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US Aid to Venezuela Thru Colombia Now is the Crux of the Crisis

Opinion: The United States is pushing the envelope against the authoritarian regime of Nicholas Maduro in Venezuela. No one is arguing, except Maduro that the tons of medical supplies are urgently needed. The people of Venezuela are in dire need of food, medicine and an end to the hyper-inflation devastating the once prosperous nation’s economy. Over three million Venezuelans have fled the country and are moving across the border into Colombia.

But there is another side to the U.S. aid being shipped into Colombia, which is why many of the international aid agencies are wanting nothing to do with this. By sending the aid to neighboring Colombia, the United States has upped the ante to encourage military members, especially the junior to mid-level officers to cease their allegiance to Maduro. The aim is to foment regime change by backing the claims of the “interim President” Juan Guaidó who has called for a “humanitarian avalanche” with “caravans” to go to the Colombian borders to get the aid next Saturday.

The hope is that once the supplies, which the U.S. is shipping to the city of Cúcuta, on the border with Venezuela, reaches the bridge between the two countries, military leaders will defy Maduro and allow the aid to cross.

However, the U.N. and other aid agencies are balking at getting involved. “Humanitarian action needs to be independent of political, military or any other objectives,” Stéphane Dujarric, the U.N. spokesman, said last week. “The needs of the people should lead in terms of when and how humanitarian assistance is used.”

Right now, the border bridge on the Venezuelan side is blocked by a tanker truck and shipping containers. And Maduro is painting himself into a corner. He claims that there is no humanitarian crisis, that the United States is manufacturing a false claim to incite a military invasion.

Calling this false flies in the face of the facts. When three million of your countrymen flee and food stores are empty, hospitals are in dire need of medicine and your only supporters to your claim as President are those known “freedom loving democracies” as Russia, China, Cuba et al, it rings increasingly hollow.

Maduro’s Vice President, Delcy Rodriguez got some advice that rivals that of Baghdad Bob when he alleged that the US aid was contaminated with carcinogens “to poison our population” and described it as a “biological weapon”, as reported by the Spanish newspaper El Mundo.

The ante is further being raised by the presence of Senator Marco Rubio from Florida who was in Colombia on Sunday. “There comes a time in many people’s lives when they have to make a decision that will define them forever,” Rubio said. “That time has come for the Venezuelan soldiers.” Rubio called Maduro’s rule “a criminal regime willing to starve and kill its own people.”

Also, Richard Branson, the British billionaire, and philanthropist is organizing a benefit concert in Cúcuta this coming Friday. Branson said he hopes to raise $100 million for humanitarian aid.

Guaidó is calling for thousands of supporters dressed in white to march on the border to confront the border guards and allow the aid to pass. Colombians in Cúcuta are uneasy about the entire scene being played out in their midst. It is a city of 750,000 that has been inundated by Venezuelan refugees.

Other humanitarian aid is slated to be coming from the Brazilian border and from the neighboring island of Curaçao.

Meanwhile, the U.S. is continuing to push the Venezuelan military to decide, Elliott Abrams, the U.S. special envoy for Venezuela, said earlier this month at a press brief, “Members of the army are Venezuelan citizens. … Our hope is that they will be able to persuade Maduro, or they will simply disobey orders to continue the starvation of the people of Venezuela.”

Kevin Whittaker, the US Ambassador to Colombia, said last week that Maduro “needs to leave so his people’s needs can be attended to, so the Venezuelan economy can be put back on its feet, and so that Venezuela can once again be a normal country.”

Maduro is digging in his heels and last week denied entry to five members of the European Parliament who flew to Caracs to meet with Guaidó at his invitation. They were barred from entry into Venezuela’s Simon Bolivar International Airport and subsequently deported.

This next week will be very interesting to watch. All eyes now are on the Venezuelan military. On one hand, they’ve been very loyal to the Maduro’s regime. But the rank and file members have family members who are starving. They know that someday there will be a reckoning.

Photo: Wikipedia

Watch “Big Mountain Heroes”, Healing Veterans Holistically

We all know or are ourselves in various stages of a love/hate relationship with the Veterans Administration. And most of us know that the vast majority of the VA is staffed with dedicated doctors that truly want to help our veterans. But that like any huge bureaucracy, that help is often caught up in an endless sea of red tape.

And in that, the VA is often just using drugs as therapy rather than a holistic approach to cure rather than just treat the symptoms is…at times, infuriating. We’ve all been there. But there are other ways to treat our veterans.

One alternative method was tried by Hurricane Media’s Brandon Webb, a former Navy SEAL, and best-selling author. His idea was to bring several Special Operations veterans from various services and units together, bond them together in a challenging yet beautiful environment at Chamonix in the French Alps and use extreme sports and the outdoors as a way of healing the entire person and not just by using drug therapy.

Webb, Nick Betts, and Jason Kenitzer from Hurricane Media brought together these veterans and filmed their experiences in the Alps and put together the film, “Big Mountain Heroes”, which is now available on YouTube.

It is beautifully filmed with gorgeous shots of the French Alps, but arguably the best shots are the closeups of the vets themselves. Getting lost in the extreme adventure of conquering the difficulties of the mountains, the years of stress and physical pain are melted away, if only for a few days.

“Big Mountain Heroes” was recently awarded the award for Best Action Sports Short at the Mammoth Film Festival recently. We encourage all of our readers to check it out.

Will this kind of therapy work for everyone? Of course not. But it does show there are alternatives out there. As someone who is never truly happy unless he’s doing something worthwhile outdoors, I wish someone had been around to offer myself a chance at something like this when my service was done.

Photo: Big Mountain Heroes, Hurricane Media

“Never Quit Attitude” Even If Wrestling A Mountain Lion

Much of our writing here has to do with the task of passing Selection and becoming a member of our Special Operations community, the best brotherhood there is. And in our writings we will frequently use the much-used but very true catchphrases that we all use in Special Operations like “Never Quit”, and my personal favorite, “Embrace the Suck.”

And after recent events here at home during the past few weeks, it put several things into perspective. Recent construction in a couple of parts of town has upset the balance of wildlife in our area. I live in a bucolic little town in Central Massachusetts, that borders on the urban setting of Worcester, the 2nd largest city in the state.

In less than two minutes you can go from deep woods in the country to a very urban setting. We have an abundance of wildlife that frequently comes into contact with people due to the human population encroaching on their land. One of the most unwelcome of guests has been coyotes. And they’re getting increasingly bolder as time moves on and they are frequently seen now in neighborhoods, rather than on the edge of them. They are losing their fear of man and it is strictly a matter of time when not if, an encounter with man takes place.

I have had brushes with them… at a distance several times, but lately those encounters have been getting closer. A few weeks ago, after a snowstorm, my dog decided that at 2:45 a.m. was when she needed to go “drop a deuce”. I walked her in the woods, as being a girl she won’t go in the yard. With the snow on the ground and a bright moonlit night, visibility was excellent. As we stood next to a trail about 100 yards from our house, I saw two figures at the top of a hill about 50 yards away. The wind was blowing in their direction and they immediately picked up on us. I could see right away what they were.

The bigger one stared and then took a step down the hill as if to come and check us out. At the time the only thing I had was a Maglite which has the power of a searchlight. Thanks to the Crate Club. I pulled the lens to make it a narrower beam and shined it right in his eyes. He stopped short and then the two of them beat it back off the trail and into the woods.

Sunday is our normal ruck day for our PT Prep pieces and I was out just before five to get a ruck in before our normal Sunday stuff takes over. There is still quite a bit of snow left on the trail, and after a melt on Thursday and Friday, the snow refroze into a hard shell. Walking on the trail, I was making more noise than a platoon of Hondo recruits made in the dark so many moons ago.

The bright moon was setting on the horizon but still cast a really good glow, especially off the frozen snow on the ground. And once again on the trail near my home were a pack of coyotes, far enough away to not be an immediate danger but close enough to stop you short in your tracks. I could see three, which means there were a few more.

Rather than turn and run, which may incite them, I froze and waited to see what they intended to do. I still had my trusty mini-Maglite, but in the right pocket was a .380, hardly a hand cannon, but I could give Wiley Coyote seven reasons to rethink things. After a few seconds, they scampered off and it seemed like a good idea to change direction and take the ruck march another way today. Which got me to think about Travis Kauffman.

Who is Travis Kauffman you say? He’s the 31-year old guy who was jogging in the mountains in Ft. Collins, Colorado when he was attacked by a mountain lion and choked it to death trying to defend himself. And on the way home, I thought about my not-so-close encounter, which in no way compares to what he went thru and thought, “how many people would have panicked and ended up as a statistic rather than fight their way thru what he went thru.”

Kauffman was out for a run on a scenic trail in the Fort Collins mountain area on Feb. 4 when his encounter happened. He said he heard a rustling sound in the woods nearby and turned to see the mountain lion only 10 feet away.

After the big cat launched itself at Kauffman, he said he and the lion fell down the side of a slope. “From there, it was just a wrestling match,” he said to NBC News in an interview.

Knowing he had to pin its legs or he’d be shredded, Kauffman picked up sticks trying to jab the cat in the throat, but they snapped. He then tried bashing its head with a rock to no avail. Finally, “I stepped on its neck and then was eventually able to suffocate it,” he said.

“It was just pure adrenaline,” Kauffman added. “There was a certain point where I just kind of imagined being stuck on this hillside and just having a cat gnaw at me, which is a pretty creepy way to go.” Indeed.

He later made it back down the mountain, where other hikers were able to give him a lift to the hospital where he received 20 stitches. He was lucky but kept his head about him. He’d get my vote in an absoute second.

This is a prime example of “Never Quit” despite the odds being in favor of the cat. And this takes “Embracing the Suck” to the nth level. This is more embracing life and choosing not to die rather than panicking and losing everything.

Honestly, the majority of the people you’d meet on the street, probably wouldn’t have survived such an encounter. That isn’t an indictment on them, simply a fact. Kauffman kept his head about him in a crisis life or death situation and lived to tell the tale. That is the kind of stuff we should all strive to attain. And that is the type of thinking that many of you someday will face. Kauffman was able to think and act clearly with a wild animal trying to kill it. There’s a lot of wild animals out there in the world, both human and other, that will want to kill you. Don’t be a statistic. Be like Kauffman.

Photo of Mountain Lion in Glacier National Park: Wikipedia

Three Members of the Army Parachute Team Seriously Injured in Florida

Three Ft. Bragg soldiers were seriously injured in a night training parachute jump in Homestead, Florida early Tuesday morning. The Army’s parachute team, the Golden Knights, were at Homestead Air Force Reserve Base in Miami-Dade County, where they frequently train during the winter months.

Kelli Bland, a spokesperson for the US Army Recruiting Command, said that the soldiers were training for an upcoming night-time demonstration. It is believed that the three soldiers may have collided during the jump, but that remains under investigation. The accident happened at 4:00 a.m. during a low-altitude jump.

The Army said that the trio were all being treated at the Ryder Trauma Center at Jackson Memorial Hospital after Miami-Dade Fire Rescue received a 4:06 a.m. call on Tuesday. Two of the soldiers were in critical condition and one was in serious condition, according to Bland.

Donna Dixon, a civilian who works for the Golden Knights at Ft. Bragg stated that the jumpers were conducting “night operations” when something went wrong during free fall around 4 a.m.

According to WRAL Channel 5 in North Carolina, one soldier was seen moving his arms and legs, another with his arms bent above his head while the third kept his hands and arms folded on his chest.
The WRAL video from the Florida EMT helicopters can be seen here:

The names of the three soldiers were being held until the Army notified the families.

The Golden Knights were first formed in 1959 and have performed over 16,000 shows in all 50 states and 48 different countries. They adopted the nickname, “The Golden Knights” in 1962. They consist of nearly 100 soldiers in four different jump teams and an aviation detachment. They annually compete in skydiving competitions around the globe and hold 348 different world records.

To get a feel of what is like to jump with the Golden Knights and skydive out of a military aircraft, check out the video made by the Knights right here:

Photo: US Army

FIRE AND ICE: ICELAND’S ELITE, “VIKING SQUAD” SWAT TEAM

“Never walk away from your home ahead of your axe and sword.

You can’t feel a battle in your bones, or foresee a fight.”

— The Hávamál (Viking book of knowledge),

circa 1000 A.D.

Occasionally here at SpecialOperations.com we get article submissions from authors, that we believe that our readers will enjoy. And this one from Warren Gray, a former Air Force intelligence officer is a really good one. Check it out and enjoy.

In the early morning hours of Monday, December 2, 2013, at approximately 2:50 AM, a reverberating, shotgun blast in an apartment at Hraunbær 20 in the eastern, Árbær suburb of Reykjavík, Iceland, in the majestically-beautiful “Land of Fire and Ice,” awakened frightened neighbors, who naturally called the Lögreglan (literally, “Law Order,” meaning Icelandic Police.) The 59-year-old offender, Sævar Rafn Jónasson, who had fired his weapon, owned at least six shotguns, suffered from major, psychiatric illness, had a long history of criminal offenses, and was under the influence of alcohol at the time, according to subsequent, toxicity analysis.

Most Icelandic police officers are unarmed, except for MK-4 pepper spray and an extendable baton, but there is one very elite, armed, SWAT unit, the Sérsveit Ríkislögreglustjórans (Special Unit of the National Police Commissioner), more popularly nicknamed the Víkingasveitin (“Viking Squad”), which is specially trained for dealing with heavily-armed suspects. So, the Viking Squad was immediately called into action, with an estimated 18 officers from Reykjavík responding to the incident scene.

The suspect fired upon two local firemen who attempted to contact him, and Viking Squad members clad in dark blue uniforms employed a locksmith in an effort to drill out a lock on the apartment door, but the perpetrator resisted, and no progress was made. At 4:55 AM, police began firing more than two dozen tear gas canisters into the apartment to subdue the armed man, but he still stubbornly refused to surrender, not responding to any police efforts to contact him by telephone or voicemail.

At 6:06 AM, 10 more tear gas canisters were launched into the kitchen window of the apartment. The suspect replied with another shotgun blast from the same window. A larger, gas container was forced through the front door, but it failed to ignite, so the Viking Squad decided to breach the door themselves.

At 6:42 AM, still four hours before sunrise in the far north, a four-man, police SWAT team entered the apartment, armed with Brügger & Thomet (Swiss) LL-06 non-lethal, yellow, 40mm “ball guns,” making a concerted effort to take the dangerous subject alive, and Glock-17 service pistols, clearly identifying themselves vocally as “armed police.” Within the next 30 seconds, Jónasson shot the nearest two Viking Squad members from his bedroom, with three shotguns at the ready, striking one man’s helmet visor and the other man’s ballistic shield, but they were uninjured.

The Viking Squad troopers returned fire, critically wounding Jónasson with at least two 9mm pistol bullets. The injured perpetrator was rapidly transported to the National Hospital, where he died at 6:58 AM. Most notably, this was the first and only time in Iceland’s modern history that police forces fired their weapons or killed someone in an armed operation. It was a traumatic, unprecedented moment for the entire nation.

Iceland has been ranked as the safest and most crime-free nation on Earth for the past 11 years, but 37 years ago, the peaceful, Icelandic government, with no standing army, recognized the increasing need to combat international terrorism, since a hijacked (by Croatian separatists) airliner, TWA Flight 355, had landed at Keflavík International Airport on September 10, 1976, with the terrorists using firearms against unarmed, Icelandic police.

It was also deemed an urgent requirement to be able to defend against possible, Soviet SpetsNaz raids during the Cold War. And, in the wake of some criminals using firearms against unarmed police, it was necessary to create an armed, SWAT branch of the national police force for dealing with serious incidents of crime, so the Icelandic government asked Norway for help.

Lieutenant Arnór Sigurjónsson, an Icelander serving with the Norwegian Army (and currently Director of Security and Defence Department of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Iceland, and NATO Military Representative for Iceland), was tasked with overseeing the training of the new, Viking Squad unit, which was formally founded on October 19, 1982, upon completion of their arduous training by Norwegian Special Forces.

Modeled on the Norwegian Emergency Response Unit (nicknamed “Delta”) police counterterrorist organization, the Viking Squad was assigned the primary duties of counterterrorism, support of local police forces, VIP security for Icelandic officials and foreign dignitaries, and protecting important installations in wartime.

As a paramilitary, police commando force of just 55 men, Víkingasveitin is subdivided into five main squads: Alpha Squad is an explosive-ordnance disposal (EOD) unit, Bravo Squad is a boat/diving unit for seaborne operations, Charlie Squad specializes in sniper warfare and close, target reconnaissance, Delta Squad is an intelligence unit, specializing in intelligence collection, surveillance, and infiltration, and Echo Squad is an airborne unit specializing in aircraft hijacking situations, skydiving, port security, and surprise assault operations.

Some of this parachute training may be carried out at Skydive Iceland in Hella, 48 miles southeast of Reykjavík, the only active, skydive center in the country, operating a Cessna P206 Super Skylane light aircraft, but sometimes with special access to an AS350B2/B3 Écureuil (Squirrel) helicopter, an AS332L1 Super Puma, or an older, ex-Icelandair DC-3/C-47A Skytrain transport.

As of March 2018, Viking Squad SWAT members wear a new, steel-gray (formerly dark blue), assault uniform, with black berets, black Kevlar helmets, black body armor with the distinctive, winged badge of the Víkingasveitin velcroed on, and black leather combat boots. Their weapons include Glock-17 service pistols, H&K MP5A3 submachine guns (150 were supplied to the Icelandic Police by Norway in 2014) with optical sights, H&K G36K assault carbines, Mossberg 500 Tactical shotguns, Blaser (German-made) R93 Tactical 2 and older, Steyr (Austrian) SSG 69 sniper rifles in 7.62mm NATO, LL-06 non-lethal grenade launchers, possibly Rheinmetall MG3 machine guns, and at least one Glock FM 78 field knife has also been seen in unit photos.

Viking Squad is stationed in three locations, in Reykjavík, at Keflavík International Airport, and in the northern city of Akureyri. Their vehicles and other transportation sources include Volvo XC70 and XC90 all-wheel-drive station wagons, powerful, Ford Police Interceptor Utility SUVs, black Chevrolet Suburbans, and other, unmarked vehicles for tactical operations, plus the Icelandic Coast Guard’s three white, blue, and red AS332L1 Super Puma helicopters and DHC-8-Q314 reconnaissance aircraft, fitted with U.S. night-vision equipment.

Although technically a police SWAT unit within the Ministry of the Interior, the Viking Squad is considered to be part of the Military of Iceland, since there is no standing army, and they often participate in joint, military exercises with Norwegian and Danish Special Forces. Viking Squad members have deployed to Afghanistan and the Balkans on NATO-led, peacekeeping operations, often as part of the Iceland Crisis Response Unit (ICRU) under the Ministry for Foreign Affairs.

The ICRU is a paramilitary unit, consisting of only about 30 active members at a time. Until 2008, they wore Norwegian-pattern, woodland or desert-camouflaged uniforms and royal-blue berets (the primary color of the Icelandic flag), and carried weapons (including H&K AG-3 [G3A5] battle rifles until 2008, Diemaco C8 assault carbines afterward, Glock-17 service pistols, FN Minimi light machine guns, and Rheinmetall MG3 medium machine guns), mostly of Norwegian, military origin, for self-defense, but this generated controversy at home amid liberal, societal traditions of non-militarization and pacifism, and now they only wear uniforms and carry weapons under special circumstances.

Iceland’s entire population is just over 350,000 people, of whom 60 percent live in the Capital Region of 208,000 people, in and around the city of Reykjavík, and 99 percent live in urban areas, with local populations greater than 200 people.

Their extremely low crime rate has been attributed to several significant factors, primarily including the lack of racial tensions, ethnic strife, or societal inequality. The nation is a largely-homogeneous society, consisting of 93-percent ethnic Icelanders, three-percent Polish immigrants, and more than three percent from other European nations (Lithuania, Denmark, Germany, etc.), the United States, and Canada. In fact, the only ethnic minorities are Asian, from the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, China, and India, all constituting less than one percent of the national population. So, racism is not as acute in Iceland as it is in many other countries.

In addition, fully 97 percent of the population identified themselves economically as “middle class,” so there are virtually no economic, class-struggle issues, and this relative equality is usually considered to be the leading reason for the lack of crime. Iceland ranks first in the world in income equality and gender equality. There is also a notable lack of hard drugs in Iceland, with cocaine usage reported at less than one percent of the population (less than half the U.S. cocaine-usage rate), removing the incentive for drug-related crimes.

GunPolicy.org estimates that there are approximately 90,000 guns in the country, sufficient to arm a quarter of the overall population. In fact, figures from 2007 showed that 23.5 percent of Icelandic households owned at least one firearm. Iceland ranks 15th in the world in terms of legal, per-capita, gun ownership, but most of those weapons are for hunting or target shooting, not self-defense, are seldom misused, and acquiring a firearm requires a medical examination, extensive, firing-range training, and a written test, so gun violence is almost non-existent.

Owning a handgun is possible, but can take as long as three to four years, and semi-automatic rifles are all but banned. In 2016, as an example, the Icelandic homicide rate averaged only .30 per 100,000 inhabitants (about one person per year), compared to the United States, where the homicide rate was 5.35 per 100,000 inhabitants (17,250 people per year), more than 17 times higher than in Iceland.

“There’s nothing wrong with the gun,” said Jóhann Vilhjálmsson, a gunsmith in Reykjavík. The gun kills nothing, you know? It’s the person who is holding the gun.” The last shooting murder in Iceland occurred 12 years ago, in 2007, and there have only been four killings by firearms in the past 20 years, according to GunPolicy.org.

Using statistics from 2011 as a typical, annual example, the Viking Squad responded that year to more than 2,120 law enforcement incidents, including 462 traffic incidents, 761 surveillance projects, 246 special missions (63 of them armed), 177 surveillance events on motorbike clubs, nine EOD missions, four special diving missions, and they assisted regular police units 125 times with the arrests of dangerous suspects, crowd control, and other difficult, SWAT-related tasks. In addition, they carried out 786 special security inspections at various embassies.

Recent, terrorist attacks in 2018 in the United Kingdom have prompted an increased presence of armed, Viking Squad officers at airports and public events. Haraldur Johannsessen, the National Commissioner of Police, assured the gun-shy nation that, “We are not increasing gun use; we are not arming more officers. We are just making the SWAT team more visible at large gatherings.”

On the foggy evening of January 13, 2017, 20-year-old Birna Brjánsdóttir, a cheerful, young woman from the suburbs of Reykjavík, got drunk at the Húrra night club and left at about five o’clock the next morning. She climbed into a red, Kia Rio rental car at about 5:50 AM and the car entered the Hafnarfjörður harbor area six miles south of the city soon after six o’clock, parking alongside the fishing trawler Polar Nanoq, from Greenland. The car had been rented by Thomas Møller Olsen, a 25-year-old crewmember on the visiting vessel.

One week later, Birna’s nude body was found floating in the ocean near the Selvogsviti Lighthouse, 22 miles south of Reykjavík, along Iceland’s southern coastline. There was no evidence of sexual assault, but she had been struck in the face, strangled, and then dumped unconscious into the water, where she died of drowning. Olsen never confessed to her murder, despite overwhelming, forensic evidence, and he was sentenced to 19 years in prison. Police still had no idea why Birna got into his car, or why he killed her.

Six Viking Squad SWAT members were instrumental in the search for Olsen, boarding a Coast Guard Super Puma helicopter to fly out and meet the Polar Nanoq as it returned to Icelandic waters. They rappelled onto the deck in rough seas, arrested the suspect, and escorted him off the ship to stand trial at Hafnarfjörður.

Birna Brjánsdóttir’s brutal murder shook Iceland’s national psyche to the core. It was a wake-up call that the times were changing. Egill Bjarnason, a local correspondent for the Associated Press, said, “Many people feel overwhelmed by how fast the country is changing, from a small, island nation to something more cosmopolitan. Birna’s death somehow encapsulated people’s unease about this new era.” Iceland still welcomed foreign visitors and immigrants, but there was a new sense of shattered peace and security. There are now more CCTV cameras in Reykjavík, and young women are warier than ever before, badly shaken by a loss of national innocence.

Despite tragic incidents such as this, which are very rare, indeed, Iceland officially remains the safest country in the world, made and kept so by the tireless efforts of the dedicated Viking Squad, who embody the modern, Viking spirit. “The Land of Fire and Ice” remains an absolutely breathtaking, tourist destination, constantly safeguarded by this elite, counterterrorist, SWAT team, the peaceful, Nordic nation’s only special forces unit.

* * *

Warren Gray is a retired, U.S. Air Force intelligence officer, author, and historian, with experience in joint special operations and counterterrorism. You may view his web site at warrengray54.webs.com.

Photo: Wikipedia

Maduro Uses Greed to Maintain Loyalty of Top Military Leaders

Opinion: When the facade comes off, these leftist Socialist leaders who decry the evils of capitalism usually live in an opulent lifestyle that would make Bernie Madoff green with envy. Venezuela is a prime example.

Nicholas Maduro has a tenuous, illegal hold on the Presidency but he, like his predecessor, Hugo Chavez knows, that as long as the military supports him, the phony election shenanigans can be swept under the rug. Latin America has always been a hotbed of military coups and Venezuela has had plenty.

But once Chavez took over, he decided to do everything in his power to ensure that the military would never rise up against him or his personal successor. He used greed and bought the generals loyalty. Chavez began an inflated and arbitrary promotion system where the most loyal officers to the regime were rewarded with promotions to general or admiral. And those promotions came with all of the perks, highly inflated salaries, homes, etc.

Venezuela now has about 3000 flag officers, (generals or admirals) for an active military force of fewer than 300,000 troops. The United States is considered very top heavy with the most flag officers in our history. The U.S. currently has 920 flag officers with a total active force of about 1.3 million troops.

But the first cracks to appear in Maduro’s power came over the weekend. Back on January 23, opposition leader Juan Guaido declared himself interim president and called Maduro’s sham “re-election” rigged. So, this weekend four air force officers — three generals and a female major announced on social media that they were taking the side of Guaido.

One of the officers, Gen. Jorge Oropeza Pernalete said in a video that was on Twitter “In Venezuela, it is urgent and necessary to rescue democracy and restore the rule of law,” he stated. “I call on others to repudiate Nicolas Maduro and those who are with him in the regime who have taken power in an arbitrary and authoritarian way.”

Maduro wants to nip this uprising against his power in the bud. He immediately visited several military bases as a show of force and no doubt instill fear into the hearts of the rest of the generals. Because he knows, it won’t be the generals who rally to the cause of Guaido to turn the tide. It will be the junior and mid-level officers and enlisted men that may go up against him.

The ordinary people are starving and over 2 million have fled the country and streamed across the border into Colombia. It is the lower ranks of troops, like their poorer countrymen who are dealing with a scarcity of food, runaway inflation and a lack of medicine and health care. The generals have all of that. To keep the lower ranking troops in line, the Venezuelans have installed the Cuban system of the secret police in the military that keeps a watch on everything that transpires and any whiff of disloyalty is strictly dealt with.

There are also three paramilitary political militias that harass and bully the poor in the barrios and crush any kind of dissent. These militias run between 500,000 to 1,000,000 and are poorly trained but operate in large numbers to constantly keep a lid on things in the poorer, opposition neighborhoods. Maduro claims to double the number of those by April.

And behind all of this remains the specter of a U.S. armed invasion. While remote, Maduro keeps his officers in line by repeating this threat constantly. Many of his generals, fearing reprisals from the people or being extradited to the United States, as many have taken up illegal activities and drug smuggling, have remained loyal.

After the John Bolton flap over his “5000 troops to Colombia” cryptic notepad, President Trump has reiterated that “all options” remain on the table, including an incursion. But the stakes were raised by Guaido himself.

He has asked the United States for humanitarian aid for the starving masses. USAID has prepared pallets of food and medicine to help the people. Guaido has urged the military to let these humanitarian supplies thru. Maduro equates U.S. aid as a precursor to a U.S. invasion. At a rally for his supporters this weekend, Maduro said that Venezuela “was not a nation of beggars.”

While the EU (European Union) has infuriated Maduro and the Russians by announcing that they have recognized the legitimacy of the Guaido claim to the Presidency, it now is reaching a crisis phase. The Russians and Chinese are pouring cash into the country to help prop up the Maduro regime. But lately, it seems, that the Chinese are becoming convinced that perhaps Maduro must go. The Chinese government announced last week their desire to continue working with Caracas “no matter how the situation evolves”, which is hardly a ringing endorsement.

While the military leaders have so far, not cracked down on protests in the bigger cities, allowing U.S. aid to enter is a completely different animal. The time is now for Guaido to speak with some of these generals and assure some of them that their fate is safe in the next government.

And the U.S. rattling its saber with the “all options” statement may be the push that the military leaders will need in advising Maduro that it is time to exit gracefully and retire on a beach in the worker’s paradise of Cuba to avoid an all-out civil war that no one wants.

Photo: Wikipedia

BG James Dozier is Rescued By Italian Special Operations Police in 1982

Brigadier General (later Major General) James Lee Dozier was kidnapped by the Red Brigades terrorist group in December of 1981 in Verona, Italy. He was held hostage in an apartment for 42 days. Then a team of Italian Special Operations police stormed the apartment, freed Dozier and arrested six terrorists without firing a shot on January 28, 1982.

Background Information:

Dozier was a 1956 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and was a classmate of Norman Schwartzkopf. During the Vietnam War, he spent 1968 and 1969 with the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment where he was awarded the Silver Star, Bronze Star, and the Purple Heart.

At the time of his abduction, BG Dozier was the deputy chief of staff for logistics and administration, responsible mainly for supply and personnel, for the NATO southern European Land Forces Command headquartered in Verona. He was the senior American officer there and had served in Verona since June of 1981.

The Red Brigades were a group of radical communists who broke from and were publicly disowned by the Italian Communist Party. They carried out a number of highly publicized terrorist acts beginning in the early 1970s. Perhaps the most infamous was the 1978 kidnapping of Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro in an ambush that killed five of his security detail. Moro was held 54 days and then murdered. His body was discovered in the trunk of a car.

The Red Brigades considered Dozier a viable target since the United States at that time held close ties to the existing Italian government and they were in the process of deploying nuclear Pershing II and Cruise missiles in Western Europe, including in Sicily, to counter the threat of Soviet SS-20 missiles aimed at Europe.

Dozier admitted after the fact that he never took the idea that he’d be a target seriously. “Quite frankly, I had no indication that I was a target. All the intelligence I received at the time — and I thought I had pretty good intelligence — gave me no indication that I was a target for the Red Brigades,” he said several years after the incident.

The Kidnapping:

On the evening of December 17, 1981, a team of four Red Brigade terrorists masqueraded as plumbers and infiltrated the apartment building where Dozier and his wife lived. Around 6 p.m., they knocked on the Doziers door to investigate a supposed leak from above them inside the apartment building above them on the upper floor. They held a gun to Mrs. Dozier’s head to convince her husband not to resist. He was clubbed and dragged out to a car where an additional team of four terrorists was the back-up team to the kidnapping.

Mrs. Dozier was not kidnapped but was tied to a chair, bound and gagged and left in their apartment. She continuously banged on the floor of the apartment for several hours before getting the attention of neighbors.

Dozier was whisked to a Red Brigades’ safe house in Padua. Inside an apartment, he was placed inside a tent and forced to wear headphones that played loud music. From the Naval War College’s paper, “The Red Brigades”:

“For more than a month, Dozier’s right wrist and left ankle were chained to a steel cot, which was placed under a small tent. He was also forced to live under the “never-extinguished glare of an electric bulb.” Dozier’s captors also required him to wear earphones and listen to loud music. During Dozier’s captivity, the Red Brigades issued various communiqués to the government and the public generally, describing their demands or complaints. They issued the first communiqué only days after the kidnapping; it was striking for its lack of any ransom demand.
Instead, it dwelled on international matters of interest to the Red Brigades, including a tribute to the German Red Army Faction. Subsequent communiqués also failed to mention ransom demands and even lacked any particular reference to Dozier. The fifth communiqué, retrieved from a trash can in downtown Rome, contained a number of anti-NATO and anti-American statements but did not make any specific demands for Dozier’s release.”

Dozier became a model hostage, allowing them to relax their guard. “I did the same things at the same time every day,” he recalled in a 2006 interview. “I asked for and was given a deck of cards, which helped them to see me as more human rather than just a hostage,” he said.

Rescue by Italian Special Operations Police:

Meanwhile, the Italian authorities were mobilizing a huge manhunt searching for Dozier and the terrorists who seized them. They finally tracked them to the Padua flat where Dozier was being held.

Heading up the rescue operation was the Nucleo Operativo Centrale di Sicurezza (NOCS), the Central Security Operations Service was part of the Italian Central Directorate for the Anti-Terrorism Police.

At 11:25 on the morning of Jan 28, 1982, Major Edoardo Perna and 12 other men launched the daring rescue operation. A six-man security team secured the perimeter while Perna and six others stormed the apartment where five Brigades members, including two women, were holding Dozier captive. Perna’s men were dressed in work clothes.

Perna moved forward and cold-cocked one of the women terrorists as soon as the door was knocked down. He used her as a shield as he raced towards the interior of the apartment. The terrorist who was supposed to kill Dozier if a rescue attempt was made was slow in reacting, partly due to Dozier’s daily activities which in essence, put him to sleep. As he tried to reach inside the tent with a pistol, he was butt-ended and disabled by one of Perna’s men who raced towards the tent.

Dozier, panicked and afraid that another rival faction of the Red Brigades was coming to kill him, initially fought with his rescuers. “I did not know what was happening. I had read accounts of the Aldo Moro kidnapping and about the factions within the Red Brigades and my first thoughts were that I may be caught up in a jurisdictional dispute among factions of the Red Brigades,” he recalled.

“They (police) pushed their way into my part of the tent and I tried to push them back out because I wasn’t sure who they were. But then it dawned on me that these probably were policemen … and one of them removed his ski mask.”

It was over in a matter of seconds. All of the terrorists were captured, Dozier was freed and would attend the trial in March of 1982.

Soon after he was rescued, Dozier, none the worse for wear, other than some hearing loss due to the loud music and being bearded received a phone call from President Reagan.

Epilogue:

During the trial, the leader of the kidnapping team, Antonio Savasta, gave evidence to the Italian authorities of not only this ordeal but of the Aldo Moro kidnapping and murder of which he also took part in. The Italian press called him a “singing canary” as he testified to get a lenient sentence. Savasta took part in 17 different killings with the Red Brigades before being caught.

He was sentenced to 16 years and six months in prison. He was freed after serving 10 of those. Dozier testified at their trial but had no problems with their release. “If he has been sufficiently punished in the eyes of the Italian government that’s fine with me,” he said at the time.

The Dozier kidnapping was the high-water mark for the Red Brigades, who then splintered around the mid-1980s, with a faction splitting off into The New Red Brigades/Communist Combatant Party and the Union of Combatant Communists. The New Brigades inherited the militancy of the original Red Brigades. The New Red Brigades claimed responsibility for the assassinations of labor minister advisor Massimo D’Antona in 1999, and others in the early 2000s.

They then, according to global terrorism sources, developed ties with Islamic terrorist organizations. A Brigades spokesman parrotted the Islamic terrorism playbook and was quoted as saying that the “Zionist entity” is trying to destroy “Arab and Islamic masses who have been expropriated and humiliated by imperialism and who constitute the natural ally of the urban proletarian class in European countries.”

Photo: Wikipedia

Watch an M-60 Tank, 106mm Recoilless Rifle Vs Land Rover

Some people have all the fun. The guys over FullMag have a dream job. They get to fire all kinds of weapons, spend all day at the range, blow shit up and go home at night. And get paid to do it.

They put together an awesome video of buying an old Land Rover “on its last legs” and parking it out on a range in the desert and firing an M-60’s main 105mm gun with a solid shot of aluminum into the main engine compartment and if that isn’t enough fun, they set up a 106mm recoilless rifle right behind the vehicle and let the backblast of the venturi tubes do their worst.

Here in the U.S., we tend to only see large armored vehicles like tanks parked at local National Guard installations. They resemble large metal works of art, rather than the mighty war machines they truly are. Even if you happen to spot a tank scooting around the Motor T lot, the chances you’ll see one firing its main gun are about the same as winning the lottery while getting struck by lightning. As a result, it’s sometimes hard to really appreciate the sheer power of these vehicles.

We’ve watched footage of tank-on-tank action in the deserts of the Middle East, and we’ve seen shots of modern tanks firing at static targets on test ranges. But it’s not every day you get to see a tank decimate your aunt’s Land Rover. Watching a tank shoot a tank may offer important insight into how armored platforms stack up, but it’s only after seeing a video like this that you understand just how destructive even old, outdated tank platforms really are when stacked up against things normal folks cruise around in every day.
Enter the YouTube channel FullMag, which got a hold of a M60 Patton tank, and a Land Rover LR3 that was a bit long in the tooth. FullMag let these two vehicles–both renown for their off-road capabilities–work out differences the old-fashioned way: with a 105mm tank round.

The shot hits the Land Rover’s passenger side fender and creates an explosion of parts and debris that’s eerily reminiscent of a person taking a round to the head: the fender remains largely intact while the engine, along with wheel and suspension components, is blown out the other side.

Having done a ton of range firing of 106mm RRs and training an anti-tank company on them, I can attest to the power of the backblast of them. After a day of putting steel downrange, one feels like he’s taken body blows from Mike Tyson. This looks like incredible fun.

To see the entire article by Alex Hollings and watch the video, click here:

Photo: FullMag

RIP to the Army Reflective Belt, You Won’t Be Missed

Opinion: Sometimes, common sense IS an uncommon virtue. And sometimes the Army, despite all evidence to the contrary actually gets one right. Just recently, the Secretary of the Army, Mark Esper signed a memorandum that states the simple, yet hard to understand for some truth. That the hated reflective belt was not needed in the daytime.

To the uninitiated or the civilians in our midst who happen to read our incessant ramblings here, that would seem to be a blockheaded statement. It is a completely unnecessary and dare I say it, (Yes please!), stupid point. Of course, you don’t require a reflective belt in daylight hours. Au contrair, mon ami… my friend Geo would say. You don’t know the Army like we know the Army.

Like all 600-lb monsters and utter stupidity, the idea of the reflective belt was born out of a good one. Back in the mid-1990s, some Airmen were running on a dark, unlit road and a driver mistakenly drove on it as it was designated for PT use. Several were killed and severely injured and naturally, the Air Force thought to alleviate that situation by having their Airmen wear a reflective belt in the hours of darkness. Makes total sense…right? Of course.

But then the brain-eating amoeba that lives in every good idea manifested itself into the brains of the brass. Like too much of a good thing or MSG Muldoon’s chemistry set, it soon got bigger than all of us. Staff officers and Sergeant Majors with no clue (not to be confused with the good ones) ran rampant with this like the clap in a one-hooker town when the Foreign Legion or 3/7 rolled into the area.

You know the types, tactical proficiency be damned, they are going to worry about every blade of Bermuda grass or Kentucky Blue Grass like it was their own children. No one was allowed to touch the Sergeant Major’s grass, let alone even look at it. If he thought you’d even think about his grass, it would him to have an epileptic seizure. Time for another anecdote.

Because every old guy has an anecdote for every occasion. Once when I was a younger and dumber (not much more than today) our unit was running our normal morning PT. Another unit was passing by us going in the other direction and they called some typical Jody cadence about “yo mama” or such, the exact one escapes me, it doesn’t matter.

Anyhow, it just so happened some woman, a dependent was walking her dog, a Golden Retriever who got a little freaked out by the yelling and began pulling on the leash and GASP! He walked on the grass. Granted it was just a couple of steps but OMG! So being the smartass Bostonian I was (still am, they don’t call us Massholes for nothing), I yelled, “Give that mutt extra duty and get him off the grass!” Of course, there were snickers in the formation. But no harm, no foul right? Wrong. Of course, someone heard me, yeah you guessed it.

So that being a Friday, guess who gets the “honor” of cutting the grass? Yours truly. Never knowing when to leave well enough alone, the Masshole had the temerity to say, “SGM, I can’t cut the grass.” Putting his coffee cup, which was permanently attached to his left hand down, he said, “Why not?” Smiling, “because I’ll have to walk on the fuckin’ grass to do it,” says I. Sigh.

That got yours truly the enviable task for repainting the stairs in front of the building. Each step had a different color on the facing of the step underneath, yellow and black all the way to the small landing as you walked into the building.

So I had a bright idea, why not put black and yellow on each step in a diagonal line with each step having the lines slant in another direction. On Monday morning, promptly at 4:45, the runner came up and said, “the SGM wants to see you…” No doubt.

“What the hell is this,” he asked. I stammered on like an idiot about it being more safety conscious. “C’mon, outside,” he said. Staring at it in the dark, he took another look and then blew me away with his next comment. “That is Out-fucking-standing!” He loved it and then announced that we were going to have all the doors in the area painted as such. Needless to say, I was not a popular person with the rest of the unit for that one for a few weeks.

But I digress, so, what happened with the reflective belt? The services loved it, like the diagonal steps. And like anything else it turned into a chickenshit Army exercise. The services all adopted it, different colors were used, so instead of baby shit yellow, green, red, blue, even pink belts appeared. Some genius decided that it wasn’t enough to be able to see troops in the dark, we have to identify them. So names and ranks were even put on some….Jesus.

And then the most chickenshit of all things found its way to war. The reflective belt became the go-to piece of equipment in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Our troops inside their bases had to wear a reflective belt at all times, day or night. Whether it be during physical training, operating in and around any vehicles, even to get into the damned chow hall. Somewhere an a-hole named Henry was smiling. “Can’t kill al-Queda or the Taliban without that reflective belt young trooper.”

And then in the bases, the color coding and extreme BS ran amok. Belts color-coded to rank became the new rage, as we made it easier for Taliban or insurgent operatives to identify the higher ranking officers.

Selection candidates with reflective vests

This extreme silliness even found its way into our Selection course. So yes, Special Forces candidates carrying a rucksack that weighs as much as a Toyota pickup truck pushing a jeep with three fucking tires down a firebreak in Camp Mackall aren’t visible enough? And worse, now this is a thing for civilian runners now. Everywhere in the states, I see civilians who love to wear whatever cool-guy Hoowah shit the Joes wear now wearing the “Belt, High Visibility, Yellow” as they jog down our streets.

Esper’s memorandum was probably met with extreme joy by the troops who have always hated the damned things to begin with. But Esper’s memorandum left enough ambiguous language in there to satisfy some chickenshit SGM who no doubt pounded his desk in frustration spilling his coffee and knocking over his Matchbox Scooby-Doo van. “Not on my gawddamn watch!” So it may take a while because old habits die hard.

Reflective PT belts will soon go the way of the dodo. Sorry, you won’t be missed. I can’t see old soldiers in the future looking with nostalgia on their reflective PT belt like our generation did/does with the poncho liner. What’s next? Will the Big Army bring back training that actually prepares the units for combat? What a novel concept.

And …fuck you very much Henry…yes, still, because you know, old habits die hard.

Photos: US Army/Newsrep cartoon

Congress Authorizes Blacks To Enlist in the Continental Army 1776

During the Revolutionary War, about 5000 African-Americans both enslaved and free men fought for the American colonies and their fight for freedom against the British. But the process was anything but a smooth one. Slavery was still in practice in all 13 American colonies at that time.

And the British were the first to take advantage of that fact. They openly recruited African-American slaves, promising freedom for those that took up arms for the Crown against those pesky Rebels. In November 1775, Virginia’s British Royal Governor, Lord Dunmore, issued a proclamation that the British would free any slave who left his slave master to serve alongside the British Army. Over 300 joined within the first month that Dunmore dubbed his “Ethiopian Regiment.”

And even today, many still debate whether more African-Americans fought for the British than the Americans.

But that changed in 1776 when the Continental Congress authorized the Continental Army to allow black men to enlist. Initially, George Washington was against this. Coming from Virginia in the south where plantations held many black slaves, like many Southern Americans, he feared guns in the hands of slaves as the thought was, they would revolt against their slave masters.

Although Washington had initially banned blacks from serving in the Continental Army, many free blacks served in the Colonial militias. Washington finally did relent, but would only allow free blacks to serve in the Continental Army. Slaves were still banned.

The first casualty in the war for American Independence is generally agreed upon as being an African-American, Crispus Attucks who was the first man killed during the Boston Massacre in 1770.

Attucks himself was a runaway slave, not from the south, but from Framingham, Massachusetts. There was an ad in the 1750 Boston Gazette that mentioned he had run from his master’s home. William Brown offered a ten-pound reward for the return of his “property”.

“Ran away from his Master William Brown from Framingham, on the 30th of Sept. last, a Molatto Fellow, about 27 Years of age, named Crispas, 6 Feet two Inches high, short curl’d Hair, his Knees nearer together than common: had on a light colour’d Bearskin Coat.”

Attucks escaped to Nantucket where he worked on a whaling ship. In March of 1770, he and some other sailors were ashore in Boston when hotheads from Massachusetts began accosting a British sentry in the street. The alarm went out and a quick reaction force from his unit, the 29th Regiment of Foot soon was face-to-face with an angry mob of Bostonians with clubs in their hands. At some point, the soldiers fired into the crowd and Attucks, with two bullets in the chest died almost immediately.

Grave of Peter Willard, free African-American of the Revolutionary War. (Photo: Author, Millbury Historical Society)

Here in my hometown of Millbury, Massachusetts, we like to claim Peter Willard as one of, if not the first African-American soldiers in the United States Army. Willard was part of the militia here and he traveled with them to fight during the battle at Lexington and Concord. When he was allowed to in 1776, he joined the Continental Army and fought until the end of the war.

He returned to his home and lived out the remainder of his years quietly. You won’t find his name in any history books, but his town remembers him. A portrait of Willard hung in Millbury’s Town Hall until the building was destroyed a fire in 1971,

Peter Salem is one of the first and possibly most famous of the Revolutionary War African-Americans to fight in the war. He was a slave but his owner freed him so that he could join the militia and fight the British after the Battle of Lexington and Concord, which he did with the 6th Massachusetts.

During the battle of Bunker Hill, Salem was credited with the killing of the British Major Pitcairn during the fighting After it was over, Salem was introduced to General George Washington and was commended for his bravery and service.

His bravery was captured in artwork by painter John Trumbull “The Death of General Warren.” In the work, it shows both General Warren and Major Pitcairn dying, on the far right is an African-American soldier with a musket that is believed to be Salem. The featured image shows a more recent drawing of Salem shooting Pitcairn.

Perhaps the most famous mixed-race infantry unit in the Continental Army was the 1st Rhode Island Regiment. Organized in 1778, the 1st Rhode Island fought mainly in the Northern Theatre during the war. The organization of this regiment was endorsed by Washington, despite his misgivings over the organization of its members. Enlisting in the regiment were 88 slaves who were guaranteed freedom at the end of their service. That is something Washington was very much opposed against, coming from the plantations of the south. The Rhode Island State Assembly promised compensation to the former slave masters for the men signing up to fight.

Even enslaved African-Americans fought in the south. The guerrilla fighters of Francis Marion, “The Swamp Fox” had some enslaved members of his unit. However, when Lord Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown, there were many African-Americans in the ranks of the Continental Army, including the 1st Rhode Island Regiment who were there.

It should be noted, however, that Washington, upon his death in 1799, freed his 124 slaves. Was it because his faithful servant, William Lee stood by his side through thick and thin and always accompanied Washington into battle? Washington admired his bravery and his faithfulness and mentioned Lee in his will. Washington in it thanked Lee for “his attachment to me” and for “his faithful services during the Revolutionary War.”

He was to be given his freedom immediately, given an annual stipend of $30 and the choice to remain at the estate, which he did until his own death, as a free man in 1810.

So although Black History Month is still a few weeks away, we thought we’d jump the gun a bit and lean forward in the foxhole to pay respect to our first African-American soldiers who have served our country faithfully since the time of the American Revolution.

Photos: Smithsonian, Millbury Historical Society, author