Since it`s foundation, in 2006, Wikileaks was conceived as a solution for citizens to expose the injustices, political persecutions and the illegal activities of governments. During the recent years, Wikileaks and his visible head Julian Assange, have exposed to the world, the lies, abuses, and Human Rights violations behind the curtains of legality of the regimes of Kenia, Iceland, United States, China, Thailand, India among dozens of countries around the globe. With the disclosure of criminal activites, labeled as classified information, Wikileaks and Julian Assange have contributed to create a more transparent world where citizens are capable of demanding direct accountability about the activities of their governments, and when governments feel the pressure of their citizens, in the aim for creating a future with out criminal, political or corporate institutional secrets.
CHRONOLOGICAL INTERNATIONAL AWARDS
~The Economist's New Media Award:
2008
~Index on Censorship Awards. The Economist New Media Award.
2008
~Amnesty International's UK Media Award
2009
~Sam Adams Award. By the Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence:
2010
~Readers' Choice for TIME's Person of the Year
2010
~Walkley Awards for Outstanding Contribution to Journalism.
2011
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March. 12th. 2012.
I am not sure what else to write that hasn’t already been said, other than to say that I think it is an unbelievably rare character trait to live your life surrounded by hedonists whose life purpose is to enrich themselves, and against this backdrop for Julian to still use his talents to pursue a lifelong ambition to live a life of purpose and meaning underscored by integrity is superlative. I can think of no better reason for this vote and to leave off by saying that if more of our leaders today lived their lives like Julian Assange, the world would be a better place for all of us. He has my vote.
Joy
Why Julian Assange should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize
Julian Assange is a brave man, not perhaps as brave as men like Bradley Manning, who at the risk of his own safety and being branded a traitor chose to expose the truth that he saw but a brave man nonetheless for sharing that information with the world, knowing full well that it could lead to his incarceration and possible execution at the hands of the American Government.
Julian Assange took this great and terrible risk not for profit, and not, as the American Govenment would have us believe for self-aggrandisement but so that the plain truth of events could be generally known by the people in whose names terrible crimes of war were being committed.
He is a man of great moral fibre who has the courage to risk his life in order that the truth be known. He has shown all of us that our soldiers are just as capable of terrible things as the soldiers of nations which we demonise and in doing so he has shown the hypocrisy inherent in the leaders of the Western World.
Powerful men in America now urgently try to extradite Julian Assange so that they can imprison him. They say that he has aided the enemies of America by making these truths generally known but the enemies of America already knew the truth. They were facing the truth in the form of Apache helecopters opening fire on civilians. The people who didn’t know the truth were us. The people of the West and I for one am horrified by what I have seen. My eyes have been opened thanks to Bradley Manning and Julian Assange.
How has Julian Assange furthered the call for peace? He has shown us that in our hunt to rid the world of monsters like Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden we have become monsters ourselves. This can be seen most clearly in the American reaction to the news of Bin Laden’s death which was not so much one of relief but unadulterated and unashamed joy and jubilation. A joy and jubilation which I believe to be very unseemly, even for the death of the worlds most wicked man.
Julian Assange holds up a mirror and shows us only the truth. Nobody will like what they see but it is up to us whether we try to change what is in that mirror or whether we silence him and any others who dare to show us for the monsters we have become.
Yours sincerely
John Holt
Dear Nobel Peace Prize,
I believe that Julian Assange and Wiki leaks have done wonderful work to make my government, all world governments and big corporate business more transparent. I believe that this transparency is essential to peace and to understanding the world we live in. Governments should have a check that holds them accountable for their deeds and their actions. Mr. Assange and Wiki leaks are a ray of light and hope in what has become a dark world. Please choose him and his organization for the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize.
Thank you,
Leslie Bahn.
There are many people whose acts of nobility merit consideration for the Nobel Prize. Service to others should always be a primary consideration, as the Prize serves as a sort of beacon for those who recognize that our world needs more care than ever before–care for the planetary ecology, care for each other, and care for the societies that people construct.
Sometimes it is necessary to puncture longheld-assumptions and comfortable myths in order to perform needed services; the person who is asleep does not always want to be woken, and those who benefit from conditions as they are now do not welcome the prospect of having to change. All the same, the messenger brings crucial information–information that can right wrongs, heal the planet, and save lives.
What Julian Assange has done through his championing of Wikileaks and its action in service of truth and sunlight where darkness had been, is to empower those many others who seek to challenge corruption and official lies. He has empowered us all, by enabling us to see behind the masks donned by the powerful; he has placed in the hands of the global public, a tool that makes us far more equal to our masters. His work is the touchstone of the ferment taking place on earth today.
Mr. Assange is pursued and openly threatened with prison by certain governments. Thus, he has been courageous and acted at real personal risk, to place this tool into our hands. He is worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize, and I recommend him for it.
Daniel Raphael
USA
Jan. 15. 2012
Controlling information has become as potent a mechanism of control as military or police force, if not more so. The “secretization” of the workings of government is now a de facto practice worldwide. Mr. Assange and the people of Wikileaks have shown the world — even in the face of our reluctance to know the truth — the true face of power in the world.
Wikileaks has created not just a crisis in the conscience of the world, but a personal crisis for all us who are citizens of governments whose horrors have been revealed. We have been forced to see the real cost of the way of life so taken for granted by the first world, and this
revelation has produced staggering change in the world in a remarkably short period of time.
I strongly believe Mr. Assange, and just as importantly, the entire staff of Wikileaks, deserve the Nobel Peace Prize for their incredible work. Doing so will also be a step toward restoring the integrity of the Prize itself, which has become badly tarnished by repeatedly being awarded to leaders actively waging war.
John
Chicago USA
Julian is trying to tell very important truths.
These help all the world’s folk to correct un-truths,
And to be better informed about matters that
Intimately affect them.
Julian is the very sharp spear-head of the
Vanguard that is undertaking the first steps
Helping us to move away from our
Early stage of savage infancy.
Julian gives us serious hope that
Humankind is on the road to a
Gradually maturing childhood—
The frontal lobe of the brain of humankind
Is showing promising signs of development.
It is cybernetics, the Internet and instantaneous
World-wide, 24/7 communication that has
Opened the instrumental door.
Julian is showing us how we can
Learn and grow from facts
We have not been told, or
From which the fiction
Has been removed.
Julian is the Henry the Navigator,
The Christopher Columbus,
Perhaps the Galileo,
The Copernicus
Of this present day.
Julian and his Wikileaks folk are the
Pioneers, the Trailblazers, who are
Directing beams of bright light
Down the avenue of the
Future on which we are
At the moment, traveling
—And at swift pace.
Michael Vickers
Sussex, UK
I would nominate Julian Assange for a Nobel Peace price because WikiLeaks, the site he co-founded, has thrown a spotlight on the duplicitous practises of our governments, transnational corporations, and NGOs.
Assange’s WikiLeaks has furnished a platform that challenges propaganda and misinformation, and allows people to act on their human (and humane) instincts; it has encouraged ordinary people from all walks of life to blow the whistle on fraud, on state-sanctioned repression and murder, and other widespread unethical and indefensible modes of conduct which have come to define our recent history.
To Julian Assange, a true torch-bearer of liberté, egalité, fraternité, thank you.
Jr.
Like so many of the greatest throughout history, Julian Assange has trodden a unique path in life.
I first had the opportunity to meet him more than a decade ago in Sydney, 1997. Even at that time, he had already had established intellectual renown within the computer security community. Despite the obvious and lucrative commercial applications of his skills, Julian chose to spend time and energy facilitating access to resources for the less fortunate by running public access computer systems for the wider community and working on cryptographic systems for the protection of human rights – underpaid, under-appreciated, and clearly selfless activities.
About this time, one of Julian’s early computer programs, ‘strobe’, demonstrated a largely unknown vulnerability within TCP (one of the core internet protocols) that allowed the covert identification of open services (or “access paths”) to a remote computer without alerting their operators. It was, first and foremost, a good ‘hack’ (in the traditional sense of exploration), and one that elegantly demonstrated the power that could be gained from the careful analysis and use of public systems. Instead of selling or abusing this knowledge, Julian openly published the information for the public good. Since that program, which itself was far from his first, Julian has taken this hard-won talent for systems analysis through public media systems and journalism to international legal and finance systems.
And there we have, in short, a role-call of the key networks that underlie our modern world – telecommunications, media, law, and finance. Systems that affect all of us and define power in our societies. So few people truly understand these systems, and even fewer choose to work toward their betterment for the public good: for it’s more lucrative to sell the knowledge, to abuse the loopholes, to abuse the trust engendered by we the public, to facilitate surveillance, and to politically auction the inherent concentration of power that each of these systems engender. We see this in telecommunications, we see this in media, we see this in law, we see this in finance. Julian’s brainchild Wikileaks and each of its brave contributors and supporters have shown us this on a global scale, and have done so far more rapidly and with far greater breadth than any other entity in history.
Today, a huge community of people across the world, old and young, and from every side of the political spectrum, stand united with Wikileaks in their bid to say “enough” – I know this because I have met them personally in Asia, Australia, Europe, North Africa, the United States. It is this global community, the public, who take issue with corruption and abuse of power, who reject unrepresentative governance, reject passive surveillance of their daily life, and demand transparency – their right to know the truth. Partly, they demand journalism with insight, journalism for a global era, journalism that covers the difficult issues – worldwide issues that take not just knowledge and effort to identify, but immense courage to tackle for fear of powerful backlash by both legal and illegal means, a backlash that Wikileaks is resisting right now.
As a citizen of multiple countries, fortunate enough to travel widely and observe societies in various states of freedom, revolution and redefinition, I motion that there is no other individual within the world who has fought against the realities of our time to work so hard and so selflessly for positive change through nonviolent means on a global scale.
Yes, Julian Assange is a spokesman for all of us and a hero for many, but beyond all, he is a wonderful human being who deserves to be recognized, now more than ever, as an incredible force for peace and understanding in the world who has mustered novel, unique, nonviolent means to further these goals internationally over a period of decades, based upon a philosophy of truth and transparency.
Julian, we salute you.
I urge each and every eligible person to nominate Julian Assange for
the Nobel Peace Prize.
- An. Owing to honest, well founded and professionally informed
fears of increased government surveillance as a result of this
statement.
Julian Assange, the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of WikiLeaks, should be nominated for the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize. By enabling whistleblowers to pass on material through a secure site, WikiLeaks has exposed unjust, illegal practices and atrocities committed by governments and corporations. Through WikiLeaks, Julian Assange has shared with the world the hidden side of international diplomacy and corporate activities; this information has enriched the historical record of nearly every country around the globe. History has traditionally belonged to the conquerors, but the cable releases and other materials have helped empower those who have little control over their destinies, and those who find their beliefs and financial power being used for unworthy purposes. The empowerment of ordinary people is, I believe, the greatest achievement of Mr Assange’s work and makes him most deserving of this prestigious prize.
Thank you.
C. A. McNelis
New York City, USA
In the beginning of everything I asked myself why should Julian Assange do something like that? Need for attention? Need for some court trials? I was observing all actions around WikiLeaks and Julian Assange over months, that topic aroused my interest more and more. I did research and questioned the intentions of a man who is willing to stand up and embarrass the most powerful and criminal political institutions of the world. Day after day I recognized that WikiLeaks was not just something like a “pop up window” in the media world, which would just disappear again as everything else before. The response all over the globe was clear, as well as the message. It became obvious for me that whatever Julian Assange’s intentions where, he changed the world.
Reading all the truth revealed by WikiLeaks and Julian Assange was shocking, watching the Collateral Murder video horrified and shocked me deeply. We had everything in this almost passed year. A very angry US government, trials, hearings, allegations in such a ridiculous way which I’ve seen barely before, blockades of money transfer services to shut WikiLeaks down, several murder threats, “information war”… it’s like a complex sci fi thriller, with which not even Hollywood could come up with and it happens now, in front of our eyes. And in the middle of this whole mess, there’s a man who seemed unusual calm and distanced about all that. Who is Julian Assange and why he seems not even touched a little bit of what’s happening to him and his surroundings? Of course he told people of his situation and treatment but with a supposed emotionless face and voice. He seemed even sometimes kind of unhuman and maybe even a little bit creepy.
Even after I considered myself as a WikiLeaks supporter I wasn’t sure what to think about him. Until I found a very touching interview. Suddenly there was not sitting this seemingly emotionless man as usual, there was sitting a man who was locked away, because he realized his dream, he realized a dream, which the most of us wouldn’t even dare to think about. There was sitting a worried father, who can’t speak to his children to safe them from attacks and threats. There was sitting a man who sacrificed everything to show us the truth. His reputation, his freedom, his private life.
What is it worth to change the world? Was it worth to try “to teach us to long for the immensity of the sea”?
Governments tried everything to shut him down, but with every try he stands up with a greater conviction than before.
Julian Assange deserves the nobel peace prize because he’s fighting for all that, for which all the other people gave up wishing and hoping years ago. He’s fighting for a future, which I can barely imagine, not just for free speech but for justice and freedom of every single one of us. He broke down the borders and huge walls between governments and it’s people.
He gave us the a taste of forbidden truth, a little bit of salt, which made us longing for the sea.
M. Messner
Austria
2011
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