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I was a physicist before becoming an engineer, and I love to hear about all that science during the Nobel Prize season, but the Peace Prize is my favorite. I wo

I was a physicist before becoming an engineer, and I love to hear about all that science during the Nobel Prize season, but the Peace Prize is my favorite. I would even say it's the only one to be "useful" (is it really useful to award money to someone sometimes many years after (s)he has retired from doing any research?) The Peace prize is different, by nature it is always non-consensual, because there would be no reason to award a Peace Prize if there were not someone else who is waging a war, denying other people their basic rights or doing other Bad Things. Today it's the Taliban and the child exploiters who are the bad guys pointed out by the prize. Last year it was the Syrian dictatorship, in 2011 the Chinese government. When Obama was given the Peace Prize, I was also shocked in disbelief, and like most people I think it was not deserved. But then I saw that some people in the US were not simply shacking their head, they were foaming with rage. Coincidentally, they were the same people who supported, and sometimes continued to justify the disastrous foreign policy of the previous administration. And that make me think this prize was actually well awarded. It was not deserved by Obama, and I think the Nobel committee, by giving him the prize at the beginning of his presidency before he could actually do anything for or against peace, was almost explicitly saying that they didn't care that he didn't deserved it. This prize was a middle finger to the Bush administration and I think that middle finger was well deserved. The same goes for other polemical awards. Al Gore got it, and it made all the climate science deniers mad. Yasser Arafat got it and the Israeli political right got crazy. It's not always like this (The Red Cross got the prize a number of times, and nobody disagrees with it), but often, if you don't understand why a Nobel Peace Prize is awarded, look at who it pisses off.

lmg643 12y ago
If we put away our personal politics, and try to see Obama's actions objectively, it seems he has continued, even expanded, America's intervention in governments around the middle east. Libya was overthrown, Egypt was overthrown, and we've been making attempts in Syria and Ukraine. And after failing to gin up support against chemical weapons, we're now bombing Syria because of some crazy rebels that are allied with groups we support. In the bigger picture, we are waging a crypto-war with between Russia over energy resources from Russia and the Gulf into Europe. Pope Francis recently had the courage to call it as such: http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/09/13/us-pope-war-idUSKBN0H808L20140913 http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/09/13/us-pope-war-idUSKB... So - to see Obama's peace prize as anything other than a partisan political joke (as you say, a "middle finger" to Bush) is a mistake. Obama's administration has put the world as close to a hot-war between nuclear powers as we've seen in some time. It should make us angry - he was elected to stop the madness, and it seems like he is running business-as-usual.
- _cudgel 12y ago
  > It should make us angry - he was elected to stop the madness, and it seems like he is running business-as-usual. It should make us angry, but not because he didn't fulfill his promise -- I think the public made a huge mistake taking a politician at his word. Rather, we ought to be angry for two reasons. One, because he simply doesn't have the power to stop it. The machinery of the state, and the industry that keeps it propped up, have a momentum all their own. Two, because he stood alone in the face of this madness. The Democrats could have reigned all this in in his first term, with investigations and criminal charges for the perpetrators, but they preferred to move on to other business, which it turns out is the same as the old business.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
derefr 12y ago
I like this interpretation. The winner of the Peace Prize isn't the moon, they're the finger pointing at the moon.
autokad 12y ago
i disagree. it relegated the peace prise to a liberal circle jerk, and only holds credibility with those who already have those ideas - hence the circle jerk. edit: and for what its worth, there was nothing Bush did that Obama didnt do ^2. more spying, more 'drone strikes', more meddling, more pushing countries into war. Kerry was a bit peeved when Syria actually abided to remove their chemical weapons.

lmg643 12y ago

If we put away our personal politics, and try to see Obama's actions objectively, it seems he has continued, even expanded, America's intervention in governments around the middle east. Libya was overthrown, Egypt was overthrown, and we've been making attempts in Syria and Ukraine. And after failing to gin up support against chemical weapons, we're now bombing Syria because of some crazy rebels that are allied with groups we support. In the bigger picture, we are waging a crypto-war with between Russia over energy resources from Russia and the Gulf into Europe. Pope Francis recently had the courage to call it as such: http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/09/13/us-pope-war-idUSKBN0H808L20140913 http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/09/13/us-pope-war-idUSKB... So - to see Obama's peace prize as anything other than a partisan political joke (as you say, a "middle finger" to Bush) is a mistake. Obama's administration has put the world as close to a hot-war between nuclear powers as we've seen in some time. It should make us angry - he was elected to stop the madness, and it seems like he is running business-as-usual.

_cudgel 12y ago
> It should make us angry - he was elected to stop the madness, and it seems like he is running business-as-usual. It should make us angry, but not because he didn't fulfill his promise -- I think the public made a huge mistake taking a politician at his word. Rather, we ought to be angry for two reasons. One, because he simply doesn't have the power to stop it. The machinery of the state, and the industry that keeps it propped up, have a momentum all their own. Two, because he stood alone in the face of this madness. The Democrats could have reigned all this in in his first term, with investigations and criminal charges for the perpetrators, but they preferred to move on to other business, which it turns out is the same as the old business.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

derefr 12y ago

I like this interpretation. The winner of the Peace Prize isn't the moon, they're the finger pointing at the moon.

autokad 12y ago

i disagree. it relegated the peace prise to a liberal circle jerk, and only holds credibility with those who already have those ideas - hence the circle jerk. edit: and for what its worth, there was nothing Bush did that Obama didnt do ^2. more spying, more 'drone strikes', more meddling, more pushing countries into war. Kerry was a bit peeved when Syria actually abided to remove their chemical weapons.