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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

#91

Post by digi_owl »

vidarh wrote: post #56
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…

> Would South Africa be a better place if it had become a Russian-influenced Communist country? If it had been, it would have been thanks to idiotic operations like this. There was no secret that there were tons of SACP members working within the ANC - they were in an explicit alliance with the ANC and COSATU (trade union alliance), and when the SACP forerunner - the CPSA - was outlawed with the introduction of apart…

Best i can tell, the thinking in Langley was/is that any social democratic movement will soon after coming to power be hijacked by hardliners and turned "soviet".

Sadly their actions seems to more often than not hasten the takeover rather than counteract it.

Then again there is also the whole "banana republic" issue, that had been going on since at least WWI.

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

#92

Post by yosefk »

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.

Most of them do, according to their definition of "good."

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

#93

Post by imglorp »

kangar00 wrote: post #83
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…

> CIA's policy is probably controlled by someone else, and that's where changes need to be made because I like to think they don't come up with the stuff on their own. Beyond you liking to think that, what evidence do you have that the CIA's policy is controlled by anyone other than the CIA's Deputy Director who commands internal operations, and its Director, who reports to the director of National Intelligence as we…

There are congressional intelligence oversight committees, who I'd like to think are aware of these things.

More likely, there's a little golf club agreement now and then between some corporation or lobbying group and government agencies. For example, if you guys can help us with a little information and maybe a teensy overthrow, we'll give you some better terms on that spy sat you wanted.

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

#94

Post by awinder »

hasenj wrote: post #71
galuggus wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about Vietnam, Iraq, Afganistan?

How did they "lose" Iraq? They successfully invaded the country, changed the regime, changed the military, the police, the government .. everything. Then they left. Iraq is in utter chaos, the US is doing just fine. How exactly did the US "lose" in Iraq?

Because the stated goal of that war was for the instilled government to survive and for democracy to transform the region. Not for the country to become destabilized with former military operatives to go into Syria and form the next great political catastrophe. That definitely wasn't a "win" long term.

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

#95

Post by [deleted] »

mrslave wrote: post #85

In the interest of some context: Mandela was a communist and a terrorist. While a "political prisoner" he was offered freedom as soon as he would publicly renounce violent protest (i.e. terrorism) and he persistently refused to do so. His second wife, Winnie, enjoyed the necklacing opponents. So nice people all round.

[deleted]

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

#96

Post by thinkloop »

Hondor wrote: post #80
spriggan3 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Why do you pity the families of US soldiers who invaded Iraq but blame the US for the deaths of Iraqis? If what the US did was wrong, then the soldiers who carried out those orders were wrong too. How do Americans maintain this doublethink that their government's military actions are bad but the people who carry them out are good? Is a US soldier somehow more righteous than an ISIS soldier? They both kill innocent pe…

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.

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

#97

Post by _yosefk »

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.

An egalitarian communist state has never existed, it's always a state where the ruling party does as it pleases while the majority has no rights whatsoever. (Whether this is superior or inferior to an apartheid state is a tough question.)

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

#98

Post by ck2 »

imglorp wrote: post #93
kangar00 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> CIA's policy is probably controlled by someone else, and that's where changes need to be made because I like to think they don't come up with the stuff on their own. Beyond you liking to think that, what evidence do you have that the CIA's policy is controlled by anyone other than the CIA's Deputy Director who commands internal operations, and its Director, who reports to the director of National Intelligence as we…

There are congressional intelligence oversight committees, who I'd like to think are aware of these things. More likely, there's a little golf club agreement now and then between some corporation or lobbying group and government agencies. For example, if you guys can help us with a little information and maybe a teensy overthrow, we'll give you some better terms on that spy sat you wanted.

Is that like the congressional committee headed by and filled with people who don't believe in science?

https://www.google.com/search?q=congress+committee+anti+scie...

Why would you expect any other oversight committee in any other field be competent?

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

#99

Post by fennecfoxen »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #78
ZenoArrow wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> It's the oil money that's fuelling the conflict on both sides, if we cut that out of the equation I'm confident we would find it much easier to work towards peace in the Middle East. I agree, though even if the US solved its energy problems today, we (i.e. the entire Western world) need to survive the generation or two of pretty angry Middle-Easterns seeking revenge for their destroyed homes and killed families, as…

> ... even if the US solved its energy problems today ...

Observe: We kinda did, as far as geopolitics are concerned anyway (environmentalist concerns may obviously differ). US net imports of oil are approaching zero, and our neighbor Canada has plenty more.

Here the Financial Times reports on projections that the US will be a net exporter by 2028, and maybe 2019 if the price shoots up: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f6dcbd90-e2bf-11e4-aa1d-00144feab7...

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

#100

Post by vidarh »

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…

> [Edit] I know I'm being downvoted, but I also doubt anyone commenting here lives in a communist country, or has ever spent much time in one.

I didn't downvote you, but this edit seriously tempted me. Your background is irrelevant. It is your arguments we have taken issue with.

The replies you have gotten point out how flawed this idea is/was. We know what politics Mandela would come to push, because he eventually got to run the South African government, and despite having prominent SACP members in it, it was a fairly moderate government which opposed a lot of SACP policies. This despite decades of Soviet influence on the ANC after Mandelas arrest.

Even if the CIA could not have known that at the time, what they would have known if they did their job properly was that the ANC at the time was quite moderate, and that they had an opportunity to stem SACP influence in the ANC if they'd engaged constructively with them.

Instead they treated them as a terrorist organization and chose to act to help their racist authoritarian enemy, and as a result they were part responsible for forcing the ANC to turn to the Soviets for weapons, training and exile for prominent members.

If South Africa had become a Soviet satellite, it would have been in parts thanks to yet another case of CIA blowback, not because of Mandela.

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