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

e-Con e-News 21-27 July 2024

Sri Lanka’s policy mavens can learn from the Asia Times Business Editor (he’s not Asian). He laments the USA’s purported decline in industrial production and supposed economic lagging behind China. China is the white man’s latest goni-billa, mau-mau, boogie-boogie scarecrow. Yet again. Editor D. Goldman wishes to spur greater resolve among his settler-compatriots to advance the US role as the world’s richest and most deadly nation-state in history. Goldman (presumably no relation to that Mr Sachs) calls for another (did it ever stop?) arms race, as a spur to modern industrial production. ‘As a young researcher for [US President Ron] Reagan’s National Security Council’, Goldman says he ‘produced a study saying that SDI [aka Space Defense Initiative, aka Star Wars – ee] would pay for itself through civilian spinoffs… We get industrial policy right when we have a national emergency – Trump’s missile defense is the way to go.’

     This arms race did not begin with Reagan. It drove the presidencies of the genocidal Truman, Eisenhower & Kennedy & Johnson and… Goldman perhaps wishes we will forget that this circle-the-wagons & kill-off-the-Indians cry has long been the rallying cry of white settlers from Virginia to Guam to Gaza. Yet, it is important to hear his jabber.

     Despite having access to the latest media ‘intelligence’, he repeats nonsense like, ‘In 1979 China took a nation of farmers and turned them into industrial workers, and multiplied GDP per capita 30 times.’  Then again, which white man (& ee uses white as a political synonym for ‘genocidal & stupid’, not a skin color) can dare admit that in fact it was the energy & sacrifice of China’s emergence as an independent nation in 1949, and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution’ from 1964, that built China’s huge industrial infrastructure.

     He does claim, however, that China now plans ‘to turn a nation of factory workers into a nation of engineers’. And also zeroes in, calling on the US to: ‘Reduce our forward deployment and concentrate resources on high-tech defense. We have faster chips. But it’s not just about processing speed: It’s know-how, education, an industrial culture & industrial communities’ (see ee Focus, China’s Long March through the Global South – David P Goldman).

     The omnipotence of such industrial workers is of course sniggered (interesting word, like the oft-used ‘denigrate’ – to insult, to make into a ‘negro’) at by our colonial-minded academics. Our education system, let alone the economy and our minds, has been hijacked.

     ee continues looking at the imperialist hijacking of the education system, and the abduction of the exertions of our minds & bodies, to prevent a modern industrial system. Week after week, we are subject to the whining of professors (mainly from the English Department, see the ‘Kuppi’ series in Island which laments the loss of ‘liberal education’ and in stubborn jargon claims to be a ‘politics and pedagogy happening on the margins of the lecture hall that parodies, subverts, and simultaneously reaffirms social hierarchies’.Really! Despite all such ‘liberal’ claims, these English slaves still wish for their ‘Master’s degrees’… and while unable to heal the nation or prescribe panaceas, all wish to be known as ‘doctors’!

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• The economist Usvatte-aratchi provides a selective look in this ee Focus at the origins of the modern university, and provides an interesting survey of its evolution throughout the world. He points out how such ‘hallowed’ institutions as Oxford and Cambridge had no part in England’s rise as a modern industrial nation. He also laments the failure of our liberals to understand how the colonial version of ‘arts’ was broken off from mathematics, technology and science. Yet he fails to describe the role of the University’s architect, ‘sir’ Ivor Jennings, in not just imposing a colonial system of education into our midst, but also embedding sectarianism into the constitution and political system to prevent the unity needed to resurrect ourselves, while continuing the dominance of the most dangerous minority of all – a trader bourgeoisie).

     Usvatte-aratchi reviews a book by the University teacher Liyanage Amarakirti, on what a university is. A US Fullbright scholar, the half-bright Amarakirti is on the central committee of the JVP electoral front, the NPP. He is also infamous for writing an ‘open’ letter to China’s ambassador, accusing that country’s government of interfering in Sri Lanka’s affairs! Trying hard to praise Amarakirti’s achievements, Usvatte calls this teacher, ‘highly regarded’ but does not mention by whom, and claims Amarakirti has reached ‘highest level in the academic hierarchy’. Whatever those heights are. Usvatte is nevertheless critical of Amarakirti’s ‘eclectic’ style, and in the end is ‘disappointed’ by the book, pointing out that dropping the names and opinions of ‘celebrated writers and scholars’ is no substitute for ‘analytical studies’ of institutions and their functions. He suggests Amarakirti is rather Eurocentric, by failing to acknowledge variety across the world, and claiming Harvard was the first university in the world! Mind you, Usvatte, too, ignores that ancient Lanka (Mahavihara, Abhayagiri) and India (Nalanda) had world-famous universities (we could argue what constituted the ‘world’ then). Noting Amarakirti’s association with ‘5 universities, 3 overseas,’ he also suggests Amarakirti is not aware that one of the universities he attended in the US was a ‘land grant’ college.

     Usvatte points out, ‘in the US, 70% of all undergraduates study in government universities and colleges’. But he does not explain that imperialist governments the world over, including in the white settler states, gave land to white peasants in and from Europe. The government built land-grant colleges with government money to teach them how to farm better, providing local agents to further their expertise in farming, providing low interest rates to mechanize their farms, and promoted rural industrialization!

     Usvatte however claims, ‘the market has always determined university output’. We have no idea what this ‘market’ may be. We do know that many US universities were promoted by large industrial capitalists to further their monopolies in their state. As Usvatte himself says:

‘Universities became important agents in the economy after about 1850, because the economy changed to need their participation. Discoveries in physics, chemistry and biology in universities began to be exploited by both industrialists and farmers. Far-flung enterprises like railways needed managers with special training. The land grant colleges in US were partly a response to these demands. The ‘Wisconsin Idea’ of a university as a ‘service centre’ where people resorted to solving their problems was symptomatic of this transformation… ‘a very high proportion of the leading industries in the US, perhaps as many as 80%, are derived from discoveries in US universities’.

     Our universities are not allowed to make such discoveries, and if & when they do, they are immediately stolen to serve others.

     Usvatte in the end is luckily not as sanguine about how great such arts education is: ‘I am not sure that Armageddon is around the corner if teaching liberal arts in universities were to decline.’ As much of the information in this ee points out, the English embedded major divisions in the society (time bombs, as Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai called them) to prevent the only method by which we can secure our true independence – the making of machines. (see ee Focus, Universities & Liberal Arts Education – Usvatte-aratchi)

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• Why are our ruling minorities so fearful of what a clearly genocidal white man thinks of us? Are they truly arbiters of the good & the beautiful? Why do the published economists & business news writers religiously echo the gospel of ‘exports’? Why cry over the loss of access to imperialist markets?

     To answer these questions, ee has tried to select & classify a scoop of the weekly English news about Sri Lanka, for the last 6 years…wishing to expose the media’s role in the continued colonization (cannibalization, may be a better word) of Sri Lanka. The English media is not written for us, and is meant to be read as if the white man is looking over our shoulder, whose approval we are supposed to seek. 

     We are ruled by a comprador faction, who are nourished through supposedly ‘privileged’ access (GSP+) to the markets of the whites, who can turn this access on and off at will. This ‘minority’ of compradors are thus allowed to move their capital and their relatives to hideouts in and out of the country, creating periodic turmoil for most of the people (see ee Random Notes, CPSL calls on all Progressive & Left forces to defeat the RW Government).

     In return, this comprador gang has to show it is able to mobilize large numbers of people (not the majority) to maintain the appearance of mass consent to our subjugation. They have to appear large enough to put on an act, through 1,000 fake media channels to make them look like they are bigger than they are, and us, smaller than we are. Exiles & diasporas (also linked to the local compradors factions & their exporters of commodity & capital) too are locked into the games run by the US state departments and related pitbulls & poodles. And it is not just about traders & merchants & moneylenders. An entire wannabe class has been nurtured. Comprador academics are also shaped by their access to western capital & ‘markets’ (journals, film & lit festivals, scholarships, etc).

     Comrades D Trump & J Biden may be doing Russian President Vladimir Putin a favor by cutting the legs off Russia’s compradors. But who will do that for us? Our compradors have infiltrated us from all sides, and have thus been emboldened, but it is important to never forget that we are many & they are very very few.

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• This ee peeks into the plans being hatched by the greatest threats to peace & progress the world has ever known– the leading imperialist capitalist nation & their poodles – white & off-white, and their effect on Lanka. We offer a glimpse into the ‘presumptive’ next President of the USA and his foreign & economic policies, as well as those interests driving the ‘presumptive’ policies of his opponent (‘the more effective evil’), a rootless coconut (i.e., brown on the outside & white on the inside!) fallen far from the tree, an off-white Indo-Caribbean female married to a Zionist ambulance-chaser.

     The IMF is again expected in town to review our report card. And the subject is apparently, corruption, which only afflicts our economies, and provides an unscientific alibi for the real roots of our underdevelopment. This saw our so-called leaders rush to declare their dedication to transparency, etc. Meanwhile, US Senator Robert Menendez, a former Cuban, who represents Rockefeller’s tax hideout in New Jersey, USA and acts as a yankee pitbull against Cuba, and, yes, and, was featured as the USA’s Torquemada on Sri Lanka in the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, thundering against our supposed congenital corruption, and demanding our acquiescence to the IMF’s 17^th set of machinations – was himself caught trying to skim off the certification of Egypt’s ‘halal’ exports to the USA….  Meanwhile, the USA President’s resignation letter (he’s too demented to run again, but demented enough to have his fingers on the nuclear and other buttons) was supposedly written and forged by his aide and corporate fundraiser Steve Ricchetti. US Presidents too it turns out are mere captive algorithms. Models of the rule of law indeed!

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Contents:

Sri Lanka’s Universities: Traders, Intellectuals & Industrial Treason