Neo-Liberals Can Write Too...

Swedish leftists are appalled that this year's Nobel Prize for Literature went to Peruvian writer Mario Llosa Vargas. Spiked-Online has a nice article about it here. To leftists Vargas just doesn't fit the mold of what a writer should be, which is, first and foremost, a socialist:

People who never voiced any concerns about the politics of other Nobel Prize winners like Wisyawa Szymborska, who wrote poetic celebrations of Lenin and Stalin; Günter Grass, who praised Cuba's dictatorship; Harold Pinter, who supported Slobodan Milosevic; José Saramago, who purged anti-Stalinists from the revolutionary newspaper he edited thought that the Swedish Academy had finally crossed a line. Mario Vargas Llosa's politics apparently should have disqualified him from any prize considerations. He is after all a classical liberal in the tradition of John Locke and Adam Smith.

For those leftists who are keen on diversity such parochialism is hypocritical. And that only leftists write literature worth reading is snobbery, pure and simple. Vargas proves that non-socialists like him can write literature that not only win prestigious prizes like Nobels, but are works of high artistic merits, which is reason enough to read them. These leftists forget that Vargas won the Nobel for his literary contributions, not his politics.

But this is not the only thing that bothers these leftists: for one thing, Vargas was once one of them.

He was a convinced Communist who supported the Cuban revolution. He moved on not because he was no longer able to sympathise with the poor and oppressed, but because he still did when others began to identify more with the revolutionaries than with the people in whose name they made the revolution. He saw that Castro persecuted homosexuals and imprisoned dissenters. While other socialists kept quiet and thought that the dream justified the means, Vargas Llosa began to ask himself the difficult questions about why his ideals looked more like prison camps than socialist utopias when realized.

Like a religious fanatic who cannot fathom someone leaving a faith as perfect as his, leftists wonder why Vargas became such an apostate, supporting rubbish like free markets and free trade.

[via arts & letters daily]

V.S. Naipaul: A Literary Monster

V.S. Naipaul is no doubt a great writer, who also has a reputation for being an arrogant prick with a gigantic ego. Like Paul Theroux, who once called Naipaul a mentor and a friend, I knew very little of the man. Some choice quotes:

Now French’s biography amply demonstrates everything I said and more. It is not a pretty story; it will probably destroy Naipaul’s reputation for ever, this chronicle of his pretensions, his whoremongering, his treatment of a sad, sick wife and disposable mistress, his evasions, his meanness, his cruelty amounting to sadism, his race baiting. Then there is the “gruesome sex”, the blame shifting, the paranoia, the disloyalty, the nasty cracks and the whining, the ingratitude, the mood swings, the unloving and destructive personality.

...Normally an author’s biography offers a reading list of influences and favourite books or writers. What do we have here? Naipaul’s father Seepersad is his favourite writer, some of Conrad passes muster, Flaubert is a one-book wonder; and all the rest he dismisses or disparages – James Joyce, Dickens, E M Forster, Maugham, Keynes, Jane Austen, Anthony Powell, Derek Walcott and many others, including me. I am “a rather common fellow”, who writes “tourist books for the lower classes”. I am also a bore and as a pedagogue “in Africa, teaching the negroes”, I clearly did the unpardonable.

Read the whole article. The level of cruelty Naipaul delights in will simply make you vomit. What a horrible, horrible man. Nevertheless, I'll still continue to read him.

A Castro Lovefest...

Frontline magazine, the unofficial news magazine of the Left Front, has devoted the cover of its latest issue to Fidel Castro, who is reluctantly stepping down from his various posts due to poor health. Surprisingly, there are no articles by foreign editor John Cherian, Fidel Castro's number one fan (though Aijaz Ahmed comes in a close second with this sycophantic article), and is no doubt rushing to Cuba this very second to kiss El Presidente's ass, and write glowing articles about him, before he expires.

Castro Replaced By Castro

Fidel Castro, who is 81, has finally stepped down as President of Cuba for health reasons. His brother Raul, who has been acting President, will take his place. Raul was not elected-- not by the people, nor by the rubber-stamping parliament-- but hand-picked by his own brother. Like all dictatorships, I guess, politics is a family affair.

It will be interesting to see if Raul can hold on to power. Fidel possessed a forceful personality, a charisma, that allowed him to lead a country on shear willpower alone. Raul, on the other hand, is the complete opposite: a heartless, soulless technocrat. Raul is also 76 years-old, so it's very doubtful he'll last very long. Regardless, Cuba will soon have to deal with a post-Castro world.

And, hopefully, the United States will stop acting like an ass and finally normalize relations with Cuba! Republicans are beholden to the Cuban community as a vote bank, so I can understand their obstinate but foolish position; but Democrats should muster the courage to say that enough is enough. Communism is dead. Cuba ceased to be a threat when the Soviet Union collapsed. So why keep up pretenses?

Cuba Accuses US Of Killing Fleeing Citizens

Cuba accuses the United States for the death of its citizens who try to flee the island. From Granma:

CUBA condemned Thursday the policies of the United States that incite illegal emigration by residents of the island to that country, with resulting human fatalities, as occurred this past December 22.

According to a communication from the Ministry of the Interior, read out yesterday on the Cuban “Roundtable” TV program, two Cubans perished on Saturday, December 22 after the speedboat in which they were attempting to leave the country capsized one kilometer off the northern coast of Havana province.

…At the same time, the communication concludes, investigations are continuing into this unfortunate accident whose root cause is the murderous U.S. Cuban Adjustment Act, which incites illegal emigration and the lucrative activities of the Cuban American mafia in South Florida.

Naturally, a mouthpiece like Granma, is not going to ask the first question that pops in one’s head when these incidents happen: why are people risking life and limb, including arrest, to flee to the United States, a bastion of capitalist exploitation, from a worker’s paradise like Cuba, where education and healthcare is free, and everybody is happy?

If you read the whole article, human trafficking seems to be the main motivating factor. Cuba is rationalizing that the “Cuban mafia” in Miami is somehow forcing people to flee, for the purposes of slave labor. If human trafficking is indeed the goal, it is half-ass way of going about it. In fact, it’s cheaper to bring people over the Mexican border than it is from Cuba.

Embargo Against Cuba Is Stupid

I agree with Matthew Cooper that the Cuban embargo is not only outdated but totally asinine; and time has come for it to go. He gives two good reasons why:

It's time to end the embargo—unilaterally and completely. The policy has been useless as a tool for cudgeling Castro, and it is hindering opportunities for American industries from travel to banking to agriculture, which is why there's no shortage of U.S. business groups lobbying to ease it. Far from hurting the deplorable Communist regime, the embargo has only given Castro an excuse to rail against Uncle Sam, both to his own people and to the world. Every year, Cuba asks the United Nations for a vote lifting the embargo. What happens? We usually end up with a couple of superpowers like Palau and the Marshall Islands standing with us. Last year, the vote was 183 to 4. The embargo makes us look like an arrogant bully.

And.

Then there's the sheer intellectual dishonesty of the embargo. We trade with the tyrants of Beijing and Damascus, so why not Havana? This question has lingered at least since 1964, when then-secretary of state Dean Rusk was asked why we were selling to the Soviets and not to the Cubans: The Soviet Union was permanent, Rusk said, while Cuba was "temporary." Oops.

If the United States is willing to trade with human right reprobates like China and Syria, why not Cuba? The animus towards Cuba is purely personal, driven by a vocal Cuban minority in southern Florida with strong political connections. In turn, Cuba has turned the embargo into a political weapon, using it not only to bludgeon the United State in world arenas like the United Nations, who see the embargo as a Cold War anachronism, but to consolidate the power of Fidel Castro, the self-appointed messiah of the Cuban people.

The only befitting way to neuter Fidel Castros is to lift the embargo. Take way the only weapon he has; it will prove one thing: the emperor has no cloths. Fidel has always identified himself vis-à-vis the United States—the yanqui imperialists who wants to invade and conquer Cuba. How will Cuba villify the United States now?

Naturally, there are short-term trade-offs. Human rights will take a backseat, of course, but human rights always takes a backseat when trade is concerned. China jails dissidents all the time, but the United States continues to trade with him, hoping, wishfully, that trade will bring democracy, and democracy will bring human rights (the jury is still out on this line of thought). So why not with Cuba?

The embargo is what it is: a monumental failure and should done away it. Yes, Cuba will declare victory, of sorts, but I say let them, it will be short-lived. People will soon see that Cuba is far from being a worker’s paradise—no matter how good their education and healthcare systems may be—but in, in fact, an economic basketbase, reliant on hand-outs by the likes of Hugo Chavez. Finally, human rights will garner more media attention now that the bogeyman—the United States—has become a trading partner..

Chavez Loses Key Referendum

Though the vote was close, and the results may still be disputed, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez lost an important referendum that would’ve given him sweeping powers to transform Venezuela into the Bolivarian socialist republic he desperately wants, including infinite terms as President.

So far, Chavez has been magnanimous by conceding defeat and accepting the results. Since his term doesn’t expire until 2012, and all levers of power are firmly in his hand, anything can happen until then. There could well be another referendum, changes forced through parliament, or an outright coup. Chavez, like all megalomaniacs, is reluctant to cede power that he thinks is divinely his. He will find a way to stick around, even after he’s worn out his welcome. I’ll be wary of Chavez till then.

On the upside, most Venezuelans, including many Chavez supporters, have decided that the concentration of power in the hands of one man is a sure path to tyranny.

The Real Reason For Rebuking Chavez

More details have emerged about the rebuke Chavez received from Spanish King Juan Carlos at the Ibero-American Summit in Santiago, Chile: it’s about the lackluster economies of Latin American countries. According to Spain, which invests heavily in Latin America, the region needs more foreign investment. This set Chavez off:

But behind the royal reprimand, much of the international media missed what may have set Chávez off in the first place. Chávez became visibly irritated at the summit when Spain's current Prime Minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero — a socialist and Chávez ally — insisted that Latin America needs to attract more foreign capital if it's going to make a dent in its chronic, deepening poverty. Chávez blames "savage capitalism" for Latin America's gaping inequality and insists "only socialism" can fix it — hence his tirade against Aznar and other free-market "fascists." At that point Zapatero chided Chávez, reminding him that Aznar himself "was democratically elected by the Spanish people." Chávez kept trying to interrupt — summit organizers even turned off his microphone — at which point the King said what was on most summiteers' minds, if the general applause he got was any indication.

Chavez can afford to indulge in his socialist fantasies. After all, he has oil, and plenty of it.

And it pointed up a fact about Chávez's revolution that chavistas are too reluctant to acknowledge. Venezuela, with its vast oil wealth, can afford to indulge socialism and eschew foreign investment; but most other Latin American nations can't. Their economic growth still depends on the kind of capital that global competitors like China and India are raking in, but which Latin America seems unable or unwilling to garner. The chavistas rightly argue that the distribution of capitalism's fruits has been grossly unequal in Latin America — which is a large reason why leftists like Chávez have been swept into power in recent years. But the region needs that investment nonetheless — and even leftists like Zapatero sound impatient with the region's mediocre performance.

This is Chavez’s megalomania on display. His goal is not to spread socialism, but his brand of socialism, financed by him and led by him. He has branded himself as a toxic mix of Che, Simon Bolivar and Fidel Castro, all in one neat package. No wonder other Latin American leaders, including many fellow leftists, are weary of him and his burning ambition to be numero uno in Latin America. Countries like Brazil are increasing their defense budgets to counter Venezuela’s growing appetite for arms, fearing Chavez might spread his revolution by force, if not coercion.

Chavez Told To Shut Up, About Time

Finally, someone has said what should’ve been said long ago:

Spain's King Juan Carlos told Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Saturday to "shut up" during closing speeches by leaders from the Latin world that brought the Ibero-American summit to an acrimonious end.

"Why don't you shut up?" the king shouted at Chavez, pointing a finger at the president when he tried to interrupt a speech by Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero.

Zapatero was in the middle of a speech at the summit of mostly leftist leaders from Latin America, Portugal, Spain and Andorra, and was criticizing Chavez for calling former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar a fascist.

Chavez, a leading leftist foe of Washington, also attacked Spanish businessman Gerardo Diaz Ferran earlier in the week after he questioned the safety of foreign investments in Venezuela.

"I want to express to you President Hugo Chavez that in a forum where there are democratic governments ... one of the essential principles is respect," Zapatero told the leaders gathered in the Chilean capital, Santiago.

And this was from fellow leftists too. Chavez is slowly pissing off even his friends, who are getting tired of Chavez’s bombastic grandstanding, his increasingly rude behavior and use of undiplomatic language. Slowly and surely, Chavez will become such an embarrassment that world leaders will stay away in droves.

Chavez thrives because he's become the chief Bush hater. Chavez needs Bush. Chavez’s popularity feeds off Bush’s unpopularity. What will happen when a new U.S. president is sworn in little over a year? Democrat or Republican, the new president will have a more pragmatic worldview, even with Chavez’s Venezuela. Will Chavez be singing the same tune then?

What Blockade With Cuba

If there’s one clear example why the United Nation General Assembly is such a useless, pointless organization, it’s their annual vote condemning the United States’ economic blockade of Cuba. From Granma, Cuba’s commie rag:

The resolution passed today for the 16th consecutive time highlights the "Necessity of Ending the Economic, Commercial and Financial Blockade Imposed by the United States on Cuba."

The 16th time! So it has become tradition, not to mention absurd. No doubt they will vote for it again next year.

It’s a strange little game these two countries play: the United States insists on a blockade that they well know is ineffectual; while Cuba agrees to play the role of hapless victim, with the idiots in the U.N. General Assembly as their cheering section

What is little known, however, is that Cuba trades with the United States. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Cuba bought $328 million worth of agricultural products from the United States in 2006 alone.

Nevertheless, why does Cuba insist on trading with a country they’ve been continuously condemning for nearly fifty years? The United States is well within its rights as a sovereign nation to trade with whomever they want. Cuba, which constantly lectures the world about the inviolability of its sovereignty, should accept this reality, wrongheaded as it is.

Che And Castro: Islamic?

Some crazy Iranian establishment types think Che Guevara and Fidel Castro are not, in fact, hardcore atheists, but God-fearing Islamic revolutionaries like them.

…Hajj Saeed Qassemi, the co-ordinator of the Association of Volunteers for Suicide-Martyrdom (who presumably remains selflessly alive for the cause), revealed that Che was a “truly religious man who believed in God and hated communism and the Soviet Union”.

…Qassemi went on to claim that Fidel Castro, the “supreme guide” of Guevara, was also a man of God. “The Soviet Union is gone,” he affirmed.

I’m sure Fidel Castro would be very surprised to hear this. Castro, like most communists, abhors organized religion, and has done almost everything in his power to destroy the Catholic Church as a viable institution. And Che Guevera’s daughter was surprised by the statement as well.

Che’s daughter Aleida wondered if something might have been lost in translation. “My father never mentioned God,” she said, to the consternation of the audience. “He never met God.”

We all know there is common cause between the hard-left and Islamic radicals for one reason: they pathologically hate the United States. Aside from believing in a strong central government and welfare state, they have nothing in common. How can they? Atheists and religious radicals do not mix.

What we are seeing, though, and what we long suspected, is that Islamic radicals are slowly taking over the hard-left. This is a tactic used by communists during the Cold War, who infiltrated socialist parties and take them over from within. And what better way to start the process than to appropriate Marxist icons

Cuba's So Called Election

Fidel Castro, ailing dictator of Cuba, is praising his country's bogus elections, which are being held this weekend with such fanfare. Writing in Granma, the Communist Party of Cuba's official newspaper, Castro criticizes American elections as only for the rich and--get this-- unfair. Castro writes:

Our elections are the antithesis of those held in the United States, not on Sundays but on the first Tuesday of November. Being very rich or having the support of lot of money is what matters the most there. Huge amounts are later on invested in publicity, specialized in brain washing and the creation of conditioned reflexes.

Having more than 90 per cent of all citizens voting in the elections and school children guarding the ballots is an unheard of experience; it’s hard to believe that this occurs in one of the “dark corners of this world”, a harassed and blockaded country named Cuba. That is how we exercise the vigorous muscles of our political awareness.

Cuba's elections--if you want to call them that--are akin to a beauty pageant: the results are fixed and known beforehand. The whole process is a pretensious excercise to legitmatize a totalitarian regime that does not, in all honesty, brook any opposition: it jails dissidents, silences critics and muzzles journalists.

In Cuba, for one thing, there's no such thing as an opposition party because the only party allowed is the Communist Party. There's only one--safe--name on the ballot, and no write-ins are allowed. The United States and the European Union have taken note of this in their criticism of the elections. Cuba poo-poos this by claiming that anyone, not just Communist Party members, can stand for elections.

National Assembly speaker Ricardo Alarcon in a recent interview said Cuban opposition members can run in Cuba's elections as long as they find someone willing to nominate them. Critics, however, say that since nominations have to be sought and voted on in public open-air assemblies, there is no such real freedom to nominate opposition members because those who do could face reprisals from authorities.

A totalitarian state is also a police state. Informing on one another is actively encouraged by the various security services, who are deeply embedded in the lives of every Cuban. It is a regime that rules by fear, nothing more. Yet Cuba still doesn't stop harping about how wonderful their health and education systems, which they claim to be the best in the world. If this is all true, then the Communist Party would win handily in an open and free election, right?

So why don't they. Simply, because the reality does not sqaure with the fantasy being pushed by Castro, and Cubans know this. They will vote for change the first chance they get.

Che: A Marketing Success Story

Leftists the world over are celebrating the death of Marxist revolutionary, Ernesto Che Guevara, who died in Bolivia forty-years ago doing what he did best-- overthrowing governments and committing acts of senseless violence. He was a hardline communist, through and through, who dedicated himself to spreading revolution throughout the world; and who fanatically believed that the only way to deal with opposition, in whatever its forms, was to liquidate them. This is why liberals like Paul Berman are dismayed by all the hero worship Che receives. He writes:

The cult of Ernesto Che Guevara is an episode in the moral callousness of our time. Che was a totalitarian. He achieved nothing but disaster. Many of the early leaders of the Cuban Revolution favored a democratic or democratic-socialist direction for the new Cuba. But Che was a mainstay of the hardline pro-Soviet faction, and his faction won. Che presided over the Cuban Revolution's first firing squads. He founded Cuba's "labor camp" system—the system that was eventually employed to incarcerate gays, dissidents, and AIDS victims.

Yet Che still cuts a romantic figure: handsome and brimming with charisma. These days he's treated more like a celebrity, or a rock star, than a political figure. It helps that he's also a marketing darling, his iconic image used to peddle everything from t-shirts to key chains. Communism has been discredited, for the most part, but the cult of Che still thrives.

Chavez And the United States: Mutual Needs

A letter in The Daily Star poses this interesting question about Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez:

Can Chavez navigate his nation along with his allies, already plagued by inflation and poverty in South American standard, to take a stand against the US when he must continue to allow his own country to be one of the top oil suppliers of his northern nemesis?

In a way, the writer has answered his own question. There can be no Hugo Chavez without the United States, in the same way there can be no United States without Hugo Chavez. They are joined at the hip. And with oil prices inexorably going upward, and the United States the chief consumer of oil and Venezuela one of its top suppliers, Chavez is in a good position to dictate his terms without fear or repercussions. In President Bush, not surprisingly, Chavez has found his foil, which garners him points among leftist circles. It will be interesting to see how he behaves when a new U.S. president, Democrat or Republican, is elected.

But the problem with populists like Hugo Chavez, however, is that sooner or later he will overplay his hand. For one thing, he will have to deliver on his “socialism for the 21st century,” which looks increasingly like the socialism of old. Lastly, for all the so-called leftward drift of Latin America, many of its leaders simply loathe Chavez and his meddling ways. Ultimately, Chavez will end up one of two ways: deposed, preferably by his own countrymen; or isolated, first, by his allies and, second, by the world community at large. In the end, Chavez will end up more like Mugabe than Castro.

Send Him To Cuba?

Is Luis Posada Carriles a terrorist? From the evidence gleaned here, he sure looks like one. Should the United States extradite him to either Cuba or Venezuela for the bombing of a Cubana jetliner in 1976? No. Those countries possess no sane justice system that we know of, just kangaroo courts. Carriles would never get a fair trial.

Cuba Expelling Foreign Journalists

Cuba is expelling foreign correspondents because they are engaging in "negative" reporting. Negative reporting, in this case, is construed as not toeing the government line; for not publishing their press releases without comment.

Leftist idiots, I'm sure, will come up with a plausable explanation for this-- something along the line about corporate media and right-wing elements in the U.S. government trying to smear the only true people's government on earth. Losing that argument they will always return to the tried and true: reminding the world how wonderful Cuba's health care system is and how literate and educated Cubans are.