Discovering Russia and Russians through the Eyes of an Ex-US Military Analyst
One of our readers criticized us for the grave crime of ‘supporting Russia’. We generally do not support any government organization, but we do try to discover and present the truth, and that truth may not happen to coincide with what media sells in the western countries. The process of discovering the truth involves reading many contrasting accounts, and then come to the conclusion about what may have happened.
A few of our readers are so brainwashed that reading anything contrary to their belief system troubles them. For the rest, we present an interesting book that just came out. We have not read the book yet, but are well familiar with the blog of the author. Here is his brief bio from the book.
The Saker was born in a military family of “White” Russian refugees in western Europe where he lived most of his life. After completing two college degrees in the USA, he returned to Europe were he worked as a military analyst until he lost his career due to his vocal opposition to the western-sponsored wars in Chechnia, Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo. After re-training as a software engineer, he moved to the Florida where he now lives with his wife, a veterinarian, and their three children. When he does not blog or help his wife at work, the likes to explore the Florida wilderness on foot, mountain bike and kayak or play acoustic jazz guitar.
The following long blog post gives you a more colorful personal account of his background.
“Submarines in the desert” (as my deepest gratitude to you)
My life has been one of ups and downs. Early on, after a pretty nasty childhood, it went up, rather rapidly. Then came the “fall from (pseudo-) grace” and I lost my career. It is still too early to go into all the details, but let’s just say that I used to be associated with a “three letter outfit” whose existence was not well-known by the general public and which has since been disbanded. In my field, I got to the proverbial ‘top’ pretty early on, but soon the war in Bosnia began to open my eyes to many things I had never suspected before. Then I found out about two things which got me blacklisted in my own, putatively democratic, country: I found out that a group of people had uselessly been murdered as a result of the criminal incompetence of their superiors and I found out that one guy had taken a long jail sentence while all this superiors had managed to walk away from a crime they all had committed. And even though I never went public, or even told my closest friends about it (to protect them), I was blacklisted and prevented from ever working again.
In those dark days my wonderful wife was always trying to tell me that it was not my fault, that I had never done anything wrong, that I was paying the price for being a person of integrity and that I had proven many times over how good I was in my field. I always used to bitterly reply to her that I was like a “submarine in a desert”: maybe very good at “something somewhere”, but useless in my current environment (I always used to visualize a Akula-class SSN stranded smack in the middle of the Sahara desert - what a sight that would be! I wish somebody would use a Photoshop-like software to create that pic). What I have found out since, is that our planet is covered with deserts and that there are many, many submarines in them, all yearning for the vastness of an ocean.
The book is available at the following link -
The Essential Saker: from the trenches of the emerging multipolar world
These are some of the most essential articles written by the Saker on his blog. Even though they cover topics ranging from history, to politics, to religion, to military affairs, to social issues, they are all linked by one common thread: the full-spectrum clash between the Western world and what the Saker calls the “Russian civilizational realm”. Most Russians, especially when addressing a western audience, feel compelled to use a diplomatic and non- confrontational language. In contrast, Saker’s style is informal, almost conversational, but also direct, even blunt. He is fully aware that his views might offend many of his readers, but he believes that there is also a bigger audience out there which will appreciate an honest and, above all, sincere criticism of what the Saker calls the “AngloZionist Empire”. The careful reader, however, will notice that the Saker’s criticisms are always aimed at a political system and its constituent institutions and supporting ideologies, but never at the people, nations or ethnicities. In fact, the Saker forcefully argues for a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic and multi-religious Russia which would be fully integrated in a multi-polar world inspired by the fraternal diversity of the BRICS countries. Underlying the Saker’s entire worldview is a categorical rejection of all ideologies and a profound belief that the root of all evil as well as the key to defeating it is always in the realm of spirituality.
