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October 11, 2004
Those Nutty Nobels
A few days ago we learned that, Wangari Maathai, a black African woman, had won the Nobel Peace Prize for 2004. She was the first on her continent to have done so, and it seemed like a nice story. No doubt that Africa could use more peacemakers.
Then yesterday we have this gem in the paper:
NAIROBI — Wangari Maathai made a typically combative start to her first full day as a Nobel laureate yesterday, defending a recent suggestion that HIV might have been made in a laboratory as a plot against Africans.You'd think that they'd be careful not to nominate someone without such nutty views. But then, you don't know the Norwegian Nobel Committee. At least her comments caused an outrage in Kenya.The outspoken Kenyan environmentalist became the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for aiding the poor with a campaign to plant trees and slow deforestation.
Miss Maathai, rarely reluctant to challenge the status quo or confront the powerful, said her comments in August were intended to promote an inquiring attitude into AIDS among Africans and combat the fatalistic notion that it was a curse from God.
Miss Maathai caused a furor in Kenya when she was quoted in Kenya's East African Standard daily as calling AIDS a biological weapon devised to destroy black people.
Yes, yes, I know, she did good things too, as is outlined in this Washington Post story. And she deserves accolades for it, too. But really, of all the people on the planet, and all that's happened this past year, is she really the most deserving?
I agree with Austin Bay that the prize should have gone to the coalition forces that liberated Iraq. Now that's real peacemaking. As he points out,
Pacifists didn't liberate Nazi concentration camps, American GIs and British Tommies did. This past year, U.S. Central Command and crack line units like the Army's 3rd Infantry Division did far more to promote and secure real peace and justice on this broken and brutalized planet Earth than decades of posturing peace marches and thousands of toothless U.N. declarations deploring dictators and genocide.Oh but they couldn't do that. No, rather give it to Jimmy Carter, as they did in 2002, which was an intentional criticism of policies of George W Bush. Jay Nordlinger has a good piece on Carter here.In the raw mathematics called body count, dropping Saddam's fascist death machine saved 50,000 to 60,000 Iraqi lives — the innocents his henchmen would have slain during 2003 while the United Nations fiddled and France burned with anti-American ressentiment.
Many, of not most of their awards, are to good and decent people and organizations who justly deserve their prize.
But then there are others that truely make you shake your head. And they've caught a lot of flack for it, too. See here and here and here for just a few examples.
In 2001 the prize went to Kofi Annan and the United Nations. 'Nuf said? Read what Michael Ledeen says about it.
In 1994, Yassir Arafat, an outright terrorist, was the laureate (sharing it with Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Perez)
In 1992, Rigoberta Menchu' Tum won. While she may have fought for Indian and peasant rights in Guatamala(but even this is disputed), she is also notable for having written an memoir that has been shown to be mostly fiction. More here.
Let's not forget 1990, when communist Mikhail Gorbachev won, who, according to the Nobel Committee, "helped to bring the cold war to an end." You won't find Ronald Reagan listed among Nobel laureates, of course
In 1995, a Boston-based organization called International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War took the prize. You don't have to spend much time on their website to learn how lefty a group they are.
Of course how can we forget 1973, when Henry Kissinger shared the prize with the comminist foreign minister of North Vietnam, Le Duc Tho (who declined the prize).
Going back a bit further, the American Friends Service Committee (the "Quakers")was jointly awarded the prize with their British counterpart, The Friends Service Council, in 1947. During the Cold War the Quakers opposed U.S. policy at every turn. See Paul Hollander's excellent book Political Pilgrims for documentation of their long history of sympathy towards communist regimes.
Such a shame, for the results of these nominations is that the prize is not taken seriously by a good many people, including me.
Posted by Tom at October 11, 2004 10:20 PM
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