This is an English translation of a potpourri of a number of recent papers and reports by one of the most interesting modern Russian journalists, Julia Latynina. I have just added a number of related thoughts.
I dislike the Nobel Prize. Yes, dear readers, you have read this correctly. Why ? We know that the finest, outstanding, excellent, brilliant representatives of the whole mankind – or commonly recognized organizations – belong to the club of the Nobel Prize Winners. Albert Einstein, Pierre and Marie Curie, Ivan Petrovich Pavlov, Niels Bohr, Fridtjof Nansen, Carl von Ossietzky, Ernest Rutherford, Linus Pauling, Willi Brandt, Lev Dmitrievich Landau, Max Ferdinand Perutz, Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov, Mother Teresa, Yasunari Kawabata, Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn, Médecins Sans Frontières, … – just to name a few of them.
The point is that nowadays the Nobel Prize has largely lost its value and prestige. Indeed, the tradition is that once a year, without fail, one has to find suitable candidacies in physics, chemistry, life sciences, economics, literature and peace. Of course, it is an extremely difficult task, especially if you have many dozens of people before you, who are more or less equally excellent, with all of them being but by far not the true, undisputable stars like those named above.
The whole story (except for the Nobel Prizes in economy and peace, where reasonable breaks are sometimes taken) is strongly resemblant of “perpetuum mobile” on a conveyor at some manufacture.
By the way, do you know how Swedes betoken the Nobel Prize Committee members ? They use for them the word “Nobelprisutdelare”, which can literally be translated into English as “one who delivers/serves out/distributes the Nobel Prizes”. I admit that, may perhaps, this notion is a kind of Swedish idiomatic expression, which should not be taken so literally. Still, as for me, when I hear this term, some ordinary, mundane and purely gastronomic analogy comes immediately to my mind: as if I am standing a long queue in a plain canteen and waiting for my portion of a hot soup with sausages. I am sorry, but somehow there is no trace of the ponderousness and solemnity usually surrounding the Nobel Prize awards …
Meanwhile, “serving out” Nobel Prize is a much more cruel process: there are huge crowds of keen and eager people in the queue, but only the smallest pick of them gets the “hot soup”. And the question arises, if all these honorable professors are simply “waiters serving out the dish” in a mechanical way, who is then the “cook” in this “canteen”, who is shaking the things up ? And the “dish” is not just a soup – it is nothing else but a recognition for the outstanding achievements in the human endeavours. This is why there ought to be somebody, who is exclusively knowledgeable of the respective fields, who is capable of unbiased choosing the best of the best, the “crème de la crème”, who ought to be absolutely godlike ... So who, for the Goodness sake, is this ???
The unexpected, but definite answers to this question have come recently.
Specifically, the manager organization administering everything around the Nobel Prize is well known – it is the “Nobelstiftelse”, the Nobel Foundation, which is a private institution established in 1900, based on the will of Alfred Nobel. He was a very rich guy who left all his belongings to the mentioned foundation. But, obviously, even all the money of Alfred Nobel would not suffice to defray the 110 years of the Nobelstiftelse glorious activity. This is why, investments, sponsors – and all the related humdrum economical stuff – are extremely necessary and absolutely indispensable in such a case.
As concerns sponsors, the principle “pecunia non olet” must definitely be ruled out in the Nobel Prize awards. Nevertheless, the Swedish Radio has located “Honeywell”, a blacklisted producer of war materials (with control systems for nuclear weaponry among them), as well as the multinational pharmaceutical giant “Astra Zeneca”, on the Nobelstiftelse sponsors’ list.
According to the Swedish Radio, the problem whether the Honeywell’s money should be used to buoy up the Nobelstiftelse is hotly debated. To my mind, there is no space for any debate, because of an obviously serious moral contradiction: indeed, you take money from someone who is producing dangerous weapons and award it to someone who is directly or indirectly working for peace or health. Not only Honeywell money, but also those from any other company at least to some extent involved in a military production, should not be acceptable in the Nobel Foundation.
The “Astra Zeneca” story is even more delicate. The problem here consisted in that two of the “Nobelprisutdelare” were simultaneously members of the Astra Zeneca’s board of directors. At the same time, one of the recent Nobel Prize winners was recognized for his work on the human papilloma virus (HPV), which can lead to cervical cancer, whereas Astra Zeneca has a stake in two lucrative vaccines against this virus.
Along with all this, there was recently another sleazy story in connection with the Nobel Prize. Several other “Nobelprisutdelare” have enjoyed a number of trips to China just “to tell Chinese officials how candidates are selected for prizes”. Along with this, virtually all their expenses (including business class flights) were to 100% covered by the Chinese government.
Whereas the first case introduces only some fine (though essential) moral issues, the latter two are already reeking of bribery. Indeed, there was some investigation into these cases triggered by Swedish special anti-corruption prosecutors, who have at last downed and shelved their efforts.
I am absolutely sure there was indeed no direct bribery in the both latter cases. Anyway, some disagreeable residue still remains, for all this clearly demonstrates that the previously honorable Nobel Foundation tends to devolve into a bunch of global bureaucrats. The above three stories are very characteristic and symptomatic of the global bureaucracy’s fatal obsession to bring everything around the world under the control – but, along with this, to be beyond the reachability of any national legislation.
Bearing all this in mind - what is my attitude towards honoring President Obama with the Nobel Prize for Peace last year ? Well, I am not a USA citizen/inhabitant and thus have only right to consider the
story solely from the outside. On the one hand, I guess, the very electing Barak Obama as the USA President is already in itself a terrific political and social experiment United States ever dared to
conduct, which demonstrates that this country is a living, pulsating society definitely heading toward its bright future, notwithstanding the most recent powerful crisis. On the other hand, due to the extremely short time spent at the height of his power, President Obama could nolens-volens only manage to declare his plans, but it is by far not taken for granted how (and whether) his ideas would work at all. Under the circumstances, such a premature Nobel Prize award strongly downplays, to my mind, the great USA endeavor followed by the whole world with immense interest and wide-reaching hopes. One strange thing in my view is that Barak Obama has promptly accepted this award. I would steadfastly reject it in his place.
Whom else do I dislike ? Well, I dislike activists of nature and human rights protection, as well as adepts of the global warming theory. Why ? They are known to be nice and kind people who are struggling not for their own profiteering, but for the peace and well-being of the whole mankind.
It is just for the above reason that I dislike them. I had grown up in the country which was struggling for the global well-being long before “The Green Alternative” appeared. That is why, I am pretty suspicious as concerns all those who are struggling for the global well-being. I’d rather prefer all those who are honestly drawing their profits – provided the state organization of the country favors profit-earners in their working for the common well-being, like the famous “butcher, brewer, or baker” by Adam Smith: “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves not to their humanity but to their self-love”.
Now let’s consider such a noble-minded activity as helping refugees. There is an organization dealing with this, it is called UNRWA – United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees. It was established in 1949 after the Arab-Israeli war, which produced 400 thousands Arab and the same amount of Jewish refugees. Now, some 60 years have elapsed. One may think that during these 60 years all the problems of the Arab refugees have been successfully solved, whereas all the Jewish refugees have long “kicked the bucket” without the invaluable UNO support.
But we witness just the opposite trend ! With the well-developed state of Israel there are no more Jewish refugees, whereas the number of Palestinian ones amounts nowadays to approximately 4 million people. These are living in an abject poverty, whereas the UNO makes free-of-charge dentist help available to them. They are governed by terrorists, and the UNO readily finds a common language with these terrorists. “I am sure that there are Hamas members on the UNRWA payroll and I don't see that as a crime”, communicated the former UNRWA head, Peter Hansen, in 2004.
Even the style of the Palestinian terrorism has radically changed. With its earlier aim being to terrorize the state of Israel, presently it is just an appeal to those who are professionally protecting human rights. Israeli army would never come to an idea of hiding their commandos in buses full of children and this way sending them to carry an assault. Instead, Hamas is using the UNO schools and hospitals in the hope that their own women and children, which play a role of “living shields”, would either preserve the terrorists or die during the bombings. In the latter case, their corpses could be widely demonstrated as a proof of the Israeli army’s sheer brutality. All the Hamas tactics is designed to brisk up the compassion of the global humanitary bureaucracy, whereas in fact this “compassion of the bureaucracy” consists in sharing all the refugees-protection funding with Hamas.
Anyone who’d visit Geneve and just have a look at the building where the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) resides, might immediately realize that the UNO will help refugees forever. As far as this building stands, there will be lots of refugees. A propos, it is possibly not a coincidence that the Office of the UNHCR was twice the winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace, namely in 1954 and 1981.
A closely related example is the most recent earthquake on Haiti. What is Haiti ? It is one of the poorest countries with the highest levels of children mortality and malnutrition in the whole Western hemisphere, it is the first country where AIDS epidemy has started. At the same time, Haiti is a country with the ultimately favorable climate.
All the world was sending humanitarian aid to Haiti. But this is useless. If the president of Haiti, Preval, will remain at power, he will definitely misuse all this aid for his own purposes. If there would be clashes, violences, and the voodooist/cannibalistic mutineers would as a result eat up (literally) the Haitian president, then all this aid will be snatched by the former.
There is in principle only one organisation which is capable of effectively helping the earthquake victims with all its resources and logistics – the US Army. But it is clear that the latter will not participate in this. Because, after some American sergeant will shoot dead the first voodooist who starts to build up barricades out of corpses, or the first cannibal who intends to eat up these barricades, everybody – president Preval, all the voodooists, all the cannibals – and especially the international humanitarian organizations (who are in effect swooping for the humanitarian aid together with organizations like Hamas or within the framework of programmes like “Oil for Food”) – will shout in choir: “Down with the US Army !”.
There are no more natural disasters in the world. Instead, nowadays we are living in societies, where disasters occur only when hazards meet vulnerability (the most recent 8.8 quake in Chile and the deadly floods on Haiti completely support this viewpoint).
And now let us consider such a marvellous thing as nature protection. Isn’t our planet grime-stained with plumbum, dioxine, sulphur and alkalis ? Isn’t it necessary to help it, like we help Palestinian refugees ?
But if you cast a look into the Kyoto protocoll, you’ll see that it is not restricting emissions of plumbum, mercury or sulphur. It is restricting only the CO2 gas emission which is just a part of the natural cycle, harmless – and the concentration of which during the Devon or Ordovick periods was 7 to 12 times as high as nowadays. As CO2 is a part of the natural cycle, and one cannot completely withdraw it from the circulation, it is possible this way to take direct control of all the world’s economies and create a multi-billion market of mineral oil quotes.
The ancestor of the Kyoto protocoll was the Montreal protocoll, which restricted the freon emission due to the fact that chlorine molecules ought to contribute to the ozon layer depletion. In 1996 Mary D. Nichols, the then EPA's Assistant Administrator for Air and Radiation, has let the Congress know that measures to prevent the ozon layer depletion would save 32 trillions (!) of dollars for the USA economy. But in reality there is no clear evidence that chlorofluorocarbons are especially dangerous for the ozon layer, so that all this tittle-tattle has set the USA economy back 100 billions of dollars.
Besides, I dislike Olympic Games as well. You'd definitely say - strange enough, for every Olympiad is usually represented as a Feast of Peace, Friendship and Human Achievements.
However, let us honestly ask ourselves: There are lots of people upon Earth who earn money with their bodies’ capabilities. These are professional sportsmen of all possible kinds, circus artists etc. But all of them are banned from taking part in the Olympiads, because – they say – Olympic Games are solely for the “amateurs”. Are all the Olympic sportsmen really the “amateurs” ?
For example, is Evgeni Plushenko an “amateur” ? Is he just a plain bank employee who uses his lunch time for figure skating ? Are boys and girls, who spend their whole lives for doing sports from their early childhood on, busy with anything else than just doing sports ?
If so, what does it mean to be a “sports amateur” ? The answer is as follows. These boys and girls, unlike the professionals, have no means and ways to earn their own money. The only possibility they really have is to get money from the “sports bureaucracy”. All the Olympic sportsmen, apart from some rare exceptions, are in effect the slaves of the bureaucrats. They have to endure enormous stresses, they are living under miserable conditions, their organisms are lumbered with frequent dopings – and all this is just to let the olympic bureaucrats live as emperors and distribute millions. The very word “amateur” is simply a grievous delusion which is concealing the fact that if the sportsmen are not earning money, than this money is earned by somebody else.
What are the most frequently mentioned dangers for the open democratic societies ? These are Iran, North Korea, terrorism, Russia, etc. Well, I guess, the dangerous signals sent by the pariah states and their allies are massively exaggerated. Indeed, it is the organic incapability of the USSR to rival open democratic societies that caused the collapse of the former, and it is surely doubtful that Venezuela would manage to achieve what the USSR could not. But the point is that after the death of the USSR, the western bureaucracy – which is now missing its real and natural enemy and hence encounters no more competitors – has entered the period of drastic proliferation.
Nowadays, the only serious thing that really endangers the open democratic societies is in fact the over-all globalisation. The national bureaucracy in any well-developed country is at least responsible to the respective voters or to the corresponding competitor countries. The global bureaucracy is but responsible to nobody and tries to regulate everything. In fact, global bureaucrats are just miming the old USSR cow, in trying to protect poor people and harness rich ones, exactly like the USSR – by regulating and distributing, regulating and distributing, regulating and distributing, … and not forgetting about their own pockets, of course !
Global Bureaucracy, Global Warming - Or Why I Dislike The Nobel Prize
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