e-Con e-News

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

e-Con e-News 16-22 November 2025

The US National Guard, historically used for terrorizing the USA’s allegedly unruly cities, has been called the ‘Ku Klux Klan (KKK) in uniform’. The KKK is the terrorist organization set up by former southern US slaveowners & Northern industrial capitalists to overthrow the attempt (known as ‘Reconstruction’) by enslaved Africans to rule their plantation domains after the US war called ‘civil’, 1861-65. Yet, it would be more appropriate to call the KKK – ‘the US Army in white sheets’.

     This week witnessed the curious signing of a ‘hasty defence partnership between the Montana National Guard, the US Coast Guard District 13, and the Sri Lanka Armed Forces under the US Department of War’s State Partnership Program (SPP)’ (see ee Random Notes). The USA ‘purchased’ Montana from France in 1803! What is Montana, once the land of the Cheyenne & Lakota, Blackfeet & Salish, doing here?

     US war officials and Montana appear unaware of their government’s travel advisory, warning their compatriots of ‘an imminent threat of violence, terrorism, & landmines!’ in Sri Lanka – with a landmine appropriately igniting in Jaffna just after, to add sound & color to their faux foreboding.

     The Montana moment turns out to have been more fog, as this week also saw various US military & hydrographic experts – unnamed & unheralded by front page headlines – descend through the clouds to supposedly calm the waters around us, or more precisely to exploit what lies beneath this ocean called Indian, and this sea called Arabian & bay called Bengal. Why? We are ‘a strategically indispensable country sitting near one of the world’s most coveted mineral basins’, writes the Lanka eNews ‘Geopolitical Correspondent’ (see ee Focus).

     Meanwhile, as Indian & Pakistani warships slipped in & out of Colombo, unnamed experts from the USA’s National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) of the US Department of Commerce and the US Navy’s Meteorology and Oceanography Command (NMOC) were parachuted in promising to ‘expand the country’s hydrographic mapping skills,’ to ‘support Sri Lanka to map its own waters, make commercial shipping lanes safer and strengthen overall maritime domain awareness’. They are now unpacking their intrusive equipment onto naval bases inside Sri Lanka, as these words are typed.

     In 2024, alongside mounting concern about India, England & the US seeking to monopolize oceanic surveys in Sri Lanka, and block China out, the US embassy in Colombo slung more shade on their manoeuvres by inviting actor Jason Momoa, who featured in the Hollywood flick Aquaman, to explore Sri Lanka’s ‘vibrant marine ecosystem’.

     The US government’s attempts at mystification continued this week when they patronizingly sought to explain that ‘hydrographic surveys help ensure safe navigation’, stressing that the seabed is ‘vital for protecting maritime sovereignty’.

     Whose ‘safe navigation’ & ‘maritime sovereignty’, we do not have to guess – as the US government treats Sri Lanka & its citizens as ‘a geopolitical afterthought’, observes the Lanka eNews ‘Geopolitical Correspondent’, unleashing erudite scepticism, that there is no way the US has any concern for our wellbeing. S/he offers as an example, the disgusting behaviour of US embassy officials in Colombo, who while issuing sermons on the rule of law etc, treat even Sri Lanka’s Bentley, Porsche, Lamborghini & Benz-importing denizens – as their eloquently teleprompted leader calls them – ‘shitholes’:

‘While Washington sends experts, satellites, ships,

and technical delegations to Sri Lanka, the process

for Sri Lankan nationals to visit the USA remains

one of the most restrictive and humiliating in

the region. Visa-appointment waiting times stretch

from months to over a year. Sri Lankan applicants,

including professionals, academics, and business

owners, report curt interviews, opaque rejections,

and arbitrary processing delays.’

So, if our Colombots are provided easy access to craka heaven in Idaho, should we just hand over our rare mineral treasures? It is more than that. The future – like that blanked-out sheet called history – is still available for all those who wish to read it. This week saw the US rumble bombers over Trinidad & Tobago (see ee Random Notes) to terrorize the Caribbean (whom ardent cricket fans here only know as the West Indies) in supposed preparation for their invasion of Venezuela. The overt attack is purportedly on hold, as the US explores further scenarios – one deterrent to a US attack being that Caracas possesses up-to-date air defenses supplied by Russia and China, which could help the US recall their 1961 defeat at Cuba’s Bay of Pigs. The leading parties in Trinidad, have secretly signed the US Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), a fact the US Embassy leaked to the media. The Communist Party of Sri Lanka asks if the Montana MoU is a precursor to our own acquiescence.

     History tells us that France bargained long and hard with the English, at the Congress of Vienna in 1814, to take control of Sri Lanka & Tobago (along with Mauritius, the Cape, Ceylon, Ionian Islands, Malta, Heligoland, Santa Lucia: all strategic pressure points on the planet’s maritime routes) until Waterloo taught them otherwise. Napoleon’s defeat led to England accelerating its 1815 coup d’etat in highland Sinhale. England, France & Germany, declaring themselves conductors of the ‘Concert of Europe, were now at peace to terrorize the rest of the world, and their own rising working classes, for another century, until their 1914 world war. This enabled England’s modern industrial monopoly, to rule all oceans’ waves, and generously proclaim, ‘free trade’ on earth.

     Having thrown ‘free trade’ out the window, England, France & Germany are now colluding with the USA to consolidate their political & military planning, manipulating both their economies and well as ours.

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‘The economic arithmetic was clear:

the Anglo-Americans had the money

but would not fight.

The fascists had militarised everything.

The socialists had little but gave all.’

The US, their pitbulls & their poodles, are intent on continuing their fascist invasions on the rest of the world – ‘frozen wars’, as in China (Taiwan) & Korea (South v North), are now being thawed, to be placed on the front burner. This ee continues Roy Singham’s elaborate ‘Restorationist History’ to understand exactly ‘Who Saved Humanity’ during what is now better called, the World Anti-Fascist War (WAFW), between 1931-45. Throw away all the thousands of English movies and comics & books about ‘World War 2’ that have served to obscure the reality of who was doing what, for & against whom. Singham’s story is fascinating. Here then is the actual role played by Joseph Stalin & Mao Zedong, much demonized in English tales, of how, ‘facing extremely powerful adversaries’, the 2 leaders had to ‘exploit inter-imperialist rivalries that became so intense by the 1940s’.

     Here then is the tale of the Soviet Union facing ‘the largest military invasion in human history’ even as ‘the US remained neutral until it was attacked’ and how ‘England declared war but prioritised empire!’ Here is the story of how the US, England & Europe fed and armed Japan & Chinese warlords to attack the Chinese people, and how China resisted, despite having an economy, with ‘only around 5% of world GDP after its century of humiliation & a decade of Japanese devastation’. Here is how a China with ‘people but few weapons, courage but little industry, resistance but scant resources’ withstood and thwarted a more powerful enemy.

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‘Western’ as a euphemism for imperialism adds to our ignorance about the world, an ignorance largely promoted by the colonial merchant media & the education system. One effect of this ignorance is our lack of history, to understand how deep are the roots of our discontent. No place on earth has deepened our ignorance of the world more than our studied ignorance of Africa. Africa is to the ‘west’ of us!

     Even as the genocide was unfolding in Palestine, mass killings saw 47 million people flee their homes in the Sudan. In the Congo, over 6 million have been killed, and 5 million people are ‘on the run’. In the Sudan, the role of the UAE (United Arab Emirates) & Saudi & Israel, quarterbacked by the US & England, etc, and the Quad, has been obscured by such media as Al Jazeera (BBC on a camel), based in a monarchy, which interrogates Sri Lankans on human rights.

     This ee Focus reproduces an essay on ‘The Southern Sudan’, by Joseph U Garang, which describes, according to Black Agenda Report, ‘the historical & political events that led to the secessionist revolts in the Republic of Sudan’s southern provinces following its independence from England & Egypt in 1956’. The essay, first published in The African Communist in 1969, also provides ‘critical historical context’ for the current raging & ignored civil war. England’s racialized colonialism has ‘played no small part in laying the foundation for the emergence of a fractious neocolonial state in continuous crisis’ – this will resonate with people in Sri Lanka. A Southerner of Luo origin, & a member of the Sudanese Communist Party, Garang was executed in 1971 after participating in a coup that briefly brought down the government of President Gaafar Nimeiry. ‘He is remembered as one of Southern Sudan’s foremost progressive theoreticians & politicians’; and his essay remains ‘a remarkable reminder of his intellect – & of the kind of vision that was lost with his death’.

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‘High interest rates & rising foreign reserves’ signal the willingness of Sri Lanka’s ruling interests, ‘to place the interests of outside actors ahead of the country’s own people & businesses’, write Arjun Jayadev, Ahilan Kadirgamar & JW Mason, as they detail ‘Sri Lanka’s Interest-rate Trap’ (see ee Focus). They lament, ‘the country is losing a generation to malnutrition, high youth unemployment, & educational losses.’ They cry out that ‘austerity in the name of fiscal sustainability is self-defeating if it destroys the conditions for growth’.

     They seem to be unaware that the merchant & moneylender interests who rule on behalf of imperialist capital, have no interest in, nay, have always militantly prevented, modern industrialization in our world. They are not the only pleaders.

     Meanwhile, the ‘Lanka Rating Agency’ (see ee Who’s Who) says that licenced finance companies (LFCs), despite their ‘solid profitability’ are on shaky ground, and must quickly shift from ‘consumption lending to financing industry…’ Though the LRA then has to add the requisite ‘exports’ to their recipe.

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 While the imperialists’ economic hitmen, the media’s economists, drone on endlessly about the need for exports & foreign investment, ee Focus continues Chapter 4 of SBD de Silva’s classic The Political Economy of Underdevelopment, that details the ‘Investment Patterns in the Settler & Nonsettler Situations’. In this excerpt, SBD compares countries side by side in Southern Africa, in those where ‘expatriate capital’ was dominant (like in Sri Lanka) such as Zambia & Nyasaland, versus settler Rhodesia (later Zimbabwe). In Zambia, ‘remittances of interest, dividends & profits after WW2 were usually more than half of total export earnings’.

‘Official concern for development was greatest in colonies

where there was a white working class. Unemployment

& poverty, besides causing unrest, would have been

too bad for white superiority – the psychological prop

to the domination which the settlers exercised.’

In the settler colonies, profits were reinvested in the colony. While the state undermined native peasant producers, settler agriculture, ‘developed through the use of state power’, led to the development of secondary industries: ‘wine production, sugar refining, textile manufacture, oil extraction, fish canning, the manufacture of meat & dairy products, and food processing & preserving.’ Staple Base Dynamism (SBD)! In settler colonies, farm machinery was adapted to local conditions. Capital and simple technology were used to improve ‘the quality of agricultural produce’ and to lower costs.

     Distinct from the industrial interests of the imperialist capitals, the state favoured the settlers, by favourably locating railways, fixing rates, providing regulated credit & guaranteed prices and, ‘above all, by proletarianizing the peasants’! Customs tariffs were ‘used to promote domestic production’ rather than used as ‘a source of public revenue’.

‘It was undesirable to accelerate the industrialization

of East Africa which must, for many years to come,

remain a country of primary produce’.

     In Rhodesia, protective tariffs directly benefited manufacturing industry, particularly in their childhood! Meanwhile, in Tanzania & Uganda, ‘tariff protection was disallowed’ so as to profit industrial interests in England. In non-settler colonies, tariffs were only seen as a means for raising revenue. The settler colonies’ high-cost goods ‘found a privileged market’ in the non-settler domains…

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ee Focus continues Gustavus Myers’ History of Tammany Hall. Here he describes how, despite the changes in the police chiefs, New York’s police department remained ‘a fruitful cause of scandal’. He describes the ‘deliberate audacity’ of the murder of an operator of a gambling house who exposed his partner who was a Police Lieutenant. ‘Irregular incomes’ substantially increased police salaries, while politicians demanded their share in the spoils. ‘Such a system makes for too many of the police an organized school of crime’. The exposure of crimes is usually linked to the benefits derived by the police by such revelations, and grand juries were wont not to believe such stories and acquit criminals.

     Public inquiries revealed a ‘widespread corrupt alliance between the police & gamblers & disorderly house keepers.’ A system had developed where operators of illegal establishments had to pay tribute to avoid arrest. The impeachment of officials was also a game to keep them docile & loyal to the ‘system’. A favorite method was to run officials & politicians into debt. A particular source of corruption was the ‘Public Service Commission’ which granted public franchises….

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Contents:

US, England & India Grab for Sri Lanka’s Maritime Minerals & More…