Fuck Obama

[Nordic]

http://alethonews.wordpress.com/2011/03 ... -the-news/

How Many Afghan Kids Need to Die to Make the News?

The number of Afghan boys gathering firewood killed by a March 1 U.S./NATO helicopter attack in Kunar Province: Nine.

The number of stories about the killing of the nine children on ABC, CBS or NBC morning or evening news shows (as of March 6): Two.

One was an 80-word report on NBC Nightly News (3/2/11), the other a brief ABC World News Sunday story (3/6/11) about Afghan president Hamid Karzai’s “harsh words for the U.S.” after the “mistaken killing of nine Afghan boys in an airstrike.”

On the PBS NewsHour? Two brief mentions (3/2/11, 3/7/11), both during the “other news of the day” segment.

On NPR? Nothing. On the”liberal” MSNBC? Zero. Fox News Channel? Zero.

CNN had several mentions of the killings. In one report (3/2/11), correspondent Michael Holmes remarked: “It does a lot of damage to the U.S. mission in Afghanistan. You don’t win hearts and minds that way.”

In the Washington Post (3/3/11), the children’s deaths were called “the latest irritant” in the relationship between U.S./NATO forces and the Afghan government. Civilian casualties are “a sore point,” and U.S. commander David Petraeus “has had to walk a fine line. Civilian casualties undermine NATO’s counterinsurgency mission here by angering Afghan civilians and bolstering the Taliban’s attempt to portray foreign troops as ruthless invaders.”

In contrast to the corporate media, Democracy Now! (3/3/11) talked about the attack as part of the larger story of civilian deaths in Afghanistan. “It was at least the third instance in two weeks in which the Afghan government accused NATO forces of killing large numbers of civilians in airstrikes,” host Juan Gonzalez noted in introducing a discussion. “An Afghan government panel is still investigating claims some 65 people, including 40 children, were killed in a U.S.-led attack last week.”

It is often said that Afghanistan is largely a forgotten war–a critique usually meant as a comment on the lack of attention paid to the hardships of U.S. military personnel. Far less consideration is granted to the Afghans who are suffering in far greater numbers.

***Warning, disturbing image below***

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[Bruce Dazzling]

War-Profiteers and Progressives Make Common Cause for Obama

Written by Chris Floyd
Saturday, 12 March 2011 23:49

Do you want to know why Barack Obama will be re-elected President of the United States?

It is not because he has signaled his willingness to eviscerate the last remaining shreds of the sparse "safety net" of social programs set in train by the New Deal.

It is not because he has shown which side he is on in the elite's war against workers who serve the public by freezing federal salaries.

It is not because he has appointed Wall Street insiders to guide not only his economic policies but the daily operations of the entire executive branch.

It is not because he has ordered the murder of hundreds of defenseless Pakistani civilians through sneak attacks by drone missiles on their homes.

It is not because he actually stands up in public and defends the torture of an American soldier incarcerated for releasing a few shards of truth about the war crimes committed by a previous administration.

Of course, all these desperate attempts to kowtow, bow, cringe and scurry before the vicious, ruthless, bloodsoaked, bloodthirsty elites of this howlingly dysfunctional society will indeed stand Barack Obama in good stead as he seeks another term as a "safe pair of hands" for the American Imperium. But the real clincher for our militarist Dominationists will be this (from Fortune):

Thanks to a surge in overseas demand, the F-15 and other aging U.S. weapons systems are hotter than they've been in years. The Department of Defense last year told Congress of plans to sell up to $103 billion in weapons to overseas buyers, a staggering rise from an average of $13 billion a year between 1995 and 2005 ...

As defense giants like Boeing, Raytheon and Lockheed Martin increasingly seek to peddle their wares to well-financed (sometimes by the U.S.) international customers, they have a surprising ally: the President. "Obama is much more favorably disposed to arms exports than any of the previous Democratic administrations," says Loren Thompson, a veteran defense consultant. Or, as Jeff Abramson, deputy director of the Arms Control Association, puts it: "There's an Obama arms bazaar going on."

...the Obama team has hustled to pave the way for big sales like the Saudi deal; the President himself recently sought to secure a pending $4 billion aircraft deal with India. Obama is also backing a massive push to rewrite the rules that govern arms exports, a process that some say will reduce oversight of U.S. weapons sales.

Obama in his first term is peddling almost 10 times as many weapons of death, destruction, repression and suffering than George W. Bush in his second term at the helm of the world-engulfing American War Machine. This is the reason why our Masters of War gave more money to Obama than to John McCain in 2008. The historic agent of hope and change had obviously clued them in on how well he would serve their sinister interests.

And the bulk of the Obama arms bazaar is going to one of the most repressive, hidebound, extremist regimes on earth: Saudi Arabia. The Saudi royals make the odious Moammar Gaddafy look like Thomas Jefferson in comparison. Yet Obama has gifted them with one of the biggest arms deals in human history. What will the Saudis do with these weapons? They will, like Gaddafy, turn them against their own people should they dare rise up against the ethnic, religious, economic, gender and political repression that stifles them.

What can you say about this sort of thing? It is sickening beyond words. It is a total -- even gleeful -- abdication to the very worst instincts of our common human kind: grasping greed, domination, brutality, corruption, and a pervasive, corrosive nihilism drained of compassion, of empathy, of all but the most base, most bestial impulses.

The money paragraph:

Yet even now, the "progressive blogosphere" is ablaze with partisan fervor bent toward a single goal: the re-election of Barack Obama in 2012. Because if Obama is not re-elected, we might get a president who ... kowtows to Wall Street, tortures Americans, kills innocent people -- that is, who actually, literally, physically has children torn into splatters and shreds of viscera and bone -- and sells arms to tyrants. And if we don't support this, if we don't "stop bitching and get to work" making sure that this continues, then we could end up with a Republican president who kowtows to Wall Street, tortures Americans, shreds innocent children into viscera and sells arms to tyrants. And that would be just terrible.

(I must confess here a lamentable failure of imagination. I simply cannot get my mind around the concept of progressive lovers of humanity who support the shredding of innocent children into splatters of viscera and bone. I simply cannot fathom progressive defenders of freedom and human rights who pledge themselves to arms peddlers dealing weapons to brutal regimes that have a proven record of using them against the legitimate demands and aspirations of their people. No doubt I lack some genetic component or neuronal constellation that would make all of this clear to me. But, stunted as I am, it looks like the most blinkered, willfully ignorant, Tea Partyish partisan extremism to me.)

In any case, it is good to see the bipartisanship that has long been the Holy Grail of the Potomac political class now taking shape at last. With both progressives and war-profiteering plutocrats making common cause on his behalf, the re-election of Barack Obama looks more certain all the time.

[8bitagent]

Obama official sacked for speaking out on Manning case:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42060000/ns ... _politics/

Sadly, it seems only Maddow is the only mainstream media show and journalist to really shine a light on Manning's conditions.

You'd THINK the Obama hating Tea Party/Fox/Rush folks would be making mountains out of the Afghan civilian deaths and Manning treatment, but not a peep!
Only from us "kooky leftist tree huggers".

I'd LOVE to see Obama visit a classroom and a little kid confront Obama about all the Pakistani and Afghan civilian deaths, or the treatment of Manning.
He thinks by tossing a bone and lipservice to gay rights that it balances out the war crimes going on. It's like oh boy! Now gays can be pawns of the global elite death machine like everyone else.

[Bruce Dazzling]

Hope, from now on, will look like this.

Hope will not come in trusting in the ultimate goodness of Barack Obama, who, like Herod of old, sold out his people. It will not be realized by chanting packaged campaign slogans or attempting to influence the democratic party. It will not come through our bankrupt liberal institutions-- from the press, to the withered stump that is the labor movement.

Hope will only come now when we physically defy the violence of the state. All who resist, all who are here today, keep hope alive. All who succumb to fear, despair and apathy become an enemy of hope. They become, in their passivity, agents of injustice.

It is not having a positive attitude or pretending that happy thoughts and false optimism will make the world better. Hope is not about chanting packaged campaign slogans or trusting in the better nature of the Democratic Party. Hope does not mean that our protests will suddenly awaken the dead consciences, the atrophied souls, of the plutocrats running Halliburton, Goldman Sachs, ExxonMobil or the government.
If the enemies of hope are finally victorious in this nation, the poison of violence will become not only the language of power but the language of opposition. And those who resist with nonviolence are the last thin line of defense between a civil society and its disintegration.


Hope has a cost. Hope is not comfortable or easy. Hope requires personal risk. It is not about the right attitude. Hope is not about peace of mind. Hope is action. Hope is doing something. The more futile, the more useless, the more irrelevant and incomprehensible an act of rebellion is, the vaster and more potent hope becomes.

Hope never makes sense. Hope is weak, unorganized and absurd. Hope, which is always nonviolent, exposes in its powerlessness, the lies, fraud and coercion employed by the state. Hope knows that an injustice visited on our neighbor is an injustice visited on all of us. Hope posits that people are drawn to the good by the good. This is the secret of hope's power. Hope demands for others what we demand for ourselves. Hope does not separate us from them. Hope sees in our enemy our own face.
Hope is not for the practical and the sophisticated, the cynics and the complacent, the defeated and the fearful. Hope is what the corporate state which saturates our airwaves with lies seeks to obliterate. Hope is what this corporate state is determined to crush. Be afraid, they tell us. Surrender your liberties to us so we can make the world safe from terror. Don't resist. Embrace the alienation of our cheerful conformity. Buy our products. Without them you are worthless. Become our brands. Do not look up from your electronic hallucinations. No. Above all do not think. Obey.

The powerful do not understand hope. Hope is not part of their vocabulary. They speak in the cold, dead words of national security, global markets, electoral strategy, staying on message, image and money. The powerful protect their own. They divide the world into the damned and the blessed, the patriots and the enemy, the privileged and the weak. They insist that extinguishing lives in foreign wars or in our prison complexes is a form of human progress.

They cannot see that the suffering of a child in Kandehar or a child in the blighted urban pocket of our nation's capitol diminishes and impoverishes us all. They are deaf, dumb and blind to hope. Those addicted to power, enthralled by self-exaltation, cannot decipher the words of hope any more than most of us can decipher hieroglyphics.

Hope to Wall Street bankers and politicians, to the masters of war and commerce, is not practical. It is gibberish. It means nothing. And this is because they kneel before the idols of greed and money.

If we resist and carry out acts, no matter how small, of open defiance, hope will not be extinguished. If all we accomplish today is to assure a grieving mother in Baghdad or Afghanistan, a young man or woman crippled physically and emotionally by the hammer blows of war, that he or she is not alone, our act will be successful. But hope cannot be sustained if it cannot be seen.

Any act of rebellion, any physical defiance of those who make war, of those who perpetuate corporate greed and are responsible for state crimes, anything that seeks to draw the good to the good, nourishes our souls and holds out the possibility that we can touch and transform the souls of others. Hope affirms that which we must affirm. And every act that imparts hope is a victory in itself.

(from Auden)

Defenseless under the night

Our world in stupor lies;

Yet, dotted everywhere,

Ironic points of light

Flash out wherever the Just

[justdrew]

Where is the president?
The world is beset. Moammar Khadafy is moving relentlessly to crush the Libyan revolt that once promised the overthrow of one of the world's most despicable regimes.

So where is the president?

Japan may be on the verge of a disaster that dwarfs any we have yet seen. A self-governing nation like the United States needs its leader to take full measure of his position at times of crises when the path forward is no longer clear.

This is not a time for leadership; this is the time for leadership.

So where is Barack Obama?


The moment demands that he rise to the challenge of showing America and the world that he is taking the reins. How leaders act in times of unanticipated crisis, in which they do not have a formulated game plan and must instead navigate in treacherous waters, defines them.

Obama is defining himself in a way that will destroy him.

It is not merely that he isn't rising to the challenge. He is avoiding the challenge. He is Bartleby the President. He would prefer not to.

He has access to a microphone 24 hours a day, seven days a week. If he tells the broadcast networks in the middle of the day that he has a major address to deliver on an unprecedented world situation, they will cancel their programming for him.

And yet, since Friday and a press conference in which he managed to leave the American position on Libya more muddled than it was before, we have not heard his voice. Except in a radio address -- he talked about education legislation.

And he appeared at a fund-raiser in DC. And sat down with ESPN to reveal his NCAA picks.

He cannot go on like this. Niall Ferguson, the very pessimistic economic historian, wrote the other day that the best we can now hope for is that Obama leaves the country in the same kind of shape that Jimmy Carter left it in.

[8bitagent]

Scary things happen when a president is on vacation for *too long*

If "shark attack" paranoia grips the nation, I'm gonna be really concerned.

[seemslikeadream]

All right now give the fuckin' prize back. NOW!! You fuckin' do NOT deserve it, period.

[Belligerent Savant]

.

All right now give the fuckin' prize back. NOW!! You fuckin' do NOT deserve it, period.

Well actually, he DID deserve it. Despite how it's marketed to us common folk, It's a medal of recognition by The EMPIRE largely awarded [with some exceptions, perhaps] to those who dutifully perpetuate and further the cause[s] of The EMPIRE/Status Quo -- much like the "freedom medal". Yet another bit of theatre [or misdirection] for the Plebes' consumption.

Among others, Kissinger is a fellow laureate. Need one say more?

Barry may very well be in the running for The Empire's MVP award, at this pace.

Let him keep that Nobel Prize. He's earned it to this point.

[seemslikeadream]

.

All right now give the fuckin' prize back. NOW!! You fuckin' do NOT deserve it, period.

Well actually, he DID deserve it. Despite how it's marketed to us common folk, It's a medal of recognition by The EMPIRE largely awarded [with some exceptions, perhaps] to those who dutifully perpetuate and further the cause[s] of The EMPIRE/Status Quo -- much like the "freedom medal". Yet another bit of theatre [or misdirection] for the Plebes' consumption.

Among others, Kissinger is a fellow laureate. Need one say more?

Barry may very well be in the running for The Empire's MVP award, at this pace.

Let him keep that Nobel Prize. He's earned it to this point.

all right all right they get it WRONG occasionally and he should still give it back

All Nobel Peace Prizes
The Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded 91 times to 121 Nobel Laureates between 1901 and 2010 – 98 times to individuals and 23 times to organizations. Since International Committee of the Red Cross was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1917, 1944 and 1963, and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1954 and 1981, that means 98 individuals and 20 organizations have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Click on the links to get more information.

2010
Liu Xiaobo
2009
Barack H. Obama
2008
Martti Ahtisaari
2007
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) , Albert Arnold (Al) Gore Jr.
2006
Muhammad Yunus, Grameen Bank
2005
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) , Mohamed ElBaradei
2004
Wangari Muta Maathai
2003
Shirin Ebadi
2002
Jimmy Carter
2001
United Nations (U.N.) , Kofi Annan
2000
Kim Dae-jung
1999
Médecins Sans Frontières
1998
John Hume, David Trimble
1997
International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) , Jody Williams
1996
Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo, José Ramos-Horta
1995
Joseph Rotblat, Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs
1994
Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres, Yitzhak Rabin
1993
Nelson Mandela, Frederik Willem de Klerk
1992
Rigoberta Menchú Tum
1991
Aung San Suu Kyi
1990
Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev
1989
The 14th Dalai Lama (Tenzin Gyatso)
1988
United Nations Peacekeeping Forces
1987
Oscar Arias Sánchez
1986
Elie Wiesel
1985
International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War
1984
Desmond Mpilo Tutu
1983
Lech Walesa
1982
Alva Myrdal, Alfonso García Robles
1981
Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)
1980
Adolfo Pérez Esquivel
1979
Mother Teresa
1978
Mohamed Anwar al-Sadat, Menachem Begin
1977
Amnesty International
1976
Betty Williams, Mairead Corrigan
1975
Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov
1974
Seán MacBride, Eisaku Sato
1973
Henry A. Kissinger, Le Duc Tho
1972
No Nobel Prize was awarded this year. The prize money for 1972 was allocated to the Main Fund.
1971
Willy Brandt
1970
Norman E. Borlaug
1969
International Labour Organization (I.L.O.)
1968
René Cassin
1967
No Nobel Prize was awarded this year. The prize money was with 1/3 allocated to the Main Fund and with 2/3 to the Special Fund of this prize section.
1966
No Nobel Prize was awarded this year. The prize money was allocated to the Special Fund of this prize section.
1965
United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF)
1964
Martin Luther King Jr.
1963
Comité international de la Croix Rouge (International Committee of the Red Cross) , Ligue des Sociétés de la Croix-Rouge (League of Red Cross Societies)
1962
Linus Carl Pauling
1961
Dag Hjalmar Agne Carl Hammarskjöld
1960
Albert John Lutuli
1959
Philip J. Noel-Baker
1958
Georges Pire
1957
Lester Bowles Pearson
1956
No Nobel Prize was awarded this year. The prize money was with 1/3 allocated to the Main Fund and with 2/3 to the Special Fund of this prize section.
1955
No Nobel Prize was awarded this year. The prize money was allocated to the Special Fund of this prize section.
1954
Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)
1953
George Catlett Marshall
1952
Albert Schweitzer
1951
Léon Jouhaux
1950
Ralph Bunche
1949
Lord (John) Boyd Orr of Brechin
1948
No Nobel Prize was awarded this year. The prize money was with 1/3 allocated to the Main Fund and with 2/3 to the Special Fund of this prize section.
1947
Friends Service Council (The Quakers) , American Friends Service Committee (The Quakers)
1946
Emily Greene Balch, John Raleigh Mott
1945
Cordell Hull
1944
Comité international de la Croix Rouge (International Committee of the Red Cross)
1943
No Nobel Prize was awarded this year. The prize money was with 1/3 allocated to the Main Fund and with 2/3 to the Special Fund of this prize section.
1942
No Nobel Prize was awarded this year. The prize money was with 1/3 allocated to the Main Fund and with 2/3 to the Special Fund of this prize section.
1941
No Nobel Prize was awarded this year. The prize money was with 1/3 allocated to the Main Fund and with 2/3 to the Special Fund of this prize section.
1940
No Nobel Prize was awarded this year. The prize money was with 1/3 allocated to the Main Fund and with 2/3 to the Special Fund of this prize section.
1939
No Nobel Prize was awarded this year. The prize money was with 1/3 allocated to the Main Fund and with 2/3 to the Special Fund of this prize section.
1938
Office international Nansen pour les Réfugiés (Nansen International Office for Refugees)
1937
Cecil of Chelwood, Viscount (Lord Edgar Algernon Robert Gascoyne Cecil)
1936
Carlos Saavedra Lamas
1935
Carl von Ossietzky
1934
Arthur Henderson
1933
Sir Norman Angell (Ralph Lane)
1932
No Nobel Prize was awarded this year. The prize money was allocated to the Special Fund of this prize section.
1931
Jane Addams, Nicholas Murray Butler
1930
Lars Olof Jonathan (Nathan) Söderblom
1929
Frank Billings Kellogg
1928
No Nobel Prize was awarded this year. The prize money was allocated to the Special Fund of this prize section.
1927
Ferdinand Buisson, Ludwig Quidde
1926
Aristide Briand, Gustav Stresemann
1925
Sir Austen Chamberlain, Charles Gates Dawes
1924
No Nobel Prize was awarded this year. The prize money was allocated to the Special Fund of this prize section.
1923
No Nobel Prize was awarded this year. The prize money was allocated to the Special Fund of this prize section.
1922
Fridtjof Nansen
1921
Karl Hjalmar Branting, Christian Lous Lange
1920
Léon Victor Auguste Bourgeois
1919
Thomas Woodrow Wilson
1918
No Nobel Prize was awarded this year. The prize money was allocated to the Special Fund of this prize section.
1917
Comité international de la Croix Rouge (International Committee of the Red Cross)
1916
No Nobel Prize was awarded this year. The prize money was allocated to the Special Fund of this prize section.
1915
No Nobel Prize was awarded this year. The prize money was allocated to the Special Fund of this prize section.
1914
No Nobel Prize was awarded this year. The prize money was allocated to the Special Fund of this prize section.
1913
Henri La Fontaine
1912
Elihu Root
1911
Tobias Michael Carel Asser, Alfred Hermann Fried
1910
Bureau international permanent de la Paix (Permanent International Peace Bureau)
1909
Auguste Marie François Beernaert, Paul Henri Benjamin Balluet d'Estournelles de Constant, Baron de Constant de Rebecque
1908
Klas Pontus Arnoldson, Fredrik Bajer
1907
Ernesto Teodoro Moneta, Louis Renault
1906
Theodore Roosevelt
1905
Baroness Bertha Sophie Felicita von Suttner, née Countess Kinsky von Chinic und Tettau
1904
Institut de droit international (Institute of International Law)
1903
William Randal Cremer
1902
Élie Ducommun, Charles Albert Gobat
1901
Jean Henry Dunant
1901
Jean Henry Dunant, Frédéric Passy

[23]

"Alfred Nobel wrote in his will that the peace prize was to be given 'to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between the nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies, and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.'"

"The AFSC Nobel Committee has formulated its own criteria, without expecting the AFSC nominee to have a perfect score on each one: 1) commitment to nonviolent methods; 2) quality as a person and sustained contributions to peace in such areas as justice, human dignity, and the integrity of the environment; and 3) possession of a world view rather than a parochial concern, with potential for a global rather than a limited impact."

(http://www.irwinabrams.com/articles/afs ... ations.pdf)

So much for complying with Alfred's explicit will.

[norton ash]

1) commitment to nonviolent methods; 2) quality as a person and sustained contributions to peace in such areas as justice, human dignity, and the integrity of the environment; and 3) possession of a world view rather than a parochial concern, with potential for a global rather than a limited impact."

As U.S. Regime Fights Three Wars, Obama Pushes F-18 Fighter Jets on Brazil

March 20th, 2011

Via: Reuters <http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/20/obama-brazil-jet-idUSN2020287320110320>:
President Barack Obama made a strong pitch for the Boeing F-18 jet fighter in a meeting with Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, but she did not indicate if her government had decided to buy the U.S.-made plane, the White House said on Sunday.
“The F-18 issue did come up. President Rousseff raised it,” White House aide Dan Restrepo told reporters in Rio de Janeiro, referring to the leaders’ bilateral meeting in Brasilia on Saturday that kicked off Obama’s five-day Latin American tour.
Brazil is weighing a multi-billion dollar bid to modernize its air force, and Obama has made promoting exports to boost U.S. jobs back home a central part of his trip to Brazil, Chile and El Salvador.
“President Obama underscored that the F-18 is the best plane on offer … in that the technology transfer package … is equivalent to the packages that are offered to partners and allies around the world,” said Restrepo, Obama’s top Latin American adviser.

What a fucking car salesman-death merchant-whore.

[Belligerent Savant]

.

I'm sure we may be able to hand-pick a few on the list that may be worthy of the "peace prize" designation, but any "award" that includes Kissinger and/or Barry Obama as representatives of PEACE should be at the very least dismissed, if not vilified.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_No ... _laureates

Generally, the Nobel Peace Prize is the most controversial of the Nobel Prizes; several of the selections have been heavily criticized.[7][8]

7.^ Tønnesson, Øyvind (2000-06-29). "Controversies and Criticisms". Nobel Foundation. Archived from the original on 2008-06-10. http://web.archive.org/web/200806101149 ... index.html. Retrieved 2008-12-03.

8.^ "The Nobel: Dynamite or damp squib?". BBC News. 2000-10-08. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle ... 724734.stm. Retrieved 2008-12-03.

[seemslikeadream]

.

I'm sure we may be able to hand-pick a few on the list that may be worthy of the "peace prize" designation, but any "award" that includes Kissinger and/or Barry Obama as representatives of PEACE should be at the very least dismissed, if not vilified.

ok I'll start twelve for twelve

Martin Luther King Jr.
Baroness Bertha Sophie Felicita von Suttner
Jane Addams
Nicholas Murray Butler
Carl von Ossietzky
Linus Carl Pauling
Alva Myrdal
Alfonso García Robles
Liu Xiaobo
Mohamed ElBaradei
IAEA
Mother Teresa

[Belligerent Savant]

.

No argument here, SLAD.

No doubt we can identify names on the list of laureates that we would agree earned the Nobel peace prize [based on Nobel's prerequisites], and after re-reading my prior post, perhaps my choice of words ("hand-pick[ing] a few on the list") may have been a bit strong, but the essential point is that the prize loses its integrity - its meaning - when individuals such as Obama and Kissinger are selected for the same prize without a hint of irony [how many civilian lives would we estimate have been lost due to the actions/decisions of these 2 men? Would being responsible for the senseless death of even 1 life typically preclude an individual from being considered for a "peace" prize? Or is it ignored in favor of some other act that reportedly promoted or facilitated peace?]

And in light of global activities of the past decade, how much sense does it make to be giving out ANY 'peace' or 'freedom' medals and/or prizes?

Does it not seem so utterly...farcical, in light of the realities of our modern world?

Let's continue to hand out rewards as the world's myriad turmoils and conflicts continue seemingly unabated, and in some instances, escalate in severity...

I'm all for aknowledging legitimate peace-makers out there. Really.

But it seems to me it'll take a tremendous amount of group effort -- efforts en masse -- to foster any movements towards 'peace'.. and I doubt those that would participate in such events would be interested in any medals or prizes for their efforts.

The end-goal of this "award" ritual, whatever it may be, doesn't seem very constructive, and may be seen by the more cynical among us as a form of deception -- or worse, a MOCKERY of the meaning of the word "peace".

More mind-f#cking.

Or perhaps I'm simply reading too much into it. Actually, that's not right: I haven't really given the process itself much thought at all [quite obvious from this rant, huh?]. I don't personally ascribe any value to it, and see it as little more than another diversion from some of the harsher realities facing the world.

But I'm more cynical than the average cat.

[seemslikeadream]

since Obama is sightseeing Rio de Janeiro's iconic Christ the Redeemer hilltop statue and now the new war in Libya, blast from the past from Pilger

War is peace, ignorance is strength
John Pilger
Published 15 October 2009

Obama, the man of peace, is planning another war to add to his impressive record

Barack Obama, winner of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, is planning another war to add to his impressive record. In Afghanistan, his agents routinely extinguish wedding parties, farmers and construction workers with weapons such as the innovative Hellfire missile, which sucks the air out of your lungs. According to the UN, 338,000 Afghan infants are dying under the Obama-led alliance, which permits only $29 per head annually to be spent on medical care.

Within weeks of his inauguration, Obama started a new war in Pakistan, causing more than a million people to flee their homes. In threatening Iran - which his secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, said she was prepared to "obliterate" - Obama lied that the Iranians were covering up a "secret nuclear facility", knowing that it had already been reported to the International Atomic Energy Authority. In colluding with the only nuclear-armed power in the Middle East, he bribed the Palestinian Authority to suppress a UN judgment that Israel had committed crimes against humanity in its assault on Gaza - crimes made possible with US weapons whose shipment Obama secretly approved before his inauguration.

The old dog whistle test
At home, the man of peace has approved a military budget exceeding that of any year since the end of the Second World War while presiding over a new kind of domestic repression. During the recent G20 meeting in Pittsburgh, hosted by Obama, militarised police attacked peaceful protesters with something called the Long-Range Acoustic Device, not seen before on US streets. Mounted in the turret of a small tank, it blasted a piercing noise as tear gas and pepper gas were fired indiscriminately. It is part of a new arsenal of "crowd-control munitions" supplied by military contractors such as Raytheon. In Obama's Pentagon-controlled "national security state", the concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay, which he promised to close, remains open, and "rendition", secret assassinations and torture continue.

The Nobel Peace Prize-winner's latest war is largely secret. On 15 July, Washington finalised a deal with Colombia that gives the US seven giant military bases. "The idea," reported the Associated Press, "is to make Colombia a regional hub for Pentagon operations . . . nearly half the continent can be covered by a C-17 [military transport] without refuelling", which "helps achieve the regional engagement strategy".

Translated, this means Obama is planning a "rollback" of the independence and democracy that the people of Bolivia, Venezuela, Ecuador andParaguay have achieved against the odds, along with a historic regional co-operation that rejects the notion of a US "sphere of influence". The Colombian regime, which backs death squads and has the continent's worst human rights record, has received US military support second in scale only to Israel. Britain provides military training. Guided by US military satellites, Colombian paramilitaries now infiltrate Venezuela with the goal of overthrowing the democratic government of Hugo Chávez, which George W Bush failed to do in 2002.

Obama's war on peace and democracy in Latin America follows a style he has demonstrated since the coup against the democratic president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, in June. Zelaya had increased the minimum wage, granted subsidies to small farmers, cut back interest rates and reduced poverty. He planned to break a US pharmaceutical monopoly and manufacture cheap generic drugs. Although Obama has called for Zelaya's reinstatement, he refuses to condemn the coup-makers and to recall the US ambassador or the US troops who train the Honduran forces determined to crush a popular resistance. Zelaya has been repeatedly refused a meeting with Obama, who has approved an IMF loan of $164m to the illegal regime. The message is clear and familiar: thugs can act with impunity on behalf of the US.

Obama, the smooth operator from Chicago via Harvard, was enlisted to restore what he calls "leadership" throughout the world. The Nobel Prize committee's decision is the kind of cloying reverse racism that has beatified the man for no reason other than he is a member of a minority and attractive to liberal sensibilities, if not to the Afghan children he kills. This is the Call of Obama. It is not unlike a dog whistle: inaudible to most, irresistible to the besotted and boneheaded. "When Obama walks into a room," gushed George Clooney, "you want to follow him somewhere, anywhere."

Extreme and dangerous
The great voice of black liberation Frantz Fanon understood this. In The Wretched of the Earth, he described the "intermediary [whose] mission has nothing to do with transforming the nation: it consists, prosaically, of being the transmission line between the nation and a capitalism, rampant though camouflaged". Because political debate has become so debased in our media monoculture - Blair or Brown; Brown or Cameron - race, gender and class can be used as seductive tools of propaganda and diversion. In Obama's case, what matters, as Fanon pointed out in an earlier era, is not the intermediary's "historic" elevation, but the class he serves. After all, Bush's inner circle was probably the most multiracial in presidential history. There was Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, Clarence Thomas, all dutifully serving an extreme and dangerous power.

Britain has seen its own Obama-like mysticism. The day after Blair was elected in 1997, the Observer predicted that he would create "new worldwide rules on human rights" while the Guardian rejoiced at the "breathless pace [as] the floodgates of change burst open". When Obama was elected last November, Denis MacShane MP, a devotee of Blair's bloodbaths, unwittingly warned us: "I shut my eyes when I listen to this guy and it could be Tony. He is doing the same thing that we did in 1997."