Nobel Peace Prize awarded to someone who really deserved it

[jmowreader]

It's not Cindy, but this year's laureate is a very good choice: Muhammad Yunus and Grameen Bank of Bangladesh.

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2006/

They earned the prize for "their efforts to create economic and social development from below."

Check out the Grameen Bank's website at http://www.grameen-info.org/ and especially http://www.grameen-info.org/bank/WhatisMicrocredit.htm, his explanation of the Grameencredit system that's at the heart of his bank's work.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

1. Take that, Islamophobes.

Great idea too- small (<$100) for third-worlders. Apparently it's working really well.

[winter999]

3. Fundamentalists have actually called him an "enemy of Islam".

He has had death threats because his bank lends money and empowerment to women.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

6. Wouldn't be surprised.

Fundamentalists did the same thing when MLK won.

Got a link though?

[MrCoffee]

7. Garameen's Microcredit is a revolutionary idea that is saving the world

The benefits on a local scale are absolutely incalculable. The Least Developed Countries are tinderboxes of strife and aggression (Somalia, Sierra Leone, Pakistan, Rwanda...just to name a very few), and Garameen's program of VERY local economic development is reaping colossal benefits in the villages and towns where it's effects are felt every single day.

I'm a huge cheerleader for microcredit, and I am ecstatic that the Nobel Committee chose to honor such a fantastic program.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

8. I hadn't heard about it until today.

How does the interest work?

[Jcrowley]

11. Cell Phones To Save The World?

Here's a Business Plan to Fight Poverty

<snip>

Many of Yunus's admirers see him as a social crusader. He sees something else. "I am a businessman," he says, "but it's business with a twist. I practice business with a social objective. That's what's missing from the capitalist system. We look for market solutions to social problems."

GrameenPhone Ltd. is the next twist in Muhammad Yunus's brand of capitalism. The company is a consortium of four partners: Yunus's Grameen Telecom (a 35% shareholder); Telenor AS, the main Norwegian telecommunications company (51%); Marubeni Corp. of Japan (9.5%); and New York-based Gonofone Development Corp. (4.5%). GrameenPhone opened for business last spring. It now offers service in Dhaka and in about 20 nearby villages. By the end of 1998, GrameenPhone will distribute 4,000 phones throughout the country. And it will keep adding not only phones but also services: fax, voice mail, Internet access.

http://www.fastcompany.com/online/12/fightpoverty.html

If one looks into how destructive are cell phones one would show great scepticism that this business model is of anything other than a short-term salve which disguises the deeper issues and is certainly no long-term solution at all. Kinder, gentler capitalism to save the "Third World?", color me skeptical.

[jmowreader]

16. It's no short-term salve

It would be FAR more destructive to run cable from point to point than it is to set up a cell network, and yes I'm thinking of the ecological impacts of the towers, the discarded phones and everything else.

[Jcrowley]

17. Don't forget the mining

Is a world without cell phones even Think-Able? I suspect the 5-8 million dead in the Congo would hope so. But then the cell phone economic model will help to save them? Hmm. Seems the Third World (Colonized countries) is being saved to death these days.

[jmowreader]

23. Would landlines require more or less mining?

These people have to communicate with one another and with the outside world if their lives are not going to be restricted to subsistence farming. Agreed?

The heart of all communication is telephony. Fax runs through it. Data runs through it, as does voice and telemetry. Except for radio and television, telephony IS communication.

Given this, we can further point out that there are two kinds of phone systems: wireline with high-capacity troposcatter links between populated places, or cellular with microwave links between the towers in the populated places and, once again, tropo shots between populated places.

None of these systems can be built without mining something. You can't even build a 1950's-level rotary-dial phone system or a 1920's-style manually-routed phone system without copper, tin, lead, aluminum, perhaps some tantalum, and iron, and the ingredients for either ceramics or phenolics. (Oh, and don't forget oil and lithium or molybdenum and sulfur to make grease if you choose mechanical switching...) Trust me on this: any mining, even copper mining in the US, gets miners and landowners shot. Mine owners LOVE to shoot their employees and the people who own land that has minable minerals under it. I don't know why. :sarcasm:

But if you're using cell phones, you don't have to run any phone lines. You don't have to dig holes for the poles, trenches for underground cables, any of that--and if you strap a windmill next to the troposcatter station and run your smaller towers off solar, you don't even need to run power lines. (You are NOT going to run a mechanical frame on solar cells. They draw way too much electricity.)

If you have no phone system in your region, you'd be a damn fool to set up anything but a cell system.

[Jcrowley]

28. I just wonder

When this sort of quasi-refutation comes around how much one has researched the matter. If you wish for more info on the massive habitat destruction, social dislocation, landfill acreage etc.. is involved with cell phones I'd be glad to provide some info for you though I think it best if one investigate it on their own. If this is the best the Nobel Group can come up with for their vaunted Peace Prize we're in deep water, which we are.

Anyway just let me know. Best to ya'.

[TahitiNut]

2. Yunus leveraged a hidden truth

More than 2/3rds of the value of the labor of the working poor is systematically confiscated by the 'employers' and economic systems. By forming what's essentially a 'co-op' (Grameen Bank), he made it possible to reinvest much of that otherwise confiscated that value in the working poor themselves.

[earth mom]

4. How is economics about Peace?!

Sorry, but IMO they picked the wrong people even if they did do something good. What they did is just not about Peace and stopping War-not at all.

Cindy deserved the award because she was fighting for PEACE. Simple as that.

[MrCoffee]

5. This has everything to do with peace.

Microeconomics is a revolution in development, which goes further than anything else in stoping regional and tribal conflict from starting. Look at the conditions in Sierra Leone, the Congo, Rwanda, Somalia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Northern India...all of them in grinding, generational poverty. Microeconomics is an enormous force for peace in the Least Developed Countries by powering local economies and encouraging self-sufficiency and indigenous economic development.

The Nobel Committee should be commended for this choice.

[Jcrowley]

9. Some of what you say is true

however the model that Grameen uses is still based on Western models of development and it's primary example for so-called "saving" third world countries, the small entrepreneurship of cellular phones,
is really in the deeper sense of 'Economy' quite a tragedy. he's just a businessman as he says himself who sees market solutions to the world's problems. This is an awful choice.

And to suggest that the cell phone is to be the savious of Africa, as is the case here, and India is to ignore the larger reality of how destructive these types of items have been for the land upon which we all depend.

[MrCoffee]

10. Beg pardon, but i have no idea what the cell phone reference is to.

Please explain.

[Jcrowley]

12. Here's some info

The social entrepreneur who pioneered 'microlending' has launched a new company. Its goal: a cell-phone in every village.
From: Issue 12 | December 1997 | Page 58 | By: Peter Carbonara | Illustrations by: David A. Johnson

GrameenPhone Ltd. is the next twist in Muhammad Yunus's brand of capitalism. The company is a consortium of four partners: Yunus's Grameen Telecom (a 35% shareholder); Telenor AS, the main Norwegian telecommunications company (51%); Marubeni Corp. of Japan (9.5%); and New York-based Gonofone Development Corp. (4.5%). GrameenPhone opened for business last spring.

http://www.fastcompany.com/online/12/fightpoverty.html

Cell phones may help "save" Africa
By Rhett Butler, mongabay.com
July 11, 2005

<snip>

Bangladesh is often used as the case study for the impact that mobile telephony can have on the economically disadvantaged. In the late 1990s Grameen Bank, a Dhaka-based for-profit enterprise long known in Bangladesh for making microloans to fund microenterprises by villagers, set up Grameen Telecommunications, a non-profit organization that provided low-cost phone services in rural areas. Using money borrowed from Grameen Bank, village entrepreneurs purchased mobile phones which they then used to sell phone services to customers -- other villagers -- by the call. The result: mobile phone entrepreneurs -- 95 percent of whom were female -- made a tidy profit while villagers reaped the benefits of instant communication. These benefits included communicating with distant family members, making it easier to find employment opportunities, having more options during emergency situations, enabling farmers to check prices in different markets before selling produce, and eventually allowing the quick and easy transfer of funds. The mobile phone microenterprise platform spread rapidly through the country and stimulated other economic activities among the rural poor, who have proven to be much more technology-savvy than many originally anticipated.

http://news.mongabay.com/2005/0712-rhett_butler.html

[TygrBright]

14. Have you LOOKED at Africa lately?

Peace there hasn't got a CHANCE without some stable social fabric to build on. The Grameen Bank model works on strengthening economic and social investments at the very bottom of the grassroots, empowering people to take control of their own labor, their own land, their own education, their own destinies in a sustainable way. Of such is the social fabric woven. People who have hope for a future and investment in themselves and their labor and their land are much less likely to be demagogued into war, genocide, ethnic strife, etc., by and for the benefit of a few strongmen.

That is REAL peace-making. Growing peace from the roots.

The original microcredit model is distributable, replicable, sustainable, and efficient in a way that big NGOs can't even begin to imagine. It's adaptable in ways "missions" and other western-based development charities could never achieve. It creates ownership of local resources and land by the people who live there, and gives them the means to grow their own economic foundations.

It is the mustard seed of peace-making. Small, unnoticed, seemingly inconsequential. Takes a long time to come to fruition, but when it does, it's a mighty plant indeed, with a powerful fruit.

patiently,
Bright

[earth mom]

25. I disagree. There is a WAR on in Iraq, remember?

Cindy Sheehan is fighting for REAL PEACE there.

You may want to brush up and read the definitions of peace, war, capitalism and economics I posted downthread in post #24.

[TygrBright]

29. One word:

Sudan.

Iraq isn't the only war in the world, you know.

God, Americans are myopic.

sadly,
Bright

[originalpckelly]

15. I know, there is an award for economics, which this clearly is...

who knows? Oh well, not like it can be changed, and it was certainly a good deserving person.

[Shakespeare]

18. You misunderstand what the peace prize is about.

Yes, they most certainly did give it to someone who deserves it.

[onenote]

22. absolutely right

Look at some of the nobel peace laureates over the years:

Mother Teresa
Desmond Tutu
Elie Weisel
Lech Walesa

Human rights advocates have often been recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize.

[earth mom]

24. FYI-Definition of the words PEACE, WAR & CAPITALISM

No, it is you who misunderstands what they are honoring here.

It is NOT PEACE but CAPITALISM. :puke:

peace
Pronunciation: 'pEs
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English pees, from Anglo-French pes, pees, from Latin pac-, pax; akin to Latin pacisci to agree -- more at PACT
1 : a state of tranquillity or quiet: as a : freedom from civil disturbance b : a state of security or order within a community provided for by law or custom <a breach of the peace>
2 : freedom from disquieting or oppressive thoughts or emotions
3 : harmony in personal relations
4 a : a state or period of mutual concord between governments b : a pact or agreement to end hostilities between those who have been at war or in a state of enmity
5 -- used interjectionally to ask for silence or calm or as a greeting or farewell
- at peace : in a state of concord or tranquillity

war
Pronunciation: 'wor
Function: noun
Usage: often attributive
Etymology: Middle English werre, from Anglo-French werre, guerre, of Germanic origin; akin to Old High German werra strife; akin to Old High German werran to confuse
1 a (1) : a state of usually open and declared armed hostile conflict between states or nations (2) : a period of such armed conflict (3) : STATE OF WAR b : the art or science of warfare c (1) obsolete : weapons and equipment for war (2) archaic : soldiers armed and equipped for war
2 a : a state of hostility, conflict, or antagonism b : a struggle or competition between opposing forces or for a particular end <a class war> <a war against disease> c : VARIANCE, ODDS 3
- war·less /-l&s/ adjective

cap·i·tal·ism
Pronunciation: 'ka-p&-t&-"liz-&m, 'kap-t&-, Brit also k&-'pi-t&-
Function: noun
: an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market

eco·nom·ics
Pronunciation: "e-k&-'nä-miks, "E-k&-
Function: noun plural but singular or plural in construction
1 a : a social science concerned chiefly with description and analysis of the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services b : economic theory, principles, or practices <sound economics>

[Shakespeare]

27. If you think copying and pasting Webster's definition of "peace"

in any way makes your point for you, you are mistaken. You'd do better to actually investigate what the Nobel committee looks for, and what their reasons are for awarding the prize--because in this case, their reasons are the only ones that count.

So, no, it is not me who is mistaken.

[TygrBright]

13. Met the guy years ago, and said to myself...

..."Someday, this guy is gonna get a Nobel."

It took longer than I thought, but I'm glad it happened. Maybe his model will get a small measure of the attention it deserves now.

hopefully,
Bright

[Shakespeare]

19. I remember Gore (and maybe Clinton, too) praising him years ago.

I'm delighted the committee recognized this man's three decades of work.

[malaise]

20. Yep he's a good man n/t

[boolean]

21. I thought poor people chose to be poor!

Well I'll be! Listening to the freeptards and repukes all these years, I'm so surprised that poor people, given the chance to make themselves an income, would actually do so!

99% repayment rate.

Using the HONOR SYSTEM.

Take that, greedy conservative freeper assholes.

[Xenotime]

26. Cindy is a winner in my heart. Her efforts truly warm the soul.