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US is not a spent force and it will recover from its recent financial crisis like it always has done. Several millionaires jumped out of the windows during the 1929 Wall Street crash. Did the US economy go belly up? No sirree. - Image caption :- In this handout photo provided by the White House, U.S. President Barack Obama holds a conference call from Camp David during a briefing on the tragedy in Afghanistan with Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, Adm. Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, National Security Advisor Tom Donilon and Chief of Staff Bill Daley on August 6, 2011 in Camp David, Maryland. - Getty Images |
(August 11, London, Sri Lanka Guardian) US enters Sri Lanka’s air space. So what’s new? One plane passed over Sri Lanka’s skies. It certainly will not discover a hidden nuclear plant or weapons of mass destruction unless you count the morons by Diyawanna Oya who are potentially more dangerous than all of Iraq’s and Iran’s nuclear warheads put together.
It set up VOA (Voice of America) in Chilaw and it has been spying on Sri Lanka’s neighbours for decades. Successive Sri Lankan governments gave it carte blanche. US dictates how Sri Lankan economy is run with World Bank and IMF breathing down its neck. Bleating that US is in financial dire straits because its credit rating of AAA was reduced to AA does not mitigate Sri Lanka’s own pathetic and parlous economic state.
US is not a spent force and it will recover from its recent financial crisis like it always has done. Several millionaires jumped out of the windows during the 1929 Wall Street crash. Did the US economy go belly up? No sirree.
Democrats and the Republicans in the Congress and the Senate are unified in everything that the US stands for. They are for capitalism and the protection of the corporate fat cats who would forever hold sway over the interests of the average US citizen who has no free health care, no insurance against repossession of his home when he fails to meet mortgage payments and the uncertainty of retaining jobs.
The man who sleeps outside the retail outlets until opening time and is allowed breathing space as he folds up his sleeping bag is the same person who had a house and a job until corporate America deemed him unfit to be a human being all because he could neither meet his down payment on his property nor could he afford to pay his taxes.
Welcome to the world of capitalism.
If for one moment you believed that US is in recession the more fool you are. Corporate America is teetering on the brink of bringing down its own citizens at the expense of maintaining its hegemony as the world’s super power. Whether is has trillions US dollars of debt (we are not still sure to whom the US owes its debt) or whether it is in want of recovering debts it lent to third world nations US reminds the rest of the world that it would still be policing world economy; rather like the feudal lords who refuse to admit their days are numbered and they may possess the family silver but cannot afford the beef on them.
Having said that US still has not drilled its oil to full potential. It has been holding onto its oil reserves for a rainy day such as what is happening in the Middle East. Along with other western nations it pumped in its technology and manpower to drain out Arab oil while keeping its own reserves intact.
Japan too does not engage in massive fishing in its own territorial waters. It catches its tuna and other fish in the rest of the Pacific and Indian Ocean including Sri Lanka. While Sri Lankans are encouraged through prime time airing of advertisements for canned fish to eat Jack Mackerel which is imported for Delmege Forsyth from Japan, Japanese fishing trawlers are hauling our own unpolluted fish with the latest Japanese technology and feeding their own with our healthy fresh fish. Is it any wonder cancer and other modern day ailments are on the increase? Japan’s chopsticks come from the forests in Burma, Indonesia and Philippines while its flora and fauna are well protected.
Sri Lanka must shed its frog in the well attitude and not hang onto the myth that it has 2,500 year old civilisation ergo the West had better emulate its pious non violence preaching of Lord Buddha. It should also stop accusing the West and the international community of ganging up on innocent little Sri Lanka which minds its own business.
Living in the global village Sri Lanka’s governance is no longer its own business and it is accountable to the rest of the world particularly its human rights record. Incidentally, Could Mrs Hilary Rodham Clinton’s visit to India and the subsequent Headlines Today investigation revealing rape, torture and murder in Wanni have anything to do with adding to the already existing evidence to bring the government before an international war tribunal?
Oh these Americans, tch tch.
(The writer is Asia Pacific Journalism Fellow at UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, California and a print journalist for 21 years. She can be reached at pearltheva@hotmail.com)
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