How to win the Nobel Peace Prize by Zahir Ebrahim
Project Humanbeingsfirst.org | 10.10.2009 03:05 | Analysis | Anti-militarism | Terror War | World
How to win the Nobel Peace Prize
by Zahir Ebrahim
Friday, October 09, 2009
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In complete realization of the 'change' mantra:
“We are gonna spread happiness,
we are gonna spread freeeeedom,
Obama's gonna change it,
Obama's gonna leeeeead em,
we're gonna change it,
and re-arrange it,
we are gonna change the world!” ( The Obama Kids Song -
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President Barack Obama has just been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The President is delighted and “Says He’s ‘Surprised’ and ‘Humbled’” according to the New York Times.
When I penned the following in great anguish in April 2003, in Chapter 2 of Prisoners of the Cave as the “shock and awe” of Iraq was under way, I hadn't the full prescience of all the future players at the time for I grossly omitted the new name. My apologies to the harbingers of 'change'. Their mantra, and the $2 billion spent creating it, has obviously been very effective. After the “peace maker”, anointment as the “Messiah” really can't be that far behind.
- Begin Excerpt -
How to win the Nobel Peace Prize
President Jimmy Carter, known as the conscionable president, refused to bomb Tehran despite recommendations from his wife and advisors, as noted by a speaker recently, builds homes for Habitat for Humanity with his own bare hands, and is the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. His own National Security Advisor (ZB) took credit for handing the Soviets their Vietnam in Afghanistan, leading to the destruction of an entire civilization and loss of multiple of its generations to multiple civil wars and poverty, eventually leading to 911 - if one is to believe the facile version of 911 put forth by the American Government. Whether or not Bin Laden was involved in 911, the facts of history attest to the machinations of the United States of America in the exercise of its military and economic power since the end of World War II as forcefully articulated by George Kennan in 1948:
“... We should cease to talk about vague and - for the Far East - unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts.”*8
ZB's own confessions to this end are highly instructive. The 1998 ZB interview to "Le Nouvel Observateur", translated from the original French by author and historian Bill Blum, is reproduced below. The translator notes that: “*There are at least two editions of this magazine; with the perhaps sole exception of the Library of Congress, the version sent to the United States is shorter than the French version, and the Brzezinski interview was not included in the shorter version.”
Question: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs ["From the Shadows"], that American intelligence services began to aid the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan 6 months before the Soviet intervention. In this period you were the national security adviser to President Carter. You therefore played a role in this affair. Is that correct?
Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.
Question: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to provoke it?
Brzezinski: It isn't quite that. We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.
Question: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against a secret involvement of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn't believe them. However, there was a basis of truth. You don't regret anything today?
Brzezinski: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter. We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.
Question: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic fundamentalism, having given arms and advice to future terrorists?
Brzezinski: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?
Question: Some stirred-up Moslems? But it has been said and repeated Islamic fundamentalism represents a world menace today.
Brzezinski: Nonsense! It is said that the West had a global policy in regard to Islam. That is stupid. There isn't a global Islam. Look at Islam in a rational manner and without demagoguery or emotion. It is the leading religion of the world with 1.5 billion followers. But what is there in common among Saudi Arabian fundamentalism, moderate Morocco, Pakistan militarism, Egyptian pro-Western or Central Asian secularism? Nothing more than what unites the Christian countries.*9
Frighteningly amoral execution of George Kennan's policy articulation from 1948 of “going to have to deal in straight power concepts”. Wouldn't you say that all American Presidents have been doing exactly that?
I had also personally witnessed on television, President Carter in 1978 toasting to the health of the King of Persia, Raza Shah, with approximately the following words: ~“To your majesty, to the love that your people have for you.” This to a tyrant responsible for brutally suppressing his own people with American supplied weapons, and while Carter is toasting his host inside the Palace, outside the streets are filled with people protesting their king. When the revolution proceeds a few month later, instead of a mea culpa, a reign of vilification, long war, and sanctions is imposed on the people of Iran. And for what crime? For wanting their freedom from American-CIA imposed tyranny at the hands of one of their own elite? The Iran Hostage Crisis, covered on ABC Nightline daily, which I would occasionally catch while eating dinner in the late night cafeteria at MIT, as I recall was quite devoid of any significant history or accurate analysis of the past 26 years leading up to the crisis. I subsequently saw a shredded memo painstakingly put together and freely available in the streets of most countries in the region about some of the imperial work being done by the American staff in the US embassy in Teheran, whom the hostage takers were calling CIA spies. The taking of these hostages, many of them civilians, was probably the biggest blunder the Iranians made after their revolution, and were paid for in spades by America with the war imposed on them through Iraq. If Jimmy Carter had deserved any Peace Prize, it would have been to avert the crisis with Tehran and successfully bring back the hostages, made amends with Iran for its people finally exercising their will and set the stage for friendship between the two countries, leaving a legacy of peace and prosperity for the region and appreciated the world over. He did not do that.
What is the prize for?
You might say Camp David and Egypt-Israel peace accord over a desert that was militarily occupied in a war? When his own people call Anwar Sadaat a traitor for making his private and separate peace with Israel and breaking up the Arab stance on Palestine which is what Israel wanted all along; and he is also a despised dictator of his own people hated and killed by them for his oppressive policies only to be replaced by another brutish dictator who is also continually kept in power by being the second largest US aid recipient in the world after Israel - is that a peace at the barrel of a gun or an enduring peace with justice?
Brokering a “peace accord” that was only a new manifestation of an old “divide and conquer” plan that the peoples at least on one side of it did not want, and which only allowed Israel a freer hand to continue suppressing the Palestinians and incrementally continue to swallow up their lands without interference from its Arab neighbors, instead of one in which all could have lived in justice and peace with full rights of return for those displaced, is an imperial farce forced upon a beleaguered peoples. And the impact of precisely this “peace accord” for which Carter got the “peace” prize are visible to all and sundry in Palestine – an amazing case study in faits accomplis that become “irreversible” - a modern day genocidal resettlement of another's land right before the very eyes of the silently bespectating world!
What about Menachem Begin? He certainly also had all the qualifications for the Nobel Peace Prize, having blown up the King David Hotel in 1948 as part of the terrorist Stern-Irgun gangs and was once the most wanted criminal in Britain.*9A
Let's see who might be in line next? Ariel Sharon and George Bush Jr. and Sr., as well as Bin Laden and Zbigniew Brzezinski, because after all, they did defeat the Soviet Union and bring an end to the four decade long Cold War. They all appear to have the right pedigree of “blood-experience” for the Nobel Peace Prize!
So pardon me if I am not tripping all over myself congratulating the “peace prize” winners!
- End Excerpt -
Read the rest of chapter 2 in full context here:
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Comments
Hide the following 9 comments
In your opinion ...
10.10.2009 08:23
No
The Sheeples Champion
10.10.2009 09:49
Obaama
It's a morbid joke, right???... Barack Obama???... Nobel Peace Prize???...
10.10.2009 10:23
"Giving this award to the leader of the most militarized country in the world, which has taken the human family against its will to war, will be rightly seen by many people around the world as a reward for his country's aggression and domination."
— Mairead Maguire, a 1976 Nobel Peace Prize recipient.
“Obama's being given the Nobel for ... exactly what? Continuing the war in Iraq? Increasing the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan? For being the Commander in Chief of the largest and the most aggressive militaries in the world? ….. surely this has got to be one of the most baffling awards ever.... even by Nobel standards.”
— A comment from a local South Asian activist
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Is it April Fool's Day in the USA on October 9th? The Nobel committee is still delusional -- still high on the Obamalade, despite reality. You know you've made a mistake when even anyone from the Taliban/"al-Qaeda" spokesmen to the U.S. Republican party have valid criticisms of Obama's Nobel Peace Prize.
Not since *Henry Kissinger* has the Nobel Peace prize been awarded to someone who bombs, from the air, (perhaps mostly) collaterally innocent people every week, and others trying to defend their country from foreign imperialist military occupation -- let alone Obama continuing to operate George 'Dubya' Bush's two beyond-the-law remote secret rendition-torture camps (Gitmo and Bagram), that we were told only contained "the very worst of the very worst -- every last one of them, terrorists!" And a president who will also support -- and militarily resupply -- an apartheid state (Israel) with cluster, DIME and phosphorus bombs, no matter how many fleeing families that state will use those *terror* weapons on.
And the Nobel committee's citing, "his [Obama's] attempts to curb nuclear proliferation"!? Who you foolin'...!? Isn't the U.S./Obama continuing to test (even if by new laser-simulated means) and build technologically *new* and "more usuble" -- because they are smaller "bunker busters" and "block busters" (because they are designed to take out just a part of a major metropolitan area), in addition to upgrading the 'regular' -- nuclear weapons and missiles? And if Obama wanted to eliminate nuclear weapons, say, to begin with, in the Middle East, he could start with his best friend country: Israel, the *first* country to introduce nukes in the Middle East, and which has 200-300 nukes, and wants the U.S. (and inevitably its Western "coalition" countries) to start (or be sucked into) yet another war in the Middle East -- this time in Iran.
Maybe the Nobel committee should change the name to the "Nobel Peace Is War Prize".
Other highly dubious examples of "Peace Prize" winners include Menachim Begin -- whom Hannah Arendt and Albert Einstein once called a *racist* and a *fascist* in a formal letter to the New York Times -- and Shimon Peres -- who, under Israel's Labour Party, presided over the largest expansion of Israeli settlements, at least then, to date (the biggest theft of Palestinian land since 1948), while (along with the U.S.) forcing Arafat to sign an absolutely useless, hopeless and a failure-from-the-start Oslo Accords, from the minute it was signatured -- and Ellie Wiesel, that saccharinely soft-spoken, but covertly virulent anti-Palestinian and *hypocritical* Zionist racist -- as all Zionist settler-colonial Jews are: the once brutally oppressed become later the brutal oppressors, in (after, then, apartheid South Africa) the last state, ideologically and officially, of its kind in the world!
I guess that Christian Zionist, Jimmy Carter (who said that Israeli apartheid *only* exists in the West Bank) got the award for the Camp David Agreement/Accords (or maybe it was for his token home-building), but this is the guy who militarily permitted, then, U.S.-supported dictatorial South Korea (who's military was/is under the complete control of the U.S. government) its 'Tiannamen massacre': called the Kwangju Masscre. Carter (and Brzezinski) also started the decades-long war -- in one form or another -- come back to haunt us all (in what American professor emeritus and author Chalmers Johnson calls, now the ultimate, "blowback"), in Afghanistan back in 1979 and, in effect, was ultimately responsible for turning the Taliban/'al-Qaeda' mujahedeen (once celebrated by a "Rambo" and "James Bond" film) into 'a world power'. And didn't Martin Luther King say, "What goes around..., comes around..."?
Probably no sitting head of state (especially an imperialist/colonialist militarist one), let alone one with only 9 months in office (but actually nominated, if not also selected, much earlier than that!), actively engaged in two, and maybe three [if you now/eventually count Pakistan], aggressive wars, or in any other countries that he, like Bush and Clinton, is going to fire missiles into (incinerating innocent families, wedding parties, or "Third World" major pharmaceutical factories), should get the Nobel Peace prize, unless, perhaps, he/she has defended his/her state -- and sheltered/saved some targeted-for-exterminaton minority -- from something like a Nazi, or other agresssive, imperialist, militarist, invasion.
Joseph Anderson, Berkeley, California, USA
Re: In your opinion ...; 10.10.2009 08:23
10.10.2009 11:33
And, by that 'logic', if someone is not in the White House, they're not allowed to criticize Obama, too? And, if someone is not in 10 Downing, they don't have a right to criticize the PM? No one has a right to criticize any body unless they're employed by it.
Have you ever heard of _democracy_ and the right to political _freedom of speech_ ?
not a sheep
whinging
10.10.2009 22:34
Those examples of goverment. The nobel foundation is a private institution.
It can do what it wants and doesn't have to answer to the "public" like a government body does.
If they want to use their money to give a prize to someone, then thats their choice - right?
Just like you could create a prize with your money and give it to someone.
Anyway, i bet this "criticizer" hasn't actually contacted anyone at the foundation. I imagine they've just posted their thoughts on the blog and left it at that. That would be like a teacher not telling a student the criticisms of their work.... completely pointless
Basically, Its not criticising - its just whinging
No
Re: whinging, 10.10.2009 22:34
11.10.2009 18:16
DO YOU HEAR WHAT YOU'RE SAYING IN YOUR 'INTELLECTUALLY' AND MORALLY TWISTED 'LOGIC'!???
You should just *move on* and spare yourself from further public SELF-HUMILIATION.
I hardly need to criticize *YOU* -- because you've just exposed yourself for the *idiot* that you are!
So, *IF* the U.S. Council for Foreign Relations -- a private institution -- said that we should wipe Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran off the face of the map; of if a private school in Britain/Europe says that it won't admit Blacks or Asans, and advocates that other private schools in Britain/Europe shouldn't either; or *if* the Nobel Prize committee gave a Peace Prize to some Christian or Muslim religious nut who advocated cliterodectomies as public policy to control women's sexuality and/or the spread of AIDS in Africa; or if a major newspaper were to publish pro-neo-Nazi material; of if a scientific laboratory is working on some new biological weapon to target certain ethnicities/races; or if a private company puts out a dangerously defective or cancer-causing product, then we don't have a to criticize them because they're private institutions???
*NOW* DO YOU SEE HOW *RIDICULOUS* YOU SOUND?...
Time for you to just *move on*...
not a sheep
what if
11.10.2009 20:42
im not bothered about what ifs. "what is" is what counts
anyway make you own fing peace prize and award it to who you want and then see how many piss you off by criticising you
No
what if... you had a *brain*...!?
11.10.2009 22:53
not a sheep
Baa
12.10.2009 13:49
Obaama