#i put my information to join the class action lawsuit :)

[8pxl]

and get sued 😤

[loser-brain]

Reblogging this again because I see no one helping one another on how to opt out.

I'm sorry to everyone saying it's easy, but you're right it is however, people with short attention spans will not find it quick.

It's at the way bottom hiding.

Copied and pasted from Esty Terms of Use Section 11. Arbitration Agreement and Class Action Waiver

G. Opt out. You have a limited right to opt out of this Arbitration Agreement (excluding Section 11.I). Specifically, iIf you are a new user of our Services, you can opt out of this Arbitration Agreement within 30 days after you first accept the Terms. If you are an existing user of our Services, you can opt out within 30 days after the effective date (listed above). To opt out, you must send a timely email to arbitrationoptout@etsy.com with your name, the email address for your account, your username and your shop name (if applicable), and a request to opt out of arbitration. If you validly opt out, neither Etsy nor you will be required to arbitrate as a result of this (or any prior version of the) Arbitration Agreement, but the Terms (and any other agreements between us) will otherwise apply to you. If we update the Terms after you validly opt out, we will continue to respect your opt-out, but such updates do not provide a new opportunity to opt out of arbitration.

Okay, so why should you opt. out?? Does it matter if you are a buyer?

This applies to both sellers and buyers. So yes, it does matter to you if you are a buyer.

You should opt out because if there was ever a class action against Esty and you never opt-out. YOU CANNOT JOIN IN THE CLASS ACTION.

If you opt out you can join others to sue Etsy. It will be a group of people suing Etsy aka a class action lawsuit.

If you never opt out, then you cannot join a group suing. You can only sue Etsy by your own payment money otherwise known as an individual suing. Mind you is rare to sue a company by yourself unless you are wealthy.

SO! let's go step by step. I'll even make you a copy-paste email to make your life so much easier and put you at ease.

Step 1. Grab this email arbitrationoptout[@]etsy.com (Remove brackets)

Step 2. Grab your username and shop name

Step 2.5. Struggle on trying to find your username. Celebrate finding your username by clicking on your profile https://www.etsy.com/people/[Username] you do not need this part only your numbers!! -> ?ref=hdr_user_menu-profile <- You can ignore this!!

Do the same with your shop. Bam. You are almost done!

Step 3. Finding your name

Go to your profile and click about. That should be your name. If you are unsure, go to account settings, under about you, your name should be there (You can also click edit public profile and you will find your name there as well).

Step 4. Begin the email. Take a deep breath you are almost done.

Hello Etsy, I'm sending this email for I, [NAME], do not agree with the new term of use of Section 11. (excluding Section 11.I). I would like to opt out of the Arbitration Agreement, thank you. My name is [NAME], and my email address is [EMAIL ADDRESS YOU USE FOR YOUR ETSY]. My username is [USERNAME NUMBERS] and my shop name is [SHOP USERNAME]. Once again, thank you.

If you do not have a shop that's okay. Just edit out the shop bit.

Step 5. Hit send. Bam. You are done and have officially opted out of Etsy Section 11. (excluding Section 11.I) Arbitration Agreement.

So what now? Well, first of all. You gotta spread this because many folks don't know this. They have till August 23, 2023, to opt-out. So spread this like wildfire. Buyers and Sellers this counts to you both at the same time. If you do not opt out you will not have the ability to sue Etsy with a group of people aka join a class action lawsuit against Etsy.

Hey another thing before I hit the hay, if you feel like the email bit is a little formal you can change it. If you have any more information about this don't be shy and talk about it. Many folks I see in the notes are confused. Wondering if they are a buyer does this affect them (yes, yes it does) many folks think staying opt-in is a good thing. I'm saying it's not because you will have to sue Etsy on your own with no help whatsoever.

I hope this help put people at ease because I've struggled on finding my name, my username, and the email to send it too. I just was a wreck scrambling on trying to find everything.

[jasmine-the-fox]

Villain’s can be heroes too

This villain au request was made by IceWolf92 Let’s hope this is loved!

Jasmine never knew what it was like to be loved by someone, her parents left her when she was a pup due to her ninetails quirk, she never had a boyfriend because even though she was an omega she looked almost like an alpha.

No one said it was easy though...

So here she was... In Paris, in Caline Bustier’s class... Being bullied because Lila Rossi claims she’s a bully. It’s hard to be honest, she was always nice towards others so why is she believed to be a bully? Did she say something wrong? Did she upset someone? Who really knows?

Right now she and her classmates were getting ready for there week long trip to Japan, it was to be a big thing because they would meet some pro heroes in person... But Jasmine was more worried about the villains that could be watching them and then plan to kidnap them at some point in the week to harm them or worse... Like Nitro for example.

Nitro was a mysterious villain with an explosion quirk, he creates an imitation to nitroglycerin from the sweat coming from his hands and he creates explosions from that, he was dangerous, most heroes that try to go after him get burnt pretty badly or are forced to retired because of there injuries... To there luck no one was killed just yet, Lila loved joking about heroes arresting her or villains killing her... She once joked about Nitro raping her.

She actually held in her vomit until she was home that day...

Even so, Jasmine did her best to stay positive, she was pretty lucky so far, she wasn’t seated anywhere near Lila who complained during the whole flight about her seat placement, she got her bags early so Lila didn’t get the chance to mess with them or anything, and she was in the bus before Lila could try to make them leave early, she laid in her bed with a sigh of relief that Lila failed to mess with her... I mean sure the class glared at her but she safely got to the hotel without a problem.

She didn’t even care that someone was watching her from outside anymore...

Nitro aka Katsuki Bakugo was interested in Jasmine since he saw her enter the bus at the airport, he had just returned from a trip in Peru for a money deal that he tricked the others by destroying everything so he could get all the money, so with a huge sum of money and a cute omega he now wanted for himself... Why not try and court her?

So at first he leaves her gifts that she would quickly find and enjoy, at the same time he observed the class... And discovered dark and vile things that was happening with that class to Jasmine... That should be stopped right now, he decided that he needed to get Jasmine out of that class and fast.

Which happened much too fast in his opinion...

It was the day that the class decided to go to the mall for some shopping, Lila was once again lying about herself which was keeping the classes attention on herself while Jasmine would look in some stores for things she might like to buy, all of a sudden people began to run and scream, a small group of villains decided to go to the mall and rob some stores... And the class? Well they became there hostages to get more money, jewelry, shoes, games and clothes among other things.

Nitro was pissed when he got there, one of the villains was surprised to see him and asks about it, the class is freaking out while Lila’s followers get mad as they put the blame on Jasmine, they were certain that she was doing all of this to scare them, Nitro is quiet as he walks over towards the class... And grabs Jasmine before leaving the mall in silence.

The omega has no words at the moment, she is just... Confused as to why she was kidnapped by Nitro today, he set her inside what she believed was his home in a nest that he must have built as he then walks away to what she believes to be the bathroom, she tried to get around the place... But the nest was scented by him and it was making it hard for her to focus, she then realised that he was courting her and that the gifts she found were from him.

Katsuki left the bathroom changed out of his Nitro gear to find Jasmine still in the nest trembling in excitement, he slowly walks over to the nest and then crouches down “My name is Katsuki Bakugo... I have been courting you for a while now and I would like to know if you would allow me to continue courting you” he explained softly which as a result made her purr out in joy, he smiled as he could understand that she accepted his courting.

Meanwhile...

Caline was confused, it had been a few hours since the incident at the mall and the police have yet to find Jasmine, she was certain that it was all a joke she had planned out but that made the police yell at her for thinking that a minor could plan an event like that, her students at the same time have begun to worry about Jasmine and her life... No longer focused on Lila’s latest lie at all, so it never occurred to them that those strange gifts she found were from Nitro.

Jasmine on the other hand... Loves her time to bond with Katsuki, they got to know one another better than before... Heck, not even her friends knew what Katsuki was being told about her right now, she was loving her time with Katsuki and the many gifts he got her... Enough that she agreed to be his claimed omega, he was actually very much excited to claim her... But she needs to return to her classmates even if he hates the idea of her going back to them.

Slowly the week ended... This means Katsuki needs to bring her back to her class now, so he carries her out of his home and to a roof far from his home so a hero can take her back to the police station to be looked over and then questioned, as she’s being questioned Caline arrives with her students as the police called her to give her the good news, to her relief she wasn’t harmed so they were able to go back to Paris without a problem.

They just had no idea that Nitro was watching them the whole time they headed for the airport... Glaring...

Lila would still try to spin the mall event to blame Jasmine but Caline shut her down, she still remembered what the police told her when she told them what Lila claimed at the time, as a result Lila was ignored at they all returned to there homes, when Jasmine arrived home, she focused on all of the courting gifts Katsuki gifted her that he bought while in disguise, things were peaceful after the whole thing in Japan for about two weeks... Before a new gift appeared at her door.

It was a box, inside she was quickly blinded for a second by her alpha’s scent on the scarf he gifted her, she purred in happiness at the gift as she slipped it on and then went to school... All the while Katsuki watched her with a gentle smile, the alpha had actually planned to go to Paris a little after she returned to continue courting her in secret... And also to watch her classmates, he discovered that some still believe in Lila while the rest no longer believes her but haven’t said sorry to Jasmine.

As time continued on, a routine was made between the alpha and omega, everyday, Jasmine would find a gift from her alpha and would use it each time, he would see this and would quietly croon out to her even if she doesn’t hear him, Lila still tries to bully his omega but he always secretly grabbed the liar and stops her plans by scaring her in all kinds of ways each day she tries... He loves the fearful expression she makes each time he grabs her.

Everynight, Jasmine would try to see Katsuki, this hurt him badly seeing her try to locate him, fail and then go home sad that she wasn’t able to see him again... But he just wasn’t ready for them to be together again. One day, Lila was found out, she was so confused on how she was uncovered for her lies because she was so good at hiding her tracks from all of her actions and lies... And she was still uncovered somehow, her mother lost it when she saw all of the lawsuits all against her daughter.

She didn’t care that her daughter was already being grabbed by the police to take her to the station for questions... She simply began yelling at her daughter for what she’s costing them right now, she is even more furious when her daughter tries to put the blame on Jasmine and in front of a crowd bullies Jasmine some more, months go by before the investigation at the school is over, Lila is expelled and deported back to Italy while some who followed and joined her in bullying Jasmine were suspended... But the whole class had to get a therapist.

But even after all of that... None of them apologized to her, the school never even tried to see if they had which enraged Katsuki greatly, actually... The class believed that Jasmine needs to apologize to them, they all believed to have been innocent and that Jasmine had done something wrong to them. And because of the fact nothing was being fixed... Katsuki decided that enough was enough, if no one was going to try and fix anything that was happening to his omega... Then he would do something about it instead.

Bit by bit, Katsuki began to reveal himself in Paris... But also secretly informed Jasmine about it all, at first he would do a little crime and then he would attack one of her classmates and an adult who abandoned her in the end, as a result Japan sent a few pro heroes to Paris to protect Jasmine as they and the school believed he came for Jasmine... Which they weren’t wrong about, the pro heroes were to be on standby but close to the omega until Nitro was captured, it sucked because not only was Jasmine unable to get anymore gifts from her alpha... But pro heroes who are alpha’s were flirting with her.

This angered her alpha greatly...

A month later... Jasmine has gone missing, pro heroes investigate but can’t find anything strange in her home... Not that they dug deep into her home, so they never saw the huge amount of clothes and items that were gone... Or notice the note she left behind explaining everything that happened to her in Japan, the flirting pro heroes or the love she and Katsuki have for each-other.

It didn’t even matter if they noticed all of that since they were too late, they all missed her and Katsuki getting on there plane, or that her money was successfully transferred to another account. Years go by and Jasmine was now married to Katsuki as a Bakugo living in a gorgeous home he built years ago for them, he had stopped working on his garden to play with there two pups for a bit while she was relaxing in her chair with a hand on her round stomach as she carried there twins... She smiles as she gets up to join them even with the limit from carrying the twins.

Katsuki while a villain... Was her hero.

[phroyd]

WASHINGTON — Matthew G. Whitaker, the acting attorney general, served on the advisory board of a Florida company that a federal judge shut down last year and fined nearly $26 million after the government accused it of scamming customers.

The company, World Patent Marketing, “bilked thousands of consumers out of millions of dollars” by promising inventors lucrative patent agreements, according to a complaint filed in Florida by the Federal Trade Commission.

Court documents show that when frustrated consumers tried to get their money back, Scott J. Cooper, the company’s president and founder, used Mr. Whitaker to threaten them as a former federal prosecutor. Mr. Cooper’s company paid Mr. Whitaker nearly $10,000 before it closed.

Mr. Whitaker’s role in the company would complicate his confirmation prospects should President Trump nominate him as attorney general.

It is not clear if Mr. Trump was aware of Mr. Whitaker’s involvement with the patent marketing company before naming him as a replacement for Jeff Sessions, who was ousted by Mr. Trump on Wednesday.

A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment on Mr. Whitaker’s ties to the patent company, which were first reported by The Miami New Times.

Before his ascension to the office of the nation’s top law enforcement official, Mr. Whitaker, 49, was Mr. Sessions’s chief of staff. A conservative Republican from Iowa, he was seen within the Justice Department as a White House loyalist who publicly expressed doubts about the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, who is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election and whether Mr. Trump or any of his associates conspired in the effort.

Mr. Whitaker’s appointment has prompted concerns that he might shut down or stymie the special counsel’s investigation.

In August 2017, Mr. Whitaker highlighted on Twitter a Philly.com opinion article with the headline “Note to Trump’s Lawyer: Do Not Cooperate With Mueller Lynch Mob.” In his tweet, Mr. Whitaker wrote that it was “worth a read.”

Mr. Whitaker also wrote an opinion article that same day for CNN’s website with the headline “Mueller’s Investigation of Trump Is Going Too Far.” He said the investigation needed to be limited. Mr. Whitaker, a former college football player, joined the Justice Department in October 2017 after Mr. Trump watched him as a CNN analyst and approved of his television appearances.

World Patent Marketing was founded in 2014 and had the hallmarks of a legitimate business. It used a splashy website and other marketing materials to “create the impression that they have successfully helped other inventors,” the trade commission said in its complaint.

In reality, the commission said, the Miami Beach company failed to make good on almost every promise it made to consumers, and strung them along for months or years after taking their money.

When prospective customers left their contact information on the company website, an employee would call them back and follow a script: The company was an “invention powerhouse” with an “incredible advisory board,” including Mr. Whitaker, a “former United States attorney who was appointed by President George Bush.” Mr. Whitaker had served as the top prosecutor for the Southern District of Iowa, a position he held until 2009.

In joining the board, Mr. Whitaker was quoted in a news release issued by the company as saying that he was honored to be a part of World Patent Marketing because it was a “trusted partner to many inventors.”

In another news release, Mr. Whitaker was quoted as saying that “as a former U.S. attorney, I would only align myself with a first-class organization.”

“World Patent Marketing,” the release continued, “goes beyond making statements about doing business ‘ethically’ and translates those words into action.”

In footage uploaded to Vimeo, a video platform, in 2015, Mr. Whitaker can be seen reviewing an invention meant to reduce razor-blade cuts. Mr. Cooper also posted a picture of himself on social media with a smiling Mr. Whitaker at the company offices in Miami.

The trade commission complaint said that consumers were told they had to spend about $3,000 for a “Global Invention Royalty Analysis” to begin the process of examining an invention with the goal of getting a patent. After making the payment, the company’s clients were then pitched various packages ranging from approximately $8,000 to about $65,000.

After the company took the money, it typically began ignoring customers, who became frustrated that they were left in the dark. Mr. Cooper would often berate or threaten them when they asked questions or wanted their money back.

“Defendants and their lawyers have threatened consumers with lawsuits and even criminal charges and imprisonment for making any kind of complaint,” the trade commission’s complaint said.

In at least two instances, Mr. Cooper used Mr. Whitaker’s former position as a federal prosecutor to rebuff customers.

Mr. Whitaker, using his Iowa law firm’s email, told a man who had complained to Mr. Cooper that he was a former federal prosecutor and served on the company’s board.

“Your emails and message from today seem to be an apparent attempt at possible blackmail or extortion,” Mr. Whitaker wrote in August 2015. “You also mentioned filing a complaint with the Better Business Bureau and to smear World Patent Marketing’s reputation online. I am assuming you understand that there could be serious civil and criminal consequences for you.”

When another frustrated customer, Rich O’Neill of Montana, emailed around the same time and wanted his $1,300 returned, Mr. Cooper fired back a threatening email.

“You’re telling me that if I don’t refund your $1,300, you will blackmail me into filing complaints with regulators? And you just put it in writing,” Mr. Cooper wrote. “You are aware that we have a former U.S. attorney on our board.”

Mr. Cooper returned the money to Mr. O’Neill, who said in an interview on Thursday that he believed the email referencing Mr. Whitaker was meant to intimidate him.

The complaint also accused the company of using thuggish tactics, according to court documents. In an email to customers, the company referenced a blog post that described how one person wanted to speak with Mr. Cooper about his invention idea. The post said that the person was intercepted by the company’s “intimidating security team, all ex-Israeli special ops and trained in Krav Maga, one of the most deadly of the martial arts.”

The post added, “The World Patent Marketing Security Team are the kind of guys who are trained to knock out first and ask questions later.”

Another customer, Brenda Wilcox, 49, a Trump supporter who lives in Broward County, Fla., said in an interview on Thursday that World Patent Marketing scammed $11,000 from her. She said the company had agreed to market, license and develop a bracelet she invented that would warn drivers if they left a baby in the back seat of their car.

Another customer, William Knecht of Texas, lost about $35,000 on a patent package, according to the complaint. “The entire time I worked with W.P.M. I feel like the company cut corners, did the bare minimum to get by, and were just slimy enough to keep me happy and not complaining,” Mr. Knecht said in a 2017 statement as part of the trade commission’s case.

Another customer, Christopher Seaver, a Florida doctor who spent more than $300,000 hoping to make money on an invention, said that Mr. Cooper asked him to be on the advisory board to do consulting work on medical patents.

“I have not made any money from my involvement with W.P.M.,” Dr. Seaver said in the complaint. “This has caused financial hardship for me because I paid life savings to W.P.M.” He added, “I’ve gotten nothing in return.”

This past March, the federal judge, Darrin P. Gayles, banned Mr. Cooper and World Patent Marketing from the invention promotion industry.

Mr. Cooper was also ordered to pay the trade commission nearly $1 million, according to court documents. His lawyers did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Thursday.

Phroyd

[metalheadsforblacklivesmatter]

Listen.

I do not expect anyone to take me at my word. By all means do your research or whatever.

But this is the result of a series of class action lawsuits that started last year. Essentially this is the result of a data privacy issue.

Normally when you're on social media, data on you is harvested then sold to advertisers fit targeted marketing. Have you ever wondered how sites like YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram make so much money despite offering a seemingly free service?

You are the product.

More specifically, data on you is the product. Facebook can collect data on "Oh, she seems to follow a lot of metal bands and she lives at this location." Then they sell that data to TicketMaster. And now TicketMaster can now send targeted ads based on my likes and location. It gets them a lot more money than throwing random ads at me like "Do you like KPop? What about Taylor Swift? Maybe GreenDay?"

(Targeted advertising is a lot more complex than this. That's an oversimplification to explain the lawsuit.)

So when you join social media you usually sign away your consent for this data to be harvested that's fine. HOWEVER. Facebook took this a step further. Some of that data harvested from you was from your friends pages. So if Facebook sees all of my friends live in New York, it can discern that I too live there even if I never gave them that information.

(This is again an oversimplification because I'm not here to teach you machine learning.)

You cannot consent to Facebook harvesting data from your friends. Because you can't control what your friends put out there, so you can't willingly and knowingly consent to this data being harvested.

Which is a huge privacy violation.

Harvesting data about you from what you post, what you search, what you follow, and what you like, is completely fine. That's in the Terms and Conditions. Harvesting data about YOU from what your FRIENDS search, post, like, etc is not. That's not data you're freely giving Facebook. That data can only be used to get information about THAT FRIEND.

So Facebook invaded your privacy without your consent by harvesting information about you without your consent and then made a profit off it. And that's the basis of this class action lawsuit. So now Facebook has to determine "Okay. We've gotta pay out this huge ass sum to the effected parties." Because the effected parties aren't just the people suing, it's the entire userbase.

So now they need to post a call to action where effected parties essentially raise their hands and say "Yes. I was negatively impacted by this thing Facebook did." (Technically all of our privacy was breached without our consent. So anyone that's had Facebook has the right to say they were negatively impacted.)

And that's what this form is. "I was negatively impacted by Facebook harvesting data without my consent."

And I hear people saying, "But Fae. It's we all understood that you're on social media, you're foregoing your right to privacy." Yes. About any information I choose to give up. If I choose to follow a dozen metal bands. I am choosing for Facebook to have that information about me so they can learn about me. "She listens to a lot of metal so she probably will like blue hair dye."

But if all my friends are in a bunch of metal Facebook groups. I can't consent to that information being applied to me, because I can't control what information that they give about themselves (legally). And ergo. Facebook has no right to use that data and use it for targeted advertising TOWARDS ME.

(Which honestly explains a bunch of weird ads I was getting that didn't apply to me. Because most of my friends don't share my interests.)

I'm not saying you have to believe me, but I'm hoping that this context understands why you're able to file for compensation on the Facebook class action lawsuit.

-fae

Important: File a claim to cash in on the Facebook settlement

If you used Facebook between 2007 and December 2022 you have until August 2023 to file your claim in the class action lawsuit.

It's literally the easiest thing to file. If you deleted your account, you still qualify. You just need the month and year you signed up and deleted. Check the email associated with your account.

The amount you receive depends on how many months you had Facebook during this time (so if you've had Facebook since the beginning, you'll get more than people that only had it for a month).

"But Thom. Doesn't sharing this mean you get less?" Yes but this is about community. I only know because a nice guy that filed decided to share with his tiktok followers. It's the right thing to do to keep it going.

-fae

[the-firebird69]

You people take the cake you don't even understand what I'm saying we're assuming you the new way and old fashioned way do you understand English

Bitol and Goddess Wife

We understand we're being sued we understand who it is and we understand what he's doing no we're being sued for things we're doing and we have to do

Bja

Pursuing things for things you're doing to our son and their illegal for you to do and you keep doing them and you keep losing and losing all your people now you think it's a joke and stuff but now you're going to die fighting over the shatteredome and part of the reason is because you expose tons of your information to us that being a loser and a teeny dick in her face yesterday you expose the list of people that were suing and they did present checks to the clerk and the clerk sent out money and you're saying they didn't because you're trying to intercept it all day at the post office finally the federal government is involved and they're going after you cuz they saw the bunkers fall they're not stupid and now they're doing the job now you're going to fall tons of people are getting involved huge huge lots of people who are sue you with us I seen that you're the same assholes at the post office

Bitol and Goddess Wife

We're trying to take it seriously but whenever we turn around people are attacking us and what you're saying is it's because we're bothering one person and we doubt that's true but he says it's a huge part of it because we're sitting there informing him and he's the boss and I won't get off him at all for any price and the price is very high and I wouldn't know it but he says that have died before a lot people always killing me sorry I figured out something I can't stop doing this because of that

Bja

We really don't care about that because we're trying to kill you and you're making it easy because you're an ass

Bitol and Goddess Wife

You're this God damn needy that won't shut up and I saw it in the battlefield and I'm writing a report it's not his fault at all it is f****** bleeding hard the moron who keeps bleeding and yapping and telling everybody everything I've got it right here in writing under duress they say it all the time

Mac

So we're suing you mostly you idiots bja and for very bad performances which are meant to cause chaos and destruction of everyone and we're out to get you and you had nowhere to go so it proves that you're sick and stupid and so far mentally gone you shouldn't be doing anything I'm just going to put up a suit to the government of the United States into the government so the world the you people be put where you belong not behind the driver's seat not in any government position not in any military position and not in any important jobs you're mentally ill and you're not qualified to do most jobs that you're doing and it's a result of your comments to us you wise a******

Bitol and Goddess Wife

These people are serious and so are we and we're going to back the proposal we're going down to meet with vital and Goddess wife and we're going to make sure that things are done right and we're going to get together and we're going to have our parallels and I lined up and ironed out and these lawsuits too we're going to issue all of them and we're going to sue all you idiots. I'm interested introducing one myself for slander and misguided tone and all sorts of things against bja and you're putting my name up there and you're telling people all sorts of things and you and yours are going down and he's going to join it it's a class action suit

And her boy and will and Bill say we need to be on there the same things that aren't true about us and inventions and about mechanics and physics and they don't know what they're talking about they're going to sue them for it because they're causing stupid things to happen to us and we agree they're so dumb it's terrible

Mac

[dragoni]

I hope the 240 million Americans who were Cambridge’s database join in the class-action lawsuits. 

Don’t forget to sue Robert Mercer, Rebekah Mercer, Steve Bannon, Jared Kushner, Nigel Oakes, Alexander Nix, Julian Wheatland and Dr Alexander Tayler.

The test case was taken to the ICO by David Carroll, an associate professor at Parsons School of Design in New York. As a US citizen, he had no means of obtaining this information under US law, but in January 2016 he discovered Cambridge Analytica had processed US voter data in the UK and that this gave him rights under British laws. Cambridge Analytica had refused to accept this and told the ICO that Carroll was no more entitled to make a so-called “subject access request” under the UK Data Protection Act “than a member of the Taliban sitting in a cave in the remotest corner of Afghanistan”.

“The data commissioner has said that data crimes are real crimes and she is now putting this into action,” data expert Paul-Olivier Dehaye, who helped Carroll with the process, told the paper. “This would have been unimaginable a year ago. It’s a real landmark. The ICO is showing that they are real consequences to not complying with UK data laws ... Cambridge Analytica has been able to evade journalists’ questions and mislead both parliament and Congress, but now if they don’t answer these questions, it shows they’re criminally liable.”

From The Guardian

“This should solve a lot of mysteries about what the company did with data and where it got it from. I hope that it will help the ongoing investigations in my country and yours, and other places like Canada. There’s a lot of questions that no one has been able to answer until now so hopefully this will be a major breakthrough in our understanding of what it did.”,  David Carroll

[socialjusticeartshare]

When Will the US End Magdalena Hernández’s Family Separation Nightmare?

She arrived at the border with two of her daughters in 2017. They haven’t seen each other since.

In the summer of 2019, Magdalena Hernández Pérez and I were outside her home on the edge of Cubulco, a small city four hours north of Guatemala City. As her grandkids played on the patio, Hernández, looking burdened beyond her 39 years, sat on a teal chair that matched the wall behind her. “Why didn’t they respect my rights?” she asked in Spanish, her voice shaking, her cries evoking the distinct guttural sounds I’d heard as my grandmother’s children stood over her casket. 

The “they” Hernández was referring to were US border officials. Two years before we met, in December 2017, they put her in a frigid holding area at a detention center with her two youngest daughters, Mariana, who was 9 years old at the time, and Julieta, who was 16. (Their names are pseudonyms.) A week later, the family was transferred to a room at a second detention facility. The next afternoon, a border official called Hernández’s name and she raised her hand. Three officials then took her outside the room she’d been in with her daughters. A female guard shackled Hernández by the legs and hands as Julieta and Mariana looked on. When Hernández asked why she was being shackled, one of the officials said that if she resisted, she’d be treated “like she should be treated.”

Mariana cried and screamed, demanding that her mom be let go; border officials still took Hernández away. “It’s never left my mind,” Julieta said about that moment. “It was a horribly traumatic because I never thought I’d see my mom like that.” The two girls began to feel better after two officials reassured them that it was only a matter of time before they were going to be taken to join their mother. “They tricked us,” Julieta said. They ended up at a shelter in California with no idea where their mother was. 

They haven’t seen her since. After being pulled away from her daughters, Hernández was led to a bus that transferred her to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Arizona, about two hours north of the border. Along the way, she couldn’t stop wondering where her daughters were: How were they? Who was taking care of them now that she couldn’t? During parts of the ride, she wanted to die. During others, she felt like she’d already been killed.

For the next month or so Hernández had no idea where her kids were, despite her pleas for information from immigration officials. In February 2018, after two months of detention in Arizona, ICE deported Hernández. She left the United States by herself. When she got off the plane in Guatemala City, she still hadn’t been able to talk her daughters. “I returned to my country destroyed,” Hernández said. 

“I returned to my country destroyed.”

Hernández’s family is one of thousands that was separated during the Trump administration. Many have been reunited in response to a class-action lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union in 2018. But Lee Gelernt, the ACLU’s lead attorney in that lawsuit, said there are more than a thousand parents like Hernández who were deported without their kids and have yet to be reunited. And yet, even within that group, Hernández’s situation is unusual. Separated children whose parents were deported alone were usually released from government shelters to live with relatives or family friends who were already in the United States. Ending up as Mariana and Julieta did, was rare.

In that first conversation, when I asked Hernández where Mariana and Julieta were now, she took out her phone and pulled up a photo. It showed Mariana looking happy on a California beach next to a few other Latin American children. She was living with foster parents in what had become her new family. Photos like this one and phone calls were the only threads that kept Hernández present in Mariana’s life. Hernández had more contact with Julieta, who’d left the foster family she and Mariana were placed with when she turned 18, joining relatives in Tennessee. She too lost touch with her sister. The Hernández family that arrived at the border together was split between two coasts and two countries.

Now, as the Biden administration has made family reunification a priority, they finally have some hope of being reunited—although what that will look and when it will happen remains to be seen. In early February, it created a task force to figure out how to reunify separated families to “the greatest extent possible.” Soon after, the administration announced that Michelle Brané, a highly respected advocate for migrant women and children, would serve as the task force’s executive director. The group’s initial report and recommendations are due by June. For parents like Hernández, they will be long months. And even with seamless logistics, no government action will undo the years of trauma that parents and children have now endured. 

“This case perfectly exemplifies all of the trauma and the pain and the years of recovery that family separation is going to cause,” said Lindsay Toczylowski, the executive director of Immigrant Defenders Law Center, a Los Angeles nonprofit that has represented Julieta and Mariana. “It’s a microcosm of what happened to hundreds and thousands of people.” Toczylowski stressed that people like Hernández absolutely should be allowed to return to the United States for the opportunity to reunite with their kids.

Making matters all the more frustrating is that Hernández still does not have a clear explanation for why her children were separated from her. What she does know is that if immigration agents had dropped her and her daughters off at a shelter three years ago, the family would be together right now. “For the past three years, it’s felt like they killed me,” she said. “Because I haven’t been able to be close to my little girl.”

“I want to see Mariana because she’s the youngest,” Hernández said. “I want to be with her and hug her and tell her how much I love her.” She prays to God that, one day, there will be justice. 

Article Source

[nancydhooper]

Meet the Activists Fighting to Free People from LA Jails

Over the last year, the criminal legal system’s many injustices dominated mainstream discourse as people took to the streets to grieve and protest the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor by police, and COVID-19 took a devastating toll on people in jails and prisons. These events galvanized many people into action — in the streets, at statehouses, and online — inspiring them to join activists who have challenged the criminal legal system’s disproportionate and often tragic impact on communities of color. One of the organizations at the forefront of this movement is the Youth Justice Coalition (YJC), a grassroots organization based in Los Angeles led by activists who have been incarcerated or otherwise entangled with the criminal legal system. The ACLU is part of a coalition representing YJC and impacted individuals in a lawsuit against LA County for its failure to adequately address the COVID-19 crisis in jails and prisons, and in protecting the health of incarcerated people. 

We spoke with two YJC members, Nalya Rodriguez and Michael Saavedra, about how the past year has affected their work and how their personal experiences help to shape this movement for change. This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Justin Hamilton

How did you get involved with YJC?

MICHAEL: I spent close to 20 years in prison, and 15 of that was in solitary confinement. While I was incarcerated, I worked with a group of outside organizers on a hunger strike. It was one of the largest prisoner hunger strikes in this nation’s history. One of the things we asked for was access to higher education in solitary confinement. That’s how I was able to take some courses and later, enroll in community college. 

I learned a lot about the legal system during my time locked up, including when I successfully sued the Department of Corrections several times over my solitary confinement, which violated my constitutional due process rights. Once I was out, I applied for a job as a paralegal and was hired on the spot. They discovered I was formerly incarcerated about six months later, and fired me. At that same time a position opened up at YJC and my roommate Anthony, who was also incarcerated, told me about it. I applied and got the job. 

NALYA: I only recently got involved with the Youth Justice Coalition, but I was familiar with the work because I was a part of an organization in undergrad called Underground Scholars, which had an reentry program for formerly incarcerated and system-impacted students. During the pandemic, I’ve also been working with UCI 4 COLA and other partner organizations in North Orange County on an initiative to put together “solidarity packs” for formerly incarcerated people. One of those partners was YJC, and that’s how I met Michael. 

Justin Hamilton

Was there a turning point in your life that led you to organizing and activism?

NALYA: In high school, I was involved with gangs and didn’t really think I was going to college, even though I was already taking advanced classes. I hated school. I was always getting kicked out of class and spent a lot of time in the dean or principal’s office, and I was constantly told that I was either going to end up a teen parent or end up in jail or dead. It made school a negative experience. One day, literally the same day I was planning to drop out, a teacher intervened and asked, ‘Is this what you want to do with your life?’ That was the first time anybody had ever asked me that. I took a moment to pause and asked myself if I wanted to continue my life the way it is, or make a change. And I decided to make a change. I finished high school, got into Berkeley, and now I’m at UC Irvine studying for a PhD in sociology. Those experiences and seeing all of my friends go to court as teenagers, and just constantly being arrested and harassed by police officers — that’s what pushed me to get into this work.

MICHAEL: If you’ve been incarcerated for a long time, there are multiple turning points, starting with your public defender, who tries to get you to take a plea bargain even though you’re innocent. They don’t warn you that it will stay on your record for the rest of your life and harm you when it comes to housing and employment. That and many other experiences made me want to do the work that I do now, and also to become a lawyer and help people like myself to not have to rely on a classist and racist system.

Justin Hamilton

Can you describe a typical workday at YJC?

MICHAEL: As far as YJC, my day typically consists of taking calls as the lead on jail litigation. Since the recent announcement of the resentencing policy from [District Attorney] George Gascón, I’ve received a flood of calls and letters from folks inside and from family members out here asking for assistance with petitions for resentencing. I also work on letters from prisoners or calls regarding litigation. And prior to COVID, every other Saturday we would do free legal clinics to help people with immigration questions, expungement, tenants’ rights, debt relief, and things like that. Other than that, a lot of Zoom meetings with the many organizations we work with. 

Justin Hamilton

How has the pandemic shaped YJC’s work over the past year? 

MICHAEL: COVID has drastically changed things. It’s caused us to redirect our resources and take on all these calls from people in prison and their family members, who are sick or scared because of conditions inside. People have not been able to come into our legal clinics and not everybody can access support online. The community we serve in South Central is primarily Spanish-speaking and Black folks reentering society after being incarcerated and they don’t know where to go. We had to shut down our office at the Justice Center, which has affected the ability to work for some of us who don’t have computers or other office equipment at home. COVID has also changed the direction of our work. We usually work on policy impacting youth. Now we’ve been focusing more on incarceration, including women’s jails and prisons. 

NALYA: For the legal correspondence program, we are creating self-help guides and informational sheets on rights in regards to the situation with COVID.

Justin Hamilton

What do you think people who aren’t impacted by incarceration misunderstand about the system?

NALYA: We need to make sure programs are accessible to non-English speakers. So I’ve worked with a lot of organizations that work with Central American newly-arrived immigrant youth. That’s one of the things that has continuously been an issue in LA and also in Oakland, where I’ve done similar work. There just hasn’t been enough resources for Spanish-speakers or Indigenous people from Central America.

MICHAEL: One thing people fail to realize is that those same people called mafiosos or gang members, the worst of the worst, they’re the ones that actually want to see peace. They have the respect of the community, and could tell the youngsters to kick back and they will respect that. And that’s why we’ve been having this beautiful time of peace right now in South Central LA, which has been unheard of. YJC has led all of those peace treaty meetings taking place. We’re connected to the actual hood where all this stuff takes place, where people are overpoliced.

A lot of peacebuilding efforts have been unsuccessful because they are led by people who are not from the community and who have ties to the Los Angeles Police Department. Some of the biggest social justice organizations are run by people with white privilege, or white saviors. I don’t want to offend anybody, but it’s true. And they’re either working with the probation department, or they have contacts. They also have this thing called mandatory reporters. So whenever they go into a situation, they take down names and give this information to the LAPD, which puts it in its gang database. Now these people are labeled as gang members and that can be used against them if they ever get arrested, or in their housing. 

I think we need to come together and educate folks and put formerly incarcerated people, people who are directly impacted, people of color in leadership positions, not just lawyers. And they need to be paid the same. We’re called the experts and we’re tokenized all the time to speak on the issue, but they don’t want to pay us the same.

The Youth Justice Coalition works out of an office that is a converted juvenile court house.

Justin Hamilton

2020 was a difficult year, especially for many of the people you work with. But did anything good come out of it?

MICHAEL: For me, 2020 brought bright, beautiful things. I got accepted to UCLA and got a fellowship with Harvard Law School. 

NALYA: I haven’t been with YJC for very long, but some of the work I’ve done in Orange County popped off in 2020, which is really awesome. We were able to raise money with collective community funds, which has been redistributed via solidarity packs for formerly incarcerated people. We also started a letter-writing program and mutual aid efforts, like food distribution — with that alone, we’ve raised over $35,000 and over $30,000 for solidarity packs, respectively.

These initiatives came from the need to address what we were seeing in our community in regards to COVID. People are in need of resources, and people are out of jobs. Our food distribution effort was a direct result of COVID, as well as the solidarity packs, which provide people who are just being released with personal hygiene kits, PPE, socks, snacks, gift cards, and other supplies they need.

Justin Hamilton

The Black Lives Matter movement has brought abolition to the forefront of the policing conversation. How does YJC approach abolition? 

MICHAEL: Abolitionists say no more jails, no more cops. It’s an ideology about a utopia without prisons or police. But you have to have something to replace all of that. And that’s where we come in as members of the communities that are overpoliced. At YJC, we offer a real solution to no cops — we call it transformative justice and peacebuilding. So when you talk about taking cops off campus, we actually have a solution. We have a school without cops or even security. Instead, we have what we call peacebuilders who are trained on de-escalation and self-defense without any guns or weapons. We try to use our voices rather than violence. 

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8247012 https://www.aclu.org/news/criminal-law-reform/meet-the-activists-fighting-to-free-people-from-la-jails via http://www.rssmix.com/

[bigyack-com]

This Is What Racism Sounds Like in the Banking Industry

Jimmy Kennedy earned $13 million during his nine-year career as a player in the National Football League. He was the kind of person most banks would be happy to have as a client.But when Mr. Kennedy tried to become a “private client” at JPMorgan Chase, an elite designation that would earn him travel discounts, exclusive event invitations and better deals on loans, he kept getting the runaround.At first, he didn’t understand why. Then, last fall, he showed up at his local JPMorgan branch in Arizona, and an employee offered an explanation.“You’re bigger than the average person, period. And you’re also an African-American,” the employee, Charles Belton, who is black, told Mr. Kennedy. “We’re in Arizona. I don’t have to tell you about what the demographics are in Arizona. They don’t see people like you a lot.” Mr. Kennedy recorded the conversation and shared it with The New York Times.It’s no secret that racism has been baked into the American banking system. There are few black executives in the upper echelons of most financial institutions. Leading banks have recently paid restitution to black employees for isolating them from white peers, placing them in the poorest branches and cutting them off from career opportunities. Black customers are sometimes profiled, viewed with suspicion just for entering a bank and questioned over the most basic transactions.This year, researchers for the National Bureau of Economic Research found that black mortgage borrowers were charged higher interest rates than white borrowers and were denied mortgages that would have been approved for white applicants.Banks, including JPMorgan, say they are committed to eradicating the legacy of racism. And they insist that any lingering side effects simply reflect stubborn socioeconomic imbalances in society as a whole, not racial bias among their employees.What recently transpired inside a cluster of JPMorgan branches in the Phoenix area suggests that is not true.Mr. Kennedy was told he was essentially too black. His financial adviser, Ricardo Peters, complained that he, too, was a victim of racial discrimination. What makes their cases extraordinary is not that the two men say they faced discrimination. It is that they recorded their interactions with bank employees, preserving a record of what white executives otherwise might have dismissed as figments of the aggrieved parties’ imaginations.Patricia Wexler, a JPMorgan spokeswoman, denied that the bank discriminated against Mr. Peters or Mr. Kennedy. She said that the bank hadn’t been aware of the audio recordings and that “in light of some new information brought to us by The New York Times,” the company put one of its executive directors on administrative leave while the bank investigates his conduct.

The Back of the Branch

Mr. Peters started his career at JPMorgan as a salesman in the bank’s credit cards division. After about eight years in various roles, he was promoted to a financial adviser position in Phoenix in 2016. His job was to help bank customers prudently invest their money.Mr. Peters had won numerous performance awards at the bank, but things soon started going wrong for him. He was working in a JPMorgan branch in the affluent Sun City West area of Phoenix. He sought a promotion to become a private client adviser, a job that would have let him work with wealthier and more lucrative clients.The promotion never came. Instead, Mr. Peters was moved out of an office at the heart of the branch where he worked with other financial advisers and was relegated to a windowless room in the back.In April 2017, one of his bosses, Frank Venniro, told Mr. Peters that another manager had accused him of taking customers’ files home at night, a violation of the bank’s code of conduct. Mr. Peters denied it, and Mr. Venniro accepted that he was telling the truth, according to a recording of the conversation. But, he added, Mr. Peters needed to be more cognizant of how his colleagues perceived him. Mr. Peters was left with the impression that his managers, who were white, were predisposed to view him suspiciously. Could he prove it? No. What happened next was clearer.Mr. Peters complained to Mr. Venniro that another financial adviser was trying to steal a prospective client: a woman who had just received a $372,000 wrongful death settlement after her son died. She was black.Mr. Venniro told Mr. Peters that there was no point in his intervening in the dispute, because the woman was not a worthwhile client. “You’ve got somebody who’s coming from Section 8, never had a nickel to spend, and now she’s got $400,000,” Mr. Venniro said, referring to the federal program that provides vouchers to help with housing costs and whose title is sometimes used as a racial slur. “What do you think’s going to happen with that money? It’s gone.”“But I thought that’s why we get involved,” Mr. Peters protested.Mr. Venniro said no. “You’re not investing a dime for this lady,” he said. He knew from experience that she would quickly burn through the money. “It happens every single time.”When Mr. Peters tried to argue, Mr. Venniro interjected. “This is not money she respects,” he said. “She didn’t earn it.”Mr. Venniro declined to comment. Ms. Wexler, the bank spokeswoman, said that Mr. Venniro was put on leave after inquiries from The Times and that he resigned last Thursday. “Our employee used extraordinarily bad judgment and was wrong to suggest we couldn’t help a customer,” she said. She said Mr. Venniro knew the client was in subsidized housing but didn’t know her race.

Marching Orders

In February 2018, Mr. Peters was transferred from the Sun City West branch to a JPMorgan branch in a less wealthy neighborhood. He perceived it as another example of managers, including Mr. Venniro, mistreating him because he was black. One day, Mr. Peters met Mr. Kennedy, then 38. Mr. Kennedy had played for five N.F.L. teams as a defensive tackle. In 2011, he had joined the New York Giants — a homecoming that, The Times wrote at the time, was notable because of his impoverished childhood in Yonkers, N.Y. That season, Mr. Kennedy and the Giants won the Super Bowl.Mr. Kennedy retired and later moved to Phoenix. JPMorgan bankers had been courting his business, but he hadn’t liked the financial advisers the bank had proposed to manage his investments. Then he met Mr. Peters. “The chemistry was just so real because he knew exactly what I needed to do,” Mr. Kennedy said in an interview.In the summer of 2018, Mr. Kennedy gradually moved $800,000 to the bank. Mr. Peters and a colleague promised he would get “private client” status, which was reserved for accounts with more than $250,000. Landing a wealthy client like Mr. Kennedy was a big win for Mr. Peters, but he was anxious about being targeted by his superiors. On Aug. 24, he filed a formal complaint with the bank. He said he had alerted Mr. Venniro “that I feel that I am being treated differently because of my race and color of my skin” and that Mr. Venniro had suggested that the solution was for him to work in the less-wealthy branch.Less than two weeks later, JPMorgan agreed to pay $24 million to end a class-action lawsuit brought by other black employees who said the company had discriminated against them — in some cases by isolating them from colleagues and dumping them in poorer branches.On Oct. 5, Mr. Venniro took Mr. Peters to a meeting room and said he was being fired. Mr. Venniro said he didn’t know why. “I’m just given marching orders,” Mr. Venniro told him, according to a recording of the conversation.Mr. Peters filed a discrimination claim with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the civil rights division of the Arizona attorney general’s office, accusing JPMorgan of racial discrimination. JPMorgan denied that and said Mr. Peters was fired for improperly assigning credit for a new client to an employee who managers didn’t think deserved it. “We stand by our decision to terminate Peters,” Ms. Wexler, the spokeswoman, said. “The facts are indisputable.” Mr. Peters disputed the facts. He said that he had given credit to the correct employee. He said the bank was using a mundane internal dispute as an excuse to fire him. He has since started his own investment advisory firm in Arizona.

‘If This Dude Gets Upset’

Mr. Peters’s termination left Mr. Kennedy in the lurch. A number of his transactions were frozen or not carried out. In one case, $92,000 of Mr. Kennedy’s money that was supposed to go into a new investment product ended up in a holding account, inaccessible to Mr. Kennedy. (Ms. Wexler said the problems were caused by administrative errors.)JPMorgan assigned him a new financial adviser, Mr. Belton. He struck Mr. Kennedy as inexperienced. He was black, and Mr. Kennedy felt that was the only reason they’d been paired. Mr. Kennedy said he began recording their conversations so he could get feedback from other people about Mr. Belton’s financial recommendations. Mr. Kennedy had been under the impression that he had been granted the coveted “private client” status that Mr. Peters had promised. When Mr. Kennedy learned that was not the case, he complained to Mr. Belton — and then to Mr. Venniro. Mr. Belton warned Mr. Kennedy not to talk to Mr. Venniro again. In two secretly recorded conversations in October last year, he asked Mr. Kennedy to think about the impression he left on people at the bank. He pointed out that Mr. Kennedy was a big black man in Arizona. And he said that Mr. Venniro had been afraid to tell Mr. Kennedy that his application to become a private client had been deleted when Mr. Peters was fired.A few days later, Mr. Kennedy went back to the branch, and the conversation returned to the question of why the bank refused to grant Mr. Kennedy the status and perks of being a private client. Mr. Belton said that bank employees were scared of dealing with him and that therefore Mr. Kennedy would be better off interacting only with Mr. Belton.“They’re not going to say this, but I don’t have the same level of intimidation that they have — you know what I’m saying? — not only being a former athlete but also being two black men,” Mr. Belton said. Referring to Mr. Venniro, he added, “You sit in front of him, you’re like three times his size — you feel what I’m saying? — he already probably has his perception of how these interactions could go.”Moments later, he said: “We’ve seen people that are not of your stature get irate, and it’s like, ‘Well, if this dude gets upset, like what’s going to happen to me?’”Mr. Kennedy asked if Mr. Belton was saying that Mr. Venniro was racist. “I don’t think any person at that level is dumb enough for it to be that blatant,” Mr. Belton replied. “I don’t have any reason to believe blatantly that he’s that way. You feel what I’m saying? Now, whether there’s some covert action? To be honest? I always err on the side of thinking that. You know, people that are not us probably have some form of prejudice toward us.”Mr. Kennedy pulled most of his money out of JPMorgan and filed a grievance with an industry watchdog, and in June the bank sent him a letter trying to put an end to his complaining. “You stated that Mr. Belton informed you that our firm was prejudiced against you and intimidated by you because of your race,” the letter said. “We found no evidence to substantiate your allegations.” Read the full article

[loudlytransparenttrash]

This Week Within Our Colleges: Part 4

As mentioned in the last post, University of California Santa Cruz administrators recently agreed to meet all four demands lodged by a black student group who overran a campus building and would not leave until their conditions were met. But in addition to the four initial stipulations, the group made three other demands to the university, and it has warned UC Santa Cruz that it has four months to comply with these demands or “more Reclamations” will result. After three days of occupation by students of Kerr Hall, Chancellor George Blumenthal agreed to give all black and Caribbean-identified students a 4-year housing guarantee to live in the Rosa Parks African American Themed House; bring back the building’s lounge; paint its exterior the “Pan-Afrikan colors” of red, green and black; and force all new incoming students to go through a mandatory diversity competency training. The three additional demands are that the university purchase a property “to serve as a low income housing cooperative for historically disadvantaged students,” that the university “allocate $100,000” for Santa Cruz’s “SOMeCA” student organization support department, and that the university create either a Black Studies department or  a Black Studies Minor or Major. The group promised that, if their demands are not met, UC Santa Cruz will “force [them] to have to take what [they] know to be in [their] best interest to Reclaim.”

Fresno State University professor was caught on camera scrubbing pro-life message off of the sidewalk and encouraging several of his students to join his erasion of free speech. When confronted by the pro-life students, who informed him they had permission to leave the chalkings, the professor claimed that "college campuses are not free speech areas.” The Alliance Defending Freedom has since filed a lawsuit against Thatcher, arguing that his efforts to intimidate and harass members of the Student for Life chapter violated their fundamental right to free speech. Fresno State President said the university is reviewing the incident and “those disagreeing with the students message do not have the right to erase or stifle someone else’s speech under the guise of their own right to free speech.” 

It’s finally confirmed. The racist note that prompted St. Olaf College to shut down is yet another hate-crime hoax, as I called it out in my last post. President David Anderson said in an email to students that “an investigation into the note encouraged the author’s confession that the note was fabricated. It was apparently a strategy to draw attention to concerns about the campus climate.” Samantha Wells said she found the alleged note on the windshield of her car and told Fox News 9 she “immediately shared the note.” Later that day, angry students blocked entrances to the college cafeteria and took over the student commons demanding staff firings and giving black students extensions on their exams. Administrators canceled classes to allow demonstrators to air their grievances in a daylong sit-in. Protesters also put up signs that included language such as “I’m sick of white tears” and “Fuck your white complacency.”

A Texas A&M University professor is facing backlash for an interview that recently resurfaced in which he argues for killing white people and some white people may have to die in order for blacks to be liberated. “In order to be equal, in order to be liberated, some white people may have to die,’” Curry states, expressing that he has “been immensely disappointed” at how little the topic is discussed.

The University of Colorado at Boulder recently announced plans to transform one of its residence halls into a “Social Justice Living Environment” in the fall. Hallett Hall will also host a new LLC for "black-identified students and their allies," in addition to the "Spectrum LLC" it already offers for "LGBTQIA-identified students and their allies." All three LLC’s will provide a live-in “peer mentor” on each floor who will “provide individual support to students” and facilitate programming for the Cultural Unity and Engagement Center, the Gender and Sexuality Center and the Women’s Resource Center.

A fraternity at the University of Chicago had to apologize for holding a construction-themed party to celebrate an end to their two-year long renovation funded by themselves after students deemed it "racially insensitive" because the party happened to occur on Cinco de Mayo. Nobody wore anything that could be considered “cultural appropriation” and there were strictly no party decorations or any aspects of the party with Mexican theme or appearance, yet six multicultural organizations declared “a construction-themed party demonstrated their privilege and authority by blatantly disregarding the concerns of marginalized groups without facing disciplinary actions” and “this event was an attack on the mental and emotional well-being of marginalized students on campus,” the statement concluded, demanding that the university “take prompt action to protect marginalized students.”

A student activist group at the University of Michigan is demanding campus officials provide them with “a permanent designated space on central campus for Black students and students of color to organize and do social justice work.” The clamor for a segregated space for students of color to organize social justice efforts comes even as the public university builds a $10 million center for black students and other students in the center of campus. In their demands, students explain why the new multicultural student center is not enough, “because we want a space solely dedicated to community organizing and social justice work specifically for people of color.”

Jason Nichols, a professor of African American Studies at the University of Maryland College Park, writes the school’s choice to invite Betsy DeVos to a commencement speech at Bethune-Cookman University “says that the wants and desires of black people, especially students, don’t matter in the face of green dollars and white power.”

A class is being taught at the University of Wisconsin Madison called “The Problem of Whiteness” which aims to “understand how whiteness is socially constructed and experienced in order to help dismantle white supremacy.” “The problem of racism is the problem of whites being racist towards blacks,” says Assistant Professor Damon Sajnani, who will teach the course. The class will also theorize what white students can do with their “whiteness” and how to mobilize their identities as a mode for social justice as opposed to racial injustices, he added. Students will write two papers in the course. The first will be a reflection of themselves and their racial identities and how that plays into their roles in modern society. The second will be a critical engagement with the required readings such as “The Souls of White Folks”, “Look, a White!” and “White Lies Matter.”

The Northern Arizona University now has signs outside of on-campus restrooms that ask students to consider whether they have “pee privilege.” “Do you have pee privilege?” one sign questions, informing restroom-goers that if they “never have to think about gender identity, ability, or access when peeing,” then “[they] do.” Another sign expands upon the definition of “pee privilege,” noting that the “ability to use a restroom without fear or concern for your own safety constitutes” such a privilege, explaining that other factors like the “gender binary,” or the “ability to undoubtedly know which bathroom to pick,” contribute to “pee privilege.”

DePaul University has prohibited the campus group Turning Point USA from displaying posters with the slogan “Gay Lives Matter” to advertise a presentation by a gay reporter on radical Islam’s discrimination against the LGBTQ community. DePaul Students for Justice in Palestine (the same group who is drinking cups of saltwater to honor the Palestine terrorists being held in Israeli prisons) has indicated that its members intend to protest the event. “We will be turning up to counter, not in our fucking name will you continue to demonize Islam and Muslims.”

[simonconsultancypage]

Healthcare Software Services Company Hit with COVID-19 Related Securities Suit

In what is the fifth coronavirus outbreak-related securities class action lawsuit to date, a plaintiff shareholder has filed a securities class action lawsuit against a healthcare information software services company. The lawsuit is based on alleged misrepresentations the company allegedly made with respect to a contract the company had entered for the sale of COVID-19 test kits. The company’s share price rose on news of the agreement, but later fell following an online report raising questions about the agreement. The plaintiff’s April 29, 2020 complaint can be found here.

  The Lawsuit

On April 29, 2020, a plaintiff shareholder filed a securities class action lawsuit in the Southern District of New York against SCWorx Corp. and its CEO Marc Schessel. The complaint purports to be filed on behalf of a class of SCWorx investors who purchased the company’s securities during the period April 13, 2020 and April 17, 2020.

  The complaint alleges that in an April 13, 2020 press release (here) referring to a “first installment purchase order,” the company announced that it had “received a committed purchase order” for two million COVID-19 Rapid Testing Units, with provision for additional weekly orders of 2 million units for 23 weeks, valued at $35 million per week. According to the press release, the purchase order came from Rethink My Healthcare.

  On April 17, 2020, the company issued a second press release (here), in which the company said that it “confirms previously disclosed plans to distribute COVID-19 Rapid Testing Units.” The press release again referenced the committed purchase order from Rethink My Healthcare. The press release also said that SCWorx “continues to anticipate receiving the first 2 million rapid detection kits within approximately two weeks and looks forward to providing incremental updates as they become available.”

  According to the complaint, in a separate development on April 17, 2020, online research firm Hindenburg Research published a report (here) captioned with a title reading in part “Evidence Points to its Massive COVID-19 Test Deal Being Completely Bogus.”

  According to the Hindenberg report, the CEO of the supplier from which SCWorx reportedly was buying the test kits, Promedical, “formerly ran another business accused of defrauding investors” and was “alleged to have falsified his medical credentials.” Promedical supposedly was sourcing the test kits with a Chinese company called Wandfo, but, the analyst report claims, “Wandfo put out a press release days ago stating that Promedical ‘fraudulently misrepresented themselves’ as sellers of its Covid-19 tests and disavowed any relationship.” The analyst report further said that the buyer that SCWorx claimed to have lined up does not appear to be “capable of handling hundreds of millions of dollars of orders.”

  According to the complaint, the company’s share price fell 17% over three consecutive trading sessions following the publication of the analyst’s report.

  On April 21, 2020, the SEC halted trading of the Company’s stock, effective April 22, 2020.

  The complaint alleges that during the class period the defendants failed to disclose to investors: “(1) that SC Worx’s supplier for COVID-19 test had previously misrepresented its operations; (2) that SCWorx’s buyer was a small company that was unlikely to adequately support the purported volume of orders for COVID-19 tests; (3) that, as a result, the Company’s purchase order for COVID-19 tests had been overstated or entirely fabricated; and (4) that, as a result of the foregoing, Defendants’ positive statements about the Company’s business, operations, and prospects, were materially misleading and/or lacked a reasonable basis.”

  The complaint alleges that the defendants’ omissions violated Sections 10(b) and 20(a) of the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934 and seeks to recover damages on behalf of the plaintiff class.

  Discussion

As noted at the outset, this complaint represents the fifth coronavirus outbreak-related securities class action lawsuit to be filed, joining those previously filed against Norwegian Cruise Lines (here), Inovio (here), Zoom (here), and Phoenix Tree Holdings Ltd. (here).

  The new lawsuit against SCWorx is one of several from among these five suits based on alleged company statements about operating capabilities and opportunities to profit from the coronavirus outbreak. The Inovio lawsuit, for instance, involved allegations based on alleged statement about the company’s virus vaccine capabilities. The separate SEC enforcement action filed earlier this week against Praxsyn Corporation (which I noted in a prior blog post, here) was also based on allegations about the company’s statements about its plans to provide high-rated health care face masks.

  SCWorx is also one of several companies whose stock the SEC has halted trading in recent days relating to coronavirus-related capabilities. For example, the SEC had also previously halted trading in Praxsyn’s shares. As discussed in an April 20, 2020 Law360 article (here), during the period February to April 2020, the agency had halted trading in the stocks of twenty stocks over COVID-19 concerns.

  We are now well into the coronavirus outbreak and already well into the period in which the economic fallout has started to accumulate. Securities class action lawsuits related to the pandemic and its economic fallout had been slow to amass, but over the course of the past week, the pace of pandemic-related securities suit filings seems to have picked up. As the economic consequences of the outbreak continue to develop and spread, we are likely to see more lawsuits arrive. Over time, I expect many more will be filed.

Healthcare Software Services Company Hit with COVID-19 Related Securities Suit published first on http://simonconsultancypage.tumblr.com/

[socialjusticeartshare]

They were one of the first families separated at the border; 2 1/2 years later, they’re still apart

FORT MYERS, Fla. – She tries to avoid the word. What she says is that her mom is in Guatemala. Or that her mom has been deported and will try to come back soon.

By Kevin Sieff The Washington Post

But when her teacher, or her social worker, or her best friend Ashley asks, Adelaida sounds it out – one of the first words she learned in English. “They separated us.”

Adelaida Reynoso and her mother, María, were among the first migrant families broken up by the Trump administration, on July 31, 2017, long before the government acknowledged it was separating parents and children at the border.

They haven’t seen each other since.

Adelaida is now 9, a third-grader in southwest Florida, one of the top students in her class, carrying a thick English dictionary in a purple backpack. María, now 31, was deported alone to rural Guatemala. She has met with lawyers and smugglers and priests about reuniting with her daughter. Nothing has worked.

Despite a massive legal effort and protest movement, many of the migrant families split up at the border remain apart. The children have now spent enough time in the United States to narrate their stories of separation in fluent English. Their parents are back in Central America, watching sons and daughters grow up over grainy video calls.

One call came last month, from Sacapulas, Guatemala, to Fort Myers, Florida, as Adelaida leaped off the school bus on a quiet, palm tree-lined street.

“I want to show you my papers from class,” the girl told her mother. “It’s the report about how I behave.”

She held the black cellphone in front of her. On the screen, her mother’s face was blurry, a sliver of the Guatemalan countryside in the background.

“I got a 100 and a 92 and two A’s.”

“How smart,” her mom’s voice crackled through the phone.

Adelaida wore a red polo shirt and a pony tail. She waved her books in front of the phone. She showed her mother her bus stop, a stretch of sidewalk outside the two-bedroom apartment she shared with 11 people, including two aunts and an uncle.

“Do you have any homework?” María asked.

“No, they didn’t give us any today,” Adelaida said.

María summoned her most maternal voice.

“When you get home, you need to wash your hair,” she said.

They stared at each other and said nothing. Adelaida moved her finger over the image of her mother’s face, caressing the screen.

“You’re always in my heart,” Adelaida said.

It’s the same every afternoon. Adelaida spends her days at Manatee Elementary, her English vocabulary overtaking her Spanish. Then she goes home and looks at her mother’s face on the phone.

Some days, Adelaida gets angry. When other kids in class talk about their mothers. When her aunt kisses her cousin Angel good night, but not her.

María can see her daughter’s eyes getting big and glassy, her face turning red.

“I need you by my side,” Adelaida exclaims.

“I’m trying,” María responds. She hangs up and cries.

– – –

The Trump administration said in 2018 that nearly 3,000 children had been separated from their parents at the border – the parents detained or deported, the children sent to foster care or family members in the United States.

A court ordered the government to reunite them, in the United States or their home countries. ACLU and other lawyers searched for parents and children, and have reunited most.

But the actual number of separated families was much higher. María and Adelaida’s case was one of the hidden ones. They weren’t acknowledged in reports to Congress. They weren’t given the option of reuniting in the United States.

Then, last year, officials gave the lawyers a batch of Excel spreadsheets identifying 1,556 earlier cases of separation, above the 3,000 previously acknowledged. Many of these newly identified families remain split up.

Lawyers traversed Central America with only scraps of information: misspelled names and phone numbers no longer in use.

Some parents have disappeared. Others have gone into hiding to avoid the threats they once tried to escape.

The lawyers found María in December.

She’s a small woman with big brown eyes who keeps her cellphone tucked into a hand-stitched skirt. She lives in a cinder block hut at the top of a hill at the edge of Sacapulas. She’s lost weight.

“You could just see how fragile she had become, how profoundly sad,” said Rebeca Sanchez-Ralda, an attorney with Brooklyn-based Justice in Motion.

After María was deported, she tried twice more to cross the border. She told immigration agents she was trying to get to her daughter. Each time, she was deported again.

María had her interview with an asylum officer on Aug. 16, 2017. She kept a copy of the transcript.

“I hope you or the officer can give me the opportunity to stay here with my daughter,” she told the interpreter. “I don’t want to return to the things that happened in Guatemala.”

Other separated parents – the ones initially recognized by the administration – have joined a class-action lawsuit filed by the ACLU. Some asked to be reunited with their children in the United States.

A federal judge ruled in favor of 11 of them. Nine of them landed in Los Angeles last month. Twenty-nine others, aided by American lawyers, crossed the border last year.

But María wasn’t a part of the ACLU lawsuit, or any other petition, because her case hadn’t been recorded.

“This is a group who the government kept hidden from us, the court, Congress and the public,” said Lee Gelernt, an ACLU attorney. “And these children were even younger than the original group, hundreds just babies and toddlers.”

After each deportation, María returned to the hut in Sacapulas and picked up the phone to tell her daughter she had failed.

“I tried my best, but it didn’t work,” she said.

She asked Adelaida if she wanted to return to Guatemala. But by then the girl had astonished her teachers, acing math tests fast enough to read chapter books while the other kids are still working.

“She’s one of those kids who just does everything right,” said her principal, Scott LeMaster.

Adelaida tells María she should come to Fort Myers, where “they protect us.”

“I tell my mom, ‘No, you need to come here, because there, there’s a little danger.”

They’ve now spent nearly a third of her life apart. Adelaida has grown six inches. She’s lost her baby teeth. She’s learned to ride a bicycle. She sends her mother photos of her Florida life.

There’s Adelaida on the Fourth of July, watching fireworks. In a white dress as the flower girl at a wedding. Holding a stack of library books. Blowing out the candles on her birthday cake, when she turned 7. When she turned 8. When she turned 9.

“She’s such an intelligent girl,” María said. “I know she’s better off there. But seeing (the pictures) – sometimes it only makes things harder.”

– – –

The threats started even before Adelaida was born.

When María was pregnant, she says, Adelaida’s father tried to force her to have an abortion. He was married. When Adelaida was a baby, María says, he entered their home with a pistol and threatened to kill them both.

María and Adelaida fled to Guatemala City, where they were threatened by a gang. María and her younger sister Patricia, with a baby of her own, decided it was time to try for the United States. They paid a smuggler $8,000; they planned to request asylum at the border.

Once María was in custody, she said, an immigration agent approached.

“He said, ‘I’m taking your daughter with me,’ and he took her arm. I started screaming. He wouldn’t say where she was going or for how long.”

Adelaida started wailing.

“I didn’t want to leave my mom,” she said. “When I was almost going to say goodbye, they took me, so I couldn’t.”

Patricia Reynoso, Adelaida’s aunt, tried to reason with the agent. She wasn’t sure why María was separated from Adelaida, but she was allowed to stay with her daughter.

“The agent looked at me and said, ‘I’m a father. I don’t want to be doing this, but it’s my job,’ ” Patricia said.

Adelaida was flown to New York, where she was placed with a foster family.

María was taken to a detention center in southern Arizona, where she pursued her asylum case. She told the asylum officer about Adelaida’s father: “He said he was going to kill me. And that I was not going to know how or when.”

The officer put a check next to the box: “Reasonable fear of torture established.”

The officer asked where Adelaida was now.

“I was told that she was going to be taken away because I had to serve my sentence,” María responded. “I asked if I would see her and I was told they don’t know, that I was not going to see my daughter again.”

María borrowed $3,000 to hire a lawyer. But after seven months, he told her to drop her case to avoid being detained for a much longer period.

“I know she wanted to be reunited with her child,” attorney Israel Hernandez said in an email.”But with the new Trump rules and lack of evidence to support (her) claim, it was difficult.”

The guidance confused María. She had a folder full of documentation to support to her case.

“It all happened quickly,” she said. “The lawyer told the judge that I was dropping my case.”

Within days, she was on a plane to Guatemala.

Adelaida was sent to Florida, where she moved in with her aunt, Patricia, in the crowded two-bedroom apartment. Another aunt moved in, and then an uncle. Other housemates were strangers.

She started attending Manatee Elementary – but at 6, she couldn’t read or write in any language. “She needs to improve all the Spanish skills and the English skills as well,” an instructor wrote.

Officials from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which facilitated the family separation policy, gave Patricia a pamphlet in Spanish on how to support Adelaida. It was called “How to Help My Child.”

“Spend time together as a family,” it suggested. “Make time for your family to eat together and play and take trips.”

– – –

One Saturday afternoon last month, two police cars drove into Adelaida’s apartment complex in Fort Myers. Adelaida stood near the window in a gray dress with a koala. Her shoulders trembled. Every time she sees a man in uniform, she feels a shock of fear.

The officers had made the building a frequent stop. It is overwhelmingly Guatemalan, often with 10 people or more crammed into small apartments.

Women walk around in Mayan fabrics. Many speak indigenous languages, not Spanish. The men work mostly in landscaping and construction. There are dozens of children, most newly arrived from the border, with asylum cases pending.

“When I just arrived, I was a little afraid,” Adelaida says. “There were so many boys.”

Sometimes when she gets scared, she sneaks away to her room and squeezes her stuffed bear.

“I pretend it’s my mom,” she says. “I dream that we are playing together.”

This corner of Fort Myers has become what Guatemalans call a ciudad espejo – a “mirror city” in which Guatemalan villages are replicated on this side of the United States border. A pipeline has formed between the northern Guatemalan departments of Quiche and Huehuetenango and the city of Fort Myers.

Almost half of María’s class is Guatemalan, mostly children who arrived in the United States over the last two years. LeMaster, the principal, has come to feel as if he’s on the front lines of the country’s immigration crisis, 1,500 miles from the border.

“Here it just comes and smacks you in the face,” he said. “We have 6-, 7- and 8-year-olds arriving who have never been to school a day in their lives.”

When the government began separating families, Manatee Elementary saw the consequences. In his Wednesday staff meetings, Le Master told the school’s teachers: “We need to be aware that some of these kids are missing water and clothes, and others are missing both of their parents.”

Adelaida says “about half” of her classmates “don’t have their moms.”

“It’s hard because sometimes the kids with moms make fun of us.”

She told her aunt. Patricia gave her advice: “Tell the other kids that your mom is coming.”

It was confusing for Adelaida. Was her mom coming or not? She did what her aunt advised. The bullying stopped. But Adelaida’s pleas became more frequent.

“I need you by my side,” she screamed at her mother last month.

“I know,” María said. She had run out of responses.

An American attorney had suggested María might be able to petition to return to the United States, now that her case was finally recognized. But there was no timeline, and no certainty. She was reluctant to mention it to Adelaida.

“I miss you more than you miss me,” Adelaida said.

“No, I miss you mooooore,” María said.

Their calls could go on like that for an hour. But lately, Adelaida had homework to do and friends to play with and books to read. The Florida Standards Assessments test was coming up and she was nervous. She excused herself.

“I remember less and less about Guatemala,” she said. “When I left, I was small.”

She paused.

“And sometimes it’s hard to think about what happened.”

Article Source

[golicit]

Guest Post: Scope of Coverage is Fine – Rate and Claim-Paying are the Keys

Paul Ferrillo

In a recent guest post, industry veterans John McCarrick and Paul Schiavone outlined some policy terms and conditions they suggested D&O insurers may want to address as the insurers try to re-orient toward profitability. In the following guest post, Paul Ferrillo provides his response to John and Paul’s article. Paul is a shareholder in the Greenberg Traurig law firm’s Cybersecurity, Privacy, and Crisis Management Practice. I would like to thank Paul for allowing me to publish his guest post as an article on this site. I welcome guest post submissions from responsible authors on topics of interest to this blog’s readers. Please contact me directly if you would like to submit a guest post. Here is Paul’s article.

  *****************

  There was recently an article written by two old friends talking about a wish list to constrict existing coverage under directors and officers (“D&O”) policies on the grounds that, more generally, the carriers are suffering big losses.

  Now to be honest about my intentions here, both Paul and John are really good friends (I have known Paul Schiavone forever since we both were at AIG in the late 1990’s) so I have no intention to impugn their integrity.  I just think there is another side of the coin.  Having been on the defense end of some really bad cases in my career (emphasis – “really bad” –  like Worldcom), there is a reason coverage is broad — to protect the personal assets and professional lives of directors and officers caught in the cross-hairs of a fraud or situation  they likely had no chance of catching or dealing with successfully.  Cheaper coverage means narrower coverage.  But narrower coverage is NOT what we need today for the reasons set forth below.

  Cheaper is not better

  Paul and John write: “And so brokers and risk managers have two choices: either accept steeply-increasing premiums for the foreseeable future and light a candle — praying for the end of the hard market, or conform the D&O policy to a narrower scope of necessary coverage in exchange for more moderate price increases.”

  If I am a director and read this statement, I say, “nope on narrower coverage, not while I am on the board.”  D&O risk is a function of corporate and enterprise risk. And enterprise risk has never been higher than it is today.  According to NERA, securities class actions continue to be record highs.  “Filings through Q3 2019 suggest that new securities class actions will peak at over 450 in 2019, making this year the highest level of filings since 2001. Through September, filings have continued to show a shift in the types of cases filed. Specifically, for 2019 Rule 10b-5, Section 11, and Section 12 cases represent a larger proportion of all filings than in prior years. On the other hand, the proportion of cases involving a merger objection has declined, a possible indication that these cases are returning to the pre-2017 levels.”  See “Recent Trends in Securities Class Action Litigation: Q3 2019 Update,” available here. Cornerstone tells us SEC enforcement action levels remains at near record heights. See SEC Enforcement Activity:  Public Companies and Subsidiaries, available here.

  Let’s not forget that there is other risk for directors outside of securities law risk.  Mergers are still happening (though M&A deal litigation is down).  Cyber risk has never been higher.  See “Data Breach-Related Securities Suit Filed Against Capital One,” available here. And some companies have even had to file for bankruptcy following a bad data breach.  See “Guest Post: Buckle up Directors: Cybersecurity Risk and Bankruptcy Risk Are Not Mutually Exclusive,” available here.

  So, reduce D&O coverage in today’s environment to get a “few dollars” back on premiums? “Not on my watch” so says the average, well-informed director.

  The real problem is capacity and rate.  Back when Paul S. and I were at AIG, you could count the number of “true,” long-term D&O carriers on your fingers and toes.  And for a Fortune 100 company, the fingers on one hand.  Today you would need a room full of fingers and toes in order to get to an accurate count.  Especially when you include the Side A carriers.  The increase in the number of markets came with an expected decrease in premium (meaning hey, “I am a new carrier, let me write a lot of cheap coverage to build my book”).  And then the losses hit, as they always do.  Including some really steep Side A derivative losses and some major cases settled for record numbers.  In the face of several years of decreasing premiums, these more current losses have put pressure on a number of carriers.  Though rates are up today at least 15% in some areas of the D&O market, several quarters of rate increases can’t overnight make up for years of premium decreases.

  So its no wonder we are hearing “let’s narrow coverage for the directors.” But as we show above, that is not the issue.  The real issue is over-capacity driving premium down, while the claim and risk side of the D&O market was steadily increasing since 2013-2014.  While directors are faulted for many things in Corporate America, they cannot be faulted for the D&O carriers mis-pricing risk and retention for years, hoping the boogeyman would not strike hard.  But as we know today, securities claims are at historically high levels, and the cyber and “me-too” event driven boogeyman have struck extremely hard.  D&O risk has never been higher.  On cyber, risk will grow even scarier as more and more regulators join in fining and sanctioning companies, creating more fodder for the plaintiffs’ bar.  So “narrow coverage for the directors?”  Nope, if I am a director I want more coverage, not less.  I want to be protected, especially from the large spill-over of cyber risk into D&O and entity risk that we are seeing today post-British Airways and Marriott Hotels.  Sitting on boards of directors was never “risk free.” Today, sitting on a board can be akin to the show, “Naked and Afraid,” on the episode where the lions where circling their camp every night looking for “snacks.”

  Claims-Paying Differentiates the Markets – and Should Drive Premium Increases

  So here is where I come out for most companies — here assuming they can fund whatever premium increases they need to in order to pass through the “hard market.”

  Having spent years in the bankruptcy ecosystem seeing the pain and suffering of boards going through hard times, I can tell you its no fun.  Especially when there are coverage issues, and especially when the D&O tower is the only thing that separates a director or officer from financial ruin.  Skimping on coverage is never a good idea.  For the same but a related reason, accepting narrower coverage can also be problematic.  In a bankruptcy setting, “everything relates to everything.” Playing with narrower coverage, broader prior acts exclusions, different “related acts” wording?  All bad ideas.  All fertile grounds for coverage lawsuits. The worst thing you could wish for in bankruptcy.

  If I am a director, I want broad coverage.  By a primary carrier that is going to pay my claim without haggling me or my defense counsel to death over the price of paper clips and photo-copying.  I want a primary carrier with plenty of claims experience, and with the “war-time” smarts to know when to show his cards and when to fold them too on the other hand.  If the premium for that coverage is more than the “average” primary premium (by someone who is not going to pay claims) then that is they way it is.  Let face it. Life is hard enough.  A narrower scope of D&O coverage?  I am sorry Paul and John.  Not on my watch.

The post Guest Post: Scope of Coverage is Fine – Rate and Claim-Paying are the Keys appeared first on The D&O Diary.

Guest Post: Scope of Coverage is Fine – Rate and Claim-Paying are the Keys published first on

[coin-river-blog]

MtGox trustee Nobuaki Kobayashi published documents on the MtGox website on Wednesday informing the public about decisions made at the second creditor’s meeting.

MtGox went under in 2014, after handling 70% of the world’s Bitcoin transactions at that time, due to a major security breach which lost $450 million worth of investor funds. The 850,000 BTC would go on to be worth billions.

Mt Gox has gone offline taking all our Bitcoin with it. I have lost quite a lot of my money today :(

— Dan Bull 🍐 (@itsDanBull) February 25, 2014

Join CCN for $9.99 per month and get an ad-free version of CCN including discounts for future events and services. Support our journalists today. Click here to sign up.

As Rehabilitation Trustee, Nobuaki Kobayashi was placed in charge of the funds following the failure of former CEO Mark Karpeles to safely operate the exchange.

Karpeles has been accused of embezzlement and fraud, and spent almost a year in a Japanese prison, although it is unclear to what extent the security breach was malicious. Karpeles was found not guilty on charges of stealing MtGox funds earlier this month, and received a suspended sentence for his guilty verdict of producing illegal records.

He may still face class action lawsuits in the US.

Organized Crime

The case has also been tied to former BTCe operator Alexander Vinnik, who reportedly received some of the missing/stolen MtGox funds.

Vinnik has connections to organized crime and former Soviet paramilitary groups operating in Russia and Ukraine, and shell companies mentioned in the Panama papers. Vinnik recently survived an assassination attempt in Greek prison while facing extradition to France.

BTCe shut down following accusations of large-scale money laundering of over $4 billion and what appeared to be an exit scam under Vinnik’s leadership.

you friends with mtgox?

— # (@TruckerAsh) July 25, 2017

$623 Million for MtGox Payback

The amount secured by the trustee was initially pegged at approximately $624 million and has decreased since the first creditors meeting under the Civil Rehabilitation Proceedings on September 26, 2018.

Now secured, the current amount will be placed in a trust, safeguarding it from bankruptcy proceedings.

MTGOX Co., Ltd (classed as the “Rehabilitation Debtor” in proceedings) now holds 141,686.35371099 BTC and 42,846.35166254 BCH. Investigations are still underway to find any additional holdings that may be stored by MtGox.

The funds will be distributed to the people who lost money in the massive breach, although it’s not possible to compensate them for the full amount that was lost.

The Tokyo District Court halted bankruptcy proceedings for MtGox after a petition on June 22, 2018, was filed by creditors to commence civil rehabilitation proceedings. The bankruptcy was put on hold to ensure that at least some funds will be repaid.

A proposal to outline the timeline and terms of the civil rehabilitation process is due on April 26.

[devinsena]

Indigenous Women Who Were Sterilized Without Their Consent Sue

Indigenous women are suing doctors in the province of Saskatchewan as well as the government of Alberta for a shocking human rights violation.

Over 60 women have joined together in the pending class action lawsuit in Saskatchewan seeking $7 million each in compensation for forced or coerced sterilization. According to the Huffington Post, the lawsuit in Alberta seeks "$500 million in damages, plus an additional $50 million in punitive damages, and has been brought on behalf of all indigenous women sterilized in Alberta without their prior and informed consent before December 2018.

According to Amnesty International, forced sterilization occurs when a woman has a tubal ligation without their knowledge or informed consent, while coerced sterilization is when women give their consent but due to incorrect or misleading information (such as the procedure can be reversed; while this is the case in some instances, it is not in many others), intimidation or threats, or incentives such as money or access to services.

As reported by The Guardian, many indigenous women claim their tubes were tied, burned or cut in public hospitals without their knowledge or when they were unable to give sufficient consent, which would be a breach of medical ethics and the law.

Some say they were threatened with not being able to see their newborns unless they agreed to the procedure. Others claim they were pushed into signing the consent forms for the procedure when they were in active labor or on the operating table.

In fact, a whole report has been put together with personal testimonies of victims. Some are included below:

“It was just, like, we’re going to do this and after, I wasn’t told anything, no explanation that it was permanent.”

“When [I was] in for C-section, nurse came to [get] me to sign the paper for tubal ligation…Even though I didn’t want to, I signed it.”

“The hospital family worker is the one who started [it], say[ing], ‘Well, we want you to have a tubal.’”

“We don’t want you to leave until the tubal ligation is done.”

“I said, no, no, and the doctor would tell me stories, about women. ‘A woman had her first C-section and passed away with her firstborn’ and the tubal ligation came up again.”

“Because my daughter had cerebral palsy, the doctor told my husband that all future kids are going to be sick, have some kind of health problem.”

“And I just said, ‘I don’t want to do this’ and  [the doctor] just didn’t hear me. I was being ignored.”

“I told the anesthesiologist that I don’t want this. The doctor was talking to the nurses and said, ‘Did she sign consent?’ The nurse said ‘yes’. But the doctor clearly heard me say, ‘I don’t want this.’”

“I’ve never talked to the doctor [about it] after because I just feel like I had to do something I didn’t want.”

“Then the doctors and nurses said, ‘It’s for your benefit. You have all these children. Enjoy her while you have her.’”

“The consent form for tubal ligation was just given to me, not explained.”

“I don’t recall signing anything, but I did think of it when I was pregnant, but…I knew at time [of delivery] that I didn’t want it done.”

“No means no. It was no in the beginning and should have been left alone.”

This is not the first time this has happened either. According to The Guardian, “in 1928, the province of Alberta enacted legislation aimed at sterilizing those considered mentally challenged and other disadvantaged groups. An estimated 2,800 sterilizations were carried out – including on many Aboriginal people – before the act was repealed in 1972. Authorities in British Columbia, which passed its own act in 1933, sterilized some 400 people.”

Then in 2015, four women came forward with similar claims and an investigation was launched. The Saskatchewan province’s health authority issued an apology and implemented new rules regarding tubal ligations. However, according to the pending lawsuit, some cases occurred as recently as 2017.

Senator Yvonne Boyer, an indigenous lawyer believes the problem could also be more widespread.

“If it’s happened in Saskatoon, it has happened in Regina, it’s happened in Winnipeg, it’s happened where there’s a high population of indigenous women,” Boyer told the Canadian Press. “I’ve had many women contact me from across the country and ask me for help.”

"If there are 60 women just in the Saskatoon area, there are many more that haven't come forward in that area, and there are many more that wanted to come forward but were too traumatized to. There's many more that have buried those memories,” Boyer explained.

“You have to ask yourself, how did this happen?” said Alisa Lombard, the lawyer representing the women.  “These are people whose choices were taken away, and they are choices based in fundamental human rights. The very intimate and personal decision to have children – or to not have children – belongs to the individual. It’s not something that can be fettered or influenced or coerced or forced.”

“These women and their communities have suffered. They have suffered. And they are entitled to restitution as they essentially relive their trauma,” Lombard further explained.

Jacqueline Hansen explained Amnesty International had investigated similar practices in Mexico, Chile and Peru.

“It’s always done for a very specific reason. It is clear that it’s been linked to policies around wanting to ensure a group of people doesn’t reproduce. I think the genesis of this, and of treatment of people across the board, is really rooted in racism. I think we have to call it what it is,” Hansen stated.

It is wrong, and always will be wrong to attempt to get rid of members of the population based on race, sex, disability, or any other defining factor. This is eugenics and the same racist mindset which was behind the creation of Planned Parenthood.

These women were coerced into not having more children due to immense pressure from doctors who made the decision for them. Many were tricked, lied to and all were unnecessarily pressured. We wish these women all the best in their case against the hospitals and health officials in the province of Saskatchewan. We hope Canadians realize this racism and and in turn cease to push for the systematic elimination of the indigenous and any others they are trying to erase from existence.

Deb Ironbow, who was coerced into having her fallopian tubes tied during a C-section in 1995, sits for a photograph in her home in Saskatoon, Saturday, December 15, 2018. (LIAM RICHARDS / THE CANADIAN PRESS)

source http://humandefense.com/indigenous-women-who-were-sterilized-without-their-consent-sue/