Socialist dictator of Venezuela Nicolás Maduro ordered measures in recent days to prepare the country for a purported “invasion” by the United States in response to President Donald Trump’s increasing efforts targeting Latin American drug cartels in the region.
Venezuelan state propaganda armed have rolled out bizarre videos in the past week of the alleged “training” Venezuela’s citizens are engaged in to scare the U.S. military out of invading.
The United States reportedly deployed three Aegis guided-missile destroyers near Venezuelan waters. According to unnamed sources speaking to Reuters on Monday, “about 4,000 sailors and Marines” are expected to be committed in the southern Caribbean region in a several-month-long operation in international airspace and waters.
For years, Maduro has repeatedly claimed without evidence that the United States plans to “invade” Venezuela and oust him from power. Maduro, who has illegally clung to power, is actively wanted by U.S. authorities on multiple narco-terrorism charges and is a leading figure of the Cartel of the Suns, an international cocaine trafficking operation identified by the United States as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) entity.
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi announced this month that the United States doubled its reward for information that can lead to Maduro’s arrest and conviction from $25 to $50 million.
“What I will say with respect to Venezuela, President Trump has been very clear and consistent. He’s prepared to use every element of American power to stop drugs from flooding into our country and to bring those responsible to justice,” Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Tuesday. “The Maduro regime is not the legitimate government of Venezuela. It is a narco-terror cartel.”
“Maduro, it is the view of this administration, is not a legitimate president. He is a fugitive head of this cartel who has been indicted in the United States for trafficking drugs into the country,” she continued.
The Venezuelan Foreign Ministry responded to Leavitt’s remarks with an official statement condemning the alleged “desperation” of the U.S. administration and the “threats and defamation” against Venezuela. According to the Foreign Ministry, Washington’s drug trafficking accusation “reveals its lack of credibility and the failure of its policies in the region.”
Maduro has so far responded to the “threat” of the United States by “preparing” the country against a purported “invasion” against him and his socialist regime. Some of his measures include the deployment of 4.5 million members of its militia and a renewable 30-day nationwide ban on drones.
Videos circulating on social media this week show Maduro attending what appears to be a martial arts exhibition performed by Venezuelan Army officials. The training room features large pictures of the Venezuelan dictator, his predecessor Hugo Chávez, and a dubious computer-generated “recreation” of Venezuelan founding father Simón Bolívar originally commissioned by Chávez in the early 2010s widely used by the socialist regime’s propaganda machine.
In the video, a Venezuelan official gifts a “combat club” to Maduro, who points out that the club features an image of his cartoon superhero alter ego Súper Bigote (“Super Mustache”).
In another video, filmed during a recent event of the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), Maduro called for the party’s unity in the face of “sectarianism” by singing a butchered version of “Querida,” one of the most iconic songs by the late Mexican singer Juan Gabriel.
“Dear friends, I say this with love, I say this with affection,” Maduro prefaced before he started singing, stressing that the socialist party must be “broad and inclusive.”
“As President of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela, the leading party of the Bolivarian Revolution, the lucid and historic vanguard, the heritage and legacy of Commander Chávez, I call for the defeat of sectarianism as one of the worst evils we have cultivated in our political practice,” Maduro said.
“We are not, have not been, and must not be a political sect. We must be a loving, unifying force that brings together all the patriots of Venezuela, all the Bolivarians of Venezuela, all those who want a free homeland, all those who defend nationality, Venezuelan identity,” he continued.
Maduro’s bizarre lyrical “performance” came hours after the dictator, in another unrelated official event on Monday, condemned the United States for its “rotten rehash of the extravagant, bizarre, and outlandish threats of imperialist supremacism against Venezuela.” In that same event, the dictator vaguely spoke about “betrayals” and “hidden and disguised cowards who are not able to tell me things to my face because they are cowards.”
On Tuesday, Maduro, in the company of Interior Minister and wanted alleged drug lord Diosdado Cabello, claimed that Venezuela is a “bastion of sovereign peace in the face of empires.”
The event introduced an expansion of the socialist regime’s so-called “Peace Quadrants” citizens’ security initiative for the capital city of Caracas. The Venezuelan regime accompanied the expansion with a new brief episode of Super Mustache, in which the dictator’s alter ego celebrates the initiative as a “new model of citizen control and popular intelligence.”
“We have merged Communal Circuits [local community groups loyal to the socialists] with Peace Quadrants, creating a territorial network of security, coexistence, and popular justice,” Maduro’s cartoon said in the episode. “This perfect union between the community and law enforcement allows us to move toward a model of citizen control and popular intelligence.”
“It is the organized people, together with our glorious Bolivarian National Armed Forces and our police forces, defending the peace, life, and dignity of Venezuela,” the cartoon continued. “Where there was once chaos, today there is organization — where violence, imperialism, and their lackeys wanted to impose themselves. Today, the peace built by the people flourishes.”
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here
Read the full article here