The Nobel Prize and the Laureate Are Inseparable | Hacker News Reader

The Nobel Prize and the Laureate Are Inseparable

nobelpeaceprize.org

298 pointskarakoram229 comments

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.

https://x.com/wikileaks/status/2001260159432290686

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.

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

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.

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-...

Yes. I believe it's the first time the Peace Council refused to organize the march.

They got an NGO of exile-Venezuelans to organize it instead.

As a Swede, "Svenska Freds" is not an entirely uncontroversial organization.

That's an understatment. They have long been aligned with the Soviet Union and later Russia.

> 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.

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.

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

It was ridiculous. He got it less than a year into his presidency.

Lifting quotes liberally from the wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Nobel_Peace_Prize

> "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.

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

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.

The Nobel Prize was given at the beginning of his tenure. Of course it was a majestic failure because by the end, he held the record of "most dropped bombs by any US president"... IIRC it must have been something 25-30k.

I imagine the 100k+ tons of bombs dropped on Gaza has subsequently reshuffled that list.

> he held the record of "most dropped bombs by any US president".

Disregarding WW2, I'd assume LBJ or Nixon holds that record.

I need to note that my understanding of geopolitics have changed since then, but I recall thinking that putting John McCain and Sarah Palin as VP in the White House would have spread political and physical wildfire over the whole world, not quite unlike the situation we have now. From that perspective I considered the Obama Peace Nobel fully earned just by virtue of getting elected.

This is the most absurd mental gymnastics I’ve read in a long time.

“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.

I'm a bit left of Bernie, and I agree. Obama's Peace Prize was BS theatrics, and a world-stage attempt to flip a middle finger at the outgoing POTUS, GW Bush.

We CAN'T know what WOULD have happened.

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 didn't realise Julian Assange's full complaint had been published (I couldn't find it at the time I looked into it).

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

Thanks for posting the link to the PDF. I've long tried to find the specific references to the legal grounds for the complaint.

You don't happen to have a reference to the status in the Swedish legal system? The police are responsible for referring this stuff to a prosecutor, and that status should be public.

Did my own research, and the Swedish police has decided not to continue with the complaint:

https://omni.se/assanges-anmalan-mot-nobelstiftelsen-laggs-n...

from 2025-12-19

Machine translation in part:

> The report contained no information indicating that a crime had been committed. Therefore, no preliminary investigation is being initiated, Rikard Ekman of the police told AFP.

That's unsurprising. There's no willingness to challenge the Nobel Foundation on the basis set out by Assange, even though they themselves reluctantly admitted in 2012 that they have a duty to ensure the will is respected:

> "...pursuant to the current legislation governing foundations, the Board of Directors of the Nobel Foundation is legally accountable for ensuring that [...] the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded in accordance with the criteria stipulated by Alfred Nobel."

This was from a press release from 2012 that now appears to be deleted from their site: https://web.archive.org/web/20120601234000/http://www.nobelp...

I think a serious examination of Nobel's will and how the Nobel Committee chose Machado over other candidates would make the Norwegian Committee look very bad. It would also show that the Swedish Nobel Foundation failed in its legal duty to ensure the will was respected. A result that would embarrass both Norway and Sweden. So what you get instead is quick dismissal of any such complaints.

The Swedish press has also been terrible in reporting this. I saw articles trying to make Assange out to be stupid for filing in Sweden. Journalists either didn't bother reading the Wikileaks press release, or wanted to keep their readers in the dark about it.

Here's one example from Aftonbladet (Sweden's largest news site):

> WikiLeaks alleges that Assange sent his letter to Swedish authorities, although it is the Norwegian Nobel Committee that appoints peace laureates. ("Wikileaks påstår att Assange skickat sitt brev till svenska myndigheter, även om det är den norska Nobelkommittén som utser fredspristagare.")

There's a book by Norwegian lawyer Fredrik Heffermehl that goes into the 2012 challenge to the Nobel Foundation. I've only skimmed it, but looks quite interesting: The Real Nobel Peace Prize - A Squandered Opportunity to Abolish War https://www.kobo.com/se/en/ebook/the-real-nobel-peace-prize-...

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

To be fair in this case, they gave it to him for making peace and ending a long-running conflict. A peace which didn't last evidently and was overshadowed by his later actions. Not unlike Aung San Suu Kyi.

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.

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.

And you know this how?

It is just basic logic really. Hypothetically, If the Nobel committee was to right now announce that this year's Nobel Peace Prize was to be awarded to a Greenlandic independence/opposition activist - Some one who applauds and supports all of Trump's current rhetoric and actions wrt Greenland, someone calling for armed intervention/invasion. What would that say about the committee's opinion on the matter. What would the timing of such an announcement signal to the Trump regime and the wider world? What conclusion could one draw reasonably?

I'm pretty sure he just wants an "I told you so" on the record. I don't think he has many illusions about recourse through the Swedish court system.

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.

Aged perfectly. [0]

The peace prize has lost all credibility.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46473999

I'm just wondering if they'll end up revising the blurb about her on their website to include the words "craven pandering."

They can say whatever they want but Usain Bolt gave me his gold medal so now Im the fastest 100m runner in the world

Sorry you got scammed, FIFA awarded me their 100m sprint gold medal so I'm the real fastest 100m runner in the world

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.

Meters and seconds (AND THEREFORE SPEED AND ACCELERATION) are a CON JOB and CONSPIRACY of the RADICAL LEFT!!1! Thank you for your attention to this TRUTHING! covfefe

I just revised all the footage from the birds in your area and couldn’t find any proof of your claims.

Lying to the Bird Intelligence Agency is a Feral catcrime.

The birds, who many people are saying aren't even real, are SPREADING LIES from the RADICAL LEFT claiming I can't run 100 meters!

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...

He presented it to himself? How Napoleonic!

FIFA were using it to get an anti corruption investigation cancelled. And the world cup and FIFA corruption are safe from Trump interference. Worked for them.

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?

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.

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.

Imagine Sean Penn having to ask Zelensky for his oscar back.

can it be rented out?

Same with the Emmy. It says it right on the bottom (along with a warning that only actual winners can be photographed holding it).

"oh, I must have lost it. Since you're claiming it's worth one dollar, here's a fiver, keep the change"

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.

It's been politicised forever. Even was during the Cold War. There have been some laughable official choices.

E.g., Henry Kissinger

Kissinger is a horrific one considering some of the things he was behind, and things he said. But he was well in with the right people internationally.

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.

No "Nobel Prize" thread is complete without this pedantic observation, however otherwise off-topic.

You mean like the 1949 Nobel Prize for Medicine being awarded to the person who developed lobotomy surgery?

An imperfect record doesn't mean the whole process is a sham.

But with the Peace Prize, the failures are numerous, and it becomes harder to claim they are outliers.

For whom are they writing this? For the sane people it's not needed and for the not-so-sane it doesn't really matter ...

Something about why you shouldn't wrestle with a pig.

I think the sentiment changes when the pig owns the farm

If memory serves me correctly then it ends up you won't be able to tell the difference between the pigs and the humans anymore.

Ya that one is a bit more Orwellian as an ending.

Maybe for the wikipedia article.

People get really into technicalities.

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.”

a lot of tech bros voted for this

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

I know a bunch of them who voted for him, it's unfortunate, often tied to single issues.

fortunately, his support is declining. Except maybe among white men.

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.

True enough. Poor Watson tried to get rid of his, only to have someone buy it for $4.1M and hand it right back.

https://www.britannica.com/question/Why-did-James-Watson-sel...

The submitted article says 4.76 instead of 4.1. Doesn’t change anything, but at least one of those sources is wrong.

> 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...

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."

He can have my old 10 metre swimming proficiency certificate.

Maybe the denigration of the award process should be the basis for revoking the award in question

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

The Nobel Peace Prize is meaningless. No matter who or why and to whome it was given. It has nothing to do with the other Nobel Prizes.

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 prize for literature has some curious inclusions and omissions.

Good point.

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

> The Nobel Peace Prize is meaningless.

No! It’s a warning sign.

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.

That's the economics prize.

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.

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)?`

I don't know why this even needs an official statement.

I could collect Olympic gold medals and nobody thinks I won them.

Didn't they relabel DEI as "Didn't Earn It". That is amusingly applicable now.

Everything they say is about us vs them and the reason something is bad is because they did it and the reason something is good is because we did it

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.

Laureates are already such a mixed bunch why not make it fungible.

What's the worst that's gonna happen, the Kissinger estate gets a second prize?

Written in such a civilized manner that one would wish them to be in the White House. Enough to be qualified nowadays.

This institution lost my respect when they handed Obama the price for not being Bush, I guess.

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.

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.

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.

There already exists a meme, where Perelman presents his Fields medal to Trump.

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.

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.

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

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.

From what Perelman said, he just seemed deeply depressed and disillusioned. Not sure it had much more meaning than that.

Sloppy seconds seems to be his thing.

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 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.

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 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”.

> The controversial DNA researcher

What a gratuitous attack!

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.

what instigated this blog post ? This ? https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan/15/maria-corina-m...

Epstein, NATO, Russia

Ignore distractions such as the Nobel

Greenland

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

I’m pretty sure Trump received a peace prize without becoming another person, so no they are indeed separable.

Honestly if it keeps the toddler occupied then I’m all for it

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.

Trump will. Oe be able to sit at the head of the round table!

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.

To borrow an idea from xkcd, maybe the $5 wrench method is the most likely way.

The original meme-tool for password extraction was a rubber hose, which made more sense. It also pre-dated XKCD by several decades.

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?

Anyway, total insanity...

Isn't her last name Machado not Rodriguez? Who is Rodriguez?

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...

As a reminder, Machado:

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...

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.

Yes, there has. It's no joke.

Hum... There some irony for it being a peace prize, but giving it to Trump doesn't make it the worst on that list.

Henry VIII* or Louis XIV?

> Henry VII

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

He was a clever king, but no one good could be king of England for more than about 18mths in those days.

I think that the parent probably meant Henry VIII.

Yep sorry fixed typing too fast missed an I

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.

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

Convenient.

Common

People from non-privileged backgrounds in India often have so called "correspondence" degrees (remote), the privileged will not empathize.

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.

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...

I am the one who disputed the claim and later deleted - I was conflicted between keeping HN largely free of political reddittery (and chose to downvote instead), and fact-checking.

> 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.

I’ve started to refer to it as the “Tony Soprano presidency”. It fits so much of the logic.

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.

A convenient explanation for Trumps ephebophilia/pedophilia.

Nah, I was thinking more of busty (adult) blondes, owning a massive business and conducting international affairs like an eighties action movie.

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????

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.

Considering his approval rating is still in low 40s, and not 0, tells you volumes about the average American mind.

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.

The issue isn't intelligence per se. It's ignorance (often willful ignorance), dogmatism, media illiteracy, political illiteracy, etc. There are many intelligent (but evil) people in the Trump administration and not every Trump voter is a dunce. Framing them all as stupid isn't useful, because it doesn't help us understand and counteract what's happening.

I agree with this. I was describing what, for me, is something akin to a stoic practice.

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.

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.

Do not underestimate latent European fascism, which is easily promoted using the same issue: immigrants. Most countries have a not-quite-majority for doing their own version of Ice, including shooting civilians.

The pendulum swings. It was less than a 100 years ago that the roles were quite literally reversed.

My brother, Giorgia Meloni is Italian PM and Marine Le Pen got 42% of the vote in 2022.

Of democracy, thats a feature, not a bug. The people spoke, the people received.

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.

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.

Have you ever wondered why poor countries are often littered with statues of their leaders?

A life of wealth, 0 consequences and only yes-men around you tends to produce these self absorbed people.

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.

That moment actually has a better Trump analogy, the time Trump stole the FIFA Gold Club World Cup trophy and FIFA had to eventually decide to make a statement that they were giving it to Trump - which is unlike anything that’s ever happened before for a FIFA trophy.

https://www.reddit.com/r/football/comments/1lzzsmc/trump_kep...

The first comment in your link says the opposite:

> 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.

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).

A photo journalist can ‘manipulate’ such images into being without manipulating anything.

You just go to the huge mural with your camera and wait for someone to walk by.

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

Thin skinned, self-absorbed? Kaiser Wilhelm II comes to mind.

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.

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

Hum... the word "autocrat" might be too polite, and some in the Trump fan club might actually not understand it's meaning completely.

I would suggest "fascist", instead.

I'll give you that.

ps: there should be a discussion on the overall group behind him too (project25, techbros, orban links etc)

Did we have to discuss this?

Machado gave Trump her medal, there's no much more to it.

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.

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.

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.

Most leaders of major powers are reasonably sane. This one may wake up in the middle of the night with a bad case of indigestion and order it so.

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.

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.

You're suggesting semi-rational behavior from a non-rational actor. That might not work out.

Everything he does is on shaky ground. The whole idea is to confuse and destabilize so none of them can get contested in time.

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....

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

There is a difference though: Kaiser’s power was un-checked. Currently there are some GOP senators who are looking to check Donnie’s ambitions. a couple of GOP senators said they will not even look at Donnie’s candidate for Fed Chairman role until the current investigation into Jerome Powell stops. And two other GOP senators are pushing a resolution to prevent Donnie from attacking any NATO countries.

Let’s see how it goes.

I notice 18 out of 20 top stories on reddit world news are about Trump.

Please just stop giving him attention.

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.

You know he can still keep doing insane things, even if you ignore him, right? Why does being ignorant of what he is doing help?

We're a little past don't give him attention. It's his second term and he's acting like it.

I have a genuine question.

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.

Why bother even saying this ?

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?

> 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)

Of course they aren't. Only a 6 year old would think so.

Oh no even the nobel prize has become politicized :(

so the discussion on circumcision gets flagged, but symbolic peace prize squabbles doesn't?

I didn't see that, but it's obviously doomed to flamewar.

(As is this, but a daily reminder to trump supporters of what everyone thinks of them doesn't hurt)

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.

Fight this. Drop everything Amazon-related from your business.

They should do something like FIFA does.

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.

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