tagged w/ Nobel Peace Prize
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For the first time in the history of the Nobel Peace Prize the award may not be handed out as China refuses to let any of Liu Xiaobo's family travel to Norway to pick up the prize on his behalf.
The superpower is also threatening their allies that there will be "consequences" if they attend the ceremony.
So far six countries have declined to attend the ceremony on 10 December for jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, and more may follow suit as the Chinese government has put extreme pressure on their closest allies to boycott the event.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee said the ambassadors who were not going were from China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Cuba, Morocco, and Iraq.
Earlier this month, China warned that there would be "consequences" if governments showed support for Liu Xiaobo at the award ceremony. The Chinese government calls Mr Liu a "criminal".
The 54-year-old dissident received an 11-year sentence last year for "inciting subversion" after drafting the Charter 08 - which called for multi-party democracy and respect for human rights in China.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee secretary Geir Lundestad said the countries had given no reason for declining and that Beijing had mounted an "unprecedented campaign to sabotage participation in the ceremony", which will be held on 10 December.
"I don't know of any example where a country has so actively and directly tried to have ambassadors stay away from a Nobel ceremony," he said.
For the first time in the history of the Nobel Peace Prize the award may not be... more
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Aung San Suu Kyi is finally free. After 15 years of jails and house arrest is now a free woman like many others. Tomorrow she will make her first speech. This liberation comes a few days after the fake Burma elections.
http://www.inaltreparole.net/en/world/aungsansuukyilibera131110.htmlAung San Suu Kyi is finally free. After 15 years of jails and house arrest is now a... more
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She was held under house arrest for two decades. That sentence is due to expire November 13, 2010. It is now Saturday in the former 'Burma' which means that her release should be imminent.
Despite calls for her release from the globe's most respected figures, including UN Secretary General Bank Ki Moon, and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Myanmar's military junta didn't yield. It was not in the agenda to let a pro-democracy politician, with the popularity of Aung San Suu Kyi (pronounced sansooshi) to threaten the election, despite the fact that it was highly criticized for 'irregularities'.She was held under house arrest for two decades. That sentence is due to expire... more
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Petition for the Chinese authorities to free the dissident Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu XiaoboPetition for the Chinese authorities to free the dissident Nobel Peace Prize winner... more
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Anybody else think this means it's a good choice? If China doesn't like it, it almost has to be right.Anybody else think this means it's a good choice? If China doesn't like it,... more
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Dissident Lio Xiaobo is honored with Nobel Peace Prize by the Nobel Committee for his undaunted stance on human rights. When Liu Xiaobo was awarded theDissident Lio Xiaobo is honored with Nobel Peace Prize by the Nobel Committee for his... more
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We must say he was an interesting selection for Nobel Peace Prize. Liu Xiaaobo a Jailed irresponsible Chinese dissident with the habit of chain-smoking has beenWe must say he was an interesting selection for Nobel Peace Prize. Liu Xiaaobo a... more
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Imprisoned Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo won the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for "his long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights" — a prize likely to enrage the Chinese government, which had warned the Nobel committee not to honor him.
Thorbjoern Jagland, the Norwegian Nobel Committee chairman, said Liu Xiaobo (LEE-o SHAo-boh) was a symbol for the fight for human rights in China and the government should expect that its policies face scrutiny.
"China has become a big power in economic terms as well as political terms, and it is normal that big powers should be under criticism," Jagland said.
Unlike some in China's highly fractured and persecuted dissident community, the 54-year-old Liu has been an ardent advocate for peaceful, gradual political change, rather than a violent confrontation with the government.
In China, broadcasts of CNN, which is available in tourist hotels, upmarket foreign hotels and places where foreigners gather, went black during the Nobel announcement and when reports about the award later aired.
China's Foreign Ministry did not immediately comment, but a spokeswoman said recently that choosing Liu would go against the prize's aims.
"The person you just mentioned was sentenced to jail by Chinese judicial authorities for violating Chinese law. I think his acts are completely contrary to the aspirations of the Nobel Peace Prize," said spokeswoman Jiang Yu.
It was the first Nobel for the Chinese dissident community since it resurfaced after the country's communist leadership launched economic, but not political reforms three decades ago. The win could jolt a current debate among the leadership and the elite over whether China should begin democratic reforms and if so how quickly.
The Nobel citation said China's new status a big economic and political power must entail increased responsibility.
"China is in breach of several international agreements to which it is a signatory, as well as of its own provisions concerning political rights," it said, citing an article in China's constitution about freedom of speech and assembly.
"In practice, these freedoms have proved to be distinctly curtailed for China's citizens," the citation said.
The document Liu co-authored, Charter 08, called for greater freedoms and an end to the Communist Party's political dominance. It was an intentional echo of Charter 77, the famous call for human rights in then-Czechoslovakia that led to the 1989 Velvet Revolution that swept away communist rule.
"The democratization of Chinese politics can be put off no longer," Charter 08 says.
Thousands of Chinese signed Charter 08, and the Communist Party took the document as a direct challenge.
Police arrested Liu hours before Charter 08 was due to be released in December 2008. Given a brief trial last Christmas Day, Liu was convicted of subversion for writing Charter 08 and other political tracts and sentenced to 11 years in prison.
In a year with a record 237 nominations for the peace prize, Liu had been considered a favorite, with open support from winners Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama and others.
When the Tibet-born Dalai Lama won the peace prize in 1989, both the Chinese government and some of the public were angry — the exiled Buddhist leader was endlessly vilified in official propaganda as a traitor for his calls for more autonomy for Tibet.
The son of a soldier, Liu joined China's first wave of university students in the mid-1970s after the chaotic decade of the Cultural Revolution.
Liu's writing first took a political turn in 1988, when he became a visiting scholar in Oslo — his first time outside China.
Liu cut short a visiting scholar stint at Columbia University months later to join the Tiananmen Square protests in Beijing in 1989. He and three other older activists famously persuaded students to peacefully leave the square hours before the deadly June 4 crackdown.
Liu went to prison after the crackdown and was released in early 1991 because he had repented and "performed major meritorious services," state media said at the time, without elaborating.
Still, five years later Liu was sent to a re-education camp for three years for co-writing an open letter that demanded the impeachment of then-President Jiang Zemin.
President Barack Obama won the Nobel peace prize last year.Imprisoned Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo won the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for... more
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Oslo, Oct 8 : Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo has won the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize "for his long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China."
The Norwegian Nobel Committee says it has long believed that there is a close connection between human rights and peace.
http://www.sinlung.com/2010/10/liu-xiaobo-wins-nobel-peace-prize.htmlOslo, Oct 8 : Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo has won the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize... more
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The award, announced in Norway's capital Oslo, is certain to anger Beijing, which had earlier warned against the move.
Norwegian Nobel Committee president Thorbjoern Jagland said Mr Liu was "the foremost symbol of the wide-ranging struggle for human rights in China".
Link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11499098The award, announced in Norway's capital Oslo, is certain to anger Beijing, which... more
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The 39-year old, blind Chinese militant lawyer Chen Guangcheng was freed from prison on Thursday, September 9th, after having served a 4-year sentence for having revealed human rights abuses in his district in Shandong Province.
He continues to be watched, however, as he is now confined to his home in Shandong, surrounded by guards and closed-circuit surveillance cameras.The 39-year old, blind Chinese militant lawyer Chen Guangcheng was freed from prison... more
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Funny pot smokers comedy show. In this part we discuss bad stereotypes, Barack Obama and the Nobel Peace Prize. Also celebrities on Weed with Bill Murray, and lastly some stoner oops stories are told.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzNZiVT0iXcFunny pot smokers comedy show. In this part we discuss bad stereotypes, Barack Obama... more
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From the Washington Post…
Beneath its commitment to soft-spoken diplomacy and beyond the combat zones of Afghanistan and Iraq, the Obama administration has significantly expanded a largely secret U.S. war against al-Qaeda and other radical groups, according to senior military and administration officials.
Special Operations forces have grown both in number and budget, and are deployed in 75 countries, compared with about 60 at the beginning of last year. In addition to units that have spent years in the Philippines and Colombia, teams are operating in Yemen and elsewhere in the Middle East, Africa and Central Asia.
Nobel Prize
The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided that the The Nobel Peace Prize for 2009 is to be awarded to President Barack Obama for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.From the Washington Post…
Beneath its commitment to soft-spoken... more
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A la opinión pública internacional:
Nosotras, las esposas, madres, hijos e hijas de aquellos hombres y mujeres que se encuentran injustamente encarcelados luego de la reciente ola masiva de arrestos en contra de la disidencia pacífica de Cuba, pedimos su solidaridad y apoyo para una campaña internacional exigiendo la liberación inmediata de nuestros familiares, quienes han sido arrestados por ejercer la libertad de expresión y pensamiento, y por querer lograr para nuestra querida nación la reconciliación y el respeto a los derechos humanos.
Las Damas de BlancoA la opinión pública internacional:
Nosotras, las esposas, madres,... more
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In a society where civil and moral values lost their worth long ago, some find glory in stomping on the rights of those they see as inferior, for having the audacity to think different then they do.
Others have the clarity to see the lye within the daily rhetoric, we were feed for so many decades and wings of freedom start to grow.
Today, the sons of those ideals for which so many gave their lives, are devoured by the revolution.
The Ladies in White were born seven years ago, during the wave of arrests, known as the Dark Spring of 2003, when the mothers, wives, sisters and daughters of the 75 dissidents who were arrested on the spring of 2003, got together to ask for freedom for their family members imprisoned by the Communists.
Every Sunday after attending mass at the Church of Santa Rita, these brave women march down 5ta Avenida in Havana, Cuba. They march for the man who gave it all, because they understood that country is above any ideology and above themselves.
These Mujeres Coraje, (Women of Courage) march in spite of the insults, violence, shoves and abuses they receive at the hands of paramilitary crowds, dresses in civilian clothes. Their only weapons.....their unconditional love for their family members and a gladiola in their hands.
These are the women most feared by the communist regime of Cuba.
Please sing the Nomination to the Nobel Peace Prize for the brave Cuban Ladies in White!
http://www.lobbyingforum.com/petition-detail.aspx?id=186
http://sunriseinhavana.blogspot.com/2010/04/these-are-women-most-feared-by.htmlIn a society where civil and moral values lost their worth long ago, some find glory... more
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Zurama
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Last night was another great episode by SuperNews!
President Obama struggles to accept his Nobel Peace Prize, when Thorbjorn Jagland questions the troop surge in Afghanistan. The Hipsters are humbled by their encounter with a dude who makes his own underground tapes, rocks killer Keffiyeh scarves, and lives "off-the-grid": Osama bin Laden.
This episode of "Master Debaters" pits the left-wing reference-dropping Dennis Miller of 1989 against the right-wing reference-dropping Dennis Miller of 2009. Watch as these two masters of nonsensical babble attempt to out-wit, out-smart, and out-reference each other.
Things get awkward on Mars, when one NASA rover decides not to go to another's birthday party. Harvey Levin and TMZ take on Jesus Christ as the papps hound him for a salacious story. Michelle Obama worries that she and Barack are in a rut and, just like a regular married couple, there's not much he can say or do to convince her otherwise. Google has finally developed technology that can literally sift through your shit.
A new episode of SuperNews! airs every Thursday night at 11pm, on Current TV.Last night was another great episode by SuperNews!
President Obama struggles to... more
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My first reaction to the Obama Nobel announcement was "What? Really?" Completely surprised. And it turns out, so was the rest of the internet (er, the world) was too.
Why Obama? Well the Nobel committee cites his efforts to create a new climate of international politics. Good reason, but you could argue he's only just begun with that. From the statement: "Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future."
Is this award a boon to Obama or a new albatross of expectation? Many commentators fear it will be the latter.
Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo sees the reasons behind it:
This is an odd award. You'd expect it to come later in Obama's presidency and tied to some particular event or accomplishment. But the unmistakable message of the award is one of the consequences of a period in which the most powerful country in the world, the 'hyper-power' as the French have it, became the focus of destabilization and in real if limited ways lawlessness. A harsh judgment, yes. But a dark period. And Obama has begun, if fitfully and very imperfectly to many of his supporters, to steer the ship of state in a different direction. If that seems like a meager accomplishment to many of the usual Washington types it's a profound reflection of their own enablement of the Bush era and how compromised they are by it, how much they perpetuated the belief that it was 'normal history' rather than dark aberration.
Time's Mark Halperin writes that it's only fuel for his critics:
Barack Obama's critics have long accused him of being a man of "just words," rather than concrete actions and accomplishments. The stunning decision to award him the Nobel Peace prize for, basically, his rhetoric, will almost certainly infuriate his detractors in America more than it will delight his supporters.
And The National Review seems to support that, echoing a pretty wide cynical tone from the right
Obama isn't the first American president to win the Nobel Peace Prize, but he's the first to win it without having accomplished anything. In 1906, Theodore Roosevelt (five years on the job) had encouraged international arbitration and helped mediate peace between Russia and Japan. In 1919, Woodrow Wilson (six years on the job) helped end the First World War through American intervention and then worked for peace afterward — the Versailles Conference was a disaster, but nobody understood quite how at the time and Wilson, for all his faults, was certainly well intentioned. In 2002, Jimmy Carter (more than two decades after the job) was recognized, rightly or wrongly, for a variety of humanitarian efforts. They all had track records. Obama's award is simply the projection of wishful thinking.
What do you think of Obama's surprise win? Will it help or hurt his efforts?
Get involved in the conversation over on Current News.
Previously from the group Obama: The First Term:
- Obama remembers the gays - News blog
- Obama postpones meeting with Dalai Lama - Current NewsMy first reaction to the Obama Nobel announcement was "What? Really?"... more
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World-renowned author and global justice activist Arundhati Roy discusses U.S. wars, the occupation in Kashmir, and her time spent with Maoist rebels in India.
March 23, 2010 |
ANJALI KAMAT: Earlier this month, when Forbes published its annual list of the world’s billionaires, the Indian press reported with some delight that two of their countrymen had made it to the coveted list of the ten richest individuals in the world.
Meanwhile, thousands of Indian paramilitary troops and police are fighting a war against some of its poorest inhabitants living deep in the country's so-called tribal belt. Indian officials say more than a third of the country, mostly mineral-rich forest land, is partially or completely under the control of Maoist rebels, also known as Naxalites. India’s prime minister has called the Maoists the country's "gravest internal security threat." According to official figures, nearly 6,000 people have died in the past seven years of fighting, more than half of them civilians. The government’s new paramilitary offensive against the Maoists has been dubbed Operation Green Hunt.
Well, earlier this month, the leader of the Maoist insurgency, Koteswar Rao, or Kishenji, invited the Booker Prize-winning novelist Arundhati Roy to mediate in peace talks with the government. Soon after, India’s Home Secretary, G.K. Pillai, criticized Roy and others who have publicly called state violence against Maoists, quote, "genocidal."
G.K. PILLAI: If the Maoists are murderers, please call the Maoists murderers. Why is it that if Maoists murders in West Midnapore last year from June to December 159 innocent civilians, I don't see any criticism of that? I can call it -- 159, if government have done it, a lot of people would have gone and said it's genocide. Why is that not genocide by the Maoists?
AMY GOODMAN: Well, Arundhati Roy recently had a rare journalistic encounter with the armed guerrillas in the forests of central India. She spent a few weeks traveling with the insurgency deep in India's Maoist heartland and wrote about their struggle in a 20,000-word essay published this weekend in the Indian magazine Outlook. It's called "Walking with the Comrades."
We're joined now here in New York by the world-renowned author and global justice activist. She won the Lannan Foundation Cultural Freedom Prize in 2002 and is the author of a number of books, including the Booker Prize-winning novel The God of Small Things. Her latest collection of essays, published by Haymarket, is Field Notes on Democracy: Listening to Grasshoppers.
Arundhati Roy, welcome to Democracy Now!
ARUNDHATI ROY: Thank you, Amy.
AMY GOODMAN: Before we go into the very interesting journey you took, you arrive here on the seventh anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. You were extremely outspoken on the war and have continued to be. I remember seeing you at Riverside Church with the great Howard Zinn, giving a speech against the war. What are your thoughts now, seven years in? And how it's affected your continent, how it's affected India?
ARUNDHATI ROY: Well, I think the saddest thing is that when the American elections happened and you had all the rhetoric of, you know, change you can believe in, and even the most cynical of us watched Obama win the elections and did feel moved, watching how happy people were, especially people who had lived through the civil rights movement and so on, and, in fact what has happened is that he has come in and expanded the war. He won the Nobel Peace Prize and took an opportunity to justify the war. It was as though those tears of the black people who watched, you know, a black man come to power were now cut and paste into the eyes of the world’s elite watching him justify war.
And from where I come from, it's almost -- you know, you think that they probably don't even understand what they're doing, the American government. They don't understand what kind of ground they stand on. When you say things like "We have to wipe out the Taliban," what does that mean? The Taliban is not a fixed number of people. The Taliban is an ideology that has sprung out of a history that, you know, America created anyway.
Iraq, the war is going on. Afghanistan, obviously, is rising up in revolt. It's spilled into Pakistan, and from Pakistan into Kashmir and into India. So we're seeing this superpower, in a way, caught in quicksand with a conceptual inability to understand what it's doing, how to get out or how to stay in. It's going to take this country down with it, for sure, you know, and I think it's a real pity that, in a way, at least George Bush was so almost obscene in his stupidity about it, whereas here it's smoke and mirrors, and people find it more difficult to decipher what's going on. But, in fact, the war has expanded.
More at the link:,World-renowned author and global justice activist Arundhati Roy discusses U.S. wars,... more
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President Barack Obama has announced which groups will get the $1.4 million he received for winning the Nobel Peace Prize.
Obama said Thursday that $250,000 will go to Fisher House, a national nonprofit that houses families whose loved ones are receiving care at Veterans Administration medical centers. He will give another $200,000 to the Bush-Clinton Haiti Fund to help the country recover from the earthquake.
The balance will go to an array of other groups including education foundations, scholarship funds and regional development groups in Africa and Central Asia.President Barack Obama has announced which groups will get the $1.4 million he... more
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