e-Con e-News

ee wishes readers a Happy New Year!

Last week, ee reproduced an Island report recalling how an attempted military coup, to overcome the so-called 2018 ‘constitutional coup’, was thwarted. Observers of such machinations of state & statecraft wonder if the latest tale about former President Maithripala Sirisena allegedly disclosing an ‘Indian Hand’ as being behind the April 2019 bombings, may indeed be true. ee also wonders if the dearly beloved ‘Cardinal’ too had inside information about this all along, ‘incensed’ because this handler was being censored? After all, the precious prelates of the Catholic Church must surely have hourly access via the Vatican to the oldest of the black-robed practitioners of such Jesuitical methods, amply provided to certain actors at regular intervals, 1948, 1959, 1962, 1971 and 1983-2009?

     In those smoky hours in 2019, ee also wondered about the role of such ‘secretive’ organizations as the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) – the power behind India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) – seeking to kill (& malign) 3 birds (Christian, Muslim, & Buddhist) with one coordinated blow. This also included a so-called ‘failed attempt’ at an Indian-owned hotel, where the alleged bomber later blew himself (or was blown up) at another non-Indian location. India’s PM N. Modi was the first foreign head of state to visit Sri Lanka after that carnage, in June 2019, chaperoned throughout by Sajith Premadasa. Meanwhile, media this week also headlined the push for a ‘Hindu Eelam Movement’ & their Presidential candidate (see ee Sovereignty).

     If Indian secret services had arranged the April 2019 terror, do their links with Sri Lanka’s own secret services explain why they were not pursued? Their ‘warning’ beforehand fits the pattern, evident in the planners of the Moscow concert hall attack who also claimed, later, that they had ‘warned’ the recipient (Russia) of their intended actions beforehand. Our good & generous neighbour too ‘warned’ us in 2019. Double gain! First, it signals friendliness and diverts suspicion away. Second, it allows later icing on the cake by blaming the recipient for not taking the warning seriously, to perhaps suit their own stratagems. ee would have loved to see ‘our’ mass media outlets pursue other parties like the JVP & their current apparently popularized leader about his opinion on this matter. We guess, it is too much to ask for that level of independence in ‘our’ media. Meanwhile, perhaps fearing arrest or possible harm, Sirisena and family are said to be taking refuge in Singapore, that bastion of the rule of law where a former fugitive Central Banker resides – the closest outpost perhaps, far from India’s hitmen?

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• Fast & Furious in Mariyakaday – Last week ee wondered if there were weapons meant for Sri Lanka aboard that Maersk-chartered Baltimore-bridge-crashing ship that had docked at the US Navy base in Norfolk, Virginia, prior to its fateful Maryland snafu. Curiosity was piqued by the amount of ‘empty containers’ on that ship making such a long journey all the way around that Cape of Storms aka Good Hope.

     With the US (& their Core Group, including Canada, etc) about to invade Haiti, to apparently suppress ‘gangs’, it is important to recall that it is the US via their ‘gusano’ (expat Cuban) gangsters in Miami who are flooding Haiti with guns. Haiti does not have a ‘gang problem’, it has a US imperialism problem. The same goes for Somalia, which the Anglo-Saxon media keeps repeating, has a ‘piracy problem’. It is the US (& their EU allies) who’s financed various ‘terrorist’ groups in Somalia. Again, East Africa & Red Sea & West Asia too, have an US imperialism problem, but no Anglo-Saxon media dare call it so.

     ee also recalls how the US sold 1,000s of firearms to Mexican ‘drug cartel’ leaders, which has led to the current ‘gang wars in Mexico’. The US claimed this ‘gunwalking’, or ‘letting guns walk’ tactic was ‘purposely’ used by the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives (ATF) Project Gunrunner aka Operation Fast & Furious to identify gang leaders. Each weapon was equipped with a GPS unit, to supposedly enable the ATF to track the guns to Mexican drug cartel leaders and arrest them. Instead, over 150 Mexican civilians were maimed or killed by these guns in Mexico. In September 2011, the Mexican government linked an undisclosed number of guns found at about 170 crime scenes, to the US project. The US scheme aimed to intentionally arm the Sinaloa drug cartel to defeat rival drug gangs. US President Barack Obama invoked executive privilege in order to withhold documents about the project. Mexico – so far from their Aztec gods & so close to the US – has a US imperialism problem too. The US’ pitbulls in Ecuador just broke into the Mexican embassy in Quito. Just as the USA’s pitbulls in occupied Palestine just bombed the Iranian embassy in Syria. Unprovoked attacks, indeed! So, the question remains: just what was in those Dali containers? Which fractions in which political faactions are they arming?

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‘Customs has no way of knowing who the consignee is & what

the cargo is until the cargo manifest is filed by the agent here.

Even then, cargo description is in most cases not sufficient to properly

identify such goods. No one will declare contents as ‘Toxic Waste’.’

– Customs Spokesman Senior Customs Director Seevali Arukgoda

Another administrative ‘coup’ is in progress to reduce or remove the powers of Customs Officials and replace them with ‘senior traders’ aka fraudulent importers. Customs unions, threatening industrial action if the Finance Ministry’s proposed amendments go through, say this is being done on behalf of the same ‘family of corrupt officials’ that annulled the 1953 Foreign Exchange Control Act and relaxed policies in 2017, enabling the bleeding of foreign exchange out of the country, causing the present economic ‘crisis’ (see ee Random Notes).

     After ee’s revelations on 30 March about hazardous wastes aboard that Danish-Maersk-chartered ship, a National Coordinating Committee (NCC) of ‘all relevant stakeholders’ was formed in Colombo and met on Friday, 5 April 2024. There has been no news since on what was decided, though we see that Germany’s GIZ is supposedly going to fund a pilot pre-arrival processing of import shipments, from May, where Colombo will get ‘cargo information 48 hours before the departure of the ship from the foreign port.’

     There were however continued attacks on ee (by Maersk-related NGOs & media) with doubts expressed about our revelations. They carefully admit that the materials imported were indeed hazardous, but only one of the 4,700 containers was for Sri Lanka and it was a ‘normal’ hazardous import needed for ‘manufacture’, while ignoring why Maersk was transporting toxic US waste through our waters. Maersk has gained a reputation for attacking its own workers who report on their mischief (see ee Random Notes).

     However, in the Daily Mirror, Rohan Masakorala, ‘founder of Shippers Academy International, a former Chairman of the Sri Lanka Shippers’ Council & 1^st Secretary General of the Asian Shipper’s Council’ calls ee a ‘false blog’ (whatever that is) publishing ‘false information’ attempting ‘to mislead the very vulnerable Sri Lankan society’, tarnishing ‘the image of a reputed shipping line, a private terminal operator in the Port of Colombo & US government institutions supporting Sri Lankan maritime sector through capacity building initiatives’ (see ee Random Notes).

     Yet, also in the Daily Mirror, Gehan L Kuruppu – also a ‘former Chairman of the Sri Lanka Shippers’ Council’ & 38-year veteran in this import-export scene – decries the attacks on the media who publicized ee’s revelations, adding:

‘Who the toxic materials & fuel were consigned to in Sri Lanka – in technical

terms the consignee of the cargo or the notify party – is not being reported.

Also, it is a long way for such hazmat & fuel to be exported in one voyage

without calling in other ports en route to Colombo Port. There are reports of uncertainty

about who is exporting such toxic waste to Sri Lanka, and who is importing them.

Are the US & the media institutions attempting to divert attention

from the ship charterer Maersk Line’s involvement?

Unless there is some classified information that cannot be divulged

for reasons that are unknown to authorities. In this instance, it is not possible to say

that the authorities cannot find who the exporter & the importer are,

as the US Customs rules are that any vessel leaving the port of US origin

has to make a prior establishment in filing the manifest.’

(see ee Industry, Baltimore Bridge collapse, Dali & controversy)

Ansell Lanka General Manager Ramesh Nanayakkara told the Sunday Times’ Sunimalee Dias (who reports Maersk & IMF, World Bank, ADB press releases as uninvestigable gospel) that they had one container on the Dali bound for Colombo that contained a chemical resin classified as hazardous. Used ‘in the normal manufacturing process’ – this raw material is used to make ‘industrial gloves’, and has been ‘imported for over 2 decades’. ‘The country of origin of this particular chemical is the USA’. The rest of the over 500 containers were said to be for transshipment cargo due for India.

     If this is gospel, isn’t it odd to bring this resin all the way from Baltimore? Is this imported ‘resin’ another ploy for foreign-exchange fraud? Ansell is linked to an old English multinational Dunlop, now based in Australia. Why not import the resin from there? Or produce it here? And if the rest of the containers were going to India, Singapore &/or Malaysia, or most going to China[ as some claimed, why not thru the Pacific? After all their talk of ‘carbon footprints’ & ‘Asia-Pacific’ etc. Odd, no?

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‘English industrial policy was to prohibit any form

of industrialisation in any of their colonies’

– HN Thenuwara (see ee Focus)

Lanka is about to miss the 5th industrial revolution, having missed the first 4 industrial revolutions in the world, and HN Thenuwara, a former Sri Lanka Central Bank Director of Economic Research now teaching at the University of Iowa, USA, is worried. This latest revolution of the industrial kind is being fueled by Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Thenuwara therefore consults ChatGpt to find out what he thinks we should do (see ee Focus). Unfortunately, he does not quite get it, as neither can ChatGpt, whose intelligence is not that artificial at all.

     While Thenuwara very kindly lays out what the first 4 revolutions were all about, he does not quite hit the nail on the thumb. The English did not just prohibit, they destroyed & mutilated, as in India, where they cut the thumbs of the weavers, etc. In Sri Lanka, ingenious traders, including, and not only Indian, importers & exporters, and the Central Bank & officials they have trained very well, who all work on behalf of US & European multinationals & banks, will simply not allow any hint of a modern industrial policy in our parts of the world.

     Thenuwara repeats standard mercantile shibboleths about 1970-77, saying ‘the country experimented with closed economy policies, which are countermeasures of industrial revolutions, and resulted in colossal failure’. His notion of failure is not good or bad, it’s sheer ignorance! Because even if there was a loss, a lack of industry would have led to further greater losses elsewhere – as is now evident, with no modern production taking place.

     And industrial policy did not ‘fail’ – it was strangled and sabotaged! He fails to show how the proportional representation system impacted those institutions curbing corruption. He ignores how the current US and EU greenwashing is to bind Sri Lanka into only buying their machinery and not making our own. He also does not call out India’s blatant movies to tie Sri Lanka into India’s industrial orbit, making it Chennai’s bitch. Finally, a top Central Bank official going to work for a foreign country, especially a country that displays constant enmity to the country’s economic wellbeing, may well constitute high corruption as well.

     Thenuwara should have asked ChatGPT to improve on this sentence: ‘Imperialist industrial policy will sabotage any form of industrialization in their colonies (including India & Japan, etc)’.

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• Just like the US & EU are constantly threatening to remove Sri Lanka’s preferred access to their hallowed market (GSP+, etc), the US is now threatening South Africa with similar menace after S Africa took US-funded Israel to the International Court of Justice for their ongoing genocide in Palestine. While the ICJ’s ruling of ‘plausible’ genocide doesn’t appear to have deterred Israel one bit (these international bodies are weaponized only against us, usually triggered along with other force-multipliers), the US has launched an investigation into South Africa’s ‘uppity negro’ behavior (see ee Focus), detailing not only their upset about Israel, but also South Africa daring to continue to pursue closer ties with Russia, China, Iran. This sheds further light on how the US views and treats Sri Lanka, a more acquiescent vassal.

     Hence, the US-South Africa Bilateral Relations Review Act was introduced in the US House on February 6. Pandor says, ‘There’s almost an implication that when the USA holds a particular position, South Africa must follow… I don’t know whether it’s because we’re Africans or some other reason.’

     South Africa’s Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor was thus beckoned to Washington, DC. South Africa’s accession to the beckoning may relate to the ‘behind-the-scenes’ deal struck in 1994 between Afrikaner cabinet minister Roelf Meyer & then ANC General Secretary (now President) Cyril Ramaphosa under the aegis of the USA, which led, 1948 Soulbury-suckering-like, to the maintenance of white minority rule over the economy. The US must be threatening to expose this ‘behind-the-scenes’ deal to undermine the ANC before the upcoming elections.

     In May 2023, the US’ South Africa ambassador’s unfounded accusation that the country was providing weapons to Russia, led to President Ramaphosa saying the allegation ‘had a most damaging effect on our currency, our economy, and our standing in the world; in fact, it tarnished our image’. In August 2023, a South African official said the country would not give in to pressure from the US to stop using Chinese company Huawei’s equipment on its networks.

     South Africa is the USA’s largest trading partner in Africa. About 600 US businesses operate in the country. The US African Growth & Opportunity Act (AGOA) provides sub-Saharan African countries some duty-free access to the US. The US has removed several countries from AGOA, eg, Ethiopia, Mali, Guinea, Uganda, Gabon, Niger, & the Central African Republic. The unstated threat of potential removal from AGOA hovers over the US-South Africa relationship, too.

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Contents:

Coup After Coup After Coup: Sabotaging the 5th Industrial Revolution in Sri Lanka