I wanted to take this opportunity to thank you for officially invalidating your most prestigious honor twice in the same decade! While I’m sure this is not the first letter of congratulations you have yet received, I should hope that it is the first to recognize your political pandering.

Listen: I was understanding when you handed Al Gore and the International Panel on Climate Change an award, theirs was at least a cause which merited serious attention and had yet to receive it. But really? Barack Obama? The man has been in office for less than seven months, hasn’t sat down with Israel and the Palestinian Authority, hasn’t made any tangible progress on North Korea, hasn’t actively spoken out against Chinese oppression in Tibet and Taiwan, hasn’t done anything (really) to merit anything more than, “Good Morning, Mr. President, would you like your eggs scrambled or poached today?”

So, in the lifetime of current college seniors, here’s a list of some notable causes/spokesmen who have won your little accolade: the current Dalai Llama, Mikhail Gorbachev (for finally agreeing to end the Cold War), Nelson Mandela, the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, Jimmy Carter (call this a “lifetime achievement” award), the IAEA (that’s International Atomic Energy Commission, for non-proliferation efforts), and, of course, Al Gore and Manbearpig…err,…the International Panel on Climate Change.

Why the President then? Supposedly “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples”, but I ask you: What conflict has ceased since BO took his constitutionally required Oath of Office? Go ahead, name one that he’s actually solved. Iraq? Nope, still battling Islamo-Fascists and Extremism there. Afghanistan? Nope, Taliban rebels are flooding in from Pakistan. India-Pakistan, maybe? They’ve been settled down for awhile but that could go at any minute. China-Anything? Nope, the PRC is still treating everyone in the region like their plaything/red-headed-step-child. Pirates, maybe, some guys in dinghy’s with Kalashnikov’s? Nope, they took over a French anti-piracy ship this past weekend.

It seems to me that the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded not because of anything BO has actually done, but for who he wasn’t: George Bush. Don’t get me wrong, I love me some bacon-egg-and-cheese-biscuit at McDonald’s on a hangover-belly, but not enough to give someone $1M and a prestigious award. (By the way, he has yet to announce where that money’s going…)

With the most sarcasm I can muster on a Friday,

Kyle C. Lincoln

CandlesForPeace.com offers its visitors the opportunity to light a candle for world peace. The tagline for thPhoto by Olga Bonfiglioe site tells its visitors that they are offering “a non-political place in cyberspace where visitors can express their support for world peace.” Since its inception in 2003, 1,180 virtual candles have been “lit.” Against a black background that characterizes its seriousness of purpose, the site operators urge people to direct their friends to it, the pixels swaying from black to yellow to simulate the FLAME OF PEACE.

Photo by Olga Bonfiglio

Jody Williams, the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize Co-Recipient for her work on the Land Mine Ban Treaty, has a message for those who confine peace to candles, doves, and Kumbaya.

“Fuck the candles,” she said.

All the Nobel Peace Prize winners are unconventional. Indeed, the Nobel Peace Prize, in contrast to Nobel prizes in such categories as physics or literature which are elitist by definition, recognizes the co-existence of a willingness to work with the most forgotten people on earth with an otherworldly courage. The banality of the divine, that is the Nobel Prize, to modify Hannah Arendt’s famous phrase. Nobel Peace Laureates work with, for, and through ordinary people to accomplish extraordinary things. Although Peace Laureates like Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela can repeatedly assert their ordinariness, Jody Williams is absolutely convincing. With the mouth of a truck-driver, the humility of a public servant, and the passion of an evangelist, Williams successfully lobbied for the passage of the Ottawa Treaty banning land mines from use in 1997.

Like her peers, Williams engages in extraordinary work. Currently, she works on a variety of international issues and joins other female recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize on the Nobel Women’s Initiative, promoting equal rights on the international arena. Her past work focused on U.S. policy toward Central American states. Traversing continents, issues, and institutions, Williams has tried to cover a spectrum of issues to combat the various manifestations of what she terms “the continuum of violence” that exists in the world. However, only her energy and passion for justice overshadow her witty irreverence.

She refers to Madeleine Albright as Madeleine “Half-Bright.” The U.S. delegation to the Ottawa Treaty earns the characterization of “motherfuckers.” Even the U.N., who has honored Williams with numerous awards, does not escape her criticism. The Human Rights Commission (HRC) of the U.N., for which she wrote a report on the atrocities in Darfur, she calls the “Non-Human Rights Commission.”

“They don’t give a shit about human rights,” she said.

In 2007, she encountered opposition to the content of her report on Darfur.

“It was one of the most disgusting experiences. The HRC did everything they could to stop the mission. European states tried to get me to either not do a report at all and another state said to write a report that would make everyone happy. I said, ‘No fucking way. That is not happening,’” she said.

Deeply aware of the institutions and people that serve as obstacles, Williams attacks through organizing amid a fusillade of obscenities. Her ability to mobilize large groups of people through new technology provided one of the reasons the Nobel Committee chose her as a co-recipient of the prize. She moves people; she speaks in the everyday language of frustration and hope. In the end, she tries to challenge ordinary people as much as governments.

“You gotta get up and do something. Accept responsibility, don’t just whine about your rights,” she said, sounding more like a football coach than an internationally-respected activist. “Don’t think because you can’t change everything overnight that you can’t make the world a better place.”