{"id":148534,"date":"2025-03-16T18:15:20","date_gmt":"2025-03-17T01:15:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=148534"},"modified":"2025-03-16T18:15:20","modified_gmt":"2025-03-17T01:15:20","slug":"imf-managing-directors-are-all-white","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2025\/03\/16\/imf-managing-directors-are-all-white\/","title":{"rendered":"IMF Managing Directors are All\u00a0White"},"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 09-15 March 2025<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/a>Dear Julie<\/em><\/strong><\/a> \u2013 We who believe in karma, even when it takes its time, have a theory. It\u2019s about why we find you \u2013 a lost, truncated \u2018Korean-American<\/strong>\u2019 \u2013 constantly scratching & poking about our country. Is it because our rubber exporters<\/strong> made lots of dollars off that US war on Korea<\/strong> (it\u2019s not<\/em><\/strong> a \u2018Korean War\u2019) that officially began in 1949 and hacked that country into 2 pieces? That\u2019s the US plan for Sri Lanka, no? Partition envy? Segregation complex?<\/em> Should we call you: Julie Pokey?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

     Surprised we are then to find you not poking into these urban housing schemes tagged as \u2018Koreava<\/em><\/strong>\u2018. Soulbury independence in 1948 gifted us another yankee, John Exter<\/strong> forming and running the Central Bank. Exter invested those rubbery dollars not in building factories but in pure consumption! \u2018Independence\u2019 was to mimick a white lifestyle, in rupees. Brought in to build up Colombo 7\u2019s fake mansions, workers were then ghetto-ed into tenements, with pethi- & ganja- & kassipu-dealing lumpens set among them, causing regular uncivil ruckuses \u2013 Korea<\/em><\/strong> having become a place name for unending conflict<\/strong>, with the US \u2018freezing\u2019 their war<\/strong> there in a melty icy-choksy-way. The US then poured heroin through those Koreava into this country after that 1977 \u2018open\u2019 economy, midst another war on the Kush (Afghanistan)\u2026 More vulli, indeed!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     We thought of Korea again, last week, after that mimic-Museum of Modern & Contemporary Art<\/strong> (MMCA) in Colombo put on (it\u2019s a put-on<\/em>, alright) a \u2018Total Landscaping\u2019<\/strong> exhibition to \u2018end conflict\u2019 in Uva, and the North & East provinces! The MMCA are experts on such vulli \u2013 as they\u2019re \u2018sponsored\u2019 by the NATO brothers & sisters: the US, English & EU.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     \u2018Total landscaping\u2019<\/em><\/strong> huh? That\u2019s what the English did to Uva in 1818<\/strong> through scorched-earth genocide. Just as the US did in Korea, 130 years hence, flattening their North through massive carpet-bombing, slaughtering millions while castrati ululate K-Pop falsettos<\/strong> about the \u2018free\u2019 <\/em>world. 100,000s of US troops are stationed over those lands \u2013 Korea, Japan, China\u2019s Taibei, Guam etc \u2013 with US leaders now claiming they\u2019ve been doing it all for free<\/em><\/strong> \u2013 one big \u2018summa-iri sanksthava\u2019 \u2013 that\u2019s Kolamba-Koreava multi-lingo, for a free ride<\/em><\/strong>. Really! So, when the US hops from Diego Garcia to Trinco, they can say we owe them an even bigger favour!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     Perhaps when real karma \u2013 like a stretched rubber band \u2013 whips back, it\u2019d be the descendants of Kim il Sung<\/strong>, who\u2019d be accorded first reception in Colombo? Until then, you keep jumping ahead of the line. Why don\u2019t you go preach to your own lost colonial leaders in South Korea to desist from constant assassinations, massacres & coups?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     C\u2019mon Julie baba, let\u2019s meet without your bodyguards at 12 midnight in one of those \u2018Koreava\u2019? Let\u2019s ask them about all those rights that you preach to us about? Mebbe together we can exorcise all these ghosts? But do wear something looser. It\u2019d be hard to flee in a tight skirt, better to wear a reddha or sarama. You can more hastily hoist it up into an amuday (aka loincloth) of sorts. Until then, dear, dear Julie Pokey, we remain yours, truly, truly\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

\u2022 Makandura to Medamulana<\/strong> \u2013 Now almost the entire country has been turned into a Koreava<\/em> \u2013 ie, if we\u2019re to believe the English media: Sinhala village and people\u2019s names are made into epithets for corruption, criminality and murder \u2013 Makandura Madush, Ganemulla Sanjeewa<\/em>, and now Batalanda Wicka!<\/em><\/strong>\u2026 Though their real target is Medamulana Mahinda<\/em> & Gothrika Gota<\/em>. Ganemulla near Gampaha once sited a famous class struggle in 1959, when Buddhist bhikkhu Daevamottave Amarawansa Thero led workers who were protesting, to overturn the class system on trains for daily commuting workers (So then the merchants sabotaged the train system for the Japanese car importers). But why this media stereotyping? It has to do with their mission to divert from the power of multinational corporations (MNCs) & banks who are responsible worldwide for the current rule of capitalism (wholesale), whose retail merchants & moneylenders actually run this country into the ground\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

\u2022 CTC\u2019s Private Courts<\/strong> \u2013 This week saw a parliamentary oversight committee chairman (SJB\u2019s footnote MP Harsha de Silva) block an inquiry into Ceylon Tobacco Co (CTC)<\/strong>\u2019s avoidance of excise taxes (see ee Random Notes<\/em><\/strong>) . This ee<\/em><\/strong> therefore continues the hoary tale on the birthing of an MNC monopoly based on snippets from Maurice Corina\u2019s Trust in Tobacco: the Anglo-American Struggle for Power<\/em>. In 1902 England\u2019s Imperial Tobacco<\/strong> and the USA\u2019s Consolidated Tobacco<\/strong> (American Tobacco<\/strong> & Continental)<\/strong> formed in England: the British-American Tobacco Co Ltd (BAT),<\/strong> to control exports of tobacco outside their 2 countries, setting up CTC, et al. It tells of how they staged secret subsidiaries<\/strong>, secretly buying out competitors<\/strong>, acquiring their shares secretly, preventing transfer of shares. They also punished distributors who did not abide by their variable promotions, using private detectives<\/strong> and \u2018private trade courts<\/strong>\u2018 to \u2018try\u2019 enterprising traders for price-cutting, even controlling how shop-windows were decorated and shops designed! What Corina\u2019s story about tobacco teaches us to ask is this \u2013 how many of the so-called Sri Lankan conglomerates like Keells & Hemas & Hayleys & Sunshine Holdings & Brandix & MAS (run by oppressed minorities, apparently) are mere \u2018independent\u2019 fronts for Anglo-US MNCs. Ammo!<\/em> Oh, and this week <\/em><\/strong>also saw Unilever oppose the attempt to label soaps, etc\u2026 (see ee Random Notes<\/em><\/strong>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

\u2022 <\/strong>The US has expelled South Africa\u2019s ambassador<\/strong> for pointing out that the US regime is white supremacist<\/strong>. His mistake, and we agree, is to point only<\/em> at this US administration. We can\u2019t blame the envoy too much though. The main backers of US President D Trump & VP JD Vance, like the wannabe-trillionaires Paypal\u2019s Peter Thiel & Twitter<\/em>\u2019s Elon Musk, are white-supremacists birthed by genocidal settler regimes in Southern Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     A 1931 sci-fi novel called Black No More<\/em> by George S Schuyler <\/strong>(see ee Workers<\/em><\/strong>) recalls our famous 1955 Vadhaka Sudhiya<\/em> \u2013 about a chemical that when drunk turns Black people white. In 1944 Schulyer went on to note that \u2018of the international capitalists<\/strong> who control the lives of over a billion colored people practically all are white<\/strong>, and so, also, are the technicians, brokers, lawyers, generals, admirals, artists and writers who serve them\u2019. He may have to amend that now, for the political white<\/em><\/strong> is a very variable hue. Meanwhile in the 1960s: \u2018All the top administrators in the UN system at that time seemed to be English or Indian retirees from the prestigious Indian Civil Service (ICS)\u2019. (see ee Agriculture<\/em><\/strong>, On Land Reform & Ford Foundation in Nepal \u2013 LC Arulpragasam)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

\u2022 <\/strong>This week\u2019s ee Focus<\/em><\/strong> points out that: All the IMF\u2019s Managing Directors are white<\/strong> (with the token \u2018honorary white\u2019<\/em>). At the IMF, 1 White Equals 9 Blacks (to put it algebraically). The IMF, & the USA that dominates it, doesn\u2019t really believe in \u2018one person, or one country, one vote\u2019. In fact, IMF Senior Staffers decisions are whetted by the US Treasury next door on that Washington strip. They can also steal a country\u2019s reserves at any time, as they have done with Venezuela. Africa meanwhile has more IMF members but less votes. No African country \u2013 & no Latin American country \u2013 has ever had a permanent seat at the UN Security Council (they\u2019re called \u2018Verandah Boys\u2019!) Yet Trump\u2019s US is threatening to quit the IMF if its veto power is eroded. Which is why a popularly elected government like in Sri Lanka, which had promised to renegotiate a mythical & odious \u2018debt \u2018with the IMF, has had to eat crow or is it parripu (which is imported from Canada and Australia, by the way): see, \u2018At the IMF: Global North has 9 Times More Voting Power than the Global South\u2019 by Vijay Prashad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

\u2022 <\/strong>The global undressing<\/strong> of a politician<\/strong> from Sri Lanka, who along with his influential family have long been loyalist-royalist servants of empire \u2013 foremost exemplars of English media, with English ink in their veins \u2013 offers another English lesson. This time, in the latest imperialist tactics & propaganda, of how to adopt & discard, dignify & then demean their puppets. There exits Volodomyr! Entre Ranil! How sad and easy it is to lure an apparently \u2018veteran\u2019 and wily politician of Sri Lanka into an English leg trap, shows how many of our so-called leaders appear to be dupes. Though here we must contrast the supposedly urbane Ranil Wickremasinghe\u2019s naivete with the so-called rustic Mahinda Rajapakse\u2019s adroit handling of such white conceit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     Why then did RW agree? What assurances was he given, by whom, and what diplomatic protocols did they agree to adhere to? RW seems to blame the EU for his travails. But why would he believe those killer poodles? The interview was recorded in February and released in March! Did he not know they would cut (\u2018edit<\/em>\u2019) the interview to suit the English blood-sucking vampire\u2019s latest fashionista needs? Did he agree to the presence of a fatuous BBC hack, for whom the \u2018East is a Career\u2019 (as Disraeli noted). And if he agreed to being questioned by an LTTE rump, why could he not point to the long-term nurturing of the separatist cause by England (going back to the 1830s!), or that the LTTE operated its International Secretariat in London, even after it assassinated former Indian Premier Rajiv Gandhi, or that the LTTE and others were military trained by the Indian government in the 1970s and 1980s?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     And as for Batalanda, could he not at least recall it was a part of a war on the South? There are just wars and unjust wars. The Sri Lankan oligarchy was aware that a new and large generation of unemployed was coming on to the \u2018market\u2019 in 1986. They had no economic solution. But all war is terror<\/strong> \u2013 to claim otherwise is a tiresome joke. Ranil refused to air the English constraints on the Sri Lankan state that led to the rise of the JVP & the LTTE. Or that the JVP & LTTE have also allied with him?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     Perhaps NATO wishes to punish RW for his failure to join in the assassination and murder of the Rajapakses in 2022, Qadafi-style?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     So, here then is Al Jara aka Al Jazeera, the camel caravanserai of the BBC, based in a happy monarchy, Qatar which claims to be an expert on democracy<\/em>. It\u2019s a good old English make-believe, a joke, like India being the \u2018largest populous democracy\u2019 (see, ee Random Notes<\/strong><\/em>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

\u2022 Diaspora Masks<\/strong> \u2013 Those searching for those rare & alternate points of view in English are herded to many \u2018experts\u2019, midst the almost but not fully overwhelming English media foggery. That Chicago boy John Mearsheimer (author of 2017 The Israel Lobby & US Foreign Policy<\/em>) is another fog maker. He was made famous by his claim that US policy is made by the Israeli (or Jewish) lobby in the US. Lobby<\/em><\/strong> is a nice word for corporate buying of officials. But is the \u2018Israeli\u2019 lobby wholly Jewish?<\/em><\/strong> Are there other interests involved? Like the weapons-selling & oil-grabbing banks & corporations. Do New York Jews determine West Asia policy? Do Miami \u2018gusano\u2019 Cubans make Caribbean & non-Anglo American policy? Do Boston Irish determine Irish\/English policy? Do \u2018diaspora\u2019 Tamils or Tamilnadu make NATO or US policy on Sri Lanka? Do Khalistani Sikhs or NRIs (Non-Resident Indians) dictate US policy on India? Or, are they mere window-dressing manikins fronting for Kapital, whose names & ethnic<\/em> essentialities never make the headlines? Mebbe as Mao Zedong suggested, they merely help to direct and steady the gun in certain political directions\u2026 While the trigger finger belongs to someone else, whose political economy ultimately decides, when to tighten those ligaments & at whom\u2026?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

\u2022 CEOs & Popes<\/strong> \u2013 The Catholic Church in Sri Lanka lends its pulpits to the \u2018NGO\u2019 (aka NATO) attack on Sri Lanka\u2019s \u2018Executive\u2019 Presidency. And yet they have to defer to an Executive \u2018infallible\u2019 Pope in Rome. In China too, Christians go to heaven, but first thru Beijing! After all, Napoleon, centuries ago, put priests on a state salary and told the faithful they can go to heaven & hell through Rome but first through Paris. While in Rome\u2019s Italy, the mafia have their executive capo! So, are there any corporate shareholders who demand the removal of CEOs (Chief Executive Officers<\/strong>)? We never hear about them. Meanwhile, these \u2018executives\u2019, chiefs (CFOs, CDOs, etc) and others, are paraded as badges of stability to inspire investors to loosen their purses\u2026 Anyway, the English cabinet, as Marx noted, was the executive committee<\/strong> of the bourgeoisie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

\u2022 <\/strong>These days see and hear more calls for reparations to the victims of the horrific April 2019 attacks, with compensations promised and whether paid, by whom and why, we do not know. Whatever happened to the JVP-dominated Uva Provincial Council demand for England to pay reparations for the 1818 genocide in Lanka? And not only. You would think with all our English & US-chartered accountants, who mostly cook & doctor multinational books, they could calculate the actual bill about how much Portuguese, Dutch, English and now the USA, owes us. The head of the Anglican Church is the King of England. So how about what the Catholics & Calvinists, Anglicans, Born-Agains, Assemblers of God, funded atheists & secularists owe us? We won\u2019t mention how much the Muslims & the Saivites et al owe. Though there is problem in maintaining this discourse at the level of religion & nationality, for inevitably it seems it is the impoverished & vulnerable congregants who end up having to pay, and dearly, for the merchants & moneylenders who lead them into such tribal \u2018ethnic<\/em>\u2019 dead ends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

The whole continent of Europe is an old battlefield;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Europeans love war & don\u2019t compromise lightly<\/strong>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today 6 great emperors divide the continent among them,<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Each boasting that he\u2019s the strongest leader of the world.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

These fellows resemble the proverbial kings in a snail shell,<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Who wasted their time chalking up victories & losses\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 \u2018On Climbing the Eiffel Tower\u2019, Huang Zunxian, 1891<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

\u2022 The sacking of the <\/a>New Zealand High Commissioner<\/strong> Phil Golf in London last week came after he told his colonial masters in England\u2019s Chatham Hous<\/strong>e that US President Donald Trump does not know history. But Trump, the ageing \u2018Indian\u2019 killer, sure knows more than that salaried NZ Maori-killer. With the English penchant for euphemism, Chatham House actually houses and camouflages the Royal Institute of International Affairs<\/strong>, named for English PM William Pitt<\/strong>, 1st<\/sup> Earl of Chatham<\/strong>. Pitt Sr (1756-61, 1766-68) led the conquest of French colonies in India and the Americas. He died (1778) soon after the \u2018loss\u2019 of a part of Anglo-North-America, aka the USA. His son, Pitt the Younger<\/strong>, also a William & PM (1783-1801, 1804-6), quarterbacked the invasion of maritime Sinhale<\/strong> in 1796, but died after major English military defeats in Haiti, and highland Sinhale<\/strong> in 1803. It was after this major defeat that the English resorted to establishing a spy system under John D\u2019Oyly to tarnish and then overthrow the rulers of Sinhale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     But the German-Scottish settler Trump is rather right on, no? He wishes to sweep away the nominal cobwebs of the still-<\/a>English colony of Canada<\/strong> (long the putative 52nd State of Amnesia), and the still-Danish colony of Greenland<\/strong>, and bring it under the steely US imperium. While our US embassy columnists, part of the teasing cocktail-party green-card circuit \u2013 have continuously diverted from the USA\u2019s real history, replacing it with the usual Hollywood song-&-dance semi-porn tragi-comedy, Trump represents \u2018the return of the real\u2019 \u2013 pure Anglo-American white-settler killer history\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     Unlike presidential predecessor <\/a>Thomas Jefferson<\/strong> (1801-9), who assumed office midst the white horror at their defeats in Haiti, resorted to stealing North American lands from the \u2018Indians\u2019 by burdening them with debt and getting them to kill each other for imports & exports, Trump I<\/strong>, in his first term, invoked Andrew Jackson<\/strong>\u2019s \u2018spoils system\u2019. As President, Jackson (1829-37) massacred the so-called \u2018Civilized Indian Nations\u2019<\/strong> (the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee-Creek, & Seminole) to \u2018cleanse\u2019 the South for enslaved cotton plantations<\/strong>. The \u2018populist\u2019 Jackson promised poor whites that they, too, could join in the land-thieving as slave-owning gentlemen. Trump II recalls predecessor Thomas Monroe<\/strong> (1817-25), who declared all of the Americas<\/strong> belonged to them, and not the old colonial empires. US history may be seen as a conflict between 2 murderous thieves, old and young, the former wishing to enjoy their spoils, and the latter, to rob even more. Trump II therefore also recalls William McKinley<\/strong> (1897-1901), who not just grabbed Spanish colonies <\/strong>of Cuba<\/strong> & Puerto Rico<\/strong>, but went beyond Monroe, to their first colony in the North Pacific, Hawaii<\/strong>, but also their first colony in Asia, the Philippine<\/strong>s, with the US Army implementing genocidal practices learned from their \u2018Southwest Indian Wars\u2019. McKinley was also the \u2018Tariff King\u2019 imposing 50% tariffs on imports to protect industry \u2013 something Sri Lanka (& the rest of the world\u2019s South) has never been allowed to do. McKinley was killed by a so-called Polish-American \u2018anarchist\u2019 or fall-guy (like so-called \u2018terrorists\u2019 today), to herald in the \u2018roughrider\u2019 Theodore Roosevelt<\/strong> (1901-9), who sent in the US army to carve out Panama<\/strong> and its canal<\/strong> from northern Colombia<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     Which bring us to the so-called \u2018post-World-War-2 US Empire consensus focused on \u2018<\/a>integrating the old colonial empires<\/strong>, expanding capitalism, and containing competitive nationalisms\u2019, based on \u2018commonly accepted trade rules\u2019 such as the US-dominated Bretton Woods\u2019 triplets \u2013 the World Bank, IMF & GATT-WTO<\/strong>. There were always \u2018exceptions<\/em><\/strong>\u2019, as successive US leaders, while proclaiming the \u2018rule of law\u2019, downgraded or ignored the rulings of these trade regulation bodies. Trump is declaring the end of that kayfabe \u2013 he wishes to remain the sole superpower \u2013 Make Imperialism Great Again (MIGA!<\/em><\/strong>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

________<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

\n
IMF Managing Directors are All White<\/a><\/blockquote>