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I did not have telepathic declassification on my 2022 bingo card.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

You cannot shame the shameless.

Meanwhile over at truth Social, the former president is busy confessing to crimes.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the GOP

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

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The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

I’m pretty sure there’s only one Jack Smith.

They’re not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Excellent Links / Liu Xiaobo Wins Nobel Peace Prize

Liu Xiaobo Wins Nobel Peace Prize

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From the NYTimes, “Chinese Dissident Awarded Nobel Peace Prize“:

BEIJING — Liu Xiaobo, an impassioned literary critic, political essayist and democracy advocate repeatedly jailed by the Chinese government for his writings, won the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday in recognition of his pursuit of nonviolent political reform in the world’s most populous country.
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Mr. Liu, 54, perhaps China’s best known dissident, is currently serving an 11-year term on charges of “inciting the subversion of state power.” He is the first Chinese citizen to win the Peace Prize.
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In awarding the prize to Mr. Liu, the Norwegian Nobel Committee delivered an unmistakable rebuke to Beijing’s authoritarian leaders at a time of growing intolerance for domestic dissent and spreading unease internationally over the muscular diplomacy that has accompanied China’s economic rise.
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The prize is an enormous boost for China’s beleaguered reform movement and an affirmation of the two decades Mr. Liu has spent advocating peaceful political change in the face of unremitting hostility from the ruling Chinese Community Party. Blacklisted from academia and barred from publishing in China, Mr. Liu has been harassed and detained repeatedly since 1989, when he stepped into the drama playing out on Tiananmen Square by staging a hunger strike and then negotiating the peaceful retreat of student demonstrators as thousands of soldiers stood by with rifles at the ready.
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“If not for the work of Liu and the others to broker a peaceful withdrawal from the square, Tiananmen Square would have been a field of blood on June 4,” said Gao Yu, a veteran journalist who was arrested in the hours before the tanks began moving through the city.

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Reader Interactions

14Comments

  5. 5.

    JGabriel

    WereBear: It comes with a monetary component of about $1.4 million. Whether the Chinese gov’t will ever let him out of jail to access it, of course, is a different matter.

    .

  7. 7.

    cschack

    The Chinese embassy in Oslo is already acting pissy. They wouldn’t even open for the mailman.

  8. 8.

    New Yorker

    @jon:

    Eh, he’s probably penning a column about how Avigdor Lieberman deserves it.

    And I wasn’t ever thrilled with Obama’s win. I prefer seeing it go to people resisting oppressive governments (peacefully, of course). I’m happy with this one.

  9. 9.

    Snarki, child of Loki

    The Nobel committee really should issue a public statement regarding the Chinese attempt to jawbone them into not giving the Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo.

    They should say:

    Thanks for nominating him! That really put him over the top in our internal discussions.

    Oh, and your threats of retaliation? Fuck you very much.

  10. 10.

    EconWatcher

    What will happen in China when you have tens of millions of young men with no realistic prospect of finding women to settle down with, because of the mismatch caused by the one-child policy?

    Or to put it another way, what happens when a growing power, with an overcrowded homeland and an insatiable appetite for resources to fuel its economy, finds itself with tens of millions of expendable young men?

    If I were Russia, with its vast lands and resources and dwindling population (particularly along the Chinese border), I would be very nervous.

  11. 11.

    Comrade Sock Puppet of the Great Satan

    “What will happen in China when you have tens of millions of young men with no realistic prospect of finding women to settle down with, because of the mismatch caused by the one-child policy?”

    It’s not the one-child policy, it’s the selective abortion of female fetuses that’s the problem. Which is even more rampant in India.

    What will happen? I don’t know. But hopefully market pressures will lead to the end of dowries, which is a big factor in the preference for male children in India.

  12. 12.

    Cris

    So are we going to see a resurgence of conservatives complaining about the Nobel committee making political statements, like they did in 2007 and 2009?

  13. 13.

    mattH

    Oh, the irony. I read an article a day or two ago about the Chinese frustration with not having won a Nobel Prize in the sciences. Best watch what you think you are entitled to.

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