Well, it’s official: the Nobel Peace Prize is completely meaningless. You see, those Norwegian geniuses have decided to award the Prize to Mohamad El-Baradei and the International Atomic Energy Agency:

In the nuclear non-proliferation regime, it is the IAEA which controls that nuclear energy is not misused for military purposes, and the Director General has stood out as an unafraid advocate of new measures to strengthen that regime.

Okay. Let’s see how ol’ Mohamed is doing. He assumed his post in 1997. Here are a few highlights during his tenure:

• May 1998: Pakistan and India each successfully test nuclear weapons.
• October 2002: North Korea acknowledges its nuclear program.
• December 2002: North Korea kicks out international inspectors.
• January 2003: North Korea withdraws from Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
• June 2003: El-Baradei declares that Iran has failed to report nuclear activities, but does not declare a breach of the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
• August 2003: North Korea and Iran agree to jointly develop long-range ballistic missiles.
• June 2004: Iranian foreign minister Kamal Kharrazi says "Iran has a high technical capability and has to be recognised by the international community as a member of the nuclear club."
• July 2004: Iran breaks IAEA seals on uranium-enriching equipment and gets back to work.
• February 2005: North Korea announces it has the bomb.

Good work, Mohamed. I quote Gordon Gekko in Wall Street:

"If this guy owned a funeral parlor, no one would die!"