It's the Falklands Again...

So, Argentina have been making noises on the Falklands/Malvinas front again. I must say that if I were an Argentinian I'd been against my country's claim on the island just as, being British I'm against Britain's. I was amused, shortly after the Falklands War by an Argentinian guy who said "Who won the Falklands War? We got rid of the Generals as a result of it. You've still got Thatcher."

And then there's the double standards. Whenever the Falklands issue crops up, I'm reminded of Britain's connivance in the forced evacuation of Diego Garcia, recently described in an article by John Pilger:

In the early 1960s, the Labour government of Harold Wilson secretly agreed to a demand from Washington that the Chagos archipelago, a British colony, be "swept" and "sanitised" of its 2,500 inhabitants so that a military base could be built on the principal island, Diego Garcia. "They knew we were inseparable from our pets," said Lizette, "When the American soldiers arrived to build the base, they backed their big trucks against the brick shed where we prepared the coconuts; hundreds of our dogs had been rounded up and imprisoned there. Then they gassed them through tubes from the trucks' exhausts. You could hear them crying."

Lisette and her family and hundreds of islanders were forced on to a rusting steamer bound for Mauritius, a distance of 2,500 miles. They were made to sleep in the hold on a cargo of fertiliser: bird shit. The weather was rough; everyone was ill; two women miscarried. Dumped on the docks at Port Louis, Lizette's youngest children, Jollice, and Regis, died within a week of each other. ...

This act of mass kidnapping was carried out in high secrecy. In one official file, under the heading, "Maintaining the fiction", the Foreign Office legal adviser exhorts his colleagues to cover their actions by "re-classifying" the population as "floating" and to "make up the rules as we go along". Article 7 of the statute of the International Criminal Court says the "deportation or forcible transfer of population" is a crime against humanity.

I Gave You My Cash

Monbiot on Wealth Creation

"What has happened over the past 30 years is the capture of the world's common treasury by a handful of people, assisted by neoliberal policies which were first imposed on rich nations by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan... The undeserving rich are now in the frame, and the rest of us want our money back."

George Monbiot writing in The Guardian

Free Bradley Manning!

It's impossible to live in the UK and not to have heard of Julian Assange these days. But how many people have heard of Bradley Manning? Bradley, a US soldier, is the alleged whistleblower who sent the classified US information to Wikileaks in the first place. He is awaiting trial and has been held in solitary confinement for the last 8 months. Whether or not it was right for him to do what he did (I happen to think that it was), the way he is now being treated in the US is questionable in the extreme. His lawyer, David Coombs, has described the conditions of his confinement:

"Due to being held on Prevention of Injury (POI) watch: PFC Manning is held in his cell for approximately 23 hours a day. The guards are required to check on PFC Manning every five minutes by asking him if he is okay. PFC Manning is required to respond in some affirmative manner. At night, if the guards cannot see PFC Manning clearly, because he has a blanket over his head or is curled up towards the wall, they will wake him in order to ensure he is okay. . . . He is not allowed to have a pillow or sheets. However, he is given access to two blankets and has recently been given a new mattress that has a built-in pillow.

"He is not allowed to have any personal items in his cell. He is only allowed to have one book or one magazine at any given time to read in his cell. The book or magazine is taken away from him at the end of the day before he goes to sleep. He is prevented from exercising in his cell. If he attempts to do push-ups, sit-ups, or any other form of exercise he will be forced to stop. He does receive one hour of 'exercise' outside of his cell daily. He is taken to an empty room and only allowed to walk. PFC Manning normally just walks figure eights in the room for the entire hour. If he indicates that he no long feels like walking, he is immediately returned to his cell. When PFC Manning goes to sleep, he is required to strip down to his boxer shorts and surrender his clothing to the guards. His clothing is returned to him the next morning."

Prevention of Injury - or pre-trial punishment?

Bradley's case and the issue of his treatment was covered recently on the Alyona show (the item starts at 20 min 30 sec):




The Bradley Manning Support Network

Facebook: Save Bradley