By Felicity Arbuthnot
The Nobel Peace Prize brings another surprise – or farce, depending on your view.
In relatively recent history, there has been Henry Kissinger (1973) architect supreme of murderous assaults on sovereign nations; the United Nations (2001)
whose active warmongering or passive, silent holocausts (think UN
embargoes) make shameful mockery of the aspirational founding words.
In 2002 it was Jimmy Carter,
whose poisonous “Carter Doctrine” of 1980 included declaring the aim of
American control of the Persian Gulf as a “US vital interest”,
justified “by any means necessary.” 2005 saw the Award go to the International Atomic Energy Agency,
which promotes nuclear energy, creating the most lethal pollutants to
which the planet and its population has ever been subjected. The nuclear
waste from the industry the IAEA promotes, is now turned in to
“conventional”, but never the less, nuclear and chemical weapons, by a
sleight of hand of astonishing historical proportions.
Barack Obama (2009)
has since declared himself executioner, by assassination in any form,
any time, any place, anywhere, of anyone deemed by him (not judge or
jury) connected to that now catch all phrase “terrorism” – half a world
away.
The Guantanamo concentration camp to which he unequivocally committed closing (17th November 2008,“60 Minutes”) asserting:
“I have said repeatedly that I will close
Guantanamo and I will follow through on that. I have said repeatedly
that America does not torture. And I’m gonna make sure that we don’t
torture … those are part and parcel of an effort to … regain America’s
moral stature in the world.” Gulag Guantanamo remains with its
prisoners, pathetic, desperate untried, or those ordered released,
languishing year after year. America’s “moral stature” has plummeted
lower than the Nixon years, Libya lies in ruins, Syria barely survives,
with the terrorists’ backers aided via Washington’s myriad back doors –
and in global outposts, US backed or instigated torture thrives.
2012’s Nobel lauded the European Union,
which, since its inception, has crippled smaller trading economies, put
barriers, unattainable conditions, or indeed, near extortion on trade
with poorer countries (often former colonies.)
EU Member States have also
enjoined punitive embargoes against the most helpless of nations and
enthusiastically embraced the latest nation target to be reduced to a
pre-industrial age (correction: be freed to embrace democracy and the
delights of rule by imposed despots, or a long, murderous, unaccountable
foreign occupation and asset seizure.) Eminent International Law
Expert, Professor Francis Boyle, called the EU Award: “A sick joke and a
demented fraud.”
This year’s Peace Prize awarded, on Friday, 11th October, went to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW)
the Netherlands based organization, founded only in 1997, unheard of by
most, charged with ridding the world of chemical weapons.
The Award came ten days
after an OPCW team arrived in Syria to eliminate the country’s chemical
weapons stock. A brief visit in August had them scuttling out, an
apparent courage free entity, within days. President Assad had requested
their investigations back in March, after it was claimed terrorist
factions had used chemical weapons – insurgents now believed to be from
some eighty three countries, backed primarily by the US, UK, Quatar and
Saudi Arabia.
The OPCW’s return, on 1st October, is now touted as a breakthrough
with an intransigent regime who had previously blocked them at every
turn – rather than had the door open for them since March – the team,
now billed as brave souls, working in a war zone – in which the Syrian
people and government live – and die – every day – in a blood-soaked
insurgency of that that famed “international community’s” making.
Is the annual Nobel justified anyway to an organization which has, in
spite of the nightmare hazards to an entire population, agree to
destroying an alleged 1,000 tons of highly dangerous chemicals (if we
believe what we are told) in just months?
In context, the US still has over three times as much chemical
weaponry (estimated at over 3,100 tons) and has defied the specified
April 2012 deadline for their disposal, on the basis that the dangers
are so great that they cannot complete building the appropriate
facilities until 2020 (some reports state 2023.) For the same reasons of
technical and safety obstacles, Russia has a believed five times the US
amount left to destroy.(i) Shameful double standards rule supreme.
Wade Mathews, who worked on the U.S. chemical stockpile destruction,
is uncertain that Syria can meet the deadline. He states that the U.S.
disposal took billions of dollars, the cooperation of many levels of
government – including the military – and a safe environment, to make
sure the destruction was safely executed. (See i.)
To the observer, it would
seems that the OPCW has taken on a high profile, rushed, reckless
enterprise, under pressure from the US/UN, which could potentially
poison Syria’s people and environment in orders of magnitude beyond the
alleged horrors unleashed by, near certainly, the insurgents.
So what possible reason
for the OCPW Nobel, and why now? Interestingly, OPCW Director-General,
Ahmet Üzümcü, is Turkish, a former Consul in Syria’s Aleppo, former
Ambassador to Israel, a former Permanent Representative of Turkey to
NATO and then to the UN in Geneva.
Apart from Director General Üzümcü obviously having some remarkably
useful inside tracks, Syria’s neighbour, Turkey is the sole Middle East
NATO Member State (never mind it has no connection to the North
Atlantic, being set amid the Mediterranean, Aegean, Black Sea, Sea of
Marmara, the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles.)
NATO is certainly not
asleep at the wheel when it comes to Syria, as neither are the European
Union, which Turkey – in spite of being “Gateway to the Orient” with the
majority of the country in it – also aspires to be a Member. Britain
and France are, of course EU Members, joined as one with Turkey in
meddling in Syria.
NATO, has long sought
footholds further east. In an enlightening letter quoted over the years
in these columns, but worthy of revisiting, on 26th June 1979, General
Alexander Hague, on his retirement as NATO Supreme Allied Commander in
Europe, wrote to the then Secretary General, Joseph Luns.
The focus then, of course,
was in the context of the Cold War, however the regional geography and
the diplomatic skills of President Putin and Foreign Minister Lavrov in
the Syria crisis make the tactics outlined again starkly relevant,
especially as President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry have arguably
been diplomatically eclipsed to near irrelevance.
The US-EU-NATO aspirations for the Baghdad-Damascus road to lead to
Tehran (diplomatic “break through” or not) should never be under
estimated. Neither indeed, as has been demonstrated since the 1989 fall
of the Berlin Wall, the desire to encircle Russia as confirmed by
encroachment of US-NATO bases at astonishing speed and with equal
chutzpah.(ii)
The tactics in the NATO letter are arguably as relevant to aims today
as when it was written, albeit, targets, circumstances, field of play
(or planned war) widened. The penultimate paragraphs read:
“We should constantly bear in mind the
necessity of continuously directing attention to the … threat and of
further activising our collaboration with the mass media.
“If
argument, persuasion and impacting the media fail, we are left with no
alternative but to jolt the faint hearted in Europe through the
creations of situations, country by country, as deemed necessary, to
convince them where their interests lie.
“The course of actions which we have in mind may become the only sure way of securing the interests of the West.”
Back to the 2013 Nobel
Peace Prize. Norwegian Fredrik Heffermehl, jurist, writer, translator,
former Vice President of the International Association of Lawyers
Against Nuclear Arms, amongst numerous other prestigious international
appointments, has long been a thorn in the side of the Norway based
Nobel Committee.(iii)
Heffermehl has argued in
his published study: “The Nobel Peace Prize. What Nobel Really Wanted”,
that the Norwegian Parliament had distorted Alfred Nobel’s intention for
the Prize. His researches found numerous academic studies that
supported his thesis. The Norwegian Parliament and the Nobel Committee
emphatically did not. His dissertation, however has been published and
expanded in Chinese, Swedish, Finnish, Russian and in December 2011 was
endorsed by Michael Nobel, of the Nobel Family Association, who
supported Heffermehl in his assertion that on their present course,
Norwegian politicians might lose their control of the Peace Prize.
Norway is, of course is in the NATO “family.” Interesting is the
criteria for the Nobel Peace Prize nomination. The Nobel website
stipulates:
“Deadline
for submission. The Committee bases its assessment on nominations that
must be postmarked no later than 1st February each year … … In recent
years, the Committee has received close to 200 different nominations for
different nominees for the Nobel Peace Prize. The number of nominating
letters is much higher, as many are for the same candidates.”
So who, in the year to 1st
February 2013 rushed to nominate the near unheard of OPCW? And is it
conceivable there might have been some accommodation with the date
(heaven forbid.)
Well, unless you are very young, you may never know, there is a while to wait:
“The names of the nominees and other information about the
nominations cannot be revealed until 50 years later”, states the Nobel
website.
It might be worth noting
the rotating Members of the Executive Council for the OPCW for 2012-2013
include countries which have done more than a little meddling in the
affairs of Syria, including France, the UK and US, Qatar and Saudi
Arabia. Norway is also on the year’s Council.
Britain’s Foreign Office Minister, Hugh Robertson, sent enthusiastic congratulations to the OPCW on their Award, adding:
“ The UK is providing an initial
contribution £2million to support the work of the OPCW in Syria and we
stand ready to provide further assistance.”(iv)
Robertson also lauds the
OPCW, referring to: “The recent use of chemical weapons by the regime in
Syria …” an entirely unproven and arguably, even libelous allegation.
Speculation, however, as to
how another surprising Nobel Peace Prize came about is vacuous. In
fifty years though, it is worth a bet that honest historians will be
shaking their heads in disbelief.
Another Nobel, another farce.
Oh, and should you have missed: Monsanto and Syngenta, this same month, won the World Food Prize – dubbed the “Nobel Prize for Agriculture.”(v)
We live in very strange times.
Notes
