Quote Originally Posted by Seamus Fermanagh View Post
The Obama award was made to encourage efforts at peace-making. Hortore published their award criteria a few threads back (at the Obama award I believe), and using the award to encourage efforts at peace-making is one of the specific criterion used.

I tend to have a typical Yank's view about awards -- that they are given in recognition of something you have ACHIEVED ALREADY. From such a perspective, the Obama award was patently silly since it was more of a "you make us feel better so do some more peacenik stuff" award than anything else.

In fairness to the committee in Oslo (only Norwegian Nobel), they ARE abiding by the criteria outlined for the award at its inception and "encouraging efforts" is one of the guidelines.

The fact that I find it silly does not mean that they are not making the award as it was intended.
What's funny though, is that the ones you'd like to get the award, like Malala, is NOT a prize according to the criteria. Just like we know that the peace prize will be awarded every year, we also know that Fredrik S. Heffermehl will write an angry chronicle stating that the prize is not according to Nobel's will and that human rights, democracy etc has nothing to do with the prize. He's also critical this year, since the OPCW only seeks to ban one kind of weapon, not all weapons... Fortunately though, nobody cares about him.

Also, I have to ask: what has Malala actually achieved? Is there peace in Pakistan now, thanks to her efforts?