Machado was also one of the political architects of La Salida, the 2014 opposition campaign that called for escalated protests, including guarimba tactics. Those weren't 'peaceful protests as the foreign press
claimed; they were organised barricades meant to paralyse the country and force the government's fall. Streets were blocked with burning trash and barbed wire, buses carrying workers were torched and peo-
ple suspected of being Chavista were beaten or killed. Even ambulances and doctors were attacked.
Some Cuban medical brigades were nearly burned alive. Public buildings, food trucks and schools were
destroyed. Entire neighbourhoods were held hostage by fear while opposition leaders like Machado
cheered from the side lines and called it "resistance".
She praises Trump's "decisive actions" against what she calls a "criminal enterprise", aligning herself
the same man who cages migrant children and tears families apart under ICE's watch while Venezuelan
mothers search for their children disappeared by US migration policies.
Machado isn't a symbol of peace or progress. She is part of a global alliance of fascism, Zionism and
neoliberalism, an axis that justifies domination in the language of democracy and peace. In Venezuela,
that alliance has meant coups, sanctions and privatisation. In Gaza, it means genocide and the erasure
of a people. The ideology is the same: a belief that some lives are disposable, that sovereignty is nego-
tiable and that violence can be sold as order.
If Henry Kissinger could win a Peace Prize, why not Maria Corina Machado? Maybe next year they'll give one to the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation for "compassion under occupation". Every time this award is handed to an architect of violence disguised as diplomacy, it spits in the face of those who actually fight for peace : the Palestinian medics digging bodies from rubble, the jour-
nalists risking their lives in Gaza to document the truth and the humanitarian workers of the flotilla
sailing to break the siege and deliver aid to starving children in Gaza, with nothing but courage and
conviction.
But real peace is not negotiated in boardrooms or awarded on stages. Real peace is built by women organising food networks during blockades, by Indigenous communities defending rivers from extraction, by workers who refuse to be starved into obedience by Venezuelan mothers mobilising
to demand the return of children seized under US, ICE and migration policies and by nations that choose sovereignty over servitude. That's the peace Venezuela, Cuba, Palestine and every nation
of the Global South deserves.
....concluded.
Courtesy. Michelle Ellner
Tailpiece.
Got up at 5, sent all the morning messages, switched on the hymns on the home theatre, lit up the lamp in the puja room and opened up the house for the day.
Lekha made our morning cuppa.
Walked on the road in front of The Quarterdeck and recited my prayers.
Bath followed by breakfast. Rema and Byja went, soon after.
Got reservation in the non-a/c chair car.
Did my packing.
A quiet evening, yakkittiyakking.
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