It should be possible to ungive the Noble Prize

[regexcellent]

Holy ****, Boris is actually pro-Soviet?

I'm reminded of how I used to hang out in an IRC channel for another forum with a lot of Europeans, and the Estonian guy was always the most staunchly pro-American, more than pretty much any of the Americans in the channel. He was about 45 years old 5 years ago I guess, and he always talked about how as an Estonian he had been saved from the Soviets by Ronald Reagan.

[-Jrabbit]

Maybe the easy way out is to convince the media to always use quotes (quotation marks for the written word, air quotes for video) whenever describing someone as a Nobel "Peace" Prize "winner."

Then we can just vary our tonality to convey the degree of sarcastic irony involved in each individual award.

[Zevico]

Holy ****, Boris is actually pro-Soviet?

I'm reminded of how I used to hang out in an IRC channel for another forum with a lot of Europeans, and the Estonian guy was always the most staunchly pro-American, more than pretty much any of the Americans in the channel. He was about 45 years old 5 years ago I guess, and he always talked about how as an Estonian he had been saved from the Soviets by Ronald Reagan.

Damn skippy. This is how a lot of Soviet emigres are.

[Hauldren Collider]

Maybe the easy way out is to convince the media to always use quotes (quotation marks for the written word, air quotes for video) whenever describing someone as a Nobel "Peace" Prize "winner."

Then we can just vary our tonality to convey the degree of sarcastic irony involved in each individual award.

I like this idea. Personally I think the prize became a joke after they gave it to Henry Kissinger. (I don't actually have a problem with Kissinger, but only an idiot would think that he is "peaceful".) The subsequent awards for Arafat, Gore and Obama are just WTF. Mandela's a debatable case. I personally like Mandela but the ANC is horrid. But giving him the prize isn't unjustifiable.

[Aeson]

Thread is much more interesting if title is taken literally ...

Arabian Stallion Noble Prize available for stud and breeding services from Heaven Sent Fam, Lynchburg, Virginia.

[molly bloom]

Not only is the ANC run by crooks and tribalists, but they've been effectively propping up Mugabe too. If South Africa wanted it could have him gone tomorrow. But he is a fellow freedom fighter against colonialism! or some other such bull**** so he stays.

Are H.C. and veggie the same person ? Or is it just veggie's turn to borrow the uninformed rant about Southern Africa today ?

And no use of 'moron', '******', 'Islamo-fascism' by dear ol' veggie either. Perhaps H.C. is using those words even as I write.....

[molly bloom]

Having relatively harmless opinions on gay rights

You are a monumental d!ckhead.

"They have to know that they are a minority and adjust to smaller things, and not rise to the greatest heights," he told the private broadcaster TVN during a discussion of gay rights. "A minority should not impose itself on the majority"

Substitute 'black', 'Jew' or 'Roma' for gay and what you have is just good old-fashioned prejudice, not a contribution to social democracy. I fail to see how his views on a sexual minority in Poland distinguish him from racists in the Czech Republic or Slovakia or Hungary who want to discriminate against the Roma:

A few moments before, I had sounded out the opinions of the young policemen and women.

"In my experience, 70 or 80% of crimes are committed by Roma," said one. "So what do I say if I stop a man, in my routine police work, and he accuses me of picking on him because of his ethnic origin?"

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22295064

[molly bloom]

I would much rather have a world without communism and no gay rights than a world with gay rights and communism. .

In case it had escaped your attention, what we have at the moment is a world with both gay rights and Communism.

he doesn't have to be a 100% saint to be a good person.

So if he discriminated against Jews in Poland that would be okay, because he fought against Communism....

. At least only some people would be second class citizens, instead of starving factory workers and collective farmers.

Oh, so not only were gay men and lesbians not collective farmers or factory workers, but just so long as it was only them that were suffering and had no civil rights that would be fine, so long as Communism wasn't around.

How exactly do you completely eradicate an idea or political philosophy, you dimwit ?

[Fake Boris]

Holy ****, Boris is actually pro-Soviet?

I'm reminded of how I used to hang out in an IRC channel for another forum with a lot of Europeans, and the Estonian guy was always the most staunchly pro-American, more than pretty much any of the Americans in the channel. He was about 45 years old 5 years ago I guess, and he always talked about how as an Estonian he had been saved from the Soviets by Ronald Reagan.

I am impressed by the breadth of your historical sources.

[Fake Boris]

Holy ****, Boris is actually pro-Soviet?

I'm reminded of how I used to hang out in an IRC channel for another forum with a lot of Europeans, and the Estonian guy was always the most staunchly pro-American, more than pretty much any of the Americans in the channel. He was about 45 years old 5 years ago I guess, and he always talked about how as an Estonian he had been saved from the Soviets by Ronald Reagan.

I am impressed by the breadth of your historical sources.

[giblets]

Whose expectancy of life has gone down since the fall of communism

http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&ctype=l&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=h&met_y=sp_dyn_le00_in&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=region&idim=country:POL:LTU:LVA:EST:UKR:DEU&ifdim=region&ind=false

I don't have data for East Germany in particular but it looks like every country he mentioned by name now has a higher life expectancy than it did under Communism... it is true that a number of Communist countries had a temporary dip in life expectancy after the collapse of Communism (but not Poland, the country Walesa was responsible for...).

[Fake Boris]

Thanks.

I was aware of this (temporary dip + recovery), but had no idea that Poland was an exception.

[Dr Strangelove]

How about all of the awards given to those responsible for the League of Nations, the Locarno Treaty and the Kellogg-Briand Pact? Arguably they set the stage for WW II.

[Hauldren Collider]

I don't think it's really fair to blame world war II on anyone but Hitler. The consequences of the League of Nations and the Treaty of Versailles and so on were so distant and so unpredictable that it's pointless to assign blame.

[giblets]

They didn't cause WWII but they were such abysmal failures that they don't deserve peace prizes.