Friday, October 03, 2014

Things People Blame the Jews For, Volume XII: ISIS

I've actually had several opportunities to add this one to the series -- I've seen the "ISIS is really a Mossad operation" bit on numerous occasions -- but the fact that this one came from Malmo, Sweden just broke the camel's back:
A local politician with Sweden’s ruling party said that Israel trained the jihadist ISIS group to wage war on Muslims.

Adrian Kaba, who represents Sweden’s Social Democrats in Malmo’s city council, made the statement this summer during a discussion on Facebook, the Sydsvenskan newspaper reported on Thursday. Reacting to the report, the chairman of the party’s regional branch, Joakim Sandell, said, “An elected official should not be spreading conspiracy theories.”

In his Facebook post, Kaba wrote on July 21: “ISIS is being trained by the Israeli Mossad. Muslims are not waging war, they are being used as pawns by other peoples’ game.”
Malmo is the epicenter of anti-Semitism in Sweden, which is perhaps not unrelated to the fact that their politicians pedal in anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.

But again, Kaba really over-stretched himself here. One doesn't have to say that Israel controls ISIS to claim that they're really basically the same thing. Or perhaps he could, like one of his British counterparts, just complain that ISIS isn't attacking Israel like it should be.

Monday, September 29, 2014

ILWU Statement on "Block the Boat"

Nothing is more progressive than threatening workers!
At 6:00 PM Saturday, ILWU [International Longshore and Warehouse Union) Local 10 and 34 represented longshoremen and clerks dispatched to work the vessel ZIM Shanghai at SSA’s Oakland California Terminal were met with hostile demonstrators, effectively blocking all access to the terminal. Longshoremen and Clerks trying to report to work were threatened physically at some points of ingress and their personal vehicles were physically blocked. As such, all personnel stood-by outside of the demonstration perimeters for health and safety purposes. At approximately 8 PM SSA released all personnel from work.

As far as the union can ascertain, the protests are organized by a coalition of individuals and organizations that plan events and create action alerts under the name of “Block the Boat for Gaza” online.

The ILWU is not among the groups organizing the protests, and the leadership and membership of the ILWU have taken no position on the Israel/Gaza conflict.
Indeed, pretty much all efforts to block Israeli boats on the West Coast end up resorting to threatening the dockworkers. Curious, that.