{"id":151535,"date":"2025-08-24T16:20:39","date_gmt":"2025-08-24T23:20:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=151535"},"modified":"2025-08-24T16:21:25","modified_gmt":"2025-08-24T23:21:25","slug":"why-ai-cant-work-in-sri-lankayet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2025\/08\/24\/why-ai-cant-work-in-sri-lankayet\/","title":{"rendered":"Why AI Can\u2019t Work in Sri\u00a0Lanka\u2026Yet"},"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 17-23 August 2025<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Blessed are the children for they<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

shall inherit the national debt\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2018Sri Lanka is expected to face a heavy external debt<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

repayment burden over the next decade<\/em><\/strong>.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u2013 see ee Quotes<\/em><\/strong>, UN OHCHR<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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US & Indian warships<\/strong> sail in & sail out<\/strong> of Colombo & Trincomalee, singing, \u2018Free & Open!, Free & Open!<\/em><\/strong>\u2019 While England, playing the role of white-faced \u2018good cop\u2019 (vs the US red-faced \u2018bad cop\u2019 threatening 20% tariffs), promises to allow exporters tariff-free access to their market. They also airily announce they have struck a<\/strong> deal on \u2018our\u2019 debt<\/strong>. Though we apparently had better pay them back by 2028. (With typical barefaced transparency \u2013 hypocrisy? \u2013 the English High Commission promises, \u2018The full text of the agreement will be published in the Treaty Series in due course<\/strong>\u2019).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     Again, why don\u2019t the English tell us now, how much Intellectual Property Rights (IPR<\/strong>) royalties, the \u2018rag trade\u2019 pays England, and for what?  Pins? Needles? Threads? Is this what all this week\u2019s English largesse is about? English multinationals (MNCs) were heavily involved in setting up the \u2018garment\u2019 business in Sri Lanka in the 1980s. And for sure, the English media, with or without AI, cannot dare calculate and pay what they owe us, after over 200 years of colonial violence. \u2018In due course\u2019 <\/em>of course!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

     Then there\u2019s the UN <\/strong>\u2013 hijacked of its mandate to represent all the nations of the world \u2013 holding us to standards their white overseers simply shunt aside. A warmongering EU<\/strong> (with the UN in tow) keeps busy sending overpaid white emissaries, singing \u2018Rule-based Order! Rule-based Order!\u2019<\/em><\/strong>, while acquiring suntans along the way, threatening to shut off our \u2018privileged<\/em>\u2019 access to their markets. Instead of protecting our own market, we find out from Japan\u2019s Nikkei<\/em> this week (see ee Quotes<\/em><\/strong>), that we are aiding Japan\u2019s auto industry, by buying their old cars at inflated prices, so Japanese citizens can sport new cars every few years, selling their old jalopies at a profit, while keeping their home market & auto factories buzzing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     After having fully hyped an export-based economy<\/strong>, the USA & EU, through their agents in the IMF & World Bank, while dangling open markets etc, they are now preventing countries like ours \u2013 which can be made subject to their arbitrary export tariffs <\/strong>at any time \u2013 from compensating for our losses in exports. One way is to enlarge our own home market (see ee Quotes<\/em><\/strong>, Patnaik). Yet, expanding our (especially, the rural) home market, to enable consumption of locally produced goods, is only possible through greater government spending, says Indian economist Prabhat Patnaik, via financing, either through a fiscal deficit<\/strong> or by a tax on the wealthy<\/strong>. But, both are prohibited by the IMF (aka USA aka Wall Street). So, what\u2019s a state that cannot push-start its own economy supposed to do?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2022 The government is perhaps trying to compete for a putative Nobel Peace Prize? \u2013 which yet another warmongering US President has laid claim to. They are apparently truthifying & reconciling history \u2013 though not by handcuffing any corporate executive or chartered accountants. English MNCs \u2013 Standard Chartered, Unilever, Citibank, Ceylon Tobacco, CIC, HSBC, etc \u2013 who have turbo-charged our underdevelopment, and are the true repositories of our bloodied history \u2013 are still proudly cruising the streets, monopolizing billboards & ads proudly proclaiming Diversity, Inclusiveness & Equality (DIE! <\/em>indeed<\/strong>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     In the last few weeks, the government has arrested a Navy Commander, an IGP, and a former President & PM, along with several former ministry officials, while threatening further arrests of cantankerous opposition politicians & officials. Unable to take the former PM\/President on about such matters as Batalanda & the Bondscam, which can easily backfire, they have settled on a doctored travel coupon by yet more academics hungry to acquire yet another accolade from yet another English degree factory\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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How many know the US government derailed India\u2019s 1st<\/sup> National Industrial Plan?<\/em><\/strong> They first hyped a fake crisis <\/em><\/strong>that announced India would be on the edge of starvation by 1966?<\/em> <\/strong>A US Ford Foundation (FF)<\/strong> team had been parachuted into India (in 1959), without even an invitation by India\u2019s government. Using doctored statistics on population & foodgrains production, the FF projected an imminent & \u2018ominous\u2019 <\/em><\/strong>food crisis & mass starvation in 7 years (1966). Laughably, unscientifically, they extrapolated the only available statistics from 15 years earlier (1951). The Ford Team only spent a few weeks in India, but then issued an instant report<\/em><\/strong>, which was force-multiplied in the English media, showering images of \u2018starving\u2019 Indians across the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     The Ford Team demanded that all earlier economic priorities for industrialization be shunted aside<\/strong> and superseded by their agricultural plan aka \u2018Grow More Food\u2019. They called for using scarce foreign exchange to import expensive fertilizer & high-yielding hybrid varieties (which the English media soon hyped as a lovely \u2018Green Revolution\u2019 <\/em><\/strong>vs a scary \u2018Red Revolution\u2019<\/em>). The FF claimed that profits would come more quickly than thru investments in heavy industry or large irrigation projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     These US-funded \u2018experts\u2019 thus \u2018advised\u2019 against \u2018the great Indian planner Mahalanobis\u2019 strategy that had prioritised \u2018self-reliance\u2019<\/em><\/strong>,\u2019 says economist Patnaik (Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis, a member of a free India\u2019s first Planning Commission<\/strong>, founded the Indian Statistical Institute<\/strong>). Patnaik\u2019s \u201879th<\/sup> I-Day: Imperialism & Open Bullying of India\u2019 alerted ee<\/em><\/strong> to a witty and critical response to those US experts\u2019 statistical fabrications to sabotage industrialization (\u2018Ploughing the Plan under\u2019, see ee Focus<\/em><\/strong>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     Sri Lanka\u2019s striving to industrialize, too, has been undermined in many other ways. Indeed, after the attempted 1962 coup & successful destabilization of the 1960-64 Sirimavo Bandaranaike government, the Dudley Senanayake government imposed the 1st<\/sup> of 17 IMF programs on the economy, & <\/strong>in 1968, abetted by the World Bank, also launched the Ford Foundation\u2019s Indian \u2018Grow More Food\u2019<\/em> campaign in Ceylon<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2022 The US Ford Foundation<\/strong>, while promoting their \u2018Starving Indian\u2019 meme, was at that same time financing a scaremongering \u2018missile gap\u2019<\/em>, to ignite an \u2018arms race<\/em>\u2019<\/strong>, well-funded by the so-called liberal <\/em>US Presidents JF Kennedy & LB Johnson. They claimed it was a necessary reaction to the USSR\u2019s launching of Sputnik<\/em><\/strong>, the first satellite put into orbit, in 1957. This was also a time when the whites were mongering rumors about the famines & mass starvation caused by China\u2019s industrial resurgence policy, known as the Great Leap Forward<\/em>. The English authors of \u2018Ploughing the Plan under\u2019 (see ee Focus<\/em><\/strong>), critical of the FF Report, call these US \u2018experts\u2019 opposing Indian industrialization, \u2018a bench of amateurs\u2019!<\/em><\/strong> And indeed, Sri Lanka continues to be ruled by such fly-by-night \u2018amateurs\u2019 from various \u2018development\u2019 (aka colonial) banks & agencies, who apparently divert our local banks & finance companies into funding micro, small & medium enterprises (MSMEs) rather than heavy industry\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This ee Focus<\/em><\/strong> also continues reproducing SBD de Silva<\/strong>\u2019s 1st<\/sup> chapter of his classic The Political Economy of Underdevelopment (PEU)<\/em><\/strong>. This excerpt contrasts the different powers of the state machineries in settler & nonsettler colonies<\/strong>. The state was far more active (genocidal?<\/em>) in the settler colonies, where the \u2018social and economic ties of the natives\u2019 had to be \u2018relentlessly\u2019 severed, and a white settler working class was nurtured & advanced to build modern industry<\/strong>. In the nonsettler colonies (also genocidal, but unable to fully defeat the resistance), \u2018state intervention was aimed far more at obtaining captive markets<\/strong> for the metropolitan economy\u2019. De Silva shows how it was made easier for Africans to link to Europe than to their own neighbours<\/strong> in adjoining villages and\/or countries. He also provided extensive examples of how the<\/strong> plantations damaged the village economy in Sri Lanka<\/strong>, targeting irrigation systems, with roads & rails to serve the expat planter than the villager. SBD also shows how nonsettler infrastructure programs contributed to \u2018deindustrialization\u2019<\/em><\/strong>, with tariff polices<\/strong> & transport networks uprooting <\/strong>indigenous manufactures, exposing them to foreign competition, promoting exports at the expense of production for the home market\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2022 The USA once boasted \u2018the world\u2019s largest demographic armoury\u2019. We don\u2019t know if it is still so. Recently, the English media briefly highlighted the state of statistics in the US, after their government sacked the head of the US Bureau of Labor Statistics<\/strong> (BLS<\/strong>) for publishing a poor July \u2018non-farm payroll report\u2019. Most international media were critical of the firing, citing the usual bull about \u2018independence\u2019. But all such stats are highly political, and are chiefly meant to serve the ruling powers. The present US administration however insists they have created many jobs, through their own initiatives \u2013 tariff & other, to protect their industries \u2013 and that their salaried number-crunchers are lying. (SBD de Silva always mentioned Karl Marx\u2019s fulsome praise for the English Factory Inspectors, who fearlessly provided statistics on industrialization; but this \u2018transparency\u2019 was due to a still-powerful rural aristocracy who was doing battle with the rising industrial capitalists!)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     In January 2024, the New York Times <\/em>reported how \u2018a highly inappropriate communication\u2019 by a BLS staff economist, had revealed \u2018material nonpublic<\/em><\/strong>\u2019, ie, highly secret, information to a select group of \u2018Super Users \u2013 banks & hedge funds, about how new inflation figures were being computed. Such highly technical details inspire forecasters competing to extrapolate inflation figures to \u2018100ths of a percentage point\u2019. These estimates are then used by investors to place bets on huge chunks of securities that are indexed to inflation or interest rates. NYTimes<\/em> named such \u2018Super Users\u2019 <\/em><\/strong>as including Barclays (English), Nomura (Japanese), BNP Paribas (French), Millennium Capital Partners (English), Breven Howard (EU, Cayman, US), Citadel; while Bloomberg<\/em> added the USA\u2019s JP Morgan, BlackRock & Moore Capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2022 All these \u2018capital pools\u2019 deploy hefty budgets to bribe public officials for \u2018insider\u2019 information, even while the capitalist media spends a lot of ink on proclaiming the supposed \u2018independence\u2019<\/em><\/strong>of state-salaried officials, who apparently have no class interests<\/em><\/strong>. A recent claim is made by Kumari Jayawardena in her co-authored book (excerpted in the Island<\/em>) in describing her father-in-law NU Jayawardena<\/strong>\u2019s role as Deputy Governor of the new Central Bank. The CBSL<\/strong> was formulated & run by a US citizen, John Exter (see ee Focus<\/em><\/strong>). NU & Exter were both apparently lovers of the so-called \u2018free market\u2019<\/em> and wanted a monetary authority \u2018independent<\/em>\u2019 of the \u2018political and electoral concerns of politicians\u2019. How really democratic<\/em> is this? we are led to wonder. As Hayek\u2019s Bastards<\/em> \u2013 a new book on the \u2019Austrian School\u2019 of economists that have now come to dominate countries \u2013 notes, such ideologues are opposed to democracy and highly misanthropist, white supremacist to the core (see ee Quotes<\/em><\/strong>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     There are many questions about Kumari Jayawardena\u2019s take on the parliamentary debates over the then new Central Bank, while the snippets provided of NM Perera and Colvin R de Silva\u2019s speeches should inspire further research. We have not read the records in the Hansard<\/em> (has it gone digital yet?). Her excerpts portray the Trotskyist MPs as safeguarding the technical competency required to run the bank of banks. Yet, economics is not just about rates & numbers & things. Such inanimate abstractions are also only products of humans, of living &<\/em> dead labor. SBD de Silva (to whom this blog is dedicated) always insisted that the Central Bank, where he once worked, has always opposed the independence of the country, ie, was against the aspirations of the majority of the people:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2018Sterling companies in Sri Lanka continued to function outside the legal<\/p>\n\n\n\n

framework of the country even after it had achieved its independence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The agency houses in 1964, when called upon by the Central Bank to<\/p>\n\n\n\n

make available for examination, for exchange control purposes, their<\/p>\n\n\n\n

service agreements with the plantation companies, declined on the<\/p>\n\n\n\n

grounds that they were not legally obliged to do so.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 SBD de Silva, PEU<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Capitalist media love to label themselves \u2018independent\u2019 & \u2018free\u2019<\/em><\/strong>. They also claim a monopoly over which institutions only they can rate as \u2018independent\u2019 & \u2018free\u2019. China has just released their 2025 report on the state of<\/strong> human rights in the USA<\/strong>. Their account highlights the capitalist control of electoral machinery in the US, and the suppression of eligible, particularly African & other darker American voters. Not much has changed in 100 years, as when we read Gustavus Myers\u2019 1917 History of Tammany Hall,<\/em> that famous New York NGO \u2013 that \u2018charitable & benevolent corporation\u2019 \u2013 which was a cover for a deadly political machine. Tammany\u2019s control of the media by corporations & their politicians is the subject of this ee<\/em><\/strong>\u2019s excerpt, continuing our peek into the history of the Big Man<\/em><\/strong> in local US politics; how early capitalism and the monopoly of power requires \u2018tender providence over the newspapers\u2019, maintaining several editors & journalists on a municipal or corporate payroll.The Big Man\u2019s \u2018greatest success \u2018 is in \u2018averting public clamor\u2019, manipulating hype and occasional charity, which the Big Man has to appear too humble to lay claim to, refusing a statue in his honor, etc (see ee Focus<\/em><\/strong>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2022 Korea was in the local news this week, with an update on a recent incident where a Sri Lankan worker at a brick factory in Naju, South Jeolla Province, was bound to a forklift truck with wrapping tape (see ee Worker<\/em><\/strong>, Video showing SL worker moved by forklift prompts action from South Korea police). <\/strong>Those US-invaded southern lands now boast the world\u2019s lowest birth rate, not reproducing themselves fast enough \u2013 a side effect of a subordinated modernization. To fill growing gaps in \u2018unskilled\u2019 labor, US-Korea is relying on both legal & illegal migrant workers. So, what has happened to industrialization in those lands?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     This ee Focus<\/em><\/strong> also reproduces Jim Glassman & Young-Jin Choi\u2019s take on \u2018The Chaebol <\/em>& the US Military-Industrial Complex<\/strong>: Cold War Geopolitical Economy & South Korean Industrialization\u2019. Rather than looking into industrial policies and personalities as most researchers into US-occupied Korea have done, they explore the role played by US military offshore procurement<\/strong> (OSP<\/strong>), to feed the US wars on China, Korea & Vietnam, to explain rapid industrial transformation in colonized East Asia. The US war on Korea inspired a \u2018flood of new orders for Toyota trucks\u2019, and was referred to as \u2018Toyota\u2019s salvation<\/em>\u2019, and \u2018Divine Aid<\/em>\u2019. During the US war on Vietnam, military contracts accounted for 26% of Hyundai\u2019s construction revenues and 77% of its total profits, 1963-66 (see ee Focus<\/em><\/strong>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2022 The Australian government once complained<\/strong>, to the Sri Lankan government of John Kotelawala, that a Central Bank employee (SBD de Silva<\/strong>) studying for his Master\u2019s Degree in Melbourne had been asked to speak at a Communist Party meeting to oppose the US war on Korea in the 1950s. De Silva insisted he had only attended the meeting to learn about what was being said, and had then been put upon, as the only Asian there<\/em><\/strong>, to speak about the horrific US (& English & Australian, etc) war. Kotelawala is supposed to have shrugged off the Aussie police report, saying we can\u2019t keep getting rid of employees at the whim of foreign governments (After all, he had just deported the US journalist Rhoda Miller de Silva as a Communist). But it was more Korea\u2019s economy, particularly the US-occupied part, that interested SBD de Silva. He did not accept that it is geopolitics alone that accounts for US-occupied Korea\u2019s rather skewed development (the famed Samsung brand was nurtured under the Japanese colonialism\u2026 Most Koreans in the south have officially abandoned the faith and culture of their ancestors, whereas in the North, a prouder people perhaps cannot be found on this earth).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     As a seeming exception to SBD de Silva\u2019s division of the world into genocidal settler & non-settler countries, the capitalist development of Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore \u2018occurred without their disengagement from the centre\u2019, coming \u2018close to transforming<\/strong> their economies, while transferring surpluses to various metropolitan centres.\u2019 While noting that:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018After encouraging the decolonization movement, the USA<\/p>\n\n\n\n

later organized the suppression of national forces<\/p>\n\n\n\n

wanting a complete break in centre-periphery relations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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After 1945, US capital \u2018feverishly\u2019 propped up \u2018Western Europe and to a lesser extent Japan, Taiwan & South Korea, as bastions against the onrush of communism\u2019, enabling a \u2018postwar reconstruction boom\u2026 unprecedented in capitalism\u2019s history\u2026 underpinned by a very high level of spending on arms and by rapid technological innovation which yielded a crop of new products and raised productivity levels in several existing branches of industry\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     The \u2018East Asian tigers\u2019 had been hyped by the English media as a \u2018newly industrializing\u2019 (NIC) model for Sri Lanka. However, SBD felt there were other internal factors, \u2018contingent upon specific elements, both historical and fortuitous\u2019 that prevented its experience being transferred to Sri Lanka. There had also been a  \u2018mobilization of surplus rural labour within the confines of the rural economy\u2019, even as  US military spending, military employment and export platforms had helped \u2018spread purchasing power and an upgrading of technical skills, etc.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     More importantly, there had been \u2018a partial reorientation of the traditional landlords<\/strong> from a rentier class <\/strong>to a predominantly entrepreneurial one<\/strong>; from rent<\/strong> & interest<\/strong> as a basis of income to profits<\/strong>\u2019. Land reforms were successful also due to \u2018the weakness of merchant & usurers\u2019 capital in the rural districts\u2019: \u2018In many underdeveloped countries it is the dominance of merchant capital<\/em><\/strong> that makes the agrarian problem less amenable to a conventional land reform; landlordism, being totally functionless, is more easily eradicated than merchant capital which, though unproductive, plays a necessary role in the day-to-day functioning of the village economy<\/strong>.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     SBD de Silva also pointed to the role played by Japanese colonialism in Korea, which was of a very different order than the English species\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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So we asked a US AI app: \u2018Does Sri Lanka owe England or does England owe Sri Lanka?\u2019 AI answered thus: \u2018The relationship between Sri Lanka and England is complex<\/strong>, shaped<\/strong> by colonial history, economics, and diplomacy. Here\u2019s a breakdown to clarify the question of who owes whom\u201d: Sri Lanka was colonized by the English (1796-1948). During this time, vast resources were extracted \u2013 land, labor, tea, rubber, and minerals \u2013 benefiting the English Empire. Many historians argue<\/strong> that England owes a historical moral or<\/em><\/strong> reparative debt to former colonies like Sri Lanka for the economic exploitation, cultural disruption, and long-term structural disadvantages left behind. Conclusion: On moral and historical grounds, one could argue England owes Sri Lanka\u2026\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 The State of the Unspoken<\/em><\/strong> \u2013 The<\/strong> media has clutched onto Artificial Intelligence (AI)<\/strong> as their latest hole-filler for their yawning vacuity. Yet for AI to work in Sri Lanka and for Sri Lankans, it has to account for the \u2018Abstract Sri Lankan\u2019, ie, the collective \u2018natural\u2019 intelligence of tens of millions of people, predominantly cultivators & workers, and mainly Sinhala & Buddhist, who throughout the millennia and centuries have shaped this country, through innovation & resistance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     This collective intelligence is largely off-grid, and will yet not be included, in any \u2018artificial\u2019 \u2018big data\u2019, \u2018blockchain\u2019 or \u2018cloud\u2019 reservoir, dominated by the imperialist (II), settler & non-settler colonial intelligence (CI) and mass information circuits. We put \u2018natural\u2019 in quotes, since the natural<\/em> is mixed up with a lot of not-so-natural matters. All any alien AI would do is reinforce the<\/strong> ruling amnesia<\/strong>. The ideas that rule the people are the ideas of the ruling class, and ideas here are shaped by an import-export non-settler plantation colony, dominated by merchants & moneylenders, who are fronts for mostly US, English & European multinational banks & corporations. Money is made here through \u2018commissions\u2019 & \u2018commissioners\u2019, who prevent local production even while gaming access to importing goods & services is but another way to exact \u2018rents\u2019, or \u2018commissions\u2019. The English High Commissioner<\/strong> could very easily be called the High Rentier<\/em><\/strong>, for how much IPR & other royalties the English have extracted from Sri Lanka, is also concealed. Much vital data & information is classified, or held behind forbidden or high paywalls. As the USA\u2019s BLS fiasco reveals: some get their<\/strong> news hot, hot & fresh\u2013 pre-news!<\/em><\/strong> What is publicly served to most people, is stale and whitewashed, fake & cold, olds, olds<\/em><\/strong> \u2013 with any real information, days, if not weeks, if not years old \u2013 all long past their use-by expiry date<\/strong>\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

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

\n
Why AI Can\u2019t Work in Sri Lanka\u2026Yet<\/a><\/blockquote>