BS: Nobel prize for peace (2003)

Subject: BS: Nobel prize for peace (2003)
From: GUEST,Wolfgang
Date: 11 Oct 03 - 06:24 AM

After a short moment of surprise (who please?) I must say I applaud this year's decision. The favourits in the German press were Vaclav Havel and the Pope, but Shirin Ebadi seems to be a very good choice.

The first female judge in Iran she had to resign after the Mullah's takeover due to restrictions of the public role of women. She has been arrested and sentenced a couple of times and is a fearless fighter for human rights, especially for women and children (the males' rights are not that much under pressure in Iran). She is a firm believer in the Islamic faith but a firm disbeliever in its present main interpretation in the Iran.

Ebadi: "As a human rights activist in Iran one is in permanent danger of being killed."
"It is not the Islam that is incompatible with women's rights, it is its one-sided interpretation by males".

No wonder it took the Iranian media hours before their first tight-lipped comment.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: Nobel prize for peace (2003)
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 11 Oct 03 - 07:22 AM

There's been some significant official support for the award from within Iran: The Iranian government congratulated Ebadi, and reformers said it was a victory for women's rights and political change in the Islamic Republic.

"In the name of the Islamic Republic of Iran's government I congratulate Dr Edabi and we see this (award) as the result of her qualifications," Abdollah Ramazanzadeh, spokesman for Iran's reformist government said in the first official reaction.

He said her views on human rights, especially women's rights, had been noted internationally and "this is an honour for Iranian women and shows that Iranian Muslim women have gained a positive atmosphere for their activities and we hope that her views will be noticed inside and outside of Iran."
(From Gulf Daily News (Bahrein)

Subject: RE: BS: Nobel prize for peace (2003)
From: BanjoRay
Date: 11 Oct 03 - 07:27 AM

I'm glad they didn't give it to the pope. His main contribution towards peace seems to have been the silence of death by aids of people told not to use condoms.
Ray

Subject: RE: BS: Nobel prize for peace (2003)
From: Rapparee
Date: 11 Oct 03 - 09:25 AM

A good choice, from what I have learned of her. I only hope that some fundy doesn't decide to put women back in their place and gun her down. She's an inspiration to people everywhere.

Does anyone know if George III was nominated for his work in the pacification of the Middle East? If so, does anyone know how long the Committee laughed?

Subject: RE: BS: Nobel prize for peace (2003)
From: GUEST
Date: 11 Oct 03 - 10:03 AM

I don't know that the committee would laugh at the nomination of Bush. After all, they awarded Trimble, De Klerk, Arafat, and some others who I thought pretty questionable. I couldn't agree more about the pope, though. Even from a (liberal) Catholic perspective, he has been a disaster to the human rights and peace agenda.

I think this is a great choice, but there are so many women like Shirin Ebadi around the world, one wonders why the committee decided to reward a Muslim woman fighting fundamentalism this year? It strikes me as window dressing of the sort the committee engaged in with the decision to award "opposing sides" in Ireland, South Africa, and the Arab/Israeli wars. The award going to Hume and Trimble in Ireland was a sick joke, IMO. And I don't know why de Klerk was awarded--he was a minor player who happened to be in the right place in the right time in history, to hand over the keys to the country to Nelson Mandela. And Arafat and Rabin? My god, what WERE they thinking?

I dunno. I don't think the Nobel committee is fulfilling it's mission with any conviction these days when it comes to the Peace Prize. Certainly not when you compare the awards in the other fields. I was very pleased to see the Medicine prize go to the men who invented the MRI. I heard an interview with one of them, and it was just so heartening, the way they said no one in the field of medicine believed it could be done--that the scientists reacted to their research as if they had said "we used hocus pocus magic, the omens, and an alchemist" to develop the technology.

Of course, the very conservative, status quo, conventional wisdom nature of the committee makes the award pretty damn problematic, IMO. I mean, why did Toni Morrison win the prize for literature over Gloria Naylor, the much better writer, when the committee decided it was time to award a black American female writer? Answer: Toni Morrison works at Princeton, who lobbies very hard for their Nobel candidates.

Call me cynical, but...

Subject: RE: BS: Nobel prize for peace (2003)
From: GUEST,pdc
Date: 11 Oct 03 - 12:15 PM

I think the choice of Ebadi for the Nobel Peace Prize was good, but also very political, which may change the status of the prize. However, it was a good choice on many, many levels, IMO.

Subject: RE: BS: Nobel prize for peace (2003)
From: DougR
Date: 11 Oct 03 - 01:20 PM

I think it was a good choice also.

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: Nobel prize for peace (2003)
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 11 Oct 03 - 01:42 PM

The award of the Peace Prize is always political, whether it goes to a politician or not.

Sometimes it's to lend strength to someone working to make things better in a tight corner; sometimes - and these tend to be the most grotesque cases - it's a hopeful gesture to mark the fact that some unutterable bastard has made a move in the right direction.

Kissinger's prize was the most extreme example of that. Comparable only to the fact that Adolf Hitler was nominated in 1938, because he cooperated in not actually starting a war that year.. But at least he didn't get it.

At least this year they seem to have chosen a genuine peacemaker. I hope some of the people who'll go on record as welcoming the award will pay some attention to what she actually says. For example, from that page I linked to earlier:

Ebadi wasted no time in pursuing her bold fight for human rights, calling for the release of political prisoners in her homeland but warning the United States not to intervene.

Just hours after becoming the first Muslim woman to win the prestigious accolade, Ebadi also spoke out against rights abuses around the world, taking aim at the US occupation of Iraq and describing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as an unequal war of "stones against weapons."

Subject: RE: BS: Nobel prize for peace (2003)
From: katlaughing
Date: 12 Oct 03 - 12:29 AM

Thanks for posting this, Wolfgang and McGrath for the quotes. I'd heard the news on the radio and was well pleased.

Subject: RE: BS: Nobel prize for peace (2003)
From: GUEST,Wolfgang
Date: 12 Oct 03 - 05:07 AM

Fine that we all agree on that particular choice (BTW, it was the first time they had a female majority in the electing committee).

But I see in some of the posts a lack of knowledge (or acknowledgement) what for the peace prize can be given according to Nobel's legacy. It can easily be given for one particular effort in one particular crisis, completely disregarding the track record of that person in other fields.

Like a physics prize can be given for one great finding to a person who has erred in nearly all other attempts to contribute to science and who is not at all a nice person.

The idea is often (there are notable exceptions in the past) not to judge whether this particular person/institution is a good choice for the peace prize, but whether one particular action of one person makes her a good choice for the prize.

The original idea fo Nobel was that the prize should be given for one particular deed in one particular year (in whatever field). The Nobel committees in the last decades have sometimes decided to give the prize for something like 'the life work'. That's not a bad idea, in my eyes, but several of the people mentioned as unworthy have been very fine choices according to the rules.

But then, I'm not a wholist looking at the whole person when judging one particular contribution.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: Nobel prize for peace (2003)
From: Wolfgang
Date: 14 Oct 03 - 12:12 PM

Iran Scorns 'Political' Nobel Peace Award (from: The Guardian)

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: Nobel prize for peace (2003)
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 14 Oct 03 - 12:45 PM

That's a strictly accurate, but potentially misleading headline that the Guardian gave its report - as witness the first paragraph in the story: "Showing the government's deep divisions over Nobel Peace laureate Shirin Ebadi, Iran's president Tuesday lauded the success of the human rights activist but called the award a ``political'' tool."

Subject: RE: BS: Nobel prize for peace (2003)
From: Wolfgang
Date: 14 Oct 03 - 12:58 PM

This award has been given to her totally on the basis of political considerations Khatami is cited later in the article.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: Nobel prize for peace (2003)
From: Wolfgang
Date: 05 Nov 03 - 11:29 AM

Nobel laureate given bodyguards after threats (Guardian article)

Wolfgang