Jeremy Corbyn = Selective memory

Hi Rob....I've not checked but I'm fairly certain that Corbyn voted against the decision to invade Iraq (Blair's baby sucking up to Bush).

The Tories supported the invasion - no doubt partly based on "dodgy dossier".

The street demos were not organised by Labour but by Stop the War Coalition (with the Socialist Workers Party heavily involved). Corbyn was indeed a leading light - as was Benn.

On this issue I think JC has been consistent.

If I were in England I'd vote Labour - perhaps same in Wales. I'm a reluctant SNP voter up here as the Conservatives exist to reinforce inequality and bolster privilege.

G

This belongs in the politics section otherwise we will have politics in every section, which will be a turn off for many!

I agree but don't want to fight with admin!

#suckup

I suggest you look at the video posted in Aposhark's thread.

Just an opinion

In this case I don't - Corbyn can't reinvent history and he and Blair are so apart politically it's unfair he being tarred by the same brush.

If we're being totally honest I think every UK government - of whatever stripe - are complicit in the Middle East clusterf*ck we see today. Empire building / colonial ambition / sphere's of influence - and of course Black Gold have been the drivers.

I'm going to differ. I would, of course - my father was a career "Arabist" - in the British Council not the Foreign Office.

"Colonial ambition" and "empire building" were very long ago. I don't think any part of today's clusterf**k has to do with Gertrude Bell, TE Lawrence, William Shakespear or any others of the "Empire Building" generations. Keep in mind that the average age in the Middle East is rather young. Are we going to blame Mussolini (who really did carry out atrocities) for today's Libya?

I'll just point out that the two nations most closely aligned with Britain - Jordan and Oman - are "success stories" in the region despite having no oil and despite being adjacent to the two big de-stabilisers - Israel and Iran, and that British soft influence in Bahrain, Kuwait and the Emirates is still very strong.

As regards Black Gold, the stuff will destabilise almost any country, and I think we do have to give BP a Special Mention for the CIA-orchestrated overthrow of Mossadeq in Iran.

Greed and dominance the breakdown of mankind

The contradiction inherent in the "Balfour Declaration" didn't exactly help!

The best that can be said about that is that we were fighting a war at the time, and in reality the Balfour Declaration was one of a series of attempts by European nations at war with one another to try to suborn the Jews fighting for the other side - iirc both Austria and Russia issued similar proclamations. Certainly that and Sykes-Picot are at the root of the mess, but they could both have been "managed". After all, we got the USSR out of Egypt quite smoothly. I think the clusterf**k is made in this century.

Well-argued article on this by the Indie's excellent Robert Fisk.

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices...tenary-arabs-jewish-settlements-a7607491.html

A point of interesting information (text extracted from Wikipedia):

"The Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC) was a British company founded in 1908 following the discovery of a large oil fieldin Masjed Soleiman, Iran. It was the first company to extract petroleum from Iran. In 1935 APOC was renamed the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) and in 1954 it became the British Petroleum Company (BP), one of the antecedents of the modern BPpublic limited company."