[DEBATE] : (Fwd) BDS - more arguments (from Dennis)

[Dominic Tweedie]

"Look at sanctions in a nuanced way, and then it's crystal clear, comrade."

Ja, well, no, fine, except that "nuance" comes from French "nue", cloud, so
"nuanced" actually means cloudy, not clear.

It's just a howler, eh?

I don't think so.

You see, in the beginning was the boycott. Read Christabel Gurney about it
in "A Great Cause" on the ANC web site. The British boycott was modelled on
the South African boycotts that preceeded it, especially the bus and potatxo
boycotts of the 1940s and 1950s.

Boycott was not a second-best tactic or a "stageist" one. The mass popular
boycott was medium and message.

When the boycott began to bite, governments started to shit themselves. They
could not turn a boycott off and on. They could not trade it or negotiate
it. All they could do was to try to overtake it. Hence, bingo! Sanctions!

There would never have been any sanctions if the boycotts were not there
first.

What is more, if the boycott campaigns had not kept going, as they did all
the way through, the sanctions would have disappeared at once.

The so-called "nuance" that sets out to schlenter "boycott" into "sanctions"
and obscure the difference between the two is a very familiar thing to an
old A-A hand like myself.

I guess people always have to learn by experience, eh?


Also sprach Domza, VC!





2009/1/10 Patrick Bond pbond at mail.ngo.za