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Edward Snowden Nominated For Nobel Peace Prize
An anonymous reader writes "A Swedish professor of sociology has nominated Snowden for the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize. Giving him the prize would also 'save the Nobel Peace Prize from the disrepute that incurred by the hasty and ill-conceived decision to award U.S. President Barack Obama' the prize, according to professor Stefan Svallfors. He notes ultimately that at great personal cost, 'Edward Snowden has helped to make the world a little bit better and safer.'"
a good idea. This would send a positive message to arrogant governments everywhere.
Smivs on the intertubes!
Adolf Hitler was nominated for the Peace Prize in 1939.
Henry Kissinger got the Nobel Peace Prize for bombing the shit out of Vietnam and Cambodia.
Obama got the Peace Prize doing sweet FA.
The fact that somebody was either nominated for the Peace Prize, or actually won it, does not actually mean much.
I'm still ambivalent about the Snowden case, as I believe many still are. So we're going to compensate the rush to give the award to Obama by rushing to give it to Snowden?
In the words of Valentine Michael Smith, "Waiting is."
" 'save the Nobel Peace Prize from the disrepute that incurred by the hasty and ill-conceived decision to award U.S. President Barack Obama' "
No, it won't.
You're far, far too late on that one.
-Styopa
You couldn't be more wrong. Snowden exposed the unconstitutional (illegal) surveillance by the NSA. IT IS ILLEGAL. The people at the NSA should go to jail and be tried for treason for going against the constitution, and you should go to school to learn these things.
"Not technically illegal".
Gotta love when a justification starts with that one.
hasty and ill-conceived decision to award U.S. President Barack Obama
Because this isn't hasty orill-conceived. This does prove, however, that the Nobel Peace Prize is designed to be awarded to whomever is popular in the news currently before the public forgets them and moves on to the next disaster. Who is next for the Nobel PP? Trayvon Martin? Or is that story already run its course since the trial is over?
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Actually be responsible for bringing peace to the world? Barack Obama didn't do anything to promote peace when he first took office, and Snowden hasn't done anything "yet" to promote peace either. Nothing saying that what he did might not later, but should we not at least wait to see how the drama unfolds first before we award the medal?
Select from tblFriends where interesting >= 4;
Someone should give Obama the "best arming of rebels" award now too just to really rub in how stupid that decision was. Foreigners need to keep their opinions and million dollar prizes out of our elections. Snowden, however, should get one. Well, except that he probably worsened foreign relationships and might actually cause a war. But just on merit, why not?
So the Nobel Peace Prize = "I HATE AMERICA" Prize.
Not really. It's meant to be a prize for making the world more peaceful. Giving it to Obama was nuts, and it's now not clear if this prize has any point any more.
I have bad news for you about that "treason" term you throw around so casually. If you read the _whole_ Constitution instead of just the fashionable parts, you'll find that treason has a very specific definition in Article 3, Section 3. While I agree that the NSA programs are illegal, "the people" {{which ones?}} at NSA didn't meet the definition of treason. Not even close.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
The world isn't better or safer because of what he's done - it might be one day, but for now we're just slightly better informed.
If there was a Nobel prize for good intentions, sure, give him that.
And let's not forget, Snowden didn't do this in the name of safety (certainly not his own). He did it in the name of liberty.
Still, he deserves it a lot more than some.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Is that because "peace" = "hate America" or "America" = "hate peace"?
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You are missing the massive difference between legal and right. In Nazi Germany it was legal to kill Jews if you were employed to do that.
If all you care about is what's legal what do you think your country is turning into?
And the other world powers that have multicultural prime ministers and presidents are ... ? I feel like Obama's Peace Prize was more about transcending race and color finally among the world's super powers. France is super liberal but you'll never seen someone of Algerian descent as their prime minister.
And maybe that proves the point that the color of the your skin really shouldn't matter at all, either when discriminating or when promoting "multiculturalism"? I mean, Obama is just more of the same. They gave him the Nobel Peace Prize because they bought into the whole "hope and change" bandwagon, but then he turned out to be third and fourth terms of Bush.
Why should I care what color the President is, one way or the other?
Forget about the consistution; it doesn't contain an infallible or eternal truth.
Do you think this type of spying is right? If you think it should be forbidden and the law doesn't agree; change the law.
Laws reflect the moral code of it's subjects. Do laws that allow these activities still reflect yours?
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Even better, impeach Obama give Snowden the Presidency, then you'll have a president that ACTUALLY UPHOLDS THE CONSTITUTION.
How is nominating for a peace prize to Edward Snowden interpreted as hatred to America?
Why can't it be equal to saying that 'we're against unauthorized intrusive spying on you're own citizens'?
Why do people need to degenerate this into hate mongering against an entire country rather than what it is. A critic of a part or it's government going rogue?
Well, what criteria do you propose? The content of their character? ROFLOL
And the other world powers that have multicultural prime ministers and presidents are ... ? I feel like Obama's Peace Prize was more about transcending race and color finally among the world's super powers. France is super liberal but you'll never seen someone of Algerian descent as their prime minister.
The major cause of war/unrest in the world isn't skin color, it's religion. I'd be more interested in seeing an openly Atheist president than a black one but I'm not holding my breath on that happening in the USA anytime soon.
No sig today...
Literally thousands of people are nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize every year. Nominating just means someone has sent in a letter suggesting them. Nomination is not in any way noteworthy.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
So the Nobel Peace Prize = "I HATE AMERICA" Prize.
Not really. It's meant to be a prize for making the world more peaceful. Giving it to Obama was nuts, and it's now not clear if this prize has any point any more.
No. Giving it to Obama was controversial. Giving it to Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin, and not giving it to Gandhi, now that was, is and will ever be nuts. Another nuts (read stupid) decision? Giving it to Al Gore while completely ignoring Holocaust savior and survivor Irena Sendler who saved 2,500 Jewish children during WII (acts for which she was detained, tortured, sentenced to death but miraculously survived.)
The Nobel Peace price not about peace. It's about political posturing.
While there's no denying that many wars have been fought under the guise of religion; I'm sure people can make war just fine (and they have in the past) without religion.
Going to an atheist president won't help either. Officially atheist regimes were some of the biggest killers in the last century.
League of Militant Atheists
The Black Book of Communism
The Black Book of Communism - (book review) by Daniel J. Mahoney
The Black Book of Communism is one of those rare books that really matters. It is the first systematic and comparative analysis of the "crimes, terror and repression" that accompanied Communism everywhere and that seemed to define its "genetic code." The book's centerpiece is a relentlessly documented narrative of political violence and repression in the Soviet Union under Lenin and Stalin, drawing on extensive archival materials made available to researchers since the collapse of Communist rule in 1991. But The Black Book also contains absorbing accounts of Communist repression in Eastern Europe, Asia, and the Third World.
The Soviet Story (2008)
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Giving him the prize would also 'save the Nobel Peace Prize from the disrepute that incurred by the hasty and ill-conceived decision to award U.S. President Barack Obama' the prize, according to professor Stefan Svallfors
Save the Nobel Peace Prize from disrepute? Too little too late dumbass. To the Stefan Svallfors of the world, where the hell were you when the Nobel Prize was given to Arafat and Rabin, when it was given to Al Gore over Irena Sendler, or when it was never given to Gandhi?
Svallfor's motion has nothing to do with reputation or morality. It's about political posturing. I'm sure and certain that there are people other than Snowden more deserving of an actual peace price that actually matters. I mean, Snowden was more than willing to go on asylum in Venezuela or Cuba, hardly bastions of democracy and decency. People deserving of a true peace price (Gandhi for instance) would never had contemplated such a cognitive dissonant option, regardless of consequences.
Allow me to dissect your argument and prove why it is entirely irrelevant.
I understand that many might not approve of spying and the NSA, but Snowden was a professional working for them via the contractor Booz Allen.
Who else would know the facts of the program? Who else could provide this information? It had to be somebody "inside". Had these accusations come from some guy on the street they would have been ignored as yet another crackpot conspiracy theory. Whistle-blowing on illegal activities always comes from a man on the inside.
Everyone knows what the NSA is about,
There were long suspicions of "what the NSA is about" but no proof, and the rule of law is that proof is necessary to convict. Prior to Snowden's release, any accusations of mass surveillance of US citizens leveled at the NSA were scoffingly disregarded and without evidence it was impossible to proceed. Thanks to Snowden, these accusations can no longer ignore the accusations (they may ignore the orders to stop, sadly).
but Snowden takes the operational details of the programs and gives them the Russians and Chinese.
Snowden released the details of the illegal and un-Constitutional programs to the /press/. You make it sound as if he snuck up to the Russian ambassador and passed secrets on to only them, which is hardly the case. Yes, the Russians now are aware of the program (most likely, the ones in power who actually worried about such things probably had a good idea of the capability of those programs already anyway, but that's beside the point). But more importantly, the US citizenry know about it as well. Ultimately, they are the only ones who can legally force a change. That other nations may now know of these programs is a side effect and - idealistically - irrelevant anyway. After all, illegal programs should be stopped so any intelligence gained about them becomes useless.
Snowden may be a "traitor" to the /people/ in the NSA, but our loyalty should not lie towards individuals but to the law and ideals that define our nation. Snowden obeyed those principles while other agents turned a blind eye or actively pursued these unconstitutional activities. He's far more a patriot than they.
Oh please, you just sound like a retard who knows nothing outside of the US when making statements like that. And the focus on "race" is also a typical US thing. What about a female president or a gay one or even an atheist one?
Belgium has a gay prime minister who is the son of two Italian immigrants.
Germany has a female chancellor.
Great Britain had a female prime minister decades ago.
I can't count the number of countries that have atheist prime ministers/presidents.
There a dozens of other examples if you care to search for them. None of which make those leaders eligible for a Nobel Peace prize.
Yeah but the US president deserves a nobel peace prize just because he's black? What an achievement!
USA! USA! USA!
You may want to stop drinking the Ghandi koolaid brought to you by Western Civilisation. From what I can tell (which is probably very biased as well), Ghandi isn't seen in some parts of India (Tamil Nadu, in my experience) as the great saviour of the nation as he is hailed by the media in the rest of the world.
He was someone who looked down on a number of castes, was an incredible imperialist, and hence very loyal to the British Empire. He didn't fight apartheid in South Africa because he believed the Whites were wrong, he fought it because he believed "clean Indians" were above "uncivilized races".
http://www.raceandhistory.com/historicalviews/ghandi.htm
http://www.trinicenter.com/WorldNews/ghandi5.htm
http://www.trinicenter.com/oops/gandhi2.html
Also, from Velu Annamalai's recommended readings regarding Gandhi:
Ambedkar, B.R. What Congress and Gandhi Have Done to the Untouchables. Bombay: Thacker, 1945.
Annamalai, Velu. Sergeant-Major M.K. Gandhi. Bangalore: Dalit Sahitya Akadiy, 1995.
Assisi, Francis. "Gandhi's Links with South Africa Examined." India West, 28 Sep 1990: 45.
Assisi, Francis. "Mahatma Gandhi's Links with SA Blacks Questioned." News India, 28 Sep 1990: 1.
Assisi, Francis. "Two New Books on Gandhiji." India West, 28 Sep 1990: 45.
Das, Nani Gopal. Was Gandhiji a Mahatma? Calcutta: Dipali Book House, 1988.
Edwards, Michael. The Myth of the Mahatma. London: Constable, 1986.
Gandhi, Mohandas K. Untouchability. Edited by Bharatan Kumarappa. Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House, 1954.
Grenier, Richard. The Gandhi Nobody Knows. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1983.
Grenier, Richard. "The Gandhi Nobody Knows." Commentary (Mar 1983): 59-72.
Huq, Fazlul. Gandhi: Saint or Sinner? Foreword by V.T. Rajshekar. Bangalore: Dalit Sahitya Akadiy, 1991.
Kapur, Sudarshan. Raising Up a Prophet: The African-American Encounter with Gandhi. Boston: Beacon Press, 1992.
Rajshekar, V.T. Hinduism, Fascism and Gandhism: A Guide to Every Intelligent Indian. Bangalore: Dalit Sahitya Akadiy, 1984.
Rajshekar, V.T. Why Godse Killed Gandhi? Bangalore: Dalit Sahitya Akadiy, 1986.
Rajshekar, V.T. Clash of Two Values: Mahatma Gandhi and Babasaheb Ambedkar (The Verdict of History). Bangalore: Dalit Sahitya Akadiy, 1989.
The major cause of war/unrest in the world isn't skin color, it's money.
FTFY.
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
"Religion".
I don't think you understand what that word means, yet like so many religious people, try to spread it around to every context to poison any argument.
Also, of course there are a lot of militant atheists out there. The same way there are/were a lot of militant "black people" out there. Guess what? When people trod all over you, threaten you, treat you like second class citizens, and impose their will (via legislation and political power) on you -- you're probably going to be a tad mother fucking militant.
"Stop being intolerant of my intolerance you assholes! C'mon guys!"
Yeah but the US president deserves a nobel peace prize just because he's black? What an achievement!
To be fair, I think it was actually because he isn't Bush.
No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun
"Freedom of speech is a principal pillar of a free government; when this support is taken away, the constitution of a free society is dissolved, and tyranny is erected on its ruins. Republics and limited monarchies derive their strength and vigor from a popular examination into the action of the magistrates.
"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Maybe the PATRIOT ACT has made you think these kinds of writings are particularly unamerican? Or you could just accept the fact that Snowden's acts are just as american as were the actions of founding fathers of the United States; who were also temporarily considered traitors.
...and I'm sure, all over the world, Edward Snowden has a higher approval rating than NSA.
Also consider that now Snowden has higher approval rating than... US Congress and Barack Obama
Now, how were you supposed "to institute a new Government"? Oh you can't. And if you'd even become interested about it the government would know about it; thanks to PRISM.
"whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."
I think Snowden is well worth one Nobel Peace Prize.
The only people who hate America, are those who would destroy the values outlined in the Bill of Rights. People like Snowden who act to protect the Bill of Rights, are patriots and heros. People who support the US no matter what it does, wrong or right, are mere amoral sociopathic nationalists.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Yeah but the US president deserves a nobel peace prize just because he's black? What an achievement!
To be fair, I think it was actually because he isn't Bush.
That assessment turned out to be somewhat incorrect.
Just want to point out that most of the comments here are comparing this to Obama's award. Snowden has been NOMINATED but not awarded. It turns out a fairly large number of people have the ability to nominate recipients: http://www.nobelprize.org/nomination/peace/index.html
This really isn't news. It's more comment trolling by slashdot -- and they've been doing a very good job of it lately.
You completely missed the point that was made.
When you persecute people and infringe upon them, it is necessary for their own good and their own existence to push back. Do you think gay people like spending so much of their life fighting for gay rights and equal treatment under the Constitution and the safety of not being beat to death on the street for simply being gay? Or do you think they would rather just have the equality and the safety of every other human being and carry on with the rest of their life?
Those "uppity gays" and "uppity negroes" and "militant atheists" that religious people usually say "should just shut the fuck up if they don't believe, because then it doesn't concern them" are "uppity" and "militant" precisely because they have to be active in fighting against the way they are treated, dismissed, and impacted by those who are intolerant.
Of course, not everyone can afford the time or personal/professional risk of being militant. Thankfully, there are those that make it their life-long cause to do that for the rest of them.
It is also hypocritical to call people "militant" who are just standing up for their rights and pushing back against your imposition upon society. I would say the "militant" ones are those who are using law and mob-rule to impose their religion upon politics, government, education, law, and all of society. Making comments about people being "animals" based on the tone of their skin or suggesting we should murder them so they "can meet their maker and find out how wrong they are about religion". THAT is militant.
It's a rather perverse and sick tactic to push and bully someone pretty much forever and then, when they stand up for themselves, shout "he's being intolerant of me!" (or, in some cases, trying to discredit lack of belief by claiming it is as much a religion as belief -- when it is the non-existence of belief and nothing more).
I imagine there were a lot of dudes, like yourself, back in the 1960s talking about how "all them negroes are actin' like nutjobs with all that marchin' and militant sitting in the front of the bus and drinking from white fountains and shit". (I am not trying to implicate you as a racist or anything, but am just drawing parallels between the attitude and terms exhibited by those in multiple situations to dismiss, diminish, and denigrate other segments of society who are actively demanding fair treatment).