View Full Version : European Union wins Nobel Peace Prize for uniting continent
(Reuters) - The European Union won the Nobel Peace Prize for its long-term role in uniting the continent, the Norwegian Nobel Committee said on Friday, an award seen as morale boost for the bloc as it struggles to resolve its debt crisis.
The committee praised the 27-nation EU for rebuilding after World War Two and for its role in spreading stability to former communist countries after the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/12/us-nobel-peace-idUSBRE89A1N820121012
I'm sure there were better options.The prize, worth $1.2 million....goes to Bryssel.
Note: Fri Oct 12, 2012 5:09am EDT
the_tyrant
10-12-12, 05:37 AM
O boy, Skybird is gonna get angry
kraznyi_oktjabr
10-12-12, 06:00 AM
O boy, Skybird is gonna get angry...and won't be only one. This decision is ridiculous only exceeded in stupidity by Obama's one. I doubt Alfred Nobel meant heads of state and federal governments when writing his testament.
the_tyrant
10-12-12, 06:04 AM
...and won't be only one. This decision is ridiculous only exceeded in stupidity by Obama's one. I doubt Alfred Nobel meant heads of state and federal governments when writing his testament.
Hey, anything to help the debt crisis right :03:
Every little bit counts!
It is a bit of a stretch to award it to an organisation rather than to a person...however in a manner of speaking I can see their point. This is one of the longest stretches of peace in Western Europe since Roman times!
So, in those terms alone, the EU deserves a peace prize.
Herr-Berbunch
10-12-12, 07:13 AM
This is one of the longest stretches of peace in Western Europe since Roman times!
Peace in the sense that there has been no physical war between member states, but politically there has been little peace, and nor will there ever be. It just ain't gonna happen, nations would need to be altruistic but there's nothing in it for them if they are, so they won't. :-?
Dread Knot
10-12-12, 07:15 AM
Quick situational overview.
The Greeks are dressing up as Nazis and jeering Mrs Merkel, the German press is outraged, Irish villagers are marching against the crushing austerity that the Euro has brought, tens of thousands of Spaniards who feel they have no future are on the march, Catalonia is threatening to secede from Spain, British and French fisherman are having pitched battles off the coast of France, Hungary appears to be rapidly abandoning democracy, Neo Nazi Greeks are openly fire bombing immigrant houses and a huge disgruntled swathe of the UK population want a vote on EU membership.
Between this and the previous awards to Barack Obama and Al Gore, it's safe to say the Nobel Peace Prize has "jumped the shark":gulp:.
I do find it ironic that Norway has rejected possible EU memembership twice in the past.
Peace in the sense that there has been no physical war between member states, but politically there has been little peace, and nor will there ever be. It just ain't gonna happen, nations would need to be altruistic but there's nothing in it for them if they are, so they won't. :-?
Oh, I fully agree, but I'd rather see Merkel and Cameron shouting at each other, than German and British soldiers shooting at each other.
It is a bit of a stretch to award it to an organisation rather than to a person...however in a manner of speaking I can see their point. This is one of the longest stretches of peace in Western Europe since Roman times!
So, in those terms alone, the EU deserves a peace prize.
I respectfully disagree, I think the Cold War and presence of thousands of troops from the US and USSR and loads of nuclear weapons, "tactical" as well as strategic for 40 years helped keep the peace more than anything else, though economic growth-in France called "les trentes glorieuses" meaning the 30 years of growth in that country from about 1945-75 played a role, sure.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trente_Glorieuses
Not sure about the stats for other countries, I still maintain MAD was more important than the EEC and EU.
As for the Nobel peace prize, it already lost all credibility with me-I just feel bad the worthy scientific awards are possibly tarnished by association.
Herr-Berbunch
10-12-12, 08:11 AM
Oh, I fully agree, but I'd rather see Merkel and Cameron shouting at each other, than German and British soldiers shooting at each other.
Yeah, but what about the British against the CESM? Once and for all, sort it out! Winner takes all. :D
I respectfully disagree, I think the Cold War and presence of thousands of troops from the US and USSR and loads of nuclear weapons, "tactical" as well as strategic for 40 years helped keep the peace more than anything else, though economic growth-in France called "les trentes glorieuses" meaning the 30 years of growth in that country from about 1945-75 played a role, sure.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trente_Glorieuses
Not sure about the stats for other countries, I still maintain MAD was more important than the EEC and EU.
As for the Nobel peace prize, it already lost all credibility with me-I just feel bad the worthy scientific awards are possibly tarnished by association.
It certainly helped, I'm not going to deny it, and we will see over the coming twenty years if a period of peace equal to that of the Cold War can be maintained without the threat of MAD. It's been twenty-three years since the wall came down, so that concrete structure put in place during the Cold War has lasted this long, and the EU has certainly plastered over the cracks in it. Now the cracks are too big to plaster over, and the whole thing is in danger of collapsing...I do wonder if we'll be able to make forty-three years of peace in Western Europe. I hope so, I really do, but if the EU falls, all bets are off.
Yeah, but what about the British against the CESM? Once and for all, sort it out! Winner takes all. :D
Don't they have a bigger military than us now? Could be 1066 all over again! :nope:
Herr-Berbunch
10-12-12, 08:42 AM
Don't they have a bigger military than us now? Could be 1066 all over again! :nope:
As long as we don't have two battles with the Norwegians before we'll be just fine.
Skybird
10-12-12, 08:54 AM
You might be surprised, tyrant, but formally this decision is more acceptable than many others of recent years. The Peace Nobel prize was founded to reward merits already gained in the field of military arms reduction and achieving (in a military understanding) a state of peace in the world. Many decisions of the past have ignored this fundamental premise, and hijacked the award for other purposes, for political correctness, for gender sociology, and for hopes what the awarded person would do in the future (Obama on my mind), and I do not know what else. Seen that way, the award for the EU is more in line with the original intention, than on many other opportunities in the past.
However, this does not mean I am happy. The other major actor that secured peace in Europe, and imo did more to secure the freedom of a free Europe, is NATO, whose role during the cold war can hardly be overestimated. For its cold war role as well as the time of stabilizing European relations after WWII, NATO imo was more important than the EEC.
The EEC is no more, but got mutated into the EU, which is something very different by what it plans for the future. And while the EU's role bases on the heritage of the EEC, its record is anything but flawless. It failed miserably during the Balkan wars. It supported the powertaking of militant radicalism in certain Muslim countries during the Arab Spring. The Euro already is no guarantee for peace and friendship, but has become the originator of bitter and deep-reaching rifts between European nations. And as I just have read in German comment in a newspaper, it is to be feared that the already very reality-disconnected, distant actors in the spaceship Brussels will mistake this award as a confirmation of their doings and ideological intentions, which probably is wanted by the Nobel committee which thereby once again demasks itself not as a gremium rewarding past merits, but as an actively engaging actor that wants to influence the future on behalf of what can only be called the Gutmenschentum. Such an active, policy-forming role is not what Nobel wanted, and the criticism has often been raised now against the Nobel committee, I am by far not the first.
So, I can live with this decision slightly better than with a peace Nobel prize for Obama, Theresa or Arafat or the UN itself. Which is a statement only about the relative value of one decision compared to others. From an absolute perspective, I think the prize should have been limited to the EEC and EU pre-89, and excluding the post-EU . So I see little reason to make much angry noise about this decision today - but I also will not applaud it. There have been worst decisions in the past.
Jimbuna
10-12-12, 11:42 AM
Did someone say Europe was at peace?
Possibly in terms of open warfare but not in terms of finance, politics, mutual interests etc. etc.
Sorry, but I really cannot understand this EU bashing...is this a kind of sports here ? Is this a dislike of big organizations?
I also agree that without NATO there would no be free Europe today and it is a shame that a some of my countrymen have already forgotten that.
But the EU played a vital role in the unification of commerce, economics and non-security politics.
What do you expect when more than 20 countries have to find compromises, whose political leaders follow (and have to follow) national interests?
What is the alternative? Europe before WWII ? And no we cannot copy the model of this nice, lovely Switzerland; because this model does not scale!
TLAM Strike
10-12-12, 12:44 PM
It is a bit of a stretch to award it to an organisation rather than to a person...however in a manner of speaking I can see their point. This is one of the longest stretches of peace in Western Europe since Roman times!
So, in those terms alone, the EU deserves a peace prize.
The Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to many organizations before. The Institute of International Law in 1904, the Red Cross in 1917 and 1944, plus a few others.
But I don't see why the EU should receive it, their members have been at peace for decades; I've not heard of the EU stopping a war between its members...
Skybird
10-12-12, 01:44 PM
Sorry, but I really cannot understand this EU bashing...is this a kind of sports here ? Is this a dislike of big organizations?
I also agree that without NATO there would no be free Europe today and it is a shame that a some of my countrymen have already forgotten that.
But the EU played a vital role in the unification of commerce, economics and non-security politics.
What do you expect when more than 20 countries have to find compromises, whose political leaders follow (and have to follow) national interests?
What is the alternative? Europe before WWII ? And no we cannot copy the model of this nice, lovely Switzerland; because this model does not scale!
It begins with that the EU is not Europe and that Europe is not the EU.
And that "Europe" always means an implicit plural. A single "European identity" never existed in the meaning of singular.
The EU is the antithesis to what you - and me - probably wishes Europe to be. And it matches formidable parallels to the power system and hierarchy structure of the former Soviet Union. Like the Federal republic of Germany today has more similiarities with the GDR than anyone can feel comfortable with.
We have a joke over here in Germany: that Merkel is Honnecker's late revenge at the "BRD" (=Bundesrepublik Deutschland=Westgermany).
I am for Europe. Thats why I am necessarily against the EU.
BTW, economic cooperation we already had with the EEC, the unification of commerce is a disaster that cripples member states more and more, and the unification of non-security policies is nsom,ethgignthey can shove deep inside their lower bottoms and serves as a foul excuse for sticking their impertinent noses deep and deeper into things that they must not be interested in and that they nevertheless want to control in the nbame of control and in order to destroy ethnic and cultural diversities of European cultures. What the EU does in this regard, in principle is not different to the ambitions of Stalinistic Russia, and Yugoslavia, or the Danube monarchy. All failed in the end, all entities fell apart in violence. It will not be different with this monster EU, I think.
The bad thing is it will be violent. The good thing is it will happen nevertheless. Force together diverse things of too great differences, and you sow the seed of future conflict. The EU - to me is a self-fullfilling prophecy. It will create right the drama that it - wrongly - claims to prevent.
"The Europe that I love is a Europe of diversity, of culture, of individual nations" - Nigel Farage.
Here is a very insightful - and recent - speech of a great politician, who is not afraid to speak up his mind.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bk6S0RNP8uQ&feature=related
This guy is right, and the EU has turned into a big and costly bureaucracy that annihilates the idea of nations and imposes a new kind of Comecon upon small nations.
This is the same kind of "totalitarian peace" that existed in the former Soviet block before 1990.
Just ask the Greeks, Poles, Hungarians, Spanish, Portuguese or my Romanians what they think about "melting" into an artificial and supranational structure that imposes its ways to everybody, no matter the cost, a "big brother" that acts to the best political interest of big states.
The EU was a great idea while it was about independent nations working together. Now, when they want to build by force the United States of Europe, it turned into an oppressing bureaucracy and is rapidly forgetting the basics of democracy.
They could as well have awarded the Nobel to the defunct Soviet Union, for averting the wars that shattered the ex-Soviet space after its dissolution.
Tribesman
10-12-12, 03:59 PM
Here is a very insightful - and recent - speech of a great politician, who is not afraid to speak up his mind.
Is that the same "I am not making this up" Nigel Farage?:doh:
EU Banking crises six trillion euros. :nope:
And not one of these crooks banged up.
EU= CORRUPTION.
Skybird
10-12-12, 05:15 PM
EU Banking crises
EU= CORRUPTION.
there is no "EU banking" crisis, but a banking crisis, and regarding the EU: a crisis of general trust that was betrayed in general. The banking in London City or America is as effected and is as corrupt. And many of the critical financial "products" that have overflooded the market with dubious, highly suspicious constructs - were brainchilds of anglosaxon banking and economy philosphy.
Not to mention the "print more money!" conception, which also is explicitly pushed by the Anglosaxon business culture. Most dubious actor here is the US Fed.
The EU is corrupt, But corrupt is also the big busines world. Business lobbyism. Investement banks. Wall Street. IMF. Etc etc etc.
"Finanzprodukte" (fincial products). The mere term and idea already is a complete declaration of intellectual bancruptcy.
The Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to many organizations before. The Institute of International Law in 1904, the Red Cross in 1917 and 1944, plus a few others.
But I don't see why the EU should receive it, their members have been at peace for decades; I've not heard of the EU stopping a war between its members...
"their members have been at peace for decades", that is relative. In 1945 the US had about the same amount of troops in Germany as Nazi Germany had with its Allies when they attacked the Soviet Union in 1941: three millions. In Europe throughout history we never had a longer period without war since the end of WW II, very relative. We have to get used to it.
There was never a war between EU members. If you refer to the conflicts on the Balkans, there were no EU members back then. They now want to become EU members. U can't become a EU member if you go to war with your neighbour,
soopaman2
10-13-12, 01:13 AM
This is similar to giving president Obama the Nobel Peace prize as soon as he took office.
Way too premature, and laughable.
I guess even the Nobel commitee has forsaken its integrity.
Makes me wary of any of its other winners, the most recent ones seem to be politically driven.
I can point out quite a few things bad about the so called "unity"
I'll start with Germany and France floating the bills at all costs to hold this farce together.
HunterICX
10-13-12, 03:27 AM
It's like giving the Nobel Price in Economics to the ones who invented the Euro..... it's hilariously ridiculous. :haha:
HunterICX
Well, the Norwegians thought maybe completely different paths....
there is no "EU banking" crisis, but a banking crisis, and regarding the EU: a crisis of general trust that was betrayed in general. The banking in London City or America is as effected and is as corrupt. And many of the critical financial "products" that have overflooded the market with dubious, highly suspicious constructs - were brainchilds of anglosaxon banking and economy philosphy.
Not to mention the "print more money!" conception, which also is explicitly pushed by the Anglosaxon business culture. Most dubious actor here is the US Fed.
The EU is corrupt, But corrupt is also the big busines world. Business lobbyism. Investement banks. Wall Street. IMF. Etc etc etc.
"Finanzprodukte" (fincial products). The mere term and idea already is a complete declaration of intellectual bancruptcy.
Update for Skybird...
Yes the city mile here is 100% corrupt but not for much longer, looks like this nest of vipers are set to jump on the ferry and take up resistance in Ireland. I of course will be keeping a eye on this story.
Jimbuna
10-13-12, 08:17 AM
Update for Skybird...
Yes the city mile here is 100% corrupt but not for much longer, looks like this nest of vipers are set to jump on the ferry and take up resistance in Ireland. I of course will be keeping a eye on this story.
Reminds me of the rats that are first to leave a sinking ship.
Reminds me of the rats that are first to leave a sinking ship.
They don't like the regulations on the way, only time will tell if these are tough new regulations or watered down full of loop holes regulations, ferry on stand by just in case.
Did someone say Europe was at peace?
Possibly in terms of open warfare
I don't think so (http://img15.hostingpics.net/pics/299721images.jpg) (warning, graphic image).
O boy, Skybird is gonna get angry
And he will be right.
Europeanist elites who never cease to congratulate themselves can be happy now, while all peoples in Europe notice everyday that the european union has no more to do with the European Dream.
In fact, all prizes in the world as well as all kinds of declarations won't do anything. The european union is no more the Europe of Peace. It is no more the Europe of the treaty of Rome. A few decades ago, the once free, fraternal and prosperous Peoples of Europe celebrated the beneficial effects brought by their mighty union.
It is no more the Europe of the free Peoples nowadays. No one would ever dare to put that in question.
What once was the Europe of Peace, is not to be considered as what the european union is nowadays. For the last 20 years, the federalist and technocratic Europe has got to see no more than failures. The european union these days, is the one of declining factories closing one after another, the one of massive unemployment, the one of uncontrolled immigration, the one of the Italian and Spanish Peoples in the streets, the one of bankers and money market. The european union nowadays, is the end of Democracies.
As it let non-elected technocrats establish authoritarian policies throughout the whole continent, the european union let tensions and old scars reappear on its side. In Athens, when Merkel is welcomed by the Greek People - overburdened with illegitimate and criminal policies - showing swastikas, does anyone really think Peace, Progress and Brotherood gain ground in Europe ?
The so-called european union is the worst enemy of the peaceful Europe. Apparatchiks in Brussels enslave the Peoples that the fathers of the treaty of Rome once had reconciled.
This Nobel prize is posthumously awarded to Europe.
This warm tribute to this defunct yet admirable ideology will hopefully draw the attention of Peoples, letting them recall the fact that Europe has got to be a dream, and not this cold nightmare everyone's got to live everyday.
Armistead
10-13-12, 12:25 PM
EU Banking crises six trillion euros. :nope:
And not one of these crooks banged up.
EU= CORRUPTION.
Same in America, cept we find a few scapegoats. Just wait unti the bond bubble burst.
Same in America, cept we find a few scapegoats. Just wait unti the bond bubble burst.
Not looking good the bond market, so much bond debt being hidden the bubble is looking dodgy.
STEED,remember that if the EU wants to have a meeting invite them home to you, so we avoid taxpayer bill, :arrgh!:
Jimbuna
10-13-12, 02:44 PM
Not looking good the bond market, so much bond debt being hidden the bubble is looking dodgy.
I need two and a half more years then after my investments in that section are matured....the bubble can go BANG!!!!!! :)
STEED,remember that if the EU wants to have a meeting invite them home to you, so we avoid taxpayer bill, :arrgh!:
I haven't got the room. :har:
It's funny how the people here make the EU responsible for everything...it's good to have a scapegoat, isn't it? Makes life easy, doesn't it?
It's new to me that the EU caused the finance crisis...has it forced countries to make debts? Oh, ah the Euro is the problem...sure...that's a good, additional, backup-scapegoat, isn't it?
Oh, U.K hasn't the Euro but indeed also has a lot of debts and economical problems...but anyways, yes the Euro is to blame, I agree...
It's new to me that people in the southern hemisphere are justified to go out to the streets and blame the EU. Please, what do you have done with all the money you got from the EU in the last decades?!?!? Was it not enough? What have other countries made of it like Ireland??? What have other non-EU countries made of their country with much less money given - like South-Korea?
When the EU made an error then it made the fatal error to give money continually with no feedback and monitoring loop...but again that was a political decision by the national leaders.
It's new to me that the EU refused to reform itself...who has fought like in Verdun in WWI for every piece of that reform to vanish...was it the EU?
No, it wasn't the EU, it was some of the elected national leaders, which have done this politics in compliance with the majority of their people...so whose fault is this ???
Ah the reason was that the reform was not good enough...you have striven for the perfect reform, which means perfect for you. The problem with this attitude is that every nation and everybody has another view of a 'perfect' reform...thus mankind invented the term 'compromise'^^ The alternative is you wait for infinity to get an solution...just fyi...
It's new to me that we live in the 80's in the 20th century. Have you realized there is a very big player, named China and other Asia states, out there? How should Europe deal with that? Perhaps each and every state should be (politically) get eaten by China sequentially..is this what you want? Do you want that this country dictate at the end indirectly social standards?
No, In the end most of the EU haters do not want to have a united Europe...that's simply it...they hide it by saying they want it but of crs not with that EU...but it would need to have this and that...blabla...sure and I wait until Christmas and Eastern are celebrated at the same day to see this happen.
Jimbuna
10-14-12, 02:40 PM
@Hawk66
This area of the forum is General Topics and as such people are entitled to air their views and opinions on most topics.
Healthy debate is fine just so long as nobody resorts to insults and name calling which would mean a violation of the rules here.
I've read your post with interest and note you have done as many others, myself included, have done which is simply giving your viewpoint.
FYI I'm anti EU like so many UK people and as such, wait with anticipation for the day we pull out.
It looks to me like you are pro EU which is fine as far as I'm concerned.
Keep a cool head my friend...tis only a debate after all.
@Hawk66
This area of the forum is General Topics and as such people are entitled to air their views and opinions on most topics.
Healthy debate is fine just so long as nobody resorts to insults and name calling which would mean a violation of the rules here.
I've read your post with interest and note you have done as many others, myself included, have done which is simply giving your viewpoint.
FYI I'm anti EU like so many UK people and as such, wait with anticipation for the day we pull out.
It looks to me like you are pro EU which is fine as far as I'm concerned.
Keep a cool head my friend...tis only a debate after all.
I've not insulted anybody or have used any insulting words.
Frankly, I've the impression that I need to justify myself for a minority opinion here.
I will discontinue any further political discussions from now on.
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