"We were not very pleased by the request, but it's an open conference.The answer was quickly taken -- Yes."
"We want to promote contact between different cultures and different knowledge and people with different perspectives."
"I
think it's all good that countries are talking to each other. If there
are contacts between militaries of different countries, even if they're
adversaries, it's good to have channels of communication."
Professor Pierre Jolicoeur, Royal Military College Kingston, Ontario
People's Liberation Army (PLA) soldiers march next to the entrance to
the Forbidden City (L) after the opening session of the National
People's Congress (NPC) in Beijing on May 22, 2020. (Nicolas Asfouri/AFP
via Getty Images)
Bejing
has a habit of covertly seeking information, from scientific to
manufacturing to state secrets from developed countries of the west in
the interests of hastening its own advances in science, technology,
medicine, and manufacturing. By whatever means possible, either through
cybertechnology or installing Chinese expatriates living elsewhere
burdening them with a commitment to furthering the interest of their
nation of birth and alternately convincing non-Chinese to act on
Beijing's behalf.
China
is a huge country with the world's largest population. Investors and
business interests from abroad are keenly interested in the prospective
market that the huge population represents. Beyond cheap labour that
enabled China to scoop up the world's manufacturing and export crown,
outsiders are drawn to the country for the potential they hope to reap
in expanded business opportunities. But there too, Beijing has its
demands, that trade secrets be open to China as a condition of setting
up shop in China.
China
does not recognize copyright and is infamous for stealing designs and
producing counterfeits for a market eager to accept cheap look-alikes,
be it designer label clothing or luxury-brand watches. China today is
not the China of yesterday. It has bounded by great leaps over the backs
of slower, more consciously law-abiding international nations'
corporations to infiltrate a presence, move up an executive ladder and
abscond with trade secrets to become a competitor and ultimately
outcompete and distroy its source.
“Several
interactions [occurred between Chinese military jets and the RCAF’s
patrol aircraft flying in international airspace near Japan.]"
"In some instances, the RCAF aircrew felt sufficiently at risk that
they had to quickly modify their own flight path in order to increase
separation and avoid a potential collision with the intercepting
aircraft.”
Department of National Defence
Its
rocketry technology has now advanced to the stage where it is busy
building its own space laboratory, sending up its own satellites for
global intelligence gathering. Investing in the cultivating of rare
earth properties to become a major stand-alone possessor of assets that
control areas of the technology market. Its long tentacles of control
have reached into the West to interfere in politics at the most basic
levels to the most sophisticated.
Beijing
knows how to take actions that make other nations sit up and take
notice.You can't help noticing after all, when your citizens are
suddenly arrested and imprisoned and given stiff incarceration sentences
on the pretense of planning to harm China's security. As was done to
Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor when Huawei executive Meng
Wanzhou was taken into custody in Canada on an extradition request from
the U.S.
Exceedingly
strained relations between Canada and China became more tense as two
years passed and the two remained in Chinese prisons on sedition
charges. Other Canadians were given death sentences for drug running by
specially convened courts. Meng was Chinese royalty. When she struck a
deal with the U.S. to return to China, the two Michaels were released
after close to three years. Soon after came the Royal Military College
turn as host of the annual conference of the International Society of
Military Sciences; national defence universities from ten
democracies...Canada the Netherlands and Portugal among them.
Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor are back in Canada, after nearly three years of detention in China, September 25, 2021.Photo by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau/Twitter
Then
came a request from the Peoples Liberation Army military science
academy to allow their members to attend the conference. A conference
the Chinese armed forces had attended in 2018 in Warsaw and 2019 in
Vienna with some of its high-ranking military officers in attendance.
The Royal Military Academy conference theme was "resilience and cohesion in the face of new forms of disruption", with one session dealing with "China and Russia's information space attacks on democracy".
The
request moved from the RMC to the Department of National Defence and
the office of the Deputy Minister of Defence before it was sent back
down to the Royal Military College with no recommendations for or
against. At the meeting, discussions of open-source information
available to anyone, representing no matters of high sensitivity; the
conference held through the internet where invitees could Zoom in.
That
was late 2020, but before then, Chinese soldiers were present in Canada
to participate in winter military exercises under an accord signed by a
previous government in 2013. At that time top military leaders in
Canada felt the arrangement should be cancelled, urged by the United
States. Canada's Department of Foreign Affairs urged against cancelling
the arrangement, expressing concern it might sour relations with China
at a time that Canada was attempting to free the two Michaels from
Chinese prisons.
The
2020 conference was an open academic event, an unclassified level with
"broad international representation". Finland for one had organized a
panel discussion on military technology from a "conceptual"perspective
based on open-source material.
"[Leaving engagement with China to the discretion of various federal departments leads to] chaos."
"We’ll have chaos as long as individual departments and the [CAF] run their own [self-serving] China policies."
"As long as China is engaging in genocide/crimes against humanity, Ottawa should tell the PLA to stay home."
Canada’s former ambassador to China David Mulroney
"Core [staffers would continue diplomatic and consular work at the U.S.Embassy]."
The embassy remains open. This is not abandonment. This is not an evacuation."
"This is not a wholesale withdrawal."
"Let me be very clear about this: The
embassy remains open. And we plan to
continue our diplomatic work in Afghanistan."
"[The heightened pace of the Taliban’s rout, leading to
increased violence and instability across Afghanistan, is of] grave
concern."
"So given the situation on the ground, this is a prudent step [partial evacuation]."
U.S.State Department spokesman Ned Price
"Without a [U.S.] diplomatic footprint the Afghan government would suffer a major psychological blow."
"Nnarratives of U.S. abandonment would strengthen, and the Taliban would score yet another victory."
Michael Kugelman, South Asia scholar, Wilson Center
Starting
in April, the United States Embassy in Afghanistan began sending home
nonessential employees as security became more untenable in Kabul. Credit...Reuters
U.S. President Joe Biden stated with the confidence of his conviction that he had no regrets over his decision to pull the American military out of Afghanistan and leave the defence of the country to the very capable, Western-trained Afghan military and national police, against the puny efforts of the Taliban to return themselves to governing the country.
His exquisitely planned American withdrawal pointed out the technologically advanced military equipment being left for the Afghan military to make use of. Advanced helicopters that no Afghans have any idea how to service. Heavy-duty military vehicles left unprotected when the troops left in the dead of night without warning their Afghan counterparts.
All of those weapons and vehicles left unguarded no longer have any need to be guarded, they are in the possession of the 'insurgent' terrorists who plan to make very good use of them, courtesy of the American taxpayer. But there's more of the U.S. treasury yet to come, to bolster the fortunes and future of Afghanistan under its current government; promises from the Biden administration of hard cash and more military arms to follow.
Oops, unless the Taliban who are steadily gaining territory and capturing provincial capitals, proceed with dispatch, moving on to Kabul, to take complete charge as is their intention.
In which case, the U.S. State Department, loathe to fully vacate the premises of its costly, fortified, high-tech embassy, is confident that its appeal to the better nature of the Islamist terror group known as the Taliban to spare the embassy and allow its work to go on, which includes of course, funding transfers to Afghanistan, to continue.
Zalmay Khalilzad, chief U.S. envoy in discussions with the Taliban is dispatched to extract the assurance the U.S. embassy will escape attack. That assurance for future foreign aid ...
Of the 1,400 American nationals servicing the U.S. embassy not all are scheduled for evacuation, ostensibly. Yet thousands of troops are being dispatched back to Afghanistan, having just a week or so earlier been pulled out. Their mission: to aid in the airlifting of American personnel and local allies; clearing them out of Kabul before the capital of the country is completely overrun by the Taliban. The airport in Kabul is to see another 3,000 combat troops arrive for the purpose of critical evacuation.
The Canadian government and the Brits have also announced special forces dispatched to evacuate their nationals. America, it seems, doesn't know whether it's coming or going. It did go, but now it is returning, however temporarily, and under conditions that evidently were too harrowing to even contemplate. Now that Afghanistan's second- and third-largest cities under attack by Taliban are theirs, the capital is next in their line-of-sight.
Although the arriving military deployment is not considered a combat mission, infantry soldiers and Marines are set to deploy with machine guns, mortars and allied heavy weapons. And just as well they do. Two infantry battalions from the Marine corps and one combat unit from the Army already deployed in the region are to arrive in Kabul with an additional brigade between 3,500 and 4,000 American soldiers sent to Kuwait on standby.
In actual fact, with those numbers and that weaponry the U.S. could in all likelihood, confront and completely destroy the Taliban.
Afghanistan's President Ashraf Ghani will have to be content with the assurances of Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin "that the United States remains invested in the security and stability of Afghanistan in the face of violence by the Taliban". With that assurance it is a foregone conclusion he will sleep much, much better at night.
Afghan
security personnel assessing the damage in Kabul last week after a
Taliban attack on the home of the acting defense minister. Credit...Reuters
"We can see them in war zones, working with bombs, scouting, targeting, probably in 2023."
"These can really become a war fighter's best friend."
"[The military feels the robots have the potential to be used in a] contingency, disaster or deployed environment."
Jiren Parikh, CEO, Ghost Robotics
"A core design principle for our legged robots is reduced mechanical complexity when compared to other legged robots, and even traditional wheeled-tracked UGVs [unmanned ground vehicles]."
Ghost Robotics website
U.S. Air Force
The dog-sized machines produced by Ghost Robotics are equipped with onboard cameras and sensors. Their purpose is to monitor for the presence of intruders along the perimeter of an army base. Capable of trotting along for as long as 7-1/2 hours before requiring a recharge, the machines, not intended for the replacement of real military dogs, can be assembled in 15 minutes, and limbs that become damaged replaced even more expeditiously.
The machines come equipped with Wi-Fi and 4G LTE to enable live information sent to its operator. Over one hundred of these robot dogs have been shipped in 2020, with the intention to send off over 250 in 2021. The robots represent part of the ambitions by the military to achieve an Advanced Battle Management System using a network of innovations like artificial intelligence and robotics for the purpose of detecting and defending against threats.
These high-tech canines labelled Vision 60 are seen as a security enhancement, forming part of a plan to replace stationary surveillance cameras at Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida. For their part, their manufacturer, Ghost Robotics. contracted by the U.S. Department of Defence, looks toward a future scenario where the machines surpass merely patrolling duties. A step forward would relate to introducing robot dogs to conflict zones.
Put into use, the robots' presence will enable humans in the military to focus on other, less mundane tasks. Philadelphia-based Ghost Robotics, founded in 2015, designed the drone with four legs as an alternative, to "feel the world". Its mechanical legs allow it to retain its equilibrium in balance while prowling through water, tall grass and like terrain.
A Ghost Robotics Vision 60 prototype provides additional
security at a simulated austere base during the Advanced Battle
Management System exercise on Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, Sept. 1,
2020.
U.S. Air Force photo by Tech. Sgt. Cory D. Payne/DVIDS
Sub-zero temperatures are no problem, since the computerized 'dogs' are able to operate in such conditions; produced to move just as animals do, they are able to climb stairs, run and turn themselves into an upright position if knocked over or tumbled. Motors control the legs and based on alterations in ground pressure, adjust accordingly. That reliance on motors for navigation purposes makes Ghost Robotics more flexible than Boston Dynamics' devices with their use of sensors.
Appearing for a demonstration at Tyndall base last month, the robot canines operated with the use of a remote control. Programmed for a patrol path, they roam semi-autonomously, their handlers capable of controlling them through virtual-reality headsets if required. Defenders who would otherwise be on patrol can now focus on training, security and overall situational awareness on the base, with the presence of the military-grade canines deployed to patrolling.
The canine robots have bomb-disabling applications, but at the present time there are no immediate plans to weaponize them. Tyndall represents the first military base in the U.S. to integrate the robots on a full-time basis. The Australian military in 2019 experimented to assess how it could leverage the robots in the "future of land warfare" in a collaboration between Ghost Robotics and the Aussie army.
Tech. Sgt. John Rodiguez patrols with a Ghost Robotics
Vision 60 prototype during the Advanced Battle Management System
exercise on Nellis Air Force Base.
U.S. Air Force photo by Tech. Sgt. Cory D. Payne/DVIDS
"Melzer allegedly provided this potentially deadly information intending that it be conveyed to jihadi terrorists." "[The planned attack was a] murderous ambush [designed by] the enemy motivated by racism and hatred as he attempted to carry out this ultimate act of betrayal." Acting U.S.Attorney Audrey Strauss, Southern District of New York
"[09A] encourages acolytes to engage in forbidden and illegal acts, including extreme violence, sexual assault, assassinations and human sacrifice." "[09A has more recently gained prominence online, allowing its propaganda to be easily accessed by] young radicals drawn to extreme fringe ideas." Hope not Hate anti-hate advocacy organization, U.K.
Shutterstock/Bumble Dee
Ethan Melzer joined the US.army in 2018 and enthusiastically became involved with 09A when 2019 arrived. It is an organization promoting "violent, neo-Nazi, anti-Semitic, and Satanic beliefs", according to New York-based prosecutors. Its adherents express their admiration of Adolf Hitler and Islamic terrorists like Osama bin Lade, according to those same prosecutors, Britain faced pressure from activists to outlaw the UK-based 09A as a terrorist organization.
A truly 'exotic' group, it intertwines Satanism, paganism and Nazism in the creation of their own very special "bizarre pseudo-religious political cult", believed to have originated in the early1970s. 09A furthermore has gained online prominence enabling its propaganda to be readily accessed by "young radicals drawn to extreme fringe ideas". Private Melzer concocted a scheme which would have made his unit in the U.S. army vulnerable to a violent attack.
First he prepared for a deployment in April at which point 22-year-old Melzer from Louisville forwarded a series of electronic messages to share details relating to his unit's location, their movements and security. Those messages went out to members of the Order of Nine Angies (09A), organization through a series of electronic messages for the purpose of launching a "mass casualty" attack, causing the deaths of "as any of his fellow service members as possible", read an indictment presented in court on Monday.
That Melzer's own life was at risk in reflection of a murderous plot he hatched against his unit, seemed not to bother him the least bit. Accusations that he leaked sensitive information about his unit to a satanic neo-Nazi cult leading to a plot to launch an attack, he said: "I would've died successfully". The success seen not in the scope of plans for a mass attack with resulting mortalities, but in his imperturbable belief in himself and his dedication to death, hoping to be killed with his overseas unit.
Unfortunately for him the FBI and the army thwarted his carefully guarded plans, arresting him on June 10 and charging him with conspiring and attempting to murder U.S. nationals; conspiring and attempting to murder military service members; providing and attempting to provide material support to terrorists, and finally, conspiring to murder and maim in a foreign country, according to the news
release.
The United Nations Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate published a report citing research recognizing a 320 percent rise in terrorist attacks with links to movements and far-right ideologies over the last five years. A"growing and increasingly transnational threat posed by extreme right-wing terrorism" the report noted, mentioning attacks becoming more intensive both in frequency and lethality.
Members and associates of 09A are known to take part in acts of violence, including murder.
Notified of his unit's assignment, moving to a different foreign base, Melzer used an encrypted application to message members of 09A and the RapeWaffen Division, with messages containing conversations relating to his umit's upcoming deployment.
John Bazemore / AP
As Ethan Melzer's U.S. Army unit prepared for a deployment in April,
the young private recognized that he could be killed while overseas and
expressed an apparent willingness to die.
"Talking with jihadists and fighting terrorism is not contradictory. I have a duty and a mission today to create all possible
spaces and to do everything possible so that, by one means or another,
some kind of appeasement can be achieved. It's time certain avenues were
explored." "We're going to try and do what the people want, like with the jirga in
Afghanistan, to put it into practice, and we're trying to do it without
being naive, we're not gullible." "We'll continue with our work, with our
duty, but we want to make sure that we will no longer be stubborn about
things, stuck, or obtuse." Malian President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita
"People think that Shariah is more rapid, less corrupt and delivered in a manner that people can understand." "It is also less costly." Drissa Traore, head, Bamako office, International Federation for Human Rights
"The jihadists have gained the hearts and minds of many people." "But what people are asking for are basic social services; they are not asking for jihadist services. They want things like roads and education." "The battle will never be won through military means." Riccardo Maia, MINUSMA head office, Timbuktu
"In all countries in the region you can see economic and social progress in capitals and other cities, but not when you leave the cities." "If you go to more remote areas, nothing has changed for 20 or 30 y6ears. You don't have leaders in the region who seem genuinely to appreciate the stakes." Gilles Yabi, director, Wathi, West African think tank
The Western effort -- mostly through French military intervention followed by diplomacy in a former French colony -- to curtail Islamist insurgencies spreading with alarming rapidity through the Sahel region of Africa, sees the minds of ordinary Malians appear to have accepted the message delivered by jihadists even though they recall the Islamist brutality they reeled under eight years earlier when a jihadist seizure of Timbuktu destroyed heritage sites and irreplaceable ancient documents and slaughtered the unconvinced.
Back then it was forbidden to smoke, for a woman or girl to be seen in the presence of men or boys at risk of flogging. Even so, the jihadists earned a reputation of stern anti-corruption and in their presence there was no crime being committed, given that Shariah actively engaged with the chopping off of hands as a deterrent against theft. "Now there are bandits everywhere", one disgruntled man stated, using a chopping down motion to indicate the effectiveness of Shariah.
The 2013 French-led military force drove the al-Qaeda affiliates from Timbuktu and other Malian towns, but seven years on, jihadists are still about in northern Mali, expanding their reach into other regions the while, despite the presence of 5,000 French troops and a 15,000-strong separate UN peacekeeping force named MINUSMA. The Sahel, a vast region on the southern fringe of the Sahara, now hosts the jihadist insurgency in other states.
Militants have convinced many northern Malians that they should be trusted to represent the people's interests far more than the government in Bamako, the capital of the country. Successive governments in Bamako have neglected the communities in northern Mali for decades. Government is equated with police, soldiers, judges and officials accused with being invested in what they can loot from northern Mali, not in benefiting locals.
Bribery and extortion, and/or involvement in Saharan drugs, weapons and people-smuggling networks cross the region and to the people living there, this is what they think of how the government manifests its interest in their welfare. Even while the jihadists have their hand in drug running as well as smuggling, they have been seen to use their profits to build Koranic schools and Shariah courts to aid in entrenching their extreme ideology, presenting themselves as the legitimate alternatives to the ineffective, disinterested state.
MINUSMA has been heartened by the arrival of 250 British soldiers to aid them in fending off repeated attacks on bases, and mounting dangerous operations to protect civilians. The group has performed whatever it could manage to replace the vacuum left by the state; repairing the road from the Niger to Timbuktu, and in Gao, a former jihadist town, helping to fund women's agricultural collectives, and build police stations, important moves to help win support among the populace.
Mali's president, Ibrahim Boubacar Keita is recognized among other Sahelian leaders as making no serious effort to address the frustration that exists in ignored and marginalized parts of their states, according to analysts. Possibly, in reaching an accord with the Islamist fanatics, the government can dispense with the nuisance pretense of fairly administering a portion of the country that is of little interest to them, voluntarily offering a firm foothold to jihad which will inevitably begin to make further inroads.
The futile West hoping to save Muslims from the greater and graver human rights abuses of Shariah-led Islam. And while France invests itself in trying to save its former colonies from collapse into the hands of Islamist terrorism, it nurtures at home in its banlieues transposed Islamists hostile to French values and ideology and determined to transform France into a bastion of Islamist Shariah using whatever means and patience required to achieve their goal.
"All
this is very unfortunate because the lessons of what transpired 75
years ago -- as we're on the verge of marking the liberation of
Auschwitz -- the lesson is that those people were victims of the most
horrific crime of the 20th century because there were lots of
bystanders." "There are a number of people [responding to the poll] who say that these situations are not our business." Jack Jedwab, president, Association for Canadian Studies
The sun lights the buildings behind the
entrance of the former Nazi death camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau in
Oswiecim, Poland, Friday, Dec. 6, 2019.A new poll suggests there are
some in this country who believe Canada shouldn't intervene militarily
if there was a genocide taking place somewhere in the world. Markus Schreiber / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
An online survey conducted in November of 2019, the very day that Canada
and much of the rest of the world pauses to reflect during what we call
Remembrance Day, the sacrifices made by our armed forces service member
during world wars, resulted in some surprising responses. All the more
surprising when November 11 is a time of reflection, of remembering, of
sadness and resolution. Yet, from the results of the poll it appears
that a goodly segment of the population considers the conflict that drew
much of the free world into an Allied response to Nazi Germany's Axis
coalition a relic of the past, not of great interest to them.
It's true, of course, that it is the losses of Canada's military service
members that is mourned on Remembrance Day, along with the celebration
of their hard-won victories over the evil that loomed its ugly threat
over freedom. But the Second World War is also inextricably linked with
the deaths of 70 million combatants and civilians during the course of
its six years of devastating bloodshed and destabilization worldwide.
Above all, it was the shocking inhumanity of the Third Reich's well
groomed architecture of mass extermination of Jews, the world's first
recognized genocide that rocked the world's conscience.
A world that, despite furtive news reports of mass atrocities preferred
to fix its attention elsewhere. And this is precisely what is happening
once again. Not our business. Happening somewhere else. No connection
with those who are being targeted for annihilation by malign forces of
destruction and death. The very disinterest, people preferring to remain
oblivious of the horrors being perpetrated on others, looking the other
way and getting on with their uninterrupted lives is itself a dreadful
indictment of human nature.
The Association for Canadian Studies commissioned the poll to be
undertaken and it found that 29 percent of respondents failed to agree
with the concept that Canada had a humanitarian obligation to send
Canadian troops to a foreign geography where a genocide was under way.
Another 11 percent preferred to withhold a response to the question of
Canada's involvement in an event taking place elsewhere, despite a
deliberate effort underway to commit genocide. Former General Romeo
Dallaire, must be shuddering in revulsion. His experience, leading a UN
mission in Rwanda was first-hand and inhumanely grotesque.
Leger Marketing conducted its survey of 2,295 Canadians, its resulted
released at the very time that global leaders will be present at an
event to mark the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Nazi death Camp
Auschwitz, whose dreaded name is synonymous with the Holocaust during
which six million European Jews, men, women, children, the elderly and
the most vulnerable in a Europe steeped in antisemitism were
exterminated in death camps, worked to death in slave-labour camps, and
summarily executed in villages throughout eastern Europe where they had
lived for centuries.
The audience stands for the Israeli national anthem at the end of the
memorial ceremony at Yad Vashem Holocaust museum as Israel marks the
country's annual Holocaust Remembrance Day, April 12, 2018. (Hadas
Parush/Flash90)
On January 27, the date when in 1945 Soviet troops liberated the
Auschwitz camp, world leaders will congregate to re-emphasize 'never
again'. According to the Auschwitz Memorial Site and Museum 120
survivors of the camp are expected to attend. It is not a result of
ignorance of events of undisputed horror that keeps such a high number
of Canadians from supporting military intervention in future genocides,
but rather a kind of emotional isolation where a segment of the
population prefers to remain uninvolved. As though mass death occurring
anywhere is divorced from moral responsibility.
The irony being that it was Canadian auspices that articulated and
brought to the United Nations the concept of 'responsibility to protect'
populations from violence enacted by their own governments. Some 43
percent of the survey's participants were able to correctly answer the
total figure of Jews whose lives were destroyed during the Holocaust;
itself rather disappointing, given the universality of the issue and its
place in the public spotlight of colossal atrocities the world has seen
perpetrated.
On the other hand, perspective is gained when it becomes clear that the
results of the survey suggest that participants who disagreed with
military intervention to stop a mass slaughter were likelier to embrace
anti-immigrant sentiment, and to display a higher distrust of Jews,
which translated to language that is more to the point; are
fundamentally antisemitic.
Interestingly enough, the youngest respondents taking part in the
survey, aged from 18 to 24, were least likely to disagree with sending
troops anywhere should a situation similar to the Holocaust take place
once again, while they most often, however, preferred to withhold an
answer to the question, as well. People aged between 45 to 54 turned out
to represent the most likely age-demographic to disagree with sending
troops to such troubling locations.
This photograph taken on December 15, 2019, in Oswiecim, Poland, shows
an aerial view of the railway entrance to former German Nazi death camp
Auschwitz II – Birkenau with its SS guards tower. (Pablo GONZALEZ / AFP)
Antonio Rivero, a retired general now living in the United States, was
shocked in 2008 when he suddenly began encountering Cuban officials in
military meetings and training. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins
"[The Venezuelan government subjects prisoners viewed by them as political opponents to] electric shocks, suffocation with plastic bags, water boarding, beatings, sexual violence, water and food deprivation, stress positions and exposure to extreme temperatures." Michelle Bachelet, UN Human Rights commissioner
"The abuse of military officers has grown because they represent a real threat for Maduro's government." "This has been Maduro's decision. He's the one giving orders there." General Manuel Cristopher Figuera, former head, Venezuelan intelligence
"If we stay silent, they win." "This is what they want, to make everyone live in fear." Carmen Acosta, Maracay, Venezuela
A proliferation of flag officers means even top
officials, like Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino (speaking) and Admiral
Remigio Ceballos (right), have limited ability to command.
REUTERS/Handout/Venezuelan presidency
Venezuela's military has been loyal to its president, Nicolas Madura; which is to say up to the present point. Just as over four million Venezuelans have become refugees, fleeing the country of their birth where they cannot find employment, where food and medicine has become scarce, where graft, corruption and violence grow exponentially as the country continues to fall into greater depths of dysfunction, the military too is discovering that the shortages of life-sustaining fundamental elements of civilized existence are now affecting them as well.
The country, rich in the enviable natural resources that once made it the generous supplier of petroleum products to its neighbours has been incapable of managing its own resources, and even oil to run industry, much less vehicles is in short supply, its economy crimped and crumbling. Most top military leaders remain loyal to their chief, the president; they are not suffering the kind of deprivation that lower-grade officers much less general conscripts do. Yet among them are those whose allegiance is now suspect.
Retired Naval Captain Rafael Acosta was among them, arrested by the country's intelligence forces and by the time he appeared at a military tribunal he was in a wheelchair, the product of torture, begging his lawyer to "help me". Three weeks later he was being buried, his body wrapped in brown plastic. Leaked autopsy report detailed blunt force trauma and electrocution. A signal notice to others in the military of the fate that awaits them should they too be suspected of turning against their president.
Factions inside the military and security forces have staged a number of attempts at overthrowing or assassinating Nicolas Maduro, their reward so far swift with state media naming the threats "a continuous coup", leading the Socialist Party justifying surveillance, arbitrary detention and torture of 'enemies' within the country's 160,000-strong armed forces -- to prevent plots claimed to number a dozen and more, all intercepted, those accused summarily dealt with.
The late Hugo Chávez (front row, in red cap) a
former lieutenant colonel and coup leader who was elected president in
1998, began remaking the military almost as soon as he took office.
REUTERS/Handout/Venezuelan presidency
Maduro's government considers the military a threat to its existence, no longer as trusted as they once were before the country was felled by inept governance, tyranny, corruption, threats and economic collapse. According to the Coalition for Human Rights and Democracy based in Caracas, 217 active and retired military officers are held in Venezuelan jails, including a dozen generals. At least 250 cases of torture committed by the security forces against military officers, their relatives and opposition activists have been documented by the coalition since 2017, with many victims years in jail without trial.
"[The weaker the government is] the stronger is the torture against the people they consider dangerous", explained coalition lawyer, Ana Leonor Acosta. Juan Carlos Caguaripano, a National Guard captain, led a failed assault on a military base in 2017 and was rewarded by being beaten, suffering testicle injuries. Oscar Perez, police officer who led an anti-government guerrilla unit, shot 14 times at close range by security officers January 2018, after offering repeatedly to surrender while involved in a shootout he broadcast live on social media.
Venezuelan Air Force Major Andrik Carrizales, shot in the head by security officers after joining a failed effort to take over a weapons factory in Maracay onApril 30. Maracay is home to the nation's main air bases and military academies.
This represents a general opinion site for its author. It also offers a space for the author to record her experiences and perceptions,both personal and public. This is rendered obvious by the content contained in the blog, but the space is here inviting me to write. And so I do.
