‘It felt like they were forcing me to quit’: HBC worker files wrongful dismissal suit

On a spring day 21 years ago, Yvette Mitchell walked into Hudson’s Bay Co.'s flagship department store in downtown Toronto with a resume.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

She loved fashion and wanted to work on the third floor — the epicentre of women's designer clothing in Canada.

She was hired on the spot.

"I was so excited," Mitchell said in an interview. "I had a great interest in fashion and thought where else to go than the Bay."

Two decades later, the retail veteran said she was in shock when the company unilaterally altered the terms of her employment, changing her permanent part-time status to that of an "auxiliary associate."

Mitchell, who had been on a temporary layoff since April 2020, last month received a letter from HBC outlining the status change.

It not only meant Mitchell would go from a guaranteed 30-hour work week to an arbitrary range of zero to 27 hours a week, she would also lose her health and dental benefits, five-weeks vacation and potentially her pension entitlements going forward, she said.

"I felt like they were forcing me to quit ... to hijack my severance pay," Mitchell said. "I felt really hopeless and lost."

She took her case to a lawyer, who has filed a statement of claim in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice alleging wrongful dismissal.

She is seeking damages for her lost benefits and pension entitlements, accrued vacation pay and lost salary and commissions, it said.

It's also seeking damages for the bad faith manner of termination and punitive damages.

The claim said Mitchell was sent home last March at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic and in April was temporarily laid off due to a shortage of work amid ongoing store closures. Last month, she received a letter informing her that her position had changed.

The claim says the retailer engaged in "constructive termination," arguing that by unilaterally changing the terms of her employment during a temporary layoff, the company has not provided Mitchell with proper notice or severance pay.

The claims made in the filings have not been proven in court.

The company said in a statement that as it is an active litigation "it would be inappropriate to comment on the particulars of this case."

The Hudson’s Bay location in downtown Toronto has been either closed or under strict capacity restrictions since March 17, 2020.

But Mackenzie Irwin, an employment lawyer representing Mitchell, said it's illegal for an employer to make significant changes to an employee’s hours of work, pay or duties — even during the pandemic — unless they have consent from that person.

“What HBC is trying to do is change the terms of her employment such that they could potentially award her zero hours in any given week," said Irwin, an associate with Samfiru Tumarkin LLP in Toronto.

"It creates serious instability… and is quite palpably unfair.”

A worker has the right to treat sweeping changes to their job as a termination through constructive dismissal, and leave with an amount of severance based on their age, years of service and position, she added.

“Our firm has seen examples in the past where a company has drastically cut down a long-term employee's hours," Irwin said. "Once that individual has worked under this new arrangement long enough, they are let go from their job and offered an inadequate severance package based not on their previous qualifications, but instead their new and reduced hours of work."

A recent court decision — the first of its kind to deal with a COVID-19 layoff in Ontario — could be favourable to Mitchell's case, said employment and business lawyer Adam Savaglio.

The Ontario Superior Court decision confirmed that common law rules on layoffs override Ontario's Infectious Disease Emergency Leave legislation, he said.

"This decision where a constructive dismissal has been found as a result of a pandemic-caused layoff has swung the pendulum in favour of employees to the serious detriment of employers," said Savaglio, a partner at Scarfone Hawkins LLP.

"This has the potential to tie up the courts with more claims against businesses that haven't been generating income," he said. "It could be nuclear for businesses facing termination payouts, that are already struggling with forced closures and restrictions on business."

On Mitchell's case, Savaglio said there are some genuine issues raised in the claim, without even taking into consideration the recent court decision.

For example, he said an employer can't fundamentally change a contract without consideration or working notice to the employee, and that an individual’s time on layoff may not be considered “working notice."

Still, he said there are obligations for workers to mitigate their losses, such as attempting to find other comparable work.

Meanwhile, Mitchell said she's not alone. She said she knows of several other longtime HBC workers who have had the terms of their employment similarly altered.

In January, HBC said it was permanently laying off more than 600 workers as a result of ongoing lockdowns that have shuttered many of the retailer's stores across the country for months.

Many of those workers received a so-called working notice, which means they are expected to work until the termination date.

Employment lawyer Lior Samfiru, a partner with Samfiru Tumarkin LLP, called it "absurd" to offer working notices when stores are closed and said HBC should be providing severance pay.

For Mitchell, she said she was a loyal and dedicated employee for 21 years.

"They had a choice to package me out, to give me a severance and be done with it," she said. "Instead they've changed my position so that come September, they don't owe me anything — no benefits, no pension, not even hours."

"I've worked so hard," she said. "I just want what's fair."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 28, 2021.

Elliot Page Sits Down With Oprah And Talks About The ‘Horrible Backlash’ Facing Trans People

Corey Atad 

4/28/2021`



Elliot Page is sharing more about his coming-out journey.

© Photo: Apple TV+ Elliot Page and Oprah Winfrey

On Friday, April 30, Apple TV+ will debut a new interview with Page and Oprah Winfrey, in which the actor opens up about the issues facing the trans community.

RELATED: Elliot Page Blasts U.S. Anti-Trans Legislation As 'Upsetting, Cruel And Exhausting'

In a preview clip shared by Vanity Fair, Page talks about needing to "become comfortable" in his body before coming out publicly.

He also talks about the "horrible backlash" trans people are facing at the moment in the U.S., with many states passing anti-trans legislation.

“It felt important and selfish for myself and my own well-being, and my mental health, and also with this platform I have, the privilege that I have, and knowing the pain and the difficulties and the struggles I faced in my life, let alone what so many other people are facing," Page says. "It absolutely felt just crucial and important for me to share that.”

RELATED: Elliot Page Shares The 'Feeling Of True Excitement' About Coming Out As Trans

Page also told Vanity Fair about his decision to talk to Oprah: "It was something I needed to sit with for a moment because the backlash right now is so intense. But the rhetoric coming from anti-trans activists and anti-LGBTQ activists—it’s devastating. These bills are going to be responsible for the death of children. It is that simple. So [talking to Oprah] felt like an opportunity to use a wide-reaching platform to speak from my heart about some of my experience and the resources I’ve been able to access—whether therapy or surgery—that have allowed me to be alive, to live my life."

He added, "I don’t want it to sound like, 'Look at me.' It’s not that at all. Actually, I was really nervous. But I thought about it for a bit, and it just felt like, Okay, the GOP basically wants to destroy the lives of trans kids and stop the Equality Act. How do you not use this platform?"

Authoritarian Tech Is On the Rise | Opinion
Raphael Tsavkko Garcia 

NEWSWEEK 4/28/2021

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Life in a refugee camp is an unimaginable horror.

© PATRICIA DE MELO MOREIRA/AFP via Getty Images A man holds a mobile phone displaying the app StayAway Covid, in Lisbon on October 16, 2020.

It's the reality of thousands of people who fled war-torn countries, poverty, hunger and sometimes death. Greek refugee camps are often overpopulated, with scarce access to water, heat, food, or toilets, set up over contaminated soil. They are the closest thing to hell on Earth.

The pandemic worsened camps on several fronts. There has been a serious uptick in surveillance technologies administered to refugees since the pandemic started. Not only are refugees detained in inhumane conditions, but they are also subjected to strict surveillance inside and outside the camps, serving as guinea pigs for authoritarian technologies that are then used on the general population.

There are plans to increase and implement such invasive and often harmful tech on everyone.

From things that seem quite simple, such as forcing refugees to wear electronic ankle monitors in Canada and implementing voice recognition in Germany to discover migrants' origins, to video border surveillance in Greece and invasive uses of contact tracing technology, Big Brother is keeping tabs on refugees in camps worldwide.

Other technologies, like body heat scanners, iris scanners and social media scraping was used in refugee camps and on borders for years before the pandemic. They were prototyped then, before moving into mainstream use when the pandemic hit.

In January, I interviewed Petra Molnar, director of the International Human Rights Program at the University of Toronto's Faculty of Law. She spent time visiting refugee camps in Greece, on the island of Lesbos.

"The [Greek] government is ... basically weaponizing COVID to use it as an excuse to lock the camps down and make it impossible to do any research," she said.

Molnar said the situation was "quite bad in terms of things like access to health care, water, shelter. ... It's far from ideal. The Kara Tepe camp is windy, it gets flooded, [people have] no access to water. It's difficult to wash hands and isolate in any meaningful way."

The most invasive and harmful tech available, what Molnar called "sexy tech," was not being used within the camps. She said there are plans to use the tech eventually, which is already in use at the Greek border and in Europe.

From drones and cameras to facial recognition and voice recognition, rarely refugees are aware that their data is been collected and freely shared with other countries without their consent, with little care for their privacy and data security.

Refugees are often more concerned with survival and making it through the day than caring about how their biometric data is being collected, stored and shared.

According to Jan Theurich, a German journalist and member of the DunyaCollective who spent several months in Greece, refugees have more pressing needs, such as being able to drink potable water, not freezing to death in windy and humid camps, or not die in a fire caused by the use of smuggled electric heaters.

"This is a political catastrophe and then a humanitarian catastrophe. It's not just the pandemic, but there's a political will behind the situation creating a humanitarian catastrophe," he said.

Leaving the camps is not always the best choice as any financial support a refugee gets can run out quickly, causing them to find their own way. In the end, a lot of people decide to stay.

"It's like making a decision between getting the pest and cholera," Theurich said. One must remember that inside the camps, refugees "are the last ones to get information from the outside world. You can imagine the effect this all have on them—there's increase in self-harm behavior, domestic violence, rapes and harassment, also stabbings."

Several countries deployed surveillance measures, either to monitor compliance to social distancing and quarantine rules or to track the spread of COVID-19.

"If these measures are actually necessary and proportionate to confront the pandemic—if they are subject to public oversight and can be rolled back once the pandemic is over," then they should be implemented, said Marcus Michaelsen, a Marie Skłodowska-Curie postdoctoral fellow at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel.

We don't know what kind of tech is being used on us at any given moment. But we can guess, investigate and denounce governments and companies alike.

One type of tech focuses on contact tracing, with apps installed on our mobile phones to track and limit contagion.

"There are still lots of apps that pose a threat to citizens' right to privacy," said Samuel Woodhams, digital tights researcher at internet research firm Top10VPN.

At least 19 apps, with 4 million downloads combined, don't have dedicated privacy policies according to Woodhams, meaning that users cannot know for sure how their data is managed—or by whom.

Yet here we are discussing the rights of citizens. One can wonder what happens to the data of those who are running for their lives and those living in less-than-democratic countries. But the fact is that even so-called democracies have shady records when it comes to surveillance, which leads many to worry.

Contact tracing apps' location data are not precise enough to track the spreading of the virus but reveal a lot of personal information. The same is true for credit card data, facial recognition and CCTV cameras in public places.

Who collects the data and where will it all be stored? Is it sufficiently anonymized, protected against data theft and abuse out of potential economic and political interests?

The answers are generally far from what most people would expect—at least from those who have full confidence in the democratic ideals of their respective countries. In authoritarian and illiberal contexts, the pandemic accelerated the decline of internet freedoms, a trend in line with a broader crisis for democracy and shrinking civic space.

It is not to say that we don't need the means to track and prevent the spreading of diseases, or that we don't need to monitor borders and protect ourselves from terrorism and potential harm. We need better rules in place, transparency and accountability. Otherwise, the same measures used to protect us will end up harming society and create a virtual police state. We must know who is collecting our data and to what purpose. We as a society must be able to set boundaries and limits.

Otherwise, little by little, the differences between democratic states and authoritarian or illiberal ones will decrease and we will end up unwillingly giving up on our privacy—which is what is happening with refugees today, all over the world. The pandemic is being used to justify expanding sometimes draconian surveillance.

It is interesting that amid such heavy use of authoritarian tech, violation of privacy and 24 hour monitoring, some people prefer to fall for conspiracy theories about microchips in vaccines. Reality in itself is frightening enough.

Raphael Tsavkko Garcia is a Brazilian journalist based in Belgium. He holds a PhD in human rights from the University of Deusto (Spain).

CANADIAN HYDROGEN POWER

The anti-Tesla: Ballard bets the day has finally come for tech Elon Musk called 'mind-bogglingly stupid'

Driving 4/28/2021

© Provided by Driving.ca Randy MacEwen, president and CEO of Ballard Power Systems, in the company's headquarters in Burnaby, B.C..

As chief executive of Burnaby-based Ballard Power Systems Inc., the company that hopes to disrupt trucking, municipal transit buses, railways and shipping with its proprietary hydrogen fuel cell technology, Randy MacEwen has made countless sacrifices.

He spent this past Christmas quarantined in a guarded hotel suite in Shanghai for two weeks, doing burpees and calisthenics to pass the time — all the while waiting to venture into a country where, out of respect for the culture, he calls one of his closest business associates, “big brother.”

“I’ve spent a lot of time learning about the Chinese culture,” MacEwen told the Financial Post.

Indeed, it marked his 60th trip to China in an estimated 70-month period, a gruelling schedule made all the more so by a health pandemic that added mandatory quarantine periods at both ends of any trip.

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To him, it’s all part of the job of trying to build a sustainable business selling hydrogen fuel cells — technology that has sometimes been compared to the lithium-ion batteries that power Teslas and other zero-emission vehicles, though it has not yet established the same market foothold.

It may not have helped that a couple of years ago Tesla CEO Elon Musk derided hydrogen fuel cells as “mind-bogglingly stupid” and “staggeringly dumb” because using electricity to generate hydrogen, and then convert it to a fuel to power a car, results in high energy losses than just charging a battery that powers a car.

MacEwen has practice batting off this energy efficiency argument.

“There’s a saying, ‘when you make cheese you lose a lot of milk, but there’s a market for cheese,’ and it’s the same with hydrogen,” he said. “There is a market today and there will be a much larger market in the future.”

MacEwen, backed by research, estimates hydrogen can apply about 60 per cent or more of energy to vehicle propulsion, compared to estimates of only 25 per cent for the internal combustion engine. Nonetheless, using energy to charge a battery pack that powers a vehicle is considered the most energy efficient of the three, at an estimated 70 to 85 per cent.

“It’s massively more efficient than the legacy incumbent technology,” MacEwen said, “so it’s a massive leap forward.”

Regardless, as more and more countries announce ambitious climate change initiatives, investor excitement around green technology, including hydrogen fuel cells, is reaching a frenzy. Ballard has benefitted as much as any company, with its stock surging up by 1,000 per cent over a two-year period, from $4.75 in February 2019 to $49 earlier this year, before settling down to a cooler 484 per cent as of April 27.

While hot markets make it easier to raise funding, they don’t make the other part of McEwen’s job — selling hydrogen fuel cell vehicles — any easier.
Always on the Brink


Founded in 1979, Ballard Power Systems was an early entrant in the hydrogen fuel cell space, and the company has spent decades perched on the brink of a major breakthrough. It seems perpetually in investment mode, and has generated earnings losses throughout much of its 40-plus year history.

Still, over the years, Ford Motor Company and Daimler AG have both invested tens of millions of dollars into Ballard, convinced it was poised to disrupt the internal combustion engine’s almost century-long dominance of transportation.

Near the start of the millennium, its stock rose to $165 per share, only to crash below a dollar a little more than a decade later, around the time it became evident that companies developing lithium-ion electric battery technology, such as Tesla, would capture the market for zero-emission sedans and passenger vehicles

.

© Provided by Driving.ca

In response, Ballard pivoted to heavy-duty vehicles, such as municipal buses and cargo trucks. The company says lithium-ion battery technology is not yet viable for vehicles that need to carry heavy loads, operate under extreme temperatures and travel long distances without refuelling, but that hydrogen fuel cell batteries are.

“Nobody foresees being able to charge a battery for a double trailer truck in less than two hours, even 10 or 15 years from now,” said Ned Djilali, a mechanical engineering professor at the University of Victoria, who has consulted for Ballard. “There’s too many inherent issues related to heat transfer. There’s only so much heat you can push through a battery.”

A hydrogen fuel cell car, meanwhile, can be refuelled in roughly the same time and manner as an equivalent ICE vehicle.

Skeptics of hydrogen energy point to the many challenges that remain, from the cost of creating infrastructure, to the inefficiencies in fuel cell cars compared to pure lithium-ion battery cars, not to mention the combustible nature of hydrogen. Then, there’s also the problem that an estimated 98 to 99 per cent of global hydrogen is produced using fossil fuels — meaning it’s not a low-carbon solution yet.

Of course, even if hydrogen fuel cells gain market share in heavy-duty vehicles, as Ballard hopes, the market for commercial trucks and buses is relatively tiny.

MacEwen estimated there are only four million new commercial truck sales globally per year, about 47 per cent of which are in China.

“What’s happening in China, of course, is it’s just growing unbelievably,” said MacEwen, “and there’s a very big emphasis on reducing dependence on foreign technology.”

That makes the market a tough nut to crack for western companies.

Nonetheless, of the 3,300 commercial buses and trucks powered by Ballard’s hydrogen fuel cell technology, about 3,100 are driving on Chinese roads, according to MacEwen.

 Provided by Driving.ca ballard-buses0428

Key to the company’s success, he said, is the “friendships” he forged with business leaders there, notably Tan Xuguang, chairman of Shandong-based Weichai Power Co. Ltd, one of the largest diesel engine manufacturers in the world.

“I call Chairman Tan — ‘Dàgē,’ which means big brother,” he said.

In 2018, Weichai agreed to plunk $163 million into Ballard to become its largest shareholder, controlling what is now about a 15 per cent stake in the company — an investment that has already multiplied several times.

Last year, through a joint venture that’s 49 per cent controlled by Ballard and 51 per cent by Weichai, the two companies commissioned a plant in Shandong province capable of producing 20,000 hydrogen fuel cell stacks per year.
‘I’ve Heard a Lot About You’

Now, MacEwen, who doesn’t speak Mandarin, has to find customers in China.

Learning about Chinese business and culture has been an education and a journey, he said.

Where a simple Powerpoint presentation might suffice to win a business deal in Canada, MacEwen said Chinese business executives want to develop a friendship with their prospective partners.

Everything from where people sit, to how you pay homage to the local region and the stories you tell about other executives at the table matters in China, he said.

“There’s a really cool saying, ‘jiyaung’,” MacEwen explained. “Basically, what it means is ‘I’ve heard a lot about you. In fact, you’re probably famous, and for a very long time, I’ve been really interested to meet you; and finally, after all this time, it’s my great honour to meet you.’”

It’s a phrase he said he leaned on heavily, upon finally emerging from his hotel on Jan. 2nd, and beginning a 10-city tour across the country via high-speed rail and other transport.

He found the buses and rail stations were packed, airports were still flying full capacity inside the country and even restaurants were just as busy as usual.

“Business is booming,” he said.

Last year, China accounted for US$54.2 million of Ballard’s roughly US$103.8 million in revenues, with Europe at US$36.4 million.

MacEwen said he’s hopeful the European market will grow in size to match China, with each comprising about 40 per cent of total sales.

The remaining 20 per cent of sales will be in North America, mainly California where the state government has issued strict dictums to clean up emissions from its heavy-duty vehicle market.

© Provided by Driving.ca ballard-cells0428

Canada, meanwhile, a longtime centre of research for hydrogen fuel cells technology and also a top 10 global producer of hydrogen, doesn’t figure as a huge market for Ballard yet.

That could change, of course.

In December, the federal government released a national hydrogen strategy that emphasizes increasing production of blue hydrogen, which is created using fossil fuels but the emissions are captured and stored, or reused.

Josipa Petrunic, president of the Canadian Urban Transit Research and Innovation Consortium, said there’s no doubt that hydrogen fuel cell buses will play a role in certain communities in the country.

For buses that travel hundreds of kilometres without returning to the depot, and only have a couple of minutes to charge up when they do return, a lithium-ion battery vehicle can’t fulfill the function, Petrunic said.

“A fuel cell bus carries enough hydrogen to furnish the bus with energy for four-, five- six-hundred kilometres,” she said. “And so you’re kind of at a diesel bus comparison, but the problem is it’s three times the price and somebody’s got to build all the hydrogen.”

Petrunic added that across Canada, and other parts of the world, hydrogen production is increasing. As the scale of the market grows, the costs for hydrogen and also operating a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle are expected to decline.

Rob Hales, an equity analyst for Morningstar who covers Johnson Mathey, one of many companies now dabbling in hydrogen fuel cell technology, said more than 30 countries including some of the largest economies, are looking at hydrogen energy as a way to reduce carbon emissions.

Those companies are putting billions of dollars toward increasing production and research — all of which should lower the cost, he said.

Green hydrogen, the least carbon intensive, produced with renewable energy, is still very price prohibitive, he said.

“It doesn’t make sense right now economically,” said Hales. “It’s just a matter of: will it make sense in the future if we throw enough money at it because that’s what we want for the environmental benefits?”

 Provided by Driving.ca ballard2-0428

In any case, it’s clear that there are plenty of opportunities for Ballard. In March, the company announced it would deliver six hydrogen fuel cells to Calgary-based Canadian Pacific Rail. The dollar value of the deal was too small to be material, and never disclosed.

Nonetheless, Ballard projects that the rail market could be worth $4 billion by 2030, and that nearly diesel powered locomotive could easily be converted to hydrogen fuel cell technology.

In April, the company announced that Sierra Energy Corp., a private company in California, plans to issue a purchase order for Ballard fuel cells later this year for a zero emission switching locomotive, partially funded by a US$4 million grant from a state energy agency.

The rail business would be the smallest of what Ballard estimates is a US$130 billion market for its technology by 2030, with trucks comprising the largest chunk at US$100 billion and buses and marine vessels splitting the remainder.

Bank of Montreal analysts pegged the truck market at US$85 million in a report earlier this year, and wrote that Ballard already has a leading market share in China, Europe and North America. It expects several years of losses while it ramps up for future growth, and expects government policies to support growth.

MacEwen estimated the company has invested $25 million in the past 18 months in expanding its capacity in Burnaby to produce membrane electrode assembly, fuel cell stacks and modules and currently has around 800 employees.

Even as it waits for the growth, the company’s imprint on Vancouver is obvious: there’s a small cluster of hydrogen-related companies in the city, many founded by former Ballard engineers or spun off from the company.

“Many of us have been around this for 20 years talking about the opportunity and future of driving a fuel cell car,” said MacEwen. “We’re now doing it.”

In Jaffa, gentrification stokes discord as Arabs pushed out


TEL AVIV, Israel — A turreted former Catholic girl's school in Jaffa is being transformed into an exclusive Soho House club. Around the corner, a historic ex-convent is now a five-star hotel. Across the street, the glittering towers of the Andromeda Hill luxury residences overlook the Mediterranean.

But farther down Yefet Street, working class Arabs of Jaffa's Ajami neighbourhood face a starkly different reality. With housing prices out of reach, discontent over the city's rapid transformation into a bastion for Israel's ultra-wealthy is reaching a boiling point. The crisis has taken on nationalistic overtones, with some Arab residents accusing the government of trying to push them out to make way for Jews.

“Ninety per cent of people here barely make a living, from hand to mouth, they don’t have enough to eat," said Jaffa resident Ibrahim Tartir. "For a young man looking to get married, it’s 5,000, 6,000 shekels ($1,800) for rent, not including water and electricity and the rest. How much does he earn? 6,000 a month. How can he live?”

Jaffa, the historic port at the core of the greater Tel Aviv metropolis, is home to around 20,000 Arab residents, remnants of the Palestinian population that lived there before Israel’s establishment in 1948. The district has undergone extensive gentrification in recent decades with government encouragement.

That trend has accelerated in the past several years as real estate prices have skyrocketed amid surging demand. As wealthy Israelis and foreigners move from other areas of Tel Aviv into Jaffa, its mostly working-class Arab residents have been pushed out. This has added ethnic tensions to an economic phenomenon familiar in other cities around the world.

“We’re reaching a point where Arab people can’t buy houses unless they are very rich,” said Youssef Masharawi, a Jaffa native and professor of physical therapy at Tel Aviv University. He said young Arabs in Jaffa have nowhere to go, unable to afford to start families in their hometown and facing discrimination in nearby Israeli cities with overwhelmingly Jewish populations.

The stress is starting to reach a breaking point.

Long smouldering tensions erupted last week after the rabbi and director of a pre-military religious seminary in the predominantly Arab neighbourhood of Ajami were assaulted by two Arab residents while visiting an apartment for sale.

Moshe Schendowich, chief executive of the Meirim B’Yafo seminary, was injured in the incident. He said that while there have been some disagreements with Arab neighbours, those conflicts "should be solved with speech, with talking, not with violence.”

Although the seminary says it isn’t out to push anyone out, some residents view it with suspicion. Its head rabbi is a former West Bank settler and was formally affiliated with Ateret Cohanim, a group that takes over Arab properties in Jerusalem to make way for Jewish settlers. The yeshiva’s website says its aim is to “strengthen Jewish identity and the voice of the Torah, (and) strengthen communities” in Jaffa.

The incident ignited an already flammable situation. In the days following, Arab residents and Jewish supporters faced off against Jewish nationalist counter-protesters. The demonstrations devolved into clashes with police.

Tel Aviv-Jaffa Mayor Ron Huldai condemned the violence but insisted “what we are seeing is not a nationalist conflict between Jews and Arabs.


“It is the product of ongoing frustration of a whole generation of Jaffans that can’t continue to live there,” he said.

But in Israel, nationalist conflict is never far away.

Before Israel's establishment in 1948, Jaffa was a predominantly Arab city of some 100,000 people. During the war surrounding Israel's creation, tens of thousands of Palestinian residents fled or were forced from their homes.

Under a 1950 absentee property law, the new Israeli government confiscated thousands of empty properties and handed them to state-run public housing companies. Many of the Palestinians who remained in Jaffa ended up in these properties.

Since 2011, the Israeli government has pushed to sell off these properties to develop more housing. Although occupants are given an opportunity to buy these homes, the prices are often too high, forcing many longtime residents to move out.

Amidar, a public housing company that manages the buildings, said there is no intention to expel people. "The properties are offered for sale first to tenants at a significant discount and with professional guidance" and most are purchased by residents, it said.

Even with generous terms, however, many low-income residents cannot afford to buy their homes. Many properties have been bought up by developers, resulting in low-income Arab residents being forced out.

On Wednesday, Tel Aviv City Hall announced that it would be opening registration for an affordable housing lottery for 28 units in Jaffa for Arab residents.

“In addition to the project, approval has been granted for a public housing renewal program in Jaffa’s Ajami neighbourhood,” city hall said in a statement. “The program will enable 100 existing tenants to remain in renovated properties while increasing supply by a further 200 apartments.”

Ravit Hananel, a professor of urban policy at Tel Aviv University, said the Israeli government has been ridding itself of public housing since the 1980s as it abandoned the country's socialist roots and adopted neo-liberal, capitalist policies.

She said the government pledged to address housing issues after mass social justice protests in 2011. But she said the response has been to push for more privatization, further hurting the disadvantaged.

While this is the case across the country, Jaffa’s rapid gentrification is not simply a case of rich against poor, said Abed Abou Shhadeh, a Tel Aviv city councilman from Jaffa.

“It has a national background behind it, and it’s part of the conflict,” said Abou Shhadeh.

While some try to depoliticize the issue, he said "it’s more than a class war. There’s a very deep rooted political tension happening at the same time, which makes it much more difficult to come with a fair and equal solution.”

Organizers of a recent protest wrote on Facebook that the “economic expulsion and gentrification that’s pushing the Arab community — and also poor Jewish residents — out of the city for the sake of real estate deals continues what was started in 1948." Graffiti on city walls say in Hebrew and Arabic: “Jaffa is not for sale.”

Masharawi, the Jaffa-born professor, called for the construction of affordable housing for young Arabs in Jaffa. He said he was determined to stand his ground against the rising tide of change.

“I will never leave Jaffa even if I am going to die within a small room in the end," he said. “This is my home, my house, my way of life.”

Ilan Ben Zion, The Associated Press

An investor in the startup that fired its CEO after he microdosed LSD at work reportedly sold roughly $92 million in shares before the ousting

awilliams@insider.com (Annabelle Williams) 

4/28/2021

© Iterable Iterable co-founder Justin Zhu Iterable

Index Ventures recently sold about half its shares in Iterable, The Information reported.

The sale, to Silver Lake Partners, came before Iterable's CEO was fired for LSD use while at work.

Two investors on the board previously had concerns about the CEO's leadership, The Information reported..

Prior to marketing startup Iterable firing its CEO, Justin Zhu, this week, a major investor sold roughly $92 million of its shares in the company, The Information's Kate Clark reported Wednesday.

Iterable, founded in 2013 by Zhu and Andrew Boni, made headlines this week after Bloomberg reported that its CEO had been fired for violating company policy. Zhu told Bloomberg he had used LSD while at work in an effort to boost his focus and creativity, taking a small dose of the drug in a practice commonly known as microdosing before an investor meeting in 2019. Boni is taking over the top job as a result of Zhu's departure.

The new report from The Information, arriving a day after the news of the CEO ousting, sheds light on broader investor concern of the CEO's leadership that could extend beyond his use of LSD.

The investor, Index Ventures, sold roughly 50% of its shares in the marketing startup to Silver Lake Partners, which took the investor's board seat as a result, according to the report. The sale happened in early April, according to The Information, just weeks prior to Zhu's ousting.

While it's not clear what exactly happened at that investor meeting in 2019, The Information reports two investors, Murat Bicer at VC firm CRV, and Index Ventures' Shardul Shah, who departed the board as a result of the share sale, had previously been unhappy with Zhu's leadership of the startup.

The Information reports the CEO had also voiced plans to be more vocal about the issue of racism against Asian Americans in the US, which has seen a rise in hate crimes. Zhu is Chinese, and helped create Stand With Asian Americans, a group of hundreds of Asian American and Pacific Islander business leaders who are spending $10 million in an effort to combat discrimination.

In a Monday vote, three board members, including co-founder Boni, voted to remove Zhu, The Information reported, with his drug use being listed as the main reason.

Iterable, Index Ventures, Silver Lake Partners, CRV, and Zhu did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the sale of Index Venture's shares and the circumstances surrounding it.

Iterable, based in San Francisco, was most recently valued at $2.1 billion, according to PitchBook.

Zhu may be the first Silicon Valley CEO fired for using LSD, an increasingly common trend where users take small amounts of the psychedelic drug in an effort to experience purported beneficial side effects. Emojibator cofounder and CEO Joe Vela told Insider in 2020 that psychedelics helped him solve problems at work: "Even a microdose can flip the prospect of a long, boring task into one that is exhilarating," he said.

While some in Silicon Valley, including Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, have embraced LSD and spoken positively about their experiences with it, the drug remains illegal in the US.

 LSD

THE BOSSES STATE IS THE BIGGEST SCAB
Commons expected to approve back-to-work legislation to reopen Port of Montreal

OTTAWA — The House of Commons was expected in the wee hours Thursday to approve legislation to put an end to a strike that has shut down one of Canada's busiest ports.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Operations at the Port of Montreal, through which millions of tonnes of goods flow, came to a halt after 1,150 dockworkers began a strike Monday morning.

Labour Minister Filomena Tassi said if the strike is allowed to drag on it would cost the economy $40 million to $100 million per week, directly threaten 19,000 other jobs and indirectly affect hundreds of thousands of jobs across the country.

And she said it's a matter of life and death because the strike has left essential medical supplies and pharmaceuticals sitting in shipping containers as the COVID-19 pandemic rages.

"I cannot impress upon you enough, this situation is dire," she said Wednesday in the Commons, where debate on the bill was expected to continue past midnight before finally being put to a vote.

"The supply chains are critical and we have to keep goods moving. And this is really a situation where, for the health and safety of Canadians and the economy, we must take this action."

Tassi said the back-to-work legislation is a last resort after more than two years of efforts to find a negotiated solution failed.

Workers at the port have been without a contract since December 2018 and started to refuse overtime and weekend work earlier this month.

The union previously held a 10-day strike in August.

The Canadian Union of Public Employees, which represents the dockworkers, said the current dispute was sparked by their employer, the Maritime Employers Association, imposing extended workday hours without consulting workers.

Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-Francois Blanchet said the strike could be called off immediately if the federal government ordered the employers association to cancel the work schedule changes.

"Take your damn phone, call them," he said.

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh said the bill undermines the right to collective bargaining and will do long-term damage to relations between dockworkers and their employer that will cause tensions down the road.

The government has also been criticized by the Conservatives for not doing enough to avert the strike. But leader Erin O'Toole has said his party will support the legislation because of the potential damage a prolonged strike could cause Canada's economy.

Manitoba Conservative MP Dan Mazier said he was "devastated" that government inaction had led to the strike. Nevertheless, he said putting an end to it is necessary to give assurance to farmers that they'll receive needed shipments of seeds and fertilizer as they start planting their crops.

"I am standing up for jobs, I'm standing up for our economy and I'm standing up for my country," he told the Commons.

Conservatives abstained Wednesday on a vote to impose closure on debate over a motion setting out the procedural steps for fast-tracking the back-to-work bill.

That allowed the closure motion to pass by a vote of 152-58, paving the way for hours of debate on the procedural motion and, eventually, on the bill itself.

The Senate, which is currently adjourned, has been recalled to deal with the bill on Friday.

The legislation would require dockworkers to return to work immediately after the bill receives royal assent.

It would extend their previous collective agreement until a new one is negotiated and prohibit any strikes or lockouts in the meantime. If negotiations fail again, the bill would impose a mediator-arbitrator on both parties

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 28, 2021.

Joan Bryden, The Canadian Press

A conservative ETF designed to boycott 'hostile' companies like Disney and Nike that support the 'liberal agenda' has beaten the broader market since Biden took office

SO DID WALL ST. FOR THE PAST 100 DAYS

egraffeo@businessinsider.com (Emily Graffeo) 12 hrs ago

Like15 Comment© Jamie Squire/Getty Image Jamie Squire/Getty Image

The American Conservative Values ETF attempts to track the market while also boycotting "liberal" companies.

The fund has outperformed the S&P 500 since Biden's inauguration.

The ETF's founder says companies that engage in political activity negatively impact shareholder returns.

An exchange-traded fund designed to track the broader market while also boycotting companies that outwardly support left-wing causes has beaten the S&P 500 since president Joe Biden took office.

The American Conservative Values ETF ($ACVF) has gained 9.1% since January 20, slightly outperforming the S&P 500's 8.7% gain. It has about $7 million in assets under management, according to Bloomberg data.

The fund has a basket of large cap US equities, but also boycotts "hostile" companies that are deemed to be too politically active and in support of "the liberal agenda.

Among the list of boycotted companies are Twitter, Nike, Disney, Goldman Sachs, Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Delta Airlines.

Bill Flaig, founder and CEO of Ridgeline Research, the investment advisor to the American Conservative Values ETF, told Insider he launched the fund in late October because he wanted to give politically conservative investors something they could feel good about investing in and not feel that "their dollars are going to the worst offending, most egregious liberal companies."

"Our goal is to balance the advocacy of boycotting and still maintain predictable, large cap performance," Flaig said.

The ACFV website states the investment thesis of the fund: "Our ETF is based on the conviction that politically active companies negatively impact their shareholder returns, as well as supporting issues and causes which conflict with our conservative political beliefs and values."

Flaig told Insider that he thinks companies that are participating in political activities are misallocating shareholder resources and not maximizing shareholder value. He said this could even apply to companies that are too engaged in conservative political activities, but the fund is focused on catering specifically to conservative investors.

Ridgeline Research doesn't have explicit numerical data that supports the thesis that politically active companies negatively impact shareholder returns.

"We don't have a historical back test for that, and it's hard to prove because a company could still be doing well that's allocating shareholder resources, they just would be doing better if they hadn't done it," Flaig said.

The fund comes as a growing number of corporations begin to engage in political activities or speak on partisan issues. After Georgia signed a new voting bill into law that changed nearly all aspects of voting and elections in the state, Coca-Cola said in a statement that they were "disappointed in the outcome of the Georgia voting legislation." Meanwhile Delta CEO Ed Basitan said the bill was "unacceptable and does not match Delta's values."

Read more: Goldman Sachs names 19 crypto-exposed stocks that have piggybacked on bitcoin's surge to achieve returns that have nearly quadrupled the S&P 500

Flaig said the political engagement from Delta and Coke was taking away from shareholder values.

"I can't see how it would have helped their shareholders' value, or their businesses actually. And I think they did get internal pushback and pushback from their boards, and we did see them backtrack in a certain sense. So I think that kind of illustrates the danger of companies that are overly political," he said.

Flaig added that conservatives are more "quiet", and he thinks that corporate America has come to the conclusion it can "pander progressive customers without alienating their conservative customers." He wants the American Conservative Values ETF to be a place for conservative investors to park their money with peace of mind that they are not supporting the "worst of the worst" and the "most hostile" companies.

One of the most important issues to Ridgeline is protecting first and second amendment rights.

He said tech companies including Apple, Google, and Facebook have been "hostile to conservatives," and free speech, though he admitted it's difficult to quantify that, and a lot of the decisions on whether a company is too liberal to be in the fund are subjective.

One of the more quantifiable measures of "hostility" is political contributions by companies and senior employees to liberal causes, charities, candidates, and advocacy groups. In the fund's SEC filings, Ridgeline lists Planned Parenthood, the Center for American Progress, and the Courage to Change PAC as examples of "liberal advocacy groups.

The fund's top holding is Microsoft, with a 6.5% weight. Flaig said that although Microsoft is not "inherently conservative," it's not the "worst offender of the larger technology companies." Microsoft is the second largest company in the S&P 500.

"Through the lens of delivering our investment objective, we can't boycott every single technology company and maintain predictable performance to the S&P 500. So we do own companies like Microsoft that have historically been hostile to conservative values," he said.

Flaig added that it would be ideal if the ETF's advocacy changed the behavior of the corporations, but that is a secondary objective of the fund.

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

Feds Arrest Alleged Launderer Of Nearly $336 Million In Bitcoin After 10 Year Hunt

BY DOUGLAS CHARLES

APRIL 28, 2021



PIXABAY


After an over 10 year investigation, U.S. authorities arrested the alleged launderer of nearly $336 million in Bitcoin, Roman Sterlingov, the administrator of the anonymizing system Bitcoin Fog.

Sterlingov, a citizen of Russia and Sweden, was arrested this week in Los Angeles on charges of operating an unlicensed money transmitting business, laundering of monetary instruments, and money transmission without a license, according to court documents.

He stands accused of laundering more than 1.2 million bitcoins – worth $336 million at the times of the payments – taking commissions on those transactions of 2 to 2.5 percent, reports Wired.


In a twisted bit of irony, despite his service allowing its users to blend their transactions with those of others to prevent anyone examining the Bitcoin blockchain from tracing the payments, Sterlingov was caught by the IRS using the 2011 transactions he allegedly used to set up Bitcoin Fog’s server hosting.


Of the $336 million the complaint accuses Bitcoin Fog of laundering, at least $78 million passed through the service to various narcotics-selling dark web markets like the Silk Road, Agora, and AlphaBay over the years that followed. The IRS also appears to have used undercover agents in 2019 to transact with Bitcoin Fog, in one case sending messages to Bitcoin Fog’s administrator that explicitly stated that they hoped to launder proceeds from selling ecstasy. Bitcoin Fog completed that user’s transactions without a response.

Most remarkable, however, is the IRS’s account of tracking down Sterlingov using the very same sort of blockchain analysis that his own service was meant to defeat. The complaint outlines how Sterlingov allegedly paid for the server hosting of Bitcoin Fog at one point in 2011 using the now-defunct digital currency Liberty Reserve.

“While the identity of a Bitcoin address owner is generally anonymous (unless the owner opts to make the information publicly available), law enforcement can often identify the owner of a particular Bitcoin address by analyzing the blockchain,” IRS Criminal Investigation Special Agent Devon Beckett wrote in an affadvit.

As Wired points out, one of the supposed benefits of Bitcoin is being able to use it for making anonymous, untraceable transactions. So much for that.

The blockchain’s ledger of all Bitcoin transactions since the cryptocurrency’s creation has often instead served as a means for law enforcement to trace even years-old transactions.

The arrest of Bitcoin Fog’s administrator based on blockchain analysis represents just how far back in time investigators can reach with those “follow the money” techniques, says Sarah Meiklejohn, a computer scientist at University College of London whose work pioneered Bitcoin-tracing techniques in 2013. “With blockchain analytics the thing we say over and over is that all this activity is on this ledger forever, and if you did something bad 10 years ago you can be caught and arrested for it today,” says Meiklejohn. “The fact that they’re pulling up those transactions is really significant.”


Interestingly, despite Sterlingov’s arrest, Bitcoin Fog is currently still online.

Speculation is that law enforcement has taken over the service as it continues its investigation. However, both the IRS and the Department of Justice declined to comment on that issue, so make your own assumptions.

Exclusive: Government, industry push bitcoin regulation to fight ransomware scourge

By Joseph Menn and John Shiffman 

4/28/2021

© Reuters/Kacper Pempel Hooded man holds laptop computer as blue screen with an exclamation mark is projected on him in this illustration picture

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Government and industry officials confronting an epidemic of ransomware, where hackers freeze the computers of a target and demand a payoff, are zeroing in on cryptocurrency regulation as the key to combating the scourge, sources familiar with the work of a public-private task force said.

In a report on Thursday, the panel of experts is expected to call for far more aggressive tracking of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. While those have won greater acceptance among investors over the past year, they remain the lifeblood of ransomware operators and other criminals who face little risk of prosecution in much of the world.

Ransomware gangs collected almost $350 million last year, up threefold from 2019, two members of the task force wrote this week. Companies, government agencies, hospitals and school systems are among the victims of ransomware groups, some of which U.S. officials say have friendly relations with nation-states including North Korea and Russia.

"There’s a lot more that can be done to constrain the abuse of these pretty amazing technologies," said Philip Reiner, chief executive of the Institute for Security and Technology, who led the Ransomware Task Force. He declined to comment on the report before its release.

Just a week ago, the U.S. Department of Justice established a government group on ransomware. Central bank regulators and financial crime investigators worldwide are also debating if and how cryptocurrencies should be regulated.

The new rules proposed by the public-private panel, some of which would need Congressional action, are mostly aimed at piercing the anonymity of cryptocurrency transactions, the sources said. If implemented, they could temper enthusiasm among those who see the cryptocurrencies as a refuge from national monetary policies and government oversight of individuals' financial activities, having surged past $1 trillion in total capitalization.

The task force included representatives from the FBI and the United States Secret Service as well as major tech and security companies. It will recommend steps such as extending “know-your-customer” regulations to currency exchanges; imposing tougher licensing requirements for those processing cryptocurrency; and extending money-laundering rules to facilities such as kiosks for converting currency.

It also calls for the creation of a special team of experts within the Justice Department to facilitate seizures of cryptocurrency, a process currently fraught with logistical and legal challenges.

Some of the ideas echo those proposed by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, which would expand disclosure rules for transactions worth more than $10,000.

Federal investigators said a proposal to register accounts would be especially helpful for identifying drug smugglers, human traffickers and terrorists as well as ransomware groups.

"That would be huge," said a senior Homeland Security Official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss emerging policy proposals. "This is a world that was created exactly to be anonymous, but at some point, you have to give up something to make sure everyone's safe."

Governments are already using the blockchain ledger that documents all bitcoin transactions to bring some charges. Last week, authorities arrested a man in Los Angeles and accused him of laundering more than $300 million through a service that combines transactions from multiple cryptocurrency wallets to obscure who is paying whom.

Records from the U.S. Marshals Service show that more than $150 million in crypto assets were seized last year and offered to the public at auction. Last week, the Marshals Service signed a $4.5 million deal with BitGo, a California-based exchange, to hold and sell more forfeited cryptocurrency.

But many of the exchanges, which conduct the critical operation of turning cryptocurrency into dollars or other widely accepted currencies, are in countries outside the reach of U.S. regulators.

The Institute for Security and Technology's Reiner said that international cooperation will be critical, and that pressure could be brought by allies with similar regulations, which could help push exchanges into countries where Americans will hesitate to send their funds.

"However much crypto markets think they have created their own networks, they still rely on existing financial markets," Reiner said.

(Reporting by Joseph Menn in San Francisco and John Shiffman in Washington; Editing by Jonathan Weber and Grant McCool