Comments on: Apologising for the Leviathan http://badconscience.com/2010/02/24/apologising-for-the-leviathan/ "But as things are, the war of the sword and the war of the pens is perpetual" - Thomas Hobbes, De Cive Sat, 26 May 2012 18:38:55 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: links for 2010-02-25 « Rumblegumption http://badconscience.com/2010/02/24/apologising-for-the-leviathan/#comment-2269 Fri, 26 Feb 2010 00:34:15 +0000 http://badconscience.com/?p=1847#comment-2269 [...] Apologising for the Leviathan « Bad Conscience [...]

]]> By: Paul Sagar http://badconscience.com/2010/02/24/apologising-for-the-leviathan/#comment-2266 Thu, 25 Feb 2010 00:21:18 +0000 http://badconscience.com/?p=1847#comment-2266 James,

Good point.

Hypocrisy is probably in the Sovereign’s remit, though.

]]> By: James A http://badconscience.com/2010/02/24/apologising-for-the-leviathan/#comment-2265 Wed, 24 Feb 2010 21:02:47 +0000 http://badconscience.com/?p=1847#comment-2265 Here’s a third possible response. Brown’s apology is disgustingly hypocritical, given that his government presided over the legal ruling finalising the expulsion of the Chagos islanders from their home (in 2008), a decision the government is currently trying to consolidate by setting up a protected marine conservation area covering the Chagos archipelago.

(http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/18/chagos-nature-reserve-greenwash)

I won’t run through the whole story, but in brief 1,500 islanders were forcibly expelled between 1968 and 1973, so that the US could set up a military base on Diego Garcia, and successive governments, right up to the present, have lied through their teeth and pulled all sorts of outrageous legal stunts to deny them the right of return. Many ended up in horrendous poverty in Mauritius, some dying from starvation, disease and suicide. But it doesn’t matter, because (according to a Foreign Office file that has since been declassified) “these people have little aptitude for anything other than growing coconuts”, they are just “Tarzans or man Fridays whose origins remain obscure”.

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