{"id":137846,"date":"2023-10-22T17:54:13","date_gmt":"2023-10-23T00:54:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=137846"},"modified":"2023-10-22T17:54:13","modified_gmt":"2023-10-23T00:54:13","slug":"civil-societys-funders-fundamentalists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2023\/10\/22\/civil-societys-funders-fundamentalists\/","title":{"rendered":"Civil Society\u2019s Funders &\u00a0Fundamentalists"},"content":{"rendered":"

e-Con e-News<\/a><\/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 15-21 October 2023<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

Sri Lanka, Palestine & South Africa feature among the world\u2019s<\/p>\n\n\n\n

foremost struggles for majority rule in a unitary state\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

The USA is telling us to watch them engulf West Asia in blood in \u2018real-time\u2019. Again. They wish to tell the world: you can do nothing about it. Try if you must. (And if you fail, and you live, you can get a post-colonial PhD in Indiana!)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     They wish more rope. Shall we give it to them, or sell it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018We\u2019re the United States of America, for god\u2019s sake!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The most powerful nation in the history of the world.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 Joe Biden, CBS 60 Minutes<\/em>, 15 October 2023<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The USA is threatening naval blockades<\/strong> of both West Asia, starting with Palestine, and of East Asia, centring on the South China Sea<\/strong>, escalating their fuel, fertilizer and food wars. This must surely shake the confidence of our most unbending advocates of export-oriented industrialization<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     The English, fearing an Imperial Japanese invasion from Singapore hooking up with Nazi Germany at the Suez via Sri Lanka in 1942, was forced by the Communist Party of Sri Lanka<\/strong>, to make concessions to cultivators and workers, and industry (see ee<\/em><\/strong> 15 February 2020, Indian Rhapsody). Would Sri Lanka\u2019s present rulers, even dare?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

It was only the other day the SL President in New York took \u2018centre stage\u2019 (so said his family\u2019s Financial Times <\/em>of Colombo) at a US Carnegie Foundation<\/strong> Forum on \u2018Ocean Nations<\/strong>\u2019. (US Steel monopolist Andrew Carnegie, by the way, whose profits funded this Carnegie Foundation, was a Vice-President & funder of the US Anti-Imperialist League <\/strong>formed in 1898, during the US war on Spain\u2019s colonies. The League was a battle waged by an older thief against a younger thief, who wanted to keep invading the world. The older thief is coy: we shouldn\u2019t push it, we might go over the edge. Carnegie wished to protect his steel monopoly).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     Over a century later, the SL President at that Carnegie no doubt heard Manhattan\u2019s robot-dentures clacking for a \u2018Free & Open Indo-Pacific\u2019 and a \u2018Rules-based Order.\u2019 The President, at least in his previous avatara, has been a fervent advocate of such \u2018Western liberal\u2019 nostrums. And why not? Free. Open. Rules. Order.<\/em> Whoa!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

\u2018You\u2019ve just said \u2018rule-based order\u2019. Have you ever seen those rules?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No, you haven\u2019t, because no one has agreed on them with anyone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So how can one talk about order based on rules that no one has ever seen?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In terms of common sense, it\u2019s nonsense. But it is beneficial to those who<\/p>\n\n\n\n

promote this approach. Because if no one has seen the rules, it only means that<\/p>\n\n\n\n

those who talk about them are making them up themselves<\/p>\n\n\n\n

from time to time to their own advantage. That is the colonial approach<\/em><\/strong>\u2026\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 V Putin, 16 October 2023<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

\u2022 <\/strong>This week as the US & petit-poodle England\u2019s warships blockade, and their caged pitbull Israel froths and gouges deep into the flesh of remnant Palestine, we hear that that the US Carnegie Foundation<\/strong>, which recently sponsored the President\u2019s speech in New York, advocates ditching this US \u2018rule of law\u2019 policy business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     It\u2019s an \u2018abundant\u2019 time. Palestine makes it abundantly clear, yet once more, white countries know nothing about real rule of law. Whiteness is lawlessness. The smell of blood thrills & flares their nostrils & nostrums \u2013 perfume to a lynch mob. Nothing like mass murder to unite them. Ah! The Concert of Europe<\/strong><\/em>: Malcolm X said, English may hate Irish, Protestant hate Catholic, Gentiles may hate Jews, but when they hear \u2018Nigger<\/em>\u2019, they all run in the same direction.\u2019 This week it\u2019s the Palestinian \u2013 subset of that \u2018ethnic\u2019 category tagged in US penitentiaries as \u2018Sand Niggers<\/strong>\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     So no surprise how all their media & economists have to suddenly fall quiet on this \u2018rule of law\u2019 business. Such military precision. Not a word about such matters anymore from US embassy lipstick like EconomyNext<\/em> or Advocata. Rule of Law<\/em>. Not a squeak. It can\u2019t be from embarrassment. They lack that lajja. And the media is not allowed memory!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

\u2022 Ranil Feels for the East Wind<\/strong> \u2013 The SL President, who is mostly airborne, next went to Beijing this week for the 10th<\/sup> Anniversary of the Belt & Road Initiative (BRI). Sri Lanka\u2019s links with China are ancient, and new promises were agreed upon. The President could have asked about the role of industrial strategy midst siege<\/strong>. China is an expert. He should have. Maybe the President is just flirting to attract more white largesse. We are not privy to that privy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     And lo! After dragging their feet for months, the IMF suddenly announces on Friday that they have reached a \u2018conditional\u2019 \u2018first staff-level agreement\u2019 with Sri Lanka for \u2018next review!\u2019 First! Conditional! Talk about bureaucracy! Suddenly? The US wars in West and East Asia are about to reorient all the IMF forecasts! And we all know who decides. Here\u2019s what was tugging at Morocco:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Failure to strike a deal would imperil the status of the central institution<\/p>\n\n\n\n

of the global monetary system\u2026 Today, the US quota share is 17.43%,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

and its voting share is 16.50%. Consequently, the US must agree<\/p>\n\n\n\n

to all the IMF\u2019s major decisions, including any changes in quotas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In other words, whether we like it or not, any deal must satisfy the US Treasury<\/strong>.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 Edwin Truman, advisor to Official Monetary & Financial Institutions Forum,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

former director of US Federal Reserve\u2019s International Finance Division<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 ee Economists<\/em><\/strong>, Another stalemate on IMF quotas is not acceptable<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

And the US Treasury is thirsty too it seems:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Sri Lanka is the only country in the world that will have drinking water<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

even if there is going to be a shortage of drinking water in the whole world.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(see ee Agriculture<\/em><\/strong>, SL at the Pinnacle of the World in its Water Supplies)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

With Sri Lanka\u2019s drought\/flood media ever at the ready to sensationalize disaster, another flood involved an overflow of stories diverting from the upcoming privatization of water. We hear from all the \u2018concerned\u2019 voices like the UN\u2019s Food & Agriculture Organization (FAO), International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), & World Food Program (WFP), who apparently need to remind us \u2018Building water resilience\u2026 requires collective commitment\u2019! Tell that to the Vel Vidane of yore!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

     <\/strong>Then there\u2019s Asian Development Bank (ADB) & Japan International Corporation Agency (JICA), generously funding the digitalization of the Water Board in anticipation of the privatization (ee Random Notes<\/em><\/strong>, The Water Act).<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

\u2022 US Advocata\u2019s Digital Catatonic Tonics<\/strong> \u2013 Just as ee <\/em><\/strong>sonar detected not a hik squeak Gaza-wise from US thinktank Advocata, all of sudden there is an icy North Atlantic swoosh of their policy demands on Sri Lanka\u2019s government. The most infamous Advocata-tonic this week ordered the President to \u2018only use\u2019 a \u2018digital signature\u2019 after 31 December 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     Apparently, the President\u2019s pen is not his own, with many hands groping to hold his pen (perhaps forging his good name), and the IMF (with Julie Chung offering the helping hand) wishes to make sure Washington holds his pen. And tight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 Omar Khayy\u00e1m<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 The IMF seeks to ensure that no matter how much the blood & many tears shed, and no matter the curses & votes cast on the road to Jayawardenapura or Galle Face Green (without pausing at Kollupitiya Junction<\/strong>), the Executive President\u2019s writ holds as long as the irrigation of his fountain pen is regulated by the US Treasury (aka \u2018Freest Marketeer\u2019). The rest of the country\u2019s bodily fluids could all ooze into the Diyavanna and India\u2019s oceanic cesspit for all they care.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     Hence the IMF (& pipsqueak Advocata) demands Sri Lanka digitalize everything (IDs, Fuel, Health info, etc.), so a fund manager & their algorithm (off-Manhattan, for tax purposes) could determine the path of investment in Sri Lanka. All part of a \u2018National Digital Strategy<\/strong>\u2019, which the World Bank applauds for its focus on decentralizing SMEs<\/strong>! Now what does this mean, not just for national security, let alone industrial policy?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

\u2022 Carving up Sri Lanka\u2019s national assets<\/strong> for the USA will be discussed at next month\u2019s Sri Lanka Economic Summit <\/strong>with the Ceylon Tobacco Company<\/strong> and State-Owned Enterprises Restructuring Unit Director General Suresh Shah, World Bank IFC<\/strong> Country Manager Alejandro Alvarez de la Campa, (Unilever<\/strong>-front) Sunshine Holdings<\/strong> Group Managing Director Vish Govindasamy, Power and Energy Minister Kanchana Wijesekera, and Advisor to the Minister of Labour and Foreign Employment Shan Yahampath<\/strong>, with US Advocata CEO Dhananath Fernando moderating\u2026 (see ee Economists<\/em><\/strong>, Imperative for SOE reforms in focus at Sri Lanka Economic Summit<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

\u2018Is the IMF setting Sri Lanka up for a 2nd<\/sup> car crash<\/strong>?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 Theo Maret, Financial Times of London<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A rather provocative headline indeed, especially for those who think the USA\u2019s IMF is a god, benevolent & concerned. Moneychanger Maret believes the IMF\u2019s \u2018unambitious targets\u2019 are setting Sri Lanka up for another default. Someone should tell Maret, the applied mathematician, that he doth under-invoice: This is the IMF\u2019s 17th<\/sup> impending car crash!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     Maret (Market without the \u2018k\u2019!) spoke at a recent \u2018Civil Society\u2019 chat-up on Sri Lanka in perfumed Marrakech. Maret works for Global Sovereign Advisory (GSA)<\/strong>, an \u2018independent\u2019 advisor of \u2018governments & other sovereign entities <\/em>on all their strategic, economic & financial issues.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     Ghana hired GSA as debt advisors in Dec 2022, along with Lazard, and Hogan Lovells. Holders of Ghana\u2019s bonds tapped Rothschild & Co and Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe as advisers. Sri Lanka hired Lazard and Clifford Chance in May 2022 to serve as \u2018advisors on debt restructuring\u2019 to appease the IMF.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     ee<\/em><\/strong> has noted before the kuchi-kuchi<\/em> between actors on both sides of this debt game, like the Rothschilds. June 2023 ee<\/em><\/strong> reported that 3 of France\u2019s wealthiest dynasties were helping take \u2018French bank\u2019 Rothschild & Co private, or should we say, \u2018more private.\u2019 While protected by the biggest guns in the world, real \u2018finance\u2019 is the actual very small island, usually offshore, NFA (no fixed address), and OTB (off the books). Maret recalls, eg, that IMF targets \u2018leaked into the market\u2019<\/strong> in Nov 2022, and \u2018rallied\u2019 Sri Lanka\u2019s Eurobonds to double their value.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     GSA\u2019s Maret was a part of a closed-door \u2018Civil Society\u2019 chat-up, with Verite<\/strong>, a US-funded \u2018SL thinktank\u2019, and the US-World-Bank-linked Transparency International<\/strong> Sri Lanka (TISL). Guess who these \u2018doors\u2019 were \u2018closed to? This \u2018Civil Society\u2019 (\u2018a rich dialogue among various stakeholders, including professionals & high-ranking members of the Sri Lankan delegation\u2019) provided \u2018civil\u2019 fog for the IMF & World Bank annual meeting in Morocco.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     This \u2018Civil Society\u2019 chat drew attention to Sri Lanka\u2019s allocation \u2018of over 70% of its revenue to interest payments \u2013 the highest in the world!<\/em><\/strong>\u2019 Which make any real \u2018repayment\u2019 not possible at all, especially when this \u2018civil society\u2019 of capitalists prevent Sri Lanka\u2019s modern industrialization. This is the real corruption!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

     Verite\u2019s de Mel\u2019s & TISL\u2019s Perera\u2019s ringing denunciations of the \u2018corruption\u2019 of the Sri Lankan government surely echoed louder across the icing western Mediterranean and into the Iberian Peninsula. The groaning to rearm moral fervor may have recalled young 16th<\/sup> century Jesuits demanding the Pope send in the cannons to avenge some Sri Lankan King\u2019s misdemeanor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     Global Sovereign Advisory\u2019s \u2018civil\u2019 intervention was more precise: the issue is the IMF\u2019s criteria, especially for \u2018market access<\/strong>\u2019 \u2013 in other words, to grab national resources. And as the recent EU-Mercosur Treaty reveals, the EU\u2019s Green\/WhiteWash aims to grab critical raw minerals<\/strong>, while dumping fossil fuel-based car models, combustion engines, and agricultural pesticides.\u2019 Maret also demands US control over SL\u2019s foreign reserves<\/strong> & exchange rates<\/strong> (see ee Random Notes<\/em><\/strong>). EU meanwhile warns that Sri Lanka needs major investment to cut down charging time for EV cars! Forget production? (see ee Industry<\/em><\/strong>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

\u2022 <\/strong>Sri Lanka, Palestine & South Africa count among the world\u2019s foremost struggles for majority rule in a unitary state. And Sri Lanka\u2019s Mannar Basin, the eastern Mediterranean\u2019s Gaza Marine<\/strong> & south Atlantic Guyana\u2019s Stabroek Basin have much in common.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     In 1948, the year the English were imposing Soulbury independence on Sri Lanka (with guarantees for \u2018minorities\u2019, including white & other merchants), the Zionists (many who\u2019d collaborated with Nazi Germany) expelled half the population of Palestine in 9 months. Demolishing 500 out of 1,000 villages, Zionists depopulated 11 towns to create the state of Israel. The English had conveniently withdrawn their \u2018mandate\u2019 from Palestine just before \u2013 Nakba<\/strong>!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     In 1948, a white South-African government, imposed English-style apartheid<\/strong>, setting up Bantustans, framed on the \u2018reservations\u2019 of Canada\u2019s Indian Act<\/em>. They divided peoples into races (Whites, Blacks, Indians & Coloureds).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     The backdrop: In 1945, the US occupied Japan, and divided Korea & Germany<\/strong>. In 1947, the English divided India<\/strong>. In 1949, the US, after defeat in China, set up a quisling state in China\u2019s province of Taiwan<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     Just before the most recent upheaval, Palestine had agreed to work with both Egypt & Israel to develop the vast Gaza Marine Gas Field, 30km off the Gaza Strip. Palestine, like Lanka etc, has been made dependent on fuel imports.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      Certain parallels are indicated by the seemingly surface activities of the agents of imperialism:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     It\u2019s not just the Australians so generously protecting the indigenous donkeys of Mannar, while mining ilmenite in Puttalam. Or that the pearls that once were bubbled to the shores, long a source of international dispute, have come & gone. Or that there are other do-gooding-doing-good NGOs doing godly work as it were in them northwest parts bordering this \u2018frontier failed rift basin\u2019 just off Sri Lanka.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     In Sept 2021 ee<\/em><\/strong> noted , USAID & other funds were targeting \u2018sensitive\u2019 coastal communities (eg, Puttalam, Mannar, Trincomalee, Batticaloa) in Sri Lanka (& Myanmar) under various guises, to aid \u2018peace-building\u2019, \u2018reconciliation\u2019, \u2018pluralism\u2019, \u2018women\u2019s empowerment\u2019, \u2018religious diversity\u2019, \u2018conflict sensitivity\u2019. One of the 1st acts of RW as the born-again PM in 2022 June was to hand out deeds to legally grant \u2018ownership\u2019 in coastal Puttalam, etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     There is a ruddy school of thought that believes the wars of the last decades in Sri Lanka are also umbilically linked to the grab for the Mannar Basin, flush with other bubblies, oils, gases & other energies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     Some point to the grab of Guyana\u2019s recently uncovered offshore gas fields by Exxon. Guyana was Cuba before Cuba, and the US & England set up \u2018race wars\u2019 to prevent it from becoming \u2018another Cuba\u2019. Guyana is expected to become Exxon\u2019s top global oil producer<\/strong>. And even more, \u2018Where the company ends and the government begins is increasingly unclear\u2019 (see ee Random Notes<\/em><\/strong>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

Palestine, like Sri Lanka, is heavily reliant on imports for energy.<\/strong> Yet the Gaza Marine Gas Field holds more than a trillion cubic feet of gas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     In September 2022, Palestinians rallied at Gaza City Seaport to demand their right to receive gas from eastern Mediterranean gas fields, and the lifting of the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     In June 2023, Israel gave \u2018preliminary approval\u2019 to exploit the Gaza Marine field.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     In September 2023, just before the recent slaughter, the Palestinian Authority again said it would sign an agreement to develop the offshore Gaza Marine natural gas field with Egypt and Israel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     (On 9 Oct, US Chevron said it shut down a natural gas field off the Israel coast at official behest. The Tamar field, 15 miles off Israel\u2019s south coast, meets 70% of Israel\u2019s energy needs for power generation. Jordan & Egypt import 7% & 4% of their total gas supply from the platform. \u2018Goldman Sachs analysts think the Tamar shutdown has \u2018contributed\u2019 to the rally in European gas prices.\u2019 Others claim: the price rise was due to \u2018a temporary shutdown of a leaky gas pipeline in the Baltic Sea, and a planned strike by liquefied natural gas workers in Australia.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

\u2022 Just as any bordello could set up a tent at the country fair as long as it increased the overall interests of the top merchant (who had first pickings among the fresh aubergines), the meaning of \u2018civil society\u2019 was furthered constricted or revealed by the \u2018Sri Lankan Civil Society Initiative on Anti-Corruption Reform for Economic Recovery\u2019, which set up \u2018a closed-door event\u2019 to whitewash the IMF Annual Meetings in Morocco.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     Trying to figure why \u2018closed-door\u2019? Perhaps it is not just oxygen (which the World bank\u2019s Transparency International otherwise preaches) they were excluding, but China against whom they are putting up a greater wall? It turns out this year\u2019s annual IMF\/World Bank meetings in Morocco has been \u2018the most explicitly confrontational yet by US\/NATO diplomacy toward China\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018At issue is not only what countries will be the major beneficiaries of future IMF & World Bank loan operations<\/strong>, but whether the world will back US unipolar dominance<\/strong> or start to move explicitly toward a multipolar philosophy<\/strong> of mutual support to increase living standards & prosperity instead of imposing anti-labor austerity<\/strong> in an attempt to maintain a trade & investment system that is now widely seen to be dysfunctional<\/strong> & financially predatory US demands<\/strong> to use these 2 organizations as arms of its New Cold War policy.\u2019 (see ee Focus<\/em><\/strong>, Hudson)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

Instead of wailing about this good old colonial system, Transparency & Verite thundered about corruption<\/em>! Their words could have surely pressed against the locked doors. Threatening to bust them up. But T&V are a salariat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     Civil Society?<\/strong> EconomyNext<\/em> and The Wickremesinghe family\u2019s Financial Times<\/em> and has become an open toilet paper of the US thinktank Advocata et al. But they have all gone rather quiet about \u2018rule of law\u2019, which has gone bunker-deep in US-occupied Palestine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     Note a whiny tweet from Presidential Economic Advisor & Advocata chair Murtaza Jafferjee (this flush thintank is a complex corpocracy, with a CEO, & many many directors & fellows, many being women, beyond the requisite minority quotas, much like the ruling merchantry. Jafferjee is eagerly waiting for EC President Ursula Von Der Leyen to also condemn Israel\u2019s denial of food, water & fuel to the Palestinians, as she did in the Ukraine. He laments such double standards are why the \u2018Global South\u2019 does not believe in their liberal platitudes. But other than that, all rather quiet in these openly lawless times. So what could it be?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     It turns out the US is about to ditch this rule-of-law biz. \u2018Carnegie Council explains how the global rift necessitates a change in western policies. It especially sees a need to ditch the so called \u2018value-\u2019 or \u2018rules-based-order\u2019 policies.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     Recall the President\u2019s recent New York jaunt, included a roundtable on \u2018Economic Opportunities in Sri Lanka\u2019 was organized by Carnegie Endowment for International Peace & Sasakawa Foundation. Did they intimate to the SL Prez the new rules we must dance by? As articulate as anyone can be in English, is this why he put on that act of exasperation for viewers of Germany\u2019s state TV\u2019s English channel? Germans may not have watched.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

\u2022 ee<\/em><\/strong> continues to serialize Idirimagen Idiriyata<\/em>, the Communist Party of Sri Lanka \u2018s \u2018Alternative Program\u2019. This issue examines \u2018the conceptual underpinnings, philosophy & ideologies of the alternative program\u2019, where wealth would be equitably distributed, and national unity is the main condition for further development as a country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     The program calls for \u2018production of real goods\u2019 to comprise \u2018the mainstay of the economy\u2019, hence the need for a high level of industrialization & technological transformation, even in agriculture. This needs a National Planning Council, with public ownership over natural monopolies such as energy, transport and communications. The program reminds that SoEs are a mainstay of not just Communist societies but also industrial capitalist ones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     These CPSL proposals recognize the shift of economic power to Asia and the rise of a multipolar world order, calling for Sri Lanka\u2019s own economic strategy, including trade & industrial policies, to be in tune with these geopolitical & geo-economic dynamics. (see ee Focus<\/em>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Civil Society\u2019s Funders & Fundamentalists<\/a><\/blockquote>