#Keri Kukral

[msclaritea]

[exploremars]

With Humans To Mars Summit 2018 just a week away, we'd like to remind you that DAY ONE will feature the exclusive premiere of SEAT 25 in the GW Lisner Auditorium at The George Washington University at 8PM EST! So arrive early, grab your theater snacks, get comfortable, and enjoy the brilliant work of Nick Agnew and Maddy Cooke, who will be in attendance for a special Q&A panel after the screening, accompanied on stage by Janet Ivey-Duensing of Janet's Planet, moderated by Keri Kukral of Raw Science! Register to attend at https://h2m.exploremars.org Source: SEAT 25 #HumansToMars #Seat25 #MarsInspires https://youtu.be/ap9xOoYMpio

[abckidstvyara]

Last year, renowned VC Steve Jurvetson parted ways in what appeared a painful split with his longtime firm, DFJ. Six months later, he’s back with a new firm, Future Ventures, Jurvetson tells us via email. (Recode was first to take notice of the new site.)

Says Jurvetson: “I am incredibly excited about the future — the future of entrepreneurship, disruptive technologies, and my [“future ventures”] to come. I strongly believe that mission-driven founders forge the future. At Future Ventures, we will support those passionate founders.

“For the past 23 years, I have seen the greatest reward, personally and professionally by backing the visionaries who push the boundaries of possibility and explore the frontiers of the unknown.”

Jurvetson’s fast return to the venture scene isn’t a surprise. In November, we talked with numerous institutional investors who agreed that if they could invest behind a new Jurvetson effort, they would.

Largely, that interest ties to Jurvetson’s track record, which includes SpaceX, Tesla Motors, and the satellite company Planet, among other bets.

The circumstances around Jurvetson’s departure from DFJ appear to have provided an opening for his return, too.

Though Jurvetson left DFJ as he being investigated by the firm for harassment, the one person who had complained about DFJ publicly, at least, a founder named Keri Kukral, later made clear that her relationship to the firm was not in a professional context.

Such opacity around Jurvetson’s alleged transgressions, combined with his long history of success in Silicon Valley, appeared to embolden investors whose livelihood depends on betting on winning VCs.

Said one such limited partner to us back in November: “Are some of these VCs forever unbackable, or unbackable until the dust settles? As an LP, it’s easier to say right now, ‘I have a fiduciary duty to my investors’ [and pass]. But a family office doesn’t have to answer to anyone. If they think Steve is a great investor, shit, they’ll give him money. They understand he hasn’t [assaulted] anyone.”

When Jurvetson was leaving DFJ, he’d said he intended to “focus on personal matters, including taking legal action against those who have defamed me.”

Now, it looks like Jurvetson may have simply decided to move on instead.

Hopefully we’ll have more on this development soon.

[fonteneauarnold]

2017’s Five Biggest Tech Company Sexual Harassment Scandals

Far too many women experience sexual harassment and discrimination in the workforce. When it happens to you, it can be dizzying and confusing. There are so many questions that need to be answered. Worse yet, there are strict limits on how long you can think through what is happening to you before getting help.

For women in Silicon Valley, 2017 has seen a lot of revealing stories about sexual harassment and discrimination in the media. We have gathered a few of the most explosive stories of the year, specifically those involving high-tech startups and their leadership.

Draper Fisher Jurvetson

In November of 2017, Steve Jurveston was pushed out of his own venture capital firm amid widespread reports of “predatory” behavior towards women. Notably, Keri Kukral’s Facebook post regarding Jurveston’s behavior went viral, leading to a number of questions being asked. Soon, others came forward about the allegedly systemic behavior by Jurveston. Ultimately, as reported by ReCode, he stepped down from his own firm. He had also been a member of the board for Elon Musk’s companies, Tesla and SpaceX. Jurveston has since stepped down from both of those, as well.

Betterworks

Betterworks is a continuous platform management company that serves a lot of major operations around the globe. Former CEO Kris Duggan co-founded the company back in 2013. According to Business Insider, he opted to step down after being sued in a California court. The lawsuit was brought by a female employee who claims he made unwanted sexual advances while on a company retreat. Her career at the company ended when she left following the incident.

500 Startup

While the allegations against Jurveston and Duggan center on workplace sexual advances, allegedly used in a coercive manner, Dave McClure, the former chief of 500 Startup, takes this one step further. According to allegations, he forcibly and repeatedly kissed a female executive in 2014. As reporting from Fortune.com explains, the accusations go far behind using power or leverage to induce sexual favors; they directly suggest assault.

Google

The presumptive high-tech leader of the pack, Google, certainly was not immune from scandal in 2017. At least three high-level employees of the company were forced out amid allegations.

First, engineer Amit Singhal left the company to join Uber. However, Uber later discovered reports that sexual harassment allegations during his time at Google were determined by Google’s investigators to be credible. This led to his early departure from Uber in February of 2017.

Next, Andy Rubin was the subject of a 2014 investigation at Google due to allegations of inappropriate behavior arising from his relationship with subordinate female employees. While maintaining his innocence, the Android developer took a leave of absence from his company amid the allegations.

Finally, in November of 2017, yet another Google employee was the subject to sexual misconduct allegations. David Drummond, a top attorney at Google, was discovered to have been involved in a lengthy extra-marital affair with a female subordinate. As The Mercury News reports, that female employee has since left the company, yet Drummond remains the chief legal officer for the company’s parent corporation, Alphabet, Inc.

Uber

Uber gets first prize. Of course, that is not exactly a lofty prize. Since last June, the tech startup has seen at least 20 firings due to allegations of sexual harassment. Starting with the ousted CEO, Travis Kalanick, the company has been accused of having a ‘locker room’ culture that disparages women and leads to a terrible and hostile work environment for female employees. The Chicago Tribune details numerous accounts of female employees being ignored or outright shut down when complaining of sexual advances or worse.

How to Handle Sexual Harassment

While Silicon Valley had a rough year, sexual harassment happens in all types of workplaces.  The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is the primary agency responsible for adjudicating claims under federal civil rights laws, including sexual harassment and discrimination claims. However, you must file a charge for workplace discrimination within 180 days. That means you generally have just six months to consider your options and take action.

Birmingham workplace discrimination lawyers can help you answer these tough questions and give you the tools, resources, and support you need in order to take control of your harassment or discrimination case.

The post 2017’s Five Biggest Tech Company Sexual Harassment Scandals appeared first on Fonteneau & Arnold.

[symmetrymovie]

The film Symmetry won 2 awards at it’s first North-American avant-premiere in San Francisco. Featuring a panel discussion after the screenings with: Ryan Wyatt, California Academy of Sciences; Dr. Donald Goldsmith, scientist/writer; Keri Kukral, ballet dancer and bio-engineer; Ruben Van Leer, filmmaker. 

Physicist Fritjof Capra was also present and stood up from the audience to make a statement about the film: "Today we can understand that subatomic particles are not isolated. You see patterns of energy in motion. So dance is the natural art form to convey this. Because there is a dance of subatomic matter. I think the film Symmetry shows this very well.”

[msclaritea]

"Besides his affiliations with the Tavistock Institute,2 the first reason Sargant is relevant to my own family history is that, once again, there is a curious overlap with the world of Fabianism, leftist movements, and progressive creative circles. In 1954, a convalescing Sargant was completing his book Battle for the Mind in Majorca, and had Robert Graves on hand to help him edit it. Robert Graves is of course the famous poet, novelist, and critic who is as responsible as Joseph Campbell for reintroducing ancient myths into popular culture (The White Goddess), and a primary influence in popularizing ancient history (I Claudius). In passing, he was teaching at Oxford during my grandfather's tenure there, but if they met, I never heard about it. So what's the connection between a poet-mythologist and the world of mind control? The answer I found was surprising because also familiar: the world of hallucinogens. In 1952, Robert Gordon Wasson (the man who brought the magic mushroom to the West) wrote to Graves asking him about the kind of mushroom which had allegedly been responsible for Claudius's death. Graves sent Wasson an account of ancient Mexican religious ceremonies that included the ingestion of mushrooms—mushrooms that had “eluded botanists and explorers for nearly five hundred years and, as a result, were generally considered to be mythical” (Streathfield, 2008, p. 60). Graves claimed there was new evidence for their actual existence, but that currently the only thing known about them was that they were referred to as “the flesh of God.” It was allegedly Graves's tip that sent the Wassons down to Mexico in 1955, where they made the discovery that would help kick-start the counterculture and spark off the “psychedelic revolution.” Among the first people to hear of Wasson's discovery were Graves and his “friend,” William Sargant. “In a bizarre turn, the war poet and the psychiatrist had struck up a friendship and agreed to collaborate on a book about brainwashing; two years later Battle for the Mind was a bestseller and had cemented Sargant's fame. Sargant provided the opinions, Graves the structure and layout to ‘make the saliva flow,’ as he put it” (Streathfield, 2008, p. 79). A few months after Wasson's discovery, the CIA was reporting on the work of “an amateur mycologist” and the potential to incorporate his findings into what was then Project Artichoke, soon to be MKULTRA. Small world. (Wasson's team was then allegedly “infiltrated” by CIA agent James Moore, before the next trip to Mexico.) As for Wasson being “an amateur mycologist”: maybe so, but he was also vice president for public relations at J. P. Morgan at the time, one of the biggest banks in the world, so not exactly an “independent researcher.” Researcher Jan Irvin (2015) ran a series of well-documented articles presenting evidence of just how deep Wasson's background was. For example, that Wasson headed the CIA's MKULTRA Subproject 58 program. That he served as a chairman to the Council on Foreign Relations (the CFR). That he had close ties to Allen Dulles, head of the CIA and MKULTRA initiator. That he earned a directorship at a pharmaceutical company for his mushroom discovery. That he was an account manager to the Pope and Vatican for J. P. Morgan. That he was in charge of promoting the Russian Orthodox Church for Russian immigrants. (This an odd overlap with my grandfather's invitation from the Russian Orthodox Church to visit the Soviet Union in 1954, “without any strings.” Though I have read his 35-page report, I am still unclear about the exact purpose of this visit. There is an appendix in the booklet titled: “Decree of the Central Committee of the C.P.SU [Communist Party Soviet Union]: About mistakes in conducting scientific-atheistic propaganda among the population.”)

The Vice of Kings: How Socialism Occultism and The Sexual Revolution Engineered A Culture of Abuse by Jasun Horsley

I don't know what Elmo is doing, but I know about magic mushrooms. They're strong in the form they're sold, now. Taking shrooms should be treated the same way as taking other psychedelics. You want to make sure only to trip with friends that you trust. In my circle of friends, someone would volunteer as a babysitter if it was your first time, promising to keep an eye out. At least, that's how we did it when I was younger. You always want to set a safe, comfortable atmosphere because shrooms can also be unpredictable. And yes, as a psychedelic, mushrooms can be used in mind control. That is most important to keep in mind, going forward as it's becoming legal.

[msclaritea]

Spies, Frauds, and Hit Men: The Indispensable Epstein, the Compromised Hoffman, the Maniacal Mehlhorn

We do not need monopolists or their consiglieres in our technology stack or in our politics.

Keri Kukral, former Silicon Valley whistleblower. I'd like to know why high profile women in Democratic circles won't acknowledge the widespread uses of Sex ops, also. It's been the biggest destructive force in international politics for years.

[msclaritea]

WHY RUSSIA'S HIGH TECH IS CALIFORNIA DREAMING

"This article from Moscow Times (April 2011) is so prescient. The focus is Tim Draper. I haven’t seen something spell out so clearly how techno-libertarians operate above nation states. Sounds like a good idea… until it’s not." Keri Kukral

"I recently attended the annual Global Technology Symposium. Although held in Menlo Park, California, the worldwide hub of venture capital companies, and organized by Silicon Valley insiders, it had a strong Russian component. Russian Venture Company, the government-run fund, was a key backer, while Rusnano and the Skolkovo project were sponsors. Russians were prominent among attendees, and a Russia Day opened the event.

In a small way, it was a rerun of last year’s visit by a California high-tech delegation to Moscow. Even though neither then-Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger nor President Dmitry Medvedev was present this time, there were numerous Russian government employees and prominent U.S. venture capitalists, including legendary Silicon Valley investors Bill Draper and Pitch Johnson.

Russian officials talked about the important role government can play in shaping the entrepreneurial culture in Russia, but they admitted that private money was needed to make innovation a success. They emphasized the importance of early stage investment in technology startups by experienced private investors, mentoring entrepreneurs and giving them professional advice. The sooner the government gets out of the venture capital business — and private capital gets in — the better it would be for the Russian high-tech industry. Rusnano and Skolkovo even announced that they had opened an office on in Menlo Park to attract U.S. venture capital.

They said all the right things and sounded quite proud of themselves for learning their lines. But all they talked about was promoting Russian innovations and high tech. U.S. investors, meanwhile, never once said the word “American.” They talked about the private sector and Silicon Valley, not strictly U.S. entrepreneurs, industry or innovation. They praised Russia’s scientific establishment and education system, but they mentioned India, China and Israel in the same breath. A technology company used as a case study at the symposium was started by scientists in Cambridge, England. It now has a factory in Germany and plans to build another one in Russia, using Rusnano investment.

The high-tech industry began in California, but it has transcended U.S. borders. It relies on ideas, entrepreneurial skills, managerial talent and capital without regard for its origins. Research and manufacturing follow the logic of business decisions, not national interests. The best thing Russia can do to promote innovation is to abandon its misplaced national ambitions and integrate into the world economy promptly and seamlessly. It needs to improve its legal protections for investors and entrepreneurs and restrain its bureaucrats and siloviki raiders. Recent initiatives by Medvedev to separate state-owned companies from the government by barring top-level bureaucrats from serving on their boards of directors is a step in the right direction, but many more will need to follow.

As for entrepreneurs, there are plenty of them in Russia, and they need no government involvement. Once there is a healthy business climate, private money from around the world will rush in to back their projects. Until that happens, however, they will want to leave Russia and join many of their countrymen already living and working in California. For them, the most inspiring words at the symposium were probably uttered by Tim Draper, founder of venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson and a third-generation high-tech investor. He started his remarks by rattling off a list of a half-dozen successful high-tech firms in the United States and asking what they had in common.

“They all had founders born outside the United States,” he said."

Alexei Bayer, a native Muscovite, is a New York-based economist.

[msclaritea]

'Republican lawmakers are struggling to explain their reasoning for moving forward with an impeachment inquiry into President Biden.' Rolling Stone

Republican lawmakers are struggling to explain their reasoning for moving forward with an impeachment inquiry into President Biden." Rolling Stone

Hunter Biden was TARGETED. Keri Kukral has spoken on the details, many times and about how these honey pot stings have resulted in so much chaos, throughout different countries. Began by Russia, blackmail sting operations have been used by other intelligence, like the Mossad. Bannon and Stone have targeted officials for decades. That vile MTG showed a picture of the president's son in his underwear on the Congress floor!

We humans are all capable of weak moments and you should all hope that someone isn't there to record your lowest and most embarrassing moments. Because anyone thinking that Hunter Biden and our hardworking president deserves this, is no better than the Satanic worshippers in Scientology and the Israeli government, who BOTH, coincidentally engage in Victim Blaming. Funny, isn't it?

[msclaritea]

Keri Kukral: Silicon Valley whistleblower:

"This is SNCTM. Gwyneth Paltrow and Brad Pitt promote it. It’s connected to Cannes Film Festival yachts, Harvey Weinstein’s hunting ground. It’s a political blackmail operation. The USG should investigate it as such. This is a hostile active measure."

[msclaritea]

"Monica Lewinsky is Silicon Valley’s and Pepperdine’s (Kenn Starr, Dershowitz). She’s here with Tim Draper’s collaborator Nigel Farage, the architect of BREXIT. Tim paid $20M+ to similarly try to break up US state borders. They want to break everything. Blackmail is their tool....I found it interesting that the Epstein survivor used Lewinsky's PR person to be a speaker for S.O.A.R." Keri Kukral

Always felt Monica Lewinsky was shady. She loved the spotlight, too much, and our International MSM loved bringing up that whole sordid episode, again and again. #CNN #NBC #ABC #CBS #NETFLIX all tortured us for years over a blowjob. Monica Lewinsky was a ringer.

[msclaritea]

If Silicon Valley whistleblower, Keri Kukral says there is something wrong with the Los Angeles FBI, then you should definitely believe her. The woman usually has excellent information, including multiple warnings on the damage that Sexual Blackmail aka Honey Potting has had on governments around the world. There sure as hell has been some very public organized crime going on. So, what' IS going on in L.A. with the local F.B.I. chapter? Why does Senator Whitehouse not address it?

[msclaritea]

I DO NOT GIVE A SHIT WHO IS NOW WORKING FOR HUNTER BIDEN. HE IS A PRIVATE CITIZEN, CBS. PISS OFF! It's bad enough the poor man was targeted with a Honeypot operation from Russia and their allies. As Keri Kukral said, the horrible state of so many governments over the years is due to constant targeting of honeypot and blackmail operations. Never hear about any of that from man, do we?

[msclaritea]

"It’s going to be ok, people. I spoke out about Tim Draper’s firm (DFJ) which closed it. They are early backers of Musk. DFJ put in $100M for Twitter, former Tesla Chair Ellison $1B, the Alwaleed’s a bunch more. I’m still here. People only have power over you if you let them." Keri Kukral