Was Venezuela's 5-Day Blackout Caused By Cyberattacks -- or Wildfires? (apnews.com) 131
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.
Re: Wildfires caused by Socialism (Score:1)
I think the population is just getting dumber, and it's being caused by rose tinted glasses worn by people reminiscing about a place and time that they never experienced. They may as well wear hats that say "Make the old stuff great again!"
Think about it:
We already know that vinyl produces way less audio fidelity than CDs, and yet people keep paying stupid amounts of money on turntables and argue on forums about which kind sound better, even though they all suck.
We already know that socialism turns even the
There's no money to pay anyone (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:There's no money to pay anyone (Score:4, Insightful)
There's lots of money. You can even use it as toilet paper.
Is this why Socialismdoesn't work? (Score:2, Interesting)
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 Ven
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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
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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 ?
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Damn those Scotsmen, you turn your back for 10 seconds and next thing you know they're drinking German Beer...
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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.)
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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.
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And in any case, this isn't a mid sized city, but perhaps the largest city area in all of the USA.
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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,
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The Netherlands is a representative monarchy, not a socialist country.
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North Korea is an unrepresentative monarchy.
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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?
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The leader of NK is mostly a powerless figurehead?
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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 th
Re:Is this why Socialismdoesn't work? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re: Is this why Socialismdoesn't work? (Score:2)
The reparations the Germany had to pay after WWI where less than France had to pay to Germany in real terms after the Franco Prussian War. They are not the cause of WWII. General Pershing had it right on the eve of the armistice when he said if we agreed to the armistice the Germans would not accept they where defeated and we would have to do it all over again. The right end to WWI would have been to march into Germany in 1919 and demand an unconditional surrender, which is exactly what we did in WWII, bec
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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?
Buy guns to shoot people they don't like, the same as everywhere else.
"There are fewer dollars around. Bullets are too costly, as are parts for the getaway car. How's a Venezuelan gangster to survive these days?"
https://twitter.com/WSJ/status/1106502839420047360 [twitter.com]
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In corrupt countries, the gangsters go into government so they can use the machinery of the state to effectuate "you know, pay the license fee or things might...get broken."
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But outlawing guns gets rid of them. California told me.
Was Venezuela's 5-Day Blackout Caused By ... (Score:4, Interesting)
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?
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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 e
Looking at UK politics (Score:1)
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.
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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 [mises.org] 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 ba
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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
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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... [time.com]
https://www.npr.org/2019/02/22... [npr.org]
etc.
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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... [time.com]
https://www.npr.org/2019/02/22... [npr.org] 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
Maduro's next claim (Score:4, Insightful)
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."
Re: Maduro's next claim (Score:1)
it's amazing that even on a supposedly tech-related news blog, no one seems to remember that stuxnet exists
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it's amazing that even on a supposedly tech-related news blog, no one seems to remember that stuxnet exists
These plants and the equipment they use predates PLCs and internet connected devices.
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Is it fishy an earthquake knocks out a power plant, and the backup power lines from a nearby one to keep it safe, and the backup generators bolted to the cement floor in the basement?
Sounds fishy, too.
Or, you know, socialism. (Score:1)
maybe central control isn't as good as it is sold?
they only the funds to hire homer simpson's in con (Score:2)
they only the funds to hire homer simpson's in the control rooms.
It's simple. (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Remove your foil hat and explain something... (Score:1)
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",
It wouldn't be about disrupting power (Score:1)
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 sh
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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 if you used a virus a la stuxnet then you would be easily exposed as they would have evidence of your involvement. The NSA wouldn't expose themselves to such predictable open scrutiny like that. Besides, everything I've learned indicates that the NSA has clear, acheivable and direct mission objectives. The CIA deals with lots of (human) uncertainty, so if the US was involved then you should suspect them.
And we absolutely care enough.
No, no we don't. However, it could be manual sabotage by a Venezuelan countryman. Using that app
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What if Venezuela seized the oil production so the elected-for-life elites can skim profits?
Does the whole current situation make a lot more sense?
Stuxnet (Score:2, Informative)
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?
Re: Stuxnet (Score:1)
Probably never heard of COINTELPRO, either. Or battery powered toothbrushes or other irrelevant things.
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Using your knowledge of the electric generation and distribution systems in Venezuela, please explain how this is relevant?
Socialism works (Score:2)
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.
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If that’s true, why are socialist countries so prone to foreign interference making it fail. Why wasn’t/isn’t the USSR or China (larger powers by all metrics) able to interfere with the US to the point of it failing?
Socialism has been tried from Nazi Germany to Venezuela and it has ALL failed, the US didn’t even interfere with National-Socialist Germany until Germany was well on its way to failure. The USSR failed while spending just a tenth of the US spending on the Cold War.
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It came close. US almost went communist between WW1 and WW2. Only draconian measures by the FBI prevented the US from going Communist. As it is US is pretty socialist - Social Security, Medicare, 40 hr week, Womens rights, Civil rights for colored people - these were all issues raised by US Socialists and Communists and US has adopted all of them. Only free college, universal healthcare and paid maternity leave differentiates the US from a socialist country (not communist socialist).
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Oh dear, another ignorant right-wing cunt that things Nazism (national socialism) is a kind of socialism.
He no doubt thinks that The People's Democratic Republic of North Korea, is a democracy too.
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Costa Rica is not a communist country, but has a lot of socialist characteristics. However, it also has a strong democratic system. You can have what it is useful and combine with other elements; why not?
The problem is not the theoretical communism or socialism (that are different things), but how some people twist these concepts to create dictatorial systems. In fact, to this date, no one communist or socialist real country have been on this planet. Because, why at the beginning the involved people
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This is a bit like saying that the horse industry must sabotage all of the successful pegasus farms around the world, lest people demand winged horses.
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your words are in the wrong order.
*if* socialism worked, people in the US would demand it.
Venezuela is not an example of it *working*, but rather another case study in its failure . . .
hawk
Remember how this began... (Score:1)
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
I might be obvious but still ... (Score:1)
... 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.
Physical issues are much more likely than cyber (Score:1)
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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.
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" designed to short out electrical transformers, blacking out much of Serbia"
http://edition.cnn.com/US/9905... [cnn.com] (May 3, 1999)
All part of a color revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] .