Amazing. It has at last gone to someone who deserves it.

Agreed, Graeme.

There is a small irony in the fact that China has tried to block internet content mentioning the award.  In 2009 Liu Xiaobo wrote an article titled The internet is God's present to China in which he tells how the computer and the internet opened a new avenue for activism.  Its worth the read....

Here is part of his discussion about peaceful activism:

Open letters signed by individuals or groups are an important way for civilians to resist dictatorship and fight for freedom. The open letter from Vaclav Havel to the Czech dictator Husak was a classic of civil opposition to dictatorship.

Fang Lizhi, a famous dissident, wrote an open letter to Deng Xiaoping, China's leader, to ask for the release of the political prisoner Wei Jingsheng. This was followed by two open letters, signed by 33 and 45 people. These three open letters were regarded as the prelude to the 1989 democracy movement, when open letters rose up like bamboo shoots after rain to support the protesting students.

Back then it took a lot of time and resources to organise an open letter. Preparations began a month before; organisers had to be found to look up the people. We talked about the content of the letter, the phrasing, the timing, and it took several days to reach consensus. Afterwards, we had to find a place to typeset the handwritten open letter and then make several copies. After proofing the document, the most time-consuming thing was to collect the signatures. Since the government was monitoring the telephones of sensitive people, we had to ride our bicycles in all directions of Beijing.

In an era without the internet, it was impossible to collect the signatures of several hundred people, and it was also impossible to disseminate the news rapidly all over the world. At the time, the influence of and the participation in letter-writing campaigns were all quite limited. We worked for many days, and in the end we would only get a few dozen people to sign. The letter-signing movements in this new era have made a quantum leap.

The ease, openness and freedom of the internet has caused public opinion to become very lively in recent years. The Government can control the press and television, but it cannot control the internet. The scandals that are censored in the traditional media are disseminated through the internet. The Government now has to release information and officials may have to publicly apologise.

I'm afraid that is a lesson which has been learned too well. governments all over the world, including Obama's, are looking at ways to censor the internet , and also to use it as a tool to spy on private citizens.

This is a high stakes game.

It is why protecting the open content of the internet in democratic countries such as our is imperative.  Governments and vested others can and do control what is released to the media.  It is those viral grainy cell phone images captured by some citizen that show the other side of the story.

In newly developed countries the latest wave of technology is accessible because the cost to implement is less than old technology like land lines.   Equipment is lighter and easier to use.  Its price and speed makes the spread of information faster and harder to control.  Right now in China they are blocking the story of their political prisoner winning the Peace prize but the story had gone viral before they tried to plug the hole; the images and words reaching far more people than Liu Xiaobo could previously on his bicycle.

It is for this reason that oppressive governments fear on line communities.  Why they dismiss global computer activists like PEN, Avaaz and others.  The governments project their knowledge of media manipulation on to the actions of others and use that to create fear and mistrust among all.

Despite technology people have always managed to get out suppressed information.  Activists throughout history have used poetry or images to communicate to others their plight, the course of action, their pleas for help.  Black slaves in America created songs that were coded messages for passing on information about the Underground Railroad.   However history also shows that oppressive regimes do not change on their own, it has usually required some kind of outside pressure to create the tipping point.

China is becoming a trading behemoth.  Its government covets that position.  People outside the country know that peaceful individuals are being imprisoned for nothing more than writing their opinions.  We can do something about it.  We can close our wallets. We can speak out and keep speaking until freedom is achieved.  History shows that doing so works. 

LB

For to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.

     Nelson Mendela 

a problem is that most people using the internet use it to download hit tunes or talk trivia with friends. Even with the web, very few have any sense of the context of news. That's why it is so difficult to explain what is happening in the world. The news media tell people almost nothing. That's why when I tell a group that random murder of civilians of all ages and mutilation of the dead has been a standard American military proactice for a hundred and fifty years  (and more) I i sound to most audiences like a lunatic. There has been nothing in the news media to prepare them for such a statement.

Indeed, much of our war news is shaped by Psy-Ops, psychologists trained to shape the news for propaganda value.

It's not just the US. Terrorism in the form of mass, indiscrciminate killing, mutillation  and destruction has been used by most armies for generations. It's a standard military strategy.

Lt. Wliiam Calley was not just a junion officer whose mind had snapped. He was  doing what he was told to do. The horror of what they have been doing is what has sent so many in post-traumatic stress disorder.

It's extremely difficult to tell the truth to people who have no context to place it in.