Harry's Place

George Galloway in Indonesia this past week, launching Viva Palestina Indonesia:

“Indonesia’s presence in the international solidarity movement is quite small, but it is, by no means, nonexistent,” Galloway said.

“We want to bring this populous country more deeply into international solidarity work.”

Galloway said the response from lawmakers, ministers and activists was positive, and said Indonesia had enormous potential to be an influential player in helping to solve the Gaza Strip conflict.

The problem, he said, is that Indonesia’s support has been taken for granted, since the country does not have diplomatic ties with Israel.

“People assume there’s nothing to boycott, because there is no relationship [with Israel] in Indonesia,” he said. “I told them that there might be no Israeli Embassy in Jakarta, but Starbucks is on every corner, and it’s flying Israel’s flag.”

Here is Galloway in Malaysia recently:

“Starbucks every year gives a large cheque to Israel, and maintains a Starbucks coffee shop in every illegal settlement in the occupied Palestinian lands. There is blood in this coffee.”

[...]

“It’s not enough to say Israel has no embassy here. Okay good. But Starbucks has an embassy. Who need an embassy when Starbucks is here, on every street corner, in every mall?”

Where did this theory about Starbucks being ambassadors for Israel come from?

Brendan O’Neill wrote about the “Schultz letter” proving the Starbucks-Israel link:

Many of the claims about ‘Zionist coffee’ and a link between Starbucks and the Israeli military spring from a letter allegedly written by CEO Howard Schultz. Dated 11 July 2006, and titled ‘A Thank You To All Starbucks Customers’, Schultz apparently said that ‘with every cup you drink at Starbucks you are helping with a noble cause’: ensuring the ‘continued viability and prospering of the Jewish State’. Schultz seems to say that the $5 billion donated by America to Israel every year is ‘no way near enough to pay for all the weaponry, bulldozers and security fences needed to protect innocent Israeli citizens from anti-Semitic Muslim terrorism. Corporate sponsorships are essential [too]’. Schultz thanks Starbucks customers for helping him to raise ‘hundreds of millions of dollars each year’ to support the state of Israel (8). This seemingly Starbucks-damning letter has been on the internet for two-and-a-half years, and it now underpins much of the current anti-Starbucks, pro-Gaza protesting. It has appeared on anti-war websites; it has been cited as evidence by those spreading the ‘Boycott Starbucks’ SMS; Daily Egypt, an English-language paper in Cairo, says that ‘Egyptians and Arabs [have been] circulating emails’ containing the Schultz letter (9).

However,

the ‘Schultz letter’ is a hoax; worse than that, it’s a piece of satire that has been accepted by some people as fact. The letter was written, not by Schultz, but by Andrew Winkler, an Australian-based ‘anti-Zionist media activist’ of German origin. It was published as a parody of Schultz, and clearly advertised as a parody, on the anti-Zionist websiteZioPedia on 11 July 2006. Winkler later wrote: ‘The Howard Schultz spoof letter has caused quite a bit of a stir… Howard Schultz never wrote that letter, I did.’ (10) Yet now it has become something like a modern, internet-shared version of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion: a hoax document supposedly written by a Jew which is cited by some people as evidence of Zionist wickedness.

Regarding the author of the hoax letter.

Andrew Winkler is a Holocaust denier who thinks:

If it wasn’t for the Jewish control of mainstream media, it would be common knowledge that Jews are constantly lying for financial and political gains. Just a few examples:

* Jews deny that they dominate Western media.
* Jews deny that they dominate the financial sector.
* Jews deny that they control the U.S. government.
* Jews deny that the ‘Young Turks’ behind the Armenian genocide were in fact Jewish.
* Jews deny that the vast majority of Bolsheviks were Jewish and that the Ukrainian genocide was a Jewish anti-Christian progrom.
* Jews deny that the Israeli government has committed numerous false-flag attacks including the attack by the Israeli Airforce on the U.S.S. Liberty
* Jews deny that there has ever been human sacrifices of Christian children as part of their Passover ritual.
* Jews deny that historic events of the past 100 years follow precisely the blueprint of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, giving credibility to the suggestion that they are genuine and not forgery.
* Jews deny the involvement of Israel’s Mossad in the false-flag terrorist attacks on 9/11 and 7/7, and the murder of Princess Diana.

Jews not only vigorously deny those facts, in spite of overwhelming evidence, they do everything in their power to harm or even destroy anyone daring to give them the slightest credibility.

A history of ruthless pursuit of political and financial goals

Jews have a well known history of ruthlessly pursuing their political and financial goals. Just a couple of examples:

* The spreading of false rumours about a victory of Napoleon in the battle of Waterloo with the purpose of crashing the London Stock Exchange, enabling the Rothschilds to buy the entire English market for less than 5% of its value.
* The creation of World War I and II for the purpose of spreading communism and the creation of the Jews-only state.
* The murder of 1.5 million Armenians to enrage Christian Westeners against Turkey in psychological preparation for the destruction of the Ottoman Empire and the creation of the Jews-only state.
* The systematic use of torture, ethnic cleansing and extra-judicial killings against the Palestinian people.
* The systematic use of lies and deception including false-flag terrorism.

Flimsy evidence and lack of due process

Hundreds and thousands of nonsensical claims

The more light is thrown on the Holocaust accusations, the more obvious it becomes how ridiculous many of them are.

What’s in it for the Jews?

The answer to the question why the Jews would make up such a gigantic lie is pretty obvious. It gave them a free pass for the pursuit of their various political and financial goals. It gave them virtual immunity for their criminal activities. Most importantly it destroyed all resistance against the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine and the genocidal treatment of the Palestinian people. Yes, making up the biggest lie in human history comes at a considerable risk. The ‘Holocult’ founders must have had so much trust in their grip on Western governments and corporate media and their ability to cover up the obvious truth, that they felt the political and financial benefits outweighed the risks.
Summary

What amazes me most about the entire Holocaust saga is how the Jews can get away with their refusal to allow any examination of the veracity of their claims. How they can get away with doing everything in their power to silence and destroy anyone who argues that their accusations don’t make sense.

Andrew Winkler on Germany:

Which debt to the Jewish people, is my question? If the Germans owe anyone then it is the Palestinians, not the Israelis. There wouldn’t be a Jewish state in the Holy Land, if it wasn’t for Germany. The horror stories spread by Judeo-Bolshevik commissars, the confessions coerced in the Stalin style Nuremberg Trials, the gruesome propaganda pictures of piles of typhus victims made it impossible for world opinion to say no to the Zionists’ wishes.

[...]

Of course Satan’s little helpers won’t admit that the Holocaust story was a big fat lie. They know that they are in trouble if more people find out. All the money they extorted in reparations. All the hardship they brought onto the Palestinians under the pretext of a safe haven. All the crimes they got away with because the world felt guilty about what happened during WWII. The world would knock on their shoulders and say, “It’s pay back time.”

Starbucks in service to Israel? Really?

No. George Galloway is picking up the baton from a Holocaust denier, and running with it.

This is a press-release from StandforPeace.

The Jewish-Muslim Interfaith monitoring group StandforPeace expressed satisfaction at a Department of Education decision to ban Human Appeal International from using the Manchester school Parrs Wood as a venue for fundraising.

Human Appeal International has been linked by the US government to the terrorist group Hamas. StandforPeace was the first to learn of the expected HAI event and provided local Jewish and human rights activists with research and expert opinion on the matter; as well as contacting the school directly.

In an email seen by StandforPeace, Preventing Violent Extremism (PVE) officers at the Department of Education concluded: “Since the concerns about HAI have come to light, Parrs Wood has performed further research including consulting local Jewish community representatives. As a result they have decided not to allow HAI or other charities which appear to have links to political organisations to use the school in future.”

Hasan Afzal, Director of StandforPeace, commented, “We are pleased to see the Department of Education take action over Human Appeal International. Schools are ripe targets for organisations such as HAI, and it is imperative that all educational institutions are vigilant about the company they keep.”

Former Malaysian president Mahathir Mohamed:

“The Jews had always been a problem in European countries. They had to be confined to ghettoes and periodically massacred. But still they remained, they thrived and they held whole Governments to ransom…Even after their massacre by the Nazis of Germany, [Jews] survived to continue to be a source of even greater problems for the world…The Holocaust failed as a final solution.”

George Galloway at Viva Palestina Malaysia this week:

Dr Mahathir and I have worked together on Palestine for years” [...]

“Starbucks gives a huge cheque to Israel every year [...]”

There is blood in this coffee… there is blood in this perfume”

“Everyone needs to ask themselves [...] are they doing enough to weaken the people who have made [the Palestinians] suffer”

“this is being done by the European settler colonial state of Israel”

“Why does Israel need an embassy when Starbucks has an embassy here?

etc etc

Gene adds: And yet more jaw-dropping stuff from Galloway, in an interview with the Jakarta Globe while he was in Indonesia.

The Scottish-born newsmaker has now retired from the political arena. “After 23 years, I decided enough was enough,” said Galloway, who resigned in 2010. “Even Mandela only did 27 years.”

No, George. You are not in any way comparable to Nelson Mandela. And no, George. You did not decide “enough was enough.” The wise and discerning voters of Poplar and Limehouse and Glasgow decided it for you.

Update:

Shock Of All Shocks:

This is a cross-post by Azzam “Kaboom” Tamimi

Some of our leftist friends, like many of us, welcomed the launch of the Arab Spring in Tunisia and Egypt and celebrated like us the downfall of Ben Ali and Mubarak. But Syria has proven to be different. Although in essence the Syrian people have the same motivations as their brethren before them in Tunisia and Egypt, our friends on the left seem to judge revolutions not on the basis of what the people aspire to see but on where the oppressive regimes stood on ‘U.S. imperialism’ and the question of Palestine. Before the Arab Spring Syria was part of the resistance axis as opposed to the pro-American moderation axis. It did not matter then that the regime in Syria oppressed the people and persecuted critics. It did not matter that Bashar’s father and other family members butchered thousands in the city of Hamas alone in the early 1980s. Many of us went along with this indifference because the people in Syria did not seem to mind. Yet, when the Arab Spring arrived at Syria’s door and the people of Syria joined in the Arab quest for freedom and dignity, it did not matter anymore where the regime stood in regional or international political alliances. The people had spoken; the people had risen and the people had decided not to be content anymore with less than freedom.

Many of the leftists (and Arab nationalists) justify their support for Bashar’s regime in claiming that Syria is facing an imperialist conspiracy of some sort. As usual, Israel and the USA are given much of the credit. The US and European statements of sympathy and support for the revolution are cited as evidence of foreign intervention. In fact the only effective intervention in Syria today is that of Russia, Iran and China who are keeping Bashar’s regime alive. It is true that the United States is responsible for atrocities in many parts of the world and so is France and so is Britain as former and present colonial powers. Yet, why should the Syria people be denied the right to rise against oppression simply because the U.S., France, Britain and other Western countries express ‘verbal’ support for such a right? What about war crimes perpetrated by Russia during the times of the Soviet Union and before and after? What about the political, cultural and religious oppression of so many nations within the territories controlled by imperialist Russia and imperialist China?

The facts are there for all to see. Bashar’s regime is perpetrating horrific war crimes in Homs and in other cities and villages across Syria. The evidence is well documented thanks to Syrian young men and women who risk their lives in order to relay the cries of help by their loved ones to the rest of the world. Yet, some of our friends on the left are so obsessed with conspiracy to the extent that the claims of the regime in Syria that it is the victim of foreign intervention sounds more credible to them than the images of brutality we see day and night on our TV screens.

My friends on the left will soon be disappointed. The Syrian people will win and Bshar’s regime will be no more.

This is a cross-post from Obliged to Offend

Football has come in for a lot of stick of late. Successive racism scandals, followed by a harrowing documentary reminding us that only one professional footballer has ever come out as gay have, to cut a long story short, dragged the game’s reputation through the mud somewhat.

Not that football set any kind of gold moral standard to begin with or anything. Were you to ask the sort of person who avoids the pub like the plague on match day to sum up their attitude towards the game, they would probably characterise it as 22 overpaid and preening primadonnas who believe underhandedness to be the ultimate virtue – so long of course, as the end result is in favour of one’s own side.

This perception is compounded by the attitude of the fans, who regularly defend the sporting equivalent of two plus two equals five. More often than not, not only will they firmly insist that two plus two equals five, but they will genuinely believe it with every fibre of their being.

Getting the unconverted to comprehend this catalogue of devotion, hatred and ill-will, then, is always going to be something of an uphill struggle. I will endeavor to give it my best shot, all the same.

In order to understand football it is, first of all I think, necessary to recognise the tedium and uniformity of modern life for a large proportion of people. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve had to listen to someone from a well-to-do background lambast those who, in their view, live through the exhilarating exploits of others – be that on the football pitch or in the glossy pages of Heat magazine. It may be a surprise for those people to hear this, but many if not most people spend the vast majority of their time doing routine jobs they would chuck-in in an instant were their lottery numbers to come in on a Saturday night. Should you ever feel tempted to speak disparagingly of a fan’s “irrational concerns,” it is worth taking this into consideration.

Also worth bearing in mind is the fact that a system which pays bankers more than nurses, teachers and fire-fighters is fairly irrational to begin with. Is it really such a great surprise to find lots of people engaging in a bit of escapism at the weekend? No, it really isn’t.

The apparent “irrationality” of football is a particular bugbear amongst haters of the game. “It’s just a piece of leather they’re kicking around,” they will smugly tell you as if they’ve just discovered the molecular structure of DNA. These are the people who can never understand the games’ reluctance to add technology to the proceedings. I must admit, introducing a degree of certainty to a game littered with the glaring mistakes of officialdom does seem, at first, like a no-brainer. Isn’t Match of the Day, the weekly highlight of the television schedule for those of us who cannot afford Sky Sports, characterised by bitter complaints about allegedly incompetent refereeing?

Again, I will be the first to admit that this is all quite true. No argument to be had here. What I would say, though, is that it misses the point entirely. The sheer sense of being robbed when a result doesn’t go a particular way is, counterintuitive as it may seem, an intrinsic part of football’s unique appeal. It is the back and forth of emotions that fans crave, not one emotion in particular. Is that irrational? Of course. But so are lots of things like, I don’t know, falling in love, or complaining about other people’s enjoyment of sports you are not yourself forced to watch.

Why, though, I am often asked, does there exist such passionate hatred of the other team? And in particular, the followers of the other team?

To put it succinctly, in an age of individuality and autonomy football gives its followers a sense of belonging and identity. All of us, whether we like it or not, have an identity we adhere to – a picture in our heads of who we are and where we belong (even those apparently too “civilised” for competitive sport often cling to an identity which sets them apart from fans; usually that of the cultured “highbrow”). There is no doubt of course that identity can, at times, be problematic, and can be harnessed to contrast one’s own imagined virtues with the negative qualities of the “other”. But it is also something people find it rather difficult to do without, as time spent in the company of teenagers, music fans and even those with a slight interest in politics will attest.

Football has a special appeal for so many because it is war-like. It involves strategy and the exertion of herculean energy to accomplish a common goal: the figurative grinding into dust of an opponent, bound up in the notion of the local club. One’s team does whatever it can to win; and to achieve its goal it must break the rules when necessary. Victory is rarely final, either, and there is always the possibility of redemption at some date in the not-too-distant future.

George Orwell, who once dismissed football as “a continuation of war by other means” – which, as I said, it is – hit the nail on the head when he said, speaking in a quite different context, that “on the whole human beings want to be good, but not too good and not quite all the time.”

I am as unhappy as the next lefty about racism and homophobia in the game. I am also aware that football does not matter one jot in the grand scheme of things. I will still be at the bar on the weekend, though, getting genuinely angry at a television screen for no other reason than I took a liking to a particular club when I was about five years old. Irrational and pointless? You bet. I am human though. And in the end, that is what football is.

What’s fascinating here is not so much that the Iranian government has banned dolls of the Simpsons cartoon characters. It’s that Mohammad Hossein Farjoo, secretary of policymaking at Iran’s Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults (shudder), approved the sale of Spiderman and Superman dolls.

“They help oppressed people and they have a positive stance,” he said.

I don’t want to get Mr. Farjoo in trouble, but perhaps he is unaware that both Spiderman and Superman are the creations of– um, er, how can I say this?– Jews.

In fact malign Jewish influence in popular culture appears to have been one of the topics at the 2nd international conference on Hollywoodism and Cinema in Tehran this month. This is from a Press TV interview with one of the participants, Tom Pollard:

Press TV: What are your views about the Jewish influence in Hollywood? How have they been able to use their domination in Hollywood to their advantage? And what are the pros and cons, given that only two to three percentage of the US population is Jewish?

Pollard: Well it’s and [sic] interesting point and it’s often raised, especially at this conference that we’ve attended. And it’s certainly true, that Jewish producers and directors do dominate a large segment, I mean not all of the, of course, I mean you can think of a lot of fine filmmakers that are not Jewish.

But they do have a disproportioned amount of influence.

Considering the Iranian regime’s usual sensitivity about Jewish– or, if you prefer, Zionist– influence in the media, it appears Mr. Farjoo may have made a big mistake.

Michael Weiss again makes the case for active Western support for the Syrian opposition.

Here is the real travesty of this revolution. Russia, Iran and Hezbollah have all been “intervening” in Syria’s internal affairs for ten months now. Meanwhile, the Arab League, the United States and the European Union have all determined that any claim to sovereignty Assad might have had in 2011 is null and void in 2012. What is needed, therefore, is not condemnations, demarches and shuttered embassies but a Western equivalent of intervention in Syria, namely in the form of:

• Humanitarian “safe areas” to provide food, aid and medical supplies to the civilian population and give the various opposition groups a headquarters inside their own country
• Advanced weapons and communication devices for the Syrian rebels
• A no-fly zone to stop the regime from using its aircraft to conduct reconnaissance, offload security personnel and – yes – strafe rebel strongholds from the sky.

Elements of the dead Left view a US military presence in the Middle East as more of a menace than a Soviet-style totalitarianism which rapes young boys in front of their fathers and murders newborn infants just for the hell of it. I don’t expect them to concede that their anti-imperialist theses are less important than Arab lives. But they have no right to misrepresent the will of the people doing the bleeding and dying. If certain comment editors have difficulty finding Syrians on the ground who want Nato fighter jets overhead, I’ll be glad to introduce them to several.

Demonstrators at Ben Gurion Airport. The sign in the center reads: “Contract Workers = Modern Slavery.”

A reminder that for all the hatred directed against it by elements of “the Left,” Israel has one of the world’s most militant and cutting-edge trade union movements– in which Arabs are a full and equal part.

Israel’s main labor union declared a strike on Wednesday that caused delays at Ben Gurion airport, and affected banks, hsopitals, government offices, trains, the stock exchange, and more, after talks with the government failed to produce an agreement on the status of workers employed through labor contractors.

Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz called the strike unnecessary, saying it could cost the economy billions of shekels if it continues. He accused the Histadrut labor federation of being entrenched in its positions.

Histadrut chairman Ofer Eini said that the length of the strike now depends on the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanayhu and Minister of Industry, Trade and Labor Shalom Simhon.
…..
Meanwhile, the Histadrut and the Coordinating Bureau of Economic Organizations – which represents private employers – have reached an agreement in principle that meets the Histadrut’s main demands with regard to outsourced workers. According to the agreement, which has not yet been signed, outsourced workers who work full time and who have been working for at least one or two years would be hired directly by their employer instead of working for an employment agency as they do now. Workers who continue to work for an employment agency would have their salaries and benefits brought in line with those of regular employees.

The agreement was reached on Tuesday between Eini, the coordinating bureau’s chairman, Shraga Brosh, and its director general, Avi Barak, and the chairman of the Histadrut’s labor unions department, Avi Nissankorn.

While a separate agreement with the private sector does not solve the problem of the rest of Israel’s outsourced workers, it contributes to Eini’s image, and it increased his bargaining power during Tuesday’s negotiating session with Steinitz.

In the session, during which no progress was made, Eini presented a general outline with two main thrusts. Outsourced workers, especially full-time cleaning workers, would be taken on as regular employees by the firms in which they work. The status of other outsourced workers would not change in relation to their employer but they would receive salaries equal to people employed directly by the company.

So while private employers were able to reach an agreement with the Histadrut on contract labor, the Netanyahu government is dragging its heels.

LabourStart is linking to updates.

President Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives, who oversaw the first democratically-elected government in a 100-percent Muslim country and who became an outspoken advocate for action on climate change, has been ousted by a military coup.