Saturday 10 October 2009

So who to you think should have been awarded the nobel peace prize?

Twenty years ago thousands of people in East Germany took the courageous step of going on to the streets of the oppressive country where they lived. They changed things, their example gave others elsewhere in Eastern Europe the courage to do likewise and the map of Europe was redrawn. Those ordinary people changed things completely, showed enormous courage and acted peacefully. Today most of them are living very ordinary extraordinary lives yet together they changed the political, cultural and social landscape.
In our celebrity obsessed age, it would have been nice to see ordinary people power celebrated by the nobel peace prize. But perhaps the prize they got was to have been part of it at the time and to know that they were there.
Who do you think should have got the nobel prize for peace this year?

3 Comments:

Tom Zweifler said...

Here is Dan Smith's take on the prize:
The Nobel Peace Prize Committee has not done either President Obama or itself any favours by awarding him this year’s prize. It’s an award for promise rather than achievement. Read the citation and it sounds pretty much like saying, ‘We award the prize to the most popular man in the world because we like his views.’

The risk for Obama in this is that he is being set up for failure. Let’s face it, his June speech in Cairo on the Middle East was absolutely brilliant as I said already but he faces mountainous problems both at home and in the region before there is a real likelihood of success.

Jane said...

thanks and now at last I can link to the famous Dan Smith's blog - does he perhaps wish he was Dan Brown??

Jane said...

seriously though I absolutely agree that this is not at all good for Obama - it will not help him at home at all I don't think and it undermines the Nobel prize as well ... - do they give it to him again once he achieves nuclear disarmament? Poor guy ...