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Lazarus and the Gimp
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Whale-raping abomination
Aug 2000
time: 05:32
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The Comoros Islands- a jewel in the Indian Ocean. Ivory beaches, palm trees swaying in the breezes, strange and rare animals such as the Coelacanth living fossil fish. This place has all the ingredients to be a dream holiday destination. So why is it that tourists rarely go there, unlike its more glamorous neighbours in the Seychelles, or Zanzibar?
The answer is simple. It's a dangerous and unstable ****-hole that's been thoroughly ****ed over by mercenaries, commies, tyrants and the French. It's been nicknamed "Coup-Coup Land", because there's been over 20 coups in the nation since independence in 1975. It's also been invaded by France twice. This is a country that's been relentlessly buggered by crap politics to the extent that it's almost starting to rival Paraguay.
There has been no shortage of ruthless and murderous bastards who've helped propagate this situation, but one man stands head and shoulders over the rest. Step forward "Colonel" Bob Denard.
Bobe Denard was born Gilbert Bourgeaud in Bordeaux, 1929. A former vacuum cleaner salesman, he fought in the French army in Morocco and Indochina before becoming one of the most active and prminent mercenaries of the 20th century. He fought private wars in Yemen, Zimbabwe, Iran, Nigeria, Benin, Angola, Congo, and Gabon- most of these were typically actions against "Marxists", though in practice "Marxist" seemed to be the label attached to anyone objecting to colonial rulership who happened to be a shade darker than white. Denard, and his fellow mercenaries, have to shoulder a considerable portion of blame for the political destabilisation across sub-Saharan Africa in the 1960's and 1970's. We can only guess at the death-toll directly or indirectly caused by this.
By 1974, Denard was ready to live the mercenary's dream- retire to a private kingdom somewhere sunny. He wound up in the Comoros. Between 1974 and 1975 the first President, Ahmed Abdallah Abderamane, was deposed by Ali Solih. Solih introduced modernising, left-wing rule to the Comoros- he started out promisingly as a down-to-earth populist attempting to install secular government in an Islamic nation, but became increasingly unhinged and despotic. By 1978 he was a despot who had appointed a 15 year old to run the police department, burnt all government records, and after a witch doctor told him he would be killed by a white man with a black dog, he killed every black dog on the island. He was also strongly-opposed to the French and French colonial influences.
At this point, I'm going to hand over to an extract from a report from Eric Margolis. A word of warning- it's a trifle biased, but worth reading anyway-
"In 1978 a young lunatic named Ali Solih seized power in the Comoros, an obscure, former French colony of no importance. Solih subjected its 500,000 black, mainly Muslim inhabitants to a reign of terror. He put teenage thugs in charge of every organ of government. A 15-year old headed the police. Gangs of armed teenagers drank, raped and looted.
Comoran businessmen hired Denard to get rid of the madman Solih, setting up a war chest of some $6 million. Denard recruited old comrades from the Congo, bought an old rustbucket freighter, and stocked up on arms. He eluded agents of France's domestic security agency, the DST, and the foreign spy agency, SDECE, who had caught wind of the plot.
After a long voyage around Africa, Denard and his men landed from rubber boats late at night outside Moroni. President Solih was lounging in his palace's bedroom, with three, naked, barely pubescent girls, popping bennies, smoking hashish, and watching a porno-flick - when Col. Bob kicked down his bedroom door. A short burst from Denard's submachine gun finished off the teenage tyrant.
Next morning, Denard draped Saleh's riddled body over the fender of a jeep and drove slowly through Moroni, as crowds cheered and acclaimed him as their saviour and king."
A lot of that is true- the drugs, the corruption, the underaged totty and porn, etc. However, Margolis neglects to mention one very important fact. It was Denard who put Solih in power in the first place, and he had been present in Comoros throughout Solih's reign working for him and keeping him in power. Rather than this being some heroic act of liberation by a moral crusader, the real reason Denard turned against Solih is that Solih had refused to pay Denard the remainder of the millions promised to him for orchestrating the 1975 coup that installed Solih. It's also kind of tricky taking Debard seriously as a white knight of sexual probity when you consider the fact that he is a seven-times bigamist....
Denard effectively ruled Comoros from then on, with the reinstalled Abderamane as a puppet President. He became rich through funds from the French government (for protecting French interests in the area) until 1981, then from apartheid-era South Africa for spying on ANC bases and monitoring the war in Mozambique. He also turned the Comoros into a gun-running centre to deliver arms to the Iraq Ba'athists. It all went wrong in 1989- Abderamane was about to sack and arrest Denard for corruption, but Denard launched his third coup and murdered the President. Two days later, on November 29, the real reasons for the assassination emerged when Denard and the GP seized control of the government in a coup. Twenty-seven police officers were killed, hundreds of people were arrested, and all journalists were confined to their hotels. The mercenaries disarmed the regular army, ousted provisional president Haribon Chebani,and installed another puppet. However, massive public demonstration arose following boycotts from the international community, and Denard was overthrown by the French and South African governments.
In 1995 the old bastard was back again, invading the islands with a mercenary force- this time without French backing. He overthrew the elected government, but was himself toppled by a French invasion involving 600 commando troops. This time he was gone for good- arrested and hauled off for trial in France for allegedly murdering Abderamane. From the BBC-
"According to Mr Denard, President Abdallah's bodyguard, Abdallah Jaffar, burst into the room and fired at him, but the bullets accidentally hit the president. Mr Jaffar was in turn shot dead by Mr Denard.
Mr Denard said he was a close friend of President Abdallah.
"I was a soldier. I was never a killer," he told the court in a final plea on Wednesday."
He was found not guilty due to lack of evidence.
So has Comoros been at peace so then? Nope. Coups and strife galore. Since 1974, it's seen 20 coups, three secessions, two Presidential assassinations and four invasions. If you're planning on going, pack a kevlar vest along with your factor-20.
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Albert Speer
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Puerile Polemic
Mar 1999
time: 00:32
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aint that something? a vacuum cleaner salesman did all that?
then again, Mussolini was a high school teacher, Stalin a Georgian priest in training, etc. it's amazing what a seemingly average person can do.
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Albert Speer
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Puerile Polemic
Mar 1999
time: 00:32
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Azazel:
of course. most of Africa, half of latin america, and a bit of Asia is just like this what with feudal warlords.
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Vesayen
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quote:
Originally posted by Lazarus and the Gimp
Yes. Even a humble vacuum cleaner salesman can become a corrupt, murderous, megalomaniacal, crypto-fascistic serial bigamist. |
That gives me hope for my dreams of megolamania!
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Lazarus and the Gimp
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Whale-raping abomination
Aug 2000
time: 05:32
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In the interests of balanced reportage, here's the Margolis article. Draw your own conclusions.
quote:
remember Co. Bob from the Congo days, during the 1960's, and his equally colourful pal, 'Mad Mike' Hoare. Col. Bob, Mad Mike and a handful of white mercenaries routed the entire Congolese Army. They saved hundreds of whites from being tortured, burned alive, or eaten by gangs of savage, paint-daubed, drug-crazed 'Simbas' of Pierre Mullelle and Antoine Gizenga. In Katanga, they humiliated a UN army sent to drive 'President' Moise Tschombe, a stooge of Belgium mining interests, from power.
Col Bob went on to fight in the bloody Biafran war of succession against Nigeria. He battled communists in Angola, with my old friend, Gen. Jonas Savimbi. Denard soldiered in Rhodesia against black guerrillas; he fought in Yemen's civil war; and with the mujihadin in Afghanistan. Frederick Forsyth was later to model the hero of his novel about mercenaries 'The Dogs of War,' on Denard.
In 1978 a young lunatic named Ali Saleh seized power in the Comoros, an obscure, former French colony of no importance. Saleh subjected its 500,000 black, mainly Muslim inhabitants to a reign of terror. He put teenage thugs in charge of every organ of government. A 15-year old headed the police. Gangs of armed teenagers drank, raped and looted.
Comoran businessmen hired Denard to get rid of the madman Saleh, setting up a war chest of some $6 million. Denard recruited old comrades from the Congo, bought an old rustbucket freighter, and stocked up on arms. He eluded agents of France's domestic security agency, the DST, and the foreign spy agency, SDECE, who had caught wind of the plot.
After a long voyage around Africa, Denard and his men landed from rubber boats late at night outside Moroni. PresidentŠ Saleh was lounging in his palace's bedroom, with three, naked, barely pubescent girls, popping bennies, smoking hashish, and watching a porno-flick - when Col. Bob kicked down his bedroom door. A short burst from Denard's submachine gun finished off the teenage tyrant.
Next morning, Denard draped Saleh's riddled body over the fender of a jeep and drove slowly through Moroni, as crowds cheered and acclaimed him as their saviour and king.
Col. Bob appointed a figurehead president and then ably ruled the Comoros for the next 11 years. Not since the white Rajas of Sarawak last century had a European adventurer seized a kingdom for himself.
Comorans loved him, Black African dictators did not. They lived in terror of Denard. After threats by black African states to stop buying arms from France, France finally sent troops to the Comoros in 1989, and overthrew Denard.
Denard returned to France, where he was briefly imprisoned. In 1993, he was charged with plotting a coup against the brutal marxist dictator of the West African nation of Benin. Since then, however, Col. Bob insisted he was in permanent retirement and interested only in raising vegetables in his garden. That is, until last week, when he and his men, some as old as he, stormed ashore in the Comoros.
Once again, black Africa howled in with outrage. A white could not be allowed to rule in Africa, particularly not one so popular. But French PM, Alain Juppe, announced his nation would not use military force to oust Denard. Black African nations evidently felt they lacked the military capability to confront Denard and his 12 white mercenaries.
So the Organization of African States again threatened France with an arms boycott. On Wednesday, President Chirac overruled his humiliated prime minister and sent 600 French commandos to the Comoros. After some fighting, the French troops freed the jailed president and seized Moroni. Col. Bob, decked out in combat gear and ammo clips, limping from his old war wound, surrendered to French troops. The old dog of war had been cornered.
I'm keeping my fingers crossed that Col. Bob escapes. French security forces have a nasty habit of shooting troublemakers. Hopefully, Denard will be back in his garden after a short stint in jail. This caper was very likely his last. At 66, after a thousand close calls, it's time to hand up the submachine gun, store the grenades, and drink a last bottle of red wine with the boys. The day of the white mercenary is almost past.
Yet even so, no black tyrant in Africa will sleep soundly in his palace until Denard is dead. For who knows, Col Bob and his senior citizen mercenaries might be somewhere out there in the sultry African night.
copyright Eric Margolis 1995
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14-12-2003 19:49
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