Ransoming Vaccines & the Indispensable Minimum of Murder

blog: eesrilanka.wordpress.com

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

e-Con e-News 06-12 June 2021

In virtually every colonial territory a certain number had to be killed

before the survivors would accept the new prospects.

This might even be said to introduce a new concept into the study of political economy

– the indispensable minimum of murder.

– SBD de Silva, The Political Economy of Underdevelopment

Right after the Gang of 7 (G7) white nations confab this weekend, multinationals in Sri Lanka will host the Unilever-led UN Global Compact Network’s Summit 2021, June 15-16. The summit will feature Michelle Bachelet, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, who wishes us to import capitalist democracy. The summit boasts carefully cherry-picked ‘Heads of State, CEOs of major corporations and UN leaders’ to address ‘global crises of climate change, the Covid-19 global pandemic, worsening social and economic inequality and unchecked corruption in order to offer a roadmap for a sustainable recovery’. (for a list of those involved, see ee Politics)

• The dominant multinationals corporations in the world pay zero taxes, yet spend $billions on ‘lobbying’ governments, i.e., bribing officials and politicians. In Sri Lanka, this bribery aims primarily at undermining state investment in modern production. Their media consistently diverts from this fundamental source of corruption, and spends much electronic ink attacking public enterprises. Much of our surpluses have to pay off the interest on the interest of loans taken to finance wasteful imports. The other loss of surpluses derives from the legal yet corrupt MNC accounting practices (ee Quotes, Conglomerates)

• Not-so-covert foreign military displays were manifest in Sri Lanka last week: Military ships and planes landed in SL from India, USA, France, Switzerland, Australia – all bearing ‘gifts & goodwill’. Notice the positive media coverage accorded to white militaries: The French navy here to see wildlife! The Swiss to ventilate us! The Indians to put out fires. The US to provide ‘aid’ for the fire damage. This was during an investor’s conference post-parliamentary passage of laws governing Colombo Port City, which the white media redbaited as a Chinese plot.

• It’s hard not to be seduced by conspiracy theories: As the country sought to revive the economy, new Covid variants, hatched in England and India, are spread. A leaking Singapore-owned ship diverted from US colony Qatar and Quad-groupie India catches fire spewing deadly toxins, just as the SouthWest monsoon sweeps in from the sea, midst the serenity of the Vesak festival, under a lockdown. It turns out it’s India’s monopoly to deal with such naval emergencies in Sri Lanka. Why haven’t the shipping businesses invested their surpluses in protecting a most valuable asset? Simple. They have no intention.

• This 167th ee marks the 3^rd anniversary of the passing of SBD de Silva to whose work our weekly compilation is dedicated. Apt it is therefore that the government hosted a conference on investment. SB’s work examined the absence of a Sri Lankan class dedicated to investment in capital accumulation. He concluded it’s the state that must play the crucial role by investing in modern industry.

     Who bans investment in what an economy really needs? Who are these ‘underdevelopers’ who profit off our unceasing discontent?

     Just like the Mahavamsa, SB’s Political Economy of Underdevelopment (PEU) needs new chapters added – an ee reader perspicaciously pinpoints. None of SB’s insights into the roots of our underdevelopment are ever discussed by public economists who appear as mere bookie boosters of the import-export plantation system (ee Random Notes)

• The World Bank also does not wish us to invest in modern (machine) production. At this week’s Colombo investment conference, the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation VP recommended the private sector should ‘pivot Sri Lanka’s Development Trajectory’, prioritizing ‘resource-based and light specialized manufacturing industries – as recommended by its upcoming report, The Country Private Sector Diagnostic for Sri Lanka. This is the same WB’s IFC that takes credit for installing the fake garment ‘industry’ in Sri Lanka, where pin, needle, thread, fabric and machines are expensively imported inputs. (ee Economy)

• ‘Thanks Joe, for the AstraZeneca’ was the Wijeya Group’s Sunday Times headline. But the US nor Japan has any such intentions! ‘On May 22, 2 days after Parliament had enacted the controversial Port City Bill which gave legal life to the Chinese-built Port City… US Embassy Spokesperson Nancy VanHorn told the media the US Government was in 2 minds whether to include Lanka to the beneficiaries’ list for a share of the vaccines.’ The Times then claims the US changed their minds, crediting themselves and ex-FM Mangala Sam for speaking to Aunty Sam Power. Nothing is farther from the truth!

• The WB & the G7 – currently meeting in English-colonized Cornwall – are blocking global access to vaccines. Their supine media here, however, still gush praise about the US, Japan & WB’s ‘promises’ to donate vaccines to SL. Maharajah News1^st TV got so excited it broadcast ‘Japan to provide 6 million vaccines’!

     The World Bank and G7 leaders are refusing to suspend intellectual property rights (IPR) by pharmaceutical multinationals, also creating artificial supply shortages. Loud promises of ‘good cop’ US backing a temporary suspension of Covid-19 vaccine patents are belied by ‘bad cop’ England and the EU opposing any such moves.

     Vaccines cannot be made and supplied unless Big Pharma makes big profits – no ‘people’s vaccines’ from the G7, even though much of research & development was funded by public money.

• The media broadcast of US & Japan’s promises to provide vaccines aim to downplay China & Russia’s actual sharing of vaccines and plans to produce them here. The G7 meeting will strengthen their combined white attack on China, but their real aim is to prevent ‘the threat of a good example’. (ee Quotes, Hudson)

     This ‘free’ media here is fully controlled by the import mafia, led by pharma (Hemas), fuel (Exxon), fertilizer (CIC), FMCGs (Unilever). The rising hysteria in the media, spreading misinformation against the government, is mainly to prevent investment in modern production.

• Most countries knew exactly how many people they’d kill with Covid, based on mathematical epidemiology. They then made policies based on political pressure amidst economic shock treatment. Capitalist countries, run by huge banks & corporations, say they oppose government planning. Yet their decisions are guided by research and researchers. They quantify and qualify every step they make to test projected outcomes. (ee Random Notes)

• This ee Focus examines how capitalism aims to survive in the 21^st century, unleashing new strategies to make profits. Dolled up in the fancy drag of sustainability, diversity, inclusivity, etc., corporations aim to sharpen the old swords to decimate the working class, through liberalization, deregulation and privatization.

     The whiteworld’s Gang of 7 gathers its forces, military, political and economic, to overcome what their media claims is a rising ‘China threat’. Meanwhile, we see the rise of fictitious capital, of so-called ‘asset managers’, and ‘private equity’ giants (eg Blackstone who took over Ceylon Glass, with EPF a shareholder), as well as huge unregulated ‘family office’ funds, even larger than modern hedge funds, which also gamble on the fluctuations of stocks, etc.

• ‘Do as I say, Don’t do as I do’ – The Great White Father in Washington is angry. Off-white Grandma India is also angry. The bleached EU (i.e. Germany, France) is angry and may withdraw GSP+. Honorary white Japan is angry. Even our old mate England is angry. According to our media’s pseudo political demographics, this somehow adds up to the entire 7 billion people of this world being mad at us!

     What are they angry about? China. They’re not angry with China; they do big business with China. They’re angry that we may actually learn from China!

     They’re angry about economic policies not dictated by the IMF. They’re against import controls, against strengthening public services, against state sponsorship of modern industry. They’re also unsettled about how we treat each other, so very concerned about majorities and minorities. Especially majorities and minorities they cannot control.

     They feel they can play the Bully in the yard, and want us to choose them as a friend. They also wish to dictate who we choose as our enemies and friends.

     How could these perpetrators of many of history’s and the world’s greatest crimes judge Sri Lanka? It’s easy. It’s whiteness: Nothing sticks to them. They decide memory. They decide the rule. They decide the exception. They wield power to prove that exception proves the rule. They decide who may be exceptional – only they are!

     But wait. They may change their minds. The US suddenly becomes friendly and will provide a small amount of expiring vaccines. But don’t attempt to produce these vaccines, let alone the machinery and the chemicals that make them, and woe be unto any state that initiates and drives such modern production (see ee Focus).    

Contents:

A1. Reader Comments –

• ‘Thanks Joe, for the Astra Zeneca’ is a Lie • What is to be Done? • Simplify ee • Humans Make Machines • Fantastic • Government Must Take over Food Middlemen • Government Dependent on Multinationals • Tamilnadu Cricket • White Chauvinist Media

A2. Quotes of the Week

• SL as Vital Information Hub • Corporate Control of Tech & Markets • China’s Socialist Example is the Threat • Vaccine Fraud • Financial Money-laundering & Rural Rip-off • Mercantilism & Home Market • China’s Protection of Home Market • Paper Profits • US Black & White Brain Injuries • UFO Reports: Fertilizer for US Military Budgets

A3. Random Notes –

• Mathematical Epidemiology & State Murder • Profitable SL Banks Refuse to Invest in Machines • SBD de Silva & Investment • Supporting Both Sides to Kill Each Other off • White Foreign Policy & Settlers • Stalin on Lenin & National Question

B. ee Focus    

B1. Western Covid Donations Are Bullshit: We Need Justice – Indi Samarajiva

B2. Saving Capitalism for the 21st Century – Kyle Bailey

C. News Index

_________________

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

• ‘The Sunday Times headline “Thanks Joe, for the Astra Zeneca” is obviously a lie. According to the minister Dr Channa Jayasumana, they’re discussing with the US to get Moderna and J&J: not Astra Zeneca.’

• ‘Rather than being destructively critical, isn’t it the duty of real media to describe how the system works, and what steps may be taken to transform this underdevelopment of these particular moments?’

• ‘ee should use easier language and make more effort to makes these economic issues more understandable and accessible’

• ‘The machines that make machines are human beings!’

• ‘Fantastic job, ee’

• ‘The government is pushing Organic. Is it an election gimmick? It has stopped imports of food, unwanted stuff, pesticides, etc. Have they banned chemical fertilizers simply because we can’t afford to import anymore? If it has the courage to do all this, why can’t it take immediate action to remove the middlemen who buy for 40 and sell for 200? It’s a matter of weeks instead of years, no? Does the army not have enough trucks? They can pass a state of emergency or some law to sequester these trucks for distribution over the next few years and pay owners fair compensation. Why not immediately stop or regulate middlemen in agriculture? Are these mafia really that strong? How are politicians heavily tied to this racket? Some say they’re funded by the import cartels, fuel, fertiliser, vehicles, machines. That behind them are the multinationals.’

• ‘Why promise organic in the future when agriculture distribution can be seized today? Get fuel from China? Russia? Iran? India is getting from Iran! Print money and pay compensation for lorry drivers and owners? We’ve seen how the government can print 600 billion LKR. Any government coming to power via mass mobilisation will have all sorts of interests. The SLPP are the biggest party so they got everyone in it. Has the pandemic, deficit, anti-China rhetoric and a large 2/3^rd parliament majority made them even more dependent on these cartels?’

• ‘Why doesn’t ee discuss the political economy of popular sports? There are no Sri Lankan cricketers in the IPL because the Tamilnadu government has asked the Indian government to ban them. Instead second-rate white Australians and New Zealanders are playing. World cricket is now run by Indian billionaires. It’s interesting why soap-selling Mahela and Sangakkara, who are managing IPL teams, have not commented on this.’

• ‘Look at the supine white chauvinism exhibited by such media hacks as Sunday Times columnist Neville de Silva, Island’s Nanda Pethiyagoda (writing as “blue-eyed” Cassandra), Lucien Rajakarunanayake (of Unilever & JWT vintage), Financial Times’ Dayan Jayatilleka (former N/E Eelam minister), et al. As with certain ST columnists, Silva has to provide his long credentials below each article, to assure us, at one time or another, he made sense to some colonial media owner who needed some pepper in his ice cream. He is supposed to be the ST’s London Correspondent. Other than some lightweight criticism of the English, just to show he’s actually there, his columns appear to be more about here and crudely Sinophobic.’

______________

A2. Quotes of the Week_

• ‘Ceylon forms an essential link in our cable & wireless network to Australia & the Far East. It is also the centre of our naval intelligence organisations for countries bordering the Indian Ocean. Inability to use Ceylon would deprive us of the only existing main fleet base between Malta and Singapore and would seriously weaken our control of the Indian Ocean.’ – English Chiefs of Staff, 5 May 1947

• ‘To a large extent the conglomerates can defend their interests abroad without colonialism based on conquest of territory, for the reason that they can control activities by their monopoly of technology and markets. First, a good portion of their income is in the form of technological rents, royalties, licensing rights, technical assistance fees, etc. The technology is rarely transferred, and its diffusion outside the orbit of such corporations is rigidly controlled. When deprived of this technology and marketing know-how, the natural resources and cheap labour of the host countries become idle assets at least in the short run. Second, transfer pricing enables a multinational to siphon away profits from high-risk territories; or by easily inflating accounting costs, it can also minimize local tax liabilities. Third, a ‘fairly wide geopolitical spread’ of production facilities enables multinationals to switch the venue of their operations, treating a large part of the world as their keyboard. The 25 biggest US multinational firms in 1967 had production facilities, on an average, in 27 countries. A parallel feature is the spreading of markets over several overseas territories, any one of which contributes only a small share of the total business. For all these reasons, the bargaining power of a multinational is immeasurably stronger than that of the transnational enterprises of the classical colonial period.’ – SBD de Silva, PEU

• ‘Today’s Cold War 2.0 aims to deter China & potentially other counties from socializing their financial systems, land & natural resources, and keeping infrastructure utilities public to prevent their being monopolized in private hands to siphon off economic rents at the expense of productive investment in economic growth.’ – Michael Hudson (see ee Industry, Thinktanks)

• ‘For decades, Africa has imported 99% of the continent’s vaccines, the bulk being distributed through UNICEF and procured through the Vaccine Alliance (GAVI), through its partnerships with international donors and pharmaceutical companies. After GAVI arrived on the continent in the early 2000s, it created a business model for selling vaccines in Africa by partnering with international donors and pharmaceutical companies to buy vaccines at lower prices, assure a marketplace for sales, secure supply, and deal with issues of quality, pricing and fairness. Over 40 African nations currently procure their vaccines through GAVI, but one of the adverse effects of the alliance is stifling domestic investment in vaccine research, production & manufacturing.’ – ee Industry, Western Countries

• ‘The act of money laundering is done in an exotic fashion encompassing a series of actions by the proverbial renting of credibility from the innocent investors. The offenders often target the unsuspecting, rural and economically distressed populations of our state who, while hoping for a dreamy return, part with their hard-earned monies in the financial institution and such bigwigs got it swallowed by turning their borrowing into NPA (non-performing assets of banks).’ – ee Business, Cox

• ‘Mercantilism is a derogatory word devised by free-market fundamentalists to describe the prioritization of domestic market development’ – ee Industry, ThinkTanks

• ‘One of the advantages of being a major economy is that we can achieve complete domestic circulation. China has 1.4 billion people and per capita GDP in excess of US$10,000, which makes it the world’s biggest consumer market with the greatest potential. Upgrading consumer spending by aligning it with modern technologies and production models can produce great potential for growth. We must regard expanding domestic consumption as the basis of our national development strategy to ensure sound dynamics among production, distribution, exchange and consumption that are more focused on the domestic market.’ – Xi Jinping (ee Economists)

• ‘Profit can be made purely from trading in a variety of financial claims existing only on paper… Indeed, profit can be made by using only borrowed capital to engage in (speculative) trade, not backed up by any tangible asset.’ – Marx, Capital

• ‘The National Football League (NFL, US), just the other day (yes, not way back in 1917, 1921 or even 1991, but in 2021) stated it will halt the use of ‘race-norming’…refers to the assumption that black athletes started out with lower cognitive functioning. It translated as less payment than for whites in case of brain injury claims.’ – see ee Sovereignty, History

• ‘Since Dec 2019 the US has a Space Force as one of 8 branches of US Armed Forces. Each of those branches has lots of higher-ranking officer positions. All people put into those, want a lucrative board seat at some weapon manufacturer when they retire. They will only get one if they manage to create enough revenue for those manufacturers while they are still in uniform.’ – ee Security, UFO Reports: Fertilizer for Military Budgets

_____________

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

• In Sri Lanka, those using mathematical epidemiology estimate the alpha point in the spread is May 28, and the country should be shut down until then, in order to mitigate the alpha point.

     Estimating how many may die in an epidemic employs the science of mathematical epidemiology. Mathematical epidemiology was used in white countries to craft an immunization strategy, modelling scenarios on the various options available to strengthen economies – estimating how many people they could afford to sacrifice if they kept their economy open.

     White countries made a conscious decision to protect and reshape their capitalist economies using the Covid epidemic, killing off as many of their own people as they could get away with. They have now proceeded to profit off vaccines, withholding them from the rest of the world.

     All public talk of ‘sharing vaccines’ goes against their very capitalist nature. And we will show why.

     By modelling a cocktail of mathematical epidemiology and economic indicators, countries can calculate and graph a curve, tracking infection and spread. They estimated an ‘alpha point’ on the highest numbers of people that may be ‘culled’ if the economy is not shut down and mobility is allowed, some at first even advocating no masks. Sweden estimated 50,000 would be killed. One million people were infected, involving 10% of the population. The state then sought to mitigate the spread through vaccination. 20,000 people were killed in Sweden, even as a recent poll showed 62% of its citizens approves the policy (ee is sceptical of such polls).

     Canada and countries allowed the disease to spread, beginning with mass deaths in elders’ nursing homes. US & Brazil’s policies helped to spread infection throughout the Americas. The media portrayed Trump and Bolsanaro as irresponsible maniacs. Yet Biden’s present strategy is a continuation of those policies, enforcing them now on the rest of the world.

• Banks in Sri Lanka announce great profits on paper, but keep refusing to invest in modern (machine) production. Their public statements disclose that most of the lending (investment) by private banks (led by Commercial Bank, HNB) as well as state banks (Bank of Ceylon, People’s Bank) is for retail and wholesale trading, healthcare (imports!), ee Industry, (abroad!), financial services. People’s Bank is a disgrace, totally neglecting investment in modern agriculture. Bank of Ceylon may be excused, since it lends mainly to the state sector. Yet none of them, private or public, invest in modern production. These banks claim to investing in manufacturing, but it’s mostly the garment business (importing needle, thread, fabric etc). Most of their investment in agriculture, is in fishing (again to import inputs!)

     Private banks and the foreign interests in behind them (note the steady takeover of Commercial Bank, NSB etc) mainly wish to facilitate the buying of imported capital goods. They will not invest in making machines. This is strictly forbidden. Meanwhile, Norway’s Norfund and the World Bank’s IFC have taken shares in the NDB, as well as in so-called community bank, Sanasa etc (see ee Finance).

• As far as we know, SBD’s detailed and prolix scribblings, since his last book published in 1982, were left to the white ants or to the kadalay sellers. Or to those who have so far chosen not to divulge what SB was driving us towards. At least some have seen fit to at least occasionally discuss his ideas publicly among socialists, a few times in the media, or use his work for academic advancement.

     Other than his daily sniping at the sheer wastefulness of our ruling classes and the treason of our economists, SB in later years was most single-minded in his focus on work and life: Those who aim to transform the lives of the people through moulding a modern industrial economy, needed to constantly analyze the country and the world, as well as history, through this goal.

     His 1982 book PEU, e.g., is divided into 3 parts. The first part is about investment patterns, the differences in the quality of the investments made to advance the world’s leading economies, as well as the similarities and differences in the investments prioritized in the genocidal colonies, settler-colonies and nonsettler colonies: these species that make up most of the world.

     Part 2 looks at what obstructs productive investment in Sri Lanka. He examines the role of the domination of the plantations in the economy, with a crucial chapter on technological stagnation in the plantations, that prevents, e.g., the mechanization of tea plucking.

     Part 3 charts steps towards a theory of underdevelopment in order to go beyond it. The book ends examining the rise (in the 1970s) to dominance of the multinationals and fund managers, and those ‘conglomerates of conglomerates – such as the World Bank (International Bank for Reconstruction & Development), Asian Development Bank, and ‘aid’ consortia, who since the mid-1960s sought to control SL’s attempts at advance.

• ‘If we see that Germany is winning the war, we ought to help Russia; and if that Russia is winning, we ought to help Germany, and in that way let them kill as many as possible.’ – Harry S Truman, 1941, then senator from Missouri, later US President who dropped atomic bombs on Japan, setting off a so-called Cold War, always hotter for us.

     This Truman quote best shows white foreign policy. Those who dream the white man will one day prefer Tamil over Sinhala or Sinhala over Tamil, Christian or Muslim over everybody, with the clash of primordial savageries of bygone civilizations ringing in their ears, should keep dreaming. They should swiftly learn the stories of the original people of those continents of the Atlantic and Pacific, and the alliances made during the attempt to defeat genocidal invasion. A good book to start with is J Sakai’s White Settlers, whose tracking of major markers on that continent-wide trail of tears is indispensable, combining original American, African and Asian histories there. Sakai’s conclusions may be argued, but few books explain what’s behind the white psychopathology we see running rampant in the world to this day.

• ‘Formerly, the national question was usually confined to a narrow circle of questions, concerning, primarily, “civilized” nationalities. The Irish, the Hungarians, the Poles, the Finns, the Serbs, and several other European nationalities that was the circle of unequal peoples in whose destinies the leaders of the 2^nd International were interested. The scores and hundreds of millions of Asian and African peoples who are suffering national oppression in its most savage and cruel form usually remained outside of their field of vision. They hesitated to put white and Black, “civilized” and “uncivilized” on the same plane… Leninism laid bare this crying incongruity, broke down the wall between whites and Blacks, between Europeans and Asians, between the “civilized” and “uncivilized” slaves of imperialism, and thus linked the national question with the question of the colonies.’ – Joseph Stalin

______________

B. Special Focus_

_______________

B1. Western Covid Donations Are Bullshit. We Need Justice – Indi Samarajiva

Reproduced below is an excerpt from this exposure of the Vaccine Game in the world. But first, some information offered by ee Readers:

• ‘Vaccine apartheid is here, and it’s revealing once more the ways our world continues to be structured by the geopolitical binaries of colonialism, capitalism, and racism. The People’s Vaccine Alliance reports that rich countries have bought enough doses to vaccinate their populations 3 times over. Canada alone has ordered enough vaccines to cover each Canadian 5 times over. Until March, the US was hoarding 10millions of AstraZeneca vaccines – not yet approved for domestic use – and refusing to share them with other countries (only under immense pressure did the Biden administration announce it’d send doses to Mexico & Canada). Israeli officials, lauded for delivering a first dose to more than half of its citizens, have likened their responsibility to vaccinate Palestinians living under apartheid to Palestinians’ obligation to “take care of dolphins in the Mediterranean.” The EU has extended controversial “ban options” which allow member states to block vaccine exports to non-EU nations. Meanwhile, countries like South Africa and Uganda are paying 2-3 times more for vaccines than the EU.’ (Qiao Collective; see ee Industry, China)

• The World Bank opposes lifting of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) for vaccines, claiming it will undermine investment in research and development: ‘The World Bank supports the licensing and transfer of technology to developing countries to bolster global supply… A very critical part of the supply chain is the invention and creation of manufacturing techniques. Above all, as we go into the booster stage, it will be vital that [R&D] flows continue to increase so that we can create vaccines that apply to new variants.’

• Kerala & TamilNadu state governments have restricted prices of 15 Covid essentials (eg PPE kits, N95 & oxygen masks, sanitizers, oximeters), to enable affordable access to medical equipment.

• Covid-19 Vaccines Global Access, or COVAX, proclaims ‘equitable access to Covid-19 vaccines directed by GAVI-Vaccine Alliance (formerly GAVI), the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, and WHO… For almost 30 years, Africa has imported 99% of needed vaccines, most distributed through UNICEF and procured through GAVI, which partners ‘international donors’ and pharmaceutical companies. GAVI arrived in Africa in 2000, imposing a business model, partnering with international donors and pharmaceutical companies, to sell vaccines at lower prices, so as to monopolize those African home markets for sales, secure supply, and regulate quality, pricing and ‘fairness’. Over 40 African nations currently buy their vaccines through GAVI, which also sabotages domestic investment into vaccine research, production and manufacturing.’

Western Covid Donations Are BS. We Need Justice (Excerpt) – ‘The US…oligarchy is irredeemably corrupt. Instead of deploying vaccine technology worldwide to end a pandemic that is, by definition, global, they’re protecting monopolies… bought by the drug companies (among other companies) and preventing generics being made at the WTO and absolutely blocking any tech sharing. Yes, the US is still doing this, public pledges aside. These pledges are all bullshit…

     China, India, Russia & South Korea did the WHO-recommended thing of helping vaccinate the world at great sacrifice to themselves. India, however, completely collapsed, stopped exports and now COVAX – the lifeline for the global majority – is dead. Without COVAX, the global majority cannot even vaccinate 20% of our populations this year, not even first responders and the vulnerable. The western nations have hoarded up to 20X the doses they need, throwing trickle-down donations to the world. It’s a health crime against humanity and they want praise for this. They want us to clap when they give a few expiring doses away. Meanwhile they want us to hate China and Russia, who are actually doing something… US officially bragging about pressuring Brazilians to not take Russian vaccines. They’re crowing about getting people killed as some victory in their new cold war. You can’t make these up. We may be getting sick, but these are sick people.

     Only China is able to produce enough supply, making them the main supply for Africa and the global majority. And for this they get nothing but propaganda and shit from the corrupt west. Living in the global majority, it’s absolutely galling.

     Here in Sri Lanka, China has donated over a million vaccines, selling more. US sends us pallets full of empty propaganda while China is sends actual vaccines and even sets up factories. It’s night and day. It’s good and evil…

     Biden has adroitly managed to sidestep much of this rage through pledges and donations, but my message here is, don’t let him. You might hear positive news but we still don’t have anything in our arms, nor are we allowed to lift them to produce for ourselves. We need vastly increased vaccine production now, not pledges of blood money in the future. These pledges are in fact killing us by deadening the necessary rage.

     The fact is, we were mostly infected through western countries. They produced the mass infections and much of the variants that are killing us now. And now they vaccinate themselves, go out to dinner, and talk happily about how the pandemic is over. But it’s not over for us.

     And the most sick thing is that many people seem to like it that way. Many rich people liked the disaster porn of people dying in India, that returned the world to way it’s supposed to be. After the global embarrassment of last year, poor people are dying, like we’re supposed to. Now the rich can pat themselves on the back for their ‘donations,’ all while blocking the justice the world needs.

     We will get out of this, with the help of countries like China and Russia that enable us to help ourselves. But we must never forget. The only vaccination we’re getting from the west right now is against their bullshit.’

– indica.medium.com/western-covid-donations-are-bullshit-we-need-justice-b13b046ecbeb

__________________

B2. Saving Capitalism for the 21^st Century – Kyle Bailey

(excerpt from: ‘Stakeholder Capitalism Against Democracy: Relegitimising Global Neoliberalism’, Journal of Australian Political Economy, No 86, 85-121)

In July 2020, former US Vice President and then-Democratic presidential nominee, Joe Biden, proposed to ‘put an end to the era of shareholder capitalism – the idea that the only responsibility a corporation has is to its shareholders’. In doing so, he seemingly rejected a core axiom of neoliberalism as it has unfolded over the last 4 decades: namely, Milton Friedman’s idea that ‘the social responsibility of business is to increase its profits’.

     With this pronouncement, Biden aligned himself to the Business Roundtable’s earlier statement redefining the purpose of a corporation as promoting ‘an economy that serves all Americans’ rather than just shareholders. It is thus likely, ‘a Biden Administration will be supportive of measures that convert the Business Roundtable’s central themes of stakeholder capitalism into law and regulation’.

     This restructuring has already begun in earnest. Most significantly, in August 2020, the Federal Reserve announced a new long-term monetary policy strategy, tolerating temporary increases in inflation to achieve ‘broad-based and inclusive’ growth and ‘foster economic conditions that benefit everyone’. After a decade of austerity, economic orthodoxy within the core capitalist states has also shifted towards greater tolerance for ‘fiscal activism’.

     Biden is not the only neoliberal Democrat to have championed ‘stakeholder capitalism’, which holds that corporations should support ‘long-term’ value creation rather than maximising shareholder value at the expense of key stakeholders such as customers, employees, suppliers and communities. In the run-up to the 2016 US Presidential Election, Hilary Clinton took aim at ‘quarterly capitalism’ and called for ‘a new generation of committed long-term investors to provide a counterweight to the hit-and-run activists’ and ‘save capitalism for 21^st century’.

     Similarly, high on the list of candidates to serve as Clinton’s Treasury Secretary was Laurence Fink, CEO of BlackRock – the world’s largest asset management fund and Wall Street’s ‘sustainable darling’. Fink’s letters to CEOs have argued, ‘every business needs a purpose… purpose is not the sole pursuit of profits but the animating force for achieving them’. BlackRock’s top team also includes numerous former Treasury officials and close Clinton advisors. [BlackRock has large shares in Unilever – ee]

     The growing political economic significance of ‘stakeholder capitalism’ is also reflected in a lively debate between Friedmanites and their mainstream critics over whether to jettison shareholder value-maximisation.

     On the anti-Friedmanite wing, the founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum (WEF), Klaus Schwab, recently claimed, ‘the pandemic has hastened the shift toward a stakeholder model of corporate capitalism’. Criticising Friedman’s doctrine of shareholder primacy for not considering ‘that a publicly traded company might be not just a commercial entity but also a social organism’, he called for world leaders to ‘move on from neoliberalism in the post-Covid era’. Financial Times, leading universities and business schools agree.

     Such developments reveal the extent to which capitalism’s multidimensional organic crisis has delegitimised the neoliberal ideology of ‘free markets’. With the so-called ‘return of the state’ after the 2007-8 global financial crisis (GFC), the rise of political leaders openly disdainful of globalisation, growing recognition of the climate emergency, and the added exigency of the Covid pandemic, will neoliberalism finally wither away amidst insurmountable political opposition? Could a form of ‘stakeholder capitalism’, ostensibly putting people and planet before profit, provide one possible avenue for a post-neoliberal break?

     Drawing on a larger case study of Unilever – an Anglo-Dutch global consumer goods firm occupying a central place within the stakeholder capitalism ‘movement’ – this article argues that ‘stakeholder capitalism’ presents an autocritique of neoliberal ideology only to buttress class forces & institutions in the vanguard of global neoliberal restructuring. Rather than a genuine alternative to neoliberalism, this shift within the neoliberal policy regime seeks to relegitimise capitalist globalisation in crisis, while deepening and extending its ‘post-democratic’ political economic logic in both the private and public spheres. Utilising examples from global economic, environmental and social governance, this argument unfolds by examining 3 areas where ‘stakeholder capitalism’ has sought to ‘square the circle’ of (global) capital accumulation and (national) political legitimation: 1) squaring profits with purpose; 2) squaring markets with state regulation; and 3) squaring global capitalism with development in the global South.

     Profits and purpose: From shareholder value to multi-stakeholder corporate governance – The aftermath of the GFC has witnessed a simultaneous ‘strengthening-weakening’ of neoliberalism that has modified patterns of class power and hastened the embrace of novel profit-making strategies by big business.

     Specifically, the crash marked the opening act in a multidimensional organic crisis of the US-led international order. Encompassing ‘morbid symptoms’ spanning economy, ecology and society, this crisis delegitimised the post-Cold War zeitgeist of neoliberal perpetual progress, thereby transforming big business’ legitimation deficit into a full-blown legitimation crisis of the capitalist system.

     One key axis of this legitimation crisis has been the popular identification of the narrow model of shareholder-value creation, premised on maximising ‘short-term’ financial performance, as central to escalating economic, social and ecological crises. Yet, far from counteracting this deep-seated legitimation crisis, the growth of corporate social responsibility (CSR) & philanthropy as forms of public relations have only added fuel to the fire. Specifically, they have exposed the contradiction between multinational corporations’ limited efforts at harm mitigation and the insurmountable damage caused by their irresponsible and ecocidal business models.

     Moreover, with the fracturing of neoliberal ‘global governance’, a growing hyper-nationalist backlash couched in ‘anti-globalisation’ rhetoric, and the re-emergence of a fledgling socialist-left, this legitimation crisis has upended the political system. As a result, national ruling classes in ‘post- industrial’ capitalist democracies ‘find it harder and harder to resolve the tension between the requirements of global capital and the interests of the population whose votes they need to stay in power’.

     Simultaneously, however, neoliberalism has never simply mirrored the dominant ‘free market, small state’ ideology codified by its core proponents. As an internationally variegated and hierarchically organised policy regime defined by practices of liberalisation, ‘deregulation’ & privatisation, it primarily denotes a historically specific form of capitalism embedded not only in ideologies, but also class relations and institutions. This ‘actually existing neoliberalism’ has been driven by corporate political mobilisation and the imperative for capitalist states to ensure system-wide profitability of business.

     Despite the weakening of neoliberal ideology in the wake of the GFC, class forces and institutions in the vanguard of neoliberal restructuring have remained largely intact, or even been strengthened.

     Indeed, rather than signalling the onset of a ‘post-neoliberal’ break, the bank bailouts and nationalisations adopted by capitalist states to contain the worst effects of the crisis paved the way for a decade of fiscal austerity. Combining an unprecedented socialisation of private debt with the decimation of working-class communities by renewed waves of privatisation and cuts to social security, pensions and welfare, this pattern of crisis, recession and austerity reflects the continued strength of capital and persisting weakness of labour – that is, the real material anchor of class and institutional power under neoliberalism.

     In turn, without a sufficiently coherent working-class politics channelling the growing popularity of anti-neoliberal ideas, ruling class forces and institutions have increasingly turned to ‘stakeholder capitalism’ as an ideological formation congruent with managing the new ‘systemic risks’ thrown up by the intensifying crises of neoliberalism… (to be cont’d)

(On the role of the unelected US Business RoundTable and other capitalist thinktanks that determine US government policy, see: ee 25 April 2020, Where Have All the Profits Gone?)

__________________________________________________________

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.

diplomatic engagement, under a bilateral military cooperation,

• Imperialism meets in Cornwall: G7

‘China and Russia are excluded from the deliberations but as hosts, England invited like-minded leaders from Australia, India, South Africa, and South Korea…their ‘global minimum corporate tax rate’ fails to limit the damaging use of tax havens – which are estimated to cost low-income countries $200 billion each year’

– thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2021/06/10/imperialism-meets-in-cornwall/

– newsclick.in/G7-Corporate-Tax-Deal-Setting-Bar-Too-Low

• US & India will take revenge on Sri Lanka: Indian ex-Colonel Hariharan

– lankaweb.com/news/items/2021/06/08/as-india-watches-china-grows-powerful-in-sri-lanka/

• Has Foreign Ministry outsourced lobbying Biden administration to US Pathfinder Foundation

– sundaytimes.lk/210606/columns/proactive-professionalism-the-need-of-the-hour-as-public-unease-on-the-rise-446080.html

• Prez & USAID agree to accelerate projects

‘The President met with Reed J. Aeschliman, senior official in charge of USAID Sri Lankan Office… A special aircraft carrying covid-19 medical equipment and supplies arrived…’

– newsfirst.lk/2021/06/08/steps-to-expedite-development-activities-powered-by-usaid-grants/

– island.lk/prez-usaid-agree-to-accelerate-projects/

• Text – H.Res.413 – 117th US Congress (2021-2022): Recognizing 12 years since end of the war

– congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-resolution/413/text?r=1

• Govt. seeks US State Dept.’s intervention to withdraw or amend resolution on SL

– dailymirror.lk/breaking_news/Govt-seeks-US-State-Dept-s-intervention-to-withdraw-or-amend-resolution-on-SL/108-213707

• Sri Lanka has only one major foreign policy issue. That is India.

– island.lk/an-appreciation-rajeewa-jayaweera-a-void-hard-to-fill/

• Erasing the Eelam Victory Part 18D Pt 4B&C & E

‘There are two schools of thought in Sri Lanka regarding the UNHRC Resolutions against Sri Lanka. There are those who are delighted that their country is censured by the UNHRC and there are those who are not delighted. They are indignant.’

– lankaweb.com/news/items/2021/06/08/erasing-the-eelam-victory-part-18d-pt-4b/

– lankaweb.com/news/items/2021/06/09/erasing-the-eelam-victory-part-18d-pt-4c/

– lankaweb.com/news/items/2021/06/11/erasing-the-eelam-victory-part-18d-pt-4e/

• Tamil Eelam in Tamil Nadu or every ethnicity around the world will demand Homelands too

– lankaweb.com/news/items/2021/06/09/tamil-eelam-in-tamil-nadu-or-every-ethnic-group-around-the-world-will-demand-homelands-too/

• EU Parliament adopts resolution on Sri Lanka – MEPs propose GSP withdrawal as last resort

– dailymirror.lk/top_story/EU-Parliament-adopts-resolution-on-Sri-Lanka/155-213843

– newsfirst.lk/2021/06/11/eu-wants-to-lift-gsp-concessions-from-sl-over-hr-concerns/

– economynext.com/eu-parliament-adopts-resolution-on-sri-lanka-wants-pta-repealed-gsp-withdrawn-82891/

– newsfirst.lk/2021/06/11/sri-lanka-at-a-risk-losing-gsp-status/

• Sri Lanka diplomats should help keep GSP+ going: Central Bank Governor

 ‘Colombo based brokers CT CLSA Securities said in a note to clients that Sri Lanka had full duty benefits for over 7,000 products. About 60 percent of the benefits were used by the apparel sector.’

– economynext.com/sri-lanka-diplomats-should-help-keep-gsp-going-central-bank-governor-82933/

• England appeal tribunal upturned orders by granting two LTTE sympathisers asylum

– sundaytimes.lk/210606/editorial/courting-disaster-with-no-proper-plan-to-handle-it-446073.html

• English assessment of Sri Lanka based on civil society and media, too – Lord Goldsmith

– island.lk/uk-assessment-of-sri-lanka-based-on-civil-society-and-media-too-lord-goldsmith/

• When will England tender an apology for massacres here and make reparation

– island.lk/perpetrators-as-preachers/

• Whips and the Common Welt – Gara X

‘England should be kicked out of the Commonwealth.’

– gammiris.lk/whips-and-the-common-welt/

• A talk on the other side of the story in Canada: SL Diaspora

– lankaweb.com/news/items/2021/06/09/a-talk-on-the-other-side-of-the-story-in-canada/

• Amid pressures from Quad, China discusses military ties with Sri Lanka

– http://www.defenddemocracy.press/amid-pressures-from-quad-china-discusses-military-ties-with-sri-lanka/

• Govt. calls on US not to proceed with resolution on Sri Lanka

– dailymirror.lk/breaking_news/Govt-calls-on-US-not-to-proceed-with-resolution-on-Sri-Lanka/108-213523

• US Bipartisan Resolution 413 inciting a future and further conflict

– lankaweb.com/news/items/2021/06/06/effect-of-the-us-bipartisan-resolution-413-on-sri-lanka-is-inciting-a-future-and-further-conflict-among-races-and-harming-the-moderate-tamil-citizens-in-sri-lanka/

• 38 Sri Lankans detained in Mangaluru

‘they allegedly paid 5 -10 lakh of SL Rupees each to an agent who promised them jobs in Canada.;

 – dailymirror.lk/breaking_news/38-Sri-Lankans-detained-in-Mangaluru/108-213914

• India Coast Guard, Sri Lanka Navy interoperability underlined in fighting X-Press Pearl fire

‘Commander of SL Navy Vice Admiral Nishantha Ulugetenne met the Captains of the Indian Coast Guard vessels when the ships called at Colombo Port on June 10…India has emerged as the first responder in the region in dealing expeditiously and successfully with humanitarian disasters or maritime accidents… in line with the vision of SAGAR – Security and Growth for All in the Region and also reflects our commitment to the Neighborhood First policy.”

– economynext.com/india-coast-guard-sri-lanka-navy-interoperability-underlined-in-fighting-x-press-pearl-fire-82847/

– timesonline.lk/news-online/Indian-vessels-in-Colombo-for-Operation-Sagar-Araksha-II/2-1133692

• US provides $100,000 in support in response to cargo ship fire

‘USAID supports the U.S. Forest Service to train disaster management professionals across South Asia, including in Sri Lanka, on the Incident Command System (ICS)—a standardized crisis management system designed to help communities more effectively respond to disasters.’

– dailymirror.lk/breaking_news/US-provides-100-000-in-support-in-response-to-cargo-ship-fire/108-213899

– island.lk/u-s-provides-humanitarian-assistance-to-sri-lankans-affected-by-ship-fire/

• 750 French Navy Men in Sri Lanka: Diplomatic engagement under bilateral military cooperation

‘They are part of the FNS Tonnerre and FNS Surcouf naval vessels of the French Government.. the ships are conducting their annual Jeanne d’Arc military mission that started in February.’

– ft.lk/top-story/From-France-with-love-but-some-fume/26-718925

– dailymirror.lk/breaking_news/French-Navy-delegation-to-have-national-parks-open-for-them/108-213541

• Covid-19: Switzerland sends plane load of humanitarian aid to Sri Lanka

‘50 ventilators provided by the Swiss Army Pharmacy,’

– island.lk/covid-19-switzerland-sends-plane-load-of-humanitarian-aid-to-sri-lanka/

• Covid-19 response: Australia uses Mattala to move supplies to India and Nepal

 ‘a Royal Australian Air Force C-17A Globemaster aircraft landed at Mattala’

– island.lk/covid-19-response-australia-uses-mattala-to-move-supplies-to-india-and-nepal/

• JAICA makes second donation of PPE to Western Province

– island.lk/jaica-makes-second-donation-of-ppe-to-western-province/

• Korea to donate humanitarian assistance worth of USD 500,000 to Sri Lanka

– island.lk/korea-to-donate-humanitarian-assistance-worth-of-usd-500000-to-sri-lanka/

• Is there compassion for SL refugees in India?

‘3 lakhs of refugees entered India, 1983-2012…94,069 SL refugees now live in Tamil Nadu spread out in 107 camps in 15 districts’

– dailymirror.lk/opinion/Is-there-compassion-for-SL-refugees-in-India/172-213496

• Sri Lanka must be a friend; not ally or fellow traveller of China – Jayatilleka

‘we have the grand-strategic interests of the US-led Quad in the Indo-Pacific and the imperative of democratic leadership of the world order.’

– ft.lk/columns/Sri-Lanka-must-be-a-friend-not-ally-or-fellow-traveller-of-China/4-719032

• 12 killed in Myanmar military plane crash

– dailymirror.lk/breaking_news/12-killed-in-Myanmar-military-plane-crash/108-213834

• Top Former Civil Servants Write to PM on ‘Disturbing Developments’ in Lakshadweep

‘Concerns over dispossession of land, predatory corporate development and destruction of the environment have been compounded by the draft PASA, a preventive detention regulation that enables the Administrator to detain any person for up to a year for common crimes’

– newsclick.in/Top-Former-Civil-Servants-Write-PM-Disturbing-Developments-Lakshadweep

– newsclick.in/Protests-Lakshadweep-Intensify-First-Ever-Sedition-Case-Charged-Archipelago

• 20-year war on Afghanistan has resulted in many laudable advances – German Minister

– economynext.com/nato-withdrawal-from-afghanistan-leaves-the-region-nervous-82757/

• New ‘Atlantic Charter’ misreads trend of time, risks destabilizing Europe: expert

‘’two leaders intend to co-operate in handling the strategic rivalry with Beijing’

– globaltimes.cn/page/202106/1225964.shtml

• Biden Seeks Allies For War On China

– moonofalabama.org/2021/06/biden-seeks-allies-for-war-on-china.html

• US stands to gain if Biden breaks up the Sino-Russian axis.

– newsclick.in/biden-clears-air-russia-ties

• Return of Lab Leak Conspiracy Shows Biden has Trumpian Characteristics on China

– blackagendareport.com/return-lab-leak-conspiracy-shows-biden-democrat-trumpian-characteristics-china

• Russian PM signs order terminating ‘open lands’ memorandum with US

The document allowed Russian and US diplomats to travel across different regions of each other’s countries without seeking permission
– tass.com/politics/1301481

• History and Historiography 101 for US lawmakers

‘There’s a year to remember: 1921. And there’s a thing that the USA would want US citizens and indeed the world to forget.’

– dailymirror.lk/opinion/History-and-Historiography-101-for-US-lawmakers/172-213790

• Another ‘Nuclear Iran’ Claim By David Albright Gets Debunked

– moonofalabama.org/2021/06/another-nuclear-iran-claim-made-by-david-albrights-isis-gets-debunked.html

• Sons and daughters of Edward Said and Hanan Ashrawi – Jayatilleka

‘creation of the state of Israel – which was morally and historically irresistible after the Holocaust’.

– island.lk/sons-and-daughters-of-edward-said-and-hanan-ashrawi/

• What to expect when Biden, Erdogan meet – Bhadrakumar

‘Erdogan has pledged full support for Georgia’s bid to join NATO, sealed a drone contract with Poland and voiced all round support for Ukraine in its standoff with Russia. Also, Turkey took active part in NATO’s Steadfast Defender exercises in Romania in end-May. …Two top US diplomats travelled to Ankara in recent weeks – Deputy Secretary of State, Wendy Sherman and US ambassador to the UN (who carries cabinet rank), Linda Thomas-Greenfield.’

– indianpunchline.com/us-reclaims-turkey-for-the-western-alliance/

– indianpunchline.com/what-to-expect-when-biden-erdogan-meet/

• Peru: a crunch election

‘Castillo’s Perú Libre (Free Peru) party manifesto describes its politics as “socialist, Marxist, Leninist and Mariáteguist” – after the founder of the Peruvian Communist party José Carlos Mariátegui – and has set out plans to expropriate foreign mining projects.’

– thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2021/06/06/peru-a-crunch-election/

• Israel Aides Repression in Colombia

– blackagendareport.com/israel-aides-repression-colombia

• How to Wreck a Black Nation In the Age of “Black Lives Matter”

‘Here is the international playbook. Note, this playbook requires meticulous alignment and careful coordination amongst vicious terrorist groups, their trolls, paid Washington DC lobbyists, US and European Union government officials, major western media outlets, UN agencies, & Amnesty International.’

– blackagendareport.com/how-wreck-black-nation-age-black-lives-matter

________________________________________________________________

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.

• Sri Lanka agent Sea Consortium Lanka deleted vital e-mails: ship probe

‘local agent Sea Consortium Lanka of Setmil Group suppressed information about the acid leak… the vessel’s owners X-Press Feeders, the largest feeder operator in the world, couldn’t have been unaware’

– lankaweb.com/news/items/2021/06/07/sri-lanka-agent-deleted-vital-e-mails-ship-probe/

– dailymirror.lk/breaking_news/NPP-calls-for-criminal-investigation-into-deletion-of-e-mails/108-213728

– island.lk/x-press-pearl-fire-sc-moved-against-local-agent-sea-consortium-lanka-and-12-others/

• Maritime conventions, disasters and hubs: Sri Lanka’s decisive hour is here

– ft.lk/opinion/Maritime-conventions-disasters-and-hubs-Sri-Lanka-s-decisive-hour-is-here/14-718947

• New Counter Terrorism Investigation Unit detention facility gazetted

– dailymirror.lk/breaking_news/New-detention-facility-gazetted/108-213617

– economynext.com/sri-lanka-president-gazettes-new-detention-centre-for-suspects-held-under-pta-82771/

• SSP Muthumala appointed first female Deputy Director of CID

– dailymirror.lk/breaking_news/SSP-Muthumala-appointed-first-female-Deputy-Director-of-CID/108-213908

• HRC asks IGP to explain how he intended to stop deaths of suspects in police custody

 – island.lk/hrc-asks-igp-to-explain-how-he-intended-to-stop-deaths-of-suspects-in-police-custody/

• Bill to increase fine for those found guilty of torture

– ft.lk/front-page/Bill-to-increase-fine-for-those-found-guilty-of-torture/44-719139

• SLAF to get three overhauled Antonov-32 aircraft from Ukraine

 – dailymirror.lk/breaking_news/SLAF-to-get-three-overhauled-Antonov-32-aircraft-from-Ukraine/108-213759

• Three SL Air Force personnel arrested for attempted robbery

‘attached to a small Sri Lanka Air Force Station in Palavi,”

– newsfirst.lk/2021/06/08/three-sl-air-force-personnel-arrested-for-attempted-robbery/

• ‘Rata Sabha: The ancient legal system of the Nuwara-Kalaaviya’.

– sundaytimes.lk/210606/plus/a-bygone-judicial-institution-445869.html

• How Denmark Helped the US Spying Programme

‘Danish intelligence aided the US in spying on European political leaders’

– newsclick.in/how-denmark-helped-us-spying-programme

• UFO Reports Are Fertilizer For Military Budgets

– moonofalabama.org/2021/06/ufo-reports-are-fertilizer-for-military-budgets.html

• The Truth About US Defunding Police

‘“Defunding” the police has often turned out to be an accounting trick, but community control of police – a righteous demand – must also ensure that all government functions address human needs…The armed forces of Russia, Germany, France, England and Japan all receive less money than US police departments. They are in fact a domestic military force.’

– blackagendareport.com/freedom-rider-truth-about-defunding-police

• Criminals tricked into using an FBI-run encrypted messaging app

‘FBI tired of wrangling with US tech giants over accessing encrypted data and locked devices’

– dailymirror.lk/breaking_news/ANOM-Hundreds-arrested-in-massive-global-crime-sting-using-messaging-app/108-213756

_____________________________________________________________

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.

• Sri Lanka Is In Crisis On Many Fronts – Nalinda Jayatissa, JVP

– http://www.colombotelegraph.com/index.php/sri-lanka-is-in-crisis-on-many-fronts/

• Australia’s rice miracle: Should Sri Lanka learn a lesson or two from it? – Wijewardena

‘Because of the labour shortages, Australian rice farming is completely mechanised…Highest per worker rice production…World’s highest rice yield…introducing organic fertilisers …needs much concentrated integrated planning.’

– ft.lk/opinion/Australia-s-rice-miracle-Should-Sri-Lanka-learn-a-lesson-or-two-from-it/14-718904

• Promoting organic agriculture: Repercussions of the fertiliser ban – Sanderatne

 – sundaytimes.lk/210606/columns/promoting-organic-agriculture-repercussions-of-the-fertiliser-ban-446059.html

• Major Issues Concerning China’s Strategies for Economic and Social Development – Xi Jinping

– en.qstheory.cn/2021-01/14/c_604551.htm

• Guo Shuqing: FinTech developments, challenges and supervision in China

‘Video speech by Guo Shuqing, Party Secretary and Deputy Governor of the People’s Bank of China and CBIRC Chairman, at the Singapore FinTech Festival (SFF) 2020’

– bis.org/review/r201222f.htm

• Transition From Dollar in Int’l Settlements Happens Naturally, Russian Finance Ministry Says

‘Earlier this month, Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said that the dollar reserves in the National Wealth Fund would be cut to zero. He added that reserves of England’s sterling will be cut to 5% whereas the euro and yuan holdings will be raised to 40 and 30% respectively.

– http://www.defenddemocracy.press/transition-from-dollar-in-intl-settlements-happens-naturally-russian-finance-ministry-says/

• World Accreditation Day & Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

– lankaweb.com/news/items/2021/06/09/statement-of-he-mahinda-rajapakse-the-prime-minister-and-finance-minister-of-sri-lanka-on-the-world-accreditation-day-2021/

• From Black Wall Street to Black Capitalism

‘Contrary to the Black capitalist myth, most Greenwood residents were low wage working people employed by whites and living in substandard housing.’

– blackagendareport.com/black-wall-street-black-capitalism

____________________________________________

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.

• Sri Lanka can continue to control imports: Central Bank

 ‘“There are goods that can be made in the country that is better than the foreign ones. I think we can control imports in 2021.”’

– economynext.com/sri-lanka-can-continue-to-control-imports-central-bank-82899/

• President to Investors: New technologies and Farming Practices.

– bizenglish.adaderana.lk/keynote-address-at-the-inauguration-of-the-sri-lanka-investment-forum-2021-his-excellency-gotabaya-rajapaksa-president-of-sri-lanka/

– dailymirror.lk/breaking_news/Govt-s-vision-is-to-make-Colombo-Port-City-a-key-service-hub-in-the-region-Prez/108-213614

– dailymirror.lk/business/Prez-calls-on-investors-to-explore-SLs-medical-tourism-industry/215-213608

– dailymirror.lk/business__main/Prez-Gotabaya-promises-investor-friendly-Sri-Lanka/245-213659

– dailymirror.lk/business__main/Prez-Gotabaya-promises-investor-friendly-Sri-Lanka/245-213659

– island.lk/president-says-sri-lanka-is-proactive-and-pro-business/

– ft.lk/top-story/President-invites-the-world-to-join-SL-s-transformative-journey/26-718969

– dailymirror.lk/business/Prez-calls-on-investors-to-explore-SLs-medical-tourism-industry/215-213608

• Sri Lanka Investment Forum

‘Speaking at the forum wre ambassador Gopal Baglay, High Commissioner for India, Woonjin Jeong, Ambassador for Republic of Korea, Akira Sugiyama, Ambassador for Japan and Qi Zhenhong, Ambassador for China, Thorsten Bargfrede, Deputy Head of Mission, Delegation of the European Union, and Martin Kelly, Chargé d’Affaires for the U.S. Embassy….with insights from Faris Hadad-Zervos – World Bank Country Director for Maldives, Nepal and Sri Lanka, Dato’ Izzaddin Idris – CEO Axiata Group Berhad, David Schwimmer – CEO, London Stock Exchange Group, Hui Kuok – CEO Shangri-La Asia, Alfonso Garcia Mora – IFC, Prateek Roongta – Boston Consulting Group, Darren Roos – CEO, IFS and Mattias Martinsson – Chief Investment Officer Tundra Fonder…’

– bizenglish.adaderana.lk/much-awaited-sri-lanka-investment-forum-commences-today/

– bizenglish.adaderana.lk/sri-lanka-investment-forum-concludes-with-over-4500-participants/

• SL ready to regain growth momentum lost since 2015: Dr. P.B. Jayasundera

‘Sri Lanka faces a few downside risks as well and emphasised on the long overdue public sector reforms, the need to improve the ease of doing business and filling the gaps in infrastructure.’

– ft.lk/front-page/SL-ready-to-regain-growth-momentum-lost-since-2015-Dr-P-B-Jayasundera/44-718968

• Attygalle lists reform measures to boost Sri Lanka’s economic outlook

‘he outlined major reform areas that includes; fiscal consolidation and revenue mobilisation, trade and investment regime and legal and judicial.’

– ft.lk/front-page/Attygalle-lists-reform-measures-to-boost-Sri-Lanka-s-economic-outlook/44-718967

• Investment Forum 2021 – Hans Wijayasuriya – Chairman, Ceylon Chamber of Commerce

‘Provision for 100% foreign ownership is nothing new nor an exception in Sri Lanka. The Repatriation experience of foreign investors has been likewise unblemished, as has been the honoring of the over 25 investment protection agreements to which Sri Lanka is a signatory.’

– bizenglish.adaderana.lk/welcome-address-sri-lanka-investment-forum-2021/

• BOI Chief identifies Manufacturing, ICT, tourism, agri and food processing, infrastructure, etc.

‘Sri Lanka is home to over 1,200 foreign companies…In the apparel industry, opportunity exists for investors to set up factories to localise up to $ 1 billion worth of raw material imports…’

– ft.lk/front-page/Sri-Lanka-is-the-next-growth-haven-BOI-Chief/44-719067

• Bouquets and brickbats from Sri Lanka’s biggest investor – Chinese Ambassador Qi Zhenhong

– ft.lk/top-story/Bouquets-and-brickbats-from-Sri-Lanka-s-biggest-investor/26-719107

– lankaweb.com/news/items/2021/06/10/chinese-ambassador-lists-difficulties-faced-by-chinese-investors-in-sri-lanka/

• Indian envoy in Sri Lanka seeks stable and predictable policies

‘panel involving three Indian companies with successful ongoing investments in SL – HCL, IOCL (LIOC), and Ashok Leyland….interest for Indian investors in automobile components, apparel industry/fabric parks, IT sector, pharmaceuticals, and education.’

– lankaweb.com/news/items/2021/06/10/indian-envoy-in-sri-lanka-seeks-stable-and-predictable-policies/

– ft.lk/front-page/India-says-ready-for-economic-partnership-for-21st-century-with-SL/44-719104

• Greater Focus on Private Sector Required to Pivot SL Development Trajectory: WB IFC VP

‘new growth could be fueled by sectors such as ICT, resource-based and light specialized manufacturing industries – as recommended by an upcoming report by IFC and the World Bank, the Country Private Sector Diagnostic (CPSD) for Sri Lanka…. IFC’s track record in Sri Lanka goes back over 50 years. IFC’s first investment of $3.25 million in the country’s textile sector came at a time when private sector financing was not readily available. IFC remains a key private sector development partner having invested $1.6 billion in some 30 projects across the country. Our portfolio today stands at $486 million.’

– bizenglish.adaderana.lk/a-greater-focus-on-the-private-sector-required-to-pivot-sri-lankas-development-trajectory-ifc-asia-and-pacific-vice-president/

– ft.lk/front-page/Greater-focus-on-private-sector-key-to-SL-s-development-trajectory-IFC/44-719065

• Nalaka showcases multi-million dollar urban development investment projects at SLIF

– ft.lk/front-page/Nalaka-showcases-multi-million-dollar-urban-development-investment-projects-at-SLIF/44-719099

• FT – International Chamber of Commerce webinar today on investing in Asia post-pandemic

‘ICCSL in partnership with BCG, CIMA and Daily FT will host a webinar today on ‘Investing in Asia in the New Normal’….ICC Chairman and MasterCard Worldwide Executive Chairman Ajay Banga, and Boston Consulting Group Mayank Jha…National University of Singapore Associate Professor Prof. Keith B. Carter, AIA Group Market Economist – Group Investment Herve Lievore, DCS Singapore, CEO Saman Wimalaratne, Deloitte India & South Asia President – Consulting Romal Shetty, Eric Roeder from UNESCAP Asia Pacific, former Central Bank Governor Dr. Indrajit Coomaraswamy, CSE Chairman Dumith Fernando, NP Capital Ltd Chairman Nimal Perera and TW Corp Chairman and CEO Thilan Wijesinghe. Moderators are ICCSL Chairman Dinesh Weerakkody and KPMG Middle East and South Asia Chairman Reyaz Mihular.

– ft.lk/front-page/FT-ICCSL-webinar-today-on-investing-in-Asia-post-pandemic/44-719146

• As Bangladesh Rises, Sri Lanka Finds India is Not the Only Neighbour With Deep Pockets

– lankaweb.com/news/items/2021/06/10/as-bangladesh-rises-sri-lanka-finds-india-is-not-the-only-neighbour-with-deep-pockets/

• Sri Lanka expects US$400mn swap with India in August: CB Governor

– economynext.com/sri-lanka-expects-us400mn-swap-with-india-in-august-cb-governor-82910/

• Huge Ceylon Tobacco Co. (CTC) profits siphoned out of country

‘Government spends approximately Rs. 214 billion per year on health and economic issues of people who suffer from various diseases due to heavy smoking…country is at a loss because of the inability to retain the large profits…as 90% of the company is owned by the British American Tobacco Co. and a few other foreign companies’

– dailymirror.lk/news-features/Quit-smoking–to-keep-Covid-19-away/131-213630

– island.lk/when-double-standards-reek-of-tobacco/

• Sri Lanka will make bullet repayment in sovereign bond in July: President’s Secy

– economynext.com/sri-lanka-will-make-bullet-repayment-in-sovereign-bond-in-july-presidents-secy-82732/

• Fiscal deficit blowout likely as restrictions erase tax revenues

– dailymirror.lk/business__main/Fiscal-deficit-blowout-likely-as-restrictions-erase-tax-revenues/245-213879

• Changes to Fiscal Management (Responsibility) Act

– ft.lk/front-page/P-ment-to-debate-changes-to-Fiscal-Management-Responsibility-Act-today/44-718962

– newsfirst.lk/2021/06/08/fiscal-act-amended-in-parliament/

• Sri Lanka hikes limit on borrowing by treasury guarantees to 15-pct of GDP

‘Treasury guarantees are mostly use pump savings of ordinary people in state banks into loss making state enterprises to further an anti-privatization ideology.’

– economynext.com/sri-lanka-hikes-limit-on-borrowing-by-treasury-guarantees-to-15-pct-of-gdp-82794/

• CB offers zero-cost swap facility to private sector borrowers of foreign currency

 ‘private sector could invest the US dollar funds raised offshore in Sri Lanka Development Bonds (SLDBs)’

– dailymirror.lk/business-news/CB-offers-zero-cost-swap-facility-to-private-sector-borrowers-of-foreign-currency/273-213657

– bizenglish.adaderana.lk/measures-to-encourage-offshore-borrowings-by-private-sector/

• PM stresses need for non-loan foreign exchange

– dailymirror.lk/business__main/PM-stresses-need-for-non-loan-foreign-exchange/245-213723

• Sri Lanka net forex reserves fall to 33-pct of reserve money

‘Sri Lanka’s monetary policy deteriorated sharply after Deputy Central Bank Governor W A Wijewardena retired from the central bank.’

– economynext.com/sri-lanka-net-forex-reserves-fall-to-33-pct-of-reserve-money-82874/

• Banks wary of long-term loan facilities amid potential hike in interest rates

‘Appetite of local banks to facilitate the corporate sector with new loan facilities to reprice their existing debt stocks to long-term fixed-rated loans under the current low-interest rate regime is waning amid concerns over interest rate risks and tightening net interest margins… In the same period, last year, a record 20-40 percent of loan portfolios of banks came under moratoria.’

– dailymirror.lk/business__main/Banks-wary-of-long-term-loan-facilities-amid-potential-hike-in-interest-rates/245-213562

• CBSL reiterates need for all licensed banks to provide uninterrupted banking services

– bizenglish.adaderana.lk/cbsl-reiterates-need-for-all-licensed-banks-to-provide-uninterrupted-banking-services/

• Public, traders, SME biz furious over sudden blanket closure of all bank branches

– ft.lk/front-page/Public-traders-SME-biz-furious-over-sudden-blanket-closure-of-all-bank-branches/44-718964

• Unit trust industry continues to attract more funds; industry assets top Rs.200bn

‘Sri Lanka’s unit trust industry, which began to attract funds in large numbers with the fall in market interest rates, continued to add assets during April, which helped the industry to surpass Rs.200 billion in assets under management (AUM)…. The top five unit trust funds, NDB Wealth Money Plus Fund, CAL Investment Grade Fund, JB Vantage Money Market Fund, First Capital Money Market Fund and CAL Income Fund together added Rs.18.1 billion in fresh assets into the sector during the first four months… corporates, which account for more than 80 percent of the AUM in the industry, use unit trusts as a popular way to park their excess liquidity as part of their working capital.

– dailymirror.lk/business-news/Unit-trust-industry-continues-to-attract-more-funds-industry-assets-top-Rs-200bn/273-213560

• Foreign Minister underlines vital role played by BIMSTEC

– island.lk/foreign-minister-underlines-vital-role-played-by-bimstec/

• “Happy” Bhutan threatened by climate change and geopolitics

– economynext.com/happy-bhutan-threatened-by-climate-change-and-geopolitics-82868/

• Chinese exports up 28%, imports hit decade-high

– ft.lk/front-page/Chinese-exports-up-28-imports-hit-decade-high/44-718956

• Inflation Dragon China: from price cuts to hikes

‘Raw materials priced in dollars get cheaper for Chinese buyers; Chinese finished goods, pricier for US consumers’

– asiatimes.com/2021/06/inflation-dragon-china-from-price-cuts-to-hikes/

• Sovereign issuer-based default rate rose to a record high in 2020

– ft.lk/front-page/Sovereign-defaults-hit-record-in-2020-more-are-possible-warns-Fitch/44-719062

• US Treasury Secretary rattles markets saying higher interest rates might be good

– asiatimes.com/2021/06/inflation-scissors-its-way-into-china-manufacturing/

• US inflation hits 5.0-pct in May 2021 amid money growth

– economynext.com/us-inflation-hits-5-0-pct-in-may-2021-amid-money-growth-82861/

– dailymirror.lk/business-news/US-inflation-sees-biggest-jump-since-2008/273-213926

• 55 US Corporations Paid $0 Income Tax but Spent $450 Million on Political, Policy Lobbying

‘These ‘tax-avoiding’ companies across sectors enjoyed almost $40.5 billion in US pre-tax income in 2020, according to their annual financial reports. They also received $3.5 billion in tax rebates’

– newsclick.in/55-Big-US-Corporations-Paid-%240-Income-Tax-Spent-%24450-Million-Political-Policy-Lobbying-Report

_________________________________________________________________________

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

• 8.9% of people below extreme poverty line in 2019 expected to rise to 13% in 2021.

‘This means there will be 890,000 newly poor people’

– island.lk/covid-poverty-and-hope-for-sri-lanka/

• Junior staff at hospitals on 04-hour strike today (09)

– newsfirst.lk/2021/06/09/junior-staff-at-hospitals-on-04-hour-strike-today-09/

• Health trade union alliance claims their strike a success

– island.lk/health-trade-union-alliance-claims-their-strike-a-success/

• Epidemiology Unit specialists responsible for wasting COVISHIELD vaccines: GMOA

– dailymirror.lk/breaking_news/Epidemiology-Unit-specialists-responsible-for-wasting-COVISHIELD-vaccines-in-Wathupitiwala-hospital/108-213866

• Kumudesh asks why govt. does not involve state labs in Covid testing at factories

– island.lk/kumudesh-asks-why-govt-does-not-involve-state-labs-in-covid-testing-at-factories/

• PCR testing can be increased by 300% overnight, say govt. Medical Lab Technologists

– island.lk/pcr-testing-can-be-increased-by-300-overnight-say-govt-medical-lab-technologists/

• Health Ministry incapable of providing accurate information: Saman Rathnapriya

 – dailymirror.lk/breaking_news/Health-Ministry-incapable-of-providing-accurate-information-Saman-Rathnapriya/108-213895

• Plight of private security officers in pandemic times

– ft.lk/opinion/Plight-of-private-security-officers-in-pandemic-times/14-719086

• Sri Lanka private workers bear Covid-19 shock with wage cuts, state workers get salary hikes

– economynext.com/sri-lanka-private-workers-bear-covid-19-shock-with-wage-cuts-state-workers-get-salary-hikes-82825/

• No regulatory body supervising the pharmacies of this country?

– ft.lk/opinion/Falling-standards-at-pharmacies/14-719084

• Harry J. calls for wage subsidy from govt. to safeguard livelihood of tourism sector workforce

– dailymirror.lk/business-news/Harry-J-calls-for-wage-subsidy-from-govt-to-safeguard-livelihood-of-tourism-sector-workforce/273-213878

• 6-month extension given to make EPF contributions

‘to grant a relief period of six months onward from the due date related to the months of March, April and May, during which employers were unable to pay contributions’

– ft.lk/front-page/6-month-extension-given-to-make-EPF-contributions/44-719100

• Settlements for families residing in acquired lands for New Kelani Bridge to Athurugiriya

– dailymirror.lk/breaking_news/Alternative-settlements-for-1-100-families-residing-in-acquired-lands/108-213680

• University admissions and fundamental rights

‘schools be categorised for the purpose of university admissions in accordance with the availability of qualified teachers and facilities’

– island.lk/university-admissions-and-fundamental-rights/

• Decolonising SL universities

‘universities are being viewed as neo-liberal institutions set up to produce human capital for the market.’

– island.lk/decolonising-sl-universities/

• Do not abuse SL Administrative Service and degrade university education – Usvatte-aratchi

 – island.lk/do-not-abuse-sri-lanka-administrative-service-and-degrade-university-education/

• Universities allowed to collaborate with global counterparts to boost intl. rankings

– ft.lk/front-page/Lankan-universities-to-collaborate-with-global-counterparts-to-boost-intl-rankings/44-719022

• Imperial College of Business Studies & University of the West of Scotland Profit off SL

‘ICBS has established itself as a leading Business School in SL and has coached over 50,000 students’

– bizenglish.adaderana.lk/imperial-college-of-business-studies-presents-prestigious-university-of-the-west-of-scotland-uws-full-scholarships-to-two-top-achievers/

• DIMO offers local students a gateway to 700+ German degrees

– island.lk/dimo-offers-local-students-a-gateway-to-700-german-degrees/

• Cricketers demand for more transparency on the grading system in the central contracts

– dailymirror.lk/breaking_news/SLC-cricketers-reach-truce/108-213616

• Pune Factory Fire: Mangal, Among 15 Women Killed, Had Joined Firm Just 2 Months Ago

– newsclick.in/Pune-Factory-Fire-Mangal-Among-15-Women-Killed-Joined-Firm-2-Months-Ago

• India Bank Union Opposes Privatisation, Says ‘Nation and its People’ Are Owners of PSBs

 – newsclick.in/Bank-Union-Opposes-Privatisation-Nation-People-Owners-PSBs

• India’s COVID-19 Crisis: A Call for People’s Unity

– qiaocollective.com/en/articles/china-india-solidarity

• Race Reductionism: Neocolonialism and the Ruse of “Chinese Privilege”

‘Recent discourse within the U.S. and Singaporean liberal-left has championed “Chinese privilege” as an analytic of power within Singapore and Asia at large. By invoking a Chinese equivalence to whiteness, analyses of “Chinese privilege” not only disavow the material history of racial capitalism in Asia, but appropriate Black and Indigenous critiques of white supremacy to bolster a long history of Singaporean anticommunism in service of U.S. military and ideological supremacy over Asia.’

– qiaocollective.com/en/articles/race-reductionism-chinese-privilege

• Knife Edge: Living with Domestic and Economic Violence, Andiaye, 2013

– blackagendareport.com/essay-knife-edge-living-domestic-and-economic-violence-andiaye-2013

• Assimilation and Empire

‘Reflecting on the spur of anti-Asian racism this past year, the writer interrogates the renewed enthusiasm for representational politics in North American discourse. This deceptive liberal schema, she argues, stakes Asian American political recognition upon the creation of a diasporic native informant class designed to propel U.S. empire’s denunciation of Asian socialism.’

– qiaocollective.com/en/articles/assimilation-empire

• Child labour on the rise, ILO warns

‘9 million additional children at risk of being pushed into child labour by end 2022 due to the pandemic… this number could rise to 46 million if no access to critical social protection coverage’

– dailymirror.lk/business/Child-labour-on-the-rise-ILO-warns/215-213903

_________________________________________________________________________

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.

• Hidden reasons behind frequent flooding and water pollution
– island.lk/how-to-gamble-with-floods/

• Kelaniya DS explains suffering due to floods there and the causes

;’ People living in Pattiya North, Pattiya West, Welegoda and Meegahawatte Grama Niladhari Divisions were severely affected…the first time in known history…Unplanned reclaiming of low-lying areas and paddy fields, laying concrete on many rural roads were the main causes for the situation’

– island.lk/kelaniya-ds-explains-the-suffering-undergone-by-record-number-of-victims-due-to-floods-there-and-the-causes/

• SL gets US $ 40mn additional WB funding to improve water and sanitation services

‘The WASSIP is the third water sector project financed by the World Bank since 1998, to provide safe drinking water and sanitation in the rural, estate and urban areas of Sri Lanka.’

– dailymirror.lk/business__main/SL-gets-US-40mn-additional-WB-funding-to-improve-water-and-sanitation-services/245-213928

– island.lk/wb-additional-financing-to-improve-water-and-sanitation-services-in-lanka/

– ft.lk/front-page/40-m-World-Bank-additional-financing-to-improve-water-sanitation-services/44-719147

• Food delivery services to be regulated

– dailymirror.lk/breaking_news/Food-delivery-services-to-be-regulated/108-213778

• ‘Fertilizer Saga’ in Sri Lanka: A Considered Opinion by a Fertilizer Company Academic Agent

 ‘An overwhelming majority of academics, research officers, extension officers, commercial growers and farmers do not agree with this immediate and total ban of inorganic fertilizers.’

– island.lk/fertilizer-saga-in-sri-lanka-a-considered-opinion/

• Fertilizer crisis: Anamaduwa Farmers protest in paddy fields

– timesonline.lk/latest-news/Fertilizer-crisis-Anamaduwa-Farmers-protest-in-paddy-fields/18-1133659

• Micro finance crisis in Sri Lanka: Tightening noose around rural womenfolk

 – dailymirror.lk/news-features/Micro-finance-crisis-in-Sri-Lanka-Tightening-noose-around-rural-womenfolk/131-213632

• Damro Plantations posts Rs. 1.2 b profit in FY21

‘Damro Plantations is the leading producer of natural latex in the country and also possess the largest extent of rubber plantations, with over 25,000 acres across the Western Province.’

– ft.lk/business/Damro-Plantations-posts-Rs-1-2-b-profit-in-FY21/34-719054

• Sri Lanka farmers, local bodies to be taught to produce organic fertilizer after import ban

– economynext.com/sri-lanka-farmers-local-bodies-to-be-taught-produce-organic-fertilizer-after-import-ban-82690/

• Pilot Govt.-backed organic fertiliser production venture in Rajarata

– ft.lk/front-page/Pilot-Govt-backed-organic-fertiliser-production-venture-in-Rajarata/44-719027

• Sri Lanka has freshwater moss, seaweed, lots of chickens to make organic fertilizer: Minister

– economynext.com/sri-lanka-has-freshwater-moss-seaweed-lots-of-chickens-to-make-organic-fertilizer-minister-82781/

• Sevanagala Sugar ventures into manufacture of organic fertiliser, using its bio-waste

– island.lk/sevanagala-sugar-ventures-into-manufacture-of-organic-fertiliser-using-its-bio-waste/

• Pavithra blames spike in cancer and kidney diseases on toxic agricultural inputs

‘Annually 75,000 new cancer patients and new 164,000 kidney patients were diagnosed… 6,000 persons died of chronic kidney diseases every year while 54 persons died daily of various cancers caused by chemical substances used as inputs in agriculture.’

– island.lk/pavithra-blames-spike-in-cancer-and-kidney-diseases-on-toxic-agricultural-inputs/

– island.lk/poison-in-our-food-agrochemicals-and-fertilisers-the-realities/

• No planning in agriculture

– dailymirror.lk/opinion/Fertilizer-tug-o-war-leaves-farmers-in-limbo/172-213628

• Banning fertilisers to bring it through black market?

– island.lk/banning-fertilisers-to-bring-it-through-black-market/

• Sri Lanka to import organic fertilizer for 1.1mn hectares of farmland

‘cabinet of ministers had given the nod for state fertilizer companies to call international bids to import enough organic fertilizer for 500,000 hectares of paddy for the 2021/22 Maha cultivation season. ‘

– economynext.com/sri-lanka-to-import-organic-fertilizer-for-1-1mn-hectares-of-farmland-82708/

• US$1bn cost for organic fertiliser transformation

 – sundaytimes.lk/210606/business-times/us1-bn-cost-for-organic-fertiliser-transformation-445944.html

• The ban on agrochemicals and its implications – Political decision not practical?

– island.lk/the-ban-on-agrochemicals-and-its-implications/

• Shift to organic fertilisers – Experts claim reduction in yield; activists warn of food scarcity

– dailymirror.lk/print/front_page/Decision-to-shift-to-organic-fertilisers-Experts-claim-a-reduction-in-yield-activists-warn-of-a-fo/238-213816

• Farmers see little of fat profits for their produce: Middlemen using pandemic to earn profits.

– sundaytimes.lk/210606/news/farmers-see-little-of-fat-profits-for-their-produce-446064.html

• Government steps in to purchase harvest left unsold

– newsfirst.lk/2021/06/08/government-steps-in-to-purchase-harvest-left-unsold/

• Stocks of poultry companies increase in price

– island.lk/govt-to-list-several-state-run-hotels-on-cse/

• Lorry with 1500 chickens drown in Victoria Reservoir

– dailymirror.lk/breaking_news/Lorry-with-1500-chickens-drown-in-Victoria-Reservoir/108-213909

• Navy nabs 45 suspects with 4040 illegally harvested sea cucumbers

‘North Central Naval Command in the seas of Walaipadu and Kiranchi as well as the Northern Naval Command in seas off Vettalakeni, Nagarkovil and Point Pedro…’

– timesonline.lk/news-online/Navy-nabs-45-suspects-with-4040-illegally-harvested-sea-cucumbers/2-1133701

• In one parish alone some 4,300 fisher-families were badly affected by ship

‘for what reason then did our port authorities allow this vessel with undeclared cargo to enter the country’s territorial waters leave alone the Colombo Port. Who was the person or persons, who planned to benefit from this operation, which finally backfired?’

– dailymirror.lk/opinion/Indian-Oceans-Pearl-on-an-X-Press-voyage-to-desolation/172-213789

• Conspiracy Behind “Burning Pearl”, ‘For a Few Dollars More’?

‘Some Western nations consign their recycle waste to third world countries’

– dailymirror.lk/news-features/Conspiracy-Behind-Burning-Pearl-For-a-Few-Dollars-More/131-21355

• Sri Lanka to bring in 42 amendments to 40-year-old National Environment Act

‘a mechanism to impose a fee from factories based on the level of contamination in the wastewater they discharge.’

– economynext.com/sri-lanka-to-bring-in-42-amendments-to-40-year-old-national-environment-act-82772/

– ft.lk/front-page/Effluent-Tax-coming-via-new-Environmental-Act/44-719066\

• Where have all the fruit trees gone?

– sundaytimes.lk/210606/plus/where-have-all-the-fruit-trees-gone-445881.html

• John Keells Foundation & Ruk Rakaganno to reforest 20 hectares of Suduwalipotha forest

– bizenglish.adaderana.lk/john-keells-foundation-partners-with-ruk-rakaganno-to-reforest-20-hectares-of-suduwalipotha-forest/

• Whither Farmers’ Struggles in India?

– socialistproject.ca/2021/06/whither-farmers-struggle-india/

• Japanese organic products maker turns cow urine into gold

– lankaweb.com/news/items/2021/06/08/agriculture-japanese-organic-products-maker-turns-cow-urine-into-gold/

_____________________________________________________________________

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.

• Pandemic cannot deter development projects; GSMB should provide infrastructure: Minister

‘overnment has initiated 13 massive development projects targeted until 2025 and estimated that these projects would require large quantities of gravel, sand and soil.’

– dailymirror.lk/breaking_news/Pandemic-cannot-deter-development-projects-GSMB-should-provide-infrastructure-Minister/108-213902

• SL commenced manufacturing of 40 medicines locally

‘retaining a considerable amount of foreign exchange outflows. Sri Lanka imports US $ 400-500 million worth of medicines per annum’

– dailymirror.lk/business-news/Govt-expects-to-co-produce-13mn-Sinovac-jabs-locally-by-Sept/273-213656

• Kiriella alleges India withheld vaccines from Sri Lanka to spite govt.

– island.lk/kiriella-alleges-india-withheld-vaccines-from-sri-lanka-to-spite-govt/

• Japan to provide urgently needed 600,000 doses of AstraZeneca vaccine

– island.lk/japan-to-provide-urgently-needed-600000-doses-of-astrazeneca-vaccine/

• Unclear what price Sri Lanka would pay for Japanese vaccines

– dailymirror.lk/print/front_page/Japanese-PM-responds-positively-to-PreZS-request-for-astraZeneca-Vaccines/238-213812

• Japan refuses to confirm reports about giving 600,000 doses of Astrazeneca COVID-19 vaccine

– dailymirror.lk/breaking_news/Astrazeneca-COVID-19-vaccine-Japan-mum-on-Sri-Lankas-claims/108-213850

• Developing countries including India unable to get vaccines from companies in other countries

‘Transform COVAX into a COVID-19 Solidarity Pooling Platform, enabling knowledge sharing as well as boosting production capacity under a public health-driven alliance of vaccine manufacturers’

– newsclick.in/patent-rights-medicines-and-vaccines-must-be-waived-and-public-sector-pharma-companies-revived

• USA sitting on huge stocks of unused vaccines

– dailymirror.lk/breaking_news/G7-leaders-agree-to-provide-1bn-COVID-vaccine-doses-to-world-UK/108-213890

• Why China’s Vaccine Internationalism Matters

‘As rich nations stockpile COVID-19 vaccines, China is providing a lifeline to Global South nations spurned by Western pharmaceuticals and excluded by the West’s neocolonial vaccine nationalism. So why is China being smeared for its efforts?’

– qiaocollective.com/en/articles/vaccine-internationalism

• China has delivered more vaccines to Africa than COVAX, how?

– developmentreimagined.com/2021/06/07/chinamorethancovax/

• Person linked to Melbourne cluster only a transit passenger here

– dailymirror.lk/breaking_news/Person-linked-to-Melbourne-cluster-only-a-transit-passenger-here/108-213839

• National Hospital of Nephrology to be declared open today

– newsfirst.lk/2021/06/11/national-hospital-of-nephrology-to-be-declared-open-today-11/

– island.lk/from-china-with-love/

– island.lk/china-has-always-shared-weal-and-woe-no-matter-what-with-lanka/

• On-site Oxygen Plants at 15 hospitals

‘carried out with funds from the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank’

– newsfirst.lk/2021/06/12/on-site-oxygen-plants-at-15-hospitals/

• Three arrested with pulse oximeters imported through backdoor

 – island.lk/three-arrested-with-pulse-oximeters-imported-through-backdoor/
• Govt. to kick-start new industrial development drive district-wise

‘256 District Secretariat divisions in the country. A district is divided into a number of Divisional Secretary’s Divisions (commonly known as DS Divisions), which are in turn subdivided into Grama Niladhari Divisions’

– ft.lk/front-page/Govt-to-kick-start-new-industrial-development-drive-district-wise/44-719020

• Prima requests CAA to increase price of Wheat Flour

 – newsfirst.lk/2021/06/12/caa-requested-to-increase-price-of-wheat-flour/

• Traders Hiking Confectionery, Bakery prices

‘The confectionery industry worth Rs.150 billion; local manufacturing industry worth Rs.85 billion and with SMEs, valued at Rs.100 billion. Separately Sri Lanka exports $150-200 million (between Rs.30 and Rs.40 billion). 1.5 million people engage in the bakery industry, where 500,000 are directly employed and another one million engaged indirectly…. raw material, packaging material and logistic costs skyrocketed past two months and the confectionery industry exports hampered due to non-availability of containers and ships…wheat flour price increased by Rs. 6, sugar by Rs. 5 and import tax of fat to Rs. 650 and import tax of margarine to Rs. 615… palm olein sold at different prices’

– ft.lk/front-page/Confectionery-bakery-prices-set-to-go-up/44-718920

• New CEYPETCO & IOC fuel prices in effect

‘higher cost of imports, lower prices in 2020 in fact helped Sri Lanka to reduce its fuel import bill by 34.7% to $ 2.5 billion according to the Finance Ministry from $ 3.78 billion in 2019’

– dailymirror.lk/breaking_news/Fuel-prices-increased-from-midnight-today/108-213920

– dailymirror.lk/breaking_news/Cabinet-sub-committee-on-cost-of-living-decides-on-fuel-price-revision-Minister/108-213907

– island.lk/people-to-get-fuel-price-shock-soon/

– ft.lk/top-story/Govt-adds-fuel-to-the-fire/26-719151

• All CPC unions oppose plan to allow private sector to import, refine and distribute fuel

– sundaytimes.lk/210606/news/all-cpc-unions-oppose-plan-to-allow-private-sector-to-import-refine-and-distribute-fuel-446131.html

• Amending Ceylon Petroleum Act a threat to national security: JVP

 ‘another motive behind the amendment of the Act was to take over all the powers under the Minister so as to extend the licence of the Indian Oil Company (IOC) which was due to end in 2023.’

– dailymirror.lk/breaking_news/Amending-Ceylon-Petroleum-Act-a-threat-to-national-security-JVP/108-213777

• Intertek/ MMBL-Pathfinder Joint Venture to set up Advanced Petroleum-Testing Lab in Hambantota Port

– island.lk/intertek-mmbl-pathfinder-joint-venture-to-set-up-advanced-petroleum-testing-lab-in-hambantota-port/

• Controversy over proposal to merge Litro with debt-ridden LAUGFS

‘“Government bailing out LAUGFS”’

– sundaytimes.lk/210606/news/controversy-over-proposal-to-merge-litro-with-debt-ridden-laugfs-446127.html

– sundaytimes.lk/210606/news/litro-gas-company-and-slic-loss-making-company-a-question-of-syntax-446121.html

• Litro Gas posts exceptional financial results

‘Profit before Tax of Rs 1,436 million for the year ended 2020.’

– island.lk/litro-gas-posts-exceptional-financial-results/

• LAUGFS, Litro to jointly use Hambantota storage terminal

– sundaytimes.lk/210606/business-times/laugfs-litro-to-jointly-use-hambantota-storage-terminal-445942.html

• Govt. reverses decision to acquire 40% stake in Laugfs Terminal

‘State-owned Litro Gas commands over 70 percent share in the country’s duopoly LPG market while Laugfs Gas serves the remainder of the market.’

– dailymirror.lk/business-news/Govt-reverses-decision-to-acquire-40-stake-in-Laugfs-Terminal/273-213722

– island.lk/govt-backtracks-from-its-decision-to-acquire-40-stake-in-laugfs-terminal/

• Gazette issued prohibiting traders from hiding LP Gas stocks

– dailymirror.lk/breaking_news/Gazette-issued-prohibiting-traders-from-hiding-LP-Gas-stocks/108-213783

• Public Utilities Commission approves the second power plant project in Kerawalapitiya,

– dailymirror.lk/breaking_news/PUCSL-looks-to-add-300-MW-to-National-Grid-by-2024/108-213620

– dailymirror.lk/business_247/SLs-2nd-gas-fired-combined-cycle-power-plant-to-be-tendered/395-213631

• PM kicks off 6 key road construction projects

– ft.lk/front-page/PM-kicks-off-6-key-road-construction-projects/44-718961

• Wrong Central highway construction caused Gampaha floods: Prasanna Ranatunga

– dailymirror.lk/breaking_news/Wrong-Central-highway-construction-caused-Gampaha-floods-Prasanna-Ranatunga/108-213703

• Cabinet approves massive project to beautify 100 Cities

– newsfirst.lk/2021/06/08/cabinet-approves-massive-project-to-beautify-100-cities/

• Components makers stand to benefit from SL’s inexpensive skilled workforce: EDB

‘he called on local companies to plug into global MNC supply chains and develop joint ventures so they can act as contract manufacturing companies that carry out design driven work within Sri Lanka.’

– dailymirror.lk/business/Components-makers-stand-to-benefit-from-SLs-inexpensive-skilled-workforce-EDB/215-213766

• CMTA raises concerns over used vehicle assembly proposal

‘disappointed to learn that a cabinet proposal to allow assembly of vehicles with used parts was being considered and if passed would be violating many laws and regulations for vehicle assembly.’

– island.lk/cmta-raises-concerns-over-used-vehicle-assembly-proposal/

– bizenglish.adaderana.lk/cmta-raises-concerns-over-used-vehicle-assembly-proposal/

• Covid time bonanza: Luxury SUVs for MPs coming, after all!

‘227 brand new Toyota Land Cruiser Prado had been imported for 225 members… During ‘Salakuna’ it transpired vehicles were ordered from Singapore based enterprise not the mother company in Japan’

– island.lk/covid-time-bonanza-luxury-suvs-for-mps-coming-after-all/

– island.lk/prosperity-and-splendour/

– dailymirror.lk/breaking_news/Massive-fraud-behind-Prado-SUV-import-for-MPs-Anura/108-213910

– island.lk/no-double-standards-please-on-govts-vehicle-import-ban-cmta/

– bizenglish.adaderana.lk/luxury-suvs-for-mps-while-imports-for-doctors-general-public-held-indefinitely-from-march-2020/

– ft.lk/front-page/CMTA-fumes-over-luxury-SUVs-for-MPs-amidst-import-ban-for-others/44-719150

• Keheliya confirms order for luxury SUVs for MPs cancelled

– ft.lk/front-page/Keheliya-confirms-order-for-luxury-SUVs-for-MPs-cancelled/44-719148

• Small Sri Lanka harbors big maritime ambitions

‘Two-thirds of the transhipment cargo going through SL is goods going from or to India, and New Delhi has traditionally seen Colombo as an ally…a big chunk of what passes through the Indian Ocean is Chinese-made, Beijing has also shown a keen interest…’

– lankaweb.com/news/items/2021/06/06/small-sri-lanka-harbors-big-maritime-ambitions/

• Sri Lanka should modernize maritime policy, review role of shipping agents: Shippers’ Council

‘SL does not have tug companies, salvors or international shipping companies based in the country’

– economynext.com/sri-lanka-should-modernize-maritime-policy-review-role-of-shipping-agents-shippers-council-82817/

• 50% of the cargo usually carried by ships are dangerous cargo

‘The cargo at this juncture makes interesting reading – from frozen chicken feet and scoured goat hair to nitric acid, methanol and lithium electric batteries.’

– ft.lk/opinion/Pearl-of-Expressed-Consumption/14-719085

• X-Press Pearl disaster; Will SL authorities sink or swim in compensation claim?

‘An international company named SMIT Salvage boards the ship after the fire has been extinguished to get an estimation….The Sri Lankan representative company of X-Press Feeders is Sea Consortium Lanka Pvt Ltd and is headed by Arjuna Hettiarachchi…. Strik Salvencher which boarded X-Press Pearl to provide an estimation is the same company which did an estimation for New Diamond which caught fire in Sri Lanka in 2020’

– http://www.dailymirror.lk/news-features/X-Press-Pearl-disaster-Will-SL-authorities-sink-or-swim-in-compensation-claim/131-213788

• Apparel industry income to drop by 20% this year

– sundaytimes.lk/210606/business-times/apparel-industry-income-to-drop-by-20-this-year-445940.html

• All in the saliva: Lankan prof leads pioneering research on oral cancer

 – sundaytimes.lk/210606/plus/all-in-the-saliva-lankan-prof-leads-pioneering-research-on-oral-cancer-445872.html

• Fire Eye laboratory (Huoyan) constructed within 10 hours last week to fight COVID-19

– bizenglish.adaderana.lk/the-polymerase-chain-reaction-keeps-the-silk-road-safe/

• Corporate Think Tank Reveals How Profit-Driven Motives Drive New Cold War against China

– blackagendareport.com/corporate-think-tank-reveals-how-profit-driven-motives-drive-new-cold-war-against-china

• Western Countries Prevented African Nations From Having Their Own Vaccine

‘Colonial-era policies and global health gatekeepers have made it nigh-on impossible for doctors and scientists on the continent to take their vaccines to clinical trials.’

– vice.com/en/article/epnxd7/africa-covid-vaccine-blocked-by-western-countries

• Scientists Have Political Role Outside Their Labs to Safeguard Humanity

‘invention of insulin; despite not being patented by its discoverers (Banting and Best), it is exorbitantly expensive, and thus, catastrophic to poorer families having a diabetic patient.’

– newsclick.in/Scientists-political-role-outside-labs-safeguard-humanity

• Next-level chips coming from AI, says Google

‘AI technology that can design computer chips in less than six hours which is significantly faster than the weeks it takes human experts in the loop. ‘

– asiatimes.com/2021/06/next-level-chips-coming-from-ai-says-google/

______________________________________________________________________

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.

• Two More Foreign Banks expected to take part in SDB bank’s Rs.4.5bn SPO

‘Dutch Development Bank (FMO) has a 10% stake while World Bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC) and Singapore-based SBI-FMO Emerging Asia Financial Sector Fund have 5.9% and 3.1% stakes in the bank.The U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) gave a US$40 million loan to SDB bank. Prabhash Subasinghe-controlled Ayenka Holdings is the single largest shareholder of SDB bank, with a 12.4% stake, followed by Senthilverl Holdings’ T. Senthilverl, with a 11.5% stake in the bank. SDB bank remains open to industry consolidation plan mooted by the Central Bank. It has 1% market share, with SMEs and retail customers accounting for over 80% of its loan book.

– dailymirror.lk/business-news/At-least-two-DFIs-expected-to-take-part-in-SDB-banks-Rs-4-5bn-SPO/273-213797

• Norfund takes board seat at NDB

‘Norfund, (Norwegian International Fund for Developing Countries) recently acquired a 9.99% stake in the NDB…Fay Piyatchatr Chetnakarnkul of Norfund based in Bangkok, served in Oslo and worked with the International Finance Corporation (IFC), a member of the World Bank Group.’

– island.lk/norfund-takes-board-seat-at-ndb/

• CB directs NBFI sector to extend relief to borrowers

‘government allowed uninterrupted economic activities only for big businesses or those into export manufacturing…small businesses – restaurants, bars, beauty parlours, cinemas, clothing stores, etc. are going bankrupt… ‘Instead of crafting plans to protect the most vulnerable and high-risk segments, Sri Lanka chose to put blanket restrictions on everyone covering the entire country, with its extremely fragile economy.

– dailymirror.lk/business__main/CB-directs-NBFI-sector-to-extend-relief-to-borrowers/245-213798

– timesonline.lk/news-online/Central-Banks-concessionary-scheme-for-businesses-and-individuals-affected-by-the-third-COVID-19-wave/2-1133721

• New NPL classification could reduce NBFI lending to MSMEs: AFC Chairperson

– dailymirror.lk/business-news/New-NPL-classification-could-reduce-NBFI-lending-to-MSMEs-AFC-Chairperson/273-213877

• Fitch upgrades ratings of HNB Assurance and HNB General Insurance

– island.lk/fitch-upgrades-ratings-of-hnb-assurance-and-hnb-general-insurance/

• Merchant Bank to raise Rs. 2.2 b via Rights Issue

‘Bank of Ceylon owns 81% stake in MBSL’

– ft.lk/front-page/MBSL-to-raise-Rs-2-2-b-via-Rights-Issue/44-719063

• Yashodha Holdings (Pvt) Ltd loses legal battle against People’s Bank

‘to prevent bank from recovering overdue facilities by disposing property mortgaged to the Bank’

– bizenglish.adaderana.lk/yashodha-holdings-pvt-ltd-loses-the-legal-battle-against-peoples-bank-to-prevent-the-bank-from-recovering-overdue-facilities-by-disposing-the-property-mortgaged-to-the-bank/

• ComBank Digital partners with LankaPay for payments to Government Sector Institutions

– bizenglish.adaderana.lk/combank-digital-partners-with-lankapay-to-facilitate-payments-to-the-government-sector-institutions/

• Fair bit of foreign buying at CSE from non-resident Sri Lankans

– sundaytimes.lk/210606/business-times/fair-bit-of-foreign-buying-from-non-resident-sri-lankans-445936.html

• The End Of Crypto Currencies: 2021

– moonofalabama.org/2021/06/why-crypto-currencies-will-end.html

• 55 foreign central banks pursuing Digital Currency

‘create a Central Bank Digital Currency before cryptocurrencies do further damage to the integrity of the U.S. financial system and a foreign country gains first-mover advantage in creating a CBDC.’

– wallstreetonparade.com/2021/06/senator-elizabeth-warren-has-one-word-for-cryptocurrencies-lousy/

• Space Oddities – Amazon’s Jeff Bezos is going to space:

‘Blue Origin says its “National Team,” includes Draper, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman… Amazon’s illegal use of price agreements to edge out competition…Amazon, Bezos’ main company, also gets billions in subsidies and does not pay taxes.’

– moonofalabama.org/2021/06/space-oddities.html

• Wall Street-Captured Fed Consolidates Its Power Under Biden

‘U.S. Treasury Secretary, is also the Chair of the Financial Stability Oversight Council, which includes every Wall Street regulator.’

– wallstreetonparade.com/2021/06/the-wall-street-captured-fed-consolidates-its-power-under-biden/

• No One Elected at Federal Reserve that Unilaterally Rewrites Rules on Wall Street Since 2007

– wallstreetonparade.com/2021/06/there-is-not-one-elected-official-at-the-federal-reserve-but-it-has-been-unilaterally-rewriting-the-rules-on-wall-street-since-2007/

• U.S. stock exchanges selling high speed access to trading data that general public has no access

– wallstreetonparade.com/2021/06/seven-years-after-michael-lewis-described-on-national-tv-how-the-u-s-stock-market-is-rigged-sec-chair-gensler-says-hes-going-to-tackle-market-structure/

• Palihapitiya’s $16m bet on Clover worth $ 682 m on Reddit rally

‘Palihapitiya, one of the most prolific SPAC sponsors, is now sitting on a paper profit of morethan4,000% …A third of Palihapitiya’s stake in Clover is pledged as collateral to Credit Suisse for a loan’

– ft.lk/business/Palihapitiya-s-16-m-bet-on-Clover-worth-682-m-on-Reddit-rally/34-719091

___________________________________________________________________________________

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’

• Rajeewa Jayaweera Memoirs Supressed?

 ‘The Yahapalanites appointed friends from their alma mater and party hacks. The following are the Directors appointed by the Yahapalana government in February 2015 and their connections. Chairman Ajith Dias (Prime Minister’s friend and ex-Royal College). Chanaka de Silva and Mahinda Haradasa, (PM’s friends, ex-Royal College, and members of UNP Working Committee), Rajan Brito (former President CBK’s friend), Hadindra Balapatabandi (former President Sirisena’s friend), Rakhitha Jayawardena (PM’s relative and old Thomian), Lt. Col. (Retd.) Sunil Peiris (Ravi Jayawardene’s friend and old Thomian), and N. De Silva Deva Aditya (PM’s friend and MP in European Parliament). CEO Suren Ratwatte, a pilot by profession, was the younger brother of the PM’s financial advisor.’

– island.lk/how-public-sector-corruption-withers-national-economy-rjs-insight/

• Two digging for gold in 10 year old grave, arrested

‘The suspects who believed to be fishermen had also been digging graves of the dead at the Urikadu cemetery for years.’

– dailymirror.lk/breaking_news/Two-digging-for-gold-in-10-year-old-grave-arrested/108-213686

• Check accuracy of weighing, measuring instrument when issuing essential service passes:

 – dailymirror.lk/breaking_news/Check-accuracy-of-weighing-measuring-instrument-when-issuing-essential-service-passes-MUSSD/108-213774

• Govt to release confiscated essential items for retail consumption to Sathosa

 – dailymirror.lk/breaking_news/Govt-to-release-confiscated-essential-items-for-retail-consumption/108-213679

• Sri Lankan Non-Life Insurers’ Capital to Normalise after Improving on Lower Claims

‘Claims from motor and medical insurance, which collectively accounted for well over 60% of the industry’s premiums and net claims, markedly reduced.’

– bizenglish.adaderana.lk/sri-lankan-non-life-insurers-capital-to-normalise-after-improving-on-lower-claims/

• University of Kelaniya launches Doctor of Business Administration Alumni in SL

‘fellow members: Dr. Dinesh Hamangoda, General Manager – Sales, Hemas Consumer was appointed as the Vice President while Dr. Tharaka Punchibandara, Head of Commercial Operations, SAARC Region, Mylan Pharmaceuticals and Dr. Ranjan Dissabandara, Managing Director, Finex Engineering were appointed as the Secretary and the Treasurer of the Alumni respectively.’

– island.lk/university-of-kelaniya-launches-doctor-of-business-administration-alumni-in-sl/

• ICTA, PwC to help innovative tech companies raise much needed funds with minimal collateral

 ‘Prof. Lalith Gamage – Chairman of ICTA, Mahinda B.Herath – Chief Executive Officer ICTA, Anura De Alwis – Chief Digital Economy Officer of ICTA, Kavinda Weerakoon, Director – Deals, PwC Sri Lanka, Ashok Goonesekere Chief Risk Officer DFCC Bank, Indika Ranaweera, Vice President – SME, Middle Market & Business Banking, NDB Bank and Kanishka Weeramunda, Founder/CEO of Paymedia. steering committee: Mangala Karunaratne – CEO, Calcey Technologies, Mr. Chalinda Abeykoon – CEO, Lankan Angel Network, Nilendra Weerasinghe – Head – Chief Corporate Advisory Officer, NDB Investment Bank, Wellington Perera – Director, Cemex Software, Jayomi Lokuliyana – CEO, ZMessenger.

– island.lk/icta

‘• S’pore-style PPP ventures kick off next week for prime Colombo locations

– sundaytimes.lk/210606/news/spore-style-ppp-ventures-kick-off-next-week-for-prime-colombo-locations-446133.html

• Colombo Property at Risk of being sold to investors; Harsha challenges to prove its wrong

– newsfirst.lk/2021/06/06/colombo-property-at-risk-of-being-sold-to-investors-harsha-challenges-to-prove-its-wrong/

• Probe X-Press Pearl disaster against backdrop of Port City & Selendiva projects – Church

– island.lk/probe-x-press-pearl-disaster-against-backdrop-of-port-city-and-selendiva-projects-church-spokesperson/

• Govt to list several state-run hotels on CSE

– island.lk/govt-to-list-several-state-run-hotels-on-cse/

• Abans posts record revenue of Rs. 37.8 billion FY21

– ft.lk/business/Abans-posts-record-profit-and-revenue-in-FY21/34-718907

• Yudishtran Kanagasabai new independent non-executive director of Dankotuwa Porcelain.

‘Retired senior partner of PricewaterhouseCoopers Sri Lanka and Maldives, currently Chairman of the Board Audit Committee of Ceylon Tobacco Co., Eswaran Brothers Exports and Millennium IT ESP, Independent Non-Executive Director of Cargills, Hunter & Co. and Lanka Canneries, Cargills Food, Cargills Bank and Ambeon Capital, and Chairman South Asia Textiles. He was Chairman, Audit Committee of Union Bank, and Commissioner of the Insurance Regulatory Commission…

– island.lk/norfund-takes-board-seat-at-ndb/

• DSI enjoins infringer for sale of lookalike products

– ft.lk/business/DSI-enjoins-infringer-for-sale-of-lookalike-products/34-718952

• LOLC global expansion strategy eyes former Soviet states

– sundaytimes.lk/210606/business-times/lolc-global-expansion-strategy-eyes-former-soviet-states-445934.html

• SL European Chamber of Commerce business and investment networking with Denmark

– ft.lk/business/European-Chamber-of-Commerce-virtual-business-and-investment-networking-with-Denmark/34-718950

• SL & Ethiopia discuss enhancing political and economic ties at first ever bilateral consultations

‘03 Sri Lankan apparel manufacturing companies & 01 chemical manufacturing company are in Ethiopia with investment of over USD 15 Million & employing over 5,000 Ethiopians… there is potential in agro processing, hydro power generation & manufacture of apparel & chemicals…over 400 Sri Lankan professionals employed in the hospitality & apparel manufacturing sectors in Ethiopia…’

– bizenglish.adaderana.lk/sri-lanka-and-ethiopia-discuss-enhancement-of-political-and-economic-ties-at-first-ever-bilateral-consultations/

• Rhino Asbestosis Group Donates 8 ICU Ventilators to Ministry of Health

– bizenglish.adaderana.lk/rhino-group-donates-8-icu-ventilators-to-ministry-of-health/

• India’s Diamond Cutters donates PCR machine To Diyatalawa

– island.lk/diamond-cutters-donates-pcr-machine/

• Hemas and Plasticcycle expands plastic waste collection network

– bizenglish.adaderana.lk/hemas-and-plasticcycle-expands-plastic-waste-collection-network/

• Brandix Sustainability Summit Calls for Net Zero Carbon Future

‘Victoria Burrows, Director of Advancing Net Zero – World Green Building Council: “private businesses need to go above and beyond current regulations for green buildings.”’

– bizenglish.adaderana.lk/brandix-sustainability-summit-calls-for-net-zero-carbon-future/

• Kerala and Tamil Nadu Capped Prices of COVID-19 Essentials

– newsclick.in/right-health-follow-kerala-tamil-nadu-capped-prices-COVID-19-essentials

• Cox & Kings Case: Parts 2&3

‘promoter Peter Kerkar is behind bars for allegedly defrauding banks. An accountant in his company has died under mysterious circumstances.’

– newsclick.in/Cox-%26-Kings-Case-How-Tourism-Finance-Corporation-Enters-the-Picture

– newsclick.in/who-led-cox-kings-deep-pit

• Jack Ma Is Not The Problem

‘It pains me to imagine how many youth will be influenced by then and become the next ones with bourgeois dreams. Many have been brainwashed by the short-sighted consumerism and interest-driven “way of success”. To fill our desires, we slowly embraced loan services and over-consumption.’

– qiaocollective.com/en/articles/jack-ma-is-not-the-problem

______________________________________________________

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.

• Gnanasara Thero set to enter Parliament as MP

– dailymirror.lk/breaking_news/Gnanasara-Thero-set-to-enter-Parliament-as-MP/108-213758

• Classist, aristocratic cabal in Sri Lanka conspiring to prevent Premadasa presidency: MP

– economynext.com/classist-aristocratic-cabal-in-sri-lanka-conspiring-to-prevent-premadasa-presidency-mp-82821/

– newsfirst.lk/2021/06/09/patali-dismisses-claims-on-rift-within-sjb/

– economynext.com/sri-lanka-opposition-intrigue-patali-denies-sjb-rift-non-committal-on-continued-support-82835/

• Life and Times of Dynamic “Thamby” Arumugan Thondaman

 ‘when the LTTE killed several UNP MPs by setting off a bomb at Grandpass, the vacancies were filled by two more CWC MPs.’

– dailymirror.lk/opinion/Life-and-Times-of-Dynamic-Thamby-Arumugan-Thondaman/172-213940

• UN Global Compact Network SL co-hosts three sessions at UN Global Compact Summit 2021

‘on 15-16 June Heads of State, CEOs of major corporations and UN leaders will address converging global crises of climate change, the COVID-19 global pandemic, worsening social and economic inequality and unchecked corruption in order to offer a roadmap for a sustainable recovery…President of Singapore, Halimah Yacob; PM of Jamaica, Andrew Holness, PM of the Republic of Korea, Kim Boo-kyum; UN Secretary-General António Guterres; UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina J. Mohammed; President of COP26, Alok Sharma; England High-Level Climate Champion Nigel Topping; Inger Andersen, Executive Director, UNEP; Michelle Bachelet, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights; Sharan Burrow, Secretary General of the International Trade Union Confederation and Sanda Ojiambo, CEO & Executive Director of UN Global Compact… First session, Network SL with Networks Mexico, England & Turkey host “Responsible Business: Diversity & Inclusion in the Workplace” with Sharmila Sherikar, Virtusa. Panelists for the Sri Lanka Network session are Dilhan Fernando – Dilmah Tea & Chairman of the UN Global Compact Network Sri Lanka; Hajar Alafifi – Chairperson and Managing Director, Unilever Sri Lanka; Rohan Fernando – Aitken Spence; Shakthi Ranatunga – Chief Operations Officer, MAS Holdings; and Rajitha Kariyawasam – Managing Director, Haycarb PLC & Eco Solutions & Deputy Chairman, Dipped Products (Hayleys Group). Network SL & Networks Bangladesh, Nepal & Pakistan to host “Towards Economic Prosperity: Perspectives from South Asia” with featuring Krishan Balendra, Chairman – John Keells Holdings

– timesonline.lk/news-online/UN-Global-Compact-Network-Sri-Lanka-co-hosts-three-sessions-at-UN-Global-Compact-Leaders-Summit-2021/2-1133703

• Marx & Gramsci – Kanishka Gunawardena at the Marx School, Sri Lanka

– https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LTTDpwHlhQ

• India Congress reset transforms Kerala politics

‘The main parties – CPM & Congress – are pitching to consolidate their respective Hindu voter base.’

– indianpunchline.com/congress-reset-transforms-kerala-politics/

• Another View of Tiananmen

‘For starters, democracy — American or otherwise — was far from the minds of the students when the protests first kicked off. The primary three demands were related to price controls/inflation, official corruption, and labor market competition.’

– redsails.org/another-view-of-tiananmen/

• Tiananmen Square

‘the student demonstrations were not about democracy.’

– island.lk/tiananmen-square/

• Dialectical and Historical Materialism (1938) – Stalin

‘In ancient times dialectics was the art of arriving at the truth by disclosing the contradictions in the argument of an opponent and overcoming these contradictions.’

– redsails.org/dialectical-and-historical-materialism/

• The Revolution against “Das Kapital” (1917) – Antonio Gramsci

– redsails.org/the-revolution-against-das-kapital/

• ‘Communist International’ Catalogue from Canadian Trotskyist

– johnriddell.com/category/communist-international/

• Did post-Marxist theories destroy Communist regimes?

– glineq.blogspot.com/2017/02/did-post-marxist-theories-destroy.html

• “New Bones” Abolitionism, Communism, and Captive Maternals

– blackagendareport.com/new-bones-abolitionism-communism-and-captive-maternals

• Socialist Strategy and Cooperatives /w Sam Gindin

‘Worker ownership and cooperatives will not succeed by competing on capitalism’s terms’

– socialistproject.ca/leftstreamed-video/socialist-strategy-and-cooperatives/

__________________________________________________________

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.

• Criminalizing Fake News – Night Watchman Society Sri Lanka

– dailymirror.lk/news-features/Criminalizing-Fake-News/131-213554

• Poorly worded legal provisions can be construed to cover “fake news”: Sri Lanka lawyer

‘police are relying on the PTA and Computer Crimes Act instead…“If they are arresting people under section 120 of the Penal Code (exciting disaffection), that too is a cognizable offence, and an arrest can be made without a warrant”

– economynext.com/poorly-worded-legal-provisions-can-be-construed-to-cover-fake-news-sri-lanka-lawyer-82815/

• Arrest without Warrant for Fake News

– economynext.com/sri-lankans-posting-information-deemed-false-on-social-media-face-arrest-without-warrant-82783/

• Information Tech Society Chief arrested for sharing false news

– dailymirror.lk/breaking_news/ITSSL-Chief-arrested-for-sharing-false-news-over-possible-hacking-of-state-websites-Police/108-213674

• BASL comes out strong against Police on fake news related to COVID-19

 – dailymirror.lk/breaking_news/BASL-comes-out-strong-against-Police-on-fake-news-related-to-COVID-19/108-213915

• Health Ministry Spokesman Dr. Hemantha Herath: Many journalists killed were “third class”

– ft.lk/news/Sajith-condemns-suppression-of-media/56-719019

• Litro Gas Company and SLIC: Loss making company, a question of syntax?

– sundaytimes.lk/210606/news/litro-gas-company-and-slic-loss-making-company-a-question-of-syntax-446121.html

• Oldest Dagoba in Sri Lanka, the World?

‘Upstream from the estuary mouth of the Yan Oya, about 2 miles up, near the village of Tiriyai, were the ruins of perhaps the most ancient Buddhist dagoba in all SL, and perhaps in the entire world’

– island.lk/fishing-expeditions-at-yan-oya/

• Former Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe called Jayaweera demise: “forced suicide.”

– island.lk/remembering-my-brother-rajeewa-jayaweera/

• Chamuditha complains his life is in danger, but won’t give up ‘Salakuna’

– island.lk/chamuditha-complains-his-life-is-in-danger-but-wont-give-up-salakuna/

• Laki’s mother was a LSSPer and the first woman MP of Parliament.

– sundaytimes.lk/210606/plus/he-leaves-behind-a-gigantic-trail-and-stories-only-he-could-have-told-445865.html

– sundaytimes.lk/210606/plus/laki-as-i-knew-him-445889.html

– sundaytimes.lk/210606/plus/diyabubula-where-the-magic-happened-445885.html

• In Memoriam Qadri Ismail: Limitations of Sri Lanka’s nationalisms

‘origins of Tamil nationalism were nothing more than grievances over government jobs, and later over depletion in university of admissions’

– island.lk/in-memoriam-qadri-ismail-limitations-of-sri-lankas-nationalisms/

– sundaytimes.lk/210606/sunday-times-2/the-qadri-ismail-we-recruited-to-the-sunday-times-is-no-more-446010.html

• Martin Wickramasinghe: The novelist, critic, and problem

 – island.lk/martin-wickramasinghe-the-novelist-critic-and-problem

• Indian Govt or WhatsApp: Who’s Defending Privacy?

‘between the Indian Government and WhatsApp over new IT law.’

– newsclick.in/govt-or-whatsapp-whos-defending-privacy

• An ‘Anarchic’ Poem and its ‘Literary Naxal’ Admirers

 – newsclick.in/An-Anarchic-Poem-Literary-Naxal-Admirers

• Joe Biden revokes Trump’s ban on TikTok, WeChat in US

– dailymirror.lk/breaking_news/Joe-Biden-revokes-Trumps-ban-on-TikTok-WeChat-in-US/108-213824

• Major media websites go down worldwide:

‘San Francisco-based Fastly – a cloud service company used by many media – acknowledged a problem…that technology requires Fastly to sit between most of its clients and their users. That means that if the service suffers a catastrophic failure, it can prevent those companies from operating on the net at all.”

– dailymirror.lk/breaking_news/Major-media-websites-go-down-worldwide/108-213690

– wallstreetonparade.com/2021/06/from-london-to-los-angeles-news-outlets-go-dark-around-the-world-this-morning-fastly-takes-blame/

• English Court Rules: Bloggers Should Be Jailed & Mainstream Media Not

‘House of Commons was debating “safety of journalists”. After reams of MP waffle about evil foreigners, the Alba Party was allocated 60 seconds’

– craigmurray.org.uk/

_________________________________________________

• Please note our new email address: econenews@gmail.com,

and our blog: eesrilanka.wordpress.com

_________________________________________________