United States – Page 7

Noam Chomsky: ‘The Real Question is…What Exactly Is The Threat of Iran?’

July 24, 2015 by Nasheman

Scholar and activist questions the need for a nuclear agreement when Iran has not violated the nonproliferation treaty

Noam Chomsky tells Al Jazeera that Iran did not deserve to be sanctioned to begin with. (Photo: Andrew Rusk/flickr/cc)

by Nadia Prupis, Common Dreams

As U.S. Congress considers signing the unprecedented nuclear agreement between Iran and world powers announced earlier this month, renowned scholar and activist Noam Chomsky on Wednesday asked a less-considered question: “Why is the deal being pursued?”

The deal constrains what is referred to as “the Iranian threat,” Chomsky said, “but what exactly is the threat?”

In an interview with Al Jazeera reporter Antonio Mora, Chomsky stated that Iran—which is a party to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), an agreement that seeks to achieve global disarmament—has “lived up to” the mandates of that accord, despite allegations it has violated some of them by failing to declare its enriched uranium program.

“I don’t think anyone ought to have nuclear weapons, including the United States, but that’s not the issue,” Chomsky said. “If Iran’s alleged noncompliance with the NPT is an issue—and I add alleged—that certainly doesn’t require sanctions or a treaty or any other actions.”

Chomsky, who has previously described the U.S. treatment of Iran as “torture,” said on Wednesday that the U.S. and Israel “freely use force and violence” throughout the Middle East—unlike Iran, which would only use nuclear power as a deterrent.

“Furthermore, the U.S. is quite open about [their use of force],” Chomsky continued.

Asked what the U.S. should do if a terrorist plot was developing in a remote area of the region, Chomsky noted that the question illustrates the egregious double-standards of American foreign policy. “We feel free to attack people anywhere and kill them who we claim might be planning to harm us in the future. If anyone else did that, we’d nuke them,” he said.

Watch the interview below:

Just a ‘Mistake’: US airstrikes kill allied soldiers in Afghanistan

July 20, 2015 by Nasheman

Helicopters attack outpost in broad daylight in what could be worst such incident in nearly 14 years of war

U.S.-led coalition has “made a very big mistake,” said one official, after an attack on an Afghan outpost left at least ten soldiers dead. (Photo: File/Wikimedia Commons)

by Jon Queally, Common Dreams

In what may be the worst “friendly fire” incident of the U.S. war in Afghanistan since it began in 2001, reports on Monday indicate that at least ten Afghan soldiers were killed and others wounded after their compound was fired on by U.S. military helicopters.

According to initial reports citing Afghan officials, a pair of U.S. gunships attacked the outpost in Logar Province in the morning hours. Pentagon officials have confirmed there was an “incident” in the area which is now under investigation.

Agence France-Presse reports:

The early morning raid in Baraki Barak district of Logar province comes as coalition forces increase air strikes on potential militant targets despite a drawdown of NATO forces after 13 years of war.

The bombing marked the second such incident in the area since last December when a NATO air strike killed five civilians and wounded six others.

“At 6am (0130 GMT) today, two US helicopters attacked a checkpoint in Baraki Barak,” district governor Mohammad Rahim Amin told reporters. “The checkpoint caught fire … and 10 Afghan army soldiers were killed,” he added, revising down a previous estimate that 14 soldiers were killed.

A statement by Afghanistan’s Ministry of Defense said that helicopters belonging to the U.S.-led military coalition had come under enemy attack in the area and returned fire, mistakenly hitting the army post.

Despite that statement, the Afghan army corps commander for the region, Sharif Yaftali, told the Washington Post that the U.S.-led coalition had “made a very big mistake” because the strike was during the daytime, and the outpost was perched on a hill top, making it visible for U.S. forces to determine that it was controlled by its allies.

“The Afghanistan flag was waving on our post, when we came under attack,” said Yaftali.

WikiLeaks: US bugged more than two dozen Brazilian leaders

July 6, 2015 by Nasheman

New spy revelations ‘likely to reinvigorate tensions,’ says The Intercept, which co-published list of targets

Photo published Tuesday under the ABC News headline, “2 Years After Spying Flap, US, Brazil Seek to Turn the Page.” (Photo: AP)

by Deirdre Fulton, Common Dreams

Just days after Brazil President Dilma Rousseff’s official working visit to the United States, during which she and President Barack Obama issued a joint communique affirming their “mutual respect and trust,” WikiLeaks and The Intercept on Saturday, July 4 published a “top secret U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) target list of 29 key Brazilian government phone numbers that were selected for intensive interception,” or phone-tapping.

Noting that last week’s visit to the U.S. was one “she had delayed for almost two years in anger over prior revelations of NSA spying on Brazil,” The Intercept‘s Glenn Greenwald and David Miranda argue that “these new revelations extend far beyond the prior ones and are likely to reinvigorate tensions.”

As WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange said in a press statement accompanying the leak: “Our publication today shows the U.S. has a long way to go to prove its dragnet surveillance on ‘friendly’ governments is over.”

The list of priority targets includes not only Rousseff but also her assistant, her secretary, her chief of staff, her Palace office, and the phone in her Presidential jet. According to WikiLeaks, the NSA targeted “not only those closest to the President, but waged an economic espionage campaign against Brazil, spying on those responsible for managing Brazil’s economy, including the head of its Central Bank.”

This is notable because, as Greenwald and Miranda write, “Brazilians are particularly sensitive to economic espionage by the U.S., both for historical reasons (as a hallmark of American imperialism and domination on the continent) and due to current economic concerns (for that reason, the story of NSA’s targeting of Petrobras was arguably the most consequential of all prior surveillance stories).”

The phones of Brazil’s foreign minister as well as its ambassadors to Germany, France, the EU, the U.S., and Geneva were also on the list.

In an interview with The Intercept, Gilberto Carvalho, a top aide to Rousseff, described his reaction to the spying revelations as “maximum indignation.”

Greenwald and Miranda continue:

For his part, the Central Bank’s Pereira da Silva said his reaction is to fully embrace the stinging denunciation of NSA’s electronic surveillance contained inDilma’s September, 2013 United Nations speech, delivered while Obama waited in the hallway to speak. That blistering speech was widely regarded in Brazil as a high point of Dilma’s leadership on the world stage.

Speaking from the General Assembly podium, she declared that “tampering in such a manner in the affairs of other countries is a breach of international law and is an affront of the principles that must guide the relations among them, especially among friendly nations.” She condemned U.S. mass surveillance as a “grave violation of human rights and of civil liberties” and, in a rare invocation of her own personal history as a rebel against the country’s oppressive military dictatorship, said: “As many other Latin Americans, I fought against authoritarianism and censorship, and I cannot but defend, in an uncompromising fashion, the right to privacy of individuals and the sovereignty of my country. In the absence of the right to privacy, there can be no true freedom of expression and opinion, and therefore no effective democracy.”

Saturday’s leak comes on the heels of previous publications by WikiLeaks that show systematic U.S. targeting of the highest officials including three French presidents and the current chancellor of Germany. On Friday, CNN and The Intercept reported that the U.S. government spied on German journalists as well.

US domestic Terrorists more deadly than 'Jihadis': Report

June 25, 2015 by Nasheman

“With non-Muslims, the media bends over backward to identify some psychological traits that may have pushed them over the edge. Whereas if it’s a Muslim, the assumption is that they must have done it because of their religion.”

Last week’s shooting at Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston, South Carolina was the deadliest right-wing attack on U.S. soil since 2001. Dylann Roof, pictured, reportedly told parishioners he wanted to start a race war before shooting dead nine black men and women.

by Nadia Prupis, Common Dreams

In the 14 years since the September 11, 2001 attacks, nearly twice as many Americans have been killed by white supremacists, right-wing extremists, and other non-Muslim domestic terrorists than by people motivated by “jihadist ideology,” a report by the New America research group published Wednesday has found.

Using a database that catalogs information on U.S. citizens and permanent residents engaged in “violent extremist activity,” the report, Homegrown Extremism 2001-2015, found that 48 people were killed by non-Muslim terrorists during that time frame, as opposed to 26 who were killed by self-described jihadis.

The New York Times reports:

The slaying of nine African-Americans in a Charleston, S.C., church last week, with an avowed white supremacist charged with their murders, was a particularly savage case. But it is only the latest in a string of lethal attacks by people espousing racial hatred, hostility to government and theories such as those of the “sovereign citizen” movement, which denies the legitimacy of most statutory law. The assaults have taken the lives of police officers, members of racial or religious minorities and random civilians.

…John G. Horgan, who studies terrorism at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, said the mismatch between public perceptions and actual cases has become steadily more obvious to scholars.

“There’s an acceptance now of the idea that the threat from jihadi terrorism in the United States has been overblown,” Dr. Horgan said. “And there’s a belief that the threat of right-wing, antigovernment violence has been underestimated.”

Last week’s shooting at the Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston, South Carolina, in which nine black men and women were killed, was the deadliest right-wing attack in the U.S. since 2001, the report states. The suspect in the murders, 21-year-old white supremacist Dylann Roof, said he had intended to start a race war through his attack.

But despite these findings, the general public and mainstream media resist the language of “terrorism” when describing so-called homegrown radicals.

As Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) editor Jim Naureckas wrote in a column published on Common Dreams this week, “Corporate media are demonstrably reluctant to use the word ‘terrorist’ with regards to Charleston shooting suspect Dylann Roof—even though the massacre would seem to meet the legal definition of terrorism, as violent crimes that ‘appear to be intended…to intimidate or coerce a civilian population’.”

Abdul Cader Asmal, a retired physician and a spokesman for Boston’s Muslim community, told the Times on Wednesday, “With non-Muslims, the media bends over backward to identify some psychological traits that may have pushed them over the edge. Whereas if it’s a Muslim, the assumption is that they must have done it because of their religion.”

Roof’s attack was “not an act of just ‘one hateful person.’ It is a manifestation of the racial hatred and white supremacy that continues to pervade our society,” wrote University of Pennsylvania professor Anthea Butler in an op-ed for the Washington Post last week, just as Roof was captured by law enforcement. “It should be covered as such. And now that authorities have found their suspect, we should be calling him what he is: a terrorist.”

France says US spying on presidents is 'unacceptable'

June 24, 2015 by Nasheman

Office of President Hollande says “it will not tolerate” acts by a foreign government that threaten France’s security.

French President Francois Hollande called a meeting on Wednesday to discuss the latest WikiLeaks report of US spying [EPA]

by Al Jazeera

The French government has denounced as “unacceptable” reports that the US wiretapped current leader Francois Hollande and former presidents Nicolas Sarkozy and Jacques Chirac.

In a statement issued on Wednesday, the office of the French president said it “will not tolerate any acts, which jeopardise its safety and the protection of its interest.”

“Commitments were made by the US authorities,” the Elysee Palace said in a statement, referring to promises by the US in late 2013 not to spy on France’s leaders. “They must be remembered and strictly respected.”

The statement followed a meeting of France’s defence council called by President Hollande in response to the release of the documents by WikiLeaks on Tuesday.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius has also summoned the US ambassador to France, Jane Hartley for a Wednesday afternoon meeting to discuss the report.

Opposition leader Marine Le Pen also said the wiretapping incidents prove that the US is not an ally of France, and called for suspension of trade talks with Washington DC.

French newspaper Liberation and the Mediapart website reported on Tuesday that the spying spanned 2006 to 2012, quoting documents classed as “Top Secret” which include five reports from the US National Security Agency based on intercepted communications.

The most recent document is dated May 22, 2012, just days before Hollande took office, and reveals that the French leader “approved holding secret meetings in Paris to discuss the eurozone crisis, particularly the consequences of a Greek exit from the eurozone”.

Another document dated 2008 was titled “Sarkozy sees himself as only one who can resolve world financial crisis”.

Spy scheme reviewed

Ever since documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden showed in 2013 that the NSA had been eavesdropping on the mobile phone of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, it had been understood that the US had been using the digital spying agency to intercept the conversations of allied politicians.

Still, the new revelations are bound to cause diplomatic embarrassment for the US, even though it is not uncommon that allies spy on each other.

Hollande said last year that he discussed his concerns about NSA surveillance with President Barack Obama during a visit to the US, and they patched up their differences.

After the Merkel disclosures, Obama ordered a review of NSA spying on allies, after officials suggested that senior White House officials had not approved many operations that were largely on auto-pilot. After the review, American officials said Obama had ordered a halt to spying on the leaders of allied countries, if not their aides.

Neither Hollande’s office nor Washington would comment on the new leaks. Contacted Tuesday by AFP, Hollande’s aide said: “We will see what it is about.”

US State Department spokesman John Kirby meanwhile said: “We do not comment on the veracity or content of leaked documents.”

WikiLeaks spokesman Kristinn Hrafnsson said he was confident the documents were authentic, noting that WikiLeaks previous mass disclosures have proven to be accurate.

The release appeared to be timed to coincide with a vote in the French Parliament on a bill allowing broad new surveillance powers, in particular to counter terrorist threats.

Pentagon rewrites ‘Law of War’ declaring ‘belligerent’ journalists as legitimate targets

June 24, 2015 by Nasheman

The Pentagon (AFP Photo)

by RT

The Pentagon has released a book of instructions on the “law of war,” detailing acceptable ways of killing the enemy. The manual also states that journalists can be labeled “unprivileged belligerents,” an obscure term that replaced “enemy combatant.”

The 1,176-page “Department of Defense Law of War Manual” explains that shooting, exploding, bombing, stabbing, or cutting the enemy are acceptable ways of getting the job done, but the use of poison or asphyxiating gases is not allowed.

Surprise attacks and killing retreating troops have also been given the green light.

But the lengthy manual doesn’t only talk about protocol for those on the frontline. It also has an extensive section on journalists – including the fact that they can be labeled terrorists.

“In general, journalists are civilians. However, journalists may be members of the armed forces, persons authorized to accompany the armed forces, or unprivileged belligerents,” the manual states.

The term “unprivileged belligerents” replaces the Bush-era term “unlawful enemy combatant.”

When asked what this means, professor of Journalism at Georgetown Chris Chambers told RT that he doesn’t know, “because the Geneva Convention, other tenets of international law, and even United States law – federal courts have spoken on this – doesn’t have this thing on ‘unprivileged belligerents’.”

This means that embedded journalists, who are officially sanctioned by the military and attached to a unit, will be favored by an even greater degree than before. “It gives them license to attack or even murder journalists that they don’t particularly like but aren’t on the other side,” Chambers said.

Even the Obama Administration’s definition of “enemy combatant” was vague enough, basically meaning any male of a military age who “happens to be there,” Chambers added.

The manual also deals with drones, stating that there is “no prohibition in the law of war on the use of remotely piloted aircraft (also called “unmanned aerial vehicles”).” Such weapons may offer certain advantages over the weapons systems. It states that drones can be designated as military aircraft if used by a country’s military.

The book includes a foreword from the General Counsel of the Department of Defense, Stephen Preston, who states that “the law of war is part of who we are.” He goes on to say that the manual will“help us remember the hard-learned lessons from the past.”

The manual is the Pentagon’s first all-in-one legal guide for the four military branches. Previously, each sector was tasked with writing their own guidelines for engagement, which presumably did not list journalists as potential traitors.

The Pentagon did not specify the exact circumstances under which a journalist might be declared an unprivileged belligerent, but Chambers says he is sure “their legal department is going over it, as is the National Press Club and the Society of Professional Journalists.”

US soldier who killed Iraqi man free to go home

June 19, 2015 by Nasheman

Marine Corps officer sentenced to seven years already served after being found guilty in retrial of 2006 killing.

Hutchins led a squad of troops sent to Hamdania to combat fighters launching sniper attacks and planting IEDs [AP]

by Al Jazeera

A US soldier convicted of the 2006 murder of a former Iraqi police officer has been sentenced to time he had already served in confinement, in a decision by a military jury at Camp Pendleton in California.

The jury also recommended that Marine Sergeant Lawrence Hutchins III receive a bad-conduct discharge from the Marine Corps on Thursday.

He had served about seven years in confinement and had faced a possible sentence of four more years.

The recommendation is not the final word. The trial’s convening authority, Marine Corps Lieutenant-General Kenneth F McKenzie, can accept or reduce the sentence in the coming weeks.

After the killing in Iraq came to light, Ray Mabus, then-US navy secretary, called it a “cold-blooded murder”.

On Wednesday, the military jury at the Southern California base found Hutchins guilty of murder, conspiracy and larceny but acquitted him of a charge of making false statements.

The San Diego Union-Tribue newspaper reported that Hutchins was sent on Thursday to his home at Camp Pendleton, where he lives with his wife and three children.

Christopher Oprison, the defence lawyer, said Hutchins’ family welcomed the sentence.

“I think they’re ecstatic right now,” he said.

Convictions and appeals

Hutchins was initially convicted in 2007 and sentenced to 11 years in military confinement, which including the seven years he served pending appeal, had left open the possibility of a four-year sentence.

A military court overturned his conviction in 2010, finding a statement he gave in custody should have been ruled inadmissible.

A military appeals court later reinstated the conviction, then overturned it again in 2013 because Hutchins was denied access to a lawyer for a week early in the investigation.

Hutchins led a squad of soldiers sent to Hamdania, Iraq, to combat fighters launching sniper attacks and planting improvised explosive devices.

On April 26, 2006, Hutchins led six Marines Corps soldiers and a navy corpsman in abducting 52-year-old Hashim Ibrahim Awad, a retired policeman.

They killed him and placed an AK-47 and a shovel next to the corpse to suggest he had been planting a bomb, according to witness testimony.

The seven other squad members were convicted of crimes at courts-martial, but none were imprisoned for more than 18 months.

Amid torture, experts say CIA's other crime was 'human experimentation'

June 16, 2015 by Nasheman

Formerly classified document exposes how agency’s attempt to legitimize abusive interrogation program was itself another layer of crime

A demonstrator is held down during a simulation of waterboarding outside the US Justice Department in 2007. (Photo: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)

by Jon Queally, Common Dreams

After the Central Intelligence Agency was given authority to begin torturing suspected terrorists in the wake of the attacks of September 11, 2001, newly published documents show that another of that program’s transgressions, according to experts, was a gross violation of medical ethics that allowed the agency to conduct what amounted to “human experimentation” on people who became test subjects without consent.

Reported exclusively by the Guardian on Monday, sections of a previously classified CIA document—first obtained by the ACLU—reveal that a long-standing policy against allowing people to become unwitting medical or research subjects remained in place and under the purview of the director of the CIA even as the agency began slamming people into walls, beating them intensely, exposing them to prolonged periods of sleep deprivation, performing repeated sessions of waterboarding, and conducting other heinous forms of psychological and physical abuse.

The document details agency guidelines—first established in 1987 during the presidency of Ronald Reagan but subsequently updated—in which the CIA director and an advisory board are directly empowered to make decisions about programs considered “human subject research” by the agency.

As journalist Spencer Ackerman reports:

The relevant section of the CIA document, “Law and Policy Governing the Conduct of Intelligence Agencies”, instructs that the agency “shall not sponsor, contract for, or conduct research on human subjects” outside of instructions on responsible and humane medical practices set for the entire US government by its Department of Health and Human Services.

A keystone of those instructions, the document notes, is the “subject’s informed consent”.

That language echoes the public, if obscure, language of Executive Order 12333 – the seminal, Reagan-era document spelling out the powers and limitations of the intelligence agencies, including rules governing surveillance by the National Security Agency. But the discretion given to the CIA director to “approve, modify, or disapprove all proposals pertaining to human subject research” has not previously been public.

The entire 41-page CIA document exists to instruct the agency on what Executive Order 12333 permits and prohibits, after legislative action in the 1970s curbed intelligence powers in response to perceived abuses – including the CIA’s old practice of experimenting on human beings through programs like the infamous MK-Ultra project, which, among other things, dosed unwitting participants with LSD as an experiment.

The previously unknown section of the guidelines empower the CIA director and an advisory board on “human subject research” to “evaluate all documentation and certifications pertaining to human research sponsored by, contracted for, or conducted by the CIA”.

Critics have long blasted any members of the medical community who participated in the torture program as traitors to their ethical and professional duties, but as the Guardiannotes, “The CIA, which does not formally concede that it tortured people, insists that the presence of medical personnel ensured its torture techniques were conducted according to medical rigor.”

But Steven Aftergood, a scholar of the intelligence agencies with the Federation of American Scientists, told the Guardian that these men who were tortured by the agency were, in fact, being studied by medical professionals to see how they would respond to such treatment. In addition to the inherent crime of that abuse, they were also unwitting subjects who never gave their informed consent to be studied in this way. “There is a disconnect between the requirement of this regulation [contained in the document] and the conduct of the interrogation program,” Aftergood explained. “They do not represent consistent policy.”

And Nathaniel Raymond, a former war-crimes investigator with Physicians for Human Rights and now a researcher with Harvard University’s Humanitarian Initiative, put it this way: “Crime one was torture. The second crime was research without consent in order to say it wasn’t torture.”

In public challenge to Obama, family of drone victim asks: 'What is the value of an innocent life?'

June 15, 2015 by Nasheman

Seeking official apology, Faisal bin Ali Jaber says, ‘Imagine that your loved one was wrongly killed by the U.S. government. Imagine they would not even admit their role in the death of your family members.’

In April, U.S. President Barack Obama, pictured with director of the CIA John Brennan, publicly apologized for the killing of two western hostages. (Photo: file)

by Lauren McCauley, Common Dreams

The family of two U.S. drone victims is refusing to keep their pain silent as they seek an official apology by U.S. President Barack Obama for the deaths of their kin.

In a CNN op-ed published on Friday, Faisal bin Ali Jaber, a Yemeni civil engineer, issued a public challenge to the U.S. leader—who recently made public statements about the deaths of two westerners killed by U.S. drone strikes, but has refused to acknowledge Yemeni civilian casualties.

“What is the value of a human life?” Jaber asks.

In the column, Jaber describes how following the August 2012 strike that killed Waleed and Salem bin Ali Jaber, the family had to identify them “from their clothes and scraps of matted hair.”

And how in the wake of the strike, while the family awaited an official apology, they were instead presented with “$100,000 in sequentially-marked U.S. dollars in a plastic bag.”

Jaber writes: “A Yemeni security service official was given the unpleasant task of handing this over. I looked him in the eye and asked how this was acceptable, and whether he would admit the money came from America. He shrugged and said: ‘Can’t tell you. Take the money.'”

“The secret payment to my family represents a fraction of the cost of the operation that killed them,” he continues. “This seems to be the Obama administration’s cold calculation: Yemeni lives are cheap. They cost the President no political or moral capital.”

In contrast to the experience of Jaber and other relatives of innocent Yemenis killed by the U.S. drone war, in April, Obama publicly acknowledged that a U.S. counterterrorism operation had killed an American, Warren Weinstein, and an Italian, Giovanni Lo Porto. The lawsuit follows another failed court challenge in Germany in which Jaber’s family sought to prosecute the home of Ramstein Air Base for its role in “facilitating American covert drone strikes in Yemen.”

“Like a lot of Americans, my family and I watched the President’s speech at home,” Jaber writes. “But while many praised him for his forthrightness, we do not share that view. His speech shocked us. No, it was worse: his speech broke our hearts.

“As I watched,” he continues, “I thought of my dead relatives, names that so far as I know have never crossed the President’s lips: Waleed and Salem bin Ali Jaber.”

On Monday, Jaber filed a suit asking a Washington D.C. district court to issue a declaration that the strike that killed Salem and Waleed was unlawful. He is seeking no monetary compensation.

“Imagine that your loved one was wrongly killed by the U.S. government, and the White House would not apologize. Imagine they would not even admit their role in the death of your family members,” Jaber concludes. “We simply want the truth and an apology. We will not rest until it is ours.”

US opens probe against TCS, Infosys for H1-B visa violations

June 12, 2015 by Nasheman

New York: The US government has opened an investigation against two of the biggest Indian outsourcing companies for possible violations of H1-B visa rules, according to a media report.

The Department of Labour has opened the investigation against Tata Consultancy Services and Infosys for “possible violations of rules for visas for foreign technology workers under contracts they held with an electric utility Southern California Edison,” the New York Times said.

The power company had recently laid off more than 500 technology workers amid claims that many of those laid off were made to train their replacements who were immigrants on the temporary work visas brought in by the Indian firms Senators Richard Durbin of Illinois and Jeff Sessions of Alabama announced the investigation after they were notified by the department, the report said.

The move by the Labour Department comes days after the NYT had reported that hundreds of employees at entertainment giant Walt Disney were laid off and replaced with Indians holding H1-B visas.

About 250 Disney employees were told in late October last year that they would be laid off and many of their jobs were transferred to immigrants on H1-B visas brought in by an outsourcing firm based in India, the report had said.

It had also cited the layoffs at the Southern California Edison power utility, saying that the layoffs are “raising new questions about how businesses and outsourcing companies are using the temporary visas, known as H-1B, to place immigrants in technology jobs in the United States.”

(PTI)

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