My Zimbio
Top Stories

Sunday, October 12, 2008

A dangerous perception and more on the Nobel Peace Prize

So I was thinking more about Martti Ahtisaari winning the Nobel Peace Prize and noting that, in addition to being president of Finland, Ahtisaari was a diplomat and peacemaker before and after being president.

That got me thinking...being a diplomat is some pretty freaking important foreign policy experience and would seem to stress the peaceful/negotiation side. What is it with our country that "general" or "war hero" are taken to be foreign policy experience. It is to some extent but it is a very confrontational form of foreign policy experience and seems to speak volumes of our view of how we deal with other nations.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I regret that the much neglected language, Esperanto did not receive the Nobel Peace Prize. At least nine British MP's nominated this global language, for the Prize.

Within a short period of 121 years Esperanto is now placed within the top 100 languages, out of 6,000 worldwide according to the CIA factbook. It is the 17th most used language by Wikipedia, and it is in active use by Facebook and Skype.

Solid arguments for Esperanto can be seen on the Youtube video, by Professor Piron, a former translator at the United Nations.

If you have time please check http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LV9XU