Nobel Peace Prize Cheaped?

Has the Nobel committee "cheaped" its peace prize by awarding it to Barack Obama?

Probably not considering some of the past winners. At least Obama hasn't done anything to hurt peace yet - I guess that's better than giving it to someone with a proven history of warmongering.

Well they gave it to Kissinger. What exactly did Obama get it for?

Obama apparently got it for his intentions, rather than anything he has done at the moment.

It states that he is being given the prize "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and co-operation between peoples."

I mean FFS the guy has done feck all in reality bar make a couple of popular speeaches!

So Hass, yes horribly cheaped!

It like awarding a prize to sperm for its intentions to get to the egg!

Cheap! Cheap! Cheap!

This is a joke, right?

There was a rabi, a priest and a bishop in a pub....

You know, Obama could earn massive statesmanship brownie points if he declined to accept the award.

Something like:

"I'm humbled by the Nobel committee's decision to honour me in this way but I don't believe I can accept this award until I have achieved something concrete. Upon taking office I wanted to instill a sense of hope among my fellow Americans and the people of the world. But hope isn't enough. I want to repay people's faith in me and themselves before I accept an honour of this magnitude."

I bet you he won't though.

Nah, he'll take the bucks

Of course not... He'll be there with his waving and his missus on his arm collecting the award for intending to bring peace to the world!

I suppose its only following in the MBE's footsteps and the Ashes 2005, where you had to do feck all and you got one!

Obama = Collingwood?

skully wrote:Obama = Collingwood?

Barrack Obama is black. Black means hope. Don't you get it, you racist? How can you deny a black man his right to the nobel peace prize?

Realistically though, Obama, for all the talk, for all the hype, has done nothing whatsoever with his presidency. He is a man carried in on momentum, a man who was chosen simply because the last guy, and the guy he was running against, were so damn bad. I'm all for the best man getting the job, and probably in Obama's case the best man did get the job, but so far he has delivered nothing. He shall be to Yank Politics what David Cameron shall be to British Politics - the man who got in by default and turned out to be every bit as useless as any other f*cker.

So, nobel peace prize? I bet there are plenty of people who do their own good work, in war-torn areas, having given up their whole lives to help the poor, the injured, the dying, who never get so much as a second's praise from anybody. Doesn't matter whether they're black, white, there are real heroes or heroines out there who never get so much as a pat on the back. It's an insult to them that Obama gets this award for being Obama.

The real reason for Obama getting the award has leaked out: he's the first Democrat who's been able to make peace with Hillary Clinton.

Chivalry Augustus wrote:

Realistically though, Obama, for all the talk, for all the hype, has done nothing whatsoever with his presidency. He is a man carried in on momentum, a man who was chosen simply because the last guy, and the guy he was running against, were so damn bad. I'm all for the best man getting the job, and probably in Obama's case the best man did get the job, but so far he has delivered nothing. He shall be to Yank Politics what David Cameron shall be to British Politics - the man who got in by default and turned out to be every bit as useless as any other f*cker.

So, nobel peace prize? I bet there are plenty of people who do their own good work, in war-torn areas, having given up their whole lives to help the poor, the injured, the dying, who never get so much as a second's praise from anybody. Doesn't matter whether they're black, white, there are real heroes or heroines out there who never get so much as a pat on the back. It's an insult to them that Obama gets this award for being Obama.

At present this is very Sage.

Is this the first time that this forum has agreed on anything?

That has just woofed this thread.

Just wait taips!! Watch the backlash!

holcs wrote:That has just woofed this thread.

Just wait taips!! Watch the backlash!

I also wondered about that Chas.

Chivalry Augustus wrote:Barrack Obama is black. Black means hope. Don't you get it, you racist? How can you deny a black man his right to the nobel peace prize?

Realistically though, Obama, for all the talk, for all the hype, has done nothing whatsoever with his presidency. He is a man carried in on momentum, a man who was chosen simply because the last guy, and the guy he was running against, were so damn bad. I'm all for the best man getting the job, and probably in Obama's case the best man did get the job, but so far he has delivered nothing. He shall be to Yank Politics what David Cameron shall be to British Politics - the man who got in by default and turned out to be every bit as useless as any other f*cker.

So, nobel peace prize? I bet there are plenty of people who do their own good work, in war-torn areas, having given up their whole lives to help the poor, the injured, the dying, who never get so much as a second's praise from anybody. Doesn't matter whether they're black, white, there are real heroes or heroines out there who never get so much as a pat on the back. It's an insult to them that Obama gets this award for being Obama.

You've smacked the nail on the nose.

taipan wrote:Nah, he'll take the bucks

I don't think he can legally. And ethically he should look on it as a joke.

meh, the nobel peace prize has the least credibility of all the nobel prizes anyways. more of a political wink and nudge than any intrinsic meaning

but yeah, i couldnt stop laughing when i heard this year's winner. a peace prize for intention. i intend to build a perfect nuclear fusion reactor. you can send the physics prize to me next year

Looks like a cheaping if I ever saw one.

Well it has a history of that.

cheep cheep.

Wherever he goes from here, Obama deserves an annuity for life for replacing Bush.

And inspiring hope in international relations, positive thinking and thoughts of the mutual benefit of a bigger picture - where Bush and his cronies closed down discussion, destabilised the Middle East and world peace, for the advancement of their own narrow God (the family Mammon).

Give Obama three prizes, for being a mensch and showing a calm, human face in the midst of an economic meltdown and profound international chaos he inherited from Simian World.

Can't resist coming on board with this, to the no doubt widespread dismay of those who have posted hitherto. Maybe this was to make up for the IOC rebuffing Obama in Copenhagen and kicking Chicago out in the first round. At least Barack and Michelle get another free trip to Scandinavia.

This does make the award a laughing-stock but it is part of a pattern -

Jimmy Carter - 2002 (the Prez who praised the Shah of Iran as "one of the world's finest living statesmen")
Al Gore - 2007 (for making a film that even a UK High Court judge said was shot through with inaccuracies)
and now His Holiness Obama.

Get the picture? Win the Democratic nomination for the US Presidency and you're a hot tip to get nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

John Kerry must be wondering what he did to offend the Norwegians although I agree with Orrin Hatch (a Republican Senator, natch) who said that Bill Clinton (and George Bush Snr) for running a foundation that has distributed over a billion dollars in relief aid for natural disasters all over the world.

The idea that Obama should be given the Peace Prize as an "incentive" doesn't seem to wash very well either. Should the Nobel Prize for Medicine be given as an "incentive" to find the cure for cancer or given when the cure has actually been discovered? Einstein had to wait until 1921 to get his Nobel Prize even though he had first developed his relativity theory 16 years earlier. No wonder the Swedes didn't want to touch the awarding of the Peace Prize with a bargepole, seeing it as overtly political and handing it over to the Norwegian Parliament.

The track record on incumbent US Presidents who have been given the NPP is hardly a good one. Teddy Roosevelt, one of the most bellicose of US Presidents who, as Assistant Navy Secretary, ordered the US fleet to the Phillipines whilst his immediate boss, the Navy Secretary and President McKinley were away for the weekend, thereby precipitating the Spanish-American War of 1898, got his award for the Treaty of Portsmouth (New Hampshire) in 1905 ending the Russo-Japanese War. The Treaty blatantly favoured Japan (who showed no gratitude to the US 36 years later) and even Roosevelt admitted that it was largely the work of his Secretary of War and Acting Secretary of State (and TR's successor as President), William Howard Taft, who deserved the prize more than he did.

The second incumbent POTUS to receive the award was Woodrow Wilson, who was considered in Europe in the same terms of mindless adoration after WWI that Obama is now. He received his award for presiding over the Paris Peace Conference which resulted in the Treaty of Versailles which ended WWI. As far as I remember that didn't work out too well as far as achieving a lasting peace in the world and many believe it contributed somewhat to hostilities breaking out twenty years later.

Certainly the award didn't impress Wilson's opponents in Congress who refused to ratify the Treaty and excluded the US from membership of Wilson's brainchild, the League of Nations, turning it into a lame duckfrom the outset. Obama's award doesn't seem to have impressed Ahmadinejad, Hamas, the Taliban or Kim-Jong-Il, either. So much for the "incentive".

Rather an irony that the award comes on the same day that Obama is considering, with his National Security Council, whether to send 40,000 more US troops to Afghanistan. Still it will be a comfort to the GIs as they go into action that their Commander-in-Chief is a Peace Prize recipient.

I always thought the comparisons, when he came into office, with FDR and JFK were absurd and overblown. I see now that many on the US left are making comparisons with another Democratic President, Lyndon Baines Johnson, who also pushed health reform and many other worthy domestic reform measures through Congress, but is now chiefly remembered for being caught up in the quagmire of an overseas war he inherited from his predecessor. I hope, for Obama's sake, that this analogy does not ring true. After all, having received the Peace Prize, it would be a shame if the Norwegian Peace Prize Committee were to ask him to give it back.

My nomination for the Peace Prize - the Iranian people. If the world had listened to them (the Chosen One said they were "having a vigorous debate" when they were being shot, beaten and arrested in the street) last summer and if they had got their way and elected a government that was at least moderately accountable to them instead of the mad mullahs currently in charge we all might find it much easier to sleep safely in our beds.