[FREE IRAN Project] In The Spirit Of Cyrus The Great

[peace]

Nobel Prize Winner's Priorities Skewed
BY: The Intelligencer
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The annual announcement of the Nobel Peace Prize lately is more often anticipated with a cringe, with the likes of Yasser Arafat having claimed the prize. This year's prize sends another highly mixed message. Shirin Abadi, an Iranian human rights activist, is this year's recipient, and she used the occasion to lash out not at the oppressive mullahs of Iran but against the West in general and, in thinly veiled remarks, the United States in particular.
"Regulations restricting human rights and basic freedoms ... have been justified and given legitimacy under the cloak of the war on terrorism," she said. That may well be true in some corners of the world, so it's a fair enough statement coming from a human rights activist. But then she went on to say this: "The concerns of human rights advocates increase when they observe that international human rights laws are breached not only by their recognized opponents," but also by "Western democracies ..." She specifically cited U.S. prisoners of war held at Guantanamo Bay as an example.

Abadi apparently has done much to attempt to improve the lot of Iranians, especially Iranian women. But please, spare us the sanctimonious moral equivalence drawn between the horrors inflicted by despots and an American prison camp where the captives are treated better than they ever were in their home countries.

Lest the Peace Prize diminish to Lilliputian import, the Nobel Committee would do well to raise its sights a bit higher.