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The Day Mandela Was Arrested, With A Little Help From the CIA

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Re: The Day Mandela Was Arrested, With A Little Help From the CIA

#91

Post by jd_free »

mrleinad wrote: post #26
jd_free wrote: post #18

Coverage of Mandela is a testament to the prevailing powers' ability to rewrite history. Millions of people think he was put in jail for protesting apartheid or something else noble. He was actually a terrorist leader - his group killed thousands of innocents in bombings and other attacks. The "activism" he's credited with while in prison was mostly arranging more killings. Read about a practice his group created whi…

This is the same bull *t that is thrown at Castro, Che Guevara, and many others. You can't make a revolution without guns, when the other side has all the power and lots of guns as well. Almost all independence wars (and I say almost, because there's this nice dude Gandhi, but I'm not sure it was an actual war) were fought with weapons, not with flowers and nice thoughts. If you're from the US you should know better,…

So, you equate Mandela with Castro and Guevara, and consider that a good thing? Care to through bin Laden in there?

I guess fighting British soldiers is exactly the same as necklacing civilians, too, so it's fair to compare it too the US revolution.

Re: The Day Mandela Was Arrested, With A Little Help From the CIA

#92

Post by iends »

ilitirit wrote: post #89
iends wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mandela was more than happy to use violence against the government as a tool in his cause for equality (although later he seemed to regret the need for it). Using violence, he broke reasonable and justified laws. Laws such as planting bombs, destroying property, and physically harming others. Just because we can all agree that his cause was just, doesn't mean he should necessarily get a free pass from criticism or ju…

> Laws such as planting bombs, destroying property, and physically harming others. The problem with this statement is that he did not physically harm others, or instruct others to do so.

Do you have a source? Mandela himself was pretty clear on violence being a tool to effect change.

Re: The Day Mandela Was Arrested, With A Little Help From the CIA

#93

Post by ilitirit »

iends wrote: post #60
mjb wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I had no idea this movement existed, but I guess I shouldn't be surprised. I'm a South African. I am constantly disappointed by the amount of time and emotional energy some South Africans (and expats) put into historical revisionism and apartheid denial. There are many reasons for it, but it's worth reminding yourself that in 1992 more than 30% of South African voters voted to continue apartheid ( http://en.wikiped…

There seems to be revisionism on both sides. Before yesterday did not know that Mandela started the armed branch of the ANC which actively bombed government buildings and while Mandela was in prison (and maybe not involved) bombed public places where innocent people were killed. This isn't judgement, this is me as an American being shocked that the media and historical portrayal I've encountered never mentioned these…

> Before yesterday did not know that Mandela started the armed branch of the ANC which actively bombed government buildings and while Mandela was in prison (and maybe not involved) bombed public places where innocent people were killed.

Here's the other difficulty - people hear "armed wing of the ANC" and then are too shocked to even consider the context.

That he started MK should be hailed as good thing. It played a pivotal role in avoiding an all-out civil war. MK gave activists (many of whom were in fact white people) an outlet for their frustrations at the apartheid government. How was this anger directed? Destabilizing the economy by sabotaging government and military targets. The goal was force the government to give the ANC a legitimate hearing, instead of imprisoning civilians whenever they tried to protest.

If it weren't for MK, civil war would have been inevitable. People were fed up. 50 years of peaceful protest had amounted to nothing.

Re: The Day Mandela Was Arrested, With A Little Help From the CIA

#94

Post by iends »

dannypgh wrote: post #86
iends wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know anything about the laws being enforced. My point was, it's hard to argue that "the moral thing to do" is to harm others or destroy property.

I actually think apartheid is a good example of why the moral thing to do sometimes is to harm others and/or destroy property. It's not hard to argue at all. Preventing the suffering of the many by harming a relatively small number of people (or destroying practically any amount of property, really) is a clear win from a utilitarian perspective.

I understand your perspective and realize it's an easy argument to make. I see the same arguments about America's use of the atomic bomb in WW2.

There is not much more to say on this topic with two opposing viewpoints :)

Re: The Day Mandela Was Arrested, With A Little Help From the CIA

#95

Post by nbm »

iends wrote: post #76
moolriaz wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Weren't those laws only really enforced when coloured people broke them, though?" What? 'Coloured' people also refers to a very specific subset of South Africans It doesn't mean what you think it does here.

Can you elaborate? When I visited South Africa, a few white people used it to refer to the non-whites. I do not know if they were just trying to be descriptive or discriminatory. Perhaps it didn't mean what I thought it meant.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coloured is fairly accurate.

"Coloured" refers to (and is used self-descriptively by) a subset of people of mixed race of generally one or more of usually British and Dutch ancestry on the "White" side, and generally one or more of various Bantu groups (mostly Xhosa, Zulu, some Ndebele, &c.) or Khoisan ancestry, and sometimes also of Malaysian or other South-East Asian ancestry (from ex-Dutch colonies).

Re: The Day Mandela Was Arrested, With A Little Help From the CIA

#96

Post by mrleinad »

noarchy wrote: post #55
tcdent wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Care to elaborate on "all of the bad things"? If there's anything to take away from this discussion on Mandela, it's that there are a lot of misunderstandings about what actually happened, especially if you are primarily informed by American media.

"all of the bad things" seem to continue: Cuba remains the only country in Latin America that represses virtually all forms of political dissent. The government of Raúl Castro continues to enforce political conformity using short-term detentions, beatings, public acts of repudiation, travel restrictions, and forced exile. Although the Cuban government released dozens of political prisoners on the condition that they…

How about this quote to reply to your post, and we remain on topic as well?

"Freedom is meaningless if people cannot put food in their stomachs, if they can have no shelter, if illiteracy and disease continue to dog them." - Nelson Mandela

I encourage you to read about how illiterate people were before Castro, and after Castro. Also if there was hunger, if people could afford to go to a doctor, and how unequal their society was.

Re: The Day Mandela Was Arrested, With A Little Help From the CIA

#97

Post by ilitirit »

iends wrote: post #92
ilitirit wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Laws such as planting bombs, destroying property, and physically harming others. The problem with this statement is that he did not physically harm others, or instruct others to do so.

Do you have a source? Mandela himself was pretty clear on violence being a tool to effect change.

In his own words:

Four forms of violence were possible. There is sabotage, there is guerrilla warfare, there is terrorism, and there is open revolution. We chose to adopt the first. Sabotage did not involve loss of life, and it offered the best hope for future race relations.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/apr/23/nelsonmandela

The entire speech is worth reading.

Re: The Day Mandela Was Arrested, With A Little Help From the CIA

#98

Post by sophacles »

jd_free wrote: post #84
iends wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There seems to be revisionism on both sides. Before yesterday did not know that Mandela started the armed branch of the ANC which actively bombed government buildings and while Mandela was in prison (and maybe not involved) bombed public places where innocent people were killed. This isn't judgement, this is me as an American being shocked that the media and historical portrayal I've encountered never mentioned these…

Exactly. If you are under 35, there's a good chance you have literally no idea about anything bad Mandela ever did and believe that he was imprisoned for doing something Rosa Parks-like or something. The fact that history can be rewritten like that is disturbing regardless of how it's used.

Keep in mind, the so called peaceful protests in places that will result in authorities using violence are nothing but violent acts themselves! If you know your action will result in violence you are in fact participating in violence, so the "peaceful" actions are merely forms of inciting terrorism cynically calculated for maximum favorable spin in the weak minded!

Don't even get me started on the economic terrorism of strikes and work slowdowns. People not following the rules is just plain wrong no matter what!

/sarcasm

Re: The Day Mandela Was Arrested, With A Little Help From the CIA

#99

Post by kops »

moolriaz wrote: post #40

Shocked by how misinformed people are about Mandela/Apartheid, or by the amount of trolling going on here. Thousands of white people have not died in SA thanks to Mandela. Mandela was not a 'terrorist'. Apartheid was BAD, and still affects the country significantly today. Here's some context for you. This all applied pre 1994/2: I am a non white South African. The only reason I got a good education was because with t…

Thanks for your post in a world where it seems horrible things were ever done only by one side in second world war. The fact that white homo-sapiens aren't extinct in SA is good enough to convince me that not just Mandela, but many other people in that country are better human beings than I am. The words of a dutch friend keep ringing in my ears where he suggested that the aggressive group will always be better off regardless of morality, I wish he was wrong but I am still waiting for the evidence to the contrary....

Re: The Day Mandela Was Arrested, With A Little Help From the CIA

#100

Post by 001sky »

iends wrote: post #58
yequalsx wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for your contribution to the discussion. I too am shocked. That the United States actively supported the Apartheid regime is a great national shame. I'm friends with a woman who grew up in South Africa. She is white. The stories she tells about the attitudes and what happened there during the Apartheid regime are revolting. She thinks Mandela is a saint and is very grateful for his leadership. Mandela was n…

Mandela was more than happy to use violence against the government as a tool in his cause for equality (although later he seemed to regret the need for it). Using violence, he broke reasonable and justified laws. Laws such as planting bombs, destroying property, and physically harming others. Just because we can all agree that his cause was just, doesn't mean he should necessarily get a free pass from criticism or ju…

he broke reasonable and justified laws

The logic here escapes me. The purpose of the laws he broke was to support the unreasonable and unjust ones from being challenged. Right? The difference between something like apartheid (or the 3rd reich) and something like a dysfunctional democracy (which will have some bad laws) is the centrality of evil in the core of the system of idendity of the state. Clearly, in SA the apartheid regime was central to the concept of the citizens of SA. Similarly, was the situation under the Nazis.

That being said, the country of SA has not integrated gracefully by any means. The crime and apalling violence has led to many of the best and brightest fleeing the country for the UK and other anglophile countries. One of my classmates from Uni had his wife mudered in a most horriffic manner. The sad realizaton is that there are not really any good success stories in sub-saharan africa, in terms of ethical governance, economic prosperity, and the rule of Law. It boggles the mind that the only way to make things work is (apparently) political strongmen and what are in essence forms of exploitative labour arrangements under one guise or another.

Hopefully it will one day be a better place.

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