Savaged by a Sheep
I woke early this morning and, as always on such occasions, my conscience got to me - atheists have notoriously active consciences. I’m inclined to think I may have wronged poor Davie Adams. An Dorcha is right that his former associations shouldn’t matter and anyway the situation in the North of Ireland at the time I’m referring to was complex and people like Mr Adams showed immense courage by taking a stand. People grow and change. The disappointing thing, for me, is that Mr Adams grew into a right-wing commentator who chose to take to task a movement about which he seems to know next to nothing and in language borrowed from an even more right-wing writer. Those comments and his present opinions were the proper direction of my attack. His past is irrelevant. Ire is a bad companion to irony.
Discussion
We welcome and encourage lively discussion from the public about articles on Irish Left Review. You can leave a comment using the form at the bottom of the page. Please read through the existing comments before posting your own.
Leave a Comment
Sins of the Father
Subscribe by Email
Best of the Web
EU Should Admit Greece is Bankrupt | Christian Rickens
The unvarnished truth - the second Greek Bailout should not have happened.
The mistake isn’t the size, but the construction of the bailout package. It isn’t geared to the requirements of the people of Greece but to the needs of the international financial markets, meaning the banks.
How else can one explain the fact that around a quarter of the package won’t even arrive in Athens but will flow directly to the country’s international creditors? The holders of Greek government bonds are to get some €30 billion as an incentive to convert their old paper into new bonds. The aim is to keep alive the illusion that Greece isn’t bankrupt — after all, the creditors are voluntarily forgiving part of the debt. The financial sector is cleverly manipulating the fear that a Greek bankruptcy would trigger a fatal chain reaction.
That leaves €100 billion. But that too isn’t geared to what Greece needs in order to get back on its feet. It’s linked to an estimate of how much debt the Greek economy can bear without collapsing. International technocrats agree that with debts amounting to 120 percent of gross domestic product, the country can just about go on servicing its debt. That’s the level at which the cow can go on supplying milk without dying of exhaustion. So 120 percent became the goal.
Collaboration, with our European partners | Cunning Hired Knaves
The European project was supposed to be a bulwark against the dangers of fascist ambition, but now it is the instrument used to dismantle European democracy in the interest of the risk adverse looking for a steady income stream from the provision of the social net by those who cite the words and actions of old fascists while doing so.
The post Collaboration, with our European partners by Richard of Cunning Hired Knaves summed up in one sentence. For much better sentences and many more urgent points read the post.
On Sunday there were massive demonstrations throughout the Spanish state, with half a million people on the streets of Madrid and 450,000 in Barcelona, protesting against the labour ‘reform’ planned by the Partido Popular, the right-wing party that most closely represents the interests of the power elites that conserved their position when the transition from dictatorship to democracy was undertaken.
S.P.A.R.K. protest at cuts to lone parents, Dublin 18th February 2012
Many families were cut in the last budget but lone parent families were particularly hit by the Fine Gael/Labour Party government.
The key elements are that single parents can’t take advantage of training such as Community Employment (CE) Schemes and when the youngest child turns 7 years old, the parent is declassed as a lone parent but treated as an ordinary worker even though there are few affordable creche places. There is a bill coming up in March which will copper fasten some of the worst elements of government plans.
There is particular anger directed at the Labour Party because they are associated with women’s rights and a more progressive society.
Please share the link to this video
Exiting the euro | Michael Roberts
Michael Roberts argues that those in Greece who cite the example of Argentina when suggesting that Greece should leave the Euro are not necessarily looking at the whole picture. The situations are not the same, Roberts points out, citing Argentina’s former central bank governor at the time, Mario Blejer and his recent piece in the Financial Times. He also points to research based on the the experience of five recent devaluations of economies in crisis (including that of Argentina) which “shows that they lead to a 10-20% fall in real GDP and take five to ten years to recover to previous real GDP levels. But that is not to say that there is no alternative to “lowering wages, privatising the state sector, reducing taxes for the corporate sector (especially big business) and ‘deregulating’ labour markets i.e. the super-exploitation of the Greek people to raise profitability.”
But the left could also find an alternative policy to exiting the euro where Greece negotiates a full default on its debt to private and foreign bondholders; takes over the banks; and uses the savings from bond and interest repayments (€17-20bn a year) to start state directed investment in jobs, technology and funding small businesses, while staying in the euro to protect the savings of the people from destruction, keeping down inflation and avoiding a rise in foreign debt. The question of exiting the euro then becomes an issue for the Euro leaders to impose (and to be resisted by a campaign within Europe), not as the main policy plank of the left.
Corporate tax avoidance: where are the worst offenders?
This table comes via the Tax Justice Network (and Richard Murphy). It’s from a table produced by U.S. researcher Kimberly Clausing and as TJN notes “demonstrates which countries are working hardest to wage economic warfare on the United States (and, by extension, on other countries,) via the global tax system”.
Solidarity campaign to support the people of Greece
Mikis Theodorakis, famous Greek composer of Zorba’s Dance, and Manolis Glezos, veteran resistance fighter against the Nazi occupation, have issued a call for a European Front to defend the people of Greece and all those facing austerity. We have decided to support this call and work with trade unions, campaigns and parties across Europe to establish a European Solidarity Campaign to defend the people of Greece. We will organise solidarity and raise practical support for the people of Greece; they cannot be made to pay for a crisis for which they are not responsible.
Chris Dillow | Capitalism against freedom
[...]
During the Cold War, opponents of communism routinely, and not entirely wrongly, claimed to be champions of liberty. Freedom for capitalists and freedom of speech and thought go together, it was claimed. “Freedom is indivisible” wrote Bruce Winton Knight in 1952. “Economic freedom is…an indispensable means toward the achievement of political freedom“ wrote Milton Friedman in Capitalism and Freedom. And back in 1944 Friedrich Hayek complained that “We have progressively abandoned that freedom in economic affairs without which personal and political freedom has never existed in the past.”
Today, though, this seems wrong. Many threats to freedom come from capitalists. The story is no longer capitalism and freedom, but capitalism against freedom.
Ian Stewart | The mathematical equation that caused the banks to crash
In The Observer, Sunday 12 February 2012
Anyone who has followed the crisis will understand that the real economy of businesses and commodities is being upstaged by complicated financial instruments known as derivatives. These are not money or goods. They are investments in investments, bets about bets. Derivatives created a booming global economy, but they also led to turbulent markets, the credit crunch, the near collapse of the banking system and the economic slump. And it was the Black-Scholes equation that opened up the world of derivatives.
The equation itself wasn’t the real problem. It was useful, it was precise, and its limitations were clearly stated. It provided an industry-standard method to assess the likely value of a financial derivative. So derivatives could be traded before they matured. The formula was fine if you used it sensibly and abandoned it when market conditions weren’t appropriate. The trouble was its potential for abuse. It allowed derivatives to become commodities that could be traded in their own right. The financial sector called it the Midas Formula and saw it as a recipe for making everything turn to gold. But the markets forgot how the story of King Midas ended.
Greece: a Sisyphean task | Michael Roberts
In a Eurozone that is unwilling to share its surplus with weaker, hardest hit economies there is no other option for those economies but default. Despite the agreement of Greek politicians to shorten their political life and accept the deal all that they have done is simply postpone this eventuality once again. However, even that postponement might be shortened by the Greek elections in April where the smaller leftist parties outside the coalition currently have 40% of the vote. Or so says Michael Roberts:
Whatever the Greek coalition leaders agree to and try to implement, such is the weakness of Greek capitalism, it will not be able to meet its fiscal targets or get its debt down to reasonable levels. Before the end of the year, the Troika will have to report that Greece is not delivering. Then the EU leaders will have to decide whether they ‘let Greece go’ or not. The EU leaders have agreed to more money for Greece (or more accurately its bondholders and banks) in return for draconian cuts in living standards in order to provide more time to try and ‘ring-fence’ other vulnerable Eurozone states like Portugal and Ireland (where they are preparing extra funding). So when Greece goes down, it will not affect the rest (or so the EU leaders hope). Of course, the Greek people may force the issue earlier if they vote in an anti-Troika government in April.
As Greece stares into the abyss, Europe must choose | Maria Margaronis
Do we really want to live in an economic union that must destroy the future of millions in order to just tick along? Maria Margaronis points out that the situation in Greece today says little about Greece and everything about the EU.
The trouble with historical metaphors is that they can obscure the present: what’s really at stake here is not Greece’s identity but Europe’s. All eyes are fixed on Athens, but the way out of the crisis requires a choice about what kind of Europe we want. The one we have now, with its deep structural inequalities and its rigid adherence to a failed economic ideology, protects neither democracy nor human rights. Stiff-necked and punitive, it prefers to eat its children.
Comment by: An Dorcha
Jan 19th 2011 at 16:01
Now I certainly have no gra for loyalists (and the UFF counted amongst their ranks some very sick twisted individuals) but for the sake of accuracy I have to say this article is well off the mark.
In the Kesh in 72/73 the UVF prisoners won the right to study higher education courses. At the same time the leadership of the PIRA ordered that any books by so called subversives (including Karl Marx and James Connolly) that were in the prison be destroyed. One of the first Republicans to get an academic qualification while serving was Martin O’Hagan and he was a sticky.
Aside from reductively going over David Adams past as a interlocutor for the UFF/UDA (no better or worse than Gerry Adams corresponding role) it just panders to some base stereotypes and bizarrely for a left wing site questions Adam’s masculinity? Wise up!
Comment by: William Wall
Jan 19th 2011 at 17:01
It’s very difficulty to address someone whose name is in Irish and begins with the definite article. It’s a bit like talking to The Knight of Glin. Do you say, O Knight? In which case I would have to begin, O Darkness… etc. Though I will say, I would have thought it should be An Dorchadas. But my Irish is rusty.
But, to get on to your comment that the ‘article is well off the mark’. What mark? Do you think this is a piece of sociology? or history? You’d need to think of this article differently. Try to see it as a satire on the kind of journalism that Adams gets up to. Check the link to his article to see what I mean. Test your sense of humour on it and see how it works.
As regards the old cliches about the IRA reading Marx, I’m well aware that the situation fluctuated, but I think the cliche is well enough attested to be trotted out again and again. If only for the fun it gives us. I checked this link before writing my piece:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2000/dec/02/society.politics
It makes the same point as you, that the loyalists also had reading material, but interestingly, the Loyalist reading material tended to be more conventional. And, equally interestingly, no trace of it remains. I ignored all that of course, because I’m not writing history. If you think my piece is history, see the second paragraph of this comment.
I certainly never questioned Adams’ masculinity. I wouldn’t be bothered one way or the other. I was thinking more of Waters’ obsession with dominant women and they way they might look at you, and how, in a way, bodybuilding is the obverse of that.
As regards Gerry V David (Adams), I’d prefer a left-wing former apologist for terror to a right-wing former apologist for terror any day. Though the jury is out, as far as I’m concerned, on how left Gerry is. But what I was suggesting is that for Adams to call organisations like People Before Profit (for example) a crackpot outfit is a bit rich, not very subtle, and not at all surprising.
Comment by: Brian Hanley
Jan 20th 2011 at 22:01
I have only met Davy Adams once, at a debate/panel on republicanism at the West Belfast festival in 2004. He was invited to speak by the republican Fourthwrite magazine. Most of what he dwelt on was the historic roots of 1790’s Presbyterian radicalism.
I thought his Irish Times article was pretty silly and he does indeed seem to have quite conservative politics. However your depiction of him as a Nazi/and or brain dead thug is wide of the mark. Adams was effectively driven out of Craigavon because he opposed UDA criminality: his family suffered intense intimidation in 2004-2005. I know there are former republican prisoners who would attest to his honesty, if nothing else.
Comment by: William Wall
Jan 20th 2011 at 22:01
I notice that both you and An Dorcha use exactly the same form of words -’wide of the mark’. Once again I ask WHAT MARK? I’d like to know what mark my piece is wide of. Once we’ve established that we might have a sensible discussion.
In the meantime I never suggested he was a Nazi or a thug. Nor that he was dishonest. The point of the reference to the UDA/UFF alleged links to Combat 18 was to say that (a) anyone associated with such an organisation (i.e. one that allegedly had links to Combat 18) could be expected to be virulently anti-Marxist, and (2) that Mr Adams has his own associations with crackpot outfits. I thought that was perfectly plain.
Also, please see paragraph 2 of my comment above.
Comment by: Terry McDermott
Jan 21st 2011 at 09:01
‘Also, please see paragraph 2 of my comment above.’
Oh, so it’s satire! Well then it was comedy gold. Really funny stuff. I’ve never heard the one about the thick fascist loyalist who spent all their time in jail body building before.
Comment by: William Wall
Jan 21st 2011 at 11:01
See the new note above.
Comment by: William Wall
Jan 21st 2011 at 14:01
@ Terry McDermott. Terry, you’re way off the mark (sic). There’s a difference between satire and a joke or comedy. I can recommend a few definitions. But satire is often not funny at all. Or not intended to be. Think of Gulliver’s Travels, for example. One way or the other ‘comedy gold’ and ‘the one about…’ do not qualify. You’re talking about stand-up comedy or pub humour. In the words of one of the other commenters here, ‘Wise up’.