MORE NOMINEES UNDER CONSIDERATION:
* Cuban dissident Oswaldo Paya Sardinas,
* Russian rights group Memorial and its founder Svetlana Gannushkina,
* Bradley Manning, who allegedly leaked secret U.S. cables to WikiLeaks,
* Congolese doctor Denis Mukwege.
I HAVE TO SAY WTF to Bradley Manning, but given that we have had — Yaser Arafat, Kofi Anand, Jimmy Carter, Al Gore and Barack Obama, I’m not surprised anymore
As with Obummer’s Peace Prize, it’s way to early to make the call that the Arab Spring is a good turn for humankind. The overthrow of some dictators alone is not enough to call it a good development — how it ends is still unknown and may well be so nasty that we will miss those dictators as their replacements could be worse devils.
As to the prize lists, the prize committee must be dominated by Marxist socialists of the Stalin variety as the choices are not those that a humanist would applaud. It isn’t worth a trip to sunny and happy Oslo to pick up the prize.