They certainly did some whitewashing of their legacies, but it is generally known how they made their money in the first place. I’d argue Nobel isn’t as well known for having made his money selling weapons. A better parallel would be if Rockefeller et al. had willed their estates to the creation of labor unions, or prizes for advancing the cause of socialism or workers rights or the prevention of monopolistic practices so as to link their names to progressive policies out of fear of being remembered as robber barons, and succeeded in doing so to the point that they were barely remembered for how they had made their fortunes. While at the same time doing nothing to implement any of this in their companies during their lifetimes and indeed leaving them working in the same state they had been before passing away.
But the Nobel Prize for Chemistry dovetails nicely with the weapons industry, right?
In the course of this thread I learned that the economics prize isn’t technically one of the Nobel prizes. It’s given equal standing today, but it was created in the late '60s instead of the turn of the 20th century and was endowed by the central bank of Sweden, not by Nobel.
That’s a pity. I had hoped you would have learned to appreciate fucking Asian girls.
No further comment needed, i don’t think.
You must be new here. 
But he inspired the new hope for the understanding of peace or words to that effect.
In response to the Nobel Peace Prize being given to Liu Xiaobo, China is now preparing to award its first Confucius Peace Prize. Really.
That’ll show thow those Scandinavian bastards a thing or two!
Truely a peaceful country that respects it’s neighbors. Just ask Tibet.
Well, the ceremony just took place… with no shortage of attention directed at Xiaobo’s poignant plight.
Microwaving the popcorn in anticipation of the Red response to this ‘sacrilege’ by the ‘barbarians’…
No, they aren’t:
Granted, the Norwegian government appoints the members of the Norwegian Nobel committee, but they don’t have any direct power over who is awarded the prize. And the ex-politician members of the committee are supposed to come from most of the political spectrum. That makes China’s current rage against the Norwegian government a bit meaningless.
I always wonder when China will realize that i’s pleas to be seen as a mature, responsible, respected power are constantly undermined by its insistance at acting like a touchy adolescent. “I’m not going to your party, and I’m gonna tell all my friends if they like me they can’t go either” is an exceptionally childish response. Time after time they shoot their credibility in the foot as they make it just so damn fun to push their buttons. They just can’t realize the ability to brush off an insult gives you more credibility in the end than all the rebuttal in the world.
China, being an authoritarian government that actually does have quite a bit of popular support, doesn’t “get” the idea that things can be separate from the government. They figure if the government isn’t involved in these sorts of things, well, maybe it out to be. The government has an overriding responsibility to make sure that all sectors are serving the national interests (which presumably they think it’s in Noway’s national interests not to make China feel butthurt.)
It’s really a different way of looking at things, and it’s at the root of a lot of our tensions. In the west, we see the government as a separate and somewhat adversarial thing to our populace. So we feel like we can criticize a country’s government without criticizing the people of that country. In China, that idea just doesn’t make sense. They see the government as more of an extension of the will of the people, and really take criticism of their government quite personally. China is it’s government, and there is no way to criticize it without upsetting everyone.
Just thought I’d chime in here, I know nowhere near as much as sven or most other Dopers probably for that matter, but I dated a Chinese woman from Beijing for almost a year or so, and anytime we discussed things related to China, it was made perfectly clear that any criticism of China or its government was the same as criticizing her personally. In my (limited) experience, Chinese people do not separate their government from their patriotism.
I don’t know why so many people are angry at our friends in China. We have moved a lot of business there taking them from a backwards country that was not a threat and made them an economic powerhouse. We always could take solace in the past that they were way behind us in technology. Now they may even be ahead of us. All thanks to our kind and generous corporations who could make money off them.
The fastest computer in the world is made in China now, They are acceleration the tech gap. They are improving industrial technology because they use it every day.
A generation ago. if you took a computer to China you would have been fined or jailed. Corporations took all the technology , patents, and intellectual properties and processes of a century of American knowhow there and were rewarded with gobs of money. We could always point out to those who feared Red China that they could not produce a lot of weaponry or sophisticated products. thank you corporations.