NO GOVERNMENT NOT ‘GOOD GOVERNANCE’
Posted on October 6th, 2013
The Daily News Editorial
It is clear now — the good governance advocates cannot govern themselves!
The United States government was officially shut down this week, and apparently this resulted from a legislative wrangle over universal healthcare, which is of course a basic right in most functioning democracies.
Not surprisingly however, the U.S President Barack Obama making a speech on the implications of the shutdown said that U.S troops that are stationed abroad will not be affected by it — before he added also rather sheepishly that the -Ëœmail will be delivered.-â„¢
For a country that advocates good governance and cautions leaders of other nations about elections not ensuring democracy by themselves — that advice must be packaged and returned to sender.
The government shut down in the U.S will result in the furlough of 800,000 or so state workers who will not be able to pay their bills. However, the fact that this state of affairs is over universal health care for all citizens, something taken for granted in most countries, offers a rather accurate indication of what kind of democracy the United States is, and about what kind of quality of life the good governance principles that the ambassadorial pundits from that country regularly pontificate on engenders.
The plain fact is that the worst mercenary instincts of mankind have trumped in the U.S, and the government elected by the people is no longer either humane or -Ëœof the people.-â„¢
Coming from the world-â„¢s most prolific exporter of democracy, this strikes as being quite the absurd drama indeed, but then there is nothing funny about a government shutdown, as many Americans would find it difficult to make ends meet when they are not being paid in the duration of the closure.
By contrast, governments of other countries that don-â„¢t either export democracy as a commodity or extol regularly the virtues of good governance, seem to function under the most difficult of circumstances.
After three decades and more of war in Sri Lanka, there is a brand new provincial administration in the North of the country for instance, and from issues dealing with landmines and child conscription by a terrorist group, the new administration in the North can now move over to the issue of fishermen whose livelihoods are being disrupted by poachers crossing the maritime boundary, stealing what would have been their catch.
The Indian fisher issue may have escaped the attention of the TNA and its new leadership in the North, as was evident from the fact that the matter was not mentioned once in the party-â„¢s manifesto. But the Sri Lankan government is not about to be remiss in its duty, and though it is a thorny issue, everything is being done even at the risk of keeping alive a major irritant in India Sri Lanka bilateral relations, to ensure that the fishermen -” mostly Tamil — in the North are not robbed of their livelihoods on a permanent basis.
It seems strange indeed that at least on the face of it what-â„¢s referred to as the -ËœSinhala government-â„¢ by some of the pundits, is the only one that is interested in the welfare of these poor people. TNA politicians fuelled and driven by diaspora funding and diaspora plans for the future of the North, and of course the international do-gooders who issue statements at the drop of a hat on human rights concerns, probably think that the fishermen-â„¢s issue is beneath them — it being classified as a strictly bilateral irritant between two governments.
It seems that certain powers do not mind shutting down governments, and that certain other powers do not mind shutting the door on livelihoods. The Working Group meeting that is supposed to bring about clarity to the issue has essentially been ignored on the Indian side. Instead, the matter is now being addressed in an ad hoc manner, through the agency of various roving state representatives. But at least one government is interested in not shutting the door on livelihoods and on shuttering people-â„¢s income sources, and curiously, that-â„¢s the one that is being regularly harangued by the U.S and some of her regional allies in Asia about good governance!
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October 6th, 2013 at 4:06 pm
US GOOD GOVERNANCE = SHUTDOWN!!!
I’m laughing from both ends.
October 7th, 2013 at 6:04 am
Rigid -isms will not work. A mix is best for all democratic countries – this is being proved everywhere. Success stories from Europe e.g. Germany, Denmark, operates on this mix of systems.
October 7th, 2013 at 10:23 am
Thomas Jefferson said:
“If the America people ever allow private banks to control the issuance of their currencies, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all their prosperity until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.
There are only two economic systems: They are barter and credit.
1. Barter is the trading of one thing of value for something else of value. Throughout history, many different things have been used for bartering because money, in and of itself, does not exist. Something must be used as money. People have traded for goods and services using farm animals, large rocks, shells and crops.
All things used as money have had one thing in common, they were all tangible wealth. They were all things you could touch. They were all things you could weigh and measure.
Gold and silver have been used not long ago as money worldwide for a couple of thousand of years. A money system using gold and silver coin is a barter system.
A $20 gold coin is twice as heavy as a $10 gold coin.
2. Credit is intangible wealth. You cannot touch credit. You cannot weigh and measure it because there is no substance to weigh and measure. It is all imagination.
Credit is not wealth. No work is used in the creation of credit other than a booking entry.
Credit is an idea, not a thing. It is expressed by bookkeeping entries and computer symbols. The manipulation of words and their meaning is the key to controlling what people think.
Thousand of years ago, people would pay the local goldsmith to store their gold for them in his vault. He would then give them a receipt for the amount of gold that was stored.
The receipt was not money, it was a money substitute. It was later common for people to use the receipts as payment for goods and services since they could be exchanged for the gold held in the vault at any time.
The goldsmith found out that only a small amount of the gold was ever claimed since people just kept exchanging the receipts. The goldsmith started writing receipts for more gold than he had, using some of the receipts to buy things and loaning the rest at interest, while taking title to real property as collateral.
It is recorded that the City-State of Venice created the official institution named Bank
The gold for these extra receipts did not exist. By adding to the amount of receipts in circulation, the goldsmith stole from the people with the real receipts and decreased the value of the real gold receipts by creating inflation.
The more of something there is, the less it is worth and the more of it is needed to trade it for something else.
Paper currency is a money substitute, it is not money. It is only valid when the number of paper currency equals the amount of real money that it is a substitute for.
By manipulating the number of receipts in circulation, the goldsmith stole the wealth of the town without anyone figuring it out.
By lowering the number of receipts, he could make money scarce, creating a depression where he could foreclose on the property and magnify his riches.
He could quicken economic activity and bring abundance by raising the number of receipts until his next rip off.
Traditional definitions are eliminated while new meanings are repeated over and over again until accepted.
Depressions are the result of private bankers reducing the money supply by tightening credit and withdrawing currency, causing a drop in prices, unemployment and foreclosure of property. This is premeditated theft.
During the Great Depression people who had gold in the banks wanted the banks to honor their contract to redeem the paper currency for gold.. That was when US President Roosevelt declared a national emergency and closed the banking system for two days as recommended by the Board of Directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Congress then passed the Emergency Banking Act declaring it illegal for US citizens to own gold under penalty of up to a $10,000 fine and/or up to 10 years in prison.
The Secretary of the Treasury is not paid by the United States Government. The Secretary serves as US Governor of the International Monetary Fund as receiver of the bankrupt United States, collecting the debt from US citizens.
The value of the US$ in 1940 was worth 17 times more than the value of the US$ now as a result of the Federal Reserve’s long-term monetary policy, which has quietly cooperated with the federal government to finance government deficits with Federal Reserve credit.
The US Congress initially defined a lawful money “dollar” as being and consisting of (at least) 371.25 grains of pure silver. Before 1965 anyone could exchange one paper dollar for one real silver dollar.
The US national debt is shooting over 12 trillion dollars! (This amount is equivalent of selling off all of France wealth). And the private debt by individuals and corporations, which is somewhere over 50 trillion dollars.
Yet, the US insists on extending financial advice to the European Union on how to manage the Euro currency…It also loves to advice Sri Lankan government too…