Finding paths to being enslaved by the USA

The USA is in the news. Exposed. Exposed to those who believed the balderdash about that country being the greatest success story of democracy, freedom and the good life, to be more precise. The USA markets lies very well. Whereas other nations as bad or worse are crude the USA is cute in sweetening the bitter, perfuming the foul-smelling and wall-papering over the grotesque. Used to be. That would be more correct.

The protests are ongoing. Significant numbers want that country to come to terms with its sordid history and violent present. Let there be no illusions though. The racist, violent military-industrial complex that is the United States of America is resilient. Is fighting back. Will continue to fight.

Last week we had the US Ambassador in Sri Lanka, Aliana B Teplitz saying that George Floyd’s death (yes, DEATH and not COLD-BLOODED MURDER BY RACIST POLICEMEN) would be investigated. On Tuesday, she issued a statement in which she bests her own standards of convolution. It was regarding a protest again the USA organized by the Frontline Socialist Party (FSP).

‘We welcome discussion on minority rights, equal protection under law, and security service accountability. But let’s do so in safe ways until there’s less to worry about from COVID-19.’

It takes some gall for a representative of the USA to talk about minority rights, equal protection under law and security service accountability, considering that ‘discussion’ of such things pale in relation to the stark and brutal articulation in their breach. Responsible protests is what she is calling for. That’s echoing what the UN chief on human rights said about protests in the USA where riots broke out after extreme and violent police provocation. It’s easy to indulge in equivalency-speak after the villains have done their work.

Safe ways, she said. Condescending isn’t she? And it’s not as though safety was ever a cardinal principle for the USA, domestically or internationally. Safety was not an issue in dealing with COVID-19 either. Profit was. Keeping businesses viable was. And is, even now. Not with respect to COVID-19, not with protests, not in ousting governments and leaders positioned against US interests, and not in supporting the brutal repression unleashed on peoples by governments and leaders allied with the USA.

But let’s talk ‘safety.’ In the midst of all this, an embassy employee created a fuss at the airport, refusing to take a PCR test. Diplomatic immunity was cited. The Government was caught wrong-footed, gave in and (to its credit) subsequently revised protocols for testing of diplomats. The man,  Wayne Hamrick according to reports, is apparently a part of the Embassy’s ‘Planning and Action Training Team’ which is attached, interestingly, to the office of the Defense Attaché. Nothing ‘diplomatic’ in either of these entities of course, but this is the USA, remember? A violent, war-like, liking-war nation whose governments talk down to other nations about human rights but have essentially burnt that book a long time ago.

So, Teplitz’ safety-talk and moralistic grandstanding is for those who protest against her Government but not for employees who could theoretically be a grave threat to the safety of all, COVID-19 and all that which she, not I, brought up.

It raises interesting questions. Now what if this ‘diplomat’ is in fact infected with COVID-19? What if he were to succumb to the deadly virus? What if he happened to be a Muslim? How would the US Embassy deal with death-rites? If buried, how would Muslims whose loved ones died of the virus and were duly cremated feel?  [For the record, I hope he is uninfected and if indeed he is infected I wish him speedy recovery.]

COVID-19 was not anticipated. The world is being recreated as I write on account of the pandemic. Surely Teplitz has heard of the Vienna Convention and knows that its authors and signatories did not anticipate and indeed could not have anticipated a pandemic such as this when crafting articles on diplomatic immunity? No one is immune. That’s the bottom line.

Let’s visit the protests. The police obtained a court order to stop the FSP protesting outside the embassy. The FSP shifted venue to De Soysa (Lipton) Circus, Colombo. Social distancing was maintained. It was a low-key protest. Understandable, given circumstances. A few had been near the embassy. The police intimidated these persons. That’s when things got hot. The protestors were provoked. Some fifty of them were arrested.
 

Tiplitz cites COVID-19 protocols. So does the Government. Indeed, if that was the issue a lot more people in all parts of the country should have been arrested for violating social-distance recommendations. Moreover, there are no laws as of yet regarding such issues. Then there’s also the case of crowds at Armugam Thondaman’s funeral. What happened to COVID-19 protocols? Of course if the 5-mourners rule was imposed it is likely that the champions of human rights, Teplitz included, would have cried out in horror about the government being insensitive to minorities, but that’s beside the point here.

I would love to hear the rights-brigade take issue with the government for the way in which the protestors were handled. Funded-voices, rent-a-signature petitioners, candle-light ladies, born-again-democrats and other Colombots aren’t exactly berating either the government or the US Ambassador. One wonders, indeed, what the lately retired-from-politics Mangala Samaraweera have to say?

Samaraweera has been vocal about one thing. The Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) Compact.

‘Sri Lanka must fast-track the MCC grant. Worth $500 million (which is roughly equal to a 20,000 rupee grant to every household in Sri Lanka), it can kick-start the relief and recovery program,’ he says. ‘Selling or leasing these State-owned Enterprises and using the money for relief, or for settling public debt, will be an asset transfer from the state to the citizen,’ he adds.

Essentially asset-transfer to the USA is being named ‘asset transfer to citizen!’ How cute is that? Samaraweera knows that the MCC essentially ties the hand of the Sri Lankan judiciary with respect to the operations of the MCC. If the government had to navel-gaze over an arrogant US Embassy official at the airport just imagine what it would have to do if the MCC Compact was in operation!

FOR THE RECORD: As presidential candidate of the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP), Gotabaya Rajapaksa, on Tuesday the 5th of November 2019, requested Venerable Ududumbara Kasyapa Thero to stop the fast launched over the MCC Compact. All agreements signed by the then  government would be reviewed and revoked if they are not in the national interest, he pledged. The candidate of the United National Party, Sajith Premadasa repeated these sentiments almost immediately. Samaraweera kept mum, for the record.

So has this Government ‘reviewed’? What’s the status of that process? Who is advising this government? Viyath Maga? The Pathfinder Foundation? What’s their agenda? What’s their ideological position with respect to the US, neoliberal economic myths and so on? When is this government going to come clean on all this?

Let’s suspend illusions. The USA is on its knees domestically. The USA, nevertheless, is not going to roll over and surrender to reason and civilization. Teplitz and the US Embassy in Sri Lanka have tasks to accomplish. Getting the MCC Compact off the ground is on top of the agenda.

This is what we have: The refusal of the US ‘diplomat’ to take a PCR test and the government agreeing to waive the requirement + government response to projects + the from-retirement please issued by Samaraweera (a US agent if ever there was one) over the MCC Compact. Need we insist, ‘do the math!’?  

This article was first published in the Daily Mirror (June 11, 2020)

 

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I can’t breathe, Ms Teplitz

On the 25th of May, 2020, something terrible happened in Colombo. A set of police officers accosted a citizen who did not belong to the majority community. The man was suspected of giving a bad cheque. He was assaulted, handcuffed and even as he said 'mata husmaganna bae (‘I can’t breathe), one of the officers pinned him down, knee on neck. The man died.

There were protests in Colombo. Riot police baton-charged and tear-gassed protestors. Water cannons were used. Rubber bullets were shot. Police dogs were unleashed. Police cars ploughed through demonstrators in various parts of the city. Unarmed, handcuffed people were punched. Over and over again. People who had fallen, were punched on and pummeled mercilessly. Televisions crews were attacked. Equipment destroyed. The media, state and private, ‘fixed’ the narrative: ‘a criminal, an unruly mob, vandalism…the police merely moved in to keep the peace…they didn’t start the fire, they are merely quenching fires lit by anarchists.’

There was outrage. There were missives from several diplomatic missions, the USA one included. Ambassadors called and wrote to the Minister of Foreign Affairs. Statements were issued to the media. Dr Fernand de Varennes, Extraordinary (!) Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Pretoria, castigated the Sri Lankan Government for promotion of violence against minorities, in diplospeak of course. International human rights organizations were livid. Sanctions against Sri Lanka were recommended. Michelle Bachelet, chief of the UNHRC, expressed dismay in a missive full of veiled threats.

Well!

Didn’t happen here. Happened and is happening right now in the United States of America.

The US Ambassador to Sri Lanka Alaina B Teplitz knows what has been happening in the US for centuries. She knows what happened on May 25, 2020 in Minneapolis. She knows what’s happening right now. Brutal. Racist. Insufferable Unpardonable. But Fenand de Varennes is extraordinarily silent. So is Michelle Bachelet. The Sri Lankan Ambassador in Washington, DC, and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sri Lanka are silent too. Those NGO personalities in the rights business who sneer at nation and nationalism here in Colombo are not affirming their internationalism either.

George Floyd said ‘I can’t breathe.’ George Floyd was not allowed to breathe. George Floyd is no longer breathing. Are you breathing easier now Ms Teplitz, I wonder. Is your America, that of genocidal, white racism breathing easier now, I wonder. Who had a knee on whose neck and who is kneeling now, I wonder.

There’s video footage of all this, Ms Teplitz knows. Its streaming in from New York, Houston, Harrisburg, Los Angeles, Washington DC, Atlanta, Detroit and other unhappy cities in her country. The United States of America is burning. The good people of that country are standing up. They want to be counted and they are being counted too I have no doubt, not for benevolent and happy purposes either.

LeBron James was spot on when he picked up and posted two images, one of George Floyd being kneed and another of Colin Kaepernick kneeling while ‘The Star Spangled Banner’ was being played before a San Francisco 49ers preseason game in 2016. ‘This ... ... Is Why,’ read the legend above the pictures. And this was the question LeBron put to one and all on Instagram: ‘Do you understand NOW!!??!!?? Or is it still blurred to you? #StayWoke.’

Black people and other minorities did not have to wake up. They were up and their nightmares were not associated with night and slumber. George Floyd’s murder was not a one-off affair. He is one of many. The various Police Departments in major US cities are notorious for racial profiling, mindless brutality against non-white suspects and soft-gloved approaches to white miscreants. The judicial system is racist and the proof is in the highly disproportionate number of inmates who are non-white. White racism’s knee has been on minority-neck for decades. No, centuries.

But Ms Teplitz knows that this knee-on-neck is not a phenomenon that is peculiar to Minneapolis or Los Angeles or New York or Washington DC or any other major city in the USA. It sums up in fact US Foreign Policy. It’s not a Donald Trump thing. It predates the US President.

The US will not let anyone or any country that gets in the way of US interests (access to and extraction of resource, securing and maintaining markets and acquiring strategic assets legally, through arm-twisting or simply by implementing guns-in-booty-out policies). It uses knee on neck on nations   and leaders who say ‘no can do.’ Those who will not be brainwashed with tall stories about free markets, growth and such, will be cajoled and bribed. Those who will not submit will be subdued. Knee on neck. Proverbially, speaking.

There’s a cry that’s rising from all over the United States of America. ‘I CAN’T BREATHE.’ That’s how George Floyd is breathing right now. That’s how this man, who pleaded, ‘let me stand,’ but was not allowed to, stands today.

The world can also say, ‘I can’t breathe!’ The world can agitate against the kind of kneeling that’s ‘all in a day’s work’ for the police in the USA. The world can stand up. And if the world does not, then breathing will not be an option. Standing will not be tenable. Maybe, just maybe, considering that the Government she represents is on its knees on many counts Ambassador Teplitz might understand now something of the condition of asphyxiation. She might be unexpectedly finding it hard to breathe. That would be extraordinary, Fenand de Varennes (who got hot under the collar over Muslim Covid-19 victims being cremated in Sri Lanka) might in his less complicit moments conclude.

She says, ‘the US Justice Department has announced a full criminal investigation into the circumstances of Floyd’s death.’ Death? Interesting choice of word. It was MURDER, Ms Teplitz knows this.  And there’s not a word in her media release about the absolute brutality unleashed on protestors after the murder of George Floyd. Humbuggery much.

‘I can’t breathe’ is a worldwide cry. It is a cry flavored by the last breath taken by a 46 year old man in Minneapolis, George Floyd. It’s a ‘#staywoke’ slogan. Let’s not sleep, for there’s a good chance that we will be kneed while in dreamland.



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A political reading of the US Ambassador's angst

Not out of love for Sri Lanka, let us be clear on that!

The US Ambassador, Ms Aliana Teplitz is agitated. The lady is in a hurry. She has written to President Maithripala Sirisena seeking his intervention to ensure cabinet approves the proposed Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) Compact agreement between the two countries. 

Well, we know that the MCC is just one of three agreements currently under discussion. There’s the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) and the Acquisition and the Cross-Servicing Agreement (ACSA). More on all these later. For now, let’s talk about Aliana’s missive.

Aliana has stated that the US is committed to an open and transparent partnership with the Government of Sri Lanka. She has alluded to her country’s investments in Sri Lanka. She’s talked about various benefits. 

Now is she assuming that there’s no one in the President’s office capable of reading the draft agreements that’s being discussed behind closed doors?  That’s not transparency on the part of the Government, but then again that’s not something she needs to worry about. 

The question is one of urgency. Why is Aliana in such a hurry? What’s agitating her so much that she has to write such a heartbreaking plea to the President?  

The answer to these questions may be found in the recent assurance given by Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe to the Bar Association of Sri Lanka. He said that none of these agreements will be signed this year.  

Well, that means, technically, they could be signed in 2020. Why can’t Aliana wait? What’s this great hurry-love for Sri Lanka? Surely, a few months of delay won’t wreck the ‘development’ she is marketing? After all it’s not as though we can go further down the tube courtesy Yahapalalana incompetence, theft and rank idiocy! So why can’t she wait? Here’s a probable answer. 

Aliana could be worried that come 2020 the yahapalana lot would be out of power. Ranil Wickremesinghe, a known receiver of US dictum (who, to his credit, hasn’t gone ga-ga as yet over these agreements), might no longer be the premier. Mangala Samaraweera, whose genuflection before the West is legendary, in such an eventuality would be out of the decision-making equation as well. Maybe it’s not ‘could’ but really ‘most certainly would’ in terms of electoral outcome.  

So, ladies and gentlemen, it’s not about love. No country loves another; countries take care of interests and if other countries are arm-twisted or fooled into playing the idiot all the better. In this instance, one player (the USA) has the arsenal to destroy the world several times over and the bucks to buy agreement (declining, sure, but still with considerable purchasing capacity) while the other (Sri Lanka) is not only economically weak but is burdened by a mindless, clueless regime whose signature attribute is a slave-mentality when it comes to the West.   

It is not that a different government would be, well, ‘different’ but these are ‘friends’ and it is also easier to do business (or extract edge) with friends as opposed to the possibility of having to deal with a regime made of people you’ve spent a lot of bucks to oust not too long ago. Interesting, in the context, is the fact that Aliana had also paid a courtesy call to Opposition Leader Mahinda Rajapaksa. We don’t know what they talked about, but it won’t be out of order to presume that the lady is covering bases, hedging bets.  

Forget Aliana, she’s doing her job. How about the Government? It is supposed to take care of the people’s interest. Some ministers have rubbished those who have raised objections to these agreements saying ‘no such agreement has been signed’ and asking ‘if you haven’t seen the documents, how can you oppose it?’ Valid points. On the other hand, why can’t the Government release the draft agreement or the US proposal(s)? Why be so opaque about it? 

In the absence of transparency we have to assess these things in terms of track records. The history of the USA need no repetition; a rogue state if ever there was one. The history of the UNP, the principal mover with regard to these agreements, is not exactly celebratory. Deceit, secrecy and sycophancy are typical markers of agreements signed by UNP-led regimes, the most recent being UNHRC Resolution 30/1. That was Mangala’s baby and therefore it is laughable when he says ‘I stand by the agreements and take full responsibility’. Easy words. Cheap words. Especially when you don’t have to deal with the consequences of downright chicanery and treachery.  

Government spokespersons have dismissed opposition to the SOFA and ACSA saying they were agreements that are being ‘renewed’. This is a blatant lie. As P.K. Balachandran has pointed out it’s not a matter of changing the date on which agreements expire. THEY ARE NEW DOCUMENTS. In the case of ACSA, it’s an 83-page text with more than 50 appendices. Moreover it is open-ended, with no time limit apart from a provision for ending it with either party giving 180 days’ notice. A lot can happen in a single day; a lot more in 180!  

SOFA is a nice acronym. Sounds comfy. Is it, though? What’s in the small print? Where’s the document? Why is this good-governance government so scared to make public the draft that’s being discussed? It’s the same with the MMC. We need the details. Why is the government is cagey?

We are not a happy nation, when it comes to representation. We are not a happy nation when we look at the people who makes decisions that could have disastrous outcomes for ourselves and our children. This government is not making us happy on most counts and that’s probably why Aliana is so agitated. She’s scared, perhaps, just as her yahapalana friends are, about political outcomes that are distasteful and which could sink or at least make it that much harder to stuff agreements such as SOFA, ACSA and MMC down the country’s proverbial throat. 

  

malindasenevi@gmail.com. www.malindawords.blogspot.com

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