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The contract soldier or “mercenary” has fallen somewhat onto the margins of European affairs since the condottieri of the Renaissance era, though in the 20thC many Europeans served, some more honourably than others, in mercenary forces elsewhere in the world, mainly in Africa. Among the better ones were 5 Commando under Mike Hoare in the Congo of the early/mid 1960s, and those who served under the Rhodesian flag in the late 1960s and 1970s. Among the less honourable, les Affreux (“the Frightful”), Belgian and French mercenaires in the Congo circa 1961-62, and some of those who served in Biafra; also, arguably the rock-bottom, those (some completely untrained) who went to Angola under “Colonel” “Callan” (in reality, Costas Georgiou, a Greek-Cypriot dishonourably discharged from the Parachute Regiment of the UK, and who never held a rank higher than corporal, if that): see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Costas_Georgiou; see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercenary#Africa; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mad_Mike_Hoare.
“To recruit his force, Hoare placed newspaper advertisements in Johannesburg and Salisbury (modern Harare, Zimbabwe) for physically fit white men capable of marching 20 miles per day who were fond of combat and were “tremendous romantics” to join 5 Commando.[5] The moniker Mad Mike which was given to him by the British press suggested a “wildman” type of commander, but in fact Hoare was very strict and insisted the men of 5 Commando always be clean-shaven, keep their hair cut short, never swear and attend church services every Sunday.[5] The men of 5 Commando were entirely white and consisted of a “ragbag of misfits” upon whom he imposed stern discipline.[5] 5 Commando was a mixture of South Africans, Rhodesians, British, Belgians, and Germans, the last of whom were mostly Second World War veterans who had arrived in the Congo wearing Iron Crosses.”
[Wikipedia].
The Wagner Group, aka PMC Wagner, has changed the rules. Here is a notionally private military company effectively acting as the private part of a state military force, though not signatory to any international conventions and, by the same token, unprotected by any.
In the 1960s and at most other modern times, mercenaries were seen only in quite small groups, certainly no more than a few hundred. That alone marks out Wagner Group as something new. Even Mike Hoare’s successful 5 Commando consisted of only about 300 men. The Wagner Group can (or could, until the recent fighting for Bakhmut/Artyomovsk) muster tens of thousands. The whole of the British Army is now no more than about 70,000-80,000, and most of those are either headquarters or “rear-echelon” forces, not combat-ready.
It comes as a slight surprise to realize that Wagner Group might even be a match for the maybe 30,000 troops who comprise the whole of the fighting part of the British Army.
It is an open question as to what would happen were Wagner Group to attack and/or get into combat with, the forces of a NATO state (eg Poland). That is, would it trigger Article 5 of the Treaty, and so create a general European conflict?
I suppose that the last time the British used private forces on any scale would be the seaborne “privateers” of the 16th-18th centuries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privateer, unless you include the arrangement with the Gurkhas, though they are now completely subsumed into the British and other armies.
[addendum: a most extraordinary figure: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Denard].
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Polish roads have certainly improved since I was there (late 1980s).
They both look hugely smug, as well they might. I wonder what could wipe the smirks off their faces?
Reading tweets from pro-immigration cretins such as tweeter “@DawnRowatt” is more than irritating; it is actually slightly frightening. It shows that there are rather a lot of people in this country devoid of any real awareness of how the country is changing for the worse (the much worse) via mass immigration and migration-invasion. Such “refugees welcome” and similar dimwits are immune to logic, to facts, to intelligent analysis. What does that leave?
They are the gravediggers of our still relatively-civilized, though declining fast, white European society.
As mentioned on the blog and by others, fraudulent “grifter” “Jack Monroe” uses literally hundreds of Twitter and other “sock accounts”, some prepared years ago, as long ago as 2013 in some cases. Such “non-people” argue with those exposing “Jack Monroe”, and they also praise her, or her dire food “recipes”.
As for me, I fail to understand why the police have not (as far as I know) launched investigation into what is really a long-running fraud, or series of frauds.
From the newspapers
“A spokesman for the National Police in the Balearic Islands said: ‘Officers have arrested a Moroccan man as the suspected author of a crime of unlawful detention, sexual assault, resisting arrest and disobedience after he tried to take a two-year-old girl on a beach in Ibiza who he kissed on the face.”
[Daily Mail].
That is what is invading Europe. That is what the “refugees welcome” dimwits (whether on Twitter, in the Labour Party, or in the Court of Appeal and Supreme Court) are facilitating.
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Is that what is also coming to England, somewhen not far off?
I usually believe in the maxim de mortuis nihil nisi bonum, but I have to say that when Gates drops dead, I shall be pleased, even though we are all on the same conveyor belt.
Not only Gates, incidentally.
Israel is a “democracy” in the sense that South Africa, in the apartheid era, was. Democracy for those thought eligible. Is there any other word as flexible (or meaningless) as “democracy”? See https://ianrobertmillard.org/2019/01/15/has-parliamentary-democracy-as-we-have-known-it-until-now-had-its-day-in-the-uk/.
A good deal of what has been shown on Western TV reports from Ukraine over the past ~18 months has been faked, or partly-faked.
West Germany, pre-1990, pre-Reunification, was pretty impressive; East Germany (DDR) not so much, and very strange, but still pretty clean and efficient, from what I saw in a brief visit at the time.
Now look at it. Migration-invasion and cultural decadence has done huge damage even as compared to the Weimar period of the 1920s and early 1930s.
“No military plan survives the first contact with the enemy” [von Moltke].
The Israelis train their staff officers and others by telling them to prepare a plan over a period of a week. 24 hours before the wargame is due to start, the officers are told that the situation has changed radically along lines explained. A new plan therefore has to be prepared. Then, less than an hour (I think a matter of 10-20 minutes) before the start, the officers are told that the situation has changed again. They are instructed to think of a new plan at once.
That method has been proven to have been effective in training officers able to think on their feet, as seen both in 1967 and in 1973, and plays to the Jewish/Israeli strength in off-the cuff innovation.
The Russians and Ukrainians of senior rank were, at least until recently, brought up in the Soviet idea of carefully-thought-out plans, and wargames that were mostly for show, to be displayed like a panorama to senior officers, political leaders, and in propaganda films. In a word— inflexible.
Late music
Ian Robert Millard 