2009 Nobel Peace Prize the prize" while in "CounterPunch", political journalist Alexander Cockburn said that, in historical context of other former U.S. Presidents winning the Nobel Peace Prize, the award to Obama "represents a radical break in tradition, since he's only had slightly less than nine months to discharge his imperial duties." Peter Beinart of the Daily Beast called the decision a "farce", while Noam Chomsky said : "In defense of the committee, we might say that the achievement of doing nothing to advance peace places Obama on a considerably higher moral plane than some of the earlier recipients". Many were critical of the
2010 Nobel Peace Prize engines for "Liu Xiaobo" in Chinese without attaching the words "Peace Prize," gave information about Liu. Yet most sites found "Liu" plus "Peace Prize" yield only the official foreign ministry response. CNN reported that any mention of "Nobel Prize" on microblogging sites was censored. One person claimed that his SIM card was deactivated after he sent a text message to a relative about the Nobel Peace Prize. Accustomed to circumventing Chinese internet censorship, bloggers and forum-users used variants of Liu's name and posted subtle or cryptic messages to express their elation about the award or sarcasm towards the state. The