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The Nobel Peace Prize 2020
- vaccinator 6y agoThe nobel peace prize is a joke... Even Obama got it... while droning innocent people.
- flobosg 6y agoThe Handwriting on the Wall, from Aaron Swartz: > I recently attended a talk at Stanford by Walter Bradford Ellis, a too-little-known activist and writer on the issue of global poverty and world hunger. http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/handwritingwall http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/handwritingwall
- tomohawk 6y agoWFP needs ‘systemic overhaul’ to limit abusive behaviour: external review https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/news/2019/10/14/WFP-United-Nations-abuse-harassment-discrimination https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/news/2019/10/14/WFP-Unite...
- JumpCrisscross 6y agoIs the Peace Prize now just a grant program? When did that start?
- antris 6y agoWhat are you on about...?
- TheRealNGenius 6y agoalways has been
- onion2k 6y agoWhen did that start? The Nobel Peace Prize was first awarded to an institution in 1904 - https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1904/summary/ https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1904/summary/ - so, to answer your question, 116 years ago.
- ecommerceguy 6y agoI think he's talking about it being a grant program. Probably tongue in cheek as well.
- onion2k 6y agoI believe JumpCrisscross is suggesting that the World Food Programme winning the Nobel Prize is effectively the Nobel Foundation giving them 9m SEK to carry on their work (eg a grant) rather than awarding them the prize for the work they do to promote peace (eg a prize). I didn't read the comment as tongue in cheek at all. I read it as JumpCrisscross saying WFP didn't do enough to deserve the prize, presumably because tackling poverty and starvation isn't enough in JumpCrisscross's opinion.
- stan_rogers 6y agoThat's precisely the reason why it was meant to be awarded for recent work/discoveries, and cannot be awarded posthumously. It is, and always has been, a grant program.
- ecommerceguy 6y agoHence the sarcasm. Jeesh
- Synaesthesia 6y agoOne of the more deserving winners of this prize.
- BurnGpuBurn 6y agoSpeaking of undeserved winners, I so hoped they would give it to the US president again...
- radu_floricica 6y agoWell, Obama got it for not being Bush so if Biden wins... They're gonna give him two?
- shripadk 6y agoOh you can bet they will. I still don't know what Obama got it for. It is a joke!
- sdfqasdghj2 6y agoThe committee was changed after the award to Obama. Norwegians were unimpressed by that award as well. It is unlikely to be awarded so frivolously again in the near future.
- jansan 6y agoI fully agree. The Nobel Peace Price had its reputation badly damaged when they gave it to Obama for "becoming president while being black and not George W. Bush".
- rvz 6y ago> The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided to award the Nobel Peace Prize for 2020 to the World Food Programme (WFP) for its efforts to combat hunger, for its contribution to bettering conditions for peace in conflict-affected areas and for acting as a driving force in efforts to prevent the use of hunger as a weapon of war and conflict. Good. Giving recognition to often overlooked efforts like this is completely deserved and worthy of this prize.
- swyx 6y agoIm not sure why this is but I'm always happier about the prize going to an organization rather than an individual person. I think literally placing the entire weight of world peace on one person is too much, and it places that person under incredible scrutiny for the rest of their life (or conversely anything bad they personally did in the past gets dragged up). handing it to an org recognizes that it takes much more than a single person to effect change and puts the cause above identity or personal flaws. Malala does seem to be handling it well, so what do I know.
- thomasfl 6y agoTotally agree. The European Union got the peace prize in 2012. Europa used to be most warn torn part of the world, and the origin of two world wars. Members states of the EU are expelled if they have armed conflicts with their neighbouring countries.
- M2Ys4U 6y agoNot exactly - there's no mechanism to expel a member state from the EU. Member states may have "certain [...] rights deriving from the application of the Treaties to the Member State in question, including the voting rights of the representative of the government of that Member State in the Council" suspended, but "The obligations of the Member State in question under the Treaties shall in any case continue to be binding on that State." (Article 7 TEU) The only way for a member state to cease being a member state is through the withdrawal process in Article 50 TEU (i.e. like Brexit).
- yostrovs 6y agoThe United States are still waiting for their peace prize on the same grounds. And the peace has lasted longer.
- tsimionescu 6y agoWas America a war torn region before the states united? As far as I know, not by a long shot.
- yadco 6y agoDonald Trump signed multiple peace deals this year
- altacc 6y agoOut of curiosity, please list these recent peace deals. If the UAE/Baharin normalization with Israel is on that list, them remove it. Getting two countries, who are not in conflict, to acknowledge each other and begin a formal relationship is definitely not a peace deal. A peace deal needs to involve the warring parties, which this did not.
- crusso 6y agoThat's a ridiculous amount of hair splitting. The normalization of diplomatic relations between Israel and major powers in the Middle East is a huge win for anyone who cares about peace. It's astounding to me that people hate Trump so much that they refuse to recognize the historicity of this moment. We're seeing a fundamental change in the dynamics of a conflict that has been ongoing for generations, and there's no denying that a huge impetus for that change has been a rethinking of how to solve the problem by the Trump administration.
- altacc 6y agoThere have been many different attempts to solve the Israel/Palestine conflict and its many associated issues. Every US president has a go and having yet another attempt doesn’t win anyone awards until real results & a resolution between the parties involved in the conflict is achieved. There was no big win here, Bahrain & UAE already had relationships with Israel, they were not in conflict. At best it can be described as possibly a small contributing factor to a future solution, if many other, much bigger and more relevant arrangements can be made. In reality not much has progressed. If anything, the few handshakes and promises made were a smokescreen for the unhappy status quo to go on as it was before.
- bzbarsky 6y agoI suspect the crux of the disagreement is whether the conflict is "Israel/Palestine", as you label it, or "Israel/Arab", as I suspect crusso labels it. The UAE/Bahrain peace deals are a big step for the latter, and not directly relevant to the former. So if you focus on the former, you are right that "not much has progressed", but that's a matter of what sort of progress you care about. For a long time the two conflicts were sort of interlinked, in that the Palestinians were used as both a rallying point and a pawn in the more general Arab/Israel conflict. Part of the significance of the UAE/Bahrain deals is an ongoing de-linking of the two conflicts. As a concrete example of a substantive changes that will actually affect the lives of a number of people that have happened recently in the larger Arab/Israel context, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain are now generally allowing flights from Israel through their airspace. This and the other recent liberalization steps are worth considering in the context of the situation described in https://ewerickson.substack.com/p/the-peace-deal-is-a-big-deal https://ewerickson.substack.com/p/the-peace-deal-is-a-big-de..., where quite recently references to Israel were routinely censored in textbooks and encyclopedias in the UAE. It's a big change from that to where we are now, and importantly it's a lot harder to sustain hostility against people you interact with on a daily basis than against a mysterious and vilified "other" that you never experience in person. So to the extent that easier travel leads to the travel actually happening, a practical effect of the sort of normalization of relations we are seeing could be a reduction in hostility "on the ground". Though that's likely to take a generation or three; these things are slow to change. Now how much credit _Trump_ should get for any of this, I dunno; I wasn't in those conversations. But I also don't think people should claim that the changes here are not important just because they (for excellent reasons!) dislike Trump.
- collyw 6y agoLost all credibility to me when they gave it to Obama despite him not doing anything.
- crumbshot 6y agoAnd people like Henry Kissinger and Shimon Peres before that. I agree, this prize is a nonsense. But then it's lacked credibility from the start. Nobel only funded it to help rebrand his anticipated legacy, to offset being remembered as "le marchand de la mort".
- jasonlotito 6y agoThis is decidedly not true. You can do your own research as to why he was given it, as well as the process involved. To suggest he did nothing is a flat out lie.
- collyw 6y agoWhy don't you point out something he did rather than claiming it is a lie? If your claim is that he did something to deserve it, then the onus is on you to prove it. Here is the first link I get returned for Obama Peace Prize" https://nypost.com/2019/11/02/why-obama-got-a-nobel-peace-prize-for-nothing-and-trump-never-will-for-anything/ https://nypost.com/2019/11/02/why-obama-got-a-nobel-peace-pr... It even says: “It is true, Obama did not do much before winning,” Lundestad, 74, a member of Norway’s Nobel Committee until 2014, told The Post. Second link I got returned is this: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34277960 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34277960 "Nobel secretary regrets Obama peace prize"
- zeveb 6y ago> To suggest he did nothing is a flat out lie. The deadline for nominations was eleven days after his inauguration. What did he do in those eleven days — other than not being Mr. Bush — that made him merit the prize? Seriously, when I saw the headline here on HN I thought, 'oh sheesh, what now?' and was pleasantly surprised to see it go to a deserving organisation this year. That is how poor their decision 11 years ago was: over a decade later and I view the award with suspicion.B
- cgtyoder 6y agoYasser Arafat - still the only person to hijack a plane and win the Nobel Peace Prize.
- drichel 6y agoMenachem Begin bombed the King David Hotel
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- netcan 6y agoSo far... The prize going to political leaders has been a mixed bag. Aung San Suu Kyi didn't turn out, for a recent example. The Arafat/Rabin choice seems poor in retrospect, but ATT it would have seemed like a similar choice to Begin/Sadaat a few years earlier. The latter peace did work out. None of these people were pure white snow. All four were aggressive, militaristic nationalists for all their life. They all made peace though, or tried. These are the kinds of choices that make the Peace Prize actually active. Politicians seek recognition, usually. I think venerating them for peacefulness does actually motivate. Trump wants one, for example. If an opportunity was there, I think he might have actually taken it just to get the prize.
- lokl 6y agoWhen I unexpectedly found myself responsible for feeding 100 people at imminent risk of starvation, half way around the world, WFP made it happen. Not only did they make an urgent delivery, they paved the way for a partnership with the Food and Agriculture Organization to set up a sustainable way for the people to feed themselves long-term (chickens: eggs to eat and to sell to buy other food). When talking about food security, even small numbers like this have an enormous impact, and it is truly mind-boggling to consider the overall impact of their work.
- bigyikes 6y agoHow do you unexpectedly find yourself in a situation like that?
- lokl 6y agoI was helping these people with a different type of need (non-life-threatening), then later the food security situation developed and nobody else seemed to be able/willing to help, so I changed my focus. As I imagine is often the case where WFP is concerned, the population was especially vulnerable due to pre-existing medical conditions.
- known 6y agoAnd Modi regime in India wasted 1500 tons of food grains https://thewire.in/government/food-corporation-of-india-godowns-food-grains-waste https://thewire.in/government/food-corporation-of-india-godo...