{"id":148973,"date":"2025-04-06T17:18:59","date_gmt":"2025-04-07T00:18:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=148973"},"modified":"2025-04-06T17:18:59","modified_gmt":"2025-04-07T00:18:59","slug":"truthifying-reconciling-in-sri-lanka-implicates-englands-unilever-ctc-cic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2025\/04\/06\/truthifying-reconciling-in-sri-lanka-implicates-englands-unilever-ctc-cic\/","title":{"rendered":"Truthifying & Reconciling in Sri Lanka Implicates England\u2019s Unilever, CTC &\u00a0CIC"},"content":{"rendered":"

e-Con e-News<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n
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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 30 March \u2013 05 April 2025<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The notorious King Leopold II of Belgium, as a young Duke of Brabant, rode the first English train in Ceylon from Veyangoda to Ambepussa and back to Colombo, drawn by an imported English locomotive engine in 1864. But more importantly, as English Queen Victoria\u2019s first cousin, Leopold enabled the mass murder and enslavement of the Congo people to extract their palm oil for William Hesketh Lever, who created the Huileries du Congo Belge (HCB), a subsidiary of the soap-manufacturing Lever Brothers Co.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     Unilever, of course, is a major if not the principal lubricator of the media & the public relations (aka advertising & marketing) companies that sustain misinformation & disinformation in Sri Lanka. It is they who, unfortunately, provide the nation with our daily mental bubble gum & bile plus the deities & demons, who appear to switch places with every government that is elected with great hope and then overthrown with great distaste. Whatever great changes or chaos, or big talk and broken promises, it turns out that the old imperial plantation system bestowed by the likes of Unilever, and more recently the IMF, carries on regardless\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     It is Unilever (actually their former CEO, Paul Polman) who has called themselves, \u2018The biggest NGO in the world\u2019! And herein lies the reason behind such \u2018charitable\u2019 appellations, which claim they are better than nation-states. And it is such NGOs, or rather, the creation of such mammoth multinational corporations (MNCs) to avoid the taxes & exchange controls of nation-states, ably assisted accountants, that is the subject of one of this ee<\/em><\/strong>\u2019s Focuses (Foci?), as ee<\/em><\/strong> continues looking into the creation & function of British American Tobacco (BAT)<\/strong>, which controls the monopoly called the Ceylon Tobacco Co (CTC).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2018There is more bloody nonsense<\/strong> talked on this subject than on any<\/p>\n\n\n\n

other business topic\u2026 it has become the oh-so-fashionable subject\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

there\u2019s an avalanche of books & conferences on the subject, but little<\/p>\n\n\n\n

common sense\u2026 we have to be better behaved than anyone else\u2026 we<\/p>\n\n\n\n

are put upon in all sorts of outrageous ways\u2026 you can fall over<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

backwards to be a good citizen of the countries where you operate<\/em><\/strong>,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

and then find yourself denounced as exploiters<\/strong>\u2026 something sinister<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

seems to have attached itself to the title \u2018multinational corporation\u2019<\/em><\/strong>; well,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

whatever you call it governments have killed a hell of a lot more people<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

than companies<\/em><\/strong>\u2026 governments tend to make the world companies their scapegoats,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

partly because they don\u2019t realise the limitations of their own power.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Richard P Dobson, Chairman British-American Tobacco (1970-76)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Formed in London in 1902, BAT was set up to control the domestic \u2018home\u2019 markets of other countries, controlling trademarks & brands outside of England, Ireland, and the USA (excepting the socialist countries, of course). By the 1970s, BAT was operating 140 factories manufacturing tobacco products in 54 countries. The accusations of causing an epidemic of cancer, inflating state expenditures on health<\/strong>, was also the principal reason for their control over paper manufacture, printing & packaging but a policy of planned investment in industries not directly related to tobacco, food, pharma & life insurance etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     CTC was in the news this week, if not in name, at least in spirit, with the headline \u2018Container declared as office furniture turns out to be Rs435bn worth of cigarettes<\/em>.\u2019 Cigarette companies have been known to smuggle cigarettes to avoid taxes, helping the formation of gangster networks known for their smuggling of other substances. <\/strong>While an Island <\/em>editorial declared, \u2018Political parties are the ground zero of corruption<\/em>\u2019, ee<\/em><\/strong> believes it is their multinational sponsors who are the real zeroes<\/em><\/strong>\u2026 Meanwhile, a seeming spokesman for the Ceylon Tobacco Co parading as \u2018interested reader\u2019 of ee<\/em><\/strong> (see Comments<\/em><\/strong>) insists that the company abides by the laws & regulations. So be sure they do, after helping to frame those ineffective legalities!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2022 If England is criticizing Sri Lanka\u2019s \u2018human rights\u2019, why don\u2019t England\u2019s principal representatives in Sri Lanka tell us and their rulers in London what they really think of us? ee<\/em><\/strong> is referring of course to the great English multinational banks & corporations, with budgets larger than Sri Lanka & most countries \u2013 such as Standard Chartered Bank, Hongkong & Shanghai Bank, Unilever, Ceylon Tobacco Co.  England is so concerned about truth & reconciliation it seems, here as in South Africa & Canada, for instance. Isn\u2019t it time then, that Unilever tell the truth about its operations in Sri Lanka? Isn\u2019t it time Unilever reconcile with the people of this country, from whom it has sucked out great profits? There\u2019s an \u2019inescapable need to deal with the past\u2019, says USAID\u2019s National Peace Council spokesman, one Perera. If this is case, then these corporations such as Unilever surely must stand in front of the line, for it is in the enslaving plantations that we find Sri Lanka & Unilever\u2019s history & truth, and not just here. After all, it became a literary industry & internet meme to blame Belgium\u2019s King Leopold for the horrors that beset Africa\u2019s great Congo, a horror that continues to this day, just across the ocean from us, as a US and Europe-backed Uganda & Rwanda invade the Congo. As well as the UAE & their US sponsors who are funding the war on Sudan. All just across the water from us, ready to set the world aflame. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

     Setting the world aflame to maintain & reassert their imperialist supremacy is also the principal reason behind the \u2018tariffs\u2019<\/strong> announced by US President Don Trump, despite his clamorous claims that it is an attempt to reverse the de-industrialization of his country. And yet, \u2018Within the IMF, the term \u2018industrial policy\u2019<\/em> is met with outright hostility\u2019,<\/strong> according to the economists Bram & Howard Nicholas (see ee Economists<\/em><\/strong>, <\/strong>Following IMF policy recommendations will lead to yet another debt crisis<\/em><\/strong>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     What is the role such multinational banks and corporations play in our exports that the USA claims is causing them such industrial pain? They certainly cause us pain and prevent local industry! And why doesn\u2019t the so-called Asia Internet Coalition<\/strong> \u2013 AIC (representing the USA\u2019s Meta, Google, X, Booking.com, Amazon, etc) pay taxes in Sri Lanka? Tell us, dear Donald, tell us! Is that why your tariffs included only the export of goods and not services. And we hear that your IMF prevented Sri Lanka\u2019s Internal Revenue Department and the  Fiscal Policy Department from insisting on a digital service tax for all these companies. They told the government that it simply cannot be allowed to happen. Instead,  the government now has to impose a digital service VAT to be paid by the consumer. Imagine that! The IMF blocked a tax!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     ee Focus<\/em><\/strong> also continues with US Vice President JD Vance\u2019s speech, where he calls for preventing the industrialization of countries such as ours. Vance is also known as a \u2018Trump tweeter<\/em>\u2019, whose position is so far insecure (though a earlobe away from the presidency), who has to continually repeat Trump\u2019s name to keep in his good books. Known as an \u2018anti-China hawk\u2019 beholden to his sponsors such as PayPal\u2019s Peter Thiel who funded his political career, portraying this Yale graduate as a p\u2019or lil white boy, the settler Vance\u2019s anti-immigrant rhetoric is heightened by his marriage to a non-resident Indian (NRI)immigrant who apparently did not come cheap\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     Meanwhile, ee<\/em><\/strong> Focus<\/em><\/strong> also offers an intriguing excerpt of Manuka Wijesinghe\u2019s more detailed implication of the US ambassador \u2018extraordinaire\u2019 Bernhard Gufler in the murder of PM SWRD<\/em><\/strong> Bandaranaike in 1959\u2026 ee<\/em><\/strong> already recalled Gufler\u2019s involvement in \u2018Exposing the Real Assassins of SWRD Bandaranaike, 12 October 2019. Wijesinghe, however, also places the murder in the context of the role played by Indonesia\u2019s Muslim head of state, President Sukarno (also later deposed midst the US, Dutch & English stage-managed genocide of 1965) who had insisted that the Buddha\u2019s \u2018ahimsa<\/em>\u2019 <\/strong>should be the binding that held the Non-Aligned Movement founded in Bandung in 1955<\/strong>, together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     ee<\/em><\/strong> Focus<\/em><\/strong> starts by reproducing the economist WA Wijewardena\u2019s recall of the \u2018Marxist\u2019 Philip Gunawardena\u2019s \u2018Visionary Economic Policies in 1930s\u2019<\/strong> which offer a benchmark for what politicians can accomplish when truly truly truly dedicated to their country\u2019s upliftment\u2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

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

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Truthifying & Reconciling in Sri Lanka Implicates England\u2019s Unilever, CTC & CIC<\/a><\/blockquote>