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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   25782 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 11, 2025

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I'm reading the Wikipedia on the Chagos Islands right now, and I'm a little confused as to why Mauritius wants the islands.

Does anyone here have any insight on that, or links on the history of these events where I could learn about it?

Ok, the weirdest part of the Wikipedia on the British Indian Ocean Territory is that its motto references Lemuria, an extremely outdated scientific theory that has connections to Theosophy.

But my understanding is that the most relevant element of the territorial dispute for people outside of Mauritius is that the territory nominally controls the .io country-code TLD. Geopolitical instability over British soverignty led to the mass exodus from .io domains.

The deal signed between the UK and Mauritius means that Mauritius will take control of the TLD; there was some doubt that it would continue to exist as a valid domain. We're definitely in a bizarre world where internet domain names are the subject of geopolitical disputes. But .su will bury us all.

Apparently the US also has military infrastructure on the islands, and Trump was a fan of the deal?

an extremely outdated scientific theory that has connections to Theosophy.

‘Scientific’.

Was lemuria ever a science hypothesis? I was under the impression that even back in the day it was ancient aliens tier.

Apparently the US also has military infrastructure on the islands, and Trump was a fan of the deal?

I highly doubt Mauritius is dumb enough to tell the US to take their base away.

Was [L]emuria ever a science hypothesis?

Originally, it was attempting to provide a mechanism for how lemur fossils were found in India and Madagascar. (For today's lucky 10,000, lemurs are a tree-dwelling mammal related to monkeys and apes.)

Apparently the US also has military infrastructure on the islands, and Trump was a fan of the deal?

Trump probably figures the US can bully Mauritus much easier than it can bully the U.K. After all, there's little chance that Trump will be swayed by the scolding of some international court.

If he thinks that (and I’m not sure he does, America has been very anti the sale) then he’s an idiot. The UK is reflexively pro-America.

I realise this doesn’t sound correct to you, because the UK criticises America (especially Trump and MAGA) so much, but it’s still true. The UK sees its criticism as coming from a colleague in the same tent, and will never side with China or Russia or really any other power on a matter of serious geopolitics. All we ask for in return is some subsidies and some head pats but we will make do even without.

There are maniac Leftists of course, even in the government, but they hold no influence on these matters and they will certainly not support Russia/China over America.

I doubt the same is true of the Mauritius.

I doubt the same is true of the Mauritius.

I mean, if push comes to shove something like "y'know all those planes full of bombs we have sitting on the island we're leasing from you? the neat thing about bombs is that you can drop them absolutely anywhere!" seems like it would be a lot more effective on the Mauritanians than the Brits?

"Mauritanians could be here" he thought, "I've never been on this island before. There could be Mauritanians anywhere." Made in the USA reverberated his entire airbase, making it pulsate even as the $9 Billion subsidy circulated through his powerful thick military budget and washed away his (merited) fear of soviet aligned countries. "With bombs you can drop them anywhere you want" he said to himself, out loud.

I see you are a man of culture as well

this is, for me, hands-down meme of the year.

I realise this doesn’t sound correct to you, because the UK criticises America (especially Trump and MAGA) so much, but it’s still true. The UK sees its criticism as coming from a colleague in the same tent, and will never side with China or Russia or really any other power on a matter of serious geopolitics. All we ask for in return is some subsidies and some head pats but we will make do even without.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if europhiles in the UK would rather be part of Macron's vision of "Strategic autonomy" than America's junior partner when it comes to foreign policy(perhaps to the extent of preferring neutrality in the case of a Taiwan-based active conflict). Whether something like this ever happens is impossible to say but I don't think it's at all impossible, particularly if elite anti-America messaging continues at the same level of intensity.

There are maniac Leftists of course, even in the government, but they hold no influence on these matters and they will certainly not support Russia/China over America.

The forthcoming UK recognition of Palestine is I think an example that leftist anti-western opinion definitely has a role in UK policy-making.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if europhiles in the UK would rather be part of Macron's vision of "Strategic autonomy" than America's junior partner when it comes to foreign policy

Not a chance. Joining AUKUS was a giant middle finger to the French (who had been supplying the original contract) and a very visible symbol of allegiance to America over European integration. This is why DeGaulle tried to keep us out of the EU, he figured Anglo instincts would come to the fore.

preferring neutrality in the case of a Taiwan-based active conflict)

Neutrality maybe. But definitely not taking the Chinese side. More like our position re: Ukraine.

The forthcoming UK recognition of Palestine is I think an example that leftist anti-western opinion definitely has a role in UK policy-making.

I was going to have a sentence excluding that specifically but I mean global power politics between the big players. Being pro-Palestine is different, it’s going against US desires but it’s not siding with Russia or China except incidentally.

The U.K. is indeed pro-American, but if Trump figures he can just act as if the U.S. owns the place and Mauritus can suck it, that's even better, at least from Trump's perspective.

Maybe, though I think that's a mistake on his part. In any case it sounds like I misread you:

I realise this doesn’t sound correct to you

so apologies for that.

What stands out to me on Wikipedia is the insistence that the islands have an indigenous population that the British lied about and deported. The Chagos Archipelago article includes the introduction "the UK falsely claimed that the Chagos had no permanent population", and the page on the islanders themselves has as its second sentence "Under international law, they are the indigenous people of the Chagos archipelago".

Read on, however, and it becomes clear that this 'indigenous population' is a melange of people from many different regions brought to the islands by Europeans as workers in the 19th century, and that when the British deported them in the 60s and 70s, they moved around a thousand people, who were mostly workers on failing, unprofitable plantations that would have been closed in the near term anyway. This is probably not what most people have in mind when they think of colonial genocides of indigenous peoples. The Chagossians are a relatively recent polyglot of diverse origins, not people with an ancient connection to the islands, and seem likely to have had found more opportunities away from the islands anyway. I'm not asserting that the deportation was therefore morally unproblematic - I'm just saying that it doesn't seem like a very central case of the violations it's being presented as. Wikipedia doesn't technically lie - "the UK falsely claimed" and "under international law they are X" seem like claims that are at least arguably true - but it presents those claims in ways that strike me as calculated to produce a misleading impression.

I was under the impression that the indigenous people were one of the problems with the current deal--they aren't from Mauritus and if you're going to return the islands to anyone, you return it to them, not to Mauritus, which the deal specifically didn't do. (And if you check a map, the islands are nowhere near Mauritus either.)

It's true that they aren't ancient, but they were expelled against their will, so they should still have some right to the islands.

Indigenous just means ‘the last non-white people in a region’.

How poor would you need to be to enjoy money and opportunity at little cost?

Strategic Indo-Pacific military base home values are looking up. Mauritius has a GDP of ~15 billion USD. Put one and one together and the question becomes why wouldn't they want the islands? I wonder if the Chagos Islands might now be the single most lucrative asset for Mauritius. On top of the strategic value, Chagos adds a yuge additional Exclusive Economic Zone away from home. Surfers eagerly await imperialist eviction.

Can even get a nice bidding war going between the UK/US and China. Basically free money.

The ICJ has a conveniently abbreviated press release that can be found on this page. tl;dr: The UK granted independence to Mauritius in 1968 only after purchasing from Mauritius indefinite ownership of the Chagos Islands and evicting those islands' inhabitants. This was not a proper execution of the UK's duty to decolonize Mauritius. The UK must give the islands back to Mauritius. (Resettlement of the former inhabitants is a separate issue.)

That's true but Mauritius and the Chagos Islands are 1200 km from eachother, they were only in the same French administrative zone together because they're small islands in the Indian Ocean and the British kept the French organization. It makes little sense for Mauritius to have the islands when they never historically controlled them (the Maldives is at least closer and they fished around there) and there's no significant proximity.

That may be your opinion, but the ICJ decided otherwise by a vote of 13 to 1.

In its resolution 2066 (XX) of 16 December 1965, adopted a few weeks after the detachment of the Chagos Archipelago, the General Assembly deemed it appropriate to recall the obligation of the United Kingdom, as the administering Power, to respect the territorial integrity of Mauritius. The Court considers that the obligations arising under international law and reflected in the resolutions adopted by the General Assembly during the process of decolonization of Mauritius require the United Kingdom, as the administering Power, to respect the territorial integrity of that country, including the Chagos Archipelago.

The Court concludes that, as a result of the Chagos Archipelago’s unlawful detachment and its incorporation into a new colony, known as the BIOT, the process of decolonization of Mauritius was not lawfully completed when Mauritius acceded to independence in 1968.

I'm well aware what the ICJ said but courts say silly things all the time. Courts are for legalities, they're very much into this abstract 'who was in what administrative zone when, regardless of whatever else was happening' remit.

Nations and sovereignty are about more than that. This case is perfect proof in point. The US military base there isn't going anywhere and that's the key part of this equation, indeed the only people on the island are those on the base. The British are just paying lots of money to make this legal issue go away so that they wouldn't have the bad PR of ignoring this court (which they are entitled to do as a permanent security council member). America couldn't care less about some international court, they don't recognize its authority at all if they rule against the US, nor does Russia or Israel for that matter.

It's not real law if people can and do ignore it when they feel like it, it's just talk. The ICJ isn't a real court, their opinions don't have much inherent weight and certainly don't in this case, it's only a matter of PR.

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