Debt Sharks & Drowned Yachts, Colonial Taxes & US Warships Rig Sri Lanka’s Elections
Posted on August 25th, 2024
e-Con e-News
blog: eesrilanka.wordpress.com
‘Before you study the economics, study the economists!’
e-Con e-News 18-24 August 2024
And in those swirling waters we saw the US corporate law firm involved in advising Sri Lanka about‘restructuring’ the country’s apparently never-payable debt. The luxury yacht saga also implicates the London-based ‘transaction advisor for divestiture of the Sri Lanka’s government stake in national assets, so-called ‘SoEs’.
The media is also yet to name the one or more Sri Lankan nationals among the passengers and/or crew who have been repeatedly cited as being aboard the luxury yacht that sank. The drama gives us insight into the shenanigans (also known as ‘business as usual’) behind Sri Lanka’s so-called bankruptcy. In such algebra, certain lives figure more preciously than others on the horizons. The IMF resolution to deal with our repetitive crimes, of corrupt profligacy, has been grudgingly put off until presidential (or parliamentary) consent flings a loin cloth of ancient respectability to garb the ongoing boondoggle.
And yet they insist that any election cannot and must not water down the bitter prescriptions of the US Treasury’s 17th IMF Breakdown. Après moi, le déluge is to be translated into Manhattan English as ‘There is no After the IMF…’ What they are saying is more than just that. So what is it they want regardless of what we want? And what must we – sitting in the middle of the most populous ocean and at the base of the world’s heartland – what must we do?
Three popularly elected governments and leaders have been ordered defunct – in Sri Lanka, Pakistan, and now Bangladesh. And India’s PM has had to scurry all the way to Kiev to entertain a deadly comic puppet who can play the piano with his penis! The cricket commentary from Rawalpindi seems to have paused for lemons. And this week saw the Awami League, party of Bangladesh’s ‘freedom struggle’, being left out of the invitations by their English-trained army chief to ‘the meeting to discuss the formation of the interim government in Bangladesh’. And perhaps this is why we are being told over & over, it’s election time again in Sri Lanka. Over & over, perhaps, because even our ‘faux Brexit of 1948’, if they ever left, is well and truly over.
And so as to remind us of the limits of our horizons, several US warships (with lesser Indian & Australian & Japanese hardware in tow splashing about the foaming quadrilateral) have been allowed to proudly flaunt their anti-air, anti-surface & anti-submarine proclivities by dropping in on Colombo for ‘replenishment’. Thirsty & hungry perhaps – perhaps breathless too – so far after all, from the USA, here they seem eager to impress their booted toes onto terra firma, so close as they are now to the once & future paradise, whose time & tide it wishes to order back & forth.
So in the wake of the warships, many of their diplomats are also embarking off airplanes mouthing mouth-watering honeydews about democracy & human rights & transparency. The latest was ‘Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Oceans & International Environmental & Scientific Affairs Jennifer R Littlejohn to discuss hydrography. Littlejohn is an African-American, and may certainly know oceans, like the Atlantic, where her ancestors were sailed over in not-so-golden chains, enslaved in the mouldy holds of ships. Then again, her ancestors may have been those who helped the white slavers fill those living coffins by luring Africans in to generational chattel. And so these lost princes & princesses have to always come at us, ‘acting’? Is the entertaining mercenary, still the only role? Is their life beyond Beyonce?
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Buffalos, elephants, lions & tigers, blood-sucking mosquitoes & parasites. To talk about wildlife, to talk about cricket, to talk about elections, in Sri Lanka, is to talk about politics & people in another key. Even talk about cakes baked elsewhere with foreign ingredients and imported appliances & utensils while awkwardly divided at home means not just a discourse on the dangers of diabetes. The media, of course likes to point at politicians (rather than at themselves) as corrupt. They certainly like to claim elections as a waste of time. Even as the media are among the more munificent beneficiaries of elections (advertising, useless dramas). And August is a month when all sorts of mahouts, trained and untrained, clamber on to elephants’ backs – not to parade them in grand style to honor the resilience of the highlanders – but to talk of ‘the culture, generally’.
As for our entertaining pastimes & our national sport: It is more popular than cricket. Here we dare speak of bourgeois elections in Sri Lanka. All the players too wear white & have to act white. On screen. Whether elections are more of a time-waster than cricket, is debatable. It is certainly a much more democratic display of farce than anything the white master can put on in London or in Washington. The white man & their media have taken it upon themselves to decide if the election is open & fair, just as they wish the ocean to remain – open & fair.
Even as they funded the chasing away of a man who overwhelmingly won the last election. Evicted by a supposedly even ‘more democratic’ struggle aka Aragalaya (rename it Ara Guliya – That Blob!). But the blob has certain recognizable vertebrae, deep down under. Evident in fashions of transparency & accountability they clothe their nakedness in.
For as economic researcher Shiran Illanperuma highlights in this ee Focus, taxation & bureaucracy, whether governmental or corporate, are integral & expensive due to the colonial import-export plantation economy. Which is why we must return to those mysterious drownings in a Mediterranean waterspout….
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The deaths by drowning off Italy include lawyers belonging to the legal firm Clifford Chance who are ‘restructuring’ Sri Lanka’s so-called debt. Also dead, in 2 different places on the same weekend, are the owners and partners of Autonomy, a hyped-up high-tech firm, linked to England’s spy agency. They had been entangled in a 12-year law suit. Their star witness, the Chairman of Morgan Stanley International, who helped throw Autonomy’s Bangladesh-born financial officer under the bus (or overboard), also drowned. Morgan Stanley is also one of the top asset managers ‘exposed’ to Sri Lanka’s debt (see ee Focus).
The 12-year lawsuit against Autonomy also saw their accounting firm, the multinational Deloitte, pay millions in fines. Deloitte is involved in the selling of Sri Lanka’s national assets to pay off the so-called debt: ‘The transaction advisor for divestiture of the Sri Lanka’s government stake in SoEs.’ These gangs of New York & London are gaming Sri Lanka’s debt, and subsequently holding its economy hostage to the whims of Wall Street via the IMF’s & World Bank’s boss, the US Treasury. They have not been subject to that much-vaunted transparency & due diligence. ee recently noted how:
‘A senior executive of Rothschild (the largest ISB creditor of Sri Lanka)
moved to Lazard (SL’s financial advisory firm for the ISB restructure) to
manage debt restructuring. It could well be that the proposals that were on
the negotiation table, including Macro-Linked Bonds (MLBs), was ‘a joint
proposal’ of the creditor & the financial advisor of the debtor!’
(ee 03 August 2024)
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Under capitalism the masses do not really participate
in governing the country… even in the most democratic regime,
the governments are not set up by the people but by the
Rothschilds & Stinneses, the Rockefellers & the Morgans.
– J Stalin (1924)
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Several US warships, proudly flaunting their anti-air, anti-surface & anti-submarine proclivities did indeed drop by Colombo for ‘replenishment’. Thirsty & hungry perhaps – perhaps breathless too – so far after all from the USA…, here they seem eager to press their booted toes on soil, so close to the once & future paradise. Many of their diplomats are also embarking off airplanes declaiming democracy & human rights & transparency. The latest was ‘Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Oceans & International Environmental & Scientific Affairs Jennifer R Littlejohn to discuss hydrography. Littlejohn is an African-American, and may certainly know the Atlantic Ocean, where her ancestors were brought in chains, enslaved in the holds of ships. Then again, here ancestors may have been those who helped the white slavers. (see ee Focus)
We notice many of these suited & skirted US diplomats are ‘Acting’ Assistant Secretary of this, & ‘Acting’ UnderSecretary of that… Many of these ‘actors’ are a lot of what liberals in the USA call ‘of-colors’ aka ‘people of color’ (POC). The carved Koreans, kidnapped Africans, faux Jews, Ukrainian Nazis, Italian mobsters & Irish conmen) who are expected to provide the thin mask of skin – Malcolm X called them KneeGrows, for their time spent on their patellas, sucking off imperialist dictat – to prove their loyalty by practicing colonialism (also known as ‘development’) over our heads. These visiting – offering their mugs for de rigeur photo-ops with an increasingly ketchup-faced US envoy and all the local color they can round up as swooning officials and politicians.
And here it is midst all this…we cannot call it villainy & intrigue. And dare not also call it corruption. This is their way. And here they are in the midst of the ongoing attempt by a long-past-due-date capitalism to sustain itself through more horrific warmongering & genocidal binges. This should enlighten us further as to what is truly meant by the economist Schumpeter’s ‘creative disruption’, and his ‘entrepreneurs’. What is meant by those Keynesian ‘welfare’ measures, which mostly fattened their militaries? What is meant by the postmodernist bidding of goodbye to the working class and the credulity of their narratives, and the superimposing instead of an amorphous ‘multitude’. They are funded, therefore they are. This week also saw the departing envoy pass out awards those astroturf women who apparently fronted as grassroots to green Galle Face in the Blob aka Araguliya.
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‘Dwelling on Ukraine’s neo-nazis can be an optical illusion.
Not that I am one to underplay their murderous actions or political power.
But that ultimately, they are junior partners to Ukraine’s liberals’
– ee Workers, Unknown victims & universal lessons
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Meanwhile their uniformed mercenaries from pale Poland, sunbathed in occupied Palestine, claiming to be the descendants of a Red-Sea-parting Moses, yet greased in the crude oils of Exxon, proudly deliver pounds of raw flesh in see-through bags to parents in Gaza, telling them their children may be found amongst them.
In Russia, the US also deploy their Gallician proxies, declaring the Baltic their lake, threatening the watersheds of the Oxus and Volga and Dnieper, with nuclear war. In East Asia, their proxies promise to similarly thaw their frozen wars in Korea and the South China Sea (Taibei).
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It is to this open attempt to return to colonial rule, that ee Focus by Shiran illanperuma looks at how ‘The colonial project created an international division of labour to ensure that the colonised would never achieve modern industrialization & development. ‘The fetters placed on Sri Lanka’s fiscal & monetary sovereignty appear almost tailor made to perpetuate its underdevelopment & prevent modern industrialization.’
Illanperuma tracks how Sri Lanka’s tax system emerged as a byproduct of the colonial plantation economy and the colonial state, taxing indirectly the trade in bulk imports of commodities for consumption and exports of cash crops to raise revenue. This required a sprawling bureaucracy to operate road, port, railway & electricity facilities; control tropical diseases, move labour to & from India; pacifying & trading in stolen land through court & police systems, while quelling the population.
He points out how there were more taxes on consumer imports than on European planters’ export revenues. But even taxes on imports had to navigate English industrial interests: eg, they had to allow English salt to compete with locally produced salt, and for English cloth manufacturers to outsell Indian imports. Yet the colonial state imposed direct taxes on the local peasantry to establish the plantation infrastructure. He quotes SBD de Silva on how the early colonial taxation regime favoured the plantation economy over the village economy. He also recalls how these tax policies ‘pauperized the peasantry and fuelled 2 wars of liberation.’
The focus this week on the colonial origins of Sri Lanka’s debt (& economy) was first published in the US-based magazine Jamhoor, which clearly must not have read Illanperuma’s article. The article begins by criticizing the economic policies of the currently unelected President Ranil Wickremsinghe. Yet their banner illustration, chosen to illustrate the essay, was an image of former President Mahinda Rajapakse, a favourite bugaboo of the white man and their media. Jamhoor meaning ‘The People’ in Urdu, says (in the passive voice, that) it was ‘launched’ in 2018, and calls itself ‘a Left media platform focusing on South Asia and its diasporas’. It turns out Jamhoor is funded by Progressive International: and linked to the Democracy in Europe Movement (DiEM25) and The Sanders Institute, with Jane Sanders, spouse of a former Presidential candidate, as a key player. Bernie Sanders is against one-person one-vote in Israel, cos Arabs will be in the majority then… Other key people apparently include Logo star Naomi Klein and presidential candidate Cornel West. It is viewed as left social democratic, and therefore quite well-funded for such a small organization.
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• What songs would Bengal’s Rabindranath Tagore sing now? He who wrote what became India’s national anthem, and then Bangladesh’s anthem too? – Jana Gana Mana (Thou Art the Ruler of the Minds of All People) is India’s national anthem. Amar Sonar Bangla (My Golden Bengal) is Bangladesh’s national anthem. Yet Tagore appears to us more like the wheel-spinner Gandhi who promoted handicraft – a utopian romantic (who the Anagarika Dharmapala criticized; as Susantha Goonetilake reminds, ‘Dharmapala had a forward-looking attitude and denounced the anti-industrial attitude of Gandhi saying that one cannot use the spinning wheel and bullock cart to compete in the modern age’). While the English chased Dharmapala into exile after murdering his brother (& DJ Wimalasurendra’s attempt to hydroelectrify Sri Lanka was being sabotaged by Boustead Bros and Peearson), Tagore was awarded the Nobel Prize – just like this aggrandized petty thief Mo Yunus, who has now been made the leader of Bangladesh by a coup.
The 1919 May 4th movement in China was highly critical of Tagore and the orientalist airs he promoted among poets in China. Was independence all about words & clothes & songs & architectural facades? or about fairer distribution of wealth? Did he even dare speak of the industrialized production that alone could sustain such fine words or fairer distribution? Was he even aware in those same years of the industrialization led by Joseph Stalin (dare i even mention such a maligned name?) that took his country from wooden plougshares to nuclear power in 10 years? The only bulwark that prevents the USA from bullying Central Asia, as they do us today?
Sarojini Naidu, ‘Nightingale of India’, who nicknamed Gandhiji ‘Mickey Mouse’, said, after seeing all the people rushing about his ashram, It takes a lot of money to keep Mickey Mouse, poor.”
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