{"id":115847,"date":"2013-11-27T03:44:45","date_gmt":"2013-11-26T22:14:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?p=115847"},"modified":"2013-12-04T16:15:21","modified_gmt":"2013-12-04T10:45:21","slug":"does-our-gambling-with-development-signal-the-rise-of-the-mafia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/does-our-gambling-with-development-signal-the-rise-of-the-mafia\/","title":{"rendered":"Does Our Gambling With \u2018Development\u2019 Signal The Rise Of The Mafia ?"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Ranil Senanayake<\/span><\/a> –<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Ranil<\/a>

Ranil Senanayake<\/p><\/div>\n

I walk the hills rising from an azure blue Caribbean sea, and try to envision the history that I have been told, a history of an island, green, tropical, rich in resources that fell into a despotic military aided rule. The consequence of a power drunk ruler who made it easy for his cronies to move money across its borders and legalized gambling to facilitate the Mafia to launder its ill-gotten money from the US. The underworld became the lords and the land went out of reach for ordinary citizens. This history spoke of a small group of dedicated people, who struggled through incredible odds and fuelled by a shining love for their country, won the nation back from the underworld.<\/p>\n

It was an impossibly small boat that arrived on the shores of Cuba with its cargo of committed revolutionaries in 1956 \u2018more dead than alive\u2019 as Che recounted, loosing over half of their comrades, in battles, yet they went on to win their nation back from the underworld. By this action the amazing ability of the human spirit to rise to the \u2018love of country\u2019 is clearly demonstrated.\u00a0 Cuba was embroiled in corruption, its dictator Batista was supported by gangsters, thugs and killers. \u00a0The huge inflow of money through their money laundering operations created a massive disparity of income and Cuban society descended into a situation of economic colonization.\u00a0 The corruption was so bad that the US president John F. Kennedy<\/span><\/a> once stated:<\/p>\n

“I believe that there is no country in the world including any and all the countries under colonial domination, where economic colonization, humiliation and exploitation were worse than in Cuba, in part owing to my country\u2019s policies during the Batista regime. I approved the proclamation, which Fidel Castro made in the Sierra Maestra, when he justifiably called for justice and especially yearned to rid Cuba of corruption. I will even go further: to some extent it is as though Batista was the incarnation of a number of sins on the part of the United States. Now we shall have to pay for those sins. In the matter of the Batista regime, I am in agreement with the first Cuban revolutionaries. That is perfectly clear<\/i>.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The history of Cuba haunted me on my return to Sri Lanka; one of the first actions of Batista on gaining power was to facilitate the flow of external money through its economy and to legalize gambling, which facilitated the entry of the mafia into the country to launder its ill-gotten wealth from the US.\u00a0 One of the first actions of the new government of Sri Lanka was to liberalize the flow of money through our nation and legalize gambling. Was this to be the creation of our own Batistas and the surrendering of our nation to the underworld elements, local and of Asia, Russia etc? As recently pointed out in the parliamentary speech by Mangala Samaraweera M.P It is the activity of the underworld and their laundering of money though our economy that now contributes to our \u2018economic growth\u2019 but is this something to crow about?<\/p>\n

Such \u2018misdirected growth\u2019 is often promoted to enrich the people with power to amass capital but it creates a class of \u2018super rich\u2019 which rapidly widens the inequality gap between rich and poor.\u00a0 The reason as to why we should all be vigilant about the phenomenon of a widening inequality gap between the rich and the poor is very lucidly explained in the informative and eye opening book \u2018The Spirit Level<\/span><\/a>\u2019\u00a0\u00a0by two Epidemiologists, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett. Their data shows that the consequence of a widening \u2018inequality gap\u2019 degrades the health and well being of the people, this phenomenon applies to all countries from the so-called \u2018rich\u2019 to the so-called \u2018poor\u2019.<\/p>\n

So, by all measures it seems that we are descending into a mafia controlled sate, rife with corruption, nepotism and cronyism. This process, like a cancer will eat into our society, destroy our culture and enslave our children. Time will come when decent people will yearn for justice and especially to rid the nation of corruption. But where will we find our champions?<\/p>\n

For us, this struggle will be hard. It has been commented that this nation twice removed from its genepool, the genes for activism and bravery. In 1971 the government \u2018removed \u2018up to 20,000 or more of the educated, poor. Those who attended university or demonstrated interest in radical politics were young or unemployed were singled out for liquidation.\u00a0 The next pogrom was in the late 1980\u2019s when over 60,000 were \u2018removed\u2019 without a word being uttered in protest on any international stage. These people never passed their genes on. Genetically speaking, we removed from our race a large percentage of the traits for high intellectual potential and activism. Metaphorically, It has become the time of the bottom feeders in our gene pool to manifest themselves as the intellectuals and leaders.<\/p>\n

Bottom feeders or \u2018lowlife\u2019 have a peculiar trait of myopia or short sightedness, that does not allow them to consider anything other than objects of their greed. Consider the recent reports from World Bank, Price Waterhouse Coopers etc that warns of the global temperature rise by 4-6 degrees due to the burning of fossil fuel and the use of cement.\u00a0 Such a jump in global temperatures will\u00a0exacerbate\u00a0global poverty, trigger severe heat waves, sudden floods and droughts, and cause sea levels to rise by three feet, it will ravage food supplies. These reports warn us of the immediate need to reduce emitting fossil carbon and to prepare for the oncoming crises.\u00a0 Given such a global scenario a responsible action would be to try and reduce our carbon footprint, but Sri Lanka\u2019s\u00a0 \u2018economic development\u2019 model does the exact opposite. We are made to accept the burning of fossil fuel, the construction of mega projects with a huge carbon debt in cement and increased fossil fuel use, as \u2018peoples development\u2019. Which people? We may well ask.\u00a0 The promotion of irresponsible carbon emitting sports such as motorcar racing, as development processes in the face of a population struggling with the rise of fuel prices is grotesque to say the least, almost as if we were living on a different planet. The wonder of Asia may soon become the blunder of Asia.<\/p>\n

We have won the war with a horrendous loss of lives of both combatants and innocents. But neither this loss nor the loss of our youth is ever acknowledged publicly to date. To a nation that values giving merit to the departed, no action to remember or give merit to the dead is encouraged, in fact such activities are violently discouraged.\u00a0 From the killings of the 70\u2019s to the killings of the 80\u2019s to the killings of the 90\u2019s\u00a0 and into the new century,\u00a0 it is the same people carry on the their ghastly work with no accountability to date. It is no surprise that we carry on this gristly tradition even to-date. We have become the ghouls that we accuse everyone else of being.\u00a0 All of the killers, torturers and those who reveled in that horror past, still stalk the corridors of power.\u00a0 No amount of propaganda can ever wash this blood from our hands. Only an honest and truthful reconciliation process with full accountability can!<\/p>\n

Until then, it will be \u2018Back to Batista\u2019 and the rise of the Mafia for us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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