British Grocer Expands Israeli Settlement Boycott
A leading British supermarket chain has extended its boycott of Israeli goods made in Jewish-only settlements in the occupied West Bank. The Co-operative Group, Britain’s fifth-largest grocer, says it will now cut business ties with any companies known to source from the settlements. The co-operative has boycotted settlement products since 2009.
2 NYC Pension Funds to Target Wal-Mart Directors in Shareholder Vote
In the latest fallout from the Wal-Mart bribery scandal in Mexico, a group of New York City pension funds have announced plans to vote against the re-election of five Wal-Mart directors at the company’s upcoming shareholders’ meeting. The directors targeted include Wal-Mart chair Rob Walton, Chief Executive Michael Duke and former CEO Lee Scott.
British Parliament: Rupert Murdoch Not Fit to Run Media Company
A British parliamentary report has found Rupert Murdoch is “not a fit person” to run a major international media company in light of the widespread phone-hacking scandal at News Corp. A committee of British MPs said Murdoch and his son, James, showed “willful blindness” about the scale of phone hacking at the News of the World tabloid. The report states: “Their instinct throughout, until it was too late, was to cover up rather than seek out wrongdoing and discipline the perpetrators.” The report goes on to say “the whole affair demonstrates huge failings of corporate governance.” Labour MP Tom Watson spoke soon after the report was released.
Tom Watson: “Powerful people were involved in a cover-up, and they still haven’t accepted responsibility. And after all of this, the story is not yet over. These people corrupted our country. They brought shame on our police force and our parliament. They lied and cheated, blackmailed and bullied, and we should all be ashamed when we think how we cowered before them for so long. But to really stop requires more than tokenistic retribution. It needs conclusive attribution. The very cornerstone of justice is that those really responsible are held to account, that the rich and powerful are as low in the face of the law as the most humble and weak. And everybody in the world knows who is responsible for the wrongdoing of News Corp.: Rupert Murdoch. More than any individual alive, he is to blame. Morally, the deeds are his. He paid the piper, and he called the tune. It is his company, his culture, his people, his business, his failures, his lies, his crimes, the price of profits and his power.”