A Not So Peaceful Nobel Peace Prize

The Nobel Peace Price is given to "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," so why does Venezuela's Maria Corina Machado's praise of U.S. President Donald Trump seem like something is misaligned. Hear Machado's interview with NPR's Up First https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/nobel-laureate-maria-corina-machado-on-regime-change/id1222114325?i=1000731361152

Music by Mound City by Coleman Hawkins (recorded 1929)

Transcript

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That this was the law, the law had spoken, and the people deserve to have their vote and their opinion recognized. I'm the lovely Way, and I'm delighted to spend a little time with you today. I was born and raised in the US, but over the past few years, I've been fortunate enough to spend some time chatting online with people from all over the world. Thanks to a little website called Cambly. I don't have any strong opinions about the Cambly English Learning Platform. But my conversations with folks from other countries have left me with a lot to think about. So, in this podcast, I thought I'd share a little with you and maybe we can keep the conversation going. This podcast is about skipping down and having long conversations. So, if you're looking for someone to dress things up, well, as the old saying goes, you can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig. I save my lipstick for the stage, dearest, and dressing up for the bedroom. I do not dress up my conversations with friends. So I'd love to have a chat. Hello, lovelies. Oh, how I've missed you. I've been longing to chat, and I'm delighted we get to chat today. So let's get into it, shall we? I believe it was October 10th, 2025, when Venezuela's Maria Corina Machado was announced as the Nobel Peace Prize winner. Hooray and Haza. Now, I actually had not heard of Miss Machado's career and her lifelong dedication to uh liberating Venezuela. Up until a few days ago. And I decided to go ahead and take a moment to listen to an interview where she was being congratulated on her whim and being asked about her position on the United States president, President Trump, and his decision to have the U.S. Navy attack Venezuelan boats, stating that these boats must be carrying drugs. Without any investigation, without any due process, without stopping the boats and boarding these boats and confirming whether or not these boats were actually carrying drugs. Just we're gonna bomb these boats, we're just gonna blow them up. And Miss Machado proceeded time and time again, despite the interviewers' efforts to ask the same question in multiple ways, Maria repeated that she was grateful for President Trump's help, and she stated that Venezuela had a history of um exporting lots of drugs, and any help that she could get from the U.S. is greatly appreciated. She also stated that when it comes to fighting wrongdoing, there has to be a period of struggle. And I was beyond pissed off because I found myself going, wait a minute, this woman who has won the Nobel Peace Prize, this woman who was currently being um lauded as someone who is a symbol of peace and prosperity and hope, she's over here saying that when it comes to her own people, they don't deserve to have the benefit of the doubt and to have the law work for them. Now, mind you, she did say that the uh presidential election in which the current leader of Zuela was ousted, um, that this was the law, the law had spoken, and the people deserved to have their vote and their opinion recognized. So I don't get it, darlings. I just don't. Because how can we have one? The laws should be supportive of the people of Venezuela because the Venezuelan people have voted for new leadership, therefore, these laws should be abided by. And yet, the same hand, she's also saying, well, it's okay that the U.S. isn't following law and actually checking and confirming that the boats that they are bombing were actually carrying drugs. I am confused. Additionally, we have the history in the U.S. where Donald J. Trump refused to accept the voter opinion in the 2020 election and was found guilty of inciting an insurrection. Yes. That would be the people of the United States cast a vote, and leadership did not agree with that vote, and leadership encouraged discourse and disruption, and did nothing to stop the violent rhetoric that followed. Maria, I have a very hard time believing that you are for peace when you seem to waver in how you think the law should be applied, when you think the law should be applied. Laws were created for a reason. Should be pretty black and white. But I digress. I found myself listening to another news podcast in which someone was being interviewed and they were applauding Donald D. Trump, seeing that he was a miracle worker because he had brought peace to the Middle East. Now, I'm struggling once again, darlings, because you see, I'm thinking Trump is talking about bringing peace to the Middle East, and you know, uh Israel needs to do what I say, Hamas needs to do what I say, and yet at the same time, he is bringing violence to major cities in New York. Having federal troops, federal agencies go into various American cities and um enforce law, I guess is what he would want to say they are doing. However, the mayors of these cities are saying, hey, we don't need your people here. Governors are saying, we don't need your people here. Our crime has gone down. People are voicing their opinions thanks to free speech, but it is not violent or disruptive. Please remove the National Guard. We move your people. Mind you, this is someone who's supposedly a broker of peace. Interesting. And on multiple occasions, my friends, Hamas and Israel have agreed to a ceasefire, and they've also broken this agreement on multiple occasions. Apparently, Biden also brokered a ceasefire deal, which lasted for X number of weeks or days, and the deal was broken. So, how long will this peace still last? I have no way of knowing. I also want peace in the Middle East. And actually, it was a young woman that I was speaking to. I am trying to remember if she was in Saudi Arabia or Turkey. I think she was actually Turkey. And I said, Hey, we need a period without war. There has been war going on at least since the 50s. And she said to me, But there has always been war. And I said, No. And she said, Yes, there has always been war. And I thought to myself, truly, a young woman can't be right. And after I called, I went online, and I just started searching for wars in the Middle East area. So while the fight between Israel and Hamas has not always occurred, the history of disruption and war and violence in the geographical region in which Israel, Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Jordan, in which all of these countries lie, even Egypt. There has been war for centuries. And that, darlings, is both frightening but that's rule. And I found myself going, wait a minute. How can this be? How is this possible? But when you think about it, even going back to the Ottoman Empire and the Byzantine Empire, and then we go back to the Romans and the Greeks. We just keep going back in time. And the names change. But there has always been war. And we look up north to Europe. Where sadly, currently, Russia and Ukraine are still at war. And wasn't it Trump who said the war between Russia and Ukraine would be done in a matter of days? Month. And he was president. That war is still going, and he has been president of the United States for several months now. There's really no end in sight. And so while my heart is saddened by the fact that this war, which seems so unjust, has been waging for quite some time. There is the question of how long has Europe been without war? How many years, how many decades? How long are these treasures where there's been no war? You see, I grew up in a time when all the talk, all the rage was about the wars of the past. War is in the past. World War One, World War II, Vietnam War, Korean War, all these things, these were the past. These things were in the past. Civil rights movement, basically, a war fought within the United States. These things are in the past. I remember the presidency of George W. Bush. And I remember the frustration of the American people saying, what's going on here? And I remember 9-11. And I remember how quick the American people were ready and willing to enlist, sign up, serve, do whatever they had to do in order to fight and defend. Because how dare they attack us? So complicated, really, because sadly, the US government has backed attacking other governments, other civilians for a very long time. I don't know, darling. I mean I'd love to say that the solution is to not get involved. I did. Or it was a gentleman who that was his answer. Hey, instead of going overseas and trying to fix everyone else's problems, let's fix our problems at home. And to some extent, I agree. I think we do need to fix our problems at home. In a wealthy country such as the United States, there should not be any child who goes to bed hungry. There should not be poverty, period. No one should be homeless. And please, darling, don't start talking to me about, well, it's capitalism's fault. That's a rather reductive view of things. Because it's not all about capitalism. And so here we are. I mean could you really go to bed at night and turn a blind eye to dangers happen outside your door if you knew that one of the people in danger was a family member of yours. Or loved one of yours. Or loved one of someone you love. It's easy to turn away when we think that it's happened over there, it's happened to someone else, it's not happening here, it's not happening to me. And yet I am reminded of night by Eli Myself. And in the game. I am paraphrasing, darlings. But it's always someone else first. Thank you for the chat. I offer up no solutions, but I do want to excite you and invite you to think a little deeper, dig a little deeper, and maybe talk amongst your own circles. Really think about what does it mean to be a Nobel Priest Prize winner? What does it mean to be a symbol of hope and peace? Where we draw the line in terms of who needs to follow the law and who can make their own laws. Where we draw the line. And what does it mean to live without war? Is it possible? All right, darling. Well, I must confess I am exhausted, but I'll keep thinking on these things, and I hope you do too. Until next time, it's been lovely to chat.