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China's Influence Widens Nobel Peace Prize Boycott
c0lo writes "Not only did China decline to attend the upcoming Nobel peace prize ceremony, but urged diplomats in Oslo to stay away from the event warning of 'consequences' if they go. Possibly as a result of this (or on their own decisions), 18 other countries turned down the invitation: Pakistan, Iran, Sudan, Russia, Kazakhstan, Colombia, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Iraq, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Venezuela, the Philippines, Egypt, Ukraine, Cuba and Morocco. Reuters seems to think the 'consequences' are of an economic nature, pointing out that half of the countries with economies that gained global influence during recent times are boycotting the ceremony (with Brazil and India still attending)."
The AP is also reporting that China is creating a Confucius Peace Prize to be given out the day before the Nobel Prize.
When I think of countries contributing to global peace, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Egypt, etc. don't come to mind in the first place.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
The only one in that list that even raises an eyebrow is Russia.
As for half of the countries that gained global influence during recent times, that's just a veiled reference to the "BRIC" countries: Brazil, Russia, India, and China. Yes, two of the four BRIC countries aren't attending. But it's not like they're a statistical sample.
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
That list is almost a Who's Who of world assholes.
Table-ized A.I.
IMHO this is the consequence of turning the peace prize into a political too. Kissinger? Arafat? Bad enough to have warmongers who happened to make peace. But the Obama prize was the worst. I like Obama myself, but he did _nothing_, good or bad, to deserve that prize. It completely discredited the institution. At this point I wouldn't be too sorry to see it go.
The English word fart is one of the oldest words in the English vocabulary.
it would appear that china is starting to flex a little more of that intimidating political Muscle it has, just to see who would fall in line with said flexing, when you are a nation close to a nation like china you can hardly argue if you want to keep trading with that nation. and avoid being invaded by a large military force that makes even the American military stop and say "hang on these guys have got some big guns", last time i checked china isn’t exactly a forgiving kind of nation.
> With China and other foreign countries holding more that half of the US debt
The US has a lot of debt, and China owns a lot of that, but it's not half. Wikipedia has a fairly elaborate breakdown: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_debt
Of a total 13.56 trillion dollars of debt, 9 trillion is publicly held (the rest is debt different parts of the government owe other parts of the government). 4 trillion is held by foreigners. 847 billion is held by China - just a little more than Japan. That's six percent. If you add in Hong Kong (apparently still counted separately; I guess the finances haven't been merged yet?) and even add in Taiwan too, that's eight percent.
Definitely worry about the total size of the debt (ugh, damn near 100% of GDP). Don't worry much about the sliver of it owed to China.
> Just the other month, China and Russia plotted to dump the US currency. If this comes to fruition, all hell will break lose. Trust me on this.
Read the whole article. The talk was about for trade between China and Russia, not all trade. Why would you go out of your way to inflate the amount of US money China has, then go out of your way to say China's going to destroy the value of that same money it's holding?
So you're saying I should be getting my notification for a Nobel prize shortly, huh?
I mean, I haven't even continued the two wars that someone else started! I'm way more peaceful than Barrack Obama! I'm quite possibly the most peaceful man on the planet!
BTW, Obama didn't do anything before he was selected, he didn't have time to. He won the award for being anything other than a Republican, preferably someone who says a lot of really nice things but never follows through. It wasn't just for not being Bush, as many people claim, there is no way in hell they would have given it to McCain.
That is pure, unadulterated bullshit right there.
Apparently the Peace Prize has been a joke since day one, as people who know the history of such things have been pointing out. That is really sad because every once in a while they seem to actually get someone half-way decent, and it tarnishes their reputation more than anything.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
Well, they're in good company:
"The German National Prize for Art and Science (German: Deutscher Nationalpreis für Kunst und Wissenschaft) was an award created by Adolf Hitler in 1937 as a replacement for the Nobel Prize (he had forbidden Germans to accept the latter award in 1936 after an anti-Nazi German writer, Carl von Ossietzky, was awarded the 1935 Nobel Peace Prize)."
And of course the Soviets also banned (a bit on-and-off though) their citizens from recieving the Nobel, and Stalin created the Stalin Prize in his own honor.
>meaningless "peace" prize founded by an arms manufacturer
That last bit is not really accurate. Nobel invented dynamite. Dynamite literally means "safe explosive" - it's invention was NOT intended as a weapon - but as a safer explosive for mining. Compared to Nitro-glycerine dynamite was a major advance.
The truth is that strictly speaking Nobel's invention has saved millions upon millions of lives - not soldier lives, the lives of ordinary people who work in a mine, people with families just doing their job - by making mining hugely safer than it had been prior.
Now of course in retrospect it was pretty much inevitable that dynamite would become a weapon as well - the ability of controlled detonation for warfare was far to irresistible to the kind of people who think warfare is a good thing, but it's quite a slur on Nobel to pretend that this was his intention. Nobel invented a device to SAVE lives, and indeed every day it still does exactly that. It can also be used to take lives, but that wasn't HIS fault.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Please do not confuse Chinese and China. There are many democratic Chinese people living elsewhere in the world that want nothing to do with the corporo-fascist government of China. You can not even call it a Chinese government as the majority of Chinese living in China have little on no influence over the Government of China.
Personally this is a diplomatic mistake as it points out exactly which countries China has financial influence over, Pakistan, Iran, Sudan, Russia, Kazakhstan, Colombia, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Iraq, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Venezuela, the Philippines, Egypt, Ukraine, Cuba and Morocco. Russia is the interesting one, although it is likely they don't care one way or the other about China's opinion and stayed away for their own reasons. As for Iraq and Colombia, hmm, perhaps they are trying to get out from under the US and looking to build relations with China or more likely Russia. In fact quite a few more likely stayed away to align with Russia rather than China.
In fact it would be interesting to find out why Russia did not attend.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen