QOTD

Via Divine Irony:

"When I was about 20 years old, I met an old pastor’s wife who told me that when she was young and had her first child, she didn’t believe in striking children, although spanking kids with a switch pulled from a tree was standard punishment at the time. But one day, when her son was four or five, he did something that she felt warranted a spanking–the first in his life. She told him that he would have to go outside himself and find a switch for her to hit him with.

The boy was gone a long time. And when he came back in, he was crying. He said to her, “Mama, I couldn’t find a switch, but here’s a rock that you can throw at me.”

All of a sudden the mother understood how the situation felt from the child’s point of view: that if my mother wants to hurt me, then it makes no difference what she does it with; she might as well do it with a stone.

And the mother took the boy into her lap and they both cried. Then she laid the rock on a shelf in the kitchen to remind herself forever: never violence. And that is something I think everyone should keep in mind. Because if violence begins in the nursery one can raise children into violence.”

 - Astrid Lindgren, author of Pippi Longstocking, 1978 Peace Prize Acceptance Speech  (via notablelove)

The Nobel Peace Prize Has Always Been Political

But until recently, it was political in the service of peace. Now it's political in the service of Wall Street, global elites and the Permanent War.

Norman Solomon at Firedoglake:

The announcement of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner, set for October 11, is sure to make big news. The prize remains the most prestigious in the world. But the award has fallen into an evasive pattern, ignoring the USA’s continuous “war on terror” and even giving it tacit support.

In his 1895 will, the dynamite inventor and ammunition magnate Alfred Nobel specified that Norway’s parliament should elect a five-member committee for awarding the prize to “champions of peace.” Yet the list of recent Nobel peace laureates is notably short on such champions. Instead, the erstwhile politicians on the Norwegian Nobel Committee have largely bypassed the original purpose of the prize.

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Since 2001, the Nobel Peace Prize has been on a prolonged detour around the U.S. government’s far-flung warfare, declining to honor anyone who had challenged any of it anywhere in the world. But the Nobel Committee has done more than just ignore peace activism seeking to stop U.S.-led war efforts. By giving the Peace Prize to Obama and the E.U., the committee has implicitly endorsed those military efforts as part of a rhetorical process that conflates war-making with peace-making. Orwell’s 1984 specter of “War Is Peace” looms uncomfortably large.

At times, the Peace Prize has earned goodwill in NGO circles by honoring humanitarian work that is laudable but not directly related to peace. And so far in this century, when the Nobel Committee has focused the prize on human rights, it has danced around Uncle Sam’s global shadow. The Peace Prize has gone only to dissidents in countries where governments are in conflict with Washington — such as Shirin Ebadi of Iran in 2003 and Liu Xiaobo of China in 2010 — while failing to honor any of the profuse activism against severe abuses by U.S.-backed governments.

It was not always this way. During previous decades, the annual announcement of the Nobel Peace Prize might alternately please or enrage the top leaders in the capital of a world power. In 1983, the awarding of the prize to Poland’s Solidarity leader Lech Walesa infuriated the Kremlin. When the 1992 prize went to Rigoberta Menchu, an indigenous foe of U.S.-supported tyrants killing Guatemalan civilians in large numbers, it was a much-needed rebuke to Washington.

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But in the “war on terror” world of this century, the Nobel Committee — far from an independent, evenhanded course — has steered the Peace Prize away from terrain where the U.S. government and its allies might appear to be anything other than noble peace-seekers. Relying on such a broken moral compass, the mission to assist “champions of peace” with the Nobel Peace Prize has lost its way.

Nobel Peace Prize Winners Who Actually Achieved Peace

These three women have earned the Nobel Peace Prize the hard way: by working for it in the most hostile of environments. In any year, any one of them would blow other contenders of any sex out of the water.

So the Nobel fucking Prize Committee can just shove its dick back in its pants and stop condescending to human beings who outclass them by a mile.

The New York "Treating Women Like Retarded Children for 153 Years" Times:

The Nobel Peace Prize for 2011 was awarded on Friday to three campaigning women from Africa and the Arab world in acknowledgment of their nonviolent role in promoting peace, democracy and gender equality. The winners were Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf — Africa’s first elected female president — her compatriot, peace activist Leymah Gbowee and Tawakul Karman of Yemen, a pro-democracy campaigner.

They were the first women to win the prize since Kenya’s Wangari Maathai, who died last month, was named as the laureate in 2004.

Most of the recipients in the award’s 110-year history have been men and Friday’s decision seemed designed to give impetus to the cause for women’s rights around the world.

“We cannot achieve democracy and lasting peace in the world unless women obtain the same opportunities as men to influence developments at all levels of society,” said the citation read by Thorbjorn Jagland, a former Norwegian prime minister who heads the Oslo-based Nobel committee that chooses the winner of the $1.5 million prize.

In a subsequent interview, he described the prize as “a very important signal to women all over the world.”

That signal reads: No matter what you accomplish, if you are a woman your achievements will always be labeled "symbolic" and secondary to the "real" achievements of men.

Click here to see pictures and read the accomplishments of these amazing women.

Risking Their Lives for Liberal Values

You think liberals have a tough row to how in the United States? In militarized and reactionary Israel, peace activists are risking jail and death to stand literally beside Palestinians protesting border walls and checkpoints.

From the Nation:

Many of these communities have not seen extended, large-scale demonstrations against the occupation since the first intifada, which ended in the early 1990s. (The second intifada began in October 2000 with unarmed protests at Israeli checkpoints, but after dozens of Palestinians were killed by massive Israeli firepower, it gradually took the form of an armed struggle carried out by small cells of militants and aimed at Israeli soldiers, settlers and civilians. Israel, using all its military power, eventually crushed it, and the violence left thousands of casualties in both societies, deepening hostility between Israelis and Palestinians and handing the Israeli left a near-fatal blow.)

“In fact, the Israeli left never recovered from Rabin’s assassination” in 1995, says former Knesset Speaker Avraham Burg. “Later, Ehud Barak came and presented his personal failure in Camp David [in 2000] as the failure of the entire way. When the head of the peace camp declared that there was no partner on the other side, it opened the door for unilateralism.” Burg, the son of one of Israel’s legendary religious leaders, was a prominent voice in the Israeli left during the 1980s and ’90s, a member of Peace Now and one of the leaders of the Labor Party; since his retirement from the Knesset in 2003, his criticism of liberal Zionism and its exclusively Jewish nature has deepened. Recently he called for Israeli Jews to explore alternative historical narratives and political models. “There was something unilateral in Zionism from the start, but it became the only way after Camp David,” says Burg. “We built the fence unilaterally, and we left Gaza unilaterally. Barak brought us back to the days of Golda Meir, who denied there is such a thing as a Palestinian people.” At the same time, the closures on the West Bank—introduced by Israel in the early 1990s and vastly tightened with the second intifada and construction of the separation wall a decade later—ended the daily direct contact, much of it commercial, that was common between Israeli and Palestinian civilians. Today most Israelis don’t travel to the West Bank except as part of their military service or on settler-only bypass roads, while a new generation of Palestinians knows Israelis only as soldiers in uniform or as settlers.

* * *

The joint struggle presents a new path for Israelis and Palestinians. While most Palestinians welcome any kind of support for their cause, not many Israelis choose to take this road; but for those who do, it changes their life. “The simple action of being there, behind walls and checkpoints, is subversive on its own,” says Adar Grayevsky, 28, an Israeli activist from Tel Aviv. “The whole idea of Israel is built on separation, and the notion that we can break that separation between us and the West Bank is powerful and new.”

“Without our partners we could not have had achievements like the international recognition of Bil’in as a place of Palestinian nonviolence, or the Supreme Court ruling that ordered the return of some of the village’s land,” says Dr. Rateb Abu Rahmah, brother of the imprisoned Abdallah Abu Rahmah. “The Israeli activists and international activists have been with us from the first day. There have been many Israeli activists who have been arrested and injured. We have seen that these are real partners with us against the wall and the settlements. We have Israelis who even stay with us in our houses because of the IDF night raids. Our struggle is a triangle with the Palestinians, the Israeli activists and the international activists. Without these support pillars, we would not succeed.”

“It takes a lot to go to these protests,” says Burg. “I see a real dedication, even sanctity, in those young people. In Bil’in you might actually get hurt, even killed. Back in the days of Peace Now, none of us thought we would end up in jail.”

Read the whole thing.

The Booby Prize

Kevin nails it:

On Tuesday Barack Obama will announce a major escalation of the war in Afghanistan. A week later he'll be in Oslo accepting his Nobel Peace Prize. Pretty good timing, no?

Don't get me wrong; I believe Obama did earn the Nobel Peace Prize.

But he's going to accept it with the Vietnam Quagmire Monkey already clinging to his back.

Last month, Naomi Klein wrote in The Nation about the danger that Obama's administration poses to the world.

Of all the explanations for Barack Obama's Nobel Peace Prize, the one that rang truest came from French President Nicolas Sarkozy. "It sets the seal on America's return to the heart of all the world's peoples." In other words, this was Europe's way of saying to America, "We love you again"--sort of like those weird "renewal of vows" ceremonies that couples have after surviving a rough patch.

Now that Europe and the United States are officially reunited, it seems worth asking: is this necessarily a good thing? The Nobel Committee, which awarded the prize specifically for Obama's embrace of "multilateral diplomacy," is evidently convinced that US engagement on the world stage is a triumph for peace and justice.

I'm not so sure. After nine months in office, Obama has a clear track record as a global player. Again and again, US negotiators have chosen not to strengthen international laws and protocols but rather to weaken them, often leading other rich countries in a race to the bottom.

She cites Obama-led retreats on climate change, on condemning racism (!), on human rights, on controlling financial speculation, then concludes:

Of course, Obama has made some good moves on the world stage--not siding with the coup government in Honduras, supporting a UN Women's Agency... But a clear pattern has emerged: in areas where other wealthy nations were teetering between principled action and negligence, US interventions have tilted them toward negligence. If this is the new era of multilateralism, it is no prize.

Read the whole thing.

How Obama Did Earn the Nobel Peace Prize Before February

On Friday, I excerpted Steve Benen's post on the aspirational nature of the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to President Obama.

On Saturday afternoon, John Nichols made a different case in The Nation.

No, the Nobel Peace Prize is and should always be given with the purpose of honoring action not aspiration. The whole point of the award is to recognize bold, presumably courageous, endeavors in pursuit of a more peaceful and functional planet.

It is against this standard that the award to Obama should be measured.

To my view, he measures up.

I may have plenty of complaints about the man and his presidency. But I believe that Barack Obama did something that merits his selection as the recipient of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize.

I am not talking here about an official act taken since he replaced the lamentable George Bush – although an argument can be made that replacing Bush's reign of error is sufficient accomplishment. What I'm talking about is actually something Obama did before his election – in fact, before his nomination as the Democratic Party's 2008 standard-bearer.

In those cattle-call presidential debates of 2007, Barack Obama staked out a position that was radically at odds with the lingering post-9/11 consensus among the American political and media elites. As a serious contender for the nomination – a candidate who had something to lose -- Obama declared for diplomacy.

In the July, 2007, "YouTube Debate," the Democratic candidates were asked if they would be willing to meet "with leaders of Syria, Iran, Venezuela" during their first term. Obama responded that, yes, he would be willing to do so. He explained that "the notion that somehow not talking to countries is punishment to them -- which has been the guiding diplomatic principle of this (Bush) administration -- is ridiculous."

He was right.

But he was immediately attacked for rejecting the "principle" – rooted in the Cold War but renewed in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon – that American foreign policy should continue to be conducted behind the tattered curtain of corruption that has given us unnecessary wars in Vietnam and Iraq, U.S.-sponsored coups from Iran to Chile, trade policies designed to serve multinational corporations and a seeming inability to hold up the banner of human rights or even humanity in Tibet, Darfur, Burma and so many other woefully neglected corners of the world.

Obama was immediately and savagely attacked by those who continued to embrace the Henry Kissinger approach to international relations.

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The pundits piled on. Obama, we were told, had revealed his inexperience. He was naïve. He was out-of-touch with "security moms" and other frightened Americans who wanted their leaders to speak loudly and swing big sticks.

In fact, Obama was entirely in touch with the American people, who had grown increasingly wary of the secretive and anti-democratic approach to global affairs that steered the United States out of the global community while telling the American people that foreign policy was the domain only of shadowy Kissingers and Cheneys.

Obama's nomination and election reflected that fact.

But, at the critical stage in the 2008 campaign, Obama did not know that declaring for diplomacy would prove to be politically smart. It required a level of courage that had been missing from American politics at the highest levels for a relatively new, largely untested candidate to take the stand he did. And that courage had an impact, ultimately moving other prominent Democrats – including Clinton – and even some Republicans toward more conciliatory stances.

Elections matter. They are the points at which countries stretch the parameters of their debates and, ideally, reform and renew themselves. But progress is only possible when prominent politicians break the mold, when they take risks that may cost them the political prizes they are so ardently pursuing.

Obama did that in the summer of 2007. And he did it on behalf of diplomacy. He argued that it was better to talk than to heighten tensions until there was no alternative to war.

It was a transformational moment for Obama's party, and ultimately for the politics of the world's dominant military superpower.

How transformational remains to be seen.

But there is more than enough justification in Obama's campaigning for the award of a Nobel Peace Prize. In fact, for those who recognize how very rare it is for prominent politicians to take risks when it comes to national security debates, Obama is an entirely legitimate recipient of the peace prize.

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Obama is being honored for what he did as a contender for the presidency -- a contender whose winning run changed the political debate in a party and a country that desperately needed to take a new direction. As such, he is not merely worthy. Barack Obama, the candidate, is the right recipient of the Nobel Prize for Peace.

Read the whole thing.

Quote of the Day

French President Nicolas Sarkozy, also said to be among the nominees, said that "Obama's Nobel Peace Prize marks America's return to the hearts of the people of the world."

Advancing the Vision

Steve Benen on the meaning of the Nobel Peace Prize:

AN ASPIRATIONAL RECORD.... In his remarks this morning, after noting that he did not feel deserving to be in the company of some previous Nobel Peace Prize winners, President Obama acknowledged a common thread in the history of the award. "I know that throughout history, the Nobel Peace Prize has not just been used to honor specific achievement; it's also been used as a means to give momentum to a set of causes," he said.

That's true. For every "but he hasn't accomplished enough yet" we've heard this morning, it's worth remembering that the award has often gone to works in progress, with the hopes of advancing an encouraging vision.

Robert Naiman had a good item on this earlier.

The Nobel Committee gave South African Bishop Desmond Tutu the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 for his leadership of efforts to abolish apartheid in South Africa. Apartheid wasn't fully abolished in South Africa until 1994. The committee could have waited until after apartheid was abolished to say, "Well done!" But the point of the award was to help bring down apartheid by strengthening Bishop Tutu's efforts. In particular, everyone knew that it was going to be much harder for the apartheid regime to crack down on Tutu after the Nobel Committee wrapped him in its protective cloak of world praise.

That's what the Nobel Committee is trying to do for Obama now. It's giving an award to encourage the change in world relations that Obama has promised, and to try to help shield Obama against his domestic adversaries.

Nobel committee chairman Thorbjoern Jagland told the AP, "Some people say, and I understand it, 'Isn't it premature? Too early?' Well, I'd say then that it could be too late to respond three years from now. It is now that we have the opportunity to respond -- all of us."

In this context, honoring the president this way makes more sense.

"An Affirmation of American Leadership"

Salon has the full transcript:

Good morning. Well, this is not how I expected to wake up this morning. After I received the news, Malia walked in and said, "Daddy, you won the Nobel Peace Prize, and it is Bo's birthday!" And then Sasha added, "Plus, we have a three-day weekend coming up." So it's good to have kids to keep things in perspective.

I am both surprised and deeply humbled by the decision of the Nobel Committee. Let me be clear: I do not view it as a recognition of my own accomplishments, but rather as an affirmation of American leadership on behalf of aspirations held by people in all nations.

To be honest, I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures who've been honored by this prize -- men and women who've inspired me and inspired the entire world through their courageous pursuit of peace.

But I also know that this prize reflects the kind of world that those men and women, and all Americans, want to build -- a world that gives life to the promise of our founding documents. And I know that throughout history, the Nobel Peace Prize has not just been used to honor specific achievement; it's also been used as a means to give momentum to a set of causes. And that is why I will accept this award as a call to action -- a call for all nations to confront the common challenges of the 21st century.

These challenges can't be met by any one leader or any one nation. And that's why my administration has worked to establish a new era of engagement in which all nations must take responsibility for the world we seek. We cannot tolerate a world in which nuclear weapons spread to more nations and in which the terror of a nuclear holocaust endangers more people. And that's why we've begun to take concrete steps to pursue a world without nuclear weapons, because all nations have the right to pursue peaceful nuclear power, but all nations have the responsibility to demonstrate their peaceful intentions.

We cannot accept the growing threat posed by climate change, which could forever damage the world that we pass on to our children -- sowing conflict and famine; destroying coastlines and emptying cities. And that's why all nations must now accept their share of responsibility for transforming the way that we use energy.
We can't allow the differences between peoples to define the way that we see one another, and that's why we must pursue a new beginning among people of different faiths and races and religions; one based upon mutual interest and mutual respect.

And we must all do our part to resolve those conflicts that have caused so much pain and hardship over so many years, and that effort must include an unwavering commitment that finally realizes that the rights of all Israelis and Palestinians to live in peace and security in nations of their own.

We can't accept a world in which more people are denied opportunity and dignity that all people yearn for -- the ability to get an education and make a decent living; the security that you won't have to live in fear of disease or violence without hope for the future.

And even as we strive to seek a world in which conflicts are resolved peacefully and prosperity is widely shared, we have to confront the world as we know it today. I am the Commander-in-Chief of a country that's responsible for ending a war and working in another theater to confront a ruthless adversary that directly threatens the American people and our allies. I'm also aware that we are dealing with the impact of a global economic crisis that has left millions of Americans looking for work. These are concerns that I confront every day on behalf of the American people.

Some of the work confronting us will not be completed during my presidency. Some, like the elimination of nuclear weapons, may not be completed in my lifetime. But I know these challenges can be met so long as it's recognized that they will not be met by one person or one nation alone. This award is not simply about the efforts of my administration -- it's about the courageous efforts of people around the world.

And that's why this award must be shared with everyone who strives for justice and dignity -- for the young woman who marches silently in the streets on behalf of her right to be heard even in the face of beatings and bullets; for the leader imprisoned in her own home because she refuses to abandon her commitment to democracy; for the soldier who sacrificed through tour after tour of duty on behalf of someone half a world away; and for all those men and women across the world who sacrifice their safety and their freedom and sometime their lives for the cause of peace.

That has always been the cause of America. That's why the world has always looked to America. And that's why I believe America will continue to lead.

Thank you very much.

The Nobel Peace Prize for Pete Seeger

I had the privilege, many years ago, of seeing Pete Seeger in concert. I even heard him sing the same "forbidden" verses of "This Land is Your Land" that he sang for Obama's Inauguration. And yes, the crowd back then - dirty fucking hippies all - wept as we sang along, because it was the Reagan Era, and Pete reminded us of the values we thought were gone.

Now that peace and social justice are coming back into style, Peter Rothberg at The Nation writes that it's time to honor one of the movement's last living legends.

This past Sunday, Pete Seeger became the oldest person to perform publicly as part of Barack Obama's inauguration festivities.

Singing the "greatest song about America ever written" (Bruce Springsteen's words) before 500,000 people and tens of millions more on television, the 89-year old legend crooned two little-known verses of his friend Woody Guthrie's 1940 patriotic standard, "This Land is Your Land" -- one about Depression-era poverty, the other about trespassing on private property -- restoring the song to its former glory over the sanitized version that ruled for so many years.

Watch the performance:



Seeger has been an inimitable ambassador for peace, social justice and the best kind of patriotism over the course of a remarkable lifetime. As a prominent musician his songs have engaged people, particularly the youth, to question the value of war, to ban nuclear weapons, to work for international solidarity and against racism wherever it is practiced, and to assume ecological responsibility.

A particular hero to the civil rights movement on whose behalf he worked so tirelessly, Seeger made his first trip south at the invitation of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1956, and returned in '65, again at King's personal invitation, to join the march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. Amid the tension and heat, Seeger went from campfire to campfire when the march stopped for the night, raising people's morale with rollicking sing-alongs of new freedom songs.

One of the seminal political events in his life, and the one which solidified his intent to make actively combating racism a lifelong pursuit, was the 1949 Peekskill race riots. In this short video, Seeger recounts his experiences:



Without doubt the most influential folk artist of the past century, Seeger deserves at least one more moment on the world stage -- at the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in Norway. The prize is only bestowed on the living. Although still spry, Seeger turns 90 on May 3. And, as writer and activist Peter Drier writes on the Huffington Post, a Nobel Peace Prize would be "a fitting and much-deserved final tribute for the world's preeminent troubadour for peace and justice" and would serve as important recognition for the many progressive causes to which Seeger has lent his name.

To advance the idea, a new campaign has begun in earnest to persuade the American Friends Service Committee -- which is entitled to put forward submissions -- to enter Seeger as its nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize 2009. Join the cause by signing the petition asking the AFSC to nominate Seeger by the February 1 deadline and check out nobelprize4pete.org for more info on how you can help.