Gag Order: Fired Employees vs. Foreign Workers

Posted on January 30, 2016January 30, 2016 by Denise Simon

Laid-off IT workers muzzled as H-1B debate heats up

ComputerWorld: IT workers are challenging the replacement of U.S. employees with foreign visa holders. Lawsuits are on the rise and workers are contacting lawmakers. Disney workers who lost their jobs on Jan. 30, 2015, are especially aggressive.

There’s a reason for this.

The Disney severance package offered to them did not include a non-disparagement clause, making it easier for laid-off workers to speak out. This is in contrast to the severance offered to Northeast Utility workers.

The utility, now known as Eversource Energy and based in Connecticut and Massachusetts, laid off approximately 200 IT employees in 2014 after contracting with two India-based offshore outsourcing firms. The employees contacted local media and lawmakers to pressure the utility to abandon its outsourcing plan.

Some of the utility’s IT employees had to train their foreign replacements. Failure to do so meant loss of severance. But an idea emerged to show workers’ disdain for what was happening: Small American flags were placed in cubicles and along the hallway in silent protest — flags that disappeared as the workers were terminated.

The utility employees left their jobs with a severance package that included this sentence: “Employee agrees that he/she shall make no statements to anyone, spoken or written, that would tend to disparage or discredit the Company or any of the Company’s officers, directors, employees, or agents.”

That clause has kept former Eversource employees from speaking out because of fears the utility will sue them if they say anything about their experience. The IT firms that Eversource uses, Infosys and Tata Consultancy Services, are major users of the H-1B visa.

But staying silent is difficult, especially after Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) co-sponsored legislation in January 2015 that would hike the 65,000 H-1B base cap hike to as high as 195,000. The measure, known as the I-Squared Act, left some of the former utility IT employees incredulous. They were far from alone.

The 200,000-member engineering association, IEEE-USA, said the I-Squared bill would “help destroy” the IT workforce with a flood of lower paid foreign workers.

Eventually, Blumenthal’s staff did learn, confidentially, about the experiences of former Eversource IT workers.

In November, Blumenthal co-sponsored new H-1B legislation by longtime program critics, Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), designed to prevent the replacement of U.S. workers by H-1B visa holders.

Nonetheless, Blumenthal remains a co-sponsor of the I-Squared Act, which raised questions among those laid off about his intentions.

“He is still co-sponsoring everything,” one former Connecticut utility worker said about Blumenthal. The worker asked not to be identified because of severance package limitations. “He is totally unbelievable.” Blumenthal was not immediately available for comment.

Leo Perrero, an IT worker at Disney who was laid off after training his foreign replacement, says non-disparagement agreements hinder the debate over the H-1B visa. Without such agreements, “you would have a lot more people speaking out – real human beings with real stories, not just anonymous persons speaking out,” said Perrero.

“Their freedom of speech is being taken away from them with the non-disparagement agreements,” he said.

The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee wanted to hear, last year, from IT employees who had been displaced by H-1B workers. It also wanted them to testify. It reached out nationally to affected employees, but had to settle for written testimony that was kept anonymous by the committee. The workers were too afraid to speak publicly.

In December, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), who is also the chairman of the Immigration subcommittee, and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), introduced an H-1B reform bill that includes a prohibition against non-disparagement clauses.

The bill “would prevent employers who seek access to the (H-1B) program from requiring American employees to sign so-called non-disclosure and non-disparagement agreements.” The agreements can prevent “American employees from discussing potential misuse of the program publicly.”

Non-disparagement clauses are common in severance agreements. But the Disney severance did not have one, and had no prohibition against any claims or lawsuits, said Sara Blackwell, an attorney representing former Disney IT workers. It is unclear why the company went this route.

Fear of jeopardizing new employment also keeps many displaced IT workers quiet. But lawsuits alleging discrimination and racketeering are being filed on behalf of displaced IT workers.

Brian Buchanan, a former Southern California Edison IT worker, is another who trained his foreign replacements. He is now part of a lawsuit alleging discrimination by Tata Consultancy Services, one of the IT services firms used by Edison. He is also included in a lawsuit challenging the U.S. government’s decision to allow spouses of some H-1B workers to seek employment. That lawsuit argues that the added workers will hurt the job market for U.S. workers.

Buchanan, who has contacted lawmakers about the impact of the H-1B programs, sees “little progress” in the past year. “Americans are going to have to act and they are going to have to act in mass, because we are fighting a huge, unseen force,” said Buchanan.

Eversource was asked about the non-disparagement agreement, and had this response: “These are private arrangements between affected employees and our company that were made more than two years ago during a period of transition and change in support of our merger. We have successfully moved on to form a new organization focused on providing superior service and value to our customers.”

But many IT workers hurt by offshore outsourcing have not been able to move on.

Former employees at Disney, Edison and Eversource tell of financial strains, tapped retirement funds and an inability to find a job, or to find one that pays close to what they once made.

Workers will say, anecdotally, that they know of many former co-workers who are now struggling. The H-1B workers tend to be younger, and the displaced ones, older, they say.

“It’s hard to start over at 50 when no one wants you,” said one former Edison IT worker. That worker is still searching for a job.

Obama Coming out of the Taqiyyah Closet?

Posted on January 30, 2016January 30, 2016 by Denise Simon

One of this mosques hosted speakers in December was Shaykh Hamzah wald Maqbul who gave a twisted sermon on Christians a year ago. It was also last year that Obama and his team met with Muslim Brotherhood leaders at the White House, some of whom were pronounced as unindicted coconspirators in the Holyland Foundation trial. It appears during Obama’s last year in his presidency he is finishing some items in his bucket list and you can bet he is holding talks during this mosque visit to encourage aggressive Muslim community action against Donald Trump and to promote Muslim refugee resettlement in America which has been highly contested in several states by governors and citizens.

Obama to make first visit of his presidency to a U.S. mosque next week

WaPo: President Obama takes a moment to show respect as he receives a tour by the Grand Imam Tan Sri Syaikh Ismail Muhammad, left, and Abdul Rashid Bin Md Isa, as he visits the National Mosque of Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on April 27, 2014. While Obaba has visited mosques overseas, he has never visited one in the United States during his presidency. (Larry Downing/ Reuters)

President Obama will make the first visit during his presidency to a U.S. mosque next week, the White House announced Saturday, as the administration tries to promote religious tolerance at a time when rhetoric linking Islam with terrorism is becoming more voluminous.

On Wednesday the president will visit the Islamic Society of Baltimore, a sprawling community center in the the city’s western suburbs, that serves thousands of people with a place of worship, a housing complex and schools, according to its website. It is one of the Mid-Atlantic region’s largest Muslim centers and describes itself as aspiring “to be the anchor of a growing Muslim community with diverse backgrounds, democratically governed, relating to one another with inclusiveness and tolerance, and interacting with neighbors in an Islamic exemplary manner.”

On Saturday, a White House official said in an e-mail that the president is making the visit: “to celebrate the contributions Muslim Americans make to our nation and reaffirm the importance of religious freedom to our way of life.

The President believes that one of our nation’s greatest strengths is our rich diversity and the very idea that Americans of different faiths and backgrounds can thrive together – that we’re all part of the same American family. As the President has said, Muslim Americans are our friends, and neighbors; our co-workers, and sports heroes – and our men and women in uniform defending our country.”

At the Islamic Society, the president will hold a round table with community members, the official said.

For years Muslim Americans have lobbied the president to visit a mosque in order to counter the perception that Islam is inextricably linked to terrorism.

The trip to Baltimore comes a month after several prominent Muslim Americans met with senior White House officials to discuss concerns about rising hostility toward people of their faith. During that session — attended by White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett, Domestic Policy Council director Cecilia Muñoz and deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes — the Islamic leaders asked for Obama to visit a mosque, ideally with former president George W. Bush, as well.

Bush visited the Islamic Cultural Center of Washington D.C. six days after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, where he declared, “Islam is peace,” and “the face of terror is not the true faith of Islam.”

At a time when some leading Republican presidential candidates, including businessman Donald Trump, have suggested barring foreign Muslims from entering the country, Obama has taken pains to criticize rhetoric that stereotypes one faith group.

“When politicians insult Muslims, whether abroad or our fellow citizens, when a mosque is vandalized, or a kid bullied, that doesn’t make us safer,” Obama said during his State of the Union address earlier this month. “That’s not telling it like it is. It’s just wrong. It diminishes us in the eyes of the world. It makes it harder to achieve our goals. It betrays who we are as a country.”

It wasn’t immediately clear why the White House selected the Islamic Society in Baltimore, although it has been the subject of threats in recent months. Baltimore County beefed up security there last spring after it received two phone threats, one citing a bomb and the other from someone threatening to “spill Muslim blood,” CBS Baltimore reported at the time.

It also is the mosque of the family of Adnan Syed, whose conviction for murder drew huge global interest when his story was told through the radio podcast “Serial.” The series was made because of the activism of a friend of Syed’s family from the Islamic Society, Rabia Chaudry, a Greenbelt lawyer who advises law enforcement about Islam, the Baltimore Sun reported in 2014.

President Obama tours the Sultan Hassan Mosque in Cairo with then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on June 4, 2009. Obama arrived in Egypt on Thursday for high level meetings before delivering a much heralded speech to an audience at Cairo University. (Gerald Herbert/AP)

Obama has visited mosques overseas, but never one in this country while serving as president.

“I think it would be enormously comforting and also send powerful message to Americans about recommitting to religious freedom — especially if we had Bush and Obama visit together,” Farhana Khera, executive director of Muslim Advocates, a legal advocacy group, said last month when she met with the president’s aides.

Obama’s relationship with American Muslim has been complicated. They are among his most enthusiastic backers, but some feel he has not done enough to address their concerns at a time of social unrest.

He has shown support for Muslims overseas, including the 2009 “New Beginning” speech in Cairo before the Arab Spring, and he has drawn praise — and intense criticism from conservatives — for declining to connect Islam and terrorism.

However, concern about profiling and domestic surveillance at mosques has escalated under Obama, and some Muslim leaders expressed concern last year when he held a key summit about violent extremism that focused significantly on Muslim extremism.

And though Obama is a Christian, many Americans remain convinced he actually follows the Islamic faith. Recent polls show that 29 percent of Americans, and nearly 45 percent of Republicans, believe he is a Muslim.

Too Damaging to Release, ah Hillary???

Posted on January 29, 2016January 29, 2016 by Denise Simon

Official: Some Clinton emails ‘too damaging’ to release

FNC: EXCLUSIVE: The intelligence community has now deemed some of Hillary Clinton’s emails “too damaging” to national security to release under any circumstances, according to a U.S. government official close to the ongoing review. A second source, who was not authorized to speak on the record, backed up the finding.

The decision to withhold the documents in full, and not provide even a partial release with redactions, further undercuts claims by the State Department and the Clinton campaign that none of the intelligence in the emails was classified when it hit Clinton’s personal server.

Fox News is told the emails include intelligence from “special access programs,” or SAP, which is considered beyond “Top Secret.”A Jan. 14 letter, first reported by Fox News, from intelligence community Inspector General Charles McCullough III notified senior intelligence and foreign relations committee leaders that “several dozen emails containing classified information” were determined to be “at the CONFIDENTIAL, SECRET, AND TOP SECRET/SAP levels.”

The State Department is trying to finish its review and public release of thousands of Clinton emails, as the Democratic presidential primary contests get underway in early February.

Under the Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, there is an exemption that allows for highly sensitive, and in this case classified, material to be withheld in full — which means nothing would be released in these cases, not even heavily redacted versions, which has been standard practice with the 1,340 such emails made public so far by the State Department.

According to the Justice Department FOIA website, exemption “B3” allows a carve-out for both the CIA and NSA to withhold “operational files.” Similar provisions also apply to other agencies.

Fox News reported Friday that at least one Clinton email contained information identified as “HCS-O,” which is the code for intelligence from human spying.

One source, not authorized to speak on the record, suggested the intelligence agencies are operating on the assumption there are more copies of the Clinton emails out there, and even releasing a partial email would provide enough clues to trace back to the original – which could allow the identification of “special access programs” intelligence.

There was no comment to Fox News from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Office of the Intelligence Community Inspector General, or the agency involved. Fox News has chosen not to identify the agency that provided sworn declarations that intelligence beyond Top Secret was found in the Clinton emails.

Reached for comment by Fox News, a State Department official did not dispute that some emails will never be made public.

“We continue to process the next set of former Secretary Clinton’s emails for release under the FOIA process and will have more to say about it later,” the official said. “As always, we take seriously our responsibilities to protect sensitive information.”

The State Department was scheduled to release more Clinton emails Friday, while asking a D.C. federal court for an extension.

FBI investigators looking into the emails are focused on the criminal code pertaining to “gross negligence” in the handling and storage of classified information, and “public corruption.”

“The documents alone in and of themselves set forth a set of compelling, articulable facts that statutes relating to espionage have been violated,” a former senior federal law enforcement officer said. The source said the ongoing investigation along the corruption track “also stems from her tenure of secretary. These charges would be inseparable from the other charges in as much as there is potential for significant overlap and correlation.”

Based on federal regulations, once classified information is spilled onto a personal computer or device, as was the case with Clinton and her aides, the hardware is now considered classified at the highest classification level of the materials received.

While criticized by the Clinton campaign, McCullough, an Obama administration appointee, was relaying the conclusion of two intelligence agencies in his letter to Congress that the information was classified when it hit Clinton’s server — and not his own judgment.

Joseph E. Schmitz, a former inspector general of the Department of Defense, called the attacks on McCullough a “shoot the watchdog” tactic by Clinton’s campaign.

The developments, taken together, show Clinton finding herself once again at the epicenter of a controversy over incomplete records.

During her time as the first female partner at the Rose Law firm in Arkansas during the mid-1980s, she was known as one of the “three amigos” and close with partners Webb Hubbell and Vince Foster. Hubbell ended up a convicted felon for his role in the failure of the corrupt Madison Guaranty, a savings and loan which cost taxpayers more than $65 million. Hubbell embezzled more than a half-million dollars from the firm.

Foster killed himself in Washington, D.C., in July 1993. As Clinton’s partner in the Rose Law firm, he had followed the Clintons into the White House where he served as the Clintons’ personal lawyer and a White House deputy counsel.

Clinton’s missing Rose Law billing records for her work for Guaranty during the mid-1980s were the subject of three intense federal investigations over two years. Those records, in the form of a computerized printout of her work performed on behalf of Guaranty, were discovered under mysterious circumstances in the Book Room of the private White House living quarters.

The discovery of those records was announced during a blizzard in January 1996 by attorney David Kendall, who still represents Hillary Clinton. After Clinton testified before a grand jury, prosecutors concluded there was insufficient evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt she committed perjury or obstruction of justice.

Despite Clinton’s recent public statements about not knowing how the technology works, at least one email suggests she directed a subordinate to work around the rules. In a June 2011 email to aide Jake Sullivan, she instructed him to take what appeared to be classified talking points, and “turn into nonpaper w no identifying heading and send nonsecure.”

A State Department spokesman could not say whether such a fax was sent.

Obama Joins Europe Orders Labels on Israeli Products

Posted on January 28, 2016January 28, 2016 by Denise Simon

Obama Administration Orders Labeling of Israeli Goods

Memo directs ‘trade community’ to label Jewish goods

FreeBeacon: A memo issued earlier this month by the Obama administration directs the U.S. “trade community” and government partner agencies to explicitly label Israeli-made goods that have been produced in the West Bank.

The Jan. 23 directive states that it is “not acceptable” to label goods coming from Israeli companies in the West Bank and Gaza Strip as having been produced in “Israel.”

The order comes amid an effort by the European Union to label Israeli-made goods, a move the Israeli government called anti-Israel and that prominent anti-Semitism watchdog groups have condemned as among the worst incidents of anti-Semitism in 2015.

This is a shift from the administration’s previous position. A State Department spokesman told reporters in November that such labeling could be perceived as “a step on the way to a boycott” and said boycotts would be opposed by the administration.

But earlier this month, senior Obama administration officials defended the EU’s move and reaffirmed its position against “Israeli settlement activity.”

The new guidance references a decades-old administrative directive that sought to promote the import of Palestinian goods produced in the West Bank. The Obama administration is facing criticism for reinterpreting it and enforcing it to punish Israeli businesses.

The new memo, issued by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, is meant to “provide guidance to the trade community regarding the country of origin marking requirements for goods that are manufactured in the West Bank.”

Good produced in these areas are not to be labeled “with the words ‘Israel,’” according to the memo, which warns that inappropriate labeling will subject the products to “enforcement action” by Customs and Border Protection.

“Goods produced in the West Bank or Gaza Strip shall be marked as originating from ‘West Bank,’ ‘Gaza,’ ‘Gaza Strip,’ ‘West Bank/Gaza,’ ‘West Bank/Gaza Strip,’ ‘West Bank and Gaza,’ or ‘West Bank and Gaza Strip,’” according to the directive.

“It is not acceptable to mark the aforementioned goods with the words ‘Israel,’’ ‘Made in Israel,’ ‘Occupied Territories-Israel,’ or any variation thereof,” it states.

Goods that are erroneously marked as products of Israel will be subject to an enforcement action carried out by U.S. Customs and Border Protection,” the memo states. “Goods entering the United States must conform to the U.S. marking statute and regulations promulgated thereunder.”

Pro-Israel organizations have taken a firm stand against the explicit labeling of Jewish goods, with some viewing the latest memo as part of a larger effort to economically isolate Israel.

“This is an administration that slaps labels on Jewish goods on a Saturday and has the president give a Holocaust Remembrance speech the next Wednesday,” said Omri Ceren, a managing director at The Israel Project, an organization that promotes stronger U.S.-Israeli ties.

“It’s worse than incoherent. It needlessly alienates Israel at a time when the Middle East is falling apart and U.S. allies are looking for signals about whose side the administration is on,” he said.

A State Department official who spoke to the Washington Free Beacon on Thursday said that the department is aware of the new memo but does not view it as a shift in longstanding policy.

“We are aware that the U.S. Customs and Border Protection re-issued guidance on their marking requirements,” the official said. “There has been no change in policy or in our approach to enforcement of marking requirements.”

The latest guidance stands as a “restatement of previous requirements,” the official added. “CBP has made clear that it in no way supersedes prior rulings or regulations, nor does it impose additional requirements with respect to merchandise imported from the West Bank, Gaza Strip, or Israel.”

“Longstanding U.S. guidelines, dating to 1995, on country of origin product marking requires that products produced in the West Bank be marked as products of the West Bank, and products of Israel be marked as products of Israel,” the official explained.

Custom and Border Protection did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the memo.

By the Numbers: Muslim Opinions and Demographics

Posted on January 28, 2016January 28, 2016 by Denise Simon

By the Numbers is an honest and open discussion about Muslim opinions and demographics. Narrated by Raheel Raza, president of Muslims Facing Tomorrow, this short film is about the acceptance that radical Islam is a bigger problem than most politically correct governments and individuals are ready to admit. Is ISIS, the Islamic State, trying to penetrate the U.S. with the refugee influx? Are Muslims radicalized on U.S. soil? Are organizations such as CAIR, who purport to represent American Muslims accepting and liberal or radicalized with links to terror organizations?

The full document supporting the NUMBERS is found here.

• The main source of the numbers we used was the poll conducted by the Pew

Research center titled The World’s Muslims: Religion, Politics and Society. It is the

single largest and most reliable survey on Muslim attitudes around the world.

• The Pew Research Center did not survey the whole of the Muslim world. Muslims in

countries including Saudi Arabia, Iran, India and China were not surveyed.

According to their own numbers, Pew numerically surveyed only 67 percent of the

Muslim world. 1 Therefore, when we were computing averages and the like, we did

not use the number for the total Muslim population of the world (1.6 billion), but

rather the total population of the countries surveyed.