This post is actually a comment from another post which grew too long to post as a comment and so had to be posted as a post. *sigh*
I don't want to defend Jeremy Corbyn. I haven't heard anything about him, except for the debate about his economic beliefs (he might be a total fuckwit, for all I know); however, I would like to point out a few issues I have with this article on The Guardian:
The author clearly states "I genuinely believe that Corbyn does not have an antisemitic bone in his body". In fact, that's also the sub-heading of the article—which then goes on to list a bunch of people & organisations Corbyn can be linked to.
Firstly, being linked to a group or sharing a platform with them—or even supporting them on a particular issue—does not mean you support every aspect of, or endorse every statement that every member of that group has ever made. I'm reminded of when the Katter party and the Greens held joint rallies against coal-seam-gas up here.
Secondly, I don't think there's any person or group in the world that's spoken out against Israel that hasn't been labelled antisemitic: A) Because that's what hard-line pro-Israelis like to do; and B) Expressing anti-Israeli sentiments will naturally engender support from genuine antisemites, making it easy to tar you with that brush.
But let's look at the specific examples given in the article:
• Corbyn once described it as his “honour and pleasure” to host “our friends” from Hamas and Hezbollah in parliament. According to Corbyn, he extended his invitation to the aforementioned groups – and spoke of them glowingly – because all sides need to be involved in the peace process.
It then goes on to talk about the extremist rhetoric in Hamas' charter as the (sole?) reason why Hamas cannot be a party to peace negotiations. Yet within five minutes I found this article ON THE FUCKING GUARDIAN about Hamas pulling back on their "death to Israel" bullshit in 2006, and this article, also ON THE FUCKING GUARDIAN, entitled "Sometimes it's good to talk—even to 'terrorists'", where Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal is quoted saying the charter is “a piece of history and no longer relevant, but cannot be changed for internal reasons”.
I suppose the bloke who wrote this Corbyn piece was also against the Northern Ireland peace process—because who gives a shit about the results, you should NEVER talk to terrorists! Right?
NOTE: When western leaders are questioned about why they regularly stick their tongues up the arses of the Saudi royal family—one of the most barbaric, oppressive, and discriminatory dictatorships on the planet—their response is always that they're more likely to make progress if they keep diplomatic channels open and friendly.
• Presented a call-in programme on Press TV, a propaganda channel of the Iranian government which was banned by Ofcom and which regularly hosts Holocaust deniers
Yes, this is terrible. Also, the Murdoch press is a shadowy organisation that subverts democracy, engages in institutionalised criminal practices, and actively championed the invasion of a country under false pretences, resulting in the deaths on hundreds of thousands of civilians. And the BBC is a government funded media organisation which actively covered up the actions of a notorious paedophile … oh, and was also on board with the whole invasion thing. Everyone who has ever had anything to do with any of these media organisations should be shot! (Hey, charging people with crimes by association is easy and fun!)
• Been accused of donating money to self-proclaimed Holocaust denier Paul Eisen, whose Deir Yassin Remembered group has been shunned by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, in the name of refusing to “turn a blind eye to antisemitism”. Corbyn has addressed that claim via his spokesman, who said that “Jeremy Corbyn’s office” had had no contact with Eisen and that Corbyn disassociated himself from his extreme views – a denial that seems neither forceful nor convincing.
So, this one's just a rumour—which he did actively deny—he just didn't deny it hard enough?
on 22 August Corbyn is scheduled to share a platform with Carlos Latuff, a cartoonist who regularly uses antisemitic imagery in his cartoons but denies being antisemitic. Middle East Monitor, the group organising the event, has been accused by the Community Security Trust of promoting conspiracy theories and myths about Jews.
As far as I know, Latuff is a FIERCE critic of Israel, but is not anti-Jew. His blog is here and his art gallery here if you want to make up your own mind. He has done numerous pieces comparing the actions of Israel to the actions of Nazi Germany; but then again, so has Michael Leunig. So anyone who's ever spoken at an event that's also hosted Leunig must also be a cunt.
As for the Middle East Monitor: every partisan think-tank I can think of puts out bullshit propaganda that supports their own political viewpoint. Some details would have been handy.
• Written a letter defending Stephen Sizer, the vicar disciplined by the Church of England for linking to an article on social media entitled 9/11: Israel Did It
So, what I can gather from this article is that a Vicar linked to an article (which I can't find, but was supposedly about Israeli involvement in 9/11), and (again, supposedly) made the comment "Is this antisemitic, it raises so many questions". In response, the church banned the vicar from using social media. Corbyn (apparently) wrote a letter (which I also cannot find) saying the punishment was disproportionate, since everyone on the internet gets caught up linking to bullshit articles once in a while.
I want to see the primary sources before I make any judgement on this one.
• Taken tea on the parliamentary terrace with Raed Salah, who he described as “a very honoured citizen” despite that fact that Salah was charged with inciting anti-Jewish racism and violence in January 2008 in Jerusalem and sentenced to eight months in prison. He was found by a British court judge to have used the “blood libel”, the medieval antisemitic canard that Jews use gentile blood for ritual purposes
I'm not going to defend Raed Salah, but he is a popular elected leader in Israel—so see my comments on Hamas. Salah was charged with inciting anti-Jewish racism and violence, but he served the eight months only for the violence charge, as he was acquitted on the racism charge (although, the acquittal was overturned 18 months later—a decision which is pending further appeal, from what I can gather). As far as the British court goes, as far as I can tell, he was eventually cleared on all charges, which you can read about in an article Salah himself wrote FOR THE FUCKING GUARDIAN. If you look at the last paragraph, which refers to debate in the comments, and then follow the links, it's revealed that Salah addressed the "blood libel" statements in the article, but the editor removed that section for some reason.
Also, from what I can find, Corbyn has not "taken tea on the parliamentary terrace" with Salah, but he has said that he would if he had the chance.
Lastly, there's the connection to the "Stop The War Coalition":
During the disastrous Iraq war, the misleadingly named Stop the War Coalition released a statement which “reaffirms its call for an end to the occupation, the return of all British troops in Iraq to this country and recognises once more the legitimacy of the struggle of Iraqis, by whatever means they find necessary, to secure such ends”.
For the Ba’athists and al-Qaida militants who largely made up the Iraqi “resistance”, “whatever means necessary” included suicide attacks on Iraqi and British soldiers. More recently Stop the War has ludicrously accused the US of launching a “proxy war against Russia” in Ukraine.
If you genuinely believed the Iraqis were fighting an aggressive force of invading foreigners, wouldn't that be a fair statement to make? If Australia was being overrun by Iraqi soldiers, I'd have to think long and hard about whether or not I'd be condemning suicide bombers (even if they were right wing arseholes, or religious zealots, whom I would normally hate). Remember, the west has a long history of supporting and funding terrorists; except when we do it, we call them rebels, freedom-fighters, guerrillas, moderate liberationist forces, etc (until they turn on us, and then we go back to calling them terrorists—see al-Qaida & ISIS).
Also, to the best of my knowledge, al-Qaida were only able to establish a presence in Iraq because of the chaos that flowed after the invasion.
And I tend to agree with the sentiment that the US is using Ukraine to conduct a proxy war with Russia. We got a peek behind the curtain when the Ruskies intercepted and leaked a phone call between Assistant Secretary Of State Victoria Nuland and the US ambassador to Ukraine. BBC has their analysis here. Nuland's an interesting person, because she's part of the governmental machine that sits below the elected representatives (and doesn't get enough media attention, in my opinion). She's had basically the same role under Clinton, Bush, & Obama, and I highly recommend reading up on her, the Kagan family (of which she's a part) and the Project For The New American Century.
The US basically supported an uprising by a bunch of Neo-Nazi fascists in Ukraine, and John McCain even shared a stage with Oleh Tyahnybok, who is famous for his speech about Ukraine being run by a Russian-Jewish mafia, and his open letters decrying the influence of "organised Jewry".
Hey, according to the logic of this article, does that make John McCain, Victoria Nuland (herself Jewish), and maybe the whole US Govt antisemitic by proxy?
On top of that, I think there's a strong case to be made that a good chunk of what's going on with Syria stems from a proxy war between the US & Russia. To be honest, I don't think the problems in Syria & Ukraine are completely disconnected; but you sort of need to look at a good map of Eurasian oil & gas pipelines to understand why. Another article FROM THE FUCKING GUARDIAN alludes to this a little bit. And This video of Wes Clark (former head of NATO's military forces) is enlightening, as well.
Like I said before, I don't want to be defending Corbyn, since I don't really know anything about him. For all I know he's a fuckwit and an antisemite and believes in homeopathy—it's just that I have issues with that particular article and the way it was written.
Oh, and in regards to Corbyn's "radical" economic policy, I heard that one of the board members of the British central bank stated publicly the other day that in order to avoid the next big recession, UK would have to seriously consider outlawing cash (so that people couldn't take their money out of the bank) and then going to negative interest rates (so that you lose money the longer it stays in the bank—thereby forcing people to spend rather than save). Talk about being fucking radical.
