China's Influence Widens Nobel Peace Prize Boycott 360
c0lo writes "Not only did China decline to attend the upcoming Nobel peace prize ceremony, but urged diplomats in Oslo to stay away from the event warning of 'consequences' if they go. Possibly as a result of this (or on their own decisions), 18 other countries turned down the invitation: Pakistan, Iran, Sudan, Russia, Kazakhstan, Colombia, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Iraq, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Venezuela, the Philippines, Egypt, Ukraine, Cuba and Morocco. Reuters seems to think the 'consequences' are of an economic nature, pointing out that half of the countries with economies that gained global influence during recent times are boycotting the ceremony (with Brazil and India still attending)."
Creating own award (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Creating own award (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't know what to say about the Confucius Peace Prize, though. Confucius was not about either peace or war — he was about extreme social conservatism. I suspect that one of these days, the world is going to stop finding China cute and see it for what it is: a first world colonialist culture with a high developed traditional theory of realpolitik and a chip on its shoulder about not being treated with sufficient respect. China will then be a much more interesting foil to the United States than it is now.
I mean, assuming the United States and China both still exist and haven't destroyed each other or merged into some horrible monster.
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There's a reason Joss Whedon chose a mix of Chinese and English as the evolution of language in Firefly...
Chinese Diplomacy (Score:3)
Clearly the Chinese need to read the US memos and bone up on their diplomatic skills. You are not supposed to openly do these things you hide it and attack anybody who might leak out your real activities.
Re:Chinese Diplomacy (Score:5, Interesting)
Please do not confuse Chinese and China. There are many democratic Chinese people living elsewhere in the world that want nothing to do with the corporo-fascist government of China. You can not even call it a Chinese government as the majority of Chinese living in China have little on no influence over the Government of China.
Personally this is a diplomatic mistake as it points out exactly which countries China has financial influence over, Pakistan, Iran, Sudan, Russia, Kazakhstan, Colombia, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Iraq, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Venezuela, the Philippines, Egypt, Ukraine, Cuba and Morocco. Russia is the interesting one, although it is likely they don't care one way or the other about China's opinion and stayed away for their own reasons. As for Iraq and Colombia, hmm, perhaps they are trying to get out from under the US and looking to build relations with China or more likely Russia. In fact quite a few more likely stayed away to align with Russia rather than China.
In fact it would be interesting to find out why Russia did not attend.
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That Iraq and Afghanistan are on this list, when they are countries that the US has spent a huge amount of effort bringing them into its sphere of influence is a triumph for China.
There are also parallels with US diplomacy in the past: organising the Olympics boycott over Afghanistan, and getting support for the Iraq war with promises for a share of the loot.
Economic influence usually trumps political and military.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
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The AP is also reporting that China is creating a Confucius Peace Prize to be given out the day before the Nobel Prize.
Like the Party's massive focus on Beijing Opera that mimicked the west while using a thin veneer of native culture as a pretense of not copying the west, the Chinese autocracy proves that they still suffer from a serious inferiority complex.
They're in great company.. (Score:5, Informative)
Well, they're in good company:
"The German National Prize for Art and Science [wikipedia.org] (German: Deutscher Nationalpreis für Kunst und Wissenschaft) was an award created by Adolf Hitler in 1937 as a replacement for the Nobel Prize (he had forbidden Germans to accept the latter award in 1936 after an anti-Nazi German writer, Carl von Ossietzky, was awarded the 1935 Nobel Peace Prize)."
And of course the Soviets also banned (a bit on-and-off though) their citizens from recieving the Nobel, and Stalin created the Stalin Prize [wikipedia.org] in his own honor.
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Confucius say this year's prize goes to the brave hero who drove his tank into Tiananmen Square to strike a blow for peace against violent, anarchist protesters!
Re:Creating own award (Score:4, Insightful)
What will the award winners feel?
Nervous dread? Blinding pain as they are led out into bright sunlight for the first time in months? The cold, wet embrace of cement being poured around their ankles? The anguish of knowing your entire family has been imprisoned? Cold metal against the back of their neck?
The possibilities really are limitless.
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I wonder what Confucius would think of this. Ignoring pleas of the people isn't exactly the kind of things he advocated.
Do you know how Confusion society treated women?!? They were only slightly better off than women in the strictest Islamic societies.
Re:Creating own award (Score:5, Funny)
Do you know how Confusion society treated women?
I don't quite.. umm. Hrm. What do you... Huh. I think you're confused.
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Re:Creating own award (Score:5, Interesting)
Ignoring pleas of the people isn't exactly the kind of things he advocated.
Are you kidding me? Harmony of the state and living under a strict hierarchy are the linchpins of Confucious thought. The very idea that the "people" should be able to have a voice, let alone use it, would have been anathema to him and his contemporaries.
Confucius was a statist, pure and simple. Trying to paint him otherwise does a disservice to history and distorts the man's beliefs (however much I might disagree with them, I'm not going to deny he had them or that he was proud of them).
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Re:Creating own award (Score:5, Interesting)
"There was an obligation for the bottom to respect the top, and also for the top to respect the bottom."
In practice - identical to the way class-society worked in Victorian (and earlier) England. The upper classes were meant to have a duty of protection, charity and upliftment toward the lower-classes who did all the work and got none of the benefits of education, wealth or power.
The difference is- the West actually learned that this doesn't work. It was in the context of a country not very long *out* of a full class system (the Victorian "democracy" was starting out at best with almost all the power at that stage in the House of Lords - which was decidedly undemocratic), that Churchill made his famous dictum about democracy being the worst form of government except for all the others.
But mind you - Britain didn't really shed the class system as a cornerstone of their society until the 70's. The great class war was fought to the music of the sex pistols !
It took a good hundred years to get to that far and even today British royalty and upper classes are still privileged (though their say in the day-to-day running of the country has been largely destroyed)...
China however, hasn't even made the slightest start.
The entire world has been the kind of complete statist that China is now. We all did it. All our ancestors tried it, practically every Western nation was once an absolute monarchy. The reality is- we changed it because it doesn't work. China hasn't learned that yet, but if history is anything to go by - they will.
The real question is - will China fall (like most of those monarchies) in bloody revolution ? Or will they have the sense (like a few of them) to recognize the inevitability of the fall of statism- and implement reforms themselves before it comes to that ? The current Chines politburo's approach and statements (especially the rather telling ones on this peace prize) suggest that we shouldn't bet on it...
Re:Creating own award (Score:5, Insightful)
The reality is- we changed it because it doesn't work. China hasn't learned that yet, but if history is anything to go by - they will.
I think you ignore the fact "if history is anything to go by" China has had emperors for thousands of years.
This democracy thing is quite "untested" in comparison.
There were countries with democracies in the past and they too collapsed or were destroyed.
India is a democracy, it's not proven that it will do significantly better than China in the long run.
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India is a democracy
"Democracy" is probably one of the most abused words in political discourse. What does it mean to you? What does it imply?
"Eternal, unflinchingly rigid caste system", perhaps?
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The only real response to to dictatorships is revolution as nothing else will work. There is no other method for change. Democracies in the past have collapsed because they were either killed off(Greece was conquored by the romans), put to much power in person's hands making them an emperor (rome).
The real solution is not to have one person with all the authority. However that creates two problems bureaucracy, and it is slow to react to anything.
In reality for all the grandstanding the President of the U
Re:Creating own award (Score:5, Interesting)
The reality is- we changed it because it doesn't work.
The system worked well enough to make the British Empire the largest empire the world has ever seen, and to give a relatively small nation dominance and influence above it's weight for several centuries.
The system has worked so far in propelling China towards becoming the world's largest economy, and in urbanising and significantly raising the standard of living for hundreds of millions of people who previously lived as subsistence farmers.
This is not a question of being "statist" or "not statist", as the terms are too simple... some people would say that the legal authority of the Federal Reserve to print notes is statist. Using the military to enact social and political goals through both war and plain old "defense spending"? Statist. Building highways and railroads? Statist. Even the Wikipedia article [wikipedia.org] fails to give some actual measurable attributes of what makes a thing "statist". All governments must plan growth by investing in infrastructure and technologies, but at what level does this get labelled "statist"?
The more interesting question is - what exactly is it that has given China this competitive advantage now? Does removing human rights protection (and hence democracy, as people would not vote for this) result in huge economic growth? Or is it just the natural result of having a billion-person common market with wages massively below the rest of the world? In response to the recession both the U.S. and China announced the creation of high-speed rail networks - the result being that China will have created the world's largest network in just over a decade, whilst Americans will have spent that decade arguing in the courts. China has flattened entire towns, to be paved over and replaced with newly built cities - this may be more efficient development, but would we be willing to give the government the right to do this in order to remain competitive in the global economy? If democracy and personal freedom (or greed) really is a less efficient way to manage a large national economy, then what do we choose - less democracy, less individual power, more government/corporate power, or stay the same? Which way do you think the powers that be are trying to drive our society in order to become more competitive in this new global age?
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England got lucky, in two respects. Most of their kings and queens weren't total idiots, and since the 1300's the Lords had enough power that the kings and queens had to at least listen to them. Over time that power expanded into a parliament.
As for the size of their empire that too is pretty much all gone. American's revolted in a bloody fued, India was freed after several years of mostly non violent struggles, Their influence could only hold so long. After India all the other area's slowly became free
And nothing of value was lost (Score:5, Insightful)
When I think of countries contributing to global peace, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Egypt, etc. don't come to mind in the first place.
Re:And nothing of value was lost (Score:4, Interesting)
Mr. Obama was elected and was immediately awarded with the Nobel Peace Prize before he had a chance to make any change. I wouldn't call him a warmonger, but we're still at odds with the Middle East, and he/we appear to have no plan in sight to change that.
Re:And nothing of value was lost (Score:4, Insightful)
I never said that countries that are NOT in the list are peaceful; I merely said that the ones that ARE in the list don't strike me as such.
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Point well made. Not that I would consider China "freer", but they haven't waged war with just about everything like the US.
They haven't had the power. And the US doesn't wage wars all that often even as the global policeman.
Re:And nothing of value was lost (Score:4, Informative)
Doesn't the 1962 war between China and India [wikipedia.org] count as aggression? Also, invasion of Tibet in 1950.
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>> Point well made. Not that I would consider China "freer", but they haven't waged war with just about everything like the US.
> They haven't had the power. And the US doesn't wage wars all that often even as the global policeman.
Sorry.. what ?
The US has had less than one complete year of peace (e.g. not at war with anybody at all) since the end of World War 2. In the same period there has been only 22 days of world peace - and the USA were in fact involved in more wars with more nations than any o
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I'd say look at how many people have been killed in international conflicts per capita (and say, per year) since WW2. I'd be very much surprised if that figure wasn't the lowest in history. For as mean as the big bad USA is, their general policy since WW2 has been to conquer the world through
Re:And nothing of value was lost (Score:4, Insightful)
>They haven't really entered into (open) conflicts that willingly, since their general populace tends to disapprove of them.
They did do all you say- but this line is just plain wrong, they've done it all too often and more-over been involved in just about every war any other western nation has fought as well !
As for this:
"Seriously? You think it's bad that there have only been 22 days of world peace since WW2? How many days of world peace do you think there have been since the dawn of history? I'd be surprised if it was more than 40..."
That is an example of the naturalist fallacy. Defined as stating that "the way something is, is the way it ought to be/ the only way it could be". Just because mankind has never managed to be peaceful does not mean that it's not a worthwhile goal.
Many other things that were once considered too normal to change HAVE changed. Slavery is now illegal in virtually every country on earth -once there was no country that didn't practice. Hardly any religions practice human sacrifice anymore - once the Aztecs sacrificed 26 thousand people in three months.
In short... the next great achievement our species needs is peaceful coexistence, and any suggestion that this is impossible is not only historically ignorant but reliant on a recognized fallacy. Fallacies are not valid arguments.
Now it's not going ot happen in a week, I'm pretty sure it won't happen in 5 years (sorry for the 5YP guys) - most of those other changes took 50 or 100 years to do... but they all happened. This one can happen too. Right now - the most important thing we can do about it is to complain everytime somebody orders people to war.
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And yet, for the last 50 years they have been at war with one sixth of all humans -- their own population.
Re:And nothing of value was lost (Score:5, Insightful)
"I would consider China "freer", but they haven't waged war with just about everything like the US."
No, the Chinese prefer to simply bludgeon their own (Tibet, Tienanmen Square, and constantly threatening war over Taiwan...)
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The funny thing about the Taiwanese is that they are, as a people, mostly willing to return to China. The government is very much not and alot of businesses aren't either. And for us in IT since Taiwanese motherboard makers make up nearly all the retail board makers in the world... Is probably best it not scoot back to China right now...
The people though generally support China, and not Hong Kong style China, but the mainland originally CCP government.
But taiwan is strange in general... Historically when th
Re:And nothing of value was lost (Score:5, Informative)
The funny thing about the Taiwanese is that they are, as a people, mostly willing to return to China.
Opinion polls show more people in Taiwan desire immediate independence than want to be part of China. I suspect far more would rather return to Japan than return to China; Japan treated Taiwan better than China did. Opinion polls the vast majority want to "maintain the status quo" which is of course de facto independence with no formal declaration. It's easy to see why: they have neighbor 50 times larger than them who keeps threatening war if they formally declare independence. Status quo maintains independence without the risk of war.
The government is very much not and alot of businesses aren't either.
The government, which despite Taiwan's democracy is still controlled through bureaucratic inertia by the Chinese and their descendents who showed up in the 1940s, is torn between its loyalty to their Chinese homeland and the preference for being a big fish in a small pond instead of a small fish in a big pond.
Businesses are similarly torn. Businesses, unlike the government bureaucracy, are often run by Taiwanese who are loyal to Taiwan. But there is a lot of money to be made in China. Also, even those businesses run by Chinese nationalists recognize that being part of China means a serious degradation in property rights.
And for us in IT since Taiwanese motherboard makers make up nearly all the retail board makers in the world... Is probably best it not scoot back to China right now...
The people though generally support China, and not Hong Kong style China, but the mainland originally CCP government.
Where are you getting this? I suspect you've landed in a group of Chinese nationalists (which means you probably live in Taipei or in an expat community outside Taiwan). Chinese nationalists and their descendents make up only about 10 to 15% of the population. I include "descendents" because I have noticed that anytime someone from Taiwan has told me they consider Taiwan to be part of China, they have anscestors who came from China in the 1940s or later.
But taiwan is strange in general... Historically when they were the pirate port for Chinese goods over the seas, the Chinese government hunted them down and cut off their heads. Around a hundred years later when Manchuria invaded China and took over, the taiwanese sided with the Chinese government against the Manchurians... Only to have the Manchurians take a huge disliking to them to the point of harsh treatment including a scorched earth tactic on the mainland for around 15 years as they built a navy to sail to Taiwan to put them down. Then China looses Taiwan to Japan before the start of the 20th century as they fail to modernize. And after WW2 Taiwan plays a role again as the former dictatorship of China flees from the CCP and ends up in Taiwan as their new home.
Obviously just some highlights, but it's been an... interesting place...
And let's not forget that the Taiwanese fought for the Japanese in WWII. If you read most of the news reports in English, the Japanese era tends to be overlooked. The statement is always something like "Taiwan and China split amid civil war" but this is misleading. The Chinese Nationalists an the Chinese Communists split, but the Chinese Nationalists were not synonymous with Taiwan. They were newcomers taking over a society that had become educated and industrialized by Japan and had fought against the Chinese Nationalists in WWII.
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>The funny thing about the Taiwanese is that they are, as a people, mostly willing to return to China. The government is very much not and alot of businesses aren't either. And for us in IT since Taiwanese motherboard makers make up nearly all the retail board makers in the world... Is probably best it not scoot back to China right now...
What on earth ? I have many Taiwanese friends. I talk to them regularly - whenever China comes up I hear them talk about how fortunate they feel to live in a democratic
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"I would consider China "freer", but they haven't waged war with just about everything like the US."
No, the Chinese prefer to simply bludgeon their own (Tibet, Tienanmen Square, and constantly threatening war over Taiwan...)
The Chinese do consider the Taiwanese "their own", but the Taiwanese are not too fond of slavery and being someone else's possession. Taiwan and China have a lot of common ancestry and culture, but only about the same as the Americas and Europe. They have a similar history two, with immigration from China to Taiwan starting in the 1600s and largely displacing and assimilating the natives.
After Taiwan was separated from the Empire of China back in 1895, back when the Russians had a czar, back before the
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Not that I would consider China "freer", but they haven't waged war with just about everything like the US.
You mean recently. China's not exactly known for their peaceful past.
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After the 2009 award to Mr. Obama, Nobel lost any meaning it had. Nothing against the man, but he simply hadn't done anything to warrant that kind of acknowledgment, yet. Nobels are about as meaningful as Oscars, now. They can fade away.
Of course not. Most of those states are US allies. (Score:3)
When I think of countries contributing to global peace, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Egypt, etc. don't come to mind in the first place.
Sorry bro. Mubarak, Musharraf, Karzai, all buddy buddy with the United States. If Ahmadinejad would follow orders, he'd be our buddy too.
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Is harmful to world peace? Hardly.
Maybe you meant something else, hard to interpret a one word comment.
I presume they are abstaining due to the fact that china supports their sovereignty over kosovo.
Much ado about nothing. (Score:5, Insightful)
The only one in that list that even raises an eyebrow is Russia.
As for half of the countries that gained global influence during recent times, that's just a veiled reference to the "BRIC" countries: Brazil, Russia, India, and China. Yes, two of the four BRIC countries aren't attending. But it's not like they're a statistical sample.
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Fast becoming? You have the tense wrong.
China: 1.2 Billion people and a GDP of 5.0 Trillion dollars.
Russia: 0.14 Billion people and a 1.2 Trillion dollar GDP.
sources [wikipedia.org]
Fear (Score:2)
On the one hand, I know the West tends to set up the "super bad guy" to use to rally its people against an external threat. On the other, China sure doesn't do a lot to make me comfortable with their new position in the world. And when looking at a lot of those countries, I wonder if we are going to end up with a semi-sphere vs semi-sphere block in the not-too-distant future.
We won't miss them (Score:5, Insightful)
That list is almost a Who's Who of world assholes.
Consequences (Score:5, Insightful)
IMHO this is the consequence of turning the peace prize into a political too. Kissinger? Arafat? Bad enough to have warmongers who happened to make peace. But the Obama prize was the worst. I like Obama myself, but he did _nothing_, good or bad, to deserve that prize. It completely discredited the institution. At this point I wouldn't be too sorry to see it go.
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At this point I wouldn't be too sorry to see it go.
Won't it be better to be restored at its normal signficance (instead of seeing it go)?
I know nothing (yet) about this year's Nobel Peace Prize laureate... is it not a step in the good direction?
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Re:Consequences (Score:5, Informative)
I know nothing (yet) about this year's Nobel Peace Prize laureate...
His name is Liu Xiaobo. He is currently imprisoned in China. He advocates democracy. But that is not why he is in prison.
He also advocates abolition of the hukou [wikipedia.org]. That is why he is in prison.
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I know nothing (yet) about this year's Nobel Peace Prize laureate...
His name is Liu Xiaobo. He is currently imprisoned in China. He advocates democracy. But that is not why he is in prison.
He also advocates abolition of the hukou [wikipedia.org]. That is why he is in prison.
A sincere thank you.
As usually, a good information creates more questions than answers, especially for an outsider or the system. Here would be 2 of them:
Re:Consequences (Score:5, Informative)
Hukou is a way to reduce the movement of populations. China especially fears large migrations from the poor west provinces to the rich east coast and from the rural areas to the cities. It is quite similar to the immigration problems all around the world, except that it is inside the country.
However, Liu Xiaobo is by no means the only one criticizing this hukou system and a lot of people want to reform it, arguing that it creates a very unequal society, where citizens don't have the same rights to education, social security, housing, etc. depending on where their official hukou is.
The reason he is in jail right now is rather that he is the main force behind the "Charter 08". This charter is also what prompted the Nobel Price. I'll let you google it yourself, I can't access it from work.
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That really takes the cake, doesn't it?
The sad thing is - what if Obama actually does something to deserve one in the near future? (Leaving aside the question of just how likely this might be of course.)
They can't give it to him again - he's already used his up! So what they really did was they robbed Obama of the ability to earn the prize the honest way. Forever in the history books it will show he received the prize before doing anything of significance with the power he would wield.
The only possible i
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You're a right-wing troll, but you're right. He's the Great Capitulator.
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And never in my life have I witnessed such unwarranted vitriol, hatred and lying denigration towards an intelligent, well-meaning, decent man. Obama's no saint and he may never be ranked among the great Presidents, but idiots in the US voted in a corporate puppet who couldn't articulate two sentences in a row TWICE. Just about anyone would have looked pretty good after that.
The US, and the world, was ready for change and that's how Obama was perceived - a man of average circumstances, who, in his person, re
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And no, he hasn't done diddly squat in the way of policy to "bridge the divide" as near as I can tell.
Off the top of my head:
1) Massive watering down of the healthcare bill - like removal of the public option.
2) Looks like he's going to continue the Bush tax cuts even for the highest income brackets.
My impression is that he does make policy changes that republicans want, but short of up and quitting his job, the GOP would never give him credit for a single compromise.
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Uh- he didn't introduce those compromises as a "bridging the divide" type thing, he did those because there was absolutely no way a public option or a tax bill not extending the full Bush tax cut would have made it through Congress. Can't really credit him as a unifier for doing that when he only did so because circumstances forced him to --esp. the fact that not everyone in the Democratic caucus is on the far left*, the voters' rejection of the broader health care tack as manifest in the Scott Brown electi
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Changing a bill because not even enough members of your own party will vote to pass it isn't exactly bipartisanship. That's just politicking. Bipartisanship would be developing the bill with input from the other side from the BEGINNING, not giving in just enough to get your bill passed after failing to force it down people's throats. Even "massively watered down" the bill is still a terrifying monstrosity.
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I guess John Kerry got some ridiculously unfair treatment from the Swift Boaters but there did seem to be some legit questions about his war record and discarding his medals.
Yes, about that. I wish Kerry had stood by his anti-Vietnam War protest days. Because he was right. That was a horrible, pointless, war of atrocities which the USA should never have entered.
Kerry should have stood up proudly and said "Vietnam was wrong, Iraq is wrong, Afghanistan is wrong, Dubya is a war criminal, I'm an antiwar hero and proud of it, and if elected I'm pulling the USA out immediately, closing Gitmo and filing treason charges, you'd better believe it."
Would it have played to the 2004-era mas
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Except for that tiny little detail of him being on record supporting going to war in Afghanistan and Iraq.....
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Before he was against them, of course...
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Oh, come now. Bush managed to string together a coherent statement at least three--maybe even four--times in his eight years. Saying he couldn't manage to do it just twice is base libel.
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Do you seriously believe that? Is saying your opponents need to get in the back of the bus reaching across the aisle? Is calling those who disagree with you 'enemies' reaching across the aisle? Those are just the two most recent examples I can think of... What exactly can you hold up as his efforts at bipartisanship?
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Yes, I do believe it. Even when he compromises, which he did far too often, from the very beginning, no Republican would vote yea on one of his bills.
He's watered down every bill to try to placate them, at least somewhat, and it's gotten him nowhere. So, he's a fool for trying.
But his biggest headache, at least when he had control of the House, were the Blue Dog Democrats.
In what has to be the greatest irony of the Tea Party upset, is that the Blue Dogs were bounced to a greater degree than most of the Demo
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Intelligent, sure. Well-meaning or decent, never. He's not only a politician, but one who was able to get elected to the office of United States president. That means that he's a corrupt, self-serving man.
Granted, I'm only 25, but out of all the presidents I can remember, not ONE served the people. Politicians almost always serve themselves, and are not to be trusted until proven trustworthy many times over.
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He was the first President after Bush. Which is apparently good enough.
Re:Consequences (Score:5, Insightful)
But in fact, this years prize seems to actually go in the other direction, of rewarding somebody who truly took personal risks to advance the cause of peaceful political evolution.
Of course China's amazing degree of freak-out about it simply drives the point home.
I'm a bit curious about the reasoning of the various countries that are "not attending" though -- which ones did it to curry political favor with China (at little perceived cost), and which ones did it because they're also busy killing/imprisoning anybody who makes a stand for democratic freedoms...?
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Occasionally I see folks linking to that site and I won't say that I disagree with some of the stuff I see there (as far as names and numbers go), but man, as far as the mindset of the world's Capitalists goes, they really don't get it. Their "enemy" really isn't sitting in a smoke filled room asking themselves, "How can we control the Chinese people?". That is completely divorced from their view of the world. It is just as bad as right-wing Americans who think that every Muslim on Earth spends 16 hours a d
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Re:Consequences (Score:5, Insightful)
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The Peace Prize has ALWAYS been political. Five years after it was first awarded (1906), Teddy Roosevelt got one for essentially bullying Japan into accepting worse terms than they should have after winning the Russo-Japanese War. 1973, Henry Kissinger got a Peace Prize essentially for just quitting a war. There's probably more, but that's all I can point out off the top of my head.
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it is impossible to award a peace prize that isn't political. the process of peace is inherently about human conflict and the resolution of that conflict. that very process is called politics. you cannot separate the concept of politics and the concept of peace, making peace is nothing more than good politics, by definition
in other words, the more contentious and disputed the peace prize, the more valid the peace prize. because interests vested against a peace will be angered at the symbolism in the prize.
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The Peace Prize was given to "Obama" for getting elected.
The USA electing a black opposition President in the time of Bush is a historical accomplishment;
the Peace Prize is yours too if you voted for him. It was like awarding the US the Peace Prize.
I see where you're coming from, but I view the Peace Prize as something really grand. Something that deserves to be capitalized.
So grand, that since it was awarded to Obama, when it was awarded, then that must mean it was intended for all of us who
a good flex (Score:3, Insightful)
This should put the US on notice (Score:2, Interesting)
Reuters seems to think the 'consequences' are of an economic nature, pointing out that half of the countries with economies that gained global influence during recent times are boycotting the ceremony (with Brazil and India still attending).
With China and other foreign countries holding more that half of the US debt, such a development should put the US on notice. It appears that those countries that 'boycotted' the ceremonies have seen the writing on the wall: China matters, and matters big time.
Over in these United States, our politicians keep bickering about how to 'handle' the massive deficit all the while making it worse with every regime/administration.
Sad indeed. Just the other month, China and Russia plotted to dump the US currency. [ibtimes.com]
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> With China and other foreign countries holding more that half of the US debt
The US has a lot of debt, and China owns a lot of that, but it's not half. Wikipedia has a fairly elaborate breakdown: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_debt [wikipedia.org]
Of a total 13.56 trillion dollars of debt, 9 trillion is publicly held (the rest is debt different parts of the government owe other parts of the government). 4 trillion is held by foreigners. 847 billion is held by China - just a little more than Japan. That's six percent. I
Julian Assange for next year's prize? (Score:2)
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China's govt demonizes like US with Assange (read) (Score:3, Insightful)
Looks like the U.S. is taking a page out of this playbook for assange.
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Doing things many people consider good, and displaying physical couragem in no way, at all conflict with attention whoring.
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wow, talk about a rogue's gallery (Score:3)
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I don't think Columbia, and the other three you mentioned are particularly bad countries, I suspect mostly they are too small and dependent on China to risk reprisals. But I agree, most of the rest in the list seem a bit like a brotherhood of dictators. Good to see all the autocrats standing together.
The Nobel committee jumpted the shark... (Score:3, Insightful)
When they voted to give Obama the prize after three weeks in office.
LK
Liu Xiaobo doesn't deserve it- try Ai Weiwei (Score:2)
If they wanted to give it to Chinese dissident, give it to one who actually deserves it.
Human rights are a worthy cause, but if anything, the reforms Xiaobo advocates could result in even more restrictions on human rights- not just through the Communist party clamping down, but rather through the horrendous consequences if people actually listened to him: there was an excellent editorial in the NYTimes today discussing this point.
Xiaobo has had some wonderful ideas, and Charter 08 was pretty cool as far as
so much for change in China... (Score:2)
I'm not saying it couldn't yet happen, and I'm not suggesting that confrontation would have been a better choice, but it is disappointing to see them still resorting to nonsense like this at this point in our engagement.
This is how a Burma, North Korea, or Iran act--not a great power.
There's no "peace" in prizes. (Score:2)
I find the very concept of a peace prize, and a ceremony after presentation disturbing. Those who deserves, doesn't care for the prize. Those who care, aren't peaceful.
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The same thing? Rubbish.
Which 2 wars has he started?
Did he not stop the torture?
Re:Good - I hope the world boycotts it (Score:4, Interesting)
So you're saying I should be getting my notification for a Nobel prize shortly, huh?
I mean, I haven't even continued the two wars that someone else started! I'm way more peaceful than Barrack Obama! I'm quite possibly the most peaceful man on the planet!
BTW, Obama didn't do anything before he was selected, he didn't have time to. He won the award for being anything other than a Republican, preferably someone who says a lot of really nice things but never follows through. It wasn't just for not being Bush, as many people claim, there is no way in hell they would have given it to McCain.
That is pure, unadulterated bullshit right there.
Apparently the Peace Prize has been a joke since day one, as people who know the history of such things have been pointing out. That is really sad because every once in a while they seem to actually get someone half-way decent, and it tarnishes their reputation more than anything.
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America is not the sole superpower. In the shape the US is in right now, they're no match, with support from their allies, for China
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I have to say I doubt it.
China's economy is very much wrapped up in ours, and their military technology still lags far behind ours. The two combined will make them eager to settle anything that comes to blows, and make any conflict extremely painful for them.
Our GDP is three times theirs, which means we have a lot more resources to leverage. War is not something China is in a good position to wage, which is why they don't fight many lately.
Re:Good - I hope the world boycotts it (Score:5, Insightful)
>meaningless "peace" prize founded by an arms manufacturer
That last bit is not really accurate. Nobel invented dynamite. Dynamite literally means "safe explosive" - it's invention was NOT intended as a weapon - but as a safer explosive for mining. Compared to Nitro-glycerine dynamite was a major advance.
The truth is that strictly speaking Nobel's invention has saved millions upon millions of lives - not soldier lives, the lives of ordinary people who work in a mine, people with families just doing their job - by making mining hugely safer than it had been prior.
Now of course in retrospect it was pretty much inevitable that dynamite would become a weapon as well - the ability of controlled detonation for warfare was far to irresistible to the kind of people who think warfare is a good thing, but it's quite a slur on Nobel to pretend that this was his intention. Nobel invented a device to SAVE lives, and indeed every day it still does exactly that. It can also be used to take lives, but that wasn't HIS fault.
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It's a good point. A prize/medal/honor of any sort, is only as good as the people who've won it. When you start giving out prizes not based upon what someone has actually *done* but what you think they will do in the future, the prize becomes meaningless. Obama was president for what, a month(?) when he was awarded the prize, and had done nothing other than get elected.
The Al Gore prize, I could *somewhat* understand - whether you (the reader) agree that Anthropogenic Global Warming (or whatever they call i
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