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Nelson Mandela Dies.

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ferlew | 21:49 Thu 05th Dec 2013 | News
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RIP.
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I agree, Jim, pathetic point scoring by some.
its not unknown, and it wasn't just the whites who had much to fear of reprisals for the wretched apartheid system but other party members.

http://www.nytimes.com/1997/05/13/world/party-led-by-mandela-now-owns-up-to-atrocities.html?src=pm
emmie

That link puts an entirely different light on the subject, be interesting to see what the usual suspects think about it.

It's not a Daily Mail link so they can't use that get out clause.
is it point scoring or perhaps a bit of balance, all the ho ha on party leaders, world despots, some very unsavoury facts come out and not just when they are dead. Some on AB were almost dancing on Mrs T grave when she died, that was pretty unsavoury, but you have to let it go as that was, is people's opinions. she was not a saint or a sinner either.
emmie

/// its not unknown, and it wasn't just the whites who had much to fear of reprisals for the wretched apartheid system but other party
members. ///

Oh dear it gets worse, not much difference to the dreaded Mau Mau that some on here wish to support with their anti-British views.
AOG, i actually don't care what others think, i do however have an issue with deifying people, not even the popes get off scot free.
Mandela cant be responsible for ANC atrocities committed while he was jailed for 27years.
i can't agree with subjugating peoples of any nationality, that is wrong, and it certainly did go on and not just from the British empire. As to the Mau Mau they certainly did commit atrocities, but so did the British out in Kenya.
tambo, sorry but this was before and in case you didn't see what about the murders of their own peoples, necklacing being one of the most disturbing and disgusting of crimes. I have seen that on news footage and it is truly gruesome.
Emmie...we don't need balance.

I thought it shameful how some people spoke of Maggie when she died. This isn't about Maggie though.
no it isn't and it was - however apart from the Falkland where some accuse her of bad conduct as it were i can't see why her name cropped up at all.
he has died of old age, a good age 95.
AOG

Forgive late response - I was getting a train.

From your third link:

"And while Thatcher did give moral support to the opponents of Soviet hegemony in Eastern Europe, to credit her as one of the architect’s of Communism’s fall is exaggerated."

Which is pretty much what I'm saying.

Your first link details Thatcher's decision to allow Cruise missiles to be stationed in the UK during the early '80s as a counter to Soviet deployment. Fair enough. It also implies that Thatcher was a decisive factor in Reagan being elected, with no backing evidence, which I think is rather spurious.

All your second and third articles say is that she maintained a united front with Reagan. The one from the Economist asserts that she 'promoted new thinking' in Moscow, whereas your last one says that she leant moral support but was not a major influence on the fall of communism.

I find it very hard to see how exactly Thatcher 'promoted new thinking' in the Kremlin - Gorbachev was largely chosen because the class of people from which his predecessors had been chosen were so aged that they could only rule from hospital beds. The UK and its leaders were not a particularly big priority for Soviet leaders.

I'm really not trying to score political points or be "anti-Thatcher", I just find the constant trope that she somehow destroyed the Soviet Union that got brought up earlier a bit silly and unconvincing.

The massive distortion of the Soviet economy towards military spending had been well entrenched long before Thatcher ever came to power, and neither did the endemic corruption which infected the entire system to the point of making it unworkable have anything to do with her. People had been smuggling in Western texts and exchanging Western ideas in secret long before Thatcher came to power (Samizdat, for example, had been going since the '60s.)

The Soviet Union would still have collapsed if Thatcher had never been elected. She was just an effective galvaniser on the Western side.
A presenter this morning referred to Mandela as equal to Jesus - what a laugh - He was a terrorist and murderer along with his then wife winnie. If you tell the world enough times he was a great man (in our own schools this is the mantra ) without them hearing the pro side of his life they begin to believe it - same as Mother Theresa - cult figures.
Africa is full of atrocities still. Am sure Mandela was aware, though not by his hand, he lead peace & forgiveness to mankind.
that last sentence does her credit then. Seeing as how many of our politicians today seem totally unable to tie their own shoelaces let alone be part of a bigger global picture. She met with Gorbachev didn't she on many occasions, are their documents i wonder on their discussions....
tambo, that just isn't true, his wife well and truly had blood on her hands.
Regarding the "terrorist" thing - by the time Mandela had chosen to do this, it's hard to see what the alternatives for the anti-apartheid movement were. What exactly is the "right" thing to do when your only choices are to accept being oppressed or to counter with violence?
but it wasn't only the whites this was directed at.

as to my precious post.
http://www.newstatesman.com/uk-politics/2010/11/gorbachev-thatcher-business
don't know where that precious came from sorry, previous is what i meant.

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