Ovi Magazine : Boycott the Nobel Prize by Thanos Kalamidas

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Boycott the Nobel Prize
by Thanos Kalamidas
2008-07-03 09:45:50

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There are only six months left until the Swedish police and the secret service or any other authority will have full access to my emails and I …don’t even live in Sweden! The Swedish parliament’s decision, with the excuse of terrorism, is one of the most uncharacteristic actions against privacy and human rights and it affects so many people in the world that makes it a terrorist action in its self. The Swedish parliament managed to make everything Bin Laden wished for our lives true and a country with tradition and history in protecting human rights demolished everything in one day.

You are probably wondering how this new Swedish law is going to affect the rest of us. Most of us feel somehow secure with the sense that we have e-mails that are dot com, for example Hotmail, Gmail or Yahoo and feel pretty comfortable about that relying on the idea that their server is somewhere in the USA.

However, I must inform them, especially the ones living in Finland and Estonia, that I don’t know how far this might goes when so much communication traffic goes though Sweden and, due to this new law that is going to be active from the beginning of 2009, it allows the Swedish police to eavesdrop on everything. This everything is correct since the new legislation doesn’t stop at emails but includes telephone calls – it doesn’t matter if it is landline or mobile – and faxes going abroad!

I don’t know from where to start, the sense of raping my personal life or from the sense of a Big Brother being here? From now on I have to check twice anything I write or whatever I write will be used for an uncontrollable reason and against me. This 'against me' has too many levels because practice has shown before that actions like those often end up in private companies, so if one day I get a brochure about modeling it will be because in a mail to my close friend I made a reference to my childhood love for modeling. And now I’m taking a soft example. I might even become a victim of a blackmail since there will be people behind this checking my communications.

The list of the harassment can continue with examples often nasty examples for pages but there is something even worse in this case. I live in Finland, and the Finnish laws and constitution supposedly protect me from actions against my privacy and human rights, but - and this 'but' is huge - a decision by a neighbor country disables the constitution of the country I live. This is a brutal and fascist action and I don’t care how the Swedish lawmakers will take the words. These ‘lawmakers’ who forced this law will be remembered for forcing a law that made happy only Bin Laden and all the things he has said about the hypocrisy of our democracy and for destroying all things people like Olaf Palme have done to make Sweden respected and admitted all around the world as a champion protector of human rights.

An action like this when it comes from a country like Sweden is shocking and excuses any other action in the name of terrorism protecting, then you legalize the Guantanamos of this world, you legalize the illegal searching of immigrants just because they have long beards, you legalize every single action against human rights. A country that has no respect to human rights and barbarically dismisses the rights even from neighbor countries has no right to nominate and award people of literature, art and science. So people, boycott the Nobel Prizes.

I’m asking from all the nominees for a Nobel Prize despite their personal feeling to reject the honor that starts from a parliament that doesn’t respect human rights, I’m asking from all these superb minds who have devote a lifetime into humanity to boycott a parliament who doesn’t respect the basics of human society, personal privacy; I’m asking everybody to boycott the Nobel Prizes because the people who decide them and represent them are worth the honor.

Nobel+Prize Sweden email Privacy

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Emanuel Paparella	2008-07-03 16:14:22
“The power of weakness allows, according to Dr. Brzezinski, four novel realities of modern life. The first is that access to the means of inflicting large-scale lethality is no longer restricted to organized and powerful states. Second, worldwide mobility and worldwide communication both facilitate coordination and planning of underground cells. Third, democratic permeability facilitates penetration of terrorism, which is difficult to detect, something that is slightly less possible, but not altogether impossible, in authoritarian regimes. Fourth, the systemic interdependence of a modern society tends to set off chain reactions. If even a single key element of the system is disrupted, it prompts escalating social disruption and wildfire panic” (Quoted from today’s article by Dr. Siddiqui “American politics, Terrorism and Islam”) I will not post this under Dr. Siddiqui’s article, where it more appropriately belongs, since he is obviously not interested in a dialogue of any kind but only in ideological declarations, however the above quote from Dr. Brzezinski is intriguing and perhaps relevant to the indignant protest by Thanos, a protest in the paradoxical heritage of the Nobel Prize since its beginning in 1901; given the fact that it was instituted by somebody (Nobel) that had little to do with nobility and that some have called “a merchant of death” for he invented and became rich on dynamite, thus making war much more lethal. (continued below)


Emanuel Paparella	2008-07-03 16:16:56
Be that as it may, if the quote from Dr. Brzezinski has any kind of validity, as Dr. Siddiqui surely thinks, then there is a rigorous Machiavellian logic that needs to be pondered before we begin our activist protest marches in the public square with Liberty leading the People while singing La Marselleise…. The key statement is this: “democratic permeability facilitates penetration of terrorism which is difficult to detect, something that is slightly less possible, but not altogether impossible in authoritarian regimes.” (continued below)


Emanuel Paparella	2008-07-03 16:17:25
That statement I submit is the other side of the coin which liberal activists usually refuse to contemplate while following lady liberty and its torch of freedom, but they do so at their own peril, for it needs to be considered when protesting human right abuses. If security resides in the power of the State to stop violence and terrorism, then it is not difficult to imagine why a state will use that power to diminish its permeability in the process becoming less and less democratic and more and more authoritarian. The logic is inescapable, Machiavelli, Lenin, Stalin and Hitler understood it quite well, and yet human rights advocates (usually on the left but not always) consistently ignore it. They have to ignore it I suppose, because if this theoretical issue is courageously pursued to its ultimate conclusion there is ultimately a question that needs to be answered before engaging in frantic political rhetoric and praxis and it is this: “On what are human rights ultimately grounded?” If merely on the power of the State, then it is a tautology to expect the State to rectify itself and abandon the very power that keeps it in existence. If on the will of the people, then we need to remember that there is such a thing as the tyranny of the majority to wit Socrates trial where the majority condemned him to death. I for one believes that a better grounding is that of the Stoics who believed that the universe has certain laws (Natural Law) to which even human nature and positive law (man-made laws) is logically tied, at the risk of transforming oneself from a human being into a fanatical monster. That lesson is valid for the terrorist but also for the State representatives out to destroy freedom of speech, and, alas, for the protester of human rights abuses who begins with the prognosis before arriving at a diagnosis of what Kierkegaard calls “the sickness unto death.”


Guantanamo	2008-07-04 00:51:45
going down in history - eventually they'll realize they can not control all communication and its not worth it any way. its like dealing with tooth decay with a sledgehammer. Dont drink the sweetened koolaide in the first place. Provide education and care for others - don't go into battle over oil - there is an undiscovered country of energy.