Nobel Peace Prize 2025: María Corina Machado
nobelprize.org582 points by pykello 3 days ago
582 points by pykello 3 days ago
Even if Venezuela goes to hell even deeper, she still deserves the prize for what she has already done!
The way she, and her team, managed to convince venezuelans that the election mattered, and to prepare to gather the evidence of the elections under constant threats from the government, that we all knew they were going to steal, and do it entirely peacefully, was an extremely impressive achievement on its own.
What an impressive act of coordination from MCM
:standing-ovation:
Disclaimer: I'm not accusing you of (intentionally or unintentionally) doing this but your comment brought up the issue.
For a lot of horrific events in the world, you will find a bias exposed by the use of active vs passive voice. Compare:
- "100 children died". How?
- "100 children killed". By whom? Why? How?
- "100 children killed in conflict". Between who? How? Why?
' "100 children killed in air strike on refugee camp by X". Oh...
The point is that a lot of people treat what is happening in Venezuela like it's some kind of unavoidable natural disaster like an earthquake. This reinforces the idea that nobody is responsible and, more improtantly, there's nothing we can do.
Venezuelans are being intentionally starved to death by economic sanctions (that's what sactions are). Why? Because Maduro is bad. Sound familiar? It should. Castro was bad. Saddam Hussein was bad (despite being a US puppet for decades).
The actual issue is that these people threaten the interests of Western companies. That's it. That's the only thing that matters.
Maduro, Castro, and Saddam Hussein are/were bad. Castro and Hussein, at least, committed murders to maintain power and Maduro pulled a coup after he lost an election.
Whether they were worth removing is another question, but if you could flip a switch and magically replace them with something better (with no cost and a guarantee the replacement would not be a murderous authoritarian) you would of course do it.
In 1988, Saddam Hussein dropped nerve gas on Kurds. Saddam was then a US ally and a foil against Iran. The US had propped up that war killing millions of Iraqis and Iranians for almost a decade for basically a net zero outcome. Why was Iran an enemy? Because the US deposed the democratically elected government in 1953 becasue they threatened to nationalize their own oil reserves.
Do you see a pattern here? Like at all?
The key point is that Saddam could drop nerve gas on Iraqi citizens and it still didn't change him being a US ally (and puppet). We don't care about someone being "bad". We never have. Saddam only ceased to become an ally when he invaded Kuwait and threatened our truly regional ally, Saudi Arabia.
All Castro did was overthrow Batisa, another US ally, and nationalize Cuban assets.
Hungary is a member of NATO and a US ally despite Viktor Orban essentially overthrowing democracy and genuinely being bad.
We helped overthrow Basher Al-Asaad. The al-asaads were former US allies too by the way. Why? Because now they were bad. Who is the new Syrian president? A man by the name of Ahmed al-Sharaa. Who is that you might ask? A former al-Qaeda leader, you know the guys were the Big Bad [tm] for 9/11. But that's OK, he (allegedly) cut ties with al-Aqeda in 2016 so all is forgiven. Let's not look too deeply into 15 or the 19 9/11 hijackers being Saudi.
Here's the lesson: whenever the US says someone is being punished, bombed, sanctioned, invaded or whatever because they're "bad" know that it's a lie. I mean they might be bad. But that's never the reason for whatever the latest punitive action is. Always, always, always the reason is become the interests of US foreign policy or Western companies is being threatened.
It's wild to claim Saddam was a US ally just two years before Iraq invaded Kuwait against US demands and got bombed by the US in the Gulf War. You are confusing offshore balancing between Iraq and Iran during the Iran-Iraq war with "ally". You need to look up the definitions of these words.
And to claim Assad was a US ally is even more outrageous, where to even start. He was a Russian ally and a Hezbollah ally, not a US ally. All of his military equipment came from Russia. All of his air support came from Russia. He allowed Iranian arms to flow to Hezbollah and was supported on the ground in Syria by Hezbollah. And he is now hiding in Russia playing video games after killing hundreds of thousands of civilians. He and the US had a common foe in ISIS for a period, but they were otherwise antagonistic over the duration of the civil war.
Are we rewriting history here?
Saddam was a de facto US ally till 1988. The relationship ended with the end of their mutual interests.
US sent terrorism suspects to Bashar regime to be tortured after 9/11.
Yeah eventually both relationships fell out but all the vile things both did happened under US watch, and US only stepped in when political/economic clash happened.
We are adhering to definitions of words. The US engaged in classic offshore balancing by backing Iraq when Iran gained the momentum on the frontline. There was no alliance between Iraq and the US.
waiting for details on how "backing Iraq" is materially different from an "alliance" with Iraq...I'm hesitant to throw yet _another_ word into the mix but there's an entire wikipedia page on US "support" for Iraq.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_support_for_Iraq...
As the late venerable Sir Humphrey Appleby said, politics is not about good or evil, but to survive to the next century.
I don't think anyone disagrees that the US is extremely hypocritical. The US has a long history of overthrowing democracies and supporting dictators, all in the name of "democracy" (oil, mostly).
That doesn't make Maduro a good guy, though. Nor Castro. Nor Batista, for that matter. And Orban is widely seen as Putin's ally in the EU. Most Europeans would rather be rid of him, but you can't just kick a country out of the EU, unfortunately.
Or Trump. He's as bad as the others. He'd certainly like to be. He wants to turn the US into the same kind of dictatorship.
> All Castro did was overthrow Batisa, another US ally, and nationalize Cuban assets.
That's not all. Castro also executed thousands creating a terror regime, nationalized American assets, funded and aided guerrillas in Latin America and Africa, aligned himself with the Soviet Union and caused the Missiles Crisis. He replaced a brutal dictatorship with another brutal dictatorship, a communist one, and ran the Cuban economy into the ground.
> Castro also executed thousands creating a terror regime
...so naturally, the solution is to make the life of the people under that regime even worse by sanctioning the country?
> nationalized American assets, funded and aided guerrillas in Latin America and Africa, aligned himself with the Soviet Union and caused the Missiles Crisis.
in other words, did things that threatened American interests.
You don't know history.
The so-called Cuban Missile Crisis didn't begin on October 16, 1962. Nor did it begin when the Soviet Union put missiles on Cuban territory. It began when the US put nuclear missiles (Jupiter MRBMs) in Turkey, mere hundreds of miles from Moscow. Those were quietly removed months after the crisis because of a secret agreement between JFK and Khrushchev.
And yes, Cuba nationalized assets. As I said. You say that like it's a bad thing. Why is the US doing colonialism and imperialism a good thing that needs to be defended exactly?
And let's say Batista and Castro were both brutal dictatorships (which is what you said), why is one bad and one good? Why is one an ally and another a mortal enemy? You're making my point: the US does not and never has cared about people being bad or doing bad things. It's purely about economic interests. That's it.
Oh and Castro's involvement in Latin America? I'm sorry, what? From overthrowing the government in Guatemala in 1954 at the behest of a US fruit company to propping up Pinochet in Chile to Noriega in Nicaragua to El Salvador to Columbia and so on, let's compare Castro's impact and legacy to that of the US and see who has done the most harm, shall we?
The Cuban economy suffered because the US starved it. But of course Castro gets the blame for that too.
> In Turkey, mere hundreds of miles from Moscow.
They were over 1200 miles away from Moscow, near Izmir, Turkey.
That's a couple hundred miles closer to Moscow than the Thor missiles that were in England.
Yes, but the point is that sanctions don't get rid of those people, they're just collective punishment on the population. (Plus are used for propaganda if the blame for an economic crisis in a country is put entirely on its regime or economic system and the fact that the country is currently under sanctions is conveniently omitted. See again: Cuba, Venezuela)
At the end of the day the purpose of sanctions is to deliberately worsen the quality of life of the population in the sanctioned country. That can't be a tool for good.
The uncritical, unfounded, white supremacist equivalence of the names of Global South heads of state that share nothing other than their inclusion in the never-ending spectacle of a collapsing and always fascist empire’s hitlist. I’m reminded of how this abomination of a country relentlessly linked Marcus Garvey (Black nationalist and Capitalist) and W.E.B. DuBois (Black pan-Africanist and eventually communist) both with the label “Bolshevik” and “Communist threat” as justification for surveillance, incarceration.
This “dictator” meme, played out for the last 100 plus years is tired and tiring especially in a place that has a higher incarceration rate than USSR in the 1930s ( or Cuba ) and is currently snatching up folk for the crime of speaking Spanish, while US Southern Command blows up Venezuelan fisherman for the crime of feeding their families.
Venezuelans are being starved by the sheer incompetency/corruption of its leaders. It’s a kleptocracy.
The collapse started way earlier than the sanctions. It’s funny, but it’s even insulting that some people cannot comprehend that there is evil beyond their own frontiers. Not everything wrong that happens in the world is because an empire is meddling, we are also capable of being useless by ourselves!
> Not everything wrong that happens in the world is because an empire is meddling, we are also capable of being useless by ourselves!
A petrostate kleptocracy can still trickle down enough scraps for it's people. An empire that controls global markets that sanctions an petrostate kleptocracy into just a kleptocracy, can't. The reality is no amount of competent governance is going to enable a petrostate like VZ to not be a shitshow if it's sanctioned from maintaining extractive infra (techstack controlled by empire) or sell in global markets. It's not about just being useless, but the inability to be useful no matter what you do. Yes, VZ got fucked from oil $100->$40 pre sanctions, but that's still a survivable/pivotable scenario than oil production going from 3 mbd to 400k mbd due to sanctions that prevents reconstitution of production. There's a reason economic freefall stabilized when Cheveron got license in 2022 that brought production back up to 1mbd.
Now you can argue a "competent" government would have conceded to Monroe (like Machado) in the first place, or not pissed off US in backyard. Like, I get it, you're living through the shit, but don't be economically/geopolitically naive, US didn't sanction VZ because muh democracy decline under Muduro when US props up other petro authoritarian MENA states. The only difference is US meddle with those that align with US interests and not, and US meddling is what makes or breaks petro states.
I think it’s you who is naive. Plus Maduro is even offering our riches to Trump if they leave him alone:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/10/world/americas/maduro-ven...
Seems he lost the anti imperialist mojo.
>In Washington, American officials offer differing assessments of the talks. One U.S. official said the reports of negotiations over the lifting of sanctions and access to the Venezuelan market was “not an accurate assessment of what took place.” ... >As Mr. Grenell and Mr. Maduro’s envoys negotiated a deal, the leader of Venezuela’s main opposition movement, María Corina Machado, pitched her own economic proposal in Washington.
Did you not even read the article, like it's 2025, posting NYT article regarding US adversary like VZ and analyzing it naively is useful idiot behavior. That said, Trump is not a LIO woketard and someone Maduro thinks can be negotiated with, the fact is Maduro is fine with operating under US umbrella, provided US didn't do retarded shit like try a muh democracy regime change like under past US admins. Of course US establishment would still prefer a tool like Machado, but there's a chance under Trump that they'll accept Maduro. That's why the article talks about both Machado an and Maduro parallel barginning. This just 101 signalling, dangling Machado for more Maduro concessions - Machado isn't actually an option, because you know, she'll get disappeared if Maduro thinks US can actuall regime change with her. Hence Machado and this sus (granted marginally deserved) Nobel peace prize is good pressure to get Maduro to concede more. The fact that Maduro is making offer is because he knows there's framework for him staying in power, unlike past US admin zero-sum/maximum pressure play with Guaido. He know's a non-democratic VZ like non-democratic MENA petrostate that aligns with US interests is workable under Trump who is moving away from democracy promotion to realist foreign policy especially with recent strategic shift in focusing on South America.
When will this stop being controversial? All you need to do is look at past winners of this farcical prize
It's debatable who's fault starvation is. Maduro might have something to do with it. I'm not sure how it threatens western companies.
GenX leftists think every problem in the world is caused by "corporations" and if you think any given problem is not caused by "corporations" they will assume you're lying. It goes beyond believing in conspiracy theories; they're literally incapable of believing in something /unless/ it's a conspiracy theory.
Most recent examples being "climate change is caused by 100 companies" and "housing prices are caused by BlackRock" which are both entirely fictional.
(There is an obvious rightist equivalent of this which has historically caused a lot more problems.)
This is the issue with all populist ideologies, where there is one monolithic boogieman that explains all ills. The real world just doesn't work like that. It's an interesting case study into confirmation bias and bad quality thinking, I guess.
Letter from the President and Prime Minister Mossadegh on the Oil Situation and the Problem of Aid to Iran dated July 9, 1953 (emphasis added) [1]:
> It was primarily because of that hope that the United States Government during the last two years has made earnest efforts to assist in eliminating certain differences between Iran and the United Kingdom which have arisen as a result of the nationalization of the Iranian oil industry. It has been the belief of the United States that the reaching of an agreement in the matter of compensation would strengthen confidence throughout the world in the determination of Iran fully to adhere to the principles which render possible a harmonious community of free nations; that it would contribute to the strengthening of the international credit standing of Iran; and that it would lead to the solution of some of the financial and economic problems at present facing Iran.
Effect on National Security Interests in Latin America of Possible Anti-Trust Proceedings, June 1, 1953 [2]:
> Elsewhere in Central America, institution of the action would greatly stimulate movements to nationalize the properties of the Company. Such nationalization is now threatened to some degree in all countries in which the Company operates, particularly in Costa Rica through the possible accession to the presidency of Jose Figueres, who is not a Communist but is openly speaking of nationalization. To the extent such nationalization is achieved, it would not only affect a private company, but would have direct and far-reaching repercussions on our strategic position.
National Intelligent Estimate: CHILE: THE ALTERNATIVES FACING THE ALLENDE REGIME, June 29, 1972 [3]:
> n the basis of the record so far, Chile’s future course remains to a large extent an open issue. To be sure, the regime carried out a substantial part of its program during its first year, particularly in the economic area. With little effective opposition—indeed, in many cases with a broad consensus—Allende nationalized key economic sectors, redistributed income in favor of the poorer classes, and accelerated land expropriation.
[1]: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/exchange-messages-...
[2]: https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1952-54v04...
[3]: https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76ve1...
what interest does north korea threaten?
Is this a serious question? SK is a strong ally of the USA and along with Japan bolsters their presence in this part of Asia. China, a geopolitical enemy of the USA, is also lightly allied with NK.
Or rather was a strong ally? I bet you are not imposing 25% tariff to your strong ally.
> the interests of Western companies
no companies listed. anyways, the beef has gone on longer than there were important south korean companied
The Venezuelan regime makes money from oil. They do not need to involve the population to generate most of the GDP. To them, spending resources to have a healthy and happy populace is just a waste of money that would otherwise go to the rulers of the regime. The CGP "Rules for rulers" explains how this happens: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs
They stay in power with the help of a paramilitary group of bullies that intimidates people: colectivos. The Venezuelan colectivos are based on the Cuban CDR (committee for the defense of the revolution). And there are other elements of the Cuban "model" of staying in power that has "worked" for 66 years, that Venezuelan regime has adopted. And the CDR resembles the Nazi Sturmabteilung in their modus operandi.
So in the end what's holding the regime together is all violence, all the way down.
The history lesson is that when the most of the GDP generation doesn't need without the help of the population, the result is a regime. Scalable and cost efficient AGI will do the same to countries that do not make most of their GDP from extracting natural resources because once the citizen is not needed for wealth generation, territorial control, etc., their political representation goes away.
> The history lesson is that when the most of the GDP generation doesn't need without the help of the population, the result is a regime. Scalable and cost efficient AGI will do the same to countries that do not make most of their GDP from extracting natural resources because once the citizen is not needed for wealth generation, territorial control, etc., their political representation goes away.
That's a great insight
Doesn't Norway bring that conclusion in doubt? The state gets massive revenue from oil as well as oil-financed investments, but is still very much a democracy.[0]
[0] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/democracy-index-eiu?tab=t...
Sure. It’s also possible Norway is just an outlier and not the coming norm.
I personally - as an American of Norwegian descent - am proud of how they’ve built much of their country…and I hope we can learn from it.
It might be that democratic countries are more resilient to that kind of effect because (and to the degree that) they already decouple productive power from representation.
E.g. a welfare state doesn't make sense from a purely GDP-selfish perspective, beyond as a crime-prevention tool, since people on disability benefits don't work. But they still exist.
Sometimes I believe that democratic systems can also be so polarized (as america) and rest of the countries that they simply split a country into two pieces somehow.
One might want lets say welfare to the youth/masses and the other wouldn't want it sometimes it feels like just to differentiate themselves from the first or to just contradict it.
We have sort of stopped coming to common agreements in republicans and democrats and heck some democrat bsky user pasted me an AI pic for something and when I said that it doesn't actively contribute to the thread they had the balls to say "Google things.Do your own research. Research." Like uh okay mate, we are on the same page but even then they came across as passive agressive :/
We just infight and never try to reach conclusion's man. And if we do and become tolerant, some intolerant freak hijacks the system, maybe the system's broken a little, I am not sure. but I know its the best hope
According to this article, it was down to 1 Iraqi:
https://www.ft.com/content/99680a04-92a0-11de-b63b-00144feab...
Because they need they still need the favor of the populace for collective defense and territorial control.
The regional military powers have more population.
It is possible that in a future where territorial control is done by robots and drones that are mass produced and maybe even self-replicating, and the scientific and economic output comes from AGI, there won't be ballot boxes anymore. There will be also no food stamps, hospitals, a justice system or anything that benefits the common person. Everyone will just be building power plants and datacenters and robot factories while being supervised a robot or being implanted with a motor control chip, or being processed into Soylent green to be fed to a chemical reactor to power a data center with the same level of indifference we currently have for animals in industrial farming. All while the people running the dystopia party all day and take selfies while not caring at all.
At that point human leadership and wealth becomes just as superfluous as the rest of humanity. However it isn’t necessarily a stable system.
The difference is that leadership and wealth has agency and power. Of course the coming dystopia will serve to benefit them exclusively. Who do you think is calling the shots here today? Billionaires are. These are products designed for them by people they hired. The idea of using profit to create a billionaire is already inefficient and yet, that is how most of these companies are structured to burn profit on enriching the few vs having the ceo live like a monk and putting everything back into the company.
Leadership and wealth are quite fluid in major transitions.
Read up on the US robber barons and they didn’t come from old money. The relatively recent (80’s to today) round of Tech billionaires don’t hail back to earlier great fortunes and most VC investors lost money compared to a simple index fund.
The first few rounds of AI investors are already getting screwed.
> The history lesson is that when the most of the GDP generation doesn't need without the help of the population
Counterexample: China. Or plenty of African countries. Being a petrocracy certainly makes authoritarianism easier, but it's not at all a requirement.
Petrocracy is a weird term because it is not oil itself the one ruling but the ones who control the oil. We have a term for that, oligarchy.
It's actually now used in a lot of political science papers.
It means a particular combination of autocracy and oil-dependence. It results in especially toxic regimes, that can be kept stable for quite a long time.
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I would rather give the "Fire Safety" prize to the people who installed sprinklers and smoke alarms than to firefighters
And what does that look like in this context, eligible countries that haven’t been at war in a while get together at pat each other on the back?
That misses the analogy.
Such countries already have not only smoke alarms but also building codes and layers of safety systems.
The analogy matches a person who goes to a place with high fire risk and no safety systems in place and through tireless effort introduces common sense measures to protect people.
No, it doesn’t miss the analogy, it questions the applicability of the analogy by asking that it be tied back more completely to the circumstances at play. Analogies are valuable rhetorical devices only in so far as they map to the salient aspects of the comparative target. In this case, either there is a target group to receive the awards, the those doing the safety work, or there is not. In the later case, the analogy is invalidated unless the resulting conclusion is something like “and so we shouldn’t have an award like this because it would just be a strange thing to do” or something along those lines that equally ties the analogy back to the real world.
You may think that but Alfred Nobel disagreed and it is his prize. If she fits the criteria is another question but it was certainly not intended to just be about real wars and real peace (whatever that is).
den som har verkat mest eller best för folkens förbrödrande och afskaffande
eller minskning af stående arméer samt bildande och spridande af
fredskongresser
shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations,
for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and
promotion of peace congresses
Relevant in this context: The translation introduces “nations” , but the original talks about peace between “people”.
I would say that is likely a correct translation as the original text refers to nation as in a group of people with a shared culture. But, yes, it is not nation as in country. So the original text refers to fraternity between peoples of different cultures, not of fraternity between countries.
How is the quote contradicting GP's position?
From the quote it doesn't seem like Alfred Nobel had civil or political rights in mind with his prize. (Not that it bothers me to give it to civil rights activists though)
It does because Alfred Nobel cared about internationalism and pacifism, neither "real wars" nor civil rights. I did not say she was a worthy winner just that we should look at what the will actually says instead of just inventing an own definition.
Excuses me, English isn't my native language but how isn't “fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses”[1] talking about actual war between countries (which I'm pretty certain is what yostrovs was talking about with (arguably clumsy) “real war” phrase.
[1]: (emphasis mine)
Consider this. There are circumstances in Venezuela that some would consider worthy of a civil war. This award winner has chosen peaceful resistance, acts that may have prevented war.
Who would you give the Nobel Peace Prize to?
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So, first off: as a matter of "taste", I really don't like the idea of giving the Peace prize specifically to anybody whose attitude is "where's my Nobel?" It should be going to somebody who believes in the cause they're fighting for and fights with no expectation of recognition, not to somebody looking to add a feather to their cap. This probably shouldn't be a criterion when choosing the winnner, but it does make me happy if the choice is consistent with this principle.
Second: If, by the end of 2026, the Israel/Palestine ceasefire is still holding, if there is real progress towards lasting peace, if Trump's administration carries on acting as a mediating force in the conflict, then, by all means, maybe he should win the 2026 prize. As of today, he just got them to sign a piece of paper. To be clear, that is still an important milestone, it makes the world better than it was a week ago, and he should get credit for getting it done. It's just not the achievement he wants us to believe it is (yet?).
Third: The man thrives on conflict, he sows divisivenes at every step. He's literally deploying the military domestically. Whatever merit there is to his peace deals doesn't nearly amount to enough to make him a net positive force for peace in the world. And that should be a factor in choosing the winner.
Ah yes, the man actively murdering civilians via illegal drone strikes in the Caribbean and invading US cities with the Department of War, who launched dozens of missiles from stealth bombers over Iran and who has greatly expanded the drone war that Biden has mostly ended.
Surely a prime candidate for a peace prize.
I would love to hear a discussion between you and those who believe Trump has pulled off the diplomatic coup of the century so far. A dispassionate observer might see a touch of TDS. Not me of course.
Nobel Peace Prize: to the "person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses".
I love how the TDS is used to describe the vast majority of people in the world who see the obvious faults of a geriatric narcissist intent on authoritarian rule and not to describe his supporters who blindly subscribe to all manner of contradictory and previously loathed positions simply because he changes his mind.
Or said another way - wouldn’t “TDS” be better used to describe those who spent the last decade insistent on free speech as a sacrosanct issue, the national debt as our primary concern, political targeting by Federal law enforcement as a universal sin, and states rights as the Foundation of our liberties while the Admin works contrary to each of those points in especially galling ways…
How many wars has President Trump really ended? https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5y3599gx4qo
Is that even a question!? Ben Gvir, Smotrich, or Mileikowsky.
For raising the bar so high.
From the New York Times "The Daily" podcast today:
Mark, what you've described and what we're seeing unfold is genuinely an impressive feat by Trump. To be able to capitalize on what seemed like this giant setback. Israel literally bombed the negotiators and the mediators. To turn that around and get a deal that Biden couldn't get done, that no other leader in the world had managed despite trying for two years straight. It is significant achievement. He was able to bring these sides together that had shown no willingness to end the war. And now they've come to this agreement. And it should also be said that one of the biggest things here is that he was willing to put pressure on Netanyahu in a way that President Biden was unwilling to do. Why do you think that's the case?
I think there's a few reasons. First, I think Trump genuinely wanted to end the war. He campaigned on ending the war in Ukraine and in Gaza.
This is like buying tickets to watch your favorite sports team win first place. It's good to support the boys, but you'd didn't do anything. The rest of Trump's thinly veiled autocratic tendencies — whether they're rhetoric aimed to rile up opponents or real goals — have done little to promote fraternity amongst nations & people.
"I dedicate this prize to the suffering people of Venezuela and to President Trump for his decisive support of our cause!"
-María Corina Machado 9:34 AM · Oct 10, 2025
This is, as yet, being reported in contradictory ways when I went looking to see if it was correct so here’s the link to where she appears to do this, assuming the post is authentic (no reason to believe otherwise but these days…)
"Political expediency makes for strange bedfellows, news at 11!"
I'm not even sure I'm against everything Trump is up to (it's unclear to me); I just don't like the autocratic moves: it's unamerican, and bad for democracy. It's setting a standard & an allowable behavior that could be exploited by bad people.
It should be considered all right, but the committee is also going to look at the whole person and Trump isn't exactly the Gandhi-like figure you'd expect to win the prize.
I think Trump genuinely doesn't like people being killed, but he's also driving a wedge in the US that can't be ignored. Sending American troops against its own citizen: not exactly Nobel-prize worthy.
> I think Trump genuinely doesn't like people being killed
This is a strange thought considering his actions.
Between drone strikes, mishandling of COVID, dismantling of foreign aid, defunding American health care, cutting off Ukraine support at several critical moments, encouraging and materially supporting Israel, he may actually end up (or already be) responsible for the most deaths of any president.
> I think Trump genuinely doesn't like people being killed
While I do understand this might be true in essence, things are a lot more complicated. He's said some heinous things that riled up actual loonies into a frenzy more than once. Deliberately. Not peace price material IMHO.
(To be fair, I generally lean left, but I don't agree with Obama getting the prize in 2009 as well, what with the targeted assassination program and all)
Its almost like there should be a Nobel "anti-prize" denouncing these people.
It remains to be seen if this turns into anything. He deliberately misunderstood the Palestinians and made the proclamation that everything was fixed. The Palestinians have to give up some major things for this to work, things they were previously unwilling to do, and are probably still unwilling to do.
Yeah it might be eligible but the academy won't change an upcoming winner in only a few days
The nominations for this year's prize closed January 31st; anyone doing anything worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize after that date may be considered for next year.
> To turn that around and get a deal that Biden couldn't get done,
Biden had different pressures. E.g. I suspect that he judged that the knife-edge election he was facing didn't allow him enough leeway to put more pressure on Israel.
In addition Netanyahu made it easier to force through a settlement given he'd manage to alienate practically everyone, including uniting the Arab world after that unbelievable strike on Doha.
If you were a cynical person you could also ask whether this settlement owes anything to Trump's personal narcissist saviour complex or need to distract from domestic issues such as the Epstein files...
Still, even despite some significant scepticism about Trump's motives, I think there is a reasonable case to be made for awarding him the prize. It was still a significant (maybe even brave) jump to break with American political orthodoxy to put this kind of pressure on Israel, and the practical result of this could be very significant in terms of saving lives and potentially long-term peace in the region. We also need to encourage these kind of acts, even (or especially) amongst unlikely peacemakers like Trump.
Let's see what it looks like next year, though. Middle East peace deals don't have a great history of holding together.
I would love full transparency to the Biden Admin's dealings wrt Israel.
I've wondered if one of the (under reported) pressures was the realpolitik geopolitical machinations of containing Iran. Especially wrt Iran's closer ties with Russia and China.
But even with insight, I would not forgive.
The whole thing just angers and saddens me. Neighbors killing neighbors. For nothing.
So many missed opportunities, snafus. Imagine what could have been. Normalization between USA-Iran (post-9/11, pre- "Axis of Evil"). Some kind of accommodation for coexistence. Nurturing democracy and development throughout the middle east.
And on and on. Going back decades, generations, ...
Trump does not fit the criteria set out by Alfred Nobel. By increasing the NATO spending he worked against "the abolition or reduction of standing armies" and he has made the "fraternity between nations" a lot worse with random threats which I doubt would weight up his "promotion of peace congresses".
I really hope they would not award someone the prize who works so blatantly against the word and spirit of the criteria in the will.
Those criteria sound like they should disqualify the person who actually got it.
Perhaps, but I was talking about Trump now. He would be a pretty big violation of the spirit of the will even if he would not be the first such.
I will personally try to refrain from commenting on the Venezuelan opposition since I do not know enough about them.
I hadn't heard of her either before today, I'm basing that on what people have said here - all good for sure, but unrelated to those criteria.
"...he was willing to put pressure on Netanyahu in a way that President Biden was unwilling to do."
Unwilling or unable? Netanyahu hated Biden and has done everything in his power to sabotage anything Democrats have done to try to help resolve the conflict, even prior to Oct 7.
Not even sure there's evidence of the pressure? What pressure?
Trump let Netanyahu run roughshod, and the proposed peace agreement (which almost certainly won't hold) is pretty... let's say vague... about the plan for Gaza post hostage-release.
All that's happened here is another agreement to exchange hostages for prisoners, which has happened multiple times in this war already. Not much else is actually agreed to and obviously even less has actually happened.
Unwilling. Biden has been a Zionist and Netanyahu/Likud supporter for decades. They put on a show in press briefings but did nothing behind closed doors, instead kept supplying them.
Far more importantly, this might force Trump to continue the pressure on the Israelis, whose very nature is to be untrustworthy, not worth trusting, since they love not just violating agreements but also using agreements as a lever for abuse. There are all the typical Israeli fingerprints all over the current deal that the Israelis will likely use to bring the whole thing back down around Trump unless he can maintain pressure. This prize increases the slim likelihood that he will have to of he covers that prize as much as it seems he does. I do not think he can or will though, and the Israelis may just even persuade him that they have a far more juicy prize to offer him instead.
I think Trump wanted to force the rather compromised committee to make a similarly foolish decision as giving Obama the prize, which would have then permitted immediate Israeli breach of the settlement.
Not to take away from Machado’s work, but this year’s prize is at the very least political, to both appease Trump in line with the above and also send a message in the face of the war build-up against Venezuela. At the same time their decision also facilitates the American takeover through less than lethal means by CIA revolution and the combined pressure of it all on the Venezuelan government. Machado is in fact a CIA asset, whether she realizes it or not.
Machado is in fact a CIA asset, whether she realizes it or not.
If you think Eastern Europe was liberated without involvement from the CIA, which has a mixed history w.r.t. competent ops in that region, I've got a Nobel prize to sell you.
No. I just don’t care for America “liberating” other people in direct violation of the founding principles of America before it was overtaken by all manner of parasitic foreign vultures that want to commandeer America for their own little ethic agendas and priorities that expose all of them as not actually being American, regardless of what the paperwork says. You can’t be made American when America exists in name only anymore.
If you've been paying attention, you see that Trump is not, as you put it, appeased at all. He doesn't know who Machado is. He utterly and publicly and loudly missed the irony.
Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush were not hijacked by ethnic agendas, again,, as you put it. The outcome they achieved was the whole point of the Cold War. It was an outcome with bipartisan support over the course of decades. Defending the value of that outcome by supporting Ukraine and NATO is also not anything as small as an ethnic agenda.
There’s kidnapping, imprisonment, torture and rape of political dissidents.
They created an exodus of 8 million people.
Starved the population.
Killed people in the thousands in the favelas and other poor areas without a trial.
Steals elections.
To me that’s a regime at war with its own population and it deserves all the condemnation possible and all the support necessary to help transition back to democracy.
What he is being accused of is a tiny fraction of what has been proven to have taken place in Gaza, under the protection of the west.
Yet the aircraft carriers are poised in the gulf to enact a third regime change operation in this oil rich country America wants under its thumb with a puppet running it.
This is the PR campaign beforehand, just like the "WMD" PR campaign in the run up to Iraq, with a woman who supports genocide in Gaza (https://x.com/VenteVenezuela/status/1286346531591852036 ) being lauded with a nobel peace prize. This is probably to lend her legitimacy when she becomes that puppet.
Saddam was a bad man too but he was an average evil. The warmongers who want to destabilize every country with oil, send in the tanks and install yet another Western puppet to maintain an iron grip on global oil supplies are a very special and unique kind of evil.
I’m not going to engage in a competition of tragedies. You are replying to a venezuelan with relatives and friends that have suffered and still suffer the consequences of the regime.
Just stop and think for a moment before even think about downplaying or comparing what is happening in my country with other world conflicts, and please don’t even dare to explain what I’ve been living.
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wow, "I have a Venezuelan friend, let me invalidate your opinion as a local", no wonder this is a thing: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venezuelasplaining
We've heard it all before, we speak english so you're not a true venezuelan, you're part of some rich caste, you're not brown enough, you're a bot, etc ... 25 years of this bullshit no matter where we go. The international left abandoned us, the international right uses us as circus act.
Of course it'd be easier for your narrative if we were defenseless people begging in our native tongue for help. It's harder when a lot of Venezuelans are actually highly educated and want to control their own country and destiny.
>> IME the venezuelans who ended up abroad speaking English almost exclusively and up being people whose families were sucking on the teat of the oil wealth under the pre Maduro government before he ripped it out of their mouths and redistributed the wealth
you mean the almost 10 million of us that left, 1/3 of the population? the 2.5 million that went to Colombia alone by foot? or the ones that that walked all the way to Peru and Ecuador to meet discrimination and xenophobia. Those are all sucking on the oil teat? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venezuelan_refugee_crisis)
>> So i guess you want this Iraq style military operation to happen. I pity your relatives for what you want to happen to them.
No one wants that, and no one said they want that. Stop making stuff up
Gotta love when foreigners explain to me what my country is going through. And they don’t even stop to think about what they are doing, it’s borderline insulting.
Im perfectly happy that a privileged venezuelan who has never had to live in a slum was insulted by my anti war stance.
Im just as happy that pro invasion iraqis in 2003 hated me.
Hate away. History will judge who is right.