Friday 12 October 2012

EU: Champion of Peace and Democracy?

I can only agree with Richard Murphy's assessment of the Nobel committee's decision to award the peace prize to the EU as "utterly bizarre".   It's not so much the attribution as the timing.  Ten years ago when Europe was enjoying relative prosperity and democracy with the Cold War a faded memory and peace the likes of which the continent had never seen perhaps you could see the point.  But at this time when the EU has effectively removed democratically elected leaders and installed a technocracies as well as decimating the social and economic fabric of half of Europe, leading to a resurgence of the far right not seen in seventy years...

Well, it's almost as laughable as the 2009 award to Barack Obama -- he who subsequently became the King of Drones and failed in almost all his headline foreign policy pledges (close Gitmo, negotiate an Israel/Palestine settlement).

All Grand Prizes are farcical, but this one more than most.