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raywritesthings · 5 years ago

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Sheriff, Hood and Maid

My Writing Fandom: Arrow Characters: Quentin Lance, Laurel Lance, Oliver Queen, John Diggle Relationships: Laurel Lance/Oliver Queen (Hinted/Unresolved) Summary: Long before the Hood arrives in Starling City, Detective Lance relaxes his loyalty to the law. His daughter must take on a double life of her own to redeem her family legacy. / AU What-If of Season 1 *Can be read on my AO3 or FFN, links are in bio*

It had been a moment of weakness. After losing Sara, seeing the bodies of all those young girls pile up one after the other, with stiff limbs and sightless eyes, it was too much. He’d have done anything to make it stop, to catch Mathis.

Anything, as it turned out, had meant selling his soul.

He’d received a call tipping him off to a location Mathis was supposedly using to conduct his sick experiments. When he’d arrived, there was no Mathis and no equipment. Just a mid-ranking member of one of the local cartels.

Quentin had been angered and then infuriated when the thug had proposed his deal. Immunity for him and his side in exchange for information. He had stormed out of that warehouse and not looked back.

Then another girl had turned up dead. And another. Before he could think it through too many times, he was dialing the number that had called in the fake tip.

What else could he have done? It wasn’t like people weren’t going to buy the drugs anyway if he refused to play ball with the cartel. He’d gotten a location and led a raid to catch the Dollmaker in the act. A serial killer behind bars.

“Just remember the favor you owe us, Detective,” he’d been warned. “Or your pretty daughter with the fancy new law degree is gonna wish it was Mathis that got to her.”

Okay, so one cartel was going to walk the streets knowing he’d look the other way. So what? They didn’t have the manpower to bring them all in.

The funny thing was, once one deal was made, it didn’t seem so bad to make more. It was like they could sniff him out all of a sudden. Maybe there was talk. He didn’t know.

Quentin found himself with a lot more convictions under his belt and a lot more friends in low places. His tab was always paid at his favorite bar before he even made it there after a shift. It wasn’t like he was letting all the criminals walk. There were still bad people getting put away.

How was it any different than Nudocerdo hobnobbing with the big wigs in their ivory towers? How was it any different than Moira Queen or Malcolm Merlyn paying all the right people to get their kids off the hook for crimes they ought to be serving sentences for?

Whenever he happened to be in a charitable mood, which he rarely was, Quentin could admit it wasn’t very different to all the wheeling and dealing he’d done behind the scenes to keep Sara’s record clean.

If he had one saving grace, it was Laurel. She alone was untouched by all the dirt and corruption their city was swimming in. He was prouder than he could say, and it burned at him more than he could stand sometimes the way she would remind him of all the things he had once taught her about the law and doing what was right. He snapped at her more than was warranted for it, and he knew she just couldn’t understand.

He never wanted her to. If she ever knew…

But it was pointless to even worry about that. The associates he’d acquired over the last few years would ensure he was never ousted, so long as he kept up his end of the deals he’d made. And he would, for her sake. This city was rotten to the core, and if all he could do was save one person from it, it damned well wouldn’t be the rich elites who could bribe their way through anything or the teens with rap sheets already a mile long. It would be his own flesh and blood, all he had left of it in the world.

With enough drink in him, most nights he went to bed with a muddied conscience. But it was enough to let him sleep.

---

Laurel had had a bad feeling for a long time. Various bad feelings, she supposed, but it was hard not to when her sister and boyfriend died while screwing each other, her mother left and her father fell into drinking. There weren’t many good feelings left in the wake of all that.

But this specific one had more to do with her work. Ever since she had started at CNRI, things had felt a little… off.

At first she hadn’t noticed, too caught up in the high of winning her first official case, saving a man’s son from prison for a crime he didn’t commit. Other little victories here and there.

But then, every time she tried going up against something big, the systemic forces truly plaguing their city, roadblocks constantly sprung up in her path. A judge threw the case out, witnesses disappeared, evidence went missing from the police lockers and, lately, her boss had been getting very particular about handing out or approving assignments.

If she’d talked to her father about it once, she must have talked to him about it a million times. He’d been a sympathetic ear at first, promising to keep an eye on things at the precinct, but as time wore on he did little more than sigh and tell her that she couldn’t expect to change the world overnight. Joanna did him one better and suggested Laurel do something with all that pent-up frustration, which had led Laurel to seeking out boxing lessons at a gym not too far from their office.

While letting her anger out through her fists did wonders for her emotional self-control, it did little to fix the rest of her problems. Laurel’s mind chased itself around in circles night after night, wondering just where the trouble was starting from. Was there some kind of leak between their office and the DA’s? Was it Kate Spencer herself? Or was she being spied on?

Laurel started meeting her clients outside of the office and off the books. For a while, it seemed to help as she was happy to note to her dad. But gradually, whatever force was conspiring against her seemed to catch up to her new methods. It didn’t matter if she worked with Joanna or alone, if she wrote her files in plain English or in the secret code she and Sara had developed during a particularly boring winter filled with school cancellations due to the wind chill, making playing outside impossible. She was reaching her wit’s end with this enemy who seemed to know her as well as she knew herself.

Just as she was starting to wonder if everything was hopeless, an unexpected ally of sorts emerged from seemingly nowhere: an archer dressed in green. He’d appeared on the scene as suddenly as Oliver had stepped back into her life after five years of him being presumed dead, taking in Adam Hunt and his security team before Laurel was slated to lose her case against him thanks to a bought Judge Grell. Then again, he took on Martin Sommers and the Triad after they attacked her home while Oliver was visiting.

It was exhilarating seeing someone finally stand up to the untouchable in this city. She couldn’t help to wonder why no one had thought to do it before, couldn’t help but feel inspired...

Laurel kept these thoughts to herself while staying at her father’s that night. The police were still processing the crime scene that her apartment had become the other night thanks to the home invasion that she suspected was meant to have been an assassination if she hadn’t been able to take down one of their attackers and Mr. Diggle hadn’t shown up to confront China White. The bodyguard himself might have been killed had Oliver not been extremely lucky with his knife throw. She supposed he must have gotten very good at that sort of thing while hunting for food on the island.

Laurel’s dreams of a figure moving through thick, green overgrowth stalking the Fortune 500 were interrupted by the low snarl of her dad’s voice. Laurel startled awake, looking around in confusion.

“...don’t care that he got away. Sommers overreached, and that’s his and your problem, not mine!”

Light shone through the cracks around the bedroom door. He was still awake? Laurel slid off the mattress as quietly as she could, sneaking in her socks to the door. She opened it a centimeter and peered down the hall.

Her father was pacing back and forth, crossing in and out of view as he spoke into a phone. “My daughter comes first. The minute you agreed to his contract, that’s the minute you turned your back on me. I wasn’t gonna do a damned thing to save that bottom-feeder from some vigilante.”

Laurel’s mind raced. If this was about Sommers, and her father was talking to a person who had accepted a contract that had to do with her…

“Yeah, I know. I know what you have on me. I’d rather we continue on business as usual, too, but we can’t do that unless I have your word that the next time Laurel is in your sights, you let me handle it. Alright? She’s my responsibility, not yours. And you can tell that to China White herself.”

China White. The Triad. Her father was on the phone with the Triad.

She watched him hang up and rub a hand across his forehead. “Should’ve just let her go to San Francisco…” he muttered under his breath.

She couldn’t keep watching. Laurel shook her head and backed up into a dresser with a muffled bang, too loud for him not to have heard. “Shit,” she whispered.

Sure enough, she heard his shoes coming down the hall. Rather than comforting, they sounded loud and heavy and like a threat. What did she do? What did she say?

The door opened before she could make up her mind to flee, and Laurel looked up at her father.

“Honey?” He asked, sounding just as concerned as always. His gun rested on his belt.

She had to play this off. She couldn’t risk him finding out she knew. She couldn’t trust he wouldn’t hurt her — she didn’t know who this man was anymore.

“Uh, sorry. I was getting up to use the bathroom, and I couldn’t see where I was going in the dark,” she explained, hoping the strain in her voice could be attributed to the pain from hitting the furniture.

He nodded. “Okay. Lamp’s on the table there for it you need it.”

“Uh-huh. Are you going out?”

He looked down at himself. “No. I just, uh, was finishing up some work at the table. I’ll get to sleep soon, promise.”

Laurel forced a smile that was more a nervous twitch of the lips as she slowly moved past him into the hall, shutting herself in the bathroom. She let out a breath then drew it back in, forcing herself to focus on that and prevent herself from hyperventilating.

Her father was a dirty cop. How long had he been? Since she got her degree? Since the Gambit sunk? Since always?

He was the source of the leak. For three years, she’d been watching herself and who she spoke to, dedicated herself to nothing but work — and the one person she had felt safe in confiding to, the one person she’d thought understood her relentless pursuit of justice, had betrayed her.

She sat on the lid of the toilet and willed the tears that wanted to spill from her eyes back. There wasn’t time to feel sorry for herself. She’d unknowingly been helping the other side by giving them ready access to information. What was she going to do now?

The first thing was stop talking to her dad about her cases and make sure to lock up her notes even in the safety of her home. And then… what? That didn’t feel like enough.

What could she do to help the people who had suffered for her ignorance? The people who would continue to suffer thanks to this corrupt bargain her father had made? Or even, maybe, possibly, her father himself?

Was he just doing this to protect her? Maybe someone had made threats. Maybe he thought it was the only way. They were both semi-public figures. It wouldn’t have been hard at all for organized crime to make the connection between them and decide to exploit it.

If she could figure out how deep this went, how far this web of alliances stretched, maybe she could free him from it.

But she couldn’t do it as herself. It was clear that either her father would be forced to stop her or the Triad and whoever else would take matters into their own hands, and she didn’t want to test her luck a second time. Prosecuting them publicly would mean damning her father, too, and despite everything she had just learned, she didn’t know if she was prepared to do that.

She had to work independently of the law. Any misgivings she might have felt about that a month ago melted away now that she knew her father had abandoned his own credo a long time ago. This wasn’t some idealized mock trial in school. This was reality. And there was someone out there already proving that the only way to get justice in this city was to get it yourself.

Laurel stood and flushed the toilet to sell her story, washing her hands in the sink as she stared herself down in the mirror. Her eyes were dry and determined.

She would do what needed to be done.

---

Oliver was at a crossroads in many ways. Diggle was on the fence about joining him. Lance was hot on the trail of evidence he’d planted to set himself up for exoneration. And he still didn’t know quite where he and Laurel stood since his return in both of his personas.

He knew as Oliver he was making things difficult, wanting to atone for his actions yet also wanting her safe. He couldn’t be the man she saw in him in his public life because he was needed as the Hood. And while she seemed far more receptive to the Hood, his first encounter with her had proven… odd.

“How do you decide?” She’d asked him unexpectedly in the dark of her apartment. The little light come through the windows made her eyes look overbright and earnest. “Who gets hospitalized and who lands in the morgue?”

“It’s not a decision,” he answered eventually. “Not a conscious one. This city is in a fight for its life. In those kinds of struggles…” He had found himself struggling then to articulate what it was to be driven by the need for survival in the heat of battle, how everything else faded away.

But Laurel had nodded as if she understood. “Then it’s not a question of targeting.”

“Is there someone you wanted targeted?”

To his surprise, she did not dismiss the question, but rather hesitated. “I don’t have everything I need yet. And you’re right that Declan’s case can’t wait if he really is as innocent as you think.”

He’d let the subject drop, and there had been no time to address it in any of their subsequent meetings. Certainly not at Iron Height, where she had pulled him out of the fog of battle through her touch and voice alone before he could make yet another kill. He didn’t know how to thank her for that. Especially when the next time he saw her, it was because she was representing him against her dad, and he couldn’t exactly thank her for something he wasn’t supposed to know about as Oliver Queen.

It helped that Laurel was convinced there was no way he was the Hood. At least, he thought she was convinced until the polygraph test. Until he revealed some of the truth about what had happened to him there. The look in her eyes… he had fled before she could ask him anything, back to the party he was having Tommy plan at the house.

Oliver walked around the main room, making sure he was very visible as Diggle prepared to head out in the Hood’s suit. While he didn’t exactly enjoy himself in this type of crowd anymore, he didn’t truly tense up until he noticed something.

Outside the glass doors to the patio, someone was watching.

The strobe lights from the party illuminated her for a moment — he thought it was a her, though he couldn’t make out her face beneath the dark shawl she wore over her head and wrapped around her shoulders. The patio went dark and then light again, and in that time she had turned her back as she dropped something in one of the potted plants.

Oliver sucked around people as he made his way to the patio and the far edge, but he could make out no one in the darkness of the grounds. None of the attendees seemed to have noticed anything, either, thought that likely was due to their inebriated states.

He went back to the plant and pulled out what she had left behind.

It was a manila envelope with a note scrawled on one side in almost exaggeratedly bad handwriting.

For the Hood, if you know him.

Oliver’s heart thudded in his chest. This woman had clearly decided to believe Lance, or at least believed he had some role in the Hood’s appearance in Starling.

Did he open it? Ignore it to avoid proving this woman’s suspicions? But then, what did she want?

Oliver took the envelope back to his room and opened it, spilling the contents onto his desk. Pictures printed on computer paper. Typed notes. It was rudimentary and low-budget, but he was looking at a dossier. A dossier on Nudocerdo, the Starling City Police Commissioner. From the looks of it, he was in far too many pockets to be doing anything good for the public.

Take him down without death and I’ll tell you everything, was written at the bottom of the final page.

Now he was truly at a crossroads. If he acted, this woman would clearly know he at the very least had a connection to the Hood. But just what was “everything”?

Oliver found himself attacked by a hitman before he could ponder that much further, and only the intervention of Detective Lance saved his life and his identity from being exposed, as much as the detective looked like he might be happy to shoot Oliver as well. Long after the party had been cleared out and his family had gone to sleep secure in the knowledge that he wasn’t a vigilante was Oliver able to discuss with Diggle the woman who seemed to think he might still be the vigilante.

“I think you were visited by the Maid.”

Oliver’s face scrunched up. “The who?”

Digg shrugged. “She showed up a couple weeks back. Folks in the Glades say they’ve spotted her trailing gangbangers and cops alike. And the rumor is she’s had to fight her way out of a situation or two. That’s part of what made me realize I needed to join this fight,” Diggle told him. Folks are getting restless, desperate. You’ve shown them a new way, and they just might take it.”

Oliver frowned. He hadn’t been trying to show anyone a new way. This was just the most effective way for him to complete his father’s mission. “Why ‘the Maid’?”

“You said she was wearing that shawl over her head? Hoodette didn’t catch on, so people started looking to your namesake: Robin Hood.”

It hit him a moment later. “Maid Marian.” His uneasiness grew. Oliver knew, of course, that the whole point of what he’d just done was that the Hood and Oliver Queen were separate identities. But he didn’t like the idea of being associated, and romantically at that, with another woman. Not when he was meant to be proving himself to Laurel. If she could only know.

Unless she did? Why exactly had she wanted to know how the Hood chose his targets and what happened to them? What had she meant by not having everything she needed yet? Was she gathering information? And if she was…

It was a theory. The same kind of theory that this woman was working off of regarding his own identity, but if he was right it changed everything.

If he was right, he needed to know what Laurel knew. And he had a feeling he’d only find that out once Nudocerdo was out of the picture.

---

Once again, he found himself at the bar and, once again, he found his tab was already covered. He wasn’t drinking anything strong, though. Not tonight. Not when he’d screwed up bad enough.

He’d been so sure it was Queen. Locking up the Hood would’ve helped smooth over the ruffled feathers caused by the vigilante’s interference in Hunt and Sommer’s operations. Would’ve made his job a heck of a lot easier. And would’ve gotten the bastard far and away from his daughter.

When he’d been sure of the archer’s identity, it had all made sense. Queen returned from that island and thought he could slide back into Laurel’s good graces by putting his thumb on the scales of justice, so to speak. That was clearly why Hunt and Sommers had been attacked coincidentally as Laurel was mounting cases against them, and she had been picked out of all the lawyers in the city to help him clear Peter Declan’s name. Only now, it apparently was a coincidence, and he didn’t know anything anymore.

The Hood needed to be caught. No matter what good other people thought he was doing, he was a menace that needed to be off the streets the same as any thug. Just because he was stealing money and giving it away didn’t make him better than the likes of a kid jacking a car for a joyride. It made him worse, because he was causing unrest with the criminal elements who, like it or not, were woven into the very fabric of Starling. Had been for longer than Quentin had wanted to admit before he’d finally given in.

A man in a fine suit took the barstool next to him. “Evening, Detective.”

Quentin blew out a breath. He was not in the mood for another deal right now, not when he was still on shaky ground with the Triad. “So, which boss do you work for?”

The man pursed his lips. “Hardly. My name is Carl Ballard.”

Ballard? One of the big-wigs? Quentin sat up a little straighter.

“What’s a guy with all the money and success in the world doing in a hole-in-the-wall like this?”

“I’m here on business. I assume you haven’t heard since you’re clearly off duty at the moment, but reports have come in that Commissioner Nudocerdo has been attacked in his home by the Hood.”

“That son of a bitch,” Quentin swore. It wasn’t enough that the guy had to prove his Queen theory wrong tonight, but he had to go after the police department?

“I agree,” Ballard said lightly. “And so do some associates of mine who were fond of Nudocerdo. Given his imminent fall from grace, we want to see that things keep running smoothly. That’s why I’m letting you know you have the full backing of Tempest to fill the position of Commissioner.”

He reeled back a little in shock. “Commissioner? Me?” His eyes narrowed. “Just what is Tempest?”

“A group of like-minded individuals who want the best for our families and our city, like yourself,” Ballard told him. “We all feel you would be the best candidate in these uncertain times. Your commitment to catching the vigilante is unmatched, and you understand the way this city works.”

He knew what that last part meant underneath. Business as usual. It was hardly what he would have envisioned all those years ago as a beat cop with his head full of ideas about changing things for the better. He’d forgotten about that dream a long time ago.

“Say I accept. What’s in it for me?”

“A number of powerful allies. More if you prove effective.”

“Effective at what?”

“Tempest wants to find out the source of the Hood’s information. What he’s basing his crusade off of and how he obtained it. These are things you have to be wondering, too.”

He had, and he’d thought for a worrying moment that it might be Laurel. For the first time tonight, he was glad he’d been wrong about his assumptions on Queen.

“I’ve been in the Glades recently working on a gentrification project, and my security tells me they’ve heard rumors of a spy. A woman. They’re calling her his Maid Marian. We’d like you to start there, tracking down this young Maid.”

An informant for the Hood? That was something solid, something real at last. What did he have to lose?

“I’ll get on it — or, guess I’ll put my best men on it, since your people want me in the Commissioner’s chair so badly.” Quentin stuck out his hand for Carl Ballard to shake.

It wasn’t the worst deal he’d made.

#lauriver #laurel x oliver #laurel lance #oliver queen #quentin lance #arrow #green arrow #black canary #my writing

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blog-rationally-irrational-blog · 5 years ago

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Are we prepared for a digital COVID 19

In a well known Hollywood action flick, directed by John Woo, Christian Slater makes a revelation that when a nuclear weapon is lost it is known as a Broken Arrow. Samantha Mathis another character in the movie asks, “Does the happen so often that it has a term coined for it?”

COVID 19, the virus that has taken the world by storm, is no less than a Broken Arrow, a nuclear weapon that we have lost control over. Developed, as well as underdeveloped nations have been devastated by it. Its modus operandi ensures that majority of the human race is still trying to grapple with the potential solution.

Nature is a great leveler. We were so used to a way of life, that we started taking things for granted. It almost seems that nature clamored for break from mankind. The best and most workable solution that has come up - the social animal to maintain social distance. Most of us would never have experienced a Pandemic of this scale in our life time. As paradoxical as it may sound, how can we be prepared for a world that we are not prepared for?

The issues under the bucket of unknown unknowns will start to hit us more often than we can anticipate. One of the key reason why COVID 19 spread so fast is because the human race is intricately connected. A key indication is a life time record 69 million global flight takeoffs in 2019 (as per flightradar24.com).

The term COVID 19 first coined on February 11, as it started to become a known phenomenon, similar to the Broken Arrow. One cannot help, but think of the digital dependency we have in these times. What could make it worse is an e-COVID wave.

The possible world of COVID 19 and e-COVID

I see a scary similarity between the physical and the digital world that may hit us in the near future. Many would recollect the havoc that was caused by “WannaCry – The worldwide cyber attack”. Are we prepared for an e-Covid then ?

What if the WannaCry virus was a trailer to a bigger digital upheaval. Similar to the SARS or NIPAH epidemic which was relatively better controlled since the spread was limited, is there an e-pandemic waiting to strike the digital world. Let us think of a scenario wherein a similar thing happens in the digital world, a fiercer version of WannaCry takes over. The only solution is to isolate computer networks or devices from connecting to internet, that are e-COVID positive. Given the reliance we have on the interconnectedness in the digital world the mayhem would be unmanageable.

In such a case, we will not be able communicate with another / any communication device. A WhatsApp call may set in a chain infection …beginning with the cell phone, moving on to any website and taking over the laptops as well as corporate accounts.

There are five reasons why e-COVID could be a strong possibility:

1) The world is getting more and more integrated with the advent of 5G it is only going to proliferate

2) There has been a significant rise in malwares and ransomwares in recent times

3) The technology to create such malwares and ransomwares has become easily accessible

4) The speed of infection will be rapid and the time to react will be minimal

5) A solution may not be an easy one to find

We have all experienced software that make our lives easier. It has made the lives of good people easier, and the lives of bad people even more easier. An easily available service is RaaS or Ransomware as a service. You can avail of ransomware services for as low as USD 400 and the list of features is quite impressive. This means any layman with a small figment of negative intention and some creativity can cause significant harm.

We are in a world of hyper connectivity, one infection connects x more people in a COVID 19 situation, in the case of Information technology this is raised to the power of x. End of November the first COVID 19 patient was identified in China, the next case was in Thailand on Jan 13. A week later US reported its first case. The world had about a month and half to respond, we could have done better? As of 22 March 224,000 people were infected and the virus infection is still raging in some countries.

WannaCry struck on 12 May 2017, on 13 May 2017, it had infected 230,000 computers in 150 countries. The speed at which future viruses will hit the IT systems and leave us with no time to react.

So what next?

As a consultant, one of the first lessons we were taught was if you don’t have the solution, you are part of the problem. Is there anything we can do to solve the potential problem? let’s look at the possible solutions:

Identify who can help - The solution for WannaCry was found almost by accident. A British researcher realized the code queried a particular domain. If the domain was activated, the infection was stopped. He bought the domain and stopped WannaCry from continuing to infect the planet’s IT systems. He became a hero overnight. In an unfortunate turn of events, just three months after his heroic act, the researcher was arrested by the FBI as it was found that he was the creator of a piece of malware that had been stealing banking details from people all over the world. He admitted to creating the malware, and pleaded guilty to the crime. It is likely that the one who discovered or developed such a virus, can also come up with solutions to destroy and protect. Reminds me of Amitabh and Dharamendra who were petty criminals, but were hired by the jailor who eventually made the dreaded Gabbar succumb. Can we keep an eye on the source of such viruses?

Identify the warriors – As much as there are COVID 19 warriors fighting the dreaded virus, we need an army of smart and efficient soldiers to fight an e-COVID battle. We need to identify these warriors as currently they are spread across the globe. The fight against an e-COVID will not be fought locally, this will be a global fight. A global repository of the e-COVID warriors needs to be developed, who can rise to the occasion and fight this battle from day 0.

Increased protection of personal devices (not just corporate devices) – A lot of organizations have started to spend money on security which includes the firewalls, VAPT’s, secure endpoints and solutions on these lines. However, in the times to come, more organizations will allow employees to work from home on their personal devices. These may not be controlled by the organization. Therefore, a significant opening will be created for hackers to pass on the virus to corporate networks and then onto the globally interconnected devices. Not to say there is a dearth of vulnerable corporate devices, the inclusion of a larger number of personal and relatively less protected devices with exposure to sensitive information will up the risk. We must figure out a way to secure personal devices.

Accountability in case of open source – A majority of organizations use freewares and open source tools to protect profitability and save cost, some of these tools are more efficient, easy to use than even the licensed version. I am not against profit making or open source tools, however we need to bear in mind that it leads to an increased exposure to unknown unknowns. Enough articles point to the origin of the COVID 19 virus …The risks were there, yet we chose to turn a blind eye. We should avoid such mistakes in the digital world from such opensource tools.

A smart mechanism to exchange information – If the red flags were raised, say a week earlier, several thousand lives could have been saved. How can we make sure that a seamless mechanism exists to identify, detect, exchange information immediately to block any such malaise. can all countries come together to establish such platforms which can share information on real time basis? The success will depend on how many are willing to share credible information in real time and is there a platform to do this.

Build a strong mechanism to respond – It is a matter of time before an e-COVID hits us. It will hit us like the COVID 19 did, catching us unawares. Better prepared nations blunted the effect of COVID 19, others who did not respond well are facing the unfortunate brunt. The response in case of an e-COVID will not help if it is from a particular country, the response has to be a global one. Currently there are global agencies, but such is the nature of the world that we live in, it is going to be extremely difficult to come up with a unified response. All countries need to come together and plan for a response when the e-pandemic strikes us.

Conclusion – We read of cyber-attacks almost every day. Several are unreported. The biggest worry of the future could be magnitude of the attack. We have not been kind to mother nature and COVID 19 is a strong push back for mankind. Are we protecting nature enough ? Are we damaging the very fabric that created us ?

A question that begs to be asked, are we doing enough to ensure that the interconnectedness in the digital world remains safe . We survived the WannaCry phase, we will survive the COVID 19 pandemic as well. The history of mankind is a testament to the same. We need to have a comprehensive mechanism to respond and make sure the digital world is a secure place. With the advent of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, could we be sure that some rogue is not misusing the technology that creates an uncontrollable virus ?

By the way the Broken arrow in the movie was diffused before it could go off…If we could have done the same for COVID 19, much of the world could have been saved today.

#Worlds largest cyberattack #ecovid #cyberattack #preparing for cyberattack

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maxwellyjordan · 6 years ago

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Relist Watch

John Elwood reviews Monday’s relists.

With nothing happening in the news, I feel like there’s not much to work with for the traditional flimsy topical introduction. So let’s just get started. Only two new relists this week.

Both Myers v. United States, 18-6859, and Santos v. United States, 18-7096, involve fairly arcane issues about what crimes qualify as predicate offenses under the much-litigated Armed Career Criminal Act – specifically, whether certain state crimes are “divisible,” meaning that even if some subsections wouldn’t qualify as ACCA predicates, others would. What makes these cases noteworthy is how the government handled them. The government initially waived its right to file a response in both, in effect telling the Supreme Court that the cases were so meritless that they didn’t warrant the government’s time. The court nonetheless called for a response in both. When government lawyers dug in to the cases, they had a distinctly different impression than upon first view, and in both cases told the court to grant the petition, vacate the judgment below and remand. In Santos, the government filed a short brief saying that the conviction in question “does not qualify as a violent felony under the [ACCA]” (at least not on the theory the government used below). And in Myers, the government concluded that the court of appeals applied the analysis required by an earlier ACCA case, Mathis v. United States, “in a manner that is inconsistent with this Court’s decision.”

The relists could mean any number of things. Most likely, the justices just need time to carefully review the cases, which involve a complex statute, difficult caselaw and significant factual records. What will be more interesting is if one of the justices decides to file a separate opinion, perhaps complaining about the Supreme Court’s “no-fault [vacate and remand] practice” (at least with respect to Myers), perhaps disputing the government’s position, or perhaps (though this is unlikely) chastising the government for not reviewing the cases more carefully initially. But next Monday when the order list is released, it will be worth reviewing the list to the very end to see if there are opinions in these cases.

Thanks to Ben Moss compiling the relists.

New Relists

Myers v. United States, 18-6859

Issues: (1) Whether the principles regarding a statute’s divisibility announced in Mathis v. United States apply both to offenses analyzed under the “force clause” of 18 U.S.C. § 924(e)(2)(B)(i) and those analyzed as “enumerated offenses” under 18 U.S.C. § 924(e)(2)(B)(ii); and (2) whether the offense of first-degree terroristic threatening under Arkansas Code Annotated § 5-13-301(a)(1)(A) qualifies as a violent felony under the Armed Career Criminal Act.

(relisted after the April 26 conference)

Santos v. United States, 18-7096

Issues: (1) Whether the “touches or strikes” language in the Florida battery statutes is divisible under Descamps v. United States and Mathis v. United States permitting application of the “modified categorical approach,” or rather, whether “touches or strikes” is a single indivisible element requiring the categorical approach and a finding under Johnson v. United States that a Florida battery-on-law-enforcement-officer conviction is categorically overbroad vis-a-vis the Armed Career Criminal Act’s elements clause; (2) whether, if a statute is divisible under Descamps and Mathis, the “modified categorical approach” permits a district court in an ACCA case to consider undisputed factual allegations in the federal Pre-Sentence Investigation Report to determine which statutory alternative was the basis of the conviction, or — for Sixth Amendment reasons — whether the Supreme Court’s consideration under the “modified categorical approach” is restricted to conclusive documents from the state criminal case; (3) whether an offense with a reckless mens rea — such as Florida aggravated assault on an officer — is a “violent felony” within the ACCA’s elements clause, which requires that the offense “have as an element the use … of physical force against the person of another”; and (4) whether the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit erred under Miller-El v. Cockrell and Buck v. Davis in denying the petitioner a certificate of appealability based upon adverse circuit precedent when all of the above issues are nonetheless debatable among reasonable jurists.

(relisted after the April 26 conference)

Returning Relists

Box v. Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky, Inc., 18-8

Issues: (1) Whether a state may require health-care facilities to dispose of fetal remains in the same manner as other human remains, i.e., by burial or cremation; and (2) whether a state may prohibit abortions motivated solely by the race, sex or disability of the fetus and require abortion doctors to inform patients of the prohibition.

(relisted after the January 4, January 11, January 18, February 15, February 22, March 1, March 15, March 22, March 29, April 12, April 18 and April 26 conferences)

Roman Catholic Archdiocese of San Juan, Puerto Rico v. Feliciano, 18-921

Issue: Whether the First Amendment empowers courts to override the chosen legal structure of a religious organization and declare all of its constituent parts a single legal entity subject to joint and several liability.

(relisted after the March 22, March 29, April 12, April 18 and April 26 conferences)

Department of Homeland Security v. Regents of the University of California, 18-587

Issues: (1) Whether the Department of Homeland Security’s decision to wind down the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy is judicially reviewable; and (2) whether DHS’ decision to wind down the DACA policy is lawful.

(relisted after the January 11 conference; now held)

Trump v. NAACP, 18-588

(relisted after the January 11 conference; now held)

Nielsen v. Vidal, 18-589

(relisted after the January 11 conference; now held)

Daniel v. United States, 18-460

Issues: (1) Whether the Feres doctrine bars service members, or their estates, from bringing claims for medical malpractice under the Federal Tort Claims Act when the medical treatment did not involve any military exigencies, decisions or considerations, and when the service member was not engaged in military duty or a military mission at the time of the injury or death; and (2) whether Feres should be overruled for medical malpractice claims brought under the Federal Tort claims Act when the medical treatment did not involve any military exigencies, decisions or considerations, and when the service member was not engaged in military duty or a military mission at the time of the injury or death.

(relisted after the March 29, April 12, April 18 and April 26 conferences)

Klein v. Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries, 18-547

Issues: (1) Whether Oregon violated the free speech and free exercise clauses of the First Amendment by compelling the Kleins to design and create a custom wedding cake to celebrate a same-sex wedding ritual in violation of their sincerely held religious beliefs; (2) whether the Supreme Court should overrule Employment Division, Department of Human Resources of Oregon v. Smith; and (3) whether the Supreme Court should reaffirm Smith’s hybrid-rights doctrine, applying strict scrutiny to free exercise claims that implicate other fundamental rights, and resolve the circuit split over the doctrine’s precedential status.

(relisted after the March 29, April 12, April 18 and April 26 conferences)

City of Newport Beach, California v. Vos, 18-672

Issues: (1) Whether Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act requires law enforcement officers to provide accommodations to an armed, violent and mentally ill suspect in the course of bringing the suspect into custody; (2) whether, under the Fourth Amendment “totality of the circumstances” analysis for assessing the reasonableness of force used against a suspect who attacks law enforcement officers, a court must take into account allegedly unreasonable police conduct that took place before the use of force, but foreseeably created the need to use that force; and (3) whether, under the Fourth Amendment’s analysis for use of force, a law enforcement officer’s interest in using deadly force against a suspect threatening an officer’s life is diminished if the assailant is mentally ill.

(relisted after the April 12, April 18 and April 26 conferences)

Dahne v. Richey, 18-761

Issue: Whether prison inmates have a First Amendment right to include threatening, abusive and irrelevant language in grievances.

(relisted after the April 12, April 18 and April 26 conferences)

McGee v. McFadden, 18-7277

Issues: (1) Whether the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit erred when it found no constitutional error when the state failed to disclose Brady evidence, a letter from a jailhouse snitch, until the post-trial hearing for a motion for a new trial; (2) whether the state and federal courts’ decisions were contrary to Giglio v. United States, United States v. Bagley, Brady v. Maryland and Napue v. Illinois when the state failed to disclose material impeachment evidence, a letter from a jailhouse snitch who testified that petitioner confessed to him; and (3) whether the state and federal courts erred in finding that trial counsel rendered effective assistance of counsel when he failed to interview Michael Jones and call him as a witness.

(relisted after the April 12, April 18 and April 26 conferences)

The post Relist Watch appeared first on SCOTUSblog.

from Law https://www.scotusblog.com/2019/05/relist-watch-142/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

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micaramel · 6 years ago

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Artist: Mathis Collins

Venue: Crèvecoeur, Marseille

Exhibition Title: La Maison des artistes

Date: February 1 – March 30, 2019

Click here to view slideshow

Full gallery of images, press release, and link available after the jump.

Images:

Images courtesy of Crèvecoeur, Paris and Marseille

Press Release:

La Maison des Artistes, Mathis Collins’s first exhibition in a French gallery, is the continuation of his exhibition Éducateur in Longtang (Zurich) which took The Yellow Kid (1) as the central figure of a series of “naughtiness” evoking, as in a self-portrait, the figure of the artist himself. The Yellow Kid comes over as an artistic pedagogue and rebel, a spanner in the well-oiled works of a cultural policy giving itself a good conscience. Here, Mathis Collins draws away from the figure of the child, to confront that of the adult. La Maison des Artistes is a world of violence, noise, injuries, deceptions and scars in which a child’s naughtiness become an adult’s crimes. The central figure is that of a clown in a pointed hat, promoting his own misfortunates, reminiscent of the artist himself.

The exhibition works like an entre-sort (the façade of a fairground stall, whose decorations, claims and various other artifices are there to incite the public to enter an interior, which often turns out to be disappointing). The central character thus guides us into an attraction announced as being spectacular, but which ends, 12 sculptures later, with an idle, penniless figure, who has failed to put on a truly sensational show. Like the different steps of an artistic career, alternating success and failure.

On joining the official Maison des Artistes, it is necessary to declare your identity and the artistic category which your work belongs to: painting, sculpture, engraving, et cetera… This process of self-identification is here intensified by Mathis Collins who toys with the traditional codes of fine art. At the heart of the concept of “popular art” lies the anonymity of the creator. Creation in the popular arts can be distinguished from an oeuvre by the non-recognition of its maker. Without a signature, an artist can only then be a Pierrot Lunaire or Mime, an icon, a character that a singer of children’s songs would include in their repertoire.

Mathis Collins studied fine art in Cergy, Metz, Montreal and Brussels before participating in Open School East in London. He has in particular exhibited his work at the Palais de Tokyo, the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, the Friche Belle de Mai, the Riijksakademie in Amsterdam, the 1m3 Lausanne and Longtang, Zürich. He is currently participating to the Lafayette Anticipations residency.

(1) The Yellow Kid is a character created by the American cartoonist and author of comics Richard Felton Outcault, and is considered to be the first comic strip.

Link: Mathis Collins at Crèvecoeur

Contemporary Art Daily is produced by Contemporary Art Group, a not-for-profit organization. We rely on our audience to help fund the publication of exhibitions that show up in this RSS feed. Please consider supporting us by making a donation today.

from Contemporary Art Daily http://bit.ly/2TwW4Xf

#micaramel

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theconservativebrief · 7 years ago

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Vox Sentences is your daily digest for what’s happening in the world. Sign up for the Vox Sentences newsletter, delivered straight to your inbox Monday through Friday, or view the Vox Sentences archive for past editions.

Cohen pleads, Manafort’s sentenced; the “last ice area” is no more.

Drew Angerer/Getty Images

President Trump had a very, very bad five minutes Tuesday afternoon: Within moments, his former campaign chair Paul Manafort was convicted on eight felony counts, while a plea deal was announced for his longtime personal lawyer Michael Cohen. [CNN / Kara Scannell, Shimon Prokupecz, Laura Jarrett, and Erica Orden]

Cohen pleaded guilty to violating banking, tax, and campaign finance laws. In his guilty plea, he said Trump directed him to make a $130,000 payoff to porn actress Stormy Daniels in the days leading up to the 2016 election in order to keep her quiet about an affair she said she had with Trump. [Washington Post / Devlin Barrett, Carol D. Leonnig, and Renae Merle]

Cohen was Trump’s longtime lawyer and “fixer,” with deep ties to Trumpworld. Before he reached the plea deal, though, he’d indicated that he’d no longer be loyal to the president. While the deal doesn’t explicitly call for Cohen to cooperate with special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, it doesn’t say he can’t, either. [NYT / William K. Rashbaum, Maggie Haberman, and Ben Protess]

Moments after the plea deal was announced, the jury in Paul Manafort’s first trial found him guilty on eight counts — five counts of filing false tax returns, two counts of bank fraud, and one count of failing to file a report to a foreign bank account — after three full days of jury deliberations. They could not reach a verdict on the other 10 counts. [BuzzFeed / Zoe Tillman]

Manafort could be tried again on those 10 counts if prosecutors choose; he also faces a second trial in September in Washington, DC, on charges of money laundering, witness tampering, lying under oath, and not registering as a foreign agent. [AP / Matthew Barakat]

Five people in Trump’s orbit during the 2016 campaign — his onetime national security adviser, campaign manager, deputy campaign manager, personal attorney, and foreign policy adviser — have now either pleaded guilty or been found guilty of federal crimes. [Vox / Alex Ward]

The news, but shorter, delivered straight to your inbox.

By signing up, you agree to our Privacy Policy and European users agree to the data transfer policy. For more newsletters, check out our newsletters page.

The Arctic’s oldest and strongest span of sea ice began melting and breaking up this summer for the first time in recorded history. The “scary” revelation is forcing scientists to rethink how the effects of climate change will progress in the Arctic. [Guardian / Jonathan Watts]

Scientists had anticipated that the sea ice off Greenland’s north coast, called the “last ice area,” would be the final portion of Arctic ice to melt. This raises the question of which area in the region will withstand the effects of climate change the longest. [EcoWatch / Lorraine Chow]

Jeremy Mathis, the author of the Arctic Report Card, said the Arctic was (in 2016, at least) melting twice as fast as the rest of the world. [NPR / Christopher Joyce]

Many expect the area to freeze over once cooler climates return. But as the gaps between the broken-up ice widen, the solar heat will increase and cause the ice to melt even more. [NYMag / Eric Levitz]

The melting will likely have a “catastrophic effect” on the animals in the region, specifically polar bears and seals. [Independent / Tom Batchelor]

Researchers looked into why women’s pockets are so much smaller than men’s. The worst effect? Women can’t hold smartphones in their front pockets. [The Verge / Megan Farokhmanesh]

A Texas high school has apologized “for missing the mark” after it published a sexist video on the school’s dress code. The instructional video showed a group of girls who were admonished and lectured for wearing shorts while “Bad Girls” by M.I.A played in the background. [Fort Worth Star-Telegram / Diane Smith]

MTV’s Video Music Awards went down last night with its expected share of drama, disappointment, and political statements. [Rolling Stone]

Star Wars actress Kelly Marie Tran has spoken out for the first time since deleting her Instagram because she faced online harassment. [NYT / Kelly Marie Tran]

“I got to know Asia Argento ten months ago. Our commonality is the shared pain of being assaulted by Harvey Weinstein. My heart is broken. I will continue my work on behalf of victims everywhere. … None of us know the truth of the situation and I’m sure more will be revealed. Be gentle.” [Activist Rose McGowan, who has faced backlash for defending #MeToo leader Asia Argento, who was accused of sexual assault this week / Twitter]

Hint: Go for the flashing lights. [YouTube / Coleman Lowndes]

A mass incarceration expert says the 2018 prison strike could be “one of the largest the country has ever seen”

Bruce Ohr, the DOJ official Trump is attacking on Twitter, explained

The Pentagon won’t check if US bombs killed kids in Yemen. CNN did it for them.

The radical moral implications of luck in human life

The Asia Argento allegations reveal our damaging misconceptions about sexual assault survivors

Original Source -> Vox Sentences: Trump’s lawyer pleads guilty, Trump’s campaign manager found guilty

via The Conservative Brief

#IFTTT #The Conservative Brief

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