I'd give it to Snowden; Manning I'm not so sure about.
I may be alone on this one, but I think Snowden and Manning are very different.
I think Manning's actions were a lot sloppier than Snowden's. Yes, Manning courageously uncovered crimes, and that's to be acknowledged. But, in my opinion, he wasn't careful enough about the impact of what he was releasing, specifically all the diplomatic communications. He seemed to have a stance that all information should be public by definition. I don't agree with that. I'm too practical -- I don't see how that would work at all. Further, I honestly think it undermined the democratic process to indiscriminately make it all public. Maybe I should be blaming wikileaks for this approach.
In contrast, Snowden has shown the world's people that it's on candid camera on the US tax payer's dime -- illegally and unbeknownst toa almost everyone, including most of Congress. What he's uncovered is fundamentally undemocratic and very, very dangerous. That's worth a blown whistle. In my opinion, it does a disservice to Snowden to lump Manning together with him.
He seemed to have a stance that all information should be public by definition.
According to Daniel Ellsberg, this is not true:
"The public has been very misled about Manning, I would say," Ellsberg says. "They talk about his being indiscriminate. That's simply false. Like me and like Snowden, he had access to communications intelligence higher than top secret. He gave none of that out."
It was not humanly possible, given the time scales involved, even in the most generous interpretation, for Manning to have reviewed all or even most of the material he released.
Also: how would Ellsburg know what Snowden had access to? That knowledge is part of the premise of his assertion.
Your first sentence is true, but doesn't change the point that if Manning did hold back more sensitive material, he must not have thought that all information should be public by definition.
Also: how would Ellsberg know what Snowden had access to?
Good question. I don't know the answer to that in either case.
To make this point even further, a lot of what Manning leaked were mundane diplomatic cables of no national security or criminal consequence (e.g. Clinton discussing how they book frequent flier miles for diplomats). In these instances he was merely a saboteur of otherwise private conversations.
I disagree as Manning's action prompted the Arab Spring, which continues on in many Middle Eastern countries. More democratic Middle Eastern countries is better for the US and for citizens of those countries.
Snowden in my eyes revealed and reminded us what we already learned back in 2006. Though he revealed the size and scope of the US surveillance program and inner linings.
> I disagree as Manning's action prompted the Arab Spring, which continues on in many Middle Eastern countries. More democratic Middle Eastern countries is better for the US and for citizens of those countries.
It may eventually be good, but right now Syria and to a lesser-extent Egypt are still mired in military conflict. You might as well have given the Nobel Peace Prize to President George W. Bush if "bringing democracy to a Middle East state" were the only qualification. As far as I'm concerned Manning would be disqualified for the Arab Spring alone.
I tend to agree that the award should go to Snowden, mainly because he knew fully of the potential consequences to himself and yet still chose to reveal the information.
Think about what Manning did as collateral damage. Its exactly the same kind of argument any government uses when going to war and hitting innocent civilians.
agreed. Manning is a totally different story, I think. The stuff he released didn't do much to protect innocent people, etc. Snowden I could stand behind.
That said, it would be just awesome if Manning got the Nobel Peace Prize, just, what, 5 years after Obama did?
In 1927 Ferdinand Buisson (France) and Ludwig Quidde (Germany) shared it "for contributions to Franco-German popular reconciliation".
In 1973 Henry Kissinger (US) and Le Duc Tho (North Vietnam) shared it for the cease fire of the Vietnam war.
In 1978 Anwar Saddat (Egypt) and Menachem Begin (Israel) shared it for the Camp David accords.
In 1993 Nelson Mandela and Frederik Willem de Klerk (South Africa) shared it for the end of apartheid
In 1994 Yasser Arafat (Palestine), Yitzhak Rabin, and Shimon Peres (Israel) shared it for...well, bringing peace between Israel and Palestine, except that hasn't exactly happened yet.
The Peace Prize has always been somewhat aspirational - it's a way not only to reward accomplishments toward world peace, but also to shame & goad people in power into working toward a more peaceful world. Obama's prize was very much in that vein: it sent the signal "We like where you're going, so you better keep it up and live up to the award you just won." There's nothing contradictory about giving it to his opponents as well.
The irony is even more inescapable than that. It was founded by a guy who invented explosives and, who only created the prize after reading an incorrect reporting of his own death and being frustrated at how he was eulogized.
> The obituary stated, Le marchand de la mort est mort ("The merchant of death is dead")[1] and went on to say, "Dr. Alfred Nobel, who became rich by finding ways to kill more people faster than ever before, died yesterday."[11] Alfred was disappointed with what he read and concerned with how he would be remembered.
I'm all for giving it to Snowden. It seems like a lot of people don't really know much about the situation and assume that he's the bad guy, based on what the TV says (that he's a traitor, etc). A lot of people don't even realize that many people consider his actions to be heroic. If he got the NPP, I think the average person might take a second look and realize that there's more to it than what they've heard.
In my somewhat convoluted estimation, the Nobel Peace Prize has ceased to hold any special meaning since it was awarded to someone who never really did anything to earn it other than become elected to an office whereupon the very foundations of freedom have been increasingly attacked through the expansion of policies which that Nobel Laureate so vocally opposed during his campaign for office.
I agree with your estimation. It would still be very meaningful to give it to Manning/Snowden though. This is for the simple reason that it was given to Obama before and Obama validated the prize by attending the ceremony and giving a lecture in Oslo.
The foundation made a big mistake by giving it to somebody who did nothing but win an election campaign. Giving it to Manning/Snowden would allow them to claw back some credibility as a progressive non-political organisation. It would also implicitly indicate to the world that they made a big mistake in 2009, it would take an organisation with strong character to make that decision.
For those who do not know, the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to U.S. President Barack Obama for his "extraordinary efforts" to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples. [1]
The Nobel Peace Prize has become so overloaded in recent years that either it's time to endow some new prizes (and let the Peace Prize actually be about, you know, PEACE again) or end the thing entirely. Frankly, I think there's some value in having an actual peace prize, so I would rather see the former happen.
For those who do not know, The 2007 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Al Gore "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". [1]
Security and privacy are driven by fear and vulnerability. Information and intelligence gives a party leverage, an advantage -- and these too are also driven by fear and vulnerability.
These are burdens we don't need anymore. Much of the concepts and frame around civilization is in relation to barbarism and keeping order, of Rule of Law trumping Rule of Power, of fairness and equality. These notions are at the end of life, and we need to be reaching for something better.
I think it would help, because it would make it a lot harder for others to associate them with spies or something without getting ridiculed.
I'm also hoping the next US president commits to giving Manning (and Snowden depending on the situation then) pardon. If I was a civil libertarian running for president, and I'd want to show real proof that I'm committed to a much more transparent government, and the roll back of the surveillance state - I'd start with that promise, and use it in my campaign, and say my first task as a president would be to pardon Manning.
I don't fully agree regarding Manning. He revealed diplomatic cables, which was basically a work of U.S. diplomats, who have been writing "honest" assessments from inside those countries, under the condition that it remains secret. In my opinion, it was unfair to the U.S. gov that it was published - and I say this as a non-American. If leaking this should be automatically pardoned, we would first need a completely different model of how foreign diplomacy should work. (But I agree the life-time sentence is too harsh).
Snowden case is different. (I also don't like that those two guys are mentioned together).
Agreed. It seems to be a bit of an unpopular opinion, but what Snowden did and what Manning did are entirely different, and lumping Snowden in with Manning detracts from the careful and considered manner in which Snowden has conducted the leaks.
I thought the Nobel Peace Prize was supposed to be about promoting peace, not sticking it to The Man. What Snowden and Manning did was far more along the lines of the latter than the former.
A lot of people don't understand what the Nobel Peace Prize is for. It's not to recognize old guys who promoted peace during their life; it's to promote peace.
Imagine that you have made some millions and you are deciding between starting the next ycombinator and using the money to promote peace. How would you go about the latter? Pretty much like the former: risky investments with a big potential payoff, only in peace rather than shares.
Saying that giving the award to Obama or Kissinger was a mistake is like saying that YCombinator is stupid because most of their investments don't pay off. If they only gave money to companies which they knew were going to be successful, they wouldn't be having any effect on their success.
So, Is it worth giving Manning and/or Snowden the Peace Prize? It would certainly focus the media's attention on them, but they have it already to some extent. It might work against the narrative that the securicrats are promoting. In some sense, Manning is a better candidate than Snowden: Manning released information which showed injustices of the Iraq and Afghan wars, whereas Snowden's releases are thus far an issue of whether domestic security is out of control. The Nobel remit covers the former; I'm not sure it covers the latter.
> A lot of people don't understand what the Nobel Peace Prize is for. It's not to recognize old guys who promoted peace during their life; it's to promote peace.
Wikipedia and the majority of these comments disagree with this -- are you certain?
Well, the fact that Nobel specified that the prize should be awarded "for work done in the preceding year" certainly argues that he didn't intend to wait for the judgement of history.
We need people like them in every single country if we want to live in a world actually guided by public interest and not by the most powerful of the particular interests.
I don't think diligent servants of the US have the guts to do that. Besides, they already awarded it to Obama in 2009 for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.
He gave planet Earth an important wake-up call: Democracy is about to be shot in the head.
(And personally, I don't think we should expect more whistle blowers in the coming years, because the NSA sure as hell will make sure it will never happen again, so this makes this moment even more important.)
He did all this showing us that he's ready to be tortured and die for this cause.
EDIT: This is history being written. What happens now and what does not will define the future we and our children will have. I thought this was 100% obvious.
Truthfully, we already knew just about everything Snowden leaked except for the the name PRISM. But it was through his leak that it got on mainstream news.
Well, he increased international tensions between the U.S. and E.U., the E.U. and Latin America, Latin America and the U.S., Russia and the U.S., and finally the U.S. and China.
If we say that increasing international tensions is a way to make peace between nations more likely then I say why not, might as well go for it.
I may be alone on this one, but I think Snowden and Manning are very different.
I think Manning's actions were a lot sloppier than Snowden's. Yes, Manning courageously uncovered crimes, and that's to be acknowledged. But, in my opinion, he wasn't careful enough about the impact of what he was releasing, specifically all the diplomatic communications. He seemed to have a stance that all information should be public by definition. I don't agree with that. I'm too practical -- I don't see how that would work at all. Further, I honestly think it undermined the democratic process to indiscriminately make it all public. Maybe I should be blaming wikileaks for this approach.
In contrast, Snowden has shown the world's people that it's on candid camera on the US tax payer's dime -- illegally and unbeknownst toa almost everyone, including most of Congress. What he's uncovered is fundamentally undemocratic and very, very dangerous. That's worth a blown whistle. In my opinion, it does a disservice to Snowden to lump Manning together with him.