ArcaMax

VANCOUVER, British Columbia — Donald Trump hasn’t done enough to warrant being awarded this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, announced last week. But he was a heck of a lot more deserving than the person who actually won it.

To be fair, the average person watching Netflix on their couch at home would have been more deserving, if only because they hadn’t actively taken money from foreign interests while begging them to violently regime- change their own country, like this year’s so-called “peace activist” winner.

In the hours before the award was announced, some figured that Trump was a shoe-in for having secured a ceasefire stopping Israel from mass bombing and effectively starving Gaza under the pretext of rooting out a handful of Hamas fighters. Much was made of the anticipated release of Israeli hostages held as collateral. But unless the deal holds, it risks going down in history as little more than a PR stunt.

This all comes after Nobel Peace laureate wannabe Trump had “showbombed” Iran earlier this year for Israel while continuing to sell weapons to Israel amid ubiquitous international outcries of genocide. His administration has also just proposed another $6 billion worth in September, according to the Associated Press.

Trump has crowed about all his anti-war efforts, but his attempt to mediate an end to the U.S.-led, NATO-backed war against Russia — using Ukraine, a dependent proxy, as cannon fodder — has been unsuccessful. His most recent remarks suggest that he’s more interested in maintaining American weapons sales to European countries if they want to keep the party going — as long as U.S. troops can otherwise stay safely out of it.

Meanwhile, Trump has also been overseeing his administration’s bombing of so-called drug boats, that look suspiciously like fishing boats, off the coast of Venezuela, while parking a load of American military hardware in the area. The war on drugs is back to serve as a pretext for harassing South American leaders of resource-rich nations who refuse to kiss the ring. Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro being chief among them, with a newly doubled $25 million State Department bounty for his capture.

So no, not qualified for a peace award. Try again. Maybe next year. But at least he’s making an effort. Or talking about making one. Clearly the bar is pretty low, because it’s a lot more than this year’s actual winner has accomplished in pushing for the opposite of peace.

The Nobel Committee praised Maria 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.”

Some of us clearly don’t live in the same reality as the Nobel gatekeepers. Machado has written directly to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (currently facing international war crimes charges) pleading for help with “the promotion of a process of regime change” at the United Nations. Nothing says “democracy” like asking foreigners to overthrow your own country to the effective advantage of your political career as an “opposition leader.”

In August 2020, she even publicly broke from another US-backed opposition puppet, Juan Guaido— dubbed the Venezuelan “interim president” by the West until openly ditching him in 2023 — because Guaido wasn’t keen enough on foreign-backed regime change for her liking.

Numerous efforts by military freelancers with known business ties to the U.S. and Israel have subsequently popped up with pro-Machado propaganda and failed regime change operations — none of which have been denounced by this so-called proponent of grassroots democracy.

“She embodies the hope of a different future. … In this future, people will finally be free to live in peace,” the Committee concluded of Machado. They mention her victimization by Maduro, but conveniently leave out the part that it’s because she’s considered a foreign agent. Machado has been the beneficiary of State Department and National Endowment for Democracy funding through Sumate — the think tank that she founded — at least as far back as 2014, according to the Associated Press.

Machado has routinely denounced Venezuelan election results so much that you’d think she was American. But for someone who has been involved in election observation, she has failed to provide sufficient evidence to convince skeptics beyond those already keen to exploit any election event to promote regime change.

The Nobel Committee refers to her “civilian courage” and the risk of “harassment, arrest and torture,” but Maduro’s government has left her to run around free, releasing her from arrest in the wake of unrest.

But regardless of this contrasting reality, the Western establishment has now greased the skids for this newly minted Nobel Peace Prize winner's eventual installation in Caracas, after a bit of violence to eject the current occupant. Only then will the Nobel vision of peace and hope prevail for Venezuelans — since the country’s wealth will finally be in the hands of her biggest foreign benefactors.