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Liu Xiaobo's Nobel Prize

Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo has won the Nobel Peace Prize. The Washington Post reports that Liu is currently in jail for helping publish the "Charter 08," which demanded, among other things, "a judiciary not controlled by the Communist Party, meaningful elections and the freedoms of association, assembly, expression and religion."

Apparently Liu has never been afraid to put everything on the line:

In 1989, he left a cushy post as a visiting scholar at Columbia University to return to China to participate in demonstrations in Tiananmen Square.

On the night of June 3, 1989, he was one of four dissidents who negotiated with the People's Liberation Army to allow the last several hundred students to peacefully vacate the square. After the crackdown he spent two years in jail.

Liu was dispatched to a re-education camp in 1996 for co-writing an open letter that demanded the impeachment of then-president Jiang Zemin.

From then until his arrest in December, 2008, two days before the charter was released, Liu lived a life of constant harassment by the security services. He was repeatedly questioned because of his views or his essays, which were passed around the Internet by thousands of his readers.

Here is Liu's wikipedia entry, which is growing right now.

It hardly needs to be said...Liu's going to have a hard time following in the footsteps of last year's winner.

View all comments (9) | Leave a comment

JmsA| 10.8.10 @ 9:35AM

It's about time they honored someone of worth.

Eric Cartman| 10.8.10 @ 9:57AM

Oh, sure! This guy! Who does he think he is? Has he saved the planet from cow flatulence or made a movie filled with lies and nonsense? No. Has he groped a masseuse while warbling a cheesy love song about himself or gained 147 pounds on the Vegan-Free Porterhouse Steak Diet while lecturing us on saving the planet by eating tofu and rice cakes? No! Does he have a jet? NO! How about two giant, oxygen sucking, carbon blowing mansions? I don't think so. He isn't even the first black president with hardly any accomplishments to his name besides helping ACORN perfect voter fraud and hanging out with a noted terrorist, Bill Ayers. All this guy has done is leave a safe job in the U.S. to go protest the Chinese government and endure years of imprisonment and torture for doing so!
Phhhht! Get a life, Nobel Dudes! Call me when you have someone worth the prize! Like Kim Kardashian or Justin Bieber! Now we're talking Peace price material. Well, in Kardashian's case we may want to rename it the Nobel Piece Prize - but only for her.

Steve B| 10.8.10 @ 11:02AM

The Nobel Peace Prize has always been a poor relation to the Nobel prizes for science and literature, and is awarded by a separate committee.

After all, Al Gore beat out Irena Sendler (who saved hundreds of Jewish children during WWII and was tortured by the Nazis and imprisoned by the communists) and Obama was awarded the prize for... exactly what was it?

It'll take a few more awards like this to give the prize any real prestige.

Tom Hanifin| 10.9.10 @ 6:07PM

Feces! If Liu doesn´t like it in China…why doesn´t he move to the United States if he thinks it is so great here? We ONCE had a 100 sq foot free speech area 5 miles from the Republican Conventions that nominated George W. Bush who then became president…by loosing two elections. And we have a bigger Cult of Incumbents than the defunct communist party ever had. AND this country rapes more of the world´s resources and causes the greatest amount of terror and unbearable poverty by maintaining more weapons of mass destruction than any other two insane nations on the face of the earth. But that still does not even take into account that this land of ¨freedom¨ has more people in prison…than any other country on the face of the earth.

F*ck idolizing Xiaobo and the Noble Peace Prize! WTF have YOU ever done for world peace, jackass? And to keep everyone in ignorance and from finding out what does not get reported…you are forbidden by the Patriot Act to go --->

http://bramin.wordpress.com/page/2/ !

So don´t say you weren´t warned!

PS.
Just love a world where billions live in acceptable obscene poverty and even more billions live in acceptable blasphemous slavery so that petty small minded sites have enough time on their hands to monitor with censorship...words of rage and passion for being unacceptable.

ChasL| 10.10.10 @ 3:57AM

It is a fact Liu Xiaobo's domestic political activities, including advocating the abolition of China's constitution in "Charter 08", were financed by the US government.

Kudos to you Nobel, you just gave the peace prize to an American spy. Liu Xiaobo taking over $650,000 from the US government via the NED is in the public records.

Just check the web archive of NED's China grant publications that's now deleted.

JmsA| 10.10.10 @ 9:05PM

What was that, again?

Eric Cartman| 10.10.10 @ 4:49PM

Testing 123

Jim Yang| 12.10.10 @ 4:29AM

What hell peace prize for a betrayer to his country, his people as well as his ancestors? Is it the value that Nobel prize for? I know the prizes are always for American people who sacrifice the interest of the others for that of themselves, so come on with your prize!!

wholesale beads| 4.18.11 @ 2:30AM

nice

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More Blog Posts by Joseph Lawler

http://spectator.org/blog/2010/10/08/liu-xiaobos-nobel-prize

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