Leah McGrath Goodman 2014-07-12T15:03:27-04:00 Leah McGrath Goodman http://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/index.php?author=leah-mcgrath-goodman Copyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Leah McGrath Goodman Good old fashioned elbow grease. How Much Is Too Much to Sacrifice? tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.3931755 2013-09-16T10:37:39-04:00 2013-11-16T05:12:01-05:00 Leah McGrath Goodman http://www.huffingtonpost.com/leah-mcgrath-goodman/ Click here to read an original op-ed from the TED speaker who inspired this post and watch the TEDTalk below.

My worst moment covering a story came in the basement of London's Heathrow Airport.

I was locked up for more than 12 hours of interrogation by the British authorities and then unceremoniously thrown out of the country after disclosing the subject of my work: decades of atrocities against children by VIPs across the British Isles that have gone ignored by lawmakers, by judges, by social workers, by the government.

The moment that nearly killed me came in the form of a simple thought: Will I have to leave these children behind, who trusted me with their stories, with no one to help them?

That was exactly two years ago this week. And it was the first time I came even close to understanding the anguish of the victims who described in heartbreaking terms what it felt like to be put between four walls without escape and treated like a piece of meat.

Many of them had come from children's homes across the British Isles, although my work focused on the island of Jersey, a cosseted tax shelter in the Channel Islands controlled by the British Crown whose government flatly -- and repeatedly -- ignored the testimony of nearly 200 children in 2008 abused at the hands of government officials, prominent businessmen, celebrities, police officers and (allegedly) one prime minister.

The moment I was locked up, it was instantly clear to me how the impact of events that take place when you are locked up is amplified, because, well, you are locked up. And in that moment, I saw how real human trauma begins not with something as bluntly obvious as threats or violence, but with forced isolation, disenfranchisement, demoralization and with the taking away of your basic human rights -- your very human-ness.

In my case, locking me up was the British authorities' way of saying, you are asking too many questions; look what we can do to you. In the case of the victims I had been interviewing, it had been their captors' way of saying, we own you; no one is coming for you; we will do what we like with you.

It should be noted that, in my case, I was verbally, not physically, assaulted. There were plenty of threats and rummaging around through my belongings, yes, but I was released after 12-ish hours. For the victims of abuse across the British Isles, this was most certainly not the case. Some were locked up from infancy to adulthood. And what happened to them is not to be described in print. Many of those I have interviewed would have preferred to die rather than what they went through. These offenses were akin to war crimes, without a war.

Where lawmakers, judges, social workers and the government fail to help those who are helpless, journalism offers a way to shine some sunlight where it is most needed. But when those seeking to uncover truth are locked up -- like I was in September 2011, or like David Miranda was this past August -- the chilling effects can be jarring.

In the aftermath, I could not understand why so many UK journalists just folded their tents and walked away.
My answer came when I was banned from the UK for not also taking the hint. -- Leah McGrath Goodman

Chilling effects fascinate me. It was the chilling effect on the island of Jersey that caused me to start investigating it in 2008 when almost 200 victims came forward with horrific stories of systemic rape and torture -- before being abruptly silenced by their own government. In the aftermath, I could not understand why so many U.K. journalists just folded their tents and walked away.


The undercover journalist from Ghana, Anas Aremeyaw Anas, is widely recognized for the impact of his stories, which have, as he says, allowed him to "name, shame and jail" corrupt officials in Africa. But what makes this journalist truly admirable is that he is willing to sacrifice his very identity and risk his own life to do this important and dangerous work.

Anas's question: what is the role of journalism, if not to benefit society?

The flip side to that question: how much should a journalist have to sacrifice to benefit society?

Miranda's partner, Glenn Greenwald, a columnist for The Guardian, did not hide his anger over his own ongoing work causing him, Miranda and his newspaper to be targeted by the British authorities.

Yet here is another trap for journalists: if you are too angry, you are no longer objective. And if you are no longer objective, you are no longer fit to cover your own story.

And then, of course, there is the meddlesome issue of journalists going after each other.

In order to fulfill the public mission of journalism -- which is, after all, supposed to be the point of it all -- it is crucial that journalists be allowed to do their work without institutional interference.

These days, we find ourselves at a crossroads. Information is the planet's new power currency - and journalists are its gatekeepers. With the public increasingly turning to online news sources for their information, state oppression of journalists and bloggers is on the rise.

Do journalists really have to become quasi-superheroes in order to find, safeguard and publish key data?


The answer ultimately lies in the will of the public -- our readers -- those people journalists aim to humbly serve.

Miranda Is Not a One-Off; it Happened to Me tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.3844480 2013-08-30T16:27:53-04:00 2013-10-30T05:12:01-04:00 Leah McGrath Goodman http://www.huffingtonpost.com/leah-mcgrath-goodman/




Reading Miranda's account of his treatment - no explanation, no access to his own lawyer, no contact with the outside world, not even his family or his partner, investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald - I remembered the day I was detained, stripped of everything I owned, including all proof of my identity, and locked up in the basement of Heathrow while researching VIP child abuse in the British Isles.



















Next month marks the two-year anniversary of my ouster from Great Britain. Since my detainment, my U.K. visa status has been fully restored through the collective efforts of members of the press, including The Guardian and the BBC. A social media campaign brought international attention to the plight of those suffering in Jersey and, through the herculean efforts of U.K. Member of Parliament John Hemming and Jersey politicians Trevor and Shona Pitman, I traveled for the first time back to London and Jersey this summer to continue my work with a group of U.K. journalists. I also was able to meet MP Hemming for the first time to thank him.




The U.K. Border Agency has not responded, so today, MP Hemming is launching a Change.org petition urging U.K. Immigration Minister Mark Harper and Home Secretary Theresa May to stop stonewalling the release the "missing" footage of my detainment.



Killing Your Own: The Truth About Oil Speculators tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.835485 2011-03-14T13:43:38-04:00 2011-05-25T18:40:24-04:00 Leah McGrath Goodman http://www.huffingtonpost.com/leah-mcgrath-goodman/
What they found taught them a lot about the nature of the oil speculator.

The Marine Corps considered its task to be of great tactical importance, as it was in the process of moving the nation's combat functions to computers and were unsure of the immediate effects on warfare. Would U.S. servicemen find it easier to inflict pain via the screen? Would they become more aggressive while waging war at arm's length? There were fears that computerization would lead to desensitization.

The heavily guarded oil-trading pits of downtown Manhattan -- the same market where oil prices shot to nearly $150 a barrel in 2008 and surpassed $100 in recent weeks -- turned out to be the perfect place to conduct these groundbreaking observations. In combat, stress often happens in deadly bursts, lasting only a few seconds. But in the Nymex trading pits, "combat" stretched for hours at a time, sometimes late into night.

The marines found the oil traders were not only able to make the same kinds of split-second decisions that U.S. servicemen were expected to make during firefights, but when compelled to act blindly based on limited data -- whether delivered live or electronically -- did so capably by way of long-honed survival instincts.

Still, the Marine Corps wanted to see what the traders would do when put directly behind the computer screen and asked to draw blood. Devising a battery of computerized war games, Francis "Bing" West, former assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs with the Reagan administration, looked on as two dozen Nymex traders met with a group of marine and navy officers on the World War II aircraft carrier USS Intrepid in New York to face off.

The traders and officers broke into two opposing teams. Each received the same number of jets, troops, and scud missiles and asked to destroy a series of targets within a certain amount of time. Both teams needed to decide separately on the best course of action when dispatching troops and munitions in ordering strikes.

As it turned out, the oil traders proved to be far more bloodthirsty than the marines. They were willing to sacrifice more munitions and also troops to achieve their goals. (In the words of one oil trader on the Nymex team: "If the traders lost 50 people, well, at least we got the job done.")

The Marine Corps, which initially planned on releasing the final scores of the match, decided it better not. West, who vividly recalls the skirmish, says the outcome was unexpected. "It turned out the traders had a much more quantitative instinct for risk-reward when applying force on the battlefield," he says. "They focused on obliterating the enemy. The generals had to explain to them that the thing they were missing was that the payoff wasn't simply hurting the enemy, it was also that the enemy did not hurt your troops."

Two decades later, it is safe to say that the enemy is, indeed, hurting our troops -- only both the enemy and the troops are us. When it comes to oil trading, not to mention speculation in the stock and other financial markets, action has largely moved to the screen, which is ruled by speculators who remain, as ever, bloodthirsty.

Yet instead of killing off troops by means of traditional warfare, they are ticking off Americans in a game of financial warfare that many Americans don't even know they are playing.

It is naïve to blame only the speculators -- traders who bet on prices for a profit -- many of whom have never been the least coy about their pecuniary objectives or appetite for risk-taking. Greed is not about to disappear anytime soon on Wall Street. For those keen to point fingers, consider the men and women throughout this country (especially in Washington) whose job it is to protect Americans and the integrity of our markets, yet primarily use their powers to curry favor on Wall Street in exchange for top-paying posts in the private sector, all while telling taxpayers how hard they are working to fix the entrenched problems.

The evidence is so overwhelming it can no longer be called anecdotal. Speculators, in the wake of the global financial crisis, are still allowed to take huge bets with almost no money down. We could make them pay more money up front. That would automatically clip their wings. We don't let our teenagers go on $1,000 shopping sprees with $50 in their pocket. Why would we let Wall Street after watching it bet the house, lose spectacularly and stick the taxpayers with the bill?

In the oil market, when Congress was given an opportunity to rein in traders' ability to make big bets with almost no down payment, guess what it did? It backed off and marched Big Oil into Washington for a public berating instead. Astoundingly, that decision was made just before oil prices hit their record high of $147.27 a barrel a few years ago and gas punched above $4 a gallon -- an area prices are again targeting.

Worse, it's no secret that New York's oil speculators brought drugs, strippers and weapons right into the trading pits. The market even had a fully stocked bar open all day above the trading floor as oil prices raced to their apex.

Did you know there's a watchdog agency in Washington responsible for keeping an eye on the energy market? It is called the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. But rather than fulfilling its mission with marine-like precision, its chairmen mostly use it as a way to cozy up to Wall Street in exchange for the lucrative jobs they really want. In fact, as oil shot to its peak in July 2008, the CEO presiding over Nymex was none other than James Newsome, the previous chairman of the CFTC.

Newsome received 10 times his CFTC salary for crossing over, but he is hardly an exception to the rule; his successors and predecessors have done similar things. This is not a problem of the individual, but a problem of a spectacularly broken system. President Obama's appointment of the current CFTC chairman, Gary Gensler, has not been seen as very reassuring, since he is a retired banker from Goldman who once strongly opposed stricter regulation of Wall Street while working at the Treasury Department from 1997 to 2001.

The woefully underfunded CFTC also hasn't followed the example of the Marine Corps in monitoring oil's transition to computerized trading, which began in earnest a year before oil prices topped out. To be blunt, technological advances do not seem to be putting an end to the energy market's long history of price manipulation (or as the traders call it, "price management"). Prices are spiking more dramatically than ever, and there is even evidence that high-frequency trading has made things worse.

In July 2009, federal authorities apprehended a Russian-American computer programmer who worked at Goldman Sachs developing top-secret trading software that could, according to Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Facciponti, "manipulate markets," specifically, the commodities and stock markets. But Goldman's possession of such software, oddly, was not the chief concern. The reason for the manhunt was the programmer's theft of the software from Goldman, which Facciponti stated was worth "millions upon millions" of dollars -- the loss of which, he said, would be "very substantial" to the bank.

This past December, the programmer, Sergey Aleynikov, was convicted. For some, justice is swift.

To make this a partisan issue is to miss the point entirely. This is not about Republicans or Democrats. This is about money and who extracts the fattest pound of flesh. The illusion being peddled to Americans is that the cops are on the beat when the "cops," in truth, have joined the league of the risk-takers. Washington has caught the Wall Street disease, and the profit motive transcends all.

We can no longer deny that fancy jobs and favors are effectively being used as bribes to influence our key regulators, state functionaries and elected officials. Are we surprised Wall Street is doing this? Or should we be more dismayed still that we are witnessing our own betrayal -- then being asked to pay for it?

The solutions to the problems are well known and have been well known since the Great Depression. When put into place and enforced correctly, they work. When reduced to Swiss cheese -- as they are now -- they do not. What is lacking is not the knowledge, but the political will to impose them. When you hear that Congress or the Securities and Exchange Commission or the CFTC needs more time to hold another hearing or conduct a new study, be warned. These are often just ways of stalling.

We need to ask ourselves, what do we believe is the end game here? With weak rules in place, many have thrived who otherwise would have not, but not for the right reasons. With the passage of the Frank-Dodd Act, we are being promised a rules renaissance and financial reform. But the lawmakers and policymakers rewriting the rules are not only part of the problem, they continue to conflate quantity with quality. How about a few commonsense rules instead of a pile of complicated ones?

We have replaced a nation of hard-working capitalists with a fake kind of capitalism that all can see rings hollow -- including our global competitors, who already smell blood on the water.

Now that we must undo the damage, the pressure is on to undertake the Great Head Fake -- and we, the enemy, are winning.]]>