The article, below, is not as much about Obama as it is about the long-corrupt, bogus Nobel Committee, but it's also about the NC bogusly awarding him and, historically, many other supreme war criminals, the so-called Peace Prize; while denying it to people who really deserved it and (for some) were nominated multiple times. It's not fully detailed, but is quite some tragic, shocking history. And this history of darkness starts with the founder himself (which reminds me of HRW, founded by psychopath General Tommy Franks, based on what I have read anyway).

"October Surprise: Peace Prize to a War Criminal",

by Stephen Lendman, Oct. 12, 2009

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=15636

Jesus, the Nazarene, and possibly others (?), said all human institutions would fail and he evidently was NOT mistaken. It's not to proselytize, but is a historical reference; and if he didn't exist at all, then this is still a historial reference to the words that are of ... ages ago.

Human institutionalisation fools a lot of people, but not everyone, and they all fail when we consider what their stated or officially declared purposes are. Never expect one to not fail, but try to get them to fail as little as possible; [humanly] possible, that is. That, unfortunately, is all we can try to do. To prevent them from ever failing is surely impossible for us, but it's important to try to get them to fail as little as possible; to always work for real justice and peace. If we don't do this, then we really deserve neither justice nor peace for ourselves. I did not coin this, but do believe in such principled outlook.

How we can try to do this is another matter. Some of us can only write, as well as speak with people during daily outings. Others can do more. Doing what we can may be little, but it's better than doing or trying to do nothing at all, I figure. Some people will prefer to become cloistered and spend life in mainly prayer, most certainly including for humanity, and this is doing or trying to do something. Such people can believe that any other human efforts will fail, and these people evidently are right, but some people choose to try to carry on with works, instead of lives of prayer. Both do as they believe and for the purpose of trying to help others; not themselves.

The institutions don't fail when their officially declared purposes are false to begin with, only meant to fool the public, and the real goals are achieved. Their only failures in this case are when they don't succeed in fooling everyone in the targeted public(s). And they usually do not fool everyone; but they sure do seem to fool a lot people. Obama fooled a lot of people! He's not an institution, but he works for the ruling "elites" and they have institutions, foundations, etcetera, and these promote Obama, etcetera.

The establishment of the League of Nations and also the U.N., along with the NC, seem to fit in this category of institutions; the officially declared purposes for establishing them being starkly different from the truly intended purposes. They were all formed by imperialist, colonialist, oligarchic, ... "elites", who never did and never will care about The Commons, the common people, socio-economic fairness, real justice for everyone, etcetera!

For laymen like myself, who have little education in history, especially truthful history, it was clear in the 1990's that the NC was a bogus institution when several so-called NC Peace Prize recipients clearly and energetically supported the war on Kosovo that, from the start, was obviously unjustifiable and which the Clinton-corrupted Rambouilet Accord clearly told us with a quick reading that the war was about gangsterism, ... at the highest of levels. For people who knew more about the "Peace" Prize allocations and denials or rejections by the NC, however, these people could know well before that it was and is a bogus institution. I only started learning this in 1999. Prior to that year, I don't recall if I knew anything at all about this bogus institution. I was little interested in politics, except local level; already and very sickened by provincial (Ca), state (US) and national (US and Ca) levels, while being so sickened by all of this crap from early teenage years, or even earlier, that I didn't care to learn about more and didn't bother being particularly interested. I tried to live without these politics in my life, as much as possible, but they eventually became ... of focus interest in the early 1990s. Since then, they've only had me very pissed off. It was easier ignoring them, before.

Streets, farm life, ... this would be more of my way of existence. Politics still screw up these aspects of society, but there's a way to get by, if communities unite, to help each other out, and this activism is needed; on the streets, in communities with farms, etcetera. Grassroots "stuff"! Grass and asphalt jungle, that is, rural and urban roots.

Kathy Kelly, a definitely deserving person, as Stephen Lendman states, was nominated multiple times and was never awarded the "Peace" Prize. He also names another deserving nominee, or two, and I think they can be happy for this rejection; given the extremely corrupt nature of the NC. However, we certainly can't be happy about having yet [another] hellbent institution that works to try to influence us into supporting evil.

People who deserve such a prize, if any is to be granted to anyone at all, don't merit ridicule, but the NC clearly does. The NC and its imperialist, ... leadership, puppeteers, that is.

It is a puppet and used for propaganda of deception, which is what Stephen Lendman basically describes with the history of this bogus institution.

This article by Medea Benjamin and Kevin Martin quickly strikes me as being right about [some] things that need to be done, but is otherwise worthless reading for, I hope most anyway, CD readers; preferably, everyone and not only CD readers.

They should make sure to demand U.S. and NATO withdrawal from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and corrections made in Haiti, South, Central, Latin America(s), Africa, Indonesia, South Korea, and so on; and I didn't see this in the article. They also write as if it's for Americans and the U.S. government to police the world, which is bogus crap, un- and anti-constitutional, etcetera. It's never for the U.S. or any other country or set of countries to police the world, unless it's done through the UN [GA] (not SC).

Real activists must consider the WHOLE picture, the whole reality, all of the related parts, say; instead of narrowly focusing on one or two instances as if it helps to address the WHOLE. By keeping the whole in mind, then it's actually easy to develop a [complete] platform. If we don't consider the whole, then a complete platform, developing one can seem impossible, or simply won't be done.

I don't believe in [partial] justice or corrections; no botch(ed) works. It's not difficult to get the platform right; it just takes some [thinking], careful, not hasty.

After all, U.S. (and NATO) imperialism, etcetera, is [global].

It's nonsense to think that the Nobel Committee offering the Peace Prize to or for Obama is or can be at all needed to get (inactive) Americans to become active. It's a view fitting for a comedic sci-fi movie. This bs move by the NC is wortheless in terms of any real good it can lead to or do, and it's a potential propaganda (of deception) scheme. It's worthless, if what we care for is real justice and, therefore, real intelligence. If any inactive or uncaring Americans suddenly changed because of this move by the NC, then these Americans would be so few that their number wouldn't matter anyway.

People need to wake up from dreamy land.

All due respect to Medea and Kevin, but there is a major flaw in their "to do list" proposal.

Regarding Afghanistan, for example, they suggest;

-"convene and vigorously support peace talks and political reconciliation".

With whom? This is not a war with an enemy that is threatening the US or NATO. There is no enemy. Which tribal war lord do you think we can reconcile with? And how long do you think any agreements will last?

-support "enhanced security"

Right, with what? how? the biggest war machine the world has ever seen is losing that one!

-"support woman's rights and economic development"

Great idea, but first you'll have to wipe out indigenous tribes who don't necessarily agree with Euro-American norms. Solution? Obama and McCrystal suggest more troops. You agree? I don't think so.

-"Provide Congress and Americans with an exit plan to remove US and NATO troops and private military contractors from Afghanistan".

A plan? They already have a plan, it sounds familiar-- enhance security, support woman's rights and economic development and, oh yeah, defeat the Taliban.

The road to Hell is paved with good intentions. The US and NATO just need to get out, period.

AlterNet
Nobel Committee Admits Getting Into Derivatives Trading in Giving Peace Prize to Obama
By Drew Westen, AlterNet
Posted on October 12, 2009, Printed on October 12, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/143210/

A spokesman from the Nobel committee yesterday spoke on condition of anonymity about the controversial decision to award the Nobel Peace Prize to President Barack Obama, who as yet has solved no international crisis or created peaceful resolution to any conflict but has delivered some awesome speeches that have breathed new life into the Norwegian stock exchange, the Red Herring 500, according to the committee member.

"There's derivatives trading now in virtually every commodity known to humankind," noted the source. "So why not peace?"

He added that rare commodities with unpredictable futures are particularly attractive to derivatives traders and that peace certainly falls into that category. With many on the right objecting that Obama hasn't done anything to earn the prize and many on the left complaining that his record domestically has been to deliver magnificent speeches without following up with any decisive actions and to paper over conflicts with inspiring words and half-measures, the Nobel committee member admitted on background that he wasn't sure whether the action of the committee technically could be considered hedging or derivatives trading, but he was counting on it to create a competitive market for both peace and Obama memorabilia.

According to inside sources, the decision to award Obama the peace prize represented an unprecedented joint decision of the committees charged with selecting winners in economics and peace.

Derivatives are complex financial products that no one on the peace committee understood. However, it had help from the committee on economics, which has been considering co-awarding its Nobel this year to Timothy Geithner and Larry Summers for their collaboration in creating and then halting the economic crisis that began with the collapse of Lehman Bros. in September 2008.

One member of the economics committee pointed out the extraordinary nature of their achievement: "Before Geithner and Summers, we could only perform econometric computer simulations. They were the first to demonstrate experimentally, in real time, that you can collapse the world economy with neoclassical economic theories and then revive it with Keynesian principles. We've been waiting for someone to test Keynesian principles definitively in the real world for over 60 years. This is a truly stunning achievement."

Members of the peace committee were moved by the arguments of their colleagues in economics.

"The possibilities of trading in secondary peace products are extremely exciting," noted the anonymous source. "Imagine if we could have used the peace prize to leverage Mussolini into not exercising his option to buy fascism from Hitler in the early to mid-1930s."

Unfortunately, the Great Depression made any attempt at deregulation of peace commodities at that time untenable.

Upon hearing about the committee's decision to introduce speculation into the peace market, a number of experts expressed serious concerns.

"Now is not the time to introduce subprime honorees into the Nobel portfolio," argued one experienced diplomat, who worried that the committee might next award the prize to Libyan not-so-strong-man-anymore Moammar Gadhafi. Doing so, he argued, could lead to an inflated peace market that could produce the equivalent of a housing bubble, or at least an inflated tent.

The committee had apparently strongly considered Gadhafi as an alternative to Obama, noting that his decision not to blow up any planes in over 20 years constituted a Nobel-caliber contribution to world peace, and that, like Obama, he had done something by doing nothing. However, his chances were dramatically reduced when the Libyan government gave a hero's welcome to the returning Lockerbee bomber who had been released on humanitarian grounds because he has three months left to live, after doctors in Scotland determined him either to be, or to have, a "malignant asshole."

Insiders have acknowledged that this was a weak year for candidates for the peace prize, leading to the unusual decision to bet on futures rather than follow the century-old precedent of selecting someone who has actually accomplished something, like Yassir Arafat, who once shaved for an episode of "Terrorists Gone Wild."

Given its interest in borrowing methods from the financial industry, however, the committee did consider short-selling the prize to former Vice President Dick Cheney. However, it ultimately decided that Cheney had already been awarded the title of "Dick," and that they couldn't really top that.

The committee's decision ultimately came down to the choice between either Obama for not being George Bush or Bush for not being president.

Drew Westen, Ph.D., is professor of psychology and psychiatry at Emory University, founder of Westen Strategies, and author of The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation.
© 2009 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/143210/

I'm still reeling from this tsunami of lectures about the True Meaning of the Nobel Peace Prize, which we ignorant and parochial disaffected Amerikan critics have woefully failed to comprehend.

It was ALWAYS really more of a "PREward"-- a treat to encourage a Goo' Boy! to keep up the good... intentions. Who knew?

I propose that the Nobel Committee secure permission from Yoko Ono to create a special "Imagine" reward to replace the present confusing premise of conferring a prestigious award based on the winner's empty talk and ability to make a good impression on secluded Norwegians.

Meanwhile, I suspect that Kevin and Medea got a phone call from Mrs. Michael Moore, and she gave them an EARFUL!

· Yr Obd't Servant

"Military spending: drastically reduce Pentagon spending in order to invest in weapons industry worker re-training and human and environmental needs, both here and around the world."

That's the no-brainer that could save us all and why the MIC's Zionists and war-profiteers keep successfully frightening us with terrorists.

Well of course the Nobel Peace Prize isn't worth the paper it's printed on. Sure, there's money involved, but the title makes a mockery of the word "peace"

It should henceforth be called the Nobel Dreamers Award.

That said, Madea offers a good starting point.

MEDEA AND CODE PINK:

DID YOU SUPPORT DENNIS KUCINICH?

ADMITTEDLY, I AM NOT KNOWLEDGEABLE OF THE CANDIDATE YOU SUPPORTED.

IF NOT, AND YOU SUPPORTED OBAMA AND TO ALL THOSE WHO DID VOTE FOR OBAMA:

THE WRITING WAS ON THE WALL. OBAMA'S VOTES IN CONGRESS VERY CLEARLY SUPPORTED CORPORATISM AND VIOLATION OF CIVIL RIGHTS (IE. PATRIOT ACT).

IF YOU DID SUPPORT DENNIS KUCINICH, THEN YOU WILL KNOW HE IS THE ONLY VIABLE CANDIDATE THAT WILL GET THE JOB DONE -- BASED ON PRIOR VOTING RECORD AND THE WAY HE LIVES HIS LIFE.

MY SUGGESTION: START SUPPORTING DENNIS KUCINICH NOW!!

"Well" (to quote Reagan), WE'RE WAAAIIITING!

President Obama, is now the third sitting American president to win the award, and his peers include Mikhail S. Gorbachev, who won the Nobel for helping end the Cold War which raged from 1945 to 1991, and Nelson Mandela, who fought for the end of Apartheid in South Africa.

Another Nobel peer is Israeli President Shimon Peres who sent President Obama a most Orwellian congratulatory message.

Within days of the announcement for 2009’s Nobel Peace Prize, twenty-two time nominee, Mordechai Vanunu declined the honor in a letter to the Nobel Peace Prize Committee in Oslo:

"I am asking the committee to remove my name from the nominations…I cannot be part of a list of laureates that includes Simon Peres…Peres established and developed the atomic weapon program in Dimona in Israel…Peres was the man who ordered [my] kidnapping…he continues to oppose my freedom and release…WHAT I WANT IS FREEDOM AND ONLY FREEDOM…FREEDOM AND ONLY FREEDOM I NEED NOW."

In 2005, Vanunu, told me:

"President Kennedy tried to stop Israel from building atomic weapons. Prime Minister Ben Guirion said, 'The nuclear reactor is only for peace."

"Kennedy insisted on an open internal inspection. He wrote letters demanding that Ben Guirion open up the Dimona for inspection.

"When Johnson became president, he made an agreement with Israel that two senators would come every year to inspect. Before the senators would visit, the Israelis would build a wall to block the underground elevators and stairways. From 1963 to ’69, the senators came, but they never knew about the wall that hid the rest of the Dimona from them.

"Nixon stopped the inspections and agreed to ignore the situation. As a result, Israel increased production. In 1986, there were over two hundred bombs. Today, they may have enough plutonium for ten bombs a year."

Excerpted Oct. 10, 2009: http://www.wearewideawake.org/

"Obama's Mandate from and Vanunu's letter to: 2009 Nobel Peace Prize Committee"

To Ms. Benjamin: My advice to BO is more succinct: Let's just get the f*** out of Iraq and AfPak.

When I heard the news, I laughed. Not sarcasticly or derisively, just plain laughed at the irony of it all.

I thought back on Martin Luther King Jr., Jimmy Carter, George Marshall, Aung San Su Kyi, Nelson Mandela, and Albert Schweitzer all of whose peace prizes have now been devalued. I remembered that in 1948, 55, 56, 66, 67, and 72, there were no peace prizes awarded because no suitable recipeints could be found.

I was on the verge of being angry, derisive, and scathing all at the same time when I heard the President's statement that he believed that he in no way was worthy of such an honor and then changed my mind about him. Is there a Nobel prize for telling the truth?

Poet

JStewart said it best last week on TDS:

The election was also a 'call to action' by The People.

So far? All talk, no action... unless by 'action' one means maintaining and/or expanding Cheney/Bush 'policies,' saving banksters, saving health insurance companies, and reading lots and lots of very pretty words...

I would have given the NPP to George Bush, for making good on his final promise to disappear into obscurity and, hence, bringing joy to tens of millions worldwide...

"Don't cave in to Israeli intransigence-we could, after all, refuse to pay for this anymore."

"Could?" Should, is more like it. Complete international boycott of fascist Israel until the citizens of that country elect a government that allows return of refugees and/or compensation for their destroyed houses and stolen Palestinian bank accounts. That's right, stolen bank accounts. Liquidated in 1948 and not a penny paid back. The Swiss should've been so stubborn! Oy!

Evidently Medea, OBOMBA has Code Pink conned too. Your "to do" list is commendable although sophomoric and you are wasting your time as he is just a tool of the MIC, but one that makes slick Willie look like a school boy! As some one else aptly made the sagacious statement: you better write that "to do" list on toilet paper!

Nice list - a great wish list - never gonna happen!

never mentioned - oil, pipelines, heroin, Military Industrial Complex, ruling rich ologarchy - they are ignoring the elephant in the living room.

But I could be wrong !

Premature Peace Prize or Call to Action?

Neither, it was a joke.

Yours is a wonderful "to do" list, and Obama would probably agree with nearly every one of them as something he WANTS to do (isn't this why he won the peace prize, for his good intentions?) but...

Will he do many or any of the "chores" on that list in the remotely forseeable future? Off his performance yesterday after telling an LGBT meeting of his "unqualified support" of the pro-gay agenda,this is doubtful. He told them it would be "no easy task" because their issues "raise a great deal of emotion in this country." Obama thus telescopes that his practical agenda of the future is going to be that of the past. None of the items on the to-do list could be accomplished without rousing a "great deal of emotion" in one or another militaristic and imperialistic constituency in the country; and those crazies of the right are, ironically, those to whose "emotions" he most directly responds. Just today, he "praised" Republicans for supporting his health care "reform" plan, citing people like Bob Dole who are not even in Congress, while hardly a GOP vote can be found. But somehow the "emotions" of the tea-baggers seem to be the most relevant emotions, maybe because they paint mustaches of Hitler on his posters and otherwise disrupt the aura of Sweet Harmony in which he and his followers have so fervently desired to prevail in this country.

I'm sorry to say this but I hope that, when you send your to-do list to the President, you put it on very soft paper that is appropriate for the use to which it is likely to be put.

The prize was given and now we await the results. How many people pay attention to this stuff anyway? We're a sorry country.