Maybe the Angry Women - 4

 Considering women's rights to their own bodies!

Considering a woman elected president and having to live in hiding from a dictator who would not leave office. Maria Corina Machado. Then she won the Nobel Peace Prize for 2025...and how to collect it (see below)

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'She's awesome': How U.S. veterans helped Venezuela's Machado escape
December 12, 2025 5:33 PM ET
Heard on All Things Considered

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil — It's an extraordinary achievement to win the Nobel Peace Prize. But for this year's laureate, even getting to the ceremony was a feat of its own.

María Corina Machado spent more than a year in hiding after her opposition movement defeated Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in last year's election by a wide margin, according to voting records validated by international observers. Maduro refused to leave office and ordered a massive crackdown on the opposition.

Getting Machado out of Venezuela and safely to Oslo required an operation worthy of a thriller. At the center of that mission was U.S. Special Forces Veteran Bryan Stern, the bearded, broad-shouldered founder of Grey Bull Rescue Foundation. Stern and his team of U.S. military veterans have pulled off hundreds of extractions around the world. But this one, he says, was different.

She's the second most popular person in the Western Hemisphere after Maduro," he said." Because of that signature, that's what made this operation very hard."

Stern and his team had only a week to plan Machado's escape, a mission they called Operation Golden Dynamite — a nod to Alfred Nobel, the Peace Prize founder who also invented dynamite.

A land route was ruled out — too many checkpoints where she'd be recognized. So, they decided to move by sea.

But they had to be careful. The U.S. military has built up a significant presence off Venezuela's coast, destroying nearly two dozen alleged narco-trafficking boats in recent months, killing at least 87 people. Stern wouldn't discuss details, but says he coordinated with U.S. officials who were aware they'd be operating in the area.

He was careful to avoid using a boat that could turn into a target. "I didn't want a big giant boat with big engines that could go fast and cut through waves," he said. "That's what the narcos use — and the U.S. military likes to blow them up."

Then their plan hit another snag: Ms. Machado's boat never arrived at the predetermined rendezvous point in the Caribbean Sea. 

"We were supposed to meet in the middle, but when that couldn't happen, we pivoted and went to them," Stern said.

In pitch darkness, with 10-foot waves smashing the sides of both boats and only flashlights to guide them, nerves frayed. Each crew worried the other could be cartel members, government agents, or worse.

"I could be Maduro's guys, I could be cartel guys — anything really," Stern said. "Everyone is skittish approaching each other in the dead of night at sea. In 10-foot waves? This is scary stuff."

Finally, once they were close enough to hear one another, a voice cut across the water.

"It's me — María!"

Stern hauled her aboard. With the wind at their backs, the final leg to a Caribbean island — which he declined to name, but is widely reported to be Curaçao — was mercifully smooth. A private plane was waiting to take her the rest of the way to Oslo.

Stern says Machado was tougher than the crusty veterans helping her escape.
"We're all bitching and moaning — it's cold, it's wet, we're hungry, it's dark," he said. "She didn't complain once."

Stern admits he was a bit star struck by Machado. He'd followed her fight for democratic change for years. He'd always assumed Venezuela's "Iron Lady" got her nickname from her political steeliness. But after that night, he says it's something more.

"She's gnarly," he said, laughing. "Pretty awesome."

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Reuters published on Dec 11, 2025: Venezuela's Maria Corina Machado has arrived in Oslo just hours after the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony — defying a decade-long travel ban after spending more than a year in hiding.

This year's peace laureate Maria Corina Machado has been forced to live in hiding. She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela.

Here she finally stands next to Jørgen Watne Frydnes, Chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, with her Nobel Prize diploma and medal.

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I noticed many negative, uninformed and just stupid comments on the FB posts that I have read following these two postings. When some of them at least asked questions, like who is she? and why did she win? I do hope they make the effort to search for the answers!

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Did you see her speaking on the correct YouTube video? My link seemed to go elsewhere. But this goes to a newscast which includes her at the Prize Ceremony.

I must wonder if her win of the election and becoming Presidente' de Venuzuela in actuality might have changed the way the US (Trump and Hegseth particularly) are acting towards it today.

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'Whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, if there be any virtue, if there be any praise,' they are all comprised in this one word, love."

and...

"Do all the good you can,

By all the means you can,

In all the ways you can,

In all the places you can,

At all the times you can,

To all the people you can,

As long as you ever can."

John Wesley, born 1703, father of Methodism.

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Angie Buchanan

6.24.22

"No more civility. No more being polite. No more trying to get along, no more attempts to understand a different point of view. No more tolerance. The filters are out, the gloves are off. I am feral, unhinged. I will not be legislated by your religious doctrine. I'm not even trying anymore, Your way hasn't worked. Let's try mine.

Art: Circe Invidiosa by John William Waterhouse In case you don't know the story - she's poisoning the waters - turning her offenders into monsters.

This witch don't mess around."

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These posts came about after the 2022 Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, and started the domino effect of many states declaring abortions illegal. Women (and a lot of feminist men) were outraged. Some who were pregnant died.

The Goddess Kali in Tampaksiring Indonesia

Kali destroys those who are evil-doers, collects the garbage of humanity.

Winter Solstice - Maybe the Angry Women - 3

Today the sun starts shining more hours each day in the northern hemisphere. It is considered the birth of new light.

"In this tradition since pre-Celtic times, and in many other cultural traditions, Winter Solstice has been celebrated as the birth of the God, and in Christian tradition as the birth of the Saviour. But there are deeper ways of understanding what is being born: that is, who or what the “saviour” is...

Birthing is not often an easy process – for the birthgiver nor for the birthed one: It is a shamanic act requiring strength of bodymind, attention and focus of the mother, and courage to be of the new young one.

Birthgiving is the original place of “heroics” … many cultures of the world have never forgotten that: Perhaps therefore better termed as “heraics”. Patriarchal adaptations of the story of this Seasonal Moment usually miss the Creative Act of birthgiving completely – pre-occupied as they often are with the “virgin” nature of the Mother being interpreted as an “intact hymen”, and the focus being the Child as “saviour”: Even the Mother gazes at the Child in Christian icons, while in more ancient images Her eyes are direct and expressive of Her integrity as Creator. In Earth-based religious practice, the ubiquitous icon of Mother and Child – Creator and Created – expresses something essential about the Universe itself … the “motherhood” we are all born within."

-Glenys Livingstone, PhD, PaGaian Cosmology: Re-inventing Earth-based Goddess Religion

 

Tlazolteotl *

Birthing.

Any woman who has given vaginal birth (as opposed to Cesarian Sections) knows the incredible energies she had to find to push another human being into life.

When the nurse says you are 10 centimeters dilatated, that's how big your cervix must expand for you to give birth.

Every human being has experienced being born.

And every mother who gave birth has experienced the incredible forces of her womb to do this act. Us who had C-Sections (2 out of my 3 births) still had much similar feelings both emotionally and physically in the process and recovery from an abdominal surgical incision.

There are lots of photos on the internet of expectant mothers pushing, grimacing, breathing but no photos of actual birth. The babies are shown right after birth, being examined, or having the umbilical cord cut. The babies are shown with the moms holding them right after birth.

But though thousands of doctors and nurses and many fathers have seen a baby's head crown, the actual birth isn't shown. Perhaps the prudish society says we can't see a woman's vagina giving birth, or her anus, or somehow these are taboo still. OK, I don't want my privates spread all over the internet...but really, millions of births take place all over the world every day! They are invisible to the mothers, however. Just saying...

The only photo of an actual birth that I found.

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We celebrate (almost everybody) birthdays each year, to mark how many years we've accomplished of life so far.

And nobody sings to the mothers!

Well, I'm just saying, it kind of is mixed up, isn't it? The mothers did all the work, risked their lives and spent many hungry hours during labor, practicing different kinds of breathing while birth was about to finally happen, after waddling around with this extra weight hanging from their very centers for so long.

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Today's goddess is any mother.

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Winter Solstice, the rebirth of light, is today at 10:03 am ET.

''god is a mother

and with that

sentence

the world stops

the world always stops

when woman and

divine

commingle

as if the

feminine

dilutes the

miraculous

when in reality

it embodies it

when jesus turns water

to wine

they clap

but when women turn breasts

to milk

they cringe

a broken man’s body

is celebrated each sunday

while a broken woman’s body

is just hidden away

and it’s no wonder

that mother is a word

used by men

to demonize those

who don’t claim the name

and weaponized to shame

those who step out of line

because

their ideal

woman

plays the role of nurturer

and silencer

in pews

built and led by them

but

when god

becomes mother

she is neither quiet

or compliant

she leads confidently

she questions authority

she commands respect

which might be the problem

for mother god

did not gather us up

carelessly

but took her time with it

she fed us milk

birthed our souls

and broke her body

and the permanence

can be uncomfortable

and to disentangle god

from motherhood

is impossible

but

to disentangle god

from womanhood

is sinful

because seeing god as mother

is one step closer

to seeing god in me

and it’s in that

i am truly

born again''

~ Kaitlin Hardy Shetler @kaitlinshetlerpoetry

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My personal wishes are that the returning light, the seasonal rebirth as the earth starts to have longer daylight hours (northern hemisphere), will bring you bright healing, abundance, love, comfort and joy! And for those of you beginning the shortening days in the southern hemisphere, you are also wished the exact same things!

Bright Healing

Abundance

Love

Comfort

Joy

As the light reaches its lowest point here in the northern hemisphere we tuck ourselves into our warm homes, and even amidst the holiday gatherings it is valuable to find a bit of time to slow down enough to feel ourselves germinating, or even incubating. This is the time to nurture what wants to be born in us and in our communities—to protect and nurture our seeds until the time comes to send out our first tentative roots. When we reach deeply into the dark and embrace it, we find that what we need to know is inside of us already.

Mary Porter Kerns

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The last of 8 nights of Hanukkah

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Four more days till Christmas.

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And of course a woman has to have a choice whether or not to give birth!

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* This statue of Tlazolteotl is now one of the best-known sculptures in the Robert Woods Bliss pre-Columbian Collection at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C. Many scholars consider it to be a masterpiece of pre-Columbian art, highly sophisticated in design and execution (Kelemen 1943; Covarrubias 1957; Mason 1958; Coe 1993; Quilter 2002). Others question its stylistic and iconographic features, and are disturbed by its lack of provenience (Baudez 1998; Pasztory 2002). They believe it is a misattributed, more modern creation. What has been written in support of the sculpture’s authenticity since the early years of the 20th century is almost entirely subjective, interpretive and speculative, endlessly repeated, occasionally elaborated. It is axiomatic, unfortunately, that whatever is repeated often enough is eventually taken as fact.

Jenny Mendes Ceramics FB site

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Mifepristone as abortion pill is legal!

 Supreme Court's unanimous decision on  legal option for abortion! 

This is PBS's article released just minutes ago:

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Thursday unanimously preserved access to a medication that was used in nearly two-thirds of all abortions in the U.S. last year, in the court’s first abortion decision since conservative justices overturned Roe v. Wade two years ago.

The justices ruled that abortion opponents lacked the legal right to sue over the federal Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the medication, mifepristone, and the FDA’s subsequent actions to ease access to it.

The case had threatened to restrict access to mifepristone across the country, including in states where abortion remains legal.

Go to link  above to read details in article by PBS.

June 24 is the 2nd anniversary of the Supremes overturning Roe v. Wade...leading to many difficulties for women in different states over the last 2 years!

And then there are abortion laws

 "Vice President Kamala Harris was in Jacksonville, Florida, today [May 1] to talk about reproductive rights. She put the fight over abortion in the larger context of the discriminatory state laws that have, historically, constructed a world in which some people have more rights than others. 

“This is a fight for freedom,” she said, “the fundamental freedom to make decisions about one’s own body and not have their government tell them what they’re supposed to do.” 

On May 1 "...Florida’s ban on abortions after six weeks—earlier than most women know they’re pregnant—went into effect. The Florida legislature passed the law and Florida governor Ron DeSantis signed it a little more than a year ago, on April 13, 2023, but the new law was on hold while the Florida Supreme Court reviewed it. On April 1 the court permitted the law to go into operation today. 

The new Florida law is possible because two years ago, on June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court  overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that recognized the constitutional right to abortion. In Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the modern court decided that the right to determine abortion rights must be returned “to the people’s elected representatives” at the state level. 

Immediately, Republican-dominated states began to restrict abortion rights. Now, one out of three American women of childbearing age lives in one of the more than 20 states with abortion bans. This means, as Cecile Richards, former president of Planned Parenthood, put it in The Daily Beast today, “child rape victims forced to give birth, miscarrying patients turned away from emergency rooms and told to return when they’re in sepsis.” It means recognizing that the state has claimed the right to make a person’s most personal health decisions. 

Until today, Florida’s law was less stringent than that of other southern states, making it a destination for women of other states to obtain the abortions they could not get at home. In the Washington Post today, Caroline Kitchener noted that in the past, more than 80,000 women a year obtained abortions in Florida. Now, receiving that reproductive care will mean a trip to Virginia, Illinois, or North Carolina, where the procedure is still legal, putting it out of reach for many women. 

This November, voters in Florida will weigh in on a proposed amendment to the Florida constitution to establish the right to abortion. The proposed amendment reads: “No law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider.” Even if the amendment receives the 60% support it will need to be added to the constitution, it will come too late for tens of thousands of women."

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Thanks Heather Cox Richardson of Letters from an American

My opinion echoes Vice-President Harris completely. Whether state of federal laws, none should determine any decisions of personal medical care.

Just imagine if states or countries could determine who was eligible to even have children? Remember China's one child rule? 

And how about organ donors? Already there's a black market of organs where they are taken perhaps forcefully from those who need money or drugs, just for richer people to continue their lives. What if the governments started determining who should or shouldn't give their organs to others?

This is why men should also be supporting the laws that allow all of us freedom to choose our own medical decisions.