To think that EU getting the Nobel peace prize is a joke

[Flatbread]

The establishment pats itself on the back, yet again. While people suffer the worst depression in 80 years with riots on the street in Athens, Madrid and elsewhere.

Belgian friends who are celebrating the award think I am being a douche. Am I? The emperor has no clothes, but yet it struts around expecting entire nations and people to kow-tow to its economic austerity programs and other inane policies.

[Anniegetyourgun]

On balance, YABU, a bit. The Nobel Peace Prize has gone to some funny people/organisations over the years. If the EU is the oddest, it's by a fairly small margin. Anyway, it's not the Nobel Prize for Economics, so the inanity of its policies aren't really the issue here. The nations of Europe may be depressed and austere but at least they're not sending the tanks in. (Yet?)

[OTheHugeManatee]

YABU a bit - whatever you think of Eurocracy the period since the formation of the EU has been the longest period of peace in Europe ever.

[HellonHeels]

It's an improvement on it being awarded to Kissinger.

[Toombs]

I think it's utterly preposterous but given that Barak Obama was awarded it for not being George Bush it's par for the course. It denigrates what could be an important prize.

The EU has not kept the peace in Europe since WW2, the UN and NATO has. The EU is presiding over the fragmentation of Europe and the consequences could be horrendous, meanwhile the EU bureaucrats continue with their harp playing.

[Flatbread]

What is 'peace'? If it is means not fighting with neighbours, then USSR should have gotten the Nobel peace prize as well. Afer all the nation-states within it didn't go to war with each other.

But if peace really means providing people with choice and prosperity so that they choose to live harmoniously with each other, then the EU has failed. People with swastikas on the streets in Greece, citizens protesting against EU policies being beaten on the streets in Madrid, democratic governments overthrown to appoint technocrats...where will this end?

Studies have shown that democratic countries do not tend to fight with each other. The EU is by nature not really democratic and will overthrow national governments and subvert the will of the people, to promote its own goals. How can this end in anything but unrest and war in the future?

To me, this diminishes the worth of the Nobel peace prize ( ok, Kissinger was a lowpoint as well).

[FreakySnuckerCupidStunt]

I agree with Hellon

Though I think it should have gone to Malala Yousafzai the 14 year old who was shot in the head by the Taliban for her activism surrounding schooling for girls.

[FreakySnuckerCupidStunt]

Or how about Irena Sendler, who saved 2,500 Jewish children from being murdered by the Nazis who lost out on the Nobel Prize to Al freakin' Gore?

[Flatbread]

Obama too, I suppose. Although i think he is a pacifist at heart. As much as he can be, given the pervasiveness of the weapons industry-government nexus in the US.

[Anniegetyourgun]

Ah well, it's the Nobel Committee's prize, they can award it to whomever or whatever they please, really. They obviously spend most of the year giggling in dark rooms, smoking mind-altering substances, emerging only at prize-giving time with random selections they thought were a great idea at the time, and who can blame them? The only unreasonable thing is taking them too seriously.

[Toombs]

Now to have awarded it to Malala Yousafzai would have been a master stroke, I can't think right now of a more deserving recipient.

[CogitoErgoSometimes]

YABU. Peace in Europe... a continent that wiped out an entire generation of young people in the 1914-1918 war and yet more millions in the 1939-45 war... was the driving ambition behind the initial versions of the EU back in 1950 when the original six countries got together. You could even argue that, because the EEC/EU has been so successful at achieving this aim, the subsequent problems have come about because it has been struggling to determine a new goal. The continent has not been universally peaceful all that time but I think a 60+ year stretch of not only cessation of hostilities but active cooperation between formerly dyed-in-the-wool enemies deserves to be recognised.

If only there was a 'Middle East/Indian Subcontinent Union' equivalent working towards the same aim, the people of that region - including Malala Yousafzi - would have much better lives.

[Toombs]

Except it wasn't the EEC/EU, it was NATO. Had it not been for NATO protection the EEC/EU could have never got of the ground.

[CogitoErgoSometimes]

No organisation acts in isolation and I don't think the involvement of NATO lessens the impact of an EU that has not stood still but gradually expanded its borders over the decades, gradually incorporating yet more nations that were formerly at each other's throats.

[BoringSchoolChoiceNickname]

When the EU was formed my office and my back garden were both bomb craters, and now they're not, so I think they've done a pretty good job of keeping the peace, and I also think that without the EU, US political and military influence over Europe would be much higher.

[Flatbread]

The prize is supposed to go to people not institutions, unless they have done something exceptional through private initiative (like medicin san frontiers). What next, should we give the prize to Nato, then next time around, award the UN the peace prize? Followed by the US for promoting 'peace'? What about NAFTA and WTO and all other international multilateral agreements that foster cooperation and thus prevent war?

Is this really the purpose of the peace prize, back-patting by entrenched political institutions?

[Flatbread]

Ok, I take my last point back. It seems the ILO has been awarded the peace prize in the past.

I am done with getting excited about this stuff. Off to watch strictly come dancing or something. They are probably more credible in how they pick the winners.

[lovebunny]

its laughable. the e u is laughable and now the peace prize is, too.