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Comment by arthurcolle | Hacker News Reader

Nobel Prize outside of the sciences is a total anachronism. Obama increased drone strikes by an order of magnitude compared to his immediate predecessor, compounding civilian deaths in an already tenuous situation, with civilian deaths still unrecorded in any meaningful manner, and yet he was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize. I voted for Obama to give you some context but still, it is a farce.

This year, in another category, you have three winners who have "contributed" to the systematic analysis of poverty and solutions towards alleviating poverty. Glad they have their 1.5 million/3 each. I wonder what the truly impoverished would think about that.

`Panem et circenses` for the elite, that's all this is. Revolution is coming, don't doubt it for a second.

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Samantha Power, who served as a Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights at the time, revealed in recent podcast that even Obama's close staff thought the price was BS and inconvenient to the president. They saw the price just as a attaboy.

Obama was likely thinking the same but it's not diplomatic to reveal it.

3 times writing price in the context of prize, it it intentional?

I share your general sentiment, but to be fair the decision to honor Obama wasn't made with his actual policies in mind - they hadn't been enacted yet, he received the prize within his first year in office. I hope and do believe they wouldn't have awarded him any peace prize at the end of his second term.

Thank you for mentioning that, because that actually reinforces the overall point more deeply - it speaks to the exact farcical nature of the act in question - the awarding of the highest, globally accepted award toward actions that are claimed to be geared toward the enacting of a peaceful world. This is obviously false, if you award a leader ostensibly on his initial actions, without any knowledge of what the next 3 years will hold. Awarding Obama a Nobel Peace Prize was a symbolic decision, meant to reinforce the notion that solving the racial issues in the USA would somehow have some kind of long-term effect on US politics, and indirectly, on global geopolitical activity (lol, that definitely worked out super well, looking back from 2020).

Has anyone told the current US leadership that we were terrorists to our own set of oppressors, back in the day?

Sorry, but this topic upsets me because no one seems to realize what all of these subtle actions really mean in the aggregate. Maybe I'm just a kook.

I think the committee got somewhat carried away and allowed themselves to dream that "Yes, we can" was more than a slogan and that Obama's presidency would be "change we can believe in" and they wanted to both encourage him to stay on that road by showering him with praise and give him more civil clout. I do believe that they were convinced they'd be helpful, that it was honest naivete, but I might very well be wrong.

You are not a kook.

Back during the invasion of Afghanistan, there was a photo of a soldier holding up a poster. The poster read, "We are at war. America is at the mall."

Murdering browns and yellows abroad while being laser-focused on status and self-stimulation at home has been the American Way for the entire post-war period.

Today's google news recommendations:

- delete these android adware apps hiding on your phone - a british family on vacation accidentally drove into the US - cardi b stuns in louis vuitton bikini picture - salma hayek, 53, shares revealing acupuncture photo - 'wheel of fortune' contestant's crack about 'loveless marriage'

The Nobel Peace Prize was part of Alfred Nobel's original will. So how is it an anachronism? Then I agree that the Norwegian Nobel committee hasn't shown particularly good judgement when chosing the winners lately.

Nobel isn’t noble in spirit. He created the Nobel prize because his eulogy was accidentally published before his death, where he was declared the father of death (he invented dynamite), or something like that. He pulled a Bill Gates and started doing philanthropy to clear his name. His real eulogy was far better. I don’t care for a second what that man thought was a good idea.

Wait is that it? His only problem was that he invented a better way to clear rocks?

He was an arms dealer, and won his riches by selling destruction.

> Revolution is coming, don't doubt it for a second.

Workers of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains.

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