Monthly Archives: May 2015

WHO RULES US IN REALITY? A QUEST THAT MAKES US WORRIED (by Shiva Kant Jha) [May 2, 2015]

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It is said that when Charles II (1630 – 1685)] ruled England, parliament was dissolved for many years, and the king ruled the realm with the cabal of advisors one of them was the most deceitful and crafty the Duke of Buckingham. Someone who saw that government at work, observed:
“Who rules the kingdom?’ “The king.” “But who rules the king?” “The duke.” “Who rules the duke?” “The devil.”
Once I was absorbed thinking about the ways our government worked. I heard two birds twitter in the bush on the roadside. They seemed to say:
“Who rules our country? Our Parliament.
Who rules out Parliament? The Cabinet under the dictatorship of the Prime Minister.
Who rules the Cabinet? The MNCs and the syndicate of the foreign investors, and the domestic calculators.
Shortly before his death, President Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865), the 16th President of the United States, expressed, on 21 November 1864, his apprehension about the future of his Republic:
“I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. . . . Corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavour to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.”
What he said with agony has already overtaken the USA. Noam Chomsky has perceptively written in his Failed States (at p. 238):
‘One predictable result has been a “new, higher level of corruption.” Corruption includes extensive gerrymandering to prevent competition for seats in the House, the most democratic of government institutions and therefore the most worrisome…. More generally, there have been “profound” effects on “the way the country is governed….. Not only is legislation increasingly skewed to benefit the richest interests, but Congress itself has been changed,” becoming a “transactional institution,” geared to implementing the pro-business policies of the increasingly powerful state.’

( For more on the subject see Chapt 29 of Shiva Kant Jha’s On the Loom of Time ( 2nd ed.)