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WSJ’s weekend interview is with Mario Vargas Llosa Peruvian novelist and part-time politician. He touches a subject that is often a Pickings theme.
… There is another disturbing current in Mr. Vargas Llosa’s work that is less often discussed–mistreatment of women, ranging from disrespect to outright violence. The abuses are particularly horrifying in “The Feast of the Goat,” a novel based on the life of Rafael Trujillo, the dictator who terrorized the Dominican Republic from 1930 to 1961. Mr. Vargas Llosa describes traveling to the Dominican Republic and being stunned to hear stories of peasants offering their own daughters as “gifts” to the lustful tyrant. Trujillo and his sons, he tells me, could abuse any woman of any social class with absolute impunity. The situation in the Dominican Republic, which he refers to as a “laboratory of horrors,” may have tended toward the extreme, but it underscores a larger trend: “The woman is almost always the first victim of a dictatorship.”
Mr. Vargas Llosa discovered that this phenomenon was hardly limited to Latin America. “I went to Iraq after the invasion,” he tells me. “When I heard stories about the sons of Saddam Hussein, it seemed like I was in the Dominican Republic, hearing stories about the sons of Trujillo! That women would be taken from the street, put in automobiles and simply presented like objects. . . . The phenomenon was very similar, even with such different cultures and religions.” He concludes: “Brutality takes the same form in dictatorial regimes.”
Did this mean that Mr. Vargas Llosa supported the invasion of Iraq? “I was against it at the beginning,” he says. But then he went to Iraq and heard accounts of life under Saddam Hussein. “Because there has been so much opposition to the war, already one forgets that this was one of the most monstrous dictatorships that humanity has ever seen, comparable to that of Hitler, or Stalin.” He changed his mind about the invasion: “Iraq is better without Saddam Hussein than with Saddam Hussein. Without a doubt.” …
Instapundit posts about refugees from Zimbabwe fleeing to South Africa.
… the Mbeki government deserves these problems for its shameful complicity in Mugabe’s disastrous dictatorship. South Africa could have done good here, but chose a see-no-evil approach. Now the problems are crossing its border.
Mark was in the Orange County Register with comments on various reactions to the Rushdie knighthood.
… What easier way for the toothless old British lion, after the humiliations inflicted upon the Royal Navy sailors by their Iranian kidnappers, to show you’re still a player than by knighting Salman Rushdie for his “services to literature”? Given that his principal service to literature has been to introduce the word “fatwa” to the English language, one assumed that some characteristically cynical British civil servant had waved the knighthood through as a relatively cheap way of flipping the finger to the mullahs.
But no. It seems Her Majesty’s Government was taken entirely by surprise by the scenes of burning Union Jacks on the evening news.
Can that really be true? In a typically incompetent response, Margaret Beckett, the foreign secretary, issued one of those “obviously we’re sorry if there’s been a misunderstanding” statements in which she managed to imply that Rushdie had been honored as a representative of the Muslim community. He’s not. He’s an ex-Muslim. He’s a representative of the Muslim community’s willingness to kill you for trying to leave the Muslim community. But, locked into obsolescent multicultural identity-groupthink, Mrs. Beckett instinctively saw Rushdie as a member of a quaintly exotic minority rather than as a free-born individual.
This is where we came in two decades ago. We should have learned something by now. …
The Corner was busy this weekend. Michael Leeden and Andy McCarthy post on Iran. And Andy makes sport of Abbas’ refusal to negotiate with Hamas. Byron York on some of Edwards’ bad luck. Mark Steyn notes some hypocrisy in the anti-gun crowd. John Miller and Michael Rubin post on Virginia’s latest insult to her citizens.
John Fund with some shorts on whether Fred Thompson will get the girls, and how we might soon be able to get rid of one of the GOP’s most corrupt.
Michael Barone posts his guess about which party will be most damaged by a Bloomberg 3rd party run.
How serious is a Bloomberg candidacy? And who does he take votes away from? Speculation about these questions is interesting, but I think the answers depend on who the Republican and Democratic parties nominate.
Carpe Diem posts on corn and ethanol.
Reason Magazine on the competition between food and fuel. Who will be hurt?
“Rapid development of the corn-based ethanol industry is already having adverse impacts on food supplies and prices.” That’s the claim in a letter from leading food companies to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) Headlines earlier this year blamed a tortilla shortage in Mexico on high U.S. corn prices and margarita drinkers must now worry about a future tequila shortfall because Mexican farmers are ripping up their agave fields to plant corn.
The ethanol rush is definitely on. There are now 110 ethanol plants operating in the United States and 74 more are on the way. The competition between food producers and fuel refiners has doubled corn prices in the past year from $2 to over $4 per bushel. At the same time, the price of groceries has gone up 3.9 percent in the last year, faster than the general inflation rate of 2.6 percent. Coincidence? …
Debra Saunders looks at the different ways global warming skeptics are smeared.
If you want to convince the world that an overwhelming majority of scientists believes in global warming, then start by ignoring scientists who are not true believers. First, establish lists of scientists with your approved position, then smear dissidents. Soon, up-and-coming scientists will be afraid to cross the rigid green line.
So, the Society of Environmental Journalists put together a guide on climate change that lists a number of publications on global warming, scientists and seven environmental groups, each with positive descriptions. Under the “Deniers, Dissenters and ‘Skeptics’” category are four listings — all negative. They suggest that these folk are venal, partisan and bad scientists, or all of the above. …
So how do they know what the average temperature is? If the numbers come from the government, would it surprise you to learn it’s poorly done? A new blog for us, Watts Up With That posts on one sensor.
… OK this picture comes in today from from surfacestations.org volunteer Steve Tiemeier, who visited the climate station of record located at the Urbana, Ohio Waste Water Treatment Plant …
American Thinker posts on the incredible shrinking NY Times.