Obamacon's Peace Prize 2

Well, Obama's got his Peace Prize, although he's done absolutely nothing to deserve it.

But he has got a nice smile.

"Having been nominated for the peace prize after only ten days in office; having spent the previous three weeks as a president-elect who silently monitored the slaughter in Gaza; and having just assumed the role of commander-in-chief in two wars, for Barack Obama to then craft a credible way to accept an accolade as this year’s most celebrated man of peace, was always going to demand some rhetorical creativity.

Still, this surely ranks as a first: to use the peace prize ceremony as an opportunity to justify war.
Speaking in Oslo last night, Obama said: “the instruments of war do have a role to play in preserving the peace.”

Only within a nation that has largely managed to insulate itself from the effects of war could such a statement be made.

Sixty-four years earlier, in the shadow of two world wars, Americans had a much greater interest in condemning war than in presenting arguments for its justification.

“… our position is that no grievances or policies will justify resort to aggressive war. It is utterly renounced and condemned as an instrument of policy,” wrote Supreme Court Justice Robert H Jackson, on August 12, 1945, when laying out the foundation for the Nuremberg Trials.

http://warincontext.org/2009/12/10/how-america-won-the-nobel-peace-prize/#comment-6875

How times have changed.

Obama pissed off Norway by refusing the usual invitations to a post-Nobel concert and lunch with the king, which duties more worthy prize winners have gladly undertaken. It's almost as if he snuck in, took the prize, and ran.



This photo, showing the most powerful man in the world, sitting smugly like a school prizewinner, says it all.

Obamacon's Peace Prize

Alfred Nobel, who died in 1896, after inventing, and profiting hugely, from dynamite, endowed a series of international prizes, mostly handled by Swedes. But in the case of the Peace Prize, a Norwegian committee administers it.

They awarded Obamacon the 2009 prize after he had been seriously in the running for only a few days. The deadline for nominations was February 1. At that point, Obama had been president for 11 days. If this wasn't hasty Obamaphilia, then nothing was.

The award, finally announced in October 2009, cited Obama "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.":

Now, it happens that Obama is going to Oslo to collect his prize in somewhat less time than 11 days after sending 30,000 more troops  to Afghanistan.

This is the second surge he has made into Afghanistan.

This situation is so bizarre that I really cannot comment properly. Those dumb Norwegians fell for the 'Obamacon' like so many others.

I will comment again after I've heard his acceptance speech. I have no doubt it will include soaring rhetoric, but nothing else of substantive value.

Turner Prize - Britain's Best Art

"Site-specific painter whose understated yet radical works are rooted in fine-art tradition wins judges' vote"

The yellow bits are gold leaf. That is the sole connection to 'fine art tradition'. The composition is only a quadruple mirror image of some abstract shape.

There must be a good technological trick to getting the gold leaf to stick to certain areas.

Yes, there is; it's called 'pounce' and static electricity, discovered, and used, by Giotto, etc, in the fourteenth century

What you do is make a sketch, then pin prick holes in the parts you want to separate. Then you rub chalk dust over the sketch, which goes through the holes, and forms areas you can't paint on. That's basically it, but of course, there are complications.

As Wright's paintings are frescos, applied directly to walls, there is no way he can sell the painting to someone who wants to take it home.

But can you imagine the number of wealthy sheikhs or Russian Mafiosi who would like something like this on their bathroom wall? He's got it made.

Wish I'd thought of the idea.

Morphing POTUS

Well it didn't take long for the new US president (or POTUS, which, if you say it out loud, sounds more appropriate) to morph from being everyone's darling to George Bush III.
His speech on Tuesday night at West Point, outlining 'Obama Surge 2' in Afghanistan (he's already sent 21000 extra squaddies) might have been taken, word for word, straight from GWB.

Who will be the Last Man to Die in Obama's Afghan War?

Who will be the last man to die for Obama's senseless war in Afghanistan?

Almost everyone knows that the war is unwinnable in any conventional sense, and that it's going to get worse, not better.

This photo shows just how much Obama has been cowed by his generals.If I had cropped the picture to show only the army officer, it would have been very easy to depict him as a Nazi.

Obama's visiting Arlington Cemetery on Veterans' Day, 11 November 2009.

Just under 3 weeks later, he announced a 'surge' in Afghanistan; 30,000 extra troops from the USA, and several thousand from other fragments of NATO.

No, don't ask me what the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation is doing fighting local insurgents some few thousand miles from Europe and America

Something very strange happened here. I saw a related photo somewhere else very recently, and wanted to use it for this post. I searched for it on Yahoo but found that on almost all the sites mentioned, the photos had been taken down.

Maybe it shouldn't be shown in advance of Obama's trip to collect the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo.

'Conus magus' ventrum 10-23mm

'Conus magus' ventrum 10-23mm

While the world is falling apart a long way away from me, I prefer to spend my time on more interesting things.

This is a series of shells I collected around here on Siargao Island. They're interesting because they are almost all half the usual adult size of this species, and very brightly coloured.

Nos 1-5 are plain pink with a narrow, fuzzy band of white around the middle. No 6 though, changes colours dramatically about halfway around the last whorl, and the rest of the series follows suit.

A certain Mr L A Reeve named this as Conus fucatus in 1849, but now it's generally credited as a juvenile of Conus magus which is normally about 50 cm (2") long.

Now, an interesting thing about shell collecting is that you don't often find juveniles. Shells appear to grow, wham! into their adult size in a single season. To get a series of youngsters like this is quite unusual.

So, why all these colourful shells around here?