Going Global

Sri Lanka will not accept any conditions on a loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the island's president has said.

"We will not pawn or sell our motherland to obtain any monetary aid," said Mahinda Rajapaksa.

The Sri Lankan government is in talks with the IMF about a $1.9bn (£1.4bn) loan to help combat the economic downturn and pay for reconstruction.

The IMF usually insists on conditions for any emergency loans.

No forced measures

These involve taking steps such as cutting public spending or raising interest rates.

But Sri Lanka has made it clear.... (more at BBC)


Hmmm.. no  I have not got many thoughts there. As of late the West seems to have simpered a bit to the war efforts and have indicated a lot more support than they used to. With Hillary Clinton's call to the president and her supposed 'support extended with regard to the 'humanitarian improvements' and the elimination of terrorism etc. I still have the Derana News Alert on my phone.

Except she didn't. Well she did call him but internet news reports seem to deny the fact that she had anything good to say, while some others agree a little more with the Temple Trees version of the tale. This phone conversation and what was really said and implied could play a big role on our future relations with the West and entities such as the IMF and World Bank.

SL is very much an import dependent economy for many of its basic essentials and therefore foreign help in terms of loans, exports tariffs, trade deals etc are essential to its survival. And these rarely come completely devoid of conditions. It seems in a polarized world, the only way to maintain true independence is to have a completely closed economy or be the strongest player around. Since we're nothing of either, it looks as if we will have to go through some changes based on the whims of others soon enough.

But obviously, the government will not make it look like they were 'conditions' when they implement them in the economy oh no. And since we seem to have pretty much of a dormant opposition it looks like the real news of what is going to happen in the in the future may not be too clear till months later. By which time it'll be too late to do anything about it. Not that anything much could be done about it anyway. But at least we'll know.

The Island wants you to live! Linc, The Company is after your son! Hiro, the virus! It was unleashed in the future by The Company. You need to save the bloody world. Again.


The Big Brother is watching you. Wiretapping is scary...they are LISTENING!!!

Damn. What is this thing about popular culture that simply ices your testicles? Or at least my testicles cos ‘The Company’ (pronounced with full emphasis on the capitals and the inverted commas) is all I’ve been hearing about lately. ‘The Company’ is unleashing a virus, ‘The Company’ wants you dead. I mean, ‘Lost’ is a Robinson Crusoe-esque shipwreck (ok, planewreck if you will) story and it turns out that the very island they are stranded on has got a hidden agenda, and uses all the stranded people as pawns to achieve its goals. I’m talking about an Island here. I mean it’s an inanimate object.

I don’t know exactly why, but the notion that there is a higher unseen entity controlling your every move and attaching strings to you every way you turn, has reached a level of mainstream popularity that to me is quite novel. Think about it, not so long ago it was only the stoners, the UFO people, and my A/L english master who waxed lyrical about ‘hidden agendas’, things that are ‘not what they seem’ and ‘they have got you fooled’ etc.

I was, and am one of those people mind you, no not a stoner or an english master. Well correction, not always a stoner, and as for the UFO's well, all I can say is that i believe in the possibilityof aliens existing. Another post on that maybe  But i've always been a conspiracy nut. If being intrigued by a possible conspiracy makes me a nut.

Someone once told me that the American people were being ‘prepared’ for a black president. He was of course referring to the black president seen in the first season of 24. This post 9/11 trash TV show if you ask me. The first season was great and Elisha Cuthbert was hot but then the whole thing got boring. Kind of noticed that the black president disappeared rather quickly in the following seasons too, I don’t know, maybe Obama should watch out.

‘Confessions of an Economic Hitman’ is a great book. And a must read for all you ‘Company’ skeptics and fanatics out there. It sets out the true story of an ‘Economic Hitman’ working for big corporations involved in exploiting mainly third world/developing counties. Read that, and you’ll get some good insight into how the whole thing worked (this mainly concerns the mid to latter decades of the 20th century), and possibly get an inkling as to how modern mega-powerful corporate interests work too.

Popular culture reflects general sentiment among the larger public. So this is really where Wall Street meets Main Street, inside people's minds. People are increasingly suspicious about big organizations and corporate interests controlling goverments and are increasingly wondering how much privacy and control they really have in their lives. Obama is popular in the polls and Obama is the one promising to cut down the power of Big Organizations. The world is caught in a Big Brother frenzy.

All that of course is primarily in the Western world right? You may ask or you may not. Here is SL, we peacefully navigate our ways through the occasional military checkpoint and avoid the occasional drunk driving rap by refusing to ‘blow the balloon’ and casually slipping the ‘ralahami’ a few hundred bucks. But nevertheless, we too are caught up in the whole global corporate game. Just how do we think we are funding our war? Just how do you think those politicos are getting their filthy hands on billions of dollars? This money has got to come from somewhere right? And the people giving it to us obviously know we are not going to pay them back. So what have they already reserved as collateral? Our natural resources? Our UN votes? Its anyone’s guess. Existing governments can simply sell the country's soul to the devil (read, The Company) and temporarily live it up and then transfer the debris of their spoils on to the poor chaps who come into power next (who will probably in turn carry on with the grand traditions of the first) but I digress.

So has capitalism fuelled this and presented to us a world where governments are mere pawns on a chessboard ruled by the multinationals? I don’t know, I haven’t found out yet, I’m still waiting for Lost Season 5, and the rest of Heroes season 3 and Prison Break 4.