Obama and the Nobel Peace Prize

Congrats to President Obama on winning the Nobel Peace Prize.  Lets hope he ends up more like Martin Luther King than Henry Kissinger, who won it in 1973.

Kissinger won the award for arranging U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam.  Good for him but Kissinger, as Richard Nixon’s main advisor, was responsible for the secret bombing of Laos and Cambodia and most likely behind the overthrow of Chile’s democratic government in 1974.

This is what Martin Luther King said in his Nobel Peace Prize speech:

I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of thermonuclear destruction. I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality….I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits.

Obama has walked a very fine line since getting involved in mainstream politics.  Not many former community organizers end up becoming the most powerful person on Earth. I I think that is a good thing.  I‘d rather have someone like Obama, trained on the streets of Chicago,  leading our military and our economy than a Wall Street type or a general.  He should know that military action does not produce a better and more safe world; and that our economic system has severe shortcomings.

If anyone has the chance to make Dr. King’s dream a reality–the dream he talks about in the Nobel speech–than Obama is our greatest hope.

We might not ever again have someone like Obama in the oval office; lets hope that he and we can forge a peaceful world that lines up with Dr. King and not Kissinger.

Filed under: Barack Obama, chicago, economy, environment, military , martin luther king, peace, Obama, chicago, community organizing, economy, military, Nobel peace prize, nobel, henry kissinger, chile, 1973, dream, King's nobel peace prize speech, miiitary, wall street

Organize Your Own Movement! My problem with the far left.

The far left is starting to really bug me.  I like Noam Chomsky just as much as the next guy, but get a grip!

The following is from a column on Common Dreams entitled “After Obama”: “President Obama has become the personification of the very Bush administration policies that Candidate Obama so roundly criticized.”

Is this guy crazy?  (He seems like a nice enough guy on his website.)  But comparing Obama to Bush is almost as zany as comparing Obama to Hitler.

Anyway, here is Mr. Chomsky on a post 2008 election wrap up on Demoracy Now:

It’s brand Obama. That his army was mobilized to bring him to office. They regard that as a good thing, accepting the Lippman conception of democracy, the ignorant and meddlesome outsiders are supposed to do what they’re told and then go home.

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the tremendous grassroots army that has been developed, which is now waiting for instructions. What should they do next to press forward Obama’s agenda?

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whatever it is, the army’s supposed to be out there taking instructions, and press work.

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What they don’t seem to realize is what they’re describing, the ideal of what they’re describing, is dictatorship, not democracy.

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The goal of advertising is to create uninformed consumers who will make irrational choices.

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And when they turn to selling a candidate they do the same thing. They want uninformed consumers, you know, uninformed voters to make irrational choices

I am a big fan of Chomsky.  I get where he is coming from.  Obama will probalby fall short of creating utopia.

But where is Chomsky’s “tremendous grassroots army”?  As brilliant as Chomsky is,  he wasn’t able to beat back Nixonism or Reaganism or Bushism.  I’m not sure if Chomsky could get legislation passed at the city council level.

Prophetic works and words are not enough. It is a start but it takes getting your hands dirty and fighting back.

And that’s why Obama won the election. Not because voters were “uninformed consumers” but because they wanted change and went out and organized to get it.

Filed under: Barack Obama, POlitics, community, germany, history, jesus, progressive , George W. Bush, Noam Chomsky, Democracy Now, Barack Obama, Obama, social justice, hitler, democracy, change, organizing, grassroots, social change, advertising, dictatorship, grassroots army, after obama, chomsky, critique, adolph hitler, far left

Fiji Methodists Being Imprisioned for Speaking out against military regime. Tell Fiji Water to stop supporting this dictatorship!

Mother Jones magazine ran a scathing cover article about Fiji Water. The byline from the  article reads:

Obama sips it. Paris Hilton loves it. Mary J. Blige won’t sing without it. How did a plastic water bottle, imported from a military dictatorship thousands of miles away, become the epitome of cool?

Now, that dictatorship has started rounding up  and imprisoning Methodists and is actively trying to destroy the Fiji Methodist Church.  (Remarkably, Fiji might be the most highly population Methodist nation in the World.  Over 36.2% and 2/3 of the indigeounous poplutation of Fiji are Methodist. )

While Fiji water has been silent about the dictatorship, the Methodist Church in Fiji have been vocal critics of civil rights and human rights abuses.  As a reult, The Fiji dictatorship is trying to ban Methodist church gatherings for the next five years.  From a New Zealand newspaper:

High chief Ro Teimumu Kepa spent two days in military and police custody and the stress was clear as she was taken to court.

Her crime is that she supports and has offered her village as a venue for a Methodist conference next month.

All Methodists and democracy advocates should write Roll International Corporation, owner of Fiji Water, and demand that they change their corporate practices and speak out about the Fiji’s government ban of the Methodist Church.

Please write:

Roll International Corporation

11444 W. Olympic Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90064
310-966-5700

Filed under: Barack Obama, Christians, Mother Jones, church, economy, human rights, torture , Barack Obama, bottled water, celebrities, civil rights, democracy, dictatorship, Fiji, Fiji Methodist Church, Fiji Water, human rights, imprisonment, Mary J. Blige, Methodist Church in Fiji, Methodist conference, military arrest, New Zealand, Obama, Paris Hilton, Ro Teimumu Kepa, Roll, Roll International Corporation, violations, water