What exactly is the Mauritian connection to the Chagos Archipelago?
Is it just because a lot of Chagossians went to Mauritius after getting kicked out? Obviously Mauritius and Chagos were ruled by the same people previous (French, then British), but is there a deeper history there?
I ask this because the Chagos archipelago is like 1500 miles away from Mauritius - the Maldives, Seychelles, and even Sri Lanka and India are all closer than that. And to my untrained eye, the Chagos archipelago looks like an extension of whatever process created the Maldives.
There isn’t one, as you say it’s over 2000km between them, the only link is that when Britain was administrating them it did so as a single territory. This is not some reunification of a country separated by a colonial power.
The United States of America has had sovereignty of itself for 248 years, should the USA give up it's sovereignty in North America or do you draw the line between somewhere between 215 and 248?
The obvious difference, is that you're comparing sovereignty over a nation/state's mainland, vs sovereignty over a separate colony, thousands of km away from the mainland (and even used only for military purposes, apparently)
Hawaii then, 3,200 km away from the US mainland, home to one of the largest US navel bases and only part of the US for the last 126 years when they annexed it?
I think this is missing the point of the original question, which is - why would a Mauritian feel "relief" at the return of a geographical territory which is extremely far from itself? The claims of the UK or the US are irrelevant to this reasoning.
Indeed, I would like to understand the answer to the above question better, since the only reason I can see is that Mauritius as a colony used to govern the islands, and that seems to have just been a convenience of the French that doesn't strongly justify any current claims of sovereignty. And since the UK were the ones to forcibly evict the Chagossians from the islands, it seems a double-injustice to "return" their land to another sovereign power which is equally at a distance from the islands themselves. Do the Chagossians support this claim by the Mauritian government?
> Do the Chagossians support this claim by the Mauritian government?
They've complained about not being part to the discussion, but in practice most of them have Mauritian citizenship now, and it should be easier for them to deal with the Mauritian government to reclaim some of their land. It's a lesser-evil situation.
I'm assuming if the were ruled as the same entity for a significant amount of time that there was a lot of movement between the two regions during that time with all that implies, intermarriage etc.
All of which would probably still mean there are lots of people still alive from the time the regions were separated that feel themselves to be nonetheless connected and unfairly kept apart.
Ok, assumed the base just had part of it. So I guess there are people who want to go back to where they came from - but they can't because the base is still there?
The plantation workers still on the island in 1971-1973 were forcibly relocated to Mauritius.
> However, the UK and Mauritius agreed in 1972 that there were 426 Ilois families numbering 1,151 individuals[24] who left the Chagos for Mauritius voluntarily or involuntarily between 1965 and 1973.[14]: par 417 In 1977, the Mauritian government independently listed a total of 557 families totaling 2,323 people — 1,068 adults and 1,255 children — a number that included families that had left voluntarily before the creation of the BIOT and never returned to the Chagos.
I imagine for such a small island chain you'd need a "parent" country to provide services, so picking the one where most people when when they were exiled probably makes sense. May also be a language thing?
Curious to know if there will be extension provisions: people think 99 years is a long time (which isn't wrong), but Hong Kong went back to China after that period of time.
AFAIK, the US and UK value Diego Garcia because currently there aren't geographical alternatives for that base. Where else could they put it that would have the same benefits?
> The lease expires in 2123. The militarily strategic landscape then is pretty much unknowable.
I bet that's what the UK thought about Hong Kong in the late 1800s, but when 1996 rolled around I think they (and many HKers) would have liked a longer-and-99-years lease.
While geography isn't quite destiny, it is fairly important, and having a random rock in a place where there are no other rocks will always be useful IMHO (unless we perhaps develop teleportation).
Considering that 99 years ago both Maldives and India were still colonised (and would remain so for decades), I'm gonna go out on a limb by saying that no, Chagos Islands weren't seen as particularly important back then.
It's very likely that we're already beyond some of the tipping points, and others are very close[0]. We're basically going into the mitigation phase now by my understanding.
If we lower the CO2 levels (carbon sequestering) and cool the planet by reflecting more sunlight (SO2 injection in the stratosphere), I'm sure these alleged tipping points will be tipped back again, given some time.
It's good to be aware that doom sells, and the incentive to publish doom predictions for the money they make is very high. Of course, they can still be true...
I don't get the reason for skepticism, when this is coming from scientists who've been studying the field for many years, and have been making predictions that have been coming true.
It's like an avalanche. After it starts you can't stop it or get all that snow back on the mountain; it has to get to level ground, melt (if it gets warm enough) and go through an entire cycle that takes time. So yes, things will likely tip back. After humanity either has already been wiped out or fully migrated to other planets and the earth gets the chance to reset itself.
I don't see it as doom, just something inevitable, which we helped to cause. And it's the ones that do all they can to downplay the consequences who make the money, in every instance, as acceptance would be bad for business.
> Climate tipping points — the "points of no return" past which key components of Earth's climate will begin to irreversibly break down — could be triggered by much lower temperatures than scientists previously thought, with some tipping points potentially already reached. There are also many more potential tipping points than scientists previously identified, according to a new study.
I count to 3 maybes only there:
1. tipping points "could be triggered by much lower temperatures"
2. "some tipping points potentially already reached"
3. "according to a new study"
Number 1 and 2 says that this may possibly happen, not that it will!
Number 3 is the worst. Many - probably most - new studies with unexpected results turn out to be wrong, as the Replication Crisis has painfully taught us. They also get the most press, because "new study confirms what we thought" stories don't go viral.
> it's the ones that do all they can to downplay the consequences who make the money
That's absolutely not true in science or publishing. The most sensational results get the most attention and grants and ad dollars.
That's 2 maybes- actually, it's a maybe^2 (if I interpret this last sentence correctly): this thing may happen at these thresholds and these thresholds may have been crossed.
Climate tipping points — the "points of no return" past which key components of Earth's climate will begin to irreversibly break down — could be triggered by much lower temperatures than scientists previously thought, with some tipping points potentially already reached. There are also many more potential tipping points than scientists previously identified, according to a new study.
In English as a first language that's an assertion that
* Climate tipping points [...] could be triggered by much lower temperatures than scientists previously thought
implying that they are real and will hapen at some threshold but there is now evidence or a model that suggets the thresholds may be lower than once thought.
The incorrect interpretation by BurningFrog above was that
> that this [ Climate tipping points ] may possibly happen, not that it will!
whereas the text (again, correct or not) was definite that Climate tipping points are real and will happen when thresholds are crossed.
The only "maybe" was a suspicion that these thresholds could be even lower than thought and a Rubicon may have been crossed already - but there was zero uncertainity expressed wrt existence and potential to be crossed.
> the incorrect interpretation by BurningFrog above was that
>> that this [ Climate tipping points ] may possibly happen, not that it will!
> whereas the text (again, correct or not) was definite that Climate tipping points are real and will happen when thresholds are crossed.
It will happen IF thresholds are crossed. And crucially, we don't know where the thresholds are. So it could happen.
"The Empire State Building WILL fall over WHEN it tips beyond some threshold" is not saying that it will fall over, means that it could fall over. And yes, also in this case the threshold is real.
We know that critical parameters are climbing, we know that (for example) CO2 sequestration is not happening nor planned to occur at a scale that matches the century of industry that put the CO2 out there.
It's a physical fact that once thresholds are reached then irreversible problems occur.
> The Empire State Building WILL fall over WHEN it tips beyond some threshold
Not a good example as the Empire State Building isn't tipping.
The insulation in the atmospheres is (by contrast) increasing.
The specific skepticism expressed in BurningFrog comment above based on an incorrect reading of the text was unwarrented, a more geneneral dbate about the specifics of models, etc. is still in play.
> Not a good example as the Empire State Building isn't tipping.
Sorry but I have to insist: the tipping points of the ESB are real, it will fall over if it leans above a certain threshold, and the threshold could be lower than we think.
This statement is trivially true and yet it tells you nothing about the current state of the ESB.
Note: I am not saying that I don't believe climate change is happening, or that we should not be worried about it, or even that tipping points are a fiction. But I agree with BurningFrog that these statements are full of hypotheticals and that they seem to say more than they actually do- exactly like the statement about the ESB. There is an obvious incentive for publishing results that attract attention and nothing attracts attention more than prophecies of doom; this is in addition to the normal publication bias of non-neutral results. We have a replication crisis in actual experimental disciplines- where the papers detail what experiments were made and how to replicate them; but much of climate science is a speculative science that operates on models and extrapolations. And, differently from say, medicine, there is an actual political side to these results that muddies things even more- we want to see results that confirm our current opinion. This should makes us doubly careful on the topic.
> So yes, things will likely tip back. After humanity either has already been wiped out or fully migrated to other planets and the earth gets the chance to reset itself.
Humanity would be better off living at the bottom of the ocean than on any other planet; and to think that climate change could make earth less hospitable than any other planet is just absurd. So this is an incredibly naive statement.
Yes agreed. There is no chance that humans are completely wiped out. We, or our ancestors, by definition have survived until today though multiple actual ice ages. We've survived though massive floods and glaciers and who knows what else.
On top of that, the closer we get to doomsday the more people will care.
I don't know where I heard it, but there's a saying that "capitalism can solve anything it just waits until the last minute".
That when the time comes enough money and resources will be poured into the solutions(s) that we can fix it.
When is that time? When profits are threatened and our continued way of existence.
I would assume that "given some time" outlasts the median life expectancy of humans. If it ever happeens. Like others said it's a chaotic system in many ways, not as if you can predict more than a few decades.
Given this, after "giving it some time" a lot of people would be dead as a direct consequence of it not been given enough time.
This is simply fantasy. Sequestering carbon mechanically is an energy losing process. It is also inefficient.
If we burned oil in year 2,000 at (generously) 50% efficiency, it will cost us 4X more in year 2040 to sequester it at 50% (very generous) efficiency.
On the face of it, we would need a sequestering industry that is 4X bigger than the oil industry, and it will be just losing money. Politically, it’s just not going to happen.
Natural sequestration (I.e. tree planting) is not enough by a very large margin (like over 10x)
Restoring CO₂ levels will use plenty of money and energy, however it's done. It can still be very much worth doing!
I don't believe much in tree planting, since it uses up huge areas of the planet forever.
The best way is to separate out CO2 from the atmosphere and pump it into underground cavities. This is the just reversing natural gas extraction, which means it's well established tech. Aside from the separating CO2 part, but that's being worked on.
In a decade or three I expect solar powered machines like this slowly but surely turning the atmosphere back to normal.
"Of over 13,000 islands examined, approximately 12% experienced significant shifts in shoreline positions. The total shoreline length of these islands approaches 200,000 km, with 7.57% showing signs of landward erosion and 6.05% expanding seaward. Human activities, particularly reclamation and land filling, were identified as primary drivers of local shoreline transformations, while natural factors have a comparatively minor impact. "
And in 1000 years it will be different again. What’s your point? The fact it has and will always change doesn’t change anything about what’s happening now.
We can choose to mitigate the change or make it worse for ourselves.
Historically 99 years was the longest term for leases in English laws. I don't think that's incorporated in laws any more, but it has just continued as common practice.
You may be right historically, but I don't think it's common practice any more - there are quite a few "virtual freehold" leases of 999 years, and most other domestic leaseholds are 125+ years when they start. When a leashold goes below 90 years its value dips sharply.
The Chinese negotiators for Kowloon deliberately settled on 99 years. Probably because they knew they'd be lynched by the Chinese public otherwise. It was not a mistake made by the British they just couldn't get a better deal.
Close to Africa/ME: Maldives, Seychelles, Comoros, Mayotte
Close to SE Asia: Cocos and Christmas Island
That's the whole point of Diego Garcia: It's not "close to" anywhere, and it's nearly in the middle of a bunch of places. That's what give it its strategic importance.
They're all pretty far from land and in the same general area.
If Diego Garcia were no longer an option, there would be alternatives. Especially with US levels of lease money.
That said, few of them are quite as remote as Diego Garcia. Which means not quite as easy to secretly fly RQ-180s or whatever the hell is more clandestinely based there.
I don't think geography is the challenge as much as politics. What country and populace will give up their ancestral land to a foreign military base. Would you?
Remember that the small islands don't have much land to begin with, and bases are large.
Yeah, but Mauritius isn't China. If the UK had reneged on the Hong Kong lease, there were economic and military options for China to potentially enforce it.
A lot can happen in 99 years, but even assuming a serious decline in US economic/military might I don't see a scenario where Mauritius could successfully enforce the lease on its own.
If the treaty is UK law, they can take the case to UK courts. It's not guaranteed to work, it depends on the legal technicalities, but the government has no say in the findings of UK courts.
A lot can happen in 99 years, but as Hong Kong shows, the UK has a decent track record on long term legal continuity.
> If the treaty is UK law, they can take the case to UK courts. It's not guaranteed to work, it depends on the legal technicalities, but the government has no say in the findings of UK courts.
Presently, the UK lacks an entrenched written constitution. Hence, any court decision can be overturned by an ordinary Act of the UK Parliament, passed by a simple majority. If a court makes a ruling which the government of the day sufficiently dislikes, the court ruling will be overturned, assuming the government has the numbers to get the legislation through the House of Commons and House of Lords.
But, in 99 years time, who knows. Maybe by then, the UK will have a written constitution. Maybe by then, the UK won't even exist anymore. Maybe by the time the lease expires, it will actually be between Mauritius and the English Republic.
> Presently, the UK lacks an entrenched written constitution. Hence, any court decision can be overturned by an ordinary Act of the UK Parliament, passed by a simple majority
This is something that our America obsessed cultural elite have forgotten. The "Brown versus Education versus Alien versus predator" style of activist/political focus on the courts rather than parliament is quite ridiculous at times.
until the government decides that only evidence they like can be presented to the court like the last administration did with their Rwanda plan for migrants.
The UK government never wanted to keep Hong Kong. (It may have wanted to pantomime trying to keep it to placate some voters).
While the UK did have a long history of legal continuity, it's made a lot of dramatic changes in recent years - the switch to the Supreme Court which has then made some legally bizarre decisions, the complete demolition of the House of Lords over a pretty short period, the efforts to entrench human rights legislation which have simply no precedent in UK constitutional history at all...
> efforts to entrench human rights legislation which have simply no precedent in UK constitutional history at all...
How so? UK was instrumental in creating the European Court of Human rights? Surely they did not believe at the time that they are just creating it for everyone else?
Well someone more powerful would not care about the lease agreements anyway so if the U.S can’t fight back the lease agreement won’t help them anyway. See Russia-Ukcraine and the agreements that were signed. They are not worth their paper
Congratulations! Would you be willing to go into more depth on why you feel relieved? You've spelled out the terms; I'm asking if you might connect the dots between those terms and your feelings about the whole thing.
Also, are you concerned that Diego Garcia might be a target in a war?
The US base on Diego Garcia is an exceptionally nasty bit of history: with the British murdering all the local islanders pet dogs - literally grabbing them from the arms of screaming children and telling them they were next - as part of an intimidation campaign to force them off the island so the US could have it’s intelligence outpost.
For those curious about this history, you can watch John Pilger’s 2004 documentary Stealing a Nation for free on his website: https://johnpilger.com/stealing-a-nation/
The two-letter ones are all countries/regions/territories. See also .su for a blast (thankfully not literal) from the past https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.su
TLD "owners" own TLDs in much the same way that we own domains, and it's very possible that ICANN phases out the .io domain when the British Indian Ocean Territory ceases to exist. From what we gathered in the other thread it somewhat depends on what ISO decides to do with its codes.
At a minimum I expect that control over the .io domain will go to Mauritius and they'll be able to reassign it as desired (since they never contracted with the hedge fund). But the typical path for a code when its country goes defunct is to get phased out.
The more I think about it, the more I agree that this is the likely outcome.
IO has been in the ISO standard forever, so there's plenty of historical precedent (like UK). Furthermore, it continues to be descriptive of a specific part of the world (like SU). The easy move here is for the ISO committee to mark IO as exceptionally reserved, for ICANN to declare that this of course makes it a special historical case which sets no precedent, and for everything to continue mostly as usual.
This assumes, of course, that ICANN aren't looking to make some kind of example/statement about misuse of ccTLDs. If they are, things may be different.
TL;DR: ICANN policy forces deletion if CC disappears from the ISO list of countries, with one famous exception (.su); but Mauritius could cut a Tuvalu-style deal to maintain it.
Hong Kong island was ceded to the British in perpetuity. The 99 years lease of the New Territories (not Hong Kong, technically) was an additional unequal treaty that the Qing were forced into on top of it, after they also had to give up Kowloon. The British could have asked for 150 years too, who'd have stopped them?
Now the same happens to Britain in reverse. There is no benefit for any state to give up territory for nothing in return, why would they be "pretty pleased" about it? Also not only is Britain ceding its territory but they're actually paying rent to keep a base on what was previously their own land! It almost feels like China is involved in this because the number doesn't sound like something Mauritius would come up with on their own. See other 99 year leases the CCP is involved in, they're obsessed with this number:
> It almost feels like China is involved in this because the number doesn't sound like something Mauritius would come up with on their own. See other 99 year leases the CCP is involved in, they're obsessed with this number
Err 99 leases are common in lots of places. 99 years is a bit more than a lifetime so not many people care much about what happens afterwards. And it is a lot shorter than in perpetuity which would look bad for whoever is granting it.
> In England during the sixteenth century it was common practice to make leases for a term of three lives or a period of 99 years. It is presumed to be upon the theory that the lease should last thru three generations as it has been common practice to accept thirty-three years as the span of a single generation.
The Chagos Islands were't lawfully "their own land" according to an International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling from 2019, which probably had something to do with this change.
The article posts one reason why they'd give it up: they feel the ongoing issue of the Chagos Islands is hurting their ability to get diplomatic support in other international matters that are far more important to them.
Also decreased oil consumption as a result of renewable energy sources (decreasing the Middle East's importance) and climate change opening up northern shipping routes (decreasing the SE Asia - Suez Canal importance).
In 99 years, being able to exert influence in the region will likely be less important to global trade.
Even if that lease was permanent I doubt the PRC would just let it be. The time limit just meant they could just wait instead of having to negotiate or invade.
Probably not. In 1997 they were happy to court the $$ associated with opening up this huge new market of 1b+ "middle class" consumers.
Id argue they still aren't sufficiently butthurt about it. The UK has sufficient grounds to reclaim HK since china has very much failed to uphold its agreement to keep hong kong democratic for at least 50 years. I guess that's why the CPC goes on gaslighting rants about "whole process democracy" like Jesus CPC. You just had to wait 20 years, what the hell is the rush?
One of the reasons UK didn't contest it in 1997 was that it couldn't. UK "owned" Hong Kong island, which is a tiny bit of territory. Most of what is called Hong Kong was actually leased from China for a definite term, and the lease was coming to an end, fair and square. Hong Kong island was handed over as part of the package.
Hong Kong island is, I would imagine, in no way sustainable as a standalone territory, if China were to be hostile.
A lot of crazy things look more reasonable when you realize that your metric for 'crazy' and 'not crazy' is less about gauging the mental state of the person making those decisions, and more about how much/little they upset Western interests.
I think it's a mistake to give in to the temptation to jump to the conclusion that China is a tunnel-vision cult of personality everything-the-crazy-dictator-wants-he-gets government.
The Chinese government under Xi has a well-established track record of long-term planning that has done nothing but elevated China's status and leverage in the world.
It really couldn't be further from (e.g.) Putin's style of governance.
Sidelining potential political competitors and/or forcing them out of the public sphere doesn't inspire confidence in Xi's ability to resist using power conveniently.
> The Chinese government under Xi has a well-established track record of long-term planning that has done nothing but elevated China's status and leverage in the world.
Some of its neighbors in the South China Sea would beg to differ.
> UKs failure to retake HK despite the broken agreement
I don’t think the UK law works that way. There may be compensation or other consequences, but it’s unlikely the whole agreement is null and void.
Real life example: I rented a house in UK, paying monthly rent. The heating system and hot water broke down in winter, and it took them three months to fix. It was clear breach of contract, landlord is responsible for the heating system and must fix withing 48 hours.
I was not allowed to break up the contract and leave, and I even went to court over it - my compensation was really pathetic.
In what universe does the UK have grounds to have anything to do with governing a region 6000 miles away from home that it seized during the Opium War?
I would love for China to have democracy, but Great Britain really doesn't have any moral high ground on the issue nor any business having anything to do with the government there.
If you think they aren't sufficiently butthurt about it, I'd counter that by saying "what can they realistically do about it?" The answer is "absolutely nothing." You want them to invade or something?
They can write a nastygram or something but any of the promises involved with the transfer really mean nothing. An analogy would be asking the next owner of your car to not play any Britney Spears on the radio. Good luck enforcing that.
Should the people of North Dakota be able to take a vote and decide to become a Chinese province?
I mean, I completely empathize with their situation, but the fact of the matter is that the UK has even less of a claim to governance over the territory than China does. It’s physically connected to mainland China with no other countries or territories around.
Whether you have the moral right to do so is rather debatable. Morals are up to the individual.
I would say that it would be a major national security issue and detriment to everyone else in the country if a state was allowed to secede to another country, especially a foreign adversary.
In the United States nobody has the legal right to secede, even if a statehouse passes a law or holds a ballot vote on a constitutional amendment.
As far as emigrating and gaining legal status elsewhere that’s up to the individual.
> In what universe does the UK have grounds to have anything to do with governing a region 6000 miles away from home that it seized during the Opium War?
A universe that respects the right of the people who live somewhere to chose the government they want? We've all seen the protestors waving British flags there.
Abolishing the right of conquest in the early 20th century was one of the great achievements of humanity, and that is not diminished by the impossibility of making it retroactive.
> If you think they aren't sufficiently butthurt about it, I'd counter that by saying "what can they realistically do about it?" The answer is "absolutely nothing." You want them to invade or something?
> They can write a nastygram or something but any of the promises involved with the transfer really mean nothing.
There's a whole spectrum of diplomatic measures the UK could do short of all-out war. Trade restrictions. Hell, full diplomatic recognition of Taiwan is a great option.
We’ve seen protestors in all kinds of countries wave all kinds of flags. We all know pragmatically that that’s not how governments are chosen.
The fact that the situation is unfair to HK citizens doesn’t have much relation to the fact that there’s no legitimate reason for the UK to have any involvement at this point in time, unless you’re just plain and simple in favor of imperialism.
In that case you’d be making the argument that people who more closely align with China who live in North Dakota are allowed to just vote and declare North Dakota to be a Chinese province.
There’s a whole spectrum of diplomatic measures that the UK can do that make zero difference in the situation.
Trade restrictions? The UK fully depends on Chinese imports. It would hurt the UK more than China.
Recognition of Taiwan? What would that change? Western countries already defacto recognize Taiwan and work with them as a close ally. This would be changing vocabulary on some documents and plaques.
>china has very much failed to uphold its agreement to keep hong kong democratic
That would be a curious failure indeed given that Hong Kong wasn't democratic under the British to begin with. It was a crown colony ruled by an appointed governor. The Brits of course never had any legitimate claim to an island they took after a war whose objective was to force opium into China. If they still have dreams of empire I'm sure China would be delighted to see them try though and see how it goes this time.
I guess this means the sun will now set on the British empire. It’s pretty far west from the Pitcairn Islands to Akrotiri and Dhekelia without the Indian Ocean territory in between.
This is exactly what I thought when I read this. https://what-if.xkcd.com/48/ makes no mention of the islands but I feel like it might cause a sunset now?
Some countries have constitutions that forbid giving up any parts of its territory, but apparently our government can hand over sovereignty without even a vote in parliament
The UK has a permanent seat on the UNSC including the ultimate single-member veto and on the sliding scale of fiction to non-fiction, international law is a lot closer to the fictional end. The UK choosing to transfer sovereignty to another country is not in-line with a ruling that says they don’t have sovereignty. They’ve chosen to be done with this controversy.
In the UK the executive (ie "the government") makes and ratifies treaties, using delegated authority [1] from the monarch.
There is no general rule that parliament has to ratify, or even scrutinise, a treaty. The main exceptions are if the treaty requires domestic legislation to be passed by parliament, or if the treaty has significant constitutionap implications. Given our un-codified constitution here in the UK, I would imagine the latter constaint comes with some wriggle-room.
This [2] briefing by the House of Commons Library lays it all out.
Yes, of course Parliament will need to vote on this, but the Prime Minister of the UK has approved it and unlike in the US., in the UK votes are predominantly along party lines so it will pass.
The Parliament being sovereign, it can pass an act about anything. It could certainly pass an act forbidding the government from ceding territory to a foreign power. However, since the current government holds a majority in parliament, in practice it won't happen.
Parliament can pass basically any laws it likes, so it could certainly do that. But that would never happen unless there was a total breakdown of MP party discipline. Hard to see that happening outside of a brexit-type constitutional impasse.
My point was that there is no constitutional requirement for parliament to ratify treaties.
It has a veto role in the text you cite (I mean, its described as an infinitely renewable 21-day delay, but that's functionally a veto, especially since the government is subordinate to and can be dismissed by Parliament during the delay, and replaced by a more cooperative government; treating the UK as if it had coequal executive, legislative, and judicial branches like the US is an error; in the UK, Parliament is supreme and the executive and judicial powers are subordinate to and contingent on its support. The government’s power usually isn’t opposed by Parliament not because the government is equal or more powerful, or has true independent powers that the Parliament can't check, but the reverse—“the government” is established from the leadership of the Parliamentary majority, and they are absolutely dependent on continued support from Parliament, so they don't, outside of the most exceptional cases, do anything that doesn't have at least tacit support of the majority of Parliament in the first place, so there is nothing to have conflict overm)
My point was that there is no constitutional requirement for parliament to ratify treaties.
Yes, it can delay a treaty. It could even pass legislation preventing a treaty from having legal effect. But that would require a extraordinary breakdown in parliamentary party discipline.
I’m not so sure. A system in which a party that wins only 34% of the vote is given a near supermajority in the legislature and control of the executive seems pretty dysfunctional to me.
Yeah, the real difference is that in the US, there is a separate election for president. In the UK, as in many other countries, the party that wins parliament gets to form the government (and determine the prime minister or whatever the title of the de facto head of the executive is). In some countries this is complicated by multiparty systems where coalitions are required, but the general idea of aligning the legislative and executive branches in this way is fairly common.
Bare majority, and with our whipping system and current parliament (massive one party domination) it will go through with ease. It has to go through the House of Lords too, and the current government don’t have a real majority there but they’re extremely reticent to oppose the democratically elected house so it’ll likely sail through there too.
Without going into the sentiment of this, I suppose Chaos Islands are not part of the United Kingdom but rather an overseas territory, so more like "property", to put it bluntly. I guess the government can just give away a building it owns, and this is more analogous than giving away "territory". And there is no current indigenous population there either.
But yeah, Jersey is also an overseas territory, can the government just give that away?
Jersey is a Crown Dependency, not an Overseas Territory. They share a King and the UK is responsible for their defense, but domestically Crown Dependencies are more independent of Parliament than your average British overseas territory.
Ok, fair point. Can the UK hand over Bermuda, or Cayman isles?
I vaguely remember handing over the Falkland Islands to Argentina was actually on the cards before the invasion, so perhaps surprisingly the answer is "yes".
Yes. Parliament can. The people living there may not be particularly happy about it though, e.g. the entire population of the Falkland Islands save like the three people who voted in favor of linking up with Argentina that one time.
While I was downvoted my answer is correct. The UK parliament can and has ceded territory and all that is required is an act of parliament.
It seems like people forget that the UK ceded everything from Ireland which was a UK constituent as opposed to a UK subject as well as Canada, Australia, India and numerous other territories.
In the UK, parliament is supreme and has the final authority.
Which highlights how stupid the war was. Argentina should have invested in a better relationship with the islands. They would all be speaking Spanish by now.
Do you have a source for this? I am not aware of any practically significant way in which the crown dependencies are different from the OTs. AMA 7.5 year resident of Bermuda.
High level overview is that it doesn’t look that different, and like most things concerning UK law and the laws of Crown Dependencies, a lot of it is just custom. There’s long been a debate over how much the UK’s Parliament can unilaterally legislate over them without their consent which remains largely untested because by custom they don’t. Overseas Territories are to my understanding creatures of the UK Parliament and remnants of the Empire whereas Jersey and Guernsey are the remnants of Normandy which the British Crown managed to retain when they lost the mainland to France. I don’t remember much about Manx history though, so I’ll refrain from commenting on them specifically.
But since you put out an AMA: how’s life in Bermuda? Would you recommend it?
Bermuda is trully wonderful. If you read HN you can easily figure out my e-Mail, feel free to drop me a message if interested further. Bermuda is the place to be if founding an insurance related start-up and probably of doing anything fintech related.
The weather is delightful, the taxes acceptable, the digital infrastructure ok. It can be an expensive place to live but a single person with no dependants could live here on $4k a month. The path to permanent residence is difficult but manageable for those who bring real value to the place (think jobs or significant capital). The people are generally friendly (though as with anywhere there are exceptions) and the Premier has at least some Software experience.
It is a very interesting question, in my humble opinion, As to Bermuda's relations with the British crown. So far as I am aware there has never been a law passed by the British parliament and enforced through the privy council which was not passed by the Bermuda Parliament before commencement. Importantly (and uniquely for the OTs). Bermuda was established prior to the Act of Union and so has a relationship with the "crown of England" rather than the "crown of Great Britain" having been settled in 1612.
The United Kingdom has parliamentary supremacy with little to no checks or balances, so if the parliament wants to give away something, there is nothing that can really stop them.
Indeed. The only practical constraints on parliament are the Laws of Nature, which unlike man's laws cannot be broken, and the will of the People, in defiance of which a Parliament necessarily would fall since the Parliament is constituted from those people.
If Parliament tried to ban booze (as the US Federal Government once did) that's probably not going to go well, and maybe they would (like the US government) be forced to undo that - but all they did here was give away something very few of their citizens likely even knew they had. I was surprised it made headlines.
> They might get punished in the next election or they may not.
If what they do is sufficiently contrary to the will of the people (or at least, those with weapons and the will to use them), they'll get punished sooner than that. Laws and constitutions are a useful abstraction but ultimately an imperfect one.
The article makes it sound like the UK is attempting to gain African influence by returning Chagos while keeping the military bases. Perhaps it's also cheaper to only have the bases since that's the main reason the UK has kept control?
Interestingly this includes the military base of Diego Garcia which is strategically important. I imagine the US will pay Mauritius a bucket load of money for continued use.
The population there is the single biggest electorate for the far right. Yes, that's right; they are black Muslims yet vote for Le Pen's party around 60%.
That's because the very last thing they want is to rejoin the Comoros and be ruled by their former slavers again; France abolished slavery when it took control of Mayotte, which never was a real independent nation but an island constantly taken over by various Muslim warlords or pirates.
An attempt to halt the negotiations, on the basis that the Chagossians were not consulted or involved, failed.
Chagossian Voices, a community organisation for Chagossians based in the UK and in several other countries, said of Thursday’s announcement: “Chagossian Voices deplore the exclusion of the Chagossian community from the negotiations which have produced this statement of intent concerning the sovereignty of our homeland. Chagossians have learned this outcome from the media and remain powerless and voiceless in determining our own future and the future of our homeland.
“The views of Chagossians, the Indigenous inhabitants of the islands, have been consistently and deliberately ignored and we demand full inclusion in the drafting of the treaty.”
[later in the article:]
Clive Baldwin, senior legal adviser at HRW, said: “The agreement says it will address the wrongs against the Chagossians of the past but it looks like it will continue the crimes long into the future.
“It does not guarantee that the Chagossians will return to their homeland, appears to explicitly ban them from the largest island, Diego Garcia, for another century, and does not mention the reparations they are all owed to rebuild their future. The forthcoming treaty needs to address their rights, and there should be meaningful consultations with the Chagossians, otherwise the UK, US and now Mauritius will be responsible for a still-ongoing colonial crime.”
One of the more surreal bits of the situation around Guantanamo bay is that the US was very careful to pay the lease amount(nowdays a trivial $4000 dollers) and Cuba was very careful about not cashing the payments.
Another weird thing was the subject of Cuban workers at the outpost. When relations soured between the countries Cuba wanted to isolate the base completely, And I have no clue about internal Cuban politics, but that stance was then lightened to "no new workers could be hired, but existing ones could stay employed" so for 59 years there was a steadily dwindling number of commuters from Guantanimo city to the base until the last one retired in 2012.
Not true at all, as regards the political aspects. There's also the people living there, or who rather had been until they were forcibly deported[0] long so long ago. And their situation also has very considerable legal and political significance. In regard to which there's also been an ICJ case with several very sharply-worded rulings starting 2019. It is also quite significant in regard to the global movement in favor of Right of Return[1], with implications for a certain third country[2] that not so coincidentally shares an excrutiatingly vexed history with both the islands' illegal occupiers up until the current date.
Of course, there are many in this crowd who at this point will say: "The fuck it does -- no one cares about the Chagossians and their long-standing claims for reparations for what the US and UK have done to them along with this pesky thing some people refer to as moral injury. And of course the ICJ doesn't matter anyway."
But I say: These things very much do matter. And it is the very fact that the US and UK thought (until recently with near certainty) that they could keep presenting a middle finger to these people and their claims, not to mention their simple dignity as human beings for so long without any repercussions is precisely why it matters, both politically and in legal terms.
And of course those who say the ICJ doesn't matter -- or that Right of Return doesn't matter -- don't matter anyway.
The US will go where it pleases and do what it wants, just like the great European empires of the 17th through 19th centuries. Sure it's Amazon and Google rather than an East India Company, but it's the same themes.
> African nations began to speak with one voice on the issue, pushing the UK hard on the issue of decolonialisation.
I wish the journalists had a little more sophistication on this. African nations began to push the UK on this because China and Russia understand that Diego Garcia is a critical port, and made investment + aid/ bribery + weapons (China / Russia respectively) conditional on forcing the issue.
In other words: The African nations have no agency or legitimate motivations of their own, and are just doing what China and Russia bully them to do. Apparently they don't even appreciate the significance of the military base on those islands. It is left for the adults in the room (Russia and China) to think and operate on such a level.
Of course no one here is naive, and we all know already that external operators have their influence, and (though the commenter provides no evidence) it's certainly possible, likely even, that such influence came into play here to some degree.
Nonetheless, the commenter's phrasing and implicit attitude toward these nations seems weirdly patronizing and, well, colonial.
African voters, to the extent that they have any vote at all [1], have vastly more important things to care about than a tiny island in the Indian ocean. I would in fact bet a lot of money that vastly fewer than 1% of African voters, in any country, know about the Chagos Islands at all.
But this is a red herring. Their leaders know all about the issue (which infinitely broader than the matter of those specific islands of course; the supposition that it's just about "a tiny island" being a straw man in itself), of course; and have made their position very clear:
The African Union on Thursday hailed the “historic political agreement” between the UK and Mauritius regarding the sovereignty of the Chagos Islands.
“This significant milestone marks a major victory for the cause of Decolonialization, International Law, and the rightful self-determination of the people of Mauritius, bringing to an end to decades of dispute,” African Union Chairman Moussa Faki Mahamat stated in a message posted on X (formerly Twitter).
Yeah but when $dictator shows up on tv and talks about figthing $bloodyColonialists at the UN, it's uncontroversial (regardless of the issue being fought) and takes time from talking about his embezzlement/corruption/etc.
Meanwhile, behind the scenes, they can go cap in hand to $bloodyColonialists and ask "do you want me to shut up? Give me $something".
This requires no shadowy influence from this or that supposed Great Power.
This all just speaks in favor of decolonialization, does it not? When decolonialisation is complete the $dictator won't be able to use it as a distraction, nor can it be a source of corruption. And apart from that it's a noble and objectively good goal in itself.
No, because they will always find some phantom menace of colonization to complain about.
Look at the Chagos Islands themselves — they were literally not inhabited until Europeans settled them. There's no "decolonization" narrative here, because there's no native population.
Once the UK leaves the Chagos islands, it will be about foreign aid with strings attached, or IMF loans, or foreign investment in farmland, or whatever. It's not a solvable problem.
> they were literally not inhabited until Europeans settled them
Decolonization is not simply about removing troops from here or there, it's about taking responsibility for actions that enriched $motherland at the expense of $colony. French and British colonialists moved people to Chagos for their own profit, and then (together with Americans) ejected their descendants from what had become, by then, a homeland; pushing governments to take responsibility for these actions is the moral thing to do.
There is no amount of "decolonizing" the UK can do that will put an end to the grievances. As long as African warlords want to blame their problems on someone else, they will find a way to link it in some nebulous way to lasting inter-generational damage by ex-colonizers.
> There is no amount of "decolonizing" the UK can do that will put an end to the grievances.
That's not true. Plenty of decolonized countries just go about their business, once the outstanding issues are solved; or even when they try to stir shit, nobody listens to them.
Here though we do have an outstanding problem that needs to be solved. Once the islands go to Mauritius and the expelled population is resettled, there will be nothing left to complain about in that particular area. Obviously, thanks to the sheer size of injustice perpetrated in colonial times, there will be plenty left to complain about elsewhere. The only answer is to solve problems with goodwill, not to bury our heads in the sand pretending our ancestors never did what they did.
Huh? I had the impression that the entire international community (sans UK, US & Israel) has been pushing for this for years, and quite insistently since the 2021 ITLOS judgement. Also, the US will keep it's base as part of the settlement.
Apart from this being pure speculation, where exactly would they build it? The archipelago has a tiny land area and the only atoll suitable for building a base is kinda already taken... Also, the primary strategic importance of Diego Garcia is to support US operations in the Middle East, where China has never interfered to any significant extent.
> The remaining British overseas territories are: Anguilla, Bermuda, British Antarctic Territory, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Falkland Islands, Gibraltar, Montserrat, Pitcairn, Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, Turks and Caicos Islands. There are also two sovereign base areas on Cyprus under British jurisdiction.
And quite a few of those in shady financial dealings. Happily hiding and laundering money for various kleptocrats. It has been noted that, just as the Roman Empire didn't really disappear - it became a church, the British Empire didn't really disappear - it became a bank.
The British government likes to make various noises about cleaning this up, but there are too many businesses in the City of London making money off the system for there to be much chance of that happening.
There will always be some crime in any financial centre, but I think there's limited evidence that there's proportionally more financial crime going on in London than e.g. NYC or Frankfurt.
bad deal for Mauritius. they didn’t gain any sovereignty, they lost some. why? because now the foreign military base is officially on Maritius soil. so US now has a base in Mauritius just like they have in Japan and other places and those places can’t do anything about it
I absolutely agree. Lammy’s justification about “closing a vector for illegal immigration” just shows how spineless they all are (especially the new lot Kier & Co.). No creativity, no defense of national interests. Just fear of negative tabloid headlines.
See also "How the British Empire and U.S. Department of Defense Murdered an Island Paradise" ... "the story of the Chagos Islands, a paradise founded by former slaves that was wiped out by the British empire so they could lease it to the U.S. as an air base" [1]
France ceded Mauritius and its outlying islands to the UK. When the UK granted Mauritius independence, it held back the Chagos Islands and forcibly deported all their inhabitants, leading to the status quo until today.
Locals matter only when it's convenient. Note that this agreement wasn't negotiated with people who lived on Chagos islands, but with government that claims the territory.
I recommend the Behind the Bastards series "How the British Empire and U.S. DoD Murdered an Island Paradise" about the Chagos islands for deeper context.
As long as the US and the UK is allowed to operate their
military bases and operations without any protest or
quibble for the next 100 years and probably more.
Have some spare change instead of too much sovereignty.
And remember the military bases are US and UK soil
and whatever goes on there can keep going on whatever
laws may or may not be passed.
Just like how the US maintains a military base,
camp (now not very busy at the moment) concentration
camp in the communist country of Cuba.
Very sad for the United Kingdom, I think. Back in 1982 Queen Elizabeth II refused to give up the Falklands at gunpoint; in 2024 King Charles III gives up the British Indian Ocean Territory without even a shot being fired.
Queen Elizabeth II had no involvement in the decision to defend the Falklands, other than perhaps some private counsel with the then Prime Minister, just as King Charles III will have had no involvement in this decision.
Why is it sad for the UK to no longer claim as their own and occupy a small piece of land that the ICJ ruled they didn't even lawfully have sovereignty over?
The inhabitants were planters and their workers (originally slaves imported in the 1700s); no-one is native to the islands.
And the poor folks who were expelled (and their descendants) were not even consulted this time around — this is purely a deal between the United Kingdom and Mauritius, whose only relationship with the islands is that they were both lumped together under the old colonial administration.
Related ongoing thread:
Ask HN: What happens to ".io" TLD after UK gives back the Chagos Islands? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41729526 - Oct 2024 (153 comments)
I'm a citizen of the Republic of Mauritius and, when this news was announced today, there was a general sense of relief.
Mauritius has been fighting for its sovereignty over the Chagos Archipelago (with Diego Garcia being the largest island) for 56 years.
Today, the Chagos Archipelago is part of Mauritius again and a treaty will (hopefully) soon be signed between the UK and Mauritius.
From there, Mauritius will sign a lease agreement of 99 years with the USA so that the military base there can continue to operate.
Of course, there will surely be a lot of money involved but we don't have the details yet.
What exactly is the Mauritian connection to the Chagos Archipelago?
Is it just because a lot of Chagossians went to Mauritius after getting kicked out? Obviously Mauritius and Chagos were ruled by the same people previous (French, then British), but is there a deeper history there?
I ask this because the Chagos archipelago is like 1500 miles away from Mauritius - the Maldives, Seychelles, and even Sri Lanka and India are all closer than that. And to my untrained eye, the Chagos archipelago looks like an extension of whatever process created the Maldives.
There isn’t one, as you say it’s over 2000km between them, the only link is that when Britain was administrating them it did so as a single territory. This is not some reunification of a country separated by a colonial power.
Its more a sort of shakedown of a ex-colonial power
The UK was shaking down the US for this military base.
The whole thing stands as a monument to the decline of the British Empire.
More like reparations
https://www.icj-cij.org/case/169
>What exactly is the Mauritian connection to the Chagos Archipelago?
I can see where this line of questioning is going but what's the connection between Britain and Chagos or the US and Chagos for that matter?
215 years of British sovereignty?
The United States of America has had sovereignty of itself for 248 years, should the USA give up it's sovereignty in North America or do you draw the line between somewhere between 215 and 248?
At what point do you say, it is what it is?
The obvious difference, is that you're comparing sovereignty over a nation/state's mainland, vs sovereignty over a separate colony, thousands of km away from the mainland (and even used only for military purposes, apparently)
Hawaii then, 3,200 km away from the US mainland, home to one of the largest US navel bases and only part of the US for the last 126 years when they annexed it?
>At what point do you say, it is what it is?
When you've lost the argument.
I think this is missing the point of the original question, which is - why would a Mauritian feel "relief" at the return of a geographical territory which is extremely far from itself? The claims of the UK or the US are irrelevant to this reasoning.
Indeed, I would like to understand the answer to the above question better, since the only reason I can see is that Mauritius as a colony used to govern the islands, and that seems to have just been a convenience of the French that doesn't strongly justify any current claims of sovereignty. And since the UK were the ones to forcibly evict the Chagossians from the islands, it seems a double-injustice to "return" their land to another sovereign power which is equally at a distance from the islands themselves. Do the Chagossians support this claim by the Mauritian government?
> Do the Chagossians support this claim by the Mauritian government?
They've complained about not being part to the discussion, but in practice most of them have Mauritian citizenship now, and it should be easier for them to deal with the Mauritian government to reclaim some of their land. It's a lesser-evil situation.
Their “relief” comes in form of US dollars to be deposited
If both sovereigns have equal claim to the land, keeping the status quo should be preferred.
I'm assuming if the were ruled as the same entity for a significant amount of time that there was a lot of movement between the two regions during that time with all that implies, intermarriage etc.
All of which would probably still mean there are lots of people still alive from the time the regions were separated that feel themselves to be nonetheless connected and unfairly kept apart.
There is no people to be reunited here. Everyone was kicked out of Chagos to Mauritius so the UK military base could be build.
Ok, assumed the base just had part of it. So I guess there are people who want to go back to where they came from - but they can't because the base is still there?
The plantation workers still on the island in 1971-1973 were forcibly relocated to Mauritius.
> However, the UK and Mauritius agreed in 1972 that there were 426 Ilois families numbering 1,151 individuals[24] who left the Chagos for Mauritius voluntarily or involuntarily between 1965 and 1973.[14]: par 417 In 1977, the Mauritian government independently listed a total of 557 families totaling 2,323 people — 1,068 adults and 1,255 children — a number that included families that had left voluntarily before the creation of the BIOT and never returned to the Chagos.
I imagine for such a small island chain you'd need a "parent" country to provide services, so picking the one where most people when when they were exiled probably makes sense. May also be a language thing?
> From there, Mauritius will sign a lease agreement of 99 years with the USA so that the military base there can continue to operate.
Seems to be a lease with the UK (which then 'sub-leases' to the US?):
* https://www.reuters.com/world/britain-agrees-chagos-island-s...
Curious to know if there will be extension provisions: people think 99 years is a long time (which isn't wrong), but Hong Kong went back to China after that period of time.
Legally that makes the most sense as it leaves everything where it is. The whole place is a weird combination of US/UK culture and standards.
The BBC article refers to it as an initial period, so I'd assume it can be extended.
> There, the UK will ensure operation of the military base for "an initial period" of 99 years.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c98ynejg4l5o
It's easier to move a single military base at the end of a lease than an entire country
AFAIK, the US and UK value Diego Garcia because currently there aren't geographical alternatives for that base. Where else could they put it that would have the same benefits?
The lease expires in 2123. The militarily strategic landscape then is pretty much unknowable.
To a 1925 (99 years ago) military force, the Diego Garcia airfield would have had zero importance.
> The lease expires in 2123. The militarily strategic landscape then is pretty much unknowable.
I bet that's what the UK thought about Hong Kong in the late 1800s, but when 1996 rolled around I think they (and many HKers) would have liked a longer-and-99-years lease.
While geography isn't quite destiny, it is fairly important, and having a random rock in a place where there are no other rocks will always be useful IMHO (unless we perhaps develop teleportation).
I wonder if they would have anticipated its value. I can anticipate a moon base would be valuable in 2123 even though it has little present value.
Considering that 99 years ago both Maldives and India were still colonised (and would remain so for decades), I'm gonna go out on a limb by saying that no, Chagos Islands weren't seen as particularly important back then.
in 99 years, most of the island probably will be underwater due to climate change.
The island is certainly in the risk zone, but I think that is also unknowable.
My guess is that by carbon sequestering and/or SO2 injection in the stratosphere, the climate change will be controllable within a few decades.
It's very likely that we're already beyond some of the tipping points, and others are very close[0]. We're basically going into the mitigation phase now by my understanding.
[0] https://www.space.com/climate-tipping-points-closer-than-rea...
I'm quite skeptical.
If we lower the CO2 levels (carbon sequestering) and cool the planet by reflecting more sunlight (SO2 injection in the stratosphere), I'm sure these alleged tipping points will be tipped back again, given some time.
It's good to be aware that doom sells, and the incentive to publish doom predictions for the money they make is very high. Of course, they can still be true...
We'll see how it goes :)
I don't get the reason for skepticism, when this is coming from scientists who've been studying the field for many years, and have been making predictions that have been coming true.
It's like an avalanche. After it starts you can't stop it or get all that snow back on the mountain; it has to get to level ground, melt (if it gets warm enough) and go through an entire cycle that takes time. So yes, things will likely tip back. After humanity either has already been wiped out or fully migrated to other planets and the earth gets the chance to reset itself.
I don't see it as doom, just something inevitable, which we helped to cause. And it's the ones that do all they can to downplay the consequences who make the money, in every instance, as acceptance would be bad for business.
Well, look at this section:
> Climate tipping points — the "points of no return" past which key components of Earth's climate will begin to irreversibly break down — could be triggered by much lower temperatures than scientists previously thought, with some tipping points potentially already reached. There are also many more potential tipping points than scientists previously identified, according to a new study.
I count to 3 maybes only there:
1. tipping points "could be triggered by much lower temperatures" 2. "some tipping points potentially already reached" 3. "according to a new study"
Number 1 and 2 says that this may possibly happen, not that it will!
Number 3 is the worst. Many - probably most - new studies with unexpected results turn out to be wrong, as the Replication Crisis has painfully taught us. They also get the most press, because "new study confirms what we thought" stories don't go viral.
> it's the ones that do all they can to downplay the consequences who make the money
That's absolutely not true in science or publishing. The most sensational results get the most attention and grants and ad dollars.
[flagged]
That's 2 maybes- actually, it's a maybe^2 (if I interpret this last sentence correctly): this thing may happen at these thresholds and these thresholds may have been crossed.
I'm not agreeing nor disagreeing with the original text - but it contains NO maybes.
BurningFrog hasn't correctly read it and is arguing against a strawmanned version of it (it may be incorrect for other reasons).
The original: https://www.space.com/climate-tipping-points-closer-than-rea...
states (correctly or not):
In English as a first language that's an assertion that* Climate tipping points [...] could be triggered by much lower temperatures than scientists previously thought
implying that they are real and will hapen at some threshold but there is now evidence or a model that suggets the thresholds may be lower than once thought.
The incorrect interpretation by BurningFrog above was that
> that this [ Climate tipping points ] may possibly happen, not that it will!
whereas the text (again, correct or not) was definite that Climate tipping points are real and will happen when thresholds are crossed.
The only "maybe" was a suspicion that these thresholds could be even lower than thought and a Rubicon may have been crossed already - but there was zero uncertainity expressed wrt existence and potential to be crossed.
> the incorrect interpretation by BurningFrog above was that
>> that this [ Climate tipping points ] may possibly happen, not that it will!
> whereas the text (again, correct or not) was definite that Climate tipping points are real and will happen when thresholds are crossed.
It will happen IF thresholds are crossed. And crucially, we don't know where the thresholds are. So it could happen.
"The Empire State Building WILL fall over WHEN it tips beyond some threshold" is not saying that it will fall over, means that it could fall over. And yes, also in this case the threshold is real.
We know that critical parameters are climbing, we know that (for example) CO2 sequestration is not happening nor planned to occur at a scale that matches the century of industry that put the CO2 out there.
It's a physical fact that once thresholds are reached then irreversible problems occur.
> The Empire State Building WILL fall over WHEN it tips beyond some threshold
Not a good example as the Empire State Building isn't tipping.
The insulation in the atmospheres is (by contrast) increasing.
The specific skepticism expressed in BurningFrog comment above based on an incorrect reading of the text was unwarrented, a more geneneral dbate about the specifics of models, etc. is still in play.
> Not a good example as the Empire State Building isn't tipping.
Sorry but I have to insist: the tipping points of the ESB are real, it will fall over if it leans above a certain threshold, and the threshold could be lower than we think.
This statement is trivially true and yet it tells you nothing about the current state of the ESB.
Note: I am not saying that I don't believe climate change is happening, or that we should not be worried about it, or even that tipping points are a fiction. But I agree with BurningFrog that these statements are full of hypotheticals and that they seem to say more than they actually do- exactly like the statement about the ESB. There is an obvious incentive for publishing results that attract attention and nothing attracts attention more than prophecies of doom; this is in addition to the normal publication bias of non-neutral results. We have a replication crisis in actual experimental disciplines- where the papers detail what experiments were made and how to replicate them; but much of climate science is a speculative science that operates on models and extrapolations. And, differently from say, medicine, there is an actual political side to these results that muddies things even more- we want to see results that confirm our current opinion. This should makes us doubly careful on the topic.
> So yes, things will likely tip back. After humanity either has already been wiped out or fully migrated to other planets and the earth gets the chance to reset itself.
Humanity would be better off living at the bottom of the ocean than on any other planet; and to think that climate change could make earth less hospitable than any other planet is just absurd. So this is an incredibly naive statement.
Yes agreed. There is no chance that humans are completely wiped out. We, or our ancestors, by definition have survived until today though multiple actual ice ages. We've survived though massive floods and glaciers and who knows what else.
On top of that, the closer we get to doomsday the more people will care.
I don't know where I heard it, but there's a saying that "capitalism can solve anything it just waits until the last minute".
That when the time comes enough money and resources will be poured into the solutions(s) that we can fix it.
When is that time? When profits are threatened and our continued way of existence.
I would assume that "given some time" outlasts the median life expectancy of humans. If it ever happeens. Like others said it's a chaotic system in many ways, not as if you can predict more than a few decades.
Given this, after "giving it some time" a lot of people would be dead as a direct consequence of it not been given enough time.
we're talking about 99 years, so outside the life expectancy of a lot of people on this thread
> If we lower the CO2 levels (carbon sequestering
This is simply fantasy. Sequestering carbon mechanically is an energy losing process. It is also inefficient.
If we burned oil in year 2,000 at (generously) 50% efficiency, it will cost us 4X more in year 2040 to sequester it at 50% (very generous) efficiency.
On the face of it, we would need a sequestering industry that is 4X bigger than the oil industry, and it will be just losing money. Politically, it’s just not going to happen.
Natural sequestration (I.e. tree planting) is not enough by a very large margin (like over 10x)
Restoring CO₂ levels will use plenty of money and energy, however it's done. It can still be very much worth doing!
I don't believe much in tree planting, since it uses up huge areas of the planet forever.
The best way is to separate out CO2 from the atmosphere and pump it into underground cavities. This is the just reversing natural gas extraction, which means it's well established tech. Aside from the separating CO2 part, but that's being worked on.
In a decade or three I expect solar powered machines like this slowly but surely turning the atmosphere back to normal.
The climate is a chaotic system, not a seesaw.
> SO2 injection in the stratosphere
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Piercer#Plot
Further information on 13,000 islands: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17538947.2024.2...
"Of over 13,000 islands examined, approximately 12% experienced significant shifts in shoreline positions. The total shoreline length of these islands approaches 200,000 km, with 7.57% showing signs of landward erosion and 6.05% expanding seaward. Human activities, particularly reclamation and land filling, were identified as primary drivers of local shoreline transformations, while natural factors have a comparatively minor impact. "
And in 299 years the climate may have changed again, as it is wont to do (and has always done).
And 65 million years ago an asteroid detonated with the power of all of the world’s nukes combined, so there is no need to worry about nuclear war.
And timespans are like that for climate too, millions of years not 299
The little ice age lasted from 1300 to 1850 [0], so 299 years is not orders of magnitudes off.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age
That’s less that half a degree, barely noticeable. Climate change is predicted to be 6 degrees or thereabouts
Is that a subtle attempt to argue that climate is changing on it's own, and not by human agency? Say it if you mean it.
And in 1000 years it will be different again. What’s your point? The fact it has and will always change doesn’t change anything about what’s happening now.
We can choose to mitigate the change or make it worse for ourselves.
It would have had some value as a coaling or oiling station thought
Why would the worlds superpower need that when they had India?
Q: Is there a reason for making a lease 99 years, rather than - say - 999 years?
Historically 99 years was the longest term for leases in English laws. I don't think that's incorporated in laws any more, but it has just continued as common practice.
You may be right historically, but I don't think it's common practice any more - there are quite a few "virtual freehold" leases of 999 years, and most other domestic leaseholds are 125+ years when they start. When a leashold goes below 90 years its value dips sharply.
999 years is considered a "permanent" lease [1]. 99 years is considered a "more than a lifetime lease" [2]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/999-year_lease [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/99-year_lease
So they can renegotiate the terms of the leasing in a reasonable time span?
I am sure that if at the end of 99 years the US or the UK still really really want to retain them, they will find a way (another lease, or by force).
Mauritius is not China. Not that I am suggesting for this to happen, but what are they going to do if the UK just decides not to leave after 99 years?
They said basically the same thing about HongKong. You can’t predict political landscape in 100 years
The Chinese negotiators for Kowloon deliberately settled on 99 years. Probably because they knew they'd be lynched by the Chinese public otherwise. It was not a mistake made by the British they just couldn't get a better deal.
There are multiple islands and archipelagos in the region.
Close to Africa/ME: Maldives, Seychelles, Comoros, Mayotte
Close to SE Asia: Cocos and Christmas Island
Diego Garcia just happened to be forcibly depopulated by the British, so was a convenient choice.
The Maldives are only ~400mi N of Diego Garcia.
So its 400mi away from another set of tiny islands which themselves are hundreds of miles from the mainland.
I'd still argue that's pretty much "not close to anywhere."
I mean, what current option is equivalent to Diego Garcia? Are any of those options realistic right now?
They're all pretty far from land and in the same general area.
If Diego Garcia were no longer an option, there would be alternatives. Especially with US levels of lease money.
That said, few of them are quite as remote as Diego Garcia. Which means not quite as easy to secretly fly RQ-180s or whatever the hell is more clandestinely based there.
I don't think geography is the challenge as much as politics. What country and populace will give up their ancestral land to a foreign military base. Would you?
Remember that the small islands don't have much land to begin with, and bases are large.
A country that's desperate for infrastructure investment and foreign reserves, because they don't have much usable land to start with?
At some point leasing away an island, so that everyone else can have a better quality of life, is an attractive tradeoff.
Possibly. The treaty has not been signed yet.
Things will become clearer in the coming weeks.
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Yeah, but Mauritius isn't China. If the UK had reneged on the Hong Kong lease, there were economic and military options for China to potentially enforce it.
A lot can happen in 99 years, but even assuming a serious decline in US economic/military might I don't see a scenario where Mauritius could successfully enforce the lease on its own.
If the treaty is UK law, they can take the case to UK courts. It's not guaranteed to work, it depends on the legal technicalities, but the government has no say in the findings of UK courts.
A lot can happen in 99 years, but as Hong Kong shows, the UK has a decent track record on long term legal continuity.
> If the treaty is UK law, they can take the case to UK courts. It's not guaranteed to work, it depends on the legal technicalities, but the government has no say in the findings of UK courts.
Presently, the UK lacks an entrenched written constitution. Hence, any court decision can be overturned by an ordinary Act of the UK Parliament, passed by a simple majority. If a court makes a ruling which the government of the day sufficiently dislikes, the court ruling will be overturned, assuming the government has the numbers to get the legislation through the House of Commons and House of Lords.
But, in 99 years time, who knows. Maybe by then, the UK will have a written constitution. Maybe by then, the UK won't even exist anymore. Maybe by the time the lease expires, it will actually be between Mauritius and the English Republic.
> Presently, the UK lacks an entrenched written constitution. Hence, any court decision can be overturned by an ordinary Act of the UK Parliament, passed by a simple majority
This is something that our America obsessed cultural elite have forgotten. The "Brown versus Education versus Alien versus predator" style of activist/political focus on the courts rather than parliament is quite ridiculous at times.
Whoever wins, the King/Queen loses?
until the government decides that only evidence they like can be presented to the court like the last administration did with their Rwanda plan for migrants.
The UK government never wanted to keep Hong Kong. (It may have wanted to pantomime trying to keep it to placate some voters).
While the UK did have a long history of legal continuity, it's made a lot of dramatic changes in recent years - the switch to the Supreme Court which has then made some legally bizarre decisions, the complete demolition of the House of Lords over a pretty short period, the efforts to entrench human rights legislation which have simply no precedent in UK constitutional history at all...
> efforts to entrench human rights legislation which have simply no precedent in UK constitutional history at all...
How so? UK was instrumental in creating the European Court of Human rights? Surely they did not believe at the time that they are just creating it for everyone else?
as always UK courts favour their country/people.
Mauritius isn't China today. In 99 years time it could be part of a China. Or a future country that is more powerful than China.
Well someone more powerful would not care about the lease agreements anyway so if the U.S can’t fight back the lease agreement won’t help them anyway. See Russia-Ukcraine and the agreements that were signed. They are not worth their paper
Congratulations! Would you be willing to go into more depth on why you feel relieved? You've spelled out the terms; I'm asking if you might connect the dots between those terms and your feelings about the whole thing.
Also, are you concerned that Diego Garcia might be a target in a war?
I’m sure the context is totally different. And yours is right as you are the citizen there.
But being a Hong Kong citizen, I have a totally different reaction to this news. (Projected to our own context.)
How does this affect fishing territory and economic zones for Mauritius?
> From there, Mauritius will sign a lease agreement of 99 years with the USA so that the military base there can continue to operate.
So basically nothing of essence will change, this is just a Panama-fication of those islands.
The US base on Diego Garcia is an exceptionally nasty bit of history: with the British murdering all the local islanders pet dogs - literally grabbing them from the arms of screaming children and telling them they were next - as part of an intimidation campaign to force them off the island so the US could have it’s intelligence outpost.
For those curious about this history, you can watch John Pilger’s 2004 documentary Stealing a Nation for free on his website: https://johnpilger.com/stealing-a-nation/
For those who prefer to read, historian Mark Curtis has published online an excerpt regarding Chagos from his 2003 book Web of Deceit: https://www.markcurtis.info/2007/02/12/the-depopulation-of-t...
The British Indian Ocean Territory is probably better known in the tech world for its top-level domain: .io.
Ok now THAT is interesting. I always thought it was a tech-focused domain, for input/output. :)
The two-letter ones are all countries/regions/territories. See also .su for a blast (thankfully not literal) from the past https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.su
Which is owned by a hedge fund, and thankfully not part of this deal (so it's not at risk!)
TLD "owners" own TLDs in much the same way that we own domains, and it's very possible that ICANN phases out the .io domain when the British Indian Ocean Territory ceases to exist. From what we gathered in the other thread it somewhat depends on what ISO decides to do with its codes.
At a minimum I expect that control over the .io domain will go to Mauritius and they'll be able to reassign it as desired (since they never contracted with the hedge fund). But the typical path for a code when its country goes defunct is to get phased out.
The more I think about it, the more I agree that this is the likely outcome.
IO has been in the ISO standard forever, so there's plenty of historical precedent (like UK). Furthermore, it continues to be descriptive of a specific part of the world (like SU). The easy move here is for the ISO committee to mark IO as exceptionally reserved, for ICANN to declare that this of course makes it a special historical case which sets no precedent, and for everything to continue mostly as usual.
This assumes, of course, that ICANN aren't looking to make some kind of example/statement about misuse of ccTLDs. If they are, things may be different.
It being owned by a hedge fund doesn't change the fact that ICAAN policies will retire the ccTLD.
Whether they choose to NOT APPLY those policies is a different matter that, again, isn't changed by who owns it but instead by use.
What are some new countries we can create so we end up with a cool TLD?
There’s gotta be someone willing to fund this.
.js would be quite a popular one.
It might well be at risk.
Extensive discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41729526
TL;DR: ICANN policy forces deletion if CC disappears from the ISO list of countries, with one famous exception (.su); but Mauritius could cut a Tuvalu-style deal to maintain it.
I imagine whoever got the 99 year lease is feeling pretty pleased about it - that's basically forever as far as they can tell.
On the other hand, I bet the UK in 1997 would have hoped for a longer lease on Hong Kong.
Hong Kong island was ceded to the British in perpetuity. The 99 years lease of the New Territories (not Hong Kong, technically) was an additional unequal treaty that the Qing were forced into on top of it, after they also had to give up Kowloon. The British could have asked for 150 years too, who'd have stopped them?
Now the same happens to Britain in reverse. There is no benefit for any state to give up territory for nothing in return, why would they be "pretty pleased" about it? Also not only is Britain ceding its territory but they're actually paying rent to keep a base on what was previously their own land! It almost feels like China is involved in this because the number doesn't sound like something Mauritius would come up with on their own. See other 99 year leases the CCP is involved in, they're obsessed with this number:
https://ceylontoday.lk/2023/08/31/over-1200-acres-of-sri-lan...
https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/australia-says-no...
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2018/05/25/asia-pacific/ch...
> It almost feels like China is involved in this because the number doesn't sound like something Mauritius would come up with on their own. See other 99 year leases the CCP is involved in, they're obsessed with this number
Err 99 leases are common in lots of places. 99 years is a bit more than a lifetime so not many people care much about what happens afterwards. And it is a lot shorter than in perpetuity which would look bad for whoever is granting it.
> In England during the sixteenth century it was common practice to make leases for a term of three lives or a period of 99 years. It is presumed to be upon the theory that the lease should last thru three generations as it has been common practice to accept thirty-three years as the span of a single generation.
https://archive.org/details/longtermlandlea00mcmigoog/page/n...
So, 99 years is basically 3 Jesuses? Or 3J?
The forced dispossession of the islanders of their home was a crime against humanity by the UK in the first place. This is righting an abysmal wrong
But this doesn't quite right, since as far I understand, the Islanders aren't necessarily Mauritians.
The Chagos Islands were't lawfully "their own land" according to an International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling from 2019, which probably had something to do with this change.
The article posts one reason why they'd give it up: they feel the ongoing issue of the Chagos Islands is hurting their ability to get diplomatic support in other international matters that are far more important to them.
Sea level rise may mean that a 99 year lease is longer than the island will be habitable.
At what point does sea level rise remove a countries EEZ claim.
Seems that it's a real issue -- https://www.reuters.com/investigations/sinking-tuvalu-fights...
Also decreased oil consumption as a result of renewable energy sources (decreasing the Middle East's importance) and climate change opening up northern shipping routes (decreasing the SE Asia - Suez Canal importance).
In 99 years, being able to exert influence in the region will likely be less important to global trade.
Erm, even if the coast is flooded, Mauritius is a big island with plenty of land well above sea level.
The discussion is about Diego Garcia.
I’ll take that bet.
You should move to Nantucket island then, lots of prime real-estate there
The real estate in Nantucket is extremely expensive, how does this comment make sense?
Even if that lease was permanent I doubt the PRC would just let it be. The time limit just meant they could just wait instead of having to negotiate or invade.
I've seen few mentions that PRC actually expected UK to extend the lease, and was surprised when UK didn't...
Probably not. In 1997 they were happy to court the $$ associated with opening up this huge new market of 1b+ "middle class" consumers.
Id argue they still aren't sufficiently butthurt about it. The UK has sufficient grounds to reclaim HK since china has very much failed to uphold its agreement to keep hong kong democratic for at least 50 years. I guess that's why the CPC goes on gaslighting rants about "whole process democracy" like Jesus CPC. You just had to wait 20 years, what the hell is the rush?
One of the reasons UK didn't contest it in 1997 was that it couldn't. UK "owned" Hong Kong island, which is a tiny bit of territory. Most of what is called Hong Kong was actually leased from China for a definite term, and the lease was coming to an end, fair and square. Hong Kong island was handed over as part of the package.
Hong Kong island is, I would imagine, in no way sustainable as a standalone territory, if China were to be hostile.
China threatened to cut off water. UK did not have any meaningful way of keeping HK without strong US support.
Even if they were legally entitled to reclaim it under law, I don't see the British re-invading China at this point.
I think China is increasingly driven by the ego of Xi Jinping and not the internal machinations of party politics.
He is 71 and getting older.
A lot of crazy things look more reasonable when you've had absolute power for a decade and aren't overly concerned about consequences in 20 years.
A lot of crazy things look more reasonable when you realize that your metric for 'crazy' and 'not crazy' is less about gauging the mental state of the person making those decisions, and more about how much/little they upset Western interests.
I think it's a mistake to give in to the temptation to jump to the conclusion that China is a tunnel-vision cult of personality everything-the-crazy-dictator-wants-he-gets government.
The Chinese government under Xi has a well-established track record of long-term planning that has done nothing but elevated China's status and leverage in the world.
It really couldn't be further from (e.g.) Putin's style of governance.
Sidelining potential political competitors and/or forcing them out of the public sphere doesn't inspire confidence in Xi's ability to resist using power conveniently.
> The Chinese government under Xi has a well-established track record of long-term planning that has done nothing but elevated China's status and leverage in the world.
Some of its neighbors in the South China Sea would beg to differ.
E.g. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=V80MGYrWWaM&t=80s
I’m confused at what your video is supposed to disprove about what I said.
China rammed into a Philippine ship knowing they would face zero consequences.
Did they face any consequences?
China’s neighbors can hem and haw all they want. China is the superpower in the Eastern Hemisphere.
> elevated China's status
In 2024 china issued 17% less residence visas than 2019.
Maybe. But the trend is down.
What does residence visas have to do with geopolitical power?
That’s one tiny variable of many.
Should I link you an article about how US immigration hit record lows after the Covid-19 pandemic?
Based on the UKs failure to retake HK despite the broken agreement, how long do you think that base will be there?
They could take it back whenever they wanted and we’d do nothing.
> UKs failure to retake HK despite the broken agreement
I don’t think the UK law works that way. There may be compensation or other consequences, but it’s unlikely the whole agreement is null and void.
Real life example: I rented a house in UK, paying monthly rent. The heating system and hot water broke down in winter, and it took them three months to fix. It was clear breach of contract, landlord is responsible for the heating system and must fix withing 48 hours.
I was not allowed to break up the contract and leave, and I even went to court over it - my compensation was really pathetic.
In what universe does the UK have grounds to have anything to do with governing a region 6000 miles away from home that it seized during the Opium War?
I would love for China to have democracy, but Great Britain really doesn't have any moral high ground on the issue nor any business having anything to do with the government there.
If you think they aren't sufficiently butthurt about it, I'd counter that by saying "what can they realistically do about it?" The answer is "absolutely nothing." You want them to invade or something?
They can write a nastygram or something but any of the promises involved with the transfer really mean nothing. An analogy would be asking the next owner of your car to not play any Britney Spears on the radio. Good luck enforcing that.
Shouldn't people of Hong Kong decide that?
https://theworld.org/stories/2016/08/30/there-s-movement-tur...
Should the people of North Dakota be able to take a vote and decide to become a Chinese province?
I mean, I completely empathize with their situation, but the fact of the matter is that the UK has even less of a claim to governance over the territory than China does. It’s physically connected to mainland China with no other countries or territories around.
> Should the people of North Dakota be able to take a vote and decide to become a Chinese province?
They have the moral right to do so.
But the ground reality is that many Chinese are becoming North Dakotans (Americans).
https://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_share.aspx?g...
And many Hong Kongers are becoming British:
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2022/07/ho...
Whether you have the moral right to do so is rather debatable. Morals are up to the individual.
I would say that it would be a major national security issue and detriment to everyone else in the country if a state was allowed to secede to another country, especially a foreign adversary.
In the United States nobody has the legal right to secede, even if a statehouse passes a law or holds a ballot vote on a constitutional amendment.
As far as emigrating and gaining legal status elsewhere that’s up to the individual.
> In what universe does the UK have grounds to have anything to do with governing a region 6000 miles away from home that it seized during the Opium War?
A universe that respects the right of the people who live somewhere to chose the government they want? We've all seen the protestors waving British flags there.
Abolishing the right of conquest in the early 20th century was one of the great achievements of humanity, and that is not diminished by the impossibility of making it retroactive.
> If you think they aren't sufficiently butthurt about it, I'd counter that by saying "what can they realistically do about it?" The answer is "absolutely nothing." You want them to invade or something?
> They can write a nastygram or something but any of the promises involved with the transfer really mean nothing.
There's a whole spectrum of diplomatic measures the UK could do short of all-out war. Trade restrictions. Hell, full diplomatic recognition of Taiwan is a great option.
We’ve seen protestors in all kinds of countries wave all kinds of flags. We all know pragmatically that that’s not how governments are chosen.
The fact that the situation is unfair to HK citizens doesn’t have much relation to the fact that there’s no legitimate reason for the UK to have any involvement at this point in time, unless you’re just plain and simple in favor of imperialism.
In that case you’d be making the argument that people who more closely align with China who live in North Dakota are allowed to just vote and declare North Dakota to be a Chinese province.
There’s a whole spectrum of diplomatic measures that the UK can do that make zero difference in the situation.
Trade restrictions? The UK fully depends on Chinese imports. It would hurt the UK more than China.
Recognition of Taiwan? What would that change? Western countries already defacto recognize Taiwan and work with them as a close ally. This would be changing vocabulary on some documents and plaques.
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>china has very much failed to uphold its agreement to keep hong kong democratic
That would be a curious failure indeed given that Hong Kong wasn't democratic under the British to begin with. It was a crown colony ruled by an appointed governor. The Brits of course never had any legitimate claim to an island they took after a war whose objective was to force opium into China. If they still have dreams of empire I'm sure China would be delighted to see them try though and see how it goes this time.
I guess this means the sun will now set on the British empire. It’s pretty far west from the Pitcairn Islands to Akrotiri and Dhekelia without the Indian Ocean territory in between.
This is exactly what I thought when I read this. https://what-if.xkcd.com/48/ makes no mention of the islands but I feel like it might cause a sunset now?
Some countries have constitutions that forbid giving up any parts of its territory, but apparently our government can hand over sovereignty without even a vote in parliament
The UN General Assembly and various UN courts have ruled that the UK had no sovereignty over the Chagos Islands in the first place.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-55848126
The UN General Assembly is little more than an opinion poll, legally speaking.
Irrelevant.
Maybe to you, but not to the UK government.
The UK has a permanent seat on the UNSC including the ultimate single-member veto and on the sliding scale of fiction to non-fiction, international law is a lot closer to the fictional end. The UK choosing to transfer sovereignty to another country is not in-line with a ruling that says they don’t have sovereignty. They’ve chosen to be done with this controversy.
The UN is relevant how? Anyway, UK did the right thing, though. Now get rid of that US hegemony-supporting base.
The base stays in and the people stays out. It's little more than a symbolic gesture.
In theory the BIOT was under the personal control of the King, and in theory he could do what he wanted with it.
I'm assuming all this is contingent on a treaty vote in Parliament? I'm not familiar with how it works in the UK
In the UK the executive (ie "the government") makes and ratifies treaties, using delegated authority [1] from the monarch.
There is no general rule that parliament has to ratify, or even scrutinise, a treaty. The main exceptions are if the treaty requires domestic legislation to be passed by parliament, or if the treaty has significant constitutionap implications. Given our un-codified constitution here in the UK, I would imagine the latter constaint comes with some wriggle-room.
This [2] briefing by the House of Commons Library lays it all out.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_prerogative_in_the_Unite...
[2] https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-...
Yes, of course Parliament will need to vote on this, but the Prime Minister of the UK has approved it and unlike in the US., in the UK votes are predominantly along party lines so it will pass.
> Yes, of course Parliament will need to vote on this
Not the case. The executive makes treaties. Parliament can scrutinise them but has no general ratification or veto role. See https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-... .
The Parliament being sovereign, it can pass an act about anything. It could certainly pass an act forbidding the government from ceding territory to a foreign power. However, since the current government holds a majority in parliament, in practice it won't happen.
Parliament can pass basically any laws it likes, so it could certainly do that. But that would never happen unless there was a total breakdown of MP party discipline. Hard to see that happening outside of a brexit-type constitutional impasse.
My point was that there is no constitutional requirement for parliament to ratify treaties.
It has a veto role in the text you cite (I mean, its described as an infinitely renewable 21-day delay, but that's functionally a veto, especially since the government is subordinate to and can be dismissed by Parliament during the delay, and replaced by a more cooperative government; treating the UK as if it had coequal executive, legislative, and judicial branches like the US is an error; in the UK, Parliament is supreme and the executive and judicial powers are subordinate to and contingent on its support. The government’s power usually isn’t opposed by Parliament not because the government is equal or more powerful, or has true independent powers that the Parliament can't check, but the reverse—“the government” is established from the leadership of the Parliamentary majority, and they are absolutely dependent on continued support from Parliament, so they don't, outside of the most exceptional cases, do anything that doesn't have at least tacit support of the majority of Parliament in the first place, so there is nothing to have conflict overm)
My point was that there is no constitutional requirement for parliament to ratify treaties.
Yes, it can delay a treaty. It could even pass legislation preventing a treaty from having legal effect. But that would require a extraordinary breakdown in parliamentary party discipline.
Can I visit the world you're in, where votes in US Congress aren't predominantly along party lines?
The US system is far more dysfunctional — we have the Senate, which ensures that there isn’t an opportunity to conduct a vote along any line!
The real lever of power in congress is the parliamentary process in the Senate.
I’m not so sure. A system in which a party that wins only 34% of the vote is given a near supermajority in the legislature and control of the executive seems pretty dysfunctional to me.
In the US Senate, 80% of the votes represent 46% of the population.
Wyoming has more sheep than people, but they are represented on the same basis as California, Florida, etc.
Yeah, the real difference is that in the US, there is a separate election for president. In the UK, as in many other countries, the party that wins parliament gets to form the government (and determine the prime minister or whatever the title of the de facto head of the executive is). In some countries this is complicated by multiparty systems where coalitions are required, but the general idea of aligning the legislative and executive branches in this way is fairly common.
And it can be approved with a bare majority?
Bare majority, and with our whipping system and current parliament (massive one party domination) it will go through with ease. It has to go through the House of Lords too, and the current government don’t have a real majority there but they’re extremely reticent to oppose the democratically elected house so it’ll likely sail through there too.
It’s not part of the UK. It’s an overseas territory owned by the crown.
Without going into the sentiment of this, I suppose Chaos Islands are not part of the United Kingdom but rather an overseas territory, so more like "property", to put it bluntly. I guess the government can just give away a building it owns, and this is more analogous than giving away "territory". And there is no current indigenous population there either.
But yeah, Jersey is also an overseas territory, can the government just give that away?
Jersey is a Crown Dependency, not an Overseas Territory. They share a King and the UK is responsible for their defense, but domestically Crown Dependencies are more independent of Parliament than your average British overseas territory.
Ok, fair point. Can the UK hand over Bermuda, or Cayman isles?
I vaguely remember handing over the Falkland Islands to Argentina was actually on the cards before the invasion, so perhaps surprisingly the answer is "yes".
Yes. Parliament can. The people living there may not be particularly happy about it though, e.g. the entire population of the Falkland Islands save like the three people who voted in favor of linking up with Argentina that one time.
While I was downvoted my answer is correct. The UK parliament can and has ceded territory and all that is required is an act of parliament.
It seems like people forget that the UK ceded everything from Ireland which was a UK constituent as opposed to a UK subject as well as Canada, Australia, India and numerous other territories.
In the UK, parliament is supreme and has the final authority.
Which highlights how stupid the war was. Argentina should have invested in a better relationship with the islands. They would all be speaking Spanish by now.
At the time Argentina was under a military dictatorship that didn't have a good relationship even with its own people.
Do you have a source for this? I am not aware of any practically significant way in which the crown dependencies are different from the OTs. AMA 7.5 year resident of Bermuda.
Sure. Here’s the UK’s fact sheet on their relationship with the Crown Dependencies including some of the differences with overseas territories.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
High level overview is that it doesn’t look that different, and like most things concerning UK law and the laws of Crown Dependencies, a lot of it is just custom. There’s long been a debate over how much the UK’s Parliament can unilaterally legislate over them without their consent which remains largely untested because by custom they don’t. Overseas Territories are to my understanding creatures of the UK Parliament and remnants of the Empire whereas Jersey and Guernsey are the remnants of Normandy which the British Crown managed to retain when they lost the mainland to France. I don’t remember much about Manx history though, so I’ll refrain from commenting on them specifically.
But since you put out an AMA: how’s life in Bermuda? Would you recommend it?
Bermuda is trully wonderful. If you read HN you can easily figure out my e-Mail, feel free to drop me a message if interested further. Bermuda is the place to be if founding an insurance related start-up and probably of doing anything fintech related.
The weather is delightful, the taxes acceptable, the digital infrastructure ok. It can be an expensive place to live but a single person with no dependants could live here on $4k a month. The path to permanent residence is difficult but manageable for those who bring real value to the place (think jobs or significant capital). The people are generally friendly (though as with anywhere there are exceptions) and the Premier has at least some Software experience.
It is a very interesting question, in my humble opinion, As to Bermuda's relations with the British crown. So far as I am aware there has never been a law passed by the British parliament and enforced through the privy council which was not passed by the Bermuda Parliament before commencement. Importantly (and uniquely for the OTs). Bermuda was established prior to the Act of Union and so has a relationship with the "crown of England" rather than the "crown of Great Britain" having been settled in 1612.
The United Kingdom has parliamentary supremacy with little to no checks or balances, so if the parliament wants to give away something, there is nothing that can really stop them.
Indeed. The only practical constraints on parliament are the Laws of Nature, which unlike man's laws cannot be broken, and the will of the People, in defiance of which a Parliament necessarily would fall since the Parliament is constituted from those people.
If Parliament tried to ban booze (as the US Federal Government once did) that's probably not going to go well, and maybe they would (like the US government) be forced to undo that - but all they did here was give away something very few of their citizens likely even knew they had. I was surprised it made headlines.
Parliament can for sure overrule the will of the people, and very often do.
They might get punished in the next election or they may not.
More precisely only the PM can call an election I believe.
> They might get punished in the next election or they may not.
If what they do is sufficiently contrary to the will of the people (or at least, those with weapons and the will to use them), they'll get punished sooner than that. Laws and constitutions are a useful abstraction but ultimately an imperfect one.
The article makes it sound like the UK is attempting to gain African influence by returning Chagos while keeping the military bases. Perhaps it's also cheaper to only have the bases since that's the main reason the UK has kept control?
Interestingly this includes the military base of Diego Garcia which is strategically important. I imagine the US will pay Mauritius a bucket load of money for continued use.
It seems the US are continuing to pay the UK and the UK is buying off Mauritius.
I imagine ALL of this was hinging on some long term agreement where the US gets to keep Diego Garcia.
France needs to give back sovereignty of so many islands around Madagascar. It's galling that they still act like a colonial state.
Like Mayotte?
The population there is the single biggest electorate for the far right. Yes, that's right; they are black Muslims yet vote for Le Pen's party around 60%.
That's because the very last thing they want is to rejoin the Comoros and be ruled by their former slavers again; France abolished slavery when it took control of Mayotte, which never was a real independent nation but an island constantly taken over by various Muslim warlords or pirates.
The uninhabited ones? Aside from politicians, does anyone care really?
Don't you mean 'Gaulling'
Hopefully I'm not too late - the Guardian's coverage included this important bit:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/oct/03/britain-to-ret...
An attempt to halt the negotiations, on the basis that the Chagossians were not consulted or involved, failed.
Chagossian Voices, a community organisation for Chagossians based in the UK and in several other countries, said of Thursday’s announcement: “Chagossian Voices deplore the exclusion of the Chagossian community from the negotiations which have produced this statement of intent concerning the sovereignty of our homeland. Chagossians have learned this outcome from the media and remain powerless and voiceless in determining our own future and the future of our homeland.
“The views of Chagossians, the Indigenous inhabitants of the islands, have been consistently and deliberately ignored and we demand full inclusion in the drafting of the treaty.”
[later in the article:]
Clive Baldwin, senior legal adviser at HRW, said: “The agreement says it will address the wrongs against the Chagossians of the past but it looks like it will continue the crimes long into the future.
“It does not guarantee that the Chagossians will return to their homeland, appears to explicitly ban them from the largest island, Diego Garcia, for another century, and does not mention the reparations they are all owed to rebuild their future. The forthcoming treaty needs to address their rights, and there should be meaningful consultations with the Chagossians, otherwise the UK, US and now Mauritius will be responsible for a still-ongoing colonial crime.”
Mauritius was a sponsor to the Treaty of Pelindaba/African Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone Treaty. The US's stockpile on Diego Garcia likely violates this.
Worth reading Kevin Murphy’s piece here:
https://domainincite.com/30395-future-of-io-domains-uncertai...
He’s a long time commentator on the domain industry and very inciteful. But also quite insightful.
What does this means in terms of global politics and US having a base there?
I also assume .io no longer being controlled by UK? ( Which is somewhat worrying )
> What does this means in terms of global politics and US having a base there?
Absolutely nothing. The US still has a base on the island of Cuba [0], they aren’t giving up Diego Garcia.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guantanamo_Bay_Naval_Base
One of the more surreal bits of the situation around Guantanamo bay is that the US was very careful to pay the lease amount(nowdays a trivial $4000 dollers) and Cuba was very careful about not cashing the payments.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban%E2%80%93American_Treaty_...
Another weird thing was the subject of Cuban workers at the outpost. When relations soured between the countries Cuba wanted to isolate the base completely, And I have no clue about internal Cuban politics, but that stance was then lightened to "no new workers could be hired, but existing ones could stay employed" so for 59 years there was a steadily dwindling number of commuters from Guantanimo city to the base until the last one retired in 2012.
Absolutely nothing.
Not true at all, as regards the political aspects. There's also the people living there, or who rather had been until they were forcibly deported[0] long so long ago. And their situation also has very considerable legal and political significance. In regard to which there's also been an ICJ case with several very sharply-worded rulings starting 2019. It is also quite significant in regard to the global movement in favor of Right of Return[1], with implications for a certain third country[2] that not so coincidentally shares an excrutiatingly vexed history with both the islands' illegal occupiers up until the current date.
Of course, there are many in this crowd who at this point will say: "The fuck it does -- no one cares about the Chagossians and their long-standing claims for reparations for what the US and UK have done to them along with this pesky thing some people refer to as moral injury. And of course the ICJ doesn't matter anyway."
But I say: These things very much do matter. And it is the very fact that the US and UK thought (until recently with near certainty) that they could keep presenting a middle finger to these people and their claims, not to mention their simple dignity as human beings for so long without any repercussions is precisely why it matters, both politically and in legal terms.
And of course those who say the ICJ doesn't matter -- or that Right of Return doesn't matter -- don't matter anyway.
[0] - https://www.hrw.org/report/2023/02/15/thats-when-nightmare-s...
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_of_return
[2] - https://www.thenationalnews.com/mena/palestine-israel/2024/0...
> US still has a base on the island of Cuba
Ah, you mean the illegal torture prison against which the Cuban government has been protesting since 1959.
Sure. It's still there though, 65 years later.
The US will go where it pleases and do what it wants, just like the great European empires of the 17th through 19th centuries. Sure it's Amazon and Google rather than an East India Company, but it's the same themes.
Luckely Amazon and Google does not have gunboats yet.
just give it a few more years and we'll see MAANG sponsored black sites
> African nations began to speak with one voice on the issue, pushing the UK hard on the issue of decolonialisation.
I wish the journalists had a little more sophistication on this. African nations began to push the UK on this because China and Russia understand that Diego Garcia is a critical port, and made investment + aid/ bribery + weapons (China / Russia respectively) conditional on forcing the issue.
In other words: The African nations have no agency or legitimate motivations of their own, and are just doing what China and Russia bully them to do. Apparently they don't even appreciate the significance of the military base on those islands. It is left for the adults in the room (Russia and China) to think and operate on such a level.
Of course no one here is naive, and we all know already that external operators have their influence, and (though the commenter provides no evidence) it's certainly possible, likely even, that such influence came into play here to some degree.
Nonetheless, the commenter's phrasing and implicit attitude toward these nations seems weirdly patronizing and, well, colonial.
If the characterization is inaccurate, then say so. If not, this is just name calling and mind reading.
There's no need, because it's essentially what I said already.
For context the entire continent of Africa has roughly the same GDP as the UK.
For even more context, GDP isn't everything.
Where is some evidence of this version of the story?
I'd like to see your sources on this.
I expect it's a bit simpler than that: anti-colonial policies resonate deeply with African voters, and are very uncontroversial.
African voters, to the extent that they have any vote at all [1], have vastly more important things to care about than a tiny island in the Indian ocean. I would in fact bet a lot of money that vastly fewer than 1% of African voters, in any country, know about the Chagos Islands at all.
[1] Mostly, not https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_in_Africa#/media/Fil...
But this is a red herring. Their leaders know all about the issue (which infinitely broader than the matter of those specific islands of course; the supposition that it's just about "a tiny island" being a straw man in itself), of course; and have made their position very clear:
Yeah but when $dictator shows up on tv and talks about figthing $bloodyColonialists at the UN, it's uncontroversial (regardless of the issue being fought) and takes time from talking about his embezzlement/corruption/etc.
Meanwhile, behind the scenes, they can go cap in hand to $bloodyColonialists and ask "do you want me to shut up? Give me $something".
This requires no shadowy influence from this or that supposed Great Power.
This all just speaks in favor of decolonialization, does it not? When decolonialisation is complete the $dictator won't be able to use it as a distraction, nor can it be a source of corruption. And apart from that it's a noble and objectively good goal in itself.
No, because they will always find some phantom menace of colonization to complain about.
Look at the Chagos Islands themselves — they were literally not inhabited until Europeans settled them. There's no "decolonization" narrative here, because there's no native population.
Once the UK leaves the Chagos islands, it will be about foreign aid with strings attached, or IMF loans, or foreign investment in farmland, or whatever. It's not a solvable problem.
> they were literally not inhabited until Europeans settled them
Decolonization is not simply about removing troops from here or there, it's about taking responsibility for actions that enriched $motherland at the expense of $colony. French and British colonialists moved people to Chagos for their own profit, and then (together with Americans) ejected their descendants from what had become, by then, a homeland; pushing governments to take responsibility for these actions is the moral thing to do.
You are illustrating my point perfectly.
There is no amount of "decolonizing" the UK can do that will put an end to the grievances. As long as African warlords want to blame their problems on someone else, they will find a way to link it in some nebulous way to lasting inter-generational damage by ex-colonizers.
> There is no amount of "decolonizing" the UK can do that will put an end to the grievances.
That's not true. Plenty of decolonized countries just go about their business, once the outstanding issues are solved; or even when they try to stir shit, nobody listens to them.
Here though we do have an outstanding problem that needs to be solved. Once the islands go to Mauritius and the expelled population is resettled, there will be nothing left to complain about in that particular area. Obviously, thanks to the sheer size of injustice perpetrated in colonial times, there will be plenty left to complain about elsewhere. The only answer is to solve problems with goodwill, not to bury our heads in the sand pretending our ancestors never did what they did.
Absolutely.
I believe we will keep the port there with the US?
Ah yes, because the UK has no agency and clearly hasn't shown itself to be very okay at standing up against Russia for example.
Huh? I had the impression that the entire international community (sans UK, US & Israel) has been pushing for this for years, and quite insistently since the 2021 ITLOS judgement. Also, the US will keep it's base as part of the settlement.
It would be naive to believe that the Chinese will not build a competing naval base there, and encroach upon Mauritius's sovereignty over time.
Apart from this being pure speculation, where exactly would they build it? The archipelago has a tiny land area and the only atoll suitable for building a base is kinda already taken... Also, the primary strategic importance of Diego Garcia is to support US operations in the Middle East, where China has never interfered to any significant extent.
You could say the same about the South China Sea before the Chinese started building islands out there.
Also, wouldn't the US and UK insist on a clause in the treaty that Mauritius can't do this?
They already have a base in Djibouti which is far more useful.
> The remaining British overseas territories are: Anguilla, Bermuda, British Antarctic Territory, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Falkland Islands, Gibraltar, Montserrat, Pitcairn, Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, Turks and Caicos Islands. There are also two sovereign base areas on Cyprus under British jurisdiction.
Good note at the end
And quite a few of those in shady financial dealings. Happily hiding and laundering money for various kleptocrats. It has been noted that, just as the Roman Empire didn't really disappear - it became a church, the British Empire didn't really disappear - it became a bank.
The British government likes to make various noises about cleaning this up, but there are too many businesses in the City of London making money off the system for there to be much chance of that happening.
There will always be some crime in any financial centre, but I think there's limited evidence that there's proportionally more financial crime going on in London than e.g. NYC or Frankfurt.
>there's limited evidence
Because the UK government is trying very hard to look the other way?
The idea that serious evil is necessarily illegal in the first place is probably hilariously naive to begin with.
> the Roman Empire didn't really disappear - it became a church, the British Empire didn't really disappear - it became a bank.
Great quip!
https://freakonomics.com/podcast/top-level-domains/ is a podcast that talks about the economics of TLDs like ".io".
> There, the UK will ensure operation of the military base for "an initial period" of 99 years.
Taking bets on how much surface area of this atoll will still be above water in 2123.
diego garcia remains, so it really is a matter of semantics.
not that military bases like these are always great with the host nations (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nf-eHVa-2zE).
any potential windfall would be nice for Mauritius, but obviously does not remedy for the conflict.
Did they agree who will get the the .io ccTLD? Or is that up to ICANN?
I have no answers - just a note there's another discussion regarding .io here if anyone wants more readin'
Ask HN: What happens to ".io" TLD after UK gives back the Chagos Islands? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41729526
Took them long enough. Glad to see the UK relinquish ownership of these islands
I had never heard of it until now, but it looks similar to parts of the Marshall Islands in that there are very narrow strips of land.
bad deal for Mauritius. they didn’t gain any sovereignty, they lost some. why? because now the foreign military base is officially on Maritius soil. so US now has a base in Mauritius just like they have in Japan and other places and those places can’t do anything about it
Pathetic weak UK government
I absolutely agree. Lammy’s justification about “closing a vector for illegal immigration” just shows how spineless they all are (especially the new lot Kier & Co.). No creativity, no defense of national interests. Just fear of negative tabloid headlines.
See also "How the British Empire and U.S. Department of Defense Murdered an Island Paradise" ... "the story of the Chagos Islands, a paradise founded by former slaves that was wiped out by the British empire so they could lease it to the U.S. as an air base" [1]
[1] https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236...
I'm unaware of the details but wasn't the island chain sold to the British?
France ceded Mauritius and its outlying islands to the UK. When the UK granted Mauritius independence, it held back the Chagos Islands and forcibly deported all their inhabitants, leading to the status quo until today.
Here in Argentina these news have been met with great enthusiasm.
So just as considerate of the chagossians as the population of the Falklands then?
Locals matter only when it's convenient. Note that this agreement wasn't negotiated with people who lived on Chagos islands, but with government that claims the territory.
Geography Now! Mauritius:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrOwkNEHIlk
I recommend the Behind the Bastards series "How the British Empire and U.S. DoD Murdered an Island Paradise" about the Chagos islands for deeper context.
Yeah...
As long as the US and the UK is allowed to operate their military bases and operations without any protest or quibble for the next 100 years and probably more. Have some spare change instead of too much sovereignty.
And remember the military bases are US and UK soil and whatever goes on there can keep going on whatever laws may or may not be passed.
Just like how the US maintains a military base, camp (now not very busy at the moment) concentration camp in the communist country of Cuba.
[dead]
This. The US hegemon is everywhere it shouldn't be. And no one stands up. Well, we'll see what happens after UA.
After Ukraine a lot more countries, especially in there neighbourhood of Russia will ask Americans for their military bases.
Very sad for the United Kingdom, I think. Back in 1982 Queen Elizabeth II refused to give up the Falklands at gunpoint; in 2024 King Charles III gives up the British Indian Ocean Territory without even a shot being fired.
Queen Elizabeth II had no involvement in the decision to defend the Falklands, other than perhaps some private counsel with the then Prime Minister, just as King Charles III will have had no involvement in this decision.
Officially sure. Practically? Not a chance.
Why is it sad for the UK to no longer claim as their own and occupy a small piece of land that the ICJ ruled they didn't even lawfully have sovereignty over?
The difference is that Falklanders at multiple times established they want to be British, more than the government in London wanted them.
Whereas Chagos Islands inhabitants were violently expulsed and the only people on site are occupation forces.
The inhabitants were planters and their workers (originally slaves imported in the 1700s); no-one is native to the islands.
And the poor folks who were expelled (and their descendants) were not even consulted this time around — this is purely a deal between the United Kingdom and Mauritius, whose only relationship with the islands is that they were both lumped together under the old colonial administration.