The Nobel Peace Prize Committee Gets One Right...

[Lord Jim]

Vapid villainous vicious vacuous vampire...

[wesw]

veritably villainous...

[MajGenl.Meade]

...vampire, vixen

[rubato]

Historically they got one very very wrong and failed to award it to Gandhi whose life work inspired and educated many other Peace Prize recipients. He pioneered a path for non-violent although often traumatic social change and gave power to the powerless.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahatma_Gandhi#Awards

Gandhi did not receive the Nobel Peace Prize, although he was nominated five times between 1937 and 1948, including the first-ever nomination by the American Friends Service Committee,[233] though he made the short list only twice, in 1937 and 1947.[113] Decades later, the Nobel Committee publicly declared its regret for the omission, and admitted to deeply divided nationalistic opinion denying the award.[113] Gandhi was nominated in 1948 but was assassinated before nominations closed. That year, the committee chose not to award the peace prize stating that "there was no suitable living candidate" and later research shows that the possibility of awarding the prize posthumously to Gandhi was discussed and that the reference to no suitable living candidate was to Gandhi.[113] When the 14th Dalai Lama was awarded the Prize in 1989, the chairman of the committee said that this was "in part a tribute to the memory of Mahatma Gandhi."[113]

yrs,
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[wesw]

headline: vampire spreads malaria

[MajGenl.Meade]

Anyone care to make a substantial rebuttal to my contention that Malaysia should not have a Nobel prize?

[wesw]

I made a minor one, but it was in another thread...

[Lord Jim]

It is my intention to do that General, but I probably won't have time today. (Frankly I wasn't sure you were serious, given the extent of your minimizing and dismissive characterization of what she has done, what she has been through, and what she continues to do, all by the age of 17.)

To put this in a little perspective, in recent years the Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to two people whose actions have actually made war more likely (Jimmy Carter, who saved the North Korean nuclear weapons program from destruction during the Clinton years, and Mohamed ElBaradei, who saw the protection of the Iranian nuclear weapons program as his primary mission when he was the Director of the IAEA) and two people who had done absolutely nothing to merit a Nobel Prize, (Al Gore, whose big claim to fame is having exploited the climate change issue to make boatloads of cash for himself, and of course Barack Obama who had barely taken office when he got it.)

Compared to any of those four, Malala is more deserving by a factor of about ten to the tenth power...

And of course there's also the shameful and disgraceful failure to give the award to the US President who was most clearly deserving of it. I'm speaking of course of Ronald Reagan, whose policies eliminated the specter of global nuclear annihilation, and resulted in millions upon millions of people being freed of the yoke of totalitarianism.

[Joe Guy]

Anyone care to make a substantial rebuttal to my contention that Malaysia should not have a Nobel prize?

I don't believe Malaysia deserves a Nobel Prize either. They can't even keep track of their airplanes.

[rubato]

Who are the "big five" the five most important recipients in the past century and a bit?

1. George Marshall Head and shoulders he was the most important to history and a great man besides. He won the war against fascism and then won the peace in both hemispheres. No one will equal his accomplishments.

2. Jimmy Carter (earned two by the admission of the Nobel Committee)
3. Norman Borlaug
4. Nelson Mandela
5. Médecins Sans Frontières

6. Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev he might be one of the top five. It is hard to say. He, more than anyone else, was responsible for the dissolution of the Soviet empire and for the disappearance of the specter of nuclear war. What he did required both wisdom and courage. But the transition has been traumatic and difficult.

The worst award was to Henry Kissinger and the Nobel Committee said afterwards that if they had known the truth he would never have gotten it.

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[wesw]

I am glad that some of you seem to think that the threat of nuclear war is gone. I m not so sure about it myself.

proliferation of nukes seems to be going pretty well

[Lord Jim]

Let me be clear about what I'm saying, Wes....

I don't think the threat of a rogue country or a terrorist group setting off a nuclear bomb is gone; not by a long shot...

But bad as that would be, that's a whole different thing from the situation we had during the Cold War; where the US and Soviet Union were squared off with over 10,000 warheads a piece, and a miscue could have resulted in billions of deaths, and the complete destruction of civilization on a world-wide scale...

That is why I specifically used the phrase "global nuclear annihilation"...

[wesw]

I remember what it was like. I m not old enough to have gone thru the Cuban crisis, but I was taught in by a very good elementary school teacher what to do in case of nuclear attack, back in the 70 s. our school was the local bomb shelter too, and during the nuclear attack drill she instructed us to get under the desk cover the back of our necks with our hands, put our head between our legs... and kiss our butts goodbye

somehow the world seems more dangerous now, and the danger seems a lot closer too home. the world seems very small these days

[rubato]

duck and cover

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKqXu-5jw60

[MajGenl.Meade]

Anyone care to make a substantial rebuttal to my contention that Malaysia should not have a Nobel prize?

I don't believe Malaysia deserves a Nobel Prize either. They can't even keep track of their airplanes.

Sorry. Must have been thinking of Malawi

[Sue U]

Malala Yousafzai is an extraordinary young woman. She is courageous, articulate and an inspiration to the world. Her journalism and her advocacy have been very moving and highly influential. I admire her tremendously. And a Nobel Prize for her is inappropriate.

As established by Alfred Nobel's will, the Peace Prize is to go 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."

The committee can (and obviously does) give the prize to whomever they want, but I don't think Malala Yousafzai meets those particular criteria. That is all.

ETA:

Also too, Malaysia, Malawi, malaria and Naomi Campbell are right out. Maybe Maleficent?

[MajGenl.Meade]

Yeah. What she said. (Gazes admiringly at photo of the gorilla his dreams)

[rubato]

I agree with Sue. Malala was chosen more for symbolic reasons than because of her own works. Very many have done as much or more and many of them paid with their lives. Dozens of polio workers are killed every year, for example, and yet hundreds continue to go back into the field knowing what they are risking:

Attack targets polio workers in Pakistan, kills 11

She was the "warm and fuzzy" choice. But not the best.


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