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Thursday, December 31, 2020

COVID-19 pandemic making healthcare leaders billionaires


Australia records first case of 'more contagious' South African coronavirus strain in Queensland quarantine


New variant of Covid-19 hits Japan, South KoreaAsia Times


The US Government Can Provide Universal Childcare — It’s Done So in the Past Jacobin


COVID-19 pandemic making healthcare leaders billionaires NY Post


A deepfake Queen is more truthful than the real one – how ironic! RT

Life In The Christmas City American Conservative. My MIT roommate hailed from Bethlehem, PA.


The Cruise Ship Suicides Bloomberg


Coronavirus stalls long-awaited day in court for historic opioid lawsuit WaPo


Congress Ends Penalty That Kept A Million Americans From Getting COVID Relief FundsMarshall Project


She Noticed $200 Million Missing, Then She Was Fired ProPublica


Payday Helps Laid-off Real News Staffer Win Better Severance on Christmas Eve Payday Report


Simon Schama: Why John le Carré Is a Writer of Substance

Simon SchamaWhat Makes John le Carré a Writer of Substance https://www.ft.com/content/04df988d-9b09-4e6a-b7d8-70b1a5e654dc: ‘Someone, sometime, had to translate Dean Acheson’s famous 1962 characterisation of a Britain that had “lost an empire but has not yet found a role” into literature. But until le Carré came along, no writer had nailed the toxic combination of bad faith and blundering, the confusion of tactical cynicism with strategic wisdom, with such lethal accuracy.... His writing did... have some precedents.... He belonged to the same “lower-upper-middle-class” as George Orwell.... Like Orwell... le Carré had a pitch-perfect ear for the disingenuous hypocrisies sustaining those who mistook “Getting Away with It” for national purpose. Le Carré’s other literary pedigree... came from Anthony Trollope: the shrewd sense that institutions had collective personalities and psychologies, as if they were extended families. As such, they were the theatre of deadly, high-stakes dramas of loyalty and betrayal…. The scene at the beginning of An Honourable Schoolboy in the Hong Kong Foreign Correspondents Club, where “a score of journalists, mainly from former British colonies . . . fooled and drank in a mood of violent idleness, a chorus without a hero” is one of the great set pieces of le Carré writing. At its centre is one of his Dickens-Modern creations: the ancient Aussie, “old Craw” based on someone le Carré knew from that field trip to south Asia, and “who had shaken more sand out of his shorts than most of them would walk over


17 Dec 2020 — He was a pouchy, sullen creature with disordered hair that swept in black strands over his face, and a silent way of popping up ...
... most perceptive and enduring writers of his age. © Greg Funnell/Camera Press | John le Carré ... Simon Schama. December 17 2020. Jump to ...

17 Dec 2020 — The spat between Le Carré & Rushdie is worth looking up. Neither comes out that well, but I can't help thinking that it is Le Carré ...

19 Dec 2020 — Le Carré's death touched me. It feels like ... 58 Retweets; 386 Likes; Dr Mark