Tell it to your moms

The way to the world's heart

Is through Salams

Not bombs...

the children/parents of Afghanistan and Pakistan who've had their loved ones killed and maimed in attacks by unmanned drones.

Let's see, President Obama is continuing to spy on Americans just like his predecessor, he is using a contorted interpretation of State's Secrets to keep victims of torture at the hands of Americans from having their day in court and there is even evidence that torture has taken place on his watch. Further, under the Convention Against Torture treaty, he is now complicit in the Bush regime's war crimes by preventing prosecution of those crimes. It is not the first time a war criminal has received the Peace Prize, but it is rare enough to take note of.

Also, it is not just the fact that he has refused to make any moves to end the two wars he inherited, it is the fact that he is trying to deny habeas corpus to people we hold in prisons in Afghanistan that really riles me up. Add to that the total disinterest in the gulag-like conditions of the Palestinians and I have to ask: What the hell is the difference between Obama and Bush? Meet the new Pres, same as the old one.

While I often find Joan Walsh to be as much of a tool as Mark Halperin, she surprised with this entirely reasonable reaction to the Nobel Prize tempest du jour. And this line is particularly important:

The right-wing's idiocy about Obama's Nobel win is no longer even interesting.

We need to get that message to Chris Matthews, Anderson Cooper, Campbell Brown, Wolf Blitzer, David Gregory, etc. etc. to whom it really is the only interesting aspect of current events. Go and tell it, Joan.

What a magnanimous and wonderful statement that Sarkozy stated.

My God.

Fantastic.

Yes he deserves it. Peace is a means, not an end. Everything that O has done, from extending a hand to the globe to holding beer summits at home, shows his committment to peace. Obama's method does not presume that everyone should agree with him, but that the debate should be "taken down a notch" so as not to escalate into hate and exaggeration.

That his detractors fail to understand this on even the most basic level...their method is to raise the pitch to hysteria...shows an enormous disconnect.

Oslo was correct to deny America it's isolationism and to remind the president and the world of the enormous responsibility he carries...

Barack Obama was in the right place at the right time!

And it dilutes the award for those who follow ...

Which one of the following peaceful actions was the award for ..?

A) Escalating the war in Afghanistan

B) Preventing the violence of the bankers committing suicide

if their thieving, lying, greedy asses hadn't been saved

working class people.

The world is so devoid of leadership that those who speak a rhetoric of "good intentions" qualify as admirable people.

I'm going to vomit ....

"...and lighten up on killing Afghans. OK?"

sincerely, Nobel peace prize committee.

is look at the numbers of people around the world who come to here Obama speak, or who danced in the street the night he was elected, to realize this is proof positive that we're still held in high esteem. So many people are looking for hope for a better quality of life and of freedom. We're still a standard bearer to countries who look to our unique experiment as a possible sign of their own.

And we've had the guts to change our point man from a lost little boy to an inspired citizen of the world.

We've surely screwed it up recently. We've elected the dregs, and let them slide by on fakes and illegal moves. We've gotten bogged down in our own daily tedium of Palinnews and Birthing-garbage at the expense of using the opportunity of Obama's election to help him make a difference.

We've taken for granted our own superlative gifts and achievements. And it took 5 Norwegians to unanimously remind us how we're seen outside our own bubble.

As Elvis once said (and you know which one I mean): "What's So Funny Bout Peace, Love and Understanding?"

Not a damn thing.

I thought it was a very funny joke, but it was real. My first thought, far from congratulatory, was wry: as John Dickerson put it in his Slate.com piece "Now FOX News knows what it's going to talk about this weekend."

But my confusion and (slight) consternation was allayed when I read Obama's speech and began to understand how he felt about it and what he was going to do about it.

Your piece here does an amazing job of capturing the "recapturing" of what many of us felt last year when Obama took the stage at Grant Park in Chicago - things are going to return, slowly perhaps, to normal.

Announcement

The Norwegian Nobel Committee

The Nobel Peace Prize for 2009

The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009 is to be awarded to President Barack Obama for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples. The Committee has attached special importance to Obama's vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons.

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. Dialogue and negotiations are preferred as instruments for resolving even the most difficult international conflicts. The vision of a world free from nuclear arms has powerfully stimulated disarmament and arms control negotiations. Thanks to Obama's initiative, the USA is now playing a more constructive role in meeting the great climatic challenges the world is confronting. Democracy and human rights are to be strengthened.

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. 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.

For 108 years, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has sought to stimulate precisely that international policy and those attitudes for which Obama is now the world's leading spokesman. The Committee endorses Obama's appeal that "Now is the time for all of us to take our share of responsibility for a global response to global challenges."

Oslo, October 9, 2009

http://nobelpeaceprize.org/en_GB/home/announce-2009/