British drugs giant AstraZeneca pounces on rival Alexion in deal worth £29.5bn

MONOPOLY CAPITALI$M; M&A BY ANY OTHER NAME

By NEIL CRAVEN, FINANCIAL MAIL ON SUNDAY

PUBLISHED:  13 December 2020

British drugs giant AstraZeneca will acquire North American rival Alexion Pharmaceuticals in a deal worth $39billion (£29.5billion), it was announced yesterday.

The deal would give Astra, which is based in Cambridge, access to Alexion's expertise in rare disease treatments, blood disorders and immunology.

It will also build on chief executive Pascal Soriot's turnaround of the business, which has seen AstraZeneca's shares rise 7 per cent this year and almost 70 per cent over three years. AstraZeneca, which also has major operations in Sweden and the US, was valued at £107billion on Friday, making it the third largest firm on the FTSE100 behind Unilever and BHP.


Swoop: The deal would give Astra, which is based in Cambridge, access to Alexion's expertise in rare disease treatments, blood disorders and immunology

There had been speculation that Soriot would seek to use the company's soaring valuation as leverage to swoop on a smaller rival.

Immunology is already a core focus for AstraZeneca alongside its development of treatments in cancer, cardiovascular, respiratory renal and metabolic diseases.

Alexion shareholders will own 15 per cent of the combined company, the businesses said in a jointly-issued statement.

Soriot said: 'We look forward to welcoming our new colleagues at Alexion so that we can together build on our combined expertise in immunology and precision medicines to drive innovation that delivers life-changing medicines.'

The executive boards of both firms have unanimously approved the acquisition, the statement said. If shareholders and regulators consent, the acquisition is expected to close in the third quarter of 2021.

Alexion chief executive Ludwig Hantson said: 'We bring to AstraZeneca a strong portfolio, innovative rare disease pipeline, a talented global workforce and strong manufacturing capabilities in biologics.'

The offer values Alexion at $175 a share. Its shareholders will receive $60 in cash and around two AstraZeneca 'American Depositary Shares' (ADR) per Alexion share. The ADR stock is a mechanism used in the United States for trading shares in non-US companies.

AstraZeneca has agreed $17.5billion (£13.2billion) of financing provided by Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs to help complete the deal. The bank agreement will cover the cash portion of the acquisition, deal costs and refinancing Alexion's existing loans. 

M-C-M

The statement said: 'The acquisition is expected to significantly enhance cash generation.'

Biden orders ‘exorcism’ of Trump from White House: 

Team in hazmat suits will spray the entire residence with disinfectant after Donald leaves

Biden is insisting the White House be thoroughly disinfected 

95 staff will have to pack up all the Trump possessions and move the Bidens

Team in hazmat suits will spray entire residence and remove carpets 

By CAROLINE GRAHAM FOR THE MAIL ON SUNDAY

PUBLISHED: 13 December 2020

Joe Biden has ordered the White House to be deep-cleaned and ‘exorcised’ of any trace of outgoing President Donald Trump.

President-elect Biden is set to move into the 55,000sq ft mansion after his January 21 inauguration but is insisting that the 132-room property be thoroughly disinfected beforehand.

White House historian Kate Andersen Brower said: ‘There is a five-hour window between presidents. That’s when 95 staff will have to pack up all the Trump possessions and move the Bidens in. They will clean or replace everything.’

A team in hazmat suits will spray the entire residence with disinfectant after Trump leaves and remove carpets, curtains and furniture.

‘The incoming President and First Lady get to choose their new furniture from a secret warehouse,’ Ms Andersen Brower told CNN.

A member of the transition team added: ‘Mr Trump’s administration has been riddled with the coronavirus. The Bidens are taking no chances. The entire property will be deep-cleaned down to replacing doorknobs and taking down soft furnishings. The virus can linger on hard surfaces so the entire residence and executive offices will be wiped clean with disinfectant to exorcise any trace of Team Trump.’

Mr Trump continued to rail against his election loss last night as his final legal challenge was dismissed by the US Supreme Court.

Joe Biden gave a thumbs-up as he walked out of a Philadelphia hospital after a follow-up exam on his foot which he fractured while playing with his pet dog Major

The President angrily rounded on Attorney General Bill Barr, calling him a ‘big disappointment’ for failing to reveal Biden’s 50-year-old son Hunter is under investigation for alleged tax evasion, tweeting: ‘Why didn’t Bill Barr reveal the truth to the public before the election, about Hunter Biden. Joe was lying on the debate stage that nothing was wrong or going on. Big disadvantage for the Republicans at the polls!’ Hunter Biden has denied any wrongdoing.

Insiders say he will refuse to attend Mr Biden’s inauguration.’

Mr Biden will order all Americans to wear masks during his first 100 days in office in a bid to bring the pandemic under control.

So far nearly 300,000 Americans have died. On Friday, the Food and Drug Administration approved Pfizer Covid vaccine for use, with frontline workers getting the first doses tomorrow.

Share or comment on this article: 

Biden orders 'exorcism' of Trump from White

Trump's Order on Visas for Foreign Workers Cost Companies $100 Billion: Report

According to estimates, the order barred the entrance of nearly 200,000 foreign workers and their dependents, said a report by Brookings Institute.

People stand on the steps of the US Citizenship and Immigration Services offices in New York, US on August 15, 2012. Photo: Reuters/Keith Bedford

Lalit K. Jha /OCT/2020

Washington: President Donald Trump‘s executive order restricting entry of skilled foreign workers into the US, mainly on H-1B and L1 visas, has resulted in an estimated loss of USD 100 billion to companies here, a top American think-tank claimed.

The executive order signed by Trump on June 22, 2020, that had temporarily banned issuing fresh H-1B and L-1 visas till December 31 caused a negative impact to the valuation of Fortune 500 firms equivalent to over USD 100 billion in losses, Brookings Institute said in a report released this week.

The H-1B visa, most sought-after among Indian IT professionals, is a non-immigrant visa that allows US companies to employ foreign workers in speciality occupations that require theoretical or technical expertise. The L-1 visa is for internal company transfers.

According to estimates, the order barred the entrance of nearly 200,000 foreign workers and their dependents, Brookings said in a report co-authored by Prithwiraj Choudhury, Indian-American Lumry Family Associate Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School; Dany Bahasr from Brookings and Britta Glennon from the University of Pennsylvania.

Noting that the non-immigrant visas (such as the H-1B and L-1 visas) that were targeted are used by companies to hire or transfer high-skilled immigrants, the report said there is overwhelming evidence documenting that skilled immigration improves firm outcomes such as profits, productivity, production expansion, innovation, and investment.


Also read: US State Dept Proposes Not to Issue Business Visas for H-1b Speciality Occupations

“Thus, it is plausible that the Trump administration’s measures significantly restraining immigration will have lasting negative impacts on American firms, and with it, slow down the post-COVID-19 economic recovery,” it argued.

Meanwhile, the American Immigration Council on Thursday said another proposed rule by the Department of Homeland Security limiting the admission periods of foreign students and exchange visitors could devastate US leadership in scientific research and technological innovation.

The proposal would negatively impact American colleges and universities and foreign students seeking a higher education degree in the United States and have long-term effects for the legal immigration system, it said.

A proposed rule by the Department of Homeland Security limiting the admission periods of foreign students and exchange visitors could devastate US leadership in scientific research and technological innovation, it said.

The proposal would negatively impact American colleges and universities and foreign students seeking a higher education degree in the United States and have long-term effects for the legal immigration system, it added.

“This rule threatens to undermine the US’ role as a world leader in education and stigmatizes tens of thousands of students based on their country of birth. New costs and bureaucratic barriers will make it more difficult for students and exchange visitors to complete their courses of study in the United States uncertainty that will inevitably drive talented students from around the world to pursue their studies in other countries, said Beth Werlin, executive director of the American Immigration Council.


“We already have an appropriate system in place to ensure that international students and exchange visitors comply with the terms of their visas. This proposed rule is unnecessary and would significantly reduce our ability to serve as a destination for the most talented students and exchange visitors from around the world,” Werlin said.

(PTI)

US Will Rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement on Day One of My Presidency: Joe Biden

Lalit K. Jha

Washington: On Saturday, US President-elect Joe Biden vowed to rejoin the Paris climate agreement on the first day of his presidency, as the world marked the 5th anniversary of the historic pact aimed at curbing global warming.

On November 4 this year, the US formally withdrew from the 2015 Paris Agreement on Climate Change, a decision originally announced by President Donald Trump in 2017.

Trump has repeatedly criticised the agreement as economically detrimental and claimed that it could cost the country 2.5 million jobs by 2025. He also said that it gave other major emitters, like China and India, a free pass.

“The United States will rejoin the Paris Agreement on day one of my presidency, and I’ll immediately start working with my counterparts around the world to do all that we possibly can, including by convening the leaders of major economies for a climate summit within my first 100 days in office,” Biden said.

The historic accord seeks to limit global warming to less than 2 degrees celsius, the value that climate scientists have determined will have disastrous consequences if exceeded.

The decision by the US, which is globally the second leading producer of all carbon dioxide emissions after China, to quit the agreement has led to condemnation from environmentalists and expressions of regret from world leaders.

The US is the only country to withdraw from the global pact. It can still attend negotiations and give opinions, but is relegated to observer status.

In a statement, the president-elect said that his administration will increase the ambition of the US’s domestic climate target and put the country on a sustainable path to achieve net-zero emissions no later than 2050.

“We’ll elevate the incredible work cities, states, and businesses have been doing to help reduce emissions and build a cleaner future. We’ll listen to and engage closely with the activists, including young people, who have continued to sound the alarm and demand change from those in power,” he said.

“And we’ll do all of this knowing that we have before us an enormous economic opportunity to create jobs and prosperity at home and export clean American-made products around the world, harnessing our climate ambition in a way that is good for American workers and the US economy,” he added.

Noting that five years ago, the world gathered to adopt the Paris Agreement on climate change, Biden said that it created an unprecedented framework for global action to avoid potentially catastrophic planetary warming while building global resilience to the climate impacts all are already experiencing.

“It sent a clear signal that nearly 200 countries were – finally, together – moving toward a clean-energy future,” he said.

The US leadership was essential to negotiating in Paris and indispensable to bringing the Agreement into force.

“Over the last four years, however, the world has lost that momentum, and nations and people in every part of the world are feeling the devastating impacts of a changing climate. We haven’t come close to the bold action that’s needed, and today, we have no time to waste,” he said.

“Under a Biden-Harris Administration, America will be back working with our partners around the world to ensure we realize those goals for the sake of our families and future generations,” Biden said.

Also read: What Joe Biden’s Climate Plans Mean for America, and the World

The climate plan being promoted by Biden and vice president-elect Kamala Harris has been called the most ambitious of any US administration yet, with a proposed $1.7 trillion investment into taking the US to net-zero by 2050. Net-zero means the country would recapture or remove as much carbon as it emits.

After being projected as the winner of the November 3 presidential election, Biden appointed former secretary of state John Kerry to be the country’s first-ever climate envoy.


Biden, who was President Barack Obama’s vice president when the Obama administration negotiated the deal, has repeatedly pledged to rejoin the Paris climate agreement.

(PTI)

Antarctica’s Melting Ice Shelves Are Dangerous

December 12th, 2020 

by Johnna Crider 

Half of Antarctica’s ice shelves could collapse in a flash, Live Science reports. The article points out that this could result from ongoing global warming.

As meltwater rushes through the cracks in the Antarctic ice shelves, it can destroy the ice shelves in minutes or hours. This is amplified by the warming atmosphere, and as the warming continues, this phenomenon may happen more often than not. A study published back in August showed that at least half of the ice shelves are at risk of having this happening. 

The study suggested that around 50% to 70% of the ice shelves holding Antarctic glaciers in place could become weak and even collapse with surges of meltwater. Ching-Yao Lai, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Marine Geology & Geophysics at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in New York and lead author of the study said, “What we find is that the amount of melting is important, but where the melting happens is also important.”

Christine Dow, the Canada Research Chair in Glacier Hydrology and Ice Dynamics at the University of Waterloo, wasn’t involved with the study but shared her thoughts with Live Science:

“The time frame over which this process could happen is the biggest question.”

“Mass loss from Antarctica (2003–2019). (Top) Mass change for Antarctica. (Bottom) Mass changes at the grounding line. Highest mass loss rates are in West Antarctica and Wilkes Land, East Antarctica. Map and grounding line mass change have been smoothed with a 35 km median filter for improved visualization.” Image courtesy NASA/Science.

Punching Through The Ice

Antarctic ice shelves that are confined to the open water create a barrier that slow-moving glaciers move up against. These buttressing ice shelves were a focal point for the study and they often have cracks on their surfaces as the shelf pushes against the curving shoreline. Also, the shelves stretch out as they flow across the ocean water. “Usually near the front of ice shelves, it gets stretched the fastest and this kind of breaking occurs,” Lai explained.

When the atmosphere is warm, the surface of an ice shelf may start to melt, and when this happens, the meltwater will pool into the cracks and create hydrofracturing, which is a process where excess water puts pressure on the ice. This makes the cracks deeper and can trigger the collapse of that shelf.

Dow explained that the meltwater “can punch through the ice to the ocean in a matter of minutes to hours, as long as there’s enough water available to keep on filling the crevasse and keep up the pressure,” adding that “the crack in the ice then fills up with ocean water.”

This could lead to the shelf breaking apart, which is what scientists believe happened to an ice shelf named Larsen B — it lost 1,255 square miles of ice over a period of a few weeks in 2002.

Lai and her team created a machine learning model to see which buttressing ice shelves were the most vulnerable to collapse. The algorithm can be trained to recognize visual features based on past images it’s analyzed. Lai and her team taught their model to recognize surface fractures in the ice using satellite images of two shelves — Larsen C and George VI — both located in the northwest region of Antarctica. Then they applied the model to a complete map of Antarctica.

After this, the researchers saw which fractures would be at risk of hydrofracture. Dow pointed out that even though researchers had used this analysis at specific ice shelves before, this application is “the first time it has been applied to the Antarctic as a whole.”

The Next Question

The research team is not done asking questions and seeking answers. They wonder, “How does this hydrofracture process contribute to the sea level rise?” To answer this question, her team will pair their model of ice cracks with climate predictions and a model of how ice flows over the bedrock of Antarctica.

Lai pointed out that the research will help the authors see how fast and how much sea-level rise could change due to cracks forming in ice sheets in combination with rising atmospheric temperatures.

The researchers don’t have an exact timeframe yet, but some scientists think that climate change will further accelerate massive hydrofracturing events within a matter of decades.

Final Thoughts

This year has been a really unusual year for many people. We’ve had the global pandemic, Trump and his drama, Black Lives Matter protests (which I support because killings of unarmed black people are abhorrent), the Pentagon released footage of UFOs, a mysterious monolith popping up at random places and then vanishing, and even a former Israeli space security chief saying extraterrestrials exist and claiming that Trump knows about it.

It’s been a helluva year, and so much has happened that the news about Antarctica’s heatwave back in February was probably forgotten. It got up to 64 degrees Fahrenheit, which is pretty much unheard of. And it isn’t stopping there — Antarctica has been simmering for 30 years — much longer than many have realized. The focus of the world is mostly on political games, whether it’s Trump and his drama or other countries with their own issues. Although many nations that took part in the Paris agreement did so because they are concerned with the direction our planet is headed in, I think we have some severe wakeup calls coming as Antarctica’s ice shelves start to collapse. 

As a whole, we are simply not doing enough to stop the heating of our planet. Some are trying, but we all need to get involved, and quite frankly, people who are starving, jobless, and who are trying to survive don’t really care about Antarctica or climate change. There are entire nations that look the other way on issues such as child slavery. There are leaders who are corrupt and don’t care about the wellbeing of their citizens. There are many issues in the world, but ongoing global warming and melting ice shelves will make most of them worse

This mentality has to change, and it starts with all of us. 

Alex Jones says Joe Biden will be removed ‘one way or another', while Rudy's star witness Melissa Carone says Trump is the 'best president we've had' in front of 15,000 protesters at the Million MAGA March

• Alex Jones, of Infowars fame, told the Million MAGA March that  Joe Biden 'will be removed one way or another' after he takes office
• Melissa Carone, 33, told the thousands of Trump supporters gathered outside the Supreme Court on Saturday that he is 'the best president we ever had'
• Carone, who went viral last week after appearing alongside Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani to give testimony at an election fraud hearing in Michigan, claimed she 'will not give up this fight'
• The massive pro-Trump crowd had gathered after the Supreme Court issued Trump with yet another loss on Friday night in dismissing a case filed by the Texas Attorney General to overturn results in four states 
• The 'Stop the Steal' rally was protesting with claims of voter fraud, despite courts across the country throwing out the numerous suits filed by the Trump campaign when no evidence of their allegations was found 
• Michael Flynn, the former National Security Adviser pardoned by Trump, spoke to rallygoers as well
• Enrique Tarrio, the head of Proud Boys,  revealed on social media he was also at the White House on Saturday 
• A White House spokesperson told DailyMail.com that Tarrio was there for a 'public Christmas tour' 
• Trump won't be meeting with Tarrio and the White House 'did not invite him,' according to the spokesperson 
• Clashes erupted between members of the Proud Boys and Black Lives Matter protesters in D.C. on Saturday night after thousands of Trump supporters gathered for the second Million MAGA March
• At least two protesters were allegedly stabbed outside of Harry's Bar at around 9.20pm 
• Meanwhile in Washington state, a person was shot in similar violent clashes between protests groups 

By REUTERS and ASSOCIATED PRESS and ARIEL ZILBER and HOLDEN WALTER-WARNER FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

PUBLISHED: 22:42 EST, 12 December 2020 | UPDATED: 05:47 EST, 13 December 2020

Alex Jones says Joe Biden will be removed 'one way or another' at Million MAGA March | Daily Mail Online

HERE ARE SOME OF THE PHOTOS FROM THE DAILY MAIL REPORT THERE ARE OVER 90 WITH THE MAIL REPORT

THEY ARE NOT REALLY CHRISTIANS THEY ARE BORN AGAIN IN THEIR OWN  MINDS'

HOW DO I KNOW I AM GOD? 

WHEN I PRAY I FIND I AM TALKING TO MYSELF.

PETER O'TOOLE INTHE RULING CLASS

                                                                 

                                                 BRING OUT YOUR DEAD!

THE VIRIGN AND TRUMP ANOTHER CONTRADICTION

AMERIKA IS BECOMING A THEOCRATIC STATE 

CHRISTIAN ZIONIST, I KNOWI KNOW A CONTRADICTION IN TERMS

FOR ANTI SEMITES THEY LIKE THEIR JEWS CHRISTIAN

LIKE THIS CHRISTIAN NATIONALIST FRAUD

ONLY A RABBI MAY BLOW THE RAMS HORN ACCORDING TO THE TORAH

ANOTHER KIND OF PRIDE THERE IS A LIBERTARIAN LGBTQ2 FLAG

 IN THE MIDST OF ALL THESE PROUD BOYS

TRUMP AND HIS WHITE NATIONALIST CHRISTIANS HATE THE FIRST AMENDMENT 

Sedition, alive and well and prosecutable against Trump ...

https://www.veteranstoday.com/2020/12/11/sedition-alive-and-well-and...

2 days ago · The federal law against seditious conspiracy can be found in Title 18 of the U.S. Code (which includes treason, rebellion, and similar offenses), specifically 18 U.S.C. § 2384. According to the statutory definition of sedition, it is a crime for two or more people within the jurisdiction of the United States:

COVID-19, gig economy or expendable employees

by Seth Ferris | Published: 00:00, Dec 14,2020


— New Eastern Outlook

FOR two generations society has been built of the concept of the regular wage earner. Housing, commercial development and politics have all been based on the presumption that most people will have regular jobs, bringing in regular incomes, and that they can expect this to continue until they retire.

This presumption was being put under considerable strain before COVID-19. Where once a single wage earner could buy and keep a home for their family, now two full-time incomes aren’t enough to enable people to own their own homes in the cities where they can earn that much. Employers are resorting ever more to temporary workers or zero hours and at-will contracts because they can’t afford to pay pensions or benefits, and the inexorable march of a ‘free market’ only free for a chosen few has eroded many of the certainties a prospering economy is supposed to provide.

COVID-19 has changed the game further. It was bad enough that politicians from the same parties that created an ‘us and them’ attitude were now exploiting the problems of the same people they themselves had excluded as unworthy. Now those same politicians are wrecking economies with lockdowns — which may be necessary for health reasons (or not) but are rather an attempt to ensure that no one can have a future, unless the few that can provide one toe the political line.




Yes sir, no sir

RUSSIANS might know what I am talking about. Didn’t they once have a revolution to get rid of the same thing?

The problem with the Tsarist system wasn’t that it was cruel, unjust or corrupt. If it had been, the Soviet Union would not have fitted the same description, and rejoiced in doing so, only the beneficiaries changing.

The Russian autocracy rested on understandings rather than laws. When you have rule of law, your point of reference is not what somebody thinks or wants, but a written text, passed by a competent governing authority, which is binding on everyone. Things are done on the basis of these laws rather than what someone above us happens to think or want at a given time — if they don’t like the law, they have to change it, following the proper procedure.

When everything is done via understandings, people act on the basis of what they think those above them want, regardless of what the law says. This can and does change from day to day, depending on all kinds of factors. As many modern refugees have found, today the government may like you because you say the right thing, but tomorrow that thing may not be what a new strategic partner likes to hear, so you are suddenly an enemy of the state.

Such a system is designed to create instability and dependence. When your life depends on keeping the right side of what the authorities want, you constantly have to kowtow to those authorities, determining their wishes and obeying them. You have no rights, no recourse, no redress, even if you have courts and tribunals and police. All you can do is obey, because if you don’t, everything you have can be taken away at any moment.

This is why the Tsarist system became so reviled, and why modern Russians didn’t bring it back when the evil empire finally fell, unlike in many other situations when a regime is toppled by popular pressure. Deep down, everyone wants democracy and rule of law, however they feel this is expressed — theocratic regimes in the Middle East, like the communists of old, are seen as offering those very same things by their supporters.

COVID-19 has created a situation where everyone’s livelihood depends on what regulations the government is going to impose on a given day. One day your employer can function, the next they can’t, because someone above you made a decision without consulting you.

All you can do to secure your immediate future is to try and work out what the government is going to do next, and show what a good person you are by jumping the right way and applauding it. Your employment rights, history with the company, skills and experience are irrelevant.

This is the polar opposite of government by the people, for the people. This is why a global pandemic is being used as the means of introducing it. ‘It isn’t us, it’s the virus.’ Just like it is the fault of the poor and immigrants, those with the least ability to influence the economy, which created the problems which deter people from rising up against such nonsense.



Freedom at one end

WHEN the internet came along, it was considered by many as a way of bucking the system. You could now create your own future by offering your skills directly, at your own price, rather than what your company chose to pay you.

You could live in some remote spot and still earn a working wage by reaching new customers your employer didn’t have. However the dream online jobs, as found on Craigslist or some freelancer sites, remain few and far between.

Yes, it is possible to run online businesses. But any prospective customer does not have an entirely online existence, so you are just as much dependent on the same economic realities as ever, online or not.

However, flexible work based on what you do best and based on your own schedule, remains an attractive idea. Consequently it is being increasingly offered as a cover for exploitation. ‘Work for us with all the advantages of being a freelancer, working from home, and you can do other work when we don’t need you.’ Not when all your customers are in the same position you can’t — they can’t buy anything you have to offer when their own existences are as precarious as your own.

Often the employers offload everything onto the worker, no longer obliged to provide them with benefits, a set schedule or regular payment. As a short term ‘gig employee,’ you are even responsible for all taxes and other governmental contributions, and these are still levied on the basis that everyone has a regular set income, as they always have been.

Wages are being driven down by creating expendable jobs, and you can become redundant based on ratings received on online mobile applications, like Uber drivers. Everything is on demand, on an as-needed basis, when the driver of those needs, the ability to pay for them, is no longer there with the same predictability.

The gig economy, far from freeing people to dip in and out as needed, is worse than wage slavery. You do not know when or if you are getting paid, or if you even have work, or what rates you will be offered or can charge.

Naturally, and it is described, ‘This new economy promises to wring out the waste and excess capacity that the old economy left in its wake and it presents enormous opportunities for those who seek a more sustainable, equitable, and diverse future’. But where does that leave the majority? Those of us who may not have benefited, or don’t know how to access this utopian dream to the fullest?



Bucked by the same system

FOR some, the gig economy is a benefit. A correspondent of mine in the Republic of Georgia recently shared how the gig economy works for him.

‘I never really knew about the “gig economy” until very recently. A friend of mine enlightened me, and I realised I had been working gigs for a while, short jobs with quick pay, temp jobs or covering for someone. These past few months I have had a lot of these, but I didn’t realise it was becoming a thing.

‘Only yesterday I lost one job and gained another. In Tbilisi, the saying “As one door closes another one opens” really rings true, at least in my experience.

‘People often ask me “What are you doing here?” Why are you here? Why are you not in China or Russia where the big bucks are? Well they don’t get it, they don’t understand. I was where the big bucks are but was I happy?? Hell, no!!!

‘Getting up at 6:00am for a 7:00am class (and this was in school, not online folks) is really not my style. The country I am referring to is Vietnam, I was there for almost two years doing gig work for a teachers agency all around Vietnam. But because I was on short contracts for each place, it was difficult to start any relationships. I was living in a small town on the coast of Vietnam; the beach was just five minutes’ walk away. But I was deeply unhappy and lonely there, even though I was on a good wage.

‘So now I’m in Tbilisi, Georgia for the pandemic. I love where I am. It was my ambition to live and work here, and I’ll stay here till I drop because I love it. As for the gig work, as a native speaker from London, England, being an English teacher works to my advantage. It’s not just about where you are from — I have a GCSE, a BA HONS and a TEFL, so it’s not as if I’m underqualified, which many teachers here maybe are.

‘I think the gig economy is a good thing that I can rely on. There will always be students, so there will always be gigs and I don’t see them as a bad thing.’

Maybe so. But what does teaching English in Georgia actually mean? Training people who want a better life to do whatever someone else thinks they need to get that life.

If the political orientation of Georgia changes, not only will there be fewer English students, but those who have already bitten that bullet will be ostracised, and the other countries they hope to go to won’t want them because they will associate their country with its new orientation. This has happened again and again — think Belarus or Ukraine. Rather than being an antidote to the negative aspects of the gig economy, teaching EFL only hastens their consumption of everything in their path.

I’m not moving

THIS problem is recognised, but imperfectly. As soon as someone tries to address it, the latest COVID-19 news is released and everything falls flat.

In California in the November elections, the elected officials said Uber and Lyft ridesharing drivers should be treated as employees, but these corporations put a referendum on the ballot to undo it and it passed. It appears the main reason the initiative failed was that the companies threatened to leave the state if the measure was passed — and everyone was scared that other employers might follow the same lead, including their own.

In a Zoom and other interviews in early November, chairman of the US Federal Reserve Jerome Powell stated that the coronavirus has probably forever changed the economy. Two examples of such changes he mentioned were that people will increasingly work from home, which will change many things of which we are aware and also things we are currently unaware of, and that there might be a ‘permanent unemployed class’ because many jobs have been either lost or ‘re-engineered’ because of COVID-19.

Powell feared for this ‘permanent unemployed class,’ both in terms of their own economic survival and the social upheavals their presence may cause in the future. This is a reality already experienced in many once-prosperous industrial cities in the western world, where local versions of Reaganomics destroyed whole communities forty years ago, and no one wants to replace the old industries because the people in them are regarded as ‘bad’, ‘unproductive’ or ‘unskilled’ because they were trained to work in jobs no longer there.

With more and more young people not being able to work (because of no work being available) and not being able to attend university (because of cost), the additional layer of unemployed workers (because of COVID-19) is causing real social and economic upheaval. There have been pandemics and economic collapses before. But never before has there been a change from regular to irregular work as the main driver of an economy — because everyone has avoided it, no country being able to prosper that way.

New Eastern Outlook, December 11. Seth Ferris is an investigative journalist, political scientist and expert on Middle Eastern affairs

A TRIBUTE TO NOAM CHOMSKY
The centrality of critical education in dark times

by Henry Giroux | Published: 00:00, Dec 13,2020


Noam Chomsky. — The Nation

Writers speak the unspeakable and the closer you get to it, the more real it is, which is part of making life possible for those who come after.
— Arthur Miller

THROUGHOUT his entire life, Noam Chomsky has used his knowledge, skills, and stature as a public intellectual to advocate for a radical change in societies that have failed to live to the promises and ideals of a radical democracy. Chomsky has made clear that intellectuals, artists, educators, and other cultural workers have a responsibility to use education to address grave social problems such as the threat of nuclear war, ecological devastation, and the sharp deterioration of democracy. And he has done it by communicating in multiple spheres to diverse audiences. His academic work and public interventions have become a model for enriching public life and addressing staggering forms of economic inequality, needless wars, and class and racial injustices. He has worked tirelessly to inspire individuals and social movements to unleash the energy, insights, and passion necessary to keep alive the spirit, promises, and ideals of a radical democracy. He models his own work on the responsibility of intellectuals by drawing from a wide variety of disciplinary fields and in doing so embraces a notion of education that turns intellectuals and cultural workers into border crossers and refiners of the moral imagination. This talk is dedicated to his courage and relentless spirit of resistance.

Across the globe, democratic institutions such as the independent media, schools, the legal system, certain financial institutions, and higher education are under siege. The promise, if not ideals, of democracy are receding as right-wing populism and an updated version of fascist politics are once again on the move subverting language, values, courage, vision, and hope for a more just and humane world. In the current historical moment, we are witnessing a crisis of education, consciousness, civic imagination, and democratic values. Education has increasingly become a tool of domination as right-wing pedagogical apparatuses controlled by the entrepreneurs of hate attack workers, the poor, people of colour, refugees, immigrants from the south and others considered disposable. In the midst of an era when an older social order is crumbling and a new one is struggling to define itself, there emerges a time of confusion, danger, and moments of great restlessness. The present moment is once again at a historical juncture in which the structures of liberation and authoritarianism are vying for shaping a future that appears to be either an unthinkable nightmare or a realisable dream.


The dark times that haunt the current age are epitomised by a new crop of authoritarians who echo the politics of a totalitarian past and have come to rule in the United States and a number of other societies. These architects of a new breed of fascist politics increasingly dominate major cultural apparatuses and other commanding political and economic institutions across the globe. Their nightmarish reign of misery, violence, and disposability is legitimated, in part, in their control of all sorts of knowledge producing settings that construct a vast machinery of manufactured consent. This reactionary educational formation includes the mainstream broadcast media, digital platforms, the internet, and print culture, all of which participate in an ongoing spectacle of violence, the aestheticisation of politics, the legitimation of opinions over facts, and an embrace of a culture of ignorance. For instance, in the United States, Donald Trump’s shaping of political culture has become in many ways more toxic and damaging than his public policies given his undermining of the civic fabric, rule of law, and democracy itself. He normalised racism, state violence, hatred, and disinformation by not only bringing it to the centre of power, but also by deeply embedding a toxic, death-dealing politics deep into the American consciousness and culture. Trump used the term ‘fake news’ as an instrument of power to disdain the truth and call the press the enemy of the American people. Anti-intellectualism and a hatred for the truth became the new normal in American culture. Under such circumstances, the growing reign of authoritarianism and right-wing popular movements waged a war on critical forms of education, regarded the truth with disdain, and disparaged the very presence of critical judgement in any sphere where civic literacy asserted itself. This plague of ignorance and culture of lies took place in the midst of a death dealing pandemic accelerated by a bungling mode of governance that disdained scientific evidence, played down the seriousness of the virus, offered no national plan to deal with the pandemic, and confused science with pseudo-science. As infections rose and deaths skyrocketed, the United States turned into a funeral home. Trump’s response was to focus relentlessly on the bogus claim that he won the presidential election while relentlessly attempting to legitimate and circulate a range of bizarre and utterly delusional right-wing conspiracy theories.


It is hard to imagine a more urgent moment for taking seriously the call to make education central to politics. The rule of authoritarianism is imposed less and less by military coups than it is through elections subverted by the force of oppressive forms of education that extend from the schools to the social media and other cultural apparatuses. The educational force of the cultural sphere is now amplified by the merging of power and new instruments of culture that have produced powerful sites of struggle in an effort to normalise and legitimate dominant ideas, values, and social relations. Making education central to politics means that any viable notion of education has to address the cultural forces shaping policies and society so as to create a formative culture in the service of democratic modes of agency, desires, and identities. If education is going to work in the service of democracy, it needs a new vision and language in which the call for real change resonates with the concrete needs, desires, values, and modes of identification that working-class people of every stripe can understand and relate to critically. As Stuart Hall once pointed out, without a politics of identification there is no hope for education in the service of creating critically informed agents. At stake here is the notion that education is a social concept, one rooted in the goal of emancipation for all people. Moreover, this is an education that encourages the acquisition of forms of human agency that are not content to enable people only to become critical thinkers. They should also be engaged individuals and social agents willing to intervene in the shaping of society. This is a pedagogy that calls us beyond ourselves, and engages the ethical imperative to care for others, dismantle structures of domination, and to become a subject rather than an object of history, politics, and power.

If we are going to develop a politics capable of awakening our critical, imaginative, and historical sensibilities, it is crucial for educators and others to create a political project infused with a language of critique and possibility, informed by the crucial notion that there is no substantive democracy without informed citizens. Such a language is necessary to enable the conditions to forge a collective international resistance among educators, youth, artists, and other cultural workers in defence of not only public goods, but also a democracy with the guarantee of not only civil and political rights, but also economic rights that ensure both dignity and a meaningful sense of agency. Such a movement is important to resist and overcome the tyrannical fascist nightmares that have descended upon the United States, Brazil, Hungary, India, and a number of other countries in Europe plagued by the rise of right-wing populist movements and neo-Nazi parties. In an age of social isolation, information overflow, a culture of immediacy, consumer glut, and spectacularised violence, it is all the more crucial to take seriously the notion that a democracy cannot exist or be defended without informed and critically engaged citizens.


Education must be broadly understood as taking place in multiple sites and defined, in part, through its interrogation on the claims of democracy. As Ariel Dorfman argues it is time to create the cultural institutions and pedagogical conditions in multiple sites extending from the mainstream press to the online digital world in order ‘to unleash the courage, energy, joy and, yes, compassion with which rebellious millions [can] defy fear and keep hope alive in these traumatic times.’ As Pierre Bourdieu has argued, ‘important forms of domination are not only economic but also intellectual and pedagogical and lie on the side of belief and persuasion [making it all the more] important to recognise that intellectuals bear an enormous responsibility for challenging this form of domination.’ This is an especially crucial demand at a time when the educational and pedagogical force of culture works through and across multiple sites. Schooling is only one site of education, while movies, television, books, magazines, the internet, social media, and music are incredibly significant forces in shaping world views, modes of agency, and diverse forms of identification. What this insight suggests is that academics, artists, intellectuals, and other cultural producers bear an enormous responsibility in addressing social problems, educating a broader public in ways that allow them to think critically and act with conviction and courage. They also need to support those institutions, public spaces, and cultural apparatuses where public issues can be debated, power can be held accountable, and intellectual inquiry is given the full range of its imaginative and critical possibilities.

The responsibility of public intellectuals also points, as CW Mills argues in The Sociological Imagination, to the work of translating private issues into larger systemic considerations, and to speak to people in ways that are accessible, can awaken their sense of identification, and illuminate critically the conditions that bear down on their lives. As intellectuals, it is crucial to remember that there is no genuine democracy without the presence of citizens willing to hold power accountable, engage in forms of moral witnessing, break the continuity of common sense, and challenge the normalisation of anti-democratic institutions, policies, ideas, and social relations.

In a time when truth has become malleable and Americans have been told that the only obligation of citizenship is to consume, language has become thinner and more individualistic, detached from history and more self-oriented, all the while undermining viable democratic social spheres as spaces where politics brings people together as collective agents willing to push at the frontiers of the political and moral imagination. Americans have forgotten their civic lessons, and in doing so ceded the ground of history to the purveyors of lies, militarism, and white supremacy. Trump’s support for the ideals of the confederacy makes clear that language is a doorway that can lead to normalising the horrors of the past. Risking the failure to learn from history, we fail to see elements of a horrendous past re-emerging as ‘an early warning system.’


Making education central to politics suggests that as artists, researchers, and academics we ask uncomfortable questions about what Arundhati Roy calls ‘our values and traditions, our vision for the future, our responsibilities as citizens, the legitimacy of our “democratic institutions”, the role of the state, the police, the army, the judiciary, and the intellectual community.’ Education has the task of creating the conditions in which people develop a collective sense of urgency that prompts a desire to learn how to govern rather than to learn merely how to be governed. Education for empowerment means creating informed and critically engaged social movements willing to fight the emotional plagues, economic inequality, human misery, systemic racism, and collapse of the welfare state caused by neoliberal capitalism and other forms of authoritarianism. Democracy’s survival depends upon a set of habits, values, ideas, culture, and institutions that can sustain it. Democracy is both fragile and always unfinished and its fate and future are not only a political issue but an educational one as well.

In the end, there is no democracy without informed citizens and no justice without a language critical of injustice. Democracy should be a way of thinking about education, one that thrives on connecting pedagogy to the practice of freedom, learning ethics, and on agency to the imperatives of social responsibility and the public good. In the age of nascent fascism, it is not enough to connect education with the defence of reason, informed judgement, and critical agency; it must also be aligned with the power and potential of collective resistance. We live in dangerous times. Consequently, there is an urgent need for more individuals, institutions, and social movements to come together in the belief that the current regimes of tyranny can be resisted, that alternative futures are possible and that acting on these beliefs through collective resistance will make radical change happen.

Noam Chomsky’s work is infused with the notion that history is open, and that it is necessary for people to think otherwise in order to act otherwise, especially if we want to imagine and bring into being alternative democratic futures and horizons of possibility. Chomsky’s importance in developing a vision infused with a mix of justice, hope, and struggle has never been more important than it is today. Moreover, in the face of the emerging tyranny and fascist politics that are spreading across the globe, it is time to heed his call to merge a sense of moral outrage with a sense of civic courage and collective action. At the very least, education is central to politics because it provides the foundation for those of us who believe that democracy is a site of struggle, which can only be engaged through an awareness of both its fragility and necessity. What we cannot do is look away. Goya was right when he warned, ‘the sleep of reason produces monsters.’


CounterPunch.org, December 11. 

Henry A Giroux currently holds the McMaster University chair for scholarship in the public interest in the english and cultural studies department and is the Paulo Freire distinguished scholar in critical pedagogy.