{"id":140571,"date":"2024-02-19T17:37:07","date_gmt":"2024-02-20T00:37:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=140571"},"modified":"2024-02-19T17:37:07","modified_gmt":"2024-02-20T00:37:07","slug":"the-arts-of-post-colonialism-geopolitics-other-white-trash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2024\/02\/19\/the-arts-of-post-colonialism-geopolitics-other-white-trash\/","title":{"rendered":"The Arts of Post-Colonialism, Geopolitics & Other White\u00a0Trash"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

blog: eesrilanka.wordpress.com<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

e-Con e-News 11-17 February 2024<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Hi guys! How are you doing, exhorted US Ambassador Julie Chung<\/p>\n\n\n\n

as she walked towards a group of MPs\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

after the ceremonial opening of Parliament\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another parliamentarian quickly shot a question<\/p>\n\n\n\n

before the US envoy could move over towards another group:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JVP leader, Anura Kumara Dissanayake is in India.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Are there any Indo-Pacific issues linked to the visit?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No, no,\u201d she hurriedly responded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ambassador Chung, who represents a nation that once was the first<\/p>\n\n\n\n

to put a man on the moon, also used the MPs as a sounding board.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She asked whether anyone there had climbed Adam\u2019s Peak<\/strong> or Sri Pada.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then she proudly boasted she had walked to the top in just 2.5 hours last month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From her schooldays, she swaggered, she has done a lot of hiking\u2026\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 Sunday Times<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We dare not suggest what the US envoy has had to hike<\/em>, to saddle her way up into the notoriously incestuous white echelons of the US State Department, but she is just doing her job, as demanded by US government\u2019s Integrated Country Strategy<\/em>, which ee<\/em><\/strong> continues to reproduce:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

The US Mission\u2019s program & training will focus<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

support on prosecutors, judges, other justice sector partners<\/strong>,<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Members of Parliament, and their staff.<\/em><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

(see ee Focus<\/em><\/strong>).<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

Imagine, the SL Envoy \u2018Hippie Mike\u2019 Samarasinghe in war-war-war-<\/em>Washington breezing into the US con-con-<\/em>Congress or stepping into the cloakrooms of their hanging (ooops<\/em>, injecting) judges and hired prosecutors to tell them they need our training in enlightened compassion? Ha!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

     All this falls under the US government\u2019s Integrated Country Strategy<\/em>, which we continue to reproduce. This ICS<\/em> excerpt proudly notes, the US embassy is the \u2018lead donor\u2019 in civilizing Sri Lankan society! The \u2018Mission\u2019 (& its missionaries<\/em>) will, \u2018in cooperation with allies & partners\u2019, \u2018endeavour to provide actors in these sectors with tools to continue operations & maintain their capacities to reach broad audiences<\/strong>.\u2019 Every single trope that emanates from the US envoy\u2019s upper orifices and the media lower orifices, from \u2018corruption\u2019 to \u2018majoritarian\u2019 to \u2018Sinhalese nationalism\u2019 to \u2018long-standing ethnic conflict\u2019, etc, will be found in this ICS<\/em> document, which sees Sri Lanka playing \u2018a crucial role in [their<\/em>] Indo-Pacific Strategy<\/strong>\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

This week therefore saw Liz Allen, the US Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy, make the first visit of such an official to Sri Lanka. \u2018Public Diplomacy\u2019 is another euphemism for \u2018Psychological Warfare\u2019. US President Ronald Reagan\u2019s Office of Public Diplomacy<\/strong>, was \u2018a dedicated propaganda unit run by Reagan\u2019s top National Security Council aide Oliver North, who simultaneously worked with cocaine traffickers<\/strong> to arm the Nicaraguan<\/strong> \u2018contra rebels\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     Allen duly met \u2018government officials, media representatives, digital content creators, & NextGen leaders\u2019, including Daily Mirror<\/em>\u2018s Piyumi Fonseka (\u2018Investigative Journalist of the Year in 2022\u2019, awarded by the owners of her newspaper) and Peradeniya professor Arjuna Parakrama of generations past (whose interview on the systematic dismantling of \u2018free education\u2019 ee<\/em><\/strong> reproduces below \u2013 see ee Focus<\/em><\/strong>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     Meanwhile, a Sri Lanka National Commission for UNESCO<\/strong> is being set up, and critics point out, the white-dominated UNESCO is attempting to \u2018again take over\u2019 education policy in Sri Lanka, another subtle ploy to \u2018take away our sovereignty\u2019. Parakrama also says, \u2018Nearly 40% \u2013 two-fifths of our schools \u2013 don\u2019t go beyond the primary level\u2019. And \u2018of the 395 registered international schools, 7 come under the Board of Investment<\/strong>, the others are registered as companies!\u2019<\/em> Parakrama fails to say that these criminal policies have been encouraged by the US\u2019 World Bank who has been heavily bribing Education Ministry officials with junkets and foreign degrees. Could he tell Ms. Allen that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     Parakrama however says the attack on education is happening because \u2018education is seen as an investment, not as a right\u2026 It follows that education for some people \u2013 the marginalised, the vulnerable, the disabled, and so on \u2013 then becomes something that you don\u2019t get much of a return on, so you dispense with or at least devalue educating the disadvantaged, which is what education should not do,\u2019. He terms the National Education Policy Framework (NEPF)<\/strong> \u2018frightening\u2019 and \u2018a potential crime against the country\u2019. There has \u2018been no open public consultation<\/strong> in this regard and that the framework was now at the parliamentary Sectoral Oversight Committee stage\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     ee<\/em><\/strong> has often been critical about the preponderance of arts graduates. But as Parakrama points out, it has to do with the structures enforced by policy and impoverishment. ee<\/em><\/strong> however doesn\u2019t quite understand why Parakrama makes a distinction between \u2018investment\u2019 and \u2018rights.\u2019 Without our own investment in modern industrialization, we are producing frogs for snakes, feeding the imperialist countries with our not so \u2019free\u2019 educated graduates. It is cultivators and workers who disproportionately pay for this \u2018free\u2019 education, and as SBD de Silva often quipped, it may have been far better to give free fertilizer to cultivators than to give \u2018free\u2019 education to the already privileged?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

\u2018Sri Lanka hails from a written history that spans beyond 2,500 years and is a legacy<\/p>\n\n\n\n

of the collective effort of the people that lived in the past & at present.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That legacy of inheritance has been the synergy behind the formation<\/p>\n\n\n\n

of a language of its own<\/strong>, a religious philosophy<\/strong>, a set of values,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

as well as vibrant cultural traits typical to this nation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, the interventions of western colonialism & imperialism<\/p>\n\n\n\n

over nearly 500 years have exerted a great deal of dominance through<\/p>\n\n\n\n

cultural hegemony. In the colonial era, the Western colonists engaged<\/p>\n\n\n\n

in outright genocidal acts, destroying & looting historic architecture,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

desecrating religious sites, and seeking to subvert the local language<\/p>\n\n\n\n

& religious practices. Now, imperialist & neocolonial forces use<\/p>\n\n\n\n

so-called soft power <\/em>to establish their hegemonic power<\/strong> & cultivate<\/p>\n\n\n\n

false consciousness among segments of our population, to induce them<\/p>\n\n\n\n

into comprador behaviour. Their strategy is to use techniques like mass media<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(including film, music, advertising), as well as social media & education<\/p>\n\n\n\n

to indoctrinate liberal cultural values & manufacture consent for continued<\/p>\n\n\n\n

imperial domination. In many sections of the middle class, the vernacular languages<\/p>\n\n\n\n

are discouraged and local beliefs & customs are ridiculed & humiliated<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cultural norms & customs of the nation are looked down upon.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(see ee Focus<\/em><\/strong>, CPSL)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

This ee <\/em><\/strong>reproduces the Alternative Program of the Communist Party (CPSL) on Cultural Development<\/strong>. ee<\/em><\/strong> does wonder however, whether culture is a \u2018surplus\u2019 as such and all about \u2018consumption\u2019: food, movies, etc. The country suffers from this culture of consumption, rather than a culture of production. And our nationalists (forgetting Dharmapala\u2019s early attempts at industry) appear not to have focused on how modern industrialization is key to modern independence and socialism! A lesson, Japan does not wish to share with us, but as the discussion on China in the Congo shows (see ee Random Notes),<\/em><\/strong> it is up to us to decide. Meanwhile, this year\u2019s Cricket World Cup in Barbados is being linked to US war games in the Caribbean aka West Indies! Culture indeed! (see Random Notes<\/em><\/strong>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     England\u2019s culture of production saw the rise of industrialization in \u2018mechanic institutes\u2019 run by and for workers. The foolish feudal pretensions of Oxford & Cambridge (which our academics love) claimed that the \u2018humanities\u2019 were the realm of the ruling class, whereas science was for their servants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     We need more industrial and educational content in our media, not \u2018superstars\u2019 who can sing and dance like monkeys, but skilled workers who can make machines (even monkeys fashion tools!). China\u2019s TikTok<\/em> algorithms are regulated to promote \u2018wholesome videos with content about young inventors\u2019 etc. Whereas the whites delegate TikTok<\/em> to sex, drugs and rock&roll. We need every workplace and school to dedicate more to research & development, to look at repair & reverse engineering, and replacement of imported parts, such self-reliance which the USA\u2019s ICS<\/em> for Sri Lanka hates!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

\u2022 Witness the widespread academic & media farces called post-colonialism<\/strong> & geopolitical conflict<\/strong>. The white man (& their varied genders) continues to invade and siege Asia, Africa & the Americas, and this features Sri Lanka & China \u2013 and this has gone on for over 500 years, continuing to this day. So what makes colonialism a bygone practice?<\/em> \u2013 as one teenage reader of ee<\/em><\/strong> told us, they have done it for over 500 years almost successfully, so why stop \u2013 and what makes it a matter of politics related to geography? They are robbing the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     The USA has gradually taken over Sri Lanka from England after 1948, overseeing economic diversion, to sabotage industrialization, using assassination, attempted coup d\u2019etat, bribery, and escalating terrorism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     The US has waged war on China right from the beginning of the USA\u2019s so-called post-colonial existence in 1776, pushing opium from Turkey on China. The US has profited from and participated in Europe\u2019s opium wars, the suppression of the Taiping (Heaven on Earth) Rebellion<\/strong>, and sought \u2018equal opportunity\u2019 with Europe, to divide and exploit China into extraterritorial concessions. So what makes this a \u2018geopolitical\u2019 conflict? China has never invaded the Americas \u2013 only the whites themselves have. The US has long colonized Mexico, Hawaii & the Philippines (committing another forgotten genocide<\/em> there), arming and then colonizing Japan (and now arming them again), dividing Korea & Vietnam (annihilating that country, before being kicked out). Their wars in Korea and Chinese Taibei (aka Taiwan) are called \u2018frozen wars\u2019. US military occupy the geographies of Korea & Taiwan, Japan & various Pacific Islands, let alone Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, as well as their wars in West Asia, and the present horror in occupied Palestine. The US (& that white man with a tan, Barry Obama) has imposed US bases in Africa and their media has whited-out the genocides in the Congo & Great Lakes. Yet our bribed intellectuals, media & academics, merrily talk of post-colonialism & geopolitics. They keep talking of Sri Lanka\u2019s \u2018China Debt Trap\u2019<\/em> \u2013 when in truth it is US\u2019 Wall Street <\/em><\/strong>that is trapping us (see ee Random Notes<\/em><\/strong>). Indeed, no Asian or African country has invaded Europe (at least in the last 500 years!) or their settler states.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

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

\n
The Arts of Post-Colonialism, Geopolitics & Other White Trash<\/a><\/blockquote>