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Water system in Caracas goes dry

The water system in Caracas, capital of the socialist paradise of Venezuela, is now shutting down because it needs electricity to operate and it does not have it because of the collapse of the power system.

Caracas began going dry Monday as Venezuela’s power crisis put utilities out of commission, risking supplies for 5.5 million people, many of whom found themselves reduced to carrying buckets of filthy river water.

Service, intermittent in normal times, was scarce to nonexistent in large swathes of the capital and experts saw little reason for hope. Caracas is 900 meters above sea level and water comes from the Tuy system of reservoirs and pumping stations below. Those depend on a reliable electric supply of 2,000 megawatts, said Norberto Bausson, who was the head of state utility Hidrocapital in the 1990s. “As of this morning, this system hasn’t been restarted yet,” Bausson said Monday. “The supply of water for the city is at risk.”

The power crisis — and now the water crisis — are testing the hold of strongman President Nicolas Maduro. Opposition leader Juan Guaido is trying to topple him after a re-election widely viewed as fraudulent and using as his main argument widespread deprivation after six years of Maduro’s rule. Hunger is widespread in the nation. Its infrastructure has decayed to critical levels.

But wait! Think of the wonderful things these people are doing to prevent climate change! No power system, no burning of those evil fossil fuels, and less carbon dioxide in the atmosphere! This is exactly what the modern luminaries of the Democratic Party like Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) want.

We should all congratulate Maduro and work to emulate him here in the U.S.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


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"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

8 comments

  • Col Beausabre

    And they’re getting plenty of exercise hauling el aqua so they can cancel their gym memberships !

    In the Sixties we threatened the Communists that we would “bomb them back to the Stone Age”. We should have waited a few years and let them do it themselves.

    This is the sort of thing that has been seen time and time again in these sort of regimes – the technically qualified fired (if they were lucky) for having the wrong politics and replaced by incompetents who passed the loyalty test. The French revolutionaries guillotined the officers of the Ancien Regime’s Navy and replaced captains with decades of experience with merchant skippers and petty officers of the right political stripe. The result ? The Royal Navy rang up an incredible series of victories that culminated in Trafalgar – the most lopsided naval victory until Tsushima a century later (interestingly, it was the Napoleonic Ideal – the Battle of Annihilation – transferred to the sea) Stalin beheaded the Red Army of Workers and Peasants by shooting the professional officers, replaced them with political aparatchiks and unqualified junior officers and almost handed Hitler his victory in the East. He eventually prevailed but at a cost to the USSR of over 20 million lives (no one knows even approximately, Communists record keeping was sketchy at best – for the best numbers I’ve ever seen, see “The Hemoclysm” http://users.rcn.com/mwhite28/war-1900.htm)

  • Cotour

    This is great!

    This is a proof of concept experiment that will certainly verify and solidify the Green New Deal as a mandatory model by which the future of man will be set.

    We will keep watching. I assume it will be well underway and paying dividends by the time that the 2020 American presidential race is held and will help the Democrats ticket.

    I think the Inca went through a similar transformation and proof of concept. When will the greedy and corrupt capitalists learn?

    Everything is backwards, and that is not by accident.

  • wayne

    Q:
    What is the historical reliability of the Caracas water-treatment plant, to begin with?
    (This IS a 3rd-world country, no matter what they claim to the contrary.)

    In the Alternate Reality–normal Venezuelan’s might rise up and systematically kill every single one of their communist overlords, with total & absolute malice aforethought,— “you’ve nothing to lose, but your chains.”

    Pink Floyd
    “One of these days, (I’m going to cut you into little pieces”)
    Live At Pompeii
    https://youtu.be/l6-doD3VpyA
    5:41

  • Ian C.

    Wayne:

    You’re right, water issues aren’t new, it’s a decades-old problem. [1] Often they didn’t plan ahead and neglected to invest to keep pace with growing demand, so Caracas (like the rest of the country) experienced shortages and rationing repeatedly. [2]

    This report from 2015 reads similar to today’s:

    “As many as 3 million Caracas residents face intermittent water cuts. The city sits in a valley almost 3,000 feet above sea level, meaning water must be pumped up from sources lower down. But poor maintenance of the pumps and pipes and a lack of government cash for replacement parts has left the city’s taps running dry. (…) The government blames the water crisis on right-wing terrorists intent on taking down President Nicolas Maduro. The president and his allies say the wider economic situation is caused by an “economic war” waged by domestic opponents with the support of the U.S.” [3]

    __________
    [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_supply_and_sanitation_in_Venezuela

    [2] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8339247.stm

    [3] https://www.newsweek.com/venezuelas-capital-running-out-water-hospitals-forced-cancel-operations-1074253

  • Edward

    Ian C. wrote: “This report from 2015 reads similar to today’s

    That report was still eight years after the electrical system was nationalized, and a decade and a half after the country went socialist. In both cases, the socialists managed to neglect the current and future needs of the people. An example of only getting what the government wants, when you let the government run things.

  • Max

    They don’t have any bread? Then let them make cake. “Each according to their need”. It’s all free anyway” just like their healthcare, paid for by all those oil profits. Just think, the USA could have socialism with free healthcare just like Venezuela and Finland!

    https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-03-12/finlands-government-collapsed-under-weight-socialized-healthcare

    With all that free energy from the sun and the wind how could the power possibly be out? (Did they get what they payed for?)
    We need Cortez to show them how to build trains that do not run on electricity or oil but are powered by the riders, “pedal power” because “everybody has to do their part” to generate electricity so the train will go down the tracks, the free energy of the 17th century future… (horses generate too much methane for her, only the Amish will have a religious exemption)

    Speaking of AOC, the plot to take over the Democrat Party. The truth we all suspected…

    https://www.pocketfives.com/forums/topic/728567-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-is-just-an-actress-one-of-many-hired-by-cenk-uygur/?page=1
    If Obama could fake it…

  • wayne

    Ian/ Edward/ Max–
    Good stuff!

  • wayne

    “AOC”
    Alexandria Ortega-Castro

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