e-Con e-News

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

e-Con e-News September 2023 Part 4

The Canadian government this week threatened to expose the Indian government’s assassination of a separatist Khalistani Sikh leader in Canada. Serendipitously, Sri Lankan lawmakers were also wondering about disjunctive diasporic silences regarding India’s assassination of leaders & civilians in Sri Lanka, let alone about blatant US & Canadian trespass here (see ee Quotes).

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‘The timing of the Canadian assault…

surged in the aftermath of the G20 summit,

which witnessed a crushing diplomatic defeat

for the US in front of the world community.’

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The US has chosen their favorite peon Canada (who credits ‘5-Eyes’ intel for monitoring diplomatic personnel) to relay anger over India’s ‘neutrality’ on the NATO war in Ukraine, at the recent G20 in Delhi. Indeed, with yet another IMF gang in Colombo monitoring Sri Lanka’s qualification for further Wall Street largesse, we hear of the usual non-economic criteria: Pakistan had to supply weapons to the Ukraine to qualify for an IMF Loan!

     Immediately after Canada’s accusation of murder, India hastily skipped a BRICS Foreign Ministers meeting to assuage white wrath, and seemingly kowtow slavish compliance (see ee Sovereignty, India’s Canadian riddle – To be, or not to be).

     Meanwhile, the head of Sri Lanka’s Parliamentary National Security Committee Sarath Weerasekera wonders why the ‘Tamil Diaspora’ does not want India & LTTE-proxy TNA investigated for the killings in the Northern & Eastern provinces, during the deployment of the Indian military (July 1987-March 1990).

     The Global Tamil Forum (GTF) recently commended India & the so-called SL Core Group, for criticizing Sri Lanka’s supposed failure to perform ‘ justice & accountability’. The GTF featured at the ongoing 54^th charade of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva. The SL Core Group includes the US, Canada & England (similar white-led ‘Core Groups’ threaten invasions of Haiti & Africa).

     Delhi again accuses the Canadian government of nurturing terrorists, drug dealers & human traffickers from India. Despite the growling, even the New York Times points to close collaboration between Ottawa & Delhi, as no one has yet been caught for the bombing of  the 1985 Air India flight from Toronto to London, that murdered 329 people: ‘Wiretaps by Canada’s intelligence agency had been erased before they could be used as evidence and physical evidence was destroyed in the blast.’

     Nearly half a million foreign students in Canada are now from India – as Chinese students no longer see Anglo North America as attractive or safe. (‘Foreign student’ is the latest name for migrant, forced to pay enormous excess fees & exorbitant rents and work often illegally in low-paying jobs)

     US colonies (from Canada to England to Germany to Australia to Japan to India) have to take turns fronting for the empire. Deeper investigation can easily expose how the Canadian government was and is deeply involved in promoting such ‘separatist’ movements in ‘diasporic’ communities. And while Canada & the US accuse others of interference in their countries, they play pucks in Sri Lanka!

• Forget so-called corruption (ee calls it ‘business as usual’), evidence is slowly dripping out (like a nocturnal emission in that dam called Victoria) about the huge financing behind the ‘Aragalaya’. Any government that claims to be national will one day have to expose and evict rather than mollycoddle this anti-national media force, led by such multinationals as Unilever & Ceylon Tobacco Co. Listen to this CTC front PepperCube (‘one of the leading research agencies in the country’) on confidence:

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‘The private sector continues to have confidence in the country

and goes on to invest in brand building & developing equity

at the consumer end. The monitored advertising spend in 2022

is at a mine blogging [mind-boggling? ha! – ee] value of Rs162billion…

This is only on the above-the-line data. If we capture the below-the-line activity

such as, consumer promotions, advertising on billboards & PR

this value can increase by another Rs100bn,

meaning the total spend by Sri Lankan companies can touch Rs250bn.

(see ee Quotes)

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• The recently indicted US Chair of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in 2020 called the then newly-elected president of Sri Lanka Gotabaya Rajapaksa ‘a suspected war criminal’. US Senator Bob Menendez has been again indicted on ‘bribery to benefit the Egyptian government’. In September 2022 Menendez had introduced a Senate resolution calling for an ‘international approach to address Sri Lanka’s poor governance & economic policy under the Rajapaksa family’s rule’.

     Indicted US Senator Menendez’ actual concern was Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s possible influence over the trajectory of the MCC Compact: ‘In Sri Lanka MCC has a $480million compact pending the approval of the Sri Lankan government. Sri Lanka, however, has just elected a suspected war criminal, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, as President. How will this affect the compact?’ The MCC is part of the US Indo-Pacific Strategy to contain China. (see ee Random Notes, Exxon & US Envoys)

• ee is totally curious about this abject media silence. Which silence? There are so many. See, silence over China’s insistence that multilateral agencies such as the World Bank & International Monetary Fund (IMF) also ‘restructure’ Sri Lanka’s so-called debt. Why isn’t the WB & IMF & ADB etc also not ‘restructuring’? (Even current President RW, when in opposition, demanded the cancellation of this debt as ‘odious’.) Indeed, as China points out, Sri Lanka is facing not a so-called ‘Debt Trap’ (from US etc) but a ‘Non-Development Trap’!

     Why are so-called progressive economists critical of this ‘debt business’ (& it is a business, for we can never repay such sharking as a merchant- & moneylender-dominated economy) not discussing the very legal role played by big banks & multinational corporations (MNCs)?

     This ee reproduces essays on the ‘dangers’ of Domestic Debt Restructuring (DDR), as well as an open letter from the Sri Lanka Debt Justice Collective, largely academics & NGO operators, most ensconced in imperialist institutions. ee is curious about the inclusion of one signatory: ‘Narayani Sritharan, AidData, William & Mary, US’. Virginia-based College of William & Mary’s AidData has been the main ‘statistical’ purveyor of the myth of the so-called  Sri Lanka Debt Trap blamed on China (see ee 20 August 2022).

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‘AidData has received more than $400,000

from the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC)…

to create high-frequency measurements that can quantify

property & land right protection programs…

Our researchers will use the MCC’s tentative investments

in Sri Lanka’s land sector reforms as a pilot.’

– ee 9 October 2018

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• Licensed Commercial Banks (LCBs) were excluded from recent Domestic Debt Restructuring (DDR) exercise due to their supposed ‘vulnerability’, which was exposed due to the recent economic rumblings. Vulnerability may be a euphemism for their active role in Sri Lanka’s underdevelopment.

     ee therefore reproduces an essay on ‘Bank Consolidation’. Private banking and their hijacking & prevention of investment in modern industry is among Sri Lanka’s greatest scandals. ee recalls the ostracism of Philip Gunawardena and the 1959 assassination of SWRD Bandaranaike was very much linked to the attempt to make banks, especially the government banks, accountable to local, especially rural communities. Many of these private banks & finance companies are fronts for selling foreign manufactures, ensnaring Lankans, especially rural people, in debt.

     The new IMF-ordered Central Bank Act supposedly limits ‘money printing’, making us further captive as Wall Street’s bitch. This is to prevent local funding of local development projects! The IMF’s Public Finance Management (PFM) Act, to be enforced in January 2024, also stipulated a debt ceiling for the government, limiting borrowings from the domestic market.’

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Presidents go from Summit to Summit,

and the Peoples go from Abyss to Abyss

– Hugo Chavez, former President of Venezuela

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• It is no surprise the media did not reproduce the very interesting speech on technology by Cuba’s President at the recent G77 Summit in Havana (see ee Focus for full text of speech). However, touching it is that the Sunday Times, premier organ of anglomania in Sri Lanka, sought to editorialize on this brain drain business, which featured in Havana…

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