The way she, and her team, managed to convince venezuelans that the election mattered, and to prepare to gather the evidence of the elections under constant threats from the government, that we all knew they were going to steal, and do it entirely peacefully, was an extremely impressive achievement on its own.
What an impressive act of coordination from MCM
:standing-ovation:
You don't need a war to have a lack of Peace!
They created an exodus of 8 million people.
Starved the population.
Killed people in the thousands in the favelas and other poor areas without a trial.
Steals elections.
To me that’s a regime at war with its own population and it deserves all the condemnation possible and all the support necessary to help transition back to democracy.
Yet the aircraft carriers are poised in the gulf to enact a third regime change operation in this oil rich country America wants under its thumb with a puppet running it.
This is the PR campaign beforehand, just like the "WMD" PR campaign in the run up to Iraq, with a woman who supports genocide in Gaza (https://x.com/VenteVenezuela/status/1286346531591852036 ) being lauded with a nobel peace prize. This is probably to lend her legitimacy when she becomes that puppet.
Saddam was a bad man too but he was an average evil. The warmongers who want to destabilize every country with oil, send in the tanks and install yet another Western puppet to maintain an iron grip on global oil supplies are a very special and unique kind of evil.
Just stop and think for a moment before even think about downplaying or comparing what is happening in my country with other world conflicts, and please don’t even dare to explain what I’ve been living.
But the relation between USA and the Arabic states were on an all time low after the Bush Crusade.
And Obama reached out to fix the relations. This is my recollection of it.
But i can agree that the rushed decision created problems afterwards for the committee. Like today when it is questioned.
> The 2009 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to United States president Barack Obama (b. 1961) for his "extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples".
That would be a basis for discussion.
For raising the bar so high.
Mark, what you've described and what we're seeing unfold is genuinely an impressive feat by Trump. To be able to capitalize on what seemed like this giant setback. Israel literally bombed the negotiators and the mediators. To turn that around and get a deal that Biden couldn't get done, that no other leader in the world had managed despite trying for two years straight. It is significant achievement. He was able to bring these sides together that had shown no willingness to end the war. And now they've come to this agreement. And it should also be said that one of the biggest things here is that he was willing to put pressure on Netanyahu in a way that President Biden was unwilling to do. Why do you think that's the case?
I think there's a few reasons. First, I think Trump genuinely wanted to end the war. He campaigned on ending the war in Ukraine and in Gaza.
Unwilling or unable? Netanyahu hated Biden and has done everything in his power to sabotage anything Democrats have done to try to help resolve the conflict, even prior to Oct 7.
den som har verkat mest eller best för folkens förbrödrande och afskaffande
eller minskning af stående arméer samt bildande och spridande af
fredskongresser
shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations,
for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and
promotion of peace congresses
We've heard it all before, we speak english so you're not a true venezuelan, you're part of some rich caste, you're not brown enough, you're a bot, etc ... 25 years of this bullshit no matter where we go. The international left abandoned us, the international right uses us as circus act.
Of course it'd be easier for your narrative if we were defenseless people begging in our native tongue for help. It's harder when a lot of Venezuelans are actually highly educated and want to control their own country and destiny.
>> IME the venezuelans who ended up abroad speaking English almost exclusively and up being people whose families were sucking on the teat of the oil wealth under the pre Maduro government before he ripped it out of their mouths and redistributed the wealth
you mean the almost 10 million of us that left, 1/3 of the population? the 2.5 million that went to Colombia alone by foot? or the ones that that walked all the way to Peru and Ecuador to meet discrimination and xenophobia. Those are all sucking on the oil teat? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venezuelan_refugee_crisis)
>> So i guess you want this Iraq style military operation to happen. I pity your relatives for what you want to happen to them.
No one wants that, and no one said they want that. Stop making stuff up
Trump let Netanyahu run roughshod, and the proposed peace agreement (which almost certainly won't hold) is pretty... let's say vague... about the plan for Gaza post hostage-release.
All that's happened here is another agreement to exchange hostages for prisoners, which has happened multiple times in this war already. Not much else is actually agreed to and obviously even less has actually happened.
Everyone you don't like is Hitler.
Democracy is not just when more than one "party".
Just because a fascist or fascist adjacent party is disallowed, does not mean democracy is absent.
I really hope they would not award someone the prize who works so blatantly against the word and spirit of the criteria in the will.
Venezuela is number 5 by the number of displaced people, the rest are all wars, it's crazy for a country at peace
I think Trump wanted to force the rather compromised committee to make a similarly foolish decision as giving Obama the prize, which would have then permitted immediate Israeli breach of the settlement.
Not to take away from Machado’s work, but this year’s prize is at the very least political, to both appease Trump in line with the above and also send a message in the face of the war build-up against Venezuela. At the same time their decision also facilitates the American takeover through less than lethal means by CIA revolution and the combined pressure of it all on the Venezuelan government. Machado is in fact a CIA asset, whether she realizes it or not.
I think Trump genuinely doesn't like people being killed, but he's also driving a wedge in the US that can't be ignored. Sending American troops against its own citizen: not exactly Nobel-prize worthy.
Biden had different pressures. E.g. I suspect that he judged that the knife-edge election he was facing didn't allow him enough leeway to put more pressure on Israel.
In addition Netanyahu made it easier to force through a settlement given he'd manage to alienate practically everyone, including uniting the Arab world after that unbelievable strike on Doha.
If you were a cynical person you could also ask whether this settlement owes anything to Trump's personal narcissist saviour complex or need to distract from domestic issues such as the Epstein files...
Still, even despite some significant scepticism about Trump's motives, I think there is a reasonable case to be made for awarding him the prize. It was still a significant (maybe even brave) jump to break with American political orthodoxy to put this kind of pressure on Israel, and the practical result of this could be very significant in terms of saving lives and potentially long-term peace in the region. We also need to encourage these kind of acts, even (or especially) amongst unlikely peacemakers like Trump.
Let's see what it looks like next year, though. Middle East peace deals don't have a great history of holding together.
I will personally try to refrain from commenting on the Venezuelan opposition since I do not know enough about them.
Surely a prime candidate for a peace prize.
They only give out one prize, which means that no matter which they pick, there will be dozes of impoverished and unjust places that don't get recognized by it. That can't be used to reject a choice, since it's true no matter what choice they make.
If you think Eastern Europe was liberated without involvement from the CIA, which has a mixed history w.r.t. competent ops in that region, I've got a Nobel prize to sell you.
While I do understand this might be true in essence, things are a lot more complicated. He's said some heinous things that riled up actual loonies into a frenzy more than once. Deliberately. Not peace price material IMHO.
(To be fair, I generally lean left, but I don't agree with Obama getting the prize in 2009 as well, what with the targeted assassination program and all)
Its almost like there should be a Nobel "anti-prize" denouncing these people.
From the quote it doesn't seem like Alfred Nobel had civil or political rights in mind with his prize. (Not that it bothers me to give it to civil rights activists though)
I'm not even sure I'm against everything Trump is up to (it's unclear to me); I just don't like the autocratic moves: it's unamerican, and bad for democracy. It's setting a standard & an allowable behavior that could be exploited by bad people.
I've wondered if one of the (under reported) pressures was the realpolitik geopolitical machinations of containing Iran. Especially wrt Iran's closer ties with Russia and China.
But even with insight, I would not forgive.
The whole thing just angers and saddens me. Neighbors killing neighbors. For nothing.
So many missed opportunities, snafus. Imagine what could have been. Normalization between USA-Iran (post-9/11, pre- "Axis of Evil"). Some kind of accommodation for coexistence. Nurturing democracy and development throughout the middle east.
And on and on. Going back decades, generations, ...
This is a strange thought considering his actions.
Between drone strikes, mishandling of COVID, dismantling of foreign aid, defunding American health care, cutting off Ukraine support at several critical moments, encouraging and materially supporting Israel, he may actually end up (or already be) responsible for the most deaths of any president.
Such countries already have not only smoke alarms but also building codes and layers of safety systems.
The analogy matches a person who goes to a place with high fire risk and no safety systems in place and through tireless effort introduces common sense measures to protect people.
Nobel Peace Prize: to the "person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses".
- Reaching out to the Muslim world.
I see. Thank you.
For a lot of horrific events in the world, you will find a bias exposed by the use of active vs passive voice. Compare:
- "100 children died". How?
- "100 children killed". By whom? Why? How?
- "100 children killed in conflict". Between who? How? Why?
' "100 children killed in air strike on refugee camp by X". Oh...
The point is that a lot of people treat what is happening in Venezuela like it's some kind of unavoidable natural disaster like an earthquake. This reinforces the idea that nobody is responsible and, more improtantly, there's nothing we can do.
Venezuelans are being intentionally starved to death by economic sanctions (that's what sactions are). Why? Because Maduro is bad. Sound familiar? It should. Castro was bad. Saddam Hussein was bad (despite being a US puppet for decades).
The actual issue is that these people threaten the interests of Western companies. That's it. That's the only thing that matters.
Or said another way - wouldn’t “TDS” be better used to describe those who spent the last decade insistent on free speech as a sacrosanct issue, the national debt as our primary concern, political targeting by Federal law enforcement as a universal sin, and states rights as the Foundation of our liberties while the Admin works contrary to each of those points in especially galling ways…
Whether they were worth removing is another question, but if you could flip a switch and magically replace them with something better (with no cost and a guarantee the replacement would not be a murderous authoritarian) you would of course do it.
The collapse started way earlier than the sanctions. It’s funny, but it’s even insulting that some people cannot comprehend that there is evil beyond their own frontiers. Not everything wrong that happens in the world is because an empire is meddling, we are also capable of being useless by ourselves!
Second: If, by the end of 2026, the Israel/Palestine ceasefire is still holding, if there is real progress towards lasting peace, if Trump's administration carries on acting as a mediating force in the conflict, then, by all means, maybe he should win the 2026 prize. As of today, he just got them to sign a piece of paper. To be clear, that is still an important milestone, it makes the world better than it was a week ago, and he should get credit for getting it done. It's just not the achievement he wants us to believe it is (yet?).
Third: The man thrives on conflict, he sows divisivenes at every step. He's literally deploying the military domestically. Whatever merit there is to his peace deals doesn't nearly amount to enough to make him a net positive force for peace in the world. And that should be a factor in choosing the winner.
Do you see a pattern here? Like at all?
The key point is that Saddam could drop nerve gas on Iraqi citizens and it still didn't change him being a US ally (and puppet). We don't care about someone being "bad". We never have. Saddam only ceased to become an ally when he invaded Kuwait and threatened our truly regional ally, Saudi Arabia.
All Castro did was overthrow Batisa, another US ally, and nationalize Cuban assets.
Hungary is a member of NATO and a US ally despite Viktor Orban essentially overthrowing democracy and genuinely being bad.
We helped overthrow Basher Al-Asaad. The al-asaads were former US allies too by the way. Why? Because now they were bad. Who is the new Syrian president? A man by the name of Ahmed al-Sharaa. Who is that you might ask? A former al-Qaeda leader, you know the guys were the Big Bad [tm] for 9/11. But that's OK, he (allegedly) cut ties with al-Aqeda in 2016 so all is forgiven. Let's not look too deeply into 15 or the 19 9/11 hijackers being Saudi.
Here's the lesson: whenever the US says someone is being punished, bombed, sanctioned, invaded or whatever because they're "bad" know that it's a lie. I mean they might be bad. But that's never the reason for whatever the latest punitive action is. Always, always, always the reason is become the interests of US foreign policy or Western companies is being threatened.
They stay in power with the help of a paramilitary group of bullies that intimidates people: colectivos. The Venezuelan colectivos are based on the Cuban CDR (committee for the defense of the revolution). And there are other elements of the Cuban "model" of staying in power that has "worked" for 66 years, that Venezuelan regime has adopted. And the CDR resembles the Nazi Sturmabteilung in their modus operandi.
So in the end what's holding the regime together is all violence, all the way down.
The history lesson is that when the most of the GDP generation doesn't need without the help of the population, the result is a regime. Scalable and cost efficient AGI will do the same to countries that do not make most of their GDP from extracting natural resources because once the citizen is not needed for wealth generation, territorial control, etc., their political representation goes away.
That's a great insight
We certainly accept this when the topic is some country that we know better here. We don’t accept the proclamation of an-ordinary-American as the infallible voice of the people. Why should we treat other countries differently?
So given the above, the other poster is within their right to compare tragedies and speculate about whether the price was deserved—it’s a competition—, and you can’t trump that by saying “but my lived experience”.
A petrostate kleptocracy can still trickle down enough scraps for it's people. An empire that controls global markets that sanctions an petrostate kleptocracy into just a kleptocracy, can't. The reality is no amount of competent governance is going to enable a petrostate like VZ to not be a shitshow if it's sanctioned from maintaining extractive infra (techstack controlled by empire) or sell in global markets. It's not about just being useless, but the inability to be useful no matter what you do. Yes, VZ got fucked from oil $100->$40 pre sanctions, but that's still a survivable/pivotable scenario than oil production going from 3 mbd to 400k mbd due to sanctions that prevents reconstitution of production. There's a reason economic freefall stabilized when Cheveron got license in 2022 that brought production back up to 1mbd.
Now you can argue a "competent" government would have conceded to Monroe (like Machado) in the first place, or not pissed off US in backyard. Like, I get it, you're living through the shit, but don't be economically/geopolitically naive, US didn't sanction VZ because muh democracy decline under Muduro when US props up other petro authoritarian MENA states. The only difference is US meddle with those that align with US interests and not, and US meddling is what makes or breaks petro states.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/10/world/americas/maduro-ven...
Seems he lost the anti imperialist mojo.
Did you not even read the article, like it's 2025, posting NYT article regarding US adversary like VZ and analyzing it naively is useful idiot behavior. That said, Trump is not a LIO woketard and someone Maduro thinks can be negotiated with, the fact is Maduro is fine with operating under US umbrella, provided US didn't do retarded shit like try a muh democracy regime change like under past US admins. Of course US establishment would still prefer a tool like Machado, but there's a chance under Trump that they'll accept Maduro. That's why the article talks about both Machado an and Maduro parallel barginning. This just 101 signalling, dangling Machado for more Maduro concessions - Machado isn't actually an option, because you know, she'll get disappeared if Maduro thinks US can actuall regime change with her. Hence Machado and this sus (granted marginally deserved) Nobel peace prize is good pressure to get Maduro to concede more. The fact that Maduro is making offer is because he knows there's framework for him staying in power, unlike past US admin zero-sum/maximum pressure play with Guaido. He know's a non-democratic VZ like non-democratic MENA petrostate that aligns with US interests is workable under Trump who is moving away from democracy promotion to realist foreign policy especially with recent strategic shift in focusing on South America.
That's not all. Castro also executed thousands creating a terror regime, nationalized American assets, funded and aided guerrillas in Latin America and Africa, aligned himself with the Soviet Union and caused the Missiles Crisis. He replaced a brutal dictatorship with another brutal dictatorship, a communist one, and ran the Cuban economy into the ground.
[0] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/democracy-index-eiu?tab=t...
The regional military powers have more population.
I personally - as an American of Norwegian descent - am proud of how they’ve built much of their country…and I hope we can learn from it.
[1]: (emphasis mine)
E.g. a welfare state doesn't make sense from a purely GDP-selfish perspective, beyond as a crime-prevention tool, since people on disability benefits don't work. But they still exist.
Most recent examples being "climate change is caused by 100 companies" and "housing prices are caused by BlackRock" which are both entirely fictional.
(There is an obvious rightist equivalent of this which has historically caused a lot more problems.)
https://www.ft.com/content/99680a04-92a0-11de-b63b-00144feab...