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Was Venezuela's 5-Day Blackout Caused By Cyberattacks -- or Wildfires? (apnews.com)
What caused a devastating five-day blackout in Venezuela? Two engineers with expertise in geospatial technologies believe the answer lies in images from a NASA weather satellite showing thermal activity, which they superimposed onto Google Earth, the AP reports:
Within hours of the attack, the government of embattled President Nicolas Maduro began accusing the U.S. of a cyberattack. Maduro has stuck to that narrative, saying hackers in the U.S. first shut down the Guri Dam and then delivered several "electromagnetic" blows. Engineers have questioned that assertion, contending that the Guri Dam's operating system is on a closed network with no internet connection.
Several consulted by The Associated Press speculated that a more likely cause was a fire along one of the electrical grid's powerful 765-kilovolt lines that connect the dam to much of Venezuela. The transmission lines traverse through some of Venezuela's most remote and difficult to access regions on their way toward Caracas, making it difficult to obtain any first-hand information that could back up or pinpoint the location of a fire. Working with an expert at Texas Tech University's Geospatial Technologies Laboratory, Jose Aguilar, an expert on Venezuela's electrical grid, said satellite data indicates that on the day of the blackout there were three fires in close proximity to the 765-kilovolt lines transmitting power generated from the Guri Dam, which provides about 80 percent of Venezuela's electricity...
Engineers have warned for years that Venezuela's state-run electricity corporation was failing to properly maintain power lines, letting brush that can catch fire during Venezuela's hot, dry months grow near and up the towering structures.
Several consulted by The Associated Press speculated that a more likely cause was a fire along one of the electrical grid's powerful 765-kilovolt lines that connect the dam to much of Venezuela. The transmission lines traverse through some of Venezuela's most remote and difficult to access regions on their way toward Caracas, making it difficult to obtain any first-hand information that could back up or pinpoint the location of a fire. Working with an expert at Texas Tech University's Geospatial Technologies Laboratory, Jose Aguilar, an expert on Venezuela's electrical grid, said satellite data indicates that on the day of the blackout there were three fires in close proximity to the 765-kilovolt lines transmitting power generated from the Guri Dam, which provides about 80 percent of Venezuela's electricity...
Engineers have warned for years that Venezuela's state-run electricity corporation was failing to properly maintain power lines, letting brush that can catch fire during Venezuela's hot, dry months grow near and up the towering structures.
his HOSTs file was too powerful for the Venzualen grid
- Venezuela
- California
Not only is there no money to pay anyone anything, nor is there money to pay for maintenance, what would people DO with money if they had any to be paid?
Its not even like you can buy WATER now.
So instead of working, people are busy just finding food and water for the most part. How does the basic machinery that holds up civilization work long term under those conditions? It cannot.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
and democrat party supporters caused it. this is what socialism does to a country and these people wanteds to shut off the connection so that rest of world, especially temporary free americans, dont see reality of left wing socalism policies. sad!
The Venezuela blackout was caused by 20 years of berniebro/AOC government.
Was Venezuela's 5-Day Blackout Caused By Cyberattacks -- or Wildfires?
... or was it caused by the best and the brightest fleeing the country and those left behind shorting out the grid because they have a very limited clue of how it works nor do they have the equipment to find that out or the materials to make proper repairs?
The path to holding power in many Central and South American nations is holding onto the party line:
"Even if, and that's a big if, the power outage was caused by fires and poor service line maintenance, it was still the fault the Imperialistic Americans. The Yankee sanctions are killing us, and they probably set those fires."
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
maybe central control isn't as good as it is sold?
Kendall what part of that rant had anything to do with anything here? You're a jobless incel idiot from Colorado, the fuck do you know about actual poverty? Go spit on a cock and shove it up your ass, apologist propaganda faggot.
AKA : Freischutz knows nothing of the situation and is throwing his shit from monkey island, hoping for a hit... What a dipshit. We should breed it with Kendall and set it loose on the Chinese internet.
.. from a cave on the other side of the plant. Real news says so. bwahahaha
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AKA : Freischutz knows nothing of the situation and is throwing his shit from monkey island, hoping for a hit... What a dipshit. We should breed it with Kendall and set it loose on the Chinese internet.
I'm not generally opposed to Socialism, Social Democracy or Capitalism for that matter, in fact I'm basically a Social Democrat. However, the situation in Venezuela can be blamed completely on the incompetence and corruption of the Chavez regime and the even greater incompetence and corruption of the Maduro regime. I know for a fact that the a large number of the people running the various major tech industries in Venezuela have fled the country because they get better jobs, better pay and the rule of law elsewhere. Venezuela has bigger un-tapped oil reserves than Norway, Venezuela should be the Norway of S-America and yet it has the economy and political stability of the Weimar Republic. I don't like US foreign policy any more than the next guy and I most certainly despise the Trump admin but blaming everything that is happening in Venezuela on the US is naive in the extreme. I know the extreme Left is in love with Chavismo and would dearly like to salvage the reputation of that marxist experiment but I'm afraid it has proven itself to be a complete and utter failure. Trying to portray Maduro as some sort of martyr of US aggression is pointless. The man is manifestly incompetent, corrupt and has obvious autocratic tendencies. Having said that I sincerely hope that Venezuela will not have to suffer the Trump administration 'bringing them Democracy' because if that happens it will be brought by that butcher Elliott Abrams which would be a bit like bringing Oliver Cromwell back from the dead to negotiate an end to the conflict in Ireland. All in all I really feel too the people of Venezuela since it does not seem they have any good way out of the mess they are in.
Cromwell is probably a better choice than May at the moment and you wouldn't even have to bring him back to life for that to be true.
I still remember people claiming Russians drones had caused the California fires (lol). Maduro's claim the US sabotaged the power grid sounds less batshit to me. Especially because they already used drones to try to assassinate him.
they only the funds to hire homer simpson's in the control rooms.
just telling how it is
There's lots of money. You can even use it as toilet paper.
Fiat money seems to be a problem for socialism and other regimes. With fiat money the government can print as much as it likes, running up inflation and driving the country into ruin. Some historians say this happened to the Romans once they started polluting their coins with base metals, and is probably what caused Germany to start WWII.
Since you brought it up, let's ask the obvious question: if a country's money is *not* fiat based, would this be enough to allow socialism to thrive?
Suppose you created VenCoin on the BitCoin model. BitCoin (and therefore VenCoin) has the ability to add new coins that the miners would find, so the country could implement a fixed rate of inflation(*). Suppose the inflation rate is fixed into the model and can't be changed. (I don't know how this might be implemented, but suppose it were. Perhaps a fixed inflation based on the current year and a fixed estimate for the average GDP growth.)
Would that be enough to allow socialism to thrive?
I ask this because, as a society, it appears there's a growing trend to transition to cashless payments using blockchain technology. Now is the time to point out fundamental problems. I'm aware of the privacy issues (cash is anonymous, BitCoin is not), but these might be overcome with careful implementation.
It seems that this would prevent the sorts of "runaway inflation" that is caused by a corrupt government printing too much money.
Would that be enough?
First, if the US wanted to disrupt their power system then they would have done enough damage that it would still be down. Second, they aren't doing anything with the electricity that the US really cares about therefore there isn't a real reason to sabotage it.
I'm not claiming the US would be above taking such actions, I'm just saying that the US doesn't care enough about Venezuela to bother.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
What a fanstastic fucking retard you have to be to blame US sanctions for the apocalypse that's going on over there. What an intellectually bankrupt sack of shit.
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Maduro [said] hackers in the U.S. first shut down the Guri Dam and then delivered several "electromagnetic" blows. Engineers have questioned that assertion, contending that the Guri Dam's operating system is on a closed network with no internet connection.
That engineers never heard about Stuxnet?
Nice try CIA nigga. This massive over-reaction confirms that rsilvergun is 100% on the money.
Serbia was the tell on that.
" designed to short out electrical transformers, blacking out much of Serbia"
http://edition.cnn.com/US/9905... (May 3, 1999)
All part of a color revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... .
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
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The foremost reason I doubt that the US is sabotaging Venezuela is that, honestly, President Trump probably wants Venezuela to continue in this state as long as possible.. "here, ladies and gentlemen, is a prime advertisement for the wonders of Socialism".
Cue the usual bleating from AOC, Bernie Sanders and their ilk about how Venezuela isn't TRUE socialism, how it will all be different and work out wonderfully NEXT time it's tried, if only it's done by people of high moral vision (i.e., them)...
The situation in Venezuela is actually multifaceted, but stems from one major problem - A single export economy - oil. When the US convinced OPEC to flood the market while it also did so, Venezuela was sunk already.
Maduro's mismanagement of his government is probably not entirely related, but there is no economic escape from a single export economy when the market drops. I don't want to say it's 100% that simple, but that's 90% of it. .they're going to have a tough go. Venezuela dug in their heels instead of branching out, isolationism and overreliance on Russia did not allow options.
Without income any country, socialist, capitalist, barter system, gnomes..
Only the Republican idiots like "Okie Warcrier" think it's entirely an "ideological" problem, lol, and the reason is simple also - Fox News Business isn't an educational resource, it's an echo-chamber for morons like him exactly.
Answer: C
There are literally THOUSANDS of ways of disabling power grids at their command. You're not only a complete moron, you also think linking to CNN is somehow blowing a lid off something related to BLACKOPS lol!? Just incredible.
it'd be about worsening the situation so we have cover for a regime change. If you did too much it would be obvious.
And we absolutely care enough. If you think otherwise you haven't been paying attention to who's running the show. John Bolton comes to mind. They guy in charge of Venezuelan aid was literally involved in the Contra scandal and used aid to smuggle arms in.
Iraq and Afghanistan are winding down. Even the most die hard pro war guy gets heat for keeping us there (Bolton went on the news shows and looked a fool for saying we'd be there forever). We need a new war. It was supposed to be Iran, but the rest of the world said no.
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The whole oil prices thing is a false premise.
In terms of percent of GDP coming from oil, Venezuela was 8th, with 7-8% of their GDP from oil. The UAE and Kazakhstan are about 14%. Saudi Arabia is 21%. Oman is 25%. Iraq is 28%. Kuwait is 30%. Angola gets about 34% of their GDP from oil production. (Stats from the World Bank and The World Factbook)
None of those other countries even went into a recession when the oil prices dropped, so you can't attribute it to the oil price changes. In fact, oil prices are back up above average, but Venezuela still hasn't been producing and selling more oil.
From 1998 to 2018, oil production in Venezuela is down from 3.5 million barrels per day in December of 1997 vs 2 million in October of 2017.
So what happened in the last 20 years? From Wikipedia:
“After Hugo Chávez officially took office in February 1999, several policy changes involving the country’s oil industry were made to explicitly tie it to the state under his Bolivarian Revolution. Since then, PDVSA has not demonstrated any capability to bring new oil fields on stream since nationalizing heavy oil projects in the Orinoco Petroleum Belt formerly operated by international oil companies ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, Chevron and Total. Chávez’s policies damaged Venezuela’s oil industry due to lack of investment, corruption and cash shortages.”
Probably just a fluke, though, right? I mean, steel production in Venezuela increased from 3400 tons in 1998 to about 4600 tons in 2008. The steel industry was nationalized by the Venezuelan government in 2008 and production declined to under 1600 tons. Huh, definitely a pattern forming. Similar stories of lower production and losses in the other industries after they were taken over: aluminum, cement, gold, iron, farming, transportation, electricity, food production, banking, paper and the media.
The issues in Venezuela are directly a predictable (and predicted by economists) result of nationalizing their industries.
Without the government takeover, even if oil companies were only competent enough to continue production levels and not grow them (as they’ve done previously over time), Venezuela would have almost twice as much hard currency coming in from oil sales.
The number of private companies in Venezuela was 14K in 1998. In 2011 it was 9K. It's lower now, but it's difficult to get accurate stats about exactly how lower in the resulting chaos. Without private companies in the economy, the economy sinks.
So no, their problems aren’t just about oil prices. Their problems, including a big chunk of the oil revenue losses, are a direct result of the socialist government of Venezuela under Chavez and Maduro taking over large portions of the economy. The government bureaucrats don't know what they're doing in business and industry and their priority is pleasing political constituencies, not making the companies run well.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
I'm not generally opposed to Socialism, Social Democracy or Capitalism for that matter, in fact I'm basically a Social Democrat. However, the situation in Venezuela can be blamed completely on the incompetence and corruption of the Chavez regime and the even greater incompetence and corruption of the Maduro regime.
http://cepr.net/publications/op-eds-columns/the-united-states-hand-in-undermining-democracy-in-venezuela
http://time.com/5512005/venezu...
https://www.npr.org/2019/02/22...
etc.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Netherlands? That's your answer?
1.) They have a whole 17,118,657 citizen's .... The USA has mid sized cities with more people. ... The USA has mid sized cities that make more money.
2.) There GDP isn't even close to a Trillion
3.) The Netherlands is not a Socialist government at best you can call it Consociationalism which is more capitalist than most of the EU.
Now who's the fucking moron ?
I'm not generally opposed to Socialism, Social Democracy or Capitalism for that matter, in fact I'm basically a Social Democrat. However, the situation in Venezuela can be blamed completely on the incompetence and corruption of the Chavez regime and the even greater incompetence and corruption of the Maduro regime.
http://cepr.net/publications/op-eds-columns/the-united-states-hand-in-undermining-democracy-in-venezuela
http://time.com/5512005/venezu...
https://www.npr.org/2019/02/22... etc.
Did you even read those articles? ... because they are just as critical of Maduro as the Americans. If those two links were meant to prove that Maduro is the only innocent in this entire sorry affair you failed, if they were meant to make the US look good you also failed:
...
...and NPR has this to say:
The Time article starts with:
As Maduro’s authoritarian regime has plunged Venezuela into humanitarian crisis
Venezuela was once considered the richest country in Latin America, and it holds the world's largest oil reserves. Many world leaders, analysts and rights groups blame Maduro for enabling the country's spiraling problems such as hyperinflation, crime, hunger and shortages of medicine and basic goods.
US keeps claiming socialism doesnt work however if people in the US were to see it works they would demand the same so the only option the US govt has is to use any and all means to sabotage any country where socialism seems to be working. Its nothing personal against Venezuela.
**Life is too short to be serious**
The situation in Venezuela is actually multifaceted, but stems from one major problem - A single export economy - oil. When the US convinced OPEC to flood the market while it also did so, Venezuela was sunk already.
Maduro's mismanagement of his government is probably not entirely related, but there is no economic escape from a single export economy when the market drops. I don't want to say it's 100% that simple, but that's 90% of it. Without income any country, socialist, capitalist, barter system, gnomes.. .they're going to have a tough go. Venezuela dug in their heels instead of branching out, isolationism and overreliance on Russia did not allow options.
Only the Republican idiots like "Okie Warcrier" think it's entirely an "ideological" problem, lol, and the reason is simple also - Fox News Business isn't an educational resource, it's an echo-chamber for morons like him exactly.
That is true, but it still places most of the blame for the economic crisis in Venezuela at the feet of Chavez and Maduro. They made the conscious choice to set up a badly managed and corruption riddled single export economy, the Americans did not do that for them, Chavez and Maduro made that choice. You can't even blame that on Marxism because nothing in Marxist economic theory (whatever else may be wrong with Marxist economic theory) forbids you from using your country's considerable oil wealth to set up a diversified economy. That being said, I don't envy Venezuelans of having that imbecile Trump and his henchmen like Elliott Abrams, breathing down their necks chanting 'keep the oil, KEEEEEP THE OIIIIIL!!" like a bunch of zombies.
Here's one:
A shitty government that seizes private property forces anyone with the means and a brain out of the country. The remainder do not know, or do not have the means to maintain a technically complicated system.
South Africa is doing a similar thing to non-native farmers. Let's see how that works out for them in a year.
There are a few more realistic actors then what your prepossessing as truth here that you have seemed to overlook.
Just the fact Trump is being so brazen about taking their oil vs Bush Jr. simply lying about bringing freedom is a signal that the US is ready to fall, like the Romans.
The kind of arrogance is far from being limited to Trump, or the Republican party, or the Democratic party, or big corporations. Just drive through any major city, and you will find homeless encampments just a stone throw from buildings that could've been used to house the homeless, but are just left to rot with no future laid out for them.
"But America is too big and powerful to fall!"
The Romans thought the exact same thing about their empire.
I tried downloading it and got
404 - File or directory not found.
The resource you are looking for might have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable.
..the Japanese did this to California during WWII with fire balloons.
Damn those Scotsmen, you turn your back for 10 seconds and next thing you know they're drinking German Beer...
The Netherlands is a representative monarchy, not a socialist country.
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.) They have a whole 17,118,657 citizen's .... The USA has mid sized cities with more people.
Please name one city in the united states that has a population of 17,000,000
IF the USA is so inclined to do stuff like this, and IF Trump was willing to roll the dice on such an action while Democrats are desperately trying to find something to use to impeach him (Keeping in mind all the laws passed after the Church Commission's post-Nixon "reforms") then WHY in the hell would Trump do it to Venezuela (which most Americans generally ignore and which poses no threat to the USA) but not do it to North korea or Iran????
As for the Trump adminstration "install[ing] a puppet government", well that's a total crock. Something like 50 nations recognize the not-Maduro guy as the actual and legitimate winner of the Venezuelan presidential election (an election most believe Maduro tampered with). One of the things that sucks about being a Communist dictator is that when you say you have won a funcky election where the numbers do not add up, people all over the world naturally believe you stole it - Commie pigs have a well-established reputation for such things.
As for the supposed American sanctions being at the root of all of Venezuela''s problems, that too is a fraudulent argument. The Trump administration makes no secret of what's been sanctioned (since, obviously, you cannot order businesses to follow a list of sanctions while not providing a list). The sanctions are NOT on the people of Venezuela, nor on the economy of Venezuela generally - they are on Meduro, his cronies, the businesses of his rich and comfortable cronies, and on Russian banks that Maduro and his cronies were using to try to get around the original set of sanctions. The US State Department is basically trying to keep Maduro and his wealthy buddies from living comfortably and eating and drinking well as they loot their own country and strangle their own people.
Hugo Chavez, put into power by the ignorant masses who were promised "free stuff" and cheered-on by fawning leftwingers like Jeremy Corbyn in the UK and by Michael Moore, Bernie Sanders, and Sean Penn in the USA, etc attacked "Big Oil".
Hugo nationalized the Venezuelan oil industry, stripping all foreign oil companies and their investors of their property and rights. With all those foreign oil companies kicked out, they left and took all their expertise in locating oil deposites and drilling transporting and refining with them. For a few years, Hugo was able to have his people continue running oil rigs and selling the oil, apparently taking in even more money to the government to fund his Marxist policies, since none was going to those foreign companies --- but with a huge downside: nobody was doing the necessary maintenance and nobody was prepping the next sites. It was inevitable that Hugo's behavior would destroy the main money-making industry of his nation. He and his successor Maduro tried to keep ahead of all this by nationalizing even more of the economy - but as Margaret Thatcher famously warned about socialism: eventually you run out of other people's money.
Social welfare programs are never able to pay for themselves. To make them work, you need a thriving private free market economy that can create the enormous profits that can then be taxed. Do too much damage to the private economy and it can no longer generate the revenues needed to fund any dreams of any redistributed wealth (the wealth must be created before it can be redistributed, and it must be continuously generated if you want to continuously redistribute).
NY Metropolitan has a population a little over 20 million. The metropolitan area includes New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ-PA which are economically dependent on one another that treating them as a single socio-economic entity is warranted.
... who has to win the most by cutting water supply? MADURO. A people preoccupied with finding the basic needs to stay alive i way more easy to control than a well fed and hydrated people that demonstrates against you. As a bonus: blames the decadent western countries.
Bach says it all.
North Korea is an unrepresentative monarchy.
I mean, third generation by now, and they even have a blessed by God myth. What else do you need to call it a monarchy?
And in any case, this isn't a mid sized city, but perhaps the largest city area in all of the USA.
The monarch actually having some kind of actual power to rule the state, as opposed to being mostly a figurine?
This, a thousand times.
Pretty much this. Europe is capitalist with large social safety nets. Venezuela goes wayyyyyy beyond that in both seizure of private facilities and massive corruption so the few who do make business can't do so without keeping a dozen local politicians and inspectors on the payroll, so nobody tries, and the economy struggles in good times. And around the world, these are pretty good times economically (domestic Trump yabble aside.)
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
The leader of NK is mostly a powerless figurehead?
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Wait no, in California criminally neglected power lines cause devastating fires. There's a reverse Russian joke in there.
You liberals sure do worship places with mono culture with large religions that push racism(as you call it). But I cant get a fucking wall to try to make sure people like me don't get replaced by people with no morals or cleanliness willing to do it for $10/hr. And I say that because I have yet to go to a jobsite that was full of illegals that didn't have shit smeared all over the porta-pottys. Also, have you tried going to a neighborhood full of illegals? packed into houses like sardines? Try it sometime, it all looks peachy from your nice little white picket fence suburb.
"There is no such thing as "thriving" under socialism." - https://www.google.com/search?q=netherlands+gdp&oq=netherlands+gdp = says you're a moron.
You think capitalist Netherlands is socialist?
Socialists don't have stock exchanges.
How about Denmark's Prime Minister:
Speaking at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, Danish PM Lars Løkke Rasmussen told students that he had “absolutely no wish to interfere the presidential debate in the US” but nonetheless attempted to set the record straight about his country.
"I know that some people in the US associate the Nordic model with some sort of socialism. Therefore I would like to make one thing clear. Denmark is far from a socialist planned economy. Denmark is a market economy,” Rasmussen said.
“The Nordic model is an expanded welfare state which provides a high level of security for its citizens, but it is also a successful market economy with much freedom to pursue your dreams and live your life as you wish,” he added.
Did you catch that "LIVE LIFE AS YOU WISH" part? I bet that's the part that won't sink in....
Get a refund on your education.
Jesus H. Mother Fucking Christ, you're a moron. And the sad thing is, you probably think you're smarter than those "deplorables".
All of the incredible theories being floated, such as cyber-attacks and "electromagnetic attacks," whatever they are (EMP? not likely) are far less likely than key grid components being mismanaged or sabotaged. It's far easier to sneak into a facility and trip some breakers or drain transformer oil than to mount a concerted cyber-attack, which requires extensive research into, or knowledge of, the grid's network and physical infrastructure. The most disturbing photo in the article, though it appears to be at a distribution sub and therefore affects a small area, is the one of burned-out transformers, one of which is missing a couple of its radiators. Even if the fire was external, if the inside was compromised it will be costly to fix and the device may even require replacement. Transformers are one of the most difficult things to repair/replace in an electrical system - most are not made until they are ordered so power could be out for months. And one that gets contaminated internally could "blow up" due to dielectric failure if not properly reconditioned by somebody that really knows what he is doing (usually the manufacturer.) That's why the US is so worried about a possible follow-up to the "Metcalf Substation Sniper Attack" near San Jose, CA in 2013.
Well they aren't good times for an oil export driven economy. Just for everyone else.
Just look at the squeeze Saudi Arabia is doing to their wealthy class to get money now that oil is down.
You're still the moron. Thanks for proving it!
The fun fact is that the Guri Dam control systems are analog, not digital they cannot be hacked by a cyberattack by definition.
Why am I not surprised the most well reasoned comment in this whole thread is modded Troll? The average intelligence of /. seems to drop on a daily basis.
Don't forget about the "opposition" that intentionally set the aid truck on fire in order to frame it as the Maduro sect. Also don't forget that the UN was invited to oversee the last election, and the boycotting "opposition" drove them out and then cried foul when they predictably lost. So many verifiable facts get lost in the US buzz media.