e-Con e-News

‘Before you study the economics, study the economists!’

e-Con e-News August 2023 Part 4

India is ‘inexorably’ enabling the war machinery of the US, Australia & Japan around Sri Lanka, the Indian Ocean and the Asia-Pacific region. India’s Kautilyan capers are ‘causing a serious change in the balance of forces and generating a spike in regional & global tensions’, astute Indian analysts warn (see ee Sovereignty, Malabar Exercises). Inexorable?

     On August 18, the navies of the US, India, Japan & Australia kicked off their 2^nd annual Malabar war games, southeast of Sri Lanka. The war games downplayed as ‘exercises’ are ‘surrounded by much hype that a QUAD collective maritime defence alliance is emerging in the Indo-Pacific’. China & Russia patrolling their own Pacific coasts yet drove English media apoplectic. Anglo-American NATO media (in their saturating style) simply refuse to entertain their citizens to an actual map of the world (see ee Sovereignty, The New Atlas).

     Also on Friday, US President Joe Biden hosted ‘a trilateral summit at Camp David with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, to sign ‘a defence, security and technology cooperation agreement.’ Both neutered Japan & an amputated Korea are already occupied by 10,000s of US troops.

     India was England’s largest satrapy with sepoy army to match. Malabar, an English colonial name for India’s southwestern coast, includes the state of Kerala – ancient land of the Chera. Kerala’s elected Communist government was overthrown by a (barely 10 year old) independent Indian military, ordered there by PM J Nehru in 1957. Two years later, PM SWRD Bandaranaike was killed (not by who we are told) in the ancient land of the Sinhala, and his government destabilized. All ‘Malabar War Games’ perhaps!

*

• August is also a month for NATO’s minions to relax, retool and revitalize their engines, physical and mental, before the start of their industrial year in autumnal September. Bookfairs and school openings paper it all over. This is followed by further missile-waving in icing October. Scary Halloween. After which they give thanks for re-inflated war budgets (midst their starvation of the original ‘Indians’).

     This ee Focus relates a Lakshman Kadirgamar Institute confab conclusion that it’s ‘ridiculous… to still talk of non-aligned policy’, after ‘having signed the ACSA (Access & Cross Servicing Agreement) with the US, in August 2017’.  And what’s with August 2017? In late July 2017 another fragrant agreement was made to legalize multinational corporations (MNCs) haemorrhaging dollars overseas, which led to last year’s engineered default?

     At this Kadirgamar Institute confab, speakers pacific and otherwise praised the human rights record of US-led powers! – their still-bleeding wars on Iraq, Syria, Libya, Ukraine, notwithstanding.  They also forgot at this LK commemoration that ‘the much-respected’ Kadirgamar was ‘killed by an organization established by India’. (see ee Focus, Quagmire)

     Also in this ee, a former US Foreign Official traces the US plan to impose a ‘federal’ solution on Sri Lanka. To unify an industrializing country, the USA fought their own bloody war to prevent federalism and secession. They’ve forgotten, we’re told, that United States of Amnesia. Of course, as their dearly ‘free media’ constantly remind us, their power (white-settler impunity, truth be told) is the ability to financially and militarily impose their own reality. On the past… and the present. Until… the future catches up (see ee Focus, Federal).

*

• Friday’s imperialist war games in the ocean came right after the US got Colombo to host ‘The Indo-Pacific Environmental Security Forum (IPESF) 2023’ from 14-17 August. US Envoy & 2022 Coup funder Julie Chung was joined by the President’s nephew Ruwan Wijewardene – former State Minister of Defence and now ‘Senior Adviser to the President on Climate Change’ (ahh! now the fog clears), US-sanctioned Chief of Defense Staff General Shavendra Silva, and Commander of the Navy, Vice Admiral Priyantha Perera. They discussed ‘Climate Change & Security’, Maritime, Ocean & Water Security, Impacts of Urbanization & Land Security, and Building National & Regional Resilience’.

     The US Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM), hauling the Sri Lanka Navy (SLN), and Sri Lanka Coast Guard (SLCG) in tow, says it invited 140 senior military officers & ‘top-level environmentalists’ from 28 countries in the Indo-Pacific.

     Sigh! These ‘environmentalists’ were in deep hibernation when an organic fertilizer policy was being viciously vilified. Some therefore wonder ‘who of the Climate Crisis Gurus & NGO Gravy Train’ starred at this show? ‘Saving’ the environment has long been big business for the UN environment experts. They’re now doing opaque carbon credit calculations in order to privatize forests and enable ocean grabbing in the name of conservation, while marketing Debt for Nature Swaps, green & blue bonds & scams!’ (see ee Sovereignty, From ‘Donor Darling’ to Pariah & Back) USAID & Cargills also made a deal to plug electric vehicles in at all their supermarkets!

*

• Kautilya Cows for Machiavelli’s Big Mac – ‘Contrary to the Modi government’s theatrical public diplomacy upholding India’s strategic autonomy’, India’s foreign policy establishment is generating ‘an entirely different perception… at the political and diplomatic level’ helping to plant ‘the function of confrontation… in the AUKUS and in QUAD’ enabling ‘an acceleration of strategic realignments among the big powers’ amidst growing signs of a new cold war globally.

     India’s moves come just after the 19^th round of India- China Corps Commander-level Meeting held at Chushul-Moldo border meeting point on the Indian side on 13-14 August. A veteran Indian diplomat notes: ‘India is at risk of being caught in the eye of the storm, as it were, although its issues with China are neither one of geopolitical rivalry nor of being a gatekeeper for Western hegemony.’

     Indeed critics wonder how the media manipulates Manipur and Kashmir (which we once knew only as expensive imported saris) to produce Bollywood-style India’s magical claim to dividing Sri Lanka to enable the blooming of rights the whites call ‘human’. India, the US & England are also funding terrorism on Manipur’s border with Myanmar.

     India’s funding and training bloody terrorism in the country and then proceeding to supposedly ‘ban’ the Tigers, and yet uphold their parliamentary stripes, recalls this week’s ‘US Sanctions on Syrian ‘Moderate Rebels’ It Had Previously Armed’: ‘An auto sales company owned by the leader of one of the armed groups is also being designated’. (see ee Sovereignty, US Sanctions)

*

• US Ambassador for Cyberspace & Digital Policy Nathaniel C Fick will visit Sri Lanka from August 20-23, after visiting India, August 17-20. He will lobby the Sri Lankan government, private sector and thinktanks on buying US-vended equipment for cybersecurity, information & communications technologies, and digital freedom. Former marine Fick was CEO of cutely named cybersecurity company Endgame Inc, then worked for Dutch Elastic NV, before being made an ‘Operating Partner’ at San Francisco’s Bessemer Venture Partners, which operates in India, Israel and England (see ee Random Notes, SLTelecom’s Bowel Movements).

     Blowing in the Wind – With all these US officials wasting their carbon footprints on junkets to Sri Lanka, we lose track and yet wonder what happened to ‘US State Department Coordinator on Global Anti-Corruption’ Richard Nephew and Dylan Aikens, the Anti-Corruption Analyst for the US Department of State who visited Sri Lanka August 8-9? Not a peep. Wonder what silence they have bought? Gone with the Wind!

‘Sri Lanka’s authorities must consult vehicle importers when making decisions

on relaxing an ongoing import ban, President of the Vehicle Importers’ Association

Indika Sampath Merinchige said… Merinchige claimed the government is relaxing

vehicle imports in accordance with the wishes of the IMF

which bailed Sri Lanka out of its worst financial crisis in decades.

‘The government is doing this for the IMF. As traders, we also like this.

But we don’t wish to lose it,’ said Merinchige.

– ee Industry, SL vehicle import ban: Traders want to be consulted in decision-making

*

Who must a government, elected by the voters and vote counters of the country, listen to? A Peradeniya Professor of Agriculture, points to the sky (climate, a great variable like sexuality & EU markets, able to attract loanable dollars). The Professor says farmers should listen to… Agriculture Professors:

While the government has the responsibility of ensuring the availability

of key resources for farming such as fertilizer, water, seeds, fuel etc,

the farmers, in turn, should have the willingness to adapt and

change their age-old cultivation practices & perceptions

to follow recommendations that are issued

after careful research & field validation.

A paradigm shift is needed on the part of the farmers as well.

– Prof WAJM de Costa, Sr Professor & Crop Science Chair,

Faculty of Agriculture, Peradeniya University

(see ee Economists, Are Farmers Willing to Listen to Agriculture Professors?)

• Chena Burn Index (CBI) – Indeed cultivators and poachers are also being blamed for an increase in forests being set on fire. This may be an indication of the tremendous pressure being placed on cultivators, for whom chena (swidden aka slash&burn) has been an ‘age-old’ and lucrative window to direct cash, as opposed to rice cultivation (as it stands), which gets them into further debt to merchants & moneylenders.

     So! Which farmers should the government listen to? Which professors? The last Peradeniya Agriculture Professor, much quoted by the media in opposition to organic fertilizer policy, turned out to be a local director of English MNC and chemical importer CIC (ICI Ltd).

     Note that the good Professor Costa allows the government a ‘Responsibility to Ensure’ (R2E). Who then will provide ‘fertilizer, water, seeds, fuel’? We do not have to imagine ‘The Who’ in the ‘Age of the 17^th IMF Review (17 Vaeni JaMuLa Yugaya)’. Which seed, fuel & fertilizer importers should the government listen to? And water?

*

Civil Servant Raju Coomaraswamy (father of NGO Queen Radhika Coomaraswamy

and de facto CBSL Governor Indrajit Coomaraswamy) was once sent abroad

and told to write on the balance of payments. He apparently consulted

an Indian statistician, who asked him, ‘What results do you wish to show?’

• More particularly, which leaders should we listen to? Here again, foreign state & corporate funding seeks to tell us. Take the recent ‘poll’ (an exegesis of how ‘polls’ – usually corporate-funded surveys – came to replace ‘polls’ at physical adults-only voting booths, would be fun on another day).

     EconomyNext and other US embassy’s media spigots tell us:

*

Significant drop in favourability of Sri Lanka’s Anura Kumara Dissanayake:

‘An opinion survey for July has shown that leftist leader AKD

has seen a dip in his net favourability rating, with opposition leader Sajith Premadasa

making a marginal gain while President Ranil Wickremesinghe’s rating stayed static.

A Sri Lanka Opinion Tracker Survey (SLOTS) polling

by the Institute for Health Policy (IHP).’

We vaguely recall this survey and institute being funded by an Australian state institution. IHP’s website tells us ‘IHP is very glad to be associated with Health Policy Research Associates (HPRA)’. Access to ‘Sri Lanka based’ HPRA’s website is limited and requires identification.

Unauthorized – This server could not verify that you are authorized

to access the document requested. Either you supplied the wrong credentials

(eg, bad password), or your browser doesn’t understand

how to supply the credentials required – hpra.lk

So much for transparency! Instead, IHP tells us HPRA is ‘an independent consultancy firm, which carries out consulting assignments in the fields of health policy, health economics and planning, social protection and development’. HPRA’s client portfolio includes the World Bank, WHO, ILO, UNHCR, the Government of Kyrgyz Republic, Government of Sri Lanka, and England’s DFID.

     Compare the state of surveys in Sri Lanka with China, where it is the government that depends on and yet controls research so that it benefits their own country (see ee Quotes). We also see this HRPA’s link to the UN (WHO, ILO, UNHCR, etc) which increasingly outvoices Sri Lanka’s government ministries and departments on such vital national issues as malnutrition and education, as well as determines policy direction.

     And speaking of England’s ‘aid’ dispenser DFID, ee has alluded before to the stunting and submission of our economies, much like our working class, to the whims and demands of imperialist economies, especially to allow them to maintain the innovations in their machine industries. This ee tracks the ‘evolution’ of the DFID, how ‘Colonial Office’ came to be renamed ‘Development Office’ (ee Random Notes, English Aid for English Machines).

*

• Sri Lanka remittances reach US$541mn in July 2023, we were told this week (see ee Workers). There’s little information on exactly which categories of workers are responsible for sending our largest sources of foreign exchange. Let alone how it was possible for the flow of such remittances to be turned off, let alone how our import-export mafia are able to park tens of billions of the country’s dollars outside the country. No such surveys here. And even better, detail exactly what are we paying back debt for. How many obsolete and over-expensive technologies, industrial goods & services have we had to pay for?

*

• In Sri Lanka’s August Business Sections (that palimpsest of erasable good news) a survey by ee Finance shows a flurry of ‘profits’ posting by private banks (even the public banks still serve private purposes) albeit in what they call ‘challenging’ times:

*

NDB ups 1H pre-tax profit by 55% to Rs4.2billion

amidst continuing external challenges

And here’s why: ‘The finalisation of the DDO and the options extended to banks has removed ambiguity and has helped lessen the risk premia added to interest rates.’

*

HNB Group records Rs9.8bn PAT in 1H 2023

HNB also adds: ‘We commend the government’s DDO plan – which insulated the banking sector from any reprofiling of Treasury Bills or Bonds. This in turn enables banks, inundated with mounting credit impairment and higher taxes, to use much needed capacity in supporting the revival of key sectors and the broader economy.’

     Are these bank profits invested in modern industry? No. Instead workers’ organizations report that current debt restructuring places the burden of debt repayment on working class. ‘Government has decided to use the funds of the Employee Provident Fund to repay Sri Lanka’s debt.’

     Hotel workers report that with the IMF’s demands for labor flexibility, ‘hotel managers are no longer required to pay workers for an 8-hour shift’. Additionally, workers will not be entitled to any overtime pay.

     At least private banks are also thrilled by the Central Bank insistence that Aswesuma beneficiaries ‘must use banks that had the ability to process cheques’, which happen to be commercial banks. Using a private bank that robs money and refuses to invest in workers and the country is a human right!

     It is no coincidence that ‘private companies are willing to set up factories inside prisons’. And midst all this, Sri Lanka’s Defence Secretary this week addressed a USAID Human Trafficking Workshop!

*

• AI-Generated News – US-funded Advocata is keeping its head down midst this their 17^th IMF Yugaya. Yet their imported media memes prevail. As comedy. Take this clearly ‘accidental’ news item, from the US embassy in Colombo’s funded media spigot, EconomyNext:

*

Sri Lanka to expand bloated state for Cinnamon despite tax woes

‘Sri Lanka’s cabinet of ministers had approved the setting up a separate department

for the development & promotion of Minister Bandula Gunawardana [sic!]…’

(see, ee Agriculture, Minister of Plantation Industries…)

US, India, Japan & Australia: Malabari War Games to Divide Us