e-Con e-News

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Before you study the economics, study the economists!”

6^th Anniversary Issue

e-Con e-News 15-21 September 2024

Welcome to ee’s 6^th anniversary issue: This ee doesn’t just recall our first tenuous scribblings (see ee Focus, 6 Years Ago: Who Took the Money? Shut Up!). The portentous perils under a Binara moon this week make us echo SBD de Silva’s advice to those seeking to unravel our dis-ease: ‘If you wish to learn about the state of the economy, talk a walk along the pavement, look at what is being sold, & where & how it is made. And why we cannot make it here?’ It is to SBD de Silva, author of the classic The Political Economy of Underdevelopment, to whom this sketchy blog ee is dedicated. He passed away on 15 June 2018, at the age of 92. ee blog began on 21 September 2018. Even more interesting times unfolded thenceforth. In such extremely ‘interesting times’ the world is facing now, ee would like to express our appreciation to all our supporters & critics!

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‘You go to the Bazaar & you talk nicely with the shopkeeper & get a good discount.

Why would you annoy him by asking stupid questions about the manufacturers?’

– Sri Lanka Daily Mirror Comment on News from Lebanon

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This weekend saw the presidential election uncurtain its expensive democratic diorama, with little mention (at least in English) of our actual political & economic challenges, leaving the country in its state of suspense. Yet more drama lies in store, and all from Negombo to Kattankudy & Jaffna & Chennai & Geneva, all must play their part. This election, we’re told, is about the US & India ‘prying’ a ‘debt-ridden’ Sri Lanka away from China’s ‘grip’. Thus spaketh Bloomberg Intelligence, another private lip service of the US State Department. It turns out we’re being ‘trapped in the US-led efforts to contain China’ (see Shamindra Ferdinando, Unprecedented 3-Cornered 2024 Polls midst External Interventions, ee Sovereignty). So, should we just bend or go limp in order that the NATO (S)Quad not be given further chances to devastate the country as they have done & would attempt, anyway, until they are rendered unable? Return to Sender!

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• ‘Bombshell’ & ‘A Can of Worms’ is how local media greeted NPP presidential aspirant Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s revelation in Kurunegala, on Tuesday, absolving former President Gotabhaya Rajapakse for the country’s 2022 downturn. So what was all that aragalaying all about? Then there was yet another ‘bombshell’ – when another presidential candidate, former Justice Minister Wijeydasa Rajapakse, pointed an invisible finger at the US & India for organizing the April 2019 terror. The terror turns out have been funded through the 2017 changes to the foreign exchange act, as demanded by the IMF. Here then is the wiggling tale of how dollars & remittances were ‘legally’ disappeared (see ee Random Notes & ee Focus), which is usually portrayed as resulting from our ignorance & corruption…

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• Just before Sri Lankans stepped up to our fabled polling booths to show how hip we are to the exorbitant democratic draperies of the imperialist world, we were given yet another powerful jolt by the USA, who demands that Sri Lanka & the ‘Indo-Pacific’ accede to their dictat. Or else!

     Soon after a Yemeni hypersonic missile jolted military installations in Tel Aviv, ‘Israel’ is said to have ‘retaliated’ by exploding pagers & walkie-talkies across Lebanon on Tuesday & Wednesday, 17-18 September. They also targeted hospitals, pharmacies, markets, shops, homes and vehicles. The exploding devices are said to have been tinkered during importation. So much for ‘smart’ homes & patriots.

     The so-called ‘oil-rich’ West Asians (Arabs, Iranian, who transmitted science & technology from East to West) have not invested in their own secure technology. And neither has Sri Lanka. And this is what ee’s 6^th anniversary issue is all about.

     The USA – the latest supreme conductor of the Concert of Europe, with colonies (in all but name) across Asia (from Turkey to India to Japan & Oceania), & Africa & the Americas (from the Arctic’s Beaufort Sea to Tierra del Fuego) – who funds & arms & gently nurses Israel, claims not to know who did it?! Their clangourous media, led by CNN & BBC, claim the ‘Israeli’ operation only targeted ‘terrorists’, and point shaky fingers along a supply chain from Taiwan & Japan to Qatar & Hungary, and now Bulgaria & Norway. To embed an explosive trigger within the new batch of pagers, ‘Israel’ was provided access to the supply chain of these devices, surreptitiously adding an explosive component & remote triggering mechanism into the Lebanon-bound shipment (see ee Random Notes).

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     It is most apropos therefore to peer into the controls over new technologies especially by celebritified(!) ‘entrepreneurs’ such as the South African & US settler Elon Musk, the head (who turns out to not exactly be the ‘founder’) of electric vehicle (EV) maker Tesla. Musk purportedly monopolizes certain tech as well as so-called (heavily corporatized) ‘social media’. After all, Musk is famous for twitting, ‘We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it,’ after the US coup against Bolivia’s Aymara President Evo Morales in 2020.  Musk wishes to grab Bolivia’s lithium, though he later backtracked: ‘We get our lithium from Australia.’

     ee already stated, Musk ‘has to perform as a celebrity frontman for organized capitalism’s more anonymous asset managers’. We therefore assess the JVP’s Sunil Handunhetti’s measure of Musk as an ‘economic hitman’, after the still-President Ranil Wickremesinghe touted Musk as yet another possible salvager of Sri Lanka’s economy.

     As a ‘celebrity’ entrepreneur he has to mimic a certain egoism, swagger & je ne sais quoi. Yet we know why he must be basking in former US president Trump recently calling him the ‘greatest cutter’, for his mass layoffs at Twitter & Tesla. And it is not a matter of setting up a faux assembly line in Kuliyapitiya with the aid of the import-mafia’s Ceylon Motor Traders Association. Indeed, for all his ‘disruption’, Musk has to operate within the ‘culture’ of the US automobile industry, and its supply chains, in Japan, in China. His ‘electric’ green economy has been enabled by the state enforcement of ‘climate’ laws. Meanwhile, their media ignores that China’s EV sales in July just surpassed 50% of all car sales; and instead rant about needing 100% North America & EU tariffs against the ‘unfair’ competition of China’s EVs (under $20,000, a fraction of US costs… The whites appear to be looking more than acting green!)

     Indeed, Musk may end up suppressing the ‘industrialization’ of our own abundant highest-quality graphene into batteries. Graphene batteries offer significant energy density, charge speed, and overall efficiency, over both lead-acid & the lithium-ion batteries that Musk uses (see ee Focus). Yet those invested in lithium batteries, like Musk, may claim graphene is more expensive, and difficult to mass produce at scale, than traditional batteries. ee sees no better time than now for Sri Lanka to develop its graphene and make our own high-tech e-batteries?

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The covert US-backed terrorist attacks this week on Lebanon reminds how our countries have little sovereignty over who & what comes in & goes out of our borders. This is evident, not just with capital & dollar transfers and ports, but in the maritime boundaries as well.

     ‘Why did successive governments adopt policies to aid fraudulent traders to misdeclare country of origin’ (asks former Director General of Commerce Sri Lanka, Sonali Wijeratne, Great import/re-export scam set to destroy local production, ee Economists). Indeed, in April 2024, Customs trade unions, themselves under attack by shipping company owners (led by Maersk) for being ornery & corrupt, instead pointed out how the new Customs Ordinance handed over executive power to private shippers. They added: ‘The government of good governance, which existed previously, had annulled the Foreign Exchange Control Act and …created relaxed policies [that] halted the scope for regulating foreign exchange in this country, and all of us are having to suffer its consequences as of today.’

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This is one more reason to simply despise & reject wholesale this media business of labelling politicians alone as corrupt. Let’s honor those national politicians who have strived to build the country out of 500 years & more, of devastation. Less than half the country was deemed literate when the English claimed to exit (but didn’t!) in 1948. Only 1% of the population was gauged literate in English. And infant mortality was 27%!

     What continues to hold us down is not corrupt at all. It is all perfectly legal! Like their genocidal wars on Korea & Myanmar. Like their genocides in Congo & Yemen & Gaza. Where are the UN ‘peacekeepers’, the loudmouthed UNHRC etc, basking in the sun on doing-goodism and ending up very-well on dollar payrolls?

     And as for our economy. It is all legit, this merchant & moneylender capitalism – to which we have been enchained. This Import-Export colonial plantation economy. But don’t depend on the USA’s IMF to tell us any different:

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 ‘If we analyse the key issues other than ‘Cost of Living’ ‘

that a typical consumer is up against [it’s] ‘Corruption’.

These were the key findings of the IMF 16-point plan that was presented.’

– Rohantha Athukorala, Qualitative Study by India’s

Quantum Research Agency (see ee Economists)

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It is the uncorrupt & innumerate IMF that calculates – after 500 years & more of this flim-flummery about the wonders of English colonialism – that somehow we owe them. That what they have been doing across the world should continue to be.

     The history of the franchise in Sri Lanka is not just of preserving colonial control through deindustrialization. It is a story of trying to prevent the actual role of the people, while presenting facades of representation: from official & unofficial representatives, appointed & educated (read: civilized), merchants & moneylenders, communal members, proportional representatives, etc.

     A true history choreographing the ballet of the ballot in the shadow of the bullet would array the delights of 76 years of English parliamentary parlez-vous while underwearing the straitjackets of a franchise limited by finance & fiat. At the first election held under colonial auspices in 1947, planters carried guns to deter workers, upper castes blockaded lower castes out of chaste voting booths, etc.

     After targeting the iron & steel workshops and related tool & weapon makers, the English (& that cavalcade of invaders before them) prioritized the destruction of a complex irrigation system on which the solidarity of the village was based. We certainly learn little about the purana Gam Sabha (village council) system, but it appears to be, given the historical context, much more ‘democratic’ than what claims to rule the country now. And this now, contentious as it is, still remains far more democratic than what transpired under colonial rule before 1948.

     Instead of clasping our long Sinhala Buddhist culture & civilization of production and the powerful hand of the state the guides such endeavours, a still-colonial education system & media & other ideological machines (you’re probably reading this on an imported device subject to all manner of imported ‘impulses’!) instead promotes an imported romanticism & fantasy which amounts to anarchism & nihilism and inevitable despair. Rather than the US, England & EU deploying spies in the guise of election monitors across the country, it is we, along with all our struggling comrade countries, who should really be monitoring them….

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Contents:

The USA is Paging Sri Lanka: Get the Message?

Courtesy National People’s Power 

National People’s Power About NPP

Welcome to the Jathika Jana Balawegaya (NPP), a dynamic political movement comprising 21 diverse groups, including political parties, youth organizations, women’s groups, trade unions, and civil society organizations. Established in 2019, NPP is driven by a shared vision of fostering a more progressive Sri Lanka. Our core objectives encompass cultivating an uncorrupted, service-oriented, accountable, and transparent political culture, promoting economic democracy for fairer wealth distribution, strengthening social protections, and championing an inclusive, democratic Sri Lankan identity. Our organizational structure, from the Steering Committee to District Executive Councils, empowers voices at all levels, making NPP a force for positive change in the nation. Join us in shaping a brighter future for Sri Lanka.

What is jathika Jana Balawegaya NPP Sri Lanka | Who are the members

Our National Executive Committee Members

Anura Kumara Dissanayake (Leader)

Professor Liyanage Amarakirthi

Vijita Herath

Lal Wijenayake

Nimala Siriwardena

Ravi Siriwardena

Asoka Peiris

Dr. Nihal Abeysinghe

Bimal Ratnayake

Professor Anil Jayantha Fernando

Kamal Perera

Mahinda Ratnayake

Dr. Harini Amarasuriya

Professor Vijay Kumar

Harshana Nanayakkara

Lal Kantha

Sheikh Munir Mulaffar

Ajith Hadley Perera

Sunil Handunneththi

Ananda Wijepala

Visakesha Chandrasekharm

Dr. Nalinda Jayathissa

Professor Wasantha Subasinghe

Upul Kumarapperuma

Professor Chrishantha Abeysena

Jagath Manuvarna

Muditha Nanayakkara

Ramalingam Chandrasekar

Saroja Savitri Paulraj

Professor Sunil Senevi

Kumara Jayakody

Vraie Cally Balthazar

Samantha Vidyaratne

Professor Jinasena Hevage

I. N. Ikram

Wasantha Samarasinghe

Charith Galhena

Premaratne Tennakon

Dr. Rizvi Sali

Dr. Kaushalya Ariyaratne

Aruna Shanta Nonis

Nihal Galappatti

Samanmalee Gunasinghe

Dr. Ajith De Mel

Chaminda Jayasuriya

Vijith Rohana

Namal Karunaratne

P.D.N.K.Palihena

Krishnan Kalaichchelvi

Sunil Vatagala

Dr. H.P. dhammika

Professor Upali Panilage

Nalin Hewage

Chaturanga Abeysinghe

Eranga Weeraratne

Kitnan Selvaraj

Lakshman Nipunarachchi

R.M. Jayawardene

Sandun Yaapa

Dr. Ashoka Ranwala

Ravindu Usvatakeiya

Arun Hemachandra

Rathne Gamage

Upali Samarasinghe

Wasantha Piyathissa

Mahinda Jayasinghe

Eranga Gunasekara

Shantha Padmakumara

Gamagedara Dissanayake

T.B.Sarath

Manjula Suraweera Arachchi

Dr. Anura Karunathileka

Professor Chandana Abeyrathne

Partner Organizations & Political Parties of NPP

• Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP Sri Lanka)
• 71 Sahodrathwa Sansadaya (Brotherhood Society of 71)
• Aluth Parapura (New Generation)
• Aluth Piyapath (New Wings)
• Ethera Api
• Mass Guiding Artists
• Public Servants for Public Service (PSPS)
• Janodanaya
• National Bhikkhu Front
• National Intellectuals Organization
• National Trade Union Centre
• Dabindu Collective
• Sri Lanka Communist Party (Alternative Group)
• University Teachers for Social Justice
• Doctors for Social Justice
• Progressive Women’s Collective
• Samabhimani Collective
• Husmata Husmak
• United Left Power
• All Ceylon Estate Workers’ Union
• Inter Company Employees’ Union

Address: 464/20, Pannipitiya Road, Battaramulla, Sri Lanka

Email: contact@npp.lk

Tel: 0112785612, 0777199524, 0714458399

Fax: 0112786050

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Aryan Rai Courtesy India Today

Marxist leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake was declared the winner of the Sri Lankan presidential election by the country’s Election Commission after an unprecedented second round of counting of votes.

Anura Kumara Dissanayake, 56, the leader of the Marxist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna party’s broader front National People’s Power (NPP), defeated his closest rival Sajith Premadasa of the Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB).

In Short

• PM Modi said he looked forward to working together and strengthening cooperation
• Dissanayake was declared winner after second round of counting
• Incumbent Ranil Wickremesinghe was eliminated in first round

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday congratulated Anura Kumara Dissanayake for his victory in the Sri Lankan presidential election and said he looks forward to working closely with him to further strengthen the Indo-Lanka multifaceted cooperation.

Marxist leader Dissanayake was declared the winner of the Sri Lankan presidential election by the country’s Election Commission after an unprecedented second round of counting of votes.

Dissanayake, 56, the leader of the Marxist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna party’s broader front National People’s Power (NPP), defeated his closest rival Sajith Premadasa of the Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB).

Incumbent president Ranil Wickremesinghe was eliminated in the first round after he failed to come within the top two in the vote list.

“Congratulations @anuradisanayake, on your victory in the Sri Lankan Presidential elections. Sri Lanka holds a special place in India’s Neighbourhood First Policy and Vision SAGAR,” Modi said on X.

“I look forward to working closely with you to further strengthen our multifaceted cooperation for the benefit of our people and the entire region,” the prime minister said.

Harshita Das Courtesy Outlook India

Anura Dissanayake’s victory is a historic moment for his party, Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna, as he becomes the first Marxist leader to assume the presidency in Sri Lanka. This represents a broader shift within Sri Lankan politics.

Anura Kumara Dissanayake Photo: X/@anuradisanayake

On Sunday, Anura Kumara Dissanayake, a Marxist leader and head of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), was declared Sri Lanka’s next President, marking a historical milestone in the country’s political landscape. Dissanayake, 55, has become Sri Lanka’s first-ever Marxist president after securing 42.31% of the vote in the presidential election held on Saturday.

Dissanayake’s ascent to the presidency represents a remarkable comeback for the JVP,  which has historically struggled to gain a foothold in mainstream politics.

Dissanayake’s political journey

Born in Galewela in 1968 and raised in Kekirawa, Dissanayake came from a humble background. He pursued a degree in science at Kelaniya University, where his political journey began as a student leader He joined the Janatha Vimukthi in 1987 Peramuna (JVP) at a time of national upheaval and became a key figure in the party’s decision-making body.

For decades, the JVP had oscillated between rebellion and political participation, marked by violent uprisings in 1971 and again from 1987 to 1990. However, as the political landscape shifted, Dissanayake advocated for a democratic approach, helping to redefine the party’s image and ultimately leading to its rebranding as the National People’s Power (NPP) in 2019.

Fast forward to September 2024. After mass protests that led to the removal of former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa in 2022, people turned to Dissanayake for leadership. His message against corruption and promise of a fresh start resonated, especially with young voters tired of traditional politicians. 

His campaign resonated particularly with young voters disillusioned by decades of corruption and mismanagement. Dissanayake’s message of anti-corruption and his vision for systemic change appealed to many who participated in the mass protests that led to the ousting of former president Gotabaya Rajapaksa in 2022. Now operating as the National People’s Power (NPP), his party has shifted focus toward democratic reforms, economic recovery, and social justice, promising a break from the old political norms.

Throughout his campaign, he pressed for the urgent need for substantial reforms in education, public health, and housing. His focus on accountability was clear as he declared that only an un-corrupt force will take action against the corrupt,” highlighting the failures of previous administrations to tackle the country’s economic crises effectively.

Marxist Leader Dissanayake Says ‘Victory Belongs To All’ Following Win In Sri Lanka Presidential Polls

BY Outlook Web Desk

Challenges ahead

Historically, the NPP had opposed International Monetary Fund (IMF) programs, but Dissanayake’s approach now includes a willingness to engage with such reforms, albeit with conditions for re-negotiation.

As Dissanayake takes office, he faces immediate challenges, particularly in addressing the country’s dire economic situation. His leadership will be scrutinized as he attempts to reconcile his party’s historical stances with the pressing need for economic reform and international cooperation. 

The eyes of a nation eager for change are now firmly on him, as he begins this new chapter in Sri Lanka’s political narrative.

Sri Lanka Presidential Polls Begin; Reflecting On Its 2022 Economic Meltdown & Survival

BY Outlook Web Desk

What does Dissanayake’s win mean for India?

Dissanayake is the leader of the party which has been historically anti-India. As Dissanayake steps into the presidency, he signals a strategic shift in this longstanding position. Despite his party’s history of opposition to foreign influence, particularly from India, he has indicated a willingness to engage diplomatically with international partners. 

Recognizing the geopolitical realities of the region, he has expressed a commitment to engaging with India, acknowledging its significant role in Sri Lanka’s development. He also aims to ensure that Sri Lanka’s interests are prioritized in the geopolitical contest between India and China, advocating for a balanced foreign policy that fosters development without compromising sovereignty.

In interviews leading up to his election, Dissanayake has outlined several key policies aimed at fostering constructive relations with India. He has stressed the importance of ensuring that Sri Lankan territories—land, sea, and airspace—are not used in ways that threaten regional stability, reflecting a more collaborative approach. He also acknowledged the necessity of balancing economic measures with India’s support

Hiru News

In a special address, President Ranil Wickremesinghe expressed his deep gratitude to the people of Sri Lanka for the mandate granted during the 21st presidential election. He acknowledged that, in accordance with the will of the people, the leadership of the country should now be passed on to President Anura Dissanayake.

President Wickremesinghe extended his sincere thanks to all those who supported him during his tenure. He reflected on his role as a caretaker, stating that he had guided “the beloved child of Sri Lanka” across significant challenges, symbolized by the “Vine Bridge,” and expressed his confidence that under President Dissanayake’s leadership, the journey will continue safely and successfully.

The full transcript of President Ranil Wickremesinghe’s speech is shown below;

Ayubowan!

Dear Citizens,

The people of the country have given their decision at this Presidential Election held on 21st September 2024. Therefore, we must respect their decision and act according to that mandate to ensure the functioning of the country.

Two years ago, I took over a bankrupt country and a collapsed economy at an extremely turbulent time.

I accepted the challenge at a time when no one else had the courage to face it.

I successfully completed the responsibility that history put upon my shoulders.

I was able to rescue my motherland from bankruptcy within a short period of two years.

I believe this to be the most important thing I could do for my country during my political career.

Inflation was 70% when I took over the country, but I could reduce it to 0.5% during my time as the President.

I increased the Foreign Reserve, which was at USD 20 Million when I came to power, to USD 5.7 Billion.

I was able to ensure that the Sri Lankan Rupee which was 380 against the US Dollar, came down to a strong and solid amount of 300.

Also, when I took over, the economic growth of the country was negative 7.3% (- 7.3%). But I was able to increase it to a positive 2.3% (2.3%). I am happy and proud about it.

I believe that the future generation of the country will give the proper assessment of my historical political role, the way it deserves.

I am aware that my place in history as the ruler of this country will be decided not today but in the future.

I followed the right path and saved people from hunger and sorrow. I hope that the new President will also follow the right path and put an end to the remaining issues that the people are facing.

I was eventually able to carry the dear child called Sri Lanka along a long distance safely – on the dangerous rope bridge.

Close to the very end of the rope bridge, people have decided to hand over the dear child called Sri Lanka to President Anura Dissanayake.

Mr. President, here I hand over to you with much love, the dear child called Sri Lanka, whom we both love very dearly. I wish that you will be able to carry this child away from the bridge to the other bank, even safer than the way I carried the child.

I will be devoted to serving my motherland with or without power, with or without a post or powers, for the rest of my life.<br />I wish to thank everyone who supported me, who did not support me, and all the citizens of the country during my time as President. Thank you.’

Ranil Wickremesinghe,
22nd September 2024.

උපුටා ගැන්ම  හිරු පුවත්

ජනාධිපතිවරණයේදී ජනතාව දුන් ජනවරම ප්‍රකාරව අභිනව ජනාධිපති අනුර කුමාර දිසානායකට රට භාරදෙන බව ජනාධිපති රනිල් වික්‍රමසිංහ නිවේදනයක් නිකුත් කරමින් පවසනවා.

එම නිවේදනයේ සඳහන් වෙන්නේ ශ්‍රී ලංකාව නමැති ආදරණීය දරුවා මම ඔබට මහත් සෙනෙහසින් භාර දෙමි ” යන්නයි.

පසුගිය 21වැනිදා පැවති ජනාධිපතිවරණයේදී ජනතාව ලබාදුන් ජනවරම ප්‍රකාරව අභිනව ජනාධිපති අනුර දිසානයක මහතාට රට භාර දෙන්න බවත් තමන්ට සහය දුන් නොදුන් සියලුම දෙනාට ස්තූතිවන්ත වන බවත් ජනපතිවරයා එහිදී පවසා සිටියා.

ශ්‍රී ලංකාව නමැති ආදරණීය දරුවා තමන් මෙතෙක් ආරක්ෂිතව වැල් පාළමේ ගෙන ආ බවත් අභිනව ජනාධිපතිවරයා යටතේ එම දරුවා වඩා ආරක්ෂිතව වැල් පාලමෙන් එතෙර කරවීමට හැකියාව ලැබේවායි තමන් ප්‍රාර්ථනා කරන බවත් ජනාධිපතිවරයා සිය නිවේදනයේ වැඩිදුරටත් සඳහන් කර තිබෙනවා.

ජනාධිපති රනිල් වික්‍රමංහගේ සම්පුර්ණ කතාව පහතින් දැක්වේ.

ආයුබෝවන් , ආදරණීය පුරවැසියනි,

සැප්තැම්බර් 21 පැවති ජනාධිපතිවරණයෙන් මේ රටේ බහුතර ජනතාව තීන්දුවක් ලබා දී තියෙනවා. අපි ඒ තීන්දුවට ගරු කල යුතුයි. ඒ තීන්දුව ප්‍රකාරව ශ්‍රී ලංකා රාජ්‍යයේ යථා පැවැත්ම තහවුරු කල යුතුයි. මීට අවුරුදු දෙකකට කලින් බංකොලොත් වෙලා, ආර්ථික අගාධයකට ඇද වැටී තිබුණ, ඉතාමත්ම අර්බුධකාරී වාතාවරණයකදී මම මේ රට භාර ගත්තා. ඒ අභියෝගයට මුහුණ දීමට තරම් ආත්ම ශක්තියක් බොහෝ දෙනෙකුට නොතිබු අවස්ථාවක තමයි මම ඒ වගකීම භාරගත්තේ. ඉතිහාසය විසින් මට ලබාදුන් ඒ වගකීම මම සාර්ථකව ඉෂ්ඨ කලා. වසර දෙකක් වැනි කෙටි කාලයකදී මේ රට බංකොලොත් භාවයෙන් මුදවා ගන්න මට හැකියාව ලැබුනා. මගේ දේශපාලන ජීවිතයේ මගේ රට වෙනුවෙන් කරන්න ලැබුණු වටිනාම කාර්ය භාරය එය කියලයි මම විශ්වාස කරන්නේ. මම රට භාර ගන්නා අවස්ථාවේදී සියයට හැත්තෑවක්ව පැවති උද්ධමනය බින්දුවයි දශම පහක් (0.5%) දක්වා අඩු කිරීමට මට හැකියාවක් ලැබුණා. ඇමරිකානු ඩොලර් මිලියන විස්සක්ව පැවති මෙරට විදේශ සංචිතය ඇමරිකන් ඩොලර් බිලියන පහයි දශම හසක් දක්වා ඉහළ දැමීමට මට හැකියාවක් ලැබුණා. ඒ වගේම ඩොලරයට සාපේක්ෂව තුන්සීය අසූවක්ව පැවති රුපියලේ අගය රුපියල් තුන්සීයක් දක්වා පහත හෙළමින් ශක්තිමත්, ස්ථාවර අගයකට ගෙන ඒමට මට හැකිවුණා.

එසේම ඍණ හතයි දශම තුනක්ව (-7.3%) පැවති ආර්ථික වර්ධනය ධන දෙකයි දශම තුනක් (2.3%) දක්වා ඉහළ නැංවීමට මා කටයුතු කලා ඒ ගැන මම සතුටු වෙනවා. මගේ ඒ ඓතිහාසික දේශපාලනික කාර්යභාරය ගැන මේ රටේ අනාගත පරපුර නිසි ලෙස තක්සේරුවක් ලබාදෙයි කියලා විශ්වාස කරනවා. මේ රටේ පාලකයා වශයෙන් ඉතිහාසයේ මට හිමි තැන තීරණය වනුයේ අද නොව අනාගතයේ බව මා දන්නවා.

මම නිවැරදි මාර්ගයේ ගිහින් ජනතාවගේ දුක් ගින්දර සෑහෙන දුරකට නිවා දැමුවා. නව ජනාධිපතිතුමාත් ඔහුට ලැබුණු ජනවරම ප්‍රකාරව නිවැරදි මාර්ගය තෝරාගෙන ජනදුක නිවා දමයි කියලා මම බලාපොරොත්තු වෙනවා.

ඉතාම අභියෝගාත්මක වැල් පාළමේ ශ්‍රී ලංකාව කියන ආදරණීය දරුවා මම හැකිතාක් උපරිම දුරක් ආරක්ෂිතව රැගෙන ආවා.

වැල් පාලමේ අවසානය පෙනි පෙනී ඒ ආදරණීය දරුවා අනුර දිසානායක ජනාධිපතිතුමාට භාර දීමට රටේ ජනතාව තීරණය කරලා තියෙනවා.

ජනාධිපතිතුමනි, ඔබත් මමත් දෙදෙනාව ආදරය කරන ශ්‍රී ලංකාව නමැති ආදරණිය දරුවා මම මහත් සෙනෙහසින් ඔබ වෙත භාර දෙනවා. මේ දරුවා මම රැගෙන ආවාටත් වඩා ආරක්ෂිතව වැල් පාලමෙන් එතෙර කරවීමට ඔබට හැකිවේවායි මම ප්‍රාර්ථනා කරනවා.

World NewsEdited by NDTV News DeskUpdated: September 22, 2024 2:35 pm IST

Anura Kumara Dissanayake became involved in the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) during his school years and fully engaged in politics during the 1987-1989 JVP insurrection. 

Anura Kumara Dissanayake was born on November 24, 1968, in Thambuththegama.

Sri Lanka’s Marxist-leaning leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake has taken a commanding lead in the presidential election, winning approximately 53 per cent of the counted votes. According to Sri Lanka’s Election Commission, Dissanayake, contesting for the National People’s Power alliance, surpassed opposition leader Sajith Premadasa (22 per cent) and President Ranil Wickremesinghe.

Here are some facts about Anura Kumara Dissanayake:

1. Anura Kumara Dissanayake was born on November 24, 1968, in Thambuththegama, Sri Lanka. His father was a labourer, and his mother was a housewife. He attended local schools and was the first from his college to get admission into University.
2. Dissanayake became involved in the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) during his school years and fully engaged in politics during the 1987-1989 JVP insurrection. He initially studied at the University of Peradeniya but left due to threats, later graduating from the University of Kelaniya in 1995 with a degree in physical science. 
3. Anura Kumara Dissanayake rose through the ranks of the JVP, becoming a key figure in the party’s leadership. In 1995, he was appointed National Organiser of the Socialist Students Association and joined the JVP’s Central Working Committee. By 1998, he secured a prominent position in the JVP Politburo. During this time, the JVP re-entered mainstream politics under Somawansa Amarasinghe and initially supported Chandrika Kumaratunga’s government, though they soon became vocal critics of her administration.
4. In 2004, Dissanayake became a cabinet minister in President Chandrika Kumaratunga’s government, handling agriculture, livestock, land, and irrigation. However, in 2005, he and other JVP ministers resigned in protest against a joint agreement between the government and the LTTE for tsunami relief coordination.
5. Dissanayake became the JVP’s leader in 2014, succeeding Somawansa Amarasinghe, and ran as the JVP’s presidential candidate in 2019, finishing third with 3 per cent of the votes. He announced another presidential bid for the 2024 elections under the National People’s Power (NPP). Known for his critical stance on Sri Lanka’s economic policies, Dissanayake has opposed IMF conditions, advocating for renegotiations to reduce taxes like the Pay-As-You-Earn tax and eliminate VAT on essential items. His policies focus on increasing social welfare and supporting businesses through targeted taxation reforms. 

Daily Mirror

Colombo, September 22 (Daily Mirror) –  After the Election Commission announces the NPP presidential candidate Anura Kumara Dissanayake as the winner of the 2024 presidential election later today, Daily Mirror learns that Dissanayake will take oaths as the new president at a simple ceremony held at the Presidential Secretariat tomorrow morning (23)..

Courtesy The Daily Mirror

Colombo, September 22 (Daily Mirror)- NPP leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake could be sworn in as the new President later today if the final announcement declaring him as the winner is made by the Elections Commission on time, a party source told Daily Mirror.

NPP General Secretary Dr. Nihal Abeysinghe told the Daily Mirror that the time for the swearing in cannot be confirmed due to the delay in issuing the results.

“If the final announcement is made on time, the swearing in could take place today,” he said.

Courtesy Adaderana

Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) Parliamentarian Dr. Harsha de Silva has congratulated the National People’s Power (NPP) presidential candidate Anura Kumara Dissanayake.

In a post on ‘X’ (formerly Twitter), the former Deputy Minister said they campaigned hard for SJB’s presidential candidate Sajith Premadasa, and that however it was not to be”.

It is now clear Anura Kumara Dissanayake will be the new President of SriLanka.”

Dr. de Silva stated that in the spirit of democracy and goodwill he called and wished Dissanayake the best in the arduous road ahead”. 

Meanwhile, Sri Lanka’s Foreign Minister Ali Sabry has also extended his best wishes to NPP candidate Dissanayake.

In a post on ‘X’ (formerly Twitter), he said the following;

After a long and arduous campaign, the results of the election are now clear. Though I heavily campaigned for President Ranil Wickremasinghe, the people of Sri Lanka have made their decision, and I fully respect their mandate for Anura Kumara Dissanayake. In a democracy, it is crucial to honor the will of the people, and I do so without hesitation.

I extend my sincere congratulations to Mr. Dissanayake and his team. Leading a country is no easy task, and I genuinely hope that their leadership brings Sri Lanka the peace, prosperity, and stability it so deeply deserves. The challenges they will face are immense, and I trust they will reflect on the lessons of the past—both the successes and failures of those who have held power before them. History teaches us that the real challenge is not in winning an election, but in governing wisely and staying true to the needs of the people.

Too often, those who have won elections in the past lost sight of the promises they made and missed the opportunity to bring real change. I hope Mr. Dissanayake and his team learn from these past mistakes and lead with a commitment to transparency, integrity, and the long-term good of the country.

I wish Mr. Dissanayake and his team every success in their efforts to lead Sri Lanka forward.”

Courtesy cna

22 Sep 2024 07:35AM(Updated: 22 Sep 2024 08:43AM)

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COLOMBO: Sri Lanka’s Marxist-leaning leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake grabbed a commanding early lead on Sunday (Sep 22) in his bid to become the next president of the debt-ridden country seeking to elect a leader to bolster its fragile economic recovery.

Early results from Saturday’s vote strongly suggested that the 55-year-old would become the first leftist commander-in-chief and head of state of the small but strategically placed island nation.

The election pits Dissanayaka against President Ranil Wickremesinghe and rival candidate Namal Rajapaksa, whose campaign conceded defeat early Sunday.

About 76 percent of the 17.1 million-person electorate turned out to vote, officials said, with final results expected later Sunday.

Dissanayaka’s strong showing in the postal ballot, considered an accurate indication of the entire electorate, boosted expectations that he would win.

Election officials said Dissanayaka had won 58 per cent of postal votes, with about a third of ballots counted.

In previous polls, candidates who garnered more than 50 per cent of the postal ballot have gone on to win the presidency.

Rajapaksa’s aides said Dissanayaka had won the vote.

“Anura Kumara Dissanayaka has won the election,” Rajapaksa’s campaign aide Milinda Rajapaksha said on Facebook, adding: “Namal Rajapaksa won politics.”

The 38-year-old scion of the once powerful Rajapaksa clan entered the fray as a dress rehearsal for the 2029 presidential poll, sources close to him told AFP.

Sri Lanka’s Foreign Minister Ali Sabry, a close ally of Wickremesinghe, also said Dissanayaka had won.

“After a long and arduous campaign, the results of the election are now clear,” Sabry said on X.

“Though I heavily campaigned for President Ranil Wickremasinghe, the people of Sri Lanka have made their decision, and I fully respect their mandate for Anura Kumara Dissanayaka.”

There was no immediate reaction from Wickremesinghe, but he declared an eight-hour curfew despite the independent Election Commission describing Saturday’s vote as the most peaceful in the country’s electoral history.

Police said the curfew was “an additional measure to protect people”.

Earlier in the day, the government declared Monday would be a special public holiday.

“NO VIOLENCE”

Wickremesinghe is seeking re-election to continue belt-tightening measures that have stabilised the economy and ended months of food, fuel and medicine shortages after Sri Lanka’s worst economic meltdown in 2022.

His two years in office restored calm to the streets after civil unrest spurred by the downturn saw thousands storm the compound of his predecessor Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who fled the country as anger mounted.

“I’ve taken this country out of bankruptcy,” Wickremesinghe, 75, said after casting his ballot.

But Wickremesinghe’s tax hikes and other measures, imposed under the terms of a US$2.9-billion International Monetary Fund (IMF) bailout, have left millions struggling to make ends meet.

Dissanayaka’s once-marginal Marxist party led two failed uprisings in the 1970s and 1980s that left more than 80,000 people dead, and it won less than 4 per cent of the vote in the most recent parliamentary elections, held in August 2020.

But Sri Lanka’s crisis has proven an opportunity for Dissanayaka, who has seen a surge of support based on his pledge to change the island’s “corrupt” political culture.

He said at a polling station he was confident of securing the top job.

“After the victory there should be no clashes, no violence,” he said. “Our country needs a new political culture.”

Fellow opposition leader Sajith Premadasa, 57, the son of a former president assassinated in 1993 during the country’s decades-long civil war, was expected to be in second position.

Premadasa has vowed to fight endemic corruption. Both he and Dissanayaka have pledged to renegotiate the terms of the IMF rescue package.

THREE-WAY RACE

Earlier in the day, political analyst Kusal Perera told AFP it was difficult to predict a winner from the three-way race – the first in the island’s history.

The government has banned the sale of liquor over the weekend and said no victory rallies or celebrations would be permitted until a week after the final results.

Economic issues dominated the eight-week campaign, with public anger widespread over the hardships endured since the peak of the crisis two years ago.

Official data showed that Sri Lanka’s poverty rate doubled to 25 per cent between 2021 and 2022, adding more than 2.5 million people to those already living on less than US$3.65 a day.

Experts warn that Sri Lanka’s economy is still vulnerable, with payments on the island’s US$46 billion foreign debt yet to resume since a 2022 government default.

The IMF said reforms enacted by Wickremesinghe’s government were beginning to pay off, with growth slowly returning.

But the country was also warned that it was not out of the woods yet.

Source: Agencies/zl

Courtesy The Straits Times

COLOMBO – Sri Lanka’s Marxist politician Anura Kumara Dissanayaka took an early lead in the Sept 21 presidential election during the counting of postal ballots, official results showed.

Mr Dissanayaka had 60.21 per cent of the 164,000 votes counted, out of just over 700,000. Public servants involved in conducting the election are entitled to post their ballots, which are the first to be counted.

About 76 per cent of the 17.1 million person electorate turned out for the Sept 21 vote, and final results are expected later on Sept 22.

The election has turned into a referendum on incumbent President Ranil Wickremesinghe’s austerity measures, implemented in line with a US$2.9 billion (S$3.7 billion) bailout loan he secured from the IMF early in 2023.

Mr Dissanayaka, 55, had vowed to renegotiate the unpopular IMF agreement under which Mr Wickremesinghe had doubled income taxes, removed energy subsidies and raised prices.

The initial results showed opposition leader Sajith Premadasa had 19.98, almost neck-and-neck with Mr Wickremesinghe who had 18.59 per cent.

If elected, Mr Dissanayaka would be Sri Lanka’s first Marxist head of state

The authorities declared an eight-hour evening curfew across the country while results were being announced via manual counts, as Sri Lanka does not have electronic voting.

Mr Wickremesinghe is seeking a fresh term to press ahead with his austerity measures after claiming credit for stabilising the economy after a crushing default on the national debt in 2022. AFP

Courtesy Hiru News

As per the postal voting results published so far, National People’s Power (NPP) candidate Anura Kumara Dissanayake continues to lead with a total of 125,999 votes (57.34%).
The current vote distribution is as follows:
Anura Kumara Dissanayake: 125,999 votes (57.34%)
Ranil Wickremesinghe: 42,307 votes (19.34%)
Sajith Premadasa: 40,595 votes (18.56%)
Namal Rajapaksa: 3,970 votes (1.81%)
Pakkiyaselvam Ariyanethiran: 1,677 votes (0.77%)

Courtesy Adaderana

The voting for the presidential election to elect the 9th Executive President of Sri Lanka was held today (21).

The Election Commission says that counting of votes has already started and the first results of the 2024 presidential election, which commenced today (21), will be released before 12.00 midnight.

The Commissioner General of Elections Saman Sri Ratnayake described the 2024 Presidential Election as the best in the nation’s electoral history, emphasizing that the election process was notably peaceful, with no reports of violence during the polling period.

A total of 17,140,354 Sri Lankans were eligible to vote, with the Gampaha District registering the highest number of voters with 1,881,129. 

Voting took place at 13,421 polling stations across the island from 7:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. today (21).

Voters had arrived at polling stations early this morning to cast their valuable votes. According to Ada Derana reporter, despite adverse weather conditions, voters in some areas showed increased enthusiasm for participating in the election.

Election officials reported that approximately 75 percent of the total electorate turned out to vote in this year’s presidential election.

Accordingly, the voter turnout percentages of several districts at the close of polls are as follows:  

Nuwara-Eliya – 80%
Monaragala – 77%
Polonnaruwa – 78%
Ratnapura – 75%
Gampaha – 80%
Colombo – 75%
Ampara – 70%
Kilinochchi – 68%
Puttalam – 75%
Kalutara – 75%
Galle – 74% 
Vavuniya – 72% 
Mannar – 72%
Badulla – 73%
Hambantota – 78% 
Kegalle – 75% 
Anuradhapura – 75% 
Batticaloa – 69%
Kurunegala – 75% 
Mullaitivu – 68% 
Kandy – 78% 
Ampara – 70%
Trincomalee – 76% 
Matale – 74%

Hiru News

The first postal vote result of the 2024 Presidential Election has been released, a short while ago.

Accordingly, the postal vote result for the Ratnapura district has been released by the Election Commission of Sri Lanka.

National People’s Power (NPP) candidate Anura Kumara Dissanayake has received the highest number of postal votes in the district with a total of 19,185 votes.

Independent candidate President Ranil Wickremesinghe is second with 6,641 votes followed by Samagi Jana Sandhanaya candidate Sajith Premadasa with 4,675 postal votes.

Namal Rajapaksa of the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) has polled 500 postal votes, while Dilith Jayaweera of the ‘Sarvajana Balaya’ alliance has received 251 postal votes.

Aloysius Hettiarachchi

It was yesterday that BBC and other main world media showed how some devices exploded on vegetable stalls in open air markets somewhere in Lebanon. I do not think what they showed in the markets were pagers. Most likely some of them were just mobiles the vendors placed on their tables while selling vegetable in addition to pagers the terrorist (or freedom fighters to some others) may have used for communication elsewhere. And today their motor cars also started exploding. Can it not happen in our country on the election day to disrupt it?. How can this happen?. This is my two cents worth on the subject:

About three weeks ago one of my old desktops made a huge noise when I switched it on. I thought something inside exploded. There are no batteries inside desktops except a 3-volt battery for the timer, unlike in a laptop in which there is a battery to store power. When I took it to the vender who sold it  (in 2013) their technicians told me that it could have happened if ants go inside and sit between two of those connectors of a chip bridging them. The power already in some capacitors can discharge making a loud noise. They told me the remedy is to replace the power unit. This was the case when I replace the old unit with an external one. What I am going to describe is how this type of explosions could be done remotely via internet. I hope those well versed in these technologies would enlighten the readers better.

Beirut was the first place I set my foot outside Sri Lanka in 1975 on my way to Kano, Nigeria. It looked an affluent place with flashy cars and high-end hotels; the young guys would rev-up the engine of their cars so much so that the wheel would turn a few times before the it took off. However, the British Airways flight that took me to Beirut from Karachi on transit announced that it would be their airline’s last flight to that city, as a civil war has erupted in that place. At the airport I noticed that each official looking at the other in a suspicious way. That situation has descended to the present level that people are divided on ethnic and religious lines and no one seems to know who is doing what. In a diverse country can it not happen to us with so much of foreign meddling as at present?.

A couple of years ago I wrote in this collum about hacking of mobile phones by NSA Group of Israel using a virus named Pegasus with a video by ColdFusion, a website created by a Nigerian researcher living in Australia; it had over million hits at the time. I did so when I felt that my phone also was hacked due to some activities of guys wearing dresses of a certain colour. He explained how the Chip fabricating companies ((or ‘Fabs’ as they are called) like Intel are mandated by their governments to include a mechanism ostensibly for the exclusive use of the owners of the machines to find out the activities of their employee, if they so wish. This may actually be for the governments to track what the users do, if they want for security reasons. One person by the name Edward Snowdon who worked for an NSA contractor ran away from the job and published leaked documents as a whistle blower. He stayed for a while in Russia and ended up in Ecuadorian embassy in London where he sought refuge for many years. Another by the name Julian Assange, an Australian who had been dabbling with computers from childhood and became a hacker is another guy who made a huge din about secret documents in Wikileaks. But none gave away the secret behind how they could get into a computer system; both have been spared.

At the moment, as far as I know, there are two main computer architectures which have been used by the computer processor chip manufacturers. They are the CISC or Complex Instruction Set Architecture and the RISC or Reduced Instruction Set Architecture. The former has about 1500 instructions defined while the latter has about 50, hence the name reduced. In all desktops and laptops (except those with M1, M2 etc belonging to Apple) run with former while 99% of popular mobiles run with the latter. The particular architecture those mobiles used is called ARM (or Advanced RISC Machines), a product developed by British engineers initially in Cambridge University. It’s a fascinating story how a young girl studying in it figured it out even to the extent of challenging those in the Silicon Valley experts in this field. And today the ARM is everywhere controlling our day-to -day activities. Thousands of engineers are employed in that company and we do not know who actually owns it as at present. How it is doing, is the most intriguing question. It is explained by the Nigerian youtuber in his ColdFusion video which I referred to earlier.

The programming language Linux was initially developed by a student by the name Linus Torvalds in the University of Helsinki, Finland with about 12k lines of codes as an open- source programming language. Many free-lancing coders contributed to it and presently it has some 30 million lines of codes, but managed by Linus himself via a platform called Git. However, the interesting part is this: at the beginning there was an allegation that he copied the mini operating system developed by Professor Andrew S Tanenbaum called MINIX having 10k lines of code. He is exactly of my age and is a professor in the University of Vrije, in Amsterdam. His book, co-authored by Ted Autin, name Structured Computer Organisation” was used by almost all IT university students including my daughter who studied in University of South Australia. His earlier version of the book she left behind where I was working overseas inspired me to study this subject of computer architecture as hobby.  I had to purchase a used paperback copy with an equivalent of S$50, although the good professor had given permission to an Indian printing company to print and distribute it at a cost of Indian Rupees 550 only in the South Asian countries including Sri Lanka; its not available in any of the book stores in our country. It’s the equivalent of the bible to Christians for IT students, in my view.

The allegation was that the Jewish professor’s tiny operating system is in all processor chips running both CISC and RISC architectures at the hardware level. And it can be used to do spying on users or whatever they want to do remotely. Perhaps it can shunt or bridge two connectors in the chip that controls power. One can imagine what would happen if the battery is fully charged when this is done remotely or accidentally as in my above-mentioned case with the desktop. With the use of internet, GPS that gives your location anyone who knows how to access the MINIX and use it can damage all devices in a certain area at a given time. There were videos that describe how to get the code to open the access to MINIX in any device. I didn’t dare to try it on my machine though. Perhaps the airlines banning the transport of tablets in bags is due to this reason.

We, too are in a critical juncture now. We should be careful in the use of technology these days. To be forewarned is to be forearmed, they say.

By Palitha Ariyarathna

Chris Knayzeh, a former resident of Lebanon who experienced the 2020 Beirut poChris Knayzeh, a former resident of Lebanon who experienced the 2020 Beirut port blast, was visiting when the news of the pager explosions broke.

Synopsis

The article discusses the catastrophic explosions in Lebanon caused by weaponized communication devices, resulting At least nine people were killed and about 2,750 were wounded.It also addresses the implications of these events in the context of cyber warfare, particularly the NSA’s hacking activities.

2020 Beirut explosion in 218 deaths, over 7,500 injuries, and significant property damage estimated at $15 billion. The blasts, linked to improperly stored ammonium nitrate, remain unexplained a year later.

In a shocking series of events, Lebanon has been rocked by explosions involving pagers and other handheld devices. These incidents have resulted in significant casualties and widespread panic, particularly among the ranks of Hezbollah. Initial reports suggest that the explosions were orchestrated by Israel, although no official confirmation has been made. The first wave of explosions occurred when thousands of pagers, reportedly used by Hezbollah members, detonated simultaneously, resulting in the deaths of at least 37 people and injuring over 3,000. A second wave of explosions involving walkie-talkies caused further devastation, killing 20 and injuring 450 more.

Hezbollah members carry the coffins of two of their comrades who were killed on Wednesday when a handheld device exploded, during a funeral procession in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Thursday, Sept. 19, 2024

These attacks have raised serious concerns about the security of communication devices and the potential for them to be weaponized. The pagers used in the explosions were designed to appear as legitimate devices but were actually rigged to explode upon receiving a specific signal. This level of sophistication highlights a troubling trend where common communication tools are transformed into instruments of violence. Chris Knayzeh, a former resident of Lebanon who experienced the 2020 Beirut port blast, was visiting when the news of the pager explosions broke. The sight of the gigantic mushroom cloud from the port blast, which killed more than 200 people and injured thousands, had already left a lasting impact on him.

That day, the Beirut port blast disaster resulted in a staggering toll: 218 lives lost, 7,500 individuals injured, and 300,000 people left homeless, alongside an estimated $15 billion in property damage. A year later, the cause of the explosions at the city’s port remains a mystery, stemming from 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate that had been stored in a warehouse for six years

The recent explosions brought back painful memories and heightened his anxiety, especially as he was stuck in Beirut traffic, fearing that any device around him could potentially explode.

According to The New York Times, Israeli intelligence took extraordinary measures by establishing a shell company in Hungary named B.A.C. Consulting, specifically to manufacture and distribute rigged electronics intended for Hezbollah. This company also reportedly sold standard, non-bomb pagers to other clients. The report indicates that the pagers were first sent to Lebanon in 2022 in a small batch. Following a speech by Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah, who denounced cellphones as Israel’s agent” and advocated for a broader use of pagers, additional orders for B.A.C.-manufactured pagers were reportedly placed by operatives of the Lebanese terrorist organization. Shortly after the explosions, unverified images of two damaged pagers began circulating on social media, displaying the word Gold” along with a serial number starting with either AP” or AR.” This led to speculation about a potential connection to the Taiwanese company Gold Apollo. However, Gold Apollo swiftly issued a strong denial of any involvement, clarifying that the model in question is produced and sold exclusively by B.A.C. Consulting.

Images shared on social media showing a damaged pager pointed to Gold Apollo as a potential manufacturer. However, the company has firmly denied any association with the device.

In a related context, the hacking of devices by groups associated with the NSA has also come under scrutiny. The NSA has been known to exploit vulnerabilities in various electronic devices to gather intelligence, often using sophisticated techniques to infiltrate and manipulate devices remotely. One notable example is the use of malware to gain access to smartphones, computers, and other electronic devices, allowing the monitoring of communications, extraction of sensitive information, and even control of the device’s functions without the user’s knowledge. Such capabilities raise significant privacy and security concerns globally, exacerbating fears about the safety of personal information in an increasingly interconnected world.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution has introduced technological advancements in cyber-physical systems, including high-capacity connectivity and new human-machine interaction modes. While these innovations hold immense potential for progress, they also pose significant risks that could endanger the entire planet. As nations navigate this technological landscape, the potential for conflict escalates. Many wars have historically been fueled by long-standing, hidden ideologies rooted in divine or religious doctrines, creating a mindset of us versus them” and leading to cycles of violence. To avert such catastrophic outcomes, we must prioritize mindfulness and a genuine commitment to peace.

The rise of new technologies brings about shifts in personality and societal dynamics. As people increasingly interact through digital platforms, profound changes occur in how individuals relate to one another and their nations. The ease of information exchange can foster divisiveness and tribalism, and nations face the challenge of navigating these changes without resorting to weaponized tactics. Moreover, geopolitical tensions are heightened by struggles for control over technology and resources, underscoring the importance of fostering dialogue and cooperation for global safety.

Instead of engaging in conflicts driven by ideological differences, the global community must adopt a framework based on understanding and mindfulness, recognizing our shared humanity. By fostering dialogue and cooperation, we can create a world where technology serves as a bridge rather than a barrier. Furthermore, countries must invest in their technological capabilities, developing indigenous technologies to create communication devices and cybersecurity solutions resilient against physical attacks and cyber intrusions. This approach enhances national security and cultivates innovation and self-reliance.

Given the increasing threats to national security from both physical and cyber attacks, investing in indigenous technology development is crucial. By creating and controlling their own communication devices and security systems, countries can better protect their citizens from external threats. The recent events in Lebanon and the hacking activities by the NSA underscore the critical need for robust security measures to protect electronic devices from exploitation. The potential for harm, whether through physical attacks or cyber intrusions, is significant, and vigilance is required to safeguard against these threats.

As we stand on the brink of new technological challenges brought on by the Fourth Industrial Revolution, we must avoid the path of conflict rooted in divine ideologies and instead pursue a future defined by collaboration and mindfulness. By working together to develop indigenous technologies and fostering international cooperation, we can ensure the safety and security of our nations while promoting peace on a global scale. In this rapidly evolving landscape, it is essential for governments to prioritize proactive measures and diplomacy to navigate the complexities of modern geopolitics and safeguard our shared future. By addressing the challenges posed by emerging technologies and fostering inclusivity, we can create a more resilient global community capable of overcoming the obstacles ahead.

-By Palitha Ariyarathna

Geopolitical

අරුණ ලක්සිරි උණවටුන B.Sc(Col), PGDC(Col), නීතීඥ.

1. ව්‍යවස්ථාපිත යුතුකම ඉටු නොකරන රාජ්‍ය සේවකයන්ට දණ්ඩ නීති සංග්‍රහයේ 289 වගන්තිය ක්‍රියාත්මක කිරීමට මහජන පැමිණිලි සටහන් කිරීමට සහ අපරාධ නඩු විධාන සංග්‍රහයේ 136.1.අ. වගන්තිය යටතේ නීතිය ක්‍රියාත්මක කිරීමට “ව්‍යවස්ථාපිත යුතුකම් ඉටුකිරීමේ ජාතික  කොමිෂන් සභාව” පිහිටුවන්න.

2. පනත් කෙටුම්පත් සම්බන්ධයෙන් ආණ්ඩුක්‍රම ව්‍යවස්ථාවේ 120, 121වන ව්‍යවස්ථා යටතේ ශ්‍රේෂ්ඨාධිකරණයේ පවත්වන නඩු විභාග, ජනාධිපතිවරණ ඡන්ද පෙත්සම් නඩු විභාග සජීවීව විද්‍යුත් මාධ්‍යයේ විකාශනය කරන්න.

3. වසර 3කට වැඩි කාලයක් වසා ඇති රාජ්‍ය ගොඩනැගිලි බදු පදනමින් කෘෂි නිෂ්පාදන සහ අපනයන නිෂ්පාදන ගබඩා කිරීම සඳහා ජනතාවට ලබා දෙන්න.

4. ප්‍රයෝජනයට නොගෙන ඇති රාජ්‍ය සහ පෞද්ගලික ඉඩම් කෘෂිකාර්මික කටයුතු සහ අපනයන නිෂ්පාදනය ස‍ඳහා වසර 3ක බදු පදනමට ජනතාවට ලබා දෙන්න.

5. ගෑස්, ඉන්ධන නල මාර්ග පද්ධතියක් අධිවේගී මාර්ග දෙපස ඉදිකරන්න.

6. පාසල් විෂය නිර්දේශයට 6 වසරේ සිට උසස් පෙළ දක්වා නීතිය විෂය හඳුන්වා දී අනිවාර්යය විෂයක් කරන්න.

7. පොදු ප්‍රවාහන සේවාව දියුණු කර ජීපීඑස් තාක්ෂණය හදුන්වා දී ජංගම දුරකථන මගින් බස් රථ ගමන් කරන ස්ථාන හඳුනා ගත හැකි පරිගණක/කෘතිම බුද්ධිමය වැඩසටහන් හඳුන්වා දෙන්න.

8. දේශීය, ආයුර්වේද, බටහිර වෛද්‍ය ක්‍රම සඳහා එක සමාන ලෙස රාජ්‍ය අනුග්‍රහය ලබා දෙන්න.

9. පළමු වරට ශ්‍රේෂ්ඨාධිකරණයේදී ආරම්භ වන නඩු කටයුත්තකදී නියම කරන දණ්ඩනයකට, සිරභාරයට ගැනීමකට, අත් අඩංගුවේ තබා ගැනීමකට, රඳවා ගැනීමකට හෝ අන්‍යාකාරයකින් පෞද්ගලික නිදහස අහිමි කිරීමකට, දඩ මුදලකට හෝ නඩු ගාස්තුවකට එරෙහිව අභියාචනා කිරිමට “විශේෂ අභියාචනා ව්‍යවස්ථා සභාව” පාර්ලිමේන්තු පනතකින් පිහිටුවන්න.

http://neethiyalk.blogspot.com/2024/09/9.html?m=1

අරුණ ලක්සිරි උණවටුන B.Sc(Col), PGDC(Col), නීතීඥ.
සමායෝජක,
වෛද්‍ය තිලක පද්මා සුබසිංහ අනුස්මරණ නීති අධ්‍යාපන වැඩසටහන.
දුරකථන 0712063394.

By Abdul Rahman Courtesy  InDepthNews

DHAKA, Bangladesh | 18 September 2024 (IDN) — On September 16, the Bangladeshi police arrested two senior journalists, Mozammel Babu and Shyamal Dutta when they were allegedly trying to leave the country. With their arrests, the total number of journalists arrested since the coming of the interim government in power has reached five. Dozens of other journalists in the country face the similar fate while some of them have been subjected to physical violence as well.

Babu and Dutta were surrounded by a mob at the country’s Mymensingh when they were allegedly trying to cross the border to India in a car with another journalist and escorted to the nearest police station, the Daily Star reported.

Babu was the managing director and editor in chief of Ekattor TV, one of the country’s biggest media organizations. He is also the president of the Bangladesh Editors Guild. Dutta is the former secretary general of Jatiya Press Club (National Press Club).

The third journalist arrested on the same day was Shahriar Kabir. All three of them were sent to seven days police remand on Tuesday.

All three were considered close to the Sheikh Hasina-led government and were critical to the quota reform movement led by the students. The Editors Guild of Bangladesh under the leadership of Babu had accused that a section of the quota agitation was against the heroes of the country’s liberation war with Pakistan in 1971.

The groups leading the quota reform agitation prepared a list of 51 traitor journalists” whom they wanted to be removed from their positions and barred from doing their profession due to their criticism of the quota movement. The student groups, who are represented in the interim government, have alleged that journalists named in their list were involved in anti-national activities. Both Dutta and Babu were named in the list.

The quota reform movement started in June this year after a high court overturned an earlier decision of the Hasina government to ban reservations of government jobs for the descendants of the freedom fighters. The students were initially demanding removal of high reservation in government jobs. Later, the agitation turned into a movement of regime change forcing Hasina to resign and leave the country in the first week of August.

On August 29, the interim government in Bangladesh filed a case against 25 journalists holding them responsible for the death of a protester in July. They were also charged with crimes against humanity. The list includes Babu and Dutta.

Journalists Mozammel Babu, Shyamal Dutta. Credit: The Daily Star

Earlier, journalist couple Shakil Ahmed Farzana Rupa were arrested at Dhaka international airport on August 21 when they allegedly were trying to leave the country for France. Both of them were working with Ekattor TV until they were sacked by the management on August 8. They were also on the list of 51 journalists mentioned above, bdnews24.com reported.

Ahmed and Rupa were also charged with the death of another protester in July.

Political vendetta?

A large number of journalists have been attacked by the protesters since the interim government took charge in early August, Reporters without Borders (RSF) claims. It also claims the cases against the journalists are without any base and outrageous and part of a ‘systematic judicial harassment of journalists.”

The purge of journalists who are considered to be affiliated with the former government has reached a new level. Media professionals are bearing the brunt of the need of vengeance that permeates this terrible legal cabal, which is hurting the image of political transition underway in Bangladesh,” said Antoine Bernard, RSF’s director of advocacy and assistance.

Dhaka Union of Journalists (DUJ) too asked the government to drop murder charges against journalists calling it unfair. While it is appropriate for any journalist to face if the specific allegations are proven, it is unjustifiable to entangle them in murder cases merely on accusations of assisting the previous government,” it said in a statement reported in the media.

Since taking power, the interim government led by Mohammad Yunus has been widely criticized for carrying out seemingly politically motivated arrests, targeting members of the Awami League and of the parties that were part of the coalition government. It has also taken a passive position with regards to violence against the Awami League and its allies with scores of leaders killed or their offices vandalized.

A large number of members of the Hasina government have been charged with the death of protesters and sent to jail. Hasina too is facing similar charges.

Left leaders, Rashed Khan Menon and Hasanul Haq Inu presidents of Workers Party of Bangladesh (WPB) and Jatiya Samajtantrik Dal (JSD), were arrested in similar cases despite the fact that they were not officially part of Hasina government at the time of the student agitation.

Sharif Shamshir, a member of the WPB told Peoples Dispatch that, media in the country is facing assaults because they are considered as the allies of the Awami League just like the left parties.

Journalists are arrested not because they committed any real crime but because they were considered to be allies of the Hasina government and their fate depends on how the parties close to the new system think about them in the end,” Shamsir said. [IDN-InDepthNews]

Original link: https://peoplesdispatch.org/2024/09/17/bangladeshs-interim-government-accused-of-political-persecution-of-journalists/

Photo: Muhammad Yunus is leading Bangladesh’s interim government. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Saeed Naqvi

Dated: 19.09.2024

That Juan Guaido, 41, has in his CV described himself as the ex President of Venezuela – 2019-2023” is not all fiction. Even when the world sleeps, the leader of the Free World is in relentless pursuit of replacing dictatorships with democracy worldwide. Replacing Nicolas Maduro in Caracas with Guaido was one such enterprise.

The Munro doctrine is alive and well” boomed Rex Tillerson, President Trump’s Secretary of State. It was therefore legitimate for US agencies to find a friend to be installed on the throne in Caracas. Venezuela has the world’s largest reserves of hydro carbons.

Vice President Mike Pence was given charge to keep a steady gaze on Guaido as he commuted between Colombia, the US and Venezuela to somehow ascend the gaddi.

As soon as the failed Guaido initiative became part of global amnesia, the leader of the Free World was dutifully at it again. Headline are still fresh about yet another failed effort to dethrone Maduro.

Dutch Foreign Minister Caspar Veldkamp told Parliament that Venezuela opposition leader Edmundo Gonzales has sought refuge in the Dutch Embassy. Before his papers for exile in the Netherlands could be processed, he found cultural continuity where he is now likely to stay – Spain. It would be interesting to see what new salvo is fired for democracy. It must be galling for the US agencies that colour revolutions are no longer giving the desired results.

Western covert operation must have taken heart from developments where their very own Fulbright scholar, Mohammad Yunus has shown the door to Shaikh Hasina whose emotional ties to India and practical ones with China were becoming something of a puzzle.

This narrative would be woefully off the mark if the explosion of public anger at Sheikh Hasina’s dictatorship is underplayed. It possibly provided the objective conditions which outsiders have exploited. It must be added in parenthesis that scholars like Jeffrey Sachs have been quite emphatic. State Department’s Donald Lou has been as active in Bangladesh and Pakistan as Victoria Nuland was in Ukraine.

While regime change” apparatus is still functional in the US, Europe in its post colonial phase is having no use for it. It has other ways to ward off the Left – occasionally tipping the scales even in favour of fascism.

Look at what was East Germany, fascism has quite impressively opened its accounts in two states. Political theatre in France has an engaging story-line: how to stop the Left?

This story actually begins at the European Union elections in June where Marine Le Pen’s Right extremist, National Rally, trounced Emmanuel Macron’s Right-of-Centre Ensemble by miles. In a state of funk Macron dissolved the National Assembly and called for national elections. The anxious French President hoped to recover lost ground. Exactly the opposite happened. Le Pen zoomed past him with 33% votes in the first round. Not very far behind was Left Alliance. Macron came third with 21%. Here was no absolute majority.

The fifth Republic had had it, should Le Pen win the second round. A fascist as President of France? The Left front and Macron withdrew over 200 candidates from triangular contests to prevent a division of anti Le Pen vote.

The trick worked but only to the extent that it stopped Le Pen. She came third, but Macron and his corporate supporters were in turmoil because the Left Front galloped way ahead. Macron’s neo-con agenda would clash head on with the Left Front’s socialism.

Instead of appointing a Left front Prime Minister as numbers in the National Assembly dictate, Macron placed the mantle on the Michel Barnier from the Republican stable.

Will the Socialist break ranks from the Left front? If not, the possible backroom deals could be sinister. Suppose, Barnier’s minority government is supported by Le Pen from the outside? She will then control the fifth republic.

People’s will as expressed by the progress of the Left front, will have been effectively neutralized by Macron-Barnier’s neo cons agenda.

Social welfare, price rise, health care, unemployment – issues that define the lives of people, will have been replaced by migration, identity politics, Islamophobia, military budgets, the staple that fascism feeds on.

What is being played out on an epic scale in France is more or less the pattern in most western democracies. Remember the excitement that was generated when Alexis Tsipras became the first communist Prime Minister of Greece, the cradle of western civilization.

No sooner had Communist reared its head in a European country than Germany, the biggest donor in EU, sat on Tsipras’s back. Greece’s debts would not be honoured.

In Spain the rise of 39 year old Pablo Iglesias as leader of leftist Podemos, at about the same time as Tsipras in Greece, caused frenzied response from the establishment: Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy whose unspeakable corruption had precipitated the election which brought up Podemos was manoevred into another term, corruption or no corruption. By attrition Podemos was killed.

It was clear as daylight that Bernie Sanders was derailed by the Democratic Party establishment largely for his socialist image. I wrote then: If you make Sanders impossible, you make Trump inevitable.” Likewise, if Jeremy Corbyn is impossible, Boris Johnson become inevitable. He succeeded clowning around as Prime Minister briefly. Right wingers in the Labour party like Peter Mandelson had sworn to undermine” Corbyn.

As the Bible says: there is no new thing under the sun.”

This had been the pattern ever, since Franklin Delano Roosevelt pulled his country out of the Great Depression of the 30s and 40s by taxing the very rich to pay for the welfare schemes. The socialist, communist and the unions had pressured him. The most popular American President in history who died in his fourth term ended up spawning corporate paranoia which has not lost momentum to this day. Joseph McCarthy remains a reaction to anything resembling New Deal. His spirit lives. Atleast in those early days of unbridled capitalism, a journalist of CBS News like Ed Murrow could single handedly demolish McCarthy. Today the field is wide open for capitalist callousness.

Courtesy The Daily Mirror

Cololmbo, September 20 (Daily Mirror) –  In reference to Sri Lanka agreeing in principle on the restructuring of commercial debts (ISB), Chairman of Advocata Institute Murtaza Jafferjee said it was a game changer on the path to debt sustainability.

He said there is a lot of political discourse on the need to renegotiate debt sustainability analysis, it cannot be done.

Making his remarks to the media, he said Sri Lanka is now under selective credit rating, and it will probably take a few more months probably to complete the whole process. After that, he said there would be a rating action on Sri Lanka.

Getting an investable rating is fundamental to our economic rating. It is important to ensure that our debt carrying capacity is improved before 2028 so that we gain access to the international market,” he said.

He said the most important criterion is to ensure that the country’s economy is growing.

That will require productivity-enhancing investments to come in,” he said. He added that most investors had been stepping out of Sri Lanka since 2020, and the current selective default status is a major deterrent for major money to come in.

Courtesy Adaderana

The Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) has suspended the party membership of three Members of Parliament. 

Accordingly, the party membership of Anuradhapura District MP S.M. Chandrasena, Ratnapura District MP Pavithra Wanniarachchi and Kalutara District MP Rohitha Abeygunawardena have been suspended.

Their party membership has been suspended for going against the SLPP Politburo’s decision to support the party’s presidential candidate, which was taken at its meeting held on July 29.

The statement further says that the three MPs’ membership in SLPP’s All-Island Working Committee, the Executive Committee and Politburo have also been suspended.

Asoka (Weerasinghe)

Dear. Editor:

The time hsarrived for me to respond to Asoka, Your letters are funny and entertaining to read. However, I am afraid that sarcastic letters like these will not yield any positive results.”

Nihal, I thank you for your comment, but that is my writing style and I do not

believe that diplomacy is my forte.  You did not ask me whether I have had any

Positive responses for my letters. I wish you did.

Here are a few, which I Believe are positive responses.

 I like to believe that my letters lay down FACTS, and I have had no negative responses from the Tamil separatist community. They are smart.  They know that if they respond they will give me another window to expose their lying negative views about my Mother Lanka.  The style of my writing is what it is,  I am no diplomat.

*In the first week in July 1988, my good friend Asoka Premachandra then

of Kingston, Ontario,  sent me an article from The Economic and Political Weekly of India, the First of a series of three by V,R. Krishner Iyer on

‘Tamil Tragedy in Sri Lanka’, hoping that I would respond.

I thought the article deserved a response and so I did in my style of writing.

I received a postcard from the Editor of EPW, thanking for responding to

Supreme Court Justice Iyer ‘s article and will be publishing it. When I responded I did not know that he was a Supreme Court Justice.  They did publish my lengthy detailed response on October 15, 1988.  After this first response, the Supreme Court Justice  Iyer decided not to write the 2nd and 3rd others of the series,   My style of writing FACTS may have got him and he backed off;

**On one Commonwealth celebration day in Ottawa held at the City Hall, I believe it was the year 2000,  former Mayor of Ottawa Marion Dewar, the MC, introduced me thus. I am proud to introduce the next item

by one of the constant letter writers on Sri Lanka’s ethnic crisis, telling us the flip side of what is going on.  You all must be familiar with the letter writer’s name,’Asoka Weerasinghe.  He is also an excellent published award winning poet. He will now read a few poems of his…”

***One afternoon the phone rang. The voice on the other end of the phone Introduced herself as, I am Virginia Leary, a Professor of Law at University of New York, and an International Jurist,  I want to meet you on the subject of Sri Lanka’s ethnic crisis. I will not leave town until I meet you”.

*Who asked you to meet me”, I asked.  The Canadian Foreign Ministry.” Was her response.   I am at the Aristocratic Hotel on Cooper Street.”

I met her and from the time I met she was on the attack as if in a Court of

 Law.  How much is the Government of Sri Lanka giving you for

what you are doing?  How many researchers do you have?  The material that I am getting in my letterbox from you, are the best researched material and well written and produced.”

I will take it as a compliment.  You have to believe me that I do not get a single cent from the Government of Sri Lanka.  I do my own research and I am the writer.”   

After a hell-hath-no-fury discussion, I thought we ended our conversation

and I got up to leave.

Just a minute,” she said.  Went into her room and came out with her cheque book.  Wrote me a cheque for US$100, and giving it to me she said, I hope this will help you with what you are doing.  No one needs to know that I gave you this cheque”.  I thanked for her kindness and we parted.

****Dr. Sharma from the Indian High Commission invited me for lunch at the Chateau Laurier in Ottawa.  I am not sure of his title.

During lunch he tells me, Mr. Ashok, everytime I open the Ottawa Citizen’s Letters to the Editor page, there is a letter from you on behalf of the High Commissioner, defending Sri Lanka’s honour.  How do you do it?   We have difficulty getting even a single letter in the Ottawa Citizen.”

So I walked him how I did it, and advised him how to go about it.  He’was very appreciative.   Nihal that’s about my writing…my way of writing…

a non-diplomatic way of writing.  And I am not going to change the way

I write.   It works well for me.  I had 56 letters of a possible 64 in print during my 5-years at the Ottawa’s Sri Lanka High Mission in newspapers and political journals, as the Communications Officer (1989-1994)..

In the 40-years of my involvement on this file, I have had over 500 letters

pick-up-ink and I have written over 2000 letters and political articles’’

Nihal I was promised by Sri Lanka’s Foreign Ministry of an entertainment allowance and a  monthly rental allowance,before joining the Mission.  They abrogated what was promised and I was down around $2,500

Canadian dollars a month, from what I was earning as an IS6 in Canadian Public Service,  I left a 20-years of Canadian Government Public Service to help  President Premadasa,  It was not a nepotism Machan’ appointment.   I had never met the man or spoken with him. And that’s the holy truth.

I was embarrassed and resentful that I couldn’ reciprocate the courtesies that I received from Press personnel, Intelligence and diplomatic, and parliamentary personnel. I am still angry and so is my wife (white-Newfoundlander) of reducing our quality-of-life by the ‘liar’ Sri Lanka’s Foreign Ministry.   And held back my younger daughter going to LSE for one year to do her Masters in Political Science and Communications,

That piece of  MA” paper was costing Mummy $55,000 for a year.   She was hurting and told Mummy, I will take a year off and collect $7,000 waitressing in Montreal for a year towards your scholarship, Mummy.”.  She saved $14,000 for her Mummy’s scholarship. And she attended LSE for her graduate studies. She is a product of McGill University in Montreal.

From then on I was forced to become a Honorary Member of the Developing Countries Beggars Consortium, getting my guests to pay my

Courtesy Entertainment Tabs.

*****The phone rang around 8:30 one weekday morning.  It was the Editor of the Letter’s page at the Ottawa Citizen.

He said,”Hey! Asoka, I was driving to Office around 7 in the morning’

and had the Ottawa Citizen open on the passenger seat. Everytime I had to stop at a traffic light, I glanced at the news-items-of-the day  in it. There was this news item on Sri Lanka.  I wondered whether Asoka will respond to it. Lo and behold, Asoka, your response was on my desk sent at 4:49 in the morning, Don’t you bugger sleep?”  The letter was published on the following day,   My style of writing didn’t matter much to the Editor.. FACTS mattered.  He knew that I was an honest writer on

Sri Lanka’s Eelam Crisis.

****** The Editors of Kingston’s The Whig Standard FORUM  (on Amnesty International’s reports on disappearances’ in Sri Lanka biased), on Thursday January 15,1987), and The Windsor Star (on Separatist terrorists rend peaceful island of Sri Lanka) on Monday, September 10, 1984, both were middle-pages- spread articles by me, challenged me asking, How much does the Sri Lanka Government pay you for what you do?” Not a cent I said.

Both Editors told me that they didn’t believe me and both asked how many researchers do I employ for what you write and produce? ‘ I am the researcher and writer”, I said.  Both told me that they do not believe me but will go ahead and publish them anyway. I swore to them that I am telling the truth and nothing but the TRUTH and I will take ‘ your Opinion about my article’ as a compliment and Thank you for wanting to publish the articles.   And they did.

*******This incident has some relevance to my style of writing.   In the summer of 1993, the Reform Party of Canada was elected as the Opposition in Parliament. The Party decided to introduce themselves to the Foreign Diplomats.  They invited High Commissioner Walter Fernando to an introductory get-together at the Parliament’s West Block. H.C  Fernando took me to meet the Opposition Reformers. They had grouped us with the rest of the Developing Country Diplomats.

About two months later I was having dinner at MUKUT, a Bangladeshi restaurant on Rideau Street, with the Reform MP, Art Hanger, MP for Calgary Northeast (1993-2008) who I met on that introductory evening.  He loved Asian Curries.

During Dinner, Art Hanger told me, Asoka, before I forget, I want to tell

why I am sitting in front of you and enjoying this Bangladeshi curry dinner.

The day when we were introducing ourselves to foreign diplomats, Deborah Gray  (MP for Edmonton North) and I went to meet the diplomats., .We came to the entrance of the Party- room, stood there and surveyed the crowd to see who we should approach.   Deborah noticed you at the far end of the room and told me, That guy with a beard, who is well dressed, and I think he is wearing a British University tie, let’s meet him.”

And so we made our way through the crowd, and you noticed us approaching you.  You saw, took two steps forward, threw your right hand towards Deborah and said, Good evening Deborah, I am Asoka, the Communications Officer at the Sri Lankan High Commission. After shaking hands you turned towards your High Commissioner and introduced him to Deborah saying, this is my High Commissioner, His Excellency Walter Fernando.  Then you turned towards me, threw your right hand towards me and said Good evening Art, I am Asoka the Communications Officer for the Sri Lankan High Commission.  And after shaking hands you turned towards your High Commissioner and introduced him to me.

You know those introductions, when we were supposed to be introducing ourselves to you, you knew who we were and introduced yourselves to us,

 sealed our wanting to come to know you better.

,

Deborah told me on our way back, That diplomat is interesting, let’s cultivate him.

And I invited you for lunch at the Parliament restaurant the following day.

Art and I became friends until he retired as an MP in 2008 and he obliged to be my Parliamentary mentor.

Once when I asked him to present a petition of ours to parliament, his response was, Asoka , I will be honoured to do that favour for you.”

We had several dinners and I cooked for him and he came home for dinners and I always had a couple of Sri Lankans join us.

He guided me, and he told me several times that he enjoyed reading my letters to parliamentarians.  One in particular was the one I wrote to  MP Pierre Poilievre, who is now the leader of the Conservative Party, and

very likely the next  Prime Minister of Canada.  He knows me fairly well.

Nihal, you may not like my style of writing, but it has been generous to me

and I have found friends among Canadian politicians, that matters to me

and also some from the Newspaper reporter faculty,

As for Mayor Patrick Brown of Brampton, who was the Conservative MP for Barrie, I have been shadowing him for many, many moons

I honestly believe to dismantle the Tamil ‘Genocide’ Memorial Monument,’the SriLankan Bramptonians are on the right path to have it removed Legally.  To me there is no other way, and I will support their efforts.  I sincerely want them to win that war too.

I hope you understand me well, and in particular what I Write and how I write it. 

As a concluding note let me tell you that my efforts to guard the good name of Yours and my Mother Lanka, I thought that my enemy was just the separatist Tamils in Canada.   Wrong!  I was in a three pronged attack war,

1. Were the community of Tamil Eelam separatists. All of them phoning and threatening that they will blow my face off this Earth,”

• One day I had a phone call from a friend of mine at the Canadian Foreign Ministry who told me, Asoka, don’t think that you have friends in your Sinhalese community. A petition against you just landed on my desk  signed by over a dozen Sinhalese,  I cannot give you a copy of the petition, but I can reveal the names so that you can be careful and guard yourself.  I chalked every one of them as my enemy.  And three had already phoned me to congratulate me on my appointment. Half of the Sinhese population in Ottawa were/are against me. All have been wanting to shoot poison darts and throw a knock-out punch at me….not sure why!  All what I was doing was to stand tall for my Mother Lanka, going after the separatist Tamils, and nothing else.

• Like, one late evening around 11 in the summer of 1987, the ringing tone of the telephone woke me up.

An agitated female voice told me, Asoka, please don’t ask me who I am, but I want to talk to you or else I won’t be able to sleep tonight.”

Sorry, Madam, I have difficulty talking to strangers, but please tell me who you are, as I have difficulty talking to phantoms.

She introduced herself to me, in confidence, and I had met her twice before.

This was the conversation.

Asoka I have just come out of a dinner party at Asoka Wickemanayake’s home.  All night the conversation was about You.

I saw them, bashing you… stabbing you… quartering you…..  chopping  off your letter writing right- hand, and all I did not see was them killing and burying you.

 I know you can handle the Tamil Separatists, but please be very careful of your own people.  They are out to get you.  Jealousy perhaps!.  Not liking to see your name signed as the author of letters published in newspapers, and seeing your face on TV’s 6 o’clock evening news commenting on the status of the Tamil ethnic war.  And about the Tamil separatist terrorists in Canada, and not of the High Commissioner’s face.   Tough tiddy! 

Thanks for sharing this Dinner-Story with me.  I promise you that I will be extremely careful.  If I can handle the Tamil separatists, you bet I can handle my Sinhalese enemies too.”   So it wasn’t easy.

• I was barred from entering the High Commission Office to read

the newspapers.  I had the habit of taking half-a-day’s leave from office each month to read the papers and take notes for my research

One day I turned up at the High Commission and  Zakaria, a clerk told me. I am sorry Mr. Weerasinghe, we  have got orders by the High Commissioner (Bull Weeratunga,the Sri Lanka Army Commander) not to open the library and let you in.”

This is a diplomat that I covered his back many a time even on

Television, when he was hammered Black and Blue,  in and out daily in the multimedia-circus by the separatist-Tamil community led by the Roman Catholic Tamil priest  Philip Ratnapala from Vavuniya, in a black Cassock with a white collar starched towards heaven, saying that ‘Bull’  supervised Torturing the Tamils in Army- camps.  Phillip had been sent to Saint Paul’s University in Ottawa to get a  graduate-degree in Theology, but he stayed back and worked as a Library Assistant at Transport Canada.

The evening Fr. Philip Ratnapala, the Roman Catholic priest was introduced to the community at Harrison & Swineetha Perera’s residence, 40 minutes into the introduction, I told this guy in black  to his face in front of the Roman Catholics, Phillip, you are a Goddamn fraud, wearing a white Starched collar looking towards heaven. All the guests were stunned, and how right was,

One evening I joined the High Commissioners of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh at a Commonwealth reception at the City Hall.  One spotted Sri Lanka’s High Commissioner ‘Bull’ Weeratunga  coming to join us and  said, Here comes ‘Handicapped Bull’ coming to join us.”

All heads turned towards him and I butted,”What do you mean?”

This High Commissioner said, He is Sri Lanka’s HC” High Commissioner Bull, isn’t he” and they all laughed at him. And I was peeved for the lack of solidarity among the  High Commissioners of the Asian Continent.  Our HC ‘Bill” Weeratunga was isolated  and the only friends he had were mainly the Sinhalese diaspora.  And one happened to be me who put my neck out to guard him, by giving a taped TV interview to Robin Benger of CBC ‘National” who had flown in from Toronto.

The Deputy Chief of Canadian Press Bureau, Victor Parsons, was

a friend of mine. My two daughters addressed him and his wife as Uncle Vic and Aunty Lorraine. His son David and daughter Jill addressed us as Uncle Asoka an Aunty Jeannie,”

When things were getting ugly and severe in the media addressing High Commissioner Weeratunga as Tamil Torturer Bull”. I approached Victor very reluctantly and asked him to find means of softening the blows on High Commissioner Weeratunga.

Vic quite rightly told me, When there are 400 Tamils demonstrating on Parliament HIll, Asoka, it is a media event.  I cannot ignore it.

But what I can do for you is to write a press-line saying that According to the Government of Sri Lanka, High Commissioner ‘Bull’ Weeratunga is a…………..” and carry it at the end of every Canadian Press new item.  The Sri Lanka Government stayed  dumb and silent on this Weeratunga affair.  I wouldn’t blame them…as they had no way out with this stupid ”machan” appointment.

               4, To continue with notes on my being forced by Sri Lanka’s Foreign 

                    Ministry to take up an Honorary Membership of the DEVELOPING 

                    COUNTRIES BEGGARS CONSORTIUM, to depend on the

guests/hosts to pick up my entertainment tabs because not been

given an entertainment allowance as promised.

                    When my very important group of friends on Canadian security who 

                     had been friends since August 1983, invited me for Monday

                     breakfast meetings to discuss all and sundry Security issues with 

                    Eelamists I told them, :Sorry Gentlemen, this is not going to

                    happen. I am not on an entertainment allowance so Breakfast

                    meetings  are out.

Don’t worry Asoka. We want you at these meetings, we will take care of the breakfast tabs.”  Beggars can’t be choosers , so I accepted their generosity over 40 times.  I say shame on Sri Lanka being this nasty as I was an employee from outside the Box of Foreign Ministry Diplomats, and  treated me as a step-brother  They did everything to sabotage my progress and I let President Premadasa know of these when I asked him, Sir, please light a stick of dynamite under the chair of whoever was supposed to be responding to me.”  And it did happen!  There were several letters of apology from the ‘top-guns’ in Ministries.

What was interesting and this incident proves positive that they

guard their ‘Brownie Points’ interests using outsiders like me. 

Nimal Kulatunga, the Mission’s Intelligence Officer, a CID person

approached me asking whether I could help him to write an 

Intelligence Report to send it to his Boss at the Ministry.

Sure I said, only if the Report goes as a co-authored Report. With

both our names on the cover.

He  assured me that it won’t be a problem.

A 129 page comprehensive report was written within two weeks. Two-thirds of it was my Intelligence content and the other one-third  was his Intelligence work.’

A copy of the completed report that was going  out in the diplomatic bag that morning to Sri Lanka was hand-carried to me by the Mission’s Chauffeur.   The cover as promised had both our names as co-authors of the Intelligence Report.  I was satisfied.  It was neatly typed and presented,

About two hours later, I got a phone call from the Mission’s Minister Counsellor.  He tells me, A funny thing happened at the Mission this morning, Asoka.  I know you told our Intelligence man that you would help him to write the Intelligence Report if it would be presented to his boss in Colombo as a co-authored report with your name in it,”

Yes, I got a copy of it this morning,”

What went out was with a new cover with his name in it and your name was taken out.”

Bxxtxxd” I thought.  I was fit to be tied.  I phoned Kulatunga  and confronted him and told him it was a paraiyar thing to do.”   He was shocked that I had come to know of it.

An apology isn’t good enough Nimal.  This was not the first time your Mission people rode my back to pick up Brownie Points,

I pointed out, and I told him, I am shocked, I am insulted, and will be reporting it to President Premadasa.”  And I did.

There have been several other incidents Like ignoring my request for 13 large Sri Lankan flags to present to the Principal of the 13 schools who invited me as a Guest  ‘Show and Tell’ Country Specific Teacher on Sri Lanka.   The Show and Tell artifacts  were all from my personal collection. I was a Museum-career person. I was no fool.  I knew what the Foreign Ministry ‘Tin-Gods and Goddesses’ were up to. ‘ To Hell with You all’, I said to myself and I asked my sister Sybil, a Musaeus College teacher, to go to Laksala and buy me 13 large Sri Lankan national flags, wrap them well and addressed to me, and Labelling it URGENT and take it to the Foreign Ministry to send it to on to me in the Diplomatic Bag to Ottawa.

If they didn’t oblige,  to take a Tuk-Tuk and, go to President’s Secretariat and hand it over to the President Office with my URGENT letter addressed to President Premadasa,

Thank Goodness, the Foreign Ministry did oblige, so President Premadasa’s intervention was not necessary, and flags were presented to the Principals after explaining the colours and images on the National Flag to the students, especially the colours representing the minority communities Tamils and Muslims, which Canada does not have in her National flag like that of the Inuit.

So I asked High Commissioner Walter Rupesinghe to provide me with 35 doughnuts, five large bottles of orange juice, 35 paper cups

and serviettes as welcoming Sri Lankan courtesies to students who came with their teachers for Specialty Geography Show and Tell talks from Me, the country specific ‘show & tell teacher.  High Commissioner  Rupesinghe lent me his domestic Podi to help me out.  These visits from primary and middle school students visited us four times at the Mission Library which I created.

                    Nihal, not being a wimp,  half of the Sinhalese-Canadians in Ottawa 

                    found it difficult to knock me down as I was a proud Sri Lankan- 

                    Canadian standing tall for my Mother Lanka as she did not deserve 

                    the rubbishing by her separatist Tamils or their Members of Parlia- 

                    Ment, like Patrick Brown, or the Liberal Terrible Five like Oliphant,

                    Lee, Karygiannis, Sgro, and Guanierie of the February 4, 2009,

                    ‘Canadian-Tamil Tiger Blarney Gong Show’ in the Canadian 

                     Parliament Chambers.   

                     I survived an act of intimidation by Canadian-Tamil separatists     

                    who threatened to blow up the 15 storey Centennial Building at 200 

                    Kent Street, on 9th June 1987 where I was employed as a Canadian

                    Government  Communications officer, on 9th June 1987. , It was a

                    big Security  Issue with the, Ottawa Police, Security, Intelligence

                    involved.   I  certainly didn’t run down Kent Street  searching for a 

                    manhole to hide from the Tamil Separatists.  And my writing style 

                    was one of my strong Weapons and not catapults and stones and

                    Bamboo sticks to guard myself from Canadian-Sri Lankan critics, 

                    and so were my poetry another weapon as my defense, like

                    CRITICS IN OTTAWA

                     Come then, and sharpen your knives and pens

                      toss your jealous thoughts, as the juggler’s balls

                      on a summer’s weekends at the Byward Market

                      will speak more sense than you, who supermen

                      play hangmen lassoing ropes at my shadow

                      sitting at Weekend Sinhalese dinner tables.

                      And sometimes playing midwife, wrenching

                      frozen mouse brats from the city’s snow-dumps.

                      Fearing the bleeding Sri Lankan sun,

                      the critics telescopes find supernovae’

‘                     in the faintest blood-coated stars.

                      You shun my defence of the truth,

                      but winged with courage and hope

                      I shall sweep on, a comet,       

                      among all you faint stars

                             (from Tears For My Roots, Asoka Weerasinghe p,24)

The only blessing that I had to make me strong to stand up tall for

My Mother Lanka who nurtured me during the first 19 formative years of my life,  was that of my ‘white-Newfoundlander wife’  for not telling me, Stop this nonsense Asoka, you are putting yourself and our family in danger,  Either You give up  this rubbish or else I will meet you at the Divorce Court”.  Bless her heart!

And what she told  me in late July 1983, which still rings in my ears. Asoka, I know you love Your Sri Lanka, and it is also hurting you to your core, the way the lying Separatist-Tamils are treating her.  I will be disappointed in you if you don’t defend her Honour.  If they take You, they will have to take me with you,  and we will take down one of their rascals with us.” 

Bless, my white-Canadian wife, Jeannie”. She has stood by me right along with my involvement on this Eelam file.  And so has my surrogate younger amazing gutsy brother, with a straight Thomian spine of steel, Asoka Yapa.

                    The bottom line is Nihal Perera, my style of letter writing will remain

                    unchanged as that is only how I know to write, who studied the 

                    English language at Nalanda in Colombo.

Warmly

Asoka (Weerasinghe)

Courtesy Adaderana

The Chairman of the Election Commission, R.M.A.L. Rathnayake, says that all election campaign offices which have been established at the electorate level must be removed after midnight today (19).

During a press conference at the Department of Government Information this morning (19) regarding the presidential poll, he stated that it is essential to remove all current election campaign offices at the constituency level from midnight today. 

Up until yesterday, the maintaining of one main office for the district and one for each constituency related to a polling station had been allowed. However, from midnight today, only one office per election division or district and one for a polling area or previous electoral electorate can be kept open. 

If these offices are not removed, the police will proceed to remove them,” he added.

He also said that a candidate’s residence can be maintained as an office, but if the residence or the office is located within 500 meters of a polling center, all campaign materials must be removed before voting begins on September 21. 

Also, if the candidate’s house is within that limit, the decorations and promotional material in the house must be removed,” R.M.A.L. Rathnayake said.

Courtesy Adaderana

Sri Lanka said it’s reached an agreement in principle with bondholders to restructure its $114 billion debt load, just days before the country heads for presidential elections.

The government held restricted discussions with nine members of the steering committee of the ad-hoc group of bondholders between September 12th and 18th, it said in a statement on Thursday. 

The parties agreed to introduce governance-linked bond features” as part of the revised bond treatment, it said, referring to clauses that would cut Sri Lanka’s repayments if it meets certain governance and anti-corruption-related targets.

Sri Lanka was joined by its legal and financial advisors, Clifford Chance LLP and Lazard, respectively, and the Restricted Members of the Steering Committee were joined by the Group’s legal and financial advisors, White & Case LLP and Rothschild & Co, respectively, the statement said. 

The Steering Committee, as a whole, comprises ten of the largest members of the Group, with the Group controlling approximately 40% of the aggregate outstanding amount of the Bonds.

Sri Lanka also announces today that in the last year it has held restricted discussions with members of the Local Consortium of Sri Lanka (LCSL), joined by its legal and financial advisors, Baker McKenzie and Newstate Partners LLP, respectively. The LCSL comprises 11 members, controlling approximately 12% of the aggregate outstanding amount of the Bonds.

Meanwhile, the Government of Sri Lanka said it has reached agreements with external commercial creditors to restructure approximately USD 17.5 billion of external debt, achieving a 40.3% Net Present Value (NPV) concession. 

This provides significant debt relief and reduces interest payments, strengthening the country’s financial stability, according to the statement.

It further said that Sri Lanka finalized a deal with China Development Bank to restructure USD 3.3 billion in debt. 

As a result of the debt treatment agreements with Exim Bank of China, Official Creditor Committee (OCC), China Development Bank (CDB) and bondholders, Sri Lanka will have obtained over USD 17 billion of debt service relief during the IMF program, the statement added. 

–With Agencies Inputs  

Read the full statement below…

Sri Lanka Reaches Agreement In Principle With Each Of The Ad Hoc Group Of Bondholders, The Local Consortium Of Sri Lanka And China Development Bank On Debt Restructuring Terms

The Government of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka (Sri Lanka”) announces today that it has held restricted discussions between 12 September 2024 and 18 September 2024 (the Restricted Period”) with nine members of the steering committee (the Steering Committee”) of the Ad Hoc Group of Bondholders (the Group”) who agreed to take part in such restricted discussions (the Restricted Members of the Steering Committee”). Sri Lanka was joined by its legal and financial advisors, Clifford Chance LLP and Lazard, respectively, and the Restricted Members of the Steering Committee were joined by the Group’s legal and financial advisors, White & Case LLP and Rothschild & Co, respectively. The Steering Committee, as a whole, comprises ten of the largest members of the Group, with the Group controlling approximately 40% of the aggregate outstanding amount of the Bonds.

Sri Lanka also announces today that in the last year it has held restricted discussions with members of the Local Consortium of Sri Lanka (LCSL”), joined by its legal and financial advisors, Baker McKenzie and Newstate Partners LLP, respectively. The LCSL comprises 11 members, controlling approximately 12% of the aggregate outstanding amount of the Bonds.

During the discussions with the Restricted Members of the Steering Committee, the parties  discussed the conclusions of the consultations carried out throughout the summer between Sri Lanka, its advisors, the Group’s advisors, the International Monetary Fund (the IMF”) and Sri Lanka’s Official Creditor Committee (the OCC”), in respect of the joint working framework on a debt treatment agreed between Sri Lanka and the Restricted Members of the Steering Committee, on behalf of the Group, in June 2024 (as announced on 3 July 2024) (the JWF”). During these consultations, IMF staff determined that the JWF was not consistent with the parameters of Sri Lanka’s IMF-supported Program and the OCC expressed concerns regarding the consistency of the JWF with the comparability of treatment principle (Comparability of Treatment”). It became clear, during these consultations, that further work was necessary to arrive at an agreement in principle between the parties which would receive a favourable assessment from both IMF staff and the OCC.

Following an iterative process with IMF staff at technical level and taking account of the feedback received from the OCC regarding the terms of the JWF, Sri Lanka and its advisors designed a revised debt treatment. The revised debt treatment was based on the JWF, with amendments designed to ensure compliance with the parameters of Sri Lanka’s IMF-supported Program and the Comparability of Treatment principle, while preserving the Group’s and Sri Lanka’s interests to the fullest possible extent. The revised debt treatment was presented to and discussed with the Restricted Members of the Steering Committee, in conjunction with the terms of an alternative restructuring option (the Local Option”), which was concurrently presented and discussed with the LCSL. The Local Option was developed in response to a request by the LCSL over a number of months in which Sri Lanka, its advisors, the LCSL and its advisors exchanged alternative proposals.

At the conclusion of the Restricted Period, Sri Lanka is pleased to report that it has reached an agreement in principle with the Restricted Members of the Steering Committee, on behalf of the Group, on the terms of a comprehensive restructuring of the Bonds (the Agreement in Principle”), the key financial terms of which are included in the Annex to this announcement.

During the discussions with the Restricted Members of the Steering Committee during the Restricted Period, the parties thereto also discussed and agreed the inclusion of governance-linked bond features in the terms of the plain vanilla bond instrument that forms part of the revised debt treatment.

At the same time, Sri Lanka is also pleased to report that it has reached an agreement in principle with the LCSL on the key financial terms of the Local Option, the key financial terms of which are also included in the Annex to this announcement. It has further been agreed that the Local Option would be offered to all holders of the Bonds, subject to a cap tentatively set at 25% of the aggregate outstanding amount of the Bonds, with priority given to local holders of the Bonds, and pro-rata allocation of the balance between consenting international holders of the Bonds who have opted for the Local Option.

During the Restricted Period, Sri Lanka also progressed discussions and reached an agreement in principle with the Restricted Members of the Steering Committee on certain non-financial provisions relating to the restructuring of the Bonds, including a loss reinstatement provision, a most favoured creditor clause and certain ongoing information disclosure requirements. A mechanism to change the governing law of the New York law governed new securities to English or Delaware law with the consent of a supermajority of bondholders if proposed by holders of 20% of any particular series of the new securities was also agreed.  In addition, Sri Lanka agreed with the Restricted Members of the Steering Committee and the LCSL on matters relating to the reimbursement of certain expenses of the Steering Committee and the LCSL.

In respect of the Local Option, Sri Lanka and the LCSL have agreed the USD Bond (as defined in the Annex to this announcement) shall include a provision whereby Sri Lanka would have the option, at its sole discretion, to make debt service payments in LKR rather than USD, at the then prevailing exchange rate , if Sri Lanka is, in its determination, unable to make such debt service payments in USD on the contractual payment dates.

Sri Lanka has agreed with the Restricted Members of the Steering Committee, on behalf of the Group, and the LCSL to proceed with the implementation of the restructuring of the Bonds on the basis of the Agreement in Principle and the Local Option.

Having received informal confirmation from IMF staff during the Restricted Period, Sri Lanka now expects to receive formal confirmation from IMF staff that the Agreement in Principle and the Local Option, taken together, are fully consistent with the parameters of Sri Lanka’s IMF-supported Program. In parallel, Sri Lanka will continue to work with the OCC and its Secretariat to secure confirmation of compliance of the Agreement in Principle and the Local Option with the Comparability of Treatment principle. Upon receiving such confirmations, Sri Lanka commits to use its best efforts to expedite the implementation of the restructuring in respect of the Bonds.

Finally, Sri Lanka is pleased to report having finalized agreement in principle with China Development Bank (CDB”) on the key financial terms of the restructuring of approximately U.S.$3.3bn of debt, based on an initial set of terms agreed in May 2024 following several months of good faith engagement. While the terms initially agreed in principle were confirmed to be compatible with Sri Lanka’s IMF-supported Program parameters, further consultations with the OCC over the summer were necessary in relation to the Comparability of Treatment principle. Following the finalization of this agreement in principle, Sri Lanka expects to receive formal confirmation from IMF staff and the OCC and to be able to move to documentation shortly thereafter.

The agreements in principle with the Group, the LCSL and CDB, which were approved by the Cabinet of Ministers of Sri Lanka earlier today, almost completes Sri Lanka’s sovereign debt restructuring exercise, as agreed under Sri Lanka’s IMF-supported Program to restore debt sustainability.

Sri Lanka would like to thank the Group and its advisors, the LCSL and its advisors, and CDB and its advisors, for their close collaboration and continuous support throughout the negotiations.

The restructuring of the Bonds will be implemented through an exchange offer and/or consent solicitation. Implementation of the restructuring of the Bonds remains subject to agreement between Sri Lanka, the Group and the LCSL on the definitive legal documentation for the new securities and exchange offer and/or consent solicitation. The restructuring of the abovementioned debt with CDB remains subject to agreement between Sri Lanka and CDB on the definitive legal documentation.

උපුටා ගැන්ම  හිරු පුවත්

තමන්ට ජීවිත තර්ජන එල්ල වී ඇති බැවින් සිය ආරක්ෂාව තහවුරු කරන ලෙස මිහින්තලා රජමහා විහාරාධිපති පූජ්‍ය වලවාහැංගුණුවැවේ ධම්මරතන හිමියන් පවසනවා.

උන්වහන්සේ මේ බව සඳහන් කළේ ඒ සම්බන්ධයෙන් පැමිණිලි කිරීමට අපරාධ පරීක්ෂණ දෙපාර්තමේන්තුවට පැමිණි අවස්ථාවේදීයි.

මිහින්තලා රජමහා විහාරාධිපති පූජ්‍ය වලවාහැංගුණුවැවේ ධම්මරතන හිමියන් සහ සුරකිමු ශ්‍රී ලංකා සංවිධානයේ සභාපති පූජ්‍ය පාහියංගල ආනන්ද සාගර හිමියන් අද (19) අපරාධ පරීක්ෂණ දෙපාර්තමේන්තුව වෙත පැමිණ තිබෙනවා.

ඒ එම හිමිවරුන්ට එරෙහිව එල්ලවී ඇති මරණ තර්ජන සම්බන්ධයෙන් ප්‍රකාශයක් ලබාදීම සඳහායි.

එහිදී උන්වහන්සේ තමන්ට එල්ලවී ඇති තර්ජනාත්මක හඬපට මාධ්‍යට ඉදිරිපත් කිරීමටද කටයුතු කළා.

Darini Rajasingham-Senanayake

In the run up to elections the post-Marxist National People’s Party (NPP), has run a high-gloss, foreign-funded, election campaign to market its policies as a ‘new dawn’. Remarkably, the NPP and rival political parties alike had ignored wider geopolitical developments that may contribute to such a dawn given the globally networked nature of Sri Lanka’ ‘poly crisis’.

Re-orienting the economy toward the BRICS that is challenging the ‘exorbitant privileged’ of the US dollar as global reserve currency would be one such step. The US dollar has been long used to debt colonize the Global South. However, all major political parties have done little to educate voters about Sri Lanka’s wider geopolitical challenges, or the need to pivot away from the West’s tired debt trap, neocolonialism.

BRICS emerging economies constitute a New Beginning in a ‘multipolar currency world.’ The Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa block also represents hope and an alternative development path for many countries caught in International Sovereign Eurobond (ISB), US dollar debt traps and the related International Monetary Fund (IMF) bailout business. There are 56 countries in Asia, Africa and South America that are in Covid-19 Lockdown induced debt traps, and Sri Lanka would need to work with them to counter the G-7 Paris Club creditor countries.

Sri Lankan’s purchasing power plummeted with rapid local currency depreciation against the exorbitantly privileged dollar amid a staged default two years ago in 2022. This was after the shadowy, off-shore Hamilton Reserve Bank filed a court case in New York against South Asia’s wealthiest country, then listed as an Upper Middle Income Country (MIC), purportedly for non-payment of a small amount of interest. As the dollars in State accounts dried up, coordinated Rating Agency messaging that the country was bankrupt’ saw the crash of the rupee against the dollar– instantly beggared citizens. Retrospectively, Sri Lanka’s first ever Sovereign Default appears to be a Full Spectrum Dominance operation amid LAWFARE and cyber operations, with coordinated fuel and food supply chain disruptions and faux democracy (Aragalaya) protests– to deliver the geostrategic Indian Ocean island to the lender of last resorts – the IMF.

Sri Lanka in the Asian 21^st Century

At this time the BRICS block have beaten the G-7 economies. Indeed, the ‘American Century’ seems done and dusted in an increasingly ‘Asian 21^st Century’ although US Presidential contenders, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump have both promised to claw it back. While the American Eagle may not be dead, the train heading East, shifting wealth and power across the world appears to have left the station.

Different regional currencies have emerged to form an alternative trade, technology and de facto reserve currency network, some using Central Bank digital currencies (CBDC), and other cross-border payment systems. The global trend away from the US dollar fiat currency (Petrodollar), which is no longer backed by Saudi Arabian oil, accelerated after sanctions on Russia, including the freezing of $300 billion Russian assets over the war in Ukraine.

Necessity is the mother of invention: Countries fearful of dollar hegemony have been de-dollarizing. Increasingly, the Indian Rupee (INR) and Chinese Renminbi (RMB), dominate intra-Asian and Indian Ocean world trade and currency exchange.

South Asia countries like Sri Lanka which are in Eurobond US dollar debt traps would benefit from de-dollarizing and recalibrating trade in regional currencies, while engaging markets closer to home.

A Conspiracy of Silence on BRICS? A Colonial Mindset and Foreign-Funding

There are no purely economic solutions to fundamentally geopolitical problems.

Sri Lanka urgently needs a comprehensive, long-term, exit-strategy from Western –ISB-IMF-CBSL debt neocolonialism, as well as, new thinking to achieve this.

However, a cross-party consensus appears to exist among all leading political parties, as well as, local think tanks, and the corporate media, to overlook the new dawn that the BRICS represents for debt-trapped citizens.

A colonial mindset has long dominated the national education system and political discourse in the island that was a British Dominion with faux independence until 1972, when the country achieved real independence and its first Republican Constitution.

In recent times, neo-imperial UK-US-EU and Japanese, or G7, interests and funding in the form of ‘development aid’ for research in universities, think tanks and related NGOs, has shaped and contained public discourse on genuine policy alternatives.The current election season saw increased foreign funding from the so-called ‘Diaspora’ to all major political parties, particularly, the NPP, as well as, to various think tanks conducting dubious surveys and polls. The latter outfits have made dubious predictions on election outcomes seemingly to game them –fronting social media and Artificial Intelligence (AI) data mining- while spreading disinformation.

The failure of all major opposition parties to address the geopolitical dimensions of the crisis and prioritize economic alternatives to endless talks with IMF, ISBs and a gravy train of legal and financial consultants, including Lazard, Clifford and Chance, raises serious questions about their external funding networks and policy agendas. This is particularly true of the NPP’s Anura Kumara Dissanayake who had portrayed his party as a break from the past and a new beginning for the country! In lieu of educating itself and its supporters on the wider issues,  the pretender to the throne, the NPP which presented itself as an alternative to the existing corrupt political culture did not lift the bar on the national economic policy debate or explore GENUINE alternatives.

The Myth of TINA to the IMF

The election manifestos of US-backed and unelected President Wickramasinghe and the post-Marist opposition National Peoples’ Power (PPP) party, alike, were remarkably silent on the need for a new government to prioritize pivoting to the BRICS to bailout ISB debt-trapped citizens.

Since coming to power amid the US National Endowment for Democracy (NED) Aragalaya protest putsch, US-backed, unelected incumbent President Ranil Wickramasinghe has portrayed his government’s Debt Sustainability Agreement (DSA) with the International Monetary Fund as a panacea. His Minister of Finance, Shehan Semasinghe, meanwhile, claimed that ‘there is no alternative’ (TINA) to the lender of last resorts, the IMF. Amending the agreement as called for by some opposition parties would cause heavy losses to the country and amount to ‘suicide’ he noted.

The warning that Sri Lanka must stay the course on the ‘IMF’s ‘bitter medicine’ of borrowing from predatory International Sovereign or Eurobond (ISB) creditors—come 2028, ironically, in order to pay them off– regardless of who wins the election has been echoed by a host of ambassadors from Paris Club creditor countries, including a visiting Japanese Minister.

Clearly, warnings against ditching the IMF and its DSA must be contextualized in the growing challenge that the BRICS represents to Washington’s economic hegemony. In lieu of ISB Odious Debt Cancellation that international and local academics and debt justice activists have sought, IMF ‘solutions’ entail austerity measures and privatization of public assets to shrink the economy. These IMF measures are set to deepen the Eurobond debt trap and impoverish citizens in the not too distant future.

It is now quite evident that International Sovereign Eurobond (ISB) scams at the Central Bank of Sri Lanka (CBSL), were the root cause for the Sri Lanka’s odious debt pile up and staged default two years ago– in 2022. At the time China was blamed debt trap lending in a concerted global and local corporate media propaganda campaign as America’s economic proxy war on the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) escalated.

Dollarizing Nature: Green Bonds and Scams in the Faux Anthropocene

With the wisdom of hindsight, Sri Lanka must look beyond the IMF’s pseudo solution of borrowing from predatory creditors in order to pay them off –come 2028: Only this time around the bonds and scams would be flavored, multi-coloured, and sweetened to make them more palatable to the economically gaslighted natives of a tropical Paradise Lost!

Under the IMF and ISB ‘advisors’ tutelage, vanilla bonds would be issued to pay off predatory ISB creditors and loan sharks, the largest being BlackRock that debt trapped Sri Lanka in collusion with corrupt local politicians and their business cronies. Strawberry pink macro-linked governance bonds are being designed with a USAID and EU-funded think tank, Verite Research, to monitor local corruption sans mention of ISB corruption or the fact that the bondholders’ names are kept secret.

Meanwhile, Green and blue debt bondage (or Debt for Nature Swaps also known as ESG or Environment, Social and Governance Bonds), are being designed to save Mother Nature in the faux Anthropocene. This, by financializing and dollarizing forests, fields and marine areas and sea-bed resources in violation of core principles of both Debt Justice and Climate Justice.

In the midst of elections fog, for the first time a green bond was issued in Sri Lanka by the DFCC Bank. In a nut shell, green and blue bonds are designed by financializing, dollarizing and privatizing Mother Nature; tropical forests, marine areas, ocean resources, and the air we breathe with Artificial Intelligence generated science fiction carbon credit calculations amid the faux Anthropocene climate catastrophe narrative, to debt colonize Global South countries and perhaps save the exorbitantly privileged US dollar as the world de-dollarizes, also given America’s massive $ 35 trillion debt.

The United Nations Secretary General, Antonio Guterrez has been talking up climate boiling” and generating fear psychosis that may help sell green and blue bonds and scams. The faux Anthropocene is of course mainly caused by environmental pollution generated by the US-led NATO war machine, its war games in 800 plus military bases around the world, endless wars, not to mention Directed Energy Weapons (DEW) and HAARP. The latter enable staging climate disasters such as earthquakes, tsunamis, heat domes, flash floods, earth slips, forest fires etc. with glossy media footage of climate disasters for green and blue washed humanitarian Disaster Capitalism.

However, there are few UN conferences on the calling for shutdown of environment-polluting military bases and NATO’s endless wars.

Are ongoing attempts at US dollar-based financialization of Mother Nature in the form of Green and Blue bonds also meant to help prolong the dollar’s life as global reserve currency in an increasingly multipolar currency system—as the world de-dollarizes? Back in Sri Lanka, the IMF-ISB pseudo solution of issuing green-washed bonds to deepen the debt trap and pay off predatory ISB creditors come 2028, is set to inflate the debt numbers. This, with the usual IMF’s austerity measures and privatization of national assets to shrink the economy is a recipe for double disaster– a second default in very short order!

Finally, the conspiracy of silence among major political parties on the need to re-orient economic policy to leverage new developments in Sri Lanka’s Asian neighborhood, such as, applying to join BRICS is concerning. Pivoting to BRICS and the global south would enable transfer of technology and access to new markets to leverage Sri Lanka’s valuable marine and mineral resources. This would help a growth-led escape from Paris Club creditors and the USD-Eurobond debt neocolonialism encrypted in the IMF Extended Fund Facility (EFF) agreement. There are no IMF solutions to Sri Lanka’s fundamentally geopolitical problems. Sri Lanka must de-dollarize to de-colonize!

By Prof. Sunil J. Wimalawansa

Despite massive failures over the past 76 years, many middle-class Sri Lankans—the majority in Sri Lanka- still believe that only family-driven, self-claimed, high-class politicians can run the country. Clans, which have controlled the country for the past four decades, have failed to uplift society and its people socially, morally, and economically and brought it to bankruptcy.

Lack of Progress in Economic Development

In recent years, there has been little progress in sustainable economic development. Beyond the natural growth driven by grassroots businesses, entrepreneurs, and tourism, rulers have done little to advance the country. The last major successful large project was the Mahaweli development. Since then, politicians have focused on selling national assets and state-owned enterprises for personal and governmental gain instead of nurturing new industries, exports, and the private sector and the betterment of its citizens.

Elected officials continue to exploit the 148^th statement in the constitution to safeguard themselves and their allies while accumulating vast wealth allegedly stored in foreign countries. All of this has been carried out under the guise of the country’s constitution, harming the nation and its people.

It is no wonder that many Sri Lankans are calling for a system change”—demanding better, more efficient governance without corruption. The Aragalaya movement, despite its authenticity and shortcomings, failed to articulate this need properly for the past three years. To reverse the country’s decline, voters must elect a political leader with honesty, intelligence, transparency, and strong leadership, free from political and legal baggage.

Failures of the Current Government 

The current government has failed to address critical areas needed to bring Sri Lanka out of bankruptcy. It failed to reduce government expenditure but imposed austerity measures as part of the IMF agreement; increasing taxes and cutting subsidies led to an increased cost of living. These measures have disproportionately impacted low- and middle-income families, leading to significant malnutrition and health issues, especially among children and pregnant mothers.

The government’s failure to establish safety nets, social welfare support, public sector reforms, and public-private partnerships, while not reducing government spending, has been irrational. The unchecked printing of money has led to inflation and currency (rupee)  devaluation. For the past two and a half years, the government has not provided necessary incentives for industry growth or exports to generate foreign exchange, instead opting to increase taxes.

Debt and Economic Recovery

The current government has no policy or plan for repaying loans or better managing interest payments. Relying heavily on tourism and remittances from expatriates, Sri Lanka has been unable to generate the foreign exchange needed to pay back loans. However, the president falsely claimed success by kicking the can—postponing the interest payment. Much of the IMF loan has gone towards repaying previous interest, leaving the country in a precarious financial situation. Future endogenous shocks, such as terrorism, or exogenous shocks, like another pandemic, could further destabilize the country.

The Need for Debt Reduction

For economic recovery, the new government must renegotiate with the IMF agreement, restructure foreign debt, seek debt forgiveness, and promote value-added exports. It must also take steps to prevent the brain drain of skilled workers, essential for the growth of local industries.

Corrupt politicians and entrenched bureaucrats created Sri Lanka’s current economic crisis. Without substantial debt reduction, the country will remain in fiscal chaos. Establishing a sustainable fiscal framework and renegotiating debt agreements is essential to ensure the country’s future growth.

Country-First Policies

Political leaders and parties that fail to prioritize (and safeguard) the country’s sovereignty and sustainable economic policies should not be elected to any office. Sri Lanka must also emphasize buying local goods and food to support the economy. Leaders who fail to do so are fakes and cannot be trusted to steer the country towards prosperity.

The Role of Religion and Culture

As a predominantly Buddhist country, Sri Lanka’s constitution has always included provisions to protect its religious heritage. Consequently, all constitutions had a specific provision to safeguard them, which must be the case with the new constitution. While religion (so as the judiciary) should be separated from the executive and legislative branches (i.e., secularism), it remains an integral part of Sri Lankan culture.

Religions incentivize people to behave better and are part of the (Hela) culture of Sri Lanka. Religions are essential and intimate parts of society’s unity, expected behaviour, attachment, and culture. Atheism and destruction of the family units, using religious disharmony, woke-culture, transgenderisum, etc., bring unacceptable behaviour, disunity, and disharmony to the country. These intercepts destroy family values, as seen in some Western countries, bringing unacceptable behavior and disunity, which should not be embraced due to foreign pressure. They are improper, must be rejected, and should not be embraced due to foreign pressure in Sri Lanka.

Ending the Oligarchy 

Sri Lanka has long been ruled by a political oligarchy, a system where a few wealthy families maintain control over the country’s finances and political power. This system, which disguises itself as democracy, leaves little room for public participation and change. To achieve the System Change that the public demands, the country must replace its corrupt constitution and ensure that governance is based on merit rather than aristocratic privilege.

Oligarchies, dominated by single parties, deny public participation and accountability. A party with an absolute majority can pass laws without regard for citizens’ needs. Social media amplifies false narratives, distracting from honest policy discussions. Voters must focus on electing leaders who prioritize Sri Lanka’s unity, progress, and recovery rather than those who perpetuate the same failed systems.

Meritocracy Over Aristocracy

Sri Lanka has a structured, highly unproductive, entrenched oligarchy system (i.e., ruled by a few wealthy folks/ politically powerful families). In a democracy, people rule for the people (constitutional order of a country). In contrast, an oligarchy is ruled by a small group (aristocrats) who control the finances and retain the political power. Oligarchy in Sri Lanka, tied to a strong nepotism, is a near dictatorship in disguise of democracy. Consequently, the people have little power to make changes or, for that matter, what they do, the right to protest, freedom of speech, etc.

We need to nurture meritocracy (appointing and giving awards, etc., based on ability, credibility, and past performance/record), which is not based on friendships and nepotism. On top of it, we need selfless leaders (instead of selfish ones) with broader understanding and wisdom to see the needs of today and the future so that the country can be prepared and directed to face inevitable challenges successfully. Leaders who are uncompassionate, cannot hear from experts and fellow citizens, and lack humility and humanism are guaranteed to cause chaos and prevent the country’s progress (e.g., loan-dependent governance, as currently happening). We have several such examples in the leadership in Sri Lanka.

Sri Lanka needs leaders and administrators (and for all jobs) who are chosen” based on their abilities, credibility, and past performance rather than oligarchy, nepotism, the school they attended, or other friendships. The country must embrace meritocracy and elect selfless leaders with the vision and wisdom to navigate future challenges.

Importance of Replacing the Constitution

Constitutions are potent tools that protect governance based on the people’s sovereignty, providing legally binding mechanisms for legitimate public participation in public life. Despite this, the current constitution in Sri Lanka is tainted with many worthless and harmful amendments designed to politicians compromising the population.

Leaders who lack compassion, humility, and humanism will continue to prevent the country’s progress. That’s why people are demanding a major System Change. However, no such change is sustainable without replacing the current rotten constitution tainted with unfavorable amendments for the public.

Political Circle, False Propaganda, and Ending Corruption

Political leaders often protect each other and deceive the public with false promises. To break this cycle, voters must use the upcoming elections to elect individuals outside the current political elite, untainted by corruption. Understanding this scenario is crucial for electing a president and MPs in subsequent general elections from outside the current ‘pool’ of MPs. People should use their vote vice to end oligarchy and not elect dishonest politicians.

A party with an absolute majority in parliament can pass laws unchecked, ignoring both opposition and the needs of the citizens. In today’s world, social media amplifies false narratives, with parties discrediting each other rather than focusing on policies that address crucial issues like inflation, cost of living, and economic recovery. Third parties and paid influencers further manipulate public opinion. A leader who does not prioritize the unity, progress, and success of Sri Lanka or adhere to these fundamental principles is ineffective and detrimental to the nation’s future.

People must recognize that political leaders often protect each other and deceive the public with false promises. Voters must elect individuals outside the current embedded political system without harmful political baggage. Oligarchy often leads to the dominance of a single party, silencing opposition and ignoring the needs of the citizens. Voters must use their voices to end the current dishonest, dreadful system.

By Juan Cole

At least one thing is now obvious in the Middle East: the Biden administration has failed abjectly in its objectives there, leaving the region in dangerous disarray. Its primary stated foreign policy goal has been to rally its partners in the region to cooperate with the extremist Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu while upholding a rules-based” international order and blocking Iran and its allies in their policies. Clearly, such goals have had all the coherence of a chimera and have failed for one obvious reason. President Biden’s Achilles heel has been his bear hug” of Netanyahu, who allied himself with the Israeli equivalent of neo-Nazis, while launching a ruinous total war on the people of Gaza in the wake of the horrific October 7th Hamas terrorist attack on Israel.

Biden also signed on to the Abraham Accords, a project initiated in 2020 by Jared Kushner, the son-in-law and special Middle East envoy of then-President Donald Trump. Through them the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Morocco all agreed to recognize Israel in return for investment and trade opportunities there and access to American weaponry and a U.S. security umbrella. Not only did Washington, however, fail to incorporate Saudi Arabia into that framework, but it has also faced increasing difficulty keeping the accords themselves in place given increasing anger and revulsion in the region over the high (and still ongoing) civilian death toll in Gaza. Typically, just the docking of an Israeli ship at the Moroccan port of Tangier this summer set off popular protests that spread to dozens of cities in that country. And that was just a taste of what could be coming.

Breathtaking Hypocrisy

Washington’s efforts in the Middle East have been profoundly undermined by its breathtaking hypocrisy. After all, the Biden team has gone blue in the face decrying the Russian occupation of parts of Ukraine and its violations of international humanitarian law in killing so many innocent civilians there. In contrast, the administration let the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu completely disregard international law when it comes to its treatment of the Palestinians. This summer, the International Court of Justice ruled that the entire Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories is illegal in international law and, in response, the U.S. and Israel both thumbed their noses at the finding. In part as a response to Washington’s Israeli policy, no country in the Middle East and very few nations in the global South have joined in its attempt to ostracize Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

Worse yet for the Biden administration, the most significant divide in the Arab world between secular nationalist governments and those that favor forms of political Islam has begun to heal in the face of the perceived Israeli threat. Turkey and Egypt, daggers long drawn over their differing views of the Muslim Brotherhood, the fundamentalist movement that briefly came to power in Cairo in 2012-2013, have begun repairing their relationship, specifically citing the menace posed by Israeli expansionism.

The persistence of Secretary of State Antony Blinken in pressing Saudi Arabia, a key U.S. security partner, to recognize Israel at a moment when the Arab public is boiling with anger over what they see as a campaign of genocide in Gaza, is the closest thing since the Trump administration to pure idiocracy. Washington’s pressure on Riyadh elicited from Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman the pitiful plea that he fears being assassinated were he to normalize relations with Tel Aviv now. And consider that ironic given his own past role in ordering the assassination of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. In short, the ongoing inside-the-Beltway ambition to secure further Arab recognition of Israel amid the annihilation of Gaza has America’s security partners wondering if Washington is trying to get them killed — anything but a promising basis for a long-term alliance.

Global Delegitimization

The science-fiction-style nature of U.S. policy in the Middle East is starkly revealed when you consider the position of Jordan, which has a peace treaty with Israel. In early September, its foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, warned that any attempt by the Israeli military or its squatter-settlers to expel indigenous West Bank Palestinians to Jordan would be considered an act of war.” While such anxieties might once have seemed overblown, the recent stunning (and stunningly destructive) Israeli military campaign on the Palestinian West Bank, including bombings of populated areas by fighter jets, has already begun to resemble the campaign in Gaza in its tactics. And keep in mind that, as August ended, Foreign Minister Israel Katz even urged the Israeli army to compel Palestinians to engage in a voluntary evacuation” of the northern West Bank.

Not only is the expulsion of Palestinians from there now the stated policy of cabinet members like Jewish Power extremist Itamar Ben-Gvir; it’s the preference of 65% of Israelis polled. And mind you, when Israel and Jordan begin talking war you know something serious is going on, since the last time those two countries actively fought was in the 1973 October War during the administration of President Richard Nixon.

In short, Netanyahu and his extremist companions are in the process of undoing all the diplomatic progress their country achieved in the past half-century. Ronen Bar, the head of Israel’s domestic Shin Bet intelligence agency, warned in August that the brutal policies the extremists in the government were pursuing are a stain on Judaism” and will lead to global delegitimization, even among our greatest allies.”

Turkey, a NATO ally with which the U.S. has mutual defense obligations, has become vociferous in its discontent with President Biden’s Middle Eastern policy. Although Turkey recognized Israel in 1949, under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of the pro-Islam Justice and Development Party interactions had grown rocky even before the Gaza nightmare. Still, until then their trade and military ties had survived occasional shouting matches between their politicians. The Gaza genocide, however, has changed all that. Erdogan even compared Netanyahu to Hitler, and then went further still, claiming that, in the Rafah offensive in southern Gaza in May, Netanyahu has reached a level with his genocidal methods that would make Hitler jealous.”

Worse yet, the Turkish president, referred to by friend and foe as the sultan” because of his vast power, has now gone beyond angry words. Since last October, he’s used Turkey’s position in NATO to prohibit that organization from cooperating in any way with Israel on the grounds that it’s violating the NATO principle that harm to civilians in war must be carefully minimized. The Justice and Development Party leader also imposed an economic boycott on Israel, interrupting bilateral trade that had reached $7 billion a year and sending the price of fruits and vegetables in Israel soaring, while leading to a shortage of automobiles in the Israeli market.

Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party represents the country’s small towns and rural areas and its Muslim businesses and entrepreneurs, constituencies that care deeply about the fate of Muslim Palestinians in Gaza. And while Erdogan’s high dudgeon has undoubtedly been sincere, he’s also pleasing his party’s stalwarts in the face of an increasing domestic challenge from the secular Republican People’s Party. In addition, he’s long played to a larger Arab public, which is apoplectic over the unending carnage in Gaza.

The Alliance of Muslim Countries

Although it was undoubtedly mere bluster, Erdogan even threatened a direct intervention on behalf of the beleaguered Palestinians. In early August, he said, Just as we intervened in Karabakh [disputed territory between Azerbaijan and Armenia], just as we intervened in Libya, we will do the same to them.” In early September, the Turkish president called for an Islamic alliance in the region to counter what he characterized as Israeli expansionism:

Yesterday, one of our own children, [Turkish-American human rights advocate] Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi, was vilely slaughtered [on the West Bank]. Israel will not stop in Gaza. After occupying Ramallah [the de facto capital of that territory], they will look around elsewhere. They’ll fix their eyes on our homeland. They openly proclaim it with a map. We say Hamas is resisting for the Muslims. Standing against Israel’s state terror is an issue of importance to the nation and the country. Islamic countries must wake up as soon as possible and increase their cooperation. The only step that can be taken against Israel’s genocide is the alliance of Muslim countries.”

In fact, the present nightmare in Gaza and the West Bank may indeed be changing political relationships in the region. After all, the Turkish president pointed to his rapprochement with Egypt as a building block in a new security edifice he envisions. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi made his first visit to Ankara on September 4th (following a February Erdogan trip to Cairo). And those visits represented the end of a more than decade-long cold war in the Sunni Muslim world over al-Sisi’s 2013 coup against elected Muslim Brotherhood Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, whom Erdogan had backed.

Despite its apparent embrace of democratic norms in 2012-2013, some Middle Eastern rulers charged the Brotherhood with having covert autocratic ambitions throughout the region and sought to crush it. For the moment, the Muslim Brotherhood and other forms of Sunni political Islam have been roundly defeated in Egypt, Syria, Tunisia, and the Persian Gulf region. Erdogan, a pragmatist despite his support for the Brotherhood and its offshoot Hamas, had been in the process of getting his country the best possible deal, given such a regional defeat, even before the Israelis struck Gaza.

Netanyahu’s Forever War in Gaza

For his part, Egypt’s al-Sisi is eager for greater leverage against Netanyahu’s apparent plan for a forever war in Gaza. After all, the Gaza campaign has already inflicted substantial damage on Egypt’s economy, since Yemen’s Houthis have supported the Gazans with attacks on container ships and oil tankers in the Red Sea. That has, in turn, diverted traffic away from it and from the Suez Canal, whose tolls normally earn significant foreign exchange for Egypt. In the first half of 2024, however, it took in only half the canal receipts of the previous year. Although tourism has held up reasonably well, any widening of the war could devastate that industry, too.

Egyptians are also reportedly furious over Netanyahu’s occupation of the Philadelphi Corridor south of the city of Rafah in Gaza and his blithe disregard of Cairo’s prerogatives under the Camp David agreement to patrol that corridor. The al-Sisi government, which, along with Qatar’s rulers and the Biden administration, has been heavily involved in hosting (so far fruitless) peace negotiations between Hamas and Israel, seems at the end of its tether, increasingly angered at the way the Israeli prime minister has constantly tacked new conditions onto any agreements being discussed, causing the talks to fail.

For months, Cairo has also been seething over Netanyahu’s charge that Egypt allowed tunnels to be built under that corridor to supply Hamas with weaponry, insisting that the Egyptian army had diligently destroyed 1,500 such tunnels. Egypt’s position was given support recently by Nadav Argaman, a former head of Shin Bet, who said, There is no connection between the weaponry found in Gaza and the Philadelphi Corridor.” Of Netanyahu, he added, He knows very well that no smuggling takes place over the Philadelphi Corridor. So, we are now relegated to living with this imaginary figment.”

In the Turkish capital, Ankara, Al-Sisi insisted that he wanted to work with Erdogan to address the humanitarian tragedy that our Palestinian brothers in Gaza are facing in an unprecedented disaster that has been going on for nearly a year.” He underscored that there was no daylight between Egypt and Turkey regarding the demand for an immediate ceasefire, the rejection of the current Israeli escalation in the West Bank, and the call to start down a path that achieves the aspirations of the Palestinian people to establish their independent state on the borders of June 4, 1967, with East Jerusalem as its capital.” He also pointed out that such positions are in accord with U.N. Security Council resolutions and pledged to work with Turkey to ensure that humanitarian aid was delivered to Gaza despite the ongoing obstacles imposed by Israel.”

To sum up, the ligaments of American influence in the Middle East are now dissolving before our very eyes. Washington’s closest allies, like the Jordanian and Saudi royal families, are terrified that Biden’s bear hug of Netanyahu’s war crimes and the fury of their own people could, in the end, destabilize their rule. Countries that, not so long ago, had correct, if not warm, relations with Israel like Egypt and Turkey are increasingly denouncing that country and its policies. And the alliance of U.S. partners in the region with Israel against Iran that Washington has long worked for seems to be coming apart at the seams. Countries like Egypt and Turkey are instead exploring the possibility of forming a regional Sunni Muslim alliance against Netanyahu’s geopolitics of Jewish power that might, in the end, actually reduce tensions with Tehran.

That things have come to such a pass in the Middle East is distinctly the fault of the Biden administration and its position — or lack of one — on Israel’s nightmare in Gaza (and now the West Bank, too). Today, all too sadly, that administration is wearing the same kind of blinkers regarding the war in Gaza that President Lyndon B. Johnson and his top officials once sported when it came to the Vietnam War.

Copyright 2024 Juan Cole

Featured image: Vice President Joe Biden visit to Israel March 2016 by U.S. Embassy Jerusalem is licensed under CC BY 2.0 / Flickr

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Juan Cole

Juan Cole, a TomDispatch regular, is the Richard P. Mitchell collegiate professor of history at the University of Michigan. He is the author of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam: A New Translation From the Persian and Muhammad: Prophet of Peace Amid the Clash of Empires. His latest book is Peace Movements in Islam. His award-winning blog isInformed Comment. He is also a non-resident Fellow of the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies in Doha and of Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN).