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Code that helped end Apartheid

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Re: Code that helped end Apartheid

#91
post #89
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it‘s not complicated. It’s straight and clear. Every human rights org says so, the UN says so, HR scholars say so. It is apartheid.

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With barbarism you mean breaking of any rule of engagement? Shooting civilians, children, innocents? Or fighting for the right to rape detainees on TV? Or starving 2.5 mil civilians?

The whole world sees who the barbarians are. You keep believing in fairy tales in your echo chamber.

[1] British doctor: „IDF deliberately shoots 5-12 year old children in the head“ https://youtu.be/0jlT-NRx-u4

[2] Footage of Israeli soldiers gang-raping a Palestinian hostage at Sde Teiman published by Israel's Ch12 https://x.com/EsheruKwaku/status/1821043507152195751

Re: Code that helped end Apartheid

#92
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I said, I don't want this to become a flame war, and to that end would have preferred not to name the apartheid state in question. But since you insist, nobody is just 'making it so by saying it' - indeed, saying it's not happening, in spite of the abundance of evidence, does not mean it's not! I've Norwegian friends who have seen it first hand and we're aghast, but of course that's just a personal anecdote that j…

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You could spend 5 minutes and find things like this that meet your definition but you won't, because you do not want to know about or acknowledge them: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judaization_of_the_Galilee

Re: Code that helped end Apartheid

#93
post #3

So when he DM’d me to say that he had “a hell of a story”—promising “one-time pads! 8-bit computers! Flight attendants smuggling floppies full of random numbers into South Africa!”—I responded. Ha ha ha. Yes, that was literally my very short pitch to Steven about Tim Jenkin's story! The actual DM: "I think this has the makings of a hell of a story: https://blog.jgc.org/2024/09/cracking-old-zip-file-to-help-o... If yo…

This is such a fabulous story!! Thank you, good Sir, for bringing it to light!! The story reads like _The Cuckoo's Egg_ in a way. Spies, intrigue, covert comms, action, revolution!

I loved that the code is still around, and works.

Kudos!!

Re: Code that helped end Apartheid

#94
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the PRNG is good enough then shipping floppies full of PRNG output is very much unnecessary. Simply send the seeds used to initialize the PRNG thereby fitting many (~180k of them on a 720kb floppy) seeds on one floppy and save your couriers a lot of risk.

Encode the seed in the arrangement of a deck of cards... shuffle to delete.

The card deck can be the key and the encryption mechanism too with Solitare. It's not secure for longer messages but it should be sufficient for short messages. It's a delicate method though because if you mess up it can be difficult to impossible to recover the proper state of the deck.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solitaire_(cipher)

Re: Code that helped end Apartheid

#95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What actually ended apartheid was international pressure and the white government's fear of a civil war. Economically isolated and vastly outnumbered, the apartheid government would have been completely removed from the country and had their property seized. My understanding is Mandela was a respected leader who was willing to play ball and facilitate a peaceful transition where the white leadership got to keep all t…

While it certainly involved a lot of people doing the right thing, that peaceful transition was absolutely incredible and I really do think that's why non-South Africans look on Mandela so fondly. If you'd told me everything about the Apartheid right up until its collapse and then said "Ok, the ANC basically win, gain power, what do you think happens?", I'd struggle to think of any scenario where there wasn't incredi…

He essentially preserved the economic/racial balance of apartheid, while he and the people around him became the new insiders. He started hanging out with the Clintons and giving diamonds to Naomi Campbell.

> To me, the peaceful transition is the achievement. It is the amazing part of it.

Apartheid was "peaceful" enough. The problem is the lack of "transition." The same people are still living in the shacks their parents lived in.

> that's why non-South Africans look on Mandela so fondly.

Non-South Africans had a lot of cognitive dissonance because they did business with South Africa and they didn't like what that said about themselves morally. The end of Apartheid gave them the license to continue that business guilt-free. It's like how sharecropping debt peonage to the same plantations that people were enslaved in and the leasing of convicts who had been sentenced to decade-long sentences for the crime of vagrancy let Americans feel better about how much they benefited from slavery.

Re: Code that helped end Apartheid

#96
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the IDF dropping bombs on apartment buildings in Beirut "terrorism"?

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The decisions about which buildings to bomb are made by AI in order to select targets faster than humans can generate and review them manually. When you say making individual decisions, you mean through AI automation. This info comes from primary sources.

Showing restraint with atomic weapons is hardly a pass for lesser violence

Re: Code that helped end Apartheid

#97
post #65
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Millions protested the Vietnam war. Many millions more protested the Iraq war. Millions upon millions have protested against Israel's genocide of the Palestinian people for an entire year. Now those same people also protest against Israel's invasion of Lebanon. It has been ineffective. We've seen peaceful protestors smeared, and beaten and harassed by the police. We've seen counter terror laws abused to smear and arr…

First, that is cherry-picking. We can find lots of examples of protest being effective. [0] And as I pointed out elsewhere, the right wing - while teaching their enemies to quit - embraces activism fully and has been incredibly successful. It's only ineffective if your measure is immediate, complete victory. You don't win everything, you face defeat, and you quit? Then I agree, your protest is useless. You think you…

I can’t think of examples of them working in my lifetime. Maybe piddling little symbolic victories, but little else.

We still have no meaningful movement on climate change, an antidemocratic political system, no social safety net, Palestine, etc.

Can you give any examples?

Re: Code that helped end Apartheid

#98

I think it was the fishing trip with Mandela and then-Prime Minister F.W. de Klerk in 1990 that ended apartheid. Specifically when one of de Klerk's people got a hook in his hand, and a Mandela person cleaned and bandaged it. After that trip Apartheid was finally broken.

What actually ended apartheid was international pressure and the white government's fear of a civil war. Economically isolated and vastly outnumbered, the apartheid government would have been completely removed from the country and had their property seized. My understanding is Mandela was a respected leader who was willing to play ball and facilitate a peaceful transition where the white leadership got to keep all t…

> What actually ended apartheid was international pressure

There wasn't any international pressure. There was a withdrawal of the continual and embarrassing support from Britain and the US, the only people other than Israel who hadn't been overly troubled by Apartheid. First from Britain, because as bad as she was, Thatcher was nauseated by Apartheid, then from the US who would have had to actively intervene (as they are right now in a similar context) in order to preserve Apartheid. This was only 25 years after the US had ended its own legal Apartheid.

The US political class was largely indifferent to Apartheid (aside from periodic expressions of mild disapproval of both sides and condemnation of Communist-backed terrorism), so when they saw how the wind was blowing within SA ("fear of a civil war"), and that individual domestic politicians could be damaged or gain politically through their actions towards SA, the US supported the "coup" (as always) so they could keep doing business without interruption.

So I'd instead say popular pressure among citizens of the US and Britain against their own politicians, and the resulting withdrawal of Anglo-American support. Everything else but "international pressure" I agree with totally.

Re: Code that helped end Apartheid

#99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What actually ended apartheid was international pressure and the white government's fear of a civil war. Economically isolated and vastly outnumbered, the apartheid government would have been completely removed from the country and had their property seized. My understanding is Mandela was a respected leader who was willing to play ball and facilitate a peaceful transition where the white leadership got to keep all t…

While it certainly involved a lot of people doing the right thing, that peaceful transition was absolutely incredible and I really do think that's why non-South Africans look on Mandela so fondly. If you'd told me everything about the Apartheid right up until its collapse and then said "Ok, the ANC basically win, gain power, what do you think happens?", I'd struggle to think of any scenario where there wasn't incredi…

There is a lot of inaccuracies here (not only in your post but I am replying to stuff above):

First, there was significant pressure on de Klerk from Western governments. Thatcher told him to release Mandela, for example. The reason she did not support sanctions is because they would likely harm South Africans for no reason...this was justified by later events. As pressure on de Klerk would have made it a lot harder to negotiate with Mandela freely.

Two, de Klerk became leader and his first action was to try to form a path to reconciliation. Mandela played his part by abandoning terrorism (I am not sure why this is disputed...this is what Mandela said about himself). de Klerk's position was, however, not particularly easy because whilst everyone acknowledged that the system had to change, it wasn't clear how to get to that point.

Three, the article implies all white South Africans were racist...this is not true. This assumption is not why apartheid happened either. de Klerk was not Botha. The US experience dominates the world, the assumption that everyone in the NP was racist is not accurate...let alone saying everyone of a certain race must have been racist.

Four, there has been massive upheaval. The economy of South Africa has collapsed, and the ANC did seize property under the auspices of BEE. Large companies were told they had to hand shares to ANC members or they would be shut down, these companies then took out loans to buy back their shares. The current President was a friend of Mandela, union leader, he was then gifted hundreds of millions in shares...that is how he became wealthy (and, if you can believe it, he is the "anti-corruption" guy).

Five, the reason there wasn't bloodshed because there was a transitional period. This was agreed by both parties, this is why Mandela wins plaudits for recognizing that NP had legitimate concerns that had to be taken into account to move forward. But...this still hasn't stopped the country collapsing.

Six, the argument that there must still be racism because of economic inequality is a uniquely US take. The ANC expropriated wealth en masse, the majority went to party insiders, and there has been almost no interest in serious economic policy-making because...the country is majority black, and the ANC are the black party. The reason people are poor is because there is no education and so they have no skills, crime is also out of control...this doesn't have anything to do with someone else not being poor (and btw, almost everyone in South Africa is now poor, the currency has collapsed, everything has collapsed, there is so much corruption that electricity cuts frequently...yes, those white people again though...this is why Malema is popular).

Seven, it was reasonable for de Klerk to be wary. What happened to Rhodesia? Everyone has this idea that everything would be fine, just trust Mandela...okay, there is a country next door where you saw whites being slaughtered en masse when Zanu-PF took power. The country has still been ruined, but that didn't happen at least.

Re: Code that helped end Apartheid

#100
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does poverty not also ruin lives? There's room for people to disagree about the specifics but the lack of widespread wealth redistribution has certainly killed a lot of people as well, it's just easier to ignore than a war.

South Africa does have wealth distribution policies in the form of requiring all companies that do business with the state or which need licences (like mines or telecoms) to have a minimum number of black ownership and black employees. South Africa also has affirmative action. In fact, there are more race based laws in South Africa currently than during Apartheid. https://freemarketfoundation.com/race-law-in-south-af…

The current President also benefitted heavily from BEE as he was a close personal friend of Mandela. Made hundreds of millions.

If you say that you are going to take large amounts of other people's assets, there is no way to run that process and not have huge amounts of corruption.

The problem has been: very high crime, heavily mismanaged infrastructure (Eskom is collapsing due to corruption, ANC politicians were taking tons of money from contracts), no investment in education, and so a population with no skills. I am not sure what wealth redistribution fixes...it has been tried repeatedly. It is like people thinking that a $1m loan from your father turns you into a different person...no, most people will end up wasting that money too.

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