European Union Nobel Prize farce

This video says about itself:

We broadcast from Oslo, Norway, just outside Oslo City Hall, as the European Union receives the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize. Norwegian peace organizations and opponents of the European Union held a torch-lit march Sunday to protest the decision.

Three Nobel Peace Prize laureates — Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Mairead Maguire of Northern Ireland and Adolfo Perez Esquivel from Argentina — sent an unprecedented letter to the Nobel Committee opposing the award saying the 27-nation bloc contradicts Alfred Nobel‘s vision of a demilitarized global peace order.

From daily The Morning Star in Britain:

Nobel farce as EU accepts peace prize

Monday 10 December 2012

EU presidents Herman van Rompuy and Jose Manuel Barroso managed to keep straight faces today as they picked up the Nobel Peace Prize.

In a year of crippling spending cuts that has seen police cracking protesters’ heads, the Nobel committee awarded the 27-country bloc the award for turning “a continent of war to a continent of peace” after the second world war.

Hundreds of Norwegians welcomed the 20 government heads who turned up for the lavish two-day ceremony with a torch-lit protest against the award.

Polls estimate that around 60 per cent of Norwegians are against the EU being awarded the prize and the country has twice voted to stay out of the bloc.

European Commission president Barroso said: “You can count on our efforts to fight for lasting peace, freedom and justice in Europe and in the world.”

But back in the real world campaigners pointed to glaring hypocrisy of the EU accepting the prize.

Amnesty European Institutions director Nicolas Beger said: “Xenophobia and intolerance are on the rise throughout Europe and growing numbers of political leaders are promoting anti-Muslim, anti-Roma, anti-migrant and anti-LGBTI messages and enjoying increasing popularity.

“Europeans are in danger of forgetting some hard-learnt lessons from their past about the importance of not relinquishing human rights and the rule of law which protect individuals from persecution.”

Peace prize laureates Desmond Tutu, Mairead Maguire and Adolfo Perez Esquivel have all demanded the bloc get no money because it contradicts the values of the prize.

But Scottish Campaign Against Euro Federalism secretary John Foster told the Star that the EU was continuing Alfred Nobel‘s policy of using his business power to enforce its world monopoly on dynamite sales “on a much bigger scale.”

He said: “The EU’s pro-big business policies have created massive regional disparities, have directly undermined democratic institutions and reduced a significant sections of the population to poverty and despair.”

He pointed to Mr Barroso’s trumpeting of a common foreign and security policy capable of deploying military missions in November.

“The EU creates conditions for war not peace,” Mr Foster said.

Former winners criticise choice of EU for peace award, as Archbishop Desmond Tutu says bloc based on “military power”: here.

Related articles

• Tutu: EU not worthy to win Nobel Peace Prize (sfgate.com)
• Tutu rejects Nobel Peace Prize for EU (bigpondnews.com)
• European Union Unworthy Winner of Nobel Peace Prize 2012 (globalnewsnet.wordpress.com)
• Protesters say European Union does not deserve Peace Prize (thehimalayantimes.com)

European Union, undeserving Nobel Peace Prize winner

Alfred Nobel from Sweden was a capitalist, but critical of capitalism.

He made lots of money from wars, but did not like war.

The Nobel Peace Prize, bequeathed by him, should be, according to Alfred Nobel, for those who have “done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.”

The European Union, winner of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, does not deserve that prize. The European Union has not contributed anything to the reduction of standing armies, let alone their abolition. Quite the contrary: in the European Union’s proposed constitution (rejected by referendum voters in France and in the Netherlands) there was a clause making it mandatory for European Union member states to increase their “defence” war budgets. The European Union also wants to have its own armed forces, as if the member states’ armed forces are not already bad enough.

The European Union pressures Greece, like it pressures other countries, to make cuts in health care and poor people’s incomes. On the other hand, it pressures Greece to increase its military budget, for the sake of the profits of weapon industry fat cats in Germany and France.

Alfred Nobel in his will left decisions about the Nobel Peace Prize to the parliament of Norway. Norway then was a neutral country. In 2012, however, it is a member of the NATO military alliance.

So, now the bureaucracy in Brussels joins other undeserving Nobel Peace Prize winners; from Martti Ahtisaari from Finland (another ex-neutral, now European Union, country) to Barack Obama (who had only been president of the USA for a short time when he got the prize, and after winning it, escalated the war in Afghanistan).

Last year, Ms Tawakul Karman from Yemen did deserve the peace prize.

This video says about itself:

10 Years! Malalai Joya on Women in Afghanistan

“History shows that no nation can bring liberation to another nation.”

Now, there are plenty of individuals and organizations who would have deserved the prize a lot more than the European Union. From the Christian pacifists of the Society of Friends, aka the Quakers, or the Iraq Veterans Against the War, in the USA; to Military Families Against the War in Britain; to human rights activist Maryam al-Khawaja in Bahrain or Afghan feminist Malalai Joya.

Daily News Line in Britain comments on this year’s award:

Saturday, 13 October 2012

Peace Prize for the ‘Fourth Reich’

The European Union has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for ‘six decades of work in advancing peace in Europe’, according to Thorbjoern Jagland of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, who added: ‘Since 1945 reconciliation has become a reality.’

Try telling that to the workers of Greece and Spain who are being savaged by the EU’s class war austerity measures, to the point where thousands of families are going hungry, and where the Greek workers regard the German-led EU as the ‘Fourth Reich’.

As the world crisis of capitalism deepens, along with its financial crisis, the costs of the maintenance of the EU and the eurozone will see the class war imposed throughout Europe, especially on the streets of its capitals, as workers understand that since the EU can only survive by breaking them, to survive they will have to break the EU, and advance to a Socialist United States of Europe.

With a stunning hypocrisy, the Nobel Committee said the EU had helped to transform Europe ‘from a continent of war to a continent of peace’, and that for over 40 years it had prevented a new Franco-German war.

This new European war has been prevented thus far, by the bourgeoisie of France and Germany uniting to try to carry through what Hitler attempted and could not achieve, uniting Europe, this time under the heel of German and French capital. This is what has kept them from each other’s throats, so far.

On this basis this alliance went forward to break all the pledges that were made to Gorbachev not to advance the EU’s borders and the NATO alliance up to Russia’s frontiers.

In the process the EU played a leading role in a great European war, destroying Yugoslavia and creating a dozen or so new states all under the thumb of Brussels, through the means of pogroms the likes of which had not been seen since Hitler’s days, air attacks and military interventions on the ground, including the mass bombing of Belgrade.

The most recent interventions of the peace-loving EU has been the Italian, French and UK air assault on Libya, with the murder of Gadaffi, and the support for puppet forces in Syria to attempt the overthrow of the Assad government through destroying the country, with France openly calling for military intervention.

Now, with the advent of the capitalist crisis, imperialist wars have been joined by civil wars to preserve the EU by smashing the working class of Europe.

EU ‘democracy’ now sees the EU bankers and politicians appointing key members of the Greek and Italian governments.

This is while the Franco-German alliance weakens, as German capital attacks the ‘lazy southerners’ who are said to be responsible for the entire EU crisis. The Franco-German alliance is now weakening to the point where the German bosses openly proclaim that they are the masters of the new Europe, and that the Greeks and the others must be starved so that the ‘peace loving’ EU can continue.

The truth of the matter is that the Nobel Committee is desperately seeking to prop up the collapsing EU, whose attempt to unite Europe under the rule of Franco-German capital is collapsing.

The EU was an attempt to reconcile the contradictions of the imperialist powers at the expense of the workers of the EU and the workers of Africa and the Middle East especially.

Why Europe Did Not Deserve a Nobel Peace Prize: here.

The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to the European Union is aimed at providing political support to all those who are carrying out the most brutal attacks against working people since the 1930s: here.

AT the same moment as France and Germany were being given a Nobel prize for keeping the peace in Europe, ie not going to war with each other for the last 60 years, the two countries were in fact squaring up to each other over the future of the EU, the single currency and ‘policing’ the budgets of the eurozone states: here.

Watchdog the International Peace Bureau branded the decision to hand the Nobel Peace prize to the European Union unlawful today: here.

EU looks to ramp up its military might: here.

Related articles

• Peace group brands EU Nobel win ‘unlawful’ (thelocal.no)
• Global Peace Network: ‘Unlawful’ to Award Nobel Peace Prize to EU (commondreams.org)
• The 2012 Nobel Peace Prize is unlawful and cannot be paid to the EU (warisacrime.org)
• Nobel Peace Prize To European Union Criticized In View Of Gypsy Apartheid‏ (eurasiareview.com)
• Global Peace Network: ‘Unlawful’ to Award Nobel Peace Prize to EU | Common Dreams (2012indyinfo.com)

Economic ‘Nobel Prize’ for undeserving recipients

This video is called Nobel Prize: Alfred Nobel, the Man P1.

From Monthly Review:

12.10.10

Adding Insult to Injury: On the 2010 Bank of Sweden Economics Prize in Memory of Alfred Nobel

by Yanis Varoufakis

Imagine a world ravaged by a plague, and suppose that the year’s Nobel Prize for Medicine is awarded to researchers whose whole career is based on the assumption that plagues are impossible. The world would have been outraged. That is precisely how we should feel about yesterday’s announcement of the recipients of the 2010 Nobel Prize.

The three academic economists, upon whom the 2010 Economics Nobel Prize was just bestowed, are undoubtedly technically accomplished, innovative in the way that they construct their models, and, in fact, rather nice people. But before we give them a pat on the back, and join in their celebrations, let us have a look at the official description of their contribution to society. This is how the Financial Times (11th October 2010) presented the body of work of the three men: Peter Diamond, Dale Mortenson, and Chris Pissarides:

[They] “have made fundamental contributions to understanding how supply and demand are matched when there are transactions or search costs involved. . . . The laureates “search and matching” theories show that it is not enough to have buyers and sellers who can in principle agree on a price; those buyers and sellers must also find each other and decide to enter into a transaction rather than hold out for a better match. Transactions do not happen by themselves but after a search process that can be costly and time-consuming, the research found. This makes it possible for market outcomes to match supply and demand well, inefficiently or not at all. The laureates’ insights have been applied, by themselves and many other researchers, to a wide range of markets, including the housing market, financial products and even marriage choices. But the most important application has been labour markets. Frictions in the matching of workers and jobs mean that labour market outcomes can be inefficient. In particular, the market may produce outcomes in which unemployment persists even if there are workers who would be willing to work at a wage employers would be willing to pay.”

And now for the translation: The three laureates have spent the better part of their careers studying what happens when there are jobs around but the workers who want them cannot find the employers who would like to employ them; and vice versa. On occasion they have narrated cases, using elegant mathematical depictions, like the one in which employer Jack would have happily wanted to hire worker Jill had he known that Jill is, in fact, quite productive but does not hire her because poor Jill has no way of convincing him that she is — e.g. because she is so desperate that she would work for a wage so low that it ‘signals’ to Jack that, to be that desperate, she cannot possibly be as productive a worker as she claims! Lastly, one of them (Mortenson) cut his teeth showing that workers can rationally choose to become unemployed as an ‘investment strategy’: that is, to quit a bad job in search of a better one (an activity that may need to be a full-time endeavor).

Interestingly, these three fine mathematical economists have one thing in common, other than their work on labor markets: in their voluminous theoretical output on unemployment and the like, there is not a smidgeon of a hint, of a mention, of an economic crisis which may boost unemployment in every sector and for all types of workers. Not one!

Thus, the plague parallel above. In 2008, for the first time since 1929, capitalism went into a paroxysm at a grand scale. Millions of people lost their homes, even more lost their jobs, houses remain unsold and workers linger in the no man’s land of redundancy. At a time when even Mr. Bernanke is worried about the widespread impact and inexorable dynamic of unemployment, from the construction industry to the high technology sector, these three economists are rewarded for work on unemployment based on models in which mass unemployment is simply impossible.

How can that be? My simple claim is this: Mainstream economics is the most peculiar of all theoretical failures. Unlike astrology or phrenology, economics becomes more discursively powerful the greater its incapacity to inform us on really existing capitalism.

Well, undeserved as this year’s prize is, it is still not as undeserved as the prize was for Milton Friedman, quack, big business ideologist, fiddler with statistical data, helpmate of Pinochet‘s drug dealing, torturing, murdering dictatorship, and “intellectual” author of the present economic crisis in Iceland and most of the rest of the world.

That really was an insult to the memory of Alfred Nobel, who, though the inventor of dynamite, was a pacifist, unlike quite some recent Peace Prize recipients; and who, though a capitalist, had anti-capitalist ideas.

The ‘Nobel prize’ for economics is no such thing: here.

Britain: A disgraced hedge fund manager’s collection of luxury teddy bears and soft toys sold for more than £1 million when it went under the hammer today: here.

Bono just managed to hit a new low, proposing we scrap the minimum wage: here.

Recession continues for most Americans, even as Wall Street pay sets new records: here.

Citigroup accused of using recession to get rid of female employees: here.

Billionaire Investor Found Guilty of Fraud and Conspiracy. Peter Lattman, The New York Times News Service: “Raj Rajaratnam, the billionaire investor who once ran one of the world’s largest hedge funds, was found guilty of fraud and conspiracy on Wednesday by a federal jury in Manhattan. He is the most prominent figure convicted in the government’s crackdown on insider trading on Wall Street. Mr. Rajaratnam, who was convicted on all 14 counts, could face as much as 19 and a half years in prison under federal sentencing guidelines, prosecutors said on Wednesday. He will be sentenced on July 29″: here.