Moneypura sect’s new refuge: ‘Salli Saranang Gatchchami’

THE SCENE IN THAILAND: The traditional daily pindapatha where monks stand in dignity and after receiving alms bless the giver and move on

THE SCENE IN LANKA LAST WEEK: The new trend of the Moneypura monk brigade, some even escorted by cheerleader women demanding the public to give money to the monks

Sunday, September 24, 2017

SHAMING OF THE SAFFRON SHROUD

Politicians use monks to make temple tills go mobile in the vilest exploitation of the robe of renunciatio

Perhaps, it signalled the beginning of the end for the ingrained respect the people of Lanka have long held sacrosanct in their hearts for the sacred saffron robe.

THE SCENE IN THAILAND: The traditional daily pindapatha where monks stand in dignity and after receiving alms bless the giver and move on

Last week, as monks took to the streets to ask the public their money to tinkle and jingle in monks’ begging bowls as alms, what the nation witnessed was a radical departure from the Vinaya Code as laid down by the Buddha for monks to follow in their speech, conduct and behaviour; and the emergence of a breakaway sect that seemed prepared to flout all religious norms and traditional practices in the interest of corrupt partisan politics.

But first a little bit of history.

The Buddha Sasana, the community of monks, was first established in Lanka by Arahant Mahinda, son of India’s Emperor Asoka during the reign of King Devanampiyatissa who reigned over Lanka from the capital of Anuradhapura in 250BC. Unlike Winston Churchill announcing to the British Parliament at Westminster in 1940 after the Dunkirk debacle “that if the British Empire and the Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, This was their finest hour” — it didn’t survive the decade — and unlike Nazi Germany’s Adolf Hitler proclaiming that the Third Reich would last for a thousand years — it didn’t last for a decade either — Devanampiyatissa Anuradhapura lasted for more than thousand three hundred years. And whilst it flourished as the nation’s capital, so did the Buddha Sasana thrive without sag.

But with repeated Chola invasions, the Sinhala kingdom was forced to abandon the historic capital and to seek new lodgings at Polonnaruwa where hope of resurrection of the glory of Anuradhapura bloomed for 150 years. But alas, the promise was not to last. With the Chola onslaughts, the Sinhala kings were forced to pack their bags and go further and further down south and set up their royal camps in Yapahuwa; then forced to move the caravan to Dambadeniya, to Kurunegala, to Gampola and then to Kotte and Kandy. With this migration and with the people dislocated, the Buddha Sasana was rendered virtually extinct.

As the Sunday Punch stated on July 9th this year, “From the 13th century onwards even the Buddhist Order of Monks became extinct not once but thrice. The Order of Monks was re-established in the reigns of Vimala Dharma Suriya I (1591–1604) and Vimala Dharma Suriya II (1687–1707) as well. But these resurrections were short lived and soon, once more, the Sasana ceased to exist in Lanka.”

“It was not until the 18th century that it was once again established on more solid ground. The Ven. Weliwita Saranankara (1698–1778) took the initiative to reestablish the Sasana in Lanka and invited a Thai monk named Upali who visited Kandy in 1753 during the reign of King Kirti Sri Rajasinghe (1747–1782) was invited by the Tamil king to do the needful and reestablish the Order. The venerable monk performed upasampada, higher ordination to a group of Kandyan monks.”

THE SCENE IN LANKA LAST WEEK: The new trend of the Moneypura monk brigade, some even escorted by cheerleader women demanding the public to give money to the monks

“Thus was the Siam Nikaya born on the 19th of July 1753 , named after Siam, now Thailand, having a mere 264 year history to date compared to the over thousand year history that ancient Lanka’s Bhikku Order had enjoyed till it ceased to exist. Given the Govigama caste exclusivity held by the Siam Nikaya which refused to ordain monks of lower castes, a revolt broke resulting in the establishment of two other Nikayas the Amarapura Nikaya in 1803 at Velitota, Balapitiya and the Ramannya Nikaya in 1864 by Ambagahawatte Saranankara, when he returned after being ordained in Burma.”

The Govigama only Siam Nikaya and ‘all castes welcome’ Amarapura and Ramannya Nikayas have for the last 200 odd years and more been successful in not only reviving the Sasana but keeping it evergreen in the nation’s heart and soul. And the monks of all three Nikayas have striven to keep true to their calling and behaved in the noble manner the Buddha’s Vinaya Code dictated.

But now there’s a new sect in town, their membership drawn from renegades of these three Nikayas, who take their cues not from the Buddha’s code of discipline but from the shifty handbook manual of political expediency; and display a ready willingness to conceal the sins of the politically corrupt under the saffron shroud.

Meet the Moneypura Nikaya, which has dared to add a new and fourth refuge: “Salli saranang gatchchami” or take refuge in money. Especially as a way of atoning the sins of public servants found guilty by Lanka’s courts of misusing public money to the tune of Rs. 600 million; and sentenced to 3 years rigorous imprisonment and ordered to pay Rs 4 million fines for their crimes and Rs. 104 million as compensation to the plundered public.

Last week’s television news showed live footage of that nauseating and humiliating spectacle of a few band of monks take to the streets with begging bowl in hand to beg not for their mid day meal to nourish their bodies in the pursuit of their spiritual quest but to ask for money from the people. Escorted by a bevy of T shirt clad women — cheerleaders shouting slogans ‘give monks money’, give monks money” — they paraded the nation’s streets and made a mockery of the Buddha’s noble robe. Millions of Lankans would have been aghast to see this blatant demand for hard cash to fall into an alms bowl which had only known food before.

But these mercenary monks who have acted so and had violated the ordination oaths to abide by the Buddha’s Vinaya Code which forbids monks to handle or accept money, let alone beg the masses for it, cannot be blamed alone; for, in their ignorance, their willingness to be turned into a cat’s-paw has been made use of in the most unscrupulous manner. And if you listen with your heart to the temple bell, you’ll hear it knell the message of how Lanka’s corrupt politics have succeeded in even staining the saffron robe with their own indelible blotching splash of corruption’s taint.

These dark forces, when their people have burgled your home and kitty and have been found guilty by a Lankan court and have been fined and ordered to compensate your loss, have the nerve, the audacity, the impunity – in short, the down right cheek – to use a band of misguided monks and make them take to the streets and ask you the money to pay the fine and compensation. And have now stooped to use the saffron robe to do it without the slightest qualm and without an iota of concern as to how such exploitation will serve to despoil the Sasana robe and will inevitably lead to its ultimate demise.

Following Joint Opposition MP Bandula Gunawardena’s publicly announced plan to collect money with the help of Buddhist monks to pay Weeratunge’s and Pelpita, Rs 104 million which the Colombo High Court Judge Gihan Kulatunga had ordered as compensation, the Ven. Medagoda Abayatissa Thera took it upon himself to blow the conch and trumpet the news of the advent of the new Nikaya in town: the money begging monk brigade

At a press conference held last week, the monk first declared in the manner of a court judge that Mahinda Rajapaksa was president at the time he issued the order to his permanent secretary Lalith Weeratunga to transfer from the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission the sum of Rs. 600 million and use the funds to distribute sil redi to upasikavans in December 2014 whilst a presidential campaign was in full swing with Rajapaksa as a candidate.

The opinion must be presented here that the presidential order had no legal basis since the president had no constitutional or any other legal right to order the transfer of public money belonging to one government entity to another for whatever purpose without prior cabinet approval and treasury sanction.

But the monk Medagoda Abayatissa’s argument was that since the president enjoyed immunity for his acts, his permanent secretary Weeratunga was also covered and enjoyed the same immunity when he acted on a presidential order and transferred from the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission the sum of Rs. 600 million and used the funds to distribute sil reddhi to upasikavans in December 2014.

But with all respects to the Medagoda Abayatissa Thera, that does not seem to be the legal thinking, as evidenced by the Colombo High Court Judge Gihan Kulatunga’s judgment when he sentenced Weeratunga to three years jail. True, the constitution shields the president in armour of immunity. But it does not protect any civil servant, or any henchmen if he or she carries out an illegal order.

If constitutional immunity bestowed upon any president for any wrongful act, in turn grants immunity to his subordinates, too, who follows his illegal order, then the president can order even mass scale financial fraud to be carried out by his henchmen who when charged can lay claim to immunity springing from the presidential source. One does not have to be a constitutional lawyer to fathom that. Common sense will do.

But when the Ven. Medagoda Abayatissa Thera talks of the Vinaya Code in Buddhism, it is quite another matter. For he is no mere novice monk unversed in the three baskets of the Tripitaka, Buddhism’s guiding scriptures, namely, the basket of expected discipline from monks: the Vinaya Piṭaka, the sheet anchor of the Noble Order of Monks; the basket of discourse: Sūtta Piṭaka, the discourses the Buddha engaged with the lay and his preaching; and the basket of special doctrine: the Abhidharma Piṭaka, the quintessence of his philosophy.

He is, to his credit, a doctor of Buddhism, having gained his doctorate in Buddhism and Jainism from the University of Delhi. . And, to boot, a professor of Buddhism, no less, of the Sri Jayewardene Open University. But he did not see anything wrong, in the prospect of monks taking to the streets begging for money. He did not see that is as being contrary to the rules laid down by the Buddha in the Vinaya code, the code of discipline by which all monks belonging to the Order must live by or face expulsion.

Announcing that an island-wide programme would be launched from September 15 till the 18th to collect money for this purpose, he declared: “As a nation we must save these two public servants. That is why we have come forward to launch the “Sil Reddhi prisoners Salvation Fund” to save them”

Funny, isn’t it, that the learned monk Medagoda should find nothing wrong in monks going a begging for money? Especially when he is aware, as he surely must be, with his Delhi doctorate in Buddhism that the Buddha’s Vinaya Code forbids monks to accept money. If the the Buddha’s Code of Discipline for monks bans monks from accepting money, how worse it is to take to the streets asking for hard cash? For whatever reason? And who’s counting?

But according to this erudite monk, Medagoda Abayatissa, this was not against the code at all. But though he maybe a professor of Buddhism, do you think he has the right to arrogate to himself the Buddha’s Vinaya Rules and interpret it according to his own fashion to suit the politics of his time when at the first Buddhist convention, held shortly after the Buddha’s passing away, the Arahant Maha Kassapa held the view, and the council of Arahants accepted without murmur, that the rules laid down by the Master, should remain untouched?

Does a doctorate in Buddhism give any monk today the right, to advocate the transgression of the Buddha’s code for monks, which a council of enlightened monks who had lived in the Buddha’s midst and imbibed the Dhamma from his lips, decided to hold as inviolate. As the Buddha said: “Oh monks! So long as you will not enact new rules and will not abolish existing ones the Sangha may be expected to prosper and not decline”. And since then, throughout the recorded history of Theravada Buddhism, which this nation’s Sinhala people have long boasted to be the guardians of Buddhism in its pristine for form, none has dared to change it or add a spin to it.

Ven Medagoda Abayatissa Thera also stated that the tour was organised to ensure that the service provided by public servants does not go unrecognised. He also stated that the organisers of the tour aimed to enlighten the public on the injustice that was committed against two long standing public servants. Perhaps, if he meditates upon it long enough, he will discover who was responsible for the injustice done unto them.

But it is true; the Vinaya Code is not the eternal universal Dhamma the Buddha preached. Even as the Buddha stated when he began formulating stage by stage when the occasions arose to make new rules, the Vinaya is not Ultimate Truths but subject to change. It is bound to be changed and modified in different places at different times. The Buddha himself amended some of the rules. The rule of communal eating was changed seven times by the Buddha himself to suit the needs of circumstances. Some were altered to suit geographical circumstances. Examples: the rule that an assembly of ten monks were necessary for granting higher ordination, footwear with more than one layer of layer not be used; the rules of bathing , to name a few, were modified.

When application of these rules needed to be changed to meet the needs of circumstances, the Buddha did not arbitrarily change the rules he had declared. He called the monks to a congregation and changed the original rules and then declared that that the new rules would be valid.

The Buddha’s approach to the Vinaya Code revealed the democratic spirit in him. Just before his demise, he summoned his favourite disciple Ananda and told him that if the members of the noble order of the Sangha wished, they were free to abolish or alter ‘minor’ rules after his passing away.

But, alas, he did not say, what rules were minor, and what rules were major’ and when the First Buddhist Council met a few months after the Buddha’s death, the members admonished the Arahat Ananda for not clarifying from the Buddha what the Buddha meant by minor rules. In the absence of that, the Sangha gathered thereat unanimously decided not to lay down new rules and not to annul any existing rule but to follow rules that had already been laid down by the Buddha.

From that day forth not a single vinaya rule has been officially changed. Neither has any new rule been added. But of course, it does not mean that all monks strictly adhere to all the rules especially when force of circumstances compels them to make a compromise and adapt to changing times. For instance, the rule that monks should not handle money cannot be adhered to in today’s commercial world though monks could have easily followed it as monks who have taken to forests hermitages or atop rocks like Kudumbigala off Arugam Bay easily do. But what are the circumstances that force monks take to the streets demanding money be dropped in their begging bowl, if not the dictates of Lanka’s corrupt politics, promoted by monks with a political bent?

And thus it came to pass last Friday that groups of misguided monks took their positions at selected locations in the city to go from street to street, from office to office with their begging bowls demanding to be filled not with food to nourish and sustain their physical self to pursue their spiritual goal but crying instead to be stacked with money, ostensibly to pay the fine a court had ordered two public servants to pay for misappropriating public funds on the orders of their political master to advance his own political fortunes. If the sight of monks begging for money was bad enough what made it uglier was that the retinue was accompanied by t- shirt clad women – cheerleaders of the new fraternity, of the new Moneypura Nikaya – shouting in the most unseemly way for the public to put their money in the monks’ ‘pin kata’ that had gone mobile. To say that it was unbecoming of a Buddhist monk wearing the saffron robe to put himself in that position is an understatement.

Like beggar mudalalies collect poor from the slums and drop them each morning at selected locations to beg on the streets and pick them up in vans extracting a commission on their daily takings, these monks, members of the Noble Order of the Sangha were walking city streets and suburbs to beg for money – like common beggars on the street – last week in a three day marathon to raise from the public with no receipts issued for money received.

But unlike most of the common beggars who are carefully chosen for their disabilities or wounds which may elicit sympathy and move a soul to drop a dime into their bowl, these men were carefully targeted by their political controllers not for any disability but for the distinct advantage of being draped in the sacred saffron shroud which serve to evoke ready reverence and move the heart and impel the hand to reach for the purse and fill the mobile temple till on the street in return for intangible merit and a better birth in the afterlife.

The saffron robe has been the designer wear of the mendicant. It predates the Buddha. Prince Siddhartha followed the fashion of his times when he renounced his palace pleasures and material wealth and used the white shroud that wrapped a corpse as his lifelong attire – of course, after disinfecting it with saffron, the antiseptic herb of India which gave the robe its name. It was symbol of the truth seeker, one who had renounced all to gain all that was worth gaining: enlightenment.,

But sad to say that in recent times in Lanka, the unscrupulous have found many uses for this robe for all reasons. Like wolves in sheep’s clothing, every mascot of every street protest is draped in one. And demands to be respected, to be treated with deference and considers it to be a shield of immunity. Like a catholic priest holding a cross to ward of the devil, street protesters believe that the mere adorning the robe of the Sasana will keep the law enforcing authorities at bay and that to mess around with it, even to lay a finger upon it tantamount to sacrilege. What is not realised is that every time the robe is used in this way and cheapened in this fashion, it loses the respect it possesses. And last week, the robe hit the nadir when it was squeezed to the extreme to wring, even from it, a few coppers to fill their coffers.

And the robe for all reasons has been found to be used for many foul reasons except for one: to be the symbolic garb of the truth seeker which automatically demands and receives the public’s reverence, worship and alms.

Stark silence of Nikaya Chiefs Siam, Amarapura, Rammannya strangely stay mum A shroud of silence has descended upon the three Buddhist Nikayas of the land over the issue of monks going on ‘pindapathey’ asking the public to fill their alms bowl with money and not grub. And made many wonder why the high priests have chosen to turn askance and remain mute when a tenet contained in the Buddha’s declared Vinaya Code, described as the sheet anchor of the Noble Order of the Sasana, is being openly violated on public streets. Beggared beyond belief Buddhists watched aghast as the Moneypura Nikaya – where anything goes – took their pin kataya to the road and made a mockery of the respect the public hold to the sacred saffron robe of the Buddha. All these Mahanayakes consider themselves as advisors to the rulers. They claim that the community of monks has been so historically, though without producing great proof of their claim. They meet the country’s top leaders and are seen on television, accepting their pirikara, hearing their confessions and blessing them in return by tying the traditional pirith noola on their wrist. They are quick to advice, even quicker –as the Asgiriya Chapter of the Siam Nikaya is – to criticize the political actions of the present government. All that is fair and well. But when a new schism is seemingly being formed that follows not the Vinaya Code but the dictates of politicians to be used at their whim as a rent a monk mob, it is perhaps better if the venerable Nikaya chiefs looked inward and started advising the truant members of their individual Nikayas first and admonishing the laity later.

Palestinian boy, shot in stomach, interrogated on video

Maureen Clare Murphy-22 September 2017

“Give me water, give me water.”

So pleads a Palestinian boy, lying on the ground after being hit with a bullet in his stomach, as he is questioned by an Israeli officer.

The exchange is shown in a video apparently recorded by the officer and obtained by a settler group which uploaded it to YouTube.

“What are you doing here?” the officer asks.

“I came to kill myself,” replies the boy, accused of running toward Israelis while wielding a kitchen knife at the entrance to the Kiryat Arba settlement.

No one is shown in the video attempting to provide first aid to the wounded boy.

Amnesty International has previously stated that an intentional failure by Israeli forces to provide medical aid to a wounded person violates international prohibitions on torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment.

And while it is unclear how the video – evidently filmed in an area under complete Israeli military control – came to be published, international law prohibits an army from exposing persons in an occupied territory to “insults and public curiosity.”

No Israelis were injured during the 13 September incident that left the teen, identified as Hasan Issa Jaradat, from the nearby village of Sair, with serious injuries.

In the video the boy gives his age as 15; some news reports have said he is 13.

Ten residents of Jaradat’s hometown – several of them children – have been killed in such incidents since late 2015.

Shoot to kill

Jaradat is not the first young Palestinian to have apparently attempted suicide in this way.
At least one Jewish Israeli has seemingly considered it a way to guarantee death as well.

An unwell Israeli man from a Jerusalem-area settlement was killed by soldiers after what the army claimed was a stabbing attempt earlier this year.

Israeli forces operate under an apparent shoot-to-kill policy encouraged by the government’s top leadership.

Another Palestinian boy was shot and killed last month after allegedly attacking soldiers with a knife at a West Bank checkpoint.

Witnesses told the Palestinian rights group Al-Haq that soldiers continued to shoot at Qutaiba Ziad Zahran, 16, even after he had fallen to the ground.

Extrajudicially executing Palestinians who pose no immediate lethal threat is Israeli policy.

Police were shown on video demonstrating how to confirm a kill to a crowd of Israeli school children earlier this year.

Interrogated in hospital room

Sixteen Palestinian children have been killed by Israeli fire so far this year.

Others have survived their injuries, only to be subjected to further abuses by Israeli forces.

The rights group Defense for Children International Palestine has documented the case of a 13-year-old boy shot by Israeli soldiers near the West Bank town of Jayyous in late July.

Mahmoud Qaddumi was wounded in both of his legs and his shoulder.

The boy was taken to an Israeli hospital, where he was held under guard and interrogated without the presence of a lawyer or family member.

The interrogator offered Qaddumi money and a smartphone in an attempt to recruit him as an informant against other children in the village who throw stones at soldiers.
The boy “is among the 500 to 700 Palestinian children detained and prosecuted by the Israeli military court system each year,” according to the rights group.

Defense for Children added that “children experience high levels of abuse during and after arrest, with the majority interrogated in the absence of a lawyer or family member, leaving them susceptible to coercion or recruitment as informants.”

Attacked by settlers

Israel’s military occupation and settlement colony enterprise in the West Bank and Gaza Strip – imposed for 50 years – exposes Palestinian children to routine violence.

Earlier this month, a group of Israeli settlers attacked 15-year-old Osama Daghlas, beating him and dragging his naked body and throwing him off a two-meter-high fence.

Daghlas had been sitting with his cousin, who managed to get away, when the settlers pursued them. The boy fell in and out of consciousness during the assault, which ended when one of the settlers threw a sound grenade next to the youth.

The wounded teen was discovered by a shepherd who had heard the sound grenade. Daghlas was treated for his injuries at a hospital.

Israeli settler violence has surged in the first half of this year, with nearly double the number of incidents resulting in Palestinian fatalities, injuries or property damage, compared to the same period last year, according to United Nations data.

Defense for Children International states that the Israeli military fails to intervene in settler attacks.

“Repeated failure by the Israeli authorities to hold settlers accountable for attacks will continue to result in unchecked violence against Palestinian children,” Ayed Abu Eqtaish, a program director with the group, stated.

The failure is inevitable, given that the soldiers are there to guard the settlements.

And yet when Palestinian children like Hasan Issa Jaradat are shot at Israeli checkpoints and settlements, it is they who are called terrorists.

The killings of history is the true scandal against freedom

The true scandal is the insidious assumption of power by sinister war-making vested interests for which no American voted. The rapid ascendancy of the Pentagon and the surveillance agencies under Obama represented an historic shift of power in Washington. Daniel Ellsberg rightly called it a coup.

by John Pilger- Sep 22, 2017

( September 22, 2017, London, Sri Lanka Guardian) One of the most hyped “events” of American television, The Vietnam War, has started on the PBS network. The directors are Ken Burns and Lynn Novick. Acclaimed for his documentaries on the Civil War, the Great Depression and the history of jazz, Burns says of his Vietnam films, “They will inspire our country to begin to talk and think about the Vietnam war in an entirely new way”.

In a society often bereft of historical memory and in thrall to the propaganda of its “exceptionalism”, Burns’ “entirely new” Vietnam war is presented as “epic, historic work”. Its lavish advertising campaign promotes its biggest backer, Bank of America, which in 1971 was burned down by students in Santa Barbara, California, as a symbol of the hated war in Vietnam.

Burns says he is grateful to “the entire Bank of America family” which “has long supported our country’s veterans”. Bank of America was a corporate prop to an invasion that killed perhaps as many as four million Vietnamese and ravaged and poisoned a once bountiful land. More than 58,000 American soldiers were killed, and around the same number are estimated to have taken their own lives.

I watched the first episode in New York. It leaves you in no doubt of its intentions right from the start. The narrator says the war “was begun in good faith by decent people out of fateful misunderstandings, American overconfidence and Cold War misunderstandings”.

The dishonesty of this statement is not surprising. The cynical fabrication of “false flags” that led to the invasion of Vietnam is a matter of record – the Gulf of Tonkin “incident” in 1964, which Burns promotes as true, was just one. The lies litter a multitude of official documents, notably the Pentagon Papers, which the great whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg released in 1971.

There was no good faith. The faith was rotten and cancerous. For me – as it must be for many Americans — it is difficult to watch the film’s jumble of “red peril” maps, unexplained interviewees, ineptly cut archive and maudlin American battlefield sequences.

In the series’ press release in Britain — the BBC will show it — there is no mention of Vietnamese dead, only Americans. “We are all searching for some meaning in this terrible tragedy,” Novick is quoted as saying. How very post-modern.

All this will be familiar to those who have observed how the American media and popular culture behemoth has revised and served up the great crime of the second half of the twentieth century: from The Green Berets and The Deer Hunter to Rambo and, in so doing, has legitimised subsequent wars of aggression. The revisionism never stops and the blood never dries. The invader is pitied and purged of guilt, while “searching for some meaning in this terrible tragedy”. Cue Bob Dylan: “Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son?”

I thought about the “decency” and “good faith” when recalling my own first experiences as a young reporter in Vietnam: watching hypnotically as the skin fell off Napalmed peasant children like old parchment, and the ladders of bombs that left trees petrified and festooned with human flesh. General William Westmoreland, the American commander, referred to people as “termites”.

In the early 1970s, I went to Quang Ngai province, where in the village of My Lai, between 347 and 500 men, women and infants were murdered by American troops (Burns prefers “killings”). At the time, this was presented as an aberration: an “American tragedy” (Newsweek ). In this one province, it was estimated that 50,000 people had been slaughtered during the era of American “free fire zones”. Mass homicide. This was not news.

To the north, in Quang Tri province, more bombs were dropped than in all of Germany during the Second World War. Since 1975, unexploded ordnance has caused more than 40,000 deaths in mostly “South Vietnam”, the country America claimed to “save” and, with France, conceived as a singularly imperial ruse.

The “meaning” of the Vietnam war is no different from the meaning of the genocidal campaign against the Native Americans, the colonial massacres in the Philippines, the atomic bombings of Japan, the levelling of every city in North Korea. The aim was described by Colonel Edward Lansdale, the famous CIA man on whom Graham Greene based his central character in The Quiet American.

Quoting Robert Taber’s The War of the Flea, Lansdale said, “There is only one means of defeating an insurgent people who will not surrender, and that is extermination. There is only one way to control a territory that harbours resistance, and that is to turn it into a desert.”

Nothing has changed. When Donald Trump addressed the United Nations on 19 September – a body established to spare humanity the “scourge of war” – he declared he was “ready, willing and able” to “totally destroy” North Korea and its 25 million people. His audience gasped, but Trump’s language was not unusual.

His rival for the presidency, Hillary Clinton, had boasted she was prepared to “totally obliterate” Iran, a nation of more than 80 million people. This is the American Way; only the euphemisms are missing now.

Returning to the US, I am struck by the silence and the absence of an opposition – on the streets, in journalism and the arts, as if dissent once tolerated in the “mainstream” has regressed to a dissidence: a metaphoric underground.

There is plenty of sound and fury at Trump the odious one, the “fascist”, but almost none at Trump the symptom and caricature of an enduring system of conquest and extremism.

Where are the ghosts of the great anti-war demonstrations that took over Washington in the 1970s? Where is the equivalent of the Freeze Movement that filled the streets of Manhattan in the 1980s, demanding that President Reagan withdraw battlefield nuclear weapons from Europe?

The sheer energy and moral persistence of these great movements largely succeeded; by 1987 Reagan had negotiated with Mikhail Gorbachev an Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) that effectively ended the Cold War.

Today, according to secret Nato documents obtained by the German newspaper, Suddeutsche Zetung, this vital treaty is likely to be abandoned as “nuclear targeting planning is increased”. The German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel has warned against “repeating the worst mistakes of the Cold War … All the good treaties on disarmament and arms control from Gorbachev and Reagan are in acute peril. Europe is threatened again with becoming a military training ground for nuclear weapons. We must raise our voice against this.”

But not in America. The thousands who turned out for Senator Bernie Sanders’ “revolution” in last year’s presidential campaign are collectively mute on these dangers. That most of America’s violence across the world has been perpetrated not by Republicans, or mutants like Trump, but by liberal Democrats, remains a taboo.

Barack Obama provided the apotheosis, with seven simultaneous wars, a presidential record, including the destruction of Libya as a modern state. Obama’s overthrow of Ukraine’s elected government has had the desired effect: the massing of American-led Nato forces on Russia’s western borderland through which the Nazis invaded in 1941.

Obama’s “pivot to Asia” in 2011 signalled the transfer of the majority of America’s naval and air forces to Asia and the Pacific for no purpose other than to confront and provoke China. The Nobel Peace Laureate’s worldwide campaign of assassinations is arguably the most extensive campaign of terrorism since 9/11.

What is known in the US as “the left” has effectively allied with the darkest recesses of institutional power, notably the Pentagon and the CIA, to see off a peace deal between Trump and Vladimir Putin and to reinstate Russia as an enemy, on the basis of no evidence of its alleged interference in the 2016 presidential election.

The true scandal is the insidious assumption of power by sinister war-making vested interests for which no American voted. The rapid ascendancy of the Pentagon and the surveillance agencies under Obama represented an historic shift of power in Washington. Daniel Ellsberg rightly called it a coup. The three generals running Trump are its witness.

All of this fails to penetrate those “liberal brains pickled in the formaldehyde of identity politics”, as Luciana Bohne noted memorably. Commodified and market-tested, “diversity” is the new liberal brand, not the class people serve regardless of their gender and skin colour: not the responsibility of all to stop a barbaric war to end all wars.

“How did it fucking come to this?” says Michael Moore in his Broadway show, Terms of My Surrender, a vaudeville for the disaffected set against a backdrop of Trump as Big Brother.

I admired Moore’s film, Roger & Me, about the economic and social devastation of his hometown of Flint, Michigan, and Sicko, his investigation into the corruption of healthcare in America.

The night I saw his show, his happy-clappy audience cheered his reassurance that “we are the majority!” and calls to “impeach Trump, a liar and a fascist!” His message seemed to be that had you held your nose and voted for Hillary Clinton, life would be predictable again.

He may be right. Instead of merely abusing the world, as Trump does, the Great Obliterator might have attacked Iran and lobbed missiles at Putin, whom she likened to Hitler: a particular profanity given the 27 million Russians who died in Hitler’s invasion.

“Listen up,” said Moore, “putting aside what our governments do, Americans are really loved by the world!”

There was a silence.

Turkey could be an additional player in South Asian affairs

Saturday, 23 September 2017


With improvement of ties with Bangladesh after the standoff over the 1971 war crimes trials, and with the strengthening of relations with Pakistan, an economically resurgent and politically ambitious Turkey may become a factor in South Asian affairs in course of time.

Pakistan Foreign Minister Mohammad Asif’s recent visit to Turkey was remarkable in that the President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan had broken protocol and met the Foreign Minister and the Turkish government even publicised a picture of the meeting. The picture represented a new approach to regional affairs on the part of Turkey. Turkey now considers Pakistan as a key factor in its new schemes in Afghanistan and also the South and Central Asian region.

Angered by US President Donald Trump’s attack on it regarding its activities in Afghanistan, Pakistan is looking for new allies to pursue its interests in Afghanistan and Turkey tops the list of countries which Islamabad would like to have on board.

Close allies

Turkey and Pakistan have always been close allies. Prior to independence in 1947, the Muslims of the Indian sub-continent had supported the Sultan of Turkey in his fight with the European countries on post World War I settlement. The Sultan was the only Islamic potentate who had dared to take on the European powers in modern times.

He therefore enjoyed great prestige among Muslims all over the world. Later, the founder of Pakistan Mohammad Ali Jinnah wanted Pakistan to be a modern and liberal Muslim country like Kamal Ataturk’s post-war Turkey.

During the Turkish-Greek war over Cyprus, Pakistan offered financial and diplomatic support to Turkey. In return, Turkey has consistently supported Pakistan against India on the Kashmir issue, even at the risk of alienating New Delhi irretrievably.


Other factors which bind Turkey and Pakistan are their uneasy involvement in America’s war against terror and their search for alternative alliances. While both believe that they are doing their best to crush terrorism, America says they ought to do more to prove their trustworthiness. Both countries host millions of refugees – Turkey from troubled Syria and Pakistan from troubled Afghanistan. Both countries are battling homegrown terrorists. There is therefore much to share and consult about.

Cultivating historical allies

It is the context of the troubled relations with their erstwhile allies, the US and Europe, that Turkey and Pakistan are now looking to cultivate their “historical and cultural allies” in Central and South Asia.

Last year, Turkey asked Pakistan to send its F-16 pilots to train its pilots but the US stopped Pakistan from obliging. Turkey, Pakistan, and Afghanistan have an intelligence sharing mechanism. Under the aegis of Turkey, Pakistan and Afghanistan have met several times to discuss security.

Turkey is a participant in the NATO military mission in Afghanistan and as such is training the Afghan police force. However, it is using its presence in Afghanistan and its good relations with the regime in Kabul to play a peace making role in the troubled country. It is also trying to be a bridge between Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Afghan government’s call for talks with the Pakistan-backed Taliban enables peace efforts to begin and Turkey could be a catalyst in this process.

Turkey can bring the Uzbeks and influential Turkmen groups to the negotiating table in Afghanistan while Pakistan can bring the Taliban and other Pashtun groups hostile to the government in Kabul. Fortunately for Turkey and Pakistan, the Americans are praising Turkey’s role in stabilising Afghanistan.

Turkey has previously mediated between Afghanistan and Pakistan. There have been almost a dozen trilateral summits held in Ankara to talk about border management, the Durand Line, refugees, and the Indian factor in Afghanistan.

Turkey and Pakistan are looking into forming a regional partnership with Russia and Iran to solve the Taliban question, overcoming long standing differences with Moscow and Teheran. Both Turkey and Pakistan now feel that Russia is a more reliable partner than the US. The Russian-Turkish-Iranian-negotiated de-escalation zone in Syria serves as a model for cooperation in Afghanistan.

The other reason to make up with Russia and Iran is Turkey’s economic development. Economically developing Turkey is dependent on Russia for 58% of its natural gas needs while 41% of its oil comes from Iran.

Bangladesh

When tragedy struck Bangladesh in August-September in the form of the influx of 410,000 Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar, Turkey was the only country to immediately offer assistance. Turkish President and strongman Erdogan sent his wife to Bangladesh to see the refugees and distribute aid. The Turkish First Lady promised that Turkey would take up the issue at the next UN General Assembly session later in the month.

Both countries have now put behind the disruption in relations brought about by Erdogan’s severe criticism of the hanging of two Bangladeshi war criminals – both leaders of the Jamaat e Islami – in the past year.  While Turkish TV called Bangladesh a “rogue state” on account of the hanging of the Islamic leaders, Turkey withdrew its Ambassador in Bangladesh.

But later, Ankara relented as it wanted to play a role in Bangladesh to restore peace and development in the troubled country. With an ambition to play a role in South Asia, Turkey could not carry on the spat with Bangladesh, and the Rohingya issue helped Ankara rebuild bridges with Dhaka. Turkey, Pakistan, and Bangladesh are now working to solve the Rohingya issue, or at least, to help Bangladesh to tide over the humanitarian crisis.

Economic Imperatives

The main reason for Turkey’s new foreign policy initiatives is its growing economic strength under the stable and dynamic rule of President Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (JDP) since 2002.

Gone is the era of unstable coalition governments and military coups. JDP’s policy of mixing populist development programs with Islamic values has delivered the goods in terms of popular support despite the persecution of dissidents.

Turkish foreign aid and investment have increased in the Muslim countries of North and Sub-Saharan Africa and the Turkic countries of Central Asia. The budget of the Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency (TIKA) is active in 30 countries, most of them having significant Muslim populations.

Turkish religious leader Fethullah Gülen’s schools are mushrooming in South Caucasus, Central Asia, and the Balkans. Turkey has infrastructure projects in Pakistan. Turkish construction companies are rebuilding some parts of Georgia. Additionally, Turkish big business is opening factories in Bulgaria. Turkish banks dominate the finance sector in Bosnia.

Turkish brands are flooding markets in Egypt and Iraq. Throughout the Balkans, South Caucasus, Middle East and Pakistan, people watch Turkish movies and soap operas. They spread the Turkish way of life which is modern and yet Islamic.

Given its role as the “natural Islamic leader” of the Middle East prior to World War I, Turkey has the confidence to pursue an independent foreign policy unlike other Middle and Central Asian countries. It sees itself as a “rising power”. “Neo-Ottomanism” is Erdogan’s motto. 

Brexit: May versus Merkel

 2017-09-23

“It’s not over until the fat lady ends her song”- so goes the adage, referring to the often overweight soprano who sings the last aria in Wagner’s opera, Gotterdammerung.   

British prime minister, Theresa May, is not fat in a physical sense, but she is fat-headed, convinced of her own righteousness over Brexit, though she herself voted ‘Remain in the Brexit’ referendum and then changed her opinion so she could win enough votes from Brexit members of parliament to become prime minister.   

Fortunately for Europe, as Ms May goes backwards Chancellor Angela Merkel goes forward. Certain to win her re-election this week, and thus overtake Vladimir Putin for longevity in office, she has Europe sewn into her gut. She has lived through it all, in the sense that the Berlin she grew up in as a girl was a bombed-out ruin, slowly being rebuilt with concrete boxes

Fortunately, for those who believe that the European Union is a force that welds together the former warring nations of Europe who precipitated World Wars 1 and 2 into a well-run economic and political union and thus has ensured that Europe has achieved its longest period of peace in 2000 years, the fat lady has just got going on her long aria. Indeed, her voice is gaining timbre as it becomes clear that the ‘Remainders’ still have a chance of defeating Ms May and her inward looking, self-destructive, supporters who would have had Winston Churchill on their backs if he were still alive -- he was a great believer in a unified Europe.   

Fortunately for Europe, as Ms May goes backwards Chancellor Angela Merkel goes forward. Certain to win her re-election this week, and thus overtake Vladimir Putin for longevity in office, she has Europe sewn into her gut. She has lived through it all, in the sense that the Berlin she grew up in as a girl was a bombed-out ruin, slowly being rebuilt with concrete boxes.   

At the same time the latest figures from the Western government’s joint think tank, the OECD, show that scores for literacy and numeracy of 16-24 year olds in England, Wales and Northern Ireland rank in the lowest four of the EU’s 35 countries

She is one to take her time and find the right moment to strike. She doesn’t believe that the UK leadership is being rational. How could it renounce its powerful position in Europe when only 37% of the electorate voted for Leave, many of them hoodwinked by the lies of Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson, the present foreign secretary? (Dominic Cummings, the chief organiser of the Leave vote, has now said it was all a mistake.) She will continue to support a hard, even harsh, negotiating stance with the UK over Brexit. She will partner with President Emmanuel Macron of France to strengthen the EU’s financial management to ensure another Greek-type crisis is avoided and so that Europe can unleash further its economic potential. I guess she won’t be averse to strengthening Germany’s and the EU’s links with Scotland, so to drive home that a self-confident Scotland could compel Ms May to realize that if she leaves Europe Scotland will leave Britain- and be welcomed to stay in the EU. In short, a re-elected Ms Merkel will fight very hard for the Europe she has long craved for- a united, anti-far right, anti-communist, pro-melting pot, peaceful, compassionate and cooperative continent. Ms Merkel is a tougher and more experienced piece of work than Ms May.   

Jenni Russel wrote recently in the Guardian newspaper, “Nothing could be less helpful to our collective psyche as the country blunders toward Brexit. We hear much about American “exceptionalism”, but Britain feels it too. We are the nation of empire, whose recent ancestors once controlled a quarter of the globe, we are the mother of parliaments, we stood alone against Hitler; we have not been conquered for a thousand years. We feel remarkable.”   

Is there a way out? Perhaps there could be a deal whereby the EU concedes that the UK has the right to control its own immigration flows, since immigration was the main issue in the Leave’s campaign. 

At the same time the latest figures from the Western government’s joint think tank, the OECD, show that scores for literacy and numeracy of 16-24 year olds in England, Wales and Northern Ireland rank in the lowest four of the EU’s 35 countries. Alongside the Americans the British have the worst technological skills. There aren’t enough British workers with the right attitudes and skills to fill the country’s jobs. The result is that the UK imports large numbers of migrants. Nearly 25% of university staff come from other EU countries- some of them are already packing to leave. A third of new nurses each year come from the EU. A recent report by the non-partisan Office for Budget Responsibility, warns that public finances are in worse shape than before the 2008 financial crash. Rising debt, plummeting tax revenues, and the lowest economic growth rate in Europe are the curse of the UK.   
Britain, as we know it, is on its way to self-destruction. How can this be stopped? Not yet. The government must go through the pain of intense Brexit negotiations with the EU; the economy has to fail even more than it is.   

Is there a way out? Perhaps there could be a deal whereby the EU concedes that the UK has the right to control its own immigration flows, since immigration was the main issue in the Leave’s campaign. Sweden quite recently did that. It was no great big deal. Then British public opinion would shift to Remain.   

At that point there has to be another referendum.   
(The writer has been a foreign affairs columnist and commentator for the International Herald Tribune/New York Times for 17 years.)   

What is Jury Nullification?

Before legalization of recreational cannabis, west coast defense attorneys saw a lot of jury nullification.

Sep-18-2017

(SAN DIEGO, Calif.) - Jury nullification is a concept where a jury on criminal case can hear the entire case, and then find the defendant not guilty because they do not agree with the law or punishment.

If you have ever been to jury duty you will hear often the court saying that as a juror it is your job to “follow the law”, however, the case law in this area says that jury nullification is actually following the law.

It is perfectly legal to have this approach and the law says that this is not grounds to overturn a case.

For example if a jury came back with a not guilty verdict and later came out in public and said “I thought they were guilty but I don’t believe in that law”, the courts have said that this would not be grounds to reverse the conviction or for a new trial.

In the years before recreational Marijuana legalization, defense attorneys saw a lot of jury nullification. Before legalization, along the west coast, including Washington, Oregon and California, defense attorneys would often share stories where a jury would be forced to decide on someone’s fate for a conviction based on simple possession of Marijuana.

Why does Jury Nullification happen?

Some jurors just don’t think that someone should go to jail or prison committing a certain crime. No matter what the prosecutor tells them about the case, or the law, they will find the defendant not guilty.

Some attorneys have even experienced situations where the person literally admitted to committing the crime on the stand, and the jurors still found their client not guilty.

It is a crazy thing to think about, but when you bring in the general public to decide on someone’s life, you have to know that these people are going to bring in their own personal beliefs and opinions when starting their deliberations.

Can an Attorney bring up Jury Nullification?

Although jury nullification is allowed and is part of the court process, it is not something that can be brought up during the trial. That would be considered grounds for a reversal.

So for example, a defense attorney, in their closing argument, can’t just tell the jurors, “Hey if you don’t believe in this, then don’t follow the law”. That cannot be said and the courts are very clear about that.

However, attorneys who are very experienced often find ways in their closing argument to explain that the law may not be a good law, and that maybe the crime their client was charged with was not so bad.