Mercenaries plague our planet

Mercenaries are increasingly being used to seize land from local communities so that it can be exploited by elites for oil and mineral wealth.

Sandlines who were being used in Papua New Guinea are one example. The Mark Thatcher coup in Equatorial Guinea which was to be carried out by Simon Mann is another example.

The use of right wing para militaries in Colombia to free up land from indigenous people and farmers for minerals or biofuels is another.

Resources as we see time and time again come with added blood. Resources are stolen, the environment wrecked at the same time and human rights abused. We need an agenda of environmental justice.

I would have thought, not withstanding the repressive nature of the elite he was paid to over throw, that Simon Mann should go back in prison for a very long time.

However the British government do greed not justice.

No more war for oil and no more stolen land, its not a slogan for New Labour.

Just seen by the way this article arguing that the coup in Equatorial Guinea was more like a comedy routine than anything else.

Coup, Betty!
Friday 06 November 2009 Paddy McGuffin
It was supposed to be Wild Geese but it played out more like Some Mothers Do Have 'Em. Yes, that's right, this week saw the release of old Etonian gun-for-hire Simon Mann, mastermind - and I use the term in its loosest sense - of the 2004 "wonga" coup in Equatorial Guinea.

Mann was freed from his Black Beach gulag having served a gruelling 15 months of his 34-year sentence. I've heard of time off for good behaviour, but this is ridiculous.

Though for once the penal system does appear to have had a rehabilitative effect. Mann emerged blinking into the daylight and immediately pledged to shop all his co-conspirators to the authorities. There's no honour among thieves, as the old addage goes, and that apparently goes double for blood-soaked mercenaries banged up in chokey.

Hell hath no fury like a hired killer scorned - or one who's just found out that the cheque bounced.

It seems like only yesterday that a rag-tag team of around 70 "crack" mercenaries were hauled from a plane in Zimbabwe during one of the most ill-advised stop offs since Roman Polanski got a craving for Toblerone.

Less the A-Team than the under-21 third-string reserves, these bold warriors were thwarted in their noble mission to line their pockets and made to look, well, a bit pathetic really. But then what can you expect when you look at the calibre of some of those involved in the attempted coup?

Mann himself was a former officer in the SAS before leaving for more lucrative pastures and teaming up with Tim Spicer in Sandline International.

Remember them? The Korporate Killers cut a bloody swathe through Papua New Guinea, Sierra Leone and Angola, propping up corrupt regimes with one lascivious eye on their conflict diamond profits.

Tellingly, one of the claims made by Mann in his attempts to worm his way out of trouble this time round was that the planned coup had actually just been a security operation for mining interests in the region. If in doubt rely on the old fall-back, eh?

More here/leer mas