totally agree..
and imagine how an award like this could empower him in his own country..
yes little by little it gets better
PRIME Minister Morgan Tsvangirai said on Friday people could live in peace in Zimbabwe as the human rights record in the country has improved significantly.
He there were some "toxic issues" for the inclusive Government he formed with President Robert Mugabe this year.
PM Tsvangirai told Reuters in the northern Spanish city of Valladolid where he was due to receive a prize for 'lifetime achievement' that now people can live in peace in Zimbabwe.
"There has been substantive progress, it's just that you have got one or two incidents and then it spoils the thing."
here
(though, yes, tbc,
the effects of this will be w us for a long time)
but i guess w Obama you can say it's the big picture, fingers crossed a more respectful to the world and re-invigorated US regime can perhaps achieve some incremental, small good in more than one area as opposed to what would've been a just acknowledgment of the leonine struggle of one country against the most horrendous brutality and darkness, ya get me.
plus the POTUS is damned if he does, damned if he doesn't. to take Iran as an e.g., if he were to continue w sabre-rattling much world opinion would say he was a Bush Clone, neo-con warmonger. if he acknowledges that is not the best thing for either country and pulls back from so much public chiding (as has been happening) certain other quarters may accuse him of selling out dissidents in Iran that struggle under the Khomeinist claw.
At the very least, it would be good to see some sort of statement of solidarity with Ukraine.
oh come now Cracker, we can't have Obama upsetting Seumas Milne and J. Steele can we now
the Nobel was awarded - as i say up-thread - in '91 to a certain special lady, clearly the elections had just been annulled the year before and she had just been arrested, but it's fair to say the Nobel commt' gave this as an acknowledgment and crossed all crossables, they don't have a crystal ball.
well, here we are in 2009 and the situation there is very much the same, let's hope their crossables are more tightly crossed this time around, you know, that's why the 'he was only in office 15 days [or however long it was] when he was put forward' is a total red herring, to be fair.
I follow that reasoning but why would they do that?
perhaps they're Independent readers who unrealistically had a straw-man view of who Obama was just before he came to office off the entirely unfair temperature of a few of his most wild-eyed fans, and decided to shoehorn all this into one glorious package of a modern art prank... ...oh no, sorry, that was just Simon Tisdall in another of his puerile Guardian articles, my mistake