BREAKING: Nobel Peace Prize Awarded to The Organization For The Prohibition of Chemical Weapons

[Hissyspit]

Source: Reuters

@Reuters: OPCW, chemical weapons watchdog in Syria, wins Nobel Peace Prize http://t.co/tv0NjEgb19

Chemical weapons watchdog OPCW wins Nobel Peace Prize

Fri Oct 11, 2013 5:02am EDT

OSLO (Reuters) - The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which is overseeing the destruction's of Syria's arsenal, won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, the Norwegian Nobel Committee said.

Experts from the Hague-based global chemical weapons watchdog, supported by the United Nations, are working to destroy Syria's massive chemical weapons stockpile after a sarin gas strike in the suburbs of Damascus killed more than 1,400 people in August.

The $1.25 million prize will be presented in Oslo on December 10, the anniversary of the death of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, who founded the awards in his 1895 will.

Norwegian public broadcaster NRK, which has a strong track record leaking the names of winners, reported the OPCW's victory more than an hour before the official announcement.

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSBRE99A07F20131011

[davidpdx]

1. Here is a link from the Nobel Committee

http://www.nobelprize.org/

[joshcryer]

2. Well deserved.

[malletgirl02]

7. I agree

I have to add, thank you for saying that. It means so much to mean that someone thinks the Noble committee made a good choice, especially after seeing so many comments on the New York times and Facebook belittling the choice. The people making the comments weren't just disagreeing, but belittling the difficult, dangerous, and important work the OCPW

[jessie04]

3. Excellent and well deserved.

[karynnj]

4. Great choice

I can't believe the courage - as well as the competence - it takes to undertake the effort in Syria. Removing those weapons really does in itself make the world safer. Had they not existed, there would have been no way to make the deal made and Syria would still have the weapons - and they most likely would have continued to use them - maybe at a lower rate - or AQ could have overtaken places where they were stored.

[hughee99]

6. "and Syria would still have the weapons"?

Doesn't Syria still have the weapons? I didn't think the international inspectors would even get to Syria until next month.

[pam4water]

9. I think it is the committee's way of saying hands off Syria to anyone who might be thinking of

bombing it.

[karynnj]

11. I think they are reaffirming the international norm that chemical weapons should not be used

- which was what Obama was speaking about. You could say that they are also saying that eliminating the chemical weapons is the way to do this --- which is exactly the agreement that the US and Russia reached and which the entire security counsil of the UN voted for.

[pam4water]

12. I doubt it. Evidence that the chemical weapons were provided to the rebels by the Saudis to suck

Last edited Fri Oct 11, 2013, 11:51 PM - Edit history (2)

the US in to the war in Syria, is be report out side the news bubble that surrounds the US. The Saudis want to run a pipe line through Syria and need a different government in Syria to do get the pipe line through. Russia is supporting Syria to keep the the Saudis out and reduce competition for their gas pipe lien to Europe. The Noble committee is outside the US so the are listing to news not spin.

The Noble Committee is still feeling really burned about giving a "Peace Prize" to someone who killed thousands of innocent civilians on two continents with drones and curse missiles strikes. That is the only way it make sense to give it to the inspector before they are finished. The way they gave it to Obama before he stopped the was in Afghanistan.

AMY GOODMAN: Paul Walker, can you talk about what happened, that kind of pressure that was brought to bear on the first head of the OPCW right before the Iraq War, that could have averted the U.S. attack on Iraq?

PAUL WALKER: Well, the—one of the major catchwords for the OPCW and all multilateral organizations is "universality." In other words, you want every country in the world to join these regimes. And we’ve all been working very hard for the last 15, 20 years on trying to universalize the Chemical Weapons Convention. José Bustani, Ambassador Bustani from Brazil, was the first director-general, what we call the DG, the director-general of the OPCW. And he was outreaching to a wide range of countries to join the treaty. I think in—by the year 2000, three years after entering the force, we had maybe 125 members, 130 members of the treaty. There’s 196 countries in the world, so we had a large number still outstanding.

And one of his areas of outreach was to Iraq. We knew Iraq had had chemical weapons, had used them actually in the 1980s in the Iran-Iraq War, and in fact had, you know, brutally murdered Kurds in Halabja in 1988. So his outreach in the early 2000s—2001, 2002—was, I think, in the views of many of us, very, very appropriate. The United States and the Bush administration took umbrage at that, however, and eventually made a public campaign to oust José Bustani, and he was actually ousted—fired, essentially—by the OPCW, the Executive Council, in 2002. Subsequently, he went to the international labor court, International Labour Organization, and sued the OPCW and won the suit, actually, in violation—that he was fired in violation of his contract...

http://www.democracynow.org/2013/10/11/chemical_weapons_watchdog_wins_nobel_peace

[karynnj]

13. Total conspirasy theory on the entire the Saudis did it stuff -- that was Russian propaganda

Amazing that you see everything the US says as spin, yet take everything put out by Russia as complete truth.

The Democracy now interview does not in any way challenge what I said -- that giving the prize to them underlines the INTERNATIONAL NORM against use of chemical weapons. This is INDEPENDENT of the US arguing for the same thing in Syria.

You can question the sincerity of anyone - including Obama - on Syria. However, it is very hard to question the sincerity of the OPCW. Their entire purpose is eliminating chemical weapons. You COULD argue that no matter who used the weapons in Syria, ridding Syria of them is good for the region.

[karynnj]

10. They already started to destroy them

I realize that I should have phrased it better - meaning there would be no effort to remove them.

[proverbialwisdom]

5. Factually informative article.

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/10/11/wins-2013-nobel-peace-prize/

Global chemical weapons watchdog wins 2013 Nobel Peace Prize
Published October 11, 2013
Associated Press

The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for working to eliminate the scourge that has haunted generations from World War I to the battlefields of Syria.

The OPCW was formed in 1997 to enforce the Chemical Weapons Convention, the first international treaty to outlaw an entire class of weapons. Based in The Hague, Netherlands, it has largely worked out of the limelight until this year, when the United Nations called on its expertise to help investigate alleged chemical weapons attacks in Syria.

"The conventions and the work of the OPCW have defined the use of chemical weapons as a taboo under international law," the Norwegian Nobel Committee said in Oslo. "Recent events in Syria, where chemical weapons have again been put to use, have underlined the need to enhance the efforts to do away with such weapons."

Friday's award comes just days before Syria officially joins as the group's 190th member state. OPCW inspectors are already on a highly risky U.N.-backed disarmament mission based in Damascus to verify and destroy Syrian President Bashar Assad's arsenal of poison gas and nerve agents amid a raging civil war.

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[pam4water]

8. Aw I was rooting for Malala! I think the prize is a message to Obama. The message being

don't bomb Syria.

[Uncle Joe]

14. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, Hissyspit.