BOOM AND BUST

Kweku Adoboli is remanded in custody on charges of false accounting and fraud, based on allegations that he abused his position as a City of London (51 degrees North, 0 degrees East) market trader,  causing losses to his employers, UBS, a large Swiss bank. 

A taxi man in Derry (54 degrees North, 7 degrees West) says he cannot afford a local holiday. He is not saving money against Christmas expenses, as he has in past years. He works long hours on low pay and he is bust.

Meanwhile Kweku Adoboli, UBS and casino capitalists across the world go boom! boom! boom!

Scilla, in Caryl Churchill's magnificent play, 'Serious Money' says

You can buy or sell money, 

you can buy and sell the absence of money, 

debt, which used to strike me as funny.

For some it's hedging, for most it's speculation.

It could be Kweku Adoboli speaking. UBS experienced a US$2 billion trading loss as a result of his achievements, which are no more than logical developments of his day job. They give the lie to the oft-quoted assertion delivered by government spokespersons and financial media commentators that 'there is no money' or 'the money just isn't there.' 

Money, serious money,  is obviously somewhere. If Kweku Adoboli can access it, why can't the citizens of Greece? Or Portugal? Or Ireland, including Derry Taxi Man?

Gleason, the Westminster Cabinet Minister in Churchill's play, says

...and the game must be protected.

You can go on playing after we're elected. 

Five more glorious years free enterprise

And your services to industry will be recognised.

Politicians across Europe are in thrall to an amorphous, nebulous, rapacious and powerful entity called The Market. They are allowed to hold on to power, in electoral terms, in a shrinking public sphere, by maintaining a hands-off stance re: The City of London, and its co-markets in New York (50 degrees North, 74 degrees East), Hong Kong (22 degrees North, 114 degrees East), Tokyo (35 degrees North, 139 degrees East) and Frankfurt (50 degrees North, 8 degrees East). 

Perhaps Kweku Adoboli is being considered for a gong? Meanwhile UBS is cutting 3 500 jobs across the bank.

There is a photo-story on The Irish Times website, with images of a Dublin (53 degrees North, 6 degrees West) house,  famous as a symbol of a market gone mad. It fetched the record Irish price of Euro 58 million in mid-2005 and is now for sale at Euro 15 million. Where did the missing Euro 43 million go? Not into the hands of the Derry Taxi Man or the tax-paying citizens of Greece. Did UBS get some of it? Did Kweku Adoboli access it too?

Let's speculate and sing along with the last song from 'Serious Money'.

These are the best years of our lives, let wealth and favour be our guide

We can expect another five, join hands across the great divide

that links Westminster and the City of London, but not the market trader and the taxi man.

Kweku Adoboli is the boom. Derry Taxi Man is the bust.

Which of them is the economic driver for the future?

Serious Money; Caryl Churchill; stage play; Methuen Drama; 2002

www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/property/2011/0922/1224304515783.html

LEGACIES OF LANGUAGE, GUNS AND VOTES

A Presbyterian Minister, in the Scottish-Calvinist tradition in Ireland, the Reverend David Latimer, speaks at the Ard Fheis (annual congress) of Irish republican party Sinn Féin. He is a Unionist, with allegiance to London, and a former soldier in the British Army, having served as a chaplain in Afghanistan.

The invitation to speak came from Martin McGuinness, himself a former soldier in the IRA and currently joint First Minister in the power-sharing Executive that governs Northern Ireland within the United Kingdom. 

The speech causes a political stir. It includes a call for a day of Hope and Transformation in response to the legacy of the past, considerable praise for Martin McGuinness' leadership and an appeal for God's help in building a 'distinguished future where we will work and grow in harmony.'

Bellows of disharmony are loudest from other Unionists, notably in The Belfast Newsletter, where commentators castigate the cleric for not challenging Sinn Féin. Gregory Campbell, MP from East Londonderry, describes the cleric's actions as 'naïve' and, in a radio interview, links the invitation with the securing of government funds for the renovation of the cleric's church in Derry (54 degrees North, 7 degrees West).

Reverend Latimer ministers in a reformation church. Martin McGuinness is a Roman Catholic. Gregory Campbell is a member of a dissident reformed Church, The Free Presbyterian Church. He is an evangelical. All three men are Christians. All three men base their beliefs, their morals and their public behaviour on interpretations of a sacred text, the Bible, where Proverbs 27:6 has

 Faithful are the wounds of a friend; but the kisses of an  enemy  are deceitful.

In speaking at the party conference of the enemy The Reverend Latimer has attempted to outflank the current political narrative with a religious one, challenging the language of separation with a discourse of reconciliation.

Separation along religio-political lines in a sectarian carve-up is one of the criticisms levelled at the power-sharing Executive led by Campbell and McGuinness' parties, the DUP and Sinn Féin. This separation may be given a boost by the proposals presented by The Boundary Commission for redrawing constituencies. Ironically Gregory Campbell will lose votes if the east-west, unionist-nationalist split is further advanced. 

The move from enemy to friend is fraught with difficulty, in the aftermath of violent conflict. Can enemies become friends in the face of such re-partition? India and Pakistan struggle with it. Will Northern Ireland become another Belgium?

Gregory Campbell is familiar with the text above, but not the gesture, the move. The Reverend Latimer, acknowledged as a colourful and effusive character, may be castigated for being overly demonstrative and a side-show, but his challenge is to the political class across the board.

Four hundred years old this year, the King James version of the Bible, at  Ezekiel 45:17, has

 And it shall be the prince's part to give burnt offerings, and meat offerings, and drink offerings, in the feasts, and in the new moons, and in the sabbaths, in all solemnities of the house of Israel: he shall prepare the sin offering, and the meat offering, and the burnt offering, and the peace offerings, to make  reconciliation  for the house of Israel.

The Reverend Latimer, Gregory Campbell and Martin McGuinness may share the text, but will they share the gesture, when the votes come in? 

Text of Reverend Latimer's speech; Londonderry Sentinel; 14.9.2011

King James Bible; on-line at Bible Gateway

PATRIOT GAMES IN LIBYA

It is straight from the recent TV drama Page 8 by David Hare or from a John le Carré novel. 

News continues to emerge of meetings involving CIA and MI6 spies with secret service people in the Gaddafi regime in Tripoli (20 degrees North, 0 degrees East). 

Human Rights Watch has discovered documentary evidence. The Observer reported in December 2003 on a meeting at The Travellers' Club in London (51 degrees North, 0 degrees East) between MI6 spooks, Foreign Office officials and the now infamous Moussa Koussa, long-derided by Western powers as a broker of terrorist acts across the globe. 

The meeting led to the sharing of Libyan intelligence on people being  sought by western powers as part of the War on Terror and a softening of business import/export and other sanctions on Libya. Which, of course, meant more arms sales to the Gaddafi regime.

Dominic Behan wrote the song The Patriot Game about the IRA campaign of the late 1950s.

Come all you young rebels and list' while I sing

For love of one's land is a terrible thing   

It banishes fear with the speed of a flame    

And makes us all part of the patriot game 

The song offers a telling critique of the uses of patriotism and the duplicitous worlds the patriot enters. 

Drawing together the much-trumpeted links between the Gaddafi regime and the IRA and the more muted revelations about the regime's links with the CIA and MI6 – it's probably reasonable to assume the French and Italian secret services also pledged their troths in Tripoli in recent years – guides us into Samuel Johnson territory when he castigated 'false' patriotism with his oft-quoted 

Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.

We hear echoes of the last verse of Behan's song 

And now as I lie with my body all holes      

I think of those traitors who bargained and sold

I'm sorry my rifle has not done the same

For the quislings who sold out the patriot game

Will the Libyan patriots, both Gaddafi loyalists and rebels, experience such disillusion as they grieve for their comrades, make safe their futures and, hopefully as soon as possible, lay down their arms?

It comes down to business in the end. Patriotism provides great cover for corporate perfidy and enables global business to proceed without trammel.

Matlock, the quintessential le Carré secret service pragmatist, asks

What's wrong, when you come down to it, with turning black money to white, at the end of the day?..... So where would you rather see that money? Black and out there? Or white, and sitting in London in the hands of civilised men, available for legitimate purpose and the public good.'

The colour coding here is not accidental. And joined with the term 'in the hands of civilised men', located in London, it is patriotic, duplicitous and racist.

Page 8; David Hare; TV drama; BBC Films; 2011

Our Kind of Traitor; John le Carré; novel; Faber and Faber; 2010

The Patriot's Game; Dominic Behan; song

ICE COLD IN LIBYA

The flight of a British army ambulance, carrying medical personnel, in the face of the German advance on Tobruk, (20 degrees North, 0 degrees East) in World War 2,  is wonderfully told in the film Ice Cold in Alex. It was shot on location in Libya in 1958. The flight is eastwards into Egypt. This week, members of the Gaddafi family reportedly took flight westwards into Algeria, as part of the end-game in the welcome fall of the Gaddafi regime.

Ice Cold in Alex illustrates the long involvement of foreign military powers in the deserts of northern Africa. The latest intervention, this time by NATO forces on a mission to save civilian lives using air cover and, openly exceeding their brief with troops on the ground, escalated the local uprising to all out war. 

It is a short step from a liberal life-saving intervention to a surge for regime change and an asset grab.

Which is how the carve up is emerging as the fledgling National Transition Council administration seeks to get a grip on the ending of conflict, the legacy of Gaddafi's mis-rule and the very basics of water supply, sanitation, food distribution, healthcare, transport and productive economic activity.

These tasks require the sort of team work championed in Ice Cold in Alex when the crew of the ambulance push it up a vertiginous sand dune. They all push together, but it is the South African/German character, the enemy, who performs the heroics that save them.

Of course Western interventions are always heroic, including the current NATO one. But who evaluates such endeavours? Who performs the cost-benefit analysis, factoring in the human and longer-term costs? If the brief was to protect lives and if evidence is now mounting of revenge killings by both rebel and Gaddafi loyalist troops, can the NATO mission be said to have succeeded?  The claim is made that more lives would have been lost. The assertion follows that NATO and the Western powers are simply trying to help as the locals get on with killing each other.

'Helping' is how the carve up will be characterised in coming months. What Arundhati Roy calls replacing 'the old despots with a more streamlined, less obvious form of despotism.' The new administration in Libya will not be keen to do business with China, Russia, Brazil and other allies of Gaddafi. They will favour France and Britain, who are currently trumpeting their roles in the war, in blatantly self-serving analyses of their efforts.

The Libyan people deserve a cooling draught, alcoholic or otherwise, as in the tremendous last scene in Ice Cold in Alex. The ambulance crew, enemies and allies, line along the bar. The barman pours frothy glasses of cold lager. Captain Anson fingers the condensation on the glass, then gulps the lager down in  a single swig, uttering the telling line: 'Worth waiting for.' 

Many challenges face the people of Libya and foreign business interests will exploit them as they do in Iraq. Rather than sectarian and civil turmoil, can Libyans hope that solidarity will infuse their future, valuing the contribution of the enemy close at hand as they push the ambulance of state, bearing the Libyan dead and wounded,  through the treacherous sands of foreign 'benevolence'?

Ice Cold in Alex; Associated British Picture Corporation; 1958

Arundhati Roy; interview; New Internationalist; September 2011