IMF Dollars Bribe Media & Economists To Loot National Resources
Posted on March 26th, 2023

e-Con e-News

Before you study the economics, study the economists!

e-Con e-News 19-25 March 2023

‘IMF denies influence in postponing SL polls’

Anti-corruption & governance reforms a central pillar of EFF-supported program – IMF’

‘Sri Lanka becomes first in Asia to have its governance come under IMF scrutiny’

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208 years after the English coup d’état of 1815, and 75 years after 1948 Soulbury independence, Sri Lanka may proudly proclaim itself a fully-fledged US colony. All that’s missing today is the transfer of the boots and military weaponry, including nuclear warships, from Diego Garcia. & Thanjavur. Or Thoothukudi.          

     On Monday, March 20, on the first day of the Northern spring, the IMF displayed their meagre largesse. On Thursday, March 22, the Central Bank Governor met the ‘heads of media organizations’ at the President’s office.

     The IMF says it is providing ‘prioritized & sequenced recommendations.’ This prioritization & sequencing involves manipulation of an ever-willing media, attempting to besiege & beguile the vote banks.

     The IMF just provided $15.6billion to the Ukraine for war. The $2.8bn of US IMF’s Extended Fund Facility (EFF) to Sri Lanka, spread out over 4 years, is also for a kind of war. A discount war. It is to engineer, lubricate and inspire acceptance – of the ‘restructuring’ of the ‘unsustainable debt’ of $84bn. Hoping to slather more debt on, while buttering select fractions of the country to dispossess the majority of the people and their aspirations.

     Rather than delving deeper into the roots of our discontent, there was news this week of a combined campaign – under the World Bank (via Transparency International) & IMF’s definition of ‘corruption’ – to hit 2 members of the USA’s evolving manifestation of the latest axis of evil: Zimbabwe and Sri Lanka. Zimbabwe, as a citadel of African nationalism, and Sri Lanka as a mainspring of Sinhala Buddhism. The English news – has been hiding the massive US-led sanctions against a defiant Zimbabwe, after Africans began to take their land back, and – instead spreads calumny. 

     Meanwhile, ‘the dreams of those who raised crosses and distributed buriyani and vatalapan at Galle Face have come true’. The country has been graduated ‘from a mixed economy to a fully fledged capitalist economy’ (ee Economists, Dream).

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‘IMF expects the government to phase out import & exchange restrictions’

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We like the great ‘expectations’ part: ‘The IMF expects…’ This entire year, it has been the government that has been ‘expecting’ an IMF package. So now, what does the IMF expect?

     The IMF this week ordered the removal of import controls & restrictions on Dollar flows, which then won adoring press releases, kiributh & firecrackers at the UNP headquarters, and the usual suspects: Chambers of Commerce, SL-Japan Business Council, etc. So why is IMF denying their influence in getting the government to keep postponing elections? Who is accusing the IMF of doing so?

     Economists are now engulfing media platforms offering diagnoses and prognoses: ‘Structural economic reforms don’t always require government spending’, claims Shanta Devarajan, a US agent involved in the IMF-ordered ‘restructuring’ game. Devarajan however betrays epistemological strategy when he laments the government’s political inability to suppress cultivation of paddy. They wish to hobble further the Paddy Lands Act, which ordains that smallholders grow rice. The World Bank agenda (Devarajan is a WB stipendiary) prioritizes the pushing of cash crops and forcefeeding us subsidized US wheat (see ee Agriculture, Attack on Rice Production & Paddy Lands Act).

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Progressive US$3billion SL program will protect poorest’ – IMF

     The IMF announcement on imports in & Dollar flows out, was accompanied by the US envoy Santa Chung distributing ‘36,000 tons of Triple Super Phosphate’, plus ‘fortified rice’ and ‘fortified vegetable oil’, plus ‘protein supplements using yellow split peas & Alaskan pink salmon’ to 95,000 children!

     Industrialization based on rhythms and processes of rice production is key to Sri Lanka’s advance. So who are the US & IMF fooling? And why is Envoy Chung in such a frenzy? She is also diverting from the activities of her whiter compatriots who are busy infiltrating key sectors of the country & its economy. We cannot expect the IMF to shed its wrappings and tell us their ‘prioritized & sequenced’ game plan to corrupt (sorry, privatize) public officials even further (under the guise of anti-corruption of course):

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‘In June 1954 journalist Rhoda de Silva (later deported from Sri Lanka) wrote in Les Temps Moderne, the journal started by Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre, about the extent of US ‘penetration’ in Sri Lanka effected under ‘diverse forms of camouflage’. De Silva wrote of Hollywood movies being filmed at strategic locations in Lanka; of the first Central Bank governor (John Exter) being a US citizen; and of other US nationals embedded in commercial, insurance and other companies here.’

   ‘The US government was putting ‘flagrant pressure’ on the SL government to break the Rice-Rubber agreement with China.’ She also pointed to ‘certain of the US methods of intervention that are less apparent’:

   ‘We wanted to discover to the slightest detail by precisely which methods the US controls the largest publishing house [Wijewardene-family-controlled Lakehouse] in Ceylon. We wanted to discover how they go about getting the US propagandists there to stir up so well the antagonism between the 2 different language groups… It would interest the Ceylonese people to learn for precisely what reasons the US ambassador and all his personnel frequent the Maldive Islands.’ (International McCarthyism: the Case of Rhoda Miller de Silva, Judy Pasqualge, ee 2 May 2020)’

• Having gone from the ‘aragalaya’ – demanding the government go to the IMF – the cry now is to how the new school principal, or viceroy, will have to impart timely discipline. How will it avoid the 16 previous IMF failures?

     And what is different now from 1950 when the Central Bank of Sri Lanka was first set up by the USA? The goal then as now, was and is, to prevent industrialization in the colonies. Industrialization has always had to be held back by any means, and enable the grab of natural resources:

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‘In the USA, consumption per head of the critical raw materials

is 20 times that in the underdeveloped countries’

(see ee Focus, SBD de Silva, Export-Oriented Industrialization & the Free Trade Zone)

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• Imperialist powers have intermittently imposed plans & laws to ensure & extend their monopoly over industrialization:

     Indian-made iron was as good as England’s, but a 19th century plan to buy local iron for a local project in India was shelved due to opposition by English manufacturers. So much for ‘free trade’. The Economist magazine in 1882 shuddered, accusing the Indian government of ‘travelling beyond its province… and where are schemes of this kind to end?’ (ee Random Notes)

     England’s Iron Act of 1750 was just one of the English Trade & Navigation acts to hinder settler colonial manufacturing that competed with England’s home industry, and restricted the iron industry in their American colonies to the supply of raw metals.

     200 years later, the USA in 1944 proposed the Morgenthau Plan to weaken Germany and Japan following World War II, eliminating its arms industry, and also removing and destroying other key industries, they deemed key to military power. This included the removal or destruction of industrial plants and equipment in that country (see ee Industry, Morgenthau Plan).

     The US wars (cold & hot) on the USSR & China, forced the US to abandon the Morgenthau Plan. This plan was however exported to the rest of the world. To Africa, in particular, says Zimbabwean political analyst Rutendo Matinyarare. He examines the current sabotage of Eskom, South Africa’s electricity company, pointing to the Anglo-American Corporation’s destruction of Zimbabwe’s Ziscosteel, the southern hemisphere’s largest steel plant. Ziscosteel was sabotaged by the ‘monopoly makers’: companies like Anglo American, ISCO of South Africa, Lancashire Steel, and Voestalpine, which were manufacturing the machines that were used in smelting iron & steel in Zimbabwe. These are acts of war to undermine Black people, to maintain the white monopoly over industrialization. ee continues its investigation into the industrialization and electrification of South Africa. Reminding readers that, until 20 years ago, whites prevented 70% of South Africans from obtaining electricity…

     Who would be the counterparts of Anglo American plc in Sri Lanka? Iron & steel production has been all but abolished in Sri Lanka. (Some may object & point to a few relatively isolated workshops; however, industrialization has to be examined in relation to transforming the economy.)

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• Africa is just across the waters from us, and yet we hear little about their real story. We would think, sharing maybe even 3 colonial languages (Portuguese, Dutch & English), we would know more. In fact, we know less. Our English Department is of no help. They are still following England’s Heinemann’s versions of African literature: Things Fall Apart, etc.

     We are supposed to follow the white fashions in culture and foreign policy, and thus must follow too, the white pandemonium. We see Somalia and Zimbabwe increasingly creeping into the synonym section under permanent dysfunction. And yet, there are major features we have shared, and not just after colonial plunder (see, ee Random Notes, Djibouti).

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• A strange coincidence. ee continues its focus on the enormous power that multinational companies (MNCs) wield in determining industrial policy, and overall economic policy. Last week, ee began a series on Southern Africa’s industrialization, delving into DJ ‘Laxapana’ Wimalasurendra’s link to a Boer prisoner & engineer, and Cecil Rhodes’ Victoria Falls fraud (ee 18 March 2023). This trail led us to Niagara Falls, Westingthouse and that famed 1893 Chicago World Exhibition (that Anagarika Dharmapala went to), also recalling the undermining of Wimalasurendra’s hydroelectric scheme by Pearson, Bousteads and the Shell Oil Co, etc. (also see ee Building Blocks). This week’s ee also looks at the MNCs behind the sabotage of industrialization in Africa: One in particular, Anglo American plc has enormous power in Africa, and recalls the power of MNCs such as Unilever plc in Sri Lanka. These multinational companies run the politicians and the media.

     Two or 3 news items on Africa struck ee‘s eye this week. Whenever Africa appears in the English newspapers in Sri Lanka, coverage strangely resembles the ways in which Sinhala villagers are represented. It’s usually caricature. And true to form there was this week’s tabloid-style sensationalism about: ‘A Zimbabwe preacher with links to a controversial Sri Lankan ‘prophet’…accused of gold-smuggling’. This is from ‘an undercover operation by Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit (I-Unit), which is targeting Zimbabwe’s President and his family’. ‘Al Jazeera reporters, posing as Chinese nationals who were looking to launder large sums of money, were offered several ways to remove all stains of corruption from their dirty cash.’ The main Al-J informant is ‘Karen Greenaway, a former US FBI investigator who tracks international money laundering schemes.’ Apparently, the US and EU sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe ‘make it difficult for the government to export gold because of the additional scrutiny on officials in power’. (see ee Sovereignty, Zimbabwe preacher)

     So why are we being told about this issue? On the face of it: the story splashes the photograph of Mahinda Rajapakse, with the Zim preacher (circled in red). Also, there is the admirable US (IMF) zeal to root out ‘corruption’. This ee Focus examines the differences between how sanctions are applied to Black countries and white-ruled countries, and, in the end, what real corruption and criminality is all about:

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Rhodesia was a white English settler state,

set up by the British South Africa Company (BSAC),

and imposed over and stolen from the people of MaDzimbabwe since at least 1890.

Under siege, within & without, the white settlers proclaimed  

Unilateral Declaration of Independence from England in 1965

over division and investment of profits.

White Rhodesia was then subject to UN-led sanctions.

This essay below divulges how these sanctions were ‘cleverly’ undermined by white governments, led by the USA, and provides insights into the undermining of countries’ economies.

After the African war of liberation there was suspended,

the English as usual reneged on their promises,

and when the country’s African leadership started to reclaim the land,

the English turned Zimbabwe into a synonym for ‘failed state’,

and its leadership, particularly Robert Mugabe as synonym for ‘Black dictator’.

These stories as with all widely disseminated English stories turn out to be false as usual.

     The other Africa-related item was the Wijeya Group Daily FT’s extended interview with one ‘consultant’ Ronnie Peiris, who is set to hold forth on 24 April in Colombo on ‘Integrated Performance Management’ needed to achieve at least 75% of the IMF’s plans. His bio: ‘Group Finance Director, John Keells Holdings, Managing Director (before the Finance Director), Anglo American Corporation (Central Africa), Planning Manager at Lever Brothers (Ceylon), Board Member in large corporations’. How’s that!? Anglo-American, Unilever & Keells! Hallelujah!

     Not sure if this is the same Ronnie Peiris, the ‘collector’ and ‘bagman’ for Chandrika Bandaranaike, and of Water’s Edge fame. But Peiris is now laying down the latest multinational capitalist gospel truth of tinsel-thin social responsibility, diversity, inclusiveness & equality (DIE!) aka Neo-Woke (weaponized astro-turf posing as grassroots), and singing from the MNC choir sheet about ‘sharing’ (no mention of shareholders) and of ‘stakeholders’, including pliant unions – ‘through a combination of top-down and bottom-up approaches’.

     The hymn Peiris is singing goes: ‘IMF’s got you by the you-know-what but that’s-not-enough…’ This current hymn amends the pure keenness of the earlier hymn, which was ‘Go to the IMF, you Stupid.’ There’s also other hymns sung by this ‘stupid’ choir: ‘Show us Everything O Naked Lord’ & ‘Blessed are the Poor’. This is for the IMF to act a little more transparent and be kind to the ‘poor’, which it uses as a ‘surplus’ army to discipline the power of the working class (see ee Workers, Integrated Performance Management).

     Last ee pointed to the farce of India’s Mahindra claiming ‘assembly’ as manufacture. Also noting the so-called manufacture of Japan’s Senaro motorcycles, and their adoption as the mode of travel by the SL President’s pettier officials. This week we are told: ‘Sri Lanka’s Senaro Motors to export locally assembled motorbikes to Kenya’. So what makes ‘Senaro Motor Corporation, a motorcycle manufacturing company in Sri Lanka’?

     ‘Around a third of the spare parts used in the motorbikes are manufactured in the firm’s assembly factory in Yakkala, a suburb of capital Colombo’. Which parts we are not told. Senaro ‘is able to import raw materials for spare parts as it has a special certification from the Ministry of Industries… When the bikes are exported, they will be labeled as Made in Sri Lanka and that is a proud moment for us!’ Proud, indeed! Sri Lanka’s good name (at least, among Africans) is being used by Japanese MNCs as a means to avoid export quotas…

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‘The continuing foreign exchange crisis is broadly attributed to flawed policies,

such as tax cuts, debt monetization, banning fertilizer & agrochemical imports,

real appreciation of the exchange rate, etc. However, the issues at hand can be also

characterized as a liquidity trap in the foreign exchange market,

enforced by the economic structure and exploitative market structure,

in the import & export sector of the economy, in the long run.’

(see last ee, All praise for Lanka’s saviours!)

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• Which brings us back to the slobbering silence of the mutton-eaters: earlier this month (ee 04 March 2023) we wondered about the hush hush of the League of Multinational Corporations (LMNC) in Sri Lanka, formed in 2018 by 7 MNCs: Unilever, Ceylon Tobacco Company (CTC, ie, British American Tobacco), Baur & Co, Heineken, HSBC, Indian Oil Co, and Mastercard.

     These powerful MNCs, with war chests bigger than most countries’ budgets, demanded of Sri Lanka: ‘Everything needs to be fixed in the context of international standards, in terms of human rights & labor laws too.’ And ‘fixing’, as in fraud, is what they do best!

     So how does the IMF ‘agreement’ this week, fulfil their demands? Unilever plc is Sri Lanka’s Anglo American plc. Let’s nominate Unilever as the mahamolakaru of Sri Lanka, behind the long-term terrorism perpetrated on the country.

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• Anglo American plc has its origins in the British South Africa Co (BSAC) of Cecil Rhodes. Settler states were founded by companies led by genocidaires, called all kinds of fancy names – privateer, buccaneer, soldier of fortune – romanticized by the arts. The Virginia Company (US) of De La Warre. The Hudson Bay Co (Canada). The West India Company (Caribbean)’s Henry Morgan. The East India Company (England) of Robert Clive.

     Nowadays, these settler units are considered creatures of the oil and mining conglomerates run by an Anglo-American Rothschild-Rockefeller cabal: BHP (Australia), Power Corporation (Canada), Anglo-American (South Africa). In Sri Lanka, Lipton’s Tea Garden has been transformed into Unilever’s Fair&Lovely…

     With all its make-up – one of the largest chemical importers into the country – Unilever slinks in the shadows of media-smoke & mirrors.

     Russia’s brave decision to confront NATO, to ‘denazify’ and disarm the US arms industry’s proxies in the Ukraine, will eventually require the formation of a broader anti-imperialist alliance, which this week’s historic visit by China’s leader Xi Jinping surely signifies. There is a clear link between the Nazism & Fascism of Europe, and the slave & colonial relations of the last 500 years. London & Washington have been put on notice…

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