The 2022 NATO Nobel Human Rights Prize – Updated

The Nobel Committee should include a member of the US or another NATO country – alternatively, it should be transferred to State Department or NATO. That would be more honest than playing these games which repeatedly and blatantly violate Alfred Nobel’s will.
Our media ought to be able to read three lines about his intentions, but no research is done to reveal the fraud. It would be too US/NATO politically incorrect.

Yet another gross violation of Alfred Nobel’s will – letter and spirit

I feel sad and tired writing it again: Alfred Nobel wanted his Peace Prize to support those who have “done the most or best to advance fellowship among nations, the abolition or reduction of standing armies, and the establishment and promotion of peace congresses.”

It is a prize for demilitarization – such as the reduction or abolition of armies, peace negotiations – for the reduction of violence and for “champions of peace”. Read Nobel’s will here. There should be nothing to discuss: It is not a human rights prize – nor is it a general Do-Good prize. Nobel wanted to reduce and abolish warfare. With NATO’s tremendous over-armament – 12 times and in future perhaps 20 times bigger military expenditures than Russia – it is, by definition, a radical claim in times when everything peace has been tabooed by militarism in research, politics and media.

Therefore, on this ground alone, the 2022 Prize – once again – is a gross violation of Alfred Nobel’s will – irrespective of what one may otherwise think of the important work for global human rights in general and the three laureates of this year.

Legal authorities ought to investigate how far an organisation’s administrators and decision-makers can deliberately deviate from the Statutes they are responsible for implementing. The media ought to focus on this question. They don’t.

And there is no excuse for that except lack of source investigation, research or self-censorship. For those who still read analytical books, there are many available, but the world’s leading expert on the prize is Norwegian lawyer Fredrik Heffermehl who has written two deep-research books: The Nobel Peace Prize. What Alfred Nobel Really Wanted and Fame or Shame (in Norwegian, Medaljens Bakside). And here is Heffermehl’s take on last year’s prize.

So what about this year’s laureates?

Here is the Nobel Committee’s motivation for the three laureates. It omits all references to Nobel’s will and argues that the decision is to “honour three outstanding champions of human rights, democracy and peaceful co-existence in the neighbour countries Belarus, Russia and Ukraine.”

Peaceful co-existence? Well! The leader of the Ukrainian Center for Civil Liberties is Oleksandra Matviichuk – partly educated at Stanford University and already a recipient of numerous Western mainstream prizes – who has, among others, published this article on the CCL homepage “Ukraine Will Not Negotiate Its Existence.”

Her content, style and concepts are basically replica of NATO or State Department messages. Like this one about Russia’s warfare which she NATO style – calls “unprovoked”:

“This grotesque experiment is reminiscent of the brainwashing of Uyghur Muslims by the Chinese government in Xinjiang concentration camps. But apparently some want Ukraine to hand over our people to these tormentors for the sake of a non-existent “negotiated settlement” with Russia.” And: “In the face of a genocidal campaign, Ukrainians should not be told to negotiate our existence. In recent days, I have spoken with human rights defender colleagues from Syria and Libya, both countries in which Russian forces and mercenaries sow death and destruction with complete impunity. The world cannot allow Ukraine to be added to this list. We will not be the last. Those that dress up their cynicism with so-called pragmatism need to go back to school and learn that the only way to defeat a bully is to stand up to it.”

No serious investigation of Xinjiang has documented anything that can be called genocide – see here. And more of the same rhetoric here – shaming everyone who may be for compromise and non-violent resolution of the conflict. She also excludes all international organisations’ possible involvement and advocates substantial armament of Ukraine as the only solution.

Judge for yourself – also when you add that her organisation is behind “Tribunal for Putin” but not for all possible war crimes and that CCL receives funds from the US State Department, the European Commission and – conspicuously – from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) which channels money from CIA and State Department to various groups inside other countries under headings such as human rights and democracy (See below).

So is it for…

Peace? No!

Coexistence? No!

Demilitarisation and the abolition of armies and warfare? No!

Support to the peace and human right to conscientious objection in Ukraine? No! (That right as well as alternative service has been suspended in Ukraine).

– or for US/NATO expansion – of arming Ukraine to defeat Russia and to weaponise human rights commitments – Oh yes!

The Nobel Committee – situated in the capital of NATO member Norway, is on a political pro-militarism mission. It cannot possibly be unaware of the content on its laureate’s homepage. Or it takes orders – directly or indirectly – from US/NATO circles?

Whatever the explanation, it is beyond a doubt completely incompatible with Alfred Nobel’s words and intentions.

The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is funded primarily by the US Congress. See NED’s homepage here. In passing, here is how NED is presented on Wikipedia: It is a US agency that was founded in 1983 with the stated goal of promoting democracy abroad. While sometimes referred to as a non-governmental organisation, the NED functions as a quasi-autonomous near-governmental organisation. 

In 1986, NED’s then (founding) President Carl Gershman (also an adviser to the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation with Adrian Zenz, see later) said that the NED was created because “It would be terrible for democratic groups around the world to be seen as subsidised by the CIA. We saw that in the 1960’s and that’s why it has been discontinued.” (More here in chapter 2.3.2).

So, not that much peaceful coordination. But a good laureate of what ought to be called the NATO Nobel Human Rights Prize 2022.

Further, NED awarded the CCL and other Ukrainian civil society organisations with its Democracy Award in May this year. NED gave its Democracy Award 2004 to another of this year’s laureates – the International Memorial Society, and it is a kind of donation industry in Russia and in Belarus, too.

There is no excuse. The thing just described has gone on – and quite openly – for decades. They are described here by Washington Post’s David Ignatius 31 years ago!

All this is tragic from a peace perspective. However, the global peace movement seems pretty ignorant about it – seemingly not even dismayed by having been deprived of humanity’s most prestigious prize – as the Novel Peace Prize is often called. Some even applaud the Nobel Committee’s decisions – even the Right Livelihood Award!

Who could have received it this year?

Obviously, a person or organization that works for non-violence, the UN Charter norm for making peace by peaceful means (Art 1), courageous people who insist on civilian non-violent action, symbolic actions and other methods – and anyone who advocates and makes strategies for solutions to the NATO-Russia conflict in Ukraine that do not imply the use of the weapons, armies etc. that Alfred Nobel was so strongly against.

One such super-relevant option would have been Yurii Sheliazhenko, the leader of the Ukrainian Pacifist Movement – and similar brave true civil society peace organisations all over the world – in the West/NATO too.

By awarding such people who are principled and do not advocate militarism and do not take this or that side in a conflict – the Nobel Committee would have made a very very important point. It chose not to. Because nonviolence and genuine peace is politically incorrect and implicitly critical of NATO and the US – that US which has conducted no fewer than 251 military deployments/interventions abroad since 1991, dwarfing anything Russia has done.

Here is a very fine article at Countercurrents listing other relevant candidates and arguments for a true Nobel Peace Prize.

And – as all the earlier years – I point to Daniel Ellsberg. The scholar-activist who has devoted his life to informing the world about just how mad and immoral and illegal – and risky – nuclear weapons are. But such a laureate would not have pleased the US, so he won’t get it.

Neither will any peace scholar, intellectual or academically knowledgeable about these matters receive this prize. Because it has – in contrast to other Nobel prizes – not been given to scientists of peace, nonviolence, civil conflict-resolution and alternative security.

But with the present communities of research, media and politics illiterate – yes, there are a few exceptions… – about conflict-resolution, nonviolence and peace, the Nobel Peace Prize Committee will surely continue its violations of Alfred Nobel’s words and intentions and be applauded.

After all, the only peace and security talked about in these dangerous and perversely militarist times are armed peace and weaponised human rights.

And both are clear indicators of the West, moral and intellectual decay.

Today, I made this statement to RT:

Notes added on December 25, 2022

• The Nobel Peace Prize empress wears no intellectual clothes – as can be seen here when she speaks incredibly wishy-washy about why they chose these recipients. All under a shiningly wrong headline:

• An excellent analysis in line with the above but also displaying more details than I did: Jeremy Kuzmarov’s “Nobel Peace Prize Winners Have Deep CIA Ties” in Covert Action, December 21, 2022.

Jeg blir altid glad for en påskønnelse for mine frie skriverier. Det er hurtigt, let og sikkert. Mange tak!