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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

#61

Post by JanezStupar »

spriggan3 wrote: post #26
mpweiher wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure if trolling... ?? Just for the record: of course large parts of it were manufactured. Some of it was manufactured by a so-called "source", but that source was so in-/non-credible that you wouldn't buy a used hammer from him, never mind a used car. And it was well known that this source was completely non-credible. In addition, various other bits were combined in ways that the appearance of a threat was manuf…

> Just for the record: of course large parts of it were manufactured. Some of it was manufactured by a so-called "source", but that source was so in-/non-credible that you wouldn't buy a used hammer from him Yet Powell built his case, before the UN with Curveball's informations. Curveball who ultimately admitted he was a taxi driver and not a scientist. Some might say "the US has been misled", I don't believe one sec…

AFAIK Powell himself has been sceptical and deceived. That is why he eventually resigned after he realized he had been played.

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

#62

Post by aries1980 »

rangibaby wrote: post #39
kmfrk wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US actually brought on a lot of nazis after WW2 to work with against the Soviets. American history is fun like that.

including Werhner Von Braun, the designer of the Saturn V and the inspiration for Dr. Strangelove

Indeed, but just for the record, Dr. Strangelove among Von Braun is the amalgamation of John Von Neumann, Edward Teller and Herman Kahn too, who were far from being nazis.

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

#63

Post by Havoc »

sangnoir wrote: post #49
Havoc wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If Mandela was a secret operative for the communists in South Africa Pretty much all of the ANC has/had strong communist links since thats who sheltered those that went into exile. So I wouldn't say "secret operative"...

If you were an ANC strategist at the time (cold war), who would you have aligned yourself with for financial & military support? Remember, you are a "3rd world" movement, European colonialism is still in full swing (though wavering), you are probably the wrong color and civil rights aren't a thing yet -Jim Crow laws are still being enforced in the US, and the apartheid government you are fighting have been aligned wi…

>who would you have aligned yourself with for financial & military support?

There wasn't really much of a choice. The west was sorta unofficially aligned with the Apartheid gov, so by default that puts revolutionaries on the soviet side. Idealogical the soviets were also a better fit.

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

#64

Post by fsloth »

nxzero wrote: post #11
cm3 wrote: post #5

The CIA is the reason for most of the unstable regions and it's hard to understand how after messing with other places and making it worse for everybody but weapons manufacturers, they're still doing the same thing over and over. Previously it was the fight against Communism, now Islam, I wonder what it will be in 2020. Middle-east, Asia, South America, all are right to be very angry with the CIA, but turn it into a…

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.

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

#65

Post by berntb »

cm3 wrote: post #5

The CIA is the reason for most of the unstable regions and it's hard to understand how after messing with other places and making it worse for everybody but weapons manufacturers, they're still doing the same thing over and over. Previously it was the fight against Communism, now Islam, I wonder what it will be in 2020. Middle-east, Asia, South America, all are right to be very angry with the CIA, but turn it into a…

You need to give good references for that, it sounds like a classic conspiracy theory.

When the cold war was going on, it was a different time. A dictator could get better offers from the different sides. (It is not a coincidence that some countries democratized after the cold war. The old leaders could get away without, when NATO needed them more.)

For instance, didn't Gadaffi destabilize West Africa? But not with any particular media attention. India/Pakistan destabilized by USA? Get real. Why would USA destabilize Somalia? And China is destabilizing quite a lot by itself, right now. And so on.

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

#66

Post by vidarh »

sangnoir wrote: post #49
Havoc wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If Mandela was a secret operative for the communists in South Africa Pretty much all of the ANC has/had strong communist links since thats who sheltered those that went into exile. So I wouldn't say "secret operative"...

If you were an ANC strategist at the time (cold war), who would you have aligned yourself with for financial & military support? Remember, you are a "3rd world" movement, European colonialism is still in full swing (though wavering), you are probably the wrong color and civil rights aren't a thing yet -Jim Crow laws are still being enforced in the US, and the apartheid government you are fighting have been aligned wi…

Same thing all over the place. Castro went on a PR tour of the US trying to gather support and was snubbed long before he went to talk to the Soviets. Few years later his party finally called itself Socialist. Another few years and they finally called themselves Communist.

Ho Chi Mihn was a Comintern member, but the Viet Minh was a broader alliance that included nationalists and others as well alongside the communist party until it was clear that they would not be able to rely on the west for support. Ho even bean the Vietnamese Declaration of Independence with an explicit reference to the US Declaration of Independence [1], which he admired greatly.

And so on...

US governments kept throwing pro-democracy movements under the bus one after the other for large parts of the cold war in ways that made it trivially easy for the Soviet Union to buy themselves friends.

[1] http://legacy.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1945vietnam.html

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

#67

Post by berntb »

benevol wrote: post #35
cm3 wrote: post #5

The CIA is the reason for most of the unstable regions and it's hard to understand how after messing with other places and making it worse for everybody but weapons manufacturers, they're still doing the same thing over and over. Previously it was the fight against Communism, now Islam, I wonder what it will be in 2020. Middle-east, Asia, South America, all are right to be very angry with the CIA, but turn it into a…

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 that really got bin Laden was US military bases in Saudi Arabia.

Hell, countries pay to have those bases today, since when they are attacked, the US gets involved directly.

The point is, the values/excuses of murderous islamists might not be that relevant...

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

#68

Post by aluhut »

cm3 wrote: post #5

The CIA is the reason for most of the unstable regions and it's hard to understand how after messing with other places and making it worse for everybody but weapons manufacturers, they're still doing the same thing over and over. Previously it was the fight against Communism, now Islam, I wonder what it will be in 2020. Middle-east, Asia, South America, all are right to be very angry with the CIA, but turn it into a…

I just wait until they mess with China. This way the economy may put enough pressure to hit it so it hurts. I lost all hope for the general public since Snowden.

But just like with all the other agencies in the US, I don't believe they'll be gone fast. They know to much ;)

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

#69

Post by newjersey »

gfgjmfgjmgh wrote: post #16

The CIA was also behind the assassination of Homi Bhabha (father of Indian atomic energy program) and Lala Bahadur Sastry (Prime Minister of India).

> Later, Gregory Douglas, a journalist who interviewed former CIA operative, Robert Crowley, over a period of 4 years, recorded their telephonic conversations and published its transcribe in a book titled, "Conversations with the Crow". In the book, Crowley claimed that CIA was responsible for eliminating Dr. Homi Bhabha, Indian nuclear scientist whose plane crashed into Alps, when he was going to attend a conference in Vienna and Lal Bahadur Shastri, who died at Tashkent summit in 1966. Crowley said that USA was wary of India's rigid stand on nuclear policy and then PM Lal Bahadur Shastri, who wanted to go ahead with nuclear tests. He also said that agency was more worried about collective domination of Indo-Russian over the region, for which a strong deterrent was required.

If that's true and if it was planned, there's probably a memo justifying it somewhere and we will declassify it in the future.

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

#70

Post by random778 »

sangnoir wrote: post #45
equalsnil wrote: post #23

Would South Africa be a better place if it had become a Russian-influenced Communist country? If Mandela was a secret operative for the communists in South Africa, as the local communist party claimed when he died, and as this former CIA operative has claimed, then he had to have known he was playing a tricky game. Ending apartheid, creating a communist paradise, pick one. [Edit] I know I'm being downvoted, but I als…

Why are you talking in hypotheticals when Mandela became president of South Africa in 1994? Your false dichotomy is empirically false because apartheid was ended without creating a 'communist paradise'. Even if we were to accept your limited worldview/binary choices; it is not clear how a state with codified racism (apartheid) is superior to an egalitarian communist one.

How do you think things would have played out had he become president 10 years earlier, 5 years before the revolutions of 1989?
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