One more reason to piss on Thatcher’s grave

Just in case you needed one, here you go: The evil old bat was also part of putschist plans against Venezuela. I was alerted to this story by a piece on Aporrea yesterday, which is basically an abbreviated translation of this Guardian piece. Here are the “money” bits about ol’ Maggie and her equally rotten son, “Sir” Mark, who also tried (and failed) to overthrow the president of Equatorial Guinea, another oil-rich nation with a disobedient leader, in 2004:

Details of the meetings between [former SAS officer Simon] Mann and Baroness Thatcher, held in the lead-up to the attempted coup, were originally due to be published in Mann’s memoir, Cry Havoc, which came out in 2011. This section was removed on the advice of the publisher, John Blake. However, an early manuscript of the book has been obtained by the Observer and its full claims can be revealed for the first time.

Thatcher’s mental capacity was already on the wane in 2003 – the year her husband, Denis, died – when the conversations are said to have occurred. Their content will prove embarrassing for her son as he prepares for his mother’s funeral on Wednesday.

Mann had known Thatcher for a number of years by this time: the two were introduced by Sir Mark, who was a neighbour of his in Cape Town. Recording a meeting that took place in the first-floor sitting room of Thatcher’s home in Chester Square, in London’s Belgravia, in autumn 2003, Mann says it became clear that the former Tory leader knew and approved of the plans for the Equatorial Guinea coup, describing them as “jolly good”.

He writes: “Maggie asks me how ‘their’ money is being handled. I reassure her that it is going through an air ambulance joint venture, separate to any other investment. Maggie talks about the Docklands redevelopment in London. How everything had to be razed to the ground first.”

In a later conversation in South Africa, Thatcher is said to have commented: “I do hope you’ll be getting on with this job of yours soon, Simon. We mustn’t let anyone down, must we?”

Thatcher is also said to have asked whether Mann had yet met a group, led by a man called Sanchos, who were seeking to remove Chávez from Venezuela. Mann writes: “No – I hadn’t: but, Mark says, we are seeing him next day, in Eaton Place, just next door.”

He continues with Thatcher’s reply: “‘Good. Well, I hope that goes well too.’ She looked at me with her imperial gaze. ‘We must always look after our friends, Simon … as I’m sure you know.'”

That sounds like her, all right. In fact, it sounds totally in character for the greedy, conniving, frankly evil “Iron Lady” who defended Pinochet, even when she knew full well what he was doing to political dissidents (read: LEFTISTS) in Chile. That “scorched earth” approach is vintage Shock Doctrine crapitalism, and it characterizes literally everything she did. Rip it up, tear it down, build shoddy glittering gimcracks where docklands — or entire sovereign nations — used to be.

And yeah, I can see how that embarrassing passage was removed. Maybe now, that chickenshit publisher will finally locate his spine and gonads and reinstate the incriminating bits. And reissue the book unabridged; it deserves a wider readership. Let the world know what mercenaries, terrorists and imperialists REALLY do. And let the chips fall wherever they may. If that means some Tory (and “New” Labour) heads rolling in the British Houses of Parliament, so much the better.

And maybe Mark Fucking Thatcher will finally get some well-deserved prison time. A “mere investor” indeed! When someone financially backs a coup against not one but two presidents, in the name of oil, he’s not a “mere” anything. He is looking to get his money back with more interest than is conscionable even by the lax rules of modern casino capitalism. He is a putschist, plain and simple. He belongs locked up for the rest of his miserable unnatural life.

And so did his horrid mother, for whom justice will only come in the form of unkind histories now.

Pity.