Nicolas Maduro says he has proof Venezuela blackout was Right wing sabotage

[Zorro]

Source: The Telegraph

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has insisted that a massive electricity blackout which plunged much of the country into darkness on Monday was the work of Right wing saboteurs hoping to influence the outcome of key municipal elections this weekend.

The leftist leader claimed to have proof that a deliberately severed cable was the cause of the power outage which hit 10 states and brought chaos to Caracas, drawing accusations of government incompetence from the opposition.

In an address on national television, Mr Maduro briefly showed images of what appeared to be a cut conductor cable lying on the grass - though it was unclear where the photos were taken.

"What motive could there be for leaving a whole country without electricity?" he said. "Whoever made this criminal attack wanted to leave our Venezuela without electricity for 24 to 48 hours ... thinking that would convince people not to continue with the revolution."

Read more: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/southamerica/venezuela/10493846/Nicolas-Maduro-says-he-has-proof-Venezuela-blackout-was-Right-wing-sabotage.html

[geek tragedy]

1. pretty poor system that one ham-handed saboteur can crash

it with one snip of a cable.

[Ranchemp.]

11. WTF does this have to do with the topic?

[bitchkitty]

12. Nothing. It's a scuzzy spammer. I reported him. n/t

[Ranchemp.]

13. I did too.

I expect MIRt will show this spammer to the door.

And it's gone.
Good job MIRt.

[DetlefK]

2. Ah. The famous "permanent revolution" of communism.

You know what's great about a permanent revolution? It never ends and you can always claim the excuse of "special circumstances".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permanent_revolution

[dotymed]

5. Communism? lol..

Whatever YOU call it, we ALL know that "unfettered capitalism" is the best economic (and political) system ever.



Is a "permanent revolution" anything like perpetual war?

[DetlefK]

6. How do you read the phrase "continuing with the revolution" ???

Btw, the socialist revolution in Venezuala has been running for 15 years now.

What else could Maduro have meant if not a hint to "permanent revolution"?

[frylock]

14. the socialist revolution in Venezuala has been running for 15 years now..

and without any negative outsider influence whatsoever. nope.

[DetlefK]

18. That still doesn't explain why he's using the term "revolution".

"Building a new/better/just/socialist Venezuela ..." He could have used whatever. But instead of using terms that implicate that the socialists work towards the future, he's using a term that focuses on the past and absolves them of responsibility.

Why is he still calling it a revolution even though the socialists have been in power the whole time? Are they revolting against the capitalist rebels?
Why isn't he branding the capitalists as revolutionaries threatening the well-being of motherland Venezuela???

Open your ears: It's a tried&true communist dog-whistle, meant to rile up the masses into blind patriotism so they accept the "extraordinary" times ahead, now that Maduro can rule by decree.

[dotymed]

29. Frylock,

You forgot . You are just gonna incite the capitalists....lol

[Dash87]

16. Your last sentence - yeah, it is.

Both need to be stamped out of existence.

[Wilms]

3. "The leftist leader"?

Is this another editorial?

[Bacchus4.0]

8. the hapless leader would be a more apt description n/t

s

[snooper2]

4. This guy cracks me up...what a joke...

The picture with the article is BEGGING for some good captions though

[loli phabay]

9. wow, ugly ugly shirt.

[Dreamer Tatum]

23. "Oh it gets better! Not only is it mustard-colored, but it has epaulettes!" nt

[Ranchemp.]

25. This is a pencil.....

can you say pencil boys and girls?

[name not needed]

57. "I'm gonna make this pencil disappear"

[Ranchemp.]

7. Same old shit, different day.

This is the pattern, blame every thing that goes wrong on everyone else except yourself.
The corrupt Maduro regime must be getting mighty worried about the upcoming elections, they blame so called RW saboteurs for the govt incompetence to keep the electric on.

This guy is either mentally unbalanced or just plaid old stupid, quite possibly a bit of both.

[Dash87]

17. Nothing but textbook, "what about the terrorists!?" tripe at play here.

Every power-hungry authoritarian-minded leader has their boogeymen. Luckily ours (The Terrorists™) have mostly reached "dead horse" status.

[Ranchemp.]

19. +1000. nt

[Dash87]

15. Keep those people afraid, Maduro! Hack...

[Comrade Grumpy]

20. I see the Scoop Jackson Brigade and the Milton Friedman Squad have this under control.

Thank goodness! Venezuela is only a four-day drive from Texas!

[Dreamer Tatum]

21. Yes...no leftist could possibly cut a cable and photograph it

or, even easier, see a cut cable and photograph it.

It would be funny, except that kind of shit DOES pass as evidence in a tin-pot, two-meal, third-rate banana republic
like Venezuela.

[hughee99]

22. So his "proof" of RW sabotage was that SOMEONE cut a cable?

Let's hope the Venezuelan courts have a different interpretation of the word "proof" than Maduro does.

When I went out to my car this morning, there was shit on my lawn... It's proof that Venezuelan RWers were in my yard this morning.

[Ranchemp.]

24. Cut? I doubt it,

more likely frayed and snapped due to lack of maintenance. But of course, the corrupt Maduro regime has to blame anyone but themselves.

[Tarheel_Dem]

26. Hey, they blamed "sabotage" for the September blackouts as well. At what point do people take...

responsibility for their failures?

Corpoelec Workers Protest Conditions as Venezuelan Electricity Minister Vows to “Restore Confidence” in Power Grid
By Ryan Mallett-Outtrim

Merida, 19th September 2013 (Venezuelanalysis.com) – Electricity minister Jesse Chacon has pledged to improve Venezuela's power grid following widespread blackouts on 3 September, while workers at the state energy company Corpoelec have protested against new employment conditions.

On Wednesday, Chacon launched an initiative labelled by the government as “Mission Electricity” during the inauguration of the India Urquía power plant in Miranda state.

Chacon stated he intends to “restore confidence in our system”, following this month's blackouts. During the ceremony, the minister stated that the blackouts had been caused by a metal grille falling on electrical lines; the resulting short-circuit cutting power across the west of the country.

The minister reiterated previous statements that the malfunction was the result of sabotage, though he stated that an investigation is ongoing.

Despite allegations of sabotage, Chacon argued that a new “awareness” of energy use is needed.

http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/10034

[KamaAina]

27. He probably also has proof the moon is made of green cheese.

[Judi Lynn]

28. Media War Against Venezuela Continues

December 05, 2013
Fear of Socialist Revolution Continues

Media War Against Venezuela Continues

by MARIA PAEZ VICTOR


Since the election of President Hugo Chávez in 1999 there has been antipathy and deliberate media distortion of the political events in Venezuela.
Last Sunday, the Toronto Star (newspaper that self-identifies as liberal, broad thinking, progressive) published a defamatory article about the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro. Once again the Canadian press goes on the attack against Venezuela, ridiculing and misrepresenting its president. And if at any time you thought that it was the personality of President Chávez that offended the world press, think again because all that media aggression now focuses on his successor, President Nicolás Maduro.

~snip~
The business elite - which led the coup d’etat in 2002- is a minority that considers itself privileged, it systematically commits fraud against the nation obtaining and misusing dollars; they create artificial scarcity through hoarding, scandalously overprices goods, practices usury, promotes capital exodus, and unleashes rumors and lies to create panic and destabilize a government that is not convenient for their immoral avarice. The problem is not economic it is political.

The Venezuelan economy is doing very well. Its oil exports last year amounted to $94 billon while the imports only reached $59.3 billon – a historically low record. The national reserves are at $22 billon and the economy has a surplus (not a deficit) of 2.9% of GDP. The country has no significantly onerous national or foreign debts. These are excellent indicators that many countries in Europe would envy, even the USA and Canada. [4]

So good is the economic future of Venezuela that even imperial banks recognize it. The multinational bank Wells Fargo has recently declared that Venezuela is one of the emerging economies that is most protected against any possible financial crisis and the Bank of America Merril Lynch has recommended to its investors to buy Venezuelan government bonds. [5]

More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/12/05/media-war-against-venezuela-continues/

[Ranchemp.]

30. The economy is doing well?

That's so ridiculous it deserves a big and a .
Oh, I'm sorry, you're right, the economy is doing well, if you're a Maduro supporter or a govt. toadie.

[jhasp]

58. So I read the linked article....

So I read the linked article and was surprised by this quote "Bank of America Merril [sp] Lynch has recommended to its investors to buy Venezuelan government bonds". Now finance is my profession and it would be poor advice to invest in fixed income securities in a high inflation, volatile environment. So I did some research and found that, in fact, a Merrill Lynch analyst had recommended the purchase of Venezuela bonds in 2012...on the news that Chavez was in poor health and that there might be a change in the government.

[link:http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-29/chavez-cancer-surgery-makes-venezuela-bonds-best-emerging-market-performer.html|

[msanthrope]

59. Welcome to DU. nt

[Freddie Stubbs]

31. This is the same guy who claimed that his predecessor was poisoned by "dark forces"

March 13 (UPI) -- Venezuela will formally investigate the possibility foreign enemies infected Hugo Chavez with cancer, causing the president's death, the interim leader said.

"We have this intuition that our commander Chavez was poisoned by dark forces that wanted to be rid of him," Nicolas Maduro, sworn in as interim president Friday, told Venezuela's pan-Latin American TV network teleSUR.

"The world's best scientists" will be invited to join a government panel to probe the accusation, Maduro said.

Maduro, 50, implied Washington could have been behind such an attack -- an accusation the State Department has flatly denied.

more: http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2013/03/13/Maduro-Dark-forces-behind-Chavez-cancer/UPI-57121363159800/

[Judi Lynn]

32. Guatemala syphilis experiments in 1940s called "chillingly egregious"

By/Ryan Jaslow / CBS News/ August 31, 2011, 11: 33 AM
Guatemala syphilis experiments in 1940s called "chillingly egregious"

(CBS/AP) What would you call deliberately infecting people with syphilis and other sexually transmitted diseases? If you were among a group of American medical researchers working in Guatemala in the 1940s, you would have called it science.
Chilling new details have emerged from the 1940s Guatemala syphilis trials, where U.S. researchers infected soldiers, prisoners, prostitutes, and the mentally ill with potentially-lethal STDs.

The Guatemala experiments have been considered a black eye on U.S. medical research's history since last year, when its files were unearthed by a Wellesley College medical historian, Dr. Susan M. Reverby. But members of a presidential panel tasked with reviewing the experiment say new information indicates researchers were especially unethical - even when placed into the historical context.
"The researchers put their own medical advancement first and human decency a far second," said Anita Allen, a member of the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues.

From 1946 to 1948, Dr. John Cutler of the U.S. Public Health Service and colleagues worked with Guatemalan government agencies to conduct NIH-funded medical research that deliberately exposed 1,300 people to STDs like syphilis, gonorrhea, or chancroid, to see if the newly discovered penicillin could prevent infection.

The commission revealed Monday only 700 of those infected were treated. Eighty-three people died.

More:
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/guatemala-syphilis-experiments-in-1940s-called-chillingly-egregious/

Clearly, this was many decades BEFORE U.S. "researchers" had as much practice at their craft.

No one in the world would buy the pompous posturing by right wingers that the US has neither motive, resources, nor history in doing things like this.

[Ranchemp.]

36. Syphillis ain't cancer and Chavez, may he RIP, died a natural death, not at the hands of the

US Govt.

Jeeez, it's gotta be getting harder and harder to defend this bat shit crazy nut and his corrupt regime and all his toadies.

[reddread]

33. so does California

anybody care?
bidness as usual.
post accountability America.

[Judi Lynn]

34. How soon we forget! Thanks for the reminder, we shouldn't need it, should we?

Seems as if it were only yesterday. What a nightmare.

No question about who wields the power.

[hrmjustin]

35. So he claims.

[Ranchemp.]

37. If he claims it's true,

then it must be so, who are we to question his "knowledge"?

[hrmjustin]

38. I don'ttrust someone who needs special powers to govern like he did.

Don't trust the man at all.

[Ranchemp.]

40. +1000.

Couldn't agree more.
At least Hugo Chavez had charisma, a rock has more charisma than the present ruler, Maduro.

[hrmjustin]

41. Maduro is not good.

[warrprayer]

39. Yay! Let's trash democratically elected progressive leaders in S.A.!

http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/CIAtimeline.html

"Merida, 27th November 2013 (Venezuelanalysis.com) –President Maduro called on candidates on both sides who are elected on 8 December to participate in a “social, economic, and political national dialogue for the future of Venezuela” the day after the elections. His call comes amid some political violence.

“To all the mayors who are legitimately elected, in peace, across Venezuela, I call on you to a great national dialogue, about topics that affect the people, about the environmental, rubbish, and security systems...so that Venezuela continues in a state of consolidated peace,” Maduro said yesterday at an inauguration in Miranda state.

Maduro’s call comes amid accusations of violence or the intention to commit violence by both political sides."


http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/10200

And after we're done, lets use those same tactics to collapse American city governments and steal pensions!

U.S.A.! U.S.A.!

[Ranchemp.]

42. When they deserve it, then yes,

and Maduro and his corrupt regime richly deserve it.

[hrmjustin]

43. is he beyond criticism?

[warrprayer]

44. please don't make me laugh

save it for someone who doesn't know what's going on.

No right wing sabatoge in South America! Noooo, NEVER!

LMAO

[hrmjustin]

45. That was not my question. Is he beyond criticism?

You can believe him all you want. I don't trust him. We disagree.

[warrprayer]

48. respectfully disagree.

I never have been to South America - you probably have.
God Bless Pope Francis.
Not kidding at all.

[Ranchemp.]

51. I've been to Venezuela.

Back in the 70's, my SeaBee Batt. was deployed to Ven. to help build the infrastructure, roads, bridges, etc.
Great people, beautiful country.

[warrprayer]

52. Stole your heart...

... from the sound of it, yes?

That happens often, from what I understand...

[Ranchemp.]

53. That they did.

The people were the best, they would bring us food/drink, the Venezuelan's who worked with us, not for us, but with us were top notch, just wonderful people and the country was some of the most beautiful country I've ever seen.
I still believe they welcomed us with open arms because we didn't come in armed with weapons, we came in armed with construction equipment to help better their lives.

[warrprayer]

54. Seabees rock!

Thanks for your service!

[hrmjustin]

56. .

[Ranchemp.]

46. Why don't you just enlighten us as to what's really going on?

This ought to be good.

[warrprayer]

47. watch the video

it IS GOOD!!!

It is a perfect example of U.S. sanctioned sabotage in South America!

&list=PL213396646199A72A

The immortal Mr. Feliciano!

Politics suck. In the end, love is all that is real.

[Ranchemp.]

49. Ahhhh, now I get it,

because the governments of Chavez/Maduro so screwed up the economy, then it must be the US Govt. fault.
Now why didn't I see that?

And where's the proof that the US or RW saboteurs are responsible for the blackout? More likely, given the state of disrepair of the electrical grid, that this was another case of mismanagement of the system.

[warrprayer]

50. agree to disagree.

I just pray for peace and justice. No wish to offend you.

[Ranchemp.]

55. Peace and justice, that's all we can hope for.

No offense taken, this is a contentious issue and can illicit passionate responses.