January 24, 2016

Doubts raised over UK government’s refusal to permit return to Chagos

For more than half a century the displaced people of the Chagos Islands have sought to return to their home, a collection of coral reefs in the Indian Ocean that constitutes one of the more far-flung outposts of the British empire. But, despite interminable legal proceedings, their efforts have so far come to nothing, partly because studies commissioned by the UK government have concluded that a resettlement programme on what is officially known as the British Indian Ocean Territory was just not feasible.

As a result, today the only people who inhabit the 60 or so islands that lie halfway between Tanzania and Indonesia are the thousands of US military personnel based on its largest atoll, Diego Garcia, which, under an agreement with Britain, has been transformed into a huge landing strip used by B-52 bombers and anonymous jets moving high value terrorist detainees to CIA black sites around the world. But now the officially sanctioned arguments made against allowing the Chagossians to return to the islands from which they were removed in the late 1960s have been thrown into question.

A former British high commissioner has questioned whether the Foreign Office tried to “massage” the drafting of a key study that put paid to any hope of returning by concluding that resettlement was financially “prohibitive” and too “precarious”...

...The UK must decide by 29 December as to whether the US-UK agreement over the use of Diego Garcia as a military base should be extended for 20 years...

/...http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/23/doubts-raised-over-uk-government-refusal-to-allow-islanders-to-return-to-chagos

January 20, 2016

“Doggone right we’re angry,” Palin said

“Doggone right we’re angry,” Palin said she said to the conservative base of supporters in Iowa, as 24/7 cable networks broadcast more than an hour-long campaign event live on TV nationwide, for free. “We are mad, and we’ve been had.”

But for Democrats, a Trump-Palin alliance represents a kind of two-headed monster on the campaign trail, the likes of which world politics may have never seen. Whether liberals see the duo as a true nightmare or a stage act to be laughed off, well: that depends on how seriously they take the Trump reality – and the staying power of the Palin Show...

/...http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jan/19/donald-trump-endorsement-from-sarah-palin-a-liberal-nightmare-or-stage-act

January 18, 2016

Maldives demands 'hostage' before ex-president can have surgery in UK

... “It is an ethical issue. That is why President Nasheed has not agreed to the demand of a guarantor,” he added

The sudden development came hours after the country’s prisons chief, Mohamed Husham, announced that Nasheed had been granted 30 days leave from prison for spinal cord surgery and was expected to leave later Sunday...

...Media reports have said the Maldives government reluctantly softened its stand on Nasheed following diplomatic pressure from neighbouring India and Sri Lanka as well as the former colonial power Britain.

The 48-year-old former president was sentenced on terrorism charges relating to the arrest of an allegedly corrupt judge in 2012, when he was still in power. The UN said his trial was seriously flawed and he should be released and compensated for wrongful detention.

Hardliner Abdulla Yameen, the current president, has refused to accept the UN ruling and is resisting international pressure to release Nasheed...

/...http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/17/maldives-demands-hostage-before-ex-president-can-have-surgery-in-uk

January 15, 2016

Agree.

Now financial system "rewiring"...

January 1, 2016

Europe set for a fundamental clash of ideas (BBC Chief Correspondent)

... With anti-austerity parties having done well in Spain and Portugal there will be fresh pressure on Brussels to police the deficit targets. - (Oh yeah. Succinctly put. Pressure from whom, may one humbly inquire, m'luds? It certainly won't be pressure from a democratic majority.)

The big question for Europe's policymakers is whether it can escape so-called "secular stagnation" - a condition of negligible growth. - (Please re-think and re-define 'growth'. Current economic systems need re-wiring to take greater social and environmental realities into account.)

In 2016 watch sentiment incline further towards launching major investment projects. .. - (Indeed. Directed from above, or attending to the ideas of those below? What kind of projects, with what overall goals - propping up current neo-liberal lightly-regulated systems or starting to make necessary changes in preparation for the foreseeable future?)

PODEMOS:


... 2016 will see a further clash of ideas: a struggle between nationalists and globalists; a struggle between those who want to revive the power of the nation states and those who believe the answers lie in international bodies like the EU; a struggle between those who believe they are defending Europe's Judeo-Christian traditions (like Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban) and those wedded to multiculturalism (Angela Merkel)... -(It does matter and it is essential to discern the differences between varieties of 'nationalism' and 'globalism'. But most MSM makes little effort in this direction, preferring black/white either/or dichotomies easier to dramatize.)

/(Much More)... http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-35160080

Have a happy year