Nobel Committee asked to strip Obama of Peace Prize
By Aaron - March 22, 2011 at 8:54 AM
Filed under Foreign Policy , Issues , Obama

The President of Bolivia and a political leader in Russia have launched a campaign to revoke Obama’s 2009 peace prize honor after the U.S. attack on Libya.

Liberal Democratic Party of Russia leader and Vice-Chairman of the State Duma Vladimir Zhirinovsky released a statement today calling for the Nobel Prize Committee to take back the honor bestowed on President Barack Obama in 2009.

Zhirinovsky said the attacks were “another outrageous act of aggression by NATO forces and, in particular, the United States,” and that the attacks demonstrated a “colonial policy” with “one goal: to establish control over Libyan oil and the Libyan regime.” He said the prize was now hypocritical as a result.

Bolivian President Evo Morales echoed the call: “How is it possible that a Nobel Peace Prize winner leads a gang to attack and invade? This is not a defence of human rights or self-determination.” Morales won the Gaddafi International Prize for Human Rights in 2006.

Obama is also administering wars in two other nations, Iraq and Afghanistan. In his most recent attack on a foreign nation — Libya — he failed to present his plan to the United States Congress.

http://mommylife.net/archives/2009/03/23/obamapoint.jpg

what does thin mean to you? are you shocked to learn that this Government or that disapproves of what the American President does?

I was, as many others shocked to find out he received it.
He had done nothing deserving to be awarded it.


The Nobel War Prize
10 October 2009
World Socialist Web Site
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/oct2009/pers-o10.shtml

Friday’s announcement by the Nobel committee in Norway that Barack Obama had been chosen to receive its 2009 Peace Prize was met with expressions of astonishment around the globe.

Many questioned how Obama could be chosen after less than nine months in office, with no discernable achievements on any front. He was inaugurated just 11 days before the cut-off date for nominations for the prize.

More significant, however, is what Obama has done in office, which has nothing to do with peace.

On the surface, awarding a peace prize to the US president is farcical. There are widespread warnings that the selection may well prove only an embarrassment for the Obama administration. How is it possible to proclaim a “commander-in-chief” who is responsible for war crimes, such as bombing the civilian population of Afghanistan — one such attack having claimed the lives of over 100 men, women and children just last May — as the champion of peace?

Yet, receiving the Nobel Peace Prize has always been a dubious distinction. Its reputation has never really recovered from the decision to award it in 1973 to Henry Kissinger, who is today unable to leave the United States for fear of being arrested as a war criminal.

A few years later, Menachem Begin was chosen for the prize. The Nobel committee chose to ignore his long career as a terrorist and killer, honoring him for reaching the Camp David deal with Anwar Sadat of Egypt, his co-recipient.

Jimmy Carter, whose administration instigated a war in Afghanistan that claimed a million lives, was given the same award in 2002.

The committee cannot be accused of violating its own principles, such as they are. The founder of the prize, Alfred Nobel, was the inventor of dynamite. He would no doubt be intrigued by the Pentagon’s efforts to speed up production of the Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP), a 30,000-pound bomb designed to obliterate underground targets. The weapon is being readied for possible use against Iran.

Despite its praise for Obama’s “vision” and for having “captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future,” the Nobel committee did not choose Obama based on illusions in his campaign rhetoric.

The Nobel Peace Prize is, and always has been, a political award given with the aim of promoting definite policies.

The selection was made by a committee composed of five members of the Norwegian parliament drawn from the main parties, ranging from the far-right to the social democrats. Its decisions reflect positions prevailing within the European ruling elite as a whole.

Thorbjorn Jagland, the committee’s chairman and a former Norwegian prime minister, defended the choice of Obama in an interview with the New York Times Friday, expressing the cynicism underlying the choice. “It’s important for the committee to recognize people who are struggling and idealistic, but we cannot do that every year,” he said. “We must from time to time go into the realm of realpolitik.”

Realpolitik doubtless played the decisive role in the recent selection of two other prominent American politicians for the prize: Carter in 2002 and Al Gore in 2007. Carter was picked on the eve of the US war against Iraq in a rebuke to the belligerent unilateralism of the Bush administration. The prize went to Gore, the Democratic presidential candidate in 2000, in advance of the 2008 election, a not-so-subtle hint that Europe wanted a break from the Bush administration.

While in those years the prize was employed as a critique of US foreign policy, this time it represents an endorsement. As Jagland put it, “We hope this can contribute a little bit to enhance what he is trying to do.”

The glaring contradiction in giving the peace prize to Obama as he prepares to send more troops into Afghanistan is more apparent than real. The award is meant to legitimize Washington’s escalation in Afghanistan, its attacks on Pakistan and its continued occupation of Iraq, giving them Europe’s seal of approval as wars for peace.

It serves to undermine popular opposition within the United States and internationally to the wars being waged under the Obama administration, as well as to future ones still being planned.

The European powers support the war in Afghanistan, a position that is more frequently finding its expression in the press. The British daily Independent, for example, published an editorial Thursday declaring that it “in principle” supports the call for sending as many as 40,000 more US troops into the war.

Meanwhile, Germany, France and other countries have shifted their positions on Iran as well, backing Washington’s campaign for tougher measures.

What ruling circles in Europe see in Obama is not a champion of peace, but rather a shift away from the unilateralism of the Bush administration and a willingness to factor European support into the pursuit of US imperialism’s strategic aims.

No doubt, Europe’s governments calculate that their backing of the US military interventions will translate into a stake in the exploitation of the energy reserves of Central Asia and the Persian Gulf.

Moreover, in legitimizing these wars and promoting a return to multilateralism in US foreign policy, the European powers see a means to legitimize their own turn to militarism and to suppress opposition to war within their own populations.

Obama’s Nobel prize, far from signaling hope that the world’s greatest military power is turning toward peace, is itself an endorsement of war and serves as a warning that the intensifying crisis of world capitalism is creating the conditions for resurgent militarism and the threat of widening international conflicts.

Finally!. Thank goodness. The world has been waiting for your opinion on this!

What has he done to warrant the prize?

That would be a question for the Nobel Committee. I didn't make the award.

If I am not mistaken he won the prize based on his stance towards nuclear non-proliferation.

Whether or not his attitudes and speeches about Guantanamo or the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan played a part in being awarded the prize is debatable.

I think the moral of this story is that the one thing people really wanted changed in our foreign policy hasn't changed.

Obama won because he was the anti- Bush.

It seems that is now not the case.

It's easy enough to look up. Here, I'll help you out.

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2009/press.html

Those were the days..

Willing2 Our President before he was president gave a lot of worried people hope that things where going to change. When he 1st became president he went over seas made friends with many nation leaders who did not approve of us very much during the Bush administration.

Our nation wants hope and change that is why they support Obama. The Gallup poll, the most prestigious and accurate approval rating system in our nation shows that only one time in the summer of 2010 was there a time when Obama's approval rating was over shadowed by his disapproval. (think in lieing look it up)

He has cut military spending so that we can put money in our enviormental agency which was cut out of the budget in 2007
(you don't believe me look up the fiscal budget from now since 07)

Let me put it in a chart for you.

Cut our nations pay onto war benefits, to help the enviorment
(peaceful)
Universal Health care gave our nation's people health care. Yes, taxes are going to be higher but it is not going away Republicans should just read all the pages and find what they cant cut.
(peaceful)
Pulled Combat troops out of Iraq.(protest rapidly declined outside the white house the protesters where quoted in saying they are confident Obama will bring back the troops.
(Peaceful)
A cop and a black prof had a national news misunderstanding. Obama just had a beer with them
(peaceful)
(Peaceful)

Willing2 Our President before he was president gave a lot of worried people hope that things where going to change. When he 1st became president he went over seas made friends with many nation leaders who did not approve of us very much during the Bush administration.

Our nation wants hope and change that is why they support Obama. The Gallup poll, the most prestigious and accurate approval rating system in our nation shows that only one time in the summer of 2010 was there a time when Obama's approval rating was over shadowed by his disapproval. (think in lieing look it up)

He has cut military spending so that we can put money in our enviormental agency which was cut out of the budget in 2007
(you don't believe me look up the fiscal budget from now since 07)

Let me put it in a chart for you.

Cut our nations pay onto war benefits, to help the enviorment
(peaceful)
Universal Health care gave our nation's people health care. Yes, taxes are going to be higher but it is not going away Republicans should just read all the pages and find what they cant cut.
(peaceful)
Pulled Combat troops out of Iraq.(protest rapidly declined outside the white house the protesters where quoted in saying they are confident Obama will bring back the troops.
(Peaceful)
A cop and a black prof had a national news misunderstanding. Obama just had a beer with them
(peaceful)
(Peaceful)

concerning similar controversy surrounding Arafats prize:

When Alfred Nobel established a fund for the awarding of five annual prizes, "to those who, during the PRECEDING YEAR, should have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind," he made no provision for the revocation of awarded prizes, nor in the hundred year history of Nobel prizes has the Nobel Foundation established any precedent for doing so.

When we queried the Norwegian Nobel Institute about this matter, a representative was quite adamant in maintaining that they will not (and cannot) revoke an awarded prize.

It is a hoax. A Nobel Prize cannot be revoked. When it is awarded it is awarded. The Nobel Prizes are given out according to the will of Alfred Nobel and the statutes of the Nobel foundation, and there is no rule whatsoever giving the option to revoke a prize.


from snopes.com

concerning similar controversy surrounding Arafats prize:

When Alfred Nobel established a fund for the awarding of five annual prizes, "to those who, during the PRECEDING YEAR, should have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind," he made no provision for the revocation of awarded prizes, nor in the hundred year history of Nobel prizes has the Nobel Foundation established any precedent for doing so.

When we queried the Norwegian Nobel Institute about this matter, a representative was quite adamant in maintaining that they will not (and cannot) revoke an awarded prize.

It is a hoax. A Nobel Prize cannot be revoked. When it is awarded it is awarded. The Nobel Prizes are given out according to the will of Alfred Nobel and the statutes of the Nobel foundation, and there is no rule whatsoever giving the option to revoke a prize.


from snopes.com

concerning similar controversy surrounding Arafats prize:

When Alfred Nobel established a fund for the awarding of five annual prizes, "to those who, during the PRECEDING YEAR, should have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind," he made no provision for the revocation of awarded prizes, nor in the hundred year history of Nobel prizes has the Nobel Foundation established any precedent for doing so.

When we queried the Norwegian Nobel Institute about this matter, a representative was quite adamant in maintaining that they will not (and cannot) revoke an awarded prize.

It is a hoax. A Nobel Prize cannot be revoked. When it is awarded it is awarded. The Nobel Prizes are given out according to the will of Alfred Nobel and the statutes of the Nobel foundation, and there is no rule whatsoever giving the option to revoke a prize.


from snopes.com