Obama and the Nobel Prize
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig10/chossudovsky1.1.1.html
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The international politics behind Obama’s Peace prize
Christian Science Monitor
10/10/09
The surprise decision to award President Barack Obama the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize had much of the world scratching its head on Friday, even among the president’s most ardent fans. Less than a year into office, the young president has made lofty promises, committed his administration to diplomacy, and convinced the world that a less belligerent America is in the offing. But he is also the commander-in-chief for the Afghan and Iraq wars, as well as ongoing lower-scale US military efforts in Pakistan, the Horn of Africa, and the Philippines. Later on Friday, Obama will hold a strategy session with his war cabinet that could lead to a commitment of more combat troops to Afghanistan. A commentator on Britain’s Sky News captured the mood well when he said it appeared Obama had won the prize for ‘not being George Bush’...
http://tinyurl.com/yz6z45s
The real problem with Obama’s Nobel
Independent Institute
by Anthony Gregory
10/10/09
Obama probably deserves the prize as much as some previous recipients, like Henry Kissinger and Woodrow Wilson, but it is still obnoxious to see any warmonger get it. It says something perverse about what the establishment regards as pro-peace activism. The real problem with Obama’s Nobel is not that it might neuter him, but rather that it may embolden him. In the name of peace, he and previous presidents have kept America in a virtual state of perpetual war for three generations. The Nobel is a signal to Obama that he can keep talking like a man of peace even as he acts like a master of war...
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=2635
Eight years of big lies on Afghanistan
Future of Freedom Foundation
by James Bovard
10/09/09
It seems like only yesterday that President George W. Bush was bragging about having brought ‘freedom and democracy’ to 25 million Afghans, a key theme in his second inaugural address. For 8 years, the American people have been fed one big lie after another regarding Afghanistan. Now, when the Pentagon is saber-rattling to vastly increase the number of U.S. troops sent there, a refresher course on the Biggest Lies is in order...
http://www.fff.org/comment/com0910d.asp
Get out now
In These Times
by G. Pascal Zachary
10/09/09
For all the talk of polarization and partisanship in U.S. politics, what’s remarkable is the extent to which President Obama has continued policies and practices of his predecessor, George Bush, in domestic economics and military affairs. Economically, Obama has continued the bailout of Wall Street, maintained Bush-era tax cuts, pursued ’stimulus’ through large deficit spending and re-appointed Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman who was a Bush favorite. In defense, Obama has broken with Bush on a few critical matters, notably by canceling expensive weapons systems and dropping (in September) an aggressive plan to impose a ‘missile shield’ in Eastern Europe that Russia intensely opposed. Yet Obama has carried over Bush’s secretary of defense, Robert Gates; essentially stuck with Bush timetables on Iraq; and maintained historically record levels of Pentagon spending. The president has continued the war in Afghanistan, raising the number of American combat troops...
http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/5006/get_out_now
I hope Nobel members are pleased with themselves
The Guardian [UK]
by Michael White
10/10/09
http://tinyurl.com/ykofrdc
Did Obama deserve the Nobel Peace Prize?
The Nation
by Melissa Harris-Lacewell
10/10/09
My reaction to Barack Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize elicited some decidedly ‘un-peaceful’ responses from my friends and followers on social networking and blog sites. … I have been an ardent supporter of President Obama. … But my response to the Nobel Peace Prize announcement was not particularly celebratory. … I criticized the idea of awarding a Nobel Peace Prize to a president whose short presidency has included drone attacks with devastating civilian casualities, the escalation of the war in Afghanistan, and a painfully slow response to the basic human rights issues facing LGBT communities. I respect the President’s accomplishments in diplomacy but believed these issues were relevant to assessing his record on peace...
http://tinyurl.com/yhaswss
Afghanistan: The proxy war
Boston Globe
by staff
10/11/09
If the president approves the McChrystal plan he will implicitly: * Anoint counterinsurgency — protracted campaigns of armed nation-building — as the new American way of war. * Embrace George W. Bush’s concept of open-ended war as the essential response to violent jihadism (even if the Obama White House has jettisoned the label ‘global war on terror’). * Affirm that military might will remain the principal instrument for exercising American global leadership, as has been the case for decades. Implementing the McChrystal plan will perpetuate the longstanding fundamentals of US national security policy: maintaining a global military presence, configuring US forces for global power projection, and employing those forces to intervene on a global basis...
http://tinyurl.com/yfy655f
Peace Prize to Obama. America: “Huh?”
The American Prospect
by Tim Fernholz
10/09/09
To sum up the the universal reaction, what the heck? … Adam may have said it best: ‘No joke, Obama should turn the Nobel Peace prize down until he’s finished with his two wars.’ Obama is doing pretty well as president, but it hasn’t even been a year yet! On the international peace front, he has made ‘extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples,’ but they are only efforts thus far. Far better to wait unto those efforts pay off to give him the prize. … Obama should accept the award on behalf of the United States and then recognize 10 or 15 underappreciated people working for peace around the world...
http://tinyurl.com/yzodccx
Nobel Peace Prize
The Libertarian Enterprise
by Kent McManigal
10/11/09
http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2009/tle540-20091011-02.html
Mr. Obama, get out of our way
Dallas Libertarian Examiner
by Garry Reed
http://tinyurl.com/yljd765
Brother Obama’s Traveling Healing and Salvation Crusade
Classically Liberal
by CLS
10/10/09
http://tinyurl.com/yklfkle
Accusing Obama critics of “standing with the terrorists”
Salon
by Glenn Greenwald
10/10/09
What’s particularly bothersome about yesterday’s attacks is the premise that it’s improper, unpatriotic and even Terrorist-mimicking to do anything but cheer — have a ‘national celebration’ — when Obama is awarded the Nobel Prize. Whether Obama is actually pursuing policies of peace happens to be an extremely legitimate topic of debate. The same is true for whether he’s done anything meaningful yet to merit the award. … While there are arguments to make in his favor — I even made some myself yesterday in the first two paragraphs of what I wrote — there is something unquestionably bizarre about awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to a leader who did not merely ‘inherit,’ but is advocating, actively prosecuting and escalating, a major war that is killing large numbers of civilians with no plans to stop, while at the same time building prisons to house people who will have no due process...
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/10/10/prize_reaction/
The Nobel Peace Prize has become a politicized joke
Nolan Chart
by Kenn Jacobine
10/10/09
The five-member committee that chooses the prize’s winners is selected by Norway’s Parliament. It has over time liberalized the selection process by choosing those that are not necessarily peacemakers but poverty, disease, and climate change foes. In other words, they have granted awards to warriors in some of their favorite causes. This year they really liberalized the process by selecting someone who has no accomplishments in any of the above...
http://www.nolanchart.com/article6944.html
Bizarro peace prize awarded to Obama
AntiWar.Com
by Justin Raimondo
10/09/09
For years — ever since the 9/11 terrorist attacks — I’ve been saying that the sheer force of the explosions that sent us hurtling into a nightmare world of color-coded terrorist alerts and hunts for ‘weapons of mass destruction,’ must have ripped a hole in the very fabric of reality. So that, today, we’re living in an alternate universe, where the laws of logic and reason are repealed — Bizarro World. For a while there I thought we might be heading back toward reality, or at least some more rational version of it, and that what I call the Bizarro Effect might be wearing off. However, this morning’s shocker — the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to an American president about to launch a decades-long military occupation, even as he promises (so far to little effect) to bring another occupation to an end — has dashed that hope beyond redemption...
http://tinyurl.com/yf447yg
Informant: Thomas L. Knapp
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Weapons Makers as 'Welfare Queens'
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/03/19
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