Ahtisaari’s Well Deserved Prize
by Srdja Trifkovic
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The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded last Friday to former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari. The mainstream media claimed matter-of-factly that this was the “global trouble-shooter’s” reward for many years of “helping end strife” in troublespots ranging from Kosovo to Namibia and Indonesia. The Norwegian Nobel Committee hailed Ahtisaari (71) “for his important efforts, on several continents and over more than three decades, to resolve international conflicts.” The claim is ridiculous: Far from being a peacemaker, Ahtisaari is an obedient apparatchik of the global elite class whose job it is to help impose “solutions” decided upfront by his paymasters in Washington, New York and Brussels. He is therefore eminently deserving of this particular honor.
There have been controversial Nobel peace prizes over the years – Yasser Arafat comes to mind, not to mention Menachem Begin – but over the past two decades the institution has degenerated into farce.
Last year it went to Al Gore for his “Inconvenient Truth.” Enough said.
In 1992 the panel of five Norwegian worthies gave it to Guatemalan “activist” (i.e. leftist self-dramatist and fraud) Rigoberta Menchu, whose deservedly forgotten autobiography was cut out of whole cloth. (The brother she “watched die of malnutrition” was later found to be alive and well fed.)
In 1999 the laureate was Bernard Kouchner, a shameless self-promoter and currently Sarkozy’s foreign minister. This quintessential ’68-er has been piggybacking of human misery for decades. Kouchner’s outpouring of pornographic compassion, elicited by the plight of the “Boat People,” prompted even his very own Doctors Without Borders to disown him. His mending of fences with the French right – and current gainful employment – came in the aftermath of his failed bids for the post of the director of the World Health Organisation and the U.N. High Commissioner on Refugees.
Ahtisaari is in good company. His most high-profile mission to date – Kosovo – is an unresolved problem made worse by him than it had been before him, or that it would have been without him. His support of the Albanian cause and insistence on independence as the only option is what the United States wanted, and he performed on cue. That his “plan” is detrimental to peace and stability in the region needs no restating.
It is ironic that the Nobel Committee announced its decision in the same week when Serbia’s resolution to have the International Court of Justice consider the legality of Kosovo’s self-declared independence was adopted by the U.N. General Assembly. It’s a bit like giving Neville Chamberlain the 1939 peace prize for Munich 1938…
Ahtisaari embarked on his bungled attempt to “deliver” the Serbs after spending many years as “Chairman Emeritus” of the Soros-funded International Crisis Group (ICG). There isn’t a single evil cause or bad idea – especially in the Balkans – that the ICG does not support and promote.
Ahtisaari’s approach to “troubleshooting” in Kosovo in 2006-2007 may have been based on six years’ worth of flawed advice that he and others in the “international community” had received from Western diplomats in Belgrade and from a small but influential clique of “pro-Western” Serbian officials and analysts who now hold the reins of power. All along his assumption had been that Serbia would cave in yet again and agree to Kosovo’s detachment, albeit with some meaningless fig leaf (”conditional independence,” “international guarantees for minority rights,” etc, etc); that Russia and China would endorse the deal at the Security Council; and that the problem would be taken off the agenda by the end of 2007 with the raising of yet another ex-Yugoslav flag at the U.N.
Ahtisaari cared not a hoot what the nature of the new entity would be – an international protectorate, an EU-NATO condominium, a future province of Greater Albania – but he was insistent that it would no longer be part of Serbia. His plan has promised protection for the remaining Serbs, and everyone – Ahtisaari included – knew that those “guarantees” were just new lies on top of the old.
When all the Serbs are cleared out from their historic and spiritual heartland, and their holy places destroyed – an even bet for the next decade – there will be expressions of surprise and regret from the latest Nobel laureate. Both sentiments will be false. Ahtisaari’s true surprise and regret will come when he dies.
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1 Comment by Roland de Chanson on 12 October 2008:
If Russian were to decide tomorrow that Finland is its within its protected near-abroad, I would expect Ahtisaari to display an eminent consistency and to champion the legitimate rights of Russians in Finland! He is but another contemptible quisling to the West. Amid the glut of fawning encomia he has received, it is refreshing to read your more sober assessment of him.
BTW, Dr. Trifković, having read your excellent works on Mohammedanism and jihad, I can only say, if you were to write a history of Serbia, it would without doubt be a very welcome addition to the historiography of the Balkans.
Kosovo je Srbija! Živela Srbija!
2 Comment by John Willson on 12 October 2008:
Ugh. Dr. Trifkovic is right as usual. This also brings up again a systemic problem: Most of these awards, as well as most of the western institutions created to give them, should not exist. I served on the Board of Foreign Scholarships in the 80s, the oversight committee for among other things the sainted Fulbright Program. If there were ever a pork program for liberal chatterers, this is it. The Nobel folks are just as irrelevant. But I guess it’s just one more evidence that the Left will find ways of giving (our) money to each other.
3 Comment by Jacob Aitken on 12 October 2008:
**Both sentiments will be false. Ahtisaari’s true surprise and regret will come when he dies.**
Excellent post, Dr Trifkovic. And ditto to #1 on a history of the Balkans.
4 Comment by Andrew G. Van Sant on 12 October 2008:
To paraphrase Psalm 145 (146):
Praise not Princes and the sons of men in whom there is no salvation.
5 Comment by Boba on 12 October 2008:
Excellent column, Dr. Trifkovic!
Apparently Ahtisaari suffers on rheumatism and might not be able to to travel to Oslo to pick up the price.
For the money he receives Ahtisaari said he “planned to spend the 10-million-kronor (1.02 million euros, 1.42 million dollars) prize money to help finance the Crisis Management Initiative group he founded after he concluded his six-year term as Finnish president in 2000.”
What has he done with the bribe money (EUR 40 million) he received from Kosovo Albanian narco-mafia?
Last year German intelligence agency BND had sent a report to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, which allegedly confirms suspicions that Kosovo Albanian leaders paid UN Kosovo Envoy Martti Ahtisaari EUR 40 mln in order to suggest independence for the province in his Kosovo settlement plan.
According to the AFP report of Oct 10, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, an adamant supporter of Kosovo’s independence, said he saw this year’s Nobel Peace Prize “as a recognition that the proposal of president Ahtisaari was the right one.”
The world has gone mad indeed!
6 Comment by Etienne Gervaise on 12 October 2008:
Nobel earned his pile by mixing nitroglycerine with sand to concoct Dynamite which has made massive improvements in mining. But in the same way as the crackpot Winchester woman, his guilty conscience over getting rich quick over a possible weapon, he founded an Institute dedicated to dishing out what have become little more than Oscars. Their literature prizes are particularly laughable, and the panel’s suggested scribblers are best avoided by readers who wish to keep both their blood pressure low and their sanity intact.
This year in the science category an American was snubbed in favor of his European plagiarists. How much is the prize? Oh yes, a cool million before the tax thief steals his share. Gosh I hope it doesn’t spoil you.
7 Comment by Lord Peter Wimsey on 12 October 2008:
Oh well, at least this time the prize did not go to a known terrorist!
And, judged against its own historically low standard, perhaps the Committee is actually making some progress!?
8 Comment by Allen Wilson on 12 October 2008:
I wonder what prizes and awards the apparatchiks in the Soviet block were giving each other in 1988? No one remembers the recipients now, much less the awards and medals, which hang on walls in homes or tucked away in closets and drawers, relics of a bygone era.
The same will become of the Nobel Peace Prize and Maartii Ahtisaari. Wall Street is our Berlin Wall………..
9 Comment by Akira on 12 October 2008:
I heard that next year’s Nobel Prize for Peace will go to Satan.
10 Comment by Akira on 12 October 2008:
Re: “I wonder what prizes and awards the apparatchiks in the Soviet block were giving each other in 1988? No one remembers the recipients now”
Not so.
I saw a lot of them at the Beg America rallies held in Georgia after Sackassvili’s failed invasion attempt:
http://brianakira.files.wordpress.com/2008/09/soviet-veterans-for-war-against-russia.jpg
Does the green thing behind the two men say “CCCP”?
http://brianakira.wordpress.com/2008/09/02/torturing-birds-for-nato-peace-with-eu-english-christ-on-our-side/
11 Comment by athanasius on 13 October 2008:
Akira @#8
He is far more deserving than some recent winners.
12 Comment by Michael Averko on 13 October 2008:
A spooky thought.
13 Comment by Milan K on 13 October 2008:
Thank you, Dr Trifkovic, I was awaiting a thorough dissemenation of the Nobel award to Ahtissari, it is a joke. And now Klugman was awarded for economics?!?! Gore!?!?! It lost its value and is much in line with the Oscar, Emmy, VMA, Golden Globe, SAG, and other self congratulatory low self esteem politicized popularity awards..
at minimum Ahtissari deserved a kick in the a** out of the Balkans.
14 Comment by Fred Fowler on 13 October 2008:
#6 Etienne Gervaise.
Sand! Sand! I don’t think that would work too well. I’ve read that it was diatomaceous earth.
15 Comment by David on 13 October 2008:
Srdja,
Great piece, as always. The Nobel Peace Prize is one of the great jokes. We know that any, well, nearly any, recipient is one who will be admired by other frauds. Indeed, this Finnish gentleman is one of the very great frauds. He joins people like Al Gore, et. al. Need one say anymore!
16 Comment by george on 13 October 2008:
There elected more on media and PR perception than the reality of who they actually are and what they have done. Case in point Henry Kissinger and the Dahlia Lama.
Kouchners now overseeing the withdrawal of Russian peacekeeping forces to be replaced with UNARMED EU ones to keep the peace. It’s going to be Srebrenica again the REAL one that is against the Serbs and I’m sure they’ll be impartial NOT.
How many people died this year as a result of Al Gores inspired Bio fuel program that sparked a food crisis this year?
The media’s coverage on Kosovo in the lead up to independence was pitiful as usual not commenting on the situation of the Serbs or the government instead they framed it as a geo-political choice between EVVVIIILLL Russia- Serb and Kosovar Albanian –US.
BBC and Channel 4 who have a myth of being critical of the government went with this narrative and there reporting on the mass pogrom against Serbs in 2004 was equally as dire which they made it look scuffle and small clashes between the Serb and Albanian community.
17 Comment by Eagle on 13 October 2008:
I can’t wait to see the literature Nobel this year. Who could follow Doris Lessing? Maybe there is yet another self-hating white South African with little to no literary merits out there? Maybe it’s Dan Brown’ s year? Hey, if anti-Christian garbage written at the 4th grade reading comprehension level can’t win it this year, just wait ’til next. Peace prizes have been, for the most part, consistently bad throughout the years. Lit disappoints more so because in the past men like TS Eliot and William Butler Yeats used to win it.
Very lucid piece which is right on the money, Dr. Trifkovic.
18 Comment by Maie Kark on 13 October 2008:
#20
Haven’t you heard? On October 9, the Prize for literature was awarded to the French writer Jean-Marie Gustave le Clézio.
19 Comment by george on 13 October 2008:
Next year it will be Sackassvili.
20 Comment by LeRoy on 13 October 2008:
Eagle @20 wrote:
I can’t wait to see the literature Nobel this year
It was Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio
The Swedish Academy, in announcing the award, called Le Clézio an “author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization.”
Whatever that means.
21 Comment by Etienne Gervaise on 13 October 2008:
@16 Fred
OK it was clean dirt! Nobel still turned out to be a nut job.
I’d like to take this opportunity to nominate Soros for the voodoo economics prize in 2009. He funded — either directly or otherwise — the two worst candidates for president of the US. Then he can boast that we have the best government money can buy.
22 Comment by Allen Wilson on 13 October 2008:
Akira, I think the writing on the green thing is in Georgian, so there’s no telling what it says, but of course the identity of many older Georgians is tied to the myth of Stalin and the ‘good old days’ of the Evil Empire. The two old soldiers, however, are not apparatchiks. They’re just outdated cannon fodder who didn’t happen to get expended, now they are infused with Georgian patriotism. It sure is strange, though. Who ever thought we would see Red Army vets marching for war against Russia?
23 Comment by Suvorov on 13 October 2008:
My grandfather had an opportunity to leave Kosovo without it’s peace-maker. At the time there would still be little surprise or regret for him.
24 Comment by jack bailey on 14 October 2008:
“Ahtisaari’s approach to “troubleshooting” in Kosovo in 2006-2007 may have been based on six years’ worth of flawed advice that he and others in the “international community” had received from Western diplomats in Belgrade and from a small but influential clique of “pro-Western” Serbian officials and analysts who now hold the reins of power.”
This is unlikely. Everything points to Ahtisaari getting his marching orders somewhere instead of creating policy on the basis of advice received from the field. It is also worth noting that the Finns recently interefered in the Slovenian elections in order to defeat the incumbent. Perhaps a coincidence. Everyone involved in separating Kosovo from Serbia is behaving as if Albanian claim to Kosovo is axiomatic, as if based on proven historical records. I wonder how this consensus was reached within the Western academic community.
25 Comment by george on 14 October 2008:
@25jack bailey
Ahtisaari recieved bribes from the KLA/Albanian mafia.
His International Crisis Group is a George Soros front like Human Rights Watch or a dozen other of his organisations who is a front man for the Rothschild empire the real rulers of this world.
How many of these so called “independent” organisations are really independent.
Amnesty International has links to MI6 British intelligence, Reporters without Borders is partly financed by NED and Doctors without Borders created by Bernard Kouchner an extremist politician who fully backed the Iraq war and advocated war with Iran as soon as he became foreign minister.
26 Comment by jack bailey on 15 October 2008:
All of that is either unlikely or irrelevant for the policy makers that matter are within the State Department and therefore untouchable under the current narrative. There is one way that this can be changed, however the Serb side has not being willing to try it so far.
27 Comment by Swede on 16 October 2008:
Jack, take a look at this seminar by D.Rothkopf where he gives an inside view of the workings of the power elite.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHtNFZ6K0pE
This is a good description of power. When you look at the seminar, keep Ahtisaari and Kosovo in your thoughts and it will all become clear how Ahtisaari has been running these peoples errands all along, just as Dr.Trifkovic has written several times.
Note how Rothkopf calls the UN dysfunctional and how he opposes the Chinese idea that every nation should mind their own business. He even defends the US self-imposed right to intervene anywhere in the world anytime. Just as they did in Kosovo, even though he doesn’t mention that example.
Thank god for people like the serbs and the paleoconservatives that opposes this madness.
28 Comment by Eagle on 16 October 2008:
Good piece on how the Peace (sic) Prize was won.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10573
29 Comment by For whatever it is worth on 17 October 2008:
contrary to what some of you seem to think, there is life outside of the Balkans. Ahtisaari was well known for his work in Africa.
But I suppose bitter Serbs (who live comfortably in America) are entitled to onesided rantings.
30 Comment by To Jack Bailey on 17 October 2008:
You wrote: “It is also worth noting that the Finns recently interefered in the Slovenian elections in order to defeat the incumbent.”
How, exactly, did the Finns interfere in the Slovenian elections?
31 Comment by A: Worth Less Than Zero on 17 October 2008:
Yes, indeed, Africa is wonderfully peaceful oasis in a world otherwise soiled by Balkan barbarians and Marty had everything to do with healing that continent also. Give me a break.
32 Comment by Etienne Gervaise on 18 October 2008:
@28 Eagle
Good call buddy!
I remember a photo in Time showing the ruins of a Yugolslavian “aircraft factory” with damaged washing machines all over the place. And to think our very own gutter press scoffed at Saddam’s Baby Milk Factory. It would be nice if — to quote Pete Townshend — we won’t get fooled again, but this scum is programmed to lie to us incessantly. I suppose we just have to keep calling them on it. The task does seem daunting, but the Scriptures say, “the truth is far from them.”
33 Comment by Eagle on 20 October 2008:
Here is a charming quote from a Peace Prize winner:
“It really doesn’t matter if Paraguay hasn’t recognized,” Ahtisaari said. “Well over 65 percent of the wealth of the world has recognized. That matters.”
http://www.b92.net/eng/news/politics-article.php?yyyy=2008&mm=10&dd=19&nav_id=54336
Maybe true in practice but what principled “democrat” would say it? What a piece of work this guy is. Is there a “Piece of Work” prize available to award this (subhu)man?
34 Comment by george on 20 October 2008:
@27Swede
Intervention is the basis of George Soros “Open Society” philosophy. That if a country is perceived a threat then you must intervene so it doesn’t spread. This coming from a guy who collaborated with the Nazis during WW2.
This type of idea of humanitarian intervention was echoed during the Balkans was on behalf of Muslims by both the left and right wing in government and media.
Intervention is the root of many problems.
We didn’t like Czarist Russia for not being democratic so we propped up Lenin and Trotsky and let Jacob Schiff undermine the government then we got communism.
US intervened in WW1 and allied nations destroyed Germany economically by post war reparations which then led to Nazism.
Western intelligence backed Islamists during the Balkans wars and then finally there’s Iraq and the trillions that would cost us.
31A: Worth Less Than Zero
I was thinking the same thing now we know why Africa is in such a mess.
Actually Islamists with links to the Balkans have been instrumental in Africa with Saudi religious indoctrination.
In reality African nations in such a mess because mercenaries are hired as proxy fighters to get control of the natural resources just like they did to Kosovo and what they are doing to Russia to gain full control of the Caspian Basin.
The Rothschild’s used this tactic with Cecil Rhodes so they could get control of the diamond mines and it continues today through his front man George Soro’s.
35 Comment by Eagle on 22 October 2008:
Finland was knee deep in conspiracy with the US to steal Serbian territory.
The latest news demonstrates further the falsification by a Finnish team of the forensic studies from Racak, Kosovo. This is not entirely new news, but the publication of a book and some statements made in Finland lend more credibility to the crimes committed by officials from Finland as part of the whole conspiracy in the Balkans.
Keep in mind that all of this occurred whilst our Peace Prize comrade Marty was president of Finland.
http://www.b92.net/eng/news/politics-article.php?yyyy=2008&mm=10&dd=22&nav_id=54412
36 Comment by Goran on 23 October 2008:
Look at what Ahtisaari has done. He came to Belgrade on 8 June 1999 with Chernomirdin and signed the Ahtisaari-Chernomirdin-Milosevic Agreement. According to it, Kosovo remains a part of Serbia and the NATO bombing stops. This plan then served as the basis for the UN SC Resolution 1244 which guarantes the sovereignity of Serbia over Kosovo in acordance with the Helsinki Final Act. The Agrfeement was obviously signed by Ahtisaari himself.
Then Ahtisaari was appointed an UN Envoy and he delivered the Ahtisaari Plan for Kosovo, giving all atributes of independent state to it. So, he turned around and spat on his signature on the Ahtisaari-Chernomirdin-Agreement and on 1244 based on it.
His Plan was never adopted by the UN SC or any other body. It was not signed by Serbia. This means it is a dead letter in international law, especially in the light of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties.
To give the Nobel Peace Prize to the man who spat on his own signature by which he had guaranteed that Kosovo is part of Serbia is as equal as giving the Prize to a lama. By the way, I was spat by it once in my local zoo.
37 Comment by Goran on 23 October 2008:
@Eagle, 35
And yes, my dear Eagle, the famous Helena Ranta did confess under pangs of conscience that the Racak affair, which was used as a trigger for the NATO bombardment of Serbia, was fabricated. In her autobiography which has just been published she blames the OEBS envoy William Walker and three Finish ministers for putting pressure on her back in 1999. She confesses that she lied. Unsatisfied by her actions at the time, she claims, Walker even broke a pencil in two and threw the parts at her. Wow! How scary! Then she succumbed and lied/gave a false expertise concerning the alleged massacre in Racak.
Too late for remorse Ms. Ranta, too late. Look at what you have done to Serbia. It was bombed to oblivion for 78 days. Many people have died including Slobodan Milosevic who has proved beyond any doubt in the Hague that you have lied. And now we have Ahtisaari creaming all over your findings which, by the way, are false findings of one dental pathologist. And remember your words at the time: you claimed that Racak was undoubtedly a massacre. I would not like to be in your skin, Ms. Ranta. And thanks God I am not.
Dear Eagle, thank you for bringing this point to light.