EU wins Nobel Peace Prize
The Norwegian committee that
selects the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize have upset one or two people this
year with their choice of the European Union (EU) as the recipient of the
(supposedly) prestigious prize for 2012. The EU received the prize for its
contribution to “the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy and
human rights in Europe.”
In the run up to the announcement there was
speculation in the press as to who would win. This wasn’t merely to fill space
in newspapers and on broadcasts but an attempt to try and make the prize seem
important to the majority of people who otherwise probably wouldn’t even notice
that the prize-giving had taken place. Luke Harding on guardian.co.uk 12
October at 07.00 BST, named a host of possible winners and quoted the odds
given to each of the candidates by bookmakers Paddy Power. His tips ranged
from Gene Sharp (6-4 favourite) to outsider Julian Assange (16-1). For comic
effect he gave the odds of some of the long-shots which included Facebook
(33-1) and the EU (40-1)!
The selection has been praised (mainly by
EU leaders and supporters), vilified as some kind of lefty/liberal plot to
upset right-wingers by the Telegraph, UKIP members and Tory grandees, laughed
at with incredulity by various journalists and semi celebrity commentators.
There was even booing and shouts of derision from the assembled press and media
representatives as the Chairman of the Nobel Committee, Thorbjoern Jagland made
the announcement.
To the Greek, Spanish, Irish and Portuguese masses
suffering under strict austerity measures it must seem increasingly like the EU
that their countries are members of is waging a war of attrition on them! And
the austerity measures being used by European governments to try and get out of
the current crisis of overproduction that is an unavoidable part of capitalism
is in many ways just that, a war of attrition against the poor by the
capitalist rulers and owners of wealth and all who create it. This attack on
the masses is certainly not a promotion or protection of their human rights,
and the understanding of this is spreading across the working masses who live
in Europe as, country by country, they are called upon to give up everything to
save the maximum profits and fabulous wealth of their masters.
Of course the EU leaders are not only involved in
bringing misery to those who live in Europe: the sanctions placed on Iran, to name but one victim, have led to many shortages, causing poverty and therefore
deaths. The individual countries that make up the EU have their own catalogues
of violent intrusions into the affairs of sovereign countries which are far too
numerous to show here in full but here is a small example of the recent ones:
1.
The break up of Yugoslavia and the wars that followed cannot be attributed
solely to US imperialism – Germany and Britain played major roles in the
destruction of that sovereign country, parts of which have now been sucked into
the EU.
2.
British imperialism was right there at the side of US imperialism at every
stage of the planning and implementation of the terroristic invasions and
all-out wars on Afghanistan and Iraq.
3.
French and British imperialism played a massive role in the destruction and
pillage of Libya and is doing so in the covert war by proxy on Syria, while other European countries are also involved in that to a greater or lesser
degree. This includes Switzerland, a country that constantly promotes itself
as a peace-loving neutral state.
4.
The majority of EU member states are well known arms dealers. The arms are
developed and produced by national or multi-national companies within the EU
and ministers of the various national governments, or sometimes of the EU
government itself, help to sell them to ‘friendly’ regimes.
Of course there are many ways to destabilise and
impoverish other countries. In the 1990s, EU fishing fleets overfished and
dumped toxic waste in the sea around Somalia, totally destroying the fish
stocks off the Horn of Africa. The result was to drive desperate former Somali
fishermen to resort to piracy to feed their families. There are estimates that
EU fleets stole five times the commercial value of fish from Somali waters that
Somalia receives in ‘foreign aid’ each year. But economically devastating poor
countries and leaving the people of said countries with the stark choice of
starving or picking up a gun is what imperialism does – and then the EU
super-parasites have the temerity to call the Somali pirates ‘parasites! Only
the mentally deranged could call this the promotion of peace.
In his will, Swedish industrialist and inventor,
Alfred Nobel, stated that the Peace Prize should be awarded to “the
person who shall 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.” It was later on
that institutions, as opposed to “persons”, were included as possible
prize recipients. Even if we were to accept that Alfred Nobel may have meant
institutions as well when he said “the person”, the question must
arise as to what is an institution? Surely to win this prize even an
‘institution’ must have all the “persons” within it working (or
professing to be working) for a common cause, i.e., peace, etc? Can anyone say
that to award a peace prize to the European Union is in any way in line with
the rather obvious spirit in which Alfred Nobel set out his wishes?
So far we can say without any doubt that the EU is
neither peaceful nor is it working for peace. We can equally say that the EU
does not, cannot, qualify as a candidate, let alone winner, of this prize if
the original instructions as set out by Alfred Nobel are applied.
So the last question must be does the Nobel Peace
Prize have any relevance? We would argue that on many occasions the committees
that make the decisions have ripped to shreds the credibility of this prize, to
the extent that it now stands stark nakedly exposed as a tool/weapon of
imperialism. This assertion of course requires some proof if we want it to be
taken seriously and for that purpose we will look at some of the previous
winners of the Nobel Peace Prize.
1.
The prize has often been used to attack socialist countries, as happened when
it was given to Liu Xiaobo, the Chinese dissident who was working to
destabilise and break up China under the guise of ‘human rights.’ This was in
2010 amid many anti-China stories being run through the imperialist media.
Likewise in 1989 the prize went to the Dalai Lama to help keep his anti-China
campaign in the limelight.
2.
In 1975 Andrei Sakharov, the Soviet dissident, was given the prize when all he
wanted was the break-up of the Soviet Union and the return of capitalism at a
faster rate than did the revisionists who by that stage had control of the
Kremlin.
3.
The leader of the forces of capitalist restoration in Poland, Lech Walesa, got
the prize in 1983 when he had made no contribution to peace at all – on the
contrary, all his efforts were designed to fool the Polish workers into
believing that a future of milk and honey awaited them if they just overthrew
their government and fully restored capitalist oppression to Poland.
4.
The arch revisionist and destroyer of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, won
the prize in 1990.
5.
Amnesty International also received this prize in 1977 for their anti-Soviet
lies and rumours that helped drive people in the West away from any real
understanding of the socialist countries.
6.
In 1973 the prizewinners were named as Henry A. Kissinger and Le Duc Tho, the
respective negotiators of the US and Vietnamese delegations at the peace
meetings to end the Vietnam War. At this time Kissinger was actually
overseeing the secret bombing of Laos. Comrade Le Duc Tho declined the prize.
7. In 2009 the
prize went to Barack H. Obama “for his extraordinary efforts to
strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples”.
This was quite breathtaking as his only achievement at that date was getting
elected as President of the USA. He had already declared, however, that he was
trying to get out of the Iraq war, but that he would be stepping up the
predatory war against Afghanistan. That is not exactly by anyone’s measure
the promotion of peace, unless, of course, the reference is to the peace of the
grave that US imperialism has extended to so many people from so many races in
every corner of the world.
The only real peace for the peoples of the
whole world will come when the system of imperialism has been thrown off and
finally buried. Then we will build a sane world and we won’t need any prizes
except the happy smiles on the faces of children who will never know, as they
do now, the pain of hunger while warehouses of food rot because no one can
afford to buy it. Children who will laugh and play and not constantly await
falling bombs or a drone smashing into them and incinerating their little
bodies every time they hear aircraft engines.
The Nobel Peace Prize is not relevant to the
struggles of the working classes. If it ever did have any significance or
progressive content, this has long since disappeared.