And the Nobel Prize for anti-Americanism, lying through one's teeth, corruption, thuggery, empire building, and pedantic, irritating behaviour (oh, Peace they call it) goes to Mohammad (Call me Closeau) el-Baradei and his bureaucracy over at the IAEA. This is the guy who completely missed fully developed nuclear weapons programs in North Korea, Libya, and Iran; who allowed AQ Khan to run his Nukes-R-Us operation in Pakistan; who failed to catch Saddam's second nuclear program in the late 80's; who never lifted a finger to stop unemployed Soviet bomb designers from plying their trade anywhere they pleased.
Other notable winners include Kofi Annan and the UN, who managed it just as the true multi-billion extent of UN corruption became clear; Le Duc Tho and Henry Kissinger for making Indochina safe for Pol Pot; Mikhail Gorbachev for knowing when to cut his losses; Yasser Arafat, Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin for general and historic thuggery, excellence in military dictatorship, and terrorism; David Trimble and John Hume for releasing convicted IRA terrorists back into society while Sinn Fein was still plotting ethnic cleansing in Ulster; Jimmy Carter for a failed presidency and being a general pain in the ass; and my personal favorite, Rigoberta Menchu Tum.
Remember her? Thought not. She won the prize for the originally titled book, "I, Rigoberta Menchu" in which she detailed atrocities inflicted on her family by Guatamalan authorities, including the death of her brother from starvation. Problem was, her brother turned up alive and well and pointed out that Rigoberta had made the whole thing up. Never mind, it could have been true.
The Literature prize has some real winners too, but that's a subject for another day.
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