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Edward Snowden nominated for Nobel peace prize

theguardian.com

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Re: Edward Snowden nominated for Nobel peace prize

#131

Post by Joeboy »

aroman wrote: post #127
Joeboy wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People on both sides of the Israel vs Palestine discourse tend to accuse the other side of acting in bad faith. And the various "Peace Processes" have generally been a result of pressure from outside the region.

>the various "Peace Processes" have generally been a result of pressure from outside the region. What makes you say this? You don't think the Israelis and the Palestinians actually want peace (albeit on their own terms)?

Of course they do, but clearly the Oslo Accords (for which Arafat and Rabin won their Nobel) were a product of US intervention. Concessions to the enemy are rarely a vote winner.

Re: Edward Snowden nominated for Nobel peace prize

#133

Post by alex-g »

CWuestefeld wrote: post #118
king_jester wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It seems reasonable to me that this person, having XY chromosomes and all the hardware that go with them, may be correctly referred to using masculine pronouns. Gender != your chromosomes and gender != your "hardware" or any other body part for that matter. Gender is about social identity and structure. > There's something to be said for respecting the wishes of the individual in how they'd like to be addressed. Bu…

While I really do tend to lean in the direction you suggest, I don't think it's quite a cut-and-dry as you claim. Here are a few things to consider. First, we're only talking about language. We get those gendered pronouns not because of a need to distinguish between how a person views his gender (or how the world views it), but because of stupid linguistic convention going back to English's Indo-European roots. You'l…

You appear to be something of a newcomer to this issue. I can tell you that everything you raise as a concern has been very extensively discussed - certainly in those places which afford legal recognition to gender transition, discrimination protection for trans people, and so on. Systems exist, and, to an extent, they work.

Still, calling somebody by their preferred name and pronouns does not grant them admission to the women's locker room, or anything else like that. It is a matter of courtesy.

The other thing is that often, in order to have a gender change legally recognized, or to access surgery and so on, one has to prove that one has already been living as a member of the appropriate gender. What this means is highly contested, but stuff like "people know me as Alice, not Bob" is part of it. It's difficult enough without people setting themselves up as linguistic gatekeepers, and deciding that they know better than Alice.

Re: Edward Snowden nominated for Nobel peace prize

#134

Post by LukeShu »

xaa wrote: post #126
Pxtl wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a time and a place to be pedantic, and this really isn't it. Transgendered people go through a heap of terrible, terrible crap and the least we can all do is give them the dignity of using their identified pronoun. If anybody has earned that respect, it's ms. Manning. I mean really, how the heck does it hurt anybody to say "She" instead of "He" after you've been informed that's not how she identifies? Does it…

My personal value system (and perhaps milord grandparent's) rates the accurate use of words (aka, truth-telling) rather high on the scale of values. Clear thought is impossible without it. When we, as a society, take words such as "war" and "gender" that previously referred to physical realities and make them highly metaphorical or even completely arbitrary, we dilute our vocabulary. We make it harder to think and co…

The word "sex" refers to physical realities; "gender" refers to social constructions. By conflating the two words, you are the one diluting our vocabulary.

Now, it wouldn't be totally unreasonable for you to assert that pronouns should be tied to sex, not gender; but that's not what you're saying here.

Re: Edward Snowden nominated for Nobel peace prize

#136

Post by joshfraser »

duaneb wrote: post #87
ck2 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So by your standard, Martin Luther King Jr. should be getting out of prison just about now? Manning was a whistlerblower, just like Snowden, with less power and ability for flight to defend themselves. There was no personal gain ever intended or achieved, yet great personal loss even in the best outcome. They saw something very wrong happening and had little to no way to say "hey there are some incredibly powerful fo…

It's not even clear Manning is a whistleblower—what the hell did he blow a whistle on? It's not like any widespread scandal, corruption, or conspiracy was revealed.

I believe this was where it started http://www.collateralmurder.com

Re: Edward Snowden nominated for Nobel peace prize

#137

Post by efuquen »

aroman wrote: post #127
Joeboy wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People on both sides of the Israel vs Palestine discourse tend to accuse the other side of acting in bad faith. And the various "Peace Processes" have generally been a result of pressure from outside the region.

>the various "Peace Processes" have generally been a result of pressure from outside the region. What makes you say this? You don't think the Israelis and the Palestinians actually want peace (albeit on their own terms)?

I think plenty Israelis want the Palestinians gone from Palestine and I think plenty Palestinians want Isreal erased from the map. When that is the goal of both parties, no I don't see them wanting peace.

Of course, we're making a huge generalization here, plenty of people on both sides don't have this as their goal and certainly want peace, which can only be achieved through coexistence. But when coexistence is not your goal, when the ideal terms for both parties is the dissolution of the other, then no; there can really be no peace.

Edit: btw I'm not really talking about the specifics of Yasser Arafat & Yitzhak Rabin listed by the OP, just your statement, which implied something more general then just those two.

Re: Edward Snowden nominated for Nobel peace prize

#138

Post by lispsil »

nivla wrote: post #96
Lazare wrote: post #17

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;…

> I believe Bush was nominated repeatedly. Ha even bizzaring, Adolf Hitler was once nominated. [1] [1] http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/facts/peace/

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

Re: Edward Snowden nominated for Nobel peace prize

#139

Post by pitt1980 »

CWuestefeld wrote: post #67
ck2 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you respect Manning, please stop saying "he" and "guy".

This is clearly something that we as a society are going to have to wrestle with. It seems reasonable to me that this person, having XY chromosomes and all the hardware that go with them, may be correctly referred to using masculine pronouns. There's something to be said for respecting the wishes of the individual in how they'd like to be addressed. But there's definitely a point at which that drifts off into absurdi…

people have a long history of taking offense when you don't address them as they prefer to be addressed

from Mohammed Ali and Kareem Abdul Jabbar, not wanting to be referred to by their given names

to all sorts of doctors and professors wanting to be address by their professional titles

to all sorts of adults not wanting people under a certain age referring to them by their first name

you to intend to offend, by all means, offend away

but don't act under the pretense that referring to someone other than how they prefer to be referred to won't cause offense

Re: Edward Snowden nominated for Nobel peace prize

#140

Post by _delirium »

belorn wrote: post #60
Lazare wrote: post #17

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;…

> "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?

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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