The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009 is to be awarded to President Barack Obama for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples. The Committee has attached special importance to Obama’s vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons.
Obama has as President created a new climate in international politics. Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play. Dialogue and negotiations are preferred as instruments for resolving even the most difficult international conflicts. The vision of a world free from nuclear arms has powerfully stimulated disarmament and arms control negotiations. Thanks to Obama’s initiative, the USA is now playing a more constructive role in meeting the great climatic challenges the world is confronting. Democracy and human rights are to be strengthened.
Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future. His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world’s population.
For 108 years, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has sought to stimulate precisely that international policy and those attitudes for which Obama is now the world’s leading spokesman. The Committee endorses Obama’s appeal that “Now is the time for all of us to take our share of responsibility for a global response to global challenges.”
Kristin has some author school visits scheduled at an international school in Monterrey, Mexico in the next couple of days. We’re leaving later this morning (Wednesday, April 9) and will be returning Monday evening (April 14).
This is the hotel we’ll be staying at over the weekend. Even though it looks fun and all, and is supposed to be in the 100º F range temperature-wise, I will be working throughout the trip.
I don’t think my cell phone is going to be working, however, so email or IM is probably going to be the best way to get in touch while we’re gone.
Still to-do before I can go to bed before waking up in a couple of hours:
Finish preparing tax docs for the accountant
Prepare mileage spreadsheet for 2007 – uggh
Pack
Clean this mess up.
Save new voicemail greeting message explaining why I’m not picking up
In preparation for upgrading a whole mess of sites to using the latest version of WordPress I decided it was time to finally upgrade my own site and to implement the new design I’d been working on for a while (for over a year now).
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