From his vacation in Hawaii, President Obama has sited major problems in the intelligence sharing systems to prevent another terrorist attack on American soil. The President sited “deficiences,” saying “a failure has occurred and that is unacceptable.” The strong words in the wake of the failed Christmas day attempt by a Nigerian man to blow up an overseas flight landing in Detroit, Michigan.
Interview with President Barack Obama
Click on above link to hear the entire interview
Q I’m sitting in the Oval Office with the 44th President, President Barack Obama. Thank you so much for this interview, sir.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, it’s great to see you and Merry Christmas to you and all your listeners.
Q Well, first of all, let’s start off on a light note. You’re preparing to go away to Hawaii for vacation, and everyone around here is talking about you body surfing. Is that a healthy thing to do? (Laughter.)
THE PRESIDENT: It’s a wonderful thing to do. I grew up doing it, love the ocean. I’ll admit to you that the Secret Service these days does not like me doing it. The last time I tried it they had a bunch of people out on jet skis in the water and surrounding me with all kinds of stuff and it was a little distracting for the other swimmers. So I don’t know if I’ll get out there this year, but I tell you what I will definitely be enjoying some sun.
Q Now with the holidays we have cold season, we have, as you say, Chicago snow — sniffles, coughs. And I understand possibly that you and your wife received the H1N1 shot this weekend. Is that true? And what would you say to the African American community and the brown community, the black and browns of this nation who are leery because of past history — i.e., Tuskegee — of getting the shot?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, first of all, people need to understand that this vaccine is safe. Malia and Sasha actually had it several months ago, right when it was first being made available to school-age children. That’s the most important population because this flu, unlike seasonal flu, disproportionately affects children and young people — healthy children and young people as well as people with underlying conditions like asthma or neurological diseases.
So it is so important and, frankly, the African American vaccination rate has been lower, substantially lower so far than the general population. I think people just need to understand: If I had the two people that are most important in my life, my two daughters, get it right away — and they’ve been just fine with it and in fact haven’t gotten sick this entire flu season — then you need to know that you need to make sure your children get it as well.
Michelle and I just got the shots ourselves we wanted to make sure nationwide that children were getting it before adults did. And now there’s enough vaccine so that adults should get it as well.
Last point I’ll make on this, particularly if you’re a senior citizen, you should get both the seasonal flu and the H1N1 flu. They’re different flus. The seasonal flu is still deadly, particularly for older Americans. And if you haven’t already gotten your flu shot there’s ample seasonal flu vaccine available as well, so you should do both.
Q As we’re talking about health, we’re talking about health care today — earlier this morning, 1:00 a.m. — were you up, first of all, to see the vote?
THE PRESIDENT: I was up because I wanted to make sure that I was watching what could end up being a historic moment.
This health care bill, I think people need to understand just how significant this is. We’ve got 30 million people who are going to get health insurance because of this bill. And disproportionately they will be African American as well as Latino. One out of five African Americans don’t have health insurance — that’s almost double the general population. So right off the bat you’re helping millions of people across the country.
Then if you’ve already got health insurance this says that insurance companies can’t engage in the kind of gimmicks and abuses that lead them to drop coverage right when you get sick or prevent you from getting health insurance because you’ve got a preexisting condition. So all the insurance reforms that we care about are in this package, which is why the insurance companies have been spending hundreds of millions of dollars in trying to fight this.
Then it’s deficit neutral. It’s not adding to the debt. Contrary to what you’re hearing from a lot of opponents it’s not adding to the debt. It’s subtracting from the debt because we’re going to be able to get a lot of savings in terms of how we provide medicine over the long term. There’s money in there for prevention, for community health clinics that serve underserved communities, particularly in the inner city. I mean, there is so much good in this bill and I’m now confident that it is going to pass and I think that the African American community — which has been suffering from health care disparities for such a long time — has a huge, huge interest in seeing this go through.
Q That’s interesting you talk about the disparities in African Americans, because many civil rights leaders, to include persons in the NAACP, are upset that the Senate version does not have the public option; the House has the public option. And the Senate and the House version are very far apart. What are the fears that you have going forward with trying to get a health care reform bill together in a timely fashion?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, first of all, I think it’s important to understand, April, that the Senate and the House bills are 95 percent identical. There’s 5 percent differences, and one of those differences is the public option. But this is an area that has just become symbolic of a lot of ideological fights. As a practical matter, this is not the most important aspect to this bill — the House bill or the Senate bill.
And the idea behind the public option was is that alongside these choices that you could choose from in the private insurance industry, you could also potentially get a government-managed plan. But it was only going to apply to a few million people who were buying into the exchange. So it wasn’t like suddenly everybody would just go out there and buy a government-run plan; most people will still get health insurance from their employers. What will happen is, is that if you don’t get health insurance through your employers, you can then go to this what we’re calling a health care exchange, get a subsidy, and buy health insurance through that exchange.
But either way, whether there’s a public option in there or not, if you don’t have health insurance, you are going to have now the option of getting it at a reasonable cost. And that’s the most important thing. And as I said, nobody has a bigger stake than the African American community in this, because disproportionately, we’re the ones without health insurance.
Q Speaking of the African American community, this seems to be a shift in black leadership, as it relates to supporting you. You have the CBC that’s upset with you about targeting on the jobs front — African Americans, 15.6 percent unemployment rate, expected to go to 20 percent; mainstream America 10 percent. Then you have black actors who supported you — Danny Glover, who’s saying that you’ve not changed, your administration is the same as George W. Bush. What are your thoughts about the fact that black leadership is grumbling, and the fact that people are concerned with you being the first African American President, and they thought that there would be a little bit more compassion for black issues?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, first of all, April, I think you just engaged in a big generalization in terms of how you asked that question. If you want me to line up all the black actors, for example, who support me, and put them on one side of the room, and a couple who are grumbling on the other, I’m happy to have that.
I think if you look at the polling, in terms of the attitudes of the African American community, there’s overwhelming support for what we’ve tried to do. And, so, is there grumbling? Of course there’s grumbling, because we just went through the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. And everybody is concerned about unemployment, everybody’s concerned about businesses not hiring, everybody’s concerned about their home values declining. And in each of these areas, African Americans have been disproportionately affected. We were some of the folks who were most affected by predatory lending. There’s a long history of us being the last hired and the first fired. As I said, health care — we’re the ones who are in the worst position to absorb companies deciding to drop their health care plans.
So, should people be satisfied? Absolutely not. But let’s take a look at what I’ve done. The Recovery Act helped to lift up an economy that was teetering on the verge of depression. We made sure that states didn’t engage in budget cuts to cut teachers and firefighters and police officers, many of whom are African American. Unemployment insurance we have put in place so that folks can still make their payments and keep their electricity on as consequence of what we’ve done. We have now made enormous investments, historic investments in education, a lot of that targeted into the inner city. Health care I already discussed. This will be hugely important for the African American community.
So this notion somehow that because there wasn’t a transformation overnight that we’ve been neglectful is simply factually not accurate.
Now, do we have to do more work? Absolutely. Because as I said before, the African American community was already hurting before the recession. And that means that the steps we’re taking around education reform, to make sure our schools are performing properly; the fact that, for example, we have recorded historic increases in Pell grants and Perkins loans, which disproportionately help our folks; that is all projected to get our education system up and running, so that it’s working for young people, they can take advantage of the jobs of the future.
When we are designing our green jobs initiatives, one of the things that we’re looking at is how do we make sure that young people in the cities who are going to be weatherized are trained for those weatherization jobs, to put them on a track for a trade over the long term. Small business lending, we have increased Small Business Administration loans by 73 percent, because banks weren’t lending. Those are being lent to African American small businesses, who are out there struggling because the larger banks aren’t helping them out.
So we have made a series of steps that make a huge difference. The only thing I cannot do is, you know, by law I can’t pass laws that say I’m just helping black folks. I’m the President of the entire United States. What I can do is make sure that I am passing laws that help all people, particularly those who are most vulnerable and most in need. That in turn is going to help lift up the African American community.
But we’re going to have a hole that we have to dig out of for a long time, and it has to do with structural impediments to opportunity that we are going to continue to try to knock down. But it’s not going to happen in one year; it’s going to take not just one term, but it’s going to take years. The important point is that we’re moving in the right direction.
Q And lastly, you’ll be coming up with your State of the Union, your first State of the Union in January. And I know you’re going to speak to all America. But, in your opinion, what is the state of black America?
THE PRESIDENT: You know, I think this continues to be the best of times and the worst of times. I mean, I think it’s the best of times in the sense that never has there been more opportunity for African Americans who have received a good education and are in a position then to walk through the doors that are opened. And, obviously, you and me sitting here in the Oval Office is a testament to that.
I think it’s the worst of times in the sense that unemployment and the lack of opportunity, particularly in some cities, has never been worse. I mean, you look at a city like Detroit where you used to have an enormous African American middle class built on the auto industry — that city is in hard, hard times right now.
Now, just going back to the point you raised earlier about our responsiveness to the African American community, imagine what Detroit would look like if we hadn’t stepped in to make sure that GM stayed open, which was on the verge of bankruptcy. Having said that, if you’ve got double digit unemployment in cities like that, we’re going to have to make some special efforts, and it starts with early childhood education; it starts with education generally. That’s why I’m putting such a big emphasis on that. But it also means that every federal agency has to make sure that the assistance that’s being made available to the general population is targeting those hard to reach places, so that they are also benefiting from our overall efforts to lift up the economy.
I’m optimistic about the long term future of the African American community, but it’s going to take work. It was never going to be done just because we elected me. It’s going to be a collaborative effort between people in the community who recognize that we’re going to have to rely on government to do some things, but a lot of these things we’re going to have to do ourselves.
Q Mr. President, thank you so much. Happy holidays. It’s awesome to be here in the Oval Office. It’s very nice — (laughter) — to say the least. But thank you so much, and thank you for giving us this interview for American Urban Radio Networks.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, it was great to talk to you. And I wish everybody out there a blessed and happy New Year, a wonderful Christmastime. And I feel pretty confident that 2010 is going to be better than 2009.
Q Thank you, sir.
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you.
A White House nurse prepares to administer the H1N1 vaccine to President Barack Obama at the White House on Sunday, Dec. 20, 2009.
(Official White House photo by Pete Souza)
BC-US–Obama-Swine Flu, 1st Ld-Writethru
President Obama and first lady get swine flu shots
President Obama says he and Mrs. Obama got swine flu shots, encourages others to get theirs
WASHINGTON (AP) _ President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama have received their swine flu shots.
Obama said Monday that he and his wife “just got the shots.” A White House official later said Obama was vaccinated at the White House on Sunday and that Mrs. Obama was vaccinated a few days before her husband.
The president also encouraged everyone to get vaccinated against the H1N1 strain of flu now that the vaccine is available to the general public. The vaccines had been restricted to high-risk groups such as children.
Obama said the vaccine is safe.
“I think people just need to understand if I had the two people that are most important in my life, my two daughters, get it right away … then you need to make sure your children get it as well,” he said.
Daughters Malia, 11, and Sasha, 8, got their shots in October when the vaccine first became available. In the interview, Obama said the girls have been just fine and have yet to get sick this flu season.
Obama commented in an Oval Office interview with American Urban Radio Networks.
Obama concedes ‘grumbling’
POTUS’s outlook on black America
By CAROL E. LEE | 12/21/09 4:58 PM
POTUS’s outlook on black America
President Barack Obama is seen in the Diplomatic Reception Room of the White House. AP Close
President Barack Obama deflected criticism Monday that he has not been attentive enough to the African-American community, telling American Urban Radio Networks that he was unconcerned to see that kind of message coming from former supporters such as actor Danny Glover.
“If you want me to line up all the black actors, for example, who support me and put them on one side of the room and a couple who are grumbling on the other, I’m happy to have that,” Obama said, adding that polls show African-Americans express “overwhelming support for what we’ve tried to do.”
In an interview with reporter April Ryan, Obama argued that the fact of his sitting with Ryan for an interview with the Oval Office was significant on its own.
“Is there grumbling?” he asked rhetorically. “Of course, there’s grumbling, because we just went through the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.”
“We were some of the folks who were most affected by predatory lending. There’s a long history of us being the last hired and the first fired. As I said on health care, we’re the ones who are in the worst position to absorb companies deciding to drop their health care plans,” Obama said. “So, should people be satisfied? Absolutely not. But let’s take a look at what I’ve done.”
Obama repeatedly used the pronoun “we” in discussing America’s black community, but insisted that he shouldn’t be expected to target policies exclusively to African-Americans.
“The only thing I cannot do is, by law I can’t pass laws that say I’m just helping black folks,” Obama said. “I’m the president of the entire United States. What I can do is make sure that I am passing laws that help all people, particularly those who are most vulnerable and most in need. That, in turn, is going to help lift up the African-American community.”
The president pointed to his push for health care reform as one part of his agenda that would benefit African-Americans, along with the rest of the country.
“We’ve got 30 million people who are going to get health insurance because of this bill and disproportionately they will be African-American as well as Latino,” Obama said. “Whether there’s a public option in there or not, if you don’t have health insurance, you are going to have now the option of getting it at a reasonable cost. That’s the most important thing, and as I said, nobody has a bigger stake than the African-American community in this because disproportionately we’re the ones without health insurance.”
As for the state of black America, Obama said it’s a mixed picture.
“I’m optimistic about the long-term future of the African-American community, but it’s going to take work,” Obama said. “It was never going to be done just because we elected me.”
With an offer of significant new aid to help poor nations cope with the effects of global warming, the Obama administration began diplomatic efforts to save the troubled climate talks before the president’s expected Friday arrival in Copenhagen.
President Obama is pressuring developing countries to cut their emissions while calling on industrialized nations to include Brazil, India and China to reduce their emissions to save the ozone layer and prevent Global Warming. The President is offering the United States as an example. President Obama is pushing forward with the U-S government mandate to cut emissions by 17 percent over a period of time.
In related news, a block from the White House Greenpeace protested against the United States Chamber of Congress. The group contends the Chamber is in violation for impeding the presidents Climate Change initiatives.
Are Blacks Abandoning Obama?
by Lloyd Grove
December 15, 2009 | 11:20pm
Danny Glover, Jesse Jackson, and other activists talk to Lloyd Grove about disappointment in the African-American community with the president’s first year.
Danny Glover heaved a sigh when I asked him recently what he thought of President Obama’s performance so far.
It wasn’t a sigh of relief.
“I think the Obama administration has followed the same playbook, to a large extent, almost verbatim, as the Bush administration. I don’t see anything different,” the activist movie actor said of Obama’s policies in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Middle East. “On the domestic side, look here: What’s so clear is that this country from the outset is projecting the interests of wealth and property. Look at the bailout of Wall Street. Why not the bailout of Main Street?”
“He may be just a different face, and that face may happen to be black-and if it were Hillary Clinton, it would happen to be a woman,” says Danny Glover. “But what choices do they have within the structure?”
More in sorrow than in anger, Glover went on: “What choice does he have-in four years, eight years? Let’s just call a spade a spade. Really. There are no choices out there. He may be just a different face, and that face may happen to be black-and if it were Hillary Clinton, it would happen to be a woman-but what choices do they have within the structure?”
• Reihan Salam: Obama Is the Left’s Worst Enemy Glover is among a growing chorus of African-American opinion leaders who are publicly and privately expressing varying degrees of resignation, disappointment, and outright anger concerning a presidency on which so many hopes have ridden. Who can forget the iconic image of the tear-streaked Rev. Jesse Jackson-who in 1984 and 1988 waged formidable campaigns of his own for the Democratic presidential nomination-as he stood overcome with emotion amid the jubilant crowd at Chicago’s Grant Park as Obama gave his victory speech?
These days Jackson is decidedly dry-eyed.
“Let me distinguish African-American support for the president from the need to challenge policies and protect our interests,” Jackson said. He argues that vocal and effective activism on Obama’s left flank could alter the political dynamic and help him accomplish such goals as health-care reform, job creation, and stricter regulation of Wall Street-in much the same way that civil-rights marches in the South, and the media attention they received, captured the nation’s moral imagination and helped Lyndon Johnson pass landmark legislation in the mid-1960s. “But this doesn’t always turn on a race-based analysis,” Jackson cautioned. “It doesn’t always have to be a function of animus” of one African American for another.
Yet in recent weeks, such prominent voices as Rep. John Conyers, the powerful chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and New York Times columnist Charles Blow have been among those taking shots at Obama over his policies, rhetoric, and political positioning.
“A lot of people are pissed off out there,” said one well-known political player who slams the president for embarrassing African-American Gov. David Paterson of New York by trying to shove him out of next year’s Democratic primary election in favor of Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, and campaigning vigorously for New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine’s unsuccessful reelection race while ignoring African-American candidate Bill Thompson’s closer-than-expected mayoral bid against Mike Bloomberg. “Thompson could have won that race,” says this politico, who-for the moment, anyway-is keeping his powder dry and declining to criticize the president on the record.
Conyers, in a remarkable outburst to The Hill newspaper, recounted how he cut Obama off a few weeks ago when the president phoned to demand an explanation for the congressman’s blunt criticisms of the troop surge in Afghanistan (”he’s getting bad advice from clowns”), Obama’s compromises on health-care reform (”bowing down” to the “nutty right wing”), and his alleged mishandling of the promised prison shutdown at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
“He called me and told me that he heard that I was demeaning him and I had to explain to him that it wasn’t anything personal, it was an honest difference on the issues,” Conyers told The Hill. “And he said, ‘Well, let’s talk about it.’ ” But the 80-year-old Conyers informed the president that he was in no mood to chat. “I’ve been saying I don’t agree with him on Afghanistan, I think he screwed up on health-care reform, on Guantánamo and kicking Greg off,” Conyers added, referring to the forced resignation of White House counsel Gregory Craig over the Guantánamo prison issue.
The New York Times’ Blow, in his Dec. 4 column, noted the president’s surprising lack of empathy for blacks suffering disproportionately from the dire effects of recession.
“There was an expectation, particularly among African Americans, that the first African-American president would at least be vocal about feeling their pain,” Blow said last week on MSNBC’s Hardball. “I think that has not been the case. The president has given a couple of speeches and he has been very heavy on the stick and not very heavy with the carrot… Just in the inability for him to commiserate with that group of people, people feel a bit deflated… He said he’s not going to focus separately on African-American issues at all. That let a lot of people down.”
These sentiments are mirrored in recent polls suggesting that while overall support for Obama among black voters continues to be overwhelming, hovering in the 90 percent range, the intensity of that support appears to be diminishing-a trend that could end up affecting black turnout in next year’s congressional midterm elections and possibly even the presidential election of 2012.
A breakout of black voters in Washington Post surveys over the past eight months shows that those who “strongly” approve of Obama fell from 85 to 69 percent, while his disapproval rating quintupled-from 2 to 11 percent. Admittedly, that’s still very low number, but it’s evidently moving in the wrong direction.
Senior research associate David Bositis, of the African-American-oriented Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, says record black turnout was among the factors that delivered six key swing states to Obama, totaling 107 electoral votes, in the 2008 election-Florida, Indiana, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.
Bositis predicted that black turnout for Obama will remain strong in 2012-and that the president enjoys significantly higher approval ratings among black voters than African-American members of Congress in their own districts. But independent pollster Matthew Towery, a former Republican strategist, said even a slight diminution in turnout could have an outsize impact.
“In a state like Florida, which Obama won by two percentage points, a falloff of 10 percent in black turnout might have changed the result and given the state to McCain,” said Towery, who recently conducted a statewide poll showing the president with an astonishing 35 percent disapproval rating among African Americans in Georgia. Towery cautioned that the startling statistics might be a peculiarity, owing to the brutal economic downturn in a state that was only recently booming.
“My best guess is that the current black polling numbers for Obama are somewhat unusual in Georgia because black professionals and the black middle class here have had to get in the unemployment line alongside younger workers who’ve only recently moved to the city and state; and many of them, too, have seen their houses foreclosed on,” Towery wrote in a recent column. He added: “Will government’s apparent inability to effect the promised positive ‘change’ begin to fan discontent in other black communities across the nation? Or will this encroaching uneasiness with Obama stay limited to this one snapshot in time in this one Southern state? We can’t yet know, but the early signs are there.”
Gatecrashers among 91 White House breaches
Monday, 07, Dec 2009 12:17
By Anisa Kadri.
Following the recent incident involving Tareq and Michaele Salahi gatecrashing a state dinner with President Barack Obama, a secret document exposing other White House security breaches has been uncovered.
According to the Washington Post, the report shows that White House security has been threatened a minimum of 91 times since 1980.
The security breakdowns include a family who drove into the White House gardens in a mini van in 1982, a pilot who killed himself trying to land his plane in the grounds in 1994 and a woman who falsely declared that she had a “special relationship” with former president Bill Clinton.
The report was commissioned in 2001 by the Secret Service after the impostor Richard C Weaver bypassed security to shake George Bush’s hand.
Secret Service official Edwin Donovan asserted that the report was created to train officers and agents, saying that it “raises the awareness of uniformed division officers and agents about their jobs”.
He continued: “We have to be concerned about the threats to our protectees at all times, whether at the White House or away from the White House.”
Since 1980, trespassers have managed to meet people protected by the Secret Service, including the president, eight times. The same man was involved in four of these incidents.
The report states, that before their intrusion, over four in ten impostors were known to federal agencies, eight had admitted their intent, and three were already being investigated by the Secret Service.
The dossier also claims to reveal loopholes that could be abused by potential criminals.
Meanwhile, the most recent intrusion by the Salahis has provoked the Secret Service into launching a criminal investigation against the pair and assessing the White House’s current security measures.
Mr and Mrs Salahi gained notoriety when, uninvited, they managed to gatecrash a state banquet hosted at the White House by President Obama in honour of visiting Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh.
An official White House photo later released showed Mrs Salahi, an aspiring reality TV star, shaking hands with the president.
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Conyers on Obama call: ‘It was an honest difference on the issues’
DAVID SHEPARDSON
Detroit News Washington Bureau
Washington — Rep. John Conyers told a Capitol Hill newspaper that President Barack Obama had recently taken him to the woodshed over comments he made.
Conyers, D-Detroit, who is chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, told The Hill newspaper Obama “called me and told me that he heard that I was demeaning him, and I had to explain to him that it wasn’t anything personal. It was an honest difference on the issues,” Conyers said.
In the Hill interview, Conyers reiterated his criticism of Obama’s troop build-up in Afghanistan.
“Calling in generals and admirals to discuss troop strength is like me taking my youngest to McDonald’s to ask if he likes French fries,” Conyers said.
The White House declined to comment on Conyers’ remarks.
Conyers didn’t offer much when asked about his comments today. Asked why Obama called him, he said: “You’ll have to ask him what prompted his call. I don’t know.”
Told the White House wouldn’t comment, Conyers said: “I better say the same thing if I know what’s good for me.”
The call was apparently prompted by coverage of Conyers’ remarks on the Bill Press Radio Show.
“I’m getting tired of saving Obama’s can in the White House. I mean, he only won (health care reform) by five votes in the House, and this bill wasn’t anything to write home about,” he said. “The public option is only available, which is the only way you manage cost and get some competition to 1,300 other health insurance companies, the only way he could have got that through is that progressives held their nose and voted for it anyway.” He also said Obama’s leadership was lacking.
“You know, holding hands out and beer on Friday nights in the White House and bowing down to every nutty right-wing proposal about health care, and saying on occasion that public options aren’t all that important is doing a disservice,” he said.
Obama accepts Nobel Peace Prize
by Stephen Collinson and Rita Devlin Marier Stephen Collinson And Rita Devlin Marier
OSLO (AFP) - US President Barack Obama on Thursday accepted the Nobel Peace Prize, paying tribute to activists who have taken on governments around the world while uncomfortably acknowledging his role as a leader at war.
Obama’s elevation to a pantheon of winners alongside the likes of Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa and Martin Luther King before he has even spent a year in office has sparked international criticism.
Obama said he received the award with “great humility” and acknowledged the “controversy” saying that next to “some of the giants of history who have received this prize my accomplishments are slight”.
He paid tribute to anti-government demonstrators in Iran, Myanamar and Zimbabwe and said the United States would always stand on the side of those who sought freedom.
“We will bear witness to the quiet dignity of reformers like Aung Sang Suu Kyi; to the bravery of Zimbabweans who cast their ballots in the face of beatings; to the hundreds of thousands who have marched silently through the streets of Iran,” Obama said.
“It is telling that the leaders of these governments fear the aspirations of their own people more than the power of any other nation.
“And it is the responsibility of all free people and free nations to make clear to these movements that hope and history are on their side.”
Responding to the international controversy over the award, the chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Thorbjoern Jagland, told the prize ceremony however that “history can tell us a great deal about lost opportunities.”
“It is now, today, that we have the opportunity to support President Obama’s ideas. This year’s prize is indeed a call to action for all of us.”
Obama is only the third sitting president to win the prize and he has been closely questioned about his credentials in Oslo, particularly after his decision to send 30,000 extra troops to Afghanistan.
He has admitted the timing of the award is an awkward coincidence.
Before the ceremony, he said: “I have no doubt there are others who may be more deserving.”
But he told a press conference he would use the prize to bolster his pro-engagement foreign policy, and to work for lasting world peace.
“The goal is not to win a popularity contest or to get an award, even one as prestigious as the Nobel peace prize. The goal has been to advance America’s interests,” he said.
“If I am successful in those tasks, then hopefully some of the criticism will subside, but that is not really my concern.
“If I am not successful, then all the praise and the awards in the world won’t disguise that fact.”
The Nobel committee praised Obama for nurturing a new era of engagement and multilateralism in US foreign policy when it made its shock announcement in October.
Obama’s first stop after landing in Oslo at dawn was to sign the guest book at the Norwegian Nobel Institute.
He marveled at how the award of the 1964 Nobel peace prize had galvanized the civil rights fight of Martin Luther King, who he has said helped pave the way for him to become the first African American president.
Obama lavishly praised Norway’s hospitality amid disappointment in Oslo at his decision to cut short his stay, even leaving before an official dinner on Thursday night.
Disappointment in Norway was mirrored in the United States, where the US leader’s once huge popularity has started to fray and isolationist sentiment is on the rise.
Several Norwegian peace and anti-nuclear organisations held demonstrations outside the award ceremony against a president who took office on a wave of euphoria but who critics say has fallen short of forging promised change.
Outside the Nobel committee offices, protestors held up a banner reading “Obama you won the prize, now earn it.”
An InFact institute poll published Wednesday in the Verdens Gang daily showed just 35.9 percent of Norwegians thought Obama deserved the prize, down from 42.7 percent in October.
Nearly as many, 33.5 percent, believe the 44th US president is unworthy of the award that has been handed out for over a century.
In the United States, a Quinnipiac University survey of 2,313 registered voters published Tuesday showed that by a wide margin of 66-26 percent, Americans think Obama does not deserve the Nobel Peace Prize.
The medicine, physics, chemistry, economics and literature Nobel laureates will receive their awards at a ceremony in Stockholm on Thursday.
Other historic Nobel Peace Prize speeches.
On December 10, 1964 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. received his diploma and award in Oslo.
2007 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Former Vice President Al Gore
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