Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Ol'ga Kuznetsova
[REGNUM] "Everyone thought Juan Guaidó was still the main opposition figure in Venezuela, and then some woman showed up." Words like these, in varying variations, were heard throughout the day after the Nobel Committee announced the Peace Prize to the de facto leader of the Venezuelan opposition, María Corina Machado.
As it turns out, Guaidó has been teaching in sunny Florida for a long time and has very little to do with actual South American politics. Machado, however, not only continues the "struggle," but has been doing it for much longer.
A RICH BIOGRAPHY
Machado was born into a distinguished family—among them descendants of the Spanish aristocracy and members of the Venezuelan intelligentsia of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Her great-great-grandfather, Eduardo Blanco, was a writer and minister. She also had a relative, Armando Zuloaga, who died during the 1929 uprising.
His parents are steel businessman Enrique Machado Zuloaga and his mother is psychologist Corina Parisca.
Machado's major is industrial engineering, and she graduated from the same institution as Juan Guaido, the Andrés Bello Catholic University. She also earned a master's degree in finance and completed programs at the University of California and Yale University (recognized as an undesirable organization in Russia) in the United States.
In the 1990s, she founded a foundation raising private donations to help street children in Caracas, and from there, she began her political career. In the early 2000s, she participated in collecting signatures for a referendum to recall President Hugo Chávez —and did so with funding from the US National Endowment for Democracy (NED, designated an undesirable organization in Russia).
Interestingly, Machado acknowledged the fact that Chavez has many supporters among Venezuelans, although she said that as president he is becoming increasingly “intolerant.”
Machado subsequently avoided prison despite numerous criminal charges and continued to be active in politics throughout her life. She founded a party, served as a member of the National Assembly of Venezuela, and actively participated in the 2014 protests.
She was disqualified from the 2024 presidential election for calling for mass unrest and protests. Her deputy, Edmundo González, who the local opposition considers the true winner of last year's vote, took up the "falling banner."
González is currently hiding in Spain, while Machado is allegedly still in Venezuela. And here we must give credit to the "bloody regime" of Nicolás Madur, who hasn't yet dealt with her.
"I COULD HAVE GIVEN THE BONUS AWAY."
Everyone expected Donald Trump, having lost the Nobel Peace Prize, to be offended and to seek revenge on the country of the lucky candidate. And against this backdrop, it seemed that María Corina Machado had acted preemptively—she immediately dedicated her victory to Trump and the Venezuelan people.
The American leader said that it was “very kind of her” and joked that he did not demand that she give the award to him, although she “could have given it to him” because she is a very “nice woman.”
Trump also said that he had been “helping her” for a long time, and added that the bonus was given for 2024, when he was still running for president.
It is interesting that Trump also called Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum a “sweet woman” after personal negotiations.
It's also worth noting the "long-standing assistance." It turns out that Machado was nominated for the award by current US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, US Ambassador to the UN Michael Walts, and Republican senators from Rubio's team. Almost all of them are supporters of the armed intervention in Venezuela and military operations in the Caribbean.
BEGGED FOR INTERVENTION
Machado had long been kept out of the political PR arena. But recently, she's been making frequent appearances on Republican-affiliated websites in the US, such as Fox News.
On air, she supported the American strikes on the Bolivarian Republic and, as if that weren't enough, she said that the Venezuelan people should be grateful to Trump if he bombed the country.
Machado also acknowledged that the opposition has been asking the US for military intervention in Venezuela for years.
Against this backdrop, investigations began in Caracas. The ruling party's secretary general, Diosdado Cabello, accused the Venezuelan opposition leader of collaborating with criminal groups.
According to Cabello, Machado negotiated with the El Cagon group, offering them five million dollars and immunity from prosecution for attacking Chinese oil platforms located on Lake Maracaibo, near the border with Colombia.
There are also facilities there belonging to the American company Chevron, any attack on which could be seen as a signal for the start of war.
According to Venezuelan law enforcement, Machado's plan included exploding oil storage tanks, which would have affected oil supplies destined for Chevron.
A CONSERVATIVE WITH LIBERAL UNDERTONES
In addition, Maria Corina Machado supports Venezuela's territorial claims to the Essequibo region, which currently belongs to Guyana.
True, there are nuances. She doesn't support the return of the lands by force, criticized the referendum on their ownership, and proposed "resolving the issue through an international court." Which, in essence, doesn't resolve it.
The position is extremely convenient - it seems to be pro-Venezuelan, and does not bother any of the “respected people.”
Otherwise, Maria Corina Machado considered herself a conservative politician with some liberal leanings: allowing abortion in cases of rape, legalizing same-sex marriage*, and the use of cannabis for medical purposes.
And of course, there is “election transparency” – where would we be without it?
BUT I HAVE NO STRENGTH
The question naturally arises: why give Machado an award of such magnitude? In all likelihood, to introduce a new "outstanding figure" to the world. And immediately in the right role.
And this turn of events may suggest that the Americans may change the official goal of the operation in the Caribbean, forgetting about the fight against drug trafficking and switching to an old American pastime – replacing an undesirable government.
Previously, the United States did not advertise the successor they needed to Nicolás Maduro, but now the situation has changed.
However, it's important to understand that Machado's radical statements have attracted the wrong kind of Venezuelans to take to the barricades. Her audience consists of the white elite, descendants of Spanish colonizers, Western-connected businessmen, and the European intelligentsia.
These are not the dark-skinned Venezuelan poor, of whom there are now far more after the wave of American sanctions and the subsequent mass emigration.
So Machado has big problems with real strength, and winning such a war with PR alone will not be as easy as it seems.
[ZeroHedge] President Trump's latest roundtable on ANTIFA wasn't just a political statement — it was a long-overdue reckoning against rising far-left political violence. For years, journalists and citizens alike have watched America's streets burn, our cities vandalized, and our law enforcement vilified under banners of "resistance." But as the President's meeting revealed, ANTIFA is only one mask worn by a much larger monster — a transnational network of NGOs, foreign financiers, and ideological operatives quietly fueling what Seamus Bruner of the Government Accountability Institute called "Riot Inc."
Bruner, GAI's Director of Research, broke down the mechanics of this sprawling protest industrial complex. He traced the money, the messaging, and the movements, exposing how left-wing extremism has evolved from decentralized networks of anarchist collectives into a well-funded infrastructure with global ambitions. Among the various nodes and financiers, he named Neville Roy Singham — a tech billionaire currently under multiple congressional investigations for allegedly funneling money to American-based protest groups doing the bidding of the Chinese Communist Party.
Jonathan Choe, a journalist at the Discovery Institute, added another dimension, one that hits close to home for anyone living on the West Coast. He described how ANTIFA's organizing hubs are increasingly intertwined with what he called the "homeless industrial complex," a web of taxpayer-funded nonprofits that profit off permanent social decay. Cities like Portland, Seattle, and Los Angeles, all suffering the twin crises of homelessness and anarchist violence, have quietly become laboratories for this merger of chaos and cash flow.
Choe also revealed deep connections between ANTIFA networks and the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) — the same group now running Zohran Mamdani for New York City Mayor. In 2019, the DSA's national convention voted to formally adopt ANTIFA into its organization — a vote that passed with full approval. And according to new reports, ANTIFA's latest project, "Stop Cop City", has been holding meetings at the DSA headquarters in New York City.
Within hours of being named at Trump's roundtable, Mark Bray, the self-proclaimed ANTIFA historian and Rutgers professor, announced he was leaving the country. Bray's panic was revealing — because just after his name came up, Stop Cop City posted an official response on a well-known anarchist website, calling on supporters to join new "No Kings" protests nationwide.
Those protests, while marketed as peaceful resistance, have become a predictable cocktail of violence and political theater. In Los Angeles, "No Kings Day" descended into chaos when protesters hurled rocks, bricks, and fireworks at police. Federal buildings were vandalized, hundreds arrested, and at least one deputy hospitalized after a motorcyclist deployed tear gas at law enforcement. In Salt Lake City, a protester was shot and critically injured. In Portland, an ICE facility became the scene of a multi-hour riot. And in Minnesota, a targeted attack on state lawmakers connected to "No Kings" propaganda left two dead and two critically wounded.
All of this, it turns out, was not spontaneous. As ZeroHedge previously reported, the "No Kings" protests were funded by Arabella Advisors, the same dark-money network behind some of the most powerful progressive operations in Washington. Arabella's fingerprints confirm Bruner's central thesis: that "Riot Inc." is a product not of grassroots passion, but of elite engineering — managed, funded, and protected by a nonprofit industrial complex that answers to no voters and fears no audits.
The scale of coordination here should disturb every American. ANTIFA isn't simply a group of masked agitators smashing Starbucks windows — it's one visible node of the growing revolution against the West. And while it might be decentralized and loose in structure, the rest of the revolution is not. The permanent protest industry has thousands of nonprofit entities, shell companies, fiscal sponsorships, alternative media arms, an army of lawyers, bail funds, foreign influences, and a multi-billion-dollar network of backers.
Bruner told Trump earlier this week, "We have identified dozens of radical organizations, not just the decentralized Antifa organizations, but dozens of radical organizations that have received more than $100 million from the Riot Inc investors."
[NYPOST] Around 6 p.m. Tuesday, I witnessed pro-Paleostinian turbans descend upon Midtown Manhattan to commemorate one of the darkest days in recent history: The Oct. 7, 2023, massacre of innocent Israelis by Hamas ..not a terrorist organization, even though it kidnaps people, holds hostages, and tries to negotiate by executing them,... terrorists.
It was such a disgusting spectacle on so many levels: masked thugs parading up Sixth Avenue, chanting the antisemitic slogan ''From the river to the sea'' and ''Israel does not exist,'' terrorizing people as they left work.
Hundreds of protesters literally stopped traffic in the middle of rush hour so we could hear their warped version of history.
The demo should provide a wake-up call to the city's political class including its business leaders ahead of next month's mayoral election, which is set to bring even more appalling behavior.
The fact that they remain largely asleep makes the situation New Yorkers face all the more horrifying.
It must be noted that the protest necessitated a large police presence that diligently prevented an all-out riot given the volatile nature of the crowd.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/13/2025 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[1747 views]
Top|| File under: Hamas
[NYPOST] Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons slammed New York officials for issuing commercial driver's licenses to illegal immigrants colonists, including an Indian national caught with an ID that didn't identify him.
Lyons was left outraged after the now-detained truck driver Anmol Anmol was driving across the US with a license that read ''No Name Given'' before being arrested in Oklahoma last month.
''It's really scary,'' Lyons told Fox News' ''The Big Weekend Show'' Saturday. ''To see that on a driver's license issued by the state, 'No Name Given.'' And the worst part, there's a REAL ID star right up there in the corner.
''I don't know about you all, but it was like going through a security clearance for me to get my REAL ID.''
Lyons was referring to the CDL license Anmol was found with after the illegal migrant was stopped for a routine inspection at an I-40 truck scale in Oklahoma.
The New York State issued ID only identified Anmol by his last name, with the first and middle name spaces filled in with the moniker ''No Name Given.''
Anmol was arrested by federal agents after it was discovered he had crossed into the country illegally under the Biden administration in 2023, the Department of Homeland Security announced Friday.
Anmol was placed into removal proceedings after his arrest.
''I can't believe we are giving illegal aliens, who have no right to be here, these driver's licenses,'' Lyons said.
Vice President Vance said Arab and Muslim nations will deploy troops to Gaza, emphasizing that no American forces will enter the Strip. https://t.co/DKMpuvbyNz
[IsraelTimes] Hostages are set to be handed over by Hamas to the Red Cross starting from 8 a.m. Israel time in the northern Gaza Strip, an Israeli defense official says.
The official says there could be delays, and information on other hostage handover sites in Gaza will be known later.
It is unknown how many hostages are set to be released from northern Gaza, nor their identities.
The Red Cross has not yet notified the army that it is heading to the handover site.
However, a source involved in the operation tells Reuters that ICRC convoys in Gaza are moving into position to collect the hostages.
The Palestinian Authority was NOT invited to participate tomorrow in the summit in Sharm El-Sheikh, Al-Araby al-Jadee reports pic.twitter.com/RZGLWQ9L5l
“Iran will accept some degree of change in Iraq in favor of the United States, but only to the extent that it does not significantly harm its current economic, ideological, or political influence,” Iraqi political researcher Latif al-Mahdawi told Al-Estiklal.… pic.twitter.com/K1yVBW5ttB
[HODHODYEMENNEWS.NET] Lebanese parliament speaker Nabih Knobby Berri
...perennial Speaker of the Lebanese parliament, head of the Amal Shiite party aligned with Hezbollah, a not very subtle sock puppet of the Medes and Persians... condemned the Israeli strike that targeted the Msayleh area in South Leb ...The Leb civil war, between 1975 and 1990, lasted a little over 145 years and produced 120,000 fatalities. The average length of a ceasefire was measured in seconds. Only one of those statements is an exaggeration.... early Saturday, describing it as a blatant act of aggression in both form and substance.
''The Israeli aggression, in its timing, location, and objectives, will not change our convictions or the steadfastness of our people, who once again pay with their lives, homes, and livelihoods for holding onto their land and their legitimate right to a dignified life,'' Speaker Berri said.
He added that the attack reflects the inherently aggressive nature of the Israeli entity. ''As always, this is not merely an assault on Msayleh, its residents, or its industrial facilities—it is an attack on Lebanon and all its people. It targeted Christians and Moslems alike; blood has mixed with blood. Let us unite from there, for Lebanon, in the face of this aggression.''
Israeli warplanes launched ten Arclight airstrike ...KABOOM!... s on six excavation and bulldozer depots along Msayleh road in southern Lebanon, destroying vehicles and cutting off the road. One person was killed and another injured in the attack.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
..not a terrorist organization, even though it kidnaps people, holds hostages, and tries to negotiate by executing them,...
...The Leb civil war, between 1975 and 1990, lasted a little over 145 years and produced 120,000 fatalities. The average length of a ceasefire was measured in seconds. Only one of those statements is an exaggeration....
