The Odd Thing About the Nobel Peace Prize

The Chinese dissident Liu Xiabo being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize has upset China. Why didn’t the Nobel Committee award him the prize for literature, like they did to Winston Churchill (1953)? This would have made the Chinese people proud and their government more supportive to peace, probably.

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This is not the first time the Nobel Peace Prize has ruffled feathers among sensitive people. Carl von Ossietzky’s prize in 1935 angered Hitler so much that he forbade all German nationals from accepting Nobel Prizes.

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In 1975, Andrei Sakharov got the Nobel peace prize but Soviet Union did not allow him to go out of the country to collect the prize. His wife read the acceptance speech at Oslo. In 1991, Aung San Suu Kyi getting the prize upset the Burmese junta and she was kept under house arrest.

Nobel Peace Prize Often Controversial

Barrack Obama’s award in 2009 was attacked as being premature and politically motivated. A president of a nation at war, Barrack Obama, after getting the prize immediately intensified the war efforts rather than end either the Iraq or the Afghanistan war.

Guatemalan Rigoberta Menchú got her peace prize in 1992 and has later been criticized for falsifying her autobiography.

Three of histories most notorious dictators in the 20^th century, Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin and Benito Mussolini have been nominated for the peace prize. Harry Truman, the US president authorising the atomic bombs over Japan was also nominated for the peace prize as also Winston Churchill.

India’s Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was never awarded the Nobel Peace Prize though he was nominated in 1937, 1938, 1939, 1947 and 1948, the year he died. The reason he was never given the prize was probably that till then the prize had been given primarily to Europeans and Americans and Gandhi represented a new kind of figure. This change of paradigm was beyond the narrow horizon of the Nobel selection committee then. They did try to make amends for this omission when they awarded the prize to the Dalai Lama and mentioned Gandhi.

Henry Kissinger (1973) definitely didn’t become an angel of Peace but rather continued being an angel of death with very dirty hands. Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres and Yasser Arafat continued in their respective pursuits, which led to much discord later on.

Betty Williams (1976) was not very loving and peaceful towards George Bush.

"Right now, I would love to kill George Bush. I don't know how I ever got a Nobel Peace Prize, because when I see children die the anger in me is just beyond belief. It's our duty as human beings, whatever age we are, to become the protectors of human life." 

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A UK High Court judge decreed that the government could only send a copy of Al Gore’s (2007) film “An Inconvenient Truth” to every school if it only pointed out “nine scientific errors” and gave guidelines to counter his “one-sided views”. In his film, Al Gore demanded Americans to reduce electricity consumption at home. Gore’s August 2006 electricity bills revealed a consumption of 22,619 kilowatts – more than twice the average family consumption in USA.

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What Do Nobel Peace Laureates Do With The Prize Money

Some give it almost entirely to their organization or to charity like Barrack Obama did. 

Baroness Bertha von Suttner (1905) gave almost all of it away to needy relatives, friends and good causes (Only a large pension from Andrew Carnegie helped her live somewhat financially worry-free).

Many Nobel laureates keep the money to themselves. The Mexican Garcia Robles (1982) openly declared that the money was for him only. Martti Ahtisaari of Finland snubbed journalists by saying 

“What I do with my money is none of your business”. 

Finland's Martti Ahtisaari’s Nobel Peace Prize has its fair share of critics too. It has been called the Nobel War Prize by Dimitri K Simes of the Nixon Center. Johan Galtung, the Norwegian peace scholar of Transcend International rejects Ahtisaari's contribution by claiming that he 

"does not solve conflicts but drives through short-term solutions that please Western countries."

Some Nobel Peace Prize winners live by a very different set of values. Henri Dunant (1901) lived frugally and saved all the money in a Norwegian bank, beyond the reach of his creditors. William Randall Cremer (1903) lived modestly and gave all the prize money to the International Arbitration League. Jane Addams (1931), the first American Woman to get the prize gave all of it to her Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. Albert Schweitzer (1952) used the money to expand his hospital at Lambaréné, adding a wing for lepers. President Anwar el-Sadat (1978) gave his prize money and royalties from his autobiography to his childhood village in the Nile Delta. Alva Myrdal (1982) kept enough of the prize money to hire a secretary as long as she lived and gave the rest to peace causes.

Father George Pire (1958) needed money for his relief organization for refugees "L'Europe du Coeur au Service du Monde". He wrote a letter to the Nobel Committee giving an account of his work. They eventually gave him the Nobel Peace Prize.

Henry Kissinger (1973) set up a scholarship fund for children of GIs who had died in the Vietnam War. Desmond Tutu (1984) created a fund to help South African blacks study in the USA. The Dalai Lama donated all the money, dividing it between those who are starving in various parts of the world, to leprosy programmes in India, to existing programmes on peace and to establish a Tibetan Foundation for Universal Responsibility. 

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Unusual Candidates Nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize

• Joseph Stalin, the dictator of Soviet Union, (not known to be very peace loving!) was nominated twice, in 1945 and 1948.
• Benite Mussolini, or Il Duce, the Italian dictator was also nominated
• Adolf Hitler, probably the most known 'baddie' of contemporary history was nominated in 1939
• Bradley Manning, the US soldier in jail now for leaking massive amounts of sensitive documents to the anti-secrecy website Wikileaks

How to Deal With A Message from God?

Can an e-mail stop you in your tracks? 

Last week I got a very exciting e-mail. 

Dear Friends,

Due to the current financial crisis facing the world at the moment, the light at the end of the tunnel will be switched off to save on electricity costs, until further notice.

Sincerely,

God

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How does one react? The first reaction is to be amused by the ingenuity of it. Lovely humour, very witty! 

Much of everyday humour is at someone else’s expense. We make fun of other people’s characteristics, mishaps, or doings. But, this message is laughing at a situation without insulting anyone. 

I have been fortunate to know some people who have this crispy and delectable kind of humour. You can experience this also in the Dalai Lama, who puts people at ease quickly by bringing out the funny side of things.

My hilarity was very short-lived when I decided to share this e-mail. Humour is not a universal quality shared and appreciated by all. As the American doctor and author, David Seabury said, “Good humour isn't a trait of character, it is an art which requires practice.”

Now, I don’t know of anyone getting divine communication by e-mail, so I forwarded this to some religious people of different faiths I know, and tried to anticipate their reactions. Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, Sikh, Buddhist, New Age, Mormon –a colourful bunch of people were forwarded the “divine” e-mail.

One person, who had lived years under a repressive regime, chuckled with delight as he explained that humour is a coping mechanism when things are really bad for people and they can’t do anything about the situation. 

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The English philosopher, statesman Francis Bacon 1561-1626 got it right 

“Imagination was given man to compensate for what he is not, and a sense of humour to console him for what he is.” 

This chuckling gentleman also said that after moving to a rich welfare state, where many of the things he could dream of before, are provided for, he has become dour and sullen and is often depressed. He tried to find jokes about depression, but noticed that this wasn’t much appreciated. 

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Blasphemy, they yelled when they saw the e-mail from God 

20% of the people got very angry yelling “Blasphemy,” and gave me a piece of their mind for sending such a thing to insult their faith. Out came different religious versions of the third commandment 

“Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain” Exodus 20:7.

Now, this is rather serious and heavy stuff and I started visualizing flames licking my feet as I was tied to the burning stake. 

Fortunately, I had the words of an American preacher Henry Ward Beecher,  

“A person without a sense of humour is like a wagon without springs-jolted by every pebble in the road.” to console me. 

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Many other people who got the e-mail from God wouldn’t comment anything. They just refused to “be drawn in” as they try to live according to the dictates of political correctness. 

Humour seems to be a sworn enemy of PC or political correctness.

Messages of Hope Abound

The best thing I experienced was with three unlikely non-professionals. By non-professionals, I mean that they did not have jobs as priests or preachers or positions to defend, only their personal faith, life experience, and vast learning to guide them. 

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With them, I had very invigorating discussions about the current financial crisis, how one nourishes hope, especially in situations when divine e-mails or other signals don’t appear. 

Divine messages abound in our everyday lives, e-mail or not; we just choose not to notice these signals of hope, they taught me. 

Lesson in Statesmanship from the Dalai Lama!

Recently HH the Dalai Lama in an interview gave a masterly demonstration of statesmanship. 

He gave the Beijing government very positive feedback on their excellent handling of the relief efforts of the earthquake in China. 

As an example, he reproached the Burmese junta for wilfully mishandling the equally severe natural catastrophe in Burma. 

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By praising the Beijing leaders and linking their praiseworthy efforts as being a signal of change within China, he also slips in criticism of their handling of the Tibet issue. 

Then he also shows the amount of dissent among the Tibetans about responding to Beijing with peaceful means. This is a cloaked message that when the Dalai Lama is no more, no one may be able to keep these angry young people in check.

By raising the Beijing leaders on a pedestal, he requires them to behave in a more elevated manner. Spiritual Noblesse oblige through mutual recognition and compassion – this is a very different vision from the ‘destroy through violence, those who are different’ policy used by those engaged in armed conflicts in different parts of the world. 

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China's Leaders Praise the Dalai Lama

This has never happened. 

The only time praise is connected to the Dalai Lama in a Chinese government statement is e.g. a foreign government leader who gives in to Chinese government pressure and refuses to meet the Dalai Lama. Some examples are: the Australian PM Julia Gillard and the Finnish government in 1996 and 1998.

There have been some allegations that certain interests within the Chinese government have even trained Tibetan women to assassinate the Dalai Lama - praise indeed! HH the Dalai Lama revealed this plot in an interview with the Telegraph UK.

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Dalai Lama, Mao Zedong and Communism

I still think of myself as half-Marxist, half-Buddhist!

The Dalai Lama says this in his book Beyond Dogma: The Challenge of the Modern World, Souvenir Press, 1996.

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"It was only when I went to China in 1954-55 that I actually studied Marxist ideology and learned the history of the Chinese revolution. Once I understood Marxism, my attitude changed completely. I was so attracted to Marxism, I even expressed my wish to become a Communist Party member." 

This is what the Dalai Lama says in a Time magazine interview on October 4th, 1999.

So, there is hope that people can change their opinions and attitudes after reading and understanding. One fine day, we might hear of such change in Chinese leaders.

Everyday Statesmanship Lesson From Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln, in a speech, referred to the Southerners as fellow human beings who were in error. 

An elderly lady chastised him for not calling them irreconcilable enemies that should be destroyed. 

“Why madam,” Lincoln replied, “Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?”

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The 'One country Two Systems' seems to be working fine in Hong Kong. Among other books, they even sell the Dalai Lama's books at bookshops there. 

So there is hope that a solution can be found for Tibet as well. China is trying so hard to stage a glorious and successful Olympic Games 2008 and success in Tibet would add to China's international prestige.

"We must all live harmoniously with our neighbours. Your happiness depends on it." 

This saying of the Dalai Lama is more true than ever in a globalising world. More and more Chinese people are opening up to the world and accepting diversity and allowing the rest of the world to enjoy the fascinating richness of Chinese culture. 

Many of our Chinese brothers and sisters have truly expanded their horizons to become valuable members of the global community.

Let us hope that a change in the attitude of China's leaders is apparent soon.