Many in Norway and Sweden distanced themselves from the Nobel Peace Prize at the time it was awarded to Machado because it was obvious it was such a bad decision.
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.
The problem with the peace prize is it seems like its given out to people who they hope will bring peace instead of people who actually have brought peace.
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.
To be fair, it's not the first extremely questionable Nobel Peace Prize award, for example, Henry Kissinger. While not nearly as egregious, Barack Obama was a bizarre choice, too.
Machado seems fine. There are always going to be controversies around any political figure, and the complaints ahead of the award were... kinda routine, I thought? She was an opposition leader who was denied power won by democratic election, and didn't start an insurrection or whatever. Checks the right boxes. Make the call and move on.
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.
But if Usain Bolt truly believed that you were better than him and indeed gave you the medal, then maybe you really were the fastest runner in the world?
I had a physics professor I worked with who had a Nobel Prize.
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.
Fun fact, Oscar winners don't fully own their statues since 1950. AMPAS reserves the right to buy it back for $1 if they want to sell it. Ownership of the statue is conditional, meaning it can't be freely sold or disposed of.
The underlying issue here is that the Nobel Peace Prize is a useless, politicized joke. It appears to be almost designed to give newspapers something to write about.
It's a shame it gets tied with scientific prizes which represent actual merit.
Now you need to look into the "Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel" - Economics wasn't part of Nobel's original endowment so the Swedish Central bank funded it in the 60s.
Maybe this is a not-so-subtle way of telling him that he lacks the personality to ever earn one. Maybe they are hoping that if he understands that, he'll stop doing ridiculous things in the attempt. If that is their motive, they should give up because he is never going to learn.
Well, you always hope there is some overlap between those, who need it to be said, those, that you can reach, and those, where it will make the tiniest bit of difference.
Quote: "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."
This shows why Machado didn't deserve the prize in the first place.
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
I agree with you that it is not like the other Nobels, but it seems to me that it is only the Peace Prize that really embodies Alfred Nobel's regret in creating a misused weapon.
The Nobel Peace Prize may be meaningless. That the most powerful man in the world has such a juvenile, psychologically rotten obsession with it that he grins ear to ear upon an illegitimate "secondary award" of it is absolutely not meaningless.
It also has a different committee awarding it - I guess every prize has - but this one is specifically, as designed, decided by a group of parliamentarians selected out of the Norwegian parliament, generally selecting some older ones and trying to represent every party. It's not academics or specialists in the area of peace and diplomacy.
I would say this is the peace prize's fundamental flaw.
That this even has to be clarified is just a joke.
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)?`
It’s clearly a bribe for Machado to get the Venezuelan presidency for herself. And it’s one of many ways in which the Trump family is enriching themselves. News articles have said they’re already worth billions more than a year ago. Unfortunately there is no check and balance against this type of corruption.
He radically increased drone strikes, so that’s something. But it pales when compared to Kissinger carpet bombing, so you are right to question his award.
The other day I read this article about Grigori Perelman, Russian mathematician who declined to accept any medal or prize related to him solving the Poincaré conjecture. He declined the fields medals and millennium prize on the basis that he didn't view himself as a hero, and thought such awards were irrelevant.
And then you have Trump, on the complete other side of that spectrum.
Perelman is a strange character; IIRC he declined several times first without bothering to give a reason. Then, after being asked enough times, came up with a "I am not a hero and such awards are irrelevant" as a somewhat acceptable version so those pesky folks would leave him alone. Thus I would not use him as an example of the right way to deal with a prestigious award.
That said, the Nobel medal to Trump circus is beyond ridiculous.
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.
I try to talk to Trump voters to understand. I suggest you try as well if you're curious about this stuff. N = a dozen or so, but ones I've talked to care more about his actual political stances, like his white nationalist policies above all else. They see this stuff as entertainment and laugh with Trump as he makes these long established institutions bend to his will.
I don’t think we have to wait for the future. Part of the problem with the polling data in 2016 was that people lied because they were embarrassed about voting for him.
They embarrassed themselves by giving the prize to such an obvious neocon toady. It was a weak attempt at appeasing Trump and the neocons by using the prize to burnish another foreign intervention, while using the compliant press to spin it as a snub against him.
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.
The whole Nobel Peace Prize has already been sabotaged by the committee in the past - I don't disagree with their current opinion, but quite frankly, they invalidated the peace prize idea numerous times before. You can look here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Prize_controversies#Peac... - ignore the ones in the decades ago, but have a look in the last 30 years or so. Many people simply should not have gotten that price, including Obama; and neither Trump. And that's just a factual observation really - the committee politicized the price.
The whole situation is a disgrace for all involved. It's blatantly obvious that Machado is trying to suck up to Trump. I bet she will get nothing out of it. And Trump looks like a complete fool. Maybe it's time to shut down the peace nobel prize. Too many questionable winners like Arafat, Obama (for what did the get it?), Kissinger, now Machado.
On the bright side, I always wanted to get a physics noble prize. I think there is hope.
Kissinger, one of the worst war criminals in history, got a Nobel Peace Prize in 1973 (and didn't steal it from someone else). Those prizes don't mean much. Time spent by Trump toying with medals is time not spent doing harm.
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.
This is not quite the outcome I foresaw. I genuinely expected Trump to entirely ghost Rodriguez, because she had the gall to accept the Peace Prize, whereas she should, of course, have refused it outright and demanded it to be awarded to Trump instead.
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?
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.
It's such a joke that we're even having to discuss this. Has there ever been such a thin-skinned, self-absorbed leader of a major power before? Even his biggest fans have to admit, if only to themselves, that he acts like a toddler.
The current prime minister of India once announced that he has Ph.D. in "all of the political science". Asked for proof, they produced his degree from Delhi University. No one who got their degree at that place during that time can't recall seeing him in the classroom!
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.
The post itself contains a fascinating historical precedent that maps pretty well to the current situation:
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.
Not to help you with your sleeping patterns but: a toddler that could overnight decide to instruct US hosting providers and other infrastructure companies that they can no longer serve EU customers, that the .COM registry domains can only be registered by US entities, that any country owes the US any part of its territory 'or else'. The Nobel Prize is a footnote, it should have never happened, but there are much worse threats on the horizon.
How about Wilhelm II, the last German Kaiser? Some strong parallels - both were thin-skinned, both were idiots with a short attention span, both damaged relations with traditional allies (in Kaiser's case, these allies were also his relatives), both yielded large power aimlessly. Hopefully Donnie does not start a world war....
Are you saying that bombing multiple countries for little to no reason, trying to force a regime change in Venezuela, and threatening to steal Greenland by force isn’t peaceful????
Not sure what you mean, the actions of this administration at this critical moments will determine how the world is going to look like for decades and decades.
It's obvious there is a lot of attention on the whole topic.
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.)
> 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?
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.
Trump says a lot of things. There's no reason IMO to think that in this case he would have done differently if he was bribed with the medal up front. I think so because a military operation to unseat the whole leadership of the country would have been very different.
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?
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.
These prizes were such a bad ideas to start with. Most recipients either think it’s stupid that they got it and not their peers, or they develop Nobel Prize syndrome. Many non recipients become sour for not getting them.
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?
We have to do better to protect our government from religious groups. And I mean ALL religious groups. That’s really the root of the political problems right now. Ironic considering that the country was founded by people who fled similar malaise plaguing the Old World. Clearly separation of church and state is not explicit enough in our laws.
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.
> Ironic considering that the country was founded by people who fled similar malaise plaguing the Old World
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.
k1m|1 month ago
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.
https://x.com/wikileaks/status/2001260159432290686
bawolff|1 month ago
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.
istjohn|1 month ago
rvz|1 month ago
The peace prize has lost all credibility.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46473999
unknown|1 month ago
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fencepost|1 month ago
vintermann|1 month ago
ajross|1 month ago
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.
bad_haircut72|1 month ago
semicolon_storm|1 month ago
andreygrehov|1 month ago
frognumber|1 month ago
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.
Keyframe|1 month ago
jedberg|1 month ago
em-bee|1 month ago
kylecazar|1 month ago
immibis|1 month ago
eliben|1 month ago
It's a shame it gets tied with scientific prizes which represent actual merit.
jamincan|1 month ago
morgoo|1 month ago
nephihaha|1 month ago
letmetweakit|1 month ago
fhdkweig|1 month ago
PlatoIsADisease|1 month ago
People get really into technicalities.
jstummbillig|1 month ago
SecretDreams|1 month ago
gdilla|1 month ago
Y_Y|1 month ago
https://www.britannica.com/question/Why-did-James-Watson-sel...
latexr|1 month ago
vzaliva|1 month ago
hermitcrab|1 month ago
elif|1 month ago
throwaw12|1 month ago
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
unknown|1 month ago
[deleted]
unknown|1 month ago
[deleted]
tomNth|1 month ago
fhdkweig|1 month ago
estearum|1 month ago
kzrdude|1 month ago
I would say this is the peace prize's fundamental flaw.
noosphr|1 month ago
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.
lostlogin|1 month ago
No! It’s a warning sign.
alkonaut|1 month ago
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)?`
duxup|1 month ago
I could collect Olympic gold medals and nobody thinks I won them.
linuxhansl|1 month ago
immibis|1 month ago
SilverElfin|1 month ago
marginalia_nu|1 month ago
What's the worst that's gonna happen, the Kissinger estate gets a second prize?
qwertox|1 month ago
apexalpha|1 month ago
lostlogin|1 month ago
TrackerFF|1 month ago
And then you have Trump, on the complete other side of that spectrum.
kzrdude|1 month ago
ptero|1 month ago
That said, the Nobel medal to Trump circus is beyond ridiculous.
ivan_gammel|1 month ago
Jcampuzano2|1 month ago
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.
dfxm12|1 month ago
tombert|1 month ago
kgwgk|1 month ago
What a gratuitous attack!
volleyball|1 month ago
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.
rammy1234|1 month ago
hexbin010|1 month ago
Ignore distractions such as the Nobel
nephihaha|1 month ago
iwontberude|1 month ago
Havoc|1 month ago
shevy-java|1 month ago
unknown|1 month ago
[deleted]
zippyman55|1 month ago
vjvjvjvjghv|1 month ago
On the bright side, I always wanted to get a physics noble prize. I think there is hope.
kzrdude|1 month ago
bambax|1 month ago
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.
Not15CharsLong|1 month ago
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...
feraloink|1 month ago
jmyeet|1 month ago
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...
huhkerrf|1 month ago
dilawar|1 month ago
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.
romanhn|1 month ago
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.
shubhamjain|1 month ago
jacquesm|1 month ago
apexalpha|1 month ago
A life of wealth, 0 consequences and only yes-men around you tends to produce these self absorbed people.
analog31|1 month ago
dh2022|1 month ago
tombert|1 month ago
unknown|1 month ago
[deleted]
avs733|1 month ago
sdeer|1 month ago
marcosdumay|1 month ago
unknown|1 month ago
[deleted]
Levitz|1 month ago
Machado gave Trump her medal, there's no much more to it.
nkassis|1 month ago
assaddayinh|1 month ago
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moron4hire|1 month ago
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cies|1 month ago
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PlanksVariable|1 month ago
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tyre|1 month ago
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woodpanel|1 month ago
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fnord77|1 month ago
Please just stop giving him attention.
epolanski|1 month ago
It's obvious there is a lot of attention on the whole topic.
Capricorn2481|1 month ago
muwtyhg|1 month ago
wsbetter|1 month ago
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.)
dghlsakjg|1 month ago
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.
kzrdude|1 month ago
unknown|1 month ago
[deleted]
HarHarVeryFunny|1 month ago
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?
hrldcpr|1 month ago
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)
ugh123|1 month ago
semiinfinitely|1 month ago
DoctorOetker|1 month ago
pjc50|1 month ago
(As is this, but a daily reminder to trump supporters of what everyone thinks of them doesn't hurt)
justinator|1 month ago
JumpinJack_Cash|1 month ago
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.
d--b|1 month ago
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?
lvl155|1 month ago
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.
timeon|1 month ago
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.