The US-funded CANVAS organization that trained Juan Guaido and his allies produced a 2010 memo on exploiting electricity outages and urged the opposition “to take advantage of the situation…towards their needs”Hybrid warfare?
The Gray Zone
US Regime Change Blueprint Proposed Venezuelan Electricity Blackouts as ‘Watershed Event’ for ‘Galvanizing Public Unrest’
Max Blumenthal
Corrected link
ReplyDeletehttps://thegrayzone.com/2019/03/11/us-regime-change-blueprint-proposed-venezuelan-electricity-blackouts-as-watershed-event-for-galvanizing-public-unrest/
Warmongers have been claiming for years that foreign interests could use a cyber-attack to disable the USA’s electrical grid. The Maduro government says the US government did just that to Venezuela’s electrical grid.
At noon on 7 March 2019, Sen. Marco Rubio boasted that, “Venezuela is going to enter a period of suffering that no nation in our hemisphere has confronted in modern history.” This was during a hearing on Venezuela at the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee.
Five hours later came the U.S. attack on the Guri power station at the Simón Bolívar Hydroelectric Plant, which plunged 80% of Venezuela into darkness. Marco Rubio was immediately informed, and he jubilantly tweeted that “backup generators have failed” before Venezuelan authorities themselves knew that backup generators had failed.
Back in Caracas, Guaidó immediately started demanding that the pro-US National Assembly invoke Article 187 of the Constitution, which authorizes the National Assembly to call in a foreign invasion.
We humans have become so dependent upon electricity that we panic when it is cut off. Whenever the Israelis attack Gaza or any other place, the first thing they do is destroy the target’s electrical infrastructure. This takes out hospitals, traffic signals, the Internet, the media, refrigerators, everything. Nuclear power plants potentially have meltdowns. And it can be hard to prove that an attack occurred.
Perhaps a traitor used a USB flash drive to insert the US-Israeli-made Stuxnet computer worm (a cyber weapon) into the power station’s PLC (programmable logic controller). In Sep 2010 the USA and Israel used Stuxnet to cripple Iran’s nuclear generating stations.
Regarding traffic signals, note that the U.S. attack occurred at 5:30 pm local time at the height of rush hour in Caracas. This is why Rubio was gloating.
There have been more blackouts since then, since it takes time to bring an electricity grid back into full operation. Power generation and consumption must always be balanced and synchronized. Restoration can only be done gradually, especially if the Stuxnet computer worm scrambled all computer data at the generating station. It took Iran months to clean Stuxnet out of their systems.
Marco Rubio et. al. claim that the blackout was caused by poor “socialist” maintenance and an antiquated system. In reality the Guri power station is state-of-the-art, and is the third largest generating station in the entire world. It got all new generators and hardware in 2010.
The next U.S. attack will be on Venezuela’s water and waste treatment plants. This is standard US and Israeli practice. They always start by destroying the infrastructure (gas, water, sewer, and electric). Venezuela is up against a the world's leading experts in how to bring down a society. Elliot Abrams et. al. will be smoking cigars, sipping brandy, and talking about their great exploits after this is all over.
Over at Moon of Alabama a reader comments, “The new and improved Stuxnet worm attacked the systems that regulate water flow through the valves that send the water to the turbines. This is precisely the type of attack that Stuxnet is made for. Stuxnet opened the valves all the way, while causing readouts to falsely say that everything was normal. With an enormous amount of pressure from the dam, the turbines over-generated, causing a severe imbalance in the national infrastructure. There are safety measures, but Stuxnet turned then off, causing a nationwide tug-of-water that resulted in severe damage.”
AC power is a waveform, which means that all plants and substations must be balanced and synchronized, or they will blow up.
Should such an attack happen to the USA, then GE-designed “boiling water” reactors in 13 states will go full Fukishima.
Since Venezuela relies on a single hydroelectric power plant for 80% of the nation's electricity, a tremendous amount of damage can be done by attacking that single plant.
ReplyDeleteAs I said above, Rubio and the rest falsely blamed the blackout on “socialist mismanagement.”
ReplyDeleteThey claimed that Maduro was causing babies to die in hospital incubators. (The “incubator babies” hoax all over again.)
In reality the Maduro government was not entirely unprepared for the U.S. terrorist attack on the Guri station. All major hospitals had backup generators, and they all switched on.
The USA has withdrawn its remaining diplomatic staff, which suggests that military action might be imminent, or that more cyber-attacks are imminent.
The U.S. has imposed sanctions against Russian bank Evrofinance Mosnarbank for allegedly helping Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA evade US sanctions. Elliott Abrams says that “significant sanctions” against international financial institutions can be expected in the coming days.
Yesterday Pompeo met with Indian Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale to demand that India stop buying crude from Venezuela.
Electricity has been restored in much of Venezuela, with authorities urging citizens to avoid using heavy usage devices. Maduro says the computerized system in the Guri station, plus the central electrical “brain” in Caracas both suffered cyber-attacks, while recovery was delayed by physical attacks against transmission lines and electrical substations. Maduro says the attacks were directed from Chicago and Houston and that more evidence would be presented soon. He said two arrests were made for sabotage against the communications system in the Guri Dam.
In Caracas, attention has now turned to water. The U.S. attack and the blackout caused the water pumping system in the nearby Tuy valley to temporarily shut down, causing water shortages.
The US plan is to make the masses suffer so badly that they will think anything is preferable, even horrendous slavery under the oligarchs.
The incubator problem is now real. Without power hospitals can not function. The country is going to burn because Bolton and his neocon butt-buddies will destroy anyone and anything to get the oil. These assholes should be slowly skinned alive an inch at a time, live broadcast on PBS.
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