Obama's Nobel: A Joke

Barack Obama is a nice likeable guy. He speaks real well, and speaks with high ideals. He speaks a lot.

While he is yet to implement much of what he says (and some might contend, any of what he says), it seems that five Norwegians who matter have decided to give him the Nobel peace prize.

The credibility of the Nobel peace prize is close to zilich anyway, considering that Kissinger got one in the 70s with blood on his hands. Efforts to retrieve some credibility by giving Nobels to Mohammed Yunus and Al-Gore nothwithstanding, their credibility is a round zilch. [ I support Al-Gore's prize, because he took up an issue which was not getting the needed traction in the western media and made it a talking point.]

President Obama might very well prove to be a decent administrator. He might very well solve the problems Iraq and Afghanistan. He might very well not start a war in his tenure. He holds tremendous promise, because he talks in peace.

But he has not done anything yet. He has not even stopped killing Pakistani citizens using those predator drones (in the name of killing terrorists). And it is for this reason that I feel that the Nobel peace prize should not be given the attention it now gets, in the future. A prize awarded by people who are so distant from reality has no meaning. Norway is a very rich country. The average Norwegian does not face the suffering that the average Pakistani does. Expecting norway to decide who the world's most peaceful man is, is bound to have a bias towards western Liberals - because the Norwegians just don't have the information to make a judgement.

Tell you who deserves the prize? Noam Chomsky. Noam Chomsky has been one of the few voices telling the truth for the last 50 years. He is an intellectual giant, whose love for footnotes is unparalelled in the history of humanity. His arguments (almost always critical of imperialist US foreign policy) are lucid. I have not heard a single cogent non emotional rebuttal of his ideas.

Addendum: This delightful article from Alternet, which contends that Obama's Nobel prize is some sort of futures trading.