Talk:Sabotage

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Another proferred origin, from European railway technology:

The word sabot means "wooden shoe" in French, and sabotage was originally just the word for the manufacturing of wooden shoes. However (so I understand) the wooden keys used to hold rails in chairs in the English fashion, which were widely used in France, are also called sabots. If you have a hammer, you can knock the keys out fairly easily and displace the rails...This was done by saboteurs, and now the word, especially in English, refers to malicious tampering and destruction, usually as a clandestine act of war, or figuratively.[1]

Sabotage is often said to come from the word for wooden shoe, but there is, as far as I know no real evidence of anyone actually destroying looms by putting a wooden shoe in it. The word "saboter" has many meanings, one of which is roughly equivalent to "do shoddy work, screw up" and it seems much more reasonable that this is the origin. I take the liberty of editing the ethymology. If anyone has a real source for a time (roughly contemporary with the origin of the word) and a place were a wooden-shoe sabotage actually took place, please correct me and add a link or reference.

Sensemaker

For what it's worth, the French article refers to workers throwing wooden shoes into machines when they wanted to go on strike, damaging the machine but not irreperably. It also offers a more complex explanation of people carrying out the dangerous operation of slowing down train carriages in classification yards by placing chunks of metal in front of the wheels. Stevage 11:45, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Online Etymology Dictionary [2] says that the term originates "from [French] saboter "to sabotage, bungle," lit. "walk noisily," from sabot "wooden shoe" (13c.)", and goes on to state that "it was not meant as a literal image" and that the clogs-in-the-machinery-theory "is not supported by the etymology". - Quirk 08:45, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Anyone know where to put this

In the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, Nelson Mandela wrote in his autobiography how he turned to Arthur Goldreich as one of the few in the ANC's nascent guerrilla army who knew how to fight. "In the 1940s, Arthur had fought with the Palmach, the military wing of the Jewish National Movement in Palestine. He was knowledgeable about guerrilla warfare and helped fill in many gaps in my understanding."

In July 1963, the police raided the Goldreich farm and captured a slew of wanted men, including Walter Sisulu, the ANC leader, and Goldreich. Five of the 17 arrested at Rivonia were white, all of them Jewish. The captured men and Mandela, who was already in detention, were charged with SABOTAGE and plotting violent revolution, which carried the death penalty.

It was basically shoved into the article at the section between Origins and Sabotage in War. It doesn't belong there, but it might have some use elsewhere. Ideas? Wally 18:11, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

I think an entry on justified, or "rightous" sabotage, which I considered this to be, has a place on this page. Hank chapot 03:46, 19 February 2006 (UTC)