Category: Uncategorized

‘This is the most fundamental attempt to change the DNA of the Labour Party in its entire history’

On April 19, 2023, a tragedy rocked Manhattan’s Financial District as a four-story parking garage, originally built in 1925, collapsed, leaving one person dead and five injured. Photos from the scene revealed a packed roof of now-destroyed cars and SUVs, estimated to be between 50 and 60 vehicles. Mayor Eric Adams confirmed this later, attributing it to the collapse.

The FDNY and the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office (DAO) are launching their investigations, with no leads yet as to whether there was any criminal intent or negligence. As of now, they theorize that the building’s advanced age and the weight of the vehicles were factors in the death of the man trapped inside.

The FDNY focus is now on removing the cars, using a backhoe shovel to clear out the garage before it can be demolished, with a controlled explosion understood to take place on Thursday, April 22. Commissioner Zach Iscol described the operation as “incredibly complex.”

When the collapse happened around 4:10 PM, slabs of concrete broke loose from the fourth floor and plummeted into the cellar, hitting four people among the garage’s visitors, who have been treated at a local hospital.

Now, it will be possible to piece together the tragedy’s cause. The FDNY and the DAO will investigate and hopefully, soon be able to explain more about the incident and its catalyst.

Critic questions why Religious Freedom Ambassador declined to call for mixed-gender prayer in Al Aqsa Mosque.

By Lauren Marcus, World Israel News

A senior member of the Biden administration called for Israel to implement the so-called Western Wall compromise, which would see the creation of an officially sanctioned mixed-gender prayer space at the holy site in Jerusalem.

“I visited the Western Wall for the first time today and met with Rabbi of the Wall Shmuel Rabinowitz,” wrote U.S. Ambassador for International Religious Freedom Rashad Hussain on Twitter this week.

“I reiterated U.S. support for implementation of the 2016 Western Wall agreement to expand the egalitarian space at the Wall.”

I visited the Western Wall for the first time today and met with Rabbi of the Wall Shmuel Rabinowitz. I reiterated U.S. support for implementation of the 2016 Western Wall agreement to expand the egalitarian space at the Wall. pic.twitter.com/BQXKrVlaTr

— U.S. Ambassador at Large Rashad Hussain (@IRF_Ambassador) April 16, 2023

Notably, Hussain did not mention the ongoing issue of Jews being denied freedom of worship at the Temple Mount, Judaism’s holiest site.

“Anything about implementing greater access for Jews to the Temple Mount?” Arsen Ostrovsky, a legal scholar and founder of pro-Israel lawfare NGO, asked Hussain in a follow-up to the tweet.

Administered by the Jordanian Waqf organization, Jews are officially banned from praying at the compound and are restricted to visiting the site during limited hours, under the supervision of armed security forces.

“Since [Hussain] was in the Al Aqsa Mosque on Friday for Ramadan, I’m sure that during his visit he advocated for a mixed gender section for Islamic men and women to pray together,” Joel Petlin, a writer and the Superintendent of the Kiryas Joel School District, replied to the statement about the compromise. “But strangely enough, I didn’t see a Tweet about it.”

Currently, the Western Wall is under the control of the Israeli rabbinate, which means prayers at the site follow the standards of Orthodox Judaism. There is a partition (mechitzah) which separates men and women at the site.

In 2016, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed to a mixed-gender plaza at the Western Wall, which would be permitted to operate and hold prayer services not under the auspices of Israel’s Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) rabbinical authorities. However, due to pressure from his Haredi coalition partners, Netanyahu later shelved the agreement, while never officially canceling it.

It’s unclear what triggered Hussain’s comment pushing for the official implementation of the compromise.

While the compromise has been discussed by Reform and Conservative Diaspora Jewish groups and is an issue disputed between the rabbinical authorities and left-wing Jewish movements in Israel, Sunday’s tweet marked the first time that a Biden administration official had weighed in on the issue.

Representatives from the Biden administration, including U.S Ambassador to Israel Tom Nides, have broken previous policy to avoid expressing opinions regarding internal Israeli politics and social issues.

The post Biden ‘religious freedom’ official pushes egalitarian Western Wall deal, silent on Temple Mount ban on Jews appeared first on World Israel News.

In the past two decades, historians have given us an increasingly complete picture of the intellectual pasts of black anti-colonialism. Including Robin D. G. Kelley’s recently reissued Freedom Dreams, Minkah Makalani’s In the Cause of Freedom, and Adom Getachew’s Worldmaking after Empire, this body of work has forged a deep understanding of the “Black Atlantic” […]

Nitzan Spiegelstein, who attends a pre-army ‘mechina” program, tells ILTV about a race he has organized to encourage young Israelis about to enter the IDF and to help soldiers suffering from PTSD and combat fatigue.

The post WATCH: Youngsters organize race for former IDF soldiers, raising spirits appeared first on World Israel News.

“This is starting with Azerbaijan but it will not end in Azerbaijan,” Foreign Minister Eli Cohen said.

The post WATCH: Israel’s top diplomat touts strong economic, security ties in Azerbaijan appeared first on World Israel News.

Canada’s price-fixing grocery giant Loblaws, drunk on excess profits, gave its CEO, Galen Weston, a huge bump in his 2022 compensation. The raise ensures that Weston, a scion of Canada’s third-richest family, continues to live large at workers’ expense.

Loblaws CEO Galen Weston’s exorbitant pay attracted scrutiny amid rising grocery prices in Canada. (Tara Walton / Toronto Star via Getty Images)

According to the owners of wage-cutting, price-fixing Loblaw Companies Ltd, Canada’s largest food retailer, the company’s soon-to-be-former CEO Galen Weston Jr was underpaid for his performance in 2022. Evidently, it makes sense to celebrate and reward those who make a killing when regular working people everywhere are struggling. To make this sort of logic work, one must aggressively gloss over the relationship between the celebrants and the consumers who made this profit bonanza possible — that is, the working people who have had to suffer outrageous grocery bills.

Weston’s increased payout, totaling $11.7 million last year, has put Canada’s self-described “face of inflation” on the defensive — and for good reason. The scandal is a reminder that the payouts enjoyed by Weston, and all other owners of capital, do not fall from the sky; they come from exploitation. CEOs like Weston are not lapping their employees in labor and time spent on the job. Such grotesque earnings are a result of either price gouging or wage and benefit cuts.

A Take Home of 340 Years’ Worth of Regular Pay

According to Loblaw’s latest management circular, a commissioned study by Meridian Consultants, amid booming profits, the scion of Canada’s third-wealthiest family needed a raise. “The results of the 2022 review suggested that Mr. Weston’s total direct compensation was below the market median and Weston’s and Loblaw’s compensation policy objectives,” the circular claims. Upping Weston’s pay, apparently, would help the company to “compensate directors appropriately for their time” and to remain “competitive.”

With this increase, a raise of $1.2 million, Weston was able to soak up $11.7 million in compensation. In contrast, it would take the average grocery store worker multiple lifetimes to earn what Weston took just last year. According to Statistics Canada, the average Canadian grocery worker made $18.97 per hour in 2022. It would take a full-time worker, with annual earnings of $34,525, more than 340 years to earn Weston’s 2022 take home of $11.79 million.

But Weston’s share of the company’s stock extends well beyond this. As the same circular notes, Weston himself owns 56.3 percent of the company’s common shares, totaling roughly $12.9 billion in eligible holdings. Collectively, the board controls an enterprise worth over $40 billion.

That pool of wealth is in excess of the gross domestic product of entire Canadian provinces. It exceeds the budgets of key Canadian public programs like the Public Health Agency of Canada, the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Agency, and the Ontario government’s school repair budget. This is, in short, an enormous concentration of wealth and power, beyond that of many elected officials.

The Face of Inflation

Weston’s raise has done very little to bolster his claim, made to Canada’s parliament last month, that the profit of the company — which in 2022 made a record $1.9 billion — “doesn’t go to me.” Against the backdrop of such farcical denials, the financial papers say plainly what everyone knows is actually happening: Weston received this increase, as the Financial Post asserts, because the company has seen record profits. In this telling, the fact that these profits have accrued while the Canadian economy and Canadian society are experiencing a deep crisis is only further proof of Weston’s canny business acumen. It has nothing to do with price gouging or chicanery of any kind.

“Increasing executive pay as profits and share prices rise,” the Post notes, “reinforces to investors that the board is properly incentivizing executives to manage the company in an efficacious manner.” The paper further stresses,

The responsibility of the corporate executive is to act in the interests of his employer, the shareholders, and the responsibility of business in a free society is to increase its profits. In 2022, Galen Weston and Loblaw did just that: adjusted diluted net earnings per common share rose from $5.59 in 2021 to $6.82 in 2022.

But where did these profits come from?

According to Weston’s testimony, “We’re a big company and the numbers are very large, but it still translates right down to the bottom line at one dollar [of profit] per 25 dollars of groceries.”

It probably goes without saying that Galen Weston was not bagging these groceries, stocking shelves, or maintaining the deli counter. His minimum-wage workers were doing all these tasks, leaving him free, if the spirit moves him, to count his personal fortune from his family’s palatial estate in Vero Beach.

As with the financial press’s unguarded acknowledgment that Weston’s raise is simply how the game works, Loblaw’s parent company has been very clear about how profits are generated. The company sees potential “profit improvements” in wage cuts or — to use the business speak — in “variable cost” reductions.

Former CEO Richard Currie was quite transparent about deploying such strategies. As he said in a 1994 address to the Ivey Business School, the company will achieve “profit improvements” through “bottom-line cost reductions” and “lowered breakeven points.” Because fixed costs — for material, buildings, and supplies — are set from outside, Currie candidly noted, “labor costs” are key to keeping outlays low. Labor costs, “the next largest cost in the food retailing business,” Currie notes, represent the overhead that can be cut.

Since Currie’s tenure, Loblaws has engaged in lockouts and union-busting work across its enterprise. To this day, the company lists potential union drives and “living wage campaigns” as potential risks to its profit margins. Meanwhile, Weston’s company has been denounced for gouging many of those same workers and the broader working class with rising grocery prices — charging nearly $40 for a package of chicken breasts, $41 for olive oil, almost $30 for detergent, and more.

On Twitter, the company has claimed that while it is “the face of inflation,” it is not the cause, and that its association with spiraling food bills is a case of scapegoating. Nonetheless, by its own account, its fourth quarter earnings in 2022, a net income of over $529 million, were 10 percent higher than the previous year. At the same time, more Canadians were forced to turn to food banks than ever before.

Every dollar that goes to Loblaw Companies is a dollar that does not go to workers. It’s value that is extracted from workers collectively — either in the workplace or in their regular food purchases.

No, He Did Not “Earn” His Pay

According to the Financial Post, Weston’s exorbitant payout should be shielded from criticism — these are his “earnings,” and he supposedly “deserves,” it. As the headline reads, “Galen Weston deserves his raise, which is Loblaw’s business not anyone else’s.”

But Weston has done nothing to earn his payout or his wealth. Galen Weston does not work on the floor of his own grocery stores or warehouses. He does not bag groceries for impatient customers, operate a forklift in one of his warehouses, or, more generally, contribute anything of value to ordinary people. If decisions at Loblaw’s were made by workers rather than shareholders, it’s a sure bet that his remuneration would be closer to his actual contribution — and rigorously cut down in size. Weston’s exorbitant payout is a result of his position, which, in turn, is a knock-on effect of his inherited wealth. He possesses a share of the value produced by Loblaws’ workers and a monopoly over an essential good — purchased by many of those same workers.

The Post claims that

society functions best when businessmen behave as businessmen instead of as politicians, and businesses function as businesses. . . . Having fulfilled his responsibility with considerable success, there is no good reason for anyone to begrudge [Weston] his raise.

It might be true that this — with millions dependent on food banks and many more condemned to poverty wages and unemployment amid rising prices — is the best possible world that the capitalist system has on offer. If so, then by all indications, there is an undeniable and urgent need for radical improvement. We don’t have to live in a world where people like Weston have the power to cut wages and benefits and hike food prices beyond what ordinary people can pay.

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The decision “leads to more unnecessary hatred among us,” said Culture Minister Miki Zohar in response. A group of Israeli women will be celebrating abroad to “get away from it all.”

By World Israel News Staff

Opposition leader Yair lapid announced Wednesday that he has refused the government’s official invitation to the traditional torch-lighting ceremony and Independence Day celebration on Mount Herzl next week due to his fury over its judicial reform plans.

“We won’t pretend that we are celebrating together and that everything is OK while the government is tearing the nation apart and erasing democracy,” he declared in response to the invitation sent both to him and National Unity party head Benny Gantz by Transportation Minister Miri Regev, who is in charge of the event.

“You have left me no choice,” he wrote in his response. “I love the State of Israel with all my heart but in three months you have divided Israeli society, and no fake fireworks performance will cover that up. If national unity is so important to you, you would not be dismantling our democracy and instead you’d be going to work for Israel’s citizens.”

“We will not sit there to watch another embarrassing show of flattery for the Netanyahu family,” he added.

Regev had called earlier in the day for unity on Israel’s Memorial Day for fallen IDF soldiers and terror victims on Tuesday and the Independence Day festivities the following day.

“I know there are disputes, criticisms, I ask everyone to put everything aside for three days in the State of Israel,” she said. “At the independence ceremony we will put aside all the arguments between us and unite around our wonderful country. We can put the arguments aside and come and salute the State of Israel for our wonderful achievements.”

In answer to a reporter’s question earlier in the week, Lapid refused to call on his followers to refrain from protesting against the government during the state ceremonies, saying, “I said that first of all I want to hear a call to stop the violence against the demonstrators.”

In reaction, Culture Minister Miki Zohar (Likud) tweeted, “Lapid’s decision not to show up for the torch-lighting ceremony deepens the rift [in society] and leads to more unnecessary hatred among us.”

Some Israeli lay people have become dispirited by the intense political acrimony and disunity, especially at this time of year.

Mimi Buchsbaum, a student and mother of two, told World Israel News that she’s leaving Israel next week for a few days because of all the hate, which she says is just too depressing. She also expects to see more hateful outbursts, such as what happened on Tuesday, Yom Hashoah, Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day, when Likud MK Boaz Bizmuth was shouted down in Tel Aviv and prevented from speaking about the solemn occasion, despite his pleas for unity.

“I love Yom Ha’atzma’ut [Independence Day],” she said. “But never have I seen anything like this. I’m going with some friends to Milan for three nights to get away from it all.

“We’ll celebrate abroad – I can’t imagine ignoring Yom Hazikaron [Memorial Day for fallen IDF soldiers and terror victims] and Yom Ha’atzma’ut. We’ll light candles for Yom Hazikaron and talk about it. On Yom Ha’atzma’ut, we’ll try to find a celebration in the city, and if we can’t, then we’ll  go out for a nice dinner and sing and dance in our hotel room.

“I love my country, but I just don’t want to see what’s going to happen here. I don’t want to see it. Neither do my friends.”

Late last month, National Unity MK Hili Tropper initiated a letter that was signed by over 90 MKs calling “to avoid bringing the political debate into the cemeteries and the days that are holy to the Israeli identity.”

Mentioning specifically Yom Hashoah and Yom Hazikaron, the letter said that the “pain of the families…do not belong to the Right or the Left, to supporters or opposers of the government, they are everyone’s days…for all of us together. They are days that remind us for whom and for what we dream, create, and yes – sometimes fight.

“The [judicial reform] dispute is legitimate, but if we lose this beacon of Israeli partnership, if we turn off its light, the storm may drown us all,” the letter added.

National Unity party leader Benny Gantz endorsed the missive’s sentiments and will be attending the torch-lighting ceremony, despite his firm opposition to the government.

The post Lapid refuses to attend state Independence Day event; Israelis dispirited by division, going abroad appeared first on World Israel News.

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