TRASHFUTURE - A Cheeky Coup with the Lads (feat. Joe Kassabian)

Episode Date: August 11, 2020

This week, we’re covering a particularly English psychosis: the upper class failson who decides to foment a coup in a central African country. Okay, maybe this type of failson is uniquely confined to the Thatcher family. That’s right, Maggie’s son Mark tried to take over Equatorial Guinea in 2004 with the help of a dead-eyed SAS madman and a South African mercenary named something like Jeep vander Honk. We brought on Joe Kassabian (@jkass99), host of the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast, to discuss this with Riley (@raaleh), Milo (@Milo_Edwards), Nate (@inthesedeserts), and Alice (@AliceAvizandum).    Part 2 of this is on Patreon, so if you want to hear it, you can sign up here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/40320474   Here's a central location to donate to bail funds across the US to help people held under America's utterly inhumane system: https://secure.givelively.org/donate/the-bail-project   If you want one of our *fine* new shirts, designed by Matt Lubchansky, then e-mail trashfuturepodcast [at] gmail [dot] com. £15 for patrons, £20 for non-patrons, plus shipping.   *WEB DESIGN ALERT* Tom Allen is a friend of the show (and the designer behind GYDS dot com). If you need web design help, reach out to him here:  https://www.tomallen.media/   Riley (@raaleh), Milo (@Milo_Edwards), Hussein (@HKesvani), Nate (@inthesedeserts), and Alice (@AliceAvizandum)

The year is 2003. Equatorial Guinea has recently become one of Africa's larger oil producers, and its brutal strongman dictator, who by all accounts was a massive piece of shit, Teotoro Obeyang Guema Basago, negotiated a hard bargain with Western oil companies. Some years previously, he had exiled Severo Moto, a former minister in one of his governments, to spade after a disagreement. Moto considered himself a legitimate opposition in exile. Meanwhile, in South Africa, an old Atoni and ex-SAS man and private security operator

Simon Mann and Margaret Thatcher's idiot son Mark, an old heroine himself, were hanging out in their fancy gated Cape Town suburb, presumably enjoying enough wealth to never have to work a day in their lives, but nevertheless bored stiff with a lot of other wealthy combat hardened or just plain stupid white dudes in their mid-50s, all wondering together loudly if life is going to give them another spin in excitement. Back in London, New Labor's Ireland Secretary Peter Mandelson had just been forced out of his home for accepting a loan from a fellow minister, and had moved into Lebanese-British-Nigerian oil billionaire Eli Khalil's flat in Holland Park.

Out of these three scenarios, a plan was hatched for 70 hard bastards to fly from South Africa heading to Zimbabwe, where they were going to pick up weapons ordered from Zimbabwe defense industries before carrying on to Equatorial Guinea to clear a path for several motos to come and free the people of Equatorial Guinea from their dictatorial ruler Obi-Yang and also free the oil from his dictatorial clutches. The one problem is they hired English people. I really find that you can't even stand in something English like this. Simon Mann, Mark Thatcher and David Bedeal.

The problem is he didn't hire geeseers with flat enough noses. Why did we hire Koo Baz? If you'd have got Dave Courtney involved in this Koo, it would have gone perfectly. Welcome back after another week or four days. If you're subscribed to the Patreon of long separation to TrashFuture, that podcast you're listening to right now, representing TF Today. It's myself, Riley, and Milo. And then representing, well, there's your problem is Alice Caldwell Kelly.

That's right. The ambassador from WTYP. And representing Hell of a Way to Die, it's Nate Bethay. Yep. Here's your military advisor who's going to make you wear really fucked up uniforms to pretend nothing has happened. He gave us all really tiny shorts. And also, as a special guest, we also have Joe Kasabian, fresh from Hawaii, the host

of the Lions led by Donkeys podcast, not affiliated with the brain dead anti-Brexit protesters who are single-handedly keeping outdoor media in business. Joe, how are you doing? I am incredibly relieved. I'm not the one with the script this time. Led by Donkeys is one of those campaign organizations that a Simon man can look at and be like, oh, God, that's a bad plan. I get so many of those people tagging me and she's like, what's this all in it?

Simple as. I'm like, dude, it's not fucking me. Just stop. But then I've learned if I just plug the Patreon, they will give me money. Love projectors. Yeah. Eight Brexit. Simple as.

No. If the extra dose of people who understand the military and people who understand complicated plans going horribly wrong and also are called open and didn't tip you off, we are doing today the episode that I think I have looked forward to most of any episode for quite a long time. Oh, yeah. This is going to be great. We're doing some fucking geopolitics.

Yes. We are. This is going to be part one of a special TF2 parter. Part two is available on the Patreon or will soon be available on the Patreon. It's one of those two where we are going to talk about the coup attempt against Equatorial Guinea by Simon Mann and Margaret Thatcher's idiot son that happened. Yes. 2004.

Mark Thatcher, the thinking man's Wyatt Coke. Is that a new guy? Is that a new Tory guy? He might be. Close. It's close. I think of Mark Thatcher more as one of the sons. I think he's better understood in comparison with Hunter Biden and Donald Trump Jr. and

just as all of the sons reflect their fathers, so too did Mark Thatcher reflect a degenerated type of Margaret Thatcher. Kind of like if Juan Guaido had hired like Donald Jr., right? I feel like it's important when we talk about types of guy that on what a hell of a way to die, Francis and I have talked a lot about the concept of like the silver corp international kind of guy like the Green Beret who thinks that he's legitimately John Rambo or what's his name? John Matrix from fucking Commando because he was a Green Beret without ever acknowledging

that he was marginally successful in his military career because he had the best funded military machine in history and like thousands of other people basically just following behind him and he's convinced he can go out and do it all on his own and doesn't realize how much it fucking sucks when you can't call drone strikes, satellites and fucking Medevac. This I feel like is a good preview of what's going to happen. I have a thesis which is that special forces guys became too cocky when their main like job of work became shooting people in compounds instead of like blowing up a dam in East Germany and having to like run 500 miles while the Red Army drops artillery on their heads.

I also don't understand like the inflated amount of self-worth that comes with this kind of guy and because like if you're like the silver corp guys that got owned by the Venezuelan fishermen or your, you know, Thatcher's idiot kid, I don't know why you have, or Simon Mann more specifically, why do you feel so like, why is your head so blown up by your own abilities when you haven't won a war in like fucking 60 years? Well, I can tell you why with Simon Mann and that's England. Yeah. Because he's English.

Like as much as you think that like the US loves the troops, the extent to which the SAS in particular have a press machine in this country is ridiculous. Yeah. And also like Alice and I have pathologized this a bit on the podcast before about how like everyone in the SAS is either like a guy from London called Gaz Baz or a guy from Glasgow called Donald MacDonald, but actually that's just that's just the enlisted SAS. The SAS officers are all guys who went to eat and called like Rupert von Rupert and like they are convinced that there is some like eaten rivalry that they're living out

by like, you know, I don't know, sniping ISIS or whatever. So what we're going to go about a little bit back in time to February 19th, 2004. It's time to carry out the coup. Simon Mann, along with a group of about 70 or so soldiers, including a man called Nick Dutouat, has all loaded into Dutouat, if you prefer the Dutch pronunciation, have all loaded into a Russian Antonov plane, the world's largest kind of cargo plane. Every Africana called something like Ypres von Pissflips and is like, there's nothing funny about this.

At Pier Novelli to ask this question, yes, the Russian Antonov cargo plane, a plane that's big enough to like carry power plants, these 70 guys would have been like sitting in like a bathroom. There are really big guys there. Yeah. Okay. People are saying you don't need such a big plane. I'm lucky you've not seen these guys.

Okay. I really like getting my mission brief from Afrikaans, Donald Trump. He's going to be trimming this, okay? All of the extra storage was to fit all the racism. Yeah. So this Antonov carrying these 70 men took off and was flying all the way to Harari where the plan was to meet a crate of weapons from Zimbabwe defense industries, pick them up and fly on to Equatorial Guinea where they were going to go basically be mad lads.

And then a bird hit the engine and everyone had to go home. Plan A had been foiled. Plan B, however, was to do exactly the same thing a few weeks later with everyone definitely knowing about how it was going to be, what was going to happen and who was going to be where at what times, by what methods and when. Just having some confusion at the airport because all of these Afrikaners are trying to shoulder their way into the cockpit to argue that it should still be Salisbury instead of Harari.

Yeah. It's like, no, no, no, no, no, you don't understand. I've been on this illegal coup flight. I had my booking moved. I would like to speak to the manager of this coup. I hate it when you get bumps from the illegal coup flight. We're trying to do an illegal coup here. I don't want the 200 euro voucher.

I want to go to Equatorial Guinea, mate. I've got to meet a crate. You've got a really good South African accent. Thank you. My dark past. I'm just laughing at the idea of what else could they have done to tip people off and I'm just imagining them like angrily demanding an insurance payout so they don't have to do the repairs on like the A and 124 just being like, no, it was damaged in a coup attempt.

Albatross flew in. We have no idea how we had to come back. Not our fault. The Antonoff is also a tremendously subtle plane for this, isn't it? Yeah. That's a big point. The bird was an ever zenu pf. We're flying a plane to Equatorial Guinea, approximately the size of Equatorial Guinea.

Yeah. That's the thing is, Nate, you said how on earth could they have alerted anyone to this any more and I'm going to tell you about all the ways they did that in the fullness of the episode. Yes. Hi. So in this TikTok, I'm going to be talking about the coup that we're planning. Again.

Hello. Had they access to TikTok? So anyway, on March 7th, 2004, a slightly smaller plane, a Boeing 747. Still a huge plane. He don't need 70 guys in a fucking 747. What? Where else are you going to put your seven flat nose geysers? And then flew all the way to Harari, not hitting one bird.

So all of a sudden, the problems of the previous plan, they're being solved. Yeah. Put the birds on fucking notice. Don't get in our way again. It'll be fucking trouble, okay? Big logistical failure of bird antifa. Yeah. Big, big heaps hanging out the fucking like a loading ramp of the Antenoff with a bird

rifle. Screaming slurs at birds. It's the only thing that the Africaners know how to do. So basically, so now, now with no birds in sight, everything is going according to plan. The 747, full of Simon Mann and Nick Duttoit, and then 68 other flat nose geysers, lands at Harari and more, moreover, sorry, it doesn't have Nick Duttoit in it, rather Nick Duttoit was already in Equatorial Guinea with a bunch of other guys from 3-2 Battalion. And there we're going to clear a path in advance.

All sounding quite professional. You have like an advanced team. You didn't hit any birds. You're going to pick up the guns and then you're going to fly in and give somebody a fucking good hiding. Somebody needs a fucking clump. Can I just point something out with regard to, okay, if Zimbabwe hasn't already figured this out, what imagines that like your advanced force of probably it decently in shape military

looking white dudes with British and South African accents, just vibing in Equatorial Guinea might potentially, potentially tip some people off with something's going on. In fact, many, it was the officers, it was mainly the officers who were the sort of British and South African accented white dudes. Many of the, many of the enlisted men would also have been black and we'll actually get to that towards the end, because if you think they were treated fairly, who boy? This crew, yeah, this crew, not great equal opportunities. Yeah.

No, that no one did their unconscious bias training. People are saying this is the racist crew. I'm like, don't be silly. It's South African with a Ryan Bannation. Will Milo talk in his normal voice at all over the course of both? Not at any point, unit. You want to hear me talking my normal voice, sign up at the $30 tier on the Patreon, okay? Okay, so really, really sad that PW both spent the last years of his life in Paris somehow.

So essentially, this Boeing 747, it's flying to Harari. It's got Simon Mann and his fun bunch in it. It lands in the tarmac and then out they go from the plane being like, yes, our weapons for our coup. Yes. Our weapons for our coup. Our guns are not in this crate. Yes, precisely, a crate labeled, you know, children's toys, not guns, humanitarian aid,

but they still have aid in quotation marks. Not a coup. Anyway. They actually reused those for the photo op with Guido, huh? So basically then, just as he is inches away from grabbing all of the weapons that he needs, he is immediately surrounded and everyone is the most arrested anyone has ever been. Every cop in Zimbabwe. Yeah.

Every single sort of military person and cop in Zimbabwe is there being like, you got got. I will not be doing the voice. Simon Mann. Do we actually have to hand it to the cops? We actually do. Like the one time, the one time the C will not be. Damn.

Woke, woke Robert McGarvey. So Simon Mann tried to claim to the Zimbabwe government that actually this group of soldiers of fortune were going to the Congo where they'd been hired to protect some diamond mines. That's better. Yeah. But Zimbabwe authorities knew precisely what was going on. Yeah, just looking down big roll of paper. Yeah, it looks like you've been telling everyone about this.

I said the spot what I've put on my be by page. Actually, we're not going to Equatorial Guinea. That was kind of an elaborate prank. They also shared on my pixel page and on my mass space, but now we're going to the Congo to do stuff which is legal. You've put several most on your top eight. We're not here for the coup. We're going there for the blood diamonds.

Yeah. No, you must. I was. Oh, there's a coup. No. We're going for the comb festival. Yeah. I'm here for the steamed hams.

I've heard so much about steamed hams. The Hall of Arms they were due to pick up were 20 machine guns, 61 AKs, 150 frag grenades, 10 RPGs, 100 RPG shells, and 75,000 total rounds of miscellaneous ammunition. Can I just raise a point right now, which is that I have no military training, but this doesn't seem like enough people or enough weapons to affect a coup of a whole country. Not even remotely. It does in Equatorial Guinea, which had no military to speak of. Yeah.

Just some guys. It's tiny. It's very small. That's like a small company of infantry with too many machine guns, as the best way to describe it. So yeah, I suppose if it's just like beat cops with truncheons, then yeah, you'll probably be okay. But yeah, I agree with your initial assessment, MiloBed.

It seems like against anyone who can put up a fight, that seems like a very light load. Have you considered that they're going to do cool South African and Rhodesian mercenary shit, run around with their shirts off with a bandolier full of ammunition belts for the machine gun over their shoulders and just be epic? There's one thing we learned from Rhodesia. They're not actually that good at fighting people who fight bad. So the thing is, Equatorial Guinea was basically or still is a country

that does not have many strong state apparatuses. It mostly, the leader of one, Mr. Obi-Yan, refers to himself as God. He has a, the police force largely keeps people in line. There isn't really much of a military because mostly he's protected by other militaries because of all the oil. So when someone tried to invade him with a small force, another military, in this case there's Zimbabwean one,

sort of took care of it. Just friends, just BFFs. So some hours later, Nick Dutouad and 14 other mercenaries were arrested in Equatorial Guinea, accused of being the advance party for the plotters. Now the idea was that Nick and his 14 friends were going to seize an airport control tower and then shut out the country to all traffic except several motos plane, which also contained many of the coup backers allegedly, and then the plane of mercenaries coming in from Zimbabwe.

They were going to land, install a moto in the presidential palace, and then democracy would kick in and so on and so forth. That's how it had done it. Wow, I was going to say, Colonel F.W. Springbok. I'm so glad of you to drop by, but do you think you could give the mic back to Milo? No. I will not. I don't want to be in the dumb-ass lame who's just a huge loser and a stickler for details,

but how are they going to shut out all other aircraft if they don't have any aircraft besides a cargo plane? Like, yes, I get it. They're also contracted with the birds. Yeah, they're just going to get on the microphone and cold them different kinds of South African slas. I mean, Equatorial Guinea may not have an air force for a military to speak of, but Angola and Zimbabwe do. And so there's a part of it that's just sort of like,

are you just hoping that, say, in the time between you taking over this control tower, people realizing it's a coup and your plane landing, that no other aircraft is going to show up, and if they do, you're just going to do like South African version of angry Mickey Mouse voice, be like, you guys better not land here. You're not allowed to land in this airfield. Like, yeah. They contracted out to the Africaner birds.

I mean, any plane that lands, I will personally fight it. Please, Colonel Springhawk, please give the microphone back to Milo. Equatorial Guinea does in fact have an air defense corps, it's just migrating flocks of birds. So the idea now, Nate, if you're suggesting that this might have been a half baked plan that wasn't fully thought through and probably wouldn't work, allow me to disprove you by introducing you to our cast of characters of this particular farce. The people that they hired, the fucked English vibes that are responsible for this.

Are you all ready to meet the English people responsible for different elements of this? Local man ruins everything. So we're going to start with the big one. We're going to start with Simon Mann. So to introduce Simon Mann in his own words, here is the opening line of a speech that he gave at Chatham House some years ago. My virginity was lost at a woman's bra in Panty Works, the old knicker factory in Lurgen, Northern Ireland.

But that loss was of my virginity as a soldier, not anything else, and was thanks to the provisional IRA, not to any lady. Wait, the provisional IRA shagged him? Did he fuck a militant in a bra factory? I mean, I'm not here to kink shame, but that's out there. No, this is perfect. I mean, I shouldn't really be doing this, but I have to say you're a very sexually appealing man.

I'm here. Father McMurphy, thank you so much for dropping by. However, Milo really needs... to be on the mic. I'm here for a united Ireland and possibly to drop a paving slab on a sass man's head. But they have to see. The bossy army is irresistible. Please, please, please, Colonel, Father.

Please untie Milo. You get to lie to this guy, huh? That guy's got a stupid fucking accent tomorrow. Imagine that IRA guy's excuse like, hey, you were supposed to plant the bomb, but I got sidetracked by fucking that para guy in the bra factory. You said take care of him. I gotta thank this tan.

I had never heard the expression bussy before. But this is someone who... It's absolutely psychotic. As Milo said before, he was kidnapped by Afrikanas. It's absolutely Rupert von Rupert energy. This is someone who believes that his life is defined by killing in as much he likes to talk about it basically starting when he first killed someone. So man was the charismatic scion of one of Britain's richest brewing families

and a graduate of Eaton College. His background... Please, calling is my father's name. Milo! Finally. His background was in an oil, the protecting of oil, in the fighting of wars on behalf of whoever will pay, who he called the barrel boys who he said were ruining Africa

through his companies that he's worked with and sort of been responsible for including executive outcomes in Sandline International. He co-founded both of those in fact. Having lived in the UK, US and South Africa. Now, if you know... I was a wealthy British Aristo army officer. I might not accuse people of ruining Africa.

If you're familiar with, you might have heard the names, executive outcomes or Sandline before, like pretty much the whole modern era of mercenaries in Africa was just this one guy who like went to Eaton, went to Sandhurst, went to the SAS, fucked around for a bit in Northern Ireland, killed some people, got out and decided, well, that was jolly good fun. Let's do some more of that, please.

Listen matey, might I say simple as. So Joe, can you explain a little bit more about the details of executive outcomes in Sandline International? What does it mean to be a private military contractor in Africa in the 1990s and early 2000s? Well, it's not great, first off. Almost all of them were connected to the Rhodesian military

or the pre-apartheid, sorry, the apartheid South African defense forces and when those governments collapsed into a pile of fucking bullshit and kicked all the white people, like the officer corps out because war crimes and such, they went out and formed and staffed all these companies and they made an agreement,

specifically, I believe it was Sandline that made an agreement that the government didn't have to pay them, they just had to give them control over diamond mines. No, this is, again, such a fucking group of things to be like, no, actually, I'm an amateur. Yeah, you don't have to pay me. You're going to let me enslave your people in this local time.

It's more of an honorarium, actually. Yeah, actually, I've got a blue and coo. With war crimes, it's actually vulgar if you don't do it for the love of the sport. I want to throw in there also just as an FYI that people understand this, that the South African military on top of war crimes international in terms of their internal repression,

also their regular military, they sent people to fight against the Angolan government. And the Cubans. Yeah, we talked about that. And the Cuban brigades that were stationed in Angola from the 70s until the 90s. And so if you were a British ex-para, ex-SAS who wanted to fucking get paid to kill people,

there was lots of opportunities from a friendly, if you will, right wing, shithead, white nationalist government. Actually, you don't have to learn French, which is the other big thing that if you want to just kill people after your military career, you just join the foreign legion. But if you're too thick to do that, or you just can't be fucked,

South Africans kind of speak English as we heard from Milo's friend. So the thing about executive outcomes as well is that it was actually spun off of an oil company that Mann worked for. So it was him, a chap called Buckingham, and they basically realized that... Just wearing enormous safari shirts

and like slouch hats to the office. It's like 1993. Everyone's like, why are you doing this? It's important to bear in mind... Guy who's born in a pith helmet is destroying your mom's pussy on the way out. I mean, genuinely, right? Like, the state of the fucking...

the state of the birds in this fucking queue is atrocious. The state of the fashion that mercenaries did. Because all of these extradition guys, they were doing war crimes in bush walls, just like prancing around in little shorts. It's hilarious. You can look at photos of the like, sealer scouts and stuff,

and they'd just be like guys in like, tiny little European football shorts. It's a funny story how I met my co-conspirators as actually on my gap year, as living in Clapham, yeah? I went to a nightclub called Inferna as having a piece at the urinal. I mean, he says to me, you're awesome. Yeah, the birds are awful for the flights.

Okay, so the other thing, right, is that at their inception, companies like Executive Outcomes and Sandline International were quite frightening. They were very, at least in their first iteration, they were quite effective at being given a task, then carrying it out brutally and effectively, and very, well, fascistly.

Yeah, you say burn the village, they burn the village. Wait, my army full of war criminals did war crimes? However, the thing is, they then, they went from awful, they went from term tragedy to farce, you know, and I think this story, this coup attempt in Equatorial Guinea, much as the entire career of Mad Mike,

what was his last name? Mad Mike Hall, a fantastic mercenary. The way his career culminated was about the same time as this. He tried to cure another tiny African nation, the Seychelles. Seychelles. And like, he formed a kind of like, a glee club that was called the Ancient Order of Frothblowers.

Stuffed a bunch of disassembled AKs into like crates of children's toys and rugby footballs. And then the, I think the Seychelles customs guys searched these crates, found the guns, and they shot one of them, flew back, and tried to like throw crates of like guns and explosives out of the door of the like fucking Boeing or whatever to like burn the evidence.

And just again, it got extremely arrested. Very normal thing. It's also important to point out that during, that during that whole time, they all were trashed. Like they had been drinking for hours when they went through customs. Oh yeah. I mean, they're still British.

Just an entirely sunburned man. Slurring his way through assembling an AK from the bottom of a crate of rugby balls and using it to shoot you fucking dead is the most like, this is perfect. This is exactly what we're talking about. A bunch of guys bright red from sunburn of just eating a whole plate of ham, egg, and chips.

Ham fistedly trying to coo the Seychelles and ending up just getting beaten up by some Russian holiday makers. If Simon Mann was already this rich, right, if he already was someone who inherited a vast fortune, made money in oil and IT, then started and led a two private military companies that took payment in the form of whole diamond mines.

Why do this crazy half-baked plan? Unlike Milo says for the love of the game. Well, this is indeed what he said. Genuinely, it's like, it's a fucking, it's an adventure thing. We're just going to go and do it and our money, if it comes, will come after the satisfaction of a whole chain of ifs. Not the kind of ifs that your bank manager

would extend your overdraft on. And it was a chance to climb a mountain that needed climbing that would be hard and dangerous. And because it is there, as Mallory is said to have been with. This is deeply Prince Harry guy English. Yes. You know, fundamentally me and the blokes, we saw a mountain that needed climbing

and if it needs climbing, it's going to get climbed, you know. Honestly though, it was more about, it was kind of a mental health thing in a way. You know, I think a lot of the guys, they were having a bit of a tough time. They needed something to focus on. You know, too many guys, they bottled it up. They bottled up the desire for a coup.

And I just thought, you know, what if I could take the guys, you know, really give them a chance to have an outlet for that in a safe way, give each other a cuddle, that sort of thing, you know. Fellas is regime change, self-care. Yeah. So this is someone who saw, who basically saw that there was someone out there

who will get to, who wanted there to be a regime change in Equatorial Guinea and just couldn't stop himself from saying, I'll do it. God, I want to do it so bad. He just loves killing. He loves killing people. There you go, kill it again. Well, yeah, literally, yeah, this is,

this is like the one kind of English psycho that we're talking about. The first one is the kind of like, dead-eyed first 15 murderer. He's like Bopoulos Simon Mann. Yeah. But like, why, why else would you be in the SAS, other than that it is the first 15 of the army, right?

So he is, he's, and the other thing, right, is this is just someone who just, who is so driven insane by his position in the British class system and his imagination of where Britain is in the global hierarchy of places that are worthwhile and so on. And again, in 2004, when Britain basically couldn't matter less.

Gordon Brown. He was wearing really wide jeans. Yeah, we're going to do a coup on behalf of like the government that Gordon Brown is in charge of. Yeah. Cool. It's still Tony Blair then, right? Yeah, it's still there.

Yeah, it's still. I mean, what late Tony Blair? Thankfully, commander of successful military missions, Tony Blair. Yeah. Yeah. Nothing ever went wrong there. However, in his book,

Of course it's got a fucking book. I had the title, but it was, oh yeah, his book, The Blokes of War. His book, I'll close. His book, Cry Havoc. Oh God. Suck my fucking dick. Amazing.

That's a mercenary coffee brand waiting to happen. Yeah. Give me the, you know, courage on a duty of war and glory like titles over that shit. Oh, it's got an illusion in it. You know, it's got like a silhouette of the SAS symbol on it somewhere.

No, it has to. I'll tell you what it has. It's Cry Havoc. The subtitle is, When I set out to overthrow an African tyrant, I knew I would either make billions or end up getting shot. That's what you want in a subtitle.

It was brevity. And then the cover. The second one. The cover image is Simon Mann, aged 70, pointing a gun at the viewer of the cover. This man will shoot you dead. You have a perfect view

down the barrel of the gun into the various wedges that make up his neck. POV. You're a customs guy in the Seychelles. The best part is that probably wasn't even planned. At this point, his brain is just sloshing gravy. So when the photographer showed up, he's had a gun thrust in his face.

So he said, I want to make the money, but I also want to make a difference, make some lives better. I feel challenged to take on such a tough job. I want the danger and the hardship. I love the crack. C-R-A-I-C.

He certainly does love the crack. I can vouch for that. It may have been a long time ago, but I've never forgotten it. So this is also someone. I still remember his mask. This is also someone who, who's said,

why did you do, why did you attempt to do a bloody coup of the equatorial Ghanaian government? Responded as though he's applying for a graduate scheme. I think it would be a great opportunity to like help people, but also learn about myself

and challenge myself. Also, it'd be fun. His gun doesn't have a front sight post. He doesn't, he doesn't need it. It is also, however, been alleged that his wife, a man-to-man spending habits, which are upwards of 50. A man-to-man.

Can we just have a talk about this, a man-to-man? So her spending habits, which were said to be upwards of 15,000 pounds a month, were also a factor, however. Damn. One transition surgery every month. She just switches back and forth.

Yeah. Just to keep him guessing. The legal papers drawn up between Moto and, and Mam suggested that he would get a $15 million one-off fee, plus a slice of all future arm purchases and oil concessions.

So much the same schema as the executive outcomes will kill them all for a diamond mine. This has never been done before. Payment scheme. In an interview with publication The Africa Report, Man said, and this is on the...

The Africa Report. Sounds like a really bad full-sighted novel. So on the justification for what he called assisted regime change. As to whether or not you should participate, he said, It's up to the individual morally. Can I do it?

Should I do it? But will the profit motive distort your aims? He smiles. I think it is fundamentally true. Capitalism is like that. It's a machine and it's hungry. And this is where I sort of realized, like this is what we have to emphasize,

like Simon Mann may be like weird and deranged and stuff, but he's by no means a stupid person. No. There's another guy we'll get to. Yeah. Simon Mann. Simon Mann is not someone who is

sort of a dupe who's constantly fucking up. If anything, the equatorial guinea thing was a sort of transformation in a life that had been characterized by, you know, relentless, effective killing for profit.

Effective evil transformed into clown shoes. Bumbling clownery. It's asbestos of blood diamonds. We should never have sent all the mercenaries to L'Académie Gaulier in Paris. But he understands,

he understands what his role is, what he's doing, why he's doing it, and why it's profitable. Hmm. And I think we'll get to sort of, as we go on, sort of why on earth would someone who is

not a stupid person take on this doomed mission? Yes. And not to preempt this too much, but like, the image that I want you to have in your head is the bit from The Simpsons

where Martin Prince is dancing around Nelson because they're the best of friends and will remain so for years and years and years. So, if we have it in our heads as well, the Simon man, he's weird, he's dangerous, but he's not stupid.

He went to eat in college. Let's look at the opposite of that. Hmm. One Mr. Mark Thatcher. Hell yeah. So, famously, famously I should just throw this in there, that if Margaret Thatcher had not won

the 1979 general election, she and her husband had plans to set their children up with like law practice slash signature jobs in Canada to get them out of England and just be like, fuck this country,

we don't care anymore. We came so close to never having to deal with this guy. But sadly, it happened. He could have been your problem Riley. He could have been your problem. You know, it's funny,

I'm a simple country lawyer these days, but there was a time when I was thinking about starting a coup, you know. Anyway, it's just me in the vineyards these days. They tried to turn Canada into Australian for like failed political idiot zones.

Yeah, that's why I left. So, Mark Thatcher. Now, Sir Mark Thatcher, as he's known now, was nicknamed Thicky at Harrow because he was very dump truck ass. Very, very, very, very stupid. Like being canned for a dick.

Also, like, a thing that people who did not go to English public schools may not know, the extent to which, like, okay, yes, obviously, everyone gets bullied and there's obvious, like everyone is targeted

for every perceived quality. However, I don't think people understand how stupid you have to be for it to be remarkable that you are stupid at Harrow, right? Yeah. It's real bad.

Like, everyone has to wear a straw boater. Like, you've got to really be doing work to come across as the stupid one. Especially, like, Harrow is genuinely one of the stupider of the English public schools. Yeah. Like, it's up there with, like, rugby and charter house.

Yeah, rugby and charter house. Oh, God. Yeah. It is quite... Clifston College. If you are famous for being stupid at Harrow, that is something. Yeah.

Yeah. So, he... Now, he became sort of enthralled to Simon Mann in Cape Town because of Simon's confidence and poise and charm. It's like the hot general, you know? Yeah.

Yeah, Simon Mann was the hot general and Mark Thatcher was just, I get basically just, but just Trump Jr. Can I just show something out that for all of this storied military accomplishments, Simon Mann left the British Army as a captain. Now, I also left the U.S. Army as a captain.

And as you know, I'm dumber than shit. And also, my military experience, while I do have seven years in uniform, it's not necessarily like, I'm a general in charge of general things. Like, I... Like, the most I ever did was be nominally in charge of 120 dudes.

So, like, the idea that he's some, you know, like, in the blood trained through fucking strategists, like, he did SAS shit, but like, you got to realize his field of control was so narrow, but it strikes me that this is the kind of person who has

enough life experiences that lead them to believe that they can fucking do anything, that they then decide that they can overthrow a country with, you know, 70 dudes and some barrels that say, not guns. And that's what the British class system does to you, right?

And especially like the Army and the SAS, too. If I couldn't do anything, would me, Jonte and 15 of Gaz Baz have jumped out of a helicopter? I don't think so. So, essentially, now, Thatcher says he was looking for a lucrative scheme

when it was alleged that man came up with the idea of the coup, but man says that it was Thatcher who brought him in. It's really sad that like, Simon Mann, this dead-eyed psycho just throws fucking Martin Prince under the bus at every opportunity. This poor, dumb fail son who's just like,

man, I think he's so cool. Well, in fact, that did not stop Mark Thatcher from saying I think Simon is my best friend. It's sad. He's a bit like Toby Young in this scenario. It's just like he's

constantly insisting everyone is his friend and they're constantly going on record just to clarify that they're not friends with him. He's the Ralph Wegoom of political fail son. Yes! Yeah, it was wrong. It's not Martin Prince. It was Ralph Wegoom. But just bear this in mind, too, though, that like with regard to the kind of people who might approach

you at some like famous people event for making even more money when your mom was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom for 11 years, that makes people think that you have pull that you probably don't if you're a huge dumbass. I mean, he's still trying. But you know what I'm saying?

Weird thing is he kind of did, but mainly because he was Mummy's little angel and she always prevented him from ever failing at anything generally. This is just, this was just beyond her abilities.

I fully believe that if Margaret Thatcher were still Prime Minister of the United Kingdom when this was going on God fucking then, Dark Hell Planet as she'd been in power for 25 years. A thousand psychers every day.

But then she would have poked Equatorial Guinea to make sure her son had a good coup. You have to understand the way that the Thatcher's raised their young is like they have to vomit food into one another's mouth like birds. She has to be very sure

that nothing hurts her baby. I knew those fucking bids were coming from something. I never thought I'd hear the expression Margaret Thatcher helicopter parent, but there we are. The other thing, right, that you mentioned

they met at some kind of money event. They didn't. They were just neighbors. This is why I will never move to heart for cheers. I heard you scream a slur. Can we be friends? So basically if you live in Rickmansworth

this kind of shit will happen. Don't ever move to heart for cheer. Just don't do it. So they live near each other and Simon was basically just this cool S.A.S. guy with stories and so on. Mark Thatcher was just like

please can I be your Patsy? I want to be your Patsy. Fucking S.A.S. simp is like the lowest it goes. So oh fuck Mark Thatcher is the Kuzumano guy in the Sopranos who likes hanging out with Tony because Tony's a mob

guy and he finds that like fascinating and then Tony gives him a box of sand to look after. He's already Buko gets way in over his head when he tries to beat up the Frenchman. Anyway, so we're going to go a little bit into Mark Thatcher's past. He got 3

O levels and no proper A levels at school. He nonetheless was offered a place at Oxford because his mother was education secretary at the time. Dope. This system works. And then he tried to become an accountant but then

failed the exam three times then gave up trying, leading to a very unusual career history. Here are a few of his careers from before his mother was prime minister. Jewelry salesman, property speculator, male model, just sort of hanging around in Hong Kong, selling

whiskey and burglar alarms in the U.S. and then he was done for taxes. Selling them together? Inventing an electronically tracked shopping trolley that somehow didn't pan out. Japanese textile impresario and failure as a

racing driver. Yes. He famously drove the Paris Dakar rally, which is one of the most high-profile and prestigious and dangerous car races you can possibly do. And he said

I have now I've raced in Le Mans, among other things, so this rally will be no problem. He said about the experience I did absolutely no preparation. Nothing. Of course he didn't. He won obviously.

It's like the week before the Paris Dakar rally and Mark Thatcher is like scratching his head like, oh, I guess we need a car. Is it chaps? He opens up AutoTrader and goes and buys a 20-year-old Austin 7 from a guy in a camel coat. He's basically like 500,000 pounds for it.

It's like that scene from the dictator when he's running up for behind and shooting everybody so he can win. What I was trying to make was more like in case you haven't looked at a fucking atlas recently, the reason Paris Dakar is hard because you drive across the fucking Sahara the whole goddamn Sahara

like it's kind of a place you want to do some preparation. Even if you're kind of an off-the-cuff guy driving across the world's biggest desert maybe a thing you plan for. So this was in 1982 when his mother was prime minister.

He was acting as navigator for his car having never studied any of the maps and being unable and being unable to effectively read a compass. How can you not read a compass? Causing his team to veer 25 miles off the track and become lost almost

immediately. Guys, am I supposed to know four letters? I only got up to three. Come on, mates, come on. He was found unharmed after a high-profile international rescue mission led by his mother, the prime minister and then described the whole experience

as jolly. He's too dumb to be scared. It's beautiful. He had him on trashy each other. New host. Tell him that we want to talk to him about a sweet racing gig. This is why I say

this guy is a canonical son. Also, I got to point out that we made reference to it a couple of weeks ago about the I want to say current affairs article about Wyatt Coke with the headline the people that capitalism creates

but like this is both the people that empire creates and the people that being able to get around on the basis of your fancy accent creates because I swear to God, I can't think of a better example of just sort of British guy who's just bullshitting and making it up as

his goes along and people assume he's an authority than this. Especially imagine him in Japan being a textiles magnate and he's like, oh, yes. I suppose cut it that way. Yeah. He talks like David Bedeal. Yeah, I was going to say David Bedeal.

He was born a hundred years before he would have had some like government position in the British Raj. Yes, yes. Oh, absolutely. This is the thing. We're talking about two different kinds of fucked Anglo vibes, right? It's two different kinds of English psychosis. On the one hand, you have this dead-eyed

killer. And on the other hand, you have this guy who's just like, yeah, I probably don't need to know how to like use a compass. Yeah, he would have been at a functionary in the British Raj and actually on the Paris-Dakar rally, he was using the same map just like a colonial era map of India just being like, guys, honestly,

I don't recognize any of this. Well, he essentially was someone who like if he he would have certainly been like given command of like one of the Afghan missions and somehow come home with one fewer survivor. That's exactly how they got lost in the

retreat from Kabul. Like basically in the grand scheme of things, 100 years ago, you know, like a failed son of aristocracy who doesn't know how to use a compass or a map would be drawing the border between India and Afghanistan as opposed to just getting lost on a fucking car race.

So I mean, improvement? It's a story. I mean, it is a story of decline, right? Like this whole episode is a story of it's a story of personal decline. It's a story of political decline. It is a group of people in powers

that just are not up to solving any of the problems in front of them for like every reason at every level. It is pure farce. But also, you know, like Mark Thatcher, had he been born a little earlier would have been like, you know, leading some kind

of English disastrous military mission and then had a statue made of him. If he'd been born 10 years later, he'd be Matt Hancock. It's all the same guy. That's true. Yeah, damn. Anyway, once his mother became

PM, he basically tended to make money in any scummy way accessible to him. Sort of being like Alice, your comparison was this guy's forest gun at an eyes wide shot party. Yeah, he just kind of was the darkest and like bleakest moments of British political history. He

bumbles through making a bit of money on the side. It rules constantly going on about his mama. Yeah. So that's true. In fact, he was alleged to be involved in Al Yamama, which we spoke to Aaron Marat about everybody made money off of that deal. He got it

allegedly, but he disputes that he got paid for it. What he does not dispute is that one of the Saudi fixers bought him a house in Bel Gravia for like, I don't know facilitating, I guess. So Dr. Kim Howells, a member of the Commons Public Accounts Committee at the time

said there were allegations flying about all over the place and they specifically included allegations that Mark Thatcher had been one of the main middle men in the whole deal and there was a hint that his mother had paved the way for him. I can believe it. Everyone said that if he was not the major middle man, that he was set to

make more out of it than any other of the British middle men. However, it does not stop at Al Yamama. That's simply the most egregious forest also a fixer on something called the Super Gun. Oh my God! I'm so happy we get to tell the Super Gun

story. So the Super Gun. Oh my fucking God! Please go ahead. The Super Gun was one of Saddam Hussein's more Doctor Evil projects aside from weapons of mass destruction, right? Where the idea was he was going to hire this Canadian

artillery designer called Gerald Bull to build an enormous, like incredibly long howitzer that I guess could then just, I guess, destroy Iran, Kuwait, whoever once you took the month or so to like

turn it. And they like actually got to the point of designing and fabricating bits of this enormously long barrel and then they got intercepted in transit by, I think British and maybe French customs because they're like, yeah, why are you shipping

a like mile long gun barrel and they were just like, oh yeah, it's a septic tank. I'm pretty sure they got killed by Mossad. Yep. Just a normal guy who kept inventing incredibly deadly weapons

and then one day he comes out of his apartment and a guy shoots him twice in the head with a silenced pistol and leaves. This guy told me he needed to hunt some moose in Tehran. Hey, they're pretty big, eh? Honestly, the best part of the entire Gerard Bull story is the fact that his cannon was supposed to fire things

into orbit. And like he sold it to Saddam personally by saying that they could shoot down enemy spy satellites by pretty much coming on them. I'm not doing this tweet again. It was a giant shell that exploded

and shot like a viscous goo over a spy's satellite. So yeah, it was a galactic cum machine. In fact, an early day motion was tabled in the House of Commons saying that this house welcomes the decision

of the United States Congress to investigate arms sales to Iraq, notes that the charges by former Israeli military intelligence agent Mr. Ari Ben Menasha that a Texan based company owned by Mr. Mark Thatcher was used to move equipment directly from Britain to Iraq that Mark Thatcher introduced super gun

designer Gerard Bull and South African military intelligence general Peter van der Westen who's introduced Mr. Bull to the Iraqi deputy chief of procurement who arranged payment for Mr. Bull's services via Cardone Industries

financial network and that Mark Thatcher introduced Mr. Bull to Mark Thatcher's Chilean associate Carlos Cardone, notes that Mr. Ben Menash also all of Mark Thatcher's vibe is knowing different comically like national men.

Ok, hold up, notes that Mr. Ben Menash also charges that Mark Thatcher sold 48 chieftain tanks to Chile and proclaimed his admiration for General Pinochet and in light of these charges hopes the government will conduct its own investigation to determine the truth of these charges and if proved true bring criminal charges against

any United Kingdom government individuals aware of these activities. Do you want to know who signed this early day motion, Mr. Jeremy Corbyn? Jeremy Corbyn Jeremy fucking crobbins he was just mad because he was just mad that the super gun would blot out

the sun and stop him from growing Maros. The super gun shoots a viscous jam over the spy satellite. Unfortunately, Ken Livingston also a co-signatory of this early day motion so swings and roundabouts. That was back in the salad days before he was too weird.

Yeah, so he also was involved in a company called Cementation that was trying to sell a university building to Oman during a massive British push to build universities in Oman. Just in the building? Like they just kick it out the back of a plane?

No. Yeah, it's just building a big plate glass university in Oman. Cementation sounds like the Instagram model who drinks come. I mean, yeah, I was going to say that sounds like some kind of very poorly

named infertility service. But like... So literally, all this dude does is no comical people. He exists at this niche that he's found in the world is to introduce Chilean general

Adolfo Eichmann Müller to like a South African guy named Jeeps von Boestgen. I'm hung up on the guy going to the Oman Durham campus. It's pretty much as good as Oxford. What it basically seems to come down to

is that every single comedically evil international actor that Margaret Thatcher helped to enable via her government, Mark Thatcher went to the drinks event with them and was like, hey, you guys want to do business? He apparently talks like that. He basically decided to

start an LLC with every international supervillain that came through number 10. Yeah, I wonder why. So basically, Cementation then later admitted, we did pay Mark Thatcher. We used him because he's the Prime Minister's son. After the deal was exposed

three years later, Margaret Thatcher was unable to deny she knew her son would profit, but told opponents she was quote, batting for Britain. Again, like that's like verbatim what fucking Boris Johnson would say, like this shit hasn't changed at all. Yeah, but like also this is

like, there's a different there's a qualitative difference right between this guy and Hunter Biden or even Donald Jr and Eric Trump. Right. And it's the fucked Anglo vibe specifically that are just like, oh, you want to buy, you want to buy like

helicopters and just and like, at some point, it's so much more nakedly evil than just like giving Hunter Biden a gas company Cinecure, right, because it's all like, fully selling torture equipment back and forth

between one person, mummy knows another. Yeah. Margaret Thatcher was unable to deny that she knew her son and just tempting that it might have been. Well, yeah, because what you get when you get down to it, Hunter Biden, I mean for as much as a fail son as he is

was still kicked out of he joined the Navy and was kicked out of the Navy for doing too much cocaine, whereas like Mark Thatcher seems to trend more towards like Charles of Spain level of like unable to tank untangle his own hair until he was 21, like there's a much more just head full

of water. Yeah, exactly head full of water heart like under bite. Yeah, heart like a shriveled fucking prune level of just if you look at photos of him, he looks almost exactly like Mr. Burns would in real life. Basically this this and this

didn't just stop at trying to do business with everyone his mother had ever met. He also demanded that he have a bodyguard at all times. Even though his twin sister felt no need to ask for such protection and it was never made necessary but she didn't spend all of her time

meeting guys who were like the most dangerous people on the planet. The thing is Mark Thatcher, I think he just wanted the bodyguard so we could have bodyguards and show people around him that he had bodyguards and it's a cool guy. He likes like a big strong man, right? And the thing is actually friends

with him. I love the idea that he has a twin sister who's normal that she's just going about like her normal. He has a twin sister who's going about her normal like rich fuck awful posh British person routine and like her twin brother is somehow you know holding a symposium on whether or not you can come in

space and like she seems normal by comparison. She said you say she's normal however when she went on she is a became a British journalist and then say no more referred to a black tennis player as a golly walk and when asked to apologize said

I stand by what I said I think he just wanted bodyguards because nobody was his friend. Yes, yes literally yes. You get a big friend. I mean to just Mark Thatcher employing the services of Dave

Courtney protection. He would have been better off like if all he wanted to do was no wide men. That's Dave Courtney's whole business model. Dave Courtney would have been a truer friend to him than Simon Man. That is true. Dave Courtney is not a fake bitch. Speaking of

this just ending our sort of Mark Thatcher segment all of this led to him being referred to by everyone in Whitehall as the Mark problem. Yeah, they had to name it off to me. He was widely hated by everyone we ever

had to work with except his mother who doted on him endlessly and never allowed him to fail for his greed, arrogance and sheer ineptitude but his mother loved him personally and when she was PM she intervened constantly to make sure all of his stupid business deals work. It's kind of amazing. Mark Thatcher, you know, you thought maybe it was

a weird demented slip of the tongue when she used the royal we when she became a grandmother but actually like she was hard at work creating her own Prince Andrew only in the sense that he is an incompetent moron. Oh, but he would have been

he would have been in that black book and on the island if he could have been. You know that perfect Mark Thatcher is not cool enough. Mark Thatcher has never been invited to a pedophile party. Those people find Mark Thatcher annoying. He's trying to do deals while they were doing pedophilia.

So how long have you been a child? Jeffrey Epstein is like, no, thank you. So in 1998 Mark's affairs then came out of the microscope again when authorities in his new home, South Africa investigated a loan scheme where basically he had a company

that gave lots of small unofficial loans to civil servants all up and down South Africa and when they defaulted on the loans they were charged 20% interest. So he basically court me round he was David basically he used to get the thing weird thing is

Greensill is doing that now but with the public sector of the UK and they're charging guy wrong and they're charging the employers rather than rather than the people who are being employed but still seems like a little strange to just be there

sort of middle manning that stuff. Anyway his role in the coup after he met Simon Mann just from being neighbors and going to barbecues together was to provide a helicopter to the coup plotters which was officially called an air ambulance.

Thatcher was accused of bank rolling the coup attempt admitted to making investments without properly understanding what they were going to be used for. You've got to have the gun mounts in an air ambulance is the thing. Yeah I mean to be fair Yeah if Mark Thatcher uses the defence of

I didn't fully understand what I was doing that is a cast iron defence like you cannot argue with that. Listen I wasn't 100% sure on what a helicopter was Look he just asked me to go into business and I said yes I never ask what we're going into business to do

I just say yes It's been working out for me my entire life I was just trying to make friends But mom he said I was cool Simon Mann said after leaving prison of Mark Thatcher one of the biggest mistakes was approaching Mark Thatcher to put in money

he just wanted to be one of the boys gain some power in an oil rich African country and impress his mother but he turned out to be a very weak link indeed Now well that's accurate That's so mean Right like that just

hurt the guy's feelings why don't you he thought you were friends Nevertheless that did not stop during and after the trial Simon Mann from claiming that Thatcher was a core planner of the coup and a big investor with a lot of responsibility for what went on

and if you want to find out more about what went on you should tune into part 2 on the Patreon I just love the idea of Simon Mann in court being like yes you signed a legal agreement with fat shithead destroyed my toilet

LLC but I never thought it was a good idea Alright Thank you to everybody for listening to part 1 of this exciting 2 part series part 2 can be found on the Patreon 5 bucks a month you know what it is Don't give us your money now stop talking in this voice yeah

I really please please just make him stop Do not stop Also you know there are t-shirts you can send emails for them and also the bail funds are still there in the description Marcus Braun is still

incarcerated he's been charged again we need to get Simon Mann out of Equatorial Guinea jail in 2004 In fact in the second half of this episode you'll find out what Simon Mann's up to these days He's just saying he's English Anyway see you later everybody

Bye Bye Bye Bye Bye Bye