2009 Nobel Peace Prize There have been a number of calls for Obama to either return the award or to have the Nobel Committee recall it, most recently in 2013. In April 2013 a petition was begun asking the Nobel Committee to rescind the Peace Prize. The petition garnered 10,000 signatures in its first day and nearly 20,000 by the end of its first week. Nobel laureate and former U.S. Vice President Al Gore called the award "extremely well deserved". Obama received congratulations and kind words from other elected officials, such as from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and former rival, Senator John McCain, who
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