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100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Already two pillars of the territory's economy, the retail and tourist industries, were suffering as the holiday season was approaching and tourist arrivals were dropping leaving hotels and attractions struggling. Pat feared the former colony would be finished as an international business hub if the Chinese army intervened. The Peoples Liberation Army, a strange name for oppressors, he thought, would not hesitate to crush the demonstrators--with tanks, like Tiananmen, the 'Door of Heavenly Peace'. Who would trust Hong Kong's currency, who would be willing to buckle under the rule of law set by the men in Beijing. In the best case there would be a deep recession, but if things went really very wrong there would be a headlong flight of business and money from Hong Kong, spelling disaster for INI. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Pat as head of a vast financial business empire--as his duty demanded, followed every event of any importance across the globe. Every day decisions were left to his executives and analysts, whilst the Fitzwilliams Foundation, headed by his trusted friend John Francis, analysed geopolitical trends and key events. He himself had, in a manner of speaking, like many of the two billion owners of smartphones, become addicted to information, prey in a mediatic battle for attention, if not minds, and it was evident to Pat, that the increasing flood of information and news had reached overload, exemplified by Trumpian fake news. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Lili's family argued, banks like HSBC and Standard Chartered had been present in Hong Kong for more than 150 years, they had survived the Japanese occupation, the People's War and the Communist Revolution. Hong Kong was China's financial window on the world, and in the long run INI would overcome any changes, it was not the moment to waver. However, that did not prevent the bank from taking measures to reinforce its position in its other markets, especially in relatively nearby Singapore, one of the links in the City of London's post-colonial financial empire. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Even if Hong Kong was beginning to look like a war zone, threatened by the shadow of the People's Liberation Army, the Hang Seng, the world's fifth most important stock market by value, remained steady, as did the Hong Kong property market--a good indicator of sentiment. Nevertheless, anticipation was a golden rule for investors, and now was the time to take action. Pat started by moving his family to London, ostensibly for the Christmas season and year end holidays. His timing couldn't have been better, a week later an unforeseen shadow appeared on the horizon. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | In the meantime, the Hong Kong elections, which had at first glance seemed positive, had in fact increased the pressure on the two sides. The Legislative Council refused to budge, and the students, now a full-blown pro-democracy movement, encouraged by the massive electoral victory, retrenched, and another week of violence shook the city, many people could not work, shops were shuttered, schools and universities closed, the MTR and bus routes were paralysed, children and the elderly were too frightened to venture out in many districts. What at first had seemed like a student movement was beginning to take on serious political and financial overtones, and Pat like many Hongkongers, could no longer ignore the possibility of a dramatic end to the crisis. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | It was a situation he could never have imagined, a reality, and with all the consequences it brought. The crisis that had broke several months earlier, when protests were organised to fight an extradition bill that would have seen Hongkongers being sent for trial in China, now metamorphosed into an increasingly anti-authoritarian government movement with no possible good ending. The Legislative Council, the Hong Kong governing body, was stacked against the pro-democracy camp since its head, Carrie Lam, appointed by the Central People's Government in Beijing, was looking more and more like one of those stone faced hard-line authoritarian party hacks, answerable to the faceless men in Zhongnanhai. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | As the shadow cast by Beijing over the frontier darkened, fear grew, and those who could started to make plans to quit Hong Kong in the knowledge they were without means to fight. A glance at what was happening to the Uighurs in Xinjiang was a terrifying vision of what could happen to the young protesters--camps and re-education. There was no end in sight. The cost of intervention would be high, Beijing could not afford to pussyfoot around with Hong Kong, there was too much at stake with the Uighurs, or Taiwan, to give in to the rebels in the former British colony, the turbulent south, where Sun Yat-sen had joined the movement that overthrew last dynasty of the Middle Kingdom. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Even though Hong Kong accounted for 3% of the mainland's economy, much less than in 1997, there was no way it could prevent a forceful intervention, if Beijing moved. | | ---|---|--- # 2 # ECONOMY CAMILLE'S VISION OF SOCIETY was coloured by her education and the relatively straitened finances of her otherwise very privileged family. She was what could be described as an open-minded progressive socialist, and none of those ideas had changed since her family fortunes had been revived by the fabulous Sommieres Collection and her marriage to Liam Clancy. In fact, the story of Liam's modest family background and the difficulties he had experienced during the crisis that hit Ireland in 2008, had gone to reinforce certain of her ideas and her vision of the world. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Both she and Liam, in spite of their considerable wealth, were liberals, supporting social justice and an equitable economy, militating against discrimination of all kinds, against climate change and the destruction of the natural environment, though they were not blind to the harsh realities of life. Ekaterina shrugged when Camille asked her about Art Basel Miami, where bananas were making headlines. An artwork, said to be worth 120,000 dollars, consisted of a banana taped to a wall, which in an act of defiance was eaten by the artist himself, who promptly replaced it with another banana. 'Perhaps it's a sign of the times,' said Dee, 'throw away art, or an act of desperation on the part of its creator in search of new expression?' Ekaterina looked blank. She didn't get that kind of reasoning. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | 'I don't know,' said Dee bifurcating, 'all I know is things are not going well in the US, like in so many other places, when a banana taped to a wall is said to be worth so much, and when 40% of Americans would have difficulty to pay a 500 dollar repair bill if their car broke down.' Pat 'Dee' O'Connelly had witnessed severe poverty in the streets of San Francisco, as for Art Basel Miami it was synonymous with wealth in a country where such a large proportion of the nation's income enriched those already rich, a situation not seen since the pre-Great Depression days of Scott Fitzgerald's Great Gatsby. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The US evolving was into a science fiction writer's futuristic dystopian society, an economy and democracy of the 1%, for the 1% and by the 1%, when its richest citizens, Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Bill Gates of Microsoft and Warren Buffet of Berkshire Hathaway, controlled more wealth than the entire bottom half of the US population. It was staggering when Bill Gates--who presented himself as a philanthropist, could order a yacht priced at 640 million dollars, when tens of thousands of down-and-outs shuffled through the streets of downtown San Francisco like a zombie invasion, just a few miles away from Microsoft's vast new Mountain View Campus in Silicon Valley, or its new AI site across the Bay in Berkeley. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | One could confuse the wealth of a country with the wealth of certain successful individuals in that country. Amongst these individuals were those who invented new products and developed new ideas that fulfilled consumers needs, building new wealth through creativity and productivity. Others, however, succeeded by exploiting consumers, or their own workers, which did not increase their country's overall wealth. It was necessary to distinguish wealth creation from wealth extraction. The latter, exploiting consumers or workers, was a process whereby one individual took wealth from others. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | John Francis, as an economist, liked to explain the growth of wealth, that is achieving higher standards of living, was the result of greater productivity, which was greatest when it came from the pursuit of knowledge. Wealth creation, he insisted, came from growing the economic pie, rather than trying to get a larger share of the existing pie. The belief of conservatives, in the power of markets--the idea that unfettered markets could run the economy, had been proven to be wrong, John believed politicians had failed to manage the transition from a manufacturing economy to a service economy, to regulate the financial sector, to control globalisation and modulate its punishing effect on weaker industries. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The other factor stemmed from Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, both of whom believed deregulation and tax cuts would open up the economy by providing incentives which would stimulate the supply of goods and services and consequently wages. As a result, Keynesian economics, based on maintaining full employment through managing demand through monetary and fiscal policy, was replaced with supply-side economics, which argued economic growth could best be created by lowering taxes and less regulation, as opposed to demand-side economics. Now, Trump opted for a supply-side policy with tax cuts designed to boost the economy, which seen in the light of Reagan's experience produced a long period of huge fiscal deficits, slower growth, and to boot greater inequality. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | George Bush Senior called Reagan's supply-side economics 'voodoo economics'. Which prompted Joseph Stiglitz to call Trump's policy 'voodoo economics on steroids'. Trumponomics combined low taxes for the rich, financial and environmental deregulation, against a backdrop of nativism and protectionism. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Boris Johnson promised more of the same policies, it was like a contagion as populists including Le Pen in France, Morawiecki in Poland, Orban in Hungary, Erdogan in Turkey, Duterte in the Philippines, and Bolsonaro in Brazil, jumped on the bandwagon. These leaders and would-be leaders had one thing in common in that they all sought to blame outsiders for their country's problems, as nativist nationalists promoted the innate virtues of their people, flattering a vulnerable electorate with lies, those who wanted their prejudices confirmed by demagogues like Farage.. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The consequence of Trump's U-turn on the Paris Agreement would be huge social costs linked to carbon emissions. Costs so high that no single business, however large, or country however rich, could bear. Only government regulations enforced by international institutions on a planetary scale could have an impact on the reduction of carbon emissions and their existential threat to humanity. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Politics and economics were inseparable, evidenced by laws, which over the previous two decades, allowed many business heads to abuse their power, enabling CEOs and their cohorts to corner large shares of their firm's income through remuneration packages that included salaries, bonuses, pension plans and perks as well as the use of private jets. It was a trend which inevitably lead to greater inequality and lower growth, making the theory of trickle-down economics risible, an erroneous supposition that suggested when the economy grows, all would benefit, even the most lowly. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The promise of a middle-class life for all following World War II was beginning to seem more and more utopian in spite of the fact Western societies were considerable better off than then. The fact was the main beneficiaries of the growth of the last quarter century were those at the very top. Whatever sector of society was examined: politics, business, industry, showbiz, even health and education, those at the top were raking it in, whilst the toiling masses worked for less. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Populist movements raised questions about the wisdom of democratic electorates when politicians set-up their nativism nationalistic platforms to attract naive voters, who were blind to the fact that the same politicians and their banker friends had brought the global economy to the brink of ruin and were responsible for the global financial crisis of 2008. Not one banker was jailed for lack of due diligence or misdeeds, instead, their banks were rescued, directors rewarded with mega-bonuses, whilst the man in the street paid the bill and suffered in silence. John Francis had yet to see an elite government leader serve any but his own kind, starting with his or her own ambitions. | | ---|---|--- # 3 # THE IMPACT OF AI |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | ALL CIVILISATIONS, AFTER REACHING their apogee of power and glory, faded and died, victims of strife in the form of war, conquest, tyranny and slavery. That's what our history books teach us. What has been less described were the effects of economic and social collapse caused by environmental and technological change. Of course we were taught about the impact of the Bronze Age and how it gave way to the Iron Age. Then there were the wars and famines, recurring dramas, from biblical times until the present. The first of those two spectres was still present--war, which had consistently brought technological progress, even if it was initially in the form of better weapons, as can be seen today, when Artificial Intelligence is employed to guide missiles and fly jet fighters. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Many global leaders, political, industrial and scientific, amongst them the late Stephen Hawking, followed by Elon Musk and Bill Gates, had warned of the dangers of AI. Some feared humanity was heading towards singularity, a point, a singular moment in time, when the ability of thinking machines outgrows that of those who created them, and progress accelerates with unforeseeable consequences for humanity. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The former president of Google China, Kai-Fu Lee, predicted 40% of jobs would eventually disappear as AI took over, the effect of which would be massive in terms of unemployment, and the subsequent transformation of society. However, if John Francis was right, it would not necessarily be a bad thing, his vision was of a Cornucopian society, where an abundance of all material things was produced by machines and where work became obsolete, replaced by the vocation of dedicated men and women, a privilege, perhaps a reward, and where each and everyone enjoyed a universal basic income, with recompenses for contributions to society and civic well-being. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Evolution had created men, Homo sapiens sapiens--after three and a half billion years of trial and error, and contrary to what our religions and philosophers told us, we were not the ultimate creation as written in the Bible--when God created mankind in his own image. Now, humanity is about to give birth to AI, which will not only surpass human intelligence, but succeed it, dominate mankind the way men now dominate apes, or exterminate humanity, after all what use would AI have for men? |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | What did billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel and Tesla founder Elon Musk foundation have in common? Both were extremely rich. Both had invested in the future of AI, the former funded the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, the latter in the Future of Life Institute. Both believed AI would be the next step in evolution, either for the benefit of humanity, or by destroying it. One of the Pat's compatriots, a certain Sean Ó hÉigeartaigh, an AI researcher, studied the philosophical questions linked to the future of AI. At the centre of his reflections was the conundrum, would AI dominate us, or vice versa? Which raised questions of AI and consciousness, shared values and the future of humanity. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | It was a common fallacy to assume that AI would always be at the service of humanity, like a dependent and respectful servant, on the contrary, could it turn against its masters? The shadow of super-intelligent machines now hung over the humanity, accompanied by multiple dangers, the most frightening of which was the idea it could harm humanity, and that was not science fiction. The question society had to ask itself was whether its leaders were sufficiently enlightened to understand the changes AI would bring, one which would require a plan on the scale of the Manhattan Project to avoid its dangers | | ---|---|--- # 4 # DIRTY MONEY |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | BORIS JOHNSON PREACHED A POST-BREXIT vision of the UK attracting investment by lowering taxes and fewer regulations. The question was what kind of investment? Already the City of London was a magnet for dirty money, channelled through the numerous tax havens controlled by the UK, in the Caribbean, or more indirectly via feeders such as its former colonies, including Hong Kong and Singapore. A system that deprived governments of taxes and the poor and needy of aid, one that often profited the same rich celebrities who clamoured for aid to the poor and downtrodden whilst squirreling away their own money in tax havens. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Most people saw dirty money as bundles or container loads of cash from drug syndicates, Colombian and Mexican cartels, gangs and small time dealers, collected and laundered in an opaque offshore banking system, or through the gold markets of Dubai. But that was was a mere cottage industry compared to the offshore network operated and controlled by the City of London, the world's largest hub for channelling dirty money, estimated at 400 billion dollars, derived from every kind of crookery invented by man, from rigged procurement to bribery, from embezzlement to the unlawful acquisition of state assets, not forgetting plain theft, by individuals and their vehicles scattered across the planet, often in poor countries, or those that were ruled by crooked oligarchies. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The idea that the City and its clients could clean up their game, open their books, was a pipe-dream, an impossible task. The honey pot was too tempting, the habit too difficult to kick for the innumerable accomplices who provided the services and means--private banks, big accounting firms, real estate agents, international banks, builders of private jets and yachts, businesses, think-tanks, newspapers, even schools, universities, and political parties. A vast network of vested interests worked in symbiosis with the crooked beneficiaries, a network now seeking independence, freeing itself of the constraints of the EU, to make more money. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | A system that drained talent away from science and industry by offering highly paid jobs in the City as wealth managers for corrupt oligarchs and their families who extorted the wealth of their fellow citizens. They distorted asset prices to the detriment of productive industry and home owners, and by doing so impoverished whole regions in the UK. But could the UK carry out reforms alone when other candidates to replace the City looked on, lining up to fill the vacuum when it came. As the Brits stumbled along the path to Brexit, the economy of one of the much vaunted models, Hong Kong, slumped more than three 3% in the quarter, not a good omen for Pat Kennedy. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Nothing lasts for ever, changes come and go. Hong Kong, a city that had been a growth reference for decades was looking at negative growth for the whole year as China was hit by the Trump effect. Tourist numbers, year on year, plunged nearly 35%. Those absent were non-mainland Chinese from Taiwan, South Koreans, Japanese, Malaysians and Singaporeans, frightened off by the disorder caused by the mass protests that were wracking the city. As the year end approached, previsions for INI's two main poles, London and Hong Kong, were not looking good for 2020, the Year of the Rat, an animal considered a protector and a bringer of prosperity in Chinese culture. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Suddenly Latin America was in ebullition, a couple of countries down from Camille Clancy's expedition demonstrators were building barricades on the streets of La Paz, the Bolivian capital, where strikers protested against election fraud, one that gave Evo Morales, Latin America's longest-serving head of state, a fourth term with just over 47% of votes, conveniently avoiding the peril of a run-off. * * * 'The UK was the best place in the world to launder your money, if you're thinking about that,' John told Kyril with a knowing smile. 'But perhaps you should wait until after Brexit, it will be a thousand times easier.' |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The City of London was the favourite hunting ground for kleptocrats, fraudsters and crooks, where they stole or hid hundreds of billions of pounds, dollars and euros every year, and the latest in that long list of criminals was Isabel dos Santos, Africa's richest woman, daughter of Angola's former president, Jose Eduardo dos Santos, who ruled that country for 38 years. After having stolen money from their victims, often poor underdeveloped countries with autocratic rulers, the main task of the criminals and their intermediaries was to launder it, use it on the open market, for their own enjoyment. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | It was where the City's many banks came in. London, Europe's most important money laundering hub, with readily available corporate structures registered in the UK, served as an opaque screen to dissimulate the identities of criminals and their accomplices, a national scandal deliberately brushed under the carpet by the UK's complaisant authorities. It was child's play, any enterprising crook could go to the Companies House web site and set up a company using fraudulent information with a few key strokes from his laptop. Until 2011, only registered firms could access the Companies House web site, firms that bore the legal responsibility for verification of the data supplied by their clients for the incorporation of new companies. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Then, the UK government, in its wisdom, decided to open Companies House to any would-be entrepreneur, allowing all and sundry to access its services via internet, from anywhere in the world, giving them freedom to create a new UK company for a modest sum with a couple of clicks and a valid credit card. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Gone were the controls, suddenly it was as easy to create a company as it was to open a Facebook account. The idea was wannabe entrepreneurs would rush out to set up businesses and by doing so would boost the UK economy. That didn't happen, but what did happen was a lot of fast thinking crooks jumped in to take advantage of the new loophole to set up furtive businesses, enabling all kinds of fraudsters and bent politicians to hide their identities behind a labyrinth of screen companies. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | John le Carre summed up the British position in his book, Agent Running in the Field, where in the words of his protagonist, former agent, Arkady, derisively speaking of the British said, 'We're special. We're British. We don't need Europe. We won all our wars alone. No Americans, no Russians, no anyone. We're supermen.' |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | And of Trump: 'He's Putin's shithouse cleaner. He does everything for little Vladi that little Vladi can't do for himself: pisses on European unity, pisses on human rights, pisses on NATO. Assures us that Crimea and Ukraine belong to the Holy Russian Empire, the Middle East belongs to the Jews and the Saudis, and to hell with the world order. And you Brits, what do you do? You suck his dick and invite him to tea with your Queen. You take our black money and wash it for us. You welcome us if we're big enough crooks. You sell us half London. You wring your hands when we poison our traitors and you say please, please, dear Russian friends, trade with us.' * * * |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | It was early afternoon when the news came in over their satellite link that Boris Johnson had won a grand slam victory, trouncing the opposition led by that out of touch old school radical, Jeremy Corbyn. Pat Kennedy shrugged his shoulders, the markets shot up, the promise of a less regulated City would certainly do no harm to his bank, in any case the bank's unit in Amsterdam--now its EU continental base, and its historic structure in Dublin, ensured its ability to pursue its business in both economic spheres. The idea that Johnson's victory would open the door to a Nirvana-like, anything goes, free-market, offshore base that could compete with the EU, was anything but certain. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Camille, Liam and John were glum, the thought of the UK leaving the EU in a little over a month was a sad event, reversing the course of the 75 years of European integration that followed WWII, in exchange for a free marketeer vision of the United Kingdom with its possible disintegration. Brexit came when, for the first time in centuries, a European could travel unhindered from Crete to Lapland, from Lisbon to Warsaw, crossing the culturally richest and densest collection of civilisations on earth, a kaleidoscope of languages, architecture, colourful traditions, rich tables, and peoples living together in peace and harmony, unopressed by Brussels. Compared to the uniformity of the US, its cultural monotony, marked by the same outlets and brands wherever one looked. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Rising from the ashes of two terrible wars, Europeans had rebuilt their cities, created a union of common aspirations, open borders, prosperity, shaking of the Soviet yoke of Communism, building a new society based on cooperation, friendship, exchange and tolerance. The United Kingdom was seduced by a loud-mouthed demagogue in the form of the beer swilling Farage, 'rhymes with garage', he told the media between guffaws and dragging deeply and morbidly on his ever-present cigarette. * * * As Hong Kong plunged into a deeper state of turmoil many of its residents looked for a safe haven, a place they, their family, and their money would be safe when the crunch came as it surely would. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The world was on a new path as leaders and governments became more and more authoritarian in their effort to control their more and more uncontrollable populations, empowered by the knowledge and freedom internet had given them. It was not easy to move to a freer land as doors closed under the growing pressure caused by immigration, an age old human option when pressures became too great. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Perhaps the world had been the oyster of ancient man as he set out in search of new territories, 'empty' or to seize, a long history that changed when Europeans discovery of lands unknown to them at the end of the 15th century, starting with the coasts of Africa and the Cape, followed by the Americas, then Australia and New Zealand, and finally at the beginning of the 19th century when they began their march into the heart of Africa. In the centuries that followed the discoveries millions of Europeans and others set out for those lands in search of a better life, mostly to the detriment of those who already lived in those 'empty' lands. But there can be no denying there was space. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Today, there are no new lands to be discovered, not only that, both, the new and old, were nearing saturation point. Now the hope of reaching a land of opportunities, already rich, where a new future could be built for the lucky arrivals, faded, as pressures in those lands rose and barriers came down. As the future dimmed in less favoured nations, their rich bypassed the barriers by opting for citizenship of small countries that saw a source of revenue in selling passports in exchange for cash and investment. It was why a strange event was organised in London, at a five-star hotel, where ministers of a number of countries gathered to promote their programmes. They were strange bedfellows, coming from the Caribbean island of St Lucia, Albania, Montenegro, Malta, Antigua and Barbuda, and Cyprus. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Their so-called golden passports not only offered citizenship of the host country, but also visa-free travel to the UK, the European Union's Schengen Area, Hong Kong, Singapore and many other countries. It was something that displeased the EU, not happy at the idea of the EU becoming a safe haven for criminals and a dirty money destination. The event was organised by Henley & Partners, a London-based firm that promoted citizenship-by-investment programmes, offering those with deep pockets the possibility of owning a second passport, a good business that had made tens of millions of dollars for Henley in commissions gained from selling citizenship. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The publicity attracted by certain of the bank's clients did not please John Francis, amongst them were firms in the British Virgin Islands, where the Malaysian crook Jho Low had set up a company to buy the mega-yacht paid in part from the billions he stole from MDB1 and the money borrowed from Pat Kennedy's bank. Low, now a fugitive from justice, held a Cyprus passport, obtained in exchange for a two million dollar investment. Cyprus, as a member of the EU, bestowed on its new citizens the freedom of movement throughout the rest of the Union. It was a lucrative business, and Cyprus had made six billion dollars in issuing several thousand passports as since it launched the scheme in 2013. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | A newcomer was Albania, a country with a troubled past, which was not yet a member of the EU, but hopefully soon would be and was already cashing in on the fact that Albanian citizens would have the right to live and work across the bloc once it entered the Union. The same went for Montenegro. It was a doubtful practice that opened the door to all sorts of shady candidates, especially those to whom money was no object. * * * Far away from the forests of the Amazon, other human beings seemed bent on Armageddon as the sky darkened over the Middle East, the cradle of human civilisation, where the risk of a new war rose to a most dangerous level. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | An attack on Saudi oilfields left dense black clouds rising above the burning oil pumping facilities of Abqaiq, the world's largest oil processing centre, after multiple strikes by unidentified missiles. Who was behind the attack that saw oil prices leap 15%? The world held its breath as fingers pointed to Iran. If the suspicions were confirmed the attack was insane, a provocation that would precipitate the region into a new and dangerous large scale war and just as Washington pondered a meeting with the Iranian leader to defuse tensions. The attack on Saudi Arabia's oil facilities threatened global oil supplies with more than 5% of global oil supplies knocked out. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | A massive series of explosions at the huge oil processing plant sent flames high into the sky from nineteen points of impact at Saudi Arabia's most important oil producing facilities. Evidence pointed to a concerted cruise missile attack from a direction north-west of the targets, that is the direction of Iraq and Iran, an information that contradicted claims by Yemeni rebels to the south who pointed to an attack by drones. Whatever the geopolitical consequences it should have underlined not only the world's addiction to oil, but its concentration in one of the planet's most dangerously volatile regions, with a history of 5,000 years of conflict, where the tectonic plates of antagonistic civilisations met. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | It was the underside of fossil fuels and the vast profits they brought, profits that had built palaces in the sands, profligate spending on luxuries, crumbs thrown to immigrant workers, dollars that enriched arms dealers and builders of fighter jets, smart bombs, helicopters and missiles. Where the US, Russia, China, the UK and Israel queued up at the trough, when they weren't shooting at each other, to get their share. | | ---|---|--- # 5 # RUSSIAN PALS EKATERINA AND JOHN WERE surprised to see Boris Johnson, following his landslide election victory, accompanied by his girlfriend Carrie Symonds, turn up at a lavish birthday party thrown by the Russian billionaire Alexander Lebedev at his mansion overlooking Regent's Park. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Amongst the guests at Lebedev's vodka and caviar birthday party were former prime minister David Cameron and his wife Samantha, George Osborne, Peter Mandelson--the strange lord, Mick Jagger, Princess Eugenie, actors Matt Smith and Rosamund Pike, the model Lily Cole, comedians Eddie Izzard and David Baddiel, the artist Grayson Perry, sculptor Antony Gormley and many others. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Galling for Britain's poor and gullible, to whom Bojo promised a better post-Brexit life, of course those who read the press were not surprised by his presence at the party, their newly elected prime minister was not a newcomer to Lebedev's bashes. As foreign secretary in Theresa May's government, he was famously photographed looking a little worse for wear on his way back from Lebedev's palazzo near Perugia, after the kind of party where gossip, intelligence and information, flowed as freely as the vodka. Whatever else the latest party was, it was an extraordinary demonstration of the influence of the Lebedev family on the cream of British society following Johnson's election win. 'Zdravstvuyte,' the leader of a 'people's government'. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The latest fling must have been a heart warming scene for Vladimir Putin with whom the Russian exile maintained cordial relations, in spite of past differences, when his bank was raided at a time when Lebedev backed the independent Novaya Gazeta. The fact that he maintained good relations with the Kremlin should have been a warning, especially after going as far as publicly supporting Putin's annexation of Crimea, where Lebedev owned a hotel complex in the seaside resort of Alushta at which he staged a media symposium, telling Russian state TV that biased Western media had put out a false impression of the situation in the Crimea. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Ekaterina reminded John she had spotted Maria Zakharova, Russia's foreign ministry spokesperson at Lebedev's book launch in Moscow. Zakharova's demure looks hid her reputation as a Kremlin hardliner, who had denied any Russian involvement in the poisoning of Sergei Skripal in Salisbury, even going as far as suggesting spies had kidnapped Skripal. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Johnson had refused to publish the Russia Report, prepared by the previous parliament's intelligence and security committee, which examined Moscow's influence on British politics and how the Russian elite has established a powerful lobby in the UK, jetting politicians and celebrities around on private planes to lavish parties where Champagne and vodka flowed and caviar was ladled out. When Mayor of London, Johnson had made many trips to the Lebedevs' luxurious palazzo in Ronti, Italy, as well as to their parties in London. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Amongst Lebedev's regular guests were luvvies like Keira Knightley, her husband James Righton, and Ralph Fiennes. George Osborne, recent UK finance minister under David Cameron, now editor of the London Evening Standard--owned by the Russian, Sarah Sands, who also edited the Standard and was now editor of BBC Radio 4's Today programme, as well as Amol Rajan, the former editor of the Independent--also owned by Lebedev, now the BBC's media editor. Lebedev, the KGB-man turned banking oligarch, aka 'the spy who came in for the gold', had during the Cold War worked at the Soviet embassy in London, not far from the offices of the Independent, situated on Kensington High Street, which he acquired in 2010, after taking a controlling interest in the London Evening Standard in 2009. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | 'Apropos Brexit,' John Francis cynically remarked, 'I suppose Bojo will join up with the US and Russia to invade Europe, free it from Brussels, then divide it in two occupied zones, we with the west and the Russians with the east.' Ekaterina flashed him daggers. Johnson, who had been expected to approve the publication of the Russia Report, compiled by a cross-party intelligence and security committee, on Russian activities in the UK, before parliament was dissolved, was suddenly in no hurry with sources saying it was vetoed with the excuse it could embarrass Donald Trump. Curiously, as if to confirm his bias, the newly elected PM insisted there was no evidence of Russian interference in the UK democratic process. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Perhaps Johnson's presence was a way of paying back the Lebedevs, since the Evening Standard had endorsed Johnson as successor to Theresa May. But John Francis saw it differently--for a newly elected British prime minister to be seen celebrating with a former Russian intelligence officer, a graduate of the KGB's Red Banner Institute, who'd held the rank of lieutenant colonel, seemed, to say the least, incongruous. Boris Johnson was many things, an epicurean fun lover and Lothario, and why not. He did not hide the fact he enjoyed gregarity, including weekend trips to Italy, even if it meant flying as an anonymous economy class passenger, rubbing shoulders with the plebs. He was a familiar figure at the Palazzo Terranove in Perugia, guest of Evgeny Lebedev, the Russian media billionaire and socialite. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | It was a strange sortie for a British foreign secretary, the third most important minister in the government, a weekend with a Russian oligarch, a celebrity bash, where well-known personalities were present, including Katie Price and actress Joan Collins, and without a security detail for Bojo. Partying at Lebedev's restored palazzo at a time when the Kremlin was still under scrutiny wasn't exactly recommendable, soon after the Novichoc affair in Salisbury, when a former spy and his daughter were targeted by Russian FSB hitmen with the deadly nerve-agent. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Returning to London, Johnson, the foreign secretary of Her Britannic Majesty's government, had caught the attention of the tabloid press when he was seen boarding a flight at Perugia San Francesco d'Assisi Airport, in Umbria, looking very much worse for wear, dishevelled, as though he had slept in his clothes, shuffling his way to the waiting aircraft. One passenger even described Bojo as weaving his way to the steps of the waiting plane 'as though he was about to throw up on the tarmac.' It was rumoured Lebedev, the owner of the London Evening Standard and the Independent newspapers, liked to invite people who would create a spectacle at his bacchanalian parties with very important people reduced to doing very foolish stunts. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Lebedev had been a friend of Johnson's since Bojo's days as Mayor of London, at which time Boris had visit his Italian Palazzo, all expenses paid, it was no surprise Lebedev's dog was called Boris. Johnson could count on a certain number of Russian friends, including Alexander Temerko, an important donor to the Conservative Party, who had held senior posts at the Russian Defence Ministry and had been a top executive and director at the Russian oil and gas company Yukos. Temerko backed Johnson's Brexit position, an event that could only favour the Kremlin, one that weakened the EU, which inevitably led to questions of Russian influence in Downing Street, considering Temerko had donated more than a million pounds to Conservative Party funds. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Temerko had risen to prominence in the Russia arms industry in the Wild West days that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union. At that time he was close to the Russian security services, as head of a state committee for military affairs, heading a strategic Russian state arms company, the now defunct Russkoye Oruzhie. His links with Yukos went back to the time when the now dissident billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky owned the oil company. Things went bad for Khodorkovsky after he attempted to build a political power base for himself and was arrested and jailed on trumped up fraud charges, leaving Temerko as the only remaining Yukos shareholder, and as such he negotiated its take over by the Kremlin. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Khodorkovsky spent 10 years in jail whilst Temerko headed for London in 2005, where a Russian request for his extradition was debooted by the High Court. Temerko had first come into public eye during David Cameron's premiership, hitting the headlines of the tabloid press after paying 90,000 pounds for a bronze bust of his prime minister friend after a successful bid at a Conservative Party fundraising event. | | ---|---|--- # 6 # CHRISTMAS EVE WANGSHU CALLED HENRIQUE almost every day, soon she would be joining him in Brazil. Leaving Hong Kong and China would be hard and that Christmas she returned to her family for what would perhaps be one of the last they would spend together for a long time to come. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Wangshu's family were Christians, part of a growing minority that counted according to some estimates more than 100 million faithful followers. Their local Anglican church was founded in the latter half of the 19th century which Wangshu and her parents attended for the Christmas service. Her three day break with her parents in Hangkou commenced with a late-night celebratory dinner at their favourite restaurant not far from the local seafood market, a guarantee of quality her father often repeated. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Christmas was celebrated by many Chinese, not especially for religious reasons, but as a time for giving and enjoying themselves. It did not compete with their traditional Lunar New Year, but was a kind of foretaste of family reunions to come when hundreds of millions of Chinese would return home, for many their sole visit to their loved ones in the year . As Wangshu and her family enjoyed their festive Christmas Eve dinner, unknown to them, in another part of the city, a young woman was feeling unwell and running a low fever. She was one of the first persons to be infected by an unknown virus that had appeared in the conglomeration of Wuhan, of which Hankou was one of its three constituent parts. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Five days later the city authorities put out a warning, an unknown form of pneumonia had been detected in the city's hospitals, shortly after the first report concerning an outbreak of disease was transmitted to the World Health Organisation. When Wangshu's condition showed no improvement she reported to her local hospital. After a summary examination she was told to rest and was sent home with an over-the-counter medication. But that was to no avail, her condition worsened, not only did she start to experience respiratory difficulties, but eating drinking became painful. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | By January 9, the media was broadcasting news about the appearance of a Sars-like virus, the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome that killed 774 people a few years earlier, which was believed to have originated in an animal and scientists were racing to discover the source of the new virus. The first death was reported the next day along with the news the source was possibly a seafood market where game--meat from different wild animals, was also sold, in the centre of Wuhan. Wangshu was finally admitted to hospital where, despite her symptoms and the fact she had been present in a restaurant adjacent to the seafood market, she was not tested for the virus. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | It was understandable, the hospital was understaffed and overflowing with panicking patients, many of whom complained of symptoms similar to those infected by what was identified as a Coronavirus. After 12 days, her condition somewhat improved and she was discharged--without being tested and without any special precautions. The same day it was announced to the media the disease could be spread between humans and the numbers of those infected exploded. Wuhan, a city of 11 million souls, was placed under quarantine, under lockdown, all transport in and out of the city--trains, planes and buses was suspended and private cars banished from the streets. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The lockdown impacted businesses, large and small, shops, restaurants, entertainment establishments, and individuals from all walks of life, preventing them from going about their daily lives and meeting with their friends and relatives. To Wangshu the streets of Wuhan resembled a scene from a Hollywood pandemic movie as furtive shadows ducked into doorways whenever a rare vehicle passed. At the same time frenetic work commenced on the building of a new 1,000 bed hospital to handle those infected by the disease, it would be operational in a week the authorities announced, and a second two weeks later. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The seriousness of the situation was underlined when the New Year festivities were cancelled across the vast country and government declared a full scale health emergency, the highest, one which allowed quarantines and other strict measures. Wuhan was an important transport hub where the country's four cardinal points crossed, a few hours by high-speed train to most major cities, and the gateway to nine provinces. Pat feared the window for controlling the spread of the virus had already closed when Hong Kong's leading figure in infectious diseases declared after a visit to Wuhan: 'I've never felt scared. This time I'm scared.' |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | What he found was shocking, instead of finding the city on a war footing he discovered chaos and incompetence. Streets, malls and restaurants were empty, worse still supermarket shelves were not restocked. Five million people had quit the city before the quarantine came into effect. Fear provoked the spread of wild rumours and emergency services were overwhelmed. Pat Kennedy feared the worse was yet to come, he knew a small fraction of a very large number is still a very large number, and decided to head for London with Lili and their children whilst there was time. There was no cure, no vaccine, only intensive care and antibiotics could help the seriously ill, attenuating side effects such as pneumonia |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | In the meantime Wangshu reassured Henrique she was slowly recovering though she was still coughing heavily and spitting blood. Her faith in her country's authorities, already shaken by the events in Hong Kong, was in tatters. Her only thought was to join Henrique in Brazil. | | ---|---|--- # 2020 # JANUARY # 1 # SHANGHAI |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | INI WAS A PRIVATE MULTINATIONAL investment and financial services banking group, though some of its holdings were historically over the counter banks--serving the public in Ireland, the Caribbean, and to a lesser extent the UK. Its headquarters were based in three cities--Hong Kong, London and Moscow, again for historical reasons, giving it a flexible structure compared to other similar banking institutions of the same size. Its diversified structure offered its customers a broad portfolio of services that ensured bank-client confidentiality in conformity with its century old tradition of banking secrecy via its offshore holdings. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Pat Kennedy was more than concerned by the accumulation of events, first Brexit, then Hong Kong, and now the threat of a pandemic and the effects it would have on INI and its 50,000 employees who worked in its branches and subsidiaries based in more than two dozen different jurisdictions. It explained why Liam Clancy was sitting at a table in a relatively quiet corner of the M1NT Bar, on Fuzhou Road in Shanghai, staring at its shark tank as he waited for Pat Kennedy. The bar was one of the top end night spots in Shanghai, situated on the roof of the M1NT Tower, 24 floors up, overlooking the Bund and Nanjing Road with a spectacular 360 degree view of the lights of the city and the kitsch skyscrapers of Pudong across the river. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The clubbers were mixed, Chinese and foreign, the younger crowd on the dance floor with the older watching from their tables. Liam spotted Pat and waved to him. 'So this is how the younger generation spends their evenings,' Pat said, forcing his voice above the music. Liam smiled sheepishly, it wasn't his first time in the bar, but since he was now a married man, he kept his visits strictly to business, when he joined the younger members of investment and banking world for drinks In any case, this time around, it was Pat who had suggested the spot, which was strange as it wasn't exactly his thing. They ordered drinks, Liam a cocktail and Pat a fruit juice mix, it was rare he drank alcohol. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | They talked, admiring the panoramic view and the dance floor where a few attractive girls danced together. It was still early in the evening. 'So how is Paris Liam, and Camille, she's back from Colombia?' 'Yes Camille sends you her love, I spoke to her a short while ago, she's in Sommieres, a long weekend with her parents.' 'They're well?' 'The work on the museum is almost completed Ollie tells me.' 'That's right, everything seems to be going well and Ekaterina has been keeping behind the architects and the restorers.' Pat paused as he to stared at the shark tank. 'I suppose you wonder why I asked we meet here?' Liam smiled politely, that was true, it was not Pat's kind of hangout. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | 'Well, I suppose it's discrete, here. At least people can't hear what we're talking about,' he said smiling. Liam concurred with a smile. Sometimes the ways of Pat Kennedy were mysterious, not to say incomprehensible. 'I've been thinking Liam, you're what now, nearing forty. You're married, well-married if I may say so, a fine wife, and your business is successful.' Liam nodded wondering what he was coming to. 'You see the bank has now become something much bigger than could have been imagined in 2007, when you were in the trading room in Dublin.' 'A lot has changed,' Liam said wincing a little as he thought back to those days when he was a young anything goes trader. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | 'Time has come to look ahead, we've become a world class corporate bank, and I cannot be everywhere at once. In addition to that London, the UK, is leaving the EU and there will be a lot of changes,' he paused looking at Liam intensely, 'there's Hong Kong, then this virus thing ... 'The plan was Angus would takeover in the City, he's got a lot of experience internationally, spent a good many years in Hong Kong. But now London out of the EU, Brussels will be restructuring it's financial sector and we shall be expanding our base in Amsterdam making it our new European headquarters which I have decided will be better headed by Angus.' Liam nodded. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | 'As you know I'm CEO in London, but the reality is I can't be everywhere at once, not only that, perhaps it's time I dedicated my life to something other than making money ...,' he said, then vaguely added, 'philanthropy.' Pat had already pulled back from the forefront of decision making over the past twelve months, turning his attention to more existential questions. He paused in a moment of reflection. 'That's why I want one of us to take over London--not one of those dyed in the wool Brit bankers.' Liam instinctively sat upright. 'By us I mean one of our Clan,' he said wryly, 'someone in whom I have absolute trust.' This was something entirely new. 'That person is you Liam.' It was cut and dry. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Pat explained Liam would have to delegate his own business for the moment, from INI he would have a vast pool of talent to take care of his business in Paris. His main task would be to lead INI's emblematic City of London bank as the UK forged a new and uncharted future alone. It would be a daunting task making him one of the youngest CEOs of a major London bank. Pat would announce his position as CEO designate forthwith. Liam would take full control mid-year once Angus left for Amsterdam as head of INI's new European headquarters. * * * |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | From his suite at the Peace Hotel on the Bund, Pat Kennedy wearily watched a morning summary of the nights events on the TV news, another night filled with scenes of violence followed by images of the city's workers clearing debris and removing graffiti. His troubles piled up as Hong Kong entered a new and violent phase. Hundreds of demonstrators had gathered outside Hong Kong's international airport intent on provoking havoc in an effort to draw international attention to their fight following violent down-town protests. The protests, sparked by Hong Kong's Beijing-backed government's refusal to back down on its extradition bill, had spread, to the great ire of Beijing, into a wider political movement. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | At the same moment hundreds demonstrators gathered in the city centre outside the British Consulate, bizarrely waving Union Jack flags and chanting God save the Queen. In the city's commercial district fire fighters struggled with a huge fire that burned for more than an hour as the city, previously reputed for its easygoing lifestyle and prosperity, descended into chaos with mob rule replacing the tourists and shoppers on its streets. Hardcore demonstrators had hurled molotov cocktails at government buildings. Police riposted with tear gas, aimed high powered jets of water mixed with dye from water cannons at the rioters, pursuing them into the city's MTR, where they pepper sprayed travellers and demonstrators alike. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The violence was racked up a degree when police fired two warning shots into the sky. More than 30 people were admitted into hospital with injuries following the night's clashes. Beijing held its breath and in an attempt to strike fear into the demonstrators, its state news agency, Xinhua, posted a video on Twitter, it showed long lines of armoured troop carriers and trucks at the border in Shenzhen, ready to roll into Hong Kong. | | ---|---|--- # 2 # THE ROAD TO RICHES FOR SOME PEOPLE MAKING THEIR first billion took a whole lifetime, but Liam Clancy made his in just a few years. He had been a slow starter, his curve long and flat before it went ballistic. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | He, like a few others, had made it to the bottom rung of a very exclusive club, that of the very rich, which counted amongst its members household names such as Jeff Bezos with Amazon, Bill Gates with Microsoft, Larry Ellison with Oracle, and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook. Lesser high profile figures included Liam's friend and mentor Pat Kennedy along with the members of their Clan. The Clan members were part of a new class of billionaires who had made it inside a decade, in contrast to Gates and Ellison, who during the personal computing boom of 1990s, had taken much longer in relative terms to make their first billion. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | As for old school investors like Warren Buffet, Zara founder Amancio Ortega, Mexican telecoms tycoon Carlos Slim Helu and casino baron Sheldon Adelson, it had taken them decades to accumulate their respective fortunes. The total number of billionaires worldwide exceeded two thousand with a combined wealth that would soon hit the one trillion dollar figure. What had changed a club long dominated by Westerners was the arrival of newcomers from Asia, amongst them were Jack Ma of Alibaba--worth near on 40 billion, Ma Huateng from Tencent--also worth 40 billion, and the Indian business magnate Mukesh Ambani who had recently toppled Jack Ma as Asia's richest man. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | France's Bernard Arnault, joined Bezos and Gates at the top of the list, each with a fortune of 100 billion dollars, which could be measured, in more human terms, as the life time's earnings of 3,000,000 average Americans. In Arnault's case, his fortune was worth more than 3% of France's economy. Just or unjust, whatever, there had always been pharaohs. Pat Kennedy's fortune was now approaching 30 billion dollars, which was more due to the recent explosion of asset values and financial markets than his own efforts. He was no Donald Trump, Pat studiously avoided upsetting the apple cart, as he liked to say, in fact the less he interfered, or the more he was absent, the faster the worth of his bank and its investments grew. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Money attracted money as every member of the Clan could testify, and the same rule was valid for most of the two thousand plus billionaires spread across the planet. There were not only men in that exclusive club, there was also China's richest woman, Yang Huiyan, not yet forty years old, vice-chairman of China's largest property developer, Country Garden Holdings, who over the course of the first 96 hours of 2018 had seen her fortune rise two billion dollars, thanks to a surge in the value of her company's shares recently introduced on Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index, which had incidentally earned Pat Kennedy's bank, INI, a tidy commission. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Yang's younger sister was a friend of Lili's. Yang, the daughter of self-made Cantonese property developer, who like many of the rich was media-shy, became China's richest person in 2007, when she was just 25, when her father had transferred 70% of his holdings to her before taking Country Garden public in Hong. | | ---|---|--- # 3 # A NEW EMPEROR |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | THERE WAS LITTLE DOUBT ABOUT the accuracy of Pat Kennedy's analysts. The report that had lain on his desks for some weeks was a constant reminder that whatever else happened, or momentarily turned his attention, at the end of the new decade China was set to become the world's number one economic power, which explained many things, starting with Donald Trump's trade war designed to put a brake on the Middle Kingdom's ambitions. Over the previous four decades, China's economy jumped from 2% to 15% of the global wealth, dwarfing countries like the UK and France, making Boris Johnson's post-Brexit ambitions puny. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Xi Jinping's target was no less than world leadership by the middle of the century, its arbiter. And not only in economic affairs, but also militarily, leading the conquest of space, and in science and technology. Xi's New Silk Roads project was conceived to meet all of China's huge needs, in one direction a continuous supply of natural resources, in the other access to the world's markets, a network of maritime, rail and energy routes, a trillion dollar investment. It seemed that only an unforeseen event could stop China, a proverbial black swan, and as things stood there was nothing on the horizon. But by definition a black swan did not exist, until it appeared. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | There were few obstacles to Xi's ambition, at least at home, the recently amended constitution ensured his power indefinitely. In addition technology gave the age old dream of total control a new meaning--thanks to artificial intelligence and surveillance techniques, including facial recognition, which would have each individual citizen under quasi permanent observation, the realisation of George Orwell's 1984, each person watched by Big Brother, from birth to death, every detail recorded, from payment of taxes, to credit and reimbursement of debt, respect of law and public order, and family and leisure activities. Strangely it recalled to John's vision Cornucopia, a workless society, a system of privileges, rewards and punishments, and one that would ensure social adhesion. In short a totalitarian system. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The question, as always, was what came first, the individual or collective interest, where should the line be drawn. Pat's deep interest in history told him there were many roads to the future, many models of society. In the past the human ant heap had adapted to change and had done so since the dawn of civilisation. He looked across the ocean to the world that had existed before Columbus, nothing was more striking than the difference between the civilisations that clashed in that confrontation between two worlds that changed history. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Even though Xi's China was intolerant of deviation, it was not that different to that of the West, after all it had brought prosperity to hundreds of millions of its citizens, forceably dragging them from the misery of a dying sclerotic imperial system, which was more than the USSR had done for its citizens in the dystopian world invented by Lenin, Stalin and their henchmen. China's leaders were now turning their attention to the problem of their country's environment, which had been deeply degraded in the race to industrialisation and modernisation. Already the country had become the world's largest market for electric battery powered vehicles, and was now planning its transformation towards hydrogen with a plan to put one million low emission hydrogen powered cars on its road by 2030. | | |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | ---|---|--- # 4 # TROUBLE AFOOT PAT KENNEDY WAS BEGINNING TO have serious doubts about remaining in Hong Kong, as he watched the real time images flash across his TV screen, street scenes worthy of a Bruce Lee gangster film, hundreds of white-shirted triad members armed with bamboo poles and metal pipes rampaging through the city's MTR transport stations, brutally attacking all those who had the misfortune to cross their path. It reminded him of recent scenes he had witnessed in Paris, when Yellow Jacket protesters had sackaged the Champs Elysee, which in appearance seemed dangerous, in reality more impressive than anything else, the usual French reaction to unpleasant political decisions. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Hong Kong was however different, and Zhongnanhai, the official residence of Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the Communist Party of China, situated in the Forbidden City at the heart of the state apparatus, was furious with the development of the situation, and its reaction could be violent as seen by its obvious instrumentation of triad gangsters, attacking innocent passers-by in downtown Hong Kong. China's great power stance was embarrassed by the events in the former British colony, coming just as Beijing was flexing its muscles in the South China Sea and the Straits of Taiwan. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Strangely enough Hong Kong's police were mysteriously absent and emergency services nonresponsive to the thousand of calls from the public as frightened and injured Hongkongers sought help and the usual calm of the city shattered. The cause of the riots was the unswerving complaisance of the Special Region's governing body, the Legislative Council, LegCo, dominated by the pro-Beijing camp, under the leadership of Carrie Lam, LegCo's chief executive. To outsiders the reaction to the new laws could have seemed exaggerated, after all Hong Kong was now a Chinese territory, even if it was a Special Administrative Region according to the agreement signed in 1997 between Beijing and London, which foresaw a 50 year transition period, of which nearly half had passed. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | To Pat it was the perfect illustration of not only how small events could have great political impact, but was also indicative of the incapacity of the system and its law enforcement agencies to control events without resorting to violence. Little did Pat realise all that was about to change for the worse. As the Chinese New Year approached the viral epidemic in Wuhan was transformed into a major crisis and Carrie Lam's reaction was to announce the government would raise its response to its highest level, 'emergency', closing schools for two weeks, in the hope of preventing an epidemic of the deadly coronavirus in Hong Kong. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The reaction to the threat was a contrast to Hong Kong's other drama when determined demonstrators broke into the Legislative Council building and tore down portraits of leaders, sprayed slogans on walls and draped a British flag across the desk of Andrew Leung, President of the Legislative Council. The images from Wuhan showed another kind of reaction as the contagion spread, fear and helplessness, as the government in Beijing raised the state of emergency, isolating Wuhan, cutting road, rail and air links with the rest of the country, at a moment that should have been a period of happiness and rejoicing to celebrate the Year of the Rat. News that China had suspended all tours, domestic and overseas, increased anxiety and people quit the streets of Hong Kong as fear of the virus started to spread. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Pat looked up the meaning of the new virus, one that infected animals and people, an RNA Coronavirus that broke into cells of its host and used them to reproduce itself. It sounded like something from a zombies movie. | | ---|---|--- # 5 # GOODBYE EUROPE AS UK PARTIES FOUGHT OVER BREXIT or not to Brexit the reasons for the crisis were overlooked as was the meaning of the European Union and the extraordinary benefits it had brought to post-Cold War Europe which was enjoying one of the greatest periods of peace and prosperity in its long history. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | That said many Europeans and Britons had missed the boat for a number of complex reasons, and amongst them were those who voted to in favour of the UK quitting the EU, including factory workers, pensioners and those nostalgic for a past, which if examined was much grubbier, as Pat Wolfe knew, he'd lived in those days, in soot begrimed smoggy London, in a class ridden society where few, very few, working class kids ever got to university, where continental holidays were reserved for the privileged, where news was broadcast by a small number of radio and TV channels, where hundreds of thousands of men worked in coal mines, where few working class families owned cars. Yes, that was the UK under Harold Wilson and his predecessors of all political leanings. |