A WELCOME RETURN

  

IT WAS A BLAST from the past, a reminder of what integrity means, and a poking in complacency’s eye when Julian Assange (remember him?) last week filed a criminal complaint in Sweden against thirty members of the Nobel Foundation for breeching the terms of that organization’s mandate when it awarded this year’s Nobel Peace Prize (NPP) to the decidedly unpeaceful Venezuelan dragon-lady, María Corina Machado. Recall the bruhaha a few months ago when the American president, Donald Trump, was nominated for the Nobel by mass-murderer and ICC-warranted* Israeli PM, Benjiman Netanyahu, with many observers concluding both leaders deserve to be in the dock awaiting trial at The Hague for war crimes instead of receiving the Nobel Prize in Oslo’s City Hall (Rådhuset) replete with its vibrant murals, frescoes and sculptures. Muchado's entirely undeserved win is an obvious attempt by the Committee to curry favour with the Americans and soothe President Trump's bruised ego for being only an 'also ran' in 2025's Nobel Prize race.

As Max Blumenthal and Wyatt Reed lay out in a recent Grayzone article about Assange’s legal brief against the Nobel Foundation, the former Wikileaks publisher argues that the 2025 winner of the once-august peace prize should be deemed ineligible to receive the NPP and its $1.18 million (USD) endowment. According to the statutes governing the awarding of the prize, the winner must 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.”

 

The Venezuelan opposition leader is a long-time advocate for regime change in her country, calling upon the United States to unseat President Nicholas Maduro by any means necessary. She approves of President Trump’s armada, currently interdicting “sanctioned” oil tankers as they enter or leave Venezuelan ports and blowing up suspected narco-trafficking boats, murdering nearly one hundred persons in both Caribbean and Pacific coastal waters in complete violation of international law. She has petitioned the American president to invade her country and forcibly remove Maduro, who, it needs remembering, is the democratically elected head of state in his third term in office. She shills states as president she would be far friendlier to the United States, allowing American mining and oil interests back into Venezuela and making her country's natural resources available to American corporations at bargain basement prices. Machado, by any standard you can shake a stick at, is ineligible for the Nobel Peace Prize.¹ She does not promote peace but, instead, calls for war against her own country. “Using her elevated position as the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, Machado may well have” already tipped the balance in favor of war,” Assange concluded.

 

Assange’s legal brief also argues she should not receive the million-dollar endowment that comes inside every box of Nobel cheese doodles.² Assange argues that Machado will use the money to promote a violent overthrow of the Venezuelan government, contravening the NPP guidelines set out by Alfred Nobel at the end of the nineteenth century.

 

“‘Alfred Nobel’s endowment for peace cannot be spent on the promotion of war,’ Assange noted. ‘Nor can it be used as a tool in foreign military intervention. Venezuela, whatever the status of its political system, is no exception. By disbursing the funds’, Assange argues, ‘the Nobel Committee in effect is financing a conspiracy to murder civilians, to violate national sovereignty using military force…[and] flagrantly violating Nobel’s will, clearly crossing the threshold into criminality.’” (Grayzone, “Julian Assange: Sweden Broke Own Laws”)

 

WE WILL WATCH with interest Julian Assange’s attempt to hold the Nobel Committee’s feet to the fire and what may come from his principled stance as he negotiates, once more, the slippery lawcourts of Sweden.

  

CHEERS, JAKE. _____________________________________

 

* ​“The International Criminal Court (ICC) investigates and, where warranted, tries individuals charged with the gravest crimes of concern to the international community: genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and the crime of aggression.” (ICC)

 

1. Of course, my bid for the next Nobel Peace Prize goes to Francesca Albanese, the tireless United Nations Special Rapporteur for Palestine and her work during her first three-year mandate and now, in her second term, continuing support for Palestinian rights in apartheid Israel as that rogue nation turns to genocide and ethnic cleansing to rid Palestine of Palestinians. Albanese should have been this year’s Nobel laureate save for the disgraceful ascension of Machado by the Nobel Committee which seems to have caved to U.S. pressure after denying Trump his ungodly Nobel Prize bid. (How can you consider Donald Trump peace prize material when his administration funds and actively supports the genocide in Gaza?) It seems the committee caved and chose Machado as a sop to cool the disappointed American president’s heated brow, adding a veneer of ‘Nobel legitimacy’ to Muchado's bid to topple Maduro’s presidency. Don’t forget, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio nominated her. It’s a Juan Guaidó 2.0 scene, except now the latest sock puppet wannabe comes with aircraft carriers and missiles.

 

2. My way of saying how compromised, politicized, and susceptible to outside influence the Nobel Peace Prize has become. Machado’s ascension into the ranks of Nobel laureates has cheapened and further eroded the relevancy of the one-hundred-and twenty-four-year-old prize. Time will tell if its reputation can be salvaged.

 

 

                                                                                           "Fuck yah!!"