President Obama is using a video posted on whitehouse.gov to speak directly to the Iranian public. According to this AP article:

In the video, the second of his presidency directed at Iran, Obama said that the United States’ offer of diplomatic dialogue still stands but that the Iranian government has chosen isolation. He said the U.S. believes in the dignity of every human being.

The White House released the video late Friday, timing it, as it did last year, to coincide with Nowruz, a 12-day holiday celebrating the arrival of spring and the beginning of the new year on the Persian calendar. The video comes as the United States has hit a rough patch in its relationships in the region, particularly with Israel.
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“The Internet” is being championed for the Nobel Peace Prize by the Italian version of Wired Magazine, according to the BBC and other reports. A record 237 individuals and organizations have been nominated for this year’s prize, which was controversially awarded to President Obama last year.

According to the BBC:

It is unclear who would accept the prize if the internet were to win.

Internet for Peace, set up to help support the nomination of the internet, says the prize would be “a Nobel for each and every one of us”.

President Obama responded to questions yesterday about Twitter and the Chinese government’s web filtering in a town hall with university students yesterday in Shanghai, China.

The questions had been e-mailed to the U.S. Embassy and were read aloud by U.S. Ambassador Jon Huntsman: “In a country with 350 million Internet users and 60 million bloggers, do you know of the firewall?” And second, “Should we be able to use Twitter freely?”

Obama’s response was polite – it did not directly criticize the host country’s government – but firm in its defense of non-censorship:
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President Obama became the first president to celebrate Diwali, or festival of lights, an official holiday in India and a festival in Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism and Jainism, last week.
Kalpen Modi, associate director in the Office of Public Engagement, who is better known by his acting name, Kal Penn, blogged about it here.

Modi, who is perhaps best known for his role in the movie “Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle,” was hired by the White House to do outreach to the Asian as well as arts communities. He started work in July. Penn is well suited for building a bridge to those communities; he campaigned for Obama during the 2008 presidential campaign and was a member of his National Arts Policy Committee. And he also taught classes in the Asian American Studies Program at the University of Pennsylvania, “Images of Asian Americans in the Media” and “Contemporary American Teen Films.”

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Bono, the lead singer of U2, has a guest editorial in the New York Times today defending the Nobel Committee’s decision to award the Peace Prize to President Obama. It might seem odd to have a rock star comment on whether Obama deserves the prize, except it’s Bono, who has used his celebrity to raise public awareness and gain audiences with political leaders around the world in order to advocate for his main causes of Africa and the AIDS pandemic.

Bono makes particular note of Obama’s goal of eradicating extreme poverty. Bono believes that goal, along with the president’s work on nuclear proliferation, climate change, Middle East relations and domestic issues like job creation and health care, constitute “rebranding in action.” Here is an excerpt:

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The reaction to President Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize ranged from supportive to outraged. The common emotion shared by his supporters and critics shared was surprise.

There were a record 205 nominees – 172 individuals and 33 organizations – topping the previous record of 199 set in 2005.  Although the nominations are kept secret for 50 years, some of them become known sooner if those making the submissions choose to publicize their choice.

Among the other reported or speculated nominees were Colombian activist Piedad Cordoba, Afghan woman’s rights activist Simi Samar, Congolese physician Denis Mukwege, Macedonian humanitarian and artist Zivko Popovski-Cvetin, Austrian children’s charity SOS-Kinderdorf International, American Greg Mortenson for his Asian school building charity, Vietnamese religious leader Thich Quang Do, American musician Pete Seeger and Chinese dissidents Hu Jia and Wei Jingsheng.

The Washington Post editorial board had an interesting suggestion for who they thought should have gotten the award instead of Obama: a woman who was entirely unknown in the world until she died, but whose first name now evokes a whole movement.

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