Peace in our time

Readers of this blog will recall that the European Union received its Nobel Peace Prize for, among other reasons, bringing peace and prosperity to Southern Europe, after years under authoritarian dictatorship and civil war. Well, how is that shaping up, one wonders.

Two items of news provide some sort of partial information as it is difficult to get a clear picture of what is going on in the country as a whole.

The Daily Mail gives us a story with suitable pictures of young neo-Nazi gangs attacking immigrants, their homes and businesses and daubing swastikas on walls. I presume these are not the same gangs of young people who greeted Chancellor Angela Merkel with jolly Nazi uniforms and pictures of her as Hitler. The Greeks really do have to make up their minds whose victims they are. (Answer: their own and, especially, of their politicians but they do keep electing them.)

Meanwhile, Golden Dawn, which has representatives in Parliament, denies that they are neo-Nazi (all a misunderstanding, guv) but proclaim that they are Greek nationalists who want Greece to be reclaimed by Greeks. That, of course, is a laudable aim but it is not entirely clear how they propose to do it beyond getting rid of all immigrants.

One of the complaints voiced by those attacked by the gangs is that the police proclaim themselves to be too busy to investigate them. Given how often we hear that in this country, I am not sure that is necessarily sinister but the BBC has gone after another story that also demonstrates that there is peace and love and joy across the European Union, even its southernmost members.

There is, according to this, evidence that some of the police are in collusion with Golden Dawn, the anti-immigrant party that uses neo-Nazi symbolism purely for aesthetic reasons. In parenthesis, let me add how odd it is to see the Daily Mail and the BBC going after the same story from the same point of view. They usually do it only if there is something anti-American involved.

It is hard to tell how wide-spread the problem is and whether it is true that Greeks are preparing for a civil war. Golden Dawn undoubtedly has 18 members of Parliament, which indicates electoral success and support. How much of that is protest voting is hard to tell. Given the venality and incompetence of most Greek politicians, protest voting is quite understandable though, for some reason, it did not go to any party with more or less liberal (in the real sense of the word) policies.

That the situation is extraordinarily difficult there one cannot deny; that there seems to be no solution proposed beyond pleas to the EU (or the German government) to lighten the burden is also clear. I don't exactly believe stories of people starving as they are usually produced by organizations who hope to raise money for themselves on the back of those stories. But that there are extremist groups hoping to benefit from the mess is certain. Will that lead to a civil war in the near future? Given modern Greek history, the chances of that are very high.

I suppose they could take this advice from City AM: Greece must stop hitting snooze and wake up to economic reform. Somehow, I don't think they will. Decades of national victimhood are not easy to overcome.

But where is the fourth president?

At the end of Conan Doyle's wonderful story, His Last Bow, Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson have trussed up the German spy and are about to take him off to Scotland Yard. World War I is about to break out and Dr Watson is returning to his old unit, the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers (though it is not clear what he will be doing there). Von Bork is protesting that he, a German subject, is being held against his will by two private individuals. 

"Well, you realise your position, you and  your accomplice here. If I were to shout for help as we pass through the village -"

"My dear sir, if you did anything so foolish you would probably enlarge the too limited titles of our village inns by giving us The Dangling Prussian as a sign-post."

In the same spirit though not in the same circumstances I suggest that we start renaming hostelries as The Three Presidents. It seems but fitting in the light of the news that the problem of who will collect that Peace Prize has been solved.

All three Presidents - Barroso of the Commission, Van Rompuy of the Council and Schultz of Parliament - will collect the Prize, presumably trying not to pick each other's pockets when the money is being handed over.

However, it remains unclear who will deliver the speech accepting the award, which normally involves just one speaker. And it is also unclear what will happen to the £740,000 prize money, although it is expected to go to charity.

A charity, eh? I wonder which particular charity or, much more likely, NGO that will go to. One that has already been heavily funded to campaign for more EU regulation of something or other?

Wait a minute. Is there not one President missing? Whatever happened to Mario Draghi, President of the European Central Bank? Why will he not be present at this auspicious occasion? He could count the money.

ADDENDUM: I gratefully acknowledge an excellent suggestion from a reader of this blog that the three Presidents (The Three Caballeros) should share out all the official languages and repeat the speech of thanks in each one. That should keep them all going for a while.

More on Jagland

In my previous posting I mentioned that the Chairman of the Norwegian Peace Prize Committee had an interesting political career. I was then accused of being coy by a regular reader of this blog who also sent me some more information about the man. Now, up with that sort of accusation I will not put. Here is the information sent to me in full:

Apart from a history of general incompetence and sloth, including started but never finished studies in economics, Jagland was a "confidential KGB source" (or as Lenin would have called him, a useful idiot). Internally in KGB he went under the call name "Juri" and was a useful source for political information. According to reports he had also been used as a "channel for active measures", including the question of nuclear free zones in the Nordic countries. These contacts were brought to light by the Soviet defector Mikhail Butkov.

Jagland defended himself that he did not do anything but his normal duties, and though he never reported his contacts to the Norwegian security services, he did report to the people in charge of the Norwegian Labour party. (Hoops!) In the same program on Norwegian television that Butkov and Jagland were discussed, Jens Stoltenberg also was mentioned - another Labour party luminary. Those who follow Norwegian politics may recognise him as the present Norwegian PM.

Quote (my transl): "Jens Stoltenberg's contact with the KGB officer Boris Kirillov led to KGB in 1989 giving him the cover/file name "Steklov". A dossier on Stoltenberg was put together at the Centre in Moscow containing personal and political information. The dossier was of the form DOR (Delo operativnoj razrabotki). These kind of files were usually restricted to people in an advanced state of cultivation, or persons already counted as confidential sources.

Looks like Arne Treholt was not alone - he was just unlucky to get caught.

I am grateful for that information and for being reminded that I should not write lazily.

It's an ill wind ...

The news of the Nobel Peace Prize being awarded to the EU, apart from causing a great deal of entertainment, has also provided the Leader of UKIP with a great deal of publicity. He seems to be the top man to be quoted everywhere, for instance in this headline on AFP: Farage and Redwood condemn EU Nobel Peace Prize. There are many more as a brief consultation with Mr Google will show. (So, can we have no more nonsense about UKIP not getting any media attention, please?)

Glenn Reynolds weighs in on the debate as to what is more embarrassing, awarding that prize to President Obama less than a year after his inauguration or to the EU."AT LEAST WHEN THEY GAVE OBAMA THE PRIZE, HE HADN’T FAILED YET." Hadn't thought of it in those terms but he is right.

Frida Ghitis argues that the Committee lost an excellent opportunity to show that it really believes in peace and freedom. True, but hardly for the first time though, possibly, Ms Ghitis did not notice it before. Or, maybe, she mentions this every year.

Kristian Berg Harpviken, the Director of the Peace Research Institute in Oslo, was interviewed on the subject and sounded a little bemused, not to say irritated. He also pointed to an important aspect:

It's a bit different, though, in Norway and internationally. In Norway, this decision is deemed to stir considerable controversy, precisely because the issue of EU membership is so controversial in Norway, and many critics here see this already as the politicians on the Nobel Committee trying to use their platform there to affect Norwegian domestic politics.

In fact, Norway has voted twice to stay out of the EU but it is well known that Thorbjørn Jagland, the Chairman of the Peace Prize Committee and a man with an "interesting" political career, would like to see the question reopened and Norway vote the right way at last.

The all-important question remains: which president will go to Oslo to collect the prize? The secondary question is what will happen to the money? I suppose it could be thrown into the general melting pot of debt and default.

Bwa-ha-ha-ha

Readers of this blog would have guessed what that title is about. Yes, indeed, it is the news this morning that the European Union, enmired in economic problems, riots in various places and impassioned arguments on how to impose yet another treaty on the ever more vociferously complaining populace, has been awarded the Norwegian Joke Prize Nobel Peace Prize, which is not awarded by the Swedish Academy but by the Norwegian Nobel Committee.

I saw the story first in the Washington Post, so I shall quote from it.

The Norwegian prize committee said the EU received the award for six decades of contributions “to the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe.

“The stabilizing part played by the European Union has helped to transform a once torn Europe from a continent of war to a continent of peace,” Nobel committee chairman Thorbjoern Jagland said.

The EU rose from the ashes of World War II, born of the conviction that ever closer economic ties would make sure that century-old enemies never turned on each other again.

Well, of course, as anyone who has looked at the history of this noxious institution knows, the EU did not rise from the ashes of anything. The EU came into existence in 1992 after the Maastricht Treaty, just about the time the war in former Yugoslavia was unfolding, with the EU and its egregious Ministers adding to the flames by encouraging the Communist apparatchik turned Serb nationalist Slobodan Milosevic to keep the federation together by whatever means possible.

Even the EEC didn't exactly rise from those ashes. By 1957 Western Europe was recovering from the war with the help of the Marshall Fund and their own activity (especially in West Germany) while Eastern Europe was left to its own far from peaceful devices.

Across Europe in that period there have been a few crises: the Berlin air lift, the uprising in East Berlin in 1953, the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, the various attempts to throw off Communism in Poland, the Prague Spring, the Berlin Wall, and so on. Where was the EU or its predecessors?

Then came the fall of Communism, achieved by the people of the countries involved with a little help from President Reagan and Prime Minister Thatcher (none of whom got the Nobel Peace Prize). Where was the EU? Well, at least, we know where it was when former Yugoslavia erupted.

As we look around at southern Europe in particular we find a curious picture of peace and democracy. But then the EU is not precisely democratic as any fule kno. In fact, its whole raison d'être is to surmount democracy and old-fashioned political accountability by managerial politics. One assumes that is why the Norwegian Committee has warmed to it.

I do not find it upsetting or insulting. Nor do I think as some people seem to that it makes a joke of the prize. It does not affect the real Nobel Prizes, that is the various science ones and the Peace Prize has been a joke for many decades. In fact, the last time a deserving candidate was awarded it was in 1906 when Teddy Roosevelt was given the gong for negotiating the Treaty of Portsmouth NH between Russia and Japan, thus bringing an actual war to an end without (as in the case of the 1972 prize, divided between Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho) unleashing a war by one of the governments against its own people. Since then? Well, have a look at the list.

One wonders, incidentally, whether there is now going to be a fight in Brussels as to who should go to Oslo to receive the Prize and the money and what will happen to that sum, which is not to be despised. Another question: when we have that famous referendum so many eurosceptics are screaming for, will the Prime Minister use this as an argument for staying in the EU?

Well, who'd have thought it

Questions are being asked about one of the trio of women who shared the Nobel Peace Prize this year. It seems that the party she belongs to in Yemen has some links with Al-Qaeda. Will the Norwegian committee care if those links turn out to be as real as they appear to be?

Meanwhile back in the big bad world

Later today the Nobel Peace Prize will not be awarded to Liu Xiaobo because he happens to be in a Chinese prison for publishing material that the Chinese Party and Government did not approve of. I expect he would quite like to trade place with Mr Assange but, alas, that is not going to happen. Nor is he going to get any support from Mr Putin, whose representative will not be present at the ceremony along with a number of other worthies. Ms Khan has not offered to put up bail for the Chinese dissident but then Ms Khan has not, so far as I know, spoken up for Mr Wilders or for Elisabeth Sabbaditsch-Wolff either.

Another person who has announced that she has a prior engagement that she had not realized before is Navi Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. And so I should think. We can't have the UN human rights supremo appearing in support of Chinese dissidents. The idea! Nevertheless, UN Watch and 23 other NGOs have called on her to attend. Ms Pillay, however, is too busy expressing her shock at the targeting of WikiLeaks to spare a thought for Chinese dissidents and their families.

Oh yes, nearly forgot: SecGen Ban Ki-moon will not be there either. Inner City Press thinks this may have something to do with both of them wanting a second term in their respective jobs and knowing that China could block that. Surely not!

UPDATE: Liu Xiaobo's wife, Liu Xia is not in Oslo either. She is under house arrest.

Who is dropping out of the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony?

Because this year's Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to a Chinese dissident, Liu Xiaobo, still in prison in China (when will Wikileaks publish any documents from the Chinese Foreign Ministry?) there is a certain amount of trouble about attendance at the ceremony this Friday. For one thing the actual recipient will not be present but that will not be for the first time in the history of the award.

China is gleefully telling the world that most countries are staying away. Actually, only 65 countries were invited to send their representatives, these being the ones with embassies in Oslo. Of these 44 have accepted but 19 have foound that all their representatives have prior engagements.

The Christian Science Monitor not only lists them but gives helpful paragraphs that explain why the country in question should be particularly anxious not to upset the Chinese government. It seems that after some deliberation, India has decided to accept the invitation, despite the forthcoming state visit to India by the Chinese Prime Minister, Wen Jiabao.

The Toy Parliament in Brussels and Strasbourg is less than completely forthcoming in its support for Liu Xiaobo. There is a certain falling out between the thieves MEPs. The Green/EFA co-leader, Daniel Cohn-Bendit of old extreme left-wing revolutionary fame, has accused the two main groups, EPP and the Social-Democrats, of silence on the subject and not expressing any support for Liu Xiaobo. It is not clear at this stage whether Baroness Ashton the hapless and ridiculous Head Honcho of EU foreign affairs will attend.

More on the Nobel Peace Prize

Glenn Reynolds links to a story about Liu Xiaobo's wife, the Chinese police and quotes some comments about Thomas Friedman's desire to see a Chinese political system in the United States. Two excellent sentences to be quoted:

Just because they sold you an iPhone doesn’t mean they’re for freedom.

And about Thomas Friedman:

They’re above criticism so long as he holds the Walter Duranty Chair at the NYT.

Love the idea of a Walter Duranty Chair at the NYT.

Meanwhile, Liu Xiabo's wife seems to have disappeared while the Chinese authorities, having denounced the prize, have lapsed into official silence.

Amazing!

Nobel Peace Prize goes to Chinese dissident and not to somebody who regularly disses the United States and the West. Wow! Man bites dog. Mind you, I am not sure what it has to do with peace though, I suppose, if China were a democracy of some kind, it would be less likely to be a threat to its neighbours and its own people. I still think it should have gone to the USMC but this is not too bad.

A real rube abroad

Some are impressed by the fact that President Obama proclaimed himself to be unworthy of the Noble Peace Prize in his acceptance speech (but not too unworthy to accept it or is he not worthy of being so unworthy that he would have had to refuse it?), others are cheering or in the case of the New York Times showing unease at his robust defence of the war against terror.

The most interesting story of the day was picked up by Glenn Reynolds on Instapundit several hours ago and is now being aired by AP News as well. It seems that once again President Obama, the man who was billed as the sophisticate who would make the world forget the rube Bush, has behaved with the sort of rudeness one expects … well … from a cowboy and a rube.

Obama had quite a whirlwind day Thursday — he signed the Nobel guest book, huddled with Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, met with King Harald V and Queen Sonja, and delivered an acceptance speech after he was formally presented with the prize. He also joined the king and queen at an evening banquet.

But he skipped several other activities, including lunch with the king, a news conference at Oslo's Grand Hotel, CNN's traditional interview with the prize winner and a "Save the Children" benefit concert, where organizers replaced him with an Obama cardboard cutout. Obama also won't be around for Friday's Nobel Concert.

Obama blamed his schedule. "I still have a lot of work to do back in Washington, D.C., before the year is done," he said during an appearance with Stoltenberg. The president's quick visit also reflected a White House that saw little value in trumpeting an honor for peace just days after Obama announced he was sending more troops off to war.

The White House and the President also, one must assume saw little value in being courteous to Norway and its King and people. After all, what does he get out of it? He already has the Peace Prize. Nothing more is needed.

Or as the Daily Beast puts it:

A day before President Obama receives his Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, the president’s treatment of his Norwegian hosts has become hot news across Scandinavia.

News outlets across the region are calling Obama arrogant for slashing some of the prize winners’ traditional duties from his schedule. “Everybody wants to visit the Peace Center except Obama,” sniped the Norwegian daily Aftenposten, amid reports the president would snub his own exhibition at the Nobel Peace Center. “A bit
arrogant—a bit bad,” proclaimed another Aftenposten headline.

…

Also among the dissed, according to news reports: a concert in Oslo on Friday that was arranged in his honor, and a group of Norwegian children who had planned to meet Obama in front of City Hall.

“The American president is acting like an elephant in a porcelain shop,” said Norwegian public-relations expert Rune Morck-Wergeland. “In Norwegian culture, it’s very important to keep an agreement. We’re religious about that, and Obama’s actions have been clumsy. You just don’t say no to an invitation from a European king. Maybe Obama’s advisers are not very educated about European culture, but he is coming off as rude, even if he doesn’t mean to.”

I can quite understand why President Obama might not want to waste any time looking an exhibition about his own achievements – he knows better than anyone how thin those are. But as to whether he means to be rude or not, one remains doubtful. After all, this is not the first time he has behaved like a rube abroad.

Remember the time he decided to chill out with his family instead of accepting an invitation to a dinner during a state visit to Russia, a visit that he appeared to confuse with a family holiday? And the time he decided to go on a romantic night out with the First Lady in Paris instead of a formal dinner with the French President who was his host during another state visit that this sophisticate confused with a family outing?

Meanwhile, Glenn Reynolds reports two interesting stories: from Hot Air we hear that the Norwegians have decided to substitute a cardboard cut-out at one of the concerts the new Nobel Peace Prize Laureate is missing (picked up by AP as well); and 44 per cent Americans would like Bush back as President. That’s nothing serious – presidents always look better when they are gone. The interesting point is the one he quotes from the forum on Ann Althouse’s blog, which is an acquired taste, in my opinion:

I think the point of the comparison is this: Bush endured 8 years of wall-to-wall, 24/7 liberal bashing from multiple networks. Meanwhile, Obama was coronated and has enjoyed wall-to-wall adoration from the same multiple networks. If Obama's numbers, 11 months in, already approach Bush's after EIGHT years, then, baby, you've got serious problems.

I must admit I did expect that famed honeymoon to last for a year or so but then even I did not expect Obama to be so crass in everything he did. What am I admitting to here?

I wonder if President Obama will mention this

Regardless of what is going on in the world and the debate that will not die about the honesty of scientific research that is feeding the warmist panic, President Obama intends to go to Copenhagen to offer various unfulfillable guarantees. Then he will travel to Oslo (presumably by bicycle and rowing boat in order to show how serious he is about the subject). He will be receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, awarded to him for his achievements in the first ten days of his presidency.

The question is, will he mention what is happening in Iran in his acceptance speech. The Iranian government has confiscated the medal awarded to the Iranian human rights lawyer, Shirin Ebadi, awarded to her in 2003.

Ebadi won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003 for her efforts in promoting democracy. She has long faced harassment from Iranian authorities for her activities — including threats against her relatives and a raid on her office last year in which files were confiscated.

The seizure of her prize is an expression of the Iranian government's harsh approach to anyone it considers an opponent — particularly since the massive street protests triggered by hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's disputed June 12 re-election.

Acting on orders from Tehran's Revolutionary Court, authorities took the peace prize medal about three weeks ago from a safe-deposit box in Iran, Ebadi said in a phone interview from London. They also seized her Legion of Honor and a ring awarded to her by a German association of journalists, she said.

Authorities froze the bank accounts of her and her husband and demanded $410,000 in taxes that they claimed were owed on the $1.3 million she was awarded. Ebadi said, however, that such prizes are exempt from tax under Iranian law. She said the government also appears intent on trying to confiscate her ome.

Ebadi, the first Muslim woman to be awarded the peace prize and the first female judge in Iran, said she would not be intimidated and that her absence from the country since June did not mean she felt exiled.

Whatever she may feel, if she has any sense at all, she will stay in geographic if not spiritual exile.

The Norwegian Peace Prize Committee is in shock. This has never happened before. Will this year's winner of the prize refer to it, I ask again.

His record on the subject of human rights is not good. His behaviour during the Iranian protests and demonstrations did not make one feel that he valued the ideas of freedom or was, in any way, ready to support those who were fighting for it.

Another test came when he was in China. Would he talk about human rights in the country that is, possibly, the worst offender. Sadly, even Der Spiegel was unimpressed. Then again, they were unimpressed by the entire Obama jaunt in Asia or, indeed, his foreign policy in general.

The White House did not even stand up for itself when it came to the question of human rights in China. The president, who had said only a few days earlier that freedom of expression is a universal right, was coerced into attending a joint press conference with Chinese President Hu Jintao, at which questions were forbidden. Former US President George W. Bush had always managed to avoid such press conferences.

President Bush, the great hate figure of the last eight years, is beginning to be missed by all sorts of people.

Just one more comment

It is time to have a break, albeit a short one, from the Obama Peace Prize story, but before I do so, I thought I'd quote something one of this blog's readers sent me: the reason for that prize being awarded to someone who has done absolutely nothing remotely relevant.

On Friday, as the world was still convulsed with laughter at the news (this is the funniest story since Cherie Blair's tearful TV appearance during which she assured us all that she is "not superwoman") CNN reported on the event during which journalists seemed to do a great deal of gasping with surprise.

The most interesting part of the justification produced by the Chairman of the Committee, Thorbjorn Jagland. After explaining that this was a Prize given to Obama for "capturing the world's attention" and giving it hope (well, not the people of Honduras, Iran, Israel, Afghanistan or Tibet but how many votes do they have?), Mr Jagland "rejected the notion that Obama had been recognized prematurely for his efforts and said the committee wanted to promote the president just it had Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990 for his efforts to open up the Soviet Union".

Interesting. So, making lots of waffly speeches, trying to take over the healthcare and raising the deficit is the equivalent of opening up the Soviet Union. Did the United States needed opening up? What was hidden in the past? Were journalists and dissidents imprisoned or thrown into lunatic asylums, known as psikhushki? Had all opposition been banned? Were there no independent trade unions under a Republican Administration? Did President Bush control the media? Come to think of it, what happened to all those promises of transparency about the White House and legislation that Obama had made in his campaign?

Moving on from this strage comparison, we ought to recall what was the net result of Gorbachev's efforts. He proved beyond any reasonable doubt that the Communist system could not be reformed and the Soviet Union fell apart. Now, is this the ultimate aim of the Peace Prize Committee - the destruction of the United States, the greatest of all liberal democracies?

Given Mr Jagland's political views, that is not an altogether outlandish idea.

More on that Peace Prize

It is not possible to enumerate all the people who seem to think that awarding Obama the Nobel Peace Prize (by the Norwegian Nobel Committee) somehow diminishes the actual prize because he has done nothing to deserve it. Well, true, but at least he did not start the Second Intifada or produced a film full of lies to scare the world’s population and earn lots of money. (And let us not forget that Al Gore beat some far worthier possible recipients.)

Nor is this the first time the Nobel Prize Committee chose “hope” over “change” as John Rosenberg writes, reminding us all of the preposterous story of Rigoberta Menchu who was given the Peace Prize in 1992 for an autobiography she did not write and which was full of lies from beginning to end. When the truth came out, her defenders displayed their contempt for Guatemalans by insisting that they cannot understand the meaning of truth and, in any case, Ms Menchu deserved the prize for what she represented rather than for what she achieved.

Mona Charen gives a list of recent winners and a motley crew they are, too, with one or two deserving names. I do wish, however, that she and others would stop wittering on about “Europeans” wanting this or rejoicing over that. There are no Europeans, only various countries and their people. They cannot possibly be all lumped together into one group. The Norwegian Nobel Committee does not represent Europeans; it does not even represent Norwegians. Whenever I read this sort of stuff about “Europeans” I start feeling a certain amount of schadenfreude about the mess Americans have got themselves into. Say what you like about the various Europeans, we did not elect Obama. Then I recall what his Administration will do to the West in general and subside.

As we know the announcement was greeted with some bemusement and as Patterico points out even Obama’s cheerleaders a.k.a. the MSM were not entirely happy with the situation. Perhaps, they, too, heard the roars of laughter that went up all round the world. Others of the usual suspects were more complimentary though even they sounded a little bemused.

Some people are completely in favour. Fidel Castro, Reuters reports, said “on Saturday it was "a positive measure" that was more a criticism of past U.S. policies than a recognition of Obama's accomplishments”. Hmmm. Nothing wrong with his brain cells then. Of course, we do not know whether he said it himself or whether it was the ventriloquist they employ in the Havana morgue.

Patterico, who thinks he should be nominated for the next Nobel Peace Prize (they don’t give it to anti-socialists, Patterico, so don’t even think of it) also has a story about the DNC Communications Director, Brad Woodhouse, expressing the somewhat fatuous opinion that those who mock President Obama’s Peace Prize are lining up with terrorists like Hamas and the Taliban. Rather odd that, since other people have justified the Prize by pointing out how nice the President has been to these two organizations. (And as some of the mostly hostile to Woodhouse comments point out, it is also odd that the Dems are now acknowledging that there actually are terrorists out there.)

Let me get this straight: hurling vitriolic abuse at General Petraeus when he was putting the surge in Iraq into place is a form of higher patriotism; feeling pleased that the poisoned chalice of the Olympics has passed Chicago by and laughing at the President who has done nothing receiving the Peace Prize that has been given to a real terrorist is a sign of treason and terrorism. Boy, I wish I had thought of that.

Mind you, not so long ago the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi called all those who were protesting against Obamacare Nazis and un-American.

Of course, it is all too late as the jokes are pouring in about Obama winning all sorts of sporting trophies. Patterico again has a few jokes and Instapundit links to a bunch of cartoons. And here is a wonderful blogpost about a first year postgraduate student, Quintus Pfuffnick, winning the Nobel Prize in Economics “for his willingness to tackle difficult problems, his commitment to improving the economic system, and his goal of bringing efficiency and equality into harmony”.

Instapundit rounds up the various stories and I have neither the desire nor the ability to compete with Glenn Reynolds.

Megan McArdle sums up the bemusement of those who are not simply amused:

I guess I must hate America, but I actually think it's kind of ludicrous that anyone is even trying to argue that Barack Obama truly deserves this Nobel Peace Prize. Could he have deserved it, after he'd had more than nine months in office? Easily. But he hasn't had time to, y'know, accomplish anything. Unless they're giving out the Prize these days for stimulus bills and banking sector interventions. The committee claims they awarded it for his "extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples"? Can even his most ardent supporters come up with any effort he's made that really qualifies as more extraordinary than those of everyone else in the world?

The point that needs to be made is that it is not those who hate America who dislike this prize (or the Norwegian Nobel Prize Committee). There is nothing glorious for America in this. To the contrary. President Bush was much hated by the tranzis and they hurled abuse at him and the country he led. But they did not despise him. How could they? The man stood up to the tranzis and carried on as he saw fit.

When it comes to his successor the story is very different. Whether it is the IOC shooing him and the First Lady contemptuously out of the way or the Nobel Peace Prize Committee throwing a bauble and a great deal of money at him, it is not dislike or fear that one sees; it is contempt. The United States at last has a President the transnational organizations do not have to be afraid of; he is no danger to them. Indeed, they have made sure of that by giving him this worthless bauble and over $1 million.

Claudia Rossett, thinking along very similar lines, analyzes the make-up of the Committee and speculates what they and their colleagues will want from the President in return for this award.

Well, maybe. Because there is a problem about that money, as Volokh posits, Article 1, section 9 of the United States Constitution says:

No title of nobility shall be granted by the United States: and no person holding any office of profit or trust under them, shall, without the consent of the Congress, accept of any present, emolument, office, or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign state.

Does this describe the Norwegian Committee, which is appointed by the Norwegian Parliament, their Prize and the very handsome sum of money that goes with it?

Consolation prize?

I had to check my calendar when I saw the news that President Obama, whose achievements up to date have been nil apart from raising the deficit to $1.752 trillion for this year alone, has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. No it is not April 1 and the news is real. Woo-hoo!

Astonishingly enough, there are people out there who are upset and talk about this demeaning the Peace Prize. How can that ridiculous thing be demeaned? First of all, it has no purpose. Science prizes are awarded for achievements though scientists may dispute whether the recipients are those who really deserved them; economics and literature prizes tend to go according to the rule of Buggins's turn but some achievement has to be shown; the Peace Prize has no purpose or justification. None of the people who have received it in the past achieved peace and some, like the late unlamented Chairman Arafat, actively promoted war and terrorism.

This could be a consolation prize for not getting the Olympics for Chicago; it could be a reward for grovelling to every tyrant under the sun and surrendering to them on the subject of free speech; or it could be simply for being the first non-white President of the United States. Given that nominations allegedly closed 11 days after Obama's inauguration, one cannot help feeling that the last of those is true.

Meanwhile, what of the US Marine Corps, who really have brought peace and freedom to millions of people int he world?

I had completely forgotten

When that gasbag and failed politician Al Gore received his Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 for a documentary that even he admitted was based on false premises (ah but you have to shock people!) one of the other candidates was Irena Sendler, a Polish Roman Catholic nurse who had saved around 2,500 Jewish children and infants, placing them with Catholic families. The latter then courageously brought them up as their own.

Irena Sendler was arrested and badly tortured by the Gestapo though her organization managed to save her from being executed. Subsequently, she lived in hiding but is said to have gone on helping Jewish children. After the war she tried to reunite some of the children with their families most of whom had been exterminated.

Needless to say she was then persecuted by the Polish Communist government for being close to the Home Army, whose members were put on show trial, and to the "bourgeois" Polish government in exile that had been betrayed by the Western allies.

Once again she was imprisoned and tortured, miscarrying her second child. Later her children were not allowed to study at Polish universities and it was not till 1983 that she was allowed abroad to receive her Israeli award.

As this entry on American Thinker tells us, the lady died last May and she has now been honoured by a film on Hallmark Channel. In Israel she has been recognized as one of the Righteous of All Nations and awarded a Commander's Cross by the Israeli Institute.

She received a personal message from the Pope in 2003 and was, belatedly, honoured by the Polish government. A great lady but, as far as the Nobel Peace Prize Committee is concerned, far inferior to the man who will do anything to promote himself into a position of power and influence.

Marc Sheppard on American Thinker speculates that the prize was agreed on behind the scenes long before the official discussion. That is entirely possible.

However, I can't help feeling that Ms Sendler was better off not receiving that prize, especially when one remembers who has been "honoured" with it in the past. It would have besmirched her fine life.