Coleen Rowley Interviews and Challenges the Nobel Committee Secretary on Obama’s Laughable Peace Prize

On March 3, 2012, Coleen Rowley attended the 3rd and final day of the Nobel Peace Forum in Minneapolis, and was able to interview Oslo-based long-time Secretary of the Nobel Committee Geir Lundestad after he spoke at a Forum event at Augsburg College. Coleen had helped draft this “Petition (to) Investigate Betrayal of the Nobel Peace Prize” a few days earlier, which has now gathered the endorsements of over 40 peace organizations. Yesterday she sent me her very sobering article and video clip from that interview. Here are a few important excerpts and the video:

Secretary Lundestad began the interview by denying he has been dodging Heffermehl’s questions and advising that “a very long responseâ€� has been prepared to respond to the allegations lodged against his Committee. Lundestad said Heffermehl’s problem is he is a “puristâ€� and an “originalistâ€� who thinks the prize should only go to peace activists as narrowly defined; that Heffermehl’s understanding of Alfred Nobel as a “one dimensional personâ€� is wrong. (Note: Lundestad had begun his earlier talk by describing Alfred Nobel as profoundly unhappy, romantically frustrated and someone who would have been diagnosed with mental problems or institutionalized if he had lived now.) Read more È

Rising Energy Tensions in the Aegean—Greece, Turkey, Cyprus, Syria

The discovery in late 2010 of the huge natural gas bonanza off Israel’s Mediterranean shores triggered other neighboring countries to look more closely at their own waters. The results revealed that the entire eastern Mediterranean is swimming in huge untapped oil and gas reserves. That discovery is having enormous political, geopolitical as well as economic consequences. It well may have potential military consequences too.

Preliminary exploration has confirmed similarly impressive reserves of gas and oil in the waters off Greece, Turkey, Cyprus and potentially, Syria.

Greek ‘energy Sirtaki’

Not surprisingly, amid its disastrous financial crisis the Greek government began serious exploration for oil and gas. Since then the country has been in a curious kind of a dance with the IMF and EU governments, a kind of “energy Sirtaki� over who will control and ultimately benefit from the huge resource discoveries there. 

In December 2010, as it seemed the Greek crisis might still be resolved without the by-now huge bailouts or privatizations, Greece’s Energy Ministry formed a special group of experts to research the prospects for oil and gas in Greek waters. Greece’s Energean Oil & Gas began increased investment into drilling in the offshore waters after a successful smaller oil discovery in 2009. Major geological surveys were made. Preliminary estimates now are that total offshore oil in Greek waters exceeds 22 billion barrels in the Ionian Sea off western Greece and some 4 billion barrels in the northern Aegean Sea.[1] Read more È

Petition to Investigate Betrayal of the Nobel Peace Prize

In June 2011 Coleen Rowley and I co-wrote a petition to rescind Obama’s Transparency Award, given to him during a secret ceremony by a handful of agenda-driven organizations led by Project on Government Oversight (POGO). Here is what our petition called for:

Awarding the worst president in US history when it comes to government whistleblowers with a Transparency Award is a huge insult. Presenting a president who has dramatically increased government secrecy with an Anti-Secrecy Award is ridiculous. Rewarding one of the worst US presidents when it comes to invocation of unconstitutional state secrets privilege is ludicrous. This award is a major insult to all liberty-loving Americans. This award is a slap to all freedom-liberty seeking activists. This award is dumb, highly damaging, and extremely dangerous by what it says it represents. Please stand up and say ‘NO’ to this award by signing this petition. I urge you to demand that this award be taken back immediately. I implore you to not let them get away with this in your name. I am asking you to sign this petition and encourage everyone you know to do the same. Don’t let them mock our nation, our people and our values: Take Obama’s Transparency Award Back Now.

At the time we were drafting this petition Coleen and I were also discussing another hypocritical and ludicrous award that was granted to this same president-The 2009 Nobel Peace Prize. We were debating whether to tackle both awards in one petition, or take on each separately. We decided on the latter.

A few weeks ago we began our discussions and plans to launch the petition addressed to the members of Stockholm’s County Administrative Board which has formally asked the Nobel Foundation to respond to allegations that the peace prize no longer reflects Nobel’s will that the purpose of the prize was to diminish the role of military power in international relations. As always, David Swanson volunteered to help with drafting and launching the petition, and taking care of all the technical and complex organizational and logistical requirements (Thank you David!). Here is the petition launched at Warisacrime.Org: Read more È

Corporate-Funded Lap-Dog Watchdogs, AntiWar.Com, Whistleblowers & Bradley Manning

Last year, in our series ‘Mega Corporate Foundations’ Lap-Dogs’ we took on pseudo-whistleblower watchdog organization Project on Government Oversight (POGO) and their consistent betrayal of legit government whistleblowers, their corporate sugar-daddies such as Soros-Rockefellers-Carnegie, and their incestuous relationship with the Executive Branch, especially the White House. You can read our coverage here, here, and here.  We also produced a video report on POGO begging the obvious question: Who’s Watching the Watchdogs: Read more È

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by subscribing .

New Alleged Hezbollah-Iran Joint Terror Operations in Azerbaijan

Azerbaijan claims it has ‘again’ busted another Iranian terror cell, but is refusing to provide any evidence or details. According to the report by the country’s state-run AZTV, on February 21 a terrorist cell operated by Hezbollah and Iran’s Revolutionary Guard had been discovered and dismantled. Allegedly the busted group, with guns and explosives, were planning attacks on ‘unspecified’ foreign nationals.

Despite reporters’ attempts the Azeri government refrained from providing any additional information:

Speaking to EurasiaNet.org, a spokesperson for Azerbaijan’s Ministry of National Security refused either to confirm or to deny the station’s report. Strangely, pro-government and state-run news sites have proven similarly skittish about delving into the AzTV report; no news about the arrests could be found on any of these websites on the morning of February 22.

…

Strangely enough, to back up the story AZTV aired footage of terrorist arrests from an incident that occurred in 2008! This new development appears to follow the very same pattern as Azerbaijan’s claim on the ‘alleged’ assassination plot against Israeli officials in Azerbaijan by an Iran-Sponsored terrorist group last month. Read more È

Part I: Israel’s Levant Basin—a new geopolitical curse?

Recent discoveries of not just significant, but huge oil and gas reserves in the little-explored Mediterranean Sea between Greece, Turkey, Cyprus, Israel, Syria and Lebanon suggest that the region could become literally a “new Persian Gulf� in terms of oil and gas riches. As with the old Persian Gulf, discovery of hydrocarbon riches could as well spell a geopolitical curse of staggering dimension.

Long-standing Middle East conflicts could soon be paled by new battles over rights to oil and gas resources beneath the eastern Mediterranean in the Levant Basin and Aegean Sea. Here we explore the implications of a gigantic discovery of gas and oil in offshore Israel. In a second article we will explore the implications of gas and oil discoveries in the Aegean between Cyprus, Syria, Turkey, Greece and Lebanon.  Read more È