The Day Mandela Was Arrested, With A Little Help From the CIA • Hacker News Board

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

#131

Post by ilitirit » Sat, Dec 07, 2013, 12:28 AM UTC

snrip wrote: post #108

ilitirit wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> for all I know Mandela pretty much deserved to go to jail. TBH, while he did break the law, I think his course of action against the state was justified. That's obviously not an excuse that will fly in court, but saying "he deserved to go to jail" is a bit disingenuous given the context. Mandela pleaded guilty to the charges against him (sabotage of various state and military instruments). The state was looking for…

Yeah, I should not have let that remark fly without further elaboration: For all I know mr. Mandela was directly connected to bombings that made innocent victims, such as the Church Street bombing. In my book that warrents jail sentence. I am not too sure how to feel about an institution of the apartheids regime being the judge to this. Right and wrong get mixed up in my head. For the fact that he and others resisted…

> For all I know mr. Mandela was directly connected to bombings that made innocent victims, such as the Church Street bombing.

FYI, he was not connected to that bombing. He was in prison at the time and only heard about it through the news and visitors. Some websites claim that he stated in his autobiography that he personally approved of the bombings. This is obviously false. His autobiography is available on the net for everyone to read.

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

#132

Post by noarchy » Sat, Dec 07, 2013, 12:38 AM UTC

oijaf888 wrote: post #85

noarchy wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

Singapore is like that too but we don't seem to single them out for it do we?

You're right. For North Americans, Cuba is local, and is discussed far more often. Singapore is definitely not without its issues (http://www.hrw.org/asia/singapore), and you'd be very hard pressed to find a state that doesn't abuse its power to some degree. Some are obviously worse than others.

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

#133

Post by noarchy » Sat, Dec 07, 2013, 12:39 AM UTC

mrleinad wrote: post #96

noarchy wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

I don't want to get drawn into a false dichotomy. The pre-Castro period was no paradise, I'm fully aware.

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

#134

Post by middleclick » Sat, Dec 07, 2013, 12:41 AM UTC

bilbo0s wrote: post #28

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…

I downvoted you and wanted to explain, as the downvote was not for your content. I, as a rule, downvote posts by sparsely populated, recently created accounts. Reason being, I generally believe them to be throwaway accounts created for the purposes of spamming and trolling. I think it does a disservice to HN to engage in that behavior. I wanted to give you some advice on how to avoid downvotes in the future. If you h…

Oh look, someone is going all "respect my authoritah" here. You should stop taking imaginary internet points so seriously.

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

#135

Post by jokoon » Sat, Dec 07, 2013, 12:44 AM UTC

Shivetya wrote: post #19

jokoon wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe the CIA should not have worked with those guys in the first place ? That's one part of capitalism I hate, paying fat checks, and knowing it will never backfire to you. When you're a government agency, when you hire somebody, there's espionage/politics involved, don't pretend the CIA is pinky pony. It's strategic moves from start to end. I've seen worse headlines.

This has nothing to do with capitalism and more to do with anything, colonialism and the Cold War. It was politics as usual, help allies to keep them. While it is easy to sit back and judge the past we have to realize that some actions were seen as prudent at the time. The nation Mandela came up in is far different from what it is today but so is the world. This by no means excuses actions of the past, but at the tim…

Sorry, but that just sounds like an empire trying to manipulate every facet of the world it can to enforce an ideology that fits what the empire wants of the world. That's what a control freak would do. He just like a certain code, it represents him, so he wants everybody to dress the same, and he will argue it's for their good sake.

The US are great inside its border, but outside, until everybody adopted total liberal capitalism (which surprisingly, fit the "I hire you, obey me" manner, and is very effective at buying assets), it will be shitting in every country it can. And that's not wise nor smart.

That's very aggressive, and that's the main reason people are now scared of flying. More and more bad rep, yet american citizens will argue europeans are faggots, that the US is on top or whatever. I don't want to judge too much, but there is a different between a respected leader and a bully.

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

#136

Post by larrys » Sat, Dec 07, 2013, 12:45 AM UTC

at-fates-hands wrote: post #31

larrys wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've raised some interesting points and I don't know enough to know if this is correct (other than what you are referring to and I don't even come close to knowing how to vet anything on this). But I do know that currently Mandela is seen as a saint (just watching the news last night alone would tell you that). So I wonder if anyone with mainstream credibility has written or will write some definite document that c…

Here's an account of the trial which I thought was pretty detailed: http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/mandela/mandel... I thought it was pretty telling he was offered his freedom if he denounced the violence the ANC was taking part in and he refused.

Actually now that I'm thinking about it last night I think Brian Williams (NBC) said that but he said it in a tone of voice that didn't make it seem bad. I thought about it a bit but forgot until you just made your comment. Shows you how the press can infer importance or not just by the way something is presented.

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

#137

Post by larrys » Sat, Dec 07, 2013, 12:48 AM UTC

ismail wrote: post #107

larrys wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've raised some interesting points and I don't know enough to know if this is correct (other than what you are referring to and I don't even come close to knowing how to vet anything on this). But I do know that currently Mandela is seen as a saint (just watching the news last night alone would tell you that). So I wonder if anyone with mainstream credibility has written or will write some definite document that c…

I think the media you are watching are doing you a disservice and quite possibly the world media. They are portraying Nelson Mandela as some kind of grand-father to the country, and yes in the last 15 years he has grown into that role, but there was more to the man that. He was not GREAT because he was a SAINT or a pacifist or forgiving. He was great, because he knew what needed to be done, and he did it at the right…

If anything it shows that you never obviously know the real story if you don't know all the details. Something that I always think and why I am so cynical and skeptical most of the time. There is always spin.

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

#138

Post by leoc » Sat, Dec 07, 2013, 1:10 AM UTC

puller wrote: post #61

wavefunction wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for your take. The people calling Mandela a terrorist don't know what they're talking about.

To be fair, he did found the armed wing of the ANC, was offered a release from prison conditional on renouncing violence which he refused to do, and afterward his group went on to carry out a number of IRA-style bombings. The apartheid regime might have justified extreme measures that killed civilians, but his hands are not as clean as you would imagine from the hagiography. We don't glorify Gerry Adams in this way a…

The analogy between Adams and the IRA and Mandela and the ANC is seriously inapt. To begin with, the IRA's objective was not civil rights for Northern Ireland's Catholic/Nationalist minority. The Provisional Sinn Féin/Provisional IRA hydra always made it absolutely clear that their goal was the establishment of "a thirty-two county socialist republic". That means that they were seeking to impose, by force, a single all-Ireland state on the Protestant/Unionist majority of Northern Ireland against its wishes. This is a straightforward small-n nationalist objective, not a democratic or ("clasically") liberal or humanitarian one. Secondly, and secondarily, even at their worst the civil disabilities imposed on Northern Ireland's Catholic/Nationalist minority (though real and serious) were not really comparable with what South Africa's black majority was made to suffer. And when those disabilities were corrected (and when the UK government began massively and even-handedly subsidising the whole Northern Ireland economy, to keep both Catholics and Protestants in jobs and forestall a collapse of the NI economy brought on by the IRA's campaign) it made not a blind bit of difference to the IRA, because, once again, Northern Ireland Catholics/Nationalists enjoying political and personal freedom within the UK was contrary to their objective. Finally, when the population of Northern Ireland participated in largely free and fair elections to the UK parliament, not only most Northern Ireland voters overall, but most voters from the Catholic/Nationalist community in Northern Ireland consistently rejected the IRA's campaign by voting for politicians who opposed it and rejecting the IRA's candidates (running under its Sinn Féin political wing). They had no mandate from anyone.

The "peace process" basically consisted of SF/IRA giving up and accepting the political arrangement which they had been violently opposing for decades, in exchange for goodies for themselves. As such it's a bit much to laud Adams for his role in it, beyond noting his success in persuading his fellow desperadoes to accept the goodies instead of continuing their deeply beloved war. (Though it turns out his success at this was pretty partial too.) Nonetheless if you don't think Adams has been glorified you're quite mistaken. As soon as the "peace process" began Adams (and Martin McGuinness, the Tweedledum to his Tweedledee) were the beneficiaries of an almost full-spectrum political and media bulldozing campaign in the Republic of Ireland, the UK and worldwide in support of the peace process and its heroes and against any hard questions. You wouldn't believe some of the soft-focused fawning and cooing Adams has received from mainstream sources, if you somehow haven't seen it yourself already.

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

#139

Post by jokoon » Sat, Dec 07, 2013, 1:16 AM UTC

pessimizer wrote: post #113

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…

Mandela was a terrorist. You're just having cognitive dissonance because you agree with him (as all right-thinking people should have.) To the extent that "terrorist" has any meaning, it is when a less powerful actor attempts to advance an agenda through creating an unmanageable situation for a more powerful institution by causing an increased sense of risk within individuals who are part of the support structure of…

You're displacing and blurring both contexts and words to your advantage.

> having cognitive dissonance

I know what most people think is not always right, but read yourself, and try to add water to your wine a little.

The context of apartheid was really bleak. Colonization by whites on african land can only generate relevant tensions from black people toward whites. Most people are black in SA and in all africa around it. You can't have a ruling minority which is not like and expect nice things. Nelson Mandela was much more peaceful (and smart) than most others.

> Mandela was a terrorist.

First, people use terrorism when they're losing a war, not an political argument. Secondly, activists have been called terrorists because the cause they defend have been discredited after other activists used violence for the same cause. It's the media and newspaper inflating images which doesn't reflect the thought of the majority.

You can't mix and match opinions and definitions used by the media to discredit Mandela, and at the same time forget how the situation was in SA, and on top of it, talk about cognitive dissonance. If most view it as a hero, maybe he just it. Nobody sees Ben Laden as a hero. Bush actually invited Mandela and apologized after he was considered a terrorist.

Conclusion: everyone sees terrorists everywhere.

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

#140

Post by 001sky » Sat, Dec 07, 2013, 1:36 AM UTC

moolriaz wrote: post #129

001sky wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No offense, but you seem quite ignorant of the "non-anecdotal" data. Almost to the point of unbeleivably so. (1) Lack of Personal Security. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_security_industry_in_S... The private security industry in South Africa is the largest in the world,[2] with nearly 9,000 registered companies and 400,000 registered active private security guards, more than the South African police and army…

Definitely, it's a dangerous country. If you read my response again, I did not disagree with this. I just don't agree that there is a mass exodus of people. The wikipedia article you cite about this doesn't cite any hard data sources, and there are more relevant and recent measures like the most recent SA census.

this doesn't cite any hard data sources

The UK census is one. For each 100k white people in london that is 1% of the white population of SA. So, ~500k is ~5% of the white SA population of ~10 million. Given the dis-proportionate wealth and education (as you illustrate in your earlier posts) of the white SA population, I would call this number "material" if not "mass exodus", because the social (and networking) impact is likely dis-proportionate to the headcount alone. For these reasons, it seems presumptive to keep denying this has ever occurred. But YMMV.