The Alternative Peace Prize
The Nobel Committee has been giving prizes to people who totally do not deserve it or who have not earned it, such as L. Paul Bremer #3* and Henry Kissinger, and now Barack Obama.
Is it worth it to receive an award when that puts you in such low company (and you can't get much lower than Bremer and Kissinger, both accused war criminals)?
I'd like to introduce an award that's been around for a while, but many people haven't heard of it. It's called the Right Livelihood Award, and they've been giving awards out since 1980.
Susan
*Correction: L. Paul Bremer won the Presidential Medal of Freedom, not the Nobel Prize. My bad. But Bremer the Third fired the entire Baath Party and 400,000 Iraqi soldiers, thus virtually creating the Iraqi insurgency. His bad.
Is it worth it to receive an award when that puts you in such low company (and you can't get much lower than Bremer and Kissinger, both accused war criminals)?
I'd like to introduce an award that's been around for a while, but many people haven't heard of it. It's called the Right Livelihood Award, and they've been giving awards out since 1980.
Susan
*Correction: L. Paul Bremer won the Presidential Medal of Freedom, not the Nobel Prize. My bad. But Bremer the Third fired the entire Baath Party and 400,000 Iraqi soldiers, thus virtually creating the Iraqi insurgency. His bad.
posted by Susan Stark at
8:38 AM
19 Comments:
Head to hand: Check facts before writing.
Bremer never got the Peace Prize. (He might have been nominated, but the list of people eligible to nominate is quite long.)
Bremer got the Medal of Freedom. Which is absurd on its face.
For the record, Obama is the second Not Bush to receive the Peace Prize. The first was Carter last year I believe.
The bar to get nominated is so low that it's meaningless to make much of a nomination.
Hitler was actually nominated. He was "considered" for a brief period.
But it's actual winners, like Kissinger, that have made the prize a farce.
Obama has proven to be a horrible President because of the things that Ted has mentioned. But I think part of the reasoning behind the award is recognition of his race. America has made huge strides towards racial equality, and Obama will remain a symbol of that regardless if he continues Bush's policies. I don't think white Americans can really understand the depth of meaning that Obama's win has for black Americans and non-whites around the world.
Obama is lucky to get this award now, because he'll have too much blood on his hands to receive it later in his term--unless they want to pull another Kissinger-type awarding.
Rex, Carter deserves it far more than Obama, and he wasn't in office, waging wars, when he got it. Grouchy, at least for this non-white around the world, Obama's win has no depth at all.
The misnamed "Right Livelihood" is just a long streak of the usual suspects, Commies that agitate the progressive people's little hearts in the West. I mean, Boff and the MST, bit not Norman Borlaug?
Well, Incitatus, in order to win the Right Livelihood Award, you have to perform a great service to others. However, if a Libertarian actually succeeds in decriminalizing drugs and prostitution as the philosophy suggests, then I'll nominate that person myself.
And as for being "Commies", I don't think any of these people sit around wearing Mao jackets and call themselves comrade.
I looked up Norman Borlaug, and found out that he received his education and subsequent employment as a result of New Deal programs.
Obama, however, is too busy bailing out Wall Street and fighting wars to create new Norman Borlaugs.
Susan,
Folks like Norman Borlaug are not created by government programs, they dedicate their life and intellect to a mission. I suggest you also look up the MST: they do sit around under Guevara and Marx posters and call each other "comrades".
re: "Bremer...created the Iraqi Insurgency. His bad."
DON'T pardon the mysogeny. It is SO typical of the female of the species (elephant-like) memory to pull something from the past to neutralize a 'My bad.' The correction should have stood alone, but see the point? Forget the old saw. You CAN live without 'them,' and if you can't, wear a cup! Harrumph!
the term 'right livelihood' seems enormously problematic to me.
Anonymous 6:13, come back when you make sense.
Incitatus, I'm quite familiar with the MST, and I can say that they are more anarchist than communist. They don't quite fit the model of "revolutionary vanguardism" that a typical communist group requires, and are dismissed as mere "squatters" by them. Che Guevara admiration not withstanding.
And I hardly think that occupying unproductive land is that much of a threat to capitalistic profits.
Anon 6:13 could have just written "Shut up bitch!" and saved us all the trouble of reading his bullshit three times to figure it out.
Incitatus,
T
Norman borlaug's work has been used to an opposite effect than he was expecting. The global genetic homogenization of wheat has brought down the price of wheat, but we just might all Be sorry soon due to the fact that it now only takes one strain of fungus to wipe out huge portions of the world food supply. Further , prior to the green revolution, many people ate for free. Borlaug's work made confiscation of land by puppet governments an economic must. In short, mass ag is not compatible with individual or small group food security strategies
Said Susan:
Incitatus, I'm quite familiar with the MST
I'm sorry Susan, but you're not "familiar" with it. You just watch it from a distance. Down here, we know firsthand their "recruitment" tactics, their agenda, and the history of the people that conceived, in the 70s, and still lead it, albeit obliquely. THe only reason it seems to you, and many well-meaning people, that they don't fit the "revolutionary vanguardism" is that the world around them has changed: taking up arms against a democratic state wouldn't garner much support in the West (not to mention it wouldn't attract as many "recruits") and their corporate sponsors are either broke (Cuba) or busy in a lot of different places (Chavez). I don't know about any dismissals, either: down here, all the leftist parties, even the ones in the opposition support them.
And they're not snubbed by the afore-mentioned police state relic of the Cold War, either:
http://www.google.com.br/search?q=MST&sitesearch=granma.cu
Now don't get me started about "unproductive" land being occupied...
OK. From now on, and even from here back, all anonymous comments are written by the same person. It's more entertaining that way.
Well, Incitatus, if the MST no longer gets support from Cuba or Chavez, that proves my point that they aren't "vangardist". They don't fit the model.
Angelo,
I think the masses in South Asia who should be starving according to Paul Ehrlich (actually, according to his weirdest predictions, it should be also the masses in Europe and North America) beg to differ from you.
hey, far be it from me to put power in the hands of individuals, and out of a form which is more easily coopted by my beloved nanny state.
I am just telling you that the consensus this century is a little more in line with your views.
the best path to reliable food security is to eliminate the distance between people and food. That conclusion is in reaction to the limits of the Borlaug way. Though, I think I remember reading that Borlaug himself reminded everyone that all he did was shorten wheat stalks so that modern farming equipment could harvest them more efficiently. He would probably lament the global loss of biodiversity arrived at in his name.
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