Venezuela is struggling its second main electrical energy blackout in a month, prompting extra accusations from President Nicolas Maduro that the US authorities has had a hand in the disaster — but is there something to the accusation?
Maduro has persistently blamed overseas “saboteurs and terrorists” for the crippling blackouts which have pressured shops, companies and colleges to shut and left the streets of Caracas empty as folks head indoors earlier than sunset.
Meanwhile, self-declared interim president Juan Guaido has blamed the outages on Maduro, whose insurance policies, he stated, have allowed the nation’s infrastructure to crumble to breaking level.
Earlier this month, impartial web site the Grayzone reported on a 2010 memo, which it referred to as a US authorities “regime change blueprint” for Venezuela, again when Washington was attempting to foment a coup towards former Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. The doc, initially made public by WikiLeaks, was put collectively by Srdja Popovic at a Belgrade-based US government-funded “democracy promotion” group referred to as the Center for Applied Non-Violent Action and Strategies (CANVAS) – and it supplies some perception into the declare that the US has performed a task in the blackouts.
The 2010 doc states that the collapse of Venezuela’s electrical sector may function a “watershed occasion” in “galvanizing public unrest” in a approach that “no opposition group may ever hope to generate.” However, “an opposition group could be greatest served to benefit from the scenario and spin it towards Chavez and in the direction of their wants,” the memo stated.
The CANVAS group is additionally significantly related to the present scenario in Venezuela, since, in response to earlier Grayzone reporting, the group led revolution “coaching classes” with Guaido way back to 2007.
The doc even pinpointed the location the place such an electrical energy catastrophe would possibly happen — the Simon Bolivar Hydroelectric Plant at the Guri dam — the very place the place a significant failure induced the latest blackouts, which Maduro blamed on a US cyber assault. The second blackout, which occurred this week, was apparently attributable to a fireplace at the identical plant. Photographs posted on-line confirmed the extensive damage that was achieved to the facility by the hearth, which was blamed by Maduro on “criminals” and “terrorists.” A 3rd blackout left a majority of Venezuelans with out web entry on Wednesday.