Leaked Documents Show Apple’s Attempts to Silence Whistleblowers

Lucas Nolan26 Nov 2021

Tech giant Apple previously told the SEC that it does not attempt to silence employees in relation to workplace harassment or discrimination, but a whistleblower’s nondisclosure agreement is bringing new scrutiny to this claim.

Business Insider reports that on October 18, tech giant Apple made a number of statements to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) including claims that the company does not attempt to silence former employees or whistleblowers in relation to the company’s working conditions.

Now, a new nondisclosure agreement given to a company whistleblower is bringing greater scrutiny to these claims. Apple’s lawyers reportedly wanted former engineer Cher Scarlett to state only the following words upon her departure from the company: “After 18 months at Apple, I’ve decided it is time to move on and pursue other opportunities.”

This language was included in an extremely strict nondisclosure and non-disparagement agreement as part of a separation agreement that Apple offered Scarlett last month. Scarlett, who spent months working to improve pay equity at Apple allegedly resulting in harassment and intimidation from the company, said that when she received the nondisclosure agreement she was “shocked.”

She added: “In my mind, I should be able to say whatever I want as long as I’m not defaming Apple.” Scarlett refused to sign the gag order but was reminded of the agreement upon seeing Apple’s statements to the SEC.

Apple claimed that when it comes to NDAs “in the context of harassment, discrimination, and other unlawful acts,” its “policy is to not use such clauses.” Scarlett filed a whistleblower complaint with the SEC on October 25 in which she claims Apple made “false statements or misleading statements” to the SEC.

Scarlett included a copy of the settlement agreement that Apple offered her in the SEC complaint and described how the company included a “statement I was allowed to say about my leaving the company being a personal decision, rather than fleeing a hostile work environment after attempting to exercise my rights and help others organize” under federal labor laws.

Scarlett further shared the NDA from Apple with Nia Impact Capital, the activist investor that is aiming to force a shareholder vote around transparency on NDAs at Apple. Nia informed the SEC this week that it had “received information, confidentially provided, that Apple has sought to use concealment clauses in the context of discrimination, harassment, and other workplace labor violation claims.”

https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2021/11/26/leaked-documents-show-apples-attempts-to-silence-whistleblowers/

Climate Change Activists: Ditch the Turkey, Put Crickets in Your Pie Crust on ‘Non-Religious’ Thanksgiving

Penny Starr25 Nov 2021

Fucking gross

The narrative that the planet and its inhabitants face eventual extinction if humans don’t end climate change has landed on the table as Americans sit down for Thanksgiving.

“The consequences of a warming world have challenged farmers and food systems throughout the United States,” is the gloomy beginning of a Washington Post article that seeks to end another piece of American traditions one dish at a time.

The Post claims drought, heat waves, and wildfires in the western United States are the result of climate change. And in the northeast it is cranberries that suffer because of “budding earlier, making them more vulnerable to frost damage.”

And in the Southeast, changes in the weather are forcing farmers to “move turkeys north” to drier ground.

Thanksgiving turkey in the oven –stock

Thanksgiving turkey in the oven. (Getty Images)

“Agriculture definitely stands to be impacted by climate change,” Sonali McDermid, a climate scientist and associate professor of environmental studies at New York University, said.

McDermid expresses distain for agriculture, not as a victim but a driver of the changing weather.

The Post actually described Thanksgiving as “one of the few nonreligious American holidays that most Americans celebrate.”

Thanksgiving (Getty Images)

Thanksgiving is “centered around the notion of gathering for the autumnal harvest,” according to Amy Bentley, professor of food studies at New York University.

The Post reported on the problematic holiday:

But food production is the largest cause of global environmental change, according a report authored by a consortium of scientists. Agriculture is responsible for up to 30 percent of global greenhouse-gas emissions and 70 percent of freshwater use.

It’s a complicated dynamic: To mitigate the effects of global warming, we need to change agricultural practices. But food is already changing because of the warming climate.

“You can bet that under climate change scenarios, corn, cranberries, leafy greens like creamed spinach [and] turkey — all of these commodities are going to be constrained,” said Jessica Fanzo, professor of global food and agricultural policy and ethics at Johns Hopkins University and one of the authors of the report.

The Post then included a list, abbreviated here, to make your Thanksgiving political correct:

Ditch the turkey that helps the economies of eight states — California, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, Indiana, Virginia, and North Carolina.

But raising turkeys hurts the planet, so a better choice is wild boar. That way you can help reduce a species that hurts the environment but cut back on polluting turkeys.

And globalist Bill Gates and Richard Branson are working to stop farming with lab-grown meat.

Better yet, forget delicious protein all together and put plant-based food on the Thanksgiving table.

“One of the solutions that’s kind of staring us in the face is to reduce our reliance on animal agriculture,” McDermid said. “I do see that as being something that is widely accepted in 2050, to have these alternatives on the table substituting for turkey.”

But even side dishes are under assault. Wheat is headed for disaster because of drought and flooding, according to the Post.

As for veggies: Potatoes, green beans, and Brussels sprouts “will suffer a similar fate when faced with extreme weather.”

Three more tips from the Post for your Thanksgiving pleasure include:

Swap pumpkin to prickly pear for the annual dessert.

Consider adding crickets to your pie crust: Studies show that crickets, grasshoppers and weevils are rich in protein and minerals including iron, zinc, copper and magnesium and that farming insects has environmental benefits including less land and water use and lower greenhouse-gas emissions.

Trade your champagne for beer made with Kernza. Kernza in flour format can also be used in pie crusts and dinner rolls.

“In the end, Thanksgiving is more about community than food,” the Post argues.

“I do think that [there is] growing acceptance that Thanksgiving is not about what exactly is on the table, but about who is at the table,” McDermid said.

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/11/25/climate-change-activists-ditch-the-turkey-put-crickets-in-your-pie-crust-on-non-religious-thanksgiving/

President Joe Biden’s $1.7 trillion Build Back Better (BBB) bill would allow cartels to get taxpayer funds for smuggling more foreign children and youths into U.S. schools, neighborhoods, and jobs, say GOP sources.

The plan, which is soon to be debated in the Senate, offers up to $3,600 per year to the guardians of all children — including imported children who have no Social Security number.

“There’s also a provision in there for a tax credit for illegal aliens who have children that are in the U.S.,” former border patrol chief Mark Morgan told Fox42kptm.com. He continued:

Think about that: You can illegally enter our borders as a family, and then you’re going to be rewarded by being paid to have your kid here illegally.

“This is going to act as an incentive for more illegal immigration negatively impacting our border security and impacting every aspect of our nation’s public health safety and national security,” he said.

The Democrats’ offer of money to the foreign parents of foreign children will likely fit within the Senate’s specials rules for debate over the so-called “reconciliation bill,” a Hill source told Breitbart News.

“I think the Social Security Number provision is not going to be voted out [by the Parliamentarian], so it is going to be a really salient point for another month,” he added.

The new giveaway will worsen the problems created by the 2008 update to Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000, he said, That act was unanimously passed by Congress, and it gave special protections to children.

But it is now used by the cartels to profitably deliver children to their illegal-alien parents in the United States and to deliver young laborers to labor traffickers around the United States.

Since 2008, the law has been used to move more than 350,000 “Unaccompanied Alien Children” into the United States, most of whom are young men looking for work. On November 21, Breitbart posted a Bloomberg report on the labor trafficking:

The Health and Human Services [HHS], Homeland Security [DHS], and Labor departments investigated the Enterprise situation but couldn’t track down most of the minors who were placed with sponsors there, according to the people familiar with the investigation. It’s not uncommon for federal officials to lose contact with unaccompanied children after their release from government custody.

The dead-end in the Enterprise case highlights apparent gaps in the federal system designed to care for children who cross the border without a parent.

The cartels will quickly see the economic opportunity created by the BBB, the source said. “Whatever opportunity you create for the cartels, they will fill,” he outlined,

They are going to look at that [payment] structure and say, “We can exploit that. There are people now who, despite wanting to come in legally can’t afford the thousands of dollars we might charge them. Now, even if they can’t afford it, the we’re happy to take them north because they once we get them in, then the government will help pay us and the coyotes for bringing them here. It’ll take the form of monthly checks.”

You’re gonna have the equivalent of having a government backed, illegal-alien enforcement mafia where the same people who bring the [migrants] here will now be coming around to pick up their monthly checks … The same people who are connecting the cartels to the [drug] gangs are going to use those same gangs as enforcers to collect cash and send it back to the cartels. They’re gonna put it in the same money laundering scheme that they’ve already got.

So you’re going to incentivize some of the more violent gangs that exist and the cartel members directly in some cases, to come by the new homes of these illegal aliens in the U.S. and harass them and take the taxpayers’ checks.

The illegal migrants will pay those checks to the cartels because the cartels have so much clout in their home countries, he said.

They will never be able to to walk away from in the same way that a little Bodega couldn’t walk away from the mob in New York City … They won’t be able to get out from the cartels. They’re gonna continue paying those taxpayer-funded checks in perpetuity … [because they need the cartels to] bring their friends and family up north.

Many Democrats understand that the welfare checks for foreign children will encourage more illegal immigration, he said:

They know what’s going on. But they know that they can’t say what their true goal is, which is actual open borders with open, uncontrolled migration both ways. And this is a step toward getting rid of borders.

“It’s a globalist mindset and it welcomes anything that moves toward open borders,” he concluded.

https://www.breitbart.com/economy/2021/11/25/joe-bidens-bbb-will-fund-cartels-child-smuggling/