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Friday, October 3, 2014

Damn if I ain't on an Indian Ocean rampage

That's right, say hello to the British Indian Ocean Territory. Shut my mouth and slap my grandma, this is the second visitor to Eff You from someplace I've never heard of. First we had St. Pierre and Miquelon, a couple French-owned islands off the coast of Canada. And now we have the British Indian Ocean Territory, which consists of the Chagos Islands including, most notably, the island of Diego Garcia, home to a major British-U.S. military installation. While I am familiar with Diego Garcia, I had never heard of The British Indian Ocean Territory, which
. . . is an overseas territory of the United Kingdom situated in the Indian Ocean halfway between Tanzania and Indonesia. The territory comprises the seven atolls of the Chagos Archipelago with over 1,000 individual islands – many tiny – amounting to a total land area of 60 square kilometres (23 sq mi).[7]
The largest and most southerly island is Diego Garcia, 44 km2 (17 sq mi), the site of a joint military facility of the United Kingdom and the United States. Following the eviction of the native population, the Chagossians, in the 1960s and 70s, the only inhabitants are US and British military personnel and associated contractors, who collectively number around 4,000 (2004 figures).[7] The islands are off-limits to casual tourists, the media, and their former inhabitants.
 The expulsion of the native inhabitants has been the subject of an ongoing legal battle for years, but so far the United Kingdom has succeeded in keeping the Chagossians out. The U.K. established a marine preserve encompassing the area in 2010, making it practically impossible for the natives to return. Sorry, guys. I assume, then, that my visitor is one of the 4,000 soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen -- British and American -- and contractors who live on Diego Garcia operating the military base. Welcome to Eff You, and keep coming by. Send your friends.

By the way, Diego Garcia is pretty much as gorgeous as you might expect of a tropical atoll:


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