Al Gore wins Nobel Peace Prize 2007

[Battlehymn Republic]

True, but this also leads me to worry about the current state of international diplomacy. Have there been no significant preventers/resolvers of war and conflict in the past year? We've come to this, having a guy who made a film, albeit a high-profile one, to win the Nobel Peace Prize?

TR's loss in 1912 would have nothing to do with it, though. He ran for a third party and broke his promise not to run for reelection (which he made in 1908 I believe, allowing his VP Taft to be the nominee).

[CaptainChewbacca]

True, but this also leads me to worry about the current state of international diplomacy. Have there been no significant preventers/resolvers of war and conflict in the past year? We've come to this, having a guy who made a film, albeit a high-profile one, to win the Nobel Peace Prize?

TR's loss in 1912 would have nothing to do with it, though. He ran for a third party and broke his promise not to run for reelection (which he made in 1908 I believe, allowing his VP Taft to be the nominee).

Roosevelt actually had a quiet 'Me then you then me' deal with Taft. He wanted a 3rd term, but it was tradition to only run two terms, so he didn't run and would allow Taft to win, but in exchange Taft would have to only serve one term. Taft later went back on the deal.

[Battlehymn Republic]

Did he really run for three terms? I thought what had happened was that he first served a term after McKinley got fragged. Then he had another term, and then passed the torch to Taft. Then he got all angry at Taft's policies, hitched his horse to the Progressives, and ran as the Bull Moose candidate in 1912.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Did he really run for three terms? I thought what had happened was that he first served a term after McKinley got fragged. Then he had another term, and then passed the torch to Taft. Then he got all angry at Taft's policies, hitched his horse to the Progressives, and ran as the Bull Moose candidate in 1912.

You're right, he was only elected in 1904. But, people felt since he'd served most ALL of McKinley's term, that it should count.

[Elfdart]

Nobel Peace prizes are more a political statements than anything else. Even the prizes for the sciences are ridden with politics.

Rigoberta Menchu's 1992 prize for her fraudulent autobiography is a perfect example.

What was fraudulent in her biography?

[Mange]

True, but this also leads me to worry about the current state of international diplomacy. Have there been no significant preventers/resolvers of war and conflict in the past year? We've come to this, having a guy who made a film, albeit a high-profile one, to win the Nobel Peace Prize?

My favorite for the Nobel Peace Prize has been the former Finnish president, Martti Ahtisaari, who has worked tirelessly to resolve various conflicts (such as mediating the peace agreement between the Indonesian government and the Aceh movement and the creation of the Crisis Management Initiative which uses conflict prevention and mediation to keep the peace in troubled regions).

[Illuminatus Primus]

Nobel Peace prizes are more a political statements than anything else. Even the prizes for the sciences are ridden with politics.

Rigoberta Menchu's 1992 prize for her fraudulent autobiography is a perfect example.

What was fraudulent in her biography?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rigoberta_Menchu

She doctored major sob-story aspects of her life or exaggerated them in order to further the guerrilla political agenda (which she joined as a political cadre). Not that that defends the murders of her family members by paramilitaries, but it was not as black/white as she portrayed, and it was political and it wasn't a truthful autobiography. And don't attack me for criticizing; I'm no supporter of the Guatemalan armed forces or the rich assholes who have exploited the political system and the poor there.

[CmdrWilkens]

for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change

Anyone want to take a stab at telling how this advanced peace? The Nobel Prize is becoming as meaningless as a fucking Academy Award or Times Man of the Year crap.

Climate change leads to direct and serious impact on the root economic conditions of agriculture throughout the world. The actual award included points about how central and sub-sahaaran Africa is already experiencing conflicts due to changing weather patterns which afect rainfall and thus crop viability. Wars and conflicts while also popping up form ideological differneces are often as not rooted in economic disparitywhether in mineral or agricultural resources that one group posseses and another does not, or does not in sufficient quantity/quality to sustain its current culture and economy. Thus we have conflict when the climate shifts and alters the availability of agricultural resources. By brining the issue to light and forcing a movement towards action to prevent precipitous results Gore could well be seen as working against a coming malestrom of conflict.

Its similair to the guy who won the prize last year from promoting micro-loans to stabalize the economy of low-income nations and persons. If you keep the bottom of society economically anchored you remove a large source of unrest and tension that can lead to both domestic and international violence. Basically both prizes are about addressing root causes of conflict. Sure its nothing so direct as negotiating peace settlements and brining warring parties to an end BUT they have the potential to effect far greater change because their scope is much broader and address the problems which cuase wars and conflicts rather than addressing one paticualr and unique set of circumstances which may have little direct bearing on others.

[Battlehymn Republic]

Odd. Micro-loans would be a much more suitable subject for the Nobel Prize in Economics.

[Adrian Laguna]

Roosevelt actually had a quiet 'Me then you then me' deal with Taft. He wanted a 3rd term, but it was tradition to only run two terms, so he didn't run and would allow Taft to win, but in exchange Taft would have to only serve one term. Taft later went back on the deal.

Nothing of the sort. It's merely that Taft and Roosevelt had a political falling-out. Thus Roosevelt decided to run because he felt Taft, and Tafts other opponets, weren't suited for the job. Meanwhile, Taft ran for re-election only to keep Roosevelt out of office, since he felt the old lion had gone off the deep end. Taft never wanted to be President, he took the office as a matter of patriotic duty. He was eventually rewarded with the job he really wanted, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

[Elfdart]

She doctored major sob-story aspects of her life or exaggerated them in order to further the guerrilla political agenda (which she joined as a political cadre). Not that that defends the murders of her family members by paramilitaries, but it was not as black/white as she portrayed, and it was political and it wasn't a truthful autobiography. And don't attack me for criticizing; I'm no supporter of the Guatemalan armed forces or the rich assholes who have exploited the political system and the poor there.

You do realize that the source of this smear campaign, David Stoll has been debunked on all but the most trivial parts of Menchu's biography. His thesis: those pesky Injuns would have been much better off if they hadn't been drinking the firewater those damn dirty commies were peddling (with the help of Rigoberta Menchu) in the cities. If they had just knuckled under when they were being robbed, raped, tortured, killed in droves and ethnicly cleansed, the army death squads would have left them alone. Clearly a Ward Bond fan.

The best summary debunking Stoll's bullshit is found here and here. What are the lies and fraud Menchu perpetrates? She claims she was uneducated. Stoll claims she made it all the way to 8th grade. She claims one of her brothers was burned alive when in fact it was her father. Her brother was shot and dumped in a ditch, which is so much better than that lying bitch would have you believe. The other "lies" are, as Patrick Degan would say, the equivalent of sifting though a barrel of pepper looking for a few gnat droppings. Greg Grandin sums it up nicely:

But Stoll's book is ultimately not about Rigoberta Menchú. Stoll sacrifices her to advance a thesis--that peaceful reform in Guatemala was possible until pre-empted by the guerrillas--that the historical record does not support. By the end of his exposé, Stoll has parlayed minor discrepancies in Menchú's life story to pronounce not only on recent Guatemalan history but on Central American, Mexican and indeed all of Latin American history. His breadth is astonishing.

Stoll's letter does not respond to our main point that his "findings" do not warrant his widely speculative and sensational conclusions regarding the causes of political mobilization and violence. He simply repeats once more that he found Indians who felt they were between two armies. Undoubtedly. And any scholar could go to Birmingham, Alabama, and find plenty of African-Americans who say that the civil rights movement placed them in danger. In Stoll's moral universe, Martin Luther King Jr. is responsible for Bull Connor's dogs.

Nowhere is this moral logic applied more grotesquely than in Stoll's interpretation of the 1980 Spanish Embassy massacre in which Menchú's father, Vicente, was killed. Although the Catholic Church's exhaustive investigation has found the state responsible for the firebombing, Stoll, based on the speculations of two California arson investigators not present at the crime, suggests that the fire was actually a "revolutionary suicide that included murdering hostages and fellow protesters." Thus Stoll transforms Vicente Menchú from victim to victimizer. Considering that this claim has long been the position of the Guatemalan military, it puts into perspective Stoll's efforts to present "other versions" of events silenced by the "cult" of Menchú. Those interested in the most definitive analysis of the violence and responsibility, an analysis that completely refutes Stoll's argument, should read the executive summary of the final report of the UN-sponsored Guatemalan Truth Commission, which is available on the Web at hrdata.aaas.org/ceh.

It's as if someone had used the holes in Elie Wiesel's account* of what his childhood was like before he was put in a concentration camp as proof that the Nazi Holocaust never happened.


*Wiesel claims he read Kant's A Critique of Pure Reason in Yiddish as a teenager and is an expert on Kant. This piece wasn't published in Yiddish until much later. If Wiesel had read Kant in Yiddish as a teenager, it would have been Critique of Practical Reason, an entirely different book, but one that was published in Yiddish.

[2000AD]

That's just the British education system as a whole, we have to be taught both points of views. It's been like that for many-a-year. This kind of case has appeared before, so it was probably a matter if precedent.

So what´s the difference to creationists wanting "both sides" to be taught?

Notice in the article it says they're objecting as some parts are 'scientific innacuracies'. Creationism is one big 'scientific innacuracy'. We're not retards over here.

That and creationism is already covered in RE. It's a pretty nice system. They get creationism in one of the most boring subjects and then in Science they do some fun stuff, like blowing shit up every now and then, in between all the normal boring learning. They leave it up to the kids to reconcile the different versions they get told in diffrent classes and most of them (AFAIK) come down on the side of science.

[Glocksman]

Back when Stoll's book came out, the New York Times sent a reporter down to Guatemala to investigate the truth of Stoll's claims.

Story

Using contacts provided by Dr. Stoll and others found independently, a reporter for The New York Times conducted several interviews here in early December that contradict Ms. Menchu's account. Relatives, neighbors, friends and former classmates of Rigoberta Menchu, including an older brother and half sister and four Roman Catholic nuns who educated and sheltered her, indicated that many of the main episodes related by Ms. Menchu have either been fabricated or seriously exaggerated. This is the way they recall it:

The land dispute central to the book was a long and bitter family feud that pitted her father against his in-laws, and not a battle against wealthy landowners of European descent who manipulated Government agencies into trying to drive her father and other Indian peasants off unclaimed land that they had cleared and farmed.

A younger brother whom Ms. Menchu says she saw die of starvation never existed, while a second, whose suffering she says she and her parents were forced to watch as he was being burned alive by army troops, was killed in entirely different circumstances when the family was not present.

Contrary to Ms. Menchu's assertion in the first page of her book that ''I never went to school'' and could not speak Spanish or read or write until shortly before she dictated the text of ''I, Rigoberta Menchu,'' she in fact received the equivalent of a middle-school education as a scholarship student at two prestigious private boarding schools operated by Roman Catholic nuns.

Because she spent much of her youth in the boarding schools, it is extremely unlikely that she could have worked as an underground political organizer and spent up to eight months a year laboring on coffee and cotton plantations, as she describes in great detail in her book.

In one of the most heartbreaking episodes of the book, Ms. Menchu tells how in 1967 she watched her youngest brother, Nicolas, die of malnutrition while the family was working for slave wages on a coffee plantation in southern Guatemala.

But Nicolas Menchu turns out to be alive and well, the owner of a well-kept homestead here. He is 49, a full decade older than his famous sister, and said in an interview that he had no recollection of a younger brother who died in the fashion described in the book, an affirmation repeated by Rosa Menchu.

''I had two brothers who died of hunger and disease, one named Felipe and another whose name escapes me,'' Mr. Menchu said. ''But I never knew them, because they both passed away before I was even born, and I was born in 1949.''

The whole NYT piece corroborates Illuminatus's observation:

She doctored major sob-story aspects of her life or exaggerated them in order to further the guerrilla political agenda (which she joined as a political cadre). Not that that defends the murders of her family members by paramilitaries, but it was not as black/white as she portrayed, and it was political and it wasn't a truthful autobiography