{"id":97421,"date":"2013-07-28T00:03:08","date_gmt":"2013-07-27T18:33:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?p=97421"},"modified":"2013-07-30T18:01:25","modified_gmt":"2013-07-30T12:31:25","slug":"in-the-long-run-youll-all-be-dead-the-perspective-of-a-corrupt-government","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/in-the-long-run-youll-all-be-dead-the-perspective-of-a-corrupt-government\/","title":{"rendered":"In The Long Run, You’ll All Be Dead: The Perspective Of A Corrupt Government!"},"content":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Emil van der Poorten<\/a><\/span>\u00a0–<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Emil van der Poorten<\/p><\/div>\n

In the not-too-distant past, a cynical fallback for those who took a jaundiced view of the future of humanity was, \u201cIn the long run, we\u2019ll all be dead,\u201d more than suggesting that any attempt at improving the human condition was futile and\u00a0 doomed to failure, at least insofar as the lifespan of anyone contemplating such action was concerned.<\/p>\n

The title of this piece projects a slight change to that old adage, in that it doesn\u2019t project cynicism on the part of the \u201cgreat unwashed,\u201d but a cynicism, bred of arrogance, of those who rule our destinies.\u00a0 It suggests that our ruling junta and those like it around the world believe that time is on their side and those who might stand in opposition to them will simply disappear because what is being done \u2013 no matter how downright evil \u2013 will survive and Old Father Time will take care of those seeking a return to civility and democratic practice (if their lords and masters don\u2019t do so themselves!)<\/p>\n

The \u201cunited front\u201d of politicians, regulators and businessmen involved in one of the largest financial scandals in the country\u2019s recent history appears to prove this in spades.\u00a0 One of the very large conglomerates in the country has allegedly been complicit with the very highest in our current Monarchy in extracting a larger-than-usual \u201ccommission\u201d from a business giant\/developer from across the Palk Strait.\u00a0 This has apparently gone beyond the usual \u201ccarrot and stick\u201d routine to include a serious threat of a \u201cfinal solution\u201d for one of the participants who has been painted into a hitherto unoccupied corner as \u201cbag-man.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>What I find particularly intriguing and permitting me one of those \u201cDidn\u2019t I tell you so?\u201d moments is the fact that the defenders of the head honcho of this particular business configuration have consistently insisted that he traipsed around the globe as a courtier to our New Monarch under duress and in order that his business empire survive through his supplicant conduct towards our Maximum Leader.<\/p>\n

What is now beginning to emerge is a rather different picture.\u00a0 It is one of active and (very lucrative) partnership in a very large business deal of great benefit to the business entity which he heads!<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve said it before and I\u2019ll say it again: anyone who believes that the \u201cdecency\u201d that it was believed was inculcated in people from the \u201cright\u201d families who went to the \u201cright\u201d schools cannot, in any way, be substantiated by the conduct of the products of this system of privilege.\u00a0 They are just as corruptible as the \u201clow-lifes\u201d who acquire lesser fortunes through simple criminality in the service of those who rule us!<\/p>\n

A check of the secondary schools where these corrupt individuals spent their formative years cannot but be revelatory in that regard, particularly when a pattern emerges of a disproportionate number of them having emerged from the portals of the \u201cBig Three!\u201d<\/p>\n

Irrespective of where one stood in the matter of the Capitalist World vs the old Iron Curtain countries, what was acknowledged as the biggest betrayal during the time of the Cold War was that of Burgess, Maclean, Philby, Blunt and Cairncross.\u00a0 Every one of them came from Public Schools and every one of them graduated (with distinction) from Cambridge University before entering into distinguished careers in the British Foreign Service, acting as spies within it and, ultimately\u00a0 – in the case of the first three – escaping unscathed into the old Union of Soviet Socialist Republics when they were \u2013 very belatedly \u2013 found out.\u00a0 In fact they were known as \u201cThe Cambridge Five\u201d and every one of them even came out of the same College in that distinguished university, Trinity.\u00a0 The moral here, if it even needs to be stated, is that \u201cclass,\u201d \u201crespectability, formal post-secondary education and all those other middle class virtues have little to do with criminal behavior.\u00a0 This appears even more so at the end of the 20th<\/sup> century and the beginning of the 21st<\/sup>!<\/p>\n

All of the alliances that one sees established in the blatant pursuit of criminality is based on the simplest of incentives \u2013 self-aggrandisement in its most crass form \u2013 and the cement that holds together all these sometimes seemingly-disparate elements of a culture that is swiftly descending into the most primitive, is the belief that unless they all \u201chang together they will all hang separately,\u201d as that other old aphorism has it!\u00a0 From ersatz \u201cDoctors\u201d to blatant money-launderers and those who act as conduits for humungous bribes; from the slums of Mattakkuliya to the mansions occupied by their families for several generations in the poshest neighbourhoods of Colombo 7, the carrot is enormous wealth while the alternative could (now) be a very sticky end!<\/p>\n

Does one really need any additional proof when that reality is reinforced by people festooned with all kinds of cash- and prestige-generating titles suddenly having to flee for their lives?<\/p>\n

However, the unacknowledged Achilles Heel of this belief is that though, \u201dIn the long run, \u2018they\u2019<\/strong> will all be dead,\u201d the mortality of the \u201cwe\u201d<\/strong> is also incontestable, both literally and figuratively, not to mention the now-proven capacity for aberration within that system, even if only at the whim of those who control it!<\/p>\n

And, while we are on the business of old adages, \u201cEven the worm will turn\u201d and even those of us who believe that Sri Lankans do not comprise some Master Race, ever ready to do (victorious) battle with the \u2018Evil Western Democracies,\u2019 we cannot but acknowledge that the meekest and mildest of people do<\/strong> have a breaking point.\u00a0 The only question is, \u201cWhen will the ahinsaka <\/em>Sri Lankans reach it?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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