09.10.2009
The original article was published on
Alfred Nobel
–
“The Champion of Peace"
When the
batteries which keeps the Norwegian government up and playing is about to get
worn out early in the autumn, after months of criticism of inefficient work and
lack of leadership, the government can rest on one reliable source of superb
energy that forces the limelight away from whatever wrongdoings and misconducts
that is about to be shed light on, towards the next peace maker of the world.
The most
exciting moment - for some - is when the doors of peace opens in the middle of
October in front of foreign journalists, headed by CNN, crowding around the
door wondering what surprise the Peace Committee has up in its sleeves this time.
The
2007-award for "The Champion of Peace" was for instance handed over to
Mr. Albert Arnold Gore, the environmentalist. If you read Alfred Nobel’s Will
– which you obviously should if you intend to understand what I am writing
about – you will see that to give the peace prize to Mr. Gore would be the
equivalent of bestowing the former Norwegian Minister of Justice and Police,
Mr. Odd Einar Dorum, a gift from "Mrs. Elen Margrethe Anker F Stangs trust
fund for poor widows and aged women in Halden"[1],
and get away with it. I will elaborate this below.
The story behind the Prize
What is
the basis for the Peace prize? What kind of an award is this really, that is;
what did Alfred Nobel really mean with this awarding? What conditions must be
met to obtain this "grand" price that to a certain extent has been
awarded to the oppressed and prisoners or to terrorists, or both?
Let us
have a closer look into Alfred Nobel’s story and how he was thinking. We don’t
have to dig for long to find his idea of peace, and what and who – by his
discretion – can make peace, and therefore what actions he believes are the
best to achieve peace, and thus who should get the reward in
Alfred
Nobel's father, Immanuel, was a weapon producer, but this fact has conveniently
been concealed by the Norwegian Peace Institute in their “timeline” of Alfreds
life: http://nobelprize.org/alfred_nobel/timeline/index.html.
In 1841
the Nobel-family moved from
As we all
know the concept of mines (thanks to the Nobel-family, really) are to surprise
the soldier (or the little ten-year-old girl running happily across the meadow
with a doll in her hand and suddenly gets her limbs and life shattered) by
tearing off a foot or two.
The
Family-company, the Nobel’s, was to such an extent dependent on warfare, that
when the Crimean War was over and the distinguished nurse Florence
Nightingale had gone home after patching up the Nobel’s victims, the family
business went bankrupt.
Great, but
this didn’t stop Alfred's desire to make money on war and misery.
When
Alfred was 30 years old, he moved back to
The
Family-company’s War Department must have praised the young and eager Alfred
and his results, and when he in 1867 was granted patent on dynamite, he had
also secured his family financially.
At the
same time he secured the responsibility for the destructions caused by his
explosives and weapons around the world (a clever lawyer could have earned some
change in initiating a class-action against the Nobel Foundation. After all,
the funds this foundation is created on derives in all its simplicity from
Nobel’s weapons and their destruction; human blood).
The
following year Mr. Nobel was awarded the
The practical
benefit – which was awarded – was to blow armies and people to pieces, and at
the same time make big money of this enterprise.
At the
Nobel Institute's home page, one can read that:
“Alfred
Nobel supported those who spoke up against militarism and war, and wanted to
make a contribution to work for disarmament and the peaceful solution of
international conflicts.”
This
sounds nice, until you read the following words:
“In 1891
he moved to
The only
reason why Mr. Nobel bought this armaments factory must have been to close it,
right? Hardly. Alfred was a business man and did obviously not intend to close
down the factory. Quite on the contrary. He was to earn money on weapons and
destruction, and this at the same time as he was fumbling with this Peace Prize
Testament which he finally manage to finish the year before he passed away,
only 63 years old.
So proud
was Alfred of his innovations and so confident in his conviction of the
dynamite’s brilliance he had become that he began to see himself as the first
human creature who, unlike Jesus, really would be able to create peace on
earth.
Just
listen, or read, how he pictured the potential of his dynamite:
"My
dynamite will sooner lead to peace than a thousand world conventions. As soon
as men will find that in one instant whole armies can be utterly destroyed,
they surely will abide by golden peace."
What he
says in effect is the following: My arms will create peace much faster than
everyone else's weapons – or peace treaties for that matter – would manage.
Once the humanity understands that they can be destroyed, they will bow for my
arms and my terror.
In short:
Terror is by Alfred's opinion the only way to solve world peace. One can almost
hear him: - Run for the stores and buy my dynamite!
His
majestic, or say, devout statement above declares neither more nor less that: -
Govern the countries of the world with terror, and you will avoid unrest and
war![2]
Another
Nobel Laureate, the physiologist Charles Robert Richler (1913 physiology and
medicine), has stated the following opinion about weapons of peace:
"Quick-firing
rifle, Monstrous artillery, improved shells, smokeless and noise less
gunpowder-these are so destructive that a great battle ... could cause the
deaths of 300,000 but in a few hours. It is evident that the nations, no matter
how unconcerned they may be at times when driven by a false pride, will draw
back (in the twentieth century) from this fearful vision.”
One is
left with the view that these wise heads really believed that world peace could
be achieved only through threats and thus by the reign of terror.
Alfred
Nobel Peace Prize is therefore not based on anything other than terror as a
peace-fixer, and we are left alone with a terrorist prize, which is awarded in
50 years
after the creation of Mr. Nobel’s Will, the author and military historian Lynn
Montross expressed his thoughts - after having reviewed the circumstances
surrounding the bombing of Hiroshima, which resulted in hundreds of thousands
dead and maimed people - on the peace weapons of his time in this way:
”Never in
history has mankind been given more reason to look forward to the future with
hope. For the blast which blew nineteenth-century nationalism to pieces at
It is
quite amazing, isn’t it, how some of our leaders look upon humanity. They
really don’t bother covering their disdain, and there is a reason for that.
According
to these great people the humanity is to be governed by terror and violence,
and the conditions of the Peace Prize seem to have been fulfilled some several
hundred thousand times with the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
So when
any group of, let’s say believers in a society based on equality before the
law, would suspect that the current system of government has ceased to function
correctly, or the current leaders in a given country are corrupt and has
reached far enough in running the country into the ditch, then the leaders –
supported by Nobel's words and innovations – can blow the “rebels” in pieces,
and by this “democratic” action tell the rest of the terrorised population who
might think of opposing to "Our great system of government" that it
could pay to bow and scrape to the weapons.
Back to
the 1800-century
One
morning Alfred got a bit of a shock as he opened the morning newspaper. In the
newspaper he could read that the local newspaper from his hometown in
Now Alfred
had really gotten something to think about. Obviously he didn’t fancy the
thought of having this statement nailed to his legacy.
Nobel was
rich, yes, he had become filthy rich of selling explosives to the weapon
industry.
Yet,
having thought through what he had done for the wars of the world, as well as
the outside world's view of him, a dissatisfied Alfred stated (three years
before his death and two years after buying Bofors, the weapon factory):
"I
wish all guns with their belongings and everything could be sent to hell, which
is the proper place for their exhibition and use."[4]
The Peace
activist Bertha von Suttner’s short stay as a housekeeper/secretary
with the weapon manufacturer and dynamite-innovator, could in itself serve as
an indication that different and conflicting ideas and thoughts about humanity
and the future to some extent occurred in Alfred’s mind. But then again there
is always another alternative: If you can’t beat the enemy, join him/her and
then…
Nevertheless,
Alfred was a business man, while Suttner was a peace-thinker in development who
later on became one of the leading peace activists of her time. In 1905 she was
awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Despite
the brief stay she had with Alfred, it nevertheless could have marked him
somewhat. It has been said that it was von Suttner and her thoughts that moved
Alfred to leave close to his entire wealth to a foundation, which was
established through his Will of five articles attempting to explain the terms
of what we today know as the Nobel’s Prizes.
The fifth
award - the so-called Peace Prize – is described like this in the Testament:
"...
and one part 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."
With these
words, in the light of the prehistory around Nobel, one can see and feel his
desire to withdraw whatever he had done and sold, perhaps not only due to the unfortunate perception that parts of
his contemporaries had of him.
Subjectively
viewed, it appears as if he simply wanted to reduce the damage he had inflicted
on the world. Objectively viewed article 5 is a contradiction to his entire
existence.
It is
therefore rather excessive – just like that - to describe Article 5 in the will
as an unspoiled genuine Peace Prize.[5]
In fact it
seems that the Nobel Peace Prize has been used for political purposes, in
connection with and after damages
have been inflicted on the humanity, somewhat in the same way as the story
Alfred-Nobel ended, where he actually ended up giving himself the first Peace
Prize ever, as a kind of an indulgence for a repentant sinner.
Several
times the Peace Prize has been granted to people who have ruined each other's neighbourhoods,
and where the prize itself seems - at least this is how it looks like for the
commoners – to have been used as a reward for leaders that have lost the energy
to fight.
The Peace
Prize appears thus as a couple of dark sunglasses for the use of the outside
world to ensure that we no longer need to see what has happened in the
neighbourhood. We get the impression that everything is now taken care of. They
have got their Peace Prize, thus it can’t be that bad. The damage and scope
will be reduced to fragments and will eventually be forgotten.
The only
thing you will remember after a certain laps of time is the peace prize itself,
and that it was some strange incident connected to the award, but ok, forget
it.
The procedure of the awarding
What is
the procedure of the selection of a winner, really?
I was
going to write something about the Peace Prize at these times last year (2007),
but got my fingers entangled in something else, which seems to have come out
fortunately for me anyway.
In the
spring of 2008 a series of documents were released from the archive after the
American, Richard
Helms, an
In a
"For your eyes only” -marked document of April
11 1973, from Helms to President Nixon's adviser, Mr. Henry A.
Kissinger, Kissinger is asked whether Nixon is nominated for this award. In
the same document it emerges that the Iranian government (in reality the Shah)
is under pressure to support a Croatian, the partisan leader Josip Broz
Tito’s nomination, but that they could support Nixon if he were to be
nominated.
Hey! Stop!
"... Under pressure to support."? Settle down for a while and give
this a thought. According to the Will, the only contact the Nobel committee is
to have with the outside world is to accept proposals/nominations for
candidates. This nomination is to be submitted no later than February 1 of that
year. Supporting a candidacy is an
unknown possibility, at least for me it is.
As far as
I know there is no secretariat in
Once the
nomination deadline has expired (sometime in February), there is no point in
submitting anything to the Nobel committee (except the nominations for next
year). However, this procedure (giving a heck about nomination deadlines) is
exactly what is described in the letter from Helms to Kissinger. Is this how
the selection process takes place in
Henry
Kissinger answered Helms a few days later, on April
14 1973 and told him that Nixon was
nominated, and that they wanted the Shah's support, or at least a guarantee
that the Shah would not supported anyone else. To ensure his vote, Nixon
invited the Shah on a state visit that summer.
Although
the documentation of manipulation is sufficient to prove foul play in
One thing
that I don’t understand though is that the absence
of a vote from
I would
like to add that it goes without saying that these letters which obviously are submitted
should not be read by the committee-members, as there is a great risk of
getting influenced by the content of those "supportive statements".
Despite this, the letters are clearly read, and they have obviously some effect
on the outcome.
In his correspondence
with Helms, Kissinger failed to tell that he also was nominated for this award,
an award he received just a few months later. Maybe he knew more than Nixon and
thus had the power to mess up his candidacy. In any case there was no reason to
trumpet his little secret, if he had one.
Both
Kissinger and Nixon have recently been accused of war crimes in
One of
these highly regarded persons was to get the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973 – as
mentioned it turned out to be Nixon's henchman, Kissinger.
It
wouldn’t make any notable difference if Nixon had been awarded the price. No
matter how you interpret and turn this award it will nevertheless appear as
bizarre, and impossible to recognize or explain.
Another message
from Helms to Kissinger in April 1973 shows that the Americans have convinced
the Shah to support Nixon's candidacy as a Peace Prize winner. In Helm’s response
to Kissinger, Helms asks what other people Kissinger believes that the Shah may
appeal to and who could write letters on Nixon's behalf (to the Nobel
committee) as a way of supporting his candidacy. Moreover, Helm emphasises that
the Iranians is short on time and that they would appreciate a prompt statement
in regards to Nixon’s/Kissinger’s wishes.
Short on
time? They're several months late (if we're talking about the nomination),
which clearly gives us the reason to believe that the real selection and
awarding process is entirely different from that what we are taught to believe.
As you can
see from the correspondence mention above, Helms refers to parts of the
selection process in this way: "... their representative support to the
Nobel Prize Committee ..." So, what is this peace prize thing? A
playground for naughty boys?
In another
message from Helms to Kissinger it is noted that
This
procedure is unheard of, nevertheless it seems obvious that it has been
used.
Well, today
the peace-doors once again were opened in
And
finally my recommendations to those of the nominees who have made an honest
attempt on behalf of the humanity, and have been nominated for this prize, say
NO! Say: - No thank you, I believe People can be governed without terror!
Herman J Berge
Luxembourg
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