“Do you not see what your Lord did with the Companions of the Elephant? Did He not bring all their schemes to nothing, unleashing upon them flock after flock of birds, bombarding them with stones of hard-baked clay, making them like stripped wheat-stalks eaten bare?”

Even the weather is out of sorts: one day hot and sunny and the next day blustery and autumnal, although in one sense this is entirely to be expected in England and should surprise no one. But because of a general sense of foreboding one easily interprets it as another epochal sign. Apocalypse is in the air. When I posted our previous article on-line, “A World Out of Balance”, there was almost no response, but when I posted a part of its first paragraph beginning “We are living in a time when history appears to be accelerating towards its destination” I was astonished to find sudden endorsement from a large number of people who thought we were talking about the end of time and the appearance of the Mahdi. Continue reading “The Year of the Elephant – Abdassamad Clarke”

“And the incorruptible Professor walked, too, averting his eyes from the odious multitude of mankind. He had no future. He disdained it. He was a force. His thoughts caressed the images of ruin and destruction. He walked frail, insignificant, shabby, miserable and terrible in the simplicity of his idea calling madness and despair to the regeneration of the world. Nobody looked at him. He passed on unsuspected and deadly, like a pest in the street full of men.” Joseph Conrad – The Secret Agent

Against the background of a geo-political situation that has been lurching out of control for some years and a financial system that has suffered fantastic reverses that are widely anticipated to be eclipsed by what is to come, a number of events have been unfolding. We are living in a time when history appears to be accelerating towards its destination. Wars, natural disasters, industrial catastrophes, mass murders, public scandals, financial crises, terrorist attacks, popular uprisings, assassinations… the kind of momentous occurrences that used to define an epoch, a decade or a year, now visit us on a weekly, or almost daily, basis. We have chosen five apparently disparate, but equally emblematic, events that have converged upon us in little more than a single week, each of which warns us in different ways of a dark nihilism that is rapidly engulfing everything we have come to regard as our culture and civilisation. Continue reading ““A World Out of Control” – Uthman Ibrahim-Morrison and Abdassamad Clarke”

“Usury I put down, as the great pivot of all their (the Irish people’s) disasters – the main and primary spring that sets on motion the whole machinery of Ireland’s calamities.”

IN OCTOBER 1819, a priest, summoned to the bedside of a dying parishioner in Ross Carberry, Cork, refused him the last Sacraments unless the man made restitution for his ill deeds. The parishioner had not murdered, stolen, lied, risen in rebellion against the government, worshipped idols or committed adultery. He “retailed his goods, that is, flax seed, worth not more than nine shillings, to the poor, in the Spring, for sowing, and obliged them to pay in Autumn twelve shillings and sixpence; gaining therefore three shillings and sixpence, upon every nine shillings, for six months; or more than seventy-seven per cent. per annum. Though that seed would be certainly of less value at the time of making the payment: for it would not sell at all in the autumn.” He raised the price by three shillings and sixpence for allowing them to pay later. Continue reading “JEREMIAH O’CALLAGHAN 1780 -1861 – Abdassamad Clarke”

So what happened in Egypt? After the last Israeli war, and after the treaty with Israel, the army became redundant militarily and turned to business. Mubarak, as army officer and later president, also got into business. No bank or multinational corporation could do business in Egypt without an Egyptian partner or stakeholder, so that the army and people like Mubarak basically cleaned up. Allegedly Mubarak cleaned up to such an extent that he is now the wealthiest man in the world, and this at a time when the average Egyptian is one of the poorest in the world. However, he became the most obvious symbol of a repressive regime, and the people agitated to get rid of him. The regime acquiesced in his removal because if they did not the regime itself would be threatened, business would be threatened. Or did they conspire at his removal in order to get their snouts deeper in the trough? Who knows? And now that he is gone? Business as usual.

The context of David Cameron’s speech is very illuminating: an on-going and worsening recession caused by greedy bankers whose system is based on rapacious usury. This is causing banks, companies and countries to default and bankrupt. In turn the resultant pressure has millions marching on the streets in protest in Athens, Dublin, Paris, Tunis and Cairo. No-one imagines that it will stop there. It has long been clear that for the UK and much of the EU, it is only a matter of time before the population march and demand change. Continue reading “David Cameron’s Munich Speech”