3/11/19, “US Regime Change Blueprint Proposed Venezuelan Electricity Blackouts as ‘Watershed Event’ for ‘Galvanizing Public Unrest’,” The Gray Zone, Max Blumenthal
“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””
“A September 2010 memo by a US-funded soft power organization that helped train Venezuelan coup leader Juan Guaido and his allies identifies the potential collapse of the country’s electrical sector as “a watershed event”that “would likely have the impact of galvanizing public unrest in a way that no opposition group could ever hope to generate.”
The memo has special relevance today as Guaido moves to exploit nationwide blackouts caused by a major failure at the Simon Bolivar Hydroelectric Plant at Guri dam – a crisis that Venezuela’s government blames on US sabotage.
It was authored by Srdja Popovic of the Center for Applied Non-Violent Action and Strategies (CANVAS), a Belgrade-based “democracy promotion” organization funded by the US government [US taxpayers] that has trained thousands of US-aligned youth activists in countries where the West seeks regime change.
This group reportedly hosted Guaido and the key leaders of his Popular Will party for a series of training sessions, fashioning them into a “Generation 2007” determined to foment resistance to then-President Hugo Chavez and sabotage his plans to implement “21st century socialism” in Venezuela.
In the 2010 memo, CANVAS’s Popovic declared, “A key to Chavez’s current weakness is the decline in the electricity sector.” Popovic explicitly identified the Simon Bolivar Hydroelectric Plant as a friction point, emphasizing that “water levels at the Guri dam are dropping, and Chavez has been unable to reduce consumption sufficiently to compensate for the deteriorating industry.”
Speculating on a “grave possibility that some 70 percent of the country’s electricity grid could go dark as soon as April 2010,” the CANVAS leader stated that “an opposition group would be best served to take advantage of the situation and spin it against Chavez and towards their needs.”
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Flash forward to March 2019, and the scenario outlined by Popovic is playing out almost exactly as he had imagined.
On March 7 [2019], just days after Guaido’s return from Colombia, where he participated in the failed and demonstrably violent February 23 attempt to ram a shipment of US aid across the Venezuelan border, the Simon Bolivar Hydroelectric Plant experienced a major and still unexplained collapse.
Days later, electricity remains sporadic across the country. Meanwhile, Guaido has done everything he can “to take advantage of the situation and spin it” against President Nicolas Maduro – just as his allies were urged to do over eight years before by CANVAS.
Rubio vows “a period of suffering” for Venezuela hours before the blackout.
The Venezuelan government has placed the blame squarely on Washington, accusing it of sabotage through a cyber-attack on its electrical infrastructure. Key players in the US-directed coup attempt have done little to dispel the accusation.
In a tweet on March 8, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo framed the electricity outage as a pivotal stage in US plans for regime change:
“No food. No medicine. Now, no power. Next, no Maduro.— Secretary Pompeo (@SecPompeo) March 8, 2019″
At noon on March 7, during a hearing on Venezuela at the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee, Sen. Marco Rubio explicitly called for the US to stir “widespread unrest,” declaring that it “needs to happen” in order to achieve regime change.
“No food. No medicine. Now, no power. Next, no Maduro.— Secretary Pompeo (@SecPompeo) March 8, 2019″
At noon on March 7, during a hearing on Venezuela at the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee, Sen. Marco Rubio explicitly called for the US to stir “widespread unrest,” declaring that it “needs to happen” in order to achieve regime change.
“Venezuela is going to enter a period of suffering no nation in our hemisphere has confronted in modern history,”Rubio proclaimed.
Around 5 PM, the Simon Bolivar Hydroelectric Plant experienced a total and still unexplained collapse. Residents of Caracas and throughout Venezuela were immediately plunged into darkness.
At 5:18 PM, a clearly excited Rubio took to Twitter to announce the blackout and claim that “backup generators have failed.” It was unclear how Rubio had obtained such specific information so soon after the outage occurred. According to Jorge Rodriguez, the communications minister of Venezuela, local authorities did not know if backup generators had failed at the time of Rubio’s tweet.
Back in Caracas, Guaido immediately set out to exploit the situation, just as his CANVAS trainers had advised over eight years before. Taking to Twitter just over an hour after Rubio, Guaido declared, “the light will return when the usurpation [of Maduro] ends.” Like Pompeo, the self-declared president [and puppet Guaido] framed the blackouts as part of a regime change strategy, not an accident or error.
Two days later, Guaido was at the center of opposition rally he convened in affluent eastern Caracas, bellowing into a megaphone: “Article 187 when the time comes. We need to be in the streets, mobilized. It depends on us, not on anybody else.” Article 187 establishes the right of the National Assembly “to authorize the use of Venezuelan military missions abroad or foreign in the country.”
Upon his mention of the constitutional article, Guaido’s supporters responded, “Intervention! Intervention!”
Exploiting crisis to “get back into a position of power”
As Dan Cohen and I reported here at the Grayzone, Guaido’s rise to prominence – and the coup plot that he has been appointed to oversee –is the product of a decade-long projectoverseen by the Belgrade-based CANVAS outfit.CANVAS is a spinoff of Otpor, a Serbian protest group founded by Srdja Popovic in 1998 at the University of Belgrade. Otpor, which means “resistance” in Serbian, was the student group that worked alongside US soft power organizations to mobilize the protests that eventually toppled the late Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic.
CANVAS has been funded largely through the National Endowment for Democracy, a CIA cut-out that functions as the US government’s main arm of promoting regime change.
According to leaked internal emails from Stratfor, an intelligence firm known as the “shadow CIA,” CANVAS “may have also received CIA funding and training during the 1999/2000 anti-Milosevic struggle.”
A leaked email from a Stratfor staffer noted that after they ousted Milosevic, “the kids who ran OTPOR grew up, got suits and designed CANVAS… or in other words a ‘export-a-revolution’ group that sowed the seeds for a NUMBER of color revolutions.They are still hooked into U.S. funding and basically go around the world trying to topple dictators and autocratic governments (ones that U.S. does not like).” [so US can function as dictator]
Stratfor subsequently revealed that CANVAS “turned its attention to Venezuela” in 2005, after training opposition movements that led pro-NATO regime change operations across Eastern Europe.
In September 2010, as Venezuela headed for a parliamentary election, CANVAS produced a series of memos outlining the plans they had hatched with “non-formal actors” like Guaido and his cadre of student activists to bring down Chavez. “This is the first opportunity for the opposition to get back into a position of power,” Popovic wrote at the time.
In his memo on electricity outages, Popovic highlighted the importance of the Venezuelan military in achieving regime change. “Alliances with the military could be critical because in such a situation of massive public unrest and rejection of the presidency,” the CANVAS founder wrote, “malcontent sectors of the military will likely decide to intervene, but only if they believe they have sufficient support.”
While the scenario Popovic envisioned failed to materialize in 2010, it perfectly describes the situation gripping Venezuela today [2019] as an opposition leader cultivated by CANVAS seeks to spin the crisis against Maduro while calling on the military to break ranks.
Since the Grayzone exposed the deep ties between CANVAS and Guaido’s Popular Will party, Popovic has attempted to publicly distance himself from his record of training Venezuela’s opposition.
Today, however, Popovic’s 2010 memo on exploiting electricity outages reads like a blueprint for the strategy that Guaido and his patrons in Washington have actively implemented. Whether or not the blackout is the result of external sabotage, it represents the “watershed event” that CANVAS has prepared its Venezuelan cadres for.”
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Added:
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Image, TheTechnocraticTyranny.com, published 2/27/2016, “State Department’s Mission: Coup d’etat"
US believes Venezuela belongs to them. In August 2001, Venezuela’s government asked the US to leave a military mission site it had occupied there for more than 50 years.…In April 2002, “US ‘gave the nod’ to a Venezuelan coup"…Elliott Abrams was “crucial figure” in the attempt….April 2002: Not realizing the 2002 US backed coup of a democratically elected government would fail in 48 hours, IMF right away stated publicly it was ready to support new Venezuelan dictator, Carmona….The move was seen in Venezuela and elsewhere as IMF support for the [2002] coup…May 2007: Venezuela withdraws from IMF and World Bank. In 1999 Chavez had begun loosening ties with them…June 2012-Venezuela and 5 other Latin American countries requested expulsion of USAID for interference in their internal politics under the excuse of…“humanitarian assistance:”…There’s no such thing as Humanitarian Intervention separate from war…Feb. 2015-Obama orders assassination of Venezuela Pres. Maduro…2017 to present: Unfortunately for Venezuela, Ivanka loves IMF and World Bank.
Image, “Christine
Lagarde (L), Managing Director and Chairwoman of the International
Monetary Fund (IMF), speaks next to White House Presidential Advisor
Ivanka Trump at the 55th Munich Security Conference in Munich, southern Germany, on February 16, 2019.” AFP, Getty3/11/19, “Trump Regime Electricity War in Venezuela More Serious Than First Believed,“ Strategic Culture, Stephen Lendman
“On Thursday [3/7/19], Venezuela’s Guri dam hydroelectric power plant was cyberattacked at 5:00 PM during the late afternoon rush hour to cause maximum disruption.
Up to 80% of the country was affected, damage done more severe than initially thought. Weeks or months of planning likely preceded what happened – US dark forces almost certainly behind it, considerable expertise needed to pull it off.
On Friday [3/8], another cyberattackoccurred, followed by a third one on Saturday [3/9], affecting parts of the country where power was restored, further complicating resolution of the problem, Maduro saying:
After power was restored to about 70% of the country, “we received another attack, of a cybernetic nature, at midday…that disturbed the reconnection process and knocked out everything that had been achieved until noon,” adding:
“(O)ne of the sources of generation that was working perfectly” was sabotaged again…infiltrators…attacking the electric company from the inside.”
Power is being restored “manually,” efforts continuing to learn precisely why computerized systems failed – things further complicated after a Bolivar state substation transformer exploded and burned, suggesting more sabotage.
What’s happening in Venezuela is similar to infecting Iran’s Bushehr and Natanz nuclear power facilities with a Stuxnet malware computer virus in 2010, a likely joint US/Israeli intelligence operation [NY Times substantiates 6/1/2012, that US carried out Stuxnet attacks]. Edward Snowden blamed them for what happened. [NY Times, 6/1/2012, “Obama order sped up waves of cyberattacks against Iran,”David E. Sanger, page A1].”…
[Achieving against Iran with computer code what until then could be accomplished only by bombing a country or sending in agents to plant explosives.…“This is the first attack of a major nature in which a cyber attack was used to effect physical destruction,” said former CIA chief Michael V. Hayden….It is only a matter of time, most experts believe, before it [the US] becomes the target of the same kind of weapon that the Americans have used, secretly, against Iran.”… Stuxnet variant could attack the US, rendering it unable to protect itself, said “little noticed” but “strongly worded” Dec. 2010 report from Congressional Research Service….“Countries hostile to the United States may feel justified in launching their own attacks against US facilities, perhaps even using a modified Stuxnet code.”]
(continuing): “At the time, [Iran] operations were halted indefinitely. Iran called the incident a hostile act. [US officials at the time said US committed “an act of war” that would likely cause retaliation.] General Gholam-Reza Jalali said if the affected facilities went online infected, Iran’s entire electrical power grid could have been shut down. [US Stuxnet did eventually escape and infect other systems] It took months to fully resolve the problem. Following the summer 2010 attack [on Iran’s nuclear facilities], the malware continued to infect the facilities’ centrifuges,requiring their replacement.
An Institute for Science and International Security analysis said “(a)ssuming Iran exercises caution, Stuxnet is unlikely to destroy more centrifuges at the (affected plants).”
“Iran likely cleaned the malware from its control systems. To prevent re-infection, Iran will have to exercise special caution since so many computers in Iran contain Stuxnet,” adding:
“Although Stuxnet appears to be designed to destroy centrifuges at (Iranian nuclear facilities), destruction was by no means total.”
“Stuxnet did not lower the production of low-enriched uranium (LEU) during 2010. LEU quantities could have certainly been greater, and Stuxnet could be an important part of the reason why they did not increase significantly.”
“(T)here remain important questions about why Stuxnet destroyed only 1,000 centrifuges. One observation is that it may be harder to destroy centrifuges by use of cyber attacks than often believed.”
Head of Bushehr’s nuclear power plant said only personal computers of staff were infected by the Stuxnet virus. Then-Iranian Telecommunications Minister Reza Taghipour said government systems experienced no serious damage.
Iran’s Information Technology Council director Mahmud Liaii said “(a)n electronic war has been launched against Iran… This computer worm is designed to transfer data about production lines from our industrial plants to locations outside Iran.”
Deputy head of Iran’s government Information Technology Company Hamid Alipour said “(t)he attack is still ongoing and new versions of this virus are spreading,” adding:
“We had anticipated that we could root out the virus within one to two months, but the virus is not stable, and since we started the cleanup process three new versions of it have been spreading.”
If malware similar to Stuxnet was used against Venezuela’s power grid, the problem could linger for months, parts of the country continued to be affected by outages for some time.
Maduro’s government will need to marshal considerable technical expertise to fully resolve things – the type cybersecurity/anti-virus/security software skills Russia-based multinational firm Kaspersky Lab can provide.
It can also identify the attack’s source and lay blame where it belongs – the US most likely responsible. It clearly has motive, opportunity and expertise – waging war on Venezuela by other means to topple its government and gain another imperial trophy.
If the malware infection is widespread, continued outages may happen until the problem is fully resolved.
Resolution may take months, disruption in the country persisting, clearly the motive behind the attack.”
stephenlendman.org
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Added: Per The Atlantic: John Bolton “is for now the shadow president of the deep state.”
“[John] Bolton, who for a whole career has fumed over bureaucrats who try to stand between their elected bosses and destiny,is for now the shadow president of the deep state.” [end of article]. The Atlantic: “John Bolton: Trump’s Shrewd [per The Atlantic] National Security Adviser”
Added: Ridiculous John Bolton names “Troika of Tyranny” which he says is Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua:
“In a speech [11/1/2018 in Miami, Fla.] richly deserving adaption as a Saturday Night Live skit, US national security adviser John Bolton has unveiled the latest extension of America’s enemies list. Eclipsing the post-9/11 ‘Axis of Evil’ we now have a ‘Troika of Tyranny,’ consisting of those powerhouse troublemakers Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua….
There are two points to be made about Bolton’s initiative. First, it arrives drenched in hypocrisy. The United States has never cared a fig about whether Cubans, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans enjoyed the rule of law, liberty, and basic human decency. The history of US relations with those nations has alternated between naked exploitation and complete disregard.
Second, whatever form any coming US sanctions may actually take, you can count on one thing: It won’t be Cuban, Nicaraguan, and Venezuelan elites who suffer. It will be ordinary people.”
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Comment: The most important function of the US Endless Genocide Industry is to permanently silence and enslave Americans from birth. The “peace” movement was going strong until Nov. 2008. It abruptly ended when Obama was elected. During his 8 years Obama transformed the Democrat Party into the home of the military-intel dictatorship. Government became something about which everything was said to be “classified.” Should a taxpaying rube dare ask a question about why this was happening, the rube was told, “That information is classified, national security, you hick.” This must be one of those “US values” we hear about that the US is exporting around the world.
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P.S. “Russiagate” was a great success. Its purpose was to ensure that Trump never enacted any of the agenda for which he was elected. When it was obvious Trump had folded like a cheap camera, news of a scary Mueller report disappeared. Then, possibility impeachment disappeared.
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