Feral

Feral is a story of a man's personal journey through war and rebellion, love won and lost, families torn apart and rejoined, freedom, business, and politics. The story goes beyond understanding how one man became the way he was and why he did the things he did. In describing these experiences, it became important to explore and describe the background to this story, including some areas of history, government, personal freedom, and human development, and the way those matters impact a range of personal, financial and international affairs linking the United States, Africa, Asia and Europe. In describing these elements of the story, it was also important to present a view that the author regards as being more factually correct than the version usually served up to the world.Feral allowed some ghosts to be exorcised, while exploring these matters in the Africa, discussing events that have occurred in the African context, as well as things that could/should happen there. Throughout the world, non-state armed groups are "players." In some cases the state stands by and watches such groups fight it out amongst themselves, in some cases the armed group(s) confronts state sovereignty, and in others they are in collusion with the state. Nearly all of these situations also involve "illicit economies," or Systeme D. In some cases the armed struggle is fully entwined with the illicit economic activity, in others it the connection is not so firm. Conventional wisdom sees non-state armed groups and Systeme D as a threat to national and international security. Rarely is there an attempt to understand the actions and motivations of such non-state armed groups and Systeme D activity as a natural Insurrection Response to the threat posed by states to individual liberty. Non-state armed groups violate the state monopoly on the use of force, and Systeme D defies regulation and taxation. Rarely is there an attempt to understand non-state armed groups as a natural response to state misuse of force, and Systeme D as a natural response to state corruption and abuse. Another way of looking at this is that the author wanted to write the kind of book that Ayn Rand would have written if she had been successful in international energy and finance, as well as been a former mercenary.