Reply #1: I heard "Sir Mark" has his house up for sale. Related?

[Octafish]

Well, anyway, they loathe him in Jolly Old...

Coup Charges Cap Mark Thatcher's Career

BETH GARDINER
Associated Press

LONDON - One of Britain's iconic names is back, in bizarre circumstances tailor-made for the country's boisterous tabloids.

Sir Mark Thatcher - son of British political legend Margaret Thatcher, titled by inheritance, and wealthy through connections and marriage - is in trouble in a far-off land for allegedly bankrolling a bungled African coup attempt.

The story features oil interests, a dictator reported to harbor cannibalistic tendencies, mercenaries from elite private schools in Britain, a Lebanese immigrant tycoon and faint echoes of Britain's former colonial dominance. And the people are lapping it up - especially the front-pages photos of the white-haired, suited Thatcher being led away from his Cape Town mansion by police.

"I wish my daughter could make what he's making," said David Ryan, a 50-year-old London letter carrier. "He made a fortune out of his mum's name. ... He's just got what he deserves."

CONTINUED...

http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/world/9541738.htm?1c

A bit o' history for those who enjoy readin' and the like...

The SAS: Prince Philip's manager of terrorism

by Joseph Brewda

EXCERPT...

The relations of these SAS firms with the Iran-Contra narcotics trafficking, emerged dramatically in August 1989, when reports surfaced in the British and Italian press that the Colombian Cali Cartel, historically most closely tied to the George Bush machine, had hired SAS veterans to assassinate Pablo Escobar of the rival Medellín Cartel. On Aug. 16, three days after the story broke, Colombian presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galán, a fierce opponent of the drug trade, was assassinated, some Colombian government sources say, by these British mercenaries. Among the individuals identified as working for the Cali Cartel were Col. Peter McAleese, a former SAS officer in Malaysia; Alex Lenox, a former member of the SAS Counter-Terrorism Warfare task force; and David Tomkins, a veteran of Afghanistan.

SNIP...
Oman was a particularly critical base of SAS operations into Afghanistan throughout the 1979-89 war. According to the recent unauthorized biography of Mark Thatcher, son of the former British prime minister, Oman's extensive SAS community served as the principal British arms-shipping center for the mujahideen.

SNIP...

Landon enjoyed intimate ties to both Mark Thatcher and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher throughout the 1980s, and this further facilitated Oman's key role as a weapons conduit to the Afghan mujahideen. A look at a map of the Arabian Sea and the Indian subcontinent shows that Oman is a stone's throw away from the Pakistani port of Karachi, the major weapons-importing point (and heroin-exporting point) for the Afghan rebels.

Ironically, another strong player in Oman during this period was one of the American CIA figures who most closely followed the British SAS model: Theodore G. Shackley. Shackley had directed the CIA's "secret war in Laos" during the late 1960s and early 1970s, and had written a book, The Third Option, spelling out the SAS approach to training and controlling local insurgent armies as surrogates. Much of the Laos "secret war" had been financed by the sale of Golden Triangle opium. Shackley was a pivotal behind-the-scenes player in George Bush's "secret parallel government" apparatus that ran the Afghan, Nicaraguan, Angolan, and other covert operations.

CONTINUED...

http://www.econcrisis.homestead.com/SFAN_SAsPrincePhilip.html

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