Comment by Lazare | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Lazare | Hacker News Reader

Some may find the list of people who can nominate someone for the Nobel peace prize interesting. From their website:

Members of national assemblies and governments of states; Members of international courts; University rectors; professors of social sciences, history, philosophy, law and theology; directors of peace research institutes and foreign policy institutes; Persons who have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize; Board members of organizations that have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize; Active and former members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee; Former advisers to the Norwegian Nobel Committee

Most of those are fairly small groups; but "Members of national assemblies and governments of states" is a pretty big chunk of people, and "professors of social sciences, history, philosophy, law and theology" is a simply enormous group of people.

As a result, nominations are very meaningless; any third rate history or sociology prof at some podunk community college can nominate someone if they have a mind to, and all sorts of people get nominated, often as a lark or to prove a point. I believe Bush was nominated repeatedly, for example. (Well...nominations are secret, but I know of people who have the ability to nominate, and claimed to have done so, and I don't see why they'd bother to lie, so...)

So yes, Snowden was nominated (well, unless these politicians are lying). Honestly, he was probably nominated dozens of times. This isn't news. Also, a couple of left-wing Norwegian politicians like Snowden. Also not news. :) The only real news here is if he wins...

> I believe Bush was nominated repeatedly.

Ha even bizzaring, Adolf Hitler was once nominated. [1]

[1] http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/facts/peace/

Hitler was TIME magazine man of year, and for a decent while in America Fascism was mildly popular (circa 1930's). Its strange looking back on a that time (Post Holocaust and WW2). American Newspapers applauded the works of fascists claiming, "They got the trains to run on time."

Being Man of the Year isn't necessarily an honor. From Wikipedia:

  Person of the Year (formerly Man of the Year) is an annual 
  issue of the United States newsmagazine Time that features 
  and profiles a person, group, idea or object that "for 
  better or for worse...has done the most to influence the 
  events of the year."

2001 title should have gone to OBL then.

Yes, it should have. Time Magazine didn't have the audacity to, and settled for Giuliani.

"Though we spent hours debating the pros and cons of naming Osama bin Laden, it ultimately became easy to dismiss him," said managing editor Jim Kelly. "He is not a larger-than-life figure with broad historical sweep ... he is smaller than life, a garden-variety terrorist whose evil plan succeeded beyond his highest hopes."

They chose Giuliani instead.

http://edition.cnn.com/2001/US/12/23/giuliani.time/

"Smaller than life?" What does that mean? For worse, those attacks have had lasting implications everywhere. Sounds like they realised they'd be slammed really hard if they stuck to accuracy so they backed down with some handy-wavy nonsense about being brave.

If their bravery had caused a proper response, similar to how Norway responded to that mass-shooting, then it'd be worthwhile to note. But despite their bravery, that "garden-variety terrorist" has succeeded in scaring people into allowing their government to expand powers.

And the dismissal that it doesn't matter because he didn't think it'd work out - that's just idiotic. Do we disqualify scientists from the other Nobel prizes because "they really didn't think this experiment would discover anything"?

So, in your opinion, it was an idiotic injustice that Osama bin Laden was robbed of being Time's Man of the Year.

I don't think it's an "injustice" and I don't think "robbed" is the right word either. I'm unaware of anyone I know that really cares what some magazine writes.

I'm just pointing out their terrible use of rhetoric and lack of logic.

It means they were writing for their U.S. audience at the time, who wanted to see Bin Laden put down and diminished.

Hitler was Time's Man of the Year in 1938, based on his foreign policy maneuvering at that time. Despite the much greater enormity and historical impact of the Holocaust, he wasn't put there in 1945 or any time since.

Time editors are not going to expose themselves to that level of social anger. No matter how many times they say "Man of the Year" is not a reward, it still has that connotation in a lot of people's minds.

Article was written in 2001, at which point it was hard to foresee the lasting implications.

Also, he didn't scare people. US government did by waiving the terrorism banner for all these years.

OBL's impact wasn't that big in year one. It was huge over the next decade though. How many million man years have we spent in airport security lines because of him?

Right. Stalin was also featured in 1940.

See this huge American Nazi Party gathering at Madison Square Gardens: http://xmb.stuffucanuse.com/xmb/viewthread.php?tid=7735 [1939]

> for a decent while in America Fascism was mildly popular

Where now politics standing in staunch opposition to liberals, communists and socialists with an emphasis on a ultra nationalism and military power, is thankfully a thing of the distant past.

Oh.

;-)

(I am joking, I'm aware that there are significant differences, particularly regarding the role of the state).

> mildly popular

Not that mild.

Getting nominated is pretty low bar, Joseph Stalin has also been nominated.

Godwin's Law!

Obama actually won it even though he campaigned saying he was all for summary drone executions. Guess the committee didn't hear those speeches

According to site you're citing, the nomination was actually an attempt at satire by a Swedish MP:

"Apparently though, Brandt never intended the nomination to be taken seriously. Brandt was to all intents and purposes a dedicated antifascist, and had intended this nomination more as a satiric criticism of the current political debate in Sweden."

No need for complex explanations when a simple one is given.

> The only real news here is if he wins...

Nitpicking a bit maybe, but he obviously can't win without being nominated. So this is still news.

Unless...

> he was probably nominated dozens of times.

Kinda, but I think it was really obvious that he'd be nominated. There's hundreds of nominations every year; Manning has been nominated repeatedly times, Assange has been nominated. Now Snowden's in the news; what were the odds some politician somewhere wouldn't take the opportunity to get some easy headlines by nominating Snowden? I can't imagine him not getting a few nominations. :)

The Nobel Committee will consider any nominee, but it may also consider other entities that it seem fit. So in a way, you don't have to be nominated.

> "professors of social sciences, history, philosophy, law and theology" is a simply enormous group of people.

It used to be that professor status was very regulated. In Sweden prior to 1993, a professor title was granted by the government, and in practice one could only become a professor if such role was currently unfilled.

Was the Noble price nomination rules created before 1993?

The rules actually were relaxed in 1993; I'm not sure what they were before that.

It's a bit unclear in English nowadays, because in Scandinavian-written academic English, 'professor' sometimes refers only to the formal title Professor, which corresponds to what Americans sometimes call "Full Professor", but in other usages it includes a broader set of faculty. For example the three academic titles in Danish are Professor, Lektor, and Adjunkt, but in recent years their official English translations are Full Professor, Associate Professor, and Assistant Professor, which better reflects how the roles have evolved in practice. So are the latter two included under the term "professors" when a Danish institution writes something in English? Sometimes yes, sometimes no...

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