Its a bit shocking and easy to ridicule. Giving the Nobel Prize for Peace to the European Union! It can be perceived as a black comedy. Dr. Caligari. After all, Europe of the recent past and its colonial and imperialist pretensions, not to mention two tragic world wars. And lets not forget its ongoing efforts in this century through NATO where Orientalism is getting a repeat performance. Yet, its exactly because of this history that great achievement has been attained and that despite the Eurozone crisis, the slow train wreck of renewed nationalism and stirring the pot of the old inferiority complexes mixed with twisted patriotism, the Eurozone is committed to sticking it through, which, following the classic paradigm, means not so much solving the problems of the past, but rather, a kind of transcending process and moving on.
The serious catastrophes of European history belong to the past, and it has moved on. It is evident that a good chunk of the new Germany is determinedly opposed to that past brand, style and concept authoritarianism. There is much more transparency in German politics; most symbolically by the Reichstag having a glass dome.
from David Frum in the National Post ( see link at end)…On first hearing the news, it seems just crazy to award the Nobel Peace Prize to the European Union. Not quite “Let’s give it to Obama before he’s actually done anything” crazy (as in 2009) — but still, crazy.
It’s not just that the European Union is a big, amorphous bureaucratic entity. (Next winner: the International Postal Union.) Nor is it just that the real heavy-lifting of keeping the peace in Europe was done by another organization entirely, with a different membership list. (That would be NATO.) It’s not even that the Norwegians who award the prize have themselves repeatedly refused to join the EU they so admire. (They don’t want to share their oil wealth with Portugal and Greece, and who can blame them?)…
— Franz Marc was a pioneer in the birth of abstract art at the beginning of the twentieth-century The Blaue Reiter group put forth a new program for art based on exuberant color and on profoundly felt emotional and spiritual states. It was Marc’s particular contribution to introduce paradisiacal imagery that had as its dramatis personae a collection of animals, most notably a group of heroic horses.
Tragically, Marc was killed in World War I at the age of thirty-six, but not before he had created some of the most exciting and touching paintings of the Expressionist movement. –Read More:http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/marc/
…The prize seems crazy because this award comes at precisely the moment when the European Union’s faults are throwing into misery people across southern Europe —and threatening to capsize the whole global economy.
It’s theoretically possible to imagine an EU that had never gotten itself into the Euro mess. Many in the EU opposed the currency-union idea, including future German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. Some EU countries refused to join the Euro (Britain) or delayed entry sufficiently long as to avoid being dragged into the catastrophe (Poland). But the EU did get itself into the Euro mess, and it got into the mess for classically EU-type reasons.
The EU characteristically insists on regarding economic problems as political problems first and foremost. A currency is classically defined as a store of value and a medium of exchange. But the EU treated the Euro as an expression of an ideal. Unsurprisingly, a currency that exists to express ideals has flunked its economic functions….
Conrad Felixmuller.Read More:http://mgmt.freeforums.org/the-art-thread-t245.html
…What’s even weirder is that the Euro currency did the least harm to the country that most opposed it (Germany, which saw its exports soar); has done more harm to the country that most demanded it (France, which saw its exports collapse); and has done the most harm of all to the countries that thought themselves the biggest winners (Spain, Ireland, Portugal and Greece, which were lured into massive public and private borrowing they could not afford). European leaders gave so little thought to the economics of currency that they did not — or
ld not — calculate their own national advantage.So boo to the Nobel committee?
Well … no. Not so fast.
The Norwegians are sending a reminder flare to their continental neighbours: In the throes of today’s crisis, please remember, the Euro may have been a mistake, but the European Union must be preserved. The EU must be preserved not only as the obviously beneficial trading area that it is, but also (yes) as an ideal….
—Polish-born Pola Negri was a major international movie star and sex symbol during the silent era and Madame DuBarry, a biopic of Louis the XV’s mistress set (incongruously) against the backdrop of the French Revolution, is one of her finest star vehicles. Funny, tragic and sexually provocative for its time, this historical epic allowed German film studio UFA to break into the international market. Four years later, director Ernst Lubitsch would become the first of many German filmmakers to migrate to Hollywood (where he would achieve even greater fame).—Read More:http://whitecitycinema.com/tag/ernst-lubitsch/
It’s an inspiring thing to visit the German-Polish border and see — not barriers, not legacies of old hatreds — but goods-laden trucks whizzing past as casually as if they were crossing the North Carolina-South Carolina state line. It’s an inspiring thing to visit Alsace and see this territory that was contested in three terrible wars arrive at peace via the simple proposition: If you want a house in Alsace, buy one. Who cares which sovereign delivers the mail?
The European Union presents every member nation with a magnificently attractive vision: A Europe at peace with itself, a Europe of rising prosperity, a Europe in which Europeans can move freely to live and work. When extremist forces arise in European countries — as they are rising now in Greece and in Hungary — they are met with the answer, “But if we yield to these forces, we’ll put ourselves outside Europe. No more right to work in London. No more aid from Germany.” The desire to qualify for Europe has powerfully pulled countries such as Serbia and Romania along the democratic path — and in years to come will exert the same force upon Belarus and Ukraine.
That’s a powerful and precious achievement. At a moment when the achievement risks being lost or forgotten due to a financial fiasco, the parliamentarians of Oslo did well to use their most effective platform to remind Europe and the world of what is at risk. Read More:http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/10/13/david-frum-giving-the-eu-its-nobel-due/
ADDENDUM:
(see link at end)… The decision was widely interpreted as a conscious bid to prop up the single currency – and the bloc itself – in their darkest hour, after the Nobel committee chairman Thorbjorn Jagland warned of a possible return to “extremism and nationalism”.
“We should do everything we can to safeguard it [the EU], not let it disintegrate. If the euro starts falling apart, then I believe that the internal market will also start falling apart. And then obviously we get new nationalism in Europe,” he said after announcing the prize in Oslo.
Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, quickly linked the “wonderful selection” to her country’s efforts to save the 17-nation eurozone.
“I often say that the euro is more than a currency, and we should not forget that these weeks and months we have spent working to strengthen the euro. At the end of the day it is about the original idea of a union of peace and of values,” she told reporters.
The award was welcomed by many European leaders offering respite.
Herman Van Rompuy, president of the European Council, and José Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, said it was a “tremendous honour”.
“It is a prize not just for the project and the institutions embodying a common interest, but for the 500 million citizens living in our Union,” they said in a statement. Read More:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/9605423/European-Union-wins-Nobel-Peace-Prize-despite-year-of-anti-austerity-protests.html
National Post
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