Sunday, June 15, 2014

Weekend Newsbites: Sat. & Sun., June 14 & 15, 2014


Hey Gang!

Yep... better late than never...

OH...! And Happy Fathers' Day!

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4 comments:

William R. Barker said...

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jun/14/border-agents-lament-mexican-gang-members-entering/

Border Patrol officials are swamped by the number of minors crossing illegally into the United States and frustrated that they can’t turn away known Mexican gang members.

* ...THAT THEY CAN'T TURN AWAY KNOWN MEXICAN GANG MEMBERS.

Chris Cabrera, vice president of the National Border Patrol Council Local 3307 in the Rio Grande Valley, said that confirmed gang members in Mexico — including those from Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) — are coming into the country to be reunited with their families, National Review reported Friday.

* GEEZUS...

“If he’s a confirmed gang member in his own country, why are we letting him in here? … I’ve heard people come in and say, ‘You’re going to let me go, just like you let my mother go, just like you let my sister go. You’re going to let me go as well, and the government’s going to take care of us,’” Mr. Cabrera told the magazine.

* GEEZUS...

He said that the only way to solve the problem was to implement harsher restrictions on who can be allowed to cross. “Until we start mandatory detentions, mandatory removals, I don’t think anything is going to change. As a matter of fact, I think it’s going to get worse,” he said, National Review reported.

Other Border Patrol officials said that officers must treat minors with gang-affiliated tattoos the same as anybody else wishing to cross the border.

* INSANITY...!!!

“It’s upsetting that a lot of them are 16 or 17 years old and a lot of them are not going to face deportation,” said Art Del Cueto, president of the National Border Patrol Council Local 2544 in Tucson, Ariz, National Review reported.

* 15-30 ARE "PEAK CRIMINAL YEARS" FOR MOST CRIMINALS. (MAKES SENSE, RIGHT? THEY'RE AT THEIR YOUNGEST... STRONGEST... THE YOUNGEST OFTEN ABLE TO "GAME" THE SYSTEM...)

Mr. Cabrera told the news agency that the Rio Grande Valley location has nine stations. The largest facility is in McAllen, Texas, with a capacity of 275 people. Its agents see between 700 and 1,500 people daily.

June 15, 2014 at 10:43 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/06/15/iraq-us-qaeda-insurgency/10545803/

The United States said Sunday it was evacuating some staff from its embassy and beefing up security as deadly explosions rocked the Iraqi capital and advancing militant Islamic insurgents released graphic images appearing to show its fighters massacring captured Iraqi soldiers.

The U.S. State Department said in a statement that an undisclosed number of staffers will be moved to Amman, Jordan, or U.S. consulates elsewhere in Iraq not immediately threatened by the insurgent group, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or ISIL.

* ARE YOU PROUD OF YOUR COUNTRY, FOLKS?

The embassy will remain fully operational with "some additional U.S. government security personnel,'' the State Department said.

* WHAT DOES THAT MEAN, "FULLY OPERATIONAL?" (FOLKS... THEY'RE LYING... AGAIN...)

The embassy, inside the Green Zone near the Tigris River, employs thousands of people, some local hires and others from the United States.

* THE EMBASSY COST LITERALLY BILLIONS OF DOLLARS... AND CHANCES ARE WE'RE GONNA ABANDON IT... SURRENDER IT...

* HEY... LET'S PRAY I'M WRONG. AND LET'S PRAY THAT IN ANY EVENT WE PROTECT THE OIL FIELDS.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the Obama administration is preparing to open direct talks with Iran on the situation in Iraq and ways to counter the radical Sunni militia there.

* FOLKS...

(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)

President Obama, in the desert resort area of Palm Springs, Calif., was briefed on the Iraq situation by National Security Adviser Susan Rice, the White House said.

* WHILE ACTUALLY ON THE GOLF COURSE...???

An embattled city in northwest Iraq, Tal Afar, fell to millitants Sunday, according to Iraqi Gen. Mohammed al-Quraishi, CNN and other media reported. Tal Afar is a strategic city, and ISIL considers it key to their plan to create an Islamic state spanning Iraq and Syria.

(*CLAP...CLAP...CLAP*)

June 15, 2014 at 11:13 PM
William R. Barker said...

* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9248996/This_IT_worker_had_to_train_an_H_1B_replacement

This is the story of an IT worker who was replaced by a worker on an H-1B visa, one of a number of visa holders, mostly from India, who took jobs at this U.S. company.

Computerworld is not going to use the worker's name or identify the companies involved to protect the former employee from retaliation. For purposes of this story, the worker has been given initials -- A.B. (They're not the person's real initials.)

At A.B.'s company, about 220 IT jobs have been lost to offshore outsourcing over the last year. A.B. is telling the story because, initially, there was little knowledge among fellow employees about H-1B visa holders and how they are used. They didn't know that offshore outsourcing firms are the largest users of H-1B visas, or exactly how this visa facilitates IT job losses in the U.S.

"I think once we learned about it, we became angrier toward the U.S. government than we were with the people that were over here from India," A.B. said, "because the government is allowing this."

* YEP! OBAMA'S GOVERNMENT! (THE DEMS CONTROL BOTH THE EXECUTIVE BRANCH AND THE SENATE.)

* IS THE GOP ALSO MAINLY BEHIND SUCH INSANITY? YEP! BUT AT LEAST WITH THEM IT'S IDEOLOGICAL! ALLOWING THIS GOES AGAINST EVERYTHING OBAMA, REID, PELOSI, AND THE DEMS SAY THEY STAND FOR!

The IT workers at this firm first learned of the offshore outsourcing threat through rumors. Later, the IT staff was called into an auditorium and heard directly from the CIO about the plan to replace them. It would take months for the transition to be completed, in part because of some new system installations.

Many younger IT workers found jobs and left. Mainframe workers were apparently in demand and also able to find new jobs. But older workers with skills in open systems, storage and SAN faced a harder time. About half the IT staffers, mostly the older ones, would stay to the end.

Training the replacement workers involved holding morning-long WebEx meetings several times a week with offshore outsourcing staff based in India. The sessions were recorded as details about the environment, including diagrams and scripts, were shared.

As they moved closer to the termination date for the U.S. workers, the overseas employees would follow or shadow, via WebEx sessions, everything an IT worker did during the day. The outsourcing firm's onshore staff helped to coordinate these efforts, but also worked to untangle the meaning of some of the questions.

The overseas workers did not appear to have much practical experience, and the same questions were asked repeatedly, A.B. said.

Before they lost their jobs, A.B.'s co-workers decided to made a subtle and symbolic protest over what was happening: As the H-1B visa workers gradually took over the offices once occupied by U.S. workers, one employee brought in a bunch of small American flags on sticks.

The flags were displayed, cubicle after cubicle, much like way flags are hung on homes in a residential neighborhoods on the 4th of July. They were visible to anyone walking down the hall. "That was the only thing that we could do," A.B. said. "We felt that we were making a statement. But to be honest, I don't think the Indian workers fully understood what was going on."

* TO BE CONTINUED...

June 15, 2014 at 11:26 PM
William R. Barker said...

* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)

To illustrate this point, A.B. recounted a conversation with an offshore outsourcing visa holder. A.B. worked directly with one of the offshore firm's visa employees, whose job it was to help train the overseas workers.

"I know he was over here to do a job," A.B. explained. "I treated him as a colleague, even though I was resentful."

The offshore outsourcing employee was pleasant, and a couple of weeks before A.B.'s job ended, he asked: "That Monday, you are going to another job?"

"I said, 'No, I'm not going to another job," A.B. recalled. "'You are taking my job. I don't have another job to go to.'" A.B. explained that as an older worker it would be difficult to get another full-time position.

The offshore outsourcing worker later sent A.B. a Facebook friend request. "I don't think he comprehended the situation over here - that we were losing our jobs, we didn't have jobs to go to," A.B. said.

(The Facebook friend request was not accepted.)

In the last month, the off-shore out-sourcing workers, again via WebEx, essentially took over A.B.'s job. It became A.B.'s role to follow along to make sure that the off-shore workers executed various tasks correctly.

While this was going on, more and more H-1B workers appeared at the company, filling more of the offices.

Before the off-shore out-sourcing had begun, there was an internal study to compare the costs of in-sourcing versus ou-t-sourcing. A.B. did not see the study, but wonders what would happen if the U.S. government were to impose restrictions on the H-1B visa and raise the cost of using it, and whether that could change the economics of off-shoring and encourage more in-sourcing.

* I'D LIKE TO SEE THAT STUDY AS WELL...

A.B. talked about hopes for getting U.S. lawmakers to visit the company and count the number of Indian workers and the number of American workers. Efforts to arrange meetings with lawmakers were unsuccessful.

"They are going to find more Indian workers than American workers," A.B. said. "For every India worker that's there, that used to be an American."

The American flags have since been removed from the cubicle walls.

June 15, 2014 at 11:27 PM

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