Why does the Nobel Peace Prize carry so much weight anymore? Don’t misunderstand me: when given to the right person, the prize is honorable and well-regarded (by me, anyhow), but take a look at who has gotten the Nobel Peace Prize in recent years and the reason listed for (not necessarily for the same person) and you wonder why it still has any legitimacy.

There are two problems with the recent awarding of the Prize.

1) Undeserved Recipients for Reason of Fraud.

- 1986 - Elie Wiesel. This dude pretends to be a champion for human rights and, maybe, for some people he is, but there is one people he purposely ignores: the Palestinians people. A hawkish fan of Israel and for that matter the Israeli right-wing, Wiesel has routinely justified Israeli colonization of Palestinian land and the occupation and killing of the Palestinians people. Wiesel is a phony who only seeks to apply human rights norms and preach compassion for all people expect those his favorite state of Israel abuses.

- 1978 - Menachem Begin. This former Prime Minister of Israel was recognized as a terrorist when he was imprisoned by the British for engaging in acts of terrorism, including the famous King David Hotel bombing that killed over 90 civilians. Begin also lead ethnic cleansing missions against Palestinians, a period he acknowledged in his autobiography (conveniently, this part of the book was omitted in the U.S. edition lest American support for Zionism decline).

- 1994 - Yasser Arafat. This late PLO leader supported attacks against Israeli civilians and also against his people when they crossed him. Arafat ordered the assassination of a famous Palestinian political cartoonist in the streets of London because the cartoonist portrayed once an affair by Arafat. Though not personally corrupt, tolerated and, in the case of his wife Suha, facilitated extensive corruption through outright theft of millions of dollars in international aid to the Palestinian people and also fraud payroll listings in order to get more than one salary for themselves or their wives.

Additional Dishonorable: Yitzhak Rabin.

2) Decent People who Deserve an Award, but not the Nobel Peace Prize.

- 2006 - Muhammad Yunus. Okay, this guy is a great person and deserved some award for the work he has done to reduce poverty. But the Nobel prize should be about peace and not about poverty, hence Nobel Peace Prize. Efforts to award for non-peace purposes undermines the original purpose for and historical role of the Nobel.

- 2007 - Al Gore and InterGovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, a UN agency). See above, Ditto.

Additional ‘Not NPP Material’: Aung San Suu Kyi