Carter's Prize

[ksmybuttons]

Whether or not the Nobel has political overtones, it doesn't diminish what Jimmy Carter has done. It seems to me he is a man that follows his heart and if he didn't win any prizes it would not change him. He would still be a caring man.

 

[Guest]

 

[Anais Dahl]

He is a former US President. I think he already has a name for himself.

Wait. Why am I arguing with Hanns? That is like arguing with my pet rabbit. Only that is usually far more engaging.

 

[Bob_Bytchin]

Whether or not the Nobel has political overtones, it doesn't diminish what Jimmy Carter has done. It seems to me he is a man that follows his heart and if he didn't win any prizes it would not change him. He would still be a caring man.

That should be all that matters. It's all that matters to me.

Rather than see any undertones, I see him as deserving. Period.

 

[SINthysist]

ednesday, Oct. 16, 2002
Book: Carter, Democrats Asked Soviets to Stop Reagan, Sway U.S. Elections

Remember the old conservative charge that many of the Democrats here in America were playing footsie with the Soviets? Some Republicans even said the Russians viewed the Democrats as their favorite party.

Now bombshell revelations prove these accusations beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Peter Schweizer, a Hoover Institution research fellow, has just written a new book, "Reagan's War: The Epic Story of His Forty-Year Struggle and Final Triumph Over Communism."

This book may well force historians to revise the history of the Cold War.

Schweizer, after scouring once-classified KGB, East German Stasi and Soviet Communist Party files, discovered incontrovertible evidence that the Soviets not only played footsie with high-ranking Democrats, they also worked behind the scenes to influence American elections.

In "Reagan's War," Schweizer shows how the Democrats worked with Moscow to try to undermine Reagan before and after he became president.

Jimmy Carter's Dirty Tricks

Soviet diplomatic accounts and material from the archives show that in January 1984 former President Jimmy Carter dropped by Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin's residence for a private meeting.

Carter expressed his concern about and opposition to Reagan's defense buildup. He boldly told Dobrynin that Moscow would be better off with someone else in the White House. If Reagan won, he warned, "There would not be a single agreement on arms control, especially on nuclear arms, as long as Reagan remained in power."

Using the Russians to influence the presidential election was nothing new for Carter.

Schweizer reveals Russian documents that show that in the waning days of the 1980 campaign, the Carter White House dispatched businessman Armand Hammer to the Soviet Embassy.

Hammer was a longtime Soviet-phile, and he explained to the Soviet ambassador that Carter was "clearly alarmed" at the prospect of losing to Reagan.

Hammer pleaded with the Russians for help. He asked if the Kremlin could expand Jewish emigration to bolster Carter's standing in the polls.

'Carter Won't Forget That Service'

"Carter won't forget that service if he is elected," Hammer told Dobrynin.

Carter was not the only Democrat to make clear to the Russians where their loyalty lay. As the election neared in 1984, Dobrynin recalls meetings with Speaker of the House Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neill.

O'Neill told Dobrynin that no effort should be spared to prevent "that demagogue Reagan" from being re-elected.

Soviet documents report that O'Neill told Dobrynin: "If that happens, Reagan will give vent to his primitive instincts and give us a lot of trouble, probably, put us on the verge of a major armed conflict. He is a dangerous man."

 

[weed]

Nice example of how fucked the political process can be SIN. No wonder Carter has been able to do more good out of office than in.

Here's another example (too bad it involved the lives of innocents):

October Surprise X-Files (Part 1): Russia's Report

By Robert Parry

WASHINGTON -- On Jan. 11, 1993, the nation's capital was readying itself for the Inauguration of President Bill Clinton, the first Democrat to sit in the Oval Office in a dozen years. Temporary grandstands were going up along Pennsylvania Avenue. The city brimmed with a celebratory air that fills the capital whenever a grand event like an Inauguration takes place. But in an obscure set of offices near the U.S. Capitol, a congressional task force was coping with another problem, one that had seeped out over those same twelve years to stain the Republican victory that had last changed party power at the White House, in 1980.

The House task force was concluding a year-long investigation into claims that Ronald Reagan's 1980 presidential campaign had interfered with President Carter's negotiations to free 52 Americans held hostage in Iran. A mixed bag of Iranian officials, foreign intelligence agents and international arms dealers had alleged a Republican deal behind Carter's back. But the task force had decided there was "no credible evidence" to support allegations that the Reagan campaign had blocked Carter's possible "October Surprise" of an election-eve hostage return.

Carter's failure to free those hostages over 444 days had sealed his political doom and boosted Reagan from a neck-and-neck race to a resounding electoral victory. The hostages' release, as Reagan was completing his Inaugural Address on Jan. 20, 1981, opened a floodgate of patriotic fervor that reshaped the political landscape and made Reagan a hero.

The possibility that this pivotal moment in modern American history had resulted from a nearly treasonous dirty trick had drawn understandably angry denials from Reagan-Bush loyalists -- and even from Democrats who feared that the public would lose faith in politics if the charges proved true.

So, with a collective sigh of relief, the House task force debunked the charges by adopting an elaborate set of alibis for the key players, particularly the late CIA director William J. Casey, who had run Reagan's campaign. One of the Casey alibi dates was nailed down, according to the task force, because a Republican operative had written Casey's home phone number on a piece of paper that day, although the operative admitted that he had no recollection of reaching Casey at home.

Nevertheless, with a host of such dubious alibis, the 968-page report was shipped off to the printers, with a public release set for Jan. 13, 1993. Washington journalists, already briefed on the task force findings, were preparing to praise the report as "exhaustive" and "bipartisan."

But two days before the news conference, a cable arrived from Moscow. It was a response to a query dated Oct. 21, 1992, that Rep. Lee Hamilton, D-Ind., who headed the House task force, had sent to Sergey Vadimovich Stepashin, then chairman of the Supreme Soviet's Committee on Defense and Security Issues. Hamilton asked Stepashin -- whose job was roughly equal to chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee -- what information the Russian government had about the so-called "October Surprise" charges.

The Supreme Soviet's response was delivered to the U.S. Embassy in Moscow by Nikolay Kuznetsov, secretary of the subcommittee on state security. Kuznetsov apologized for the "lengthy preparation of the response." It was quickly translated by the U.S. embassy and forwarded to Hamilton.


Carter vs. Reagan
To the shock of the task force, the six-page Russian report stated, as fact, that Casey, George Bush and other Republicans had met secretly with Iranian officials in Europe during the 1980 presidential campaign. The Russians depicted the hostage negotiations that year as a two-way competition between the Carter White House and the Reagan campaign to outbid one another for Iran's cooperation on the hostages. The Russians asserted that the Reagan team had disrupted Carter's hostage negotiations after all, the exact opposite of the task force conclusion.

As described by the Russians, the Carter administration offered the Iranians supplies of arms and unfreezing of assets for a pre-election release of the hostages. One important meeting had occurred in Athens in July 1980 with Pentagon representatives agreeing "in principle" to deliver "a significant quantity of spare parts for F-4 and F-5 aircraft and also M-60 tanks ... via Turkey," according to the Russian report. The Iranians "discussed a possible step-by-step normalization of Iranian-American relations [and] the provision of support for President Carter in the election campaign via the release of American hostages."

But the Republicans were making separate overtures to the Iranians, also in Europe, the Russians claimed. "William Casey, in 1980, met three times with representatives of the Iranian leadership," the Russians wrote. "The meetings took place in Madrid and Paris."

At the Paris meeting in October 1980, "R[obert] Gates, at that time a staffer of the National Security Council in the administration of Jimmy Carter and former CIA director George Bush also took part," the Russians said. "In Madrid and Paris, the representatives of Ronald Reagan and the Iranian leadership discussed the question of possibly delaying the release of 52 hostages from the staff of the U.S. Embassy in Teheran."

Both the Reagan Republicans and Carter Democrats "started from the proposition that Imam [Ruhollah] Khomeini, having announced a policy of 'neither the West nor the East,' and cursing the 'American devil,' imperialism and Zionism, was forced to acquire American weapons, spares and military supplies by any and all possible means," the Russians wrote. According to the report, the Republicans won the bidding war.

"After the victory of R. Reagan in the election, in early 1981, a secret agreement was reached in London in accord with which Iran released the American hostages, and the U.S. continued to supply arms, spares and military supplies for the Iranian army," the report continued. The deliveries were carried out by Israel, often through private arms dealers, the Russians said. Spares for F-14 fighters and other military equipment went to Iran from Israel in March-April 1981 and the arms pipeline kept flowing into the mid-1980s.

"Through the Israeli conduit, Iran in 1983 bought surface-to-surface missiles of the 'Lance' class plus artillery of a total value of $135 million," the report said. "In July 1983, a group of specialists from the firm, Lockheed, went to Iran on English passports to repair the navigation systems and other electronic components on American-produced planes." Then, in 1985, the weapons tap opened wider, into the Iran-contra shipments.


The Russian 'Bomb'
The matter-of-fact Russian report was stunning. It also matched other information the task force had. The Israelis, for example, had shipped U.S. military spares to Iran in the early 1980s, with the acquiescence of senior Reagan administration officials. But the Russians weren't clear about where their information came from or how reliable it was.

After receiving the Russian report in January 1993, a U.S. Embassy political officer went back to the Russians seeking more details. But the Russians would state only that the data came from the Committee on Defense and Security Issues. The embassy political officer then speculated that Moscow's report might have been "based largely on material that has previously appeared in the Western media."

But apparently, there was no serious follow-up -- even though Moscow, the communist enemy in the 1980s, claimed to possess incriminating evidence about two CIA directors (Casey and Gates) and two U.S. Presidents (Reagan and Bush). Though the Russian claims about Carter's negotiations with Iran might cause embarrassment, Carter, as President, possessed the constitutional authority to negotiate with a foreign power. The Republicans did not.

Task force investigators felt the Russian report could be safely dismissed because one section took seriously the allegations of former Israeli intelligence official Ari Ben-Menashe, an Iranian-born Jew. Ben-Menashe had testified to Congress that, as an Israeli intelligence officer, he participated in Paris meetings between senior Iranians and Republican emissaries in October 1980. Ben-Menashe had placed Casey, Bush and Gates at those meetings as well.

But Bush, who was Reagan's vice presidential running mate in 1980 and President during the task force investigation, denied being in Paris. So did Gates, who was Casey's deputy director at CIA and Bush's CIA director. (Casey died in 1987 before the October Surprise issue surfaced.)

When Ben-Menashe went public in the early 1990s, the Israeli government first called him an imposter and claimed he had never worked for Israeli intelligence. But confronted with documents proving Ben-Menashe's employment, Israeli officials reversed themselves and admitted that Ben-Menashe had worked for Israeli military intelligence from 1977-87. Nevertheless, they continued to attack his truthfulness. The House task force also rejected Ben-Menashe as lacking credibility. For his part, Ben-Menashe, now living in Canada, still insists that he was telling the truth.

After finding the Russian report in a remote storage room on Capitol Hill, I contacted one well-placed official in Europe who checked with the Russian government. "This was real information based on their own sources and methods," the official told me. As for the possibility that the report was blowback from the U.S. media, the official insisted that the Russians "would not send something like this to the U.S. Congress at that time, if it was bullshit."

Instead, the Russians considered their report "a bomb" and "couldn't believe it was ignored," the official said. Not only did the House task force keep the extraordinary Russian report secret, it ended up in a cardboard box among hundreds of documents, some unclassified and others "secret." The document boxes were piled, ingloriously, on the floor of a former Ladies' Room which had been converted into storage space, deep inside a parking garage of the Rayburn House Office Building.

@Copyright 1995

 

[Rex1960]

list of winners

... do you remember at least some of these persons/organizations ?

2000
Kim Dae Jung (Southkorea)

1999
Médecins Sans Frontières

1998
John Hume (Northern Irland)
David Trimble (Northern Irland)

1997
International Campaign to Ban Landmines -
Jody Williams (USA)

1996
Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo (East-Timor)
José Ramos-Horta (East-Timor)

1995
Joseph Rotblat (UK)
Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs (Canada)

1994
Yasser Arafat (Palestine)
Shimon Peres (Israel)
Yitzhak Rabin (Israel)

1993
Nelson Mandela (Southafrica)
Frederik Willem de Klerk (Southafrica)

1992
Rigoberta Menchú Tum (Guatemala)

1991
Aung San Suu Kyi (Myanmar)

1990
Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev (USSR/Russia)

1989
The 14th Dalai Lama (Tenzin Gyatso )

1988
United Nations Peace-keeping Forces

1987
Oscar Arias Sanchez (Costa Rica)

1986
Elie Wiesel (USA)

1985
International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War Inc. (USA)

1984
Desmond Mpilo Tutu (Southafrica)

1983
Lech Walesa (Poland)

1982
Alva Myrdal (Sweden)
Alfonso García Robles (Mexico)

1981
Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees - (Suisse)

1980
Adolfo Pérez Esquivel (Argentinia)

1979
Mother Teresa (India)

1978
Mohamed Anwar al-Sadat (Egypt)
Menachem Begin (Israel)

1977
Amnesty International (UK)

1976
Betty Williams (Northern Irland)
Mairead Corrigan (Northern Irland)

1975
Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov (USSR)

1974
Seán MacBride (Irland)
Eisaku Sato (Japan)

1973
Henry A. Kissinger (USA)
Le Duc Tho (North-Vietnam)

1972
-

1971
Willy Brandt (Germany)

1970
Norman E. Borlaug (USA)

1969
International Labour Organization (Swiss)

1968
René Cassin (France)

1967
-

1966
-

1965
United Nations Children's Fund Unicef (USA)

1964
Martin Luther King Jr. (USA)

1963
Comité international de la Croix Rouge (Suiss)
Ligue des Sociétés de la Croix-Rouge (Suiss)

1962
Linus Carl Pauling (USA)

1961
Dag Hjalmar Agne Carl Hammarskjöld (Sweden)

1960
Albert John Lutuli (Southafrica)

1959
Philip J. Noel-Baker (UK)

1958
Georges Pire (Belgium)

1957
Lester Bowles Pearson (Canada)

1956
-

1955
-

1954
Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

1953
George Catlett Marshall (USA)

1952
Albert Schweitzer (France)

1951
Léon Jouhaux (France)

1950
Ralph Bunche (USA)

1949
Lord (John) Boyd Orr of Brechin (Schottland)

1948
-

1947
Friends Service Council - The Quakers (UK)
American Friends Service Committee (USA)

1946
Emily Greene Balch (USA)
John Raleigh Mott (USA)

1945
Cordell Hull (USA)

1944
Comité international de la Croix Rouge (Swiss)

1939 -1943
-

1938
Office international Nansen pour les Réfugiés (Swiss)

1937
Cecil of Chelwood, Viscount (UK)

1936
Carlos Saavedra Lamas (Argentinia)

1935
Carl von Ossietzky (Germany)

1934
Arthur Henderson (UK)

1933
Sir Norman Angell (UK)

1932
-

1931
Jane Addams (USA)
Nicholas Murray Butler (USA)

1930
Lars Olof Nathan (Jonathan) Söderblom (Sweden)

1929
Frank Billings Kellogg (USA)

1928
-

1927
Ferdinand Buisson (France)
Ludwig Quidde (Germany)

1926
Aristide Briand (France)
Gustav Stresemann (Germany)

1925
Sir Austen Chamberlain (UK)
Charles Gates Dawes (USA)

1924
-

1923
-

1922
Fridtjof Nansen (Norwegen)

1921
Karl Hjalmar Branting (Sweden)
Christian Lous Lange (Norway)

1920
Léon Victor Auguste Bourgeois (France)

1919
Thomas Woodrow Wilson (USA)

1918
-

1917
Comité international de la Croix Rouge (Swiss)

1913 - 1916
-

1913
Henri La Fontaine (Belgium)

1912
Elihu Root (USA)

1911
Tobias Michael Carel Asser (Netherlands)
Alfred Hermann Fried (Austria)

1910
Bureau international permanent de la Paix (Swiss)

1909
Auguste Marie François Beernaert (Belgium)
Paul Henri Benjamin Balluet Baron d'Estournelles de Constant de Rebecque (France)

1908
Klas Pontus Arnoldson (Sweden)
Fredrik Bajer (Denmark)

1907
Ernesto Teodoro Moneta (Italy)
Louis Renault (France)

1906
Theodore Roosevelt (USA)

1905
Baroness Bertha Sophie Felicita von Suttner (Austria)


1904
Institut de droit international (Belgium)

1903
William Randal Cremer (UK)

1902
Élie Ducommun (Swiss)
Charles Albert Gobat (Swiss)

1901
Jean Henri Dunant (Swiss)
Frédéric Passy (France)

Source: Nobel Foundation

 

[Viper Vic]

Mr Carter is a nice guy. But he has never meet a dictator he didn't coddle. His anti American stance is an embarrasment to the US and Georgia.

He should stick to building houses and keep his and his wife's mouth shut.

 

[weed]

Some are remembered....many are forgotten.

Why the blank years? Do they all correspond to war time?

 

[weed]

Mr Carter is a nice guy. But he has never meet a dictator he didn't coddle. His anti American stance is an embarrasment to the US and Georgia.

He should stick to building houses and keep his and his wife's mouth shut.

A stance for peace is something I believe most Americans can be proud of.

 

[Rex1960]

Maybe they had no runnings in those years 'cause they had a full PM box like some specific LitLady ...

 

[weed]

Maybe they had no runnings in those years 'cause they had a full PM box like some specific LitLady ...

oops....and I'm not even at war.

 

[Rex1960]

...Why the blank years? Do they all correspond to war time?

I guess so. WWI and WWII are pretty obvious. I'm not quite sure about the other blanks... i'd have to look that up.
I think 23/24 was the Greek/Turkish War, 55/56 Suez War, 67 Six-Days-War....

On the other hand there where so many other wars/conflicts and they've found at least someone for the prize, so i really don't have a clue.

 

[weed]

Here we go.....

Turning Down the Prize


Prizes are not automatically awarded each year. They can be withheld if there are no worthy candidates or when a world situation makes awarding the prizes impractical. Because of World War II, no awards were given from 1940–1942. Prizes can also be declined. Even if a prize is declined, the winner is entered in the books, but the cash gift reverts back to the fund. In 1937, Hitler issued a decree that forbade Germans from accepting Nobel Prizes. He considered pacifist journalist Carl von Ossietzky's 1935 peace prize a slap in the face. In 1973 Le Duc Tho refused the Nobel Peace Prize as he did not believe peace had been reached in Vietnam.

http://www.infoplease.com/spot/99nobel2.html

 

[SINthysist]

Carter and Clinton (with his failed 1994 "treaty" worth North Korea) are precisely the types of world leaders that put us in these situations because they refuse to recognize, as did Chaimberlain, that people can harbor evil intentions and they are then in turn easily used and manipulated into creating "deals" which secure the picture of Peace for a period for a future fiasco. But remember, our friend the Shah and that aspirin factory and the Balkans? These men of Peace are hypocrits at best. I don't trust anyone who has committed our troops to battle for their own cause and then turn on that avenue of Diplomacy because "The Other Side" want to execute it. That's immoral.

 

[Rex1960]

SIN, you're one of the few guys knowing at least a little bit about history, realpolitics and geostrategical demands. (I mean, I consider you being educated)

My point is, what's now considered a failed attempt, a lost concept was once a clever step to approach a certain goal under certain circumstances. And maybe the other way round...

I remember our chancellor Willy Brand (nobel prize winner) and his socalled "Warshaw's kneefall". He has been criticized being Moscow's puppet and betraying German's history and "our brothers" behind the iron curtain. Later we were willing to accept his guesture as one single step towards our Reunion...

 

[Guest]

This thread is the reason why I hate the politicians, or more to be precise, the spin doctors. I hate them. HATE THEM! HATE THEM! HATE THEM!

 

[SINthysist]

Rex - kind words, thanks, but I have to disagree. Idiots like me feel they were utopian, dream-like gestures from a movement whose ideals have included the socialist and communists states wherever possible. Now, the elite, look-to-Europe-for-all-solutions-involving-the-state-of-mankind, now THOSE ivory-tower intellects were the ones who lauded those efforts as MOST NOBLE...

I'm just a son-of-a-dirt farmer educated at the poor man's get a job upgrade University of the middle-aged. You have to go to a REAL college to get the kind of education that says Peace with Barbarian, Tyrants, and Liars can be negotiated through treaties. Personally, I learned about tyrants in the field of heavy construction and in that college only an ass-whoopin' would shut up the mouthy Saddam-types...

 

[weed]

Geez....that's kind of funny, SIN. It was the school of RL that has taught me that peace can prevail. I have never been in a position where I could bully someone physically....yet the only time I can ever remember a bully prevailing over me is when I played on their bullying level. When I keep to my wits I am much more likely to have any conflicts resolved than if I try to bully.

Not going to whoop my ass for being mouthy, are ya'?

 

[SINthysist]

I dunno, lot of people here seem to like that sort of thing ...

 

[SINthysist]

See, I grew up with a vicious, brutish tyrant and no amount of appeasement was going to stop the enraged beatings, so I learned to fight back, to at least get in my licks, to try and get that one lucky shot and stop the beating...

That's why I became so enamoured of strong things, a reflexive defense that said, that's not going to happen ever again...

Marine Corps boot camp was actually an easier place to live in that that from which I came.

 

[Rex1960]

... Idiots like me feel they were utopian....
I'm just a son-of-a-dirt farmer ....

Blame it on my rotten english or my german lack of humor but i didn't get it.... and I'd so much like to understand you.

 

[SINthysist]

I don't get me!

Translation

The people who advocate the Carter-esque position are the academic elites, the theorists, the people who are concerned about the intellectual aspects of the world. They believe themselves to be Aristotle…

The people who advocate the Regan-esque position are the academic equivalent of a community college in the eyes of the former. A rustic, brutish school of thought that feels all conflicts must be resolved from a stronger position. They believe themselves to be Diogenes…

The former school advocates treaty via appeasement, a bribe-type scheme (and how they run thier elections) based on the best interests of the opponent.

The latter school advocates treaty via the best interests of thier OWN people first with the confidence that they can't be threatened or bluffed in the face of naked aggression.

 

[SINthysist]

Translation:

Why can't we just all get along...

VS

Do that again and I'll kick your fawking ass, cause I ain't turning the other cheek for the likes of you...

 

[Rex1960]

See, I grew up with a vicious, brutish tyrant and no amount of appeasement was going to stop the enraged beatings, so I learned to fight back, to at least get in my licks, to try and get that one lucky shot and stop the beating...

That's why I became so enamoured of strong things, a reflexive defense that said, that's not going to happen ever again...

Marine Corps boot camp was actually an easier place to live in that that from which I came.

It was a lucky punch that stopped my dad from beating me up ...
I somehow feel we have something in common here.

But self-defense is only one side of the medal. I have to make sure that nobody could ever think of self-defending himself just because I've been the one that originally caused this kinda trouble. Now that I'm grown-up and learned at least something.
I'm not going to be the first-striker... I'm not going to be the preventive attacker if you know what I mean. Call me chicken, but
the spiral of violance is spinning so fast and after all the entire world is wondering where and when these chain-reactions ever started.

But i have to admit, once in a while you gotta fight (how come I have this "Coward of the county"- tune in my mind right now?)