Quote:
Undertoad
IOW, basically the committee was making a political statement and the value of the prize is diminished.
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The Nobel Peace Prize is always about political statements. Peace results from politics, with International Relations as a catalyst.
Was the prize for the ICBL and Jody Williams in 1997 not a political statement? What about the 1995 prize to the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, when US-Soviet relations were at a decisive point? The 1983 prize to Lech Walesa, when Solidarnosc were being suppressed in Poland? The 1975 prize to Sakharov, taking a stance against human rights abuses in the USSR? The 1964 prize to Martin Luther King Jr., support against US segregation and civil rights abuses? The 1935 prize to Carl von Ossietzky, as a signal to the German government that it was acting tyrannically and inhumanely?
That's what it's all about. That is the value of the prize, aside from the current EU1.1mil.
It's standing up for what they believe to be
right, which in hindsight has been correct for the vast majority of the time since 1901. That you disagree with their opinion doesn't devalue anything. That is its purpose.
That's nice, make an off-hand dismissive comment about the prize that is given to the people who have in large parts done more for the good of mankind than any of us probably ever will. Even Arafat, who jointly received it with Peres and Rabin in 1994, has done more to reduce Palestinian militancy than anyone could have ever believed ten or twenty years ago when there was absolutely no
way that Israel-Palestinian co-operation could exist as it does now.
Exceptions, such as Kissinger in 1973, do exist (although Kissinger under Nixon is credited to some extent with the US withdrawing from Vietnam), but it's worrying to see uninformed derogatory comments attempting to devalue what the Nobel Peace Prize stands for. Read more about the laureates and the prize <a href="http://www.nobel.se/peace/laureates/">here</a>.
X.
10-13-2002, 12:12 PM
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