AND THE WINNER IS…

WHEN IT COMES to the Nobel Peace Prize Committee’s choice of winner; it leaves many a sane and rational observer with the surreal feeling of being in the twilight zone. The committee members have, over the years, turned this award into the kind of  fantastic  nonsense that compares with the Turner Prize in the world of art – indeed, it would not surprise many of us detractors to see a pickled shark craned in to receive the award at some future date.

            This year’s winner was not an individual or an institution, but a whole continent, would you believe? Yes, the EU was this year’s recipient. Despite social unrest on the streets of Athens, Madrid, and Rome; the committee still thought that the continent deserved a peace award.

            The euro fiasco was ignored, just as Henry Kissinger’s record in Vietnam was ignored in 1973, Fredrick Willem De Klerk in 1993, Yasser Arafat in 1994.

            More than a few eyebrows have been raised over the years with regard to this particular prize. But to presume that the EU is a suitable candidate for what is supposed to be a most prestigious honour is lamentable and risible, and leaves this award with little credibility and no respect. The trouble is, unlike the sciences and literature; the peace prize allows for political prejudice and sentiment among the committee members.

            The EU is no more worthy of an award than Wall Street or the City of London. Yet these… what can I call them?… These members of the European tribe; these bureaucrats who drink and dine with the European political elites… elites that the Nobel Peace Committee are glued too like Siamese twins.

Was this award to the EU merely a sop; an expression of “solidarity” (that odious European idiom) at a time when the continent has been brought ever nearer to the abyss by those architects of a United States of Europe? I think so; for, despite the language of the committee’s statement; all this award amounts to is a meagre contribution of £1 million in prize money, to help out the European deficits.

THE EUROPEAN UNION IS in a mess of its own creation; a mess that does not deserve any kind of award; for in such a case, the award would merit the same regard as lead, rather than some precious and deserving emblem made from gold.

            Like the Turner Prize Committee, the Nobel Committee courted controversy. But in the case of the Turner Prize, such controversy amounts to the kind of publicity that guarantees the awards’ success, in terms of the hullaballoo it creates. Whereas, the only thing such a controversy guarantees for the Nobel Peace Prize Committee, is to have it taken far less seriously than the organisers would have wished. 

            This award belittles the continents difficulties and will, in the future, demand from historians, the significance and importance of its presentation to a continent at a time when the continent of Europe was in decline - as well as a European Union in  desperation to complete its congealment at whatever cost to the people of Europe by forcing through political and monetary union.

            Once more we see the Nobel Peace Prize being used politically; in this case to help keep afloat the European ideal, which has always been the model of political and monetary union…or , to use its correct title, a Federal Europe.

THIS AWARD HAS represented nothing short of a disgrace for the Nobel Peace Committee. This particular part of the Nobel franchise should have its license rescinded. It is easily manipulated by prejudice and a bureaucratic compass that points in all directions toward the European Union.

            The Nobel Peace Prize should take a holiday from the Nobel categories and await a more deserving moment in human history before showing its ugly head once more.

             Yes, I agree, this would be unfair, if not unreasonable. So, in the mean time, the Nobel Peace Committee may continue to award individuals, but only individuals, and certainly not institutions or whole continents, with the Nobel Peace Prize. Such a format can only lead to questions of political bias among the Nobel Committee.

            The European Union is becoming unravelled by the experiment, orchestrated by politicians, of the single currency. It was a mad-cap idea warned against at the time by what were considered by the Europhiles as swivel eyed Eurosceptics. But these ‘demented’ sceptics are being proven right by the unfolding events.

YET DESPITE THESE unfolding events, the Nobel Peace Prize Committee still sees fit to award such failure with a £1 million cheque. What a disgrace it is to the founder Alfred Nobel that such an award should go to such a winner of such ill-repute as the European Union.

            Alfred Nobel sought to flower the best in ideas, whether scientific, artistic, literary, or philosophically. I hope that the peace prize was an addendum added by those who came after him. If this was not the case, then Alfred Nobel deserves the misspending of his fortune today on such unachievable aims as world peace; or even peace within a single family.

            A peace award was, and never was intended to be put within the Nobel franchise. Or if it was then controversy and ridicule would soon follow its introduction. The Nobel Peace Prize has become the most discredited award treated with cynicism and disparagement.

            Part of the reason for awarding it to the EU, is said to be because the EU has kept the peace of Europe for 60 years, due solely to its formation; when in fact it was the Cold War that kept Europe at peace thanks largely to the USA. But I cannot see the Nobel Committee ever acknowledging this and awarding the peace prize to America; so they create this fiction about the European Union being responsible for peace in our time.

            This whole circus has been  a conspiracy against historical reality in post war Europe. The EU model was meant to end European conflict, yet with the ever deeper euro crises and the paradigm of austerity causing social unrest; and with ideologically driven European statesmen determined at all cost to keep the 17 euro members together out of nothing more than bravado, and an almost dogmatic and blinkered view of reality; it seems that the sinking ship is being kept afloat by nothing more than the Nobel Committee.