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.”
****
Just more fuel to the argument how political and useless this prize is. Algore and Arafat, anyone?
It used to be controversial. Now it’s just a joke.
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:
Don’t forget about the “ig Nobel Prizes” (see improbable.com)! Laudably bizzare research gets its own recognition.