A European said that about Obama… seriously?
A hero to some, villain to others, Edward Snowden has been nominated for the “prestigious” Nobel Peace Prize by a Swedish university professor who also took a less-than-subtle swipe at Barack Obama, as reported by Russia Today.
Professor Stefan Svallfors of Sweden’s Umeå University has formally nominated one of America’s most wanted men, former-NSA employee Edward Snowden, for the Nobel Peace Prize on the grounds of his “heroic effort at great personal cost.”
The sociologist also cited Snowden’s actions displayed that “individuals can stand up for fundamental rights and freedoms.”
After breaking wide-open the news that Obama’s National Security Agency is secretly collecting massive amounts of personal data on a huge swath of the American citizenry, Snowden fled the United States. He is currently holed up in Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport awaiting a nation, any nation, to approve his numerous requests for political asylum.
Svallfors stressed that his decision to award the 2013 prize to Snowden would “help to save the Nobel Peace Prize from the disrepute incurred by the hasty and ill-conceived decision to award US President Barack Obama [the] 2009 award.”
The selection of Obama as recipient was much criticized insofar as his nomination came on only the twelfth day of his presidency.
Obama also took heat for what many consider his never having a concrete accomplishment to base the award on. The decision, moreover, may have been politically motivated as a swipe at George W. Bush.
Cited as the rational by the Nobel Committee, Obama’s citation states in part:
For his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.
