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‘But the question is whether the entire ouster [of President Gotabhaya Rajapakse in 2022]was instigated & executed from scratch by the West with the help of local quislings as has happened in so many other countries where the West successfully instigated regime changes or attempted them, from Chile to Bolivia, Iran, Libya, Syria etc, etc.

And they have the audacity to threaten regime change even in Russia! In spite of incumbent President Ranil Wickremesinghe being legitimately elected by parliament last July, discontent among the electorate is growing as claimed by the opposition. A major propaganda effort to depict the finalisation of the $2.9bn and the immediate availability of $333mn as a massive victory for the government went awry when State Finance Minister Ranjith Siyambalapitiya admitted that within 24 hours $121mn was paid to India.

The government seems to be trapped in its own propaganda & being silly.’(see ee Security, Govt responds in kind to retired Air Vice-Marshal Sampath Thuyacontha’s salvo)

One year after the US-funded coup d’etat aka ‘aragalaya’ escalated against an elected government – which had a curious inability to defend itself after being called all manner of strong-armed adjectives (see below) – the new unelected regime has interdicted 20 Ceylon Petroleum Corporation (CPC) workers on 29 March, for opposing the sale of the fuel retail market back to the oil companies. India’s Oil Company (IOC) already has grabbed a major share. 2 of the 3 new companies are fronts for Rockefeller-behemoth Exxon (Australia-based United Petroleum), and Shell (US-based RM Parks), etc. Trade unions allege the recent energy tariff hikes are being implemented with the intent of ‘unbundling the CEB by showing an artificial profit’ via the tariff hike (see ee Focus on the Rise & Sabotage of the CPC).

• This ee Focus continues investigating the rise of a real energy industry (a state monopoly!) under white-settler South Africa, and its subsequent sabotage when Africans ostensibly gained political power in 1989.

• The local CEO ‘of color’ under England’s Standard Chartered Bank suggests that the Rupee (LKR) appreciation before the IMF approval was recently appreciated artificially to add a neon-glow to the IMF loan, yet will thereafter depreciate 5-7% annually:

     The Rupee appreciated ‘due to the removal of the currency band (limiting the exchange rate), mandatory conversion and the restriction of imports to $1.4billion monthly’. He noted, Sri Lanka has to strike a balance in the exchange rate & such ‘yo-yo’ fluctuation seen recently is not good. He wants ‘double-digit interest rates‘, because the US Federal Reserve offers 5%+ rates, and ‘makes it very easy’ for investors to park their Dollars in the US. (Standard Chartered Bank’s roots, by the way, are in England opium wars on China & apartheid Southern Africa)

• Depreciation is another word for stealing workers’ wages, unless it is linked to a modern industrial policy that upgrades workers’ skills and living standards. Depreciation also means more income must be paid to service the demanded interest and amortization payments on foreign debt. The problem some analysts say is, ‘Sri Lankan productivity does not reflect its currency’. Besides, there are many ‘inhibited assets’ due to elevated currency. ‘Our exports are very unattractive with the current price schemes.’ Indeed, depreciation alone will not necessarily lead to higher asset quality or investment in higher productivity, etc, but will surely depress wages…

• The Supreme Court is due to deliver the verdict on the petitions filed against the Central Bank (Amendment) Bill confidentially to the Speaker of the Parliament, in the coming days after the petition [by several parties including Pivithuru Hela Urumaya leader Udaya Gammanpila & National Democratic Front leader Wimal Weerawansa] against the bill was taken up before Supreme Court justices Priyantha Jayawardene, Kumuduni Wickramasinghe and Arjuna Obeysekere on 24 March. Justice Jayawardene said, the hearing of these petitions will be completed in 2 days. Indeed, to counter the oppositional petitions, and bolster the IMF’s demand, intervening petitioners including Suwa Seriya Foundation Chair Dumindra Ratnayaka, Fintrex Finance Chair Ajit Gunawardene and others claim the proposed bill enshrines the people’s inalienable sovereignty as provided by Articles 3 & 4 of the constitution. (see ee Economy, 5 intervening petitions)

• ee Takes a Break – After 261 weekly ees, uninterrupted by tempests, personal, political and meteorological, we must now take a break due to challenges intractable though possibly soon overcome.

     ee has tirelessly (& even tiresomely) sought to inject the crying need for modern industrialization (MI) into a national conversation monopolized by merchant and moneylender media on behalf of their foreign multinational sponsors.

     This merchant media’s mandate is to totally ignore, ridicule, or distort the need for production based on MI. This attack on MI has spanned our almost entire colonial history. The still-colonial media’s job is to instead point fingers elsewhere: deficits, balance of payments, lack of foreign investment, corruption, etc. The US is demanding that investigations into corruption be limited to the post-2018 period.

     Yet, this media is far more corrupt than any other institution in the country. When unable to refute the need for MI they then caricature MI as manufacture, assembly, even handicraft, etc; and even importers call their racket, ‘industries’ (see ee Industry, ‘Auto industry requests quota system from govt to resume vehicle imports’).

     Indeed this auto ‘industry’ meeting was (related in a different news story) a breakfast forum organized by the Ceylon Motor Traders Association, where Japanese envoy Hideaki Mizukoshi in Colombo acted wounded about ‘reviving’ the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA)-funded Light Rail Transit (LRT) project, ‘abruptly terminated by the previous government’. Adding haughtily, ‘it all depends on how the reforms of the Sri Lankan government go and whether Sri Lanka can regain the trust from the Japanese government & business community’. The story claims the ‘JICA loan facility, given its favourable conditions, [included] low-interest rates and grace period of 12 years’. These are of course myths. The truth is these loans further underdevelopment. We have no media that will detail how much of this debt is to pay for used Japanese-made machinery, goods & services (IPR etc), never allowed to be made or provided here (see ee Building Blocks, Japan’s Limits on Industrial Exports)

     Then there is this misleading headline: Selyn pioneers blockchain technology with London College of Fashion. Which turns out, it’s: ‘Sweden’s PaperTale, a blockchain technology company’ which ‘maximises transparency and traceability in the production process’. All these ‘celebrity’ Sri Lankan ‘designers’ who claim it’s an ‘equal partnership’ merely use these machines and are not allowed even near designing and producing the technology aka making machines (ee Industry).

     An ee reader drew our attention to an EUSL Energy project (Europe-SL Capacity Building in Energy Circular Economy), which is offering an MSc Degree Program at Open University in collaboration with the KTH Royal Institute of Technology (Sweden), CentraleSupelec (France), University of Twente (Netherlands)’. Will they be sharing real technical knowhow? (see ee Focus, SBD de Silva’s take on the new multilateral imperialism)

     Meanwhile, imperialists are hiding behind all manner of whitewash, greenwash, blackwash and genital wash: The EU Ambassador proclaimed this week that a new regulation will replace their GSP Plus with ‘environmental protection’. Apparently, ‘the 24th meeting of the EU-SL Joint Commission in February in Brussels focused on democracy, governance, rule of law, human rights, including the rights of minorities, women, children and labour rights, and freedom of expression and association.’

And even if Germany’s leader Angela Merkel had to resign under US threat to expose her lesbianism (see last ee), despite having served the US so well, there’s the German medical and pharmaceutical device multinational B Braun’s (female) managing director delivering the keynote speech at Daily FT-Interbrand Women’s Day gala next Friday, April 7, at Cinnamon Grand. Having captured International Women’s Day, corporations have decided to change the date as well?

• Keep hand plucking – ‘The government spent nearly Rs350billion on defence, Rs300million for education, another Rs300mn for health, but only Rs10mn for industrial development’– Plantation Industries Minister Ramesh Pathirana addressing the ‘Food Research Presentation & Network Forum in Colombo (ee Industry, Govt allocate funds for education, health, not for industrial development). No dates provided for this statistic. However, readers can be assured, the so-called tea ‘industry’ has no plans to change their slavish practices of almost 200 years now.

• There is little media however on how the IMF loans announced last week come at an extremely high interest rate, like the International Sovereign Bonds, which in actuality flung the country into further servitude. Nor does the media point out that once the new Central Bank Act is passed – preventing the country from controlling its money flow – Sri Lanka will only have to depend on these same high-interest ISBs, whose main borrower was the Central Bank under former CB governor Indrajith Coomaraswamy, who is now quarterbacking the robbery of the Central Bank again. The utter falsehoods about ‘robust social protection’ under direct target cash transfer – especially after the removal of the food subsidy – will result in inflation further diminishing people’s income. The IMF’s allocation of 0.6% of GDP for social protection gives lies to their claims of ‘robustness’. Their PR strategy is clear: State Minister of Finance Siyambalapitiya told Parliament on Wednesday, ‘We need to provide relief to poor and vulnerable groups initially’.

*Full Story

US Coup Expands on Sri Lanka State Sell-Off