After Aung San Suu Kyi, Malala as "the Darling of the West"?

Being a father of 2 girls - 4 and 13 - and an educator, I love what Malala Yousafzai stands for and salue her for raising her voice. My young one Nilah has just started reading, and she is surrounded by all kinds of reading materials in a home where she needs not worry about getting shot for simply learning to read.

So, absolutely more power to the courageous young woman.  (Listen to her full speech at the UN here).

But talks of awarding Nobel Peace Prize to a 16-year old girl who became an instant darling of the West - and the mass media - after having been shot by their perennial Enemy - the bearded Taliban!! - are really over the top.

All this, I fear, is less about Malala than about the Narcissistic elites in the West.

For the 16-year old Malala's story fits in with their accepted template, ah, what else??!!, Good versus Evil - where bearded, revolting male religious fanatics whose thinking belongs in the long gone past and the international community that likes to think of itself as 'moral, principled, egalitarian and all the things virtuous (despite ample evidence to the contrary).

My fear is like Aung San Suu Kyi before her, an accidental human rights icon and 'fallen idol', the dominant forces in the West are using, coopting and promoting  'the voice' Malala in a big way.

To be blunt, I don't think much of Nobel Peace Prize,  Not after Barack Obama, EU, Aung San Suu Kyi, Kissinger, etc. - and Myanmar's genocidal President Thein Sein as 'a short-list'.

But if the Nobel Inc. feels it must keep on arrogating to itself the business of annointing one or two individuals (or an organization) as SuperHuman or Super-Organization every year then my very first choice certainly would be the trio of Truth-tellers: Bradley Manning, Julian Assange and Ed Snowden

The dire situations they face respectively today for taking on the world's most imperialist nation in recorded human history speaks volume about the impact and import of their conscience-driven Truth-telling.

Indeed their truth telling is earth-shattering.

It has been a rude wake-up call to one of the ugliest realities of our contemporary world: the most powerful government is also the most immoral Big Brother soaked in institutionalized fear of little people who will think for themselves and aren't afraid to Skype their mind!

Their work has, perhaps by accident, exposed how vulnerable imperial systems of lies and propaganda really are, and how much these system fear Truths and Truth-tellers. 

The more powerful the greater the paranoia:  both citizens and 'aliens' alike are feared and hence spied on 24/7.

Alas, the dominant forces in the West, including the men and women who decide annually who will be 'Super-Human" or "Super-Organization", can't really stomach Truths - any truths. And therefore, none of courageous individuals - whatever their personalities and shortcoming may be - will least likely be given the award.

I really wish there are nobler, more influential forms of recognition which rests on intellectual honesty and principled-ness than this deeply contaminated and tarnished Nobel Peace Prize (among those who think beyond these accepted templates) so that these 3- aforementioned individuals who no longer operate within these ideologically manipulated and intellectually dishonest Systems may be recognized for their contributions to our collective human Knowledge.

For they are the ones who History will recognize as the real heroes who have enlightened the whole world about the perils of Imperialist regimes who have little or no regards for human rights, privacy, civil liberties, etc., on a global scale.

'Rogue regimes' around the world in any 'axis of evils' pale in comparison to Washington and its unscrupulous and double-moral-standards Western allies in the EU and non-EU Western governments.

What the Assange-Manning-Snowden trio have done is shed light on the nasty back alleys of these rogue governments and their years of systematic criminal activities. 

The late Harold Pinter, a Nobel laureate himself who saw through the fog of global lies about the really existing Imperialism, would be pleased, very pleased, with this idea.

Citizens' critical awareness worldwide is a basis for creating a more just and peaceful world.

© Maungzarni.com


Dr. Maung Zarni is a noted exile, commentator, and expert on Burmese affairs. He is currently a visiting fellow with Civil Society and Human Security Research Unit, the London School of Economics and Political Science.

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