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    Lord of War - spookily prescient: US-Ukrainian arms dealer tells and shows it like it is/was. Archived Message

    Posted by Jim_Carlucci on November 27, 2022, 11:54 am



    Don't let the fact that I'm referring to a 2006 movie with Nicolas Cage put you off.


    Here's a "Weapons, Arms and Legs Show" clip - followed by some (spoiler?) extracts from the script.

    Berlin Arms(and legs) Show:





    ...and here are those spoiler script extracts(NB.I have not interjected any comments - it's all from the movie):

    "My name is Yuri Orlov.
    When I was a boy, my family came to America but not all the way.
    Like most Ukrainians. We congregated in Brighton Beach.
    It reminded us of the Black Sea.
    I soon realized we just swapped one hell for another.

    Yuri.
    It's my brother Yuri.

    Selling guns is like selling vacuum cleaners. I was an equal opportunity
    merchant of death.
    I supplied every army but the Salvation Army.
    I sold Israeli-made Uzis to Muslims.
    I sold communist-made bullets to fascists.
    I even shipped cargo to Afghanistan when they were fighting my fellow Soviets.

    I never sold to Osama bin Laden. Not on any moral grounds. Back then
    he was always bouncing checks.

    By the mid '80s, my weapons were represented in eight of the world's top 10 war zones.

    There's no problem leading
    a double life. It's the triple and quadruples lives that get you in the end.

    Back then I carried a French, British, Israeli and Ukrainian passport and a student visa for the US.

    But that's another story.
    I also packed six different briefcases depending on who I was that day and the region of the world I was visiting.

    Without operations like mine it would be impossible for
    certain countries to conduct a respectable war.

    I was able to navigate around
    those inconvenient little arms embargoes.
    There are three basic types of arms deal. White being legal, black being illegal - and my personal favorite color gray.

    Sometimes I made the deals so convoluted, it was hard for me to work out if they were on the level.

    To keep authorities in the dark, I often spoke in code. Rocket launchers were "mothers," the rockets... "children. "

    Ukraine. I was young. But I remember.
    Look. I'll start in Odessa, right? And then work my way to the Crimean.

    You're gonna be dead
    before you frucking reach Kiev.

    Come on, we're going home.

    You've gotten so rich selling for the CIA.

    You can't seem to get that ideology
    completely out of your head.

    Oh, the Cold War had its uses. Kept attentions frozen.
    Now it's harder to determine
    which side one's on.

    Things have become more complicated.

    No, it's gotten simpler.

    There's no place in gunrunning for politics anymore, Simeon. I sell to leftists and rightists.

    I'd sell to pacifists but they're not the most regular of customers.

    Of course you're not a true internationalist
    until you've supplied weapons to kill your own countrymen.

    This current state of chaos won't last forever.

    There'll have to be order.

    Instead of cutting each other's throats.

    The problem with gunrunners going to war is that there's no shortage
    of ammunition.

    This was the chaos that the Old Guard had always feared. As far as they were concerned I was giving arms dealers a bad name. But then they could hardly report me to the Better Business Bureau.

    And Ukraine wasn't the only former state with an unpaid army and stockpiles of guns.
    There was Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Belarus
    - all there for the taking.

    Of all the weapons in the vast Soviet arsenal. Nothing was more profitable than the Avtomat Kalashnikova - model of 1947 more commonly known as the AK-47 or Kalashnikov. It's the world's most popular assault rife.
    A weapon all fighters love. An elegantly simple 9 Ib. amalgamation.
    It's so easy even a child can use it, and they do. "



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