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AUDACITY IN NORWAY

- by Kim Petersen / October 9th, 2009

The Norwegian Nobel Committee has seen fit to award a peace prize to a man less than a year into elected presidential office in the United States. So what are Barack Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize credentials?

Obama is a man who has yet to shut down a global gulag, who has yet to end the warring in Iraq, who has yet to oversee the return of the elected president of Haiti (deposed by US, Canadian, and French forces), who stands unflinching on the coup d’etat in Honduras, who runs cover for Israeli massacres of Palestinians and Israeli violations of the Geneva Conventions (i.e., supporting war crimes), who seeks to proliferate military bases in Columbia, who has ramped up the killing in Afghanistan, and who has overseen the spillover of war into Pakistan.

Is this the criteria that is deserving of a Nobel Peace Prize?

The Norwegian Nobel Committee chairman Thorbjørn Jagland said, “Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future.”

So Nobel Prizes are being handed out for offering hope? Is this an effort to prod Obama along the road toward a peace-making presidency?

Didn’t Norway reward Yitzhak Shamir, Shimon Peres, and Yasser Arafat Nobel Peace Prizes for giving the hope of peace in historical Palestine? Since then Israel has carried out many slaughters of the indigenous Palestinians. And yes, Palestinians have resisted with violence — sometimes lethal.

Wasn’t US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger co-awarded a 1973 Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating a cease-fire in the US war on Vietnam? Hope was hung around a ceasefire destined to collapse. At least Vietnam’s Le Duc Tho had the integrity to refuse a prize where peace was based on the tokenism of hope.

There are many examples that contradict the notion that Nobel Prizes would spur the US nation toward peace. Yet the leaders of the most warring nation on the planet continue to be rewarded with peace prizes. It defies rationality.

Did Obama offer a mea culpa for US atrocities?

Did Obama seek justice for the perpetrators behind the killing of an estimated 1.3 million Iraqis based upon a concocted casus belli?

To his credit, Obama did something most unusual in acknowledging that the US was behind the 1953 coup d’etat in Iran? Did he offer an apology? Did he offer compensation?

Hoping for peace in a state based on the genocide, dispossession, and marginalization of its Original Peoples, a state whose economy was largely built through slavery, a state built through the expansionism of war with its neighbors, a state built through dominating its hemisphere through self-declared destiny, despite never managing the gumption to apologize for these past grave crimes seems rather dubious.

There are plenty of states deserving of censure. However, when one state with a long history of violence stands supremely powerful and claims itself to be a beacon onto all other states, that is where transformation must first occur in a world whose people long for a just peace.

That will require more than wishful thinking. It will require the audacity to mobilize the masses to a revolution for peace.

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Kim Petersen is co-editor of Dissident Voice. He can be reached at: kim [at] dissidentvoice.org. Read other articles by Kim, or visit Kim's website.

"I've done nothing!"

http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/clips/obama-address/1163263/

For those who may not already know this Alfred Nobel is the person who invented dynamite. His fortune is based on the sale of dynamite to the militaries of governments worldwide. In short, Alfred Nobel is the ultimate war profiteer of all time so it is absurd that his foundation should be handing out peace prizes at all.

However when you see the list people who have been awarded the Nobel peace prize it starts to make sense. Only a handful actually really worked for peace the rest were just really big costumers of dynamite.

Alfred Nobel Bio, from the Nobel Foundation Web site.

1833 Alfred Nobel is born in Stockholm, Sweden. In the same year, his father – Immanuel Nobel – goes bankrupt.

1837 Immanuel Nobel travels to Finland and then to St Petersburg, Russia, where he starts a mechanical workshop; he leaves his family behind in Sweden.

1842 The Nobel family is reunited in St Petersburg.

1850-1852 Alfred Nobel goes to Paris and works for one year in the laboratory of T. Jules Pelouze. He also travels to Italy, Germany and the United States (US).

1853-1856 The Crimean War rages.

The Nobel Company flourishes at first, but goes bankrupt as the war ends and the Russian military cancels orders.

Alfred Nobel searches desperately for new products. Nikolai N. Zinin, Nobel's chemistry teacher, reminds him of nitroglycerin.

1862 Alfred Nobel starts his experiments with nitroglycerin.

1863 Nobel obtains the first patent on nitroglycerin (blasting oil) as an industrial explosive. He develops and patents a detonator (blasting cap) for triggering the explosion of nitroglycerin. He also moves to Stockholm, where he continues his experiments.

1864 Emil, Alfred Nobel's brother, is killed during the preparation of nitroglycerin at Heleneborg, Stockholm.

Nobel continues his experiments and forms the company Nitroglycerin AB in Stockholm, Sweden.

1865 Alfred Nobel improves the blasting cap design and moves to Germany to set up the Alfred Nobel & Co Factory in Krümmel near Hamburg.

1866 Nobel establishes the United States Blasting Oil Company in the US.

A violent explosion destroys the Krümmel plant. Experimenting on a raft anchored on the river Elbe, Alfred Nobel tries to make nitroglycerin safer to handle. He finds that nitroglycerin is stabilized by the addition of kieselguhr (a siliceous deposit; also known as diatomaceous earth), and calls this mixture dynamite.

1867 Alfred Nobel obtains a patent for dynamite.

1871 Nobel establishes the British Dynamite Company (Ardeer, Scotland, UK). In 1877 the company name is changed to Nobel's Explosives Company.

1872 Immanuel, Alfred Nobel's father, passes away.

1873 At the age of 40 Alfred Nobel is a wealthy man. He moves to Paris and settles at Avenue Malakoff.

The manufacture of nitroglycerin and dynamite starts at Ardeer.

1875 Alfred Nobel invents blasting gelatine in Paris and patents it in 1876. He establishes Société Générale pour la Fabrication de la Dynamite in Paris, France.

1876 Dynamitaktiengesellschaft (DAG), formerly Alfred Nobel & Co (Hamburg, Germany), is formed.

Alfred Nobel advertises for a housekeeper/personal secretary, meets with Bertha Kinsky von Chinic und Tettau (later von Suttner) and hires her. She leaves his employment after a short time and becomes a leading peace activist.

1880 Dynamite Nobel is formed by merging Nobel's Italian and Swiss companies.

1881 Alfred Nobel buys an estate and laboratory at Sevran outside Paris.

1885 German Union is formed by merging DAG and a group of German dynamite companies.

1886 Nobel-Dynamite Trust Co (London, UK) is formed by merging DAG and the Nobel's Explosives Company.

1887 Nobel obtains a patent for the blasting powder "ballistite" in France.

1889 Andriette, Alfred Nobel's mother, passes away.

1891 Alfred Nobel leaves Paris and settles in San Remo, Italy, after a dispute with the French government over ballistite.

1893 Alfred Nobel hires Ragnar Sohlman, who he later names executor of his will and testament.

1894 Alfred Nobel buys a small machine works (Bofors-Gullspång) and a manor (Björkborn) at Karlskoga, Sweden.

1895 The third and final will of Alfred Nobel is signed at the Swedish-Norwegian Club in Paris.

1896 Alfred Nobel dies at his home in San Remo, Italy, on 10 December 1896.

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Peace Prize recipients

. 2009 - Barack Obama

. 2008 - Martti Ahtisaari

. 2007 - Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Al Gore

. 2006 - Muhammad Yunus, Grameen Bank

. 2005 - International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei

. 2004 - Wangari Maathai

. 2003 - Shirin Ebadi

. 2002 - Jimmy Carter

. 2001 - United Nations, Kofi Annan

. 2000 - Kim Dae-jung

. 1999 - Médecins Sans Frontières

. 1998 - John Hume, David Trimble

. 1997 - International Campaign to Ban Landmines, Jody Williams

. 1996 - Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo, José Ramos-Horta

. 1995 - Joseph Rotblat, Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs

. 1994 - Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres, Yitzhak Rabin

. 1993 - Nelson Mandela, F.W. de Klerk

. 1992 - Rigoberta Menchú Tum

. 1991 - Aung San Suu Kyi

. 1990 - Mikhail Gorbachev

. 1989 - The 14th Dalai Lama

. 1988 - United Nations Peacekeeping Forces

. 1987 - Oscar Arias Sánchez

. 1986 - Elie Wiesel

. 1985 - International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War

. 1984 - Desmond Tutu

. 1983 - Lech Walesa

. 1982 - Alva Myrdal, Alfonso García Robles

. 1981 - Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

. 1980 - Adolfo Pérez Esquivel

. 1979 - Mother Teresa

. 1978 - Anwar al-Sadat, Menachem Begin

. 1977 - Amnesty International

. 1976 - Betty Williams, Mairead Corrigan

. 1975 - Andrei Sakharov

. 1974 - Seán MacBride, Eisaku Sato

. 1973 - Henry Kissinger, Le Duc Tho

. 1972 - The prize money for 1972 was allocated to the Main Fund

. 1971 - Willy Brandt

. 1970 - Norman Borlaug

. 1969 - International Labour Organization

. 1968 - René Cassin

. 1967 - The prize money was with 1/3 allocated to the Main Fund and with 2/3 to the Special Fund of this prize section

. 1966 - The prize money was allocated to the Special Fund of this prize section

. 1965 - United Nations Children's Fund

. 1964 - Martin Luther King Jr.

. 1963 - International Committee of the Red Cross, League of Red Cross Societies

. 1962 - Linus Pauling

. 1961 - Dag Hammarskjöld

. 1960 - Albert Lutuli

. 1959 - Philip Noel-Baker

. 1958 - Georges Pire

. 1957 - Lester Bowles Pearson

. 1956 - The prize money was with 1/3 allocated to the Main Fund and with 2/3 to the Special Fund of this prize section

. 1955 - The prize money was allocated to the Special Fund of this prize section

. 1954 - Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

. 1953 - George C. Marshall

. 1952 - Albert Schweitzer

. 1951 - Léon Jouhaux

. 1950 - Ralph Bunche

. 1949 - Lord Boyd Orr

. 1948 - The prize money was with 1/3 allocated to the Main Fund and with 2/3 to the Special Fund of this prize section

. 1947 - Friends Service Council, American Friends Service Committee

. 1946 - Emily Greene Balch, John R. Mott

. 1945 - Cordell Hull

. 1944 - International Committee of the Red Cross

. 1943 - The prize money was with 1/3 allocated to the Main Fund and with 2/3 to the Special Fund of this prize section

. 1942 - The prize money was with 1/3 allocated to the Main Fund and with 2/3 to the Special Fund of this prize section

. 1941 - The prize money was with 1/3 allocated to the Main Fund and with 2/3 to the Special Fund of this prize section

. 1940 - The prize money was with 1/3 allocated to the Main Fund and with 2/3 to the Special Fund of this prize section

. 1939 - The prize money was with 1/3 allocated to the Main Fund and with 2/3 to the Special Fund of this prize section

. 1938 - Nansen International Office for Refugees

. 1937 - Robert Cecil

. 1936 - Carlos Saavedra Lamas

. 1935 - Carl von Ossietzky

. 1934 - Arthur Henderson

. 1933 - Sir Norman Angell

. 1932 - The prize money was allocated to the Special Fund of this prize section

. 1931 - Jane Addams, Nicholas Murray Butler

. 1930 - Nathan Söderblom

. 1929 - Frank B. Kellogg

. 1928 - The prize money was allocated to the Special Fund of this prize section

. 1927 - Ferdinand Buisson, Ludwig Quidde

. 1926 - Aristide Briand, Gustav Stresemann

. 1925 - Sir Austen Chamberlain, Charles G. Dawes

. 1924 - The prize money was allocated to the Special Fund of this prize section

. 1923 - The prize money was allocated to the Special Fund of this prize section

. 1922 - Fridtjof Nansen

. 1921 - Hjalmar Branting, Christian Lange

. 1920 - Léon Bourgeois

. 1919 - Woodrow Wilson

. 1918 - The prize money was allocated to the Special Fund of this prize section

. 1917 - International Committee of the Red Cross

. 1916 - The prize money was allocated to the Special Fund of this prize section

. 1915 - The prize money was allocated to the Special Fund of this prize section

. 1914 - The prize money was allocated to the Special Fund of this prize section

. 1913 - Henri La Fontaine

. 1912 - Elihu Root

. 1911 - Tobias Asser, Alfred Fried

. 1910 - Permanent International Peace Bureau

. 1909 - Auguste Beernaert, Paul Henri d'Estournelles de Constant

. 1908 - Klas Pontus Arnoldson, Fredrik Bajer

. 1907 - Ernesto Teodoro Moneta, Louis Renault

. 1906 - Theodore Roosevelt

. 1905 - Bertha von Suttner

. 1904 - Institute of International Law

. 1903 - Randal Cremer

. 1902 - Élie Ducommun, Albert Gobat

. 1901 - Henry Dunant, Frédéric Passy