Clegg realises he has fucked up

More evidence, as if it was needed, that Nick Clegg is a giant walking sack of shit with a ministerial car: yesterday at Prime Minister’s questions he said the government was going to close Yarl’s Wood, a hellhole private prison for asylum seekers who have done nothing wrong.

But, a bit like when the Lib Dems promised in government that they would stop locking up kids, only to lock up and then deport a baby from Glasgow, it turns out this claim was about as true as the SDL claiming they’re not racist. The government’s real powers were quick to make sure everyone realised that in fact only the “family unit” (i.e. the bit where they lock up parents and their innocent kids) will be closed, but the centre as a whole will remain open. (Even on this minimal commitment – please note it hasn’t actually happened yet!)

Yarl’s Wood is a place where our society locks up people who have fled torture, rape and other horrors from around the world. Very often, their suffering in other places is the result of our government’s policies. When they get here, they are denied the right to live in relative safety in the UK, stuck in a private prison run for profit by 21st century evil megacorp SERCO, and eventually deported back to countries where they face extreme danger.

Earlier this year, innocent women locked up in Yarl’s Wood went on hunger strike to protest their incarceration, and the abusive, racist treatment they faced from SERCO’s staff.

Anyone with even an ounce of humanity or decency in their body who got into power would tear the prison walls down right away. Nick Clegg and his ConDem chums have proven that they’d like people to think they’re decent human beings, but in fact they’re duplicitous wankstains more interested in implementing an extreme-right economic programme than basic human rights.

Britain's shame: Yarl's Wood

You’d think this blatant porkie would have got Clegg in a spot of bother, but instead of being angry at him for lying from the dispatch box, all the media and political commentators are going mental about a point earlier on in the day when he actually told the truth!

In the posh boys debating style that Westminster is famous for, he was clashing with Jack Straw, and said, perhaps without thinking it through, that, “We may have to wait for his memoirs, but perhaps one day he will account for his role in the most disastrous decision of all: the illegal invasion of Iraq.”

This presents his Tory chums with a bit of a problem: they voted for the Iraq war back in 2003, and absolutely backed the idea that it was legal.

For once however, Clegg was telling the truth on this one. Under international law, the UK and US had no authorisation to send their troops into Iraq, and the rest of the world had to sit back and accept it because they didn’t know what else to do about George W. ‘Monkey with a razorblade’ Bush. In Britain, the then Labour government tried to pretend it was legal because they got the attorney general to “change his mind” and say everything was kosher in time for the invasion.

Now, the fact that the Deputy Prime Minister has said what we all know, that the war was illegal, from the government dispatch box, might give some more leverage to people who want to take the UK to court for war crimes and flouting of international law in invading Iraq.

Nothing to worry about lads, it's all legal and above board

To try and clean up the mess, the same beleagured government spokespeople were forced to insist that the deputy PM was speaking in a personal capacity (at Prime Minister’s questions! It doesn’t get much more official than that!), and that his views were not those of the government.

Nick Clegg is obviously a bit of an idiot if he thought that this would have no implications when he said it. But the sad thing is it’s obscured what is a big issue: privatised prisons which we use to lock up innocent people. The fact of the matter is, I don’t really care about the legality of the Iraq war. If the government at the time had managed to get a legal fig leaf for what they were doing it would still have been wrong, and no amount of debating after the fact will change that. What is happening right now though is that we have a piece of human garbage as deputy PM who keeps claiming he’s going to stop locking up kids and innocent people but never actually seems to make good on it.

A while ago I did an article about violent videogames, where I jokingly made reference to accidentally shooting civilians in a helicopter gunship. Watching this footage thats been leaked on the internet of insurgents and civilians (including a reuters cameraman) being slaughtered makes you wonder how far war is from a videogame today. The gunship attacking the crowd doesn’t appear to be at threat, with the pilots chatting casually -- and then laughing when they make the kill.

This isn’t the first time journalists have been killed by the US Army -- the Al Jazeera offices were bombed not just in Iraq, but also in Afghanistan as well. This slaughter of journalists might have been a mistake, but the attack on Al Jazeera offices twice in two wars must be a deliberate attack on a tv station that is critical of the war on terror.

The footage of this attack must have been extremely hard to obtain, and leak without risk of discovery and or court martial from the US military -- it’s very likely there are many more cases like this across Iraq, that we will never see footage of. The mainstream media has ignored research done by institutions like ORB predicting over a million Iraqi casualties, with Iraq Body Count research showing the single largest cause of death was from US/UK forces attacking from the air.

Yeah Baby!

Looking for a quick way to raise some extra cash? Have you ever considered lying to the world and then sending over a million innocent civilians and British soldiers to their deaths? Because it’s really pretty lucrative in the long run.

Former Prime Monster Tony Blair has been raking it in since he moved out of Downing Street. Embarrassing details have just emerged of just how much he’s made as a result of the war in Iraq that he helped start, so embarrassing that he’s fought to keep them secret for nearly two years.

South Korean oil consortium UI energy paid Tony Blair for a major consultancy as part of their efforts to increase their already massive interest in the oil fields of Kurdistan (in Northern Iraq.)

On top of that, the Kuwaiti royal family have been paying him £1 million to advise them. Kuwait has been in the news recently for the massive fines imposed by a court on a parliamentarian and journalists for criticising the PM. Incidentally, the Prime Minister in Kuwait has to be a member of the Royal Family, and is selected by the Emir.

Blair also makes huge sums through consultancies to a range of governments (mostly in the Middle East), as well as public speaking appearances. And of course, let’s not forget the £63, 468 pension and office allowance of £84, 000 a year that is paid for by the UK taxpayer!

All in all it’s estimated he’s made about £20 million since leaving office.

But most shocking is that starting a war for oil has ended up being so personally lucrative for Blair. If you were in any doubt that the war in Iraq was all about oil, just look at how closely personally he’s been working with oil companies.

The autonomous region of Kurdistan in Iraq is one of the most closely allied areas with US/UK forces. The Iraqi government in Baghdad has been angered by separate deals struck by Kurdish authorities with foreign companies like UI energy.

UI boasts of its links with prominent figures, such as former Australian prime minister Bob Hawke, US Congressman Stephen J Solarz, the former US secretary of defence Frank C Carlucci, and US commander for the Middle East General John P Abizaid.

The contacts and influence Blair built up in the US and throughout the corrupt US-backed regimes in the Middle East have helped him get rich.

And what’s more, Blair knew how embarrassing this would be when it came out, and so asked the advisory committee on business appointments (which monitors top government officials work when they leave office) to keep it secret for 20 months. He claimed this was because of “market sensitivities”, but after he asked for yet another extension of how long his deal with UI was kept secret, the

"FFS, I told you not tell anyone about my business!"

committee lost patience.

When we marched against the war, with slogans like ‘No war for Oil!’, many people pictured faceless oil corporations. But in fact it’s now clear that the people at the heart of the war, the ones with blood on their hands, like Tony Blair, personally had a huge interest in it. Put simply, Tony Blair killed over a million people to make himself rich. He’s responsible for the crime of the century, and should be put on trial as a mass murdering war criminal.

Who would you want to investigate if the Government had lied about going to war in Iraq? Columbo? CSI? Jonathon Creek? If your answer was 4 Knights of the Realm and a Baroness, congratulations you have won and can now become the Government of the UK.

The Government announced earlier this year, at long last an inquiry into the decision to invade Iraq would be conducted. In true New Labour fashion however, the people leading the Inquiry were all picked by the Prime Minister. As Craig Murray points out on his blog, several of these “independent minds” were on record as backing the war.

Its a unique case of the guilty selecting the judges they want to put them on trial. Those leading the inquiry are also, along with being Knights and a Baroness, Privy Counsellors. The Privy Council itself is an undemocratic medieval hangover, so quite suited to the kind of “investigation” the government would want.

It’s likely there will be damning testimony against the Government throughout the Inquiry. There simply was no case to answer on Iraqi WMD and this was known before the invasion itself. The head of the UN weapons inspections Scott Ritter was vocal in opposing the invasion for example, arguing correctly that no Iraqi weapons programme existed.

Nevertheless this is an Inquiry and not a trial. There is no penalty for lying at any point in this inquiry. The most likely result will be some “recommendations” to the intelligence services to pay more attention in future, but that the UK Government just made an honest mistake and it was probably Saddam’s fault anyway. Or as one foreign office official, Sir William Ehrman put it in an unfortunate turn of phrase, “Saddam was black and he had to prove himself white. He did not do so”.

As fellow civil servants the honourable Knights and Baroness, will cover up for the establishment like all Privy Counsellors are trained to do.

Even these guys would be far more damning Judges than them…