AbbaGav

I was struck by the spirit of prophecy while reading the BBC's report of this year's Nobel Peace Prize winner:

UN nuclear agency director and Nobel Peace Prize winner Mohamed ElBaradei has said the award will give him and his organisation a 'shot in the arm'.

Mr ElBaradei said the peace prize would act as a spur to tackle nuclear crises in Iran and North Korea.

I don't expect this Nobel award to spur anything in Iran, except maybe to enhance the chances of the Chief Mullah for Nuclear Procrastination and Obfuscation Through Negotiation (CMNPOTN) of the Islamic Democratic Republic of Free Iranian Democratic Peoples (IDRFIDP) to win next year's award.

In fact, given the recent history of the illustrious prize's list of recipients, I think I can hazard a pretty reasonable guess at what next year's short list of candidates might look like. Of course, you can't check my predictions for the better part of a century since the list of also-rans is sealed for about 50 years. Then again, I've never shied away from making unverifiable predictions before, so why start now?

Without further ado, my list of nominees for next year's Nobel Peace Prize:

• Ali Larijani, CMNPOTN of the IDRFIDP, for his firm stand against the language of force, for his unceasing and endless commitment to negotiations over his nation's compliance with the historic NPT, for his opposition to nuclear apartheid, and for his unyielding opposition to the use of military force by the United States.
  
• Jimmy Carter, because we bothered George Bush so much last time we thought we should do it again.
  
• Kim Jong Il, in honor of his many years of Juche striving against the horrors of starvation inflicted on his people. Wait, maybe that's Kim Il Sung. I can't remember which is the dead dad and which the incompetent son. Oh what the heck, let them split the prize.
  
• Jimmy Carter, for his dedicated work monitoring the Nobel Prize balloting process to ensure a fairly selected winner.
  
• That lady that stood outside George Bush's ranch, so bravely exposing the horrible hidden truth that war is bad and soldiers die, with only her courageous acceptance of foot massages and group hugs to make her point. Can somebody find out if her name is still available in some internet Google cache or something?
  
• Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, for his dedication to freedom-fighting and the liberation of his bands of foreign nationals from the possiblity of the tyrannical yoke of local Iraqi control.
  
• Osama Bin Laden, for not bombing anything really big lately, thus showing himself to be a statesman of the highest order, saving thousands of lives a year by not blowing people up. Or maybe it's just because he's dead and couldn't kill anyone if he wanted to, but that's a minor unprovable detail.
  
• Wile E. Coyote, Yosemite Sam, and all the other unfairly stigmatized characters of children's entertainment, for their persistence in the face of adversity, resilience in the face of grave bodily injury, and commitment to small local industry like Acme Inc. in this unfeeling and uncaring age of globalization.
  
• al-Gore, for his efforts to democratize TV, as reported by al-Reuters, including reports of the party scene in Iran among the first triumphs of his new network.
  
• Jimmy Carter, ... we don't really feel we need a reason so back off, all right? He's a nice guy! Have you even met him?
  

Good luck, and may all my nominees receive exactly what they deserve in the coming year.

[NOTE: just to be clear, of course I'm not wishing the same fate on Jimmy Carter or al-Gore as on Osama Bin Laden or his buddy Zarqawi. Now Wile E. Coyote, maybe that's a more fair comparison...]

TrackBacks posted to some good blogs: Cafe Oregano, MacStansbury.org, My Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, Point Five, and Basil's Blog