The Nobel Prize Goes to ... Once Again a Hater

Ben Johnson, at frontpagemag.com (Oct. 13, 2004):

The Nobel Prize has sunk to a new and discrediting low by honoring an environmental activist who insists white scientists created the AIDS virus to eradicate the world’s black population. The media have portrayed Kenyan activist Wangari Maathai, founder of the Green Belt Movement, as a latter day Johnny Appleseed who has planted millions of trees in Africa. She is in fact a paranoid, anti-white, anti-Western crusader for international socialism.

Maathai, the first African woman to win the Nobel Prize, states AIDS is man-made. She claimed “some sadistic scientists” created AIDS “to punish blacks.”

“I may not be able to say who developed the (HIV) virus but it was meant to wipe out the Black race.”

It's not too hard to interpret that innuendo. Some non-black scientist created the AIDS virus to punish blacks. And it's unlikely she envisions Wen Ho Lee in Los Alamos cooking up HIV by the beaker.

Maathai reiterated her ridiculous claims as recently as last Saturday.

“Some say that AIDS came from the monkeys, and I doubt that because we have been living with monkeys [since] time immemorial,” the new Nobel prizewinner said. “Others say it was a curse from God, but I say it cannot be that.”

In her mind, that only leaves white devils.

In a rambling answer that also dishonors the liberation of Iraq, Maathai stated:

Us black people are dying more than any other people in this planet. [sic.] It's true that there are some people who create agents to wipe out other people. If there were no such people, we could have not have invaded Iraq. We invaded Iraq because we believed that Saddam Hussein had made, or was in the process of creating agents of biological warfare. In fact it [the HIV virus] is created by a scientist for biological warfare. Why has there been so much secrecy about AIDS? When you ask where did the virus come from, it raises a lot of flags. That makes me suspicious.

Whichever (white) scientist created AIDS, Maathai's blood libel extends to all of the West, as she claims Western governments have done nothing to alleviate the suffering of African victims. “Why is the rest of the world just watching, doing nothing while Africans are being wiped out? The rest of the world has abandoned us.”

Upon announcement of the award, the U.S. State Department offered qualified praise for her work planting trees, while condemning her backwoods conspiracymongering. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan offered no such qualifications.

Maathai is more than an itinerant seed-dropper, though. As a member of the Green Belt Movement, she has led sub-Saharan African women in provoking sometimes-violent clashes with police. Presented as a hero of the downtrodden, she has demonstrated against peasants’ economic interests. When Kenyan autocratic leader Daniel arap Moi wanted to revive the nation’s dead economy by building the world’s largest skyscraper in the capital, her riotous actions dried up investment. Later, she led a protest to prevent “small-scale farming” on African forestland and called farmers “invaders” guilty of “rape.” She has also shown herself at the forefront of developing left-wing protest tactics. Twelve years ago, she and the women in her Green Belt Movement previewed contemporary Western antiwar protesters by staging a public strip-in. (Thanks to her actions, this may be her nation’s only successful export.)

What About Real Genocide?

There is a very real genocide raging in Africa on the streets of Darfur and throughout sub-Saharan Africa, as Muslim Arabs murder indigenous black Christians and animists, 100,000 in Darfur alone. The repeated rape of young black boys by Arabs is now commonplace. These repeated scenes first played out during the genocide in Rwanda, which began early in the Clinton administration, and have been seen all over the sub-continent for a decade. Maathai has addressed this brutality at the World Women's Conference in Beijing in 1995, where she blamed it on, Western capitalists. She claims Western governments laid the groundwork for present slaughter during the Cold War, but: “The carnage goes on in Somalia, Rwanda, Liberia and in the streets of many cities. People of Africa continue to be sacrificed so that some factories may stay open, earn capital and save jobs.”

Arab genocide is also the fault of wealthy whites.

Globalist Socialism

Maathai has since entered the corridors of power as a parliamentarian and Kenya’s assistant environment minister. However, she has courted global socialism through her long association with the United Nations’ environmentalist agenda.

She was a member of the Commission on Global Governance, founded in 1992 at the suggestion of former West German Chancellor and socialist Willy Brandt. Maathai worked on the CGG alongside Maurice Strong, Jimmy Carter and Robert McNamara. The group’s manifesto, “Out Global Neighborhood,” calls for a dramatic reordering of the world’s political power – and redistribution of the world’s wealth.

Most importantly, the CGG’s proposals would phase out America’s veto in the Security Council. At the same time, it would increase UN authority over member nations, declaring, “All member-states of the UN that have not already done so should accept the compulsory jurisdiction of the World Court.” It asks the UN to prevail upon member governments to enact proposals made by wide NGOs – such as the Green Belt Movement. “Our Global Neighborhood” also suggested creating a10,000-man “UN Volunteer Force” to be deployed at the UN’s approval on infinite peacekeeping missions everywhere (except Iraq).

In its economic section, the report calls for the international taxation of multinational corporations and for a worldwide carbon tax. A new international “Economic Security Council” would assure the world’s economic growth takes place according to “sustainable development” principles. The IMF would be given the ability to interfere in the economic policies of member nations “to ensure that domestic economic policies in major countries are not…damaging to the rest of the international community.” Call it pre-emptive regulation.

Earth Charter

Maathai also acts as a commissioner for the Earth Charter, along with the aforementioned Maurice Strong, Mikhail Gorbachev and Steven Rockefeller. She is also on the Charter’s Steering Committee.

In addition to similar calls for sharing the “benefits of development…equitably,” the Earth Charter calls on international bodies to “Promote the equitable distribution of wealth within nations and among nations.” Another Charter provision would disarm the entire world and use the money previous allocated for national defense to restore the environment. Additionally, the Earth Charter worries about the “unprecedented rise in human population,” and demands “universal access to health care” – literally, for the universe.

A Biased History

Promoting an agenda like this has become de rigeur for Nobel Prize recipients. Maathai’s fantastic AIDS claims are the most unusual but far from the only examples of politicking with the coveted award. A partial list of recent examples includes:

Yasser Arafat, whose prime contribution to peace has been directing the murders of thousands of innocents, including Israeli children, American citizens and his fellow Arabs;
Jimmy Carter, upon his criticizing the impending liberation of Iraq;
Marxist fraud Rigoberta Menchu;
Desmond Tutu, who, despite his reputation as a man of peace, once authorized blacks to engage in anti-white terrorism;
Stalinist poet Pablo Neruda, who won the prize almost 20 years after writing a poem that states, “Stalinists, Let us bear this title with pride”;
Pro-Castroites Garcia Marquez, Aldolfo Perez Esquivel and Nadine Gordimer;
Anti-American writer Darius Fo, who wrote, “The great speculators [of American capitalism] wallow in an economy that every years kills tens of millions of people with poverty [in the Third World] — so what is 20,000 dead in New York?”; and
Leftist poet Toni Morrison, who dubbed Bill Clinton the “first black president.”

Had the Nobel Prize sought to reward genuine liberators who exemplified courage in the face of organized resistance, we can think of three excellent candidates: George W. Bush, Tony Blair and Australian Prime Minister John Howard.

Both Bush and Blair were nominated this year by Jan Simonsen, a member of the Norweigan Parliament. Simonsen defended his choice, saying, “Even though they haven’t found those weapons [in Iraq], they got rid of a dictator and made the world more safe. They got rid of a madman.”

That they did, ending his evil use of chemical weapons, his rape rooms, his torture of children with electric drills, his filling of mass graves with young girls sometimes still clutching their dolls, and his intentions to re-create a WMD program as soon as UN sanctions were lifted. They succeeded in the face of a bribed UN Security Council drunk on Iraqi oil contracts and Oil-for-Food kickbacks. Most importantly, Operation Iraqi Freedom planted the hope of democracy in the current nexus of the War on Terrorism.

Simonsen left out one important dignitary: John Howard of Australia. Howard has faced down fierce internal opposition to stand with us in the Liberation of Iraq. Diana Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate’s sister and head of Americans Overseas for Kerry, unsuccessfully attempted to undermine Howard’s re-election. An Australian newspaper recorded a characteristic comment: “John Kerry's campaign has warned Australians that the Howard Government's support for the U.S. in Iraq has made them a bigger target for international terrorists.” Mark Latham, Howard’s opponent, promised to imitate Spain’s Socialist president by pulling Aussie troops out of Iraq. Howard has become a modern Profile in Courage, and the Australian voters have rewarded him for that by entrusting them with their continued leadership.

Pity it’s the only reward any of the three are likely to receive.