Sri Lanka & India Sail Hush-Hush Under US Navy
Posted on December 16th, 2023
e-Con e-News
blog: eesrilanka.wordpress.com
‘Before you study the economics, study the economists!’
e-Con e-News 10-16 December 2023
One objective of the USA’s ‘colour revolution’ in Sri Lanka aka ‘Aragalaya’ has been achieved – mission accomplished! The Sri Lankan & Indian Navies are now operating under USA-England’s Combined Maritime Force (CMF). Midst lots of blabber about ‘nonalignment’ and ‘strategic neutrality’ etc, we are about to end up embroiled in white military (naval) attacks on the Western IOR (Indian Ocean Region), already stalked by the US Central Command. This could immediately mean fighting against Ansarullah (which BBCysts call Houthi) of Yemen, against Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somalia, and potentially against Hezbollah, Iran, Syria, and even Palestinian Liberation Movements. They aim to use us as cats’ paws to claw at our neighbors.
So, what was the media headlining while this Anglo-US takeover was being effected? Readers can check our past ee News Indexes to verify this: The media was jabbering about Chinese ‘spy’ ships, about protracted kerfuffle between the headline-grabbing Minister of Justice and the National Aquatic Resources Research & Development Agency (NARA) over control of the mapping of the country’s ocean floor, about Tamil Nādu’s incessant poaching, and about the rare interceptions of their dangerous drugs and fake medicines (which are yet flooding the country), etc. How we can intercept contraband when allied to the main drug dealers of the world (of English Opium Wars & US Golden Triangles, anyone?) remains a mystery? It was also pointed out this week that the international (read: English) media ‘without hesitation categorizes all Chinese research vessels as spy ships’.
The CMF is commanded by a US Navy Vice Admiral, who also serves as Commander, US Naval Forces Central Command (Navcent) and US Navy 5th Fleet (stalking the Persian Gulf, Red Sea & Arabian Sea). All 4 commands are based at US Naval Support Activity (NSA) in colonized Bahrain. CMF’s Deputy Commander is an English Royal Navy Commodore who recently visited Sri Lanka, again rather hush-hushedly.
So, what’s going on? Wasn’t SWRD Bandaranaike murdered for also kicking the English navy out of Trincomalee & Katunayake? So, is this the end of ‘flag & anthem’ independence… of ‘briefcase independence’? (see ee Random Notes, US Navy)
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• He likes to play the baba: this University of Colombo Professor S Abeyratne. ee used to mock him as Reductio Ad Abeyratne, for his ability to condense any and all trivia into the utopian talking points demanded by the white embassies: rule of law, corruption, free trade, etc. He writes a weekly column in the President’s family rag The Sunday Times. ‘Endless bribes & commissions from top to bottom’ are required to do business in Sri Lanka, he wails this week, saying villagers impudently ask, ‘What do I get? – Mata Monavadha Lebenne?’ when private businesses are set up in their communities – in this case on Temple Lands!
He’s such a baba, but then so are the rest of these 5th-column economists. They rather attack Sinhala (nay, all Black peoples & countries) as somehow genetically corrupt. Someone should ask Mistuh Abeyratne why the English embassies (England, South Africa, Canada, Australia, New Zealand) in Sri Lanka call their chief agents, High Commissioners. Is it cos they take the highest commissions? Monavadha Oonta Lebenne? – What do they get? This he can’t & won’t, and is simply not allowed to, say.
The USA speaks its own variable English, and calls their siccarios, Envoys (from the French for ‘on the way’, perhaps to invade!). The English & their settler colonies as well as kalusuddha colonies (India, etc) are more honest – if we choose to explore or rather excavate their English – an English never taught in our obese & flatulent English departments. These – D’Oyly’s great-grand-spawn – have never heard of England’s industrial revolution, nor of their de-industrialization of our world. This ee continues examining the metasizing of imperialist ‘supranational’ institutions under the guise of ‘aid’ and ‘development’. Premier among them is the Crown Agents Office in Sri Lanka set up way back in 1833:
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‘The Office of the Crown Agents (OCA)
was the English empire’s middleman:
if colonial governments needed to buy something,
they set it up. Under the Secretary of State for the Colonies,
it then managed colonial investments and the supply
of all non-locally made goods, as well as supervising
construction projects & paying colonial officers’ salaries & pensions’
(ee Focus)
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• This ee charts the evolution of the OCA into England’s Commonwealth Development Corporation, originally called the Colonial Development Corporation, to use exports from colonies to pay off the vast US loans that funded their 20th century world wars. The term ‘development’ was a cunning corporate 1950s advertising strategy led by Unilever in Africa to justify the continued dominance of companies closely linked to the English empire. Think of all the government ministries who sport the title ‘development’ now, think of the names of NGOs & banks (eg, World Bank’s real name, IBRD). This ee unearths the origins of imperialism’s fake aid business in England’s Crown Agent Office (OCA); the US World Bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC), which under the guise of ‘poverty reduction’, is behind several so-called ‘commercial banks’ in Sri Lanka; the USA’s Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), which makes electricity expensive for people yet diverts it inexpensively to tourist hotels, the UN’s ‘Sustainable Development Goals’ which talk of ending ‘poverty everywhere’ and providing ‘quality education for all’ but insists on teaming up with big businesses (aka IMF).
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• This ee looks at the close corporate links with NGOs and 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 therefore examines the colonial origins of Unilever and the devastation it has left in its path; and also looks at 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 like Care USA, Save the Children, Oxfam etc & corporations (Unilever also claims to be an NGO!). They all seek to promote profit over justice, weakening labor laws and eviscerating workers’ protections & rights. To enforce this predatory behavior, MNCs have created a global Supreme Court (ICSID) and are raising & funding private mercenary militias (death squads) to crush labor movements, and intimidate & murder activists. Welcome to the age of perpetual war and full spectrum dominance: Gaza is meant to show us their ways…
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‘Hotels, catering to foreign tourists,
bask in the luxury of subsidised electricity,
paying a mere Rs28/unit, while ordinary households
over 181 units monthly face a peak-time tariff of Rs106/unit’
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The concern with Pathirana’s critique is that he naively absolves the IMF of culpability by suggesting that the IMF demanded direct taxes. IMF staff, however, know full well that in order to meet their ambitious fiscal targets in short order, indirect taxes are the easiest to collect for governments. Taxing the rich would require stringent capital controls & a strong government which IMF-supported policies have happily eroded over the past decades.
Education is surely an essential, but education for what? More arts & humanities graduates to bloat government bureaucracy? More lawyers, doctors, nurses & technical workers to immigrate to the white West? In a way, funding road & infrastructure is more productive as it at least provides livelihoods for rural workers.
It is true that taxes are low & tax holidays are excessive in Sri Lanka. But anyone who calls themselves Marxist has to ask why this is the case. It cannot just be due to the unique meanness of the Sri Lankan ruling class. It is a reflection of very low levels of productivity, requiring tax cuts to maintain profits.
High interest payments are specifically due to the high exposure to private debt. Sections of this pseudo-Left jumped on the anti-China debt-trap narrative and helped manufacture consent for further exposure to private debt in 2015. Unlike Chinese debt, there are no records or corresponding assets of the way higher private-US-vulture-bank ISB debt has been used!
The purpose of state-led industrialization is not just to correct market failures, but to actually build the home market, which would ensure further industrial advance, particularly in the countryside
Finally, Pathirana refers to so-called ‘independent trade unions’. ‘Who are they ‘independent’ of? Are they those that met with US & EU ambassadors & their agents in the lead-up to the 2015 Yahapalana mess and/or during 2018’s so-called ‘coup’, or during the Aragalaya, which delivered us to the IMF? Are they just independent of mass political parties, and therefore of the people? Does their leadership reflect the social character of the membership? Do they derive their funding from members, or from foreign NGOs & CIA-backed ‘unions’ like the AFL-CIO? Do they represent the productive workers of the countryside? Or are they simply a small urban enclave representing the interests of government bureaucracy & the neocolonial service sector?
Recall that some of these so-called independent unions were linked to certain sectarian fellow-travelers in various ‘international’ unions, all, if not mostly, based in Europe or the US. Most of whom supported the US & EU & English wars on Iraq, Syria, Libya, Palestine, etc.
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• ee also reproduces the criticisms by the Nicholas father-&-son tag team, of the new Central Bank Act (CBA). They point out it is Washington (metonym for the powerful US state) who demanded that the IMF release funds only after passage of the new Act. The old Central Bank Act of 1950, also being a US Federal Reserve creation, has now outlived its purpose. The Nicholases also record that another NATO-faithful economist & WG columnist WA Wijewardena recalls that the current governor of the Central Bank, Nandalal Weerasinghe, a former IMF stipendiary, stenographed this US demand for a new CBA, much earlier on, during the 2015 US-misbegotten Yahapalana regime, while working under Governor – now criminal fugitive – Arjuna Mahendran.
At this moment when the new pro-NATO President of Argentina, as a candidate wielded a chainsaw to indicate his anarcho-corporatist intentions for their Central Bank, the next government should not just amend the new CBA, but abolish the existing US-sculpted Central Bank, which SBD de Silva pointed out, has always opposed the independence of the country, from day one. They should establish a new People’s Bank to directly finance heavy industry and put the current Governor on public trial – along with his old boss Mahendran hiding out in rule-of-law Singapore, who CNN easily located & interviewed when the US dislodged the last President Gotabhaya Rajapakse!
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• And speaking of Argentina, well known for its animal husbandry, wool, etc, this ee Focus continues sharing the Communist Party of Sri Lanka’s Alternate Program: this week examining Livestock & Dairy. Until JR Jayawardena’s post-1977 ‘open economic’ policies promoting imports, local milk production could fulfil 80% of Sri Lanka’s milk consumption needs. Now Sri Lanka produces only 45% of the demand for milk & related products. So, in a country where parents consider providing milk and milk-related products to their children as a mandatory obligation, what is to be done?
We should point to a curious lacuna, though. The failure to address what SBD de Silva called Staple Base Dynamism (SBD!) This refers to the practice allowed in the settler colonial countries, where primary staples were developed through dynamic rural industrial processes: milk to yoghurt to cheese, etc; wheat to flour to bread and desserts, and industrial chemicals, etc. Nonetheless, ee is pleased to continue our coverage of the CPSL’s program, of matters rarely well-detailed in other party programs (see ee Focus).
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Contents:
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A1. Reader Comments –
• ee Fires up • MAS’ Israeli & South African Directors • CPSL Program is Cool • Colombo’s Eco Ice Waste • Kissinger the Only War Criminal?
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A2. Quotes of the Week –
• IPKF Follies • SJB’s Ranil-run Economics • LNT Mendis & CPSL • White Riots & Cuban Protests • Liberals are the Real Face of US Imperialism • Boeing’s Bedded Presidential Candidates • Israel’s Radiation Wall • Hollywood Avoids Napoleon’s Real Rise & Fall • Napoleon & Proletariat • Fake Optimistic US Indicators
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A3. Random Notes –
• Sri Lanka & India under US Navy • JVP Goes NutFlix • IMF’s Austerity Budget Means • Was Kissinger or Obama Worse? • Lanka-Japan Friendship • Bureau Veritas’ Tech Imports • Sim’s Chemical Imports
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B. ee Focus –
• B1. Taxing the Impoverished to Reward the Rentiers – Budget 2024: Dhanusha Pathirana
• B2. A future government should significantly amend the Central Bank Act – Part I: The Nicholases
• B3. Colonial History of Aiding Unilever & NGOs under Cover of Development
• B4. Livestock & Dairy & Idirimagen Idiriyata: Alternate Program of Communist Party of Sri Lanka, Pt10
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C. Building Blocks –
• Guaranteed Rice Price for Industrialization • Creation of a Home Market for Industry • Japan’s Limits on Industrial Exports • Smallholding & Science • Extraordinary Culture of Machine Tools • Making Central Banks Independent of the People? • On State-owned Enterprises & Privatization
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D. News Index
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A1. Reader Comments
ee thanks Readers who send articles of interest. Please excerpt or summarize what is important about any news sent, or your comments, and place any e-link at the end. Email: econenews@gmail.com
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• ‘I get fired up with all sorts of good ideas after reading through ee. But there needs to be more continuity with the themes.’
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• ‘There are no Sinhala directors on the MAS Board. However, they have an Israeli Jew and a White South African. Maybe that’s what they mean by diversity, inclusivity & equality – DIE!’
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• ‘It’s cool that ee is reproducing the Communist Party’s alternate program. Last week, I learned lots about Sri Lanka’s rivers, that I never knew before.’
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• ‘Colombo has a new ice rink called Eco Ice. Where do these people live? Perhaps it’s export-substitution. You don’t have to travel to subarctic Canada or Sweden to experience deep freeze. But at what cost? How cynical to call it ‘eco’? Especially when the country may experience furthers power cuts after the US escalates wars in West Asia.’
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• ‘Why has the capitalist press found Kissinger a war criminal only after his death? When he was calling the shots, all were with him.’ (see ee Quotes & Random Notes)
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A2. Quotes of the Week_
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• ‘In the final analysis, [India’s] highly professional foreign service officers carry out their briefs from headquarters, keeping aside their personal reservations, if any. As Counsellor in our embassy in Bonn (West Germany), my ambassador DS Kamtekar summoned me one afternoon to give me a cable which had just arrived from Delhi regarding the decision to deploy the IPKF to Sri Lanka. Kamtekar, an extraordinarily cerebral mind, asked me with a twinkle in his eye what I thought of the GoI decision, since I had only recently completed my 3-year assignment in Colombo as 1st Secretary (Political). I told the ambassador in brutal frankness that the decision was a monumental folly, as Sri Lankans were sure to close ranks against us & evict us eventually. Nonetheless, we did a fine job and briefed German officials exactly on lines Delhi wanted. That is the wonder that was India.’
– Bhadrakumar (ee Sovereignty, Diplomatic blow to India as Biden turns down invite)
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• SJB’s Ranil-run Policies – ‘The SJB economic platform represents policy continuity with Ranil, not change. The Harsha-Eran economic model has 5 pillars which make it morphologically Ranilian: 1) Renewed access (through an IMF rubber-stamp) to the foreign money markets, ie, a return to the original addiction. 2) A castrated Central Bank incapable of state intervention to offset external shocks, ie, do a Mahathir. 3) Unilateral rewriting of the Social Contract in favour of foreign & local big capital, by scrapping labour & land reform laws. 4) Unfettered, maximum – not optimum – privatisation & foreignisation of the economy, deleting the state & cooperative sectors. 5) Retention of the 2017 foreign exchange law which facilitates outflow and loss to the country of hard currency earnings.
Weighed-down by the albatross of Harsha’s Economic Blueprint, Sajith is handicapped in 2024 in his ability to compete with the JVP-NPP by losing the liability of a UNP profile as Ranasinghe Premadasa so easily did in 1988.’ – Dayan Jayatilleka (ee Economists, Sajith-Ranil equation, Opposition Alliance, Tamil Question & Foreign Policy)
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• ‘LNT Mendis was a Marxist until his death. Of the old traditional school. As a young undergraduate at University College, Colombo, in 1940, he became a founder member of the-then Ceylon Communist Party headed by SA Wickremasinghe. He always worked for the state. He abhorred the very thought of ever working for the private sector. Starting as an elections officer, he went through being Assistant Commissioner of Agrarian Services at the time Phillip Gunawardene’s Paddy Lands Act was operating at its zenith, to serving the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation (being one of the pioneers with Sam Silva, James Lanerolle & former Auditor-General Wijesuriya in 1961), to heading the Oils & Fats Corporation and the Building Materials Corporation that he set up under the Ministry of Housing & Construction with Pieter Keuneman as minister in the mid-1970s. He prematurely retired as Senior Asst Secretary of his Ministry.’ – Susirith Mendis (from FB)
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• ‘Given how the facts are communicated, a paradox arises: if the incidents occur in Europe or the USA, they are riots; if they happen in Cuba, we are dealing with a civic protest against the regime”. If the demonstrators are European or US citizens, they are rioters or violent criminals, to whom the law must be rigorously applied; if they are Cubans, they are activists, fighters for democracy” etc.’ – ee Media, Double standards & new protest linguistics
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• ‘Contrast Kissinger to the ideological maniacs of ‘US democracy & human rights’ in power today who are responsible for far more carnage, death and destruction than him. I recommend anyone take a trip to DC. You may think that the face of US imperialism is some ruthless, cold-hearted pragmatist – but it’s the opposite. It’s ‘bleeding heart’ liberals willing to spill the blood of children to pursue their idealistic fantasies.
I reject this ‘universal celebration’ not because I think Kissinger is defensible. To be clear, he is a criminal with blood on his hands. I reject the ‘universal celebration’ where John Fetterman advisors, Biden campaign staff, ‘democratic socialists,’ liberal UkroNazi-NAFO supporters, ‘anarchists’ and young idealistic liberal interns for the US State Dept & other vermin – join alongside self -proclaimed ‘Communists’ & ‘anti-imperialists’ to hold hands, sing together, feel good about themselves, and throw a party together.
This is just sanitized Hollywood Leftism that is completely inauthentic and distracts from the fact that imperialism’s most aggressive champions are in fact maniacal ideologists like themselves, not cold-hearted realists.
It reminds one of the ‘humanitarians’ in the state dept who – while concretely fully supporting ‘Israel’ – engage in ‘humanitarian’ platitudes as a fake attempt to show sympathy to Gaza (while ‘condemning Hamas’). This actually helps imperialism by giving it a mask of principled ideological consistency.
In reality, the bloodshed of Gaza proves the irredeemability of the US ‘rules based’ world order!’ – ee Sovereignty, Not Sorry for Ruining the Fun
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• ‘In general, I don’t think we want capitalism & democracy to share the same bed anymore. It’s time for a clean divorce. Let companies be companies but I don’t like the crony capitalism. This dates back a long time in both parties.
And I think that we need to end the lobbying, and I personally believe that if you have been working in the Government, you should not lobby that Government for 10 years. If you have been a government-elected official, doing deals with companies, be they Boeing or be they pharmaceutical companies, you should not join the board of that company for 10 years after.
The former chair of the FDA, the Commissioner of the FDA, ended up on the board of Pfizer. Nikki Haley did deals for Boeing and ends up on the board of Boeing. I don’t care if it is a Republican or Democrat, we need some basic principles that end the corruption in Government. That’s how we got the health insurance exemptions. That’s how we got the pharmaceutical liability exemptions. We need to end the corruption.’ – Vivek Ramaswamy, ee Industry, ‘Mr. Trump Says He is Very Proud of Operation Warp Speed: Should He Be?’
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• ‘The neutron bomb was invented in 1958 by Samuel Cohen of the Livermore Laboratory of California and then RAND. In 1984 he proposed that Israel construct a neutron radiation wall around the country. ‘What I am suggesting is the construction of a border barrier whose most effective component is an extremely intense field of nuclear radiation (produced by the operation of underground nuclear reactors), sharply confined to the barrier zone, which practically guarantees the death of anyone attempting to breach the barrier. Establishing such a nuclear wall” at the borders of a threatened country can make virtually impossible any successful penetration by ground forces – as well as a preemptive ground attack by the threatened country’.’ – ee Sovereignty, New Evidence that Israel is Using a New Uranium Weapon – Make that the Neutron Bomb
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• ‘The Hollywood movie has no real explanation of why Napoleon rose to the top in the French revolution, why he won his battles and why he lost the war in the end… France may have occupied Europe, but England had the colonies of the USA, Canada, Africa, India, & Asia behind it. England, based on its international trade, could mobilize more economic resources, raw materials and labour than France. In a prolonged war, England could survive longer and better than France.’
‘The workers who dug the canals, raised the triumphal arches and manned the factories were not allowed to go on strike, or to form unions to bargain for better working conditions or higher pay. However, Napoleon’s government saw to it that wages should keep abreast of prices, that bakers & butchers & manufacturers were under state price regulation, and that – especially in Paris – the necessaries of life should be supplied. Until the last years of Napoleon’s rule, wages rose faster than prices and the proletariat shared (modestly) in the general prosperity, proud of Napoleon’s victories. There was no unemployment, so no political revolt. ‘Nobody is interested in overthrowing a government in which all the deserving are employed,’ said the great man.’ – Roberts (ee Economists, Napoleon’s War Economy)
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• ‘The economic indicators that the optimists and mainstream economics single out to judge the health of a capitalist economy are mainly ‘lagging’ indicators. They look at employment, consumer spending, GDP and prices. But Marxist theory tells us that what drives capitalist economies first is profits; then profits as invested in productive investment (this raises productivity of labour & output, not invested in fictitious capital like stocks & bonds); and only then does investment & production growth feed down to employment, wages & consumer spending. And when we look at these forward looking indictors of the US economy, it is not so rosy.’ – Roberts (ee Economists, Goldilocks & the last mile)
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A3. Random Notes (‘Seeing Number in Chaos’) _
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• Sri Lanka & India under US Navy – In July 2022 the Indian Navy quietly joined the USA’s Combined Maritime Force (CMF) based in colonized Bahrain. It didn’t get much media in India, for it was ‘buried 12 paragraphs deep in the joint statement issued at the end of the India-US 2+2 dialogue in Nov 2023’, in a 3-line paragraph that says less than what it means: ‘The Ministers welcomed India’s full membership of the multinational Combined Maritime Forces (CMF) headquartered in Bahrain.’ The apparent hush-hush is due to: ‘A Shift in Policy as India Joins Multinational Force Not Led by UN’ (see ee Sovereignty).
On 2 Oct 2023, English Deputy Commander Combined Maritime Forces (CMF), Commodore (Royal Navy) Philip Edward Dennis, based in colonized Bahrain, called on SL Navy Commander Vice Admiral Priyantha Perera in Colombo. Deputy Chief of Staff & Director General Operations, Rear Admiral Pradeep Rathnayake, Naval Assistant to the Commander of the Navy & Chief Hydrographer of the SL Navy Hydrographic Service, Commodore Kosala Warnakulasooriya, Defence Advisor at the English High Commission in Colombo, Colonel Darren Woods, et al, were also reported present.
Midst media diversion about battles between Minister of Justice Wijedasa Rajapakse and the National Aquatic Resources Research & Development Agency (NARA), the US Army Pacific Deputy Commander entered Sri Lanka ‘unheralded’, reported ee (18 Nov 2023). US Envoy Yatathvijitha Koreavay Julie Chung twitted on Nov 16 that she ‘welcomed Major General Christopher Smith, Deputy Commanding General of the US Army Pacific to explore ways to enhance our US-SL security partnership… ensuring a secure Indo-Pacific region. ee also noted that India & USA were moving ‘to grab Oceanic Surveys around Sri Lanka’.
On 20 November 2023, Sri Lanka joined the USA’s Combined Maritime Forces in West Asia as its 39th Member. ‘We are excited to have Sri Lanka as part of CMF,’ said Vice Adm Brad Cooper, CMF commander, calling it a ‘growing international naval coalition in the Middle East, which protects some of the world’s most important waterways. The naval partnership upholds the international rules-based order (except in Palestine etc) by supporting security & stability across 3.2mn sq.mi of water encompassing some of the world’s most important shipping lanes.’
On 4 December, the Indian Navy marked its Navy Day, which commemorates India’s attack on Karachi harbour during the 1971 War under ‘Operation Trident’. India’s navy is also gearing up to host its largest multilateral exercise Exercise Milan in Feb 2024, with over 50 countries, ‘to assist countries in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) as the first responder & Preferred Security Partner. The Indian Navy conducts 17 multilateral and 20 bilateral exercises annually. The last edition of Milan was held off Visakhapatnam with over 40 countries.
Apparently, India’s Mobile Training Teams (MTT) have undertaken Operational Sea Checks of ships from ‘2 friendly countries’ – Sri Lanka & South Africa at Gokanna (aka Cheena Varaaya aka Trincomalee) & Cape Town. INS Nireekshak also conducted mix gas diving training for Sri Lankan Navy personnel in Trincomalee, in 2022-23.
Indian Navy Survey Ships have also conducted several hydrological surveys in Sri Lanka, Tanzania, Maldives, and Mauritius, as well as joint Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) surveillance, as ‘requested’ by Indian Ocean littoral states such as Maldives, Seychelles, and Mauritius. And these are not spy ships, apparently.
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• ‘See the venue AKD has chosen to showcase his ‘knowledge’ of the music industry, of global supermarkets and Netflix: Uda Dumbara, a sleepy mountainous area inhabited by impoverished paddy, vegetable & highland cultivators!
AKD should be taught about the speech given by China’s Premier Zhou Enlai at a forum on literary & artistic creations & screenplay writing in 1961. Zhou delineated physical & intellectual production and discussed class struggle & united front, to whom art & literature serve, development laws, heritage, creation & leadership in art & literature.
Before uttering unscientific nonsense AKD should learn the ideas expressed by Marx, Engels and Lenin on art & literature, and Chairman Mao’s treatises on art & literature which have a profound relevance to countries in the East.
Has AKD written any theoretical essay? If the JVP claims that it is a Marxist party, what extraordinary profound knowledge of Marx do they have, of the ability to apply Marxism-Leninism to the economic and political situation of Sri Lanka? Is it able to unite Marxist parties and circles into a single unit giving it political leadership? It is an affront to Lenin if we try to describe what Lenin did before the Great October.
What ideological struggle do AKD & JVP/NPP wage against the SLPP, UNP, SJB & other splinter groups, except calling all of them horas? Is he criticizing their political & economic programs? What work have they done to unite Marxist groups & circles when it is not banned, at a time of enjoying democratic rights without any police persecution?
What change – if the JVP is not using the term ‘Revolution’ – is the JVP going to bring about? Is it a bourgeois-democratic revolution as Lenin put forward in his Two Tactics of Social Democracy in the Democratic Revolution or A Phase of New Democracy as expounded by Mao? Both leaders said the Proletariat – Working Class – Communist Party must be the leader. Is the JVP or NPP such a party becoming the leader of the bourgeois democratic or new democratic revolution?
Giving an interview to the Sunday Times, AKD had stated that his party’s aim will be a ‘Pohosath Janathawak – Pohosath Ratak’ (Rich People – Rich Country). All are hackneyed phrases (like ‘engine of economic growth’), nothing new in what he says; we have heard all this from all people who sought a mandate from people since Independence. These so-called engines are like the different types of locomotives the Ceylon Government Railways (CGR) has imported from its inception, which still cannot provide an efficient and effective service to commuters! What kind of ‘economic democracy’ AKD imagines, we do not know.
How is AKD going to make people ‘rich’ is the biggest question. ‘Rich’ in what? They are ‘rich’ in rhetoric. In words, not deeds. It seems that AKD is thinking that statecraft – with apologies to Mao – is ‘a dinner party or writing an essay or painting a picture or doing embroidery’.
If the JVP/NPP assumes that they will come to power very soon, in preparation to hold power we advise them to read and understand Lenin’s essays Impending Catastrophe & How to Combat It and One of the Fundamental Questions of Revolution (Collected Works – Vol25).’ – ee Politics, Janus-faced JVP: False Conceptions & the Harini Amarasuriya Factor
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• Analyzing Sri Lanka’s 2024 Annual Budget – ‘Over the last 7 or 8 months our economic policymaking has been almost on autopilot – we have just been following the IMF benchmarks and what there is in the World Bank Country Partnership Framework. These are 4-year term agreements and programs and the government really doesn’t seem to be thinking about how to get either the people or the economy out of this crisis except through this IMF path, and austerity is very much a part of it. And by austerity, I mean that there is very little government expenditure for people and programs, and even investment for that matter. Along with that, their vision is one of serving commercial interests – about what is best for business, what is best for the private sector and more importantly over the last 4.5 decades not just in Sri Lanka all over the world, Finance Capital has been dominant, big finance, the banking sector and as we all know Sri Lanka defaulted on its debt last year and much of that debt is owed to powerful bondholders, hedge funds, western pension funds, insurance companies who buy Sri Lanka’s debt, and this budget is focused on repaying them their debt and then creating a climate in Sri Lanka where those who might be interested in taking forward commercial interests are given all sorts of goodies.’ – ee Economists, Analyzing Sri Lanka’s 2024 Annual Budget with Ahilan Kadirgamar
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• Was Kissinger or Obama Worse? – ‘What is notable in the current moment, in the moralizing obituary circuit, is the framing that Kissinger was somehow uniquely evil & murderous – a moral cancer on the US body politic – and that he personally shifted US policy in this direction.
The Wickedest Man Alive – This ‘exceptional war criminal’ framing is especially promoted by the Imperial Liberal Press, in particular the Overton window gatekeepers such as The Nation, DemocracyNow!, NY Times, and Washington Post.
These sources draw liberally from the Bishop of Bombast, Christopher Hitchens, who described Kissinger as a ‘one-man rolling crime wave’, and his actions as ‘the wickedest thing ever done in American political history’, a moral crisis and stain on US politics. But is this characterization correct?
Kissinger had his fingerprints all over Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, East Timor, Chile, Argentina, Bangladesh, Cyprus, implementing or greenlighting horrific, genocidal-politicidal atrocities. But these actions were not sui generis nor were they uniquely Kissingerian. They had already been templated, foreshadowed, & rehearsed for by previous US policies, long before the realpolitiking Kissinger had laid his felonious fingers on the reins of foreign policy. Korea (1948-53), Indonesia (1965-66) and the Philippines (1899-1902) are some key exemplars.
Gaza Covered with Snow – In the case of Korea, 20% of the population were killed, according to General Curtis LeMay, who designed and conducted the bombing campaign. What had been done tactically to individual cities – Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima – was concretized as continuous strategy for Korea: 635,000 tons of bombs, more than the entire Pacific bombing campaign, dropped in endless sorties of high explosives, cluster bombs & napalm over an entire country.
To get a contemporary image of this, take the worst bombing of Northern Gaza – already unimaginable and unthinkable in its sheer, atrocious barbarity – imagine, eg, the devastation of the Jabaliya refugee camp – and then double the intensity of that bombing, and then magnify the theater of bombing 800-fold. Add in endless napalm and time-delayed cluster bombs – to kill anyone who tried to rescue survivors – then you have a small sense of what Korea went through. Then add snow: Korea borders Siberia, and temperatures can drop to -25 degrees Celsius. If you were bombed and somehow survived the shredding of your flesh by cluster bomb shrapnel, or its incineration by napalm, there’s a good chance you would die from exposure to cold under an open sky, as the US rolled out massive air strikes in the month of November, 73 years ago. And still, if you survived all this, and had dug yourself into subterranean shelter, you could have been drowned later when irrigation and hydroelectric dams were attacked, and entire valleys inundated with flooding, while subjected to threats of biological & chemical weapons.’ – see ee Sovereignty, Question the Narrative that Villainizes Henry Kissinger: Correcting the memory of the obsequious butler of US empire
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• Lanka-Japan Friendship Society new office bearers: ‘Exco for 2023/24: Patron Hideaki Mizukoshi, Ambassador for Japan, Vice Patrons: Merrick Gooneratne/Immediate past President, Sumana Liyanage, Deepal Gunaratne, Mikinaga Hotta, President: MD (Tony) Saldin, VPs: A Anandagoda, Jayaraja Chandrasekera, Gaminda Haegoda, Neomal Perera, Sunitha Wijepala, General Secretary: Samadara Mampitiye, Asst Gen Secretary: Diloshini Nesakumar, General Treasurer: M Thiyagaraja, Asst Gen Treasurer: R Kadirgamar Rajah, Executive Committee: Nemantha Abeysinghe, Dhammika Attygale, Vijaya Corea, PHP de Silva, Mahendra de Vaz, DARM Nishanthi Galhena, WI Gunawardena, Jannath Ismail, Upali Jayawardena, Brigadier Samantha Jayasundara, Captain Ganesh Mendis, Sarojini Nagendran, Rohan Pallewatte, Shanil Perera, SN Raghavan, Shelly Thenuwara, Manoranjan Wijebahu, Himani Wijemanne.’ (see ee Sovereignty)
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• Bureau Veritas of France exports to Sri Lanka: ‘Calibration of calipers, external micrometers, circular sample cutters, steel rulers, dial gauges, thickness gauges, crock meters, balances, weights, glassware, piston operated pipettes, refractometers, hydrometers, pH meters, thermometers, cold refrigerated storages, ovens, incubators, water baths, furnaces and RPM of rotors, among many others.’ – ee Industry, Bureau Veritas provides high-precision calibration services for diverse industry sectors
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• Serving large MNCs for 22 years – Sim Lanka Ltd has partner companies Cable Solutions, Aluflex Lanka, Prime Packaging, and Quality Floors. Sri Lanka Export Development Board assisted its products for the multinational electronics industry. Its newest alliance is with Control Print, India, a coding and marking solutions provider. Sim operates in 4 key sectors: electronic manufacturing, printing & packaging, industrial oil regeneration services, and industrial automation. Partners offer solutions for cables and harness applications for white goods, industrial, automotive & aerospace industries, industrial plastics and biodegradable products for paints, lubricants & dairy industries, aluminium foil lids, sealants & heat transfer labeling (HTL) for applications covering dairy, pharmaceutical, tea & industrial sectors, and flooring solutions, such as laser leveled, polished concrete and heavy-duty PU and epoxy flooring. Sim Lanka has strategic alliances with global brands such as Weller, Murr Elektronik, Simco-Ion, Huby, Distrelec, Kleentek, Ferrocare Machines, Sure Print, Giantlok & Oilmax. The company embraces women’s empowerment, diversity & inclusion, carbon neutral operations, children’s education & nutrition. – ee Industry, Sim Lanka