{"id":134649,"date":"2023-05-28T16:31:38","date_gmt":"2023-05-28T23:31:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=134649"},"modified":"2023-05-28T16:31:38","modified_gmt":"2023-05-28T23:31:38","slug":"multinationals-the-hiding-of-import-export-dollars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2023\/05\/28\/multinationals-the-hiding-of-import-export-dollars\/","title":{"rendered":"Multinationals & the Hiding of Import-Export\u00a0Dollars"},"content":{"rendered":"

e-Con e-News<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

The uninterrupted interregnum of the aragalaya, from March 2022 \u2013 that removed in 3 months a popular President elected by a huge landslide just over 2 years before \u2013 took place during the US trial of a relative of the ruling Rajapaksas \u2013 former Sri Lanka Ambassador to the US, Jaliya Wickramasuriya \u2013 and a former tea exporter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     Wickramasuriya\u2019s sentencing in a US court for alleged fraud (speculating on land \u2013 that foremost US national religion!) was postponed from April to 20 July 2022. With an executive rendered vulnerable in Sri Lanka, coordinated violence (signaled by the May 9th<\/sup> arson attacks on 74 MPs\u2019 homes) then escalated midst threats of foreign invasions, military coups, and assassination by \u2018death-dealing 1980s sparrow units\u2019 (see ee<\/em><\/strong> 16 July 2022).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     Thus it came to pass that on that 20th<\/sup> day in July 2022, a shut-down Parliament was resumed to choose a new \u2018unelected\u2019 President \u2013 Ranil Wickremesinghe. Jaliya Wickramasuriya was lightly sentenced later that day in a somewhat quiet Washington \u2018show trial\u2019 (minus media \u2018perp walk\u2019).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     The US hostage-taking of a Rajapaksa relative may cast further enlightenment on the yet-to-be-shed splotchy snakeskin camouflaging the head-scratching events unfolding before us. It offers private tuition on the limits to a white-west-embedded kalu-suddha leadership (ee Sovereignty<\/em><\/strong>, The Ambassador, His Swanky New Embassy & the Limits of Diplomatic Immunity).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     What Washington\u2019s courts have to overlook is that the real scandal of Sri Lanka\u2019s economic practices lies \u2013 not just in real-estate speculation \u2013 but in the whole colonial import-export plantation game. Yet how could a Washington court or an IMF or World Bank rule against such a system. Why not? The slave plantation system arrived in Sri Lanka via Jamaica and Haiti, etc., wholesale from Washington on the Potomac, hub of the domestic US slave trade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sri Lanka\u2019s ruling class and related wannabes are made up of those fully invested in the Anglo-Saxon-led colonial universe anchored in the icy North Atlantic. Their money (the bulk of it \u2018legally\u2019 transferred by \u2018exporters\u2019, led by the multinational corporations: see, ee Focus<\/em><\/strong>) is in the white west. Their children are brainwashed in the ethos and mores of the white west (they just love love love their hollywood & rock\u2019n\u2019roll: Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!<\/em>). They own property in the white west (property the white west could confiscate or wield as a weapon at will, as shown with Venezuela or Cuba, Russia or Iran, regardless of the so-called \u2018international rule of law\u2019).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     The policies enacted to maintain the reckless lifestyles of this Sri Lanka rock-n\u2019rollin middle class have been crashed. At the same time, this middle class seeks to extend by any means this very same untenable unsustainable lifestyle. The Anglo-American media encourages Sri Lanka\u2019s middle class to act more arrogant and lazy, with no constructive plan allowed, driving them full of outrage \u2013 not against themselves, though:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018The Budget has no answer for all these issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite the crash in the exchange rate<\/strong>,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

despite the increase in the interest rates<\/strong> about 2 to 3 times,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

the incomes that are already generated in the economy by workers<\/p>\n\n\n\n

are not accessible to the government<\/strong> or the public in general.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is captured by a business elite in the import-export sector<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

who are more inclined to keep the capital outside the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(ee Focus<\/em>, <\/strong>Budget 2023: Heal the Wound or Worsen it?)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Grand robbery has been taking place. For a long time. But the robbers are not those who the white media and their embassies, and the IMF keeps promising to name: The Chinese. Workers. State enterprises. Corrupt politicians. <\/em>Not them. It\u2019s the old colonial import-export plantation game. What is downplayed however is that this \u2018import-export sector<\/strong>\u2019,that\u2019s preventing productive investment in this country, is led by the major MNCs in this country. The national envoys \u2013 representing these MNCs \u2013 are in a constant state of sermonizing \u2013 of undiplomatic tirade and harangue \u2013 dutifully reproduced by a salivating hang-tongued media. We will have to await a more incisive hermeneutic of the real role MNCs play in Sri Lanka.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 This ee<\/em><\/strong> reproduces an Island<\/em> analyst\u2019s exegesis of the State Minister for Defense\u2019s promise last week to a visiting US official to \u2018right-size\u2019 the military. This visit seemed timed for two anniversaries, largely ignored or disparaged by the English media in Sri Lanka. The defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam on 19 May 2009. The inauguration of a republic on May 22 1972, that finally released Sri Lanka from English political but not economic thrall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     The US Official arrived midst the President\u2019s promise to carve out an \u2018Interim Administration for the North & East,\u2019 and demands for a \u2018non-territorial community council\u2019 for Tamil settlers in the hill-country. What does all this portend for the imposition of US troops and extraterritorial laws via the MCC, SOFA & ACSA. The Island<\/em> analyst declares, given the economic threats:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018The country is in such a precarious situation,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

political leadership may tend to conveniently ignore basics,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

especially to please Uncle Sam, the obvious king-maker here now,<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

thereby jeopardizing the country\u2019s national security\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013\u00a0ee Focus<\/em><\/strong>,Blind Security Reforms<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Full Story<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Multinationals & the Hiding of Import-Export Dollars<\/a><\/blockquote>