How do you steal rubies?

In 1944, Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer starred in the film "Gas Light," directed by George Cukor, in which the charming husband (Boyer) tries to convince his wife (Bergman), and those around her, that she is insane, subtly and systematically manipulating small elements and situations of daily life, insisting that she is wrong or that she remembers the facts incorrectly. By questioning his wife's sanity, the husband aims to steal the rubies she possesses.

This is one of the tactics of hybrid warfare heavily employed by US imperialism, with the support of its European satellites that form NATO, through the construction of inversions of reality intentionally, and widely used today by the military establishments of these countries, they aim to publicly condemn alleged "conspiracies" developed by enemies previously chosen by them. A classic recent example of these manifestations is when the self-proclaimed... non-ideological Olavo de Carvalho made inversions of truth when he stated that "NGOs are the ones setting fire to the Amazon," "that the electronic voting machines are rigged," and "that the PT developed the penis-shaped baby bottle." Also inversions of truth are "Deltan Dallagnol's PowerPoint presentation," encouraged by the Lava Jato commander Sérgio Moro, to condemn Lula, or when the corporate media claims that "the Brazilian military are merely technical, politically neutral, occupying more than 1/3 of the positions in the Planalto Palace, but that it is the PT that controls the State." Or even when the US Pentagon stated that "Iraq has an arsenal of highly destructive chemical weapons." For these gentlemen who formulate and operate hybrid warfare, "there is no distinction between war and politics." (Leiner, Piero.) Brazil in the spectrum of hybrid warfare. (São Paulo: Alameda, 2020). Therefore, hybrid warfare actions do not cause the emotional impact of tanks and soldiers on the battlefront. The hybrid is something that inhabits a kind of gray area, and the processes involved in hybrid warfare... They are all the more efficient the more imperceptible they are. It is, therefore, a subliminal war. A war made of words, images, inversions of reality, volatile information, emotions, and the provocation of resentments hidden in the depths of individuals, of prejudices based on class, race, color, and gender, as well as the irrational convictions rooted in every human mind.

The consequences of a hybrid war are not bodies lying on the ground in the open air, struck by projectiles and filmed by the lenses of fantasy; but they are the invisible victims of the economic and political disruption caused by the warlords, expressed in unemployment, hunger, malnutrition, precarious work and social safety nets, the structural violence of the police and justice apparatus, and the haste of internal polarizations that fuel violence between brothers of the same nation.

In 2014, in Brazil, with the establishment of Operation Lava Jato, something very familiar began to be perceived in the tactics of hybrid warfare, orchestrated by the Brazilian media, legal, and military systems, culminating in the acceptance of the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff by the Federal Chamber on April 17, 2016. In his documentary research on this historical period, sociologist Piero Leiner notes that, looking at Brazilian military personnel who were reflecting on hybrid warfare, he found an article published in 2015 on the website defesanet.com.br in which a high-ranking military officer mentioned hybrid warfare as part of a strategy for the coup perpetrated in the overthrow of the Ukrainian government. (Leiner, Piero. Op. Cit.).

Journalist Pepe Escobar, an experienced professional in covering world geopolitics, also describes how, in the Hybrid Warfare Manual, the perception of the influence of a vast, unengaged middle class is essential to achieving success, so that these unengaged individuals gradually become opposed to their political leaders, leading them to amplify discontent through propaganda and psychological efforts to discredit the government (as in Dilma Rousseff's Brazil), preparing the population for various types of demonstrations and rebellions. (Escobar, Pepe. Brazil at the epicenter of Hybrid Warfare) One of the real results, to cite just one example, of the hybrid warfare implemented in Brazil to overthrow the Rousseff government and install Bolsonarism as a form of fascism, through social and economic counter-reforms against the Brazilian population and national public assets, can be fully appreciated by monitoring Petrobras' financial statements. In 2021, the oil company obtained profits of approximately R$106,7 billion (a 1.400% increase in one year), distributing dividends to shareholders totaling R$101,4 billion, the largest distribution in the company's history. For this to happen, the Brazilian people had to finance the billionaire shareholders by paying dollar-denominated prices for fuel: gasoline alone (R$7,00) has already been readjusted by 116%, and cooking gas has seen a 100,1% increase under the Bolsonaro government. Curiously, one of the... inversions of reality One of the main consequences of the propaganda campaigns aimed at overthrowing Dilma Rousseff's government at the time was precisely the high price of fuel (gasoline averaging R$3,00). The conflict in Ukraine is yet another chapter in this hybrid war. Russia was forced, through armed struggle, due to the failure to heed its warnings and proposals since Vladimir Putin's speech at the Munich Conference in 2007, to do what it had proposed diplomatically: neutralize NATO's expansion along the eastern borders of the globe, even seeking to reverse some of its losses imposed by Western imperialism after its defeat at the end of the last century. The context presents itself in a favorable scenario given the military humiliation of the US after twenty years of invasion of Afghanistan, as well as the failure of its violent policy of military interventions aimed at changing governments or regimes in Libya, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and Afghanistan itself, and the inadequacy of its economic sanctions against Iran, China, and Russia itself. (Fiori, Luís.) Notes on the War in Ukraine. 

The declaration by China and Russia on February 07, 2022, enshrines the need for the West to respect the existence of multiple cultures and civilizations within the same interstate system. Furthermore, it heralds the end of the unipolar world power and ethics imposed by the West over the last 300 years of the world system's history. It seems that, from now on, the US and its European satellites will not be able to steal the rubies with the same ease as before.