Airbnb Sued, Accused of Ignoring Hosts’ Race Discrimination

Posted on May 18, 2016 by Luke Ford

The sharing economy, operated by apps like Uber and AirBNB, only works when it is among people worthy of trust.

Bloomberg: Airbnb Inc. was accused in a civil-rights lawsuit of ignoring a black man who complained that his reservation request with the online room-rental company was rejected by a host because of his race.

Gregory Selden, 25, sued Tuesday in federal court in Washington, D.C., claiming violations of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and other statutes. He’s seeking class-action status to represent what he says are thousands of other people who’ve had similar experiences with San Francisco-based Airbnb. Title II of the act bars discrimination in places of public accommodation, such as hotels, restaurants, movie theaters and sports arenas.

The suit adds to Airbnb’s growing list of legal challenges. The company has sparred with governments over the taxes its hosts pay, and it’s been sued over other alleged misdeeds of its hosts, including one incident involving a hidden camera in a rental.

Nick Papas, a spokesman for Airbnb, said that while he can’t comment on individual cases, the company does prohibit content that promotes bigotry, racism, hatred or harassment.

“We strongly believe that racial discrimination is unacceptable and it flies in the face of our mission to bring people together,” Papas said in an e-mailed statement. “We are taking aggressive action to fight discrimination and eliminate unconscious bias in our community.”

Company’s Challenge

While the claims haven’t been proven in court, the lawsuit shows the challenges companies like Airbnb face in policing the behavior of users who aren’t typical employees and who aren’t managed by anyone on the ground, said Todd Solomon, a lawyer with McDermott Will & Emery LLP in Chicago.

“It’s hard enough to instill corporate culture even with face-to-face contact, so there’s a special challenge here,” said Solomon, who isn’t involved in the case. “They have no idea if somebody who registers a rental home has any interest in sharing their core values or whether they even know about their core values.”

Selden, of Virginia, claims an Airbnb host in Philadelphia identified only as Paul turned down his request in March 2015. But Paul, whom Selden refers to as an Airbnb agent, representative or employee, continued to advertise the property as being available on the requested date, according to the suit.

‘Same Listing’

“Soon after and on the same day he was rejected by the Airbnb agent or employee, Mr. Selden stumbled across the same listing,” according to the complaint. “This is despite the fact that the Airbnb agent or employee told Mr. Selden that the accommodation was not available.”

Paul then accepted the same request made by using two phony profiles for white men named Jessie and Todd, Selden said.

When Selden complained to the company, “his cries to Airbnb would fall on deaf ears,” according to the suit.

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Will Jewish Billionaires Heed Sheldon Adelson’s Call To Put Money Behind Donald Trump?

Posted on May 18, 2016 by Luke Ford

Nathan Guttman writes: Las Vegas billionaire Sheldon Adelson has reached out to Republican Jewish leaders asking them to follow his lead and contribute to Trump’s presidential campaign.
“Like many of you, I do not agree with him on every issue,” Adelson wrote board members of the Republican Jewish Coalition in the Monday email, which was first reported by The Associated Press. “However, I will not sit idly by and let Hillary Clinton become the next president. The consequences to our country, and Israel, are far too great to take that risk.”
Jewish donors have made up in the past an estimated quarter of direct funding for Republican presidential campaigns and may have played an even greater role in Super PAC funding. For Trump, who is reportedly interested in raising $1 billion, Jewish donors, if they follow Adelson’s lead, could prove valuable not only in providing major funds but also in signaling to other centrist establishment contributors that Trump represents a worthy political investment.
Some major Jewish donors, including New York hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer, have expressed strong public positions against Trump and are unlikely to heed Adelson’s call.

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Siege Mentality Grows in Hasidic Kiryas Joel as Corruption and Sex Probes Loom

Posted on May 18, 2016 by Luke Ford

Maybe these Hasidim should not act in ways that are dishonest, illegal and anti-social, and then maybe the wider society will have less reason to investigate them?

(JTA) — Even before FBI investigators descended last week on the Satmar Hasidic village of Kiryas Joel, there was a growing sense in this insular community that it and its unique way of life were under attack.
Two months earlier, the FBI had been in the village investigating alleged fraud of a government program, and community leaders also have been facing a mounting campaign by dissidents to increase state oversight of yeshiva curricula.
“We need to know what kind of danger we’re in,” the Satmar rebbe in Kiryas Joel, Rabbi Aaron Teitelbaum, said in a widely publicized May 4 speech about the threat of closer state supervision of yeshiva curricula. “These are bad times for us Jews, terrible. We need to pray to God that they should not interfere with the upbringing of our children.”

In last week’s FBI raid, investigators confiscated computer equipment and boxes of documents from the village’s Department of Public Safety and its main yeshiva, United Talmudical Academy. An unnamed law enforcement source interviewed by a local newspaper, the Journal News, said the raid was related to the publication on social media two weeks ago of a leaked hidden-camera video that appeared to show a principal of the yeshiva kissing and grasping young boys in his office. Some 6,000 students are enrolled in the school.
Publication of the video, which generated a firestorm in Orthodox circles, came the same week that a New York State legislator, Ellen Jaffee, introduced a bill that would bring better enforcement of state rules that require non-public schools, including yeshivas, to ensure they are providing education that is “substantially equivalent” to that offered in public schools. Yeshivas like those in Kiryas Joel, located about an hour north of Manhattan in New York’s Orange County, long have flouted state standards on secular subjects, foregoing even basic subjects like English and math in upper grades.
For a long time, Teitelbaum said in his speech, there’s been an implicit understanding between state authorities and the leadership of Hasidic communities like Kiryas Joel that the state wouldn’t interfere in communal affairs.

But that implicit agreement may be breaking down as it becomes more difficult for authorities to ignore abuses – sexual, educational or financial – allegedly taking place within these closed communities. The prospect of outside interference threatens one of Kiryas Joel’s raisons d’etre: Hasidic control of the community’s affairs.
“Until now there were also strict laws, but because we live in a kingdom of benevolence [a reference to government authorities] to put it bluntly they simply turned a blind eye to what’s going on by the Jewish children,” Teitelbaum said in his speech, which was delivered in Yiddish and then translated into English for widespread dissemination. “They didn’t want to look, the benevolent kingdom. Now, too, they’d continue doing that, the government would have continued, they’re happy not to look and not to know. But these worthless people are stirring up in various ways and are demanding in court, forcing the government that they should take a stance.”

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Adelson and Trump

Posted on May 18, 2016 by Luke Ford

I study a page of Talmud every day. There’s nothing that Donald Trump has said that is more uproarious than what you find in Talmud and other Jewish texts.

If a Jew wants to condemn nativism, xenophobia, bigotry, and racism, he is free to do so, but he can’t find much support in Torah. Every strongly identifying in-group has negative feelings about out-groups. The stronger your in-group identity, the more likely you are to hate out-groups. This is not unique to Jews or to blacks or to Muslims or to Trump supporters. This is basic social identity theory.

Rob Eshman writes:

But then you go and throw your support, uncritically, with no caveats, conditions or what-have-yous, behind a man whose words and policies attack the democratic values Israel and America stand for, and the people it needs to coexist with to survive.
After Trump called for a “total ban” on Muslims coming into the United States, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declined to receive him in Israel. A country that is 20 percent Arab, that is bound to live with and among Muslims, that really is the only democracy in the Middle East, cannot single out a minority based on its religion. And, of course, neither can the United States.
That’s one reason why House Speaker Paul Ryan has so far refused to endorse Trump. So why can the country’s most powerful Republican stand on principle, while a lover of Israel can’t? Frankly, Mr. Adelson (and I would say this to you) it’s embarrassing.
And how is it pro-Israel to support someone who engages in the wholesale denigration of Mexicans? Latinos are the fastest-growing and most powerful minority in this country — one whose support Israel will need in the coming years. To mingle the “pro-Israel” brand with appeals to racism and xenophobia plays directly into the hands of the Israel haters. And Trump’s history of regressive statements on women stands in stark contrast to the freedom, strength and accomplishments of women in Israel.
If you believe the United States is Israel’s most important ally in the world, then you must agree that America’s support for Israel depends, ultimately, on the support of the American people. Trump has deeply alienated women and Latinos. And let’s be very clear: If any leader had said about Jews what Trump has said about Muslims and Mexicans, we would be screaming to repudiate him. And we would expect other groups to stand with us.
So what should you do now? Simple. It’s not too late to make clear to the man with the world’s largest megaphone that your $100 million is contingent on him walking back entirely his policies on Muslims and his statements on Mexicans. All the rest of Trump’s outlandish, often ill-informed and frequently flip-floppy policies are beside the point. Tell Trump you can’t be pro-Israel and pick on minorities. You can’t be pro-Israel and anti-democracy.

What democratic values do Israel and America stand for? How are they unique?

Why can’t Israel single out a minority based on its religion? Why can’t America?

Any rational non-Muslim country would not want Muslims in it. Not because Muslims are inherently bad, but because they are inherently a bad fit for non-Muslim countries.

“And how is it pro-Israel to support someone who engages in the wholesale denigration of Mexicans?”

Because wholesale denigration of people is unknown to Jews and to the Jewish tradition?

“Latinos are the fastest-growing and most powerful minority in this country — one whose support Israel will need in the coming years.”

Latinos and blacks don’t care about Israel. They have no reason to care about Israel.

To mingle the “pro-Israel” brand with appeals to racism and xenophobia plays directly into the hands of the Israel haters.

Jewish Israelis understandably wish that all Palestinians would disappear tomorrow. Is that racist and xenophobic or is just plain self-interest? Different groups have different interests. You can call these interests names, but the interests remain. Most people don’t want to be around those who are hostile to them. Arabs and Muslims, for understandable reasons, are hostile to the Jewish state.

Hating Israel is not irrational. Different groups have different interests. It would be weird for a Muslim or an Arab not to have some negative feelings about the Jewish state on land they regard as belonging to them.

If you believe the United States is Israel’s most important ally in the world, then you must agree that America’s support for Israel depends, ultimately, on the support of the American people.

The American people care about America. They don’t care about Israel.

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Canada’s Trudeau makes formal apology for racist Komagata Maru incident

Posted on May 18, 2016 by Luke Ford

Why should Canadians apologize for wanting to keep Canada white? They are not responsible for taking in anyone who wants to move there.

Are Tibetans evil for wanting to keep Tibet Tibetan? Are Japanese evil for wanting to stay Japanese? So why should white people in countries created and developed by white people apologize for wanting to keep their countries white?

Washington Post:

On Wednesday, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau delivered a formal apology in his country’s House of Commons for an incident that took place more than a century ago.

In mid-May 1914, the Komagata Maru, a Japanese steamship, arrived in Vancouver after leaving Hong Kong in early April. On board were 376 passengers, most of whom were Sikh migrants from what was then British India. The ship was not allowed to dock.

A 1908 Canadian law at the time forbade arrivals in the country who did not make a “continuous journey” from their nation of birth or citizenship. In an era when hundreds of thousands of white European immigrants were settling in Canada, the law was seen as a measure to stymie Indian arrivals because it was practically impossible to travel directly from the Indian mainland to North America.

n a challenge to the rules, the Komagata Maru, chartered by a Sikh businessman with ties to an influential Sikh political party in the Americas, steamed across the Pacific. Its arrival in Canada was anticipated by doom-mongering local headlines, which warned of an impending “Hindu invasion.”

Sir Richard McBride, then the Conservative premier of British Columbia, made clear the explicit racism of Canada’s policies on the night the Komagata Maru reached Vancouver.

“To admit Orientals in large numbers would mean the end, the extinction of the white people,” he said. “And we always have in mind the necessity of keeping this a white man’s country.”

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