We all should know about the habit of the cuckoo of laying a single egg in another bird's nest. When all the eggs in the nest hatch, the baby cuckoo makes sure that the other hatchlings fall out of the nest, and thus it gets all the attention and food that its foster-parents can give it.
Over a period lasting from 1967 to 1973, the British government expelled the inhabitants of the Chagos Islands (British Indian Ocean Territory) in order to provide a large naval and air base on the main inhabited island of Diego Garcia, which was strongly desired by the USA to serve as a strategic asset in its imperial aim of world domination.
The islanders, although British citizens (often referred to by their Creol name of 'Ilois'), were never consulted about this, and were shipped out to Mauritius, some hundreds of miles away to the south-west. They never resigned themselves to the loss of their right to return home and pursued the British government in the English High Court. In November 2003, they finally obtained an order giving them permission to return, which order seems to have had no effect whatever either on the British government or on the biggest cuckoo in the world, the US Air Force, which has taken over the territory completely for its heavy bombers. The former inhabitants have ever since been trying unsuccessfully to recover their homes and their lands, but have so far only managed to make temporary visits to tend family graves and to see the destruction carried out on their former land.
For those who are unaware of where these islands are situated, they lie in the Indian Ocean south of the Maldives and east of the Seychelles and from a strategic point of view allow any piratical force based there easy access to Africa, the Middle East, Pakistan and India.
The story is more sinister than a mere tale of woe about an evicted people, since the huge complex built on Diego Garcia has been used as a base for attacks by the US Air Force on targets such as Afghanistan, and it has been referred to by spokesmen as acting as an unsinkable aircraft carrier. It is currently being used as a threat to targets in Iran which can be reached without the embarrassing problem of overflying any other country.
This force, which can very fairly be called the "biggest cuckoo in the world", has obvious uncomplicated links between its bases in Iraq and that on Diego Garcia, due to the lack of the necessity of overflying any potentially objecting country. This presumably explains why the British government and the US Air Force show such extreme disdain for the Law as laid down by the English Courts.
It is sad to think of these poor people who were first dumped in Mauritius and who have ever since tried to return home, as their rights have been trampled on by this biggest cuckoo which, with extreme ruthlessness, just shrugs off their claims as being of no importance. Now that the torture centre at Guantanamo Bay is due to close, it would hardly be surprising if the rulers of the USA were to set up a new similar centre on one of the more remote islands in the Chagos Archipelago to prevent any justice being available to their helpless hapless victims.
Never underestimate the ruthlessness of cuckoos, which happily eject their foster-parents' chicks in order to take all the benefits for themselves.
© Copyright 2008 by AxisofLogic.com
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