In the days that passed between the death and burial of Sinead O’Connor, there was an outpouring of praise for the Irish singer. News accounts and op-eds in major media in the US and Ireland made note of her courageous and prophetic voice. If there is a lesson to be learnt from Sinead’s life and the reactions to her passing, it is the importance of calling institutions and nations to account for past sins and the benefits that can accrue to future generations when such a reckoning occurs.
While the many causes for which Sinead fiercely advocated had a single common denominator – all were borne of her concern with injustice – she is best remembered for an appearance on national television ripping up a photo of Pope John Paul II while admonishing the audience “to fight the real enemy”. Some saw her action as unforgivable. The incident haunted her and for a time derailed her career, but not for her many fans in Ireland.
Ireland, a largely Catholic country, understood Sinead’s anger. My wife Eileen was deeply attached to her Irish heritage and her Catholic faith. We were frequent visitors to the Emerald Isle and were there in the early 1990s when the newspapers were filled with stories about the Magdalene laundries, the homes to which “delinquent children” and pregnant unwed women were sent and subjected to abuse and forced servitude. The expectant mothers worked until their babies were born and taken from them.
The Irish press carried pages of photos and interviews with women detailing the abuse they endured and the pain of their loss. Stories were also revealed of mothers who died in childbirth and babies who perished (6,000 in all) and were interred in mass graves. These reports were compounded by extensive reports of sexual abuse by the clergy.
Because Sinead, at the age of 14, had been charged with theft and sentenced to a year and a half in a Magdalene laundry, she knew firsthand the indignity of this incarceration. As the Irish media and political leaders would not let the matter rest, posting stories and editorials and statements by elected officials, many Catholics came to share her rage. The Catholic Church in Ireland was held accountable for its past and continues to be humbled by this reckoning.
While Sinead’s legacy of demanding accountability for past injustices was being honoured, one could not help but contrast it with recent news stories in the US that showed American politicians and US Catholic bishops not only refusing to acknowledge the past of the country and church but seeking to erase it.
Despite this sordid history, America continues to claim its innocence and its right to be the standard-bearer of virtue
For example, Republican governors and other elected officials in Florida, Texas, and Virginia are demanding changes in the way America’s deplorable history of slavery and racism is taught in schools.
In a crass effort to “whitewash” slavery, that institution is being portrayed as a time in which some blacks learned skills that benefited them post-slavery. Eliminated are a detailed accounting of the horrors of Jim Crow segregation and the mass lynchings that took thousands of lives. They want a guilt-free past with no accountability.
Nor is sexual abuse a stranger to the US Catholic Church (or, for that matter, some other religious institutions). Shocking stories of widespread abuse continue to be reported, in dribs and drabs, and soon forgotten, because religious leaders in the US coalesce to sweep their problems away to “protect their institutions.” Or they work to change the subject by asserting that the real problems lie elsewhere.
While Ireland and its church have been forced to come to terms with the past, America and its institutions have never fully come to terms with theirs and are moving in the opposite direction.
Contrast the shameful coverups of the US bishops with Pope Francis’ apology to Canada’s indigenous peoples for the church’s role in erasing their history and culture or Pope Francis’s recent meeting in Portugal with victims of clergy abuse.
Compare this acknowledgment and apology with America’s failure to own up to its history and crimes. This refusal to acknowledge and accept responsibility for the injustices of the past has led my compatriots and co-religionists to insist on our collective innocence while making delusional claims of virtue. It’s become a habit we can’t break – with consequences for our present and future behaviours.
America is the only nation to use nuclear weapons – and we did so without telling the Japanese about the long-term impact of radiation on civilians, who years later continued to suffer from radioactive poisoning. The US dropped millions of tonnes of bombs on Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq, making victims of millions of innocents. As late as the past decade, the US used torture as a weapon to extract information from prisoners and tried to justify this practice with shockingly detailed “legal memos” written by Bush administration officials.
Despite this sordid history, America continues to claim its innocence and its right to be the standard-bearer of virtue. This sense of impunity is what comes from never being forced to reckon with the past, as the Irish and the Irish Catholic Church were forced to reckon with theirs.
This, then, is one lesson from Sinead O’Connor’s life and death: the importance of calling nations and institutions to accept responsibility for their pasts, and the humility and the possibility of changed behaviour that can accompany this acknowledgment.
How to avoid crypto fraud
- Use unique usernames and passwords while enabling multi-factor authentication.
- Use an offline private key, a physical device that requires manual activation, whenever you access your wallet.
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Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
The specs
Engine: 6.2-litre supercharged V8
Power: 712hp at 6,100rpm
Torque: 881Nm at 4,800rpm
Transmission: 8-speed auto
Fuel consumption: 19.6 l/100km
Price: Dh380,000
On sale: now
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Zakat definitions
Zakat: an Arabic word meaning ‘to cleanse’ or ‘purification’.
Nisab: the minimum amount that a Muslim must have before being obliged to pay zakat. Traditionally, the nisab threshold was 87.48 grams of gold, or 612.36 grams of silver. The monetary value of the nisab therefore varies by current prices and currencies.
Zakat Al Mal: the ‘cleansing’ of wealth, as one of the five pillars of Islam; a spiritual duty for all Muslims meeting the ‘nisab’ wealth criteria in a lunar year, to pay 2.5 per cent of their wealth in alms to the deserving and needy.
Zakat Al Fitr: a donation to charity given during Ramadan, before Eid Al Fitr, in the form of food. Every adult Muslim who possesses food in excess of the needs of themselves and their family must pay two qadahs (an old measure just over 2 kilograms) of flour, wheat, barley or rice from each person in a household, as a minimum.
The specs
Engine: 3.0-litre six-cylinder turbo
Power: 398hp from 5,250rpm
Torque: 580Nm at 1,900-4,800rpm
Transmission: Eight-speed auto
Fuel economy, combined: 6.5L/100km
On sale: December
Price: From Dh330,000 (estimate)
Groom and Two Brides
Director: Elie Semaan
Starring: Abdullah Boushehri, Laila Abdallah, Lulwa Almulla
Rating: 3/5
Scores in brief:
Boost Defenders 205-5 in 20 overs
(Colin Ingram 84 not out, Cameron Delport 36, William Somerville 2-28)
bt Auckland Aces 170 for 5 in 20 overs
(Rob O’Donnell 67 not out, Kyle Abbott 3-21).
Leaderboard
63 - Mike Lorenzo-Vera (FRA)
64 - Rory McIlroy (NIR)
66 - Jon Rahm (ESP)
67 - Tom Lewis (ENG), Tommy Fleetwood (ENG)
68 - Rafael Cabrera-Bello (ESP), Marcus Kinhult (SWE)
69 - Justin Rose (ENG), Thomas Detry (BEL), Francesco Molinari (ITA), Danny Willett (ENG), Li Haotong (CHN), Matthias Schwab (AUT)
