The Obama Peace Prize

Is it premature nobelification?

That is one of the arguments today as the world wakes up to the fact that Barack Obama has won the Nobel Peace Prize after less than a year in office. That strange whining sound you hear is the right wing television and radio pundits tossing their radios and televisions out their windows in the Excited States this morning while screaming primally into their puffed up mirrors. God it is good to be on this side of the pond today.

The Nobel officials are saying that this prize isn't so much for what Obama has already managed to accomplish on the nuclear front as it is a carrot for him to continue to work for peace for people and the planet in the face of the juvenile and self-interested opposition he faces to health care and other reforms in America and around the globe. Well, it's their prize and they can give it to anyone they wish.

But let's then keep him honest on this account.

To keep the Nobel Peace Prize sacred, Obama must in the next days:

- Pull out of Afghanistan and Iraq. It ain't working. You have no moral authority. You are creating more hate against America, more terrorists around the globe willing to sacrifice. Get out now.

- Put Israel on notice that it is no longer immune to United Nations declarations. The billions the U.S. gives in hard and soft support allows Israel to punish mercilessly the Palestinians and provokes its neighbours throughout the Middle East.

- Cease the pseudo war against Iran. As John Pilger argues in the New Statesman, the U.S. has bowed again to its CIA operatives and put the country on the road to another illegal war, where millions of ordinary people in Iran, and hundreds of lower income "coalitions soldiers" pay the cost for the bloody folly.

There is a lot to love in Obama but he is still too reliant on Bush doctrine when it comes to dealings in the Middle East, Latin America and Africa. Now is the time for Obama to really wage peace. Use the Nobel currency to make real change in America and around the world, Mr. Obama, Mr. Nobel Laureate.

Blackheath Canuck

ps A Week in December by Sebastian Faulks had bad press before it came out. Since then I have not seen a real review. I may have just missed them. But, for what it is worth, I think it was a very interesting read. It offered a good slice of a London week in 2007, somewhat reminiscient of Saturday by Ian McEwen, though I wouldn't push the comparison too far. It is not as literary. But it is still a decent read. Unless you're a banker.