e-Con e-News

e-Con e-News 25-31 August 2024

US and Australian air forces practiced ‘hot pit’ bomber exercises southwest of Sri Lanka in this ocean called Indian recently – unreported by media in Sri Lanka. It was all part of ‘an overall US Bomber Task Force (BTF) Mission deployment to exhibit ‘joint force lethality… in the Indo-Pacific by demonstrating the US Air Force’s ability to operate anywhere in the world at any time’ (see ee Random Notes).

Add these old colonial practices to the evidence dribbling out that the IMF’s bitter prescriptions are aimed at creating further chaos in the country.

MP Wimal Weerawansa recently pointed out in Parliament, that it is useless to keep electing leaders, without dealing with the promoters and funders of ‘color revolutionaries’, who keep thwarting the people’s mandate, and keep destabilizing elected leaders, if they do not toe the white line: Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Thailand, Indonesia (see ee Focus, CIA Front Preparing Color Revolution Using Elections in Indonesia). We will not point to Korea, Gaza, the Sudan or the Congo.

Dive no deeper then, than into that sunken unsinkable yacht in the Mediterranean. That once-luxurious yacht is giving up more secrets from its depths, quite revealing of the vested mathematics behind calculating Sri Lanka’s so-called debt. Add Sri Lanka-linked bankers, media, accounting firms, law firms and consultants, to the company owned by the drowned ‘tech wizard’, which ‘boasts a veritable closet of former operatives on the books: MI5, MI6, CIA, NSA, & FBI.  One multimillion-pound investor, with a family long linked to the colonization of Sri Lanka and to the Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Co (P&O), which still controls our oceanic shipping, is Alexander Arbuthnot, whose father is a former English war (defence) minister, and mother, the Westminster chief magistrate, ‘Lady’ Emma Arbuthnot, who ‘presided over part of the lengthily cruel & prolonged extradition proceedings of Julian Assange.’ (see ee Focus)

     The links of spy agencies in the USA & England to the ‘financiers’ & ‘advisors’ who drowned and survived in that luxury yacht, expose their now-soggy fingers deep in ‘insider’ stock market manipulations. The practices of debt advisor Clifford Chance & Deloitte, the accounting firm responsible for selling off Sri Lanka’s national assets, offer insights into the – no doubt legal – practices of that world.

     Meanwhile, there is still no word about, or name given, to the Sri Lankan crew member still being detained in Baltimore USA, following the crash of the Maersk-chartered ship into a bridge on March 26. Still no name or personality given to the Sri Lankan passengers or crew onboard ‘the English-flagged luxury yacht The Bayesian [which] capsized in a storm early Monday, August 19 off northern Sicily with 22 people aboard… The 12 passengers & 10 crew members were believed to have hailed from Canada, France, Ireland, Myanmar, New Zealand, Sri Lanka, England & the USA’ (see ee Focus).

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• Politics appears clearer in Sinhala: ‘Politics’ is desha + palana – the ruling of a country, and politicians, those who would rule the country. According to the capitalist mass media, politicians, those who rule Sri Lanka, are all corrupt. So if the politicians of the country don’t rule us, who should? The capitalist media? Artists? The unelected judiciary (who jump on the boards of private corporations at the first chance)? The armed forces, then? The multinational corporations (MNCs, larger than countries), and their subsidiaries, branch plants, whatever it is they call them now? Wish to be ruled by a former microfinancier & Nobel Prize-winning usurer? How about offshore rule? Indian National Security Advisor Ajith Doval dropped in and met with Ministers and Generals….(see ee Focus, Poliitical Officers)

     The media use of surveys and polls in a supposedly democratic electoral process, is rather pernicious. The pollsters named in most news items admit to being ‘funded by the Neelan Tiruchelvam Trust, England’s National Institute for Health & Care Research (NIHR), The Asia Foundation in Sri Lanka, and others.’ The USA’s Asia Foundation is a notorious CIA front (see ee Focus, Political Economy).

     Looking through the fog of fine words about diversity, and inclusion & equality, transparency, sustainability, etc, the USA, like their colonial predecessor England, clearly has no solution to ‘the continuing development of Sri Lanka’s underdevelopment’. The US is both working to unite the UNP & SJB, while putting pressure on both these merchant and usurers’ parties. They wish to weaken and strengthen certain tendencies, to especially contain ‘national feeling’, in all the parties. Likewise, they are also funding the JVP’s NPP, and promoting them in the media. This is meant to help stoke the JVP’s fantasies, as well as help to ‘whip’ certain sections of the UNP & SJB into uniting against that eternal specter of ‘Marxists’.

Imperialism still controls the media in Sri Lanka, in Sinhala, in Tamil, in English. As is evident in Bolivia, Venezuela, and the USA itself, it is the corporate media that influences or can cast doubt on elections, regardless of the voting.

     All sides could be provoked to collude in unleashing or subjecting people to violence prior to any election, which would eventually help the current unelected President Ranil Wickremesinghe to stay in office under certain provisions of the Constitution. They are fattening chickens to feed monkeys, or fattening frogs for snakes. This is meant to exacerbate instability. An NPP government may not last for even 2 years, given the type of superficial criticisms – corruption, tax avoidance, etc – legal or not, which do not get to the root of the crisis. These usually unsubstantiated accusations could also be used by and against any opponent.

Neither will a UNP-SJB government last. The US has no plans to enrich or resell the country, since their main plan is to prevent any increasing relations with China. They would prefer to promote a Ukraine style-chaos rather than help resolve any of the longstanding economic underdevelopment after centuries of colonialism.

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• Last week, ee reported on how ‘the colonial project created an international division of labour to ensure that the colonized would never achieve modern industrialization & development… The fetters placed on Sri Lanka’s fiscal & monetary sovereignty appear almost tailor made to perpetuate its underdevelopment & prevent modern industrialization’(Shiran Illanperuma).

     In this ee Focus, Indian economist Prabhat Patnaik shows how Bangladesh entry into an IMF agreement has furthered economic disaster, meant to accelerate long-term chaos. More importantly, the IMF seeks to block the state’s ‘capacity to intervene’ so that it cannot ‘promote domestic industrialization’. They have no wish for countries to actually pay back supposed debts. To promote production, requires ‘some degree of protection of the home market. This protection is however disallowed by the IMF.’

     Patnaik recalls how the World Bank & IMF after having hailed Bangladesh: as an economic ‘miracle’ just a few months ago, calling it ‘a success story of export-led growth’, are now actively pushing it into chaos. Wholly dependent on ‘garment exports’, and remittances from overseas workers, Bangladesh was hit by the ‘restrictions’ on such world trade by the pandemic. Bangladesh also depended on imported fuel, which saw spikes blamed on the NATO war on Russia. Then Bangladesh approached the International Monetary Fund (IMF)…. This sounds rather eerily familiar to our ears.

     Patnaik concludes: ‘the transcendence of neoliberalism requires the mobilisation of people around an alternative economic strategy that gives a greater role to the state, focuses on the home market, and on national control over mineral & other natural resources.’ This is what ee has always advocated for Sri Lanka. However, ee still wonders what the term neoliberalism includes, and leaves out…

‘The Indians will not reap the fruits of the new elements

of society scattered among them by the British bourgeoisie,

till in Great Britain itself the new ruling classes shall have

been supplanted by the industrial proletariat, or till the

Hindoos themselves shall have grown strong enough

to throw off the English yoke altogether.’

Karl Marx, Manuscripts on the Polish Question (1863-64)

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‘Neoliberalism is often associated with a set of economic

liberalization policies, including privatization, deregulation,

consumer choice, globalization, free trade, monetarism, austerity,

& reductions in government spending =100% IMF Proposals’

‘Often associated’ may be the key words here. This above definition came up during a social discussion of ‘neoliberalism’. But let’s see what neoliberalism & the IMF is not ‘associated’ with, especially in Sri Lanka? 1) Imperialism, 2) Anti-Marxism-Leninism (particularly anti-Stalinism). All of which amounts to anti-industrialization – to prevent the country from capturing the ‘commanding heights of the economy’ (Lenin).

     Imperialism was taken out of fashion almost suddenly, in the white world (let say, after 1976). No self-promoting academic would want to use such words, especially at a time when the white world was absorbing Asian & African ‘scholars’ (US Vice-Presidential Candidate JD Vance’s wife & other ‘Green Card’ Indians etc, are the manufactures of an immigration category called B1?).

     But in one shot the mighty eraser fogged out our major contradiction (500 years of contradiction at least – so now their calculations say: we owe them!) just as they were (expanding) launching their latest round of genocidal world wars (talk about real Keynesian – military – ‘welfare, and, Schumpeterian – military – ‘creative destruction’) to keep capitalism going.

     Then, while taming their working classes (actually saying ‘goodbye’ to them) and smashing unions, they welcomed an amorphous supposedly leaderless autonomous ‘multitude’ – ara gollo, indeed!). All this while also assassinating and massacring modern leadership, they also made nationalism a bad word. Especially industrial nationalism, the yakada nationalism of steel.

     After all, USSR leader Joseph Stalin, despite misrepresentations, gave leadership to gathering the late-19^thC and early 20^thC working genius around world into the USSR – expertise not only obtained from England & USA – to build an industrial state that can still defend itself – if it wishes to.

     So, they made the type of industrialized nationalism, of the USSR, PRC, DPRK, Eastern Europe, etc, a bad word, from which we are not supposed to study and learn, especially about the forms of organization (cadre party, central committee, politbureau) and machinery required.

     The word neoliberal is also so academic (using it, may make an academic, ‘edgy’ & ‘radical’ but retain their tenured career) and confusing (We doubt the word liberal was/is even used in daily (Sinhala) conversation. And also because few people even know what the 2-faced role of just ‘liberalism’ alone has been (the ‘freedom’ to own slaves). Neoliberal may mean even less but larger concentrated groups of slave owners. The original Rockefeller-funded economists who coined the word, also wished to call their attack, New Capitalism, and were clear this was about holding the rest of the world back.

     So now ‘analysts’ go into great details on ‘neoliberal’ policies – but these policies (free trade, globalization) have been there all along. Colonialism has been a ‘private ‘enterprise of the English state to keep its ruling class happy!? Again, people’s understandings of what ‘socialism’, ‘imperialism’ and ‘communism’ means, have also been happily confused, especially by so-called well-funded ‘Westernized’ Marxists (see ee Focus, Distorting Political Economy in Sri Lanka)

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Contents:

US & Australia Practice Pre-Election Bombing Runs in Indian Ocean