One of the funniest things I read as a young man was a minister in the newly Communist state of Nicaragua explaining why they shut down the newspapers; 'They said we suppressed freedom of expression. This was a lie and we could not allow them to publish it.'
China has 'warned' the Nobel committee for weeks not to give a peace prize to 'criminal' Liu Xiaobo, currently sitting in a Chinese prison for reasons no one really knows. Hey, someone may have told them Barack Obama didn't deserve a peace prize for, apparently, his inaugural address, given the dates when nominations close, but they did it anyway, since all their other efforts to, as Gunnar Berge phrased it 'kick George Bush in the knee' (e.g. Gore, Carter, Krugman) didn't work.(1)
But the Nobel committee gave it to Liu Xiaobo anyway, China blacked it out from news and websites, and declared relations with Norway would be worsened. I guess China doesn't think believe the Nobel committee is politically neutral either.
But it's a big step for soft lefty types, who have found themselves unable to criticize enemies of the state in large communist countries for decades.
The Nobel committee said Liu's participation in the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests in Beijing and the Charter 08 document, which called for greater freedom in China and an end to Communist Party political dominance. Obviously the Chinese government did not allow access to Liu, he may not even know about it - heck, he may not even know what day it is - but his wife Liu Xia said he would be pleased and was happy for him.
She was in her Beijing apartment surrounded by police, of course, so not allowed out to meet reporters.
(1) They aren't the only ones. Nobel Peace Prize winner Betty Williams had to apologize to Pres. George Bush for saying she could kill him, ironically, for a Nobel Peace Prize winner, at the International Women's Peace Conference in Dallas - a touchy place to threaten presidential assassinations.
