Let’s check in with that 30,000-job $10bn Trump-Foxconn Wisconsin plant. Wow, way worse than we'd imagined

Surreal tales from the Midwest

Tue 20 Oct 2020 // 00:58 UTC

Kieren McCarthy in San Francisco BIO 

It’s been three years since Wisconsin approved more than $3bn in incentives to bring Foxconn to the US state.

The Taiwanese monster manufacturer promised to build a $10bn plant making LCDs, requiring 30,000 workers, which was quickly reduced to 13,000, and turn Wisconsin into a Silicon Valley of the Midwest. It was a vision repeatedly promoted by President Trump.

“The eighth wonder of the world,” the hyperbolic reality TV star promised while claiming the deal was a reflection of him keeping his word to bring manufacturing back to America and make the country great again.

We last checked in two years ago, when the plant had been reduced to a twentieth of its original size, the planned job count had fallen again to 5,200, and Foxconn promised the LCD plant would open in 2020.

Back then, under fire and political pressure, with the President keen to show progress, Wisconsin’s then-governor Scott Walker using the project in his re-election bid, and growing concerns that literally nothing was happening, Foxconn saved face with a $100m grant to the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The plant should be open by now, and with the election just weeks away, The Verge has taken another look at what’s going on and… it’s not pretty.

The 30,000 -> 13,000 -> 5,200 jobs? They currently stand at 281. And according to the website’s extensive reporting, most of those workers sit around watching Netflix all day because they have literally nothing to do.

Phoney promises

It gets worse: in order to qualify for the massive incentives Wisconsin approved back in 2017, Foxconn had to meet minimum job hires. But those hires are only counted at the end of the year, which led to the company mass hiring in the last three months of the year and then laying most of the new workers off in January. The $100m grant to the Wisconsin-Madison University? It stopped at $700,000.

There is no LCD plant. In large part because the economics of it just don’t make sense: even when hiring people at $30,000 a year when Wisconsin’s median household income is about $60,000, it’s not possible to make a profit thanks to razor-thin margins. Of the $10bn promised, 2.8 per cent has been spent, and two per cent of the 20 million square-feet of promised factory has been built, according to Foxconn's own figures in its subsidy submissions.

The Wisconsin project may go down as one of the biggest political and economic con-jobs the US has ever witnessed, with both Trump and Scott pushing hype and big claims over reality. Two years ago, the fear was that the project would cost the state one million dollars for every job created; in 2020, it’s literally not possible to make that comparison because there are no actual jobs beyond hiring people to prop up the deal.

From Foxconn’s end, CEO Terry Gou is responsible for continuing to push the fantasy – ensuring repeat trips to the White House – but despite having the CEO on board, the reality is that none of Foxconn’s business arms were able to make the financial case to move to Wisconsin – and so they haven’t.

With such a high profile project and big political promises – not to mention millions of dollars in real investment from the state and local authorities in infrastructure in order to make the plants functional – Foxconn has been unable to simply walk away. And so, every time the issue returns to public consciousness, another promise is made. Foxconn still claims that at some point it will start making LCDs at the Midwest plant.

Made in China? Not for much longer, reckons Foxconn boss

READ MORE

It gets worse. Wisconsin’s current governor, Tony Evers – who beat Scott Walker in some part because of his promise to find out what was really going on with the Foxconn contract – is being stymied by the state’s Republican-held legislature which refuses to allow access to information about what is going on behind the scenes. It just so happens that one of the biggest defenders of the deal is the speaker of the Wisconsin Assembly, Robin Vos, who also happens to represent the district where the factory is located.

Not a chance

This year, Foxconn is supposed to hire a minimum of 1,820 workers with a goal of 5,200. Even with a hiring surge, the company cannot make it – because no one in the state believes it is anything but a fudge to get the government money. One employee charged with building partnerships with local companies told The Verge that previous failed efforts made it impossible: “Every place we tried to go, somebody from Foxconn had already been there and they’d already pissed them off,” they said.

But still the project won’t die. And this year Wisconsin is one of a small number of US states being bitterly fought over because it could help decide the presidency. Faced with his frequent and public exhortations about the deal, Donald Trump feels he has no choice than to keep pumping the hype, appearing just this month on Wisconsin TV news to claim that Foxconn had built “one of the most incredible plants I’ve ever seen,” and that if he is re-elected he will make it come good. “If we win the election, Foxconn is going to come into our country with money like no other company has come into our country,” Trump said with typical overstatement.

Meanwhile, The Verge tracked down dozens of current and former employees on the project, and outlines just how insane things became: when managers realized they had huge factory spaces and nothing to do in them, they fielded ideas for business models and considered – among other things – fish farming, exporting dairy products, storage space, and automated factories with autonomous vehicles.

But no one in Foxconn’s larger interconnected business arms would put in the money to make any of them happen because they all knew what no one will admit publicly: the entire thing is a boondoggle. Foxconn ignored requests for comment.

Gone golfing

One of the most telling details surrounds the autonomous vehicles. They were going to transport employees from the city to the plant on the outskirts of town. It was part of a new Smart Cities vision: a free, hyper-modern approach of workers moved in driverless shuttles outfitted with the latest technology; cameras and algorithms, sensors running on 5G.

The reality was quite different: a shipment of cheap golf carts from China that couldn’t be retrofitted to work autonomously. They were described by one employee as “the biggest pieces of shit.” One revised plan was to use them as security vehicles but the security company refused to pay for the carts. As so they ended up abandoned in a huge empty building being used by bored employees for races. When the batteries ran out, they were left standing where they stopped.

President Trump is supposed to have visited the plant several times to do a ribbon-cutting; first in May, then in September. But there is nothing to open. It’s empty except for abandoned golf carts. Some still hoped Trump would turn up and force the company to actually do something, even indulging in dark humor about their predicament. According to The Verge, “employees joked about having someone stationed behind a curtain, steering the president around via remote control.”

And somehow that is the perfect encapsulation of the billion-dollar farce that is Foxconn, Trump and Wisconsin. ®

THE REGISTER

RIP
Spencer Davis, bandleader with the Spencer Davis Group, dies aged 81
Guitarist who helped popularise blues and R&B in the UK died while being treated for pneumonia in hospital

R&B pioneer … Spencer Davis in 2008. Photograph: Rex/Shutterstock

Ben Beaumont-Thomas
Tue 20 Oct 2020 

Spencer Davis, who as bandleader with the Spencer Davis Group topped the UK charts twice in the mid-60s, has died aged 81 while being treated for pneumonia in hospital.

The group, who formed in Birmingham in 1963 and also featured Steve Winwood, had hits including Gimme Some Lovin’, Keep On Running, Somebody Help Me and I’m a Man. Along with a number of other early British pop groups, they helped popularise the sound of US blues and R&B in the UK.

Winwood left the band in 1967 to form Traffic, with Davis and others disbanding the group in 1969. They partially re-formed for two years in the mid-70s, and again in 2006, when Davis returned to international touring with the group.
  

The Spencer David Group in 1966, with Davis in pram. Photograph: John Pratt/Getty Images

Born in Swansea in 1939, Davis began learning accordion and harmonica at the age of six. Drawn to the allure of US R&B records, he took up the guitar and formed his first band the Saints with Bill Wyman, who later joined the Rolling Stones.

Davis moved to Birmingham to study German at university, and played in bands on the side, first performing American folk and traditional blues. In 1963, he and drummer Pete York recruited the 15-year-old Winwood and his brother Muff to their band, first called Rhythm and Blues Quartet, then the Spencer Davis Group.

Like the Stones, the Dave Clark Five, the Kinks and others, the Spencer Davis Group were part of the flourishing “beat” scene in the mid-60s, playing music influenced by American rhythm and blues. They, along with another Birmingham band the Moody Blues, were dubbed “Brum beat” to differentiate them from the vibrant scenes in London and Liverpool, though their popularity grew with a residency at London’s Marquee club.

Building their sound around uptempo rhythms and Winwood’s powerfully soulful vocals, their first single, I Can’t Stand It, was released in 1964. They topped the charts the following year with Keep On Running, and in 1966 with Somebody Help Me, both written by Jamaican artist Jackie Edwards. Further hits included the anthemic, Winwood-penned Gimme Some Lovin’, which was also a hit in the US, reaching No 7.

I’m a Man (1967) would be the group’s last major hit, also reaching the Top 10 in both the US and UK and later covered by the band Chicago.

Following their first breakup, Davis moved to the US and struggled financially, later complaining of punitive record contracts. “I didn’t realise what had been going on. I’d sold millions of records and hadn’t seen a penny from them,” he said in 2005.

He switched to an industry role in the 70s, working with his label Island Records to help develop artists including Bob Marley and Robert Palmer. He also helped Winwood’s solo career.

Artists paying tribute to Davis include Gary Kemp of Spandau Ballet who tweeted: “He lead a magnificent band, one of the greats of the 60s, along with Muff and Steve Winwood. Keep in [sic] Running and Gimme Some Lovin’ were R&B classics. He drove soul into the white rock sound of the time.”

Spencer Davis: Gimme Some Lovin' star dies during treatment for pneumonia

The Spencer Davis Group topped the UK singles chart twice, with Keep On Running and Somebody Help Me, and had three top 10 albums.

Tuesday 20 October 2020 22:14, UK

Image:Spencer Davis, pictured in 2009, has died aged 81

Singer and musician Spencer Davis, who founded The Spencer Davis Group, has died while being treated for pneumonia, his agent has said.

The star, who had hits with songs including Keep On Running and Gimme Some Lovin' in the 1960s, died in hospital, aged 81.

As fans paid tribute on social media, Bob Birk, his agent of more than 30 years, said in a statement sent to Sky News: "He was a very good friend.

"He was a highly ethical, very talented, good-hearted, extremely intelligent, generous man. He leaves behind his long time, domestic partner, June and three adult children.

"He will be missed."

Image:The Spencer Davis Group pictured in 1965: (L-R) Spencer Davis, Pete York, Steve Winwood and Muff Winwood

Among those paying tribute on social media was fellow musician Badly Drawn Boy, who tweeted: "Sad news. Spencer Davis. Legend."

Radio Caroline presenter Suzy Wild also tweeted: "I'm so very, very saddened to learn of the passing of Spencer Davis. He was such a lovely man, generous and kind, warm and funny, and will be much missed. RIP dear Spencer."

And the actor Philip Martin Brown tweeted: "#RIP Spencer Davis. Such happy memories of Northern Soul dancing to This Hammer."

Born in Wales, Davis formed his group in Birmingham in 1963, alongside Steve Winwood on keyboard and guitar, his brother Muff Winwood on bass, and Pete York on drums.

The BBC reported that the group was originally called The Rhythm & Blues Quartette, but changed their name when Muff highlighted that Davis was the only one who liked doing media interviews.

 

Spencer Davis, performing live on stage at Alexandra Palace, London on 2 August 1973

According to the Official Charts Company, the band topped the UK singles chart twice, with their breakout hit Keep On Running and Somebody Help Me, and had seven top 40 singles and three top 10 albums.

When Keep On Running - a cover of a song by West Indian performer Jackie Edwards - led UK charts in 1966, it overtook double A-sided Beatles single We Can Work It Out/Day Tripper as number one and the band sent a congratulating telegram to Davis.

Gimme Some Lovin' famously featured on the soundtracks of films The Blues Brothers and Notting Hill.

Keep On Running musician Spencer Davis dies aged 81

The guitarist and singer was known in musical circles as the Professor.

Spencer Davis (Paradise Artists/PA)


By Alex Green, PA Entertainment Reporter

October 20 2020 

Spencer Davis, who founded the influential beat band The Spencer Davis Group, has died at the age of 81.

The Welsh-born musician, who produced hits including Keep On Running and I’m A Man, died in hospital while being treated for pneumonia.

His agent Bob Birk told the PA news agency: “I have represented him as his agent for over 30 years.


He was a highly ethical, very talented, good hearted, extremely intelligent, generous manBob Birk, Spencer Davis's agent

“He was a very good friend. He was a highly ethical, very talented, good hearted, extremely intelligent, generous man.

“He leaves behind his long-time domestic partner June and three adult children.

“He will be missed.”

Davis, who was known in musical circles as the Professor, was born in Swansea and began learning harmonica and accordion at the age of six.

In 1960, he moved to Birmingham to read German at the University of Birmingham, where he was further exposed to burgeoning genres such as skiffle, jazz, and blues.

He formed The Spencer Davis Group in 1963, featuring Steve Winwood on keyboards and guitar, his brother Muff Winwood on bass, and Pete York on drums.

Bandmate Steve Winwood (Myung Jung Kim/PA)

They originally performed as the Rhythm and Blues Quartet and played mostly R&B covers.

Within a year, they had landed a regular gig at the famous Marquee Club on Oxford Street in London, and by 1964 had adopted the name The Spencer Davis Group.

They topped the UK singles chart twice and had seven top 40 singles, according to the Official Charts Company.

The original line-up were together for six years, with subsequent reunions featuring a variety of new players.

The track Gimme Some Lovin’ famously featured on the soundtracks of films The Blues Brothers and Notting Hill.

Music by The Spencer Davis Group is also included in the recent Helen Reddy biopic I Am Woman.

(PA)

Actor Philip Martin Brown was among those paying tribute.

He said on Twitter: “#RIP Spencer Davis. Such happy memories of Northern Soul dancing to This Hammer.”

The Brian Jonestown Massacre frontman Anton Newcombe shared a video of the band performing Gimme Some Lovin’.

He wrote: “Rest In Peace Spencer Davis.”

Horace Panter, bassist with ska band The Specials, tweeted: “One of the pioneers of those great 60s bands fusing soul and R&B into rock. Remember first hearing #thespencerdavisband as an impressionable teenager. Just got their album out so turntable beckons.”

I was not aware. Of course I was a fan. The British Invasion is my main thing. RIP Spencer Davis. Thank you. https://t.co/XZWitesw8n— Stevie Van Zandt (@StevieVanZandt) October 20, 2020

Stevie Van Zandt, best known as a member of Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, said he was a fan of Davis, tweeting: “The British Invasion is my main thing. RIP Spencer Davis. Thank you.”

THIRD WORLD USA 

Bottle-fed babies most at risk as study shows high lead exposure in US water

Researchers say Black infants may be more at risk while about 80% of homes had detectable levels of lead in tap water

This story is co-published with Consumer Reports
Kevin Loria for Consumer Reports

Tue 20 Oct 2020
 

Christin Farmer: ‘Black children have a disadvantage before they even arrive.’ Photograph: Hiraman/Getty Images

Not long after Peter and Erica Finin moved from Michigan to Pittsburgh, they had the tap water in their new home tested for lead. It was 2017, and “the whole [lead] situation in Flint was very much in the news”, Peter says. They’d been thinking about starting a family, and wanted to be safe.


'It was everywhere': how lead is poisoning America's poorest children

In searching for testing options, Peter came across a program offered by Healthy Babies Bright Futures (HBBF), a non-profit alliance of scientists and child health advocacy groups, and Virginia Tech.

Test results showed they had a serious lead problem, with levels high enough to potentially harm children and infants. “It made it clear we needed to get a filter,” Peter says.

The Finins were one of nearly 800 families across the country included in a study, released on Tuesday, of people who had their water tested by HBBF. That included 97 households in New Orleans, and 688 from elsewhere in the country.

Nearly 80% of the homes outside of New Orleans had detectable levels of lead in tap water, and 40% had levels that exceeded the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommended limit on lead in drinking water in schools. Perhaps most concerning, 15% had levels high enough to potentially cause at least a half-point drop in IQ in infants who are exclusively bottle-fed with formula mixed with tap water.


There’s no amount of lead that’s safe Jane Houlihan

Results for New Orleans, in each case, were slightly worse, and were analyzed separately so the city’s results wouldn’t distort the national ones.

Lead in drinking water remains a critical issue in the US, despite attention brought by the crises in Flint and other cities, says Jane Houlihan, research director for HBBF. “There’s no amount of lead that’s safe,” she says, adding that children “have one chance to develop a healthy brain and lead erodes that chance”.

Consumer Reports has long been concerned about the effects of lead, particularly on children, whose brains and bodies are still developing. “This report underscores CR’s previous research showing potentially harmful levels of lead in some foods and drinks babies and toddlers consume,” says James E Rogers PhD, director of CR’s food safety research and testing. “It’s critical that the government and industry address this public health challenge immediately.”
A potent neurotoxin

Lead is ubiquitous, found in some soil, toys and ceramics, as well as some paint found in homes built before 1978, when lead paint was banned.

But drinking water is a major source. While lead pipes were outlawed in 1986, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that 6-10m homes in the US still get water through water service lines that predate the ban. Lead can also come from the water supply itself, or from a home’s plumbing, faucets or fixtures.

Ingesting even small amounts of lead over time can lead to lasting health problems because it accumulates in the body, says Dr Mona Hanna-Attisha, a pediatrician and professor at Michigan State University College of Human Medicine, who first publicized the issue of elevated blood levels in children in Flint, Michigan and was not involved in the HBBF study. Those problems include reduced IQ and academic performance, as well as attention deficit disorder and behavior problems.

Dr Mona Hanna-Attisha at her office in the Hurley children’s center in Flint on 15 January 2016.
Photograph: The Washington Post/Getty Images

But while lead exposure can be dangerous for anyone, it’s especially concerning for infants fed powdered formula that’s mixed with tap water. “If the water in the home has high levels of lead, a bottle-fed baby is the family member at greatest risk because they drink a far greater volume of water per pound of body weight than older children or adults,” Houlihan says.

“That’s what kept me up the most at night in Flint,” where breastfeeding rates were low, Hanna-Attisha says. The first four to six months, when infants consume nothing but breastmilk or formula, is key to neurodevelopmental growth, she says. “Lead is a potent, irreversible neurotoxin,” she says. “No matter what you do, it’s impossible to get rid of a child’s lead exposure if it’s there.”

Since pediatricians generally don’t screen infants for lead until they are one year old, and water in homes isn’t necessarily tested for lead, relatively little is known about the extent of lead exposure in these first vulnerable months of life, Hanna-Attisha says.

“It’s terrible to think we have not addressed this,” she says.

The new HBBF study helps quantify that harm, as it includes a risk analysis showing how lead in these first months could cause lifetime IQ point loss for babies who consume only formula.

According to the CDC’s 2020 Breastfeeding Report Card, just 26% of babies in the US are exclusively breastfed through six months of age. That means most infants probably drink at least some formula during their first months of life. And US retail sales of powdered formula, which is usually less expensive than liquid, are estimated to be more than 10 times greater than those of liquid.
Widespread contamination

The homes in the HBBF-Virginia Tech study were located in 343 cities and towns in 46 states and were built between 1840 and 2019.

Despite the country-wide distribution, the study is not nationally representative. Participants all wanted to have their lead levels checked, many because they had reason to think their water could be contaminated. Still, Houlihan says, “I was surprised lead was detected in so many homes.”  

 Photograph: Consumer Reports

Only 21% of the homes had no detectable amounts of lead in the water. While older homes were slightly more likely to have lead, 70% of homes built after 2000 still had some.

In nearly 40% of the homes, at least one sample exceeded 1 part per billion (ppb), the AAP’s recommended limit for drinking water in schools.
Special risks to Black infants

Black infants may be at higher risk from lead in tap water, according to HBBF’s report. That’s primarily because they are more likely to be formula-fed. Twenty-six per cent of Black infants are never breastfed, compared with 16% of Hispanic babies, 13% of non-Hispanic white infants and 10% of Asian babies, CDC figures show.

Overall, Black children are more likely to be exposed to lead, worsening inequities from birth.

“Black children have a disadvantage before they even arrive” says Christin Farmer, the founder of Birthing Beautiful Communities, a group that provides childbirth and parenting education to Black women in Cleveland. She says that in that city, maps showing financially stressed and disadvantaged neighborhoods overlap with maps showing high levels of lead poisonings.Quick guide
Why is there a crisis with America’s water?Hide


Issues include contaminated water, concerns that millions face obstacles to access safe, clean running water, a growing affordability crisis, plus rising alarm about the billion-dollar bottled water industry’s use of public water sources at low cost.
Contaminated water

While drinking tap water is often the best and safest option for people in the US, some communities, often those with vulnerable or marginalized residents, face health risks from drinking water that has been affected by some form of contaminant.
Lead and other metals. Possible contaminants include heavy metals like lead, arsenic, cadmium, chromium, copper, nickel or mercury. As the Environmental Protection Agency notes on lead: “[It]... can enter drinking water when plumbing materials that contain lead corrode.” Lead is harmful to health, especially for children whose neurological development can be hurt if exposed. Flint, Michigan made headlines around the world in 2015 for lead poisoning after authorities switched its water supply to the polluted River Flint. 

Forever chemicals. In recent years, concerns have grown about the risks of “forever chemicals”, or pfas, impacting water supplies, with potentially more than 110 million Americans at risk. Some of these chemicals have been linked to cancers, liver damage, low birth weight and other health problems. Some of the highest levels have been found in cities including Miami, Philadelphia and New Orleans. 

Nitrates, radionuclides. Other threats of contamination come from nitrates fertilizers with communities at risk from agricultural runoff, radionuclides which can end up in drinking water because of mining, fracking and oil drilling. There is also some growing concern about disinfection byproducts added to water to treat bacterial contamination.
Water affordability

The US is experiencing a growing water poverty crisis as aging infrastructure, environmental clean-ups, changing demographics and the climate emergency fuel exponential price hikes in almost every corner of the country.

Exclusive analysis by the Guardian published in June 2020 of 12 US cities shows the combined price of water and sewage increased by an average of 80% between 2010 and 2018, with more than two fifths of residents in some cities living in neighbourhoods with unaffordable bills.

The consequence is millions of ordinary Americans are facing rising and unaffordable bills for running water, and risk being disconnected or losing their homes if they cannot pay.

Separate research has found more than two million people in the US lack running water and basic indoor plumbing. – Mark Oliver and Nina Lakhani
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Poorer families face greater hurdles fixing the problem, too, since homeowners are often required to pay at least part of the cost of replacing the pipes and, in many cases, don’t own the properties anyway, Hanna-Attisha says.

This is the case even though getting rid of lead in water would save money in the long run, according to a report by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Pew Charitable Trusts. It found that removing leaded drinking water service lines leading to the homes of children born in 2018 would protect more than 350,000 kids, and yield $2.7bn in future benefits – more than the estimated cost to replace the lines.
Fixing the problem

Houlihan, Hanna-Attisha, and other experts say the EPA’s actionable limits on lead are too high to be safe, and that the laws that regulate the use of lead are too weak for children’s health.

The EPA says that, for health purposes, the lead level in drinking water should be zero. While water utilities are always required to take some steps to prevent contamination with lead and other heavy metals, they must take greater action, notably replacing lead service lines, only if 10% of samples taken from homes by a water system test above 15 ppb.

When asked about the discrepancy between its action level and health recommendation, the EPA tells CR that the action level isn’t meant to establish a safe level of lead, but is instead supposed to measure the effectiveness of corrosion control in water systems.

The EPA says its new rule provides a comprehensive approach to reducing lead in drinking water and disputes the idea that rule changes would slow lead pipe replacement. “Very few water systems have conducted lead service line replacement programs,” the agency says, noting that “most systems above the action level did not achieve 7% in any year,” because of loopholes in the current system.

While HBBF’s findings are worrisome, Houlihan emphasizes that parents don’t need to panic. And she notes that while there are no safe lead levels, the threat of lead shouldn’t stop parents from feeding their babies in whatever way works best for them, whether by bottle or breastfeeding. For bottle-fed babies, there are steps parents can take to lower their children’s exposure to lead in drinking water, she says.

Using a water filter is easy and affordable, and experts recommend one which is certified to remove lead.

Ana Cook, who lives in a Milwaukee suburb, took that step after discovering serious lead levels in her water when she was pregnant. “I immediately stopped drinking the water at our house,” she says, until the filter was installed.

You should also unscrew and rinse out the “aerator”, a small screen at the end of a faucet, every few months, Hanna-Attisha says, since lead particles from corroded pipes can get trapped there.

The EPA also recommends flushing your water lines for 45 seconds before drinking water to clear out water that’s been stagnant in the line, and always using cold water for drinking, cooking and baby formula since hot water can cause metals to leach from pipes.


This story is co-published in partnership with Consumer Reports. Consumer Reports has no financial relationship with any advertiser on this site

Outsourcing could work if it went to companies who value people over profit

From test and trace to care homes, it’s time to bring public services back in house and award contracts to social enterprises

‘England’s test and trace system has been described as barely functional.’ Photograph: Phil Noble/Reuters
Tue 20 Oct 2020 

England’s “world-beating” test-and-trace service has failed to materialise. Riddled with problems since its inception, it has been described as barely functional, with demand up to four times that of capacity and 90% of tests failing to hit the 24-hour turnaround target.

But the problems with test and trace go far deeper than the incompetencies of this government. Over the last 30 years, Britain has shifted from having a market economy to being a market society where large swathes of public services are outsourced to the private sector. NHS test and trace is a prime example of this model, with management consultants such as Deloitte and Serco running large parts of a system where shareholder value appears to have trumped the needs of our frontline services.

Let’s be clear: the money we spend on our public services is not equivalent to other spending decisions we make. Of course price and quality are important, but public services exist to serve citizens, not consumers. They embody vital public values, including democracy and a shared sense of the common good.

Our public services should never have become a gravy train for highly paid consultants and shareholders who are more interested in dividend returns than the needs of people and communities. Yet here we are: with a small number of large firms dominating this market and delivering high returns for their investors while driving down the quality of the services they’re paid to provide.

Outsourcing was the brainchild of Margaret Thatcher’s government, which introduced compulsory competitive tendering in the early 1980s. The government viewed this policy, which forced local authorities to open up in-house services such as cleaning, catering and maintenance to private competitors, as a way to neuter strikes, downsize council and NHS workforces, and ultimately cut costs. White collar workers in the NHS and local authorities suffered the often dramatic reduction in salaries that accompanied this shift.

A growing litany of failures have stemmed from this policy decision. In early 2018, the British multinational company Carillion declared insolvency and started to liquidate its assets. Carillion, whose business model was described in a report for UK parliament as an “unsustainable dash for cash”, derived £1.7bn per year on revenue from public-private partnerships to run services for the NHS, Ministry of Defence and rail projects such as HS2. The company’s collapse cost the UK taxpayer an estimated £148m and resulted in the loss of around 2,300 jobs.

In 2019, meanwhile, the multinational security service company G4S was permanently stripped of its contract to run Birmingham prison after the government was forced to take control of the failing jail, which had earned the reputation as one of the most violent prisons in England and Wales.

And in adult social care, years of outsourcing has created a system where billionaires and private equity barons extract profits from our care home services. It’s no surprise that the four biggest care providers measured by revenue have the worst Care Quality Commission inspection ratings for safety, or that many carers don’t receive sick pay or the living wage.

Outsourcing has also changed the way we view public services. In the 1990s, Britain’s competitive tendering regime emphasised the role that cost should play in public service delivery. Civil servants and local government officers increasingly chased “value for money”, awarding contracts to companies offering the lowest price, regardless of whether they had any experience in areas such as contact tracing or prison management. Meanwhile the opaque nature of some tendering arrangements, and the often impenetrable structures of many large companies, make it difficult to scrutinise the terms and flows of money involved.

What’s needed is a fundamental shift in values in how we deliver public services. Many local authorities have recognised the problems with outsourcing and are starting to bring services such as refuse collection and recycling back in-house. Councils are finding that “insourcing” can reduce costs, retain public money within the public sector and enshrine the values of democracy and accountability. When Liverpool city council insourced a number of its services in 2015, it saved £1.4m and created 100 new jobs in the local area.


Private equity and care: a sector propped up by debt
Read more

But current arrangements can’t be changed overnight. There are now significant funding restrictions that prevent local authorities from insourcing, especially in England. After 10 years of austerity, funding for local public services is almost half what it was in 2010. Local authorities need a new, generous funding settlement. At the very least, revenue support grants to local authorities and levels of investment in the NHS should return to what they were pre-2010.

Moreover, the economic and social devastation stemming from the pandemic means that every single pound of public money must be used wisely. While many services should arguably be insourced, this is not a one-size-fits-all approach. Local authorities may want to involve organisations and individuals that aren’t part of the state but have similar values and make a positive contribution to the delivery of public services – such as awarding contracts to co-operatives or socially driven, not-for-profit organisations.

A system of “social licensing” would help. This would stipulate the kinds of businesses that could gain access to public sector markets. Businesses that extract profit from the public sector and siphon this to private shareholders and CEOs would be barred from applying – whereas those that enable good outcomes from public spending, such as cooperatives, social enterprises and community businesses, could compete for contracts. Social licensing should also mandate organisations that bid for public contracts to pay fair tax and the living wage.

The free market, as John Maynard Keynes once put it, is “not intelligent, it is not beautiful, it is not just, it is not virtuous – and it doesn’t deliver the goods”. Today, as England deals with the consequences of a failed test-and-trace system that should never have been outsourced, these words could hardly be more apt.

• Tom Lloyd Goodwin is associate director of policy and Neil McInroy is the chief executive of the Centre for Local Economic Strategies

Nigeria protests lead to 24-hour Lagos curfew

Airport shut as city governor condemns ‘anarchy’ and violence surrounding Sars police brutality protests

People in Lagos demonstrating against police brutality in Nigeria. 

Photograph: Sunday Alamba/AP


Emmanuel Akinwotu in Lagos
Tue 20 Oct 2020 

The government of Lagos has imposed an immediate 24-hour curfew, shutting down protests against police brutality that have erupted across Nigeria and paralysed large areas of the state that includes Africa’s largest city.

The protests have been against the notorious Sars police unit, now dissolved but accused of scores of extra-judicial killings. More broadly the protests have been against systemic abuse by Nigerian police forces. Early in the protests, police fired on protesters in the Surulere area of Lagos and elsewhere. Armed gangs have attacked protesters in Lagos and the capital Abuja.

The demonstrations had “degenerated into a monster threatening the well-being of our society”, said Babajide Sanwo-Olu, the governor of Lagos, in a statement on Tuesday.

His statement came after a police station was set on fire in the Iganmu area of Lagos on Tuesday morning. The national police chief also ordered the immediate deployment of anti-riot forces following increased attacks on police facilities, a police spokesman said.


Nigeria's anti-police brutality protests bring Lagos to standstill

“Criminals and miscreants are now hiding under the umbrella of these protests to unleash mayhem on our state,” he said, promising that the government would “not watch and allow anarchy”.

In recent days violence on the streets has fuelled unrest across Nigerian cities, amid one of the most striking protest movements in a generation against police brutality.

Four Nigerian states, and the capital, Abuja, have banned protests or adopted curfews effectively banning demonstrations.

Several protesters yesterday targeted Lagos airport, blocking off entrances to its international and domestic terminals, causing flight delays.

A one-minute silence on Monday among the crowds near Murtala Muhammed airport, Lagos, to remember ‘lives lost to police brutality’.

 Photograph: Benson Ibeabuchi/AFP/Getty

Outrage against the federal Special Anti-Robbery Squad, commonly called Sars, reached a tipping point after footage posted online early October showed Sars officers dragging a man from a hotel in Lagos before shooting him in the street.

Thousands of mainly young people have taken to the streets, many for the first time, demanding immediate police reforms. Protests led by young people have raised more than £200,000, setting up helplines for protesters in trouble, covering medical aid and providing private security.

In response to widespread demonstrations, which are not common in Nigeria, the government has dissolved the unit and adopted numerous measures, including judicial panels to investigate Sars abuses and compensation for victims.

Yet protests have grown, amid criticism that the pledges do not go far enough, following several previous pledges to reform or overhaul the unit.

Many people are incensed that Sars officers have not been arrested despite a deluge of video evidence showing abuses, including, in recent weeks, at demonstrations. The government said though that in Lagos four officers were arrested for violence against protesters and were under trial.

The announcement of the new police unit, the Special Weapons and Tactics (Swat) team, to partly replace Sars, has caused anger too.

In recent days, people wielding machetes, knives and clubs have attacked protesters, leaving many injured according to Amnesty International.

At least 15 people have died since protests began two weeks ago, Amnesty said. The organisation condemned widespread violence by police forces against peaceful demonstrations.

Amnesty International Nigeria said yesterday: “In the past few days we have documented escalating violence and coordinated attacks against peaceful #EndSars protesters.” It said police had used “excessive force” leading to many casualties.

Footage posted online showed dozens of young men with machetes, knives and sticks arriving at the scene of a protest sit-in outside the Lagos state government secretariat last Thursday, then attacking fleeing protesters.

Witnesses accused security forces of standing idly by. Lagos’ government condemned the violence and ordered an investigation.

In Benin City, in the southern state of Edo, people broke into a prison on Monday morning. Footage on social media showed several prisoners fleeing and climbing out of the prison, joining groups of men in the city vandalising property.

Edo’s governor, Godwin Obaseki, ordered a 24-hour curfew, blaming vandalism “by hoodlums in the guise of #EndSARS protesters”.

In Obalende, a busy market area in Lagos, people put up road blocks with tyres and rocks and extorted cash from drivers, as protests took place nearby, mirroring similar reports across the city.

The unrest has grown, alongside warnings from the army that soldiers would be ready to intervene, and calls from government officials pleading with protesters to end the demonstrations.

Chocolate industry slammed for failure to crack down on child labour

Children as young as five still exposed to hazardous work in countries including Ghana and Ivory Coast, report reveals

Cocoa beans drying in the sun, Ivory Coast. Hazardous work includes the use of sharp tools, working at night and exposure to agrochemical products. Photograph: Michael Dwyer/Alamy

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Oliver Balch
Tue 20 Oct 2020 

Nearly 20 years after the world’s major chocolate manufacturers pledged to abolish employment abuses, hazardous child labour remains rife in their supply chains, a new study finds.

Research from the University of Chicago finds that more than two-fifths (43%) of all children aged between five and 17 in cocoa-growing regions of Ghana and Ivory Coast – the world’s largest cocoa producers – are engaged in hazardous work.

In total, an estimated 1.5 million children work in cocoa production around the world, half of whom are found in these two west African nations alone. Hazardous work includes the use of sharp tools, working at night and exposure to agrochemical products, among other harmful activities.

The report, commissioned by the US Department of Labor, notes that the overall proportion of children working has gone up by 14 percentage points in the past decade. The increase is accompanied by a 62% rise in production over the same period.

The findings raise difficult questions for industry in particular. Back in 2001, big brands such as Nestlé, Mars and Hershey signed a cross-sector accord aimed at eliminating egregious child labour. Despite missing deadlines to deliver on their pledge in 2005, 2008 and 2010, they continue to insist that ending the illegal practice remains their top concern.

In response to the scathing report, US chocolate giant Mars reiterated that child labour has no place in cocoa production and said it had committed $1bn to help “fix a broken supply chain”.

Campaign groups dismiss such comments as a duplicitous smokescreen. Indeed, a lawsuit stating that international chocolate manufacturers knowingly profit from abuses against children is currently being heard in the US supreme court.

Charity Ryerson, founder of US campaign group Corporate Accountability Lab, echoes a widespread feeling that the chocolate industry is guilty of “mind-boggling hypocrisy”. If it wished to, it could end child labour tomorrow, she said.

“In the past 20 years, the cocoa industry has invested enormous skill and resources in public relations around sustainability, but the increase in child labour demonstrates it has utterly failed to bring that same expertise and investment to create real sustainability.”


US could become ‘safe haven’ for corporate abusers, activists warnre

Cocoa buyers flatly deny the charge, arguing that the issue is complex and not easily fixed. The explanations for their repeated failure stretch from the legal (they don’t own the cocoa farms where abuses happen) to the practical (auditing is expensive; identifying origin farms is complex) through to the nit-picking (the Harkin-Engel protocol on cocoa is nonbinding and only covers the “worst” forms of child labour).

According to the Fairtrade Foundation, only around 6% of the chocolate industry’s total revenues makes its way back to farmers – fair-trade models seek to counter this by increasing consumer prices and passing on the premium to farming cooperatives.

Louisa Cox, impact director at the Fairtrade Foundation, concedes that more help is needed to tackle “practical problems” if child labour is finally to become a thing of the past. Her list includes the provision of long-term finance, training and technical services, as well as helping farmers diversify beyond cocoa.

Taking a leaf out of the fair-trade book, the governments of Ghana and Ivory Coast this month rolled out a price-premium scheme (known as a “living income differential”) for all cocoa sales. The move also includes efforts to avoid oversupply, forward sales and other deflationary practices.

'It is serious and intense': white supremacist domestic terror threat looms large in US

From the frequency of attacks to the scope of ambition, racist terror groups – encouraged by the president, are showing unparalleled activity in the modern era

A militia group, including Pete Musico, right, who was charged over a plot to kidnap the Michigan governor, stands in front of the governor’s office after protesters occupied the state capitol building in Lansing, Michigan, on 30 April 2020. Photograph: Seth Herald/Reuters

Ed Pilkington
Mon 19 Oct 2020 

On 6 October Chad Wolf, the acting secretary of homeland security, released his department’s annual assessment of violent threats to the nation. Analysts didn’t have to dig deep into the assessment to discover its alarming content.

In a foreword, Wolf wrote that he was “particularly concerned about white supremacist violent extremists who have been exceptionally lethal in their abhorrent, targeted attacks in recent years. [They] seek to force ideological change in the United States through violence, death, and destruction.”




Gretchen Whitmer: Trump 'inciting domestic terrorism' with 'Lock her up!' rally chant

Two days later, the FBI swooped. It arrested 13 rightwing extremists who had allegedly been plotting to carry out a range of attacks in Michigan, including the kidnapping of the Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer.

Later revelations revealed that a group of anti-government paramilitaries that included some of those arrested had also discussed kidnapping the governor of Virginia.

The double strike, just days apart, of the threat assessment and the Michigan plot arrests marked an important moment in America’s tortured history of racist terrorism. US authorities appeared not only to have woken up finally to the extent of the white supremacist threat but were actually doing something about it.

As the FBI director, Christopher Wray, told Congress in February, “racially and ethnically motivated violent extremists” have become the “primary source of ideologically motivated lethal incidents” in the US. The danger overshadowed the jihadist threat that has dominated the security debate since 9/11.

Last year was the deadliest on record for domestic extremist violence since the Oklahoma City bombing of 1995. White supremacists were responsible for most of that bloodshed in 2019 – 39 out of 48 deaths, including 23 people who died at the hands of an anti-Hispanic racist in El Paso, Texas, and a Jewish worshipper murdered at Poway Synagogue in California.

The makeshift memorial for victims of the shooting at the Cielo Vista Mall Walmart in El Paso, Texas, on 6 August 2019. Photograph: Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images

While federal authorities may be showing a new resolve to tackle the problem, experts on white supremacy warn that the extremists are showing even greater determination. The movement is stirring, nationwide.

“The threat is serious and intense,” said Vanda Felbab-Brown, a terrorism and extremism expert at Brookings. “It is by far the most serious domestic danger in the US on many levels – the frequency of attacks, the level of recruitment, the scope of ambition of the groups and the wider political capital they are building.”

If 2019 was the deadliest year in a quarter of a century for domestic terrorism in America, 2020 is shaping up to be the year that white supremacy spreads its wings. Groups are showing a degree of confidence unparalleled in the modern era.

Agitators have seized the dual opportunities of the coronavirus pandemic and the Black Lives Matter protests to come out of the shadows and on to the streets. Even before the start of the pandemic, they were flexing their muscles.

Felbab-Brown recalls attending the gun rally in Richmond, Virginia, in January that attracted thousands of extremists carrying semi-automatic assault rifles. “There were militia members from all across the US, Trump supporters with guns, gun rights supporters, all mixing together in large crowds. They drew energy from each other, enlarged their networks and emboldened their thinking – and that was before Covid.”

Since the pandemic struck in late January, the rightwing surge has gathered pace. Armed groups of extremists have presented themselves as vigilante security guards, ostensibly protecting property during anti-police brutality protests but in reality confronting peaceful protesters and sowing chaos and violence that has culminated in loss of life.

Though studies have noted the rise of far-right violence in the US as far back as 2007, there is one aspect of today’s political climate that makes the current threat level uniquely dangerous: Donald Trump. In the recent presidential debate with Joe Biden he notoriously declined to denounce the extremist group the Proud Boys, exhorting them to “stand back and stand by”.

Gun rights advocates attend a rally organized by The Virginia Citizens Defense League near the state capitol building on 20 January in Richmond, Virginia. 

Photograph: Zach Gibson/Getty Images

Trump has done far more than refuse to criticize white supremacist groups – he has actively communicated with them through his Twitter feed and dog-whistles blown on the campaign trail. “He may not be talking to them in person, but he definitely is talking to them through the frequency,” Felbab-Brown said.

Trump has issued calls to arms to domestic terrorist groups during pandemic lockdowns in Democratic-controlled states. In April his cry of “Liberate Michigan!” was interpreted by militant groups as an invitation to storm the state capitol with their weapons.

His incendiary “law and order” posture in the wake of largely peaceful protests has had similar effect, as did his defence of Kyle Rittenhouse, the white teenager charged with killing two people amid anti-police brutality protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

On Thursday, and again over the weekend at his rallies, Trump returned to the theme of the enabling of extremists during the NBC town hall in which he effectively endorsed the toxic pedophilia conspiracy theory espoused by QAnon, the rightwing movement identified by the FBI as a potential domestic terrorism threat. The president also renewed his attacks on Whitmer – an astonishingly rash act given the terrorist plots against the Michigan governor.

“Trump’s messages to the groups have been egregious and disastrous, on a par with the behavior of Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil and Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines,” Felbab-Brown said. “They have been enormously harmful to the US.”

Donald Trump participates in an NBC News town hall event at the Perez Art Museum in Miami on 15 October. Photograph: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images

Michael German, a fellow of the Brennan Center for Justice who worked in the 1990s as an undercover FBI agent infiltrating white supremacist and militia groups, has studied how Trump’s racist appeals and implicit encouragement of violence have played with far-right militants. “Now they feel sanctioned. They think, ‘my violence is no longer criminal, it’s allowed, it’s what the president wants us to do’,” he said.

German has watched too as the groups have grown more methodical and practiced in their tactics over the past four years of Trump approbation. The tacit approval they have received from the Trump administration has rendered them far more effective and dangerous.

“As an undercover agent, I was present in the room when militants tried to convince a recruit to carry out a violent act and either go to the grave or become a fugitive. That’s a hard hump to get over. If you feel the president of the United States has authorized you to engage in this activity, it’s a lot easier.”

With white supremacy showing a new vitality, German is skeptical that the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security are serious about taking on the threat. The recent acknowledgments of the extent of the danger from Wolf and Wray are a step in the right direction, but much more urgency is needed.

“I want to see it in data. I want to see the arrests, the investigations, I want to know what the FBI is actually doing. I suspect the data would show that there have been a lot of deaths caused by white supremacists, but disproportionately few investigations,” German said.

The FBI’s use of resources tells its own story. The agency divides its counter-terrorism pie up 80 to 20: 80% goes on fighting international terrorism, 20% domestic.

An armed civilian stands on a roof during protests on 25 August over the shooting of Jacob Blake by a police officer in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

 Photograph: Tayfun CoskunAnadolu Agency/via Getty Images

The bureau’s own figures compiled for 2008 to 2018 indicate that the balance of threat is the exact reverse – some 73% of all extremist murders in the US in that period were by far-right terrorists, only 23% by Islamist terrorists.

At least at the federal level, the FBI is having some success in infiltrating extremist groups as the arrests of the alleged Michigan kidnap plotters attested. The record among state and local law enforcement looks far less impressive.

Among local police forces, the pattern is less likely to be infiltration of far-right groups by officers than the other way round – extremists are inveigling themselves into police forces. German’s work for the Brennan Center, drawing on FBI policy documents, has pointed out that white supremacist and anti-government groups often have “active links” with law enforcement officials.

Yet the justice department has no national strategy for spotting and removing white supremacist police officers.

On Thursday, armed members of the Boogaloo Bois – extremists agitating for a second civil war – illegally assembled outside the police headquarters in Newport News, Virginia. Instead of arresting the men for violating a ban on firearms on city property, the police chief handed their leader a bottle of chocolate milk and allowed him to address his ranks through a microphone and sound system that the force provided.

An insight into the world that is being created by this heady combination of a supportive president and fraternizing local police amid the turmoil of the pandemic and a fast-approaching volatile election is afforded by a new podcast from the Southern Poverty Law Center. Baseless takes listeners inside the leadership of the Base, a domestic terror group dedicated to destroying US democracy and sparking a race war that they believe and hope will transform America into a white ethno-state.

Drawing on 83 hours of secret recordings of top leaders inside the Base, including its founder Rinaldo Nazzaro whose true identity was revealed by the Guardian in January, the podcast conveys with chilling intimacy the scale of the white supremacists’ ambitions.

Armed Boogaloo Boy protesters led by Mike Dunn holding a banner during a demonstration against new firearm restrictions.

 Photograph: Chad Martin/Sopa Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

The militants describe the intricate vetting process that they follow for all new recruits. Potential new members are required to fill out a questionnaire that asks them whether they have had any military training.

Promising applicants are then invited into the “vetting room” in which a panel of five or six Base extremists, headed by Nazzaro, quiz them through an encrypted phone app. If they pass that stage, they are then given a task such as posting flyers around schools and college campuses that say “Save your race, join the Base”; and “Learn, train, fight, organize”.

The Base perceives itself not so much as an organization, but as a web of like-minded violent extremists. “We see ourselves more of a network,” Nazzaro is heard saying on the tapes.

But the one quality above all others that the terrorists crave is military experience. One in five of the 100 individuals who make an appearance on the recordings have had combat training as former or serving military personnel.

“This is a clear target,” said Jamila Paksima, co-producer of the Baseless podcast. “They are looking for people with military experience who can then train other recruits. So the US government is equipping people with the skills of warfare that are then potentially being turned back against the American people.”

The G2 interview

Cornel West: 'George Floyd's public lynching pulled the cover off who we really are'

‘They could kill me any day; that’s all right with me. I am going down swinging, brother’ … West. Photograph: Philip Keith/The Guardian

The G2 interview
Cornel West: 'George Floyd's public lynching pulled the cover off who we really are'
As the US philosopher and civil rights activist looks ahead to the presidential election, he discusses Joe Biden, Black Lives Matter and why Barack Obama was more Kenny G than John Coltrane

by Hugh Muir
Mon 19 Oct 2020

Cornel West is a thinker. Readers of Prospect magazine recently voted him the world’s fourth-best thinker. And right now he is thinking about 3 November, and whether the United States will reject or endorse Donald Trump. No one knows what will happen; not even West, not least because in the US he sees contradictions that even he can’t fully explain.

One such contradiction was Charlottesville, Virginia on the day in August 2017 when far-right activists menaced a community, killed a woman protesting against racism and then basked in the affirmation of Trump calling them “some very fine people”. West – always dapper in black suit, black scarf, white shirt, gleaming cufflinks and with his grey-flecked afro standing proud – was there.

“I remember seeing those folk looking at us and cussing at us and spitting at us and carrying on. And then the charge, and the anti-fascists coming in to save our lives. But what I also remember is walking by the park and seeing these neo-fascist brothers listening to some black music. I said: ‘Wow, this is America, isn’t it? These neo-fascist brothers listening to some Motown just before they going to mow us down.’ Ain’t that something?”

What West says matters because of his CV and because he straddles so many platforms: in academia, in the media, in popular culture. He seems too learned to be embraced by popular culture and too popular to have sway in academia, and yet he manages both. It’s capital he intends to expend between now and November.

“I am not crazy about Biden,” he says. “I don’t endorse him. But I believe we gotta vote for him. I am not in love with neoliberal elites either. I think they have to take some responsibility for this neo-fascist moment. But in the end, this white supremacy is soooo lethal … and it cuts so deep.”

West is arrested in Ferguson, Missouri, for an act of civil disobedience in protest at the killing of Michael Brown by police two months earlier, October 2014. Photograph: Charles Rex Arbogast/AP

He pauses and his measured delivery becomes staccato. There is pain there. “When you think about it, 65% of white brothers voted for Trump and 50% of white sisters. That’s the kind of country we live in. It’s like ... Wow! If it wasn’t for black folk and brown folk and progressive white folk … you voted for him then and you will vote for him again? Is that what we are talking about? With his impact on the world ...everybody knows he is a gangster, everybody knows he is a pathological liar and a xenophobe.”

And how will it turn out? Will Trump win again? If he loses, will he go? West pauses and reflects. “It’s hard to say. Some of us gonna go in and escort him out. He will probably say the election was rigged, he will probably say it was illegitimate. He could call on his troops to not accept the result of the election. Then we are really in a mess, my brother ... civic strife, man.”
Trump is creating a character for himself. Like a dumbed down version of a Pirandello play

It is, many say, the Covid election. Trump belittled it, under-reacted, ignored his scientists, caught it, recovered – or so he claims – and then made his recovery part of the narrative. Par for the course, says West. “He is creating a character for himself. Like a dumbed down version of a Pirandello play. He is trying to convince us that he is the strongman who is the only one who can save America: that he is a Superman bouncing back from the virus he was in denial about.”

West, 67, sees himself as part of an “anti-fascist coalition” against Trump. He is rooting for the least worst. “What I don’t want to do is present Biden as some great defender of the poor and working people,” he says. “I don’t want to lie. We have had enough lies with Trump.” It’s Hobson’s choice. “When there is a cold-hearted, mean-spirited neo-fascist like Trump, I have got to try and push Biden over the line.”

The same applies to Kamala Harris, Biden’s running mate, and with Biden already 77, a potential president. “She is a brilliant black sister,” says West. But, “she is very much a part of that class and imperial hierarchy”.

West’s yearning to be part of the dominant debate began in childhood in Sacramento, California, where he grew up with his mother Irene, a feted teacher, his father, Clifton, an air force civilian administrator, and three siblings. The Wests raised their progressive voices in the Shiloh Baptist church, as civil rights demonstrators and through the Urban League, a historic civil rights organisation. They took the young Cornel to see Martin Luther King. “He was very powerful. I was too young to understand all his words, but he had an impact on my soul.”

A keen scholar, West took his activism to elementary school. Aged eight, he was kicked out because he refused to salute the flag. A teacher tried to coerce him and a fracas ensued. He had his reason; a family horror, a very American outrage – the death of his great-uncle. “My great-uncle was part of a group from the military who came back from the first world war; a number who were lynched in uniform. They put the flag around them to let them know they were not going to be full citizens, even though they had been willing to give their lives for the country.”

But the young West – assertive and school-less – was lucky to be bright and have supportive parents who knew their way around the system. His mother eventually found him a school across town and then returned each day to teach in her own. West found his metier. “I had a wonderful time,” he says. “I was blessed to bounce back.”

‘When there is a cold-hearted, neo-fascist like Trump, I have got to try and push Biden over the line’ … West. Photograph: Philip Keith/The Guardian

He was set on a stellar trajectory. In 1970, he went to Harvard, graduating in 1973 with a degree in near Eastern languages and civilisation. Then he went off to Princeton to become the first African American to graduate there with a PhD in philosophy. After lecturing at Harvard, he went on to the Union Theological Seminary, New York, the University of Paris and Yale University’s Divinity School. At Yale, during an anti-apartheid campus protest, he was arrested and briefly jailed. In 1988, he returned to Princeton where he spent six years teaching religion and African American studies before re-entry to Harvard – a tenure that ended explosively in 2002 when he fell out with the university’s then president Lawrence Summers. Re-route again to Princeton for more pioneering teaching of African American studies before, in 2017, a triumphant return to Harvard gazetted with fanfare in the New York Times.

Central to his rock star ascent are his books. The first clutch were worthy and well-received. Then in 1993 came West’s collection of essays, Race Matters. It became the lens through which much of the US discussed race: a standard work in colleges and universities, it was the defining text over which the political and intellectual battles were fought. Bill Clinton, the then president, called West to the White House for a private consultation. Some hailed the book, since republished in a 25th anniversary edition, as an arrow through America’s dark heart. Others questioned his analysis. But few argued with the book’s contention that race mattered and, in its wake, West mattered, too.

Today, he presents as a genial man of firm positions and strong faith, drawn from a well of Christianity that means Trump, Michael Bloomberg and even Tucker Carlson – the notorious rightwing Fox News anchor – are referred to as brother. Which can lead to problems – for example, when he refers to the controversial head of the Nation of Islam. “When I call Trump a brother, they say: ‘Oh Brother West, my God, he’s so open-minded.’ But I call Louis Farrakhan a brother, and they say: ‘Oh Brother West must be antisemitic.’ As a Christian you are told to love thy neighbour, and it’s not love thy neighbour with qualifications, its love across the board.”

Happier days … with Obama at a fundraiser in Harlem, 2007. Photograph: Hiroko Masuike/Getty Images

Any love for Barack Obama, however, is disfigured by the solid line he draws from Obama’s time in office to the rise of Trump. He has called his country’s first black president a “war criminal” because of his use of drones. Now, he says: “People don’t understand the weight of the bailout of Wall Street. Why would you use a trillion dollars for the top 0.01% and leave your people dangling, go to them every four years and act as if you’re their hero?”

I wouldn’t be who I am without an Aretha Franklin or John Coltrane

For West music and culture are vital to his thinking. No one else juxtaposes the thoughts of great poets and philosophers with those of Curtis Mayfield or Bootsy Collins. “I wouldn’t be who I am without an Aretha Franklin or John Coltrane,” he says. He also prizes hip-hop. As we speak, he is preparing for a hip-hop summit aimed at increasing voter registration. “Geniuses like Rakim and Tupac are wrestling with their conception of what it means to be human in their context,” he says. “They are artists and all the artists, as Shelley says in his Defence of Poetry, are the ‘unacknowledged legislators of the world’.”

So, too, the Wachowskis, the cult film-makers who hired him to play Councillor West in The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions. “That was something,” he recalls. “We had intellectual dialogue with Keanu Reeves and Laurence Fishburne, reading Schopenhauer and William James. They are very much intellectuals, they really are.”

West in The Matrix Reloaded. Photograph: Warner Bros

But when this politico-cultural lens seeks out Obama, crosshairs appear. “It is just sad that the first black president ended up being Kenny G rather than John Coltrane,” he says. “What can you say? ‘Go on Kenny G, play your notes; you’re alright …’ Obama’s alright. He’s not a fascist or anything. But we’re looking for Coltrane.”

Since the death of George Floyd, people have also been searching for diagnoses and radical prescriptions. An unprecedented stirring, to West’s mind, simply explained. “George Floyd’s public lynching connected with the pandemic, connected with the neo-fascist gangster in the White House, and pulled the cover off who we really are and what our system really is,” he says. “We have been living a lie for so long.”

The killing of Breonna Taylor, and the grand jury decision that no police officer should be charged with her death, “shows the system is decrepit; rotten,” West says, quietly. “That is why it is more concerned with bullets going through the white neighbour’s door than the bullet that killed the black sister.”

From race matters to Black Lives Matter: “A beautiful new moment in the struggle for black freedom.” But even there West sees pitfalls and offers advice. There must be clear objectives, he says. It must be “a profoundly human affair that is always multi-racial, multinational, multigender, multi-sexual orientation”. Crucially, it must prioritise those who need it most. “The focus must be on empowering the least of these, to use the biblical term – the poor and working-class. When you are overthrowing monuments, that is not empowering poor people. It becomes a symbolic gesture.”

That strategy, he says, requires deep thought. “Lincoln was a white supremacist for most of his life but, I mean, my God, he grew. He was a force for good. What happens is you begin to alienate certain members of a larger community that you are trying to speak to.”

When I first interviewed West, he was being feted at Cambridge University and in London, while David Cameron was at No 10, dispensing social division and austerity. “Britain is in deep trouble,” West said then. Neither of us saw what would follow. “Johnson,” he spits contemptuously, “is the kissing cousin of Trump. He is just more educated, more polished and more sophisticated, but I think he is in the same Trumpian zone with Netanyahu and Modi and Bolsonaro. I hate to say that I might have been right about Britain,” he says. Then he chuckles and shrugs in sympathy: “I didn’t see Johnson coming either.”

Over Zoom, he is a lesson in deliberation: rocking back and forth in his own time register, but that’s deceptive because he is also a blur of activity. There are the demands of academia, the summits, his podcast The Tightrope, an engaging double act with Prof Tricia Rose, the sociologist from Brown University in Rhode Island, spanning race, social affairs and culture. He is slightly giddy, preparing for the academic Oscar award of a hugely prestigious Gifford lecture in 2024, one of the series hosted by Edinburgh University since 1888 and described as “the highest honour in a philosopher’s career”. His subject: wrestling death and dogma and domination.

He is also a very vocal supporter of Julian Assange and the fight to stop his extradition to the US. “He’s a truth teller,” says West. “He has been simply laying bare some of the crimes and lies of the American empire.” But will he pay the price? “I am praying for him,” he says, “but I don’t think it looks good, man.”

If the times are bleak, with just a glimmer of hope for 3 November and thereafter, West insists they follow a predicted trajectory. “Militarism, racism, poverty and materialism; all four of these will suck the energy out of American democracy,” he says, reciting reverently. “Martin Luther King said that right before they killed him – and the truth-tellers often get killed, as you know. That’s the way of the world.” Should he be concerned? He cocks his head and laughs: “Oh shoot, they could kill me any day; that’s all right with me. I am going down swinging, brother, like Ella Fitzgerald and Muhammad Ali – with a little bit of Rakim and some Coltrane.”

To tackle sexual violence in Bangladesh the culture of victim blaming must end 

There are still those who ask ‘what was she wearing’. An urgent conversation is needed about toxic masculinity and consent
  

Protesters demand justice on 14 October for the alleged gang-rape and torture of a woman in in Dhaka. Photograph: Zabed Hasnain Chowdhury/SOPA I/REX/Shutterstock

Shireen Huq and Syeda Samara Mortada
Mon 19 Oct 2020 

There has been growing outrage among Bangladeshi citizens over the past two weeks at a string of gruesome gang rapes and sexual assaults reported in the media. There is a deep lack of confidence that the victims will ever get justice, as well as anxiety over the traditionally-held view that a woman and her family lose “honour” when she is raped.

The question remains: did the woman ask to hold this honour that has been bestowed upon her? Is a woman’s honour held in her body? According to Ain O Salish Kendra, an organisation in Bangladesh that provides legal assistance to victims of violence, between January and September this year, men raped 975 women, killed 43 women after raping them, and attempted to rape 204 others. This is not the actual number of rape cases, but the figure that has been reported publicly – the true toll will be a lot higher.

So last week a group of women got together to form an alliance called “Feminists Across Generations”. We want to protest against the violence which women and girls are suffering, irrespective of their class, occupation or any other identity marker; be it at the hands of family members, strangers, or state actors from law enforcement or the military.
We are angry. We are angry at families, schools, and at the government for blaming the victim

We are angry. We are angry at families, schools, and at the government for blaming the victim and for forcing them to change instead of holding perpetrators to account. Those who continue to ask what he victim was wearing, where she was, who she was with and what time it was. Those who continue to say that she was “asking for it”.

Feminists Across Generations stood to protest against not just individual cases of violence against women, nor to focus on the trial and punishment of perpetrators, but to question the cultural and social practices that have nurtured and allowed this violence to breed; the systemic discrimination against women both de jure and de facto that persist; the inequality that underwrites our structures of governance and justice, and the provision of social services.

The goal of organising has to be broadened, beyond criminal justice, to include discourse around toxic masculinity and a strategy to bring about an end to the culture of rape and sexual violence.


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Systemic change is necessary and the modernisation of Bangladesh’s antiquated laws, such as the Character Evidence Law, which allows survivors to be questioned in the court of law on their “character”. More than ever, it is time to target societies, mindsets and the culture of impunity. It is time for all citizens to come together and demand freedom for women and girls, not protection. We demand safety on the streets at any time of the day or night, on public transport, at schools, at work and in our homes.


Gender-based violence is a national emergency in Bangladesh. It should be declared as such. No form of violence can be considered “normal”, nor can it be considered part of any culture. Together – women and men – we must continue the fight to help realise a Bangladesh that is free of rape and sexual violence.

We demand zero tolerance for victim-blaming at all levels of society (structural, institutional, societal and individual). We demand that rapists are no longer sheltered in our homes, schools and workplaces – families need to hold their boys and men accountable for any and all violence they perpetrate. We claim our right to occupy all public spaces without fear of violence, at any time and for any purpose.

Comprehensive sex education, including a clear understanding of consent, must be made mandatory in all schools. We ask that swift action be taken against all those weaponising cyber tools to commit violence against women. We request that rape laws are reformed to recognise and criminalise marital rape, irrespective of the age of the victim who is subjected to rape by her spouse.

We are opposed to the death penalty. It is not a solution. Talking about the death penalty has not brought justice for Nusrat Jahan Rafi, Kalpana Chakma, Yasmin Akhter, Sohagi Tonu or any of Bangladesh’s other lost women and girls. There are many more who live in fear.

We want an end to the culture of rape.


Shireen Huq is the founder of Bangladeshi women’s activist organisation Naripokkho and Syeda Samara Mortada is an activist with the SheDecides movement