Alternative Nobel winners slam US policies

[Guest guest]

" Alternative Nobel " winners slam US policies

--

 

Mail this story to a friend | Printer friendly version

 

SWEDEN: December 10, 2001

 

 

STOCKHOLM - Two of the four winners of the Right Livelihood Award, dubbed the

alternative Nobel, accused the United States of adopting policies which threaten

the world.

 

 

" The unstinting support of the United States for the most extreme right-wing

policies of the government of Israel has created immense anger and hatred, " said

Uri Avnery, an Israeli who co-founded the Gush Shalom movement dedicated to

peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

" What is the sense of destroying one (Osama) bin Laden if you at the same time

do things that create 10 bin Ladens, " he told Reuters at a dinner in Stockholm

last week honouring the 2001 award winners.

 

" All over the Middle East today there is resentment and frustration with the

United States which is immense and growing, " he said.

 

" It may undermine all the pro-American regimes in the Middle East, it will lead

to a wave of revolutions, perhaps led by fundamentalists, and it is a danger to

the whole world. "

 

The Right Livelihood Award, worth roughly $200,000, is bestowed on organisations

or people who dare to throw off the straitjacket of conventional ideas, break

taboos and work for peace, social justice or the environment.

 

 

NOBEL SPIRIT

 

" Our award is very much in the spirit of what Alfred Nobel intended, namely to

honour those who conferred the greatest benefit upon mankind, " said Jakob von

Uxekull, founder of the award.

 

He was referring to the Swedish inventor of dynamite whose testament spells out

the terms of the Nobel prizes awarded since 1901.

 

" The environment is crucial. I set it up as an environmental award mainly after

the Nobel foundation decided not to have an environmental award, " von Uxekull

said.

 

The Right Livelihood Award has been granted annually since 1980 by a

Stockholm-based foundation started by von Uxekull, who put up the initial

capital after selling off his post stamps business.

 

Angie Zelter and her British disarmament group Trident Ploughshare were also

winners of the 2001 award for their non-violent action to rid the world of

nuclear weapons.

 

" (Britain is) supporting the missile defence initiative by the United States

which again supports America in its control of what is often called the armed

wing of gobal capitalism, " Zelter told Reuters.

 

The other two winners' work struck at poverty and social degradation, which the

award committee sees as the root causes of the latest wave of global tension and

insecurity.

 

Brazilian priest, author, ecologist and philosopher Leonardo Boff was one of the

founders of liberation theology. He twice received silencing orders from the

Vatican and left the Catholic church in 1992, saying " the future of humanity and

the planet Earth " were more important than the future of that institution.

 

Venezuela's Jose Antonio Abreu was rewarded for creating a national system of

youth orchestras aimed at children from poor families.

 

The informal self-service buffet of cold cuts washed down with an Italian wine

attended by the winners, organisers and half a dozen sponsors was a far cry from

the splendour of the traditional Nobel awards dinner.

 

 

 

Story by Peter Starck

 

 

REUTERS NEWS SERVICE