Do you have an atlas at your side? Diego Garcia. Iran. Must Read

[peacetalksforall]

Diego Garcia - the island targeted for our assault on Iran.

Posted over the weekend. Article from the Guardian.

Vile secret 40 year old agreement - U.S.<> U.K. to create launching point for U.S. military operations - now considered to be the launch site for bombing Iran?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1784993,00.html

First the U.K. manipulates secret deals and kicks the people of the island.

Then, "In December 1966, Lord Chalfont, a Foreign Office minister, signed a contract in Washington giving the Pentagon a 50-year "lease" on Diego Garcia with an automatic extension of 20 years. Declassified state department documents obtained under the US Freedom of Information Act in 2005 reveal that Washington wanted the entire population expelled; as one official put it, the islands were to be "swept" and "sanitised". This was described in a secret file as "a neat, sensible package".

Article long; reads fast. Get an idea of how far ahead the British and the Aaerican military have been eyeing this island for something matching an Iran attack.

Notice how no one ever says they are conducting war against the Middle East for the good of the citizens of the U.S. and U.K. or Russia. No, we have a military for the corporations. A short term deal to gather as much wealth as possible to use to control us.

Eisenhower wasn't just wise or a seer - this war on the Middle East has been planned from the 1920's and Eisenhower ONLY warned against it.

Can we count how many people know what is really going on and continue to play their actor-operative role to make us think we are defending ourselves? This is an all-out offensive war on the Middle East.

GE, Time-Warner, Murdoch, Viacom, WSJ, Moon - they are all in on it.

The geography is there in your atlas. But, it doesn't show burial sites.
And few will say it.

[Hobo]

1. We (US) have been using

Diego Garcia for years. It was used by us in the first gulf war. This is really old news.

- Hobo

[drm604]

4. So?

Does that justify it? Is there a statute of limitations on right and wrong? The courts have ruled in favor of the people and the governments are ignoring the courts.

The government is considering an appeal, knowing that the Americans, having attacked Iraq and Afghanistan from Diego Garcia, are furious.

The Americans are furious. :nopity:

I wonder how furious those dispossessed people are? :grr:

And this has all been done in our names with our tax dollars.

[peacetalksforall]

5. Our fears for Iran are up-to-date. And this article brings the status of

the illegal takeover up-to-date.

And there are probably many like myself that are ignorant about the takeover of the island and the enormous lengths the British have gone to in secret and how people working for the military and corporations can destroy the lives of indigenous people.

The entire affair is updated in this article that was posted this weekend and that many may have missed. I should have linked the DU thread - here it is:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x213716

[dipsydoodle]

2. We went all through this a few days back

Ghost Dog posted it. I then got into trouble by innocently posting an unapproved link to John Pilger on this subject - nothing wrong with Pilger just the link I used. Search John Pilger's documentaries find the narrative of his docmentary on the subject from 2004 or use the links which Monkey see Monkey do kindly provided to watch the whole documentary.

Download: http://www.indybay.org/uploads/stealing_a_nation.rm (35 megs or so)
Stream: http://www.indybay.org/uploads/stealing_a_nation.ram

I didn't have any luck with the first but the second was fine - I'm on 10meg broadband.

[drm604]

3. Everyone should read the entire article.

This is repugnant. :grr:

[DemoTex]

6. Excellent essay on the US takeover of Diego Gargia in Granta 73.

Thirty years later, nearly 4,000 American sailors and contractors live on Diego Garcia. There are two bomber-capable runways, each two and a half miles long; two 'nuclear-cleared berths', and a network of jetties and piers. The lagoon now has deep-water anchorages for thirty ships. The skyline of the island has been speared by arrays of towers, space-tracking domes, oil, petrol and aviation fuel dumps, barracks, weapons ranges, and training areas. By the summer of last year the US government was calling Diego Garcia an 'all but indispensable platform', absolutely central to American strategy for policing a large part of the world and in particular the Middle East. (snip ..}

For a start, the Americans had long insisted that for security reasons there should be no people—either on Diego Garcia itself, or on any other of the outer atolls. The islands should be handed over, 'fully sanitized' and 'swept' (to use the words found in American papers of the time) and ready for the troops and nuclear submarines and bombers that were going to make the colony their home. 'The primary objective in acquiring these islands,' wrote an unnamed British official in an undated memorandum headed 'Objectives', 'is to ensure that Britain has full title to and control over these islands ... so that Britain and the United States should be able to clear the Territory of its current population.' The Americans attached great importance to this freedom of manoeuvre and the British authorities went along with this demand. They assured the Americans that people on the atolls were no more than 'rotating contract personnel'—and just to make sure, in November 1965 and then again six years later, it was arranged for laws to be passed (actually, this being a colony, ordinances were written, without the requirement for any parliamentary consultation) which made it illegal for anyone to come to the islands ever again—or, indeed, to be there in the first place—without a permit. Anyone who was there could be deported, and put in prison while awaiting deportation—or, in the magisterial tones of the Order, 'while awaiting removal ... be kept in custody, and while so kept shall be deemed to be in lawful custody'. (snip ..)

Despite a British ruling that 'no journalists shall be allowed on the Chagos Archipelago', I went there once, illegally, and spent a fortnight snooping around. My visit was in 1985, and it is referred to in the Foreign Office papers—'he arrived in a yacht ... was refused by immigration authorities ... and sent on his way.' Like so much else in the Foreign Office submissions, the remarks are not quite accurate. (snip)

But my skipper, a tough young Australian woman, drily informed the immigration men that she was claiming the lagoon as a 'port of refuge', as was her mariner's right, and that she would be staying on Diego Garcia for at least the next two days. And so we dropped anchor; there was nothing the authorities could do as international maritime law prevails even in Diego Garcia. (entire essay at link below)

http://www.granta.com/extracts/1225

Granta 73
Spring 2001

[dipsydoodle]

7. They also shot every single dog on the island

such was the sweeping.

[bloom]

8. kick