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.'"
Re:It wouldn't be a problem (Score:5, Interesting)
But since that can't be guaranteed, and the abuses caused by a bad king far outweigh the benefits, it is better to endure the inefficiency (and dare I say, stupidity of your neighbors?) of democracy and the checks and balances than to give all that power to one man.
I wonder... (Score:5, Interesting)
how a prize named after Andrei Sakharov is gonna go over with Snowden's landlord, a veteran of the KGB that tormented Andrei Sakharov.
Re:I wonder... (Score:2, Interesting)
how a prize named after Andrei Sakharov is gonna go over with Snowden's landlord, a veteran of the KGB that tormented Andrei Sakharov.
He'll grin and bear it. Just the public revelations about the NSA, GCHQ, and other allied intelligence services and their operations has been priceless to the Russians, not to mention the Chinese, Iranians, and terrorist groups (that are already changing their communications methods). If they manage to get their hands on some of the other documents that he stole* the value would be astronomical. And that is just the documents themselves, the political turmoil, infighting, and disruption add a whole new layer.
* Snowden apparently stole at least 70,000 documents just covering the British, some on Australia, and who knows how many on the US?
largely ignored by most leading intellectuals.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Let's take Obama's Nobel Prize away and give it to Snowden.
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.
That all being true, no matter what Snowden or any other activist does to try and roll back the fascist encroachments of absolute power - the peace prize world is off limits. Heroes of the people like Manning, Snowden will continue to be labeled traitors and excluded from all significant high profile peace prizes, Time Person of the Year, in large part due to the failure of our intellectuals [wikipedia.org]:
The article is an attack on the intellectual culture in the U.S., which Chomsky argues is largely subservient to power. He is particularly critical of social scientists and technocrats, who he believed were providing a pseudo-scientific justification for the crimes of the state
Intellectuals have betrayed us all before [ditext.com] and it will continue to happen until a groundswell of people start to shun, exclude and shine a bright constant light on these mostly unnamed behind the scenes policy setters who have corrupted their purpose blinding following the "party line" subservience to power.
Re:Yes. And. But. (Score:5, Interesting)
"You don’t have any other society where the educated classes are so effectively indoctrinated and controlled by a subtle propaganda system – a private system including media, intellectual opinion forming magazines and the participation of the most highly educated sections of the population. Such people ought to be referred to as “Commissars” – for that is what their essential function is – to set up and maintain a system of doctrines and beliefs which will undermine independent thought and prevent a proper understanding and analysis of national and global institutions, issues, and policies." - From Language and Politics
Example:
A more difficult task is to shift the moral onus of the war to its victims. This seems a rather unpromising enterprise -- rather as if the Nazis had attempted to blame the Jews for the crematoria. But undaunted, American propagandists are pursuing this effort too, and with some success. Things have reached the point where an American President can appear on national television and state that we owe "no debt" to the Vietnamese, because "the destruction was mutual."28 And there is not a whisper of protest when this monstrous statement, worthy of Hitler or Stalin, is blandly produced in the midst of a discourse on human rights. Not only do we owe them no debt for having murdered and destroyed and ravaged their land, but we now may stand back and sanctimoniously blame them for dying of disease and malnutrition, deploring their cruelty when hundreds die trying to clear unexploded ordnance by hand from fields laid waste by the violence of the American state, wringing our hands in mock horror when those who were able to survive the American assault -- predictably, the toughest and harshest elements -- resort to oppression and sometimes massive violence, or fail to find solutions to material problems that have no analogue in Western history perhaps since the Black Death.
Re:Lets give him Obama's Nobel Prize (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
I think you're referring to "Great Silent Majority". The Great Silent Majority is made up of morons whose stupidity is only exceeded by the ignorance of the politicians they elect to Congress, who live lives they believe that are so pathetically empty and unfulfilling that they must resort to television fantasy and reality shows to fill this perceived void.
I am now a part of the Slight Vocal Minority, many of which think Edward Snowden should be given a medal for revealing the illegal snooping the NSA has been doing on the American public and then put in prison for revealing what it is doing in the rest of the world.
I'm fine with Obama (Score:-1, Interesting)
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),
He doesn't enforce federal drug laws in states that legalizes weed. That alone is a drug-war breakthrough.
privacy (massively expanding unwarranted surveillance)
your metadata was never private. IP headers are public. Do you know how many people get to see your IP headers as it travels across the internet?
Libertarians need to give up liberty. You never had freedom in any society where you weren't the highest power. You were victimized by the "America is free" lie that you were taught as a child. Ha ha. Smart people always knew you never had freedom.
It is disgustingly narcissistic to assume you had these rights, and libertarians are the most narcissistic members of society, always about "me, me, me!"
You don't get what you want in society, since you have minimal rights and powers. You are only allowed what the rest of society decide for you, and the rest of society couldn't care less about your metadata rights.
not to mention international law (pardoning the Bush administration for war crimes, torture, etc.)
It's bad form to attack previous administrations. The goal of every administration is to move forward, and not focus on the past. The last thing any administration wants to do is put a previous administration in the news and give them any attention. You don't even MENTION the previous administration, and erase them from history.
The fault is in the American public in electing the previous administration in the first place, and when you move forward, you fix the source of the problem by fixing the public's attention.
Re:I wonder... (Score:5, Interesting)
how a prize named after Andrei Sakharov is gonna go over with Snowden's landlord, a veteran of the KGB that tormented Andrei Sakharov.
Reportedly, Putin is a fan of Sakharov.
An excerpt some early interview with American "National Public Radio":
Mr. Siegel: On another subject, our listener, Alfred Friendly Jr., sent us this question. He wants to know what influence you believe Andrei Sakharov and other human rights advocates and their supporters in the West had on the course of Soviet and Russian history.
President Putin: I think that was a crucial impact that they provided. It was a fundamental impact that they provided to the Russian history. At different periods, certain periods of time in the life of any nation, there will be people who turn on the light, if you will, and they show a road for the nation to follow. And no doubt Andrei Sakharov was one of those people who turned on the light.
Link: http://archive.kremlin.ru/eng/speeches/2001/11/16/2355_type82916_142499.shtml [kremlin.ru]
That is, there are no problems whatsoever regarding Sakharov prize for Snowden.
You might also want to check that Putin is a fan of Solzhenitsyn, too -- under Putin, Solzhenitsyn's masterpiece was included into the Russian regular high school curriculum.
Re:Lets give him Obama's Nobel Prize (Score:4, Interesting)