TBR News February 5, 2016
The Voice of the White House
Washington, D.C. February 5, 2016: ”There is increasing fear in official Washington about the possibility of an IS attack in the United States. Our borders are not secure and floods of illegals pour into this country from both Mexico and Canada. It would only take a very few fanatics to create politicall and domestic havoc by, let us say, bombing some iconic building in a major city, None of these brainless twits have thought about setting wild fires or derailing trains but sooner or later, such activites might dawn on them. The real answer to this kind of terrorism is counter-terrorism but the destruction, let us say, of a Sunni holy site would also infuriate other Muslim countries, some of whom have vital oil. The German wartime program called ‘Night and Fog’ is also another solution. In this program, targeted terrorists or their leaders, simply vanish while out for a walk with their dog or making a visit to a public lavatory. They are never heard of again and the turmoil caused by the mysterious disappearances causes suspicions and fears in the ranks of the survivors.”.
SECRECY NEWS
From the FAS Project on Government Secrecy
Volume 2016, Issue No. 11
February 4, 2016
COMING TO TERMS WITH SECRET LAW
The topic of “secret law” is probed at great length in a new law review paper, which substantiates the concept and suggests a set of principles for addressing it. See “Coming to Terms with Secret Law” by Dakota S. Rudesill, to be published in the Harvard National Security Journal, 2015.
Secret law is defined here as “legal authorities that require compliance [but] that are classified or otherwise withheld from the public.”
The paper provides extensive citations to relevant source material (including a few references to Secrecy News), thoughtful
consideration of arguments for and against the status quo, and a novel compilation of congressional reports that include classified addenda. (h/t Lawfare)
TPP STRATEGIC IMPLICATIONS, AND MORE FROM CRS
A new report from the Congressional Research Service examines claims that the 12-nation free trade agreement known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) will (or will not) advance the strategic interests of the United States by enabling it to exert influence in economic as well as security domains. See The Trans-Pacific Partnership: Strategic Implications, February 3, 2016.
Other new and newly updated Congressional Research Service products that Congress has withheld from public distribution include the following.
The Obama Administration’s Feed the Future Initiative, January 29, 2016
Immigration Legislation and Issues in the 114th Congress, February 3, 2016
Unaccompanied Alien Children–Legal Issues: Answers to Frequently Asked Questions, updated January 27, 2016
State Challenges to Federal Enforcement of Immigration Law: Historical Precedents and Pending Litigation in Texas v. United States, updated January 27, 2016
Apprenticeship in the United States: Frequently Asked Questions, January 29, 2016
The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC): An Economic Analysis, February 1, 2016
Airport Privatization: Issues and Options for Congress, updated February 3, 2016
The Good Cause Exception to Notice and Comment Rulemaking: Judicial Review of Agency Action, January 29, 2016
Oil Sands and the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund: The Definition of “Oil” and Related Issues for Congress, February 3, 2016
Dietary Guidelines for Americans: Frequently Asked Questions, February 2, 2016
Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF): Size and Characteristics of the Cash Assistance Caseload, updated January 29, 2016
Federal Securities Law: Insider Trading, updated February 2, 2016
Iran’s Foreign Policy, updated January 29, 2016
Jordan: Background and U.S. Relations, updated January 27, 2016
Legislative Branch: FY2016 Appropriations, updated February 1, 2016
Body Armor for Law Enforcement Officers: In Brief, updated January 28, 2016
Conversations with the Crow
On October 8th, 2000, Robert Trumbull Crowley, once a leader of the CIA’s Clandestine Operations Division, died in a Washington hospital of heart failure and the end effects of Alzheimer’s Disease. Before the late Assistant Director Crowley was cold, Joseph Trento, a writer of light-weight books on the CIA, descended on Crowley’s widow at her town house on Cathedral Hill Drive in Washington and hauled away over fifty boxes of Crowley’s CIA files.
Once Trento had his new find secure in his house in Front Royal , Virginia, he called a well-known Washington fix lawyer with the news of his success in securing what the CIA had always considered to be a potential major embarrassment. Three months before, July 20th of that year, retired Marine Corps colonel William R. Corson, and an associate of Crowley, died of emphysema and lung cancer at a hospital in Bethesda, Md. After Corson’s death, Trento and his Washington lawyer went to Corson’s bank, got into his safe deposit box and removed a manuscript entitled ‘Zipper.’ This manuscript, which dealt with Crowley’s involvement in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, vanished into a CIA burn-bag and the matter was considered to be closed forever
After Crowley’s death and Trento’s raid on the Crowley files, huge gaps were subsequently discovered by horrified CIA officials and when Crowley’s friends mentioned Gregory Douglas, it was discovered that Crowley’s son had shipped two large boxes to Douglas. No one knew their contents but because Douglas was viewed as an uncontrollable loose cannon who had done considerable damage to the CIA’s reputation by his on-going publication of the history of Gestapo-Mueller, they bent every effort both to identify the missing files and make some effort to retrieve them before Douglas made any use of them.
Douglas had been in close contact with Crowley and had long phone conversatins with him. He found this so interesting and informative that he taped and later transcribed them.
These conversations have been published in a book: ‘Conversations with the Crow” and this is an excerpt.
Conversation No. 6
Conversation No. 57
Date: Tuesday, January 7, 1997
Commenced: 9:34 AM CST
Concluded: 10:07 AM CST
RTC: Good morning, Gregory. I take it you have survived the holidays intact?
GD: Yes. Christmas is a non-event and as far as New Years Eve is concerned, all I can say about that is that I could hear the fireworks and the guns going off for about an hour. It sounded like the Battle of Bull Run for a while. And the next day I heard on the news that people were indeed shooting guns up into the air and the spent shells were pattering down on their neighbors and strangers. What they should do, is to stick the muzzle in their mouths and then pull the triggers. Make work for the ambulance people, the medical examiners and, of course, the unfortunate ones who have to clean the brains off the ceilings.
RTC: So graphic. Reminds me of Frank Wisner’s end. Polly complained that the ceiling was a mess and it took two weeks and much paint to cover up the evidence of Frank’s end. He used a shotgun.
GD: That will do it. How did his black boyfriend take it?
RTC: That’s a closed chapter.
GD: Well, I wonder how Costello’s equally black boyfriend took the news of his lover’s sudden demise in the lonely sky over the Atlantic?
RTC: I was not privy to that. I do understand his brother, who was in the RN, refused to accept the body.
GD: Infection. If they cremated him, perhaps his boyfriend could come over and claim him. At least John would get his ashes hauled for the last time.
RTC: (Laughter) You are not very nice, Gregory.
GD: God, I would hope not.
RTC: How is the second Müller book coming along?
GD: Quite well. Now that I have Kronthal’s name and more input, it will be a worthwhile venture.
RTC: I have been asked, repeatedly, if you have mentioned a second volume, but I always pretend not to hear the question. Being an old man has its advantages sometimes. No, you have stirred up a very vicious hornet’s nest, Gregory, and they won’t give up until they have either run you into the ground or bought off your publisher.
GD: They wouldn’t have any luck trashing me because I trash right back, and while they are conventional in their character assassinations, I am very unorthodox. They don’t have the intelligence to deviate from the usual badmouthing and I don’t have the patience to put up with their crap. You now, about a week ago, I rang up Raul Hilberg, the historian. He’s teaching up in Vermont and writes about the Holocaust. Still, he’s a competent and relatively honest historian. He told me a funny story about Bob Wolfe. Seems Wolfe sent him a copy of the Müller book with a enclosed note hoping Hilberg would trash the work in print. Hilberg told me he read it through and while he found parts of it very disturbing, he couldn’t oblige Wolfe because, from a historical point at least, it was very accurate. He said Wolfe said I was threatening national security with my writings. Hilberg said that the fact that your organization hired carloads of Gestapo and SS men who were wanted for anti-Jewish activities was not national security.
RTC: They are absolutely terrified that if this thesis gains popular belief, they will be unable to cope with the uproar. Critchfield has been pushing them to have you shot and from my occasional, unpleasant, meetings with Wolfe, he is desperate to ruin your reputation. But I don’t think national security has any part of this.
GD: What do you think?
RTC; Wolfe is a typical Beltway boy. He has carved out a niche for himself as an outstanding expert on the Third Reich.
GD: Nonsense. Wolfe is most certainly not a real expert. He pretends to be, but he is not. Imagine what more I could learn if I were in his place.
RTC: He’s afraid you will start talking and show him up as a fraud.
GD: Aren’t they all?
RTC: Tell me, does Kimmel know Wolfe?
GD: Oh yes, he does. We’ve all had dinner together at the Cosmos Club.
RTC: Well, that explains much. I should tell you that you are viewed here in the FBI and CIA nests as a real loose cannon. No one knows what you’ll come out with next and the idea is to get your confidence and then try to find something on you to discredit you. Kimmel is part and parcel of this game and they are using Wolfe as the resident expert, hoping he can trip you up.
GD: Robert, that won’t happen. If Wolfe is their front man, they’re all in bad company. Hilberg said Wolfe was an envious phony who was jealous of everyone and the only reason he had occasional dealings with him was because Wolfe was an outrageous suckass who had very good access to the official records. Tell me about that. Wolfe got into the prohibited files and sent me an Army General Staff document listing all the top Nazis brought into this country in 1948 and to include Müller and far more. This had been sealed by Presidential order but Wolfe made a copy of it and sent it off to me, hoping frantically that I would trust him and finally tell him what persona Heini Müller used while he was living here.
RTC: Of course, they don’t know the name. He was under deep cover and I doubt if more than eight or nine people knew who he really was and what his former job had been.
GD: Truman knew, and Beetle Smith did for certain and, of course, Critchfield was the CIA man who hired him. Other than that, I don’t know who here really knew his given name.
RTC: And you can add my name to the short list. Can you imagine the frenzy to find out what name he used so they could purify their files? The burn bags would be piled up by the furnace doors, believe me. And then they could say very smugly that they had searched their files and never found anyone with that name.
GD: That’s why Wolfe has been so friendly with me.
RTC: Oh yes, he has. But he hates you, Gregory, not because our leadership there hates you but because he’s afraid you will show him up as a fraud and, more important, he will fail in his mission. He does so want to get in with the Naftali CIA crowd and he wants your head on a platter to please them.
GD: He’s too eager, too treacherous and too obvious to be of any use to them.
RTC: Don’t forget, Gregory, this is the Beltway and they’re all the same. They are a bunch of gross incompetents who are prepared to pay homage to another Beltway boys self-serving lies about their importance, if you will, in turn for other Beltway boys paying attention to theirs. You know and they don’t, and they don’t want someone outside their circle who is more intelligent than they are to rock their boats.
GD: They must be afraid the Jews will get after them for daring to hire their enemies.
RTC: Well, that’s true, but only up to a point. The Jews know when to shut up and they can use this to pry more money out of the government to assuage their wounded spirits.
GD: Well, in the next book, I will have some interesting things to say. The loose cannon rolls around the deck of the warship in a storm, battering holes in the sides of the ship. If I’m lucky, maybe they’ll all sink in shark-infested waters. But thinking about this, Robert, I’m sure there are things that even a shark wouldn’t eat. Yes, I do know more than they ever will. I know this sounds egocentric, but it is true. I really enjoy encountering all the experts and observing them trying to find out what I know so they can pick my brains on the one hand, and trying to get me to turn my back so they can stab me in it on the other. Why are these despicable types attracted to government work?
RTC: Where else would they get a job?
GD: Mopping up after the elderly in a nursing home or doing vital work at the sewage treatment plants of America.
RTC: I have some interesting news for you. I have just had Greg ship you off a long list of Nazis who worked for us, plus their new names and addresses here. Could you use that?
GD: Oh yes, how wonderful. What a wonderful Christmas present. Anyone I know? RTC: That’s for you to decide.
GD: If I have the original names, I have the files that will let me check on them. Müller gave me a list of Gestapo agents, and more important, the V-Leute or German stool pigeons for the Gestapo. I wonder how many of them are working for Langley?
RTC: And don’t forget the Army got its share.
GD: Not at all. Müller gave me his old Army uniform, medals and all. It’s in my closet in a bag. The same uniform he was wearing in the Signal Corps picture of him in the White House with Truman and Smith.
RTC: Oh, do publish that.
GD: I will save that for the last. I’ll wait until Wolfe and the Inner Sanctum Hebrews are in full cry against me and then put out a number of things. It would be like throwing table salt on garden slugs and snails. Lots of yellow foam and a painful death.
RTC: Couldn’t happen to nicer people. You remember that Roosevelt/Churchill intercept I gave you? Kimmel had it checked out and once they decided it was original, he suddenly forgot all about it. Of course, it would go far to exonerate his grandfather, but he will never, never use it because it came from you and you are the spawn of Satan.
GD: Isn’t it funny. Robert? Instead of asking you, politely, of course, to help them, they band together like frightened rats in a burning barn, shrieking how terrible you are. Besides their own stupidity, are they hiding anything?
RTC: I doubt it. My impression is that the intelligence community does not tolerate talent.
GD: The enshrinement of mindless mediocrity. Burial at Arlington and a star on the Langley wall.
RTC: And don’t forget a tree planted in the Holy Land.
GD: Their Holy Land, Robert, not mine.
(Concluded at10:07 AM CST)
German spy agency says ISIS sending fighters disguised as refugees
February 5, 2016
by Caroline Copely
Reuters
Berlin-Islamic State militants have slipped into Europe disguised as refugees, the head of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency (BfV) said on Friday, a day after security forces thwarted a potential IS attack in Berlin.
Hans-Georg Maassen said the terrorist attacks in Paris last November had shown that Islamic State was deliberately planting terrorists among the refugees flowing into Europe.
“Then we have repeatedly seen that terrorists … have slipped in camouflaged or disguised as refugees. This is a fact that the security agencies are facing,” Maassen told ZDF television.
“We are trying to recognize and identify whether there are still more IS fighters or terrorists from IS that have slipped in,” he added.
The Berliner Zeitung newspaper cited Maassen on Friday as saying that the BfV had received more than 100 tip-offs that there were Islamic State fighters among the refugees currently staying in Germany.
German fears about an attack have risen since the Paris killings. On Thursday, German forces arrested two men suspected of links to Islamic State militants preparing an attack in the German capital.
Authorities also canceled a friendly international soccer match in Hanover last year and closed stations in Munich at New Year due to security concerns.
Maassen, however, warned against alarm
We are in a serious situation and there is a high risk that there could be an attack. But the security agencies, the intelligence services and the police authorities are very alert and our goal is to minimize the risk as best we can,” he said.
(Reporting by Caroline Copley; Editing by Tom Heneghan)
Fall of Syria’s Aleppo would hand Russia’s Putin elusive prize
February 5, 2016
by Andres Osborn
Reuters
Moscow-Vladimir Putin thinks Russian air strikes in Syria have helped turn the war’s tide but the pace of the Syrian army’s advance has frustrated him, some sources say. If Aleppo falls, he could get the military and symbolic prize he has been craving.
More than four months of Russian air strikes have stabilized the government of President Bashar al-Assad, the Kremlin’s closest Middle East ally, helping his forces find momentum on the battlefield.
But the names and strategic significance of the towns and villages they have recaptured have failed to electrify a Russian public more worried about falling living standards. Nor has the Syrian army – backed by Russian air power – yet delivered a major victory that Russia can sell to the wider world as proof of its military might and growing Middle East clout.
“There has been some frustration with the Syrian army’s performance,” one source close to the Russian military, who declined to be identified, told Reuters. “Particularly in the beginning they were making slow progress.” Retaking full control of Aleppo, Syria’s biggest city before the five-year war, would change the narrative, say diplomats and analysts, bringing Putin a step closer to his preferred end-game which envisages a Russia-friendly Syrian government that allows Moscow to keep its naval and air base there.
“So far we’ve heard reports of government forces gaining ground here and there and there have been a few notable successes,” Dmitry Trenin, a former colonel in the Russian army and director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, told Reuters.
“But all those successes were rather tactical and not particularly spectacular,” said Trenin. “Should Aleppo be placed under full control of Damascus that would be a big psychological boost for Assad and a source of satisfaction for the Kremlin.”
Aleppo has been divided for years, with government forces controlling a section and other parts in the hands of rebels.
Tens of thousands of Syrians fled intensifying Russian bombardment around Aleppo on Friday, and aid workers said they feared the city, which once held two million people, could soon fall under complete government siege.
Government troops and their Lebanese and Iranian allies fully encircled the countryside north of Aleppo and cut off the main supply route linking the city to Turkey in the last 24 hours. Ankara said it suspected the aim was to starve the population into submission.
As the Kremlin’s impatience for a breakthrough has grown, it has bolstered its forces in Syria. Mostly recently, local media reported it had dispatched its most advanced military jet — the Sukhoi-35s — to join its strike force of around 40 fast jets.
It has also intensified its strike rate.
‘USEFUL DISTRACTION’
A victory in Aleppo could help lift morale at home where an economic crisis is eroding living standards and real incomes are falling for the first time in Putin’s 15 years in power.
Boosted and protected by a loyal state media, a tightly-controlled political system and a dearth of meaningful opposition, Putin’s approval rating remains over 80 percent according to opinion polls.
But with tentative signs of social discontent bubbling up — foreign currency mortgages holders, truckers and pensioners have all protested in recent months — a headline-grabbing Russia-assisted victory in Syria could cheer downcast voters.
“It would be a useful distraction and a show for people,” said Stepan Goncharov, of independent pollster, the Levada Center, saying state media had in the past used Syria to stoke anti-Western feeling and to reinforce the idea that Russia is again a great power.
“Their trick is to remove themes that stir social anxiety and replace them with ones that unite,” said Goncharov. “A military victory (in Aleppo) would be a great power moment, a symbol of military might, and would be used to increase support for the authorities.”
He said the last time Levada asked, in October, they found that 72 percent of Russians had a broadly positive opinion of Russian air strikes in Syria, but that the subject had since taken a back seat to stories about the economy and what the Kremlin was doing to navigate the economic crisis.
There were some signs support for the authorities was slipping a little because of the downturn, he added.
Carnegie’s Trenin said Russians, despite the Kremlin’s flashy media campaign, were not actually that interested in the Syria conflict and with memories of the Soviet debacle in Afghanistan still lingering wanted the Kremlin to limit its involvement there.
“For most people this is a war in a distant country,” said Trenin, saying voters remained nervous about any suggestion that ground forces might be sent. So far, the official Russian military body count has been just four, three of whom were killed in combat.
However, Islamic State claimed it blew up a Russian passenger plane over Egypt in October, killing all 224 people onboard, in revenge for Russia’s Syria campaign.
For Putin, says Trenin, Syria is important but part of a wider play.
“The ultimate goal of Mr Putin is to restore Russia to great power status,” he said. “Syria is part of that. But it’s also about wider Russian foreign policy and about Putin’s own legacy. Syria is the place where this is being decided.”
(Editing by Peter Graff)
Islamic State losing recruits to casualties and desertions, says Washington
Number of Isis fighters falls from about 31,000 to 25,000 as US-backed forces make advances, while Saudi Arabia offers to join ground operations
February 5, 2016
The Guardian
Islamic State’s contingent of fighters in Syria and Iraq has fallen from about 31,000 to 25,000 according to a US intelligence report revealed by the White House.
Officials in Washington cited battlefield casualties and desertions to explain the roughly 20% decrease and said the report showed a US-led campaign against Isis was making progress.
US-backed security forces in Iraq, and tribal militias and moderate opposition groups in Syria, contributed, said White House spokesman Josh Earnest, alongside a US-led air campaign that has launched more than 10,000 strikes against the Islamist extremists.
The announcement came as Saudi Arabia offered to send group troops into Syria as part of “any ground operations that the coalition [against Isis] may agree to carry out”.
Earnest said the new US intelligence estimate “means they continue to be a substantial threat, but the potential numbers have declined”.
“Isis has sustained significant casualties,” Earnest said.
Ground fighting efforts by coalition partners of the United States are having an effect in the conflict against Islamic State, he said, while international efforts were beginning to stem the flow of foreigners seeking to join the movement.
“Isil is having more difficulty than they’ve had before in replenishing their ranks, and we have long been aware of the need of the international community to cooperate to stop the flow of foreign fighters to the region,” said Earnest.
The new intelligence report of 19,000-25,000 Islamic State fighters in Iraq and Syria contrasts with 2014 estimates of 20,000-31,000 fighters.
“The decrease reflects the combined effects of battlefield deaths, desertions, internal disciplinary actions, recruiting shortfalls, and difficulties that foreign fighters face traveling to Syria,” said Emily Horne, a spokeswoman for the National Security Council.
Some north African jihadists who might otherwise have travelled to Syria to join Islamic State may instead have heeded calls by the movement’s leadership to head to Libya, where the Islamists are fighting to expand their grip on territory on the Mediterranean coast.
The intelligence report did not account for Isis affiliates in south Asia, other parts of the Middle East and north Africa, where its Libyan branch is expanding.
There appear to be conflicting US estimates of the strength of the movement’s Libyan affiliate. Defence officials put the number at some 3,000 while other US officials put it at 5,000-6,000.
Regime forces make key gains in Syria
The Syrian army has retaken two key rebel strongholds in a major push supported by the Russian air force, a monitoring group said. NATO head Stoltenberg says Russian air strikes are “undermining” the peace process.
February 5, 2016
DW
The pro-government troops have retaken Ratyan on the northern outskirts of Aleppo, and Atman in the southern Daraa province, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Friday
The move comes as the regime forces are closing in on the rebel-held Aleppo. In the previous two days, the government troops and their allies cut off rebels’ main supply route between the city and the Turkish border.
“Taking Ratyan will enable the regime forces to fully control roads around the towns of Nubul and Zahraa, which they recaptured two days ago,” the head of the monitoring group Rami Abdel-Rahman told the dpa news agency
According to the Observatory, the Damascus’ troops were backed by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and the Lebanese Hezbollah movement, with Moscow providing air support.The victory in Atman is also a major gain for the regime, as the rebels used the town to launch attacks in the Daraa region, Abdel-Rahman told AFP.
Rebels demanding more weapons
The northern countryside of the Aleppo province was now completely encircled, according to a senior officer in the US-backed Free Syrian Army.
“The Russian cover continues night and day, there were more than 250 airstrikes on this area in one day,” Hassan Haj Ali told the Reuters news agency on Friday.
The officer also reiterated calls for more military aid from international partners.
“We demand daily more support, but the issue of anti-aircraft (weapons) has become a dream … the dream that will not come true,” he said.
While acknowledging “very heavy battles” in Ratyan, Haj Ali said that the regime forces were still not controlling the town.
The pro-government troops have retaken Ratyan on the northern outskirts of Aleppo, and Atman in the southern Daraa province, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Friday.
Bombing the peace talks
Peace talks on Syria were put on hold earlier this week, as the regime forces launched a fresh offensive with Moscow’s aerial backing. Opposition forces have said they would not negotiate until the strikes stop.
NATO’s Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg criticized the Russian campaign on Friday, saying it was raising tensions and damaging the peace process.
“What we have seen is that the intense Russian airstrikes mainly targeting opposition groups in Syria are undermining the efforts to find a political solution to the conflict,” he told reporters.
The Kremlin dismissed the criticism as “incorrect.”
“Russia is consistently making efforts within the general international framework of seeking a peaceful and political settlement to the situation in Syria,” Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
“At the same time, Russia is providing support to the legitimate leadership of the Syrian Arab Republic in its fight against terror,” he added.
The UN Security Council is due to discuss the situation later on Friday, with the Geneva talks on hold until February 25.
dj/ng (dpa, AFP, Reuters, AP, Interfax)
Blame Canada? US Senate committee ponders if northern border is a threat
Homeland security committee scrutinises Trudeau’s plan to fast-track country’s intake of refugees amid fears it will enable terrorists to reach US soil
February 4, 2016
by David Smith
The Guardian
Existential threats to the US homeland have come in many forms – some real, some imagined. There was immigration from Asia – referred to in the xenophobic phrase “yellow peril” – fascism in Europe, communism in the Soviet Union and radical Islam in the Middle East.
And now there is Justin Trudeau in Canada.
The new Canadian prime minister’s plan to fast-track his country’s intake of Syrian refugees was scrutinised on Wednesday by the US Senate homeland security committee, amid fears that it will enable terrorists to cross the border and reach US soil. Trudeau will make a state visit to Washington next month.
The hearing, which did not begin with a rendition of the song Blame Canada from South Park, offered a glimpse of the relationship between the US and its northern neighbour, once characterised by Trudeau’s father Pierre, a previous prime minister, as like “sleeping with an elephant”.
It also raised the possibility that Republican candidate Donald Trump chose the wrong border when he promised to build a wall to keep out people from Mexico. The northern border, it transpires, is far more porous.
The committee was told that of 21,000 agents in the US border patrol, only 2,100 are assigned to the northern border, with probably only about 300 of those guarding it at any one time. Witness Dean Mandel of the US National Border Patrol Council said: “I would assess that there are approximately as many Capitol police on duty right now protecting the Capitol complex as we have on the entire 4,000-mile northern border.”
On the shorter southern border with Mexico, he added, there is one agent for every linear mile. On the northern border with Canada, there is one agent for every 13.5 miles and much less infrastructure. And the number of Canadian agents on the other side is probably even fewer.
Can we expect President Trump to order Trudeau to erect a border wall? There would be practical problems, for a start. Many people cross by boat and the technology that greets them is far from cutting edge.
Witness Dr Laura Dawson, director of the Canada Institute at the Wilson Center in Washington, said: “We’ve got great lakes and great fishing and hundreds of miles of the border is actually under water. I don’t know how you build a wall under water. We’ve got pieces of the border that stretch through mountains.”
It may surprise some to know that the primary concern of those worried about the Canadian border is not about hordes of Americans pouring over the border in search of inexpensive healthcare. During his election campaign, Trudeau made the ambitious pledge to resettle 25,000 refugees fleeing the violence in Syria by the end of 2015. This has been delayed slightly to the end of this month. The move was lauded by progressives and liberals as typical of Canadian humanitarianism. Among US Republicans, not so much.
Senator Rob Portman of Ohio warned: “If Canada is accelerating that programme, that puts us more at risk.”
Senators questioned whether security would be compromised by overworked Canadian officials failing to vet the refugees properly through background checks. Witness Guidy Mamann, a Canadian legal expert, said they would be under pressure to get the job done for Trudeau: “This was the crown jewel of his election platform. This is a mark he has to hit.”
Witness David Harris, director of the international intelligence programme at Insignis Strategic Research in Ottawa, told the committee that, taking the relative population sizes into account, the 25,000 refugees in Canada would be the equivalent of 255,000 refugees in the US. “Britain, almost twice Canada’s population, will take several years to admit 20,000,” he added.
“If the extensive US intelligence system would have trouble security-screening 10,000 Syrians in a year, how likely is it that Canada, even with valuable US assistance, could adequately screen two and a half times that number in four months?”
But Dawson mounted a spirited defence of the Canadian policy. She said refugees coming to the country were from low-risk groups – families with children, single mothers, and lesbians, gay, bisexual and transgender people – all of whom have taken refuge in Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey. Some 60% are women and 22% are children. “This is not an Isis demographic,” she said.
While 25,000 is a big number, it is consistent with Canada’s response to historic crises: before it gained independence, it was a haven for African Americans fleeing slavery in the US. “Canadians looked at the images of Alan Kurdi, the little boy on the beach this summer, and said this is not who we are. We are a community of diversity, we are a community who accepts newcomers.”
Senator Tom Carper, ranking member on the committee, offered a different, intriguing theory for Canadian kindness: too much space. With a population of just 35 million and a vast land mass, he suggested, it needs more people.
Mandel, meanwhile, suggested the refugee resettlement was something of a red herring compared with the 5 million foreign visitors who enter Canada each year. He described its visa waiver system as “a huge security gap”. He also called for more staff, resources and cooperation.
Yet through it all, the unfailingly polite American senators – many from border states including New Hampshire – went out of their way to flatter their friends in the north, saying how often they had been to Canada, how they had Canadian friends, how they even got mistaken for Canadians. “I love Canadians,” said chairman Ron Johnson, who goes fishing up there.
As the hearing drew to a close, Senator Jon Tester of Montana told his colleagues and the Canadian witnesses that the US must accept responsibility for the refugee situation. “We invaded Iraq 15 years ago looking for weapons of mass destruction. The result of that has been quite frankly the Middle East is a mess. These refugees don’t have any homes, they’ve been destroyed.
“The best way to radicalise people is not to reintegrate them into a society. We have an obligation to figure out how to do this and do this right for the sake of this country, but we cannot ignore it because if we do, we’re not doing anybody any favours on this Earth.”
Perhaps emboldened by this, it was Dawson who supplied the zinger of the day: “Without being cute, the United States is more of a risk to Canada than Canada is to the United States.”
The Guantánamo in New York You’re Not Allowed to Know About
February 5, 2016
by Azum Kundnani
The Intercept
Before every phone call that Fatuma Hashi has with her brother Mahdi, FBI agents come on the line to tell her what she is not permitted to talk about. “You’re not allowed to speak about political issues. Or whatever’s happening in the outside world. Or his case,” she told The Intercept.
Mahdi Hashi, a young man of Somali origin who grew up in London, had never been to the United States before he was imprisoned in the 10-South wing of the Metropolitan Correctional Center in lower Manhattan in November 2012, when he was 23. For over three years, he has been confined to a small cell 23 hours a day without natural light, with an hour alone in a slightly larger indoor cage. He has had no physical contact with anyone. Apart from occasional visits by his lawyer, his human interaction has been limited to brief, transactional exchanges with guards and a monthly 30-minute phone call with his family.
Yet most of Hashi’s time in solitary confinement occurred before he had been deemed guilty by the justice system. Prolonged isolation prior to or in the absence of trial, sensory deprivation, and a lack of independent monitoring are normally associated with the detention center at Guantánamo Bay and CIA black sites overseas. But the MCC’s 10-South wing, which houses terrorism suspects, is no different in these respects. A former MCC prisoner and a psychologist specializing in trauma told The Intercept that the kind of extreme isolation imposed on defendants there can pressure them to accept a guilty plea, irrespective of actual guilt.
For Hashi, who worked at a community youth organization in London, everything changed when he was approached by MI5, the U.K.’s domestic intelligence agency. He was pressured to become an informant, according to accounts he gave to rights groups and local authorities, but refused, despite being warned that doing so would make his life difficult.
In 2012, while Hashi was visiting Somalia, the British government used special powers to strip him of his citizenship, leaving him stateless. He crossed into neighboring Djibouti to visit the British consulate there, he claims, and appeal the decision. U.S. prosecutors allege he was traveling to Yemen to join al Qaeda.
Upon entering Djibouti, Hashi was arrested by agents of the secret police and forced to watch other prisoners gagged, blindfolded, and beaten for hours, he alleges in case filings, with the complicity of FBI agents and other unidentified Americans. According to defense attorneys, Hashi was threatened with physical abuse and rape if he did not cooperate.
In November 2012, he was transported to New York by the U.S. government to face charges of supporting al Shabaab, the Somali terrorist organization. Prosecutors say he traveled to Somalia to attend a training camp and fight with al Shabaab in Somalia’s civil war. They accept that Hashi poses no specific threat to any Americans and that he received “harsh treatment” in Djibouti.
In May 2015, after two-and-a-half years of isolation, Hashi entered a guilty plea of conspiring to provide material support to al Shabaab. Last week, on January 29, he was sentenced to nine years in prison. He will likely be incarcerated at a Supermax facility in Colorado or a high-security “communications management unit” in Illinois or Indiana, all of which mean ongoing solitary confinement.
Government prosecutors were seeking 15 years, but Judge John Gleeson of the Eastern District of New York said the case was “complicated,” and accepted, in part, Hashi’s position that he joined al Shabaab not to engage in violent attacks but because he thought the group could restore peace to war-torn Somalia. “I believe you believe this organization you joined was dramatically different than what you thought or hoped it would be,” Judge Gleeson said.
For Fatuma Hashi, the U.S. government’s approach is hard to understand. “He was in his own country,” she said. “It had nothing to do with the United States. Why does this country that has nothing to do with us have a say in his life?”
Fatuma cannot fully share with journalists what she knows about her brother’s treatment in the MCC, a gray slab of a building that goes largely unnoticed by the office workers and tourists walking the streets near the Manhattan end of the Brooklyn bridge. Government restrictions — known as “special administrative measures,” or SAMs — prevent prisoners, their attorneys, and family members from describing the conditions inside the high-security unit to the wider public, shrouding New York’s little Guantánamo in secrecy.
Psychological damage
In an account to be published in a new book on solitary confinement — titled Hell Is a Very Small Place — a Pakistani prisoner, Uzair Paracha, gives one of the most detailed illustrations yet of incarceration at the MCC. He was held in isolation there for two-and-a-half years after he was arrested in 2003 at age 23.
“The windows were huge but the glass was frosted so we had a lot of light but couldn’t see a thing,” he said. “It was a shade of white during the day, blue in the evening and early morning, black at night, and yellow when it snowed, as the snow reflected the streetlights. This was one way to estimate the time since they didn’t allow any watches.”
Video cameras constantly monitored the inside of Paracha’s cell, including the shower and toilet areas. Lighting was completely controlled from the outside, so that guards could deliberately leave the lights on at night to make sleeping harder. With their metallic walls, the cells were like ovens in the summer and freezing in the winter.
The medical effects of Paracha’s imprisonment at the MCC were severe: a weakening of his eyesight, brought about by having his entire world just a few feet away; a deterioration of physical coordination that made walking on stairs harder; and breathing problems, especially while trying to sleep.
Dr. Kate Porterfield is a clinical psychologist at the Bellevue/New York University Program for Survivors of Torture. She has evaluated prisoners held at various sites in America’s war on terror, including at Guantánamo. “With isolation, there’s a severing of the orienting data of our lives — the stuff that makes us feel like we are on our feet,” she told The Intercept. “This can result in paranoia, disorientation, feeling confused about whether your perceptions match reality, and not being sure who to trust.”
“That’s very dangerous to someone’s psyche,” she added. “It’s not just about feeling depressed because you’re in prison. The defendant ought to be oriented enough in the realities of their life and world that they can contribute to their own defense. A sense of paranoia and suspicion hampers the defendant in trying to connect with his or her legal team so that they can discuss and investigate the case.”
If a person has experienced torture or coercive interrogation before being put in isolation, they are even more vulnerable, Dr. Porterfield said. “There is then a greater likelihood of psychological damage and even less chance for recovery in any real sense.”
Indeed, virtually every academic study has concluded that solitary confinement has serious mental health consequences. These begin after 60 days and resemble the acute reactions suffered by torture and trauma victims.
The average length of time that defendants in federal terrorism prosecutions spend in solitary confinement prior to trial is 22 months, according to a 2014 report by Human Rights Watch and the Columbia Law School Human Rights Institute. Amnesty International has stated that pre-trial solitary confinement at the MCC amounts to “cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment.”
At least one prisoner who has been held at both the MCC and Guantánamo has described the Manhattan jail as harsher. Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, who was convicted of involvement in the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa, told his psychiatrist that Guantánamo is “more pleasant” and “more relaxed” than the isolation section at the MCC. At Guantánamo, he said, prisoners were not strip-searched and could associate together for recreational activities.
Joshua Dratel, an attorney who has represented clients at Guantánamo as well as the MCC, has also said the New York jail is worse.
A tool for prosecutors
The one advantage that prisoners at the MCC are supposed to have over their counterparts in Guantánamo is that they are subject to trial in a criminal court rather than a military tribunal. However, the use of pre-trial solitary confinement has become, in effect if not intent, a tool for prosecutors to skew the judicial process in their favor.
Experts like Dr. Porterfield emphasize how extreme isolation can induce a desire to accept a plea. “We find again and again that isolation in prisons and the experience of maltreatment have a huge impact to the point where people do almost anything to get out of the coercive situation,” she said. “If there’s one thing the last 14 years have shown us, it’s that abuse does not lead to good information gathering.”
Laura Whitehorn was held for two months in pre-trial isolation at the MCC in 1986 on allegations of passport fraud, part of a larger conspiracy case for which she was later sentenced to 23 years in prison. “The sense of isolation, even after only two months, was so intense,” she told The Intercept. “I think, at that point, one would be ready to do almost anything to be back in human contact.”
“What was particularly horrible was the constant watching and monitoring,” Whitehorn recalled. “It was like being played with by the guards, a form of psychological taunting. I felt at any moment I could have any part of my being or body violated with impunity.”
Peter Quijano has represented several clients facing federal terrorism charges at the MCC, most of whom have been held in the jail’s isolation unit.
“It just seems obvious that if anyone, regardless of the mental state they have going in, is housed and detained in such a manner for any period of time, it has to start having an effect on them,” he said. “Anecdotally, we’ve seen increased deterioration over a period of time, especially in a pre-trial situation. It seems like a punishment and it affects their ability to assist in their defense.”
Legal visits at the MCC are hampered by the extreme temperatures in the “claustrophobic” visiting room. “It’s hard to stay there for much more than two hours,” Quijano said. Attorney and client remain in separate cages during the visits, divided by a mesh grate that makes eye contact impossible.
Severe restrictions on communication
Mahdi Hashi divides his monthly phone call between his parents and siblings in London and his wife in Somalia. His sister Fatuma described being “overwhelmed with emotions” on these calls after not hearing his voice for so long. “Every day I’m in pain thinking about his situation,” she said. Fatuma, who is 24, has not seen Mahdi for six years
She says the family has sent him books that took eight months to arrive. He never receives the letters and photographs they send. But there are strict limits on what Fatuma can say publicly about his imprisonment due to the SAMs applied in his case, which prevent Mahdi Hashi from any “oral, written, or recorded communications” with another prisoner; restrict his monthly phone calls to immediate family members; and prevent his family from sharing the content of the calls with anyone else.
Nor is Hashi allowed to communicate with journalists in any way, including via his attorney. SAMs, which are issued by the attorney general, are supposed to be specific to individual prisoners who pose “a substantial risk” of communicating messages that “could result in death or serious bodily injury to persons.”
One consequence of the SAMs is that protests by prisoners remain hidden from public view. In September 2013, a blogger claimed that Hashi was on hunger strike to protest the conditions of his imprisonment. He was reportedly hospitalized with jaundice and close to liver failure. But the protest could not be verified or discussed in more detail.
“It’s a last resort when you have so few resources to defend yourself,” said Whitehorn, the former MCC prisoner, on reports of Hashi’s hunger strike.
It has not been established whether Hashi was forced to undergo the brutal force-feeding practices used at Guantánamo, although force-feeding was applied in response to the protest of another MCC prisoner. Oussama Kassir, a Swede who went on hunger strike at the MCC eight years ago, was subjected to “medical feeding,” according to his attorney.
The people best placed to shed light on Hashi’s hunger strike — his lawyers and his family — were restricted by the SAMs, and prosecutors and prison administrators declined to comment. According to the blogger, the FBI cut off a phone call from Hashi to his father — in which Hashi described the protest — after one minute, but the SAMs mean we cannot know if this actually happened.
Saghir Hussain, Hashi’s British lawyer, has spoken with his client about the conditions of his incarceration, but is prevented from sharing such information. Hashi’s American lawyer did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Mahdi Hashi’s prosecution provides one model of how the U.S. government deals with Western citizens accused of fighting with jihadi organizations overseas: coercive interrogation outside of U.S. jurisdiction, transportation to the isolation unit of a federal jail in New York, solitary confinement and restricted communication in conditions of secrecy until a guilty plea is made, then a lengthy incarceration at a high-security prison.
From one perspective, this approach seems to respect the rule of law. But look a little closer and it becomes clear that there are possibilities for abuse equivalent to or worse than at Guantánamo.
Why less is much, much more on LinkedIn
Forget what you’ve heard about connecting with everyone. Avoid the sales schemers and scammers and connect smart with these tips.
February 5, 2016
by Alina Dizik
BBC
Every time you log on to LinkedIn, an icon reminds you that several people are waiting to connect.
Some are strangers with impressive sounding jobs, while others might be people with whom you’ve briefly exchanged emails. You’re not quite sure how they fit in your professional network or if they can help your career, so you hesitate.
Should you accept their LinkedIn invitation or not?
Figuring out how to make meaningful connections on LinkedIn (and declining invitations from the rest) is one of the most complex aspects of developing your professional network via social media, said Andy Headworth, founder of Sirona Consulting, a social media recruitment firm in Worthing, UK.
“A lot of people approach LinkedIn with a scattergun approach of connecting with people,” he said. But linking with whoever comes your way, might mean you’re not making the best use of the site.
The key is to be strategic. First, the obvious: ask yourself why you’re connecting with someone before adding them to your contact list, he said.
Then, work to sharpen your overall LinkedIn strategy. Here’s how experts say you can carefully curate your connections.
Avoid the sales pitch
Whether it’s real estate agents or entrepreneurs looking to peddle their products, those using the network for sales are sure to mine your contact list in a way that can feel unprofessional. Having a sales person you don’t know well — or at all — tap into your contacts “affects the quality of your network”, said Dave Delaney, founder of FutureForth, a digital marketing firm based in Nashville in the US.
But not all sales-focused or unknown connections, the digital equivalent of a “cold call”, deserve the cold shoulder. Recruiters who use LinkedIn to find job candidates can be a good means of facilitating connections for your own career gains, he said.
When recruiters are mining your network, your connections automatically know that they’ve learned about a potential position through one of your connections, which can make your own profile more valuable.
Avoid old friends…and potential dates
Just because you sat next to someone in 10th grade chemistry doesn’t mean they need to be one of your professional connections. The same applies to that guy or girl who is trying to ask you out on a date. In fact, connecting with someone unrelated to your field or whose professional background you’re not sure of could potentially cast your own profile in a negative light.
On the other hand, having a broader network when trying to shift careers or filled with professionals whose work you admire can be an asset, said Andrew Stephen, a marketing professor at Oxford University’s Said Business School.
Building up a set of [social] connections is not necessarily an effective use of LinkedIn,” said Stephen. “You are creating these relationships because you think there is some professional benefit down the line.” And that doesn’t include keeping tabs on a former boyfriend or girlfriend.
Connect within your industry
If someone with common professional interests takes the time to write Delaney a personal message with a quick introduction on LinkedIn, he usually accepts the invite. That’s because many of the people that ask for such connections also put out industry content or have the potential to know other professionals in the same field. That amplifies your connections and your profile when it comes time to find a job or simply seek out resources for an upcoming project.
If you’re the one reaching out, build rapport first. “Remind them in a couple of sentences who you are and how you met” prior to asking for a connection, said Delaney, who discourages sending LinkedIn’s pre-written request.
Additionally, it’s important to have a completed profile and photo prior to making the introduction, he added.
Avoid inactive users
People who don’t often access LinkedIn or have little content on their profile, won’t be helpful when it’s time for you to tap into your network. “If there’s nothing there and not enough content, then they aren’t going to take the networking seriously,” Headworth said.
Many inactive users can also be fake accounts or scams, especially those accounts without photos or a work history. These days, even active profiles can turn out to be fake. “We are seeing a large number of fake profiles and sometimes they look too good to be true,” Headworth said and adds that vetting strangers through an additional online search on their name, company and job title can help you spot scams.
Keep in mind that the social media network discourages users from connecting with people they don’t know personally. To discourage over-connected profiles, super users simply have a 500+ sign on their profile to avoid “a numbers game” that may entail thousands of connections, according to May Chow, a spokesperson for LinkedIn.
“We stress to members that’s it’s about quality, not quantity,” she wrote in an email.
Connect with thought leaders
It’s not always a bad idea to connect with strangers — especially because some of those strangers are working at the top of their fields. Link up with other senior leaders who are writing thoughtful blog posts, or sharing industry news, said Oxford’s Stephen.
This kind of industry content may be more difficult to find outside of LinkedIn and helps keep you informed about the comings and goings in your particular field. Some loose connections can make your own profile more useful because it helps you get a dose of real-time industry news without subscribing to email newsletters.
“Build out a network that gives [you] good content,” Stephen said.
All the News That’s Fit to Print
How the Media Hide Undocumented Workers
by Aviva Chomsky
Tom Dispatch
In our post-modern (or post-post-modern?) age, we are supposedly transcending the material certainties of the past. The virtual world of the Internet is replacing the “real,” material world, as theory asks us to question the very notion of reality. Yet that virtual world turns out to rely heavily on some distinctly old systems and realities, including the physical labor of those who produce, care for, and provide the goods and services for the post-industrial information economy.
As it happens, this increasingly invisible, underground economy of muscles and sweat, blood and effort intersects in the most intimate ways with those who enjoy the benefits of the virtual world. Of course, our connection to that virtual world comes through physical devices, and each of them follows a commodity chain that begins with the mining of rare earth elements and ends at a toxic disposal or recycling site, usually somewhere in the Third World.
Closer to home, too, the incontrovertible realities of our physical lives depend on labor — often that of undocumented immigrants — invisible but far from virtual, that makes apparently endless mundane daily routines possible.
Even the most ethereal of post-modern cosmopolitans, for instance, eat food. In twenty-first-century America, as anthropologist Steve Striffler has pointed out, “to find a meal that has not at some point passed through the hands of Mexican immigrants is a difficult task.” Medical anthropologist Seth Holmes adds, “It is likely that the last hands to hold the blueberries, strawberries, peaches, asparagus, or lettuce before you pick them up in your local grocery store belong to Latin American migrant laborers.”
The same is true of the newspaper. The invisible links between two mutually incomprehensible worlds were revealed to many in the Boston area at the end of December when the Boston Globe, the city’s major newspaper, made what its executives apparently believed would be a minor change. They contracted out its subscriber delivery service to a new company.
Isn’t newspaper delivery part of the old economy and so consigned to the dustbin of history by online news access? It turns out that a couple of hundred thousand people in the Boston area — and 56% of newspaper readers nationwide — still prefer to read their news in what some dismissively call the “dead tree format.” In addition, despite major ad shrinkage, much of the revenue that allows newspapers to offer online content still comes overwhelmingly from in-print ads.
The Globe presented the change as a clean, technical move, nothing more than a new contractor providing newspaper delivery for a lower cost. But like so many other invisible services that grease the wheels of daily life, that deceptively simple task is in fact provided thanks to grueling, exploited labor performed by some of society’s most marginalized workers, many of them immigrants and undocumented.
In this respect, newspaper delivery shares characteristics with other forms of labor that link the privileged with the exploited. This is especially true in Boston, recently named the most unequal city in the country. Some of the most dangerous, insecure, and unpleasant jobs with the lowest pay and a general lack of benefits provide key goods and services for citizens who undoubtedly believe that they never interact with immigrants or receive any benefits from them.
In fact, immigrant workers harvest, process, and prepare food; they provide home health care; they manicure hands and lawns. In other words, the system connects some of the most intimate aspects of our daily lives with workers whose very existence is then erased or demonized in the public sphere. And all of this happens because these workers are regularly rendered silent and invisible.Reporters Heroically Deliver the Paper
To get that “dead tree” item from the printer to your doorstep requires hundreds of human workers willing to leave home in the middle of the night, 365 days a year, regardless of the weather and the driving conditions (a serious issue in New England). They must drive to a distribution center to receive, fold, and package the papers, load them in their own car, and spend several hours racing through dark streets to finish their route before dawn. Although they pay for their own gas, insurance, and car maintenance, the low piece rate that these “independent contractors” receive per-paper-delivered barely allows them to reach the minimum wage. Many of them are immigrants.
The Globe’s workers remained invisible to much of the public until December 28th when the paper replaced its long-time delivery contractor with Long Beach-based ACI Media Group. Droves of workers were laid off from the previous company when it lost its Globe contract, and ACI promised to cut costs for delivery by paying its newly hired workers less and making them work more under significantly worse conditions. As a result, ACI had trouble attracting workers and those they did hire began to quit en masse when confronted with the degrading new working conditions. Thousands of papers went undelivered, day after day. When subscriber complaints flooded in, the media began to take notice. But most of the journalists covering the developing story preferred to look everywhere except at the workers themselves in trying to explain what happened.
Subscribers may be aware of their paper carriers because they catch a glimpse of them or hear them in the early morning, or they may take seriously those envelopes that the carriers regularly leave, hoping for tips to bolster their meager income. Apparently, however, the Globe’s own reporters never thought to consider how the newspaper arrived at subscribers’ homes until the system went into crisis.
A week into the quagmire, the Globe mobilized its reporters and other staff to help deliver the Sunday paper. If anyone outside the Boston area heard about the issue, it was undoubtedly because of this unprecedented action. Under the headline “Boston Globe Employees Help Deliver Papers on Sunday,” for instance, the New York Times noted that 200 of them “stayed up all night,” having brought their own “flashlight and a GPS,” and that they “assembled and bagged thousands of newspapers and stacked them in their cars.” On NPR, Renee Montagne chimed in, reporting that “before dawn on Sunday morning, dozens of the Globe’s reporters and editors fanned out and delivered the papers themselves. They carried flashlights and GPS.”
As one of those reporters told the Times, “You’re following instructions about whether people want it directly on their porch or hidden somewhere, so you have to walk up to the house and drop it where they wanted it.” CNN Money explained that “first, the volunteers had to bag the papers,” and provided a photograph to prove that such a remarkable act had indeed happened. All of this coverage tacitly offered up the same message: reporters had heroically crossed the lines of race, status, and class! How amazing!
Clearly, this foray into the world of immigrant labor proved startling for those reporters. Columnist Marcela García called it “an unbelievably eye-opening experience.” Columnist Shirley Leung wrote, “We have an old saying in newsrooms: Putting out the paper is a daily miracle. I used to think that was just about filing your story on deadline, but I’ve come to appreciate how it’s the whole package from keyboard to doorstep.”
Columnist Joan Vennochi, after spending the night delivering papers, lamented the suffering of the “victims” of the Globe’s decision — by which, of course, she meant the subscribers. After a humorous description of his own amateur attempt to follow a morning delivery route, reporter Kevin Cullen concluded casually that “whatever they pay the delivery people, it’s not enough, and it’s more than a little depressing to think this debacle has been brought about by a desire to pay them even less.”
“Whatever they pay the delivery people…” Curiously, in the first two weeks of reporting on the crisis, no news source seemed able to find out how much the new company was actually paying. The Columbia Journalism Review reported widespread speculation “that the labor shortage stems from ACI offering lower pay rates than other carriers. But ACI and Globe management have both denied that claim.” Apparently it never occurred to CJR reporter David Uberti to ask a worker!
Press coverage made it clear that newspapers live in, and speak to, a world of privilege. It was assumed, for instance, that readers shared the utter ignorance of reporters when it came to the work (and the workers) involved in physically transporting newspapers to their doorsteps. They were, in other words, to enjoy unlimited access to “information” about the world that “matters” — and complete ignorance when it came to the mundane details that lay behind that access.
Only one of the journalists who participated in that Sunday delivery extravaganza, columnist Marcela García, who frequently covers immigrant and Latino issues, even thought to focus her attention on the workers who actually did the same job every day. “Reporters delivering their own work — that’s a story,” she wrote. “But off camera, and working side by side with us as we assembled the Sunday paper, were the people who are there every night, making not much more than minimum wage… Part of the subtext of the crisis the Globe has faced for the past week is that our new delivery vendor can’t seem to find enough people willing and able to do the grueling work.”
At her blog, García recorded one of her colleagues saying, “Wow, I can’t believe something like this had to happen for us to learn about these workers and their conditions.” She was evidently one of the few reporters willing to talk with some of the actual workers that Sunday morning when the Globe staff mobilized to help with the delivery. Or perhaps she was one of the few able to. While 35% of Boston’s inhabitants speak a language other than English and the city is now “majority minority,” the paper’s journalists, unlike its delivery workers, remain overwhelmingly white and English speaking.
The Vanishing Workers
That Tuesday, January 5th, publisher John Henry offered a public apology — to subscribers, of course, not to the workers with the old carrier who, because of his actions, had lost their jobs, or the ones with the new carrier who had seen their working conditions and pay undermined. Henry did emphasize that a major reason for switching carriers was ACI’s promise of substantially cheaper service. Clearly, he felt it unnecessary to mention that these savings would be realized on the backs of the delivery workers. “Until Globe staffers embarked on an effort to save more than 20,000 subscribers from missing their Sunday paper,” Henry wrote, “we had underestimated what it would take to make this change.” He then offered a post-modern, post-material explanation for the problem: the new company’s routing software had proven insufficient for the job!
On January 9th, almost two weeks after the delivery crisis began, an exposé by reporter Michael Levenson finally brought the issue of “long hours, little pay, no vacation for delivery drivers” out of the shadows. He described the “grueling nocturnal marathon for low-income workers who toil almost invisibly on the edge of the economy.” The next day, when 15 workers delivered a letter of protest to the new carrier and walked off the job, reporter Dan Adams explained their demands and actually quoted Lynn Worker Center organizer Julio Ruiz.
On January 13th, the Globe published a lead editorial challenging management and bringing labor issues to the fore in a significant way. It recognized that “drivers get no vacation, and lack worker protections. That’s despite the fact that packaging papers into plastic bags, in the middle of the night, can be grueling work.” The editorial called on the state attorney general and federal authorities to investigate the delivery business, including implicitly the accusation leveled by workers that their employers misclassify them as “independent contractors” in order to avoid paying the wages or offering the labor protections they deserve.
In other words, the organizing and protesting of the workers — and the experiences of the reporters as one-day delivery people — helped briefly open a window between the world of those who write and read the news and the world of the exploited labor that transports it from the former to the latter.
Yet the window didn’t last long. A Globe postmortem by Mark Arsenault on January 16th returned to a purely technological explanation of the problem in summing up the three-week debacle. “The root of the delivery mayhem,” he wrote, “lies in something so simple that nobody gave it much thought until it was too late: sensible paper routes.” Once again, software and routing lay at the heart of the matter, while workers and working conditions conveniently vanished.
If newspaper writers and readers are effectively isolated from the world of the workers who deliver the paper, that divide goes both ways. One immigrant worker who spoke to García — in Spanish — was a Guatemalan who had taken on a second paper route during the crisis. He worked from one at night to eight in the morning and requested to be identified by a pseudonym. “I asked him if he ever reads the Globe,” García reported. “He looked up and stared back at me as if I was saying something crazy. And he just laughed.”
Our infatuation with virtual modernity should not blind us to the exploitative systems of labor that undergird our world from our front doorsteps to distant parts of the planet. As the Globe’s delivery crisis made clear, the present system relies on ignorance and on the invisibility of the labor of mostly immigrant, often undocumented workers. The Globe’s delivery breakdown offered a brief look at just one way in which the worlds of business, journalism, and readers rely on such workers. And the local and national coverage revealed just how unusual it is for those who own, manage, write, and read newspapers to see this underside of our information economy.
So when you next pick up your paper and read the latest blast by Donald Trump against undocumented immigrants, remember: the odds are you can only do so because an undocumented worker brought it to your doorstep.