blog: eesrilanka.wordpress.com
“Before you study the economics, study the economists!”
e-Con e-News 01-07 August 2021
That One Billion Dollars Sri Lanka had to pay in July as so-called ‘debt’ ongoing, where exactly did it go? If it were to China, the white-out media would be howling! Why are these media’s lambs so silent?
• South India repeatedly invaded Anuradhapura-based Rajarata to destroy its iron and steel production. The Portuguese, Dutch and the English, particularly after the Uva Rebellion of 1818, also targeted such industries. A nascent steel industry was built up after 1956, with support from socialist countries. Governments after 1977 destroyed all such efforts (see ee Focus).
Economists refuse to mention, the best way to pay our ‘debts’, is through modern industrialization. They rather complain about money-printing causing inflation. Yet if this money and the massive profits companies are making are invested in modern production, rather than real-estate, no such inflation would ensue. Dialog Axiata just announced Rs. 68 billion in revenue for the first six months of 2021! (see ee Business)
• Sex & the United Nations – Prostitutes in Geneva’s Red Light District, near the UN headquarters, represent an array of nations, cultures, languages. Sex workers, trafficked in from Asia, Africa & the Americas, are forced to service an equally wide array of UN diplomats, corporate executives and bankers. They are young and old, female and male, and everyone in between. Prices start at 100 Swiss Francs (~Rs22,000) based on menus offering diverse ‘racial’ and sexual delights.
Prostitution is legal in Switzerland. But illegal in many of the countries where diplomats are from. So Geneva’s RLD provides valuable ‘intelligence’ to Swiss police and other powers to control foreign policy, down the street at the UN.
• The military role in education is being fiercely debated on the internet. Yet, the internet is still controlled by the US military. The US military first set up the internet system (DARPA) to connect its research institutions (universities, etc.) to its factories.
US Dollars are flooding in to promote protests and media outrage-ification. The news this week notes how Facebook, Twitter, news agencies like BBC and Reuters, as well as tax-free cultural fronts like the British Council, are heavily implicated in destabilizing our countries, playing all sides. The Sri Lankan government has absolutely no control over imperialism distributing funds to NGOs.
• Last week, ee superficially examined Dialog and Sri Lanka Telecom’s colonial role in the controlling the internet. ee, 2 weeks ago, showed how Unilever operates through 100s of so-called Sri Lankan companies, using legal fictions, facades, covers, front & shell companies. Figuring out who really controls the internet and Unilever, etc., needs looking at who researches, produces and supplies their machinery.
Countries do not advertise their industrial might. In fact, they hide it. Many do not know thatSingapore is an industrial economy, albeit a fortress for white multinationals to dominate southeast Asia.
• Sri Lankan needs Rs. 34,000 per person per month just to eat! – An English thinktank erroneously reported this week. This Institute of Development Studies (IDS) has for a long time prevented actual research into our underdevelopment.
In 1969, the entire top echelon of the Sri Lanka Planning Ministry, under Gamani Corea, was flown to the IDS in London for a joint working conference on Development Planning in Ceylon. Many of this ‘echelon’ were then bribed with study and research work, largely superficial.
The IDS is of course linked to the Unilever Corporation. While Unilever’s top shareholders are listed as asset managers Blackrock, etc., historical ownership remains with the Leverhulme Trust. This trust controls England’s top thinktanks and industrial research. Unilever’s Materials Innovation Factory in England blends ‘materials chemistry expertise’ with the latest computational and robotic technology. They will not allow any of this here. Instead Sri Lanka’s expertise is confined to packing their goods. (see ee 27 June, 21 Nov 2020)
• The murder of child workers is still in the news. Yet last year there were 71 workers killed on the job, with 1,116 nonfatal accidents. Recorded incidents at least, though not reported in headlines. (ee Quotes on Work & Murder)
The exposure of the murder of domestic workers by prominent Colombots has sent the ‘labor flexibility’ mafia quiet, for now. Labor Flexibility is IMF-speak for destroying workers’ rights. Meanwhile, protests by trade unions, health workers and teachers, have been enthusiastically promoted by the capitalist media. There was less reportage on the protest by electrical engineers, against the sale of power plants to the USA. Rural energy production is crucial to modern industry. Imperialism wishes to prevent it.
Contents:
A1. Reader Comments –
• Undersea Cables • Tuition Mudalali MPs • Army Education & Industrialization • No Capitalism in SL • Booker Prize & Imperialism • Facebook Profits • Lenin & Cultural Revolution
A2. Quotes of the Week
• IMF Destroyed Our Industries • FDI Fraud & Solar • Germany Mega-Brothel • China’s Industrial Party • Obama’s Effective Evil • Food & Multinationals • 100% Bank Profits on Late Payments • Social Murder • Natural Interest Rate?
A3. Random Notes –
• Best Workplaces in SL? • Ruining SL Steel • So Many Stalins • Foundations & Development Studies • UN & Prostitution • Balachandran’s Ethnic Game • DS meant Dominion Status • Scandinavia & Slavery • US Constitution & Slavery • Biden vs Stalin • Brecht on Communism
B. ee Focus
B1. Marx & Machines Building Machines
B2. The First Socialist Industrialization
C. News Index
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A1. Reader Comments
• ee thanks Readers who send articles of interest. Please excerpt or summarize what is important about any news sent, or your comments, and place any e-link at the end. Email: econenews@gmail.com
• ‘Last week’s ee on the internet and undersea cables, was eye-opening. Where can we read more?’
• ‘At least 20 MPs are tuition mudalalis. China just banned private tuition’
• ‘Re: the KNDU debate, Is there any discussion about education for modern industrial production. Does the KDU curriculum have anything about that?’
• ‘Why talk of socialism, when we don’t even have capitalism? We are a tea brokerage for Unilever.’
• Re: Book prize: Booker is likely to award or shortlist the Sri Lankan – if the story casts Tamils, Sinhalese and armed forces in the light that is required by empire’ (see ee Media, Booker)
• ‘I see Facebook has decided to pay VAT in Bangladesh, but how much profits are they making here?’
• ‘Lenin’s ideas of “cultural revolution” meant training workers and peasants as a class to take over ruling the country.’
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A2. Quotes of the Week_
• IMF recommendations completely destroyed our national industries such as Paper Mills Corporation, National Weaving Mills, Tyre Corporation, Hardware Corporation, Plywood Corporation, Paranthan Chemical Corporation, Sugar Corporation, Oil & Fats Corporation, Marketing Department Canning Facilities, Mineral Sand Corporation, National Milk Board, Co-op shops, and many more that had laid a firm foundation for solid economic take off.’ – ee Economists, IMF
• On Solar Energy – ‘Foreign participation [is] usually couched in arguments of lack of adequate expertise… and the lure of so called Foreign Direct Investment and inward flow of dollars at this critical juncture. But the question must be asked is, in how many such projects approved by the BOI, how much funds were sourced from the local banks limiting the credit available for the local entrepreneurs? The most blatant example is the Korean investor in the Thulhiriya Textile Mill, who vanished leaving a multibillion loan unsettled for a local bank… We will by spending in Dollars for the use of our own sunshine, which we could harness ourselves for a similar or lower cost in rupees and also ensure the much desired energy security and reduction of drain on foreign exchange. The folly of a similar nature was permitted during the Mahaweli Project downstream development. The project packaging was done in a manner to exclude the local contractors and the awards were made to foreign companies. However, the actual work was done by local contractors on subcontracts very competently. But their experience still remains unaccepted for prequalification of the larger scale of projects. Many decades after, such monumental follies need not be repeated. We must not make the mistake of falling, during daytime, into the pit that we fell into at night, as the local saying goes.’ – see ee Industry, Solar
• ‘A mega-brothel like Germany, where 1.2 million men pay for sex every day’ – ee Workers, Switzerland.
• ‘Under China’s Xi, the key ideas of the Industrial Party, restoring the grand development narrative, cherishing scientific thinking, and leapfrogging the West through a focus on advanced technology, have taken center stage in the CCP’s policy’ – ee Industry, Factum
• ‘Obama and the Democrats were not the “lesser evil” that millions of people hoped for. Instead, they were just the more effective evil…’ – ee Media, Ford
• ‘We have a world food system that is based on large multinational companies; private profits; and low measures on international transfers to help poor people, sometimes none at all. It is based on extreme irresponsibility of powerful countries with regard to the environment. And it is based on radical denial of the rights of poor people.’ – ee Agriculture, Sustainable
• ‘3 US banks “make 100% of their profits on overdraft fees.”…most folks paying these fees are living paycheck to paycheck and many don’t even know they’ve over-drafted their account because many banks provide no warning at the time the overdraft is occurring.’ – ee Finance, Overdraft
• Social murder – ‘When one individual inflicts bodily injury upon another such that death results, we call the deed manslaughter; when the assailant knew in advance that the injury would be fatal, we call his deed murder. But when society places hundreds of proletarians in such a position that they inevitably meet a too early and unnatural death, one which is quite as much a death by violence as that by the sword or bullet; when it deprives 1000s of the necessaries of life, places them under conditions in which they cannot live – forces them, through the strong arm of the law, to remain in such conditions until that death ensues which is the inevitable consequence – knows these 1000s of victims must perish, and yet permits these conditions to remain, its deed is murder just as surely as the deed of the single individual; disguised, malicious murder, murder against which none can defend himself, which does not seem what it is, because no man sees the murderer, because the death of the victim seems a natural one, since the offence is more one of omission than of commission. But murder it remains.’ – Engels
• ‘Marx denied the concept of a natural rate of interest. For him, the return on capital, whether exhibited in the interest earned on lending money, or dividends from holding shares, or rents from owning property, came from the surplus-value appropriated from the labour of the working class and appropriated by the productive sectors of capital. Interest was only a part of that surplus value. The rate of interest would thus fluctuate between zero and the average rate of profit from capitalist production in an economy. In boom times, it would move towards the average rate of profit and in slumps it would fall towards zero. But the decisive driver of investment would be profitability, not the interest rate. If profitability was low, then holders of money would increasingly hoard money or speculate in financial assets rather than invest in productive ones.’ – ee Economists, Roberts
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A3. Random Notes (‘Seeing Number in Chaos’)_
• What on earth are all these business headlines claiming various Sri Lankan companies have been declared the ‘BEST WORKPLACES’? Is it the workers who decide this? No! A US-based multinational organization called the Great Place to Work Institute, produces the dubious ranking, FORTUNE 100 Best Companies to Work for. One of their local partners is the Employers’ Federation of Ceylon, which in 1935 was registered as the first trade union. Yet the EFC’s job has been to destroy workers’ organizations. They came out openly in the 1980s, when mass firings of workers demanded, which then led to decades of terrorism.
• Sri Lanka’s nascent steel industry is almost in ruins. Steel is the rice of industry. All major countries protect their steel industry. It is considered a vital part of their self-defence, like food security.
Our economists ignore why such ‘heavy’ ‘capital’ industry is important. They rather whine about paying debts (while demanding imports of industrial goods, including chemicals, which increases debt). They do not mention that modern industrial production (machine making) is the best method to advance the economy.
Closely related to modern industry is the production of energy. This is why the USA and India have marched forward (with their ambassadors making publicized appeals) to offer their ‘aid’ to promote energy. As ee’s gurus, such as DJ Wimalasurendra and GVS de Silva pointed out, the rural production of electricity and its requisite machinery and parts is vital to the country’s renaissance. They were both thwarted, by England’s manipulation of our political economy, which continues to this day.
Electrical engineers have come out against the sale of the Kerawalapitiya power plant to the US. ee has already noted the push by major US banks to take over power plants worldwide, and then strip them bare.
Working from home (WFH) is the latest fad for capitalists, using modern technology, which can monitor every movement of the worker. As ee reminds, machinery and its making, signifies the modern era from earlier eras. Whereas instead of improving everybody’s quality of life, capitalism’s first resort after making machines was to hire women and children!
• Joseph Stalin is in the news. The head of the Teachers’ Union, and the Chief Minister of Tamilnadu, are also named Joseph Stalin. Yet we’re more interested in the original Joseph Stalin, leader of the USSR. Why would ee be most concerned about a leader universally reviled by the whites? One word of praise about Com. Stalin is almost impossible to find on the internet. There are numerous sites dedicated to the millions purportedly killed by him. But here’s the thing: There are almost no sites dedicated to telling us how many millions were murdered in the white settler states. To the original peoples in those continents, particularly in Anglo-North America and Australia, etc., let alone here, India, China, or Africa?
So how do we learn about modern industrialization and make a plan? What are the models we can learn from? Why do we learn only about the broken English of the landed gentry, and not of the English of Industrial Revolution? Why do we hear of US President Thomas Jefferson, etc., and not of Alexander Hamilton? Why do we hear only of Her Majesty’s Leftists (based solely in London or Manhattan) and not of J. Stalin? (see ee Focus)
• Many imperialist-sponsored institutes operate in Sri Lanka, through fronts of England’s Institute of Development Studies, and the USAID’s Asia Foundation, etc. Germany operates through the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, the Friedrich Neumann Stiftung, and the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, all linked to anti-communist German political parties. They have financed the SL Foundation, Marga Institute and the Rural Development Training and Research Institute. These SL organizations sponsor 3 extremely vital areas: development studies, industrial relations, and local government.
• UN & Prostitution – We invoke the icy fleshpots of the Alps, because funded protests will escalate, as anxious headlines and diversionary dramatics, that hyperventilate Sri Lanka’s media, are decamping from Park Ave Plaza at 55 East 52nd St in New York, US, to the Palais Wilson 52 Rue de Paquis in Geneva, Switzerland.
For the last few months, the financial news has all been about paying debts, now it will be about ‘human rights’.
Park Avenue is where the top holders of Sri Lanka’s International Sovereign Bonds are headquartered, like BlackRock, and the Morgans (JP & Stanley). BlackRock is also supposed to be Unilever’s largest shareholder. BR is also the world’s largest asset manager, and the world’s largest investor in fossil fuels. Yet ‘sustainable’, ‘inclusive’, “diverse’ Unilever’s power lies in its industrial might.
The Palais Wilson is where the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights is headquartered, just north of Geneva’s Red Light District. Palais Wilson is named after US President Woodrow Wilson, who set up the League of Nations, forerunner of the United Nations.
After weeks of headlines about paying off an initial billion dollars of (mostly interest on) loans, most people in this country have not benefited from, we will now be inundated by more threats from the whites. So why do we have to listen to their sermons? And isn’t it time Sri Lanka spark a global cultural revolution to bring the UN under the control of the majority of the world’s peoples?
• Indian correspondent PK Balachandran’s headline ‘Sinhala and Tamil not always antagonistic’, says it all: While it is important to point out such issues are not primordial, and rooted in genes, etc., the boardrooms and other nooks of our oligarchy are full of thieves of a multicultural hue, as we write! These merchants may even agree to promote ‘ethnic’ antagonisms to keep their slices of the commercial market. So why say, all ‘people’ are antagonistic now? Balachandran, who is claimed as a ‘liberal’, consistently fails to discuss Bajajification and Tatafication, etc, and other underlying economic issues, where we are being entrapped into India’s/Chennai’s industrial home market. THIS is the issue. People invoking ‘ethnicity’ always wish to keep us unsteady, by making us ponder dubious genetics.
• The DS in DS Senanayake meant: Dominion Status or Doing Shhhh…!?
Dominion status granted in 1948 prevented us from passing our own laws, until we became a republic in 1972. Before 1972, attempts to set up an independent economy, through land reform, investment in modern industrialization, were thwarted by London, though not just by legal means – by attempted assassination, coup d’état, terrorism.
‘Leo Amery was “the most thoughtful and conscientious imperialist” of the first half of the 20thcentury. As England’s Secretary of the State for the Colonies and Dominion Affairs in 1926, he prepared Whitehall for the Balfour Report on Inter-Imperial Relations, and towards the end of the crucial discussions, pointed out, ‘freely associated’ in the ‘defining sentence’ or ‘status formula’ implied the ‘right to dissociate’…
Amery therefore coined the phrase, dominion meant ‘independence plus’. ‘Word formulas adopted were ambiguous at the best of times, could always have double meanings & tended to reverse their import over time. Dominion is a classic case. Its original use signified subordination, from dominus, master, lord, and dominium, property, ownership, authority, sovereignty, lands of a feudal lord, territory subject to a king of ruler. The plantations and colonies were ‘His Majesty’s Dominions beyond the seas’…Canada’s PM Wilfrid Laurier complained about Canada being lumped together with Trinidad and Barbados during discussions about the makeup of Imperial Conferences in 1907. So in 1907, ‘Dominion’ became the distinguishing label for the colonies with responsible government. Dominion status was a halfway house between colonial and independent status. Canada ceased using ‘Dominion of Canada’ after 1926, and joined the UN in 1945 under the original name ‘Canada’. The gay Mountbatten managed to persuade a sceptical Nehru (who was sleeping with M’s wife Edwina) that Dominion Status equated with sovereign status.
Burma refused this status and advanced to independence on 4 January 1948 as the Republic of the Union of Burma, outside the Commonwealth.’ This drew great English rage against Myanmar to this day.
‘The 3rd Asian Dominion was Ceylon. Ceylon would be the first colony to achieve this status since Commonwealth relations had been defined in 1926. Ceylon became a Dominion and was to be the last… A dominion was originally more than a colony but less than an independent state. Dominion status was a halfway house between dependent status and sovereign status and it became redundant after the Statute of Westminister in 1931… In July 1954 Minister of State for Colonies Harry Hopkinson replied honestly: “It has always been understood and agreed that there are certain states in the Commonwealth which, owing to their particular circumstances can never expect to be fully independent.”’ – The Strange Death of Dominion Status, WD McIntyre
• ‘Scandinavians have no history of colonialism into Africa and Asia,’ reported a Sunday Island columnist, with Oxonian credentials. This is of course simply not true. Sweden briefly grabbed Africa’s Gold Coast – Fort Christiansborg/Fort Frederiksborg 1652-58, Fort Batenstein 1649-56, Fort Witsen 1653-58, and Carolusberg 1650-63, and in the America’s Saint-Barthélemy 1784-1878, New Sweden (now Delaware, US, 1638-55), and Tobago (1733). Guadeloupe (1813-14). At the 1884-85 Berlin Conference, Germany, Belgium, Spain, France, England, Italy, Portugal and Ottoman Empire, divided Africa. Austria-Hungary, Denmark, the Netherlands, Russia, Sweden-Norway, and USA, returned without any slices of Africa. As for this Oxonian, does this make our columnists a breed of herded cattle?
• James Madison, who largely drafted the US Constitution, a slave owner and white psycho, was careful to leave out that the US allowed owning humans, because it would not look good. The original US Constitution did NOT prevent enslaving or trading in humans. Democracy was a dirty word, to those founding fathers, and it still is to the US government.
Nowhere does the US Constitution say ‘all are created equal’ nor does it guarantee ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’. When chattel slavery was abolished officially in 1865, the US still allowed it in prison, while also declaring Blacks 2/3rds of white people (as in the Dred Scott case). So guess who’s in prison mostly, and guess how much Black people are paid in relationship to white folkÉ. Dubois called racial privilege, the psychological wage that made up for the class differences between whites.
• Liberalism sounds like a nice word, but behind its masque is horror. Look at Biden claiming the US is murdering people again in Afghanistan to protect women, children and minorities! The US media called the terrorist G Hekamatayar – who threw acid at women attending university in Kabul, and murdered communists – a ‘freedom fighter’, and invited him to the White House.
Domenico Losurdo’s book Liberalism: A Counter-History, links liberalism and slavery. The so-called father of liberalism, John Locke was a notorious promoter of (African) chattel slavery.
Losurdo’s book on Joseph Stalin also shows how the USSR leader was turned villain from hero (he was on the cover of Time magazine 3 times in the 1940s while leading the defeat of the Mighty Nazi war machine). The English and the US were quite happy to have the Germans slaughter the Russians, and vice versa. (see ee Focus)
• In Praise of Communism – by Bertolt Brecht
It is reasonable. You can grasp it. It’s simple.
You’re no exploiter, so you’ll understand.
It is good for you. Look into it.
Stupid men call it stupid, and the dirty call it dirty.
It is against dirt and against stupidity.
The exploiters call it a crime.
But we know:
It is the end of all crime.
It is not madness but
The end of madness.
It is not chaos,
But order.
It is the simple thing
That’s hard to do.
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B. Special Focus_
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B1. Marx & Machines Building Machines
• Machine-building distinguishes modern political economy from previous eras of pre-industrialization (handicraft, manufacture, assembly). It is when machines build machines that modern industry really takes off.
Marx credited Benjamin Franklin for distinguishing humans as tool-making animals – homo faber. Along the way he credited a polyandrous panoply of other founding ‘fathers’ of political economy – William Petty, Richard Cantillon, the Physiocrats, Adam Smith, David Ricardo, etc. But the deciding modifier is ‘modern’ and the decisive practice is ‘machine-building’. Our obsequious colonial import media promotes assembly, manufacturing, etc. Our import bills are massive due to imports of machines and fuel to work those machines.
The longest chapter in Marx’s Capital Vol 1 may be Chapter 15 on ‘machine making’, with as many as 246 footnotes. He makes an important distinction of modern machine industry from previous epochs. Machine-making got a major impulse from the struggles of Africans to free themselves from chattel slavery in the Americas. Chapter 15 also has much to say about education, and the prevention of education to workers.
Marx focused on machinery and machine tools (that made machines) versus tools alone, as marking the era of Modern Industry. MI never looks upon an existing production process as final, and is therefore always revolutionary. As SBD de Silva said: “One thing leads to another” in MI, rather than in assembly and manufacture. Marx dates rapid MI to the period 1846-66, when increased numbers were pushed off the land from agriculture by industry.
Marx noted: ‘It is only during the last 15 years (i.e., since 1850), that a constantly increasing portion of these machine tools have been made in England by machinery, and that not by the same manufacturers who make the machines. Instances of machines for the fabrication of these mechanical tools are, the automatic bobbin-making engine, the cardsetting engine, shuttle-making machines, and machines for forging mule and throstle spindles.’
‘Increasing labour productivity is achieved by using machinery, to cheapen commodities and to produce surplus value. Machines produce surplus value by decreasing the amount of hours a worker works for themselves, while increasing the hours they work for the capitalist.’
While the manufacturing revolution began with controlling labour-power, the MI revolution began with the instruments of labour, which converted tools into machines, differentiating machine for handicraft tools.
The invention of machines made a revolution in steam-engines necessary. Watt‘s genius was shown in the specification of the patent, describing his steam-engine not as an invention for a specific purpose, but as an agent universally applicable in Mechanical Industry, and pointing out its applications, many of which, were not introduced till half a century later. Soon, the cooperation of a number of single machines of one kind was turned into a complex system of machinery.
In the manufacture of envelopes, one man folded the paper with the folder, another laid on the gum, a third turned the flap over, on which the device is impressed, a fourth embossed the device, and so on; and for each of these operations the envelope had to change hands. With MI, one single envelope machine soon performed all these operations at once, making over 1,000s of envelopes in an hour.
The fake garment business in Sri Lanka persists in what first existed in Europe, the conglomeration in one place of similar and simultaneously acting machines. The special tools of various detail workers in manufacture, were in Europe transformed into tools of specialised machines, each machine constituting a special organ, with a special function, in the system. In such machine industry, human hands were replaced by machines, chemistry, etc., ensuring the continuity of earlier manual processes. While certain parts still required handling by a worker, in machine-makers‘ workshops, the slide rest was converted into a self-actor. Once a machine alone executed all the needed movements to process raw material, an automatic system of machinery arose, stopping and starting work.
The famous inventions became practicable, only because many skilled mechanical workers were produced during the manufacturing period.
Manufacture produced the machinery, with which modern industry abolished the handicraft and manufacturing systems…
The expansion of machinery industries depended on a growing a class of workers, who, owing to the almost artistic nature of their employment, could increase their numbers only gradually.
But more especially, the revolution in the modes of production of industry and agriculture made necessary a revolution in the general conditions of the social process of production, i.e., in the means of communication and of transport. …Agriculture on a small scale, with its subsidiary domestic industries, and the urban handicrafts, the means of communication and transport were so utterly inadequate to the productive requirements of the manufacturing period, with its extended division of social labour, its concentration of the instruments of labour, and of the workmen, and its colonial markets, that they became in fact revolutionised… Apart from the radical changes introduced in the construction of sailing vessels, the means of communication and transport became gradually adapted to the modes of production of mechanical industry, by the creation of a system of river steamers, railways, ocean steamers, and telegraphs.’
But the huge masses of iron that had now to be forged, to be welded, to be cut, to be bored, and to be shaped, demanded, on their part, cyclopean machines, for the construction of which the methods of the manufacturing period were utterly inadequate.
Modern industry had therefore itself to take in hand the machine, its characteristic instrument of production, and to construct machines by machines. It was not till it did this, that it built up for itself a fitting technical foundation, and stood on its own feet. Machinery, simultaneously with the increasing use of it, in the first decades of this century, appropriated, by degrees, the fabrication of machines proper. But it was only during the decade preceding 1866, that the construction of railways and ocean steamers on a stupendous scale called into existence the cyclopean machines now employed in the construction of prime movers.
Here is an interesting discussion of work and poetry and philosophy: ‘It is a remarkable phenomenon in the history of modern industry: machinery sweeps away every moral and natural restriction on the length of the working day. Hence, too, the economic paradox, that the most powerful instrument for shortening labour-time, becomes the most unfailing means for placing every moment of the labourer‘s time and that of his family, at the disposal of the capitalist for the purpose of expanding the value of his capital. – “If”, dreamed Aristotle, the greatest thinker of antiquity, – “If every tool, when summoned, or even of its own accord, could do the work that befits it, just as the creations of Daedalus moved of themselves, or the tripods of Hephaestos went of their own accord to their sacred work, if the weavers‘ shuttles were to weave of themselves, then there would be no need either of apprentices for the master workers, or of slaves for the lords.” And Antipatros, a Greek poet of the time of Cicero, hailed the invention of the water-wheel for grinding corn, an invention that is the elementary form of all machinery, as the giver of freedom to female slaves, and the bringer back of the golden age.
Here is the translation of Stolberg’s poem, because it brings into relief, quite in the spirit of former quotations referring to division of labour, the antithesis between the views of the ancients and the moderns – “Spare the hand that grinds the corn, Oh, miller girls, and softly sleep. Let Chanticleer announce the morn in vain! Deo has commanded the work of the girls to be done by the Nymphs, and now they skip lightly over the wheels, so that the shaken axles revolve with their spokes and pull round the load of the revolving stones. Let us live the life of our fathers, and let us rest from work and enjoy the gifts that the Goddess sends us.” (1782)
Oh! those heathens! They understood…nothing of Political Economy and Christianity. They did not, eg, comprehend that machinery is the surest means of lengthening the working day. They perhaps excused the slavery of one on the ground that it was a means to the full development of another. But to preach slavery of the masses, in order that a few crude and half-educated parvenus, might become “eminent spinners,”, “extensive sausage-makers,” and “influential shoe-black dealers”, to do this, they lacked the bump of Christianity.’ [‘bump’ here means brains?]
(excerpts from Marx’s Capital, Vol 1, Chapter 15: ‘Machinery& Modern Industry (Section 1: The Development of Machinery’)
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B2. The First Socialist Industrialization
‘We do not want to industrialise for the sake of power. We want to industrialise because it is the only way to get rid of the curse of poverty. It is the only way to ensure higher living standards and to give our people, when they are free from the pursuit of inadequate food and shameful housing, the leisure and serenity to enjoy our beautiful country; to develop their culture in their own way.’ – Philip Gunawardena
• White July’s 27th was the day that US and English banks stole $1billion from us to pay for the luxurious living of the importers of their goods! With several billion still more to go! So this paying never-ending debts is a good time to ponder what modern industrialization (MI) really means: Not one economist, crying about how much we owe the white banks, ever suggests machine production as the answer to our economic disordering. A way to quickly pay off debts! No professor of economics teaches this subject of MI.
• The appeals by the Chettiar business leaders of SL’s Indian community, for Gandhi in 1927 and Nehru in 1939 to intervene in Sri Lanka, took place at 2 important junctures in Sri Lankan history.
In 1927, the role of the Chettiar moneylenders as buffers between the white banks was being challenged. In 1939, the Bank of Ceylon was just set up and both the English and their local puppets of a multicultural variety wished to prevent the Bank from investing in modern industry. Last week the Island celebrated ‘Sir’ Earnest de Silva (Flower Rd now named after him), calling him the ‘Laird of Ratgama’, who England made first chairman of the Bank of Ceylon, and England’s Queen made a knight in 1946! Good night to the bank! BoC announced massive profits this week? But profits for what?
So let us recall the sacrifice and the demonization and erasure of leaders and scholars who knew exactly what Sri Lanka needed: Anagarika Dharmapala, DJ Wimalasundera, GVS de Silva, Philip Gunawardena, & SBD de Silva. Abroad we can learn from K Marx & F Engels, VI Lenin, J Stalin, Mao Zedong:
• Why does the Communist Party of China (CPC) uphold Marxism-Leninism? And should we? It is Stalin who first set down the basic tenets of Leninism, and described it as Marxism in the age of imperialism and proletarian revolution. So, why discuss Stalin, when the whole white world calls him a monster?
First, we’re interested in industrialising our country, and need to examine the major models available to us. Joseph Stalin was the first Marxist to attempt to adapt Marx’s analysis of capitalist industrialization to Soviet conditions. It was Stalin’s leadership that set down an early plan for economic renewal and industrialisation. He led the USSR from using wooden plows to becoming a nuclear power. He became the prime architect of socialism ‘in power’ in human history. It is Stalin who is the missing link between Marx, Lenin and Chairman Mao.
• The USSR policy of driving both industrialization and rural collectivization, was embodied in the two 5-Year Plans 1928-37 under their leader J Stalin. The USSR’s 15th Party Congress of December 1927, marked the end of Lenin’s New Economic Policy. The USSR then emphasized rapid industrialization and collectivization. From almost nothing, thousands of heavy industries were established, electricity was generated, production multiplied 4 times by 1937, while the capitalist world was reeling from their Great Depression.
Economic tensions also arose due to inadequate Russian farming methods. Rural famines had been common in Russia, in the 19thC until 1930. Famines exacerbated the revolutions of 1905 and 1917, and undermined new Soviet policies (1918-20, 1920-21, 1927-28). Industrialization also affected food production, as it had to be achieved without capitalist modes of accumulating funds: colonial expansion and international loans.
Industrialization had to rely on internal, or socialist accumulation: So higher prices were set for the increasing number of manufactured goods, like a super-tax, to flow back into industry. While capitalist propaganda highlights the failures, there were significant gains, midst capitalism’s Great Depression. In fact, the Depression may well have been an attempt to undermine the USSR’s progress. Just as today, the US is exporting inflation to our world to hike commodity prices, and undermine China.
In the USSR, prices of agricultural goods were lowered. Industrialization then required enforced requisitions of grain, as the furious pace of industrialization left agriculture far behind – especially as millions of people shifted from the countryside to work in the new industries. Abandoning the New Economic Policy of promoting small farmers, the USSR in November 1929 accelerated collectivization. In 1928 only 1% of agriculture was collectivized; by 1937 more than 95% was collectivized and mechanized, increasing investment in agriculture, with land under cultivation increased, to ensure greater crop yields
The majority enthusiastically embraced the production of a new life. Employment exploded and unemployment disappeared (and with it unemployment insurance), a full range of social insurance and retirement pensions became universal, free healthcare and education also became universal, literacy pushed towards universality, cultural institutions from libraries to cinemas became relatively widespread, women found themselves released into the workforce (despite still carrying heavy domestic burdens), and the material standards of workers and farmers generally increased. Infant mortality decreased, and the birth-rate and life expectancy increased.
The capitalist media of course focus on ‘purges, deportation and enforced labour’, ignoring that the whites worldwide were preparing for genocidal war, based on their ’successes’ in the white settler states of the Anglo-Americas. They were also quite happy to see the Germans and the Russians massacre each other. (information from – Stalin: From Theology to the Philosophy of Socialism in Power, Roland Boer)
• The Communist Party of China analysed the USSR’s early economic record, and gave Joe Stalin a 70% report card. Chairman Mao is said to have opposed capital punishment because he said they hadn’t yet figured out how to bring an innocent man back to life. Yet it’s important to examine the daunting circumstances under which Stalin rose to power: There is little on the internet about the 21 countries that invaded the baby USSR, how many people the invaders murdered. 80% of the Bolshevik party’s leadership was killed, and Stalin had to depend on former white officials and officers who could easily sabotage the fledgling government’s efforts. At least 20 million were killed in the USSR when Nazi Germany invaded. The Japanese imperial army killed millions in China.
It is also important to remember, that as long as Chinese remained ‘coolies’ for 5,000 years, few cared. The moment they began to stand up? Look at the fake outpourings about supposed poor slave labor in China! (see ee Industry, The Industrial Party)
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C. News Index______________________________________________
• ee News Index provides headlines and links to gain a sense of the weekly focus of published English ‘business news’ mainly to expose the backwardness of a multinationally controlled ‘local media’:
C1. Sovereignty
(ee is pro-politics, pro-politician, pro-nation-state, anti-corporatist, anti-expert, anti-NGO)
ee Sovereignty news emphasizes sovereignty as economic sovereignty – a strong nation is built on modern industrialization fueled by a producer culture.
• Indian High Commissioner calls on Foreign Minister
‘Indian investors are keen to invest in the renewable energy sector, especially in solar energy’
– timesonline.lk/latest-news/Indian-High-Commissioner-calls-on-Foreign-Minister/18-1134525
• UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) set to crack the whip on SL in six weeks
– sundaytimes.lk/210801/columns/unhrc-puts-govt-in-a-spot-diplomacy-deficient-451132.html
– dailymirror.lk/breaking_news/SL-envoydesignate-to-India-proposes-electrical-grid-connectivity-between-two-countries/108-217435
• India Failed Obligations But Wants SL To ‘Fully Implement’ 13th Constitutional Amendment
– lankaweb.com/news/items/2021/08/06/india-failed-to-fulfill-its-obligations-but-wants-sri-lanka-to-fully-implement-13th-constitutional-amendment-oped/
• SL not used Indian Special Line of Credit of US$50million for countering terrorism
– lankaweb.com/news/items/2021/07/31/blueprint-for-making-indo-lankan-relations-special/
• Envoy-designate Moragoda proposes electrical grid connectivity with India
‘High Commissioner-designate to India Moragoda Missed Flight’
– island.lk/buddhism-is-indias-most-precious-gift-to-sri-lanka
– island.lk/moragoda-heading-to-delhi-with-roadmap-to-restore-ties/island.lk/moragoda-heading-to-delhi-with-roadmap-to-restore-ties/
– dailymirror.lk/opinion/Addressing-the-core-issue-of-trust-deficit-in-Indo-Lanka-relations/172-217466
• Shivajilingam urges President not to acquire privately-owned lands to expand military camps
– island.lk/shivajilingam-urges-president-not-to-acquire-privately-owned-lands-in-north/
• Kilinochchi magistrate orders police to excavate site
– island.lk/kilinochchi-magistrate-orders-police-to-excavate-site/
• Erasing the Eelam Victory Part 21Hb
– lankaweb.com/news/items/2021/08/01/erasing-the-eelam-victory-part-21hb/
• US Ambassador’s statement on Port City Colombo Developers is misleading
– bizenglish.adaderana.lk/us-ambassadors-statement-on-port-city-colombo-developers-is-misleading/
• Celebrating 50 years of SL-Singapore diplomatic ties with fugitive Mahendran harboured there
– island.lk/celebrating-50-years-of-lanka-singapore-diplomatic-ties-with-fugitive-mahendran-harboured-there/
• May the long-lasting Sri Lanka-China friendship bear new fruits: Defence Secy.
– ft.lk/front-page/May-the-long-lasting-Sri-Lanka-China-friendship-bear-new-fruits-Defence-Secy/44-721082
• US will continue to support SL’s fight against Covid-19: US Ambassador tells Speaker
– dailymirror.lk/latest_news/US-will-continue-to-support-SLs-fight-against-Covid-19-US-Ambassador-tells-Speaker/342-217375
• Indian illegally changed the demography of the Jammu Kashmir Valley
– lankaweb.com/news/items/2021/08/04/5th-august-2019-the-ever-blackest-day/
• Tory MPs Call for English Troops to Go Back to Afghanistan
‘Capable of Acting Without USA’
– sputniknews.com/world/202108051083533721-capable-of-acting-without-americans-tory-mps-call-for-british-troops-to-go-back-to-afghanistan/
• From The Periphery To The Core – Taliban Capture First Provincial Capital
– moonofalabama.org/2021/08/from-the-periphery-to-the-core-taliban-capture-first-provincial-capital.html
• A King of Burma and the Sacred Tooth Relic
– lankaweb.com/news/items/2021/08/06/a-king-of-burma-and-the-sacred-tooth-relic/
• Iran nuclear deal: A bridge too far for Biden Under Economic Pressure in US?
– indianpunchline.com/jcpoa-a-bridge-too-far/
• New York Times Leaving Out Context To Vilify Iran’s New President
– moonofalabama.org/2021/07/leaving-out-context-to-vilify-irans-new-president.html
• ‘Maximum Pressure’ Against Iran Has Failed. What Will Biden Do Next?
– moonofalabama.org/2021/08/maximum-pressure-against-iran-has-failed-what-will-biden-do-next.html
• A new dawn breaks in Tehran
‘Iran’s advanced centrifuges are enriching uranium at 63 percent purity already, as per IAEA estimates in early May, and the so-called “breakout time” is steadily narrowing.’
– indianpunchline.com/a-new-dawn-breaks-in-tehran/
• English network of intel-linked operatives sold every alleged Syrian chemical weapons attack
– thegrayzone.com/2021/08/04/network-uk-intel-operatives-syrian-chemical-weapons/
• Asia-Pacific increasingly shaping up as flashpoint region
‘India is sending four warships into the South China Sea region on a two-month deployment’
– island.lk/asia-pacific-increasingly-shaping-up-as-flashpoint-region/
• US arms sales sound death knell for Taiwan authorities: Global Times editorial
‘US to sell 40 155mm M109A6 Medium Self-Propelled Howitzer artillery systems to Taiwan’
– globaltimes.cn/page/202108/1230713.shtml
• Leaked files reveal London secretly controls both pro- and anti-government NGOs overseas
‘shadowy work done by the British Council in Egypt manipulate what non-governmental organisations’
– rt.com/op-ed/531210-leaked-files-london-control-ngos/
• Homage to the Tooth Relic in Congo
– bizenglish.adaderana.lk/homage-to-the-tooth-relic-in-congo/
• New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardin’s apology to the Pacific Islanders for atrocities
– newsclick.in/taliban-afghan-return-left-peru-apology-new-zealand
• Haiti: On Interventions and Occupations
‘In the wake of Moïse’s assassination, the comprador bourgeois lapdogs (such as Claude Joseph, Joseph Lambert, Ariel Henry) as well as the nonBlack oligarchs (such as Reginal Boulos) rushed first to get the blessings of their white overlords, representatives of the UN occupation force, the Core Group and the U.S. State Department’
– blackagendareport.com/haiti-interventions-and-occupations
– youtube.com/watch?v=zZmRyvpHhaI
• Vaccine confusion: Do European leaders have ‘blood on their hands’?
– island.lk/vaccine-confusion-do-european-leaders-have-blood-on-their-hands/
• After vilifying the UN, US returns to the world body
– sundaytimes.lk/210801/sunday-times-2/after-vilifying-the-un-us-returns-to-the-world-body-451035.html
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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.
• Foreign intel operating in Sri Lanka? – Easwaran Ratnam
– dailymirror.lk/breaking_news/Foreign-intel-operating-in-Sri-Lanka/108-217309
• Protests Against Chinese Foreigner Turns out to be Local Sri Lankan
– sundaytimes.lk/210801/columns/mistaken-identity-and-lanka-chang-gets-a-taste-of-northern-anger-451190.html
– newsfirst.lk/2021/08/04/y-c-chang-controversial-land-owner-speaks-to-news1st/
• First Deputy National Security Adviser level Meeting of Colombo Security Conclave
‘meant to promote the maritime security in the Indian Ocean Region…as the forum for Trilateral Maritime Security Cooperation among India, Maldives and Sri Lanka…under General LHSC Silva, Chief of Defence Staff and Commander of Army, with Pankaj Saran, Deputy National Security Adviser of India and Aishath Nooshin Waheed, Secretary, National Security Adviser’s Office at the President’s Office of Maldives…Bangladesh, Mauritius and Seychelles participated with Lt. Gen. Waker Uz Zaman, Principal Staff Officer to Armed Forces Division of Bangladesh Army, Pusmawatee Sohun, Permanent Secretary, Prime Minister’s Office, Mauritius, and Colonel Micheal Rosette, Chief of Defence Forces, Seychelles People’s Force.They identified Marine Safety and Security, Terrorism and Radicalization, Trafficking and Organised Crime and Cyber security.’
– timesonline.lk/latest-news/First-Deputy-National-Security-Adviser-level-Meeting-of-Colombo-Security-Conclave-hosted-virtually/18-1134527’
– newsfirst.lk/2021/08/04/colombo-security-conclave-begins-on-wednesday-04/
• Defence Secretary stresses importance of senior officers acquiring new skills
‘Gunaratne said: “I am immensely delighted to see this type of a synergistic approach towards transforming retiring military officers to potential leaders in the corporate sector.”’
– island.lk/defence-secretary-stresses-importance-of-senior-officers-acquiring-new-skills/
• ARMX marks International Security Officers’ Day
– island.lk/armx-marks-international-security-officers-day/
• Supreme Court suspends the operation of Deradicalization Regulations
‘Journalists and human rights activists Ruwan Laknath Jayakody, Kavindya Christopher Thomas, Centre for Policy Alternative and its Executive Director Dr. Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu and Shreen Saroor had filed Fundamental Rights petitions’
– dailymirror.lk/latest_news/SC-suspends-the-operation-of-Deradicalization-Regulations/342-217611
• The Role of Indian Intelligence & the LTTE
– island.lk/ltte-terrorism-immediately-prior-to-1981/
• Sumanthiran clashes with Weerasekara over arrests in civvies
– newsfirst.lk/2021/08/06/video-sumanthiran-clashes-with-weerasekara-over-arrests-in-civvies/
• Police abuses surge amid Covid-19 pandemic: USA’s HRW
– timesonline.lk/latest-news/Police-abuses-surge-amid-Covid-19-pandemic-HRW/18-1134532
• Hundred victims here, thousand victims there, what does it matter to the state?
– sundaytimes.lk/210801/columns/hundred-victims-here-thousand-victims-there-what-does-it-matter-to-the-state-450969.html
• Govt. to set up new judiciary training centre
– sundaytimes.lk/210801/education/govt-to-set-up-new-judiciary-training-centre-450758.html
• To educate the general public of the laws in our country
– island.lk/law-is-light/
• Authorities falter on accountability in ‘Navy 11’ case: Amnesty International
– dailymirror.lk/breaking_news/Authorities-falter-on-accountability-in-Navy-11-case-Amnesty-International/108-217559
• Enforced disappearances: brutalisation of society
– dailymirror.lk/opinion/Enforced-disappearances-brutalisation-of-society/172-217750
• Sri Lankan police’s homophobic and transphobic practices
– dailymirror.lk/recomended-news/Calling-for-an-end-to-homophobia-and-transphobia/277-217552
• Former Solicitor General was interdicted on distorted and doctored tape recording
– sundaytimes.lk/210801/news/former-solicitor-general-was-interdicted-on-distorted-and-doctored-tape-recording-451256.html
– ft.lk/front-page/Bar-Association-requests-AG-to-reinstate-former-Solicitor-General-Dilrukshi-Dias/44-721332
• Postal bombs for murder: The 1948 case that shocked Sri Lanka
– sundaytimes.lk/210801/sunday-times-2/postal-bombs-for-murder-the-1948-case-that-shocked-sri-lanka-451028.html
• Why Hypersonic Missiles Are Real Game Changers – by Gordog
– moonofalabama.org/2021/08/hypersonic-missiles-are-they-a-gamechanger-by-gordog.html
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C3. Economists (Study the Economists before you study the Economics)
ee Economists shows how paid capitalist/academic ‘professionals’ confuse (misdefinitions, etc) and divert (with false indices, etc) from the steps needed to achieve an industrial country.
• English think tank ranks SL world’s fifth least affordable nation for basic food
– dailymirror.lk/business-news/UK-think-tank-ranks-SL-worlds-fifth-least-affordable-nation-for-basic-food/273-217649
• Hype over IMF – Waduge
‘How many countries has IMF taken out of debt or put into debt? Who can answer!’
– lankaweb.com/news/items/2021/08/04/hype-over-imf/
• Are Governments losing control to Corporates
‘Pfizer, J&J & Merck hold shares in Vanguard, SSGA & BlackRock investment companies. Pfizer & AstraZeneca are also connected.’
– lankaweb.com/news/items/2021/08/05/are-governments-losing-control-to-corporates/
• Our economy was in good shape till the IMF took over (2019)
• Why Razeen Sally delivered the Central Bank’s 69th Anniversary Oration (2019)
– lankaweb.com/news/items/2021/07/31/a-point-of-view-on-economist-dr-razeen-sally-delivering-the-central-banks-69th-anniversary-oration-recently/
‘ Sri Lanka makes the mistake of letting IMF write a plan for the country’ – US Verite
– island.lk/real-question-is-not-whether-sl-should-go-to-imf-or-not-verite-research
• Examining the debt crisis
‘CA Sri Lanka organised a CEO’s forum on debt crisis – Maninda Wickramasinghe, Managing Director of Fitch Rating; Nishan de Mel, Executive Director of Verité Research; Manil Jayesinghe, CA President; W. D. Lakshman, Governor – Central Bank; and Vish Govindasamy, Chairman – Ceylon Chamber of Commerce’
– sundaytimes.lk/210801/business-times/examining-the-debt-crisis-450919.html
• Sri Lanka Marxists advise de la Rue worship as central bank credit tops trillion rupees
– economynext.com/sri-lanka-marxists-advise-de-la-rue-worship-as-central-bank-credit-tops-trillion-rupees-84550/
• Cabraal dismisses critics and predicts 5% growth this year, explains money printing
– ft.lk/ft_tv/Cabraal-speaks-on-debt-situation-in-SL/10520-721122
– island.lk/cabraal-dismisses-critics-and-predicts-5-growth-this-year/
– dailymirror.lk/opinion/Money-printing-is-like-drastic-treatment-to-a-major-illness-Ajith-Nivard-Cabraal/231-217302
• Country’s overall debt now at over 16.2 trillion
– island.lk/abolition-of-range-of-taxes-in-nov-2019-triggered-crisis/
• Sri Lanka’s 213 billion rupee money printing to repay foreign debt: Treasury Secretary
– economynext.com/sri-lankas-213-billion-rupee-money-printing-to-repay-foreign-debt-treasury-secretary-explains-84470/
• IMF or not: What other options are available for Sri Lanka? Basil Silent – Wijewardene
‘Debt paid by using existing foreign reserves and minimising dollar outflow by arranging with local banks to reflow maturity proceeds to SL Development Bonds that are to be issued on a future date.’
– ft.lk/w-a-wijewardena-columns/IMF-or-not-What-other-options-are-available-for-Sri-Lanka/885-721142
• Scarcities of essential foods, fuel and pharmaceuticals on the horizon – Sanderatne
– sundaytimes.lk/210801/columns/are-we-resolving-the-economic-crisis-450984.html
• SDR cannot be used as a currency and is tradable only within the IMF – Kussi Amma Samath
– sundaytimes.lk/210801/business-times/economic-woes-450899.html
• Sri Lanka needs medium and long term plan to overcome debt crisis – Abeyratne
– sundaytimes.lk/210801/business-times/sri-lanka-needs-medium-and-long-term-plan-to-overcome-debt-crisis-450873.html
• Denying IMF support is no solution for Sri Lanka’s economic woes – Colombage
‘conditionalities, aka “structural adjustment policies”, include balancing the budget, removing price controls & state subsidies, privatising state-owned enterprises, liberalising foreign trade & exchange systems, adopting flexible interest and exchange rates and removing barriers to foreign capital flows.’
– ft.lk/columns/Denying-IMF-support-is-no-solution-for-Sri-Lanka-s-economic-woes/4-721234
• Why are we fighting shy about going to the IMF? – Weerakkody
– ft.lk/dinesh-weerakkody/Why-are-we-fighting-shy-about-going-to-the-IMF/5-721345
• We need to be mindful about is whether they do enough value addition in Sri Lanka
– island.lk/finance-minister-urged-to-give-fresh-impetus-to-doing-business-conditions-in-sri-lanka/
• Gotabaya govt. following same failed, obsolete strategies to face economic crisis: Anura
‘outdated strategies such as printing money, obtaining loans and selling state property to face the economic crisis’
– dailymirror.lk/breaking_news/Gotabaya-govt-following-same-failed-obsolete-strategies-to-face-economic-crisis-Anura/108-217295
– island.lk/crisis-not-solely-due-to-pandemic/
• Commercialising Education and the Great KDU Bailout
‘There is a common myth promoted by the ruling classes backed by finance capitalists that privatisation and commercialisation of state institutions lead to greater efficiency and better services.’
– dailymirror.lk/opinion/Commercialising-Education-and-the-Great-KDU-Bailout/231-217305
• Finance Minister gets US-Pathifinder report on MSMEs
– ft.lk/business/Finance-Minister-gets-useful-report-on-MSMEs/34-721161
• Institute of Policy Studies ‘Policy Pitch Competition for University Undergraduates 2021’
– ft.lk/business/IPS-announces-Policy-Pitch-Competition-for-University-Undergraduates-2021/34-721323
• US-Pathfinder Foundation releases China Reform Forum webinar report
‘China Reform Forum (CRF) is an academic research institution affiliated to the Party School of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. The Pathfinder Foundation engaged in two other similar bilateral strategic dialogues with the Asia Society Policy Institute (ASPI) of the United States and England’s International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS)’
– ft.lk/business/Pathfinder-Foundation-releases-China-Reform-Forum-webinar-report/34-721396
• The Case for a G21– to include the African Union
– project-syndicate.org/commentary/g20-should-become-g21-with-african-union-by-jeffrey-d-sachs-2021-08
• “Fatalities are Part of Life” in a Capitalist Climate Emergency
– socialistproject.ca/2021/08/fatalities-are-part-of-life-in-capitalist-climate-emergency/
• The Austrian Business Cycle – Roberts
‘What drives capitalist economies and capital accumulation are changes in profits and profitability. Economic growth in a capitalist economy is driven not by consumption as the Austrians claim, but by business investment’
– thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2021/08/01/the-austrian-business-cycle/
• Commodification as subjugation of use-value to exchange-value
– socialistproject.ca/2021/08/commodification-capitalism-alternatives/
• Martin Luther King’s Message of Economic Justice
“King was talking about it being 100 years since emancipation in 1963, yet millions of African Americans still lived on a lonely island of poverty in the sea of an abundant society.”
– blackagendareport.com/historian-michael-honey-recalls-martin-luther-kings-message-economic-justice-new-book-promised-land
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C4. Economy (Usually reported in monetary terms)
ee Economy section shows how the economy is usually measured by false indices like GDP, etc, and in monetary terms, confusing money and capital, while calling for privatization and deregulation, their constant moaning about debt and balance of payments without stating the need for industrial production to overcome such issues, etc.
• Finance companies have not extended financial moratoriums as instructed
‘Finance firms warned over exorbitant interest rates’
– ft.lk/front-page/Finance-firms-warned-over-exorbitant-interest-rates/44-721284
• No scarcity of essential goods, claims Govt.
‘In May, Sri Lanka had spent $253.6 million on consumer goods including food and beverages, dairy, vegetables, sugar and $ 330 million on fuel. In the first five months of 2021, $ 1.3 billion was spent on consumer goods imports and $ 1.7 billion on fuel, according to the Central Bank.’
– ft.lk/front-page/No-scarcity-of-essential-goods-claims-Govt/44-721283
• Firms hire corporate spies to get necessary dollars
– sundaytimes.lk/210801/business-times/firms-hire-corporate-spies-to-get-necessary-dollars-450916.html
• Finance Minister preparing for the budget in November
– sundaytimes.lk/210801/columns/unhrc-puts-govt-in-a-spot-diplomacy-deficient-451132.html
• Debt-hobbled Sri Lanka risks running out of options – Reuters
‘All the tell-tale crisis signs are there: bonds at nearly half their face value, debt-to-GDP levels above 100%, over 80% of government revenues being spent on interest payments alone and barely enough reserves to cover a few months of spending… the next major payment is not until January, when it must find $500 million. But that is followed by a more hefty $1 billion in July and another $1 billion before the end of 2023. On top of an eyewatering fiscal deficit estimated to be around 11%, it could easily run out of rope.’
– dailymirror.lk/business_247/Debt-hobbled-Sri-Lanka-risks-running-out-of-options/395-217461
– bizenglish.adaderana.lk/analysis-debt-hobbled-sri-lanka-risks-running-out-of-options/
• Sri Lanka inflation rises to 5.7-pct July 2021, overtakes policy rate
– economynext.com/sri-lanka-inflation-rises-to-5-7-pct-july-2021-overtakes-policy-rate-84440/’
– bizenglish.adaderana.lk/ccpi-based-inflation-increased-to-5-7-per-cent-in-july-2021
– dailymirror.lk/business_247/July-food-price-up-0-70-Advocatas-BCI/395-217460
– island.lk/food-inflation-down-non-food-inflation-up/
• Sri Lanka state revenues up 8-pct to June, below 2021 budget targets: Treasury Secretary
– economynext.com/sri-lanka-state-revenues-up-8-pct-to-june-below-2021-budget-targets-treasury-secretary-84445/
• Economy relapsing amid 3rd wave, warns ICRA Lanka
– ft.lk/front-page/Economy-relapsing-amid-3rd-wave-warns-ICRA-Lanka/44-721206
• IMF to allocate SDRs on August 23, Sri Lanka expects around US$800mn
– economynext.com/imf-to-allocate-sdrs-on-august-23-sri-lanka-expects-around-us800mn-84515/
• Sri Lanka gets Rs3,500mn from post bond auction ‘tap’ issue
– economynext.com/sri-lanka-gets-rs3500mn-from-post-bond-auction-tap-issue-84552/
• Sri Lanka prints enough money to wipe out Bangladesh swap with single failed bond auction
– economynext.com/sri-lanka-prints-enough-money-to-wipe-out-bangladesh-swap-with-single-failed-bond-auction-84589/
• Sri Lanka fails to sell 12-pct of T-bills despite nudging up de facto policy rate
– economynext.com/sri-lanka-fails-to-sell-12-pct-of-t-bills-despite-nudging-up-de-facto-policy-rate-84586/
• Development Bond auction for US$75mn opens
– economynext.com/sri-lanka-development-bond-auction-for-us75mn-opens-84626/
• 3 Regional Offices established to decentralize Consular services of Foreign Ministry
– timesonline.lk/latest-news/Three-Regional-Offices-established-within-past-ten-months-to-decentralize-Consular-services-of-Foreign-Ministry/18-1134528
• Black money and undisclosed income – Bangladesh context
‘current black money to GDP ratio is around 40 percent.’
– island.lk/black-money-and-undisclosed-income-bangladesh-context/
• Investors rethink China strategy after regulatory shocks
– ft.com/content/0de80b60-4809-41f6-a287-a3b0f88a15d2
• Retail investors on the hunt for bargains in China-focused funds
– ft.com/content/df131515-c989-41ab-8cb1-63033030cd64
_________________________________________________________________________
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
• Ceylon Electricity Board employees protest selling Kerawalapitiya power plant to US Co.
‘without calling for tender’
– dailymirror.lk/caption_story/CEB-employees-stage-protest-in-Colombo/110-217619
– timesonline.lk/latest-news/In-pictures-CEB-threatens-TU-action-against-privatisation/18-1134523
• FSP Union leaders arrested over violent protest
– timesonline.lk/latest-news/Union-leaders-arrested-over-violent-protest/18-1134486
– timesonline.lk/latest-news/Student-union-leaders-remanded-till-Aug-11/18-1134538
• The menace called the JVP – why has no government chased them out of universities?
– lankaweb.com/news/items/2021/08/05/the-menace-called-the-jvp-why-has-no-government-chased-them-out-of-universities/
• Govt. in a bind over massive salary and pension bill: Revenue dwindles amidst pandemic
– island.lk/govt-in-a-bind-over-massive-salary-and-pension-bill-revenue-dwindles-amidst-pandemic/
• Labour Ministry recovers Rs 9 billion from EPF defaulters
‘2.91 million employees have active EPF accounts with the Central Bank, while 167,352 new accounts were added during the year. In 2020, 1,453 institutions registered with the EPF, which brought the total number of EPF contributors to 94,171. The value of the fund as at 31.12.2020 was Rs. 2,540,438 million… 738 factories had also been registered with it in 2020, bringing the total to 31, 833… 71 fatal accidents and 1,116 non-fatal accidents were reported in 2020.’
– island.lk/labour-ministry-recovers-rs-9-billion-from-epf-defaulters/
• Labour minister accuses Sri Lanka Foreign Employment Bureau of massive waste
– economynext.com/labour-minister-accuses-sri-lanka-foreign-employment-bureau-of-massive-waste-84663/
• 46% of jobs in services, 30.4% in agriculture and 23% in manufacturing – People’s Bank CEO
‘The agriculture sector’s significance to employment has reduced from almost 32% in 2010 to just over 23% in 2020, despite billions by taxpayer handouts towards the politically significant agri sector’
– ft.lk/columns/Is-our-labour-force-ready-to-rise-to-new-challenges-of-post-pandemic-economy/4-721241
• Curb spread of dengue: Health Education Officers’ Association
– island.lk/sl-warned-of-double-whammy/
• Upsurge in COVID but Govt. wants normal work from tomorrow – Sunday Times
– sundaytimes.lk/210801/news/upsurge-in-covid-deaths-and-cases-but-govt-wants-normal-work-from-tomorrow-451250.html
– dailymirror.lk/opinion/Government-and-health-sector-at-odds/172-217397
– island.lk/friends-of-the-virus/
– timesonline.lk/top_story/Govt-gets-public-sector-operational-but-pregnant-mothers-seek-further-relief/274-1134450
• SL hospital capacity reaches ‘tipping point’ as country records highest COVID-19 toll in a day
– lankaweb.com/news/items/2021/08/05/sri-lanka-hospital-capacity-reaches-tipping-point-as-the-country-records-its-highest-covid-19-toll-in-a-day/
• PHIs in action Against Media at Pickets
– dailymirror.lk/caption_story/PHIs-in-action/110-217377
• Education crisis: A humanitarian crisis
‘The entire student (4.3 million) and teacher (241,000) populations have been facing crisis after crisis since March 2020. With school closure, less than 10% of students had the ability to connect to real-time face-to-face education, online. The internet accessibility, as per Census 2019 is only 34.11%, and as per a Computer Literacy survey, only 22.2% of households owned a laptop or PC. About 45% of students used parents’ smart phones to access notes sent by teachers using WhatsApp.’
– island.lk/education-crisis-a-humanitarian-crisis/
• Teachers & Principals protest for 21st day; Massive turnout at N’Eliya protest (Aug 01)
‘Stalin said the overwhelming majority of 16,000 principals and 240,000 teachers are behind the union action…. EN says: Over 240,000 school teachers and 15,000 principals in Sri Lanka have been on strike for 23 days running over the question of salary anomalies that they say goes back 24 years’
– newsfirst.lk/2021/08/01/teachers-massive-turnout-at-neliya-protest/
– sundaytimes.lk/210801/education/no-online-classes-until-teachers-demands-are-met-strikes-to-continue-450760.html
– island.lk/stalin-insists-teachers-wont-settle-for-less/
– economynext.com/sri-lanka-cabinet-firm-on-not-giving-in-to-teachers-salary-hike-demand-84545/
– timesonline.lk/top_story/Heavy-traffic-congestion-as-teachers-head-to-Colombo-in-vehicle-procession/274-1134499
– dailymirror.lk/news-features/Unions-continue-struggle-amidst-unlawful-moves-by-govt/131-217622
• Unions still undecided on ending protests
– island.lk/unions-still-undecided-on-ending-protests/
• Teachers’ pay hikes: An unjust call…No Quick Fix….
‘Teachers work 180 five-hour-days (around 900 hrs) a year. Whereas other public servants work 240 eight-hour-days (around 1900 hrs) a year.’
– island.lk/teachers-pay-hikes-an-unjust-call/
– island.lk/poor-children-worst-affected-by-teachers-strike-gl/
– economynext.com/sri-lanka-to-address-teachers-salary-anomalies-in-november-budget-no-quick-fix-minister-84526/
– timesonline.lk/top_story/Unfair-for-teacher-unions-to-demand-immediate-solution-to-salary-anomaly-issue-Govt/274-1134479
• Hostage Drama at Ansell Lanka, Biyagama in 1994
– island.lk/hostage-drama-at-ansell-lanka-biyagama-in-1994/
• SL Deputy High Commissioner to Chennai visits Brandix India Apparel City in India
‘training and upskilling of the rural women workforce in manufacturing products for international brands and labels was noted…Brandix, apart from being the largest textile park operational in the country, is also the largest employer of women with over 20,000 employees at the location.’
– bizenglish.adaderana.lk/sl-deputy-high-commissioner-to-chennai-visits-brandix-india-apparel-city-in-india/
• Tug o’ war over Wayamba’s new medical unit
– sundaytimes.lk/210801/news/tug-o-war-over-wayambas-new-medical-unit-451219.html
• Postponement of the KNDU bill is welcome.
– island.lk/a-welcome-retreat/
• KNDU: MBBS for the rich, crumbs for the poor
– island.lk/kndu-mbbs-for-the-rich-crumbs-for-the-poor/
• KNDU running on borrowings: National Audit Office
– sundaytimes.lk/210801/news/kdu-running-on-borrowings-national-audit-office-451233.html
• KNDU among issues Sirisena and FSP discuss in Colombo
‘SLFP position on ‘militarisation of education’ to be revealed shortly’
– island.lk/kndu-among-issues-sirisena-and-fsp-discuss-in-colombo
– sundaytimes.lk/210801/columns/protest-against-plan-to-place-universities-in-military-jacket-451009.html
– sundaytimes.lk/210801/education/kelaniya-university-teachers-protest-against-kndu-bill-450762.html
– dailymirror.lk/plus/Proposed-Kotelawala-National-Defense-University-Bill-Militarisation-under-the-pretext-of-equal-opportunities-for-higher-education/352-217401
– ft.lk/columns/The-KNDU-Bill/4-721232
– lankaweb.com/news/items/2021/08/02/quality-engineering-education-for-all/
– timesonline.lk/latest-news/In-pictures-Kotalawala-Act-must-be-completely-defeated-Joint-Centre-against-Kotalawala-Act/18-1134539
• Covid pandemic, KNDU debate and civil-military relations
‘350,000 students sit for admissions examination (GCE-A), and 200,000 students qualify for admissions, around 30,000 are admitted to universities…. Annually over 10,000 students go abroad for their education… there are 15 universities and the average student intake is around 2,000.’
– island.lk/covid-pandemic-kndu-debate-and-civil-military-relations/
– ft.lk/opinion/KNDU-Bill-Is-the-devil-as-black-as-he-is-painted/14-721290
– timesonline.lk/latest-news/Video-KDU-alumni-defend-the-university/18-1134520
– dailymirror.lk/latest_news/SF-not-against-Kotelawala-Defence-University/342-217755
• Government to prune welfare expenditure to tackle fiscal deficit – Sunday Times
– sundaytimes.lk/210801/business-times/government-to-prune-welfare-expenditure-to-tackle-fiscal-deficit-450903.html
• ‘Value’ in the new ‘corporate University determined by accountants rather than philosophers
– island.lk/critical-thinking-and-the-value-of-university-education/
• Take-home rations distribution to 1.2 million children: UN WFP
– lankaweb.com/news/items/2021/08/05/the-government-of-sri-lanka-and-wfp-provide-food-rations-to-children-who-are-missing-out-on-school-meals/
• 20 more occupations to be off limits for children
‘In 2016, 103,704 children in paid and unpaid jobs, helping parents in cultivation and family business – 59,990 children worked in paid jobs while 39,000 in hazardous forms of child labour. 4,700 children involved in non-hazardous jobs. 1999 survey found 926,037 children working. 10 years later, a 2008/09 survey showed 557,599. 80% of working children attended school in 2008/09 with 39% in 2016. Legal age increase to 16 years, reduced children working to 45,500. Mandatory education up to year 13 contributed to drop. 85% of children at work are rural including Colombo, Gampaha, Moneragala, Kurunegala and Batticaloa and work in the service sector operating plants and machinery in industries, tourism, transport, in construction and manufacturing businesses’
– sundaytimes.lk/210801/news/20-more-occupations-to-be-off-limits-for-children-451206.html
– dailymirror.lk/plus/Dismantling-a-child-labour-structure-brick-by-brick/352-217551
• Women’s groups in Vavuniya accuse gov. of delaying investigation into death of child worker
– island.lk/womens-groups-protest-in-vavuniya-accusing-govt-of-delaying-investigations-into-death-of-underage-worker
– sundaytimes.lk/210801/news/death-of-bathiudeen-residence-domestic-ags-dept-raises-suspicions-over-scene-of-the-crime-451179.html
– sundaytimes.lk/210801/news/second-autopsy-focus-on-sex-abuse-451192.html
– island.lk/out-of-11-females-who-worked-at-rishads-house-three-are-dead/
– newsfirst.lk/2021/08/03/the-cause-for-my-death-detectives-discover-words-written-on-the-wall-of-ishalinis-room
• COPA raps Dept. of Probation and Child Care Services
– island.lk/copa-raps-dept-of-probation-and-child-care-services/
– timesonline.lk/latest-news/COPA-wants-drafting-of-national-policy-and-laws-to-protect-child-rights-expedited/18-1134536
• 8.7% of population above the age of 5 in Sri Lanka lives with some form of disability
– sundaytimes.lk/210801/business-times/uplifting-the-lives-of-persons-with-disabilities-450880.html
• Vaccination drive for all employees in all 14 export processing zones (EPZ)
‘85% of Sri Lanka’s national industrial exports are derived from BOI enterprises…BOI provides nearly 500,000 direct employment from both 14 EPZs and manufacturing facilities outside the zones’
– ft.lk/front-page/BOI-EPZs-see-highest-attendance-to-date-post-D1-vaccination/44-721115
• Some 20,000 Jaffna district families left out of housing schemes
– sundaytimes.lk/210801/news/some-20000-jaffna-district-families-left-out-of-housing-schemes-451215.html
• LGBTQ rights: Sri Lanka still undecided, says govt in response to homophobic police video
– economynext.com/lgbtq-rights-sri-lanka-still-undecided-says-govt-in-response-to-homophobic-police-video-84543/
• Germany’s DIMO forum focuses on youth skills for employment and entrepreneurship
– island.lk/dimo-forum-focuses-on-youth-skills-for-employment-and-entrepreneurship/
• Germany’s new industry-driven warehouse operator vocational training
‘In cooperation with Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH Sri Lanka, the Delegation of German Industry and Commerce in Sri Lanka (AHK Sri Lanka) and the Tertiary and Vocational Education Commission (TVEC), leading logistic companies in Sri Lanka such as Aitken Spence, EFL Global, Hayleys Advantis, Hellmann MAS, John Keells joined the training initiative.’
– ft.lk/business/New-industry-driven-warehouse-operator-vocational-training-supported-by-German-Government/34-721397
• Flexibility, culture likely to decide Sri Lanka post-pandemic workforce
‘About 75 percent of Sri Lanka’s workforce or 1.5 million employees are facing a high risk of falling in to poverty, with 68 percent in informal employment amid a Coronavirus crisis’
– economynext.com/flexibility-culture-likely-to-decide-sri-lanka-post-pandemic-workforce-84523/
• Sri Lanka ranked second-best for digital nomads in 2021
– ft.lk/front-page/Lankan-break-for-global-digital-nomads-still-in-the-works/44-721383
• Institute of Personnel Management & Institute of Marketing (SLIM) on “Future of Work”
‘worldwide 18% of workers have occupation suitable for working from home’
– bizenglish.adaderana.lk/cipm-and-slim-organized-webinar-on-future-of-work
• Aussie Lankans’ donations flow for COVID project sans politicos back home
– sundaytimes.lk/210801/news/aussie-lankans-donations-flow-for-covid-project-sans-politicos-back-home-451226.html
• India’s Essential Defence Services Bill violates ILO policy on strikes
– newsclick.in/Essential-Defence-Services-Bill-violates-ILO-policy-strikes
• U.S. complicity in the deaths of South African vanadium mine workers.
– blackagendareport.com/glen-ford-revolutionary-friend-leader-lover-black-people–
• Transit Fare-Free is Transformational
‘Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Tallinn, Estonia, Luxembourg, Aubagne, France, Olympia, Washington…’
– socialistproject.ca/2021/08/fare-free-is-transformational/
• The Brutal Normality of Switzerland’s Sex Market
– truthdig.com/articles/a-brutal-normality-switzerlands-sex-market/
• New York City, sex trafficking hub?
– nydailynews.com/opinion/ny-oped-nyc-sex-trafficking-hub-20210728-hbiw6tw3hjeurntdhitujh2wzi-story.html
• How Amazon Exploited a Weakened America
‘Amazon, meanwhile, hired 250,000 people, taking the total to over a million employees globally. Most of those jobs sucked: They were largely in warehouse and delivery, which have become notoriously brutal jobs’
– blackagendareport.com/how-amazon-exploited-weakened-america
_________________________________________________________________________
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.
• No permission granted to import chemical fertilizer: PMD
– dailymirror.lk/latest_news/No-permission-granted-to-import-chemical-fertilizer-PMD/342-217541
– ft.lk/top-story/President-s-Office-insists-no-U-turn-in-organic-fertiliser-push/26-721336
– dailymirror.lk/breaking_news/Decision-to-ban-chemical-fertilizers-remains-unchanged-Govt/108-217612
– ft.lk/top-story/Govt-s-policy-on-use-of-organic-fertilisers-remains-unchanged-Weeratunga/26-721393
• Chemicals needed for organic fertiliser not banned, says Treasury Secretary
– island.lk/chemicals-needed-for-organic-fertiliser-not-banned-says-treasury-secretary/
• Basil lifts ban on import of chemical fertilisers: potassium and nitrogen
– ft.lk/top-story/Basil-lifts-ban-on-import-of-chemical-fertilisers/26-721286
– lankaweb.com/news/items/2021/08/03/sri-lanka-lifts-fertiliser-import-ban-after-outcry/
– lankaweb.com/news/items/2021/08/03/gazette-issued-for-importing-nitrogen-extracts-and-potassium/
– timesonline.lk/business/Government-temporarily-reverses-chemical-fertiliser-ban/10-1134488
– lankaweb.com/news/items/2021/08/05/sri-lanka-walks-back-fertiliser-ban-over-political-fallout-fears/
• Plantation-Elephant Conflict linked to Destruction of Water Sources
– island.lk/of-that-monkey-motion/
• Unleashing the ‘Billion Dollar’ potential of Sri Lanka’s rubber industry
– bizenglish.adaderana.lk/unleashing-the-billion-dollar-potential-of-sri-lankas-rubber-industry/
• Sri Lanka crepe rubber, high-end exports in jeopardy as dollar shortage hits inputs
‘banks unable to issue dollars amid money printing,’
– economynext.com/sri-lanka-crepe-rubber-high-end-exports-in-jeopardy-as-dollar-shortage-hits-inputs-84628/
• Ceylon Tea weathering the storm
– sundaytimes.lk/210801/business-times/ceylon-tea-weathering-the-storm-450912.html
• Swiss team of experts due today to study SL’s agricultural landscape
‘initiative is by A. Baur & Co. (Pvt.) Ltd (Baurs), a leading diversified business group and a name synonymous with pioneering scientific manuring in Sri Lanka’
– island.lk/swiss-team-of-experts-due-today-to-study-sls-agricultural-landscape/
• State Minister says advance Japanese knowhow can be obtained to make organic fertiliser
‘Ebora Ruske, officer in charge of agriculture, Fan Nagaki production manager, Yamanchi Yasshio of Chnosankio Uki Coop, head of SLPP Japan Branch Jayantha Hettiarachchi, J.I.T. Ranasinghe, J.B. Lalinda and Susantha Perera’
– island.lk/state-minister-ranasinghe-says-advance-japanese-knowhow-can-be-obtained-to-make-organic-fertiliser/
• National Christian Council warns of fertiliser shortage snowballing into a national food crisis
– island.lk/nccsl-warns-of-fertiliser-shortage-snowballing-into-a-national-food-crisis/
• Korea donates equipment to upgrade National Plant Quarantine Service Headquarters
– island.lk/koica-donates-equipment-to-upgrade-national-plant-quarantine-service-headquarters/
• Labour Department amends special allowance for cocoa, cardamom and pepper trade
– sundaytimes.lk/210801/columns/mistaken-identity-and-lanka-chang-gets-a-taste-of-northern-anger-451190.html
• Devananda: Some EU conditions not reasonable
‘“60% of our fish exports go to the European Union’
– island.lk/devananda-some-eu-conditions-not-reasonable
• Chinese sea cucumber farms back in operation in Kilinochchi
– island.lk/chinese-sea-cucumber-farms-back-in-operation-in-kilinochchi/
• Indians Merchants poaching millions of rupees worth of fish resources from Sri Lanka
– sundaytimes.lk/210801/columns/mistaken-identity-and-lanka-chang-gets-a-taste-of-northern-anger-451190.html
• Captain of Lankan-flagged vessel fined $167,000 by Seychellois Court for illegal fishing
– dailymirror.lk/breaking_news/Captain-of-Lankan-flagged-vessel-fined-167-000-by-Seychellois-Court-for-illegal-fishing/108-217542
• DFCC Bank unveils ‘Krushibala’ loan scheme to enhance local Agri businesses
‘Loans up to LKR 100 Mn, with payment periods of 5 to 7 years..at a concessionary fixed interest rate of 7% per annum… for Cultivation (Tea/ Rubber/ Coconut / Floriculture/Rotational Crop Cultivation/Inter Cropping), Livestock, Dairy, Agriculture Processing (Rice Milling, Grain Legume Processing, Fruit and Vegetable Processing, Dehydration etc.),Warehousing and Enhancing Storage Facilities, Development of Commercial Agriculture and Hi-Tech Agriculture (Control Environmental Agriculture / Export Agriculture Crops, Organic Farming/ Nursery/Seed Production, Drip Irrigation, Tissue Culture etc.) and Introducing / Capacity Enhancement of Organic Fertilizer Manufacturing.’
– bizenglish.adaderana.lk/dfcc-bank-unveils-krushibala-loan-scheme-to-enhance-local-agri-businesses/
• SL Embassy in Germany on “Finding a Market for Agri Products in EU”
– bizenglish.adaderana.lk/webinar-hosted-by-embassy-of-sri-lanka-in-germany-on-finding-a-market-for-agri-products-in-eu-concludes-successfully/
• Sri Lanka to pay Rs 1 mn for deaths, permanent disability from protected wild life
– economynext.com/sri-lanka-to-pay-rs-1-mn-for-deaths-permanent-disability-from-protected-wild-life-84547/
• Global Experts from Sysco LABS offer insights into Enterprise Mobile Development
‘innovation arm of Sysco, the world’s global foodservice leader’
– timesonline.lk/business/Global-Experts-from-Sysco-LABS-offer-insights-into-Enterprise-Mobile-Development/10-1134466
• North Lanka Family Foods Ltd., a community investment in Pali, in Northern Sri Lanka
‘taking over a shutdown micro-dairy in Kilinochchi in 2013, over the next seven years and with a larger investment, the company now has a multifunctional food and beverage plant in Iyakachchi, near Elephant Pass’
– ft.lk/front-page/UN-Food-Systems-Best-Small-Business-Award-goes-to-northern-project-by-MA-S-Kitchen/44-721203
• SL receives Singapore Beach Cleanup machines to remove X-Press Pearl plastic waste
– newsfirst.lk/2021/08/03/sri-lanka-receives-state-of-the-art-beach-cleanup-machines-to-remove-x-press-pearl-plastic-waste/
• Ministry of Environment kicks off ‘Ivura Rakina Pawura’ in Manampitiya with Tokyo Cement
– bizenglish.adaderana.lk/ministry-of-environment-kicks-off-ivura-rakina-pawura-in-manampitiya-with-tokyo-cement-group
• Tigers and wild dogs here from around 10,000 years ago,
‘WPNS Research by Dinal Samarasinghe, Eric D. Wikramanayake, Alex Braczkowski, Rukshan Jayewardene, Arjun Gopalaswami, Jehan Kumara, Justine Alexander and Kithsiri Gunawardena, with backing from the Environmental Foundation Limited (EFL) and the Leopard Trust.’
– sundaytimes.lk/210801/plus/back-to-where-the-big-cat-roams-450795.html
• Eco Friendly Volunteers (ECO-V), Rufford Small Grant & Journeys for Climate Justice
– sundaytimes.lk/210801/plus/spreading-the-green-message-450777.html
• How AKP Cronyism Let Turkey’s Forest Fires Get Out Of Control
– moonofalabama.org/2021/08/how-akp-cronyism-let-turkeys-forest-fires-get-out-of-control.html
• Sustainable food systems are possible outside corporate agriculture
– peoplesdispatch.org/2021/07/29/sustainable-food-systems-are-possible-outside-corporate-agriculture/
• England is one of the least forested places in Europe
– island.lk/environment-the-wilderness-experiment/
_____________________________________________________________________
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.
• Oil and gas exploration in Mannar Basin mapped
– ft.lk/front-page/Oil-and-gas-exploration-in-Mannar-Basin-mapped/44-721329
– dailymirror.lk/latest_news/Energy-Ministry-maps-hydrocarbon-blocks-for-exploration-and-development/342-217602
• Are we to buy our solar energy with dollars?
– island.lk/are-we-to-buy-our-solar-energy-with-dollars
– island.lk/clean-energy-without-foreign-exchange/
• Indian investors keen to invest in SL renewable energy sector – Indian High Commissioner
– bizenglish.adaderana.lk/indian-investors-keen-to-invest-in-sri-lanka-renewable-energy-sector-high-commissioner-gopal-baglay/
• Sri Lanka renewable power competitive tenders stuck for 10 months without ministerial nod
– economynext.com/sri-lanka-renewable-power-competitive-tenders-stuck-for-10-months-without-ministerial-nod-84605/
• CEB engineers ask President to allow completion of coal-fired power plant extension project
– island.lk/ceb-engineers-ask-president-to-allow-completion-of-coal-fired-power-plant-extension-project/
• Killer coal not for Lanka – Sunday Times
– sundaytimes.lk/210801/editorial/killer-coal-not-for-lanka-451122.html
• Sri Lankan bishop attacks coal power plant
– lankaweb.com/news/items/2021/08/02/sri-lankan-bishop-attacks-coal-power-plant/
• Sri Lanka to mandate 70-pct renewable power target in gazette rule
– economynext.com/sri-lanka-to-mandate-70-pct-renewable-power-target-in-gazette-rule-84641/
– lankaweb.com/news/items/2021/08/06/sri-lanka-targets-70-percent-renewable-energy-goal-by-2030/
• JRJ and the start of the privatization of the production of electricity
– island.lk/an-encounter-with-jrj-and-the-start-of-the-privatization-of-the-production-of-electricity-in-sri-lanka/
• President’s renewable targets possible, says top electrical engineer
– island.lk/presidents-renewable-targets-possible-says-top-electrical-engineer/
• Sri Lanka renewable power plan for 2030 equal to Germany: CEB engineers
– economynext.com/sri-lanka-renewable-power-plan-for-2030-equal-to-germany-ceb-engineers-84506/
• Sri Lanka’s Adani-JKH US$650mn port terminal gets 25-year tax holiday
– economynext.com/sri-lankas-adani-jkh-us650mn-port-terminal-gets-25-year-tax-holiday-84555/
• Sri Lanka’s Hambantota port backed by China’s Sinopec to expand bunkers offering
– economynext.com/sri-lankas-hambantota-port-backed-by-chinas-sinopec-to-expand-bunkers-offering-84624/
• Sri Lanka’s shipping industry primarily a trans-shipment driven industry
‘We must see development ofshipping and logistics to truly become a maritime logistics hub’
– ft.lk/columns/Then-and-now-Hambantota-International-Port/4-721196
• Sri Lanka’s Katunanayake, Mattala airports to run Swedish IFS ERP
– economynext.com/sri-lankas-katunanayake-mattala-airports-to-run-ifs-erp-84570/
• Air Force manufactures and donates two Heated Humidified Oxygen Therapy Units
– island.lk/air-force-manufactures-and-donates-two-heated-humidified-oxygen-therapy-units/
• SLAF hands over new ward complex at Mulleriyawa Base Hospital
– newsfirst.lk/2021/08/04/pictures-slaf-hands-over-new-ward-complex-at-mulleriyawa-base-hospital/
• Navy builds two-storey building for school on Mandaitivu Island and rehabilitates another
– island.lk/navy-builds-two-storey-building-for-school-on-mandaitivu-island-and-rehabilitates-another/
• China’s engagement in Freight Service Supply Centre in Colombo
– sundaytimes.lk/210801/business-times/chinas-engagement-in-freight-service-supply-centre-in-colombo-450909.html
• Airport and Aviation Services ramps up digital transformation with IFS
– island.lk/airport-and-aviation-services-ramps-up-digital-transformation-with-ifs/
• Nitric acid leak on German Hapag-Llloyd ship on July 29
– ft.lk/business/SLPA-successfully-mitigates-nitric-acid-leak-on-ship/34-721160
– timesonline.lk/latest-news/SLPA-successfully-reworks-leaked-chemical-container-on-board/18-1134482
• Sri Lanka Railway losses top Rs. 10 b mark in 2020
‘65% of train fleet owned by SLR over 30 years old. In 2020 SLR procured 10 locomotives, 6 normal power sets, 9 up country service-related power sets, 20 float wagons and 36 oil tank wagons. Advance payments made for 2 air-conditioned power sets and 160 passenger coaches from India. Rehabilitation of 100 passenger carriages underway’
– ft.lk/front-page/Sri-Lanka-Railway-losses-top-Rs-10-b-mark-in-2020/44-721172
• Chinese company continues e-train smart card ticketing project
– sundaytimes.lk/210801/business-times/chinese-company-continues-e-train-smart-card-ticketing-project-450862.html
• Local ‘mafia’ campaigning to derail sale of star sapphire cluster to prospective global buyers
– island.lk/local-mafia-campaigning-to-derail-sale-of-star-sapphire-cluster-to-prospective-global-buyers/
• Govt. has already spent US$60-65mn to procure Covid-19 vaccines – Lalith Weeratunga
– island.lk/govt-has-already-spent-us-60-65mn-to-procure-covid-19-vaccines-lalith-weeratunga/
• Institute of Chemistry organises webinar on ‘Genes, Immunity and COVID-19 Vaccines’
– island.lk/institute-of-chemistry-organises-webinar-on-genes-immunity-and-covid-19-vaccines/
• Uni. Of Colombo in collaboration with Health Ministry, MRI to expand gene sequencing
– dailymirror.lk/latest_news/Uni-Of-Colombo-in-collaboration-with-Health-Ministry-MRI-to-expand-gene-sequencing/342-217534
• Sri Lanka beckons Indian pharma companies to Hambantota
‘Pharmaceutical Zone in Arabokka in Hambantota objective is to meet around 40% of local demand…Indian pharmaceutical industry exported shipments worth $245.76 million in 2020-21 to the country. India’s overall exports to Sri Lanka in 2020-21 was $3.5 billion’
– lankaweb.com/news/items/2021/08/01/sri-lanka-beckons-indian-pharma-companies-to-hambantota/
• Thailand recently started production of vaccines.
– island.lk/who-envoys-call-for-a-two-track-approach-to-defeat-the-pandemic/
• Covid: Pulse oxygen monitors work less well on darker skin, experts say
– lankaweb.com/news/items/2021/07/31/covid-pulse-oxygen-monitors-work-less-well-on-darker-skin-experts-say/
• 1990 – Suwa Seriya’s success story
‘training for ambulancemen and technicians at a specialized institution in Hyderabad.’
– island.lk/1990-suwa-seriyas-success-story/
• Rockefeller-Pathfinder & Visa help Micro & SME sectors to meet post-Covid challenges
– island.lk/pathfinder-and-visa-team-up-to-help-micro-sme-sectors-to-meet-post-covid-challenges/
• Seylan Bank launches state-of-the-art data centre in Colombo
‘built by V S Information Systems in collaboration with leading IT infrastructure providers such as Panduit, Vertiv, and Starline.’
– island.lk/seylan-bank-launches-state-of-the-art-data-centre-in-colombo/
• R.O.B. Wijesekera, former Chairman of Industrial Technology Institute (ITI formerly CISIR)
– sundaytimes.lk/210801/plus/appreciations-10-450783.html\
• Vietnam overtakes Bangladesh, becomes world’s 2nd largest apparel exporter
– ft.lk/front-page/Vietnam-overtakes-Bangladesh-becomes-world-s-2nd-largest-apparel-exporter/44-721177
• CPC & ‘The Industrial Party’ : Benefits of listening to ‘internet trolls’
– newswire.lk/2021/08/08/factum-perspectives-cpc-the-industrial-party-the-benefits-of-listening-to-internet-trolls-head/
• China Goes From Gaming Clampdown to Sports Boost and Stocks Soar
‘Shares of sneaker makers and other sports companies jumped as Beijing launched an effort to increase the numbers of fitness trainers and people exercising regularly over the next five years.’
– bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-04/china-sports-stocks-rise-as-safe-choice-after-videogame-shock
• Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine gets grant for Infectious Diseases Prevention
‘University of Liverpool’s Surface Chemistry group and the Unilever microbiology laboratory (link is external) at the Materials Innovation Facility…’
– lstmed.ac.uk/news-events/news/lstm-receives-multi-million-grant-to-improve-product-development-for-infectious
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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.
• ETI Directors released on bail
– ft.lk/front-page/Indictments-served-on-ETI-Directors-released-on-bail/44-721282
• Bank of Ceylon highest industry profits for 2020 of Rs. 23.6 billion profit
‘…and Rs. 3 trillion in assets. The bank’s Inward Remittance grew over US$2.8 billion’
– sundaytimes.lk/210801/business-times/boc-celebrates-its-82nd-anniversary-on-an-austere-note-450868.html
– island.lk/boc-launches-export-circle-to-drive-smes-to-the-level-of-institutional-exporters
– ft.lk/top-story/BOC-overtakes-last-year-s-Rs-27-b-profit-in-just-1H-of-2021/26-721208
– ft.lk/front-page/Parliamentary-Committee-on-Public-Finance-commends-BOC/44-721207
• National Development Bank profit before taxes Rs. 6.1 billion first half of 2021
‘Rs. 1.46 billion, raised through the private placement with Norfund – the Norwegian Investment Fund and US$75 million from the US-based Development Finance Corporation’
– sundaytimes.lk/210801/business-times/ndb-shows-strong-performance-in-h1-2021-amidst-pandemic-450876.html
• Vallibel Finance profits soared in June quarter on new loans, with income of Rs.1.28 billion
– island.lk/vallibel-finance-profits-soared-in-june-quarter-on-new-loans/
• Pan Asia Bank Pre-Tax Profit of Rs. 1.82 Billion 1H 2021
– ft.lk/financial-services/Pan-Asia-Bank-records-impressive-performance-amidst-challenges/42-721219
• Ceybank Asset Management profit swells by 575% to Rs. 89.7 million
‘… owned by Bank of Ceylon (44%), Sri Lanka Insurance Corporation (26%), Unit Trust of India (17.5%), and Carson Cumberbatch PLC (12.5%). National Savings Bank (NSB) is trustee for all Ceybank Unit Trust Funds…Directors comprise Chairman Anura Fernando, G.A. Jayashantha, R.M.N. Jeewantha, Executive Director and CEO I.C.C. Ferdinands, S.M. Paranavitana, A.D. Perera, and V. Govindan.’
– ft.lk/front-page/Ceybank-Asset-Management-profit-swells-by-575/44-721174
• Lanka Credit & Business Finance plans for a public listing
‘Listing process through NDB Investment Bank. Furthermore, with FJ & G de Saram as our Legal Advisors and Sampath Bank PLC as the Banker to the IPO…The customer base of the company comprises farmers, fishermen, vendors, labourers and small business owners’
– island.lk/lcb-finance-announce-plans-for-colombo-stock-exchange-listing/
• Merchant Bank looks to successful Rs. 2.24 b Rights Issue, New CEO…
‘Formerly at Seylan Bank, then Saudi ORIX Leasing Company, Nations Trust Bank
– sundaytimes.lk/210801/business-times/dammika-appointed-new-mbsl-ceo-450889.html
– ft.lk/front-page/MBSL-looks-to-a-successful-Rs-2-24-b-Rights-Issue/44-721388
• Union Bank appoints new Deputy Chairman, changes to the Board
‘“Deputy Chairman designate, Trevine Fernandopulle also was Group Chief Risk Officer/Executive Vice President – Risk of the DFCC Group, Chief Risk Officer at Bank of Ceylon and Deputy Chief Executive Officer (DCEO) HSBC Sri Lanka,…New board member A.S. Ibrahim was CEO, People’s Leasing & Finance.’
– timesonline.lk/business/Union-Bank-appoints-new-Deputy-Chairman-changes-to-the-Board/10-1134491
• Senkadagala Finance to raise Rs. 474.5 m via Rights
‘E.W. Balasuriya and Company Ltd., (56.46%) and the Balasuriya family controls over a 70% stake’
– ft.lk/front-page/Senkadagala-Finance-to-raise-Rs-474-5-m-via-Rights/44-721201
• English Ernst & Young Advises Commercial Officers at Sri Lankan missions overseas
– ft.lk/business/E-Y-insights-to-Port-City-Colombo-for-Commercial-Officers-at-Sri-Lankan-missions-overseas/34-721162
• New SEC Act: Preparing Sri Lanka’s capital markets for the future
– sundaytimes.lk/210801/business-times/new-sec-act-preparing-sri-lankas-capital-markets-for-the-future-450884.html
• Wall Street banks have rebuilt that 2008 derivatives doomsday machine again
‘a $168 trillion monster concentrated at four mega banks on Wall Street… JPMorgan Chase Bank, Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Citibank N.A. (the federally-insured unit of Citigroup), and Bank of America are sitting on $168 trillion in derivatives or 89 % of the $189 trillion at all banks’
– wallstreetonparade.com/2021/08/u-s-banking-system-has-a-168-trillion-nightmare-looming-it-was-ignored-in-written-testimony-for-todays-senate-banking-hearing/
• Three U.S. banks “make 100 percent of their profits on overdraft fees”
– wallstreetonparade.com/2021/08/more-than-700-walmart-stores-house-a-bank-with-a-predatory-past/
• Wall Street sees retail orders as the “dumb money” it wants to trade against
– wallstreetonparade.com/2021/08/serially-charged-robinhood-doubles-in-price-in-three-days-but-appears-to-have-forgotten-about-its-second-quarter-earnings-report-after-losing-1-4-billion-in-first-quarter/
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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’
• Export Development Board Collaborates with CCC and USAID
‘participants included EDB Chairman Suresh de Mel, USAID Sri Lanka and Maldives Mission Director Reed Aeschliman and The Ceylon Chamber of Commerce Chairman Vish Govindasamy.’
– bizenglish.adaderana.lk/edb-collaborates-with-ccc-and-usaid-supported-partner-activity-to-build-capacity-of-development-officers-on-regional-export-facilitation/
• US Facebook Marketplace Comes to Sri Lanka
– bizenglish.adaderana.lk/facebook-marketplace-comes-to-sri-lanka/
• Dialog H1 2021 Revenue at Rs68 Bn
– bizenglish.adaderana.lk/dialog-posts-strong-1h-2021/
– economynext.com/sri-lankas-dialog-axiata-net-profits-doubles-in-june-quarter-84619
• SLT Group Revenue grew to Rs. 49.9 Bn in first half 2021
– island.lk/slt-group-consolidates-cost-manages-waste-to-deliver-positive-results-in-first-half-2021/
– ft.lk/front-page/SLT-Group-delivers-positive-results-in-1H/44-721276
• Sri Lanka’s largest textile manufacturer Teejay Q1 revenue up 119% to Rs 10.4 billion
– bizenglish.adaderana.lk/teejay-lanka-steps-into-2021-22-with-improved-q1-performance/
– ft.lk/business/Teejay-Lanka-steps-into-2021-22-with-improved-Q1-performance/34-721374
• Sri Lanka Insurance provides protection for Judicial Service Association vehicles
‘Judicial Service Association of Sri Lanka represents all the District Judges and Magistrates’
– island.lk/sri-lanka-insurance-motor-plus-provides-comprehensive-protection-for-judicial-service-association-sri-lanka
• Memorial services held to remember the late Mr. R. Rajamahendran
– newsfirst.lk/2021/08/01/memorial-services-held-to-remember-the-late-mr-r-rajamahendran
– sundaytimes.lk/210801/plus/appreciations-10-450783.html
• Sri Lanka property price disinflation in the capital Colombo ends
– economynext.com/sri-lanka-property-price-disinflation-in-the-capital-colombo-ends-84671/
• Oman interest in SLAF HQ land and Chalmer’s Granary
‘Available for lease in Western Province are Welikada prison land in Borella; Tractor Corporation, Agriculture Department & Milco land in Narahenpita; as well as SL Exhibition & Convention Centre, C. W. Mackie, 2 CWE properties and People’s Bank Training Centre, at D. R. Wijewardena Mawatha.
Hospitality and leisure projects are Visumpaya at Union Place; 80 Club at Torrington Square; & space in Sir Baron Jayatilleka Mawatha in Colombo 1. Lands in Norris Canal Road, Colombo 7, and Battaramulla taken over for multi-storey car parks.’
– sundaytimes.lk/210801/news/oman-shows-interest-in-slaf-hq-land-and-chalmers-granary-451258.html
– economynext.com/omani-shumookh-inks-mou-with-sri-lankas-uda-interested-in-g-secs-84548/
• Senior Engineer Vijitha Herath assumes duties today as new Chairman of Sri Lanka Insurance
– island.lk/senior-engineer-vijitha-herath-assumes-duties-today-as-new-chairman-of-sri-lanka-insurance/
• President Condominium Developers Assn
‘’ Prime Group’s Chairman Premalal Brahmanage is new President of the Condominium Developers Association…He was also Deputy Chairman of HNB Finance.’
– island.lk/president-condominium-developers-assn/
• India’s HCL, to take up 80% of ‘The Offices’ at Cinnamon Life for its Sri Lanka hub
– island.lk/global-technologies-company-hcl-to-take-up-80-of-the-offices-at-cinnamon-life-for-its-sri-lanka-hub/
• Oceanfront Condominiums Galle by International Construction Consortium gets COC
– island.lk/oceanfront-condominiums-galle-by-icc-obtains-coc/
• Top women leaders share insights on navigating headwinds amid pandemic
– ft.lk/special-report/Top-women-leaders-share-insights-on-navigating-headwinds-amid-pandemic/22-721224
• Heineken Begins Local Brewing of Flagship Beer in Sri Lanka
‘Heineken Lanka is the second largest manufacturer and distributor of beer in Sri Lanka. Heineken Lanka has operated a brewery in Mawathagama, Kurunegala, for the past 20+ years, with 200 permanent employees and 6 iconic beers.’
– lankaweb.com/news/items/2021/08/06/heineken-lanka-begins-local-brewing-of-flagship-heineken-beer-in-sri-lanka/
• Meijboom-van Wel appointed Managing Director of Heineken Lanka
– ft.lk/business/Meijboom-van-Wel-appointed-Managing-Director-of-Heineken-Lanka/34-721223
• OREL IT appoints Upendra Pieris as CEO
‘Recently inducted as Member of the prestigious Forbes Technology Council…now Executive Committee Member for AI Center of Excellence and Entrepreneurship Forum at SL Association for Software and Services Companies (SLASSCOM), and Digital Chapter and Software Chapter of the Federation of Information Technology Industry (FITIS)…also a Director of the ICT Industry Skills Council & Advisory Committee Member for the IT/BPM Sector at the Export Development Board’
– island.lk/orel-it-appoints-dr-upendra-pieris-as-ceo/
• Masters Corporate Education, corporate education arm of SL Technological Campus (SLTC)
– ft.lk/business/The-Directors-Program-launched-by-Masters-Corporate-Education-oversubscribed/34-721375
• Sri Lanka to exploit Trade, Investment and Tourism potentials in Black Sea Region of Turkey
– bizenglish.adaderana.lk/sri-lanka-to-exploit-trade-investment-and-tourism-potentials-in-black-sea-region-of-turkey/
• Singer wins Best Distributor in South Asia from Dell Technologies
– bizenglish.adaderana.lk/singer-wins-best-distributor-in-south-asia-from-dell-technologies/
• International Trimmings and Labels donates medical equipment
– sundaytimes.lk/210801/sunday-times-2/itl-donates-medical-equipment-451024.html
• Cathay Pacific Cargo helps SL by transporting COVID-19 testing kits
– timesonline.lk/business/Cathay-Pacific-Cargo-helps-SL-by-transporting-COVID-19-testing-kits/10-1134401
• Dialog Axiata and Wavenet donate national patient bed management system
– island.lk/dialog-axiata-and-wavenet-donate-national-patient-bed-management-system/
• Promotion of Sri Lanka’s exports in Fujian, China
– bizenglish.adaderana.lk/promotion-of-sri-lankas-exports-in-fujian-china/
• Standard Chartered showcases SL potential via China – Sri Lanka Virtual Investor Forum
– bizenglish.adaderana.lk/standard-chartered-showcases-sri-lankas-potential-via-china-sri-lanka-virtual-investor-forum/
• Unilever ‘aids’ Nuwara Eliya medical institutions
– bizenglish.adaderana.lk/unilever-sri-lanka-continues-to-support-healthcare-sector-with-contributions-to-nuwara-eliya-medical-institutions/
• SEC has left Wall Street a dangerous and unrepentant band of thieves
– wallstreetonparade.com/2021/08/trading-unit-of-5-count-felon-jpmorgan-chase-gave-550-customer-passwords-and-user-names-to-an-active-customer-for-more-than-a-decade-sec-fines-it-a-paltry-2-75-million/
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C10. Politics (Anti-parliament discourse, unelected constitution)
ee Politics points to the constant media diversions and the mercantile and financial forces behind the political actors, of policy taken over by private interests minus public oversight.
• SLFP asks govt. to address SLPP constituents’ grievances or face consequences
– island.lk/slfp-asks-govt-to-address-slpp-constituents-grievances-or-face-consequences
– island.lk/slfp-tells-major-partner-how-to-resolve-crisis/
– island.lk/maithri-told-slfp-not-to-cause-any-embarrassment-to-govt-amaraweera/
• Another win for misogynist MPs?
– island.lk/another-win-for-misogynists/
• Half of the national list should be for women : Women Parliamentarians’ Caucus
– timesonline.lk/latest-news/Half-of-the-national-list-should-be-for-women-Women-Parliamentarians-Caucus/18-1134531
• MPs’ educational qualifications must be disclosed, but no MP has given details
– sundaytimes.lk/210801/news/rtic-rules-mps-educational-qualifications-must-be-disclosed-but-no-mp-has-given-details-451254.html
• The government and its vaccination drive – Deshapriya
– island.lk/the-government-and-its-vaccination-drive/
• Ranawaka’s Contempt of Court Bill: Justice Minister says Govt. will announce its stance soon
– sundaytimes.lk/210801/news/ranawakas-contempt-of-court-bill-justice-minister-says-govt-will-announce-its-stance-soon-451223.html
• Majority of the Sinhalese did not vote for President Sirisena’s government
– island.lk/restoring-reconciliation-process-cannot-be-piecemeal/
• How Lakshman Kadirgamar became an MP and Minister – Jeyaraj
– ft.lk/columns/How-Lakshman-Kadirgamar-became-an-MP-and-Minister/4-721238
• Sri Lanka’s social volcano and Sinicisation of the Sinhala mind – Jayatilleka
‘Progressive centrism (Biden) is where the needle settles.’
– ft.lk/dayan_jayatilleka/Sri-Lanka-s-social-volcano-and-Sinicisation-of-the-Sinhala-mind/10527-721293
• The Rajapaksa Dynasty in Sri Lanka: Democracy in Decline – Saravanamuttu
– lankaweb.com/news/items/2021/08/04/the-rajapaksa-dynasty-in-sri-lanka-democracy-in-decline/
• “Shelly Aiya”: Courageous Politician with Enlightened Principles – Jeyaraj
– dailymirror.lk/recomended-news/Shelly-Aiya-Courageous-Politician-with-Enlightened-Principles/277-217752
• Marxism in Africa (1975)
‘People have no difficulty relating to electricity but they say: “Marx and Engels, that’s European!” They don’t ask the question, “Was Edison a racist?” but they ask the question, “Was Marx a racist?”’
– redsails.org/marxism-in-africa/
• Glen Ford and the Need for Black Radical Analysis
‘In the post-civil rights era, the Black working class and poor, whose labor as sharecroppers and domestic workers during Jim Crow became obsolete, were forced to confront a new set of social and economic maladies: deindustrialization, urban blight, mass incarceration, and heroin epidemics’
– blackagendareport.com/glen-ford-and-need-black-radical-analysis
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C11. Media (Mis/Coverage of economics, technology, science and art)
ee Media shows how corporate media monopoly determines what is news, art, culture, etc. The media is part of the public relations (corporate propaganda) industry. The failure to highlight our priorities, the need to read between the lines. To set new perspectives and priorities.
• Between romance and revolution: Nanda Malini and Politics of Pavana
– island.lk/between-romance-and-revolution-nanda-malini-and-politics-of-pavana/
• SL-linked Daisy Veerasingham Associated Press CEO
– ft.lk/front-page/SL-linked-Daisy-creates-history-at-Associated-Press/44-721437
• From Mockingbird to Birdwatch: Big Tech & Big Media Uniting Against Independent Press,
‘Twitter announced that it was partnering with the Associated Press (AP) and Reuters to expand its efforts to “identify and elevate credible information”’
– sputniknews.com/us/202108051083535783-from-mockingbird-to-birdwatch-big-tech–big-media-uniting-against-independent-press-scholars-warn/
• Facebook aims to use you against you
– youtube.com/watch?v=uaaC57tcci0
• Facebook pays $0.288 m in VAT for first time in progressive Bangladesh
– ft.lk/front-page/Facebook-pays-0-288-m-in-VAT-for-first-time-in-progressive-Bangladesh/44-721387
• Intellectual Property Law – One of Many Legal Frameworks Explained
– dailymirror.lk/hard-talk/Intellectual-Property-Law-ONE-OF-MANY-LEGAL-FRAMEWORKS-EXPLAINED/334-217471
• Manourie Muttetuwegama, a personal memoir – Manik de Silva
– island.lk/manourie-muttetuwegama-a-personal-memoir/
• Place where we can find real philosophy of the Buddha
– lankaweb.com/news/items/2021/08/06/this-is-the-place-where-we-can-find-real-philosophy-of-the-lord-buddha/
• National Film Corporation directed to steer the local cinema industry revival
– sundaytimes.lk/210801/business-times/nfc-directed-to-steer-the-local-cinema-industry-revival-450892.html
• Little known French connection and the battle of Trinco
– sundaytimes.lk/210801/plus/little-known-french-connection-and-the-battle-of-trinco-450791.html
• Ceylon Society of Australia
– island.lk/dr-nalini-kumari-kappagoda/
• Karunananda of Sri Lanka: Courageous Loser Who Won Hearts at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics
– lankaweb.com/news/items/2021/08/05/karunananda-of-sri-lanka-the-courageous-loser-who-won-hearts-at-the-1964-tokyo-olympics/
• Since the BJP came to power in 2014, India has shut down the internet 521 times
– sundaytimes.lk/210801/sunday-times-2/indias-internet-hypocrisy-450982.html
• Glen Ford’s Journalism Fought for Black Liberation and Against Imperialism
– blackagendareport.com/glen-fords-journalism-fought-black-liberation-and-against-imperialism
– blackagendareport.com/glen-ford-memoriam
• How History Textbooks Reflect America’s Refusal to Reckon with Slavery
– blackagendareport.com/how-history-textbooks-reflect-americas-refusal-reckon-slavery
• Booker & Empire’s Bookies
– scroll.in/article/1001621/a-readers-guide-to-the-13-books-longlisted-for-the-booker-prize-2021
• Blogger Craig Murray Framed by Scottish Jailed by English
‘bloggers should be held to a different (by implication higher) standard in law than the mainstream media (the judgement uses exactly those terms), because the mainstream media is self-regulated.’
– craigmurray.org.uk/
• Former English ambassador Murray’s jailing is move to snuff out independent journalism
– jonathan-cook.net/blog/2021-07-30/craig-murrays-jailing-is-the-latest-move-in-the-battle-to-snuff-out-independent-journalism
– craigmurrayjustice.org.uk/
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• Please note our new email address: econenews@gmail.com,
and our blog: eesrilanka.wordpress.com
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