{"id":141513,"date":"2024-04-22T14:30:01","date_gmt":"2024-04-22T21:30:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=141513"},"modified":"2024-04-22T14:30:01","modified_gmt":"2024-04-22T21:30:01","slug":"the-naked-emperor-exxon-sarvodhaya-the-jvp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2024\/04\/22\/the-naked-emperor-exxon-sarvodhaya-the-jvp\/","title":{"rendered":"The Naked Emperor \u2013 Exxon, Sarvodhaya &amp; the\u00a0JVP"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em><a style=\"color: #0000ff;\" href=\"https:\/\/eesrilanka.wordpress.com\/\" data-rich-text-format-boundary=\"true\">e-Con e-News<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n<p>\u2018<em>Before you study the economics, study the economists!<\/em>\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/eesrilanka.wordpress.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/image-2.png?w=575\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-4366\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>e-Con e-News 14-20 April 2024<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>*<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u2018Firstly, the&nbsp;<strong>political parties<\/strong>&nbsp;&amp;&nbsp;<strong>party politics<\/strong>,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>and secondly the&nbsp;<strong>Executive Presidency<\/strong>;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>both these&nbsp;<strong>structures should be abolished<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Thirdly, the&nbsp;<strong>independence of the judiciary<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>should be maintained. Fourthly all the&nbsp;<strong>appointments<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>in ministries &amp; government institutions<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>such as&nbsp;<strong>Central Bank<\/strong>,&nbsp;<strong>Treasury<\/strong>, etc, should be managed<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>by non-political, non-partisan persons,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>and&nbsp;<strong>all political appointees should be sent home<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lastly, the religious institutions headed by&nbsp;<strong>Buddhist Sangha<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>should undergo a radical change\u2019. <strong>\u2013 AT Ariyaratne, Sarvodaya\u2019s Supreme Leader<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>92-year-old Ahangamage Tudor Ariyaratne, controverted founder of the&nbsp;<strong>Lanka Jathika<\/strong>&nbsp;<strong>Sarvodhaya Shramadana Movement<\/strong>&nbsp;has made the transition \u2013 into samsara; others suggest he may have exited samsara.&nbsp;<strong><em>ee<\/em><\/strong>&nbsp;is not qualified to pass judgement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; US envoy Julie Chung\u2019s media twit machine immediately twittered, that she was \u2018<strong>grateful<\/strong>&nbsp;to the just deceased\u2026 for the&nbsp;<strong>\u2018opportunities to partner<\/strong>&nbsp;with Sarvodhaya over many years\u2019, having \u2018supported his efforts to&nbsp;<strong>uplift the lives of countless<\/strong>\u2026\u2019 etc., etc. , You know the yankee prattle. Fill in the blanks!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Then there\u2019s the head of&nbsp;<strong>USAID\u2019s National Peace Council<\/strong>&nbsp;of Sri Lanka, Jehan Perera, gushing: \u2018Dr AT Ariyaratne, the most important person&nbsp;<strong><em>for all time<\/em><\/strong><em>!<\/em>\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Others point to Ariyaratne\u2019s more honorable role as a young man in the&nbsp;<strong>Bauddha Jathika Balavegaya (BJB)&nbsp;<\/strong>formed following the abortive \u2018Catholic Army Officers Coup in January 1962\u2019. &nbsp;They recall Ariyaratne speaking first at BJB meetings, always placing stress \u2018on Ahimsa (non-violence) a cardinal tenet of Buddhism\u2019. They recount Ariyaratne\u2019s rendition of the proceedings of the&nbsp;<strong>Press Commission<\/strong>&nbsp;(1963-64), established by Sirimavo Bandaranaike\u2019s Government \u2018to highlight anti-Buddhist activities and focus attention on immoral acts treacherous to the nation\u2019:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u2018The Press is an instrument which is primarily meant to serve<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>the real interests of a country. It can also be misused. If we were not satisfied<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>that the newspapers of the&nbsp;<em>Lake House<\/em>&nbsp;&amp; the&nbsp;<em>Times<\/em>&nbsp;groups were guilty<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>of anti-national &amp; anti\u2013Buddhist conduct on a large scale, we would not have recommended<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>a drastic change in the ownership of the newspapers belonging to these groups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>From the evidence placed before us, we are satisfied that the existing newspapers<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>did not hesitate to&nbsp;<strong>fabricate, suppress, slant, or distort news &amp; views<\/strong>&nbsp;whenever it suited them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>They have been further guilty of anti-national &amp; anti-Buddhist activities, which<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>are more serious than the earlier-mentioned lapses on their part. Indeed,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>the most vehement critics of the present activities of the Press were the Buddhists<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&amp; some of their organizations, and we are satisfied that their grievances are genuine<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&amp; should be removed. Buddhist leaders have been falsely accused of being intolerant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Their hopes &amp; ambitions receive scant consideration, and their rightful place<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>due to their religion has been denied by the newspapers. This has been deliberately done<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>to help the minorities, in particular, the Christian minorities, to perpetuate<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>the<\/strong>&nbsp;<strong>unjust privileges acquired by them during the last 4 centuries<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>at the expense of the Buddhist Majority.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>(<em>Final Report of the Press Commission<\/em>, 1964)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So why did Ariyaratne go where he went after that, and what made him go that way? Some are spreading gossip of his outr\u00e9 proclivities. Yet here are Ariyaratne\u2019s own words:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u2018I got disillusioned with politics. An idea was born in my mind<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>that a&nbsp;<strong>social revolution minus political colouring<\/strong>&nbsp;should be staged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Sarvodaya Shramadana movement was the outcome of this thinking\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u2013 AT Ariyaratne<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What matters to us at&nbsp;<strong><em>ee<\/em><\/strong>&nbsp;is that Ariyaratne\u2019s Sarvodhaya has helped throw rural people (their proletarianization the cornerstone of any industrial modernity) into debt by getting them to buy imported Indian, Japanese &amp; US agricultural machinery, rather than investing any profits they were allowed to make, investing in making those machines here, and upskilling rural people \u2013 developing a working class dedicated to capital accumulation:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Instead, Sarvodhaya \u2013 now headed by Ariyaratne\u2019s son Vinya (who this month was \u2018judging\u2019 corrupt public servants on behalf of&nbsp;<strong>Transparency International<\/strong>, and was also a guest speaker at&nbsp;<strong>Harvard Asia Pacific Regional Conference<\/strong>) \u2013 was turned into the country\u2019s largest NGO (excluding private &amp; multinational corporations, Unilever, Exxon, etc) \u2013 one of the oldest of the Rockefeller and US-government-funded NGOs (see&nbsp;<strong><em>Random Notes<\/em><\/strong>&nbsp;on Rockefeller &amp; Ford Foundation).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; \u2018Is Sarvodaya a credible NGO, being more or less&nbsp;<strong>a family-run organisation<\/strong>? asked&nbsp;<strong><em>The Island<\/em><\/strong>&nbsp;in August 2020, after the US government had announced another set of millions in funding some exercise in promoting those types of democracy and \u2018free media\u2019 that only dollars can buy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Sarvodhaya, in cahoots with the Norwegian government, had illegally settled in the Vanni those Indians being sent back to India under the 1964 Sirima-Shastri Pact. These later became \u2018the last soldiers of the LTTE\u2019\u2026 provisioning their \u2018elite\u2019 or hapless suicide bombers\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<strong><em>ee<\/em><\/strong>&nbsp;also cannot forget Ex-JVPer &amp; later-UNPer Victor Ivan\u2019s&nbsp;<em>Ravaya<\/em>&nbsp;was started off with a nudge, elbow &amp; heads-up from Sarvodhaya. Ariyaratne provided their ample printing facilities for&nbsp;<em>Ravaya<\/em>&nbsp;to print its weekly tabloid, on a pay-later basis.&nbsp;<em>Ravaya<\/em>&nbsp;was birthed along with the Canada-government-funded&nbsp;<em>Yukthiya<\/em>&nbsp;&amp;&nbsp;<em>Sarnihar<\/em>, to attempt the impeachment of President R Premadasa. These tabloids were always one of the instruments used by their white masters,&nbsp;<em>sotto-sotto&nbsp;<\/em>on imperialism, enabled to disseminate their limited perspectives despite limited circulation and ads, which would have made any other papers collapse, unless funded \u2018under the table\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Sarvodhaya also backed the allegedly nonpartisan General Mahesh Senanayake, linked to the US military, when he ran for President in 2019 against Gotabhaya Rajapakse. Senanayake as the topmost officer responsible for the&nbsp;<strong>Directorate of Military Intelligence<\/strong>, was accused of not preventing the Islamic attacks on churches, but gave no believable answers as to why he had not prevented them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; During the so-called Aragalaya, which then led to the ousting of supposedly nepotistic Rajapakse, Sarvodhaya helped provide services for a 24\/7 field hospital with St John\u2019s Ambulance\u2026 (health facilities, which were not of much use, when he passed away at a private hospital). Perhaps it is such \u2018opportunities\u2019 engineered by Sarvodhaya, et al, that the US government\u2019s Chung is so \u2018grateful\u2019 to Ariyaratne.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Sarvodaya has never challenged Sri Lanka\u2019s big banks,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>even the state-owned ones, who raise a significant portion<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>of their deposits at low cost from rural<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&amp; economically disadvantaged areas &amp; grant most loans<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>in Colombo, to large businesses &amp; the government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Banks fund up to 90% of their business through<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>such rural customer deposits. Bank shareholders only fund around 10%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Sarvodaya was \u2018founded\u2019 by the Rockefeller-funded and much-awarded Ariyaratne in 1958. Ariyaratne received the&nbsp;<strong>Jamnalal Bajaj Award<\/strong>&nbsp;in 1991, and was nominated to the US-installed Yahapalana government\u2019s&nbsp;<strong>Constitutional Council<\/strong>&nbsp;as \u2018a civil representative\u2019 in 2015. Indeed, Ariyaratne and Sarvodhaya have&nbsp;<em>earned<\/em>&nbsp;their accolades: Ramon&nbsp;<strong>Magsaysay<\/strong>&nbsp;Award (Philippines) 1969, King Baudouin Award for International Development (<strong>Belgium<\/strong>) 1982, Niwano Peace Price (<strong>Japan<\/strong>) 1992, and Mahatma Gandhi Peace Prize (<strong>India<\/strong>)\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; By 1986 the import-export oligarchy were alerted to their failure yet again to fitfully employ yet another generation who had come of employable and martial age. The oilgarchy began stoking the great murderous war of terror on the South, and with another in progress in the north,&nbsp;<strong>Sarvodaya Economic Enterprise Development Services<\/strong>&nbsp;(SEEDS, a microcredit division of Sarvodaya) was thus licensed to entice rural consumption.&nbsp;<strong>Sarvodaya Development Finance (SDF)<\/strong>&nbsp;was formed in 2010 as the economic arm of Sarvodaya.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 52% of SDF is owned by SEEDS, 22% by Sarvodaya-related entities, and 13% by other shareholders. &nbsp;Other investors \u2018from Sri Lanka and overseas\u2019 include Japan\u2019s&nbsp;<strong>Gentosha Total Consulting<\/strong>, with its origins in paedophilic Manga magazines! There is no mention of who exactly owns which shares that have voting rights. This the media will not report!&nbsp; SDF \u2018debuted\u2019 in Dec 2021 on the Colombo Stock Exchange, promising to use profits to develop villages. \u2018Sarvodaya had committed over a billion rupees for development of 5,300 villages in which it operates. Though the company will be profitable, dividends from SDF will be put back into villages.\u2019 The qualifier \u2018though\u2019 does seem curious.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; SDF now proudly proclaims that 80% of their multibillion+-rupee portfolio is lent (unlike the big banks) outside the Western province. Of this multibillion-rupee loan portfolio,&nbsp;<strong>several billion are for leases funding tractors<\/strong>. They\u2019ve proudly noted: \u2018None of its tractor loans [are] in the non-performing category\u2019. So what&nbsp;<em>is<\/em>&nbsp;in the non-performing category? And what about harvesters too? We won\u2019t ask what has happened to the buffalos, from whose milk Europeans make expensive artisanal cheese, and would like to export to Colombo\u2019s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; All SDF does is sell foreign (Indian, Japanese, US) machinery and goods to rural farmers (see ee Sept-Dec 2021). For Sarvodaya, whose figurehead leaders affect Gandhist simplisms and wear national couture, development is not investment in modern industry or upgrading technical (scientific &amp; artistic) skills of villagers to make those machines they lease and sell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; SDF\u2019s deals with foreign \u2018machinery retailers\u2019are mainly Indian industrial fronts for imperialist industrial companies: (India\u2019s Mahindra, Swaraj &amp; TAFE, &amp; US\u2019 Massey Ferguson etc.) that \u2018allow farmers to access modern farming machinery, such as tractors &amp; harvesters\u2026 Leasing solutions are available for 2wheelers, 3wheelers, &amp; other 4wheelers to enhance individual lifestyles.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Sarvodaya never demands that US Massey or India\u2019s Mahindra or Japan\u2019s Kubota build those machines here? His organization was an excuse for preventing actual agricultural policy to industrialize the rural so people coulda made the pencils and books and shoes and clothes their children needed \u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; SDF is linked to US government media mouths (and they have many) in Sri Lanka like&nbsp;<em>EconomyNext<\/em>. SDF Chairman Channa de Silva is Founder Chairman of Capital Media, publishers of Echelon business magazine and web portal economynext.com. He previously served as a director of Summit Finance, Delmege, Pan Asia Bank, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) SL and the Board of Investments (BOI) SL!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The autocratic Ariyaratne was incinerated with honors by state. Media reported that Sarvodhaya village upliftment program began in the Rodi village of Kanatholuwa in the Kurunegala district in 1958, and spread to 15,000 villages, praising Ariyaratne for freeing people from caste oppression. Researchers who have studied other \u2018caste villages\u2019 in Sri Lanka since the late 1970s, note that in the 20 years since Sarvodaya had started his \u2018revolution\u2019, the only difference that had taken place was that marriages had begun to be \u2018mediated\u2019 by government officials, who gave new birth certificates with surnames belonging to the govi (farming) caste. They note that the only decisive protest movements against casteism were organized by the scientific socialist movements. Sarvodhaya and other religious organizations only made caste divisions a \u2018beggar\u2019s wound\u2019. Sarvodhaya and other non-governmental organizations [NGOs] went to caste villages only after these socialist movement were attacked and weakened. They have set up family corporations aka NGOs, which have ended up as colossal failures. The best examples of that can be found in Ariyaratne\u2019s Sarvodhaya as well as his sister\u2019s son, Harsha Kumara Navaratne\u2019s Seva Lanka. Both those organizations are family companies, with the financial controllers also being close relatives of the family. Researchers ask how these the organizations that exist as clannish clubs can create any kind of a just society?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>*<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u2018In virtually every colonial territory a certain number had to be killed<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>before the survivors would accept the new prospects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This might even be said to introduce a new concept<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>into the study of political economy \u2013 the indispensable minimum of murder.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>S. B. D. de Silva,&nbsp;<em>The Political Economy of Underdevelopment<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The Emperor<\/strong>&nbsp;is not only naked, he &amp; she and they &amp; theirs are thoroughly enjoying their nakedness, in open broad televised daylight, exposing what was previously relegated to so-called snuff porn movies. The Emperor\u2019s minions are now shown raping, dismembering &amp; murdering whole masses of people as evident in US-occupied Palestine and occasionally disclosed in their old &amp; new theatres of horror, horror, horror, from the fragmented Congo to divided Korea, from 1965 Indonesia to 2002 Guantanamo, but now available on media, social yet mostly anti-socialist (of the scientific kind, that is).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The lesson they wish to teach us is that those who resort to&nbsp;<strong>armed self-defence against their military invasions &amp; occupations&nbsp;<\/strong>will be exterminated \u2013 a lesson supposedly taught to and imbibed by the original peoples of the Americas, and those Africans kidnapped and sold as enslaved chattel for their American plantations, and their present-day colonies in Asia (Japan, South Korea) and Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And ringing &amp; resounding through these centuries and over &amp; under all their forever wars today is their thoroughly absurd sermons, echoed by their NGO boys &amp; girls &amp; in-betweens, about human rights and rule of law, etc. And so, with the annual meetings of the USA\u2019s international financial institutions in Washington \u2013 where corporate lobbyists have assembled 1,000s of prostitutes, male and female, to teach central bankers and their delegations from around the world the other bondage and discipline and sado-masochism (BDSM) \u2013 their perpetual news blows fire and ice, one minute demanding submission to IMF dictat, the next minute lamenting the lot of those they are stealing from. And so\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Into the middle of a smouldering bonfire about to be exploded in Sri Lanka again, their media this week continued tossing their combustible gunpowders, which promise more glorious fireworks, some&nbsp;<em>LGBTQXYZ&nbsp;<\/em>rights, some so-called \u2018<em>ethnic<\/em>\u2019, so-called \u2018minority\u2019 and \u2018gender\u2019 rights, then in jumps an estate workers\u2019 strike, with their kangany-turned trade union leader, son of a son of a son, invited into that global brothel known as the&nbsp;<strong>World Economic Forum<\/strong>, all flung head first into the conflagration with the required fogs and smokes and minute-by-minute \u2018mirrors\u2019 all needed to sell off people\u2019s right to labor and life, and related national resources, all for a song to international bondholders who are really North Atlantic mass murderers &amp; extortionists, who can stand back as far as they can from whatever toxic shrapnel &amp; noxious gases they explode &amp; emanate\u2026 all so that the import-export plantation oligarchy ruling Sri Lanka can rescue itself out of the hangover from the orgy it has indulged in for the last decades and centuries (choose your frame: 1948, 1795, 1659, 1505, etc\u2026)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>*<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This&nbsp;<strong><em>ee Focus<\/em><\/strong>&nbsp;looks at the role the JVP has been playing or has been asked to play, seemingly acceding to the selling of the country\u2019s most treasured resources to USA &amp; its chief colonies (EU, Japan, India. etc).&nbsp;<strong><em>ee<\/em><\/strong>&nbsp;also looks at the comparison made between Sri Lanka and Greece, in particular the Greek party Syriza, which once claimed to be \u2018Radical Left\u2019 and the JVP, once a cadre party that seems to have survived 2 annihilation campaigns, and still calls itself a Marxist-Leninist Party, which somehow got into a suicidal internecine war with other Marxist-Leninist Parties, leaving both sides open to infiltration by&nbsp; \u2018Third Forces\u2019 \u2013 the Empire\u2019s counter-insurgency political police\u2026 who create and run fake Leftists, socialists, communists, etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>*<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Stefanos Kasselakis<\/strong>, a candidate for President in Greece suddenly appeared, out of the blue. He vied for and took over the leadership of so-called \u2018Radical Left\u2019 Greek party Syriza and then split it into two. He had once volunteered for Joe Biden\u2019s 2008 election campaign and for Wshington\u2019s CSIS (<strong>Center for Strategic and International Studies<\/strong>) foreign policy think tank, worked at&nbsp;<strong>Goldman Sachs<\/strong>&nbsp;and in the shipping industry. He then ran for the leadership of Syriza, whose state ballot he had joined, in a non-elected position, in 2023,&nbsp;<strong>as a representative of the Greek expatriate diaspora in the USA<\/strong>. Kasselakis lives within a&nbsp;<strong>same-sex marriage<\/strong>&nbsp;and helped to accelerate a division of Syriza into two components, weakening it rather than reinforcing it, as he had promised to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<strong>\u2018This saw a capture of Left ideology by the liberal Empire\u2019:<\/strong>&nbsp;Imperialist ideology, because it is supposed to be pluralistic, \u2018must create&nbsp;<strong>a semblance of pluralism<\/strong>, as long as this pluralism is under control. The Empire has its Right and its Left, which precisely do not question its essence and aims. Any other \u2018Right\u2019 is accused of being nostalgic of Hitler, and any other \u2018Left\u2019 of being nostalgic of Stalin \u2013 or at least of being merely backward, out of time, etc.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The party retains certain policies to prevent being cut off from its mass base, but then rather than leading, it ditches other more vital policies, basing leadership on so-called surveys and polls. In Sri Lanka, the latest \u2018polls\u2019 and \u2018surveys\u2019 promoting the JVP are funded by the CIA\u2019s&nbsp;<strong>Asia Foundation<\/strong>, who is also tirelessly training Sri Lanka\u2019s judiciary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; These polls can pretend to be a more democratic way to govern, but they are a fake \u2018democratic\u2019 ruse to win elections. Some leaders given media coverage, start to feel vain, and come to be believe they are really talented and find themselves offered some \u2018spontaneous\u2019 help from those who have suddenly \u2018recognized\u2019 their talents. They then get easily manipulated, and are soon adjusting their positions to \u2018electoral needs\u2019 \u2013 which happen to be the needs of those who sponsor politicians\u2026 ahem\u2026 the \u2018brought to you by\u2019 folks. Guess who? &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Societies of the past used to make warriors of the young people, and politicians of the old, who tempered the momentum of the younger. The warriors now are mostly traders and financiers, and the politicians do the biddings of traders and financiers. They are chosen, educated and sponsored by traders and financiers. And they sell out everything without any remorse of conscience\u2026 without even realizing what they are doing. They tend to believe that the only necessary qualification is intelligence. The neutralisation of all convictions and beliefs is pursued today in a very methodical way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The most powerful parties and manipulators of the establishment (Multinational Corporations and their boards of directors, the BJP\u2019s RSS, Trump\u2019s Bannon, etc) have justifiably adopted and distorted Lenin\u2019s cadre-based political party, as the most efficient route to capturing power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The former leader of Syriza, Alexis Tsipras, opened the door to Kasselakis\u2019 leadership by allowing \u2018the people\u2019 \u2013 not tried and true dedicated cadre from the grassroots but&nbsp;<em>astroturf<\/em>&nbsp;\u2013 to nominate party candidates: \u2018Isn\u2019t it all the more democratic, if, instead of the party members,&nbsp;<strong>it is the people who decide<\/strong>?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; \u2018Now,&nbsp;<strong>which people are we talking of?<\/strong>&nbsp;Well, the voters of the party, certainly, only we don\u2019t know them, not before the elections, since they have not voted yet, not after, since the election is secret.&nbsp;<strong>How are we to distinguish them from others then?<\/strong>&nbsp;Well, let\u2019s say they will be the ones&nbsp;<strong>willing to pay a fee in order to vote<\/strong>. But this fee cannot be very significant, for that would not be democratic. Result: by paying 2 euros anyone can vote. Let\u2019s face it then:&nbsp;<strong>the leader of a party can be elected by supporters other than those of the party (under some critical mass of a party they can even be a majority)!<\/strong>&nbsp;It is important to understand how this was made possible, what the underlying presuppositions are. The word \u2018party\u2019 itself underlined the discontinuity as a characteristic of the electoral body, it is a word belonging to another era. There are no parts in our \u2018liquid times\u2019, only hydraulic pressures to be managed; imperial ideology wants continuity and for continuity\u2019s sake it has to liquidate everything. In this context parties are no longer parties, they are variables of adjustment. In the process, liberal democracy first ceases to be a democracy, and manages to be liberal only as long as it can export illiberalism at the periphery of the Empire and blackmail its constituents to conformity\u2026.\u2019 (crudely adapted from Christos Marsellos\u2019s Golden Boys &amp; \u2018Young Leaders: Syriza in search of a New Leader, Sept 2023, see&nbsp;<strong><em>ee Politics<\/em><\/strong>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>*<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>________<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Contents:<\/strong><br>https:\/\/eesrilanka.wordpress.com\/2024\/04\/20\/the-naked-emperor-exxon-sarvodhaya-the-jvp\/<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-wp-embed is-provider-e-con-e-news wp-block-embed-e-con-e-news\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"wp-embedded-content\" data-secret=\"UF8Q2jPT31\"><a href=\"https:\/\/eesrilanka.wordpress.com\/2024\/04\/20\/the-naked-emperor-exxon-sarvodhaya-the-jvp\/\">The Naked Emperor \u2013 Exxon, Sarvodhaya &amp; the&nbsp;JVP<\/a><\/blockquote><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"wp-embedded-content\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts\" security=\"restricted\" style=\"position: absolute; visibility: hidden;\" title=\"&#8220;The Naked Emperor \u2013 Exxon, Sarvodhaya &amp; the&nbsp;JVP&#8221; &#8212; e-Con e-News\" src=\"https:\/\/eesrilanka.wordpress.com\/2024\/04\/20\/the-naked-emperor-exxon-sarvodhaya-the-jvp\/embed\/#?secret=QKD2afZn0J#?secret=UF8Q2jPT31\" data-secret=\"UF8Q2jPT31\" width=\"500\" height=\"282\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>e-Con e-News \u2018Before you study the economics, study the economists!\u2019 e-Con e-News 14-20 April 2024 * \u2018Firstly, the&nbsp;political parties&nbsp;&amp;&nbsp;party politics, and secondly the&nbsp;Executive Presidency; both these&nbsp;structures should be abolished. Thirdly, the&nbsp;independence of the judiciary should be maintained. Fourthly all the&nbsp;appointments in ministries &amp; government institutions such as&nbsp;Central Bank,&nbsp;Treasury, etc, should be managed by non-political, non-partisan [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-141513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141513","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141513"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141513\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}