It's a sad and surreal world where people like Machado and Trump sell themselves as peace-loving " freedom fighters" and protectors of democracy - and people, even intelligent people, buy what they are selling.
Don't kid yourself. She is just like Trump, a hard-right, populist authoritarian and oligarchy-lover masquerading as a fighter for the people. She is not "desparate", far from it. This is her chance to remake Venezuela into her vision of what it should be: a playground for Big Oil, unfettered capitalism and the rapacious oligarchs who likely fund or at least support her. Her image has been carefully crafted and honed for nearly a quarter century by these malignant forces to appeal to both Western liberals and the right-wing populists on the ascendant here and in Europe. The Western media as usual is happy to carry all that dirty water - whether out of ignorance or at the behest of their oligarch owners, take your pick.
It dismays me that the Nobel prize will now be used to lend legitimacy to such nefarious plans and the bloody intervention and regime change both Machado and Trump are bent on inflicting on the unfortunate Venezuelans. But it doesn't surprise me in the least that Machado is chomping at the bits for the US to "drop the bombs" without any qualms about what that means for her people - after all, she pushed for the sanctions that devastated her country's economy and killed untold thousands of people and caused millions to flee. So what's a few more thousand, as long as Maduro is gone and Venezuela is up for sale, er "open for business", right?
Violence, deprivation and starvation repackaged as "peace". Authoritarianism and oligarchic rule repackaged as "democracy". Loss of sovereignty and national aspirations marketed as "freedom and liberation". It's the Trumpian playbook and Machado has played it well. There will be lots of "winners" but the losers will be ordinary Venezuelans.
If you think Maduro is bad, just wait until the CIA starts its black ops with Machado's help and people start "disappearing" and there is more blood in the streets in the tradition of what happens to all small countries that dare to oppose the US Empire and nationalize their resources or attempt to control their own destiny. Especially socialist ones.
Yes, socialist not communist. I lived under Soviet-style communism in my formative years. Venezuela is not communist. Ask me how I know.
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