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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

#151

Post by smsm42 »

rayiner wrote: post #106
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…

> That the United States actively supported the Apartheid regime is a great national shame. The real shame is that The Afrikaner nationlist party that instituted apartheid ran on the platform in 1948, the same year that the Dixiecrats in America ran on a segregationist platform. Apartheid started to crumble in 1990, less than 30 years after George Wallace, as Governor of Alabama, declared "segregation now, segregatio…

I don't think Reagan opposed Mandela because he loved the apartheid - but because Mandela was outspoken Marxist with communist leanings (and ANC was allied with communists), spoke many times in support of Castro and was in general complete political opposite of what Reagan stood for.

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

#152

Post by smsm42 »

brown9-2 wrote: post #74
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…

Are you sure that it is fair to blame Mandela for what some parts of the ANC did while he was imprisoned? Did he have control over all of the factions then?

That depends. Did he raise his voice against the practices and use the fullest of his authority to stop it, but failed, or did he accept the practices as something people do, but not talk about in the polite society?

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

#153

Post by PeterisP »

jbooth wrote: post #34
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…

It's pretty amazing that we've got all these brand new accounts showing up, all to make sure that we're aware of what a terrible person Nelson Mandela was. I had no idea this movement existed, but I guess I shouldn't be surprised. Nothing to do with race, I'm sure, they're just pacifists who oppose violence in all forms. If they were being oppressed by black people, they'd never have resorted to violence.

Why do people equate being a terrorist with being a terrible person?

If you're being oppressed and can't fix it by 'soap box/ballot box', then going to 'ammo box' and killing your oppressors is morally just and proper.

Is your country counquered by a foreign military occupation, as say, France in 1940's but also many other cases? Then participating in guerilla warfare and terrorism is perfectly understandable for morally sound, ethical people.

Is your country ruled by an oppressive dictator? Revolution, including terrorism against the ruling clique and military, and followed by armed rebellion (as, say, founding of USA) is morally justified in many such casses; simply allowing your nation to lose another generation while waiting for the dictator to go away is the immoral option.

It might be in my personal and my countries best interests for that particular occupation or that dictator to stay in power, and those particular terrorists to lose - indeed, it probably is so for some current global hotspots - but it doesn't mean that these terrorists/freedom fighters are evil people; they're simply fighting on another side, but if the fighting was needed to defend my community or nation, I'd consider such violence as not only ethically permissable, but as an ethical duty to take up arms and do as much as you can.

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

#154

Post by moolriaz »

JPKab wrote: post #143
moolriaz wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The person who sang that song was convicted of a hate crime, and is now facing criminal charges, so I don't see this as a legitimate reason to run away. I would like to see some evidence for a mass exodus from South Africa, specifically would be interested to see if large amounts of money have been taken out of the country to fuel this. I don't think any data exists for this. I was pointing out that what was said was…

The "person" who sang that song was doing so in a huge group of people, and I seriously doubt most of them were prosecuted. BEE, like any other race-based affirmative action program, is obtuse and unjust. The much more just (and effective) tool for achieving the outcome desired by race-based affirmative action is income-based affirmative action, where income is derived from the person's familial income while growing…

You're really thinking on the wrong level here. You're talking about SAT scores and affirmative action in the US. In South Africa, we're talking on a totally different level. I advise you do some reading on the extent on racial inequality in SA before trying to draw comparisons. You can start here: http://www.education.gov.za/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=qVocM3...

You're talking about getting into universities, the gap between black and white primary and high school education is massive, just to get the basic requirements for university entrance is a struggle if you come from a rural town and do not speak first language English.

Do not compare the US and South Africa. There is no comparison. BEE may be unjust (I don't think it is), but the scale of inequality in South Africa is overwhelming. Remember that over 85% of the population is non-white. I'm not sure how exactly what you say applies in a SA context, but income-based affirmative action sounds no different from race-based affirmative action in SA. I can put forward more relevant scenarios than the one you mention, I know numerous white people, both from poor and rich backgrounds, who have successfully gotten jobs. They are qualified. The same applies to black people. The unemployed people I know are simply not qualified, regardless of their race.

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

#155

Post by moolriaz »

001sky wrote: post #140
moolriaz wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

My bad, thought it was just a BBC article.

In South Africa there is simply no mention of an exodus today. This was before my time.

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

#156

Post by bambax »

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…

> Please explain to me how this is the work of a terrorist

Terrorism is the response of the weak to the strong; if the strong is wrong and unjustly oppressing the weak, then terrorism is justified and good.

It could be argued that terrorism saves lives: it kills less people to obtain a big outcome, than a regular war.

Terrorism is war hacking.

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

#157

Post by mrleinad »

noarchy wrote: post #133
mrleinad wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There's no point in critizicing Castro unless you also acknowledge everything he changed for good, and how the United States in the name of freedom and democracy wants to undo all that. Once you put everything at the same level, then you can start analyzing what's actually best for them.

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

#159

Post by TrainedMonkey »

mason240 wrote: post #147
TrainedMonkey wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are confusing things. Mandela was not a terrorist because he won, proper term is freedom fighter. History is always written by victorious.

No it not. History is written by historians, who are constantly reevaluating primary documentation and the conclusions that were drawn from them by previous generations of historians.

In perfect world yes, but quite often documentation that does not agree with ruling party gets torched.

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

#160

Post by peterashford »

pessimizer wrote: post #118
moolriaz wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a bit condescending. Terrorism doesn't have an accepted definition, and that definitely isn't my definition of terrorism, nor many others. Perhaps people living in America are more inclined to your definition. I believe that terrorism is defined by the desire to cause mass fear in the general populace by intentionally targeting innocent people, to send across some political message in whichever guise. 9/11 was…

>Terrorism doesn't have an accepted definition, Then it's going to be very difficult to make an argument that Mandela was not a terrorist. >In the Anglo-Boer war a similar tactic was employed by the Boers to great effect, but I have never heard of anyone referring to their actions during this war as acts of terrorism. The first hit I get for "Boer terrorism" is: http://www.angloboerwar.com/books/78-stevens-the-comple…

Its clear to me at least that any definition of "terrorism" must include the concept of inducing fear in the general populace by means of acts of violence on that population. That's also clearly NOT what Mandela did.
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