NOBEL PEACE PRIZE GOES TO.....
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Finland's Martti Ahtisaari wins Nobel Peace Prize
By DOUG MELLGREN and MATTI HUUHTANEN, Associated Press Writers
Finland's ex-president Martti Ahtisaari won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for his efforts to build a lasting peace from Africa and Asia to Europe and the Middle East.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee said it honored Ahtisaari for important efforts over more than three decades to resolve international conflicts.
"These efforts have contributed to a more peaceful world and to 'fraternity between nations' in Alfred Nobel's spirit," the committee said in announcing the prize.
By selecting Ahtisaari, 71, for the prize, the Nobel committee returned its focus to traditional peace work after tapping climate campaigner Al Gore and the U.N. panel on climate change last year.
"He is a world champion when it comes to peace and he never gives up," said Ole Danbolt Mjoes, the chairman of the Norwegian Nobel awards committee.
The award, he said, was in line with recent Nobels to other peace mediators, notably Jimmy Carter in 2002 and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan in 2001.
Ahtisaari told AP Television News that while winning the prize would help his future mediation work, he is looking to other challenges, too, particularly youth unemployment worldwide.
But he also conceded that the decades of work have taken a toll.
"I have to start realizing that I am 71" and maybe it's time to stop "traveling 200 days a year outside Finland."
The secretive five-member committee said Ahtisaari's work across the world — Africa, Europe, Asia and the Middle East — proved that such efforts can have a profound effect on peace processes.
"Through his untiring efforts and good results, he has shown what role mediation of various kinds can play in the resolution of international conflicts," the committee said in announcing the 10 million kronor (US$1.4 million) prize.
"For the past 20 years, he has figured prominently in endeavors to resolve several serious and long-lasting conflicts," the citation said, mentioning his work in conflicts from Namibia to Aceh, Indonesia, Kosovo and Iraq.
Ahtisaari had been mentioned in speculation as a possible Nobel Peace Prize candidate since 2005, just after he negotiated an end to a conflict in Indonesia that began more than 140 years ago, bringing together the Indonesian government and the leaders of the separatist guerrilla movement in Aceh. He initiated and mediated peace talks in Finland, and a peace agreement was signed in Helsinki.
"He has also made constructive contributions to the resolution of conflicts in Northern Ireland, in Central Asia, and on the Horn of Africa," the citation said.
Speaking to NRK Norwegian TV, Ahtisaari said he "was very pleased and grateful" to receive the prize.
Asked what work he considered the most important, Ahtisaari, the first Finn to win the prize, said that "of course Namibia is absolutely the most important because it took such a long time." He also singled out his work in Kosovo and Aceh.
Ahtisaari was a senior Finnish diplomat when in 1977 he was named the U.N. envoy for Namibia, where guerrillas were battling South African apartheid rule. He later rose to undersecretary-general, and in 1988 was dispatched to Namibia to lead 8,000 U.N. peacekeepers during its transition to independence.
Ahtisaari said he hoped the prize would make it easier to attract financing for his peace work.
"There are always many possibilities. I really hope now that I receive the prize that it makes it easier to finance the organizations that I chair," he said. "It's very important to be able to act properly, you need financing and you never have enough."
Ahtisaari has had a broad career in politics and peacemaking.
A primary school teacher who joined Finland's Foreign Ministry in 1965, he spent 20 years abroad, first as ambassador to Tanzania and then to the United Nations in New York.
In 1994, Ahtisaari accepted the presidential candidacy of Finland's Social Democratic Party and won the election. He did not seek re-election in 2000 and has since worked on international peace efforts.
In 2007, Ahtisaari's office — Crisis Management Initiative — started secret meetings in Finland between Iraqi Sunni and Shiite groups to agree on a road map to peace. Those talks, based on the format of peacemaking efforts in South Africa and Northern Ireland, included 16 delegates from the feuding groups. They "agreed to consult further" and begin reconciliation talks.
"He managed to get 36 senior Iraqis to Helsinki in April 2008, and is now working on a next meeting in Baghdad," Mjoes said of the efforts.
Damien Kingsbury, an Australian academic who was part of the Acehnese delegation during the Indonesia peace talks said Ahtisaari started off "from a very naive position. He was, by definition, pro-Indonesia, supporting the integrity of the state and dismissing Aceh's insistence on independence."
The Acehnese vehemently criticized Ahtisaari's position. But Kingsbury, in a telephone interview from Australia, said he "helped broker an agreement between the two parties that has proven to be sustainable."
Ahtisaari was chairman of the Bosnia-Herzegovina working group in the international peace conference on former Yugoslavia from 1992 to 1993, and was special adviser to the U.N. secretary-general on former Yugoslavia in 1993.
Serbia bitterly rejected his attempts to forge a compromise settlement on Kosovo, which declared independence in February, but his blueprint forms the essence of Kosovo's constitution.
Vojislav Kostunica — who led Serbia's government as prime minister during the Kosovo talks — saw the award as political and a sign of further pressure on Serbia to give up Kosovo.
"Serbia must fight for Kosovo even more firmly and strongly," he said.
Ahtisaari's plan also laid down the guidelines for the deployment of a European Union police force in Kosovo and other key aspects of the way today's Kosovo is run day to day.
Kosovo's Prime Minister Hashim Thaci hailed the Nobel selection as "the right decision for the right man."
"We proclaimed independence of Kosovo in accordance with the document of President Ahtisaari and Kosovo appreciates very much" that he won, Thaci told the AP.
The peace prize is presented in Oslo. Nobel prizes for medicine, chemistry, physics and economics are handed out in Stockholm, Sweden. The ceremonies are always on Dec. 10, the anniversary of Nobel's death in 1896.
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Associated Press writer Matti Huuhtanen reported from Helsinki, Finland. Associated Press reporters Slobodan Lekic in Brussels, William J. Kole in Vienna and Louise Nordstrom in Stockholm also contributed to this report.
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On the Net:
http://www.nobelpeaceprize.org
http://www.prio.no
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My own connection with Peace continues to be Pax Christi.
Read more about Pax Christi, at:
www.paxchristiusa.org
www.paxchristiinternational.org
Peace, kids.

FROM THE BLOG ENTITLED WRITERQUAKE, AND LYDIA, THE BLOGGER WHO CREATED IT, IN THE NAME OF PEACE, KIDS, I GIVE YOU THE FOLLOWING:

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into
fragments
by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms toward
perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its
way into
the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-
widening thought and action—
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my
country
awake.

- Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) Indian poet,
playwright and essayist;
Won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913

Peace, kids.

A LETTER OF THANKS FROM CONDEMNED PRISONER, TROY DAVIS.
I was made aware of this letter by my wonderful Pax Christi group(Pax Christi, St. Jude's, here in the Atlanta area). This was first published online at:
www.bodyontheline.wordpress.com
I am posting it here, and also at:
www.lisananetteallender.blogspot.com/
because it should be seen by as many people as possible.
Thank you for reading this, and for acting on it, too.
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Marcy Newman October 1, 2008
a letter from troy davis
from amnesty international’s urgent action center
read the letter. click the link above. take a moment to work to save this man’s life. make some time to eradicate the barbaric death penalty.
the words below are his. the bold below is mine:
To all,
I want to thank all of you for your efforts and dedication to Human Rights and Human Kindness, in the past year I have experienced such emotion, joy, sadness and never ending faith.

It is because of all of you that I am alive today, as I look at my sister Martina I am marveled by the love she has for me and of course I worry about her and her health, but as she tells me she is the eldest and she will not back down from this fight to save my life and prove to the world that I am innocent of this terrible crime.

As I look at my mail from across the globe, from places I have never ever dreamed I would know about and people speaking languages and expressing cultures and religions I could only hope to one day see first hand. I am humbled by the emotion that fills my heart with overwhelming, overflowing Joy.

I can’t even explain the insurgence of emotion I feel when I try to express the strength I draw from you all, it compounds my faith and it shows me yet again that this is not a case about the death penalty, this is not a case about Troy Davis, this is a case about Justice and the Human Spirit to see Justice prevail.

I cannot answer all of your letters but I do read them all, I cannot see you all but I can imagine your faces, I cannot hear you speak but your letters take me to the far reaches of the world, I cannot touch you physically but I feel your warmth everyday I exist.

So Thank you and remember I am in a place where execution can only destroy your physical form but because of my faith in God, my family and all of you I have been spiritually free for some time and no matter what happens in the days, weeks to come, this Movement to end the death penalty, to seek true justice, to expose a system that fails to protect the innocent must be accelerated.

There are so many more Troy Davis’. This fight to end the death penalty is not won or lost through me but through our strength to move forward and save every innocent person in captivity around the globe. We need to dismantle this Unjust system city by city, state by state and country by country.

I can’t wait to Stand with you, no matter if that is in physical or spiritual form, I will one day be announcing, “I AM TROY DAVIS, and I AM FREE!”

Never Stop Fighting for Justice and We will Win!

– Troy Davis