Sunday, October 14, 2007
Better luck next year
The pantheon of valiant people who might have won the Nobel Peace Prize this year -- had only they had captured the imagination of five particular Norwegian parliamentarians -- is a global catalog of courage against tyranny and violence.
In Olso Friday, the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize was not awarded to the Burmese monks whose defiance against, and brutalization at the hands of, the country's military junta in recent weeks captured the attention of the Free World.
The prize was also not awarded to Morgan Tsvangirai, Arthur Mutambara and other Zimbabwe opposition leaders who were arrested and in some cases beaten by police earlier this year while protesting peacefully against dictator Robert Mugabe.
Or to Father Nguyen Van Ly, a Catholic priest in Vietnam arrested this year and sentenced to eight years in prison for helping the pro-democracy group Block 8406.
Or to Wajeha al-Huwaider and Fawzia al-Uyyouni, co-founders of the League of Demanders of Women's Right to Drive Cars in Saudi Arabia, who are waging a modest struggle with grand ambitions to secure basic rights for women in that Muslim country.
Or to Colombian President Àlvaro Uribe, who has fought tirelessly to end the violence wrought by left-wing terrorists and drug lords in his country.
Or to Garry Kasparov and the several hundred Russians who were arrested in April, and are continually harassed, for resisting President Vladimir Putin's slide toward authoritarian rule.
Or to the people of Iraq, who bravely work to rebuild and reunite their country amid constant threats to themselves and their families from terrorists who deliberately target civilians.
Or to Presidents Viktor Yushchenko and Mikheil Saakashvili who, despite the efforts of the Kremlin to undermine their young states, stayed true to the spirit of the peaceful "color" revolutions they led in Ukraine and Georgia and showed that democracy can put down deep roots in Russia's backyard.
Or to Britain's Tony Blair, Ireland's Bertie Ahern and the voters of Northern Ireland, who in March were able to set aside decades of hatred to establish joint Catholic-Protestant rule in Northern Ireland.
Or to thousands of Chinese bloggers who run the risk of arrest by trying to bring uncensored information to their countrymen.
Or to scholar and activist Saad Eddin Ibrahim, jailed presidential candidate Ayman Nour and other democracy campaigners in Egypt.
Or, posthumously, to lawmakers Walid Eido, Pierre Gemayel, Antoine Ghanem, Rafik Hariri, George Hawi and Gibran Tueni; journalist Samir Kassir; and other Lebanese citizens who've been assassinated since 2005 for their efforts to free their country from Syrian control.
Or to the Reverend Phillip Buck; Pastor Chun Ki Won and his organization, Durihana; Tim Peters and his Helping Hands Korea; and Liberty in North Korea, who help North Korean refugees escape to safety in free nations.
What a bunch of losers.
CWCID: Glenn Reynolds.
12 Comments:
By 
Christopher Chambers, at
Sun Oct 14, 04:15:00 PM:
So? As my grandmother used to say, "Ain't you got nothin' constructive a-tawl ta say? ot one blessed t'ing." Do you live with the Nobel Committee? Do you know the means of choosing the winner(s)?
The Chinese blogger thing's amusing. When since have you ever been hawkish about the Chinese--buyers of our cheap money on the national credit card (hey, at least we don't have pay higher taxes), and purveyors of all things that destroy union jobs (and poison our kids)...or Vietnam for that matter. Fertile business ground for US corporations, that Vietnam. Don't want to piss them off...LOL
Come on--you sound like one of these clowns who get worked up about the Best Picture or Best Actor choices during the Oscars. Look, I actually thought Peter O'Toole in "Venus" did a better job than Forrest Whittaker, but hey, those damn politically correct liberal fag affirmative action Hollywood types--they robbed him. At least they didn't reward that bleeding heart DiCaprio for that awful "Blood Diamond." hahaha. Lord...
By SR, at
Sun Oct 14, 05:15:00 PM:
DiCaprio was better than either of the other two by a long shot.
I do agree with CC on the value of the Peace
Prize being equal to Best Actor.
By 
, at
Sun Oct 14, 05:16:00 PM:
As usual, Mr. Chambers, you sound like an ass. I can't believe you actually have a law degree, worked for DOJ, teach and have published novels. The supercilious nonsense you post does you no credit.
By Purple Avenger, at
Sun Oct 14, 05:34:00 PM:
Do you know the means of choosing the winner(s)?
1) Apply blindfold
2) Toss darts
By Dawnfire82, at
Sun Oct 14, 06:33:00 PM:
That simple eh? I always assumed that there was money involved.
By , at
Sun Oct 14, 10:06:00 PM:
Re this assertion of "equality" of the two awards under discussion, one has to believe an Oscar provides far greater utility in helping one bed nubile would-be starlets than does the Peace Prize. I believe the Peace Prize is crystal, so it isn't even a serviceable doorstop. The Oscar is thus slightly more equal on any objective scale.
By Georg Felis, at
Mon Oct 15, 12:38:00 AM:
The Arafat Peace Prize has become a very reliable indicator of people we should stop taking seriously. The people listed above *should* be taken seriously, therefore they have no chance of winning it.
By , at
Mon Oct 15, 12:53:00 AM:
And they never even consitered that chinese man who stood in front of that tank in tenimin square nor did they consiter giving it to those cuban boat people or ELIAN GONZALLAS Instead they gave it to YASSIR ARAFAT the PLO leader and they gave it to AL GORE for his big time fruad
By , at
Mon Oct 15, 01:16:00 AM:
Yitzak Rabin got the Nobel, amazing for a Zionist fascist who advocated crushing the bones of Palestinian children. And FW DeKlerk, the South African Nazi who defended apartheid for decades before he saw the tide turning and got scared.
Gore certainly does not deserve the Nobel, but not for the idiotic reasons some of you right wing thugs on this blog propose. His work on climate change is not new. If climate change is the reason, they should give it to the thousands of environmental activists who have waged the struggle against climate change and greenhouse gases for decades now.
By , at
Mon Oct 15, 09:50:00 AM:
TH: That last line of your article violates the 'previous reference' rule. It comes across that the "losers" are the people on the list.
Zhombre: There is no possible way Christopher is a lawyer, unless he got his degree from a Cracker Jacks box. Lawyers spend too many years in school to write as poorly as he does. Grammatical errors, punctuation, spelling, syntax; his work is a hopeless mess.
But First Prize for "Oddest Comment of the Week" (so far) has to be given to some guy with the funny name of "Anonymous". To wit:
"Gore certainly does not deserve the Nobel, but not for the idiotic reasons some of you right wing thugs on this blog propose."
Not one person in the comments (or our Corn-head blogger, hisself) said why Gore shouldn't get the Nobel. Most of it was mockery, like the "darts" and "crystal" comments, and who should have gotten it. What a great example of how far-left ideology truly blinds its adherents to the words right in front of them.
Standard left-wing battle plan:
1. Ignore the evidence
2. Attack the messenger
Besides, I'm a little jealous of his calling the radical arch-neocon warmongering death cultists here "thugs."
That's my job. :)
By TigerHawk, at
Mon Oct 15, 10:11:00 PM:
Dr. Mercury -
Did not violate the last reference rule. They are a bunch of losers. Literally.
By , at
Tue Oct 16, 02:13:00 PM:
Doc Mercury, this is Chambers' self description from his own blog: Jack of all trades, master of none; author of the Angela Bivens series of mystery novels, two anthologies, published short fiction and comic books, including an upcoming graphic anthology. Former US Department of Justice lawyer, proud Princeton booster. Bourbon drinker. Lecturer/Faculty: Georgetown University School of Continuing Studies; University of Maryland/UMUC at College Park.
