{"id":137099,"date":"2023-09-19T16:01:42","date_gmt":"2023-09-19T23:01:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=137099"},"modified":"2023-09-19T16:01:42","modified_gmt":"2023-09-19T23:01:42","slug":"there-they-go-again-back-to-77-all-the-julys-1980-1983-1987","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2023\/09\/19\/there-they-go-again-back-to-77-all-the-julys-1980-1983-1987\/","title":{"rendered":"There They Go Again: Back to \u201877 & All the Julys \u2013 1980, 1983,\u00a01987\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

e-Con e-News September 2023 Part 3<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n
\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Before you study the economics, study the economists!<\/em>\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

e-Con e-News September 2023 Part 3<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Political thuggery<\/strong> is the main deterrent<\/strong> to economic reforms\u2019 \u2013 A former Swedish <\/strong>Industry Ministry Director, Dag Detter last week warned an Asian Development Bank (ADB) Colombo Forum aiming to sell off national assets. (They wasted a lot of precious dollars and carbon to fly this Viking all the way to Colombo to warn us about their camouflage: \u2018Social democracy on their lips, capitalism in their holster.\u2019)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     \u2018Extremists who do not subscribe to a free enterprise system, even if it has a human face,\u2019 <\/strong>snuggle within \u2018the group supporting the President<\/strong>\u2019 warned former English Ceylon Tobacco Co chairman Suresh Shah<\/strong>. Shah now chairs that same President\u2019s SoE Restructuring Unit (SRU<\/strong>), formed to impose the IMF plan to sell off national assets<\/strong>. The main problem for these flaming democrats is: \u2018How to get past the election jitters<\/strong>.\u2019 Both Detter and Shah are big fans of using mass-media strategies to trick the working class. CTC is one of the best. A besieged state health service pays the bills for the cancers they fester, while they pack their profits off to parent BAT in London (see ee Random Notes<\/em><\/strong>). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hong Kong reporter starts to ask Venezuela leader<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nicholas Maduro visiting China, a question in English:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maduro<\/strong>: \u2018Speak Mandarin, there\u2019s no English interpreter \u2013 It\u2019s a new world!<\/strong>\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 So many English media outlets in Sri Lanka.<\/strong> All saying the very very same same thing, over & over. A simple scan of our weekly news index provides ample evidence. They don\u2019t even bother to rephrase or use a thesaurus. Any real news is but decoration for the press releases<\/strong> from the US, English, EU, Japanese & Indian embassies, IMF, World Bank & UN \u2013 all making pronouncements clearly beyond their welcome. All looking in a mirror of their own making, and saying, \u2018Aint we good lookin!?\u2019 All this color-coded talk of corruption<\/em> and not one word about how this capitalist media, epitome of such art, operates in a merchant world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     Dollared Civil Society is all agog about corruption<\/em>. Yet the present Exchange Control Act which allows the parking of $billions <\/strong>outside the country <\/strong>will never be changed because the IMF has prevented the government<\/strong> from doing so, and the government has agreed <\/strong>(see ee Random Notes<\/em><\/strong>, Vichara).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     And then the spit of the Anglican King\u2019s BBC Channel 4<\/strong> splutters out some drivel. Watch all this media scurry about like pissu kumbi scratching their heads, as if the heavens have opened all their reedy orifices at once. And, lo! Pixeled spit turns into electronic rivers of ink. & ink into gospel. Let not one drop of mud go to the ocean without a media editor using it to fill any holes left in a page midst Anglo Unilever\u2019s glossy promises to turn us all fair&lovely<\/em> & stoopid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pump out enough smoke & you might create fire<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 The Economist <\/em>(London)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is the <\/em>IMF setting Sri Lanka up <\/em><\/strong>for a 2nd<\/sup> car crash?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 <\/strong>Financial Times<\/em> (London)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Long delays caused by official sector squabbling<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

are creating new strategic options<\/strong> for private creditors\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 <\/strong>Financial Times<\/em> (London)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More than half of Sri Lanka\u2019s revenue to be gobbled up with <\/em>interest payments<\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 <\/strong>Financial Times <\/em>(London)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018More than half\u2019 is an understatement. Funny how the Financial Times<\/em><\/strong>, so full of number-crunching graphs etc, deploys imprecision & innumeracy when needed. This debt can never be paid unless we industrialize. Yet they will not allow that, either. And so, the debt farce opens to yet another season. It is autumn in New York, London & Geneva. Rare birds head south, honking. The school year begins. & here come the monitors. & there are the foreign experts & local merchants blaming \u2018extremists\u2019 & \u2018thuggery\u2019 for delaying IMF tinkering. (see ee Random Notes<\/em><\/strong>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     Last month the US government<\/strong> demanded that a New York court (whose salaries it pays) delay a decision on lawsuit by an offshore tax-hideout holder of Sri Lanka\u2019s bonds. This week, France<\/strong> & England<\/strong> petitioned the same Manhattan judge, arguing in favor of Sri Lanka\u2019s request<\/em> for a 6-month freeze on any litigation. France hosts the so-called Paris Club<\/strong>, where government-to-government debts are restructured. England \u2018historically oversaw the London Club<\/strong>, the less formal group for private creditors to negotiate with sovereign borrowers\u2019, observes the Financial Times <\/em>(London). Why are they so concerned? The media <\/strong>rarely tell us about this London Club.<\/strong> (see ee Random Notes<\/em><\/strong>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 Yet<\/strong> another IMF delegation<\/strong> landed here this week. A new<\/strong> Central Bank Act<\/strong> declared its independence from the country. Now we can only finance industrialization via Humpty Dumpty on Wall Street<\/strong>. Also, a supposedly independent workers\u2019 pension fund (EPF<\/strong>) & Monetary Board<\/strong>, with no representation from workers, has taken on the entire burden of paying off \u2018domestic debts\u2019 incurred by capitalists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     This week\u2019s railway strike<\/strong>, with a Moratuwa student falling off a train, had the Labor minister and media linking both events. The government then resorted to punitive legislation against railway workers. Anybody who loves to ride the rails knows well how the SLGR is undermined. This forced ee <\/em><\/strong>to recall the continued dominance of national transport by vehicle importers (banks etc).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      ee<\/em><\/strong> also recalls the USA\u2019s International Monetary Fund 1977 policies of privatization, and so-called liberalization & financialization of the economy, that enables the programmed anarchy on the roads & rails to this day. Such \u2018human resource\u2019 policies made ee <\/em><\/strong>remember the Employers Federation of Ceylon<\/strong> (the country\u2019s 1st<\/sup> organization to register as a trade union in colonial 1935) demanding the government totally ban strikes in 1978:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018To introduce legislation enforcing a total ban<\/strong> on strikes & lockouts in essential services<\/strong>\u2026 and the requirement of a 60% support of the workers through secret ballot for strike action in non-essential services<\/strong>\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 July 1980 saw the UNP government freezing the bank accounts<\/strong> of trade unions, and the mass sacking of at least 50,000 workers<\/strong>. Such policies set the stage for further turmoil triggering pogroms & wars north & south. Such anarchy is required to push back against any attempt at true (economic) independence. The forces of super-consumption were unleashed after 1948 to divert investment in modern industrialization policies that even India had adopted. The children of 1977 then rose up in 2022 to demand their birth right of continuing the import-party\u2019s non-stop orgy. So now, another bill\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     This week also saw protests at the CWE after the sacking of almost 300 workers. Recall how the tale of the nationalization of oil companies and the formation of the CWE are linked. Our white-educated intellectuals don\u2019t believe a state can catch & sell dry fish. Only a Harvard MBA can do that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Even as universities are captured by capital<\/p>\n\n\n\n

and turned into what is termed as University Inc<\/em><\/strong>,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

the new knowledge they produce is still publicly funded<\/strong>.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 Prabir Purkayastha, Intellectual Property, Knowledge Monopoly<\/p>\n\n\n\n

& the Rent Economy (see ee Economists<\/em><\/strong>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All good bourgeois desire the impossible,<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

i.e., the conditions of bourgeois life without<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

the <\/em>inevitable consequences<\/em><\/strong> of these conditions.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 Karl Marx<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 Sri Lanka is further privatizing its \u2018education sector\u2019 \u2013 to change \u2018its state-sector-led universities to private-sector-led investments to ensure professionalism and increase employability\u2019. Justice Minister Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe has such a plan, reports US stenographer EconomyNext<\/em>, \u2018to abolish the current University Grant Commission \u2026 to establish more private universities.\u2019 This ABC ain\u2019t new.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     \u2018The island nation has faced with strong resistance for private universities in the country as Leftist politicians & Marxists have protested in street,\u2019 US EconomyNext<\/em> provokes the minister, who duly obliges: \u2018Rajapakshe was critical of past demands by socialists<\/em> & Leftists<\/em> for state-led higher education. \u2018What socialism, what Marxism<\/strong>?\u2019 That\u2019s nonsense. In all those (socialist) countries, the private education has been promoted\u2026\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     We wonder where the intelligent minister gets his education, which is very different from \u2018schooling\u2019. In this ee <\/strong>Focus<\/em><\/strong>, Kasun Kariyawasam examines how underfunding and the failure to industrialize \u2013 let alone understand the role industrialization plays in giving education a structure \u2013 have undermined claims to \u2018free education\u2019. \u2018Free education\u2019 has come at a great price: Manufacturing literate idiots who are gloriously innumerate. Indeed, in this 5th<\/sup> anniversary of ee<\/em><\/strong>, recall SB\u2019s humorous quip: it would have been better to provide free fertilizer to cultivators than free education to Colombo\u2019s wannabes.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

     Indeed, we recall the Cambridge economist Joan Robinson<\/strong>\u2019s last message to her students in the 1960s: \u2018Supposedly illiterate peasants across the world from London, who had never ever heard Robinson\u2019s lectures, were accomplishing miracles in China.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     ee<\/em><\/strong> therefore also continues the battle with ChatGPT<\/em><\/strong> on the role played by China\u2019s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s \u2013 which the English & its media bots love to malign \u2013 in capturing the home market. ee<\/em><\/strong> also concludes its look at Russia\u2019s industrial development midst imperialist siege, and their deployment of domestic demand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

_________<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Contents:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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There They Go Again: Back to \u201877 & All the Julys \u2013 1980, 1983, 1987\u2026<\/a><\/blockquote>