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News & ArtsFriday, October 9, 2009
International The Nobel Peace Prize
Posted by Eli Sanders on Fri, Oct 9, 2009 at 10:27 AM
It's in the morning news, and everywhere, and no one, it seems, knows exactly what to think. Tell 'em, Slog.
Really? A Nobel Peace Prize for President Obama?
1
Fucking reality check:
Published on Friday, October 9, 2009 by CommonDreams.org
A Nobel Worthy Effort: Ending Youth Violence From Chicago to Afghanistan
by Jesse Hagopian
President Obama has launched a new national initiative against youth violence in the wake of the brutal killing of Derrion Albert, a 16-year-old sophomore at Chicago’s Fenger Academy High. Derrion’s fatal beating by several other teens, captured on video from an onlooker’s cell phone, has inundated the nightly news and the blogosphere —prompting U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, the former chief of the Chicago public schools, to visit Chicago this past Wednesday to address the issue of youth violence.
But to many parents, students and teachers in Chicago, Duncan’s visit to Chicago represented the perpetrator returning to scene of the crime.
That’s because Duncan’s “Renaissance 2010” initiative that he helped launch beginning in 2005, ordered dozens of Chicago's public schools closed and thousands of students reassigned to campuses outside their neighborhoods —and often across gang lines.
The closure of these public schools was a move by Duncan to bring in privatized charter schools that take public funds and place them in schools outside of public oversight. In numerous school board meetings and protests, community members have warned Duncan that the reckless closing of schools would have dire consequences—from the loss of cherished education programs and neighborhood schools, to the increase in gang violence.
Before the 2006 school year, an average of 10-15 public school students were fatally shot each year. But as schools were shut down and public education was eroded, deadly shootings soared; 24 in the 2006-07 school year, 23 in the 2007-08 school year, and last year ended with a record 34 deaths and 290 shootings.
"You have a trail of blood and tears ever since they launched (Renaissance 2010)," said Tio Hardiman, director of the anti-violence organization CeaseFire Illinois, in story by MSNBC. "There's a history of violence associated with moving kids from one area to another."
Investing in our public schools and after-school programs (rather than siphoning off money from them in the form of charter schools), and investing in job programs and universal healthcare before investing in failed banks, could go a long way towards alleviating the conditions of hopelessness that breed violence.
But even reprioritizing spending on social services and education isn’t enough to save America’s youth from violence.
Inauspiciously, the Obama administration chose October 7th to issue its press release calling for a “National conversation on values to address youth violence.” October 7th marked the 8th anniversary of the War in Afghanistan—a war that has enlisted tens of thousands of America’s youth to carry automatic weapons to a foreign land to participate in the unhinged brutality of an occupation. As Obama considers whether to bow to the generals and send an addition 40,000 troops to Afghanistan—a war widely becoming known as “Obama’s Vietnam”—already some 800 Americans and thousands more Afghans have been killed in this conflict.
If Obama wants his national conversation on youth violence to be more than platitudes and media hype, he would do well to revisit these words delivered by fellow Nobel Peace Prize winner Martin Luther King, Jr. in his famous “Beyond Vietnam” speech:
We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem. So we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools. So we watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor village, but we realize that they would hardly live on the same block in Chicago…
…I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today: my own government.
Jesse Hagopian is a teacher in Seattle and co-founder of ESP Vision: Educators, Students, and Parents for a Better Vision of the Public schools. He can be reached at: jdhagopian@gmail.com
More...
Published on Friday, October 9, 2009 by CommonDreams.org
A Nobel Worthy Effort: Ending Youth Violence From Chicago to Afghanistan
by Jesse Hagopian
President Obama has launched a new national initiative against youth violence in the wake of the brutal killing of Derrion Albert, a 16-year-old sophomore at Chicago’s Fenger Academy High. Derrion’s fatal beating by several other teens, captured on video from an onlooker’s cell phone, has inundated the nightly news and the blogosphere —prompting U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, the former chief of the Chicago public schools, to visit Chicago this past Wednesday to address the issue of youth violence.
But to many parents, students and teachers in Chicago, Duncan’s visit to Chicago represented the perpetrator returning to scene of the crime.
That’s because Duncan’s “Renaissance 2010” initiative that he helped launch beginning in 2005, ordered dozens of Chicago's public schools closed and thousands of students reassigned to campuses outside their neighborhoods —and often across gang lines.
The closure of these public schools was a move by Duncan to bring in privatized charter schools that take public funds and place them in schools outside of public oversight. In numerous school board meetings and protests, community members have warned Duncan that the reckless closing of schools would have dire consequences—from the loss of cherished education programs and neighborhood schools, to the increase in gang violence.
Before the 2006 school year, an average of 10-15 public school students were fatally shot each year. But as schools were shut down and public education was eroded, deadly shootings soared; 24 in the 2006-07 school year, 23 in the 2007-08 school year, and last year ended with a record 34 deaths and 290 shootings.
"You have a trail of blood and tears ever since they launched (Renaissance 2010)," said Tio Hardiman, director of the anti-violence organization CeaseFire Illinois, in story by MSNBC. "There's a history of violence associated with moving kids from one area to another."
Investing in our public schools and after-school programs (rather than siphoning off money from them in the form of charter schools), and investing in job programs and universal healthcare before investing in failed banks, could go a long way towards alleviating the conditions of hopelessness that breed violence.
But even reprioritizing spending on social services and education isn’t enough to save America’s youth from violence.
Inauspiciously, the Obama administration chose October 7th to issue its press release calling for a “National conversation on values to address youth violence.” October 7th marked the 8th anniversary of the War in Afghanistan—a war that has enlisted tens of thousands of America’s youth to carry automatic weapons to a foreign land to participate in the unhinged brutality of an occupation. As Obama considers whether to bow to the generals and send an addition 40,000 troops to Afghanistan—a war widely becoming known as “Obama’s Vietnam”—already some 800 Americans and thousands more Afghans have been killed in this conflict.
If Obama wants his national conversation on youth violence to be more than platitudes and media hype, he would do well to revisit these words delivered by fellow Nobel Peace Prize winner Martin Luther King, Jr. in his famous “Beyond Vietnam” speech:
We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem. So we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools. So we watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor village, but we realize that they would hardly live on the same block in Chicago…
…I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today: my own government.
Jesse Hagopian is a teacher in Seattle and co-founder of ESP Vision: Educators, Students, and Parents for a Better Vision of the Public schools. He can be reached at: jdhagopian@gmail.com
4
It's their prize, they decide, so what they say, goes.
Obama has achieved the repudiation of dumb and stupid wars, and told the world we are ending torture. His new approach includes multilaterialism on many fronts, and broader engagement.
Yes, actual fruits have not yet arisen. But if nobel committee wants to reward the new rhetoric, the new stance, the entire position that yes the rest of the world matters and isn't to be treated as cow turds on your cowboy boot, who are we to tell them they got it wrong?
Obama has achieved the repudiation of dumb and stupid wars, and told the world we are ending torture. His new approach includes multilaterialism on many fronts, and broader engagement.
Yes, actual fruits have not yet arisen. But if nobel committee wants to reward the new rhetoric, the new stance, the entire position that yes the rest of the world matters and isn't to be treated as cow turds on your cowboy boot, who are we to tell them they got it wrong?
6
@3 - Well you have to give him credit for succeeding in pissing off both the right and the left. So, he's bridging the gap?
8
Way to get an award for doing absolutely nothing to earn the award. What a fucking sham. And I like Obama.
The right is going to have a field day over this. The stupid son of a bitch should have declined it. That would have been classy.
The right is going to have a field day over this. The stupid son of a bitch should have declined it. That would have been classy.
9
This is more a poll of how fucking stupid Slog readers are.
Seriously, Obama gets the Nobel Peace Prize for bombing the moon, Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan, and Pakistan! You stupid fuckers can't tell war from peace! And I thought the Ref 71 backers were ignorant, backwards hicks!
Seriously, Obama gets the Nobel Peace Prize for bombing the moon, Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan, and Pakistan! You stupid fuckers can't tell war from peace! And I thought the Ref 71 backers were ignorant, backwards hicks!
10
I'm not generally a big fan of Charles' posts, but today's really struck me: "It is shocking because we had no idea of the kind of popular noise he generates in the world outside of our own." Also, on NPR this morning, they talked about how this prize is sometimes given pre-emptively, as encouragement, as a push in a certain direction. I think the prize is given as worldwide recognition for potential, and in hopes that it will be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
11
On the plus side, this gives the Right the chance to come off as even more unhinged:
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/…
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/…
12
@10 actually it is given for doing shit, like bringing peace or something crazy like that.
Teddy Roosevelt: Brokered the end of the Russo Japanese War.
Wilson: The fourteen points.
Carter: Peace between Israel and Egypt.
Obama: WTF?
And Afghanistan grinds on.
Preemptive my ass.
Teddy Roosevelt: Brokered the end of the Russo Japanese War.
Wilson: The fourteen points.
Carter: Peace between Israel and Egypt.
Obama: WTF?
And Afghanistan grinds on.
Preemptive my ass.
13
It was awarded for "vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons." So assuming that we don't get nuked in the next decade, I'd say it's deserved. It's hard to measure, partially because part of the reason he was awarded it was he isn't the destabilizing force Bush was...
14
The Nobel Peace Prize is, and has almost always been, entirely about politics. This isn't really an award for Obama; it's a statement of approval on his election.
It's sort of a sham, but that doesn't mean I don't sort of agree.
It's sort of a sham, but that doesn't mean I don't sort of agree.
16
Yeah nothing against the pres, but being in 2 wars doesn't warrent a peace prize, even if you didn't start them!
17
@12: It's not always for things that have happened. Here's a (short, incomplete) list of brilliant failures, ideas that didn't pan out, and programs that were very new when the prize was awarded.
Dawes: The Dawes Plan
Kissinger: The Paris Peace Accords
Arafat: Israel-Palestine peace talks
Brandt: West Germany's Ostpolotik
The committee itself draws parallels to Gorbachev's prize in 1990.
Dawes: The Dawes Plan
Kissinger: The Paris Peace Accords
Arafat: Israel-Palestine peace talks
Brandt: West Germany's Ostpolotik
The committee itself draws parallels to Gorbachev's prize in 1990.
20
fuck you Nobel Peace Prize judges for making me side/agree with my SUPER CONSERVATIVE CUBE-MATE......I never thought this day would come....but you screwed my pooch & sank my battleship
22
@17 OK, but what major foreign initiative has Obama even started? Let alone accomplished? The man hasn't even had a brilliant failure yet!
23
I'd kind of like him to do something first. You know, earn the prize, rather than just get it for not being an enormously destabilizing force.
I'm not George W. Bush either, where's my fucking Nobel Peace Prize?
Couldn't they have simply given it to all of humanity, with the following exceptions: George W. Bush, Osama bin Ladin, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and the staff of Stortingets Dry Cleaning in Oslo Norway?
I'm not George W. Bush either, where's my fucking Nobel Peace Prize?
Couldn't they have simply given it to all of humanity, with the following exceptions: George W. Bush, Osama bin Ladin, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and the staff of Stortingets Dry Cleaning in Oslo Norway?
24
The "Right" having a field day with this doesn't matter, just like all the other hateful crap they focus on. Ignore it.
25
@17 sorry for the additional post but one more point ...Gorbachev has introduced glasnost and perestroika at that point, which were two truly earth shaking reforms for the USSR.
I really do believe the award cannot be defended. There is simply no precedent for this.
I really do believe the award cannot be defended. There is simply no precedent for this.
26
This is as much Bush's prize as Obama's. Much of what Obama has accomplished is reversal of Bush policies (e.g. use diplomacy, respect other points of view, don't pander to xenophobia, follow the Geneva Conventions, acknowledge climate change, inform policy with science, etc.)
27
@25, I agree it's premature, but I think you're downplaying the importance of the change in tone that Obama's introduced into our relationship with the outside world. His rapprochement with the Islamic world especially is amazing; and his commitment to things like the environment and nuclear disarmament -- and he and Medvedev have agreed to reduce the nuclear stockpiles of the US and Russia -- all play into this. Although -- again -- not at the time when he was nominated. He was nominated TWO WEEKS after taking office, so in that sense you're right. There is absolutely no way this can be defended, except that his election IN AND OF ITSELF was a tremendous move towards peace.
28
@26, but he hasn't followed the Geneva Conventions unless you're saying that rendition isn't a violation. Also, all that other stuff you mention is worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize? The bar is set way too low.
29
Even if the decision was made just recently.
...
which it was.
I'll expect to see a long line of Medicare and Medicaid cards burnt by the socialized medicine using Taliangelists this week in front of the Norwegian and Swedish embassies.
Do they still have those fun breakfasts near Westlake?
...
which it was.
I'll expect to see a long line of Medicare and Medicaid cards burnt by the socialized medicine using Taliangelists this week in front of the Norwegian and Swedish embassies.
Do they still have those fun breakfasts near Westlake?
31
I'm with @18... Even Obama sounded like WTF? in his speech. Hopefully we will all be able to look back in 7 or 8 yars and say perhaps it was awarded prematurely, but yeah, he deserves it.
32
Also also: in his first two weeks in office, Obama ended the ban on stem cell research AND lifted the gag rule on abortion services and non-abstinence-based education. There were other things, too -- repudiations of the Bush doctrine, mostly -- that were all extremely exciting. So it's not like he hasn't done anything -- it's all been small things. That's sort of the way he works: not very many home runs, but lots of singles. He's the Ichiro of politics.
33
I think it’s a combination of two things that are bothering me about the award:
#1. It’s for potential, not accomplishments. For speeches and words, not action.
#2. It’s for something general (“efforts to strengthen international diplomacy”), rather than for involvement in a specific issue or conflict(s).
I think there are past winners who fall into one of those categories or the other (e.g., Kofi Annan was probably #2, Arafat/Rabin/Peres were arguably #1 since they didn’t actually accomplish much in the way of peace, in the end). But, I’m not sure how many other winners fall into both categories.
I’m still thinking through this, though. My initial reaction was definitely along the “WTF” end of the spectrum.
#1. It’s for potential, not accomplishments. For speeches and words, not action.
#2. It’s for something general (“efforts to strengthen international diplomacy”), rather than for involvement in a specific issue or conflict(s).
I think there are past winners who fall into one of those categories or the other (e.g., Kofi Annan was probably #2, Arafat/Rabin/Peres were arguably #1 since they didn’t actually accomplish much in the way of peace, in the end). But, I’m not sure how many other winners fall into both categories.
I’m still thinking through this, though. My initial reaction was definitely along the “WTF” end of the spectrum.
35
The gag rule has tremendous global implications, but, yeah, you're right.
I think his being the sitting President is telling. This isn't an award to Obama, per se, as much as it is to all of America. This is an award not for the specific policies and treaties that *this president* has introduced, but for the fact that we elected him, that we turned our back on the last 8 years and embraced a secular, progressive, intellectual and urban president. Urban meaning cities, meaning culture, meaning environmentalism, as opposed to the suburban policies under George W. Bush.
Is it a weird award? Yes. Does it represent a huge sigh of relief on the part of the committee that suddenly we're willing to talk to people again? Yes. Is it blatantly political? Yes. Is it also (just a little bit) kind of rad that the world likes us again? Yes.
I think his being the sitting President is telling. This isn't an award to Obama, per se, as much as it is to all of America. This is an award not for the specific policies and treaties that *this president* has introduced, but for the fact that we elected him, that we turned our back on the last 8 years and embraced a secular, progressive, intellectual and urban president. Urban meaning cities, meaning culture, meaning environmentalism, as opposed to the suburban policies under George W. Bush.
Is it a weird award? Yes. Does it represent a huge sigh of relief on the part of the committee that suddenly we're willing to talk to people again? Yes. Is it blatantly political? Yes. Is it also (just a little bit) kind of rad that the world likes us again? Yes.
37
If you say "not worthy" it's because you haven't been outside of the U.S. Do you people have any idea what this man's impact has been on people outside America?? He has restored faith in our country among all kinds of people, from all walks of life, on all corners of the globe. And he has singlehandedly set a completely different tone-- a positive, cooperative, peaceful one- among people in the world. Go get yourself a passport, and leave America for a bit. You'll see.
38
hells yes, well deserved because when he killed that fly on camera, he turned that into a teachable moment, and helped us all better understand the plight of the housefly.
39
I'm a prObama liberal (unless he completely fucks up healthcare/continues to ignore any queer issues) but he doesn't deserve the Nobel.
It raises the spector of Tatum O'Neal winning the Oscar for her first film (Paper Moon, which is great) at age 9 and subsequently figuring out that: 1)Peter Bogdanovich, the director and her father/co-star Ryan O'Neal pulled that performance out of her, and 2)she can't act.
It raises the spector of Tatum O'Neal winning the Oscar for her first film (Paper Moon, which is great) at age 9 and subsequently figuring out that: 1)Peter Bogdanovich, the director and her father/co-star Ryan O'Neal pulled that performance out of her, and 2)she can't act.
40
@37. Great so he gets an award for making foreigners feel good? What do the people of Afghanistan think of him? Or the Pakistani's? How happy do they feel when one of their villages is taken out by an poorly aimed cruise missile? Do they get the warm and fuzzies? I cannot believe how far some people have their heads up this guys ass.
Do I really need to go traveling abroad to know that the European liberals love him and in the rest of the world its business as usual?
This is a bad choice and he is wrong to accept the award.
Do I really need to go traveling abroad to know that the European liberals love him and in the rest of the world its business as usual?
This is a bad choice and he is wrong to accept the award.
41
Maybe this will encourage the White House factions that don't want Rahm Emmanuel to become the next Henry Kissinger?
Maybe this will encourage Obama to get us out of Afghanistan? I heard the same arguments on the BBC this week for increasing UK's troops by 1000 (from 8000 to 9000) that McChrystal was using to increase our troops by 40,000. Same arguments used to sink us so deep in Vietnam that only Rambo could save us.
Maybe this will encourage Obama to get us out of Afghanistan? I heard the same arguments on the BBC this week for increasing UK's troops by 1000 (from 8000 to 9000) that McChrystal was using to increase our troops by 40,000. Same arguments used to sink us so deep in Vietnam that only Rambo could save us.
43
I think it would have been more appropriate to give it to him at the end of his term in office....after he delivered on his campaign promises.
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