nearly half of the undergraduate tutorials for which Cambridge University is famous are delivered by precariously employed staff without proper contracts
. The UCU says this is a familiar story across the country. ........... Determined not to drop out, she borrowed the tent from a friend. ....... “Many people are still shocked to learn that higher education is one of the most casualised sectors in the British economy. There are at least 75,000 staff on insecure contracts: workers who are exploited, underpaid, and often pushed to the brink by senior management teams relying on goodwill and a culture of fear.” ......... “It was a really hard time, carrying on teaching and doing my research while I had nowhere to live,” she says. “I ended up with severe PTSD.”Remote-first work is taking over the rich world A growing body of research hints at why ....... In february 2020 Americans on average spent 5% of their working hours at home. By May, as lockdowns spread, the share had soared to 60%—a trend that was mirrored in other countries. Many people, perhaps believing that working from home really meant shirking from home, assumed that office life would soon return to something like its pre-pandemic norm. To say it has not turned out that way would be a huge understatement. .........
40% of all American working hours are still now spent at home.
........ Wall Street banks, often the most enthusiastic advocates for in-office work, are toning down the rhetoric. ........ Workers hope they will spend closer to half their working hours at the kitchen table. ........ Many people remain scared of contracting covid-19, and thus wish to avoid public spaces. Another possibility is that workers have more bargaining power. ....... Work that is largely done remotely may be more efficient compared with an office-first model. .......... Economists have less insight into why remote workers might be more productive. One possibility is that they can more easily focus on tasks than in an office, where the temptation to gossip with a co-worker looms large. Commuting, moreover, is tiring. Another factor relates to technology. Remote workers, by necessity, rely more on tools such as Slack and Microsoft Teams. This may allow bosses to co-ordinate teams more effectively, if the alternative in the office was word-of-mouth instructions that could easily be forgotten or misinterpreted. ...........The number of people moving to cities such as Tulsa, in Oklahoma, which is positioning itself as the global capital of remote work, remains small.
............ Remote work makes people’s collaboration practices more “static and siloed”, it finds. People interact more with their closest contacts, but less with the more marginal members of their networks who can offer them new perspectives and ideas. That probably hurts innovation. The upshot is that fully remote teams might do quite well in the short term, but will ultimately suffer as innovation dries up.What Will Drive China to War? A cold war is already under way. The question is whether Washington can deter Beijing from initiating a hot one. ....... President xi jinping declared in July that those who get in the way of China’s ascent will have their “heads bashed bloody against a Great Wall of steel.” The People’s Liberation Army Navy is churning out ships at a rate not seen since World War II, as Beijing issues threats against Taiwan and other neighbors. Top Pentagon officials have warned that China could start a military conflict in the Taiwan Strait or other geopolitical hot spots sometime this decade............... Beijing is a remarkably ambitious revanchist power, one determined to make China whole again by “reuniting” Taiwan with the mainland,
turning the East and South China Seas into Chinese lakes
, and grabbing regional primacy as a stepping-stone to global power. It is also increasingly encircled, and faces growing resistance on many fronts—just the sort of scenario that has led it to lash out in the past. ........... When confronted by a mounting threat to its geopolitical interests,Beijing does not wait to be attacked; it shoots first to gain the advantage of surprise.
................ It is willing to pick even a very costly fight with a single enemy to teach it, and others observing from the sidelines, a lesson. ..........China attacks not when it feels confident about the future but when it worries its enemies are closing in.
........... Beijing often has attacked far superior foes—including the U.S.—to cut them down to size and beat them back from Chinese-claimed or otherwise sensitive territory. ......... In 1950, for instance, the fledgling PRC was less than a year old and destitute, after decades of civil war and Japanese brutality. Yet it nonetheless mauled advancing U.S. forces in Korea out of concern that the Americans would conquer North Korea and eventually use it as a base to attack China. In the expanded Korean War that resulted, China suffered almost 1 million casualties, risked nuclear retaliation, and was slammed with punishing economic sanctions that stayed in place for a generation. But to this day, Beijing celebrates the intervention as a glorious victory that warded off an existential threat to its homeland. ................ In 1962, the PLA attacked Indian forces, ostensibly because they had built outposts in Chinese-claimed territory in the Himalayas. The deeper cause was that the CCP feared that it was being surrounded by the Indians, Americans, Soviets, and Chinese Nationalists, all of whom had increased their military presence near China in prior years. Later that decade, fearing that China was next on Moscow’s hit list as part of efforts to defeat “counterrevolution,” the Chinese military ambushed Soviet forces along the Ussuri River and set off a seven-month undeclared conflict that once again risked nuclear war. .............Beijing turns violent when confronted with the prospect of permanently losing control of territory. It tends to attack one enemy to scare off others. And it rarely gives advance warning or waits to absorb the initial blow.
.............Beijing’s military hasn’t fought a major war since 1979.
.......... From 2007 to 2019, growth rates fell by more than half, productivity declined by more than 10 percent, and overall debt surged eightfold. The coronavirus pandemic has dragged down growth even further and plunged Beijing’s finances deeper into the red. On top of all this, China’s population is aging at a devastating pace: From 2020 to 2035 alone, it will lose 70 million working-age adults and gain 130 million senior citizens. .......... For roughly a decade, Japan has been engaged in its largest military buildup since the Cold War; the ruling Liberal Democratic Party is now talking about doubling defense spending. India is massing forces near China’s borders and vital sea lanes. Vietnam and Indonesia are expanding their air, naval, and coast-guard forces. Australia is opening up its northern coast to U.S. forces and acquiring long-range missiles and nuclear-powered attack submarines. France, Germany, and the United Kingdom are sending warships into the Indo-Pacific region. Dozens of countries are looking to cut China out of their supply chains; anti-China coalitions, such as the Quad and AUKUS, are proliferating. .................. Xi, like his predecessors, desires to make China the preponderant power in Asia and, eventually, the world. .......... Most of China’s trade passes through the East and South China Seas. And China’s primary antagonists in the area—Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines—are part of a strategic chain of U.S. allies and partners whose territory blocks Beijing’s access to the Pacific’s deep waters. ............... Schoolchildren study the century of humiliation. National holidays commemorate foreign theft of Chinese lands. For many citizens, making China whole again is as much an emotional as a strategic imperative. Compromise is out of the question. “We cannot lose even one inch of the territory left behind by our ancestors,” Xi told James Mattis, then the U.S. secretary of defense, in 2018. ................. In August 2021, a record 68 percent of the Taiwanese public identified solely as Taiwanese and not as Chinese, and more than 95 percent wanted to maintain the island’s de facto sovereignty or declare independence. ............. If China does attack, Washington could face a choice between escalation or seeing Taiwan conquered. ......... U.S. and Japanese officials now confer routinely on how they would respond to Chinese aggression—and publicly advertise that cooperation. .............. For years, Chinese strategists have speculated about a short, sharp war that would humiliate Japan, rupture its alliance with Washington, and serve as an object lesson for other countries in the region. Beijing could, for instance, land or parachute special forces on the Senkakus, proclaim a large maritime exclusion zone in the area, and back up that declaration by deploying ships, submarines, warplanes, and drones—all supported by hundreds of conventionally armed ballistic missiles aimed at Japanese forces and even targets in Japan. Tokyo then would either have to accept China’s fait accompli or launch a difficult and bloody military operation to recapture the islands. America, too, would have to choose between retreat and honoring the pledges it made—in 2014 and in 2021—to help Japan defend the Senkakus. Retreat might destroy the credibility of the U.S.-Japan alliance. Resistance, war games held by prominent think tanks suggest, could easily lead to rapid escalation resulting in a major regional war. ..................... From Beijing’s perspective, circumstances are looking ripe for a teachable moment. The best target might be the Philippines. .............. Beijing possesses grandiose territorial aims as well as a strategic culture that emphasizes hitting first and hitting hard when it perceives gathering dangers. It has a host of wasting assets in the form of military advantages that may not endure beyond this decade. Such dynamics have driven China to war in the past and could do so again today. ...............a U.S.-China war could be incredibly dangerous, offering few plausible off-ramps and severe pressures for escalation
............ If Beijing understands that it cannot easily or cheaply win a conflict, it may be more cautious about starting one. .......... require an intellectual shift—a realization that the United States and its allies need to rapidly shut China’s windows of military opportunity, which means preparing for a war that could well start in 2025 rather than in 2035. And that, in turn, requires a degree of political will and urgency that has so far been lacking.Capitalism is killing the planet – it’s time to stop buying into our own destruction Instead of focusing on ‘micro consumerist bollocks’ like ditching our plastic coffee cups, we must challenge the pursuit of wealth and level down, not up ......... Regardless of which complex system is being studied, there’s a way of telling whether it is approaching a tipping point. Its outputs begin to flicker. The closer to its critical threshold it comes, the wilder the fluctuations. What we’ve seen this year is a great global flickering, as Earth systems begin to break down.
The heat domes over the western seaboard of North America; the massive fires there, in Siberia and around the Mediterranean; the lethal floods in Germany, Belgium, China, Sierra Leone – these are the signals that, in climatic morse code, spell “mayday”.
......... Our great intelligence, our highly evolved consciousness that once took us so far, now works against us. ............ “cake” was mentioned 10 times as often as “climate change” on UK TV programmes in 2020. “Scotch egg” received double the mentions of “biodiversity”. “Banana bread” beat “wind power” and “solar power” put together. ............... If an asteroid were heading towards Earth, and we turned on the radio, we’d probably hear: “So the hot topic today is – what’s the funniest thing that’s ever happened to you while eating a kebab?” This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but with banter. ........... The chatter on the radio sounds like the distant signals from a dying star. ......... the environmental impact of producing an organic cotton tote bag is equivalent to that of 20,000 plastic ones. ..........Rich people can persuade themselves they’ve gone green because they recycle, while forgetting that they have a second home
............ a recent survey of public beliefs about river pollution found that “litter and plastic” was by far the biggest cause people named. In reality, the biggest source of water pollution is farming, followed by sewage. Litter is way down the list. It’s not that plastic is unimportant. The problem is that it’s almost the only story we know. .......... a 2019 speech by the chief executive of the oil company Shell, Ben van Beurden. He instructed us to “eat seasonally and recycle more”, and publicly berated his chauffeur for buying a punnet of strawberries in January. .......... The great political transition of the past 50 years, driven by corporate marketing, has been a shift from addressing our problems collectively to addressing them individually. In other words, it has turned us from citizens into consumers. It’s not hard to see why we have been herded down this path.As citizens, joining together to demand political change, we are powerful. As consumers, we are almost powerless.
......... when Stalin and Hitler were in power, “one of the most astonishing human traits that came to light at this time was obedience”. The instinct to obey, he observed, was stronger than the instinct to survive. Acting alone, seeing ourselves as consumers, fixating on MCB and mind-numbing trivia, even as systemic environmental collapse looms: these are forms of obedience.We would rather face civilisational death than the social embarrassment caused by raising awkward subjects, and the political trouble involved in resisting powerful forces.
The obedience reflex is our greatest flaw, the kink in the human brain that threatens our lives. ................In reality, the great fortunes amassed under capitalism are not obtained this way, but through looting, monopoly and rent grabbing, followed by inheritance.
......... One estimate suggests that, over the course of 200 years, the British extracted from India, at current prices, $45tn. They used this money to fund industrialisation at home and the colonisation of other nations, whose wealth was then looted in turn. ............ The apparent health of our economies today depends on seizing natural wealth from future generations. This is what the oil companies, seeking to distract us with MCB and carbon footprints, are doing. Such theft from the future is the motor of economic growth. Capitalism, which sounds so reasonable when explained by a mainstream economist, is in ecological terms nothing but a pyramid scheme. ............Bill Gates, according to one estimate, emits almost 7,500 tonnes of CO2, mostly from flying in his private jets.
Roman Abramovich, the same figures suggest, produces almost 34,000 tonnes, largely by running his gigantic yacht. ............There is a poverty line below which no one should fall, and a wealth line above which no one should rise. We need wealth taxes, not carbon taxes
.......... But more important than the direct impacts of the ultra-wealthy is the political and cultural power with which they block effective change. Their cultural power relies on a hypnotising fairytale. Capitalism persuades us that we are all temporarily embarrassed millionaires. This is why we tolerate it. In reality,some people are extremely rich because others are extremely poor: massive wealth depends on exploitation.
And if we did all become millionaires, we would cook the planet in no time at all. But the fairytale of universal wealth, one day, secures our obedience. ............ In consenting to the continued destruction of our life-support systems, we accommodate the desires of the ultra-rich and the powerful corporations they control. ....... In Fridays for Future, Green New Deal Rising, Extinction Rebellion and the other global uprisings against systemic environmental collapse, we see people, mostly young people, refusing to consent. What they understand is history’s most important lesson. Our survival depends on disobedience.How Tyson Foods Got 60,500 Workers to Get the Coronavirus Vaccine Quickly The meatpacking giant, which was criticized for failing to do enough to protect its workers from Covid-19 last year, has become a leader on corporate mandates.
Congress pressures Biden to defend Taiwan China's aggressive behavior is worrying lawmakers, but a new U.S. strategy could fan the flames...... The strategic ambiguity doctrine, enshrined in the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, stipulates that the U.S. remains purposely noncommittal about whether it would defend Taiwan from an attack or invasion by China. ......... “It’s really important that we arm Taiwan and help them to defend themselves. China wants to gobble them up,” Hawley said in a brief interview. “But I think it’s also a mistake for [Taiwan] to say, ‘well, if something happens, the United States will just bail us out.’ They’re a long way away.” ....... “This is competition. It does not have to be conflict,” Biden said. .......
'Europe is back at the epicenter' of COVID-19, WHO warns. 'Enough idiocy,' Italian official tells anti-vaxxers. In the past week alone, the Europe region saw 1.8 million new COVID-19 cases and 24,000 deaths, or 59 percent of global cases and nearly half the world's coronavirus deaths. "If we stay on this trajectory, we could see another half a million COVID-19 deaths in Europe and Central Asia by the first of February next year" ......... if 95 percent of Europeans just wore masks in public, 188,000 lives could be saved in the next three months. ......... Eight of the 53 countries in the WHO's European region have vaccinated more than 70 percent of their population, but two have immunized less than 10 percent. The worst outbreaks are in Russia, Ukraine, and elsewhere in low-vaccination Central and Eastern Europe. Germany, with 67 percent of its population fully vaccinated, recorded a pandemic-high 33,949 new COVID cases on Wednesday.
