Barack Obama’s Nobel Prize should be withdrawn and given instead to Wiki-Leaks.
Obama marketed himself as an agent of “change” and “hope,” but has sunk the world deeper into war and despair.
Wiki-Leaks stands as a symbol of the internet, humankind’s most critical bastion of democracy and open dialog, which are the only reliable paths to the peace and justice the Nobel is meant to honor.
The power of the internet has been forever affirmed by the ferocity with which the forces of war and empire have attacked its spreading of the Truth. The most telling reality is that none of its imperial critics are questioning the factuality of what has been revealed.
Barack Obama’s Nobel Prize should be withdrawn and given instead to Wiki-Leaks.
Obama marketed himself as an agent of “change” and “hope,” but has sunk the world deeper into war and despair.
Wiki-Leaks stands as a symbol of the internet, humankind’s most critical bastion of democracy and open dialog, which are the only reliable paths to the peace and justice the Nobel is meant to honor.
The power of the internet has been forever affirmed by the ferocity with which the forces of war and empire have attacked its spreading of the Truth. The most telling reality is that none of its imperial critics are questioning the factuality of what has been revealed.
Quite the opposite. The real “crime” of the Wiki-Leaks releases is that they are missiles of the ultimate peace-maker, verifiable fact.
The “democracies” of the west have mimicked the Chinese and innumerable other dictatorships in trashing the legal and Constitutional barriers meant to guarantee precisely this free flow of information.
The Obama Administration apparently wants criminal charges against Wiki-Leaks even though its principal, Julian Assange, is not a US citizen, has published nothing that is not factual. With no legal justification, without a trial or court orders, Obama has pressured a wide range of corporations and international agencies to break all the rules of commerce and common contractual commitments in crippling Wiki-Leaks’ funding and distribution.
When he accepted the Nobel Prize, Obama delivered a pro-war speech, justifying his escalation of the war in Afghanistan.
Now he has launched a war against the free flow of information that is essential to the survival of democracy on a globalized planet.
This kind of behavior makes mockery of the prize, and of the true peacemakers, such as Martin Luther King, who have justly received it.
Without the internet, there is no hope for change. It sustained the critical shreds of democracy so severely threatened in the dark years of George W. Bush. Now his successor wants it killed.
Make no mistake, the administration’s attack on Wiki-Leaks far exceeds the limits of this wave of documents. It’s very much about a larger effort to shut down humankind’s most vital access to real information in an electronic age increasingly dominated by huge corporations.
In moral, political and so many other ways, Obama has forfeited any claim he might have to that Prize.
The Committee that gave it to him should demand it back, and give it instead to the Internet as a whole, as currently represented by Wiki-Leaks.
For those of us committed to an end of empire and the beginning of a just, peaceful and sustainable world, preservation of the free flow of information is job one.
Amidst these violent, illegal, war-like attacks on Wiki-Leaks, giving them the Nobel Prize as a representative of the internet is appropriate and essential.
So is taking it away from the man leading the assault against them.