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100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Glory wasn't perhaps the word, plunder may have been better, but John reminded them of the words of Polybius as they made their way to the restaurant on foot: 'If earlier historians had failed to eulogize history itself, it would, I suppose, be up to me to begin by encouraging everyone to occupy himself in an open-minded way with works like this one (The Histories), on the grounds that there is no better corrective of human behaviour than knowledge of past events.' They could only concur. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | It was eighteen months since Camille and Liam were married in the village of Sommieres--the home of her parents, in Provence. Theirs was no ordinary home, but a vast chateau. She was part of what they call the privileged classes, even though her family had been hard put to maintain their ancestral home. Had been that is, because their situation changed dramatically with the fortuitous discovery of her great uncle's collection of paintings, forgotten in the cellars of the 40 room demeure. Liam was a very successful self-made Irish banker cum businessman, whose family did not have an aristocratic background like Camille's, but she was not a snob. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | His success was equally fortuitous, thanks to Pat Kennedy who had spotted his talents as the bank expanded following the financial crisis of 2008 and had taken him under his wing. Camille on the other hand like many girls of her class had attended a private girls' school in Switzerland and then studied in Paris at Science-Po, an elitist establishment, where she had kept a low profile as to her background, for several reasons, one of which was she did not want to be stuck with the label of being a penniless aristocrat, which was far from the case, and two being labelled as an aristo in Paris was not a good thing in the politically correct 21st century where everything was examined under a microscope. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Her father, the current Comte de Sommieres, had experienced increasing difficulties in maintaining the upkeep of their chateau and its large estate, and with Camille being the only child, her parent's had hoped she would marry a rich prince, which was not part of her plan, though by chance that's exactly what happened, when she met her future husband, thanks to an extraordinary stroke of fortune--the discovery of Édouard Sommieres' collection of early 20th century Modern Art, which brought Liam to Provence. Ireland was no strange place for Camille, her mother, a friend of Alice Fitzwilliams, had sent her on many a vacation to the Fitzwilliams' fine home in Wicklow, where she spent the summers riding. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | That was what probably attracted her to Liam, she spoke excellent English and both were Catholics, though not in exactly the same way, being Catholic in Camille's family had little in common with what that meant to Liam's parents and grandparents in Ireland. Fortunately Liam and his generation had shrugged off that burden, like most Irish people today. It was John Francis--a long-time friend of the Fitzwilliams, who brought Liam to Sommieres, after Alice Fitzwilliams suggested Camille's father talk with John's wife, Ekaterina, an art expert, about her Uncle Édouard's collection. But that's another story, in any case everything happened very quickly and in a way Camille was still trying to catch up. * * * |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The next day they all set off for San Sebastian. It was hot, very hot. In Spanish they called it an ola de calor--a heat wave. It was seven in the evening and after a few drinks and pintxos in the Parte Vieja, they strolled along Askatasunaren Hiribidea, or Avenida de la Libertad in Spanish, making their way back over the ornate bridge crossing the Urumea River towards the Zuriolla beach. The temperature was still a sweltering 33oC and the crowds were out to take advantage of the light breeze drifting in from the sea. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The occasion that evening was the first concert of the Jazzaldia, Jazz-time, the city's annual jazz festival, starring Joan Baez, one of the last surviving icons of the 60s anti-war movements in the US. It was part of the singer's farewell tour and Anna wanted to see her perform in person, a living legend, one of the most remarkable figures of the feminist movement in her generation . Anna with Camille and Liam were of course much too young to even come closely to remembering Joan Baez's moment of glory, who it seemed to John, would, for many young people, probably figure alongside King Tut. She was a living fossil from a bygone age of counter-culture, after all 50 years had passed since she sang It Ain't Me Babe when the first men landed on the moon. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | She was still protesting, at the outset against the war in Vietnam, now after more than half a century later against the plight of illegal Mexicans and other immigrants sent home by the Trump administration. Her disk was as worn as the memories of Lyndon Banes Johnson and his war against Communist expansionism. But protest movements were still fashionable, eminently fashionable, especially those led by a woman and Joan Baez was there from the first hour, marking her time with the songs that made her famous, like Blowin' in the Wind. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Thousands of spectators were gathered on the beach for the evening concert, for a great many it was a souvenir of their youth, when certain Basque's resorted to terror under a cloak of independence. Times had changed, witnessed by the name of the avenue, Askatasunaren Hiribidea, unpronounceable by the majority of Spaniards. It wasn't only politics that changed, it also seemed as if the weather was a taste of things to come. Climate change had been forecast for so long, it was like shouting wolf, and now for the first time it seemed the wolf was really at the door. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Even if Joan Baez was but a fading memory, protest wasn't dead, less than half an hour's drive to the north of San Sebastian things were heating up as the anti-G7 conference got underway. Thousands had gathered for a contra-conference and the French authorities were bracing themselves for street battles when the contras and their allies, the Gilets Jaune, an anti-Macronist movement, would be out in force. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | That was far from Anna's thoughts as they talked about music and film festivals, and she spoke to her friends about Woody Allen's latest film, which had been shot in San Sebastian. It was entitled Rifkin's Festival, a romantic comedy, the story of an American couple who arrive in San Sebastian for its Film Festival and were enchanted by the magic of the city, the beauty and charm of Spain, with each finding a new love, she a French movie director, and he a Spanish beauty. Woody Allen's links with San Seb went back to the time when he premiered Melinda & Melinda at the city's film festival. He remarked at an official reception in the city hall: 'I'd like to convey to the world my view of San Sebastian the way I conveyed my view of Paris or New York to people.' |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Poor Woody was now in trouble, like San Sebastian, but for different reasons. The city, like many other European cities, was beginning to feel the effects of mass tourism, a victim of its own success. For Anna it was a sign of its growing prosperity, however, tourism was transforming certain of its neighbourhoods and historical sites into attractions to be exploited by investors, to the detriment of their traditional inhabitants, like Venice, Florence and Barcelona, the souls of which were sucked out, leaving empty though beautiful shells. She was not against gentrification and there was no reason why the citizens of her hometown should not benefit from the inflow of money, but she did not want to see the city transformed into a zoo. | | ---|---|--- # 11 # SUMMER CAMP |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | LIAM TOGETHER WITH CAMILLE arrived at the camp, invitation only of course. A little more that 18 months or so before, they would have never made that exclusive list, now as if by magic they were part of that elite. Liam had always thought he would refuse an invitation, but now they had become, in a manner of speaking, celebrities, Camille jumped at the idea. Why? Out of curiosity, she told Anna and Ekaterina. They arrived on Sergei Tarasov's yacht the Cleopatra together with the Clan--Pat, Lili, John, Ekaterina and the others, to join some of the world's wealthiest personalities and their celebrity friends who were gathered together at the Verdura Golf & Spa Resort on south-west coast of Sicily. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Many guests arrived by helicopter, leaving their jets parked at Palermo airport, then a 100 kilometres hop south, flying over Corleone--home to many mafia capos, real and fictional. Others sailed in on their own yachts, anchoring offshore, a short ride in their tenders to the resort's jetty. The occasion was the annual Google Camp, a three-day bash, just 20 kilometres from the ancient Greek temple of Agrigento. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The event, which some called Davos on Sea, was launched by Google's co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 2012, a gathering of the rich and famous, certain made the front pages of tabloids and people magazines, like Camille, who had made the cover of Paris Match, daughter of Count Olivier de Sommieres, whose art collection had made world headlines a couple of years earlier, and Liam, a high flying investor close to Sir Patrick Kennedy. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The theme of the summer camp was climate change, and the guests included top tier names like Prince Harry, Barack Obama, Mark Zuckerberg, Leonardo DiCaprio and Katy Perry, who rubbed shoulders with fashion designer Diane Von Furstenberg, former Google chairman Eric Schmidt, Elon Musk founder of Tesla and SpaceX, New Zealand's richest man Graeme Hart, DreamWorks Pictures founder David Geffen, German pharmaceutical mogul Udo J. Vetter and the silver screen's hero Tom Cruise. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The camp was the brainchild of Larry Page and Sergey Brin, a summer break from the humdrum existence of some of the world's wealthiest personalities--stressed-out stars, political and business leaders and tech gurus, a quiet place where mornings they could meditate on the coming end-of-the-world climate crisis, then cocktails and lunch, followed by an afternoon of relaxation at the poolside, or for the more sporting guests tennis on one of the resort's six clay courts, and why not a round of golf under the generous Mediterranean sun. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The secretive camp was in fact an open secret, though social media was banned, which didn't stop the paparazzis' speedboats from circling the yachts anchored offshore, like sharks, in the hope of catching a celebrity, preferably female, young and better still topless, sipping champagne on the after deck, on the arm of a star like DiCaprio, or better still Prince Andrew. The Cleopatra was anchored off the resort's private beach and seafront, not far from the Andromeda owned by billionaire Kiwi, Graeme Hart, further away was Barry Diller's Eos, whilst David Geffen's Rising Sun stopped by to drop off Perry and Bloom. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The contemporary resort, designed by Sir Rocco Forte and his sister Olga Polizzi, lodged the pampered guests in luxury villas, complete with their own private pools, they could of course also enjoy the beach adorned with fine white imported sand, its jetty jutting out over the translucent waters of the Mediterranean. Their mornings were filled with conferences and discussions on climate change and cities of the future with lectures from renowned specialists, whilst afternoons were free, which gave Pat, always curious, the opportunity to visit the ancient Greek ruins of Selinunte, the vineyards of Sambuca or the picturesque fishing town of Sciacca. * * * |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Although Pat Kennedy and his Clan saw themselves as standing apart from that media-seeking band of global nomadic celebrities, Pat revelled not only in the easy going spirit of the event, but especially its setting, where past civilisations converged, Greeks, Romans and Carthaginians, where great battles were fought, where the transformation from the ancient world took place, when its pantheon of Greek and Roman gods ceded its place to Christianity. Sicily had witnessed the Crusaders, the Renaissance, the Holy Roman Empire under Charles V, and the conquest of the New World. What happened next was the question that dogged Pat. What did the future world hold for the world? |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | He forgot that question as he headed for the closing gala held before the magnificent 2,500 year old Temple of Concordia which provided a magic setting for the diner and concert starring Elton John and Lenny Kravit. Pat was happy to be surrounded by his friends, his Clan, their Clan, built around friendship and loyalty, roots and family. Preening each other on their yachts or on their islands was not their thing, though on occasions they were drawn into events like Davos or the Summer Camp. They were of course part of that exclusive fraternity of mega-rich, but avoided publicly trying to outdo others in their philanthropic exploits, preferring discretion rather than headline grabbing art sales, outbidding their peers for yet another trophy to decorate one of their multiple outsize homes. | | ---|---|--- # 12 |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | # A NEW PRIME MINISTER LOOKING AT THE UK AND BREXIT from Hong Kong, it seemed as if it would need more than a prophet to save its citizens from their collective folly. To many Britons, especially the older generation, the question of Brexit boiled down to 'What did we have two World Wars for?' |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | After a series of wimpish uncharismatic leaders, the time was ripe for a Churchillian figure, or an Iron Lady, but with no candidate of that stature on the horizon, Boris Johnson stepped up to take on the role. He was to many a providential leader, one who would save them from the tyranny of Brussels, from the conspiracy against England, to carry the flag of Saint George and the Union Jack into battle against their country's heredity enemies, namely, France, Germany, Italy and Spain, collectively reincarnated in the European Union. Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson was born in New York to British parents, a chance that gave him dual British-American nationality, which following a rocambolesque tax dispute with the American IRS services he abandoned after being elected Mayor of London. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | He was born in Upper East Side Manhattan, where his parents lived in a bohemian loft opposite the Chelsea Hotel, in the district of the same name, one of the haunts of Bob Dylan, Iggy Pop, and Jimi Hendrix. Johnson's family included English, Turkish, German and French ancestors and amongst them were Christians, Jews and Muslims, some of them aristocrats, which explained how he once described himself as 'a one man melting pot', a vision probably more suited to New York, an emigre rather than a member of the British ruling class, which no doubt left its mark. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | He was born with more than a fair share of natural bombast which appealed to many less privileged Brits, who saw him as a saviour who would lead them from the dystopian world, in which they believed they lived, to a new dawn, escaping from a destiny worst than that of Mad Max and the Hunger Games. It was probably his promise of a better world outside the EU that attracted many working class Brexiteers who didn't want a 'deal', they wanted 'out', freedom from the 'dictatorship' of Brussels. Most of them lived in the past, still fighting the Bosch, the Jerries and Ities, though there were precious few people alive who could remember the war, not to mind having fought it. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | It was a paradox, Bojo to his friends and voters, wanted to exchange Europe for the Subcontinent, China and Africa, forgetting what they, the colonised, had not forgotten, domination and oppression, bound only by tenuous self-interest, and often bitter links to England. | | ---|---|--- # 13 # BORIS AND BOMBAST THE LITHUANIAN EUROPEAN COMMISSIONER, Vytenis Andriukaitis, compared Boris Johnson to Boris Yeltsin--the same kind of political bombast, their unrealistic promises, and their sidestepping of economic rationales and rational decisions. Yeltsin's decisions led to a new autocratic constitution and finally paved the way to Vladimir Putin and a Russia led by a clique of oligarchs, a pseudo-market economy, governed in a pseudo-democracy. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Boris Yeltsin's promises coined a catch phrase after he was told by Yegor Ligachyov, a Soviet politician, 'Boris, you are wrong.' Hopefully, it would not be the case for Boris Johnson. Johnson gained leadership in an arcane contest in which just over one-tenth of one per cent of the British population voted. It was nothing less than a romanesque coup d'etat that Frederick Foresyth would have had difficulty in inventing. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Boris 'fuck business' Johnson was elected by 92,153 Conservative Party members, those who had done nothing more than pay a 25 pound membership fee and vote for their chosen candidate. Thanks to this arcane, almost cabalistic procedure, Bojo became prime minster, effectively Britain's leader, at the head of a nation of 66 million, amongst the world's leading democracies and most economically powerful states |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | In many countries changing an entire government without an election would have been described as a coup, especially if it had been led by a leader proposing a radical change of policy, ditching his country's closest trading partners, political friends and allies with whom, over the course of half a century, London had worked as an equal partner, in a freely elected parliament in Strasbourg and participating in the European Commission in Brussels. 'Pifflepafflewifflewaffle,' said Bojo in his comments on Northern Ireland according to John Crace, a Guardian columnist, who put the remark down to 'off the cuff bollocks'. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | As one Member of Parliament put it 'the circus has come to town' with Boris Johnson arriving at 10 Downing Street after plotting his first 100 days in office in a 10 million pound Westminster town-house, owned by Andrew Griffith, a former Rothschild investment banker, who quit Sky--Europe's largest media company, owned by Comcast, a US telecommunications conglomerate--where he had been chief finance and operating officer, and now appointed Johnson's chief business advisor. | | ---|---|--- # 14 # A PROPHET |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | TEN DAYS LATER AT A DIFFERENT, perhaps more down to earth money grubbing world, night was falling, as Camille led Liam through a crowd of bubbling celebrities gathered at the Domaine Saint Raphael, somewhere in the Mediterranean hills to the north of Saint-Tropez. They were there at the invitation of the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation for a star studded fund raising diner. One of the evening's notable guests, standing timidly besides Kyril Kyristoforos, surrounded by stars clad in tuxedos and evening gowns, was a small nut brown man, he was dressed in a simple open neck shirt, the coarse denim trousers of a French peasant and worn leather sandals. He seem very small, very wrinkled and frail, compared to the sleek well fed crowd of celebrities preening themselves around him. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Liam wondered if it was the same guru they had met in India, to him they were all the same--Mahatma Gandhi look-alikes. The small man had a somewhat bewildered air, like a lost child, in the middle of the extravagant star-studded bash thrown by DiCaprio, as extravagant as Jordan Belfort, the real life investor the actor had played in Wolf of Wall Street, a movie produced by the now infamous Malaysian-Chinese financier, Jho Low. Amongst the celebrities were Prince Albert of Monaco, Sylvester Stallone, Elton John, Naomi Campbell and Marion Cotillard. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The actor's foundation was, according to its blurb, dedicated to the long-term health and well-being of all Earth's inhabitants. Through collaborative partnerships, supporting projects that protected vulnerable wildlife from extinction, while restoring the balance to threatened ecosystems and communities. The foundation vaunted work in four fields--protecting biodiversity, oceans conservation, wildlands conservation and climate change. Liam wondered if 'Gandhi' knew the event was sponsored by Swiss jewellers and banks, paying anything between 7,500 and 150,000 euros a throw. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | To raise funds for his favourite wildlife programmes, indigenous rights movements and to finance the combat against climate change, DiCaprio auctioned his Rolex, the diamond cufflinks he wore the night he won his Oscar, and a seven-night stay at his Palm Springs property. Camille whispered to Liam the Gandhi-like figure was the jetset's favourite guru. It didn't surprise him when he saw Marion Cotillard fawning over the old man. If he wasn't Gandhi who was he then, a holyman, a sadhu, or a mystic. In any case it seemed to Liam, if the crowd around him was anything to go by, he was well connected to the world of showbiz and the media. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Kyril appeared and pointed them in the direction of the guru, who beckoned to him. Liam wondered if it was 'get me out of here' sign. The celebrities moved aside to make space for the newcomers. 'Lazarus, let me introduce you to Camille de la Salle and her husband Liam Clancy,' he said. Liam now knew Gandhi's name. They shook hands. 'Please, join us,' invited Lazarus, who then turned to his audience to continued his homily on the state of the planet. 'Is it,' he asked, 'that we have not become aware of the value of our planet, the only oasis of life in a sidereal desert? How is it that we keep plundering it, polluting it, blindly destroying it?' The stars looked at him in awe, as if he had made a startling Christ-like revelation. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Liam soon discovered that the 77 year old guru had amongst his followers, rich, powerful and media personalities. Lesser mortals waited three or more months to make the pilgrimage, pay homage, at the court of the guru in Montchamp, Ardeche, near Montelimar, where a winding road ran through sleepy villages, past the sun-dried Mediterranean landscape before arriving at the bottom of a hill. There a stony path bordered by tall oaks led to a large stone farmhouse. Lazarus always waited to meet them personally with outstretched hands. 'Thank you for your interest in my modest person,' he would say pointing them in the direction of the farmhouse. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | They followed him and once inside he invited them to be seated, offering drinks, then invited them to watch a video on a large TV screen. The subject was always centred around a system of organic farming developed by the guru. Marion Cotillard made no secret of her admiration for the guru, Gerges Lazarus, born in 1938 in Egypt, now a French essayist, organic farmer, novelist and poet, the founder of Gaia, a foundation dedicated to the creation of an ecological and humane society. If fact, on her own admission, she fell had in love with him at first sight, at the famous restaurant Le Train Bleu at the Gare de Lyon in Paris. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Since that day, Lazarus had been the mentor for Dior's muse, who donated money to his movement, promoted his farm, and projected him into the glitzy world of media and showbiz. Camille remembered the guru had accompanied a friend of her mother's to their chateau in Sommieres four or five years earlier with an agroecological project. Camille's mother the countess, had complained, 'Money, money, money, that's all Gerges is interested in today.' Her father had called it a scam, but the friend was mesmerised by the charismatic guru and had invested a considerable sum of money to transform part of her domain to sustainable farming, unfortunately the money went up in smoke, 'but at least it was organic smoke,' she joked philosophically. * * * |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The next day Pat announced they were going to Saint-Tropez for lunch. Why? Dee suspected it was something to do with one of his boyhood fantasies, linked to Brigitte Bardot and her iconic film And God Created Woman. It was past midday when their three car convoy arrived at Ramatuelle, on the Saint-Tropez Peninsula, where they pulled up outside Club 55, an open air restaurant, situated amongst the gnarled tamarisk trees that bordered the Pampelonne beach, a spot made famous by Bardot. To their great surprise Pat was greeted like an old friend by Patrice de Colmont, the smiling patron of the restaurant, impeccably dressed in white open collared shirt that accentuated his deeply tanned complexion, at the same moment a couple of valets stepped forward to take the keys of their cars. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | They were guided by de Colmont over a board walk past affluent looking diners already seated amongst the tamarisks. Their table lay discreetly to one side, protected under a white canvas awning, screened by flowering oleanders, to the south was an unbroken view of the sparkling Mediterranean beyond the impeccably raked white sand of the exclusive beach. Colmont was a friend of the stars, the rich and royals, who patronised his restaurant, including Marion Cotillard and her guru--where they discussed agroecology and climate change, watching their wealthy friends at play, their yachts anchored offshore, outboards ferrying their guests to the jetty for lunch at the famous restaurant. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The star graced Pat and his friends with her presence in the company of the guru, reciting the oft told the story of Club 55, one that could have been invented by a Hollywood script writer, which according to popular legend began in 1947, when Colmont's father, an ethnologist and filmmaker, was shooting a documentary in the Mediterranean, when a sudden Mistral forced him to take shelter at Pampelonne. To his surprise he discovered an unspoilt paradise and decided to buy a fisherman's cottage on the edge of the then deserted beach. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | In 1955, when Roger Vadim arrived with his film crew to shoot And God Created Woman with Brigitte Bardot, they mistook the cottage for a restaurant. Colmont's mother stepped in and took up the challenge, setting up a makeshift canteen to supply the crew of 80 people with meals during the shoot. Club 55 was born, and soon chic Parisian vacationers were queuing at the door. The Colmonts never looked back and nearly three quarters of a century later they had added their own vineyard and olive grove, and in addition fresh organic vegetables were supplied daily from the gurus' sustainable agroecological farm. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | It was a flourishing business that counted a staff of one hundred during the summer months, the smartest watering hole along the coast, the place to see and be seen, for royals, rock stars, actors, and jet-setters, a definite must for celebrities like Leonardo DiCaprio who after disembarking on the jetty, his yacht anchored offshore, passed between the parasols, his latest girlfriend tagging along, whilst he waved to his friends and admirers just like Gatsby. Camille wondered if he knew its famous tamarisks were considered an invasive species and not especially eco-friendly. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Strangely enough Pat had already met the guru in Udaipur, at the unbelievably extravagant festivities for the marriage of Isha Ambani, the daughter of India's richest man. Pat had been confused, confounding the small frail man with Mahatma Gandhi, dressed in a white dhoti and wearing leather sandals, his kind, very wrinkled brown face, radiated benevolence and beatitude. It was some moments before Pat realised he wasn't a reincarnation of India's iconic leader, but something else, something between a saint and a celebrity. 'Namaste,' he said taking Pat Kennedy's hand in his, placing the other over it, holding it for a long moment, looking into his eyes, and softly speaking, 'Ekhrestos Anesti.' |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Pat replied, 'Namaste.' It took him a moment to figure out the meaning of the other words, then his face light up, Ekhrestos, of course, Christ. Gerges Lazarus, a Coptic Egyptian, was the spiritual leader of Gaia, a foundation created by Kyril Kyristoforos, built on the principles and theories preached by early conservationists, survivalists--Henry Fairfield Osborn Jnr and William Vogt. Lazarus's parents, teachers, had fled Egypt, first to Greece, then France, when he was a child, after their local church in outlying Alexandria was burnt down in a wave of anti-Christian violence following Gamal Abdul Nasser's seizure of power in 1952. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Lazarus had his home in Provence, that almost legendary region of France, the home of painters, writers, cinema stars and celebrities. It was a bastide--a fortified collection of buildings, which dated from the 14th century, standing on a limestone ridge, overlooking some 50 hectares of organic olive groves, vineyards and orchards. La Crete-des-Maures lay to the east of Draguignan, which formed a triangle with Nice and Cannes, about an hour from St Tropez, a pleasant drive for billionaires and Hollywood stars, a refuge where they could ease their conscience, breathing the perfume of Provence whilst showing the world, how, in the company of the guru, they cared for the planet, and photographed for their Facebook page with the great man by Gaia's communications manager. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The picturesque bastide was dotted with Mediterranean pines and cedars, and a narrow cobbled street wound its way past fountains, small houses, a keep, stables and storehouses, built in the local white limestone and roofed with ochre Roman tiles. There was also a small chapel and what must have been a school, all of which had been left to ruin in the seventies as young people abandoned a life of eking out an existence on the hard sun-dried slopes for an easier world in the cities of Nice and Toulon on the coast, their old folk staying put until they died away. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Lazarus and a couple of friends had initially squatted the bastide, setting up their workshop for local traditional artisanal products, bowls and tableware from olive wood, which were sold at farmer's markets in St Tropez and St Raphael. With not much money Lazarus started to grow his own vegetables and care for the neglected olive and fruit trees. He built a reputation for the quality of his organic products and attracted like-thinkers, preaching a clean back to nature vision of life, then as his reputation grew so did the cash from sales and contributions provided by his city dwelling customers and like-thinkers. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | He then met Kyril, an experienced manager, who set up an association, Gaia, which he later transformed into a foundation, and bought up the ruins of the bastide, where the price of an ancient stone house was less that that of a parking spot in Nice, then its outlying land, restoring the homes for back-to-basics ecologists, who worked the land to supply food for Lazarus and his followers and as a market garden. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The organisation under Kyril's impulsion was transformed into a going ecobusiness, offering weekends and workshops in the colourful bastide with organic food from its gardens. As time passed he organised seminars oriented towards ecoagriculture, based on sustainable and natural production methods that took place in the larger restored buildings, training those who saw a future in organic food production, this led to conferences and little-by-little Gaia extended its scope to questions of ecology and environment, then to the protection of wildlife and endangered species. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Kyril was a good businessman and progressively the foundation was expanded adding multiple services related to publishing, books, monthly magazines, promotional brochures followed by the production of short documentary films. Kyril Kyristoforos personally managed communications and the organisation of media events, and much more importantly fund raising. Gerges Lazarus was in a sense the foundations image, its icon, the combination of a peasant farmer and a saintly leader uninterested in money or fame. The main building was an 18th century house with its living rooms, bedrooms, kitchen and wine cellar, part of which was reserved for Lazarus and special guests. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The style was rustic bordering on the spartan, though behind the no frills appearance was a well run system of management and housekeeping, as good as that of any modern hotel establishment with all food prepared from organically grown ingredients according to the techniques developed and preached by the foundation. Kyril developed political, philanthropical, business relations and links with clean celebrities and stars with the ambition of building the foundation into an influential organisation, capable of lobbying international institutions and governments, and this passed by mediatic success vehicled by mainstream media, television and cinematic productions on themes linked to the natural world, ecology and environment. * * * |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Sergei Tarasov's yacht, the Cleopatra, was anchored off La Plage de Pampelonne, a short ride on the yacht's tender to the beach where that evening Pat Kennedy hosted a promotional event for Indians at Club55. Like Sergei and Pat, many guests arrived at the jetty from their yachts, small compared to the 85 metres and 2,500 tons of the Cleopatre. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The beautiful people gathered for the event included a collection of stars and celebrities from the world of showbiz and of course Lazarus together with Kyril, Mat, Olivier de la Salle with his wife and other members of the Clan. The high point of the evening was the screening of Indians, a 20 minute promotional preview of the still to be completed film, followed by the signing of a special edition of Pat O'Connelly's latest book, The Tragedy of the Amazon, with an introduction by Lazarus, at 2,000 euros a copy, a drop in the ocean for those present. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Lazarus, as usual seemed lost before the elegant crowd, it was part of his charm, who rose to applaud him when he finally appeared. Scarlet Johansson took his hand and guided him to his place at the main table as the band struck up an Elton John number. He seemed smaller and even more Ghandi-like than when Pat had last seen him. He raised his arms embarrassed at the attention accorded him. The music stopped and George Clooney appeared on the small stage to ask the guests to rise again for another round of applause as he asked the old man to join him. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | John remarked Lazarus was no Mahesh Yogi, the Indian maharishi made famous, outside of India that is, by The Beatles in 1967. Pat was just old enough to vaguely remember Flower Power, when the Liverpool lads became mesmerised by transcendental meditation, what he didn't know was the story of how they joined the Maharishi's spiritual training camp in Rishikesh in 1968. Mahesh Prasad Varma had developed a transcendental meditation technique and a worldwide following. It consisted of chanting silent mantras that induced total awareness, when perception was unlimited. His honorary titles Maharishi and Yogi were self-attributed, as was the case for Hindu or Vedic gurus said to possess great mystical knowledge. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Mahesh Yogi was a disciple of one of those Indian spiritual leaders, of which there were many, each preaching a different form of meditation in the Hindu tradition, which sought to explain human existence in a harsh and unjust world. As a maharishi, a spiritual teacher, he transformed his teachings into an international movement with worldwide tours and ended up by attracting the attention of Hollywood stars and celebrities in search of spirituality. In the sixties India became a fashionable destination and George Harrison's wife Pattie developed an interest in Oriental philosophy and religion following a holiday in Bombay. Then, when Mahesh Yogi arrived in London, she persuaded George and then the others to listen to the Maharishi speak at the Hilton. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | They were hypnotised and left with the Maharishi for Bangor in Wales to become followers of the guru. The rest was history, the Maharishi soon realised the Beatles would form catalyst and through them attracted Mick Jagger, Marianne Faithfull and Donovan. A movement was born, Flower Power, along with its gear, long hair and mantras, justly epitomised by the musical Hair. LSD was replaced by transcendental meditation after the Beatles' manager Brian Epstein, who should have joined them in Bangor, died tragically from an overdose of barbiturates mixed with alcohol. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | John was at the London School of Economics and Political Science--LSE, at the time, and as a result of the Flower Power craze, he followed the trail to India and Sri Lanka where he ended up buying his place near Galle, the Plantation, which went a long way to explaining John's offish approach to Lazarus and Gaia, but he was not about to discourage Pat, any criticism would have appeared mean. Lazurus was helped onto the small stage and Clooney raised his hands again in a call for silence. Lazurus placed his hands together and bowed to Clooney and then the guests. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | He approached the microphone and started to speak, softly, barely audibly, slowly at first, then urgently to the hushed crowd. 'The more sand has escaped from the hourglass of our world,' he said, paraphrasing the words of Machiavelli, 'the clearer we should see the future we are making for our children. Time is running out and unless we take action, now, they will inherit nothing but a barren desert.' Lazarus's words made a deep and visible impression on Pat Kennedy who was seated at the head table between Amal Clooney and Camille de la Salle. * * * Pat had just arrived from Hong Kong via Egypt where he had visited the Grand Egyptian Museum, scheduled to open in 2020, in the company of his archaeologist friend Ken Hisakawa. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The one billion dollar museum, designed by the Dublin-based Heneghan Peng Architects, planned to display the 5,400 treasures from the tomb of King Tutankhamun, along with 50,000 other objects from the old museum in downtown Cairo. Its official inauguration was planned for 2022, the centenary of Howard Carter's discovery of Tutankhamen's tomb. The vast museum was situated at Giza so that visitors could contemplate the marvels of Egypt together after arriving at the new airport just 30 minutes from the site. Visitors would commence with a chronological tour starting from prehistory to the Greco-Roman period, with a presentation of recent discoveries plus monumental pieces too large to be housed in the old museum at Tahrir Square. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | It would also present objects used in the daily life of the pharaohs, immersing visitors in the royal court, illustrating not only how they dressed and what they ate, but also the embalming and funeral preparations for the afterlife. The object of their visit, in addition to the museum, was to learn more about space archaeology and satellites imagery, which had been used in Egypt to discover unknown ancient ruins, and how it could be employed in Central and South America. Ken had been following the work developed by Sarah Parcak, an Egyptologist, who was based in Alabama in the US. Using satellite imagery and other remote sensing tools, including hyperspectral camera data, she had identified a huge number of new sites belonging to hitherto unknown Egyptian cultures. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | He saw it as a way to accelerate his work in Central and South America and had persuaded Pat, without too much difficult, to fly to Egypt to meet Parcak. The Egyptologist had identified countless ancient settlements, many pyramids, and more than one thousand undiscovered tombs, including Tanis, the Lost City, excavated in 1939 by the French archaeologist Pierre Montet, who unearthed a royal tomb complex containing three intact and undisturbed burial chambers containing silver coffins, sarcophagi, golden masks and jewellery including bracelets, necklaces, pendants, tableware and amulets. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | There were multiple possibilities for satellite exploration as the technique had been used for the mapping of an amphitheatre at the Roman harbour of Portus, in what is now Romania; the search for prehistoric hominid fossils in Kenyan lake beds; Viking sites in Newfoundland; and more interesting to Hisakawa, Sarah Parcak's latest work--the satellite-mapping of the whole of Peru, which had already identified some 20,000 previously unrecorded sites, with an estimated 700 of potentially significant archaeological importance. Information that could help trace the expansion of ancient unknown Peruvian civilisations. It was a completely new field compared to the traditional dig, carried out by earthbound archaeologists on their knees, scrapping away at the dirt with a trowel and a brush in their hands. * * * |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The idea of using orbital satellites to discover what was concealed beneath the canopy of the Amazon rainforest seemed to Ken Hisakawa the only realistic approach to discovering the history of the unknown civilisations that had flourished in certain regions of the Amazon Basin and had disappeared for unexplained reasons. Satellites, backed by airborne Lidar systems, could point archaeologists to the vestiges of ancient cities and roads. Many unknown Maya sites had been found in the Guatemalan jungle using Lidar imaging, man-made features hidden beneath the canopy of the forest. In Egypt, one of the most revealing discoveries to Ken's mind came from a study into the causes that brought the Old Kingdom to an end, the period during which the great pyramids of Giza were built. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Satellite imagery of the Egyptian delta followed by on-the-ground survey work showed how the number of settlements fell at the end of the Old Kingdom, caused it appeared by climatic change accompanied by long periods of drought, a revelation that could provide answers for present day societies threatened by multiple environmental problems. Technological progress was such that archaeologists now had access to satellite images having a resolution of 0.3 metres, with the promise that advances would soon make it possible to zoom into a single shard of pottery. | | ---|---|--- # 15 # INSOMNIA |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | PAT 'DEE' O'CONNELLY WAS finding it difficult to work as the distractions piled up, he had taken on the task of writing the documentary script for the expedition and was distracted by the constant flow of bad news, Pat Kennedy and Hong Kong, John Francis and Brexit, riots on the streets of Paris, wildfires in Australia, and Syria--a powder keg as Russia and Turkey faced off. He was beginning to feel like Franz Kafka, the author of Metamorphosis, an insomniac, who disturbed by noisy neighbours in his Prague apartment wrote deep into the night. Unfortunately that was not a solution for Pat, first he was not an insomniac, second Anna would not have been very happy, and third the crisis building up was infinitely graver than noisy neighbours. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | He had his commitments, the narration for Indians, promotional work for his book The Tragedy of the Amazon, followed by another work centred on Russia--a story of crookery, corruption and money laundering in the City of London. The Fitzwilliams Foundation had observed and monitored the Russian oligarchy against a background of Vladimir Putin's challenge to the Western democracies through a series of extraterritorial ventures reminiscent of the Cold War. With this in mind John Francis had persuaded Pat to co-author a book on how Moscow had instrumentalised the City of London's banking system and British politicians to advance its pawns on the geopolitical chessboard. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The Foundation had every reason to watch Moscow closely, as Pat Kennedy--successor to the late Michael Fitzwilliams, stood the head of the INI Banking Corporation, a multinational triumvirate, with its three main pillars situated respectively in Hong Kong, London ... and Moscow. The latter was headed by Sergei Tarasov, who after a dangerous brush with the Kremlin had mended his bridges and was again seated at the head of INI Moscow, thanks to the largely pragmatic concerns of the Kremlin and its occupier. Russia had returned to the forefront of world affairs over the course of the decade, thanks to the hesitations of Barrack Obama and then the bungling unilateral decisions of Donald Trump, encouraged by Europe's weakness--undermined by Brexit. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Moscow had finally re-emerged, a phoenix from the ashes of the Soviet Union, regaining its primacy as one of the world's most powerful nations, thanks to its nuclear arsenal, its military prowess and its vast territory spanning the Eurasian continent, from the Baltic to the Sea of Japan, facing the US across the Bering Sea. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | In spite of the Western sanctions imposed over its actions in Ukraine, Moscow had seen the West off, had dominated the military and geopolitical confrontation in the Syrian conflict, had won two unlikely allies, Turkey and Iran, eclipsing all the efforts made by Washington since Suez, regaining a paramount place in Middle East politics, a new power broker, even finding common interests with Saudi Arabia as an oil producer, whilst maintaining good relations with Israel, where one million Russian Jews lived. At the same time Russian money flooded into the UK financial system and its tentacular emanations, more precisely British Overseas Territories, where the flow of loose money dwarfed even that of the City of London, which nevertheless pulled the strings. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | How did that concern INI, well Pat Kennedy's bank had wittingly or unwittingly been instrumental in the flow of that money, like many other large banks, but perhaps more so, because of its unique geographical structure and distribution in different legal and administrative systems, jurisdictions and polities, from Hong Kong to Moscow, and the City of London to the Caribbean including Panama, Dominica and Belize to mention a few. Russia was not a superpower in the conventional sense, and although it was strictly speaking a second division player in economic terms, with its oil and gas reserves, its mineral resources, it geographical reach, its military-industrial complex, and its nuclear arsenal, it set its own rules as an independent player that few could afford to ignore. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The world woke up to a new reality when Vladimir Putin launched his unexpected gambit, seizing the Crimea and backing Donbass separatists in 2014, a warning to NATO, which had taken advantage of Moscow's weakness to prise former Soviet republics from its sphere of influence. Moscow's ambitions were underlined when Putin invited 43 leaders to Sochi for the first summit held by the Russian Federation for the nations of Africa, a continent that Moscow saw as a market for the arms and know-how of its military-industrial complex. The same went for Putin's unfailing support for Cuba and Venezuela, countries which had long seen Moscow as an alternative to Washington, underpinning revolutionary socialist regimes, though Russia's ideological ambitions had long since faded. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Therein lay the key to the Kremlin's motivations, with neither the economic power, a population comparable with those of the US, China or the EU, nor ideological ambitions beyond its own business and security needs, there was the interest of its oligarchy--wealth, a softer kind of power, and the stability to ensure its own continuity, in other words, a good old banana republic dictatorship backed by a terrifying nuclear arsenal, which was maybe a good thing, getting richer was better for world peace than ideological confrontation. | | ---|---|--- # 16 # THE LOST CITY KEN HISAKAWA HAD INTRODUCED Pat Kennedy to the Moskitia region of Nicaragua, one of the few places on earth where nature's ecological and evolutionary processes still remained intact. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | A couple of years earlier the two men had explored the dense jungle region in the search for the vestiges of the Lost City of the Monkey God. It was a region of great interest to archaeologists and scientists, where, if they hadn't found significant vestiges of a lost civilisation, they had discovered an amazing nature reserve, 246 species of butterflies and moths, 30 species of bats, and 57 species of amphibians and reptiles, creatures living in the forests surrounding the supposed site of what was also known as the White City, where nature for the moment still reigned, untouched by man. Some thought it had been the home to an ancient civilisation, others like the French archaeologist, Rene Viel, adamantly rejected the idea. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | In any case the region was a treasure house of nature, a pristine world of the past, to be preserved from the predatory human species that had spread across the face of the planet like a disease devouring all in its path. As the two friends pursued their search for lost civilisations, another one was in the making. Robots were already casting their furtive shadow across the landscape of the developed world. Each day the evidence mounted in an endless stream of reports that landed on the large antique desk of John Francis, in his office at the Fitzwilliams Foundation, on Queen Anne's Gate in the heart of London. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | It was inevitable, he had foreseen it--the age of Cornucopia, when work as it had been known since the Industrial Revolution would be an individual choice, when the wealth of the nation would be redistributed in the form of a universal wage calculated on the basis of an individual's contribution to the well-being of society. It was a nice idea, but the transition risked being complicated, very complicated. In the meantime, the use of robots caused job losses across the board, for both skilled and unskilled jobs, in all geographical regions. It was estimated up to 20 million manufacturing jobs could be lost in the coming decade, ten short years, in all countries. Already many had gone in the UK, where technological change was impacting all work places. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Were politicians capable of managing the transition when they themselves were ephemeral shadows, coming and going, unanswerable to those who had elected them, exposing their electors to capitalism's steamroller, unable to change the way work and employment evolved and how wealth was distributed in modern society. Over the course of three or four decades, privatisation, deregulation and taxation had favoured finance and big business, benefiting shareholders and directors, whilst the employees had been left vulnerable to technological change, be it in the office, on the factory floor or in distribution. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Capitalism had long been presented as the only workable model--in spite of all its faults, compared to Communism, the much vaunted alternative, which had been shown to be unworkable in the USSR and in a whole swath of Soviet-like socialist countries. Even so the flaws of capitalism were there and had been exposed and accentuated by the financial crisis of 2008, wage stagnation, increasing poverty, inequality and the emergence of a new kind of populism compounded by the threat of climate change. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | At the same time there was a growing opposition in the developing world to the use of natural resources by big business, especially foreign business. The question was who owned those resources? Minerals, oil and gas, water, agriculture, fisheries and land. Who should benefit from their use? Who were the deciders? It would need enlightened men and women, those not distracted by useless political squabbles, fighting over power, short-term leaders with short-term electoral interests. The task of finding those men and women would require nothing short of a miracle for West democracies, as they were pitted against behemoths like China and authoritarian leaders like Vladimir Putin in a new battle for survival. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | That left one overriding question unanswered--was man capable of regulating his world, one that was becoming more and more complex, beyond the capacity of any one individual, committee or even state. | | ---|---|--- # AUGUST # 1 # AN OLD FRIEND SCOTT HAD BEEN BUSY WATCHING over the changes at his new gallery, when Pat 'Dee' O'Connelly and Anna Basurko appeared. The summer vacation had not yet ended and Paris was still quiet when they set off along the banks of the Seine under the Plane trees, enjoying the fine weather and watching the tourists, as they walked from their place on quai des Celestins to rue des Beaux-Arts, just fifteen minutes away across the Seine. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The Left Bank gallery was Scott's third in Paris, recently acquired to take advantage of a thriving market in primitive arts. On seeing his friends, Scott dropped what he was doing, impatient to announce the news just received from Indonesia--the discovery that Homo erectus, popularly known as Java man, was thought to have lived at Ngandong much more recently than previously believed. Anna was nonplussed, perhaps she had misunderstood the name, she was Spanish, and though her English was excellent, there were always problems with accents and pronunciation, especially when the two men, long-time residents in Paris, flipped from English to French. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | They both laughed and Pat reminded her of Scott's extraordinary, but controversial discovery, made a few years earlier, a calvarium, identified as that of an ancient human ancestor, Homo erectus, evidence that a small population of modern man's predecessors had survived into historical times on the island of Borneo. Anthropologists had thought that the Ngandong erectus, who had lived on the island of Java, had become extinct 400,000 years ago, but new scientific methods now revised that to just 100,000 years. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | This went in Scott's direction, as the recent discovery of Homo floresiensis, a small primitive human, named by the media as 'the Hobbit', found on the island of Flores, near Bali, was 12,000 years old, like the fossils of Homo luzoniensis found in the Philippines, both of which were considered to have been offshoots of erectus. Scientist's believed that the new date, thanks to improved technology, was proof that a small group of human ancestors had made their last stand at Ngandong on the Solo River, where they had been wiped out by a climate change event, one that transformed their savannah-like habitat into a hostile rainforest. Scott suggested they continue over lunch, at L'entrecote a couple of streets away, Anna nodded in approval and they set off towards boulevard Saint Germain. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The two men chatted enthusiastically about erectus, first discovered by Rene Dubois, a Dutch military doctor, in the late 19th century, fossils that were later shown to be 1.9 million years old. The skull caps and shinbones used to establish the new date of the Ngandong erectus were in fact not new discoveries, but had been found by a Dutch expedition in 1930. The new dating of the Javanese erectus fossils comforted the knowledge that other survivors had continued to live on neighbouring islands, where perhaps further fossils remained to be discovered. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Between about 120,000 and 110,000 years ago, an Ice Age came to an end. Sea levels rose as glaciers melted, and the climate became warmer and wetter, transforming the biosphere of Java, one in which erectus was unable to adapt, as borne out by evidence that the bones of erectus had been swept, together with those of many other animals, into the Solo River by catastrophic flooding. * * * Man, an unremarkable creature during two million years, suddenly, ten or twelve thousand years ago, burst out of his modest niche, and in a flash in terms of history, emerged from being just another creature living in equilibrium with the natural environment to become the dominant species. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | After leaving Africa 70,000 years ago, Homo sapiens succeeded in reaching every corner of the earth in the space of about 50,000 years, occupying and transforming almost every niche of the natural environment for their own benefit and to the detriment of their fellow creatures. As the number of humans continued to grow on man's rapid march towards ten billion, they succeeded in transforming the environment and climate in a way that no other living organism had succeeded in doing so since the formation of the oceans and continents. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | There were many well argued commentaries on migration, starting with definitions of what migration was--humanitarian and political issues, causes and responsibilities with the later linked to colonisation and imperial history, which inevitably involved an euro-centric gnashing of teeth and tearing of hair, as if European nations had been the only expansionists in human history, even if they--starting with Alexander of Macedonia and Julius Caesar, had made a significant contribution to European expansionism in history. They were only copying the examples set by the Hittites and their near neighbours, or for that matter all of those Homo sapiens who had preceded them, and their ancestors including erectus. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The fact is all human history has been punctuated by movement and most certainly atrocities with our distant ancestors going as far as eating each other. The riposte that men were civilised and capable of rational thinking was nonsense and had been proven so throughout human history, which mostly recorded man's achievements in terms of war, conquest and colonisation. Even civilisation's artistic and literary achievements often glorified success in war and the domination of the other, not forgetting their respective gods with whom certain had covenants. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Dee recalled a discussion on a Parisian street with a Good Samaritan militating in favour of the Rohingya people, Dee asked him why Burma, a country the activist had never visited, and why not the homeless on the streets of his own neighbourhood. He looked at Padraig as if he was another of those right-wing racist fascists. Of course the Rohingya were more exotic, needed less explanation than the reasons why poor immigrants, or hapless French men and women, slept in shop doorways near to the Good Samaritan's home. El Ahram reported Egypt imported 10 million tonnes of wheat in 2018, from nine different countries to fed its population. That figure was forecast to increase to 12.6 million tonnes for the year 2019/20 when Egypt's population would top the 100 million mark. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | At the same time the 16 year-old Swedish climate change flag carrier, Greta Thunberg, set off for New York to address the UN Assembly, on a sailing boat, an example of how the world should change its gas-guzzling habits. Dee wondered if she had given any thoughts as how those millions of tonnes of wheat could be transported to Egypt on sailing boats, or how a country could allow its population to grow beyond its capacity to feed them, and what would happen if Egypt's main suppliers, Russia and Ukraine, suffered crop failures. Once again the problem returned to population, and not specifically that of Egypt, which simply served Dee as an example to illustrate a point. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Speaking of climate, Anna changed the subject to Pat Kennedy and his research project in Colombia. There was nothing new, except confirmation Pat would be arriving the following week and until then they'd have to wait. | | ---|---|--- # 2 # THE MEDITERRANEAN 'THE LUVVIES ARE AT IT AGAIN,' John moaned, as he read Ekaterina a story of Richard Gere praising migrants in Lampedusa as extraordinary people. It was true they had endured extraordinary hardships to make it to the Mediterranean. But things were not as simple as the 69 year old Hollywood actor imagined. 'Once his summer break is over, he'll be back to the comfort of his New York pad with his new 36 year old wife,' John casually remarked. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Ekaterina shot him a black look, their own age difference was even greater than that of the Gere pair. John studiously re-concentrated his attention on the article in Hello. Ekaterina knew about hardship, John had never experienced the kind of life she had remembered during the twilight days of the USSR and the chaos of Boris Yeltsin's Russia. Not that she was in favour of uncontrolled immigration. Gere had taken a break from his holiday in Tuscany to meet migrants on their ship, drifting at sea, without a home port to dock, to drop anchor. The actor delivered essential supplies of food and water, taking the opportunity to show the unfortunates pictures of his newborn son. 'As if they cared a damn about an ageing American actor they'd never heard of,' said Ekaterina, 'and his sprog!' |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | John looked up surprised, Ekaterina's English vocabulary was making considerable progress, even if it wasn't exactly in the right direction. He wondered where she'd picked the word up. Perhaps the decline of the language was a symptom of what was wrong with Britain, like Brexit, not a solution to its ills. A trip to the poorer districts of London told a different story to that of his own, around Royal Hospital Road in Chelsea, where he and his small family lived in splendid isolation, shielded from the common folk and violence of districts like Croydon and Southwark, where knife crime was rampant. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Social centres and public parks were disappearing almost overnight in the poorest districts and suburbs, as were pubs, shops and banks, even churches were being abandoned, left derelict as communities lost faith. Health and social services were underfunded whilst politicians focused on austerity and budget cuts ignoring the pain it cost to the more needy. When the high street shops closed people hunkered down at home, tele and takeaways, pub life disappeared, a way of life where men and women entered another world, one in which they were actors, rather than spectators. As for the young, many turned to solitude, lost in their own lonely worlds of video games and Netflix. | | ---|---|--- # 3 # CRISIS |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | FAR FROM THE AMAZON JUNGLES the situation was deteriorating quickly in Hong Kong, caught up in a crisis that seemed to have no issue but a bad one. The Global Times, a tabloid published by The People's Daily--the Chinese Communist Party news organ, showed a video filmed in Shenzhen, of thousands of soldiers in helmets and shields in an exercise battling with mock demonstrators disguised as students. The world was concerned by what was happening in Hong Kong, which to all intents was a city state, and one of the most important financial hubs in Asia. It looked like David against Goliath, a nice biblical parable with a happy ending, in reality the denouement risked looking more like Tiananmen or Sebastopol, with the rebellion crushed in blood. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The situation had got out of control and Pat Kennedy had set up a crisis room with his closest associates and advisors, including the Wu family and heads from the bank's overseas centres in London and Moscow. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | From the banks headquarters in Central on Hong Kong Island things looked normal, that is apart from the banner waving demonstrators on the forecourt of the bank's skyscraper home. But from the Peninsula in Kowloon, where they were gathered for their crisis meeting, away from distractions, the bankers had a ringside view on what was really happening on the street as the demonstrators swarmed past the luxury boutiques, their window displays filled with the kind of goods that few of them could afford--Vuitton handbags, designer watches, jewellery fit for oligarchs and Red Royalty, and shoes that cost a worker's annual wage. The expensive cars that normally dropped the wealthy shoppers off were nowhere to be seen, safely parked in deep underground garages. The usual flocks of well-heeled tourists were sheltering in their hotels or had flown on to more peaceful destinations. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | * * * In Moscow, yet another world, whilst Ekaterina waited for John to return from a visit to Sergei at the Russian headquarters of INI, she half watched the evening television news. In their large apartment off Tverskaya, where they were staying to catch up on the Russian art scene, she felt only vaguely concerned by the state of ebullition in the world that summer. Alena ignored her mother's complaints and continued to type away on her mobile phone as the nanny grabbed her brother Will to pack him off to bed. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Ekaterina zapped news channels and paused at an image she recognised, the terrace bar of a recently renovated market hall overlooking Trubnaya Square, where a well-dressed crowd sat drinking, the men from bottles of craft beer and their wives and girlfriends sipping at what she supposed was Aperol spritz. Below the terrace, on the esplanade, as the sun slowly went down over the Moscow skyline, the scene was quite different, riot-police harassed a crowd of predominantly young demonstrators, chasing one group across the square into the adjoining streets, those who weren't fast enough were grabbed and manhandled into waiting police vans, whilst loudspeakers threatened those remaining with arrest, a sure guarantee of detention for the more hardy opposition activists. |