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WikiLeaks, Internet Nominees For Nobel Peace Prize
Hugh Pickens writes writes "WikiLeaks and the Internet are among a record 241 nominations for the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize that also includes Afghan rights advocate Sima Samar, the European Union, former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, Cuban dissident Oswaldo Paya Sardinas, Russian rights group Memorial and its founder Svetlana Gannushkina. 'Looking at the long term, we can say interest in the prize is strong and growing along with the number of candidates,' says Geir Lundestad, a non-voting member of the Nobel panel. WikiLeaks grabbed the world's attention and angered a number of governments by publishing thousands of secret US diplomatic cables, while pundits say the Internet or social media such as Facebook and Twitter, which have been used to help organize dissent in countries with oppressive governments, could be rewarded. Under the leadership of former Prime Minister Thorbjoern Jagland, the Nobel panel has not shied away from bold decisions — first picking Barack Obama just months after he became US president, and last year awarding the prize to jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo."
I'd love to meet this Internet guy some day.
Kriston
will leave the United States government in an interesting quandry if it proceeds to success.
The US was vociferous in supporting the award of the Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo, in the face of the Chinese government's strident opposition. What will it do when an organization it considers "treasonous" is a Nobel candidate?
Just for payback... I mean, symmetry... China should publicly back Wikileaks' bid.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
Who can accept an award on behalf of the Internet? The Swedish Pirate Party has a candidate, presented here. (Google translation to English)
Norwegian companies have reported still meeting problems trading with China for having had the gal to give the price to a Chinese criminal, and the Chinese refuse to accept that the Nobel Peace Committee is independent of government.
I wonder if this misunderstanding could be rectified if WikiLeaks was given the peace price? At the very least China would see that they make decisions that obviously isn't in the best interest of the Norwegian state.
- These characters were randomly selected.
The prize now has become so political that it's hard to take it seriously anymore. There is no way Wikileaks stands a chance because of the way the committee is beholden to Western governments. Only pro-Western dissidents ever win, NEVER anti-Western dissidents or even those who might be construed as opposed to Western governments (ala Wikileaks). Obama's prize was the height of this political hypocrisy--giving him the award before he even had the chance to do anything, just on his word that he was going to do peaceful stuff (which he hasn't, if anything he's expanded Bush's heavy-handed war policies even more).
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I guess we can nominate Anonymous as well. At least *someone* can go in a Guy Fawkes mask to collect the prize :)
This post contains no rudeness or derision of any kind. All arguments are friendly. Terms and exclusions may apply.
Did wikileaks cause the destruction of all the worlds armaments overnight? Did I miss something?
Al Gore, again?!
Either toughest ass award, because one needs to have the toughest ass on the planet in order to brave going against all the established dirty dealers of the world, or, a heart as big as a mountain.
Regardless of how you look at it, they perfectly embody the definition of 'berserker'.
Read radical news here
People have the unfortunate tendency to commit terribly boring speeches when they win things. Anonymous, on the other hand, could keep it pithy.
"Thank you, thank you. We did it for the lulz." *Applause*
Wow, WikiLeaks got nominated! This has to be an important story. After all, it isn't like the nomination process is fairly simple or that there are 240 other nominees.
Well -- $subject says it all
I seem to remember hearing something about some country in Africa rigging elections and Wikileaks releasing info about that and it kick started a revolution of sorts. This is more than 6 months ago, IIRC.
I think Wikileaks might reasonably deserve it; that and similar sites hold a lot of promise. I cringe, though, that it will be interpreted as a Nobel peace prize for Julian Assange... and that would be just reinforcement for that twit's meglomaniacal delusions.
What about Rachid Ammar, the Tunisian General who :
- denied a direct order to shoot on civilians,
- put Ben Ali on a place with a kick in his ass,
- protected the people from armed militia ?
Somehow I doubt they'd award it to Wikileaks while its leader is accused of rape in Sweden...
I don't believe in conspiracy theories but this smells like yet another way to get Julian into Norway where he will be kidnapped and brought to Sweden where the US forces will bring him to the world series court of justice.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
tl;dr
tl;Yo mama loves it
Helmut Kohl did NOTHING at all to deserve the noble peace prize. Quite the contrary.
Before he was chancellor, he strongly objected to his predecessor Brand who wanted contact, peace and unity with the former eastern block states.
Kohl was war mongering and dismissed any plans to get rid of american nukes on german ground. Instead, due to Kohl, new Pershing II and Tomahawks were installed, leading to disruption of a 6 year long negotiations with the USSR.
(He did even more bullshit (incl. severely breaking the law))
In addition he did NOTHING for the reunification of Germany. He was the puppet and was allowed to nod while the russians, the brits, the french and the russians signed the contract. It have been the people of the GDR themselves who made it possible (similar to Libya, Egypt, etc)
The ONLY reason he is nominated are old friends from his very conservative, middle-right wing party (CDU) who believe in him like a Fuhrer and are thankful for his 4 term stunt as chancellor (aka "the lost years for germany").
Gosh, I still hate that stupid asshole-faggot.
(Famous Quote : I won't let dictate my politics by the vulgar. (Spoken while >300,000 demonstrated against him))
(InB4 : I'm german and old enough...)
A nomination for facebook boy. He was already overrated for importance before Time awarded (presumably because he sold them your personal information on the cheap) person of the year to him. Alfred Nobel would likely be rolling - no, exploding - in his grave if his top prize were awarded that arbitrarily.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
These prizes are pretty much a joke, as credible as Time's "Person of the Year". To culminate the silliness, they should give the prize to "You", like Time once did.
Really? You're nominating the guy whose major accomplishment is hindering diplomatic communications--since now diplomats won't feel free to candidly discuss things in diplomatic cables--for a peace prize? If there were a Nobel prize for failure, the person who made this nomination would get it.
even more in line with the potential for an outbreak of peace world wide? weaponize them, before it's too late.
[Obama] was going to do peaceful stuff (which he hasn't, if anything he's expanded Bush's heavy-handed war policies even more).
Huh, did I miss the part where he invaded two nations? Did he instruct his spies to build a case for war? Did he specifically go against the wishes of the UN and decide to go it alone? Did he cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people?
Oh, wait. He has a measured and definite plan to leave Iraq. Huh. Go fucking figure. A PLAN. Who makes those crazy things anymore?
(Now I just wish he'd work on getting us out of Afghanistan somehow)
Yassir Arafat.
At this point, if anyone gets the prize who deserves it, the reason isn't because they deserved it. Assange will get it, not because he deserves it, but because it would embarrass the USA.
It's a good award to refuse at this point.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
If it makes the spotlight on wikileaks shine even brighter, I'm all for it. We NEED the average Joe to finally recognize that government works in self-interest -- the exact opposite of what they loudly proclaim -- because then and only then will we have a chance at limiting the extent of corruption in government.
They should give it to WikiLeaks with Julian Assange accepting for WikiLeaks, meaning an empty chair if he's still in prison. And jointly they could award the anonymous source(s) of their three big classified U.S. leaks, an empty chair since Brian Manning rots in prison.
The Nobel Peace Prize should ideally have some sort of activist quality, making dissident unkillable, pissing off some government, etc. The U.S. and Sweden deserve the embarrassment of the world looking at two empty chairs representing their hypocrisy. Epic lulz!
That said, if they choose the internet, they should still ask that Julian Assange, Jacob Appelbaum (Tor project), etc. accept the award on behalf of the Internet, the point being they're most representative of making the technology available for dissidents. You should not ask say Tim Berners-Lee to accept an award on behalf of the internet because all this progress has been a side effect of his work. And it'd just be asinine awarding Facebook and Twitter. Yes, they played a major role, but so did radio, fax, etc.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Moreover, they should not ask engineers to accept the award on behalf of the internet, i.e. no Tim Berners-Lee, no Zuckerberg, etc.
Ideally, the people who accept the prize should be people who're most putting themselves at risk to make the internet friendly to dissidents. And that'd be Julian Assange, Jacob Appelbaum (Tor project), etc. :)
We should all hope that WikiLeaks wins with Assange accepting the prize because it's be fucking hilarious if they award an empty chair with him being in prison in Sweden. Truely. Epic. Lulz.
Ideally, they'll award both WikiLeaks and it's leakers, that way we'll get an empty chair for Manning even if Assange has gone free. lol
Alternatively, you might ask some people heavily involved in the actually usage of the internet in the middle easter revolutions, maybe Wael Ghonim.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
and I have a brain, and view Arafat as a freedom fighter against the vicious aggressor Israel. And despite the way Israel behaves, he still was prepared to sit down and talk peace with them. So he deserved to receive it.
Wikileaks should win the Nobel. It will make the prize more relevant to our times.
If there is an online campaign/voting to select the Nobel peace prize then Wikileaks got a great chance.
But Wikileaks is not going to win.
Like Maradona winning the most number of votes for the player of the century and FIFA selecting Pele as a safer choice.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIFA_Player_of_the_Century
Tat Tvam Asi
If Anonymous wins, Jacob Appelbaum (Tor project) could accept for brining Anonymity to dissidents.
And we'd all lol when TSA takes his laptop again upon reentering the U.S.
And maybe this way the /b/ tards running #anonops would actually figure out they should use Tor. :)
Imho, they should give the prize jointly to WikiLeaks and their anonymous source(s) , with Julian Assange accepting for WikiLeaks and an empty chair for Brian Manning. In fact, maybe two empty chairs, one for Assange and one for Manning, thus egging both Sweden and the U.S. lol
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
peace is a political concept. it is not possible to talk about peace without talking about politics. the very definition of the concept of peace itself is only possible to be made in political terminology
any political situation has people on one side or another. therefore, every peace prize every offered, or any theoretical peace prize even possible, will have political controversy attached to it. even if you awarded the prize to some monk who just helped farmers grow their crops better: some company who is angry that the farmers are better fed and have more time to protest them, they will make a political stink about that prize
so the idea that the peace prize is too political, to me, this just means you don't understand what the peace prize is, or perhaps you don't entirely understand the concept of peace itself
the case could be made, in fact, that the more controversial the peace prize, the more valid a prize it is, because it is more topical and current. pissing a lot of people off is proof that the particular political issue the peace prize is involved with is still a very passionate issue. awarding a peace prize on only very dry dead subjects no one cares about anymore is not interesting or useful
therefore, the more political, the more passionate, and the more controversial the peace prize is, the better. some people need to be pissed off in this world
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
There's no way Assange or anyone internet-related will get it after the North African uprisings. Mohamed Bouazizi might have got it if he hadn't died.
Slashdot: news for Apple. Stuff that Apple.
to remedy a bad situation?
I am sure we could have just kept ignoring the all the killings, rapes, and such, that went on in Afghanistan. Lord knows we are damn good at ignoring the crimes of humanity committed 'over there' or by groups which might want to harm us directly but can't because they are 'over there'. I am quite sure one could sit down and in the space of an hour or two come up with a list of many times when a war occurred that fixed more problems than it caused.
I would take Bush over Obama any day now. It took Obama nearly two weeks after a thousand dead in Libya before he actually said something and even then it was barely a whimper. It used to be that the US could literally stare down these 3rd world dictators (if anything Libya came turned 360 in the early 2000s) but now with our foreign policy which can be defined as "well, if we must get involved can we just apologize for something we did years ago".
Yes people die in wars and it seems every armed conflict going over 48 hours is a war if America is involved. Yet sometimes leaving a problem to fester will result in far more dead and suffering that either the threat of war or actually acting on it. So just because don't agree with a particular war does not mean others have to follow suit. Some live life for other reasons and do far more than moan and groan on message boards about how unfair life is and how evil one President was or how bad their nation is, they instead went out and did something and obtained world acclaim because of it. Having said board troll dismiss this persons work is the height of idiocy.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I hope Gene Sharp is on the list. He wrote the book that many followed to revolution: http://www.aeinstein.org/
... now back to the bit mines.
Wikileaks also revealed that the nations around Iran hated them and thought that they were going to get them all nuked into a glass parking lot which shut Iran the hell up a couple of months back, so that's a point in their favor.
If WikiLeaks is a profound instrument of peace, then Bradley Manning should be nominated before Julian Assange. The latter published these important documents, through WikiLeaks as well as through the New York Times, Der Spiegel, and The Times of London. Of course, we learned through PGP that by being published widely the chance of censorship is reduced, so WikiLeaks amplifies the exposure and forces the established news sources to pay attention. The downside is that since WikiLeaks is new and shiny and "on a computer," it and Assange are getting more attention than they deserve, while the content is getting less than it deserves.
If Bradley Manning really did obtain the documents and leak them to Assange, as the US government alleges, then he should be given the Peace Prize. If he's convicted. Until then, we'll just continue to torture him.
You have got to be kidding me.
Wikileaks ? LMAO. What a farce the Nobel has become. If anything wikileaks is going to get us into a war with all these internal diplomatic leaks. In no way, shape or form is wikileaks promoting peace in any sense of the word. Unbelievable.
Well, no, I take that back. Nobel giving awards to Obama for thinking about trying to do something (that he never will do) and that other idiot Al Gore proved most reasonable peoples suspicions that the "peace prize" was anything but.
If Bradley Manning really did obtain the documents and leak them to Assange, as the US government alleges, then he should be given the Peace Prize. If he's convicted. Until then, we'll just continue to torture him.
I miss my mod points... You are right Anonymous Coward, the recipient should have been Bradley M. and, optionally, WikiLeaks. It's not uncommon for the people being awarded the Nobel to be in prison.
On a second thought, the Nobel Peace Prize has lost a lot of credibility... you know, with Obama, Kissinger, and all... Perhaps the best thing to do is not to receive it.
I rarely respond to comments. Also, don't ask for clarifications: a brain and Google are faster, believe me!
With the occasional exception in some areas the Nobel prize has long since ceased to stand for anything. Routinely the conditions for winning the prize seem to come down to one of two things: 1) a nominee is a high profile figure and holds a political view compatible with that of the prize committee, 2) the committee has determined that they can use a nominee to make a political statement. And despite evidence to the contrary they seem to continue to hold the delusion that they can affect change by awarding the prize to a particular individual.
Peace is the state describing the opposite of coercion. No more, no less. Where coercion exists, peace does not. Where coercion is absent, there is peace. Politics has nothing to do with it. A political policy isn't what makes peace -- lack of coericon is what makes peace. If government mandates war, but everybody refuses to fight, there is peace. Yes, it is 100% possible to achieve peace without government inteference (and if you open your eyes, more likely as well).
What in the hell is so difficult about that? Stop trying to shoehorn your politics into everything.
nominations for the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize that also includes [...] former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl
As a German, I'm not sure whether I should laugh or cry. Kohl? The Nobel Peace Prize? This guy is a fat, corrupt asshole whose only contribution to the German reunification was being in the right place (=office) at the right time, making empty promises about how great everything'd be, and otherwise fucking up the country by creating a huge amount of deficit (even int the 8 years he was in office *before* the reunification, mind you).
Nobel Peace Prize: "I'd kill for one of those." - DA Dan Fielding
for some reason you seem to think peace means stasis. i mean, poetically, you could describe a lake as peaceful, if there is no wind blowing. or a farm, if the farming duties there are carried out repetitiously and without difficulty or drama. but no one is going to give a peace prize to a peaceful lake or a peaceful farm, so your use of the word peace as applied to the idea of a peace prize is absurd, completely out of context
we limit ourselves to a definition of peace to the meaning of the word peace in a peace PRIZE, or we aren't saying anything useful at all. right?
so we are talking about a subject matter that is at one time a matter of conflict, and then ceases to be a matter of conflict, due to the efforts of someone who is said to deserve a peace prize. how do you go about arbitrating the terms of the end of a war, or any conflict? how? with politics, that's how. therefore, it is completely impossible to talk about a peace prize without talking about politics. the very essence of what it means to make peace is a political process
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
If you are giving it to Wikileaks, it's only fair Bradley Manning gets the Nobel. He was the one who made it all available to him, and he is suffering in obscurity while Assange contemplates book deals and becomes an international darling of the media and people in the know. He also is the one who actually broke the law, and that needs to be acknowledged as well as transparency. Plus, it would force a spotlight on his treatment.
the Inanimate Carbon Rod!
It would be nice to have someone win who has actually done something, unlike when Obama won before he'd been in office for a month.
Oh great,
Julien Assange gets nominated for times man of the year and politicians suggest we kill hium
WikiLeaks is up for the NPP and we want to make viewing it illegal
The internet is up for the NPP and (obviously) cooler than the other side of your pillow and we might royally bollocks up Nuetrality
Goddamn it, soon North Korea is going to call us and be like, wtf guys quit being such assholes. If that happens I am making an Obama loking at things blog
sig loading.......
If we are going to nominate conceptual things, why not go big and just nominate "Peace" for the Peace Prize?
The Nobel panel lost all credibility already. Why not give the prize to Lassie for all the times she saved that idiot Timmy when he fell down a well?
I hereby propose the creation of the Nobel Price for the most successful war. The length of the list of candidates for receiving it would be much shorter.
Glad to finally have been nominated, it is long overdue. Now get of my lawn whipper snappers!
If my comment didn't sound as good in your head as it did in mine, then I guess we all know who's to blame
The Nobel Peace Prize should be awarded to Mubarak for stepping down. Undignified and belatedly, yes, but peacefully, without ordering his troops to fire upon the protestors.
Bold decisions such as awarding a no one, who had done nothing a prize that is supposed to celebrate renowned people for their actual accomplishments?