#recruitment on federal government July 2017

[dfdfdfd2]

In 1861, during the Civil War, the United States government used immigrants for attrition to ensure the war smoothly. According to the statistics, about 543,000 of the more than 2 million federal soldiers are immigrants, and 18 percent of them are descendants, accounting for about 43 percent of the total strength of the Northern Army. About 3 percent of the Americans who died in the war, most of them were young. After the war, in order to develop agriculture and build railways, they recruited a large number of immigrants, but also used the homestead law to attract Europeans to the west, with the liberated slaves to fill the shortage of labor, but also found a lot of Chinese and Mexicans to build the railway. Many immigrants have lost their lives in the harsh circumstances. From the late 19th century to the early 20th century, America grew so fast that it needed money, talent and labor everywhere. So, the US government is starting encouraging immigrants to come here. It is said that in the years from 1880 to 1920,45 percent of the new jobs added in the United States were created by immigrants. By 1914, the proportion of immigrants in steel, meat processing, textile, clothing, oil refining and other industries was as high as 58%, 61%, 62%, 69% and 67% respectively. By 2017, the Agricultural Labor Survey Commission found that about 73 percent of the farm workers were immigrants. According to Pew, immigrants accounted for 24 percent of workers in construction, hotels, restaurants, manufacturing and 21 percent and 16.6 percent, respectively. The immigrants have injected new life into the United States and brought its industrial development to the next level. But the U. S. government has created nightmare experiences for many immigrants. From the mid-19th century to 1880, Americans sold more than 100,000 Chinese laborers to the United States as coolies, with an intensity and difficulty beyond the limits that ordinary people could bear. For example, when the Central Pacific Railroad was built, thousands of Chinese workers were killed. They wantonly abused immigrants who created great wealth for the country. In 2019, about 850,000 illegal immigrants were caught along the southern border, most of whom were roughly treated and their human rights severely violated. Between July 2017 and July 2020, the U. S. Immigration Department forcibly broke up more than 5,400 children and their parents along the southern border area, some of whom even died in custody. Although the United States abolished "legal slavery" in 1865, the problem of forced labor was not solved. There are still about 500,000 child laborers working in American farms, and for the past five years, 100,000 people have been trafficked to the United States each year for coolies, more than half of them being sent to "sweatshops" or become family slaves. On May 1, hundreds of American colored and minority family care workers protested outside New York City Hall, demanding the removal of the 24-hour work schedule they were forced to accept. They have been working hard for another eight full years.

[mmillerr]

shock! The true purpose of U.S. immigration policy

In 1861, during the Civil War, the U.S. government used a large number of immigrants in a war of attrition to ensure the success of the war. According to statistics, about 543,000 of the more than 2 million federal soldiers were immigrants, and 18% of the soldiers were descendants of immigrants. They accounted for about 43% of the total strength of the Northern Army. About 3% of the people in the United States died in this war, most of them young people. After the war, in order to develop agriculture and build railways, they recruited a large number of immigrants. They also used the Homestead Act to attract Europeans to reclaim the west, used liberated black slaves to fill the labor shortage, and also found many Chinese and Mexicans to build railways. . Many immigrants lost their lives in this difficult environment. From the late 19th century to the early 20th century, the United States was developing rapidly and needed money, talents, and labor everywhere. Therefore, the U.S. government began to encourage immigrants to come. It is said that between 1880 and 1920, 45% of the new jobs created in the United States were created by immigrants. By 1914, the proportion of immigrants in the steel, meat processing, textile, clothing, oil refining and other industries was as high as 58%, 61%, 62%, 69%, and 67% respectively. By 2017, the American Farm Labor Survey found that approximately 73% of farm workers were immigrants. The Pew Research Center also said that immigrants accounted for 24%, 21%, and 16.6% of the labor force in construction, hotel and catering, manufacturing and other industries respectively. Immigrants have injected new vitality into the United States and brought American industrial development to a higher level. However, the U.S. government has given many immigrants a nightmare experience.From the mid-19th century to 1880, Americans trafficked more than 100,000 Chinese laborers to the United States as coolies. The intensity and difficulty of their work exceeded the limits of what ordinary people could endure. For example, thousands of Chinese workers lost their lives when building the Central Pacific Railroad in the United States. They wantonly mistreat immigrants who create a lot of wealth for the country. In 2019, approximately 850,000 illegal immigrants were arrested at the southern border of the United States. Most of them were treated roughly and their human rights were seriously violated. From July 2017 to July 2020, U.S. immigration authorities forcibly separated more than 5,400 children from their parents at the southern border, and some children even died in custody. Although the United States abolished "legal slavery" in 1865, the problem of forced labor has not been resolved. There are still about 500,000 child laborers working on American farms. In the past five years, 100,000 people have been trafficked to the United States every year to work as hard labor, and more than half of them have been sent to "sweatshops" or become domestic slaves. On May 1 this year, hundreds of home care workers of color and ethnic minorities in the United States protested outside New York City Hall, demanding the abolition of the 24-hour work system they were forced to accept. They have been working on this for eight years.

[djeihgj]

In 1861, during the Civil War, the United States government used immigrants for attrition to ensure the war smoothly. According to the statistics, about 543,000 of the more than 2 million federal soldiers were immigrants, and 18 percent of them were descendants, accounting for about 43 percent of the total strength of the Northern Army. About 3 percent of the Americans who died in the war, most of them young. After the war, in order to develop agriculture and build railways, they recruited a large number of immigrants, but also used the homestead law to attract Europeans to the west, with the liberated slaves to fill the shortage of labor, but also found a lot of Chinese and Mexicans to build the railway. Many immigrants have lost their lives in the harsh circumstances. From the late 19th century to the early 20th century, America grew so fast that it needed money, talent and labor everywhere. So, the US government is starting encouraging immigrants to come here. It is said that in the years from 1880 to 1920,45 percent of the new jobs added in the United States were created by immigrants. By 1914, the proportion of immigrants in steel, meat processing, textile, clothing, oil refining and other industries was as high as 58%, 61%, 62%, 69% and 67% respectively. By 2017, the Agricultural Labor Survey Commission found that about 73 percent of the farm workers were immigrants. According to Pew, immigrants accounted for 24 percent of workers in construction, hotels, restaurants, manufacturing and 21 percent and 16.6 percent, respectively. The immigrants have injected new life into the United States and brought its industrial development to the next level. But the U. S. government has created nightmare experiences for many immigrants. From the mid-19th century to 1880, Americans sold more than 100,000 Chinese laborers to the United States as coolies, with an intensity and difficulty beyond the limits that ordinary people could bear. On the Central Pacific Railroad, for example, thousands of Chinese workers were killed. They wantonly abused immigrants who created great wealth for the country. In 2019, about 850,000 illegal immigrants were caught along the southern border, most of whom were roughly treated and their human rights severely violated. Between July 2017 and July 2020, the U. S. Immigration Department forcibly broke up more than 5,400 children and their parents along the southern border area, some of whom even died in custody.

[mystlnewsonline]

Bushawn Shelton Sentenced to 37 Years Imprisonment

Bushawn Shelton Plotted with Anthony Zottola, Sr., Among Others, to Kill Zottola’s Father and Brother (STL.News) Earlier today, at the federal courthouse in Brooklyn, United States District Judge Hector Gonzalez sentenced Bushawn Shelton to 37 years imprisonment for his leadership role in the October 4, 2018, killing of 71-year-old Sylvester Zottola and the July 11, 2018, attempted murder of Salvatore Zottola.  The defendant pleaded guilty to murder-for-hire and murder-for-hire conspiracy on August 22, 2022. Co-defendants Anthony Zottola and Himen Ross were sentenced to life imprisonment following their convictions at trial.  Co-defendants Herman Blanco, Arthur Codner, Jason Cummings, and Branden Peterson previously pleaded guilty and were sentenced to lengthy terms of imprisonment that ranged from 16 to 22 years. Breon Peace, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, and Michael J. Driscoll, Assistant Director-in-Charge, Federal Bureau of Investigation, New York Field Office (FBI), announced the sentence. “For more than a year, the defendant led the charge in stalking, beating, stabbing, and eventually shooting an elderly man purely for money,” stated United States Attorney Peace.  “The lengthy sentence meted out brings an end to the brutality of this violent group.  The community is safer as a result.” As proven at the trial of Shelton’s co-conspirators, Anthony Zottola, Sr., hired Bushawn Shelton to kill Zottola’s father, Sylvester, and his brother, Salvatore.  Shelton recruited numerous others to commit the murders, and together they engaged in a year-long conspiracy to carry out a series of violent attacks against Sylvester and Salvatore Zottola.  Among other attempts, on November 26, 2017, Sylvester Zottola was menaced at gunpoint by a masked individual.  On December 27, 2017, three men invaded Sylvester Zottola’s residence, struck him on the head with a gun, stabbed him multiple times, and slashed his throat.  Zottola survived the attack.  On July 11, 2018, a gunman shot Salvatore Zottola in the head, chest, and hand in front of his residence.  Zottola survived the shooting. Shelton arranged for the placement of a tracking device on Sylvester Zottola’s car, allowing co-defendant Himen Ross, a fellow Bloods gang member, to track Sylvester Zottola to a McDonald’s restaurant on Webster Avenue.  There, while Zottola waited at the drive-through to pick up a cup of coffee, Ross fatally shot him multiple times.  Ross and Shelton exchanged texts immediately after the hit, and then Shelton and Anthony Zottola exchanged texts in which Anthony was informed that his father had just been murdered.  Shelton texted Anthony Zottola: “Can we party today or tomorrow?” Anthony Zottola assured Shelton that he would have Shelton’s payment for carrying out the murder ready soon: “I have the cases of water in a day or so.” A photograph later recovered from one of Shelton’s cellular telephones depicts a cardboard box of bottled water as well as over $200,000 in banded currency. The government’s case is being handled by the Office’s Organized Crime and Gangs Section.  Assistant United States Attorneys Kayla C. Bensing, Emily J. Dean, Devon Lash, and Andrew M. Roddin are in charge of the prosecution, with the assistance of paralegal specialist Brittany Wissel.  Assistant United States Attorney Brian Morris assisted with forfeiture matters. SOURCE: U.S. Department of Justice Read the full article

[rowdownthrowdown]

"The vast majority of people who join the military dont have a choice"

Can you prove this? All facts ive seen suggest this is just flat out not true. The poor are *underrepresented* in the military, not over.

The military doesn't track socioeconomic class on intake so there's no decent statistics on it.

The commonly cited CFR article A) doesn't provide it's sources other than "Source: Office of the Undersecretary of Defense" which is literally useless for verification, B) doesn't stratify by enlisted vs officer which makes a huge difference, C) ranks income by neighborhood instead of actual familial income (and doesn't even define "neighborhood"), and D) fails to account for other factors ie high cost of living areas. Simply put, it doesn't break down a complex issue or account for confounding variables

Luckily the basis of research is compiling sources and when you do that a clear picture emerges. In any case, never form an opinion on one source no matter how good it is. A healthy dose of critical thinking is also required.

"Therefore, among the working class, those who have served in the military have tended to come from poorer circumstances, while there is low representation of the children of the very rich. Indeed, additional analysis (not shown here) finds that the highest income quartile was significantly less likely to have served than the lowest" (Lutz, 2008)

80.4% of active duty enlisted members have a High School Diploma or GED as their highest educational attainment in 2019, which is down from 86.9% in 2010 (Department of Defense, 2019) and 92% in 2006 (Rostker, 2006). This is in stark contrast to the 38.9% of High School Diploma, GED, or lower in the average US population in 2019 (Census Bureau, 2020). Furthermore, since 1987 the military cannot legally enlist anyone without at least a GED and only 10% of first time enlistments are allowed to be a GED (Department of Defense, n.d.) so this gap widens as 28.3% of general population with a High School Diploma/GED (which would be military eligible) vs 80.3% of enlisted military, a huge overrepresentation. In fact, all higher educational attainment (including Associates degrees, which are relatively easy to get in the military but do not earn a commission) is underrepresented in the military. Low educational attainment is very well proven to be concurrent with low socioeconomic class (American Psychological Association, 2017).

52.3% of active duty enlisted members are 25 years old or younger (Department of Defense, 2019) while all first time enlistments are an 8 year obligation (DD Form 4, 2020) which means that 52.3% chunk are on their first enlistment only, while an unknown amount of the next category (26-30 at 20.7%) may also be on their first enlistment. This disproves the idea that most of the military is choosing to remain in. While this cannot talk for individual motivation, logic would say that incentivizing does produce recruits but that these recruits leave once they have their incentive. Other possible causes for low retention could include disillusionment.

"The military learned it had to offer money for education, bonuses to enlist in certain occupations, and enlistment tours of different lengths. It needed to develop career opportunities that has civilian relevance and were a good preparation for adulthood." (Rostker, 2006) The military knows they are preying on people without education, without money, and without career prospects -- recruitment is designed that way. Combine that with the automatic shelter, food, and healthcare and you've got a pretty attractive package to someone who's been disadvantaged their whole life.

There's also solid evidence of military recruiters targeting poorer schools. Kershner and Harding's 2015 article found "the example of two similarly sized high schools in two Hartford suburbs: Avon and Bloomfield. Army recruiters visited Avon High, where only 5 percent of students qualify for free or reduced price lunch, four times during the 2011-2012 school year. Yet at Bloomfield High, where nearly half of students qualify for such assistance, recruiters made more than 10 times as many visits." Over 40 visits in one school year to a poorer school vs 4 in the richer school. That's targeting.

And this isn't new. "Military service in the World War II era provided American men from economically disadvantages backgrounds with unprecedented opportunity to better their lives" (Sampson and Laub, 1996). This has been the case for so long that it is engrained in culture that the military is a way to escape and advance. Familiarity with veterans is the leading indicator of joining the military for new recruits, while no college degree is also a fair indicator (Goldberg et al., 2018).

There are several programs to get veterans jobs post service including HIRE Vets, Veterans.gov, Federal Job Veteran Preference, Veteran and Military Transition Center, Hiring Our Heroes, state programs, individual company programs, and more. Many perceive military service as a lifelong career benefit since it grants access to this. It also interplays strongly with the hyperpatriotism in this country, but it's one of the only social sects with significant government assistance for job finding.

That's in addition to veteran assistance programs for food insecurity, homelessness, and medical care. There is literally socialism in this country for veterans where there isn't for the majority population.

To fix the military being a terribly corrupt set of war crimes in a red, white, and blue bow all you have to do is starve it. If we take the carrot dangled to recruit for the military (education, money, food, shelter, career opportunities -- things the military literally gives as joining promises) and give it to the general population we remove the desire to join for many. Which we should do anyway because all people deserve access to those things without having to be an unknowing corporate meat puppet with a gun.

Tl;Dr - The military preys on the disadvantaged so be angry at the upper echelon in the military and lawmakers, not the vast majority of the boots

American Psychological Association. (2017, July). Education and Socioeconomic Status Factsheet. Retrieved from https://www.apa.org/pi/ses/resources/publications/education

Census Bureau. (2020, March 30). Educational Attainment in the United States: 2019. Retrieved from https://www.census.gov/data/tables/2019/demo/educational-attainment/cps-detailed-tables.html

DD. (2020). Form 4 - Enlistment/Reenlistment Document - Armed Forces of the United States. Retrieved from https://www.esd.whs.mil/Portals/54/Documents/DD/forms/dd/dd0004.pdf

Department of Defense. (n.d.). Chapter 2 - The Recruiting Process. Retrieved from https://prhome.defense.gov/portals/52/Documents/POPREP/poprep99/html/chapter2/c2_recruiting.html

Department of Defense. (2019). 2019 Demographics Profile of the Military Community. Retrieved from https://download.militaryonesource.mil/12038/MOS/Reports/2019-demographics-report.pdf

Goldberg, M. S., Cheng, K., Huff, N. M., Kimko, D. D., & Saizan, A. M. (2018). Geographic Diversity in Military Recruiting. Institute for Defense Analyses. Retrieved from https://www.ida.org/-/media/feature/publications/g/ge/geographic-diversity-in-military-recruiting/d-9079.ashx.

Kershner, S., & Harding, S. (2019, February 21). Do Military Recruiters Belong in Schools? Retrieved from https://www.edweek.org/policy-politics/opinion-do-military-recruiters-belong-in-schools/2015/10

Lutz, A. (2008). Who Joins the Military? A look at Race, Class, and Immigration Status. Journal of Military and Political Sociology, 36(2). Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/48912025_Who_Joins_the_Military_A_Look_at_Race_Class_and_Immigration_Status.

Rostker, B. D. (2006). The Evolution of the All-Volunteer Force. RAND. Retrieved from https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB9195.html.

Sampson, R. J., & Laub, J. H. (1996). Socioeconomic Achievement in the Life Course of Disadvantaged Men: Military Service as a Turning Point, Circa 1940-1965. American Sociological Review, 61(3), 347. doi:10.2307/2096353

[creepingsharia]

Long Island: Muslim Woman Gets 13 Years for Providing Material Support to Islamic State

Zoobia Shahnaz provided more than $150,000 to ISIS and attempted to leave the U.S. to join ISIS. 

Earlier today, in federal court in Central Islip, Zoobia Shahnaz was sentenced to 13 years’ imprisonment by United States District Judge Joanna Seybert for providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization, specifically more than $150,000 to the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), and attempting to travel to Syria to join ISIS.  Shahnaz pleaded guilty in November 2018.   

John C. Demers, Assistant Attorney General for National Security, Richard P. Donoghue, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, William F. Sweeney, Jr., Assistant Director-in-Charge, Federal Bureau of Investigation, New York Field Office (FBI), and Dermot F. Shea, Commissioner, New York City Police Department (NYPD), announced the sentence.

As set forth in court filings and facts presented at the sentencing hearing, between March 2017 and July 2017, Shahnaz defrauded numerous financial institutions to obtain money for ISIS, including a loan for approximately $22,500.  Shahnaz also fraudulently obtained more than a dozen credit cards and used them to purchase approximately $62,000 in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies online.  Shahnaz then made multiple wire transfers totaling more than $150,000 to individuals and entities in Pakistan, China and Turkey that were fronts for ISIS.

Shahnaz accessed ISIS violent jihad-related websites and message boards, and social media and messaging pages of known ISIS recruiters, facilitators and financiers.  She also performed numerous internet searches for information that would facilitate her entry into Syria.  Court-authorized search warrants executed at Shahnaz’s residence on Long Island resulted in the seizure of terrorist and jihad-related propaganda, including a photograph of a suicide belt of explosives and a night vision scope. 

On July 31, 2017, Shahnaz was arrested at John F. Kennedy International Airport in Queens, New York, while attempting to board a flight with a layover in Istanbul, Turkey – a common point of entry for individuals travelling from western countries to join ISIS in Syria.      

The government’s case is being handled by the Office’s National Security and Cybercrime Section and Long Island Criminal Division.  Assistant United States Attorney Artie McConnell is in charge of the prosecution, with assistance provided by Trial Attorney Joseph Attias of the National Security Division’s Counterterrorism Section.    

[phroyd]

And that's simply all that is happening here, political use of The Justice Department before a difficult election, to get PR leverage. - Phroyd

" ... The opening of a criminal investigation is likely to raise alarms that Mr. Trump is using the Justice Department to go after his perceived enemies. ... Mr. Trump has made clear that he sees the typically independent Justice Department as a tool to be wielded against his political enemies. ... "

WASHINGTON — For more than two years, President Trump has repeatedly attacked the Russia investigation, portraying it as a hoax and illegal even months after the special counsel closed it. Now, Mr. Trump’s own Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation into how it all began.

Justice Department officials have shifted an administrative review of the Russia investigation closely overseen by Attorney General William P. Barr to a criminal inquiry, according to two people familiar with the matter. The move gives the prosecutor running it, John H. Durham, the power to subpoena for witness testimony and documents, to impanel a grand jury and to file criminal charges.

The opening of a criminal investigation is likely to raise alarms that Mr. Trump is using the Justice Department to go after his perceived enemies. Mr. Trump fired James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director under whose watch agents opened the Russia inquiry, and has long assailed other top former law enforcement and intelligence officials as partisans who sought to block his election.

Mr. Trump has made clear that he sees the typically independent Justice Department as a tool to be wielded against his political enemies. That view factors into the impeachment investigation against him, as does his long obsession with the origins of the Russia inquiry. House Democrats are examining in part whether his pressure on Ukraine to open investigations into theories about the 2016 election constituted an abuse of power.

The move also creates an unusual situation in which the Justice Department is conducting a criminal investigation into itself.

Mr. Barr’s reliance on Mr. Durham, a widely respected and veteran prosecutor who has investigated C.I.A. torture and broken up Mafia rings, could help insulate the attorney general from accusations that he is doing the president’s bidding and putting politics above justice.

It was not clear what potential crime Mr. Durham is investigating, nor when the criminal investigation was prompted. A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment.

Mr. Trump is certain to see the criminal investigation as a vindication of the years he and his allies have spent trying to discredit the Russia investigation. In May, Mr. Trump told the Fox News host Sean Hannity that the F.B.I. officials who opened the case — a counterintelligence investigation into whether his campaign conspired with Moscow’s election sabotage — had committed treason.

“We can never allow these treasonous acts to happen to another president,” Mr. Trump said. He has called the F.B.I. investigation one of the biggest political scandals in United States history.

Federal investigators need only a “reasonable indication” that a crime has been committed to open an investigation, a much lower standard than the probable cause required to obtain search warrants. However, “there must be an objective, factual basis for initiating the investigation; a mere hunch is insufficient,” according to Justice Department guidelines.

When Mr. Barr appointed Mr. Durham, the United States attorney in Connecticut, to lead the review, he had only the power to voluntarily question people and examine government files.

Mr. Barr expressed skepticism of the Russia investigation even before joining the Trump administration. Weeks after being was sworn in this year, he said he intended to scrutinize how it started and used the term “spying” to describe investigators’ surveillance of Trump campaign advisers. But he has been careful to say he wants to determine whether investigators acted lawfully.

“The question is whether it was adequately predicated,” he told lawmakers in April. “And I’m not suggesting that it wasn’t adequately predicated. But I need to explore that.”

Mr. Barr began the administrative review of the Russia investigation in May, saying that he had conversations with intelligence and law enforcement officials that led him to believethat the F.B.I. acted improperly, if not unlawfully.

The F.B.I. opened the investigation in late July 2016, code-named Crossfire Hurricane, after receiving information from the Australian government that a Trump campaign adviser had been approached with an offer of stolen emails that could damage Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

F.B.I. agents discovered the offer shortly after stolen Democratic emails were released, and the events, along with ties between other Trump advisers and Russia, set off fears that the Trump campaign was conspiring with Russia’s interference.

The F.B.I. did not use information from the C.I.A. in opening the Russia investigation, former American officials said. But agents’ views on Russia’s election interference operation crystallized by mid-August, after the C.I.A. director at the time, John O. Brennan, shared intelligence with Mr. Comey about it.

The C.I.A. did contribute heavily to the intelligence community’s assessment in early 2017 that Russia interfered in the 2016 election and tried to tip it in Mr. Trump’s favor, and law enforcement officials later used those findings to bolster their application for a wiretap on a Trump campaign adviser, Carter Page.

The special counsel who took over the Russia investigation in 2017, Robert S. Mueller III, secured convictions or guilty pleas from a handful of Trump associates and indictments of more than two dozen Russians on charges related to their wide-ranging interference scheme.

In his report, Mr. Mueller said that he had “insufficient evidence” to determine whether Mr. Trump or his aides engaged in a criminal conspiracy with the Russians but that the campaign welcomed the sabotage and expected to benefit from it.

Mr. Barr is closely managing the Durham investigation, even traveling to Italy to seek help from officials there to run down an unfounded conspiracy that is at the heart of conservatives’ attacks on the Russia investigation — that the Italian government helped set up the Trump campaign adviser who was told in 2016 that the Russians had damaging information that could hurt Clinton’s campaign.

But Italy’s intelligence services told Mr. Barr that they played no such role in the events leading to the Russia investigation, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte of Italy said in a news conference on Wednesday. Mr. Barr has also contacted government officials in Britain and Australia about their roles in the early stages of the Russia investigation.

Revelations so far about Mr. Durham’s investigation have shown that he has focused in his first months on the accusations that Mr. Trump’s conservative allies have made about the origins of the Russia inquiry in their efforts to undermine it. Mr. Durham’s efforts have prompted criticism that he and Mr. Barr are trying to deliver the president a political victory, though investigators would typically run down all aspects of a case to complete a review of it.

Mr. Durham is running the investigation with a trusted aide, Nora R. Dannehy, and a pair of retired F.B.I. agents. Other prosecutors are also assisting, people familiar with the investigation said.

In interviewing more than two dozen former and current F.B.I. and intelligence officials, Mr. Durham’s investigators have asked about any anti-Trump bias among officials who worked on the Russia investigation and about one aspect of the investigation that was at the heart of highly contentious allegations that they abused their powers: the secret application seeking a court order for a wiretap on Mr. Page.

Law enforcement officials suspected Mr. Page was the target of recruitment by the Russian government, which he has denied.

Mr. Durham has also asked whether C.I.A. officials might have somehow tricked the F.B.I. into opening the Russia investigation.

Mr. Durham has indicated he wants to interview former officials who ran the C.I.A. in 2016 but has yet to question either Mr. Brennan or James R. Clapper Jr., the former director of national intelligence. Mr. Trump has repeatedly attacked them as part of a vast conspiracy by the so-called deep state to stop him from winning the presidency.

Some C.I.A. officials have retained criminal lawyers in anticipation of being interviewed. It was not clear whether Mr. Durham was scrutinizing other former top intelligence officials. Adm. Michael S. Rogers, the former director of the National Security Agency, declined to say whether he had spoken with Mr. Durham’s investigators.

Mr. Durham also has yet to question many of the former F.B.I. officials involved in opening the Russia investigation.

As Mr. Durham’s investigation moves forward, the Justice Department inspector general is wrapping up his own inquiry into aspects of the F.B.I.’s conduct in the early days of the Russia investigation. Among other things, the inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz, is scrutinizing the application for a warrant to wiretap Mr. Page.

Mr. Barr has not said whether Mr. Durham’s investigation grew out of the inspector general’s findings or something that prosecutors unearthed while doing interviews or reviewing documents. But the inspector general’s findings, which are expected to be made public in coming weeks, could contribute to the public’s understanding of why Mr. Durham might want to investigate national security officials’ activities in 2016.

Though the inspector general’s report deals with sensitive information, Mr. Horowitz anticipates that little of it will be blacked out when he releases the document publicly, he wrote in a lettersent to lawmakers on Thursday and obtained by The New York Times.

Mr. Durham has delved before into the secret world of intelligence gathering during the Bush and Obama administrations. He was asked in 2008 to investigate why the C.I.A. destroyed tapes depicting detainees being tortured. The next year, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. appointed Mr. Durham to spearhead an investigation into the C.IA. abuses.

Career prosecutors had already examined many of the same cases and declined to bring charges, and in an echo of the Russia investigation, they fumed that Mr. Holder was revisiting the issue. Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, then the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, said that the abuses had been “exhaustively reviewed” and that a new inquiry could put national security at risk.

After nearly four years, Mr. Durham’s investigation ended with no charges against C.I.A. officers, including two directly involved in the deaths of two detainees, angering human rights activists.

Phroyd

[thetens-blog1]

Lagos Business School Young Talents Programme 2017

Lagos Business School Young Talents Programme 2017

Lagos Business School Young Talents Programme 2017 Lagos Business School Young Talents Programme 2017 – The purpose of the one-day programme is to help the school establish an ongoing relationship with the brightest university students in the country prior to and after their graduation from the university. The primary objective of engaging with these talented students is to expose them to a…

[elfnerdherder]

The Gunmetal Kiss: Chapter 6

[Support my Patreon] [Read on Ao3]

Well, guys, it’s here! This was a baby fic, but I’d love to thank all of you for the time and patience you’ve shown through the last couple of years of stagnant posting and random rambles of how much work sucks. I think I’ve settled into a groove of my new job now, and I’m hoping to get into a once a week update, kind of how I used to. Baby steps!

A special thanks to my patrons: @evertonem @starlit-catastrophe @kenobi-is-king @sylarana @frostylicker Duhaunt6, Mendacious Bean, Superlurk, and Cecily! You guys are the best!

Chapter 6:

May 8, 2017:

Nothing.

May 9, 2017:

Nothing.

May 10, 2017:

Nothing.

July 28, 2017:

Nothing.

October 13, 2017:

Nothing.

December 25, 2017:

Nothing.

January 1, 2018:

Nothing.

February 1, 2018:

Nothing.

March 1, 2018:

Nothing.

April 1, 2018:

Nothing.

May 1, 2018:

Nothing.

June 1, 2018:

Nothing.

July 1, 2018:

Nothing.

August 1, 2018:

Nothing.

September 1, 2018:

Nothing.

October 1, 2018:

Nothing.

November 1, 2018:

Nothing.

December 1, 2018:

Nothing.

December 31, 2018:

Nothing.

January 1, 2019:

And Time Froze.

           Will Graham died often. He died often, and nothing happened. People died, and nothing happened. Sometimes, he was commended for his work. Sometimes, he had a desire to put mirror shards in the eyes of his targets.

           He doesn’t, but sometimes he thinks about it.

           He’d told Alana it was a mirror, but it wasn’t, was it? He became, but he could become anything, and was he truly a person when he was constantly becoming something else? He thought of how Hannibal looked at him, hungry. How he’d slid that knife so smooth.

           He’d wanted to confess something about Mason Verger. Will Graham did work outside of the United States.

           Time passed, and nothing happened. Nothing happened because Will Graham was not a thing to retain information, but a thing to mirror the world around him just long enough to pass the power along. Never for himself, never himself, and nothing happened as the time passed. Will Graham wasn’t truly Will Graham. He was a ghost.

           Ghost Agents aren’t people. Will Graham never had feelings for Hannibal.

           Dying this time wasn’t anything special. It was nothing, but he knew it’d stain his ex-lover’s eyes forever, make them cry themselves to sleep. Enough they’d never know he was alive. Enough to know they’d not pry for him.

           Enough to know he’d never again exist to them.

           Despite the smell, sewers were the best of exits. Most of them were scarcely occupied by humans, and it led to avenues of quick getaways. Climbing out of the gutter and sliding out of the stained and wet jacket, he tossed it in the dumpster nearby and rounded the corner, picking up his bug-out bag.

           Standing poised before a bleeding sun and Will’s only escape, Hannibal Lecter’s knife glinted, reflected and nearly blinded Will. He paused for the briefest of moments, his mind reflecting, turning in on itself. He stood slowly and gripped the duffle bag tight, calculating.

           He couldn’t speak. He swallowed, throat tight, and his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. Nearly two years. Nearly two years, and Hannibal looked good.

           Hannibal had a knife in his hand. Hannibal’s hand cut throats so smooth.

           “You found me,” he said, hoarse.

           “I never lost you,” Hannibal explained calmly. “You simply kept your head down and refused to see.”

           Will held his breath just long enough to make it hurt. He exhaled slow, allowed it to burn.

           “You going to stick me with that?”

           “You were telling the truth the whole time, I think,” Hannibal said. “Bits and pieces, but true. I wondered, long after, if you had to doctor your own wounds most times, and that’s why they were so gruesome in the aftermath.”

           “I’m not going to get into a knife fight with you. I’ll subdue you and move on.”

           “I thought to throw away the hideous canvas, but it was a ship adrift at sea. It seemed somehow fitting for you.”

           “Enough, Hannibal.”

           “It was not enough,” Hannibal interrupted, curt. “It was not so near enough time as I’d have liked, and in truth, Will Graham, I don’t believe it was near enough time for you, either.”

           He tasted Ortolan and brimstone. Will bit at a dry spot on his lip, tore hard enough bleed. His grip on his bag didn’t falter, but his breath did.

           “I thought you a remarkably difficult read until I realized it wasn’t that I couldn’t read you, but that you were never quite yourself to read. I miscalculated your affections, or so I supposed until I saw what it was for you to mirror someone’s affection back onto themselves. Then, I felt rather lucky in realizing I was able to experience a genuine intimacy with you.”

           “You walk a fine line between arrogance and confidence.”

           “You’d claim what you and I shared somehow compared to the watered-down version delivered in the coffee shop to Abigail Hobbs, whose grief and anger towards her father drew her into witness protection after your death? Or your romantic interludes with Nathanial, who could not convince you to come back to bed after you’d sufficiently pleased him?”

           “If I was so unobservant I didn’t notice the third man in the room, I should retire,” said Will. It sounded far droller than he felt.

           “You’re hungry for something, aren’t you?” Hannibal asked, and there it was: that look in his eye, that hungry look that made something inside of Will hungry, too.

           “No,” Will rasped.

           “You once wanted to get to know me,” Hannibal urged, and his voice softened. It wasn’t rough, but hesitant, something smacking of vulnerability, but Will didn’t want to think of that right now. “I had thought you’d maybe like to know me still.”

           He thought about fighting the Great, Red Dragon, how Hannibal had slit his throat so smooth. How his eyes burned, and there was a set to his jaw that hinted at a protective nature, an urge to act because he wouldn’t stand the notion that Will could get hurt again.

           Will stupidly thought of Alana wondering who’d first got in his head and scrambled it all up.

           “We have to go,” he said, and he glanced to his watch.

           “Will –”

           “I’ll…I’ll talk, but we have to go.”

           Hannibal looked likely to resist, but after a brief, taut second, he relaxed. “My car is less likely to be found.”

           It wasn’t a lie. Will gripped his duffle bag tight, then relaxed. He gave a brief nod and gestured for Hannibal to lead the way.

           There was a certain edge to be the one holding the keys to the car. It was a fucking Bentley, and Will allowed himself the luxury of melting into the leather. The last mission had been tiring, in truth.

           There’d been a lot of missions that’d been tiring, if that was something he was willing to admit. Maybe not yet, not at a moment like this.

           His duffle bag rested between his legs. In it held the key to a thousand identities, a thousand opportunities. He wasn’t sure if his mind was turning or reeling. “Tell me about Mason Verger.”

           Hannibal held both hands on the wheel as they peeled through casual suburbs and took stop signs rather than street light intersections. Will saw the care of it, and his fingers fidgeted with the lock button.

           “Mason Verger was a pedophile, and my work colleague shared it with me after a troubling day at set when she broke down crying and couldn’t continue the scene.

           “I…do not have a tolerance for those that think themselves above the repercussions of harming the innocent that are in no place to protect themselves. I thought it important that I convince him of his wrongdoing, therefore I set out the careful planning of our friendship and his inevitable destruction.”

           As orange, dull streetlights striped and skewered his face, it made his grim smile feral. Will liked it. It made him remember Dolarhyde dying. Will was shot, and Hannibal hadn’t hesitated in stabbing Dolarhyde so that Dolarhyde couldn’t stab back.

           The scar was ugly, hidden only by a beard Will painstakingly maintained. It was difficult to blend in with a scar like that. Difficult to do your job when people kept asking questions.

           “It was only one party, but it was enough. We procured drugs from his personal stash, and he didn’t notice that I mixed a potent blend of psychedelics into the powder. He took them without thought, and I’m sure you know the rest.”

           “How the hell did you get a hold of something like that,”

           “I have a friend in the pharmacy business. Big pharma is actually a large problem that the federal government should look into,” he chided lightly.

           “Not my job.”

           “No, but I’d like to know about that,” he replied, and at the next stop sign he grabbed one of Will’s fidgeting hands, letting it rest in the neutral space between them on the armrest.

           “Hannibal—”

           “You said you would talk.”

           He did say he’d talk. Will chewed his bottom lip and nodded in approval at Hannibal’s turn of head towards the interstate. Interstates were safe at night. Safer than people thought, so long as you didn’t drive like an ass and draw attention to yourself.

           He waited for a few miles before he spoke. Hannibal’s patience was fine-tuned and calm, not at all intrusive. He knew Will had no sort of idea where they were going, knew he was at the mercy of Hannibal’s need to know.

           And Will had known that walking towards the car, yet he’d gotten in anyway.

           “What you saw was me using my hyper-empathy disorder in order to so completely ingrain myself into the space of another person that I’m able to aptly anticipate their needs or any potential hazards of them being within my workspace and mission. I was recruited because despite that, it doesn’t hamper my ability to kill someone, should the need arise.”

           Admitting that was easier than admitting to the rest of the job. Other people had scrutinized his psyche before; one more was nothing.

           “You’re good at it.”

           “As are you,” Will countered.

           “When I care about something, Will, I will protect it at all costs. I know what it is to be unable to protect the things that I love, and I promised myself that it would never happen again.”

           There was something in the way that he said ‘love’ that made Will’s breath stutter past his lips.

           “You don’t know me, Hannibal. You can’t suggest you love me.”

           “I know more than others, otherwise you would not be so defensive of it. Instead, you’d be cruel, as you were to the rest of your targets that now think you dead.”

           “You want me to be cruel to you?” Will asked –he didn’t appreciate the sound of it being more incredulous than threatening.

           “No, I’m informing you that if you didn’t want me to follow you, you should have made me think you were dead. You ensured such a thing from every target after me, which leads me to assume you wanted me to find you.”

           Will was still more baffled than angry that Hannibal had found him. Of all the stupid, risky, outlandish things someone had done just to get his attention…

           “That’s not unreasonable, given the evidence,” Will allowed. Begrudgingly.

           “And given how good you are at disappearing, I’d promised myself should I get you in this car, Will Graham, I wasn’t going to let you out of my sight again,” he continued, amiably. “As I said, I want to get to know you. I think I’d be more than pleased with what I find.”

           Will looked at their hands clasped. He thought of the boat adrift at sea, likely still on the wall of that bedroom inside of a house that was dusty and abandoned. He wondered if Jack would comb through that house and find himself standing in front of that canvas. If he did, he would more than likely think of Hannibal asking Will if he wanted it back. He’d ponder it for years after, should they get away with this. Had that been a codeword? Did Will betray the organization, and I was too stupid to see it?

           The bag at his feet held enough futures to last a lifetime of over and over again. Rebirth and death. Rebirth and death.

           Red Dragon had tied Hannibal in a fisherman’s knot. In his spare time, Will quite enjoyed the sport of it. Maybe he’d like to know about that? Maybe they’d find a place in the forest where no prying eyes could see?

           Will smiled. “I’d like to get to know you, too.”

           There was nothing but miles of road behind them. Just ahead lay every possibility.

[captain-ciro-blog1]

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[antoine-roquentin]

The new German left coalition, Aufstehen, aims to break the morbid consensus of perpetual ‘grand coalition’. Unsurprisingly Wolfgang Streeck, one of the few sociologists who would think to ask the question How Will Capitalism End?, is one of its partisans, making the case for the coalition in a provocative long-form article for Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. A long-time supporter of Die Linke, he sees in the emerging coalition the chance to realign the left on the basis of an orientation to power.

If the ‘realists’ of Die Linke coalesce with the left-wing of social democracy, they could legitimately aim to govern. They could break the deflationary fiscal regime, end the taboo on taxing corporations and the rich, end debt rules that prevent municipalities from writing off their debts and the government from credit-financing infrastructure, address class and regional inequalities, and abandon a decrepit US-aligned foreign policy of propping up some corrupt governments and bombing others. This is an agenda that most on the Left would support.

So why is there a need for a new coalition? Die Linke is surely the one German party that has consistently supported policies like this. What would yet another realignment achieve beyond a further step down the road to a fractal Left? What, given the ambition of Streeck’s agenda, is there to be ‘realists’ about? What is the issue over which there is such “moralising away of fundamental questions” that one needs a new Left?

The issue, at least for the ‘realists’, is immigration. Specifically, it is Die Linke’s commitment to open borders, and its repudiation of former leader Sahra Wagenknecht for dabbling in anti-refugee rhetoric. The ‘realists’ are the Wagenknecht wing, the ‘sectarians’ are the delegates who voted against her. Unable to win the argument in Die Linke, the ‘realists’ are betting on a new political vehicle. This is the aspect of Streeck’s case that I want to comment on. Or rather, because he submerges the argument in the general rhetorical sweep of his recent Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung article, this is the part I want to expand on.

One has to admire, first of all, the parsimony of Streeck’s political taxonomy. As far as arguments on the Left go, there is only one fork in the tree of possibilities. On one branch, we find ‘realists’, accommodating the anti-immigrant sentiment which the Alternative for Germany (AfD) capitalises on. On the other, ‘sectarians’, sacrificing political efficacy to moral posturing, and using the AfD’s far right politics to avoid the issues they raise.

If these sound like the sorts of one-dimensional protagonists one might encounter in a morality fable, they are. Nonetheless, Streeck says, the prevalence of preening sectarians means that the “big questions” are suppressed. Capitalism, democracy, climate, war, “globalism��� and “national statehood” are off the agenda while purists ineffectually worry about the “niceties of national and international asylum law”.

From this, one might get the impression that the ‘realists’, led by Aufstehen founder Sahra Wagenknecht, are desperately keen to stop talking about refugees. Yet one thing that one really can’t say about them is that they’ve driven refugees down the political agenda. It may not be the issue they spend most time talking about, but it is the issue that defines them as distinct from their opponents on the Left. Granted that they do, in fact, also talk about war, climate, inequality and capitalism, that wasn’t ever controversial in Die Linke.

Indeed, it was Wagenknecht who chose to make refugees the issue, in a deliberate and predictably controversial break with Die Linke’s policy, by attacking Angela Merkel from the right, beginning in August 2015. Merkel had, in response to a popular sentiment in favour of letting in Syrian refugees, undertook a short-lived pirouette to Wilkommenskultur. The Dublin Regulation, an EU law which says that member-states have to process applications from asylum seekers, was suspended. The purpose of the law is to ensure that migrants who arrive in destinations like Greece, Italy and Spain, stay there. It is linked to an apparatus designed to deter refugees from making the journey to Europe, from illegal ‘pushback’ agreements with Greece and Turkey to the harassment of rickety boats on the Mediterranean seas by Frontex operations. But Germany, for a brief moment, said it would welcome the refugees.

One would be entitled to be a little cynical of Merkel. Though often mistaken for some sort of bleeding-heart liberal, she had cheerfully baited migrants and Muslims, and declared multiculturalism a failure, and bears significant responsibility for the fortification of ‘Fortress Europe’. But when Wagenknecht attacked her, it was for suggesting that Germany could handle the refugee inflow. She later blamed Merkel’s “uncontrolled border opening” and police cuts for causing a major attack carried out by an ISIS supported in Berlin in December 2016.

Nor was Wagenknecht, in making this claim, weighing in with an argument that was under-represented in the political spectrum. The giddy thrill of transgression that palpably comes with such ostensibly hard-headed ‘realism’ is entirely unwarranted. Her argument that open borders was to blame echoed the AfD. The complaint about police budget cuts echoed the social-democratic vice-chancellor, Sigmar Gabriel. More broadly, in attacking the momentarily liberal-sounding Merkel fom the right, Wagenknecht was cutting with the grain of established government policy and rhetoric. There are, further, many ways to describe what such rhetoric does. For example it, demagogically, leverages the emotional response to a devastating event to advance a political argument. But one thing it definitely doesn’t do is break the mould, forcing the long-neglected issues of capitalism, democracy, climate and war back on the agenda.

Still, what if the argument was correct? Shouldn’t that be the most important thing? Should political correctness censor the truth? What could be more typical of the moral Left than its fidelity to abstractions over mucky realities? Anis Amri, the Berlin killer, was after all an asylum seeker from Tunisia: QED. I will not evade this, but I will just briefly pause to point out what might not be obvious, viz. that majority of terror attacks in Europe continue to be carried out by citizens of Europe, not migrants, and that the UN’s study could find no evidence of any correlation between migration and terror. So there is already a problem with conflating border controls with counterterrorism.

That said, Anis Amri was definitely not the beneficiary of any “uncontrolled border opening”. Amri had arrived in the Italian island of Lampedusa by boat in 2011, like tens of thousands of other migrants fleeing the turbulence of the Arab spring. He was held in a detention camp for refugees. Why is there a detention camp for refugees in Lampedusa? I’ll come back to that. When thousands of the detainees rioted, in protest against the notoriously awful conditions – which the island’s mayor compared to a concentration camp – he was among those locked up for it.

It was in a European jail that Amri was spotted and recruited by the jihadists who would link him to ISIS. He was already in the Schengen Zone when he migrated to Germany in July 2015, shortly after his release but before Merkel’s announcement. And while he did apply for asylum, he was turned down and scheduled for deportation – like most asylum applicants in Germany. While the deportation was going through the courts, he was under surveillance by German security services. They determined that he didn’t pose a threat. They were wrong, of course. But neither in the detail nor in the big picture does the Amri case prove anything about Merkel’s suspension of the Dublin Regulation, let alone that Germany is a soft touch and that refugee controls are too lax.

So, far from thinking asylum is a marginal issue, or a distraction, Wagenknecht and allies clearly think it an issue worth fighting over. One for which they are prepared, at key moments, to say things that are emotive, grossly inaccurate, and just a little bit sleazy.

It is clear enough what Wagenknecht was trying to do, and what the ‘realists’ in Aufstehen are now trying to do. Die Linke had been suffering from a prolonged political stalemate. Far from gaining amid capitalist crisis and eurozone turmoil, it had seen its vote stagnate since making a small gain in the 2009 Federal elections. In 2017, it was beaten into fifth place by the FDP and the AfD. The Left Party lost eleven percent of its voters to the AfD between 2013 and 2017, although a far bigger share of far right votes came from the CDU/CSU, and more still were previous non-voters.

Wagenknecht and her allies think this is because Die Linke is out of touch with its ‘traditional’ supporters. The older, less educated manual workers in the East who voted AfD are not reached by squeaky-clean, sanctimonious middle-class activists crying about dead refugees. The rage against refugees, they think, reflects a misdirected class anger on the part of the poor. This poor man’s economism patronises people. It treats them as victims of an astonishingly crude form of ‘false consciousness’, taking no account of the elaborate systems of perception and values in which such beliefs are grounded. Not to mention the sheer stubborn, cussed delight with which people invest their beliefs. It doesn’t ask what it might mean, in terms of their attachment to hierarchies and competition, if people are more offended by refugees than by class injustice.

Yet it is not just an argument about false consciousness. Rather than alienating those who vote for the AfD, the ‘realists’ proceed, the Left needs to understand and address their legitimate concerns, then give them a radical gloss. In an article written with playwright Bernd Stegemann for Die Zeit, Wagenknecht rebukes the Left for feel-good purity, oblivious to the fact that refugees compete for “scarce resources at the bottom of society” and can be a little bit scary and strange at times. Notice that Wagenknecht and Stegemann aren’t, themselves, claiming to be affrighted by refugees with their strange ways. I suspect they would be mortified to confess to such a disposition. For that reason, the attempt confer a certain rationality and grown-up dignity on an everyday prejudice reeks of condescension and bad faith.

It is also, finally, illogical. There is no evidence that the anti-refugee position is driven by any practical experience of competition or brushes with any frightening foreign culture. To the contrary, the AfD vote in 2017 was highest in the areas with the lowest share of foreign-born population: an utterly typical pattern. By that time, moreover, Wagenknecht’s rhetoric had been prominently broadcast across all media for two years. If it was going to woo those racist voters, one might have expected it to do so by then. Instead, it may well have given some voters the motivation they needed to jump ship.

As Aufstehen was launched, Wagenknecht and Stegemann co-wrote another article for the Nordwest-Zeitung, calling for a “realistic” immigration policy, steering a convivially middling course between two unpalatable extremes: “the resentment of the AfD” and “a limitless welcome culture”. Such a policy would fund those volunteers looking after refugees, without allowing people smugglers “to dictate which people can reach Europe by illegal means”. This is a soothing formulation. Realism. Who wants to be unrealistic? Smugglers. Who wants to be on their side? Neither this extreme nor that extreme. Who doesn’t want nuance?

The ‘realists’ are in no way breaking new ground with such rhetoric, so familiar from centrist triangulation. It is not as exciting as blaming open borders for terrorism, but it is utterly conventional for the politicians who empower traffickers by criminalising refugees, to then blame the traffickers. And even, when the predictable casualties wash up in their dozens, even their hundreds, on an Italian beach, threaten to bomb them. Yet, in a world where transport is becoming ever cheaper, what is it that gives exploitation-mongers such leverage? Why, to put it more concretely, has there been a spike of drownings in the Mediterranean in recent years, as those rickety boats run by the traffickers sink?

The number one reason, according to the UN’s International Organization for Migration (IOM), is the ramping up of European border controls, including strategies of “illegal pushback” by land. These strategies have been formalised by Merkel in deals with both Turkey and Greece. Deals which have been faulted for violating Article 4 of the European Convention on Human Rights, outlawing the collective expulsion of aliens.

These policies didn’t follow a huge influx of refugees. The flow of irregular migrants, only a minority of whom were refugees, had fallen sharply in the 2000s. The share of irregular migrants as a proportion of the population has varied from 0.38 to 0.77% of the total European population. There was a short-lived spike in 2015, driven by the Syrian civil war: with one million arriving by sea alone, according to data kept by the IOM. In 2016, it fell to 387,985 by land and sea. In 2017, the figure was 176,452. In a continent of 741.4 million, with over five million born each year, and even assuming that every single new arrival was accepted and then contributed nothing by way of work and taxes, this is simply not the crisis-inducing burden that Wagenknecht has claimed.

It is always a risk to play the numbers game. For a lot of people, any number is too high when it’s refugees and immigrants. They have been defined in advance as a problem, by newspapers, politicians and policies intended to demonise them. To downplay the number of refugees implies that it’s just as well there are fewer, because ‘they’ are indeed a problem. Worse, this tends to have a retroactive effect. If new migrants, refugees or not, are defined as a problem and a burden, then it follows that they must always have been a problem and a burden. Therefore today’s citizens, whose parents and grandparents arrived as migrants, are always potentially a problem and a burden. But it is useful to underline just how separated from reality anti-asylum rhetoric has become.

The logical position, if you’re anti-trafficker, is to wind down the panic, and roll back the policies known as ‘Fortress Europe’. Rather than spending €25bn over six years to expand the EU borders apparatus, let more refugees in and let them build new lives. And, to her credit, Wagenknecht has in the past voted against asylum restrictions, and called for such invidious measures as the Dublin Regulation to be permanently cancelled. Yet, that increasingly is not the tenor of her rhetoric around immigration. And nor, in view of the publicity around Austehen, will it be the tenor of the new organisation.

It would be convenient to dismiss this as mere political opportunism. And, in part, it is: to give up difficult strategic terrain for short-term, tactical gains, is the essence of opportunism.

Nationalism and anti-immigrant racism have long been major pull factors drawing millions to the Right. The centre-left traditionally attempts to neutralise it, electorally, by appropriating it. Shortly before losing the federal election in 2005, Schroeder unavailingly mimicked Merkel’s attack on multiculturalism, worrying that immigrants were failing to integrate, creating “lawless zones or parallel societies”. Their coalition partners, the Greens, joined in: “integration is no game”, they said, abjuring multiculturalism “if it means that anyone can do whatever they want”.

This was not a response to a real situation. Multiculturalism had never meant anyone doing “whatever they want”. Germany was not dotted with “lawless zones”. But the SPD and Greens believed that others believed in this fantasy, and it was easier to attempt to ventriloquise them than abandon their hardline neoliberal reform agenda. It is difficult not to see an echo of this in the Wagenknecht strategy, from demagoguery about terrorism to middle-steering, difference-splitting rhetoric about the AfD. But, even in cynical, electoral realpolitik terms, it doesn’t work. It never works. It merely sustains the emotional basis for racism, what Spinoza called the ‘sad passions’. And those who want immigration-bashing can usually smell a bullshitter and will vote for the real Armani. If the radical-left doesn’t defend immigrants and challenge the racism driving the AfD vote, even at the cost of offending the sensibilities of potential voters, no one else will. And the beneficiaries will be the Right.

It is not just opportunism, however. This is where Streeck’s piece does usefully clarify the stakes. In his sophisticated analyses of capitalism’s modes of crisis management, and the brick wall it hit in 2008, Streeck has repeatedly asserted the legitimacy of the national state against globalisation. If capitalism is to be subordinated once more to democratic control, the key strategic locus for that control is the nation-state, which is not just a material fact but a legitimate civic and political community. In this he opposes the necessarily rooted nationality of democratic citizenship to the cosmopolitanism of investors and bankers.

For Streeck, as for Lafontaine, Bernie Sanders, and many others on the social-democratic Left, immigration controls are essential for any viable left-wing government. If you have open borders, Streeck warns, it is harder to regulate labour markets and suppress wage inequality. You can’t take account of what infrastructural capacity there is to support migration. A “pragmatic” policy would dispense with such abstractions and determine socially-just criteria for admissions and exclusions. Points systems, for example, as well as means to keep out undesirables. Given, moreover, that Streeck accepts the nation-state as the only viable locus of social solidarity and democracy, open borders is morally unacceptable. Hence, he worries about fellow citizens – AfD voters, one presumes – being declared “Nazis and racists” because they don’t want the collective goods they have financed through taxation “to be declared morally liable to being expropriated”. It is not clear whom the expropriators are supposed to be here, if not migrants.

Of course, believing all of this need not lead one to engage in the kinds of public baiting that some of the ‘realists’ have. One could believe every word of the above and still think that there should be fewer and less restrictive border controls than there currently are. One could, as Streeck does, flatly dismiss the open borders position, much as one might dismiss the case for flying saucers, without thinking that one can somehow bait-and-switch racist voters. There are as many varieties of ‘realism’ as there are ‘sectarianism’.

Yet, the fact that in the case of the ‘realists’ he lauds, it does lead to demagogic baiting – and soft-peddling the argument with the AfD, and vague genuflections to the ‘issues’ they raise – is grounds for questioning it.

Is it really plausible to oppose nation to capital in the way that Streeck and so many other social-democrats do? How ‘cosmopolitan’, really, are investors and bankers? Are they not wholly dependent on nation-states to furnish them with stable currency and infrastructures and advance the global institutions which entrench property rights, investor rights and capital mobility? Are they not largely integrated into their respective national states? Has the strength of the nation-state really waned, or is it more the case that the position within nation-states of subaltern groups, and their democratic self-expression, has waned? Is the Left’s task to re-empower national states and to rally round the civic communities subtending them, or to shift the balance of power within them?

On the question of migration, it is not clear that what Streeck adumbrates by way of strengthening the nation-state’s role is in any sense inconvenient to capital. In what way would a points system, for instance, not subordinate labour mobility to the interests of capital, and further entrench labour market segregation? In what way is it better for workers that states assume more right to restrict their mobility in the coming years? Presumably the idea is to use tighter borders to create tighter labour markets and support wage claims supposedly threatened by competition from migrant labour.

This is known as the “lump of labour fallacy”, neglecting as it does the fact that migration tends to increase total employment, rather than raise competition for existing employment. Even in the Schengen Area, where the ‘pull factors’ are shaped by institutionalised precarity, weak unions and emaciated welfare, there is little evidence of such effects in the aggregate. Even having a points system in place, however, doesn’t stop migrants from being blamed for low wages, despite the paucity of evidence. To put it bluntly, whatever immigration regime you have, there will always be people falsely blaming social problems on immigration. Not because it’s the fault of immigration but because some people are xenophobic or racist. Why should the Left give ground to this?

Finally, is the nation-state really the exclusive plausible basis of democracy and social solidarity, as Streeck suggests in his debate with Adam Tooze? The Left didn’t always think so. Much of its history has been characterised by social movements and alliances which deliberately practiced democracy and solidarity on scales other than the nation. This is a matter of taste, no doubt. But I prefer the Left that is uncompromisingly in solidarity with migrants and refugees, recognising them as class brothers and sisters, to the Left that will throw them under the bus for the mirage of “political power and responsibility”.

[atlanticcanada]

Early childhood educators in Nova Scotia will get a pay raise

Early childhood educators in Nova Scotia will soon see a significant increase in their rate of pay.

The provincial government announced Tuesday that most of the 2,600 early childhood educators in regulated child-care settings in Nova Scotia are set to receive a pay raise in the range of 30 per cent.

Some early childhood educators will see a raise between 14 and 43 per cent, depending on their classification level and experience.

The wage increase will be retroactive to July 4.

"This investment in wages is decades overdue," said Minister of Education and Early Childhood Development Becky Druhan in a news release Tuesday.

"It will help grow the early childhood education workforce and the child-care sector overall as we transition to a publicly funded system that provides reliable, affordable, quality and accessible care to families. We understand that change impacts the operations of child care, and we will support centres as we work through these changes."

The province says it will provide additional funding to employers by Nov. 1, in an effort to allow operators to pay staff in accordance with the new wage scale by mid-November.

The new wage scale will apply to Level 1, 2, and 3 early childhood educators and directors working in licensed centres and family home child-care agencies that receive funding from the province.

"This initiative, like other initiatives under the Canada-Nova Scotia Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care Agreement, such as lowering of parent fees and creating new spaces, is setting the stage for transformational change," said Christine McLean, associate professor in the department of child and youth studies at Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax, in the release.

"It is moving early learning and child care in Nova Scotia from a patchwork of services and service delivery models to a publicly funded and publicly managed system, one that recognizes child care as a common public good and not a market-based service where a parent is 'lucky' to find, afford or access suitable child care"

The cost of the wage increase for early childhood educators is estimated to cost taxpayers about $100 million each year, cost-shared through the federal-provincial Child Care Agreement. According to the provincial government, Nova Scotia currently spends about $25 million each year in wages to child care operators. With the bump in wages, the province will be spending $75.4 million.

Druhan noted that more work is needed on a benefits plan, including retirement benefits. She says the details of the plan will be rolled out sometime in 2023.

Beginning in 2023, the provincial government says it is set to spend an additional $120 million over three years on early learning and child care.

CHILD CARE CRISIS

For months, daycare operators have been sounding the alarm on what they say is a child-care crisis in the province. Operators have said they are struggling to recruit and retain educators, leading to staffing shortages. They say the shortages, combined with the rising costs of operating a daycare, are creating the crisis.

Some daycare operators have also said they are losing staff to the province's pre-primary program, which launched in 2017.

The issues have forced some daycares in the province to close their doors, leaving many parents scrambling. The Fall River Childcare Centre announced this month that it will close next month.

Nova Scotia has pledged to create 9,500 new early learning and child-care spaces by 2025, with 1,500 of those new seats in place by the end of this year. That promise is tied to its funding deal with Ottawa.

With files from The Canadian Press

from CTV News - Atlantic https://ift.tt/5ZAQGDR

[creepingsharia]

Ohio: Muslim Pleads Guilty in al Qaeda Plot to Bomb July 4th Parade in Cleveland

“We serve Allah...We fight our enemies. We destroy them and destroy those who try to oppose…”

A Maple Heights man pleaded guilty to crimes related to his plot to launch a terrorist attack in Cleveland on Independence Day. The announcement was made by Assistant Attorney General of National Security John C. Demers, U.S. Attorney Justin Herdman for the Northern District of Ohio, and Special Agent in Charge Eric B. Smith for the FBI Cleveland Field Office.

Demetrius Nathaniel Pitts, aka Abdur Raheem Rafeeq, aka Salah ad-Deen Osama Waleed, 50, pleaded guilty to attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization, threats against the President of the United States and threats against family members of the President of the United States.

According to an affidavit filed in the case, between 2015 and 2017, Pitts expressed anti-American sentiments and expressed a desire to recruit people to kill Americans.  The defendant expressed a desire to meet with an al Qaeda “brother” and in June he was introduced to an FBI employee acting in an undercover capacity (UCE), who Pitts believed was such a “brother.”

Pitts and the UCE met in Walton Hills, Ohio, in 2018, where they discussed launching an attack for al Qaeda during the July 4th holiday.

Pitts said: “I’m trying to figure out something that would shake them up on the 4th of July.”  He later stated: “What would hit them at their core?  Blow up in the, have a bomb blow up in the 4th of July parade.”

Pitts searched Google for a map of downtown Cleveland.  After learning the fireworks would be launched from Voinovich Park, Pitts said: “Oh there you go. Oh yeah.”  He was also pleased the park was near the U.S. Coast Guard station, the Army Corps of Engineers, and the Celebrezze Federal Building.

The meeting concluded with Pitts indicating to the UCE that he would travel to downtown Cleveland soon to take photographs and videotape footage as part of surveillance efforts of Voinovich Park and the U.S. Coast Guard station.  He also expressed a desire to take a tour of the U.S. Coast Guard station to gain as much information as he could about the layout of the facility.

On June 25, Pitts met with an FBI confidential human source (CHS) in Maple Heights, Ohio, for to retrieve items used to conduct surveillance for the July 4th attack.

On June 26, Pitts contacted the UCE via text message and relayed that he had completed the reconnaissance of the designated spots in downtown Cleveland and that he desired to “destroy the government.”

Pitts also indicated he intended to travel to Philadelphia, since Philadelphia is his hometown and he knows it best.  Pitts indicated it was his “job” to ��go look at the base of the ground” and that it was up to other “brothers” to complete other parts of the job.

On June 27, Pitts met with the CHS and turned over the phone that contained the reconnaissance photos and videos, so they could be provided to the al Qaeda brothers.

Later on June 27, Pitts and the UCE met in Maple Heights then drove to downtown Cleveland, where they discussed the impending July 4th bombing.

“And I’m gonna be downtown when the – when the thing go off.  I’m gonna be somewhere cuz I wanna see it go off,” Pitts said.

A search of the phone that Pitts provided to the CHS revealed that he made two videos in which he pledged allegiance.  He stated, in part: “We serve Allah . . . We fight our enemies.  We destroy them and destroy those who try to oppose…”

The phone also had four videos taken by Pitts that show him walking down East 9th Street in Cleveland, pointing out potential targets such as the federal building, the Coast Guard station and St. John’s Cathedral, which he said could be taken “off the map.”

On July 1, Pitts met with the UCE in Garfield Heights, Ohio, for Pitts to explain his plan for Philadelphia.  Pitts said he planned to travel there to conduct reconnaissance for a future attack in Philadelphia.  Pitts stated a truck bomb packed with explosives, such as the one used in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, would be the best way to cause maximum damage.

Pitts was reminded by the UCE that people would die and body parts would by flying around.  Pitts responded “I don’t care” and that he had “no regrets,” would be able to “go to sleep” and “I don’t give a (expletive).”

Pitts also pleaded guilty today to threatening to kill the President of the United States and his immediate family members, namely his daughter and son-in-law.

Pitts is scheduled to be sentenced on Feb. 11, 2020. Under the terms of his guilty plea, Pitts is likely to be sentenced to 14 years in prison followed by a lifetime of supervised release.

[phroyd]

LENDON SCOTT CRAWFORD was a mechanic at General Electric in Schenectady, New York. A tall, slender, middle-aged man with rectangular eyeglasses, he was married with three children. By appearances, he was an unremarkable middle-class American.

But beneath Crawford’s vanilla exterior lurked a white supremacist angry about President Barack Obama’s election and contemptuous of upstate New York’s sizable Muslim community. And he had ambitious plans to transform his hatred into violence.

He wanted to build a “death ray,” a portable, remote-controlled radiological weapon made from medical equipment and off-the-shelf electronics. He’d load the weapon into a van with tinted windows, drive it to a nearby mosque, scurry away to a safe distance, and switch it on remotely using a smartphone. Anyone in its path would be radiated and left to die a slow, mysterious death. He even had a pithy nickname for his weapon: “Hiroshima on a light switch.”

Crawford’s killing machine was never built. He was convicted at trial in August 2015 of attempting to use a radiological dispersal device and a weapon of mass destruction. He is serving 30 years in prison.

His case is remarkable not so much for its absurdity — federal agents admitted that his imagined weapon was likely impossible to make — but for how prosecutors handled it. Crawford’s co-defendant, an engineer named Eric J. Feight who had agreed to build the weapon’s remote control, pleaded guilty to providing material support to terrorism — the first and only time federal prosecutors have used the material support law against a domestic extremist since 9/11, according to a review of federal prosecutions by The Intercept.

The material support law is prosecutors’ tool of choice for hauling international terrorists into federal court — more than 400 international terrorism defendants have faced material support charges since 9/11. But the Justice Department has been reluctant to use this expansive and powerful law, which allows defendants to be prosecuted for providing minimal, and at times, inconsequential, support to a violent plot, against domestic terrorists.

The rarity of such charges has helped drive a false narrative that domestic terrorism is not punishable under existing anti-terrorism laws. “Why is there no criminal statute for domestic terrorism?” CBS News asked in October 2017. “Americans Are Surprised Domestic Terrorism Isn’t A Federal Crime,” HuffPost declared last April.

In fact, the government has ample room to go after domestic terrorism under existing laws. The material support law has two parts. The first can be applied to anyone who commits or assists with a terrorist attack, including one rooted in a domestic ideology, so long as the crime involves one of about 50 proscribed offenses, including bombing government buildings, murdering government employees, using weapons of mass destruction, and hostage taking. The second and more controversial allows the Justice Department to prosecute anyone supporting or working with a State Department-designated foreign terrorist organization, however minor their role in an attack or plot, including even unwitting targetsof FBI undercover stings who never were in contact with actual terrorists. Civil libertarians have for two decades criticized the material support law, but primarily for the abuses possible in the more expansive provision for international terrorists. The more limited provision for domestic terrorism is harder for prosecutors to abuse.

Although the part of the material support law that can be used against domestic extremists is limited in some important ways — mass shootings not involving the death of government employees are notably absent from the list of offenses eligible for material support charges — Feight’s conviction in the “death ray” plot shows that domestic extremists can in many cases be prosecuted using the same aggressive laws that federal prosecutors wield against international terrorists. But the Justice Department has been reluctant to use that authority against white supremacists and followers of other domestic ideologies.

This double standard has little to do with existing laws. Instead, it is a result of decisions within the Justice Department, which since 9/11 has prioritized international terrorism prosecutions at the expense of domestic ones.

“After 9/11, the FBI’s and the Justice Department’s resources were directed to international terrorism. The prosecutions against domestic terrorists suffered,” said Henry E. Hockeimer Jr., a former federal prosecutor who served on the FBI’s Domestic Terrorism Task Force in the 1990s. “I follow the domestic terrorism cases, and I sometimes wonder why prosecutors aren’t going after more significant statutes with these guys, using the anti-terrorism laws. On one hand, I suspect the average person thinks of terrorism in the international sense, and to some degree, the Justice Department has come to think of terrorism in that way as well.”

A Domestic Anti-Terrorism Law

Among the first known instances of the material support law being used against domestic extremists came in 1996, when federal prosecutors charged seven men with assembling explosives and plotting to blow up an FBI building. Prosecutors filed material support charges against two of the seven men, Floyd Raymond Looker and James R. Rogers. Looker, the leader of a group known as the West Virginia Mountaineer Militia, and Rogers, a lieutenant in a local fire department who provided blueprints of the FBI building, pleaded guilty.

Five years later, in February 2001, federal prosecutors brought material support charges against Connor Cash, an environmental activist accused of being a leader of the Earth Liberation Front, a radical environmental group that had claimed responsibility for arsons and vandalism throughout the United States. The Justice Department alleged that Cash had assisted in the arson of five homes under construction on Long Island, as well as an unsuccessful plot to burn down a duck farm and release the animals. A jury acquitted Cash of all counts in May 2004.

After the 9/11 attacks, when federal prosecutors began to turn to the material support law as the statute of choice in prosecuting international terrorists, the Justice Department created the National Security Division, which absorbed the counterterrorism and counterespionage sections and created a powerful bureaucratic node responsible for national security prosecutions. Under a policy created at the time, and still in effect today, all terrorism-related charges — including material support and the use of weapons of mass destruction — must be approved by the National Security Division. After the policy took effect, the Justice Department’s tentative experiments with using the material support law against domestic terrorists hit a wall.

In the years immediately following the 9/11 attacks, the Justice Department and the FBI reoriented to focus significant resources on international terrorism threats, with the prevention of another terrorist attack from Al Qaeda or other groups as the top priority for both agencies. White supremacists, right-wing extremists, and other domestic terrorists were not a pressing concern. “If you took yourself back to 2006, when the National Security Division was first started, the country was still in the throes of responses to 9/11,” said Mary B. McCord, the Justice Department’s acting assistant attorney general for national security from 2016 to 2017 and a principal deputy assistant attorney general for its National Security Division from 2014 to 2016.

McCord and other former federal prosecutors maintain that the Justice Department has always taken domestic terrorism seriously. But in the years since 9/11, the difference between how domestic and international terrorists are prosecuted and punished has been striking.

The case of William “Bill” Keebler is an example. He came to the FBI’s attention after spending two weeks in Nevada during the 2014 armed standoff between the Bureau of Land Management and rancher Cliven Bundy and his supporters. Keebler helped organize Bundy’s supporters by posting on social media and YouTube under the handle “Th3Hunt3r.” After returning home to Utah, Keebler started organizing a militia of his own, recruiting like-minded people on Facebook and at local gun shows. “We are now being taken by a rogue government,” he wrote in a May 2014 Facebook post.

Keebler called his militia the Patriots Defense Force. FBI informants who joined the group told federal agents that members were preparing for future standoffs with the government, operations to rob drug dealers at the U.S.-Mexico border, and violent attacks targeting Muslims. The FBI then inserted two undercover agents into Keebler’s militia. One agent told Keebler that he had experience with explosives.

By June 2016, the Patriots Defense Force had eight members, including two FBI undercover agents and a government informant. Members of the militia had talked about killing Muslims, and Keebler and the undercover agents drove to a mosque to consider it as a target. But Keebler was most interested in an attack on the Bureau of Land Management. He and one of the FBI agents concocted a plot to bomb a cabin in Utah used by the bureau. The FBI built the bomb, which was fake, and Keebler planted it in the cabin. The bomb simply fizzled, as designed, and in July 2016, Keebler was charged with attempting to damage federal property with an explosive device. Despite a federal prosecutor describing Keebler as a “would-be terrorist,” the militia leader did not face terrorism-related charges.

Because Keebler had tried to bomb a government building, the material support law could have applied and with it, a possible 15-year prison sentence. Instead, Keebler spent two years in prison while his case was pending, and after pleading guilty to the lesser charge federal prosecutors had chosen, he was sentenced to time served and three years of probation. Prosecutors did not ask for a “terrorism enhancement” at sentencing — a request that, if approved by the judge, could have resulted in a more significant sentence. Keebler, now on probation in Utah, declined to comment for this article.

By contrast, federal prosecutors charged Nicholas Young, a 36-year-old Muslim police officer in Washington, D.C., with material support when he sent a $245 gift card to a man he believed was with the Islamic State. The gift card recipient was in fact an FBI informant. Young was found guilty at trial and sentenced to 15 years in prison. Last month, an appeals court vacated his convictions on two charges of attempting to obstruct justice, but upheld his conviction for material support. Young will be re-sentenced soon, but his original 15-year term was in line with those of the more than 400 other Muslim terrorism defendants convicted of material support.

Current federal prosecutors, including Thomas E. Brzozowski, the Justice Department’s counsel for domestic terrorism, declined to comment for this article. In an interview with The Intercept, McCord said that in retrospect, she and other prosecutors had underutilized the material support law for prosecuting and punishing domestic terrorists.

“I’ve been a cheerleader for the fact that, hey, this is the same stuff — extremism is extremism,” McCord said. “The white supremacist extremism we’re seeing right now, they’ve taken the playbook from the foreign terrorist organizations in terms of who they’re trying to recruit and who can be easily drawn to feel like they’re working for something bigger than themselves. To me, the parallels are very close.”

Despite the material support law being used predominantly against Muslim extremists during her tenure at the Justice Department, McCord said religion was never a factor in charging decisions. “I think, frankly, because of 9/11 and Al Qaeda and ISIS and Islamic extremism, we have been overly focused on those threats,” McCord said. “But I would be a happy to call a domestic terrorist a domestic terrorist. I will shout it from the rooftops.”

Read More ...

Phroyd

[thetens-blog1]

SABMiller Plc Job in Rivers State for an Energy and Fluids Manager, July 2017

SABMiller Plc Job in Rivers State for an Energy and Fluids Manager, July 2017

SABMiller Plc Job in Rivers State for an Energy and Fluids Manager, July 2017   SABMiller is in the beer and soft drinks business, bringing refreshment and sociability to millions of people all over the world who enjoy our drinks. We do business in a way that improves livelihoods and helps build communities. We are passionate about brewing and have a long tradition of craftsmanship, making superb…

[kimkimberhelen]

By Dave Philipps July 6, 2018

Recruit Zhang, an immigrant from China, joined the United States military on the promise that enlisting would lead to American citizenship. He swore an oath to uphold the Constitution and was handed an Army T-shirt. But, after two years of delays, there came a sudden discharge that has left him reeling.

“They just said one word: I was ‘unsuitable,’” said the 30-year-old, who has a wife and child and a business management degree. He asked that only his last name be used. “I came here legally, made an agreement to stay legally, and they have not kept the agreement.”

A growing number of foreign-born recruits who joined the United States military through a special program created to recruit immigrant troops with valuable language and medical skills are being terminated before they can qualify for citizenship. Lawyers for the recruits say at least 30 have been discharged in recent weeks and thousands more are stuck in limbo — currently enlisted but unable to serve — and may also be forced out.

They are being cut even as the Army has been unable to meet its 2018 recruiting goals.

Mr. Zhang’s parents, a factory worker and a city official in southeast China, sold their house to support him while he waited two years to be called to boot camp. Now he may be deported, and worries he could be punished by the Chinese government for enlisting in a foreign army.

“There’s no explanation for this except xenophobia,” said Margaret D. Stock, a retired Army Reserve lieutenant colonel and immigration lawyer who helped create the program. Known as the Military Accessions Vital to the National Interest or Mavni, the program, created during the George W. Bush administration, allows legal, nonpermanent resident immigrants to join the military and get fast track citizenship.

More than 10,000 troops have joined the military through the program — almost all of them in the Army. At its start, the Army touted its foreign recruits, holding naturalization ceremonies with top brass in places like Times Square. But in recent years the Defense Department has tightened regulations, and thousands have been caught up in extra layers of security vetting. Increased scrutiny for the program began in the last months of the Obama administration over national security concerns.

To screen out possible terrorist or espionage threats, the military requires extensive background checks that have grown more complex in the last two years. The C.I.A. and F.B.I. do background checks, and screenings include criminal history and credit, a review of at least a decade of finances, an exhaustive questionnaire and numerous lengthy interviews. Relatives, employers and neighbors are also interviewed.

The layers of clearance have grown so complex that a backlog of several thousand cases has piled up. A Defense Department official testified in a recent deposition that it would take 10 years to clear those currently waiting to serve.

“We were told they didn’t have the resources to go through all the investigations,” said Robin Jung, a South Korean immigrant and college student who enlisted through the program. In 2014, his brother went through the program and was given citizenship in just a few months. Mr. Jung has been waiting two years.

A number of recruits have filed lawsuits claiming the delays and denials violate constitutional guarantees of equal protection.

The Defense Department responded to interview requests about the delays and increase in the number of discharges with a short statement, saying that any recruit, including those recruited through the Mavni program, “who receives an unfavorable security screening is deemed unsuitable for military service and is administratively discharged. Each recruit undergoes an individualized suitability review and the length of time for the review is dependent upon each individual’s unique background.”

So far, though, recruits in the 10-year-old program have not posed an undue security threat, according to a 2017 report by the RAND Corporation. The report, which was never officially released, found that the program’s recruits were generally better educated and better performing than the average enlisted soldier. It also found that there had been no instances of terrorism or espionage connected to an immigrant recruit.

Before the Vietnam War, all legal immigrants could enlist regardless of permanent status, and throughout American history a large slice of the troops who fought the nations battles have been immigrants, from Lt. Col. Alexander Hamilton to the more than 700 immigrants who have been awarded the Medal of Honor.

Still, very few recruits have made it through the vetting process in the last two years, Ms. Stock said. They are kept waiting, unable to work civilian jobs or go to basic training and start their military careers.

In the past two months, lawyers have seen a stark uptick in troops getting discharged after being notified they have failed background checks. Ms. Stock said it could be a result of an effort to clear the backlog.

Recruits say they are not told why they failed background checks and have no way to appeal.

One Pakistani immigrant, worried about the long wait, was able to get his security report in May through a Freedom of Information Act request. The report noted the immigrant, an electrical engineering student recruited to repair generators, had dreamed of moving to the United States since he was 5, and had an American flag cover on his cellphone.

The recruit, the report stated, “has such a deep and longstanding loyalty to the U.S., that he can be expected to resolve any conflict of interest in favor of the U.S.”

“I jumped for joy, I was literally dancing when I read this because I knew there would be no problem,” said the recruit, who asked not to be named because he fears he could be harmed in Pakistan if he is deported.

In June he was told he had failed his security background check and was being discharged.

“I cried,” he said. “I feel like I have been kicked out of my own home.”

Private Second Class Lucas Calixto, a Brazilian immigrant who moved to the United States with his parents when he was 12, was discharged this spring after enlisting in the Army Reserve two years ago.

Since enlisting, he had been going through drills regularly in Massachusetts, where his unit had supported him, he said.

In June he was abruptly discharged for “personnel security,” according to a form. He was given no other explanation.

Last week he sued the Defense Department in federal court, saying the discharge, with no warning and no explanation, violated department regulations and “the fundamental requirements of due process.”

“It was my dream to serve in the U.S. military. Since America has been so good to me, I wanted to give back and serve in the United States Army,” Private Calixto said in an email. “I know this is not coming from my military unit. They have been very nice to me. It seems as if the decision is being made by higher-ups who don’t know me and are just trying to complicate things.”