Here’s how London’s main daily newspaper, the Evening Standard, was covering the Israeli elections – in the news section, mind you, of its website - this morning:

By lunchtime it had been replaced with the rather more vanilla “Israelis go to the polls in tight election race”. I preferred the original version; so much more revealing - in every sense of the word.

[via Alex Massie]

I have to hand it to you guys: you’re nothing if not inventive. The latest wheeze dreamed up by the Jews in their relentless quest for world domination is, it seems, the humble coffee bean.

Radical leftists and Islamists (we really must find an umbrella term that saves me typing all that out every time, so closely do they self-identify these days) are busily spreading the rumour that the Israeli assault on Gaza is being bankrolled by Starbucks, who have apparently donated all their profits this past two weeks to the Zionist war effort. For further details, over to our old chum Yusuf Al-Qaradawi:

“They used to hand a sign on the doors of their shops: ‘We benefit our most important partner, which is Israel, we help in the education of students in Israel, we help build up the Israeli defense arsenal,’ and so on. People go and drink their expensive coffee. Instead of paying 2 riyals for a cup of coffee, they pay 20 riyals. This Starbucks is Zionist. Why do we not teach the nation to make do with its own products, when possible, even if they are of lesser quality? This is the only way the nation will rise. My brothers, put the boycott against the nation’s enemies into action. Every riyal you pay turns into a bullet in the heart of your brothers in Gaza and in other Islamic countries.”

I’m sure I need hardly add that this is, er, grande crappucino. Starbucks has no special charitable or business links with Israel (indeed, it closed all its Israeli stores in 2003) and, as Snopes.com points out, the myth about Starbucks profits being used to fund the Israeli military comes from a spoof letter purporting to be from Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, but actually penned by one Andrew Winkler and published on the ZioPedia website with a subsequent disclaimer clearly identifying it as parody. (Schultz himself is an avowed friend of Israel, which is no doubt how the story got started in the first place.)

Needless to say, satire is not the anti-war movement’s strong point. Several branches of Starbucks have been attacked in cities from Beirut to London and the chain forced to issue an official denial of this ludicrous story. But the fake Schultz memo sticks, like some ersatz internet version of the Protocols; websites republish the claims, Facebook groups pop up, and Starbucks is now semi-officially one of the financial props of the Zionist entity.

Nor is the damage restricted to overpriced coffee shops; British supermarket chain Marks and Spencer has also been targeted by demonstrators; ostensibly that’s because it stocks Israeli produce, like every other supermarket chain in Britain, but I wonder if it’s entirely coincidental that ‘Marks’ is one of this country’s more famously Jewish-founded businesses and a long-standing bugbear of anti-Semites throughout the Middle East. Indeed, if you tune into Iranian TV - and even Iranians watch the Superbowl - you will discover that there’s barely a large multinational anywhere that doesn’t siphon off profits to support the miracle on the Med. (Pepsi stands for “Pay Each Penny to Save Israel”, apparently, which I must admit sounds rather catchy.)

Of course, some might say that this is all rather handy, given those close links between the far left and the radical Islamist right; for your average member of the Socialist Workers Party, the only thing more satisfying than smashing a shopfront is surely the knowledge that you’re striking a blow for Palestine at the same time. But, deeper than that, as Brendan O’Neill points out at Spiked Online, it is arguably symptomatic of a wider malaise, what he calls a “cultural anti-Semitism” – “the projection of disillusionment with Western culture and values on to Israel, also known, in our politically illiterate times, as ‘the Jews’”.

How far that’s true I’m not sure; but it’s an interesting article and worth reading in full. In the meantime, you could do a lot worse than stopping off at Starbuck’s on your way home. Sure, it’s overpriced, but at least all those profits are being spent on shiny fighter planes.

The Axis of Evil is up to its old tricks -- at least, if you believe Robert Mugabe's official spokesman. America and Britain are plotting an invasion of Zimbabwe, but this time at least we've had the smarts to make sure we don't have to do the dirty work ourselves. Comrade George Charamba had the scoop for the state-run Herald newspaper:

‘‘The British and the Americans are dead set on bringing Zimbabwe back to the UN Security Council, they are also dead set on ensuring that there is an invasion of Zimbabwe but without themselves carrying it out. In those circumstances they will stop at nothing including abusing both the office and personnel of the secretary general.

‘‘We would not be surprised if they spring a ‘mission' involving the UN.''

Would that this were true. It's rapidly becoming a cliché to describe just about everything as the most pressing item in the incoming President's in-tray -- terrorism, the economic crisis, you name it -- but while the growing humanitarian crisis in Zimbabwe may not occupy the headline writers' attention to the same extent, it is urgent and it is getting worse.

Having evidently got bored of watching his people starve, Mugabe is now presiding over a cholera epidemic that has claimed hundreds of lives and could kill tens of thousands more unless urgent action is taken. The outbreak has been made worse by the breakdown of the water and sanitation systems even in Harare, and with no water, drugs, blood or food for patients, and intermittent electricity supplies, the hospitals are shutting down.

Meanwhile the international community has ratcheted up the rhetoric, but little else. While the EU extends its travel ban on Zimbabwean government officials (a ban that seems to be waived every time Mugabe is invited to an international summit, or a Pope dies), the regime returns the favour; a group of international mediators, including Kofi Annan and Jimmy Carter, were denied entry to Zimbabwe last month. (Mind you, I wouldn't let those two in either.) As for regional bodies such as the African Union and the Southern African Development Community, they're busily putting pressure on the opposition MDC to accept a "power-sharing" agreement that could scarcely be more worthless if it were signed in bullshit.  

Thanks to the desperate situation in Afghanistan and the bungled aftermath of the Iraq invasion, "regime change" is the dirtiest of phrases, and not one that's likely to be on Obama staffers' lips. Remaining options, though, are few and far between. Economic sanctions can have little effect on a country with no economy, and diplomacy is clearly a non-starter without proper regional support. But the stance of the Mbeki government in South Africa has been shamefully weak (a dereliction of duty that stands second only to their policies on AIDS), and only the possibility of a refugee crisis on its border with Zimbabwe, combined with the harsher rhetoric of Mbeki's presumed successor, Jacob Zuma, holds out any real hope for a more pro-active South African role. By then, however, it will be too late for those who are dying as the infrastructure of the Zimbabwean state collapses around their ears, taking their lives with it.

After an election campaign in which the wingnut right tried repeatedly to raise the spectre of Barack Hussein Obama as crypto-Islamist sleeper sent by the terrorists to destroy the republic from within – a sort of Mohammedan candidate, if you will – it’s kinda refreshing to see normal service resumed this morning, now that the newbie’s back to being attacked as a tool of the Jews. That, at least, is the subliminal message of Al Qaeda’s latest video message, in which Ayman Al-Zawahiri deploys what the media are coyly referring to as a “racial epithet” to describe the President-elect:

The phrase that has caught everyone’s attention, of course, is the punchline; Obama is portrayed, like Colin and Condi, as compliant “house Negroes”, who in Malcolm X’s infamous categorization were too docile to rise up against their oppressors, unlike their counterparts “in the field”. (As news outlets have carefully pointed out, the Arabic word used in the message, “abed”, does not actually mean “Negro”, though it’s rendered as such in the subtitles. In fact it can mean either “slave” or “black”; Arabs use the same word fairly interchangeable for both ideas. One wonders what Malcolm would have made of that.)

Lest there was any doubt that he was sharing the Al Qaeda perspective on African-Americans’ long march to freedom, though, Zawahiri (if indeed it is he) hammers the real point home with characteristic subtlety:

“You were born to a Muslim father, but you chose to stand in the ranks of the enemies of the Muslims, and pray the prayer of the Jews”

…accompanied by obligatory photo of Obama wearing a kippah.

As a reminder that we are dealing with antediluvian minds, this is at least welcome, if (one would hope) redundant. But while the crass use of racially loaded language may jar horribly to western ears, at least we have some idea now of the narrative that Islamists intend to construct around America’s first mixed-race President, and the implicit threat to Muslims who seek accommodation with Israel and the West, rather than conflict.

Still, at least they didn’t call him an Uncle Tom. Endorsing McCain was bad enough, but if I thought Al Qaeda were Naderites I’d be starting to question their judgement.

To Liverpool, then, and the MTV Europe awards, in an attempt to make sense of this historic week in politics. At the tender age of 24, Katy Perry is already a veteran of the culture wars; despite its utterly insipid lyrics, her chart-topping paean to lipstick lesbianism, I Kissed A Girl, attracted the ire of conservatives and gay groups alike. Who better, then, to interpret the sudden shift in the American zeitgeist for an audience of screaming European teenagers?

Jared Leto, from 30 Seconds to Mars, made the crowd stand in honour of the US President-elect Barack Obama. Amid rapturous cheers, he said: "Liverpool, let's hear it for Barack Obama."

Perry responded: "Maybe Europe will love us again now."

I can only speak for myself when I stress that Katy’s message was in no way compromised by the image of her entering the arena, moments earlier, straddling a giant chapstick. But her careful use of the qualifier “maybe” was entirely redundant; there’s no question about it. Europe loves you again now. Can you feel it? Doesn’t it make you warm inside? What? Oh.

Certainly U.S. visitors and residents over here noticed the change almost immediately; apocryphal reports even spoke of American girls spontaneously being offered flowers on the streets of Paris. (You must never underestimate the opportunism of a Frenchman.) Politicians from across the spectrum were maintaining a public silence, but privately crossing their fingers and praying for a Democratic victory; their subsequent congratulations had an unfamiliar tone to them which at first I couldn’t place, so long was it since I’d heard sincerity in their voices. If the member states of the EU had electoral college votes up for grabs, Obama would have swept the continent 27-0.

The press were especially pleased. The week’s most predictable about-turn was to be found in the UK’s Guardian newspaper, for eight years the house broadsheet of every self-respecting left-wing Bush-hater on this side of the pond. In a gushing editorial, they rejoiced that “So often crudely caricatured by others, the American people yesterday stood in the eye of history and made an emphatic choice for change for themselves and the world”, conveniently ignoring the fact that they have been doing much of the caricaturing this past decade. “Today is for celebration, for happiness and for reflected human glory. Savour those words: President Barack Obama, America's hope and, in no small way, ours too.”

This ludicrous theme recurs again and again in European reactions to Obama’s triumph. It is perceived in some sense to be a victory for Europe; somehow, it vindicates European values, the European outlook on the world. How or why this should be the case is not entirely clear, though there’s no doubt that Obama’s urbane cosmopolitanism hews closer to the way Europeans like to think of themselves than Bush’s grating cowboy image. But the myth has already started to take root; finally they have listened to us and seen the error of their ways, the European chatterati tell themselves, with a preening amour propre that is faintly ridiculous to behold.

Wiser voices have urged caution. Matthew Parris, the most sane and sanguine of British conservative commentators, tried to prick the bubble of misplaced euphoria in a column in the Times towards the end of last week:

He, we sense, understands. He cares. He is like us, understands us, surely agrees with us, even though he has not yet said so. He would be our friend if ever we were to meet him. In some strange way he knows us already, though we have never been introduced. He is the pop star whose poster adorns the adolescent's bedroom wall… the David Beckham who is surely deeper/cleverer/gayer/more cultured (depending on your bent) than he seems; the Queen Mother who, if she ever had come to tea, would have got on with us like a house on fire.

It is desperately important that we never meet these people, for reality would be cruel.

A reality check, too, from the head of Britain’s Equality and Human Rights Commission, Sir Trevor Phillips, who warned that a British Obama would never manage to rise to the top in our own society. Colin Powell, the son of Jamaican immigrants, once expressed similar reservations about his own prospects had his family chosen this country ahead of the US. But quiet surprise that Americans have chosen a black leader has been more in evidence than much critical analysis of the reasons why it hasn’t ever come close to happening here.

For those Europeans, and Brits, who delight in criticising American policy at every turn, it has been the convenient refrain of the past eight years that they are not anti-American but anti-Bush. When the last high-fives have been done and the balloons are cleared away, it will be time for Europe’s new pin-up to get down to business, and it will surely be a mere matter of weeks before the first howls of outrage start emanating from the usual quarters. We will see then what their excuse is this time.