Nobel
Hypocrisy
By Stephen Lendman
18 October, 2007
Countercurrents.org
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 [email protected].
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.
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