Climate protests shut BP's London headquarters on CEO's first day

Greenpeace climate activist looks on as he is being removed by police officers near the entrance to BP's head office in London, Britain February 5, 2020. REUTERS/Toby MelvilleBP HIRES A  LOONEY AS CEO

LONDON (Reuters) - Climate protesters forced BP (BP.L) to temporarily shut down its London headquarters on Wednesday, the first day in office for the oil and gas company’s new CEO Bernard Looney.

RELATED COVERAGE
Police arrest nine people after protest at BP's London HQ

BP said more than 100 Greenpeace activists attempted to place 500 solar panels in front of BP’s building in St James’ Square in central London, and blocked the entrances with oil barrels.

Police said they had arrested nine people after the protest.

Greenpeace spokesman Stefano Gelmini said several activists had chained themselves to the oil barrels.

BP said Chief Executive Looney, who was visiting staff in Germany on Wednesday, shared the “deep concerns” of the climate protesters and understood their frustration and anger.

The 49-year-old Irishman will set out his vision for BP’s response to the low carbon energy transition in a speech next week where he is expected to unveil deeper commitments to reduce the company’s carbon emissions.

BP said Looney “hopes that what he has to say then will give people a sense that we get it and are very serious about working to address the problem.”

BP has faced growing pressure from climate activists and investors to meet to the 2015 Paris climate goals to battle climate change.

Police arrest nine people after protest at BP's London HQ

LONDON (Reuters) - British police arrested nine people after climate change protesters temporarily shut down BP (BP.L) headquarters in London on Chief Executive Bernard Looney’s first day in office.

More than 100 Greenpeace activists attempted to place 500 solar panels in front of BP’s office, blocking the building’s entrances with oil barrels.

The people were “arrested for offences including aggravated trespass, highway obstruction and conspiracy to commit public nuisance and have been taken to police stations in central London”, the Metropolitan Police said in a statement.

Britain's Metro Bank hires lawyers over Cuba and Iran sanctions breaches
FILE PHOTO: People walk past a Metro Bank in London, Britain, May 22, 2019.

 REUTERS/Hannah McKay - RC1FD925C560/File Photo
LONDON (Reuters) - Britain’s Metro Bank has hired a law firm to help it investigate payments routed through the bank that breached U.S. sanctions, a regulatory filing showed.

One Metro bank customer was subject to U.S. sanctions on Cuba, while another received payments from Iran, the bank said.

The Evening Standard newspaper reported on Tuesday that Metro Bank appointed law firm DLA Piper to conduct the review, which will look into how the lender’s internal controls were breached.

DLA Piper did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Metro Bank declined to comment.

The bank notified U.S. regulators in 2017 about the sanctions breaches, according to a prospectus it released in September while raising funds.

Metro could face a fine proportional to the amount of money handled.

The disclosures follow a turbulent period for Metro Bank, after a major accounting error disclosed last January triggered a share price crash and the departure of its chairman and chief executive.

Metro Bank shares have fallen 90% since it disclosed the problems.

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'Weird,' sharp-nosed thalattosaur species identified from Alaska fossil

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) - An iguana-like creature with a needle-sharp snout has been confirmed from a fossilized skeleton as a species of the marine reptile thalattosaur previously unknown to science that roamed the coast of what is now Alaska some 200 million years ago.

Dating from the Triassic period and identified from a lone fossil found the Tongass National Forest in Alaska, the new creature has been named Gunakadeit joseeae, after a Native Tlingit name for a legendary sea monster, according to an article published on Tuesday in the journal Scientific Reports.

It is the only intact thalattosaur fossil ever found in North America, said paleontologist Pat Druckenmller, director of the University of Alaska Museum of the North and lead author of the study.

“This animal is striking because it’s got this super-sharp pointed snout. Literally, it’s needle-like,” Druckenmller said, describing the creature as “weird.”

The snout and the fine bones in its throat suggest a reptile that dug into cracks in submerged reefs to suck out food, mostly small crustaceans and squid.

It’s fossil was uncovered through a stroke of luck, when an extremely low tide in 2011 exposed the typically submerged rock where it was embedded on an island beach as scientists happened to be surveying the area.

Fully separating the fossil from rock took years, said U.S. Forest Service geologist Jim Baichtal, one of the scientists who found the specimen.

Positively identifying it as a new species included a trip by Druckenmiller to China, one of the few places where intact thalattosaurs have been discovered.

That work confirmed what was obvious to those who saw the fossil’s skull and snout in 2011, Druckenmiller said: “We knew right away that it was totally different.”

At the time Gunakadeit joseeae was living, what is now the rugged temperate rainforest of southeast Alaska was a much warmer place – a coastal region only about 10-20 degrees north of the equator, Druckenmiller said.

That territory migrated northward, pressing into North America and creating the paleontologically interesting terrain of Alaska’s southeast panhandle.

The newly identified thalattosaur is the latest among several important paleontological discoveries in the Tongass National Forest.

They include the 1996 discovery of a 10,300-year-old human skeleton in a cave in the southern part of the largest U.S. national forest. Those remains, of a young man with a fish-based diet, contributed to knowledge about people who migrated to North America by coastal routes rather than over the Bering Land Bridge.

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Cast out The women of Ghana’s ‘witch’ village
As women age in rural Ghana, signs of dementia, mental health issues, or even menopausal symptoms, can result in them being declared ‘witches’ and pushed out of their community

Photo Gallery  Feb 4, 2020

Cast out: the women of Ghana’s ‘witch’ village – in pictures

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Sex, saints and serpents: Pieter Hugo in Mexico – in pictures The impact of ritual on the body … 

The Snake Charmer, Hermosillo, 2019. Photograph: Pieter Hugo

The series reflects the artist’s long-standing interest in how history and environment can shape a culture and those living within it. Hugo looks both to rituals of rites of passage, and their associated formal codes of conduct and dress, and also the wider rituals of religion, theatre and community. In this series, he specifically looks to the impact on the physical body, creating powerful portraits that focus on tattoos, jewellery, sweat and scar


Named after the famous folk song which translates as The Cockroach, La Cucaracha is an exhibition of new photographs by South African artist Pieter Hugo exploring death, sexuality and spirituality in Mexico

Pieter Hugo: La Cucaracha is at Huxley-Parlour Gallery, London, from 19 February to 14 March.

All pictures © Pieter Hugo


The Wedding Gift, Juchitán de Zaragoza, 2018

The extraordinary and the everyday jostle for attention in the South African photographer’s examination of Mexican culture. This image shows a young bride in Juchitán de Zaragoza cradling an iguana, a creature considered a symbol of patience, understanding and kindness in Mexico. Read more on this image by Sean O’Hagan

Burning Bush, Oaxaca de Juárez, 2018 For this series, Hugo has drawn on Mexican history, as well as cultural, art historical and literary references, such as the mural From the Dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz to the Revolution (1957-66) by Communist artist David Alfaro Siqueiros. While referencing Mexico’s rich visual culture, Hugo’s work attempts to investigate how ritual, tradition and community inspire the complex reconciliation between the extremes of life and death.

• After Siqueiros, Oaxaca de Juárez, 2018

  Recreation of a scene from David Alfaro Siqueiros’ mural Del Porfirismo a la Revolución (1957-1966) O’Hagan writes: ‘In Hugo’s Mexican portraits, the mood moves between the heightened everyday and the grotesque: weatherbeaten peasants in work clothes, a woman dressed like Frida Kahlo, corpulent nudes, blood-covered faces and a man wearing a crown of thorns. Nothing is ever entirely what it seems, the complex nature of Mexican culture reflected through an outsider’s eyes as a mixture of ritual, role-playing and various degrees of exaggerated reality’

After Siqueiros, Oaxaca de Juárez, 2018

Recreation of a scene from David Alfaro Siqueiros’ mural Del Porfirismo a la Revolución (1957-1966) O’Hagan writes: ‘In Hugo’s Mexican portraits, the mood moves between the heightened everyday and the grotesque: weatherbeaten peasants in work clothes, a woman dressed like Frida Kahlo, corpulent nudes, blood-covered faces and a man wearing a crown of thorns. Nothing is ever entirely what it seems, the complex nature of Mexican culture reflected through an outsider’s eyes as a mixture of ritual, role-playing and various degrees of exaggerated reality’

Interview
Khashoggi fiancee: 'Saudi Arabia can get away with whatever it wants'

Hatice Cengiz tells Guardian world has failed to punish kingdom over journalist’s murder in Turkey

Tue 4 Feb 2020
 

Hatice Cengiz said if anything now happened to her,

 the world would be responsible. 

Photograph: Taylor Jewell/Invision/AP

The fiancee of Jamal Khashoggi has said the world has failed to hold Saudi Arabia to account over the journalist’s murder and the kingdom is being “encouraged to do whatever it wants”.

Hatice Cengiz, a Turkish scholar and activist, said the lack of meaningful global sanctions against Saudi Arabia more than a year after Khashoggi’s brutal killing inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, had sent a message that the kingdom “can do what it wants, and then get away with it”.

“Because these people were not punished for what they have done, and because the world has chosen to just move on, they can still do what they want,” she said.

Jamal Khashoggi murder: timeline of key events


Cengiz spoke to the Guardian in Washington, where she is to attend Tuesday’s State of the Union address as a guest of the Democratic congressman Gerry Connolly, who has called for a halt in arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the possible closure of Saudi diplomatic facilities in the US.

In the wide-ranging interview, the 37-year-old spoke of her life since 2 October 2018, when Khashoggi, a Washington Post journalist, who had entered the Saudi consulate to retrieve documents he needed for their marriage, failed to emerge, leaving her waiting outside.

Jamal Khashoggi pictured in May 2018. 

Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

An investigation into the murder by a UN special rapporteur for extrajudicial killings, Agnès Callamard, later established that Khashoggi had been killed by a Saudi murder squad in what she described as a premeditated, state-sanctioned extrajudicial killing. US intelligence agencies have separately determined with a medium to high degree of certainty that the killing was ordered by the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman.

Subsequent investigations and a report in the New York Times have alleged that “MBS” – as the crown prince is known – discussed the idea of using a “bullet” against Khashoggi as early as 2017. The Saudi government has said that the murder was a “rogue” act and had not been ordered by Prince Mohammed. The crown prince told 60 Minutes in an interview that he took “full responsibility [for the murder], especially since it was committed by individuals working for the Saudi government”. 

 Cengiz said of Prince Mohammed bin Salman:

 ‘If he said he is responsible, and he is, he

 needs to answer our questions. It’s as simple 

as it gets.’ Photograph: Reuters

Since the murder, Cengiz has described her shock and overwhelming grief, and has described how she felt “detached from life for a long time”. But today Cengiz seems anything but detached.

Even as she describes the feeling of being “terrified” for her safety, her words are lit by a fierce demand for justice, and anger about what she describes as the world’s failure to hold Saudi Arabia accountable for the murder of the man she loved.

“They were encouraged to pursue their agenda even further,” she said. “If anything happens to me or to anyone now, how would they feel? The world would be responsible, double responsibility.”

Cengiz rarely holds back in her rebuke of the west – from the UN, to the US and the UK – and its response to the murder. While the world has witnessed Cengiz as a grieving partner, Callamard said Cengiz also has a “commanding personality”. When they first met, Cengiz spent 20 minutes interrogating the French investigator about her background and her intentions.  

Agnès Callamard. 

Photograph: Fabrice Coffrini/AFP/Getty Images

“There were searching questions and I felt I needed to pass this test if I was planning to interview her. We had a long and fruitful meeting afterwards, an important one for my investigation,” Callamard said. “There is far, far more to Hatice Cengiz than a victim or than the fiancee of Jamal Khashoggi. She is intelligent; she is brave, she has [defied] and continues to defy norms.”

The Guardian reported last week that US authorities urged British counterparts to keep a close eye on Cengiz in London last summer, because of their belief that Saudi Arabia had the “ambition and intention” to monitor Cengiz in the UK.

Cengiz said she was never alerted to the threat but that her fears for her safety have been a constant preoccupation. “Isn’t the fact that I was followed an attack on my private life? Because these things prevent me from being a normal human being.”

Cengiz described her connection to Khashoggi as an emotional one, and said the journalist did not share details of his work with her. But she recalled that he was mindful of the social media campaign against him on Twitter, and the retaliation against his critiques of the Saudi crown prince published in the Washington Post.

She recalled being surprised after Khashoggi said the Saudi trolls who were attacking him online made him feel “down”. “He said they can really mess with your psychology and your feelings,” she said, and that he tried not to pay too much attention to it.

The couple did not talk about whether Khashoggi feared being surveilled or having his mobile phone monitored or hacked. But Cengiz recalled that he did communicate with senior Saudi officials – princes and other authorities – over WhatsApp.

Omar Abdulaziz, a dissident and close associate of Khashoggi’s in Canada, has alleged in an Israeli lawsuit that technology owned by the Israeli firm NSO Group was used to hack into his phone on behalf of Saudi Arabia. It occurred at a time when he and Khashoggi were trading “hundreds” of messages on WhatsApp. NSO Group has denied the allegations and has emphatically stated that its technology was never used to personally target Khashoggi.

“There is obviously an international need to prevent people from using these [spyware] programmes,” Cengiz said. “We can see how spyware technology was apparently used to do something wrong by the government, something harmful. And is this not an international crime?”

Jamal Khashoggi: murder in the consulate

In December, prosecutors in Saudi Arabia announced that five men were sentenced to death, and another three would face time in prison, for their roles in Khashoggi’s murder. The secret trial was roundly criticised by human rights activists as a sham. The case “exonerated” three senior men of wrongdoing, including Saud al-Qahtani, a close aide to the crown prince who was sanctioned by the US for his alleged role in the planning and execution of the murder.

Cengiz flatly rejects the outcome of the trial. “If MBS is really responsible, as he said in an interview, why didn’t he explain the reason for the five to be sentenced to death? Who are these people, and what happens to the others? Did they really think we would accept this without any explanation,” Cengiz said.

“On the one hand, MBS has said he accepts responsibility, on the other, he is running away from it,” she said. ”

PARADE IN DUSSELDORF GERMANY 2019

The great kava boom: how Fiji's beloved psychoactive brew is going global


From trendy bars in New York, to anti-anxiety pills sold in Australia and New Zealand, the powdered root is taking off

Supported byAbout this content


Talei Tora in Suva Tue 4 Feb 2020

A woman enjoys a bowl of kava at the Kava Bure in Suva. 

Photograph: Talei Tora/The Guardian

On a Friday night in Suva, the capital of Fiji, the Kava Bure is filling up. Groups of people have started arriving to meet friends for a post-work basin or three of kava, a drink made from the root of the piper methysticum tree.

The bar, which is out in the open air with wooden tables surrounded by bamboo fencing, sells $5 or $10 bags of powdered kava. These are mixed in a plastic basin by an elderly Fijian man, who asks patrons if they would like the mix “sosoko” – strong – or “just right”, before giving them the basin and coconut shell bowls for drinking.

“Kava Bure is a place where I can just sit, relax and enjoy myself with friends after a long day at work. Normally, we would go there to have a few basins,” says Ropate Valemei, a frequent patron.


Vanuatu leads push to make narcotic drink kava a worldwide favourite

Kava bars are relatively new in Fiji (compared to Vanuatu, where there are more than 300 bars) and reflect the shift of kava consumption from something drunk in traditional ceremonies or shared among family and friends while sitting on the floor around a tanoa (wooden kava bowl) or plastic basin to more commercial spaces.

But the appeal of the drink – known to have psychoactive qualities – is no longer confined to the Pacific. There are now roughly 100 kava bars across the US and Australia is preparing to allow commercial importation. In the meantime, the world’s first kava tissue culture laboratory in Fiji has been set up, aiming to increase supply and sell kava in products from a brewable powder to anti-anxiety medication. 

 Kava for sale at Suva Market

 Photograph: Talei Tora/The Guardian

‘The demand just went up’

Kava sessions can last anywhere from an hour to several hours, sometimes until the early hours of the morning. The taste is earthy and the strong aftertaste is sometimes counteracted by sucking on a lolly or mint after consuming a bowl. In Fiji, seasoned drinkers are “black belts”, who can drink kava for hours, sometimes every day of the week. But for the uninitiated, the drink has an almost immediate numbing effect, which starts from the mouth and then eventually makes its way down the body, leaving a person with a relaxed sensation that gets stronger with every bowl.

But while extremely popular in the Pacific, kava has, for the most part, struggled to cut through internationally, in part due to tight regulations in Western countries, where kava has been blamed for causing liver problems, though evidence suggests this is only the case if kava is taken in conjunction with alcohol or other drugs.

Kava export earnings in Fiji peaked in the 1980s, at more than $FJD35m (US$16m) per year, largely driven by exports to Europe. After kava was banned in Europe in the 1990s, exports plummeted. But there has been steady growth since then, with the export market growing from about 900 tonnes per year in the 1990s to 6,000 tonnes in 2015.

By 2018, kava export earnings were approximately $FJ30.7m, with the largest amount being exported to the United States at 148,000kg, 80,000kg to New Zealand and 13,000kg to Hawaii.

Fiji’s kava market suffered a major setback in 2016 when it was hit by Tropical Cyclone Winston, the most intense tropical cyclone on record in the southern hemisphere. Winston devastated the country, causing $US1.4bn in damages – more than one third of the country’s GDP – and wiped out huge swathes of the kava crop.
 Work has been selling kava for 18 years 

and has seen the huge spike in the growth 

of kava sales. Photograph: Talei Tora/The Guardian

But kava sellers who have been able to re-establish their businesses are experiencing a huge boom. The lack of kava supplies after the cyclone caused a spike in the price of A-grade kava from about $FJ40-60 to $FJ120 per kilogram. This dramatic increase, combined with a sudden interest in the drink from foreign markets, has meant that more people have begun planting kava crops, and even then they cannot keep up with demand.


Mary Work, a kava stall owner at Suva’s Municipal Market has been selling kava for 18 years and has had a front row seat to the spike in demand. “From my point of view, after the cyclone the demand just went up. And [even with] the high price, they just want it more now,” she adds.

“There is a lot of demand. My husband is supplying the US and they want one tonne every month. He can’t meet the demand. One tonne a month ... And kava takes three to four years to mature.

“The people are flying over there, even from overseas … and a lot of people from Australia too, like Fijians living there are coming back and planting their kava now, which is good.


My husband is supplying the US and they want one tonne every month. He can’t meet the demand.Mary Work, kava seller

“The demand for kava is so high they [are] beginning to harvest young ones. One year, two year [-old plants], you know, so you getting young ones coming and you don’t allow it to mature because there is a lot of demand.”

Going high-tech

At the other end of the kava market is Fiji Kava Limited, also known as Taki Mai, one of two large kava processing facilities in Fiji. It is the first kava company to list on the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) and in 2019 opened the world’s first kava tissue culture laboratory, which will clone parent kava plants and grow standardised, quality-controlled plantlets at its factory in Levuka, the old capital of Fiji.

Fiji Kava’s laboratory sits on a hill behind the 140-year-old Levuka public school, nestled between two kava nurseries. Its factory is unprepossessing from the outside but inside it is a different story. Visitors have to remove their shoes and put on protective plastic feet coverings. The dark rooms are lit by florescent lights and lined with small glass jars holding tiny kava samples.

Kava tissue culture samples at the world’s 

first kava tissue culture laboratory in Levuka, 

Fiji. Photograph: Talei Tora/The Guardian

The company is planning on initially growing 250,000 tissue culture plantlets and hopes to increase this by 500,000 plantlets annually. Fiji Kava Limited currently makes anti-anxiety capsules for the Australian, New Zealand and US markets and instant kava powder.

In October 2019, on a visit to Fiji, the Australian prime minister Scott Morrison announced that the personal kava import limit for people travelling from Fiji to Australia would be increased from 2kg to 4kg and that a pilot program would start by the end of 2020 allowing commercial importation of kava.

FacebookTwitterPinterest Australian prime minister Scott Morrison announced the relaxation of laws regarding the importation of kava into Australia after a meeting with Fiji’s prime minister Frank Bainimarama during a visit to Fiji in October 2019. Photograph: David Mariuz/EPA

At the time of the kava announcement, Morrison described the relaxing of importation rules as a “further demonstration” of the countries’ close relationship. Fiji’s prime minister, Frank Bainimarama, thanked him for the announcement, saying “the whole of Fiji” had been waiting for Australia’s rules on kava to change.

Kava retailer Pauline Benson says even this small increase in a personal importation allowance is welcome. “Australia has always had a huge demand for kava because there is a large Pacific Island population living in Australia and it’s so hard to get kava there… there is still a huge demand,” she says.

Back in Kave Bure in Suva, the tables are full as dusk arrives. Cries of “Bula!” – Fiji’s national greeting – ring out as someone in the kava circle takes a bowl to drink. Ropate Valemei says that while people often arrive at the bar with a few friends, over the course of an evening of drinking they will inevitably make many more. In the Pacific, whether it be for traditional ceremonies or in more modern social gatherings, kava continues to bring people together

KAVA NEEDS TO BE MASTICATED AND MIXED WITH SALIVA TO BECOME ACTIVE

LONG TIME USE WILL TINGE THE WHITES OF YOUR EYES BLUE, LIKE THE FOLKS IN DUNE, KAVA WAS WHAT FRANK HERBERT USED AS HIS MODEL FOR SPICE.

I FIRST USED IT IN THE SEVENTIES AND THE EIGHTIES, I CAME ACROSS IN DR. RICHARD MILLER'S MAGICKAL HERBS ALONG WITH ABSINTHE, DAMIANA, AND YOHIMBE.

This is no ‘British culture war’, just a few rightwing loudmouths whingeing 

From Brexit to diversity, barely a week passes without some new confected outrage making Britain seem more divided than it is

Chaminda Jayanetti Wed 5 Feb 2020

‘Barely a week passes without some new confected outrage, 

followed by thinkpieces chalking it up as another battle of

leave v remain, or open v closed.’ Photograph: Matt Dunham/AP

They called the miners’ strike “a civil war without guns”. They could call Britain’s “culture war” a civil war without brains. Barely a week passes without some new confected outrage, either manufactured or amplified by online shock jocks, followed by a slew of thinkpieces chalking it up as another battle of leave v remain, or open v closed.

But this is different to the culture war that has dominated – and damaged – American politics for decades. The American culture wars weaponised the religious conservatism of tens of millions of Americans in order to hold back progressive measures such as abortion provision and gay rights – and keep delivering Republican victories.

By contrast, British politics outside Northern Ireland is freer of religious conservatism, with a broad social and political consensus in favour of gay equality that was once unthinkable. The legal right to abortion, while never secure, is not as fragile as across the Atlantic. Nobody wins votes in Britain by quoting the Bible or claiming the endorsement of God. The vast gulf between the US and UK in these areas still exists.

To be sure, there is a values divide between social liberals and “authoritarians”. This has always existed, but is growing as a driver of voter behaviour as party loyalties fade. Issues such as immigration, crime, social mores and, more recently, sovereignty cleave along this line. Occasionally politicians manage to blur the boundary – Tony Blair tacked to the centre on crime; David Cameron tacked to the centre on gay rights. Brexit aside, the issues at play are, for better or worse, regular features of political debate, even if the spectrum on which they are debated is shifting.

But what passes for a culture war in Britain is little more than a succession of fleeting furies amplified by overpaid loudmouths and circulated via social media, against a backdrop of Brexit into which they are all conveniently merged.


An example is the row about “trigger warnings” at universities. The merits and demerits of giving people notice about possibly upsetting subject matter can be debated. But by their nature these warnings have an impact only on those who choose to be impacted by them. They are, in practical terms, irrelevant to most people – they have no effect on their lives. People who vent about them, especially if they are not at university, are just whinging.

The periodic backlash against diversity in TV and film casting is another whinge – one expressed abusively at times, but at its core a whinge nonetheless. There is no “legitimate concern” at stake here; much of it is driven by racists and misogynists who suffer no impact other than to their chronic fragility.

Indeed, a consistent factor with such whinging is how delicate and sensitive the whingers show themselves to be. For all the bloviating about millennial “snowflakes”, the whingers throw their toys out of the pram at the faintest imagined provocation.


These are whingers. The culture war moniker just hands them a megaphone

The list of whinges is almost endless: people wearing the Remembrance poppy imperfectly; people speaking a foreign language on the bus; insufficient references to “Christmas” or “Easter” in seasonal marketing; straight-laced millennials; “nanny state” attacks on public health information campaigns; “snowflake” labels attached to mental health discussions; frothing about vegans.

This is whinging. These are whingers. The culture war moniker just hands them a megaphone.

The commonality here is that, in each case, the subject matter doesn’t negatively affect anyone – neither the whinger, nor anyone else. That is why this list leans towards the political right – those who criticise discrimination are targeting something that does negatively affect people. But even then, remainers whinging about an innocuously designed Brexit coin are also … well, whinging.

It is easy to miss the social consensus that does exist. The periodic professional windbag spewing forth against Greta Thunberg draws us away from the fact that most people in Britain are concerned about climate change.

The culture wars narrative ascribes the fumings of keyboard warriors to 17.4 million leave voters, most of whom won’t even be aware of the whinge du jour. Even a more widely held whinge – immigrants speaking in their mother tongue – is something most leave voters are either “not very bothered” about or “not bothered at all”.

This misrepresentation is convenient for both left and right, remainers and Brexiters. One side gets to cast all leave voters as bigoted and stupid, while the bigoted and stupid get to pretend they have 17.4m nods of agreement backing them up.

Political figures then use this conflation to claim the legitimacy of the “silent majority” for their own agendas. Britain’s political and media scene has a whole cast of frauds playing fancy dress as the allies of ex-miners from Barnsley; professional blowhards trying to get their shoutfests to go viral online; religious conservatives fantasising that Brexit might bring back the Bible; newspaper columnists chasing the validation of speaking for the masses; the entire existence of Blue Labour. Meanwhile, people in Barnsley have better things to do.

The unexciting truth is this. Britain voted to leave the EU, driven by concerns over immigration, sovereignty, and disaffection among some with the establishment. The Tories won a majority based on delivering Brexit and not being Jeremy Corbyn. Values influenced this – broad brush values that have been part of public opinion for decades. If Corbyn was seen as unpatriotic, it’s because he failed to convince voters he possessed a trait that people require from their leaders in virtually every country on earth.

People’s attitude to Brexit naturally influences their view of the process of leaving the EU. But outside that, most of the weekly storms and skirmishes that are chalked up to the culture war should instead be understood as rants by bigots and bores. Casting them as some kind of profound conflict makes British society seem more intractably divided than it is, while giving the tedious whingers a political elevation they do not merit.

• Chaminda Jayanetti is a journalist who covers politics and public services

‘Try to stop me’ – the mantra of our leaders who are now ruling with impunity

George Monbiot @GeorgeMonbiot

Trump, Bolsonaro, Modi, Johnson. Across the world, flouting the law has become normalised. We have to stop it


Wed 5 Feb 2020 

‘Like other killer clowns, Trump may now feel he can get away with anything.’ Narendra Modi and Donald Trump embrace at the White House. Photograph: Susan Walsh/AP

It is not a sufficient condition for fascism to take root, but it is a necessary one: the willingness of political leaders not only to break the law but to revel in breaking it is a fatal step towards the replacement of democracy with authoritarian terror.

We see this at work in the United States today, where the Republican party’s blatant disregard for the constitution will allow Donald Trump to escape impeachment.

If Trump is elected for a second term, he will test to the limit the potential for wielding unconstitutional power. But the phenomenon is not confined to the US. Several powerful governments now wear illegality almost as a badge of honour.

It’s happening in the UK too. The Brexit vote was secured with the help of blatant illegality

Fascist and prefascist governments share, among others, two linked characteristics: they proudly flout the laws that are supposed to restrain them while introducing new, often unconstitutional laws to contain political opponents or oppress minorities.

In Brazil, outrages against indigenous people, opposition politicians and journalists are encouraged and celebrated at the highest levels of government. Jair Bolsonaro won the presidential election with the help of a judicial coup in which due process was abandoned to secure the imprisonment of the frontrunner, Luiz Inácio da Silva (Lula). Bolsonaro has been photographed embracing two of the suspects in the murder of the leftwing councillor Marielle Franco, and has sought to block corruption investigations into his son Flávio, who allegedly has close links with members of the paramilitary gang accused of killing her.

In response to democratic protests, Brazil’s economy minister has threatened to impose martial law. Bolsonaro has called for the police to execute suspected criminals: “These guys are going to die in the streets like cockroaches – and that’s how it should be.” His racist comments about indigenous people, and curtailment of the agencies supposed to protect them, could help explain a new spate of murders by loggers, miners and ranchers. Human rights groups are urging the international criminal court to investigate Bolsonaro for incitement to genocide.

The investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald, who has published explosive reports about corruption and crime in Bolsonaro’s government, and his husband, the leftwing congressman and Guardian columnist David Miranda, have received repeated death threats, containing details about their lives that only the state could know. Greenwald has now been spuriously charged with cybercrimes.

The far-right Bolsonaro movement wants us dead. But we will not give up
Glenn Greenwald and David Miranda

In India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, after discovering that his alleged association with the 2002 Gujarat massacres no longer appeared to tarnish his name, is laying the foundations for a vicious ethno-nationalism. His new citizenship law deliberately denies rights to Muslims and could render millions of people stateless. People protesting against this act are brutally attacked by the police. Police and armed gangs have raided two Delhi universities, randomly beating up students, to spread generalised terror. In Uttar Pradesh, political opponents are routinely imprisoned without charge and tortured.

Modi has ripped up the constitution to annex Jammu and Kashmir. The police have fired on people protesting peacefully against this illegal action, blinding some of them with shotgun pellets. Political leaders have been arrested and communications shut down. Officials treat this illegality as a brutal joke. Haryana’s chief minister, Manohar Lal Khattar – a close Modi ally – boasts that “now we will bring girls from Kashmir”, as colonial booty.

The president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, has bragged of riding around the streets of Davao on his motorbike when he was mayor of the city, shooting people he suspected of being criminals. Since becoming president he has, in effect, turned the police into a giant death squad, empowering them to murder people they believe to be involved in drug crime. Unsurprisingly, this general licence has led to the murders of political opponents, and land and environmental defenders.

Even as he applauds the killing of drug suspects, Duterte jokes about taking illegal drugs to keep himself awake at international summits. Opponents are imprisoned, judges are sacked and replaced, journalists are prosecuted on trumped-up charges. The imposition of martial law on the island of Mindanao is used to crush dissent; objectors are treated as terrorists and murdered.

Like these other killer clowns, Trump may now feel he can do anything. His legal team has in the past suggested he has total immunity, boasting that he could literally get away with murder. A culture of impunity is spreading around the world. “Try to stop me” is the implicit motto in nations ranging from Hungary to Israel, Saudi Arabia to Russia, Turkey to China, Poland to Venezuela. Flaunting your disregard for the law is an expression of power.

It’s happening in the UK too, though so far on a smaller scale. The Brexit vote, which eventually enabled Boris Johnson to take office, was secured with the help of blatant illegality. The government intends to carry out a legislative cleansing of Romany Gypsies and Travellers, knowing that this offends our own Equality Act, and is likely to lead to a case before the European court of human rights. It’s almost as if it welcomes the confrontation.

These are experiments in absolutism. They don’t amount to fascism in their own right. But in conjunction with the elevation of preposterous and desperate men, the denigration of minorities and immigrants, political violence, mass surveillance and widespread mockery of liberalism and social justice, they suggest that some countries, separately and together, are beginning to head towards the darkest of all political places.

The normalisation of impunity is possibly the most important step towards authoritarian rule. Never let it be normal.

• George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist

WOMEN ARE THE PROLETARIAT

Feminist economics: the obstacles US women face under capitalism

Guardian US’s new series reveals the dilemmas women face in a nation in which parity in pay, political representation and more remain out of reach
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Noa Yachot and Nicole Clark

Wed 5 Feb 2020 06.00 GMTLast modified on Wed 5 Feb 2020 06.42 GM

Illustration: Sarah Mazzetti/The Guardian


Why does it cost more to be a woman than a man in so many spheres of American life? Why is America’s treatment of mothers so out of sync with other developed nations? Why do women have less free time than men? And why do women face so much pressure to spend money and time on grooming, from eyebrow waxing to makeup?

These are the some of the questions we’ll explore in Feminist economics, our new series revealing the myriad obstacles women face under American capitalism. Parity in pay, political representation, household obligations and more remain well out of reach, and the disparities are frequently exacerbated when gender bias intersects with racial discrimination.

Our launch stories today reveal how a lack of paid parental leave is forcing women to make almost impossible choices about whether to stay pregnant, and whether salary transparency is a solution to gender wage inequity. We’ll also report on the cost of breastfeeding, whether the gig economy is working for women, and the toll taken by endless pressures to beautify – as well as on the women who are asking whether life has to be this way.

By some accounts, the American economy is working better than ever for women. They now hold more payroll jobs – 50.04% – than men according to the last jobs report. They make up a majority of the college-educated workforce and earn more than 57% of bachelor’s degrees.

But should we be celebrating?

Lifetime healthcare costs are a third higher than for men, one in four women are forced to return to work two weeks after childbirth, a transgender woman might see her income drop by one-third after transitioning, and only one Fortune 500 company is headed by a woman of color.

If time is money, then here, too, women are behind. Many readers won’t be surprised to learn that American women spend an average of two hours more a day than men on household labor and care work.

On top of the time devoted to managing their households, adult women spend an average of nearly an hour a day on their appearance. They don’t do so frivolously: grooming habits have been found to disproportionately boost women’s salaries, and women who wear makeup are perceived to be more competent.


Women may be rising in workforce numbers, but the gender pay gap, perhaps the most widely recognizable measure of inequality, holds steady. Women make about 85 cents to the dollar made by white men. It’s worse for black women, who make about 61 cents for every dollar made by white men. Education isn’t always the answer: black women with advanced degrees earn less than white men with bachelor’s degrees.

Oxfam has estimated that unpaid labor performed globally by women and girls is worth more than $10.8tn annually – three times the size of the world’s tech industry. Yet unpaid labor – the backbone of a functioning society, which keeps us fed and sustains our children and elders – isn’t just unremunerated, but uncounted. Gross domestic product (GDP), the dominant indicator of economic health and guide for government policy, only measures paid labor, effectively making invisible the unpaid labor of women.

In recent decades, feminist economics has emerged as an academic discipline to address the roots of gender inequality and promote policies that take half the world’s population into account. Doing so effectively, however, requires challenging some popular assumptions about how the economy works.

Gender disparities are often explained as matters of personal choice, “like women choosing to go into professions that happen to be paid less”, says Dr Kate Bahn, a feminist economist and the director of labor market policy at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth.

In modern America, however, women have not necessarily chosen how value is apportioned in the economy. It’s past time, many argue, that they had an equal say.