Geir Lundestad, who served as Director of the Nobel
Institute for 25 years, wrote in a newly released memoir that although
the five-strong Norwegian Nobel Committee had all agreed to give Obama
the award, his record in office since receiving the prize had shown it
to be a mistake.
According to Lundestad, the argument which swayed the committee was that the prize would help him achieve his goals.
“In hindsight, we could say that the argument of giving Obama a
helping hand was only partially correct,” he wrote, according to VG
newspaper.
…Lundestad was not the only person to have misgivings about the Obama
award, the American president himself said he was “surprised”.
“Even many of Obama’s supporters thought that the prize was a
mistake. In that way, the committee did not achieve what it had hoped,”
Lundestad writes.
He claims that Obama’s advisors even discreetly asked if it would be possible for the US President to avoid the award.
“His cabinet had already asked whether anyone had previously refused
to travel to Oslo to receive the prize,” Lundestad said. “In broad
strokes, the answer was no.”
And the Nobel Committee may be about to repeat the same mistake.
Some are lobbying for Secretary of State John Kerry and his Iranian
counterpart Foreign Minister Javad Zarif to receive the next prize.
Maybe they ought to wait to see how the sellout to a nuclear-armed Iran works out first? It seems silly to give prizes for reaching an agreement before seeing whether the agreement is actually meaningful (see: Kissinger - Le Duc Tho, Rabin - Peres- Arafat, etc.).
Taken together, the catalog of capitulations is breathtaking: spot
inspections, disclosure of previous nuclear activity, gradual sanctions
relief, retention of nonnuclear sanctions.
What’s left? A
surrender document of the kind offered by defeated nations suing for
peace. Consider: The strongest military and economic power on earth,
backed by the five other major powers, armed with what had been a
crushing sanctions regime, is about to sign the worst international
agreement in U.S. diplomatic history.
How did it come to this? With every concession, Obama and Kerry made clear they were desperate for a deal.
And they will get it. Obama will get his “legacy.” Kerry will get his Nobel. And Iran will get the bomb.
AP's Matt Lee hits Jen Psaki on Kerry's apartheid comments
At Monday's State Department press briefing, the AP's Matt Lee hit State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki on Secretary of State Kerry's apartheid comments. Psaki owned them and warned that 'many' have used similar terms to describe Israel's future.
Let's go to the videotape.
Someone needs to get Matt Lee the figures on the true population of Israel (Jews v. Arabs) and how there really is no demographic threat to the future of Israeli democracy.
In the meantime, the rest of the Obama administration has gone silent on Kerry's comments.
Speaking with The Jerusalem Post, multiple officials in the
Obama administration declined to either defend or condemn the most
recent remark. Members of his team believe that kernels of truth exist
in his controversial statements— that, should a two-state solution fail
to come to pass, efforts to undermine Israel's legitimacy may be
emboldened, and Israel's Jewish population might come to rule a majority
of Arabs and Palestinians in its borders.
His communications
staff has made a concerted effort to discipline the secretary's message:
the State Department maintains that, without peace, Israel will
struggle to remain both Jewish and democratic.
But Kerry has, on several occasions, diverged from that message, to the frustration of his aides.
And American Jewish groups have condemned Kerry's statement across the board.
All
major American Jewish or pro-Israel organizations weighed in on the
reported comments, including the American Israel Public Affairs
Committee, with a rare statement released on Monday.
"Any
suggestion that Israel is, or is at risk of becoming, an apartheid state
is offensive and inappropriate," the AIPAC statement read. "Israel is
the lone stable democracy in the Middle East, and protects the rights of
minorities regardless of ethnicity of religion."
Israel Radio had an interview this evening with a government official who said that Kerry isn't anti-Israel but has gone overboard with love for Israel. Kerry wants his Nobel peace prize and he wants an 'achievement' as Secretary of State. The Obama administration believes that Israel is low-hanging fruit - we're the only foreign country who pays attention to them and who cares at all about what they have to say. But they hate us and treat us with contempt. This administration cannot come to an end soon enough.
Defense Minister Yaalon calls Kerry 'messianic and obsessive'
Defense Minister Moshe "Boogie" Yaalon has a pretty blunt assessment of US Secretary of State John Kerry. According to Yaalon, Kerry is 'messianic and obsessive' (Hat Tip for photo here).
“Abu Mazen lives and dies by our sword,” Ya’alon is quoted as saying by Yedioth.
“Once we leave Judea and Samaria, he is finished. In effect, during
these past months, there haven’t been negotiations with the
Palestinians, but with the Americans.”
“The only thing that can ‘save’ us is for John Kerry to win his Nobel
Prize and leave us alone,” the defense minister reportedly said.
Source in Defense Ministry told Israel Radio: "All along [Ya'alon] has
expressed deep concerns that the diplomatic process could lead to
missiles on Tel Aviv and Ben-Gurion Airport. He doesn't intend to
compromise on Israeli security even is he is called a hard nut to crack.
The remarks elicited angry reactions from both within the government and the opposition.
Tzipi Livni - seeing Yaalon as a threat to her chance for a Nobel peace prize - is seething.
Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, who leads Israel's negotiating team, wrote
on Facebook: "You can oppose negotiations professionally and
responsibly without tongue-lashing and destroying relations with
Israel's top ally."
There are a lot more comments at that link, but perhaps this is the most interesting one:
Ya’alon has made similar statements in the past to other publications
which were kept off the record and reported without his name attached to
the quotes.
You mean they treated Ya'alon like an etrog. BWAHAHAHAHAHA!
Contrary to what US Secretary of State John Kerry is trying to impress upon us, getting Israel and the 'Palestinians' to the table is the easiest part.
The reason the launch is so tough, Kerry said, “is because both
sides want to understand what the parameters are, how you will negotiate and
what you negotiate about. And once you get to that, then you can begin to dig in
and get to the hard work.”
The history of the last 20 years of
negotiations, however, belies that rather rosy assumption. Barak and Arafat were
able to launch talks, that was the easy part. What they could not do was
conclude them. The same with Olmert and Abbas. They launched the talks and had
dozens of fruitful and convivial discussions. They couldn’t conclude the
agreement.
And they could not seal the deal because the over-used mantra
that “everyone knows what an agreement will look like, and all you need to do is
get the sides into a room until smoke comes out of the chimney” is
empty.
Not everyone knows what an agreement will look like. If everyone
knew what an agreement would look like, it would have been reached long
ago.
Not all Palestinians know, or accept, that Har Homa – let alone Gush
Etzion, Ma’aleh Adumim or Ariel – will stay in Israeli hands. Not all Israelis
know tens of thousands of Jews living beyond the Green Line will have to be
uprooted.
Not every Palestinian knows that they are going to have to give
up dreaming of “returning” to Haifa, Jaffa or Safed. Not every Israeli knows
that Jerusalem will not be Israel’s undivided capital for eternity.
Those
things are not known, the parameters are not agreed upon by all.
The gaps
on these issues are huge, and it is reckless to promote the expectation that if
you just sit down and talk again, everything will work out.
The
difficulty in launching the talks is only a skeleton of the difficulties that
will emerge once the talks are launched. If that was true in 2000 when there was
only one Palestinian entity, not one in the West Bank and another in Gaza as
today; and if that was true in 2008 when the region was not imploding as it is
now, then it is even more the case today when those two elements no longer
exist.
I'll go a step further: It's downright dangerous to raise expectations by claiming that reaching an agreement is easy. It's not easy. Not only does everyone not know what an agreement will look like - if one is possible at all - NO ONE knows what an agreement will look like. That's why all these do-gooders should stop their pursuit of both a legacy and a Nobel peace prize, leave well enough alone and stop raising expectations that are impossible to fulfill. The first rule is to do no harm.
Could Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan be a candidate for a Nobel peace prize? (Hat Tip: MFS - The Other News) (Given that they gave one to President Hussein Obama for his 'future potential' how much worse could this be)?
Well, there's a small catch....
Turkish Family and Social Policies Minister Fatma Şahin held talks with
Secretary General of the Council of Europe Thorbjørn Jagland, who is on a
visit to Turkey. After the meeting she said that “the process of EU
integration strengthens Turkey’s positions and weight”, Turkish NTV reported.
Later on the minister wrote on her twitter page about her impressions
from the meeting with Mr Jagland, as follows: “Apart from Secretary
General of the Council of Europe Thorbjørn Jagland, who told me literary
the following: “Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is a Noble
Prize candidate if he manages to solve the Kurdish issue”, is also
Chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee”.
At the meeting Minister Şahin confessed that the violence over women in
Turkey was a problem of the society and there was a need to take the
necessary steps in this field.
I'd be amazed if Erdogan were to manage to 'solve the Kurdish issue' (unless genocide is a 'solution'), let alone his Islamist government do anything to ameliorate violence against women. 'Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me'?
The European Union won the Nobel Peace Prize for its long-term role
in uniting the continent, the Norwegian Nobel Committee said on Friday,
an award seen as a morale boost for the bloc as it struggles to resolve
its debt crisis.
The committee praised the 27-nation EU for
rebuilding after World War Two and for its role in spreading stability
to former communist countries after the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall.
...
"This is a message to Europe to do everything they can to secure what
they've achieved and move forward," [Committee chairman Thorbjoern] Jagland said, saying it was a
reminder of what would be lost "if the union is allowed to collapse."
The
president of the European Parliament welcomed the awarding of the 2012
Nobel Peace Prize to the European Union on Friday, saying it recognized
post-war reconciliation in Europe and would serve as an inspiration.
"(We
are) deeply touched and honored that the EU has won the Nobel Peace
Prize," Martin Schulz said in a statement distributed on Twitter.
"Reconciliation
is what the EU is about. It can serve as an inspiration. The EU is a
unique project that replaced war with peace, hate with solidarity."
I wonder what the odds are in Las Vegas on the EU existing a year from now. This ought to raise the odds on them not existing.
If Iran wiped out Israel, would that be enough for Carter to justify war?
Former President Jimmy Carter has told a conference of Nobel Peace Prize laureates in Chicago (I know, that's rich in and of itself) that there is not yet any justification for a war with Iran.
War is only just when it is a "last resort" after "every other possible peaceful resolution" is exhausted, when all efforts are made to protect civilians, when the purpose of the conflict is to make the situation better, not worse, when society in general agrees it is just and when the level of violence is "proportional to the injury received," he said.
"That would obviously exclude our recent policy of preemptive war," Carter said in a keynote address.
The United States has been "almost constantly at war" in the past 60 years – in Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, El Salvador, Libya, Panama, Haiti, Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan and many others.
"And now we are contemplating going to war again perhaps in Iran," said the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize winner.
Most of those wars fail to meet the criteria for a just war and "some of them were completely unnecessary."
In Carter's world, there is no justification for war now against Iran, because they don't have a nuclear weapon yet. There will be no justification for war against Iran once they develop a nuclear weapon, because they will not have used it yet. And if God forbid they develop a nuclear weapon and use it to wipe out Israel and a few other countries, there will be no justification for a war because a war won't bring those countries back anyway.
Yes, this is for real, although it's unfortunately unlikely that the prize will be revoked. AP reports that Nobel peace prize officials are facing an inquiry into why President Obama was given the Nobel peace prize a few months after taking office (Hat Tip: Verum Serum).
Nobel Peace Prize officials were facing a formal inquiry over accusations they have drifted away from the prize's original selection criteria by choosing such winners as President Barack Obama, as the nomination deadline for the 2012 awards closed Wednesday.
The investigation comes after persistent complaints by a Norwegian peace researcher that the original purpose of the prize was to diminish the role of military power in international relations.
If the Stockholm County Administrative Board, which supervises foundations in Sweden's capital, finds that prize founder Alfred Nobel's will is not being honored, it has the authority to suspend award decisions going back three years — though that would be unlikely and unprecedented, said Mikael Wiman, a legal expert working for the county.
Obama won in 2009, Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo won in 2010, and last year the award was split between Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Liberian activist Leymah Gbowee and Tawakkul Karman of Yemen.
They don't really confront the issue of what Obama has actually done (or had actually done as of the closing of nominations for the prize on February 1, 2009) to bring about peace, i.e. nothing. Instead, they focus on the belief (and I'm not sure it's correct) that Obama would use military force if necessary.
Fredrik Heffermehl, a prominent researcher and critic of the selection process, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that "Nobel called it a prize for the champions of peace."
"And it's indisputable that he had in mind the peace movement, i.e. the active development of international law and institutions, a new global order where nations safely can drop national armaments," he said
Especially after World War II, the prize committee, which is appointed by the Norwegian Parliament, has widened the scope of the prize to include environmental, humanitarian and other efforts, he said.
For example, in 2007 the prize went to climate activist Al Gore and the U.N.'s panel on climate change, and in 2009 the committee cited Obama for "extraordinary efforts" to boost international diplomacy.
"Do you see Obama as a promoter of abolishing the military as a tool of international affairs?" Heffermehl asked rhetorically.
I don't think that's the point. I think the point is that the prize was intended for people who have made a contribution to world peace, and not for people who might make one in the future. That's what was wrong with giving the award to Obama in the first place. Let's face it - it was an attempt by the Europeans to lash out at George W. Bush one more time. And it cheapened the prize.
Italian legislator Fiamma Nirenstein writes that there is a hero and a villain in the current drama over Iran's nuclear weapons, and that the villain is the guy who is holding the Nobel Peace Prize. It's time to change that.
The hero is a Japanese, the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Yukiya Amano: notwithstanding the pressures from China and Russia – and notwithstanding who knows what steps Iran may take– he was as brave as a lion in presenting to the world what instead had been concealed, downplayed and minimized by his predecessor, Mohammed El Baradei, in the same role, from 1997 to 2009.
El Baradei had a nice group of technicians to study the situation in Iran. And they reported to him who decided what to use and what to select. And he did select a lot, even if everybody already knew the truth. Actually, the intelligence agencies from half of the world (including the Arab ones) gave him information that proved reliable when compared to the facts on the ground. It was well known – as Amano’s report plainly reveals – that up to 2003, the uranium enrichment preparatory work took place in various sites and that they received assistance from very important providers, such as Russia and China. And that, after the Ayatollahs’ regime had tried to cover it up by masking it as a civilian effort, this activity was increasingly pushed underground. But this was no secret to anybody, it was just a pretence to ignore its objectives, not to understand why these plants were being built so secretly and with the help of so many foreign technicians.
This work appears to be more clearly designed for war purposes. Amano says it, El Baradei did not reveal it even if he had all the elements to do so. And yet, surprise, surprise, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005 «for his effort in preventing the use of nuclear energy for war purposes». The well-meaning ideological approach of the Nobel Organizations made many mistakes, but now they have committed a blunder. El Baradei has obliged the world to face today a nightmare that could have been avoided if the IAEA had timely certified that a crazy, Islamist, extremist, anti-Western, anti-Semitic Iran was preparing an atomic bomb that can now be built in a very short time (some say it takes one year to build up a whole arsenal, some say two.... but two bombs, a trifle, can already be built today for most experts). And that he was experimenting warheads that are able to hit not only Jerusalem, but also the European capitals. And so, in addition to the categorical imperative to act contained in Amano’s report, (that at least the USA and Europe should act blocking the Iranian bank through sanctions, by ignoring Russia and China) we would like to make a sensible humble proposal to the Nobel Prize Organizers: if you want to save your face before future generations, at least take his Nobel Prize back.
Unfortunately, if they didn't take Arafat's prize back in 2000, they're not going to take ElBaradei's prize back either.
What do you all think of giving Stuxnet - and its unnamed inventors - the Nobel Peace Prize?
Stuxnet, perhaps the most sophisticated, complex worm virus ever designed, invaded the computer control systems of Iran’s atomic facilities. Washington’s Institute for Science and International Security concluded that Stuxnet infected as many as 30,000 institutional computers involved in the project and outright broke 1,000 Iranian IR-1 centrifuges at the Natanz uranium-enrichment facility.
World security experts opined that Stuxnet was “amazing” and “groundbreaking,” even a “prime example of clandestine digital warfare.” If the malwarfare were not enough, an assault on Iran’s atomic scientists was also an integral part of the campaign. As recently as Nov. 29, quantum physicist Majid Shahriari was eliminated in Tehran – causing the next 5,000 people engaged in weaponizing Iran to perhaps think twice about their career paths.
A key lesson has clearly been learned: Attack effectively and keep quiet. The temporary derailment of Iran’s atomic program is the greatest news story not reported on in 2010. The West can sleep just a little better tonight as a result, comforted by the amazing results secured by a smart and civic-minded Lone Ranger who might be considered for the next Nobel Peace Prize. But nobody for sure knows who that quiet masked man was. Or what he did. Or why he did it.
Stuxnet would certainly be a more worthy recipient than the 2009 recipient. It's certainly done more to bring peace to the world than he has done (before or since).
A brief excerpt from Jennifer Rubin's excellent post on why 'International Human Rights Day,' which took place on Friday, ought to be an occasion for mourning.
One of the more egregious examples in the report demonstrates the link between European governments and Palestinian groups, which under the banner of "human rights" launch daily assaults on Israeli sovereignty. A press release from NGO Monitor announcing the new monograph described how the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) filed arrest warrants "in multiple countries against Israeli officials, primarily for 'war crimes' over the 2002 targeted killing of Hamas terrorist Salah Shehade'." The money for this, roughly $400,000, was provided in 2005 by the Dutch affiliate of Oxfam, which diverted European Union grant money for the "Abolition of the Death Penalty Project," a project supposedly intended to abolish the death penalty "in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, applied by the Palestinian National Authority via judicial death sentences and via extrajudicial executions." The money was actually used by PCHR to strategize with attorneys on its "war crimes" lawsuits.
This past week, Navi Pillay, the UN 'High Commissioner' for Human Rights, declined to attendthe Nobel Peace Prize ceremony, which took place on Friday, just like the Chinese wanted (the winner of the prize is imprisoned in China). If the recipient had been from Hamas, you can bet she would have attended.
Thursday will make seven years since the World's most unrepentant terrorist went to hell. A museum honoring the memory of the terrorist, Yasser Arafat, will be opening in the Mukhata complex in Ramallah within the next year. The cost of building the museum is now estimated at $3.4 million - nearly double the original estimate. The museum will have thousands of artifacts from Arafat's life.
Thousands of artifacts from former PLO terrorist leader Yasser Arafat's life are being gathered for a new $3.4 million museum in Ramallah. The facility, set to open within the year, is being built on to the Muqata – the compound where the PLO chairman spent the last two years of his life.
That section of the building, which now serves as the headquarters for his successor, PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, has been sealed since Arafat's death on November 11, 2004.
...
The museum is being built by the Yasser Arafat Foundation, inaugurated in Cairo in February 2008 by a group that included PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa and Arafat's nephew, Nasser al-Qidwa, who became chairman of the board.
Some $5 million was already in the foundation's coffers by the time the organization was officially launched. However, the source of the funding is not clear, and no information is publicly available. [What? So little? And he didn't even leave them the Swiss bank account number? CiJ]
Among the thousands of items in the collection being catalogued is one of the famous black and white cotton keffiyehs worn by Arafat, that eventually became the worldwide symbol of Palestinian terrorism, and later, the Palestinian Authority.
“Arafat wasn't better than those in charge today because he brought us all those thieves of the PLO,” a Ramallah shopkeeper, Mohammed Sobeh, told the Associated Press. “But despite all that, I love Arafat because he died while he was resisting” Israel and the United States.
Six years after his death, the keepers of the Former Palestinian Authority Chairman's memory are gathering thousands of objects - photographs, pistols, the trademark sunglasses and military-style suits he favored - for display in a museum under construction at his former West Bank headquarters, where Arafat spent the last three years of his life encircled by Israeli forces.
Let's not get all nostalgic for this terrorist scum.
A year and a half ago, when this story first came out, I wrote a list of the top ten things I'd like to see in an Arafat Museum. It's time to break that list out again.
Well, I can think of a few things I'd like to put in that museum. Here's my top 10 list.
1. Video of Arafat's physician saying Arafat died of AIDS.
2. Video of PFLP leader Ahmad Jabril admitting Arafat died of AIDS.
3. "Red Horizons" by Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa, the former head of Romanian intelligence under Nicolai Ceausescu.
8. The list of terrorists to whom Arafat was paying salaries during the intifada (taken from computer hard drives when Israel raided the Mukhata in 2002).
9. Arafat's Swiss bank account numbers.
10. Suha Arafat's monthly budget in Paris (one month of which would more than pay for this museum).
For the record, the reason I'm emphasizing things having to do with Arafat's homosexuality is because it's the thing that will most destroy his image among the 'Palestinian people.'
I'm sure Jimmy Carter will be there to cut the ribbon at the opening. But what happens if they find Muslim graves inside when they're doing the construction? Hmmm.
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
