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After an extended hiatus home and away from email and the interweb, I’m now back and straight into classes at Stanford. Not that the holiday hiatus was totally work-free – see above for a cartoon published this month in Jewish Renaissance magazine – it illustrates an anecdote from the article it accompanies, so don’t fret if you don’t get it. The idea is that in uniform, all the army soliders’ religious differences/stereotypes become obscured. So hurrah for uniformity! Not often you hear that on this website. Content aside, it was a nice prod for me to turn my hand to watercolour washes over the festive period, as I grabbed the odd minute or two to sketch out scenes from London, Yorkshire and Paris (the holy trinity of European cultcha) to hone my life drawing skills. I’ll post new art every day.
What better way to start 2010 than by casting off the shackles of last year – famous for that US Supreme Court ruling giving corporations unprecedented power in electoral funding – and giving Rupert Murdoch the keys to the Kingdom? The United Kingdom, that is – or at least any semblance of a diverse media. After an expose published in December destroyed Vince Cable’s cabinet credibility, it now falls to Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt, who has already publicly stated his support for the wannabe Ozymandias of Oz, to decide on whether Murdoch’s proposed £8bn buyout of BSkyB by his News Corporation should be subjected to a Competition Commission inquiry. Why could this be a bad idea? Aside from the obvious media hegemony argument (for the record, I’m no all-hands-t0-the-wheel liberal either), there’s the undisputed history of Fox Managerial influence over its editorial offerings. Click here to read about the memos from Fox News Washington Managing Editor Bill Sammon that told journalists to play down climate change stories, and use the term ” government option” instead of “public option” in their coverage of the health care debate. Surprisingly, the Guardian has come out with some arguments for why the takeover is a good thing, which you can read here.
For more info on Murdoch’s media empire, click here.
More from the follow-up on last week’s post revealing the real reason behind the UK government’s support for a marine preserve on Diego Garica – namely to use the leverage of the environmental lobby in the UK against the less powerful Chagos Support group, who are fighting to return the expelled islanders to their homeland.
Another legal revelation here (though not as scandalous and therefore far more likely to stay in the headlines) is that tweeting is now possible in court, as ruled by the Lord Justice Judge of the High Court (quite the title):
“The use of an unobtrusive, hand-held, virtually silent piece of modern equipment for the purposes of simultaneous reporting of proceedings to the outside world as they unfold in court is unlikely to interfere with the proper administration of justice.”
As opposed to a camera…
Radio silence of late has been due to our snowy return to the UK, where naturally all transport has ground to a halt in the wake of a few inches of snow. As the itinerant comics journalist, I’ve been using the time to chronicle the wonder of the big smoke in my sketchbook – above is the commercial black hole of Mordor, aka Oxford St, in all its festive glory. Some washes to come later on this week, along with a long post on Honduras and Canadian Mining Companies in Central America. It doesn’t get more festive than that.
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?)
A recent communique from the UK Chagos Support Associations reveals that next week an Early Day Motion (EDM) is being proposed in Parliament to discuss the possibility of a final settlement for the displaced Chagossians whose stories I tell in my 4-page comic, ‘The Right to Return’. You can see a sample page above, and the whole comic is at the bottom of this post.
For even more background info, read my original post on the comic here or visit the UK Chagos Support Association’s website. If that’s still not enough, I highly recommend David Vine’s ‘Island of Shame’ or John Pilger’s film, ‘Stealing a Nation’, below:
So here’s where you Britishers come in: you need to contact your MP and ask them to sign EDM number 960 Chagos Islands as soon as possible. Here’s the link. Don’t know who your MP is or how to contact them? Then turn to the ever-excellent They Work for You site, type in your postcode and hey presto – instant constituent power is yours.
The gist of the EDM proposes:
That this House believes that the interests of the Chagossian people and of Mauritius must be fully protected in the proposed Marine Protected Area; urges the Government to withdraw its case from the European Court of Human Rights and to settle out of court, as already suggested by the Court; and requests the Prime Minister to engage with Mauritius and the Chagossians, before the general election, in order to initiate discussion on an overall settlement of the issues, including timetable for eventual transfer of sovereignty of the Outer Islands to Mauritius and provision for a limited settlement on the Outer Islands.
As ever, please forward, RT and share the links in this post around – this is the last hope of the displaced Chagossians after a protracted legal struggle that has lasted decades.
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