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by Daniela Gonzalez The 2019 Venezuelan blackouts were a series of power outages that affected Venezuela from 7 March to 14 March 2019. The blackout was the largest in the country’s history, affecting over 20 million people. While some areas experienced only a few days without electricity, others suffered one whole week, and remote regions waited a grueling ten days for restoration. A Bitter Memory and a Bleak Future Five years and some weeks after that event, the blackouts remain a stark reminder of the country’s vulnerability, a bitter event that could repeat without any warning. The specter of a repeat hangs heavy, fueled by a lack of transparency and accountability from the government. The official narrative has been (of course) pointing fingers at external forces and blaming the US for an alleged “war” against the “revolution” and other similar nonsense. However, the reality paints a different picture. The reality is, that the money for the necessary extended maintenance planned was stolen. To provide the military with a continuous source of “resources” (ahem), and avoid potential rebellions, of course, in this report from 2022 they specifically mention that in 2013 the facilities were put under the “custody” of a branch of the armed forces. Already in 2010, after 19 electricity companies were seized and nationalized, the crisis got increasingly worse. That was to be expected. By doing so, those in power exert what is already defined as some twisted societal control method. The uncertainty for those who can’t work without power and can’t even get paid without energy is awful. Today, the crippled grid is working at only 29% of its total capacity, and a new blackout is imminent. What factors contributed to the blackout? The blackouts were generated by a combination of factors, including: Lack of investment in the country’s electricity infrastructure The Venezuelan government had not invested in its electricity infrastructure for many years, and the system was in a state of disrepair. This is the most serious cause of the whole issue and more evident in the lack of maintenance. The high power lines need to have the weeds on their routes periodically trimmed, to avoid an accumulation because of the wildfires. The support structures can suffer fire damage to several degrees. However, this maintenance is expensive and needs resources that the nationalized power company lacks. I will have to be honest, though. There is an initiative to resume collecting the needed payments, which, for some reason, were stopped in most locations for a long time. It is yet to be seen if the money collected will be used to maintain the infrastructure instead of finding its way to the bottomless pit of the corrupted elite pockets. One of the most recent cases is the energy generation wind park in Paraguana. Designed to produce 100 MWatts, cost a lot of money and hasn’t produced one single volt. Meanwhile, tragedies like the one where a man dies because while he is in surgery the power goes out keep happening one after another. That poor man bled to death. Drought A severe sequence of droughts in Venezuela has reduced the water levels in the country’s main source of hydroelectric power. Political instability The political crisis in Venezuela has led to a decline in morale and productivity among workers in the electricity sector. This is a factor: back in 2018, there were strikes because of the low wages in the sector. The private distribution companies no longer exist. There is only a nationalized, inefficient, and corrupt company. The official position of the ones driving the state-owned power corporation CORPOELEC is…”sabotage.” With this lie, they disguise their responsibility and manipulate the few weak minds that blindly still follow them. Of course, this was all part of a scheme in a bigger frame; controlling the power grid, they control the people. Without energy, people can´t work. They already have the mechanisms to deal with the desperation this produces: the colectivos shock troops, responsible already for many shootings into the civilian demonstrations since 2014. Most rebel states of Venezuela are located in the West: Tachira, Zulia, and Mérida. The three suffer incredible power rationing schedules that are no longer explainable by technical means as they obey a State policy of punishment. The impact The blackouts had a devastating impact on Venezuela, mostly on the economy. They caused widespread disruption to businesses, taking down steel, aluminum, and oil production and led to shortages of food, water, and medicine. The blackouts also contributed to the country’s economic crisis, as businesses could not operate without power. Albeit many farms have backup generators, most of them are diesel, and this is not easy to find, either. The Venezuelan government has been criticized for its handling of the blackouts. The workers who appeared dead (see below) in suspicious circumstances accused the high commands of failing to invest in the electricity infrastructure, and of mismanaging the country’s oil wealth, which could have been used to fund repairs to the electricity grid. The blackouts remind us of the importance of investing in infrastructure and the dangers of political instability. They also remind us of the importance of having a diversified energy mix so that a country is not reliant on a single source of power. This is the scenario of most of the Venezuelans living in the cities, like myself. There have been several “suicides” among the staff working in the electricity supply industry. (links can be translated in your browser) These deaths were never investigated. Nowadays, the situation with the power blackouts is getting worse every day as the machinery and the infrastructure age. In my city (I live in the capital), whenever there is a blackout, the metro stops working, and the situation inside the tunnels with the trains becomes complete chaos. However, I will write another article about this in the next few days. Action Plan As this is a prepping website, once the root causes and the scenario, including all the possible consequences of a prolonged power grid failure, are identified, the course of action is as follows. We all identify our power consumption carefully. LED lamps consume much less, which has been a blessing of these new times. I remember some years ago how my friends and I used to light all the bulbs and fans at home, just to see how the wheel of the power meter – counter spun faster! But those times are now gone. The fees are the same for everyone because there is no way they can replace the measuring gauges in the short term without huge investments first. The company is dried up, though, and they need a new income source before starting to maintain the infrastructure and charging reasonable fees again. We have learned to work on the things we can control – mostly the consequences of a blackout, as we can’t rely on having a working power grid. Every two days, we have a power cut of 3-4 hours. It is without warning, unprogrammed, and unexpected. The voltage surge when it comes back burns any unprotected equipment. It’s mandatory to have surge protection for every device you have plugged in. Venezuelans have suffered a lot. People who once used to have cheap, affordable power (one of the main advantages of our country thanks to the abundant hydric resources) have seen their fridges, TVs, and even fans (not to mention air conditioners) damaged by the power surges. Our whole infrastructure is falling apart, and the scenario is getting worse because those running the main positions don’t have a clue, as they don’t have the engineering and technical background. As far as I can tell, nobody in Venezuela is preparing for the next big blackout. The explanation is that people are surviving from one week to the next. They don’t have the means to prepare anymore, nor do they stock themselves. Don’t make that mistake. Prep while you can, with the best you can afford. See you soon! Dani What do you think? Do you think that we could face a similar situation here? Do you think we could one day see punitive power outages if we live in a region that is not supportive of an administration? Let’s discuss it in the comments. About Daniela Daniela Gonzalez is a student of history at the Universidad Central de Venezuela in Caracas. The post Here’s What Infrastructure Neglect and Political Instability Look Like appeared first on The Organic Prepper.

The Secret Service opened a formal investigation of a Maine man whose social media posts showed “unusual interest” in President Joe Biden’s family, although he apparently didn’t make a serious threat of violence, according to the agency’s response to requests filed under the Freedom of Information Act by The Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project. A senior Secret Service agent, John Mazza, conducted the investigation of the Twitter user in summer 2022, documents released to the Oversight Project show. (The Heritage Foundation, home to the Oversight Project, launched The Daily Signal in 2014.) In July 2022, about 18 months after Biden became president, a regional Secret Service office requested that agents conduct a “preliminary protective intelligence investigation” targeting the Maine man, an Army veteran, for one or more posts on Twitter. The reason? This person, whose identity was still unknown to the Secret Service at the time, “posted statements of unusual interest towards the Biden Family,” according to the documents obtained by Heritage’s Oversight Project: What appears to have gotten the Secret Service’s attention? One of the man’s posts suggested, apparently jokingly, that he planned to “invade the White House and get pics of Biden in his ‘Depends,’” referring to a brand of adult diaper. By contrast, some social media users who despise former President Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee to take on Biden in a rematch in November, routinely post messages about assaulting or assassinating him. Biden, a Democrat, has talked in public about wanting to rough up Trump. The Daily Signal acquired the man’s name through the Oversight Project but isn’t publishing it because the man, who lives in a small town on the coast of Maine, was not charged with a crime by the Secret Service. In addition, attempts to reach him were unsuccessful and he hasn’t agreed to speak publicly about being investigated.  In beginning the investigation in August 2022, the Secret Service inaccurately suggested that the man was focused on material from what the agency called the “iCloud hack” of presidential son Hunter Biden. In fact, no such hack occurred. The material came from decrypted iPhone backups of what New York Post columnist Miranda Devine called the “Laptop From Hell” in the title of her 2021 book about the contents of the younger Biden’s laptop computer. By law, the Secret Service is authorized to investigate and prosecute threats against the president and successors to the presidency (18 U.S. Code § 871). To prove that a threat is worthy of investigation, the Secret Service must show the existence of a threat to kill, kidnap, or inflict bodily harm upon the president of the United States, the president-elect, the vice president, or other officer next in the order of presidential succession.   Documents released in response to the Oversight Project’s FOIA request, however, reveal that the Secret Service opened its investigation of the Maine man based only upon First Amendment-protected speech. The Secret Service didn’t identify actual threats to Biden or his family, instead predicating the case on what it called the man’s “unusual interest” in the family. This “unusual interest,” however, appeared to be comprised of nothing more than obvious jokes that were critical of Biden. Zero comments by the Twitter user suggested a serious intent to engage in violence, according to the Secret Service documents released to the Oversight Project.  The New York Post’s initial reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop files was suppressed by Twitter, Facebook, and other social media in cooperation with government officials in the weeks before the 2020 election, in which Biden defeated Trump. The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other liberal-leaning news outlets, however, later confirmed the authenticity of those laptop files, which also were in the possession of the FBI. Kara Frederick, director of The Heritage Foundation’s Tech Policy Center, has warned about increasing government efforts to target Americans, especially conservatives, who speak out online. In a commentary published by The Daily Signal in February 2022, about six months before the Secret Service opened this investigation, Frederick wrote that the growing symbiosis between Big Tech and government, the constriction of digital life, the pernicious targeting and exploitation of the next generation, and the expansion of digital surveillance will accelerate the stratification of American society. If current patterns are not disrupted, conservatives will bear the brunt of [a] tech-enabled classification system implemented hand-in-glove with the government. After scrutinizing other posts by the Maine man, which revealed no threats of violence against Biden or his family, that summer the Secret Service nevertheless deemed his posts sufficient to extend its investigation beyond the permitted preliminary investigative stage.   The Secret Service investigation occurred about a year before entrepreneur Elon Musk bought Twitter and changed the name of the social media giant to X in July 2023. The agency initially misidentified the Twitter user until developing more information. After reviewing public and law enforcement records, some of them not easy to obtain, the Secret Service determined that the user of the Twitter account was a man, initially thought to be a woman, who posted opinions on “conspiracy theories.” And upon reviewing the man’s online blog, Mazza apparently didn’t find any threats of violence, the documents indicate. In addition, email attachments to documents obtained by the Oversight Project in the FOIA request contain subpoena results, but the contents of those attachments were not provided. The names of those email attachments reveal the extensive scope of the Secret Service investigation of the man, including technical information such as IP addresses. The use of subpoenas indicates that the Secret Service conducted a criminal investigation of a U.S. citizen for activity on social media protected by the First Amendment. Here is detail from a document showing that the Secret Service executed and got results from one or more subpoenas in this case: Eventually, the Secret Service sought the results of an interview with the Maine man, a photo of him, more results from corroborating interviews, investigative notes, and two different official forms used by the agency. It is not clear whether the Secret Service ever interviewed the Army veteran or conducted the corroborating interviews. Interestingly, contact information for Mazza, the senior Secret Service agent who conducted the investigation, was discovered in the contact files on first son Hunter Biden’s notorious abandoned laptop. Mazza, now retired, was assigned at one time to the Secret Service division that provides protection to the vice president, the position Biden held from 2009 until 2017, as well as some of the vice president’s family members. Hunter Biden’s possession of Mazza’s contact information in his laptop should have set off alarm bells. Such a situation is extremely irregular, a former Secret Service agent who spoke on condition of anonymity told The Daily Signal. The former Secret Service agent speculated that the younger Biden may have gotten this contact information if Mazza had led one of the agency’s protective details and provided it to the president’s son or other relatives under protection. Mazza, reached Friday by The Daily Signal, declined to comment for the record on the investigation and his involvement. It’s not clear to what extent Secret Service investigations and subpoenas target other social media users for activity protected by the First Amendment without any stated evidence of a threat of violence against the president or his family. Also not clear: whether the Secret Service continues to issue subpoenas to social media users merely for exhibiting “unusual interest” in the Biden family, or whether the Secret Service’s intent is to protect the family from journalistic inquiry and public scrutiny at all costs—including censorship and the legal process. “In order to maintain operational security, the U.S. Secret Service does not discuss the means and methods used to conduct matters of protective intelligence,” Secret Service spokesperson Alexi Worley told The Daily Signal on Monday afternoon, after the initial publication of this report. “We can confirm that the Secret Service investigates all threats related to our protectees.” Secret Service spokespersons last week had declined to comment before publication, saying they would need more context about the 2022 investigation before doing so. Trump receives death threats almost daily via social media. It remains unclear whether the Secret Service fairly and impartially investigates actual threats against those it protects or instead has become a weaponized arm of the U.S. government. In one example, in this January 2024 exchange on Mastodon, a sort of decentralized social network used heavily by liberals, a post by former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, now a professor at UC Berkeley, sparks comments from two others about assassinating Trump. Fred Lucas and Ken McIntyre contributed to this report. This story was updated to include a comment from a Secret Service spokesperson. The post EXCLUSIVE: Secret Service Investigated Twitter User’s Apparent Joke as ‘Unusual Interest’ in Biden Family appeared first on The Daily Signal.