Vladimir Putin Nominated for Nobel Peace Prize

The fact that Russian President Vladimir Putin is among the nominees for receiving the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize is strangely amusing in a sick way but is nothing compared to the reasoning given by the International Academy of Spiritual Unity and Cooperation of Peoples of the World, a Russian advocacy group that broadly pursues peace, for their nominating him. They claim that since United States President was awarded the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize and was reputedly on the verge of launching minimally a withering bombing attack against Syria and Bashir al-Assad as a response and fulfilling a threat for the use by the Syrian military of chemical agents in that nations raging civil war, and as it was Russian President Vladimir Putin who interceded and prevented what could have resulted in a horrendous loss of life including many innocent victims, then fairness dictates that President Putin also should be awarded with a Nobel Peace Prize. The Nobel Committee will be meeting in the near future to begin to whittle down the choices from the record setting two-hundred-seventy-eight nominees to a more manageable number somewhere around forty, then subsequently to around twenty-five, then to a slim dozen or so and then finally to a single winner which will be announced some time in October.

 

On what I hope is a more serious note, some of the other nominees are Pope Francis; Denis Mukweg, a physician who for more than a decade “has given medical treatment to survivors of sexual violence and in 1999 he founded the Panzi Hospital in Bakuvu, DR Congo;” Edward Snowden; Chelsea Manning, formerly known as Bradley Manning (and these people wish to be taken seriously?); the protesters against the governments of Thailand and Venezuela; Novaya Gazeta, a newspaper “set up in 1993 at the initiative of Mikhail Gorbachev, who devoted part of his Nobel Peace Prize money for the purpose. The newspaper has since experienced the killings of several of its journalists. Its website has been exposed to numerous cyber-attacks;” and finally the one I would proudly support, Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani teen who was shot by the Taliban because of her outspoken support for the education of girls who was a nominee last year and should have already been awarded this prize. With the history of some of the modern awardees of the Nobel Peace Prize such as Albert Gore for his work on global warming or Yasser Arafat for what, introducing the concept of hijacking airliners for political concessions and forcing the release of terrorist murderers? Yes, some Nobel Peace Prizes have been well deserved having the status, accomplishments and selflessness of a Mother Teresa, a worthy Nobel Peace Prize Awardee. I am sure we all would desire that the Nobel Committee would actually award what should and could be a most prestigious of international awards to less controversial and obviously political awardees such as President Obama who apparently was given one for getting elected President of the United States and the aforementioned Al Gore and Yasser Arafat. We will hopefully get an awardee worthy of Albert Nobel’s original intents and purpose returning some of the presumed dignity that a Nobel Peace Prize should confer. Edward Snowden; Chelsea Manning, formerly known as Bradley Manning; and this is supposedly a serious list? Puleeeeze!!

 

Beyond the Cusp