The Nobel Peace Prize for Kofi Annan: A discredited award for a discredited bureaucrat.
Dear Mr. Kincaid,
How do you respond to the fact that the United Nations and its secretary-general Kofi Annan won the extremely prestigious Nobel Peace Price? I happen to know something about how this committee operates, and I would be curious to see any attempts on your part to "explain this one away". :) How would you explain that an independent committee renowned for its thorough and incorruptible scrutiny of candidates chose the United Nations and Kofi Annan for this huge honor? I mean, it's the Nobel Peace price's 100th anniversary, for crying out loud!
In any case, whether you like it or not, this *is* big news. You've got to comment on it on your news section somehow, and I really look forward to it!
Today the world took one small step towards sanity, in my opinion.
Cheers,
Christian
"The track record of the Nobel awards committee is not a good one. Already, the Nobel committee has harmed its reputation with numerous unworthy Literature prizes…"
-- Ronald Radosh
In the article, A Nobel Prize for Fidel?,by Ronald Radosh in FrontPageMagazine.com on March 19, 2001, he noted that a left-wing Norwegian parliamentarian, Hallgeir Langeland, had announced his nomination of Fidel Castro for the coming year's Nobel Peace Prize. Radosh commented, "Is there even really a chance that Castro could get a Nobel Peace Prize? Unfortunately, the answer is yes. The track record of the Nobel awards committee is not a good one. The most blatant Communist revolutionary awarded the prize was the Guatemalan terrorist Rigoberta Menchu, who received the coveted award in 1992. True, she was presented to the world as a human rights advocate and as a symbol of "peace and reconciliation." But in essence, she was an advocate of armed guerrilla struggle and the poster girl of the declining revolutionary left in Latin America. As Menchu wrote: "Our idea is to put into practice the methods initiated by the masses when they evolved their 'people's weapons':to be able to make Molotov cocktails."
As with Fidel Castro, Menchu's cause is that of the international Left - armed revolution and the creation of "socialism" in Third World countries. Anthropologist David Stoll, who wrote Rigoberta Menchu and the Story of All Poor Guatemalans, exposed Menchu's book in 1998. Stoll, as the world learned, reported that while Menchu wrote she was a child farm worker who could not speak or write in Spanish until she was an adult, in reality she attended Catholic boarding schools. Moreover, she claimed that rich white landlords forced her family from its land. Stoll showed that her property was lost in a family fight with her father's in-laws. To these damning revelations, Geir Lundestad of the Norwegian Nobel Prize committee commented, "all autobiographies embellish to a greater or lesser extent."
Of course, were Castro to actually receive a Nobel Peace Prize, it would only further sully the reputation of the prize. Already, the Nobel committee has harmed its reputation with numerous unworthy Literature prizes, which over the years have gone to such as the Stalinist hack poet Pablo Neruda, politically correct authors such as Toni Morrison and Gunter Grass, the anti-American extreme leftist Dario Fo, and the South African novelist Nadine Gordimer. Moreover, should the likes of Castro get the Prize, it would weaken the impact of the prizes awarded such worthy recipients as Lech Walesa, Andrei Sakharov and the Dalai Lama." (emphasis added).
Kofi Annan's Real Record:from a letter by Cliff Kincaid to he Washington Times:
Mr. Annan made a deal with Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein that led to the expulsion of weapons inspectors and Iraq´s re-emergence as an international security threat. He also made a deal with Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi, giving him immunity from prosecution in the Pan Am 103 terrorism case. Mr. Annan supports the comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which was voted down by the U.S. Senate. He supports the global warming treaty, which would raise U.S. energy prices while benefiting Communist China and the Third World. He also supports an International Criminal Court, which could arrest and imprison Americans.
The secretary-general supports the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, even though it was signed with the USSR, a country that no longer exists, and was violated by both the Soviet Union and Russia. He supports the Biological Weapons Convention as well, even though China and Russia have violated it. Mr. Annan opposes a national missile defense system for the United States. He collaborated with then-First Lady Hillary Clinton and Bella Abzug to promote abortion as an "international right" and smeared the United States as a greedy nation in a speech at the University of Notre Dame, claiming Americans don´t spend enough on foreign aid. He supports all "necessary revenues" for the United Nations, which amount to global taxes.
Mr. Annan lent his support to the international campaign to abolish the death penalty in the United States and other nations. He berated the United States for not paying its "dues" to the United Nations, when America had contributed billions of dollars to peacekeeping operations that had not been reimbursed or credited to the United States. He promotes "global debt relief," a cover for transfers of more U.S. wealth to deadbeat socialist Third World dictatorships. The secretary-general refused requests to authorize U.N. peacekeepers in Rwanda to seize weapons and prevent genocide. He proceeded with an independence vote in East timor that led to a bloodbath, and he covered up the fact that U.N. soldiers were spreading AIDS around the world.
Your claim that Mr. Annan "has championed some reforms that have helped make the United Nations a more cost effective and transparent" is also false. U.N. whistleblower Linda S. Shenwick, a former budget analyst at the U.S. mission to the U.N., says that no significant reforms have been carried out. No one has lost a job at the United Nations because of Annan´s reforms. On the other hand, the U.N. pension fund has grown to $25 billion.
World hails Annan's Nobel but massacre survivors demurThe United Nations and U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan jointly won the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize on October 12. Annan is pictured addressing a special U.N. session on terrorism in New York on October 1. REUTERS/Peter Morgan
The Norwegian Nobel Committee praised the United Nations and its chief for working for peace throughout the world. It said Annan had brought "new life" to the world body and had fought for human rights and against AIDS and international terrorism.
By Alistair Lyon
LONDON (Reuters) - World leaders hailed the United Nations and its Ghanaian secretary-general, Kofi Annan, as worthy winners of the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, but survivors of massacres in Rwanda and Bosnia criticised the award.Tributes rolled in from several trouble spots where Annan, 63, has brought his influence and diplomatic skills to bear.
In the Middle East, where Annan is one of the few U.N. officials to win Israeli as well as Palestinian acceptance as a man of good will, both communities endorsed the award.
Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres praised Annan as a man with a humanitarian approach who "really worries about the poor of the world" and is "changing the face of the U.N.".
Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat welcomed the Nobel committee's choice, saying he hoped the world body would "gather the necessary strength" to end Israeli occupation and establish a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital.
Lebanese President Emile Lahoud, in a congratulatory telegram, thanked Annan for the role he and the United Nations had played in Israel's withdrawal from south Lebanon last year.
Portugal, the former colonial power in East Timor, lauded the efforts of Annan and the United Nations in bringing independence to the tiny East Asian territory.
"Truly, he was a key man so that the United Nations could play a different, constructive part in placing Timor on the road to independence," Portuguese Foreign Minister Jaime Gama said.
Nobel laureate and former South African President F.W. de Klerk praised Annan's "positive and constructive role in promoting peaceful solutions to conflicts around the world".
MASSACRE SURVIVORS
But Antoine Mugesara, a representative of Rwandan genocide survivors, recalled the "mess" he said Annan had made during the 1994 killings when he was head of U.N. peacekeeping operations.
"He has a heavy responsibility in the Rwandan genocide. It is a pity, it is unfortunate, he should not have been awarded that Nobel Prize," Mugesera told Reuters.
The Rwandan government, which was fiercely critical of Annan in the years after the genocide but has since patched up ties, extended qualified congratulations to the prize winners.
"We hope that the failures of the past will be a lesson for both the organisation and the secretary-general to make sure that peace and security is assured for all," said Joseph Mutaboba, permanent secretary in the Foreign Ministry.
Annan has apologised on behalf of the United Nations for its failure to prevent or halt the massacre of some 800,000 Rwandans, mainly ethnic Tutsis, by ethnic Hutu extremists.
In Bosnia, survivors of the 1995 massacre of up to 8,000 Muslim men and boys by Bosnian Serbs in the U.N. "safe area" of Srebrenica said they were "appalled" by the Nobel award.
"The United Nations and Kofi Annan are winners of the Nobel prize for genocide against the Bosniaks (Muslims) of the Drina valley and the whole of Bosnia," the Mothers of Srebrenica and Drina Valley association of survivors said in a statement.
Annan was head of U.N. peacekeeping at the time of the massacre. In 1999, he blamed the United Nations and key governments for failing to use force to prevent it.
WARM WORDS
European leaders were lavish in their praise.
"Today's announcement is marvellous news and richly deserved. No one and no organisation is more deserving," said British Prime Minister Tony Blair in a statement.
He said the award was an important signal as the West tries to bring to justice "those who struck at the heart of the free world just blocks from the U.N. headquarters", referring to the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington.
French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin hailed the award as a just recognition of Annan and of the United Nations as an institution needed more than ever in a troubled world.
"Via Kofi Annan and the United Nations, this Nobel Peace Prize lends remarkable support to all those who struggle for a world of peace, solidarity and justice," he said in a statement.
Words of approval also came from Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel, Swedish Prime Minister Goran Persson and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.
"If anyone has earned this award, taking into account his uncommon political achievement also in the present situation, then it is Kofi Annan," Schroeder told reporters.
U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson welcomed the Nobel award and compared U.N. workers in the field to the New York firefighters who responded to the last month's suicide-hijack attacks that killed nearly 5,600 people.
"I hope that the award of the Nobel prize to the United Nations will bring home that U.N. staff in the field are in the frontline of danger on behalf of humanity," she said.
U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Ruud Lubbers voiced delight at the honouring of "a fabulous man".
Annan, who is the fifth African to win the Nobel Peace Prize, also won plaudits from envoys to the United Nations.
India's U.N. ambassador, Kamalesh Sharma, said the prize would make Annan a "real global celebrity, like a rock star".
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