Al Gore has won the Nobel Peace Prize, sharing it with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. There's going to be a hue and cry from the old school types, who will insist that talking about polar bears is not on the same level as Theodore Roosevelt ending the Russo-Japanese war.
These critics miss the point. For the past half century, the Nobel Peace prize has not been about peace, but about politics. In the same way that a Nobel Prize for Literature means that the author's books are boring crap, so the Peace Prize means that the winner was some guy that, well, what exactly?
Child Soldiers - Sudan
Saying that environmentalists deserve a Peace Prize is a pretty big stretch. It's quite obvious that this was handed to Gore and his looney-tune buddies as a slap to George W. Bush, in the same way that it was handed to Jimmy Carter in 2002. I have no idea what Jimmy Carter has done to "advance peace," just as I have no clue what the UN and Kofi Annan ever did. He won the prize in 2001, after supervising the Oil for Fraud scandal and doing absolutely nothing to stop tyrants around the globe from murdering people, especially in Africa.
This is Ole Danbolt Mjoes, Nobel committee chairman, awarding the prize to Gore: "We would encourage all countries, including the big countries, to challenge, all of them, to think again and to say what can they do to conquer global warming. The bigger the powers, the better that they come in front of this."
Ah! Now I get it. If you use the word conquer, you can give the Peace Prize to anybody. Old Ole asserted that this was not a slap at Bush or the US for not adopting Kyoto (Clinton, darling of the Left, didn't adopt it, either). Still, one can't deny the Nobel crowd's bald politics. When handing the Peace Prize to Carter in 2002, then-committee chairman Gunnar Berge called it a "kick in the leg" to the Bush Administration. You can't get more direct than that.
Alfred Nobel, master of dynamite and TNT, started the whole Prize game back in 1895. Back then, the prize was to go to a person that fought for peace and disarmament. It now includes poverty, economic growth, and the environment. In other words, it's being watered down to include virtually anybody for anything.
Burma
The Buddhists that get shot in Thailand on a daily basis by Islamic thugs, the people struggling for democracy in Burma and getting tortured for their trouble, the peasants in Darfur that are hacked to death each and every day. No peace for them. Al Gore is being hailed as a prophet. How about doing something for peace now?
Here's another laugher from the Nobel Committee, upon presenting the award: "[Climate change] will place particularly heavy burdens on the world's most vulnerable countries. There may be increased danger of violent conflicts and wars, within and between states."
News for you, genius: the vulnerable countries are already in danger. There's no "may" about it. Violent conflict and war are taking place right this minute. Take off your rose colored political blinders for the first time in your life, and you might be able to see the blood in the streets.
It makes one ill to think that there are fat cats like Al Gore patting themselves on the back in Norway over a dubious scientific theory, while a few thousand miles away, men, women, and children are receiving the hard facts of a bullet to the brain.
1 comment:
Even Ted Kennedy said, of the Kyoto Treaty, "No one in their right mind would sign that thing."
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