I certianly agree with the idea Obama shouldn't have won the prize. But to say this is somehow going to damage him or that's it's some miscarriage of whatever is way way over the top.
After all he immediately stopped the two wars his own country was involved in thus saving lives and hundreds of millions of dollars to be used for domestic programs; and he brought peace to the Middle East as well -- all in a few months!
It's just the way it was predicted it would be last year before the elections.
I'm quite taken aback at the award. And while the Nobel jury may not still be out, I think a lot of people are scratching their heads.
But, this truly points out the power of hope and the ability to move hearts and minds with change. Frankly, I think it's a Peace Prize for American voters for doing a complete 180 and saying it's a new day in this country. Apparently, the Nobel jury thought it was a new day for the entire world.
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 Chicagoâs Fenger Academy High. Derrionâs fatal beating by several other teens, captured on video from an onlookerâs cell phone, has inundated the nightly news and the blogosphere âprompting 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, Duncanâs visit to Chicago represented the perpetrator returning to scene of the crime.
Thatâs because Duncanâs âRenaissance 2010â 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 âand 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 consequencesâfrom 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 isnât enough to save Americaâs youth from violence.
Inauspiciously, the Obama administration chose October 7th to issue its press release calling for a âNational conversation on values to address youth violence.â October 7th marked the 8th anniversary of the War in Afghanistanâa war that has enlisted tens of thousands of Americaâs 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 Afghanistanâa war widely becoming known as âObamaâs Vietnamââalready 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 âBeyond Vietnamâ 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 ChicagoâŚ
âŚI 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
They said that it's not because of what he's done, but for his potential. If that's the case, I think my toddler deserves the prize, because she's got potential coming out her ears.
@17, ..."happy to give Obama a chance to deserve it" is pee-hurfect.
Seems like the Peace Prize was to the other Nobel Prizes sort of what the Lifetime Achievement Award is to getting a regular Oscar. This shows up that it doesn't have to be so.
Oh, and let's not forget that most memorable of Nobel Peace Prize winners: Yasser ("there are no Israeli civilians" and "the sea will run red with the blood of Jews") Arafat.
But, really, folks. Inaugurated on January 20, and nominated for the Prize by February 21? Puh-leeze.
Yes, I think on some level it was a prize for the USA moreso than Obama. People forget how absurd the idea seemed (to Europe)18 months ago that big, arrogant, racist, Muslim-hating America would ever repudiate Bush. We one-upped them this one time and they are acknowledging that. I think Obama was right that this is more a call to action "we can work with America again" than a reward
Good Morning Dan,
Well, for me needless to say, I am in shock.
This is NOT deserved. The Nobel Committee is completely incompetent. This is unfair to Obama. Heâs only been in office 9 months! This is NOT Obamaâs doing. I canât believe this happened. Utter foolishness on the part of the committee. There is unequivocally a âCultâ of Obama. The award is entirely political. It is only meant as a rebuke of Bush.
Consider this âShould ________.â Fill in the blanks yourselves. I canât believe the idiocy of this decision. The sheer audacity (yes âaudacityâ) is mindboggling. For Mr. Obama, it is politically fraught with peril.
The committee has now cut his Presidency no slack whatsoever.
I'm going to Disneyland!!!!!
Why shouldn't have Obama gotten a peace prize?
After all he immediately stopped the two wars his own country was involved in thus saving lives and hundreds of millions of dollars to be used for domestic programs; and he brought peace to the Middle East as well -- all in a few months!
It's just the way it was predicted it would be last year before the elections.
It does seem a litle premature, though, doesn't it?
But, this truly points out the power of hope and the ability to move hearts and minds with change. Frankly, I think it's a Peace Prize for American voters for doing a complete 180 and saying it's a new day in this country. Apparently, the Nobel jury thought it was a new day for the entire world.
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 Chicagoâs Fenger Academy High. Derrionâs fatal beating by several other teens, captured on video from an onlookerâs cell phone, has inundated the nightly news and the blogosphere âprompting 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, Duncanâs visit to Chicago represented the perpetrator returning to scene of the crime.
Thatâs because Duncanâs âRenaissance 2010â 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 âand 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 consequencesâfrom 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 isnât enough to save Americaâs youth from violence.
Inauspiciously, the Obama administration chose October 7th to issue its press release calling for a âNational conversation on values to address youth violence.â October 7th marked the 8th anniversary of the War in Afghanistanâa war that has enlisted tens of thousands of Americaâs 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 Afghanistanâa war widely becoming known as âObamaâs Vietnamââalready 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 âBeyond Vietnamâ 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 ChicagoâŚ
âŚI 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
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOrmOvHys…
I strongly suspect that this was a payoff in exchange for awarding the Olympics to Rio.
Freedom lovers are becoming fewer and fewer, and the egos and superficial are dominating the world landscape.
This is not the country, or world I fought to save in Vietnam. I am sad today.
that would sure piss off Michelle, for sure...
pretty surpising, a Nobel potential-peace prize, a huge fuck-you to Bush. but I'm happy to give obama a chance to deserve it.
Seems like the Peace Prize was to the other Nobel Prizes sort of what the Lifetime Achievement Award is to getting a regular Oscar. This shows up that it doesn't have to be so.
But, really, folks. Inaugurated on January 20, and nominated for the Prize by February 21? Puh-leeze.
Well, for me needless to say, I am in shock.
This is NOT deserved. The Nobel Committee is completely incompetent. This is unfair to Obama. Heâs only been in office 9 months! This is NOT Obamaâs doing. I canât believe this happened. Utter foolishness on the part of the committee. There is unequivocally a âCultâ of Obama. The award is entirely political. It is only meant as a rebuke of Bush.
Consider this âShould ________.â Fill in the blanks yourselves. I canât believe the idiocy of this decision. The sheer audacity (yes âaudacityâ) is mindboggling. For Mr. Obama, it is politically fraught with peril.
The committee has now cut his Presidency no slack whatsoever.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/arti…
"_ Myth: The prize is awarded to recognize efforts for peace, human rights and democracy only after they have proven successful.
More often, the prize is awarded to encourage those who receive it to see the effort through, sometimes at critical moments."