Hello Reader,
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A hunted freedom fighter crossed violent seas at dawn, nomads blocked bulldozers devouring sacred valleys, moms sacrificed themselves for literacy, and one badass flautist walked free after five years in darkness.
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This week, heroic men and women risked everything for freedom.

The Global Fight for Freedom

1. Operation Golden Dynamite Delivers Hope
2. Commandos Hit Maduro Where It Hurts
3. Our "Year of Revolution" Begins Early
4. The Faith Iran's Theocracy Fears
5. Brave Tibetans Rise Against China

Country names are followed by their 2025 freedom scores according to Freedom House. Not a ranking. * Indicates a territory, not a formal country.

I didn't name this company The Rebel Alliance because I held onto Star Wars fantasies too long or because I detest empire—though both are true. I chose it because our society elevates the wrong heroes: smug actors, belligerent pundits, pompous “influencers”. Meanwhile, those risking everything to battle the world’s true dark forces sacrifice in anonymity.
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But real-life Jedi walk among us. María Corina Machado is one.
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In a scene reminiscent of Princess Leia's rescue in the original Star Wars, U.S. special forces veteran Bryan Stern played Luke. His Grey Bull Rescue team met Machado at sea in pitch darkness, transferring her between boats through crashing waves in “Operation Golden Dynamite”.
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Meanwhile, on land, Machado wore a wig and slipped past ten military checkpoints over twelve nerve-racking hours as Maduro's forces hunted her.
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By midnight, she reached the coast. At 5 a.m. Venezuela's most wanted woman then boarded a wooden fishing skiff into violent Caribbean seas—the same waters where U.S. airstrikes have recently sunk over twenty similar boats. Her network warned American forces: don't fire. Two F-18s penetrated Venezuelan airspace nearby as she crossed into Curaçao Tuesday afternoon, exhausted but alive.
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Machado won the Nobel Peace Prize for leading Venezuela's resistance to Venezuela’s dictatorship—fighting for democracy and freedom against Nicolás Maduro's Empire. When she led the opposition to landslide victory last year, Maduro declared himself winner, then unleashed a brutal crackdown. Machado went underground for a year—isolated, malnourished, hunted.
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Now she's free to lobby the galaxy for Venezuela's liberation. But she must walk a perilous tightrope as the regime portrays her as America's puppet. She’ll have to prove she fights for Venezuelan freedom, not Trump’s transactional agenda.
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“I’ll be back in Venezuela. I have no doubt,” Machado promised.
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"What is it they've sent us?" someone asks Leia at the end of Rogue One, the 2016 Star Wars prequel.
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"Hope," Leia responds. That's what Machado’s rescuers just delivered across Caribbean waters.

​56% of Venezuelans live in extreme poverty. 40% face critical food insecurity. Venezuelans lost an average of 24 pounds in 2017. Today, 89% of households cannot afford a monthly food basket.
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Venezuelans skip meals, trade sex for food, flee.
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Donald Trump’s amoral foreign policy rarely promotes freedom, and it’s unclear why he’s so intent upon ousting Maduro while allying with his petro-tyrant peers. But do the suffering care if his motivations are pure? In Venezuela, results matter more than principle.
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On December 10^th, two Black Hawk helicopters launched from the USS Gerald R. Ford thundered overhead as commandos fast-roped onto the deck of the Skipper oil tanker. Sanctioned since 2022 for smuggling Iranian crude, the giant Venezuelan oil tanker carried $80 million of precious cargo. It had spoofed its location for weeks—disguised under a Guyanese flag in violation of maritime law.
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Within minutes, the crew surrendered without resistance.
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Meanwhile, Treasury sanctioned six more vessels and Maduro's nephews—notorious narco-traffickers freed by Biden. Intelligence intercepts now reveal panic through Maduro's inner circle as the CIA tightens its noose.
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Venezuelans have endured this socialist catastrophe since 1999—government seizures, price controls, rampant corruption—transforming Latin America's wealthiest nation into its poorest. Nearly eight million have fled. Venezuela's economy has contracted 70% since 2014—twice the Great Depression's devastation.
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For those trapped inside Venezuela's nightmare, hope flickers. The regime may not see the new year. In such desperate circumstances, does it really matter why?

In our just-released report, 10 Revolts That Will Shake the World in 2026 we described 2026 as "The Year of Revolution."
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But the rebellion has already begun.
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Nepal's Gen Z burned their parliament in September, ousting their government. Madagascar's youth sparked regime change. Kenya forced its president to withdraw his tax bill. The Philippines exploded over flood corruption. Young Peruvians faced live ammunition. Moroccans demanded healthcare reform.
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This week, Gen Z claimed its first victory in Europe.
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On December 1st, over 100,000 Bulgarians—in a nation of seven million—flooded Sofia's streets in the largest demonstration since the 1990s. Students joined rallies spreading to Plovdiv, Varna, Bourgas, and Rousse. Placards blazed: "Gen Z is coming" and "Young Bulgaria without the Mafia." Giant screens looped videos ridiculing politicians as protesters chanted "Peevski and Borissov out of power."
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The trigger: a 2026 budget hiking government fees to finance spending, cementing elites' control. Bulgaria—consistently ranked the EU's second-most corrupt (Hungary) member—has endured seven parliamentary elections in four years while high-level graft convictions remain nonexistent. When communism collapsed in 1989, the economic devastation that followed prevented Bulgaria from building strong democratic institutions, enabling oligarchs and political dynasties to capture state power.
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Thursday, Prime Minister Rosen Zhelyazkov surrendered: "Vox populi, vox dei"—the voice of the people is the voice of God.
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Yet danger lurks. Moscow-friendly President Rumen Radev—who has declared Ukraine's prospects "doomed"—now looms as Bulgaria's most popular politician.
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Protesters specifically targeted oligarch Delyan Peevski—sanctioned under the U.S. Magnitsky Act in 2021 for bribing officials and using media control to shield himself from prosecution.
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The Year of Revolution started early, and Gen Z's conquest has only begun.

For my friend Samantha…
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On October 26, security forces dragged six mothers from their Hamadan homes to begin prison sentences for the crime of teaching literacy. Atefeh Zahedi's six-year-old son and fourteen-year-old daughter watched as agents seized their mother. Neda Mohebbi's three children—ages five, nine, and thirteen—said goodbye to mom, who now faces seven years behind bars for "deviant educational activities contrary to Shari'a."
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Iran's rulers fear them for a reason. The Bahá'í reject violence, preach equality of men and women, and forbid allegiance to political parties. In a theocracy built on obedience, a faith that honors independent

thought is sedition.
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The theocracy's machinery of repression accelerated dramatically after June's Israel-Iran conflict. Between June and November, authorities documented over 750 persecutory acts of the Bahá'í —triple the previous year's tally. Revolutionary Guards raided over 200 homes, arrested at least 110 believers, and sentenced more than 100 to prison terms reaching ten years. Mothers were ripped from their children. Farhad Fahandej, who already served fifteen years, disappeared into custody on November 12—his family is still searching for him.
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The 1979 revolution unleashed systematic persecution that a 1991 memorandum signed by Supreme Leader Khamenei formalized into policy, explicitly ordering the "blocking" of Bahá'í "progress and development." Human Rights Watch now calls it a crime against humanity. The European Parliament agreed last week, condemning decades of "systematic persecution".
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Yet the Bahá'í endure. Denied education, employment, and even dignified burial, they persist—teaching children to read while their mothers rot in Evin Prison's darkness.

In early November, Chinese bulldozers carved into a Gold Valley pasture where their yaks had grazed for generations, intent on extracting its gold deposits. Days later, Tibetan nomads descended on local officials, demanding they stop. The response was brutal: within hours, Chinese authorities dragged at least 60 protesters away, sealed the village, and ripped the phones from their hands. Families whose loved ones vanished were forbidden from mentioning the arrests—even to their neighbors.
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Monks blocked mining here in the 1990s and 2010, but China has tightened its grip. Resistance could now be fatal.
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The crackdown continues China's cultural annihilation. Authorities pry Tibetan children as young as four into boarding schools teaching exclusively in Mandarin. Campus signs proclaim: "I am a Chinese child, I love speaking Mandarin." Teachers stage skits crediting the Party for children's shoes and clothes. Over 800,000 students—three-quarters of school-age Tibetans—live in these facilities, coming home only for two-month breaks.
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Freedom House gives Tibet a freedom score of 0 because Tibetans have zero individual liberties and zero voice in their government. Worse yet, their identity is now being erased through surveillance, forced assimilation, and the criminalization of their culture and religion.
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The damage is catastrophic. China steals Tibet's children and land simultaneously. Mining projects devour sacred valleys while boarding schools erase language—a dual assault to make Tibetan culture extinct.
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That's why 60 shepherds risked everything to stop those bulldozers.

Freedom Fighter of the Week: Maria Kalesnikava

In 2020, masked agents shoved her toward the Ukrainian border in the predawn darkness. Their message: leave Belarus "alive or in bits." But as the car reached neutral ground, she lunged through the rear window, clutched her passport, and tore it into pieces. Then she walked back—alone and on foot—straight into President Alexander Lukashenko's waiting arms.
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The terms “badass” and “concert flautist” rarely coincide, except in Maria Kalesnikava.
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The world-renowned musician became the face of Belarus's uprising after Belarus’ rigged 2020 elections sparked the largest protests in the nation's history. Alongside opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, she rallied tens of thousands with her trademark gesture—hands forming a heart—demanding freedom.
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Democracy in Belarus died slowly under Lukashenko. Elected legitimately in 1994—the nation's first and last free election—he spent three decades crushing opposition by rigging referendums to grant himself unlimited terms and making dissidents disappear. By 2020, Lukashenko had detained thousands and forced opposition leaders into exile or prison.
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His survival required Moscow's support. In exchange, Putin gained a staging ground for his 2022 Ukraine invasion and a client state dependent on Russian subsidies.
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Kalesnikava paid brutally: 11 years in prison, 18 months in solitary confinement, emergency surgery for a perforated ulcer after guards denied medical care. Guards forced her into freezing punishment cells while her weight plummeted.
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On Saturday, she was released from prison after five consecutive years. Trump lifted U.S. sanctions in exchange for the freedom of 123 prisoners—including Kalesnikava, Nobel laureate Ales Bialiatski, and opposition leader Viktar Babaryka. This followed June's release of Tsikhanouski.
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Trump's motivation is characteristically unclear: a humanitarian victory that simultaneously rewards an authoritarian leader he admires. He calls the prisoners "hostages," but praises Lukashenko as "very respected."
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Over 1,100 political prisoners remain behind bars, but Kalesnikava's heart remains unbreakable.

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