e-Con e-News

blog: eesrilanka.wordpress.com

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

e-Con e-News 23-29 November 2025

The US military has been given unrestricted access to all Sri Lankan ports, including Hambantota port, & airports through an Acquisition & Cross-Servicing Agreement (ACSA). The Sri Lankan government is supposed to have secretly signed ACSA (7 pages) in 2007, for 10 years. The USA subsequently provided satellite intelligence that facilitated the Sri Lanka government’s defeat of the LTTE.

     To ensure theACSA would be secretly re-signed in 2017, with 10-times more concessions (83 pages), the USA engineered & funded that awkward coalition of the Yahapalanaya, mashing together a rump SLFP, UNP & JVP in 2015.  Yet they were unable to force the then-President to sign the SOFA (Status of Forces Agreement), which would have allowed US boots on Sri Lankan soil, nor finalize the MCC (Millennium Challenge Corporation) to enable deeper economic penetration (see ee Random Notes). They were also unable to prevent the election of Gotabhaya Rajapakse, though they soon engineered scarcities and an economic crisis, funding and fomenting a faux putsch, enabling his removal (but not his hanging) which ended up sending the country into the scaly arms of the IMF for a 17^th time. ‘Regime change’ indeed, yet the colonial import-export plantation fraud that has ruled the country for almost 200 years, was retained.

     ACSA is due to be extended again in 2027. The USA is plotting, to ensure another ACSA extension; watch the political, military & economic moves they have been making.

*

The NPP government has sought to ‘calm’ investors about its capacity to scale the 2028 post-IMF ‘debt-repayment cliff’. ‘There is a little bit of an unwanted fear,’ Deputy Industry & Entrepreneurship Development Minister Chathuranga Abeysinghe told an online forum last week organised by England’s Tellimer (‘an emerging markets investment banking boutique’) and Softlogic Stockbrokers. The USA will make any easing of their IMF terms for the heavy repayments to Wall Street, contingent on whether the Sri Lankan government extends the ACSA agreement and signs the SOFA (Status of Forces Agreement). Can they make Sri Lanka jump off that cliff?!

*

‘Was signing [the Montana] agreement a political condition

for the reduction in tariffs? Is this MoU a precursor

to signing a SOFA with the USA? Will Sri Lanka’s

military, naval & air force infrastructure facilities,

as well as Sri Lanka’s ports & airports, be placed at

the disposal of the US war machine? Is Sri Lanka

to be a pawn in US military aggression in Asia?’

– CPSL

*

With the USA ready to launch yet another war, in the Americas this time, instead of resolving its own drastic problems, the NPP has not answered the Communist Party of Sri Lanka’s questions: if the recent ‘hasty’ defence partnership between the Montana National Guard, US Coast Guard District 13, and the Sri Lanka Armed Forces under the US Department of War’s State Partnership Program (SPP) entailed any military agreement for boots on the ground?  & where exactly on the seabed will the boots of those unnamed experts from the USA’s National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) of the US Department of Commerce and the US Navy’s Meteorology & Oceanography Command (NMOC) who recently entered the country, dive off & land on?  

*

The recent terrorist attacks in both Pakistan & India, were coordinated by the US through its agents in both countries. They are said to be preludes to sabotaging the upcoming tête-à-tête between Indian PM N Modi & Russian President V Putin in December. The incendiary comments by Japan’s government leaders to inflame China is being prompted by the USA, despite their blather about promoting peace. The aim is to divide what many see as an emerging – logical though winding & protracted – attempt at uniting the world against fascism.

*

Capitalism is seeking to revive itself again through another world war – the Nobel Economics Prize was handed over to those who theorize ‘disruption’ (Hint! Hint!) to restore capitalism, and the Nobel peace Prizes to those who promote chaos & confrontation. ee continues Roy Singham’s arithmetic of ‘Who Really Defeated Fascism’, during what the whites call World War 2 (1939-45), which actually began much earlier in Asia and Africa, and witnessed the mass slaughter of 85 million human beings! While Hollywood & BBC, in movies & documentaries, like Bridge over River Kwai and Dunkirk only recall the suffering of whites, Singham calculates the real toll, including SE Asia & Africa (where WW2 actually began in 1935, when Italy invaded Ethiopia) – nearly 1 million Africans fought in that war, only to be returned to colonial servitude after. England, rather than taking on the Nazis outright, had first sought to preserve its colonial possessions, while the US manoeuvred to profit from the war, arming Japanese imperialists & the Nazis. It was the USSR & China, Asians & Africans, that took the brunt of the racialized genocides, forced-labour systems, & famines. Singham offers a forensic, meticulous recounting, never accounted before (see ee Focus).

*

‘50-80% of Sudan’s overall gold production was

being still smuggled in 2022 – mainly to the UAE –

rather than officially exported’

(see ee Sovereignty, Sudan needs peace)

The horrific role played by the Emirates in the Sudan, backed by the usual suspects (US, England, Israel, EU), requires deeper examination. ee Focus concludes Joseph Garang’s essay on ‘The Southern Sudan’. Written over 50 years ago, Garang is no longer alive, but his study still contextualizes today’s news by providing the historical and political underpinnings to the meddling that has taken place after that country’s ‘independence’ from England & Egypt in 1956. A decade later, not a single representative in their parliament was a ‘peasant’ in a country 90% populated by cultivators. So-called leaders preferred to strike deals to divide the country, rather than unite with progressive forces north & south. Published in The African Communist in 1969, the essay helps sensitize us to the present upheaval in the Sudan (just across the pond from us), and the part played by England’s racialized colonialism (all too familiar to us). One of Sudan’s foremost progressive theoreticians & member of the Sudanese Communist Party, Garang was executed in 1971 by the then Sudanese government.

*

Though criminally ignored by the English media, learning about Sudan remains very important for us. Several colonial governors and officials in Ceylon first practised their terroristic arts in Africa (and Sudan in particular). SBD de Silva, to whom this blog is dedicated, stands out as an original researcher who dared examine imperialism’s practices in Africa, and the lessons and the insights African history offered as precedent to and concomitant with, Europe’s and newer Anglo-American invasions of Sri Lanka.

*

With Sri Lanka experiencing heavy floods this week, we recall: Just like Karl Marx in his final years, SBD de Silva in his sunset moments studied more closely the nature of Sri Lanka’s ancient villages & agriculture, based on the disciplined organization of the irrigation system. SBD recorded the colonial destruction of the irrigation system to undermine the old society, and impose the plantation system (and the failure of the English & post-1948 attempts to revive the old system of waterways). The English bestowed upon us the most impoverished peasantry in Asia. SBD de Silva noted the need for monetization and commercialization – hitherto prevented – of the peasantry, as the basis for a rural home market This was vital to reviving and advancing rural industrialization in coordination with the traditional cycles of rural agriculture.

*

Comparing and contrasting countries, side by side, in southern Africa, settler-colonial and non-settler, was the subject of last week’s excerpt from Chapter 4 of SBD de Silva’s classic, The Political Economy of Underdevelopment. He examined their investment patterns, the nature of their productions, and the settlers’ determined reliance on a home market (vs the constant whining for exports & foreign investment in non-settler colonies like ours). The last excerpt specifically noted the significance of a white settler working-class presence that hot-housed modern industrial growth.

     This ee Focus continues the Chapter, this time looking at the nature of settler economies in northern Africa. Algeria had more than a million Europeans, Morocco 600,000 Europeans; and Tunisia nearly a quarter of a million, yet holding ‘aloof’ from Europe (while segregated from the native Africans whom they impoverished). Commercialized settler Maghrebin agriculture accessed modernized techniques and a national market, generating both a European bourgeoisie & a large wage proletariat. Urbanization & transportation, rail & shipping, stimulated industrial growth, with manufacturing providing another source of dynamism.

     As an example of his exacting scholarship, SBD offers 2 complex exceptions to his settler-nonsettler dichotomy – the Belgian Congo (where the entry of Europeans was officially regulated), & (in the next ee) Indochina. Though they were not specifically settler colonies, ‘they became more industrially advanced than could normally be expected’. In the mineral-rich Congo, he examined the industrialization promoted by Katanga’s Flemish settlers, where, for example, the impurities from copper refining led to other valuable metal industries and chemicals.

*

Every November the Northeast Monsoon strikes. The media, which is supposed to know better about our climate, act surprised. This year rains & winds have struck us with a distinctive fury, leaving death, destruction and despair in its wake. Some turn this annual occurrence into a conspiracy. Some blame it on the gods. Others seeking to prevent industrialization in Sri Lanka at all costs, claim ‘global-warming’ is caused by industrialization. Still others blame it on our primordial wickedness, original sin, etc. The present rulers will blame it on past administrations. Past rulers blame it on the present rulers. Foreign armies step in offering to rescue us.

     Harnessing these freak furies, into growing green gold to feed ourselves and modern attempts to transform this silver lightning to energize our future, remain just idle talk.

     Many countries revere and celebrate the changes in their seasons; a truly national media would prepare and fortify people against what the tilting of the Earth against the rotation of the Sun in the northern hemisphere portends for a country centred in the turbulent Tropic of Cancer.

     The colonial practices of destroying the irrigation systems to undermine the solidarity of ancient villages, in order to quell resistance; the sabotaging the plans to hydroelectrify the economy – have all prevented the liberation of the country through modern industrialization. The images of the flooding of the former state-owned textile plant in Thulhiriya, that was turned over to foreign interests, provide further evidence of the inability of such privatized interests to look beyond their profits, while passionately preventing a planned economy and society.

*

‘The same blind eagerness for plunder

that in the one case exhausted the soil,

had, in the other, torn up by the roots

the living force of the nation…’

– Karl Marx, Capital

*

The misuse and wastage of the country’s natural resources is paralleled by the exploitation of workers. Th media promote the day-in day-out whining by such employers as the Planters’ Association. They claim their sectors are on the verge of dying out due to unreasonable labor demands, which are supposedly preventing foreign direct investments (FDI). A simple visit to a lineroom would disabuse anyone except the delusional, of their claims to modernity or gender equity, and other virtues that their media press releases constantly signal and broadcast. While there are hourly headlines about ‘gang’ violence, and much talk of democratic rights, there is little ongoing media reportage on how employers treat people at work.

     Workplace safety is the topic of Commercial & Industrial Workers’ Union President, Swasthika Arulingam’s interview by the Daily Morning. She declares, most factory workers or blue-collar workers don’t even have the right to sick leave. Workers are being increasingly pushed to prioritize reaching targets over protecting their own health & safety. With salary structures tied directly to productivity, workers are forced to ignore basic safety measures so as to earn a living wage. The corporate & IMF buzzword about ‘flexibility’ is just an excuse to remove remaining protections. The Employers’ Federations also constantly complain labour laws favor workers, but in reality they do not. Technical education is vital and should be encouraged from an early age. Arulingam opposes the ‘push towards getting younger people, even children of 16 years, into the workforce, and to introduce part-time work for children’.

*

SBD de Silva’s work exposes, the historical and determined opposition by merchants and moneylenders to oppose and sabotage – on behalf of their multinational masters – the modern industrialization of our countries. While trade unions are primarily self-defense organizations for workers, trying to climb up an escalator constantly going down, the labor movement should also make demands for modern industrialization, that would provide the economic basis for fulfilling their demands.  Economists, too (paid to offer elixirs, which amount to being temporary panadols leading to suicidal polydols) avoid the fundamental necessity for modern industry. Their usual and daily panaceas are privatization, exports, FDI, balance of payments, etc etc ad nauseam. Their daily media demands: Public-Private Partnerships (PPP)! MSMEs! Energy transition! Decarbonization! Blended finance! Carbon-credit markets! Digitalization. Fiscal consolidation. Flexibility. Sustainability! etc, etc. On and on… Who hasn’t seen or heard these words, and who can explain to us what they actually mean?

     ee reproduces South Africa’s Gillian Schutte’s eloquent takedown of all the media fluff, in her expose of the recent G20 meeting in South Africa (see ee Focus). Schutte describes the role of influencers full of sound & fury signifying nothing, appearing like they are hip & heavy but saying zero. The ‘core function’ of the G20 is ‘the consolidation of a global financial architecture that secures Western industrial & geopolitical interests.’

*

ee’s News Compendium has gathered & gleaned over 7 years of these mountains of corporate PR garbage, which repeats certain tropes over & over again, ad nauseam. Most news is diversionary, fog-heavy, full of aspirations, anodynes, replete with infinitives, about what corporation or governments aim ‘to’ do but never do. The media brims with ‘informercials’, with promises that never see the real light of day or night. ee will continue to highlight the more valuable ‘news’ that come across our screens. But most of what is published for mass consumption, as news, is highly processed, like canned food, toxic and inedible. Most of it is produced by corporate Public Relations (PR) agencies & their employees, past & present. Politicians and economists, especially those names that appear almost daily and weekly in the news, are sponsored by foreign, mainly imperialist (called ‘Western’) governments and their corporations. The corporate media always talking about corruption, is corruption itself!

*

The entire purpose of ee serializing Gustavus Myers’ 1917 History of Tammany Hall is to show how the daily media’s babble about corruption, cannot expose their sponsors, or the private ownership of political and economic structures, which is, itself, a deadlier form of corruption. The recent Tammany chapters show how, for over a century, the exposure of corruption in the capitalist media is used to tame those who threaten, in some way, the controllers of the capitalist system, especially those moving in on their monopoly.

     The recent US war on Russia via the Ukraine shows how imperialists, with their media barking alongside, has weaponized charges of corruption to target governments & officials they don’t like.

*

‘Under Obama, the US insisted on creating a second,

completely separate legal vertical in Ukraine focused

solely corruption. The National Anti-Corruption Bureau

investigates cases of corruption especially of officials

in higher position. The Specialized Anti-Corruption

Prosecutor Office assembled cases to go to court.

The High Anti-Corruption Court of Ukraine is judging over them.

The vertical was designed to be independent of the Ukrainian

government & state. A special Civil Oversight Council – not the

parliament – is nominally in control of it. But the effective control

was always with the US embassy in Kiev through the various

anti-corruption NGOs & media it was financing in Ukraine.’

– Moon of Alabama

The real corruption is capitalism: the private appropriation of the workers’ surplus. Here is Myers’ ongoing tale of over 100 years ago, when monopoly capitalism was in its infancy, about the USA’s largest metropolis, home to Wall Street (whose bond vigilantes now hold Sri Lanka hostage). Here is a New York – Manhattan being the home of the largest publishers in the English world – that is constantly issuing sermons to the world, of how bad their enemies are, and how pure they are, why, even electing so-called socialist mavericks (minus a political machinery) as Mayors, etc.

*

The USA has pardoned a drug-dealing former President in Honduras, who was an agent of the USA, while falsely accusing the President of Venezuela of drug-dealing in order to grab its abundant resources.

     The US Embassy in Colombo recently celebrated the 250^th birthday of the US Marine Corps. Instead of promoting their macabre celebrations, a real media would have educated them that this is the US Marine’s 220^th anniversary. The Marines go back to 1805, and their protection of the first US purchases of opium from Smyrna in Turkey to China via the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. This lucrative drug dealing led to the first US attacks on North African and Ottoman ships, labeling the North Africans as ‘Barbary pirates’ for demanding the US pay tariffs when crossing their seas.

     A  Second Barbary War soon followed in 1815, when the US navy attacked Algiers, forcing a treaty to ban ‘piracy,’ ie, to stop attacks on US ships carrying opium. After attacking Algeria, the US ended taxes to Ottoman navies, although some European nations continued annual taxes. The US Marine Corps adopted the line ‘To the shores of Tripoli’ to open the ‘Marine Hymn’. Marines’ uniforms’ leather high collar was to protect against cutlass slashes, hence nickname Leatherneck for marines. The US traders soon became ‘consignment agents’ in Canton for ‘country’ ships carrying Bengal and Malwa opium from India. 1820s: US & English were shipping 100s of chests of Turkish opium to Southeast Asia & China. The US should invade itself. – Oh wait! It’s already planning that too!

*

________

Contents:

USA’s Boots on Sri Lanka’s Soil