Robbers and Wreckers

To quarrel with them is a loss of face

To have their friendship is a sad disgrace

Those lines by Bharavi were written after the fourth century A.D. when Sanskrit was already a purely literary language.

 We have had the spectacle of a reporter in DC asking Donald Trump whether he regrets his lying all the time every day of his life. And, Trump responded “What did you say?” and one could see that such a possibility had never occurred to him: he was genuinely baffled.

The question here and now is whether such a thought has ever come to Anura Kumara Dissanayake and Harini Amarasuriya, both obedient servants of the US and India. For example, the prathigna given by Amarasuriya as she was sworn in by AKD as Prime Minister in a Cabinet of three. That their doings are in line with the desires of Ranil Wickremesinghe (and maybe the “aspirations” of their buddies) would translate also to the cover up of his bringing in Arjuna Mahendran, the son of a Chairman of the UNP, to trash the Central Bank and execute Ranil’s bond scam.

In the matters of managing our economy and respecting our age-old culture this lot have shown us glimpses of the lunatic self-applause that define Trump’s doings. As phrased by a commentator in the U K Guardian a few days ago Trump’s endeavours “weren’t about Making America Wealthy Again. This was much more primal. Sticking it to all the people who had laughed at him over the years. His bankruptcies. His hair. His orangeness. His stupidity. Sticking it to all those who had taken him to court and won. Now he was the most powerful person in the world. He had the whole world watching as he messed it up. He could do what he liked.”. It’s quite obvious that the last is how AKD, HA, Yapa and the top tier of those most culpable have read their horoscopes: they do not expect to be held accountable

“The U.S.’s new tariff policy reflects a broader shift away from globalisation and towards economic nationalism and national balance sheet economic model approach”. So wrote a self-styled Business Cycle Economist last week. That is the kind of delusion that ‘growth-friendly’ market theory such ‘economists’ are trained to shove down the throats of politicians possessed of just about the bit of wit required to enrich themselves in tandem with the IMF and those entrepreneurs it supports.

At this point we should note also that Trump’s new wave of tariffs was harshest on Cambodia, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam and Sri Lanka––all, coincidentally, in addition to their strategic importance for war-mongers, Buddhist countries.

How closely those who call the shots among the power-wielders here follow Trump is seen in their response or lack of one to the earthquake that has devastated Myanmar and Thailand a week ago. The USA has been salivating over the riches of Myanmar for a long time, confident that Aung Suu Kyi would deliver them on a platter. That no doubt was the object of the aragalaya here and seems within reach for India now.

For months now, from 2022 at least, there have been markers that showed who was running the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (so calling themselves) and what their agenda was with respect to our country and her people. An early eruption that showed their hand was that aragalaya‘. It was designed to ensure a regime change that would place, let us for convenience say, Adani in charge. It involved, as a first step, getting Gotabhaya out of the presidency. That it was so was also shown two years ago in the London Review of Books by Pankaj Misra in an essay titled “The BIG CON” on Modi’s India. In which Gotabhaya and Adani are mentioned and the above object specified.

Misra’s latest work has been on “The World After Gaza” – a reference not without its applications not only to Modi’s support for Adani in Haifa, but to the ridiculous and altogether culpable gestures of friendship towards the US-Israeli led coalition of criminals shown by Ranil Wickremasinghe and associated Colombians who succeeded him. Haifa is the largest port in that segment of occupied Palestine and the Trump group also has had a stake in it.

I shall pause here with the concluding lines of Bharavi’s quatrain.

 One of sterling judgment realizes

What fools are worth and foolish ones despises.

by Gamini Seneviratne