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Piece or Peace Prize




Bill Ashe • 31 December 2005

When we hear that Gerry Adams was up for the Piece/Peace prize, I seem to wander into that place I am so familiar with and that is 'confusion-land'.

I linger here wondering do they mean PIECE, as a piece of the action, piece of the monetary benefits or a piece of any power that he can stick into his ego pockets?

If that is the case then I need no longer to be confused and if there is a prize for such a thing then I would agree, sure he should be on the top of that list !!!!

Now, if they mean PEACE then I am doomed to linger here in confusion land?

Although does not this Nobel Peace Prize carry a bit of contradiction in itself. After all, to name any peace prize after the inventor of dynamite is at least a tinkling of confusion. Throw in torpedoes and land mines and the high loss of life working on these tools of destruction, the largest arms works in the world and his factories around the world to manufacture dynamite.

Now, there are those who say, "Oh he was smart enough to see his wrong way." Well, yes, people can change and that is a good thing, but SMART, I kind of wonder about that when he made a statement like this:

"My dynamite will sooner lead to peace than a thousand world conventions. As soon as men will find that in one instant,whole armies can be utterly destroyed, they surely will abide by golden peace." Alfred Nobel

I guess we have to find some justification in all these about-faces. Maybe now Elton John can now say, "I am not queer—my husband is," or a Lord Mountbatten book on The Heights of My West of Ireland Holiday, a Thatcher book on 'Beauty Hints.'

I guess the pendulum of changes has its swings and we live through it, but in Adams' case, don't you get the feeling, 'Hey Tarzan or his ape friends never had this many swings'!





 

 

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