The Past

I made my first post on this blog on March 1, 2012. Since then, as of August 5, 2018, I have posted nearly 13,000 articles, which I have selected from the near and far reaches of the online world, in an effort to give you up to date news and research on and about the wide world of PMSC (Private Military and Security Contracting).

Of course, I have been following this world for far longer than that, dating back to the late 1980s; when the only PMSC companies anybody knew anything about were Executive Outcomes from South Africa, Sandline of the United Kingdom and MPRI (Military Professional Resources Inc.) of the United States.

And ever since then I have been following it on a daily basis, chronicling it in all its fascinating detail and glory and infamy.

It may not seem like it, but staying current involves a lot of work; from searching for relevant articles, uploading them to the blog, categorizing and publish them. In fact, it takes a considerable amount of time and effort to get this done. Especially when you do it every weekday.

The Future

In the past I was willing to do all this for free, as a sort of labor of love, or, perhaps, obsession. But I have less time these days and more obligations. I do this on top of a fulltime job. And, sadly, experience has shown that as long as access is free nobody will contribute so much as a cent to keep it going.

So, reluctantly, I have decided, to convert the blog to a subscription basis. That means you will now have to pay an annual fee to access the blog.

Reasons why you should subscribe

First, there are few people out there who have been following it as long as I have. While, I may not have been present at the creation of the first PMSC I was there in the earliest years, reporting on the like of Executive Outcomes operating in Angola and Sierra Leone, and MPRI in Croatia.

I wrote a well-received book on the subject, wrote a weekly column about it for United Press International, blogged for years about it at the Huffington Post, and still write about if for various publications.

Second, you will find information here you simply won’t find elsewhere. This a curated blog, meaning I spend a lot of time searching databases you don’t have access to. I do not just type security contractors or private military companies into a search engine and paste the first ten results. You are getting the benefit of deep information gathering dives, as well as the results of decades of experience in knowing where to look. In short, I know where the PMSC bones are buried. You can search elsewhere but I guarantee you won’t find in one place all the scholarly and academic articles that are here.

Finally, you are getting incredible value. For now, I have decided to set the subscription fee at only $25.00. Why is this a bargain,? For that amount you get about 2,600 articles a year. That’s less than a penny an article, plus access to all the other articles already there.

If that is not value for your money there is no such thing.

Bear in mind that the fee you pay goes only to compensate me, in a very tiny way, for my time and effort, and to help defray some of the costs of maintaining this blog.

In conclusion, my promise to you is that I will keep doing this. Naturally, I prefer that you subscribe. But if you choose not to I understand and wish you well. But before you do that think about what you will miss. You won’t get this information anywhere else.

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