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WikiLeaks Nominated for Nobel Peace Prize

by Terrence O'Brien on February 2, 2011 at 02:00 PM

WikiLeaksIt almost feels that WikiLeaks' nomination for a Nobel Peace Prize was inevitable. The site's focus on transparency and exposing corruption and human rights abuse, as well as its knack for stirring up controversy, seems tailored to draw the attention of the Nobel Prize Committee. After announcing that WikiLeaks had been nominated, Snorre Valen, a member of the Norwegian parliament, called the site "one of the most important contributors to freedom of speech and transparency." If WikiLeaks were to win the Nobel Peace Prize, the committee would come under intense criticism, especially after the controversial choices of Barack Obama and Chinese pro-democracy activist Liu Xiaobo in the last two years. Such a decision would likely put Obama himself in the awkward position of criticizing the Committee, only two years after he humbly accepted the same award from the Norwegian group. It is important to note, though, that Julian Assange is not nominated for the Nobel Prize -- presumably because of his immense ego -- only the organization he helped found.

Tags: NobelPeacePrize, NobelPrize, top, web, Wikileaks

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