I don’t like George Galloway, for a wide range of reasons. However, if he continues skewering gung-ho right-wing idiots in this vein, I may have to re-evaluate. Best Speech Ever…
I don’t like George Galloway, for a wide range of reasons. However, if he continues skewering gung-ho right-wing idiots in this vein, I may have to re-evaluate. Best Speech Ever…
More on this at http://dearkitty.modblog.com/core.mod?show=blogview&blog_id=603333
there’s an entertainingly pathetic disappointed fox news commentary here
Sadly his Newsnight performance this evening wasn’t as impressive. His claim that "We wouldn’t have had to invade Iraq for their oil if Maggie Thatcher hadn’t shut the coal mines" is unfortunatly bollocks as the UK is a net exporter of oil and has been since 1982….
http://www.dti.gov.uk/energy/inform/dukes/dukes2004/03longterm.pdf
As most of our power stations are now gas fired we should actually be thinking of invading Russia instead….
Check your facts Mr Galloway…………
Until possibly this year. But yes a good point.
Although I have to say that I’ve looked into it a lot, spoken to quite a few people who know more about politics and oil than me, and I’ve come to the conclusion that the war was probably about getting control of more oil fields, though I’m not sure Tony Blair thought this.
Reading that Fox news thingie above, I thought, "In the UK, these people would have already been sued for libel, lost, and been forced to print a retraction". I’m starting to become fond of our restrictive libel law…
Oh I absolutely agree, I’m almost 100% certain the US invaded Iraq for strategic energy reasons, however I’m not sure that’s any worse a motive than that which any other war has been fought on.
Frankly the Middle East is, and always has been been, run by a bunch of autocratic maniacs and the US probably quite rightly came to the conclusion that pouring billions of dollars in oil money every year of support money to those regimes is a very bad idea. However the execution of the ‘regime change’ plan to secure access to the energy reserves was frankly shoddy and short sighted.
I do find it amusing that because the US has never developed a sensible energy diversification strategy it’s basically at the beck and call of bunch of hereditary nutballs. Who else appart from me knows that one of the recent ex-King’s of Saudi Arabia was an alcoholic and was removed from the throne because he was pissed 24 hours a day…. Amazing for the head of a muslim state….
It’s always been one rule for the ruling class (who do very well off annuity oil revenue streams thank you very much) and one rule for everyone else…
"Amazing" isn’t quite the right word. "Par for the course" might be more reasonable.
Saudi is even worse than other Arab states in this respect, since it’s founded on the principle that the religious police are allowed to enforce whatever crazy perversions of Islam they like, as long as they successfully keep the proles under control and let the royals do whatever *they* like behind closed doors.