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Friday, October 12, 2012

Nobel Awards Peace Prize to EU As EU Continues to Wage War of Austerity Against Its Citizens

Presumably Golden Dawn is already wiping its ass with the award. (My point is not to suggest that Golden Dawn is representative of the EU, but to suggest that Golden Dawn is a symptom of catastrophic EU economic policies that should, in my view, disqualify the EU from consideration for the Prize right now.) Announcing the award the committee chair Thorbjoern Jagland declared:
The EU has been a key in transforming Europe "from a continent of wars to a continent of peace... This is a message to Europe to do everything they can to secure what they've achieved and move forward..." and a reminder of what would be lost "if the union is allowed to collapse."
So, it would seem that like the head-scratcher award of the Prize to President Obama before he had actually done anything but not being George W. Bush, this was more an award signaling hopes and fears than an award recognizing accomplishments (which is not to deny the EU's real accomplishments). The Right Livelihood Award has seemed more reliably Nobel Peace Prizey than the Nobel Peace Prize for years now. I agree that the accomplishment of the EU is historic and its failure would be catastrophic, but I disapprove the extent to which the EU's emphasis has been economic rather than civic, while this award disavows the economic in a way that threatens to evacuate the civic.

12 comments:

Giulio Prisco said...

The "accomplishment" of the EU is catastrophic and its failure would be historic.

Athena Andreadis said...

The EU deserved the prize (maybe) once. Not any more.

The other annoyance is that the Peace Nobel is the only one that is given to groups. For the rest, it's maximum three people. Many worthy scientists haven't got it for this reason: it goes to the bigger names, the rest get shafted.

Dale Carrico said...

Prisco are you becoming a right-wing crank in addition to the futurological crank you already were? Now, there's a typical transhumanoid "progress" narrative if I ever heard one.

Giulio Prisco said...

Is opposing a corrupted central bureaucracy never legitimated by popular vote, and affirming the right of the citizens to democratically choose how their countries should be run, "right-wing"?

See my comments here:
http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/4856

Dale Carrico said...

That's a good point you're making Giulio, it probably isn't exactly right to describe as legibly "right-wing" (or legibly anything) the politics of somebody like you who awaits the arrival of the Robot God under whose Friendly ministrations the corrupt will be compugooized and bureaucracy will vanish in a spontaneously self-optimizing order of cyberangelic algorithms warmly suffusing logical decision space, you know, for kids.

Giulio Prisco said...

Does this have anything to do with the EU, politics, the points that you are making, or the points that I am making? You tell me.

Again, you sound like those homophobes whose one and only "argument" is calling others fags. A bit sad if you ask me.

Barkeron said...

Well, the collapse of the EU would be indeed historic as it's obvious such an event would have significance in history.

But disparaging its accomplishments and calling them "catastrophic" sure has a distinct right-wing extremist vibe.

Only the free (market) American WASP herrenmensch deserves to be a power on the international stage through their exceptional "future-orientedness" and "progressiveness", amirite?

Dale Carrico said...

Given the critique of the EU contained in the actual post I obviously don't disdain every critique of the EU.

But I do note that Euroskepticism of the right-wing variety often foregrounds "central bureaucracy" whining and insinuations about anti-democracy (you'd never guess from that complaint that there is no EU Constitution because it was voted down, as have others of the better civic impulses of the EU, while the "trade" structures get implemented top-down, of course, through the usual international treaty/regulatory frameworks) -- just as right-wing selective states-rights mouthbreathers and secessionists here in the States do the very same -- usually the better to stealth what are in substance racist/patriarchal nightmares and/or market fantasies that cannot withstand scrutiny on their own terms in any sustained way.

Of course, when one is getting drawn into an exchange with an individual online who is truly cracked, like transhumanoid new-age "cosmic engineer" and "cyberangel" aficionado Prisco one always has to decide eventually to step back, rarely in a way that satisfies the nutter in question. Prisco, there is a price to be paid for your incredibly prolific online advocacy of the extremist imaginable varieties of Robot Cultism, and that price is that serious people don't ever have to take you seriously at all.

As for the angry addled old straight white guy schtick of calling an openly gay man who has devoted his life to queer activism indistinguishable from a rancid homophobe -- something you have done not once, not twice, not three times, but time after time after time, over the years, in many different contexts -- I think this cute little quirk of yours will amount to a homophobic attack in itself at some point. As I have said before, you transhumanoids publish your loony views to the world and solicit reactions to them on their terms, and you don't get to cry about even strong and dismissive disagreement as a kind of hate speech even if the time you spend among True Believers renders that sort of reaction distressingly unfamiliar to you.

Giulio Prisco said...

Re "calling an openly gay man who has devoted his life to queer activism indistinguishable from a rancid homophobe"

You criticize others based not on what they say about the topic at hand, but based on your dislike of what they _are_ (in your opinion).

This is not only similar, but actually identical to the attitude of the homophobes who dismiss everything that their critics say, _just_ because they are fags.

Dale Carrico said...

You were not born a Robot Cultist, let alone an indefatigable proselytizer for the ridiculous views of the Robot Cult for which I ridicule you. I don't know you as a person, and I presume there is more to you than transhumanoid, digital-utopian, and techno-immortalist positions for which you advocate so nonsensically in public places and in ways that solicit scrutiny. Critique, satire, parody, even ridicule of views and fallacious reasoning is not hate speech, however discomfiting it may be. You actively seek out attention for your views -- indeed, no small share of the ridicule you suffer from me is prompted by comments YOU publish on MY blog -- nor do I occupy a position of privilege over you from which I attack you in some disadvantage or vulnerability over which you have no control and so neither is this properly conceived as a matter even of bullying. You are simply seeking to insulate some of your dangerous and nonsensical views from criticism through the pathetic charge that such criticism is hate speech unless it is superficial enough to concede the essential seriousness of your discourse or the validity of its most basic premises as I do not.

In the case of the specifically gnomic utterance you made about the EU, declaring it "catastrophic" and characterizing it as essentially "central" and "bureaucratic," I simply drew on my knowledge of your other views and dismissed you as a crank in light of them. That's the price you pay for having a record. You could have elaborated your views or corrected for such misconceptions if you had any serious point to make, but you did not. Even though you have done nothing in the past to deserve better treatment -- and indeed our online skirmishing over the years has amply demonstrated you deserve far worse -- I actually went ahead and DID contextualize and elaborate my position in greater detail. You declared my attitude indistinguishable from hate speech. I do not testify here to abuse, since I am happy simply to use you as an occasion for the elaboration of various themes for the benefit of quieter, more reasonable readers than you, but it is worth noting in conclusion that you have been either wrong or too unclear to make that determination in almost everything you have said on every point on every topic in almost every way in this extended exchange as usual.

Giulio Prisco said...

I did elaborate on my views, ref. 4th comment above: "See my comments here: http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/4856"

Note that my views on this topic, and the topic itself, have nothing to do with your obsession.

Of course there is more to me than one dimension. I used to think that everyone has many dimensions, but I am not so sure now, since you keep going back to your obsession like a broken record, regardless of what is the topic under discussion. I hope you will forgive me for repeating this one last time, but this is exactly like criticizing every opinion expressed by others just because they are fags, and without even bothering to say something relevant.

I did comment on your blog a few times in the last few months, hoping to have a mature discussion, but I see that I was too optimist.

Dale Carrico said...

Actually, spamming my comments section isn't exactly the same thing as elaborating a position in that conversational space. But don't worry about it. On your way out, do be sure to sample my new signature fragrance at the Amor Mundi gift shop, "My Obsession." It smells like hate speech and semen.