Nobel Peace Legacy Was Meant To Be Radical

So many promoters of war have won the Nobel Peace Prize in recent history: Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Kissinger, to name a few.

But Alfred Nobel’s will, where he laid out the requirements for winning the Peace Prize, were anything but moderate. Nobel said the prize should go to:

…the person who shall have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work of an idealistic tendency; and one part to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity among nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses. (emphasis added)

20 thoughts on “Nobel Peace Legacy Was Meant To Be Radical”

  1. Rachel Maddow has tried to excuse the award going to Obama by giving examples of winners who were rewarded for their efforts toward peace before any result was achieved. However, Obama has made no such effort. He has been bombing civilians in Pakistan, is escalating the war in Afghanistan, is not withdrawing from Iraq, has been lying about Iran breaking laws in pursuit of nuclear weapons, has reneged on closing the prison at Guantanamo, kept in place the practice of torture through rendition, is increasing the military budget, favors expanding NATO and is not proposing closing any military bases.

    Oh, but he gave lip service to abolishing nuclear weapons without doing anything towards that end.

  3. When the Zionist regime in Tel Aviv was committing war crimes in Gaza early this year, Obama didn't say a single word against it. Since becoming President, The Great One has essentially ignored Israel's criminality. And, yes, he's staying in Iraq, attacking Pakistan, invading Afghanistan, threatening Iran. . . .

    Ah, what monumental efforts on behalf of "peace"!

  5. If you liked Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize, you’ll just love the winner for the Nobel Prize in Economics.

    I’m wagering on Bernie Madoff.

    3. Naw! It'll again be Bojangles…what with all the misplaced hoopla over how 'well' the economy is 'improving' on account of all the stimulus and bailouts he's engineered at our expense. .

    1. That brillant work is up for the 2009 Nobel Prize for Literature I hear.

      Obama's going to sweep these Nobel Prize thingies just like Slumdog Millionaire ran the table at the Oscars!

  7. At first I was puzzled. Then it struck me: this was an attempt to define Obama, so that he might act like someone who deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. So, why not give the Nobel prize to every sitting U.S. president? Well, I think the assumption was that, in his heart (didn't we hear this from Obama apologists all election?) Obama is right-thinking on U.S. foreign policy. Nowadays, many of those same apologists (the ones who haven't just sold out to the war party) argue that Obama simply does not have the power to make significant changes in US policy–his hands are tied. I believe this award was meant to empower Obama to follow his heart. Even if it doesn't work, defining Obama as a world renowned man of peace will make it all the more absurd when he behaves like a neocon, and public outcry will be heightened. Clever move, don't you think?. Who cares what the rules of the damned award stipulate? And who cares if some previous winners get salty? This isn't a game. It's the fate of the planet.

  8. I was so surprised to hear Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize.He has made no contribution yet,many Us troops are still in Afghnistan and it may esclate war…I agree with you that Obama makes no significant change in US foreign policy…

  9. May be next year Mr. bin Laden be the recipient, after all hi and his followers killed far fewer human beings than the Nazi Anglo-American Terrorist Organization aka NATO!

  10. I notice I am the first person to report on Oct 12, to your blog. It is possible someone else has preceded me but not yet posted. But the reason for this mysterious award is cleared up in an article that appears in Antiwar.com. Accordingly, America pulls out of a NATO exercise after the Turks “snubs” Israel by not allowing it to participate. Believe me that’s just the spin. The real reason was the exercise was a cover to bomb Iran, and forces with the US overnment working with the Turks sabotaged it and provide cover (and backbone) for Obama by making him an ordained man of peace. John Kurius

      1. They would be fools!

        If you read the blogs in Ha'aretz (English edition), you'll find it full of Israeli Valerianuses, claiming the US rules Israel! In truth, idiot-politicians in both countries stupidly seek the support of US Armegeddonites.

  12. Well, Alfred Nobel had quite a different ending from what seems to have been most of his life before. Stephen Lendman says the following in the article further below.

    “Alfred Nobel (1833 – 1896) began it in 1901. Swedish- born, he was a wealthy 19th century chemist, engineer, dynamite inventor, armaments manufacturer, and war profiteer, later reinventing himself as a peacemaker. ”

    “October Surprise: Peace Prize to a War Criminal”,

    by Stephen Lendman, Oct. 12, 2009

    http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=15636

    And Stephen Lendman provides an important list of the many war criminals the Nobel Peace Prize was granted, while also clearly naming two or three deserving people who are nominated, but were never granted the NPP; f.e., Kathy Kelly, who was nominate four times.

    Imo, the NPP should be obsoleted, and the whole Nobel institution probably should be also obsoleted. Any prizes given out, even when to deserving people, is a matter that’s rather meaningless. Why attach ourselves to such unnecessary and regularly abused symbols? They don’t add any quality to the work awardees have done, and, again, the Nobel institute is regularly corrupt; certainly when it comes to the NPP anyway.

    Given how corrupt it is, people who are nominated and are deserving could well do by refusing to be nominated as a symbolic gesture to say that the Nobel institute is a [very] corrupt one that should no longer be honoured. I see this like military troops and officers who are awarded medals for service in corrupt or criminal wars, rejecting the medals they’re awarded as a symbolic way of denouncing the rogueness of the “elites” behind the wars.

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