Oddly, not everyone is happy with the choice from the five members of ‘den norske Nobelkomité’ for the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize. As you must already know, it went to the Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado "for her tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy".
She’s the current thorn in Nicolas Maduro’s hide. She’s popular, supported by many foreign powers as the energy behind Venezuela’s slightly ridiculous candidate for president, the doddery Edmundo González (now living in some considerable comfort in Madrid), and she lives in fear of being arrested by Maduro’s thugs.
The Magats and their leader Donald Trump are of course furious that the prize wasn’t awarded to humankind’s finest example – after all, he has resolved a dozen wars already.
On Friday, following the announcement, the White House blasted the Nobel Committee for not awarding the Peace Prize to Trump (says the BBC), noting that ‘…Trump has been outspoken about his desire for the award, taking credit for ending several global conflicts. He regularly brought it up, including during his address to the UN General Assembly in September’.
I think many of us would have blown a fuse if Donald Trump had of been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize (even if it might balance the choice of Barack Obama back in 2009).
Even odder than Trump’s rage at being thus slighted, we also heard from Politico that ‘Donald Trump deserved the Nobel prize, says Vladimir Putin.' (Yikes!). '...The Russian president insisted that the Nobel committee has lost credibility’.
Thanks for that mate, says Donald: ‘The US President expressed his gratitude to Putin for his recent public support for his Nobel Peace Prize bid’.
That’s right, you couldn’t make it up.
María Corina Machado may be a popular choice, but she is also something of a handful. A Vox video on YouTube has her speaking – via video-link – to a recent meeting of the Patriots for Europe in Madrid:
"Dear presidents, dear Santiago Abascal, leader of Vox and organizer of Europa Viva, dear friends of freedom. From Venezuela I want to send my warmest greetings to each one of you, our great friends from Vox and Patriots for Europe…”
Personally, I’ll take vanilla.
Some other candidates who lost out to María include Francesca Albanese, plus Elon Musk, Donald Trump and some other luminaries who haven’t made it onto my radar.
Two candidates missing from the official list were the magnificent Greta Thunberg and Spain’s Pedro Sánchez. Either one would have been a better choice.