Giving the Nobel Peace Prize to warmongers is a crime that’s gone on too long |
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has accused the Nobel Foundation of breaking Swedish law when it bestowed its highest honor upon the pugilistic Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado.
Before he died in 1896, the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel made sure that his last will and testament was straightforward and unambiguous: The Nobel Peace Prize shall be awarded to the person who in the preceding year has “done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.”
Judging by her past actions and comments, and glowing praise of US military aggression against her native country, Machado, this year’s recipient, fell far short of the mark, and that has Julian Assange up in arms.
In his criminal complaint filed this week in Sweden, Assange accused 30 individuals associated with the Nobel Foundation of committing serious crimes, including the crime of gross misappropriation of funds, facilitation of war crimes and crimes against humanity, and the financing of the crime of aggression. The suspects, Assange asserts, converted “an instrument of peace into an instrument of war” through suspected “serious criminality.” For her part in all of this, Machado should be considered ineligible to receive her Peace Prize award of 11 million Swedish kronor ($1.18 million).
It seems that Assange has a point. After all, it is a secret to nobody that there has been a massive buildup of US........