Alternat affirms Rula Jebreal's account: her contract was not renewed, and an NBC producer suggests Greenwald's account of Ayman Mohyeldin's removal from Gaza was closer to the truth than the NBC version of events.
"...and put an end to more than 2,500 years of Iranian monarchy." Historically, this is not accurate: there were many different dynasties over the land that now forms modern Iran over the last 2,500 years. Some of which were not even Iranian in the modern or historical sense.
Zainab al-Khawaja and Asmaa Mahfouz should be on the list. Zainab al-Khawaja has been in prison for more than seven months now, and will likely to continue to remain there till February 2014.
In retrospect, I imagine Mandela probably would have wanted to have expended more political capital for starting antiretroviral treatment for eligible HIV positive individuals when he was in power of ANC. He partially atoned for not advocating on behalf HIV/AIDS patients earlier in his political career, when announced that his only surviving son died of HIV-related complications in 2005, but by then millions were infected (many during his tenure) and tens of thousands died (at least) when those deaths could have been simply averted from treatment.
This is not to detract from Mandela's astonishing history, legacy, and words--just to acknowledge that he would have probably done this one thing differently if given the chance.
I also feel that he would be deeply irritated by being recast as a respected statesmen firstly, and human rights defender secondly. Unfortunately, casting Mandela as a respected statesman like Churchill is easy--Mandela was a great statesman, and surely someone that deserves to be respected--but as you write there was much more to him than that.
"You had high-minded responsible businessmen like Benjamin Franklin and you had mean-spirited businessmen, including the slave-owners."--to me, this sentence construction appears to imply that the two set of individuals are mutually exclusive: high-minded "responsible businessmen" and "mean-spirited businessmen." Benjamin Franklin did own slaves. He may have signed petitions towards the end of his life, advocating for the end of slavery, indicating a dramatic change of thinking at the end of his life, but that does not detract from the reality that he owned slaves and advertised for their capture when they ran away. He may not had plantations like Thomas Jefferson with hundreds of slaves, and (maybe) a bulk of his wealth may not have derived thereby from slavery, but owning slaves (even several--not hundreds like TJ) means the that some of his wealth derived from being "mean-spirited."
Sincere apologies (I mean it), if this comes across as nit-picky or surly--in this regard, I may find myself a bit annoyed. It's just that so much of early-American history is lacking in detail and presentation, when it was only some 300 years ago.
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Alternat affirms Rula Jebreal's account: her contract was not renewed, and an NBC producer suggests Greenwald's account of Ayman Mohyeldin's removal from Gaza was closer to the truth than the NBC version of events.
"...and put an end to more than 2,500 years of Iranian monarchy." Historically, this is not accurate: there were many different dynasties over the land that now forms modern Iran over the last 2,500 years. Some of which were not even Iranian in the modern or historical sense.
Zainab al-Khawaja and Asmaa Mahfouz should be on the list. Zainab al-Khawaja has been in prison for more than seven months now, and will likely to continue to remain there till February 2014.
In retrospect, I imagine Mandela probably would have wanted to have expended more political capital for starting antiretroviral treatment for eligible HIV positive individuals when he was in power of ANC. He partially atoned for not advocating on behalf HIV/AIDS patients earlier in his political career, when announced that his only surviving son died of HIV-related complications in 2005, but by then millions were infected (many during his tenure) and tens of thousands died (at least) when those deaths could have been simply averted from treatment.
This is not to detract from Mandela's astonishing history, legacy, and words--just to acknowledge that he would have probably done this one thing differently if given the chance.
I also feel that he would be deeply irritated by being recast as a respected statesmen firstly, and human rights defender secondly. Unfortunately, casting Mandela as a respected statesman like Churchill is easy--Mandela was a great statesman, and surely someone that deserves to be respected--but as you write there was much more to him than that.
"You had high-minded responsible businessmen like Benjamin Franklin and you had mean-spirited businessmen, including the slave-owners."--to me, this sentence construction appears to imply that the two set of individuals are mutually exclusive: high-minded "responsible businessmen" and "mean-spirited businessmen." Benjamin Franklin did own slaves. He may have signed petitions towards the end of his life, advocating for the end of slavery, indicating a dramatic change of thinking at the end of his life, but that does not detract from the reality that he owned slaves and advertised for their capture when they ran away. He may not had plantations like Thomas Jefferson with hundreds of slaves, and (maybe) a bulk of his wealth may not have derived thereby from slavery, but owning slaves (even several--not hundreds like TJ) means the that some of his wealth derived from being "mean-spirited."
Sincere apologies (I mean it), if this comes across as nit-picky or surly--in this regard, I may find myself a bit annoyed. It's just that so much of early-American history is lacking in detail and presentation, when it was only some 300 years ago.