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With Obama winning the Noble Peace Prize perhaps he can patch things up with Rev Wright
Congratulations President Barack Obama just won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize for his “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples” the Norwegian Nobel Committee said..If that’s the case, I hope he pulls out of Afghanistan, helps Free Palestine, ends the blockade w/ Cuba and puts an end to AFROCOM…That will give this prize richer meaning… It’ll move him in the direction of Martin Luther King who won this award 45 years ago. I have my reservations and disappointments with Obama and him waffling on key issues, many have said it was due to politics and the pressure put on him by organized powerful forces, while many of us on the left have kind of left it up to him to do right by us. Perhaps this Noble Prize will give him the political cover to do the right thing and buffer him from war hawk critics.
It’s either that or Obama who is now the ‘Peace president’ will have to look us in the eye and tell us that ‘War is the answer’ which will then underscore the devaluing of this award which the right is already spinning… In anycase the President winning the Noble Prize will put the fact that ‘he didn’t win’ the Olympics for Chicago..It will also ironically give him political cover when he doesn’t respond angrily or aggressively to right wing nuts who seem to be all up in his grill all the the time..
-Davey D-
Well deserved: President Obama won Nobel Peace Prize
http://carlosqc.blogspot.com/2009/10/well-deserved-president-obama-is-2009.html
by Carlos in DC
President Barack Obama deserves well the Nobel Peace Prize.
This award is not about what he has accomplished –or not- within the U.S. during his first eight months in office, but what his election as the first Black president of the United States has meant for this country and the entire world.
As the first African descendant leader of the most powerful and richest nation in human history, a country built for centuries with the work of African and Native American slaves, Barack Obama has broken many barriers with his election and directly promoted equality, respect for diversity, social justice, and change all around the planet.
This is a well deserved prize, and it represents also the hope of hundreds of millions of oppressed people in the world struggling against racism, including the over 180 million Afro descendants in the Americas, with leaders like Piedad Cordova, the Afro Colombian Senator who was also a favorite and front runner for this award.
This prize is also well timed as president Obama is close to decide on the fate of the U.S. presence in Afghanistan and Iraq, where the current conflicts are getting more complicated and a military solution seems less probable in both cases.
Obama wins Nobel Peace Prize
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/europe/2009/10/200910984730747202.html
The Nobel Committee on Friday said that Obama had made “extraordinary efforts in international diplomacy and co-operation between peoples.”
Barack Obama, the US president, has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009, less than a year after taking office.
The announcement was made in Oslo, the Norwegian capital, recognising Obama’s attempts to foster international peace and create a world without nuclear weapons.
Obama, 48, wins the award while still being the commander-in-chief of US-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
“Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future,” Thorbjoern Jagland, the head of the committee, said.
“His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world’s population.
“Obama has as president created a new climate in international politics.
“Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play.”
‘Midst of engagement’
The prize is worth $1.4m, which will be handed over on December 10.
The only US presidents to have won the award while in office were Theodore Roosevelt in 1906 and Woodrow Wilson in 1919.
Kristian Berg Harpviken, from the International Peace Research Institute, told Al Jazeera: “I was very surprised … On the other hand what I did expect this year was a daring prize.
“I mean by daring is a prize that went to somebody who is not only rewarded for past achievements but who actually stands in the midst of a historical engagement.
“In other words, I was expecting the committee to want to use the political weight of the prize to make a difference in the world. To award it to somebody who could take that political capital and run with it.
Harpviken said that Obama is yet to achieve any of his major objectives on the global stage but added “what Obama has done is to give a breath of fresh air to international diplomacy and to multilateral collaboration.”
“He has done that but he has yet to prove that he can deliver. And on many of the concrete issues where he has made tall commitments and has high ambitions it is clear that the wind is not blowing his way and that it is going to be very difficult.”
Governments and world players began reacting to the announcement of the award on Friday.
The Taliban condemned the decision saying that Obama has “not taken a single step towards peace in Afghanistan”.
However, Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, congratulated Obama, calling the announcement “appropriate”.
An aide to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, said that the award should prompt Obama to begin to end injustice in the world.
“We hope that this gives him the incentive to walk in the path of bringing justice to the world order,” Ali Akbar Javanfekr, Ahmadinejad’s media aide, said.
“We are not upset and we hope that by receiving this prize he will start taking practical steps to remove injustice in the world.”
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I feel that the award and the President no longer have prestige. I mean Nobel Peace Prize?? He is still dropping unmanned drone bombs in Pakistan, yet he wont go get Bin Ladin. Obama to me is a really bad joke in every sense.
To me it seems he was awarded the Prize to be politically correct. They are giving him an award in advance of all the royal mess ups Obama will make all winter long.
I will continue to watch Americas Fall in to the Obama nation, the newest 3rd world banana republic. A nation where corporate profit, corruption and bailout reins without end.
it’s Nob-el Peace Prize, not Noble.
If they can give the Peace Prize to Kissinger, they can give it to anybody. If he decides to withdraw the troops from Iraq and Afghanistan and use the savings to pay for universal health care, _then_ he’ll deserve the Nobel. Unfortunately, I fear he’s been bought and paid for already as the president with the most expensive campaign ever, and the lesson of these four years is likely to be that an African-American president is just as capable of selling out his constituency as any white president.
Hope he proves me wrong.
They should’ve gave Bush the Nobel War Prize.