- Alfred Nobel was a wealthy nineteenth century Swedish-born
chemist, engineer, inventor of dynamite, armaments manufacturer and war
profiteer who remade his image late in life by establishing the awarding
of prizes in his name that includes the one for peace. This most noted
award was inspired by his one-time secretary and peace activist, Bertha
von Suttner, who was nominated four times and became the first of only
12 women to be honored.
-
- Since it was established in 1901, the Peace Prize was
awarded to 95 individuals and 20 organizations. Some recipients were worthy
like Martin Luther King, Jane Addams and Albert Schweitzer but too many
were not including this year's honoree. Al Gore joins a long list of past
"ignoble" recipients like warrior presidents Theodore Roosevelt
and Woodrow Wilson and supporter of rogue regimes Jimmy Carter. He's also
among the likes of genocidists Henry Kissinger and three former Israeli
prime ministers - Menachem Begin, Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin - along
with former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan who never met a US-led war
he didn't love and support. So much for promoting peace and what this award
is supposed to signify. More on this below.
-
- Almost anyone can be nominated for the prize and look
who were but didn't get it - Adolph Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Joseph Stalin
and more recently George W. Bush, Tony Blair and Rush Limbaugh laughably.
In contrast, one of the most notable symbols of non-violence in the 20th
century, Mahatma Gandhi, was nominated four times but never won. More recently,
anti-war activist Kathy Kelly, co-founder of Voices in the Wilderness,
now known as Voices for Creative Nonviolence, got three nominations but
was passed over each time for less deserving candidates. Her "reward"
instead was to be sentenced in 2004 to three months in federal prison for
crossing the line into Fort Benning, Georgia in protest against the School
of the Americas, now known as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security
Cooperation that's commonly called "the school of assassins."
-
- Peace Prize Awards to War Criminals
-
- Henry Kissinger was likely the most noted war criminal
ever to win the Nobel Prize (in 1973 with Vietnam's Le Duc Tho who declined
his award saying there was no peace in his country). The sheer scope of
his crimes is breathtaking:
-
- -- three to four million Southeast Asian deaths in the
Vietnam war,
-
- -- the bloody overthrow of a democratic government in
Chile and support for Latin American dictators,
-
- -- backed Surharto's takeover of West Papua and his invasion
of East Timor killing hundreds of thousands,
-
- -- supported the Khmer Rouge early on and its reign of
terror rise to power,
-
- -- backed Pakistan's "delicacy and tact" in
overthrowing Bangladesh's democratically elected government causing a half
million deaths, and much more around the world as National Security Advisor
and Secretary of State for Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford.
-
- Former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and the world
body he represented won their award in 2001 "for their work for a
better organized and more peaceful world." It wasn't for what Annan
did in his various UN roles. Early on, he had a position in the Secretariat's
services department in New York. He then got subordinate responsibility
for the Middle East and Africa in the "special political affairs"
department. There his support for Washington's call for troops to be sent
to Somalia in the early 1990s helped put him in charge of all peacekeeping
operations in February, 1993. In that role, he prevented measures from
being taken to stop the impending Rwanda slaughter he was warned about
in advance that caused around 800,000 deaths on his watch. He also kept
the Security Council uninformed of what was coming.
-
- At the behest of then UN Ambassador Madeleine Albright
and without consulting Secretary-General Boutras-Boutras-Ghali, Annan sided
with the Clinton administration's authorization of NATO to illegally bomb
Serb positions in Bosnia in 1995. It got him the Secretary-General's job
in January, 1997 in which one observer noted he "courted the wrath
of the developing world by rejecting anticolonialism in favor of moral
principles cherished in the West."
-
- Kofi Annan's Nobel award is a testimony to hypocrisy
for a man whose ten years as Secretary-General failed to fulfill the mandate
he was sworn to uphold: "to save succeeding generations from the scourge
of war; to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights; to establish conditions
(promoting) justice....equal rights of men and women (in all nations and
respect for) international law (and) social progress....to ensure....armed
force shall not be used."
-
- During his ten year tenure in the top UN job, Annan:
-
- -- supported Iraqi economic sanctions that caused around
1.5 million deaths including over one million children under age five;
-
- -- backed the Bush administration's illegal 2003 Iraq
invasion and occupation that's now taken an additional 1.2 million or more
lives;
-
- -- supported the illegal Afghanistan war and occupation;
-
- -- remained mute on the possibility of a wider war with
Iran even if it includes first strike nuclear weapons;
-
- -- made no efforts to work for peace in the Middle East
including in Occupied Palestine nor did he denounce Israel's 2006 war of
aggression against Lebanon;
-
- -- remained loyal to the West and ignored the plight
of his own people throughout the African continent including the immiseration
of South African blacks post-apartheid;
-
- -- allowed thuggish paramilitary Blue Helmets to occupy
Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia,
Eritrea, Liberia, Ivory Coast and Sudan. More on UN peacekeeping below.
-
- Kofi Annan's sole achievement was his uncompromising
complicity with the Clinton and Bush administrations' worst crimes of war
and against humanity. His loyalty earned him the Nobel award that signified
nothing to do with peace he disdained.
-
- UN Peacekeeping Forces got the Nobel award in 1988 for
missions the UN defines as "a way to help countries torn by conflict
create conditions for sustainable peace." Blue Helmets supposedly
are sent to conflict and post-conflict areas to perform multiple services
that include as top priority restoring order, maintaining peace and security
and providing for the needs of people during transitional periods until
local governments can take over on their own.
-
- Most often, Blue Helmets end up creating more conflict
than resolution and function mainly as unwanted paramilitary enforcers
or occupiers. At other times, they become counterproductive or ineffective
and end up doing more harm than good. Since 1948, over five dozen peacekeeping
operations have been undertaken. Most were dismal failures including the
first ever UNTSO mission during Israel's so-called "War of Independence."
The operation is still ongoing after nearly 50 years, peace was never achieved,
Blue Helmets are there but play no active role, and the world community
is silent in the face of Israeli crimes of war and against humanity.
-
- The same condition is true in Haiti where for the first
time in UN history MINUSTAH peacekeepers were deployed to enforce a coup
d'etat against a democratically-elected president. They disdain peace and
stability and function instead as paramilitary occupiers indiscriminately
terrorizing and killing unarmed civilians in service to Western capital.
-
- Three former Israeli prime ministers also got Nobel Peace
Prizes - Menachem Begin in 1978 and Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres in 1994.
All three men committed crimes of war and against humanity as did all
other Israeli prime ministers since David Ben-Gurion took office May 14,
1948 after the new State of Israel declared it independence as an exclusive
Jewish state. Nonetheless, the Nobel Committee awarded them its highest
honor for furthering the cause of peace they disdained by using their position
to inflict on the Palestinian people what Edward Said once said was Israel's
"refined viciousness." Menachem Begin was a particularly virulent
racist and Arab hater calling Palestinians "two-legged beasts"
and saying Jews were the "Master Race" and "divine gods
on this planet."
-
- Then there's the current Nobel Peace Prize honoree, Al
Gore. CounterPunchers Alex Cockburn and Jeff St. Clair wrote the book on
him in 2000 titled "Al Gore: A User's Manual." It's a critical
account of a "man whom his parents raised from birth to be president
of the United States" and who always put politics over principle.
He built his credentials for the high office around pro-business, pro-war,
anti-union and phony environmental advocacy as no friend of the earth then
so who can believe he's one now.
-
- His 1992 book "Earth in the Balance" was more
theater than advocacy. In it, he assessed the forces of planetary destruction
that included air and water pollution, soil erosion, deforestation, overpopulation,
ozone depletion and global warming. He highlighted the impact of auto emissions
and need to phase out the internal combustion engine but made no effort
in office to do it.
-
- Then as vice-president he used his "green credentials"
to sell the pro-business, anti-worker, anti-environmental NAFTA to the
environmental movement. He also supported clear-cutting logging practices
including in old-growth areas. He ignored an assessment that this practice
risked the extinction of hundreds of species. He backed a 1995 spending
bill "salvage logging rider" that opened millions of National
Forest lands to logging and exempted sales of the harvest from environmental
laws and judicial review for two years. He and Clinton further allowed
South Florida's sugar barons to devastate thousands of Everglades acres
and gave away consumer Delaney Clause protection that kept carcinogens
out of our food supply.
-
- Throughout his political life, Gore supported Big Oil
and was tied to Occidental Petroleum Company and its "ruthless tycoon"
chief, Armand Hammer. In return for supporting company interests, he got
political favors and patronage from Hammer and his successor, Ray Irani
who was a major DNC contributor and got to sleep in the Lincoln bedroom
as a bonus reward. He's also been a shill for the nuclear industry that
won't solve or even alleviate global warming and the threat it poses according
to nuclear expert Helen Caldicott. Commercial reactors discharge huge amounts
of greenhouse gases along with hundreds of thousands of curies of deadly
radioactive gases and other radioactive elements besides being sitting
ducks for retaliatory terror attacks experts believe will eventually happen.
-
- Earlier in the House (1977 - 1985) and Senate (1985 -
1993) and as vice-president Gore also shilled for the Pentagon and defense
contractors. He "played midwife to the MX missile," opposed efforts
to cut defense spending, and backed the Reagan administration's Grenada
invasion and Central American wars. He partnered with Clinton's Balkan
wars in the 1990s that destroyed Yugoslavia so NATO could expand into Central
and Eastern Europe for its markets, resources and cheap, exploitable labor.
In Kosovo, he collaborated with Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) paramilitary
thugs against Serbia and ignored their connection to organized crime. He
earlier traded his vote for the Gulf war for prime time coverage of his
speech.
-
- He then backed ousting Saddam by coup or any other means
and supported the most comprehensive genocidal sanctions ever imposed on
a country that killed a likely 1.5 million or more Iraqis including over
one million children under age five.
-
- Cockburn and St. Clair fill in more blanks about a political
opportunist who supported Big Tobacco, "exploited his sister's death
and son's (near-fatal) accident for....political advantage; became a soul
brother of Newt Gingrich; race-baited Jesse Jackson; pushed Clinton into
destroying the New Deal; plotted to stop Democrats from recapturing Congress
in 1996" so "his rival Dick Gephard" wouldn't become Speaker;
"leached campaign cash from nearly every corporate lobbyist"
in town, and, as already covered, lied about being a friend of the earth
by disdaining environmentalism through his actions.
-
- Does this man deserve a Nobel Peace Prize (let alone
to be president) along with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC) "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge
about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures
that are needed to counteract such change." The Nobel Committee ignored
Gore's environmental record and went on to say "for a long time (he's)
been one of the world's leading environmental politicians (through) his
strong commitment, reflected in political activity, (that) strengthened
the struggle against climate change." Contrary to his easily accessed
public record, not his posturing, The Nobel Committee blindly added "He
is probably the single individual who has done most to create greater worldwide
understanding of the measures that need to be adopted."
-
- In point of fact, throughout his political life, Gore's
actions betrayed the public's trust and still do. He and his wife live
in two large energy-consuming homes: a 10,000 square foot, eight bedroom
one in Nashville and a 4000 square foot one in Arlington, VA. The Gores
also own a third home in Carthage, TN. In both Washington and Nashville,
utility companies offer a wind energy green alternative to customers for
a small per kilowatt hour premium. Gore can easily afford it, but public
records show no evidence he's does it in either residence. Alex Cockburn
gets the last word on a man who shills for privilege, has plenty for himself,
and like George Bush disdains the public interest: "Al Gore distills
in his single person the disrepair of liberalism in America today, and
almost every unalluring feature of the Democratic Party" that's mostly
indistinguishable from the other side of the aisle in a city where the
criminal class is bipartisan.
-
- Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at
lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
-
- Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and
listen to The Steve Lendman News and Information Hour on TheMicroEffect.com
Mondays at noon US central time.
|