While the Nobel Peace Prize is a nobel idea( ), it gets hammered for being awarded too soon and not soon enough. Plus it is awarding exemplary human behaviour, which simply isn't going to hold up long term.
Saddly, Liu Xiaobo (and wife) will probably rot in jail with very little changing in the long term because of this event. I view that as more of a tragedy rather than recognition of any real change in human rights in china, which was probably why the peace price was awarded now rather anytime in the last few decades.
"Okay, I'll have the truth with a side order of clarity." ~ Dr. Daniel Jackson.
"Reality has a well-known liberal bias." ~ Stephen Colbert
"One Drive, One Partition, the One True Path" ~ ars technica forums - warrens - on hhd partitioning schemes.
Awarding prizes to people in authoritarian nations is just fucking insane in my view. Didn't the people learn anything from, say, the Nobel prize for literature to Boris Pasternak, which led to massive problems for the latter inside the USSR? At least Pasternak wasn't thrown into jail. But Liu was already in jail. Now it seems his wife is arrested. Was the prize really worth it?
What does this prize even mean, when everyone goes to the EXPO 2010 in Shanghai? The world will not change for one man.
Lì ci sono chiese, macerie, moschee e questure, lì frontiere, prezzi inaccessibile e freddure
Lì paludi, minacce, cecchini coi fucili, documenti, file notturne e clandestini
Qui incontri, lotte, passi sincronizzati, colori, capannelli non autorizzati,
Uccelli migratori, reti, informazioni, piazze di Tutti i like pazze di passioni...
...La tranquillità è importante ma la libertà è tutto!
The Chinese temper-tantrum over this says a lot about how no matter how nice the Olympic games may be, modernity in China is a thin (lead-based) coat of paint over a country that can still be very, very ugly over political dissidence. It's a shame this poor bastard and his wife have to deal with it.
Stas Bush wrote:What does this prize even mean, when everyone goes to the EXPO 2010 in Shanghai? The world will not change for one man.
It means that a lot of Chinese people who would otherwise never have heard of the guy will look up Charter 08 and his other essays to find out what all the fuss is about. Which will spread awareness of his activism and build popular sympathy.
I suspect that Liu Xiaobo would consider it worth it. It's not like he didn't realize he was facing a long time in prison for speaking out.
Ralin wrote:It means that a lot of Chinese people who would otherwise never have heard of the guy will look up Charter 08 and his other essays to find out what all the fuss is about. Which will spread awareness of his activism and build popular sympathy.
Charter 08 is banned on the Chinese internet, and there's a total blackout in the local news about the Nobel Peace Prize (at least here where I live). So the ordinary Chinese wouldn't find out anything about it. Someone who speaks English and watches international news in English, or someone who daily circumvents the Chinese firewall is probably already familiar with a lot of that stuff. For such people it wouldn't be news, too.
I'm not sure you fully understand the capacity for highly selective censorship in China, especially in the national language mass media. I have to deal with it daily and I must say that I am impressed... in a negative way, I guess.
Lì ci sono chiese, macerie, moschee e questure, lì frontiere, prezzi inaccessibile e freddure
Lì paludi, minacce, cecchini coi fucili, documenti, file notturne e clandestini
Qui incontri, lotte, passi sincronizzati, colori, capannelli non autorizzati,
Uccelli migratori, reti, informazioni, piazze di Tutti i like pazze di passioni...
...La tranquillità è importante ma la libertà è tutto!
Chris OFarrell wrote:SDN hasn't been cut off from China?
We clearly have to work on that
Don't - we have members who live in China. Cute ones, too
On-topic: It seems to me that the peace Nobel price is nearly always given for working on something - such as peace (duh), individual freedoms etc. That's in contrast to all the other Nobel prizes, who are given for achievements.
However, that makes some sort of sense - when you have made a scientific discovery, it stays. That's not true for political achievements, those can be undone. Hence, the nature of the two prices is inevitably different.
SoS:NBAGALE Force "Destiny and fate are for those too weak to forge their own futures. Where we are 'supposed' to be is irrelevent." - Sir Nitram
"The world owes you nothing but painful lessons" - CaptainChewbacca
"The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of a mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one." - Wilhelm Stekel
"In 1969 it was easier to send a man to the Moon than to have the public accept a homosexual" - Broomstick Divine Administration - of Gods and Bureaucracy (Worm/Exalted)
I wonder if the Nobel Peace Prize might benefit from moving away from the "every year without fail" model to one where they wait for something obvious. It'd certainly benefit from following the other Nobel prizes and making the award retrospective and well after the fact.
Stas Bush wrote:Charter 08 is banned on the Chinese internet, and there's a total blackout in the local news about the Nobel Peace Prize (at least here where I live). So the ordinary Chinese wouldn't find out anything about it. Someone who speaks English and watches international news in English, or someone who daily circumvents the Chinese firewall is probably already familiar with a lot of that stuff. For such people it wouldn't be news, too.
I'm not sure you fully understand the capacity for highly selective censorship in China, especially in the national language mass media. I have to deal with it daily and I must say that I am impressed... in a negative way, I guess.
There were impromptu gatherings of thousands of people in China, or so the German news reported it. And apparently, one can still find charter 08 on the chinese internet, albeit in obscure locations.
Granted, most of that will not be accessible to the average person, but I doubt there is no under-the-table give away of the charter.
Whoever says "education does not matter" can try ignorance
------------
A decision must be made in the life of every nation at the very moment when the grasp of the enemy is at its throat. Then, it seems that the only way to survive is to use the means of the enemy, to rest survival upon what is expedient, to look the other way. Well, the answer to that is 'survival as what'? A country isn't a rock. It's not an extension of one's self. It's what it stands for. It's what it stands for when standing for something is the most difficult! - Chief Judge Haywood
------------ My LPs
Ralin wrote:It means that a lot of Chinese people who would otherwise never have heard of the guy will look up Charter 08 and his other essays to find out what all the fuss is about. Which will spread awareness of his activism and build popular sympathy.
Charter 08 is banned on the Chinese internet, and there's a total blackout in the local news about the Nobel Peace Prize (at least here where I live). So the ordinary Chinese wouldn't find out anything about it. Someone who speaks English and watches international news in English, or someone who daily circumvents the Chinese firewall is probably already familiar with a lot of that stuff. For such people it wouldn't be news, too.
I'm not sure you fully understand the capacity for highly selective censorship in China, especially in the national language mass media. I have to deal with it daily and I must say that I am impressed... in a negative way, I guess.
That's interesting, since Xinhua, China daily and etc are carrying the news on their website.
But it WOULD explain why I haven't seen any smattering of it on the newsforums
Let him land on any Lyran world to taste firsthand the wrath of peace loving people thwarted by the myopic greed of a few miserly old farts- Katrina Steiner
I don't know, perhaps it is a mix of timing and filtering, but the local news sure look like a blackout. The websites of China's state news agencies carry news about China's reaction to the award:
China strongly disagrees with a Norway committee's decision to award this year's Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo, a criminal convicted of agitation aimed at subverting China's government, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said on Friday.
And the like...
However, I didn't find any mention of the Charter 08. In fact, searching for Charter 08 without using some proxy to bypass the Chinese firewall would yield no results as all pages will be blocked by the ISP.
Lì ci sono chiese, macerie, moschee e questure, lì frontiere, prezzi inaccessibile e freddure
Lì paludi, minacce, cecchini coi fucili, documenti, file notturne e clandestini
Qui incontri, lotte, passi sincronizzati, colori, capannelli non autorizzati,
Uccelli migratori, reti, informazioni, piazze di Tutti i like pazze di passioni...
...La tranquillità è importante ma la libertà è tutto!
Stas Bush wrote:I don't know, perhaps it is a mix of timing and filtering, but the local news sure look like a blackout. The websites of China's state news agencies carry news about China's reaction to the award:
China strongly disagrees with a Norway committee's decision to award this year's Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo, a criminal convicted of agitation aimed at subverting China's government, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said on Friday.
And the like...
However, I didn't find any mention of the Charter 08. In fact, searching for Charter 08 without using some proxy to bypass the Chinese firewall would yield no results as all pages will be blocked by the ISP.
Oh. I was referring to "there's a total blackout in the local news about the Nobel Peace Prize" as opposed to Charter 08.
Its definitely in the major news though and now has editorial comment from the China Global Times. Their Chinese editorial essentially blasts the Norway peace prize as Western imperialism being imposed upon China.
Why Xiaobo is a dissident is not mentioned so far other than he wrote anti-government articles.
Let him land on any Lyran world to taste firsthand the wrath of peace loving people thwarted by the myopic greed of a few miserly old farts- Katrina Steiner
The Chinese government is just filled to the brim with vindictive militarisitic nationalisitic morons which unfortunately wield considerable influence over foreign policy as observed in the recent Sino-Japanese ruckus. They are vindictive enough to erase a decade of diplomacy. Now every one in Asia knows the Chinese doesn't give a fib about their opinion, going as far as to regard some countries as "small".
Should we expect anything else of them?
STGOD: Byzantine Empire Your spirit, diseased as it is, refuses to allow you to give up, no matter what threats you face... and whatever wreckage you leave behind you.
Kreia
Good news - apparently the wife was not arrested after all. It has been confirmed she will be able to visit him in prison tonight.
However, it is not sure if she will be allowed to tell him that he won the prize, given the conversation will be censored and observed by two police officers who will immediately end the conversation if politics are mentioned (as is SOP).
Whoever says "education does not matter" can try ignorance
------------
A decision must be made in the life of every nation at the very moment when the grasp of the enemy is at its throat. Then, it seems that the only way to survive is to use the means of the enemy, to rest survival upon what is expedient, to look the other way. Well, the answer to that is 'survival as what'? A country isn't a rock. It's not an extension of one's self. It's what it stands for. It's what it stands for when standing for something is the most difficult! - Chief Judge Haywood
------------ My LPs
...though they just cut off all contact with her to the outside help and placed her under house arrest.
Whoever says "education does not matter" can try ignorance
------------
A decision must be made in the life of every nation at the very moment when the grasp of the enemy is at its throat. Then, it seems that the only way to survive is to use the means of the enemy, to rest survival upon what is expedient, to look the other way. Well, the answer to that is 'survival as what'? A country isn't a rock. It's not an extension of one's self. It's what it stands for. It's what it stands for when standing for something is the most difficult! - Chief Judge Haywood
------------ My LPs
"A lot of what we [NED] do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA." - Allen Weinstein.
“The misnamed National Endowment for Democracy is nothing more than a costly program that takes US taxpayer funds to promote favored politicians and political parties abroad. What the NED does in foreign countries … would be rightly illegal in the United States.” - Ron Paul
How does that prove anything? Or rather, what are you trying to say?
Whoever says "education does not matter" can try ignorance
------------
A decision must be made in the life of every nation at the very moment when the grasp of the enemy is at its throat. Then, it seems that the only way to survive is to use the means of the enemy, to rest survival upon what is expedient, to look the other way. Well, the answer to that is 'survival as what'? A country isn't a rock. It's not an extension of one's self. It's what it stands for. It's what it stands for when standing for something is the most difficult! - Chief Judge Haywood
------------ My LPs
I don't really see a problem with funding parties and programs in other countries if they match your interests. Countries are always going to do this sort of shit; better they do it openly with capital and politics than with espionage and warfare.
1980s Rock is to music what Giant Robot shows are to anime
Think about it.
Cruising low in my N-1 blasting phat beats,
showin' off my chrome on them Coruscant streets
Got my 'saber on my belt and my gat by side,
this here yellow plane makes for a sick ride
Also, I am not surprised if this is not really genuine, seeing as how China is quite famous for its PR campaigns against people they do not like.
Whoever says "education does not matter" can try ignorance
------------
A decision must be made in the life of every nation at the very moment when the grasp of the enemy is at its throat. Then, it seems that the only way to survive is to use the means of the enemy, to rest survival upon what is expedient, to look the other way. Well, the answer to that is 'survival as what'? A country isn't a rock. It's not an extension of one's self. It's what it stands for. It's what it stands for when standing for something is the most difficult! - Chief Judge Haywood
------------ My LPs
Thanas wrote:Also, I am not surprised if this is not really genuine, seeing as how China is quite famous for its PR campaigns against people they do not like.
Of course, if the information does not fit the paradigm and confirmation bias you are used to, it is dismissed. And, has it ever occurred to you that the Nobel Peace Prize is a political tool?
As for China and their PR campaign, it sucks and it's terrible. That's why they're not very good at it. They should learn from the best, the people who manage to make this man a martyr for serving their cause: the West.
Thanas wrote:Also, I am not surprised if this is not really genuine, seeing as how China is quite famous for its PR campaigns against people they do not like.
Of course, if the information does not fit the paradigm and confirmation bias you are used to, it is dismissed. And, has it ever occurred to you that the Nobel Peace Prize is a political tool?
Yes.
How does that prove any of your points?
Whoever says "education does not matter" can try ignorance
------------
A decision must be made in the life of every nation at the very moment when the grasp of the enemy is at its throat. Then, it seems that the only way to survive is to use the means of the enemy, to rest survival upon what is expedient, to look the other way. Well, the answer to that is 'survival as what'? A country isn't a rock. It's not an extension of one's self. It's what it stands for. It's what it stands for when standing for something is the most difficult! - Chief Judge Haywood
------------ My LPs
), it gets hammered for being awarded too soon and not soon enough. Plus it is awarding exemplary human behaviour, which simply isn't going to hold up long term.
