Not Nobel Winners

[red-beard]

From the Wall Street Journal today:


In Olso yesterday, the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize was not awarded to the Burmese monks whose defiance against, and brutalization at the hands of, the country's military junta in recent weeks captured the attention of the Free World.
The prize was also not awarded to Morgan Tsvangirai, Arthur Mutambara and other Zimbabwe opposition leaders who were arrested and in some cases beaten by police earlier this year while protesting peacefully against dictator Robert Mugabe.
Or to Father Nguyen Van Ly, a Catholic priest in Vietnam arrested this year and sentenced to eight years in prison for helping the pro-democracy group Block 8406.
Or to Wajeha al-Huwaider and Fawzia al-Uyyouni, co-founders of the League of Demanders of Women's Right to Drive Cars in Saudi Arabia, who are waging a modest struggle with grand ambitions to secure basic rights for women in that Muslim country.
Or to Colombian President Álvaro Uribe, who has fought tirelessly to end the violence wrought by left-wing terrorists and drug lords in his country.
Or to Garry Kasparov and the several hundred Russians who were arrested in April, and are continually harassed, for resisting President Vladimir Putin's slide toward authoritarian rule.
Or to the people of Iraq, who bravely work to rebuild and reunite their country amid constant threats to themselves and their families from terrorists who deliberately target civilians.
Or to Presidents Viktor Yushchenko and Mikheil Saakashvili who, despite the efforts of the Kremlin to undermine their young states, stayed true to the spirit of the peaceful "color" revolutions they led in Ukraine and Georgia and showed that democracy can put down deep roots in Russia's backyard.
Or to Britain's Tony Blair, Ireland's Bertie Ahern and the voters of Northern Ireland, who in March were able to set aside decades of hatred to establish joint Catholic-Protestant rule in Northern Ireland.
Or to thousands of Chinese bloggers who run the risk of arrest by trying to bring uncensored information to their countrymen.
Or to scholar and activist Saad Eddin Ibrahim, jailed presidential candidate Ayman Nour and other democracy campaigners in Egypt.
Or, posthumously, to lawmakers Walid Eido, Pierre Gemayel, Antoine Ghanem, Rafik Hariri, George Hawi and Gibran Tueni; journalist Samir Kassir; and other Lebanese citizens who've been assassinated since 2005 for their efforts to free their country from Syrian control.
Or to the Reverend Phillip Buck; Pastor Chun Ki Won and his organization, Durihana; Tim Peters and his Helping Hands Korea; and Liberty in North Korea, who help North Korean refugees escape to safety in free nations.
These men and women put their own lives and livelihoods at risk by working to rid the world of violence and oppression. Let us hope they survive the coming year so that the Nobel Prize Committee might consider them for the 2008 award.

[john70t]

Didn't Rupert Mordock just purchase the WSJ?

[red-beard]

What does that have to do with anything?

[john70t]

I read about this experiment. They put 5 rats in a cage and supplied the subsistance food rations for 20. The rats multiplied to about 30, then they started fighting and eating each other until there there were 20 left.
They then maintained this population for a long time.

At the conclusion of the experiment, it seems their environment has more an effect on the rats quality of life than how they interacted while they were busy multiplying.

[red-beard]

And what does that have to do with anything related to this?

[kstar]

I understand your angle John, and I truly appreciate what Mr. Gore has done as far as dramatically raising awareness about an event that is happening, at least for the geologic moment. Of course, the scientific jury remains out regarding whether man or the sun or some other factor is causing this climate change and the experts are even more divided regarding what if anything can de done by man to modify this climate change.

It's a good thing that Mr. Gore has created such awareness about the environment even if the method was a bit muddy - his work has lead to an increased adoption of renewable resource applications. But, IMHO, the talk of impending global doom because of climate change and what man can do to change it seems shaky, uncertain and amorphous.

I am more moved by the list Red-Beard posted, the folks who have already made a real and measurable impact on peace in this world.

It's just my opinion, but something does smell funny in Oslo . . . and has for some time now.

Best,

Kurt

[john70t]

I'm just arguing for the sake of arguing Kurt. Someone doesn't have to be "pro-peace" to be a member of the anti-Gore lobby.

Of course the "peace prize" should go to those actively dedicated to (and suffering for) changing their local political conditions.
The bigger picture would extend beyond localities, but few people want to think about unpleasant thoughts like self-restraint in terms of population growth and conservation.

[Tobra]

Originally Posted by john70t

Didn't Rupert Mordock just purchase the WSJ?

Huh?

This years winners got it for making the current United States administration look bad, seems like there have been a number of "Peace Prize Winners" that fit in that category recently, didn't Carter win one for that?

It is not really a peace prize

[Joeaksa]

There was a time when the Nobel prize was really something to have won.

After Yasser Arafat was given the award it went downhill from there...

[island911]

Originally Posted by kstarnes

.. I truly appreciate what Mr. Gore has done as far as dramatically raising awareness about an event that is happening, at least for the geologic moment. ...

It's a good thing that Mr. Gore has created such awareness about the environment even if the method was a bit muddy - h...

It's just my opinion, but something does smell funny in Oslo . . . and has for some time now.

Best,

Kurt

That funny smell, well, THAT you should know about from the great contributions from Trey Parker. We all need to truly appreciate what Mr. Trey Parker has done as far as dramatically raising awareness about that scary, and smelly, problem of ManBearPig. Trey should really get an award or something for that.

[DanielDudley]

Originally Posted by red-beard

What does that have to do with anything?

Um, a lot.

[Joeaksa]

Originally Posted by DanielDudley

Um, a lot.

Pls explain it to us as I do not see any correlation either.

[varmint]

the liberals have their own "inconvenient truths". al gore does not compare well with any of the people on that list. it shows how trivial the nobel prize can be.

but by claiming rupert murdoch is involved, john70t doesn't have to deal with the issue.


so i'll ask the question again. why does al gore deserve the prize more than any of the people listed above?

[varmint]

nothing better illustrates the absurdity, than when rush limbaugh got himself nominated for a nobelpeace prize last year.

here's an articles from reason, explaining other ways to game the system...


yes, it's a long cut and paste.i apologize.






the last decade, Al Gore has won the triple crown: an Oscar, a Nobel Peace Prize, and (this is disputed) Florida. Now, winning an Oscar is hard—you usually have to pretend to be handicapped, or speak with a semi-convincing English accent, or spend hours in an uncomfortable period costume. And Gore himself would have trouble telling you how to claim the Sunshine State. But the Nobel Prize is easy. The important thing to remember is that peace doesn't have much to do with it. One of the very first winners was Theodore Roosevelt, a man who described the Spanish-American War as "fun." The Peace Prize is more of a Humanitarian of the Year Award, with humanitarian defined loosely enough to include Yasser Arafat and Henry Kissinger.

Broadly speaking, there are three ways to get it:

1. Be a famous humanitarian. This is the obvious approach. It is also the hardest. The Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to Albert Schweitzer, who built hospitals in Africa; to Norman Borlaug, who developed high-yield strains of wheat; to Muhammed Yunus, who devised a new method of giving loans to low-income entrepreneurs; and to the Dalai Lama, who...actually, I'm not sure what the Dalai Lama does, but evidently it impresses a lot of people.

Does your achievement need to be related to peace? It can—as with, say, Linus Pauling, who capped off an impressive scientific career with a crusade against above-ground nuclear testing. But the peace angle isn't necessary. It isn't even strictly necessary that your accomplishments be as impressive in practice as they are in your intentions. (You'll note that Gore has not actually stopped global warming.) The best way to get credit in Oslo is to conduct your humanitarian pursuits while working with some vast global agency. Indeed, if you don't think you have the chops to, say, revolutionize Third World agriculture, you can always get a Peace Prize the next way:

2. Start an international organization. Or, if you can swing it, be an international organization. Over the years, the Nobel Peace Prize has gone to Amnesty International, Doctors Without Borders, the UN's International Labor Organization, and the Red Cross. Gore himself will share his prize with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The Peace Prize has also gone to Cordell Hull, who helped found the United Nations; to Dag Hammarskjöld, the former head of the United Nations; to Kofi Annan, another former head of the United Nations; and to a wide range of delegates to and officials within the United Nations. UNICEF won it once. The UN's refugee office won it twice. When Annan took the prize, he shared it with the entire United Nations. And before there was a United Nations, the Nobel committee promoted the League of Nations. (In 1919 it gave the prize to League founder Woodrow Wilson, whose previous contribution to peace was to plunge the United States into the most pointless major war in its history.) Before there was a League of Nations, the Nobel committee honored groups like the Inter-Parliamentary Union and the Institute for International Law.

Now, some of those organizations do worthy things. But they don't have much to do with peace, unless you define peace as "international cooperation." Sometimes, as with Amnesty International and Doctors Without Borders, that means a bottom-up movement of individuals collaborating across national lines. More often the award honors institutions of global governance, whether or not they're particularly pacific. One year it went to the UN's peacekeeping forces, which advance the cause of peace by shooting people.

You'll see a similar trend in the non-institutional figures who win the Peace Prize. Occasionally it goes to a Carl von Ossietzky, a Martin Luther King, an Andrei Sakharov, a Lech Walesa—that is, to a person nonviolently struggling against an oppressive state. But the award is as likely to go to a current or former government official: a George Marshall, a Willy Brandt, a Mikhail Gorbachev, a Jimmy Carter. Some of those statesmen aren't exactly pacifists, which leads us to the third and easiest way to win the Peace Prize:

3. Kill a lot of people, then stop. In 1973, the Nobel Peace Prize was shared by Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho. Kissinger's CV included the "secret" bombing of Cambodia and the "Christmas" bombing of North Vietnam; just a month before his prize was announced, he was complicit in the coup that installed a brutal dictatorship in Chile. So why did he win? Because he and Tho had reached a truce to end the Vietnam War. Tho wasn't a particularly peaceful man either, but at least he had the common courtesy to refuse the award.

More recently, the prize went to Palestine Liberation Organization chief Yasser Arafat, a man whose career to that point had been spent arranging terrorist assaults on civilians. He shared the award with Israel's Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin; the three of them, like Kissinger and Tho, had negotiated an end to a war. In this case the peace agreement didn't hold, and both the state of Israel and various Palestinian groups went on to produce many more corpses. So don't worry if you develop a taste for blood during the initial stage of your Peace Prize campaign: You're free to resume killing once Mr. Nobel's money is safely in your hands.

By this method, the prize could conceivably go next year to Dick Cheney, the Janjaweed, or anyone else in a position to bring a war to a temporary stop. That someone could be you!

My advice to anyone who wants to follow in the footsteps of Linus Pauling and the Dalai Lama is to fuse approaches two and three. Start an NGO devoted to murder and mayhem—something on the SPECTRE/Al Qaeda/Medellin Cartel model—and then agree to a truce. In theory, you could accomplish this in an afternoon, but to make a splash big enough to impress the Nobel judges it's probably best to bargain with something larger than the Nashville Police Department's hostage negotiations unit. Choose your target wisely.

Either that, or make a movie.