Peace and human rights EU-style
Sorry, I didn't know it was April Fools Day today. Just announced was that the EU has been award the joke that is the Nobel Peace Prize. Not since Barack Obama being awarded the prize just days after winning the presidency in 2008 (only to go on and start more wars) has there been such an undeserving winner. The Nobel Prize committee's grounds for the EU's award was the non-elected body's work in advancing 'peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights'. Of course, this is chilling and blind-sightedness when considering that the EU consists of members such as Greece where human and minority rights are systematically violated, or that the EU's blinded and haphazardly applied concept of solidarity has given it tacit support for Greece's aggressive and anti-peace foreign policy towards neighbouring countries like Turkey, Albania and Macedonia. The EU has always been quick to criticise human rights violations in other countries, however it turns a blind eye when those same violations occur within its own boundaries. Russia in particular receives its fair share of EU criticism, however not only does the EU not criticise the exact same authoritarian and sham-democratic system in EU members like Bulgaria, it even gives them its blessing! Or how about the many EU countries who routinely ban LGBT Pride parades and propose laws 'against gay propaganda'? Sorry, but the EU as an organisation should not have been given this piece of false advertising. Meanwhile, true peace activists, like the Bahraini doctors and nurses who treat wounded democracy protesters, are completely side-lined. All this is part of the charade of the humane, caring and democratic world we supposedly live in.
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