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Resistance See other Resistance Articles Title: WikiLeaks nominated for Nobel Peace Prize WikiLeaks, the whistleblowing website, has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize by a young Norwegian politician. The controversial proposal comes just days ahead of a court appearance by WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange, at an extradition hearing in London over allegations of sexual assault in Sweden, a charge he has repeatedly denied. The Nobel Peace Prize committee is beginning to deliberate nominations, which closed on February 1. Members of parliament around the world, some academics and previous winners can nominate whoever they like for the award. Snorre Valen, 26, a Norwegian musician and politician, said he chose to nominate WikiLeaks for promoting human rights and freedom of speech. “Liu Xiabao was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last year for his struggle for human rights, democracy and freedom of speech in China,” Mr Valen wrote on his website. “Likewise: WikiLeaks have contributed to the struggle for those very values globally, by exposing (among many other things) corruption, war crimes and torture.” Although it is hard to gauge how seriously the nomination will be considered by the Nobel committee, the prospect of giving such a high-profile award to WikiLeaks will outrage many in Washington and governments around the world. The US government has been exploring ways to prosecute Mr Assange for publishing vast quantities of state secrets online, many of which have embarrassed the US administration. Some observers did not rate WikiLeaks’ chances of winning. “To claim that [Mr Assange’s] actions have in some way promoted ‘fraternity among nations,’ to invoke the famous line in Alfred Nobel’s will, would be far-fetched, if not altogether inaccurate,” Scott London, a US journalist and Nobel Peace Prize specialist, told the AFP news agency. Army chiefs have often said that WikiLeaks’ publication of military secrets put at risk the lives of US troops in war zones and their local allies. But Mr Valen noted WikiLeaks’ “small contribution” to the revolution in Tunisia by releasing US diplomatic cables about the president. “It is always easier to support freedom of speech when the one who speaks agree with you politically. This is one of the ‘tests’ on liberal and democratic values that governments tend to fail,” Mr Valen said. “And many countries respond to WikiLeaks‘ obvious right to publish material that is of public interest, by seeking to ‘shoot the messenger’… It is not, and should never be, the privilege of politicians to regulate which crimes the public should never be told about, and through which media those crimes become known.” The nomination illustrates the scale of popular support for WikiLeaks. A divisive figure, Mr Assange won the readers’ poll for Time magazine’s person of the year in 2010, although the publication’s editors awarded their prize to Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg instead. WikiLeaks recently signed a deal with the Daily Telegraph newspaper in the UK to continue publishing stories based on its cache of thousands of US diplomatic cables. The site had previously dealt exclusively with the Guardian and the New York Times, but it has struggled to contain its trove of secrets, with Aftenposten, a Norwegian newspaper, claiming to have received all the cables independently of WikiLeaks. Several WikiLeaks copycats and rivals have emerged in recent weeks, notably OpenLeaks, created by a former WikiLeaks employee, and various regionally focused sites, including IndoLeaks in Indonesia, RuLeaks in Russia and Balkanleaks. Mr Assange is currently writing his autobiography, for which he has secured book deals worth more than £1m, which he said will be put towards his own legal expenses and operation of the site. WikiLeaks has been reliant on donations for its income, but withdrawal of payment processing support by Visa, MasterCard, PayPal and Bank of America - along with spiralling operational costs - have left question marks over its financial stability. Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 1.
#1. To: Tatarewicz (#0)
Better Wiki than the kenyan.
There are no replies to Comment # 1. End Trace Mode for Comment # 1.
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