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100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The crowd was demonstrating in protest against the exclusion of opposition candidates in the Moscow local elections. The clampdown ended in one of the biggest protest movements in recent recent times, a sure sign of growing discontent as the Kremlin veered towards even greater authoritarian rule as Vladimir Putin's popularity dropped. Leading the protests were those close to Alexei Navalny who campaigned against rampant corruption at all levels of power, witnessed by irrefutable evidence in videos circulating in Moscow. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Navalny, who was banned from state television, had been arrested and jailed on numerous occasions and barred from standing as an independent candidate in the 2018 presidential election. His bank accounts were frozen and masked police raided his offices where they seized documents and computers. One of Navanly's associates, Lyubov Sobol, an Anti-Corruption Foundation lawyer and member of the Russian Opposition Coordination Council, had planned to stand as an independent in the Moscow elections, only to be told the voter signatures required were fakes and that her candidature was void. She riposted with a hunger strike and was arrested in spite of her protestations, 'Who are you frightened of? Your own citizens, a woman on the 20th day of her hunger strike?' |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The euphoria of the Crimea annexation was over and fewer Russians were willing to make the kind of sacrifices that sanctions entailed. Real incomes had fallen and that coupled with pension reforms hit Putin's popularity ratings. The younger generation of Muscovites had grown up in a different world to that their parents and grandparents. Putin, called the 'dwarf' by anti-government media, was a pure product of the USSR and the Cold War, that was history to the young generation who wanted a different more open and easygoing world, where they could enjoy the benefits of their likes in Western Europe and the US, one where they didn't have to make useless sacrifices and fight mindless wars. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The same old tired anti-Western rhetoric no longer went down with them and they feared falling foul of the arbitrary rules of their authoritarian Kafkaesque state that dragged its screaming victims into police vans with vicious blows to discourage resistance--as had their Soviet predecessors. | | ---|---|--- # 4 # JAKARTA PAT KENNEDY WAS WHAT they called a 'Taipan' in Hong Kong, one of the legendary few who had built a colossal fortune by force of character and daring. From his Hong Kong base he had spread his business across South East Asia, building on the base of the network developed by INI's Amsterdam based bank, the Nederlandsche Nassau Bank, and the Smeaton family's Anglo-Dutch Commercial Bank founded a century earlier in Jakarta. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Since those days, Indonesia had gone from being part of the Het Nederlandse Koloniale Rijk--The Dutch Colonial Empire, to a vast and fiercely independent nation. At the same time its population had grown from around 50 million to 270 million and was projected to grow to 330 million. Its capital Jakarta, called the 'Big Durian' by its inhabitants, together with its sprawling suburban area, was the home to 30 million. To most Indonesians, and many other people in the region, HG amongst them, the news that Jakarta was sinking into the Java Sea was nothing new, for decades it had been settling into the mud, silt and polluted slime, a reality visible to anyone who visited the city's port, Tanjung Priok, and especially the city's hapless population. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The news that Indonesia was to create a new capital in the sparsely-populated region of Kutai Kartanegara and Penajam Paser Utara, on the island of Borneo, came as forest fires swept through vast regions of the archipelago, added one disaster to another, after decades of destruction by logging, mining, sugar cane and oil palm plantations. The idea of two million migrants arriving from Jakarta was apocalyptic, the death knell for what remained of the natural environment in East Kalimantan, targeted as the site for the new capital. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The announcement came as a thick haze hung over large parts of Peninsula Malaysia, Sarawak and Sabah, setting off a war of words between Kula Lumpur and Jakarta with accusations and counter-accusations as Malaysian authorities pointed to data released by Indonesia's Disaster Mitigation Agency with satellite data showing more than 3,600 fires on Sumatra and Borneo. That was contradicted by data from the ASEAN Specialised Meteorological Centre, which clearly showed the total number of hotspots in Kalimantan and Sumatra were dwarfed by those recorded in Malaysian territory. A lot of chest thumping and little action. The blame game did nothing to help those affected when schools were shut as the air became unbreathable and face masks were issued to the population of Sarawak. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | At the origin of the crisis was a cycle of dry weather that caused a steep increase in the number of forest fires across the region, which according to data published by the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service, produced over 14 megatonnes of CO2, three times greater than that produced over the previous 15 years. Many of the fires became uncontrollable after being deliberately started by farmers to clear their land. However, the underlying soil of large areas of Sumatra and Borneo was made up of deep peat deposits--vegetable matter accumulated over thousands of years, which once set on fire continued to burn for weeks. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | As distant corners of the planet were hit by uncontrolled fires, raging across hugely different regions, from Indonesian to Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, the Congos, Siberia, Alaska, Greenland and Australia, vast quantities of CO2 were ejected into the atmosphere and the temperatures rose inexorably. * * * |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | President Joko Widodo's announcement came on the heels of dire predictions for the future of Jakarta and its population, choked in permanent gridlock as more than three million commuters struggled to get into and out of the city each day. Not only was the city sinking into the sea, its drainage and sewerage systems overflowing, it was also overshadowed by the threat of natural disaster. The island of Java was the home to some of the world's most active volcanoes, situated on the ring of fire. Jakarta and other cities lived in the permanent shadow of calamity--the constant threat of volcanic eruptions, shifting tectonic plates, earthquakes and tsunamis, as John Ennis and Scott Fitznorman had witnessed three years earlier when they fled the eruption of Krakatoa. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The new administrative capital would attract millions of migrants to Kalimantan, whilst Jakarta would continue as a commercial and financial centre, the majority of its 30 million residents certainly opting to stay put, in spite of the impending disaster, as city's population inexorably spread out in all directions. HG was shocked when she learnt hundreds of square kilometres of land would be bulldozed to build the new capital, as the state institutionalised the destruction of the Borneo's natural environment. It was nothing less than former president Suharto's transmigration programme that was introduced in the 1970s. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Suharto's government, in an effort to reduce the demographic pressure on the densely populated islands of Java and Madura, forcibly relocated thousands of villages and countless families to the less crowded islands of the vast archipelago, notably to Borneo, transporting them to isolated regions where rough airstrips were built for the huge versatile C5 air force cargo planes that carried the villagers and their meagre belongings, providing each family with a few sacks of rice and other basic necessities, plus a parcel of summarily cleared forestland to be cultivated for their future needs. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The arrival of vast numbers of migrants created an often deadly conflict with the indigenous peoples. Today the Paser Balik tribe, which had already suffered from the incursion and destruction of its lands by logging and mining companies over the years, feared that the new capital would raze their homeland forests, drain its waterways, exterminate its remaining wildlife, and transform its world into an urban desert. Much of the land in the region destined for the new capital was already exploited by mine operators, palm oil producers and logging companies, some of whom would certainly profit by selling the land back to the government for the building of the new capital. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | HG told her friends the people of Borneo did not fear the forces of nature, but ran in fear of civilisation and its concrete jungle. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Neighbouring Malaysia, HG's home, was faced by many other problems after it had undergone a series of deep political changes, returning 92 year old veteran politician Mohammed Mahatir to power following the 1MDB scandal, which amongst other things had indirectly involved Pat Kennedy's bank. Mahatir had marked Malaysia's modern history as the country's long-time prime minister, between 1981 and 2003, when he been the advocate of hard-line Bumiputra and Muslim tendencies in a multiracial, multi-religious, country with a diverse geography--its two largest states lay on the island of Borneo, isolated from Peninsula Malaysia, a structure created by the British at the moment of their colony's independence, as a bulwark against Sukarno's Indonesia, then threatened by communism. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | After years of economic progress, an example in Southeast Asia, it was threatened by instability as the Muslim majority practised discriminatory policies against large Chinese, Hindu and indigenous communities, fomenting violence and forcing Islam on the indigenous peoples, threatening religious pluralism with ultra-conservative policies, wielding religion and race in favour of ethno-nationalistic-economic domination by the Bumiputra majority, widening the cultural divide between the country's diverse ethnic groups. | | ---|---|--- # 5 # A LIGHTHOUSE DINER |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | WHO WOULD HAVE BELIEVED ten years ago that America and the West would lose the Middle East and that Bashir El Assad would emerge victorious in a conflict against an American led coalition, in a geometrically variable battle against the Caliphate, allied with Kurds and a variety of anti-Assad groups. Under Donald Trump the Middle East had lost its importance for a number of complex reasons, amongst them was his trade war with China and his vision 'Make America Great Again'. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | It was with this in mind he headed for the G7 conference in Biarritz where he was to meet the leaders of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United Kingdom. It would be complicated as he was to a great or lesser degree in disaccord with them all. As for Vladimir Putin he was absent, expelled, justifiably following sanctions for his annexation of the Crimea. Macron had become Western Europe's most active leader on international issues by default--Germany's Merkel was in difficulty, and the UK's new premier was embroiled in the Brexit battle. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Putin, however, hoped to reinforced his position, but in truth Russia was a giant with feet of clay. Although he had performed an almost impossible task, considering Russia's catastrophic post-communist legacy and the chaos bequeathed by Boris Yeltsin, his country's weaknesses had persisted, commencing with chronic underinvestment, compounded by its over dependence on energy export revenues, poor infrastructure, corruption, rising social stress and discontent, set against the background of an oppressive authoritarian state. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | In spite of its vast territory, energy and raw material resources, Russia's population was small, its economy no better than a middling European power, it was no match for the other world powers, especially its neighbours--China to the east, the EU to the west. The former, a populous industrial giant, flexing its muscles, the latter an economic powerhouse which was still undecided as to its future role in the world. Though Vladimir Putin was solidly ensconced in power, apart from a vague vision of a Greater Russia, he had no clear constructive vision for his country or successor should he stumble. * * * |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | As the leaders met, anti-globalisation and climate activists converged at two points, each situated on the opposite side of the border that divided the Basque Country between France and Spain. Their goal was to confront the rich-poor divide that was widening at an alarming rate, caused by the indifference of political leaders and the speed of technological change. Inevitably the jamboree attracted eco-warriors of all ilks, it coincided nicely with a midsummer trip to the clean and green Basque Country with its gastronomic traditions, offering side trips to St Jean de Luz and the 16th century fortified town of Fuentarabbia as well as Hendaye's beach, four kilometres of golden sand, flanked by the foothills of the Pyrenees. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Their leaders included national media personalities on the forefront of green parties and activist movements, all of whom saw the event as an opportunity to broadcast their narratives, reiterating their crusade slogans, out of fear they--themselves that is, be forgotten. It was a mediatic business and having one's image flashed on TV screens, blogs, and the front pages of the press was all part of the vote getting, fund raising, battle. It didn't take much communications savvy to know it was better being photographed rubbing shoulders with the troops at an eco-conference in northern Spain, than being spotted, like an idiot royal prince, teeing off at the Real Club Valderrama, an exclusive golf club in Sotogrande, Andalusia, at the opposite end of the Iberian Peninsula. | | ---|---|--- # 6 # A SUMMIT |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | MORE THAN 13,000 SECURITY AND LAW enforcement troops were gathered in and around the historic town of Biarritz. They were there to ensure the safety of the heads of states and their delegations gathered for the G7 summit in the French Basque Country and prepare for the arrival of leaders of the world's rich nations. They included Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, and their host Emanuel Macron, present for three days of talks on global issues, from the climate emergency to trade wars. The forces of law and order present included 44 CRS companies and 48 mobile gendarmerie squads, plus specialised units, amongst which was the RAID--the National Gendarmerie Intervention Group and the Republican Guard. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Facing them was a ragtag army of anti-G7 demonstrators that mounted desultory skirmishes near the camp where they were installed outside the small picturesque Basque town of Urrugne, a dozen kilometres to the south of Biarittz. The chic seaside resort of Biarritz was in lock-down with traffic restricted to residents and officials, all requiring badges. Railway stations and the local airport were shutdown for the duration of the summit, sailing boats banned from approaching the coast, and surfers from the beach. It was no-go zone, bang in the middle of the tourist season. Demonstrators' feeble attempts to enter the town at a roundabout exit from the motorway that linked Biarritz to the Spanish border were quickly repelled at road checks set-up at the border and major crossroads. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The assorted mob then attempted to block access to their camp by setting up rough and ready barricades and bombarding the police with anything that came to hand. Their makeshift projectiles were of little use as the police surged into the camp firing tear gas canisters and flashballs in front of the astonished eyes of vacationers at a nearby holiday residence. * * * |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | It was going to be a hot day in Biarritz with the temperature expected to reach the mid-thirties. The splendid resort was an armed fortress as the summit was set to kick-off. Emanuel Macron arrived onboard his presidential jet at Biarritz Pays Basque Airport, about six kilometres from the town centre, Trump arrived at Bordeaux Airport on Air Force One, a Boeing 747, where he transferred to a smaller C32--a military version of the commercial 757 airliner in the colours of the US presidential fleet--for the 200 kilometre hop south to Biarittz. Waiting for them was the army of gendarmes and other security forces with their vehicles to ensure they and the other world leaders were not troubled by the plebeian mob. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | A few kilometres to the south in Hendaye the temperature had already reached 30C and a light mist hung over the beach obscuring the the twin rocks, Les Jumeaux, and the 19th century Chateau d'Abbadie that looked out over the sea from a high point in the distance. Between the old mauresque casino and the place du Palmier, the normally busy beach centre with its cafes and shops was almost deserted, just a scattering of tourists and a handful of locals out for their baguette and morning newspaper. Many of the cafes were however closed, the bank and its ATM boarded-up, as were the real estate agencies and the ladies swimwear boutique, Pretty Woman. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Preparations that reminded Pat O'Connelly of a Caribbean beach resort before a hurricane, if it hadn't been for the fact he'd seen three suspected agitators in handcuffs and five others seated on a bench surrounded by heavily armed police the previous evening. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | That morning Hendaye had started to empty and by midday it was deserted. Where had the 10,000 demonstrators gone? Bayonne, according to the rumour that was making the rounds. Pat grabbed his car and took off for the autoroute just outside the town. Bayonne lay a little under 40 kilometres to the north. Some 30 minutes later he crossed the Garonne, took the exit Bayonne Nord and swung back into the city where he parked nearby the railway station. There he headed into the historical centre on foot crossing back over the river where he joined the crowd that was starting to build up, one that was different from the anti-G7 crowd in Hendaye, uglier and looking for trouble. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | At the same moment Donald and Melania Trump arrived in Biarritz where they were greeted by the French president and his wife Brigitte. First was an impromptu lunch, then a tete-a-tete between the two men on the terrace of the Hotel du Palais, where Trump seemed tense, but let Macron have his moment announcing, '... every once in a while, we go at it just a little bit, not very much, but we get along very well. We have a very good relationship ... we couldn't have asked for better weather or a more beautiful location.' The meeting was essentially one of the US and its allies, and Trump would need them as he ratcheted up his war of words and tariffs against China whilst leaving Russia to sulk in its corner. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | In any case there would be no joint communique, which would avoid the heads of state leaving under a cloud, as they had at their last meeting in Canada, when Trump refused to sign the document and consensus was consigned to the bin, a result that Macron wanted to avoid. It would be a loss of face before African leaders from five nations, the Australian prime minister, India's prime minister, Brazil's president and the Chilean president, congregated in the fashionable resort town, a haven for Russian oligarchs, celebrities and well-heeled tourists. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Boris Johnson arrived, seemingly as confused as ever as he jumped out of his car and headed in the wrong direction. He counted on Trump to bail him out of his self-made Brexit predicament and desperately needed a pat on the back and the promise of a trade deal. Incongruously, the Hotel du Palais overlooked a large Russian Orthodox church, built more than a century earlier for Czar Nicolas II, a reminder of Vladimir Putin's absence, an absence Trump regretted, it would have been '...much more appropriate to have Russia in, particularly the G8, because a lot of things we talk about have to do with Russia.' |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Beyond the vast ornate gates of the Palais, Biarritz was tense, a special magistrates court had been set up to handle demonstrators as control points were set up at crossroads where armed police were posted to prevent trouble makers invading the red zone--declared off limits to the public. | | ---|---|--- # 7 # DIVISIONS EMMANUEL MACRON PUT CLIMATE change at the centre of the event. However, the subject was not on Donald Trump's agenda, in fact it was far from his multiple preoccupations; a trade war with China; a simmering dispute with the EU over tariffs; and a slanging match with the other half of the planet. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The solidarity the Western world had enjoyed since WWII was in tatters in spite of the greats grandstanding in Biarritz. It was divided not only over trade, but just about everything else, from climate change to dealings with China, Iran and Russia, and of course there was Brexit with Trump pouring oil on the fire by the promise of a fantastic deal for Johnson. * * * In spite of the perfect setting under clear summer skies, the summit got off to an embarrassing start when against a background of raging forest fires in the Amazon, Emmanuel Macron and Jair Bolsonaro commenced by trading insults. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Macron accused Bolsonaro of lying on Brazil's position on climate change and threatened to block the free trade agreement negotiated the previous month between the EU and the South American trade bloc Mercosur, which included Brazil. Bolsonaro riposted by accusing Macron of having a colonialist mentality and treating Brazil like colony. Matters were made worse after Bolsonaro posted photos on Facebook comparing pictures of his and Macron's wife, with the comment: 'Now do you understand why Macron is persecuting Bolsonaro?' twisting the knife by adding, 'Don't humiliate the guy. Hahaha.' |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Bolsonaro was accused of favouring an agricultural policy for his country, one which would have a catastrophic effect on the Amazon's environment, rather than defending the rainforest, where according to his critics the rate of deforestation had surged to the point new agribusiness was consuming an area the size of Manhattan every day. Not satisfied with that, Bolsonaro had opened public lands to agribusiness, lands settled by ribeirinhos and the quilombolas, the former lived by fishing, rubber tapping and the traditional harvesting of Brazil nuts and other forest products, the latter were the descendants of rebel slaves who had won their right to territories occupied by their ancestors. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | After five centuries of European colonisation, the indigenous peoples, who had already suffered under their Portuguese masters, were now faced with the threats of deforestation on a vast scale and the destruction of all the plants and creatures that lived in their homelands. Pat O'Connelly often wondered why no one never pointed to the intensive agriculture policies of the US or the EU, where in the latter case the natural biotope had been degraded over two millennia to feed Europe's population which had grown more than six-fold since Roman times. * * * |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | As demonstrators prepared to bang their drums for the last day of the conference and delegates packed their bags, the result was summed up by the general reaction of financial markets. Friday Trump announced an additional duty of 5% on Chinese goods, then over the weekend, he announced he may have second thoughts, then followed by saying he wished he had raised tariffs on Chinese goods even higher whilst adding he did not plan to follow through with a demand that US firms find ways to close operations in China. Monday Asian markets slid sharply with the Nikkei opening down by over 3% as the business world was shaken by the generally confusion created by Donald Trump. As one analyst wrote there was an uneasy feeling that the very fragile negotiations were spiralling out of control. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Gold rose and oil dived with the prolonged uncertainty following rumours linked to the possible presence of Iran in Biarittz--the thought of easing sanctions threatened a flood of Iranian oil onto the already weakening market. | | ---|---|--- # 8 # ANOTHER VERSION THE VAST MAJORITY OF THOSE supporting environmental movements were well intentioned, but amongst the activists was a hard core of extremists. Certain of those bore a religious fanaticism in their actions, bordering on hysteria, which at times was exploited by individuals whose interests lay in their own gain, influence or profit. Environmentalist groups were prone, like in every associative movement, to individual ambition, power and glory. Where leadership cults flourished behind a façade on green sanctitude. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The hysteria over the rainforest fires in Brazil was the occasion to focus well-fed, privileged Westerners, on an easy target, especially since Bolsonaro had replaced leaders favoured by champagne socialists, even if they had been imprisoned or ousted for corruption. Bolsonaro was targeted for having the temerity to use his country's resources as his government saw fit. He was white, wealthy, Christian, conservative and even worse had an army background. Luvvies, like Leonardo DiCaprio, friends of crooks such as Jho Low, claimed the fires in the Amazon were the worse since records began, perhaps, but put into perspective those records began a decade ago. Though slash and burn agriculture had existed since the dawn of agriculture. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Tracking by NASA reported that the annual variations were within what would be normally expected over the vast and varied territory of the Amazon which englobed a number of different biospheres. The general dialogue often turned around the idea that the developing world was incapable of managing its own affairs and only developed countries held the solution to their problems, which in the case of the New World was laughable considering the damage conquistadors like Cortes and Pizarro had inflicted on their civilisations, not forgetting American heroes like Buffalo Bill and Custer, who together contributed to the destruction of wildlife and the decline of indigenous peoples. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | It was easy to point to the misery of India, the pollution of China's industries, from a comfortable home in London or Paris where people in developed nations enjoyed the kinds of privileges the poor and less well-off aspired to. The gloating schadenfreude of well-heeled tourists snapping the slums of Manilla or the favelas of Rio with their smartphones, congratulating themselves on their intelligence and their environmentally friendly home countries. Images they would paste on their Facebook pages with temples and smiling street urchins. In 1989, Dean Edwin Abrahamson wrote in his book, The Challenge of Global Warming: |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | 'A world with a doubled or tripled human population, with a several fold increase in consumption, and with greenhouse gases, industrial pollutants, and other assaults on the environment proportional to those of today is not only virtually unimaginable, but impossible. If societies attempt a several fold increase in economic activity described in the Brundtland Report (published in 1987), using the present means of production, increasing emissions of greenhouse gases will have consequences similar to those of nuclear war.' Today, more than 30 years later, the world is well along that path, since over those three decades next to nothing had been done to counter the effect of emissions and the world population had jumped from 5 billion to 7.5 billion and would reach 10 billion within a generation. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Brazil needed to develop its economy and its natural resources were the key: agriculture, forestry industries, mining and urban development, whilst striving to maintain an acceptable level of sustainability. If the international community wanted something greater at the expense of Brazilian growth, then it would have to contribute to safeguard its biosphere. From humanity's point of view, protecting the Amazon was vital, but to keep the rainforest as a pristine reserve at the cost of 200 million Brazilians was unacceptable to its government. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The multiplication of foreign NGOs agitating against industrial development of the rainforest and other biospheres in Brazil had become a serious bone of contention between the greens and the country's leaders, who looked at the policies of Ecuador and Peru, both of which had taken measures to expel foreign-funded NGOs that acted against their interests on questions of environment. As a sovereign nation, Brazil had every right to pursue its economic development as it saw fit, including the management of its forest resources which after all belong to them. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The claim that the Amazon rainforest was the lungs of the planet was on every politicians lips, claims it recycled 20% of the planet's oxygen were bandied about, though according to climate expert Michael Mann, it was nearer to 6%, a nevertheless very significant figure. | | ---|---|--- # 9 # A SAVIOUR? |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | JOHN FRANCIS HAD HOPED a new Margaret Thatcher--in the form of Theresa May--would cut the Gordon's knot, but she failed. Now it was the turn of a Churchillian figure, Boris Johnson, who after more than 1,000 days of political infighting, sensational headlines, with plots and counter-plots, public insults by the different partisans, against a background of catastrophic predictions, wavering financial markets and the near collapse of sterling, promised the final Brexit battle was about to start as parliament returned from its summer recess. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The summer had seen the first truly visible signs of climate change, blistering heat, storms and flooding, as the weather ran its topsy-turvy course. At the same time the economy was paying the price for political turmoil and a trickle of bad news was building up into a steady stream as businesses and consumers started to cutback on investments and spending as the festering crisis came to an ugly head. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | After the summer break, Britain's parliament was about to open the new session with an historic showdown between Boris Johnson--who had vowed to leave the European Union on October 31, and the anti-Brexiteers who viewed themselves as the last bulwark against impending disaster as the UK staggered towards its historic destiny. Finding a majority in a very divided parliament to prevent Britain withdrawing from the bloc without an exit deal seemed an almost impossible task. Whatever the outcome, the Brexit battle would go down in the history books with a referendum that had cleaved the country in two, from the government down to the common folk, with little chance of reconciliation. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The trouble was Johnson's Conservative government had a majority of just one seat in the 650 seat house, thanks to the support of the DUP, a small, almost inconsequential, Northern Irish Party. It was with deep regret that John Francis observed the opposition, as it stood at the crossroad of history, a moment when its leader with courage and vision could have deflected the government from its destructive path. That was not to be as the opposition was led by an old fashioned Marxist reactionary, who left the way clear for the mop haired adventurer, who as a last resort opted for parliamentary elections, confident his socialist adversary stuck in his 1950s time warp could never gain the confidence of the British people. | | ---|---|--- # 10 # BREXIT |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | JOHN, ALTHOUGH HE WAS a firm Remainer, was more complacent about Brexit than certain of his friends, in the belief that a compromise face saving arrangement would be found. However, whilst he did not believe in a plot, he had no doubts that a certain class of UK politicians saw the UK's natural partner as the US, especially those whose financial interests lay in a Transatlantic alliance, and who were resolutely set on separating the UK from its European friends. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | It was clear that certain Americans including the billionaire Robert Mercer, former head of Renaissance Technologies, a supporter of Donald Trump, played a key role in the Brexit campaign. A long time friend of Nigel Farage, he was a major donor to right-wing political causes in the US, such as Breitbart News, to which Steve Banon was linked along with Cambridge Analytics. The decisive nature of Brexit was a continuum of European history that went back to Henry VIII and his continental contemporaries, Francois I and Charles I of Spain and their successors, an almost permanent state of confrontation in the balance of power, peaceful or otherwise. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The danger was this time around the UK would end up as somebody else's pawn in a game to weaken Europe, a tragedy in view of the cost paid in World War I and II to all concerned. Britain's weakness was illustrated by the artist Ai Weiwei, who told the BBC that Beijing sees Britain as a nonentity and that it and the West in general were uninterested in getting involved in the Hong Kong crisis. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | When asked if Britain had a specific responsibility, the artist replied that the Chinese government simply laughed at London, noting they could not even manage their own problems. Seen from afar Britain's Brexit entanglement seemed Ruritanian, transforming the country and its parliament into a laughingstock, epitomised by Monty Python-like characters, namely John Bercow bellowing, and Boris Johnson with his theatrics, characterising what was in effect a toothless circus lion. After all what did the West do when the Chinese government sent in its tanks to literally crush the Tiananmen demonstrators into a bloody pulp? Pat remained confident in spite of what he saw as posturing by the central government in Beijing, he did not envisage another Tiananmen Square horror. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | For the moment, as far as he was concerned, the former colony offered a highly desirable advantage to his bank when doing business with China, thanks to its British based style legal system which guaranteed rulings based on fair laws and not corruption. Hongkongers were justifiably alarmed when non-stop news flashes started scrolling across their TV screens of tank and troop movements on the other side of the border. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | On the opposite banks of the creek that separated the city of Shenzhen from the New Territories, less than a dozen or so kilometres from Pat's gleaming headquarters, large numbers of paramilitary forces were seen gathering at different points in the city. In total 12,000 troops with armoured personnel carriers, helicopters and amphibious vehicles were on standby waiting for the order to move. Pat reassured himself it was nothing but intimidation, a game drawn from the Art of War, the ancient Chinese treatise by Sun Tzu. He recalled one of its main tenants--avoiding direct armed conflict confrontations, a last resort, only justifiable when all other alternatives had been exhausted, and even then, a direct clash of arms was to be avoided. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | He talked to a puzzled Lili of the dangers of a Pyrrhic victory as they sipped their morning coffee looking out at the panoramic view of Victoria Harbour far below their vast apartment. Pat was in many ways a self-made man, an autodidact, who compensated for his lacunas by consuming every book of history that came his way, a diversion from the endless stream of documents that arrived from the bank's branches strung across the world. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | A Pyrrhic victory would profit no one, he said as he kissed Lili on her forehead, before leaving for his car waiting forty floors below for the short drive to the bank. Normally he would have walked, but the temperature and humidity had risen several degrees as a tropical depression approached the city, besides he did not want to confront the demonstrators and security forces, even at that early hour. In spite of Pat's optimism, observers generally agreed that something bad was about to happen. Everything pointed to a brutal crackdown as Beijing finally lost patience after weeks of riots and the chaotic incursion that shutdown Hong Kong's airport. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Mainland news reports spoke of treachery and terrorism as it prepared the public for an invasion by its special forces whose methods would even make the efforts of Hong Kong's raptors look tame thirty years after the Tiananmen demonstrations were crushed. At that time China's then supreme leader, Deng Xiaoping, confronted by the death of 3,000 young men and women, commented, 'You must remember in this country, a million is not a big number.' To make matters worse for Zhongnanhai, the events coincided with the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China, to be celebrated in grand style. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The old ones remembered Chairman Mao boast 'Kill one, frighten ten thousand', but today that would no longer work, brute force in Hong Kong would not only shatter its economy would also provoke urban warfare. The leaders greatest fear was contagion, though for the moment that seemed unlikely as prosperity stifled political discontent. What would happen if China's economy stalled, if Trump pursued his trade war, or a black swan appeared on the horizon. | | ---|---|--- # 11 # AFTER PUTIN |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | AS THE AMAZON BURNED, WILDFIRES raged across the Taiga, Vladimir Putin was forced to call in the army to fight the inferno that was devouring vast areas of Siberia, smothering towns and villages in a dense blanket of smoke. It was estimated three million hectares in Central and Eastern Siberia were burning with the Krasnoyarsk region being one of the worst hit, where its governor declared there was little that could be done, the huge almost empty region of Taiga forest was unreachable and Russia had neither the means or the manpower to combat the fires, the most important in living memory. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The fires, triggered by high summer temperatures, were accompanied by lightning, strong winds, dry thunderstorms and in general exceptional weather conditions, sending smoke and haze across the vast and often inaccessible region rendering the sun almost invisible. Such fires were not uncommon during the summer months, but they had spread much further than usual with a total of 12 million hectares of forest affected. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Paradoxically, as the temperatures rose and the fires spread, Siberia flooded as the permafrost melted. Russia was rotting at its edges, its industrial cities suffering from the gravest forms of pollution, starting with Norilsk, 400 kilometres inside the Arctic Circle, which was slowly sinking into the ground, a city built on permafrost, now thawing rapidly, causing its foundation to crumble, threatening its very existence. Climate change was poised to claim its first major industrial victim. Norilsk a city of 180,000 was the world's most important producer of nickel and palladium, accounting for three quarters of its needs, in addition it produced a vast range of other metals from gold to cobalt with the mining company Norilsk Nickel generating yearly revenues of almost 12 billion dollars. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | 'Our temperatures are rising two-and-half times faster than the global average,' Vladimir Putin told the press. 'We, are a northern country--70% of our territory is located in the northern latitudes. We have entire cities above the Arctic Circle built on permafrost. If it begins to melt, just imagine the consequences. Catastrophic.' It was a change of attitude, considering Putin had previously voiced doubts about climate change, even suggesting warmer temperatures would benefit his country. The danger was the collapse of residential and industrial buildings and already a doctor was seriously injured on the front steps of a Norilsk blood bank when part of the concrete canopy covering the entrance collapsed. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Norilsk was the most polluted city in the Russian Federation and climate change was accelerating the damage, Greenpeace warned of the dangers as thawing permafrost caused thousands of oil and gas pipeline to crack leaking large quantities of crude oil into the environment. Permafrost covered two-thirds of the country's vast territory, where giant craters had been discovered caused by the explosion of methane gas escaping from the ground. In the extreme north of Russia, off the Arctic coastline, islands were disappearing as permafrost thawed and sea ice melted, washed away by storms and waves. Roads and railways were hit by subsidence and toxic radioactive pollutants were released into the environment when landslides hit waste water retention dams. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | In the recent past, temperatures in Norilsk, which could fall to minus 50oC, were stable, but these had risen two degrees and the surface thickness of the permafrost reduced, with more moisture in the soil, freezing and expanding in winter, undermining the structures of countless buildings. The same problem affected many other Arctic cities in Russia, including Salekhard, Nadym and Dudinka, and the port on the Yenisei River through which Norilsk Nickel shipped its products. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Twenty years after Vladimir Putin was appointed acting prime minister by Boris Yeltsin, he remained popular at home for having brought stability and a certain degree of prosperity and modernity to Russia. This popularity peaked after national pride was restored following the annexation of the Crimea, after of the humiliation that followed the collapse of the USSR. At the same time the modest looking former KGB officer was transformed into an authoritarian leader, whose declared goal was the restoration of Russia to its rightful place as a first-class world power. His rejection by the West was accentuated when the Kremlin cracked down on opposition parties, seized control of the media and closed its eyes to rampant corruption. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The encirclement of Russian resulted in a Russia first policy, rebuilding relationships with the Kremlin's former Soviet bloc friends, especially Assad in Syria and Madura in Venezuela. Little-by-little Putin's Russia resembled an old fashioned dictatorship, structured around a new form of government, a politico-economic oligarchy, built on authoritarian consumerism, with resource based exports subsidising state revenues. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | However, in spite of its vast resources, Russia did not compare to the other economically powerful Western nations, only its nuclear arsenal justified the Kremlin's pretensions. Its population of a bit more than 140 million was declining, much smaller than Jair Bolsonaro's, who as head of the world's fourth largest country, a vast warm and fertile land filled with incalculable riches and a population of over 200 million, who could afford to cock a snoop at France's president, insulting Macron's wife Brigitte with impunity. | | ---|---|--- # 12 # TIPPING POINT |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | IT WAS WIDELY REPORTED that deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon had surged, various comparisons were cited by the media and by their armchair experts to impress the scale of the reported disaster on the minds of a non-specialised public. One said three football pitches a minute, another an area the size of the UK each year, or monthly losses the size of Greater London, and yet another spoke of 750,000 square kilometres disappearing since 1978. No one disputed the fires, or the deforestation, legal and illegal, on the other hand the disinformation and sloppy reporting with unverified figures bandied about by so-called experts was misleading, discrediting the work of scientists and serious journalists. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Pat Kennedy viewed the South American continent as a vast new market in which to expand his bank and had met Jair Bolsonaro and his ministers to discuss his plans. He kept an open mind on the Amazon and agribusiness, it was better to work with Brazil than against it, especially as it was a major supplier of foodstuffs to China. Some said the number of hectares cut was pushing the world's biggest rainforest closer to a tipping point beyond which it could not recover. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Pat saw his foray into the Amazon as an opportunity to explore the facts and the historical context, which as ever, provided him with valuable tools for tracing a path towards the future. His historical reference point was Hardenburg's report and Casement's mission at the time when robber barons ruthlessly exploited the indigenous peoples. Brazil's population stood at 208 million, which meant that in comparison to Europe or China it was almost empty, and it would remain that way, since according to forecasts its growth would not exceed to 233 million before it stabilised at 228 million in 2060. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Which went against the popular theory that explained the world, before the Industrial Revolution, was caught in a Malthusian trap, where increased prosperity was translated into larger populations, leading to no real gains in per capita income. Bolsonaro could have well taken Bertrand Russell's words to encourage his people, 'Civilised man is distinguished from the savage by prudence, or, to use the slightly wider term, forethought. He is willing to endure present pains for the sake of future pleasures....' | | ---|---|--- # SEPTEMBER # 1 # THE BANK PAT KENNEDY'S BANK, like most other Hong Kong banks, was highly profitable, if fact the city's banks were among world's most profitable, thanks to low costs, and high asset quality. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Hong Kong was part of the City of London's unspoken of post-imperial empire. A string of financial centres that controlled nearly half of the planet's capital flow. Besides Hong Kong was Singapore, the Channel Islands, the Caribbean and a confetti of former imperial outposts, all part of a network run by the elite for the elite in a totally opaque system beyond the reach of serious government, for the simple reason that every member of the reigning establishment had their snout in the trough. A system perpetuated by cupidity and need for survival. All that meant nothing to Zhenbao, who like Henrique had studied in London, where both both had met radicalised Mainland students. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Zhenbao had befriended Henrique at the bank's sports club, though their paths had crossed many times, their backgrounds were poles apart, his position at INI was in the legal department, a nine to five job in the arcane complexities of Hong Kong law, inherited from the British. However, what both young men shared was their enthusiasm for martial arts. Outside work, Zhenbao's interest in martial arts took another turn, his hero was Bruce Lee, and Lee's Cantonese form of the art, Jeet Kune Do. Lee in the tradition of the Shaolin monks fought injustice. As such Zhenbao saw the demonstrations as a combat and the opportunity to put his skills into action. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | After hours, like Henrique, he donned his street gear, dressing from head to toe in black, a hard hat and protective glasses, packing his gas mask, arm protectors and walkie-talkie in a compact rucksack that also served as body armour, then quit his Kowloon East apartment and headed out onto the streets to confront the raptors, a special unit of the anti-riot police. Zhenbao owed his radicalisation to his family background, which had been amongst those who had fled the Mainland in 1969, during the dark days of Mao's Cultural Revolution. They now feared the plans Beijing had for the former colony, and he, a brilliant student, who had studied economics at the LSE in London, where he discovered his grandfather's stories about Mao's China were not just the imagination of an old man. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Like Henrique he no longer believed in 'one-country, two-systems', the promise made by China, under which Hong Kong would enjoy autonomy during a period of 50 years from its handover by London in 1997. During the Umbrella Revolution in 2014, Zhenbao had met a girl, Ailin, a political scientist and a member of a group of hardcore activists at Hong Kong University, called Demos, who enrolled him into their movement. The declared goal of Demos was nothing less than outright independence. From that point on Zhenbao participated in the often violent protests that rocked Hong Kong, organising and spearheading the demonstrators, building barricades, dashing from one district to another in a frenzied game of hide and seek with police. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | His group's tactics involved targeting Mainland MSS undercover operators and their agent provocateurs, amongst whom were certain criminal triads, who staged vicious attacks on police, firemen and public facilities which were attributed to students in the state controlled news agencies. Zhenbao and his friends, were amongst a growing number of radical Hongkongers who were targeting Beijing and its oppressive policies. Their objective was to organise a structured movement capable of resisting the march towards authoritarianism. The plan was to pressurise the government into abandoning the policies being imposed by Beijing in a direct challenge to China's Communist Party, bent on transforming Hong Kong into just another Chinese city. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Zhenbao's plan was independence, which was as dangerous as it was audacious. He with his friends organised themselves in cells, used pseudonyms, wore balaclavas, dark glasses, dressed in black, risking the fury of Hong Kong's masters by their calls to liberate Hong Kong. To Zhenbao and his friends, the Hong Kong puppet government saw any challenge to the authority of Beijing as an illegal act, it was why they were determined to overthrow LegCo at any cost. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Chinese officials in an article published in the Global Times, a state controlled media organ, publicly accused the demonstrators of terrorism following the storming of Beijing's Central Government Liaison Office by black-clad activists who ransacked the glass and steel skyscraper bearing the state seal of China. Thousands gathered and eggs were hurled at the building and its walls tagged with slogans 'Revolution in Our Time'. In the battle to dislodge the intruders considerable means were deployed with anti-riot police armed with batons, tear gas, pepper spray and water canons tearing into the crowd. The demonstrators objective was to send a clear message to Zhongnanhai, the seat of the red princes in Beijing, with tactics borrowed from Bruce Lee: |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | 'Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way around or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves. Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.' |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | To young people like Zhenbao and Henrique, who were adolescents in 1997, the 50 years transition period would be up in their lifetime, when those who made the deal were long dead. Beijing's vice like grip was slowly tightening and their future under an authoritarian regime looked grim, but they would not relinquish their freedoms and rights without a fight. Leaving Hong Kong for London, Lisbon or Vancouver, was not an option for them. They had little choice but to heed Hong Kong's richest man, Li Ka-shing, who commended Hongkongers to 'love China, love Hong Kong and love yourself'. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Li's message figured in front-page advertisements in two major newspapers, the Hong Kong Economic Times and Hong Kong Economic Journal, with the two large characters 'No Violence' stamped on the international red 'forbidden' sign. However, the side slogans, according to a learned scholar in Oriental studies, Victor H. Mair, contained a cryptic message that suggested something else: 'The cause and the result depend upon China. Let Hong Kong rule itself', or, 'No violence; China is in overall charge of things, but let Hong Kong take care of its business too.' |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The message followed the seemingly endless confrontations between police and protesters that had plunged Hong Kong into its worst crisis since China took over in 1997, which only went to confirming Pat Kennedy's worst imaginings, Hong Kong had embarked on a long slippery road to direct rule from Beijing, which was not a good augur for his bank's future. | | ---|---|--- # 2 # UNWELCOME VISITORS THE MEDITERRANEAN WAS AT the centre of an almost daily drama linked to climate change, or was it was more realistic to say the overpopulation of the planet, an idea that did not please the politically correct luvvies of London and Paris, who either saw shades of racism in anything linked to immigration controls, or eugenics where it came to population control. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The focal point was the Italian port of Lampedusa, where the captain of Sea-Watch 3, a 31 year old German woman, had rescued 40 African migrants from their sinking boat. An undeniably laudable act. However, two weeks later Carola Rackete, a Greenpeace activist was arrested trying to enter Italian waters, to illegally land the immigrants at Lampedusa. The wretched men and women were victims of multiple dramas, first, poverty and strife in their homelands, second, being caught up in the Libyan civil war, third, shipwrecked at sea, and now the legalities of EU immigration controls in the form of Matteo Salvini, Italy's interior minister, who refused entry of the vessel into his country's territorial waters. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The captain of the vessel declared: 'What I'm really scared of is the damage we are doing to our planet, and the hostility that may be unleashed against those fleeing drought, famine, fires and storms.' She was of course right about the dangers of collapse, but the root cause for the collapse was the proliferation of the human species, wherever it lived. Helping the immigrants was a humanitarian gesture, but a drop in the ocean, the problem was not there, it was to stop galloping population growth, which was inevitable linked to food, consumption and the need for agricultural land. None of that was the fault of those desperate migrants seeking salvation in better climes. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Her diatribe about right-wing politics, capitalists, profiteers, 'who either manufacture disaster or take advantage of it to gain wealth and power. The climate crisis will cause disasters that could help tyrants and fascists seize the reins,' missed the point. It was the human species collectively at the source of the problem, their numbers, that motivated the kind of misguided eco-warriors who focused their movements on the political arguments of the past to justify their actions. | | ---|---|--- # 3 # VERNISSAGE SCOTT FITZNORMAN WAS uncharacteristically anxious, with yet another public transport strike, another chaotic weekend ahead in Paris, he was about to inaugurate the first exhibition at his new gallery on rue des Beaux-Arts, a couple of minutes walk from Saint-Germain-des-Pres. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The transformation and the installation of a collection of fine primitive art had taken a considerable amount of time and effort and he was fretting about the effect the strike could have on the many guests he had invited for the champagne vernissage, part of Parcours des Mondes, an annual art show dedicated to traditional art from Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas. He needn't have worried, it was not as if Scott's clients were the kind of people to take a bus, though a few did use the metro, one of them was Camille. She took Ligne numero 1, from Bastille to Palais Royal. It was automatic, no driver, and for the moment automats had no social issues. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | It was just four stops and once emerged on rue de Rivoli she cut through the Louvre, past the tourists ambling around the Cour Carree, to the other side and the Seine, to the footbridge. The weather was pleasant, a change from the sticky tropical Amazonian heat she'd endured over the previous two weeks. She wound her way through the crowd, over the Pont des Arts, where a groups of Chinese filmed their visit, snapped selfies, or were simply admiring the view. On the Left Bank she turned up rue Bonaparte, then onto rue des Beaux-Arts where Scott Fitznorman's fine arts gallery was situated next to l'Hotel--that was its name, l'Hotel, a splendid five star boutique hotel, noted for its style, which corresponded to the name of the street on which it stood. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Pat had acquired the gallery to expand his field into African and pre-Colombian art. Gallerie Blumenthal was divided into two wings situated either side of the entrance and reception. The gallery's sober facade remained unchanged, which its late owner, Charles Blumenthal, had maintained for almost half a century. Blumenthal's Swiss family, long standing business friends of Pat's, had decided to cede the business to him. Charles Blumenthal's widow was passing the last year's of her life on the Gold Coast of Lake Zurich, whilst their children and grandchildren, now bankers and real estate developers in London and New York, had neither the desire nor the time to consecrate their efforts to the arcane field of ethnic art, though they remained dedicated collectors. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The one condition was the gallery continued as Blumenthal's, a kind of monument to the old man, a lingering vestige of his German grandfather's interest in African Art, which glossed over the fact he had made his fortune in tropical hardwoods following the Scramble for Africa, when the German colonial empire, under its three successive kaisers had colonised the Cameroons, an area then larger than Nigeria today. Blumenthal's grandfather moved to Switzerland at the outbreak of WWI, where he continued to trade in tropical hardwoods and supply the belligerents with the wood needed for pit props in their coal mines and sleepers for their railways, logged by bonded Africans, often under their Ashanti masters. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | That history was forgotten now that African Art was prized by rich men for their collections and the collections of reputed museums such as the Getty Center, the Metropolitan and the Smithsonian. The principal change in the Parisian gallery was the addition of a collection of pre-Columbian pieces, concentrated mostly on South American civilisations, as opposed to those of Meso-America. Fitznorman was delighted to see Camille, even though there was still another couple of hours before the other guests arrived. 'Where's Liam?' 'With Pat, looking at a property in the Marais.' 'Ah, Pat's investing in a real place in Paris.' 'It seems like it.' |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Scott presented the exhibits on display, African figures and masques, then some even stranger stone figures from Colombia, Chimu-Chavin, a style more distinctive and primitive in comparison with the more recognised classic pre-Columbian styles. 'So Scott, are you ready?' 'As ready as I'll ever be,' he replied turning to admire the exhibits. 'I mean for our next film shoot.' 'Oh, yes, the end of next week. HG will be here in a couple of days. After a rest we'll be ready to leave for Bogota.' 'Great. Have you swatted up on Brazilian collectables?' she asked a little seriously. 'Sure, don't worry Camille, everything is ready.' | | ---|---|--- # 4 # LIDAR |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | KEN HISAKAWA had shown how his field of work had been transformed, thanks to Lidar technology, as had the work of other archaeologists, who until recently had to depend on what was visible to the human eye when searching for evidence of unknown sites. Now thanks to laser Light Detection and Ranging, known by the acronym Lidar, all that had changed, as the technology introduced a new way of scanning entire regions in search for undiscovered archaeological sites. There were two types of Lidar, topographic and bathymetric. Topographic Lidar used a near-infrared laser to map the land by penetrating overlying vegetation, while bathymetric Lidar used water-penetrating green light to measure sea floor and riverbed elevations. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Recently archaeologists with their airborne lasers had explored the Mexican states of Tabasco and Chiapas where they identified hitherto unknown sites through the dense forest cover. In total the ruins of 27 Maya religious and cultural complexes were located. In 2009, the same methods were used to map Caracol, a Maya city in Belize, a site Pat Kennedy and his friends had visited in 2018. Thanks to this new technology archaeologists discovered parts of the city previously unknown. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | There were many questions concerning the origins of the Mayan civilisation and its links with the Olmecs, a culture that preceded it, and more importantly the origins of Mesoamerican civilisations and their links to other in pre-Columbian cultures, especially sites in the triangle formed by the frontiers of present day Brazil, Ecuador and Peru. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The research was comparable to that of ancient cities of the Khmer civilisation in Cambodia, where apart from the temples and stone structures, there was little trace of the dwelling places of the inhabitants of those cities. The central areas would have been surrounded by the homes of the privileged elite, and beyond by the modest dwellings of the ordinary people. All would have been crossed by networks of roads and waterways, beyond which were the gardens and fields that provided the city with food. Almost all of the dwellings would have been built of perishable materials that were long since swallowed up by the tropical forest after the collapse. Even the stone temples were forgotten, overgrown by dense vegetation until 19th century explorers and archaeologists stumbled on the ruins. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | It was a subject of intense interest to Pat Kennedy, and the existential question--why? Why had those cities been abandoned? Why had those civilisations collapsed? More importantly was the question of the future of today's civilisation, which seemed more and more fragile, with so many dysfunctionalities. It was why INI, as part of partnership programme, backed research in China, Egypt and Latin America. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The reason for this apparent goodwill was image building, by participating in projects related to social and environmental issues, which had a positive impact on the bank's reputation and in the end its profitability. Pat did not of course manage this personally, it was not his role, his was to guide his ship through the shoals of a world where the financial and geopolitical order was in constant flux Pat Kennedy had his preferred interests with art, history, archaeology and anthropology at the top of the list, and he keenly followed all the news on those subjects, especially research carried out at major pre-Columbian sites, where until recently most effort had been concentrated on the restoration of the monumental works. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Regrettably, little attention had been given to how the ordinary people lived, that is until Lidar was invented. Pat had first remarked the results of Lidar in Nicaragua and Honduras, and when it was suggested he broaden the scope of Indians to investigate the existence of early pre-Columbian civilisations in the Amazon, he had in truth needed little persuading, especially when it came from Camille Clancy and Anna Basurko. |