This is appeasement not peace. Yet, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to US President Barrack Obama for reasons which are baffling. Recipients of the same prize, namely the Dalai Lama and Barrack Hussein Obama, ironically cannot meet as it might discombobulate a delicate international order.

Perhaps the Norwegian Nobel Prize committee was rewarding Obama for not launching a war under false pretexts the way his predecessor George W. Bush did just nine months into office. Otherwise, Obama has achieved nothing except for an exaggerated engagement with the Islamic world.

According to the Daily Telegraph, an “Obamameter” run by the political accountability organization PolitiFact lists “seven broken promises, a dozen stalled initiatives and 117 pet projects still ‘in the works.’”

The Nobel award is symptomatic of all that is wrong with our system.

Our standards are literally being shortened. There is a duality of metrics that separates the rulers from the ruled. When the ruler fails to deliver, a prestigious award provides the fix.

One class sports a long list of titles, awards, “achievements” and those meaningless two-, three-lettered acronyms on ponderous coattails while the other class desperately cling on to the hems for their daily crumbs.

We live in an SMS world defined by abbreviated value-added jargons (VAJ) like ROIs, ERPs, KPIs and thousands of other acronyms that favour paper credentials over knowledge, Ponzi schemes over gold and venality over industry.

One class throws out such jargons, titles and acronyms as yardsticks that others should live by. When ruination knocks at the door, it is the agenda setters and the main culprits who walk away with the fat bonus.

It is not easy to shake off the power of acronyms. If they were alive today, Sigmund Freud and his nephew Edward Bernays may have used them in case studies of population control.

There is power in stilted vocabularies. In a corporate meeting, jargons are routinely resorted by one clueless group to beat the senses of another. Statistics and glossy power points are shoved down your throat. Few seek clarity. No one wants to be seen as a hick. Resolutions are finally passed. Over time, it leads to pseudo-sciences within the once respectable socio-economic fields of study.

Abbreviated terms of reference (TOR) are great trinkets for a self-delusional professional rabble. They revel in the mass-manufactured credentials available at schools, universities and e-bay.

In the end, we have an acute global talent shortage in a world brimming with paper qualifications.

Ever heard of the search consultant who slogged more than a year to find a suitable vice president for an international bank? Standards were high; the two-, three-lettered credentials required would fill up a page, including the never advertised GF – Good Family. (If you applied these standards to the military, a field medic is not allowed to man the 20-mm gun at a crucial point in battle).

Six months later, the bank collapsed! Few four-flushers at this bank knew what was going on. Their tasks were neatly delineated. Yet, armed with their vaunted acronyms, they are free to peddle their rattlesnake oil elsewhere. They are in demand as, like Obama, they can promise the world and con the common man into parting with their future.

Welcome to the real world. Like the financial world, “notional” and “fiat” flips into “real.”

War becomes peace! Fiction becomes fact. The worrying signs are there. Astartling number of Britons actually consider Winston Churchill and Mahatma Gandhi to be fictional characters while they vouch for the authenticity of Baker Street’s Sherlock Homes!

The Daily Mail hypothesizes that such ignorance “could well have something to do with the TV insurance adverts inviting viewers to ‘challenge Churchill’ and featuring a lugubrious talking dog.”

That’s the power to sell. The power of fictional imagery! According to a Wall Street Journal report, an astonishing 61% of sub-prime loans were palmed off to those who actually qualified for a conventional loan. The problem lies not with greed per se, but with Key Performance Indexes (KPIs) governing the Job Descriptions (JDs) of bank executives. To meet such metrics, they have to inveigle large quantities of loans in the shortest possible time to achieve maximum profit.

A computerized database of such performances sifts out the “high achievers” from the “underperformers,” the conmen from the common men and, in some instances, the barely literate from the educated. Your worth is spelt out in stats and acronyms. Every trick is employed under the veneer of letters to cheat the uninitiated.

These charlatans set the universal discourse for civilized behaviour, educational standards and career achievements.

The most pressing task for the CEO of America Inc is a financial one. How will he deal with a one quadrillion dollar plus (more than 1,000 trillion) derivatives market that is waiting to explode? It is largely an American creation. The Chinese are threatening to default on a fraction of them and a few trillion in defaults is enough to sink the Western Economy.

Nobel Economics laureates will tell you it is all business as usual, and the bulls are being warmed up for the mother of all matador markets (MOAMM). It is only matter of time…

Time, however, is revealing a disturbing reality.

The Obama Record

Has Obama brought peace to Afghanistan or is he building up troops there? Read the news. The Taliban writ runs throughout half of Afghanistan and slowly, across the western half of Pakistan. Has Muqtada Al-Sadr kissed the cheeks of his Sunni and Kurdish brethren in Iraq with a salam? Isn’t Pakistan’s Jihad Inc. run with US-supplied weaponry?

Why are the entities known as Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda still free to thread the terror mill? Why hasn’t the United States sued for peace and diplomatic ties with neighbouring, little Cuba when it can tolerate every gross human rights violation in China?

If Obama is afraid of Turkish sensitivities over a century-old Armenian genocide, can he be expected to stand up for international justice today?

Has Obama brought universal healthcare to millions of Americans who can’t afford it? How are the deteriorating manufacturing and employment sectors measuring up to reality? Do the marginalized need another sound bite or another lying statistic to reassure them that things are shaping up?

Will the deteriorating value of the US dollar prompt Washington to embark on another Persian Gulf adventure? Every major war in history was fuelled by the re-liquidation needs of an empty treasury. Like the psychology of acronyms, the casus belli is buried under jargons, lies and patriotic grunts.

ROI, ERP, KPI, T-Bill …CIC, Rah, Rah Rah!¹ Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil!

The historical progression is time-tested. When financial systems collapse under the weight of fraudulent practice, it is time for a Fuhrer to step in with catchphrases. They will be earthy and populist and will be addressed to a horde of the disenchanted.

And the clueless!

Let’s face it. This is the first modern generation not to have produced a Nikola Tesla, an Albert Einstein, or a financial whiz who can match the genius of Nikolai Kondratieff. Or how about a Mahatma Gandhi who was rejected five times for the Nobel Peace Prize? Maybe things were not rigid then. Einstein could not fix his hair right, Gandhi wore a loincloth. People could think!

Obama sets Gandhi as his standard. It is a clichéd fashion statement. The contrast cannot be depicted with sufficient brevity. One was born to privilege but “came down” to his true roots. The other was fast-tracked out of a ghetto possibility to the presidency of the United States. It was something unreal and remains so, much like Obama’s tinsel-tinged predecessors.

Mahatma Gandhi eschewed violence. He brought down the greatest empire ever through non-cooperation, by boycotting the financial foundations of Imperial rule. His actions triggered self-rule and independence for many nations. He fought for the poor and wanted them to live in dignity.

Obama the Nobel Peace laureate may turn out to be the anti-Gandhi. Out of the crumbling foundations of our financial system, he and his cohorts must do something. The metrics of today leave him little choice. There is no thinking outside the box.

Instead of fortifying the nation-state, Obama may dissolve them for a borderless commune. Force will be met by force, violence will increase and the foundations of a New World Order will be built on the ashes of the faceless poor.

The Norwegians must have given that award to prevent this spectre.

——————————————

Stephen –

This morning, Michelle and I awoke to some surprising and humbling news. At 6 a.m., we received word that I’d been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009.

To be honest, I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures who’ve been honored by this prize — men and women who’ve inspired me and inspired the entire world through their courageous pursuit of peace.

But I also know that throughout history the Nobel Peace Prize has not just been used to honor specific achievement; it’s also been used as a means to give momentum to a set of causes.

That is why I’ve said that I will accept this award as a call to action, a call for all nations and all peoples to confront the common challenges of the 21st century. These challenges won’t all be met during my presidency, or even my lifetime. But I know these challenges can be met so long as it’s recognized that they will not be met by one person or one nation alone.

This award — and the call to action that comes with it — does not belong simply to me or my administration; it belongs to all people around the world who have fought for justice and for peace. And most of all, it belongs to you, the men and women of America, who have dared to hope and have worked so hard to make our world a little better.

So today we humbly recommit to the important work that we’ve begun together. I’m grateful that you’ve stood with me thus far, and I’m honored to continue our vital work in the years to come.

Thank you,

President Barack Obama
————————————————————————-
Mr. Obama, you have not been working with me, or millions of other Americans, nor have you promoted anything more than the peace of the grave for uncounted Afghan and Pakistani peasants. You call anybody who has fought for “justice and for peace” terrorists or insurgents. Anybody who objects to hegemony by the United States is either co-opted, killed or subverted.

On the home front, you and your bought and paid for lackeys in Congress pass ever more draconian laws to subvert our Constitution and destroy our privacy, our right to protest, our basic freedoms under the Bill of Rights. No law that is supposed to provide some sort of relief to We the People is passed until the lobbyists have gone over it with a fine tooth comb and made sure that the profits of the wealthy and the cartels are not touched.

This Winter, there may be a hundred million Americans living under cardboard in the streets, begging for food for their families. We are rapidly returning to the “Gilded Age” of the 1890’s where the wealthy rode their carriages from party to party, grinning at the hordes of people clutching their rags together, their hands out for a coin or two to buy some food for their families. This is what the people running this nation still consider the “natural order of things.”

More and wider wars, war crimes and crimes against humanity, billions more for the war machine and its profiteers, while the people suffer and starve, their jobs outsourced to places where people will work an eighteen hour day for a handful of rice. Health care is rapidly going down the tubes, mortgages are being foreclosed, and in some areas, banks and other financial institutions, who cannot sell the foreclosed homes are having them torn down, to prevent anybody from living in them.

Now, you are embarked on a program to spend still more money on new, advanced, nuclear weapons when we can destroy the planet twenty or thirty times over with the horrors already sitting in their silos on hair trigger alert. New weapons of pain and distress, to be used to disperse protestors of government policies are being developed and distributed to law enforcement. NorthCom is training combat brigades in “suppressing civil unrest.” So starving, homeless, sick people here in the United States will be dealt with, should they protest their plight under the American Oligarchy, of which you are apparently the poster boy.

When the war criminal Henry Kissinger got his Nobel Peace Prize, the whole thing became nothing but a public relations farce. The farce continues and will, apparently, as thousands or tens of thousands, here and abroad, die for the profits of the Oligarchy.

You said, “To be honest, I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures who’ve been honored by this prize — men and women who’ve inspired me and inspired the entire world through their courageous pursuit of peace.”

That was the only accurate statement in your letter to me. I would say, “For shame, Sir,” but you have none, so why bother.

With disgust and sadness,
Steve and Adrienne Osborn

by Michael Boldin

When browsing the news this morning, I came across “the” big story of the day – Barack Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize. My first thought – is this some kind of joke?? Not until I found the announcement on the official Nobel website could I actually believe it.

It really doesn’t matter what your position is on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the regular bombing of Pakistan, and the talk of sanctions against Iran (I happen to be opposed to all of it) – to give a “peace” prize to someone overseeing multiple wars is more Orwellian than Orwell.

And that’s not even considering the fact that Obama’s spent most of this year issuing threats to American citizens, too. i.e. buy this health insurance plan or I’ll fine you. Ignore the fine, and I’ll arrest you and throw you in a cage.

Wow, talk about peaceful.

So, what is this, some kind of international ad campaign to increase the amount of worship given to our “dear leader?” If they were serious about a peace prize going to a peace activist, they would’ve given it to someone like Ron Paul who’s been fiercely advocating an end to wars and the complete liquidation of the entire US Military empire around the world.  Or, how about Cindy Sheehan?

Barack Obama as a peacemaker is a complete and utter mockery of the entire award. I sure hope that makes people reconsider how important their other prizes are – Krugman, anyone?

It sure gives new meaning to the famous line “War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength.”

How did we wind up with another Cheney/Bush clone in the White House? Since his election, still more billions have been given to the banksters, the Wall Street speculators who caused the current melt-down, and above all to the Military Industrial Complex (MIC) and the Pentagon. Every piece of “Gone with the Wind” sized legislation is held up until every special interest, every bankster and insurance group is completely protected, at the expense of We the People.

The first act of the “new” administration was to widen the war in Afghanistan, and also to push it into the tribal regions of Pakistan. The buildups continue, with an even greater emphasis on robot, remote controlled killing machines to maximize casualties amongst the Afghans while minimizing danger to our own personnel.

We are now being told that Bush’s war was one of “choice” whereas Obama’s is a “war of necessity.” Look closely at this. He states that our personal survival in the United States consists in spending billions futilely chasing a handful of ex-CIA operatives (from an earlier war ) around the mountains, meanwhile firing Hellfire missiles into Afghan villages, killing innocent villagers, elderly, female, children, in hopes of killing some Pashtun carrying a rifle, which makes him an “insurgent.” In that part of the country, you are not properly clothed unless you have a weapon. When we blast a village and do manage to kill a man with a rifle, there are ten more to take his place; the friends and relatives of those killed and maimed by our attacks. For thousands of years, these people have been fighting off invaders and expelling occupiers of their land at tremendous personal cost. They don’t even care who or what the United States is, they simply want them, and any other invader, out of their country.

This would all seem to be insanity until you look at what is controlling this nation. Follow the money! If we keep escalating the wars, the MIC continues to make huge profits. It trades with both sides in weapons and intelligence, always at a profit. If we ever waged peace, the MIC would have to start making refrigerators and stoves. A guy buys a refrigerator, he keeps it for ten or fifteen years. Where is the profit in that? A guy buys a thousand pound bomb and BOOM! He has to buy another. Now there, my friends, is profit. And then, of course, there is the oil pipeline route.

We are looking at a government where the Fed Chairman tells Congress that to survive, we must promote austerity in the United States. Cut back on social services, education, Social Security, Medicare and other frills. At the same time, another three hundred billion is given to the Pentagon to promote their wars, and their research into still more draconian ways to control not only We the People, but the entire world.

A ten percent cut in the Pentagon’s budget would take care of most of our domestic problems,. We could feed the hungry, house the homeless, provide decent medical care and repair our crumbling infrastructure. That would still leave the bloated Pentagon giant spending several times more than all the rest of the world combined in “defense” spending. We are spending money on developing more robots, suborbital bombers, armed platforms in orbit that can rain death and destruction on anybody who refuses to obey us.

Over two centuries ago, a group of visionaries wrote a remarkable document to be the rule and guide of the new nation. Over the past couple of decades, but especially during the past nine years, that document, the Constitution of the United States, along with its first ten amendments, known as the Bill of Rights, has been effectively shredded, replaced by the misnamed Patriot Act in its various incarnations, the Military Commissions Act, the various Surveillance Acts and Executive Orders. The Executive is shielding the perpetrators of these crimes, and then there is the dismissing of habeas corpus, the repeal of Posse Comitatus and other protective legislation to leave us open to martial law and a military takeover.

I have sent four letters to Mr. Obama, certified, return receipt requested. At least three have been delivered. The only response, so far, was a preprinted card with a stamped signature from some guy who is the chairman of correspondence, or some such title.

In these letters, I have queried him as to why the Constitution is not being restored to the Halls of government and reminding him of the duties specified in the document. No answer.

I have asked him why he is escalating our wars and further impoverishing our nation with giveaways to the rich. Why no help is given to those who are being foreclosed on. No answer.

I sent him a copy of the Nuremberg Principles, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, The Constitution of the United States, including the Bill of Rights. I cited the fact that, under the Constitution, those are all part of the “Law of the Land,” as they are included in treaties that were ratified by the Senate. I asked him, “What part of the above documents have we not broken?” No answer.

I have sent off similar queries over the years to my alleged representatives in the House and Senate. No answer. Apparently, these subjects are now off limits as far as government officials are concerned. Perhaps they have truly shredded the Constitution and it is no more. I fear that the “Great Experiment” has come to an end, not with a bang, but with scarcely a whimper. Now, little seems to be left but for the somnolent American Sheeple to just follow the nice goat with the bell up the ramp, and though the doors into the abattoir. A sad end to a noble effort by our forefathers.

Would it surprise you to know that this very concept has been seriously proposed in our government both under the Bush administration and now under the Obama hypocrisy? Bush advocated seining the Internet for “thought” that could be considered criminal and formulated a plan to subject those potential criminals to imprisonment to “prevent the thought from becoming reality”. The Obama White House is now contemplating similar action.

HR 1955, the “Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Act” was introduced and actually passed the House, but thank God it never passed the Senate. It was placed into committee and any statement of its death would be premature. It can still be brought back so we must remain vigilant about this Bill. It would have stripped citizens of their rights and specifically targeted the Internet for investigative scrutiny. The Internet part of the plan was to form a Group that would search the Internet for thought patterns that could be construed as a “potential terrorist” violation of HR 1955. A Terrorist could be a “Homegrown” citizen of the United States or anyone in the world and such a violator could be deemed “an enemy of America”, by the President and would be subject to clandestine arrest and placed into a prison indefinitely, with no access to rights such as Habeas Corpus, or even notice to next of kin. They could simply disappear, forever.

Obama in a recent speech called for laws that would allow for “preventative detention”. He said he was working on a means to imprison people for crimes that they might commit sometime in the future, legislation he said that would be a legitimate, legal framework for this imprisonment. This Preventative Imprisonment would be open ended, that is, a person could be imprisoned forever, very similar to what was proposed in HR 1955.

Preventative Imprisonment may be a new concept for most Americans but rest assured it is not the last time we will hear those two words discussed. It seems that President Obama has signed a Presidential Directive to put in place such a plan. What does this mean?

Preventative incarceration as suggested by Obama is a means to prevent the happening of some crime or illegal activity by means of imprisoning a person or persons before they have the opportunity to commit that crime or illegal activity. The upshot is that a person who has not committed a crime but has been identified as dissident may be placed in prison indefinitely to keep him or her from committing some future crime against the State. Please take a pencil and a piece of paper and list everything you can think of that could be construed as “Illegal Activity”. And let yourself add to that list anything that you as President could decree to mean “Illegal Activity”. You now have a list of things that could be used to quell dissent about illegal Government actions. And you have a list of “ thought crimes” that could be used to imprison an innocent person, forever.

But you say “We need protection from our enemies”. And in answer I will refer you to a very popular National Leader who once told his adoring citizens that if they would give him special powers not allowed by their Constitution, he would be able to protect them from the Country’s enemies. So the electorate gave Adolph Hitler what he asked for.

One day the German Citizens woke to discover, they were the enemies of the State as long as they remained free to disagree with its directives and policies. Dissent was no longer an option because to do so would subject them to clandestine arrest and indefinite imprisonment. They could and many did, simply disappear forever. Call it Preventative Imprisonment.

Our hold on our freedoms is as strong as our resolve to keep them. We need to remain vigilant in protecting our Constitution and Rule of Law. We are slowly sliding down a slippery slope to becoming servants of the State. And all the while the State is evolving into an incestuous marriage between Special Interests and Corporatism. We are looking at our descendants living in a Rollerball Society if we don’t reverse this trend. What are you willing to do about it?

There are hundreds bound for Heaven
For they’ve served their time in Hell,
In the BushCo run resort
That’s known to all as “Gitmo.”

Black cells, blinding lights,
Horrendous volumes of sound!
Rubber hoses, cold cells, fire and ice,
Deafening weeks of silence in solitary cells.

Seed of Afghan bounty hunters,
Picking up young men at random.
Forty pieces of silver per head;
No questions asked nor answers given.

Days spin out to weeks, to years.
Beatings, dogs, rape and fear
Waterboarding, tied and hung in agony.
Electric shocks, insults, threats it will get worse.

Ignorance is resistance, in the interrogator’s mind.
No law, no rights, no answer to their questions.
Eternal torture, you’re here for life,
Even if found not guilty.

Your Holy Books are spat upon,
Chewed by dogs and worse.
Your name has been exchanged
For a number and a curse.

Death is not worth many things,
But you’ll not find them here,
Doomed to spend your youth, your life,
Many years of abject fear.

To seek release, you decide
That you will eat and drink no more.
A few weeks or more of discomfort
And you’ll reach that far off shore.

But, “No!” your jailers say
They’re worried for your health.
They’ve always stopped the torture
When you could endure no more.

So they strap you to a feeding chair,
Through your nose they shove a tube.
Crusted with the blood and snot
Of those who’ve gone before

And down the tube they pour the gruel
Of forbidden food and offal,
And joke and laugh and pat your head
And grin at your tears of shame.

And so you renounce your time of fast
Even that is denied your soul.
And your captors rejoice at your years ahead
To be lived in durance vile.

But then you work with infinite stealth
And ropes from rags you twist
And in the dark of night
You fashion a saving noose

In silence you step off your bunk
And in minutes your soul flies free
Looking down at that tortured thing
That was so hard to leave.

And laughing at your torturers
When they look into your cage,
To find that there’s nothing left
To be a target for their rage.

Three have escaped and flown to Heaven
Inspiration for hundreds more.
Who seek an end to their living death
On Gitmo’s far off shore.

Steve Osborn
11 June 2006
———————————————-
Somehow, some way, we have got to take our nation back from the thieves and murderers who have controlled it for so long, and apparently still do, with a new puppet who speaks English in full sentences and is of a darker hue, but the message is the same and the Imperial Storm Troopers still go forth to kill and occupy yet more small nations and We the People find ourselves in an increasingly more restricted Prison Planet of our own.