The private militia that grant states plausible deniability

Your life is like a schedule, you run to meet the bills, no one's awake to tell you... life kills! Words I first heard as my life was reaching the final furlong on the first of the rank of treadmills we’re thrust upon to keep us from questioning the fruitlessness of our struggle to survive... until the curtain finally comes down somewhere on the retirement stage.

When Phil Oakey, Ian Craig Marsh, Martyn Ware and film technician Philip Adrian Wright (aka Human League) performed at Derby Assembly Rooms on 21 May 1980 I was in the audience as I lived nearby in Nottingham where I was beginning the final three-year stretch on the education treadmill that replaces the freedom of infancy and paves the way for a smooth transition onto the merry-go-round of work.

For some that starts a few years earlier for others a little later, with the majority migrating onto the family phase at some point when everything speeds up before slowing again in the run-up to the retirement setting.

Four treadmills – education, work, family and retirement – that we’re all condemned to step onto to prevent us from rejecting a system many of us realise from very early on we’re just not cut out for... unfortunately from the moment our birth is registered the machine starts running and we’re off on a desperate quest to keep up.

For those who survive until the retirement stage an opportunity to jump off can present itself, largely dependent on the toll taken on the previous stages. Those left with money, health and family content to stay on the treadmill, those left with little too tired to get off... but between the two groups there’s a sub set who finally take the time to breathe and realise what a futile ride it’s all been and just stop struggling to stay on.

And that’s the group I now fall into, grateful for many experiences I’ve had on the treadmills but finally able to step back and see the world for what it really is before reaching the end of the journey.

Back in 2006 I was disturbed by the movie Blood Diamond starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Djimon Hounsou and Jennifer Connelly... was aware of the suffering and injustice in Sierra Leone and horrified by it but still desperately trying to stay on the treadmill to sort the children’s education out, keep the mortgage paid and put food on the table.

All that changed a decade later when my wife was diagnosed with late-stage cancer. I stopped work, the children were adults and soon after my wife had passed away the “plandemic” hit and my eyes opened to the world again for the first time really since my birth had been registered 60 years earlier.

The treatment of cancer far more geared towards “big pharma” profits than a patient’s health, the “convid fiasco” pushing the boundary on what humanity will cow down to and the aftermath paving the way for a New World Order I’ve very little desire to see take shape. So here I am, fed up with the world but finally able to focus on the madness and injustice that has flourished since the end of World War II and strive to help others open their eyes to the mess that’s been created since the United Nations was formed on 24 October 1945 and warfare became the most profitable business on the planet.

But, as warfare has come of age in the last 80 years, countries are constantly in conflict while a huge chunk of humanity has developed an immunity to it and can’t be manipulated as easily as before, opening the way for mercenaries to profit from the horrors of war. Although innocent civilians will always get caught in the crossfire, increasingly war is a business for the PMC... and by that I don’t mean the Planet Minecraft Community.

I’d suggest the UN’s role has had very little to do with keeping peace and far more to do with creating an environment for the military-industrial complex to flourish and, with war the mainstay of the relationship, for the Private Military Company to blossom, with psychopaths now ruling the world.

While researching Palantir’s role in clearing the path for the imminent “big brother” takeover the world is being groomed to accept I stumbled upon a London-based security specialist called Grey Dynamics, which has opened my eyes to the transformation the world has experienced during my lifetime.

The company claims to be in the business of gathering, analysing and interpreting critical information to provide accurate intelligence through detailed and accessible online reports; to assist clients with practical intelligence applications in their operations; and to help organisations build and enhance their capabilities through specialised training programmes.

And, through a very comprehensive website on the role of the PMC in the modern theatre of conflict it’s offered me a crash course into the politics of modern warfare where plausible deniability allows the military-industrial complex to manipulate nations and events while feeding bullshit to mushrooms happy to be kept in the dark.

From Wagner in Russia and the Ukraine to DynCorp, Convoy and Executive Outcomes the website charts the explosion of PMCs on the world stage which in the sphere of modern warfare perhaps goes back to 1965 and the formation of WatchGuard International by SAS veterans David Stirling and John Woodhouse.

Wikipedia suggests the company’s first assignment was to report on the state of the royalist forces in Yemen, with it eventually providing training teams and advising on security matters in Zambia and Sierra Leone. Stirling also organised deals to sell weapons and provide military personnel to other countries for various privatised foreign policy operations with contracts mainly with Gulf states. The company was also linked with a failed coup attempt to overthrow Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in 1971.

But with the end of the Cold War and the exodus of thousands of military personnel from Western countries in the 1990s it was the perfect environment for PMCs to come of age. Some of the larger corporations in the United States included Vinnell and Military Professional Resources; while G4S, Sandline International and Keenie Meenie Services (KMS) entered the game in the United Kingdom; with Lordan-Levdan in Israel and Executive Outcomes in South Africa.

Today, according to Grey Dynamics, the big players are in Russia and the US, with Wagner and Blackwater two of the highest-profile names in the business. Wherever there’s conflict in the world you’ll find one or more PMCs on the ground allowing the national aggressors the luxury of plausible deniability for anything unsavoury that compromises the UN’s integrity.

In 1989 the UN Mercenary Convention was initiated to prevent the use of mercenaries and was entered into force on 20 October 2001. As of August 2021 it had been ratified by 37 states, although signed but not ratified by nine... and glancing down the list of signatories you won’t see the US or UK listed among them.

It would be foolish to think of mercenaries being a modern phenomenon, soldiers of fortune have always been around. What’s changed has been the technology available to support the death and destruction and distance the aggressors from the business of killing. For generations of teenagers groomed on first-person shooters guiding a drone or masterminding a missile attack is something they’ve grown accustomed to, while blowing away targets with an automatic weapon has become second nature.

For the school-yard bullies and testosterone junkies the PMC is a land of opportunity, with the highest bidders paying handsomely to keep the drones on high alert. Private security is a big growth industry and the advent of the New World Order will see the crosshairs focused on us all if we step out of line. When it comes to building back better there’s a term for those who get in the way... it’s called collateral damage.

Officially the figures put the death toll in Gaza since 7 October 2023 at less than 80,000 but we all know the collateral damage is exponentially higher... although soon it won’t matter as all the lost lives will be buried beneath condos and beach resorts that reward the ghouls in the Israel Defence Forces and PMC mercenaries for selling their souls to the devils calling the shots.