4 ms·

Why is that an important distinction? Is forcible expulsion and dispropriration more acceptable if the people were brought to the island as slaves and laborers

Why is that an important distinction? Is forcible expulsion and dispropriration more acceptable if the people were brought to the island as slaves and laborers in the mid-1700s?

venning 9y ago
> an important distinction That it is a distinction is important to me. Having difficult discussions is made more difficult if we obscure facts or conflate terms. > more acceptable I applied no normative judgement.
- nimchimpsky 9y ago
  > That it is a distinction is important to me. Why ?
  - moo360 9y ago
    Are you being deliberately obtuse? It's a pretty important distinction that these were not some native tribesmen with millennia of ancestral history tied up in the lands.
    - 3131s 9y ago
      100s of years though, so from the perspective of an individual on the island it's exactly the same -- their entire life was on that island. So, the distinction is pointless and reeks of apologetics IMO. "Sir Bruce Greatbatch, KCVO, CMG, MBE, governor of the Seychelles, ordered all the dogs on Diego Garcia to be killed. More than 1000 pets were gassed with exhaust fumes. "They put the dogs in a furnace where the people worked", Lisette Talatte, in her 60s, told me, "and when their dogs were taken away in front of them our children screamed and cried". Sir Bruce had been given responsibility for what the US called "cleansing" and "sanitising" the islands; and the killing of the pets was taken by the islanders as a warning."
      - DarkKomunalec 9y ago
        By that logic, ethnic Europeans are the 'original inhabitants' of North America. I'm also unclear on why you quoted what the British did in your post - how does it relate to whether or not calling those people 'original inhabitants' is misleading? Do you believe that, if the British did something sufficiently wrong to them, that calling them 'original inhabitants' will be less misleading?
        sattoshi 9y ago
        What would you call the descendant of a Frenchman who settled in Quebec during the 1600s ? Immigrant? No. Settler? Not really after so many years. As an immigrant, I view them as natives Quebecers. What would you call them?
        pluma 9y ago
        Not everything is a contest. It doesn't matter how "original" natives are if they're natives. The reason "ethnic Europeans" aren't "the original inhabitants of North America" is that European settlers violently displaced (or killed) the previous inhabitants. Heck, the "original" inhabitants of North America (as far as we know) actually originated in what is now mostly Russia if you go back a few dozen millenia. And if you go back further than that (according to mainstream scientific consensus) we all likely originated in Africa. Defining the term "original inhabitants" as an absolute is blatantly begging the question (specifically it only works if you're a creationist). People were subjected to physical and psychological violence to be forcibly removed from their home and birthplace. That's bad enough, no matter how many generations lived in the same place before. This isn't about who's had it worse.
        DarkKomunalec 9y ago
        So why oppose clarifications on what 'original' means in this context?
        pluma 9y ago
        They were expelled in 1965. The current year is 2017. If we wait a few more decades this discussion will be pointless either way. I'm not opposing clarifications. I'm opposing quibbling over the semantics of "original" as if the distinction adds anything to the conversation. Their parents lived there, they were born there, they were violently expelled and suffered emotional abuse. The number of dead ancestors (or lack thereof) in the ground does not invalidate the suffering these people were forced to endure.
    - nimchimpsky 9y ago
      No its not.
      - moo360 9y ago
        it's
        nimchimpsky 9y ago
        Rather than correcting grammar, why don't you respond to the numerous rebuttals of your point of view elsewhere in this thread ? You says its important but don't explain why, and empathise that you place no "normative judgement" on it. Normative judgment doesn't make sense btw, judgement adhering to the norm - eh wat ? I think you meant moral/ethical.
    - pluma 9y ago
      By European standards the US is mostly inhabited by non-natives. So I guess it'd be okay to forcibly expel everyone but the Natives because they don't have millennia of ancestral history? I'd hope the more important distinction is how people are removed, not how many generations of dead people there were before them.
    - panglott 9y ago
      If a man shows up with a gun to run me off my land, it doesn't matter whether it was my father that bought it or my grandfather or my great-grandfather. What's important is the forcible dispropriation itself. Cases like this just make a mockery of the Lockean natural rights theory of property.
      - moo360 9y ago
        I made no comment on if it was right or not, I simply maintain that there is an important distinction there.
islanderfun 9y ago
For a conversation to happen, everyone should be on the same page. Distinction for the sake of clarity should always be welcomed and not confused with endorsing a specific action or behavior.
paulddraper 9y ago
The question is NOT about the morality of deportation, but about about the legitimacy of the UK's ownership. The only two nations that have laid claim to the territory are France and the United Kingdom. (France lost it in the Napoleonic Wars.)
- toyg 9y ago
  https://youtu.be/UTduy7Qkvk8 https://youtu.be/UTduy7Qkvk8
  - paulddraper 9y ago
    Ha ha :) Of course, the difference between the Indian Ocean Territory and India, is that people lived in India before. When the French showed up, the atolls were uninhabited.
MichaelGG 9y ago
It doesn't really matter at all. The land didn't come with a .io ccTLD. It's dervived from a name the British chose, so it's not like they stole the domain name from those people, right? Displacing settlers is a different question.
- walrus01 9y ago
  I think the morally questionable problem is this: I am highly doubtful that the original inhabitants of the islands are receiving any revenue whatsoever from the corporation which runs .IO. At least the small pacific island nation states that have hired third parties to run their ccTLD have contracts and agreements in place for a revenue share.
  - mattmanser 9y ago
    I am similarly outraged that I haven't had any cheques from Nominet come through the post recently and as a UK tax paying citizen I am outraged at this oversight. I want my £10!
  - jpttsn 9y ago
    Are the original inhabitants of these islands still alive?
    - venning 9y ago
      Yes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chagossians https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chagossians
  - MichaelGG 9y ago
    Why should they get any revenue from .io? The .io is an invention of the government and has nothing to do with the original inhabitants. The "original" people were removed well before .io even existed. Might as well demand they get paid for any inventions the military makes while testing stuff out there. And if the British hadn't done this and gave control over to the people living there 50 years ago, they wouldn't get .io either, because they wouldn't call themselves British Indian Ocean Territories. They'd have used something reflecting the name in their language. So again, this is a "resource" purely created by the British government being there. Maybe it's terribly unfair and bad what they've done to those peoples, but .io doesn't figure into that at all. Edit: I suppose if they had their own nation state, they could make some money that they couldn't otherwise. But why stop at domain names (which, again, wouldn't be .io, it'd be .cx or something for Chagossians)? They can't issue passports, a potentially valuable resource, not being a sovereign nation. They can't run "tax haven" schemes, etc. Seems like getting upset over .io itself is pointless compared to all the other stuff they could do with an internationally recognized government.
problems 9y ago
I'd say that using the land of your own country - owned by people in your country - for military purposes, while sketchy, is definitely more acceptable than taking an island from its indigenous occupants by force. The UK ownership then seems at least to be legitimate.

Why is that an important distinction? Is forcible expulsion and dispropriration more acceptable if the people were brought to the island as slaves and laborers in the mid-1700s?

venning 9y ago

> an important distinction That it is a distinction is important to me. Having difficult discussions is made more difficult if we obscure facts or conflate terms. > more acceptable I applied no normative judgement.

nimchimpsky 9y ago
> That it is a distinction is important to me. Why ?
- moo360 9y ago
  Are you being deliberately obtuse? It's a pretty important distinction that these were not some native tribesmen with millennia of ancestral history tied up in the lands.
  - 3131s 9y ago
    100s of years though, so from the perspective of an individual on the island it's exactly the same -- their entire life was on that island. So, the distinction is pointless and reeks of apologetics IMO. "Sir Bruce Greatbatch, KCVO, CMG, MBE, governor of the Seychelles, ordered all the dogs on Diego Garcia to be killed. More than 1000 pets were gassed with exhaust fumes. "They put the dogs in a furnace where the people worked", Lisette Talatte, in her 60s, told me, "and when their dogs were taken away in front of them our children screamed and cried". Sir Bruce had been given responsibility for what the US called "cleansing" and "sanitising" the islands; and the killing of the pets was taken by the islanders as a warning."
    - DarkKomunalec 9y ago
      By that logic, ethnic Europeans are the 'original inhabitants' of North America. I'm also unclear on why you quoted what the British did in your post - how does it relate to whether or not calling those people 'original inhabitants' is misleading? Do you believe that, if the British did something sufficiently wrong to them, that calling them 'original inhabitants' will be less misleading?
      - sattoshi 9y ago
        What would you call the descendant of a Frenchman who settled in Quebec during the 1600s ? Immigrant? No. Settler? Not really after so many years. As an immigrant, I view them as natives Quebecers. What would you call them?
      - pluma 9y ago
        Not everything is a contest. It doesn't matter how "original" natives are if they're natives. The reason "ethnic Europeans" aren't "the original inhabitants of North America" is that European settlers violently displaced (or killed) the previous inhabitants. Heck, the "original" inhabitants of North America (as far as we know) actually originated in what is now mostly Russia if you go back a few dozen millenia. And if you go back further than that (according to mainstream scientific consensus) we all likely originated in Africa. Defining the term "original inhabitants" as an absolute is blatantly begging the question (specifically it only works if you're a creationist). People were subjected to physical and psychological violence to be forcibly removed from their home and birthplace. That's bad enough, no matter how many generations lived in the same place before. This isn't about who's had it worse.
        DarkKomunalec 9y ago
        So why oppose clarifications on what 'original' means in this context?
        pluma 9y ago
        They were expelled in 1965. The current year is 2017. If we wait a few more decades this discussion will be pointless either way. I'm not opposing clarifications. I'm opposing quibbling over the semantics of "original" as if the distinction adds anything to the conversation. Their parents lived there, they were born there, they were violently expelled and suffered emotional abuse. The number of dead ancestors (or lack thereof) in the ground does not invalidate the suffering these people were forced to endure.
  - nimchimpsky 9y ago
    No its not.
    - moo360 9y ago
      it's
      - nimchimpsky 9y ago
        Rather than correcting grammar, why don't you respond to the numerous rebuttals of your point of view elsewhere in this thread ? You says its important but don't explain why, and empathise that you place no "normative judgement" on it. Normative judgment doesn't make sense btw, judgement adhering to the norm - eh wat ? I think you meant moral/ethical.
  - pluma 9y ago
    By European standards the US is mostly inhabited by non-natives. So I guess it'd be okay to forcibly expel everyone but the Natives because they don't have millennia of ancestral history? I'd hope the more important distinction is how people are removed, not how many generations of dead people there were before them.
  - panglott 9y ago
    If a man shows up with a gun to run me off my land, it doesn't matter whether it was my father that bought it or my grandfather or my great-grandfather. What's important is the forcible dispropriation itself. Cases like this just make a mockery of the Lockean natural rights theory of property.
    - moo360 9y ago
      I made no comment on if it was right or not, I simply maintain that there is an important distinction there.

islanderfun 9y ago

For a conversation to happen, everyone should be on the same page. Distinction for the sake of clarity should always be welcomed and not confused with endorsing a specific action or behavior.

paulddraper 9y ago

The question is NOT about the morality of deportation, but about about the legitimacy of the UK's ownership. The only two nations that have laid claim to the territory are France and the United Kingdom. (France lost it in the Napoleonic Wars.)

toyg 9y ago
https://youtu.be/UTduy7Qkvk8 https://youtu.be/UTduy7Qkvk8
- paulddraper 9y ago
  Ha ha :) Of course, the difference between the Indian Ocean Territory and India, is that people lived in India before. When the French showed up, the atolls were uninhabited.

MichaelGG 9y ago

It doesn't really matter at all. The land didn't come with a .io ccTLD. It's dervived from a name the British chose, so it's not like they stole the domain name from those people, right? Displacing settlers is a different question.

walrus01 9y ago
I think the morally questionable problem is this: I am highly doubtful that the original inhabitants of the islands are receiving any revenue whatsoever from the corporation which runs .IO. At least the small pacific island nation states that have hired third parties to run their ccTLD have contracts and agreements in place for a revenue share.
- mattmanser 9y ago
  I am similarly outraged that I haven't had any cheques from Nominet come through the post recently and as a UK tax paying citizen I am outraged at this oversight. I want my £10!
- jpttsn 9y ago
  Are the original inhabitants of these islands still alive?
  - venning 9y ago
    Yes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chagossians https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chagossians
- MichaelGG 9y ago
  Why should they get any revenue from .io? The .io is an invention of the government and has nothing to do with the original inhabitants. The "original" people were removed well before .io even existed. Might as well demand they get paid for any inventions the military makes while testing stuff out there. And if the British hadn't done this and gave control over to the people living there 50 years ago, they wouldn't get .io either, because they wouldn't call themselves British Indian Ocean Territories. They'd have used something reflecting the name in their language. So again, this is a "resource" purely created by the British government being there. Maybe it's terribly unfair and bad what they've done to those peoples, but .io doesn't figure into that at all. Edit: I suppose if they had their own nation state, they could make some money that they couldn't otherwise. But why stop at domain names (which, again, wouldn't be .io, it'd be .cx or something for Chagossians)? They can't issue passports, a potentially valuable resource, not being a sovereign nation. They can't run "tax haven" schemes, etc. Seems like getting upset over .io itself is pointless compared to all the other stuff they could do with an internationally recognized government.

problems 9y ago

I'd say that using the land of your own country - owned by people in your country - for military purposes, while sketchy, is definitely more acceptable than taking an island from its indigenous occupants by force. The UK ownership then seems at least to be legitimate.