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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.
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
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
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.
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.
Would that be enough to allow socialism to thrive?
There is no such thing as "thriving" under socialism. Socialism is legalized theft.
Socialism taxes working people to give to unworking people. Eventually, a few working people figure out they're getting a bum deal and switch to being unworking people. Those still working now have to pay higher tax rates to support all the original unworking people AND the people who recently decided to stop working.
As the tax rates increase, more people from the working class figure out they're getting a bum deal and switch to being unworking. Repeat, again and again, until finally there are no working class people left to tax and the whole system collapses.
Venezuela is in these final death throes of socialism. Not enough people working to maintain even the most basic necessities.
That, or maybe the US put economic sanctions on Venezuela to prevent them from trading their oil for replacement parts to keep the electrical grid functional. Did the US cyberattack the Venezuelan power grid? If not, did the US drop a couple flaming "Rods of God" on them in strategic locations to cause the wildfires that made the grid fail?
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.
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.
If you want to see the root causes of WW2, look no further than the Treaty that ended WW1. The indemnities that Germany had to pay impoverished the country to the point that "any man on a horse" that could get them out of that trap was welcomed with open arms....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Victor Davis Hanson makes a good argument that the primary cause of WW2 was that Germany was allowed to surrender in France and thus were not forced to accept defeat the way they would have if Germany had been invaded. He isn't convinced by the theory that peace conditions were so onerous that they played much of a role.
See that "Preview" button?
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.
But the major problem was the Weimar Constitution that was shoved down Germany's throat to end WWI. It had a huge flaw in that any stupid fringe party could get representation in the Reichstag (and thus political legitimacy) which is literally what allowed the Nazi party to get a foothold from which to launch into control via a charismatic populist leader (Hitler). So yes, there was definitely an air of anger over the way Germany was forced to surrender which help plant the seeds for the populist takeover later. It's never just one thing of course. And the reparations definitely played a part in pushing the massive inflation of the German mark and essential collapse of Germany's economy which was definitely fertilizer for the populist message as well, but the framework that allowed all of this to fall into place and be taken advantage of by a small group with a charismatic leader was the Weimar Constitution itself.