It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Thursday, September 28, 2023
UK
The colonial inheritance tax loophole that could save Rishi Sunak’s family millions Lauren Almeida Tue, September 26, 2023
Wealthy Indian families living in Britain stand to inherit fortunes tax-free thanks to a “loophole” dating back to colonial times.
After India gained independence in 1947, an agreement was struck to ensure British and Indian citizens living in either country did not end up paying death duties twice.
But the treaty has remained in place, even after inheritance tax was abolished in India more than three decades ago. And tax lawyers suggest the technicality could possibly save Rishi Sunak’s family hundreds of millions of pounds.
Mr Sunak is reportedly considering cutting the levy in the March Budget and might commit to scrapping it entirely in the party manifesto ahead of the next General Election.
Inheritance tax in Britain is increasingly falling upon more and more ordinary, middle class families, thanks to a deep freeze on allowances and a boom in property prices over the past decade.
Defence secretary Grant Shapps this week said: “People know that there’s something deeply unfair about being taxed all their lives and then being taxed in death as well.”
Akshata Murty, Mr Sunak’s wife, is the daughter of N.R Narayana Murty, the multi-billionaire founder of the Indian IT giant Infosys.
Mr Murty has an estimated net worth of $4.1bn (£3.3bn), according to Forbes. Ms Murty owns a 0.93pc share of Infosys, according to the company’s latest filings, which is estimated to be worth around £600m.
However, her estate may not be liable to pay an inheritance tax bill on assets held in India – potentially saving the family £240m on the shares alone.
Christopher Thorpe, of the Chartered Institute of Taxation, said that while the treaty did not just benefit very wealthy families, Mr Sunak’s family could save hundreds of millions of pounds because of the rule, adding: “It is a loophole from an old treaty that was signed before all the rules changed.”
Inheritance tax is levied at 40pc on wealth over the £325,000 threshold. Individuals have an extra £175,000 allowance towards their main residence if it is passed to direct descendants.
The threshold has remained at £325,000 since 2009 and Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has frozen it until 2028, in a move that is expected to drag thousands of more families into paying the levy.
The Government collected £7.1bn in death duties last year. It is forecast to hit £8.4bn by 2028, according to official projections.
Ms Murty also may not have to pay inheritance tax on whatever her billionaire father chooses to leave her if he is domiciled in India, experts have said.
Sean McCann, of the advice firm NFU Mutual, said: “In the UK, inheritance tax is charged on the estate of the deceased, rather than the recipient, so Akshata Murty would not face a charge on any inheritance she receives from her father’s estate.”
We intend that both capital and land—in a word all the raw materials of labor—should cease being transferable through the right of inheritance, becoming forever ...
AUSTRALIA
Qantas pilots plan 24 hour walkout in possible blow to oil and gas cos
Alasdair Pal Thu, September 28, 2023 Sydney Airport as Australia reacts to the new coronavirus Omicron variant in Sydney
SYDNEY (Reuters) - Pilots at Network Aviation, a subsidiary of Qantas Airways, will go on strike on Oct. 4, the Australian Federation of Air Pilots (AFAP) said on Thursday, a move that could affect flights to mines and energy projects in Western Australia.
The union has been negotiating with Qantas management over wage policy revisions in the resource-rich state, which is home to large deposits of iron ore and natural gas.
“The AFAP remains committed to reaching an agreement for our members in Western Australia who fly for Qantas subsidiary Network Aviation and is disappointed that we have had to take this action,” said Senior Industrial Officer Chris Aikens.
The union represents about 85% of the 250 or so pilots flying for the airline.
More than 99.5% of AFAP pilot members at Network Aviation voted in a ballot late Monday to approve several legally-protected industrial actions that include work bans and stoppages.
Qantas did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for QantasLink, an airline brand of Qantas, on Tuesday called the proposed disruption "disappointing", adding it has offered the pilots significant pay rises and more guaranteed days off.
(Reporting by Alasdair Pal in Sydney. Editing by Gerry Doyle)
Australia's Qantas chairman says shareholders want him despite turmoil
Wed, September 27, 2023
SYDNEY (Reuters) - The chairman of Australia's Qantas Airways on Wednesday vowed to stay in his role despite a host of scandals engulfing the airline, saying its biggest shareholders wanted leadership continuity even as its shares track a one-year low.
In a parliamentary hearing, Richard Goyder resisted weeks of pressure to resign, including from the airline's own pilots, saying that he had followed "high ethics" throughout his career, and that investors considered him the best person to lead the company through a reputational crisis.
Goyder's testimony at a Senate committee amounted to a tense showdown between one of Australia's most revered corporate leaders and top lawmakers, who accused him of presiding over a company involved in potential abuse of market power and violation of consumer law, and found to have illegally sacked workers.
After the airline's long-standing CEO retired early this month, citing the need for renewal, unions, consumer groups and investors have turned their sights to Goyder. Stock analysts have downgraded the stock, citing rising costs of buying fuel and repairing its customer service systems.
"I've had meetings with our major shareholders two weeks ago, and they are very strongly supportive of me staying," Goyder told the hearing.
"I would also argue that my history in business has been of high ethics," he added, noting that he led conglomerate Wesfarmers through the 2009 financial crisis as CEO before taking Qantas "through the most existential crisis we've had as an airline".
"While I retain the confidence of shareholders and the board, I will continue to serve. If that confidence isn't maintained, then clearly I will review that decision," he said.
Asked about a federal government decision to stop Qatar Airways from doubling its potential flights to Australia, new Qantas CEO Vanessa Hudson confirmed her company sent a confidential submission to the government in 2022 opposing the rival's request on grounds that "it's been incredibly important to let the market recover from the effects of COVID".
But she and Goyder, the Qantas chairman since 2018, denied having any discussions about the Qatari request with any member of the federal government.
The decision has been a lightning rod for consumer outrage at Qantas, which sells three-fifths of all Australian domestic airline tickets, because it limited competition that might have pushed fares lower, according to antitrust experts.
Jayne Hrdlicka, the CEO of Qantas's biggest domestic competitor, Virgin Australia, told the Senate hearing she regretted not lobbying harder for extra flights from Qatar, a partner airline.
"We honestly believed that the Qatar rights bid would be approved," Hrdlicka said. "It was unthinkable that it wouldn't be. The country is starving for extra capacity."
Qatar Airways' senior vice-president of global sales, Matt Raos, told the hearing the company was "surprised and shocked" its application was denied without a reason given.
(This story has been refiled to remove an extraneous word in paragraph 4)
(Reporting by Byron Kaye, Editing by Gerry Doyle) New Qantas CEO Hudson Grilled by Lawmakers Over Raft of Scandals
Angus Whitley Wed, September 27, 2023 at 1:04 AM MDT·3 min read
(Bloomberg) -- New Qantas Airways Ltd. Chief Executive Officer Vanessa Hudson was grilled, rebuked and chided by a parliamentary inquiry, piling more pressure on an airline already under fire for its treatment of passengers, staff and competitors.
Appearing before a senate committee in Canberra on Wednesday, Hudson first said sorry for the airline’s service levels, repeating an apology she made to passengers last week. But Senator Bridget McKenzie, chair of the committee, took Hudson to task for the airline’s failure to make a written submission to the inquiry like smaller rivals Virgin Australia and Rex.
McKenzie then criticized Hudson, Chairman Richard Goyder and General Counsel Andrew Finch, seated in a row, for not knowing the dates of certain policy decisions inside Qantas. Neither could they name the colleague liaising with government on one particular matter. The lack of a submission and ready answers, McKenzie told them, “shows a level of disrespect.”
The inquiry — ostensibly formed to investigate a government decision to block more Qatar Airways flights into Australia — on Wednesday ignited into a fiery and unrestricted attack on Qantas.
The airline’s brand and reputation are suffering from a relentless wave of negative headlines, and Qantas stock is down 24% from a June peak.
Australia’s antitrust watchdog is suing Qantas for allegedly selling fake seats on thousands of flights it had already canceled. The country’s highest court earlier this month ruled that Qantas illegally sacked almost 1,700 ground workers during the pandemic. The revelations saw then-CEO Alan Joyce bring forward his retirement and step aside for Hudson, who took over the top job just three weeks ago.
Compounding the airline’s troubles, Hudson is being forced to increase spending to bolster service levels that slipped under Joyce’s repeated cost-cutting programs. While Joyce’s tenure ended with record profits, he left many disgruntled passengers waiting for flights, looking for lost luggage, or searching for replacement services.
Read More: Virgin Australia Blindsided by Government Block on Qatar Flights
Goyder on Wednesday defended his own position, telling the committee he has the support of the company’s largest shareholders to carry on. The airline’s pilots union on Tuesday called for him to step down.
The answers from Hudson and Goyder weren’t good enough for Senator Tony Sheldon — a long-time critic of Qantas — who said he had lost count of the airline’s apologies.
“I’ve only got 10 fingers and 10 toes,” Sheldon said. He accused Goyder of failing to take responsibility for sacking the 1,700 ground workers, a decision repeatedly found by courts to be illegal.
“You refuse to hold yourself to account,” Sheldon told Goyder.
Goyder said the airline apologizes “for what happened.” But he said there were “sound commercial reasons” for the decision.
Rachel Waterhouse, CEO of the Australian Shareholders Association, said in an interview that Goyder ought to step down by the end of the year. But he must first field questions from shareholders at the annual general meeting in November, and lay out a succession plan for his role, she said. Like Joyce, Goyder must answer for decisions made under their joint watch, she said.
“They’re both absolutely responsible,” she said.
Hudson, meanwhile, reiterated a commitment to lift performance.
“There are still issues, and cancellations are higher than they should be,” Hudson said. “We’re reviewing all our customer policies and processes to ensure that they are fair. You have my commitment that we will be serving Australians better.”
As the Anti-Abortion Movement Terrorized Clinics, Pro-Choice Activists Took Matters Into Their Own Hands
Angela Hume Tue, September 26, 2023 “Stop Operation Rescue” poster, October 1988, by Joe and Agnes Sampson. Photo from Joe and Agnes Sampson’s personal collection. Photo illustration by Slate.
Deep Care follows generations of activists and health workers who orbited Women’s Choice Clinic in Oakland, California, from the early 1970s until 2010, as they worked underground and aboveground, in small cells and broad coalitions. The book is grounded in interviews with activists sharing details of their work for the first time and reveals a story of the radical edge of the abortion movement. The following is an excerpt from Chapter 6: “Your First Line of Defense Is Self-Defense.”
By the mid-1980s, almost 90 percent of abortions were performed at stand-alone clinics, but it was getting harder to be a Feminist Women’s Health Center. (FWHCs were independent abortion and reproductive health care providers operated by feminist-identified laypeople.) The right wing that elected Ronald Reagan president in 1981 had worked throughout the 1970s to recruit and fold free-market conservatives and white Christians into a single, powerful base. By the 1980s, the far-right fringe of this new right wing produced a terroristic anti-abortion campaign. Violence hit Oakland Feminist Women’s Health Center, also known as Women’s Choice Clinic, close to home in 1985, when arsonists firebombed one of its sibling clinics in Los Angeles.
AK Press
How did the anti-abortion movement become such a leviathan? In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the movement mainly included white supremacists who, pointing to declining white birth rates, believed that legalized abortion would mean “race suicide” for white Protestants. Later, in the 1960s, leading up to the ruling on Roe v. Wade, the movement became a Catholic one too. After Roe, the church intensified its crusade against abortion, and other conservative groups joined in interpreting the ruling as a rejection of traditional values; newly galvanized, these other religious and interest groups joined the movement.
Starting in the 1970s, the anti-abortion movement began to push for laws that prohibited public funding for abortions. At the same time, Republican politicians were advocating that the government divest from families by slashing public benefits (welfare), further racializing poverty. The anti-abortion movement and Republicans in Congress came together to pass the Hyde Amendment, which in 1977 banned Medicaid reimbursements for abortion. The Republican anti-welfare campaign had come to imply an anti-abortion stance. And the implied equation of welfare and abortion—and the imperative to reject both—would animate the right for decades to come.
By the early 1980s, there had been bombings and arsons of clinics by anti-abortion terrorists nationwide. Anti-abortion aggression did not stop the FWHCs from providing services, but on the morning of April 8, 1985, arsonists attacked the L.A. clinic. No one was ever convicted, and the Los Angeles Fire Department never declared the fire to be arson, even though the health center had received threats.
Over the course of the 1980s, the United States lost almost 20 percent of abortion providers. In the words of longtime Women’s Choice Clinic Director Linci Comy, the attacks were spearheaded by “very angry men.” “This was a fight about male superiority,” she told me. “And the worst of the right wing came out to join that struggle. Not only were they women haters, but they were queer haters. It was a Christian militia.”
To grasp what a feat it was for Women’s Choice to survive the war years, which started in the 1980s and escalated in the 1990s, you have to look at the lengths activists were willing to go to defend their clinics.
In January 1985, three months before the L.A. clinic firebombing, a director at Women’s Choice named Pat Parker suggested to her comrades that they get serious about self-defense. She started a group to talk about how they should respond to the anti-abortion attacks. They named their group the Clinic Defense Committee and called for a “Bay Area–wide, broad-based coalition of support for reproductive rights.” Not long after, the committee would rename themselves Bay Area Coalition Against Operation Rescue when the militant organization Operation Rescue came on the scene.
Operation Rescue would organize abortion clinic “hits” (as clinic defenders called them), in which hundreds of OR members would mob a single abortion clinic. So BACAOR members rose up, executing an unprecedented and militant street response that reflected their understanding that abortion access was a condition for everyone’s freedom and autonomy, and that clinic defense was community self-defense.
Sept. 17, 1988, was set to be Operation Rescue’s first big hit in the Bay Area. When I visited BACAOR member Kass McMahon at her home in Albuquerque, I spent a week rummaging through her plastic bins full of records and ephemera. Kass took copious notes over the years. She was a trained journalist, she explained to me, with a facility for documenting.
Early that September morning, 50 or so BACAOR members arrived at a clinic called Pregnancy Consultation Center in San Francisco to find hundreds of OR demonstrators blocking the doors. Arriving in vans, the antis had descended upon the clinic well before sunrise and, in no time at all, blockaded the entrance to the mission-style medical building.
“They were fanned out in front of the door in layers,” Kass recalled. “The cops were there, too. They weren’t going to let us get anywhere near OR. And they weren’t going to help get OR out of the way, either.”
But BACAOR wasn’t about to concede—they used bullhorns to lead a noisy counterdemonstration and distracted OR with theatrics. A satirical street theater group called Ladies Against Women arrived dressed in conservative garb and held up signs that read “Every Sperm Is Sacred!” while singing the Monty Python hymn. “One of the things that made us successful was our use of visual activism to pierce the hypocrisy of OR,” Kass explained.
Despite BACAOR’s efforts, OR was indefatigable in its plan to shut down Pregnancy Consultation Center. It was hours later when police finally started carrying away and sometimes arresting antis who were lying or sitting limply on the ground in front of the doors. What happened at Pregnancy Consultation Center reinforced a core principle of BACAOR: You do not depend on the police.
The Sept. 17 hit infuriated and inspired clinic defenders to ramp up their response to OR. “BACAOR grew like a Jack-and-the-beanstalk after that,” Kass said. Dozens more people came to the next meeting. “The next time OR hit, we were ready. We had our tactics. We had a plan. This was no longer clinic watch. This was clinic defense.”
On a spring afternoon, two clinic defenders named Agnes and Joe (pseudonyms) had me over for a screening. They’d been going through the BACAOR video tapes that they had created and found the notorious July 1989 “wedding scene,” an example of BACAOR on the offensive. I’d heard about the wedding, that it was a classic.
Joe hit play on his laptop, and the still image of a group of BACAOR protesters erupted to life. Young people of all genders marched in a tight circle in front of First Orthodox Presbyterian Church in San Francisco, chanting, “Racist, fascist, anti-gay! Born-again bigots, go away!”
Demonstrating in front of churches that hosted Operation Rescue was one of BACAOR’s new tactics, and Agnes had the idea that they could stage a mock wedding at this one. She and Joe had made some props and costumes, and to their delight, the group ran with it all. “BACAOR attracted creative types,” Agnes said. “They just made it up right there.”
In front of the church, people got acquainted with their props and into their roles; a young blond woman zipped herself into the ratty old wedding dress Agnes had just found at a thrift store. It was crusted with dried red paint, especially in the crotch. Wedding attendees circled the bride and started pushing, pulling, and taunting her. They dangled red-painted wire coat hangers in front of her, some of which were strung with naked plastic babies. Some hooked the hangers onto the bride’s dress; others pulled at her dress, tearing it away from her body. The bride moaned, “Nooo!”
One wedding attendee led the group in a prayer:
I pledge obedience
To the men
Of Operation Rescue
And to the repression
For which they stand
One penis
Under God
With slavery and repression
For all women.
Everyone cheered.
When it was time for the ceremony, a man in a thrifted suit coat stood next to the disheveled bride. Someone assumed the role of minister and began: “We are here today to join this couple.” Wedding guests threw bloody hangers at the bride while she screamed. One flamboyant guest interjected, “Get over it, honey! You’ll get used to it. Use a little K-Y! It won’t hurt so bad.”
The minister then commanded, “Take this woman, your lawful wedded wife … and baby-making machine! I pronounce you man and property. You may impregnate the bride.” A member of the wedding party stepped forward and presented a red velvet pillow, on which there was a pair of handcuffs. The groom cuffed one of the bride’s wrists, and then one of his own.
Then wedding guests moved in on the bride and shoved her to her knees in front of the groom. “Do your duty! Do your duty,” they chanted. “Breed! Breed! Breed!” With a look of disgust, the bride started bobbing her head in what appeared to be a mock blow job. (Had this mock wedding really turned into a mock rape? Yes, it had.) Everyone was yelling and screaming. Guests continued to pelt her with bloody hangers and plastic babies. Some started spanking the babies. The bride crawled around miserably.
“Not the church, not the state, we don’t want to procreate!” a BACAOR member started chanting, calling everyone back to center and ending the scene. Others joined in. “We won’t go back! We won’t go back! We won’t go back!”
In 1989, BACAOR was made up of lots of lesbians and queer folks. Inspired in part by the performative tactics of ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power), BACAOR embraced visuals and words that confronted and exposed the hypocrisy of its enemies. When its members were on the offense, demonstrating at Christian churches or in the streets, they used humor, camp, and satire.
What struck me most about BACAOR’s mock wedding was that it did not hold back in its representation of violence directed at the bride. “We were unruly,” a BACAOR member named Laura Weide said of the scene. It was too much. And in the “too much” lies the exposure. This is how the satire packed its punch: The moment when the mock wedding, which was bold and bawdy, escalated into a mock rape outside a church—when the satire becomes contemptuous, devastating, and total—was the moment of truth.
It’s difficult to go to these types of places and tell the truth: that the Christian right did (and does) subject women to violence by forcing marriage, heterosexual procreative sex, pregnancy, birth, and parenthood on them; and that this violence can be emotional, physical, sexual, or all three.
In our discussion of the scene, Agnes pointed out that the wedding captures what it might feel like to be a woman who becomes pregnant and doesn’t want to be—as if the whole world is pelting you with dangerous objects, including men and babies.
“It felt great,” she said of pulling off the scene. “There we were, in front of a church, the center of the oppression. And we were able to make just total vicious fun of them and their whole woman-hating thing. It felt good to say what it was really all about, which was women being stomped into the dirt.”
As Agnes’ comments suggest, the scene registers how personal the movement was for clinic defenders. BACAOR had a political analysis, and its members also had lived experience. They were women who had had unplanned pregnancies themselves and who had experienced discrimination and policing by the medical institution, churches, and the state. They were lesbians, gays, queers, and gender-nonconforming people who had been the target of homophobic and transphobic speech and violence. Their street theater reflected the emotional pain, exasperation, and outrage they harbored toward institutions that seemed hellbent on pacifying, controlling, immiserating, and erasing them. As they wrote around the time of the mock wedding, “The attack on reproductive rights is also an attack on sexual freedom, particularly for women, youth, and lesbians and gay men.”
“The only political statement I’ve ever heard that has more layers to it than ‘the personal is political,’ ” Kass said to me, “is ‘silence equals death’ ”—the message central to ACT UP’s campaign. BACAOR members were not afraid to allow their politics to be informed by their deepest, rawest wounds. And they were unwilling to stay silent.
The wedding was satirical improv street theater, but when you start to think about what women and queer and trans people were up against—especially with the Webster v. Reproductive Health Services decision coming down at that same time and marking the beginning of the end of Roe—the irony starts to crumble. BACAOR did its work at the edge of this sinkhole.
Just as BACAOR worked to develop tactics to fight antis at clinic doors, it also started developing its intelligence arm. In the months that followed, BACAOR members started embedding themselves in OR to do opposition research.
A BACAOR member named Vanessa (pseudonym), an out lesbian and anarchist punk from New York, told me about a time she infiltrated OR. Vanessa’s aim was not to get intel about OR’s plans, but rather to shut down their meeting altogether so that they couldn’t announce the next day’s meeting spot.
The attempted shutdown happened on a Friday night in fall 1989—a turbulent time. Earlier that year in March, at a BACAOR counter rally at St. Dominic’s Church, San Francisco police pepper-sprayed a group of protesters. In April, leading up to the Supreme Court’s Webster decision, which abortion defenders believed that the court could use to overturn Roe, tens of thousands of choice supporters took to the streets in San Francisco. Meanwhile, OR continued to escalate its attacks on clinics all around the Bay Area. The stakes felt high.
That Friday night, OR’s pre-hit rally was being held at a conservative church in Fremont. Vanessa and two other BACAOR members, Willow and Suki (pseudonyms), arrived at the church in ankle-length skirts. Vanessa had tucked her spiky blue mohawk beneath a wig of thick long hair. She wore a loose-fitting cardigan. She looked like a Christian white woman, or a slightly frumpy secretary.
Vanessa, Willow, and Suki smiled as steadily and widely as they could as ORs warmly welcomed them to the event and ushered them into the church. The rally opened with speeches by OR leaders. There was some singing, and then it was time for a skit. Out onto the raised altar came a flamboyant OR member dressed in a slim-fitting red costume with pointy horns and a red staff. “He started saying that he liked killing babies,” Vanessa recalled. “He kind of swished around on the stage. He was this gay pro-abortion devil. It was clear he loved getting to act gay. Obviously, he was gay.”
Next, OR started to “rile up the troops about babies.” The group screened a slideshow of fake images of mutilated fetuses while the crowd whispered and moaned. Clearly OR was getting ready to announce the approximate location of the next day’s hit. That was Vanessa and her friends’ cue.
The three took turns leaving their pew, staggering their exits so as not to draw too much attention. Long heat vents ran all along the bases of the church’s two side walls. Toward the back, Vanessa pulled a vial out of her sweater pocket and deposited a few drops into the vent. “We had access to some chemicals,” she explained. “Nothing that would hurt anyone. It basically just created a powerful stink bomb.”
The stink bomb was fast acting. Soon everyone was screaming and rushing out the doors. Just as Vanessa crossed the door’s threshold to the outside, a beefy security guard grabbed the back of her cardigan. “Somehow I managed to wriggle out of that sweater and kept running,” she recalled.
Outside the church, BACAOR was holding a counter rally. Vanessa and Willow tried to take cover with friends, but perhaps their secretary garb gave them away, because three cops soon approached and cuffed them. (Suki had taken off on foot.) The cops had Vanessa and Willow stand in the glaring floodlights. ORs swarmed them, eager to identify the perpetrators. “Is this your sweater?” one cop asked Vanessa. “Nope,” she replied. “I’ve never seen that sweater before in my life.”
Even so, Vanessa and Willow were shipped off to Santa Rita Jail, where they would spend the next five days. “We were banned from the entire city of Fremont for two years,” Vanessa told me after finishing the story. “And every time I would go to a defense, ORs would recognize me.”
“What do you think about the action now?” I asked her. Planting a stink bomb at an OR church rally was, after all, one of the riskier offensive actions that BACAOR members took. Vanessa said, “The tactics that OR employed were dangerous to women: threats, screaming in women’s faces, sending in their thugs to beat up clinic defenders. … It took a real toll on a huge range of people—clients, clinic staff, activists, concerned people. I’d like to believe that some of the things we did to counteract those tactics helped convince OR that they had to change, that going to clinics and beating up on people was a bad idea. They had to be countered.” In Vanessa’s mind, she was giving OR a taste of its own terroristic campaign in the form of an inconvenience, or maybe a scare. Moreover, she pointed out, employing tactics that stood a chance of stopping OR from executing a hit was in alignment with BACAOR’s goals.
By that same fall, BACAOR had articulated its goals clearly in its printed materials: “We fight for abortion rights in the context [of] our demands for full reproductive freedom—to be educated about our reproductive options, to be free from forced or coerced sterilization or population control, and to be able to choose to have and to care for our children.” Its numbers had climbed to more than 2,000 people.
BACAOR was explicitly anti-fascist—certainly, it was a leading antifascist movement of its generation. Its philosophy was one of autonomous action: “We understand that we must rely on ourselves, not our elected officials, to defend and expand our freedoms.” In other words, as its members wrote, echoing the community self-defense philosophy of the Black Panther Party: “Our first line of defense is self-defense.”
Later in 1990, BACAOR began to see OR numbers abate in the Bay Area, so it started sharing strategies with clinic defense groups cropping up around the region and country. Some BACAOR members helped organize a national clinic defense conference in March 1990 in Detroit. BACAOR changed its name to the Bay Area Coalition for Our Reproductive Rights to reflect its broader reproductive rights agenda.
The fact that OR mass blockades were dwindling in the Bay Area, at least for the time being, was a win for clinic defenders. But instead of mobbing clinic doors, OR members and other anti-abortion extremists who did show up to harass people at clinics tended to be the “more fanatical bands, mostly of men, who picket[ed] with overt hostility and direct physical combativeness aimed at escorts.” Their enemy was evolving.
With spying charges behind him, NYPD officer now fighting to be reinstated
BOBBY CAINA CALVAN Tue, September 26, 2023 Baimadajie Angwang is interviewed at the Law Office of John F. Carman, Esq., Wednesday, Feb. 1, 2023, in Garden City, N.Y. Angwang, a suspended New York City police officer who had been accused -- then later cleared -- of spying for China is fighting to be reinstated, but the department wants him fired for refusing to be interrogated by the bureau of internal affairs exploring possible disciplinary action.
(AP Photo/John Minchillo, File)
NEW YORK (AP) — A suspended New York City police officer who had been accused -- then later cleared -- of spying for China is fighting to be reinstated, but the department wants him fired for refusing to be interrogated by the bureau of internal affairs exploring possible disciplinary action.
The fate of the officer, Baimadajie Angwang, now rests with an NYPD disciplinary judge who is considering arguments made before her Tuesday.
The police department argues Angwang should be fired for insubordination, saying he willfully disobeyed orders to submit himself to questioning in June. That came two months after Angwang filed a lawsuit against the city saying he was wrongfully arrested when he was taken into custody in September 2020 by authorities with guns drawn as he prepared to report for duty at his Queens precinct.
The U.S. Attorney's Office announced Jan. 19 that it was dropping all spying charges against the officer, saying prosecutors had uncovered new information warranting their dismissal. That ended a two-year ordeal for Angwang, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Tibet, who had been accused of spying on expatriate Tibetans in New York on behalf of officials at the Chinese consulate in the city.
Despite his long legal ordeal, Angwang said on the stand Tuesday that he still wants to rejoin the force.
“I still want to be a police officer. I still want to serve,” he said.
Angwang said he refused to appear at the June 5 questioning because he was advised that the order was unlawful because his new attorneys were denied additional time to confer with him and get up to speed with the case. Police also rejected requests for a witness list and other documents ahead of the hearing, which was to focus on any wrongdoing that warranted discipline because of his interaction with Chinese officials in New York.
The lawyer representing the police department, Penny Bluford-Garrett, argued that “taking orders” was part of the job, and that the department’s internal affairs bureau “can investigate you for anything.”
The U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn had initially claimed that Angwang began working as an agent for China in 2018 and was secretly supplying information on Tibetans pushing for their homeland’s independence from the communist government. It said he had worked to locate potential intelligence sources and identify potential threats to Chinese interests.
Tibet has been an especially sensitive issue for communist China.
There was no allegation that Angwang compromised national security or New York Police Department operations.
Angwang, 37, was assigned to an NYPD precinct in Queens as a community liaison.
“Does he deserve to lose his job? The answer to both questions is absolutely not,” said his lawyer, Michael Bloch.
Instead, he said, the department should say, “Thank you for your service, sir, and welcome back.”
Angwang’s lawyers, however, contend that the interrogation was a setup to entrap the officer, despite having his federal case dropped by the Justice Department earlier. An internal affairs lieutenant testified that he had prepared a list of 1,700 questions for Angwang.
Angwang was first notified on May 17 to appear five days later for questioning. But his attorney got a postponement until June 5, giving Anwang time to find new attorneys.
Police marksman who shot dead gangster faces sack despite being cleared
Martin Evans Wed, September 27, 2023 Jermaine Baker was shot dead in Wood Green, north London, but officer W80 was cleared of wrongdoing
A Metropolitan Police firearms officer who shot dead a gangster eight years ago faces being sacked despite being cleared of any criminal wrongdoing, The Telegraph can reveal.
The marksman, known as W80, shot dead 28-year-old Jermaine Baker in a police operation in December 2015 as Baker was preparing to spring two prisoners from Wood Green Crown Court, in north London.
He was not charged in connection with the death, but now the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) is set to announce that W80 will face a gross misconduct hearing that could result in him being sacked.
The announcement is likely to further inflame tensions within the Metropolitan Police’s firearms command, coming a week after another officer, known as NX121, was charged with murder for the shooting of Chris Kaba.
About 300 armed officers laid down their weapons at the weekend and Sir Mark Rowley, the Metropolitan Police commissioner, has admitted that London is currently less protected than normal.
At one stage the military was put on standby to cover for counter-terrorism officers who were refusing to carry guns and Suella Braverman, the Home Secretary, announced a review into armed policing.
The IOPC announcement relating to W80 could come as soon as Thursday, The Telegraph understands.
One source within armed policing said: “The timing of this announcement is unfortunate to say the least. There are thousands of firearms officers right across the country contemplating their future right now.
“Not only do they risk being charged with murder when things go wrong, but even if they are cleared by the courts they could still be sacked for gross misconduct.
“The system is unfair and it doesn’t make any sense. How can you be cleared of wrongdoing by one system but found guilty in another?
“Nobody is saying we shouldn’t be accountable for our actions, but there has to be some consistency so we know where we stand. If things don’t change then I’m afraid nobody is going to want to do the job and we are going to have a major crisis on our hands.” Supreme Court sides with police watchdog
While Baker was not holding a weapon when he was shot, an imitation Uzi submachine gun was recovered from the rear of his car. W80 later said he believed Baker had been reaching for a firearm when he opened fire.
A public inquiry later concluded that Baker had been lawfully killed, despite identifying a string of police mistakes in the planning of the operation.
Within days of the incident, the officer was arrested and investigated by the IOPC on suspicion of murder.
Under criminal law, police officers can claim self-defence if they can show they had an honestly held belief – even if that was mistaken – that their life was in danger.
In June 2017, the Crown Prosecution Service announced that there was not a realistic prospect of conviction and the officer would not face criminal charges.
But the IOPC recommended that W80 face a gross misconduct hearing because disciplinary offences are based on the civil test that states an honest but mistaken belief must also be “reasonable”.
The Metropolitan Police disagreed with the decision and took the case to the Supreme Court to try to have it overturned.
It argued that the criminal threshold ought to be applied in both cases. However, in July the Supreme Court rejected the appeal and sided with the IOPC.
Following the walkout by firearms officers at the weekend, Mrs Braverman announced a review into armed policing.
Sir Mark also published an open letter calling for the subjective criminal law test for self-defence to be applied in misconduct cases. He said: “One simple test will avoid delay, simplify the process and provide better protection for the public.”
The fact that the W80 case has still not been concluded almost eight years on from the incident has also caused grave concern, with Sir Mark appealing for the legal and disciplinary processes to be speeded up to provide more confidence for all concerned.
In his open letter, he wrote: “In the small proportion of cases where officers have acted improperly, the system needs to move swiftly and assertively to deal with them, rather than tying itself in knots pursuing good officers through multiple legal processes over many years. This saps the confidence of all officers to act against criminals.”
The officer known as NX121 is expected to stand trial next year and a hearing to determine whether he can be identified will take place at the Old Bailey next week.
In India-Canada row, a tug toward faith
Christian Science Monitor's Editorial Board Wed, September 27, 2023
A bit of shocking news last week forced much of the world to study up on a long-simmering rift in India. Canada accused the Indian government of killing a Canadian citizen near Vancouver who was a prominent activist for an independent Sikh state in his native homeland. While much of the focus has been on Sikh separatists and the diplomatic fallout for India, another spotlight turned on Punjab, the Indian state where Sikhs are in the majority.
There the separatist sentiments that fueled a decade of violence between Sikhs and the state half a century ago have significantly diminished. Instead, many of today’s Sikhs are bridging divides, joining hands with Hindus to restore historic Muslim mosques in Punjabi villages. Some of the funding comes from Sikhs living abroad. Sikh and Hindu families have donated land where new mosques now stand.
These projects – more than 165 so far, according to one Islamic association’s count – demonstrate that religions can lay a foundation for unity by practicing their shared tenets, such as meekness and sincerity. “This kind of brotherhood should prevail across India,” Mohammad Mursalin, a resident of the Punjabi village of Kutba Bamaniya, told Religion Unplugged. “Love must be nurtured, and animosity must dissolve. ... All religions emphasize love; none advocate hate.”
The mosque-building marks a healing counterpoint to the lingering tense relations between Sikhs and India’s nationalist Hindu government. Many Sikhs living abroad still worry they are being surveilled by Indian intelligence services, yet even “hard-core faith groups” in the Sikh diaspora have become apolitical, says Gurharpal Singh, an emeritus professor at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies. The reason for that shift is significant. “They’ve become much more spiritually oriented,” he told The New Yorker last week.
That coincides with a prevailing sense of spiritual accommodation at home. A comprehensive Pew Research poll on religious tolerance in India in 2021 found that 95% of Sikhs feel very proud to be Indian. Some 70% of Sikhs said a person who disrespects India cannot be a Sikh, while 82% of Sikhs said they feel very free to practice their religion.
As new mosques rise, the community affections they represent may be aiding calls for a formal process of reconciliation to address the violence against Sikhs during the 1980s, especially now amid rising Hindu nationalism under Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Erasing communal divisions, wrote Dharamvira Gandhi, a Hindu former member of Parliament from Punjab, in a newspaper opinion piece, requires repentance, forgiveness, “large-heartedness and broad-mindedness.” Those qualities are consistent with Sikhism’s core tenets of equality, humility, and love-inspired service to others.
It isn’t just mosques. The unity felt in many Punjabi communities has led to shared religious festivals and joint restoration projects of historically significant Hindu and Sikh temples. Such actions are solvents for the fears and suspicions that now have set two democracies at odds with each other.
‘Whether it costs our lives or not’: killing of Canadian Sikh leader reignites historic fight
Leyland Cecco in Toronto and Sarah Berman in Vancouver
THE GUARDIAN Wed, September 27, 2023 at 4:30 AM MDT·6 min read 118
Photograph: Jennifer Gauthier/Reuters
Yellow and blue smoke filled the air as protesters in Vancouver tried setting fire to a damp Indian flag. As the flame eventually took hold, people in the crowd waved Sikh separatist flags and chanted calls for the expulsion of India’s top diplomat in Canada.
Amid the pounding of drums and shouts from protesters, the activist Harkeerat Kaur told the crowd that Nijjar’s final words to temple worshippers had been a plea to participate in an upcoming vote calling for an independent Sikh homeland, Khalistan: “[He] stated … we should vow to participate in the peaceful Khalistan referendum. We believe in the ballot.”
Since his death in June, Nijjar has been praised by his community as a martyr – and labelled a terrorist by India. The feuding over his legacy, and mounting concern over what Canada’s government claims was an extrajudicial murder on its soil, has refocused attention on Canada’s Sikh diaspora, their longstanding grievances with India – and the Sikh separatist cause.
Canada is home to the largest Sikh community outside India. Despite a long and layered history in the country, many Canadian Sikhs identify with a sense of historical mistreatment at the hands of both British colonial and post-independence governments in India, said Satwinder Bains, the director of South Asian studies at the University of the Fraser Valley. “They’ve felt those frustrations have never been resolved through the justice system, nor through a parliamentary system. They feel like they’ve tried everything,” she said.
Over generations, some have cultivated hope that Sikhs might one day claim a portion of the Punjab region as their own.
That dream has a long – and violent – history. Beginning around partition in the 1940s, the movement transformed into an armed insurgency in the 1980s, under the leadership of Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale. The Indian flag is torn during a protest outside India’s consulate in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada on 25 September 2023. Photograph: Jennifer Gauthier/Reuters
In 1984, the Sikh leader, who stood accused of orchestrating a series of attacks on Hindus in Punjab, sought refuge in Amritsar’s Golden Temple alongside other militants.
The Indian army ordered Operation Blue Star, an attack that led to the killing of 400 Sikhs in the temple, many of whom were pilgrims. In retaliation, the bodyguards for Indira Gandhi, the prime minister, shot her dead, triggering anti-Sikh pogroms that killed more than 3,000 people, with little consequence for the attackers.
“It was a horrific time. And in those moments, the idea of Khalistan, of a safe haven for Sikhs, really meant something,” said Neilesh Bose, an associate professor of history at the University of Victoria.
In 1985, Khalistani militants in Canada targeted two Air India flights, widely seen as revenge for Operation Blue Star. A bomb on Air India flight 182 exploded off the coast of Ireland, killing all 329 people onboard, including 268 Canadian citizens, 27 British citizens and 24 Indian citizens in the worst act of aviation terrorism before the September 11 attacks. The second bomb exploded in the Tokyo airport, killing two baggage handlers. The attacks led to discrimination against Sikh men, identifiable by their turbans, even though many had little interest in the Khalistan cause.
“Punjabi Sikhs in Canada were often seen as enemies of the state, targeted by police and seen as responsible for this attack,” said Bose, adding that both the bombings and public backlash changed how the Sikh diaspora saw itself in the broader Canadian public. “These events – 1984, the Air India bombing – they’re inescapable for so many in the Sikh community. Everybody lives in this context of these moments, and these inescapable legacies.”
The Khalistan movement is banned in India, but in Canada generations of Sikh activists have freely advocated for an independent homeland. While political leaders have emphasised the right to free speech and expression in Canada, they have also long courted the Sikh community as a powerful voting bloc.
That has prompted frustration in India, which has accused Canada of turning a blind eye to extremist Khalistani activity and refusing to act on information about potential threats. Before the Air India bombing, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) failed to act on intel from India about plots against airliners, and successive Canadian governments have refused extradition requests of Sikh activists from India.
Indian authorities allege Nijjar was among the Khalistani activists involved in terrorist activity on Canadian soil. They have accused him of organising an arms training camp for Sikh extremists in British Columbia in 2016, being involved in a plot to assassinate a Hindu priest and police officers in Punjab and heading a banned militant organisation, the Khalistani Tiger Force. The allegations, which he denied, were not investigated by the Canadian authorities and remain unproven.
It remains unclear how popular the Khalistan cause is within Canada’s Sikh population. For some, the movement is forever tainted by violence and the painful legacy of the Air India bombing. For others, it represents a powerful way to counter India’s Hindu nationalist government and the growing persecution of religious minorities.
Already this year, thousands in Ontario and British Columbia have cast ballots in a Khalistan referendum, a global diaspora effort as Sikh activists attempt to unify the disparate groups and co-ordinate pressure on the Indian government.
Demonstrators rally in support of Khalistan outside the Indian consulate in Toronto on 25 September 2023. Photograph: Cole Burston/AFP/Getty Images
The ballots come as a younger generation has grown more emboldened and provocative. In June, a Sikh group in the city of Brampton prompted outrage with a parade float depicting the assassination of Indira Gandhi, which included a blood-splattered effigy of the murdered leader.
On posters for the referendum championed by leadership at the Guru Nanak gurdwara where Nijjar was shot dead, his image appears alongside a photo of the architect of the Air India bombing.
Such incidents have infuriated India. But the brazen murder of Nijjar – which reportedly involved at least six men who fired around 50 bullets – is only likely to sow further mistrust and resentment among a new generation of Sikhs.
“These are Canadian-born children. They may never have set foot in Punjab,” said Bains. “But through their parents’ or grandparents’ eyes, they have seen the pain, the anger and hurt. And those feelings have been exacerbated over the years because there has been no justice and no closure.”
Indervir Singh, 36, who attended Monday’s rally, said that Nijjar’s death in June and Trudeau’s subsequent allegations are only a reminder of the escalating human rights abuses in India.
“I’m born here. Ever since I was a kid you heard about the atrocity in 1984 when the government killed thousands of innocent people,” Singh said. “We’ve always been rallying against that, fighting against that, and trying to get justice for that.”
Singh said he joined protests in support of Sikh farmers in 2021, but had largely been ambivalent about the pro-separatist movement. “Personally I didn’t really think about it, nor was I supporting it,” he said. “But now that this happened, I think from a sovereignty perspective we’re demanding that.”
While he doubts independence could ever be achieved in India, he said: “As Sikhs we’re known to fight against injustice – whether it costs our lives or not.” View comments (118)
US senator wants JetBlue CEO to answer if Spirit deal will hike air fares
Updated Wed, September 27, 2023
By David Shepardson
(Reuters) -U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren has asked JetBlue CEO Robin Hayes to answer if the low-cost airline privately forecast its planned $3.8 billion merger with Spirit Airlines will dramatically hike air fares, according to a letter seen by Reuters.
Warren, a Democrat, cited reports that court documents suggested internally JetBlue had estimated fares on Spirit planes "could go up by as much as 40%," following the merger. Warren said in the previously unreported letter that if accurate the documents "reveal that you have misled the public about the impacts of your merger – and they reveal that the merger will result in higher costs and reduced service for airline passengers."
The documents were filed by lawyers suing to block the merger on behalf of private travelers. The information Warren cited had been redacted, but remained visible on the documents.
JetBlue said the reported claims do "not reflect facts set out in JetBlue documents." The carrier said the 40% figure was plaintiffs' "spin on confidential evidence" and that "the factual evidence ... will demonstrate that JetBlue intends for the merger with Spirit to increase competition and help lower fares across the board."
Warren also asked if JetBlue documents show "Spirit’s exit from a route results in market-wide price increases of all other airlines serving that route by 30%." She also sent a copy of the letter to Spirit CEO Ted Christie.
A judge has set an Oct. 16 non-jury four-week trial in a U.S. Justice Department lawsuit seeking to halt the JetBlue acquisition. The Justice Department challenged the deal, saying it would eliminate competition, lead to higher ticket prices, reduce passenger capacity and shrink consumer choices.Hayes told Reuters in March that JetBlue will still serve Spirit customers buying very low-cost tickets and rejected the idea fares will go up.
"I fully recognize that very price-conscious customer and it's very important that the larger JetBlue continues to cater and provide a service to that customer and we absolutely will," Hayes told Reuters.
(Reporting by David ShepardsonEditing by Chris Reese and David Gregorio)
