Is there any particular reason to take this claim from Maduro at face value?
"why doesn't the US go after these hackers and designate targeting civilian infrastructure as a crime?"
To which the response was essentially "The US would like to reserve those types of cyber attacks for their own uses"
These quotes are very loose, I read it last year, but essentially, the US didn't make a stink about older grid attacks in order to save face when the US does it.
Additionally, much of VZ's difficulty was due to the massive sanctions against the nation. Sanctions are effectively attacks on a nation's citizens to pressure the government. Disabling power infrastructure is absolutely in-line with the motives of sanctions and embargos.
I feel like Mother Goose had a cautionary tale about killing your golden goose that perhaps Venezuela’s leadership ought to read up on.
In this case, it fits squarely in with American foreign policy, especially their orientation towards Venezuelan chavismo.
I understand the US's foreign policy is a global threat, but let's not let that be an excuse for the atrocities and corruption of tyrants in Venezuela and other places.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_crisis_in_Venezuela
The Derwick one seems pretty light too, at least the article here just mentions an accusation from a journalist. And even then, if we are using corruption/overbilling with regard to a government contractor as an "atrocity" now.. That's going to have wider repercussions than here.
And ok, Venezuela took bribes from another government contractor, along with many other countries. I wouldn't call that an atrocity, but if that's what it is I guess I will give you the benefit of the doubt about it.
I give you benefit of the doubt about everything really! I just don't know if you have packaged your case here well is all.
As for the attrocities I meant the Maduro (and current) government in general. There are currently over 1000 political prisoners in the country, a mix of protesters, politicians, reporters, etc. A lot of them have been tortured and many have died in custody. Most of the sources from NGO are in Spanish but the Wikipedia is a good start, specially the section about the Maduro government [1]
If you check the news right now you'll see that only in the past month about 50 have been released. There's a huge effort in the country right now to get the hundreds of others out.
Ultimately, what I want to say is that while we can express disdain for the US government we can do the same for the Venezuelan one, even if they claim to be against each other. Maduro and his gang are not the victims here, they've oppressed the Venezuelan people for 27 years, let's not give them an easy out
Perhaps there's more at play here than pretending like Maduro is a uniquely bad guy but also so hilariously incompetent his corruption scheme blacked out the country.
Let's be clear here, there are many evil states in this world. But Maduro isn't exactly Mohammed bin Salman or Donald Rumsfeld.
Just showed you an article describing all the human right abuses, tortures and forced disappearances done under the Maduro regime and this is your take away? I can only assume you're not arguing in good faith.
Check the news right now, about the prisoner releases happening as we speak and the hundreds still to go. One died only last week in captivity. Guess we can tell their families at least Maduro is not bin Salaman. Such cruelty, man