Nobel Peace Laureates Endorse Violence
By Robert J. Burrowes
August 12, 2015 "Information
Clearing House" -
In a recent
letter to US President Barack Obama, twelve Nobel Peace laureates
declared their support for the long history of US elite violence
against Native Americans and enslaved Africans, as well as the US
imperial violence around the world that has butchered tens of
millions of people over the past 200 years. See ‘US: An End to
Torture: Twelve Nobel Peace Prize laureates write to President
Barack Obama asking the US to close the dark chapter on torture once
and for all. Obama responds’.
http://thecommunity.com/no-to-torture/
The letter to Obama was
signed by ex-President José Ramos-Horta (Timor-Leste, prize
recipient in 1996), Archbishop Desmond Tutu (South Africa, 1984),
Leymah Gbowee (Liberia, 2011), Mohammad ElBaradei (Egypt, 2005),
Jody Williams (USA, 1997), Muhammad Yunus (Bangladesh, 2006), F.W.
De Klerk (South Africa, 1993), John Hume (Northern Ireland, 1998),
Oscar Arias Sanchez (Costa Rica, 1987), Bishop Carlos X. Belo
(Timor-Leste, 1996), Adolfo Perez Esquivel (Argentina, 1980) and
Betty Williams (Northern Ireland, 1976).
The letter, the response
from Obama and a subsequent article written by Ramos-Horta – see
‘Obama: The Courage to Say “We Were Wrong”‘
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jose-ramoshorta/obama-the-courage-to-say-we-were-wrong_b_7934284.html
– were a stark reminder to those of us who struggle to end the
violence in our world of what genuine peace activists are up
against.
It was also a stark
reminder that the Nobel Peace Prize, founded in response to the will
of Alfred Nobel following his death in 1896, to be awarded to a
person ‘who 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’ – see ‘The
establishment of the Peace Prize’
http://nobelpeaceprize.org/en_GB/about_peaceprize/establishment/
– was corrupted beyond recognition a long time ago, as has been
carefully documented by Fredrik S. Heffermehl in ‘The Nobel Peace
Prize Watch’
http://www.nobelwill.org/ and again graphically illustrated by
its recent award to a prominent perpetrator of violence like Barack
Obama. See ‘Understanding Obama and Other People Who Kill’
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL1305/S00051/understanding-obama-and-other-people-who-kill.htm
(In fairness, perhaps, it should be noted that Obama is not the
most violent recipient of a Nobel Peace Prize: that title should no
doubt go to former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.)
Ostensibly written by the
twelve laureates to ask Obama to end the extensive US torture
program, the letter includes the following words:
‘The United States, born of the concept of the
inherent equality of all before the law, has been since its
inception a hallmark that would be emulated by countries and
entire regions of the world. For more than two centuries, it has
been the enlightened ideals of America’s founders that changed
civilization on Earth for the better, and made the US a giant
among nations.”
Given the systematic
atrocities planned, organised, sponsored, financed and committed by
the US government throughout its history, which have been carefully
documented by one author after another, one can only presume that
the authors of the letter are delusional, incredibly ignorant or
utterly devoid of compassion for those who have suffered or are
still suffering from the extraordinary violence inflicted by
military and economic forces controlled by the United States elite.
In relation to the
domestic history of the United States, perhaps they should read
Howard Zinn’s book ‘A People’s History of the United States: 1492 –
Present’
https://zinnedproject.org/materials/a-peoples-history-of-the-united-states-updated-and-expanded-edition/
or they might try a
shorter, more recent book in which Professor Timothy Braatz noted
that US society was organized around the violent dispossession of
Native communities, the enslavement of blacks, the marginalization
of women, the exploitation of working people and industrial warfare.
See ‘Peace Lessons’.
http://www.amazon.com/Peace-Lessons-Timothy-Braatz/dp/0692303758/ref=sr_1_28?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1429793285&sr=1-28&keywords=Peace+lessons
This seems a long way
from the ‘enlightened ideals of America’s founders that changed
civilization on Earth for the better’ to which our Noble peace
laureates refer. And I’m sure that if they care to go out and ask a
sample of Native Americans, African-Americans, women, working people
and soldiers suffering from PTSD, they will get more insight into
the accuracy of their claim as it stands today.
And what of the US impact
on the rest of the world? Incredibly, in his article, Ramos-Horta
says that ‘many of us on the other side of the world were touched
forever when the Kennedys came out in support of the rights of
Africans to rule themselves’. Is he naïve? A sycophant? Has he
forgotten the vital role, extensively documented in the US National
Security Archive, played by the US government in supporting the
Indonesian occupation of his own country? See ‘A Quarter Century of
U.S. Support for Occupation’
http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB174/
I wonder what Desmond
Tutu thinks of Ramos-Horta’s comment. Tutu, at least, should know
what happened to the visionary leader of the newly independent Congo
– see ‘Patrice Lumumba: the most important assassination of the 20th
century’
http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/poverty-matters/2011/jan/17/patrice-lumumba-50th-anniversary-assassination
– and have some idea of the history of US violence throughout
Africa, Asia and Central/South America, killing true leaders and
installing US stooges so that western corporations can ruthlessly
exploit their natural resources. For a taste of the extensive
documentation of this point, see many of the books by Noam Chomsky
http://chomsky.info/
and the recent book by Andre Vltchek ‘Exposing Lies of the
Empire’
http://badak-merah.weebly.com/exposing-lies-of-the-empire.html
I am only too familiar
with the truth being butchered by elites and their agents in
academia and the corporate media. But to read the truth being
butchered so ruthlessly by Nobel Peace laureates is nauseating
indeed.
Let us hope that those
Nobel peace laureates who did not sign this letter will share their
response to it with us.
I am deeply committed to
searching out ways to resolve all conflicts nonviolently. But we
must always start with the truth. Deluding ourselves about history
or letting perpetrators get away with violence in the hope that they
will be kinder to us next time does not work. Despite his pretty
words, Obama will not change – see ‘The Destruction of Barack Obama’
http://www.nationofchange.org/destruction-barack-obama-1374153044
– and the US elite would not allow him to change should he
seriously consider doing so. See ‘The Global Elite is Insane’.
http://warisacrime.org/content/global-elite-insane
If you have the courage
to acknowledge and act on the truth, you are welcome to consider
signing the online pledge of ‘The People’s Charter to Create a
Nonviolent World’
http://thepeoplesnonviolencecharter.wordpress.com
which has been signed by one honest and genuinely admirable Nobel
peace laureate already.
And remember this: if you
have not won the Nobel Peace Prize, you are in the same category as
Mohandas K. Gandhi and many other fine people around the world who
still struggle relentlessly for a world without violence whatever
personal price they may pay.
Robert J. Burrowes has
a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He
has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand
why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist
since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?’
http://tinyurl.com/whyviolence His email address is
flametree@riseup.net and his website is at
http://robertjburrowes.wordpress.com