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Hit ‘previous’ for the full lowdown on Eisenhower’s military-industrial complex speech, and the first part of this comic. Scroll down to read about what I’ve got up to over the last month at Stanford.
Friday marked not one but two important anniversaries: Human Rights Day and Day of Action against US Military Bases. For more on the former and to find out exactly what the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is all about, go here.
Speaking of human rights, last week also saw more revelations from the Wikileaks Datadump – this time to do with the displaced Chagos islanders and their fight for the right to return to their homeland in Diego Garcia. Read my 4-page comic about the case here. As has often been the case with the Wikileaks “revelations”, it’s only cemented what we’d feared all along – that the MPs in charge of the project had treated the entire case with the sort of disabused colonial mentality that the Foreign Office is often parodied for. Here’s the quick summary: [USG=US Gov’t). My highlights in bold. For more detail, read this Guardian article.
The official insisted that the establishment of a marine park — the world’s largest — would in no way impinge on USG use of the BIOT, including Diego Garcia, for military purposes. He agreed that the UK and U.S. should carefully negotiate the details of the marine reserve to assure that U.S. interests were safeguarded and the strategic value of BIOT was upheld. He said that the BIOT’s former inhabitants would find it difficult, if not impossible, to pursue their claim for resettlement on the islands if the entire Chagos Archipelago were a marine reserve.
2. And as if there was any doubt about the real purpose of Diego Garcia in either UK or US govts’ minds:
Designating the BIOT as a marine park could, years down the road, create public questioning about the suitability of the BIOT for military purposes. Roberts responded that the terms of reference for the establishment of a marine park would clearly state that the BIOT, including Diego Garcia, was reserved for military uses.
3. But here’s the real, unedited UK gov’t take on the issue:
Roberts acknowledged that “we need to find a way to get through the various Chagossian lobbies.” He admitted that HMG is “under pressure” from the Chagossians and their advocates to permit resettlement of the “outer islands” of the BIOT. He noted, without providing details, that “there are proposals (for a marine park) that could provide the Chagossians warden jobs” within the BIOT. However, Roberts stated that, according to the HGM,s current thinking on a reserve, there would be “no human footprints” or “Man Fridays” on the BIOT’s uninhabited islands. He asserted that establishing a marine park would, in effect, put paid to resettlement claims of the archipelago’s former residents. Responding to Polcouns’ observation that the advocates of Chagossian resettlement continue to vigorously press their case, Roberts opined that the UK’s “environmental lobby is far more powerful than the Chagossians’ advocates.” (Note: One group of Chagossian litigants is appealing to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) the decision of Britain’s highest court to deny “resettlement rights” to the islands’ former inhabitants.
The BIOT “has had a great role in assuring the security of the UK and U.S. — much more than anyone foresaw” in the 1960s, Roberts emphasized. “We do not regret the removal of the population,” since removal was necessary for the BIOT to fulfill its strategic purpose, he said. Removal of the population is the reason that the BIOT’s uninhabited islands and the surrounding waters are in “pristine” condition. Roberts added that Diego Garcia’s excellent condition reflects the responsible stewardship of the U.S. and UK forces using it.
(Because, let’s face it – why would you let the natives steward the land when the UK and US gov’t could do such a better job at it?)
I don’t think I was alone in finding Barack Obama’s nuclear change of heart a little odd, and more than a little hypocritical. Let’s skip back to December, and his Nobel Peace Prize address. Which, incidentally, made him one of the few prize winners to argue for war in his acceptance speech: “To say that force is sometimes necessary is not a call to cynicism – it is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason”. When it comes to waging war, reason will apparently only take you so far. Presumably after that it’s intuition, or maybe divine inspiration – we need only look back to the former President for that, courtesy of the Independent UK.
But I digress. The important thing here is Obama’s policy towards nuclear weapons, which incidentally was the reason he was awarded the Nobel in the first place. Here he is again: “One urgent example is the effort to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, and to seek a world without them. I am committed to upholding this treaty. And I am working with President Medvedev to reduce America and Russia’s nuclear stockpiles.” That was December 2009. Hence the double-take when he announced in the latest budget that the agency responsible for the US’ nuclear weapons stockpile would receive a 13.4% increase from the previous fiscal year, totalling $11.2 billion. Granted, some of that would go towards controlling and securing existing nuclear warheads, but then there’s also “plans to go to full production of the refurbished Navy W-76 Trident submarine warhead, to refurbish the B-61 bomb, and to study options for maintaining the W-78, the warhead in the Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile.”
Coincidentally, in the same month that this nuclear leap was taken, one of the lone survivors of both of the 1945 atomic bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Tsutomo Yamaguchi, died aged 93. Amazingly, he was within the designated ground zero area (3km from the blast) for both. The students of the Stanford Graphic Novel Project have chosen his incredible testimony as the basis for their graphic novel, and the first few pages were excitedly written on Monday. To get a sense of the unbelievably apocalyptic level of destruction in Hiroshima and Nagasaki when the bombs dropped, check out this recent NPR podcast with the author of Last Train from Hiroshima, a collection of survivor testimonies.
In other news, the Independent World Report is running my Diego Garcia comic in their latest issue, but you can check it out here. And there’s only a week to get your pre-orders for the Honduran coup comic in! See the widget to the right and spread the word.
Here’s the tragic end to the Diego Garcia story, which covers up the House of Lords’ decision a year ago to deny the Chagossians the right to return to their homeland. Speaking of tragic outcomes, after a massive turnout in Maine, prop 1 was passed yesterday banning same-sex marriage in the state. I’m thinking of doing a piece on the money trail behind the yes campaign – which also worked in California, so stay tuned.
Here’s the next page of my Diego Garcia comic – those of you new to the site, skip back using the previous posts on the toolbar to the right, or else visit the COMIX page to read the whole thing as a slideshow. Thanks for all your support, and remember to spread the word about the Chagossians’ struggle.
Beyond that, you can take steps from wherever you are in the world here – just follow the ‘How you can help’ link on the left toolbar.Donating aside, you can directly contact the relevant MPs who are defending the British government’s stance on the issue, as well as read their little back and forth in the House of Commons from back in 2004. If you’re a brit, it’s worth registering at theyworkforyou.com – it’s a free, easy way of keeping tabs on exactly what your local MP is doing for you. And if you’re American, then remember to support the Vote No on 1 campaign in Maine and help stop the ban on same-sex marriage that went through here in California last year.
As returning readers to the site will see, I’ve added some new widgets to let you share my comics far and wide to spread the word about topics like the US base on Diego Garcia and the Honduran coup. At the bottom of every post is a veritable plethora of links to facebook, twitter, email, you name it – so feel free to pass on the link. It also looks like I’ve found a home for the Diego Garcia comic outside the confines of this site. More details to come when it’s all official. For now, here’s p2 of 4.
Thanks to the Jan Oberg, Director of the Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research and Celia Whitaker of the Chagos Support Foundation for their support.
At last the US has successfully brokered a deal between Zelaya and Micheletti. Hopefully this will also result in an investigation of the de facto regime’s litany of human rights abuses over the past four months, which are still continuing on the streets of Tegucigalpa. Articles about police ‘meowing’ and firing sonic blasts of pig noises at the Brazilian embassy in total impunity to keep the Zelaya party deprived of sleep sound both surreal and horrendous: here’s a great article by Joe Shansky at Pulsemedia.org on the worrying use of psychological weapons by police, both in the US and abroad.
Today’s comic is the first page of a new piece based on Diego Garcia, which many are labelling ‘the new Guantanamo’ for its role as one of the prime US Military bases for Iraq/Afghanistan, not to mention in interrogating ‘enemy combattants’. I’d entered it in the Observer Graphic Short Story Competition 2009, but perhaps as Joe Sacco was mysteriously taken off the judging panel in their final press release announcing the winners, it may have led to a bigger step away from any non-fictional entries. Who knows.
Although it’s been in the papers as a popular transit point for illegal rendition flights run by the CIA and MI6, my piece concentrates on the backstory to the island, more specifically how the UK and US governments conspired to illegally evict the island’s inhabitants from their home in the 1960s. Two invaluable sources were David Vine’s Island of Shame and John Pilger’s Stealing A Nation, which I thoroughly recommend. As always, the whole comic is posted on the COMIX page, so please forward the link around to raise awareness for the Chagossians’ campaign to return to their homeland.
