Mercenaries

Mercenaries were getting quite a lot of publicity a few years ago; bad publicity. Various people had decided that they hated them for various reasons. All of this applies to military mercenaries. Every one in the City of London is a mercenary too. They get hated  for slightly different reasons but by much the same people. Of course teachers, office workers and many others are mercenaries too but they do not attract  the same kind of abuse. Is all of this justified?

Mercenaries were used a lot in Italy before it became a state in its own right. Venice had its men. So did the Pope. Things were lively. Italy is safer now but the corruption is carrying on. Ask David Mills, an Englishman why he was setting up off shore companies for Silvio Berlusconi. He won't tell but he is going to have to explain himself in an Italian court this month [ November 2006 ]. He has now [ August 2010 ] been convicted. Of course the Pope still has his Swiss Mercenaries but that is different somehow.

Colonel Callan [ previously Costas Georgiou ] came later and was marvelous publicity. The Main Stream Media loved it. He was half lunatic and a good fighting man when it mattered. It was just the times in between. He got kicked out of the British Army for robbing a post office. The money was back the same night. He got a court martial, prison and a discharge. He made corporal it seems but he was never going to get any higher. His platoon commander was Gil Ghani, a much more dangerous man but not stupid.

Executive Outcomes
Was a first class outfit providing full services to legitimate governments. Its people were South African with lots of experience of the real thing. They did good work in Sierra Leone then  Clinton turned nasty. Lotsa diamonds are involved in the place. The Oppenheimers want them. Clinton panders to Jews. Follow the money, find the evidence. QED.

 

Men with guns are the new dotcoms
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Sitting behind his smartly fashioned desk in one of the new, antiseptic office blocks that line London’s Victoria Street, Tim Spicer looks the very model of the modern entrepreneur. He talks smoothly about service delivery, market share and profit margins....
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Now the private armies are  mainstream businesses and plan to get a lot bigger.... Their bosses are more likely to be wielding Powerpoint presentations than AK-47s, and their boardrooms provide billets for the likes of Field Marshal Lord Inge, the former chief of the defence staff, who is non-executive chairman of Aegis.

Armor Group.......listed itself on Aim with a market value of more than £30 million. It had sales of £124 million last year, operates in more than 50 countries and has Sir Malcolm Rifkind as its chairman. Aegis had sales of £62 million last year, employed 1,200 people, and made a profit of £2.5 million. It could have made a lot more, the company is quick to explain, but it was too busy investing in new offices in Iraq and Afghanistan, and didn’t want to take cash out of what are clearly seen as long-term investments.

There’s no doubt that there is plenty of money chasing mercenaries. In Iraq, foreign governments and international agencies spend vast sums of money on protection. Britain’s Department for International Development has set aside more than £278 million from its Iraq reconstruction budget to pay for increased security. Nobody really disputes that the money needs to be spent. There is no point in paying for new electricity generators or water pipes or any of the other infrastructure Iraq needs if you don’t pay to stop people from blowing it up.

By 2005, driven by Iraq and Afghanistan, sales  had mushroomed to $2.5 billion......  For the companies, it’s a basic contract. They figure out what the job will cost, then add on a chunk for their trouble..... 

The most troubling issue is not financial — profit margins are good — but how close to the action you get. ‘We do protective tasks, we don’t do offensive action,’ says Spicer. ‘That’s where the line is drawn.’

Only Armor has listed its shares to date, and it doesn’t have much of a rating. The shares are languishing at a third of their high last year. Sales are going to be there for the foreseeable future.