Just don't get Barack Obama's Nobel Peace Prize? Well join a growing crowd.....

I have to admit that I was one of those who, on hearing that US President Barack Obama had been awarded the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, went; "Whaaa?"
To see if I was the odd man out I did a quick swing across cyberspace on Saturday afternoon and this is what I found:

According to Mashable: The Social Media Guide Obama's Nobel Peace Prize: 69% of Twitter Users Don't Get It and drew this graph. Click to enlarge

Many in US media skeptical of Obama's Nobel Prize‎ reported the AFP.

Nancy Gibbs at Yahoo News thought The Last Thing Obama Needs Is the Nobel Peace Prize but her colleague Gregory Katz played another tune with Obama's Nobel Peace Prize triumph praised by many.

The Taliban pointed out the irony of getting a peace prize while conducting an escalating war in The Age's article Taliban condemns Obama's Nobel Prize.

The Brisbane Times informed us his Kenyan family 'honoured' by Obama's Nobel Prize.

The Sydney Morning Herald ran with Obama urged to use Nobel as spur to peace

Al Jazeera expressed surprise but went with Obama: I do not deserve Nobel prize

Examiner was plain blunt - Barack Obama: a Nobel for speeches, sainthood if he achieves something?

Teh Man himself was suitably humble according to a White House presser REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT ON WINNING THE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE and a twee blog post Happy Birthday Bo! (which should come with an excess sugar warning).

While the Norwegian Nobel Committee released a short four paragraph announcement which started all the fuss by awarding the prize to Obama primarily for his "vision" and "attitudes".
Ever obliging, the Nobel Committee invites us to Ask the 2009 Nobel Laureates a Question! via its website.

Before the year is out Obama will probably be wishing that he hadn't won, because everytime the US death toll in Afghanistan rises some grieving mother is likely to toss that prize right back in his face.

Funniest line of the week.......

From The Borowitz Report:

Elsewhere, NASA bombed the moon, saying it was the one spot President Bush missed.

FBI current terrorist watchlist too big and riddled with errors

From THE FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION'S TERRORIST WATCHLIST NOMINATION PRACTICES, May 2009:

The federal government's consolidated terrorist watchlist was created in March 2004 by merging previously separate watchlists that were once maintained by different agencies throughout the federal government.1 The watchlist is managed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), through its supervision of the Terrorist Screening Center (TSC). The watchlist is used by frontline screening personnel at U.S. points of entry and by federal, state, local, and tribal law enforcement officials.2 The watchlist serves as a critical tool for these screening and law enforcement personnel by notifying the user of possible encounters with known or suspected terrorists and by providing instruction on how to respond to the encounter. Each day the watchlist is updated with new or revised biographical information on known or suspected terrorists gathered by U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies, including the FBI. Within the FBI, submitting the name of a known or suspected terrorist to the consolidated terrorist watchlist is referred to as a watchlist nomination. In general, individuals who are subjects of ongoing FBI counterterrorism investigations are nominated for inclusion on the watchlist, including persons who are being preliminarily investigated to determine whether they have links to terrorism. In certain circumstances, FBI policy also allows for the nomination of an individual for whom the FBI does not have an open terrorism investigation. Since the establishment of the watchlist in 2004, the FBI has nominated or processed the nominations for more than 68,000 known or suspected terrorist identities.3 As of December 31, 2008, the consolidated terrorist watchlist contained more than 1.1 million known or suspected terrorist identities.4........... In total, more than 62,000 watchlist records have been created using the FBI's processes for nominating individuals who are not being investigated for terrorism. Additionally, we found almost 24,000 FBI watchlist records that were based on an FBI investigation but not sourced to a current terrorism case classification. Many such watchlist records that we reviewed were based on cases that had been closed years ago and should have been removed at that time. [My highlighting]

If one bothers to read this U.S. Dept. of Justice audit it quickly becomes obvious that this terrorist name/profile list is not being accurately updated and is riddled with errors, including in some instances the names of dead people.

And so many pooh-poohed when the ACLU first pointed out problems with the list and set up its Terror Watch List Counter.

I can't help but wonder if the Rudd Government were to introduce a national mandatory ISP-level Internet filtering scheme, would we see the Australian Communications and Media Authority/Censorship Board list of banned URLs increase with similar rapidity (although it would be hoped with a more modest total) as those born-again flying monkeys the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy appears to favour pile on complaints about their pet hates?

Evans Head's Dawn Undery is a living treasure

Images from Dawn Undery website and Lismore Regional Gallery

click on images to enlarge

Dawn Undery, now retired to Evans Head on the NSW North Coast, is one of Australia's leading botanical artists.
She is exhibiting at Lismore Regional Gallery until the end of October 2009.