In South Africa, I feel I am a stranger, at best an animal.
Oliver TamboRead
The U.S. is the last country that should see itself as an ally of the apartheid system.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes that the U.S. should not support oppressive regimes like apartheid given its values of freedom and equality.
Oliver Tambo expresses the belief that the United States, a nation that prides itself on democracy and civil rights, has a moral obligation to oppose systems of oppression such as apartheid. By labeling the U.S. as the last country to view itself as an ally of such a system, Tambo underscores the hypocrisy of supporting any form of institutionalized inequality that contradicts fundamental human rights.
In practice
During a lecture on human rights, this quote can be used to illustrate the importance of standing against oppression.
In South Africa, I feel I am a stranger, at best an animal.
The more pressure you bring from without, the less internal pressure is necessary.
The sanctions will not kill us. It's apartheid that's killing us.
How do you deal with a criminal that will not listen to what you have to say and who continues his policy of violence? Some say you continue to talk and let him tire himself out. But nearly 40 years after the institution of apartheid, is there anyone who still believes that verbal persuasion will work?
It was of limited usefulness to head great rallies. The government did not listen, and, soon enough, the tear gas and the muzzles of the guns were turned against the people. The justice of our cries went unrecognized.
It was becoming clear that, from being at the top at Holy Cross, we were at the bottom at St. Peter's. Objectively, this was very good, for it offered us a challenge and an opportunity to grow if we were ready to take it; and we surely were.
It has been said that the people of this country are deeply interested in the humanitarian and philanthropic considerations involved in [the Eastern Question]. All must appreciate such feelings. But I am mistaken if there be not a yet deeper sentiment on the part of the people of this country, one with which I cannot doubt your lordships will ever sympathise, and that is - the determination to maintain the Empire of England.
The Iraq war was always a long shot. But it was made immeasurably longer by its principal architects in Washington, including Douglas Feith, who ignored expert advice, reserved most of their effort for fighting each other in ideological battles, and regarded the Iraqi people as an afterthought.
The established politicians, who before the war preached national pride and Christian love, were the first to collaborate with the Germans. But the communists, who as children we'd been taught to fear, kept a resistance movement alive, living and dying true to their ideals.
This aesthetic quality, then, is what politics is all about. It's authenticity that separates winners from losers, good politics from bad, and he-man leader-types from consultant-directed puppet-boys.
Politics has become so expensive that it takes a lot of money even to be defeated.
There is no more dangerous thing for a democracy than a foreign policy based on presidential preventive war.
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