So our favorite Sri Lankan rude girl tweeted her surprise about Obama getting the Nobel Peace Prize:
“Obama winning the nobel peace PRIZE? he should give it back like john Lennon sent back his MBE” — @_M_I_A
GROAN. Really, Maya? The sitting U.S. president should give back a Swedish (decided by Norwegians) prize because it’s like a British citizen receiving a British honor… how, exactly? And the Nobel carries the taint of its dynamite origins, sure, but is that the same as the bloody history of the British Empire?
And speaking of history!! Lennon DIDN’T give it back until FOUR YEARS AFTER he accepted it:
John Lennon, along with the other Beatles were made MBE’s in 1965, to much criticism. Lennon justified the comparative merits of his investure by comparing military membership in the order, saying “Lots of people who complained about us receiving the MBE received theirs for heroism in the war – for killing people”. He continued: “We received ours for entertaining other people. I’d say we deserve ours more.” [Source]
Lennon sent back his MBE insignia in 1969, which Queen Elizabeth had bestowed upon him in 1965. He wrote: “Your Majesty, I am returning this in protest against Britain’s involvement in the Nigeria-Biafra thing, against our support of America in Vietnam, and against “Cold Turkey” slipping down the charts. With love. John Lennon of Bag.” [Source]
So let’s see…Lennon happily accepted it in 1965 saying “we deserve ours” more than people in combat, then returned it in 1969 for a list of ludicrous reasons that included the failure of his song with the Plastic Ono Band.
For Obama to refuse the medal exactly like Lennon, he should hold onto it for four years then give it back because he just lost the 2012 election or something. Or wait, even that would be more meaningful.
Lennon’s a genius, wrote great songs, the world lost a poet, (etc., etc.)…and I really do love M.I.A’s songs. All of them. But sometimes, just sometimes, you just can’t help wishing that musicians would shut the hell up about politics because they start sounding like these guys. And that’s just too soul-crushing to contemplate.
Cross-posted](http://blog.mtviggy.com/2009/10/09/m-i-a-slams-obama-fails-history/) to the Iggy Blog.
This is their criteria: “According to Nobel’s will, the Peace Prize is to go to whoever “shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses”.” http://nobelpeaceprize.org/en_GB/about_peaceprize/
This is their reasoning why they gave it to President Obama. “Obama has as President created a new climate in international politics. Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play. Dialogue and negotiations are preferred as instruments for resolving even the most difficult international conflicts. The vision of a world free from nuclear arms has powerfully stimulated disarmament and arms control negotiations. Thanks to Obama’s initiative, the USA is now playing a more constructive role in meeting the great climatic challenges the world is confronting. Democracy and human rights are to be strengthened. ” Read it all there too http://nobelpeaceprize.org/en_GB/home/announce-2009/.
And no, I don’t think he should have gotten it so soon, but I am not ripping him apart for it. Think about it. Last year someone threw his shoes at our then President. This year our President gets a Nobel award. Things have changed.
(FYI #47 is me. I entered the comment not realizing I forgot to re-enter my name.)
“…shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations”
hmmm, who has done quite a bit of that in the last 9 months… wait, wait, let me think..
@ sameer: the impression i got from the various interviews of the head of the committee was that they realise it’s work unfinished, but they would like to promote and encourage such works, and President Obama seems to be in a good place to be the one doing it…
three alternative words: global power structures. my line was a quote from rodney king, who was beaten by los angeles police officers who were subsequently acquitted, with riots ensuing. it was a plea for social cohesion and a critique of the idea that you can get it by not confronting ideas about conflict and what motivate them, as obama and the nobel committee seem hellbent on doing, in a broad way.
what can you do? we don’t run the world…they do, unfortunately. for now 😀
Sincerely yours, dr. optimist
oh and the “plea for social cohesion” was mostly directed at this space. cicatrix is a nice, thoughtful person. there’s no reason to trash her for something like this post, regardless of what you think about it. civility would serve just as well.
what disturbs me about this award is not that obama hasn’t done enough yet to deserve this award, but the fact that he has done things which should prevent him receiving a peace award. not only has he not stopped any of the wars that were handed down to him but he is in fact planning to escalate the war in afghanistan and he has authorized bombings which regularly result in civilian deaths like this http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article6237189.ece his record so far on civil liberties issues, including preventive detentions is similar to bush (in fact at one point he was trying to strengthen bush’s policies). similarly his record on transparency is dismal (http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/06/17/transparency/). recently his administration is even supporting attacks on the freedom of information act. i appreciate the way he has handled iran and his stance on israeli settlements, but all his good work is far outweighed by the above
to add to the above his closing down of guantamano, but simultaneous expansion of bagram, with similar or worse detention policies http://www.aclu.org/safefree/detention/40997prs20090915.html is another example. more on obama and climate change… http://redgreenandblue.org/2009/09/30/us-playing-spoilsport-at-international-climate-negotiations/
to add to the above his closing down of guantamano, but simultaneous expansion of bagram, with similar or worse detention policies http://www.aclu.org/safefree/detention/40997prs20090915.html is another example. more on obama and climate change… http://redgreenandblue.org/2009/09/30/us-playing-spoilsport-at-international-climate-negotiations/
Just so you know, I’m the Sameer of #46,47,48.
All the other Sameers or Samirs are not me.
Specifically all the other sameers/Samirs I’m talking about are #4, #52, #53.
My posts are #46, 47, 48, 54 and this one.
phew, i thought you went away came back with some very different thoughts.. hah! maybe you could be “S”ameer, you know, with a capital S. =)
So far I am the Sameer (#46,47,48,54,55) with the capital “S.” Perhaps it ain’t enough. 😉
I ditto that.
On a different note, there are two ways a prize can be given. Many times in the basic sciences and medicine the Nobel prize is given when the recipient is far along in his life and is senile. I remember seeing a Nobel laureate sending a note to his friends,’ I got this (Nobel) prize for something I did sometime, somewhere during my career.’ (It was long expected and long overdue and the field has advannced forward). In a field like world peace the activist and the world at large may be benefited if it came after a threshold is reached in a movement than at the conclusion.
To be technical in the case of President Obama, he did contribute, IMHO, to the lessening of standing armies in the world today, a requirement for the NPP. Imagine if other candidates, John McCain and Sarah Palin at the helm of affairs today. Let me hazard a guess, we would have escalation of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with a third war with Iran in progress.
hoi polloi said
but we are having an escalation in afghanistan
p.s.- changed from sameer to sam to avoid confusion
not all war is necessarily bad. wars that stop other bigger wars from occurring or greater destruction and displacement of people would be considered good (the WW’s for instance). the fight was always in afganishtan, the iraq side-show was an unnecessary disruption that has resulted in countless iraqi lives and great destruction. president obama (then candidate obama and nominee obama) had always said less in iraq, more in afganistan. saying a person is incapable of seeking long term global peace because they are now engaging in wars seems silly to me.
no sitting US president would ever be up for the npp because somewhere sometime they would have ordered military action by their armed forces or via nato or the u.n.
I’m just wondering what it is about conservatives or right wingers that makes it so easy for them to resort to personal or ad hominem attacks at the drop of the hat? I’m really disturbed by this trend and I see it all over the comment boards here of all places.
MIA is a cokehead indie band scenester groupie what do you expect?
Yes! Exactly! The only time they should be given a Nobel Peace Prize – if ever – is to pat them on the head for extraordinary effort given the confines of the position towards something that will actually have a positive result. You can make the argument that Obama has done that, but I thinkt he awarding of the prize to him says more about the Nobel Committee and how degraded American government public relations on foreign policy had become prior to Obama than it does about Obama himself.
To be fair, it’s not just conservatives or rightwingers who engage in such things – I’ve been known to do the same, and I’m not either.
However, I agree that there is an extremely disturbing trend, which in the UK is called ‘fascism’ or ‘the far right.’ they have more power in the u.s. and there are more religious idioms used but it’s basically the same thing – a total lack of responsiubility, rampant use of stereotypes, and a collective and exclusive mentality, and tacit incitement to violence. well usually tacit.
I’m curious at what point in the last two years you decided that Obama was in any way of South Asian descent. 🙂 There are certainly very good reasons to talk about Obama and his policies on a South Asian blog (notably the war) but the celebrity grounds that you discuss are kind of silly.
“awarding of the prize to him says more about the Nobel Committee and how degraded American government public relations on foreign policy had become prior to Obama than it does about Obama himself.”
Agreed. I can’t understand the vitriol towards somebody who simply won an award that he didn’t even nominate himself for. Your anger should be directed towards the process if you disagree, not the recipient! Logic fail.
I am an Obama supporter, but even I feel the prize was a joke. Having said that, funny to see outrage from some middle aged republicans who have had no record of bashing the Kissinger Nobel Peace Prize.
I like MIA’s songs, but the analogy is not a good one. Good to see her bust the stereotype of the brainy Asian.
As opposed to the sweet and kind comments from left wingers exemplified by Betty Williams who repeatedly expressed her desire in public about wanting to kill George Bush while he was still President. The Secret Service usually takes a dim view of such opinions. She got a pass. Ironically enough, she’s the 1976 Nobel Prize winner.
and here is a pretty disgusting video put together by media matters http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8e28D4vxsU there really isn’t much difference between republicans and democrats. things just depends on whose in power.
Prolly cuz she’s Sinhalese. At least she sounds like one based on the search that I just did of previous posts. I don’t know too many non-Sinhalese who attempt to explain the institutionalized discrimination of Tamils in Sri Lanka based on the fact that Tamils were overrepresented in academia relative to their population. Or that Sinhalese chauvinism at the time of independence from the British as “birthing pains of a new country trying to establish itself” and therefore understandable. I’d like to see the reaction a statement like that would get here if it were made in the context of Hindu-Muslim relations in India.
Link
Someone crying discrimination! Tamils have problem in all the places they settle in large numbers, it is not just Sri lanka, they are hated by their own neighbors (specially Karnataka). With their strong presence in center they have got away cheating the Karnataka farmers in Kaveri water sharing and they played hell lot of games using the bandit Veerappan. Skrew LTTE, nothing good has came out of them.
President Obama is worthy of a Nobel prize, however it may be too soon to get one in his first year. Nevertheless, if MIA and Rush Limbaugh are both hating on Obama for getting the Nobel peace prize, something ain’t right.
Akash: Thank you for your valuable contribution. It really does require remarkable skill to somehow link the issue of watersharing of the Kaveri to the civil war in Sri Lanka. Bravo sir! It will go down in history, I’m sure, as yet another of one many valuable contributions the people of Karnataka have made along with giving the world Rajnikanth and Anil Kumble. Us Tamils only have three Naubel Laureates to our credit.
Naubel Laureates = Nobel Laureates
I think she did think it through. I’m proud of her conceptual leap and I think she’s right, because it’s a back-handed compliment just like a British knighthood- it requires that the recipient show respect and fealty to someone or something that has no actual control or influence over you. Also, it is clearly directed towards his future decisions which is strictly speaking nobody’s business in any part of Scandinavia. This is a weird, gremlin-like or trollish form of social control, and should be eschewed.
Next thing you know, Obama will have to travel to Stockholm and get woken up by a singing Lucia girl with candles on her head bringing him pastries in bed, This could really put Michelle’s nose out of joint, and he doesn’t need that. He can’t even keep the money–this sucks, Cicatrix. I think he could wait four years, sure, that would make sense and have more impact.
Well, that’s what happens when you throw in your “lot with the terrorists – the Taliban and Hamas” while putting “politics above patriotism at every turn.”
Dear CdnMedStudent, I wouldn’t get too cocky buddy; “You Tamils” have also produced most of the world’s suicide bombers, pioneered the suicide bomb jacket and set up the most proflic group of child soldiers. The people of Karnataka couldn’t ever compare to that. Just saying.
here is a nice read abt the “O”utrage pandemic some peoples seem to be suffering from.
“…..and against “Cold Turkey†slipping down the charts. With love. John Lennon of Bag”
I thought that was very funny! Typical Lennon, combining biting social commentary with sly wit!
Hey, Henry Kissinger got the Nobel Peace Prize! Nothing can be more absurd than that, considering his very insidious and bloody backroom deal making!
The BBC has just announced that the First Lady has won the Nobel Prize for Economics! Have they no shame? The committee should stop pandering to the US and resign right now. Otherwise we’ll soon hear that Sasha has won the Prize for Geography and Malia for History.
Granted he won the prize deserved or not folks are getting upset like he made them give it to him. I hope he gives it back I am tired of people whining about it..
Wow. Slow down and back up, everyone. This post was about M.I.A. shooting her mouth off and the veracity of the example she used. In that context, the Obama bashing (though disappointing personally to me) and the arguments about whether he “deserves” the NPP are relevant.
CndMedStudent, Akash, Naresh…this post is NOT about the LTTE and this Tamil-bashing is appalling. Further comments will be deleted.
Piqued, this comment: “Speaking of Sri Lanka and Cicatrix, why all the silence on the topic? When the war was on cicatrix couldn’t help but write screeds against the evil of the LTTE, couldn’t help working potshots against MIA for supporting them. All under the guise of speaking for the people.”
Is hilariously disingenuous. I don’t take “potshots against MIA” as much as bemoan the fact that a fellow Sri Lankan whose music I LOVE and who I quite admire, is confused about Sri Lanka and generally tends to mangle most political issues.
I haven’t written anything on Sri Lanka’s current state because I haven’t written anything at all in a long while. Since May, to be precise. New job with pop-culture focus that left no time for much else. Sorry to disappoint.
CndMedStudent, your research is sloppy. I’m half-Sinhala, half-Tamil. I’ve written about this in comments all over this site, boring the regulars silly.
I hope that’s enough house-keeping to tidy up the comment thread so far. Further comments re LTTE or me will be deleted (off-topic, this thread will NOT devolve into another GoSL/LTTE thread), repeat offenders will be banned, and this thread will be closed.
Until then, Obama’s a Nobel Peace Prize winner! Have at it 🙂
UberMetroMallu: total fail. The Nobel Prize was awarded to U.S. professors Elinor Ostrom and Oliver Williamson.
I should say, the nobel prize for economics.
Before you resort too quickly to the ‘I know you are but what am I?’ defense, how often did this happen in public discourse in the United States over the 8 years of the Bush Presidency and how serious a threat was it?
In contrast, compare the number of times that guns were brought to HEALTH CARE debates in August, the number of claims against Obama (racist, hitler, Stalin, communist, socialist, nazi, born in Kenya) that are so mutually inconsistent the only common link is an effort to dehumanise, and the ongoing public arguments by ‘respectable’ rightwing leaders for the internment of the Japanese (Michelle Malkin), a crusade against Muslims (Ann Coulter), public calls for violence (G Gordon liddy).
It’s not the ad hominem attacks that are scary (which as pointed above, people of all political stripes occasionally or frequently engage in) but the combination of them with their tone, their violence, and the trend towards outright violence. If and when there are serious assassination attempts against Obama, one factor for them will definitely be the total failure of the rightwing to exercise any kind of discretion, leadership, or other nonfrightening tools in engaging in politics in the past year, if not further back. In my opinion this is a function of the amount of social power they have and the lack of political power as wella s the failure of the entire American elite to deal with economic issues affecting the middle and working classes at all, but that’s not going to make it feel any better if there’s some kind of dramatic failure of politics that leads to a crisis.
closing one’s eyes to this or pretending there’s an equivalency with ‘the left’ (which BARELY exists in the U.S.) is absurd and imo cynical.
Oprah wuz robbed
You must have missed the film that came out a few years ago graphically depicting Bush’s assassination on theless than subtle poster (for those obtuse individuals still unsure what the content and agenda of the film was) ? With the added hypocrisy of claiming it was a serious documentary, and the leftwing critics who even awarded it a prize, it apparently didn’t raise anyone’s ire. It even got a theatrical release in the US. On a side note, back in ’88 John Kerry repeated a joke about how the Secret Service was under orders to shoot Dan Quayle if Bush Sr was incapacitated. Oddly all this death tinged hostility comes the supposed liberals. So we have less than veiled incitements to violence from a Nobel Peace Prize winner, a movie that got fairly wide theatrical release all during Bush’s office. And not much of a reaction about that. Yet now any opposition or dislike if Obama is seen as an “incitement to violence”. Ok. the 2010 elections are just about a year away. We’ll see if Obama can prove that famous Lincoln adage wrong.
The only criteria that matters is the one Alfred Nobel decreed for the prize in his name to be given to the person whom most met it in the past year – not their entire lives:
Mother Teresa Undeserving of Nobel Peace Prize, Author Says http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,3701741,00.html
The Nobel Peace Prizes awarded to Mother Teresa and Al Gore violated the terms of Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel’s will that created the awards, the author of a book on the subject has said…
…The Peace Prize, the only one awarded by a Norwegian committee, was to be presented each year to “the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.”
Only 45 percent of the Nobel Peace Prizes awarded since World War II are in line with the spirit and terms of Nobel’s will, according to Norwegian lawyer Fredrik Heffermehl, author of the book “Nobels vilje” (“Nobel’s Will”).
“Disarmament and anti-militarism was what Nobel wanted to promote,” Heffermehl told Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten’s English desk. …”
Did you mean Sasha Grey!?
now everytime the president authorises more troops to the theatres of war, or approves another special ops, the loud-crowd will say, “see, totally undeserving!!!”.
there is very little this man can do for the good of his country or the good of the world community that some will “not” find fault with.
I’m not having this argument because it poses a false equivalency and decontextualises the issue from the present-day into some abstract sphere in which there are ‘conservatives’ and ‘liberals’ for time eternal. The facts are: there is, right now, a widespread astroturf movement in the United States that is tapping into the @about 20% of the American electorate that are nutters. This movement has no responsible leadership and is continuously inciting people and encouraging people to dehumanise their opponents, particularly Obama. The major difference between this and any left or centre-left movements in the United States since @1970s in THIS context is the combination of their size, power, and vitriol.
In other words, this is not a debate. You can disagree with people all you want (i disagree with probably 9/10ths of what Obama is doing or saying on any given day), but there is a difference between disagreement and dehumanisation and a further step from dehumanisation to calls for elimination. Don’t take what I’m saying personally unless you’re a Glenn Beck type or one of his followers, because there’s clearly nothing wrong with disagreeing with Obama – if there were more people who did so without resorting to dehumanising him or defending the practices that do, that would be a good thing for all concerned – especially all the people that the Obama administration’s current policies are screwing over on a daily basis.
See this morning’s Huffington Post sensational headline: “Peace Prize? – Obama Quietly Authorizes 13,000 more Troops for Afghan War”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/12/obama-authorizes-13000-mo_n_318150.html
FYI those are not more troops, they are actually replacement troops.
Seriously, you don’t need Rush when you have Huff Po.
Link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/12/obama-authorizes-13000-mo_n_318150.html
the washington post article that is linked says the troops are support troops (engineers, medical personnel, intelligence experts and military police) not replacement troops.
i really dont get the logic behind this. are liberals not allowed to attack obama when they feel he is doing something wrong? look at the amount of promises he has broken; from civil liberties issues to transparency issues to guantanamo to climate change to dont ask dont tell to financial regulations to ending the iraq war — these are things he promised he would do, these are the things that people elected him to do!!!
if pointing out that you are doing the opposite of what you had promised and what the theme of your campaign was is ‘fault finding in everything he does’ then lets have more of it.