Informant38

The 2005 Right Livelihood Awards:

In every generation, there are groups of people and individuals around the globe who valiantly uphold these principles of right livelihood. They should be the stars in our human cosmos, but their work often entails personal sacrifice, being opposed by powerful forces around them.
The Right Livelihood Award was established in 1980 to honour and support such people. It has become widely known as the 'Alternative Nobel Prize' and there are now over 100 laureates from 48 countries.

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Uexkull:

I was always interested both in problems and in solutions, and I always was surprised that we continue living with problems, to which there are solutions. And I wondered why many of these solutions were not being taken seriously. And I also asked: How do you get taken seriously? And so having grown up in Sweden, it was clear that if you win a Nobel Prize, you get taken seriously. And therefore I proposed to the Nobel Foundation to introduce a prize for this new important issue, for the environment, and also a prize relevant to the needs of the people in the so-called third world. And although I offered to provide some money to get this off the ground to get them take it seriously, they turned it down. But in the meantime I told so many people about this idea and had so much support that I decided to try to do it myself. Of course in a much smaller way than the Nobel Prizes, because I had made some money by dealing in rare postage stamps, which is, of course, less profitable than inventing dynamite like Alfred Nobel did.

interview with Jakob von Uexkull
Jorg Altekruse/Right Livelihood Award
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As you may know, a few years ago the 'Alternative Nobel Prize'(The Right Livelihood Award) which I established , was awarded to the Committee of Soldiers' Mothers of Russia for their struggle to protect soldiers against mistreatment .Precisely because I am aware of these problems do I want to express my gratitude to the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation for the maturity and peacefulness with which they have reacted to all the reversals, hardships and provocations they have suffered in recent years.
We have an obligation to them -- and to all of us -- to act.For peace without justice, truth, hope and trust cannot last .In a finite world filled with arms of mass destruction peace cannot co-exist with an ideology of global greed.At present we have no global dialogue, but the attempt by a privileged minority to impose on everyone else a worldwide economic model, the consequences of which increasingly resemble sophisticated theft and a war of the rich against the poor.As the Millenium approaches, perhaps it is time again to throw the money-lenders out of our temples --and remind ourselves that you cannot eat money.Hopefully, Russia with its rich spiritual tradition can take the intiative in showing the world that the crucial question is not how much solidarity, natural diversity and culture our economy can afford.It is, on the contrary, what economic system our humanity, civilisation and environment can afford.The present economic 'war on costs' has become a war on society, culture and nature -- in which there can only be losers.Their cost-benefit-analysis has become an economics of genocide, in which the lives of the global poor are valued at a fraction of those of the rich.
Those responsible for this silent war against all our higher human values claim that there is no alternative.There is, they say, only one economic system which works , namely the global rule of general-purpose money without limits or borders.There is no acceptance of diversity -- only the intolerant preaching of the 'winners' that the world must be ruled by the mass psychoses of the capital markets.Nothing must be done unless it is more profitable than the (unproductive) speculations of casino capitalism.
This is a recipe for disaster.We should not forget that the capitalist crisis of the 1930s was finally 'solved' only by war.Positive alternatives are not easy to build or even visualize today . But we must persevere -- for the present world order has no future.If we project its growth scenarios -- of consumption, resource use, waste and pollution -- even a few decades into the future, it becomes clear that we are being led up a blind alley.

Jakob von Uexkull
UNESCO INTERNATIONAL FORUM
"FOR A CULTURE OF PEACE AND DIALOGUE AMONG CIVILIZATIONS IN THE THIRD MILLENNIUM"
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Statement by von Uexkull to the Knesset in defense of Mordechai Vanunu
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First People Of The Kalahari/Roy Sesana
Right Livelihood Awards
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Survival International