e-Con e-News

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

e-Con e-News 04-10 February 2024

If you wish to learn in advance the headlined news of tomorrow & next week & the weeks after, in this media called Sri Lankan, read the USA’s Integrated Country Strategy (ICS). The ICS makes clear exactly how ‘our’ media – colonized, Colombo-based, corporate, and state – are fed their incessant priority ‘talking points’. The ICS is a ‘for public release’ document, so we can assume it is a squid’s ink to fog their real imperialist designs (see ee Focus).

     The ICS highlights Sri Lanka as the center of economic & security competition in the geopolitically significant Indian Ocean Region. It claims their primary security risk is: ‘a narrative could return that the USA has plans for a secret base’ in Sri Lanka. Yet they already have one!: look at the size of that beach-side Kollupitiya edifice, through which the internet and all media and all green cards must enter and exit, spying on the Indian High Commission next door, who also spies on them and us all. You can understand why their Aragalaya (Porattam) skipped these addresses and sped to Galle Face instead.

     The US confesses they have been the main sugar-daddy of so-called civil society NGOs (‘The US government has long been the lead donor strengthening civil society organizations’ – ICS, p15) ICS breezily proclaims the US seeks to reshape Sri Lanka’s security forces, while applying US law (ICS: 2). Really! Slavery is still legal in the USA! (see ee Economists, The Evolution of US Slavery). So, what exactly does reshape mean? Teach us to sing Mississippi Goddamn?

     Yet they are worried that Sri Lanka will backslide, despite all their efforts to impose ‘good governance’. Backslide is a patronizing slur, repeated in the ICS report. It suggests that, minus plantation justice, the village – Leonard Woolf-style – would slip back into jungle, or that slave master-style, and minus the whip (made of Exxon polyester no doubt!), the nigras would regress to their old freedomways. So, what exactly does backslide mean? Let England’s Oxford Dictionary tell us:

‘Backslide [bakslīd] verb (past backslid; past participle backslid

or past participle archaic backslidden ) [no object]

relapse into bad ways or error…’

     Here’s the first instance: ‘While President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s tenure did not see a return of the most egregious violations committed during the 2005-15 era, there was backsliding on democratic governance and human rights, including majoritarian rhetoric and policies that pose a threat to the rights and inclusion of minority communities, some erosion of civil society space, an increase in impunity for past and current abuses, and the weakening of independent institutions that provide a check on the presidency.’ (ICS: 11)

     They next use ‘backslide’ when worrying they have been throwing overvalued USDollars at Colombo’s fattened white-Black spawn: ‘While Sri Lanka has a long history of a free press and strong civil society organizations, their reach outside Colombo remains limited and the operating environment is subject to backsliding’ (ICS: 15). This is again an old colonial trope (the Yankees have learned well from the Anglo-Saxon elders) worrying that our rural rubes and rustics cannot be trusted. They again note:

     ‘Risks associated with not achieving this objective include a stagnant or weakened civil society and media environment that gives room to misinformation and self-censorship, disinformation, and backsliding on human rights (ICS: 16). So why then is their ban-yeogjeog-in (Korean for traitorous) US Envoy & Facebuck whimpering about the Online Safety Bill? Fake oppositions.

     However, their real worry is not just military and political but also economic. Here we can see how and why their media economists constantly yammer against ‘import substitution’:

     ‘Although Sri Lanka has shown its potential for economic growth, the business climate is hampered by corruption, import substitution policies exacerbated during the pandemic, high tariffs, non-tariff barriers, and opaque procurement practices. These factors increase Sri Lanka’s susceptibility to pernicious foreign interference’ (ICS: 17). Wow! Pernicious! Is it because socialist countries (‘malign influence countries’ ICS calls them) helped set up the only real (steel, etc) industries, post-1948, which their Yankee Dicky went on to dismantle after 1977. Perhaps they recall, ‘import substitution’ is what really advanced their countries, including their own (why’d they throw that tea overboard in 1773?). And here they go yet again:

     ‘Objective 3.3 Risks | The success of this objective could be impacted by trade barriers placed on US companies by the Sri Lankan government. Policies focused on import substitution & self-reliance may prevent the Sri Lankan Government from adhering to economic reforms in line with international best practices. Sri Lanka’s debt situation and fiscal position may limit the government’s financial space… The Embassy will engage with the government, including through renewed Trade & Investment Framework Agreement talks in 2022, to remove existing barriers & refrain from import substitution practices. The Embassy will also leverage US Export Import Bank & US International Development Finance, and other funding sources to overcome Sri Lanka’s financial limitations.’ What if these limitations have been imposed by preventing industrialization?

     So-called Development Financial Institutions (DFIs) set up by imperialist countries, promote their own industries & sabotage our own industrialization. Foreign DFIs ‘invest’ in local banks & financial institutions, mainly to promote sales of their own industrial goods: machinery, vehicles, etc. The most famous DFI is the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC), investing in Brandix, Commercial Bank etc. Sri Lankan banks complained that foreign DFIs were not only withholding funding and demanding immediate upfront payment. Local Sri Lankan banks were not just being held hostage by DFIs. DFIs are on the verge of taking them over (see ee 14 May 2022).

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• ‘We must cease to think of English as a colonial language,’ claims ‘celebrity’ Colombo novelist Ashok Ferry promoting a literary festival funded by English opium-bank HSBC, British Council, Goethe Institute, etc. (see ee Media). Meanwhile, British Council is being accused of high fraud for robbing the EU’s 7million Euros (~Rs2.5bn), for a project to strengthen local mediation boards (see ee Random Notes).

     Apparently, the British Council, an English-state-promoted NGO, which doesn’t pay taxes, is seen more as a teflon-no-stick Bermuda Triangle, where funds slither off and simply disappear without trace. They provide absolutely little accountability, even as their English media like to point fingers at how corrupt our elected representatives are.

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‘If persons who were committed to contributing towards the betterment

of the society and its growth, are being discarded and disregarded

when they grow old, it only speaks of signs of an uncivilized society…

A trend of pushing children who have lost the protection of their parents

or guardians into children’s homes, or cast into positions where

their wellbeing is completely disregarded has been observed in our country’

– CPSL: Social Welfare Program (see ee Focus)

•Welfare is the penance the rich pay for refusing to industrialize the economy. The local oligarchy also refuse to employ the people of this country with dignified skilled work, even as they monopolize the resources of the country, preferring to sell them off to the highest foreign bidders.

     This ee continues reproducing the Communist Party of Sri Lanka’s Alternative Program – The Way Forward – focusing on Social Welfare: While the US’ IMF is throwing even able workers into the dump heaps; and Samurdhi – downgraded and relabelled yet again, to Aswesuma – is typically reported as a fraud. It is a fraud in a way, as it doesn’t really resurrect people, but not in the manner labelled by the true welfare-recipients: such as US-Dollared Advocata, etc., which one economist called a non-state sector thinktank!! Ha! Is the USA a non-state? They also forget that this country has survived through the hells of the last 500 years and more, largely through its Buddhist ethos.

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• Any name of a person or an institution usually repeated by English media more than once in a day or a week is usually an agent of imperialism, funded by their agencies, banks and multinationals (see ee Industry, for the extended coverage of Rividhanavi, a consortium of Lakdhanavi, Windforce & the Blue Circle of Singapore).

     Take for instance, the media trope that the IMF and India has helped us out of a bad situation. These ‘friends’ staged this default themselves, even as they constantly point fingers at our leaders.

     India’s Upcountry Minister in Sri Lanka, S Thondaman reminds us how close we are to India, yet forgets to ask why, eg, this week, ‘In a tea garden in North Bengal, a 58-year-old Adivasi worker died of alleged starvation after he was unable to obtain food from government sources.’ Or that there is no money in India’s Budget for unorganised workers, who constitute more than 90% of India’s workers and contribute more than 50% of that country’s GDP.

     And yet, they say we are an ungrateful lot. The media tells us, Wall Steet’s bondholders are ‘frustrated’ with us, and India’s Adani is ‘angered’ with us, for not simply handing over Mannar (& Trincomalee), and they are all mad that we do not hand over (‘summa iri’) the enormous landholdings of Telecom and Cement Corporation lands, overriding their hallowed transparency, which only shows their imperialism has no clothes.

     The USA is telling the world in real-time a-la Palestine, ‘All resistance is futile’. Their economic dictat adds: ‘There is no alternative’ to the IMF’s panaceas etc. And yet, if there is no alternative, why does the IMF and the Central Bank have to actually impose the demand of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee (whose chief Bob Menendez was recently indicted for conspiracy) to impose the new Central Bank Act that makes it dependent on Wall Street vulture funds? – as an Institute of Political Economy (IPE) webinar this week pointed out. And why then has Bill Gates & Co microsoftly-softly crept into the President’s office? (see ee Random Notes)

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Contents:

USA’s Secret Base in Kollupitiya & Julie’s Media Scriptures