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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.
I'm pretty sure that whoever ends up causing the destruction of all the world's armaments overnight will Not be invited to the smoldering ruins of Norway to accept a peace prize...
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.
Did Obama? Did Carter? Did Arafat? Did Sadat? Or Begin?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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 ?
No, but Gore's PowerPoint presentation did.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
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)
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.
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?
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
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.
Everyone pissed himself laughing and was too embarrassed to admit it so they agreed to dismantle their guns in exchange for keeping the story under wraps?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.
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.
Did wikileaks cause the destruction of all the worlds armaments overnight? Did I miss something?
Bob... Bob? Bob, p-put down that lighter, you know you're not allowed to play with matches next to munitions stockpiles! Bob! No, Bob, don't light that fu-
Ceci n'est pas une
He's not megalomaniacal - just misunderstood... ;p
Ceci n'est pas une
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!
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?
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
In no way, shape or form is wikileaks promoting peace in any sense of the word. Unbelievable.
Thank you for expressing your incredulousness, you just said what many people were thinking.
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?