WikiLeaks Nominated For 2011 Nobel Peace Prize 495
mvar writes "Whistle-blower site WikiLeaks has been nominated for the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize by a Norwegian politician who cited its role in freedom of speech, news agency NTB reported Wednesday. 'WikiLeaks is one of this century's most important contributors to freedom of speech and transparency,' parliamentarian Snorre Valen said in his nomination. Valen cited WikiLeaks' role in disclosing the assets of Tunisia's former president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and his nearest family, contributing to the protests that forced them into exile."
Century (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Century (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh and for you more childish types who instantly polarize when Obama is mentioned, grow up. I don't care how nice and decent of a fellow he is. I don't care how much you like him. None of that has anything to do with it. He simply hadn't done anything one way or another for the cause of peace when the prize was awarded to him. There are many people who were more deserving of it than him -- heroes, scientists, doctors, philanthropists, lots of folks who have done much more good. They were all passed up. That's the point.
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I agree that Obama shouldn't have been nominated for the reasons you said.
But it seems like a difficult prize to award. People who do this sort of thing are rare.
Got a list?
Re:Century (Score:5, Informative)
And as the recepient of the prize is supposed to go "to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses."
Wiki leaks certainly didn't do anything to promote fraternity between nations or reduce standing armies or even promote peace.
Re:Century (Score:4, Funny)
For instance, should Truman have got one for Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
It would certainly be in the spirit of Nobel's personal contribution to world peace - better living through high explosives.
Re:Century (Score:5, Insightful)
You have it backwards. (Score:3)
When you recieve something, you feel an obligation to try to uphold it. Obama said himself that he didn't feel like he deserved it, but that he would do his best to live up to it. In many ways, the prize in this instance was meant to serve as a preemptive, "please don't become George W. Bush." That isn't exactly the same as "getting the prize just because he isn't George W. Bush."
Maybe slashdotters are different from normal people, but what would you do if you recieved the Nobel Peace prize? Would it af
Re:You have it backwards. (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd kick Thorbjorn Jagland in the balls for accepting my nomination and then allowing me to win. I'd also give the King of Sweden a wedgie.
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So he got the nobel peace prize for something he was supposed to do? That's retarded.
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So he got the nobel peace prize for something he was supposed to do? That's retarded.
Temporally speaking, it's actually advanced.
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Re:Century (Score:4, Interesting)
I've explained this before: the Nobel Peace Prize was given to Obama specifically for not being George W. Bush!
You just named the qualifications of 7 Billion people.
Where do I pick up my Nobel Peace Prize?
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You weren't happy with your Time Person of the Year, 2006 award?
Re:Century (Score:5, Informative)
To add the superfluousness of the nobel, the irony of the 2009 recipient hosting a dinner for the man who is imprisoning the 2010 winner was lost on the populace.
They told me if I voted for McCain these things would happen.
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what do you seriously expect Mr. Obama to do
Lead.
You're right it's not easy. You're right the situation is complicated. You're right we can't browbeat the Chinese government into treating their people decently. To me, that says the only thing we can realistically do is lead by example. Show the peoples of the world that America still believes in something more than expediency of the moment.
Unfortunately, for far too long, under far too many Presidents, we have done little of that. We coddle dictators as long as they give us something in return. Ch
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You can see how the prize has become nothing more than a tool for political leverage -- albeit very poorly. This is true even when you consider the more recent recipient Liu Xiaobo. While he may be deserving of the prize, it is hard to ignore the political aspect -- i.e. getting China to make changes with respect to human rights. It almost feels as though this was actually the real intent of the prize, and that Liu Xiaobo was a nominee who happened to be an appropriate face for the prize.
In the years before
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Some might say the prize was devalued when it was given to warmongers. Some might say the award was given as an encouragement, to try and influence his path.
Re:Century (Score:5, Insightful)
The Nobel Peace Prize means absolutely nothing now. It was blatantly given to someone who had not earned it and did not deserve it, and that person is Henry Kissinger. While in office, he did very little to promote peace, and often actively promoted war. It's clear that this once-lofty prize has become infected and tainted by the very politics and cronyism that has corrupted most other institutions. So yeah, this is a nice gesture, but it's just a token one with no real meaning.
Oh and for you more childish types who instantly polarize when Kissinger is mentioned, grow up. I don't care how nice and decent of a fellow he is. I don't care how much you like him. None of that has anything to do with it. He simply hadn't done anything for the cause of peace when the prize was awarded to him. There are many people who were more deserving of it than him -- heroes, scientists, doctors, philanthropists, lots of folks who have done much more good. They were all passed up. That's the point.
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The one who sounds polarized here is yourself bud. So you imply that anyone who responds in disagreement with you is "immature", ie you are right, end of story. Sounds like you might be the one needing some more years of fermenting.
As for your assertion that Obama receiving the prize is somehow absurd, I would have to disagree. The Obama campaign and his work leading to his election was one of the most positive things to happen in the world at that time, most specificially in generating a positve image for
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Who's getting nominated now?
Re:Century (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Century (Score:4, Insightful)
It's done far more than Barak Obama, and I believe that should qualify.
Re:Century (Score:4, Informative)
Go back to that page. Find a timeline, or a list of things with dates attached. Filter them for those that have actually had an impact on world peace. Now, of those, how many happened before he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize? He took office on the 20th of January, and was awarded the prize on the 10th of December, but the nominations closed on the first of February, meaning he'd been in office for less than two weeks before he was nominated and less than a year before he won.
He might deserve a Nobel Peace Prize in a few years. He got one in 2009 for not being George W Bush. Compare this 'achievement' to those of some of the previous winners, like Martin Luther King, Jr., Desmond Mpilo Tutu or Nelson Mandela.
Mind you, since they jointly awarded it to Yasser Arafat, Yitzhak Rabin, and Shimon, for deciding to take a little break from their war it's not had a great deal of credibility.
Re:Century (Score:5, Informative)
What you have said is true. On the other hand, this latest nomination brings the award renewed credibility.
They gave it to the head of a terrorist organization: Yassir Arafat...... they have no credibility, and will never gain any until they revoke his.
Re:Century (Score:4, Insightful)
perspective perspective perspective... I don't believe Yassir Araffat was the head of terrorist organization no more than G. W. Bush was.
I was bought up in India, and countless times in my history books I read how those who bombed the british rule and parliament were heroes, they still are today with countless statues all over the city. Today you call Arafat a terrorist, if Palestine is liberated he will go down as a hero.
Re:Century (Score:5, Insightful)
The question you should ask is when did Yassir Arafat every do anything that resulted in a lasting peace? He certainly had opportunities, but he always ended up walking away from them. A lasting peace would have made him irrelevant.
Re:Century (Score:5, Insightful)
You forgot to mention Nelson Mandela - a 'terrorist'. Funny that you didn't bring him up.
Re:Century (Score:5, Insightful)
What you have said is true. On the other hand, this latest nomination brings the award renewed credibility.
They gave it to the head of a terrorist organization: Yassir Arafat...... they have no credibility, and will never gain any until they revoke his.
Feh, Arafat was a dilettante, Henry Kissinger bombed an entire country [wikimedia.org] illegally and they still gave him a Nobel Prize.
Re:Century (Score:5, Informative)
The touchpoint for Tunisia was not Wikileaks, but a young, college-educated man trying to earn a meager living for his family through selling vegetables from a cart because he could find no other job. He didn't have the money to pay the bribes necessary to get a permit, and the police took away his only means of earning a living. On top of the confiscation, and because he refused to pay a bribe to get the cart back, the police assaulted him and insulted his family. When he went to protest, he was ignored, so he went and got some flammable liquid, doused himself with it, and ignited it. Demonstrations started shortly after this, and the police cracked down on them, escalating the demonstration to riots. It spiraled from there.
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Nobel Prize candidates must be living. The young man died of his burns in early January.
Re:Century (Score:5, Informative)
Norman Borlaug, 1970.
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Linus Pauling, 1962
Joseph Rotblat, 1995
holy cow. (Score:2)
in the respect of PEACE price, it doesnt matter whether they were cooks, machinists, or jugglers - they received them for their ACTIVISM as PERSONS.
example : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus_Pauling#Activism [wikipedia.org]
Pauling had been practically apolitical until World War II, but the aftermath of the war and his wife's pacifism changed his life profoundly, and he became a peace activist. During the beginning of the Manhattan Project, Robert Oppenheimer invited him to be in charge of the Chemistry division of the project, but he declined, not wanting to uproot his family. He did work on other projects that had military applications such as explosives, rocket propellants, an oxygen meter for submarines and patented an armor piercing shell and was awarded a Presidential Medal of Merit.[37][38] In 1946, he joined the Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists, chaired by Albert Einstein.[39] Its mission was to warn the public of the dangers associated with the development of nuclear weapons. His political activism prompted the U.S. State Department to deny him a passport in 1952, when he was invited to speak at a scientific conference in London.[40][41] His passport was restored in 1954, shortly before the ceremony in Stockholm where he received his first Nobel Prize. Joining Einstein, Bertrand Russell and eight other leading scientists and intellectuals, he signed the Russell-Einstein Manifesto in 1955.[42] In 1958, Pauling joined a petition drive in cooperation with the founders of the St. Louis Citizen's Committee for Nuclear Information (CNI). This group, headed by Washington University professors Barry Commoner, Eric Reiss, M. W. Friedlander, and John Fowler, set up a study of radioactive strontium-90 in the baby teeth of children across North America. The "Baby Tooth Survey," headed by Dr. Louise Reiss, demonstrated conclusively in 1961 that above-ground nuclear testing posed significant public health risks in the form of radioactive fallout spread primarily via milk from cows that had ingested contaminated grass.[43][44][45] Pauling also participated in a public debate with the atomic physicist Edward Teller about the actual probability of fallout causing mutations.[46] In 1958, Pauling and his wife presented the United Nations with the petition signed by more than 11,000 scientists calling for an end to nuclear-weapon testing. Public pressure and the frightening results of the CNI research subsequently led to a moratorium on above-ground nuclear weapons testing, followed by the Partial Test Ban Treaty, signed in 1963 by John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev. On the day that the treaty went into force, the Nobel Prize Committee awarded Pauling the Nobel Peace Prize, describing him as "Linus Carl Pauling, who ever since 1946 has campaigned ceaselessly, not only against nuclear weapons tests, not only against the spread of these armaments, not only against their very use, but against all warfare as a means of solving international conflicts."[47] The Committee for Nuclear Information was never credited for its significant contribution to the test ban, nor was the ground-breaking research conducted by Dr. Reiss and the "Baby Tooth Survey". The Caltech Chemistry Department, wary of his political views, did not even formally congratulate him. They did throw him a small party, showing they were more appreciative and sympathetic toward his work on radiation mutation. At Caltech he founded Sigma Xi's (The Scientific Research Society) chapter at the school, as he had previously been a member of that organisation. He continued his peace activism in the following years co-founding the International League of Humanists in 1974. He was president of the scientific advisory board of the World Union for Protection of Life and also one of the signers of the Dubrovnik-Philadelphia Statement. Many of Pauling's critics, including scientists who appreciated the contributions that he had made in chemistry, disagreed with his political positions and saw him as a naive spokesman for Soviet communism. He was ordered to appear before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, which termed him "the number one scientific name in virtually every major activity of the Communist peace offensive in this country." A headline in Life magazine characterized his 1962 Nobel Prize as "A Weird Insult from Norway". Pauling was awarded the International Lenin Peace Prize by the USSR in 1970.[48]
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it was given to barack obama, because instead of emphasizing divisions and accumulated (rightful) anger, he chose to express a road of peace, union and collaboration in between races, and managed to successfully bring black and white together during his election campaign. it doesnt matter whether you like him or not, it doesnt matter what our political views are. this was what had happened. and, scientists dont get PEACE prices, fool.
So you're saying that he was eligible for the prize because he was a black man who got white people to vote for him? That's not peace, that's political success. Whether it has a long lasting affect on race relations in the US will remain be to be seen (I'm hopeful).
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As far as I could tell, he conducted a very ordinary campaign for a Democratic presidential candidate with the exception of himself being a black dude. This is not particularly noteworthy, and in my opinion, that speaks the loudest.
You mak
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I don't think Al Gore's work on Global Warming deserves derision for being a stretch to tie to peace. If you take AGW as a given, then the connection to peace is pretty straightforward. Doing nothing about AGW = rising sea levels. Rising sea levels = hundreds of millions of displaced, angry people. Hundreds of millions of displaced, angry people = war.
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This is one of the most compelling comments on Slashdot about the century made thus far this decade! (this decade started last month btw)
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I don't know about you, but the decade started for me a year and one month ago.
No, I'm just kidding. Of course that doesn't make any sense. It actually started in mid-June, 2009.
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I second - but... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I second - but... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:I second - but... (Score:5, Funny)
. . . and he was never heard from again.
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Re:I second - but... (Score:5, Funny)
Can I have his IPv4 address?
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I'm with you! Anonymously!
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Damn it!
DDoS BREAK SMASH BURN RIOT FUN! (Score:3)
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Well they already gave it to the far more destructive and malevolent Mark Zuckerberg...whoever's most influential by whatever means gets the prize, those are the rules...
Just great (Score:5, Funny)
If Wikileaks has been nominated, does that mean the actual prize going to be won by Mark Zuckerberg?
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I agree; I thought Nobel Prizes could only be awarded to individuals, which appears to indicate Assange even if he is just a figurehead. As he said on Saturday Night Live,
What are the differences between Mark Zuckerberg and me? I give private information on corporations to you for free, and I’m a villain. Zuckerberg gives your private information to corporations for money and he’s Man of the Year.
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What an ugly move to discredit wikileaks (Score:3, Interesting)
Just look who got that one before.
Re:What an ugly move to discredit wikileaks (Score:4, Informative)
Just look who got that one before.
2010 - LIU XIAOBO for his long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China.
2009 - BARACK OBAMA for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.
2008 - MARTTI AHTISAARI for his important efforts, on several continents and over more than three decades, to resolve international conflicts.
2007 - INTERGOVERNMENTAL PANEL ON CLIMATE CHANGE (IPCC) and ALBERT ARNOLD ( AL) GORE JR. for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change.
2006 - MUHAMMAD YUNUS and GRAMEEN BANK for their efforts to create economic and social development from below.
2005 - INTERNATIONAL ATOMIC ENERGY AGENCY and MOHAMED ELBARADEI for their efforts to prevent nuclear energy from being used for military purposes and to ensure that nuclear energy for peaceful purposes is used in the safest possible way.
2004 - WANGARI MAATHAI for her contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace
2003 - SHIRIN EBADI for her efforts for democracy and human rights
2002 - JIMMY CARTER JR., former President of the United States of America, for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development
2001- UNITED NATIONS & KOFI ANNAN, United Nations Secretary General
2000 - KIM DAE JUNG for his work for democracy and human rights in South Korea and in East Asia in general, and for peace and reconciliation with North Korea in particular.
1999 - DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS (MÉDECINS SANS FRONTIÈRES), Brussels, Belgium.
1998 - JOHN HUME and DAVID TRIMBLE for their efforts to find a peaceful solution to the conflict in Northern Ireland.
1997 - INTERNATIONAL CAMPAIGN TO BAN LANDMINES (ICBL) and JODY WILLIAMS for their work for the banning and clearing of anti-personnel mines.
1996 - The prize was awarded jointly to: CARLOS FELIPE XIMENES BELO and JOSE RAMOS-HORTA for their work towards a just and peaceful solution to the conflict in East Timor.
1995 - The prize was awarded jointly to: JOSEPH ROTBLAT and to the PUGWASH CONFERENCES ON SCIENCE AND WORLD AFFAIRS for their efforts to diminish the part played by nuclear arms in international politics and in the longer run to eliminate such arms.
1994 - The prize was awarded joinly to: YASSER ARAFAT , Chairman of the Executive Committee of the PLO, President of the Palestinian National Authority. SHIMON PERES , Foreign Minister of Israel. YITZHAK RABIN , Prime Minister of Israel. for their efforts to create peace in the Middle East.
1993 - The prize was awarded jointly to: NELSON MANDELA Leader of the ANC. FREDRIK WILLEM DE KLERK President of the Republic of South Africa.
1992 - RIGOBERTA MENCHU TUM, Guatemala. Campaigner for human rights, especially for indigenous peoples.
1991 - AUNG SAN SUU KYI, Burma. Oppositional leader, human rights advocate.
1990 - MIKHAIL SERGEYEVICH GORBACHEV , President of the USSR, helped to bring the Cold War to an end.
1989 - THE 14TH DALAI LAMA (TENZIN GYATSO) , Tibet. Religious and political leader of the Tibetan people.
Clearly a wretched hive of scum and villainy... if you're a conservative.
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Wonder why they never put Gandhi on that list.
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Wonder why they never put Gandhi on that list.
He never won, but he was nominated five times [nobelprize.org] with the last nomination coming days before he was murdered.
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2010 LIU XIAOBO - ardent supporter of President Bush's wars. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liu_xiabo#Political_views [wikipedia.org]
2009 BARACK OBAMA - escalator of Bush's wars, clearly has made them his own.
1919 Woodrow Wilson - drug the US into the first world war based on lies, despite running on keeping US out.
1925 Austen Chamberlain - British war imperialist who opposed Irish independence.
Charles Gates Dawes - For his collecting war reparations from Germany
Lots o
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No kidding.
2008 - MARTTI AHTISAARI - Who spent every single day from 1994 to 2000 seeking out and destroying molecular Oxygen, leaving behind poisonous Carbon Dioxide in its place.
2002 - JIMMY CARTER JR., - A man who confessed to murdering millions of members of the arachis hypogaea family, and who has somehow avoided being tried for his crimes so far.
It just gets worse the deeper you dig. Even the 14th Dalai Lama scores 800 milihitlers on the evilometer for his part in the mysterious deaths of his thi
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I wonder if, if they win, the U.S. will boycott like the Chinese did last year. It would be worth over-inflating Assange's ego just to see that epic level of hypocrisy on display.
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Clearly a wretched hive of scum and villainy... if you're a conservative.
I'm pretty sure they were talking about 1973 when Henry Kissinger won the award.
Yes, there was a damn dirty shame. Especially with people like Roméo Dallaire [wikipedia.org] never getting any recognition.
Wow (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm sure this will be suppressed somehow, but this is quite appropriate in my opinion.
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>>>I'm sure this will be suppressed somehow
You mean like how China refused to let the Nobel prize winner go to his own ceremony? Maybe between now and then, the US will arrest Assange and do the same thing. That would truly be ironic.
(US acting like China).
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This blows my mind for sheer paranoia.
So I think the notion that it'll be suppressed is a wee bit silly. Once it's out there, it's out there!
* and apparently the ordered list tag no longer works, or at least not in preview.
Obama vs Wikileaks (Score:2, Redundant)
They would deserve it more than Obama, which doesn't necessarily imply that they'd deserve it.
Wait a minute... (Score:3)
Van Halen cited WikiLeaks' role in disclosing the assets of Tunisia's former president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and his nearest family, contributing to the protests that forced them into exile
But I'm pretty sure they don't have the credentials to nominate someone for a Nobel Prize...
A nonstory (Score:5, Informative)
In 2010, 237 nominations were made for the Peace Prize, 38 of which were organizations. While it's of some apparent interest that Wikileaks got a nomination, it is one of many and nomination is open to a lot of people.
Re:A nonstory (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:A nonstory (Score:4, Insightful)
Person 1: Why did you shoot your dog?
Person 2: Someone was bitten by a rabid dog.
1: The rabid dog was in another city, that was your pet.
2: Well, at least I did something about the rabid dog problem.
Sometimes doing something isn't better than doing nothing.
Worthless (Score:2, Informative)
Why would anyone care about the Nobel Peace Prize? It's worthless.They gave it to Obama, before he even did anything, who has gone on to escalate wars, both military and economic.
Frankly, I would turn down such a prize. It no longer stands for anything.
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They gave it to Obama, before he even did anything
In fairness, they really gave it to the idea of Obama [artvoice.com] much more so than to Obama himself. And really, the idea of Obama is what many people voted for, while in the end we have all received for president the man Obama.
The Nobel Peace Prize is a joke (Score:2, Insightful)
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Here's a hint: in most parts of the world, Wikileaks is celebrated without "but"s or "if"s . Just because your country in particular is different doesn't mean much in the overall picture. The fact that it Wikileaks generates controversy in your country says more about your country than Wikileaks.
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...and the wisdom of the crowd is always right, then? I'm going to go re-read 1984 with that in mind.
The reason Wikileaks generates controversy in the US is that there is diversity of opinion here. We aren't all of one mind on a huge number of issues.
I personally think that what Assange did is fine (he's a civilian), and the soldier who broke just about every opsec-related rule there is should be court-martialed, but that's not the topic.
The question of whether Wikileaks deserves a nomination focuses narr
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...and the wisdom of the crowd is always right, then?
Depends on the crowd.
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That we can openly debate things?
No.
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Here's a hint: in most parts of the world, Wikileaks is celebrated without "but"s or "if"s
So group think and no diversity. OK.
No, not group think, Sherlock. Many non-US societies don't actually accuse people of treason for disclosing the truth. In some places, they actually applaud it.
The fact that a society might feel that its people don't deserve to know what its actual foreign policy is, or how its wars are prosecuted, is nothing to be particularly proud of.
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Correction: Obama was rewarded the peace prize in 2009.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_Peace_Prize_laureates [wikipedia.org]
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The last prize was given to a man (Obama) as a tool to promote peace...
Actually the last prize was given to Liu Xiaobo.
The prize for Obama... I'm mixed. I think his rhetoric and election message was a genuine force for world peace, even though he wasn't president and hadn't done anything policy-wise. He was an advocate for peace, and that message reached and affected a lot of people.
I don't necessarily know that he was the single most significant advocate for peace of the year... but I don't begrudge him th
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This is a quote taken from my local newspaper, by Raj Patel on American discontent with President Obama.
"A lot of us thought of him as the pizza delivery guy of change, where we would sit on our couches and he would being hot, steaming change in 30 minutes."
Which leads me to think, cultures and civilization can be easily destroyed by the drop of a bomb, to rebuild that will take time.
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Here, now you can read past the first sentence and properly respond to the OP:
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He is probably in China, and therefore does not know that the last Nobel peace prize was given to a "terrorist" under house arrest for the unthinkable crime of handing out leaflets that were not 100% supportive of his glorious leaders.
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In Totally Unrelated News... (Score:5, Funny)
Absurd (Score:2)
Makes sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Since they've already given out two Nobel Peace Prizes for "not being George W Bush" (Gore and Obama) stands to reason a third would be in order.
Man, just think how awful of a President you have to be that people get prizes for being the exact opposite of you.
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Obama is hardly the exact opposite of Bush. He has slightly darker skin and curlier hair, but most of his actual policy is aligned with Bush to within a few percent.
"ONE" of this century's contributors ? (Score:3, Insightful)
and no, cryptome, unfortunately, didnt mean shit.
first, they didnt have any success in bringing the issues to the masses into mass media - they never went into danger and publicity like wikileaks did, so it was easy for mainstream media to totally ignore them - just like how they totally kept public in the dark about acta, if you want an example -
and,
they were inflitrated by nsa right at the start :
http://bsd.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1910704&cid=34556662 [slashdot.org]
rendering them totally ineffective.
I'd nominate Mark Zuckerberg & Jack Dorsey (Score:2)
If it weren't for them, the events going on in the mid-east right now wouldn't happen.
There, I said it. Agreed?
Meaningless. (Score:5, Insightful)
Whatever you might think about WikiLeaks' contributions to free speech politics, government transparency, etc., it's hard to see how it's filled any of those criteria. The release of diplomatic cables arguably did a lot to damage fraternity between nations.
Of course, as others have observed, it seems to have been some time since the letter of Nobel's will has meant anything to the Peace Prize committee.
Re:Meaningless. (Score:5, Insightful)
The release of diplomatic cables arguably did a lot to damage fraternity between nations.
The release of other things did a lot of good.
The release of the diplomatic cables did not end the world, and while the governments were embarrassed the actual people I think have been brought together by the frank disclosure that their leaders were being duplicitous jerks. (We all knew this all along, of course. But just putting it out in the open still makes a difference.
Re:Meaningless. (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think even Wikileaks would suggest that their mission directly entails the reduction of standing armies, the promotion of peace congresses, or fostering fraternity between nations. Their claimed purposes have more to do, again, with transparency, free speech, and public accountability. Those are all good things, but they are not the principles on which Nobel originally wanted the prize awarded.
The fact that there is no Nobel Prize awarded for good work in advancing free speech principles does not mean the criteria for awarding an existing prize should be distorted just so we can give a shout out to some entity whose political aims we like or agree with. Unfortunately, this is more or less what the Peace Prize has become--an amorphous love letter from the Nobel Committee to whoever happens to be doing what they like at the moment.
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Only if you see fraternity between nations as the interactions between their governments. The people of those nations, on the other hand, may get along much better as a result.
Humiliate abusive governments, make it obvious what they do. Both the US Federal Government and its meddling in the affairs of other nations and the oppressive governments of the middle east. Maybe then we can come to an understanding without wort
Forget about it (Score:3)
...the winner has already been leaked, and WL was not it.
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Mother Teresa? That woman who said that it's good for people to suffer physically, because that way they connect to God?
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Premise 1: The Nobel Peace Prize is to be awarded to the person who "...shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses."
Premise 2: Wikileaks is a whistleblowing site.
Premise 3: "Secret secrets are no fun. Secret secrets hurt someone."
Argument: Wikileaks reveal secrets. Secrets discourage "fraternity between nations", specifically between nations that aren't privy to the secrets.
Re:Peace? (Score:4, Insightful)
Assuming your premises are all correct, Bradley Manning should be receiving the Peace Prize, since, you know, he's the one who put his ass on the line to steal those documents and expose the secrets. Without PFC Manning and people like him, Assange would just be an obnoxious misogynist with a web site.
While we're at it, let's give Random House Publishing the Nobel prize for Literature, too. That book they published this year was REALLY good!