What the world is reading

The Peace Prize has more often than not,sought to influence the worlds opinion,according to this article,and so,the decision to award Obama is not incongruent to some the earlier ones. In fact,the award has throughout its history been captive to the politics of the time. It quotes instances: In October 1989,for example,with Chinas Tiananmen Square uprising still fresh,the committee announced it was awarding the prize to Beijings nemesis,the Dalai Lama.

The article quotes Scott London,co-author of a new book on Nobel lectures with his historian grandfather,Irwin Abrams: The Norwegians know they have the opportunity to influence world opinion twice a yearwhen they announce the prize and when they award it. And they want to make the most of it.

A clear political statement was also made,according to WSJ,when in the early part of this decade,some of the committees citations became pointedly aimed at the George W Bush administration. In 2002,former President Jimmy Carter won the prize. In praising Carters lifetime of work on peace and social justice issues,committee member Gunnar Berge made reference to the fact that the US government was fighting in Afghanistan and gearing up for war in Iraq at the time.

The Australian

Stardust no substitute for achievement

Heres some blunt criticism: One thing is reasonably clear,through the fog of war and diplomacy,there is nothing reliably noble about Nobel prizes. Many of the people who ought to have won it didnt. Several who certainly shouldnt have won it did,such as Yasser Arafat and Le Duc Tho of communist North Vietnam, it says. It adds that the nominations for the award were sent in by February 1,12 days before Obama had even become president.

This is very Alice in Wonderland; all prizes to be declared before the start8230;The Nobel committee betrays an astonishing political naivety in endorsing Obama as a man of peace when the world is so unstable,the choices before him so imponderable,the power of the American establishment so unavoidable and when we still know so little of his real calibre. The article is also hard on Obama: Can it be that Obama is already intoxicated with the exuberance of his own celebrity? For that is all he is so fara well-meaning super-celebrity.

The Independent

And the other Nobel nominees were8230;

The Independent focuses on the other nominees for the Peace Prize,and highlights six stories they think are the most inspirational. One is Dr Denis Mukwege,a doctor who treats rape victims in Congo. He was,for a long time,the only gynaecologist treating rape wounds in Congo. At the Panzi hospital in Bukavu,he performs as many as half a dozen surgeries a day; so far he has treated 21,000 women. His pioneering work has helped thousands of these women reclaim something of their physical selves and begin to heal some of the psychological wounds.

There is former mountaineer Greg Mortenson,It was a failed attempt to climb K2 in Pakistan in 1993 that set Greg Mortenson on a path that would take him almost to the humanitarian summit of the Nobel Peace Prize. Mortenson has built scores of schools in the mountains of Pakistan and Afghanistan. His Central Asia Institute has built 84 schools in the region,educating mainly girls,and Mortenson,51,has become a tireless advocate of the need to build human relationships with the Muslim world. His mantra: politics wont bring peace,people will bring peace.

Newsweek blog

Why Obama shouldve won for literature

Louisa Thomas writes without being entirely serious,that Obama was perhaps a more apt choice for a different prize. One thing Obama has done is write a really great book,Dreams From My Father,along with a more formulaic but well-regarded political stump book,The Audacity of Hope. Maybe he should have gotten the Nobel Prize in Literature instead.

A literature prize for Obama would devalue the committees claims to being the ultimate arbiter on literary merit. But this is the prize thats passed over Tolstoy,Borges,Nabokov,Proustto name only a few. Lets be seriouswho seriously thinks the prize is serious?