English translation: Machetera
In an unusual decision, the Norwegian Nobel Committee put an end to seven months of searching among the 205 nominees for the Nobel Peace Prize and conferred it upon Barack Obama. The Norwegian committee's decision provoked very mixed international reactions: ranging from stupefaction to huge laughter. The statement by the organization's president, Thorbjorn Jagland got straight to the point: "It's important for the Committee to recognize those people who are struggling and idealistic, but we cannot do that every year. We must from time to time go into the realm of realpolitik. It is always a mix of idealism and realpolitik that can change the world." The problem with Obama is that his idealism remains at the level of rhetoric, while in the world of realpolitik, his initiatives could not be more antagonistic to the search for peace in this world.
According to Robert Higgs, a specialist in military expenditures for the Independent Institute inOakland, California, the way Washington prepares its defense budget systematically conceals the real total. Upon analyzing the figures submitted to Congress by George W. Bush for the 2007-2008 fiscal year, Higgs concluded that they represented just over half of the figure that would actually be disbursed, therefore surpassing the previously unthinkable barrier of a trillion dollars, that is, a million dollars multiplied a million times. And this because, according to Higgs, one must add to the base sum originally designated for the Pentagon, the expenditures related to defense which are spent outside the Pentagon; the extraordinary funds demanded by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; the interest associated with the indebtedness incurred by the White House to meet these expenses; and those arising from the medical and psychological attention for the 33,000 men and women wounded in the wars of the United States which require a hefty budget for the National Veterans Administration. Obama has done absolutely nothing to stop this infernal machine of death and destruction, and when through the
mouthpiece of his Secretary of State he denounces arms purchases which "outpace all other countries," instead of beholding the beam in his own eye, the target of his criticism is the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela!
Obama increased the budget for the war in Afghanistan as a result of his contemplated increase in the number of troops deployed in that country; his troops continue to occupy Iraq; he has given no sign of changing George Bush Jr.'s decision to activate the Fourth
Fleet; he has moved ahead with a still secret treaty with lvaro Uribe to open seven new U.S. military bases in Colombia, and it is said that there are five more that are about to be confirmed, through which he is preparing (or has become complicit in) a new wave of warmongering against Latin America; he maintains his ambassador in Tegucigalpa when
practically all others have been withdrawn, thereby supporting the Honduran putschists; he maintains the blockade against Cuba and is not in the least perturbed by the unjust imprisonment of the five anti-terrorist fighters incarcerated in the United States. Of course, the Norwegian Committee periodically suffers some delusions which translate into decisions as absurd as the present one – whether brought on by its ignorance of world affairs, opportunistic pressures, or the delights of Norwegian aquavit, no-one can be totally sure. But if at one time it granted the Nobel Peace Prize to Henry Kissinger,
correctly defined by Gore Vidal as the biggest war criminal wandering loose in the world, how could they have denied it to Obama, especially after the rebuff he suffered at the hands of Lula in Copenhagen? Realpolitik demanded an immediate rectification of this error. Because after all, as the very President of the United States stated upon learning of his prize, it represents a "reaffirmation of [U.S.] American leadership on behalf of aspirations held by people in all nations." And so, in a sudden attack of "realism," the comrades on the Committee put forward their grain of sand to fortify the declining
hegemony of the United States in the international system.
Let us not other two warmongers, Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt, though not within nine-month in power, too received Nobel Peace Prize.
Nobel Prize record – when it comes to "Peace"- is no different than the record of United Nations, when it comes to the plight of Muslim communities around the world – From Palestine to Bosnia or from Chechnya to Afghanistan or from Iraq to Philippines. I bet if Hitler had agreed to help WZC for the creation of a Zionist entity within Palestine by war – he too would have received the Nobel Peace Prize.
Obama: Nobel Prize but no Peace
http://rehmat1.wordpress.com/2009/10/11/obama-nobel-prize-but-no-peace/
If Shim3oun Peres (a notorious liar, terrorist, hypocrite, mass-murderer, baby-killer) and Yaser Arafat (a murderer, terrorist, thug, thief, liar) can get this prize then i guess anyone can. This prize has no meaning to me since it is not sincere.
I wouldn't be surprised if Abbas or Dahlan were to be given this prize. And how about giving it to the various arab rulers that torture their own people for having the wrong opinion or being too anti-israel or dare to speak up against "his majesty" and "his excellency" and his highness" and then wrap it up with giving it to netanyahu, olmert, livni, barak (after their latest achievment in Gaza) and why not even lieberman (at least he still hasent killed as many as olmert, barak and livni). Condaleeza rice and her new middle east should be given a piece of the cake as well. Let the charade continue.
Palestine is occupied as a country, but the world is occupied as a system.
I think Norway issued Obama a mandate-meaning Do Something to deserve the honor!
In his congratulatory message to President Obama upon being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, Israeli President Shimon Peres stated:
"Very few leaders if at all were able to change the mood of the entire world in such a short while with such profound impact. You provided all of humanity with fresh hope, with intellectual determination, and a feeling that there is a Lord in heaven and believers on earth. Under your leadership, peace became a real and original agenda. And from Jerusalem, I am sure all the bells of engagement and understanding will ring again. You gave us a license to dream and act in a noble direction." [1]
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." [2]
In 1994, Yitzhak Rabin, Yasser Arafat and Peres were all awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for playing a part in achieving the Oslo Declaration of Principles. According to the preamble of the DOP, peace was to be based on mutual respect and reconciliation.
Alfred Nobel’s intention was to reward people with a moral backbone and he hoped to create icons and examples to humankind. Here's hoping President Obama seizes his Nobel Prize as a mandate from Oslo and also hold Israel accountable for past sins of omission and obfuscations.
In 1963, when Vanunu was nine years old the Zionists came to his home town of Marrakech, Morocco and convinced his Orthodox father to abandon his general store and pack up the first seven of his eleven children for the land of milk and honey. Instead, the Vanunu's were banished to the desert of Beesheva. A few months later, Shimon Peres, then Israel's Deputy Minister of Defense met with President John Kennedy, at the White House.
Kennedy told Peres, "You know that we follow very closely the discovery of any nuclear development in the region. This could create a very dangerous situation. For this reason we monitor your nuclear effort. What could you tell me about this?"
Peres replied, "I can tell you most clearly that we will not introduce nuclear weapons to the region, and certainly we will not be the first."
Ghassan Khatib, a spokesman for the Palestinian Authority, said Palestinians hope the prize "will provide an additional incentive" for Obama to keep striving for an end to the decades-old conflict while Reuven Rivlin, speaker of Israel's parliament, called the Nobel decision "very strange." [3]
The Nobel committee "stressed that it made its decision based on Mr. Obama’s actual efforts toward nuclear disarmament as well as American engagement with the world relying more on diplomacy and dialogue." [4]
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.
Instead of repenting and abolishing nuclear weapons after the terrorism inflicted on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the American government upped the ante of nuclear insanity and thus bears the most responsibility for the political conflict and economic competition that ensued during those 46 years.
The apartheid regime in South Africa existed from 1948 until 1994; but it was not until the late 1980's that the American government got on-board with the over twenty years of a global call for boycott, divestment and sanctions that finally brought that apartheid system to its knees.
The Norwegians are way ahead of US in regards to people power and human rights activism for justice in Israel Palestine.
The Norwegian government dropped the Israeli firm Elbit Systems Ltd. from the government pension fund, because regular people brought to the attention of their government Elbit's involvement in building the Apartheid Wall in the Occupied West Bank.
"Norway's Council of Ethics cited the 2004 International Court of Justice ruling that declared the Separation Wall to be illegal. Elbit Systems supplies essential components for the building of the Wall, including surveillance technology, and is also a manufacturer of weapons used to sustain Israel's Occupation of Palestine… [and] because of the firm's material support for the illegal Occupation and crimes against the Palestinian people… [and because they] supplied arms to Israel in the full knowledge that these weapons would be used against civilians in Palestine and Lebanon." [5]
Knowledge always brings responsibility and there are no secrets on the World Wide Web!
On October 2, 2009, The Washington Times reported that "Obama agrees to keep Israel's nukes secret [and] reaffirmed a 4-decade-old secret understanding that has allowed Israel to keep a nuclear arsenal without opening it to international inspections."
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."
On April 5, 2009, President Obama stood on the world stage in Prague and admitted, "As the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, the United States has a moral responsibility to act…When we fail to pursue peace, then it stays forever beyond our grasp. We know the path when we choose fear over hope. To denounce or shrug off a call for cooperation is an easy but also cowardly thing to do. That’s how wars begin. That’s where human progress ends…the voices of peace and progress must be raised together…Human destiny will be what we make of it…Words must mean something."
Here's hoping President Obama will courageously pursue the mandate issued from Oslo with an unrestrained audacious daring and that President Peres is ready to ease his conscience and allow Vanunu the right to leave occupied east Jerusalem.
"HOPE has two children. The first is ANGER at the way things are. The second is COURAGE to DO SOMETHING about it."-St. Augustine
1.http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1254861908462
2.http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1216&Itemid=218
3. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-obama-nobel-israel10-2009oct10,0,6389213.story
4. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/10/world/10nobel.html?th&emc=th
5. http://www.waronwant.org/news/latest-news/16659-victory-for-bds-campaign-as-arms-firm-axed
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