{"id":966,"date":"2009-10-09T08:45:25","date_gmt":"2009-10-09T12:45:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/fensterm\/?p=966"},"modified":"2009-10-09T11:02:45","modified_gmt":"2009-10-09T15:02:45","slug":"the-politics-of-the-peace-prize","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/fensterm\/2009\/10\/09\/the-politics-of-the-peace-prize\/","title":{"rendered":"The politics of the “Peace Prize”."},"content":{"rendered":"
\"440px-Official_portrait_of_Barack_Obama\"<\/a>

Barack Obama {Photo: Wikimedia Foundation}<\/p><\/div>\n

The Norwegian Nobel\u00a0 Committee<\/a><\/a>1<\/sup> has announced the 2009 prize winner US President Barack Obama.<\/a><\/p>\n

“We would like to enhance, to support what he is trying to do.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"Naomi<\/a>

Naomi Klein {Photo: Wikimedia Foundation}<\/p><\/div>Noami Klein<\/a>2<\/sup> was interviewed on Democracy Now!<\/a> this morning and ran a fairly good list of why this award is a bad idea. Mostly, she points out that despite what he has said<\/strong>, Obama has not done<\/strong> much for peace.\u00a0 The\u00a0 web rebroadcast is on a loop every hour on :09.\u00a0 A large raster bittorrent download should be available by 11:00 AM.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

British-Pakistani historian, journalist and activist Tariq Ali<\/a> was also interviewed on DN! [They tried to reach journalist Jeremy Scahill3<\/sup>, but had technical difficulties.] In his talk at Harvard, Tariq expressed his doubt that US military activity in Pakistan is in the US long term interest<\/a>. In today’s interview he points out, among other things, that the war in Iraq-Afghanistan goes on apace with an increase in troops in Afghanistan. Tariq pointed out some of the questionable awards in the past.<\/p>\n

1<\/sup>Note that the ‘Nobel Prizes’ are awarded in memory of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel and presented by the King of Sweden. My favorite anomaly is the inclusion of the Bank of Sweden Prize<\/a>, not funded from the Nobel estate, with the Nobel prizes. This does not make Amartya Sen<\/a>A<\/sup> the spawn of satan, but it tarnishes his halo a bit. Robert Merton<\/a> and Myron Sholes<\/a> who won “for a new method to determine the value of derivatives” [mortgage backed securities anyone?] , on the other hand, clearly are the spawn of satan. We don’t need to make a fuss about the Late Larry Summers’B<\/sup> hero Milton Friedman, but one has to wonder how someone who gets people fired for wanting to regulate underbacked highly liquid securities can be regarded as a monetarist.<\/p>\n

2<\/sup>Naomi, offered her critique of Milton Friedman and his disciple Donald Rumsfeld, in her book, The Shock Doctrine<\/a>. Basically, Friedman who favored ‘non-interventionist government’ nonetheless thought that the only way to get there is by engineering ‘shock and awe’.<\/p>\n

3<\/sup>Jeremy is the chronicler of “Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

A<\/sup>Sen has a quality that the LateB<\/sup> Larry Summers will never be accused of. He is disarmingly charming.<\/p>\n

B<\/sup>For those who have, for whatever reason, not<\/strong> been following tgbtd<\/strong>, is there life after Harvard?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Norwegian Nobel\u00a0 Committee1 has announced the 2009 prize winner US President Barack Obama. “We would like to enhance, to support what he is trying to do.” Noami Klein2 was interviewed on Democracy Now! this morning and ran a fairly good list of why this award is a bad idea. Mostly, she points out that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":168,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1058],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-966","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-dismal-excuse-for-a-science"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/fensterm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/fensterm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/fensterm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/fensterm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/168"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/fensterm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=966"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/fensterm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/966\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":968,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/fensterm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/966\/revisions\/968"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/fensterm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/fensterm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/fensterm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}