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 OSLO,
Oct. 7 – The International Atomic Energy Agency and its chief Mohamed
ElBaradei today won the Nobel Peace Prize for 2005
for their work in stopping the spread of nuclear weapons. Holger Keifel/Polaris,
for NYT
Mohamed ElBaradei, 63, has practiced quiet diplomacy to dissuade nations
from using nuclear technology for arms.
"The prize recognizes the role of multilateralism in resolving all
of the challenges we are facing today," Mr. ElBaradei told a televised
press conference at the agency’s headquarters in Vienna. "The prize
will strengthen my resolve and that of my colleagues to continue to speak
truth
to power."
We were talking about the Nobel Prizes yesterday with
the students in our Media News course. One of our students, who has
worked for many years for a major Tokyo newspaper, expressed surprise
that the initial rounds of Nobel Prizes, announced last week, were not
front page news in the Boston
Globe.
In Japan, apparently, the newspapers go to work
on the Nobels even before the nominations are announced, speculating
on
the chances of likely candidates for nomination! When the nominations
are officially announced, they prepare in-depth profiles and background
pieces on each of the nominees, whom they invariably interview. The life
of a Nobel nominee must be a non-stop whirlwind of interviews with foreign
journalists from the announcement of the nominations to the announcement
of the actual prizes.
When that happens, the Japanese papers really go
to town, with front page, over the fold splash headlines, and detailed
analyses
of the accomplishments, history, and personality of the winners. If
a favored son of the Rising Sun wins, as happens with increasing frequency
these days, they merit a separate section.
Unfortunately, we related, in the United States
the only selections that get that kind of scrutiny are Major League
Baseball’s
Most Valuable Player, and Supreme Court Justices. In this country,
the Nobel Prizes are placed on the
same level of importance and newsworthiness as the Pulitzers, Oscars and Miss
Universe – annual events of intense interest to a small clique of
specialists and fanatics, and only passing interest to the general public.
Page three material, at best, unless a local figure is involved.
When asked why that is, we were nonplussed. We had
been aware for a while that the Nobel’s are a much bigger deal around
the
world than they are in the US. All we could come up with is that there
have been so many American winners that people are jaded, that isolationist
Americans aren’t all that interested in what people in foreign countries
are up to in general, and that the Nobels, Alfred Nobel, Stockholm, Sweden
and even the word "Peace" are vaguely tinted with a creepy veneer of
socialism and Old World weirdness.
However, we concluded, you can bet your bippy that
when the Grand Champion Nobel Peace Laureate is announced, it will
be front
page news in the US. We were right.
By awarding the Peace Prize to the International
Atomic Energy Commission, the Nobel Committee are sending a message.
The message
is that they are scared shitless that the nuclear cat is out of the bag,
or about to be, and that dozens of independent but interconnected projects
around the globe represent a bunch of belligerent and bedraggled bums
banging on the door of the heretofore ultra-exclusive nuclear club.
As the visible manifestation of the international
arms industry, giving out a prize named after the inventor of dynamite,
it
is easy to see why the Nobel Committee is against nuclear proliferation. It’s
hard to sell tanks and machine guns when every Tom, Dick and Hassan has
a pocket nuke.
Only our firm belief in the inevitability
of Nuclear War and the hope that it A) transpires as far away from
where we are as possible, and B) inspires a spontaneous worldwide
popular uprising forcing power-mad psychotic politicians to get rid
of the damn things once and for all keeps us from losing all hope.
from the
New York Times
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