The international community must cut off income sources for the regime of Nicolas Maduro, according to Maria Corina Machado, the opposition figure who has just been awarded the Nobel Peace.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
In Oslo to get the award for her fight for democracy, Machado was asked about the U.S. capture of the tanker Skipper off the coast of Venezuela, and whether she would support an American military intervention in the country, which has been the subject of speculation following the U.S. build-up of assets in the Caribbean.<\/p>\n
Machado replied that \u201cVenezuela has already been invaded\u201d by agents from Russia and Iran as well as\u00a0Colombian guerrilla and drug cartels controlling 60 percent of the country.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
She said that this had turned Venezuela \u201cinto the criminal hub of the Americas\u201d whose regime is sustained by\u00a0a\u00a0\u201cvery powerful, well-funded system of repression,\u201d funded by trafficking in drugs, arms,\u00a0people, and an oil black market.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to cut those flows. Once that happens and the repression is weakened,\u00a0it\u2019s\u00a0over, because violence and terror are all the regime has left,\u201d she said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
When Machado, 58, won the Nobel Peace Prize in October, she dedicated it in part to Donald Trump, who had repeatedly said he had deserved the honor for his role ending conflicts. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Machado has sided with the Trump administration’s position that Maduro has links to criminal gangs that are a direct threat to U.S. national security, although the legality of the strikes on boats allegedly carrying drugs have been questioned by Democrats and some Republicans.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe ask the international community to cut those sources, because the regimes supporting Maduro and the criminal networks have turned Venezuela into a safe haven for their operations into the rest of Latin America,\u201d added Machado.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The international community must cut off income sources for the regime of Nicolas Maduro, according to Maria Corina…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":343000,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,17237,12,935,3,18231,3310,644,21,19,22,20,25,24,18232],"class_list":["post-342999","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-coast-guard","tag-donald-trump","tag-live-blog","tag-news","tag-nicolas-maduro","tag-oil","tag-trump-administration","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-venezuela"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342999","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=342999"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342999\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/343000"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=342999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=342999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=342999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}