Mia Farrow contradicts Naomi Campbell at war crimes trial...
mrmatthew
1,575 Posts
...is the weirdest headline i never thought i would see.
that is all.
that is all.
Comments
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/video/article300101.ece?vxSiteId=0bc72527-aa8e-4487-a5e8-94aae448c9dd&vxChannel=Sun Exclusive&vxClipId=1347_SUN47281&vxBitrate=300
I don't know much about Campbell, but her testimony at the war crime trials was some unbelievable dumb blond nonsense.
shes had some serious work done too, her face was all sorts of nasty.
An absolutly insane story, some of the photos being unearthed are surreal, theres one i saw on a news site (BBC?) with Imran and Jemima Khan, Naomi, Charles Taylor and Nelson Mandela.
crazy shit.
:face_melt:
Is that Quincy Jones?
Holy shit, i missed him.
This photo RULES.
but interesting read
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703589404575417460834079500.html
The verdict was unbelievable.
Marian hyde is a plagiarist, quintessentially non-excellent, and an utter bitch irl
This whole things just underscores how Mandela is the true teflon don. Dude makes a thug and war criminal guest of honor and still cannot get anyone to criticise him. His whole history has been whitewashed and it receives a fresh lick of paint with every new disgrace that is revealed.
One man's freedom-fighter, another man's t3rr0r15t.
But most people have no interest in scratching the surface of the Mandela legend and accept the easy-to-swallow, rug-raise-broom-sweep-lower-rug chunkification of the life and times of the great man. There is no room in the media for shades of grey when you have a target as easy as apartheid.
Back in 1997 the hope for Taylor was that he'd usher in a new era of peace. He'd just been elected president after calling a halt to a bloody civil war (okay, so he kind of started it) and the international community cut him a lot of slack in the name of promoting regional stability. Everyone knew the score -Taylor was a brutal warlord and gangster from the start but for a short window he was touted as a poster-boy for progress. He gave big speeches, met with politicians across the world and his PR machine went into overdrive to generate photo ops like the one above. Didn't last long but he got some good mileage out of it. To be fair, I think Mandela and his wife were pretty uncomfortable with Taylor's presence at that dinner.
Loving Ms Campbell's testimony. Best court transcripts ever.
"I get gifts given to me all the time, at all hours of the night. Sometimes without notes. It is quite normal for me to receive gifts."
:hard_as_fuck:
do you have any evidence of this?
without diminishing the man's anti-apartheid credentials, mandela's ANC was allied pretty closely throughout its history with the soviet union, easily one of the top 2 or 3 human rights violators ever.
it's not like the man was above rubbing shoulders with unsavory dudes in order to further his wider aims.
just saying.
Nelson Mandela's wife, Graca Machel, told her: "'No, no, you don't want to be photographed with this man. This is the president of Liberia. He's not supposed to be here' or 'he should have left by now.'
"She moved the children and me to another area."
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3087377/Mia-Farrow-Naomi-knew-diamond-was-from-Charles-Taylor.html#ixzz0wF9UoyTy
I guess I was thinking of evidence of Mandela's discomfort with Taylor's presence as manifested before these embarrassing photos came to light and the family had to make excuses for his being at their party.
oh well I guess we'll never know.
Yeah, because he did a lot of rubbing shoulders with the Soviet Union during the twenty-seven years he spent in fucking prison. Or do you mean after he was released in 1990, when the Soviet Union was pretty much finished as a world power and without doubt a spent force as far as its influence upon so-called liberation movements was concerned?
The ANC wasn't "closely allied throughout its history with the Soviet Union". It was closely allied with the South African Communist Party, which isn't quite the same thing (although it may appear that way to some Americans, I suppose). The ANC certainly received significant support from the USSR during the 70s and 80s, when the apartheid regime was becoming increasingly more brutal, when other countries with a supposedly less "unsavory" human rights record were content to turn their back on the systematic human rights violations taking place in South Africa, and when shithouses like Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher were doing everything in their power to block, weaken and otherwise circumvent international sanctions and anti-apartheid legislation. But hey, let's not judge those fucking reptiles by the company they keep, now. That would be pretty "unsavory", wouldn't it?
Just saying.
2. as for the USSR's not having had a cozy relationship with the ANC, all I can say is that you are wrong (again, I am very, very open to any countervailing evidence you can provide). it's pretty well known.
3. (whether "indigenous" communist parties existing in non-aligned and soviet bloc countries can truly be understood to have been autonomous from the USSR is a separate discussion.)
4. as for Reagan and Thatcher, why are you changing the subject?
Yeah, when he was in prison. I guess you think his biannual visits were given over to KGB staffers and lengthy discussions of ANC strategy, after which Mandela telegraphed the Kremlin's orders to ANC HQ. Please be serious.
RIF. I'm not disputing that there was a relationship, as I clearly stated. Rather, I'm disputing your assertion that this relationship existed throughout the history of the ANC, rather than only being of any significance during a period when such a relationship was politically expedient for one party, and a virtual necessity for the other. After all, the US or the UK certainly weren't offering the ANC any support worth a fuck, were they?
Again, RIF. For reasons I can't quite fathom, you're the one judging Nelson Mandela on the company he keeps, when a) he's not the subject of the trial and b) not even the subject of this thread. And you're asking me why I'm changing the subject.
Heads of state meet with other heads of state.
Roosevelt/Stalin
Kennedy/Castro
Nixon/Mao
Carter/Arafat
Reagan/Gorbachev
And on and on.
African leaders meet with African leaders.
No reason to even comment.
Precisely. Thank you.
Im loving how I am somehow the culprit for derailing this thread when the first page is replete with (1) posters incredulous at Mandela's having invited Charles Taylor to his house, as well as (2) folks talmbout how his legendary status is seldom questioned despite his questionable associations.
somehow by addressing these very points I am guilty of derailing the thread. smh.
Everyone knows that the ANC was sympathetic to the Soviet Union and many ANC members including Mandela were in the SACP. However if you're looking for characters that were through and through communists you'd be more on point talking about Joe Slovo or Chris Hani. While Mandela may have talked of nationalization of the diamond industry it was Joe Slovo who was the most supportive of the Soviet Union. However all the talk about communists misses the mark because there were always pragmatists within the ANC who ultimately knew that negotiation and an embrace of capitalism were the best means to defeat apartheid. In the eighties Thabo Mbeki was rumored to be a snitch and coward by some in the ANC and SACP for running afoul of Joe Slovo and meeting with capitalists. Even if you aren't a fan of Mandela you have to be absolutely awed by the fact that the country didn't descend into an all out civil war. Fuck being cynical and saying Mandela didn't help tamp down on the unrest that was going around during the time. There was brutal fighting between the ANC and Inkatha, Eugene and AWB, Chris Hani's assassination, disgruntled civil servants, and rebellious military officers fomenting and supporting unrest. The credit for this could be shared by Cyril Ramaphosa, Thabo Mbeki, etc. but Mandela certainly deserves much of the credit. That said I'm certainly not above criticizing Mandela and the ANC. I've always felt that is was a bit disingenuous of the ANC to downplay the role of Steve Biko and Black Consciousness. If it wasn't for Biko and the Soweto Generation the ANC would've been relegated to being a bunch of quixotic revolutionaries led by exiled armchair revolutionaries. The ANC's cooptation of the Soweto Generation helped revive the organization's standing at a time when it was viewed by many as being moribund.