Biden Campaign Concerned After Candidate Gives Unsolicited Back Rub To Coat Rack

https://politics.theonion.com/biden-campaign-concerned-after-candidate-gives-unsolici-1837895384?utm

Americans Are Starting to Love Unions Again

MEAGAN DAY

Labor union approval is now higher than at nearly any point in the last 50 years. The reasons: shit pay, teacher strikes, and Bernie Sanders.

https://jacobinmag.com/2019/09/unions-us-labor-movement-americans-gallup-poll-bernie-sanders

This Labor Day, we have cause to celebrate. Public support for unions has reached 64 percent in a recent Gallup poll.

Gallup has been asking the public about support for unions since 1936. Since 1967, the polling agency observes, the union approval rating “has only occasionally surpassed 60 percent. The current 64 percent reading is one of the highest union approval ratings Gallup has recorded over the past fifty years.”

To make sense of this trend, we need to take three factors into account: wage stagnation and benefits erosion, the teachers’ strike wave, and the rise of Bernie Sanders.

The first factor — substandard wages and benefits — only makes sense when you consider it alongside the other two. Wages are increasingly insufficient to cover skyrocketing living costs, and employers continue to slash benefits to increase profits, making life harder for working people. This is an obvious source of frustration with the status quo, a basic factor that causes working people to turn to collective action in the form of unions.

But worsening conditions don’t automatically juice unions’ approval rating, and they certainly don’t lead directly to increased union membership. On the contrary, wages have been stagnating since the seventies, and since then the union approval rating and union density itself have gone down, not up. Neoliberalism has been ascendant since the mid-seventies, and in that time its footsoldiers have been able to both wring more productivity and profit out of workers without sharing and also convince many workers that it’s the unions who are greedy.

So eroded conditions alone are not responsible for the uptick in the union approval rating. People don’t automatically warm to unions just because their employers are treating them poorly. They have to be presented with a credible alternative.

Enter the teachers’ strike wave, which started in 2018. The strikes in West Virginia, Oklahoma, Arizona, California, Washington, and several other states put unions in the news, making them visible and relevant to large segments of the population for the first time in decades. And importantly, by “bargaining for the common good” — or connecting their demands to the wellbeing of communities as a whole — the strikes were successful at impressing on people that what’s good for unions and workers is also good for students, parents, and the entire public.

But there’s still a missing piece of the puzzle. When the Chicago teachers went on strike in 2012, for example, the mainstream media gave them a chilly reception. This owes to the tenor of the broader conversation about public schools and unions, shaped by privatizers and union-busters in the education reform movement. For example, in 2008 Time Magazine published an issue with a photo of union-buster Michelle Rhee on the cover, hyping her heroic “battle against bad teachers.” And in 2014 the cover of Time read, “Rotten Apples: It’s nearly impossible to fire a bad teacher. Some tech millionaires have found a way to change that.” The story talked about the “war on teacher tenure” like that was a good thing.

Since then, public opinion about teachers and their unions has done an about-face. When teachers began striking en masse in 2018, they received largely sympathetic media coverage and overwhelming public support. At the height of the teachers’ strike wave, Time’s cover sported a portrait of a teacher overlayed with the words, “I have a master’s degree, 16 years of experience, work two extra jobs, and donate plasma to pay the bills. I’m a teacher in America.” That was one of three special covers for that issue, each sympathetically profiling a particular public school teacher. The feature inside was titled, “13 Stories of Life on a Teacher’s Salary.”

Suddenly, it seemed, teachers and teachers’ unions were no longer considered the problem with public education. In fact, empowering them could be the solution.

What changed between 2014 and 2018? We’d be remiss if we ignored the fact that right in the middle of that period, the most pro-union presidential candidate in Democratic Party history ran for president. Bernie Sanders used the massive platform the race guaranteed him to criticize inequality and extol the virtues of unions and collective worker action. Even after he lost the primary, he spent the next several years spreading the same pro-worker, pro-union message, including elevating unions’ demands and materially assisting them in their fights against the boss.

Sanders has pulled American politics to the Left and created a much more pro-worker political climate on the whole. It was in this new climate that the teachers began to strike — as Eric Blanc points out in his book Red State Revolt, teachers in West Virginia and across the country were emboldened to take action by the unexpected success of Sanders’ message. And it was in this new climate that their strikes were greeted favorably by both the press and the public.

There are no guarantees that this spike in the union approval rating is permanent. But in anatomizing the bump, we can see what kind of work needs to be done to turn the trend into something more lasting.

Unions should continue to make themselves visible to the broader public through strikes and seek to foreground class-wide demands that benefit entire communities. Socialists should continue to use electoral politics to agitate against corporations and on behalf of workers and unions, on as big a stage as possible. If enough effort is put into these projects, it’s conceivable that this spike will only mark the beginning of a labor movement resurgence, creating a populace vastly more friendly to unions — and ultimately more likely to join them.

An Inspiring Climate Victory in Kenya

Ahead of global climate talks, activists in Kenya successfully blocked a Chinese-backed coal plant at a world heritage site.

By Anita Plummer, September 4, 2019

https://fpif.org/an-inspiring-climate-victory-in-kenya/

As the UN Climate Action Summit approaches on September 23, the official UN site lays out individual actions that people can take to reduce their carbon footprint. But around the world activists are acting collectively as well, with a coordinated global climate strike. 

Local collective actions also can inspire hope, as demonstrated by Kenyan activists, who just won a key victory in a years-long campaign against a proposed coal plant on the Kenyan coast. 

This summer, Kenya’s National Environment Tribunal issued a landmark ruling that halted the Amu Power Company’s plans to construct a 1050 MW coal plant in Lamu, a World Heritage Site on Kenya’s coast. This victory against the $2 billion project followed years of organizing by local and national environmental groups. It has been hailed by climate activists worldwide for advancing the global campaign to combat fossil fuels. 

I interviewed Kenyan activists in June as part of an investigation of China-Kenya relations that began with my dissertation research a decade ago. 

Even as China and the United States move away from coal as a dying technology, both continue to promote coal power in developing countries. They often find allies in local elites who are eager to act as partners, despite opposition from public opinion and from energy development experts. 

The option for coal in Kenya is particularly questionable, since the country has been a pioneer in the use of renewable energy, including hydropower, geothermal, wind power, and off-grid solar.

Kenya’s Vision 2030, an economic development blueprint, served as the impetus for the Lamu coal plant. The plant was to be part of an infrastructure project called LAPSSET (Lamu Port-South Sudan-Ethiopia Transport), which links three countries. Lamu is already to host an oil refinery, two oil pipelines, and a 32-berth port, on which construction has already begun.

The project is being developed by Amu Power Company, owned by Kenyan private investors. Foreign involvement includes Chinese banks and construction firms, while GE has a contract for so-called “clean-coal” technology. I found strong suspicion among Kenyans that the project is a vehicle for payoffs to special interests. Many believe that government officials stand to benefit at the expense of taxpayers, particularly given 25-year guarantees for purchase of energy by the state-owned power company even if the electricity is not needed.

The LAPSSET plan assumes the long-term viability of fossil fuel industries. But Kenya has been a leader in renewable energy, with geothermal and hydropower now the principal sources of electricity. 

The country has the largest wind farm in Africa, and Kenya’s innovative M-Kopa system has brought home solar power to 750,000 households in East Africa. Renewable sources provide 72 percent of the energy consumed in Kenya, compared to only 10 percent in the United States and 13 percent in China. Kenyan and international experts agree that the energy consumption projections on which the government based its plans were overestimated, and that future needs could easily be met without coal. 

Fortunately, Kenya has progressive environmental laws, a strong judiciary when it comes to environmental issues, and active oversight by the National Environment Tribunal and National Environmental Management Authority. The country also has a history of environmental activism. Local activists in Lamu began to mobilize soon after the government announced its plans for the coal plant, laying the groundwork for the current victory.

Lamu residents were initially open to the prospects of job creation, but local residents told me that they did not know one person from Lamu who had gained employment at the LAPSSET project site. When community members realized that they were not being consulted and that their land was being appropriated, they formed Save Lamu. In 2010, Save Lamu joined with Natural Justice, a South Africa–based organization with offices in Nairobi, to initiate consultations in 34 villages and with 40 organizations in Lamu County. This led to the Lamu County Bio-cultural community protocol, an alternative development vision for their community.

In late 2016, a coalition of organizations including Save Lamu, Natural Justice, 350.org, and Greenpeace Africa formed deCOALonize Kenya to challenge development of the coal plant and promote 100 percent renewable energy in Kenya. The group has used social and earned media, direct action, and letter writing to highlight the negative impacts of coal and organize key Kenyan constituencies to challenge regressive energy policies.

Activists, especially women, have also been mobilizing in Mui Basin, designated as the site for new coal mining, although initial supplies would be imported from South Africa. At a community meeting there, a group of 100 residents, mostly farmers, were asked, “What is development to you?” In response, participants stressed the close connections between the environment and sustainable livelihood as well as ancestral and spiritual connections to land.

One woman declared, “The government should help our community add value to the farming that already exists. We want to grow watermelons, not have coal mines.” A Lamu activist reported on a trip to coal mining areas in South Africa, where air pollution has led to severe illness among miners and their families. In the Mui Basin meeting, I sensed that even though people were primarily concerned with immediate threats to their health and livelihoods, their horizons had expanded beyond the local.

The judgment handed down by the National Environmental Tribunal sent a signal to the Kenyan government and to external actors, such as China, that there is power in coordinated and sustained community organizing. Afterward, the Chinese ambassador met with environmental activists and said that China would defer to Kenyan decisions. The U.S. ambassador, however — a Trump appointee — tweeted the day before the ruling that coal was “the cleanest, least costly option.” 

Vested interests in Kenya, China, and the United States will likely try to revive the project. But activists plan to keep the momentum going by continuing to engage the Kenyan public, pressure elected officials, build international support, and raise legal challenges. They will be able to build on their victory, which is significant not only for Kenya but for Africa and beyond.

Burning Down the House

Far-right governments in the U.S., UK, and Brazil are laying bare their nihilistic roots and full destructive potential.

By John Feffer, September 4, 2019

https://fpif.org/burning-down-the-house/

Doesn’t idiocy ever take a vacation?

As August wound down, the populist troika of Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, and Jair Bolsonaro proved once again that the United States, the United Kingdom, and Brazil would be better off with no leaders rather than the dubious characters that currently pretend to govern these countries.

In all three cases, these leaders escalated their nationally destructive policies this summer in ways that have alienated even their erstwhile supporters. Once again, they have demonstrated that they have no interest in making America, Great Britain, or Brazil great again. They are only interested in doing as much damage as they can before they are ultimately dragged out of office.  

Johnson Tries a Coup

Boris Johnson is a bumbling blowhard with but one current obsession: Brexit. He has promised to sever the UK’s relationship with the European Union by October 31 even if it means doing so without a deal that would mitigate the pain of separation. 

The Halloween deadline is grimly appropriate. A No-Deal Brexit would make for a blood-curdling horror film. Just slap a Ghostface mask on the British prime minister, give him a knife to cut the umbilicus with Europe, and voila: Scream 5.

Johnson’s latest tactic to get what he wants is to suspend Parliament for five weeks this fall to limit debate on alternatives to his doomsday option. He hopes to make it impossible for parliament to pass even emergency legislation banning a no-deal Brexit. Believe it or not, the British system allows for such maneuvers – so Queen Elizabeth had to give her blessing to the suspension. 

When Trump engages in anti-democratic activities, the Republican Party by and large indulges him. Not so in the UK, where even conservatives are up in arms over Johnson’s silent coup. After the prime minister’s announcement of the suspension, the government’s whip in the House of Lords resigned, as did the head of the Scottish Conservative Party. Former Conservative Prime Minister John Major, meanwhile, has pilloried Johnson and joined a legal challenge to the suspension.

This week, Johnson lost his one-vote majority in parliament when Conservative member Philip Lee defected to the Liberal Democrats even as the prime minister was addressing the chamber. 

Most parliamentary members, including quite a few Conservatives, oppose a no-deal exit. No matter: Johnson is following Trump’s script by remaking the Conservative Party in his own image, threatening to purge anyone who doesn’t follow his hard line. After losing a vote that will allow parliament to introduce legislation to delay Brexit, Johnson expelled 21 dissidents, including a number of former ministers and one grandson of Winston Churchill. 

Now Johnson is talking about holding a snap election in mid-October. The Conservatives are comfortably outpolling Labor, the Liberal Democrats, and the Greens. However, if all the Remain forces unite against Johnson, they could eke out a victory. But Johnson could also promise an election for October 14 and then, surprise, postpone it until after Halloween, making Brexit a fait accompli. 

Johnson once said, “Brexit means Brexit and we are going to make a titanic success of it.” Determined to do the wrong thing even though he knows it’s wrong, Johnson is steering the United Kingdom straight into an iceberg. Nigel Farage is his chief navigator, and the rest of the country is clustered on the bow, bracing for impact. 

With a second referendum, wiser heads could wrest control of the helm and prevent disaster, but Johnson is doing everything he can to fast-track Brexit on the principle that it doesn’t matter where you’re going as long as you get there fast. 

Bolsonaro Fans the Flames

Idiocy loves company.

Jair Bolsonaro styles himself the Trump of the tropics. The comparison is apt. Some future poet, in describing the inferno of the present, will stuff Trump, Bolsonaro, and Johnson feet first into the mouth of Satan in the ninth circle. Having stoked the fires of climate change, Bolsonaro will richly deserve such an afterlife.

As The Economist points out, Bolsonaro as a candidate…

promised to end fines for violations of environmental law, shrink the protected areas that account for half of the Brazilian Amazon and fight NGOs, for which he has a visceral hatred. In office, his government has gutted the environment ministry and Ibama, the quasi-autonomous environmental agency. Six of the ten senior posts in the ministry’s department of forests and sustainable development are vacant, according to its website. The government talks of “monetizing” the Amazon but sabotaged a $1.3bn European fund that aims to give value to the standing forest.

As a result of Bolsonaro’s hands-off policy, deforestation in the Amazon has been out of control this year. Emboldened by their president’s actions, Brazilian farmers organized a “fire day” to clear land for planting. “We need to show the president that we want to work and the only way is to knock (the forest) down. And to form and clean our pastures, it is with fire,” said one of the organizers of the Fire Day. The number of fires in the Amazon nearly doubled this year over the same period last year. 

It’s not as if the world wasn’t warned. Time magazine put the burning Amazon on its cover exactly 30 years ago! 

The impact this time around is straight-forward. The Amazon is a huge carbon sink. Burn it up and global warming will accelerate. There will also be irreversible loss of biodiversity. And the upside? More soybeans, which Brazil can sell to China because the latter is no longer buying the harvests of U.S. farmers. 

Oh, and more profits into the pockets of Bolsonaro’s friends in the industries that are paving the paradise of the Amazon and putting up a parking lot.

Trump Trashes the Planet

Donald Trump is a moth that can’t stop itself from flying directly at the flame of fame (or, more accurately, the inferno of infamy). He could stay off Twitter, but instead his tweets piss off one group of voters after another. He could stay away from the press, but his lies, gaffes, and personal attacks are amplified throughout the media universe. Arguably, this is a strategy to solidify the base and reinforce Trump’s reputation as an anti-establishment gadfly.

But there’s no political strategy behind his trade war with China and his impulsive threats last month to further escalate tariffs on Chinese goods. The sectoral damage to his base worries his political advisors: say goodbye to the farm vote, a good chunk of blue-collar voters thrown out of work, and a bunch of average consumers angry at shelling out more money for their holiday gifts. 

Worse would be a more general economic recession brought on by this needless trade war, which would doom the president’s reelection chances. Yes, the U.S. economy is due for a “correction,” particularly because of Trump’s tax cuts and over-the-top spending. But if Trump played it safe, he could have probably postponed the recession until after the 2020 election. Instead, he’s doing everything he can to ensure that it makes landfall smack dab during the presidential race.

Trump isn’t just self-destructive. He continued over the last couple weeks to destroy U.S. alliances, most recently by expressing interest in buying Greenland from Denmark. The land wasn’t on the market, as the Danish government reminded the president, which prompted Trump to cancel his trip to the country. 

Greenland? Really?! Perhaps Trump was making an indirect acknowledgement of the effects of climate change, attempting a land grab up north to secure a spot for Ivanka and Jared’s summer palace.

Meanwhile, Trump is powering full speed ahead toward climate apocalypse. The administration’s latest move is to remove restrictions on methane emissions, a more potent contributor to global warming than carbon dioxide. The effort is designed to reduce costs for oil and gas companies. But guess what? Even some of the top energy companies are opposed to Trump’s move.

“Last year we announced our support for the direct regulation of methane emissions for new and existing oil and gas facilities,” Exxon Mobil spokesperson Scott Silvestri said. “That hasn’t changed. We will continue to urge the EPA to retain the main features of the existing methane rule.” After all, Exxon, BP, and others are trying to position natural gas as part of the solution to climate change, and the Trump administration is busy undermining this argument.

The methane restrictions that Trump is trying to unravel date back to the Obama administration. But the current administration wants to tear up much older agreements as well. The Clinton administration protected Alaska’s Tongass National Forest from logging and mining. But Trump wants to open up this 16.7 million-acre sanctuary to the usual suspects in the extractive industries. This is no small land parcel. It represents half the world’s temperate rainforest.  

Bolsonaro, at least, is only interested in trashing a rainforest (albeit a large one). Boris Johnson is content to trash a country (albeit a rich one). Donald Trump, with that ego of his, aspires to trash an entire planet. Yes, all three will eventually flame out. But not before they’ve scorched the earth clean.

An environmentalist told journalist Alan Weisman before the 2016 elections that she was considering voting for Trump. “The way I see it,” she said, “it’s either four more years on life support with Hillary, or letting this maniac tear the house down. Maybe then we can pick up the pieces and finally start rebuilding.”

The philosophy of “things have to get worse before they get better” has sometimes worked out in the past. But that’s the past. 

Unless we stop him, we’ll be rooting around in the post-Trump ashes in vain for the pieces. The house will be gone. And there will be nothing we can salvage to rebuild it.

This Time, the World Is Watching in Kashmir

By taking over Kashmir at gunpoint, India has set itself up to reap the whirlwind.

By Shubh Mathur, August 22, 2019

https://fpif.org/this-time-the-world-is-watching-in-kashmir/

“The hasty stroke goes oft astray.” This piece of remembered wisdom from The Lord of the Rings seems to be an apt description of the Indian military siege of Kashmir. 

On August 5th, at midnight local time, the disputed territory was abruptly cut off from all communication, both with the outside world and within Kashmir, as India snapped internet and phone connections and shut down all Kashmiri television channels. A strict curfew was imposed across Kashmir, a region roughly comparable to the state of Virginia in extent and population (8 million). 

During the previous week, an additional 50,000 Indian troops had been moved into Kashmir, to join the roughly 750,000 already deployed there. And on August 6, the Indian home minister announced that India was revoking Articles 370 and 35A of the Indian Constitution, which gave Kashmir some limited autonomy and restricted outsiders from buying land in the state.

Under the new dispensation, Kashmir is to be ruled directly from Delhi as a Union Territory. The last time Kashmir was ruled directly from Delhi, from 1990 to 1996, it witnessed human rights violations on a massive scale, with extrajudicial killings, torture, rape, disappearances, firing on unarmed demonstrators, burning of homes, crops, and standing harvests, and a complete clampdown on all political activity. The warning signs that this will be repeated are already loud and clear. 

The entire operation has been overseen by Home Minister Amit Shah, from the hard-right Hindu nationalist BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party), infamous for his orchestration of the massacre of 3,000 Muslims in the state of Gujarat in 2002. Though very little news escapes the military cordon India has thrown around Kashmir, there are reports of mass arrests, including of young children, a near-total clampdown on freedom of movement within Kashmir, and Indian military forces opening fire on protesters with live ammunition, tear gas, and pellet guns. Pellet guns are an Indian invention designed especially for “non-lethal crowd control” and used only in Kashmir. They bullets explode like shrapnel on impact and have been responsible for blinding hundreds of Kashmiris since 2016.

The narrative has shifted 

The long and dismal record of Indian human rights abuses in Kashmir had, until now, been routinely ignored by the outside world. But now, the narrative has changed. 

Media outlets across North America, Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and Latin America either report from the ground or pick up news as it appears in independent Indian outlets. They show images of desolate streets ringed with gleaming new concertina barbed wire and bristling with checkpoints, children injured and blinded by Indian troops firing pellet guns and even using catapults, and doctors and patients trying to reach hospitals turned away by soldiers at checkpoints. An independent Indian news outlet interviewed a young woman who was forced by Indian soldiers, in behavior worthy of Tolkien’s orcs, to walk 6 kilometers while in labor, to reach a hospital where she could deliver her baby. There seems to be no limit to the cruelty with which Indian troops treat Kashmiri civilians. 

Perhaps because this is unfolding in a world that is grown weary of war and hatred, these stories and images are striking home. There has been a trickle of news of Hindu nationalist violence against minorities and Dalits in India that western media is no longer able to ignore. Perhaps the true colors of the Hindu nationalist government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi (who was rehabilitated by the Obama White House after Condoleezza Rica had denied him entry into the U.S. for his part in the Gujarat pogroms of 2002), are now being recognized. 

Perhaps the lynchings, the signs of a sinking Indian economy, and the war mongering emanating from the Indian leadership — whose popular support was reaffirmed in a massive electoral mandate earlier this year — are making investors queasy. 

And perhaps most significantly, as the U.S. prepares to pull itself out of the Afghan quagmire, it will need the help and support of Pakistan’s new government. 

This combination of factors has enabled the western and U.S. media to get in touch with their conscience. Insightful reporting and editorials are making front page headlines — and even Human Rights Watch has broken years of silence on the issue to warn India, quite rightly, to “step back” in Kashmir. Maybe Churchill was right after all, when he said you can trust the Americans to do the right thing, after they’ve tried everything else. 

To be sure, this shift has been some time in the making. 

In 2017, the Rafto Foundation of Norway awarded its prestigious annual prize to two Kashmiri human rights defenders, Parveena Ahangar of the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons APDP and Parvez Imroze of the Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society JKCCS. In 2018, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) issued its first ever report on Kashmir, and a follow up report in June 2019. Reports from JKCCS on torture and Amnesty International on arbitrary detentions (aka arrests without charges) added to the growing evidence of massive human rights abuses by India, putting these squarely in the international gaze. The Turkish news site TRT World picked up the story with sustained reporting.

The other side of the western media coverage on the current crisis has been the near-total blockade on all Kashmiri media, and reports of Kashmiri journalists being attacked by Indian troops. While some independent Indian media sources have been reporting on the situation in a courageous and principled way, the majority of Indian media, traveling freely around Kashmir in army vehicles and helicopters, repeat the Indian government’s lies about peace, “normalcy,” and a glorious future of corporate investment for Kashmir. 

Kashmiri journalist Gowhar Geelani, who was able to access an internet connection after nearly two weeks, sent out this message on Twitter: “Kashmir will remember the Instruments of Tyranny. Especially those who raised a toast to celebrate, to mock at Kashmir’s collective misery, helplessness, unprecedented information blockade, crackdown, and mass arrests. History shall never forget their Goebbelsian propaganda!”

Despite the continuing communications blockade, videos are starting to trickle out. 

Which way to the future?

It was probably the impending U.S. departure from Afghanistan, and the increasing role that China plays in the region through the CPEC (China-Pakistan Economic Corridor), that explains the timing of India’s rushed move to annex Kashmir. 

The idea may have been to ratchet up tensions in the region to prevent the U.S. withdrawal. But all is not going according to plan. There have been popular protests around the world, with global peace activists supporting the Kashmiri right to self-determination. Along with the media, this represents a significant shift in the global narrative on Kashmir.

As was reportedly affirmed at a closed door UN Security Council meeting on August 16, the UN continues to recognize Kashmir as a disputed territory and the unilateral Indian annexation does not change that status. According to Indian reporters with inside sources, Russia surprisingly joined China in calling for an open UNSC meeting, which can have more lasting consequences. This means that a major pillar of the Indian position on Kashmir, that it is an internal matter for India to handle as it sees fit, has been blown to smithereens. And a major foreign policy objective for Pakistan, to internationalize the Kashmir dispute, has been achieved.

No formal statement on the meeting has been issued by the UNSC, and naturally both India and Pakistan are spinning it as a diplomatic victory for their side. What is certain Kashmir is back on the agenda at the UNSC after a gap of 48 years. The threat of nuclear war with catastrophic global consequences may have the effect of focusing the efforts of that august and secretive body on finding a just and peaceful solution. 

What would such a solution look like?

The Kashmir Scholars Network, a group of which I am a member, has developed a set of recommendations for action towards a peaceful and just resolution of the conflict in accordance with the wishes of the Kashmiri people. It is based on our collective knowledge of the Kashmir conflict and our connections to multiple actors, including human rights activists, civil society groups, lawyers, journalists, writers, artists, and academics in Kashmir. 

“We recommend that United Nations bodies work urgently towards the following goals:

1) Immediate cessation of Indian violence against Kashmiri civilians and restoration of all civil and political rights.

2) Recognize the right of the Kashmiri people to determine their own political future, and mediate a just settlement based on the right to self-determination. In this process, international monitors must ensure that there is no government reprisal or intimidation against the people of Kashmir as they discuss future arrangements and express their political aspirations.

3) Demilitarize both sides of the Line of Control between India and Pakistan. Further, to demilitarize all of Kashmir and immediately revoke Indian emergency laws such as the Armed Forces Special Powers Act.

4) Create mechanisms and procedures that will allow Kashmiris on both sides of the Line of Control to meet freely and discuss their political futures.

5) Create a Special Rapporteur with the mandate to investigate and report on crimes against humanity in Kashmir. This would be the first step in setting up credible mechanisms for documentation, accountability, and justice for human rights abuses in Kashmir over the past three decades, including extrajudicial executions, torture, gendered and sexualized violence, enforced disappearances, and unknown, unmarked, and mass graves.

6) Create a UN Commission of Inquiry with the mandate to investigate all instances of human rights violations, which will be the first step in seeking accountability and justice for these crimes.”

As the UNSC faces up to the task of decolonization in Kashmir, what of the rest of India? The trashing of the Indian Constitution by the BJP has grim implications for democratic processes within India, as is already becoming evident. At the far eastern corner of the country, another slow-motion humanitarian and human rights disaster is unfolding in Assam, where the Indian government is ready to strip 4 million Muslims of their citizenship and place them in concentration camps prior to deporting them to Bangladesh. The two leading alerts on Genocide Watch today are Kashmir and Assam.

Minority groups like the Sikhs and Nagas, with their own histories of suffering repression and violence at the hands of the Indian state, are watching events in Kashmir closely, and what they foretell. The long night of Indian fascism has just begun. 

What do the Kashmiris make of this? No one knows at present, because they are still under a communications lockdown with leaders, civil rights activists, and teachers under arrest, without charges. But when the Indian clampdown is lifted, their voice will be heard loud and clear, and it will be a roar for freedom. The Indian soldiers will be standing by, armed and trigger-happy, ready to shoot down teenagers, women, and children, as they have done so many times in the past. 

This time, the world will be watching. 

Update: As of August 22, the number of arrests was estimated to be around 4,000. Reports of torture are surfacing. The UN Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights has issued a statement calling on the Indian government to end the communications clampdown and expressing concern about the reports of arrests and torture. 

A friend received a call from Parveena Ahangar of the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons, an inspiring human rights defender and one of the mothers of the disappeared. Parveena asked her to tell friends and supporters around the world that she is fine and the spirit of the Kashmiri people is unbroken. 

Tax Dodging 101: The Aircastle Model

The GOP has made it easier than ever for companies to pay $0 in taxes. A Connecticut-based airplane company shows it was already too easy.

By William Minter, September 4, 2019.

https://fpif.org/tax-dodging-101-the-aircastle-model/

Aircastle Ltd. is not a household name, but if you’ve flown on South African Airways, KLM, or any of more than 80 other airlines, you’ve probably traveled on an airplane the Connecticut-based company owns and manages. 

The company´s business model is based on buying, selling, and leasing aircraft worldwide. Its corporate structure minimizes the payment of taxes by using a complex arrangement of subsidiaries, all managed from Connecticut, Ireland, or Singapore.

These arrangements, recently highlighted in the #MauritiusLeaks investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), are legal. But they have allowed the company to pay minimal taxes, including no corporate taxes in the United States on income from their aircraft leases.

Aircastle, of course, isn’t alone among large American companies in lowering their taxes through creative accounting. Well-known giants such as Amazon and Apple do so as well. 

But the recent revelations on Aircastle’s use of Mauritius as a tax haven provide a helpful window into how such tax dodges can use offshore companies set up primarily for that purpose. Getting to zero with tax avoidance became even easier with the new Republican tax cuts in 2017, but Aircastle was already well on the way to that objective.

For example, when Aircastle decided to do business in South Africa in 2010, as the ICIJ and Quartz Africa revealed in July 2019, it turned to a Bermuda-based law firm to help it set up six subsidiaries in Mauritius: Thunderbird 1 Leasing Ltd. along with five other companies named Thunderbird 2 through 6. As was Aircastle´s common practice, each company was to own a specific aircraft. South African Airways made their lease payments to the subsidiaries in Mauritius, each of which was owned in turn by an Aircastle subsidiary in Bermuda or Delaware.

Since South Africa and Mauritius have a tax treaty allowing this, Aircastle paid Mauritius at the low Mauritius rates on the income from the leases ($772,735 a month for the first A300-200 leased by South African Airways from Thunderbird 1 beginning in 2011). From 2011 through 2014, according to documents leaked to ICIJ, Thunderbird 1 paid  a total of $382,600 in Mauritius taxes, a 1.59 percent tax rate on $24 million in operating profits.

Aircastle paid no taxes on these profits either in South Africa or in the United States.

According to ICIJ, “Had Aircastle’s Thunderbird 1 company alone reported the profits it made in Mauritius over four years in the U.S., it could have paid more than $5 million. Those taxes would just about cover the state of Connecticut’s current budget for domestic violence shelters.” 

Including other Thunderbird companies as well, Quartz calculated, Aircastle paid $1.5 million in Mauritius taxes on profits of $53 million, at an effective rate of 2.87 percent — thus avoiding $14.8 million in taxes it would have owed if taxes had been paid to South Africa. This is equivalent to more than half the annual social housing budget of Johannesburg.

Aircastle did not respond to queries from ICIJ or Quartz, and data for a more comprehensive analysis of its tax strategy are therefore not available. However, since the company is registered on the New York Stock Exchange and also traded on NASDAQ, its reports to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) are public. Its annual report to investors for 2018, for example, incorporates the 10-K report to the SEC.

There we learn that Aircastle Ltd is actually incorporated in Bermuda and thus pays no U.S. corporate income tax, except on the management services supplied by its U.S. subsidiary to the aircraft-owning companies. Bermuda has no corporate income tax. Thus the company notes in its 10-K report, under the heading “risks related to taxation”:

“If Aircastle were treated as engaged in a trade or business in the United States, it would be subject to U.S. federal income taxation on a net income basis, which would adversely affect our business and result in decreased cash available for distribution to our shareholders.”

Given the lack of transparency in corporate reporting, it is hard to tell how Aircastle’s strategies compare to those used by other companies. The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) reported in April, based on 10-Ks submitted to the SEC, that 60 of the Fortune 500 had zero or negative federal income tax payments in 2018. But more detailed analysis or estimates of tax revenue lost, in the United States and other countries, require much more data than almost all such reports provide.

The fundamental step needed to make accountability feasible is public country-by-country reporting, whereby corporations would be required to provide for investors and the public a breakdown by country of revenues, profits, employees, and taxes paid for  every country in which they do business. Governments, investors, and even some businesses are increasingly accepting the need for such reports.

According to an April 2019 report from the U.S.-based Financial Accountability and Corporate  Transparency (FACT) Coalition, however, the trend is in the right direction. “The evidence suggests we are quickly reaching a turning point,” said Christian Freymeyer, researcher and author of the report. “Investors see the value, policymakers see the benefits, and businesses see the inevitability of greater transparency. It’s only a matter of time before tax transparency is accepted and expected of financial disclosure.”

Freymeyer´s analysis may well err on the side of optimism, given the continued opposition from those with vested interests in tax avoidance. But it is certainly true that the argument is now finding new supporters far beyond the circle of tax justice activists who have been the leaders in demanding these reforms.

Man hurt after asking HK cops about right and wrong

Man, 22, hit and subdued after taunting police by asking ‘Did you lose your conscience?’

By ALMEN CHUI

https://www.asiatimes.com/2019/09/article/man-hurt-after-asking-hk-cops-about-right-and-wrong/?utm

A 22-year-old passerby has been arrested and faces a possible charge of “disorder in public” after taunting a group of riot police with questions about their ability to tell right from wrong.

On Monday night, the 22-year-old man surnamed Chu stood on the sidewalk at the intersection of Nathan Road and Boundary Street in Kowloon while a group of riot police stood on an opposite street.

The riot police were deployed as protesters had surrounded the Mong Kok Police Station.

It was understood that Chu, wearing a white T-shirt at that time, shouted at the officers: “Sir, did you drop something? Did you lose your conscience, [your] humanity?” and “Where were you on July 21? Where were you when gangsters beat up people?”

A reporter from Apple Daily captured the moment, which saw at least five riot police chase Chu, hit him with batons several times and subdue him in the middle of the road.

Chu used his hands to protect his head while a police officer kicked him a few times. Chu cried: “I have done nothing wrong, I was only scolding you.”

Chu suffered head injuries, as blood was seen coming from his head on to his T-shirt. He was taken to a police vehicle and later sent to hospital for medical treatment. He needed five stitches for his head wound and was detained in the hospital.

Reporters inquired about the event at the daily police press conference on Tuesday, asking what remarks by the man broke the law and lead to him being arrested. Bradley Wright, district commander of Mong Kok, said police actions were based on the rule of law and evidence.

When asked if citizens would be taken away by police for simply shouting at them, Wright said no one would be arrested for expressing a view. But, he did not say what the Chu had actually done to break the law.

After further questioning, Wright said they would investigate whether the man had committed other offenses such as “disorder in public places”.

People say there have been other cases like this. Shatin district councilor Raymond Li was arrested on Sunday in Tai Wai in the New Territories after shouting at a group of police outside the MTR station: “Black cops who brutally beat up citizens are despicable.”

Anson Wong Yu-yat, a human rights lawyer, said charges of ‘disorder in a public place’ could not be tied to the sort of remarks these men appear to have been arrested for, news website HKCNEW.com reported.

Under Public Order Ordinance 17B, any person who in any public place behaves in a noisy or disorderly manner with the intent to provoke a breach of the peace, or whereby a breach of the peace is likely to be caused, shall be guilty of an offense.

Wong explained that the law did not focus on individual behavior. The focus should be behavior that has an intention to provoke a breach of the peace.

He didn’t think the words these men shouted actually broke the law of ‘disorder in a public place’.