They didn't give it to Machado hoping she would bring peace. In fact, they did it for the opposite reason. They awarded it at the height of tension and build-up of US forces outside Venezuela, while they were blowing up boats in the Carribean, to encourage Trump to go even further. Something btw which Machado wholeheartedly supported and encouraged.

Agreed, it was weird. They were like "yay Obama" and maybe trying to lock him in to doing peaceful things by giving him a pre-emptive prize.

They strayed from meaningful principles and now they are reaping what they've sown.

I think the criminal complaint in Sweden route is the only path that has had some success in the past in trying to make these organisations accountable for the peace prize. Swedes like to wash their hands of Nobel Peace Prize responsibility, pointing to Norway instead (it's the only prize where the comittee deciding is in Norway and not Sweden). But the foundation that pays all the winners, including the peace prize winner is in Sweden. And in 2012 the Stockholm County Administrative Board ruled that the Swedish Nobel Foundation is legally responsible for ensuring the Norwegian committee follows Alfred Nobel's will.

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.

I cannot recall Obama doing one single thing for peace internationally? Which conflict did he help stop?

There was also Abiy Ahmed, who went on to commit a genocide [1] the following year in Ethopia, it's less talked about than the one Palestine. Imagine giving Benjamin Netanyahu the nobel peace price, what a joke of an institution.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tigray_genocide

I think it's currently the best route to challenge the way the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded. See my earlier comment. In 2012 the Stockholm County Administrative Board ruled that the Swedish Nobel Foundation is legally responsible for ensuring the Norwegian committee follows Alfred Nobel's will. So that's probably a reason Assange went the route he went with the criminal complaint.

Assange's lawsuit is kind of silly, but his point about the incorrectness of the award to Machado stands up to scrutiny. She overtly encouraged military intervention by the US in Venezuela. That's a blatant contradiction of everything the Nobel Peace Prize is purported to stand for.

It is what many saw, just not the people who take the US foreign policy establishment at its word.

The world's oldest peace organisation, the Swedish Peace and Arbitration Society, distanced itself from the Nobel Peace Prize, writing in October:

"...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-...

> didn't start an insurrection or whatever.

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.

You guys are idiots. I got an entire TV network to tell everyone I’m the fastest 100m sprinter in the world so that title should belong to me.

FIFA did themselves a solid punch in the face with that one.

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...

This would only take away credibility from Bolt. Specially for something that has so little subjectivity as "running fast". I this really happened the most likely case is that Bolt joined a cult and got brainwashed to believe the cult leader is faster than him.

E.g., Henry Kissinger

I know, right? Look at this, what Liv Ullman said. https://deadline.com/2026/01/norwegian-star-liv-ullmann-comm... I don’t understand what Liz Ullmann means here. The Nobel people said the prize can’t be revoked, shared, or transferred so it is just the gold medal that María Corina Machado gave to Trump. It is a very nice medal to have! But it isn’t anything to get upset about if she chooses to give her medal to someone. Norway isn’t going to invade the USA to get it back.

>“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.”

I think the sentiment changes when the pig owns the farm

Unfortunately, there is no past tense here, and he has a lot of support in the US.

> Though Christie’s in Manhattan set the estimated haul for James D. Watson’s prize between $2.5 and $3.5 million, an anonymous bidder bought it for $4.1 million, the New York Times reports. The total rose to $4.76 million due to the buyer’s premium, which goes to the auction house.

https://time.com/3619174/james-watson-nobel-prize-medal-auct...

But he is not here to give it. Nobel's nobele regret can be misused just like his weapon.

The prize for literature has some curious inclusions and omissions.

The last one given to someone who didn't win it went to Goebbels, the Nazi war enthusiast. I hope it isn't too accurate a warning sign.

At that time it was not only for Kissinger but also for North Vietnamese representative. It just that Lê Đức Thọ (as war was still ongoing) declined it while Kissinger did not.

Not sure why some American representatives (Kissinger and Trump) are so pathetic.

Also this:

> 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.

Often in life the extreme ends of a spectrum are not “good” and “bad” but varying degrees of suboptimal.

Well, Trump scored bigly on his senility test, and was even able to distinguish a giraffe from an elephant, as he bragged about, so it seems pretty clear he's a high IQ individual.

I honestly think the racist stuff is the primary reason.

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”.

ah yeh that's what I meant by NATO. Sorry Greenland

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delcy_Rodr%C3%ADguez

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...

it's quite incredible that trump put himself on the list of autocrats being given others prizes

The fifa prize was a very public bribe: https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/us-attorney-droppe...

Not to downplay the Modi thing but ... honorary Ph.D.s are handed out left and right, and it's common for politicians to just buy one. They mean very little, and making that into a scandal is just showing lack of creativity to show the real scandals, of which there should be plenty.

In his defence, Modi's was external degree - i.e remote degree - so no one sees in the class room.

A now-deleted reply challenged this claim, so I went to search, and it seems to be a melange of three different facts?

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...

Before leaving the house, I find it helpful to imagine the median intelligence level in my geographic area (local, or country as a whole) and then recall that about half the population has a level below that point.

For many Americans (on both sides) politics is not about policy.

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.

That was my main learning from the last election: The difference between Americans and Europeans truly is much greater than I'd ever expect.

I really thought that it was impossible for Trump to get elected again. Everyone was warned, yet they wanted him back.

I keep reading in the news that Trump now polls the lowest ever for any US president, then I check Nate Silver and he's been hovering around the same value for the last 90 days or so.

The "or else" is actually on rather shaky grounds considering the national debt. For the sake of argument if certain countries decided to stop buying US treasury bonds the federal state would be insolvent about 5s later. Certainly a default of that size would destroy the economy in every single country pretty much except maybe Cuba and North Korea.

The EU (and Europe) will have to lean East until Germany remilitarizes. US will find itself alone with enemies on all sides.

They did mention the toddler in question is leader of a major power, so I don't think what you're saying is going to surprise GP.

Yeah, every time something like this happens, it becomes more necessary to boycott US services simply because you cannot guarantee their continuity or non politicization.

There's a newspaper photography cliché: "Person walks past a huge mural of [dictator]". I have noticed since the 90s and often wondered if a few of these images might be manipulated (replacing the background would be the easiest thing in the world).

isn't that crazy that the United States revert to that level in less than 10 years ?

Trump taking the peace prize from Machado is a page out of Putin's playbook when Putin stole a superbowl ring from Bob Kraft, the owner of the Patriots. US secret service had to get involved and tell Kraft to drop the issue and let Putin have it.

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.

It’s not right. Until you have carpet bombed a place, Kissinger style, are you really worthy of the prize?

https://theconversation.com/henry-kissingers-bombing-campaig...

Well duh, he’s got the peace prize ticked off already, thanks to FIFA.

Now he’s aiming for the war prize.

Obama was a war monger and still got the peace prize.

Personally I give it a year or less, at the pace things are going.

Some people care about good institutions and would like to preserve them.

But Tony was a good businessman and also regretted entering certain aspects of the family business.

My vote is for 13 year old boy's fantasy presidency.

> Henry VII

What do you have against Henry VII? From Wikipedia he seems to have been a good king.

I don't request the supporters of circumcision to be censored (indeed I would prefer to let people incriminate themselves on the topic), I only ask not be censored myself, and not to censor my peers so we can discover each other true opinions...

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.