nonsense. any effort at conflict resolution by the UN depends upon the tenor and balance of international relations as set by US foreign policy. you sound like you have yet to accept the UK’s entirely secondary status as a diplomatic power . . . congeniality means far more than you give it credit for, but since your declaration that it “doesn’t mean a thing” was entirely unsupported, i won’t go any further on that road
so, if you want to be hopelessly and meaninglessly vague about it, then yes, anyone who worked for the US govt over the last nine or so years is part of the mechanism which gave us the war on terror - BFD - Obama’s rhetoric still signals a substantial shift in approaches to global peace efforts by the US, who is inevitably the central player in any effort at conflict resolution anywhere in the world.
and yes it is easy to talk about nuclear disarmament - but one of the main points of my post was that this award is an attempt to encourage Obama to walk the walk and not simply talk the talk. perhaps that’s overly optimistic of the nobel peace prize committee (or whoever makes such decisions) but optimism is part and parcel of any effort at “increasing the peace”, and increasing the peace is precisely what the Nobel committee is concerned with in granting the award - like you and i both said: it’s all about that warm fuzzy feeling, optimism is central to that.
so, yeah, whatever you say - be a pessimist, i’m merely pointing out why the reward was given and possibly deserved, i’m not in the business of justifying anyone else’s choice - there are much better informed people than you or i behind these decisions (sorry if that fact pisses you off)
lastly, i fail to see how the UFO flake’s extradition (or lack thereof) is at all relavant to the discussion . . .
I’d be happy if the UK and the US weren’t so intertwined, I hate my country feeling it has to piggyback every time the US invades a sovereign nation.
It is precisely this arrogance, that the US is somehow a moral arbiter or force for peace in the world, that means Obama’s pretty speeches count for fuck all. Kennedy gave nice speeches. He also gave us the Bay of Pigs, Operation Mongoose and covert action against Vietnam.
No, it’s a reward for being the first (half) black US president.
The fact that you don’t even know who makes the decision to award such a prize shows you can have no valid opinion on why they awarded it. By ‘valid opinion’ I mean something other than wishful thinking and guesswork.
This is ad hominem, so fuck off.
The very fact you call him a ‘UFO flake’ shows your disdain for him and his rights. The extradition treaty by which this guy is going to be transported to the US and potentially held there without trial for as long as the US authorities deem necessary is a Bush administration treaty. It has been widely protested in this country. If Obama really wanted to act on the rhetoric and mark a distinction between him and the previous administration it is this sort of thing that really counts. Instead, he’s just as happy as Bush for this poor bloke who has basically done nothing harmful to anyone to be treated like an inanimate sack of organs.