“The Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa died on 13 April, in Lima. He was 89. Best known for his role in Latin American literature’s revival, which earned him a Nobel Prize in 2010, Vargas Llosa was also a political activist. After a brief period of communist involvement as a student, he made a U-turn and used his literary influence to mount a defence of neoliberalism. In 1990 he ran for president, and in 2021 he supported far-right candidate Keiko Fujimori against left-wing candidate Pedro Castillo.” ( Le Monde Diplomatique) Neocon with a Nobel By Ignacio Ramonet, Le Monde Diplomatique, December 2010 In Llosa's El Sueno del Celta, the hero, Roger Casement, 1864-1916, “was an outstanding historical figure. As a British consul in Africa, he was the first to condemn, as early as 1908, the atrocities of Belgian colonialism in the Congo Free State… Vargas Llosa’s novel has rescued Casement from oblivion, as ‘one of the first Europeans to have formed a very clear idea of th...
“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.” —Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilisation and the Remaking of the World Order, 1996, p. 51