Monday, September 21, 2015

A third-world attitude to democracy

Over the weekend, Burkina Faso's Regiment of Presidential Security - basicly, a praetorian guard - overthrew the country's transitional government and re-established a junta after the government recommended that it be disbanded. And in the UK, a serving general is threatening the same thing for the same reason:
A senior serving general has reportedly warned that a Jeremy Corbyn government could face "a mutiny" from the Army if it tried to downgrade them.

The unnamed general said members of the armed forces would begin directly and publicly challenging the labour leader if he tried to scrap Trident, pull out of Nato or announce “any plans to emasculate and shrink the size of the armed forces.”

He told the Sunday Times: “The Army just wouldn’t stand for it. The general staff would not allow a prime minister to jeopardise the security of this country and I think people would use whatever means possible, fair or foul to prevent that. You can’t put a maverick in charge of a country’s security.

“There would be mass resignations at all levels and you would face the very real prospect of an event which would effectively be a mutiny.”


[Emphasis added]

This is an outright coup-threat. So what's the British government doing about it? Sweet fuck-all:
However, a Ministry of Defence spokesman ruled out a leak inquiry on the grounds that it would be almost impossible to identify the culprit. Despite cutbacks, there are still around 100 serving generals in the army.

So, a serving general threatens a coup, and the MoD says "meh". Pretty easy to see whose side they're on. The British military clearly needs a purge to remove those with such third-world attitudes to democracy.