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‘Political parties could have used this year’s May Day to emphasize the gravity of the situation thereby preparing the population to face the deepening crisis.

Instead, all of them engaged in meaningless rhetoric……such useless propaganda received primetime television coverage as well as coverage by Sinhala, Tamil & English print media.’– former General Secretary of the Communist Party, DEW Gunasekera (See: ee Random Notes, for more)

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Even the most vicious snakes moult their skin quite often. But not the corporate media. Well-bribed by their multinational corporate sponsors, led by Unilever, Ceylon Tobacco Co, CIC-ICI, Standard Chartered, etc., they see no need to renew the country. Yet they preen themselves in constant claims to ‘newer’, ‘diverse’, inclusive’, etc. The media’s job is to trivialize or ignore what is vital, and highlight what is paltry. They claim to be whiter than white and love to point fingers at politicians (who usually wear ‘national’ & are ‘corrupt’ – though the media never call their corporate sponsors such names). Or highlight the petty crimes of working-class criminals (usually given Sinhala monikers, Makandure Madush etc). Despite the whiteout, there are those who would still attempt to discuss the roots of our disquiet. Yet, their words never obtain repetition and saturation in broadcast media. Meanwhile, all of them are totally prevented from examining one tap root: the prevention of modern industrialization.

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‘Special Loan Conditions on Upper Kotmale Hydropower Project (UKHP):

1) 50% of goods & services from Japan;

2) All main & subcontractors from Japan;

3) Consultants should be from Japan’

– ee Industry, Wimalasurendra Memorial Lecture 2022

     Such ‘loan conditions’ are demanded not just by Japan. It’s part of the imperialist game of keeping us underdeveloped. ee was directed this week to examine the 1935 Report of the Technical Advisor on Industries in English-colonized Ceylon. He (KD Guha) noted how in India every Province already had a Department of Industries by 1935 (due to being ‘rudely shocked’ by world war & depression). Yet in Ceylon, despite ‘the bitter experience of Ceylon in recent years as purely an agricultural country’, all that was allowed over the previous 2 decades had been an overabundance of ‘mere speculation’ on the need for industrialization. He noted how in India, the Department of Industries had to battle the Department of Education to take control of Technical & Industrial Education (so today in 2023 India’s Institute of Technology or IIT is a leading institution in machined modernity).

     The 1935 report records drawbacks (in Bengal then, as) similar to developing a modern producer culture in Ceylon, which still apply to us almost 100 years later: ‘An absence of familiarity’, ‘want of zeal’, ‘lack of technical knowledge’, ‘want of necessary tools & appropriate machinery’, ‘lack of necessary funds for developing cottage industries and saving cottage workers from the clutches of the middlemen’, ‘ignorance of market conditions’, and ‘lack of advertisement’.

     Well, as to ‘lack of advertisement’ of our real needs, we can very well ask Unilever, who controls the propaganda (aka public relations or PR) machinery (which was behind the recent ‘Aragalaya’) in Sri Lanka (and has captured our home market!).

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• Which brings us to this tiny gem found midst the mountain of doo-doo that is the English media in Sri Lanka today. Within a mistitled excerpt from A Cabinet Secretary’s Memoirs by BP Peiris – ‘Writing the Soulbury Constitution’ – we learn of the stenographic ‘native’ copyeditors of the English dictat to inscribe a body of useless principles that would prevent our economic transformation at ‘independence’. Note the reference to 19^th century comprador families, English universities, and Colombo clubs, where all the so-called ‘separations of powers’ between executive, judiciary, legislature and raw capitalist cravings vaporize in a tipple of alcohol:

‘PC Villavarayan – Classics man from Oxford; HNG Fernando – Oxford & Orient Club;

BP Peiris – No Clubs; Abeysundera – One-time Private Secretary to DS;

S Namasivayam – Oxford, Grandson of Arunachalam;

Fred de Silva – Son of George de Silva, Member, State Council;

A Mahadeva – Grandson of Ramanathan;

The fact that I was drafting the Constitution was kept secret by my colleagues…

The Ministers’ Draft, which had been prepared by Sir Ivor Jennings,

was in a most confusing form as a draft and,

although it contained all the essential points, had to be entirely redrafted.’

– ee Politics, Writing the Soulbury Constitution.

Such hubris! All those essential points by ‘Sir Aiyo!’, serving to maintain English political, military & economic interference in the country to this day, were dictated by England’s Foreign Office!

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• This ee covers the continued US destabilization of Asia & Africa. The 14 May elections in Thailand offer a template of what is in store for Sri Lanka. In SL elections have been postponed while there is blatant auctioning of public resources (under the guise of SoE restructuring) to pay for the upcoming buy-off of politicians. As one observer points out (ee Workers), the IMF is only concerned about corruption by the empire’s enemies, than political and economic repression of the masses.

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• Nazis & Fascists of Europe always saw the genocidal white settlers of the Americas, Africa and the Pacific, as their ‘older brothers’ (no ‘sisters’ are mentioned but they no doubt ‘intersect’). So, it is no surprise that Europe is so easily capitulating to US control of their politics and economy. At the same time the Nazi (& ZioNazi) grip over US & Canadian political power grows even more dire and shrill.

     For those taken in by the fake claims of DIE (Diversity, Inclusion, Equality), former US ambassador Charles Freeman explains exactly what defines a ‘European’ (White, Christian & Docile). Hungary PM Viktor Orban exposes the US war as cover for the US to cut Europe off from Russia and China, to set up a new architecture of power in Europe – this is no Polish joke! (See ee Random Notes)

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• This ee covers SBD de Silva’s charting of the retardation of the growth of indigenous industrial capital – as evident in the post-1977 sabotage of an indigenous textile & garment industry (when it had features of real industry) leading to the rise of the fakers (Brandix, MAS), which mirrored the multinational capture of Singapore’s garment industry. He also noted the rise in imports due to so-called ‘access’ to export markets. (ee Focus, Political Economy)

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• England’s Pre-emptive Judicial Tricks – There’s an ongoing suit in Scotland by over 1,000 injured tea workers employed by James Finlay and Unilever in Kenya. Finlay insists Scottish courts have no authority to preside over the case [and] that letting Scottish courts determine the class action suit would be a direct attack on Kenya’s sovereignty! Workers argue that policy is made at the multinational’s registered parent company in Scotland [and] the ultimate beneficiary of the profits derived from labour rights violations are domiciled in Scotland’. What may interest Sri Lankans is that these injuries are also linked to Finlay’s ‘mechanical harvesting department, with a 9-year-old boy decapitated by a tea-plucking machine at a 100-year-old James Finlay tea estate. Tea plantations have refused to mechanize production in Sri Lanka, relying on its over-150-year methods of labor-intensive musculoskeletal movements. Though no such law suits appear to have been launched from here. As to how these plantations were built on land stolen from Sri Lankans, see Random Notes. The story also refers to a recent BBC documentary of sexual abuse of workers by Unilever management in Kenya. The issue for us is that Unilever is BBC and BBC is Unilever. So what tricks are the English up to now? (ee Focus, Kenya)

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• This week saw ‘Sri Lankan firm’ Browns Investment buy into aforementioned multinational tea firm James Finlay Kenya. Also, Swiss multinational Nestle, which monopolizes milk production in Sri Lanka, declared itself a private company. Nestle claims that the ‘company manufactures over 90% of its products sold in Sri Lanka locally at their state-of-the-art factory in Kurunegala’.

     Further, England’s Unilever claimed to ‘get more Sri Lanka-rooted’ by setting up a malted beverage plant in Sapugaskanda. Again, the media provides no details on where their machinery and chemistries come from, nor how much imports are required. Then, we get the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) and the Delegation of German Industry & Commerce (AHK SL) together with the Export Development Board (EDB, which has a German offficial housed within its offices) organizing an ‘awareness program on German Act on Corporate Due Diligence in Supply Chains.’ This ‘diligence’ will then insist that local production does not meet their high ‘green’ standards, and we must only use their machinery!

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Multinationals Meddle midst Mindless May Day