Yes, The Int'l Banking Cartel does run the Nobel Peace Prize - OBAMA WINS [duh]

[Overcast]

President Barack Obama said Friday he was honored and humbled to win the Nobel Peace Prize and would accept it as a "call to action" to work with other nations to solve the problems of the 21st century.

It's hard to contain the laughter... 'humbled'. Yeah - whatever.

http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20091009/NEWS/310090017/Obama+wins+Nobel+peace+prize

The poll is like 5 to 1 people disagreeing he deserved it.

[φυδγε]

Obama's Nobel doesn't bring peace to some

President Obama's Nobel Peace Prize is producing some tough political comments here in the United States.

Some conservatives say the award reflects Obama's weak foreign policies.

Rush Limbaugh e-mailed POLITICO: "And with this 'award,' the elites of the world are urging Obama, THE MAN OF PEACE, to not do the surge in Afghanistan, not take action against Iran and its nuclear program and to basically continue his intentions to emasculate the United States."

He continued: "They love a weakened, neutered U.S., and this is their way of promoting that concept. I think God has a great sense of humor, too."

Democrats say the prize proves that Obama has improved the U.S. image in the world -- and some say the conservative carping sounds like the Taliban and al-Qeada.

"The right-wing media have once again demonstrated their true colors," said Eric Burns, president of Media Matters. "They want Obama to fail, and as long as he is president, they seem to want America to fail, too."

He added: "Does the right care that the Taliban shares their sentiments on this story?"

Spokesman Robert Gibbs declined to get drawn in, saying he would leave that to the pundits.

This not the first time Republicans have tried to use Obama's global popularity against him. It happened in last year's election campaign with John McCain.

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/theoval/post/2009/10/68500727/1?loc=interstitialskip

GOP, even some liberals, dismiss Obama peace prize

By CHARLES BABINGTON (AP) – 37 minutes ago

WASHINGTON — Gee, you'd think a U.S. president who won the Nobel Peace Prize might get rave reviews from his party's activists and polite congrats from top Republicans.

But news of Barack Obama's award Friday drew a rebuke from the Republican Party chairman, ridicule from conservative bloggers, and even gripes from some liberals who think he hasn't done enough to wind down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Top Democrats congratulated Obama, of course, but critics abounded.

"What has President Obama actually accomplished?" said Michael Steele, chairman of the Republican National Committee.

"It is unfortunate that the president's star power has outshined tireless advocates who have made real achievements working towards peace and human rights."

There was praise from two Democrats who also have won the Nobel Peace Prize.

Former President Jimmy Carter, who won in 2002, called Obama's selection a "bold statement of international support for his vision and commitment."

Former Vice President Al Gore, who won two years ago, said, "I think that much of what he has accomplished already is going to be far more appreciated in the eyes of history, as it has been by the Nobel committee," Gore said.

And some Republicans had kind words, too.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., Obama's presidential rival last year, told CNN he could not divine the Nobel committee's intentions, "but I think part of their decision-making was expectations. And I'm sure the president understands that he now has even more to live up to. But as Americans, we're proud when our president receives an award of that prestigious category."

Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty said, "under any circumstances I thought an appropriate response is congratulations."

But GOP Rep. Gresham Barrett, who is running for governor of South Carolina, mocked Obama's prize. "I'm not sure what the international community loved best; his waffling on Afghanistan, pulling defense missiles out of Eastern Europe, turning his back on freedom fighters in Honduras, coddling Castro, siding with Palestinians against Israel, or almost getting tough on Iran," Barrett said.

Congress' top Republican leaders — Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Rep. John Boehner of Ohio — were silent on Obama's award Friday.

Several commentators challenged the value of the Peace Prize, noting that Palestinian President Yasser Arafat shared it in 1994.

"What's Obama done?" asked Rick Moran in his blog on American Thinker, a strong advocate of Israel. "What peace has he negotiated? ... I suppose an organization that thought Yasser Arafat worthy of the same prize can't be taken seriously anyway. But they are."

Erick Erickson, writing on the conservative RedState.com, suggested Obama won in part because he is black.

"I did not realize the Nobel Peace Prize had an affirmative action quota for it, but that is the only thing I can think of for this news," Erickson wrote.

Obama himself said he felt humbled and undeserving, declaring in a Rose Garden statement: "I do not view it as a recognition of my own accomplishments."

The reaction was only slightly warmer on some liberal Web sites, where some writers said Obama should end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan before being awarded such a prize.

Jim White, writing for firedoglake.com, said the president "has stated a desire to end the war in Iraq and to close Guantanamo. So far, however, Obama only has delivered charming rhetoric on these important fronts. His actions, sadly, have tended to reinforce the worst of the Bush policies after giving them a nice rhetorical dusting off."

To be sure, some groups and politicians gave Obama full-throated congratulations.

Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine, who chairs the Democratic National Committee, called the award "an affirmation of the fact that the United States has returned to its long-standing role as a world leader."

Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., chastised the GOP's Steele for his remarks, and noted that conservative activists had cheered when Obama failed last week to bring the 2016 Olympic Games to Chicago.

"I find it very very disappointing for the chairman of the Republican Party — after the cheers that went out when America lost the Olympics — to now be attacking our president, everyone's president in our country, at a time when he is being recognized on the world stage," Stabenow said.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iMFUq5X-_ONjqUmgLg1QqpIzL90gD9B7OAT00

[Anti_Illuminati]

It looks like military PsyOps and fluoride really are that effective folks--can you believe that someone actually thought of all this and took the time to cite these references about the puppet?  This is a quote by someone who thinks he is citing legitimate reasons why he deserved to get this (changed name of poster to be more fitting):

http://forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?t=119601621&page=6

by:  Iwillobedientlygotothecamps

3/18/8 ? Obama caught world-wide attention for his moving speech on race relations

7/24/8 - Obama lays the foundation for a new era of international relations and began inspiring renewed hope in American leadership during his campaign speech in Berlin

11/6/8 ? Obama?s victory was hailed as a promise of hope for the world.

12/1/8 ? Obama began plans to restore U.N. ambassador to cabinet rank.

1/22/9 - Appointed a Special Envoy for Middle East peace

1/22/9 ? Ordered the closing of Guantanamo Bay

1/22/9 ? Ordered comprehensive review of detention policies

1/22/9 ? Prohibited use of torture

1/22/9 - Signed an executive order to close CIA secret prisons

1/23/9 ? Lifted ?Global Gag Rule? on international health groups

1/26/9 ? Began to address climate change by increasing fuel standards for automobiles

1/26/9 ? Appointed Special Envoy for Climate Change

1/27/9 - Signs Lily Ledbetter ?Fair Pay? Act

2/1/9 ? Expanded healthcare for children by signing SCHIP

2/5/9 - Again addressed energy conservation by increasing standards for appliances.

2/24/9 ? Directed almost $1 billion for prevention and wellness to improve America?s health

2/25/9 - Initiated international efforts to reduce mercury emissions worldwide

2/27/9 ? Committed to responsibly ending the war in Iraq

4/1/9 ? Agreed to negotiation of a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with Russia.

4/1/9 ? Enhanced U.S. ? China relations

4/2/9 - Led global response to the economic crisis through the G20, obtaining commitments of $1.1 trillion to safeguard the world?s most vulnerable economies

4/4/9 - Renewed dialog with NATO and other key allies

4/5/9 ? Announced new strategy to responsible address international nuclear proliferation

4/13/9 ? Began easing tension with Cuba through new policy stance

4/17/9 - Secured $5 billion in aid commitments "to bolster economy and help it fight terror and Islamic radicalism"

4/22/9 - Developed the renewable energy projects on the waters of our Outer Continental Shelf that produce electricity from wind, wave, and ocean currents.

5/8/9 ? Proposed International Affaires budget that included funds to create a civilian response corps -- teams of civilian experts in rule of law, policing, transitional governance, economics, engineering, and other areas critical to helping rebuild war-torn societies; Provide $40 million for a "stabilization bridge fund," which would provide rapid response funds for the State Department to help stabilize a crisis situation.

6/4/9 - Gave historic address to the Muslim World in Cairo - "American is not at war with Islam" Foreign affairs experts insist that Obama's engagement with the Muslim world has been remarkable. "He has been able to dramatically change America's image in that region"

8/4/9 - Used DIPLOMACY to free 2 American journalists from a North Korea prison

9/18/9 - De-escalation of nuclear tension through re purposing of missile defense prompting Russia to withdraw its missile plan.

Now go google all that shiit and get back to me next year.

[mr anderson]

They give out prizes for a politician’s promise now?



by Paul Colgan
October 10, 2009

http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/they-give-out-prizes-for-a-politicians-promise-now/

“It’s not April 1st, is it?” asked a White House aide when told that his boss, Barack Obama, had won the Nobel Peace Prize.



Well it’s not a joke but the award to the US President is easily the most controversial laureate in living memory. Remember some of the others who have won this: Nelson Mandela and F.W. de Clerk for ending apartheid; Mikhail Gorbachev for bringing an end to the Cold War; John Hume and David Trimble for helping bring peace to Northern Ireland.

Oh, and there’s also Mother Theresa and the Dalai Lama.

Many commentators have been quick to ridicule the decision. “Rarely has an award had such an obvious political and partisan intent,” wrote Michael Binyon in The Times, adding the award “risks looking preposterous in its claims, patronising in its intentions and demeaning in its attempt to build up a man who has barely begun his period in office, let alone achieved any tangible outcome for peace.”

Some would argue that the rot started two years ago when the peace prize went to Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. But regardless of your views on climate change, at least Gore and the IPCC had behind them the very clear achievement behind them of helping elevate climate change to the top of the global political agenda.

John Hume shared the prize with David Trimble in 1998 after they had dragged the Catholic and Protestant communities, complete with their extremist wings, to the negotiating table to conclude a deal on Good Friday of that year which restored self-government to Northern Ireland. Hume had started the process in earnest, risking his life by meeting with Gerry Adams of Sinn Fein to try and talk him and, by proxy, the IRA - into ending a bloody campaign of terrorist resistance to British rule in the province. Hume is an unassuming, poorly-presented, hard-working politician who, through his talks with Adams, laid the groundwork for ending a conflict that killed more than 3000 people.

And Trimble, then the leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, clung to his leadership by his fingernails through the process amid dissent from his party membership. There was bravery from both the Irish and British governments in the peace process but it was Hume and Trimble who led from the trenches and ended the cycle of ongoing violence in Northern Ireland.

Obama hasn’t even been in office a year and hasn’t achieved anything like their achievements. Or Gorbachev’s. Or de Clerk’s or Mandela’s.

US film maker Michael Moore, hardly known for his sympathies with enemies of Obama, has written an open letter to the US President following the awarding of the prize. “The irony that you have been awarded this prize on the 2nd day of the ninth year of our War in Afghanistan is not lost on anyone,” writes Moore. (Actually, that one point had eluded me, mate, but that’s by the bye.) He recounts some of Obama’s achievements:

    you admitted to the Iranians that we overthrew their democratically-elected president in 1953, you made that great speech to the Islamic world in Cairo, you’ve eliminated that useless term “The War on Terror,” you’ve put an end to torture—these have all made us and the rest of the world feel a bit more safe considering the disaster of the past eight years.

And he adds this as a postscript:

... the very fact that you’ve offered to walk into the minefield of hate and try to undo the irreparable damage the last president did is not only appreciated by me and millions of others, it is also an act of true bravery. That’s why you got the prize. The whole world is depending on the U.S.—and you—to literally save this planet. Let’s not let them down.

I’ve used the comments from Moore because ridicule and condemnation of the prize will not be in short supply. You can read some others who disagree with the decision here and here.

Obama says he doesn’t feel he deserves “to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures who’ve been honoured by this prize”, but adds “I also know that throughout history the Nobel Peace Prize has not just been used to honour specific achievement; it’s also been used as a means to give momentum to a set of causes”.

The US President is without question a brilliant mind, a great speaker, and has a gift for influencing people. He has reshaped world opinion of America and his mere presence in the Oval Office means the world can look to Washington for leadership on tackling global problems.

Yet he is now facing a massive challenge in Afghanistan, where US forces are suffering increasingly heavy losses and losing control of increasingly large areas. The Taliban insurgency is gaining momentum there. Obama may have to make decisions there that might seem incompatible with a prize that recognises peace. Obama may even have to escalate the conflict to win it.

This is a prize awarded for promise, not deeds. Politicians are not known for delivering on promises. Obama may be an unusual class of politician, but he has a long way to go before he really breaks that old mould.

[SUPREMEMASTER]

NOTICE/READ FIRST: I just wanted to copy my response that I left on the PropagandaMatrix forum because I felt that I actually wound up stating key points...

Link to other thread on other forum.

P.S. does anyone have any comment on the point that the mainstream media is now engaging in gate-keeping?

Barack Obama was given the noble peace prize.  Lots of people have been questioning what Obama has done to earn the noble peace prize.  I think that the noble peace prize has unintentionally woke up a lot of people in the international community about how little Obama has accomplished.  Could it have unintentionally helped wake people up?  What do you think about this?  

Yeah but at the same time they might just "direct" the "woken-up" people into thinking that the "new" Republicans (or something) would just swoop in and fix what George Bush AND Barrack Obama did...

Hell -- maybe they'll just make a controlled libertarian the president this time...

But besides all of that, the "MainStream" (Because the mainstream way is the "proper" and "politically correct" way for doing anything -- or is just supposedly supposed to be...) way of looking at Obama a while ago was that he was good and that he would fix everything...

In a way -- everyone -- even the mainstream news -- is going to look at this and go "Well wait he hasn't done much good"...

But they're only going to expose what he's done to a point.

They're going to blame Obama -- the controlled, teleprompter-reading moron who doesn't control anything.

They're not going to say that he's controlled -- they're not going to say he wasn't a legal U.S. citizen -- they're not going to bring up any issue of true significance.

They're only going to say that he's done bad and then do a ton of "gatekeeping"...

If ANYONE, no matter who they are, exposes Obama PAST that "certain point" that the mainstream media exposes Obama, then they who expose Obama PAST that point are automatically radical and extreme conspiracy theorists.

Only the mainstream media exposes Obama in a limited way, and anyone in the alternative media who goes beyond that mainstream limit is automatically a conspiracy theorist.

AUTOMATICALLY.

So now the mainstream media is trying to give the impression that they're exposing Obama -- they are trying to give a false sense of being fair-and-balanced.

But they are going to only say that Obama is "bad" for all the wrong reasons.

They will gate-keep. They will try their best to give some information in order to keep everyone from finding out ALL the information.

And they will "twist" and "spin" the limited amount of information that they give out.

It's mind control.
And as a direct answer to the question in the Subject line:

I think that this was just another stupid event to make him look good. Despite the fact that the mainstream media is going to look at it and said "Wait he probably doesn't deserve it."

But then again the mainstream media was probably meant to backfire because the public is so brainwashed that they think that Obama really did deserve it so it makes him look even better that the evil mainstream media is criticizing Obama.

[Republic Renewal]

Mainstream media. A tool that we second guess sometimes. The point is that the sheeple believe he got that medal for honest reasons. THIS IS A LIE!!

Obama is starting to look bad, real bad. What's one way to end his looking bad streak than by presenting him with a supreme goodness prize. PROPAGANDA. Always is, always will be.
Positive reinforcement on a man with a soul as black as his face. NO RACIAL COMMENTS I JUST AM USING HIS RACE AS A SIMILI.

The man is pure evil. A puppet, and the NWO always rewards their puppets....

[Spark of Truth Inc.]

When I heard this story breaking, I thought to myself: They are going to dismantle him now. There's no way this award helps Obama to stay popular or congruent with his noble agenda. He's set up to fail from now on. They'll sacrifice him in front of our eyes.

Just remember: Hitler was TIME MAGAZINE's person of the year 1938, and Stalin was person of the year 1939!

[Republic Renewal]

Excellent point!

The mainstream always makes their dictator look good before they do terrible deeds.

[Harconen]

Obama Will Go Naked to Stockholm

AntiWar.com
Fri, 09 Oct 2009 23:06 EDT
http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2009/10/09/obama-will-go-naked-to-stockholm/

Obama, Kissinger, Wilson, Roosevelt and Moniz.

Quick. What do Barack Obama, Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Kissinger and Egar Moniz have in common? All won the Nobel Prize, the first four for "peace" either as sitting presidents, or in Kissinger's case, while his bombs were falling on innocents in Vietnam. Moniz won the prize in Physiology or Medicine for his invention of the lobotomy. Of these five he wrought the least carnage.

Today we awoke to news that Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Some looked quick to see whether it was April 1. Most often folks mumbled resignedly "War is Peace." I prefer the Vietnam era formulation that warring for peace is like fu**ing for virginity. A few wept tears of disappointment, certainly mainstream Medea Benjamin who, having recently come out definitively as a hawk, must have thought that with this adjustment the Nobel was certainly in sight. Code Pink needs a new name now. Justin Raimondo suggests Code Yellow. But I believe Whores for Wars might be better. (That would only apply to Medea and the national leadership, many of the local Code Pinkers being genuine anti-interventionists who cannot stomach the narcissistic national leadership like mainstream Medea.)

My good friend and Israeli expat Joshua was at first afraid he was having a bad dream or that the Nobel committee was working a cruel joke. After all, Joshua reasoned, Obama is war criminal, who has engineered the biggest military spending in human history, who daily drops bombs on innocents, women and children in at least three countries, Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan, who supports the worst war criminals and lodges some in his administration, who destroyed in a few months the "hope" for a peace in the middle east. The western world has gone crazy, no doubt, says Joshua. And since war is now peace we might rename all organizations appropriately - United for War and Justice, War Action, and so on.

This led Joshua to predictions for future Nobels.

Next year, literature: Obama for "The Audacity of Hope" - the greatest fiction ever.

Next year, economy: Obama - creating a new statistical metric for recovery.

Next year, peace: Bush/Cheney - based on Obama's peace prize precedent.

Year after, peace: Netanyahu - the man behind Obama's peace in the Middle East.

But to this writer we witness the second repetition of history. The US Empire's first great colonial war on the Asian mainland in the last half century was Truman's Korean war. This was repeated as tragedy in Vietnam at the hands of the Best and Brightest, with Johnson and Kennedy in the lead. And now the Iraq/AfPak war comes at us from Bush and Obama and Congresses both Democrat and Republic. If Vietnam was tragedy, then certainly Iraq/AfPak is farce. There were no WMD in Iraq and everyone knew it. By the military's own admission there are about 100 Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, so the US troops are not there because of Al-Qaeda - and everyone knows it.

Now the ultimate comedic turn comes with the award to Obama of the Nobel War Prize. Perhaps the antiwar movement needs to adjust its tone from pure outrage to ridicule. After all Obama and the elite running this country are without clothes as they parade before us as men of peace, puffed up with talk of fake health care reform and assuring us of economic recovery that provides no jobs. It would be hard to make this stuff up. And through our tears at the predicament we are in, we can at least ridicule these hypocritical murderers. They deserve to be seen clearly as the cruel and absurd hollow men that they are. They march before us unknowingly naked.

[Harconen]

The Orwell Peace Prize

Martha Rose Crow
SOTT.net
Fri, 09 Oct 2009 14:55 EDT
http://www.sott.net/articles/show/194486-The-Orwell-Peace-Prize

Right after Christmas, my nephew is leaving for another tour in Afghanistan. My Sister's heart and my heart are broken. The chances are good that this time he's coming back in a box with a flag on top of it.

But in many ways, he's dead already. Like many soldiers who've come back from the middle east, he's wired on self-destruct. My Sister has told me that she can't count the times she's taken guns away from him when he was threatening suicide because those times have been so many.

When I was a child, I was highly idealistic. I wanted to swim the English Channel. I wanted to live an exceptional life. I wanted to graduate from the university and perform work that would improve the lives of others. I wanted to be a peace maker and I wanted to earn a Nobel Peace Prize.

Back then, I didn't know about the dirty money connected with the prizes; that they came from money made from munitions or that the principal of the endowment was invested in more implements of war and/or of human oppression like capitalism that rapes the world for cheap natural resources and cheap human labor.

My childhood idealism about the Nobel Peace Prize waned a long time ago. It took awhile, but I learned that it was awarded by elites to politically 'frame the culture' of 'peace' and/or use the awardee as propaganda for the elite. It seemed to me that too many of the real peace makers are never awarded any prizes for their work and that too many heads of states are awarded it instead.

In the book 1984 by George Orwell, 'War is Peace' and 'Peace is War'. Orwell's book paints a psychopathic universe where reality is the opposite of what it really is. In Oceana, the place where the book takes place, Lies Rule: they Become the Truth. The whole place is built upon the lies of the 'party' or the ruling elite.

When I saw that Obama had 'won' the Nobel Peace Prize, I almost fell out of my chair. He's only nine months into his presidency and he has done nothing to stop any of the American wars. Contrarily, he's escalated the war in Afghanistan and spread it to Pakistan. Obama wants to add 40,000 more troops in Afghanistan. Last I heard, the war in Iraq is still continuing. More, the opaque and unwinnable war against 'terrorism' is still going on as well while the definition of a 'terrorist' keeps expanding to include anyone who opposes tyranny, including war.

What about torture? Obama hasn't done anything to stop it. That status quo merry-go-round of violence and the violence of lies goes on and on.

In lieu of the lack of bringing peace, Obama should have won the Nobel Peace Prize for Economics as more people are out of work now than when he was given the mantel of presidency. This is how great the hypocrisy is.

So what does all of this mean? A group of five elites chose Obama to market lies and deception; to sell an Orwellian world where people are programmed to believe that a war monger, a false messiah of peace, is the ideal peace bringer when in a real reality, he is the farthest from it.

And Obama's nomination in the swill world of the Orwell Peace Prize is in good company. Although they didn't get the prize, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini and Joseph Stalin were nominated. History has proven what kind of 'peace makers' they were and history will prove that Obama is of the same ilk.

People see through this ruse and sham. They know that Obama hasn't kept his campaign promises of stopping war and promoting peace. They know that he's being controlled by the powerful and wealthy military industrial complex who stand to lose enormous profits if Obama pursues peace.

This will be my nephew's third tour of duty. For a year (if he stays alive that long), we will live on pins and needles. Every day, we will hope that bad news doesn't arrive at the front door, brought by a well-dressed soldier messenger. Every day, we will hear about new war casualties and worry if he is one of them. We will live in a limbic hell and wait.

And during this time, Obama will escalate the wars, support Israel's illegal wars, while wearing the official Nobel Crown as the 'New Prince of Peace'.

[bigron]

Nobel Committee: War is Peace

Mr. Obama wins the Nobel Peace Prize for promoting just about everything but peace.

by Little Alex

                 
 

October 9, 2009
http://www.uruknet.info/index.php?p=m58756&hd=&size=1&l=e

Friday, the Nobel Committee announced that President Barack Obama is the recipient of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize for"extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples" during his first nine months in office. The Washington Post (WaPo) reports the Committee "singled out for special recognition Obama’s call for a world free of nuclear weapons".

Leave it to the best manufacturers of consent for war like Glenn Kessler at the WaPo to display the farce of this award. He reports this "is a classic case of an aspirational award" as the Committee’s rationale is "an acknowledgement that those efforts have yet to yield results", adding:

Consider the long list of actions that Obama has promised: closing the facility at Guantanamo Bay within a year; achieving Middle East peace; ending the war in Iraq and defeating al Qaeda in Afghanistan; halting Iran’s possible drive to a nuclear weapon; convincing North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons.

Many of these have proven to be very difficult challenges. Obama appears likely to miss the deadline to close Guantanamo. The Middle East peace push is nearly off the rails, with Obama shifting course last month after failing to convince Israel to agree to even a temporary settlement freeze. The North Korea talks have been moribund.

Obama has on his desk a proposal to boost the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan by 40,000 or more, a decision that could extend the fighting there for many years.

"Barack Obama’s campaign may have changed the tone in international diplomacy, and that might have been a good thing," Campaign for Liberty President John Tate said. "However, his actions fail to match his campaign rhetoric. He is ramping up in Afghanistan, expanding the war into Pakistan and his administration is making plans to bomb Iran. At the same time, he has failed to make major troop withdrawals in Iraq, or anywhere else in the world."

The Obama Administration says there is "no option" on the table to end the violent occupation of Afghanistan and no intention of any near-end to the occupation of Iraq with 124,000 U.S. troops there now and the plan to have 50,000 occupying the country after the so-called 'withdrawal’ process is 'achieved’ in August 2010.

Liaqat Baluch, a senior leader of the Jamaat-e-Islami, a conservative religious party, said: "It’s a joke. How embarrassing for those who awarded it to him because he’s done nothing for peace. What change has he brought in Iraq, the Middle East or Afghanistan?" (Reuters)

In the two wars Mr. Obama has been leading in 2009, 886 civilians were killed in Afghanistan from February to July [.pdf] and 2,629 in Iraq from February to August, Brian Doherty posted at the Reason blog. (h/t: Angela Keaton)

"The Nobel prize for peace? Obama should have won the 'Nobel Prize for escalating violence and killing civilians’," Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told Reuters–posing as Mr. Pot to the kettle president.

"Obama hasn’t even had time to slaughter that many people," Campaign for Liberty editor-in-chief Anthony Gregory posted at The LRC Blog, with tongue-in-cheek. "He has only killed thousands, maybe tens of thousands, though his mass displacement of people in Pakistan is significant, too. But Woodrow Wilson–that man threw the 20th century into a bloody totalitarian tailspin. It cheapens the prize to give it to an amateur like Obama."

As for the Orwellian-named "peace process" in Palestine-Israel, Mr. Obama has done nothing but enable Israel’s massacre on Gaza earlier this year and expanded colonization of the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Mr. Obama’s rhetoric has been nothing different from that of his predecessor, George W. Bush and has not threatened to cut military welfare from the U.S. to Israel–on which Israel is dependent to perform its atrocities.

Constitutional lawyer Glenn Greenwald blogs at Salon: "He uttered not a peep of opposition to the Israeli massacre of Gazan civilians at the beginning of this year (using American weapons), one which a U.N. investigator just found constituted war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity."

"Unless real and deep-rooted change is made in American policy toward recognizing the rights of the Palestinian people I would think such a prize would be useless," Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas prime minister in the Gaza Strip, told reporters after Friday prayers.

Professor Noam Chomsky wrote back in June:

The plans being executed right now are designed to leave Israel in control of the most valuable land in the West Bank, with Palestinians confined to unviable fragments, all separated from Jerusalem, the traditional center of Palestinian life. The "separation wall" also establishes Israeli control of the West Bank aquifer. Hence Israel will be able to continue to ensure that Palestinians receive one-fourth as much water as Israelis, as the World Bank reported in April, in some cases below minimum recommended levels. In the other part of Palestine, Gaza, regular Israeli bombardment and the cruel siege reduce consumption far below.

Obama continues to support all of these programs, and has even called for substantially increasing military aid to Israel for an unprecedented ten years. It appears, then, that Palestinians may be offered fried chicken, but nothing more. Israel’s forced separation of Gaza from the West Bank since 1991, intensified with U.S. support after a free election in January 2006 came out "the wrong way", has also been studiously ignored in Obama’s "new initiative", thus further undermining prospects for any viable Palestinian state….

If Obama were serious about opposing settlement expansion, he could easily proceed with concrete measures, for example, by reducing U.S. aid by the amount devoted to this purpose. That would hardly be a radical or courageous move. The Bush I administration did so (reducing loan guarantees), but after the Oslo accord in 1993, President Clinton left calculations to the government of Israel. Unsurprisingly, there was "no change in the expenditures flowing to the settlements". The Israeli press reported: "[Prime Minister] Rabin will continue not to dry out the settlements," the report concludes. "And the Americans? They will understand" (Hadashot, Oct. 8; Yair Fidel, Hadashot Supplement, Oct. 29, 1993)….

Obama administration officials informed the press that the Bush I measures are "not under discussion", and that pressures will be "largely symbolic". In short, Obama "understands".

The probable source, Peace Now, which monitors settlement activities, estimates further that the two largest settlements would double in size—Ariel and Ma’aleh Adumim, built mainly during the Oslo years in the salients that subdivide the West Bank into cantons.

Mr. Obama has done nothing more than hypocritically pass a ceremonial resolution at the U.N. Security Council to curb global nuclear proliferation. In fact, the U.S. is expanding its own nuclear production while enabling Israel’s covert proliferation of nuclear weapons and the threat to use them–based on manufactured false allegations–against Iran’s international agency-safeguarded low-enrichment facilities for its nuclear energy program.

Last week, Eli Lake at The Washington Times reported, quoting Administration officials: "Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu obtained President Obama’s guarantee that the White House would continue a 4-decade-old secret deal to allow Israel keep a nuclear arsenal without opening it to international inspections."

Mr. Obama has continued economic warfare against the Iranian people while threatening its expansion and a military strike. These threats are illegal were the U.S. to be compliant with international law–"rules that all nations must follow", as Mr. Obama says.

"Ultimately, he may find on his desk a Pentagon proposal for a military strike on Iranian nuclear facilities," Mr. Kessler writes. "Or he may get a call from an Israeli prime minister saying such a strike is imminent…. But is it something a Nobel Peace Prize winner would authorize?"

Mr. Obama has actively covered up the war crimes of the Bush Administration in order to deny setting precedence that would condemn his own crimes. "He’s worked tirelessly to protect his country not only from accountability–but also transparency–for the last eight years of war crimes, almost certainly violating America’s treaty obligations in the process," Mr. Greenwald writes. "And he is currently presiding over an expansion of the legal black hole at Bagram while aggressively demanding the right to abduct people from around the world, ship them there, and then imprison them indefinitely with no rights of any kind."

"Obama has not proven to be exactly a ray of light on questions of human rights and international law," George Washington University law professor Jonathon Turley writes at his blog. "He is now in violation of various international agreements over torture and United Nations officials have denounced the United States for refusing to carry out its duty to prosecute those responsible for the torture program. Yet, the Nobel Committee has chosen this time to award him with the Peace Prize—undermining the importance of the Geneva Conventions."

Justin Raimondo at AntiWar.com writes: "On top of that, you’re pushing through Congress a record military spending bill that keeps the U.S. spending more than the top 45 nations on earth combined on weapons and methods of war."

Mr. Obama doesn’t deserve to be on a list with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Mother Teresa, Amnesty International, Carl von Ossietzky, Aung San Suu Kyi and Nelson Mandela. He’s better fit for one with mass murdering tyrants like Shimon Peres, Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson and Henry Kissinger. The 2009 Nobel Peace Prize puts the president on a list with all of them.



 

[bigron]

Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize
 
Posted on Oct 9, 2009
By Mr. Fish
http://www.truthdig.com/cartoon/item/20091009_obamas_nobel_peace_prize/

[klompfot]

Thorbjørn Jagland, the leader of the Nobel peace prize committee, is a former member of the trilateral commission, CFR, former prime minister and foreign minister of Norway, AND was on september 29th this year elected as secretary general of the Council of Europe.

[Overcast]

"War is Peace."

That absolutely has to be the very best phrase for this Obama Nobel Peace Prize sham.

[Overcast]

[Monkeypox]

If Kissinger can get a Nobel, so can Obama.

Yes, but Pissinger received it because of his years of "work".

Obama got it because he's, well, Obama.

[Monkeypox]

Well, if Fidel Castro likes it, then it must be good...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20091010/ts_nm/us_nobel_peace_obama_castro_1


Fidel Castro lauds Nobel prize for Obama
Reuters

  
U.S. President Barack Obama smiles after making remarks on regulatory reform in the East Room at the White House in Washington Reuters – U.S. President Barack Obama smiles after making remarks on regulatory reform in the East Room at the …

HAVANA (Reuters) – Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro lauded the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to U.S. President Barack Obama, saying on Saturday it was "a positive measure" that was more a criticism of past U.S. policies than a recognition of Obama's accomplishments.

Castro said the prize made up for the blow Obama suffered last week when the International Olympic Committee awarded the 2016 Summer Games to Rio de Janeiro after Obama had flown to Copenhagen to pitch for Chicago, his adoptive hometown.

The Nobel Committee announced on Friday that Obama had won the peace price for his "extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples."

The decision prompted surprise in many quarters and anger from Obama's conservative foes in the United States.

But Castro, who has generally written positively about Obama, was pleased at the decision by the committee.

"I don't always share the positions of that institution but I'm obligated to recognize that in this instance it was, in my judgment, a positive measure," Castro wrote in a column published in state-run media.

"Many will say that he still hasn't earned the right to receive such distinction. We prefer to see in the decision, more than a prize for the president of the United States, a criticism of the genocidal policies that not a few presidents of that country have followed."

Such policies, Castro said, had "brought the world to the crossroads where it finds itself; an exhortation for peace and the search for solutions to assure the survival of the species."

The Nobel prize made up for "the reverse Obama suffered in Copenhagen ... which provoked angry attacks by his adversaries of the extreme right," Castro wrote.

His comments were part of a long piece entitled "The Bell Tolls for the Dollar" in which he said the U.S. dollar was losing its position as the preeminent world currency.

Also, he criticized the United States, as he often does, for not doing more to cut emission of greenhouse gases said to be causing global warming.

Castro, 83, ran Cuba for 49 years after taking power in a 1959 revolution but stepped down last year and was replaced as president by his younger brother Raul Castro.

The elder Castro has been seen only in occasional photos and videos since having surgery for an undisclosed intestinal ailment in July 2006. But he still has a behind-the-scenes role in government and keeps a high profile through his writings.

[Republic Renewal]

The American people are split over whether or not Obama deserved the Peace Prize. Anyone think that this might be the plan, to divide and conquer?

[Dig]

The American people are split over whether or not Obama deserved the Peace Prize. Anyone think that this might be the plan, to divide and conquer?

America is not split on this at all.

The MSM is split.

The MSM is not America, now more than ever they are proving how irrelevant thay truly are.

[Jackson Holly]

Sane:

The MSM is split.

Exactly. The MSM, as always, is creating Multiple Personality Disorder in the abused, dazed and confused American Psyche.

[Harconen]

War and peace prizes

Nobel peace prize winer Henry Kissinger (right) with Richard Nixon. Photograph: AP

Howard Zinn
The Guardian
Sat, 10 Oct 2009 23:23 EDT
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/oct/09/nobel-peace-prize-war-obama

I was dismayed when I heard Barack Obama was given the Nobel peace prize. A shock, really, to think that a president carrying on two wars would be given a peace prize. Until I recalled that Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Henry Kissinger had all received Nobel peace prizes. The Nobel committee is famous for its superficial estimates, won over by rhetoric and by empty gestures, and ignoring blatant violations of world peace.

Yes, Wilson gets credit for the League of Nations - that ineffectual body which did nothing to prevent war. But he had bombarded the Mexican coast, sent troops to occupy Haiti and the Dominican Republic and brought the US into the slaughterhouse of Europe in the first World War, surely among stupid and deadly wars at the top of the list.

Sure, Theodore Roosevelt brokered a peace between Japan and Russia. But he was a lover of war, who participated in the US conquest of Cuba, pretending to liberate it from Spain while fastening US chains on that tiny island. And as president he presided over the bloody war to subjugate the Filipinos, even congratulating a US general who had just massacred 600 helpless villagers in the Phillipines. The Committee did not give the Nobel prize to Mark Twain, who denounced Roosevelt and criticised the war, nor to William James, leader of the anti-imperialist league.

Oh yes, the committee saw fit to give a peace prize to Henry Kissinger, because he signed the final peace agreement ending the war in Vietnam, of which he had been one of the architects. Kissinger, who obsequiously went along with Nixon's expansion of the war, with the bombing of peasant villages in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Kissinger, who matches the definition of a war criminal very accurately, is given a peace prize!

People should be given a peace prize not on the basis of promises they have made - as with Obama, an eloquent maker of promises - but on the basis of actual accomplishments towards ending war, and Obama has continued deadly, inhuman military action in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The Nobel peace committee should retire, and turn over its huge funds to some international peace organization which is not awed by stardom and rhetoric, and which has some understanding of history.

[Harconen]

Obama's Nobel Prize Stuns War Victims

IslamOnline.net
Sat, 10 Oct 2009 21:37 EDT
http://www.islamonline.net/servlet/Satellite?c=Article_C&cid=1254573482737&pagename=Zone-English-News/NWELayout

Ajmal Khan, 55, could not believe his ears when he heard about US President Barack Obama's surprise win of the Nobel Peace Prize.

"I don't think he deserves the peace prize," Khan, a Pakistani mechanical engineer, told the Los Angeles Times on Saturday, October 10. "Has he done anything special to bring peace in the world? Killing goes on in Afghanistan, in Iraq, and in other countries."

Obama was granted the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009 on Friday, for his "extraordinary" efforts in international diplomacy and hastening nuclear disarmament.

"If the category is peace, he doesn't deserve the peace prize," said Nadeem Umtaz, 49, a salesman in Islamabad. "The situation keeps getting worse in Pakistan and Afghanistan."

"I think he got the prize because he's a powerful man, that's all," he said.

Since Obama came to office, the US stepped up drone attacks in north-western Pakistan on claims of hunting down Taliban and Al-Qaeda operatives. But the attacks have killed hundreds of civilians and only a few Taliban leaders.

Obama has also failed to end the eight-year Afghan war. Instead, he ordered more troops to the central Asian Muslim country to fight the Taliban.

"There's no end to death and destruction in Pakistan and Afghanistan," said Ayaz Wazir, a security analyst and expert on Pakistan's tribal areas.

For What?

Many Pakistanis say that Obama deserves court trial, not Nobel Prize, for the destruction in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

"Everyone I know curses Obama," Nasir Ali, a taxi driver, said. "And if he was here in front of me, I would curse him, too."

The same sentiments are echoing among war-ravaged Afghans.

"Things are just the same as the way they were by the administration of [George W.] Bush," Kabul restaurant worker Obaid Alam told the US news network NBC. "Things are not better, things are worse and worse."

The Afghan man is puzzled how Obama was chosen to the Nobel Prize, even though he ordered more troops to the war-torn country.

"The number of US Army [troops] has increased here, the number of terrorist attacks increased here," he said.

He said that the extra US troops Obama has ordered are adding more fuel to the raging conflict.

"I'm kind of confused whether that Nobel Award [is] for all those things."

Obama has recently sent more than 30,000 extra troops to Afghanistan and is mulling requests for thousands more. There are over 103,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan, which the US invaded following the 9/11 attacks.

"I'm not sure I understand -- this isn't for peace here, is it?" Bank worker Homaira Reza told the Los Angeles Times. "Because we haven't got any."

[bigron]

Obama and the Nobel Prize: When War becomes Peace, When the Lie becomes the Truth

By Michel Chossudovsky
 
Global Research, October 11, 2009
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=15622



When war becomes peace,

When concepts and realities are turned upside down,

When fiction becomes truth and truth becomes fiction.

When a global military agenda is heralded as a humanitarian endeavor, 

When the killing of civilians is upheld as "collateral damage", 

When those who resist the US-NATO led invasion of their homeland are categorized as "insurgents" or "terrorists".   

When preemptive nuclear war is upheld as self defense.

When advanced torture and "interrogation" techniques are routinely used to "protect peacekeeping operations",

When tactical nuclear weapons are heralded by the Pentagon as "harmless to the surrounding civilian population"

When three quarters of US personal federal income tax revenues are allocated to financing what is euphemistically referred to as "national defense" 

When the Commander in Chief of the largest military force on planet earth is presented as a global peace-maker,

When the Lie becomes the Truth. 

Obama's "War Without Borders"

We are the crossroads of the most serious crisis in modern history. The US in partnership with NATO and Israel has launched a global military adventure which, in a very real sense, threatens the future of humanity.

At this critical juncture in our history, the Norwegian Nobel Committee's decision to award the Nobel Peace Prize to President and Commander in Chief Barack Obama constitutes an unmitigated tool of propaganda and distortion, which unreservedly supports the Pentagon's "Long War":  "A War without Borders" in the true sense of the word, characterised by the Worlwide deployment of US military might.

Apart from the diplomatic rhetoric, there has been no meaningful reversal of US foreign policy in relation to the George W. Bush presidency, which might have remotely justified the granting of the Nobel Prize to Obama. In fact quite the opposite. The Obama military agenda has sought to extend the war into new frontiers. With a new team of military and foreign policy advisers, the Obama war agenda has been far more effective in fostering military escalation than that formulated by the NeoCons.

Since the very outset of the Obama presidency, this global military project has become increasingly pervasive, with the reinforcement of US military presence in all major regions of the World  and the development of new advanced weapons systems on an unprecdented scale.

Granting the Nobel Peace Prize to Barack Obama provides legitimacy to the illegal practices of war, to the military occupation of foreign lands, to the relentless killings of civilians in the name of "democracy".

Both the Obama administration and NATO are directly threatening Russia, China and Iran. The US under Obama is developing "a First Strike Global Missile Shield System":

"Along with space-based weapons, the Airborne Laser is the next defense frontier. ... Never has Ronald Reagan's dream of layered missile defenses - Star Wars, for short - been as....close, at least technologically, to becoming realized."

Reacting to this consolidation, streamlining and upgrading of American global nuclear strike potential, on August 11 the Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Air Force, the same Alexander Zelin cited earlier on the threat of U.S. strikes from space on all of his nation, said that the "Russian Air Force is preparing to meet the threats resulting from the creation of the Global Strike Command in the U.S. Air Force" and that Russia is developing "appropriate systems to meet the threats that may arise." (Rick Rozoff, Showdown with Russia and China: U.S. Advances First Strike Global Missile Shield System, Global Research, August 19, 2009)

At no time since the Cuban missile crisis has the World been closer to the unthinkable: a World War III scenario, a global military conflict involving the use of nuclear weapons.

1. The so-called missile defense shield or Star Wars initiative involving the first strike use of nuclear weapons is now to be developed globally in different regions of the World. The missile shield is largely directed against Russia, China, Iran and North Korea.

2. New US military bases have been set up with a view to establishing US spheres of influence in every region of the World as well as surrounding and confronting Russia and China.

3. There has been an escalation in the Central Asian Middle East war. The "defense budget" under Obama has spiraled with increased allocations to both Afghanistan and Iraq.

4.  Under orders of president Obama, acting as Commander in Chief, Pakistan is now the object of routine US aerial bombardments in violation of its territorial sovereignty, using the "Global War on Terrorism" as a justification.

5. The construction of new military bases is envisaged in Latin America including Colombia on the immediate border of Venezuela.

6. Military aid to Israel has increased. The Obama presidency has expressed its unbending support for Israel and the Israeli military. Obama has remained mum on the atrocities committed by Israel in Gaza. There has not even been a semblance of renewed Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. 

7. There has been a reinforcement of the new regional commands including AFRICOM and SOUTHCOM 

8. A new round of threats has been directed against Iran.

9. The US is intent upon fostering further divisions between Pakistan and India, which could lead to a regional war, as well as using India's nuclear arsenal as an indirect means to threaten China.

The diabolical nature of this military project was outlined in the 2000 Project for a New American Century (PNAC). The PNAC's declared objectives are:

defend the American homeland;

fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theater wars;

perform the "constabulary" duties associated with shaping the security environment in critical regions;

transform U.S. forces to exploit the "revolution in military affairs;" (Project for a New American Century, Rebuilding Americas Defenses.pdf, September 2000)

The "Revolution in Military Affairs" refers to the development of new advanced weapons systems. The militarization of space, new advanced chemical and biological weapons, sophisticated laser guided missiles, bunker buster bombs, not to mention the US Air Force's climatic warfare program (HAARP) based in Gokona, Alaska, are part of Obama's  "humanitarian arsenal".

War against the Truth

This is a war against the truth.  When war becomes peace, the world is turned upside down. Conceptualization is no longer possible.  An inquisitorial social system emerges.

An understanding of fundamental social and political events is replaced by a World of sheer fantasy, where "evil folks" are lurking. The objective of the "Global War on Terrorism" which has been fully endorsed by Obama administration has been to galvanize public support for a Worldwide campaign against heresy.

In the eyes of public opinion, possessing a "just cause" for waging war is central. A war is said to be Just if it is waged on moral, religious or ethical grounds. The consensus is to wage war. People can longer think for themselves. They accept the authority and  wisdom of the established social order.

The Nobel Committee says that President Obama has given the world "hope for a better future." The prize is awarded for Obama's

"extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples. The Committee has attached special importance to Obama's vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons."

...His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world's population. (Nobel Press Release, October 9, 2009)

The granting of the Nobel "peace prize" to president Barack Obama has become an integral part of the Pentagon's propaganda machine. It provides a human face to the invaders, it upholds the demonization of those who oppose US military intervention.

The decision to grant Obama the Nobel  Peace Prize was no doubt carefully negotiated with the Norwegian Committee at the highest levels of the US government. It has far reaching implications. 

It unequivocally upholds the US led war as a "Just Cause". It erases the war crimes committed both by the Bush and Obama administrations.

War Propaganda:  Jus ad Bellum

The "Just war" theory serves to camouflage the nature of US foreign policy, while providing a human face to the invaders.

In both its classical and contemporary versions, the Just war theory upholds war as a "humanitarian operation". It calls for military intervention on ethical and moral grounds against "insurgents", "terrorists", "failed" or "rogue states".

The Just War has been heralded by the Nobel Committee as an instrument of Peace. Obama personifies the "Just War".

Taught in US military academies, a modern-day version of the "Just War" theory has been embodied into US military doctrine. The "war on terrorism" and the notion of "preemption" are predicated on the right to "self defense." They define "when it is permissible to wage war": jus ad bellum.

Jus ad bellum has served to build a consensus within the Armed Forces command structures. It has also served to convince the troops that they are fighting for a "just cause". More generally, the Just War theory in its modern day version is an integral part of war propaganda and media disinformation, applied to gain public support for a war agenda. Under Obama as Nobel Peace Laureate, the Just War becomes universally accepted, upheld by the so-called international community.   

The ultimate objective is to subdue the citizens, totally depoliticize social life in America, prevent people from thinking and conceptualizing, from analyzing facts and challenging the legitimacy of the US NATO led war.

War becomes peace, a worthwhile "humanitarian undertaking",  Peaceful dissent becomes heresy.

Military Escalation with a Human Face. Nobel Committee grants the "Green Light" 

More significantly, the Nobel peace prize grants legitimacy to an unprecedented  "escalation"  of US-NATO led military operations under the banner of peacemaking. 

It contributes to falsifying the nature of the US-NATO military agenda.

Between 40,000 to 60,000 more US and allied troops are to be sent to Afghanistan under a peacemaking banner. On the 8th of october, a day prior to the Nobel Committee's decision, the US congress granted Obama a 680-billion-dollar defense authorization bill, which is slated to finance the process of military escalation:

"Washington and its NATO allies are planning an unprecedented increase of troops for the war in Afghanistan, even in addition to the 17,000 new American and several thousand NATO forces that have been committed to the war so far this year".

The number, based on as yet unsubstantiated reports of what U.S. and NATO commander Stanley McChrystal and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Michael Mullen have demanded of the White House, range from 10,000 to 45,000.

Fox News has cited figures as high as 45,000 more American soldiers and ABC News as many as 40,000. On September 15 the Christian Science Monitor wrote of "perhaps as many as 45,000."

The similarity of the estimates indicate that a number has been agreed upon and America's obedient media is preparing domestic audiences for the possibility of the largest escalation of foreign armed forces in Afghanistan's history. Only seven years ago the United States had 5,000 troops in the country, but was scheduled to have 68,000 by December even before the reports of new deployments surfaced. (Rick Rozoff, U.S., NATO Poised For Most Massive War In Afghanistan's History, Global Research, September 24, 2009)

Within hours of the decision of the Norwegian Nobel committee, Obama met with the War Council, or should we call it the "Peace Council". This meeting had been carefully scheduled to coincide with that of the Norwegian Nobel committee.

This key meeting behind closed doors in the Situation Room of the White House included Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and key political and military advisers. General  Stanley McChrystal participated in the meeting via video link from Kabul.

General Stanley McChrystal ias said to have offered the Commander in Chief "several alternative options" "including a maximum injection of 60,000 extra troops". The 60,000 figure was quoted following a leak of the Wall Street Journal (AFP: After Nobel nod, Obama convenes Afghan war council, October 9, 2009)

"The president had a robust conversation about the security and political challenges in Afghanistan and the options for building a strategic approach going forward," according to an administration official (quoted in AFP: After Nobel nod, Obama convenes Afghan war council  October 9, 2009)

The Nobel committee had in a sense given Obama a green light.  The October 9 meeting in the Situation Room was to set the groundwork for a further escalation of the conflict under the banner of counterinsurgency and democracy building.   

Meanwhile, in the course of the last few months, US forces have stepped up their aerial bombardments of village communities in the northern tribal areas of Pakistan, under the banner of combating Al Qaeda.
 

[aLLyOuRbAsE]

i cant believe they can get away with giving the nobel PEACE prize, to someone who is at this very moment WAGING WAR!!!!!

[Harconen]

i cant believe they can get away with giving the nobel PEACE prize, to someone who is at this very moment WAGING WAR!!!!!

You know what it is? SICK SICK SICK OVER ANY BORDER!

[Republic Renewal]

America is not split on this at all.

The MSM is split.

The MSM is not America, now more than ever they are proving how irrelevant thay truly are.

Understood. Are we to believe not one shred of newspaper? Not a second of newscast? Have we been reduced to rumours?! Where then are the truths?  In alternative media we trust.

[Brocke]

Obama should give back Nobel Prize

Article from: The Advertiser
October 12, 2009 09:30am



Barack Obama, Alexander Downer / Composite

ALEXANDER DOWNER

SELECTING President Barack Obama for the Peace Prize was a political decision of gross stupidity.

WHEN I heard Barack Obama had won this year's Nobel Prize for Peace I was sitting at a meeting with an African friend. He is pretty left wing by any standards and loves Barack Obama.

He turned to me and said, sotto voce, "patronising, very patronising". I thought the decision was really dumb and discredited, maybe fatally, but I asked my friend what he meant. He screwed up his face and said bitterly: "He only won the prize because he's an African-American".

That may be part of the explanation. Barack Obama was nominated after he had been in office for just 11 weeks. Even now, he only has served as President of the U.S. for 8 1/2 months and has not had anything like enough time for his policies to bear fruit.

This was a very bad decision and Barack Obama should have been man enough to refuse the prize. If he had, he would have helped preserve the integrity of the Nobel Peace Prize and also demonstrate a disarming degree of modesty.

How could he have snatched the prize from such people as the great Zimbabwean humanitarian and champion of freedom, Morgan Tsvangiri, or the renowned Greg Mortenson, a former U.S. Army doctor who has set up schools for girls in tough, Taliban-dominated areas of Afghanistan.

These people are real heroes; brave, decent, effective and modest contributors to a better world.

Colombian Senator Piedad Cordoba, who mediated to end the civil war in Colombia, apparently was nominated, too. But he is not on TV every night so he cannot get it.

This year's Nobel Peace Prize has been a hideous display of cynical politics. The blame does not all lie at President Obama's feet. He was, after all, offered the prize by the Nobel Peace Prize Committee.

The Peace Prize process is very different from the procedures used for other Nobel prizes, such as medicine and literature. They are decided by professional academicians but the Peace Prize is awarded by a small committee of Norwegian politicians. That is quite a problem. At the time Alfred Nobel, the Swede who invented dynamite, set up his prizes, Norway was in a political union with Sweden and apparently Mr Nobel thought Norwegian politicians were less corrupt and more humane and visionary than their Swedish counterparts so he determined the Norwegian Parliament should set up a committee and choose the winner.

They have come up with some odd results. Mahatma Gandhi - the father of peaceful protest to free hundreds of millions of people from colonialism - did not win them over. He was not worth it, apparently.

Nor was Winston Churchill who, with his brave people, held out alone in Europe against the Nazis in 1940 and much of 1941 and with Roosevelt, Truman and Stalin won World War II.

Then there was the Cold War. The two heroes who finally brought the curtain down on that were Pope John Paul II and Ronald Reagan. Not them either, apparently.

To be fair, some Nobel Laureates have deserved the honour. Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan, who led the women's peace marches in Northern Ireland in the 1970s, were worthy winners.

So were Nelson Mandela and F.W. de Klerk. A great favourite of mine, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, was an excellent choice in 1991 as was Lech Walesa in 1983. But Barack Obama after just nine months in the job?

So who exactly is on this committee which selects the Nobel Prize for Peace?

There are five Norwegian MPs on the committee, three from the left and two from the right. There is a woman called Sissel Ronbeck, who is a Labour MP. In her earlier years she was the chairman of the Norwegian Workers Youth League. Then there is Ms Agot Valle, of the Socialist Left Party. There is a Conservative and a member of the libertarian Progress Party. And then there's the chairman, the most important of all the members of the committee. He is a man called Thorbjorn Jagland.

Mr Jagland was once prime minister of Norway and became the foreign minister. He is a member of the Norwegian Labour Party.

In 2001, you will recall there was a standoff between the Australian Government and a Norwegian ship, the Tampa. The Tampa had picked up several people who were trying to get to Australia from Indonesia. The Government told the Tampa it had to take the people to Indonesia, that is, back to where they came from. The ship's captain, on instructions from Norway's then government, said it would not. They had to land in Australia.

One cold Canberra night I was snug in bed when my phone rang at 2am. It was foreign minister Jagland. I politely told him it was a little late for me although, no doubt, a pleasant early evening in Oslo. He started shouting. He hardly needed a phone from Norway. He "ordered" me to accept the ship into an Australian port. I politely explained our policy about stopping people smugglers and said the asylum seekers would be safe in Indonesia where they would be processed by the UNHCR. Not good enough, he yelled. The Tampa was going to land them in Australia. I told him it was not. It did not.

This Thorbjorn Jagland was a real party-political player. He was Labour, we were Liberal. He good, we bad. What a surprise; the same man has made the worst decision in Nobel Peace Prize history as he hated George W. Bush and Barack Obama is an African-American. He has done real damage to the institution. You cannot help a fool.

* Alexander Downer was Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs from 1996 to 2007.

http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,22606,26196226-5006301,00.html

[bigron]

Former CIA Asset Obama's Fictional Nobel Prize Statement

By Sherwood Ross

                             
 

October 11, 2009
http://www.uruknet.info/index.php?p=m58827&hd=&size=1&l=e

Can President Obama be serious when he says he accepts the Nobel Peace Prize as "an affirmation of American leadership on behalf of aspirations held by people of all nations"?

Among "all nations" does he include the people of Iraq? Polls show Iraqis overwhelmingly want the U.S. to get out. Apparently, they didn’t enjoy their dose of "American leadership." Does Obama’s "all nations" include Okinawa, which the U.S. has occupied for 64 years and refuses to leave?

Does "all nations" include Diego Garcia, whose inhabitants the U.S. forced from their island homes in the Indian Ocean, (as Time magazine has reported,) and whose dogs we gassed for good measure? (President Bush later used that base to attack Afghanistan, the better to dominate the oil-rich Middle East.)

Since he’s been in office only a short time, when Obama speaks of "an affirmation of American leadership" is he referring to the eight years of warmongering by his predecessor George W. Bush, who tore up every international treaty he could lay his hands on? In fact, global public opinion polls identified Bush as one of the most feared public figures on the planet. What kind of "leadership" is it when one UN member invades another based on lies and kills a million of its people, steals it blind, and shatters its economy? Calling that "leadership" is a bit wide of the mark.

Perhaps Obama is referring to the "leadership" of his friend Bill Clinton, who let half a million Iraqi children starve to death during his White House watch and who inaugurated the rendition kidnappings of men off the streets of foreign countries---men who were subsequently tortured and denied legal rights and representation?

"Leaders," of course, are supposed to have followers. But a CNN poll September 15th found that 58 percent of Americans oppose the war in Afghanistan. That war is as illegal as the war in Iraq, yet President Obama is deliberating about whether to escalate it, not whether to end it.

Obama’s statement accepting the Nobel is as misleading as his remarks to the CIA last April 16th when he praised the Agency and hailed the U.S. as "a nation of laws" when today it is, in fact, the world’s principal law-breaker. The fact is, the charismatic new president appears to see the world through the dark glasses of the CIA and has aligned himself with the Agency’s imperialist agenda. Given Obama’s past employment, this is not that odd.


According to Wikipedia, upon graduating from Columbia University, Obama for a year "held a position as a research associate" in Business International Corp., a CIA front organization. The company is alleged to have kindly paid off Obama’s college loans for him. Obama worked in BIC’s financial services division, where he edited "Financing Foreign Operations," a global reference service, and wrote for "Business International Money Report," a weekly financial newsletter. According to an article in the October issue of Rock Creek Free Press, of Washington, D.C., reporter Wayne Madsen writes, "Through its contacts with leading liberals around the world, BIC sought to recruit those on the left as CIA agents and assets." At any rate, the New York Times reported in 1977 that a BIC company official admitted providing "cover" for CIA employees.


The CIA, of course, has long been tied in with advancing the interests of the oil industry. Its Middle East station chief Kermit Roosevelt in 1953 stage-managed the overthrow of the democratic government of Iran after it nationalized its oil industry, as it had every right to do, especially when they were being cheated like mad.

CIA secrecy conceals many of its crimes such as the torture in Iraq and Afghanistan prisons. So Obama, as a former CIA asset, protects the Agency by not prosecuting their alleged torturers, by withholding photographs of their nauseating handiwork, and by praising the bandits in public. One way to tell who really runs a country is to look to see which, if any, of its citizens are above the law. In America, those people are headquartered in Langley, Virginia.

#

(Sherwood Ross formerly reported for the Chicago Daily News, wire services, and national magazines. Reach him at sherwoodross10@gmail.com)



 

[glorydays]

The ironic thing about the Nobel 'Peace' Prize is who it is named after...Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite and the biggest arms manufacturer in Sweden in the 1800s.

It should be renamed....the Nobel War Prize.

[Republic Renewal]

The ironic thing about the Nobel 'Peace' Prize is who it is named after...Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite and the biggest arms manufacturer in Sweden in the 1800s.

It should be renamed....the Nobel War Prize.

Hear hear! Most agreeable.

[bigron]

Prize for Hope [A Cartoon From Austria]



By Petar Pismestrovic, Kleine Zeitung, Austria
http://www.truthdig.com/cartoon/item/20091012_prize_for_hope_a_cartoon_from_austria/

[lazarus]

Bill O’Reilly praises Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize win

http://www.irishcentral.com/news/Bill-OReilly-praises-Obamas-Nobel-Peace-Prize-win-64014552.html

“Having a U.S. president honored with a peace prizes is good for the country. It's as simple as that,” he said.

“We should want the world to think we're a nation that gives peace a chance, because that's what we are.

[Outer Haven]

I just noticed a ridiculous contradiction on the Nobel Piss Prize official site (or maybe it's just me):

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/shortfacts.html

Posthumous Nobel Peace Prizes

There is one posthumous Nobel Peace Prize, to Dag Hammarskjöld in 1961. From 1974, the Statutes of the Nobel Foundation stipulate that a Prize cannot be awarded posthumously, unless death has occurred after the announcement of the Nobel Prize. Before 1974, the Nobel Prize was also awarded posthumously to Erik Axel Karlfeldt (Nobel Prize in Literature 1931).

And, then, below, on Ghandi's nomination:

Mahatma Gandhi, one of the strongest symbols of non-violence in the 20th century, was nominated in 1937, 1938, 1939, 1947 and, finally, shortly before he was assassinated in January 1948. Although Gandhi was not awarded the Prize (a posthumous award is not allowed by the statutes), the Norwegian Nobel Committee decided to make no award that year on the grounds that "there was no suitable living candidate".
Read more about "the missing Laureate" »

So are posthumous awards allowed or not? 

[Anti_Illuminati]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/6330163/United-States-to-send-up-to-45000-more-troops-to-Afghanistan.html

United States to send 'up to 45,000 more troops to Afghanistan'
The US is expected to announce a significant surge of up to 45,000 extra troops for Afghanistan after Gordon Brown said that 500 more British troops would be sent to the country.

By James Kirkup and Andrew Hough
Published: 11:29PM BST 14 Oct 2009

 Barack Obama holds a briefing on Afghanistan and Pakistan with his National Security Team. Newsnight reported he would announce a surge in troop numbers.  Photo: GETTY
Robert Gibbs: Barack Obama to 'send 45,000 more troops to Afghanistan', reports suggest
But White House press secretary Robert Gibbs dismissed the claims. Photo: AP
Gordon Brown: Barack Obama to 'send 45,000 more troops to Afghanistan', reports suggest
Gordon Brown told the Commons that Britain is sending another 500 troops to Afghanistan. Photo: PA

President Barack Obama's administration is understood to have told the British government that it could announce, as early as next week, the substantial increase to its 65,000 troops already serving there.

The decision from Mr Obama comes after he considered a request from General Stanley McChrystal, the US commander in Afghanistan, to send tens of thousands of extra American troops to the country.

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup, the Chief of the Defence Staff, said: "I don't want to put words in the mouths of the Americans but I am fairly confident of the way it is going to come out."

An announcement next week could coincide with a meeting of NATO defence ministers in Bratislava, Slovakia, due next Thursday and Friday.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs dismissed the claims, after President Obama met with his war council for the fifth time to map out a new strategy in Afghanistan.

"I would not put any weight behind the fact that a decision has been made, when the President has yet to make a decision," he told reporters in Washington.

"I've seen the report. It's not true, either generally or specifically. The president has not made a decision."

But Ministry of Defence sources indicated that the British Government had been told to expect a substantial increase in the number of of American troops.

Earlier Gordon Brown announced the British force in Afghanistan would increase to 9,500 but was told by former defence secretary John Hutton that he should have sent more troops to Afghanistan six months ago.

Mr Hutton said it would have been “much more helpful” to the British mission if the Prime Minister had listened to military calls for a larger force earlier this year.

Mr Brown previously blocked a military request for almost 2,000 extra troops for Afghanistan.

Gen Sir Richard Dannatt, the former Army chief who is now advising the Conservatives, said that decision left the force fighting with “part of one arm tied behind its back”.

Mr Hutton was defence secretary at the time of the earlier troop request. He resigned from the Cabinet in June.

He made it clear that he wanted the earlier deployment plan to go ahead and suggested that blocking it had undermined the British mission. The Prime Minister “should follow the military advice”, Mr Hutton said. “I think it would have been much more helpful had we had the additional troops there six months ago.”

Defence sources disputed this view, insisting that there were not enough trained troops to deploy at the time.

But Mr Hutton’s words overshadowed Mr Brown’s announcement in the Commons that he would increase the force in Afghanistan, taking British numbers there to 9,500.

As The Daily Telegraph reported last week, a total of 1,000 more British soldiers will go to Helmand province. Five hundred will be new troops from Britain. The remainder is a British battle group currently deployed in Kandahar province under international command.

The Prime Minister said the Kandahar battle group was being redeployed “to meet the changing demands of the campaign, which require greater concentration of our forces in central Helmand”.

He said he supported the new deployments “in principle”, saying that before the troops could be sent, certain conditions must be met. Those terms were that soldiers were properly equipped, that the Afghan government promised more forces to Helmand and that Nato allies bore more of the burden in Afghanistan.

David Cameron, the Conservative leader, mocked Mr Brown’s “condition”.

He said: “Won’t many people think: isn’t it the Government’s responsibility to make sure they have that necessary equipment? And might they also ask: why is it that after eight years we are still playing catch-up on equipment?”

[Protean]

WAR is PEACE

[Harconen]

On the Nobel Prize for Occasional Peace

From left: Queen Silvia, Princess Madeleine, King Carl Gustaf, Prince Carl Philip and Crown Princess Victoria at the Nobel Prize Awards of 2008. [image credit: Newscom]

Matt Taibbi
Taibblog
http://trueslant.com/matttaibbi/2009/10/13/on-the-nobel-prize-for-occasional-peace/

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 18:09 EDT
It's hard to believe, but there have been sillier moments in the history of the Nobel Peace Prize than this recent fiasco involving Barack Obama - it's just so hard to remember them when you're rolling around on the ground and spitting up greenish foam in a state of shock, as most of us were this past weekend as the news of Obama's amazing award rolled over the airwaves.

The Nobel Peace Prize long ago ceased to be an award given to people who really spend their whole careers agitating for peace. Like most awards the Prize has evolved into a kind of maraschino cherry for hardcore careerists to place atop their resumes, a reward not for dissidence but on the contrary for gamely upholding the values of Western society as it perceives itself, for putting a good face on things (in Obama's place, literally so).

Even when the award is given to a genuine dissident, it tends to be a dissident hailing from a country we consider outside the fold of Western civilization, a rogue state, "not one of us" - South Africa from the apartheid days, for instance, or the regime occupying East Timor.

You never, ever get a true dissident from a prominent Western country winning the award, despite the obvious appropriateness such a choice would represent. Our Western society quite openly embraces war as a means of solving problems and for quite some time now has fashioned its entire social and economic structure around the preparation for war.

Most of our important scientific innovations come, either directly or indirectly, through research into the creation of new weapons. Our media relentlessly praises and cartoonizes war and violence, blithely indoctrinates millions of children a day into the possibilities of military combat with video games and toy guns. We house an utterly insane percentage of nonviolent criminals in jails. And when a fringe presidential candidate named Dennis Kucinich announced plans to create a "Department of Peace," he was almost literally laughed off the campaign trail.

We're a society that believes powerfully in the divine right of force, but that doesn't mean we don't like to think of ourselves as being peaceful. And indeed, there are times when we actually do turn to peace and diplomacy to solve our problems. Usually this is because all other avenues of action have been exhausted first, or because it just happens to be the right logistical move at that particular moment.

Like for instance, we invade Iraq for whatever asinine reason was actually behind that decision, we stay there for, oh, seven years or whatever, and eventually it starts to occur to us that this is an extraordinarily expensive activity, pisses off everyone involved, destabilizes a whole region, and to boot puts the lives of countless innocent Iraqis and young Americans at risk, though of course this is the last consideration. Moreover the plan to gain permanent access to Iraqi oil reserves through the establishment of a friendly "democratic" regime with (let's say) a "flexible" attitude toward foreign investment is turning out to be problematic at best.

So eventually someone will make the decision that this whole Iraq war thing is stupid, benefits no one, not even politically in the short term, and moves will be made to wrap up this idiotic business and bring everyone home. At which point someone making this dreary logistical decision will get nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, and that someone will probably win it, allowing us all to bask in the glow of our "peace-loving" values which prevailed in the end over hate and violence.

That's how this thing works. We ebb toward war most of the time. But sometimes, out of necessity, or when we run out of bullets, we ebb the other way. And it's then that we give ourselves awards for our peace-loving behavior.

Who knows, maybe Barack Obama's award is already tied to that particular Iraq plotline. He was, after all, elected in part because his party, the Democratic Party, which had supported the idiotic invasion at the start, had lately decided to abandon the idea and present itself as being against this particular war.

More likely the Obama critics who believe that Obama won this award for not being George Bush are right as well. The problem the international community had with Bush wasn't that he believed in war and the use of force, it was that he believed in the unilateral use of these things. Bush did not believe in the use of force as an expression of a whole society's values, he believed in it as an expression of his own machismo.

He was like Slim Pickens in Dr. Strangelove, flying through history with a bomb between his legs, shouting "Yee, haw!" It wasn't so much that this behavior was wrong, it was just unseemly. He was like the drunk at a Victorian tea party who during the soup course makes jokes about the hostess's secret pregnancy in France. We Westerners, we just don't do things like that. Decorum, sir, decorum!

How do we do things? We keep the troops in those faraway places like Afghanistan and Iraq, sure, but while we do that we make sure to extol things like tolerance and dialogue and the spirit of diplomacy. We make sure that the same people who were not involved in the decision-making process during the previous bombing runs under Bush are in the loop again, now and hopefully forever. We smile a lot and say nice things about the Geneva convention and the impropriety of torture and secret detention, the importance of the rule of international law. We make everybody feel better about how things are going to go from now on.

This is what Barack Obama did to "earn" the Nobel Prize. He put the benevolent face back on things. He is a good-looking black law professor with an obvious bent for dialogue and discussion and inclusion. That he hasn't actually reversed any of Bush's more notorious policies - hasn't closed Guantanamo Bay, hasn't ended secret detentions, hasn't amped down Iraq or Afghanistan - is another matter. What he has done is remove the stink of unilateralism from those policies.

They're not crazy-ass, blatantly illegal, lunatic rampages anymore, but carefully-considered, collectively-run peacekeeping actions, prosecuted with meaningful input from our allies.

You see the difference? The Nobel committee sure did!

There've been some dumb Nobel Peace Prizes before. Giving one to Gorbachev in 1990, sandwiched right in between his invasions of Azerbaijan and Lithuania, comes immediately to mind. Giving one to Henry Kissinger, a man responsible for the bombings of millions of Indochinese (and who consistently favored the use of increased bombing runs to force the other side to the negotiating table) is another. The award to Arafat, Rabin and Peres likewise seems humorous to me. The Al Gore award, I don't even want to go there. I went years thinking that the Al Gore prize was a joke someone was playing on me. I still can't believe it really happened.

The unifying thread for all these prizewinners is that they were all important political figures who at one time or another embraced violence as a just and appropriate policy, and got the peace crown once the political weather changed and it was time to put the tanks back in the garage. Even Gore, during the Kosovo war, boned up on his war cred before he got a prize for losing an election, growing a beard, and making a freaking movie. And hey, maybe in the real world, you can't punish politicians for embracing force - maybe there's just no way around the use of violence, when you're running a country the size of the U.S. I wouldn't know. I've never been President or Vice President of anything.

But it's hard not to notice that those onetime war-favoring pols are the Westerners who win these awards, when there is still a significant minority of people living right here among us who believe that nonviolence can work as a permanent policy, and who have consistently rejected and opposed the obvious militaristic values of the society we actually happen to live in.

Those people win the Nobel Prize when they live in "other" countries, when they're penniless priests in Timor or Soweto or activists in Guatemala. But when they're Americans or Western Europeans or Japanese who think we should reduce military spending or defund catastrophic weapons programs, no dice, because those people don't represent "us" - us being a society that doesn't seriously think about disarming.

Instead they use the award to give political backrubs to the inexperienced commanders of deployed armies, people like Barack Obama. I have no idea what his award means, but I do know one thing; it doesn't have a lot to do with peace.

[Republic Renewal]

WAR is PEACE[/center]

If the opposite of war is not war (ake peace) therefor, war cannot be peace. Without war there cannot be peace perhaps, but war is certainly not peaceful.

[bigron]

Afghan Resistance Statement

Nobel Prize for Obama

Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan

http://www.uruknet.info/index.php?p=m58959&hd=&size=1&l=e

Thursday, 15 October 2009

According to reports in media, the Nobel peace prize has been given to Barrack Obama, President of the United State of America, ostensibly for his work for peace and stability in the world!

The fact of the matter is that, that flames of war have not been put out with the assumption of power by Obama, nor the intensity of wars has reduced. Contrarily, the wars have intensified and the tempo of mass murder of humankind increased with the wars taking a more sanguinary shape.

Obama had promised, during his election campaign, to put an end to the war in Iraq and work for a real peace in the Middle East and close the Guantanamo jail. He had also promised to hammer out excellent strategy for Afghanistan and take positive and practical steps as regards the economic recovery from financial meltdown, which is the result of the wrong policies of USA. But now we see all these pledges by Obama were only empty words and slogans aimed at pulling a fast one on people.

The flames of the war in Iraq are raising with more intensity. The siege of Gaza and the mass murder of the Palestinians have been continuing unabated. The torture in Guanatano jail has not been ended. The war in Afghanistan and insecurity in the region are spiraling up. The economic meltdown is deepening while the belligerent policy of American Administration and Obama has not changed as yet.

Despite all the shortcomings, violations and other anti-peace activities, if still he is given Nobel peace prize, then it means that the colonialism does not intend to change its path and let the people to live in peace and stability. Understandably, one could not expect the panel of the Nobel Prize Committee to show unbiased judgment as regards those who have, in a way, installed them. While the Nobel Prize Awarding Committee, considers the perpetrators of all these violations and infringements to deserve the Nobel peace prize – the usurpation of freedom of the oppressed people of the world and the murder of innocent men continue unfalteringly . Still more, these perpetrators of crimes are bent on continuing their wicked and unjust activities in the time to come. In light of these realities, the Nobel Prize Allotment Committee ironically granted the Nobel Prize to whom who is ahead in anti-human activities and has in his hands, a sword stained with the blood of the people.

The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan considers the peace Nobel prize to Obama to be an addition to the collections of the unjust decisions of the world. The IEA calls on statesmen, writers and lawyers of the world to raise their voice against this unfair decision so that those who are murderers of the people of the world and violators of peace would not be able to throw dust into the eyes of the people by obtaining the Nobel peace prize and thus cover up their unforgivable crimes for some times.




 

[N.E.P.]

 

[Harconen]

Presidential Power Grows: Will You Love Every Future President?

photo courtesy of N.E.P.

David Swanson
TomDispatch
Thu, 15 Oct 2009 11:09 EDT
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175127



An Introduction by Tom Engelhardt:

October 7th marked the eighth anniversary of the Bush administration's invasion of Afghanistan and so of the... well, can we really call it a war?... that won't end, that American commanders there now predict could last for another decade or more. And yet, here's the weird thing: because Congress no longer actually declares war, we officially must be fighting something else entirely. Put another way, we are now heading for the longest undeclared war in U.S. history (depending on how you count up the Vietnam years).

The Obama administration, having doubled down on Afghanistan in March, sending another 21,000 or more U.S. troops as well as extra contingents of civilians, deciding to put a billion dollars into a new embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan, and build new or expanded embassy and consular facilities, roads, bases, and prisons in Afghanistan, is now considering yet another expansion of the [you fill in the blank], including up to 40,000 -- some reports now say 80,000 -- U.S. troops, more drone air strikes, and more training of Afghan forces. And yet, the U.S. is still operating on the pallid "authorization for use of military force" passed by Congress on September 18, 2001 at the behest of the Bush administration. It only authorizes the president "to take action to deter and prevent acts of international terrorism against the United States." No more. War itself -- despite all the fighting, the death, and the money spent -- has never been declared, and in our present era of ever expanding presidential power, it never will be.

In other words, we are at war without being at war. As in every war since World War II ended, we find ourselves once again in a presidential conflict backed by Congress. Although Senator John Kerry's Foreign Relations Committee has held hearings on "how the nation should declare war" (a subject that you might think the Constitution had definitively settled), don't count on the Obama administration to return to Congress for an actual declaration of war as it moves forward in the Af-Pak theater of operations.

George W. Bush is gone, but as David Swanson, TomDispatch regular and author of Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union, makes clear, our increasingly engorged presidency remains essentially untouched, despite the new occupant in the White House.

    Presidential Power Grows
    Will You Love Every Future President?
    By David Swanson

    Presidential power has been on a pathway of expansion beyond what the Constitution outlined, and what a government of, by, and for the people requires, since George Washington was president. That expansion, which hit the highway after World War II, got a turbo boost during the co-presidency of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.

    Some of the new powers that those two stole from Congress, the courts, the states, and us the people are being abused less severely in this new age of Obama; others, more so; but far more crucially, in a pattern followed by recent presidencies, all are being maintained, if not expanded, and thus more firmly cemented into place for future presidents to use. Wherever you fall on the political spectrum, you are likely to strongly oppose some major decisions of some future presidents. So it shouldn't be hard to envision some pretty undesirable consequences that might flow from presidential power that increasingly approaches the absolute.

    Our television news and newspapers don't seem terribly interested in this story, despite scraping its surface with reports on the many "czars" Obama has appointed or lectures on the importance of renewing, or only marginally amending, the PATRIOT Act. And Congress seems, if possible, even less interested. That's not so surprising, given that we've replaced the three branches of government with the two parties, so that at any given time roughly half the members of Congress take as their leader a president who is theoretically supposed to execute the will of Congress. And the other half usually obey their party's "leaders" in Congress, whose primary interest is in electing one of their own as the next president. Both parties continue to value presidential power itself either for its uses in the present, or for when their candidate is elected. Everyone wants to inherit the imperial presidency, not constrain it.

    Under these circumstances, bills to create commissions investigating presidential abuses, to place a judicial check on claims of "state secrets," limit the use of presidential signing statements, or to allow more than eight members of Congress to be given "security" briefings by the executive branch prove not to be priorities for either party.

    These days, the old-fashioned idea of checking executive abuses of existing laws through the issuance of subpoenas or by impeachment is, in Washington, widely considered a scandalous proposition. Congress impeached a judge this year who had groped his employees, but Jay Bybee, who signed secret memos purporting to legalize aggressive war and torture, and who now holds a lifetime seat on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, is protected from such a step by his recent membership in the executive branch (and the displeasure Fox News would express toward his impeachment).

    In April, Senator Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, asked Bybee to testify, and the judge refused, just as many of his former colleagues in the Bush administration had in 2007 and 2008. Leahy may be unwilling to follow up by issuing a subpoena that even the new Department of Justice might refuse to enforce. The current department, for instance, allowed the White House Counsel to negotiate partial compliance with a House Judiciary Committee subpoena by former presidential advisor Karl Rove. And if Leahy is like most members of Congress, he will not even consider the option of using the Capitol Police to enforce a subpoena himself -- something that no committee has done in 75 years.

    All Power to the President

    Any quick survey of the powers the presidency now claims would have to include the power to make laws, the power to make wars, the power to spend money, the power to make treaties, the power to grant immunity for crimes, the power to operate in secrecy, the power to spy without warrants, the power to detain without charge, and the power to torture.

    Laws are still made by Congress, but they can be rewritten via signing statements; that is, statements announcing a president's intention to violate particular sections of the very bill he is signing into law. Neither Congress nor President Obama has thrown out all of Bush's extensive signing statements that did indeed alter laws. In fact, Obama has announced that his subordinates will review his predecessor's signing statements only as the need arises.

    This policy might please those imagining that the Obama administration will always make the right decision about whether to maintain or reject a Bush-made amendment to a law, but it does nothing to strip the presidency of the power to use the mechanism of the signing statement to re-make or amend or alter new laws. As it happens, Obama has already published his own law-making signing statements.

    Presidents now also routinely determine national policy through executive orders and, in doing so, run the country out of the White House rather than through departments headed by officials approved by Congress. They also increasingly dictate a legislative agenda to Congress -- and both members of Congress and members of the public generally accept without comment or opposition that inversion of our constitutional system. And then there are the secret memos.

    In those secret memos, Bush's lawyers in the Department of Justice dutifully "legalized" numerous illegal acts, including aggressive war and torture. Despite years of public back-and-forth between the White House and the Congress over the question of whether to ban torture, any act of complicity in torture was already a felony in the U.S. code under the Anti-Torture Act, which enforced the Convention Against Torture signed by President Ronald Reagan. However, the secret Justice Department memos were taken as the final word in legality, no matter what the law said.

    Obama has directed the Justice Department not to prosecute those at the highest levels responsible for producing those memos, though he has permitted consideration -- whether seriously intended or not -- of the possibility of prosecuting a handful of low-ranking staffers who strayed beyond the illegal policies outlined in the memos. Not only does this bestow immunity on the most prominent criminals, reversing the approach -- starting at the top -- that the U.S. took at the Nuremburg war crimes trials after World War II, but it has the potential to create a terrifying precedent for the future. If a president can use his justice department to legalize a crime simply by asking a lawyer to write a memo, then who can doubt that a president has something approaching absolute power?

    Presidents, not Congress, do indeed make wars now, whether or not they consult Jay Bybee's memo on the subject. They make wars without congressional declarations of war, using instead vague bills to maintain a pretense of congressional involvement -- and then they don't even comply with the terms outlined in those authorizations. Illegal (as well as unconstitutional) as they may be, these wars can be expanded into apparently permanent occupations that include the construction of gigantic military bases from which additional wars may be launched. In the process, mercenaries often take the place of soldiers, and as "private contractors" they then operate even further from congressional oversight or the law.

    To invade Iraq, President Bush spent money not appropriated for that purpose. He also gave himself the power to transfer money into "black budgets" beyond the purview of all but a few members of Congress, and so use it for secret tasks signed off on by his officials. Of course, massive secret budgets under the control of the president are nothing new, though they've grown through the years. Neither are they constitutional or sustainable.

    On October 6th, the leaders of the two parties met with President Obama and, by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's account, let him know that he could end, decrease, maintain, or escalate the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan as he saw fit. The Senate had voted the previous week not to call on war commander Stanley McChrystal for public testimony about that ongoing war until after the president determines his war policy, which of course means a war policy for all of us. Two days later, in a surprising flicker of dissent, House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey released a statement suggesting that, contrary to everything he'd said for years, he recognizes that Congress has the power to choose not to fund those wars and thereby to end them.

    As his presidency was winding down, George W. Bush concluded an unofficial treaty (though it was called a Status of Forces Agreement) with the government of U.S.-occupied Iraq for three more years of war there without feeling the slightest need for it to be ratified by the Senate. Ever since, the U.S. military has actually violated the terms of that document, while its key commanders continued to publicly state their intention to remain in Iraq beyond the end of 2011, a clear violation of the agreement. In the meantime, this White House has used the treaty as cover for an ongoing illegal occupation of Iraq with, at this point, 120,000 U.S. troops and tens of thousands of private contractors.

    Is Congress Broken?

    When many feared that Bush might pardon his subordinates for crimes he had himself authorized, the consensus among members of Congress and scholars was that he could, in fact, do such a thing. In some ways what both Bush and Obama have actually done is worse. With a big assist from Congress in the form of bills like the Military Commissions Act and the FISA Amendments Act, they have worked to grant immunity for crimes without even naming the criminals or revealing what they have done. Obama's Department of Justice is now arguing, appealing, or re-appealing in various court cases to keep secret the abuses of government officials and corporations involved in torture and warrantless spying. Recently, the Justice Department even argued that, when it comes to denying information to a court or the public, telecommunication corporations must be considered a part of the executive branch of the federal government, and earlier this year the administration threatened the British government with an end to intelligence sharing if it revealed evidence of torture.

    President Obama announced that he will only claim the right to hide information from a court on the grounds that important "state secrets" are involved after careful review by lawyers at the Department of Justice. This may be an improvement over the Bush years -- not exactly a hard standard to reach -- but notably this decision still cedes not an ounce of power to any branch other than the executive, even as Obama's lawyers make radical "state secrets" claims in attempts to block entire court cases, rather than over particular pieces of information.

    While this president is ceding modest amounts of territory claimed by the previous one, he is ceding nothing when it comes to presidential power itself. For example, the president said he would release White House visitor logs (as the Bush administration had not), just not those already recorded, including the ones that held records of the visits of deal-making health insurance executives, nor any future logs that he thinks would endanger "national security." That offers change of a sort, however modest, but leaves it entirely in the president's hands to decide which logs to release.

    This administration has indeed released some of the secret memos that Bush's Department of Justice used to justify torture and never shared with the public, but only when compelled by courts. The Justice Department has, in fact, fought fiercely against their release and has redacted significant sections of them before making them public.

    Bush claimed for the presidency the power to detain people without charge or legal process -- and then used it. Obama stood in front of the U.S. Constitution in the National Archives in Washington and asserted the same power, in violation of the right of habeas corpus found in that torn and tattered document. Director of Central Intelligence Leon Panetta and presidential advisor David Axelrod have similarly made clear that the president still claims the power to engage in "harsh interrogation techniques" but chooses not to use it. Torture in this way has been transformed from a crime into a policy choice, with the intended message apparently being that we can stop torture temporarily by choosing to elect Democrats. This is perilous territory.

    Perhaps presidents simply cannot be expected to give back powers gained by the executive branch, but shouldn't we expect Congress to work to take them back on our behalf? When Alberto Gonzales resigned as attorney general, he did so because a rapidly growing list of members of Congress signed onto a one-sentence bill directing the House Judiciary Committee to investigate possible grounds for his impeachment. Such an approach toward Judge Jay Bybee could begin to restore the power of Congress to assert itself in other areas as well, while pressuring the Justice Department to enforce the law, and potentially making public a great deal of information through the subpoenas involved in any impeachment hearing, which does not permit claims of "executive privilege." Information subpoenaed in an impeachment hearing must be produced, or the failure to produce it can become another impeachable offense.

    Many of us probably consider our current president a much nicer guy than our local congressional representative. That doesn't change the fact that influencing a president, or even a senator, via grassroots pressure is infinitely more difficult than influencing a member of the House of Representatives.

    This is not a new discovery. After all, isn't this, in part, why the House was given the power of the purse and the power of impeachment? Being closer to the ground, that body is, by its nature, going to be more amenable to democratic pressure and direction. If we want once again to have a real hand in making our nation's policies, our best shot -- admittedly still a distinctly uphill course -- is to focus on the person who represents us in the House.

    Unfortunately, we have to compel each of them to do something they have come to collectively fear: taking back the power originally bestowed on them and not on behalf of their party, but of their branch of government, of the Constitution to which they've sworn an oath, and of the proper sovereigns of this nation: we the people. Otherwise the chief legacy of the Obama years will, like those of his immediate predecessors, be the slide from republic into empire and the continuing growth of an imperial presidency.

David Swanson served as press secretary for Kucinich for President in 2004, runs the AfterDowningStreet.org website, and is the creator of Impeachbybee.org. His new book is Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union (Seven Stories Press). He is now touring the country for the book.