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A former CIA spy has revealed his key role in the arrest of Nelson Mandela

thetimes.co.uk

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Re: A former CIA spy has revealed his key role in the arrest of Nelson Mandela

#181

Post by [deleted] »

patrickaljord wrote: post #175
danharaj wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And i suppose the people of "The Democratic Republic of North Korea" know a thing or two about democracy and republics. There are plenty of communists who categorically reject state communism. They're called anarchists.

Leftist anarchists are against private property though and against turning a profit and individualism. We all know how this ends. Also, how do you enforce the no private property rule without a state and without a private security agency?

[deleted]

Re: A former CIA spy has revealed his key role in the arrest of Nelson Mandela

#182

Post by unethical_ban »

ZenoArrow wrote: post #167
enoch_r wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The WTO and WTCs have similar names, but are not otherwise related to each other.

TIL. Thanks. So if it wasn't the headquarters for the WTO, what activity was taking place at the WTC?

Trade. Wikipedia probably has the answer but I believe it was just another set of high rise offices.

Re: A former CIA spy has revealed his key role in the arrest of Nelson Mandela

#183

Post by toyg »

ZenoArrow wrote: post #144
thinkloop wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 dam…

> Those people were not forced to sign up to the military

You should read up a bit on the US military. A lot of those people came from disadvantaged backgrounds where army careers are the only ticket out of poverty.

The US political and military establishment literally preys on the poor for their cannon fodder. It's the post-Vietnam equilibrium: they won't draft, so (white) sons and daughters of the middle-classes will be left alone, and in return such middle-classes don't ask too many questions about where, how and why the military is used.

To assuage collective guilt, a narrative has emerged in which grunts are not blamed, since they are effectively victims of a system nobody really wants to change.

Re: A former CIA spy has revealed his key role in the arrest of Nelson Mandela

#184

Post by seanmcdirmid »

blfr wrote: post #176
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In practice yes, but not in theory, which is an important distinction. To use an analogy, genocide of Jews is an unacceptable ideal, you don't have to try it out to know its bad. In retrospect, no one thought the nazi's plan could have ended up working in a "good" way. Compare that to Lenin and the Bolsheviks, given communism as an ideal alone, it wasn't inherently flawed or "evil", it just turns out people are selfi…

It turns out that public ownership of the means of production actually leads to an even worse world than planned, industrial genocide. Part of the reason why is people clinging to this idea long after it has been shown not viable and leading to absolutely horrific events like Holodomor (a Holocaust level genocide before Holocaust) or The Great Leap Forward. I can see how one might find communism interesting from the…

I think you are really misinterpreting the meaning of "an acceptable proposition". It doesn't have to evaluate to T, only that, as an abstraction, it does not evaluate to F based on its structure alone.

No we don't want communism (at least I don't), but for someone to say it is illogical is completely incorrect.

Re: A former CIA spy has revealed his key role in the arrest of Nelson Mandela

#185

Post by qntty »

patrickaljord wrote: post #175
danharaj wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And i suppose the people of "The Democratic Republic of North Korea" know a thing or two about democracy and republics. There are plenty of communists who categorically reject state communism. They're called anarchists.

Leftist anarchists are against private property though and against turning a profit and individualism. We all know how this ends. Also, how do you enforce the no private property rule without a state and without a private security agency?

Lack of private property doesn't need enforcing, it's the existence of private property that needs enforcing

Re: A former CIA spy has revealed his key role in the arrest of Nelson Mandela

#186

Post by hackerboos »

dijit wrote: post #81

Given 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…

Strange that you believe the CIA is behind a Brexit push considering the position of the White House and the IMF.

Also leaving the EU is not going to result in 'economic collapse' - the EU doesn't want tariffs on their exports to the UK. I'd expect those trade negotiations to be pretty swift.

Re: A former CIA spy has revealed his key role in the arrest of Nelson Mandela

#187

Post by EliRivers »

ZenoArrow wrote: post #60
benevol wrote: post #35

Earlier 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…

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.

Makes a lot of sense to me. NYC is an obvious top target. WTC is a big building, so high body count. Well known around the world; will have more impact than hitting some building nobody has ever heard of. Very distinctive appearance and a lot taller than the buildings around it, so good chance of actually being able to find it. Having two tall towers next to each other increases the chance of collision. Being so tall compared to the buildings around them, good chance of a lot of people seeing it happen (and recording the second one hit, so good publicity). In terms of practicality and terrorising, it ticks all the boxes.

Re: A former CIA spy has revealed his key role in the arrest of Nelson Mandela

#188

Post by ccvannorman »

""The agent firmly believed Mandela was in the pocket of Communist Russia and was planning to incite the Indian population in the Natal region, where he was based, to rise up.""

Given ubiquitous surveillance and increasing state power, how long before average citizens start getting locked up because a single cowboy at an agency "firmly believes" they are a threat?

Re: A former CIA spy has revealed his key role in the arrest of Nelson Mandela

#189

Post by tomarr »

dijit wrote: post #153
krisdol wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

the EU being overly bureaucratic is due to age, the UK system has the same issues. our sovereignty is not important as long as we have the choice to leave in future, but the benefits awarded the middle/working/lower classes is unquestionable and we may not be awarded such luxury under a malevolent or overly 'for the rich' party. Rights are only rights until they aren't. Workers rights in the UK are the best they've e…

I'm British and back staying in the EU, but I think your post is unnecessarily condescending and incorrectly portrays your opinions as facts.

The immigration argument is about EU citizens which the Danish system can do nothing to stop/slow, and stopping the 'free-flow' of EU citizens is most Brexiters biggest desire from the campaign. The economic studies are definitely in Remain's favour, but economics as a field is very 'woolly', often wrong and more importantly does not resonate with a large populace who have seen living standards broadly stagnate since the last prolonged recession.

There are arguments for and against - the Remain camp don't have a satisfactory answer to people who are genuinely concerned over immigration or (albeit discretely) do not like immigration in their surrounding, and the Leave campaign have the consensus on the economic side due to uncertainty over post-Brexit state and agreements.

Re: A former CIA spy has revealed his key role in the arrest of Nelson Mandela

#190

Post by zo1 »

fsloth wrote: post #64
nxzero wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Often wondered what the world would be like if there was an intelligence group that only did good.

Not feasible. Until we develop an ethical calculus "good" will always be relative. The problem with this is that one cannot infer ethics from logic. Also, human basic psychology is such that more power one has the less scrupulous one becomes. Therefore, either the group would be within a range of totally good in nature and totally feeble in power, or totally corrupt in nature and totally powerfull.

>"The problem with this is that one cannot infer ethics from logic."

Of course you can. The problem I assume you're encountering is that you're not starting from irreducible basic premises. Thus, you can't logically resolve the already-existing and conflicting inconsistencies.

We are bombarded from birth with very illogical and inconsistent rules about how the world works. All of those things implicitly include "ethical" value systems. They're very hard to reconcile logically after the fact, simply because they're contradictory in nature and we have at that point heavily-invested into building mental models to navigate the world.

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