[Peace] Fwd: Petition: Rescind Obama's Nobel Peace Prize
C. G. Estabrook
cge at shout.net
Thu Mar 1 10:14:45 CST 2012
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> WarIsACrime.org
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> Petition: Rescind Obama's Nobel Peace Prize
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> Endorse as an organization.
> Endorse as an individual.
>
> Dear Members of Stockholm's County Administrative Board:
>
> The signers of this petition include an array of peace groups and
> peace activists based in the United States. The undersigned wish
> to endorse and support the investigation that Stockholm's County
> Administrative Board has reportedly begun based on it supervisory
> role over the Nobel Foundation and information received from
> Norwegian peace researcher/author Fredrik Heffermehl. We understand
> your Board has formally asked the Nobel Foundation to respond to
> allegations that the peace prize no longer reflects Nobel's will
> that the purpose of the prize was to diminish the role of military
> power in international relations. According to Heffermehl, "Nobel
> called it a prize for the champions of peace,…and it's indisputable
> that (Nobel) had in mind the peace movement, the movement which is
> actively pursuing a new global order ... where nations safely can
> drop national armaments."
>
> The undersigned non-profit peace organizations and activists base
> their endorsement of your inquiry on the following facts:
>
> Alfred Nobel's will, written in 1895, left funding for a prize to be
> awarded to "the person who shall have done the most or the best work
> for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of
> standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace
> congresses."
>
> After only a few years, however, a disastrous trend was begun of
> awarding the prize to government officials and political figures who
> had done more to promote war than peace. For instance in 1919, the
> Nobel "prize for peace" went to Woodrow Wilson who had needlessly
> dragged his own nation into the worst war yet seen; who had
> developed innovative war propaganda techniques, conscription
> techniques, and tools for suppressing dissent; who had used the U.S.
> military to brutal effect in the Caribbean and Latin America; who
> had agreed to a war-promoting settlement to the Great War; but who,
> in the war's aftermath, promoted a "League of Nations" in the hopes
> of resolving disputes peacefully.
>
> Although the Nobel peace prize came to be heavily, but by no means
> entirely, dominated by elected officials, yet some excellent award
> choices occurred in the ensuing years: that of Jane Addams as co-
> recipient in 1931, Norman Angell in 1933, and organizations, such as
> the Red Cross in 1944 (and again in 1963) and the American Friends
> Service Committee in 1947. It's worth asking, however, why even
> more principled war opponents including Gandhi were never deemed
> worthy.
>
> In 1953 the Nobel went to General George Marshall. In 1973 a co-
> laureate was none other than Henry Kissinger and whatever their
> merits, these were major makers of war who would almost certainly
> have also won the Nobel War Prize, were there such a thing. This
> insanity competed, however, with the bestowing in other years of the
> prize on leaders who were not holders of high office, not
> necessarily born to wealth, and not only opponents of war but also
> advocates of the use o f nonviolent resistance to violence and
> injustice. Thus the peace prize went in 1964 to Martin Luther King,
> Jr., in 1976 to Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan, in 1980 to
> Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, in 1983 to Lech Walesa, in 1984 to Desmond
> Tutu, in 1991 to Aung San Suu Kyi, in 1992 to Rigoberta Menchú Tum,
> etc.
>
> The Kissinger style "peace" laureate, and the MLK type differed in
> that one was the path of peace activists who dedicated their careers
> to international fraternity and demilitarization and the other was
> the path of powerful figures and makers of war who had either shown
> some restraint in a particular instance or had appeared (accurately
> or not) to have acted on behalf of peace in a particular situation.
> Honoring both nonviolent human rights advocates and mass murderers
> has moved the prize away from advocacy for the elimination of
> standing armies and is at odds with the words in Nobel's will as
> well as the early tradition of awarding the prize to true advocates
> of peace.
>
> In 2006 and 2007, Muhammad Yunus and Al Gore took home peace prizes
> for work that, at best, bears only an indirect connection to peace.
>
> Despite these previous examples of falling short of Nobel's original
> intent in establishing the Peace Prize, at least from 1901 to 2008,
> no peace prize was given to anyone who had neither done nor even
> pretended to do anything significant for peace nor done any other
> good and significant thing that some people might believe would
> indirectly contribute to peace. That all changed in 2009 when US
> President Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Obama had
> just been placed in a position of great power promising to expand
> the world's largest military, to escalate a war, and to launch
> strikes into other nations without any war declarations. He showed
> up to collect his winnings and gave a speech justifying and praising
> war. His acceptance speech rejected a previous laureate's (MLK's)
> speech as too peaceful.
>
> The 2009 Nobel Prize recipient, President Barak Obama, did not even
> attempt to earn his award as some had hoped but has instead followed
> through on his speech justifying and praising war. This hypocrisy
> has not gone unnoticed by many other people in the world, prompting
> 1980 Peace Laureate Adolfo Pérez Esquivel's recent letter to the
> 2009 peace laureate bemoaning the fact that Obama is waging wars on
> behalf of the military industrial complex and "burying himself more
> and more in violence and devoured by the domination of power". In
> addition to directly contradicting the terms of Alfred Nobel's last
> will, the awarding of the world's foremost peace prize to a
> militarist who states his intent to wage war, perniciously serves
> the opposite purpose.
>
> We therefore commend your investigation of the betrayal of the award
> in order to re-establish criteria for the Nobel Peace Prize that is
> aligned with Nobel's original intent. We also suggest your Board
> communicate with the Nobel Foundation urging them to rescind Obama's
> award so that the Nobel Peace Prize does not serve to sugarcoat,
> obfuscate and enable more use of violence and military force, the
> exact opposite purpose for which it was created.
>
> We will keep you apprized as more US peace groups and individuals
> sign this endorsement.
>
> Endorse as an organization.
>
> Endorse as an individual.
>
> Undersigned:
>
> Veterans for Peace (Leah Bolger, National President)
>
> Minnesota Campaign to Ban Landmines and Cluster Munitions (Jack
> Rossbach, Director, who adds that MCBL was part of the International
> C ampaign to Ban Landmines which was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize
> in 1997 deservedly)
>
> DemocracyorEmpire.org (Adrien and Ed Helm, coordinators)
>
> New Hampshire Peace Action (Will Hopkins, Director)
>
> Eagan and Burnsville (Minnesota) Peace Vigils
>
> Dr. Michael D. Knox, Chair, US Peace Memorial Foundation (in his
> individual capacity)
>
> Women Against Military Madness (Director Kim Doss-Smith)
>
> National Security Whistleblowers Coalition (Sibel Edmonds, Founder)
>
> Grand Rapids Area Peace Circle (Vicki Andrews, member)
>
> Vets for Peace, Itasca Chapter #148
>
> Anti-war.com
>
> Come Home America
>
> Medea Benjamin, Cofounder, Global Exchange and CODEPINK (in her
> individual capacity)
>
> Ann Wright, retired US Army Colonel and former US diplomat who
> resigned in opposition to the Iraq war
>
> Ray McGovern, veteran Army officer and former CIA analyst
>
> David Swanson, peace activist-researcher and author of War Is A Lie
>
> Military Families Speak Out- Minnesota Chapter (Mike Perkins, member)
>
> Other links:
>
> The Betrayal of the Nobel Peace Prize | Let's Try ... - David Swanson
>
> The Nobel Peace Prize: What Nobel Really Wanted by Fredrik S.
> Heffermehl http://www.amazon.com/Nobel-Peace-Prize-Really-Wanted/dp/0313387443
>
> “Puppet Obama prize an infomercial for war” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9TumJf3w6A
>
> “Clinton, Manning among Nobel Peace Prize candidates” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/27/nobel-peace-prize-2012-nominees_n_1303614.html
>
> *****
>
> Endorse as an organization.
>
> Endorse as an individual.
>
> Please forward this to everyone who might be interested.
>
> ##
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