Norwegian Idiot Thinks Wikileaks Deserves Nobel Prize
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Almost anyone can nominate someone for a Nobel Peace Prize, and a 26-year-old Norwegian legislator has done just that for Wikileaks.
The Nobel Committee solicits nominations from any member of any national government, not to mention any professor social science, history, philosophy, law, or theology at any university, anywhere. Which means Michele Bachmann can nominate Terri Schiavo's toenail clippings for a Nobel Peace Prize if she wants. With that massive grain of salt in mind, take note that Snorre Valen, a leftist Norwegian politician, has thrown Wikileaks into the ring, because "truth is always the first casualty in war" and because it was a handy way to get his name in the press.
Wikileaks will not win the Nobel Peace Prize.
And it shouldn't! In part because one way it has become, in Valen's words, "one of the most important contributors to freedom of speech" on the planet is by threatening to sue its critics for libel.
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The "Guardian serialization" is Wikileaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy, the Guardian's new book on working with Assange and Wikileaks. Extracts have begun running in the paper and online. The alleged libels aren't clear. But Julian Assange is an asshole and a blowhard. Maybe he'll sue us now?
[Photo of Assange via Getty Images]