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Geekery Today: posts from February 14th, 2002
WAR IS PEACE (posted 14 February 2002)
They say that satire died when Henry Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize,* but if a Right-wing Norwegian pol gets his way, the Nobel committee will be spitting on the grave. Conservative MP Harald Tom Nesvik announced last week that he had nominated Tony Blair and George W. Bush for the Nobel Peace Prize for their decisive action against terrorism, something I believe in the future will be the greatest threat to peace
[The Guardian].
We are at war with Eastasia.
We have always been at war with Eastasia.
Well, now, wait just a cotton-picking minute. According to the provisions of Nobel, the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize 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
.
However, Tony Blair has ordered more military actions than any U.K. leader since World War II, with at least one military action every year since 1998. George W. Bush has urged budgets massively increasing the size and funding of the U.S. standing military, continued and deepened U.S. military aid for the on-going civil war in Colombia and Israeli military occupation of Palestine, and initiated a war not only against Afghanistan, but an undefined, open-ended War on Terrorism
which administration officials daily threaten to expand to other nations such Iran, North Korea, and Iraq. Vice President Dick Cheney told the Washington Post that the campaign of warfare the President has launched may never end. At least, not in our lifetimes.
Both Bush and Blair have refused to work with multilateral consultation and diplomacy through peace congresses, with Bush’s refusal to secure UN Security Council approval
before initiating the war in Afghanistan, and Blair’s refusal to place the British troops occupying Sierra Leone under the command of United Nations Peacekeeping forces.
There are many competing nominations, so this slap in the face to the worldwide peace and justice movement may not occur (however, it wouldn’t hurt to let the prize committee know how you feel). However, just the existence of this Orwellian assertion that launching perpetual war is doing work towards peace, is sufficient to knock down my hopes for the human race several notches. (Right-wing crazies should long ago have ceased to faze me—these are the same people who called our terrorist wars on the democratic governments of Nicaragua and Chile a fight for freedom. But I suppose that I am too sensitive to the politically absurd.)
Take Action! Urge the Nobel Peace Prize committee to reject Bush and Blair, and keep the award for those who have really worked for peace.
