e-Con e-News

blog: eesrilanka.wordpress.com

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

*

e-Con e-News 25 May – 01 June 2024

*

‘We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it,’ twitted Tesla’s Elon Musk, after the US government organized a coup against Bolivia’s Aymara leader Evo Morales in 2020. Musk was standing earnestly in line to grab Bolivia’s lithium. Musk, who tries to be as ‘honest’ as his billions will allow, sadly went on to delete his tweet, holstering his pistol after clarifying that perhaps there was no immediate rush: ‘We get our lithium from Australia.’

     The only reason ee begins with this Hollywood tabloid-style trash, is because the capitalist mass media congenitally suffers from instant amnesia & effusive blather from one moment to the next. And we’ve been diverted to the apparent splash of attention splattered on Sri Lanka by Elon Musk, as eerily elicited by our PR-hungry President & his more circumspect climate-wary nephew. To protect the purported high-tech billionaire celebrity individual Musk who has to perform as a frontman for organized capitalism’s more anonymous ‘asset managers’, the media demanded that the JVP’s Sunil Handunhetti retract his measurement of Musk as an ‘economic hitman’. Handunhetti was congruently compliant & even kind. Musk is a just another mask in an ocean of muskets & masked men.               

*

‘In India’s immediate geographic neighbourhood,

RAW has often been willing to venture

into murky spaces to recruit killers’

– Washington Post (see ee Focus)

*

Washington Post is perhaps not just referring to India’s role in provoking wars in Sri Lanka alone. The Post has a testy tale to tell about alleged Hindutva hitmen in the former Apache badlands. They take rather naked solace in claiming that their recent telltale on India’s derring-do ‘on US soil’ was provided ‘by former senior Indian security officials who had knowledge of the operation.’ We are also supposed to lay aside the other types of US surveillance that provide such insights. We’re also sure US media are not against recruiting killers in more or less ‘murky spaces’. They are after all showing us how post-colonialism is conducted in the grotesque daylight of West Asia (with less limelight on Africa’s Great Lakes, or the Caribbean’s Haiti etc) and the fogged pipelines of the Norselands.

     The Washington Post is simply imputing, or wishes to be seen as imputing, that the US is all-seeing and all-aware: that India is treading crudely on the rather-wizened diplomatic carbuncles of the USA. They claim the US is trying to look the other way due to the US’ need for their broader strategic recruitment of India against China. This makes the US government overlook India’s purported silencing (including murder) of critics on not just US, Canadian and European soil.

     Imperialism nurtures diasporas and the critics within their bosoms & bellies, and then dispose of them at will after getting their own way diplomatically or otherwise. They are usually doing it Exxon’s way – Exxon has time-tested old expertise in such matters. ee often recalls Exxon CEO Tillerson’s demands on allowing corporate bribery before being made Trump’s Foreign Secretary. This ee reproduces the USA’s current imputations if only because they shed dim light on a period when there was heightened ‘terrorist’ activity involving the same directors & actors in Sri Lanka as well.

     This week’s flashing of ISIS-linked arrests in India, midst elections there, the crude nature of the alleged plot, point to the level of disregard exhibited by those who would rule us, at this moment when their interference in the country is at a peak. These narratives may also serve both sides who may appear to be opposed, filling their identitarian vote banks (as well as their labor markets): ‘Modi gets the Hindu vote; Trudeau farms the Sikh vote, etc.’

*

‘We have been facing up to an extremely perilous economic crisis

that ignited in 2022, that was translated into a political crisis

and then into a social crisis, and which has now been

full-blown into a cultural crisis’

– Communist Party of Sri Lanka (CPSL)

The CPSL sought this week to ally with a new political alliance to contest upcoming elections. The trader media is already spluttering spit on the new alliance – Sarvajana Balaya (SB) – calling it ‘Islamophobic’, ‘Ultranationalist’ & ‘Old Leftist’.

     The CP faces more day-to-day challenges. ‘Last year, the CPSL at its 80^th Anniversary celebration presented its alternative economic strategy, Idirimagen Idiriyata (Forward from the Way Forward), as a response to a burgeoning economic crisis… It is not just a question of looking for wrongdoers but a look at where we have all gone wrong,’ recalls the CPSL. ‘We called on other parties to discuss the program. The UNP and the SJB wishes to continue on the path taken since 1977. The JVP chose not to respond to our call for consultation. Based on an economic framework to counter the anti-industrial path which caused this crisis, which successive governments since 1977 have tread, we have since been in discussion with other parties and have signed on to this new Sarvajana Balaya Alliance.’

     The CPSL’s latest political alliance, Sarvajana Balaya, includes Dilith Jayaweera’s Maubima Janatha Party (MJP), MP Wimal Weerawansa’s National Freedom Front (NFF), MP Udaya Gammanpila’s Pivithuru Hela Urumaya (JHU), MP Vasudeva Nanayakkara’s Democratic Left Front, Gevindu Kumaratunga’s Yuthukama National Organisation, and a collective of ‘independent’ MPs led by MP Channa Jayasumana. (see Random Notes, Other Demands)

*

‘In a series of speeches made at the State Council,

especially during 1933-34, Wimalasurendra identified

the broad alliance that worked against the Hydroelectric Scheme.

He used different names at times to identify this alliance:

‘Big Business’, ‘Oil & Coal Combine’, ‘Almighty Oil Interests’,

‘Big Business & Alien Combines’, ‘Imperialistic Element’,

‘Big Business Element’, ‘Big Business Party’.

– BD Witharana, Negotiating Power & Constructing

the Nation: Engineering in Sri Lanka

The so-called crisis of recent times seemed to be sparked by fuel shortages & power cuts. A century-old drama continues. The Institution of Engineers (IESL) held a press conference at their Wimalasurendra Auditorium on Vidya Mavatha to warn that the planned electricity reform law will legalize the ‘procurement of renewable energy as well as transmission lines without competitive tenders’. India’s ‘Adani is expected to build a transmission line apparently without competitive tender’. ‘It is also building the largest renewable plant in the island so far without competitive tender’ (see ee Focus). Yet is this the main issue?

     Recall how over a century ago, ‘engineer’ DJ Wimalasurenda called out ‘big Oil’ even as his Laxapana vision of self-sufficiency in energy was sabotaged by fellow ministers who were then knighted for their services to Shell & British Petroleum (BP), just as now our leaders are locked into tenured fealty to Exxon.

     In the spirit of Wimalasurendra, the IESL could clearly state what must be done to achieve energy security and show us the path, including who & what will help us along – and who & what will hijack us? About multinational corporations (MNCs) & banks behind the electrical generation & distribution industries and their fulltime lobbyists & PR companies, with their bank hideouts, side benefits and happy endings… The IESL should tell us who they are? In the spirit of Wimalasurendra… Who is Adani a frontispiece for? Exxon? P&O? A whiff of musk and yet another masked man.

*

___________

Musk, Adani & Other Masked Hitmen