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General Discussion => The Speakeasy: OOG/Off-topic Discussion => Topic started by: Nmaro Makari on 13 Oct 2012, 16:08
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Linkage: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19936165 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19936165)
Now, am I the only one who finds the choice of winner puzzling? Not least that the vote was unanimous with seemingly no other contenders. Just off the top of my head I can think of Aung Sang Suu Kyi or Malala Yousufzai, but not even a mention?
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The committee might be very afraid of an EU breakup because of this crisis.
IMO, it just can't break up. The European Union is the best shot at a theoritical Earth Federation, and is metrically the best place on the planet to live, before this current crisis.
Surprisingly, the BBC top comments on the original awarding article, were all pro-EU as an ideal (I was expecting bitter cynicism). I think anyone in their right mind should realize that the EU ideal is really amazing. There will always be those accusations of plutocracy and oligarchy, but that exists in EVERY society...so you just look at the good instead. And the EU wins by a long shot.
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I'm not sure sure any more tbh :/
I mean sure, growing up it was a nice thought, and it was something I might have even believed in now. But reading the Greek reaction to this* today, I just found it hard to somehow excuse this. I mean, who cares what some wannabe pundit on the BBC comment section, or Tory backbencher thinks? By far the most telling reactions come from Greece, people who are feeling pretty sour about the whole thing as is evident.
This whole crisis has caused me to fall rapidly out of love with the EU. Plus, I think the EU's contribution to peace can be disputed, in some cases even quite well. Combined with the fact that there were a multitude of other worthy candidates, I just have to wonder what the committee were thinking.
*http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/greeks-baffled-by-the-eus-peace-prize-8209666.html (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/greeks-baffled-by-the-eus-peace-prize-8209666.html)
*http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/oct/12/greece-eu-nobel-peace-prize-war?newsfeed=true (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/oct/12/greece-eu-nobel-peace-prize-war?newsfeed=true)
*http://greece.greekreporter.com/2012/10/13/amid-unrest-greeks-question-eus-nobel-prize/ (http://greece.greekreporter.com/2012/10/13/amid-unrest-greeks-question-eus-nobel-prize/)
(Also, how do you attach a link to a word with this thing?)
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Hm, will give those a read et al
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19899540 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19899540)
http://theweek.com/article/slide/234622/the-2012-nobel-peace-prize-who-should-win#1 (http://theweek.com/article/slide/234622/the-2012-nobel-peace-prize-who-should-win#1)
Some of the people who, in my opinion, were better contenders.
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(Also, how do you attach a link to a word with this thing?)
*[url=http://greece.greekreporter.com/2012/10/13/amid-unrest-greeks-question-eus-nobel-prize/]Amid Unrest Greeks Question EUs Nobel Prize[/url]
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My own comment:
A big, big "Shrug".
"for [having] over six decades contributed to the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe."
And this is more or less a truth. Do we all smell of roses and puke rainbows? No, of course we don't. But this doesn't make it any less true that the EU is an institution that promotes (and enforces) exactly this.
At a time like this you'll see all the pro / con arguments, defenders of the union surface as do the vocal critics.
Let's do a simple reality check and find out that a nobel peace price is usually at least 50% wishful thinking.
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Weird choice, but whatever. Remember they gave the thing to President Obama just for his good intentions and for making a speech about nuclear weapons.
Re: the EU; My knowledge is limited and experience virtually nil being an American. My understanding is that the current crisis kinda stems directly from the Maastricht Treaty in '92 when the French lassoed the freshly unified Germany into the shared currency without also creating sufficiently potent shared organizations to regulate and control the economy on a continental scale. Not talking about the ECB, but a true fiscal and banking union and meaningful coordination of economic policies. They'll probably end up creating and/or investing those organizations as a result of the present fiscal crises. Monetary union will lead to economic union--through hardship--and that could, eventually, pave the way for a more genuine political union. c/d?
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Integrated economy without integrated politics for enforcing economic policy will continue to be a disaster.
And this prize was as well deserved as Obama's.
You wanna give it to some one with some stones, give it to Aung San Suu Kyi.
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Correction: Apparently she did get it in 1991.
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The European Union is the best shot at a theoritical Earth Federation
Should that even be a goal?
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IMO, it just can't break up. The European Union is the best shot at a theoritical Earth Federation, and is metrically the best place on the planet to live, before this current crisis.
You have to be careful with those metrics. Some of them (like infant mortality) are reported differently by European countries in order to give a different impression to the world than might otherwise be perceived.
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You have to be careful with those metrics. Some of them (like infant mortality) are reported differently by European countries in order to give a different impression to the world than might otherwise be perceived.
Oh, can you enlighten us? Quickest source I've found was of course on wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_infant_mortality_rate ), where the list is published and estimated by an extremely anti-US source. :|
Re: the EU; My knowledge is limited and experience virtually nil being an American. My understanding is that the current crisis kinda stems directly from the Maastricht Treaty in '92 when the French lassoed the freshly unified Germany into the shared currency without also creating sufficiently potent shared organizations to regulate and control the economy on a continental scale. Not talking about the ECB, but a true fiscal and banking union and meaningful coordination of economic policies. They'll probably end up creating and/or investing those organizations as a result of the present fiscal crises. Monetary union will lead to economic union--through hardship--and that could, eventually, pave the way for a more genuine political union. c/d?
It looks like the monetary union was introduced too quickly, that's why the EU has such a hard time regulating the surroundings in their member states right now. Basically what's done now should've happened years earlier.
Overall I must say that I do enjoy (living in) the EU, since open borders and shared currency makes live and travel /so/ much easier. You are used to this, I assume, so you know the benefits. Might just want to add that it's easy to cross several borders here in one day of driving.
General re: Weird choice: It is, but it (imo) also isn't undeserved. Also I'd like to point out that Norway ( and as such the Nobel Price Commitee ) isn't part of the EU, so it's very likely not an act of patting one's own shoulder.
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I found that decision weird too. Added to the fact it was attributed to an institution rather than to a single individual as well. But why not... Pretty sure better candidates could have been found but as said above it was the same with Obama. Funny thing is apparently this EU nobel prize has been vividly criticized by Lech Welesa (1983 peace nobel prize).
I think it is not too hard to see the link with the current EU crisis. I think it is not a reward in itself but most of an expectation for the times to come, or some kind of encouragement.
Anyway, people like to say that they are pissed with the EU just because everything goes wrong. We have to remember the "no" to the constitution referendum several years ago which is quite telling in itself : what really causes issues currently is not the EU in itself, and besides radical and conservative parties, most of the people actually opposed to the EU are not opposed to it as an ideal, but in it current state. It has several times already been criticized for being overtly being way too much liberal (see how it deals with chinese economical influences) and overall too soft. It has been criticized for staying light years away from the global population where we hardly hear about what's going on on the top EU layers, especially considering how many of our laws are not even handled anymore by our national governements but by the EU itself (and it is still increasing). Well, it has been criticized on a lot of points and it has mostly been directed at its leadership, rather at the entity in itself imo.
I personnally find the ideal wonderful.
Re: the EU; My knowledge is limited and experience virtually nil being an American. My understanding is that the current crisis kinda stems directly from the Maastricht Treaty in '92 when the French lassoed the freshly unified Germany into the shared currency without also creating sufficiently potent shared organizations to regulate and control the economy on a continental scale. Not talking about the ECB, but a true fiscal and banking union and meaningful coordination of economic policies. They'll probably end up creating and/or investing those organizations as a result of the present fiscal crises. Monetary union will lead to economic union--through hardship--and that could, eventually, pave the way for a more genuine political union. c/d?
Why Maastricht would be a cause of that ?
To me the primaries causes of the current crisis are the same than for the US crisis : the subprimes crisis (which looks a lot like the Great Depression stock market mechanics), added to things like Goldman Sachs screwing things up further with shady deals done with the Greek governement to erase a part of their debt, which helped to lead the whole country in the mess it currently is (added to the fact that their governement has always hidden their true economical situation to the EU). Of course these are not the only reasons, but they are overall very similar or often tied to what happens in the US. Add to that big, bloated banks screwing things ever more by losing huge capital in trading activities... Like Bankia in Spain, already sucking in billions from the EU Central Bank to do a little damage control. Banks having the right to combine deposit activities with trading activities, becoming enormous (and that's now happening in the US too since they also reverted that Roosevelt act to keep deposit and trading separate). Eventually, citizens pay for that.
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In response to Seri's point about it being a better place to live, I do feel I should point out that mainland Europe in particular becomes a whole lot less hot if you're from a minority background, especially Roma Gypsy or North African Muslim or Turkish. I highly doubt a majority of these people responded favourably to this news.
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I think it has always been quite obvious that it becomes a whole less hot for immigrating minorities in most countries.
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I think it has always been quite obvious that it becomes a whole less hot for immigrating minorities in most countries.
To varying degrees but true. You've missed the point though; These things work against the EU being a peace prize candidate. In fact, the notion that this peace prize is awarded to an institution rather than a person is ridiculous. Saying the EU deserves this prize is basically saying "Well, lets all just forget about the EU's failure in the Balkans, or the fact that many of its people are discriminated against on a daily basis, or all the other stuff that's undermined peace. We're just going to pretend that didnt happen ok?"
Tl;dr: The problem with awarding the prize to an institution, particularly a political one, is that you have to take into account everything they have contributed to the goals of the prize. The EU's contributions are a mixed bag.
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You have to be careful with those metrics. Some of them (like infant mortality) are reported differently by European countries in order to give a different impression to the world than might otherwise be perceived.
Oh, can you enlighten us? Quickest source I've found was of course on wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_infant_mortality_rate ), where the list is published and estimated by an extremely anti-US source. :|
LOL. Well, I'm not saying that all of the statistics are invalid, to be sure. However, some...creative interpretation...does exist. For example, (last I checked) the United States and Canada considers any birth, whether premature, deformed, or whatever, to be a "live birth". Therefore, any infant that dies after being born is considered a unit for the infant mortality statistic. On the other hand, in France (and a lot of other European countries), if a baby is born dangerously premature, it is excluded from the "live births" and consigned to the "stillbirth" category - unless it survives.
This, as you might imagine, skews things a bit, as premature babies are the least likely to survive. However, if we correct for this sort of statistical cheating, the United States has one of the best infant survival rates. Another way - and probably the best way currently to analyze infant health, is to consider perinatal survival rates, in which case the United States is doing quite well, and many European countries are revealed to be doing much worse.
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I just have to emphasize our friends across the Atlantic...
Pretty much everything here is different than in your own nation.
Religion.
Minorities.
Culture.
Very few people are really involved in religion in Europe.
Very few people let it dictate their worldview.
There is cultural differences in nations that are built around Protestant mentality and Catholic/Orthodox.
None of the minorities in Europe are striving to be part of an 'European Dream' or part of an 'Europe spanning culture'.
There is no equivalent to African-American, or any prefix-American in Europe.
Which kind of leads to the Culture.
There is no Europe spanning culture.
There is no Europe spanning ideals.
There is no shared media outlet that can indoctrinate Europeans to think that they are sharing anything.
Just the currency, just co-operation between different nations to build bridges and nowadays just the debts.
EU is a cod.
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LOL. Well, I'm not saying that all of the statistics are invalid, to be sure. However, some...creative interpretation...does exist. For example, (last I checked) the United States and Canada considers any birth, whether premature, deformed, or whatever, to be a "live birth". Therefore, any infant that dies after being born is considered a unit for the infant mortality statistic. On the other hand, in France (and a lot of other European countries), if a baby is born dangerously premature, it is excluded from the "live births" and consigned to the "stillbirth" category - unless it survives.
LOL indeed. :|
Of course it does exist somewhere, somewhen. Everyone who makes a statistic uses different parameters - if only slightly - and it's no secret that agendas can bleed through the numbers.
I fail to see how this is relevant, though, since any tampering to make oneself appear better - like you've claimed is done regularily - should be disappearing in statistics compiled by non-domestic sources, such as the two I've linked, no?
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I think it has always been quite obvious that it becomes a whole less hot for immigrating minorities in most countries.
To varying degrees but true. You've missed the point though; These things work against the EU being a peace prize candidate. In fact, the notion that this peace prize is awarded to an institution rather than a person is ridiculous. Saying the EU deserves this prize is basically saying "Well, lets all just forget about the EU's failure in the Balkans, or the fact that many of its people are discriminated against on a daily basis, or all the other stuff that's undermined peace. We're just going to pretend that didnt happen ok?"
Tl;dr: The problem with awarding the prize to an institution, particularly a political one, is that you have to take into account everything they have contributed to the goals of the prize. The EU's contributions are a mixed bag.
I do not think I have missed the point. Your tl;dr is absolutely correct. No instutions of governemental magnitude I know of can claim to have achieved nothing else than peace. Which is why I found that weird too.
I may be wrong but I don't think the EU got involved in any way in the Balkans war. NATO, and UN, sure, but the EU... ? Also, what does the EU have to do with discrimination in the first place ? Aren't the national governements more responsible for this at the current time ? It starts to get quite complicated when we speak about an upper layer of governement that does not have a full control of the laws and what happens in the territory of each member state, far from it.
Or when we say EU, are we speaking about the very people that live inside ? Are we speaking about the people, the whole, or just the european institution and what it stands for ? Personally, I don't know here...
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I nearly lost all faith in the Nobel committee last time, when Obama was just handed the prize before he had had time to even lift a finger and do anything at all.
This time, it feels as if the prize was far more deserved, but honestly still leave a taste of 'the hell, wasn't there anyone else who deserved it more?'
Well, it remains to be seen. Least I won't have to spend a couple weeks being ashamed of my nation this time around, that's always something.
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At least this one won't result in a diplomatic shitstorm like the one we had with China.
Other countries need to learn that the Nobel Peace Prize committee's selection of prize winners is not subject to review and censorship by Norwegian national authorities.
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I fail to see how this is relevant, though, since any tampering to make oneself appear better - like you've claimed is done regularily - should be disappearing in statistics compiled by non-domestic sources, such as the two I've linked, no?
No. The statistics for countries such as the above are compiled off of (almost always) the self-reporting of countries. If measures as the above are used, then the statistics become useless for rankings.
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For some reason when I read this I thought it was a PR stunt to shore up support for the EU given the current difficulties they're facing. Or is it a medal for not starting yet another continental conflict by any of its members in contravention to almost a millenia of European history? I think US policy and the Cold War had more to maintaining the peace in Europe post-1945.
That's beside the point that if the intent of the EU is to create a democratic European Federation then they should work towards that first by actually convincing national electorates by promoting the benefits of Federation and moving on from there. Unified currency should have been the last step not the first one because it seems most of the current problems with the EU stem from forcing countries like Greece, Spain, Portugal etc., to compete with economies like France and Germany without the ability to devalue their currencies to promote investment and growth.
When countries go bankrupt it only increases sentiments that run counter to any concept of European unification aside from the fact many Europeans seem to identify with their own national identities and not any actual sense of being, "European" before that.
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No. The statistics for countries such as the above are compiled off of (almost always) the self-reporting of countries. If measures as the above are used, then the statistics become useless for rankings.
That's your claim.
Please explain why North Korea isn't first place in everything.
Also: Using self-reported raw data is different to using self-created statistics (sets of data).
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No. The statistics for countries such as the above are compiled off of (almost always) the self-reporting of countries. If measures as the above are used, then the statistics become useless for rankings.
That's your claim.
Please explain why North Korea isn't first place in everything.
Also: Using self-reported raw data is different to using self-created statistics (sets of data).
Because no one accepts NK's claims, if NK even bothers to make them. Not because of credibility so much, but because NK has no pull in international circles to ensure acceptance. The Soviet Union used to get away with making untrue claims all the time - one reason for the CIA's drastic overestimation of the U.S.S.R.'s abilities.
This isn't private knowledge, either. You can go look up how European countries report post-natal deaths vs how the U.S. and Canada do.
Here's a Unicef report on the misreporting of central and eastern European infant mortality rates: http://www.unicef-irc.org/publications/pdf/iwp95.pdf
Note that those rates have been accepted in the past, despite their lack of credibility.
I'll try to get some more sources, but I have to head to work.
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No need to bother, tbh.
Your link focuses on
a) post-communism states ( Also: being in geographical europe isn't the same as being in the european union )
b) analyzes the situation prior to EU membership. ( Data is from 2001, the work was published in 2003 )
But at any rate, I've never claimed that you're incorrect about the differences how the official statistics are put up and that there are indeed motivations to appear better. Although I'd say the motivation to appear better would be to get into the EU, not to make the EU look better to the rest of the world.
Also you weren't exactly using Poland, Latvia and the latest bunch of joiners as an example but were targeting a founding member.
So we can refrain from going "Nuh-huh" at each other since it'll boil down to "It's not true because the EU fakes its statistics.".
With that I'm done with that topic derailment. Or take a look at crime rates (or intentional homicide (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate) - I'm sure there's been a EU memo to fake these statistics, too).
As such - over and out.
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Des, click on the second link in the Wikipedia article you provided. That page discusses the differences Vikarion mentioned.
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So we can refrain from going "Nuh-huh" at each other since it'll boil down to "It's not true because the EU fakes its statistics.".
With that I'm done with that topic derailment. Or take a look at crime rates (or intentional homicide (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate) - I'm sure there's been a EU memo to fake these statistics, too).
As such - over and out.
Actually, I'm pretty sure that the EU statistics for violent crime are measured with methods similar to U.S. ones. You seem to be under the impression that I have some grudge against the EU, or, for that matter, some argument with the idea of Europe being a pleasant place to live. I don't. My values and morals don't lead me to consider whether a society is the most pleasant place to live to be the highest end of a society, so such comparisons are relatively less important to me. I just note that some of the traditional measures of such may not be measured similarly between societies.
I do tend to find many European countries and many Europeans to be...not to my taste, and I oppose attempts to import European modes of thought and ideals to the United States, but I'm not in the habit of constructing fanciful visions of evil EU bureaucrats falsifying data for the sake of better WHO comparisons. What I said can be backed up with evidence. If you could lend me the favor of not constructing your own vision of some obese white Texan inventing stories so he can put 'murica on a pedestal, I would be most appreciative.
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The Nobel has been a joke for a while now.
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Here we go again, never say never. :lol:
If you could lend me the favor of not constructing your own vision of some obese white Texan inventing stories so he can put 'murica on a pedestal, I would be most appreciative.
Don't put these words into my mouth, I think you're better than that.
Des, click on the second link in the Wikipedia article you provided. That page discusses the differences Vikarion mentioned.
It does, yes. I'm not denying that that happens, although I want to point out that this is not an issue in all european countries (Since the majority adheres to the WHO rules). Note what the source of the wikipedia article thinks about this overall:
However, it appears unlikely that differences in reporting are the primary explanation for the United States’ relatively low international ranking. In 2005, 22 countries had infant mortality rates of 5.0 or below. One would have to assume that these countries did not report more than one-third of their infant deaths for their infant mortality rates to equal or exceed the U.S. rate. This level of underreporting appears unlikely for most developed countries.
And I must confess, too, when I think about "european countries" and "best place to live in" I'm not thinking about Poland, Romania or Portugal same as I wouldn't think about Detroit when discussing the upsides of the United States. ;)
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And I must confess, too, when I think about "european countries" and "best place to live in" I'm not thinking about Poland, Romania or Portugal same as I wouldn't think about Detroit when discussing the upsides of the United States. ;)
When discussing the success of any union, it is important to recognize the upsides and downsides.
I don't think it is fair to exclude Poland, Romania, Portugal, etc as being part of Europe when the individual who brought the EU's metrics up started the sentence with "best shot a theoretical Earth Federation."
The European Union is the best shot at a theoritical Earth Federation, and is metrically the best place on the planet to live, before this current crisis.
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Absolutely correct, it isn't fair. Also I'm not excluding them, I was thinking about that from a perspective where I've posed myself the question: If I'd want to emigrate (within europe), where would I go to, which as you can imagine is pretty biased.
If we're talking metrics we should look at the european average which still doesn't disappoint, even if there's a west-east and north-south slope.
Now we're coming back to the topic, because reducing these differences ( often at the cost of the economically stronger member states - you should see the critics ;O ) is the stated goal of the european union, hence the price maybe wasn't entirely undeserved.