Posted on 10/12/2008 7:51:39 PM PDT by WesternCulture
The Nobel Peace Prize, awarded in Oslo on Friday, often generates a certain amount of controversy. This year's award to peacebroker Martti Ahtisaari seems to take the prize back to its roots.
Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, whose will both funded and set up the terms of the Nobel prizes, decreed that the Peace Prize should go to whoever "shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and the holding and promotion of peace congresses."
In recent years, though, the prize has gone to environmental champions, human rights activists and a host of others not seemingly involved in actual peace work. The committee appointed by the Norwegian parliament to award the prize has seemed to stretch the definition of work that can lead to peace.
The committee has even been a target of indirect threats from those afraid of being embarrassed, most recently Chinese authorities who feared the Peace Prize would go to one of their dissidents. The Norwegian Foreign Ministry reportedly in turn feared reprisals from China if a Chinese dissident won.
The committee itself operates independently of the Norwegian government, and no current members of the government or parliament are allowed to sit on it.
While the other Nobel prizes are awarded in Stockholm, capital of Nobel's native Sweden, the man who invented dynamite wanted the Peace Prize be awarded by a committee appointed by the Norwegian parliament. Norway and Sweden were in an uneasy political union at the time, and some historians believe Nobel wanted to give a show of support to the Norwegians.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee is made up of five persons, mostly former politicians, who reflect the elected make-up of the Norwegian Parliament. Current members include Mjøs, a professor and former head of the University in Tromsø; Berge Ragnar Furre, a historian and theology professor at the University of Oslo who represented the Socialist Left party in parliament from 1973-77; Sissel Rønbeck, a member of parliament from 1977-93 from the Labour Party; Inger-Marie Ytterhorn, political adviser to the conservative Progress Party and a member of parliament from 1989-93; and Kaci Kullmann Five, a former trade minister and member of parliament for the Conservatives from 1981-97.
Both Mjøs and Furre will be replaced when their terms run out at the end of the year. The current make-up of the Norwegian Parliament means the new members will be chosen by the Labour Party and the Socialist Left.
WORTHLESS “honor”.
“The committee has even been a target of indirect threats from those afraid of being embarrassed, most recently Chinese authorities who feared the Peace Prize would go to one of their dissidents. The Norwegian Foreign Ministry reportedly in turn feared reprisals from China if a Chinese dissident won.”
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Just more fuel to the argument how political and useless this prize is. Algore and Arafat, anyone?
Giving the award to Algore and Carter were moments of idiocy- giving it to Arafat in 1994 is still an outrage.
The award is less than meaningless, it is shameful to win it now. It won’t be long before a recipient declines the award.
It used to be controversial. Now it’s just a joke.
Don’t forget Kofi Anan. Not since the League of Nations has a world leader done so little to prevent widespread murders.
a) would have disapproved of Al Gore's claims that the environmental scenarios he describe are based on solid scientific evidence (sooner, they are based on speculations connected to various “scientific experiments” mainly consisting in letting computer programs interpret other computer programs)
b) would have thought Al Gore's present activities to have little to do with “fraternity between nations..the abolition or reduction of standing armies and the holding and promotion of peace congresses”.
Furthermore, Nobel was absolutely not an anti-militarist:
“My dynamite will sooner lead to peace than a thousand world conventions. As soon as men will find that in one instant whole armies can be utterly destroyed, they will surely abide by a golden peace.”
Even though he later on changed his mind regarding the potential of dynamite in this area, he obviously believed that the disposal of deadly enough weapons on both sides could lead to a “balance of terror” between two enemies.
I'd say three interesting questions in this context, although not directly linked to the issue of the Nobel quote above, are these:
- Would Nobel have approved of Truman's decision to “drop the bomb”?
- Would he have given support to Reagan's stance towards the Soviet Union in general and the Strategic Defense Initiative program in particular?
More about Alfred Nobel:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Nobel
More about the Nobel Peace Prize:
Correction:
I wrote:
“I’d say three interesting questions..”, I mean TWO questions of course. :D
Don’t forget about the “ig Nobel Prizes” (see improbable.com)! Laudably bizzare research gets its own recognition.
Le Duc Tho is the first (and thus far only) person in history to refuse a Nobel Peace Prize. He declined the 1973 Peace Prize—jointly awarded to him and Henry Kissinger — because Vietnam was not yet at peace.
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