I am not really interested in politics, but I am curious why countries abstain. They surely have an opinion; my countries (born in NL, live in ES) had NL abstain and ES vote against the UK. Now I can understand why Spain voted; a lot of people are of the opinion that UK left EU and they should suffer a lot for it. It's a underbelly thing but it's quite accepted here. They want Gibraltar and they want to see them (UK) suffer for what they messed up (opinions vary but even my most angry brexit voting friends of mine would not do that in a re-vote). That the Netherlands didn't vote is also not a surprise; our gov has no backbone (see MH shoot down/Russia/Olympics crap; same jellyfish still is the boss; he is smart but people want to see a lot more action, not just moving with the tides) and just tries to be everyone's friend. But France & Germany? That must be political but why? Is that because ties to UK/US or ?
UK suffers defeat in UN vote on Chagos Islands
41–50 of 91 posts
Re: UK suffers defeat in UN vote on Chagos Islands
#42> focusing dissatisfaction over its permanent seat on the UN security council. But China isn’t having dissatisfaction focused on it for their permanent seat? That’s rich. When China gives back Tibet, then perhaps we can talk about dissatisfaction about the U.K. on the Council.
I think China will “give back” Tibet when the USA “gives back” Indian Territories.
Re: UK suffers defeat in UN vote on Chagos Islands
#43This is why you shouldn't use .io domains. It sounds cool but you're indirectly sponsoring a military base where people were tortured and because of which people were deported.
Based on cursory research the British government has refuted the claim that any money is given to them from .io domain registrations.
That's an answer to a question in the House of Lords. It needs to be read between the lines. Government doesn't effectively receive anything but according to the second article cited by Wikipedia, Paul Kane, who originally runned the .io domain said that the Crown Bank was receiving money :
"In a second conversation with Kane, he reiterated that “we do remit money to the Crown bank in accordance with our agreement. We pay X amount per name.” Kane did not say what “X amount” was, due to confidentiality."
Meanwhile it seems that in 2017 Affilias has bought the .io domain for 70 millions dollars...
Re: UK suffers defeat in UN vote on Chagos Islands
#44An interesting article about Australia’s Cocos Islands which was considered as an alternative to Diego Garcia
https://thediplomat.com/2019/04/australias-cocos-islands-can...
Re: UK suffers defeat in UN vote on Chagos Islands
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
They discovered and conquered these places a long time ago. Those places basically belong to them. That’s how it works.
"discovered" How do you discover a place that people already are or know about? I'll give you a hint...you don't. You show up their, subjugate the locals, and claim your history as the history of civilization itself.
So in this limited case no one was actually living there before.
Re: UK suffers defeat in UN vote on Chagos Islands
#46I am not really interested in politics, but I am curious why countries abstain. They surely have an opinion; my countries (born in NL, live in ES) had NL abstain and ES vote against the UK. Now I can understand why Spain voted; a lot of people are of the opinion that UK left EU and they should suffer a lot for it. It's a underbelly thing but it's quite accepted here. They want Gibraltar and they want to see them (UK)…
opinions vary but even my most angry brexit voting friends of mine would not do that in a re-vote
EU election polling may suggest otherwise. There's something slightly weird in UK politics where the media predominantly takes one side of a debate and then it seems to become socially unacceptable to be on the other side.
The brand new Brexit Party look to be getting double the vote of any other party, yet other than of parents and in laws no one I know has offered up that they were on the leave side. Yet I could name maybe 100 people who have talked about being on the remain side.
I've been brought up not to talk openly about politics anyway, but it seems a shame to me that there's a relatively silent majority.
Anyway, fully agree with your post otherwise. It looks worse than Eurovision!
Re: UK suffers defeat in UN vote on Chagos Islands
#47I am not really interested in politics, but I am curious why countries abstain. They surely have an opinion; my countries (born in NL, live in ES) had NL abstain and ES vote against the UK. Now I can understand why Spain voted; a lot of people are of the opinion that UK left EU and they should suffer a lot for it. It's a underbelly thing but it's quite accepted here. They want Gibraltar and they want to see them (UK)…
I think it's multiple things. First, they don't want to piss off their allies, the UK and US, by voting against UK occupation. Second, they may themselves have similar territorial arrangements and are concerned that this sets a precedent for use of the International Court of Justice to delegitimize such possessions.
Re: UK suffers defeat in UN vote on Chagos Islands
#48I am not really interested in politics, but I am curious why countries abstain. They surely have an opinion; my countries (born in NL, live in ES) had NL abstain and ES vote against the UK. Now I can understand why Spain voted; a lot of people are of the opinion that UK left EU and they should suffer a lot for it. It's a underbelly thing but it's quite accepted here. They want Gibraltar and they want to see them (UK)…
France has a few territories in a rather similar situation, and possibly the Netherlands as well.
They probably don't want to anger the UK because they might need their support in the future if the same kind of vote happens to them, but at the same time, if they support the UK, a lot of countries will remember it and it could swing the vote against them.
At this point the best game is not to play.
For Germany, I do not know as they do not have overseas territories as far as I know. However, they are pretty keen on the UK staying in the EU, so that might be the reason.
Re: UK suffers defeat in UN vote on Chagos Islands
#49Does this mean that people can return to those islands? Certainly seems unlikely they would close the military base unless they were forced to so do by some military or substantial economic action. This type of thing is what makes me worried about the long term sustainability of US security. The paradigm is not really rule of law when it comes right down to it, it's might makes right. This is an inherently insecure p…
I'd imagine this is the sort of situation where Mauritius uses this embarrassing (for the UK and US) defeat to pressure the UK/US for a lucrative base hosting agreement. There's little value to Mauritius themselves in having a massive naval complex on an isolated island, their economy can't sustain the sort of military that would benefit from it. Their best use of it would likely be to reestablish sovereignty and then "rent" it to "great powers" like the US/UK, Russia, China, India, etc.
Re: UK suffers defeat in UN vote on Chagos Islands
#50I am not really interested in politics, but I am curious why countries abstain. They surely have an opinion; my countries (born in NL, live in ES) had NL abstain and ES vote against the UK. Now I can understand why Spain voted; a lot of people are of the opinion that UK left EU and they should suffer a lot for it. It's a underbelly thing but it's quite accepted here. They want Gibraltar and they want to see them (UK)…
France has a few territories in a rather similar situation, and possibly the Netherlands as well. They probably don't want to anger the UK because they might need their support in the future if the same kind of vote happens to them, but at the same time, if they support the UK, a lot of countries will remember it and it could swing the vote against them. At this point the best game is not to play. For Germany, I do n…
For France, it is even more sensitive as we are in the process of giving some of these territories more rights or simply full independence. This is a long and painful process for all the involved parties anyway because you dig again in the past often violent history of the territories.