"Nobel Peace Prize goes to arms watchdog; Obscure group in spotlight for work in Syria" by Alan Cowell | New York Times, October 12, 2013
LONDON — The Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded its 2013 Peace Prize on Friday to a relatively modest and little-known UN-backed body, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, that has drawn sudden attention....
They didn't win one back in 2009 when Israel dumped chemical weapons in the form of U.S.-supplied white phosphorous. How interesting.
Among diplomats, the prize was seen as the high point of a startling rise to prominence for an organization that has worked in relative obscurity. Some Syrians, however, took strong exception to the idea of lauding chemical weapons watchdogs when the bulk of the more than 100,000 fatalities in Syria’s civil war have been caused by conventional weapons, like airstrikes, artillery, and rocket fire.
Despite the urgency and danger of its task, the organization had not been tapped as a likely winner. In the days leading up to the award, much attention had focused on individual candidates, including Malala Yousafzai, the 16-year-old Pakistani student who risked her life to campaign for girls’ education and would have been the youngest recipient of the award....
Related: The Girls of Pakistan
Also see: Malala Yousafzai addresses Harvard audience
Malala Yousafzai: The full meaning of recovery
Pakistani student given EU rights award
Maybe the runner-up prize will help take the sting away a bit.
Thorbjorn Jagland, the former Norwegian prime minister who is chairman of the Nobel Committee, said chemical weapons had been used by Hitler’s armies in their campaign of mass extermination and on many other occasions by states and terrorists. He denied suggestions that the award to a body based in The Hague represented a Eurocentric shift after last year’s award to the European Union. “It’s global,” he said.
Actually, Hitler and that whole crop didn't use them because of the experience of WWI, and I'm not even going to go into the Holohoax thing here. Certainly the U.S. was guilty of using them in Japan, that is beyond question.
As for last year's recipients, I am still at a loss to explain how the NATO arm of the E.U. earned a Peace Prize for flattening Libya and turning it into a failed state. The one that is now developing its own drones?
The organization’s mission is to act as a watchdog in implementing the Chemical Weapons Convention, which came into force in 1997 with four aims: to destroy all chemical weapons under international verification; to prevent the creation of new chemical weapons; to help countries protect themselves against chemical attack; and to foster international cooperation in the peaceful use of chemistry.
Oh, they came into force in 1997, so Israel's dumping of chemical weapons on Lebanon in 2006 didn't win them a prize, either.
And I'm not even mentioning AmeriKa's dumping of depleted uranium and white phosphorous on Serbia, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
The body has a technical staff of around 500, according to its website, and an annual budget of around $100 million. Its members cover 98 percent of the global population landmass, as well as 98 percent of the worldwide chemical industry, it says.
Iraq did not have them. Where were you guys? You could have prevented the deaths of millions.
Since its creation, the organization has sent experts to carry out 5,000 inspections in 86 countries, working discreetly, almost shunning publicity, with the small number of signatory countries that acknowledge possessing chemical weapons. By far the biggest of these are Russia and the United States. Four countries besides Syria have not signed or ratified the treaty: Egypt, Angola, South Sudan, and North Korea. Israel and Myanmar have signed the treaty but their state governments have not ratified it.
Although it attracted some notice when it sent experts to tackle the chemical arms held by Moammar Khadafy, the Libyan leader, nothing had prepared the organization for its mission in Syria.
The operation is unparalleled in its urgency and its hazards. The UN Security Council has set extremely tight deadlines for the mission, calling for the destruction of Syria’s arsenal of dangerous toxins by mid-2014 in the middle of an intense and violent conflict.
The Nobel nominees are shrouded in secrecy.
Pffft!
Apart from Yousafzai, another front-runner was said to have been Denis Mukwege, a gynecologist who has treated rape victims in the long-running conflict in his native Democratic Republic of Congo.
Also see: A doctor takes on militias
The award of $1.25 million will be presented on Dec. 10, the anniversary of the death of its founder, the Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, who established the prize in 1895 in his will. It was the 94th to be awarded since his death.
The award was e$tablished by $ome elite $wedish indu$triali$t?
--more--"
Also see: Women of Peace War Call
I didn't even bother reading or linking the other Nobel awards since they have been cheapened to the point of irrelevancy -- if such self-adulating awards amongst the elite was ever anything but.
