Where – and What – in the World Is Diego Garcia

[seemslikeadream]

But, there was one small problem. Actually, 2,000 small problems - the Chagossians,



http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/04/09/8168/

by Sean Gonsalves
With California weather in my blood, Cape Cod spring feels like an extension of winter.

What keeps me warm until summer comes is baseball - and fantasies about vacationing on a tropical island like Guam, where my 6th- and 7th-grade best friend, David Reed, and his Navy dad were transferred to from the now defunct Oakland Navy Base.

“Where’s Guam?” I asked.

“It’s some tropical island in the North Pacific Ocean. Kinda like Hawaii, but no tourists,” Dave said. Then, already honing my gift of asking conversation-changing questions, I said: “Why do we have a base in Guam?”

It wasn’t until years later I learned that Guam is a key FOB. That’s military jargon for “forward operating base,” just one of a million or so military acronyms.

In a world where America is the self-appointed global cop, an FOB is like a police precinct - a strategically located substation from which hardware and personnel can be quickly dispatched to keep the neighborhood rabble in line.

Diego Garcia is the other key FOB that people who consider themselves well-informed about the Busheviks “war on terror” ought to know about.

David Vine, assistant professor of anthropology at American University and author of the forthcoming book Island of Shame: The Secret History of Exile and Empire on Diego Garcia, details the post 9/11 significance of these FOB’s, especially Diego Garcia - the coveted military outpost in the Indian Ocean’s Chagos Archipelago, where the beaches look like one of those Corona beer commercials.

In the 1950s, U.S. war planners were worried about local populations catching the decolonization bug sweeping the Third World. So the U.S. Navy came up with the “Strategic Island Concept,” which, in part, identified the British colony of Diego Garcia as a good place to build an isolated base, helping to ensure that former colonial subjects in the Middle East and Africa understood that freedom means whatever the hell the Washington consensus says it means.




http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3667764379758632511&q=diego+garcia&total=1134&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0&hl=en

STEALING A NATION (John Pilger, 2004) is an extraordinary film about the plight of people of the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean - ... all » secretly and brutally expelled from their homeland by British governments in the late 1960s and early 1970s, to make way for an American military base. The base, on the main island of Diego Garcia, was a launch pad for the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Stealing a Nation has won both the Royal Television Society's top award as Britain's best documentary in 2004-5, and a 'Chris Award' at the Columbus International Film and Video Festival



http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8535731563246208987
UK Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on the situation of the Chagossians

[SoFlaJet]

1. I do not know itseems BUT....

I DO happen to know where ALFREDO Garcia's head is located

[notesdev]

2. Guam is part of the US

If you didn't notice, Guam gets to send delegates to the convention.

Diego Garcia is a small island in the Indian Ocean.

[seemslikeadream]

3. There is a bit more to the story

[Beausoleil]

4. Indeed

There are native Guamanians still on Guam. Diego Garcia was basically stolen and cleared out for British/American interests.