Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why is everything behind a damn paywall these days?
It's newspapers and the decline in print.
Newspaper death throes.
A former CIA spy has revealed his key role in the arrest of Nelson Mandela
141–150 of 297 posts
Re: A former CIA spy has revealed his key role in the arrest of Nelson Mandela
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> Of course we don't call the Apartheid government "terrorists" for these crimes. Almost everyone agrees that the Apartheid government was horrible. Almost no one holds them up as a positive example. Conversely, almost everyone holds Mandela and his terrorist organization up as an example and as a hero despite them intentionally setting off bombs in civilian locations like shopping malls and restaurants.
From the biographies I read, they never put bombs in public, civilian locations. Only in strategic industrial/infrastructure locations, making sure there was not a person in place.
But, of course I read that in biased biographies. Do you have source that a person was killed by these attacks?
Re: A former CIA spy has revealed his key role in the arrest of Nelson Mandela
#143In 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…
Since the ANC was unbanned, murder rates in South Africa have soared.
http://issafrica.org/uploads/CQ7Thomson.pdf
Re: A former CIA spy has revealed his key role in the arrest of Nelson Mandela
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why do you pity the families of US soldiers who invaded Iraq but blame the US for the deaths of Iraqis? If what the US did was wrong, then the soldiers who carried out those orders were wrong too. How do Americans maintain this doublethink that their government's military actions are bad but the people who carry them out are good? Is a US soldier somehow more righteous than an ISIS soldier? They both kill innocent pe…
The soldiers didn't know any better, and the situation wasn't clearly evil enough for there to be expectation of rebellion or refusal of orders. The leaders, by contrast, knowingly engineered it (according to parent) No one brought up isis soldiers.
If the soldiers didn't know any better, then that's a sign that our cultural attitudes towards war are somewhat lacking. Those people were not forced to sign up to the military, and if their moral compasses were distorted enough to believe wars not based on self defence can somehow be justified then why is that message getting across?
We shouldn't blame the soldiers for doing a difficult job, especially after the damage is done, but we can and should discourage people from signing up in the first place.
Re: A former CIA spy has revealed his key role in the arrest of Nelson Mandela
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Of course we don't call the Apartheid government "terrorists" for these crimes. Almost everyone agrees that the Apartheid government was horrible. Almost no one holds them up as a positive example. Conversely, almost everyone holds Mandela and his terrorist organization up as an example and as a hero despite them intentionally setting off bombs in civilian locations like shopping malls and restaurants.
From the biographies I read, they never put bombs in public, civilian locations. Only in strategic industrial/infrastructure locations, making sure there was not a person in place. But, of course I read that in biased biographies. Do you have source that a person was killed by these attacks?
Re: A former CIA spy has revealed his key role in the arrest of Nelson Mandela
#146Earlier 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?
One thing I find bizarre about 9/11 is that very few people seem to openly question why the World Trade Center was amongst the top targets that day. Perhaps if people looked a little deeper into what the WTO does it might help us make better decisions going forward. In the interest of balance, the situation on 9/11 wasn't completely the fault of the US. Saudi Arabia appears to have been the main driving force behind…
The WTO and WTCs have similar names, but are not otherwise related to each other.
Re: A former CIA spy has revealed his key role in the arrest of Nelson Mandela
#147Given the serious effort CIA puts into destabilising regions (Lets not forget the large amounts of sources who said people were being ferried and paid to go to Kiev when the Ukrainian uprising was occuring) it would not surprise me very much if they were also behind the Britain "exit" from Europe, since that would cause an economic collapse of the EU and would remove a super-power from play. I feel like a conspiracy…
It's the workers who have been shafted by declining standards of living, stagnant wages, rising prices, false promises about the benefits of free trade agreements, and increased immigrant labor -- coupled with an increasingly bureaucratic EU organization that pushes more political change than economic/trade change. The citizens of Britain signed up for the EU when they saw it as a trade agreement that would benefit them down the line, instead they are giving up more sovereignty to EU's bureaucracy in exchange for benefits that disproportionately flow up to the elite.
And it's not economic suicide. In the short term it will most likely hurt but in the long term, Britain will survive and the EU will need to bend to accommodate Britain's consumers, even if the UK is not a member state. It is one of, if not the, biggest importers of EU goods and it's the EU, not Britain, who cannot survive without accommodating the other.
Also I don't see why the US would benefit in any way from a collapsed EU or UK. Trade and travel becomes harder when they are not a single unit.
Re: A former CIA spy has revealed his key role in the arrest of Nelson Mandela
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
There isn't anything intrinsically wrong with communism as an ideal. All of its implementations, however, have been seriously lacking, and perhaps it is unviable in practice; this does not mean the concept is unacceptable in theory.
You are clearly incompetent about the subject. The "ideal" of communism and the practice of communism are not two different things. Communism is practiced precisely the way it is theoretically intended to work. Communism is a cleptocratic system of ruling and exploiting the manual labour and natural resources of any given territory inhabited by unambitious masses that largely lack individualism. The core of the syste…
You sound like an Ayn Rand soliloquy.
Re: A former CIA spy has revealed his key role in the arrest of Nelson Mandela
#149Would 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…
I lived in a country run by communist party for 14 years, but I do not see any link with ending South African apartheid at all. The apartheid ended and no communist paradise/hell/regime instead.
Re: A former CIA spy has revealed his key role in the arrest of Nelson Mandela
#150Not really an "admission", he was guilty of the crime for which he was charged.
Given the systematic abuses by the state authority in South Africa, at the time of Mandela's arrest, against the social and civil rights of a certain group of citizens due to ethnic prejudices, believe a some context is worth considering in deciding who was right and wrong.
The "abuses" by the Apartheid government was actually negligible compared to the violence South Africa has experienced since the unbanning of the ANC.
http://issafrica.org/uploads/CQ7Thomson.pdf