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

[actionreplay.livejournal.com]

Oh _that_ Thatcher :). I thought he hadn't actually done that, but was just too dim to realise what was going on...

[autopope.livejournal.com]

You said "hooray" too soon; that Wikipedia article is curiously skewed -- only one, very brief, mention of oil in the whole thing!

Yes, the coup plotters were after some enormous offshore oil reserves that were discovered in the late 1990s. Private Eye has been tracking this one; IIRC there were rumours of one of the big oil multinationals being behind the plotters.

[werenerd.livejournal.com]

I don't think it should be up to private businessmen to decide which countries to topple with mercenary armies. The consequences of that are even most disastrous than the poor system of international law we have today. Even in the case of war-mongering USA, there's at least some element of electoral accountability, in this case there is no accountability at all (except for the mercenary captain).

[mskala.livejournal.com]

I don't want to die for Fernando Poo.

[lovelybug.livejournal.com]

I like you xxx