#This Tumblr user has been found executed by site policy | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

appro880 · 6 years ago

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This week, Automattic, which owns WordPress, took over Tumblr for an undisclosed amount and brought on about 200 staffers. (Scott Eells/Bloomberg) By Rachel Siegel August 13 Tumblr, the onetime darling of social media, sold for a whopping $1.1 billion in 2013. On Monday, in perhaps the latest mark of its decline, the site was reportedly bought for just $3 million. Twitter didn’t miss a beat in pointing out that Tumblr’s reported sales price was less than that of this bluefin tuna. BuzzFeed propped up a list of seven condos you can buy in New York for the same price as Tumblr. So how did this happen? How did Tumblr — once a booming online start-up — get swallowed up by the owner of WordPress, another blogging giant and Tumblr’s former rival? Let’s start with Tumblr’s early days. The site launched in 2007 under David Karp, who dropped out of high school at age 15 and got Tumblr up and running when he was 20. In a 2011 interview, Karp said he had wanted to set up a blog but didn’t think the traditional, long-form formats like WordPress were the right fit. [Verizon sells early social-media darling Tumblr] “I had all these cool videos, links and projects that I wanted to put out there, and I had a really hard time doing it,” Karp told .net magazine in 2011. “I wanted to do something different. I was determined not to compete with WordPress.” The site picked up steam as popular bloggers and whole universities moved content over to Tumblr. Musicians, photographers and writers followed suit. At the start of 2010, Tumblr was landing 100 million impressions every month, according to Karp’s 2011 interview. By the end of the year, it had reached 3 billion. The platform also caught on in the fashion world, and Tumblr eventually hired a fashion director and began sending bloggers to high-profile events like New York Fashion Week. The popularity paid off. In 2013, Yahoo bought Tumblr for $1.1 billion. But Yahoo ultimately wrote off much of Tumblr’s value. Verizon took over Tumblr in 2017 when it acquired Yahoo. Then, this week, Automattic, which owns WordPress, took over Tumblr for an undisclosed amount and brought on about 200 staffers. Automattic said it would not disclose terms of the deal any further. Automattic chief executive Matt Mullenweg told the Wall Street Journal that he has long been a Tumblr user and sees the site as complementary to WordPress. “It’s just fun,” Mullenweg said of Tumblr. “We’re not going to change any of that.” [Before Tumblr announced plan to ban adult content, it was a safe space for exploring identity] Tumblr struggled to keep pace with other social media giants such as Twitter, Facebook and Reddit. But a 2018 policy change alienated many of its users and longtime supporters. Last December, Tumblr announced a nudity ban that included photos, videos and GIFs of genitalia and female nipples, as well as any visual depictions of sex acts. At the time, chief executive Jeff D’Onofrio wrote that “there are no shortage of sites on the internet that feature adult content. We will leave it to them and focus our efforts on creating the most welcoming environment possible for our community.” Until the ban, sex-focused subcultures and pornography had been tacitly allowed on the site. One BuzzFeed reporter estimated that there were hundreds of thousands of blogs that would be shut down, plus millions of individual posts containing adult content. (Mullenweg told the Journal that his company plans to keep the ban in place.) As The Washington Post’s Abby Ohlheiser wrote last year, Tumblr had long been considered a safe space for exploring identity. But some creators said Tumblr’s ban eliminated a place where LGBT communities and other people with marginalized gender and sexual identities found support. “It was a safe space for me to explore things online that I would not necessarily want to try [in] real life, where that might not be safe realistically,” one user, who called himself Mutabear on Tumblr and asked not to be named for fear of professional repercussions, told Ohlheiser. “More importantly, it was a way for me to connect with other like-minded people.” Mutabear told his followers he was leaving the site after the ban announcement. If last year’s ban added to Tumblr’s decline, Monday’s sale was the latest kick. After Axios editor Dan Primack reported that Tumblr sold for less than $3 million, one Twitter user quipped that “Tumblr’s porn blogs could have literally had a GoFundMe to buy the entire platform.” “I am extremely upset that no one told us Tumblr was for sale for an amount we could have Kickstarted,” said another. Granted, not everyone was sold. Said another: “The most interesting thing about the Tumblr acquisition is that everyone on Twitter apparently has more than [$3 million] laying around.”

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kyloren · 7 years ago

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Man I just wanna enjoy making gifs and graphics and Tumblr does this c0pyright bs stuff :////

I feel your plight, I really do, but this is more than just copyright violation fiasco, or as people started calling it the snappening aka blogpocolyspe aka fuck everything, let’s move to Pillowfort.

First of all, let’s examine why what’s happening is happening: Blog are being deleted because of DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) violations — supposedly, people get take down notices via email with a three strike policy, but I’ve heard some blogs were terminated without warning. Agency sites have been using a third-party software, Okularity [ Our entire team is based in Los Angeles, California. We’ve spent over seven years perfecting software designed to accurately and reliably find, match, and ultimately secure your likeness, images, photography, and video at little cost to you. We’re your image experts and we’re passionate about valuing your content and likeness as much as you do. ] which reserve-searches images and identifies edits on tumblr, which are then taken down by staff and results in blog termination as a way of tumblr to protect itself from getting bombarded with copyright infringement lawsuits.

Second of all, let’s examine why photographers and agencies are filling copyright complaints. We all raise arms when people slight artists and steal their work, when gifs made by gifmakers are ‘found on google’ and reposted, when people plagiarise fanfiction — these are infringements on our intellectual property. Logic stands, we should also understand and care why agencies file copyright complaints; they are protecting their livelihoods. (Moral grey area of how paparazzi photos in themselves are a violation of privacy aside.) Except, we clearly don’t care. Why? Because it doesn’t concern us directly. These photographers are abstract concepts which threaten our blogs and their existence, so we choose not to give to craps about them. Which is fair, and someone pointed out it’s hypocritical, but it’s more complicated than that. There are no good answers to this part of the argument. At one hand, imagine if you were one of these photographers and your livelihood was infringed upon like this. On the other hand, there’s a great big fucking difference between artists demanding big companies stop exploiting them and stealing their ideas; and blogs being terminated because tumblr is afraid of loosing money to lawsuits. It’s an underdog scenario, and we’re the underdogs, clearly rooting for ourselves.

(TL;DR: Copyright laws are a fucking nightmare. We both need them and detest them because they can be exploited by entities with deep pockets. Don’t come @ me, but Copyright Laws of South Korea are the fucking worst and easily exploitable and that’s the tea.)

Third of all, there have been arguments that pictures that underwent editing change — change of dimensions, colouring, brightness, etc. — should be reviewed as transformative works and be protected by copyright same as gifs and YouTube videos are. My answer is this: Don’t ask me this, I have no idea. I’m a physicist, not a lawyer, much less one who specialises in copyright laws. Someone more knowledgeable than me needs to address this issue.

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s talk about the thing I did want to talk about: Tumblr Staff.

Again, it’s obvious why tumblr is taking such firm action with these copyright violation notices than it does with anything else people on this platform have been bombarding them about for eons — MONEY. Lawsuits cost money and tumblr ain’t about that life.

This platform is riddled with white supremacists, pedophiles, porn blogs, and a variety of other Undesirables #1, who do way more damage to the platform in general, but they don’t cost tumblr the company anything so they are sleeping on them.

Not to mention the variety of shitty things about this app in general: from the glitches to the ineffective privacy settings, from the goddamn data-mining to the old urls being kept by non-active blogs. General upkeep on tumblr is very poor, -100000000/10, would not recommend.

Now, one can argue that one should dismarry the staff from the parent company. Maybe tumblr the platform is The Hobbit Trilogy; maybe Yahoo and Oath is the collective studio presence of Warner Bros., New Line Cinema, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, WingNut Film, The Saul Zaents Company, and even, ugh, The Weinstein Company; maybe the staff is Peter Jackson of this; maybe we’re all are just New Zealanders of this affair, and it will all end as badly for as The Hobbit Law had for New Zealand. Maybe I’m fucking reaching with my analogy. Who knows? Certainly not me.

[update: I’m not shading Peter Jackson, I’m shading the studios involved in the Hobbit movies. Peter Jackson fought to keep production in New Zealand, but the studios ultimately fucked New Zealanders over. The great The Hobbit issue isn’t about Peter Jackson, it’s about big companies throwing their weight around and profiting more out of exploitations of others.]

And why is that? Oh, yeah, because I’m not the goddamn staff. 99% of us aren’t. Everything that I say or you read by other bloggers isn’t 100% of the situation because we don’t know the full situation. Everything you read above and will see below I have extrapolated from my own research into the current situation, but again, I’m not the The Eye of Sauron, I don’t know everything. And why is that? Because the staff hasn’t released a fucking statement, hasn’t told us anything, it has just been turning this hellsite into the last 15 minutes of Infinity War and sowing mass-panic.

Now, not for me to tell @staff how to run their platform — except, no, I’m a user of this platform, and I’m issuing a complaint.

I admin a couple of discord servers and whenever we do anything, we put out announcements that we changed thing A and did thing B. If people are dissatisfied, they tell us their concerns and if they are reasonable, we change thing B to thing C to satisfy them. Now, tumblr is hella of a lot bigger than discord server of 300+ members, but at the same time, the staff isn’t composed of three admins and a handful of mods. My point is: Transparency is paramount. Even as an administrator you do things that people won’t like, you gotta go and tell them you’re doing them so they’ll be aware of what the fuck is going on.

Ignorance breeds fear which breeds mass-panic. And what do we have currently on tumblr? A fucking epidemic of fear.

So tumblr is might be threaten with copyright infringement lawsuits, so they are taking actions to protect themselves from that by issuing copyright violation notices and terminating blogs. Okay, we don’t like it, but even if we don’t, tumblr should have told us about it instead of acting like a ghoul in the night, snatching blogs out of their cribs, and terminating them.

Tumblr should have issued a statement telling us what was happening, what should we do and how can we avoid termination, and what we should do to correct our behaviour and avoid being red-flagged. Generally, idk, tell us what the fuck they have been doing and why. Currently, all the information circling tumblr is gathered post-fact after blogs have been terminated and panic has spread. But what do I know? I’m just a dumbass with a computer, same as most of us. If we were any different, we’d be dumbasses on a mobile and on Twitter instead.

TL;DR: Ultimately, we’re being fucked over. This isn’t just about the latest copyright-prompted fiasco — there has been a long standing problem of how staff and the cooprorate overlords keep treating us like shit and we. keep. taking. it. It’s as if this is a humiliation, revenge-fantasy-fulfillment fic, but we’re the ones revenge is being executed upon.

#the snappening #previously @stark #*#anonymous #ask box

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bbnnfeed-blog · 6 years ago

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El Arte de la Blockchain Auditoria del Proyecto: Entrevista Destacada con Aaron Contorer de FP Complete

New Post has been published on https://bnn.io/news/art-blockchain-project-audit-feature-interview-fp-completes-aaron-contorer/?utm_source=Tumblr&utm_medium=socialpush&utm_campaign=SNAP

El Arte de la Blockchain Auditoria del Proyecto: Entrevista Destacada con Aaron Contorer de FP Complete

The rapid acceleration in the number of Blockchain projects launched has been well documented. According to the data gathering site, Statistica, the global blockchain technology market is predicted to reach $2.3 billion U.S. dollars by 2021.

One downside of this rapid advancement trajectory is the lack of proper due diligence with respect to project controls and protocol. Left unchecked these vulnerabilities can have a detrimental effect on the overall integrity and repute of the project.

FP Complete, an engineering company whose mission it is to create robust, maintainable, and high-performance server software has carved out a niche in terms of addressing this looming issue. Specializing in data security, system integration, regulatory compliance and data integrity, FP Complete is well regarded for its efforts in assisting numerous companies with the quality of their software products.

This year, Cardano, a fast-growing distributed computing platform that fuels the blockchain for the cryptocurrency ADA recently engaged FPComplete to serve as final auditor of IOHK’s (Cardano’s development team) work. Having completed the first audit in February of 2018, the team is now tasked with submitting monthly reports to the Cardano Foundation for review.

The ultimate aim of the foundation is to create a completely transparent model replete with enhanced engineering methods and coding standards for the Cardano platform.

Aaron Contorer

Blockchain Business News Network interviewed Aaron Contorer CEO of FB Complete at the May “Blockchain in Healthcare” workshop held in San Diego. Contorer is a former executive of Microsoft, where he worked as program manager for distributed systems and general manager of Visual C++, the leading software development tool at that time. He served as the full-time technology adviser to Bill Gates, and founded and ran the company’s Productivity Tools Team for complex software engineering projects. Here are some of the insights he shared from his talk with us about future of blockchain project audits and software controls:

Tell us a little bit about FP Complete and your journey there

AC: Sure. Let me start with the basics as my personal background might be relevant. I was Technology Advisor at Microsoft for Bill Gates and have been running or helping to run, software projects since the eighties. At Microsoft, I ran a lot of their network architecture services. I helped to design the backend of MSN back when it was a new family of online services. Later, I was in charge of a lot of their software engineering tools like Visual Studio and the tools that were used to write Windows, Office, and things like that. So, I am an engineering tools and network infrastructure guy [and have been] for a long time.

What led you to launch FB Complete?

AC: When I started FB Complete in 2012 our vision was to help drive the widespread adoption of better engineering tools and better engineering methods across the IT industry in cutting-edge organizations. We have about twenty-two people right now. We are hired by finance companies and life science companies primarily, to help them get their own software products done and secured and really turbocharge their IT and software engineering groups.

Talk to me about the intersection of your work with this emerging area of blockchain and specifically how that ties into broader advances in technology.

AC: Well, we are finding that blockchain clearly is going to be a very successful and important technology. But, a lot of the engineering that goes into actually building blockchain based systems is, to be honest with you, not up to speed. Right now, even without blockchain, you look at a lot of companies where security and reliability are important to what they do, and you find that there are security breaches, reliability failures, and outages [happening] pretty much every day and a giant one every few months that makes the front page.

Has blockchain made addressing these vulnerabilities more complicated?

AC: When we bring blockchain into this world, the standards for reliability go up. Blockchain is indelible, and it is public – that’s what’s so great about it. It’s math. It just always works. It always does what it is supposed to do. But, when you implement that math on a computer and use other computers to feed data into the blockchain and say ‘this is a transaction I would like to do, this is the record I would like to publish and permanently commit myself to – if those systems are unreliable or even worse have been broken into or compromised then that’s a problem.

You’re referring to the legacy systems, correct?

AC: Exactly. The IT systems that are being integrated now into blockchain are legacy [systems] that are typically not up to speed. We had already been working with companies to help them improve in fintech—in financial technology—their IT infrastructure and engineering. But, the story continues because we also have been brought in by multiple blockchain companies to assist them with the actual engineering of the blockchain itself.

So that’s where projects like Cardano come into the picture?

AC: Yes. We are the auditors for Cardano which is the world’s #4 cryptocurrency with several billion dollars in valuation. They brought us in as their technology auditors. The increasing trend we [see] these days in blockchain is auditing. And, that’s really—I think—the big news for us lately.

Can you describe the auditing process for us?

AC: Sure. The deal with auditing is—if you are going to trust a public infrastructure that you don’t own, can’t control, can’t fix or turn off, — if something’s wrong with it, you need to know that the infrastructure is good. Most blockchain systems are implemented by a fairly small number of people at very specific organizations. So, the question to ask as a user of blockchain—say a corporation that wants to put data on the blockchain is, does it work correctly? Can I trust it?

Why would a blockchain project want to conduct an audit?

AC: Blockchain organizations that want to establish a really high level of credibility and demonstrate trustworthiness for mission-critical things recognize the importance of bringing in auditors, like FP Complete. That is why I am so delighted that groups like Cardano are saying, let’s do a public audit. Let’s have somebody independently look at the technology and report on any [weak] areas they see so that they can be improved. I think that is a great approach. Not everyone is doing that yet. But, I think in the next year or two you’ll see a lot more auditing.

Where do you think we’ll be in terms of audits over the next 12 to 18 months?

AC: My greatest hope is that the quality bar rises to where it deserves to be for blockchain infrastructures and the legacy systems that are going to be linked to them. If there is a place where the scrutiny is maybe missing, it’s the legacy systems. I don’t think a lot of people understand how irrevocable and public blockchain data really is when comes to legacy systems pumping data into it.

Can you offer an example of what you’re talking about here?

AC: Here’s one: If I don’t have a really secure way to manage my digital keys, then I really shouldn’t put this data on the blockchain yet. If someone is able—by breaking into one of our computers—to start issuing large transactions with no one to stop them, this should be sewed and tightened up before launching real high-value transactions on a real public blockchain. I don’t think most people intuitively grasp how little of a safety net they have if they do the wrong thing on a public and indelible database.

Outside of your work with Cardano, what other sorts of projects are you guys keeping an eye on?

AC: Well, I’ll tell you, we have actually been hired by multiple other organizations to help them build new cryptocurrencies. So, we are really keeping an eye now on reusable infrastructure for efficiently building cryptocurrencies because the volume of them is just going to go up and up. Specifically, we have a special interest in custom cryptocurrencies and niche cryptocurrencies that are designed to meet the needs of specific markets whether that be asset-backed cryptocurrencies or ones with different governance rules or security policies.

Are there other areas you are keeping an eye on?

AC: Another area that has really gotten our attention is providence or supply chain tracking. I think a lot of people in blockchain still think it is mostly about moving money and don’t realize the enormous importance of being able to track the motion of physical assets. This is an incredibly important application of blockchain that will change how we do things. I think people should pay more attention to that because it is going to be huge.

Concluding thoughts?

Only this. I think that blockchain is a technology where so many smart people are coming together. [But,] sometimes there is a lack of pausing to ask, ‘what are the best practices?’ Or, has anyone figured out how to solve a very similar problem? What are the “gotchas” that we are going to run across? Let’s learn from that. Let’s stand on the shoulders of the giants who built the last generation of technology.

Michael Scott is a writer for the Blockchain News Network

#Blockchain

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mikemortgage · 6 years ago

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‘Necessity’: Those in US illegally push for license to drive

ALBION, N.Y. — Dairy farm worker Luis Jimenez gambles every time he drives without a license. Even a minor traffic stop could alert immigration agents that he is in the country illegally and lead to deportation.

But in the wide open spaces of upstate New York’s farm country, supermarkets and job sites are often too far away for walking, there’s not always somebody around to give you a ride, and catching a city bus or subway just isn’t an option.

“Necessity forces us to take a risk,” Jimenez said in Spanish as he drove home recently. “We have to work, we have to buy food. Sometimes we get sick and workers like me can’t drive to a hospital, can’t buy medicine. But I feel I need to take the risk so that my kids and my family can have a better life.”

In New York and elsewhere, the idea of extending new privileges to those without legal immigration status has been resisted. But a renewed push across the country to allow them to get driver’s licenses resonates strongly among those who make their living in the rural crop fields, dairy farms and fruit orchards where the need for everyday transportation can be the greatest.

Apple orchard worker Eladio Beltran, who is facing deportation after a traffic stop, says licenses also could alleviate the constant fear workers like him live under.

“We don’t feel safe,” Beltran said. “If you are in a vehicle and you see a cop, you know any time he can turn his lights on. And you end up arrested; you end up in Mexico.”

Immigrants and their advocates have already gotten access to such licenses in a dozen states including California, Colorado and Illinois, some of them accepting state tax returns as identification. They are now targeting roughly a half-dozen states where they see a friendlier political landscape this year. That includes Wisconsin and New Jersey, where Democratic governors succeeded Republicans, and New York, where Democrats now are in total control of the Legislature.

“Now there’s a new urgency to really try to get this done, and there is new political opportunity,” said Christine Neumann-Ortiz, executive director of Voces de la Frontera, an immigrant advocacy group based in Milwaukee.

The laws could give state-level protection to immigrants who fear more aggressive enforcement by federal immigration agents under the Trump administration. Bolstering those fears is the impending departure, announced over the weekend, of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen , who had been viewed as resistant to some of the harshest immigration measures supported by Trump and his aides.

Advocates say police would still be able to view drivers’ past infractions, but they say immigrants producing a valid license will be less likely to face further questions and contact with federal agents.

In New York, farmworkers make up only about 10,000 of the estimated 265,000 immigrants without legal documents expected to get driver’s licenses, according to the Fiscal Policy Institute. But they might get the most use out of licenses.

Ismael Castellanos is driven a mile daily from the home he shares with four other immigrant workers to the dairy farm where he cares for calves. Trips for a carton of milk or a dozen eggs can be more problematic, and pricey. The nearest grocery store is 8 miles away, and he pays people with cars between $30 and $40 per trip.

“You have to call the person and ask which afternoon he has off so he can drive you, so you do grocery shopping that day,” Castellanos said in Spanish.

Castellanos, Beltran and Jimenez spoke to The Associated Press on the condition that names of the farms where they work are not disclosed. They are part of a group called Alianza Agricola, which is lobbying for the license law in New York.

It’s unclear whether attitudes have changed much in New York since 2007, when then-Gov. Eliot Spitzer attempted to adopt such a license measure but was forced to back off amid withering political opposition. A poll from Siena College last month found New York residents still opposing the idea by almost 2 to 1.

State Sen. Daphne Jordan argues the law would lead to voter fraud, bank fraud and identity theft. The Albany-area Republican said an online petition she started found similarly strong opposition.

“If they want to stay here, then they should become citizens,” Jordan said. “We have a system in our country. And it’s there for a reason. And so just follow the system and be here legally, and that’s the answer to all of it.”

Advocates say the bill will help the state, as well as immigrants, thanks in part to additional revenue from car registrations and sales taxes. As immigrants register cars, they will buy insurance. They also point to a study that found states with license laws average lower traffic fatality rates, presumably because the immigrant drivers have passed state-administered driving exams.

“Not only does it protect the undocumented immigrant farmer who is harvesting our products, our agricultural products, but it protects society as a whole,” said sponsoring state Sen. Luis Sepulveda, a Bronx Democrat.

Beltran said he faced possible deportation after being stopped for speeding in 2014 as he was driving to buy bronchitis medicine for one of his daughters. The local police notified Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which said it administratively halted his immigration proceedings in 2016 on humanitarian grounds.

Then in 2017, local police stopped him for driving the wrong way down a one-way street, according to federal officials. Beltran said he was driving to a gas station in an unfamiliar town. Police called Customs and Border Patrol officers, who arrested Beltran because of his reentry after a 2008 deportation. His immigration case was reopened, leading to a hearing in Buffalo next month.

The 32-year-old father of four continues to work, but the hearing is on his mind. On a recent cool spring morning, he trimmed a neat row of apple trees, knowing he might not see them bear fruit.

“I am working today but days go by fast. Will I go back to my family after entering immigration court?” he said. “If I get deported, when will I see them again?”

——

Associated Press writer Deepti Hajela in New York contributed to this report.

from Financial Post http://bit.ly/2VuFidj via IFTTT Blogger Mortgage Tumblr Mortgage Evernote Mortgage Wordpress Mortgage href="https://www.diigo.com/user/gelsi11">Diigo Mortgage

#IFTTT #Financial Post

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mikemortgage · 6 years ago

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Gwyn Morgan: Talk about ‘collusion’: How foreign-backed anti-oil activists infiltrated Canada’s government

Canadians watching Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election might be tempted to find comfort in their certainty that such foreign interference could never happen here.

Except it already has. And while the Russian government at least denies interfering in American political affairs, the perpetrators who meddled in Canadian elections have publicly trumpeted their success in devising and executing their plan aimed at helping elect who they wanted.

This story has all the elements of a fiction novel. Unfortunately it’s real. Piece by meticulously researched piece, B.C.-based independent researcher Vivian Krause spent almost 10 years exposing the story. Every detail has been corroborated, including with American and Canadian tax records, together with documents and statements from the perpetrators themselves.

The story begins in 2008, when a group of radical American anti-fossil-fuel NGOs created their “Tar Sands Campaign Strategy 2.1” designed explicitly “to landlock the Canadian oil sands by delaying or blocking the expansion or development of key pipelines.” A list of key strategic targets included: “educating and organizing First Nations to challenge construction of pipelines across their traditional territories” and bringing “multiple actions in Canadian federal and provincial courts.” A “raising the negatives” section includes recruiting celebrity spokes-persons such as Leonardo Di Caprio to “lend their brand to opponents of tar sands and generating a high negative media profile for tar sands oil.”

Canadians are realizing foreign groups sabotaged our energy economy — for no good reason

Joe Oliver: Yet more proof foreign radicals (yes, radicals) are sabotaging Canada’s economy

‘Eco-colonialism’: Rift grows between Indigenous leaders and activists

What would become a massively disruptive intrusion into Canadian affairs would take years and a large amount of money. Enter the Rockefeller Foundation, the Hewlett Foundation, and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. They, along with environmentalist charities, poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the U.S.-based Tides Foundation, a murky organization that provides cover as a legal laundering service that can funnel donations into activist groups, without revealing the source.

Independent researcher Vivian Krause uncovered evidence of a U.S. led green campaign to landlock Alberta oil.

Since both American and Canadian tax laws require charities to document receipt and disbursement of funds, Krause was able to gather irrefutable evidence that tens of millions of dollars were transferred from Tides U.S. to its Tides Canada affiliate. Moreover, Krause was able to obtain 70 covering letters showing the recipients and how they used the funds.

They went towards mobilizing First Nations against the fear of oil spills, including payments to help build “indigenous solidarity resistance to pipeline routes,” to maintain “opposition to oil tankers” and to “provide legal support for actions constraining tar sands development.” Funding also went to the Great Bear Initiative Society to build support for designating the so-called “Spirit Bear” habitat as a nature reserve.

Payments went to the Pembina Institute to “advance…the narrative that oil sands expansion is problematic”; to Greenpeace Canada “for events to show opposition to pipelines and tar sands expansion”; to the Living Oceans Society “to build opposition to the Kinder Morgan Pipeline”; and to Forest Ethics “to conduct education and outreach opposing the Kinder Morgan and Northern Gateway pipelines.”

But the American anti-oilsands funding effort didn’t stop at encouraging opposition to oil pipelines. The Victoria-based Dogwood Initiative received millions of dollars from Tides Canada to run get-out-the-vote campaigns in the 2017 B.C. provincial election, including deploying a throng of campaign workers in the riding of Green Party Leader Andrew Weaver. After his election, the B.C. government would be in the hands of an NDP/Green alliance bent on fighting the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion.

Money was also funnelled to campaign activists working to help the Liberals win the 2015 election. Vancouver-based Leadnow received directly and through the B.C.-based Sisu Institute more than $1 million from Tides Canada towards the objective of defeating then prime minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative government, which supported expanding the oil and gas industry. Leadnow claims its campaigners helped defeat Conservative candidates in 25 ridings.

If it weren’t for all that American funding directed at a campaign mobilizing First Nations and other anti-pipeline activists, the Liberals might not have been so successful in running against the Harper Conservatives; but then, without the election of an ideologically anti-oilsands Liberal government, the funding for the anti-oilsands campaign might not have been enough, either. The website of the Tar Sands Campaign boasted until recently a quote from team leader Michael Marx: “The controversy from the campaign contributed to political victories at the provincial and national level in 2015 and led to bold climate commitments by Canadian leaders.” After the CBC reported this past January on the campaign (which the National Post and Financial Post, with Krause’s help, had been reporting on for years) on The Weekly hosted by Wendy Mesley, Marx’s quote was taken off the campaign’s site. (The episode is very much worth watching.)

But the campaigners received a bonus beyond their wildest dreams when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appointed one of their most dedicated eco-warriors as his principal secretary. Prior to ascending to the most powerful post in the Prime Minister’s Office, from 2008 to 2012 Gerald Butts was president and CEO of World Wildlife Fund Canada (WWF Canada), an important Tides campaign partner. Butts would use his new powerful position to bring other former campaigners with him: Marlo Raynolds‏, chief of staff to Environment Minister Catherine McKenna, is past executive director of the Tides-backed Pembina Institute. Zoë Caron, chief of staff to Natural Resource Minister Amarjeet Sohi, is also a former WWF Canada official. Sarah Goodman, on the prime minister’s staff, is a former vice-president of Tides Canada. With these anti-oil activists at the epicentre of federal power, it’s no wonder the oil industry, and hundreds of thousands of workers, have plummeted into political and policy purgatory.

Now, Butts, the architect of this economic and social disaster and national-unity crisis has resigned amid a scandal alleging inappropriate favours for SNC-Lavalin. I wonder if this resignation will pay as well as the last one: When Butts resigned from WWF Canada to join the PMO, Krause discovered that he subsequently received two separate payments from WWF Canada totalling $361,642. When Krause asked him about it, he explained in a May 26, 2016 tweet that: “It was my contract severance.” That’s startling. Over my entire career leading one of Canada’s largest companies and serving as a director of four others, I have never heard of “severance” paid when someone decided to quit.

But then, in a way, Butts never did. He would prove to be as or more useful to the anti-oilsands activists at WWF Canada and other hard-core environmental groups being inside the government, rather than outside it. From one job to the next, he never stopped fighting Alberta’s oilpatch.

That is the latest sorrowful chapter in this scandalous story — a story that never could have been told without the determination of Vivian Krause, a real Canadian patriot who dedicated 10 years uncovering the truth.

Gwyn Morgan is the retired founding CEO of Encana Corp.

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mikemortgage · 6 years ago

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Worker visas in doubt as Trump immigration crackdown widens

NEW YORK — Immigrants with specialized skills are being denied work visas or seeing applications get caught up in lengthy bureaucratic tangles under federal changes that some consider a contradiction to President Donald Trump’s promise of a continued pathway to the U.S. for the most talented foreigners.

Getting what’s known as an H-1B visa has never been a sure thing — the number issued annually is capped at 85,000 and applicants need to enter a lottery to even be considered. But some immigration attorneys, as well as those who hire such workers, say they’ve seen unprecedented disruptions in the approval process since Trump took office in 2017.

“You see all these arguments that we want the best and the brightest coming here,” said John Goslow, an immigration attorney in Ann Arbor, Michigan. “Yet we’re seeing a full-frontal assault on just all aspects of immigration.”

For American businesses, there is a bottom-line impact.

Link Wilson, an architect who co-founded a firm in Bloomington, Minnesota, said finding enough qualified workers within the U.S. has been a problem for years. That’s due to a shortage of architects, but also because his firm needs people with experience developing senior housing. He said employers who turn to international applicants do so as a last resort, putting up with legal fees and ever-expanding visa approval times because they have no other choice.

“We’re just at the point where there’s no one else to hire,” said Wilson, who hired an architect under an H-1B visa last year after enduring a long wait. He estimates his firm turned away about $1 million in projects in 2018 because it didn’t have enough staff to handle them.

Three months after taking office, Trump issued his “Buy American and Hire American” executive order , directing Cabinet officials to suggest reforms to ensure that H-1B visas are awarded to the “most-skilled or highest-paid” applicants to help promote the hiring of Americans for jobs that might otherwise go to immigrants.

Subsequent memos have allowed for greater discretion in denying applications without first requesting additional information from an applicant, tossed the deference given to people seeking to renew their H-1Bs, and raised concern that the government would revoke work permits for the spouses of H-1B holders. One order restricted companies’ ability to use H-1B workers off-site at a customer’s place of business, while another temporarily rescinded the option of paying for faster application processing.

Attorneys who handle these applications say one of the biggest shifts is an increase in “requests for evidence,” or RFEs, from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. An RFE can delay a visa for months or longer as applicants and employers are forced to submit additional documentation over things such as the applicability of a college degree to a prospective job or whether the wage being offered is appropriate. If the responses are unsatisfactory, a visa may be denied.

“They’re just blocking the avenues so that employers will get frustrated and they won’t employ foreign nationals,” said Dakshini Sen, an immigration lawyer in Houston whose caseload is mostly H-1B applications. “We have to write and write and write and explain and explain and explain each and every point.”

USCIS data released on Friday shows an increase in the number of completed H-1B applications receiving an RFE, from about 21 per cent in the 2016 fiscal year to 38 per cent last fiscal year. The number continued to rise in the first quarter of this fiscal year, to 60 per cent.

A growing number of applications with such requests were ultimately denied, while the approval rate among all applicants has fallen. Approvals also dipped in two other visa programs for foreign workers, including one for individuals with extraordinary abilities in areas such as science, sports and the arts.

Jessica Collins, a spokeswoman for USCIS, linked the changes to the president’s executive order, saying the goal was to reduce “frivolous” petitions and that “it is incumbent upon the petitioner, not the government” to prove eligibility.

Some employers note traditional three-year renewable terms of H-1Bs have also been changing; one lawsuit by an organization representing information technology companies claims some visas were valid for only a few days or had expired before they were even received.

Meantime, a vague entry published in the Federal Register last fall advised that the Department of Homeland Security would propose additional revisions to focus on attracting “the best and the brightest” and to “ensure employers pay appropriate wages” to H-1B visa holders, which has raised alarms that the administration will move to narrow the definition of who qualifies.

Caught in the crosshairs of all this are workers like Leo Wang.

Wang, 32, spent six years after college in his native China learning all he could about data and analytics. He got into the University of Southern California, interned at a major venture capital firm and wasted no time after finishing his master’s before starting on another degree. He couch-surfed, passed up an enticing foreign job offer and amassed educational debt all in pursuit of the dream that ultimately came true: A six-figure Silicon Valley job.

As long as it took Wang to achieve his goal, it disappeared in record time.

Wang was working at Seagate Technology under an immigration provision known as Optional Practical Training, which gives those on student visas permission to work. But that expired last year, and because his H-1B application was in flux, he was forced to take a leave from Seagate and withdraw from the master’s program he was pursuing at Berkeley. He says he and his company dutifully responded to an RFE, compiling examples of his work at Seagate. But on Jan. 11, Wang got a final answer: He was denied an H-1B.

“All I wanted was to be able to see my American dream,” he said.

Sandra Feist, an immigration attorney in Minneapolis, said talented foreigners discouraged by the visa process are beginning to look at opportunities in other countries, and she questions what that means for America’s future, especially if top-tier researchers who could contribute to science and medicine are turned away.

One of her clients, a computer systems analyst from India with a master’s degree from a U.S. college, filed his petition for an H-1B in April 2017 with 101 pages of documentation. He received an RFE, and a 176-page response was filed, with additional paperwork attempting to prove just how complicated the position was. He was denied. Feist filed a 282-page appeal, requesting that the file be reopened. Though the appeal was approved, there was a second RFE, which Feist said raises the same issues she already responded to.

With a U.S. work visa unlikely, that client is applying for permanent residency in Canada with his wife and U.S. citizen child.

CEOs for companies including Apple, Ford and Coca-Cola penned a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen in August, saying immigration policy changes were undermining economic growth. “At a time when the number of job vacancies are reaching historic highs due to labour shortages,” they said, “now is not the time to restrict access to talent.”

A provision for immigration based on skills, education and employer needs dates back to the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, and the visa now known as the H-1B has until recently enjoyed wide support among politicians on both the left and the right. A Pew Research Center survey last year found broad approval for high-skilled immigrants among the public, as well, with support at 83 per cent among Democrats polled and 73 per cent of Republicans.

Trump has vacillated on the issue. During a March 2016 presidential debate, then-candidate Trump was asked about his opposition to visas for skilled workers, to which he said “I’m changing” and that he saw such policies as a way to keep top international students in the U.S. “We absolutely have to be able to keep the brain power in this country,” he said.

His campaign followed that with a statement saying: “The H-1B program is neither high-skilled nor immigration: these are temporary foreign workers, imported from abroad, for the explicit purpose of substituting for American workers at lower pay.”

Last month, Trump again reverted to a more conciliatory note, tweeting that H1-B holders “can rest assured that changes are soon coming which will bring both simplicity and certainty to your stay, including a potential path to citizenship.”

Back in China now, Wang isn’t sure what to make of Trump’s words. He’s talked to a friend from Seagate, now at a Swedish firm, about openings there, and a former boss in Singapore has some prospects for him as well.

“I still believe in the American dream,” he says. “It’s just that I personally have to pursue it somewhere else.”

——

Sedensky can be reached at msedensky//twitter.com/sedensky

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mikemortgage · 6 years ago

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Gone in a New York minute: How the Amazon deal fell apart

NEW YORK — In early November, word began to leak that Amazon was serious about choosing New York to build a giant new campus. The city was eager to lure the company and its thousands of high-paying tech jobs, offering billions in tax incentives and lighting the Empire State Building in Amazon orange.

Even Governor Andrew Cuomo got in on the action: “I’ll change my name to Amazon Cuomo if that’s what it takes,” he joked at the time.

Then Amazon made it official: It chose the Long Island City neighbourhood of Queens to build a $2.5 billion campus that could house 25,000 workers, in addition to new offices planned for northern Virginia. Cuomo and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, Democrats who have been political adversaries for years, trumpeted the decision as a major coup after edging out more than 230 other proposals.

But what they didn’t expect was the protests, the hostile public hearings and the disparaging tweets that would come in the next three months, eventually leading to Amazon’s dramatic Valentine’s Day breakup with New York.

Immediately after Amazon’s Nov. 12 announcement, criticism started to pour in. The deal included $1.5 billion in special tax breaks and grants for the company, but a closer look at the total package revealed it to be worth at least $2.8 billion. Some of the same politicians who had signed a letter to woo Amazon were now balking at the tax incentives.

“Offering massive corporate welfare from scarce public resources to one of the wealthiest corporations in the world at a time of great need in our state is just wrong,” said New York State Sen. Michael Gianaris and New York City Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer, Democrats who represent the Long Island City area, in a joint statement.

The next day, CEO Jeff Bezos was on the cover of The New York Post in a cartoon-like illustration, hanging out of a helicopter, holding money bags in each hand, with cash billowing above the skyline. “QUEENS RANSOM,” the headline screamed. The New York Times editorial board, meanwhile, called the deal a “bad bargain” for the city: “We won’t know for 10 years whether the promised 25,000 jobs will materialize,” it said.

Anti-Amazon rallies were planned for the next week. Protesters stormed a New York Amazon bookstore on the day after Thanksgiving and then went to a rally on the steps of a courthouse near the site of the new headquarters in the pouring rain. Some held cardboard boxes with Amazon’s smile logo turned upside down.

They had a long list of grievances: the deal was done secretively; Amazon, one of the world’s most valuable companies, didn’t need nearly $3 billion in tax incentives; rising rents could push people out of the neighbourhood; and the company was opposed to unionization.

The helipad kept coming up, too: Amazon, in its deal with the city, was promised it could build a spot to land a helicopter on or near the new offices.

At the first public hearing in December, which turned into a hostile, three-hour interrogation of two Amazon executives by city lawmakers, the helipad was mentioned more than a dozen times. The image of high-paid executives buzzing by a nearby low-income housing project became a symbol of corporate greed.

Queens residents soon found postcards from Amazon in their mailboxes, trumpeting the benefits of the project. Gianaris sent his own version, calling the company “Scamazon” and urging people to call Bezos and tell him to stay in Seattle.

At a second city council hearing in January, Amazon’s vice-president for public policy, Brian Huseman, subtly suggested that perhaps the company’s decision to come to New York could be reversed.

“We want to invest in a community that wants us,” he said.

Then came a sign that Amazon’s opponents might actually succeed in derailing the deal: In early February, Gianaris was tapped for a seat on a little-known state panel that often has to approve state funding for big economic development projects. That meant if Amazon’s deal went before the board, Gianaris could kill it.

“I’m not looking to negotiate a better deal,” Gianaris said at the time. “I am against the deal that has been proposed.”

Cuomo had the power to block Gianaris’ appointment, but he didn’t indicate whether he would take that step.

Meanwhile, Amazon’s own doubts about the project started to show. On Feb. 8, The Washington Post reported that the company was having second thoughts about the Queens location.

On Wednesday, Cuomo brokered a meeting with four top Amazon executives and the leaders of three unions critical of the deal. The union leaders walked away with the impression that the parties had an agreed upon framework for further negotiations, said Stuart Appelbaum, president of the Retail Wholesale and Department Store Union.

“We had a good conversation. We talked about next steps. We shook hands,” Appelbaum said.

An Amazon representative did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

The final blow landed Thursday, when Amazon announced on a blog post that it was backing out, surprising the mayor, who had spoken to an Amazon executive Monday night and received “no indication” that the company would bail.

Amazon still expected the deal to be approved, according to a source familiar with Amazon’s thinking, but that the constant criticism from politicians didn’t make sense for the company to grow there.

“I was flabbergasted,” De Blasio said. “Why on earth after all of the effort we all put in would you simply walk away?”

——

Associated Press Writers Alexandra Olson and Karen Matthews in New York, and David Klepper in Albany, New York, contributed to this report.

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mikemortgage · 6 years ago

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Burkina Faso killing highlights increasing security threat for mining companies

TORONTO — The killing of a Canadian mining company executive in Burkina Faso is drawing attention to the deteriorating security situation in the country and the risks resource firms face in unstable regions.

Kirk Woodman, who was working for Vancouver-based Progress Minerals Inc., was found dead after being kidnapped in the country Tuesday.

The incident, while rare, comes as threats from insurgents rise in the West African region which is home to numerous Canadian mining operations.

“Burkina Faso is a relatively new target for Islamic militancy,” said Ryan Cummings, a director of consultancy Signal Risk based in South Africa.

“I believe that in the West African region we are seeing a potential spread of extremism and Islamic militancy into new zones. Specifically into areas where mining interests are present but have been insulated from the violence could potentially be increasingly affected.”

There are not yet enough indications that the mining industry is being targeted, but the resource sector is one of the few where expatriates would operate outside of the capital of Ouagadougou.

“I don’t necessarily think this is so much an attack on the mining sector per-se, it’s more targeting foreign nationals who find themselves in such locales because of commercial interests there,” Cummings said.

Montreal-based SEMAFO Inc., which has mines in the region, reported several attacks on roads near its operations last year.

The company said a national employee and a subcontractor were killed last August when a bus transporting employees was targeted by bandits and another subcontractor and five gendarmes were killed in a separate attack days earlier. In December, the company said government security forces were attacked on a road about 40 kilometres from its Boungou mine in the country.

The company updated its security policy so that all foreign employees are now being transported by helicopter between the mine site and the capital. It said security for local employees has been boosted by a ground military force and more escorts and that it continues to discuss security issues with the government.

Werner Claessens, a geologist who has known Woodman since the 1990s, said the environment for exploration geologists in Western Africa has been deteriorating in recent years.

The properties acquired by Woodman’s company was a promising series of gold prospects, but the “red zone” they were located in had come to be considered difficult to work in, he explained.

“It was a zone considered quite dangerous,” he said, adding that several years ago that wasn’t the case.

“It became dangerous in the summer of 2017 when the first terrorist attacks took place in that part of the country,” he explained.

Claessens has worked and lived in Western Africa since 1985, and lived in Burkina Faso from 2004 until 2011, and regularly visits the nation.

“For us it’s a very sad thing to see what is happening and developing there in terms of terrorist attacks â¦ We’ve never seen this before in the nearly three decades I worked there,” he said.

Cummings said there are increasing risks in Mali and Cote d’Ivoire as well, which are also home to numerous mines owned by Canadian mining companies.

But he said that while there are pockets of security issues across the continent, it is not the main risk faced by companies operating there.

“The biggest risks facing the mining sector are actually political stability and also legislation, and how the state intends to deal with its extractive sector.”

— With files from Michael Tutton in Halifax.

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mikemortgage · 6 years ago

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Canada proves land of opportunity for famous immigrant inventors

Ask the leader of any technology company and they’ll tell you that hiring engineers, data scientists or mathematicians is one of their biggest challenges. STEM careers are the fastest growing part of the labour market, and some estimates put the need for technology workers at 216,000 jobs by 2021. To explore the talent gap, the FP talked to innovators who have left Canada to pursue opportunities with big multinational companies, and also those who have moved here to be a part of this country’s digital transformation. You can find all of our coverage here.

Although the United States often bills itself as the land of opportunity, Canada is no slouch when it comes to immigrant inventors. The country ranked seventh in terms of the number of immigrants who held patents between 2000 and 2010, according to a 2016 National Foundation for American Policy report. Historically, Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the first practical telephone, might be the most famous immigrant inventor to grace these shores, but there are plenty of more recent examples and they come to Canada for many reasons.

Here are a handful of them:

Tobias Lütke, chief executive and co-founder of Shopify Inc., came to Canada when he was 22.

Tobias Lütke, chief executive and co-founder, Shopify Inc.

Lütke was a programming prodigy in his native Germany, but followed his heart and moved to Canada in 2002 at the age of 22. Initially, he wanted to build an e-commerce site to sell snowboards, but found the available tools lacking so he built his own. Those tools became the foundation of the online shopping portal Shopify, one of the most successful Canadian startups ever.

Maninder Dhaliwal, chief executive, Lions Gate International

Dhaliwal was born in India and came to Vancouver in 1999 to study engineering at the University of British Columbia. Her master’s degree helped her find work, but she eventually decided to strike out on her own in 2013, co-founding Lions Gate, which specializes in India-focused international venture projects in technology, manufacturing and infrastructure.

Robert Herjavec, chief executive, Herjavec Group

Best-known for his starring roles on CBC’s Dragons’ Den and ABC’s Shark Tank, Herjavec came to Canada on a boat in 1970 from communist Yugoslavia. He has built and sold several technology companies, and in 2003 founded the Herjavec Group, which has been called one of the most innovative cybersecurity companies.

Shahrzad Rafati, chief executive and founder, BroadbandTV

Rafati was born in Tehran in 1979 and grew up in a family of entrepreneurs, but moved to Vancouver in 1996 against her parents’ wishes. She enrolled in computer science at the University of British Columbia and in 2005 founded BroadbandTV, a multi-channel network for online video creators that has struck deals with the NBA, Warner Bros. and the Huffington Post, among others.

Aditya Jha, chief executive, dgMarket International Inc.

Jha was born in Nepal, grew up and started his career in India, and came to Canada in late 1994, joining Bell Canada. He then co-founded a software company called Isopia Inc. (which was later acquired by Sun Microsystems for more than $100 million) and has started or bought several more businesses, including dgMarket International Inc., a worldwide consulting tender portal. He also runs Project Beyshick, which provides seed money to budding Aboriginal entrepreneurs as well as university and college endowments.

Shahrzad Rafati, founder and CEO, BroadbandTV Corp.

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mikemortgage · 6 years ago

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Alphabet shuts down Google+ after data leak it has known about since March is exposed

Google will shut down the consumer version of its social network Google+ after announcing data from up to 500,000 users may have been exposed to external developers by a bug that was present for more than two years in its systems.

The company said in a blog on Monday it had discovered and patched the leak in March of this year and had no evidence of misuse of user data or that any developer was aware or had exploited the vulnerability.

Shares of its parent company Alphabet Inc, however, were down 1.5 per cent at US$1150.75 in response to what was the latest in a run of privacy issues to hit the United States’ big tech companies.

The Wall Street Journal reported earlier that Google had opted not to disclose the issue with its Application Program Interfaces (API) partly due to fears of regulatory scrutiny, citing unnamed sources and internal documents.

Google said it had reviewed the issue, looking at the type of data involved, whether it could accurately identify the users to inform, whether there was any evidence of misuse, and whether there were any actions a developer or user could take.

“None of these thresholds were met in this instance,” it said. “We found no evidence that any developer was aware of this bug, or abusing the API, and we found no evidence that any Profile data was misused.”

Under the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), if personal data is breached, a company needs to inform a supervisory authority within 72 hours, unless the breach is unlikely to result in a risk to the rights and freedom of users.

“It seems like the downside risk of having a story that says they intentionally hid information about a major breach from users is bigger than the upside of avoiding scrutiny,” said Geoffrey Parker, an engineering professor at Ivy League college Dartmouth.

“I wonder if there wasn’t more depth to the internal debate.”

Regulatory Interest

Google said a software glitch in the social site gave outside developers potential access to private Google+ profile data between a major redesign in 2015 and March 2018, when internal investigators discovered and fixed the issue.

The affected data was limited to static, optional Google+ Profile fields including name, email address, occupation, gender and age.

The WSJ report said that a memo, prepared by Google’s legal and policy staff and shared with senior executives, warned that disclosing the incident would likely trigger “immediate regulatory interest” and invite comparisons to Facebook’s leak of user information to data firm Cambridge Analytica.

Allegations of the improper use of data for 87 million Facebook users by Cambridge Analytica, which was hired by President Trump’s 2016 U.S. election campaign, has hurt the shares of the world’s biggest social network and prompted multiple investigations in the United States and Europe.

Google Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai was briefed on the plan not to notify users after an internal committee had reached that decision, according to the WSJ.

Google came under criticism for refusing to send a top executive to a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Sept. 5 about efforts to counteract foreign influence in U.S. elections and political discourse.

“I think Google does have a public relationship issue and this now makes their lack of openness even worse,” Ivan Feinseth, an analyst at Tigress Financial Partners said.

Facebook’s chief operating officer and Twitter’s chief executive testified at the hearing, where an empty chair was pointedly left for Google after the committee rejected Google’s top lawyer as a witness.

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mikemortgage · 6 years ago

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Japanese tycoon going on SpaceX rocket says he trusts Musk

TOKYO — The Japanese online retail tycoon who plans to travel to the moon on the SpaceX rocket says he respects and trusts Elon Musk as a fellow entrepreneur, despite his recent troubles.

“Twitter can get you into trouble,” Yusaku Maezawa, chief executive of Zozo Inc., said Tuesday at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club in Tokyo. “And that can be said of Elon Musk, too.”

Musk’s tweet in August that declared he had secured financing for a Tesla buyout got him in trouble with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Under a settlement, Tesla and Musk each must pay a $20 million penalty. Musk also stepped down as Tesla’s chairman.

Maezawa, 42, who is also quite active on social media, is set to be a passenger on Musk’s Space X, the first-ever private commercial space trip, scheduled for blastoff in 2023, to orbit the moon, in what Maezawa has dubbed his “#dearMoon Project.”

Maezawa said he got a good feel for Musk’s character by visiting Tesla, and seeing the relationship Musk had developed with his employees.

“They believe in Elon Musk,” he said. “That kind of company is marvelous. I felt that as another entrepreneur.”

Although Maezawa said nothing was decided yet on who was going with him on the space travel, he said he wanted to take visual artists, fashion designers and musicians from a variety of backgrounds, including the actress he was dating, Ayame Goriki, “if she proves to be a good match for the mission.”

Maezawa said his company has a twitter policy, and experts go over his tweets in advance. Sometimes he gets emotional on social media, but he is careful not to say anything that might hurt his company, he said.

Recently, he took to his twitter and Instagram accounts to lash out at online hecklers, who had ridiculed his halting rendition of “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” on an expensive Stradivarius violin he had just purchased.

Maezawa is known for lavish purchases, including artworks by Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol. But he is equally known for sharing them with the public.

He shrugged off the possible dangers of space, just as he brushed off the risks of tweets and associations with Musk.

“There is no end if you start thinking about that,” he said of the risks.

Maezawa said he has not yet started training for the mission, but he has been getting regular medical checkups and is brushing up on his English.

In a nation where people tend to be focused on blending in and getting along, Maezawa has stood out. Forbes magazine estimates his wealth at $2.9 billion.

Maezawa ran an import CD business and played in a rock band before he embarked on his online fashion business with his shopping site Zozotown.

Recently, he has begun making clothes, such as a wearable technology called Zozosuit. The suit, splattered with hundreds of dots, takes body measurements with a software application, ensuring a good fit.

Maezawa said nicely fitting clothes bring smiles and the moon trip’s purpose also is to add to happiness.

The world remembers the first words of the 1969 Apollo astronaut Neil Armstrong, “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind,” he said.

Maezawa has a message of his own that he says will be more casual, akin to the lyrics he loved playing in rock bands growing up.

All I want to say is this: Wouldn’t the world be a better place if there is peace?” said Maezawa.

��—

Follow Yuri Kageyama on Twitter at https://twitter.com/yurikageyama

On Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/yurikageyama/?hlen

Her work can be found at https://www.apnews.com/search/yuri%20kageyama

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