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Submarines in the desert” (as my deepest gratitude to you)
586,013 Views November 13, 2014

Submarine in the desert


Foreword
I have been thinking about writing this post for several months now. But in a world were everything coming from the heart is misconstrued as some form of posturing, I was frankly afraid to do so. Also, writing that kind of stuff is not what bloggers do, much less so those who try to run a halfway credible blog. And yet, every time I got a kind email, a letter or even a gift, I felt that I have to write this. God knows I am opening myself up for even more misrepresentations as usual, but I think it is well worth it. My spiritual father always used to say “one soul is more precious than the entire universe“.
So I dedicate this post to that one soul.

Introduction
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.

Modest beginnings at first
I came to the USA in 2002 with only one desire: to leave my past on the other side of the ocean and to disappear, to become an anonymous ‘nobody’ who would be left alone. More than anything else, I needed time to recover, to lick my wounds and to spend time with the only people who had stood by my without every doubting me: my wife and my kids.

The French have a very good saying:”chassez le naturel et il revient au galop” which can roughly be translated as “try to suppress your nature, and it will come back with a vengeance”. This is what happened to me. While in 2002 I had promised myself to never analyze anything more complicated that a fiction book, by 2007 I suddenly decided to start a blog. This blog. My goal? Very, very primitive: to write what the hell I wanted. I had spent so many years writing for “big people” who had very narrow limits of what they were willing to read that I decided to indulge in the joy of writing whatever I wanted with no concern or regard for anybody’s opinion. I had an itch to scratch I decided to scratch it.

You can still parse the archives of 2007 or 2008 and you will see that I really was making no efforts to reach anybody, make a difference or become popular. A short and ill-fated contact with Antiwar.com (which ended up in disaster), gave me a few more readers but my readership was still tiny.

My choice of topics did not help. Years before, I had literally “bumped” into the topic of Hezbollah and, my curiosity picked, I spent a decade studying this movement and its amazing leader. By 2007 I was an unrepentant Hezbollah-groupie and Nasrallah fanboy and most of the blog dealt with the Middle-East. The other topic was Russia, simply because this was the country my family came from and which I had professionally analyzed for years. As for the Ukraine, I don’t think that I ever mentioned it at all. While I was disgusted with the ignorance and hatefulness of Ukrainian nationalists, I did not care about the Ukraine: “let them soak in their own ‘independent’ and yet pathetic and clearly sinking statelet if they want – I have more inspiring things to look at” was my philosophy at the time. Sure, I kept an eye on events there, but to me this reminded me of Russia in 1993 – I was disgusted with all the actors and with the entire situation. Besides, what could happen there which would be worthy of interest?

And sure enough, life proved me wrong (-: again :-)


The big wars of 2013
First, there was Syria and the Russian role in stopping Uncle Sam. Oh yes, there were the political efforts of the Russian diplomats, and they were ‘bad’ enough. But less noticed what the fact that Russia sent a hastily assembled but capable naval task force to the Syrian coast. Not a task force big enough to fight the US Navy, but a task force capable of providing a full view of the skies over and beyond Syria to the Syrian military. In other words, for the first time the US could not achieve a surprise attack on Syria, not with cruise missiles, not with airpower. Worse, Russia, Iran and Hezbollah embarked on a covert and overt program of material and technical assistance for Syria which ended up defeating the Wahabi insurgency. The AngloZionist were absolutely *livid*. So to teach Putin and those damn Russkies a good lesson, they blew up the Ukraine and, again, Putin did two things they had never expected and which they could never forgive: he did sent forces Crimea but he did not do so in Novorussia: there he helped covertly. There was no doubt possible: Russia had committed the “Crime of Crimes” of openly defying the will of our planetary overlords. The Empire’s response was predictable: a full-spectrum ‘war’ on Russia and Putin, albeit not an overtly military one (yet).

For me and my blog, the consequence of this mega-crisis was immediate: the readership literally exploded and, at the suggestion of other (it was not even my idea!), more Saker blogs suddenly began popping up. From a unknown one man anonymous blog the Saker blog morphed into a global community, and that over less than one year.

[Sidebar: if often fell like a war profiteer. The worse the situation in the Ukraine, the more readers I get, the calmer, the less. On a really quiet day I get as little as 20’000 hits, on a really bad day, up to 69’000. I estimate my more or less regular readership at no more than 30’000]

I am outlining all this to truthfully explain to you that this was never the plan for me. Not only was this completely unplanned, it even took me by surprise. In fact, I was so surprised that I could not honestly make sense of it. Think of it.

Here is a one-man blog, written by some anonymous dude with a silly alias, who repeatedly engages in all sorts of crimethink (like the day when I wrote – to a mainly Arab readership – that I believed that Hamas ought to unconditionally release Gilad Shalit, LOL!) who is neither from the Left, nor from the Right, whose writing is chock full of typos and, frankly, very poorly written sentences and yet this blog suddenly takes off like a rocket. And you can tell by my writing style that I don’t even take myself too seriously. But so what in the world has happened here?

Sure, I am a decent analyst, I know Russian and a few other languages, I have studied Russia for all my life and the Middle-East for, well, a little over a decade. This is not bad, but hardly a reason for such a success.

Then I understood:

It was never about me, but always about you

Along with more daily visitors, I began receiving more and more emails and letters. And presents. Often very touching ones. Just look at the absolutely beautiful drawing of a Saker Falcon I got yesterday (thanks SO MUCH “S.T.”! I will frame and posted it on my wall)


People who had never met me and who really knew nothing about me were literally pouring kindness over me. Most emails and letter centered on political issues, but a big minority were expressing much deeper feelings such as gratitude and a desire to morally support. I was amazed, really. Then my readers began suggesting that I should place a donation button on the blog. Many may not believe me here, but that idea had never even crossed my mind. Eventually, I did (God knows I needed the money) and to my absolute amazement people began donating. Why? Why would anybody in our cynical word filled with crooks donate some hard earned and always scarce money to a guy he/she has never met? Was that just because I was posting materials about Syria or the Ukraine? Or my oh-so-good analyses? Hardly.

And then there was also the rage. Many, many letters were literally oozing with rage. Rage against the government, its media, the Empire, the lies and the dishonesty. Rage at having been lied to. Rage at the humiliation of being treated like a serf or a slave. Rage at our dysfunctional and self-destructive society. Before that, I had no idea that so many people were so mad.

The most gut-wrenching letters were often from US servicemen. They often began with “I consider myself a patriotic American and I love my country which I served for many years in the military but….” and here it inevitably turned into a painful admission that this country was lead by evil crooks, occupied by parasites, owned by a 1% of SOB whom everybody else despises. And you would simply not believe the kind of stuff these correspondents, including former servicemen, would write about Putin. It was amazing – I regularly joke that if given a chance to run, Putin might be elected as President of the US of A.

[Sidebar: By the way, I will not post these letters here. Not even excepts. First, I want to protect the trust of those who wrote to me. Second, some of these letters are so amazing and moving that I will inevitably be accused of making them up. So I will simply forgo presenting any ‘proof’ for my statements. Believe me or not – makes no difference to me. And if you don’t – then I guess that yours is not the soul I dedicate this post to anyway]

So there I was trying to figure out – why such an outpouring of kindness for a total stranger (and an anonymous one at that!) and such an outpouring of rage against the society we live in. And then, I think that I figured it out.
The deserts are filled with submarines (but they are breaking free!)




The Way Out
That’s it. I had mistakenly believed that I was the only one feeling like a submarine in a desert, but in reality the deserts of our society were filled with people who felt completely alienated. Several times in the past I posted here the beautiful song by David Rovics “We are everywhere” because with each passing month I began to realize that he was literally right – we are, indeed, everywhere.

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