e-Con e-News

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e-Con e-News 10-16 November 2024

• US and Indian warships – the Indian submarine INS Vela and the USS destroyer Michael Murphy – sail into Colombo, one after the Presidential election, and one after the Parliamentary election, a week apart. Our innumerable political and economic crystal-ball gazers (drunk on dollar stipends) fail to tell us what this belligerence truly portends… Leaders and media have to deploy ‘strategic ambiguity’, in their pronouncements, which are then amplified during elections. Some hedge their analysis with the hack placebo of geopolitical rivalry, etc. We apparently have to balance 500 years of European piracy to affirm that whites still have the right to ‘rule the waves’ far beyond Washington & London. Perhaps they seek to remind us what they ultimately mean by ‘democracy’. These symbolic shows of force, meant to project power, betray weakness as well. Do these benefactors feel the ROR (rate of return) on their investments is insufficient, and they need some symbolic muscle-flexing too?

     And what does all this have to do with that kerfuffle about supposed threats to resting & pro-creating dollar-pampered murderous Zionazis in Arugam Bay?

     Capitalist elections & wars are never far apart. Take former Australian PM Scott Morrison, a frequent visitor to Colombo’s innermost security sanctums. It turns out Morrison lost an election and had to retire despite arranging for a ‘refugee ship’ from Sri Lanka to be sighted over the great divide at the very moment he voted. Morrison & Trump’s former CIA Director, Mike Pompeo (who even Trump now considers unreliable) are ‘strategic advisers’ to US asset management firm DYNE Maritime, which funds technologies related to AUKUS, the white-only club (honorary whites like the Japanese & slightly tanned Indians have to settle for the more ‘inclusive’ Quad, see ee Sovereignty).

     The Indian & US splashing about, also relate to the recent B-2 bomber attack on Yemen, on what the US called 5 Houthi ‘hardened underground weapons storage locations’, launched from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri via Diego Garcia. These bombers, which have bombed both Afghanistan and Iraq, have ‘far more than half again the range to enable it to hit any target in Iran’, if they take off from Diego Garcia, which Indian and Mauritius have apparently allowed the US to operate from for another 99 years. Most stories about Diego Garcia ignore the eviction of the original residents there and instead talk of the ‘Sri Lankan Tamils’ who were somehow allowed to claim refugee status on a US base!

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‘The 99-year term of the agreement, and of the treaty that will enshrine it, should

be especially worrying to Tehran…the new agreement enables B-2 bombers &

their successor aircraft to strike at Iran for more than twice as long…”

     (see ee Random Notes)

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Yet the message conveyed is: they can bomb Afghanistan & Yemen and Iran, and they can surely attack Sri Lanka & India too. We are being told to be patient, that the latest dispensation is still being weaned (off which breasts we can imagine) though no such matter of an Indian Ocean Zone of Peace, a cumbersome fantasy, can as yet be broached. And yet encroach farther they do. And it is within this scenario of the ongoing massacres in occupied Palestine, that the poor beleaguered Zionazis were apparently disturbed of their rest, on vacation from their chosen land of stolen milk & honey.

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Like baby birds twittering out the same songs from loud mouths wide open begging to be fed, the merchant media in Sri Lanka, which so likes to whine about corruption, is the swindle personified. ee goes to a lot of needless trouble – as we are often reminded by critical friend & foe alike – to reproduce much of the fake & fatuous headlines of the English media. Despite their claims to ‘diversity’, it is a work of wonder how this poodle media repeat the same bilge over & over again. If readers examine our news compendium, they will note how boring press releases from the white embassies & corporations & their so-called NGOs are repeated over again. Meanwhile Iran’s clear objections to being implicated by the US & Israel are given little saturated play in an obsequious media.

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• Was the new government forced to promise they would lift the Import Ban on Automobiles? This ee Focus reproduces Dhanusha Pathirana’s Sleepwalking into Disaster: ‘Having saddled the nation with a disastrous International Sovereign Bond (ISB) restructuring that ballooned debt repayments by billions [see last ee], the Central Bank Governor (CBSL) now pushes for lifting the import ban on personal vehicles – a blatant kowtow to the IMF’s imperialist agenda.’ Pathirana asserts ‘the Governor, with zero role in generating foreign exchange, is dictating its fate’. The Governor claims, the country can be flooded with gas-guzzling automobiles, instead of building industries that foster employment that requires scientific learning, as opposed to repetitive manual labor with life-consuming work hours of our manufactured exports. Pathirana says, it’s the IMF that ‘demands this ‘liberalisation’ – a euphemism for enriching foreign corporations at the expense of Sri Lanka’s future stability & development. Conveniently forgotten is the IMF’s own 2022 assessment under Article IV consultation, partially blaming our economic collapse on the very consumerism they now endorse!’

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This ee Focus also reproduces ‘Former Permanent Representative of Sri Lanka to the United Nations in Geneva’ Tamara Kunanayakam’s questions on the new JVP/NPP Government’s decision in October to ‘strongly reject’ the US-England draft resolution at the recent UN Human Rights Council, extending the mandate of an ‘external evidence-gathering mechanism’. Yet, on the following day, the resolution that the Government had ‘strongly’ rejected was adopted without a vote, ie, by consensus. ‘Consensus resolutions necessarily involve the explicit or implicit consent of the country concerned’. Then again, colonized countries depend on such badgering to provide an excuse for their inability to advance the country.

    Kunanayakam explains, ‘Country-specific resolutions are a weapon used by Washington to impose its hegemonic agenda on non-Western countries. ‘Consensus is only advantageous to the one who wields the weapon’. The resolution on Sri Lanka is ‘precedent-setting’, giving ‘legitimacy to the controversial ‘Responsibility to Protect’ doctrine that permits Washington to exercise its domination over other states on the pretext they are ‘unwilling & unable’ to protect their own citizens, thus undermining the UN Charter-based multilateral order & its sovereignty principle. She adds:

‘In the case of Sri Lanka, the initiator has always been the US.

The drafting is done in Washington & the text imposed in Colombo,

with the US Ambassador playing a crucial role. The regular

one-to-one meetings between US Ambassador Julie Chung

& Prime Minister Harini Amarasuriya, and between

the Ambassador & the President, is now an open secret.’

(see ee Focus)

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    Kunanayakam also claims the JVP/NPP government treated the BRICS Summit in Kazan, Russia, ‘with disdain… BRICS is viewed by Washington as a threat to its global hegemony’. She also queries, ‘why did the JVP/NPP government publicly lie that BRICS had rejected its application to become a member?’ However, the JVP/NPP and Russia have responded to the general allegations, saying, ‘Sri Lanka’s BRICS membership was not rejected’.

The growing of the BRICs alliance is truly welcome for countries like Sri Lanka. We have to shamefully endure sermons about ‘rights’ from global outlaws, suffer their sanctions to enable their extractions, while depending on the dubious benevolence of the USA’s triplets, World Bank, IMF & WTO. Much needs to be done, minus the capitalist media’s exaggeration of BRICS’ powers when their hacks tire of casting doubt on its aims. ee Focus also reproduces the Indian economist Prabhat Patnaik’s sober examination of the recent BRICS Summit in Kazan. The recent summit created a new category called ‘partner nations’ as a step toward full membership, and accepted 13 such new ‘partner’ countries, among whom were Cuba & Bolivia. He points out how BRICS has come out ‘against unilateral economic sanctions that the US-led imperialist powers have been imposing on countries that dare to assert their independence from imperialist hegemony’. BRICS also suggests ‘a program of reform for the International Monetary & Financial System’. He points out that the ‘free trade argument upon which the WTO is founded, is itself flawed’, of the injustice of ‘the WTO rule that a country cannot give price support to farmers’. He also offers suggestions beyond just de-dollarization, to eliminate the hegemony of finance. He also understands its limits: ‘BRICS remains a heterogeneous bloc that cannot be expected to adopt a radical agenda’. He then details the need for a truly radical agenda.

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Contents:

US & Indian Warships in Colombo to Sink Democracy