The US strategy regarding Venezuela appears to be to cause as much pain and disturbance as possible, while offering “help” contingent on ‘regime change.’
While US sanctions (which amount to controlling Venezuela’s oil income) have helped crater the economy and caused a humanitarian crisis, the US is trying to get a measly $25m in “aid” across the border in order to help further separate the government and the people. (The same tactic that motivated the US “aid” to Somalia and resulted in the “Black Hawk Down” incident – a running gun-battle in a city full of civilians)
5000 more soldiers to Colombia
“We broke it, and it’s not getting any better until you give us what we want” is pretty basic power politics. How do you demonstrate control over someone: by making them suffer. Never mind that, at the same time, the US is freaking out about Central American immigrants in caravans coming North to pollute the body politic’s priceless milk-white bodily fluids. Everything is a mess – a created mess.
Now, there’s this, which sounds like it’s straight out of the CIA’s Vault 7 malware collection. Remember how the US is constantly banging on about the threat of the Chinese getting into our power grid and doing, well, this? [guard]
Venezuela: ‘country has stopped’ as blackout drags into second day
Delcy Rodríguez said schools were closed and workers should stay home after ‘technological attack’ on Guri hydroelectric plant
What is a “technological attack”?
On Friday morning, more than 16 hours after power failed across most of the country, Venezuela’s vice-president, Delcy Rodríguez,
announced that schools would not open and private- and public-sector workers should stay at home.
Rodríguez told the state-run broadcaster Telesur her country had fallen victim to “an act of electric sabotage committed by Venezuela’s extreme right opposition” on a hydroelectric plant in the country’s south.
The streets of Venezuela’s capital, Caracas, were quiet amid growing fears over the human cost of what observers called the worst power outage in memory.
“I can’t even imagine how the children who are in neo-natal intensive care units spent the night – the ones who are connected to ventilators,” said Eunice Lample, a pediatrician at one such practice in Caracas.
“an act of electric sabotage committed by Venezuela’s extreme right opposition” – cyberwar. I’m not saying that Venezuela’s extreme right opposition isn’t capable of a bit of cyberwar without US coaching but given that the CIA has been coaching Venezuela’s extreme right opposition about pretty much everything else, it’s not a far stretch.
It’s worth noting, here, that cyberwar is considered under international humanitarian law as part of a conflict scenario. If a nation attacks another nation’s civilian power grid (as has happened here) it’s not sufficient to say “it would have been much worse for you if we had simply bombed you like John Bolton wanted to do” – either of those scenarios amount to an attack on civilians. We all know the US doesn’t care about that, and has forgiven itself for any damage that it may cause, etc, but someday some of these clowns may be called to account for their actions.
This is being done in order to increase Venezuela’s Misery Liberty level.
The US Government’s projections show that American use of fossil fuels will probably increase through 2050. [By which time the big die-off will be setting in!] It is absolutely unmistakable that Venezuela is sitting on a huge barely-exploited puddle of oil. The relationship between the history of oil exploitation in Venezuela and US government policy is unmistakable – the US is trying to gain political control over the world’s oil reserves; it’s not necessary to actually have the oil, it’s merely necessary to control the people who control the pumps liberate some people. [cnn]
Remember this post when you read leaks from the US government, snickering about this incident.
Also: the Guardian is writing about this, but the US news is not. I know the Trump family’s dissolution is more interesting, but it’s a bit suspicious to me that there hasn’t been more coverage in the US media.
The history of the exploitation of Venezuela’s oil, and foreign companies’ drilling rights is complicated (I will go so far as to say I am not confident I can understand all the players) but it appears to be remarkably similar to the history of Iran’s oil and foreign companies’ drilling rights. There have been various cycles of foreign companies coming in and overthrowing governments, setting up sweetheart deals, then revolutionaries nationalize the oil reserves and the US becomes their implacable enemy because: socialism! Or maybe it’s simply “resistance is futile.” It seems to me that the one kind of “socialism” that is absolutely never acceptable is when a government nationalizes its oil reserves and throws US oil companies out. I’m sure it’s a coincidence.
Someday some of these clowns may be called to account for their actions? Wow, you sound optimistic today. What happened? Are you in a good mood?
By the way, personally I believe that the probability of any American being held accountable for the crimes they did is so close to zero that I might as well treat it as impossible.
Ieva Skrebele@#1:
I believe that the probability of any American being held accountable for the crimes they did is so close to zero that I might as well treat it as impossible.
Maybe that was a little bud of
optimismwishful thinking but you crushed it like a bug on a railroad track.Aww. Sorry. Don’t be sad. I’m sending you a hug.
Now I have to wonder about whether I’m a bad influence on you (and people in general).
Speaking of crushed hopes, reading you blog for two years had made me more cynical. Well, I suppose that a more precise way how to put it is that I have learned about some depressing topics that I previously didn’t know about—it’s not that I wasn’t already just as cynical as I have become thanks to you, it’s just that the scope of topics I’m cynical about has increased. So here we are, both of us crushing each other’s optimism and spiraling down towards absolute cynicism.
Not to be a third wheel on the bug-crushing railroad cart, but, yes, the clowns in charge will get what they deserve. I think the worst possible outcome – for them – is that they all have to share the same Nobel peace prize instead of everyone getting their own.
Incidentally, neither of you is a bad influence on people, quite the opposite. Take me, for example. Reading this blog has infused me with cynicism as well.* If it hadn’t I’d now be crippled with dismay at the state of the world, unable to function and wasting all my time screaming. Instead, I can scroll through the daily news with ease and a total lack of surprise, thinking, “of course they did/that happened”, while calmly processing the minutiae of whatever crap the world is doling out today.
These days I’m more suprised when things go right – e.g. the Dragon capsule not crashing into the ISS, burning up or sinking to the bottom of the Atlantic. Well, maybe next time, when there’s more at stake. At any rate, occasional pleasant surprise is a much nicer state of being that constant dismay even though, as a cynic, I can’t really enjoy it. (Can you overdose on cyncism? I’m inclined to say that you can but nothing will happen. Perhaps that’s a symptom.)
*Thank you?
Seems rather speculative.
(That ain’t cynicism, it’s credulity)
Or like a small Central or South American country that’s attracted the interest of the United States.
As a side note, I was just listening to an interview with Max Blumberg (?) who was pointing out that US attacks (my term) against Venezuela has led to the USA importing more oil from Russia than it has imported in over a decade. Duh, was this planned?
John Morales@#5:
Seems rather speculative.
Yes, it is. I suppose we won’t know what happened for years.
jrkrideau@#7:
US attacks (my term) against Venezuela has led to the USA importing more oil from Russia than it has imported in over a decade
It’s impossible to say “nobody would be that dumb!” when the Trump administration is involved.
I find it interesting that you believe the “official” lie of the Venezuelan government simply because the US has intervened other Latin American countries. The reason the Guri hydroelectric plant is down is because the money to maintain it has been systematically stolen and at least nine of the 20 turbines are down for need of repair https://www.el-carabobeno.com/nueve-de-20-turbinas-que-tiene-la-represa-del-guri-estan-inoperantes/ (I’m sorry that it is in Spanish, but I want to cite a local press source). I agree with you that the recent sanctions the Trump administration took are basically criminal as they affect the people, while barely affecting those in power (in fact it provides the perfect alibi for the government to blame their incredible shortcomings on an external power). The oil industry in Venezuela was nationalized on 1976 by then president Carlos Andres Perez. Coincidentally, it was during Perez second term that Chavez tried to take the power by force on the 1992 coupe. Anyway, I’m with you that the US does a lot of misdeeds and terrible things, but it doesn’t mean that failed governments and nations can’t happen for internal reasons (like voting for a megalomaniac wanting to be a dictator like Chavez and Trump).
Komarov @#4
What you described is somewhat similar to what I experience. I guess, one could expect a cynical person to be grumpy, but I’m not, actually I’m quite cheerful and mostly happy with my life.*
Like you, I also calmly and unemotionally process all the bad news without even being surprised or feeling desperate. That’s just what I expected anyway. Unlike you, I actually do enjoy the occasional pleasant surprise whenever something good happens.
—
*My recipe for a happy life—learn to get by with as little money as possible, work only a few hours per week, spend the rest of my time pursuing my hobbies and doing things I like. Don’t read news too often and don’t worry about things I cannot influence anyway. Having no children means that I don’t need to worry about the future—once my life gets too uncomfortable or the world falls apart due to the changing climate, I will just kill myself. For now, I’m just embracing hedonism and enjoying my life for as long as the nice times last.
joestutter@#10:
I find it interesting that you believe the “official” lie of the Venezuelan government simply because the US has intervened other Latin American countries
It’s not that. I strongly suspect it was a US cyberattack because of method, opportunity, and motive. I’m probably also being highly spooked by John Bolton and Elliot Abrams being positioned to advocate more extreme methods to Trump; I have been expecting a ramp-up of dirty tricks and more violence from the anti-government forces based on (presumed) more CIA involvement. In that case I could be suffering from confirmation bias: I am expecting dirty tricks and I see what looks like it could be one.
The information about the state of the power plant is interesting and argues that the power failure could be “natural” (it’s also possible that general collapse is resulting in people stripping components out of the system to sell them) Perhaps it did fail with convenient timing and the Venezuelans are blaming the US as a convenient root of all evil.
Anyway, I’m with you that the US does a lot of misdeeds and terrible things, but it doesn’t mean that failed governments and nations can’t happen for internal reasons
That’s definitely true. I’m surprised that Trump doesn’t think Chavez was a great guy; they’re very similar except that Chavez was brown and Trump is orange.
Marcus Ranum @ # 12: … they’re very similar except that Chavez was brown and Trump is orange.
Er, and that Chavez was competent, reached his presidency without an irreality tv show, did the majority of his country’s population a lot of good, and remained highly popular throughout his life.
@13 Pierce R. Butler
Picky, picky. They were/are both humans—err I think Trump is human?
Other than that, it a bit difficult to see any similarities between the two.
@ 10 joestutter
I find it interesting that you believe the “official” lie of the Venezuelan government simply because the US has intervened other Latin American countries
Aw gee, just because the US lied in the run-up to the Spanish-American War Remember the Main. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_of_the_Spanish%E2%80%93American_War, lied about the Gulf of Tonkin incident, lied about weapons of mass destruction in the lead-up to the Iraq invasion, lied about a “No Fly Zone” in Libya and so on. Oh, and Puerto Rico remains a US colony.
The US has done its damnedest to pull of a coup in Venezuela more than once. One way or another, it appears to have been interfering in Venezuela since Hugo Chávez was first elected.
The US in the persons of the President, the Secretary of State and the National Security Advisor plus the demented Senator from Florida have been talking about regime change in, not just Venezuela, but Nicaragua and Cuba.
All of a sudden, just after the February 23 fiasco there is a sudden massive power failure. Sheer coincidence. And pigs may fly. It is remotely possible that it is a coincidence but that I should take the US’s word is crazy. Notice that Abrams is almost dancing a jig in this clip. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExAE7Bsi2Q4&feature=youtu.be&t=131.
I find it hard not to believe the Venezuelan government if offered the choice of their story and the US story. Of course both could be wrong. I look forward to the UN report.
If Trump, Bolton, Pompeo, Abrams, etc. all said that Venezuela was in South America, I would haul out a map and check.
Maine blast it.
@15 jrkrideau
All of a sudden, just after the February 23 fiasco there is a sudden massive power failure. Sheer coincidence. And pigs may fly. It is remotely possible that it is a coincidence but that I should take the US’s word is crazy
It was not all of a sudden, this is not the first time there has been a massive power failure in Venezuela, it is for sure the largest, but they have been going down since at least 2008. Below are links to several articles that mention the lack of maintenance as the main reason for the power failures since 2008 (I apologize again that they are in Spanish, but I think they are less politicized than the ones I can find in english) . Chavez did invest in new thermoelectric plants, but apparently many of them were either not connected or are not running at full potential for lack of fuel (yes, lack of fuel in a country that used to be one of the top oil and gasoline producers in the world).
Also, just for the sake of clarity, I was born and raised in Venezuela and still have direct family members living there.
https://hugarcapella.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/confiabilidad-del-sistema-electrico-nacional1.pdf
https://www.venelogia.com/archivos/10377/
https://www.monografias.com/trabajos65/sector-electrico-venezuela/sector-electrico-venezuela.shtml
https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias/2015/10/151028_venezuela_luz_electricidad_crisis_dp
http://elestimulo.com/climax/en-la-oscuridad-el-sistema-electrico-nacional/
https://www.analitica.com/actualidad/actualidad-nacional/falta-de-mantenimiento-y-desinversion-incidieron-en-aumento-de-fallas-electricas-en-venezuela/
@13 Pierce R. Butler
Er, and that Chavez was competent, reached his presidency without an irreality tv show, did the majority of his country’s population a lot of good, and remained highly popular throughout his life.
If there is one thing that Chavez was not it is competent. The mess Venezuela is in right now is a product of his policies and the corruption he fostered. Also, I find it bewildering that some people mention that he did a lot of good for the population implying that before him the country was some savage nation. Venezuela had free public education, including college and post graduate, for decades before he came to power as well as public health.
There were -and still are- some systemic problems in public education and health that were exacerbated on the late 1980’s and the 1990’s in part by the collapse of oil prices. Chavez tried to tackle some of these and had some decent ideas regarding health, but he was completely inept at execution and surrounded himself with people as inept as himself. One thing he was really good at was selfpromotion (another similarity to Trump). As an example you can look at the alphabetization miracle that he used to promote himself which was way (if not completely) overblown. (https://frrodriguez.web.wesleyan.edu/docs/working_papers/Freed_from_Illiteracy.pdf ).
I agree with Marcus that there are many similarities between Trump and Chavez, and even thought Chavez did not have a tv show before been elected, he had one afterward every Sunday that lasted 4 to eight hours.
joestutter@#17&18:
I’m going to turn my skepticism about the whole affair up another couple of notches. Thank you. There is a lot more I have to understand.
The way the blackout was described where I initially read about it was as a nation-wide blanket shutdown (or at least it gave that impression) – something that took the entire grid down and kept it down for days sounds to me like a problem with the control systems and a possible cyberattack – though, as you point out, the grid appears to be badly maintained and unreliable already. Normal grid failures don’t result in complete long-term shutdowns; failures of the control systems might. So that’s one point going one direction. Another point going the other direction is that apparently the power has been coming back on, spottily – which is not what we’d expect to see if the control systems were the problem. A cyberattack/control system failure would look pretty much like black, black, black, and pow the lights come back on eventually. Normal grid failures would look like spotty, regional failures that were repaired in priority order. I don’t know enough about Venezuela’s grid and I’m willing to believe the worst (I’ve had friends from there tell me horror stories about the chavista’s competence)
So I’ll move my position to “suspicious but withholding judgement.”
One of the problems with these things is that the people I know who could confirm or deny – won’t. The people who would confirm or deny don’t know. We’re going to have to wait for the history of this time to be written and I may not survive that long because the bodies are not going to be buried for a long time.
If this was a result of US strategic cyberwar, then it is definitely a crime against humanity. The body-count is already going up.
If there is one thing that Chavez was not it is competent
Another similarity to Trump, there.
[Edit: There’s another thing I did not mention. In 2013 an industry acquaintance attempted to recruit me to help bid on a project sponsored by a “presidential library” of a former US regime member. The project was to develop cyber-attack tools specifically designed to bypass Venezuelan government control on computer networks. After some initial discussion, my friend and I concluded that the other principal party was extremely skeevy – actually, off the skeevy-chart – and declined further involvement. Were we dealing with a provocateur, or an actual off the books project? I’ll probably never know. But it definitely increased my suspicion-level regarding the power grid failure because power systems were mentioned as a target in 2013.]
@ 17 joestutter
Unfortunately my Spanish is non-existent but I am quite willing to believe poor maintenance, etc.
My issue is that the USA has been doing its damnedest to overthrow the Venezuelan Govt since about 10 seconds after Chávez was elected and has recently been ramping up attacks including sponsoring a puppet pretending to be a president.
Just a few days after the fiasco at the Colombian border the lights go out. Duh, pure coincidence.
If the entire power installation at El Guri hydroelectric dam had failed a year ago, I would have assumed it was bad luck and poor maintenance.
The USA has a long record of lies, and violent interventions in a lot of countries. Check with President Allende’s daughter.
Trump and his crazed loons have been issuing threats, imposing sanctions, threatening other countries that trade with Venezuela, trying to incite the military to rebel, and so on.
The default assumption is enemy action. My assumption could well be wrong but the timing and the US gloating is damning.