American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture
Bob Dylan wins 2016 Nobel Prize for Literature.
Didn’t take long for this,
Juan Luis Guerra gana el Premio Nobel de QuímicaLA ACADEMIA RECONOCE SUS INVESTIGACIONES SOBRE LA BILIRRUBINA Y LA VITAMINA DE CARIÑO
Guerra, que ha recibido la noticia esta misma mañana, ha agradecido el premio pero ha querido recordar que “yo he visto Los Agapantos de Monet en el MOMA, he visto exhibir las obras de Van Gogh y de Picasso, el Foliage de Cézanne y la Mona Lisa, pero nada se compara con tu cara bonita”.
At Peace Prize Ceremony, Winner’s Chair Stays Empty (emphasis added)
OSLO — Imprisoned in China and with close family members forbidden to leave the country, the Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, an empty chair representing his absence at the prize ceremony here.
For the first time in 75 years, no representative of the winner was allowed to make the trip to receive the peace medal, a diploma and the $1.5 million check that comes with it.
You would think the prior Nobel Peace Prize winner would make a moral statement by attending the ceremony in person in a show of solidarity.
You would be wrong.
By NMA.TV,
Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo will be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday. But instead of traveling to Oslo to receive the award Liu will spend the day in jail, where he is serving eleven years on charges of “inciting subversion of state power” for his part in the writing of Charter ’08, a document that called for greater freedom of expression, human rights and free elections in China.
Animated video,
Here are the countries that are siding with China on the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony for Liu Xiaobo:
Russia
Ukraine
Kazakhstan
Cuba
Venezuela
Morocco
Egypt
Tunisia
Sudan
Iraq
Afghanistan
Pakistan
Colombia
Vietnam
Iran
Saudi Arabia
Philippines
Serbia
. Beijing boasted Tuesday that most countries would stay away from attending the ceremony. In fact, only the 65 countries with embassies in Norway were invited, and 44 of those had accepted, according to the Nobel Prize Committee.
In the natural sciences, the Nobel Prize committees have been awarded to people who have done meaningful work that changed the study of science; however, in literature and the “peace” categories, they have shown themselves totally irrelevant.
This year marks a change:
First, with the Nobel in Literature,
Vargas Llosa and the Value of Literature
His work is a rebuttal to those who believe that fiction exists on the periphery of history and politics.
As Mr. Vargas Llosa wrote in his 2001 essay about literature, “Nothing better protects a human being against the stupidity of prejudice, racism, religious or political sectarianism, and exclusivist nationalism than this truth that invariably appears in great literature: that men and women of all nations and places are essentially equal.”
This year’s citation for Vargas Llosa says that he got the prize for “his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual’s resistance, revolt, and defeat.” This points to a focus on individual rights which is central both to simple humanitarianism and also — though European Leftists would disagree — market-led neoliberalism.
In making this choice, for this reason, the Academy seems to have done just what is expected of it, which is not to go by rumours and prejudices, but to look at the work itself. And as an example of why Vargas Llosa is fascinating, there is not just all his considerable body of work over the years, but also his most recent book, published this year, which has not been translated from Spanish, but whose subject matter signals its exceptional interest.
The selection of Liu Xiabo for Peace Prize is even more striking:
China is furious, making this onerous statement,
In recent years, relations between China and Norway have maintained favorable development, which is in the basic interests of the two countries and their people. The Nobel committee’s award to Liu Xiaobo is completely contrary to the objective of the Nobel Peace Prize, and will bring harm to the China-Norway relationship.
The Chinese government has also forced Liu Xiabo’s wife out of her home in Beijing, and blanked Nobel Prize searches:
Text-messaging on mobile phones is not immune from censors, either. A Shanghai-based netizen, @littley, tweeted his unfortunate experience: “My SIM card just got de-activated, turning my iPhone to an iPod touch after I texted my dad about Liu Xiaobo winning the Nobel Peace Prize.”
From an email by the Independent Institute, where Alvaro Vargas Llosa is senior fellow,
Alvaro Vargas Llosa, Senior Fellow at the Center for Global Prosperity, who has authored such notable works as Liberty for Latin America, which obtained the Sir Anthony Fisher International Memorial Award for its contribution to the cause of freedom in 2006, expressed the following sentiments:
The Nobel Prize for Literature awarded to my father, Mario Vargas LLosa, is great news for those of us who value freedom. His work explores the oppressive structures of power and the plight of the individual who rebels against them, [and} their impact has given some comfort, for decades, to those who struggle against authoritarian regimes. Among the moving messages he and the family have received since the announcement are hundreds of letters of hope from Cubans and Venezuelans who see in him a symbol of what they stand for. The cause of liberty in the Western Hemisphere has good reason to rejoice.
The Independent Institute and its staff would like to join Alvaro in his praise, and extend their sincere appreciation to Mario for his tremendous contributions to the advancement of freedom in Latin America and across the world.
In other Nobel Prize news, the Peace Prize committee finally gets it right:
Nobel Peace Prize Given to Jailed Chinese Dissident (emphasis added)
Liu Xiaobo, an impassioned literary critic, political essayist and democracy advocate repeatedly jailed by the Chinese government for his activism, has won the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of “his long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China.”
Mr. Liu, 54, perhaps China’s best known dissident, is serving an 11-year term on subversion charges, in a cell 300 miles from Beijing.
He is one of three people to have received the prize while incarcerated by their own governments, after the Burmese opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, in 1991, and the German pacifist, Carl von Ossietzky, in 1935.
By awarding the prize to Mr. Liu, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has provided an unmistakable rebuke to Beijing’s authoritarian leaders at a time of growing intolerance for domestic dissent and a spreading unease internationally over the muscular diplomacy that has accompanied China’s economic rise.
I applaud the Peace Committee’s decision; let’s hope they continue on this track.
UPDATED with video,
A Pen Against Dictatorship
Vargos Llosa wins the literature Nobel.
The Nobel Literature Committee has awarded the Prize to the best living Spanish-language writer, and one of the best writers in the history of literature:
Mario Vargas Llosa Wins Nobel Literature Prize
Vargas Llosa is not only a white male, he’s also a free-market libertarian who believes in democracy. His books have been bestsellers for decades.
He’s currently teaching at Princeton, and will be giving a public lecture at Princeton U next Monday – I expect it’ll be mobbed.
Vargas Llosa is one of those rare literary creatures who has not only helped to define the aesthetic stylistic innovation of his period but directly influence its events.
The author of over 30 books – and very nearly the president of Peru – Vargas Llosa is one of the preeminent public intellectuals of the post-war era and one of the great libertarian heroes of the age at least since his highly public criticism of the Castro regime starting in the early 1970s. An outspoken critic of authoritarian regimes on the right and the left, who else but Vargas Llosa would have called for the legalization of drugs while addressing the American Enterprise Institute’s annual dinner a few years back? He has been a consistent voice against repression wherever he finds it and an eloquent champion of freedom in all its manifestations. His insistence that all aspects of liberty – political, economic, and cultural – are inextricably linked is as powerful as it is rare among writers of his stature.
Reason has published two articles by Vargas Llosa: The Children of Columbus, and Global Village or Global Pillage?
Why we must create a universal culture of liberty
Trio Wins Nobel Chemistry Prize
American Richard Heck and Japanese researchers Ei-ichi Negishi and Akira Suzuki won the 2010 Nobel Prize in chemistry on Wednesday for developing a chemical method that has allowed scientists to make medicines and better electronics.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said the award honors their development of palladium-catalyzed cross couplings in organic systems. The academy called that one of the most sophisticated tools available to chemists today, and one that is used by researchers world-wide and in commercial production of pharmaceuticals and molecules used to make electronics.
A friend tells me that the types of reactions they initially described are taught in
organic/organometallic chemistry as coupling reactions, and are named
reactions (Heck coupling, Negishi and Suzuki reaction).
Congratulations to the winners, and to the Nobel Prize committee for awarding it to people who actually did something.
Snubbed Norwegians replace absent Obama at event with … cardboard cutout
Yessiree…the cutout made a personal appearance
a “Save the Children” benefit concert, where organizers replaced him with an Obama cardboard cutout. Obama also won’t be around for Friday’s Nobel Concert.
Here he is on stage right:
In other Oslo news, check out Michelle Obama’s Mirror’s Blog on Golden Geese Land in Oslo.