I argued for Scottish Independence on the grounds that we should break away from the UK – a state which was continually complicit in illegal war, support of dictatorships, purveying arms for war crimes and torture.
I have friends of all kinds of political persuasions, but I do not know a single person who is prepared to defend the British government’s decision today to continue the ethnic cleansing of the Chagos Islanders. Do you?
I have been campaigning on the subject on this blog for a dozen years, and the only hopeful sign has been an increase in public awareness from a very low base. There is no possible defence for deporting an entire island population to make way for a US military base on Diego Garcia. It ranks with the worse crimes of Empire, and let us not forget it happened in 1971, not in old history. Let us also not forget that both Labour and Tories supported this crime.
The decision is the more disgusting as it is taken under the “Royal Prerogative” after years of court battles. As I posted a couple of days ago, the government stated that returned islanders would not be allowed civilian use of the US military airport. They now state that without an airlink there could not be a viable population on the outlying islands.
Let me give you this quote from Sikunder Burnes p.376
Those who believe the British Empire was beneficent might consider this account by a junior officer:
“Their wells, by which they irrigated the land, were blown up with gunpowder and rendered useless. These people lived, in great measure, on dried mulberries, as the land would not produce enough corn for their consumption. There were beautiful mulberry trees around the forts. Every morning and evening two companies from each regiment were sent out to cut them down.
We found that by cutting rings through the bark into the heart of the trees, it was effectively destroyed as if it was cut down… and it was lighter work… we became quite adepts in the work of destruction, and a greater scene of devastation was perhaps never beheld.”
The deliberate starvation of the civilian population was an appalling crime. A rural economy dependent on tree crops could not survive the complete destruction of the trees, as there was nothing to live on until new trees grew. Some areas have never recovered from the deliberate devastation of the rural economy.
I have no doubt the majority of people in the UK would be horrified by the deportation of the Chagos Islanders. But the entire political and economic structure of the UK state is such that it is inevitably a satrap to United states Crimes, be it in Diego Garcia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya or elsewhere. The only remedy is for the United Kingdom and its worldwide imperial pretensions to be ended as a state. I express this view succinctly here:
I do hope that outrage at the Chagos decision will cause my friends in England to renew their determination to effect revolutionary change. Here in Scotland we must renew our determination to break up the UK at the earliest possible moment.
For the Chagos Islanders we send our love, and encouragement, and urge them not to give up hope. This must be the start of a new and more radical phase in the struggle. Perhaps it is time for a Chagos flotilla?
Signed First Editions of Sikunder Burnes are now available direct from this blog! You can leave a message naming the dedication you want. Sold at cover price of £25 including p&p for UK delivery or £29 for overseas delivery. Ideal Christmas presents!!
The Chagossians were removed because of American military demands, and the situation has not changed today, whatever arguments are being used.
African states, like Nigeria, could change their borders, and join other neighbouring countries if they wished, and nobody would care. The problem is that the area was hyper-divided before colonial intervention, and nobody is ready to reach agreement with anybody else, even today.
The criticisms of British policy stem from Palestine and India. The Palestine Mandate was intended from the beginning in the Jewish sense. The first British governor was a Jew, Sir Herbert Samuel, and Transjordan was openly separated off to give a territory to the Arabs. OK, the Brits changed their mind later, but too late.
In India, the policy was openly anti-Muslim. OK they agreed to give Janna his Muslim state, but they cut off anything which might be described as having a mixed population. That is why Kashmir, although entirely Muslim, but with a Hindu Raja, is now part of India and not Pakistan. And why India is the third largest Muslim country in the world, although It has a prime minister who is an ideologically extremist hindu governing a small majority.
Laguyerre:
“The Chagossians were removed because of American military demands, and the situation has not changed today, whatever arguments are being used.”
The £40 million compensation might help toffs in Downing Street feel better, but you couldn’t buy a small but viable island off Argentina …
Are we Mexicans? Is Scotland going to re-build Hadrian’s Wall to keep the Queen and her ministers out?
A tiny group of toffs and would-be toffs subscribe to neo-conservative/ neo-colonial ideology. I was educated with some of them. They have no morals, no principles, no honesty, no interest in foreigners or in others of the same nationality. Our own politicians have to adapt to their crass ideas or lose their position.
Why did the security services not monitor Jo Cox’s killer? They were pretty blatant about their evil cause – they did not like Jo Cox trying to help the desperate Syrians because they were foreigners. Sounds to me several shades less dark than David Cameron’s policy which was to fan the flames of war by supporting terrorist thugs Al Qaida etc etc.
When I decided to live in a Welsh Valley the powers that be couldn’t cope with a Muslim living outside the inner city ghetto where their vicious spies in the Muslim community exercise a tight grip. But Britain First could yomp and camp anywhere, unmonitored, unfettered and unpleasant.
I’m still not sure why lumping all the people of England and Wales with the neo-fascists in power is OK while expelling 3 million Mexicans is not OK.
That dreadful elite has quadrupled the price of buying a house in 16 years. I bought mine for £27K in 2000 and it is now worth £108K. They’ve built no houses for the 10 million immigrants or next generation to live in and people live rough everywhere. Is that to make houses more expensive deliberately or to reap more interest from the sweat of our brows. The UK is not intrinsically malignant, Thatcherism is.
Nick Clegg is the epitome of the brainless public school twit who thinks that an alliance with Cameron, i.e.an alliance between Westminster School and Eton, is more beneficial than an alliance with the British public.
Without his betrayal Thatcherism, neo-liberalism or whatever else you like to call it, would have died and joined the dinosaurs after 2008.
One good turn to piggies by Cameron deserves another. Thatcherism’s Bacon was saved by one toff helping out another.
Although highly intelligent, and a man of integrity, Craig’s proposed solution to some of the world’s problems that the UK is responsible for, to me at least – looks plain daft, as well as reeking of hypocrisy that is completely illogical and unworkable.
I simply cannot work out Craig’s worldview.
He is very pro-EU – which is a US controlled Dictatorship
He is a Globalist – which is a US controlled Dictatorship
He is anti-nations – and anti-borders – yet he drew some of them up himself.
Whilst he now doesn’t like borders, he want’s the UK to be broken up – which would mean imposing borders.
For Scotland he wants Independence – yet still wants to keep the UK pound?? and remain a member of the EU, US controlled Dictatorship
And yet Craig claims to believe in Democracy??
As he is very good at Stand-Up – I reckon he could give a very good impression of George Carlin – simply be explaining all these ideas.
Other than that, I agree with a great deal of what he writes.
The guy who ran over my wife, phoned me up a few hours ago, to ask how she was (should be O.K. in 6 months), so I did get a chance to empathise with him. It could have been very much worse.
Tony
Tony Hope the wife doing Well
The pound Actually belongs to Scotland to
And I agree Too of Craig’s Writings….Much of them.. And his policy of putting up with numpties..Like Me
Have to say I agree with you, Tony. However, most of us here hold mutually irreconcileable opinions – we’ve built up a mental model, perhaps, only to find that important bits of the world don’t fit it. The worst divide being The World As It Is versus The World As It Ought To Be, complicated by the fact that no-one has quite the same idea of either of those Worlds. This situation is familiar to a scientist, and he has means of clarifying his insight, even if he doesn’t always use them. Unfortunately most of the people running “As It Is” as well as those agitating for their “As It Ought To Be” are arts graduates…..
#deliberate needle
The most important current aspect of national self-determination is regional resistance to foreign policy that fails to respect core human rights. The Scottish people have recourse to remedial secession when the state fails to represent the Scottish people’s commitment to human rights, solidarity, or peace. Britain’s forcible population transfer from the Chagos Islands, failure to negotiate nuclear disarmament, acquiescence to systematic and widespread disappearance or torture, and armed attack in manifest breach of the UN Charter justify unilateral Scottish independence. To defend the Scottish people’s right to peace and development, Scottish civil society should deposit their own human rights instruments with the UN and end British impunity on Scottish soil.
If Scotland was faced with servicing it’s share of the UK debt out of it’s own revenues, and was encouraged or bribed by the big world bully to do a bit of dirty work ,maybe in return for a little debt holiday so the wee ones can still go to school, for instance, I am sure brave little Scotland would be even worse than the new Eastern European states with their rendition camps and racist governments.
Despite what Craig says,though I like others agree with him on many other matters
I see the possibility of *permitting* the Chagosians to settle on the islands was raised, but brushed aside because the islands were (a) humid (like everywhere else in the vicinity) and (b) overgrown with vegetation (like most tropical islands if you leave them alone). Pretty weak, I thought. There was the additional implication that if it took the US Marines to clear the jungle, it would be impossible for mere natives. Weak, and patronising. I’d guarantee that some at least of the exiles would be only too glad to give it a go – but they weren’t asked, of course.
But all this is irrelevant. The Chagos Islands will be the Chagos sandbanks in fifty years’ time, unless questions transcending nationality and rights of residence are addressed. They won’t be, but somewhere along the line the septics are going to have to extend their runway. Upwards.
will it take 50 years of sea level rises to end this argument Ba’al?
During the last 20 years sea level rises have doubled to 3.4 mm/annum, which by 2050 would raise the sea levels by roughly 115.6 mm/12 cm with some extra leeway.
By 2100 this would have risen to 2800-3000mm, roughly by a foot if the signs accelerate, as they already do, so by the 2100 the US will have to use Chinese island building methods to reassert its military prowess in the central Indian ocean.
because I’m somewhat worried about morale and possible Trumpism excitement on the islands it would be good to know what is being done for the recreational side of this deployment, one can only fish so many barracuda’s before it gets boring.
One wonders as to how many ladies/ boys and or ladyboys are stationed at Diego Garcia or have they got a rota system that lets everyone experiment experiences?…..;)
I think we are now in a positive feedback regime, and linear increases in sea level cannot be assumed. To put it mildly. Add to that increased erosion due to more active weather systems, and acidification depleting or destroying stable live reef margins, and, well, I wouldn’t stake my life on it but as a ballpark guess, Diego Garcia may need to be replaced by an aircraft carrier in another half-century.
Easy peasy.
Leave the ises to the scientists and technicians.
And the oughts to the arts grads.
That’s the way most societies pretend to operate.
Ideally.
Our problem is that money-grubbing elites are covering both ises and oughts.
And that’s the way it’s always been.
http://dissidentvoice.org/2016/06/why-is-the-uk-government-scared-of-an-online-petition/
The opening chapter of John Pilger’s book Freedom Next Time is devoted to Diego Garcia. Pilger tells of how Anthony Greenwood, the Colonial Secretary in Harold Wilson’s Labour administration, went to Mauritius in 1965 and bribed that country with a payment of £3 million to let the UK retain the Chagos Islands when Mauritius gained independence. This was in complete contravention of UN Resolution 1514 which stated that all colonial peoples had a right to independence.
Anthony Greenwood was a founder member of CND. That goes to show what conflicted people a lot of politicians of the Left are or become.
Which makes the fact that the Americans were allowed their base in exchange for an $11 million discount on Polaris almost Kafkaesque but then CND has always been run by hypocrites and Wilson himself promised he was going to get rid of Britain’s nuclear weapons before he became PM.
Harold Wilson’s totally cynical attitude towards Africa was appalling too. He sent large amounts of military equipment to the Nigerian Federal Government to use against the people of Biafra. All in order, so Wilson thought, that British oil investments would be safeguarded.
One aspect of the Biafra affair was the Catholicism of the Igbo. Was there a sort of vestigial Orangeism which put Biafra beyond the Pale?
Proposals by the foreign secretary David Miliband Britain in 2008 for the creation of a giant marine protection zone closed to all fishing around the almost pristine tropical archipelago were backed enthusiastically by nine of the world’s major green groups, including Kew Gardens, the RSPB, Greenpeace, the Pew Environment group, the Zoological Society of London and the Marine Conservation Society. Together they asked supporters to back the Foreign Office proposal for the reserve and raised over 275,000 signatures. The park was finally established in 2010.
But diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks in 2011 suggested that Britain and the US lured the environment groups with the offer of the reserve and then used its ban on fishing to ensure that no Chagossian would ever be able to live within hundreds of miles of Diego Garcia. This, the largest island in the Chagos archipelago, was cleared by Britain of 1,500 native people in 1964 when it leased the island to the US for a massive military base.
Even if the Chagossians won the legal right to return, they might be unable to live on the islands if they were not allowed to fish.
I can’t imagine David Miliband coming up with that on his own – doesn’t the actual plan have to cunning reek of Mandy the puppet master?
The FCO has some reasonably decent lawyers.
As Inside So Outside.
Look at Hillary un-coifed, under siege:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/17/hillary-clinton-first-public-appearance-bernie-sanders
She’s still lying with ‘curled up in bed with a good book’ nonsense. Curled up in bed you evil devil, yes but when did an out-of-work Devil ever find the Peace to read a ‘good book’?
We make our hells and heavens right here. She is going to pay for this to the end of her life and I now hope her suffering is great. Suffering is The Greatest Game and you CANNOT crack it with any amount of ANALYSIS whatsoever.
The Rules of Universal Intelligence are another paradigm, if not Dimension, altogether. It is where Einstein found E=MCsq, though the dimension I refer to may well be an incremental one.
YCNMIU! This may be a timely tip for some ageing ladies:
Tracy Kiss swears by gulping down a smoothie every morning, with the key ingredient being… a teaspoonful of sperm.
Read more: http://metro.co.uk/2016/11/14/vegan-single-mum-drinks-sperm-smoothies-every-morning-to-give-her-energy-6257252/#ixzz4QGxw39EJ
Suck it up Kiss!
Hush, you can put your Clinton Derangement Syndrome to bed now. She’s too old to ever run for anything ever again. Enjoy your 8 years of Trump.
Media out of touch.
Indoctrinated.
Flat out lying.
Whatever.
Ours is as bad:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zT0Rjc6jKCg
The actual statement made yesterday by the loyal partei servant.
Update on the British Indian Ocean Territory
http://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/written-questions-answers-statements/written-statement/Lords/2016-11-16/HLWS257/
https://www.gov.uk/government/people/anelay-of-st-johns
Her husband is a barrister and deputy High Court judge. He specializes in family and matrimonial law.
Thanks for the #115 update.
But, for Heaven’s sake can you please tell what the f*** is NEW? Troll!
Thanks for the links, sharp ears.
Anelay, a history teacher for five years at a secondary school, seems superbly qualified. So qualified in fact- to be a Blair appointee to the Lords- that she was actually appointed by that herald of Blairism , John Major.
I don’t quite know what to make of an expert on sexual violence who served as a Whip. No doubt as, I believe, Adorno, the bete noir of neo fascists on the net, observed capitalist society is suffused with sado-masochism.
Dunno what to make of this neither.
Seems they’ve quite happy with the grisly blown to bits kinda violence, but quite critical of sexual violence.
Reminds me of that programmme Angelina Jolie and William Hague were involved in.
Very concerned to criticise rape in war, but not so bothered about the war and slaughter itself.
Is it some kind of accommodation between feminism and barbarism.
Quite a curious position for progressives.
But that’s identity politics for you.
Bizarre.
I now understand your reason for Scottish independence, that when there are bad people doing bad things, you should run away, rather than taking them on and defeating them. You’re abandoning everything from Magna Carta onwards.
Craig
“I have been campaigning on the subject on this blog for a dozen years, and the only hopeful sign has been an increase in public awareness from a very low base.”
So all those campaigners, including an irregular here recently before committee, their years of effort amount to nothing. Not worth a mention. The Chagossians themselves? Obviously not. They probably don’t even know Julian Assange. Craig alone shapes the landscape.
I am the salvation! Buy my book!
Looks like the Swedes are raising a red flag over the Anglo-Americans attempting to go it alone in the international sphere with Trump’s unilateralism and May’s Brexit proposalswith them opening a new investigation into the Palme assassination under the direction of chief prosecutor Krister Petersson.
His investigation will begin in February, and the waiting is to see what London and Washington do. If May adopts a hard Brexit policy, it certainly will not go over well in Stockholm which has traditionally had close relations with Britain.
If Trump goes ahead with making people like General Flynn head of his security apparatus, and adopting a reset approach to Putin at NATO’s expense, think Sweden will not be pleased.
Suspect if this happens, Petersson will look into the Anglo-American plot which assassinated Palme.. This would result in ending the attempt to extradite Julian Assange, and replacing it with an interpol warrant to extradite Captain James Rennie aka Captain Simon Hayward, who apparently is a resident of the Cayman Islands and lives in Dubai, to Sweden as the likely assassin of the former Prime Minister.
This was a previous example of Washington and London using NATO for their own purposes and against Swedish interests
Of course, if the USA and the UK adopt more traditional policies, especially letting NATO protect Scandinavia, during his transition, the Palme assassination will just remain unsolved.
I thought Sweden was a US stooge who would extradite Assange to their overlords as soon as they got their hands on him?
I must say I don’t understand this hatred of Sweden when it is the USA which is after Julian Assange.
If a country has an extradition treaty with another country, it cannot just cherry-pick legal demands for one’s extradition. It just has to see that the provisions of the treaty are observed.
And I did notice that when Sweden had discretion in Leon Panetta’s hit quad, hunting me down in Sweden in February 2009, it ordered the assassins to leave, relying upon Sapo’s cooperation with the FBI in making me out to be ‘Jihad Jane’s whitey assassin of loony cartoonist Lars Vilks would do what was necessary to take me out of circulation.
And here I don’t blame the Swedes, just the loons running the Bureau as I never had anything to do with this poor woman seeking some way to avoid jail for her pro-Muslim efforts, especially her drunken entreaties to me to have sex with her, and make her baby.
It’s worthy of note that Ben Fogle has supported the cause of the Chagos Islanders for many years.
He was wasting his time here though!
‘I have had meetings with the Foreign Office and with William Hague and have been campaigning in Washington for an audience with Hillary Clinton to try to right a terrible wrong.’
The Chagos islanders’ plight makes me ashamed to be British
The exiled islanders are desperate for the right to return to their homeland – but Britain seems determined to stop them
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/may/21/chagos-islanders-plight-ashamed-british
PS He attended a ‘champagne party; to celebrate the establishment of the marine park though! He also opposed Scottish independence along with other celebs – https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/aug/07/celebrities-open-letter-scotland-independence-full-text
He seems to be rather conflicted.
There is little point in Ben Fogle begging Hillary Clinton for help, the cow can’t even help herself now, curled up in bed crying.
“If Scotland was faced with servicing it’s share of the UK debt out of it’s own revenues, and was encouraged or bribed by the big world bully to do a bit of dirty work ,maybe in return for a little debt holiday so the wee ones can still go to school, for instance, I am sure brave little Scotland would be even worse than the new Eastern European states with their rendition camps and racist governments….”
The assumption being made here is that the UK can and will ‘service its debt.’
As is evident from current austerity measures around the world this can only happen by sacrificing popular living standards to the extent that they settle below subsistence levels.
Or by taxing the interest paid to creditors at source.
The latter solution is the only one consistent with society’s survival.
There is no reason that I can think of that prevents Scotland from taking on its ‘share of the debt’ and then imposing a 95% tax on interest paid to creditors- that ought to finance education liberally.
Given that the UK borrows in Sterling, I see no reason why the UK wouldn’t be able to service its debts.
*Breaking*
Corrie Wilson resigns
http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/656004/Another-SNP-MP-faces-cash-probe-call-Corri-Wilson
How many is that now, is it FOUR under Police Scotland investigation.
Maybe Independence is the answer
but what was the question.
More Fraud anybody?
Corri Wilson became a South Ayrshire councillor in the 2012 local elections for the ward of Ayr East.
From June 2015 until August 2016 she was one of 125 MPs who employed a member of their family: employing her son Kieran as a caseworker/personal assistant.
Since 15 September 2016 she employs her daughter Shannon as a caseworker/personal assistant.
From the period of 1 June 2015 to 31 May 2016 Corri Wilson claimed the 7th highest public expenses of any MP in the United Kingdom, claiming a total of £94,545.41.
If Nigel Farage can hire his wife, I’m not sure why you think this is a problem.
The problem is Chic Brodie when a SNP MSP gave her £88,000 of tax payers money which she used for campaign expenses for the referendum and running for parliament.
A Full Troughing
http://order-order.com/people/corri-wilson/
Full troughing marks to SNP MP Corri Wilson, who has only been in Westminster for a year yet has managed to get both her son and daughter on the public payroll. She’s hired her wee bairns Kieran and Shannon as“personal assistants” on taxpayer-funded salaries of up to £34,000 each. A handy top up to mum’s £75,000 salary, sending the Wilson household income from the taxpayer well into six figures. No doubt a full, open interview process was carried out.
So did Nigel Farage. (Use tax money to run for Parliament when he wasn’t supposed to spend that money that way.)
It was revealed in 2014 that Chic Brodie was the most expensive MSP in Scotland, having claimed £54,297 in public expenses for the year
‘Elites that distance themselves from voters will be voted out’ – Austria’s Hofer on Trump win
https://www.rt.com/news/367284-austria-elections-trump-hofer/
Austrian extreme far-right presidential candidate Norbert Hofer says Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential elections proves the public has had enough of political elites and he now sees his own victory in his country’s upcoming elections as more likely.
“Wherever the elites distance themselves from voters, those elites will be voted out of office,” Hofer of Austria’s Freedom Party said in an interview with Reuters news agency. Inspired by Trump’s surprise victory, the politician now believes his election campaign is on the right track, despite its sharp stance on Austria’s EU membership and immigration.
The days of the Elites, like Blair / Cameron are over.
Yup, out with the Elites!
https://s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/fkXBxMLZfAXiM3JAQZha4w–/YXBwaWQ9aGlnaGxhbmRlcjtzbT0xO3c9ODAw/http://media.zenfs.com/en-US/homerun/news.mashable/b75d23ed4dfe6fb7c8986b144888ebd2
UKIP in EU scandal as £150,000 pounds are misspent.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/nov/17/eu-set-to-ask-ukip-group-to-repay-almost-150000-in-misspent-funds
But the biggest scandal of all, a shameful one to boot is the £300’s per day awarded to the 900 odd unelected undemocratic Lords, who eat and drink in a taxpayer subsidised restaurant, in the odious House of Lords.
The Supreme Court’s most senior judge was urged to stand down from a hearing on Britain’s EU exit yesterday as it emerged his wife had posted anti-Brexit messages online.
The Voters of the United Kingdom are in complete agreement that they want to leave the hated E.U.
yet the establishment want to divert democracy, steal our BREXIT
Pro-Brexit MPs accused Lord Neuberger, president of England’s highest court, of being ‘compromised’ by his wife’s tweets.
Lady Neuberger had denounced the EU referendum as ‘mad and bad’ – and dismissed Ukip and Brexit as just a protest vote.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3951682/Supreme-Court-s-senior-judge-urged-stand-crucial-Brexit-case-wife-s-pro-Remain-tweets.html#ixzz4QSFYf5eU
Why should people of influence have the say over our democracy?
The SNP, the Lib Dems, Sinn Fein, the Greens, most of the Conservative M.P.’s , most of the Labour M.P.’s
most of the judiciary, the BBC, the BoE, Barack Obama, Tony Blair, Jack Straw, Gordon Brown,
Lord Mandelson, Lord Kinnock, Lady Kinnock, Richard Branson
and so on,
all wanted us the be shackled to the European Union, against our democratic wishes.
If we are not allowed to leave the hated E.U.
you can say for us in the United Kingdom, democracy is over
Hm! My wife’s opinions and mine differ significantly.
john
are you or your wife a high court judge?
No, but my point is that my wife’s opinions are not necessarily mine, nor mine hers. I would not jump to the conclusion that if Neuberger’s wife holds an opinion, either that he shares it or that he is unable to be objective regarding the matter.
For a number of years I’ve been aware of allegations that Tony Blair had, many years ago, been convicted of “cottaging”.
Tony Blair dismisses claims he wants job as Trump adviser
https://www.rt.com/uk/367429-blair-trump-advisor-denies/
http://ukchildabuseinquiry.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/the-alleged-cottaging-conviction-of.html
He never ceases to amaze.