Nobel Prize

The Nobel Peace Prize is the world’s most prestigious award, as Jay Nordlinger argues in this erudite and insightful history. He has written not only the go-to reference book for the prize and its laureates but also an important philosophical reflection on the nature of “peace” in modern times.

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The nomination of a scoundrel like Julian Assange for the Nobel Peace Prize is not without precedent – in fact, there’s a good chance he could win it. Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, would join the company of Palestinian terrorist-in-chief Yasser Arafat if he were to be awarded the prize.

Eighteen countries, including China, chose not to attend the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony honoring jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiabo last week in Oslo. Along with the Palestinians, those countries include: Afghanistan, Algeria, Cuba, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, the Philippines, Russia, Kazakhstan, Iraq, Iran, Vietnam, Venezuela, Sudan, Tunisia, Morocco, and Sri Lanka.

The award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo, a Chinese intellectual serving an 11-year jail sentence on subversion charges, has accomplished two great things.

When Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo won the Nobel Peace Prize last week, the authoritarians in Beijing responded in their typical, iron-fisted fashion.

The award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo on October 8 is a huge problem for China’s leaders. It undermines their efforts to portray the Chinese Communist party as the legitimate representative of China’s people. And for that very reason, Liu’s prize is an enormous boon to the people of China—and to the cause of democracy in general.

An EU diplomat and diplomats from 10 European countries tried to deliver a letter of congratualtions from EU Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso to Liu Xia, the wife of Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo at her home in Beijing.

Ellen Bork's roundup of Nobel Peace Prize reactions yesterday deserves a postscript. Hugo Chávez of Venezuela sucked up to his ideological comrades in Beijing (not to mention very large customers of Venezuelan oil) in memorable fashion:

Here are a few reactions to the award of the Nobel Peace Prize on October 8 to the writer and literary critic Liu Xiaobo, who was sentenced in December 2009 to an 11-year sentence for “incitement to subversion of state power” for his writings about democracy and human rights and his association with the Charter 08 democracy manifesto:

When the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded today to Liu Xiaobo, one of China’s most prominent dissidents, now serving an 11-year jail sentence, I could not help but think of a small, inspiring museum in Oslo called the Museum of Resistance.

An announcement of the Nobel Prize for literature is almost necessarily accompanied by columns listing those distinguished writers who were passed over, as well as more than a few clunkers who were not.