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UK will give sovereignty of Chagos Islands to Mauritius

bbc.co.uk

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Re: UK will give sovereignty of Chagos Islands to Mauritius

#261

Post by dangus »

lmm wrote: post #169
dangus wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what universe does the UK have grounds to have anything to do with governing a region 6000 miles away from home that it seized during the Opium War? I would love for China to have democracy, but Great Britain really doesn't have any moral high ground on the issue nor any business having anything to do with the government there. If you think they aren't sufficiently butthurt about it, I'd counter that by saying "wh…

> In what universe does the UK have grounds to have anything to do with governing a region 6000 miles away from home that it seized during the Opium War? A universe that respects the right of the people who live somewhere to chose the government they want? We've all seen the protestors waving British flags there. Abolishing the right of conquest in the early 20th century was one of the great achievements of humanity,…

We’ve seen protestors in all kinds of countries wave all kinds of flags. We all know pragmatically that that’s not how governments are chosen.

The fact that the situation is unfair to HK citizens doesn’t have much relation to the fact that there’s no legitimate reason for the UK to have any involvement at this point in time, unless you’re just plain and simple in favor of imperialism.

In that case you’d be making the argument that people who more closely align with China who live in North Dakota are allowed to just vote and declare North Dakota to be a Chinese province.

There’s a whole spectrum of diplomatic measures that the UK can do that make zero difference in the situation.

Trade restrictions? The UK fully depends on Chinese imports. It would hurt the UK more than China.

Recognition of Taiwan? What would that change? Western countries already defacto recognize Taiwan and work with them as a close ally. This would be changing vocabulary on some documents and plaques.

Re: UK will give sovereignty of Chagos Islands to Mauritius

#262

Post by dangus »

cscurmudgeon wrote: post #163
dangus wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what universe does the UK have grounds to have anything to do with governing a region 6000 miles away from home that it seized during the Opium War? I would love for China to have democracy, but Great Britain really doesn't have any moral high ground on the issue nor any business having anything to do with the government there. If you think they aren't sufficiently butthurt about it, I'd counter that by saying "wh…

Shouldn't people of Hong Kong decide that? https://theworld.org/stories/2016/08/30/there-s-movement-tur...

Should the people of North Dakota be able to take a vote and decide to become a Chinese province?

I mean, I completely empathize with their situation, but the fact of the matter is that the UK has even less of a claim to governance over the territory than China does. It’s physically connected to mainland China with no other countries or territories around.

Re: UK will give sovereignty of Chagos Islands to Mauritius

#263

Post by BurningFrog »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #205
BurningFrog wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm quite skeptical. If we lower the CO2 levels (carbon sequestering) and cool the planet by reflecting more sunlight (SO2 injection in the stratosphere), I'm sure these alleged tipping points will be tipped back again, given some time. It's good to be aware that doom sells, and the incentive to publish doom predictions for the money they make is very high. Of course, they can still be true... We'll see how it goes :…

> If we lower the CO2 levels (carbon sequestering This is simply fantasy. Sequestering carbon mechanically is an energy losing process. It is also inefficient. If we burned oil in year 2,000 at (generously) 50% efficiency, it will cost us 4X more in year 2040 to sequester it at 50% (very generous) efficiency. On the face of it, we would need a sequestering industry that is 4X bigger than the oil industry, and it will…

Restoring CO₂ levels will use plenty of money and energy, however it's done. It can still be very much worth doing!

I don't believe much in tree planting, since it uses up huge areas of the planet forever.

The best way is to separate out CO2 from the atmosphere and pump it into underground cavities. This is the just reversing natural gas extraction, which means it's well established tech. Aside from the separating CO2 part, but that's being worked on.

In a decade or three I expect solar powered machines like this slowly but surely turning the atmosphere back to normal.

Re: UK will give sovereignty of Chagos Islands to Mauritius

#264

Post by cscurmudgeon »

dangus wrote: post #262
cscurmudgeon wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shouldn't people of Hong Kong decide that? https://theworld.org/stories/2016/08/30/there-s-movement-tur...

Should the people of North Dakota be able to take a vote and decide to become a Chinese province? I mean, I completely empathize with their situation, but the fact of the matter is that the UK has even less of a claim to governance over the territory than China does. It’s physically connected to mainland China with no other countries or territories around.

> Should the people of North Dakota be able to take a vote and decide to become a Chinese province?

They have the moral right to do so.

But the ground reality is that many Chinese are becoming North Dakotans (Americans).

https://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_share.aspx?g...

And many Hong Kongers are becoming British:

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2022/07/ho...

Re: UK will give sovereignty of Chagos Islands to Mauritius

#265

Post by DiggyJohnson »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #250
Maken wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no people to be reunited here. Everyone was kicked out of Chagos to Mauritius so the UK military base could be build.

Ok, assumed the base just had part of it. So I guess there are people who want to go back to where they came from - but they can't because the base is still there?

The plantation workers still on the island in 1971-1973 were forcibly relocated to Mauritius.

> However, the UK and Mauritius agreed in 1972 that there were 426 Ilois families numbering 1,151 individuals[24] who left the Chagos for Mauritius voluntarily or involuntarily between 1965 and 1973.[14]: par 417 In 1977, the Mauritian government independently listed a total of 557 families totaling 2,323 people — 1,068 adults and 1,255 children — a number that included families that had left voluntarily before the creation of the BIOT and never returned to the Chagos.

Re: UK will give sovereignty of Chagos Islands to Mauritius

#266

Post by OfficeChad »

ThinkBeat wrote: post #19

Yeah... As long as the US and the UK is allowed to operate their military bases and operations without any protest or quibble for the next 100 years and probably more. Have some spare change instead of too much sovereignty. And remember the military bases are US and UK soil and whatever goes on there can keep going on whatever laws may or may not be passed. Just like how the US maintains a military base, camp (now no…

[dead]

Re: UK will give sovereignty of Chagos Islands to Mauritius

#267

Post by toyg »

bpodgursky wrote: post #257
Thiez wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This all just speaks in favor of decolonialization, does it not? When decolonialisation is complete the $dictator won't be able to use it as a distraction, nor can it be a source of corruption. And apart from that it's a noble and objectively good goal in itself.

No, because they will always find some phantom menace of colonization to complain about. Look at the Chagos Islands themselves — they were literally not inhabited until Europeans settled them. There's no "decolonization" narrative here, because there's no native population. Once the UK leaves the Chagos islands, it will be about foreign aid with strings attached, or IMF loans, or foreign investment in farmland, or wh…

> they were literally not inhabited until Europeans settled them

Decolonization is not simply about removing troops from here or there, it's about taking responsibility for actions that enriched $motherland at the expense of $colony. French and British colonialists moved people to Chagos for their own profit, and then (together with Americans) ejected their descendants from what had become, by then, a homeland; pushing governments to take responsibility for these actions is the moral thing to do.

Re: UK will give sovereignty of Chagos Islands to Mauritius

#268

Post by dangus »

cscurmudgeon wrote: post #264
dangus wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should the people of North Dakota be able to take a vote and decide to become a Chinese province? I mean, I completely empathize with their situation, but the fact of the matter is that the UK has even less of a claim to governance over the territory than China does. It’s physically connected to mainland China with no other countries or territories around.

> Should the people of North Dakota be able to take a vote and decide to become a Chinese province? They have the moral right to do so. But the ground reality is that many Chinese are becoming North Dakotans (Americans). https://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_share.aspx?g... And many Hong Kongers are becoming British: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2022/07/ho...

Whether you have the moral right to do so is rather debatable. Morals are up to the individual.

I would say that it would be a major national security issue and detriment to everyone else in the country if a state was allowed to secede to another country, especially a foreign adversary.

In the United States nobody has the legal right to secede, even if a statehouse passes a law or holds a ballot vote on a constitutional amendment.

As far as emigrating and gaining legal status elsewhere that’s up to the individual.

Re: UK will give sovereignty of Chagos Islands to Mauritius

#269

Post by someguydave »

ivanbakel wrote: post #240
s_dev wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What exactly is the Mauritian connection to the Chagos Archipelago? I can see where this line of questioning is going but what's the connection between Britain and Chagos or the US and Chagos for that matter?

I think this is missing the point of the original question, which is - why would a Mauritian feel "relief" at the return of a geographical territory which is extremely far from itself? The claims of the UK or the US are irrelevant to this reasoning. Indeed, I would like to understand the answer to the above question better, since the only reason I can see is that Mauritius as a colony used to govern the islands, and…

Their “relief” comes in form of US dollars to be deposited

Re: UK will give sovereignty of Chagos Islands to Mauritius

#270

Post by Spooky23 »

returningfory2 wrote: post #152
Spooky23 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US system is far more dysfunctional — we have the Senate, which ensures that there isn’t an opportunity to conduct a vote along any line! The real lever of power in congress is the parliamentary process in the Senate.

I’m not so sure. A system in which a party that wins only 34% of the vote is given a near supermajority in the legislature and control of the executive seems pretty dysfunctional to me.

In the US Senate, 80% of the votes represent 46% of the population.

Wyoming has more sheep than people, but they are represented on the same basis as California, Florida, etc.

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