How is it that the political climate in the USA has shifted so radically to the political left?
There is growing evidence that an asymmetrical war is being waged in the USA in order to change our country, our history and our way of life. This is the war of the twenty first century.
by Maibort Petit
Freedom Voice Reporting
No one can deny that there is a political movement in this country to bring about Democratic Socialism. A few years ago, the idea of a Socialist America was laughable. "Americans have traditionally had an aversion to socialism as a label. A 2019 Gallup poll found that over half of Americans believe some form of socialism would be a bad thing for the country and a 2018 YouGov poll showed that over half of Democrats and two thirds of Republicans would be uncomfortable with a socialist candidate.", from Data for progress.
The Covid epidemic taught us obedience to Government. We learned that our present generation is willing to accept executive decrees with no legislature involved in enacting new laws. That although the term socialism is still not accepted by the majority in this country, it is becoming more popular. What is driving this trend towards acceptance of authoritarian rule? This article is not to debate, if the decrees were necessary or not, it is a discussion of acceptance of dictator style leadership. How is it that the political climate in the USA has shifted so radically to the political left? There are many hypothesis to answer that. We will discuss one method that has been very successful in Latin America and also recently in America.
There is growing evidence that an asymmetrical war is being waged in the USA in order to change our country, our history and our way of life. This is the war of the twenty first century. They can be small dissidents made up of political extremist groups with no affiliation to a county, which means they are not recognizable, no uniform. They can engage in violent activities, leaving little chance of reprisals. How do you counterattack a group that is mixed into your civilian population. "In addition, those killed in action can be portrayed as martyrs and used to recruit more converts to the cause.", quoted from David E Long, writing for a newsletter from the USA naval Post Graduate School.
An example to clarify, would be in the Middle East.
Islamic Jihadism may send civilians with bombs wrapped around their torso into Israeli civilian areas to cause as much civilian death as possible. Those who die are promised rewards in the afterlife, they are called martyrs and the leaders of their cause will support their families if they died as a martyr.
When Israel retaliates, they find an enemy hard to fight. The numbers of soldiers are in Israel's favor. The military might is in Israel's favor, but this is not conventional war. The enemy is normally hidden in school buildings, in hospital buildings and among the civilian population. The enemy wants you to kill their civilian population. That will get the population angry at the enemy, and make them more politically popular. the world screams that the fighting is disproportionate. There would be screams that War Crimes were committed. This is an example of an asymmetrical war.
The 9/11 terrorist attacks and the war in Afghanistan are among the best-known recent examples of asymmetric warfare: conflicts between nations or groups that have disparate military capabilities and strategies. For twenty years we fought in Afghanistan against an enemy that doesn't mind if civilians die. It makes them stronger. If the USA does an attack and there are innocents that die, which can not be avoided in war, the enemy gets stronger politically. We are conventionally stronger, but we can not win such a war.
During the BLM and Antifa riots last year. They were able to burn down businesses and destroy cities. They could attack police with impunity. An example is a blog in the Marshall Report that blames the police for the riots. "Disproportionate use of force can turn a peaceful protest violent, research shows. Though these protests began with peaceful demonstrations outside the city’s 3rd Precinct, interactions between police and protesters had escalated. Police unleashed pepper spray, projectiles and tear gas. Protesters threw water bottles, built barricades and destroyed nearby property."
Not only are the Police afraid to respond to these riots, BLM and Antifa has become more acceptable and more popular. They burn down a city and their popularity increases. The foundation widely seen as a steward of the Black Lives Matter movement says it took in just over $90 million last year, according to a financial snapshot shared exclusively with the Associated Press.
New York City is one of many school systems in the United States set to roll out Black Lives Matter (BLM)-themed lesson plans this fall. According to the NYC Department of Education, teachers will delve into “systemic racism,” police brutality, and white privilege in their classrooms. School systems across the country are adopting BLM curriculum at at alarming rate, indoctrinating our children to achieve Marxist objectives.
The Bolivarian revolution is the ideological motivation of a socialist revolution determined to transform Venezuela and challenge the global liberal order has brought about the use of all available means of the oil-state.
Venezuelan President Chavez knew early on that he could not win a war with conventional weapons nor with technology against the United States. So he started an asymmetrical war with the Great American nation. The astute warrior will tailor his campaign to the adversary’s political-economic vulnerabilities and to his psychological perceptions. Real military leaders think that this is not a fair. Which is unfortunate, as the United States has not been very successful at winning this new twenty first century war.
Although there are compelling reasons for the Colombian people to raise their voice of protest due to the serious socioeconomic crisis they face and that has been increased by the Covid pandemic, such legitimate discontent would have been used as a breeding ground by the national and foreign adversaries of the New Granada administration in its objective of weakening democracy and the rule of law in the region.
Such warnings are expressed by Joseph Humire, executive director of the Center for a Secure Free Society (SFS), who in his latest report called "Asymmetric Assault on Colombia", who warns that the middle and poor Colombian class is used as a tool of asymmetric warfare waged from Venezuela.
The expert in global security issues, specialized in the analysis of transregional threats in the Western Hemisphere, warns that it is a threat that Colombia cannot solve alone, but requires a more comprehensive effort and the participation of democratic forces in the entire region to understand that just as it went to Colombia, so does the rest of Latin America.
Humire refers that the protests began on April 28 before the announcement of the implementation of a tax reform by President Duque, but despite the fact that the project was withdrawn four days later, the protests intensified and resulted in violent clashes between the Colombian police forces, civil protesters and others.
As of May 13, there were 34 deaths, including at least one police officer, and more than 1,500 injured, more than half of whom were police officers injured by blunt objects (blade, explosive, firearm, etc.), according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. from Colombia. As well as more than 600 arrests for arson, vandalism, robbery and destruction of banks, shops, vehicles, ATMs, cultural monuments and public infrastructure in Colombia.
The report points out that "human rights groups and organizations have denounced repeated abuses and excessive use of force by the Colombian police against protesters, including the use of tanks with multiple launchers of non-lethal projectiles, specifically in the city of Cali." . But it also highlights the statements of the Colombian Defense Minister, Diego Molano, who reported on May 3 that at least six criminal groups were behind the acts of vandalism and violence in, subverting the protests that would otherwise be peaceful. The military head mentioned, among others, the dissidents of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC-D), the National Liberation Army (ELN) and the Blue and Black Shields of the M-19 youth movement. Then, on May 8,
Humire warns that already in November 2019, September 2020, during similar protests, groups of young militants were identified who subverted these protests and were dedicated to escalating violence and vandalism.
The report recalls that, at that time, Diosdado Cabello warned that the Colombian protests were like a "Bolivarian breeze" that flows from Venezuela and that again, on April 7, 2021, before the current protests, Cabello to veiled threats against Colombia in his television program “Con el Mazo Dando”, when he stated that "we are going to wage war in their territory" in response to the possible perceived aggression against the Venezuelan regime.
The Venezuelan strategy
Categorically, Joseph Humire states in his report: "This asymmetric war has already reached Colombia."
He maintains that the government of Iván Duque has had to deal with the provocation launched from Venezuela by the Nicolás Maduro regime since August 2018 when he began his term, but warns Colombia is not a recent target for the Bolivarian revolution.
He explains that addressing Colombia is a main objective of Venezuela's national security strategy since the dawn of that Bolivarian revolution and, in this sense, he undertook a strategy that depends on the application of an asymmetric war against those he considers his foreign adversaries.
So, the report goes back to November 2004, when the late President Hugo Chávez, through a document called "The New Strategic Map", gave orders to the National Armed Forces (FAN) to develop a new doctrine defense for contemporary conflict. A short time later, in April 2005, during the First Fourth Generation Military Forum and Asymmetric Warfare in Caracas, Chávez said: “I call on everyone to begin an (...) effort to understand the ideas, concepts and doctrine of asymmetric warfare ”.
Joseph Humire requires that, although in 2007 the attempt to legitimize the transformation of the armed forces through a constitutional referendum failed, in September 2008, it did so through an executive decree that converted the army from a conventional structure on dominance capabilities. from defense to an asymmetric structure focused on the control of the territory. "The new Bolivarian Armed Forces (FANB) of Venezuela would be made up of five regional combat commands, called 'REDI', integrated with civilian militias and other non-state armed actors distributed in twenty-four integrated defense zones, known as 'ZODI'".
Under this new approach of the Venezuelan army that understands the protection of state sovereignty as territorial expansion, between 2013 and 2015, Nicolás Maduro dedicated himself to expanding this asymmetric integrated defense structure to eight regions (REDI), 28 zones (ZODI) and 99 areas (ADI), becoming the new “mapper-in-chief” of Venezuela.
The report states that the military are integrated with Transnational Criminal Organizations (TCO) in Colombia and elsewhere.
According to Joseph Humire, an expert in global security, specialized in the analysis of transregional threats in the Western Hemisphere and executive director of the Center for a Secure Free Society (SFS), the events that occurred in Colombia where a wave of violence was unleashed. Starting with the population's protest at the announcement of the implementation of a tax reform by the government of Iván Duque, is not a casual or isolated event, but rather responds to an asymmetric war strategy led by Nicolás Maduro to annex the country neogranadino to the Bolivarian revolution. In fulfilling this objective, disinformation is a fundamental tactic that, promoted by the Venezuelan regime, is aimed at promoting chaos in Colombian society and institutions.
These considerations are part of the report "Asymmetric assault on Colombia", developed by Humire for the SFS and which we have been talking about in previous deliveries.
Humire reiterates that the Colombian events are not an isolated incident and estimates that, even in the protests in the United States in the summer of 2020, it was possible to verify these tactics of disinformation and iconography very similar to those that occurred during 2019 in South America.
In this sense, it maintains the existence of a verifiable regional coordination when reviewing the events and protests that took place in Ecuador, Chile and Colombia during 2019. It explains that this “coordination is in the cyber domain, where sophisticated click farms and network centers in Distant territories spam social media with bots and trolling accounts that exacerbate protests and spread false narratives. "
Bombing from Venezuela
Humire's report refers to a study of 7.6 million digital interactions related to the 2019 Colombian and Chilean protests, in which digital forensic analysts found that less than 1 percent of users generated nearly 30 percent of the time. percent of the content with most of the geolocated accounts in Venezuela.
Likewise, another study of 4.8 million tweets issued between October 20 and November 5, 2019 revealed that a large group of hashtags in favor of the protests in Chile originated in Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba.
The Colombian authorities are aware of this and, in fact, on December 11, 2019, the report quotes Vice President Marta Lucía Ramírez, who, at an anniversary event of the Colombian Customs Authorities, suggested that at least part of the The social media traffic that fueled the protests in Colombia was projected from Venezuela and Russia.
Similarly, the report specifies that Colombia has a population of 51 million people, of which three quarters are connected to the Internet, mainly through smartphones. He adds that of the ten hours a day that these people average on the Internet, four of them dedicate them to social networks, a figure that expresses the urgency that the Colombian authorities must put in the digital manipulation and disinformation in the ongoing protests. The report ruled that this is the most important lesson of what happened in Colombia and Chile in October and November 2019.
Trolls in action
Joseph Humire also refers to some studies that suggest that a similar disinformation effort is already underway in Colombia itself. He explains that a Miami-based data mining company determined that more than 7,000 trolling accounts on social media are actively participating in the current protests in Colombia. The study revealed that troll accounts are intended to block and spam any comments or posts that criticize the protests, while amplifying specific narratives and hashtags such as #NosEstanMatando, which only show one aspect of reality on the ground in Colombia.
The report expresses concern that digital forensics reveals that these more than 7,000 trolling accounts are run by click farms in Bangladesh, Mexico and Venezuela, which are likely run by servers in Russia and China. The data mining company is reportedly releasing samples of Asian-based trolls accounts that have made viral images and videos of the protests in Colombia, taking them out of context. Note that even though SFS has not independently verified the Miami firm's analysis, it does match previous disinformation efforts seen in Chile, Ecuador, and elsewhere, which have been verified.
Legitimacy crisis
In its last part, Joseph Humire's report makes mention of the fact that Latin America is possibly the region most economically affected by the global Covid-19 pandemic.
In Colombia particularly, more than ten years of economic growth have evaporated in one year, with a 6.4 percent contraction in its GDP last year and unemployment skyrocketing to nearly 16 percent. "It was only a matter of time before social unrest spilled into the streets," the report warns.
Iván Duque's plan to free Colombia's human capital through its "orange economy" was hampered by the pandemic.
It warns that, to address the problems of the economy, President Duque focused on the immediate challenge and ignored the more far-reaching geopolitical dimensions surrounding the situation. That is why the elaborate fiscal plan called "Sustainable Solidarity Law" "was insufficient to suffocate a distressed population that, for more than a decade, despite economic growth, has been hit by growing insecurity, a plan of failed peace, toxic policies, and external forces that capitalize and catalyze the situation ”.
Finally, he warns that the crisis in Colombia is not only socio-economic, but also of political legitimacy of state institutions, while highlighting the legitimacy of the discontent of the population translated into protests, but warns about how this is used to attack the institutionality and democracy. “The Colombian people, especially the peaceful protesters, are not the culprits of the crisis, they are the victims. Like some of the most vulnerable in society, the poor and the middle class in Colombia are considered as tools of asymmetric warfare by national and foreign adversaries of the Colombian State. This is a threat that the military and police forces cannot solve on their own.