Off Guardian
The author is currently on the ground in Venezuela
This morning at 1:30 a.m., engineers and electrical workers restored
Venezuela’s power after a massive cyber sabotage at 4:45 p.m. yesterday
shut down 17 of 23 states in a blackout.
This is the third major attempt by the United States and internal
counterrevolutionaries to try to destroy the power system, the first
being March 7-12 and the second from March 23 to April 4. There have
been hundreds of terrorist attacks on the power lines.
This quick recovery by the energy sector — engineers, technicians and
soldiers deployed to help in the efforts — is testament to the
revolutionary people’s capacity to resist and a higher organizational
level with each new challenge.
Each attack has been met with determined resistance and the Maduro government’s counter measures to minimize damage.
Engineer Rafael Argotti, whom Liberation News interviewed during the
first blackout on March 9, explained today what is behind the power
sabotage.
“This blackout was simply another electromagnetic attack. From January
to July of this year, we have detected more than 76 incursions of U.S.
planes specialized in electromagnetic work. The sabotage took place
while the Bolivarian revolution is advancing in the international arena.
This weekend we held the gathering of 120 countries of the Non-Aligned
Movement, which affirmed its recognition of Nicolás Maduro as president
of Venezuela.”
Read more
Natural News
(NaturalNews) According to what I'm hearing from several sources in my
network of contacts, the U.S. government is putting systems in place to
black out online news sites like Natural News, Drudge Report, The Blaze
and many others. A practice run that took place earlier this week in
California has already achieved this result and confirmed the technical
ability to make it happen at will.
The recent outage of news sites experienced by internet users in California was reported by this article on BeforeItsNews.com
and confirmed by The Washington Times, The Blaze and other sites. The
Natural News reader service team also recorded numerous complaints from
California users who were unable to reach our website even though our
site was fully functional and serving pages worldwide.
What was especially telling about this outage is that it only affected online news sites
while allowing other internet traffic to flow normally. This selective
targeting of news websites could have been accomplished by "deep packet
inspection used inside the routers that move information packets along
the internet," reported Before Its News technical staff. "This
technology allows ISP's to look inside the packets your computer sends
and receives and then make a decision to allow the packets through,
modify the packets or block them. This technique can also be used to
slow or speed up traffic."
The selective targeting proves that
this was not a general outage. The traffic blockage was specifically
targeted to online news sites.
Bloomberg
For Dominga Kanaza, it wasn’t just the soaring inflation or the weeklong blackouts or even the looting that frayed her nerves.
It was all of them combined.
At one point last month, the 37-year-old shop owner refused to open
the metal shutters protecting her corner grocery in downtown Buenos
Aires more than a few inches — just enough to sell soda to passersby on a
sweltering summer day.
“It was scary,” said Kanaza as she yelled out prices to customers
while sipping on mate, Argentina’s caffeine-rich herbal drink. The
looting that began in neighboring Cordoba province when police officers
left streets unguarded to strike for higher pay had spread to the
outskirts of Buenos Aires, sparking panic in Kanaza’s neighborhood. The
chaos, she said, was like nothing she had seen since the rioting that
followed the South American nation’s record $95 billion default in 2001.
Thirteen years after that collapse, President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner is
running out of time to avert another crisis. The policy mix that
Fernandez and her late husband and predecessor, Nestor Kirchner, used to
usher in 7 percent average annual growth over the past decade — higher
government spending financed by printing money — is unraveling.
Inflation soared to 28 percent last year, according to opposition
lawmaker Patricia Bullrich, who divulges monthly estimates for
economists cowed into silence by Fernandez’s crackdown on price reports
that clash with official figures. By the government’s count, inflation
was less than 11 percent.
Read more
