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

400^th Weekly Edition

e-Con e-News 7-13 December 2025

Who offered to suddenly call off ‘in 45 minutes’ the self-styled aragalaya, which the merchant media had been pumping up, which had been spouting hot air for months, and was now at the gates of parliament in July 2022? Who offered to crown a mere parliamentary speaker as Executive President? Is it the forever-leaving-but-never going US envoy Julie Chung or long-gone-but-forever-haunting Indian envoy Gopal Baglay? Is the former Speaker Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena a gallant, for refusing such a poisoned chalice, and upholding parliamentary decorum? Or was Abeywardena, a ‘grotesque mediocrity’ playing ‘a hero’s part’? Yet, does it matter who took on the role of undiplomatic peon delivering the instructions of their controllers in Washington &/or Delhi?

     The merchants’ media can’t seem to make up their mind if it was one or the other or both, or if it matters. Whoever it was, seemed to be able to deploy both the paramilitary Special Task Force (STF) at the Speaker’s residence (to threaten or protect him, we are not told), or to assure the Speaker that such a grab for power would gain acceptance by the ‘strugglers’ (merchants, moneylenders, GNGOs, church, anarchists, nihilists, etc), a nod by the wielders of the state monopoly of violence (private & public), and thumbs up by the state monopoly of consent (the media, private & public).

‘The Moving Finger writes; &, having writ,

Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit

Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,

Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.’

– Omar Khayyám

The question of who wore the outer raiment of the rainmakers on that fateful day July 13 in 2022 was given new life with the publication of a book by the then-soon-to-be-next ‘unelected’ President Ranil Wickremesinghe’s media advisor Sunanda Maddumabandara. The author appears to be a hand who writes, and yet his hand is moved by other hands. (Incidentally, this week saw the US embassy’s Chamber of Commerce (AmCham SL), sit together with Wijeya Newspapers and Unilever’s Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR), to ‘Narrate Sri Lanka’s Story’,see ee Who’s Who) Maddumabandara, as unreliable a narrator as ‘media advisors’ tend to be, claims the Speaker himself has told him it was the Indian envoy, Baglay. Maddumabandara’s master Ranil Wickremesinghe, the recovering Anglican, has been flying in all directions (except Moscow & Beijing), visiting Red Forts & diverse Hindu temples. Wickremesinghe too is heroically portrayed as having refused a poisoned chalice and upheld parliamentary decorum, and attended the book launch, though the ousted President Gotabhaya Rajapakse did not, and has chosen not to comment on the matter in his biography.

     The JVP appears to have been the main (temporary) beneficiary of the aragalaya’s strivings, and was also baying at the gates of parliament that day. They were apparently not the first choice of the imperialist conspirators, though they now seem to be following the Wickremesinghe script. Wickremesinghe’s writ, which appears to echo the demands of the imperialist hegemon, sees his will being done, even if by remote control. The Island’s Shamindra Ferdinando (see ee Focus) highlights the claim made by nationalist analysts that it was the US Envoy who secretly made such demands. Ferdinando wonders who deceived the nationalists into claiming it was only the US Envoy, though all agree the ouster of a democratically elected President was a joint US-India project. The version in the Sinhala Divaina of the Ferdinando essay omits his assertion that the nationalist analysts were deceived. Anyway, such speculations ultimately appear to be diversions.

     After over 500 years of imperialist invasion & intrigue, it is more than time to shed illusions. The wars in Asia (West, East, North & South), and in Africa (again, in all its compass directions) are being led and coordinated by the USA. The wars in the Ukraine & on Palestine are led by the USA, with all their running dogs in tow and on cue. The USA is now the conductor of the Concert of Europe, with its white settler territories seeking to spread their ‘occupying’ tentacles.

     While much is being made of Russian President V Putin’s visit to India, the situation is fluid. While there are forces that seek a newer & better world, India was the largest English department in the world, and there are powerful interests, legacies of colonial vintage, in all our countries, who serve the imperialist hegemon’s desire for manifest destiny, as presumably ordained by their white god (see ee Quotes). The US in order to assert its dominance as the sole superpower is stalking & striding the world, seeking belligerent allies (Europe, Japan), suicidal proxies (Ukraine, Israel), fake enemies & asymmetrical foes, threatening confrontation and, when thwarted, unfurling chaos through their ‘grey channels’. 

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‘Technology is developed in the world that by using such technology,

one can predict which areas get the highest rainfall & which areas

will be prone to floods. Enough & more data can be gathered using

such technology, but till today we have failed to use this…

In our country we are still looking up at the sky & saying it’s

about to rain or, after it rains, saying the rainfall has been heavy.’

– then-opposition JVP MP Anura Kumara Dissanayake (2016),

Now President (ee Agriculture, Who sowed the cyclonic wind…?)

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Sri Lanka’s tea industry not impacted by Ditwah, traders’ body says

– see ee Agriculture

While media argues back & forth about whether early warnings about the flooding (including from India, BBC, Al Jazeera etc, always sure to send mixed messages) and conspiracy theorists (divine & secular) abound regarding extra-special seedings of clouds, by imperialists in Asia, the tea trader chose to declare their deforested plantations were untouched, even as plantation workers insist that they too suffered inundation.

     In Sri Lanka, the US & Indian militaries bearing ‘gifts’ (which inevitably have to be paid back with exorbitant interest) have stomped their boots on the ground, while proclaiming to bring relief to the country. The best relief or the best aid these tax-avoiding philanthropists could give, as former PM Sirimavo Bandaranaike once quipped, is to leave the country alone. For what is given by one hand is usually taken by innumerable other hands.

     While Indian companies have been handed the production of electronic ID cards, the US’ Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT aka Murder Inc) claims to have developed an information system to collect Ditwar-related data ‘free of charge’. US’ Microsoft will provide ‘the necessary technical support’; and another US Embassy outfit called GeoAI, combining AI & Geographic Information Systems (GIS) promises ‘to strengthen early warning systems, improve emergency response and enhance long-term planning.’ This is the same USA that has openly opposed (via their World Bank, and innumerable economists) and quietly subverted long-term economic planning by the Sri Lankan state (see ee Random Notes). What has happened to the numerous equipments installed in the country to supposedly early-warn us, even as they appear to be dual-use, collecting information on us & the seas around us? (see ee Who’s Who, Japan’s Doppler)

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The new Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, packaged as a heavy-metal head-banging rock&roller, shows where she obtains her real cultural & political tunes from, by threatening to deploy even heavier metals – missiles in Taiwan against China. Warwick Powell discusses the backdrop: the paranoia (see ee Focus) the US exhibits against any North Asian alliance between Japan, China, Russia & Korea, and Japan’s purported anxieties of an ageing population, midst rising food & energy insecurity (this is what prompts their need for Sri Lankan workers in labor-intensive operations). Warwick also describe the manoeuvres of US & Europe speeding into overdrive to prevent any coming together of India, Africa, China, Russia, which they seek to blockade & strangle, like what they are doing in Cuba & Venezuela etc. Warwick doubts any major nuclear confrontation:

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‘What’s the likelihood that

Washington will sacrifice Washington,

or put at risk Washington, New York,

Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco,

Miami, & every other city in between,

in the name of defending Tokyo, or Seoul,

or Taipei, or Manila for that matter?‘

Warwick wonders if Japan is ready to take on the role of an Asian Ukraine, ‘to go & fight & die for the USA’. And while the USA’s vassals in Europe, Africa & Asia seek to somehow become honorary whites or equals at least, the US plan seems to be to carve out ‘geo-economic blocks’, demanding their allies ‘cut themselves off from important centers of power like China and to commit themselves solely to the USA.’

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Should Japan have invaded Sri Lanka first, rather than attack the USA in Hawaii’s Pearl Harbor? is the subject of an extended dissertation in the LankaWeb (see ee Quotes). The Sri Lankan author Senaka Weeraratna laments, ‘Day after day we are constantly bombarded with propaganda against the Japanese & the Germans despite the end of the war 80 years ago’. The argument for Japan invading Sri Lanka first is based on the work of a Japanese militarist & prolific author of such books as How China Started the 2^nd Sino-Japanese War: Why Should Japan Apologize to China? There is no mention of Japan’s colonization of China, Taiwan, or Korea, or of the massacres of 100,000s in Nanjing, etc. Weeraratna mentions DS Senanayake, Dudley Senanayake & JR Jayawardene (Ceylon) as friends & admirers of Japan. JR is credited with foregoing demands for reparations from Japan at the infamous Treaty of San Francisco in 1951, which turned Japan into a colonial US military base, with the US inscribing its constitution. JR curiously stated:

‘We in Ceylon were fortunate that we were not invaded,

but the damage caused by air raids, by the stationing of

enormous armies under the SE Asia Command,

& by the slaughter-tapping of one of our main commodities,

rubber, when we were the only producer of natural rubber for

the Allies, entitles us to ask that the damage so caused should

be repaired. We do not intend to do so, for we

believe in the words of the Great Teacher [Buddha]…’

The USA’s 1951 San Francisco Treaty, opposed by the USSR because China was excluded from the Conference & it violated China’s sovereignty over Taiwan, studiously gave no guarantees against theUSA’s revival of militarism in Japan, now on full display.

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This week’s ee continues examining how socialism defeated fascism, even as the English & US hedged their bets, hoping the USSR with China & Germany with Japan would all destroy each other. It was the Red Armies of the USSR & China that held off & vanquished the brunt of the fascist attacks. Again, Roy Singham delivers incredible statistics on the sacrifice made. The Nazi Yellow Stars that Jews were later forced to wear were preceded by forcing Communists to wear Red Triangles:

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‘Before fascism turned outward to conquer nations,

it perfected mass murder at home. Fascism’s first

victims were domestic communists from 1931-45’

It was communists arrested in the 1,000s who filled the first concentration camps. Here in this ee Focus you can read of the love affair between the USA’s Henry Ford & the Nazi leader Adolf Hitler: ‘Western leaders did not just know – they applauded’. US media praised Hitler’s anti-communist violence as ‘necessary housekeeping’, revealing ‘capitalism’s preference for fascism over socialism.’ Again, fascism itself had its roots in the colonization of much of the world, and particularly in the practices of the settler colonies.

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The development pattern of the white settler colonies is the focus of Chapter 4 of SBD de Silva’s classic The Political Economy of Underdevelopment. This ee Focus concludes this chapter, which seeks to also explain the seeming exceptions in the Congo & IndoChina (Vietnam), to SBD’s division of the world into settler & non-settler colonies. While exhibiting certain advanced features, the Congo & IndoChina’s basically colonial status prevented their advance into the ranks of developed countries. The settler colonies focused on their home markets & developed their societies, while non-settler colonies are constantly told to focus on exports, giving over our home markets to multinational corporations (MNCs) like England’s Unilever in Sri Lanka. The settler colonies fought major battles with their European governments even as they repressed the indigenous peoples.

     This ee discusses more fully the example of Vietnam’s economy, which was subject to genocidal wars waged by the Japanese, French & US governments. SBD discussed how industrial development took place in Indochina before WW2, due to ‘adventitious factors’ such as being far from France, and a ‘balcony on the Far East’. Large numbers were employed in a range of industries. SBD de Silva, however, examines what ‘made the French Parliament & industrialists willing to finance Ferry’s conquest of Tonkin’. He also detailed the 3 devices France used ‘to pre-empt the Indochinese market’. He noted how Indochina’s exports to France were regulated, while ‘French goods could enter Indochina freely’.

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ee Focus also continues Gustavus Myers’ 1917 History of Tammany Hall. Here Myers, even as he drearily narrates the system of organized bribery in New York involving the monopolies – traction, railroad, telephone, electric lighting, industrial & other financial interests – finally highlights the criticism by US socialists, of so-called ‘anti-corruption campaigns’:

‘The political ‘bosses’ were only the tools of the great financial

& industrial magnates; & that where the political ‘bosses’

gathered in their millions, the magnates accumulated their 10s

or 100s of millions of dollars as their individual fortunes.

Why, queried the Socialists, concentrate attention on the instruments?

Why not, said they, attack the power of the whole social, political

& industrial system of which the political ‘boss’ was merely one

expression?  This system, according to the Socialist party, was the

capitalist system for the overthrow of which they declared & agitated.’

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Contents:

The USA Seeks a Suicidal Ukraine in Asia: Can Japan or Sri Lanka Help?