Chinese Govt. Blacks Out News of Dissident Liu Winning The Nobel Peace Prize

<i>"It was not clear if Liu himself had been told about the Nobel."</i><p>This has to be one of the first, if not <i>the</i> first case of someone winning a Nobel Peace Prize and not being immediately allowed to know they'd won. The article mentions that he is the first to win it while still imprisoned, as opposed to simply under house arrest. Imagine winning one of humanity's highest honors, but the very censorious state you fought against keeps you from knowing even that simple fact!

I'm not big on the Nobel Peace Prize, though I guess they're improving their average over last year. But man, I love Norway:<p><i>China declared the decision would harm its relations with Norway - and the Nordic country responded that was a petty thing for a world power to do.</i>

That ought to be "Chinese Govt. Blacks Out News of Dissident <i>Liu</i> Winning The Nobel Peace Prize". As originally written, it was kind of like saying "News of Dissident Bob..."<p>The Chinese put their family name first, and the given name second. Sometimes it's ambiguous because you don't know if the media report is westernizing the presentation. But in this case it's clearly wrong, because the two-syllable "Xiaobo" <i>must</i> be a given name because it's got two syllables.

"Attempts to send mobile text messages with the Chinese characters for Liu Xiaobo failed."<p>Not only the internet, but also the text messaging channels are under censorship. China looks like a country that came out of a political horror movie.

I think we all have it in ourselves to be petty dictators, even to the point of convincing ourselves it's for the greater good.<p>When we have a teaspoon of power as parents, managers or customers, is it not tempting to hide the truth and impose our wills without concern for our subordinates?<p>I have to work on this constantly as a father. The greatest thing is when I loosen the reins and give my 3 year old son more freedom, and he comes around to do the "right thing" without being forced. I'm so much prouder of him than if he was just following me out of fear.

I don't understand what they hope to accomplish. I can understand the (flawed) reasoning behind blacking-out news regarding certain events, such as how the Chinese government handles protesters, human rights violations in China, etc.<p>But this news item is a single fact. There aren't any "details" to cover up - the fact, comprised of a single statement "The noble peace prize is being given to a Chinese dissident" is nothing you can cover up. It's a single, standalone declaration, you can't apply spin, you can't really do _anything_ with it, other than simply know that it occurred. This kind of stuff is hard to "black-out" and it's rather pointless to do so.<p>The only way to combat news items like this would be to attack it, not hide it.

<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liu_Xiaobo" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liu_Xiaobo</a> is unsurprisingly blocked.

Is it possible to know who <i>proposed</i> Xiaobo for Nobel?

This hardly seems like a surprise.