position:counsel

  • Does Being ’Zionist Feminist’ Mean Betraying Women for Israel? - Tikun Olam תיקון עולם
    https://www.richardsilverstein.com/2017/03/16/zionist-feminist-mean-betraying-women-israel


    Rasmea Odeh participates in Detroit Black Lives Matter rally

    March 16, 2017 by Richard Silverstein Leave a Comment

    Yesterday, I wrote a critique of Emily Shire’s diatribe against the Women’s Strike Day USA protest. She especially singled out platform statements supporting Palestinian rights. Shire, a professed Zionist feminist, dismissed the criticisms of Israeli Occupation contained in the event platform as irrelevant to the issue of women’s rights. Then she launched into an attack on one of the conveners of the Strike Day, Rasmea Odeh. Shire alleges that Odeh is a convicted terrorist and former member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a U.S. designated terror group.

    A comment Deir Yassin published yesterday here got me to thinking further about this issue. I researched Rasmea’s case and the torture she endured. My view is this is precisely the sort of case and individual any women’s movement should embrace. Here is a summary of the facts of the case. In 1969, a cell of the PFLP planted bombs at a Jerusalem Super-Sol. They exploded, killing two Hebrew University students.
    shin bet torture

    Afterward, security forces arrested Odeh and jailed her without charges or access to counsel. She was tortured, by her account, for 45 days. Here is how she described her treatment in testimony to a UN commission on torture in Geneva:

    …”They beat me with sticks, plastic sticks, and with a metal bar. They beat me on the head and I fainted as a result of these beatings. They woke me up several times by throwing cold water in my face and then started all over again.”

    In addition to this physical torture, Odeh also faced sexual torture. Her father, a U.S. citizen, was also arrested and beaten, “and once they brought in my father and tried to force him under blows to take off his clothes and have sexual relations with me.” Later, interrogators “tore my clothes off me while my hands were still tied behind my back. They threw me to the ground completely naked and the room was full of a dozen or so interrogators and soldiers who looked at me and laughed sarcastically as if they were looking at a comedy or a film. Obviously they started touching my body.” In her father’s presence, interrogators threatened to “violate me” and “tried to introduce a stick to break my maidenhead [hymen].” Shackled naked from the ceiling, interrogators “tied my legs, which were spread-eagled, and they started to beat me with their hands and also with cudgels.”

    Every method described in her account is known from previous descriptions of the treatment of Arab terror suspects. We know, for example, that Doron Zahavi, an IDF AMAN officer, raped Mustafa Dirani in Prison 504. The beatings and positions she describes are also previously described in testimony by the Public Committee to Prevent Torture in Israel. Therefore, it’s not just conceivable that Rasmea endured the treatment she claims, it’s almost a certainty. Especially given that two Israelis were killed in the bombing.

    In summary, the Shin Bet tried to force her father to rape her. The interrogators themselves raped her and further degraded her sexually. And her father was tortured as a means of compelling her to confess. If this isn’t a perfect portrait of a cause that all feminists should embrace, I don’t know what is. So when Shire claims that Palestine is the farthest thing from what Women’s Strike Day’s mission should be, she’s engaging in willful blindness to the plight of another woman. A woman who happens to be Palestinian.

    Rasmea was tried and convicted in an Israeli military court, which features military judges and prosecutors using rules that favor the prosecution and shackle the hands of the defense. It can rule any evidence secret and so prevent the defense from seeing it, let alone rebutting it. Such a conviction could never withstand scrutiny under U.S. criminal procedures or even Israeli civilian courts.

    Further, Shire justifies her denunciation of Odeh by noting that Israel denies torturing Rasmea. So you have an Israeli security apparatus which is well-known for lying when evidence against it is damning. And you have Rasmea’s testimony, supported by scores of accounts by other security prisoners as to their treatment under similar circumstances. It reminds me of the story of the husband who returns home to find his wife in bed with another man. The man jumps out of bed and says: “Hey, this isn’t what this looks like. Nothing happened. I swear it. Who are you going to believe? Me, or your lyin’ eyes?” Emily Shire prefers to believe the agency that lies to her with a straight face. In doing so, she shows that she is a Zionist first and foremost; and a feminist second, if at all.

    As for the citizenship application infractions which the Justice Department is exploiting in order to expel her from the U.S.: she had been tortured once by Israel. Her decision to hide her previous conviction was surely founded on a fear that she might be deported once again back to Israel or Jordan (where Israel had sent her after her release from prison). The Jordanian security apparatus collaborates closely with Israeli intelligence. The former is quite handy with torture itself. Further, the U.S. judge in her first trial prohibited her attorney from raising torture as part of her defense. Her second trial will explicitly permit such testimony. Though I’m not privy to the defense strategy, I hope it will demand that a Shabak officer who participated in her interrogation testify at trial. And if his testimony diverges from the truth, I hope there is means to document this and hold him accountable. It would be one of the first times such an agent would be held accountable legally either inside or outside Israel.

    In the attacks against Rasmea, it’s certainly reasonable to bring up her participation in an act of terrorism: as long as you also examine the entire case against her. She admitted participation in the attack. But she denied placing the bomb in the supermarket. Despite her denial, this was the crime for which she was convicted. Further, Rasmea was released after serving ten years as part of a prisoner exchange. If Israel saw fit to release her, what is the point of using her alleged past crime against her today?

    As for her membership in a terror organization, she has long since left the militant movement. Her civic activism is solely non-violent these days. Further, virtually every leader of Israel for the first few decades of its existence either participated directly in, or ordered acts of terror against either British or Palestinian targets. Why do we grant to Israel what we deny to Palestinians?

    It may be no accident that two days before Shire’s broadside against the U.S. feminist movement (and Rasmea) in the NY Times, the Chicago Tribune published another hit-piece against her. The latter was credited to a retired Chicago professor. Her bio neglected to mention that she is also a Breitbart contributor who is the local coördinator for StandWithUs. This sin of omission attests either to editorial slacking or a deliberate attempt to conceal relevant biographical details which would permit readers to judge the content of the op-ed in proper context.

    The Tribune op-ed denounces Jewish Voice for Peace’s invitation to Rasmea to address its annual conference in Chicago later this month. As I wrote in last night’s post, what truly irks the Israel Lobby is the growing sense of solidarity among feminist, Jewish, Palestinian, Black and LGBT human rights organizations. Its response is to divide by sowing fear, doubt and lies in the media. The two op-eds in the Times and Tribute are stellar examples of the genre and indicate a coordinated campaign against what they deride as intersectionality.

    #Palestine #femmes #résistance #zionisme

  • The Challenge of Going Off Psychiatric Drugs | The New Yorker
    https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/04/08/the-challenge-of-going-off-psychiatric-drugs

    Laura had always assumed that depression was caused by a precisely defined chemical imbalance, which her medications were designed to recalibrate. She began reading about the history of psychiatry and realized that this theory, promoted heavily by pharmaceutical companies, is not clearly supported by evidence. Genetics plays a role in mental disorder, as do environmental influences, but the drugs do not have the specificity to target the causes of an illness. Wayne Goodman, a former chair of the F.D.A.’s Psychopharmacologic Drugs Advisory Committee, has called the idea that pills fix chemical imbalances a “useful metaphor” that he would never use with his patients. Ronald Pies, a former editor of Psychiatric Times, has said, “My impression is that most psychiatrists who use this expression”—that the pills fix chemical imbalances—“feel uncomfortable and a little embarrassed when they do so. It’s kind of a bumper-sticker phrase that saves time.”

    Dorian Deshauer, a psychiatrist and historian at the University of Toronto, has written that the chemical-imbalance theory, popularized in the eighties and nineties, “created the perception that the long term, even life-long use of psychiatric drugs made sense as a logical step.” But psychiatric drugs are brought to market in clinical trials that typically last less than twelve weeks. Few studies follow patients who take the medications for more than a year. Allen Frances, an emeritus professor of psychiatry at Duke, who chaired the task force for the fourth edition of the DSM, in 1994, told me that the field has neglected questions about how to take patients off drugs—a practice known as “de-prescribing.” He said that “de-prescribing requires a great deal more skill, time, commitment, and knowledge of the patient than prescribing does.” He emphasizes what he called a “cruel paradox: there’s a large population on the severe end of the spectrum who really need the medicine” and either don’t have access to treatment or avoid it because it is stigmatized in their community. At the same time, many others are “being overprescribed and then stay on the medications for years.” There are almost no studies on how or when to go off psychiatric medications, a situation that has created what he calls a “national public-health experiment.”

    Roland Kuhn, a Swiss psychiatrist credited with discovering one of the first antidepressants, imipramine, in 1956, later warned that many doctors would be incapable of using antidepressants properly, “because they largely or entirely neglect the patient’s own experiences.” The drugs could only work, he wrote, if a doctor is “fully aware of the fact that he is not dealing with a self-contained, rigid object, but with an individual who is involved in constant movement and change.”

    A decade after the invention of antidepressants, randomized clinical studies emerged as the most trusted form of medical knowledge, supplanting the authority of individual case studies. By necessity, clinical studies cannot capture fluctuations in mood that may be meaningful to the patient but do not fit into the study’s categories. This methodology has led to a far more reliable body of evidence, but it also subtly changed our conception of mental health, which has become synonymous with the absence of symptoms, rather than with a return to a patient’s baseline of functioning, her mood or personality before and between episodes of illness.

    Antidepressants are now taken by roughly one in eight adults and adolescents in the U.S., and a quarter of them have been doing so for more than ten years. Industry money often determines the questions posed by pharmacological studies, and research about stopping drugs has never been a priority.

    Barbiturates, a class of sedatives that helped hundreds of thousands of people to feel calmer, were among the first popular psychiatric drugs. Although leading medical journals asserted that barbiturate addiction was rare, within a few years it was evident that people withdrawing from barbiturates could become more anxious than they were before they began taking the drugs. (They could also hallucinate, have convulsions, and even die.)

    Valium and other benzodiazepines were introduced in the early sixties, as a safer option. By the seventies, one in ten Americans was taking Valium. The chief of clinical pharmacology at Massachusetts General Hospital declared, in 1976, “I have never seen a case of benzodiazepine dependence” and described it as “an astonishingly unusual event.” Later, though, the F.D.A. acknowledged that people can become dependent on benzodiazepines, experiencing intense agitation when they stop taking them.

    In the fifth edition of the DSM, published in 2013, the editors added an entry for “antidepressant discontinuation syndrome”—a condition also mentioned on drug labels—but the description is vague and speculative, noting that “longitudinal studies are lacking” and that little is known about the course of the syndrome. “Symptoms appear to abate over time,” the manual explains, while noting that “some individuals may prefer to resume medication indefinitely.”

    Audrey Bahrick, a psychologist at the University of Iowa Counseling Service, who has published papers on the way that S.S.R.I.s affect sexuality, told me that, a decade ago, after someone close to her lost sexual function on S.S.R.I.s, “I became pretty obsessive about researching the issue, but the actual qualitative experience of patients was never documented. There was this assumption that the symptoms would resolve once you stop the medication. I just kept thinking, Where is the data? Where is the data?” In her role as a counsellor, Bahrick sees hundreds of college students each year, many of whom have been taking S.S.R.I.s since adolescence. She told me, “I seem to have the expectation that young people would be quite distressed about the sexual side effects, but my observation clinically is that these young people don’t yet know what sexuality really means, or why it is such a driving force.”

    #Psychiatrie #Big_Pharma #Addiction #Anti_depresseurs #Valium

    • Le problème, c’est que les psychiatres ont surtout le temps pour prescrire, pas pour creuser. Et que le temps de guérison entre frontalement en conflit avec le temps de productivité.

      Le temps de guérir est un luxe pour les gens bien entourés et avec assez de moyens financiers.

      Et il manque toujours la question de base : qu’est-ce qui déclenche ses réponses psychiques violentes ?

      J’aurais tendance à dire : un mode de vie #normatif et étroit qui force certaines personnes à adopter un mode de vie particulièrement éloigné de ce qu’elles sont, de ce qu’elles veulent. Notre société est terriblement irrespectueuse et violente pour tous ceux qui ne se conforme nt pas au #modèle unique de la personne sociale, dynamique et surtout, bien productive !

      #dépression

  • Meet Francis Malofiy, the Philadelphia Lawyer Who Sued Led Zeppelin
    https://www.phillymag.com/news/2019/02/11/francis-malofiy-led-zeppelin

    Francis Malofiy may be the most hated man in the Philadelphia legal community. He may also be on the cusp of getting the last laugh on rock’s golden gods.

    #droit_d_auteur #musique #plagiat

    • @sandburg Voillà

      Meet Francis Malofiy, the Philadelphia Lawyer Who Sued Led Zeppelin
      https://www.phillymag.com/news/2019/02/11/francis-malofiy-led-zeppelin

      People Laughed When This Philly Lawyer Sued Led Zeppelin. Nobody’s Laughing Now.

      Francis Malofiy may be the most hated man in the Philadelphia legal community. He may also be on the cusp of getting the last laugh on rock’s golden gods.

      By Jonathan Valania· 2/11/2019


      Philadelphia-area attorney Francis Malofiy. Photograph by Bryan Sheffield.

      The fact that Philadelphia barrister Francis Alexander Malofiy, Esquire, is suing Led Zeppelin over the authorship of “Stairway to Heaven” is, by any objective measure, only the fourth most interesting thing about him. Unfortunately for the reader, and the purposes of this story, the first, second and third most interesting things about Malofiy are bound and gagged in nondisclosure agreements, those legalistic dungeons where the First Amendment goes to die. So let’s start with number four and work our way backward.

      At the risk of stating the obvious, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, let the record show that “Stairway to Heaven” is arguably the most famous song in all of rock-and-roll, perhaps in all of popular music. It’s also one of the most lucrative — it’s estimated that the song has netted north of $500 million in sales and royalties since its 1971 release. Malofiy’s lawsuit, cheekily printed in the same druidic font used for the liner notes of the album Led Zeppelin IV, alleges that Jimmy Page and Robert Plant — Zep’s elegantly wasted guitarist/producer/central songwriter and leonine, leather-lunged lead singer, respectively — stole the iconic descending acoustic-guitar arpeggios of the first two minutes of “Stairway” from “Taurus,” a song with a strikingly similar chord pattern by a long-forgotten ’60s band called Spirit. At the conclusion of a stormy, headline-grabbing trial in 2016 that peaked with testimony from Page and Plant, the jury decided in Zep’s favor.

      When the copyright infringement suit was first filed in Philadelphia by Malofiy (pronounced “MAL-uh-fee”) on behalf of the Randy Craig Wolfe Trust — which represents the estate of Randy “California” Wolfe, the now-deceased member of Spirit who wrote “Taurus” — people laughed. Mostly at Malofiy. The breathless wall-to-wall media coverage the trial garnered often painted him as a loose-cannon legal beagle, one part Charlie Sheen, one part Johnnie Cochran. “Everybody kind of dismissed me as this brash young lawyer who didn’t really understand copyright law,” he says, well into the wee hours one night back in December, sitting behind a desk stacked four feet high with legal files in the dank, subterranean bunker that is his office.

      Hidden behind an unmarked door on the basement floor of a nondescript office building in Media, the law firm of Francis Alexander LLC is a pretty punk-rock operation. The neighbors are an anger management counselor and a medical marijuana dispensary. “I think of us as pirates sinking big ships,” Malofiy, who’s 41, brags. Given the sheer number of death threats he says he’s received from apoplectic Zep fans, the fact that mysterious cars seem to follow him in the night, and his claim to have found GPS trackers stuck to the bottom of his car, the precise location of his offices remains a closely guarded secret. Failing that, he has a license to carry, and most days, he leaves the house packing a .38-caliber Smith & Wesson.

      While most lawyers are sleeping, Malofiy is working through the night to defeat them, often until sunrise, fueled by an ever-present bottle of grape-flavored Fast Twitch as he chain-chews Wrigley’s Spearmint gum and huffs a never-ending string of Marlboro menthols. We’ve been talking on the record for going on eight hours, and Malofiy shows no signs of fading; in fact, he’s just announced the arrival of his third wind.

      He has a pretty good ‘fuck you’ attitude that comes from an inner confidence. He might have had a little too much early on,” attorney Jim Beasley Jr. says of Malofiy. “If you piss the judge off with your pirate act, the judge can make it difficult for you. Sometimes you could avoid all that by not swinging your pirate sword around.

      Talk turns to the distinctly pro-Zep tenor of the media coverage of the “Stairway” trial. “I was a punch line for jokes,” he says, spitting his gum into a yellow Post-it and banking it into the trash for, like, the 42nd time. Nobody’s laughing now, least of all Page and Plant. Nor, for that matter, is Usher. Back in October, at the conclusion of a dogged seven-year legal battle marked by a bruising string of dismissals and sanctions, Malofiy won a $44 million verdict — one of the largest in Pennsylvania in 2018 — for a Philadelphia songwriter named Daniel Marino who sued his co-writers after being cut out of the songwriting credits and royalties for the song “Bad Girl” from the R&B heartthrob’s 2004 breakout album, Confessions, which sold more than 10 million copies.

      Also, in late September of last year, the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Malofiy’s appeal of the 2016 “Stairway to Heaven” verdict and ordered a new trial on the grounds that the court “abused its discretion” when the judge refused to allow Malofiy to play a recording of “Taurus” for the jury. (Members were only allowed to hear an acoustic-guitar rendition played from sheet music.) The retrial is expected to begin in the next year, and Page and Plant, along with bassist John Paul Jones, are again anticipated to take the stand. Copyright experts say Led Zeppelin — which has a long history of ripping off the ancient riffs and carnal incantations of wizened Delta bluesmen and only giving credit when caught — should be worried.

      Malofiy, who calls Zep “the greatest cover band in all of history,” will go to trial armed with reams of expert testimony pinpointing the damning similarities between the two songs — not just the nearly identical and atypical chord pattern, but the shared melodic figurations, choice of key and distinctive voicings. He’ll also show the jury that Page and Plant had ample opportunity to hear “Taurus” when Zep opened for Spirit on their first American tour in 1968, two years before they wrote and recorded “Stairway.”

      “Most big companies rely on the concept of wearing you down, forcing you to do so much work it literally drives you broke,” says Glen Kulik, a heavy-hitter L.A.-based copyright lawyer who signed on as Malofiy’s local counsel when the Zep case was moved to federal court in California. “If you have any chance of standing up to them, it’s going to require an incredible amount of persistence, confidence, and quite a bit of skill as well, and Francis has all those things in spades.” And Kulik would know, having successfully argued a landmark copyright infringement case before the Supreme Court in 2014 that paved the way for the Zeppelin suit.


      Francis Malofiy. Photograph by Bryan Sheffield.

      Ultimately, Malofiy doesn’t have to prove Led Zeppelin stole Spirit’s song; he just has to convince a jury that’s what happened. Assuming the trial goes forward — and that this time, he’s allowed to play recordings of both songs for the jury — there will be blood. Because contrary to his hard-won rep as a bull in the china shop of civil litigation, Malofiy possesses a switchblade-sharp legal mind, an inexhaustible work ethic, and a relentless, rock-ribbed resolve to absorb more punches than his opponents can throw. He’s a ruthlessly effective courtroom tactician with a collection of six-, seven- and eight-figure verdicts, not to mention the scalps of opposing counsel who underestimated his prowess. “I don’t plink pigeons; I hunt lions and tigers and bears,” he says. The big game he’s targeted in the past decade include deep-pocketed transnational corporations like Volvo (an epic seven-year case that ended in an undisclosed settlement) and Hertz (against whom he won a $100,000 verdict).

      In the arena of civil litigation, where the odds are increasingly stacked against plaintiffs, Malofiy claims to have never lost a jury trial, and that appears to be true. “I have lost twice — in the Zeppelin case and a lawsuit against Volvo — but got both decisions reversed on appeals,” he says, unsheathing a fresh stick of Wrigley’s. “Now, the same people that were asking me for years why I’m doing it are asking me how I did it.”

      If Malofiy prevails in the coming “Stairway” retrial, he’ll completely shatter the Tolkien-esque legend of the song’s immaculate conception — that it was birthed nearly in toto during a mystical retreat at a remote Welsh mountain cottage called Bron-yr-aur, to which many a starry-eyed Zep disciple has made a pilgrimage once upon a midnight clear when the forests echo with laughter. It will be like proving that da Vinci didn’t paint the Mona Lisa, that Michelangelo didn’t sculpt David. Barring a last-minute settlement, many legal and copyright experts predict that Malofiy may well emerge victorious, and credit for the most famous rock song in the world will pass from the self-appointed Golden Gods of Led Zeppelin to some obscure, long-forgotten (and not even very good) West Coast psych band, along with tens of millions in royalties, effectively rewriting the sacred history of rock-and-roll. And the man who will have pulled off this fairly miraculous feat of judicial jujitsu is the enfant terrible of Philadelphia jurisprudence.

      Malofiy hates wearing a suit and tie. Outside the courtroom, he dresses like a rock star masquerading as a lawyer: a crushable black trilby perched at a jaunty angle atop a blue bandana, a collarless black and orange leather Harley jacket, and a pair of beat-to-fuck brown Wesco boots, unlaced. “I’m always in jeans and boots when I meet new clients,” he says. “I warn them up front: ‘If you want a fancy lawyer in a suit, you should go elsewhere.’”

      The barrier to entry for new clients at Francis Alexander LLC is steep, because Malofiy doesn’t take on new cases so much as he adopts new causes. A case has to register on a deeply personal level if he’s going to eat, sleep, and fight to the death for it for the next five to seven years.

      “Lawyers have an ethical responsibility to advocate zealously for their clients,” says attorney Max Kennerly, who’s worked with Malofiy on a number of cases. “But frankly, in this business, a lot of lawyers play the odds and just do a ‘good enough’ job on a bunch of cases. Sometimes they win, and sometimes they lose. Francis really throws himself into his cases.”

      After 10 years of struggle, things finally seem to be breaking Malofiy’s way. Fat checks from cases settled long ago are rolling in, alleviating some fairly crippling cash-flow issues, and big cases just keep falling out of the sky — more than his two-lawyer outfit can field. They need to staff up, stat. Malofiy wants to hire some young bucks fresh out of law school — preferably Temple — as force multipliers in his quest to hold the powerful accountable on behalf of the powerless. “Most kids in law school right now will never see the inside of a courtroom,” he says. “Law schools don’t want to teach you how to change the system; they want to load you up with debt so you have to go do grunt work for some corporate law firm that specializes in maintaining the status quo.”


      Francis Malofiy. Photograph by Bryan Sheffield.

      Malofiy doesn’t have a website. He doesn’t do social media. He doesn’t trawl the watering holes of the rich and powerful. He doesn’t even have a business card. Thanks to the notoriety and name recognition that came with the Zeppelin trial, new clients chase him. He just got off the phone with a Brooklyn puppet maker who wants him to sue the band Fall Out Boy for alleged misuse of two llamas — Frosty and Royal Tea — that it created. Right now, he’s on a conference call with a trio of British songwriters who want Malofiy to sue the Weeknd for allegedly lifting a key section of their song “I Need to Love” for a track called “A Lonely Night” on his 2016 Starboy album, which has sold more than three million copies to date.

      “Why are you guys calling me?” he asks.

      “We’re looking for an honest person fighting for ordinary working people,” says Billy Smith, one of the Brit songwriters in question. Malofiy clearly likes the sound of that. After thinking it over for a few moments, he tells them he’ll take their case and gives them his standard new-client spiel. “I can’t promise we’ll win, but I can promise I won’t turn yellow when things turn bad. I won’t put my tail between my legs and run,” he says. “If there is any bad news, you will hear it from me first.”

      His teeth have been bothering him for days, and near the end of the call, one of his dental caps comes loose. He spits it out, and it skitters across his desk before he traps it under his palm. Most lawyers would be mortified. Malofiy thinks it’s hilarious. “I got teeth like you people,” he says to the Brits. Everybody laughs.

      Many people mistake Malofiy’s unconventionality as a design flaw when it’s actually a feature. “I think that’s an incredibly important part of what makes him so good as an attorney,” says A.J. Fluehr, 33, Malofiy’s right-hand man, co-counsel and, though eight years his boss’s junior, voice of reason. “Because he’s so unorthodox, I believe it causes a lot of other attorneys to underestimate him and think, ‘Oh, he’s not serious; he doesn’t know what he’s doing.’ All of sudden, there’s a massively serious case against them.”

      Even some of the defense lawyers who’ve done battle with Malofiy begrudgingly acknowledge his chops. “I’ve known Francis for four years now. He is difficult to deal with but a fierce advocate for his clients and his cause,” says Rudolph “Skip” DiMassa, a partner at Duane Morris. “Calling him ‘abrasive’ would be putting it mildly. But he wears it like a badge of honor that he is not like all the other lawyers in town.”

      When I read that and similar assessments from other lawyers back to Malofiy, he chalks them up to blowback for the heresy of Robin Hooding a corrupt status quo. “I have a target on my back because I sue big corporations, politicians, big law firms. Hell, I sued DA Seth Williams,” he says one night at the Irish Pub, as he’s nursing a screwdriver he’ll chase with a root beer. “When you start stepping on toes and suing the wrong people and get a few million shifted from those who have it to those who don’t — that’s where the change happens; that’s where you make a difference. And there is a price you have to pay for that.”

      According to family lore, Francis Malofiy’s maternal grandfather was murdered by Nazis in occupied Greece; his great-grandmother had to cut the body down from a tree and carry it home on the back of a mule. Concurrently, his paternal grandfather was murdered by Nazis in Ukraine, while his father and grandmother were frog-marched to camps in Germany. Some things can never be forgotten or forgiven. That’s why Malofiy is always kicking against the pricks. A slight child, he was often bullied at school, and after a brief experiment with turning the other cheek, he started fighting back. Hard. He recalls the day that a bully was picking on a girl half his size; young Francis cold-cocked him and threw him into a closet door. The kid had to be taken out on a stretcher. After that, the bullies moved on to easier prey. “I was always fighting for the little guy, even back then,” he says.

      In the third grade, friends turned him on to Poison’s Look What the Cat Dragged In and Bon Jovi’s Slippery When Wet, indelibly imprinting the spandexed bikers-and-strippers aesthetic of ’80s hair-metal onto his psyche. He started channeling the energy he once put into beating back bullies into beating the drums. One day in the sixth grade, he came home to tell his dad about a band all the kids were into: “The Led Zeppelins.”

      “He said, ‘No, son, it’s just Led Zeppelin.’”

      “No, I’m pretty sure it’s the Led Zeppelins.”

      So his father, who’d seen the band at the Electric Factory, drove Francis to the record store at the Granite Run Mall, where the clerks set him straight. His father bought the four-cassette Zep box set that had just come out. On the way home, Malofiy heard “Whole Lotta Love” for the first time, and before the song even ended, it was official: Led Zeppelin was his favorite band. When he was in high school, his drum teacher gently broke the news that Zep didn’t exactly, um, write all their own music — that key parts of their iconic songs had been cherry-picked from old, obscure blues recordings. “I said, ‘C’mon, don’t talk shit about Jimmy Page!’” Malofiy recalls. Then his teacher played him the Willie Dixon-penned Muddy Waters track “You Need Love” — which is what “Whole Lotta Love” was called before Zep hijacked the lyrics and the riff and Frankensteined them into the gloriously scuzzy heavy-metal Viking porno movie for the ears we’ve come to know and love. It was hard for Francis to process, and even harder when he was tipped to the uncanny similarity between Spirit’s “Taurus” and “Stairway.” Still, the spell Zep cast over him remained unbroken.


      Francis Malofiy. Photograph by Bryan Sheffield.

      As a young teenager, he built go-karts, dirt bikes and small-block Chevys. To make spending money for guitars and records, he started buying beater cars, fixing them up, and flipping them for quadruple what he paid for them. He almost didn’t graduate from high school because he’d played hooky too many times, to go fishing or work on cars or play guitar. When he finally got his high-school diploma, he raced home from school to show his mother in his Chevy S-10 lowrider. Tearing ass on the backcountry roads of Media, he blew past a cop who immediately lit up his cherry top and gave pursuit. Soon, one cop car became two, then three, until there were five cars tailing him.

      Much to his parents’ dismay, his run-ins with the law became common. They were never for anything all that serious, just the usual teen-rebel monkeyshines: fighting, speeding, the occasional high-speed car chase. He got a big wake-up call in 1998 when his beloved Uncle Nick — a.k.a. Nicholas “The Greek” Vasiliades — was handed a life sentence for running a high-volume meth lab in a warehouse in Manayunk that supplied the drug networks of the Pagans and the Mafia, as well as for his 50-gun arsenal of illegal weaponry. Malofiy was devastated. “I was going down a bad path,” he says. “My uncle pulled me aside and said, ‘You’re smart enough to do it the right way. You need to step away.’”

      Malofiy took the warning to heart and focused on getting a college education, graduating from Penn State in 2000 with a degree in finance. After college, he went back home to Media and his true loves: cars, girls and heavy metal. With a revolving cast of musicians, he formed multiple go-nowhere suburban hard-rock bands with cringe-y names like Prada G and Sluts ’n Slayers. Unimpressed, his parents urged him to enroll in law school. Eventually he relented, forging this pact: He would go to law school if he: a) could do whatever he wanted with the unfinished basement of his parents’ home (i.e., build a high-end recording-studio-cum-man-cave tricked out with a kitchen, bedroom and bathroom); and b) nobody hassled him about having long hair, rocking out and chasing girls. Deal. Malofiy took the LSATs and scored just south of 160 — hardly off the charts, but good enough to get into Temple, where he found himself drawn to copyright law.

      He graduated from law school in December of 2007 and took the bar exam the following July. On the night of August 16, 2008, he stopped into the Liberty Bar at 22nd and Market with his then-girlfriend. It was crowded, but they found a table in the back. After ordering drinks, they started getting static from a group of three young men in ball caps and white t-shirts. “Three drunken jerkoffs, white privilege out the ass,” says Malofiy. According to Malofiy’s testimony, the trio mocked his bandana and called him “cunt,” “pussy” and a “dirty spic.” (It was summer; Malofiy was tan.) According to Malofiy, at some point the men apologized and the situation seemed defused, but then one of them grabbed Malofiy’s girlfriend’s ass. “I said, ‘That’s it. Follow me out,’ and made for the door,” Malofiy says, but he was blocked by a member of the group. As they stood chest-to-chest, Malofiy says, the man struck him twice. Finally, Malofiy, who boxed in college, unloaded with a right cross that landed squarely on the guy’s left cheekbone, shattering the glass still clenched in Malofiy’s fist.

      The man suffered a deep gash in his cheek that would require 150 stitches and reconstructive surgery. Malofiy nearly severed the tendons in his thumb. Bleeding profusely, he had his girlfriend drive him to the emergency room at Penn Presby to get stitched up and then to Central Detectives to file a criminal complaint.

      Two months later, in October, notice came in the mail that he had passed the bar. His mother was ecstatic and insisted on driving him to the Pittsburgh office of the Prothonotary of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania immediately to obtain his law license rather than wait two weeks for the formal ceremony. When they got home the next day, Malofiy got a call from Central Detectives, who said they had a “body warrant” for his arrest on aggravated assault and related charges stemming from the Liberty Bar fight. The next day, he turned himself in and spent a night in jail awaiting a bail hearing. Had he not gone to Pittsburgh at his mother’s behest, it’s unlikely he’d have gotten his law license with a felony arrest on his record.

      Malofiy’s first case as a newly minted lawyer would involve defending a client staring down decades in prison if convicted: himself. Heeding the maxim that a man who is his own lawyer has a fool for a client, Malofiy hired Sam Stretton, one of the most respected criminal defense attorneys in the city. Malofiy took the stand and delivered an impassioned defense of his actions. “He had already hit me twice, blocked my exit-way,” he testified. “I was scared for my safety and my girlfriend’s safety, and his friends had just yelled ‘Fight!’ and came up to me with fists drawn. I thought I had no other option.” The jury found him not guilty on all charges.

      “Welcome to Hogwarts,” Malofiy jokes as he shows me around the vast oak and stained-glass room that houses the law library at the Beasley Firm, possibly the most fearsome and feared personal-injury law firm in the city, where he worked, in an of-counsel capacity, from 2012 to 2014.

      Fresh out of law school and still wet behind the ears, Malofiy showed up one day in search of mentoring. Granted an audience with Jim Beasley Jr., one of the most successful plaintiff’s attorney in the city, Malofiy ended up with a promise of rent-free office space, the phone extension 666, and a commitment to help finance some of the highly ambitious cases he was mounting — a product-liability suit against Volvo, and a breach-of-contract suit, against a marble manufacturer that had screwed his client out of an ownership share, that resulted in a $4.2 million verdict — not to mention the Usher case. “Jim was like, ‘I keep getting calls from defense lawyers saying That kid’s the fucking devil, so you must be doing something right,’” Malofiy recalls.

      During Malofiy’s tenure at Beasley, he took out a controversial full-page ad in this magazine that depicted him crashing through a courtroom in a hot rod, looking every bit James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause. Many members of Philadelphia’s uptight, buttoned-down legal community thought it was disrespectful. “Everyone was outraged, but I thought it was funny,” says Beasley. “He has a pretty good ‘fuck you’ attitude that comes from an inner confidence. He might have had a little too much of that early on, but I think he’s throttled back a bit. So many of a judge’s decisions are ties and jump-balls that are not reversible, and if you piss the judge off with your pirate act, the judge can make it difficult for you. Sometimes you could avoid all that by not swinging your pirate sword around.”

      Malofiy has learned this the hard way. In 2015, a three-judge panel voted to suspend his license to practice law in U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania for improper conduct in the Usher case — despite the fact that the special prosecutor recommended what amounted to a slap on the wrist: a reprimand.

      “It’s highly unusual that they would disregard the disciplinary recommendations of the special prosecutor after he has heard the facts,” says Stretton. The matter is currently on appeal before the Third Circuit.

      At Malofiy’s insistence, I’ve been tailing him for the better part of a month: from a big-dollar NDA’d settlement in a judge’s quarters, to a Port Richmond dive bar called Chuckles, to a Bucks County gun shop where he plunked down $1,729 for a handsome Benelli shotgun (a gift for his right-hand man Fluehr), to a back-alley strip bar in Center City and the disused factory under the Commodore Barry Bridge that he’s purchased and plans to renovate into office space, living quarters and a beer garden. I watched him hide his $82,000 Land Rover from the repo man (“It’s all a misunderstanding”) and then, days later, saw a pile of white letter-size envelopes stacked on his desk, each containing what looked to be thousands in cash. What I have come to learn is this: When you write about lawyers, there is so much you can’t write about lawyers.

      Malofiy slowly, methodically and unflinchingly parceled out the most personal details of his backstory — the good, the bad and the ugly — as I incrementally earned his trust. But always on his timetable, not mine. It could be exasperating, but by the end, I discovered the method to his madness: He’d been pacing his revelations as he would a trial presentation. And now we’re reaching the crescendo of his closing argument — the big reveal.


      Francis Malofiy. Photograph by Bryan Sheffield.

      It’s a few clicks shy of midnight at Malofiy’s house in Media on a Sunday night shortly before Christmas. In the morning, he’s jetting off to an auction in London to bid on the Helios recording console that captured “Stairway to Heaven” for the ages. (Malofiy, true to form, won’t confirm that he won or lost the auction.) Though he’s been locked in a nasty four-year legal fight with Led Zeppelin, they’re still his favorite band.

      Malofiy called to insist that I come to his house tonight. “Why? What for?” I demanded. He said he wanted to show me something I could only see there. I begged off, explaining that this article was due in the morning and I already had more than I could use. But he insisted, promising it would be worth my while. He doesn’t disappoint. He tells me to open the freezer. There’s a bottle of Tito’s vodka, an ice tray, and half a lemon on a plate with a yellow plastic knife. “That’s the lemon Robert Plant squeezed into his tea when we deposed him in London back in 2016,” he claims. This is deeply ironic and, if you’re acquainted with the role lemons play in Plant’s legend, cosmically hilarious. One of Led Zeppelin’s most infamous tracks is “The Lemon Song,” a sultry blooze ramble from 1969’s deathless Led Zeppelin II stitched together from pieces of Howlin’ Wolf’s “Killing Floor” and Robert Johnson’s “Travelling Riverside Blues.” (Zep settled a 1972 copyright suit over the Howlin’ Wolf portion of the song.) In the fifth verse, Plant sings:

      Squeeze me baby, till the juice runs down my leg
      The way you squeeze my lemon, ah
      I’m gonna fall right out of bed

      By swiping that lemon rind at the deposition, Malofiy stole Robert Plant’s metaphoric penis the way Prometheus stole fire from the gods. Zep famously invoked the mythic “Hammer of the Gods” from Norse legend. For Jimmy Page, that hammer was his guitar, but for Plant it was his, um, mighty lemon tree.

      Incredible though it may seem, Malofiy says he’s kept the lemon on ice for the past three years and had it in his briefcase like a talisman when he gave oral arguments for what proved to be his successful appeal of the 2016 “Stairway” verdict. He has every intention of taking it to the retrial that will, barring unforeseen developments, commence in the next year.

      “Robert Plant is always going on about his lemon, and at the deposition he made a big deal out of slicing it up and squeezing it into his tea and then sucking on the rind,” he says with a cat-who-ate-the-canary grin. “Jimmy Page famously dabbled in black magic and was always going on about Aleister Crowley, and I said to myself, ‘If they are going to use black magic to try to beat me on technicalities — well, two can play at that game.’”

      Published as “The Devil’s Advocate” in the February 2019 issue of Philadelphia magazine.

  • OxyContin Maker Explored Expansion Into “Attractive”… — ProPublica
    https://www.propublica.org/article/oxycontin-purdue-pharma-massachusetts-lawsuit-anti-addiction-market

    Secret portions of a lawsuit allege that Purdue Pharma, controlled by the Sackler family, considered capitalizing on the addiction treatment boom — while going to extreme lengths to boost sales of its controversial opioid.

    In internal correspondence beginning in 2014, Purdue Pharma executives discussed how the sale of opioids and the treatment of opioid addiction are “naturally linked” and that the company should expand across “the pain and addiction spectrum,” according to redacted sections of the lawsuit by the Massachusetts attorney general. A member of the billionaire Sackler family, which founded and controls the privately held company, joined in those discussions and urged staff in an email to give “immediate attention” to this business opportunity, the complaint alleges.

    The sections of the complaint already made public contend that the Sacklers pushed for higher doses of OxyContin, guided efforts to mislead doctors and the public about the drug’s addictive capacity, and blamed misuse on patients.

    Citing extensive emails and internal company documents, the redacted sections allege that Purdue and the Sackler family went to extreme lengths to boost OxyContin sales and burnish the drug’s reputation in the face of increased regulation and growing public awareness of its addictive nature. Concerns about doctors improperly prescribing the drug, and patients becoming addicted, were swept aside in an aggressive effort to drive OxyContin sales ever higher, the complaint alleges.

    Among the allegations: Purdue paid two executives convicted of fraudulently marketing OxyContin millions of dollars to assure their loyalty, concealed information about doctors suspected of inappropriately prescribing the opioid, and was advised by global consulting firm McKinsey & Co. on strategies to boost the drug’s sales and burnish its image, including how to “counter the emotional messages” of mothers whose children overdosed. Since 2007, the Sackler family has received more than $4 billion in payouts from Purdue, according to a redacted paragraph in the complaint.

    The redacted paragraphs leave little doubt about the dominant role of the Sackler family in Purdue’s management. The five Purdue directors who are not Sacklers always voted with the family, according to the complaint. The family-controlled board approves everything from the number of sales staff to be hired to details of their bonus incentives, which have been tied to sales volume, the complaint says. In May 2017, when longtime employee Craig Landau was seeking to become Purdue’s chief executive, he wrote that the board acted as “de-facto CEO.” He was named CEO a few weeks later.

    After its 1996 launch, OxyContin rapidly became a top seller. But reports of patients abusing the drug soon followed. OxyContin contained more pain relief medication than older drugs, and crushing and snorting it was a simple way to get high fast. In 2007, Purdue pleaded guilty to federal charges of understating the risk of addiction and agreed to pay $600 million in fines and penalties. Still, the company argued publicly that OxyContin has “done far more good than harm,” and it sought to place responsibility for the bad acts on “certain of its supervisors and employees.”

    Privately, the complaint suggests, the Sacklers were concerned about alienating two executives, then-CEO Michael Friedman and then-legal counsel Howard Udell. Friedman and Udell each pleaded guilty in 2007 in U.S. District Court in Abingdon, Virginia, to a misdemeanor charge of misbranding OxyContin, as did a former executive. The board signed off on the three executives’ decisions to plead guilty. No member of the Sackler family pleaded guilty.

    Purdue paid $5 million to Udell in November 2008, and up to $1 million in November 2009, the complaint states. In February 2008, the company paid $3 million to Friedman. The complaint doesn’t mention any payments to the former executive.

    “The Sacklers spent millions to keep the loyalty of people who knew the truth,” the complaint alleges.

    Udell died in 2013. A person answering a phone number listed to Friedman declined comment.

    When sales results disappointed, Sackler family members didn’t hesitate to intervene. In late 2010, Purdue told the family that sales of the highest dose and most profitable opioids were lower than expected, according to the complaint. That meant an expected quarter-end payout to the family of $320 million was at risk of being reduced to $260 million and would have to be made in two installments in December instead of one in November.

    That news prompted a sharp email question from Mortimer D.A. Sackler, whose late father, also named Mortimer, was a Purdue co-founder. “Why are you BOTH reducing the amount of the distribution and delaying it and splitting it in two?” he asked. “Just a few weeks ago you agreed to distribute the full 320 [million dollars] in November.” The complaint doesn’t say how much was ultimately paid.

    In September 2014, Purdue embarked on a secret project to join an industry that was booming thanks in part to OxyContin abuse: addiction treatment medication. Code-named Project Tango, it involved Purdue executives and staff as well as Dr. Kathe Sackler, a daughter of the company co-founder Mortimer Sackler and a defendant in the Massachusetts lawsuit. She participated in phone calls and told staff that the project required their “immediate attention,” according to the complaint.

    Internally, Purdue touted the growth of an industry that its aggressive marketing had done so much to foster.

    “It is an attractive market,” the team working on the project wrote in a presentation. “Large unmet need for vulnerable, underserved and stigmatized patient population suffering from substance abuse, dependence and addiction.”

    While OxyContin sales were declining, the internal team at Purdue touted the fact that the addiction treatment marketplace was expanding.

    “Opioid addiction (other than heroin) has grown by ~20%” annually from 2000 to 2010, the company noted. Although Richard Sackler had blamed OxyContin abuse in an email on “reckless criminals,” the Purdue staff exploring the new business opportunity described in far more sympathetic terms the patients whom it now planned to treat.

    “This can happen to any-one – from a 50 year old woman with chronic lower back pain to a 18 year old boy with a sports injury, from the very wealthy to the very poor,” it said.

    Company documents recommended becoming an “end-to-end pain provider.” Initially, Purdue intended to sell one such medication, Suboxone, which is commonly retailed as a film that melts in the mouth. When Kathe Sackler asked staff members to look into reports that children might be swallowing the film, they reassured her. They responded, according to the complaint, that youngsters were overdosing on pills, but not the films, “which is a positive for Tango.”

    In 2015, Purdue turned its attention to another potential product, the overdose reversing agent known as Narcan, calling it a “strategic fit.” Purdue executives discussed how its sales force could promote Narcan to the same doctors who prescribed the most opioids. Purdue said in the statement Wednesday that it decided against acquiring the rights to sell Suboxone and Narcan.

    While those initiatives appear to have stalled or ended, Richard Sackler received a patent last year for a drug to treat addiction, according to the complaint. The patent application states that opioids are addictive and refers to people who suffer from substance use disorders as “junkies.”

    #Opioides #Sackler

  • TRAITOR: The Whistleblower and the “American Taliban”

    http://whistlebl0wer.com/traitor-whistleblower-american-taliban

    This is the the memoir of the Justice Department legal ethics advisor, Jesselyn Radack, who blew the whistle on government misconduct in the case of the so-called “American Taliban,” John Walker Lindh–America’s first terrorism prosecution after 9/11.

    About the Author

    Jesselyn Radack is currently the director of National Security & Human Rights at the Government Accountability Project, the nation’s leading whistleblower organization. Previously, she served on the DC Bar Legal Ethics Committee and worked at the Justice Department for seven years, first as a trial attorney and later as a legal ethics advisor.

    “The Justice Department forced me out of my job” she writes, “placed me under criminal investigation, got me fired from my next job in the private sector, reported me to the state bars in which I’m licensed as an attorney, and put me on the ‘no fly list.’”

    Her offense? She believed, erroneously as it turned out, that the Department would not want to use illegally obtained evidence in its prosecution of John Walker Lindh, an American convert to Islam. He had been imprisoned by Afghan warlords in November 2001 soon after the U.S.-led NATO invasion of the country after 9/11.

    Lindh, then 20, was a California-born convert to Islam. He had travelled to Yemen on a spiritual quest in 2000, and went to Afghanistan in June 2001 to join the Taliban army at a time when the Taliban government, a United States ally in the 1980s, was still receiving United States aid. Lindh survived a harsh POW camp in which more than three quarters of his 400 fellow Taliban POWs died in chaotic conditions along with an American interrogator.

    Radack advised against further federal interrogation of Lindh without a lawyer present because his parents had retained counsel. Later, she blew the whistle when she learned that the department destroyed evidence of her advice, and then withheld the evidence from a Virginia federal court, where Lindh faced charges of murder and treason in a high-profile prosecution helping inflame the public in the earliest stages of the war.

    Radack’s gripping tale describes a culture clash at the Justice Department between due process advocates and conviction-hungry zealots.

    #Jesselyn_Radack

  • Israel This wasn’t supposed to happen at a conference on anti-Semitism -

    Jews are apathetic to suffering of other minorities, World Jewish Congress counsel tells a Tel Aviv conference, but gets lukewarm response from delegates

    Judy Maltz Dec 11, 2017
    read more: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.828354

    Many would argue that anti-Semitism is no worse than any other hatred. But it’s not every day that a top official at the World Jewish Congress tries to make that case – let alone suggest that Jews are apathetic to the suffering of other minorities.
    So when Menachem Rosensaft, the general counsel of the WJC, an organization dedicated to fighting anti-Semitism, delivered remarks in this vein at a Tel Aviv conference on anti-Semitism on Monday, the audience was – needless to say – caught off guard.
    To really understand Israel and the Jewish World - subscribe to Haaretz
    “Anti-Semitism is sometimes referred to as the most pernicious hatred,” he told delegates. “I respectfully reject that characterization and any suggestion that anti-Semitism is somehow worse than other forms of bigotry.
    He continued: “I’m sorry, but the white supremacist ideology that holds African-Americans and Hispanics to be inferior to Caucasians is every bit as reprehensible as anti-Semitism. So are other kinds of discrimination and oppression on the basis of religion, race and nationality.
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    “The hatred that resulted in the genocide of Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica and of the Tutsi in Rwanda are no less evil than the hatred of Jews that resulted in pogroms and the Shoah,” he added.

    It wasn’t exactly what participants at “The Oldest Hatred Gone Viral” summit had come expecting to hear.
    Rosensaft, who teaches law at Columbia and Cornell, was a keynote speaker at the conference, sponsored by the WJC in cooperation with NGO Monitor, a right-wing organization that tracks the activities of anti-occupation and other civil society groups in Israel.

    Menachem Rosensaft, general counsel of the World Jewish Congress.Courtesy of the World Jewish Con
    Considered an international expert on genocide, Rosensaft suggested that Jews were not sensitive enough to the persecution of other minorities, in particular Muslims and African-Americans.
    “In our fight against anti-Semitism, we must never allow ourselves to lose sight of the fundamental reality: That precisely the same dangerous hatred used to incite violence – sometimes lethal violence – against Jews can just as easily be used against other minorities,” he said.
    Rosensaft said that Jews tend to focus too much on anti-Semitism from the left and ignore anti-Semitism on the right. “I am as concerned about neo-Nazis and white supremacists shouting ‘Jews shall not replace us,’” he said, referring to the violent rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August, “as I am by jihadists or BDS activists who deny Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state.
    “We do ourselves a disservice, in my opinion, when some of us focus our attention – primarily, if not exclusively – on the anti-Semitism generated by the anti-Israel left, while minimizing the impact of the bigotry and xenophobia emanating from the extreme right.”
    Rosensaft, a child of Holocaust survivors and considered a leading authority on the second generation, warned that Jewish apathy to the plight of others would cause others to be apathetic to the plight of the Jews.
    “If we do not recognize the suffering of others and the hatred directed against others, for what reason and on what basis can we expect others to look at the hatred directed against us and want to identify with us?” he asked.
    Rosensaft made his remarks during a special session devoted to the memory of Prof. Robert S. Wistrich, a renowned Hebrew University authority on anti-Semitism who died in May 2015.
    In the discussion that followed, members of the audience challenged Rosensaft for asserting that anti-Semitism was comparable to other forms of bigotry.
    Wistrich’s widow, Danielle, drew a large round of applause when she delivered the following statement, summing up the general sentiment among delegates: “I don’t think we Jews need to spend our energy, our money and our time to defend Arabs, because I think they have their own people to do that. I think it is good to be well meaning and wonderful to have a big heart, but let’s keep it for ourselves.”

  • Les #réfugiés_érythréens ne sont pas les bienvenus en Suisse, mais l’or d’Erythrée, lui...

    Schweizer Geschäfte mit einem geächteten Regime

    Die Schweiz hat von 2011 bis 2013 für rund 400 Millionen Franken Rohgold aus Eritrea importiert. Schweizer Firmen haben es raffiniert und daraus Goldbarren gegossen.
    Die #Bisha-Goldmine gehört zu 40 Prozent dem repressiven eritreischen Regime.
    Ein ehemaliger Arbeiter der Mine lebt heute als Flüchtling in der Schweiz. Er erzählt von Zwangsarbeit beim Bau der Mine.
    Aus keinem anderen Land kommen so viele Asylsuchende in die Schweiz wie aus Eritrea. Die Mine ist eine der wichtigsten Einnahmequellen des Regimes.
    Asylpolitiker von links bis rechts kritisieren die Millionengeschäfte scharf.

    https://www.srf.ch/news/schweiz/schweizer-geschaefte-mit-einem-geaechteten-regime?ns_source=srf_app?ns_source=sr
    #or #matières_premières #Erythrée #Suisse #mines #travail_forcé #film #vidéo #asile #migrations #réfugiés #Lufthansa #Frankfurt #Nevsun

    Accusation (provenant de la société civile canadienne selon SFR) de travail forcé dans la mine :

    L’exploitant de la mine, Nevsun :
    http://www.nevsun.com
    Ici la description de la mine sur le site de l’entreprise :
    Bisha Mine Location


    http://www.nevsun.com/projects/bisha-main

    On dit bien que :

    The State of Eritrea has a 40% interest in the Bisha Mine through the #Eritrean_National_Mining_Company (#ENAMCO), 30% of which it bought from Nevsun prior to initial construction. As a result, ENAMCO contributed 33% of the initial build capital and, as a partner with Nevsun, has been integral to the success of the Bisha Mine. For more see About Eritrea.

    Et toujours sur le site un chapitre consacré à « about Eritrea », où on parle notamment de l’infrastructure (définie comme « excellente ») qui permet de sortir les matières premières des mines :


    http://www.nevsun.com/projects/bisha-main/eritrea

    L’histoire de l’Erythrée, pour Nevsun, s’arrête en 1993 :

    Eritrea gained independence in 1993, after fighting for its freedom for over 30 years.

    Et bien évidemment, on parle d’économie (un des pays les plus pauvres du monde), mais pas de politique...

    Eritrea is largely an agriculture based economy and one of the poorest nations in the world. The country’s economy predominantly consists of:

    cc @reka

    • Mining Company on Trial for Human Rights Abuses Appears to Lobby at the Human Rights Council (HRC)

      Nevsun Mining Resources Ltd, based in Canada is cur rently facing a lawsuit initiated by more than 80 Eritrean plaintiffs, who contend they were victims of forced labour, human rights abuses and crimes against humanity at the company’s Bisha Mine in Eritrea. #Bisha Mine is owned 60-per-cent by Nevsun and 40-per-cent by Eritrean government.

      Forced Labour and the appalling conditions in Bisha Mine have been documented by Human Rights Watch and the UN Commission of Inquiry into Human Rights in Eritrea. Yet the Todd Romain, the Vice President of Corporate Social Responsibility of this company and his PR are at present in Geneva at the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) session where the current special rapporteur on human rights in Eritrea is due to deliver her final report, and a decision will be made regarding the renewal of the mandate.

      Nevsun also participated in side events organized by the Eritrean Mission at the HRC on 16 June 2016 (http://www.eritrea-chat.com/eritrean-mining-conference-about-human-rights-in-geneva-16-june-2016) and on 8 March 2018 , and visited many Missions in Geneva despite the fact that this court case was already ongoing.

      Human Rights Concern-Eritrea (HRCE) believes most strongly that it is inappropriate for a representative of a commercial corporation whose name has been raised in connection with human rights abuses during HRC debates and oral statements on the human rights in Eritrea, and which is currently the accused to court proceedings regarding human rights abuses, should be party to human rights side events, neither should it’s top representative give the appearance of lobbying country delegations about HRC initiatives that are directly concerned with its court case.

      Eritrea has not implemented any of the UPR recommendations from the first and second cycles. The recommendations from the Commission of Inquiries and the Special Rapporteur have so far been ignored. No improvements in human rights in Eritrea have been identified in the last decade; 10,000 or more prisoners of conscience are still in detention and the violently enforced lifelong military service which prevails unreformed. Forced/slave labour have been used in all the government owned businesses including mining projects.

      HRCE feels it important that country delegations and media are made fully aware of this issue, and advises that no further hearing should be given to any of Nevsun’s representatives pending a final court ruling on the human rights case.

      http://hrc-eritrea.org/mining-company-on-trial-for-human-rights-abuses-appears-to-lobby-at-the

    • Nevsun lawsuit (re Bisha mine, Eritrea)

      In November 2014, three Eritreans filed a lawsuit against Nevsun Resources in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. They allege the company was complicit in the use of forced labour by Nevsun’s local sub-contractor, Segen Construction (owned by Eritrea’s ruling party), at the Bisha mine in Eritrea. Nevsun, headquartered in Vancouver, has denied the allegations. This lawsuit is the first in Canada where claims are based directly on violations of international law.

      The plaintiffs, Gize Yebeyo Araya, Kesete Tekle Fshazion and Mihretab Yemane Tekle, claim that they worked at the Bisha mine against their will and were subject to “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment”. They allege that they were forced to work long hours and lived in constant fear of threats of torture and intimidation. Nevsun has rejected the allegations as “unfounded” and declared that “the Bisha Mine has adhered at all times to international standards of governance, workplace conditions, and health and safety”.

      In October 2016, the Supreme Court of British Colombia rejected Nevsun’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit and ruled that the case should proceed in British Colombia as there were doubts that the plaintiffs would get a fair trial in Eritrea. Nevsun appealed the decision.

      In November 2017, the British Columbia Court of Appeal rejected Nevsun’s appeal to dismiss the suit, thereby allowing the case to proceed in Canadian courts. The court also allowed claims of crimes against humanity, slavery, forced labour, and torture to go forward against Nevsun. This decision marked the first time an appellate court in Canada permitted a mass tort claim for modern slavery.

      On 19 January 2018, Nevsun filed an application with the Canadian Supreme Court asking for permission to appeal the British Columbia ruling. There is no fixed time for the Supreme Court to decide whether to grant or deny such applications.

      – “Nevsun appeals to Canada Supreme Court in Eritreans’ forced labor lawsuit”, Reuters, 26 Jan 2018
      – “Court allows Eritrean mine workers to sue Nevsun”, Nelson Bennett, Business in Vancouver, 6 Oct 2016
      – [Video] “Nevsun in Eritrea: Dealing With a Dictator”, CBC Radio-Canada, 12 Feb 2016
      – [FR] «Une minière canadienne nie des allégations de travail forcé en Érythrée », Radio-Canada, 23 novembre 2014
      – “Nevsun Denies Accusations of Human-Rights Abuses at Eritrea Mine”, Michael Gunn & Firat Kayakiran, Bloomberg, 21 Nov 2014
      – “Nevsun Resources faces lawsuit over ‘forced labour’ in Eritrea”, Jeff Gray, Globe and Mail (Canada), 20 Nov 2014

      Canadian Centre for International Justice (CCIJ):

      – “Vancouver court clears way for slave labour lawsuit against Canadian mining company to go to trial”, 6 Oct 2016
      – “Eritreans file lawsuit against Canadian mining company for slave labour and crimes against humanity”, 20 Nov 2014
      – [FR] « Des Érythréens intentent un recours contre une compagnie minière canadienne pour l’usage de main d’œuvre servile ainsi que pour des crimes contre l’humanité », 20 novembre 2014
      – “Appeal court confirms slave labour lawsuit against Canadian mining company can go to trial”, 21 Nov 2017

      Nevsun:
      – “Nevsun Comments on B.C. Lawsuit”, 6 Oct 2016
      – “Nevsun Comments on B.C. Lawsuit”, 21 Nov 2014

      Camp Fiorante Matthews Mogerman [Counsel for the plaintiffs]
      – “Plaintiffs’ Submissions on Forum Non Conveniens”, 17 Dec 2015
      – “Plaintiffs’ Submissions on the Representative Proceeding”, 17 Dec 2015
      – “Plaintiffs’ Submissions on Customary International Law”, 15 Dec 2015
      – “Plaintiffs’ Submissions on the Act of State Doctrine”, 14 Dec 2015
      – “Notice of Civil Claim”, 20 Nov 2014

      Siskinds [Co-counsel for the plaintiffs]
      – “Siskinds co-counsel in lawsuit against Nevsun Resources”, 20 Nov 2014

      Fasken Martineau DuMoulin LLP [Counsel for the defendant]
      – “Nevsun’s Chambers Brief on Customary International Law”, 1 Dec 2015
      – “Nevsun’s Chambers Brief on Forum Non Conveniens”, 23 Nov 2015
      – “Nevsun’s Chambers Brief on the Act of State Doctrine”, 23 Nov 2015
      – “Nevsun’s Chambers Brief on the Representative Proceeding”, 23 Nov 2015
      – “Nevsun’s Response to Civil Claim”, 13 Feb 2015

      – Araya v. Nevsun Resources. Reasons for Judgment, Justice Abrioux, Supreme Court of British Columbia, 6 Oct 2016
      – Araya, Gize v. Nevsun Resources Ltd.[payment required], Vancouver law courts, 20 Nov 2014.

      – Gize Yebeyo Araya, Kesete Tekle Fshazion and Mihretab Yemane Tekle v Nevsun Resources Ltd and Earth Rights International, Court of Appeal for British Columbia, 21 Nov 2017


      https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/nevsun-lawsuit-re-bisha-mine-eritrea

      Quelques liens cités dans cet article :
      https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/canadian-courts-review-series-of-claims-filed-against-canadian
      https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/nevsun-denies-accusations-of-human-rights-abuses-at-eritrea-mi
      https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/eritrean-refugees-file-claim-in-canada-against-nevsun-over-all
      https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/nevsun-lawsuit-re-bisha-mine-eritrea#c168706
      https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/vancouver-court-clears-way-for-slave-labour-lawsuit-against-ca
      https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/eritrean-refugees-file-claim-in-canada-against-nevsun-over-all
      https://www.business-humanrights.org/fr/des-erythr%C3%A9ens-intentent-un-proc%C3%A8s-contre-nevsun-au-

    • Nevsun in Eritrea: Dealing With a Dictator

      When a small Vancouver mining company struck gold in a remote corner of Africa, it started with so much promise. In remote Eritrea, Nevsun built a mine that was generating $700 million in profits in its first four years of operation. But it was also generating a lot of controversy – because Nevsun was partnered with a brutal dictatorship that runs the country and controls 40% of the mine. That has led to allegations by the UN and Human Rights Watch that the regime has used conscripted military labour in the mine. The Eritrea government has also been accused of funnelling arms to the terrorist group al-Shabaab. Nevsun denies the allegations of human rights abuses and insists it is a “template for responsible international business.” What is the price of doing business with a dictator? Mark Kelley investigates.

      The Eritrea regime has a 40 per cent stake in the mine and is accused of crimes against humanity by the U.N.
      Nevsun Resources Ltd. is facing a lawsuit in B.C.’s Supreme Court
      The allegations filed by three former Eritrean conscripts in B.C.’s Supreme Court accuse Nevsun Resources of being “an accomplice to the use of forced labour, crimes against humanity and other human rights abuses at the Bisha mine”

      http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/episodes/2014-2015/nevsun-in-eritrea-dealing-with-a-dictator

    • Appeal court confirms slave labour lawsuit against Canadian mining company can go to trial

      British Columbia’s highest court today rejected an appeal by Vancouver-based Nevsun Resources Limited (TSX: NSU / NYSE MKT: NSU) that sought to dismiss a lawsuit brought by Eritreans who allege they were forced to work at Nevsun’s Bisha Mine.

      The ruling by the British Columbia Court of Appeal marks the first time that an appellate court in Canada has permitted a mass tort claim for modern slavery.

      The court rejected Nevsun’s position that the case should be dismissed in Canada and instead heard in Eritrea. Madam Justice Mary Newbury described the situation in Eritrea as one with “the prospects of no trial at all, or a trial in an Eritrean court, possibly presided over by a functionary with no real independence from the state … and in a legal system that would appear to be actuated largely by the wishes of the President and his military supporters…”

      The court also allowed claims of crimes against humanity, slavery, forced labour, and torture to go forward against Nevsun. It is the first time that a Canadian appellate court has recognized that a corporation can be taken to trial for alleged violations of international law norms related to human rights.

      The lawsuit, filed in November 2014, alleges that Nevsun engaged Eritrean state-run contractors and the Eritrean military to build the mine’s facilities and that the companies and military deployed forced labour under abhorrent conditions.

      “We are very pleased that the case will move to trial,” said Joe Fiorante, Q.C., of Camp Fiorante Matthews Mogerman LLP, lead counsel for the plaintiffs. “There will now be a reckoning in a Canadian court of law in which Nevsun will have to answer to the allegations that it was complicit in forced labour and grave human rights abuses at the Bisha mine.”

      Since the initial filing by three Eritrean men, which was the matter reviewed by the Court of Appeal, an additional 51 people have come forward to assert claims against Nevsun.

      “I am overjoyed that a Canadian court will hear our claims,” said plaintiff Gize Araya. “Since starting the case, we have always hoped Canada would provide justice for what we suffered at the mine.”

      The court also rejected Nevsun’s argument that the company should be immune from suit because the case might touch on actions of the Eritrean government, including allegations of severe human rights violations. Justice Newbury, looking to a recent UK case on the issue, wrote that “torture (and I would add, forced labour and slavery) is ‘contrary to both peremptory norms of international law and a fundamental value of domestic law.’”

      This latest ruling by the B.C. Court of Appeal follows one earlier this year permitting a case to go forward against Tahoe Resources for injuries suffered by protestors in Guatemala who were shot outside the company’s mine.

      “The Nevsun and Tahoe cases show that Canadian courts can properly exercise jurisdiction over Canadian companies with overseas operations,” said Amanda Ghahremani, Legal Director of the Canadian Centre for International Justice. “When there is a real risk of injustice for claimants in a foreign legal system, their cases should proceed here.”

      The plaintiffs are supported in Canada by a legal team comprised of Vancouver law firm Camp Fiorante Matthews Mogerman LLP (CFM); Ontario law firm Siskinds LLP [Nick Baker]; Toronto lawyer James Yap; and the Canadian Centre for International Justice (CCIJ). This victory would not have been possible without the support of Human Rights Concern Eritrea and the tireless efforts of Elsa Chyrum.

      https://www.ccij.ca/news/press-release-nevsun-case

    • Nevsun Comments on B.C. Lawsuit

      Nevsun Resources Ltd...advises that the British Columbia Supreme Court has refused to permit a claim against Nevsun to proceed as a common law class action. The court did permit the lawsuit by the three named plaintiffs to continue. Today’s court decision addresses only preliminary legal challenges to the action raised by Nevsun. The judgment makes no findings with respect to the plaintiffs’ allegations, including whether any of them were in fact at the Bisha Mine. The judge also emphasized that the case raises novel and complex legal questions, including on international law, which have never before been considered in Canada. Nevsun is studying the court’s decision and considering an appeal of the decision that the action can proceed at all. Nevsun remains confident that its indirect 60%-owned Eritrean subsidiary, Bisha Mining Share Company (“BMSC”) operates the Bisha Mine according to international standards of governance, workplace conditions, health, safety and human rights...BMSC is committed to managing the Bisha Mine in a safe and responsible manner that respects the interests of local communities, workers, stakeholders and the natural environment.

      https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/nevsun-comments-on-bc-lawsuit-0

    • “In November 2014, three Eritreans filed a lawsuit against Nevsun Resources in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. They allege the company was complicit in the use of forced labour by Nevsun’s local sub-contractor, Segen Construction (owned by Eritrea’s ruling party)...”
      "... at the Bisha mine in Eritrea. Nevsun, headquartered in Vancouver, has denied the allegations. The plaintiffs ... claim that they worked against their will and were subject to “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment”.

      https://twitter.com/eduyesolomon/status/1232726864193556480

  • Greece: Protest and fire break out at Lesbos migrant camp

    Police said no injuries were reported from Monday’s protest and that the fire believed to have been set deliberately at the Moria camp is still burning.

    http://www.nydailynews.com/newswires/news/world/greece-protest-fire-break-lesbos-migrant-camp-article-1.3314802?cid=bit

    #Lesbos #Lesvos #protestations #feu #Moria #asile #migrations #réfugiés #camp_de_réfugiés #Grèce #hotspots #résistance

    • Μόρια : « σκούπα » για πρόσφυγες που έχουν δύο « όχι » από την Υπηρεσία Ασύλου
      http://www.efsyn.gr/arthro/moria-skoypa-gia-prosfyges-poy-ehoyn-dyo-ohi-apo-tin-ypiresia-asyloy

      Commentaire reçu via la mailing-list de Migreurop :

      Une #opération_policière d’une grande envergure s’est déroulé hier matin à Moria, le hot-spot de Lesbos. Au moins 200 policiers ont passé au peigne fin le camp avec des contrôles d’identité systématiques afin de repérer les demandeurs d’asile déboutés dont les appels à la Commission de Recours ont été rejetés. L’opération a duré six heures et s’est conclu par l’interpellation d’une cinquantaine de personnes qui ont été amenés au commissariat de Lesbos pour contrôle d’identité. Ceux qui ont vu leur deuxième appel rejeté, seront conduits à un centre spécial pour les personnes en instance d’expulsion- une sorte de prison qui fonctionne au sein du camp de Moria-, pour être ensuite expulsés vers la Turquie.

      #police

    • Reçu via la mailing-list de Migreurop :

      Déchaînements de violences policières contre les réfugiés à Moria (Lesbos, Grèce) (English below)

      Plusieurs plaintes contre la police ont été déposées pour des mauvais traitements, des coups et des blessures sur des hommes déjà immobilisé voire menottés et pour des tortures pratiqués dans les commissariats. Au moins 11 parmi les 35 hommes arrêtés lors de la répression de la révolte à Moria la semaine dernière, ont déjà déposé ou sont sur le point de déposer de plaintes contre des policiers pour coups et blessures pouvant entraîner des lésions corporelles graves. Parmi eux, un Sénégalais âgé de 37 ans qui n’avait pas participé aux incidents avait reçu de coups de pied à la tête par un groupe de 4 policiers jusqu’à perdre connaissance et a dû être hospitalisé dans un état préoccupant.

      14 organisations humanitaires et défense de droit de l’homme ont faire part de leur très vive inquiétude et ont lancé un appel à la justice grecque pour qu’une enquête soit immédiatement ouverte afin de déterminer les responsables de cette violation flagrante des droits les plus élémentaires de migrants et de toute notion d’Etat de Droit.

      Au Parlement,19 députés de Syriza ont déposé une question adressée au Ministre de l’Immigration et à celui de l’Intérieur, en exigeant des explications sur cet « flagrant abus de pouvoir et sur les tortures pratiqués sur des hommes déjà arrêtés et menottés ». Ils veulent savoir qui a donné l’ordre pour ce type d’interventions policières et comment se fait-il que des hommes en civile ont été autorisés à participer à la répression brutale de la révolte.

      Un autre élément extrêmement préoccupant est le fait que les charges qui pèsent sur les 35 hommes arrêtés sont absolument identiques pour tous sans qu’aucune distinction personnalisée soit faite entre les supposés responsables de la révolte.

      Voir la vidéo qui montre des groupes de policiers et des civils qui s’acharnent contre des hommes immobilisés par terre où quiconque qui a le malheur de croiser le chemin de la police est violement brutalisé.

      Ci-dessous le communiqué de presse des 14 organisations (in English)
      http://www.solidaritynow.org/en/joint-press-release-violent-incidents-moria-lesvos

    • Greece: Authorities must investigate allegations of excessive use of force and ill-treatment of asylum-seekers in Lesvos

      Amnesty International calls on the Greek authorities to urgently investigate allegations that police used excessive force against asylum-seekers in the Moria camp near Mytilene during a protest on 18 July 2017 and ill-treated some of those who were arrested and detained in the Mytilene police station following the clashes that ensued. Testimonies the organisation collected from victims and witnesses about excessive use of force in the Moria camp are also supported by audio-visual material that was made public in the media in the days after the protest.

      https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/eur25/6845/2017/en

    • Report on Rights Violations and Resistance in Lesvos

      In the months since our last update on rights violations and resistance in Lesvos, our advocacy and campaigning resources were almost exclusively focused on the two trials for the Moria 35 and Moria 10 that took place in Chios in late April and early May 2018.

      The situation has predictably worsened in Lesvos. On the 17 April 2018, the Greek Council of State (the highest administrative court in Greece) ruled that geographic restrictions imposed by the Asylum Service for asylum seekers arriving to the Greek islands was illegal. However, within a week, new legislation was proposed, which further limits the rights of asylum seekers and continues the practice of containing asylum seekers to the Greek islands. Moria Camp is now at three times its capacity, holding approximately 7000 individuals. Between 500 and 1000 Kurdish asylum seekers are still living outside Moria in temporary shelter provided by Lesvos Solidarity – Pikpa, and Humans 4 Humanity, as they fear for their safety in Moria. Procedures are now so delayed that even individuals who are recognized as vulnerable, and whose cases should be prioritized under Article 51 of Greek Law 4375, are being scheduled for their interviews nearly a year after their arrival. This means that they are prohibited from leaving the island of Lesvos, and are denied freedom of movement during this entire time.

      In one case we are following, an eleven year old child has a serious, undiagnosed digestive condition that causes her constant pain and seizures. Because they have been unable to diagnose her illness, the hospital in Mytilene has referred her for testing and treatment in Athens. Even the Mytilene police department has recommended that geographic restrictions be temporarily lifted so that she can travel to Athens for further tests and treatment, but the Regional Asylum Office has denied this request without an appointment in the Athens hospital. Her family is now in a constant state of fear that given her critical condition, their daughter will be unable to receive emergency medical care when needed, given the lack of testing and treatment for her on the island. Already once, when she had seizures and attempted to get treatment at the hospital in Lesvos, she was not admitted because they do not have means to treat her.

      The Green Party published a report on 6 June 2018 exposing the inhumane conditions that systematically violate refugee rights in the Greek hotspots. On the 1 June 2018 the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) also published preliminary observations of its visit to detention facilities in Greece from 10 to 19 April 2018, with damning findings.
      Treatment of Moria35 defendants highlights lack of procedural safeguards for detained asylum seekers in Lesvos

      In the last month and a half since the conclusion of the Moria 35 trial, we have been closely following the administrative process related to the detention and processing of the asylum claims of these individuals. It has become a near full time job of our Greek attorney based in Mytilene to ensure that Greek authorities comply by their own laws and respect the rights of these asylum seekers. Despite the fact that the UNHCR, the Ombudsman’s Office, and the Legal Centre have been closely monitoring their cases, there have been rampant violation of their rights at every step of their procedures. Unfortunately despite this close monitoring, two individuals were deported to Turkey on the morning of 13 June 2018. The violations we have observed in the individual cases of these 35 men highlight the lack of procedural safeguards to protect the rights of asylum seekers, particularly those who are being detained.

      Below we outline some of the observed violations of Moria 35 defendants’ rights as asylum seekers:

      Two individuals whose cases were rejected were denied the representation of a lawyer on appeal. The appeal of a rejected asylum claim is the one stage in the asylum procedure where asylum seekers have the right to a lawyer, under Article 44(3) of Law 4375. Although both requested the representation of a lawyer, the examination of their case on appeal occurred without them having been assigned an attorney.

      Another individual signed for voluntary departure, but then changed his mind and decided to continue his claim for international protection. He requested that his case be reopened. While that request was being processed, he was placed by police on the list to be deported on the 1 June 2018. It was only after advocacy from the Legal Centre that he was removed from the deportation list. He remains in detention, despite the lack of legal grounds to hold him there.

      Another individual was held for over a month in detention, after transfer to Lesvos following the trial in Chios. There was no recommendation for his continued detention either from the Regional Asylum Office, as required by Article 46(3) of Law 4375. After daily follow up from the Legal Centre, eventually the police admitted that they were holding him by mistake and he was released.

      Two additional individuals had their asylum cases rejected, but were unable to appeal because they were detained. With advocacy from UNHCR and Legal Centre lawyers, one of the individuals was able to lodge his appeal. However, he remains in detention, and it is not clear if the Appeals Committee will review his case on the merits or deny the appeal as untimely filed.

      The second individual was deported on the morning of 13 June 2018. This was despite the fact that for days he had been expressing to the police his desire to appeal the rejection of his asylum claim. Lawyers from HIAS and the Legal Centre also spoke with the Mytilene police department the day before he was deported and informed the police that they would be filing an appeal on his behalf. On the morning of 13 June 2018, he was deported to Turkey. This individual, a Guinean national, claims that he was a victim of torture, and will be subject to persecution if returned to his country. Regardless of whether his claim is credible, he has the right to appeal the rejection of his claim. Even though untimely, it is not the police who have the authority to accept or reject his appeal, but the Asylum Service. His right to appeal was clearly denied, and his deportation was illegal as police were aware that he would be appealing the denial of his claim and they proceeded with the deportation in any case.

      A second Moria 35 defendant was also deported on the 13 June 2018. His case had been rejected in the second instance. In 2017 this Ghanean national had been rejected and scheduled for deportation, but he lodged a subsequent application. It was the denial of this subsequent application that led to his deportation. While the Regional Asylum Service again scheduled for him to file a subsequent application on 14 June 2018, on 11 June 2018, we were informed that they would not accept a second subsequent application, since he had already submitted a subsequent application in 2017. However, he still had the option of appealing the denial of his claim in administrative court. Less than two days after being informed that he could not file a subsequent application, he was deported to Turkey. This individual has recently received original documents from Ghana that were not previously submitted to the Asylum Office. These documents corroborate his claim that he will be imprisoned 10-15 years if returned to Ghana. Prison conditions in Ghana according to human rights reports are “generally harsh and sometimes life threatening due to physical abuse, food shortages, overcrowding, and inadequate sanitary conditions and medical care” meaning he should be eligible for subsidiary protection, if not refugee status. Both individuals that were deported on the 13 June 2018 are also eligible for humanitarian protection as important witnesses to a serious crime that is still being investigated in Greece (the brutal police attack against the 35 arrestees on 18 July 2017). The swift move of the police to deport these individuals show that while procedures to grant protection and ensure that refugee rights are respected are constantly delayed, the State is able to mobilize and act swiftly to deny these same rights.

      The trampling of the rights of these individuals by the police has followed their brutally violent arrest, their unjust prosecution, and lengthy imprisonment in the case of the Moria 35. It is not clear if the police have targeted these individuals precisely because they were part of the Moria35 case, or if the violation of detained asylum seekers rights is systematic. What is clear is that there is a lack of sufficient transparency, oversight, and monitoring of detention and deportation practices.
      Legal Centre Successes

      Despite this hostile environment, we continue providing legal aid and individual consultation to all foreign nationals who seek our counsel. We conduct approximately 10 individual consultations daily, and through the assistance of our volunteer lawyers and interpreters, hundreds of individuals have been granted international protection in Greece, or have successfully had geographic restrictions lifted so they can legally travel to mainland Europe.

      We also continue to have success in assisting individuals in reuniting with family members in second European States under the Dublin III Regulation. In one case, a single young man from Haiti who is seriously ill was approved to be reunited with his family in France. While in Haiti, he had attempted to apply for a visa to join his parents and younger siblings in France, but was denied because he was over 18. France finally admitted, through our advocacy, that he was dependent on the care of his family, and that he should be able to join them in France. The fact that this individual was forced to take a lengthy, expensive, and dangerous journey to Europe through Turkey and the use of smugglers, only to be later admitted as an asylum seeker in France, shows that European immigration policies are broken.

      We will continue our work to assist and help navigate individuals through this broken system, and to monitor and expose the violations of these individuals’ rights when they occur.

      http://www.legalcentrelesbos.org/2018/06/14/report-on-rights-violations-and-resistance

    • Grèce : accusés d’avoir manifesté dans la violence, plus de 100 demandeurs d’asile ont finalement été acquittés

      Un tribunal de l’île de Lesbos en mer Égée a acquitté jeudi soir une centaine de demandeurs d’asile accusés d’avoir protesté contre leurs conditions de vie.

      Ils étaient plus d’une centaine sur le banc des accusés : un groupe de demandeurs d’asile, en majorité Afghans, a été acquitté jeudi 9 mai par un tribunal de l’île de Lesbos, en Grèce. Ils avaient été accusés d’avoir occupé en avril 2018 une place publique du centre de #Mytilène, le chef-lieu de l’île, pour protester contre leurs conditions de vie dans le camp surpeuplé et insalubre de Moria. Ils avaient également été accusés d’avoir fait usage de la force physique et de résistance.

      Des chefs d’accusation “dénués de tout fondement”, a commenté dans la presse locale l’une des avocates de la défense, Me Elli Kriona-Sarantou, en se félicitant du jugement du tribunal. "Nous n’avons rien fait. Nous avons été attaqués par des extrémistes. Nous sommes innocents", a, pour sa part, déclaré à l’AFP Hadisse Hosseini, l’une des personnes acquittées.

      Cet Afghan faisait partie des quelque 200 migrants rassemblés sur la place Sappho le 22 avril 2018 pour dénoncer leurs conditions de vie après la mort d’un autre Afghan souffrant de manque de soins de santé. Leur rassemblement avait été pris à partie par environ 150 militants d’extrême droite, qui leur avaient jeté des pierres et des fusées éclairantes. Des affrontements avaient suivi, entraînant l’intervention de la police.

      "Une situation qui nourrit l’impunité"

      Me Elli Kriona-Sarantou s’est dit préoccupée du fait que les militants d’extrême droite n’aient pas encore été jugés, "une situation qui nourrit l’impunité sur l’île". Seuls 26 agresseurs ont été identifiés par la police et doivent comparaître à une date qui n’a pas encore été fixée.

      Du même avis, Vassilis Kerasiotis, le directeur de la branche grecque de l’ONG HIAS, estime que cette décision de justice “n’appelle à aucune célébration”. L’organisme a défendu plus d’une trentaine des migrants accusés. “Le simple fait que 110 participants à une manifestation pacifique aient été jugés par un tribunal, après avoir subi une attaque raciste et un recours disproportionné à la violence par la police, est extrêmement préoccupant”, a-t-il commenté sur la page Facebook de HIAS.

      La Grèce accueille actuellement plus de 70 000 réfugiés dont près de 15 000 sur les îles de la mer Égée. Avec près de 9 000 arrivées depuis le début de l’année 2019, le nombre des réfugiés a de nouveau augmenté, après avoir chuté en 2017 et 2018.

      La situation est explosive en particulier sur les îles de Lesbos et de Samos où les camps sont surpeuplés. À Lesbos, le nombre des migrants et des demandeurs d’asile s’élève à environ 7 000 personnes alors qu’il n’y a que 4 200 places disponibles pour eux dans les camps et les logements de l’île.

      Dans le camp de Samos la situation est pire : 3 175 personnes y vivent actuellement contre une capacité de 648 personnes, selon les chiffres publiés jeudi par le ministère de la Protection du citoyen.

      https://www.infomigrants.net/fr/post/16820/grece-accuses-d-avoir-manifeste-dans-la-violence-plus-de-100-demandeur

  • Hacked Emails Show Top UAE Diplomat Coordinating With Pro-Israel Think Tank Against Iran
    https://theintercept.com/2017/06/03/hacked-emails-show-top-uae-diplomat-coordinating-with-pro-israel-neoco

    THE EMAILS PROVIDED so far to the The Intercept show a growing relationship between the United Arab Emirates and the pro-Israel, neoconservative think tank called the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD).

    On the surface, the alliance should be surprising, as the UAE does not even recognize Israel. But the two countries have worked together in the past against their common adversary, Iran.

    On March 10 of this year, FDD CEO Mark Dubowitz authored an email to both the UAE’s ambassador to the United States, Yousef Al-Otaiba, and FDD Senior Counselor John Hannah — a former deputy national security adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney — with the subject line “Target list of companies investing in Iran, UAE and Saudi Arabia.”

    “Dear, Mr. Ambassador,” Dubowitz wrote. “The attached memorandum details companies listed by country which are doing business with Iran and also have business with the UAE and Saudi Arabia. This is a target list for putting these companies to a choice, as we have discussed.”

  • abo-abo/swiper: Ivy - a generic completion frontend for #Emacs, Swiper - isearch with an overview, and more. Oh, man!
    https://github.com/abo-abo/swiper

    flexible, simple tools for minibuffer completion in Emacs

    This repository contains:

    Ivy, a generic completion mechanism for Emacs.

    Counsel, a collection of Ivy-enhanced versions of common Emacs commands.

    Swiper, an Ivy-enhanced alternative to isearch.

    Excellents outils qui ont contribué à me redonner le goût d’utiliser Emacs. Autocomplétion puissante et intuitive, et l’interface de recherche incrémentale est excellente.

  • Europe and Its Immigrants in the 21st Century: A New Deal or a Continuing Dialogue of the Deaf?

    European policymakers are attempting to develop immigration policies that meet economic needs and promote greater competitiveness and growth —without undermining the social models so valued by their electorates. To succeed, they must take into account aging populations, high and persistent levels of overall unemployment, even higher levels of unemployment among immigrants and ethnic minorities, and sector- and location-specific labor mismatches and shortfalls.

    In this volume, the Migration Policy Institute has gathered some of the leading European thinkers to offer insightful counsel and, wherever possible, solutions to Europe’s immigration challenges. The book’s contributors piece together the puzzle of a well-managed, comprehensive immigration regime, tackling issues ranging from immigration’s economic costs and benefits, to effective selection systems, citizenship, the welfare state, and integration policies that work.

    http://www.migrationpolicy.org/research/europe-and-its-immigrants-21st-century-new-deal-or-continuing-dialo

    #intégration #asile #migrations #réfugiés

    Table of Contents

    Introduction

    Managing International Migration Better: Principles and Perspectives for Gaining More from Migration
    Demetrios G. Papademetrios

    Integration

    The Challenge of Integration in Europe
    Sarah Spencer

    Integration Processes of Migrants: Research Findings and Policy Lessons
    Rinus Penninx

    Citizenship
    T. Alexander Aleinikoff and Patrick Weil

    Building Successful Urban Policy in the New Era of Migration
    Jorge Gaspar and Maria Lucinda Fonseca

    Practices and Policies for Immigrant Integration in the United States
    Maia Jachimowicz and Kevin O’Neil

    Economics and Labor Migration

    Migrants and the European Labor Market
    Rainer Münz and Thomas Straubhaar

    Is Immigration an Enemy of the Welfare State?
    Grete Brochmann and Jon Erik Dolvik

    The New Role of Migrants in the Rural Economies of Southern Europe
    Charalambos Kasimis

    Future Demographic Change in Europe: The Contribution of Migration
    Wolfgang Lutz and Sergei Scherbov

    Selecting Economic Migrants
    Demetrios G. Papademetriou and Kevin O’Neil

    #citoyenneté #migrants_économiques #démographie #welfare_state #travail

  • Mississippi Lawmakers on Brink of Passing Georgia-Style Anti-LGBT ’Religious Freedom’ Bill - The New Civil Rights Movement
    http://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/is_mississippi_about_to_join_north_carolina_by_passing_a_

    According to Protect Thy Neighbor, a project of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, here are a few other potential consequences of HB 1523:

    a government clerk could refuse to issue a marriage license to a couple because one person had been previously divorced;
    a taxpayer-funded adoption agency could refuse to place a child with a happy and loving family because the parents lived together before they were married;
    a taxpayer-funded organization that provides shelter to kids who have suffered child abuse could turn away a pregnant teenager;
    a counseling group practice could refuse to see a mother and her teen who is experiencing severe depression because the woman is unmarried;
    a counselor could refuse to help an LGBT person who called a suicide hotline;
    a fertility clinic could refuse to treat a veteran and his partner because they are not married;
    a car rental agency could refuse to rent a car to a same-sex couple on their honeymoon; and
    a corporation could fire a woman for wearing pants.

    After the bill cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee last week, the Human Rights Campaign noted that it would also allow foster parents to subject LGBT children to “conversion therapy,” in addition to legalizing “Kim Davis-like discrimination” on the part of government employees.

    HB 1523 passed the House 80-39, and today is the last day for the Senate to take it up.

    http://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/tags/North_Carolina

    • The Justice Department is disputing the idea that all children are entitled to an attorney. “Nothing in the Constitution requires the taxpayers to provide counsel to minors in immigration court,” Justice Department lawyers said in a 2014 motion, adding that doing so would cause “potentially enormous taxpayer expense.

  • REDACTED COMMUNICATION SENT TO COUNSEL IN MATTER OF SUIT AGAINST MORRISON & FOERSTER ET AL ON AUGUST 7, 2015

    Dear Counsel:

    I hope you are well and are enjoying the summer.

    This will serve to discuss various matters dealing with the two above referenced actions. At times, each counsel is addressed individually and at times issues are addressed to all (or the majority of) counsel collectively, as follows:

    1. YOLO COUNTY SUPERIOR COURT JUDGES DAVID ROSENBERG AND DAVID REED — First, as to the part of this communication addressed to Messrs. Michael Fox, Keith Fink and Olaf Muller, please be informed that an upcoming federal action of Levi v. Girardi & Keese will include one cause of action seeking only equitable relief against “Yolo County Superior Court.” Since your clients (Judges David Rosenberg and David Reed) are part of the “Yolo County Superior Court”, I wanted to give you a heads-up of the upcoming action, as well as to inform you that it is unrelated to the topics which were previously the subjects of various agreements.

    Simply put, and as discussed in more detail below as events relate to other parties, there have been serious new developments dealing with: a) Yolo DA / AARP b) Michael Cabral / Yolo and Riverside DA’s offices/ SNR Dentons - Rod Pacheco - James Hsu / Yolo County’s Cache Creek Casino - Chief Marshall Mckay/ Mark Friedman / DLA Piper / Kapor Enterprises.

    As far as (a) — developments involving Yolo DA and AARP, etc, note that last week I learned that AARP — where George Davis (formerly a California Bar BOG member who voted to press false criminal charges against me with Yolo DA, president of AARP-California, and with strong financial ties to CCPF) and Barbara O’Connor (AARP and AARP Foundation Director, Link America Foundation Director - whom I caught in major alleged fraud re Washington DC party to celebrate the “linking” of the two Americas — which in actuality was a Barack Obama inauguration party - and employee of Sacramento-based Donna Lucas’s Public Affairs) — has bestowed an unusual grant of $40,000 on the Yolo County District Attorney (see attached press-release and HERE ) headed by Jeff Reisig and Jonathan Raven.

    As far as (b) — developments involving Yolo / Riverside Assistant District Attorney Michael Cabral — note that during the pendency of the criminal action against me, a very unusual theory was explored by which Cabral had been transferred from Riverside County DA to Yolo County DA for the sole reason of falsely and maliciously criminally prosecuting me in order to intimidate me into silence and otherwise confiscate incriminating evidence through the execution of an invalid search warrant.
    At that time, I looked into those facts and rejected the theory dealing with Cabral (See story HERE). About one month ago, I learned that Cabral is no longer with the Yolo DA, and has returned back home to the Riverside County District Attorney.

    As you may recall and as I stated previously, I agreed to a plea of no contest to a charge of misdemeanor attempted extortion as a stopgap measure since I was under duress on various fronts. As part of the plea bargain I agreed to, among other things, not contact the State Bar of California Board of Governors/Trustees directly, and other overreaching conditions.

    Both as a journalist and as a victim of the above alleged malfeasance, I am obviously interested in informing the State Bar of California Board of Governors/Trustees and the public vis-a-vis press releases, published articles, and by contacting other journalists of those events. However, per conditions imposed on me while under duress as part of the plea bargain in the criminal matter by Judge Reed, I am prohibited from directly contacting BOG members. As such, in addition to suing some of the above named and others in federal court, I plan to ask the same federal court for relief to allow me to freely exercise free speech.

    As such, if the attorneys for Judges Rosenberg and Reed believe that advancing an action against Yolo County Superior Court for equitable relief is not consistent with the spirit or language of our prior agreements, please let me know.

    Note that from my perspective past events are all forgotten history and there is absolutely no desire to rehash old claims against Rosenberg and Reed. In fact, as I mentioned to Rosenberg’s attorney (Mr. Fink) over the phone, I am a huge fan of Rosenberg and was recently disappointed that he was not appointed as a justice to the California Supreme Court given his outstanding judicial qualities, experience, and political background (i.e. former chief of staff to Governor Jerry Brown; Judicial Council member; mayor of Davis, etc).

    2. SERVICE OF BRIEF AND APPENDIX — California Rules of Court Rule 8.124 (e)(1)states that “a party preparing an appendix must: (A) Serve the appendix on each party, unless otherwise agreed by the parties....”

    As far as the service of the appendix, I am hoping that each party will agree to waive formal service and instead agree that the service of a searchable PDF Appendix via electronic mail is sufficient. Note that I will be advising the court of my request and the responses received from counsel, if any.

    Similarly, I am hoping that you will also agree to waive formal service of a hard copy of the appellant’s brief and to instead agree that the service of searchable PDF and/or Microsoft Word version of the brief via electronic mail is sufficient. I will also be letting the court know that I made this request of counsel and the responses received, if any.

    I would like to urge everyone to agree to the above in order to save a tree, costs, and the unnecessary labor of printing, copying, and binding thousands of pages.

    3. SETTLEMENT DISCUSSIONS — As applied to the two above referenced actions, I would like to remind everyone that the window to engage in settlement discussions has been closed, as was stated previously. As such, due to multitudes of reasons, in connection with the above two referenced actions, please refrain from extending any settlement offers, attempting to engage in settlement negotiations, or offering anything of value. The only exception will be if the undersigned originates a proposal.

    4. DOCKET — As far as the matter pending before the California Third District Court of Appeal, note that the docket maintained by the court contains many inaccuracies and is otherwise lacking. For example, a search for the last name of defendant/respondent “James Brosnahan” yields no result. Ditto defendants Freada Kapor Klein, Michael Cabral, Mark Friedman (only the name of the late distinguished Morton Friedman OBM appears), Fulcrum Property (only “Fulcrum Davis” appears, which I assume is associated with the Friedmans), Mary Cary Zellerbach, Martin Investment Management, Ronald Olson, Jeff Bleich, Chris Young, Kamala Harris, Douglas Winthrop, Holly Fujie, Ophelia Basgal, and others.

    As such, I ask that each of you contact the court of appeal on behalf of your respective clients — similar to the 4th entry of the docket by which the attorney for Darrel Steinberg independently wrote the court to advise that Steinberg is a respondent, see HERE — to inform the court of the problem and ask for it to be rectified.

    Moreover, please ensure that the name of your clients are spelled correctly i.e. “Munger,Tollis” or “Freada, Kapor, Klein” are not the correct spelling, at least based on my understanding.

    The attorney representing Ms. Kamala Harris is requested to inform the court to remove a comment by which the docket states that Ms. Harris was sued in her capacity as the attorney general or forward proof where I allege she was sued in such capacity.

    The attorney from Locke Lord representing defendants Cary Zellerbach and Martin Investment is asked to inform the court to correct the docket which does not mention either yourself, your firm, or your clients. Also with respect to your client that has thus far managed to avoid service, please be advised that the California statute of limitations is tolled and I intend to pursue claims against her either in state or federal court. REDACTED

    5. SKADDEN ARPS — ISSUES RE RAUOL KENNEDY REPRESENTATION OF CALIFORNIA JUDICIARY — Mr. Russell, as you may recall, in reply to my inquiry you wrote: "My colleague Raoul Kennedy does indeed represent Justice Robert Mallano in Mallano v. Chiang et al., LASC Case No. BC533770. As you may know, Judge Elihu Berle granted class certification in Mallano on January 15, 2015. The class members have not yet been identified because notice has not been circulated, nor has the period for opt outs occurred. Nevertheless, regardless of which judges or justices eventually become members of the class, pursuant to section 811.9 of the California Government Code, the “fact that a justice, judge, subordinate judicial officer, court executive officer, court employee, the court, the Judicial Council, or the Administrative Office of the Courts is or was represented or defended by the county counsel, the Attorney General, or other counsel shall not be the sole basis for a judicial determination of disqualification of a justice, judge, subordinate judicial officer, the county counsel, the Attorney General, or other counsel in unrelated actions.” Cal. Gov’t Code § 811.9. As a matter of law, there is no conflict. The statute is attached for your reference."

    As a reply, I wrote in part that the statute applies only to one justice, and in the case at hand Mr. Kennedy represents (as of now and assuming none chose to opt out) the entire qualified panel of justices of the Third District and that, most importantly, per the statute, the representation must be the “sole” basis. Here, the representation of Skadden/ Kennedy is NOT the sole basis. Rather, there is an additional basis for the disqualification — which is the fact that Skadden itself is also a DEFENDANT in the “unrelated action.”

    In any event, this will serve to inform you that I intend to seek to disqualify any and all judicial officers who are clients of your firm. As such, I ask for you to please forward a list identifying the class members and all those who chose to opt-out of the litigation.

    6. MORRISON & FOERSTER: Mr. Besirof, associate Davis indicated that you replaced Mr. Dresser as the attorney in this matter. Please let me know if you have any questions or require certain clarification. Since you are new to the case and since it is summer, if you need extra time to catch up on materials as far as the filing of an appellate respondent brief, I am extending to you (and by extension everyone else) an additional 60 days in which to file your brief.

    7. DEFENDANT MARK FRIEDMAN / COUNSEL - BROTHER PHILIP FRIEDMAN — Mr. Friedman, in connection with events dealing with Michael Cabral / Yolo DA / Chache Creek Casino and SNR Dentons, can you please provide a list of all the partnerships between defendant Mark Friedman and the Rumsey / Yocha Dehe tribe which operates Cache Creek Casino in Yolo County?

    A lawsuit (attached) the tribe/casino filed against your brother and REDACTED lists the following: Government Property Fund,LLC; Government Property Fund II, LLC ; Government Property Fund III, LLC ; Government Property Fund IV, LLC ; 4330 Watt,LLC; Fulcrum Management Group LLC ; Fulcrum Friedman Management Group, LLC ; Illiniois Property Fund, GPF ; and Illinois LLC. Are these partnership still in effect ?

    Also, for purposes of determine potential conflicts of interest in the current pending matter as far as your ability to serve as legal counsel given your role as a potential witness, please inform me whether Paragraph 108 of the lawsuit which states: “The other Vectors partners included REDACTED and Opper, as well as Friedman, Friedman’s father and brother, and John Krasznekewicz (a Friedman friend)” refers to you, Philip Friedman. In essence, what I am asking is are you the Vector partner or is the brother alluded to someone else ? Also, starting in 2006 to the present, were you involved in any other partnership with the tribe and the casino ?

    8. MUNGER TOLLES & OLSON: Mr. Senator, if not a bother, I will appreciate if your firm would forward me the following:

    a - copy of the report prepared by your colleague Bart Williams dealing with alleged misconduct by Joe Dunn, especially in connection to a trip overseas by which Dunn was accompanied by Howard Miller of Girardi & Keese and Tom Layton. As you may be aware, accompanying the Yolo County District Attorney officers during the execution of the search warrant at my home was also Tom Layton — who served as liaison. As such, if said report is in the public domain, I will appreciate if you forward a copy.

    b - your colleague Jeffrey Bleich recently solicited as clients a group of UC Davis APA law students in connection with their bid to admit post-mortum an APA applicant to the State Bar of California. If not a bother, will it be possible for you to please forward to me a copy of the motion and all other pleading submitted to the California Supreme Court.

    9. FREADA AND MITCHELL KAPOR / LEVEL PLAYING FIELD INSTITUTE : Mr. Medina, at your earliest, I will appreciate if you please address the following:

    a. In order to determine your status as potential witness, can you please forward your employment history to date beginning from around 2006 ? Were you ever employed at the DLA Piper office in Sacramento ? If yes, can you please state the dates of your employment.

    b. Are you and your clients in a position to disclose who is paying Kapor and LPFI’s attorney’s fees? If it is DLA Piper who set you up to defend the two or otherwise is paying your attorney’s fees, please let me know. As you may know, DLA Piper managing partner Gilles Attia, daughter Sarah Attia, and partner Steve Churchwell played a huge role in CaliforniaALL / Obama for America. Also, separately and around the same time, there is an allegation that DLA Piper laundered $50,000 to “Obama Victory Fund” through defendant Level Playing Field Institute / Kapor Enterprises vis-a-vis the so called “Kapor Maneuver.”

    c. Recently, I have learned from a YOU-TUBE video featuring Mr. Kapor that he is heavily invested in what he refers to as “Ed-Tech” companies.

    It will be appreciated if you let me know if Mr. Kapor, his wife, or their entities have any business relationships with Steve Poizner or former California Bar Foundation treasurer Lindsay Lee — both of whom are also involved with Ed-Tech.

    d. Yesterday, just as I was about to send you settlement business proposals, much to my chagrin and indignation, I encountered the following article in USA Today. Under the heading of “Kapors pledge $40 million investment in tech diversity” it stated, among other things: “Mitch Kapor and wife Freada Kapor Klein will invest $40 million over three years in a set of initiatives designed to give women and underrepresented minorities a better shot at becoming technology entrepreneurs.” The article further stated that “Kapor Capital will make more than $25 million in investments in technology start-ups working to narrow the achievement gaps. At least half of the companies will have founders from underrepresented groups.” (See story http://tinyurl.com/p33dxlx )

    My understanding is that any and all non-profit and for-profits companies operated in the State of California are deemed to be “business establishments” that come within the purview of Civil Code Section 51 known as The Unruh Civil Rights Act.

    Be advised that the plan by the Kapors and Kapor Capital to “make more than $25 million in investments in technology start-ups working to narrow the achievement gaps. At least half of the companies will have founders from underrepresented groups” runs afoul of The Unruh Civil Rights Act which reads: “All persons within the jurisdiction of this state are free and equal, and no matter what their sex, race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, disability, medical condition, genetic information, marital status, or sexual orientation are entitled to the full and equal accommodations, advantages, facilities, privileges, or services in all business establishments of every kind whatsoever.”

    In other words, Kapor Capital’s plan to pick and choose “founders from underrepresented groups” (based on the article, women and “underrepresented minorities”) is unlawful. If you or your clients disagree, please forward an explanation. Otherwise, I shall await word from you that there has been a change of plans.

    e. As you may be aware, starting around 2000, the former executive-director of the State Bar of California (Ms. Judy Johnson) secretly served as the president of the “California Consumer Protection Foundation” ("CCPF") an entity which obtained millions of dollars from class-action “cy pres” awards and from fines, settlements and payments the CPUC — during the time Michael Peevey and Geoff Brown served as commissioners — imposed on various utility companies. For example, anytime a merger took place i.e. between various cell-phone companies such as Verizon, millions were paid to CCPF.

    CCPF, in turn, funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars to entities in South-Central Los Angeles [with very close connection to State Bar of California BOG members Shrimpscam’s Gwen Moore and George Davis], a dubious entity in Venice for “Youth Radio”, an entity headed by Michael Shames, various Asian-American entities with close connections to State Bar officials (Holly Fujie and Madge Watai — Little Tokyo Service Center, etc.) and money to entities headed by associates of Justice Ming Chin.

    Based my estimation, around $3 million cannot be accounted for, and separately I alleged that CCPF submitted false reports to the IRS. Months before the execution of the search warrant, I complained to the IRS against CCPF as well as filed an ethics complaint against Judy Johnson and others with the State Bar of California. Later, as you may recall, the State Bar of California BOG voted to file criminal charges against me, alleging among other things, that the CCPF ethics complaint constituted criminal conduct which served as one basis for the search warrant.

    Based on my recollection, it also appeared that CCPF may have funneled money to entities established by the Kapors. Since all the materials have been confiscated by the Yolo DA and are otherwise inaccessible, at your earliest, I will appreciate the names of those entities and the dates / amounts each of these contribution.

    f. Please consider this a formal request for “Kapor Center for Social Impact” to produce its 3 last 990 forms submitted to the IRS. If you need me to request this information from the entity directly, please let me know.

    Thank you for your attention to these matters. Please let me know if you have any questions.

  • Jason:

    Thank you for the prompt reply.

    1. As far as Mr. Raoul Kennedy’s relationship with Skadden Arps,
    thank you for the information and obviously I stand corrected. My
    recollection was that up until the end of 2014 Mr. Kennedy was a
    “partner” (and not “of counsel”) at Skadden and that is where I was
    looking for his name — under the heading of partners. Incidentally,
    I have also noticed a similar sudden change in the status of Mr. Alec
    Chang from “partner” to that of “of counsel”, which I am sure is also
    the result of Skadden’s good faith business needs.

    2. In order to better analyze the potential conflict — and while
    keeping in mind that it is perfectly OK for judges to assume the role
    of plaintiff and for there to be minimal resulting interruptions to
    the firm which chose to assume the representation as far as conflicts
    of interest and disqualifications — I ask that you send me a copy of
    the complaint and all other pleadings, as well as a list of the
    members of the class and those who chose to opt-out.

    As far as the statute you mentioned, as applied to the facts at hand
    it is not on point. The crux of the statute is that the fact that a
    justice is represented by counsel shall not be the sole basis for a
    judicial determination of disqualification of a justice in unrelated
    actions. In essence, the fact that Justice Vance Raye, for example,
    is represented by Skadden/Kennedy shall not be the SOLE basis for
    request for judicial disqualification in unrelated actions. First,
    this statute does not pass the common sense test because what you are
    advocating is that if Skadden/Kennedy is representing Justice Vance
    Raye in a personal injury matter against a restaurant, for example, I
    will be prohibited from seeking to disqualify Raye in this case —
    that does not make sense. Second, this statute applies only to ONE
    justice, and in the case at hand Mr. Kennedy represents (as of now and
    assuming none chose to opt out) the entire qualified panel of justices
    of the Third District. Third, and most importantly, per the statute,
    the representation must be the “sole” basis. Here, the
    representations of Skadden/ Kennedy is NOT the sole basis. Rather,
    there is an additional basis for the disqualification — which is the
    fact that Skadden itself is also a DEFENDANT in the “unrelated
    action,” and as was previously mentioned, as of February 15, Raoul
    Kennedy himself (as well as Chang, Nolan, and various Skadden clients whom Skadden colluded with Girardi & Keese and who benefited from unlawfully retaliating against me) will be named in the upcoming federal action. For purposes of full disclosure, please note that I did not conduct any further legal research in analyzing the statute and my position is based only on what you forwarded to me as anattachment.

    As such, if there is a case that you want me to read to
    in support of Skadden’s contention, please forward it to me.
    Otherwise, I will seek to disqualify any and all judicial officers who
    are clients of your firm.

    In fact, my position is that under the circumstances your firm and its
    clients — each on its own accord — had a duty to make a disclosure
    of such relationship. I am enclosing for your convenience a “comment” written for the “California Judges Association” which clearly states that there are other consideration other than 811.9 that must be taken into consideration.

    Note also that also as a taxpayer and resident of California I already
    have concerns over this litigation relating mainly to the fact that
    the venue chosen to represent a Second District Court of Appeal
    Justice was his own, and the fact that a determination was made that
    the rule of necessity applies to Judge Elihu Berle whereas the
    Judicial Council could have chosen a judge which was not part of the
    class i.e. a recently appointed judge or a retired judge, such as
    Leslie Nichols who retired prior to 2008.

    3. In connection with Mr. Chang, I have also noticed that he no longer practices out of any of Skadden’s offices in California and is
    otherwise listed as practicing out of New York. At your earliest, I
    will appreciate if you provide me with the date — for purposes of
    SOL/tolling of SOL — that Mr. Chang allegedly left California for New
    York.

    4. Please note that hence forth, with the exception of pro-per
    parties (i.e. MoFo, Girardi & Keese, KVN, MTO, Arnold & Porter) any
    and all other attorneys with paying clients (i.e. Zellerbach, Kapor,
    UC, Yolo DA, Friedman), will no longer be ccd on this topic in order
    to prevent the spending of unnecessary legal fees by their clients.

    Thank you,

  • From: Jason Russell to myslef

    My colleague Raoul Kennedy does indeed represent Justice Robert Mallano in Mallano v. Chiang et al., LASC Case No. BC533770. As you may know, Judge Elihu Berle granted class certification in Mallano on January 15, 2015. The class members have not yet been identified because notice has not been circulated, nor has the period for opt outs occurred. Nevertheless, regardless of which judges or justices eventually become members of the class, pursuant to section 811.9 of the California Government Code, the “fact that a justice, judge, subordinate judicial officer, court executive officer, court employee, the court, the Judicial Council, or the Administrative Office of the Courts is or was represented or defended by the county counsel, the Attorney General, or other counsel shall not be the sole basis for a judicial determination of disqualification of a justice, judge, subordinate judicial officer, the county counsel, the Attorney General, or other counsel in unrelated actions.” Cal. Gov’t Code § 811.9. As a matter of law, there is no conflict. The statute is attached for your reference.

    We are perplexed by your question regarding Mr. Kennedy’s association with Skadden, as the link you sent to us prominently displays a link to Mr. Kennedy’s biography. Nevertheless, Mr. Kennedy’s biography is attached here for your reference, and is also available at http://www.skadden.com/professionals/raoul-d-kennedy.

    We trust this resolves your concerns and obviates the need to brief these issues in the California Court of Appeal. Should you choose to ignore the governing statute, we may seek sanctions against you under CCP § 128.7.

    Jason

  • Five Takeaways from the Newly Released #Drone Memo
    https://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/five-takeaways-newly-released-drone-memo

    Avec beaucoup de retard, le mémo réclamé par l’ACLU et le New York Times et sensé expliquer les raisons pour lesquelles il était tellement urgent de mettre hors d’état de nuire #Anwar_al-Awlaki qu’il n’y avait d’autre choix que de le liquider (plutôt que de chercher à le capturer) a finalement été rendu public,

    Monday morning, a federal appeals court released a government memorandum, dated July 16, 2010, authorizing both the Department of Defense and the Central Intelligence Agency to kill Anwar al-Aulaqi, a U.S. citizen, in Yemen.

    The publication of the Office of Legal Counsel memo comes, as the court noted, after a lengthy delay. The ACLU (along with the New York Times) has been fighting for this memo since we first asked for it in a Freedom of Information Act request submitted in October 2011.

    Monday’s release by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit is an important victory for transparency. But while the memo advances the public record in significant ways, it still does not answer many key questions about the government’s claimed authority to kill U.S. citizens outside of active battlefields. Here are several important takeaways from Monday’s release.

    (...)

    There are additional OLC memos addressing the lawfulness and constitutionality of the targeted killing of U.S. citizens — and the government will likely have to release portions of those as well.

  • #STL to appoint defense counsel to #al-Akhbar despite chief’s objections
    http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/stl-appoint-defense-counsel-al-akhbar-despite-chiefs-refusal

    An international court that has charged Al-Akhbar and its editor-in-chief #Ibrahim_al-Amin with contempt and obstruction of justice over the publication of a secret witness list will appoint a counsel to defend the accused against Amin’s wishes. The Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL), ostensibly set up to investigate the 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, said in a statement Thursday that Contempt Judge Nicola Lettieri decided to go ahead with the decision despite Amin vowing to boycott the trial. read more

    #STL

  • DECLARATION IN SUPPORT OF EX PARTE APPLICATION FOR EXTENSION OF TIME TO SERVE PLEADING

    Notice was provided to parties and counsel that Plaintiff is aware of who were served to date by email.

    The only party who has stated it will oppose the application is Morrison & Foerster, whose counsel asked
    Plaintiff to advise the Court that the firm will oppose the ex parte application, however counsel has not to
    date responded to a request that he provide the basis for the objection.

    All the below named defendants have not yet been served primarily because a process-server was unable to
    locate a proper address for which to serve and/or because a process-server is in the process of serving saiddefendants and/or because Plaintiff was unable to locate the address of defendants and/or Plaintiff encounteredmyriad difficulties and obstacles in serving said defendants such as Larissa Parecki, Voice of OC, Erwin Chemerinsky, Skadden Arps, Mary Ann Todd, Munger Tolles, Bradley Phillips, Ron Olson, Edison
    International, Douglas Winthrop, Howard Rice, Holly Fujie, Buchalter Nemer, Raj Chatterjee,Thomas Girardi,
    Richard Tom, Southern California Edison, Wilson Sonsini, Cary Martin Zellerbach AKA Mary Ellen Martin
    Zellerbach, Mark Robinson, Arnold Porter, Mark Friedman - Fulcrum Properties, Mark Parnes, CalifomiaALL,Ruthe Catolico Ashley, Sarah Redfield, Morrison England, Torie Flournoy-England, James Brosnahan,Geoffrey Brown, Ophelia Basgal, Pacific Gas & Electric Company, Verizon Communications, Darrell
    Steinberg, Kamala Harris, Michael Peevey, Steve Poizner, Freada Kapor Klein, James Hsu, Jeff Bleich,
    Sonnenschein Nath & RosenthaL.

    Specifically, for example:

    Jeff Bleich — process server who went to his office in San Francisco was informed Mr. Bleich is out of the
    country. Process server recommended to Plaintiff substituted service, and it will be attempted on Becky Bleich
    (his wife) at the home address in order to perfect service.

    Raj Chatterjee — service has been attempted multiple times, both at his office and place of residence. Plaintiff
    anticipates Mr. Chatterjee will soon be served via substitute service.

    James Brosnahan — service has been attempted multiple times, both at his office and place of residence.
    Plaintiff anticipates Mr. Brosnahan will soon be served via substitute service.

    Geoffrey Brown — process server visited the home of Mr. Brown at least twice. Mr. Brown is either not home
    or not responding to the process server’s contact efforts. An envelope containing the Summons, FAC, ADR,
    CMC package was left on the stairs of his residence. The process server has advised that a “stake-out” may be
    necessary to serve Mr. Brown.

    Freada Kapor Klein — process-server visited Freada Kapor’s office in Oakland and was told to leave papers
    with her assistant. As such, at this point Plaintiff is unsure if service has been perfected on Freada Kapor.

    Sarah Redfield — out of state defendant (a resident of Maine). An attempt to serve Redfield pursuant to CCP
    by first-class-mail registered, return receipt has to date been unsuccessful.

    Cary Martin Zellerbach AKA Mary Ellen Martin Zellerbach — Plaintiff served her company, “Martin
    Investment Mangement,” located in Illinois, but to date could not locate Cary Martin Zellerbach’s residence in
    San Francisco to complete service.

    Mark Friedman, Fulcrum Properties — Plaintiff is unsure if service was perfected as of yet.

  • In Texting Era, Crisis Hotlines Put Help at Youths’ Fingertips - NYTimes.com
    http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/05/us/in-texting-era-crisis-hotlines-put-help-at-youths-fingertips.html?nl=todays

    The conversation began abruptly, with the anonymous teenager getting straight to the point: She had just told her family that she was really a boy trapped in a female body. “Now my family hates me,” she told a crisis counselor.

    The counselor was empathetic. She asked for more detail about the family, offered encouragement and provided the name of a local support group.

    It was in many ways a typical exchange on a crisis hotline, except it took place entirely by texting.

    Il est temps de prendre ne compte l’aptitude aux SMS des ados. Excellente initiative.

  • Mortar strikes Vatican embassy in Damascus
    http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/mortar-strikes-vatican-embassy-damascus

    A mortar round hit the Vatican embassy in Damascus on Tuesday morning, damaging the building but causing no casualties, a diplomat told AFP. “A mortar round fell this morning at 6:30 am (0430 GMT) on the embassy rooftop, causing only material damage,” said Giorgio Ghezza, counselor at the papal nunciature. Rebel-fired mortar rounds have frequently hit areas of central Damascus. (...)

    #syria #Top_News