Nobel Selects EU ... World Snorts?

Despite a year marked by one of the worst crises in decades and repeated scenes of social unrest across the continent, the European Union has been awarded the 2012 Nobel peace prize. The Norweigien prize committee awarded the 27-nation bloc for its 60 years of contributions to the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe. The award ... by the Nobel Committee shows that in these difficult times the European Union remains an inspiration for countries and people all over the world and that the international community needs a strong European Union', said President of the European Commission Jose Manuel Barroso. The committee also praised the Union for rebuilding Europe after World War II and for spreading stability after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. – EurActiv

Dominant Social Theme: This place called the European Union is just the best. Let's award it a prize.

Free-Market Analysis: The European Union wins the Nobel Peace Prize. Did you expect it, dear reader? Did you ask, perhaps, "What is the European Union?" This is a sickness, to treat agglomerations of peoples and regions as individuals. Here's something more from the video narrative excerpted above:

We must never forget that at its origins the European Union brought together nations emerging from the ruins of the devastating 2nd World War and united them in a project for peace, built on supranational institutions representing the common European interest.

The European Union, starting with the European Community, has reunified countries split by the Cold War, and made it around values of respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, justice, the rule of law and respect for human rights', said President of the European Commission Jose Manuel Barroso.

The award is thought to be an attempt to encourage greater integration in the EU as the eurozone crisis has threatened to tear the European project apart.

The Nobel Peace Prize Committee and the international community are now sending a very important message to Europe that the European Union is something very precious, that we should cherish it for the good of Europeans and for the good of the entire world', said President of the European Commission Jose Manuel Barroso.

Of course, this is the same EU that is trying to build a sizable army and has passed vastly intrusive legislation to spy on citizens using the Internet. It is the same EU that as not been able to find a third-party auditor in years because of all the acknowledged corruption at the top.

Regulations pour out of the EU like smog while half of the union is bankrupt and the other half resent paying the bill. How all this is either laudable or peaceful is beyond us.

Watching Greece and Spain (and soon France) go up in flames is to watch a spectacle of failure. But the EU has always been a spectacle and its handlers continue to try to manage its persona and profile with less and less success. The more it fails, the more those behind its misguided formation try to defend it and prop it up.

One only has to read the derisive feedbacks on YouTube following this video to see people actually perceive the authoritarian spectacle the EU has become. All the prizes won't change this unpleasant reality.

(Video from EurActiv's YouTube user channel.)