Blackwater Founder Makes Secret Army in UAE

[Simon_Jester]

Well, foxholes fall into the general category of "entrenchment-" they're simply a form of it better adapted for dispersed fighting by troops spread out over a large area.

I would honestly be surprised if in a military like that of Egypt or Saudi Arabia, the troops were even good about digging foxholes.

[Shroom Man 777]

The invisible hand of the free market is slitting the third world's throat with a bayonet of "freedom".

More like the Third World sees throat-slitting daggers in the free market's hand, and is committing seppuku to avoid the dishonor of losing to the free market.

Bullshit. So they avoid the dishonor of losing to the free market... by whoring themselves out to Western oil companies, and becoming subservient to foreign interests manipulating their country? Because that's what the US-allied Arab nations are doing. That's what all Third World nations with regimes backed by foreign powers are doing. That's like preserving your honor with a chastity belt with a built-in double ended dildo.

Maybe you're mistaking it for the free market bleeding the Third World's breasts and sucking out the blood from their milkbags, like a bunch of vampires, and the Third World somehow getting aroused by this and allowing themselves to be sucked dry in exchange for spare change.

[Block]

The invisible hand of the free market is slitting the third world's throat with a bayonet of "freedom".

More like the Third World sees throat-slitting daggers in the free market's hand, and is committing seppuku to avoid the dishonor of losing to the free market.

Bullshit. So they avoid the dishonor of losing to the free market... by whoring themselves out to Western oil companies, and becoming subservient to foreign interests manipulating their country? Because that's what the US-allied Arab nations are doing. That's what all Third World nations with regimes backed by foreign powers are doing. That's like preserving your honor with a chastity belt with a built-in double ended dildo.

Maybe you're mistaking it for the free market bleeding the Third World's breasts and sucking out the blood from their milkbags, like a bunch of vampires, and the Third World somehow getting aroused by this and allowing themselves to be sucked dry in exchange for spare change.

Or maybe you're way oversimplifying? Who says third world leaders act in the best interests of their countries?

[Bakustra]

What? I'm not sure how you get that from what Shroom said. Please, elaborate a little.

[Block]

What? I'm not sure how you get that from what Shroom said. Please, elaborate a little.

The ruler doesn't = the nation?

[Shroom Man 777]

The ruler does = nation's policies regarding free market, their complicity in foreign interests, geopolitical actions, and selling out their nations to foreign powers?

[Sarevok]

75 % of the blame goes to third world leaders and 25 % to outsiders. Blaming evil westerns for everything is a lame excuse. Third world countries get exploited because their leaders incompetent and unfit for their role.

[[R_H]]

...

Is this guy really trying to build up a mercenary army in the Middle East? Really? MGS4 was a video game, you aren't supposed to take your business model from Liquid Snake.

So what was Blackwater then?

Besides, this battalion isn't an army, it's light infantry. What's the difference between what Prince is doing and the Gurkhas or the FFL for example?

[Sarevok]

The Gurkhas and FFL are part of the British and French army respectively. They answer to their elected governments not a billionaire.

[[R_H]]

The Gurkhas and FFL are part of the British and French army respectively. They answer to their elected governments not a billionaire.

From what I remember of the article, these guys answer to the UAE, Prince and co are responsible for training and advising them.

[Shroom Man 777]

75 % of the blame goes to third world leaders and 25 % to outsiders. Blaming evil westerns for everything is a lame excuse. Third world countries get exploited because their leaders incompetent and unfit for their role.

And some because foreign powers depose their competent leaders and replace them with goons.

Their incompetent leaders who are unfit for their role get to continue leading, and continue on with their roles, because of outside backing. You have entire regions of the world with shitholes that are backed by foreign powers. The topic of this thread happens to be situated in one of those areas too.

Now, this doesn't happen to most of the third world shitholes because most third world shitholes are unimportant and have nothing of value for anyone. But those that are important? Those with something the invisible hand of the free market wants to grope and fondle? Oh, they're going to be in a world of fuck. History has shown this time and time again, and current events, as reported in this thread's article, show that it continues to happen right now.

To deny the responsibility of foreign powers, when they are the ones who reap the rewards of the shit conditions in these miserable countries that happen to be situated on resource-rich areas, would be to ignore geopolitical reality. You don't need a simplistic parable with blue people and mustached bad guys in space helicopters with clear glass canopies to realize this.

[Simon_Jester]

Hmm.

Shroomy, perhaps there are two kinds of horrible things happening at once here. On the one hand, we have the corporate-whoring, about which you have even more, and more obscene, things to say than I do.

On the other hand, there are countries where the popular culture, or the religious movements, or political radicals, does something completely different and yet still very counterproductive: it looks at all Western ideas, even the ones that you've got to admit are pretty OK like freedom of speech, and sees them all as if they were enemies. It rejects them all, and sees them all as a kind of cultural subversion. Even if that means rejecting things that make themselves stronger, or things that are not uniquely Western but are merely strongly associated with Western culture.

Sidewinder was talking about this second thing, and how it can weaken a country. Applied to Muslim countries, we get radical Islamic movements that want to run everything by their version of how things should have been a thousand years ago. We get armies that spit on ideas like "let officers take initiative rather than sitting quietly on their asses and getting blown up because no one got around to giving them any orders." We get enervating, weakening conformism within the society where if you do not behave like a Really Really Muslim Person you are a bad person and should get remedial stickbeatings, forcing everyone to act in silly ways to show off how well they fit in.

And it is very possible for both these things to be happening at the same time. The ruler is whoring out to the West, at the same time that the popular culture and the radical movements seeking his overthrow are cutting off their noses to spite their faces when it comes to rejecting the West and everything associated with it.

[Sidewinder]

75 % of the blame goes to third world leaders and 25 % to outsiders. Blaming evil westerns for everything is a lame excuse. Third world countries get exploited because their leaders incompetent and unfit for their role.

And some because foreign powers depose their competent leaders and replace them with goons.

Their incompetent leaders who are unfit for their role get to continue leading, and continue on with their roles, because of outside backing. You have entire regions of the world with shitholes that are backed by foreign powers. The topic of this thread happens to be situated in one of those areas too.

You're oversimplifying things. The Islamic Republic of Iran is NOT getting backing from the US. Neither is Burma/Myanmar. Some places simply have the bad luck of having an oppressive and exploitative government, and obscurity that makes other nations' citizens struggle to remember where they are, much less help them.

[xerex]

well hopefully if the Arab Uprising is successful in the end, one of the effects of the uprising will lead to more initiative on the part of the Arab lower ranks.

[Phantasee]

I kinda doubt that. If anything the militaries will be even warier of giving them much initiative and will probably keep their troops on a shorter leash.

[K. A. Pital]

Sidewinder, how is Myanmar an Islamic nation or even barely related to the Middle Eastern incompetence? They're heavily Buddhist for all I know.

[Shroom Man 777]

You're oversimplifying things. The Islamic Republic of Iran is NOT getting backing from the US. Neither is Burma/Myanmar. Some places simply have the bad luck of having an oppressive and exploitative government, and obscurity that makes other nations' citizens struggle to remember where they are, much less help them.

In the case of Iran, turns out backing a repressive regime and propping Shahs will just piss the people off there and make them hate you and your culture and make them turn the other way? Which is exactly what is sparking the rampant anti-Americanism of so many movements there.

Do you think the rabid anti-Americanism would exist there, if America didn't fuck around in the region and just spent its time alone playing with its own dick instead?

Of course, that doesn't change the fact that the nations there will still be repressive moronic shitholes. But hey, at least they're just exploiting each other and killing each other, rather than getting screwed over by foreigners, getting angry and then going out and blowing up those foreigners screwing them over.

[Sidewinder]

Sidewinder, how is Myanmar an Islamic nation or even barely related to the Middle Eastern incompetence? They're heavily Buddhist for all I know.

I was referring to Shroom Man 777's apparent belief that the superpowers- the US, China, and the former Soviet Union- are backing the oppressive governments of all Third World "shitholes," when many of these nations receive no such backing. The Middle East is not alone in suffering under a poor government that uses the US- China and the former Soviet Union, to a lesser extent- as a convenient scapegoat. Case in point: Fascist nations that justify themselves as "anti-Communist," such as Spain under Francisco Franco.

[Shroom Man 777]

Did I say that all third world shitholes are such? You're the one going on about the third world seppuku to whatever free market honor or whatever, as if foreign interests aren't helping drive those knives in.

Oh, I'm sorry, is the topic at hand about the UAE hiring mercenary kill squads by itself while renouncing Western ideals? Oh, so they're not being aided by the services of an American billionaire who was formerly part of the US military establishment, who also mingled in the social circles of the American rich and powerful, and who played a crucial role in other foreign interest interventions in the Middle East? Who knew!

PS. Franco's also a shitty example, since Richard Nixon loved him. If the West was willing to get the help of ex-Nazis to combat the Soviet Union, then I don't doubt their foreign interests also backed Franco against the commies. Turns out a lot of fascist nations are also backed by foreign powers, lol.

[Sea Skimmer]

I was referring to Shroom Man 777's apparent belief that the superpowers- the US, China, and the former Soviet Union- are backing the oppressive governments of all Third World "shitholes," when many of these nations receive no such backing. The Middle East is not alone in suffering under a poor government that uses the US- China and the former Soviet Union, to a lesser extent- as a convenient scapegoat. Case in point: Fascist nations that justify themselves as "anti-Communist," such as Spain under Francisco Franco.

Umm Franco simply was anti communist... that was a big part of what the whole Spanish Civil War was about.

[K. A. Pital]

Sidewinder, how is Myanmar an Islamic nation or even barely related to the Middle Eastern incompetence? They're heavily Buddhist for all I know.

I was referring to Shroom Man 777's apparent belief that the superpowers- the US, China, and the former Soviet Union- are backing the oppressive governments of all Third World "shitholes," when many of these nations receive no such backing. The Middle East is not alone in suffering under a poor government that uses the US- China and the former Soviet Union, to a lesser extent- as a convenient scapegoat. Case in point: Fascist nations that justify themselves as "anti-Communist," such as Spain under Francisco Franco.

Franco is an extremely poor example (besides, he really was anti-Communist and killed shitloads of communists), as people have already noted. He was extensively backed by foreign powers, both in pre-war period and in the post-war period as well. Besides, US, China and USSR aren't merely "convenient scapegoats", those are real major powers that opressed smaller nations. The extent of the meddling by large powers in the affairs of small nations can't be underestimated.

If you want to find nations which never had foreign powers meddle in their affairs, I doubt you wouldn't find a single one. Thank the age of imperialism for that. Most of the world was carved up so that hardly a place remained unreached and untouched by the Great Powers' dickery.

[Shroom Man 777]

This discussion actually made me wonder. What nations in Africa, Asia or the Americas hasn't been touched by Western/European interests in history?

[K. A. Pital]

None. Absolutely all nations that we now consider Third World and a good fraction of those that went into Second World were, at some point, colonized by Europeans. If you superimpose these maps:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Colonisation_1800.png
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:World ... ritory.PNG
You will see that not a shred of the Third World remained untouched by colonization and imperialism.

Well, outside of almost uninhabitable tropical jungle regions of Latin America. Many were fucked over by major world powers not once, but twice or thrice in their history.

[Pu-239]

Iran, Ethiopia, Thailand, Afghanistan, various Himalayan countries come to mind if you accept the ones that weren't colonized outright.

[Lord Woodlouse]

Iran, Ethiopia, Thailand, Afghanistan, various Himalayan countries come to mind if you accept the ones that weren't colonized outright.

You're kidding, right? Iran was calved up between the British and Russian Empires. Ethiopia (as Abyssinia) was annexed by the Italians. Thailand was extensively dicked around by European powers. Afghanistan was briefly controlled by the British Empire.