e-Con e-News

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

e-Con e-News 25 November – 02 December 2023

How many people know foreign courts are about to grab jurisdiction over Sri Lanka!? We often wonder why the LTTE & its footstools (TNA, etc.), dedicated as they are to a separate ‘independent’ state, would demand Sri Lanka submit to international (read: white) courts, and UN Committees hijacked by private corporations? And why are our economists so dedicated to foreign investment & exports?

     It turns out that we have been (1948, notwithstanding) subject to England’s and even India’s courts! And now, taking advantage of the hallucinatory season of bacchanal, Parliament is set to pass a new law, which will also give other foreign courts (especially in the US & for their multinational corporations, MNCs) the right to enforce their foreign judgments on Sri Lanka.

     The timing of this act, between December 25 (known to Christians as Christmas) and January 7 (known to them as Epiphany – a sudden revelation!) is not coincidental. Curiously, media recently revealed a ‘repudiation’ of Roman-Dutch Law in allowing banks to seize property without going to court! (see ee Random Notes). It turns out all this is part of a long-term plan to be able to overthrow leaders and grab national resources – ‘legally’ of course! Also related to this is the ‘generosity’ in handing over title deeds under the guise of correcting the wrongs of colonialism. This will only increase land fragmentation and promote the USA’s MCC program for MNCs to take over agricultural lands. (see ee Focus)

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• ‘Back on K Street (famous for the offices of lobbyists in Washington DC), we turned a corner and within about 10 minutes found the World Bank’s main campus in Washington DC – a large complex of buildings spanning several city blocks. Somewhere inside them was the ICSID (International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes).

     ICSID’s website calls itself the ‘world’s leading institution devoted to international investment dispute settlement’, saying it had ‘administered the majority’ of these cases globally. ICSID also said it ‘contributes to the [World Bank’s] overall goal of poverty reduction’[not elimination! – ee] by promoting foreign investment via ‘providing confidence in the dispute resolution process’… ICSID’s offices were in the Bank’s J building – across the street from its main building on Pennsylvania Avenue… We’d imagined that once we were in the right building it would be enough to ask people there for specific directions. But those we stopped in the lobby & corridors also gave us puzzled looks. Some of them didn’t even seem to recognise the name ICSID, asking us to repeat it. But when we finally found this branch’s offices, we saw that it occupied an entire wing of a floor. It wasn’t well known, but it certainly didn’t look small.

     We went through a glass door and found the person that had answered the archive staffer’s phone call. She was friendly and took us on an impromptu tour of the office, showing off its file rooms, meeting rooms and desks for what she said was the centre’s rapidly growing team. ‘Our office wasn’t always this big,’ she emphasized.’ (see ee Focus)

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• This ee continues our charting of the corporate coup d’etat to overthrow ‘independent’ governments. In Sri Lanka, this attack is led by Unilever, one of the largest corporations in the world, who not only has captured our home market, but also controls our media. ee is therefore examining the setup of an international legal system to control and plunder the resources of the world, and overthrow governments that challenge corporate domination. This involves, the ‘nefarious alliance’ between so-called NGOs & corporations (Unilever also claims to be an NGO!). They seek to promote profit over justice, weakening labor laws and eviscerating workers’ protections & rights. To enforce this predatory behaviour, MNCs have created a global Supreme Court and are raising and funding private mercenary militias (death squads) to crush labor movements, and intimidate & murder activists.

     The mechanisms of control used to plunder the colonies always blows back and are also being used in the industrial world. Large corporations are looting and pillaging so-called ‘independent’ yet still-colonized countries by forcing them to accept international agreements & investment treaties – corporate courts – that favor multinational corporations. A shadow legal system is in operation across the world to enshrine a system where MNCs can sue states for enacting policies they don’t like, which they say infringe on ‘investor rights’. This system was created ‘in the heat of the decolonization movement and the end of formal empire’. The main body where these cases are heard is actually an arm of the World Bank’s International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) created in 1966, when countries were supposedly getting independence. Capitalists panicked about maintaining control, how to ensure their investments in underdevelopment are protected when they don’t have formal empires and garrisons of troops (like the colonial East India Company did) where they can take out a leader if he does something they don’t like? The system was the brainchild of Hermann Abs, a German Nazi exonerated by the English and the US at the Nuremberg trials. (see ee Focus)

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• So why does the media not say what’s going on? There is no transparency demanded when it comes to naming private creditors. The truth is they are not a national media. They are controlled by Unilever. Media owners should be made to meet the people every week, at press conferences where people can ask questions about their priorities, their commissions & omissions, and most importantly, their funding sources. Who will make them do so? Not politicians who are provided access to the droppings of the MNCs – licenses to distribute imported fuels, foods, alcohols, cigarettes, consumer goods, etc.

     Some compare ee’s function to a garbage picker scavenging at the city dump, looking through rubbish to find things for use or sale. This is what it is like going through their media, local & international.

     We know the English media, both national (if they can even be called that!) & international (read: white world), are thoroughly backward. Again, it is not a matter of capacity but determination. We’re surprised to learn the Sinhala media is even worse. Then again, this makes sense. It would be deadly to the imperialist project if people knew what was going on in the world let alone with their own neighborhoods.

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• Ensuring self-sufficiency in grain & basic food products, increasing the purchasing power of the rural home market, and supplying industrial workers with nutritious food at stable prices: This ee Focus continues sharing the Communist Party of Sri Lanka’s Alternate Program: this week examining agriculture and the much-touted Green Economy… Sri Lanka has one of the lowest arable lands per capita in South Asia, and lower than even China. This demands rationalizing the use of agricultural land, and increasing yields & productivity through modern technology & capital-intensive farming (see ee Focus).

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• Our economists are either purposely or inadvertently ignorant of what modern industrial culture is all about. Modern industrialization has its own logic. It is not only agriculture or services. Industries impart an internal dynamic, expanding markets, lowering costs. The role of industry is not to earn foreign exchange, but to multiply products, develop the division of labor, specialization, like in the motorcar industry.

     In modern industrialization, the entire system becomes an integrated process. Garments need textiles, and involve the production of machinery & component parts, including chemicals. An integrated chain is a self-expanding process. Garments in Sri Lanka have not been allowed to go thru this change, and cannot transform the economy.

     During the US (‘civil’) war, the northern government contracted to produce revolvers. The invented techniques from weapons were used for making sewing machines & motorbikes. Such industrial organization absorbs, transforms and integrates. Without production forces, productive relations cannot develop to be more conducive to socialism, compared to what we have now (– remember SBD de Silva…).

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Contents:

USA Wants Legal Right to Overthrow Leaders & Steal Resources in Sri Lanka