The CIA was also behind the assassination of Homi Bhabha (father of Indian atomic energy program) and Lala Bahadur Sastry (Prime Minister of India).
Conspiracy theory nonsense. Welcome to Hacker News.
A former CIA spy has revealed his key role in the arrest of Nelson Mandela
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Re: A former CIA spy has revealed his key role in the arrest of Nelson Mandela
#112Not too far off topic:the book "The Devils Chessboard", the history of Allen Dulles and the CIA is informative. The author was at Harper's Magazine for decades, and this book is full of personal accounts and information gleaned from historical records. The book is an eye opener. I was particularly shocked by how Dulles suppressed information of the holocost as it was happening, preventing obvious steps like bombing the railway lines leading to the death camps. Dulles was so fixated by the communists that any actions were to him justified.
Edit: Dulles was also fixated by protecting the interests of his law firm's Wall Street clients and he viewed the Nazi apparatus, minus Hitler, as a potential resource, something to be protected and largely left in place after the war.
Re: A former CIA spy has revealed his key role in the arrest of Nelson Mandela
#113Would South Africa be a better place if it had become a Russian-influenced Communist country? If Mandela was a secret operative for the communists in South Africa, as the local communist party claimed when he died, and as this former CIA operative has claimed, then he had to have known he was playing a tricky game. Ending apartheid, creating a communist paradise, pick one. [Edit] I know I'm being downvoted, but I als…
Cheers from Saint-Petersburg, comrade :)
Re: A former CIA spy has revealed his key role in the arrest of Nelson Mandela
#114I think it's interesting how the CIA's goal seems to be more or less "maintaining the status quo" in the global power struggle. This is obviously a useful thing to have, but if it gets too strong, how can we ever have the positive revolutions that have given us things like democracy?
The United States economy would collapse, without a constant supply of "enemies" to keep the military industrial complex ticking over.
If anyone thinks that a defeat of "militant Islam" would bring peace to the world, they're sadly deluded. The next "enemy" will already be being funded, armed and encouraged to flex its muscles, ready to be smacked down again, in the next great crusade to bring "freedom and democracy" to some unfortunate part of the world.
We've just not been told who it is yet!
Re: A former CIA spy has revealed his key role in the arrest of Nelson Mandela
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why are you talking in hypotheticals when Mandela became president of South Africa in 1994? Your false dichotomy is empirically false because apartheid was ended without creating a 'communist paradise'. Even if we were to accept your limited worldview/binary choices; it is not clear how a state with codified racism (apartheid) is superior to an egalitarian communist one.
An egalitarian communist state has never existed, it's always a state where the ruling party does as it pleases while the majority has no rights whatsoever. (Whether this is superior or inferior to an apartheid state is a tough question.)
It is, been there :)
Re: A former CIA spy has revealed his key role in the arrest of Nelson Mandela
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
Osama Bin Laden told the US the reason for his fight (which is the origin of violent movements such as ISIS): American politics/interference in Muslim countries. Do you see the pattern?
ISIS is commiting genocide. They are killing and raping, and destroying monuments from eons ago. Are you saying that these are acts of legitimate self defence??!!
That's not what they said.
Don't escalate a difficult topic of discussion into an argument unnecessarily.
Re: A former CIA spy has revealed his key role in the arrest of Nelson Mandela
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
Often wondered what the world would be like if there was an intelligence group that only did good.
If we extrapolate, humans will sooner or later create "true AI". Such an AI system can break free from our control (it will end up manipulating us in the physical space), it should become wiser than humanity as a collective (because it will evolve much faster then us). And in this case, we'd end up having such "an intelligence group that only did good". The problem lies in how we manage to bridge the period between n…
AI may very well end up being perfectly efficient and incorruptible at managing resources, but we will sill need to give it "human purpose". That's where the problem is.
Re: A former CIA spy has revealed his key role in the arrest of Nelson Mandela
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
> CIA's policy is probably controlled by someone else, and that's where changes need to be made because I like to think they don't come up with the stuff on their own. Beyond you liking to think that, what evidence do you have that the CIA's policy is controlled by anyone other than the CIA's Deputy Director who commands internal operations, and its Director, who reports to the director of National Intelligence as we…
There are congressional intelligence oversight committees, who I'd like to think are aware of these things. More likely, there's a little golf club agreement now and then between some corporation or lobbying group and government agencies. For example, if you guys can help us with a little information and maybe a teensy overthrow, we'll give you some better terms on that spy sat you wanted.
Thing is, they're not, as we discovered when the Snowden revelations came to light. Intelligence agencies do, in fact, operate without proper oversight, and are run by means of informal channels to private interests with overseas assets to protect. That's been true since the Dulles brothers.
Re: A former CIA spy has revealed his key role in the arrest of Nelson Mandela
#119In the interest of some context: Mandela was a communist and a terrorist. While a "political prisoner" he was offered freedom as soon as he would publicly renounce violent protest (i.e. terrorism) and he persistently refused to do so. His second wife, Winnie, enjoyed the necklacing opponents. So nice people all round.
Of course the government of SA didn't have to renounce violence, which is the way they dealt with any resistance. Violence, torture, intimidation. Refusal to negotiate.
Of course we don't call the Apartheid government "terrorists" for these crimes.
He was not a communist, but an African nationalist. This is something he has always maintained and was confirmed when he became president, the national economic policy was pretty much neoliberal. The reason why he remained close to the communists is because they were sympathetic to his cause and lent a lot of support.
Re: A former CIA spy has revealed his key role in the arrest of Nelson Mandela
#120You know how we're still hunting down and jailing formers nazis and concentration camp guards? Why aren't we doing the same to these CIA agents and decision makers?
There was a militant group in Greece that did that vigilante-style (since the Greek government refused / was unable to carry out any kind of prosecutions), "17 November", named after the date of an uprising [1] against the CIA-supported military government. They successfully assassinated the Athens CIA station chief (the only time a CIA station chief has been killed on duty), and promptly got labeled a terrorist organization. Arguably they did actually become one later, when they broadened their assassination campaign to a broad range of prominent Greek figures rather than the early focus on only targeting intelligence agents (both American ones and their Greek contacts). But early on they were very popular, because people like Richard Welch [2] were seen by many Greeks as legitimate military targets.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athens_Polytechnic_uprising