Julian Assange even filed a criminal complaint in Sweden last month to try to stop the Swedish Nobel Foundation paying out over $1 million dollars to her, arguing it's going against Alfred Nobel's will, and they have a responsibility to respect his will.
He wrote last month: "Using her elevated position as the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, Machado may well have tipped the balance in favour of war, facilitated by the named suspects."
I find it funny that what many saw as a terrible decision has now come to pass, and the Nobel Institute is scrambling to save face.
We don't award the chemistry one to people with a promising research program, we award it to people who actually have discovered things that we actually know changed the field. If we awarded the peace prize based on actual accomishments judged with the benefit of hindsight instead of expected accomplishments, it would work a lot better.
They strayed from meaningful principles and now they are reaping what they've sown.
> "We have not given the prize for what may happen in the future. We are awarding Obama for what he has done in the past year. And we are hoping this may contribute a little bit for what he is trying to do,"
> Jagland said the committee was influenced by a speech Obama gave about Islam in Cairo in June 2009, the president's efforts to prevent nuclear proliferation and climate change, and Obama's support for using established international bodies such as the United Nations to pursue foreign policy goals.
> Nominations for the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize closed just 11 days after Obama took office.
Obama entered office on Jan 20th; was nominated before February; was announced in October; and it was justified by actions he'd taken between nomination and announcement.
Obama's own acceptance speech included
> "perhaps the most profound issue surrounding my receipt of this prize is the fact that I am the commander-in-chief of the military of a nation in the midst of two wars."
It does seem like a bizarre choice, and it does seem like an attempt to raise the awards profile which has meaningfully cheapened it.
Disregarding WW2, I'd assume LBJ or Nixon holds that record.
“The political party I don’t like might have done bad things, so even though my guy did bad things, he stopped the other guys from doing bad things by winning. So it’s deserved”
My god.
It's an interesting choice for sure. In 2009, he had only killed 50-100 civilians via drone strike by the time they awarded the prize. And he didn't kill US citizens via drone strike abroad until 2011.
Being realistic about things, it's because he was black.
Of course the Nobel groups were not happy about that decision so it's rarely talked about. But it's probably a reason Assange went the route he went with the criminal complaint.
But it's now available for anyone interested. Extract below:
CRIMINAL COMPLAINT
Submitted to:
• Ekobrottsmyndigheten (Swedish Economic Crime Authority), Hantverkargatan 15, 112 21 Stockholm.
• Krigsbrottsenheten (Swedish War Crimes Unit), Kungsholmsgatan 43, 106 75 Stockholm.
[snipped]
The political decision of the Norwegian selection committee does not suspend the fiduciary duty of Swedish funds administrators. Where a decision by the selection committee is in flagrant conflict with the explicit peace purpose of the will, or where there is evidence that the awardee will use or is using the prize to promote or facilitate the crime of aggression, crimes against humanity, or war crimes, administrators must resolve the conflict in favor of the will. They must safeguard the endowment by declining to disburse funds. The Norwegian committee’s selection does not grant them criminal immunity.
More: https://file.wikileaks.org/files/2025/machado29-dist.pdf
The peace prize has lost all credibility.
Now, sure, she then went on to personally hand over the medal (or statue or whatever it actually is, I genuinely don't know) to the thin-skinned leader of a foreign superpower in a transparent attempt to be corruptly granted the office by an interventionist coup de tête. Not a great look!
But to claim that this is "what many saw" is sort of ridiculous. No one saw this. The world we live in is simply too ridiculous for predictions like that.
"...it is becoming increasingly clear that she is a political actor who also gives her support to Trump and Israel, and with an agenda that stands far from peace, disarmament and reconciliation between peoples. Not least, her uncritical positions in favor of Israel, the USA's violations of international law in attacks against ships in the Caribbean and for a military intervention in Venezuela raise a multitude of questions about how the Nobel Committee made its choice."
https://www.facebook.com/svenskafreds/posts/pfbid02aoK2T5BdW...
In Norway, the Norwegian Peace council also distanced itself:
'The Norwegian Peace Council announced that it will not organize this year's traditional torchlight procession through downtown Oslo on the day the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded due to its disagreement with the choice of Venezuelan far-right politician María Corina Machado as the winner.
'The organization, which brings together 17 Norwegian pacifist organizations and some 15,000 activists, declared on Friday, October 24, that it made this decision because its members "do not feel that this year’s winner is in line with the fundamental values of the Norwegian Peace Council."'
https://orinocotribune.com/norwegian-peace-council-will-not-...
They got an NGO of exile-Venezuelans to organize it instead.
Well, she did call on Trump to intervene violently, which he did. She also defended the bombing of civilian boats. Even if you don't count those as insurrection, I certainly count them as a pretty damning whatever.
Lying to the Bird Intelligence Agency is a Feral catcrime.
And to make it better, Trump kind of presented it to himself.
Amazing.
Key bit at about 35 seconds in.
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2026/jan/18/embarrassme...
He didn't win it. It was won by a team of students / collaborators / mentees, who felt he deserved it. I can't disagree with them. Among the nicest people in the world.
I don't think anyone meant it in the sense of "You're a Nobel Prize Winner," so much as "We couldn't have done this without your mentorship, and you deserve to hold onto this." He certainly doesn't consider himself to be a Nobel Prize winner.
It's a shame it gets tied with scientific prizes which represent actual merit.
People get really into technicalities.
>“I’m Norwegian, we give a Nobel Prize to somebody who deserved it and suddenly that Nobel Prize is going to somebody else. It’s so strange, so strange and that’s why I’m happy specifically now that we have laws that say that if you misuse the Nobel Prize we take it away from you. Somebody in power in the United States may be disappointed. He will lose it… I am happy.”
https://www.britannica.com/question/Why-did-James-Watson-sel...
https://time.com/3619174/james-watson-nobel-prize-medal-auct...
What's the worst that's gonna happen, the Kissinger estate gets a second prize?
I could collect Olympic gold medals and nobody thinks I won them.
I would say this is the peace prize's fundamental flaw.
If Trump really wanted to annoy those people he should start the 'Nobel Memorial Prize by Trump' and award it to himself.
It's about as legitimate as the one in economics.
I mean if I buy an oscar statue off Ebay, how many Oscars do I have? Zero. I have an oscar Statue. But no one cares how many Oscar Statues actors get. They care how many times they were awarded.
Wasn't there a similar story about some bravery medal (purple heart)?`
She was asking for military intervention to own nation, in other words, she wanted people get killed because she wanted to rule the government and she was ready for every possible brutal solution
Even worth, Nobel committee lost its credibility, subsequently diminishing the importance of Nobel prize itself
Not sure why some American representatives (Kissinger and Trump) are so pathetic.
And then you have Trump, on the complete other side of that spectrum.
That said, the Nobel medal to Trump circus is beyond ridiculous.
> I'm not interested in money or fame, I don't want to be on display like an animal in a zoo.
Seems like a smart approach.
If Terence Tao gave me, or a thrift shop, his Fields Medal, does that make me, or them, a great mathematician ?
The Nobel Peace Prize is also a bit odd. The other Nobel prizes seem more to be given out based on merit, but the peace prize seems highly political. Not sure why Machado got one in the first place, nor Obama for that matter. Trump would be one of the most undeserving ever, given that he seems to want to start wars with everyone, other than his wannabe buddy Putin.
I was just googling for prior peace prize winners (y'know - people who the Nobel committee actually awarded them to), and didn't realize that Al Gore had been given one too. For his climate change awareness work. Maybe the world will be a more peaceful place if it doesn't get too hot?
I think you're saying this as a joke, but to me it seems extremely likely that climate change will lead to wars and conflict (if it hasn't already)
First off, it seems pretty targeted at Trump's and Machado's situation, so I'm assuming it's based off of that.
I understand the importance and pride with an award as grand as this, but with so much at stake, is it worth keeping the integrity of the award, especially a peace award, at the cost of the freedom of millions of lives in Venezuela?
(I word it like "the cost of millions' of freedom" because from what I know, Trump has hinted that his not placing Machado in power, and instead the Vice President, was fueled in part by not recieving the Nobel Prize, and for lack of a better term, wanting to punish Machado because of that.)
Is there any indication that pretending that he won would materially improve the situation in Venezuela? Machado is famous because she is in opposition to the Chavez/Maduro regime, but if you dig into her politics, she is VERY far to the right. She looks a lot more like a venezuelan Orban than Mandela if you read about her.
Awarding her the prize in the first place was a purely political decision not really rooted in merit (much like Obama), no reason for them to play a different game now.
What a gratuitous attack!
I can't imagine being somebody who voted for him and thinking this is what an "alpha" man does, bitch and moan about prizes and recognition instead of actually doing things of value.
I wouldn't be surprised if there is a large cohort of people who never admit they voted for Trump in the future out of embarrassment.
They can’t be impressed with his business acumen considering that he’s an objectively terrible businessman. They can’t be impressed with his academic record considering he doesn’t really have one. He has no military history, the only thing people know him from was a terrible reality TV show and his constant need to embellish everything he does.
Well, that, and the fact that he started saying a bunch of really racist shit in 2015 about how Mexico’s “not sending their best”, and how he’s not going to get a fair trial for Trump University because his judge has a Mexican-sounding last name.
I think a lot of his voters are cowards who are deeply unhappy and are too afraid to say that they believe that immigrants and DEI are the sole reason that their lives are terrible.
I find it funny because the reasons their lives are terrible are both more complicated but also simpler than DEI and immigrants. As far as I can tell, nearly all their problems boil down to self-interested sociopaths who have inserted themselves into power, and these sociopaths are completely ambivalent to the consequences of their decisions, so long as it doesn’t directly affect them.
To be clear, this is beyond “capitalism” or anything like that. Sociopaths controlling the world has been a thing for millennia, probably as long we’ve had any concept of “society”.
Plus the selection process is actually pretty random at best and biased at worse. I mean how do you select one person every year, without some completely arbitrary factor?
The winning team lifts the original 1974 Fifa World Cup made of 18k gold during the cerimony and then as soon as they get in the locker room an exchange is made and the winning team receives a bronze copy of the trophy plated in gold.
On the bright side, I always wanted to get a physics noble prize. I think there is hope.
We should award him a medal every minute -- and, at the same time, stand firm against his aggressive stances. An eye for an eye, but a medal for everything else.
Got to hand it to Trump. He hit 3 birds with this one - He de-legitimized yet another European/International institution, while simultaneously using the same to bless his war of aggression. And he got half a nobel out of it too.
Absent that scenario, I fully expected a tearful ceremony in the Rose Garden, where she would hand the medal to him, as the only True Recipient. That didn't happen either, and what we got right now seems a bit... forced? Like: Trump's advisors got through to him (no simple feat!) and positioned her as the only slightly viable path toward success in Latin America, and got him to take the L?
Anyway, total insanity...
Delcy Eloína Rodríguez Gómez (born 18 May 1969) is a Venezuelan lawyer, diplomat, and politician who has served as the acting president of Venezuela since 3 January 2026, after the United States captured and de facto removed President Nicolás Maduro from power.
But you're right she is not the Nobel laureate. Quite an embarrassing brainfart from my side, possibly instigated by the fact that Machado would have been president now, if not for her obstinacy...
1. promised to privatize various companies, particularly in the oil extraction business to the benefit of, primarily, American oil companies [1]; and
2. is very pro-israel and thinks it's important that Venezuela moves their embassy to Jerusalem [2].
Either Machado is a CIA-backed puppet or wants to be. Trump has now joined a club with Joesph Goebbels of being gifted a Nobel prize [3] (also in article).
It makes a complete mockery of the Peace prize to hand it someone who is either an American puppet or a grifter and the Nobel committe should rightly be lambasted for this.
[1]: https://fortune.com/2026/01/03/maria-corina-machado-nobel-pr...
[2]: https://en.royanews.tv/news/66321
[3]: https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/from-giving-it-to-nazis-to-s...
Knut Hamsun (Literature Prize 1920): In 1943, the Norwegian author Knut Hamsun travelled to Germany and met with Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels. After returning to Norway, he sent his Nobel medal to Goebbels as a gesture of thanks for the meeting. Goebbels was honoured by the gift. The present whereabouts of the medal are unknown.
I would suggest "fascist", instead.
ps: there should be a discussion on the overall group behind him too (project25, techbros, orban links etc)
But that's nothing compared to this man. I usually avoid his news but seeing him grabbing fifa peace price wasn't a good sight.
It's irrelevant if he's giving his opinion on a subject in a YouTube video; it's still not journalism (and it's not even an op-ed, since he's effectively self-publishing).
None of that stops him from trying to present himself as a journalist or a comedian.
I know what an op ed is. You don't need to tell me. It doesn't have to be in print anymore. (You obviously looked up that definition somewhere.)
Narendra Modi is said to hold a BA awarded by Delhi University in 1978 (or possibly 1979?). The veracity of that has been disputed.
He is also said to hold an MA awarded by Gujarat University in 1983, where the provided exam transcript[1] marks him “external” (i.e. remote) and includes the curious phrase “entire political science”. The veracity of that has been disputed as well.
Finally, he was offered[2] a honorary doctorate (of what, I haven’t been able to ascertain) by Southern University in Louisiana in 2014, but declined.
(I haven’t been able to find any references to him claiming to hold a PhD in English-language sources.)
[1] http://www.gujaratuniversity.org.in/web/NWD/NewsEvents/2000_...
[2] https://wwwcfprd.doa.louisiana.gov/boardsAndCommissions/Meet...
> The current prime minister of India once announced that he has Ph.D. in "all of the political science".
This didn't happen, at least publicly and on record. The previous dispute was around his distance education Masters; which isn't hard to believe or hard to get. They don't attend regular classes.
It's about tribalism and nihilism. Decades of political disfunction (defined by the failure of elected leaders to enact policy broadly supported by voters) has lead to a loss of faith in the ability of government (as currently structured) to deliver anything. If government (and other institutions) have failed to deliver anything to someone, it's understand why they may not care about its destruction.
I really thought that it was impossible for Trump to get elected again. Everyone was warned, yet they wanted him back.
There is no flaw in the principle of that process. Its as old as time. Pontius pilate, 2000 years ago, had the exact same headache.
The EU (and Europe) will have to lean East until Germany remilitarizes. US will find itself alone with enemies on all sides.
I'm pretty sure that if any one of those three comes to pass a lot of people will be surprised and caught flat footed.
And there will be nobody that stops it.
A life of wealth, 0 consequences and only yes-men around you tends to produce these self absorbed people.
You just go to the huge mural with your camera and wait for someone to walk by.
https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/heres-how-vladimir-putin-...
> "I took out the ring and showed it to [Putin], and he put it on and he goes, 'I can kill someone with this ring,'" Kraft said in 2013. "I put my hand out and he put it in his pocket, and three KGB guys got around him and walked out."
> Despite the fact that Putin walked off with the ring, Kraft still wanted the $25,000 piece of jewelry returned. However, he ended up giving up on his quest to get the ring back when White House called and told Kraft that starting World War III over a Super Bowl ring probably wouldn't be the best idea.
> "It would really be in the best interest of US-Soviet relations if you meant to give the ring as a present," Kraft said he was told on the White House call in 2005. "I really didn't [want to]. I had an emotional tie to the ring, it has my name on it. I don't want to see it on eBay. There was a pause on the other end of the line, and the voice repeated, 'It would really be in the best interest if you meant to give the ring as a present.'"
> Days later, a statement came from Kraft, and all of the sudden, the owner's stolen Super Bowl ring was now officially a "gift" to Russia.
> "I decided to give him the ring as a symbol of the respect and admiration that I have for the Russian people and the leadership of President Putin," Kraft's 2005 statement said.
https://www.reddit.com/r/football/comments/1lzzsmc/trump_kep...
> Doing my sad job of having to defend Trump (sadly):
> He did not "kept" for himself. FIFA that decided to keep it in the white house
> It is normal for champions to receive and keep a replica during and after the awards. Happens, for example, in the World Cup, Champions League and Libertadores.
> Probably, FIFA will take the trophy back eventually and keep it in Switzerland just like the WC one.
> This is political tabloid click/ragebait.
https://theconversation.com/henry-kissingers-bombing-campaig...
Now he’s aiming for the war prize.
(Everyone, including Obama, was pretty flummoxed by that prize.)
Quote from Gary Bass, professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton University and author of "The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and a Forgotten Genocide:"
"In at least one crucial part of the world, Kissinger’s legacy is fixed: In South Asia, Indians and Bangladeshis widely remember Kissinger as an unusually cruel and cold-hearted person. As they bitterly recall, he and Richard Nixon firmly supported Pakistan’s military dictatorship throughout its bloody crackdown in 1971 on what today is Bangladesh, sending some 10 million Bengali refugees fleeing into India. In one of the worst atrocities of the Cold War, Pakistan’s junta brushed aside the results of a democratic election, killed awful numbers of Bengalis and targeted the Hindu minority among the Bengalis. (Bangladesh is now the eight-largest country in the world, with a population larger than Russia or Japan, as well as a major Muslim country with considerable strategic importance in South Asia.) On the White House tapes, Kissinger sneered at Americans who “bleed” for “the dying Bengalis.”
"Kissinger’s actions in 1971 were clouded by his own ignorance about South Asia, his emotional misjudgments and his stoking of Nixon’s racism toward Indians. Kissinger’s policies were not only morally flawed but also disastrous as Cold War strategy. As U.S. government officials presciently warned him, a Pakistani crackdown would result in a futile civil war with India sponsoring the Bengali guerrillas, creating the conditions for Soviet-backed India to rip Pakistan in two—a strategic defeat for the United States and a strategic victory for the Soviet Union. And don’t forget that Kissinger knowingly violated U.S. law in allowing secret arms transfers to Pakistan during the India-Pakistan war in December 1971. Despite warnings from White House staffers and State Department and Pentagon lawyers that such arms transfers were illegal, Nixon and Kissinger went ahead, with Kissinger saying that doing so was “against our law”—a scandal of a piece with an overall pattern of lawlessness that culminated with Watergate."
In the context of Nobel's history of controversial awards, your complaint sounds like a petty grudge against Obama.
[1] https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/remark...
Also he didn’t try to overthrow an election he lost.
He and Nixon did plenty of mongering already in 1971, when they firmly backed and tried to cover up Pakistan's military atrocities in what is now Bangladesh. 10 million refugees didn’t prevent the Nobel committe from giving him the prize in 1973.
Not defending Kissinger at all.
Let’s see how it goes.
My vote is for 13 year old boy's fantasy presidency.
Machado gave Trump her medal, there's no much more to it.
Please just stop giving him attention.
It's obvious there is a lot of attention on the whole topic.
(As is this, but a daily reminder to trump supporters of what everyone thinks of them doesn't hurt)
If truth, logic and rationalism were weaker than lies, narcissism and incumbents, the renaissance could never have occurred, freedom of beliefs and freedom of speech were essential to develop philosophy, science, etc. during the renaissance and after.
> (As is this, but a daily reminder to trump supporters of what everyone thinks of them doesn't hurt)
So who gets to decide what hurts? For clarity I don't think this discussion should be flagged, but the double standards are eye-gouging.
I am not even sure if this country can survive the next three years and come out of it unscathed. One group basically trojan horsed their way to top and destroyed global order indefinitely.
I had impression that it was other way around. Basically puritans. I can imagine people in Europe at that time were happy that they left. Unfortunately, as example this Greenland situation, they are back now.