He Deserves to be Whipped???

The fact that the Kuala Lumpur High Court has found Syed Saddiq guilty of four charges of criminal breach of trust, misappropriation of property, and money laundering linked to RM1.12 million of Bersatu Youth funds did not quite shake me – until I read the sentence: Seven years of imprisonment, a RM10 million fine and two strokes of the cane.

What disturbs me is the sentence, especially on the whipping part.

Mariam Mokhtar wrote a long article to argue that the prosecutor had been too overzealous in his efforts to commit Saddiq. She cites Saddiq’s unwavering stances on issues of principles and thinks Saddiq represents our hope for the country. I cannot find fault with her sentiment.

The verdict and sentence created much traffic in the chat group amongst our Class of 1973 UM Engineering mates. Some contend that a crime is a crime, and Saddiq must face the music. Others thought it was because of his own making politically.

Of course, Saddiq still has higher courts to appeal, and a royal pardon to seek at the end of the legal route.

Sentences are meant to serve society’s expectations. Few would disagree if a harsh sentence is meted up to someone who has committed a heinous crime. Let’s take the case of the war in Gaza. Hamas’s action on October 7 was certainly an act of terrorism, even though it was done not without a cause. Yes, every effort can be made by the Israeli government to hunt down the terrorists, which they are certainly very good at, but for Netanyahu to order a blanket wipe-out of the Palestinians in Gaza is itself a terrible crime. 

China also sentences corrupt officials to face firing squads, but only if they have embezzled billions and caused irreparable damage to the economy.

In Saddiq’s case, I believe that it is more of a judgmental lapse than an intention to cheat. As Tunku Abdul Rahman used to say, if you have to throw stones at every one who is seen to be in the ‘wrong’, then you probably cannot find any stone left in the country. (I am just exaggerating!)

Wisdom is expected from a judge, not by-the-book decisions. It is not possible for sentences to be “standardized”, but double standards must not be the conclusion that we draw from our judiciary system.

I wrote about a certain Bāo Zhěng (包拯, 999-1062) in my recent book Knowing Your Roots. Let me bore readers with the lessons that can be learned from this legend.

Bāo Zheng, more commonly known as Bāo-Gōng (包公), was a justice in the Song Dynasty. Bao Zheng today is honoured as the cultural symbol of justice in Chinese society. Dramas on him have enjoyed sustained popularity. In mainstream Chinese mythology, opera, or drama, he is often portrayed with a black face and a white crescent shaped birthmark on his forehead. Legend has it that as he was born dark-skinned, Bao Zheng was discarded by his father right after birth. However, his virtuous elder sister-in-law, who just had an infant named Bao Mian (包勉), raised Bāo Zhěng like her own son. As a result, Bao Zheng would refer to Bao Mian's mother as "sister-in-law mother".

Bao Zheng was known for his honesty and uprightness, with actions such as sentencing his own uncle, impeaching an uncle of Emperor Ren-Zong's favourite concubine, and punishing powerful families. He defended peasants and commoners against corruption or injustice.

The Case of Executing Chen Shi-Mei (鍘美案)

Chen Shi-Mei had two children with wife Qin Xiang-Lian, and left them to sit for the imperial examination in the capital. After finishing first, he lied about his marriage and became the emperor's new brother-in-law, leaving Qin and the children to fend for themselves. Years later, a famine forced Qin and her children to move to the capital. She finally found a way to meet Chen, and begged him to at least help his own children. Not only did Chen refuse, but he also sent a servant by the name of Han Qi to kill them in order to hide his secret. Instead, Han helped the family escape and killed himself. Desperate, Qin brought her case to Bao Zheng, who tricked Chen into coming to court to have him arrested. The imperial family tried to intervene, but Bao executed him, nonetheless.

 

This case might not even appear metaphorical to Saddiq’s. Indeed, this is not my intention. I was trying to use Justice Bao Zheng to symbolise ‘wisdom’. Yes, the case would not have stood up in modern day justice systems. He used it to convict and serve society’s expectations.

What would Justice Bao mete out if he was the judge in the present case?

Shelf Lives of Empires and America, your time is up?

I was reading Hugh Peyman’s latest book America as No. 3, Get Real About China, India and the Rest. Peyman writes glowingly about the works of two great thinkers/historians – John Glubb and Paul Kennedy.  

Kennedy’s book The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers is more recent; it was released in 1987. He is a well-known academic; many readers would have read it. It is more fact-based. He studied the causes and drew lessons. However, Glubb’s The Fate of Empires & Search for Survival is more observation-based. Glubb was born in 1897. He served throughout the first World War but in 1926 resigned his commission and accepted an administrative post under the Iraq Government. From 1939 to 1956 he commanded the famous Jordan Arab Legion.

Glubb observed that empires typically lasted about 250 years. He cited the following examples to support his observations.

I agree with some critics that Glubb was generalizing. It can hardly be described as a phenomenon. Be that as it may, there are many common denominators that do make an empire very vulnerable upon reaching a certain age, like what we humans tend to feel when we go into our 70s or 80s.

America declared independence on July 4, 1776. It is 247 years old. Peyman thinks that the American empire is also about to expire!

I love to believe Peyman, but we need to be more vigorous in making our wish!

Glubb had overlooked China to draw his conclusion. Let’s look at the timeline of China’s history.

Xia and Shang each lasted about 500 years, followed by Zhou’s 879 years, which included 275 years of the Warring States period. Han recorded 426 years. After that, China was plagued by many short dynastic reigns for about four hundred years. Xia, Shang, Zhou, and Han obviously did not sit well with Glubb’s pattern.

Then came Tang (289 years), Song (269 years), non-Han Yuan (89 years), Ming (275 years), and non-Han Qing (267 years). None lasted more than 300 years.

The People’s Republic of China is now 74 years old. Its health looks great and there is no reason for us to predict its demise now, save the nuts in the West and their sycophants in Japan, Korea, and the Philippines.

The causes of a dynasty or an empire’s demise are usually apparent to historians. To the Chinese, the emperor in question has lost the mandate of Heaven!

For America, the writing is indeed already on the wall. Society is fragmented – its great ethnic diversity is no longer a blessing. All Americans are equal before the law; but the reality is far from the truth. There is much racism and prejudice, and people are not quite tolerant of one another. The racial inequality and the huge gap between the rich and the poor, etc. turn many to lawlessness, gun violence and homelessness. The country spends much more than they produce and comes up with monetary policies that make other countries poor. The leaders are weak and devoid of visions and foresights, yet they think they are the best people to safeguard democracy in the world. The proxy war they are fighting in Ukraine is far from over, yet they want to help Israel finish off the Hamas. But the straw that will break the camel’s back is its unpreparedness to live peacefully with a rising and confident China. It thinks deprivation of technology to China is the answer to sustaining its hegemony position. The American leaders fail to recognise the fact that the strength of any empire is in its people. Much of American technology prowess is contributed by Chinese in America. This pool will certainly get smaller if the anti-China or anti-Chinese sentiments continue unabated.

America has helped awakened a strong sense of civilisational pride amongst Chinese all over the world. Yes, China still has many problems to solve, chief among which is the unbridled entrepreneurship that tends to get the whole country into a financial mess from time to time. There is still a gap between policies and execution. The former are usually good, and the latter, poor. Xi should encourage people to speak out in meetings and gatherings, rather than seeing top party officials and government leaders behaving like schoolboys feverishly taking note of what he says. Their petrification is very evident; it leads to mental seizure, as shown many a time in their inability to act in the most obvious way. (That’s anyway a very Chinese behaviour. Maybe there are strengths in it.) But one thing is for sure, China is less burdened by the unnecessary baggage that America loves to carry, and China is completely capable of reforming itself on a continuous basis.

Hi China, never mind what the world says of you. Just do things the Confucian way.

Let’s hope Peyman’s book can help englighten the Western world. 

 

Hamas, you have led your people into the jaws of Netanyahu!

I have always held the view that the Hamas leaders are a very ‘bodoh’ lot. Yes, they do have a cause, but they simply do not have any idea how to bring the Gaza Palestinians out of the reach of the Israeli jaws.  

Since their October 7 terror on the Israelis, more than ten thousand of their people have lost their lives. Out of the dead, two-thirds were children and women. Much of northern Gaza has been flattened, and they include schools and refugee centres. Aljazeera is the only TV channel that shows what has been, and is still, happening there. Many of the scenes are simply too graphic for us to watch. The world is calling for an immediate ceasefire. But America stands with Netanyahu, so do its hardcore allies. They are happy to support the bloodthirstiness of Netanyahu and his generals. (Hi Zelensky, you have a new competitor for America’s affection! It looks like you will soon be abandoned by Biden and NATO.)

Palestine is the birthplace of Judaism and Christianity, and has been controlled by many kingdoms and powers, including Ancient Egypt, Ancient Israel and Judah (c 9^th Century BCE), the Persian Empire, Alexander the Great and his successors, the Roman Empire, several Muslim caliphates, and the Crusaders. In the more modern times, the area was ruled by the Ottoman Empire, then the British Empire after World War I. Starting in the late 1940s and continuing for decades thereafter, some 850,000 Jews from the Arab worlds immigrated to Israel.

 

In 1947, the UN General Assembly recommended partitioning Palestine into two states: one Arab and one Jewish.

 

The Jews declared the independence of the State of Israel in 1948. Unfortunately, the Arabs rejected the partition plan. War broke out; in the aftermath, Israel not only conquered more territories than those originally mandated, but they also drove out or caused about 80% of all Palestinians to flee.

 

After the war, only two parts of Palestine remained in Arab control – the West Bank, which was annexed by Jordan, and the Gaza Strip, which was occupied by Egypt. (Does this say something about the Arab world? Technically, Egyptians are not Arabs, but Arabic-speaking, though.) Israel took Gaza in the Six-Day War in 1967 and began to establish settlements in the occupied territories. 

 

The Palestinian national movement gradually gained international recognition under Yasser Arafat. In 1993, the Oslo Peace Accords between Israel and the PLO established the Palestine Authority as an interim body to run parts of Gaza and the West Bank (but not East Jerusalem) pending a permanent solution to the conflict. In 2007, Hamas won control of Gaza from the PA, now limited to the West Bank.

Except Israel and the US, most countries support a two-state solution to the conflict. But realistically, can the two-state proposal work?

Geographically, West Bank and Gaza are not abutting. West Bank is landlocked. The Gaza Strip does front the Mediterranean Sea, but it is too tiny to be able to survive on its own. The Arabs are generally very tribal in their mindsets – some countries practise absolute monarchy; others do show some form of democracy. You also have Muslim Brotherhood movements which countries like Egypt do not take kindly to as well. And the Muslim world is divided into the Sunnis and the Shias. While Palestinians are Sunni, Hamas is strongly supported by the Hezbollah in Lebanon and Iran, both are Shia followers. It is all very confusing indeed.

Devoid of any strong common cause, Muslims in the Middle East only lend lip services to the Hamas in the present conflict, nothing more.

Do not blame them, though.

Militarily, Israel is the most powerful country in the Middle East. Judaism is puritanical. “We are God’s chosen people”, that is their belief. Period. On the other hand, the Arabs have never been cohesive. Even the Ottoman Empire, whose sultans were also not Arabic, could only rule with feudalistic iron-hands.

What was Hamas’s endgame in staging the October 7 raid into Israel? (I have loosely used the term ‘endgame’, which is a misnomer, for a foray of this nature should not be a game at all!) There is no doubt they have shaken the world up to the fact that their plights have been overlooked for a long, long time. But what are the consequences? And what can they achieve?

Hamas’s October 7 terror would only bring out the mania in Netanyahu and his generals. And to Biden, an attack on Israel is absolutely no-no, for the Jews are part-and-parcel of the US Deep State. Antony Blinken openly reminds everyone that he is Jewish and with that credential or qualification, he is trying to help? Help who? This dumb man keeps himself super busy. Who is listening to him?

When the whole of Gaza is flattened, Israel will occupy it for good. The remaining Palestinians will have to flee. Many will become suicide bombers in no time. The vicious circle continues!

As for the West Bank Palestinians, their leaders are entrenched in the trappings of the office Israel has accorded them. They will continue to pretend that they are the ‘authority’. In my opinion, statehood is not tenable there. It might as well ask to be absorbed by Jordan and live as Palestinian Jordanians – like Fujianese Chinese or Cantonese Chinese or Hainanese Chinese in China! Why try to split hair with your tribal background when you have no teeth or might? Or maybe the Autonomous State of Palentine that is guaranteed by the Arab fraternity? (Like Xinjiang, or Xichang. or for that matter SAR Hong Kong?)