Snowden Nominated For Freedom of Thought Prize 212
First time accepted submitter DigitalKhaos23 writes "Snowden is a candidate for the European Parliament's Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, named after Soviet scientist and dissident Andrei Sakharov, which honors people or organizations for their work in the defense of human rights and freedom of thought. The article adds: 'Edward Snowden risked his life to confirm what we had long suspected regarding mass online surveillance, a major scandal of our times. He revealed details of violations of EU data protection law and fundamental rights.'"
Lets give him Obama's Nobel Prize (Score:5, Insightful)
It wouldn't be a problem (Score:5, Insightful)
That's why we don't want the NSA to have this power. Because as far as we can tell, the abuses have been more harmful than any benefits for catching terrorists (and really, the programs don't seem to have caught many terrorists).
Yes. And. But. (Score:5, Insightful)
Something about the irony of these prizes:
They're awarded to the people who are still going to be destroyed for what they've done for humanity while the monsters perpetrating the obscenities against us all are going completely fucking unscathed. The villains are allowed to continue their gross abuses while we give the human equivalent of a gold star sticker to the guy who couldn't not scream.
This surveillance stuff is nothing (Score:3, Insightful)
I want to hear about the medical experiments being performed on prisoners, the serums and electrodes and soft pillows and comfortable chairs [wikimedia.org]
Re:Lets give him Obama's Nobel Prize (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree 100%. He's done more for liberty in the USA than any politician has done in 50 years. he's actually managed to push surveillance as a topic of conversation at the average american's dinner table. That alone is an excellent achievement, nevermind the rest he has done.
Don't Forget Jimmy Carter (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Lets give him Obama's Nobel Prize (Score:2, Insightful)
He's done more for liberty in the USA than any politician has done in 50 years.
Except that what he has done is being largely ignored by most of "my fellow Americans", in the Nixon sense of the word.
Most Americans are more concerned about what the Kardashians are up to, and not what the NSA is up to.
Re:I wonder... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Don't Forget Jimmy Carter (Score:5, Insightful)
Considering the last 50 years, I rate Jimmy Carter and his Carter Center very highly, though a big percentage of his good work has been done after his political career ended in 1981.
Carter is a great former president, Obama was a great future president.
Time to find a good incumbent.
Re:I wonder... (Score:5, Insightful)
how a prize named after Andrei Sakharov is gonna go over with Snowden's landlord, a veteran of the KGB that tormented Andrei Sakharov.
The same way that landlord can live with an avenue in Moscow name after Sakharov [google.com].
Or... you think that avenue is under risk of being tormented too?
Re:Yes. And. But. (Score:5, Insightful)
The real irony of this particular prize and nomination is that it's named after a Russian that wanted to flee to the West to escape the oppression in Russia, and this nomination is for someone who had to flee oppression in the West by escaping to Russia.
How times change.
Hypocrisy (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Lets give him Obama's Nobel Prize (Score:5, Insightful)
Obama won the prize for the achievement of not being Bush.
Re:Don't Forget Jimmy Carter (Score:3, Insightful)
Carter was, and is, one of the best statesmen the USA has ever had as President. Unfortunately he was inadequate as a politician. He never was able to get Washington to work.
Obama is also having trouble getting Washington to work. But in this case its because he has to deal with a badly broken Republican party. The Republicans were enticed into bed with a pretty little tea bagging wench and are now saddled with a marriage partner who cares more about being given the bling she has set her silly dreams on than about making the marriage work.
Time and again Obama and professional Republican politicians have started to work out the meaningful compromises that make a democracy work, only to have that dumbass wench throw a hissy fit because she won't get the bling that she thought she had been promised.
The Republicans need to toss the bimbo out. Let her make her own party. Yeah, divorces are messy and both sides lose, but marriages like this one that should never have happened are messier for longer, and can really get dangerous to everybody, especially when there are so many firearms in the household. </rant>
Re:Traitor (Score:5, Insightful)
Sometimes the law needs to be broken.
Wasn't the US founded by a bunch of rebels who violently rose up against the lawful authority of the time?
Re:I came (Score:5, Insightful)
I do not think you understand the ramifications of what has been done.
In your defence few do, even here on Slashdot. I saw someone begging for 1984 instead of what we now have which is both far more insidious and far more subtle as well as far more totalitarian. That person is on the right track of understanding; “we” have essentially doomed the future of humanity.
Nothing less. A fait accompli, a done deal, inescapable.
We have to fight it but we can never win because winning is now impossible no matter who your are or what one might believe or whatever one claims allegiance to.
It will never go away now. Widespread ability is too sophisticated to remove it and its seductive allure as a fantasy of control will only grow stronger.
This is what fate looks like. Fight it not in delusion about winning but to potentially be able to claim ownership of yourself. If nothing else out of pure defiance and spite or even enlightened self-loathing.
Everyone has already lost but will you choose to lose in style? That's the only real choice left for every human being.
Re:Don't Forget Jimmy Carter (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't true. I think Obama has a fundamental lack of respect for liberty (he laughs off the idea of ending the drug war), privacy (massively expanding unwarranted surveillance), and the constitution (numerous violations such as unwarranted search and seizure), not to mention international law (pardoning the Bush administration for war crimes, torture, etc.)
He's not hamstrung by the Republicans; he's just a very big disappointment as a president. It's somewhat redundant, if true, to say that he should be impeached, given that that has applied to pretty much all US presidents for the last few decades.
Re:Lets give him Obama's Nobel Prize (Score:2, Insightful)
I agree 100%. He's done more for liberty in the USA than any politician has done in 50 years. he's actually managed to push surveillance as a topic of conversation at the average american's dinner table. That alone is an excellent achievement, nevermind the rest he has done.
And yet, somehow I don't feel comforted over the fact that all we can do as citizens today is talk about it at the dinner table.
Would have been nice to have a Snowden event during a time when we actually could have done something about it.
Not going to beat myself up too bad about that though, the era I speak of is likely before we had a standing president warning us about the Military Industrial Complex. We lost control long ago.
Re:Don't Forget Jimmy Carter (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't forget directly ordering the extra-judicial killing of US citizens.
Re:Yes. And. But. (Score:5, Insightful)
The main problem is not "intellectuals", its journalism. Or rather the lack of journalism.
Conflict of interest has destroyed journalism.
Re:Traitor (Score:5, Insightful)
Sometimes a law being "broken" isn't a law at all, but spin by the thugs who run government.
If anyone is a traitor in this, it's the US Congress, the US Senate, the US President, the Canadian Prime Minister, the Canadian Senate, the Canadian House of Commons, the UK Parliament, and so on.
They're the ones who authorized the creation and growth of these abusive letter agencies in violation of the laws of their lands.
Re:Traitor (Score:5, Insightful)
Whistle blowing is not a crime. It's a service.
And when the entire government you could report to is corrupt, one has no choice but to whistleblow to the media and the public who own the government.
Re:Lets give him Obama's Nobel Prize (Score:2, Insightful)
I never really understood how a president can come into power and get a nobel peace prize, when he's not really had a chance to do anything... I guess he had to take over and the 'war on terror' had been started by Bush.
FROM: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Why_did_Barack_Obama_win_the_Nobel_Peace_Prize
"This is a question that seems to call for opinions, but first, a few facts. Barack Obama was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize because the committee believed he had already demonstrated a willingness to engage in diplomacy, and to reach out to the world community, rather than just using "tough talk"-- the committee believed President Bush had been far too bellicose in his rhetoric, and they saw in Barack Obama a new era in communication between countries. As the committee stated in
their press release, he was given the award for his "extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples."
"
This seems to be a direct contradiction on what he was suggesting - to bomb Syria... So Maybe Putin should get the Nobel peace prize... and Edward gets the bravery award or whatever... I mean he's really got sum balls messing up the plans of the NSA and GCHQ. I can't say I would have done the same.
The other thing that made me cross was that Obama deliberately said about chemical weapons being a game changer... thus giving the rebels or Al-Qaeda the incentive to also use checmical weapons... doesn't he realise thats just irresponsible?
He also hasn't tried (Score:4, Insightful)
On any issue of importance he's either agreed with them, or folded without a fight. I'd give him a "hamstrung" thing if he'd taken a number of fights to the republicans, lost each time, and has to start compromising to get anything at all done. However he hasn't done that. He's never even stood up and fought. It isn't even that he's rolled over, he's just never shown up in the first place.
This blaming the republicans is really silly. While the republican party by and large is not being helpful, they do not have any sort of control. They have a narrow majority in the house, a minority in the senate, and of course don't have the presidency. If President Obama wanted to stand up and fight on things that mattered, well he'd have a shot at least. It isn't like they could just ram legislation past him. However he hasn't, not once that I can think of.
That's the problem.
What do you mean? (Score:3, Insightful)
Your evidence supports that, not disproves it. The problem is the Saudi monarchy is massively corrupt, as all monarchies tend to be. That doesn't mean that a theoretical perfect one, that is unattainable with real people, wouldn't be a great system.
I mean look at a system like the US has, it's mix of democracy and republic. There is a lot of infighting in government, bureaucracy, dead weight, and so on. It is slow to respond and rather bloated. This is by necessity, and also by design. Spread the power around and create checks and balances so that nobody can abuse it. That is needed because we deal with real people, but it is inefficient.
Now imagine a system where it is a dictatorship, or other situation of absolute power, but we have a theoretical perfect being (an AI maybe) as the ruler. It is incorruptible, cares for nothing but the welfare of its citizens and nation, and makes the best choice it can, all the time. Well that would be a hell of a lot more efficient. Shit would get done. When things needed to change, they'd just change by immediate decree. No games, no pork barrel spending, no holding the budget hostage.
The problem is, we can't have that perfect ruler. Humans are imperfect and put them in a position of absolute power, they get corrupted, generally very badly. Even if you got real lucky and got one that didn't, sooner or later you'd get one that did.
Hence the need for a more complex, and inefficient, system like what we see in modern free countries. However that doesn't invalidate the theory that with a perfect ruler a system of absolute power would be more efficient.
Re:Don't Forget Jimmy Carter (Score:5, Insightful)
Outrageous statements? Maybe, but his claim that the US is not a functional democracy was not false.
He may not have been the most effective president, but he's the most noble person to have occupied the White House in recent years. Instead of getting dirtier politicians into office, Americans should work on cleaning up the rest of Washington to people like Carter can have more impact.
Re:Don't Forget Jimmy Carter (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's Obama's fault as president, in a nutshell: If the Democratic and Republican leadership in Congress both agree on something, Obama assumes the issue is settled and does nothing about it.
And this isn't a 2013 phenomenon or even a 2011 phenomenon: That kind of thinking started showing up in Obama's actions as president-elect, both with his choice of cabinet nominees and with his decisions regarding the giant bank bailouts with little-to-no strings attached. What Obama has exposed is that the 2 major parties have widespread agreement regarding:
- civil liberties (they'd rather we didn't have 'em)
- the rights of foreigners (will always be trumped by requests of business or convenience)
- the rights of citizens (to be violated when it's convenient)
- international law (to be violated with impunity because the US has a military that's on par with the rest of the world combined)
- equal justice under the law (there are documented cases of rich and powerful people literally getting away with murder, and US citizens executed by the US government with no legal proof that they were engaged in any kind of criminal act)
- privacy (to be ignored)
- war (it's good for business)
- banking (banks should be allowed to do whatever they want)
Both parties have some backbenchers that disagree with these views (more Democrats than Republicans, because the Democratic Party culture allows for more questioning and dissent without a primary challenge), but both parties are controlled by people who believe fully in all the ideas I just listed.
Re:I'm fine with Obama (Score:4, Insightful)
It's debatable whether Bush actually was elected in the first place.