9 ms·
Edward Snowden nominated for Nobel peace prize
- informatimago 13y agoThe Norwegian Nobel Committee is composed of five members appointed by the Storting (Norwegian Parliament). The Committee's composition reflects the relative strengths of the political parties in the Storting, and is assisted by specially appointed expert advisers.
- Tloewald 13y agoHe certainly deserves it more than Obama (let's not mention Kissinger).
- Nux 13y agoYep, they should take it back from Obama and give it to Snowden.
- heelhook 13y agoFortunately its not about who deserves it more than whom, (theoretically) its about who deserves it the most (although, imho, that's hardly ever the case).
- Numberwang 13y agoAt the time he got it he and Putin deserved it. Had he not gotten it then, he would def. not deserve it now after all the horrible decisions he's made since.
- mushfiq 13y agoFrankly speaking I dont think any one can give "valid" explanation why Obama won it!
- sigzero 13y agoThere is no valid reason, that is why.
- znowi 13y agoObama's prize was more of a credit for good deeds in the future. Jagland himself (Nobel committee chairman) partly confirmed that. Sadly, it didn't work out. Rather backfired.
- ekianjo 13y agoexcept that obama kept the million dollar prize. since he didnt return it id call that stealing.
- icebraining 13y ago"Kept" is a rather strange way of saying "donated to charity".
- ekianjo 13y agoWell he shouldn't even dispose of the money the way he wants if he did not deserve it.
- seferphier 13y agothe ability to sell 'hope' and 'change' is a powerful one.
- angersock 13y agoWhat's wrong with good ole' Hank?
- lclemente 13y ago2009 - Obama 2014 - Snowden That would certainly be something ;)
- return0 13y ago2015: Putin It's like they are giving the Emmys to the actors of some weird worldwide soap opera.
- daemonk 13y agoWhen did the Nobel peace prize become the "most-influential" prize.
- hessenwolf 13y agoI assume it must have been before it lost the status when they gave it to a guy who had yet to do anything, other than give some captivating speeches... so... several minutes sometime?
- aestra 13y agoNo way, it was always a joke. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Peace_Prize#Criticism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Peace_Prize#Criticism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Prize_controversies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Prize_controversies
- Shish2k 13y ago> a guy who had yet to do anything Thus making him infinitely more peaceful than every other major politician of the era :P (If by "major politician" you mean "American president", and by "era" you mean "2001-2010". Which actually is what most people mean, AFAICT...)
- hessenwolf 13y agoLet's scale it by how long he had been in power by that time...
- scrrr 13y agoWho says it's the 'most-influential' prize?
- lechevalierd3on 13y agoWhen Obama got it before he had a chance to do something to deserve it.
- icantthinkofone 13y agoAnybody can get nominated. Being seriously considered is more important.
- codecondo 13y agoHe did open the eyes for many, he clearly was 'sent' here to do just that. Who else?
- chao- 13y agoWouldn't be a bad consolation for being passed over as the TIME person of the year.
- praptak 13y agoWhile I'm fond of any form of flipping the NSA-backing US administration the bird, the Nobel Peace prize has not enough reputation to matter in this context. Al Gore got it for raising awareness of climate change. Obama got that for not being Bush. Even if Snowden gets it, it doesn't really matter.
- thomasfl 13y ago> Obama got that for not being Bush That's probably what he's is going to be remembered for. Poor guy.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- brazzy 13y agoThere are a whole lot of worse things one might be remembered for. Being Bush, for one.
- ItendToDisagree 13y agoOr being the guy who 'legitimized' the drone war and killing of American citizens without a trial. Institutionalizing the president's power to decide who dies under the "disposition matrix" (kill list). Note: Not saying Anwar al-Awlaki was a good guy, or blameless, or anything of the sort. But it is still killing an American citizen from afar without so much as a thought of a trial.
- CWuestefeld 13y agoI'm with you, right up to the point of "an American citizen". As I see it, the right to a speedy jury trial, etc., don't come from being a citizen. These things came from the natural rights philosophy that Madison and others viewed the world through when creating our Constitution and Bill of Rights. Hence, the right to a trial comes simply from the fact of being a person. No citizenship or residency required. (I grant that reconciling this with acts of war makes it much more murky)
- patricjansson 13y agoIt would be critisim agains the committee itself, giving it to someone pointing out previous laureates as anti-peaceloving.
- Lazare 13y agoSome may find the list of people who can nominate someone for the Nobel peace prize interesting. From their website: Members of national assemblies and governments of states; Members of international courts; University rectors; professors of social sciences, history, philosophy, law and theology; directors of peace research institutes and foreign policy institutes; Persons who have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize; Board members of organizations that have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize; Active and former members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee; Former advisers to the Norwegian Nobel Committee Most of those are fairly small groups; but "Members of national assemblies and governments of states" is a pretty big chunk of people, and "professors of social sciences, history, philosophy, law and theology" is a simply enormous group of people. As a result, nominations are very meaningless; any third rate history or sociology prof at some podunk community college can nominate someone if they have a mind to, and all sorts of people get nominated, often as a lark or to prove a point. I believe Bush was nominated repeatedly, for example. (Well...nominations are secret, but I know of people who have the ability to nominate, and claimed to have done so, and I don't see why they'd bother to lie, so...) So yes, Snowden was nominated (well, unless these politicians are lying). Honestly, he was probably nominated dozens of times. This isn't news. Also, a couple of left-wing Norwegian politicians like Snowden. Also not news. :) The only real news here is if he wins...
- belorn 13y ago> "professors of social sciences, history, philosophy, law and theology" is a simply enormous group of people. It used to be that professor status was very regulated. In Sweden prior to 1993, a professor title was granted by the government, and in practice one could only become a professor if such role was currently unfilled. Was the Noble price nomination rules created before 1993?
- Lazare 13y agoThe rules actually were relaxed in 1993; I'm not sure what they were before that.
- _delirium 13y agoIt's a bit unclear in English nowadays, because in Scandinavian-written academic English, 'professor' sometimes refers only to the formal title Professor, which corresponds to what Americans sometimes call "Full Professor", but in other usages it includes a broader set of faculty. For example the three academic titles in Danish are Professor, Lektor, and Adjunkt, but in recent years their official English translations are Full Professor, Associate Professor, and Assistant Professor, which better reflects how the roles have evolved in practice. So are the latter two included under the term "professors" when a Danish institution writes something in English? Sometimes yes, sometimes no...
- adobriyan 13y agoAttending ceremony will be tricky.
- chippy 13y agoNorway and Russia share a border. So it may be easier than at first glance. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norway%E2%80%93Russia_border http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norway%E2%80%93Russia_border
- Peroni 13y agoI think the comment was intending to highlight the fact that multiple international organisations are trying to arrest Snowden and his appearance at the awards would put him in jeopardy, not that travel logistics might be an issue.
- fit2rule 13y agoWhich international organizations are trying to arrest Snowden? (Only States can do it..)
- coldcode 13y agoMaybe we can get someone to nominate the NSA for the peace prize. Would make for fun commentary.
- valarauca1 13y agoWell theoretically all this global spying and bombing targets from remote controlled airplanes piloted half a world away should be making a safer more peaceful world right?
- hawkharris 13y agoSnowden hasn't officially been nominated. From the article: "The five-member [Nobel] panel will not confirm who has been nominated but those who submit nominations sometimes make them public."
- jebus989 13y agoYou know how the nomination process works right? It won't be officially confirmed until 50 years has passed. See http://www.nobelprize.org/nomination/peace/ http://www.nobelprize.org/nomination/peace/
- corin_ 13y agoThat doesn't mean he hasn't officially been nominated, just that there's no official confirmation of his nomination.
- ck2 13y agoEveryone has already forgotten Pfc. Manning rotting away for 35 years. I saw a "free Snowden" sign the other day which I thought was asinine.
- swalsh 13y agoManning released a bunch of documents, but how did he change the world?
- dferlemann 13y agoFuck the world. He's action is true to himself. For that, I respect the guy.
- ck2 13y agoIf you respect Manning, please stop saying "he" and "guy".
- CWuestefeld 13y agoThis is clearly something that we as a society are going to have to wrestle with. It seems reasonable to me that this person, having XY chromosomes and all the hardware that go with them, may be correctly referred to using masculine pronouns. There's something to be said for respecting the wishes of the individual in how they'd like to be addressed. But there's definitely a point at which that drifts off into absurdity. Just because I can claim descent from Henry VIII doesn't mean that I can reasonably expect people to address me as "lord". So I'm interested in respecting people, but think we need to let this percolate through society first, and determine where to draw reasonable lines, before you accuse someone of disrespect for failing to honor someone's alternate world view.
- umanwizard 13y agoIt seems pretty simple to me. If you ask me to describe my best friend, I might say he's smart, studied this or that in school, speaks such-and-such languages, likes such-and-such music, and so on. His height and weight would be pretty far down the list of things I find important. Similarly, we think of our mind as being our "self" in a much more fundamental way than our toes. If a person is female in their mind but has a male body, it seems very clear that we should consider the former to be their "real" gender. Why should the body matter more or be more fundamental?
- mh_yam 13y agoIf Obama can receive it, then I don't see why not Snowden.
- reuven 13y agoFirst of all, a huge number of people are nominated each year for the Nobel Peace Prize. So the fact that Snowden was nominated doesn't really surprise me; I'm guessing that many activists from around the world are nominated. The list of who can nominate is somewhat restricted -- but given that any member of any parliament, or any social-science professor at any university, can nominate someone, that doesn't strike me as a very high barrier to entry. The bigger question, in my mind, is whether Snowden contributed to world peace. Yes, he clearly unveiled all sorts of schemes that the NSA had. It's a good thing for democracy that he did such things; it's clear that the US government was doing things that it claimed not to be doing, and that US and foreign citizens alike were rather upset to hear. So yes, I'm personally glad to hear that these things were unveiled. However, did this really contribute to world peace? Is the world a less violent place as a result? You could make the argument that it actually is more dangerous in the world, because the US is less able to spy on people. I'm not sure if that's the case, but it's not a totally crazy argument.
- tete 13y agoWell, I guess since even Barack Obama, a president who spreads hatred by not abolishing torture, not ending wars, supporting assassinations, etc. won the Nobel Peace Prize a lot of things are counted. Since the US obviously fights many secret wars and considers everyone but UK; Canada and Australia their enemy unveiling the fact that there are secret wars fought way more intensely than we knew before it is the only possible first step to end it. It at least makes more sense to me than destroying a part of (mostly broken or expired) nuclear weapons. I don't think that the presence or absence of nuclear weapon will ever be a reason for war, maybe a pretense, but that's all.
- reuven 13y agoI actually think that Obama's generally an OK president. (Not that I agree with many of his policies, including those having to do with Guantanamo and drones, mind you.) But I still think it was kind of weird for him to get the Nobel Peace Prize. At the very least, it strikes me as way premature.
- sdaityari 13y agoWouldn't it be ironical if he wins the Nobel just a few years after Obama?
- sleepyK 13y agoWow. The ability of people to only see what they want to see is amazing. So Obama deserved a Nobel Peace prize for running a successful electoral campaign, but Edward Snowden doesn't deserve one for making one of the largest exposés of compromises of individual freedom in the history of the world. Bravo, Americans.
- wanda 13y agoNobel peace prize =! TIME person of the year
- cb_ru 13y agoLet's have a look at how the Norwegian Nobel Committee works, that is, the people in charge of selecting the winners of the Nobel Peace Prize. Currently, the committee is made up of five members, who have to represent the political parties of the Norwegian Parliament. Here is the list of these members : Mr Jagland (for 4 years) Mrs Kullmann Five (10 years) Mrs Ytterhorn (13 years) Mrs Reiss-Andersen (2 years) Mr Stalsett (1 year) Jagland has been a member of the Nobel Committee since 2009. The same year, he was elected Secretary General of the Council of Europe. Note that Norway is part of the Council of Europe, but not of the European Union. Jagland is in favor of the EU, although Norwegian people have voted against joining the EU two times. All of the other members are politicians from national parties. According to Wikipedia, Mrs Kullmann Five is also member of the Board of Directors of Statoil, an oil company which is the largest company in Norway. Mrs Reiss-Andersen is a lawyer, and she has written two novels. Mr Stalsett is the Protestant bishop in Oslo. As we can see, the committee is not a group of international law experts, famous scientists or peace activists. The truth is, it seems the five members of the committee do not have the right profile to be responsible for one of the most important international awards in the world. In fact, an additional person helps the committee to make decisions. Geir Lundestad is the director of the Nobel Institute and has been the "secretary" of the Norwegian Nobel Committee since 1990. He was a researcher in charge of international relations at Harvard for three years, and a researcher at the Woodrow Wilson Center, which is the eleventh biggest think tank in the world (according to the Go-To think tank ranking) with famous members like Hillary Clinton and Arne Duncan. Then, in 1990, Geir Lundestad came back to Norway and became the new secretary of the Nobel Committee, and went on for 23 years. The bottom line is that Geir Lundestad is the real decision-maker. This guy calls the shots, and he will of course not choose Edward Snowden as the next Nobel Peace Prize.
- saosebastiao 13y agoWell it certainly would say something about the value of the NPP if one winner was forced into refugee status in one of the worst human rights violating countries because he couldnt get a fair trial from another NPP winner.
- callesgg 13y agoI partly think the peace is like getting a bucket of piss since the time obama got it.
- philwelch 13y agoObama? Try Arafat or Kissinger.
- kingkawn 13y agoBarack and him will have a good chat at the next nobel winner bbq
- staunch 13y agoAh yes, the BBQ is always so delicious at The Annual Nobel Winner Chicken Dinner.
- etiam 13y agoI was disappointed he didn't win in 2013. If I remember my reading of the rules correctly the members of the Nobel Committee could still have nominated at the point when it was clear what he was revealing and how. Seems like the obvious choice by far for last year. As a relatively minor side benefit, Snowden winning the Peace Prize would be an elegant rebuke to the rulers in the Sixth Eye of Five Eyes - Nobel's birth country of Sweden. I'd like to see that. There are many people that would be eminently eligible to share a Nobel Peace Prize with this sort of motivation though. Only two slots left for the sharing... Bill Binney and Tom Drake? John Kiriakou? Who are the other strong contenders?
- blisterpeanuts 13y agoHear, hear. I would love to see him get the Nobel. I think history will look kindly at Mr. Snowden, while the NSA's activities will be vilified -- assuming we are allowed to learn about those activities and those of us speaking out (or just texting each other about it) aren't fired, denied tenure, or otherwise removed from public view in the Brave New World of total surveillance.
- mironathetin 13y agoThat is a great way to make Snowdens life a little safer.
- richardlblair 13y agoHow interesting. If he wins, he will be obtaining the same award as Obama. That just seems so ironic. You win the same award as the guy who has lied about what the NSA is doing, and what he is willing to do about it.
- codex 13y agoGiven that Snowden has undermined Pax Americana, I find this nomination surprising.
- cordite 13y agoWhat does the peace prize even mean?
- PythonicAlpha 13y agoHe will not get it. Since the real kings of the world will prevent it. They will provide, that more likely a terrorist or mass-murder will get it. Or even somebody that orders unethical kills of people by drones.
- jabits 13y agoHere, Here! In the end, more knowledge will lead to more peace. It sounds hokey, but clandestine infinite historical data storage can only end in disaster.
- lechevalierd3on 13y agoWhat kind of message would it send to the world if the US gouvernement was still trying to put in jail a Nobel peace prize ?
- collyw 13y agoIt's a shame Obama devalued the prize by accepting a it.