Amendment 2: USA Constitution

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Another gruesome mass murder in the USA last week (14 December 2012), 26 dead, of whom pathetically 20 are little children! Politicians weep in public, call upon God’s grace and say that the tragedy will make America stronger. We have heard it before, we will hear it again and again, but nothing will really change. Nothing can change because the interested corporations that manufacture or import and sell guns and their powerful gun lobby have most politicians in their pockets with their political donations, marketing and public relations campaigns. This is politics in America and it does not change. After all, America is the greatest country on earth that ever was, so why should it change.

How exceptional America is in this respect is succinctly revealed in a table put out by the UK Daily Mail of 18^th December 2012.

Arms in the US: Figures  that add up to tragedy

94,388 people shot in the US so far this year. 300 million privately owned firearms in US.

39 people killed by firearms in England and Wales over 12 months in 2008/9.

40% of gun purchases in the US do not need background check.

190 people shot in the US on Saturday alone (22^nd December 2012).

11 is the minimum age in Minnesota to be eligible for a firearms certificate.

42 of the 50 states of the US do not ban or regulate assault rifles.

50 shots fired by a lone gunmen at a shopping mall in California the day after the massacre (no one injured).

70,000 women aged 51 to 65 gained a concealed –weapons permit in May 2012 alone.

50% of guns worldwide are in US – but just 5% of global population.

1 is the number of mass murders that have been carried out by a woman.

231 people killed in mass shootings (4 or more dead) in the US since May 2009.

35 people killed by firearms in Australia in a single year.

95 shots used by German police in 2011 (including 49 warning shots)

90 shots used by LA police to kill 19 year old man after high speed chase.

60 people were killed by firearms in Spain in a single year.

9,484 were killed by firearms in US in same 12 months.

The familiar argument is that it is not guns but people that kill. But the stupidity of that argument was proved again on the same day as this latest massacre when a man in China went on a similar murderous spree in a school in China. But since he had no access to guns and used a knife, 20 children were injured but none died and the man was apprehended.

The reliance on the Second Amendment to the US Constitution, approved 300 years ago, provides a specious argument and a fig leaf for the gun lobby and its supporters whose influence is national. It clearly talks of a well regulated militia to protect the state
because the US lacked both a proper Standing Army and a national police force. Today, the US has the most powerful military the world has ever seen and a huge police force covering federal, state and county entities. They are both equipped with the most sophisticated technologies. And yet the US Supreme Court ruled that the District of Columbia, the US capital, had contravened the law by banning persons from carrying concealed weapons in public and forced the revocation of the law.

The sanctity of this Second Amendment is strange. Constitutions are not written in stone by God like the Ten Commandments. Consider the Fourth Amendment: Search and arrest warrants.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

This particular amendment has been repeatedly amended in practice, with Congressional approval and the administration’s rulings, citing the security of the state and dangers of
terrorism. There is no argument that the country has to be protected from terrorists and the constitution’s amendments need to be accordingly modified. But why cannot the same be done with the Second Amendment, even granting the doubtful interpretation of the courts?

Gun lobbyists claim that the only way to protect oneself from gun violence is to be armed sufficiently to retaliate. Should we arm all the little children to protect themselves from
crazed murderers?

Primitive savages who lived in pre-historic times were always armed to protect themselves and their families. But in civilised societies it is the function of the police to protect ordinary citizens. But not in America, which will always seek to be an exception.

A concerned Congresswoman is expected to propose a law banning military assault weapons. But the law has 900 exceptions!

People will always get aggravated over issues which they will later forget and regret. In a more normal society, people might vent their anger by breaking some household object or even beating a person. But if a gun is at hand and the man (it is usually a man) is a
weakling and coward, he will use the gun. Most of the mass murderers have been young White males and are weaklings with a grievance against society who would run away from a bout of fisticuffs but feel powerful when using guns to kill others. That is why societies around the civilised world restricts gun ownership and only allow hunting weapons for licensed persons with no criminal records or diminished minds. But in free America one can not only own powerful military assault weapons, you could even possess old artillery pieces and battle tanks!

Kenneth Abeywickrama

14 December 2012

“Through a  mixture of fantasy and reality, historical and social perspectives, Mo Yan has  created a world reminiscent in its complexity of those in the writings of  William Faulkner and Gabriel García Márquez, at the same time finding a  departure point in old Chinese literature and in oral tradition.”

From citation made with the award by  the Swedish Academy.

“In writing about the darker aspects of society  there is a danger that emotions and anger allow politics to suppress  literature. A novelist must take a humanist stance as literature originates  from events but transcends them.”

From Mo Yan’s acceptance speech in Stockholm at the Nobel  Awards ceremony (http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2012-12/09/content_15999293.htm).

His real name is Guan Moye, and his  pen name, Mo Yan, means “don’t speak”. Coming from a family of poor farmers in a  village in Northeast Gaomi Township, Shandong province, China, where most of  his novels are set, he endured the hardships of the Cultural Revolution  (1966-1976) working in a factory in a poor village and saw the chaotic rise of
China to a world power. His literary skills blossomed out while he was a  soldier in the Peoples’ Liberation Army. These were recognized by the Chinese  Army and he became a teacher of literature at the Army  Cultural Academy  and he later joined Beijing  Normal University  for formal education and obtained a Master’s in Literature. The most famous of
his 11 novels are: Falling Rain on a Spring Night (1981), Red Sorghum Clan  (1987), The Garlic Ballads (1988), The Republic of Wine (1992), Big Breasts and  Wide Hips (1996), Sandalwood Death (2004), Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out  (2006), Change (2010) and Pow (2013). He has produced hundreds of short stories.

China has an ancient  historical tradition of producing great classic novels that are absorbing  stories of everyday life and adventure, long before that of any other nation,
Eastern or Western. The modern novel as we know it can be seen in Chinese  novels of the 13^th century and later. Other nations, like ancient Greece, Rome and India have  their grand mythical stories but these are not real life stories that a reader  can readily relate to. In English literature we have a modern novel in  Chaucer’s Pilgrims Progress of the 13^th century. But none of these  are comparable with the exciting story-telling found in the voluminous Chinese  novels of the 13^th – 19th centuries: Outlaws of the Marsh (by Luo
Guanzhong), Plum in the Golden Vase (?), Romance of the Three Kingdoms (by Luo
Guanzhong), Journey to the West (by Wu Chengen), Chronicle of the West Wing (by
Wang Shifu), In Search of Gods (by Gan Bao).

The Swedish Academy that chooses the Nobel Prize  awards for literature has a long history of political bias, awarding many of  its prizes to anti-communist activists in Eastern Europe
in the Soviet era and to two Chinese political agitators, one of whom is a  refugee in France and the other in a Chinese prison. This is its first  recognition of an outstanding Chinese literary giant of our times who is part  of the Chinese establishment. However, Mo Yan’s writings are anything but what  the Chinese establishment has wanted to project of life in China and his elevation to Vice President of the  Chinese Writers’ Union reflects the new open society in China.

Big Breasts and Wide Hips

This is one of his great epic novels. Mo Yan is  one of the most skilful story tellers of modern times and every page of this  book holds the reader in suspense. Before the reader concludes that an episode  is settled a new development alters the picture in a continuing flow of dramatic  events of gains and reverses and changing fortunes.

The story is set in a village in North East Gaomi Township  in Shandong Province, China, where the author himself was  born. The story revolves around the life of a poverty-stricken peasant family  living a primitive life in one of the most dramatic periods of Chinese history,  from 1900 during the time of the Manchu emperors to around 1965, going through  the periods of the upheavals of the Japanese invasions, the  Nationalist-Communist wars, the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution. It  is a chaotic period of enormous tragedy, enormous sacrifice and suffering till  the incubation period of present day China. Elements of these contending  powers wash through Gaomi village leaving its tragic impact on the lives of the  poor peasants whose traditional way of life is turned upside down. They live in  alternating periods of murder and starvation and periods of some normalcy while  the outsiders take control over their lives. The suffering reaches a height by  1965 when the insanity and the brutality of the Red Guards terrorises the
population with mass propaganda, mock trials and severe punishments. Then there
is a break of 15 years in the main story as the story teller, Jintong  Shangguan, is sent to a prison labour camp where he toils in a salt production  facility under harsh conditions. When he returns in 1980, the Chinese world has  changed beyond recognition. Instead of being punished or even executed for  being a rich peasant or a business owner, making money and becoming rich is now  a virtue. Those who seize the opportunities and become rich have all the  frailties of human beings: they live extravagantly with all the latest imported  Western goods and social manners, they bribe officials for favours and
generally exploit the system for their personal benefit. The poor are still  left behind while the conflicts within society for power and position continues  under new rules. The story continues till 1992.

The long story is told through the experiences  of the Shangguan family over this entire period. The heroine of the story is  “Mother”, Shangguan Lu, born in 1900 and the other principal characters are her  eight daughters. The Shangguan family is a matriarchal unit. At the beginning,  the physically tough mother-in-law rules the family with violence against her  husband, son and daughter-law-law. When Japanese forces kill the two men and
permanently cripple her, “Mother” becomes the head of the family. Mother is not
concerned with morality in the traditional sense or in politics or any other  idealism. She is quintessentially human and her mission in life is to raise and  preserve her family at all costs during these chaotic times while displaying a  decency and kindness to others in defiance of the demands of the new political  movements and the moral hazards they have created. Her suffering is life long. There  are no other heroes: the real heroes are Mother and her daughters, all of whom  eventually suffer after initial gains.

The technique used is the narration of the main  story through the eyes of Mother’s only son, Jintong Shangguan. Jintong is a  very weak and imperfect male with a fetish for female breasts and milk and an  inability to eat normal food. He never grows up to be a man. He is physically  weak, lacks mental stamina, is cowardly, sexually impotent and often survives  through the help of the women he encounters who are somehow attracted to him  for a while. He is an eternal loser and he often admits he is “useless”. He is  an anti-hero, floating with the forces around him without participating in  them, unlike his sisters, and suffering greatly from the mental and physical  abuse he is subjected to. His sisters, on the other hand, are tough women who  become involved in the political movements that sweep through the village and  form liaisons with political leaders and the wider political spectrum is  revealed through the fortunes and misfortunes of the family sisters and their
offspring.

It must take great courage to tell such a tale  in China  or for that matter in any country in the world. While official histories  document the heroic movements that marked the birth of a new nation, this long  episodic tale reveals the tragedy and the dark side of such movements. It  encompasses the periods of Mao’s Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution  when millions lost their lives out of starvation and brutality and finally the
new China  with its economic success and the shortcomings that accompany this success. As  seen by the villagers, the story makes no mention of any political leader or  any political programme, only their tragic impact on the people’s lives. Without  moralising, it illustrates that good and bad are a part of human societies.

Kenneth Abeywickrama

13 December 2012

The constitutions of governments of all  countries that seek to be representative of their people have evolved over  centuries with both home grown and imported characteristics. In Britain, the  first country to experiment with representative government, the system evolved from  the time of the Magna Carta (1215). Yet it still retains elements of the past
authoritarian regimes like a monarchy and a House of Lords, dressed in the garb  of harmless tradition. The United  States evolved with the US Constitution (1787)  and the Bill of Rights (1789), developed first by a land-owning aristocracy  with no special interest in popular democracy, into a more representative form  of government as a result of mass agitations. But it still retains the  tradition of political patronage now in the form of giant corporations that  have replaced large landowners. It seems that a continuation of some aspects of  tradition gives strength to a constitution. China is no exception.

The 18th Congress of the Communist Party of  China was held this month and the event was followed by thousands of foreign  journalists and observers who came to Beijing  to study the new projections planned for the country. At the same time, despite  China being the world’s  second largest economy and a major trading partner and the largest creditor of
the USA’s foreign debt,  there was little attention to the event in the USA media except to fault Chinese  economic policies and ridicule its politics (BBC, New York Times, Economist,
Wall Street Journal). This was in stark contrast to the run up to the USA Presidential election a fortnight earlier  when both candidates inveighed against China  and vowed to punish the country for the US economic problems.

There was a recent Chinese TV clip where  post-graduate students of international relations at a prestigious US university were asked about their knowledge of the Chinese political  system and they confessed they knew very little if at all. In contrast, USA and other Western news magazines and  economic and political journals have over the last four decades being  predicting the imminent collapse of the Chinese economy and the implosion of  the system of government, notwithstanding that China has maintained the fastest
economic and social growth rates in the history of mankind during that time.  Unfortunately, it is in the West that we now see economic collapse and social
upheaval, despite unending optimistic forecasts.

China  is a one party state governed by the Communist Party of China (CPC). This is
well known to Westerners and is a major point of criticism. But the CPC is not  your run of the mill political party found in Western democracies that was  created by privileged classes to contend for the right to govern. It is a  revolutionary party that was created by oppressed workers and peasants in 1923  which won control of the country through political campaigns and armed force in  a country where democracy did not exist.

It is incomprehensible to Americans who have  very little knowledge of Chinese history but not to those living in China. Since  the overthrow of the last Manchu (also known as the Qing dynasty) emperor in  1911, China  had not had a unified national government and endured ceaseless internal  conflicts between government at the centre, feudal warlords, bandit armies,  Western imperial powers that occupied the main port cities and rapacious
Japanese invaders. It was the Chinese Communist Party, formed in 1923 originally  with 30 members that organised the oppressed workers and peasants, fought  against the other contending forces, and finally gained supreme power in 1949  through military victories. It was this party that once again unified the whole  of China, except for Taiwan which was protected by the US naval fleet  against attack by mainland forces. The triumph of the Communist Party caused  widespread anger in the USA  at the time and there were political debates on “Who lost China?”

Against this background, the overwhelming  majority of Chinese regard the Communist Party of China as the legitimate  vehicle for the governance of China.  It would be incomprehensible to the Chinese to have a two party system as in  the USA  where both parties are beholden to corporate donors and the 35,000 odd  lobbyists who are perpetually advancing the cause of vested interests.

The Communist Party of China has evolved over  the last six decades of power from a party with a primitive ideological vision  with obsolete economic theories into one that is more sophisticated and highly  management oriented. In the first decade of rule in the 1950s, under the  authoritarian leadership of Mao Zedong, “The Great Leap Forward”  sought to industrialise using primitive technologies and rigid performance  targets, all under centralised planning and control. The resulting economic  disasters and human suffering was worsened when Mao introduced the  “Cultural Revolution” when the youth of this vast country was  mobilised to turn society on its head by destroying all institutions and past
history to create a mythical pure communism where there were no formal social  structures.

With the death of Mao Zedong in 1976, Deng  Xiaoping reformed the party which had suffered abuses under Mao’s authoritarian  rule with the “Cult of the Personality” built around him by his sycophants.  He began the process of dismantling the rigid ideological Marxist economic and  political theories and quietly introduced open market economic reforms, creating  a more democratic party structure. His mission was carried forward by his  successor as General Secretary of the Communist Party, Jiang Zemin. So much  that the Communist Party under his successor, Hu Jintao, grew to an active  membership of close to 88 million, which included workers, peasant farmers,  public and private sector employees and now even twenty  billionaires/millionaires. This makes it the largest party in the world, which  is a record, even considering that China has a population of 1.3  billion comprising one fifth of the world.

After Mao’s death, it was Deng Xiaoping, who was  also abused and suffered physical and mental punishment during the Cultural  Revolution, who strongly advocated measures to avoid adoration and deification  of leaders in future. It is now written into the Chinese constitution that the  “cult of the personality” is illegal. He resisted calls to continue office
after serving his time and introduced the current practice of top leaders  serving only two terms of five years each.

One feature emerges throughout this period of  party evolution: at no time was the party controlled by privileged vested  interests as in the case of political parties in the Western democracies. The  victory of the communist revolution ensured that. In fact, it went to the other  extreme for many decades, with the ideology of communism which sought to  establish “a dictatorship of the proletariat”. In pursuit of this objective, as  in the early Soviet Union, it sought to persecute and marginalise all families  that were affluent or held high positions in the past, thus destroying the  intelligentsia and managerial classes in the process.

The Constitution of China retains its loyalty to  its ideological roots for continuity. The introductory paragraphs in the  document carry this message.

“The Communist Party of China is the vanguard both of the  Chinese working class and of the Chinese people and the Chinese nation. It is  the core of leadership for the cause of socialism with Chinese characteristics  and represents the development trend of China’s
advanced productive forces, the orientation of China’s advanced culture and the
fundamental interests of the overwhelming majority of the Chinese people. The  realization of communism is the highest ideal and ultimate goal of the Party.

The Communist Party of China takes Marxism-Leninism, Mao  Zedong Thought, Deng Xiaoping Theory and the important thought of Three  Represents as its guide to action.”

The “Three Represents” are Jiang Zemin’s contribution to Chinese  political theory.

The power structure in China is based on the Communist  Party. Party cadres fill all the top positions as leading provincial officials, and are also found in every government department and public enterprise. They  ensure that the guiding principles of the party line and policies are followed.  The authority of the Communist Party is unchallenged. Any dissent or changes  must come from within the party and emanates from party leaders depending on  their support within the Standing Committee and the Political Bureau (Politbureau).

The highest leadership position is that of the  General Secretary of the party. The principal political officers of the country  are selected and voted into office by the CPC Congress of delegates which meets  every 5 years. The recently concluded 18^th Congress was attended by
2,307 delegates from all party regional offices. The Congress elected the  Central Committee which now consists of 205 members and 171 alternate members.  It also elected the smaller Political Bureau of the Central Committee (25 members) from  among them and the even smaller (7 members) Standing Committee of the Politbureau  responsible for the highest level of day to day decision making. In addition,  as eradication of corruption was a major issue at this Congress, it created a  Central Commission for Discipline Inspection of 130 members. The Congress also  elects the members of the Central Military Commission which supervises the  country’s military and consists of some of the highest ranking civilian and  military officers.

The CPC consists of proven technocrats who are  concerned with the practical problems unlike politicians in many Western  countries that need to take populist positions on matters like abortion, gay  rights, religious values, creating democracy in foreign lands, policing the  world, etc. The aim for the next 5 years was defined as “building a moderately
prosperous society in all respects, we must, with greater political courage and  vision, lose no time in deepening reform in key sectors and resolutely discard  all notions and systems that hinder efforts to pursue development in a  scientific way.” In summary, the primary goals were defined as follows: 1)  Sustainable economic development; 2) Extension of country’s cultural soft  power’ 3) Improvement of living standards; 4) Building a resource conserving  and environmentally friendly society.

No wonder most of the top leadership elected  consists of highly educated engineers, scientists and economists, some educated  in the USA,  and not lawyers as in many Western countries. Unlike in Western democracies,  they do not canvass for positions through mass media and bitterly fought  elections and make numerous promises which are generally left unfulfilled when  they attain office. The top leaders are chosen from within after discussions  and ratified by the CPC Congress. These tend to be people with long service
both in industry and government office who have ended successfully governing  large provinces (provinces in China  are more populated than any European nation) and tend to have a median age of  around 60 years.

The Congress made the following amendments to  the constitution, given here in summary.

1. Guide to action should be based on a scientific outlook on  development.
2. Path and theories to be based on the socialist system with Chinese
   characteristics.
3. Need to promote ecological progress.
4. Reform and opening up to the world will be a path to a stronger China.

The constitution of China is not considered sacrosanct  as in the West and is routinely amended at the CPC Congresses to meet new  demands in a changing world.

Corruption was a major issue at this Congress.  Retiring General Secretary Hu Jintao warned that rising corruption could  threaten the party and even the state. Between 2007-2012, 660,000 cases of  corruption were prosecuted, which included 60 top level officials from the  provinces. The high-level Central Commission for Discipline was created for
this reason to give more powers to investigators. Despite this, the highest  level of party officials at the centre are generally incorruptible and live  very modest lives while most cases of corruption are from the provinces. The  increase in corruption is traced to economic expansion coupled with very low  salaries for public officials compared with much higher earnings by private  business people and corporate managers.

Now that many regions of China are  gaining a new prosperity, the CPC has to evolve to give more voice in  government to those who are not within the party and are not tied to its
ideology. There are now 350 million internet users in China (the  largest for any country in the world) and 250 million social media network  users who would criticise local administrations and force officials to correct  abuses and often act as independent watchdogs. The growth of the Chinese social  media networks (such as Sina Weibo, Renren, Tencent, Douban and Wichat) has  made a difference to politics. The answer is not to restrict access to mass  media, as has often happened, but to encourage criticism even if it is  sometimes a nuisance. The Chinese public is now mostly mature enough to be  trusted and deliberate malcontents will be marginalised by them.

The major lines of conflict within the communist  party are between the conservatives and the progressives calling for change. The  conservatives in China,  unlike elsewhere, are those who are more committed to doctrinaire communism who  would be called leftists in the West, and progressives are those strongly  advocating open market reforms who would be called rightists elsewhere.

The other major drawback in China today is  the weakness of the judicial system in implementing the Rule of Law. While  crimes of violence are surprisingly low compared to Western countries which  have urban areas that law-abiding people have to avoid, there are fewer  safeguards for citizens against official harassment. Yet the Chinese police forces are in marked contrast to those in the USA where all police personnel are  armed and yet hundreds of them lose their lives annually in the line of duty.  Chinese police personnel do not carry routinely carry guns or even batons but  citizens would not dare to confront them in the performance of their duties.  Let us illustrate this with a first hand experience.

Our family was touring China in April  2009. We had arrived in Kunming airport from Guilin and were looking  out for our guide who would be with a placard with our name. There were 4 young  men with bags fidgeting near the exit point. After a little while they started  to leave. At the exit, two men in casual dress confronted them and showed them  their identity cards. The young men froze. Within a few minutes a large open  police truck with a big dog pulled up and the men were placed inside. The truck  went off. Not a single word was spoken during this encounter. It all took  barely five minutes and people around did not even notice what was taking  place. In contrast, if such an arrest was done in the USA, the place  would have been surrounded by heavily armed police and SWAT teams. The suspects  would have been wrestled to the ground and manacled and led into police cars  with screaming sirens. Bystanders would look on in terror.

US President Ronald Reagan theatrically intoned  that “government is not the solution, government is the problem”. The  neo-conservatives who hold the ideological high ground in the USA have since  demanded the dismantling of government and the substitution of large private  corporations to handle business usually done by governments (except to increase  the military to unprecedented levels). If this were to be practiced, the CPC
which governs China  is the closest to this model. It has all the trappings of a large corporation,  the largest in human history, but with all citizens as shareholders and not a
privileged few.

This leads us to conclude that China should  not blindly copy from the West but should evolve its own institutions and  structures at its own pace. It could ignore the patronising advice and  hectoring of Western analysts and critics. The CPC has demonstrated unrivalled  successes in the last four decades and it can be left to continue their
mission.

Kenneth Abeywickrama

15 November 2012.

Film Review
Most cinema goers who patronise the neighbourhood cinema hall are usually treated to blockbusters with plenty of sex and violence with strong nationalistic overtones where our good guys overcome foreign bad guys. So we miss out on some of the fine films that are being made around the world in countries as diverse as France, Germany, Italy, Iran,
China, Japan and Russia.

The Story of Qui Ju is one such exceptional film made in China in 1992 by famed Chinese Director, Zhang Yimou. It is entertaining, touchingly emotional and carries an absorbing story. The filming is superb. The story is set in a primitive and remote village in China of the 1990s. The heroine, Qui Ju, a farmer’s wife (played by Gong Li, a leading Chinese actress), is outraged that the village chief, Wang Shantang, has assaulted her husband,
Qinglai, hit him in the chest and kicked his testicles. She is already pregnant with a child but fears that the family “crown jewels” are damaged forever. China’s one child policy makes every child, especially a male child, precious. The assault was due to a quarrel where the village chief felt insulted by a remark by the farmer that he was only capable of producing “hens”, referring to his failure to have a male child.

The wife and his sister take the injured man in a push cart to the medical clinic in the nearest town. The clinic is so inadequate and spare that it can barely carry that title. The medical technician provides some medications and gives a report on the injuries. Qui Ju takes the report and vows to punish the chief. The story of the film is about her quest for justice where her aim is to get the chief to apologise for his actions and gain back the family respect.

She takes the case to the local police, where they try to create an amicable settlement by getting the chief to pay compensation. They want peace in the village. But Qui Ju does not want money, she wants an apology for the insult to her family, and the irascible chief will insultingly give money but not an apology. Unhappy with the verdict she takes the case to the next higher level, the District Police headquarters in the big town. The police chief here is sympathetic but also seeks to obtain an amicable settlement and agrees to increase the compensation. But Qui Ju does not want the money: she wants only an apology. She spends more of the family resources seeking justice than any compensation that could be obtained. Every time she sets out to seek officials in town and city she has to sell part of her family’s chillie crop to finance her expeditions. Despite her delicate health in her advance stage of pregnancy and the difficulty of travel during winter, she decides to take the matter to the higher Appeal Court in the main city in the district.

By this time, even her husband, who is now cured of his injuries, is fed up with her craze for justice. But she doggedly continues her quest with the support of her sister-in-law, ignoring her husband’s protests. Before the final ruling of the Appeal Court, she nearly dies at childbirth but is saved by the prompt actions of the village chief with whom she has carried out a vendetta who obtains help during the winter night to take her to a hospital. One month after the birth of a baby boy, the happy Qui Ju hosts a celebration where the village chief would be the chief guest. But by then the Appeal  Court ruling has been given and, unknown to her, the village chief has been sentenced to jail. While she anxiously waits for his arrival at the celebration party as chief guest, a police party carts him to jail amid screaming police sirens. The film ends with her desperate run in the snow to intercept the police vehicles taking the Chief to jail.

Qui Ju is not portrayed as a single minded avenger, but is a complex character with a soft heart. When the Appeal Court summons the District Police Chief, who has been very kind to her, to answer for his decision in the case, Qui Ju is distraught he will be penalised and tries to withdraw her case till the Police Chief assures her that it is only a routine procedure.

The Gong Li’s acting is superb. The country women’s journeys to town and city are done with finesse showing the country bumpkin’s amazement at the sophistication of the city and the dangers the two women face from urban hustlers. The film ends on a dramatic note with the irony of Qui Ju getting her revenge when she does not want it any more.

The film has won several awards: Venice Film Festival’s Golden Globe (1992), Vancouver International Film Festival (1992), French Syndicate of Cinema Critics (1993), Independent Spirits Award (1994), National Society of Film Critics Award (1994), and many others in China itself.

Kenneth Abeywickrama

12 November 2012

Published by Haymarket Books, Chicago,  Illinois. 2012.

Book Review

The only reason I bought this book about a now forgotten episode in the American Civil Rights struggle of the 1960s was because I heard the protagonist being interviewed on the small independent radio news channel “Democracy Now!” Two black American athletes, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, committed an American sacrilege at the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City when they gave the Black Power salute on the victory stand after winning the 200 metre race to highlight racial discrimination in the USA. For this act of treason against White supremacist policies and racial discrimination, they were harassed for about four decades and their careers were destroyed. Though it is now four decades after the event, it is still an important side show to the centuries-long struggle of the Afro-American community to gain equal rights and respect in a country plagued with racism
since its very foundation.

What is revealing in this book is not just a story of one man’s struggle for freedom in a racially besotted society. That by itself is noteworthy because while the US administration takes upon itself the role of the world’s moral guardian and launches human rights crusades against nations unwilling to be subservient to it, it was considered unacceptable for Afro-Americans to highlight their plight till recent years. The campaigns and the sufferings of the NAACP and the Black Muslims in bringing about change are now scarcely remembered. What is more disturbing to those unfamiliar with US society is the tragedy of Afro-American society as a whole as revealed by the autobiography of John Carlos: a demoralized people with few opportunities to improve their lives except through sports or music. Poverty exists throughout the world and poverty in India, for example, is far more acute and pervasive than in the USA. Yet it is not as tragic or demoralising as in the Afro-American neighbourhood. The Afro-American life described here is not directed towards escaping poverty but stagnation in misery: street violence, crime, narcotics, rejection of educational opportunities, breakdown of families, etc.

International sport, including the Olympic Games, is highly politicised with the Americans and Europeans dominating these organisations. Avery Brundage, then head of the Olympic Committee in 1968, had awarded the Games to Nazi Germany in 1936 and balked at expelling Aparthied South Africa till world opinion forced a decision. In 1980 the US and 60 allies boycotted the Moscow Olympic Games (its major West European allies
did not join the boycott) because of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in support of its beleaguered government fighting Islamic fundamentalists. No such boycotts followed US invasions of Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan and interventions in numerous smaller nations in Africa and South America. In 2008, the award of the Olympic Games to China caused so much anger in the West that Olympic torch bearers were constantly harassed passing through European capitals. Two obscure black athletes, taking upon themselves to
highlight the sad plight of people of colour in America with a simple act in the 1968 Olympics, were taking on a formidable opposition of White Supremacists around the world.

By 1968, despite the Civil Rights Act (1964) of President Johnson in response to the NAACP Civil Rights campaigns, coloured people in America saw few gains immediately afterwards. By the time, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X had been gunned down by racists and the Black Panthers had been eliminated in FBI raids. In 1967 Mohamed Ali was banned from boxing and his heavyweight championship title was withdrawn due to his
opposition to the Vietnam War and resistance to the draft.  There was still a sense of hopelessness in the Black community.

Despite these, there were small groups of White people both in America and elsewhere who were revolted by the treatment of coloured people and lent their support to the struggles. During the brief protest on the Olympic stand in 1968, the two black athletes were supported by the runner up in their 200 metres race, Australian second place winner, Peter Norman, who also suffered for his action in later life.

In 2005 the students at San Jose State  University, where Tommie Smith and John Carlos were alumni, raised $380,000 to create memorial statues for this act of defiance on behalf of human rights by these three athletes. In some small way, they had been rehabilitated by mainstream America, while Mohamed Ali, who suffered much more for his actions as a Black Muslim activist, is now internationally celebrated as one of the greatest athletes of all time.

Kenneth Abeywickrama

12 October 2012

The Man Who Changed China, by Robert Lawrence Kuhn

Crown Publishers, New York, 2004

Book review and commentary

This is not just the biography of an important modern Chinese leader, Jiang Zemin, who became the General Secretary of the Communist Party of China and President of the country (1989-2002), but the inside story of China in recent decades as seen through the eyes of an insider. The author, an American who lived and worked in China as a businessman for many years, is uniquely qualified to do this due to his access to the inner workings of politics of China. He uses the life story of Jiang Zemin to illustrate the transition of modern China from the madness of the post-revolutionary Mao Zedong years – the Anti-Rightist witch hunts, the economic stupidity of the Great Leap Forward and the murderous Cultural Revolution. In all these insane communist experiments, tens of
millions of Chinese died and hundreds of millions were scarred for life. The astonishing thing is that China came out of these awful tragedies and reconstructed itself to become a powerful nation with a fairly advanced quality of life for many of its people, surpassing the achievements of all other developing nations. That is the story of this book.

When I visited China in 2009 and wanted to visit Mao’s mausoleum while in Tiananmen
Square, my young fashionably dressed and well educated Chinese guide made excuses and when pressed, said it was better to remember Chou En Lai. While China is now on the rise as a modern society, the memory of those dark years still lurks, as it lurked even in the mind of Jiang Zemin, according to this book. At the same time, it is not easy for Westerners to take a dispassionate view of these events in modern China as they find the transformation of China inexplicable in relation to their own experience and history. China, with a continuous civilisation of five millennia while being the largest nation on earth, is an enigma to them. It takes a person like the author who lived in China to
understand the psyche of the nation that underwent so many changes in such a short period of historical time, a transformation that took Western nations over 500 years. Western economists have been annually and ritually predicting the imminent collapse of the Chinese economy whereas, ironically, it is the economies of the West that are now in collapse. Most American experts have almost always been proved wrong in their prognosis of Chinese events, making America’s China policy often faulty and counter-productive to US interests.

Mao, “the Great Helmsman”, united China after centuries of chaos caused by Western and Japanese imperialism, warring regional warlords, bandit armies and a corrupt and rapacious Kuomintang regime. His experiments creating a pure communist society while he held onto absolute power as a divine figure was broken only with his death. Deng Xiaoping was ordained as “Paramount Leader” and cleverly guided the country away from ultra-leftwing madness using his immense prestige as a revolutionary fighter since Mao had already eliminated the more famous Lin Biao and Liu Shaoqi as possible successors.

The modernisation of China was unquestionably initiated by Deng Xiaoping who used carefully contrived euphemisms (such as “Socialist market economy with Chinese characteristics”) and clever aphorisms (“A cat may be black or white but it is a good cat if it catches rats”) to gain public approval for the creation of an open market economy in a country where Mao’s communist ideas were ingrained in the minds of large sections of the population. Jiang Zemin who was sponsored by him as his successor was among the first of the new generation of leaders (the Third Generation in modern China) who had not been in the revolutionary wars and were technocrats.

The story of Jiang Zemin illustrates the working of the modern Communist Party of China which was no longer dominated by an all-powerful leader but has different factions with differing views on the management and future of China. In this sense it is a very democratic party where ideas can be debated and leaders need to network with different groups and make compromises to obtain power and climb up the hierarchy. With 85 million politically committed members, about 10% of the adult population, it is also fairly representative. While critics in the West claim that their own multi-party system (in practice, only two parties almost everywhere, both representing the same powerful economic interests) is the true test of democracy, they cannot explain why their system has produced stagnant economies and growing social inequality while the single party China
advances economically, socially and culturally.

The modern Communist Party of China defies the traditional description of a communist party. It is not concerned with a class struggle but is focussed on economic, social and cultural development. It makes national plans like corporate operating plans. Unlike the democratic multi-party state where politicians are concerned with gaining power by short-term measures, broken promises and diversions into retrograde populist racial, religious and moral issues, the Chinese Communist Party survives through its commitment to
carefully planned, executed and monitored long-term development. For example, in 1998 the party even leads a campaign to introduce good manners in society (I have personally found that many ordinary Chinese citizens are notoriously uncivil in manners) and publishes “The Civilised Citizen’s Study Book” for public teaching.

The author illustrates the inevitable pitfalls of the communist system. The system required that all public ministries, departments and enterprises should have communist party officials to guide decision making and ensure conformity to party policies. This huge cadre of party loyalists were often the main source of corruption that hampered progress and the fight against official corruption is an ongoing national project with the penalty for high level corruption being execution. Some of the highest members of the party have fallen victim to this.

The movement towards a modern market-based economy would not have succeeded if not for the resolute efforts of the aged Deng Xiaoping who undertakes a “Southern Imperial Tour” of China in 1990 to voice his views on modernisation and force the national leadership to act swiftly. Jiang Zemin, still apprehensive about his position and beholden to the older left-wing leaders in the Politburo would not have acted decisively if not for this
forceful campaign by Deng Xiaoping who is in every sense the real architect of modern China.

But it was Jiang Zemin who was left to guide the critical phase of economic modernisation with the emphasis on science and technology and the opening of the market to foreign investors. His selfless dedication, political and managerial skills and personal charm helped to guide the country nationally and in gaining international acceptance and support, despite an ingrained aversion to China (and a continuing fear of China’s
ascendancy) in the Western capitals.

Jiang Zemin, like all the third generation of Chinese leaders, was an educated and cultured technocrat. The strong managerial skills that have propelled the Chinese economy in recent decades are seen in Jiang Zemin’s own work. He has a huge cadre of experts to guide him on all economic, social and political topics. Before foreign trips are undertaken, advance parties research the locations to determine the itineraries and activities to be undertaken. Armies of experts analyse possible questions at meetings and prepare suitable
responses. Little is left to chance. Jiang also, unlike his predecessors, is able to sing and ham in public to charm his foreign hosts and lessen their hostility. He is both an extraordinary leader and personality.

The communist party remains the solid foundation of China’s success and development. The peaceful transfer of leadership from Jiang Zemin to Hu Jintao in 2002 through elections within the central committee illustrates this and it ensures that the development policies will continue.

Kenneth Abeywickrama

23 September 2012.

On China, by Henry Kissinger

The Penguin Press, New York, USA,  2012

Henry Kissinger, the supreme diplomat and renowned academic, has put out  a book that should be made compulsory reading for current American diplomats.  Unlike the American politicians and the TV pundits who have been ceaselessly  bashing China since the
communist revolution without ever visiting China,  Kissinger has visited China  on 50 occasions, talked with the top leadership of the last half century and researched  the Beijing archives.  The result is a highly informative view of China, with summarised sketches of  its ancient history and culture and its impact on Chinese politics, while the  centrepiece is the historic US-China rapprochement managed by President Nixon  and Chairman Mao in which Kissinger played the key role. Despite its historical  perspective, the book is highly readable and absorbing.

During the period just after 1970, China was just coming out of the  tragic upheaval of the cultural revolution when Chairman Mao sought to  dismantle the bureaucracy and create a pure communist society by destroying  state institutions and the careers of all the leading figures in academia, the  public services and the military by empowering the youth operating as  dictatorial Red Guards. The experiment nearly destroyed the Chinese revolution  but Mao, ever the master of ideological contradictions, ended the power of the
Red Guards and sought a reversal of policy. Meanwhile China faced a greater external threat from its  erstwhile ally, the Soviet Union, as China  claimed ideological primacy over the Soviet Union  in the communist world and became an adversary. Military skirmishes on the  Chinese border went on between the countries for over years. China then needed
an ally against its rival communist state.

President Nixon, despite being later vilified for his authoritarian  style, was one of the most cerebral of modern US Presidents and a clear headed  visionary unlike most of his later successors in office. He had been a  committed China  basher in his politics. The USA  was the strongest military and economic power in the world. The Communist Party  of China, likewise, ceaselessly spewed hatred against the USA which was branded  the “paper tiger” and its allies “the running dogs of US imperialism” in its  daily propaganda for the Chinese people, as the USA had aided the Kuomintang  government and protected them in their refuge in Taiwan. But China was  desperately poor and its economy was hopelessly backward. How this unlikely duo  agreed to cooperate at all is a piece of major world history.

Despite its backwardness and problems, China was a country to be reckoned  with. It had given a good account of its military prowess in Korea against the might of the USA and its allies, as it had earlier against India in the  border skirmishes. It was then the conduit for arms and supplies to the North  Vietnamese fighting the USA  and its allies. But China
needed the USA  to curtail the Soviet threat. The USA  was losing the war in Vietnam  with seemingly no way out of the debacle while it was engaged in confrontations  with the USSR in Europe, the  Middle East and many other parts of the world.  So it was left to two men of outstanding prescience, Nixon and Mao, to leave aside  their ideological differences and collaborate, against the tenor of public  opinion in their own countries, negotiating initially in complete secrecy.

The convoluted politics of the Western powers had hitherto ignored the  existence of one fifth of the world’s population living in China. Taiwan with 16 million people represented China in the UN and its Security Council while  400 million people in China  were non-persons. It was only in November 1971 that China  took its rightful seat in the UN after an overwhelming majority elected it in  the General Assembly of the UN, despite strong US opposition. But Nixon had the foresight  to see that China,  with the background of its five millennia old continuous civilisation, would  become a world power with the creative ability of its vast population. China and the US  agreed that despite the ideological divide, and while each country retained the  right to criticise the other in public, they had a confluence of interests in  confronting the ambitions of the USSR. But China declines to sign any formal agreements  with the USA  and opts for carefully worded joint communiqués that would satisfy political  opponents to their collaboration in each country.

Of great interest to students of diplomacy are the contrasting styles of  US and Chinese negotiators and real life pictures of the Chinese leaders. Mao  himself, whom Kissinger describes as a colossus, does not participate in the  negotiations. He gives audiences like a divinity from his simple book strewn  office room and makes his points through metaphors, epigrams and references to classical  Chinese literature but declines to be drawn into details which he says will be  the work of his ministers. His two great experiments with pure communism, The  Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, were both costly disasters but  the old revolutionary was a cult figure because of his lifelong fight to  restore China’s  dignity after “The Century of Shame” when the Western powers plundered and  humiliated a vast country that was for millennia the greatest world power.

Despite Kissinger’s understanding of China,  he cannot but pay lip service to America’s commitment to promote  democracy and human rights worldwide. This, coming from the man who really  began the calamitous Vietnam War that cost 3 million Vietnamese lives and  master-minded the overthrow of the democratic Chilean government of Allende to
install a military dictatorship which tortured and killed tens of thousands,  must be seen as sanctimony intended for his American audience. But unlike  American politicians and its general public which tends to regard developing  nations with condescension, Kissinger states: “The attempt to alter the  political structure of a country of the magnitude of China from outside is likely to  involve vast unintended consequences. American society should never abandon its  commitment to human dignity. It does not diminish the importance of that  commitment to acknowledge that Western concepts of human rights and individual
liberties may not be directly translatable, in a finite period of time to  Western political and news cycles, to a civilisation for millennia ordered  around different concepts.” (page 426)

Another issue of particular interest is the 1989 Tiananmen Square riots (described as  the Tiananmen massacre in the West) which Kissinger places in its true context.  After one decade of gradual liberalisation of the economy, following three  decades of continuous revolutionary experiments under Mao, sections of the  students were now demanding Western-style political choice and, in the style of  the former left-wing Red Guards, were occupying public places, schools and  universities. The Chinese authorities could not decide how to handle this  situation and the response was debated for almost seven weeks before the  government decided that the movement should be cracked down by force to avoid
more chaos. Force was met with counter-force and led to many deaths. This  incident was highlighted in the Western media which had flocked to China earlier to report on Gorbachev’s first  visit to Beijing.  The Western media and politicians screamed of massacres and human rights  violations and sanctions were once again imposed on exchanges with China. American  politicians could conveniently forget how the peaceful Civil Rights movement of  the sixties and the Anti-War protests of the seventies were brutally  suppressed. Strategically, the US  felt it no longer needed China  on its side as the Soviet Union had crumbled  and was no longer an adversary. In fact, the US believed that China would be the next communist state to collapse: a big mistake.

Despites these setbacks, the policies of Deng Xiaoping continued to move  the country from autarchy to an open market economy linking it to the external  world a dramatic shift for a country which had closed itself to foreign  influences for several millennia and considered itself the “Middle Kingdom”  which was the centre of human civilisation. The aged revolutionary, a hero of  the Long March and the anti-Japanese and revolutionary wars, begins the process  of reforming the Communist Party and the country which enables his successor,  Jiang Zemin, to oversee a two decade development which makes China a world
power and the second largest economy in the world.

Kissinger makes the pertinent observation that US foreign  policy is not consistent and also suggests it is not always working in its best  interest because it is often driven by domestic political agendas. Further,  with every change of administration, the key personnel in the State Department  up to Assistant Deputy Secretary are replaced and there are long intervening learning  periods. On the other hand, the operation of the Chinese government through the  communist party (with a current membership of 90 million) after Mao does not  present a monolithic structure with an unchallenged supreme leader as many are
led to believe. After Mao, the communist party acquired a diverse  representation and issues are often hotly debated between the more liberal right  wing and the traditional Mao inspired left wing before major policy decisions  are taken. Major policy decisions are taken after long and careful analysis  that takes into account the impact of current strategies in the long-term.

Sadly, the Western democratic system relies on politicians concerned with  short-term interests that enable them to grab power and the consequences of  this are evident in the crises facing the West today.

For thousands of years, Chinese leaders had learnt how to handle  powerful and hostile “foreign barbarians” and absorb them into their system.  But the “Century of Shame” (mid 19^th to mid 20^th centuries) had shown that China  could not now stand up to the military might of modern Western aggressors. This  book is essentially the story of how China re-invented itself to learn  what was useful from the West and once again established itself as a dominant  power in the world.

Kenneth Abeywickrama

26 August 2012.

In the early 20^th century, West European historians  contemptuously referred to the declining Ottoman Empire  as “The Sick Man of Europe”. After its defeat in World War 1 the empire was  dismantled and divided between Britain  and France.  Today, the sick men are the Europeans while the unquestioned world leader, the USA, is not far  behind. The world is witnessing an astonishing phenomenon: the West which ruled  most of the world for three and a half centuries is anaemic and sick while the  former non-Western colonies and dependents are on the rise and are making  tentative thrusts to challenge the old order.

Imperial powers do not quietly give in to a new order rationally: they  will fight to the last using all the powers and the cunning they possess to maintain  dominance through international disorder to divert attention from their own  problems and attempt to destabilise upcoming rivals for power. China, which once imagined itself to be the Celestial Empire, did likewise when confronted by the technologically  superior and more modern European powers in the 19^th century.  Since the USA  under President Eisenhower demonstratively humiliated Britain and France  for its imperial actions during the 1952 Suez  invasion and punished them in the UN councils, the US  remains the unchallenged leader of the West with a subservient Western Europe willing to do its bidding.

The world is more dangerous than ever before, not because of the nuclear  threats from minor states like North Korea and  Iran  (which are still unsubstantiated) but because of the decline of Western  economies, the breakdown of their social order and their inability to dominate  the world through their financial institutions and powerful militaries. In
former times, the US  repeatedly overthrew socially progressive governments in South America, Asia and  Africa under the guise of eliminating  communism and established friendly military dictators to ensure the dominance  of their business corporations which controlled the natural assets of those  regions. Now, after the demise of communism, some of the military  interventions, like in Libya  and Syria,  seem more irrational and without economic sense. Is there any economic sense in  placing trade embargoes on Iran,  the second largest oil producer in the Middle East,  when the West is in economic crisis and in need of cheap oil? Is there any  sense in placing crippling taxes on solar panels from China (265%) when the US desperately needs alternative  energy sources?

Today’s wars pretend to be ideological: the need to propagate Western-style  democracy for the good of the whole world. Democracy, like the former Soviet communism  is a metaphysical concept, akin to an all powerful ruling God who cannot be  denied The Christian Church once accompanied and justified Western imperial conquests while
today Western ideologues claim to establish democracy by bombing civilian  populations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, not forgetting Vietnam where more  explosives were dropped than in the whole of World War 2 while the deadly  chemical, Agent Orange, poisoned the land and people for centuries to come. In  reality the West has created more dictatorships than democracies from which  countries in South America, Africa and Middle East  are freeing themselves despite continuing Western opposition.

Democracy is never precisely defined but is described in grandiloquent  and meaningless terms as “government of the people, for the people, by the  people” and as “freedom and liberty”. Its practical application is more meaningfully  described as the right to choose the government through universal adult  franchise. But its application in the greatest democracy in the world, the USA, leaves  room for doubt. According to the Frenchman, Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1885),  and subsequent American theorists, the political and social structure of America  embodies the very essence of democracy. But since 1796 till the Civil Rights  Movement of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People  (NAACP) in the 1960s, the Afro-Americans and other non-white people, including all  Asians, were deprived of basic democratic rights legally and treated socially  as inferior people. Slavery in it most brutal form persisted in America, which  the Civil War did not eradicate except for a legal fiction, long after all  other countries had abolished slavery. Officially, women got the franchise only  in 1919, but many devices are still being created by some states in the USA to  disenfranchise minority community voters. But most importantly, the gigantic  transnational corporations and financial institutions that dominate the  commanding heights of the Western economies have taken command of the politics  of the West.

The real purpose of a nation state is to ensure the well being and  prosperity of its entire people. When 400 Americans own 35% of the national  wealth, nearly 20% of working people are unemployed or under-employed, 45  million are without health benefits, and hundreds of thousands are homeless in  the richest country in the world, democracy is irrelevant. The US corporations  collected a massive US$ 11 trillion in profits in 2011 (leave aside the  undisclosed profits in tax havens) but still wants lower taxes even after  actual tax payments were revealed to be between 11-16% while the ordinary  citizens paid 30-35%. Unrestrained corporate and billionaire funding of  politicians in the US  has made a mockery of the electoral system where politicians depend on funding  to gain elected office.

A recent study by an American NGO, the Tax Justice Network, found that  the rich of the world had secreted around dollars 32 trillion in tax havens  (http://saints.catholic.org/business/story.php?id=47032) while the GDP of the world is only $60 trillion. In Europe,  recession has driven sections of the population to advocate fascism and  propagate hatred of non-Europeans. While European unemployment and social  conditions are even worse than in the USA (they do not have the same  ability as the US Federal Reserve to create new money to keep the economy  afloat), the EU leaders are mainly concerned with bailing out bankrupt bankers  while punishing the ordinary citizens with austerity measures.

How do the corporate elite in Western societies flourish and dominate  the political system to the detriment of democratic values? It is primarily  with marketing propaganda. Widespread surveillance of the public, the break up  of trade unions, secret arrests and imprisonment without trial, and violence  against street protesters, all under the guise of national security, are the  last resort. But marketing propaganda is the key.

Historically, the greatest marketing organisation in the world since the  medieval age in Europe has been the Roman  Catholic Church. Through a combination of state power backed by immense wealth,  it created a mythical universe of heaven and hell, God and Satan, miracles and  divine wrath for disbelief and rewards for obedience to church dictates. The  great God could be accessed only through the church. Throughout the Middle
Ages, the church invented the most gruesome tortures the world has known to  punish heretics and bought over kings and emperors with its wealth and promises  of divine salvation while the priests often indulged in unholy immorality. Its  successor today is the alliance of giant Western corporations and financial  institutions.

These are some of the established myths created by decades of clever  marketing by the corporate dominated politico-economic system that passes for  free enterprise capitalism and democracy.

• What is good  for big corporations is good for the country. So corporations need tax breaks  and huge subsidies.
• When the  giant financial corporations that largely control most of the world’s
  finance go bankrupt because of corruption and speculative deals, they must
  be bailed out with public money or the economy will collapse.
• Financial corporation  managers should not be prosecuted as they play an important role in the  economy.
• Corporations  should not be taxed to prevent them from moving production to China, even though China has more restrictions on  business than any Western country.
• Corporations  are there to create jobs. If they manufacture abroad in China and India  and Mexico  it is because they are taxed too much, not because they are greedy and unpatriotic.
• The wealthy  should not be taxed as they create business by investing – even though  they invest mostly in stock market and commodity speculations.
• Social  benefits for the under-privileged – education, health care, social
  security benefits – undermine the economy.
• Poverty is  due to laziness, not the denial of opportunity.
• If people are  homeless because their homes have been foreclosed by teaser mortgages,  they must suffer the consequences of their imprudence.
• Democracy and  free speech demand that billionaires and big corporations should be  allowed to fund political campaigns without revealing their names and the
  massive funds employed in politics.
• The 35,000  lobbyists working on Congressmen, mostly hired by corporations to promote  their agendas, are a sign of freedom of speech.
• Fundamentally, “The Government is the Problem” (President Reagan’s favourite) – it exists to primarily to maintain a large miliatry, police, prisons and assist large business corporations.

When less than 50% of the voters care to exercise their vote, it is a  sign that people have opted out of their democratic system. The leisure time  most people have is used to watch sports and corporate news on TV. Only a  fraction of the educated class of people has the habit of reading and economic  and political analysis. Others could buy into the system for their gain. Half a  century of corporate media propaganda has dumbed the minds of the masses in the  West. Would that Vance Packard (1914-1996), who wrote The Hidden Persuaders in  1957, about how marketing created unwanted needs, lived today.

Thepanis Alwis

Baddegama, Sri Lanka.

06 August 2012

“Behind every great fortune there is a crime.”

Honore de Balzac (1799-1850), French novelist.

Prof. Luis Garicano, Director of Research at the London School of Economics, was explaining to Queen Elizabeth on 05 November, 2008, the origins and effects of the current financial crisis, during her first visit to the world famous academic institution to open a new building, when the old queen asked the simple question:

“If these things are so large, how come everyone missed it? Why did nobody notice it?”

The baffled professor’s explanation is very revealing: “At this stage, someone was relying on somebody else and everyone thought they were doing the right thing.” The Queen, one of the richest people in the world, had lost 25% of the value of her blue chip stocks in the London Stock Market[1]. Around the European Union and the USA, hundreds of millions of ordinary citizens would lose their life savings, their homes or their jobs.

A rational public may then well ask: “If that is the state of your knowledge, why do we need economists to help national policy decisions, and even our private investment decisions?” It is not true that everyone was unaware of the impending crisis caused by an out of control unregulated Western financial system. Many US economists who were not in the mainstream had been warning that stock markets and speculation through derivatives had created a casino financial market resembling Las Vegas style gambling. They warned for two decades that the system was unsustainable and a crash was inevitable. But with top financiers in New York and London making personal fortunes of billions of dollars and buying governments in the West, the truth was the last thing politicians wanted to hear.

People paid $10,000 for a seat at one time to listen to the pontifications of Alan Greenspan, Chairman of the US Federal Reserve, revered for two decades as the wizard of economic development. By persuading governments under Presidents Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and George Bush that de-regulation of the financial markets would create an efficient system of resource allocation and at the same time creating immense amounts of new money for the financiers and bankers to speculate, he presided over a gigantic national Ponzi scheme that created a false prosperity for two decades. New borrowings and new money was created to pay interest on existing debts and spend lavishly for expensive military adventures around the world. When asked at a Congressional hearing why he did not anticipate the crash, he blithely replied: “If we had known then what we know now, we would have acted differently.”

Prof. Luis Garicano, in response to the Queen’s question, explained: “There are billions of people in the world making their own decisions so it is difficult to predict market movements.” That is the trouble with modern economics which is based hugely on complex mathematical formulae based on unverifiable assumptions. It makes the economists and academics seem very clever when they use complex software to work huge mathematical equations and arrive at certainties when a perceptive non-academic could use common sense to see a more realistic picture. In no branch of science would practitioners come to firm conclusions on the basis of unverifiable data. At least they would qualify the result with a caveat: “Conclusions subject to error because of unverified data inputs.” And these predictions are not dealing with private decisions: they involve policies governing the health of the national economy and the livelihoods and fortunes of hundreds of millions of citizens.

At a hearing of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission appointed by President Obama, on 07 April 2010, Alan Greenspan admitted making mistakes but defended himself saying “One cannot always be right. I was right 70% of the time, I was wrong 30%.” The Chairman, Phil Angelides, a former State Treasurer of California, shot back at him: “The Captain of the Titanic was 99% right and 1% wrong. It is the size of the mistake that matters, not the numbers.” The 70/30 formula has a historic background which Mr. Greenspan may not have been aware of. When Mao Zedong was asked about the many crimes of the Soviet dictator, Joseph Stalin, he defended him saying “Stalin was 70% good and 30% bad.” Now modern capitalist China defends Mao Zedong using the same 70/30 formula.

So what is the difference between mainstream Western economists and Gypsy fortune tellers? They both make a living by using mumbo-jumbo to please their clients by telling them what they want to hear.

Kenneth Abeywickrama

15 October, 2011.

Ever since Vasco da Gama and his small flotilla of ships rounded South Africa (which became for them the “The Cape of Good Hope”) in 1498 to enter the Indian Ocean, Western imperial powers have poured into the Asian region and created six centuries of turmoil, making this vast ocean the most militarized piece of water in the universe. In the European Middle Ages, Asian powers like China and India were the richest nations on earth. Earlier, traders from the Middle East, India and China had plied these waters and exchanged goods even with Rome from pre-Christian times without any major conflicts. But Europeans, with their superior military organisations and weaponry, and their insatiable quest for military conquest and booty, spelled disaster for most of Asia. Within a few centuries, the Portuguese, Dutch, British and French had destroyed most of the great nations of Asia whose civilisations are traced to many millennia before the West reached that threshold.

The Second World War, where the imperial powers of the West as well as their Japanese imitator and the USSR fought their life and death struggle for dominance, created the catalyst for the subject nations of Asia and Africa to gain their independence after centuries of oppression and domination. But the struggle for Western dominance of this region continued with their constant interference in the internal affairs of newly independent nations, now operating as agents of “regime change”, to oppose those governments that were not cooperative with Western interests and establish others who would be more accommodating. In Indonesia, the Western plot to oust President Soekarno in 1967 and install Suharto was achieved by the brutal massacre of over half a million “communist sympathisers” between October 1965 and February 1966 and in Vietnam the war against the country to install a puppet regime and frustrate communism cost over 3 million Vietnamese lives and an enduring environmental disaster still haunting Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos that will last many generations.

Today, Western interests in the Indian Ocean region spans the East African littoral states, the Middle East, South Asia, the island nations of the Indian Ocean and East Asia (which it fears will come under Chinese influence). While NATO forces led by the US still fights a major decade long war in Afghanistan which has drained Western government Treasuries, strained military resources and tired their publics patience, it is also carrying out covert military operations in Somalia, South Sudan and Yemen, apart from the massive operation in Pakistan mainly using remotely operated attacks by “drones”.

In the light of these developments, people in the small island nation of Sri Lanka are wondering what to make of the latest Wikileaks revelation that the US Assistant Secretary for South and Central Asia, Robert Blake, had tried to persuade the Secretary of Defence of that country on 08 December 2009 to send Sri Lankan troops to support NATO operations in Afghanistan[1].

Sri Lanka has been on the cross hairs of the West for over two decades, since the Indian government under Indira Gandhi nurtured and unleashed the LTTE terrorist movement which cost untold suffering to the people of that country. Being ever ready to seize an advantage when a non-European country experiences internal divisions, the West played it hot and cold during the internal conflict. It proscribed the terrorist group and yet provided them space to operate and raise funds in the West for the war in Sri Lanka while placing an arms embargo that applied to the government. While condemning terrorist violence, Western NGOs and Norwegian peace makers provided covert support for the terrorists at times. So there was consternation in the West when the Sri Lanka government which they had marginalised defeated the LTTE in May 2009 after a two and a half year war which the self confident LTTE initiated. While the terrorist leadership was holed up fighting its last battle, the West took the unprecedented step of trying to negotiate the rescue of the terrorist leadership and their repatriation abroad to fight another day.

Since then, the Sri Lankan government has been the focus of a massive Western-led smear campaign as a human rights violator based on unsubstantiated (and unacknowledged) evidence produced by un-mentioned sources which is regularly shown in the media in the form of gruesome horror videos put together by British Channel 4 TV and copied by other Western media, condemnations by the NATO powers that are endorsed by the UN Secretary-General and repeated ad nauseam by Western NGOs and political leaders in the USA, UK, Canada and Australia. The Sri Lankan military has been denounced as being a brutal organisation that intentionally killed 40,000 civilians (some others put the figure at 100,000) due to sheer lack of concern for innocent lives. Books and articles on the brutality of the Sri Lanka government and military are proliferating and courts of law in the USA, UK and Switzerland are contemplating legal action against selected Sri Lanka leaders.

If all this is true, why would a top US diplomat want these same human rights violating soldiers to fight alongside NATO troops in Afghanistan, whose soldiers presumably have not committed human rights violations by wantonly killing innocent civilians in distant Asian lands?

Now the motivation becomes a little clearer. Let it be said that most Sri Lankans consider Mr. Robert Blake as a sincere friend of their country, and for good reasons. He is a public official while policy decisions are made by the political leadership. But wherever possible, he has shown goodwill towards Sri Lanka. So was his request a possible path to bail out Sri Lanka and rescue it from its tormentors? It is common knowledge that non-European countries that are allied with NATO in its direct or proxy wars, like Ethiopia, Uganda, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, are redeemed and never criticised despite being conspicuous rights violators.

Sri Lanka is a highly vulnerable nation because of its strategic location in the Indian Ocean, commanding all the major sea routes, and its natural harbour in Trincomalee, is the best in the region. The major US/NATO operational bases, Djibouti and Diego Garcia (where Britain committed an atrocious human rights violation be expelling the entire Chagossian population to create the military base), are farther removed from the war zone in Afghanistan. In 1958, the Sri Lankan leader, S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike (himself the subject of Western vilification even now), reclaimed through diplomacy the British bases in the country, including Trincomalee. If not for his foresight, Sri Lanka, like Guatanamo Bay in Cuba, would have become a key centre for NATO military operations and its independence would have long since been compromised.

Thepanis Alwis

Baddegama, Sri Lanka.

25 October, 2011.