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A ‘Chinese’ & an ‘African’ meet in ‘Europe’

‘Chinese’: Xi Hong is my name.

‘African’: Delighted, my name is Emmanuel Noël de Souza.

‘Chinese’: So you’re not African but Franco-Brazilian?

‘African’: Yes, I am African

‘Chinese’: And your name is Emmanuel Noël De Souza?

‘African’: Yes, I owe my parents this pretty name.

‘Chinese’: Even simple names that don’t require any technique, any technology,

you can’t produce them at home? Do you have to import them or have them donated to you? ………….

This ‘African’ could easily well be a ‘Sri Lankan’. Besides, it’s not that Asians & Africans do not ‘know’ about the vital indispensability of modern ‘machine-making’ industry. Ask Japan, China, India, Korea. Ask Zimbabwe. South Africa. Congo. It is just that such ideas and practices are murderously penalized, and creatively sabotaged. Besides, ‘our’ media and schools also simply will not tell! Then again, ‘our’ editors and professors themselves do not know what the culture of modern production entails.

Note the regular paeans to fake local manufacture or assembly parading as industry, announcing Made-in-Sri Lanka. Note the obtuse references, that pop out regularly, comparing Sri Lanka to an Africa, which serves as an imagined benchmark for ‘system failure’. And yet, such references end up being far more revealing about our own studied ignorance about the real world and history.

     This week, it was ‘award-winning’ Professor Rohan Pethiyagoda addressing the 48^th Convocation of the University of Sri Jayewardenepura at the BMICH in Colombo:

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Attack of the Ekonomik Killers!