I queued this article in November of 2025 but never published it. The context has suddenly become much more relevant, so I'm clearing my queue of anything related to Venezuela. At first, I thought it was kind of hilarious that the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize had been awarded to a Venezuelan. You know, because Trump wants one of the damned things so desperately, and he hates Venezuela, so it really seemed like a stick in his eye. Hoo-boy was I wrong. The Nobel Peace Prize in 2025 was awarded to María Corina Machado, who I've written about before in these very pages. She is the U.S.-supported opposition leader in Venezuela. She organized the military coup against Chavez in 2002 and supported the shadow government during the whole Juan Guaido decable. The Nobel Prize committee lauded her as, <bq>[...] one of the most extraordinary examples of civilian courage in Latin America in recent times" and praised for her "tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela". For years she has campaigned against Venezuela's President Nicolás Maduro Moros, whose 12-year rule is viewed by many nations as illegitimate.</bq> OK. That seems interesting. Maybe I'm missing something. Let's see what <a href="https://apnews.com/article/nobel-peace-prize-oslo-41b6bff88e2d57af0917bcf778e132ad" author="Kostya Manenkov, Regina Garcia Cano and Geir Moulson" source="AP News">Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado wins the Nobel Peace Prize</a> writes, <bq>Machado, who turned 58 this week, <b>was set to run against Maduro in last year’s presidential election, but the government disqualified her.</b> Edmundo González, who had never run for office before, took her place. The lead-up to the election saw widespread repression, including <b>disqualifications, arrests and human rights violations.</b></bq> <bq>Machado was included in Time magazine’s list of 100 most influential people in April. U.S. Secretary of State <b>Marco Rubio wrote her entry, in which he described her as “the Venezuelan Iron Lady”</b> and “the personification of resilience, tenacity, and patriotism.”</bq> Man, if Marco Rubio thinks she's good, there's got to be something fishy about her. Lemme check my own notes. Oh dear... <h>Machado through the years</h> My notes over the last year-and-a-half paint a different picture. The U.S. mind-virus is nestled deeply in the members of the Nobel committee. This is not surprising; this is the same committee who've already rewarded Barack Obama and Henry Kissinger for their peaceful contributions. Poor Hillary Clinton seems to always be a bridesmaid. But we were talking about another <iq>iron lady</iq>, <ul> <div><a href="{app}/view_article.php?id=4964">Links and Notes for February 2nd, 2024</a> <a href="https://original.antiwar.com/roger_harris/2024/02/05/why-the-us-is-reimposing-sanctions-on-venezuela/" author="Roger D. Harris" source="Antiwar.com">Why the US Is Reimposing Sanctions on Venezuela?</a> <bq>Machado’s treatment by the Venezuelan government has arguably erred more on the side of leniency than severity. In most other countries, a person with her rap sheet would be behind bars. <b>Back in 2002, Machado signed the Carmona Decree, establishing a coup government. Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez had been deposed in a military coup backed by the US.</b> The constitution was suspended, the legislature dismissed, and the supreme court shuttered. Fortunately for democracy in Venezuela, the coup lasted less than three days. The people spontaneously took to the streets and restored their elected government. <b>Machado, who now incredulously claims she signed the coup government’s founding decree mistakenly, was afforded amnesty.</b></bq></div> <div><a href="{app}/view_article.php?id=4979">Links and Notes for February 16th, 2024</a> <a href="https://original.antiwar.com/ted_snider/2024/02/18/americas-hypocritical-stance-on-venezuelas-and-pakistans-elections/" author="Ted Snider" source="Antiwar.com">Washington, Pro-Democracy? Depends on the Country</a> As detailed in the article and elsewhere, Machado has a long history of anti-democratic activity in Venezuela, plausibly if not definitively linked to foreign governments like neighbor Panama and perennial instigator the U.S. She is a signatory to two documents supporting and encouraging coups in Venezuela, one of which succeeded for a few days. The decision to bar her was taken by the courts, not by executive fiat. </div> <div><a href="{app}/view_article.php?id=5084">Links and Notes for May 17th, 2024</a> <a href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/05/17/is-washington-trying-to-subvert-venezuelas-elections/" source="CounterPunch" author="Maria Paez Victor">Is Washington Trying to Subvert Venezuela’s Elections?</a> <bq>The results of a 3 May 2024 poll by Encuesta Nacional Ideadatos, indicated that <b>Nicolás Maduro is the choice of 52.7% of voters while Edmundo Gonzalez is the choice of only 18.7% of voters.</b></bq> And that 18.7% of voters are probably just so anti-Maduro that they would vote for a cardboard box instead. <bq>Despite being legally barred from running for public office 15 years ago because of proven corruption, <b>Machado staged a bogus opposition “primary” in which she prevented other opposition candidates from running. Ballots were unaudited and destroyed making post-voting inspection impossible. Then Machado declared the absurdity that two million people voted for her.</b> But truth did not matter. The aim was only to tell this falsehood to the gullible international media, who will print anything the USA candidate of the extreme right will tell them.</bq> <bq>Gonzalez openly declared he has no plans to campaign personally (What for? He has the money and power of the USA behind him?) People aren’t sure if this is due to his elderly age, 74, or his sheer idleness. <b>Maria Corina Machado is the one who is campaigning for him, carrying around a large poster of his face so people can recognize Edmundo Gonzalez on the ballot.</b></bq></div> <div><a href="{app}/view_article.php?id=5143">Links and Notes for July 26th, 2024</a> <a href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/08/02/venezuela-an-attempted-coup-by-any-other-name/" author="Maria Paez Victor" source="CounterPunch">Venezuela: An Attempted Coup By Any Other Name</a> <bq>We are in the presence of <b>an attempt of the international fascist far right and the CIA to overthrow the government of Venezuela with a massive disinformation and denigration campaign</b> to justify illegal sanctions and foreign intervention in the country. The checkered past and crimes of Machado, poster girl of the far right, is never mentioned, <b>her involvement in coups, her promotion of street violence in the past, her asking the USA for sanctions and military invasion against Venezuela, and right now, her collaboration with criminal gangs and narco-paramilitary groups are never mentioned.</b> Her puppet, Edmundo González, was involved in the logistics and financing of the death squads in El Salvador’s civil war. Their hands are tainted with blood.</bq></div> <div><a href="{app}/view_article.php?id=5164">Links and Notes for September 6th, 2024</a> <a href="https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/09/07/ewym-s07.html" author="Andrea Lobo" source="WSWS">Washington presses regional governments to secure Maduro’s ouster in Venezuela</a> <bq>Five weeks after the July 28 presidential elections in Venezuela, the fascistic leader of the US-backed opposition, <b>María Corina Machado, demanded on Thursday that the Biden administration “do more” to oust President Nicolas Maduro from power.</b> Speaking to reporters from an undisclosed location, Machado argued that this was a matter of strategic importance for US interests globally and concluded: <b>“I am partial to maximum pressure.” She then repeated her appeals for the Venezuelan military to overthrow Maduro.</b></bq> Hooray! This is just what the world needs: another maniac to add to Zelensky and Netanyahu. There are so many people rubbing their hands together for a similarly tragic situation in Venezuela. It's not like it's going great there now, but the U.S. is looking to make things so much worse.<fn></div> </ul> <h>Machado in 2025</h> So that's the kind of stuff that those of who'd been listening had been hearing up to the end of the 2024. What do the reactions look like now that she's won the Nobel Peace Prize? The article <a href="https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/when-maria-corina-machado-wins-the-nobel-peace-prize-peace-has-lost-its-meaning/" author="Michelle Ellner" source="ZNetwork">When Maria Corina Machado Wins the Nobel Peace Prize, “Peace” Has Lost Its Meaning</a> writes, <bq>If this is what counts as “peace” in 2025, then the prize itself has lost every ounce of credibility. I’m Venezuelan-American, and I know exactly what Machado represents. <b>She’s the smiling face of Washington’s regime-change machine, the polished spokesperson for sanctions, privatization, and foreign intervention dressed up as democracy.</b> Machado’s politics are steeped in violence. <b>She has called for foreign intervention</b>, even appealing directly to Benjamin Netanyahu, the architect of Gaza’s annihilation, to help “liberate” Venezuela with bombs under the banner of “freedom,” <b>She has demanded sanctions</b>, that silent form of warfare whose effects – as studies in The Lancet and other journals have shown – have killed more people than war, cutting off medicine, food, and energy to entire populations. Machado has spent her entire political life <b>promoting division, eroding Venezuela’s sovereignty, and denying its people the right to live with dignity.</b></bq> <bq><b>She praises Trump’s “decisive action” against what she calls a “criminal enterprise,”</b> aligning herself with the same man who cages migrant children and tears families apart under ICE’s watch, <b>while Venezuelan mothers search for their children disappeared by U.S. migration policies.</b></bq> <bq>If Henry Kissinger could win a Peace Prize, why not María Corina Machado? <b>Maybe next year they’ll give one to the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation for “compassion under occupation.”</b></bq> The article <a href="https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2025/10/11/sjsy-o11.html" author="Andrea Lobo" source="WSWS">Nobel Prize for imperialist war and regime change goes to Washington’s Venezuelan puppet María Corina Machado</a> writes, <bq><b>This hero of the struggle for a “peaceful transition to democracy” openly hails US military aggression and is directly collaborating with Washington</b> on plans for post-regime-change repression of all those opposed to Washington's intervention. <b>As the New York Times acknowledged last week, “The group supporting the use of force is led by Maria Corina Machado.”</b> The Times adds: “One of Ms. Machado’s advisers, Pedro Urruchurtu, said <b>she was coordinating with the Trump administration and had a plan for the first 100 hours after Mr. Maduro’s fall. That plan involves the participation of international allies, he said, ‘especially the United States.’”</b> One can be certain that those 100 hours would be every bit as bloody as those that followed the coups in Chile in 1973 and Argentina in 1976.</bq> <bq>Recently, <b>Machado went on Fox News to endorse the ongoing US military buildup in the Caribbean and extrajudicial massacres of fishermen accused without evidence of working for cartels allegedly tied to Maduro.</b> <b>“I want to tell how grateful we are to President Trump and the administration</b> for addressing the tragedy that Venezuela is going through,” she said. <b>“Maduro has turned Venezuela into the biggest threat to the national security of the U.S.</b> and the stability of the region.”</bq> It's nice how everyone is showing their true face all the time now. It somehow makes things easier when they don't even bother with subterfuge. The Nobel Prize Committee is irredeemably in the tank for the U.S. administration. There is no doubt in my mind that the U.S. heavily influenced---if not outright made---the selection, having first ascertained that the prize absolutely couldn't go to Trump instead. As Lobo writes, <bq>[...] they couldn’t give the award to the US organ grinder, <b>they did choose one of his able monkeys in the person of Machado.</b></bq> <bq>A defender of “free market” policies, above all the privatization of the state oil company PDVSA, whose public ownership has been upheld by a wide spectrum of bourgeois parties since the 1970s, <b>Machado has endorsed Milei’s economic program of “shock therapy” in which “freedom” means the liberation of corporations to eliminate social spending and exploit the working class</b> without any restrictions or regulations.</bq> Should she somehow come to power<fn>, I suppose she could expect a $20B "loan" from the U.S. government when those policies utterly and predictably fail to do anything but enrich herself, as Milei's have. This is nothing but a farce. Irredeemably stupid. Lobo continues, <bq><b>It is necessary to cut through the lying propaganda of “democracy” and “human rights” and reveal the ugly reality of bourgeois politics.</b> The working class must reject with contempt <b>the cynical use of the Nobel Prize to sanctify imperialist reaction.</b> Only the unity of workers in Venezuela, with those of the rest of Latin America, the United States, and internationally—armed with a socialist and revolutionary perspective—can halt the march to world war and fascist dictatorship, and open the way to genuine peace, democracy and social equality. <b>The anointment of Machado by imperialism is, above all, a warning: the ruling class is preparing for new crimes on a world scale.</b><fn></bq> <h>Yeah, but who else is worthy?</h> I just heard Chas Freeman say, near the end of the following excellent interview that, <iq>I would have said that Francesca Albanese should have gotten a Nobel Peace Prize.</iq> His interlocutor Jyotishman agrees, saying that <iq>Absolutely. I mean, there there are many candidates. Some some said Greta Thunberg, some said Francisca Albanese.</iq> And that's only if we stick to female, white Europeans! I'm sure the rest of the world would have something to offer as well, were the Norwegian Nobel Prize Committee to be interested in anything other than currying favor with the U.S. empire. <media href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jm1kxCygFmw" src="https://www.youtube.com/v/jm1kxCygFmw" source="YouTube" width="560px" author="India & Global Left" caption="Chas Freeman: Why This Gaza Ceasefire Won’t Last"> <h>Let the lady speak for herself</h> If you're wondering what to believe, then listen to the lady herself. She <a href="https://x.com/MariaCorinaYA/status/1976642376119549990">posted this on Twitter.</a>, cited in its entirety. <bq>This recognition of the struggle of all Venezuelans is a boost to conclude our task: to conquer Freedom. We are on the threshold of victory and today, more than ever, <b>we count on President Trump, the people of the United States</b>, the peoples of Latin America, and the democratic nations of the world as our principal allies <b>to achieve Freedom and democracy.</b> <b>I dedicate this prize</b> to the suffering people of Venezuela and <b>to President Trump for his decisive support of our cause!</b></bq> This is practically an open invitation to invade Venezuela. <img src="{att_link}maria-corina-machado-1.7-trillion-privatize-venezuela-oil-1024x576-2694743155.webp" href="{att_link}maria-corina-machado-1.7-trillion-privatize-venezuela-oil-1024x576-2694743155.webp" align="none" caption="María Corina Machado sells out" scale="50%"> Oh, never mind. It <i>is</i> an invitation to invade Venezuela, install her as president, after which she will give away $1.7T of natural resources to U.S. firms. She's probably get something for it. On of the peace prize, of course. And that, folks, is your Nobel Peace Prize winner for 2025. Drive safe. <h>Postscript</h> The article <a href="https://scheerpost.com/2025/12/17/julian-assange-sweden-broke-own-laws-with-nobel-prize-to-venezuelas-machado/" author="Wyatt Reed & Max Blumenthal" source="The Grayzone / Scheer Post">Julian Assange: Sweden Broke Own Laws With Nobel Prize to Venezuela’s Machado</a> writes that when you embrace Trump and the U.S., you get dirty, <bq>The Wikileaks founder pointed to the “ample public statements… showing that the U.S. government and María Corina Machado have exploited the authority of the prize to provide them with a casus moralis for war,” adding that <b>the explicitly stated purpose of the war sought by Machado and her wealthy Latin American backers would be “installing her by force in order to plunder $1.7 trillion in Venezuelan oil and other resources.”</b> <b>The Nobel Foundation stands accused of a number of violations of Swedish criminal law, including breach of trust, misappropriation and gross misappropriation</b>, conspiracy, crimes against international law, as well as financing of aggression, facilitation of war crimes and crimes against humanity, and breaching Sweden’s stated obligations under the Rome Statute, to which Stockholm says it is “deeply committed.” Under Swedish law, “<b>Alfred Nobel’s endowment for peace cannot be spent on the promotion of war,” Assange noted.</b> “Nor can it be used as a tool in foreign military intervention. Venezuela, whatever the status of its political system, is no exception.”</bq> <hr> <ft>I'm not a genius for having seen it coming. I just read and remember.</ft> <ft>Man, things move <i>fast</i> in Trump-world. I wrote that just two months ago and, here we are, with Maduro out of the way, but also <i>Machado has been completely sidelined.</i></ft> <ft>Well, Ms. Lobo was <i>certainly right about that.</i></ft>