The man behind United States’ China awakening

Economist Peter Navarro. Photo: Courtesy of University of California-Irvine

This is the first in a series by Asia Times writers profiling key individuals chosen by US President-elect Donald Trump to join his administration

By HARRY J. KAZIANIS -DECEMBER 23, 2016 

There was a time in the mainstream discourse of US foreign policy thinking that China was simply regarded as a cash machine, and certainly nothing to be feared.

Capitalism, that transformational engine of inevitable human progress that would one day induce Beijing to embrace free markets, and eventually, even if far into the future, democracy.

But in the meantime, while we waited for China’s “come to Jesus” moment, there was money to be made: a billion plus ready and willing Chinese consumers to sell anything and everything to.

As one former Fortune 500 senior executive told me roughly a decade ago: “China is filled with billions of people hungry for what America can sell them. They want to be us. Why not get rich off it?” And therein lies the rub, the mirage we all bought into willingly.

The sad but true fact is the state we hoped for those riches to come from is governed by a totalitarian-government, a Communist Party that dominates the political, economic and social fabric of society — armed with the idea that China suffered a century of shame and humiliation, and it must reclaim its rightful place in the pecking order of Asian affairs, no matter the cost.

But no matter. Eventually, old “Red China” would see it our way — meaning America’s way, and transform itself in our image. Change was just around the corner. The best type of regime change was certain, and this time, not at the barrel of a gun. History, you know, had ended.

Beijing, according to the so-called experts, had no other choice.

She would have a stake in the global economic system, a system that was making this ancient civilization rich, helping lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, and creating an economic superpower that could one day even surpass mighty America. She would never want to overturn such a system — a system that was also intimately tied to borders and alliance networks built by the United States at the end of World War II.

Economics professor

Why would China want to destroy paradise? Or that was the thinking, at least.

But others saw it differently — very differently. One such person, Dr Peter Navarro, a professor of economics at the University of California at Irvine, saw China not as an ATM with unlimited cash reserves but as a threat — a threat not only to Asia but to America and the foundations of its ability to wield and project power throughout the larger Indo-Pacific region.

Economically, Navarro saw Beijing as a mercantilist state that kept its markets deceptively closed while it exported its way to greater and greater levels of national power. Where some saw a US$600 billion bilateral trade relationship that must be preserved at all costs, Navarro saw Washington being suckered by Beijing, with the proof being a massive trade deficit that destroyed millions of good paying jobs along the way.

Indeed, it is that imbalanced economic relationship that Navarro would argue is the source of China’s rising military might. As Beijing’s economy gets stronger, powered by billions of dollars in profits by so-called “free trade” with America, it would have the resources and technological base to challenge Washington in the near-seas and skies of Asia.

Combined with stealing America’s best weapons designs, like the F-22, F-35, THAAD and more, China would have all it needed to ensure America would think twice in a crisis.

Death by China

Navarro’s thinking — laid out in books like Death by China and Crouching Tiger: What China’s Militarism Means for the World — is quite clear: China has no intention of ever becoming a “responsible stakeholder” of the present international order, as has been repeated time and time again, but wants to tear the system to pieces.*

He was ridiculed for his thinking — I saw it first hand as his editor at The National Interest magazine and by other Asia hands who felt Navarro was too hawkish, too itching for a fight with a nation that had so much to offer the world, that some would say is just misunderstood. Some were much meaner, calling him a warmonger.

But as the years went on, Navarro’s ideas were embraced more and more, especially by those in the US military who watched China’s rise with great concern. An awakening has now come full circle when it comes to understanding the motives and aspirations of China.

While certainly not an “Evil Empire” based on Soviet-style domination, a more realist perspective is coming into vogue — one, it would seem, President-elect Donald Trump shares.

Navarro is no longer the outsider when it comes to China policy, but a White House insider, as of January 20, a voice that will now be whispering into the ear of the President of the United States. And I could not be more pleased.

Harry J. Kazianis (@grecianformula) is director of defense studies at the Center for the National Interest, founded by former US President Richard M. Nixon, as well as executive editor of The National Interest. In the past, Kazianis has managed the foreign policy communications of The Heritage Foundation and served as editor of The Diplomat.

(In the interests of full-disclosure, I was a reviewer and wrote the lead blurb of Crouching Tiger.)

What China Didn’t Learn From the Collapse of the Soviet Union

BY JAMES PALMER-DECEMBER 24, 2016

It’s been 25 years since the fall of the Soviet Union, and in that time the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has generated tens of thousands of internal papers, roundtables, and even documentaries on the issue. Like most intellectual products in the mainland, 95 percent of these have been worthless regurgitations of the political line of the day by mediocre careerists. But the official angle on the collapse, which once seemed to be pushing the country toward reforms that were more sensitive to public needs and opening the economy, has shifted sharply in the last few years. Today, the lessons Beijing is drawing seem likely to keep sending it backward.

It’s no surprise that the party is obsessed with the collapse of its former rival and ideological partner. The most bizarre thing about the brief spate of articles in 2012 and 2013 describing the newly appointed CCP general secretary, Xi Jinping, as a potential Mikhail Gorbachev for China was that some of the writers seemed to think they were paying him a compliment. In China, though, Gorbachev is seen not as a far-sighted reformer but as a disastrous failure, a man who led his country, and his party, to national calamity. That’s not an unfair view: China has no desire to lose a quarter of its territory, watch GDP drop by 40 percent, and see male life expectancy cut short by seven years, as Russia did in the 1990s.

Before the Soviet leader’s failed gambit, though, many Chinese looked favorably on Gorbachev. The Soviet Union and China had tentatively made up after their vicious — and nearly world-ending — split in the 1960s, and both were looking to learn from the other’s experiences. Moscow was increasingly convinced that China’s “reform and opening up” was a way forward for its moribund economy, and Chinese intellectuals, inside and outside the party, were intrigued by the possibilities offered by glasnost and perestroika — the pillars of Gorbachev’s heralded reform platform.

The Soviet collapse prompted hard self-reflection, albeit couched within the even harder limits of Chinese political correctness. (Even in relatively liberal moments — such as the fervent intellectual debates of the late 1980s — raising fundamental questions about national identity, the leadership of the party, and the correctness of socialism was a risky move for anyone inside the system.) What were the causes? Was China inevitably heading down the same path if it didn’t change its ways?

Virtually every aspect of the early People’s Republic, from the organization of its railways to its party structure to its ethnic minority policy, was copied from the Soviet Union. As Marxist theorists saw it, like the Soviets, China had leapfrogged from peasant feudalism over industrial capitalism straight into socialism. But in reality, both slapped a veneer of socialism over a fusion of new nationalism and old-fashioned empire. And both followed mass famine with cultural revolution (originally a Soviet term) and bloody party purges.

At first, part of the Chinese response was to use the Soviet example to spur further reform inside the party itself. As political scientist David Shambaugh has argued, critical analysis of Soviet failings pointed to a top-heavy, incompetent, and stagnant Soviet Communist Party and prompted efforts in Beijing to transform the CCP into a more modern, flexible, and resilient organization. That didn’t mean sweeping democratic reform, but it meant a party more sensitive to public opinion — and more interested in steering it, through both subtle and unsubtle means, in the right direction.

There were also more immediate shifts. Fear of the popular changes unleashed across Eastern Europe had already played a powerful role in prompting the brutal crackdown on protesters in Beijing and elsewhere in 1989. In the aftermath of the Soviet collapse, deeply conscious of the role that rising nationalism, from Ukraine to Azerbaijan, had played in bringing down the Soviet Union, policy around China’s autonomous regions and ethnic minorities tightened, and the language shifted. Minzu, the Chinese term for non-ethnic-Han groups, shifted from being “nationalities” in official translations to “ethnic minorities.” Meanwhile, worries over Soviet economic stagnation boosted Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping’s final big push for economic reform during his 1992 “Southern Tour” of the country’s newly booming commercial cities.

Running parallel to this, however, was always a counternarrative that suggested the disaster hadn’t come from inside but outside. It was the reformers who had caused the fall of a superpower, this argument went, by shaking faith in the system through acknowledging the Soviet Union’s past crimes, letting in dangerous foreign influences, and abandoning hard-line Marxism. This idea has now received official stamp from the very top of Beijing’s leadership, and one can see it reverberating through the new wave of paranoia about foreign influence, reassertion of party power, and hostility to civil society.

As Xi himself put it in a 2013 speech: “Their ideals and beliefs had been shaken. In the end, ‘the ruler’s flag over the city tower’ changed overnight. It’s a profound lesson for us! To dismiss the history of the Soviet Union and the Soviet Communist Party, to dismiss Lenin and Stalin, and to dismiss everything else is to engage in historic nihilism, and it confuses our thoughts and undermines the party’s organizations on all levels.”

“Historical nihilism” has become a favorite shibboleth for those looking to demonstrate loyalty under Xi, as has the hysterical defense of every bit of past propaganda. Manufactured Maoist hero Lei Feng, once idealized by Chinese youth in the 1960s, has been dragged, yet again, from the grave to serve as inspiration for utterly indifferent Chinese youth despite the “Western conspiracy” against him.

The new line is simple: blame the West and blame the Soviet leaders — like Gorbachev — who let the West in. It’s one reason why China has pushed through harsh new laws designed to force out foreign nongovernmental organizations, why the national press is getting shriller and shriller in its hostility to the United States, and why censorship is worsening. At the same time, there’s no sign of the political reforms that some Western observers once confidently predicted.

What’s behind this shift? Part of it seems to be Xi’s personal conviction in the essential truth of the party — and in his own right to rule as a revolutionary scion. That would be enough to shift the entire course of discussion by itself, in a country where following the leader’s signals is second nature for anyone who wants to climb the ladder. (It’s a habit that carries over into other contexts: Before President-elect Donald Trump’s Taiwan call, visiting Chinese groups in Washington were ending speeches with, “Together, we can make America and China great again.”)

But Xi’s own convictions have been empowered by the events of the last decade.The deepest Chinese fear is of regime change similar to the kinds that swept across the former Soviet space and let loose the Arab Spring. “Color revolution” is a useful phrase, because it detaches these events from true, rightful revolution — of the kind that made the People’s Republic of China and all its “revolutionary martyrs” — and puts it firmly in the realm of an organized, U.S.-led conspiracy designed to destabilize potential opponents.

The belief that all of these revolutions were U.S.-orchestrated plots isn’t just propaganda, but sincerely held; I argued with a People’s Daily editor after a visit to Iran just after the Green Revolution in which he’d claimed that the Iranians loved their regime. “All the so-called protesters were CIA spies!” he told me.

In Beijing, American promotion of democracy and human rights is seen as just a tool to ensure U.S. dominance and one that therefore has to be constantly resisted. “Peaceful evolution,” the nationalist tabloid Global Times proclaimed, was just another name for color revolution. Even seemingly harmless cultural products have been caught up in this. Zootopia, a recent Disney animated children’s film, explained a People’s Liberation Army newspaper, was an American plot to weaken China’s morale.

The hostility toward the color revolutions and the chaos they’ve unleashed has thus been projected backward. The Soviet fall, once seen at least in part as a result of the Communist Party’s own failings, has become reinterpreted as a deliberate U.S. plot and a moral failure to hold the line against Western influence. That has ended what was once a powerful spur to reform — meaning that, barring a major change in leadership, the likely course of Chinese politics over the next few years will be further xenophobia, even more power to the party, and an unwillingness to talk about the harder lessons of history.

Photo credit: Feng Li/Getty Images

Congo talks near deal for Kabila to step down in 2017

Democratic Republic of Congo's President Joseph Kabila attends the signing ceremony of the Peace, Security and Cooperation Framework for the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Great Lakes, at the African Union Headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia February 24, 2013. REUTERS/Tiksa Negeri/File Photo

By Aaron Ross | KINSHASA- Sat Dec 24, 2016

Political rivals in Democratic Republic of Congo neared a deal on Saturday for President Joseph Kabila to leave power in 2017 after dozens of people were killed during protests this week at the end of his mandate.

Under the agreement, elections would be held next year and Kabila, who took power in Africa's fourth most populous country after his father was assassinated in 2001, would agree not to change the constitution to run for a third term.

Roman Catholic bishops who have mediated during weeks of talks were upbeat about reaching a deal in time for a planned signing ceremony on Friday, but Congo's main opposition bloc warned that several "significant" differences remained.

"We have finished practically 95 percent of the work," Catholic Bishops Conference president Marcel Utembi told reporters. "There remains a short way to go."

Divisions persisted over whether the prime minister will come from the main opposition bloc and on the composition of the electoral commission, which the opposition accuses of pro-government bias.

"If the divergences are not bridged, it will be difficult to sign this accord," opposition leader Jean Marc Kabund told reporters.

Kabila, whose representatives participated in the talks, did not comment.

At least 40 people were killed this week in a crackdown by security forces against demonstrators who blew whistles and banged pots and pans in protests demanding Kabila leave office, according to the United Nations.

Kabila's critics accuse him of deliberately postponing the presidential election that was due last month in order to cling to power beyond the end of his constitutional mandate.

The government say the delay was due to difficulties registering millions of voters and the constitutional court ruled in May that Kabila could stay in office until his successor is elected.

Mineral-rich Congo has not had a peaceful power transition since independence in 1960, and Church negotiators have billed the talks as an attempt to stop the country sliding back into war.

Millions of people died in regional conflicts between 1996 and 2003 and Pope Francis has called for a peaceful solution to the current standoff.

The last day of the talks between the ruling coalition and opposition parties began at 11 a.m. local time (1000 GMT) after negotiations went through the night.

Remaining issues are to be resolved in small groups with the support of the church's secretariate while the bishops return to their dioceses for Christmas, Utembi said.

(Writing by Edward McAllister; Editing by Sam Holmes and Helen Popper)

South Korea: Choi Soon-sil brought in for questioning by special prosecutor

Choi Soon-sil, the jailed confidante of disgraced South Korean President Park Geun-hye, center, arrives for questioning into her suspected role in political scandal at the office of the independent counsel in Seoul, South Korea. Pic: Reuters

24th December 2016

A SOUTH KOREAN special prosecutor probing a corruption scandal engulfing impeached President Park Geun-hye summoned a friend of hers at the centre of the crisis for questioning on Saturday on charges including bribery and embezzlement, an official said.

The questioning of Choi Soon-sil, whom Park has described as a life-long friend, came ahead of a ninth straight weekend rally in central Seoul demanding the immediate ouster of Park.

Choi and other former presidential aides were charged in November with abuse of power and fraud, but Park has immunity from prosecution as long as she is in office even though her powers are suspended.

“The charges in the indictment are but a very small part of the 14 points under investigation by the special prosecutor,” said Lee Kyu-chul, a spokesman for the team of investigators probing the scandal.

SEE ALSO: South Korea: Park’s close confidante denies charges as trial begins

Choi will be questioned on charges of bribery and transferring embezzled assets abroad, Lee told a briefing.

Choi, wearing a grey prison uniform and a surgical mask, was taken to the special prosecutor’s office from detention, pushed by a throng of correctional officers through a media scrum.

She did not answer journalists’ questions about the charges.

The special prosecutor has up to 100 days to investigate allegations that Park colluded with Choi and her aides to pressure big conglomerates to contribute 77 billion won ($64 million) to foundations set up to back her policy initiatives.

Park has denied wrongdoing but apologised for carelessness in her ties with Choi.

SEE ALSO: South Korea: Park supporters rally against impeachment vote, more protests loom

The friendship dates back to the 1970s when Park served as acting first lady after her mother was killed by an assassin’s bullet intended for her father, then-president Park Chung-hee.

Five years later, in 1979, Park’s father was murdered by his disgruntled spy chief.

Park’s impeachment is being reviewed by the Constitutional Court which has up to 180 days from the day of the Dec. 9 impeachment to decide whether to uphold it or reinstate Park.

Another large crowd is expected in central Seoul later in the day calling on Park to step down. A group of 1,000 young people are scheduled to dress up as Santa Claus and march to the presidential Blue House to deliver handcuffs. – Reuters

Nigerian army captures last Boko Haram camp in former stronghold

‘The terrorists are on the run and no longer have a place to hide,’ says president after military offensive in Sambisa forest

 Nigerian soldiers in Borno state in November 2015. Photograph: Reuters

Reuters in Abuja-Saturday 24 December 2016

Nigeria’s army has captured Boko Haram’s last enclave in the vast Sambisa forest that was the Islamist group’s stronghold, the country’s president has announced.

“I was told by the chief of army staff that the camp fell at about 1.35pm on Friday and that the terrorists are on the run and no longer have a place to hide,” Muhammadu Buhari said in a statement.

He said the capture of the camp marked the “final crushing of Boko Haramterrorists in their last enclave in Sambisa forest”, which is in Borno state in north-east Nigeria.

It follows a large-scale offensive in the forest by the Nigerian military in the last few weeks. Reuters was unable to independently verify whether the camp had been captured.

The military had said in the last few days that Boko Haram fighters were fleeing into surrounding areas, and locals were told to be vigilant.

Boko Haram has killed 15,000 people and displaced more than 2 million during its seven-year insurgency to create an Islamic state governed by a strict interpretation of sharia law.

In early 2015 the group controlled an area around the size of Belgium, but it has since been pushed out of most of that territory by Nigeria’s army and troops from neighbouring countries.

Multiple sclerosis drug 'a landmark'

By James Gallagher-22 December 2016

A drug that alters the immune system has been described as "big news" and a "landmark" in treating multiple sclerosis, doctors and charities say.

Trials, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, suggest the drug can slow damage to the brain in two forms of MS.

Ocrelizumab is the first drug shown to work in the primary progressive form of the disease.

The drug is being reviewed for use in the US and Europe.

MS is caused by a rogue immune system mistaking part of the brain for a hostile invader and attacking it.

It destroys the protective coating that wraps round nerves called the myelin sheath.

The sheath also acts like wire insulation to help electrical signals travel down the nerve.

Damage to the sheath prevents nerves from working correctly and means messages struggle to get from the brain to the body.

This leads to symptoms like having difficulty walking, fatigue and blurred vision.

The disease can either just get worse, known as primary progressive MS, or come in waves of disease and recovery, known as relapsing remitting MS.

Both are incurable, although there are treatments for the second state.

'Change treatment'

Ocrelizumab kills a part of the immune system - called B cells - which are involved in the assault on the myelin sheath.

In 732 patients with progressive MS, the percentage of patients that had deteriorated fell from 39% without treatment to 33% with ocrelizumab .

Patients taking the drug also scored better on the time needed to walk 25 feet and had less brain loss detected on scans.

In 1,656 patients with relapsing remitting, the relapse rate with ocrelizumab was half that of using another drug.

Prof Gavin Giovannoni, from Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry, was involved in the trials and said: "The results shown by these studies have the potential to change how we approach treating both relapsing and primary progressive MS."

He told the BBC: "It's very significant because this is the first time a phase three trial has been positive in primary progressive MS."

More than 100,000 people are diagnosed with MS in the UK, around one-in-five are progressive.

Dr Aisling McMahon, the head of clinical trials at the MS Society, commented: "This is really big news for people with the primary progressive form of multiple sclerosis.

"It's the first time a treatment has shown the potential to reduce disability progression for this type of MS, which offers a lot of hope for the future."

The drug is being considered by the European Medicines Agency and the US Food and Drug Administration.

But Prof Giovannoni warned that patients in the UK may be disappointed as it may be hard for the NHS to fund everyone getting a drug that is likely to be expensive.

He told the BBC: "I would expect a narrow group of people to be eligible."

Dr Peter Calabresi, from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, added: "This is the first drug to show a significant effect in slowing disability progression in a phase three trial in primary progressive multiple sclerosis and therefore represents a landmark study in the field."

But he warned doctors to "stay vigilant" because of the risk of side-effects.

Weakening the immune system increases the risk of infection and of cancer emerging.

Follow James on Twitter.

“PURAVASI BALAYA” WANTS NEW CONSTITUTION TO BE APPROVED BY A REFERENDUM

23/12/2016

Civil society grouping Purawesi Balaya yesterday urged the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government to go ahead with the planned referendum to pave the way for a brand new constitution.

Purawesi Balaya emphasised that a new constitution was required to achieve objectives of the incumbent administration as well as post-war national reconciliation process.

Addressing the media at the Centre for Society and Religion (CSR) at Maradana, top Purawesi Balaya spokesperson Gamini Viyangoda acknowledged that introducing a new constitution was certainly the biggest challenge faced by the ruling coalition. Viyangoda asserted that the successful completion of post-war national reconciliation process would never be a reality unless the new constitution was introduced.

The Geneva-based United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in June this year said that either a new constitution or constitutional amendments should be put to a referendum in 2017. The UNHRC said that from a human rights perspective, the constitutional reform process presented an important opportunity to rectify structural deficiencies that contributed to human rights violations and abuses in the past and reinforce guarantees of non-recurrence.

Purawesi Balaya didn’t make any reference to the Geneva process or the special statement on Sri Lanka made in June this year.

Viyangoda said former President Mahinda Rajapaksa wouldn’t oppose the abolition of dictatorial presidential powers or doing away with executive presidential system as the latter would not be able to hold that post ever again. However, the former President opposed devolution of power citing the threat of the country being divided on ethnic lines and western intervention.

Joint Opposition Leader Dinesh Gunawardena and former External Affairs Minister Prof. G.L. Peiris on Wednesday urged the government to share its specific constitutional reforms proposals with other political parties.

Reiterating Purawesi Balaya’s commitment to yahapalana policies, Viyangoda castigated those who had been reluctant to go ahead with the referendum in spite of them being members of the incumbent administration. Viyangoda urged them to face what he called a daunting task. “Many believed that the Rajapaksas couldn’t be defeated and they considered our plans in the run-up to presidential polls in January 2015 as unrealistic”, Viyangoda said. Having defeated the authoritarian Rajapaksa rule, the country couldn’t under any circumstances afford not to go the whole hog. “Let us go ahead with the referendum whatever the obstacles and threats,.”

The NGO activist said a deliberate attempt was being made to discredit the civil society. Viyangoda accused a section of the media, websites and social media of claiming that three Purawesi Balaya activists, Dharmasiri Bandaranayake, Saman Ratnapriya and him would enter parliament through UNP National List.

Emphasising that they wouldn’t accept National List posts under any circumstances, Viyangoda said they could as members of civil society play a more effective role than a members of parliament. “And on the other hand, we don’t want to commit political suicide by entering Parliament.”

Viyangoda and Saman Ratnapriya explained how persons with vested interests had displayed posters in Colombo and major towns declaring the government accommodating Purawesi Balaya members in parliament.

Saman Rathnapriya addressing the press briefing (c)s.deshapriya

Ratnapriya said that a new constitution was needed urgently to address recurring concerns pertaining to good governance, accountability and human rights. Constitutional reforms were essential to neutralise those who had adopted former President Rajapaksa’s strategies. Ratnapriya said that certain critically important and far reaching proposals couldn’t be accommodated in the 19th Amendment to the Constitution as it was placed before the people at a referendum. The trade unionist said that those sections should be included in the constitution subjected to people approval at a referendum.

Purawesi Balaya said that proposals to adopt constitutional amendments which didn’t require a referendum weren’t acceptable to the vast majority of those who had desired change of government in January 2015.

Ratnapriya criticised ministers for questioning the need to go ahead with the constitutional making process without delay.

Referring to scheduled three-day debate in parliament in second week of January, 2017 on constitutional reforms, Ratnapriya said “let the people decide the fate of the constitutional proposals at a referendum”.

During the course of the briefing Ratnapriya revealed that the civil society would push for remaking of the ten-member Constitutional Council to accommodate more civil society members. Ratnapriya said that though they pushed for seven civil society members and three members of parliament, finally agreement was reached on a composition vice versa to their proposal. Ratnapriya said that Constitutional Council reflected the parliament therefore far reaching changes were required.

Original caption: Yahapalana partner demands referendum in line with Geneva Resolution.

By Shamindra Ferdinando / The Island

Lankan expats alarmed by creeping federalism 

by Harischandra Gunaratna-December 23, 2016, 10:21 pm

Sri Lankan expatriates have decided to stand up against what they alleged as creeping in of federalism through constitutional reforms.

"We have noticed the signs of federalism being ushered in on the pretext of introducing a new Constitution. The report by the Committee on Centre and Periphery of the steering committee of the Constitutional Assembly is nothing but a blueprint of federalism," Coordinator of the newly formed Global Sri Lankan Forum Nuwan Wellanthudawa said.

Addressing a news conference held at the Cinnamon Grand Hotel in Colombo on Thursday, Wellanthuduwa said: "We observe that the proposals being made by the committee on Center and Periphery are in line with the Thimpu principles. We had a discussion with President Maithripala Sirisena on Wednesday and pointed that out to him. He told us in no uncertain terms that he too did not agree with the recommendations of the Centre Periphery Committee and pledged that the content of the report would not

be included in the new Constitution to be made. We have decided to lobby Sri Lankans living all over the world against the latest threat to the unitary status of Sri Lanka.

"We also pointed out to the President that he had not received a mandate to effect constitutional amendments through referendums.

He pledged so in the Section 2 of his election manifesto on which people have elected him. We are not against any political party but are sure that last year’s regime change would help the separatist forces. We will not allow that to happen. That is why we have started a campaign under the theme: ‘The freedom achieved is in danger’. We expect to hold campaigns both in Sri Lanka and abroad to defeat sinister moves against the motherland."

He said the GSLF would not leave any room for whoever in power to undermine the country’s unitary status and sovereignty.

Senior ex-co members of the GSLF Ajantha Premaratne (Dubai), Nihal Mendis (Italy), Vijith Wickramasinghe (Dubai), Wasantha Keerthiratne (Italy), Mahesh Peiris (France), Upali Hemachandra (Japan), Lakshman Barnes (Monaco) and Arjuna Payagala (UK) also addressed the press.

Are People Blaming The Government? Will Old Thieves Rise To Power Once More?

By Thushara Wanniarachchi –December 23, 2016 

Thushara Wanniarachchi

In the World’s current social system, it seems that a comfortable government regime can only be maintained for a decade. That is perhaps why the present system of representative democracy is less than 5 years, so that one regime can maintain power and control for two terms. The same can be said in the 7 decades following independence in Sri Lanka. While it was not the case during J. R. Jayewardene’s rule, the years after that can be summed up as a black spot in a tragic history. Societies where leaders such as Gaddafi, Castro and Putin held and still hold control, are similar to that of being at the brink of a volcano. There are many examples of how such a rule has sent Nation’s plunging into decline and catastrophe. Libya, Iraq and Syria are tragic examples of what ignoring the unwritten golden rule of a decade-long regime can do.

If Mahinda Rajapaksa won a third term, by this time, due to the terms imposed on Sri Lanka by the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), there would have been absolute chaos and confusion within the country, and government forces and the civilians’ would have fallen – once more – into a state of civil war. In this situation, indifferent youth would have been fighting for essentials such as fuel, food and drink. On January 8th, when this government came to power, we already know that Sri Lanka’s economy had become a confused mess. The cost of living was at an unbearable high, democratic institutions were eroding, and the rule of law and the judiciary was under the iron boot of the controlling regime. The people themselves were so distressed by the situation, that their silence was palpable.

During the exhibition development carried out during the previous regime, one part of the country was suffering as though in the depths of hell, whilst the other mature and knowledgeable portion of the nation had an unfortunate understanding about their fate forming around them. The Hambantota port, airport, theatre and international cricket ground are nothing short of wasted resources and messy loan-traps. The central priority of the current regime is to undo the dept-trap the previous regime plunged Sri Lanka into. In this regard, the Prime Minister has suggested many economic strategies, laws and regulations.

Under this situation, the Rajapaksa regime were to be found declaring their ability to secure power instantaneously to their followers, thus engaging in improper political conduct. This is quite amazing if you were to think about it. It is a historical mistake that the Rajapaksa’s, instead of correcting their past mistakes, have instead partnered up with the same old thieves, murderers and criminals, in order to begin a new power grab.

Frequencies used by the Sri Lankan electronic media organizations are the inherent property of the public, and have been obtained on a temporary basis after paying taxes. These organizations further obtain large amounts of advertising from government agencies in order to secure these frequencies and ensure the maintenance of their organizations.

Similarly, due to the current trend in Sri Lanka’s electronic frequencies, it is not uncommon to hear people hurling allegations towards the government, asking them to leave. Anyone watching the evening newscast would think that the government is likely to collapse the next day. However, while they promote a anti-government opinion, there is a difference between blaming, criticizing and opposing the government. There is one matter which the electronic media opposing the government should remember. Regardless of the laws in the country, these media institutions exist because of the advertisements amounting to billions of rupees from the government.

The following is the annual ad revenue generated by just 3 leading media institutions solely from the National Lotteries Board:

Sirasa T.V. – 29 Million
Sirasa F.M. – 17 Million
Y F.M. – 06 Million
Hiru T.V. – 22 Million
Hiru F.M. – 19 Million
Derana T.V. – 20 Million
Derana F.M. – 12 Million

This is just the revenue from one government organization. The Government, through many such agencies, place a vast number of government advertisements. If the electronic media organizations continue to disrupt government processes, the best course of action would be to stop these ads as soon as possible.

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President to meet Chief Ministers on Super Minister

- Dec 23, 2016

President Maithripala Sirisena has called for a meeting with the Chief Ministers of the nine provinces today.

Western Province Chief Minister Isura Devapriya told the media that the President has called for a meeting at 3 p.m. today with the Chief Ministers and the discussion was likely to focus on the proposed Development Special Provisions Bill which would create a Super Minister.

The President has stated that the provincial ministers’ opinions should also be taken into consideration before passing the proposed bill in parliament.

- http://srilankaedition.com -

Muslim women’s lib and liberal Islam – Part 2

It appears therefore that both the liberal Muslims on the one hand and on the other the traditionalists who are all for a rigid application of the Sharia are agreed in going against Koranic injunctions and recommendations that are outrageously out of sync with the modern world, such as the cutting off of hands for theft and slavery.

Izeth Hussain- Dec 24, 2016

( December 23, 2016, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) The abrogated verses of the Koran arising out of contradictions between verses are not negligible in number but are very substantial: according to one estimate they concern as much as 71 out of 114 Suras (Chapters) in the Koran. The question of abrogation has proved to be highly controversial. Most Christians, accustomed as they are to what is called I believe the Higher Criticism of the Bible developed since the nineteenth century, will conclude that the Koran does not consist only of the revelations provided to the Prophet but that there were later interpolations. But most Muslims won’t accept that because they hold that the Koran was put together in a final and definitive form shortly after the death of the Prophet, unlike the holy texts of other religions which took decades and more for final collation. However that could lead to the conclusion that Islam postulates a God who kept on changing his mind just like fallible human beings.

That of course is totally unacceptable to Muslims whatever the sect to which they belong. The only way out is to hold with proponents of the liberal critique of orthodox Islam that there are two dimensions to the Koran, one of which is eternal and universal and the other is temporary and locally specific. I quote again Montgomery Watt on the doctrine of abrogation: “The idea underlying the doctrine is that certain commands to the Muslims were only of temporary application, and that when circumstances changed they were abrogated or replaced by others”. As I have shown above there were three different Koranic positions on the drinking of wine within a single lifetime, that of the Prophet. How on earth are we to suppose that the provisions of the Sharia, formulated by four Islamic legists two centuries and more after the death of the Prophet, are sacrosanct and immutable for all time? The commonsense of the matter is that if God had wanted to prescribe a comprehensive legal code valid for all time, He would have done so in the Koran. He did not, and I find myself forced to accept the liberal critique that the Sharia is a human construct and not something Divinely ordained. The Divine Law is a misnomer.

I will now provide some instances to show that Koranic injunctions and recommendations have been ignored in Muslim practice even though the Muslims themselves regard them as the direct word of God, not mediated by the Prophet but conveyed by him to humanity. The most famous instance is that of the cutting off of hands for theft. It is an injunction not just a recommendation, a categorical and not a conditional injunction with no ifs and buts about it. And yet it has not been put into practice in the greater part of the Islamic world. That is not because of adaptation to the norms and values of modernity, but something that prevailed from the days of early Islam. The Caliph Omar, the second Caliph of Islam, ordered the cutting off of the hand of a man convicted for stealing food. Omar, famous for his fearlessness and uncompromising integrity, rescinded his order after he was told that that man had stolen food under conditions of famine. Therefore, even a categorical Koranic injunction, no less than the word of God, was not regarded as sacrosanct but as open to denial or modification according to conditions of time and place. How can we regard the provisions of the Sharia as sacrosanct and immutable for all time?

I will now provide instances of Koranic recommendations that are not put into practice. Slavery is allowed in the Koran but the freeing of slaves is recommended and the attitude towards it is thoroughly negative. According to the letter of the Koran, slavery should today be allowed while it is discouraged. But it is banned all over the Muslim world – Saudi Arabia being I believe the last country to ban it in the second half of the last century. Another instance is that of lex talionis, the retaliatory law of an eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth which is allowed in Suras 2:178; 5:45; and 16:126. I wrote of it as follows: “But no Muslim state will today allow its citizens to take the law into their own hands, obviously because lex talionis is appropriate only to societies without a centralized state providing police and judicial authorities. No traditionalist argues that lex talionis must be permitted today. This is a clear example of Koranic law changing with changing circumstances”.

It appears therefore that both the liberal Muslims on the one hand and on the other the traditionalists who are all for a rigid application of the Sharia are agreed in going against Koranic injunctions and recommendations that are outrageously out of sync with the modern world, such as the cutting off of hands for theft and slavery. But there is an exception: polygamy is outrageously out of sync with the modern world but the liberal Muslims and the traditionalists are polarized about it. We have to wonder about the reasons for that polarization.

I quote from my seminar paper: “But neither did the Prophet say that we must practice polygamy. It is known that the verse on polygamy was the consequence of the battle of Uhud in which Muslim males were decimated, and furthermore it is hedged by the important condition that all wives have to be treated equally. Yusuf Ali and others have argued that that condition is impossible of fulfillment, and therefore polygamy should be banned. It can also be argued on the basis of Sura 24:32 that monogamy is in reality preferred to polygamy. Nevertheless there has been a fierce insistence that polygamy is allowed by immutable Koranic law”. So, Koranic law that is mutable when it concerns theft and slavery suddenly becomes immutable when it concerns polygamy. What is the explanation for this inconsistency? The explanation, I believe, is that polygamy unlike theft and slavery concerns the position of women in relation to men. What the traditionalists really want is the continued unIslamic subjugation of women. And behind that is a fear of change and a conservative backing of the powerful against the powerless. I will be arguing that case later citing the views of the Algerian Emeritus Professor at the Sorbonne, Mohammed Arkoun, and others.

I come now to the second source of the Sharia, namely the hadiths which are the Traditions of the Prophet, meaning the record of what he said and what he did. There are thousands of them and six books of the hadiths are accepted as having canonical status, with the ones by Imam Bukhari and Imam Muslim being regarded as the most authoritative. I quote from my seminar paper: “It is known that in the vast corpus of the hadiths, most were apocryphal or worse, as they were motivated by inter-sect and inter-dynastic rivalries. Bukhari, Muslim, and the other editors of the six canonical books adopted what was regarded as a rigorous methodology so far as isnad (genealogy) was concerned, tracing back each hadith to the time of the Prophet through reliable witnesses. But it appears that they ignored matn (content), and consequently there are many contradictory hadiths. Their methodology has been criticized by Goldziher in the nineteenth century and several other European scholars. The work of Joseph Schacht is regarded as authoritative by some Muslim scholars”.

I proceeded to make the important point that it must not be supposed that European criticism of the hadiths was motivated by Orientalist ill-will towards Islam. Louis Massignon, generally regarded as the greatest of the European Islamologists, who became a devout Catholic through the impact on him of Islam, made critical observations on the hadiths in his work of dazzling scholarship establishing the historicity of Salman the Persian, one of the five original Companions of the Prophet. But it was in fact a Muslim, Sir Seyed Ahmed Khan, who in the nineteenth century first criticized the methodology used by Bukhari and others, and he did so in terms that were later used by Goldziher. In his The Traditions of Islam (1924) Alfred Guillaume quotes some pages from Ibn Khaldun, the great medieval historian, questioning the authenticity of the hadiths. He also quotes from Moulavi Cheragh Ali, a disciple of Sir Ahmed, questioning the authenticity of all the hadiths in a work published in 1885. The criticism of Schacht has been accepted by Professor Fazlur Rahman. It has also been accepted by Asaf Fyzee in his text book Outlines of Muslim Law (1987) which had gone into several editions since its original publication in 1947. I am providing these details to establish that the questioning of the authenticity of the hadiths has behind it a solid Islamic tradition going back to the great Ibn Khaldun in the Middle Ages.

(To be continued).