Realm of Violent Dream, 3rd Day of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Castor): Early this morning, the Stable Genius ordered the military to invade Venezuela, bomb its capital, Caracas, and kidnap its president, Nicolás Maduro, along with his wife, Cilia Flores. The administration claims the two are now on board a U.S. battleship stationed in the Caribbean and will be taken to New York to stand trial.  

HOSCA strongly condemns this morning's actions and considers them a cold-blooded attack on a major civilian center. Three million people live in Caracas, five million in the metro area. It's one of the densest cities in South America. The invasion was not authorized by Congress and there was no imminent threat to U.S. soil that justified the use of force under international law. Article 2(4) of the U.N. Charter forbids the use of force against another state’s territorial integrity or political independence unless it’s self-defense or authorized by the Security Council. There’s no evidence either condition applied here. 

Yet the Stable Genius has been building up U.S. military presence in the Caribbean for months, deploying aircraft carriers and troops, and blowing up random boats and murdering the occupants. He has designated Venezuelan institutions and gang networks as terrorist organizations to pave the way for this military intervention.

To be clear, HOSCA does not condone or support Maduro or his incompetent, corrupt, and repressive regime. Maduro’s brutal rule has shattered Venezuela’s economy, causing millions of its citizens to flee overseas. In the 2024 election, although ballots from voting machines showed a massive defeat for Maduro, his national electoral council declared him the winner hours after the polls closed without providing any detailed vote counts to support their pronouncement. 

Although HOSCA does not consider Maduro to be the democratically elected president of Venezuela, it does not recognize the U.S.'s authority to intervene in the internal affairs of a foreign nation. The Stable Genius has declared, “We’re going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition.” The U.S. has no legal authority to unilaterally decide to run another country. The Stable Genius provided few details of what that rule would look like, but there were ominous suggestions that U.S. oil companies would have a role in the transition.

This latest attempt to oust a government through force is merely a continuation of the United States' long history of destabilization in Latin America, including in Chile, Cuba, Guatemala and Nicaragua. It  comes after the U.S. spent some 20 years trying to create a stable government in Afghanistan. The war in Iraq turned out to be a disaster which continues to have negative effects across the entire Middle East, and displacing Gaddafi in Libya only resulted in a fractured state. 

It’s not about drugs. The excuse that this was about “drug trafficking” or “narco-terrorism” is nothing but a manufactured alibi. This is happening within weeks of disbanding a DOJ task force that took on drug cartels and the Stable Genius pardoning the former president of Honduras, who was imprisoned here for cocaine trafficking on a grand scale. 

It's not about democracy. The Stable Genius never cared about democracy. He's sanctioned Brazil for prosecuting its former President, who tried to overturn the free and fair election that ousted him from power.  

It's not about illegal immigration. The Stable Genius claimed, without evidence, that Maduro and Venezuela have been emptying its prisons and asylums and sending the inmates to the U.S. But destabilizing Venezuela will only cause more  Venezuelans to flee, and immigrate to Columbia, Central America, and eventually the United States. Regime change and destabilization will only make illegal immigration worse. 

It's a power grab - the Stable Genius wants to be able to declare war on anyone he labels an enemy. He's willing to plunge the hemisphere into chaos and is breaking his pledge to end wars instead of starting new ones just to show he can act without congressional approval or the buy in of the public, even if it undermines opposition to China seizing Taiwan, or Putin's invasion of Ukraine. 

It’s about oil. Venezuela sits on the world's largest proven oil reserves, and its economic and geopolitical position has long made it a target of U.S. political and economic pressure. The Stable Genius had previously complained that the U.S. should have seized the oil after defeating Iraq, and his domestic energy strategy, such as it is, centers exclusively around fossil fuels and can be summarized by the motto, "drill, baby, drill."       

It's about distraction. The Stable Genius needs a big, red-white-and-blue military spectacle and a show trial to distract the public from his sinking approval ratings, the Epstein scandal, skyrocketing health-care costs, and an overall affordability crisis.

HOSCA protests, HOSCA disapproves, and HOSCA has no intention of ignoring this latest affront to the sovereignty of South and Central America. Hands off! No blood for oil!