Democrat September-October 2012 (Number 131)
Report by Brian Denny
Brussels creates a
desert and calls it peace
The decision by Nobel judges to award the Peace Prize to the European Union as it drives millions into poverty has been derided around the world.
It is possibly the sickest joke since US secretary of state Henry Kissinger won it in 1973 while overseeing the fascist coup in Chile and the secret bombing of Laos.
The Nobel committee claimed that the EU had turned "a continent of war to a continent of peace" while rioting and protests take place in many eurozone states suffering from EU diktat.
RMT general secretary Bob Crow said that awarding the prize to an organisation behaving like a colonial overlord in Greece, Spain, Portugal and elsewhere was "ludicrous and deeply cynical.
"EU austerity policies, which even the IMF is now baulking at, are causing mass unemployment, record suicide rates and permanent economic decline in order to shore up a dying currency - the euro," he said.
For the EU to create an economic desert for millions of workers in Europe while claiming to have preserved peace in Europe is just unsustainable.
EU institutions sparked the war in Yugoslavia in 1992 after John Major agreed illegally to recognise Croatia following massive German pressure during Maastricht Treaty negotiations in return for an opt-out of the euro.
Campaign Against Arms Trade also expressed surprise that the EU had received the award, with five of the world's top 10 arms exporters being EU states.
Many of those weapons are sold to EU-backed tyrannies including Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.
Spokeswoman Kaye Stearman said the EU "had done nothing to limit or restrain" such sales by member states.
Former Tory foreign secretary Malcolm Rifkind added to the farce by suggesting that the EU ought to share the peace prize with the NATO military alliance - which accounts for 70 per cent of world military spending and has bombed and invaded sovereign states including Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya.
The burgeoning EU army which has been developed out of the German-Franco Brigade and Eurocorps is also active in a number of war-torn hotspots around the world in order to secure resources for monopoly capital in Europe, particularly Germany, France and Britain. This is what was meant by Commission President Jacques Delors when he stated that a European Army was required to fight the resource wars of the 21st Century – hardly a policy for peace.
see - Eurocorps "A force fo the EU and Atlantic Alliance"
"I do not wish to seem ungrateful for my one five hundred millionth of a Nobel Prize. However, if entire continents can now win this once-prestigious award, might I suggest Antarctica?
It has never invaded anyone, has never produced an empire, has never known slavery, has almost no poverty, and, per capita, has one of the highest standards of living in the world.
Indeed, almost the entirety of the population have third-level education: a true knowledge economy.
Pity about the weather."
Letter in the Irish Times 13.10.12