A Nobel Prize for Depleted Uranium

The Nobel Peace Prize this year is shared by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and Mr. Mohamed ElBaradei, its Director General, "for their efforts to prevent nuclear energy from being used for military purposes and to ensure that nuclear energy for peaceful purposes is used in the safest possible way." The Nobel prizes being all largely political prizes, it is of course very clever and should certainly be backed, that right now this prize goes to a gentleman from a Muslim country, as this may clearly further a policy of détente in the nuclear field in that part of the world, unfortunately so much in the limelight. Also, it hardly can be denied that the efforts mentioned by the Norwegian Nobel Committee have indeed led to commendable results. After all, humanity as a whole or in very large parts has not yet been blown off the surface of this earth. That very real danger of extinction of life and resources and of the accompanying great suffering, where extinction was not immediate, has provisionally been escaped, the extinction and suffering not been made come true. Only relatively few (though any single individual is numerous enough!) have suffered so far (from Hiroshima to the recent wars in the Balkans and the Near East). But this partial success of the efforts has above all been only in the interest of the United States, and not so much of its people as of its power crust, that bad smelling gratin done with plastic cheese. How many rotten eggs do you need for such a soufflé?

Nuclear energy for peaceful purposes (how peaceful can you get!) is not used in the safest possible way. The recent scandals in the Hamburg, Germany, area, where I live, alone are enough to disprove that. And we are here in Germany, not in Russia or the equally technically and morally incompetent United States in matters nuclear.

Nuclear energy has been used, is being used for military purposes. Or are weapons with depleted uranium bouillon cubes (stock cubes) used in kosher cooking or Hallmark cards sent to friends? And if you use such cubes in your kitchen, it's your sovereign decision (albeit one not earning you many toques or the wrong ones, the Nobel prize for cooking maybe?), it's not flying into your garden or through the window into your tureen, coming from your friendly neighbourhood invader (a suspiciously distant kind of neigbourhood) or pacification franchiser. You do not need to run...

Thus the Nobel Peace Prize 2005 headlines in the news these days are more hypocrisy and lies than anything else and just the usual political cosmetics to make the average John and Jane Doe continue to think that their destiny is in the best possible hands with our over death and life deciding despots.