e-Con e-News

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‘Before you study the economics, study the economists!’

e-Con e-News 03-09 November 2024

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‘Mr Shakeri also told prosecutors that his Iranian contacts asked

him to plan a mass shooting to target Israeli tourists in Sri Lanka

in October 2024, a year after the Hamas attacks on Israel.’

– BBC

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‘We remain committed to defending our strategic interests &

values in Sri Lanka – the fulcrum of the Indo-Pacific region.’

– US State Department, Integrated Country Strategy

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We normally ignore the BBC, England’s state broadcaster. But it may be too late in the day to misunderstand the USA’s ‘values.’ In a move, timed to hit the weekend headlines, the US government on Friday dished out to their talking heads some fluffed-up bombai-muttai to chew on, to get them moving their salaried jaws. They breathlessly disclosed that an ‘Iranian asset Farhad Shakeri,’ is ‘accused in a plot to assassinate then-presidential candidate Donald Trump’. The US claims the Iranian aka Afghani was ‘also tasked with targeting Israeli tourists in Sri Lanka’ (hmm, could it have been a CIA Iranian asset? one can only wonder…) The BBC then brayed more flatulence out louder.

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‘These ambiguous advisories directed at Sri Lanka by the US

are not mere gestures of caution – they are calculated moves

that influence perception. This ambiguity, whether by design or

through bureaucratic inertia, embodies a troubling double standard in

US diplomacy, eroding the very principles of transparency it claims to

uphold & calling into question the essence of fair international relations.’

– Sunday Times Political Editor, US envoy on security alert, ee Sovereignty

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The story signals an attempt by the outgoing US Biden administration, who stand accused of failing to protect then-candidate & now incoming President Trump, to divert attention onto another of their makeshift demons. The charges are being brought by a thoroughly discredited US Attorney General Merrick Garland, who has failed to enforce their own US laws in their war on Palestine. Garland has been reminded: ‘You may choose to look the other way, but you can never say again that you did not know.’

     Instead, the former US Supreme Court Judge Garland is throwing some shade our way… The BBC news flash, a clearly garbled botch-up, at the end of their story has the alleged Iranian (actually an Afghani) ‘telling’ Manhattan prosecutors (in that increasingly familiar Southern District of New York court) of his plans to target Sri Lanka. Yet there’s no mention earlier in the story, of the ‘Afghani’ talking directly to prosecutors. It is possible the BBC decided to add the Sri Lankan tale last minute onto their Trumpian fable. The BBC’s Saturday cocktail & bedtime ballad of terror also targets ‘brave’ US journalists who expose Iran’s allegedly inhuman wrongs (‘I came to America to practice my 1st Amendment right to freedom of speech’), and their favorite villains, wicked New York mobsters, not to mention the Afghani Shakeri, ‘an asset of the IRGC based in Tehran’, who ‘immigrated to the US as a child’. Now that’s long-term planning!

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‘Shakeri is still at large in Iran, the Justice Department said’

AdaDerana

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‘The US government said Mr Shakeri has not been arrested

& is believed to be in Iran’

– BBC

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So, here we get yet another US ‘conspiracy’ outsourced to their favorite London spooks to shoddily embellish, as they are old experts on these ‘oriental’ parts. Apparently, their glossy lies need less & less substance. What is Hollywood, California (sunny home to the US military) and what is Manhattan, New York (home to Wall Street)? What is fantasy, what is fiction? All we know is their news is as always as far from the truth as is possible. It is not their job to educate us, despite their school lunch programs in Colombo, which will soon include soya hotdogs! It is after all possible, that Trump’s assassination was yet another crafted Hollywood charade plus the ear-lining ketchup…

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‘You know I’ve dealt with 3 US presidents. Now they

come into office with ideas but then men in dark suits &

blue ties come to tell them how the real situation is &

you never hear of those ideas again.’ – Russia President V Putin

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ee is no fan of this ‘deep state’ business. Those who keep denying the existence or role of the state, then accidentally stumble upon something about the state they did not know before and call it deep – deep state. Yet it is also possible they may be getting an alibi ready for a future hit, to bring former never-Trumper & PayPal’s Peter Thiel doughboy, Wall St’s Hillbilly Bluesman JD Vance & his discount B1-visa Indian spouse, to the fore. All the US & European embassy cocktail-circuit agony aunts in Colombo are dismayed: ‘How could people in the USA do this to us! And after all those lectures on human rights, they elect a felon who believes he has the right to grab women by their private parts. Even a Sri Lankans would not dare say that out loud.’

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Sri Lankans are being told they are experiencing ‘election fatigue‘. But it is the capitalist media who is tired of having their demands ignored by electorates. The media, one of the largest beneficiaries of the largess of capitalist elections, only reports the ramblings of billionaires who deliver the political talking points of their zillionaire owners through media control, thinktank reports, and viciously targeted advertising meant to rouse workers against each other. Indeed, what we are experiencing is yet another blatant ‘return’ by capitalism to its ‘roots’ in ‘primitive accumulation’:

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‘The forcible divorcement of the worker from the means of production,

the driving of the peasants from the land, the stealing of the commons,

the system of colonies & national debts, protective tariffs, & the like…’

– Lenin, The 3 Sources & 3 Component Parts of Marxism

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According to Europe’s primitive impulses, logic & morality are the weapons of slaves, women, Jews (Palestinians, in real life) & the working classes. The masters do what they want, and make up reality & rules as they go along. Let’s see how long this latest avatara lasts. Our economists have to keep changing their proscriptions, JIT, just in time! While the latest buzzwords go on about entrepreneurs & disruption…, the real disruption they always plan on is: another world war.  And in case there are any doubts as to their intent, check out England’s blatant claim to ‘decolonize’ the Chagos Archipelago – faithfully proclaimed by their salaried lapdog BBC – in the Indian Ocean, by handing over what is not theirs, to the USA to continue to use as a military base to bomb Asia & Africa…

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• Some of those who criticized the previous government for all manner of transgressions – some true, some false – and claimed to have supported this present President into office – are busy signing petitions & writing letters, asking it to stand up for various causes: the environment, social security, the constitution, free education, anti-anti-terrorism, etc. Not one of them discusses the need to build a productive modern industrial economy that could undergird such ideals. As for free education, SBD de Silva quipped, we would have progressed much faster if the state had first provided free fertilizer to cultivators!

     Oh wait! Those who once criticized our call for industrialization as old-time Stalinist, autarkist etc, are now calling for a revival of ‘planning & industrial policy’ to ‘prioritize avenues of production that can protect Sri Lanka’s people’. Reason: they are terrified of Trump! They suddenly realize all their talk of exports will go for a 6, since the West is closing them out and they have absolutely no sense of a world beyond Singapore to the east. While they provide little definition of what they mean by industrial policy, they get excited & state: ‘A viable strategy for accumulation will necessarily require compromises with our own capitalist class. That includes identifying potential areas for profit-making.’

     Now as far as we know, and as far as the record shows, the ‘capitalist class’ (if there is such an animal in Sri Lanka, ‘rentier class‘ is more like it) have absolutely no interest in employing workers in a dignified manner, in investing in modern industry and raising the skills of the working class. They are too busy making easy money by selling off the country…. (see ee Economists, Alternative to fascist tide is self-sufficiency at home)

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• The US & EU meanwhile, have made the economy dependent on their inputs & largess (access to markets, they turn on & off at will). In this ee Focus Shiran Illanperuma examines Sri Lanka’s ‘toxic’ addiction to tourism, which debases our culture so as to entertain foreigners – so while they drink in the beauty, we are prevented from developing. SBD de Silva pointed to tourism as a classic rentier activity, doing nothing new, except monopolizing a ‘view’ – seaside, mountain, forest, etc. Just as the rag trade refuses to make a pin or a needle, thread or textile, tourism does not invest in modern skilling via industrial activity, which ithey consider detrimental to tourism. Illanperuma points out how our regional competitors in tourism, such as Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand, did not collapse in the way Sri Lanka did during the pandemic: ‘This is because they are rising manufacturing powers first and tourist attractions a distant second or third.’

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• Meanwhile, in other Hollywood news… we are forced to recall and wonder of the present fate of the experts at that grand Asia Liberty Forum (ALF) conference on Sri Lanka, which declared:

‘To discuss & promote capitalism & free market policies

may look ironic in a country that is officially named ‘Democratic

Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka’. Yet this country has more pro-market

policies than many supposedly capitalist Asian economies.’

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This ALF held in 2019 was sponsored by the US Atlas Network, co-sponsored by the US Advocata Institute, the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom (FNF, Germany) and Action Institute (US). Speakers included Razeen Sally (National University of Singapore), Pratap Bhanu Mehta (Ashoka University, India), and Fraser Howie (Independent Analyst, Singapore), Christer Ljungwall (ENC Center for Global Affairs, Sweden), and Ganeshan Wignaraja (Lakshman Kadirgamar Institute of International Relations & Strategic Studies, Sri Lanka). We wonder where all these experts on Sri Lanka have scattered to. Maybe they believe the JVP has fallen for their lures & wiles, and now await its decomposition into more succulent portions.

     The FNF, which stands accused of going ‘beyond its legal limitations in Sri Lanka’, also sponsored US Advocata’s ‘Let’s Reset Sri Lanka’ ReformNow Conference at the BMICH, in August 2022, in the wake of the aragalaya. They demanded ‘Unlocking Land for Development, selling off national industries (SoEs, SriLankan Airlines), stripping Samurdhi (welfare), and dismantling labor laws (so-called flexibility).  So what will they do now?

     On election day, blatantly breaking the law, Colombo University professor & Sunday Times columnist Srimal Abeyratne, and Borah merchant & US Advocata chairman Murtaza Jafferjee circulated ‘their views’ on the economy, which were amply amplified by the outgoing President Ranil’s prolific Media Division (PMD).  Wickremasinghe had appointed Jafferjee, after the aragalaya, to form an ‘Economic Stabilization Dialogue’ between the Ministry of Finance & ‘independent’ economists.

     All those shouting about criminality and corruption ignore such macro-duplicity… And this week saw the hilarious episode of Germans giving stand-up dressing-downs to Colombo Anglicans about Jews and terrorist Arabs at the Bandaranaike Centre for International Studies. How centred those eponymous Bandaranaikes have become in the study of the international, we wonder.

     One acolyte of this crew of economic experts is the World Bank’s Shantha Devarajan, ‘who also acts as a Government Advisor on IMF’. He told the Sunday Times,‘The National People’s Power government has suggested to the IMF that it would like to modify some of the reforms to cushion the impact of the negative growth over the last 2 years on the poor.’ Devarajan is Professor of Practice of International Development, Edmund A Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, USA. He promised:

There should be a way of doing this while staying within the parameters

of the overall fiscal adjustment program, which is crucial for achieving

debt sustainability & restoring investor confidence.

So, they aim to fondle the head with more insecure ‘social security’ before they cut it off. Investor confidence, eh! And what, pray, do they wish to invest in?

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‘The principal impact of foreign enterprise on the development

of the underdeveloped countries lies in hardening & strengthening

the sway of merchant capitalism, in slowing down and indeed

preventing its transformation into industrial capitalism.’

– Paul Baran, The Political Economy of Growth, 1957

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‘The rise of indigenous productive forces in the colonies stands

in irreconcilable contradiction to the interests of world imperialism,

whose very essence is to take advantage of the variation in the level of

development of productive forces in different arenas of the world economy

to achieve monopoly super-profits.’ – Theses on the Eastern Question,

4^th Congress of the Communist International, Resolutions 1922

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It is rare to see the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce accused in a headline in a mainstream manhole, like the Wijeya Group’s Financial Times:

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‘Sri Lanka’s ISB restructure: Debt trap backed

by IMF & Ceylon Chamber of Commerce’

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Yet such truth is irrefutable. The IMF & Chamber of Commerce are aiming to lock Sri Lanka into a ‘perpetual cycle of debt & underdevelopment’, insists researcher Dhanusha Pathirana: The government is ‘directly colluding with the creditors’, and the deal is mired in corruption. Based on a flawed IMF’s debt sustainability analysis (DSA), Pathirana believes they are purposely underestimating the true cost of debt restructuring. The IMF plan is designed to sustain indebtedness, crippling Sri Lanka’s bargaining power with creditors. Tactics include weakening the currency over time, and ensuring they can exploit labor at the lowest price. While Lazard is the heavyweight financial and legal adviser to both Ghana and Sri Lanka, the IMF has given Ghana a better deal (perhaps due to the rising resistance to imperialism emanating from Ghana’s neighbor Burkina Faso). What is missing is Pathirana’s alternative to imperialism’s designs and an elaboration on what is to be done.

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• The indefatigable Kamalika Pieris continues her wide rendering of Sri Lankan history, that rarely gets play in the daily capitalist mass media. Her recent archiving covers the link between what she called Indian Settler-Colonialism & the Tamil Eelam project (see ee Sovereignty). Tamil plantation workers (now funded as Malayaha Tamil!) have been endlessly played against the Sinhala peasant of the highlands.

     Our great scholars in their towers of imported steel give little insight into the English processes that turned India into such a ‘great’ exporter of emiserated labour, inserting them into strategic enclaves in the economy – port, railway, plantation, etc. This ee also concludes our look into how they turned people from citizens & cultivators and artisans into ‘coolies’.

     ee Focus looks at how our South Indian neighbor across the strait, Tamilnadu, and Tanjore in particular, was made a source for selling its people into indentured slavery, in Ceylon and the rest of the world.  While we should note that this account avoids England’s opium trade, grown in India and forced on China – its greatest commerce in the 19^th century – it is a curious omission in a tale of sheer displacement and destruction…

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• ee continues George Jackson‘s analysis of US industrialization and Black workers in his classic, Blood in my Eye, published in 1971, the year the US government assassinated him. Jackson surveys the 2 largest fascist states in Latin Amerika – Brazil & Argentina, and their ‘dependence on foreign trade and their neocolonial status, which involves dependence on ‘foreign investment’.’ He also looks at the expansion of US industry out of the demands of their very uncivil ‘Civil War’, and ‘the morbid traditional fear of Blacks, Indians, Mexicans; the desire to inflict pain on them when they began to compete in industrial sectors‘.

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Contents:

USA & England Hatch Iranian Hit on Israelis in Sri Lanka – IMF & Chamber of Commerce Put JVP into Necklock