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Heathrow was a sea of grounded airplanes. They said it was a terrorist threat that shut the entire airport down. For a moment it seemed that the world-financial system had crashed totally. Either way, there didn't seem to be any point in landing there. We probably wouldn't be allowed anyway. No movement was discernible. The baggage carts and service vehicles were all parked in neat rows. That didn't look like a typical response to a terrorist threat. Not a human soul was in sight. It seemed as if air traffic had come to a halt in the two weeks we had been away in Russia. Obviously it hadn't. Only a single wing of the main terminal looked like it was still in operation that had Air Force planes at its gates. That seemed to support the terrorist story. What a shocking return to the real world this was!
Of course, we all knew that Russia was in a worse mess, though in a different way. Its physical economy had been more deeply collapsing. They too, had refused to take the required actions to save themselves, but had stopped that in time, luckily, and reversed course at virtually the last moment.
As it was, we didn't in London. The plane was diverted to Frankfurt, Germany. I didn't mind the diversion.
"Did I tell you that I nearly got robbed twice in a single day, at Heathrow airport?" I said to Ushi as the plane climbed again.
"No!" Ushi answered in a serious tone.
I told Ushi that I had gone into one of the washrooms on the way to the baggage office. Travelers rarely use these out of the way washrooms, unless their luggage is lost. I told her that I was barely through the door when I felt a man standing behind me. He pushed me hard against a wall.
"Welcome to the home office" the man had joked, "and please give me everything you've got. Be smart!"
I told Ushi that I heard some groaning in the background. I told her that I twisted myself out of his lock and rammed the chap into the opposite wall. "What a surprise he got, and me too, especially me," I said to her. "The man was in uniform. He was one of the airport security people. The people who were hired to protect me nearly robbed me. I just stood there in disbelief and stared at the man. 'You're disgusting,' I said to him. 'And it's even more disgusting that you're stealing from a fellow officer. I am an officer of the diplomatic service. We are struggling like hell to keep the world from blowing up, and there, you're turning against your own family, as it were. With creeps like you providing security, what chance does humanity have?' With this said, I left him standing where he was and did what I came for."
I told Ushi that it really got interesting after that, that he apologized profusely as I left the washroom, and came running after me, pleading that I shouldn't report the incidence. I told Ushi that he started to explain the "ways of the world" to me, as he had put it. "Stealing has become a way of life in London," he insisted, "especially the stealing from your own kind." He couldn't see why I was so annoyed with him.
Ushi laughed when I told her that.
"Don't laugh yet," I replied. "It gets better, still."
"It can't get better," she said.
As a reply, I continued telling my story, saying that he had been employed earlier in one of the big investment houses before he became a security officer at the airport. "He told me what he had encountered there," I said to Ushi.
"Everybody was stealing from everyone else, there," he had said to me, "they even dared to collect a commission for arranging the theft. And all of this was totally legal. So, why shouldn't it be legal for me to rob you in the washroom where you least expect it? It's the same game, the same method, only a slightly different process was involved."
"You found this interesting?" Ushi interrupted. "Let me guess, you invited the man for coffee, right?" she grinned.
"No, no, it was lunch time," I corrected her. "I invited the man for lunch." I told Ushi that his point was, that the whole market had become an organized arena for stealing. Huge profits were taken out of a market where nothing was being produced that generates the wealth that was distributed by the brokers as profit.
She had to laugh.
"Don't laugh, Ushi," I replied. "He told me that the people brought in their money cheerfully and gave it to the brokers, but did the brokers buy them investments that built industries with their money, investments that created productive processes or infrastructures which are required to produce useful things that enrich society? No, they didn't."
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