Abolition of the Nobel Peace Prize. [Maybe they meant the Nobel Prize for Comedy.-ed. I hope so.]
MEANWHILE: In the real world of the United Nations (not the Stockholm Kabuki Theatre Version):
The U.N. employees union has criticized Secretary-General Kofi Annan for retaining his former chief-of-staff as an adviser despite accusations the aide authorized shredding three years of files on the corrupt oil-for-food program for Iraq.
A resolution adopted by the Staff Council, the union’s executive, and obtained Thursday by The Associated Press, said keeping Riza as a personal adviser “is inconsistent with the requirement that all those working for the United Nations organization shall be of the highest integrity.” The resolution was passed on Tuesday.
In a report in September, Volcker said Riza “played a greater role than he was willing to state” in the oil-for-food program. He was “the primary point of access to the secretary-general, routinely received copies of significant documents,” and reviewed a March 7, 2001 memorandum on allegations of kickbacks and surcharges which he forwarded to the secretary-general.
(via Cap Marlow)
UPDATE: For the francophone, more OFF hijinks here. Gilles Munier, the Secretary General of the French-Iraqi Friendship Association, is under investigation as of October 6.
The Nobel Peace Prize has been a controversy for a long time. There is no tangible political component to the other prizes, save perhaps literature in some instances. The Peace Prize on the other hand is nothing but politically charged.
http://www.RightViews.com
OK- two goodie two shoe groups-whatever-that annoy the heck out of me-the Swedes rapidly followed by the Swiss.
I really loathe the Swiss-the apex crossing of every drug lord, tax evader, corrupt kleptocratic kingpin, and every evil bastard with a penchant for savings spanning decades. The Swiss have been living high off the cream of crud.
I like bunker busters. We tell the Swiss to hand over the chocolate recipe-step away from the vaults-so no one gets hurt-and commence dropping-or whatever you call it. {Of course our own economy would collapse…merde.}
I’m off to get an Irish coffee.
First Schumer, then the Swedes and add the Swiss…it’s Happy Hour!
The Peace Prize has become the ultimate self-esteem award for the effete intellectual crowd. It is not as if actual success is a criteria for selection.
Where do I sign?
The Nobel Peace Prize — isn’t that the one Yassir Arafat won?
No need to abolish it, just to rename it
(with apologies for the shameless self-promotion)
I was shockec . . . shocked, to see whom this peace prize has been awarded to. Clearly it’s now become a political tool and all but worthless.
I’m only surprised that they didn’t award it to Osama Bin Laden.
What did I miss? Wasn’t ElBaradei correct about the weapons in Iraq and the Bush Administration wrong?
Paleokaus,
Wasn’t ElBaradei correct about the weapons in Iraq and the Bush Administration wrong?
Maybe, maybe not. Or are you thinking about this other guy?
No, they both appeared at the UN and urged caution:
“ElBaradei has questioned the U.S. rationale for the war in Iraq since the 2003 Iraq disarmament crisis, when he, along with Hans Blix, led a team of UN weapons inspectors in Iraq, seeking evidence of weapons of mass destruction.”
Wikipedia
And that earns him his Nobel Prize because?
I think I finally figured it out. It is in fact the
“Nobel Prize for Ostentatiously Parading Your Good Intentions Around the World Stage, While Not Actually Advancing the Cause of Peace in any Meaningful Way, And in Fact Causing Genuinely Dangerous People and Regimes Nothing but Amusement”
but that didn’t fit on their little announcement stationary, so it got shortened to “Nobel Prize for Peace.”
The misunderstaing resulting from this little abbreviation has confused a lot of people for quite a while.
I do not claim to be an expert on this, but everything I see indicates that he has worked to put pressure on countries that are developing nuclear weapons and to accomplish nonproliferation without warfare.
The criticism of him is that programs (Pakistan, Iran) have not always been detected, but that criticism must be spread to all Western intelligence. He appears to have forcefully taken on regimes such as Iran and North Korea. On Iraq, his approach, which criticized Iraq while refusing to accept our more palpable B.S., such as to the aluminum tubes, would have increased the possibility that a war could be avoided.
The criticisms of El Baradei have been far more severe than that, I am afraid. They are that he has actually ennabled the programs in Pak and Iran by looking the other way to a great extent, some even think deliberately. But I am sure Mr. or Ms. Paleokaus sees it differently.
I may be totally wrong about this, but arent the United States and Russia the only nations that have reduced the numbers of their nuclear weapons; and didnt that come about because of the collapse of the USSR; and didnt that happen by the actions of the reckless warmonger, Ronald Reagan?
On the other hand, India and Pakistan, North Korea, Lybia, and Iran have all developed and/or are or were working on weapons–At least two of which secretly, even though the IAEA was “on the job,” and for which they receive the NPP.
Why not Reagan posthumously–he actually did something, where under the IAEA, the world has become more dangerous. What am I missing here.
Libya gave up its nuclear weapons program because of our actions in Iraq – as did Saddamm, of course. So the prize should go to GW and his team.
I think the point is that, as we all know, the UN is impotent, and state to state leverage is the only reliable way to reduce the threat of nuclear proliferation. If anything this award demonstrates not only bankrupcy of the Peace Prize Committee, but the total failure of the UN.
“The criticism of him is that programs (Pakistan, Iran) have not always been detected”
Why who else wanted them who hasn’t got them, a Nobel Peace prize for failure?
He sure did a fine job of uncovering the nuclear project in Libya.
Oh. Wait. Bush did that.
Never mind.
Stockholm Kabuki Theatre-LOL!
RogerA- I can tell you still aren’t jaded-you’re a good guy. The French have been at this stuff for so long we’ll never catch up. I don’t know why we just don’t get with it, open up a Department of Bribery and get it over with….
Well from the article that Roger linked to in Le Monde don’t know if I am getting it all right-but at least they call the scandal by a better title-
“Oil Against Food”.
Now for the lovely part-
Munier was awarded for services rendered-
11 million barrels of oil.
On which with coupons-he profited by a margin of 30 cents of every dollar of the selling price.
Munier-at the end gives the Robin Hood defense and says that he re-routed it to the Iraqis to save their people from the unjust, and unfair embargo.
I’m thinking that’s about what it says and as my brain can barely keep the prepositons in the right place I can’t even start to do the math-but I think however you slice it-that’s a whole lotta cash.
Poor Claudia Rosett how does she keep up with these “pros”?
PS-as an aside Villepin and Sarkozy are in round ten of their particular little guerre.
Link
What a mess.
Le Duc Tho? Rigoberta Menchu? Jimmuh Carter? Yasser Arafat? By comparison with those frauds, Baradei doesn’t look too bad.
Given the previous recipients, Pat is right, this one is a step up. The Nobel Committee will, howerver, redeem themselves next time around. Expect to see Kofi Annan accepting the prize…
As for the name of the prize, how about the “Nobel Peas Prize” in rembrance of the famous bumper sticker, “Visualize Whirrled Peas”.
mbecker908,
Expect to see Kofi Annan accepting the prize…
He already did, in 2001
2001: The prize was divided equally between:
The United Nations ( U.N.)
and its
Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, Ghana, 1938-
For their work for a better organized and more peaceful world.
I especially like that “better organized” part.
In the past, the Nobel Peace Prize committee may have been (I think) using the Award in a way that they hoped would convert recipients to follow more peaceful ways; how else would you justify a decision to present the award to someone like Arafat. More recently, however, the Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to those who, by being so honored, would be viewed as a slap-in-the-face of Bush and his Adminstration. Look at the shenanigans that surrounded the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Carter and the accompanying Bush bashing. The awarding of the Peace Prize to Baradei seems to me to be a blatant continuation of this “Nobel” tradition…or has everyone forgotten Baradei’s leaks last year, just before the November election, that were clearly designed to embarrass the Bush Administration’s efforts in Iraq. Since Baradei has no record of accomplishment in actually limiting nuclear proliferation, one must conclude that he is receiving the Nobel Peace Prize as a reward for his valiant (though unsuccessful) attempt to reverse the US policy in Iraq by surreptitiously assisting the efforts of the Kerry campaign in unseating the Bush Administration. I suspect that the members of the Nobel Peace Prize Committee would view a Kerry Administration as a major step forward in advancing the cause of peace, and that Baradei’s efforts to make that happen were therefore, in their eyes, a commendable effort even if it meant interference with the electoral process of the US).
RAZ–great post–what you said. Perhaps for the squishy elements of society that go ga ga over the UN, it is still nation state power that makes things happen–and this fact is what sticks in the craw of the internationalists.
The make up of the Nobel Peace Prize Committee,the Storting,make very interesting reading,http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4320586.stm
It is comprised of,mostly,political hacks of a leftish hue.
They passed over Baradei last year in favor of Kenyan tree lady Wangari Maathai. He was the odds-on favorite in 2004; must have been miffed. So now they are finally getting around to him.
According to the following quote from the article I linked, my guess is that next in line (now that they’ve done the environmentalist) are Sting and Robert “beat me, beat me” Fisk:
Ms Maathai’s win comes after Geir Lundestad, the head of the Norwegian Nobel Institute, hinted in 2001 that the award might shift focus in its second century to honour new types of activists such as environmentalists, rock stars, and perhaps even journalists.
When the weather turns here in central washington, I love to re-read Tacitus’ Annals–”the legions create a wasteland and call it a peace.” Regretably, the British did exactly that in the 19th century as the Pax Britannica; and clearly the American have done that in the 20th and early 21 Century–although neither the British nor Americans created a wasteland. But they did create a peace. They did through force of arms and naval power; they subjegated pirates, nazis, and other miscreants, and the world was ultimately a better and safer place because good men did harsh things when harsh things needed to be done.
The fabled world order will never arise as currently conceived. That we have a relative world peace (except for jihadism) is a tribute to the notion that great nations do great things when they time is right. There is NO world entity that can act like a single nation, guided by a set of principles–wether liberal democracy or Smithian economics, can achieve–until that time, the burden of action will rest on nation states.
The UN is irrelevant; two thousand years of history suggests the power of nation states is what creates the preconditions for peace and stability–it is the pax romana, it is the pax britticanica, it is the pax americana–but it is ultimately, the pax.
OMG–and I left out my concluding notion: the winners of the peace prize, had it been extant for 2000 years would have been, the senate and people of Rome of the first and second centuries, Queen Victoria, and the any president of the United States since 1940.
Hey, abolish ‘em ALL.
All of the Nobel Prizes are bogus, to varying extents. Peace and literature are a joke. Economics is the occasion of sniggering. Even the ones in the real sciences are subject to enormous politicking and backstage maneuvering, and are typically highly arguable.
The worst part is that Nobel Laureates are thereafter viewed as infallible geniuses. I know two dozen of them (literally), and believe me, they’re just like everyone else. The worst part is if/when they start to believe their own press, which some do and some (the better adjusted) don’t.
For my money,Alfred Nobel and Karl Marx are in a dead heat for the two greatest screwups of the 19th century.
Just to be clear, the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded in Oslo, Norway. The other Nobel prizes are given out in Stockholm, Sweden. So blame the Norwegians, if you must. Although, since I didn’t read the committee member list linked to above I am not sure who comprises the actual committee membership. I’m sure it must not be all Norwegians.
The very idea that commitees of otherwise obscure Scandanavian acadamics are in a position to recognize and bestow honors for the heights of human achievement is laughable.
In the sciences, there’s at least some mininum creditibilty attached because the achievements are real. But a group of high school science teachers could do just as well at determining who deserves these prizes.
It’s a shame that wealthy invididuals elswhere don’t set up and promote competing foundations of their own, and perhaps give the Nobel a run for its money. How about a Rupert Murdoch Peace Prize? Why not? It would be just as if not more legitimate than the Nobel.
Today’s (Oct. 7th) Debkafile (http://www.debka.com/article.php?aid=1094) says it all:
“Bush Did the Job, Elbaradei Walked Off with the Peace Prize.”
And it’s just more back-handed Bush-bashing by the Scandanavians.
I’d be more proud of winning a Golden Globe than of winning a Nobel.
What a joke.
The guy misses Libya entirely and I don’t exactly see him talking sense into Iran or NK.
As far as Iraq is concerned, if the UN people had done their damn job in the first damn place there might not have been a war.
Since el Baradai seems to hopelessly wrong,would it be too much to ask for the money back? It would be intersting to examine his bank statements also.
MI5 have discovered a nasty can of worms http://www.guardian.co.uk/nuclear/article/0,2763,1587752,00.html
> As far as Iraq is concerned, if the UN people had done their damn job in the first damn place there might not have been a war.
Bingo! Give that man a cigar.
Korla:
I am not a man, but I will take the cigar.
Obviously, the Nobel Committee is once again giving Bush “a kick in the shins,” as one of the Nobel committee members candidly put it when they awarded the prize to Jimmah a few years ago.
If the Nobel Committee is merely trying to express their views and score political points, then really, what differentiates them from a group of wealthy bloggers with a couple million to blow each year?
Wrong again Thibaud.
The Nobel Committee is more like PBS.
It’s not their money!