USA 0 Norway 1

The title tells the story. No more words needed.

Is there an argument for no-platforming Trump?

If the UK news organisations got together and decided to no-platform Donald Trump, we would never have to listen to his offensive nonsense. We wouldn't know that he thinks London is imposing sharia law, that he has solved a thousand wars, climate change is "the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world" and telling us "your countries are going to hell."

Obviously I can switch off the TV or go to a sports channel but I'd like my "news" not to be just a mouthpiece for a lunatic. There is real news around the world, we don't need to listen to his insulting remarks about the UN - his hosts. I'm not generally a violent man but I do sometimes just want to smack him in the face.

I'd expect my recommended action would be used by him to tell us how we are against free speech. But we wouldn't know he'd said it, so it wouldn't matter.

Obviously I'd have to no-platform him too, but where's the fun in that?

Would you like me to?

For those of you familiar with YouTube, you'll know that "shorts" are now all the rage. This is the first of of my "short blogs". There'll be another tomorrow.

Blessed are the peacemakers

If I were to ask you to estimate how many nominations there were for the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize you might, based on an assumption of seriousness, guess maybe 10-20. The actual number? 338. 

Who are they? We don't know and we won't until 2075, since the names are held secret by the Norwegian Nobel Committee - which is different from the Swedish bodies responsible for the Physics, Chemistry, Medicine, Literature and Economics prizes. Alfred Nobel was Swedish but he stipulated in his will that the Peace prize be judged by a committee of five chosen by the Norwegian Parliament. The 2025 Committee members are:

• Jørgen Watne Frydnes – Chair, a former nonprofit leader & businessman, youngest ever committee head. 
• Asle Toje – Vice Chair, a foreign policy scholar and longtime contributor to peace and geopolitics. 
• Anne Enger – Former Centre Party leader and culture minister. 
• Kristin Clemet – Former Conservative Party cabinet member. 
• Gry Larsen – Former Labour Party state secretary and political adviser.

Despite the "50 year" secrecy, Roger Boyes in the Times of 12 August reported that Donald Trump was "nominated by Pakistan, Israel and Cambodia". Now there's a bunch of happy campers. Boyes doesn't reveal how he came about this information - perhaps an email from Netanyahu?

It seems to be a media "given" that Trump is seeking (maybe even expecting) the prize this year. Indeed, there has been much recently from the White House trumpeting (no pun intended, it just came out) that he has "stopped six wars" or he's "just ending five wars" (maybe one of the original six has started up again). Only the other day the obsequious White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt (no offence Karoline, it's a requirement for the job) said that "President Trump 'deserves' the Nobel Peace Prize." She went a step further, declaring that "it's 'well past time' he be awarded the prize". 

Let's have a look at the criteria for awarding the prize. Nobel's will requires the winner to be "...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." From the point of view of Trump's claims, I'd say there's a difference between stopping a war, as in a ceasefire, and building a lasting peace. Having said that, some of the past recipients haven't scored too well on that metric. Abiy Ahmed, Prime Minister of Ethiopia, received the Prize in 2019 for "initiating a peace agreement with Eritrea, ending a decades-long “no war, no peace” standoff by agreeing to hand over the disputed border town of Badme and reopening diplomatic and travel links." In practice, nothing happened and a year later Ethiopia erupted in a brutal civil war. Aung San Suu Kyi (1991): Honored for non-violent resistance to military rule in Myanmar but later faced global condemnation for inaction—or complicity—in the Rohingya genocide. in 1973 Henry Kissinger & Lê Đức Thọ were jointly awarded the Prize for "ending the Vietnam War". Which not only didn't happen but Lê Đức Thọ, the Viet Cong leader, refused the prize, saying there was no peace.

Against these egregious examples of misguided decisions there are a few that remain widely respected (at least by the liberal intelligentsia) as being deserved and long-lasting, such as Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela alongside F.W. de Klerk, the latter showing a prediliction for "shared peacemakers" which horrifyingly might lead to Trump and Putin jointly winning for "stopping a bloody war in Ukraine". Although I'm not sure Trump is prepared to share the glory with anyone.

There are also interesting examples of organisations that have won, for instance the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (1997) and Médecins Sans Frontières in 1999. To me it seems more appropriate to honour the ongoing work of the hundreds of people in organisations that work peacefully, often in war-torn countries, than to feed the egos of politicians out for personal glory.

You can tell I'm probably not a fan of the whole circus. There are better things for the five people on the Committee to be doing with their lives for the next two months than shuffling paper in an almost certainly flawed exercise. But - hope for the best, plan for the worst!

By now the original 338 will have been whittled down to a dozen or so and extensive expert research will have been initiated. The winner is announced the second Friday of October—for 2025, that’ll be 10th October. The award ceremony is on 10th December.

Shut up or suck up

How to deal with the 47th President of the United States? It's a problem national leaders have grappled with for six months now. It's gone from fawning (Starmer, Alexander Stubb) through mature assertion (Macron, Carney) to bemusement (Ramaphosa, "death, death, death") and belligerence (Zelensky, "you're gambling with World War III...it's going to be great television"). It doesn't appear to make any difference. Starmer's cringeworthy production of a letter from the King out of his pocket like a magician got us a tariff reduction to 10%. Here's how the others did:

Finland: 10% (no letter, no king)

France: 10% (no letter, definitely no king)

Canada: 25% (no letter, same king, no state visit)

South Africa: 35% (poor Cyril)

Ukraine: 10% (no letter, no punishment)

Today we saw the übermensch of cringe, Nato Secretary-General Mark Rutte laying down the red carpet and prostrating (castrating?) himself on it in front of President God with this extraordinarily obsequious message:

Mr President, dear Donald,

Congratulations and thank you for your decisive action in Iran, that was truly extraordinary, and something no-one else dared to do. It makes us all safer.

You are flying into another big success in The Hague this evening. It was not easy but we've got them all signed onto 5 percent!

Donald, you have driven us to a really, really important moment for America and Europe, and the world. You will achieve something NO American president in decades could get done.

Europe is going to pay in a BIG way, as they should, and it will be your win.

Safe travels and see you at His Majesty's dinner!

- Mark Rutte

Ugh. Pass me the sick bucket. He gets paid €317,000 a year tax free for this bag of wind.