Posted on 06/30/2005 8:08:51 PM PDT by SmithL
U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.
Her name is among 1,000 women from more than 150 countries collectively nominated for the annual award and one of 14 from the Bay Area.
The nominees were chosen by an international team to represent the many women who have worked for peace throughout the world.
Lee was selected for being the only member of Congress to vote against the post-Sept. 11 resolution that authorized Pres. Bush to use military force in the fight against terrorism.
Project organizers also said that Lee promotes human rights policies and legislation to treat and stop the spread of AIDS.
"It's an honor to be included with all of these women who have done so much to promote peace on our planet," Lee said.
The "1000 Women for the Nobel Peace Prize 2005" project began three years ago as a Swiss initiative but spread globally as volunteers helped assemble and select the final nominees.
The prize will be announced in the fall, but organizers plan to publish a book with biographies of the women by the end of the year. They also plan a traveling exhibit and an on-line program.
Other nominated Bay Area residents list include:
• Medea Benjamin of San Francisco, founding director of Global Exchange, a human rights organization, and co-founder of a peace group, Code Pink: Women for Peace.
• Terry Greenblatt of Berkeley, former director of Bat Shalom, Israel's national women's peace organization and an Activist in Residence at the Global Fund for Women. She also founded Kol Ha-Isha (The Women's Voice) Center of Jerusalem, Shani (Israeli Women Against the Occupation), and the Community School for Women's Studies and Economic Development.
She's in good company.
I saw this and in a moment of abject terror thought of Sheila Jackson-Lee. Thank God that didn't happen.
Your Queen Sheila and our bichon Barbara are two Lees in apod.
http://www.house.gov/lee/Biography.htm
About Congresswoman Barbara Lee
Congresswoman Barbara Lee was first elected to represent California's ninth Congressional District in 1998, in a special election to fill the seat of retiring Congressman Ron Dellums. She is the most senior Democratic woman on the House International Relations Committee where she serves on the Africa Subcommittee and the Western Hemisphere Subcommittee. She also serves on the House Financial Services Committee, where she sits on the Housing Subcommittee and the Subcommittee on Domestic and International Monetary Policy. She is the Co-Chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Whip for the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) and a Senior Democratic Whip. She also serves as Chair of the CBC Task Force on Global HIV/AIDS and Co-Chair of the CBC Haiti Task Force.
Congresswoman Lee's accomplishments in promoting effective, bipartisan legislation to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS and bring treatment to the infected have earned her international recognition as a leader in the fight against global HIV/AIDS. She led the fight to create the Global Fund to Fight HIV/AIDS and to bring affordable generic AIDS treatments to impoverished regions. She sponsored legislation to protect AIDS orphans, and led the bipartisan effort to create a $15 billion fund to fight HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.
Congresswoman Lee's willingness to stand on principle earned her international attention when she was the only member of Congress to vote against the resolution authorizing President Bush to "use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons." In addition to being one of Congress' most vocal opponents to the war in Iraq, Congresswoman Lee has been a leader in promoting policies that foster international peace, security and human rights. She sponsored legislation disavowing the doctrine of preemptive war, co-sponsored legislation to create a cabinet level Department of Peace, and has led the bipartisan effort in Congress to end the ongoing genocide in Darfur, Sudan.
In her role on the Financial Services Committee, Congresswoman Lee has been a staunch advocate for programs that reflect her commitment to building healthy communities, fostering opportunity and protecting the most vulnerable in our society. She helped lead the fight to make housing more affordable by creating a National Housing Trust Fund.
She has introduced legislation to make communities safer by providing after school programs in public housing and to protect tenants from arbitrary evictions. Congresswoman Lee has been a leader in the fight against predatory lending and one of Congress' most active members in the effort to end homelessness.
With her leadership roles in the Congressional Black Caucus and the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Congresswoman Lee has been a leader in the fight for civil rights and civil liberties. She was one of only several members of Congress to formally object to the certification of Ohio's electoral votes in an effort to push electoral reforms to address the widespread voting irregularities in Ohio and elsewhere during the 2004 Presidential elections. Congresswoman has been active in fighting to protect financial privacy. She has also been a vocal opponent of the PATRIOT act and a leader in protecting free speech by opposing media consolidation.
California's ninth Congressional District encompasses most of Alameda County, including the Cities of Albany, Berkeley and Oakland to the North and Ashland and Castro Valley to the South.
Congresswoman Lee was born in El Paso Texas. She graduated from Mills College in Oakland and received her Masters in Social Work from the University of California in Berkeley.
Congresswoman Lee began her political career working in the office of her predecessor, Congressman Ron Dellums, where she eventually became his Chief of Staff. Before being elected to Congress, she served in the California State Assembly from 1990-1996 and in the California State Senate from 1996-1998.
I guess I don't see a great difference between the two.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 15, 2002
Contact: Stuart Chapman 202.225.2661
Scott Lynch 202.862.9740x3030
Congresswoman Barbara Lee Received International Peace Bureau's Sean MacBride Prize
Washington, DC - Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D-California) was awarded the Sean MacBride Prize, given annually by the International Peace Bureau (IPB), of which Peace Action is a member organization, on Thursday, November 14, 2002 at 12 noon in her office, 426 Cannon Office Building, Washington, D.C.
IPB selected Lee for the prestigious prize because of the Congresswoman's courage in questioning the merits of going to war as a remedy for the September 11 terrorist attacks. Lee believed that the resolution was not only overly broad in its war-making powers, but it preempted any possibility for negotiations, a framework that Lee considers the most effective way of ensuring peace around the world. On the floor of the House, Congresswoman Lee told her colleagues that while "September 11 changed the world . . . I am not convinced that military action will prevent further acts of international terrorism against the US."
Announcing Lee as the MacBride winner, Cora Weiss, IPB President, said, "Barbara Lee is an outstanding woman, who truly represents the people of her district, who have consistently said 'no' to war. In this age, with over 30,000 nuclear weapons in the world, 639 million conventional weapons, and $839 billion for military spending and preparation for war, it is incumbent on people in positions of responsibility, such as Congresswoman Barbara Lee, to use every diplomatic, non-lethal solution at their disposal to resolve differences."
Kevin Martin, Executive Director of Peace Action said, "Representative Lee is the standard by which all other leaders in Washington are judged - sure in her convictions and unafraid to do the right thing for both her country and the world. By choosing Representative Lee for this award, the IPB has recognized her importance as a voice of reason in a national government that is recklessly enamored with the use of force as a means of resolving international conflict."
Ms. Lee joins an illustrious group of MacBride Prize winners including Ireland's John Hume, a Nobel Peace Laureate; The Committee of Soldiers, Mothers of Russia for opposing the war in Chechnya; and Praful Bidwai and Achin Vanaik, Indian journalists who have campaigned against the nuclearization of South Asia.
The Prize is named for Ireland's great statesman and human rights activist, who was a founder of Amnesty International; was UN Commissioner for Namibia; and was President of the International Peace Bureau from 1974-85. MacBride received the 1974 Nobel Peace Prize. With her 200 member organizations in 60 countries, the IPB, the recipient of the 1910 Nobel Public Prize, is the oldest and most comprehensive of international peace federations.
Peace Action, (the merger of Sane and The Nuclear Freeze) is the nation's largest peace and disarmament organization.
The lone vote in the House of Representatives opposing military action in response to the terrorist attacks on the U.S. has a long history of associations with Communist Party and extremist groups and individuals, WorldNetDaily investigations show.
Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., is a long-time friend of Communist Party militant Angela Davis who succeeded another radical from the city of Oakland, Rep. Ron "Red" Dellums.
The votes in the House and Senate Friday authorized military action by the executive branch and provided $40 billion to help cover the costs of retaliation and rebuilding from the devastation of Tuesday suicide attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.
Lee paid her establishment political dues – first as an aide to Dellums and later as a California assemblywoman and state senator. However, less known is Lee's service on the national coordinating committee of the "Committees of Correspondence," an organization that splintered from the Communist Party USA in 1991. Davis, the three-time Communist Party candidate for vice president of the United States, served by her side.
Earlier, while working with Dellums, she joined the U.S.-Grenada Friendship Society, a front group supporting the Communist dictatorship of Maurice Bishop, a close ally of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. Just months before the U.S. invasion that toppled Bishop in 1983, Lee and Dellums visited the island on official business of the House Armed Services Committee to gauge the military threat posed to the United States by an international airport being built there by Cubans. According to documents captured by U.S. military forces in Grenada, Lee personally presented Bishop's Politburo with a draft of Dellums' report before it was presented to his congressional committee.
Despite revelations about this in 1993, Dellums went on to become chairman of the committee so vital to national security. Lee went on to become a member of the California Legislature. She threatened Joseph Farah, now the editor of WorldNetDaily, with a defamation lawsuit for publishing this information during her first term as a California assemblywoman. She dropped the threat after being challenged to provide any evidence that the charges were not true.
The minutes of a Politburo meeting held in 1982 say Lee actually encouraged the Communist government to make a revision in the report to minimize the military significance of the Grenada airport.
Less than a year later, the captured documents reveal, Lee helped coordinate a tour of the West Coast for Ian Jacobs, Grenada's deputy U.N. ambassador, as part of a propaganda offensive "to counterattack President Reagan's verbal attack on Grenada." Once again, Angela Davis was by her side.
President Reagan later ordered an invasion of the island when U.S. medical students were taken hostage by the Cuban-backed regime. When U.S. Marines landed, they were met with armed resistance, not from local forces, but from Cuban infantry regulars.
Lee's friendly relations with Cuba date back even further. In 1979, while on Dellums' staff, she traveled to Havana to attend a conference of "non-aligned nations," a Cold War euphemism for countries aligned with the Soviet Union. She attended the conference not as an employee of the federal government, which she was, but rather claiming to be a journalist for the left-wing alternative San Francisco paper, the Sun-Reporter.
The San Francisco paper Lee represented in Cuba was edited at the time by the late Carlton Goodlett. On April 22, 1970, Goodlett received the Lenin Peace Prize in Moscow. It was quite an affair – attended by Leonid Brezhnev and other party notables. The date marked Lenin's 100th birthday.
Until 1956, the Lenin Prize was called the Stalin Stipend. The name was changed only after Nikita Khruschev denounced mass murderer Josef Stalin at the 20th Party Congress in Moscow. It was not just an honorary award for promoting the cause of world Communism and Soviet hegemony. The prize was established in 1928 as the socialist rival to the Nobel Prize and paid its recipients amounts ranging from 50,000 to 100,000 rubles.
When Goodlett returned with his cash, he proceeded to file as a candidate for governor of California in that year's election. He also bankrolled the first big election bids of former California Assembly Speaker Willie Brown and Dellums.
In October 1997, a Freedom of Information Act request was filed with the FBI. It sought information about Goodlett, particularly with respect to the Lenin Prize and about his backing of Dellums. A few weeks later, Dellums surprised virtually everyone on Capitol Hill, throughout his district and across the nation by resigning in the middle of his two-year term.
Nevertheless, Lee was sworn into the House of Representatives by a smiling Speaker Newt Gingrich in 1998. She glibly took her oath to defend and uphold the Constitution, and she faced only token opposition in her successful bids for her first two full terms in the House.
The votes in the House and Senate were remarkable for their gravity, urgency and absence of opposition or even debate. Discussions took a mere five hours and the final vote was 420 to 1.
"There must be some of us who say, let's step back for a moment and think through the implications of our actions today – let us more fully understand its consequences," Lee said. "Far too many innocent people have already died."
The Senate version of the resolution passed 98-0. Sens. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, and Jesse Helms, R-N.C., did not vote.
She's a real piece all right.
Well, there goes any remeining credibilty for this groups nominations requirements.
Just as the Congressional Black Caucus has only blacks as members and excludes whites, the Peace Prize nominees can only be anti-American neocommunists.
This is BS. The Nobel Prize committees don't release the names of people nominated or the people on the selection committees.
100% COMMIE!
Here is the criteria from the Nobel Institute itself:
The Nominators – Peace
Right to submit proposals for the Nobel Peace Prize, based on the principle of competence and universality, shall by statute be enjoyed by:
1. Members of national assemblies and governments of states;
2. Members of international courts;
3. University rectors; professors of social sciences, history, philosophy, law and theology; directors of peace research institutes and foreign policy institutes;
4. Persons who have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize;
5. Board members of organizations who have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize;
6. Active and former members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee; (proposals by members of the Committee to be submitted no later than at the first meeting of the Committee after February 1) and
7. Former advisers appointed by the Norwegian Nobel Institute.
ncountylee,
Not a relative, I assume. LOL.
Here are the "other" nominees from the United States:
| Mary Thunder (United States of America) |
| Hadayai Majeed (United States of America) |
| Betty Reardon (United States of America) |
| Charlotte Bunch (United States of America) |
| Jane Roberts and Lois Abraham (United States of America) |
| Marta Drury (United States of America) |
| Swanee Hunt (United States of America) |
| Betty Burkes (United States of America) |
| Roma Pauline Guy (United States of America) |
| Cynthia Basinet (United States of America) |
| Chris Norwood (United States of America) |
| Holly Near (United States of America) |
| Anne Firth Murray (United States of America) |
| Sharon Hutchinson (United States of America) |
| Kate Michelman (United States of America) |
| Alice Ophelia Hyman Lynch (United States of America) |
| Elizabeth (Betita) Martinez (United States of America) |
| Grace Paley (United States of America) |
| Dorothy Rupert (United States of America) |
| Barbara Smith (United States of America) |
| Susan Sygall (United States of America) |
| Maria Varela (United States of America) |
| Cora Weiss (United States of America) |
| Elise Marie Biorn-Hansen Boulding (United States of America) |
| Linda Burnham (United States of America) |
| Kate Donnelly (United States of America) |
| Rosalie Bertell (United States of America) |
| Barbara Lee (United States of America) |
| Yuri Kochiyama (United States of America) |
| Aileen Clarke Hernandez (United States of America) |
| Roselle Bailey (United States of America) |
| Mandy Carter (United States of America) |
| Candi Smucker (United States of America) |
| Medea Benjamin (United States of America) |
| Cynthia McKinney (United States of America) |
| Ellen Barry (United States of America) |
| Terry Greenblatt (United States of America) |
| Kip Tiernan (United States of America) |
| Andrea Smith (United States of America) |
| Noeleen Heyzer (United States of America) |
|
All I can say is WHO? |
Shoot!
Here's the working link:
http://www.1000peacewomen.org/eng/html/nominierte/suche.php
Millions of women are engaged daily in working for a better future. Without regard for their own safety, they are active on behalf of the community's well-being. They call for reconciliation, demand justice, and rebuild what has been destroyed. They transform conflicts. They fight against poverty and for human rights. They create alternative sources of income, and they strive for access to land and clean water. They educate and heal. They reintegrate HIV patients. They find solutions to a great many forms of violence and they condemn the genital mutilation of girls.
The project 1000 Women for the Nobel Peace Prize 2005 defined as its objective the nominating of 1000 women to represent collectively the millions above-mentioned. The life stories, the visions, methods, strategies and networks of these 1000 women will be publicized. With this recognition they should receive both encouragement and gratitude for their commitment.
After almost three years' work, we are happy to introduce these 1000 women to you here. Their short biographies were compiled by local journalists and authors, as well as by academics and by members of organizations. These biographies give us insight into the life and work of each of the 1000 women. They also reflect the cultural differences involved in evaluating personal data. To satisfy any curiosity for further information, a book on the 1000 women will appear in autumn 2005.
Hey, there's no nominations from China. Go figure! lol
Not a relative, I assume. LOL.
LOL - NO!!!
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