China Officially Recognizes Its Nobel Peace Prize Winner

It sort of reminds one of the old saying about being tarred and feathered: if it wasn't so much for the honor I'd just as soon pass it by.

China has let the secret out -- dissident Liu Xiaobo won the Nobel Prize for Peace last week.

The official China Daily reported it in an article quoting a Norwegian judge/writer who said the selection of Liu was wrong.

Liu's wife, Liu Xia, already is being held incommunicado. Somehow she managed to get Twitter message out calling her detention illegal, Al Zaeera reported. "I had the phone for only one day and already it has been cut by the hoodlums."

Brings back memories of when South Africa used to ban people, but its government and people turned to democracy.

Liu Xia's Twitter address is @liuxia.

China had stopped to block circulation of the news, but they were a little slow off the mark. It had already spread around the nation.

While Internet searches could be blocked, and BBC World Service and Voice of America broadcasts could be jammed, the horse was already out of the barn.

Blocking hundreds of millions of emails, chat messages and other Internet channels isn't easy.