Sri Lanka Is Colonized Again
In the old days, squabbling feudal elites sold Sri Lanka out to the colonizers. We call the colonizers Dutch, Portuguese, and British, but in truth it was private companies who paid protection money to the crown. One feudal lord would feud with another, and then ask the white men with guns for help. And it worked. They got personal power, for a time. Meanwhile they sold their whole country out, and the common people starved.
Decisions that took food out of children's mouths and stripped resources out of the land were taken in board rooms far away. Wealth was ‘privatized’ and taken out. The feudal elites got their cut, but the colonial elites got the glut. The common people were left with crumbs, and cuffed mercilessly if they spoke out. After the Uva rebellion the foreign capitalists and their paid mercenaries killed all the men and livestock, salted the Earth and left the women and children to starve. The province still hasn’t recovered its fertility. So it was then, and the horror remained for hundreds of years. Now it’s back again, after a brief interregnum where we thought we were independent.
Today the elite families in Parliament directly selected a President, a man expressly rejected by the people and despised. Ranil Wickremesinghe, the nephew of the first dictatorial…
