Just being the president of the US automatically qualifies a person to be the winner of the nobel prize for peace. Or peace by war, I would say. With no offense meant towards the man, the president of the US, I would like to say that the declaration has been quite premature. Of course its not required to wait till the demise of any person, to award him/her the prize.

It’s a case of glorifications presiding achivements. No strong measures have yet been taken to bring about peace in this world. Millions of innocent lives are taken every year, in the name of war against terrorism. And the terrorist harbouring countries are being offered military aid, in the name of counter-terrorism measures.

I wouldn’t claim that this man won’t try to carry out the tasks at hand.Just that a more gentle person would have refused to accept the award, before proving himself to the world.

Barack Obama Peace Laureate 2009

Posted by Fenrir on Politics of Sanity

A Nobel prize is, presumably, awarded for accomplishment. It is not awarded for intentions, aspirations, or fine sentiments. I have yet to hear of a Nobel Prize in Physics being awarded to a physicist for intending to discover a universally accepted unified field theory, or of a Nobel Prize in Literature being awarded to somebody for aspiring to write a brilliant novel. I think most people would agree that a prize awarded purely on the basis of intentions or aspirations is absurd. Anyone can have fine sentiments; what’s truly admirable is having the courage to act on those sentiments, and the knowledge and skills to make them a reality.

But in awarding President Obama the Nobel Prize for Peace, the Nobel Committee has behaved no less absurdly than if they were to award me the Nobel Prize for Medicine because I gave a stirring speech about how wonderful it would be to find a cure for cancer. No speech, however well-chosen the words and however charismatic the delivery, is going to provide a cure for cancer. Likewise, while Obama may have promised a new era of “hope” and “change”, it is not at all clear nine months into his presidency that he has been able (or even willing) to deliver on any of his promises. And given that he was nominated as a potential recipient a mere two weeks into his office (nominations were due on February 1st) makes the award all the more preposterous.

Even a child is able to tell the difference between saying you are going to do something and actually doing it. But it seems the Nobel Committee, and much of the international community, have totally taken leave of their senses and forgotten this basic distinction.

This may seem like a minor issue, with all that’s going on in the world. But I think it’s symptomatic of a larger problem endemic within society — a problem where we regularly mistake words for deeds, symbols for actions, and abstractions for reality. Something to consider as the Nobel laureate for Peace plans to continue his war.

I respect and admire Obama but him getting a Nobel price at this time is quit premature, although I suspect the Nobel committee aim is to add pressure on the American president to avoid being trigger happy when dealing with international conflicts’ such the Iran one…… ama?

Although there has been considerable argument about why Barack Obama does not deserve recognition for things he may accomplish in the future, few have taken the time to address the actual issue of the prize itself. The problem with the Nobel prize for Peace is that unlike achievements in science and literature which are static and permanent contributions to humanity, the concept of “peace” is a fluid and ever-changing dynamic.

The very aims of peace come with a kind of Utopian standard of perfection that is impossible to preserve. The result of such wishful thinking that a Nobel prize carries with it a kind of transformative power on the world is akin to the same illusory attempts to forever control the markets against periodic recessions. What is known about the history of the world can only be summed up in the observation that no peace is lasting, and that all things that rise must eventually fall.

The concept of peace, then, is permanently transient. The wars that ravaged Europe during the past two thousand years has given way to a lull, while the peace that existed in other parts of the world has given way to what seems like endless conflict. Bringing an end to the Israeli-Palestinian impasse has been an ambition of every American leader since the forties. And even if it were possible to reconcile that situation through negotiations and compromise, there are new destabilizing conflicts bubbling to the surface all over the world.

Part of the problem with awarding the Nobel prize for Peace to a world leader like the American President is that the designation is largely paradoxical. The unspoken counterbalance to President Obama’s peaceful overtures to Iran is the threat of American invasion and aerial bombardment. The means to achieve a peaceful and democratic Afghan state is in the continued presence of the largest multilateral military contingent in the world. And while the noble criteria for the Nobel was based upon Nuclear disarmament, such ambitions were highly touted during the Ronald Reagan-Mikhail Gorbachev detente period, for which only the Russians won commendation for their efforts.

Perhaps the greatest contrast between the former President and the current one is that George W Bush was seen as a “war maker” and not a sower of peace. But if the aims of peace are based upon the containment of those forces which seek to irreparably harm the tenuous balance upon which peace sits, then the warmongering President also can lay claim to that ambition. However spectacularly misguided the invasion of Iraq was, it could be argued that George Bush saw the regime as a destabilizing component of the Middle East, and a threat to peace in the region. As it turns out, that threat was actually a border and a caliphate away, but in 2003 there was a good deal of people who believed the decision was the necessary one.

Similarly in Afghanistan, the Taliban’s unwillingness to hand over the al-Qaeda leadership led to what was seen as a necessary escalation to intervention in the country. The geopolitical framework of what constitutes peace in the Middle East is a fragile and difficult tip-toe on eggshells, as we saw with the nearly devastating insurgency in Pakistan as the Taliban spread to the Swat Valley from Afghanistan across the nebulous Pashtun tribal lands.

Even the United Nations is widely regarded as a sham organization of peaceful accord, in which the interests of despotic dictatorships are weighed in egalitarian concern with democracies centuries ahead in the rule of law and liberal enlightenment. As the international body becomes more irrelevant in apparition, alliances have become the true arbiters of holding the peace, such as NATO’s mission in Afghanistan, a pragmatic intervention based upon the idealistic goals of internationalism that the United Nations has been unable to cultivate.

The concept that a leader of a single country can accomplish a permanent peace through ambitions that are certain to be met with fierce resistance, is probably more reflective of how our species has placed faith in “hope”, rather than the actualization of such goals.

Mr Obama said he was humbled by being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. If he was being genuinely humble about it he would have taken the view that he did not deserve the Nobel Peace Prize and would have refused to accept it. That would have been the honourable way to act.

After all, he has been in office only since late January of this year and although he may have done that indefinable thing of setting a better tone for peace after the rather bellicose George Bush Junior, he has not, as far as I am aware ended any wars or prevented any wars or done anything concrete for which he deserved the honour.

It may be that by the time he leaves office Mr Obama might well merit, genuinely, the Peace Prize, but in my judgement he does not deserve it now. His acceptance makes me wonder about his own judgement.

Presumably Mr Obama must have felt (and/or been advised) that he did deserve the Nobel Peace Prize. Mr Obama could not or did not want to see that he did not deserve the prize. Does he really hold the view that he has, after the time in office equivalent to the gestation period of a human from conception to birth he has made the world more peaceful? If he holds that view he lives in a different world from me, presumably in that strange world inhabited by the Nobel Peace Prize Committee, who awarded the Prize to President Obama,

The rest of us will simply have to struggle in the real world. It is a world where wars are still fought and blood is still being shed; a world where it takes a week to start a prison in Guantanamo for people uncharged with any offence but several years to dismantle that prison, a world where humans from different nations struggle for dominium over their neighbours’ lands and resources and a world where ignorant armies clash by night, to the same extent as the day upon which Mr Obama took his oath of office.

I guess like most of the world, I was exceedingly surprised to hear when I turned on the news this morning that President Obama had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.  Even Obama himself seems to have been surprised.

I can’t say I’m displeased so much as baffled by the award.

Much as I still admire – and have hopes for – what Obama is trying to accomplish, I can’t help but think that getting the prize in another year or two would have been more helpful to him in pushing forward his agenda.

Whatever else, it does remind me to remember how very much I hope he can accomplish.  It was never going to be easy, but I didn’t expect it to be this hard.

I have to remember not to get discouraged to the point of giving up.

ELIE WIESEL

Elie Wiesel, the Holocaust survivor and author, made some of the more salient points I’ve heard today about the awarding of the Nobel Prize for Peace to President Barack Obama. Wiesel was interviewed by Steve Inskeep on National Public Radio. The core of the interview, from the NPR web page, was as follows:

Mr. WIESEL: I’ll tell you. First of all, it’s strange for me to think of him now as my fellow Nobel laureate. … After all, he’s the president of the United States. But at the same time, seriously, he made history by allowing the American people to correct its own old racial injustices. After all, he’s the first black person to have been elected to that high office, and in doing so he did bring hope and dignity to the fact, to the very position. And therefore I think he gave something to the Nobel Prize.

INSKEEP: He added to the Nobel Prize rather than the other way around.

Mr. WIESEL: It goes both ways. But in this case, really, for the president of the United States, a sitting president, who is nine months in office, it’s true that he tries and tries – I’m sure he tries in many areas to do the right thing, and he will succeed, but in this case the prize will add or increase his moral authority.

INSKEEP: Moral authority. Well, let’s talk about that. Because this is a president who has begun many efforts around the world and the Nobel committee cited them, from reducing the threat of nuclear weapons to reducing nuclear arms stockpiles, efforts to bring peace in different parts of the world. But it’s been widely noted this morning that although many efforts have begun, none have really been concluded. Do you think it will make a big difference in those efforts that the peace prize goes to the president?

Mr. WIESEL: First of all, I think he is being recognized for his efforts and his beginnings, as you say. But I am a person who loves beginnings, I love beginnings. The mystery of beginnings is part of Jewish mysticism. And in this case, in politics, of course, because it’s also – it’s also politics – it is a good thing, it’s a promise. The Nobel committee says that he represents a promise and I’m sure that he will try to fulfill it.

INSKEEP: And they do say that they want to encourage him on his way. Is that normal for the Nobel Prize to be used to encourage rather than just reward people?

Mr. WIESEL: Not really. But the Nobel Prize committee has its own rules, and they may decide anything they want. They may decide that encouragement is part of the experiment.

US President Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for giving the world “hope for a better future” and striving for nuclear disarmament. The decision to award one of the world’s top accolades to a president less than nine months into his first term, who has yet to score a major foreign policy success, came as a major surprise.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee praised Obama for “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.” The first African-American to hold his country’s highest office, Obama has called for disarmament and worked to restart the stalled Middle East peace process since taking office in January 2009.

Obama himself put the award in perspective while admitting he was both surprised and humbled by it. He said he did not feel he deserved to be in the company of so many great transformative figures of peace . “I do not view it as recognition of my own accomplishment, rather as an affirmation of American leadership of all nations,” Obama said in a brief media appearance at the White House Rose Garden, seeking to deflect some of the criticism for what many across the world feel is an award he is yet to earn and has come too early. I

t reminds us that Obama’s idol Mahatma Gandhi who was most deserved candidate for this prize ,was denied  by the then imperialist Nobel committee. Gandhi was nominated in 1937, 1938, 1939, 1947 and finally a few days before his assassination in January 1948. The omission has been publicly regretted by later members of the Nobel Committee, though the committee never came out with the reasons for not awarding the prize to the most deserving candidate of the century. So the criticism /reactions for awarding the peace prize  of 2009 to Barack Obama, who has not done anything towards peace except dreaming ,are well justified. It is like awarding a Olympic medal before stepping into the track.

Homeless

I found myself homeless as a teenager, an experience I will never forget. I type ‘found myself’ – a horrible, passive, uninstructive phrase. What I mean is that as a kid I was no saint, and my dad finally turfed me out on my ear.

Looking back, as a home-owning, middle class, average earning wage slave – I wonder how I got here. The answer – 25% choice and 75% luck. If the wrong place, choice and time, put me on the street, the opposite got me out again.

I read with horror on the Scotsman website that homelessness is still such a huge problem. Over a decade of a Labour government and the affordable housing agenda has still not been delivered. At least the survey, about which this article refers, suggests that most people have similar concerns.

The Scotsman

“In the name of the hungry, of the naked, of the crippled, of the homeless, of the blind, in their name, I accept the award.” Mother Teresa of Calcutta Albanian born Indian Missionary and Founder of the Order of the Missionaries of Charity. Nobel Prize for Peace in 1979. (1910-1997)

After a heavy breakfast, the shit-eating scribbler of St. Petersburg (otherwise as known as Pyetr Turgidovsky) makes way his to work through nineteen boggy fields and one shallow but increasingly putrid swamp, riding a unicycle with a punctured tyre. His workplace consists of an abandoned barn, shared with thousand rats or so: ‘the perfect conditions,’ writes the Russian, ‘in which to create a masterpiece’.

He writes in forty-seven minute bursts. If he goes overtime he punishes himself by ringing his mother, who is guaranteed to remind him of everything that could possibly go wrong with an old woman’s gall bladder. If she isn’t in, he rings the talking clock, which has much the same effect.

Between periods of writing, he often washes his beard in orange juice. On other occasions he throws a needle into a nearby haystack and sees if he can find it. Once he snorted a line of pigeon droppings and had a hallucination about winning the Nobel Prize for Peace (‘the most frightening experience of that week’ he later called it).

For lunch Turgidovsky eats peaches, plums and, on Thursdays, pears. He also eats cheese, which he simply can’t abide.

After lunch, he returns to his desk and starts writing again.

The Norwegian Nobel committee on friday announced its nobel prize for peace to the former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari.He has dedicated himself for the decades to peace efforts and took responsibility to make peace in Asia, Africa and Europe.

It has been said by the Nobel committee that out of 197 nominee for the annual nobel peace prize award, the committee has chosen Mr.Martti Ahtisaari, the former finnish President for his efforts to resolve the international conflicts in other continents for over 3 decades.The people who are not touch with him might say that he is a quiet undemonstrative person, but thats not the fact.Mr.Ahtisaari is a charming and humourous person and takes everything in simple way,sai Grath Evans.

Mr.Ahtisaari has committed himself in setting peace in African continents.His major achievement was to bring down the South African domination on Namibia.This was the closest to his heart.His efforts to bring peace in Indonesian province of Aceh,Kosava,Northern Ireland and recently in Iraq were all a considerable ones.Mr.Ahtisaari has been frequently seen as the contender of the nobel prize, but now he got his turn.After winning the award Mr,Ahtisaari said that he want to keep away from social issues for a while and he want to spent some time with his family.He also said that since his involvement in social life he will not be at home for 200 days in a year and now he wants to spend the remaining days of his life with his family.

Today Ahtisaari is an outstanding international mediator. Through his untiring efforts and good results, he has shown what role mediation of various kinds can play in the resolution of international conflicts.Mr. Mjoes said Mr. Ahtisaari’s record was “rather fantastic.” “He never gives up even when there are setbacks,” he said, adding that he hoped Mr. Ahtisaari’s example would spur similar mediation in Afghanistan and Sri Lanka.

Blood is not the solution for Conflicts! only the peace efforts can resolve the issues

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The Norwegian Nobel committee on friday announced its nobel prize for peace to the former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari.He has dedicated himself for the decades to peace efforts and took responsibility to make peace in Asia, Africa and Europe.

It has been said by the Nobel committee that out of 197 nominee for the annual nobel peace prize award, the committee has chosen Mr.Martti Ahtisaari, the former finnish President for his efforts to resolve the international conflicts in other continents for over 3 decades.The people who are not touch with him might say that he is a quiet undemonstrative person, but thats not the fact.Mr.Ahtisaari is a charming and humourous person and takes everything in simple way,sai Grath Evans.

Mr.Ahtisaari has committed himself in setting peace in African continents.His major achievement was to bring down the South African domination on Namibia.This was the closest to his heart.His efforts to bring peace in Indonesian province of Aceh,Kosava,Northern Ireland and recently in Iraq were all a considerable ones.Mr.Ahtisaari has been frequently seen as the contender of the nobel prize, but now he got his turn.After winning the award Mr,Ahtisaari said that he want to keep away from social issues for a while and he want to spent some time with his family.He also said that since his involvement in social life he will not be at home for 200 days in a year and now he wants to spend the remaining days of his life with his family.

Today Ahtisaari is an outstanding international mediator. Through his untiring efforts and good results, he has shown what role mediation of various kinds can play in the resolution of international conflicts.Mr. Mjoes said Mr. Ahtisaari’s record was “rather fantastic.” “He never gives up even when there are setbacks,” he said, adding that he hoped Mr. Ahtisaari’s example would spur similar mediation in Afghanistan and Sri Lanka.

Blood is not the solution for Conflicts! only the peace efforts can resolve the issues.