Climate Science Fiction versus Local Realities. The EU-US Polycrisis through BioWarfare and Directed Energy Weapons
In the cover image Sri Lankan President unveils ambitious national green vision paving the way for a sustainable future Fri, Nov 3, 2023, 07:43 pm SL Time, ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka.
Sri Lanka is a test case for 54 other countries in US dollar-Eurobond debt traps
by Darini Rajasingham-Senanayake
Dr. Darini Rajasingham-Senanayake, is a Social and Medical Anthropologist, based in Colombo, Sri Lanka. All links to Gospa News articles have been added aftermath.
We live in an age of anxiety, a nervous system, a state of permanent emergency that is conducive to a range of psychological operations (PSY-OPS). Anxiety narrows one’s field of vision, diminishes lateral and critical thinking, and puts us in ‘survival mode’.
Unable to see the big picture and suffering from induced attention deficit syndrome, perpetually wired up to phones and tablets, we are vulnerable to Globalist grand narratives. This is especially so in a world of AI augmented virtual reality where big Data and algorithm-generated ‘facts’ tend to merge with science fiction and deep fakes.
“Poly crisis’ is a fashionable term these days in United Nations (UN), and Bretton Woods circles that engage in crafting Covid-19 panicdemics, climate catastrophe, debt, poverty and inequality narratives and related globalist policy solutions.
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Meanwhile, local, national and regional realities and development priorities in countries in the Global South are increasingly marginalized and rendered invisible due to the much hyped ‘poly crisis’ and proffered global ‘solutions’, which often result in big policy mistakes at the local and national level.
What also tends to be overlooked in international conference circuits is the fact that at the root of the ‘Polycrisis’ is the Euro-American military business industrial complex that President Dwight Eisenhower warned Americans about decades ago.
This includes dual use ‘Gain of Function’ research for biological warfare and weather modification technologies like Directed Energy Weapons (DEW), NATO proxy wars, and the booming global arms industry headed by the United States which has 750 military bases around the world.
Decades ago weather modification as a technology was embraced by the US military as a tool to help both wartime and peacetime missions.[i] The shooting down of a Chinese weather or ‘spy balloon’ earlier this year was clearly the tip of the ice berg. Hence, rather than yet another CoP 28 climate summit in Dubai, the urgent need is for a Global Conference to limit the production of destructive weapons and curb the ‘merchants of death’ who profit from war, staged emergencies, and humanitarian ‘disaster capitalism’. Also needed is a Global peace conference for Gaza.
Anthropocene Global Boiling?
The United Nations Secretary General, Antonio Guterrez recently claimed that global warming had morphed into ‘global boiling’. However, empirical reality in much of tropical South and East Asia this year belied the UNSG’s Anthropocene media hype– ahead of yet another climate summit.
In Sri Lanka the monsoons arrived, much as they had since I can remember, and arguably for eons across the Indian Ocean. Contrary to the El Nino, climate boiling narrative, they again brought cooling winds and plentiful rain to fill the reservoirs for good harvests and hydropower electricity to light homes and city streets. Birds migrated as usual in 2023.
Indeed, geostrategic Sri Lanka, whose carbon footprint is tiny to nonexistent seems to be in a climate ‘cool spot’ or sweet spot—as some climate change models have suggested, receiving more rain than usual. Or, perhaps Mother Nature providing an extended rainy season in Sri Lanka is fighting back against the totalizing climate catastrophe/ global boiling story about purportedly sinking islands!
The Environmental Cost of the US Superpower’s Economic, Hybrid War Games in Indian Ocean
National and South Asia empirical realities that contradict and contravene the official ‘climate catastrophe’ narrative, however, do not feature in the global Corporate media echo chamber and UN and related NGO conference circuits that thrive on fear-inducing disaster stories that often promote inappropriate and costly policy mistakes at the local level.
Recently, at the first International Climate Change Forum in Colombo, Sri Lankan President, Ranil Wickramasinghe outlined ambitious plans for the country’s green transition. [ii] In a speech laced with the mandatory UN environmental sustainability and economic growth jargon, the President expressed his determination for Sri Lanka to become the first country in the region to achieve a ‘green economy’.
Wickramesinghe stated that he planned to present the strategic Indian Ocean island’s climate prosperity plan at the United Nations COP -28 climate summit to be held in Dubai at the end of this month.
100 Billion for a Green Transition Vanity Project
Blissfully ignorant that many of the major industrialized climate polluting (G7) countries and their big oil corporations are ramping up hydrocarbon production and carbon emissions at this time, the Sri Lankan President noted that the price tag for Eurobond debt-trapped Sri Lanka reaching net zero emissions by 2040 would be a cool $100 billion USD– over 20 years.
The figure of $ 100 billion for Sri Lanka’s green transition is almost three time larger than the country’s estimated external debt of $ 35 billion at this time. External debt estimated at $ 26 billion last year caused the strategic Indian Ocean island’s first ever sovereign Default, resulting in rapid local currency deprecation that instantly impoverished citizens.
Given the hefty tab of $ 100 billion for the President’s Green transition vanity project, which the country clearly does not need and cannot afford at this time, the question is who is behind Sri Lanka’s expensive Green agenda?
Pelosi’s Pivot as Cold War and Colonialism rebound in the Indian Ocean amid Greenwash
A few weeks after the International Climate Change Forum in Colombo, the Sri Lankan President was again promoting a Green Hydrogen Roadmap– funded by USAID at the Shangri La Hotel oblivious to the fact that US, UK, France and other climate polluting countries and the Big Oil companies like Shell, BP and Exonn have been ramping up hydrocarbon exploration, production and carbon pollution.
UK Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak has pledged in July to “max out” the UK’s oil and gas reserves as he revealed a new round of intensive North Sea drilling in July, which experts said could be catastrophic for the climate. The new oil and gas exploration and drilling and carbon emissions would ensure Britain’s energy security from Russia’s redoubtable Mr. Putin and the BRICS Plus’ increasing control of the global oil trade.
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This after the Nord Stream gas pipelines from Russia to Germany were hacked last year by the US– if Nobel prize winning journalist Seymore Hersch it to be believed. The Biden administration had announced in September, plans for as many as three new oil and gas drilling lease sales in federal waters over the next five years.
Rather than Green Hydrogen, what debt-trapped Sri Lanka urgently needs as a national development Priority is a Fisheries Sector Industrialization policy and roadmap to leverage its extensive Indian Ocean resources for food security and improvement of the livelihoods of its coastal fisheries communities.
Climate Colonialism, Carbon Laundering, and Double Standards
It is increasingly clear that debt trapped small island nations, are being primed to launder the carbon pollution of the profit and greed fueled Big Oil companies of industrialized OECD Aid ‘donor’ countries as they ramp up fossil fuel production at this time. This through Debt for Nature Swaps (DFNS), Green and Blue or Environmental Social and Governance (ESG), bonds and scams and green hydrogen science fiction while Sri Lanka’s valuable ocean resources are looted.
Heedless, the President stated; “To meet the financial challenges of the green transition, Sri Lanka is committed to raising a significant portion of the required funds through commercial means.” By this is meant borrowing from many of the same Eurobond creditors like BlackRock and Adani that had debt trapped the island through corrupt deals with local politicians and their business cronies.
At this time, Adani, BlackRock’s South Asian partner has already been awarded prime coastal lands in Mannar for so-called Green Energy projects and at the Colombo port ex-ante an agreement with the Paris Club creditors, while the IMF talks up a ‘parity of treatment’ of creditors.
What was not mentioned is the fact that almost 40 percent of Sri Lanka’s existing official debt is held by private creditors, hedge funds that charge predatory interest rates many of whom like BlackRock and Adani are greenwashing themselves to market Green and Blue bonds and scams.
It was the private creditors whose names are secret, which were responsible for the accumulation of Odious debt leading to Default, as a result of corrupt transactions between predatory lenders and local politicians, once the Hamilton Reserve Bank filed a court case against the Government of Sri Lanka (GoSL), last year.
Sri Lanka’s Asian neighbours have been far more generous and flexible than the Eurobond holders who charge predatory interest rates when it comes to the debt restructuring. 19 percent of Sri Lanka’s debt was owed to China, 7 percent to Japan, and 5 percent by India, the main bi-lateral creditors, with the rest held by Multilateral agencies including the Asian Development Bank, World Bank, IMF.
Eurobond holders now stand to again benefit from the IMF’s debt restructuring that requires the GoSL to further borrow billions (almost $ 2 billion this year alone) from the same hedge funds, BlackRock being the biggest, that charge predatory interest rates that led to the island’s ever Sovereign Default, ironically in the year that Sri Lanka marked 75 years of putative Independence from the British Raj.
Is debt colonialism ramping up again, this time in the form of ESG bonds and scams based on obtuse Datafication and science fiction-based carbon credit calculations and trading options promoted by various UN experts, agencies and a gravy train of MIND-less environmental NGOs? Does the CoP climate agenda with French President Emannuel Macron’s ‘New Global Financial Pact’ smack of double standards and climate colonialism?
PART 2
CoP-28 Beyond Financializing Mother Nature and Greenwashing Bond scams
Green transition policy debacles are not new to Sri Lanka. A couple of years ago there was a rush to ban the use of chemical fertilizer and switch to organic fertilizer without a transition plan. The result was the destruction of crops and farmers’ livelihoods and corruption in rushed organic fertilizer purchases sans a proper tender process. All this predictably occurred in the name of ‘environment conservation’ by the Gotabaya Rajapakse regime.
Ironically, the green transition to organic fertilizer raised fears of famine in a lush tropical country, but President Gotabaya Rajapakse got an invite to address the UNGA about his Green policy successes in Sri Lanka!
The organic fertilizer policy catastrophe does not appear to have moderated the much hyped push to an expensive and unnecessary ‘green energy transition’, (including Green hydrogen) that Sri Lanka does not need and cannot afford at this time, which is being promoted by local politicians, foreign Aid donors, and UN policy makers with a host of MIND-less conservation NGOs — to further debt trap the strategic island nation.
Speaking of a tough task ahead for his ambitious Green Transition at the International Climate Change Forum in Colombo earlier this month, President Ranil Wickramasinghe made the grandiose and absurd claim that tiny Sri Lanka’s green transition was necessary for the planet’s well-being, heedless of the cost to debt-trapped and impoverished citizens!
Few in the audience thought to ask why Sri Lanka whose carbon foot print is minute should rush into a green transition costing $ 100 billion, which its impoverished citizens cannot afford when the big carbon emitting G7 industrialized countries and companies are expanding fossil-fueled profits, and oil and gas exploration and production?
Is this not a case of double standards and double jeopardy? This question is doubly relevant given that Eurobond trading was the primary cause of the accumulation of Odious Debt that caused the country’s first ever sovereign default.
From the Organic Fertilizer Debacle to Green Hydrogen via EVs
Recently, the Minister of Transport was advertising expensive electric vehicles (EVs), although the price of electricity has gone through the roof! This means that poor people who consume electricity would be forced to subsidize wealthy folk who buy expensive EVs. This in turn, would further drain the island’s foreign reserves and deepen the debt trap.
Like the organic fertilizer debacle the EV policy debacle appears to be well thought out. On November 20, addressing the USAID funded Sri Lanka Green Hydrogen Symposium 2023, President Wickremesinghe outlined a comprehensive vision for embracing cutting-edge green energy technologies. President Wickremesinghe opened his speech by drawing attention to the alarming findings of a UNF emission report for 2023. [iii]
The UNF or United Nations Foundation is an NGO in Washington DC that claims to support the UN, and seems to specialize in Green science fiction with lots of Big Datafication!
From “Donor Darling” to Outcast: Sri Lanka Ignores BRICS amid Cold War and Climate Hypocrisy
On the back of the much hyped climate catastrophe/ global boiling grand narrative, attempts are ongoing through the IMF’s opaque debt data calculations, to deepen the debt trap and further impoverish citizens, with equally opaque carbon calculations, this time with Green and Blue bonds and scams, also referred to as Debt for Nature Swaps (DFNS), or Environment, Social and Governance (ESG), bonds. But such a green transition would clearly cause more harm than good.
At this time, questions arise about the Ranil Rajapakse regime’s IMF debt restructuring program with Debt for Nature Swaps (DFNS) and Environment, Social and Governance debt bondage, and the rational of making policies based on over-generalized climate catastrophe global narratives– a practice that compounds problems and debt, and turns science on its head. This was also evident during the Covid-19 panicdemic global lockdown policies that debt trapped many global south countries where the virus was mild.
After all, it is a truism that local and national context-specific and evidence based policies are necessary, rather than those hyped in Global media narratives about climate boiling.
It is clear that Sri Lanka has lost economic sovereignty and policy autonomy to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and its Paris Club creditors debt restructuring, although attempts are on-going to blame Asian neighbours, China and India, for the strategic Indian Ocean island’s first ever Sovereign Default in March 2022.
BlackRock and Adani to benefit from Sri Lanka’s the Green transition
Sri Lanka’s first Soverign Default last year was fundamentally a consequence of the geopolitical stand-off between the US, China and India, as much as, corruption of local politicians and their crony business elite.
Yet, according to the IMF Extended Fund agreement, Sri Lanka must borrow almost USD 2 billion this year alone from the same private markets/ bond traders that had caused the Odious debt trap in the first place by charging predatory interest rates – especially, during economic shocks like Covid-19 lockdowns and the 2019 ISIS claimed Easter Sunday attacks on economy and society.
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Hardly surprising then that the IMF’s Sri Lanka debt restructuring program with a mere USD 3.9 billion loan over four years seems designed to sustain and deepen its control of the strategic island’s policy space and economic sovereignty by requiring more borrowing on predatory private Eurobond markets now based on obtuse and unscientific carbon credit calculations and DFNS.
In the context it is relevant to quote the statement issued by a group of more than 80 International economists and development experts, including Professors Jayati Ghosh, Thomas Piketty, Dani Rodick, Yanis Varoufakis, which called for outright Eurobond debt cancellation given the practice of charging predatory interests rates as well as the lack of transparency. [iv]
Global Britain, Intelligence Hands and King Charles’ Great Reset
The statement available at the Debt Justice UK website clearly stated:
Private creditors own almost 40% of Sri Lanka’s external debt stock, mostly in the form of International Sovereign Bonds (ISBs), but higher interest rates mean that they receive over 50% of external debt payments. Such lenders charged a premium to lend to Sri Lanka to cover their risks, which accrued them massive profits and contributed to Sri Lanka’s first ever default in April 2022. Lenders who benefited from higher returns because of the “risk premium” must be willing to take the consequences of that risk.
Indeed, ISBs are now trading at significantly lower prices in the secondary market. In this context, giving private bondholders an upper hand relative to sovereign debtors in the Paris Club and the IMF’s required debt negotiations violates the basic principles of natural justice.
However, the IMF “debt restructuring” agenda is designed to deepen the country’s Eurobond debt trap by promoting more borrowing on bondmarkets! Only, now the bonds would be green and blue and pink washed, or Environment, Social (gender) and Governance sensitive bonds, based on obscure and unscientific datafication regarding the volume of carbon emitted by trees and sea grass to mask the lack of transparency in opaque climate science fiction narratives to justify carbonated bond trading
Moreover, the bond holders’ names would still be a secret. In short, the IMF is systematically deepening the debt trap and its control of the island’s economic policy with its bailout conditionalities, and the country is being further impoverished to benefit Colonial Club de Paris bond holders though ESG Debt bondage.
Simultaneously, BlackRock the world’s biggest wealth fund that worth trillions (having received huge US Government Covid-19 bailout funds under the CARES Act to asset strip around the panicdemic locked down and debt trapped Global South), and Adani are now being green, blue and pink washed to trade in Green and Blue Bond and scams.
Climate Colonialism with Cabondated Green Bonds: Macron’s “Finance Shock”
All this begs the question: who drafted the ambitious and unnecessary national Green transition plan to the tune of USD 100 billion, when by the President’s own admission, Sri Lanka lacks the necessary technical expertise on the subject?!
‘Debt for Nature Swaps’ (DFNS), or Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) bonds for Carbon Laundering in the Global South, based on gamed carbon credit calculations increasingly appear to be a ‘bailout’ of private creditors of the colonial Club de Paris.
In tandem with French President Macron’s New Global Financial Pact’ ESG bonds would once again benefit private creditors who charge predatory interest rates. Should an expensive green transition posited on more Eurobond borrowing be a national policy priority for at this time?
Earlier this year French President Emmanuel Macron inaugurated the ‘Summit for a New Global Financial Pact’. In his opening remarks, Macron, told delegates that the world needs a “public finance shock” – a global push of innovation and financing.[v] Macron later paid a midnight visit to the Sri Lankan President to seal the deal — as France an Atlantic Ocean country extends its Carbon footprint in the Seas of Sri Lanka and the Indian Ocean with nuclear submarines and fishing trawlers companies!
Sri Lanka is a test case for 54 other countries in post-Covid-19 US dollar-Eurobond debt traps, many near Default.
The Global South it seems would under Macron’s New Global Financial Shock be expected to launder Carbon Emissions through DFNS and ESG bonds. Is the name of the game: Climate Colonialism!
In the final analysis, there is need to de-link debt restructuring and the climate catastrophe metanarrative. The ‘Polycrisis; grand narrative obscures more than it reveals, while enabling conflation and inflation of debt numbers, while enabling a new round of colonialism, in the form of forest lands and “ocean grabbing” as the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam has detailed in several reports. Debt trapped global south countries being compelled into carbon sequestering or carbon laundering of the expanding carbon emissions of the industrialized countries that are again ramping up hydrocarbon exploration and production — in the name of’ environmental conservation’
The Anthropocene ‘polycrisis’ metanarrative increasingly masks climate (neo)colonialism and a push to land and ocean grabbing under the rubric of ‘environmental conservation”, as part of a new blue-green debt deal for the Global South. This would further a Global Governance agenda that violates core principles of the United Nations Charter, such as, the Right to Self-determination of colonized peoples, sovereignty, and the territorial integrity of States, while turning science and the need for locally-grounded, empirical, evidence-based policy-making, on its head.
Finally, are we increasingly seeing the Financialization and weaponization of Mother Nature with DFNS, and Directed Energy Weapons (DEW)?
The latter enable staging climate disasters, storms, flash floods, forest fires, earthquakes, and tsunamis while enabling humanitarian disaster capitalism and re-construction to benefit investors like BlackRock and Adani.
Darini Rajasingham-Senanayake
Dr. Darini Rajasingham-Senanayake, is a Social and Medical Anthropologist, based in Colombo, Sri Lanka. All links to Gospa News articles have been added aftermath.
ALL ARTICLES BY DARINI RAJASINGHAM-SENANAYAKE
GOSPA NEWS – ECONOMICS – GEOPOLITICS
https://media.defense.gov/2017/Dec/28/2001861722/-1/-1/0/T_COBLE_BENIGN_WEATHER_MODIFICATION.PDF
[ii] http://www.colombopage.com/archive_23B/Nov03_1699020814CH.php
[iii] http://www.colombopage.com/archive_23B/Nov21_1700580675CH.php
[iv] https://debtjustice.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Sri-Lanka-debt-statement.pdf
[v] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/6/22/macron-opens-climate-summit-in-paris-calls-for-finance-shock
Sri Lanka Debt Justice Collective sends Alarming Open Letter to IMF on DDO
