Nobel Prizes

The Nobel Prize is one of the world's most prestigious awards. For a scientist it is certainly among the highest degrees of recognition there is. This is perhaps less true of writers, for which there are other equally prestigious awards. But even for writers, this is the award for which they are in competition with writers of all languages. The matter is perhaps different for peace activists. One does not work for peace with the aim (or hope) of winning this prize (the same is not true of scientists).
Universities brag about the number of Nobel laureates among their faculty in the brochures. Nations with large numbers of Nobel laureates gloat. Other nations rejoice when they have (finally) one of their members awarded or merely nominated, unless of course the nation is Burma and the awardee is Aung San Suu Kyi. This last example illustrates how while most of use recognize the remarkable intelligence and the successful activity of laureates (and nominees), this does not mean that governments take all the opinions of Nobels as just and right.
Yet we should take note, governments included, when several nobel laureates sign joint statements. Some recent examples:

• The Nobel Peace laureates Jimmy Carter, the Dalai Lama, Shirin Ebadi, John Hume, International Physicians For the Prevention of Nuclear War, José Ramos Horta, Desmond Tutu, Lech Walesa, and Jody William, signed a letter calling for worker's rights, the right to organize, form unions and collective barganing, and criticized nations like Colombia, Burma, China, Zimbabwe and ... the US for limiting these rights.
• The laureates José Saramago, Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, Rigoberta Mechú and Nadine Gordimer signed a declaration demanding the respect for the sovereignty of Venezuela.

Ocassionally, the acceptance speech is a enduring mark on history. This was certainly the case with Martin Luther King Jr.'s speech. Or, when Jean-Paul Satre refused the Nobel Prize for Literature. It is a moment when the awardee has the world stage and can speak his mind for all to hear.
This year the Nobel prize for Literature was awarded to the playwright Harold Pinter. Pinter is now 75, is suffering from cancer, and was recently hospitalized, so he was unable to travel to Stockholm. But he sent a 46 minute speech intitled Art, Truth and Politics (which one can see in its entirety over the web) in which, among other topics, he unsparingly accuses the US of "systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless" crimes, of exercising "a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good". He does not spare his own country, the "bleating little lamb tagging behind [the US] on a lead, the pathetic and supine Great Britain".
I bow to your courage, Mr. Pinter, to speak up in your moment of pain, to be unafraid of the scorn from those that believe such cermonies should be unpolitical, to speak your mind before the world and plead for peace for humankind. That is the certainly the mark of one worthy of recognition.