Hooray for Thatcher?

[ciphergoth]

OK, so it's far from clear he actually tried to do it, and if he did he doubtless did it for personal gain, but if he did, it looks like overthrowing the government of Equatorial Guinea and bringing in the main opposition party might actually have been a good thing to do. I mention this here only because AFAICT the news reports seem to be treating it as if Equatorial Guinea was a perfectly nice democracy until he came along.

Don't worry, I'm not turning Tory. It's just that I don't feel motivated to catalogue every single evil and stupid thing they do, but when they do something that might not be either evil or stupid it's surprising enough to blog about. If Boris does something that is only one of evil and stupid I'll probably blog about that too.

Comments

[autopope.livejournal.com]

That's the $64,000 question, isn't it?

But I'd just like to note that coups driven by the avarice of American oil corporation boardrooms do not have a reliable track record of delivering happiness and wellbeing and liberty to the subjects of the odious dictators who are to be overturned for not sharing their oil revenue. (See also: Iraq, Iran in the 1950s, Nigeria, etcetera.)

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

True enough. I guess the only reason I might hope for better in this instance is that they're only talking about replacing the Government rather than the entire State, and they're replacing it with a body that already exists and already has support in that country. Effectively they're just enforcing what should have been the results of the 2002 election. This is in pretty sharp contrast to at least Iraq and Iran.