Prize Day at News Links

Reading his acceptance speech

Why did Obama accept the Nobel Peace Prize when he had already decided to take the war in Afghanistan to its ultimate consequences? Nobody forced him into an act of cynicism. Fidel Castro

David Seaton's News Links

Today the President of the United States received the Nobel Peace Prize. He read a stirring speech in which he used the Nobel Peace Prize to justify America's wars.

In my opinion this was one of the most interesting presidential statements since Bill Clinton speculated on the meaning of "is". In case you have forgotten that one, it went like this:

"It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is. If the--if he--if 'is' means is and never has been, that is not--that is one thing. If it means there is none, that was a completely true statement....Now, if someone had asked me on that day, are you having any kind of sexual relations with Ms. Lewinsky, that is, asked me a question in the present tense, I would have said no. And it would have been completely true." (footnote 1,128 in the Starr report)

In order to celebrate Obama endeavoring to reach Clinton's superb mastery of the fine American art of euphemism,  I have thought up a little contest to choose other unlikely prize winners. 

Here is my tentative list of possible awards, readers are encouraged to add to this selection by posting their own suggestions:

• Nobel Prize for Literature: Dan Brown
• Nobel Prize for Economics: Bernard Madoff
• Nobel Prize for Physics: The Diet Coke + Mentos Development Team
• Pulitzer Prize: Rush Limbaugh
• Oscar of Hollywood for Lifetime Achievement: Sonny Tufts 
• Something for poor Tiger Woods, but I haven't figured out just what yet
  

I am sure you can think up better stuff than this list and I am looking forward to reading them. DS

Obama's Nobel Prize is richly deserved

David Seaton's News Links

There has been much controversy swirling around president Obama's Nobel Peace Prize, which I wont bore my readers by recapping. Basically the well intentioned criticism -- we can discount the ill intentioned -- boils down to, "why so soon, he hasn't done anything yet". They are all missing the point.

First, we should take a step back from the prize... it is very much a creature of the moment it is given. It is not some sort of universal "Mount Rushmore" of the good and the great: Mahatma Gandhi never received it and Henry Kissinger (a war criminal) and Menachem Begin and Yasser Arafat (terrorists) did.

So the Nobel Peace Prize is not like being made a Saint in the Catholic Church and getting your own office in heaven.

What the prize does is to send a message.

If you look at the Nobel Peace Prizes awarded since 2001 you can see a pattern:

• 2001 - United Nations, Kofi Annan 

• 2002 - Jimmy Carter 

• 2003 - Shirin Ebadi(first Muslim woman to win the prize) 

• 2004 - Wangari Maathai (African woman ecologist) 

• 2005 - International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei 

• 2006 - Muhammad Yunus, Grameen Bank (micro-credit) 

• 2007 - Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Al Gore 

• 2008 - Martti Ahtisaari (UN diplomat and peacemaker)  

The thread running though it all being, "the Nobel Committee abjures George Walker Bush and all his works".

So, Bush has gone, you say, why give the award to Obama so soon?

Bush is gone, but not what he did.

George W. Bush pulled the mask off the United States of America and Barack Obama is putting the mask back in place and that is why he has been given the prize.

What do I mean by "mask"?

Well, for anyone who has been reading Noam Chomsky for some time and paying attention, or who has recently read Naomi Klein's dot-connecting masterpiece, "The Shock Doctrine", it is no surprise to see the USA portrayed as a "rogue state": it has acted as one for decades.

In short: behind its mask of benevolent defender of democracy and human rights, the USA had been attacking and invading other countries and torturing people for a long, long, time.

But for much of the western world this was an "inconvenient truth"... unthinkable, bad for business and bad for morale, something not mentioned in polite, moderate-centrist, company.

From the vantage of international law, the USA is "like unto a whited sepulcher", which, to quote the King James Bible's protagonist, "indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness".

What changed?

Bush made Noam Chomsky a main-stream, best-selling author.

In the year 2001 destiny crossed 9-11 with George W. Bush and Bush in all his arrogant, incompetent, ignorant, meanness ripped off America's mask and kicked the top off the sepulcher and what was behind the mask was too ugly for the world to face every day on the news and all the maggots that came crawling out of the sepulcher stank unbearably.

And then the economy collapsed.

What Madelene Albright called "the indispensable nation" turned out to be "the unspeakable nation" and the corner stone of the world system turned out to be a grave stone... and no alternative is sight.

Well, you say, Iraq and Afghanistan are still at war and the USA is still killing civilians; Guantanamo and Bagram prisons are still in business, the international currency of reference, the US dollar, appears headed for collapse, even golden California is bankrupt. What has changed?

The magic of Obama has put the mask back on.

Air Wick has been hung in the sepulcher and Glade has been sprayed.

And all in only nine months.

However, the powerful forces that lay behind that which we chose to call "Bush" are mobilizing the AstroTurf of birthers and teabaggers and yet unknown McVeighs and Oswalds conspire against this mild attempt, this pretense of normalcy, and so the horrid face behind the benign mask is reappearing at the edges... and downwind the sepulcher still has quite a breath on it.

So the Nobel Committee is rushing to do its part in propping up the idea of an imagined return to a pre-Bush America: A certain idea of the civilized world.

If, in the future, having replaced the mask and chased the worms back into the sepulcher, President Obama actually manages to change some of the underlying reality itself, he will rank up there with M. K. Gandhi and require no further prize, for then he will be able to hand out the peace prizes, not a roomful of Norwegians. DS

Draft Al Gore... Spare the world Giuliani

"Mr. Gore’s central argument is that “reason, logic and truth seem to play a sharply diminished role in the way America now makes important decisions” and that the country’s public discourse has become “less focused and clear, less reasoned.” This “assault on reason,” he suggests, is personified by the way the Bush White House operates. " NYT review of "The Assault on Reason"

"Al Gore is a serious man confronted by a political system that is not open to a serious exploration of important, complex issues. He knows it." Bob Herbert - NYT

David Seaton's News Links
Al Gore is the only serious, mainstream, "household word" type, public intellectual left standing in a country that has produced giants like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. While I would never put him in anywhere near the same league with those titans, there is no other American political figure at this time with Gore's intellectual capacity, experience and any chance of ever being elected president (he was elected once already, after all).

Gore has identified and made his own property the two gravest problems facing America and the world today: global warming and America's deficit of democracy. This alone, whatever other merits he may possess, marks him as a historical figure.

I think Gore is wise not to run for President and to unnecessarily expose himself again to the insult and ridicule which is now what passes for public debate in the USA, but I think that the Democrats are foolish not to draft him. The present field of Democratic candidates is made up of dwarfs in comparison to Gore.

There is some idea that the Democrats are predestined to win the next presidential election... This idea is entirely erroneous in my opinion. The forces able to create and press such an unlikely dunce as George W. Bush upon the American people (twice!) are still there and certainly will marshal up every dirty trick in their massive repertoire. The two leading Democratic candidates, Hillary and Obama are singularly vulnerable to the sort of garbage that these people can brew up. Oscar, Emmy and Nobel Peace Prize winners a tad less.

The leading Republican candidate. Rudolph Giuliani is uniquely suited to exploit the weaknesses of both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. They would both be electable if it weren't for Al Qaeda, but Al Qaeda will still be there in October 2008.

Osama bin Laden has done very well with the Republicans and he has no reason to want to change. A Giuliani presidency could be even worse than Bush, especially with people like Daniel Pipes and Norman Podhoretz advising him. If Osama had his 'druthers' I'm sure he'd pick Rudy. And one big bomb in the right place, at the right time and I doubt if the American people would be in any mood to elect either the first woman or the first African-American president of the United States.

Perhaps the country is not ready for somebody that is really as serious as Al Gore is just yet. Another failed presidency might do the trick. After four years of Rudy Giuliani and the ensuing nightmare of war and corruption, the American people might be finally "ripe" for Al Gore.

The Democrats could save us all of this by drafting Al Gore now, but I doubt that they will. DS