Can we just retire the friggin' Nobel Peace Prize Already?
I mean, seriously, it HAS NO MEANING ANYMORE. And Hasn't for a long time.
see:
EU winning Nobel Peace Prize is beyond parody, like knighting Fred Goodwin in the middle of a mad boom
By Iain Martin World Last updated: October 12th, 2012
Has the committee which runs the Nobel Peace Prize been infiltrated by satirists or opponents keen on discrediting the organisation? Norwegian radio reports this morning, carried by Reuters, suggested that the European Union is to be awarded the prize for supposedly keeping the peace in Europe for the last sixty years. Was this a Nordic spoof? Apparently not.
It is only a few years since President Obama was ludicrously awarded the Nobel peace prize for winning the 2008 election and not being George Bush. Since then Mr Obama has continued the war in Afghanistan, stepped up drone attacks and got America involved in Libya's bloody revolution, suggesting that it is better to hand out baubles after someone has finished their job rather than when they are just getting started or are half way through. Incidentally, the same stricture should have applied to bankers honoured by New Labour when they were still running banks which later blew up.
Giving the EU a peace prize is at best premature, like knighting Sir Fred Goodwin in the middle of the mad boom. We have no idea how the experiment to create an anti-democratic federation will end. Hopefully the answer is very peacefully, but when Greek protesters are wearing Nazi uniforms, and Spanish youth unemployment is running at 50 per cent, a look at history suggests there is always the possibility of a bumpy landing.
Daftest of all is the notion that the EU itself has kept the peace. It was the Allies led by the Americans, the Russians and the British who defeated and disarmed the Germans in 1945. The German people then underwent the most extraordinary reckoning, transforming their country into an essentially pacifist society. The EU had very little to do with it. Throughout that period it was Nato, led by the Americans and British, which kept the peace in Western Europe. The American taxpayer picked up most of the resulting tab, and the British paid a significant part of the bill too.
more
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/iainmartin1/100184804/eu-winning-nobel-peace-prize-is-beyond-parody-like-knighting-fred-goodwin-in-the-middle-of-a-mad-boom/
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has become almost routine anymore.
The timing of reminding people of the President's purely PR reception of it is unfortunate, but maybe they thought they had better get it done before the shit hits the fan over there. Working toward peace is not exactly a popular endeavor at this time in history and the supply of legitimate candidates are thin on the ground.
"I mean, seriously, it HAS NO MEANING ANYMORE. And Hasn't for a long time..."
Many people may actually believe that. However, many people may believe otherwise, regardless of the whether both the nominees and the winners stack up 100% with our own political beliefs, or whether we're aware of the meaning it has for its recipients or not.
Although I do realize that you, like The right-leaning Telegraph and the authoritarian Chinese government may have quite a few problems with, it takes nothing in fact, away from anyone.
One wonders if the critics of the EU's receiving a prize actually read the nominating notes: two of the EU's named principal features – the devolution of power (or "plus jamais la guerre"
, and the solid social alliance and trust between Great Britain, Germany and France - would have been unthinkable merely one hundred years ago, seems to me be worthy in and of itself.
The people in the Nobel committee are mostly international policy / political science wonks. And one of the main things you learn about the European Union in that field is not it's economic role. In fact it has been underlined by members of the committee that the prize has nothing to do with economy. Members of the committe as also previously said that there has been two major overlooked candidates for the prize: Ghandi and the EU. They decided to rectify one of them, despite probably understanding that many people would'nt get it at a time that the EU is in economic trouble. That British right wingers and angry Greeks criticise it is expected, as well as people on the right in the US, who see the EU as an annoying power block which makes American dominance over Europe diminish.
In order to keep peace and democracy in unstable regions (which Europe has been throughout the history of mankind), you need to put in place mechanisms and institutions that stablize and make it difficult for people to fight.
The Marshall Aid did it's part. although the Marshall plan had alterior motives. Think it was a free give away from the US to be nice? No, the point was to give the working classes of europe money and jobs so that they could buy American imports. The Marshall Aid had a huge influence on the creation of the European consumer society that got going after World War Two, and it's not a coincidence that American culture followed American goods over here. It was to basically Americanize Europe so western Europe would function as an ideological bulwark against the spread of communism. If Europeans were kept poor, they would turn communist for sure. In that sense the Marshall Aid was a phenomenal success story of US foreign policy, and a way better tactic than spreading democracy at the barrel of a gun like nowadays..
NATO also played a role in ensuring that western Europe held a united front against the Soviet Union, but it did very little for the economy.
Neither of them has done what the EU did. Create economic interdependence. This started with the coal and steel union purposely set up in 1950 to make war between France and Germany impossible. Basically to stop the fighting over the rich Alsache-Lorraine region which has switched back and forth between France and Germany a number of times.
The city of Strasbourg is in Alsace but even today many people there speak German in their everyday lives. It is not a coincidence that Strasbourg is the official seat of the European Parliament, the Council of Europe, The European Ombudsman, the European Court of Human Rights, and the EuroCorps as well as other institutions. Strasbourg is also the second largest port on the Rhine.
This region is just as important to Germany as to France. Rich in resources, it was a very important manufacturing area.
It is not inconcievable that especially now with the cold war over, that France and Germany might have been eyeballing each other again if it were not for European integration. They are the twobig war powers in Europe traditionally, not Germany and England and their proximity and shifting borders have always caused problems for everyone.
I know that many Americans on the right and even some on the left has this kind of "white mans burden" attitude towards Europe, that we are hopeless crazies that need a firm hand to guide us. But the EU is a European creation and it really has worked as a piece keeper, even if it was pretty stupid to put all the eggs in one economic basket (especially with the US housing bubble bursting).
And i say this as an EU skeptic. I don't like the EU economic policies of expanding east to get cheap labour to undercut the working class of western Europe. And i don't like the austerity measures imposed on the working classes of the peripheral countries, creating a kind of new colonialist relationship of central powers and satellite dependencies.
But as a factor in not having another European war? Sure. Curbing extremism like we are seeing in Hungary and Greece at the moment? Absolutely.
hmm this became som long and wonkish im going to create a brand new post for it as well 
