The Lemmeys Lay an Egg in the Chagos

Chagos Islanders helping the Seabees, Diego Garcia, 1971

Okay, imagine this, you have a home, a large home on 14 square miles, shared between you and 1100 other people. You are told, mysteriously, by the British government that you will be evicted to build a military base. If you have an extremely long ancestry on the island, you're entitled to some compensation, and only a little bit, several years too late to help you out in any significant manner, but if it's only you or your mother or your grandfather, you're entitled to none. Worse, brutal measure including depravation of supplies, threats of bombing, and the destruction of domesticated animals are used to achieve these ends.

But here's the strange part: the military base isn't even in your chain of islands, but on a larger island 30 miles away.

And thus you have the Chagossians. They've been forced out of a home that wasn't even needed for anything, and at one point, the British did not believe they were entitled to any compensation. They described them as "Tarzans" and "Man Fridays," and dumped them on the nearby island of Mauritus without so much as food and water to fend for themselves in the Port Louis slums. At most, an eviction of Diego Garcia might have been in order, probably to the other islands, and certainly not by these means.

This leads me to wonder, just what are they doing with those islands? There are allegations of black sites by the US Intelligence community on those islands. There are also large areas of solid farmland and excellent mineral resources and fishing completely off limits to any economic development. And then there are the poor souls forced to live in urban slums because some idiot in London, or DC (the story varies), decided this was honestly a good idea.

Mauritus is now seeking control of the islands. While the US millitary has a legitimate claim to the neccessity of Diego Garcia, I see no reason at all that they should so much as whine at some reasonable level of economic development on a bunch of islands that aren't even reasonably near them. If they had been willing to make the people there American or British citizens on the Chagos Islands, and only rearrange the lives of those directly affected by the military base, maybe my feelings would be different, but after 39 years of reckless unethical behavior towards an entire society, methinks that neither London nor DC nor Port Louis, Mauritus, who sold their people out for 3 million pounds, can be trusted at all with the greatest Lemon of Lemmeyland. This is totally irresponsible, and no official associated with these acts should be allowed to keep their job, and no bureau associated with the duties regarding the British Indian Ocean Territory should avoid thorough scourging and discipline.

Those people have a home they have been deprived of. Now, the UK wants to declare a giant nature preserve to keep them out of their home forever. This is not the first time that eco-nazism has hurt the people of the Chagos - another proposed site for the current base at Diego Garcia was an uninhabited atoll rejected because it was the site of a rare breed of turtle. Please, please, please let them come back, and there is no reason at this point why someone else should not control those islands, especially when the British have abused them so thoroughly:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness." -The Declaration of Independence

Government comes from the people, and thus the British Government has lost it's right to the British Indian Ocean Territory, pure and simple. Who will it go to instead? I don't know. Not Mauritus, not the UK, and not America, that much has to be certain.

Guest Post - The Irate Dog

This logo is exclusive property of "The Irate Dog," authorized for use ONLY on this site. Use this image, and I will kill you, with my own two hands.

Our guest, who is also a regular reader and a follower of this site, has chosen to speak about health care, and in particular, health care in the UK. The name of his blog is "The Irate Dog."

After talking at lengths on BlogCatalog, Jeremy and I decided I should write a guest post for his blog. After flicking through his posts and editorials I landed on one particular post that caught my eye; “Healthcare Co-ops - The Third Option”.

We all know that healthcare has been the subject of heated debate over in the USA in recent months - coming to a peek at Obama/Hitler posters being brandished (that scene still confuses me. How can Obama be compared to a fascist when his idea for national healthcare takes him to the left...in the opposite direction ideologically?). Unfortunately a lot of public outrage at the idea of a national healthcare system is based on a distinct lack of knowledge. For example that classically ignorant argument that came out of the US that said that if Stephen Hawking were treated by the NHS he would be dead - a case clearly made in the heat of the moment because Stephen Hawking was and is in fact treated by the NHS and has said himself that he owes them his life.

I’d like to take this opportunity to explain my own country’s healthcare system. For me it is the crowning jewel of the post war Labour government. It is not, as apparently many Americans would describe it, an institution of Death Panels and inferior-quality healthcare. It is not a last resort. It is not an example of a Communist or Socialist victory.

It is, in short, magnificent. It is, excluding dentistry and some prescriptions, free at the point of use. You go in, you see a personal General Practitioner, you go out. Not a penny has left for wallet, your bank account or your insurance company. This means two very important things. 1)Diseases can be caught earlier and 2) Poorer people can get the same healthcare as everyone else.

Think about it. In a country where there is an economical dis-incentive to seek medical attention people will tend to leave things be and see if they get better. If they don’t get better, they then go to the doctors and find out they have something “that wouldn’t have been a problem if only you’d come to us sooner”. Here in the UK, you can have a slight sniff, maybe a cough, and go straight to your GP without any monetary worries at all. That means serious diseases, cancer etc. are caught much earlier and things can be done about them much more easily.

People say the NHS is a Socialist, even Communist idea as if that was supposed to be insulting. Well, if it was so terrible, wouldn’t the various right-wing political parties in the UK want to get rid of it? The Conservative party (who are likely to gain power again next year) are doing no such thing - just like always. They have in fact pledged to fund it better and make it more efficient. Even the BNP (the most right-wing party we have) isn’t talking about getting rid of the NHS. Why? Because it is a genuinely genius idea and there would be public uproar if it were taken away.

Here in the UK you see a lot in the news about long waiting lists and patients having to wait on trolleys for days on end before they get a bed. But the fact is, at least those instances are unique enough to warrant their own news headline. It is not a trend but a hot topic that sells newspapers. Like all teenagers being anti-social and a terror to society - yes, a great story, but totally inaccurate and frankly insulting.

That’s all from me. I hope Jeremy and I continue to trade posts like this. It’s been a very good experience.

Bye!

Tom

Visit my blog at http://theiratedog.blogspot.com

(For your personal convenience, the post that caught Tom's interest can be found here.)