Obama wins Nobel Peace Prize

[faceless]

Unbelievable. All they would have to have done in order to not look fucking corrupt would have been to have chosen a leader who ISN'T presiding over illegal wars.

[funkyfunkpants]

Madness, only been in office 5 mins! what about the 8 years of hard work Dubya put in trying to rid the world of WMDs

[pirtybirdy]

This is friggin' nuts! I mean, I'd have no problem with it if he actually earned it, but WTF??? He's brought nobody together and we are still in two countries with loads of troops. What the hell was that committee smoking? lol!

[major.tom]

The only conclusion I can come to was that he got it for not being Dubya. Trouble is, there are several other billion people who aren't either. Do they deserve the Nobel Peace Prize?

So many other candidates far more deserving... What a waste.

Is "humbled" politician-speak for "embarrassed"? In other related news...

[luke]

theres a good bit in todays democracy now with naomi klein and tariq ali - As US Continues Afghan, Iraq Occupations and Quashes Accountability for Gaza Assault, Critics Decry Awarding of Nobel Peace Prize to Obama

[major.tom]

One might even call this event "The Hope of Audacity".

(just an idle musing)

[Colston]

[SquareEyes]

Don't they get about 1 million for winning this? What did he do peace-wise to earn this?

[faceless]

Fidel Castro hails Barack Obama's Nobel peace prize
Cuba's Fidel Castro is the latest world leader to opine on the controversial award of the Nobel peace prize to President Barack Obama.
By Philip Sherwell in New York and Leonard Doyle in Washington
10 Oct 2009
telegraph.co.uk

But the endorsement of the veteran communist revolutionary may be the last thing Mr Obama wanted, as his words will only strengthen conservative complaints that the prize was an anti-American gesture.

The former dictator, who handed power to his brother Raul last year after falling seriously ill, made clear that he believed the award was primarily a repudiation of Mr Obama's predecessors. "Many believe that he still has not earned the right to receive such a distinction," he wrote in a column published in state media. "But we would like to see, more than a prize for the US president, a criticism of the genocidal policies that have been followed by more than a few presidents of that country."

Mr Castro, 83, who has spent half a century railing at international bodies, said he had often disagreed with the choice of Norway's Nobel judges. But this time, he noted modestly, "I must admit that in this case, in my opinion, it was a positive step". In his regular "Reflections of Comrade Fidel" outpourings, Mr Castro has praised some of the young American president's policies in recent months, while criticising him for not lifting the US trade embargo on the Caribbean island.

By the time Mr Castro delivered his opinion on Saturday, plaudits and criticisms over the award had been flowing in for more than 24 hours. But Bill Clinton, the last Democratic president before Mr Obama, remained strangely silent at this stage. He and Mr Obama appeared to have been slowly warming to each other after an ugly fall-out during last year's combative primary campaign between Mr Obama and Hillary Clinton, the former president's wife.

But veteran Clinton-watchers suggested the ex-president might harbour resentment at being consistently passed over for a Nobel himself over the years. The award has never come his way, despite having worked to bring peace to Bosnia and Northern Ireland, having devoted himself to Middle East talks, and having later setting up a huge philanthropic initiative - "which some might view as a transparent effort to win a Nobel", observed Glenn Kessler in the Washington Post.

Since Mr Clinton left office in 2001, three prominent Democrats have been made the Nobel peace laureates - former president Jimmy Carter (in 2002), his former vice president Al Gore (in 2007) and now the current White House incumbent. Mr Clinton has had testy relations with all three.

Mr Carter and Mr Gore were both quick to compliment Mr Obama. But elsewhere in the US, little positive was being said and even the White House tacitly acknowledged that the prize only served to highlight the yawning gap between the President's promise and his accomplishments. "I'd like to believe that winning the Nobel Peace Prize is not a political liability," said David Axelrod his senior adviser. "Hopefully people will receive it with some sense of pride. But I don't know; it's uncharted waters."

"This is ridiculous -- embarrassing, even," wrote Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post, "I admire President Obama. I like President Obama. I voted for President Obama. But the peace prize?" American conservatives were bemused by the award, but most of the cringing was among those sympathetic to Mr Obama. "The Nobel Peace Prize award to Barack Obama seems so goofy," wrote the columnist David Ignatius, "even if you're a fan, you have to admit that he hasn't really done much yet as a peacemaker." And the generally adulatory Huffington Post commented: "Whatever one might feel about Obama, he has not earned this singular award."

In the Rose Garden on Friday, Mr Obama described himself as "surprised and deeply humbled" by the award, saying he did not deserve it but would accept it as "a call to action". And he went out of his way to remind listeners that he has still a long way to go to achieve the goals that the Nobel Committee apparently expects of him, whether it be ridding the world of nuclear weapons, fighting climate change or delivering peace to the Middle East.

Before Mr. Obama spoke, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, Michael Steele, openly mocked him. "The real question Americans are asking is, 'What has President Obama actually accomplished?'" he said. "One thing is certain - President Obama won't be receiving any awards from Americans for job creation, fiscal responsibility, or backing up rhetoric with concrete action."

Rush Limbaugh, the conservative talk-show host, was as outspoken as ever. "Can you imagine, folks, how big Obama's head is today?" he asked listeners. "I think it's getting so big that his ears actually fit." He said the award was evidence the Nobel committee simply wanted America "neutered," and an attempt "to emasculate the United States".

Others joked that the Nobel committee had lower standards than the TV comedy show Saturday Night Live, which recently poked fun at Mr Obama for his lack of accomplishments. Even Arizona State University, declined to award him an honorary degree, when he was a guest speaker - because of his inexperience.

----------------

It's an interesting twist to think that there's some kind of conspiracy involved in this award - apparently with the intention of making the USA look bad!

[Ash]

It has become a joke now. I mean just look at the people who got it over the last few years.

I'll consider it a peace prize ONLY if they give it to Noam Chomsky (, A. Roy, et al.). Then again, knowing a bit about Porf. Chomsky, he might say 'f**k all' to it. It wouldn't surprise me at all.

[luke]

Howard Zinn - War and peace prizes
The dismaying gift of the Nobel prize puts Barack Obama on the list of its winners who promised peace but prosecuted war

I was dismayed when I heard Barack Obama was given the Nobel peace prize. A shock, really, to think that a president carrying on two wars would be given a peace prize. Until I recalled that Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Henry Kissinger had all received Nobel peace prizes. The Nobel committee is famous for its superficial estimates, won over by rhetoric and by empty gestures, and ignoring blatant violations of world peace.

Yes, Wilson gets credit for the League of Nations – that ineffectual body which did nothing to prevent war. But he had bombarded the Mexican coast, sent troops to occupy Haiti and the Dominican Republic and brought the US into the slaughterhouse of Europe in the first World War, surely among stupid and deadly wars at the top of the list.

Sure, Theodore Roosevelt brokered a peace between Japan and Russia. But he was a lover of war, who participated in the US conquest of Cuba, pretending to liberate it from Spain while fastening US chains on that tiny island. And as president he presided over the bloody war to subjugate the Filipinos, even congratulating a US general who had just massacred 600 helpless villagers in the Phillipines. The Committee did not give the Nobel prize to Mark Twain, who denounced Roosevelt and criticised the war, nor to William James, leader of the anti-imperialist league.

Oh yes, the committee saw fit to give a peace prize to Henry Kissinger, because he signed the final peace agreement ending the war in Vietnam, of which he had been one of the architects. Kissinger, who obsequiously went along with Nixon's expansion of the war, with the bombing of peasant villages in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Kissinger, who matches the definition of a war criminal very accurately, is given a peace prize!

People should be given a peace prize not on the basis of promises they have made – as with Obama, an eloquent maker of promises – but on the basis of actual accomplishments towards ending war, and Obama has continued deadly, inhuman military action in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The Nobel peace committee should retire, and turn over its huge funds to some international peace organization which is not awed by stardom and rhetoric, and which has some understanding of history.

from http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/oct/09/nobel-peace-prize-war-obama