RUTHFULLY YOURS

Odds are after this weekend’s Jan. 16 presidential election, Taiwan (an island which Beijing says is officially part of one China but de facto self-governing), will be ruled by Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) candidate Tsai Ing-wen.

The DPP is an organization created decades go to push for the formal independence of Taiwan. Beijing has for years made clear that any such move would be tantamount to a declaration of war.

Yet even without such a rupture, which seems far-fetched in the current upbeat mood on the both sides of the Straits, Beijing is especially wary of any step that might rock the region’s very delicate political balance. With the Chinese economy hitting a speed bump in the past months, with a Hong Kong anti-communist student movement still brewing, tensions in the South/East China Sea and with Japan still high, any “wrong” development in Taipei about Beijing or in Beijing about Taipei could kindle dangerous chain reactions.
Benjamin Lim

Benjamin Lim

An authoritative and comprehensive book that was recently published in Taiwan, Bamai zhongguo (“Taking the Pulse of China”), offers some key insights on the sensitive conundrum facing China and Taiwan. It was written by Reuters Beijing correspondent Benjamin Lim and deals with everything that Taiwan deeply worries about — Xi Jinping, Taiwan, Sino-US relations, and the future of China.

Born in Manila to Chinese parents, Lim studied engineering in the Philippines and Chinese in Taiwan. He has been a journalist for more than 30 years.

According to Lim, the Taiwan elections aren’t simply a contest between old-fashioned Nationalists of the KMT and the newly ambitious DPP. The huge elephant in the room is China, with its potentially enormous impact on the future of the island and the rest of the world.

News Flash: When the rich and mighty meet next week at the World Economic Forum’s annual pow-wow, Jan 20-23, in the ski resort of Davos, Switzerland, North Korea will have no envoy among them. If that sounds intuitively obvious, think again. It was only this Wednesday, following North Korea’s Jan. 6 nuclear test, that the WEF organizers of the Davos conference told the press they had disinvited North Korea’s delegation.

Well done. Except this leaves us with the question of why the World Economic Forum decided to invite North Korea in the first place.

Until Kim Jong Un’s regime carried out its Jan. 6 underground nuclear test, with the added frill of advertising it — true or not — as a hydrogen bomb, North Korea’s Foreign Minister Ri Su Yong and his entourage were comfortably ensconced on the WEF guest list for Davos. At this international pajama party for the global elite, they were going to be welcomed to rub shoulders with such luminaries as Bono, Leonardo DiCaprio, Secretary of State John Kerry, Vice President Joe Biden, more than 40 heads of state and government, 1,500 business leaders and the heads of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank.

They were going to be included in the Forum’s 2016 effort, as described in the WEF mission statement, “to demonstrate entrepreneurship in the global public interest while upholding the highest standards of governance.”

Secretary of State John Kerry declared that the world became a safer place today as the Obama administration repealed sanctions on Iran.

Implementation Day came as the International Atomic Energy Agency released a report “confirming that Iran has completed the necessary preparatory steps to start the implementation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.”

“It was issued after Agency inspectors on the ground verified that Iran has carried out all measures required under the JCPOA to enable Implementation Day to occur,” IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano said. “This paves the way for the IAEA to begin verifying and monitoring Iran’s nuclear-related commitments under the agreement, as requested by the U.N. Security Council and authorised by the IAEA Board.”

In releasing guidance on the lifting of sanctions, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew said the administration “will continue to target sanctionable activities outside of the JCPOA – including those related to Iran’s support for terrorism, regional destabilization, human rights abuses, and ballistic missile development.”

Members of Congress, particularly a group of Senate Democrats, have been pressuring the administration to act against Iran’s missile program in defiance of UN Security Council resolutions.

The Long Shadow Of Malthus

For more than 200 years, a disturbingly vicious thread has run through Western history, based on biology and justifying cruelty on an almost unimaginable scale. It centres on the question of how to control human population growth and it answers that question by saying we must be cruel to be kind, that ends justify means. It is still around today; and it could not be more wrong. It is the continuing misuse of Malthus.

According to his epitaph in Bath Abbey, the Rev Thomas Robert Malthus, author of An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798), was noted for “his sweetness of temper, urbanity of manners and tenderness of heart, his benevolence and his piety”. Yet his ideas have justified some of the greatest crimes in history. By saying that, if people could not be persuaded to delay marriage, we would have to encourage famine and “reprobate specific remedies for ravaging diseases”, he inadvertently gave birth to a series of heartless policies — the poor laws, the British government’s approach to famine in Ireland and India, social Darwinism, eugenics, the Holocaust, India’s forced sterilisations and China’s one-child policy. All derived their logic more or less directly from a partial reading of Malthus.

To this day if you write or speak about falling child mortality in Africa, you can be sure of getting the following Malthusian response: but surely it’s a bad thing if you stop poor people’s babies dying? Better to be cruel to be kind. Yet actually we now know, this argument is wrong. The way to get population growth to slow, it turns out, is to keep babies alive so people plan smaller families: to bring health, prosperity and education to all.

Britain’s Poor Law of 1834, which attempted to ensure that the very poor were not helped except in workhouses, and that conditions in workhouses were not better than the worst in the outside world, was based explicitly on Malthusian ideas — that too much charity only encouraged breeding, especially illegitimacy, or “bastardy”. The Irish potato famine of the 1840s was made infinitely worse by Malthusian prejudice shared by the British politicians in positions of power. The Prime Minister, Lord John Russell, was motivated by “a Malthusian fear about the long-term effect of relief”, according to a biographer. The Assistant Secretary to the Treasury, Charles Trevelyan, had been a pupil of Malthus at the East India Company College: famine, he thought, was an “effective mechanism for reducing surplus population” and a “direct stroke of an all-wise and all-merciful Providence” sent to teach the “selfish, perverse and turbulent” Irish a lesson. Trevelyan added: “Supreme Wisdom has educed permanent good out of transient evil.”

“Our fellow Muslims have been happy to use us as a pretext, to have something to point at and complain about: We are waging war; it is because of the Palestinians. We refuse to fight; it is because of the Palestinians. We cannot do what you want; it is because of the Palestinians. At no time did they ever seriously seek to resolve the conflict, nor did they ever want to.The great benefit we have is that the Israelis no longer rule us. We now have an autonomy. If the Americans and Europeans continue meddling and pressuring one side or the other in our conflict with the Israelis, eventually the stable but still fragile Palestinian social fabric in the West Bank will tear, and at the first sign of weakness Hamas and ISIS will rush in — as they have long been planning — to take over.”

If the Americans and Europeans continue meddling, the stable but still fragile Palestinian social fabric in the West Bank will tear, and at the first sign of weakness, Hamas and ISIS will rush in — as they have long been planning — to take over.

Every Arab regime has, at one time or another, used the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as an excuse to oppress its people. Our fellow Muslims have been happy to use us as a pretext: We are waging war because of the Palestinians. We refuse to fight because of the Palestinians. We cannot do what you want because of the Palestinians. At no time did they ever seriously seek to resolve the conflict — nor did they ever want to.

The sheikhs who claimed it was forbidden for Muslims to live under the shadow of infidel European Christianity now have to watch as Muslims grovel at Europe’s feet and beg the infidel Christians for a safe haven and shelter from… other Muslims.

According to Islamic sources, one of the signs of yawm al-qiyamah (Judgment Day) and redemption is the appearance of the False Messiah, masih dajjal, sent by Satan in the guise of the True Messiah. He is charismatic and powerful, his skin is the color of bronze, his hair is curly and his eyes flash fire. He pretends to do good deeds, drawing people to him and making them blindly follow him.

Iran’s commitment to Shi’ite interests seems firmly linked to its idea of its mission, as well as to the survival of its revolutionary regime. Iran’s theocracy is likely willing to pay a high price to safeguard this legacy. The West should not expect Iran to reduce its presence in Syria or Iraq, even under severe military pressure.

As the Obama Administration continues to reward Iran for violating its agreement not to build nuclear weapons under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and violating its agreement not to build nuclear-capable missiles, and its refusal to sign the worthless “Iran Deal,” its presence is set to become even more unpleasant as it becomes more prominent.

The West does not seem to appreciate the intensity of Iran’s commitment to its Shi’ite cousins in Syria. The West also seems not to comprehend the depth of Iran’s spiritual ties to its centuries-old role as the champion of Shi’a Islam.

Much Western journalistic commentary addresses Iran’s commitment to the Assad regime in Damascus. Left underreported is the profound sense of shared religious identity between the Shia of Iran and the Shi’a Alawi minority of Syria. Iran’s determination to maintain Alawi supremacy in Syria transcends any personal attachment to the Assad administration.

In light of this month’s execution of a leading Shi’ite preacher Nimr al-Nimr by Saudi Arabia and the consequent heightened tension between Tehran and Riyadh, it might help policymakers to understand that the religious divide between Shi’ite and Sunni Muslims as an inveterate and unbridgeable chasm as that between ISIS and the United States.