Shaphan

Local Stuff

I live in Islington, and years ago I saw a UFO while sunbathing on Parliament Hill, so I wish I'd seen the spectacular light-show over Archway last Thursday evening.  The Islington Gazette has the story.  What with this and other recent stories from America of similar sightings, the conventional wisdom that UFOs were a late 20th-century phenomenon seems to be proving premature.

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Genetically I'm a Liverpudlian; footballistically I'm a Gooner; viscerally, I'm anti-Dubai and all it stands for.  I've written before about my unhappiness at Arsenal FC's sponsorship deals with the Israeli government ("ThinkEilat.com"; don't think about Eilat's recent suicide bombing) and with Emirates Airline.  Although more Blue than Red, I have a soft spot for both Liverpool clubs, so was perturbed when the Maktoum family showed an interest in LFC, and was thus relieved when they pulled out of the deal.  But now, according to The People, the al-Maktoums have turned their attention back to Arsenal.  "ARSENAL are the target of a £450million take-over bid from Sheikh Mohammed.  The world's fifth-richest man is said to have earmarked Gunners after being snubbed by Liverpool this week in favour of American investment."  [Via Arseblog]

Arsenal FC's links to child abuse, destruction of Lebanon

[This is a follow-up to a previous post, Israel's Arsenal and Arsenal's Israel's, about Arsenal FC's sponsorship deals with Dubai's al-Maktoum crime syndicate family and with the Israeli Tourism Ministry, neither of which I, as an Arsenal supporter, could approve.]

On Wednesday, September 13th, Arsenal FC played Hamburg SV in the Champions' League in Hamburg, winning 1-2.  Because both clubs are sponsored by Emirates Airline, Arsenal's logo was, as a one-off, changed to read 'Dubai'.

The following day it was reported that:

Dubai's ruler has been accused of enslaving thousands of young children for camel races in a class-action lawsuit filed in the US.

The action claims Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, his brother Hamdam and 500 others are responsible for abducting and trafficking the children. (..)

The children were said to be from Bangladesh, Sudan and southern Asia.

Once in Dubai, it is claimed that the children - some of them as young as two - were kept in poor conditions, starved (so as to keep their weight down), abused and forced to take part in a dangerous sport.

It's only a lawsuit, which has yet to be tried in court;  on the other hand, it's the first stage towards a conviction.  UAE/Dubai bans political parties and voting, its mosques are state-controlled and the internet is censored.  If the Maktoums are also involved in child abduction, abuse and enslavement, I doubt whether the Arsenal board could care less (unless, of course, it led to bad publicity).

Meanwhile, Arsenal FC continues to be cagey about its dirty dealings with the Israeli Tourism Ministry (it's a topic never reported on its website).  The idea, as I understand it, was to send planeloads of Gooners to act as human shields for the Zionist regime.  Well, the Jerusalem Post reported on September 6th that,

The Tourism Ministry has delayed its advertising at Arsenal Football Club's new Emirates stadium fearing that a campaign promoting Israel might create negative sentiment in the UK after the war in Lebanon, The Jerusalem Post has learned.

"It was a mutual decision as we felt it wasn't the right time to start the campaign," Uzi Gafni, director of the Israeli government tourist office in the UK and Ireland told the Post. "Given how Israel was portrayed in the British media through the war, we felt it better to wait until the cease-fire agreement was secure, that Israel was out of the limelight for a while, before starting the promotions for fear of a negative reaction by the public here." (..)

For now, however, a visit to www.arsenal.com confirms that Israel remains absent from the football club's impressive list of sponsors.

Gafni said that Tourism Ministry representatives were scheduled to meet with Arsenal around mid-September and that the campaign should kick off at the club's home game on September 23 against Sheffield United.

He added that the government had received assurances that it would be compensated for the time lost on the deal.

The club said in response: "Arsenal is jointly evaluating with the Israel Tourist Board the position with regards to our relationship."

So, not only did Arsenal receive money from the Israeli Tourism Ministry, the club is also going to pay back money to the ITM as a result of the Israeli government's unjust assault on Lebanon and Hezbullah.  I can see what the Zionist regime gets from the deal - but, apart from a heap of trouble, I can't see what benefit Arsenal gets from it whatsoever (except for those who are called to be human shields, for they will get a discount).

PS  Note the JP report's choice of words, "the government had received assurances that ...", which makes explicit that this is a deal between Arsenal FC and the Israeli government.

Addendum:  A (rather shrill) 'Boycott Israel' website has a 'Boycott Arsenal' campaign too.  It adds this information to what I already knew.

The televised ads will reach audiences of up to 700 million in an estimated 198 countries.  The Israeli Tourism Ministry will also receive intellectual property rights, the use of the team logo and the right to use photos of the team and its players in ads.  For an additional fee, Arsenal players will also appear in the ads.[3]

The deal doesn't stop with promoting Israel but actually grants Israel a physical presence in the stadium.  The Israeli Tourism Ministry can use the stadium's banquet hall twice a year and can organize an exhibition at the end of the playing season.[3]  The stadium will also feature permanent sales tables for t-shirts.[4]

Arsenal stuff(ed)

I feel good, I think.  I've done what I said I would do and cancelled my Arsenal FC website membership, due to AFC's sponsorship deals with Emirates Airline and the Israeli Tourist Board.  And I explained in the email why I was withdrawing my support.  I wrote:

Please cancel my ATVO membership.  I am doing this extremely reluctantly - as a longtime supporter I've liked contributing to the Club, even if it was a miniscule amount.  But the Board's recent sponsorship deals are so ill-conceived, irresponsible and immoral that I can no longer continue actively supporting the Club.

In Dubai, as I'm sure the Board knows, there's no democracy, the internet is censored, and the mosques are controlled by the government.  And the Zionist state is, if they hadn't noticed, the world's most controversial political problem.  Neither Emirates Airline nor the Israeli Tourist Board are truly independent commercial concerns, and their reasons for sponsoring the Club are not purely financial.  So, either the Board is obtuse or it is abusing its trust by drawing Arsenal FC into a conflictual political arena on the wrong side of the argument.  Arsenal supporters, players, staff and local residents may be made more vulnerable to terrorist attacks because of the Board's decisions - did the Board take that, and its possible consequences, into consideration before signing the contracts?

Osama bin Laden was once an Arsenal supporter and visited Highbury a couple of times in the George Graham era, so I bet Osama's cancelled his Arsenal TV Online membership too having heard about the new sponsors.  Osama and I are now supporting Jeddah Athletic.

Oh, and if Arsenal wins the Champions' League, and Spurs finishes fourth in the league, AFC should stand aside and allow Spurs to compete in its place. It was a wrong-headed precedent that allowed Liverpool to enter this year - LFC hadn't qualified by right and it didn't even defend the cup (they kept it, as five-times winners).  If the perfect storm occurs, Arsenal should do the right thing and let Spurs have its just reward.

P.S. I've had an email back from AFC to say my comments have been passed on to the Club.  I feel temporarily virtuous, and I hope there are others, aside from Osama and I, who have done or will do likewise.

Israel's Arsenal and Arsenal's Israel's

For my sins and graces, I am a supporter of Arsenal FC, having lived within earshot of Highbury for 20 years.  I will continue to support Arsène Wenger, his staff and the players, but the Board has now lost my confidence.  First there was David Dein telling Patrick Vieira, in my view Arsenal's greatest-ever player, that the club was neutral about keeping him.  But that's about the playing side, and Dein is paid to make those decisions, so I could forgive that.

But then there was the decision to accept £100 million in sponsorship money from Emirates Airline.  Emirates Airline is owned by the Emirates Group, which is itself owned by the Dubai government (read, the al-Maktoum family), which founded the company in 1985.  The chairman is HH Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed al-Maktoum, who is also president of Dubai's civil aviation authority. In other words, Emirates Airline isn't an ordinary commercial company - it is the state airline of the UAE and an agency of the Maktoum 'royal' family of the Dubai emirate.  There is no voting nor voters in the UAE, and political parties are forbidden.  The state dictates who runs the Sunni mosques and what is preached in them at Friday prayers.  So the UAE manages to offend the sensibilities of democrats and Islamists alike.  But the Maktoum 'royal' family in Dubai has managed to seduce the West, first with its oil wealth and now in its diversification into tourism and commerce.  Arsenal FC should not be promoting the interests of the Maktoum family, which is an enemy of both secular and religious freedom.

And now the board of directors has gone and signed an agreement with Israel to promote Israel as 'Arsenal's' tourist destination of choice, both on the website and on banners around the new ground, the Emirates Stadium (see above).  Oddly, the news was not announced, and is not yet posted, on the Arsenal website.  But Israel's tourism minister commented: "(Through the deal with Arsenal) Israel will get a lot of coverage as a preferred tourist destination in the consciousness of millions of people, not only in England, but around Europe and the world." 

To Arsenal, it's worth £350,000 in the first season - peanuts compared to the UAE deal but the Israelis seem satisfied.  But we, ie Arsenal, shouldn't be accepting Israeli money, nor promoting its interests "in the consciousness of millions".  It's as morally reprehensible as the Emirates sponsorship, and arguably more so.  Israel has an arsenal of 120-plus nuclear weapons, unbound from any treaty agreements with the IAEA or the UN, which are pointing at Tehran, Qom and Damascus.  While Israel has an undeclared arsenal of nuclear weapons and other WMD, Arsenal FC shouldn't be taking Israel's money.  When Israel agrees with Syria that the Middle East should be WMD-free, then we should take their money (provided they've also returned Jerusalem and the West Bank to its people).

The Arsenal board of directors' seem willing to accept money from anyone, even if that leaves the fans more vulnerable to terrorist attack.  At the moment, the club accepts my money as a registered user of the website (although I haven't attended a match for years).  Unless Arsenal FC changes its decision, my moral imperative will be to withdraw my miniscule financial support from it.  I'll miss the video of match-highlights and player interviews, damn it.