Human Rights, Tree Rights & White Rites

“Before you study the economics, study the economists!”

Human Rights, Tree Rights & White Rites

e-Con e-News 14-20 March 2021

‘The last people I will listen to is a white face on this issue’ – Philippines’ Foreign Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr, thus discussed his country’s position on Myanmar.

     Locsin fingers English perfidy in Myanmar, and the duplicitous role of white liberals and their media like the New York Times. He tells his diplomatic staff not to listen to white people: “I know all of you want postings in Western capitals… you won’t…” He also spoke of the white plans to break Myanmar into pieces to steal its oil and gas, like they’ve done in Syria, Iraq, Libya… (see ee Sovereignty, Locsin).

     Such plainspeak is not affordable to Sri Lanka apparently, even as the Philippines is still named after a white Spaniard, and we strive to be a ‘Democratic Socialist Republic’.

     Our Ministry of Foreign Affairs, with lingering colonial remnants, is said to be structurally trapped. The economy has been made almost totally dependent on exports to the EU and US, and on remittances from West Asia, South Korea, the EU. ‘We have nothing we could export to China, Southeast Asia or Africa, the world’s fastest-growing regions.’

     ‘We have nothing’? – Is this why we have to patiently listen to the patent masquerades of a warmongering US, England and allied white poodles snarling lectures on human rights? No wonder every media-promoted economist demands we maintain the import-export plantation system, further entrenching subjugation. Importers, with multinational corporations behind them, still rule, controlling our home market. They monopolize the advertising charade, which controls media. Media controls politicians and obscures truths about our lives: The big truth is our non-settler colonial status enforces an import-export economy that simply fails to modernize production! (see ee Focus)

     The white man can kill, maim and starve millions but no investigations are allowed or held. Their amnesia is no defect, it’s a way of life, enforced by their weapons of capital and mass murder. As for Sri Lanka’s ‘defeat’ in Geneva, that all of NATO’s lapdogs beg for – it’s no defeat as long as the white man is allowed to undemocratically manipulate a world body. It’s no defeat if we help form a new international – the call of the hour. If we shape a cultural and economic revolution for a renewed nation – needed now more than ever.

• All the visible and invisible powers of the heavens and the hells keep being unleashed to prevent a winning President and popular government from ruling. And not just ruling, but completing our economic independence, especially in such dire circumstances no other government has faced.

     The media overflows with fake do-gooders, environmentalists and corporate-feminists, barking chorus with financialized human rightists and northern, eastern & hill-country separatists ready to slice up Lanka like Europeans did Africa in 1884. Behind them lurk the cliques of merchants and drug dealers, money launderers and bankers, their fund managers and financial rating agencies – rentiers who paralyze any economic advance.

     Meanwhile they escalate rhetoric against President GR, blaming him for militarization, dictatorship etc., while the import mafia and their media are still running riot, preventing any restraints of their anti-national activity: A ‘city hotel’, manager after a night of ribaldry, runs down and kills people on Marine Drive… 15 are killed, more maimed, on a private bus in Passara… What permits this? Exxon, Toyota and Tata design national transport policy and rule the roads.

• USSR leader M Gorbachev once challenged US President R Reagan to a debate on human rights at 12 midnight in the middle of Black Harlem, New York. If whites wish to speak on ‘human rights’ and ‘minorities’, such discussions should be held not in artificially heated rooms in Alpine Geneva, but in the middle of their reservations, ghettoes, and barrios, in the Dakotas’ Black Hills, Washington DC’s Anacostia (92% African), or in the deindustrialized English Midlands where English spy agencies recruit their jihadi supporters to destabilize other countries.

• The arrest of former Western Province governor for stating he does not abide by Sri Lankan law but only Muslim law, recalls the type of ruling oligarchy the English have imposed on us, and to whom they owe primary allegiances.

     SBD de Silva’s The Political Economy of Underdevelopment, analyzed investment patterns in the world. He noted the differences between 1) Non-settler colonies like Sri Lanka dominated by expatriate investors (mostly the plantation or plantation-cum-mining economies), 2) Regions of new settlement where the original people were almost exterminated and white investors transferred their entire interests to the settler bastions, 3) settler colonies with European minorities, claimed as their permanent home (eg South Africa, Kenya, Zimbabwe, the Maghreb: ee Focus)

“Better if we gave free fertilizer to cultivators than free education to all…What has all this ‘free education’ wrought? A parasitic class of consumers, who know their wine, women and song [read: sex, drugs, rock n roll]. They only know ‘consumer culture’ but do not know ‘producer culture’ (of machines making machines), and are proud not to know.” –­ SBD de Silva

• England opposed setting up universities in Sri Lanka, delaying them for a century. Now a century after that, universities are run down while billions are spent on foreign degrees. (ee Random Notes)

• Ecocide & Genocide & Big Oil – The recent rash of headlines about cutting trees, saving dugongs, etc., can be traced to enviro-funding: billions of rupees funding zillions of media words on ‘saving the environment’. What is their link to Rockefeller petro-giant’s International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)or CTC Tobacco’s World Wildlife Federation, who’ve formed invasive networks in our country?

     Was that ‘ecocide’ art banner in Vihara Mahadevi Park the result of Canadian government funding of an eco-art activism workshop by a ‘Branded Content Mastermind’ on March 2? (ee Media). The ‘art’ is credited to the ‘Youth Wing’ of the English colonial government’s Wildlife & Nature Protection Society. The WNPS, ‘Third oldest non-governmental conservation organisation in the world’, established in 1894, set up Wilpattu & Yala National Parks on the mass graves of the martyrs resisting the genocide and scorched-earth policies of the English that destroyed Sinhale rice granaries. They mirror similar parks like Yellowstone, set up in 19^th century USA, from where the original people were driven out.

     ‘Tree rights’ will be the next human rights, so to speak: Oil companies have already bought up ‘neutralize carbon’ portfolios. Also check out the Sri Lanka Business and Biodiversity Platform set up in 2012 by the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce and IUCN, with such environmental paragons as plantation companies, Brandix (who pour chemicals into waterways), Hitachi, Abans (what do they do with all the garbage they collect?) etc.

     Check out ee Agriculture news sections from the start of the 2021. EconomyNext even began reproducing articles on whales from 5 years before! Other media soon followed, and now rather than discussing vital agricultural reforms, all the pulp-wasting media focuses on saving trees.

• US moves to compromise SL’s navy: Daily Mirror headline asks, Secret US document reveals Lanka’s ‘Indo-Pacific’ role?: ‘Asked about the possibility that data or intelligence shared with India might reach the US, with risk of being used against China – especially in view of the intel-sharing aspect of BECA – Foreign Secretary Colombage insisted there are only 3 countries (Sri Lanka, India, Maldives) involved. “We partner with India. If India shares with someone else, we can’t help that.” (ee Sovereignty, Indo-Pacific)

• Terrorist attacks in Myanmar are being coordinated from London, and so is the destabilization of the Ukraine. Apparently, England is handling ‘dirty’ operations, while the Biden regime steadies their transition team. The white task for the next 5 years is to play Russia, India and China off against each other, while manipulating attempts to modernize. As one ee contributor noted: “They are shouting about human rights now, but if they take over Myanmar, millions could be slaughtered without another English word”. (ee Sovereignty)

• This week’s murder of 8 ‘Asians’ in Atlanta, US, occurred midst a surge in anti-China headlines. The icy sinophobic blasts were heralding US Secretary of State Blinken’s landing in US military-occupied-Korea to lay down white man law on East Asia, to tell us who our enemies and friends should continue to be – 4 out of the 8 shot were Korean. This was just before Blinken met his Chinese counterpart in Alaska on Thursday:

     • Blinken Rallies ‘Quad’ Democracies to Counter Assertive China – Feb 17, Bloomberg

     • Blinken warns China against ‘coercion and aggression’ – March 16, Reuters

     • Blinken denounces China’s ‘strings attached’ vaccine diplomacy – March 17, Nikkei

     • US sanctions 24 HK & Chinese officials ahead of Blinken’s key meeting – March 17, AP

     • Bolstered by allies, Biden officials take blunt message to first China talks – March 17, AP

     White officials & media deny links between this media barrage, escalating since Trump’s virus blame-game, and the murders of Asian women, blaming such clear terrorism on personality ‘quirks’, ‘sex addiction’ & ‘killing temptation’, ‘a bad day’!

     A Mark Twain short story ‘defended’ a young white boy arrested for throwing stones at Chinese people – Disgraceful Persecution of a Boy: saying he did exactly as he was told by media and his elders. Twain’s story is over a 100 years old – americanliterature.com/author/mark-twain/short-story/disgraceful-persecution-of-a-boy

Contents:

A1. Reader Comments –

• ee Wrong about English • English Amnesia • Whiter than whites we are • NDB means Norway Development • Sugar Factory? • People are Lazy? • ee Too important to Miss • Hope CBSL Governor Doing the Right Thing • Development Bank? • Bachelet & 2030?

A2. Quotes of the Week

• Maritime Security Secretariat • White Face Lies on Myanmar • UNP & Prolonging War • Bankers Outdated • Civil Service Myths • Human Capitalist Education • Commune at 150 • Robinhood Stock Hoodwink Youth

A3. Random Notes –

• Fake Education System • Abolishing Universities • Sirs & Wasted Knights • South Africa still White • Swiss Chocolate Ghana • Intellectual Coolies

B. ee Focus       

B1. Investment Patterns in Settler & Nonsettler Situations – Economic Underdevelopment & the Settler-Nonsettler Dichotomy

C. News Index

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A1. Reader Comments

ee thanks Readers who send articles of interest. Please excerpt or summarize what is important about any news sent, or your comments, and place any e-link at the end. It’s better to email: econenews@gmail.com.

• ‘I forwarded this week’s particularly insight-giving ee to fortunate recipients. I think ee has got more powerful in saying what it wants to.’

• ‘I don’t share ee‘s dislike of the English. Some ee ideas are rather quaint. Interesting (and typical), nothing to say about involvement of the government personnel responsible for the sugar scam, but only about the connections of the corporate world. Although ee talks about industrialization, ee seems to be against the palm oil industry. I do not know whether there is any democratic industrialized country which does not have a corporate sector.’ [ee responds: our one goal is to explain how plantations, tourism, garments, etc., are not ‘industries’ at all, with no spread effects, keeping people low-skilled. Perhaps we have failed to explain this properly?]

• ‘Shouldn’t last ee have been titled, “National Media? English Amnesia!”… It’s not international amnesia! The world is still with us, not them!’

• ‘Writing ee in English is a waste of time. Writing to the enemy.’

• ‘Our countries are still white non-settler colonies. The ruling mentality is white. They hate the majority of the people. They say terrible things about Sinhala people, yakos, etc, let alone about African or Chinese people. Look at that Cassandra in the so-called liberal Island paper, calling Meghan a Black tart!’

• ‘Re: Sugar, weren’t they supposed to open a sugar factory? ee articles must be shared in Sinhala too, there’ll be more awareness then. When we write in English, it’s only accessible to a niche. Why do they import sugar from London? Does ee mean the govt is forced to do so? Shouldn’t the government decide from where to buy?’

• ‘Re: National Development Bank, now owned by Norway, now doesn’t have to change its logo – NDB. It’s now Norway Development Bank.’

• ‘I’m really really surprised by ee’s knowledge and capacity. I wish I could write like that. It is simply amazing. And useful as well. I read a few lines at least every week. This is too important to miss. Thank you.

• ‘I had no idea about any of these things that the West, India had been doing to us, before I started reading ee. As a 23-yr-old, who’s never known these things, I am so glad ee is writing about this and glad for Gammiris.lk (how I found ee). Thank you.

     Reading through your articles it seems SL has had a rentier economy all this time. How sad what has happened to our people, our country. We are still colonised.

     I remember my father telling me about SWRD’s assassination but he clearly had no idea who was really behind it. It’s sad to think that most people in the country don’t really know.

     It’s clear everything I thought of the ‘economy’ has been false… So this CBSL governor is doing the right thing? I hope so and if true he should probably be given a STF detail!

     Are we going the right way, ee? Is the development bank not being set up? And what is wrong with our universities that SBD De Silva was chased out?!’

• ‘I want to discuss something bothering me for a while. Dr Gavin Karunaratne said, when the IMF imposed structural adjustment in 1977 abolishing all public sector efforts at employment creation: “No one then realized that the IMF was playing the sinister role of making all our 3rd World Countries indebted so that the countries to which we are indebted can call the shots and dictate to us.’’

     This is sad and it is what worries me the most. What other things are being imposed on us right now in probably benign forms (for now) that we are unaware of their true purposes? The UN’s 2030 Agenda and SDGs come to mind, adopted in 2015 after Yahapalanaya happened.

     Once when UNHRC chief Bachelet was reprimanding SL in her usual fashion one of the odd things she said: SL’s current path interfered with 2030 Agenda. Exactly what is this agenda pushing all sorts of things – digitization, ‘smart’ cities and impact hubs all over the world? It seems to coincide with the World Economic Forum’s agenda.

     Yahapalanaya introduced biometrics for identification and kept pushing these “smart’’ things a lot, smart classrooms with laptops given! Are these policies being scrutinised?

     When the SLPP was elected, the first thing the UN L head did was to go to the PM and get a promise from him to implement SDGs.

     The WE Forum seems to want to impose a rentier economy worldwide, even in their own west I think (but taken to the extreme) – The Great Reset. Check these links:

– thewallwillfall.org/2020/10/30/the-great-reset-for-dummies/

– winteroak.org.uk/2021/03/16/impactor-alert/

– wrenchinthegears.com/

     These seem to be plans for the future for the rich that control the world, through what they call the 4th “Industrial” revolution (4IR). Also, vaccines are SDG No 3. How convenient that a global pandemic came along for it. They are also pushing digital currencies for Central Banks now

     Sri Lanka should hold off on their policies and maybe even reverse the biometrics and the rushed digitization of many aspects of governance.

     All in all, these are scary things I feel no one is paying attention to right now, and I worry whether we are making mistakes like in 1977. What does ee think?

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A2. Quotes of the Week_

• ‘At the launch of Sri Lanka’s Maritime Security Secretariat, Foreign Secretary Adm (rtd) Jayanath Colombage said “The entire world is benefited from this initiative as the Indian Ocean is the lifeline of the entire world.” Asked to explain what he meant, in the light of its possible origins in a secret US national security document, Colombage argued, in 2018 “those concepts were there” but not any longer – though “India may be wishing for that.” The concept of a Maritime Domain Awareness Centre has been around since 2011 he said’ (ee Sovereignty, Indo-Pacific)

• ‘I was a minister when the LTTE with superior weapons such as MBRLs were on the verge of driving our armed forces out of Jaffna peninsula. One of the reforms introduced by the GR-Fonseka team was to immediately get the latest weaponry. Unfortunately the leaders of the UNP, led by Ranil, could not understand any of this and were setting up the media to question the financing of those planes and weapons…

     Another problem facing the country is the inefficient provincial health system. Many of our Chief Ministers were small-time politicians who had very little idea of management. I am now revealing a secret that JRJ never wanted to appoint politicians as Chief Ministers. His idea was to appoint senior public servants with proven management track records to run the newly established provincial councils. I remember politicians like Dissanayake of Gampola lobbied against this saying officials had no political savvy. Instead he proposed himself for the post of Chief Minister of Central Province and JRJ was made to change his mind by confidantes like Gamini and Ronnie de Mel.’ – (see ee Workers, Amunugama)

• ‘Bankers in flesh and blood would be irrelevant in the future.’ (ee Economists, Oration)

• ‘The English established the Ceylon Civil Service in line with what they had in their country. It was considered highly prestigious and it was the best of fresh graduates straight from universities who would join the CCS. Though sometimes ridiculed as ‘pen pushers’ whose ‘Bible’ was the ARs (Administrative Regulations) and FRs (Financial Regulations), it was known they had no partisan politics, moreover, they were clever and scrupulously honest.’ – Sunday Times

• ‘The World Bank announced an ambitious ‘human capital’ project for Sri Lanka in 2019. Its plan for the public education system is based on the flawed assumption that the country’s economy was transitioning from a rural economy to an urban, “globally competitive” export-led economy. ‘Human capital’ is the underlying thinking that has informed the reshaping of investments in education globally for the last several decades. Proposed by the Chicago School of (neoliberal) economists in the 1960s, ‘human capital’ theory assumes a linear relationship: greater investments in education enable more years of education, which, in turn, create opportunities to earn higher incomes, resulting in greater productivity. The obsession with measuring the success of education systems by the ‘rate of return’ and ranking countries based on the Human Capital Index (HCI) followed.’ (ee Workers, Underfunding)

• ‘The best accounts of the Paris Commune are that of the Communard Lissagaray, The History of the Paris Commune, translated by Eleanor Marx and published in 1876.’

– marxists.org/history/france/archive/lissagaray/index.htm

The Civil War in France, Marx’s own account written right after the Commune was crushed.

– marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/

Belgian Marxist Eric Toussaint’s excellent modern account of the economic machinations of the Banque de France and the Commune:

– cadtm.org/The-Paris-Commune-of-1871-banks-and-debt (ee Economists)

• ‘Robinhood.com does something very novel; they combine investing/trading tools with a social media experience targeted to young people – complete with trading addiction, and a herding effect. They have amassed a user base whose orders tend to be small’ (ee Finance, Trading into Poverty).

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A3. Random Notes (‘Seeing Number in Chaos’)_

                        We wrote perfect grammars, profound dictionaries, poetry and speculated

in metaphysics of a transcendental character. We remained long under the spell

of fascinating but comparatively fruitless learning… ­– Muthu Coomaraswamy

Free education has never been free – ‘Sir’ Muthu Coomaraswamy, as Ceylon State Councillor, was calling in 1876 for an education in Science, with Arts defined not as ‘fine’ arts but, ‘technology or industrial arts’. Muthu is considered the first non-Christian/Jew to enter some London guild where lawyers conspired against justice.

     The 19^th century Coomaraswamies, like the Lorenzs, de Alwises, Morgans, Diases represented the first ‘generation of Ceylonese who had fully availed themselves of the new European and US educational facilities’, and suspected dire shortcomings.

     The English responded to Coomaraswamy and others’ pleas, by instead abolishing Queen’s College in Colombo, especially to prevent Ceylonese from competing with whites for higher civil positions. A university was not opened for another 75 years. By then a class of parasites were in control.        

The last knowledge the English wish to impart is the knowledge of modern production – how to make machines, etc. Abolition also prevented Queen’s College’s growth into an industrially linked university, as was the rage at that time, in a rising US, Germany, Japan. (see: https://gammiris.lk/yaka-vs-loyalists-vs-uncle-thoms)

     The English instead reinforced affiliations with foreign universities, whose advertisements now fill entire supplementary inserts in weekend newspapers, as glossy as the ads for lands, cars, weddings. Many of the ads to study abroad suggest migration possibilities, featuring seductive photos of white women.

     This is why we cackled when the Sunday Times again this week sang the praises of the colonial civil service, how uncorrupt they were until the Sinhala yakos took over. They don’t say out loud or mean the Sinhala only, of course. (see ee Quotes)

     Anyone who wishes to know the ‘other’ or the real story of this ‘civil service’, which always had had its own undemocratic ‘society’ it operated within, should read WMDD Andradi’s SL Subordinates of the British: English-educated Ceylonese in Official Life (1865-83), to learn how ‘suddha’ the English were…

      English policy, continuing to this day, is to produce ‘brown monkeys’ who keep the ‘natives’ enslaved, by acting as informers for empire and helping kill off the monkeys when necessary. Education in English was to promote colonial control. Education in Sinhala was to promote Christianity to alienate the ‘heathen’ Buddhist.

     ‘Sir’ Muthu, father of the ‘metaphysician’ Ananda (who subordinated Sri Lanka to India in his cultural analyses), may be curious to know that his direct descendants, and allied class fractions known as Colombots, are desperately clinging on to their tasteless English fruits and related fruitlessness. Many of them are now, as we speak, allied with whites in Geneva, speaking in the foxiest Queen’s elocution, of how ‘backward’ us monkeys are, and how we must be brought to heel.

• ‘Sir’ Muthu’s father was deeply involved in the intrigues and battles to topple the last redoubt of Sinhale. The gay English governor North had employed the father, as an informer: appointed ‘Mudaliyar of the Governor’s Gate’ in 1805. That Coomaraswamy became ‘personal officer’ to the Gov Brownrigg, 1812-22, during the toppling of the Nayakar King in 1815 and the horrors enacted to suppress Lanka’s first war of independence from the English in 1818. When the Legislative Council of Ceylon was established in 1833, Horton appointed that Coomaraswamy as ‘the unofficial member representing Tamils’. He died soon after.

     As to how son Muthu became a ‘Sir’, we are not told aloud but only of his contributions to the arts, performing theatrically in front of their Queen Victoria. The English bestow their ‘knightly’ largesse on ‘leading’ kneegrows (as Malcolm X called Black US State Department puppets). “Sir” for their exceptional role played in mass murder, reinforcing domination, like ‘Sir’ Syed Ahmad Khan, who helped the English suppress India’s first war of independence from English rule in 1857. Several ‘Sirs’ were anointed for their contributions to the arts. But always behind the veiled curtain of the arts, stealthily lurk the English, with their very physical ‘materiel’, and their Birmingham steel handcuffs.

     One ee contributor insists, this ‘elite’ class of rulers we now have were ‘pochchi holders’, especially the old media barons. They had to run behind the English catching their droppings, which were then retailed to other locals, as legal tender.

• In 1867 the Colonial Inspector of Schools W Sendall reported: ‘There does not exist in the island a single public institution where the profession of teaching may be learnt.’

     The English were opposing universities for yakos, and spoke of the great dangers of educating the masses: ‘artificially cheapening high-class education is in this country, making itself felt more and more every day, in the increasing number of those who having thus acquired a smattering of knowledge which they would never otherwise have dreamed of acquiring, are unfitted for the humble occupation of their predecessors, swell the ranks of the idle and discontented and prove an element of weakness and possibly of danger in the body politic.,

     Sendall dissented: ‘In a country like Ceylon any agency other than the government would be an inferior one. Government would not be doing its duty if it permitted superior education to lapse into the hands of missionaries’. He agreed it was a serious evil that existing schools were producing a class of shallow, conceited half-educated youths who had learned nothing but to look with contempt upon the condition in which they were born and from which they conceive that education had raised them and who desert the ranks of the industrious classes to become discontented hangers on of Courts and Public Offices. But this had to be mitigated not by abolishing such schools, but by improving them…’

• South Africans say the political power they ‘received’ did not include power over their country’s economy, policies, education and the media. Nelson Mandela was taken out of prison, still speaking ‘nationalization’ but after going to Davos’ World Economic Forum, he returned singing the IMF song of needing foreign investment. Truth & Reconciliation: with the criminals who oppressed and robbed them. Some Africans were allowed into the boardrooms, those doors quickly shutting out again the millions of Africans. This was also a time when the USSR was ‘withdrawn’.

     Listen carefully to Ronnie Kasrils, South Africa’s Minister for Intelligence Services (2004-8), member of the National Executive Committee (NEC) of the African National Congress (ANC) 1987-2007, and of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (SACP), 1986- 2007. What kind of communists are these who did not consider taking over the means of production or the banks? (ee Economists, Commune)

     Listen then to Kasrils on Nationalization and the History of South Africa’s Economic Policy Choices, sharing his ideas with the Germans: Perhaps it arose from something even deeper within the foundations of the ‘Mandela miracle’ that had waged no long insurrection or civil war. “The transformation had been a ‘Faustian pact’ in which democratic majority rule had been conceded in return for maintaining the power of the predominantly white economic elite. Which had then, as part of the pact, co-opted a new black economic elite.”

– youtube.com/watch?v=WA9sMdQzdiA

• Swiss Chocolate Anyone? Every few weeks in different colonized (supposedly ‘postcolonial’) countries there are promises not to export our primary products. This week it was Ghana’s turn announcing they won’t export coca.

      But then, no plan is elaborated how industrial processes will be put in place. In this case, to make chocolate etc and 100 related products. Ghana’s leader promised not to export cocoa to Switzerland (57% of their cocoa from Ghana). Will Nestle, Cadbury etc help? No way. They will not share the tech or the processes, nor will they set up workshops to incrementally make parts of the machinery: Ghana will have to keep making heavy payments for importing parts and IPR royalties for using their tech.

     The bitter truth is, unless there’s stated 5, 10, 15, etc.,-year industrial plans – which according to white World Bank law, our countries dare not state out loud or even to ourselves in our sleep – wherein there is a local supply chain for tech and chemical inputs. So then all these pronouncements are mere jive talking, just to get a better price for the export merchants. The whites will overcome any price rises thru devaluation of currency etc. Nothing short of installing a proper class structure and related production relations to enable capital accumulation is the answer…

     There are powerful import-export mafias, with local agents of multinationals, who will oppose if not sabotage every step of the way. There is also heavy electoral tension in Ghana, so promises are made galore.

     The phenomenon of shifting from only growing cocoa to a multiplicity of machine-made coca-related products has been called ‘Staple Base Dynamism’ – process limited to whites and their settlers – where wheat was machined into flour, then bread, cakes, alcohols and hundreds of other related products. Where milk was made into to cheese to dairy products, and along the way numerous machines were made and perfected, not to mention use of waste products to develop other industries.

After they got rid of Nkrumah, they destroyed all real industry in Ghana he had set up. Also, all the distribution channels and markets for these ‘primary’ products are controlled by Unilever, etc. It is also not just making chocolate, it is making the machines that make the chocolate…

After Nkrumah’s ouster, they seem to have systematically destroyed all the industries he set up. This primarily benefited the Euros. But can such vandalism be traced to a colonial class structure where some Ghanians were waiting in line for their turn to loot, and get rich quick, like those before them who were fondled by the colons? …There is a sheer absence of discussion about the loss of this attempt at a producer culture vs the consumer culture that dominates the media of celebrity, wine, women, cars and entertainment…But there is much about resentment that some are enjoying themselves more than others…

• A Sunday Island columnist this week repeated the old fiction of the last King of England abdicating for love. The writer is a former LSSPer, loves the US Clintons, & the English Queen, a fan of US and its so-called democracy of the dollar, by the dollar, for the dollar.: ‘In one of the episodes of The Crown, Queen Elizabeth visits her uncle Edward III in Paris 10 days before his death in 1972. The uncle who abdicated the throne for his US wife, praises the Queen, whom he had once called Shirley Temple, for her success as a monarch.’ Sigh. Intellectual Coolies & their white wet dreams.

     That Nazi English king abdicated because the USSR had just received all the files of his collaboration with the Nazis (handed over by their Queen’s Art Appraiser, who they claimed was a Soviet spy). That king’s collaboration took place while English soldiers (and their local Lankan forces) were being killed by the Nazis. Another column by a “Cassandra” who claims to be for women’s rights, pretty much called that tanned English princess, a Black tart, for daring to challenge Cassandra’s wet-dream queen….

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B. Special Focus_

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B1. Investment patterns in the settler and nonsettler situations –

Economic underdevelopment and the settler/nonsettler dichotomy: SBD de Silva

The diverse results of foreign capital and enterprise, as reflected in the scale and character of the economic expansion that took place, can be studied in terms of: 1) the territories dominated by expatriate investors (mostly the plantation or the plantation-cum-mining economies), 2) the regions of ‘new settlement’ which were inhabited overwhelmingly by European settlers (eg, Canada, the USA, Australia), and 3) the settler colonies, which a European minority came to regard as their permanent home (e.g. South Africa, Kenya, Rhodesia, and the lands of the Maghreb).

     In the regions of new settlement which became developed economies, and to a lesser extent in the settler colonies, the progressive effects of foreign enterprise seem to be connected with the fact that such enterprise involved the migration of the capitalist and often the transfer of his national allegiance. Successive streams of settlers became assimilated with the earlier immigrants to form a local community.

The Englishman who went to America, or to Australia, was soon absorbed, and he or his family ceased to be foreign [just as] the Dutchman or Frenchman who came to reside in Tudor England became (Englishmen in due course – their children grew up in English schools (such as there were), inter-married, and lost their foreign allegiance.¹

The reorientation of the immigrants’ economic interests and, to some extent, of even their cultural identity, was also significant politically. The countries of new settlement freed themselves relatively early from the metropolis or they became dominions with rights equal to those of the metropolitan country. Regulations or restraints by the metropolitan country were not compatible with the settler status of its European communities. In colonial America the frustrations of the trading and planter capitalists arising from this incompatibility erupted in the War of Independence, but there always existed in varying degrees tensions and conflicts between the settler communities and the metropolitan country – as in South Africa, Kenya, Rhodesia, Algeria.

     These metropolis-colony differences were more acrimonious in countries where the settlers included a European working class; in the expatriate colonies – eg, India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia – such a class was totally absent except as ‘transient seamen and soldiers’. The considerable degree of political authority which a European settler class generally acquired – either by violent or by constitutional means – paved the way for more viable economic structures than in the nonsettler colonies; this was especially reflected in the growth of manufacturing industry.

     The expatriate dominated or nonsettler economies, on the other hand, were characterized by the limited entrepreneurial interests of the foreign investors, who virtually confined themselves to trade, plantation crops and minerals. There was a lack of dynamism in their staples base, which failed to transform itself along lines familiar in the settler colonies and a fortiori in the regions of white settlement. Activities which were competitive with those in the metropolitan centres, including production for the domestic market, were as a rule excluded. Apart from the decade before the First World War when English investment created jute mills and engineering works in India, the expatriate investors had practically no hand in colonial industries. For example, in 1915 the relative positions of English and non-English enterprises in India’s large-scale manufacturing industries were such that cotton spinning and weaving, printing presses, rice mills and oil mills were entirely or overwhelmingly Indian; and engineering workshops and iron and brass foundries, sugar, woollen mills and carpet manufacturing enterprises were English and Indian in more or less even proportions.²

     As predominantly producers of raw materials and of certain foods and beverages, the nonsettler colonies established a strong complementarity with the metropolitan economy, becoming constituent but subordinate parts of that economy. The development of export production, while causing a reorientation of their economy away from the domestic market, failed to bring about a structural change. Export production did not of itself signify a higher stage of development nor did it, in the absence of a diversified production pattern, create vertical and horizontal linkages within the domestic economy, with a ‘reciprocal generation of expanding industries’. An export surplus, in whatever way it is derived, enables an economy to import capital goods and technical and professional skills, so that in this sense the export sector was the equivalent of a capital goods sector and therefore the basis for the growth of secondary industries. But in these countries, the development potential of the original staples base lay completely unrealized.

1 The Settler-Nonsettler Typology

In underdeveloped countries, with the partial exception of the settler colonies, foreign investment was carried out by Westerners who were not colonizers in the real sense. The ‘Colonies proper‘, wrote Engels, ‘are those [like Canada, the Cape, Australia] which were occupied by a European population, as distinguished from those inhabited by a native population [India, Algeria, the Dutch, Portuguese and Spanish possessions]’. ³ The term ‘colony’, observed LB Clarence, does not apply to territories dominated by nonsettler investors. ‘ “Colony” is a term which sometimes grates on the ear, as applied to a tropical dependency in which… the European immigrants [are no] more than a drop in the bucket compared with the sons of the soil. ‘⁴ These countries, said J. S. Furnivall, were colonized by capital rather than with men.⁵ The Europeans here were merely sojourners; their numbers were relatively small and ‘they seldom set their roots in the area’.⁶ ‘A large section of English capitalists… did not even live in India. The majority of the English investors in India… lived in Britain. ‘⁷

     The English merchants and planters in Sri Lanka belonged to this category. As stated in a contemporary account, they were ‘men for the most part who hoped to get rich quickly, and to return to England with a fortune’.⁸ The transient interest of individual Englishers was also noted by J. Ferguson.⁹

In Ceylon a generation among European colonists has usually been considered not to exceed 10 years – not at all on account of mortality, for [the] hills of Ceylon have the perfection of a healthy climate, but from the constant changes in the element of the European community – the coming and going of which in the past has made such a distinct change in the broad elements of society every 10 or certainly every 15 years.

A Sri Lanka writer makes it clearer:¹⁰

The Englishman lived here for 20 or 30 years – as an administrator, or to plant his tea, or to carry on his trade. But he always remained an Englishman, and England was always his home. He went home on leave, his children went home to school [and] when he retired he went home to die.

The Europeans, that is to say, did not transfer their allegiance to these lands or acquire a personal stake in them. Their business interests were mainly an extension of those of the metropolitan country, and limited both in their range and time horizon. They confined themselves to the administration, to plantations and to business, where they held the top positions. Their stay, necessarily short, was connected with the prospect of day-to-day gain. This short-lived sojourn – tantamount to a posting abroad – conditioned the social attitudes and the internal structure of the European community in the nonsettler colonies. Demarcated by their incomes and by the colour of their skin, they lived in small encapsulated groups. The sense of exile and alienation was tempered by bodily comforts, such as ‘the indulgence available through the existence of low-paid domestic service’, and the satisfaction gained from ‘membership of the top status group in… a multiracial society’.¹¹ Pomp and formality marked their public behaviour and their private social life, imitative of the aristocracy in England. They entertained in their spacious homes or in exclusive clubs. ‘Tennis, bridge and billiards were played, whiskey was drunk, and gossip and a certain amount of quiet business took place. These clubs were uncompromisingly English in habits and atmosphere, once again seeking to create an illusion of home. ‘¹² Though their small numbers may have encouraged social cohesiveness, the transient nature of their interests was a destabilizing element.¹³ Only a few Europeans grew up in these colonies; there was a preponderance, of males, a shortage of unmarried women and the virtual absence of children of school-going age.

     Whereas the nonsettler colonies were predominantly primary-product based export economies (or, as in India, had an export sector dominated by foreign capital), the settler colonies had more varied and complex socio-economic structures. These colonies differed from one another in regard to the size and composition of the settler population; for example, in Central and East Africa, European working-class elements were excluded, but they appeared in South Africa and the French colonies of the Maghreb. The settler colonies were themselves underdeveloped, yet they exhibited a different pattern of investment and their economic structures were far more viable than those in the nonsettler colonies. Demographically and socially, too, the Europeans in the settler colonies (and a fortiori those in the regions of new settlement) were different from those in the nonsettler colonies. They were relatively numerous and established a permanent stake in the country of residence. This commitment of settler investors to the host country had economic and political implications which I shall discuss in later chapters. The settlers sought to develop an economy that was independent of the metropolis and in competition with it while entirely repudiating the indigenous interests.

 (to be continued, from Chapter 2, of SBD de Silva’s The Political Economy of Underdevelopment)

Notes:

1 W. A. Lewis, ‘Report on Industrialization and the Gold Coast’ (Accra, 1953), p. 8.

2 Compiled by the Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics. Quoted in C. Meyers, ‘Labour Problems in the Industrialization of India’ (Cambridge, Mass., 1958), p. 20; also H. Venkatasubbiah, ‘The Structural Basis of Indian Economy’ (London, 1940), pp. 114-17, Appendix D, pp. 149-50.

3 Engels to Kautsky, 12 September 1882, ‘Marx and Engels Selected Correspondence’ (London), p. 359.

4 100 Years of British Rule in Ceylon, ‘Proceedings of the Royal Colonial Institute’, vol. 27(1895-6).

5 ‘Netherlands India’ (Cambridge, 1944), p. 102. Furnivall’s comment that the nonsettler territories were ‘colonized by capital’ should not be taken to mean that they attracted a large amount of foreign capital.

6 O. C. Cox, ‘Caste, Class and Race’ (New York, 1959), p. 360.

7 A. I. Levkovsky, ‘Capitalism in India’ (Bombay, September 1966), p. 124.

8 S. W. Baker, 8 Years’ Wanderings in Ceylon’ (London, 1855). In highlighting the essentially transient interests of individual English in the nonsettler colonies. Baker stated: ‘You cannot convince an English settler [sic] that he will be abroad for an indefinite number of years; the idea would be equivalent to transportation: he consoles himself with the hope that something will turn up to alter the apparent certainty of his exile’ (ibid., pp. 98-9).

9 ‘Ceylon in 1903’ (Colombo, 1903), p. 82.

10 Suriya Wickremasinghe, South Rhodesia, A British Algeria, ‘Times of Ceylon’, 16 July 1964.

11 Cyril Sofer and Rhona Ross, Some Characteristics of an East African European Population, ‘British Journal of Sociology’, vol. 2(1951), p. 319, n. l. The Europeans in Indochina, though more cut off from their homeland, had their compensations: ‘On the whole, between furloughs, most … [of them] lead a life which is easier than it is in France – without anxiety, comfortable routine and rather stay-at-home’ (Charles Robequain, ‘The Economic Development of French Indo-China’ (Oxford, 1944), p. 31).

12 F. S. V. Donnison, ‘Burma’ (New York, 1970), p. 95.

13 Pierre Boulle has brought this out in his novel on the life of Europeans on a plantation, ‘Sacrilege in Malaysia’ (London, 1959).

__________________________________________________________

C. News Index______________________________________________

• ee News Index provides headlines and links to gain a sense of the weekly focus of published English ‘business news’ mainly to expose the backwardness of a multinationally controlled ‘local media’:

C1. Sovereignty

(ee is pro-politics, pro-politician, pro-nation-state, anti-corporatist, anti-expert, anti-NGO)

ee Sovereignty news emphasizes sovereignty as economic sovereignty – a strong nation is built on modern industrialization fueled by a producer culture.

• Indian arrested for vandalizing Buddha statues in Kuliyapitiya

– newsfirst.lk/2021/03/20/indian-arrested-for-vandalizing-buddha-statues-in-kuliyapitiya/

• Secret US document reveals Lanka’s ‘Indo-Pacific’ role?

‘Trilateral Maritime Security Secretariat, for cooperation between Sri Lanka, India and the Maldives,

was formed on March 1 to facilitate continuation of National Security Advisor (NSA)-level meetings’

– dailymirror.lk/opinion/Secret-US-document-reveals-Lankas-Indo-Pacific-role/172-207974

• ‘England suppressed wartime HC dispatches unfavorable to Western strategy at UNHRC’

– island.lk/uk-suppressed-wartime-hc-dispatches-unfavorable-to-western-strategy-at-unhrc/

• The New Yellow Peril – Causes And Effects

‘The New York Times reports of a mass murdering of Asian people near Atlanta. Its front page summary says: “The motive for the killings was unclear.” But NYT headlines Anti-China…’

– moonofalabama.org/2021/03/the-yellow-peril-cause-and-effect.html#more

• Attacks on Myanmar coordinated from London

– indianpunchline.com/india-should-hold-the-line-on-myanmar/

• Locsin on Myanmar coup: ‘The West destroyed Suu Kyi’

– https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_Ae6DHfOyI

– rappler.com/nation/teodoro-locsin-response-myanmar-coup-the-west-destroyed-aung-san-suu-kyi

• Sri Lanka’s ambassador to Myanmar to resign after failing to help fishermen (Hiru Video)

– lankaweb.com/news/items/2021/03/15/sri-lankas-ambassador-to-myanmar-to-resign-after-failing-to-help-fishermen-video/

– dailymirror.lk/breaking_news/Decided-to-quit-two-weeks-after-assuming-duties-Prof-Nalin-de-Silva/108-207871

• FM hits out at resolution on SL pending before UNHRC, calling it political

– ft.lk/front-page/FM-hits-out-at-resolution-on-SL-pending-before-UNHRC-calling-it-political/44-714963

• Embracing LTTE Strategy in 2008/09: Norway, USA, England, France and Human Rights Conglomerate as Complicit Tiger Allies

– lankaweb.com/news/items/2021/03/13/embracing-the-ltte-strategy-in-2008-09-norway-usa-uk-france-and-the-human-rights-conglomerate-as-complicit-tiger-allies/

• And now a Vexatious Persecution Office in Geneva

– gammiris.lk/and-now-a-vexatious-persecution-office-in-geneva/

• Cheerio EU, hello EA (and more, hopefully!)

‘Hello East Asia!”

– dailymirror.lk/opinion/Cheerio-EU-hello-EA-and-more-hopefully/172-207969

• On Fire with Dr. Palitha Kohona – Sri Lanka’s Ambassador to China

– dailymirror.lk/dailymirror_online/On-Fire-with-Easwaran-Rutnam-Dr-Palitha-Kohona-Sri-Lankas-Ambassador-to-China/379-208039

• UN Security Council is Where SL Enjoys Strong Support; UNHRC Resolutions Useless

– lankaweb.com/news/items/2021/03/14/what-matters-is-un-security-council-where-sl-enjoys-strongsupport-unhrc-resolutions-are-useless/

• England’s Secretive Proscribed Organisations Appeal Commission Supports LTTE

– dailymirror.lk/breaking_news/UK-Home-Secretary-ordered-to-review-lift-on-LTTE-ban/108-207690

– lankaweb.com/news/items/2021/03/14/britains-ban-on-tamil-tigers-terrorist-group-may-be-lifted-after-secretive-tribunal-ordered-priti-patel-to-conduct-a-review/

– ft.lk/news/Secretive-tribunal-orders-UK-Home-Secretary-to-review-LTTE-ban/56-714753

• UNHRC resolution: Unfriendly act by England on SL as Commonwealth member

– dailymirror.lk/top_story/UNHRC-resolution-Unfriendly-act-by-UK-on-SL-as-Cwealth-member/155-207696

• Referring SL to ICC futile exercise, England tells pro-LTTE groups

– island.lk/referring-sl-to-icc-futile-exercise-uk-tells-pro-ltte-groups/

• Global Tamil Forum questions credibility of SL commissions, pushes for Geneva solution

 – island.lk/gtf-questions-credibility-of-sri-lankan-commissions-pushes-for-geneva-solution/

• England concerned over UN report on human rights and accountability in SL

– island.lk/britain-express-concern-over-un-report-on-human-rights-and-accountability-in-sl/

• England and core group wrap up tough resolution on SL – Sunday Times Political Editor

– sundaytimes.lk/210314/columns/uk-and-core-group-wrap-up-tough-resolution-on-sl-436227.html

• England High Court acquits Maj. Gen. Priyanka Fernando

– dailymirror.lk/breaking_news/UK-High-Court-acquits-Maj-Gen-Priyanka-Fernando/108-208161

• Kandyan Convention of 1815 – A Convention violated and dishonoured

– lankaweb.com/news/items/2021/03/19/kandyan-convention-of-1815-a-convention-violated-and-dishonoured-2/

• Govt. has no intention to grab any private land in North, says SLFP MP Raghavan

“During that time over 10,000 acres of private lands were returned to their rightful owners. I will always stand by the Tamil people.”

– island.lk/govt-has-no-intention-to-grab-any-private-land-in-north-says-slfp-mp-raghavan/

• Gotabaya’s Geneva war: Courting avoidable defeat – Jayatilleka

– ft.lk/columns/Gotabaya-s-Geneva-war-Courting-avoidable-defeat/4-714777

• Sarath Knows Not Jack, But Princess Dayana just loves Jake!

‘There’s Cuba, China, USSR, with Sri Lanka on one side. And there’s Dayana with USA, England and the rest of the whites on the other.’

• We categorically deplore & condemn Interference by Indian Ambassador in Lanka’s internal matters

– lankaweb.com/news/items/2021/03/15/we-categorically-deplore-and-condemn-interference-by-the-indian-ambassador-in-sri-lankas-internal-matters/

• Aggression of the Hindus in India had been checked by Buddhist societies.

‘He mentioned Nepal in the north, Sri Lanka in the south, Taxila in the west, Mainamati and Chittagong in the east.’

– gammiris.lk/india/

• Indian High Commissioner pays first visit to LIOC Trincomalee Terminal

– ft.lk/business/Indian-High-Commissioner-pays-first-visit-to-LIOC-Trincomalee-Terminal/34-714810

– island.lk/indian-high-commissioner-tours-northern-and-eastern-provinces/

• All the Tamil nationalist parties are working on the agenda of a ‘neighbouring country’

– sundaytimes.lk/210314/columns/govt-accused-of-recognising-junta-in-myanmar-436315.html

• Sacred Monument from Seetha Amman Temple N’Eliya to Ram Mandir, India

– dailymirror.lk/print/front_page/Sacred-Monument-from-Seetha-Amman-Temple-NEliya-to-Ram-Mandir-India/238-208146

• Meaningful devolution will support peace, inclusive progress in Sri Lanka: India envoy

– economynext.com/meaningful-devolution-will-support-peace-inclusive-progress-in-sri-lanka-india-envoy-79785/

• We will not do any injustice to Sri Lanka: India tells SL

– dailymirror.lk/breaking_news/We-will-not-do-any-injustice-to-Sri-Lanka-India-tells-SL/108-207710

– gammiris.lk/sarath-knows-not-jack-but-princess-dayana-just-loves-jake/

• “India will unequivocally stand by Sri Lankan Tamil communities” – Jaishankar

– newsfirst.lk/2021/03/15/india-will-unequivocally-stand-by-sri-lankan-tamil-communities-jaishankar/

• India has pledged Sri Lanka will not be wronged at UNHRC: foreign secy

– economynext.com/india-has-pledged-sri-lanka-will-not-be-wronged-at-unhrc-foreign-secy-79904/

• Why does India not have a Geneva game-plan? – Kumar David

– island.lk/why-does-india-not-have-a-geneva-game-plan/

• Sri Lankan President speaks to Indian Prime Minister ahead of crucial vote at UNHRC

– lankaweb.com/news/items/2021/03/13/sri-lankan-president-speaks-to-indian-prime-minister-ahead-of-crucial-vote-at-unhrc/

• Reset of India-Lanka ties in the cards – Adani Group to build container terminal in Colombo: Bhadrakumar

‘Simply put, Sri Lankan government is intertwining its economic prosperity with India’s massive market in an inseparable way’

– indianpunchline.com/reset-of-india-lanka-ties-in-the-cards/

• State Minister Ajith Nivard Cabraal Meets Members of the CEO Forum of India

‘60 CEO’s with Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry (FICCI) they have started a new program call “SHINE LANKA – Path to Investment Sri Lanka”.’

– bizenglish.adaderana.lk/state-minister-ajith-nivard-cabraal-meets-members-of-the-ceo-forum-of-india/

• India vote crucial for Sri Lanka at UNHRC – Balachandran

– lankaweb.com/news/items/2021/03/18/india-vote-crucial-for-sri-lanka-at-unhrc/

• Is Sri Lanka fighting a lost battle in Geneva? – Jeyaraj

 – ft.lk/columns/Is-Sri-Lanka-fighting-a-lost-battle-in-Geneva/4-714900

• Lankan woman dies in Japanese detention centre

– dailymirror.lk/breaking_news/Lankan-woman-dies-in-Japanese-detention-centre/108-207700

• Ambassadors’ Forum of Sri Lanka launches Geneva Crisis – The Way Forward

– island.lk/ambassadors-forum-of-sri-lanka-launches-geneva-crisis-the-way-forward/

• The UNHRC is the Mother of all Pawns

 – island.lk/unhrc-when-the-end-justifies-the-means/

• Did Sri Lanka commit ‘war crimes’? International Legal luminaries says NO

– lankaweb.com/news/items/2021/03/17/did-sri-lanka-commit-war-crimes-international-legal-luminary-sir-desmond-de-silva-says-no-2/

– lankaweb.com/news/items/2021/03/17/did-sri-lanka-commit-war-crimes-international-legal-luminary-prof-michael-newton-says-no-2/

– lankaweb.com/news/items/2021/03/17/did-sri-lanka-commit-war-crimes-international-legal-luminaries-prof-crane-and-sir-desmond-de-silva-say-no-2/

– lankaweb.com/news/items/2021/03/17/did-sri-lanka-commit-war-crimes-international-legal-luminaries-sir-geoffrey-nice-and-rodney-dixon-say-no/

• Ending Sri Lanka’s Conflict: 7721 Collateral Damage is worth the eventual peace

– lankaweb.com/news/items/2021/03/17/ending-sri-lankas-conflict-7721-collateral-damage-is-worth-the-eventual-peace/

• English Parliament must also discuss payment of reparations to Sri Lanka for colonial crimes committed in Ceylon (1796-1948)

– lankaweb.com/news/items/2021/03/17/british-parliament-must-also-discuss-payment-of-reparations-to-sri-lanka-for-colonial-crimes-committed-in-ceylon-1796-1948/

• Were the UN officials / Diplomatic Envoys SLEEPING during Sri Lanka’s Conflict?

– lankaweb.com/news/items/2021/03/17/were-the-un-officials-diplomatic-envoys-sleeping-during-sri-lankas-conflict/

• UNHRC must judge Sri Lanka on violations of IHL not Human Rights

– lankaweb.com/news/items/2021/03/17/unhrc-must-judge-sri-lanka-on-violations-of-ihl-not-human-rights-2/

• Quad: Say It Like Mod – Quad held its first summit meeting on March 12, 2021

‘US has a tactical need to keep the Quad going while it resets the ties with China.’

– indianpunchline.com/quad-say-it-like-modi/

• 75 Years Since Freedom Struggle: What was RSS’s Role?

– newsclick.in/75-Years-Since-Freedom-Struggle-What-was-RSS%27s-Role%3F

• Why BJP’s Hindutva Runs Into the Tamil Wall

– newsclick.in/Why-BJP-Hindutva-Runs-Into-Tamil-Wall

• US senators upset with Modi govt over Buying Russian Arms

– indianpunchline.com/why-us-senators-are-upset-with-modi-govt/

• Video evidence of ‘massacre’ by English special forces in Afghanistan VANISHES – report

– lankaweb.com/news/items/2021/03/15/video-evidence-of-massacre-by-uk-special-forces-in-afghanistan-mysteriously-vanishes-report/

• Despite transatlantic ‘love fest’, EU charts third way in ties with US and China

‘France, which has 1.8 million citizens in Pacific overseas territories, has about 4,000 troops in the region, plus navy ships and patrol boats.’

– reuters.com/article/uk-eu-usa-china-idUKKBN2B400S
• US, Chinese diplomats clash in first high-level meeting of Biden administration

– ft.lk/front-page/US-Chinese-diplomats-clash-in-first-high-level-meeting-of-Biden-administration/44-715075

• EU envoys agree first China sanctions on Human Rights in three decades

– dailymirror.lk/international/EU-envoys-agree-first-China-sanctions-in-three-decades/107-207997

• Moscow promises retaliation if US places banned missiles in Japan

– dailymirror.lk/international/Moscow-promises-retaliation-if-US-places-banned-missiles-in-Japan/107-207654

• Saudi Arabia reveals location of next year’s number 1 Houthi missile target:

– motorsport.com/f1/news/f1-reveals-jeddah-street-circuit-saudi-gp

• Why The War In Ukraine May Soon Resume

‘The Biden administration is filled with the same delusional people who managed the 2014 coup in Kiev.’

– moonofalabama.org/2021/03/the-war-in-ukraine-may-soon-resume.html#comments

• Black Alliance for Peace: We Fight for Haiti Because We Are Haiti

– blackagendareport.com/black-alliance-peace-we-fight-haiti-because-we-are-haiti

• Barbados removes Queen as Head of State, what if remaining 14 countries exit Commonwealth?

– lankaweb.com/news/items/2021/03/17/barbados-removes-queen-as-head-of-state-what-is-the-fate-of-great-britain-if-remaining-14-countries-do-same-also-exit-commonwealth/

• Bolivian Coup Leader Jeanine Áñez Arrested

– newsclick.in/Bolivian-Coup-Leader-Jeanine-%C3%81%C3%B1ez-Arrested

– orinocotribune.com/jeanine-anez-arrested-for-sedition-conspiracy-and-terrorism-in-bolivia/

• Lula will win in 2022 unless he is killed

‘With huge support among the people AND the military while being careful with Biden as per Pepe.’

– thesaker.is/brazils-lula-in-a-wilderness-of-mirrors/

• Canada’s 141 years old skeleton

‘There are many traumatized First Nations, Inuit, and Métis ‘fathers and daughters, sons and mothers’ who were ‘separated and never returned’ to their parents. Some were killed.’

– island.lk/canadas-141-years-old-skeleton/

• England’s Nuke Increase Is In Breach Of Its NPT Obligations

– https://www.moonofalabama.org/2021/03/britains-nuke-increase-is-in-breach-of-its-npt-obligations.html

• How Biden Can Make the Quad Endure

‘… attract other regional democracies as partners, including Indonesia, New Zealand, & South Korea…. other green-focused partners, such as New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, & coastal and island states threatened by climate change such as Bangladesh, Maldives, Sri Lanka, & the Pacific….’

– carnegieendowment.org/2021/03/11/how-biden-can-make-quad-endure-pub-84046

• John Locke and the Roots of White Supremacy in the US – Walden Bello

– counterpunch.org/2021/03/17/john-locke-and-the-roots-of-white-supremacy-in-the-us/

• ‘Killer’ Putin will ‘pay a price’ for alleged US election meddling: Creepy Joe Biden

– dailymirror.lk/international/Killer-Putin-will-pay-a-price-for-alleged-US-election-meddling-Biden/107-207998

• US Aggressiveness Will Accelerate Its Demise

‘The “maximum pressure’ campaign against Iran continues, the sanctions on Venezuela will be upheld or even strengthened, the bombing of Syria, no change on Yemen and so on.’

– moonofalabama.org/2021/03/us-aggressiveness-will-accelerate-its-demise.html#more

– moonofalabama.org/2021/03/us-aggressiveness-follow-up.html#more

• Putin To Biden: Attempts To Stop Russia’s Development Have To Reckon With Us!

– lankaweb.com/news/items/2021/03/19/putin-to-biden-despite-all-attempts-to-stop-russias-development-they-will-have-to-reckon-with-us/

• Who truly was the most dishonest president?

– lankaweb.com/news/items/2021/03/13/who-truly-was-the-most-dishonest-president/

________________________________________________________________

C2. Security (the state beyond ‘a pair of handcuffs’, monopolies of legitimate violence)

ee Security section focuses on the state (a pair of handcuffs, which sposedly has the monopoly of legitimate violence), and how the ‘national security’ doctrine is undermined by private interests, with no interest in divulging or fighting the real enemy, whose chief aim is to prevent an industrial renaissance as the basis of a truly independent nation.

• More than 5,600 motorcyclists killed during last five years

 “About 5,677 motorcyclists died in road accidents; 4, 221 pedestrians and 1,185 cyclists have also died in road mishaps,”

– island.lk/more-than-5600-motorcyclists-killed-during-last-five-years/

• Death toll in Passara accident increased to 13; 31 injured

– timesonline.lk/news-online/Update-death-toll-in-Passara-accident-increased-to-13-31-injured/2-1132656

• 95,496 people arrested for drug-related offences in 2020.

– economynext.com/sri-lankas-drug-menace-needs-a-new-approach-79869/

• The power that money and finance wield over law and order

– sundaytimes.lk/210314/sunday-times-2/law-and-order-money-and-power-436152.html

• Let’s have one law for Sri Lanka – Daily Mirror Editorial

– dailymirror.lk/opinion/Lets-have-one-law-for-Sri-Lanka-EDITORIAL/172-208055

• Justice Minister: Rs 20 billion allocated for development of judicial system

– island.lk/justice-minister-rs-20-billion-allocated-for-development-of-judicial-system/

• Lankan President says Special Forces camps will be reopened in Eastern Province

– lankaweb.com/news/items/2021/03/15/lankan-president-says-special-forces-camps-will-be-reopened-in-eastern-province/

• US Human Rights Watch slams Sri Lanka’s ‘de-radicalisation’ law

– ft.lk/news/Rights-group-slams-Sri-Lanka-s-de-radicalisation-law/56-714941

• Banning burqas and madrasas would have impacted rights – USAID NPC

– island.lk/banning-burqas-and-madrasas-would-have-impacted-rights-npc/

• President says Opposition campaign to deceive masses must be countered

– ft.lk/news/President-says-Opposition-campaign-to-deceive-masses-with-absurd-allegations-must-be-countered/56-714746

• Committee’s final report may backfire on the Sinhala Buddhist majority

“Reading the Presidential Commission report into the Easter Sunday terror attacks, the international community may conclude that these attacks were carried out by Sinhala Buddhists.”

– sundaytimes.lk/210314/columns/blowing-hot-blowing-cold-on-easter-sundays-bomb-report-436145.html

• New regulations for deradicalisation of those holding violent extremist religious ideologies

– ft.lk/front-page/New-regulations-forderadicalisation-of-those-holdingviolent-extremist-religious-ideologies/44-714742

• JVP: Burqa ban aimed at diverting public attention from sugar tax scam

– island.lk/jvp-burqa-ban-aimed-at-diverting-public-attention-from-sugar-tax-scam/

• Easter Sunday attackers & Nominations from JVP’s National List

– dailymirror.lk/breaking_news/Anura-to-be-questioned-soon-Minister/108-208047

– island.lk/suicide-bombers-father-on-national-list-jvp-leader-to-be-questioned/

• MR should be questioned for paying salaries to Zahran before questioning Anura: Bimal

– dailymirror.lk/breaking_news/MR-should-be-questioned-for-paying-salaries-to-Zahran-before-questioning-Anura-Bimal/108-208140

– island.lk/kiriella-vital-evidence-withheld-from-pcoi-that-probed-easter-carnage/

– island.lk/question-mahinda-first-on-extremists-jvp

– ft.lk/columns/Easter-Sunday-COI-Report-Reverberations/4-715044

• Zahran Hashim, Kattankudy and the Islamic State in Sri Lanka

– dailymirror.lk/opinion/Zahran-Hashim-Kattankudy-and-the-Islamic-State-in-Sri-Lanka/172-208185

• SIS Chief calls on CID to investigate allegations by Opposition MP

– ft.lk/news/SIS-Chief-calls-on-CID-to-investigate-allegations-by-Opposition-MP/56-715069

• Restriction to enter Iranaithivu island raises concerns of Human rights groups

 – dailymirror.lk/news-features/Restriction-to-enter-Iranaithivu-island-raises-concerns-of-Human-rights-groups/131-207788

• Ghost trawler in North puzzles Navy

 – island.lk/ghost-trawler-in-north-puzzles-navy/

• Amid moves to import Chinese vaccine sans data, four NMRA board members sacked

– sundaytimes.lk/210314/news/amid-moves-to-import-chinese-vaccine-sans-data-four-nmra-board-members-sacked-436357.html

• PHIs have no objections to private sector joining vaccination programme

– island.lk/phis-have-no-objections-to-private-sector-joining-vaccination-programme/

• Brazil Diplomatic Incident over Suppressing Russia Vaccine

– brasilwire.com/fallout-us-suppression-of-russian-vaccine-in-brazil-becomes-diplomatic-incident

• EU gets down and dirty

‘The UK’s angry reaction to the EU using unsubstantiated claims in support of the ongoing anti-Oxford AZ vaccine campaign is understandable.’

– island.lk/eu-gets-down-and-dirty/

• Vaccine Wars, the ASEAN and the Quad

– newsclick.in/Vaccine-Wars-the-ASEAN-and-the-Quad

• National Medicines Regulatory Authority & Moratuwa Uni to design National Quality Assurance lab

– sundaytimes.lk/210314/sunday-times-2/nmra-signs-agreement-with-moratuwa-uni-to-design-new-building-and-national-qa-lab-436164.html

• Indian scientists begin a voyage to map the Indian Ocean genome

– island.lk/indian-scientists-begin-a-voyage-to-map-the-indian-ocean-genome/

• India’s smart vaccine diplomacy

 ‘India is a global pharmaceutical powerhouse, manufacturing some 20% of all generic medicines and accounting for as much as 62% of global vaccine production’

– sundaytimes.lk/210314/sunday-times-2/indias-smart-vaccine-diplomacy-436175.html

• Asian women among eight dead in US spa shootings

– dailymirror.lk/international/Asian-women-among-eight-dead-in-US-spa-shootings/107-207996

• Killings by Police Declined after Black Lives Matter Protests

– blackagendareport.com/killings-police-declined-after-black-lives-matter-protests

• USA And 5- Eye Partners Use ‘Persuasion’, Sabotage & Disinformation To Gain Vaccine Supremacy

 – moonofalabama.org/2021/03/us-and-its-five-eye-partners-use-persuasion-sabotage-and-disinformation-to-gain-vaccine-supremacy.html

• USA Sitting on Tens of Millions of Vaccine Doses the World Needs

– nytimes.com/2021/03/11/us/politics/coronavirus-astrazeneca-united-states.html

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C3. Economists (Study the Economists before you study the Economics)

ee Economists shows how paid capitalist/academic ‘professionals’ confuse (misdefinitions, etc) and divert (with false indices, etc) from the steps needed to achieve an industrial country.

• Money printing does not lead to inflation – Dr. Kenneth de Zilva

‘it is loosely used by neo-liberal economist particularly monetarists in Sri Lanka to invoke baseless fears about price inflation as they find their theories being exposed globally.’

– dailymirror.lk/opinion/Money-printing-does-not-lead-to-inflation-Dr-Kenneth-de-Zilva/172-207875

• Dr. Roshan Perera and Prof. Colombage join Advocata Institute as Senior Visiting Fellows

‘She also sits on the board of Senkadagala Finance. She joins the Advocata Institute with a recently completed Masters in Public Administration as an Edward S. Mason Fellow at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University – USA’.

• Cry of the savers – Reductio Ad Abeyratnum

 ‘The interest incomes of the savers have also declined by about 50%… Within a period of 50 years from 1963 to 2012, people over 60 years of age will have increased from 600,000 to 2.5 million.’

– sundaytimes.lk/210314/business-times/cry-of-the-savers-436104.html

• Agony of EPF earners, bank interests and a solution

‘There is the non-contributory pension scheme for state employees and the private sector scheme when workers receive a lump sum and use that to invest in a fixed deposit to receive a monthly income’

– sundaytimes.lk/210314/business-times/agony-of-epf-earners-bank-interests-and-a-solution-435880.html

• What low-interest rates mean for corporates?

– ft.lk/columns/What-does-a-challenging-economic-environment-facilitated-by-low-interest-rates-mean-for-corporates/4-714902

• Import substitution rackets promoted for cronies to get rich at expense of population – Sally

‘When Sri Lanka got independence from England, England had to beg Ceylon not to withdraw currency board reserves precipitately’

– economynext.com/sri-lankas-path-to-default-paved-by-spurious-keynesian-transfer-problem-and-mmt-bellwether-79749/

• K. Sivagananathan Memorial Oration 2021 – Part I: Siva’s contribution to banking industry

‘The Monetary Board agreed to divest part of its ownership in favour of a private limited liability company to be floated to handle the country’s cheque clearing function and payment system. An MOU was signed among the three parties, the Central Bank, SLBA, and LankaClear to provide clearing and payment services in Sri Lanka under Central Bank’s overall supervision. Thus, the Central Bank which was earlier both the owner and regulator of clearing and payments services was now to function only as the regulator cum supervisor. That was Siva’s achievement.’

– ft.lk/columns/K-Sivagananathan-Memorial-Oration-2021-Part-I-Siva-and-his-contribution-to-banking-industry/4-714711

• Increasing exports vital to improve balance of payments and foreign reserves

– sundaytimes.lk/210314/columns/increasing-exports-vital-to-improve-balance-of-payments-and-foreign-reserves-436201.html

• Counterbalance reliance on principal investors in infrastructure by partnerships with region

– sundaytimes.lk/210314/business-times/government-strictly-adheres-to-prudential-financial-management-435920.html

• Who masterminded the Central Bank gang robbery and who helped Mahendran to leave the country and abscond in hiding?

– lankaweb.com/news/items/2021/03/19/who-masterminded-the-central-bank-gang-robbery-and-who-helped-mahendran-to-leave-the-country-and-abscond-in-hiding-2/

• Credit-Rating Agencies Could Derail Economic Recovery – Jayati Ghosh

‘The world’s three major private credit-rating agencies are using their power to prevent low-income countries from restructuring their debts and stimulating their economies. The case for an independent public ratings agency has never been stronger.’

– project-syndicate.org/commentary/credit-rating-agencies-could-derail-economic-recovery-by-jayati-ghosh-2021-03

• Radical Economic Transformation: A Basic Document: South Africa

‘Amplifies the theme of white monopoly capital and calls for the mass nationalisation of industries including mines, insurance companies, steel and chemical companies (Sasol, ArcelorMittal and Evraz Highveld Steel are named), cement and construction companies’

– dailymaverick.co.za/article/2021-03-14-carl-niehaus-tables-radical-economic-transformation-plan-ahead-of-ace-magashules-campaign-for-anc-president/

• The Paris Commune of 1871, banks and debt

‘The Paris Commune made a fatal error in not taking control of the Bank of France…A popular government cannot sit back and do nothing in face of the world of Finance. It must take radical measures regarding its Central Bank, private banks and debt. If it does not do so, it is condemned to failure.’

– cadtm.org/The-Paris-Commune-of-1871-banks-and-debt

• Paris Commune 150: the economics

‘The government resorted to monetarising the debt, MMT-style in the hope that this would continue to stimulate investment and growth. Marx called this the “Catholicism” of the monetary base, turning the banking system into “the papacy of production” and embraced what Marx called the “protestantism of faith and credit.” Financial crashes ensued as profit growth began to slide. Indeed, we can get an idea of the growing problems for the French capitalist boom in the movement of stock prices and equity returns. There was a fall in profits in the 1859 recession, and in 1864 and 1868 before the calamity of the Franco-Prussian war.’

– thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2021/03/18/paris-commune-150-the-economics/

• It’s not really value versus price, but social need versus private profit – Carney writes a book

– thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2021/03/15/mark-carney-value-or-price/

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C4. Economy (Usually reported in monetary terms)

ee Economy section shows how the economy is usually measured by false indices like GDP, etc, and in monetary terms, confusing money and capital, while calling for privatization and deregulation, their constant moaning about debt and balance of payments without stating the need for industrial production to overcome such issues, etc.

• GR formula to deal with spike in inflation

‘increased production and income are the only ways to deal with the rise in cost of living,’

– ft.lk/top-story/GR-formula-to-deal-with-spike-in-inflation/26-715071

• Rupee dip triggers political standoff, policy response

‘Government and main Opposition politicians traded points over rupee depreciation yesterday, in the backdrop of the Central Bank suspending the requirement for licensed banks to sell 10% of worker remittances and 50% of export earnings to the monetary authority and stopping the purchase of Sri Lanka Development Bonds as part of a multi-pronged effort to stabilise the currency.’

– ft.lk/top-story/Rupee-dip-triggers-political-standoff-policy-response/26-714962

• Central Bank says recent bond yield volatility unwarranted

‘Upward pressure seen on short-term bills and longer-term bond yields since February’

– dailymirror.lk/business__main/Central-Bank-says-recent-bond-yield-volatility-unwarranted/245-208078

• Sri Lanka expects to collect 125mn dollars a month from exporter surrenders

– economynext.com/sri-lanka-expects-to-collect-125mn-dollars-a-month-from-exporter-surrenders-79747/

• Sri Lanka suspends forex surrender requirement

– economynext.com/sri-lanka-suspends-forex-surrender-requirement-79919/

• Sri Lanka rupee strengthens after forex surrender suspension

– economynext.com/sri-lanka-rupee-strengthens-after-forex-surrender-suspension-79920/

• IMF was dragging feet in 2020, Sri Lanka provided relief in Pandemic on its own: Minister

– economynext.com/imf-was-dragging-feet-in-2020-sri-lanka-provided-relief-in-pandemic-on-its-own-minister-79742/

• Banks issued with fresh orders to refrain from buying Lankan ISBs

– dailymirror.lk/business/Banks-issued-with-fresh-orders-to-refrain-from-buying-Lankan-ISBs/215-208054

• Govt. records $156million outflow of long-term loans

– ft.lk/front-page/Govt-records-156-m-outflow-of-long-term-loans/44-714695

• Sri Lanka overnight window borrowings spike amid reserve outflow

– economynext.com/sri-lanka-overnight-window-borrowings-spike-amid-reserve-outflow-79926/

• COPA directs Inland Revenue to collect arrears over Rs 100 billion

‘The Committee also pointed out the importance of merging institutions including the Department of Motor Traffic, Land Registry Office with the Department of Inland Revenue for the tax collection process. The Inland Revenue Department stated that 29 such institutions have been identified…-’

– timesonline.lk/news-online/COPA-directs-Inland-Revenue-to-collect-arrears-over-Rs-100-billion/2-1132567

– ft.lk/front-page/COPA-calls-for-report-of-tax-evading-institutions-by-31-March/44-714792

• Cabinet nod for new taxes

– ft.lk/front-page/Cabinet-nod-for-new-taxes/44-714885

• Ministers, Cabinet bypassed to fast track development

‘State institutions could enter into agreements through Ministry Secretary; Treasury Secretary given more powers’

– sundaytimes.lk/210314/news/ministers-cabinet-bypassed-to-fast-track-development-436380.html

• Prime lending rate touches fresh low despite bond yield hike concerns

 – dailymirror.lk/business__main/Prime-lending-rate-touches-fresh-low-despite-bond-yield-hike-concerns/245-207738

• US dollar selling rate surpasses Rs.201

– dailymirror.lk/business_247/US-dollar-selling-rate-surpasses-Rs-201/395-207943

• Sri Lanka rupee quoted slightly firmer at 199.50/200.50 levels in one-week forwards market

– economynext.com/sri-lanka-rupee-quoted-slightly-firmer-at-199-50-200-50-levels-in-one-week-forwards-market-79903/

• Sri Lanka’s economy contracts 3.6% in 2020

– dailymirror.lk/business_247/Sri-Lankas-economy-contracts-3-6-in-2020/395-207887

– bizenglish.adaderana.lk/sri-lanka-economy-shrinks-by-3-6-percent-in-2020/

• CB undertakes comprehensive review on banks’ fees and commissions

– dailymirror.lk/business-news/CB-undertakes-comprehensive-review-on-banks-fees-and-commissions/273-207983

• Cabraal also responsible over bond scams – Wasantha

– newsfirst.lk/2021/03/18/cabraal-also-responsible-over-bond-scams-wasantha/

• People’s Bank of China approves a 10 billion Yuan Currency Swap

– timesonline.lk/news-online/Peoples-Bank-of-China-approves-a-10-billion-Yuan-Currency-Swap/2-1132565

– economynext.com/sri-lanka-loan-from-china-development-bank-close-to-materializing-79801/

• China to play central role in supporting ‘CCC’ rated Sri Lanka, Maldives, Laos: Fitch

– economynext.com/china-to-play-central-role-in-supporting-ccc-rated-sri-lanka-maldives-laos-fitch-79844/

• Korean envoy says Sri Lanka is well-poised to receive FDI

– dailymirror.lk/business-news/Korean-envoy-says-Sri-Lanka-is-well-poised-to-receive-FDI/273-208166

– ft.lk/business/Korean-Ambassador-hosts-BOI-Chief-discusses-trade-and-investments/34-715061

• India steps in to help Sri Lanka out of debt abyss

– sundaytimes.lk/210314/business-times/india-steps-in-to-help-sri-lanka-out-of-debt-abyss-436116.html

• Quiet Indian tycoon Adani beats Musk, Bezos with biggest wealth surge

– ft.lk/front-page/Quiet-Indian-tycoon-Adani-beats-Musk-Bezos-with-biggest-wealth-surge/44-714741

• Mainstream Media News Blackout

‘Subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing of critical importance on the growing tsunami of dark money that is corrupting the U.S court system’

– wallstreetonparade.com/2021/03/the-dark-money-ring-of-charles-koch-and-leonard-leo-gets-an-airing-before-the-u-s-senate-followed-by-a-mainstream-media-news-blackout/

• Global economy to witness “solid rebound” this year: UNCTAD

– dailymirror.lk/business/Global-economy-to-witness-solid-rebound-this-year-UNCTAD/215-208032

_________________________________________________________________________

C5. Workers (Inadequate Stats, Wasteful Transport, Unmodern Plantations, Services)

ee Workers attempts to correct the massive gaps and disinformation about workers, urban and rural and their representatives (trade unions, etc), and to highlight the need for organized worker power

• Railway strike called off over penalising workers for management errors

– dailymirror.lk/breaking_news/14-trains-ran-this-morning-no-plans-for-evening-Control-room/108-208006

– dailymirror.lk/breaking_news/Railway-strike-called-off/108-208028

– timesonline.lk/news-online/Railway-strike-called-off/2-1132634

– newsfirst.lk/2021/03/18/railway-token-strike-called-off-following-discussions/

• JVP: Govt. trying to bribe Railway trade unions

– island.lk/jvp-govt-trying-to-bribe-railway-trade-unions/

• Why are Sri Lanka’s Free Trade Zone Unions unable to fight for better working conditions?

‘Workers, like Dandeniya and Thushara are part of hybrid form of NGO-Unions who run welfare activities, raise awareness and even organise strikes.’

– ft.lk/columns/Why-are-Sri-Lanka-s-Free-Trade-Zone-Unions-unable-to-fight-for-better-working-conditions/4-714969

• Poverty reduction needs priority with cohesive export-led growth policy framework – Advocata Colombage

‘The actual number of people living below the poverty line in Sri Lanka is about 10 times bigger than the mere 4.1% of population, as reflected in official statistics… nearly 50% of the population live below the poverty line.’

– ft.lk/columns/Poverty-reduction-needs-to-be-prioritised-with-cohesive-export-led-growth-policy-framework/4-714776

• ‘Hunger needs to be overcome before highways and high life’ – Tissa Vitarana

– island.lk/hunger-needs-to-be-overcome-before-highways-and-high-life/

• Private sector workers to call Labour Dept. about lost jobs during pandemic: Labour Minister

– dailymirror.lk/breaking_news/Private-sector-employees-to-contact-Labour-Dept-for-lost-jobs-during-pandemic-Labour-Minister/108-208049

– ft.lk/front-page/Labour-Ministry-seeks-info-on-pandemic-job-losses/44-714970

• 50 shanties gutted at Kajeema Watta, Grandpass,

 – island.lk/50-shanties-gutted/

• 20 plantation companies file writ petition against Rs. 1,000 daily wage

– ft.lk/front-page/20-plantation-companies-file-writ-petition-against-Rs-1-000-daily-wage/44-714795

– newsfirst.lk/2021/03/15/petition-filed-to-invalidate-gazette-increasing-daily-wage/

• Ceylon Workers Congress wants Collective Agreement

‘Of the 44 wages boards in place, the Labour Commissioner noted that the tea and rubber board provides for the highest payment of Rs.900+ Rs.100 for daily wage earners.’

– sundaytimes.lk/210314/business-times/cwc-wants-collective-agreement-435893.html

• Enacting laws alone will not solve problems of female workers

‘There are over 50 labour laws and a large category of labour belongs to the informal sector, where labour laws are not applicable to categories such as domestic servants employed in households;

– sundaytimes.lk/210314/business-times/enacting-laws-alone-will-not-solve-problems-of-female-workers-435913.html

• Sri Lanka 1 of 3 countries in Asia where women migrants constitute 60-70% of legal migrants;

– ft.lk/columns/Gender-gaps-in-economic-opportunities-and-political-participation/4-714903

• 44 years after dismantling welfare state, workers have lost security of employment

– dailymirror.lk/opinion/Lankas-journey-from-welfare-state-to-unbridled-COL-EDITORIAL/172-207702

• Women’s collectives scaled up through unions and federations provide multiple possibilities

– dailymirror.lk/opinion/Womens-Co-operation/172-207703

• More SL women need to take up vocational training – Dullas

– island.lk/more-sl-women-need-to-take-up-vocational-training-dullas/

• Teachers’ Union demand withdrawal of political appointments.

– dailymirror.lk/caption_story/Protest-outside-Education-Ministry/110-208138

– dailymirror.lk/breaking_news/Heavy-traffic-reported-along-Battaramulla-Pelawatte-road-due-to-protest/108-208105

– newsfirst.lk/2021/03/19/teachers-unions-clash-opposite-education-ministry/

• Prof. Ratnasekera: 33% increase in annual University intake a daunting challenge

– island.lk/prof-ratnasekera-33-increase-in-annual-intake-a-daunting-challenge/

• Underfunding public education system will pave way for more privatization

– island.lk/funding-fallacies-in-education/

• Group urges Japanese immigration bureau to reveal truth behind Sri Lankan detainee’s death

– adaderana.lk/news/72298/sri-lankan-woman-dies-of-emaciation-in-japanese-immigration-detention-facility

– lankaweb.com/news/items/2021/03/19/group-urges-japanese-immigration-bureau-to-reveal-truth-behind-sri-lankan-detainees-death/

• George E De Silva, ‘Father of the Rural Health Scheme’ – Amunugama

‘He was supported by Dr S.A. Wickremasinghe then of the LSSP and later of the Communist Party’

– sundaytimes.lk/210314/sunday-times-2/reflections-on-the-covid-19-pandemic-and-the-rational-path-to-modernisation-436156.html

• Channel practice: How it all began and evolved

‘1974 Government doctors were banned from doing private practice. This led to the resignation\retirement of several popular specialists who continued to practise in the private sector.’

– sundaytimes.lk/210314/plus/letters-to-the-editor-435857.html

• Russian House Colombo hosts parley on women’s contribution towards development

‘Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in the world to conquer space, was a Russian. Sirimavo Bandaranaike, a Sri Lankan, was the world’s first woman Prime Minister.’

– island.lk/russian-house-in-colombo-hosts-parley-on-womens-contribution-towards-development-of-modern-society/

• India Bank Employees Strike Work, Farmers and TUs Join Protest Against Privatisation

– newsclick.in/As-Bank-Employees-Strike-Work-Farmers-TUs-Join-Protest-Against-Privatisation

• Women will not reach parity at the pinnacle of power for another 130 years, predicts UN

– sundaytimes.lk/210314/sunday-times-2/women-will-not-reach-parity-at-the-pinnacle-of-power-for-another-130-years-predicts-un-436160.html

• UN forced labour drive hits target with backing of 50 nations

– bizenglish.adaderana.lk/u-n-forced-labour-drive-hits-target-with-backing-of-50-nations/

• Ending Poverty in the United States

“The biggest problem is the absence of an increased minimum wage.”

– blackagendareport.com/freedom-rider-ending-poverty-united-states

• Wall Street vs. Workers

‘Wall Street’s 2008 crisis cost the economy tens of trillions of dollars and destroyed 53% of Black wealth in the country’

– wallstreetonparade.com/2021/03/wall-street-vs-workers/

• Sri Lankan Children & US White Supremacism

– dailymirror.lk/opinion/WHEN-YOUR-CHILD-ENCOUNTERS-RACISM/172-208184

• Leading corporates come on board Interbrand and Daily FT International Women’s Day event

‘NDB, Singer, Nawata, John Keells Properties, Sri Lanka Insurance Corporation, Supreme Flora, Cinnamon Grand,Citrus Events Worldwide and You by the Wax Museum will partner…’

– ft.lk/front-page/Leading-corporates-come-on-board-Interbrand-and-Daily-FT-International-Women-s-Day-event/44-714993

• Guangzhou 1927: The Paris Commune of the East

– newsclick.in/Guangzhou-1927-The-Paris-Commune-of-the-East

_________________________________________________________________________

C6. Agriculture (Robbery of rural home market; Machines, if used, mainly imported)

ee Agriculture emphasizes the failure to industrialize on an agriculture that keeps the cultivator impoverished under moneylender and merchant, and the need to protect the rural home market. Also, importation of agricultural machinery, lack of rural monetization and commercialization, etc.

• Dudley Sirisena and State Minister Siripala Gamlath among millers who control rice market. ‘Getting the duo to release some of their paddy stocks will be half the battle in overcoming the artificial shortage of rice…will be able to bring down the rice prices immediately, and prevent foreign exchange being spent on rice imports.’

– island.lk/roaring-millers-and-whining-lions/

• Farmers have lost their traditional lands, not an environmental disaster to provide a solution

– dailymirror.lk/breaking_news/Govts-policies-collapse-if-people-lose-trust-in-its-actions-President/108-208102

• “Discussion with the Village” in Nuwara Eliya on Saturday (20)

‘in the Yombuweltenna village in Walapane Divisional Secretariat Division of Nuwara Eliya District.’

– newsfirst.lk/2021/03/20/discussion-with-the-village-in-nuwara-eliya-on-saturday-20/

• Ministry of Water Supply to conduct survey into Drinking Water Sources

– newsfirst.lk/2021/03/19/ministry-of-water-supply-to-conduct-survey-into-drinking-water-sources/

• Parliament went under water on two occasions.

– island.lk/a-dam-across-the-diyawanna-oya/

• Protest over handing Nindagam lands of the Galgamuwe Viharaya to multinational companies

– newsfirst.lk/2021/03/14/protest-against-handing-over-nindagam-lands-of-the-galgamuwe-viharaya-to-multinational-companies/

• Rs. 60 m loss due to irregularities in water project: COPA

– ft.lk/front-page/Rs-60-m-loss-due-to-irregularities-in-water-project-COPA/44-714694

• Fallow paddy fields in Katana cultivated after 40 years

– sundaytimes.lk/210314/news/fallow-paddy-fields-in-katana-cultivated-after-40-years-436309.html

• Coconut as food grade fibre? What the rats tell us

– sundaytimes.lk/210314/plus/coconut-as-food-grade-fibre-what-the-rats-tell-us-435843.html

• JVP files FR petition before SC over sugar scam

 “The petitioners allege that This is undoubtedly the biggest scam in the history of Sri Lanka. The money the government has lost from this case is much higher than the infamous bond scam”

– ft.lk/front-page/JVP-files-FR-petition-before-SC-over-sugar-scam/44-714697

– sundaytimes.lk/210314/business-times/new-faces-new-scam-436109.html

– newsfirst.lk/2021/03/15/sugar-scam-vs-bond-scam-the-similarities/

– dailymirror.lk/news-features/Johny-Johny-Yes-Papa/131-207877

• Impose excess profit tax to recover sugar scam losses, UNP urges govt

– economynext.com/impose-excess-profit-tax-to-recover-sugar-scam-losses-unp-urges-govt-79783/

– newsfirst.lk/2021/03/16/ciaboc-launch-investigation-into-sugar-scam/

• Finance Ministry admits Rs. 15.9 billion “foregone revenue” on sugar imports

– sundaytimes.lk/210314/news/finance-ministry-admits-rs-15-9-billion-foregone-revenue-on-sugar-imports-436376.html

– island.lk/bitter-sugar/

• Sri Lanka rubber plantations face devastation from Pestalotiopsis leaf disease

– economynext.com/sri-lanka-rubber-plantations-face-devastation-from-pestalotiopsis-leaf-disease-79911/

• Tea production up in February

– timesonline.lk/business/Tea-production-up-in-February/10-1132640

– ft.lk/front-page/February-tea-crop-up-23-low-growns-soar-to-5-year-high/44-715073

– ft.lk/front-page/Tea-fetches-highest-ever-FOB-value-of-Rs-940-09-per-kilo/44-715081

• The Friedrich Naumann Foundation to Host an Online Dialogue on Tea

‘Tea is the most consumed beverage in the world, second only to water… Biodiversity Sri Lanka Platform which was pioneered by Dilmah Conservation together with the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce and IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature).

– island.lk/the-friedrich-naumann-foundation-to-host-an-online-dialogue-on-tea/

• Destructive Fake Eco Posts being circulated. Is the JVP responsible?.

– lankaweb.com/news/items/2021/03/19/destructive-fake-posts-being-circulated-is-the-jvp-responsible/

• Island of islands

‘many offshore small islands and islets, which by one account number over 100 , varying in size from the largest Mannar to islets like Sinigama and Werallaiya.’

– island.lk/island-of-islands/

• 855 billion sachets used every year globally by food and home care brands

– ft.lk/columns/Sri-Lanka-s-sachet-addiction/4-714972

• Rescuing trapped wild elephants

– sundaytimes.lk/210314/plus/a-jumbo-task-that-can-be-done-more-humanely-435848.html

• Delays in gazetting proposed Managed Elephant Reserve in Hambantota Power struggle keeping farmers’ requests at bay?

 – dailymirror.lk/news-features/Delays-in-gazetting-proposed-Managed-Elephant-Reserve-in-Hambantota-Power-struggle-keeping-farmers/131-207787

• More farmers demand solution to human-elephant conflict

– newsfirst.lk/2021/03/18/more-farmers-demand-solution-to-human-elephant-conflict/

• No construction projects within the locale of Sinharaja: CEA

 – dailymirror.lk/top_story/No-construction-projects-within-the-locale-of-Sinharaja-CEA/155-207785

• No EIA report for constructions in Sinharaja – CEA Chairman

– newsfirst.lk/2021/03/15/no-eia-report-for-constructions-in-sinharaja-cea-chairman/

• Sinharaja deforestation stirs up massive discourse

– newsfirst.lk/2021/03/18/sinharaja-deforestation-stirs-up-massive-discourse/

– newsfirst.lk/2021/03/18/video-waterway-blocked-for-pool-inside-controversial-site-in-sinharaja/

– island.lk/now-govt-said-no-approval-given-to-remove-trees/

– dailymirror.lk/news-features/Police-questions-young-environmental-activist-Little-Bhagya-unmoved-by-undemocratic-forces/131-208063

– island.lk/sinharaja-in-danger/

• Dynamite blasting kills critically endangered Sea Cow

 – island.lk/dynamite-blasting-kills-critically-endangered-sea-cow/

• “Sri Lanka’s coral reef has turned into a grave-yard,” – Divers Union

– newsfirst.lk/2021/03/15/video-sri-lankas-coral-reef-has-turned-into-a-grave-yard-divers-union/

• Environmental destruction near Ma Oya

– newsfirst.lk/2021/03/19/environmental-destruction-near-ma-oya/

• Govt instructs to take down Ecocide mural ahead of protest

– dailymirror.lk/top_story/Govt-instructs-to-take-down-Ecocide-mural-ahead-of-protest/155-208093

– economynext.com/environmental-activists-cry-foul-as-climate-action-event-allegedly-disrupted-79948/

• Destruction of forests and water ways of Sri Lanka by private companies SJB raise questions

– dailymirror.lk/print/front_page/Destruction-of-forests-and-water-ways-of-Sri-Lanka-by-private-companies-SJB-will-raise-questions-in/238-208145

• Demand to release elephant in Canadian zoo

 – timesonline.lk/news-online/Demand-to-release-elephant-in-Canadian-zoo/2-1132596

• Ghana will no longer export cocoa to Switzerland

‘More than 57% of the cocoa beans used in producing Swiss chocolate comes from Ghana’

– youtube.com/watch?v=OXHtlJRircQ

• Cuba and Venezuela sign bilateral agricultural agreement

 ‘A new cooperation project to promote expansion and use of moringa, thitonia, mulberry and other grasses for animal fodder in Venezuela, which includes exchange of knowledge and production support in areas of agricultural management and agro-industrial transformation to manufacture animal feed.’

– en.granma.cu/mundo/2021-03-12/cuba-and-venezuela-sign-bilateral-agricultural-agreement

• Every fifth child faces water scarcity globally: UNICEF report

– island.lk/every-fifth-child-faces-water-scarcity-globally-unicef-report/

_____________________________________________________________________

C7. Industry (False definitions, anti-industrial sermons, rentier/entrepreneur, etc)

ee Industry notes the ignorance about industrialization (versus handicraft and manufacture), the dependence on importing foreign machinery, the need to make machines that make machines, build a producer culture. False definitions of industry, entrepreneur, etc, abound, and the need for a holistic political, economic and military strategy to overcome the domination by merchants and moneylenders.

• Half a Million Jobs Lost? – Motor Trade: Is there a way out?

– lankaweb.com/news/items/2021/03/14/half-a-million-jobs-lost-motor-trade-is-there-a-way-out

• Industrial production ploughs ahead in Jan. indicating manufacturing revival

‘Cheaper imports don’t mean anything when people earn meager incomes due to loss of well paying jobs due to unrestrained trade liberalisation. The absence of robust and sustainable manufacturing bases left a large swath of Sri Lankans unskilled, forcing more than a million in their prime working ages to engage in unproductive taxi driving and another two million to seek foreign employment. Meanwhile, local enterprises experience an acute labour shortage. Extremely higher labour costs have made some small businesses to close shops.’

– dailymirror.lk/business-news/Industrial-production-ploughs-ahead-in-Jan-indicating-manufacturing-revival/273-207736

– ft.lk/business/PMI-expands-in-Feb-on-higher-production-and-new-orders/34-714813

• Sri Lanka container transshipment down 3.3-pct, domestic down 14.4-pct

– economynext.com/sri-lanka-container-transshipment-down-3-3-pct-domestic-down-14-4-pct-79901/

• Colombo Port’s West Container Terminal must not be given to India

– newsfirst.lk/2021/03/14/approval-of-ag-sought-for-west-container-terminal-deal/

• Keells disclosure on development of WCT

– bizenglish.adaderana.lk/jkh-disclosure-on-development-of-wct/

– ft.lk/front-page/JKH-makes-formal-disclosure-to-CSE-on-WCT/44-714799

• Adani goes public on Colombo Port’s West Terminal deal

‘APSEZ, is the largest port developer and operator in India with 12 strategically located ports and terminals – Mundra, Dahej, Tuna and Hazira in Gujarat, Dhamra in Odisha, Mormugao in Goa, Visakhapatnam, Gangavaram and Krishnapatnam in Andhra Pradesh, Dighi in Maharashtra and Kattupalli and Ennore in Tamil Nadu – represent 24% of the country’s total port capacity, handling large amounts of cargo from both coastal areas and the vast hinterland. The company is also developing a transhipment port at Vizhinjam, Kerala…’

– ft.lk/top-story/Adani-goes-public-on-Colombo-Port-s-West-Terminal-deal/26-714800

– ft.lk/front-page/Gautam-Adani-says-thank-you-to-SL/44-714798

– lankaweb.com/news/items/2021/03/15/adani-ports-led-consortium-to-develop-west-container-terminal-in-colombo

– economynext.com/adani-india-to-have-51-of-sri-lanka-port-terminal-jkh-a-material-stake-79796/

• SL Adani-WCT terminal is a private deal without tender, not govt-to-govt: opposition

– economynext.com/sri-lankas-adani-wct-terminal-is-a-private-deal-without-tender-not-govt-to-govt-opposition-79958/

• Sri Lanka LGP distributors should return favour given during Covid-19 crisis: Basil

– economynext.com/sri-lanka-lgp-distributors-should-return-favour-given-during-covid-19-crisis-basil-79902/

• Mannar Wind Not Linked to CEB National Grid

– island.lk/ceb-admits-mannar-wind-power-farm-not-fully-connected-to-national-grid/

• CEB launches Nawalapitiya transmission project for renewable energy with French

‘A long-term loan of EURO 30 million (nearly Rs. 6,000 million) has been provided by the French Institute of Financial Development for this purpose. Rs. 1,500 million has been allocated by the CEB.’

– island.lk/ceb-launches-transmission-development-project-for-renewable-energy-with-french-assistance/

• The Elephants in the Room – Electricity and Transport Energy

‘tremendous drain on foreign exchange due to dependence on imported fossil fuels for transport’

– island.lk/the-elephants-in-the-room-electricity-and-transport-energy/

– ft.lk/columns/Sri-Lanka-s-power-expansion-plan-lacks-vision-and-strategic-thinking/4-714985

• The Ceylon Chamber of Commerce signs MOU with McLarens Maritime Academy

‘where CCC appointed surveyors will have an opportunity to undertake training programmes to enhance their technical know-how in the fields of bunker and draught survey… McLarens Group of companies offers Maritime and Logistics sector activities, with a dominant presence in Petroleum & Energy, Manufacturing & Distribution, Property & Strategic Investment and Leisure. They also represent some of the world’s largest Liners, a feeder line and several NVOCC operators with an overall approximate of 35- 40% throughput of the container volumes in Sri Lanka. The Group owns and operates its very own fleet of vessels, tugs and boats, along with the largest bunker barge fleet in the country. McLarens Shipping Limited (MSL) and GAC Shipping Limited (GAC) of the McLarens Group of Companies are listed P&I Correspondents in Sri Lanka, for International Group of P&I Clubs and other Fixed Premium products.’

– bizenglish.adaderana.lk/the-ceylon-chamber-of-commerce-signs-mou-with-mclarens-maritime-academy/

• Raising of the Kotmale dam – misconceptions and facts

‘Kotmale reservoir should have been built to the full capacity at the first instance’

– island.lk/raising-of-the-kotmale-dam-misconceptions-and-facts/

• 3 new Colombo city railway lines to ease traffic congestion

‘… from Ragama to Kirulapone via Colombo Fort, the other route to Kelaniya via Moratuwa, Piliyandala, Narahenpita and the third to Hunupitiya (Wattala) via Kottawa, Pannipitiya and Thalawathugoda.’

– sundaytimes.lk/210314/business-times/3-new-colombo-city-railway-lines-to-ease-traffic-congestion-436123.html

• CB requests financial institutions provide leasing concessions for passenger transportation services

‘Businesses and individuals engaged in providing public passenger transportation, private passenger transportation such as school transport service, office transport service, taxis including three wheelers, etc. and providing passenger transportation services to tourism sector are eligible to benefit from the latest support scheme. Performing lease facilities including lease facilities under moratorium as at 31 March obtained by eligible borrowers will qualify for this extension.’

– bizenglish.adaderana.lk/cb-requests-financial-institutions-to-provide-leasing-concessions-for-passenger-transportation-services/

– ft.lk/front-page/Fresh-support-to-COVID-hit-passenger-transportation-sector/44-714745

• SriLankan Airlines sues Airbus for $ 1 b

– ft.lk/top-story/SriLankan-Airlines-sues-Airbus-for-1-b/26-714934

• SriLankan Engineering signs maintenance agreement with FITS Aviation

– bizenglish.adaderana.lk/srilankan-engineering-signs-maintenance-agreement-with-fits-aviation/

• Kingslake to support German Siemen Tech GRI’s next growth to increase rubber exports

– bizenglish.adaderana.lk/kingslake-solutions-to-support-gris-next-phase-of-growth-with-aim-to-increase-rubber-exports/

• Haycarb’s bottom line likely to boost with Tesla’s electric vehicles push worldwide

– island.lk/haycarbs-bottom-line-likely-to-boost-with-teslas-electric-vehicles-push-worldwide/

• SL looks to award initial 5G spectrum bands end of this year

– dailymirror.lk/business__main/SL-looks-to-award-initial-5G-spectrum-bands-end-of-this-year/245-207986

• Expolanka Holdings acquires three US logistics companies

‘to expand its logistics operations based out of New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport’

– island.lk/expolanka-holdings-acquires-three-us-logistics-companies/

• Mobility in Sri Lanka: Beyond the import ban

‘Prior to the import ban, Sri Lanka was importing around US$ 1.5 billion worth of motor vehicles annually. The expenditure on petroleum imports (for motor vehicles) was $2.9 billion in 2018. Our travel speed within the city of Colombo was estimated by the University of Moratuwa as 8 kmh’

– sundaytimes.lk/210314/business-times/mobility-in-sri-lanka-beyond-the-import-ban-435916.html

• Utility vehicle import not suspended: Finance Min. Sec

– dailymirror.lk/breaking_news/Utility-vehicle-import-not-suspended-Finance-Min-Sec/108-207689

• AMW Manufacturing expands tyre capacity with positive outlook for 2021

‘… in close partnership with the Al-Futtaim Group, one of the world’s leading multinationals, originating in the UAE’

– ft.lk/business/AMW-Manufacturing-expands-tyre-capacity-with-positive-outlook-for-2021/34-714812

• Local corrugated carton industry calls for relief from skyrocketing paper prices

‘There are more than 40 corrugated carton manufacturers, with about 10 of them making up over 70% of the market share. Many manufacturers are equipped with fully-automatic, state-of-the-art plants…’

– ft.lk/front-page/Local-corrugated-carton-industry-calls-for-relief-from-skyrocketing-paper-prices/44-714794

• Local cement production extends gains to January after record 2020 production

 – dailymirror.lk/business-news/Local-cement-production-extends-gains-to-January-after-record-2020-production/273-207734

• Japan’s Sanritsu Deco has newest branch at the BMC (Building Materials Corporation)

– timesonline.lk/business/Japan-Gedara-expands-partnership-with-BMC-to-serve-better-to-Sri-Lankan-construction-industry/10-1132564

• Import substitution boosts profitability for Royal Ceramics

– island.lk/import-substitution-boosts-profitability-for-royal-ceramics/

• Tiles & sanitary ware prices destroying SME contractors & home builders: Ceylon Institute of Builders

‘Wants Govt. to resolve issue by easing import restrictions’

– ft.lk/front-page/Tiles-and-sanitary-ware-prices-destroying-SME-contractors-and-home-builders-CIOB/44-714698

• Loans, leasing concessions for tourism sector extended by another 6 months: Tourism Ministry

– dailymirror.lk/breaking_news/Loans-leasing-concessions-for-tourism-sector-extended-by-another-6-months-Tourism-Ministry/108-207694

• Sri Lanka ranks as worst place for internet quality

– dailymirror.lk/business-news/Sri-Lanka-ranks-as-worst-place-for-internet-quality/273-207732

• Federation of Information Tech’s PickMe CEO launches 1^st Internet Day with Microsoft India

– dailymirror.lk/business-news/Sri-Lanka-to-launch-first-Internet-Day-with-Indian-Co-Chair/273-208167

• Sri Lanka to introduce “unlimited” internet not subject to FUP: regulator

– economynext.com/sri-lanka-to-introduce-unlimited-internet-not-subject-to-fup-regulator-79936/

• HUTCH demonstrates fastest 5G experience in Sri Lanka

‘its parent company, CK Hutchison Holdings, one of the first telecom operators to launch 5G worldwide’

– bizenglish.adaderana.lk/hutch-demonstrates-fastest-5g-experience-in-sri-lanka/

• SAARC Startup Awards recognises Hatch as ‘The Best Co-Working Space 2020’

– ft.lk/front-page/SAARC-Startup-Awards-recognises-Hatch-as-The-Best-Co-Working-Space-2020/44-714796

• Indian Navy’s Indigenisation Push Gets Boost with AIP System for Submarines

‘The Indian Navy had embarked on a determined process of transitioning from a ship-buying force to a ship-building one by 2030’

– newsclick.in/indian-navy-indigenisation-push-gets-boost-AIP-system-submarines

• The Quad Critical and Emerging Technology Working Group

– whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/03/12/fact-sheet-quad-summit/

• Zim-Cuba to build pharmaceutical plant

‘Cuba and Zimbabwe have set in motion a plan to set up a local State-of-the-art pharmaceutical plant, in a development expected to improve local drug supplies in the long term… Cuba has a highly developed biotech industry, which exports vaccines and medicines for diseases such as meningitis, hepatitis B and lung cancer to more than 40 countries.’

– sundaymail.co.zw/zim-cuba-to-build-pharmaceutical-plant

• Cuba Working on a ‘People’s Vaccine’: the US and the World Should get Behind it

– newsclick.in/Cuba-Working-People-Vaccine-US-World-Should-get-Behind-it

• China, Russia team up for final frontier

‘Chinese lunar capsule Chang’e 5 landed on moon’s surface on December 1, 2020 and returned to earth a fortnight later with the first fresh samples of rock and debris from the moon in more than 40 years.’

– indianpunchline.com/china-russia-team-up-for-final-frontier/

• International Space Station releases 2.9-TON pallet of battery junk into orbit

– dailymirror.lk/caption_story/ISS-releases-2-9-TON-pallet-of-batteries-into-orbit/110-207819

• Gold worth billions smuggled out of Africa

– reuters.com/investigates/special-report/gold-africa-smuggling/

______________________________________________________________________

C8. Finance (Making money from money, banks, lack of investment in modernity)

ee Finance tracks the effects of financialization, the curious role of ratings agencies, false indices, etc., and the rule of moneylenders.

• Sri Lanka to appoint foreclosure ombudsman, change mortgage laws: PM

‘Many small individuals who do not have assets and are not considered for loans are able to use lease to buy a vehicle due to quick seizure available to recover the vehicle and repay depositors. Most Sri Lankan finance companies have fallen not due to leases but due to property investments.’

– economynext.com/sri-lanka-to-appoint-foreclosure-ombudsman-change-mortgage-laws-pm-79803/

• Rate caps hinder banks’ penetration into microfinance sector: HNB chief

– dailymirror.lk/business__main/Rate-caps-hinder-banks-penetration-into-microfinance-sector-HNB-chief/245-208169

• Sri Lanka finance companies loan growth to slow, bad loans to rise – Fitch

– economynext.com/sri-lanka-finance-companies-loan-growth-to-slow-bad-loans-to-rise-79746/

• Return on Equity for all banks have halved during past 4 years

– ft.lk/top-story/ROEs-for-banks-receding/26-714740

• Citizens Development Business Finance raises EUR 5 Mn from Dutch Triodos IM

– bizenglish.adaderana.lk/cdb-raises-eur-5-mn-in-subordinate-debt-from-triodos-im-to-strengthen-tier-ii-capital/
– ft.lk/front-page/CDB-raises-EUR-5-m-in-subordinate-debt-from-Netherland-s-Triodos-IM/44-714744

• Fitch expects India’s Bharti Airtel Sri Lanka Airtel unit to seek M&A

“Airtel Lanka acquired the 900MHz spectrum that was surrendered when Etisalat Lanka and Hutch Lanka merged in 2018.”

– economynext.com/fitch-expects-sri-lanka-airtel-unit-to-seek-ma-79807/

• Fitch confirm Sri Lanka’s Dialog Axiata ‘AAA(lka)’ rating

‘Dialog could receive support from its 83% Malaysia-based parent, Axiata Group Berhad (Axiata), if its SCP were to weaken.’

– economynext.com/sri-lankas-dialog-axiata-aaalka-rating-confirmed-79808

• Banking sector hit hard by the pandemic, but resilient

‘The banking sector holds liquid assets which are threatened or vulnerable in the current currency depreciation setting but bankers say that their foreign exchange profits are retained in foreign currency which will balance this impact.’

– sundaytimes.lk/210314/business-times/banking-sector-hit-hard-by-the-pandemic-but-resilient-435887.html

• NDB turns acquisitive; shores up capital for aggressive growth

– dailymirror.lk/business-news/NDB-turns-acquisitive-shores-up-capital-for-aggressive-growth/273-208073

• Depositors of failed finance companies struggle to survive

– sundaytimes.lk/210314/business-times/depositors-of-failed-finance-companies-struggle-to-survive-435899.html

– ft.lk/front-page/TFC-depositors-appeal-for-Rs-500-000-additional-payment/44-714933

• The Finance depositors seek urgent govt. intervention

– dailymirror.lk/business/The-Finance-depositors-seek-urgent-govt-intervention/215-207942

• Sri Lanka failed finance company depositors to Rs9.8bn extra after insurance increased

– economynext.com/sri-lanka-failed-finance-company-depositors-to-rs9-8bn-extra-after-insurance-increased-79956/

• Public money to bail out Rogue Dealers

‘The fervent hope by those who love this country is that the government like pre- 2015 doesn’t give in to the so-called High Networth Investor (HNWI) ‘pressure’ and bring in the superannuation funds to cut those HNWIs’ losses. Repeat – not to bailout the selfish rogue dealers.’

– sundaytimes.lk/210314/business-times/wise-decisions-the-game-changer-at-cse-436120.html

• Larger firms dominating market due to Covid-19: IMF

– dailymirror.lk/business/Larger-firms-dominating-market-due-to-Covid-19-IMF/215-207881

• Dollar selling rate of Rs. 200.06 having investors worried

– island.lk/dollar-selling-rate-of-rs-200-06-having-investors-worried/

• Sri Lanka stocks end 1.62-pct lower on continued selling pressure

– economynext.com/sri-lanka-stocks-end-1-62-pct-lower-on-continued-selling-pressure-79918/

• Shares end lower for a fourth straight session

– island.lk/shares-end-lower-for-a-fourth-straight-session/

• Retail Investors Lose Consistently When They Actively Trade their Own Account

– wallstreetonparade.com/2021/03/janet-yellens-plunge-protection-team-has-142-billion-to-play-with/

• Destroying Investor Confidence

– wallstreetonparade.com/2021/03/sal-arnuk-of-themis-trading-plans-to-bury-robinhood-citadel-and-sec-at-house-hearing-today/

• Goldman Sachs Just Landed in the Cross-Hairs of the Senate Banking Committee

– wallstreetonparade.com/2021/03/goldman-sachs-just-landed-in-the-cross-hairs-of-the-senate-banking-committee/

• Trading retail investors into poverty

– wallstreetonparade.com/2021/03/congressman-andy-barr-wants-robinhoods-young-day-traders-to-be-free-to-trade-themselves-into-poverty-while-all-of-his-own-money-remains-professionally-managed/

___________________________________________________________________________________

C9. Business (Rentierism: money via imports, real-estate, tourism, insurance, fear, privatization)

ee Business aka ee Rentier focuses on diversions of the oligarchy, the domination by a merchant mafia, making money from unproductive land sales, tourism, insurance, advertising, etc. – the charade of press releases disguised as ‘news’

• City of Merchants

– ceylontoday.lk/news/city-of-merchants

• Germany’s GLX Garage links SL SMEs to catalyse growth

‘facilitated by GIZ SME Sector Development program through the funding received for COVID 19 response by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).’

– ft.lk/business/GLX-Garage-links-Sri-Lankan-SMEs-with-world-class-knowledge-to-catalyse-growth/34-714938

• Boston Consulting Group South Asia to deliver keynote at Daily FT and ICCSL webinar

– ft.lk/business/Prateek-to-deliver-keynote-at-Daily-FT-and-ICCSL-webinar/34-714936

• Softlogic Life ranked third largest in the life insurance market,

– ft.lk/financial-services/Softlogic-Life-s-2020-Annual-Report-Asia-s-first-to-obtain-external-assurance-on-integrated-reporting/42-714996

• Keell’s Jit Gunaratne joins Lanka Tiles Board

‘Board of Lanka Tiles Plc comprises K.D.D. Perera (Chairman), A.M. Weerasinghe (Deputy Chairman), J.A.P.M. Jayasekera (Managing Director), A.M.L. Page, T.G. Thoradeniya, K.D.G. Gunaratne, S. Selliah, J.A.N.R. Adhihetty, S.M. Liyanage, S.R. Jayaweera, J.R. Gunaratne, and G.A.R.D. Prasanna (alternate to D. Perera).’

– ft.lk/business/Jit-Gunaratne-joins-Lanka-Tiles-Board/34-714750

• AIA’s 5% growth in operating profit after tax

– island.lk/aia-reports-strong-2020-financial-results/

• Sri Lanka’s real estate market transitioning from buyers’ market to sellers’ market

‘Chamber of Construction Industries of Sri Lanka President (Eng.) Ranjith Gunatilleke joined Mitsui Construction Co. Ltd., in 1979 and served as the Chief Engineer until the formation of Sanken Construction (an associate company of Mitsui). He currently holds the position of Deputy Chairman of the Sanken Group.’

– ft.lk/front-page/Sri-Lanka-s-real-estate-market-transitioning-from-buyers-market-to-sellers-market/44-714911

• Blue Diamonds Jewellery regains sparkle, records profits after a decade

– ft.lk/front-page/Blue-Diamonds-Jewellery-regains-sparkle-records-profits-after-a-decade/44-714974

• Russian top billionaire Andrey Melnichenko visits Port City Colombo

– bizenglish.adaderana.lk/russian-top-billionaire-andrey-melnichenko-visits-port-city-colombo/

• Minister of Education gifts Milo campaign winners

– island.lk/minister-of-education-gifts-milo-campaign-winners/

• George Steuart Teas sponsors VIP foreign dignitaries’ special Ceylon Tea gift boxes

– ft.lk/business/George-Steuart-Teas-sponsors-VIP-foreign-dignitaries-special-Ceylon-Tea-gift-boxes/34-714984

• Dialog powers entire spectrum of public health officials as official connectivity provider

– island.lk/dialog-powers-entire-spectrum-of-public-health-officials-as-official-connectivity-provider/

• China Targets Hong Kong Wealth Gap, Housing Woes After Political Purge

– wsj.com/articles/china-targets-hong-kong-wealth-gap-housing-woes-after-political-purge-11615813651

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C10. Politics (Anti-parliament discourse, unelected constitution)

ee Politics points to the constant media diversions and the mercantile and financial forces behind the political actors, of policy taken over by private interests minus public oversight.

• Campaign expenditure: How JRJ Constitution paved way for corruption

‘the 1978 Constitution had abolished specific laws meant to ensure financial integrity of lawmakers’

– island.lk/campaign-expenditure-how-jrj-constitution-paved-way-for-corruption/

• US Karu slams EC, demands new Constitution without dictatorial features in 20 A

– island.lk/karu-slams-ec-demands-new-constitution-without-dictatorial-features-in-20-a/

• The General Election of 1956 Part 3A

‘The naval port of Trincomalee, the Air base at Katunayake and military camps at Diyatalawa were retained by England, when England withdrew from Ceylon.’

– lankaweb.com/news/items/2021/03/14/the-general-election-of-1956-part-3a/

• The General Election of 1956 Part 3B

‘The MEP government set up Conciliation Boards , Labour tribunals, The Employees Provident Fund and passed the Prevention of Social Disabilities Act, No. 21 of 1957.These laws and bodies are now taken for granted. The pioneer role of the MEP is forgotten.’

– lankaweb.com/news/items/2021/03/14/the-general-election-of-1956-part-3b/

• The General Election of 1956 Part 3C

‘A National Planning Council was formed it. This was a first for the country. This Council brought out Ceylon’s first Ten Year Plan for 1959-68. This Plan was prepared after consultation with economists such as Joan Robinson, Nicholas Kaldor, John Kenneth Galbraith, and Gunnar Myrdal’

– lankaweb.com/news/items/2021/03/14/the-general-election-of-1956-part-3c/

• SLFP yet to decide on PC polls; rank and file have concerns: Rohana Lakshman

– economynext.com/slfp-yet-to-decide-on-pc-polls-rank-and-file-have-concerns-rohana-lakshman-79914/

• In search of a ruthlessly efficient leader – SJB celebrates first anniversary

– dailymirror.lk/opinion/In-search-of-a-ruthlessly-efficient-leader/172-207970

• 200 protests will be held during the coming days: Opposition Leader

– dailymirror.lk/breaking_news/200-protests-will-be-held-during-the-coming-days-Opposition-Leader/108-207769

• Another knock on the head for the Public Service – Sunday Times Editorial

‘SLIDA (Sri Lanka Institute of Development Administration) [is] taking over the conducting of examinations for recruitment and promotions in the public sector, from the Examinations Department.’

– sundaytimes.lk/210314/editorial/another-knock-on-the-head-for-the-public-service-436221.html

• Were Jesus and his Followers the First Black Panthers?

– blackagendareport.com/were-jesus-and-his-followers-first-black-panthers

• The future of L.A. is here. Robin D.G. Kelley’s radical imagination shows us the way

– latimes.com/lifestyle/image/story/2021-03-17/robin-dg-kelley-black-marxism-protests-la-politics

• The Paris Commune at 150

– tribunemag.co.uk/2021/03/the-paris-commune-at-150?

• ‘Nietzsche, Aristocratic Rebel: Intellectual Biography and Critical Balance-Sheet’ by Losurdo

– marxandphilosophy.org.uk/reviews/18867_nietzsche-the-aristocratic-rebel-intellectual-biography-and-critical-balance-sheet-by-domenico-losurdo-reviewed-by-matt-sharpe

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C11. Media (Mis/Coverage of economics, technology, science and art)

ee Media shows how corporate media monopoly determines what is news, art, culture, etc. The media is part of the public relations (corporate propaganda) industry. The failure to highlight our priorities, the need to read between the lines. To set new perspectives and priorities.

• ‘Igniting Conservation through Art’ by Benjamin Von Wong today

‘WNPS and the High Commission of Canada share the perspective that young people are key to protecting the planet…WNPS’ Youth Workshop today, which will focus on the intersection between art and environmental activism’

– ft.lk/lifestyle/Igniting-Conservation-through-Art-by-Benjamin-Von-Wong-today/8-714077

• Begin a discussion on the rational path to modernization – Amunugama

‘Despite the carping criticism, particularly from social media, Sri Lanka is one of the few countries which has survived the Corona epidemic relatively unscathed.’

– island.lk/reflections-on-the-covid-pandemic/

• Alleged abduction of journo: Is President going to let abduction start again? – Harsha

 – dailymirror.lk/breaking_news/Alleged-abduction-of-journo-Is-President-going-to-let-abduction-start-again-Harsha/108-207764

• Police arrest journalist who claimed he was assaulted

– economynext.com/police-arrest-journalist-who-claimed-he-was-assaulted-79915/

• FMM calls the Press Council flawed and wants it abolished not restructured

‘Journalists and Media activists remembered fellow workers who have been killed…

– economynext.com/fmm-calls-the-press-council-flawed-and-wants-it-abolished-not-restructured-79787/

• Indian Film industry renews calls for Govt. support for quicker revival

‘“Indian cinemas are back in action with full capacity and there are new movies that have been released – with many more to be released. However, suppliers are hesitant to distribute here as there is no significant audience to patronise theatres.”’

– ft.lk/front-page/Film-industry-renews-calls-for-Govt-support-for-quicker-revival/44-714929

• Indian consulate in Jaffna to engage more with regional media

– island.lk/indian-consulate-in-jaffna-to-engage-more-with-regional-media/

• The world’s richest man who prefers an ‘austere’ life

‘Azim Premji retired in 2019 as Chairman/CEO of Wipro India, a diversified conglomerate with interests in IT, FMCG, lighting and other’

– ft.lk/columns/The-world-s-richest-man-who-prefers-an-austere-life/4-714778

• The Aftermath of Empire – Reappraisal and Reconciliation – (Part 2)

– island.lk/the-aftermath-of-empire-reappraisal-and-reconciliation-part-2/

• Everyone is respectful to the Queen – Rajan Philips

– island.lk/all-in-a-long-week-from-oprahs-one-shot-to-weerawansas-backstabbing/

• China’s millennials, Generation Z lead nation away from Hollywood films, US culture, US brands

– scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3126180/chinas-millennials-generation-z-leading-nation-away-hollywood

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Our new email address: econenews@gmail.com,

Our blog: eesrilanka.wordpress.com

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