Seycheles, its people, politicians will rue/regret passing that legislation allowing the USA military in Seychelles with out accountability and control

Seycheles, its people, politicians will rue/regret passing that legislation allowing the USA military in Seychelles with out accountability and control

We have written a very great deal about that SIROP exile return program, CDU/Alliance/SDP/SNM/MPR/MPRD of 1987/88, it was the USA who opposed and torpedoed that program as it was and the political mess we landed in and have found our self since.

The reason the program was not their idea, did not originate from them. It was not discussed with them. Their solution was get rid of the Seychelles government, SPPF its politicians by what ever means and what ever manner.

We have read in the Nation and Seychelles Weekly of the law to be passed in parliament allowing the USA military on Seychelles soil with out any control. For them to acquire that status in Iraq they had to invent a war involving NATO. The destruction of Iraq and the infernal suffering of its people.

We have written several threads warning everybody in Seychelles that they were walking a very dangerous road. the situation will/could escalate, they could and will find themself involved in Situation they do not want.

For all that had been said of filth of FA Rene - he would never have allowed such a situation to develope. Other solution would have been found. The important question to ask who are those involved in setting the Seychelles nation up like they did Iraq, who are those involved in putting the Seychelles in gunny bags or better put blind folding them. It is over the Sechelles - Seychelles arcahic/fraternal/Masonic heritage strongly contested by many like the did with the Iraq situation to control and take over hence the developement. May be those of you in Seychelles will understand and appreciate our EU community resolve to stand against those in Seychelles who do not believe we have certain irrifutable rights.

With this situation even President G Bush at the hight of his terrible diplomatic and political misconception would not have dreamt such a coup who are those involved. Is this the way one thank a friend who has help one person come to power. Like Tony Blair and a few others.

It is very bad enough the world situation. Next our Sechelles - Seychelles EU Comunity will be drag into the mess, the EU Parliament, the EU Court of Justice, the Council of Europe and Bruxelles involved and the many governments of EU , their institutions and their media. They will start their intimidation , threaths, harassements and bullying - implant fear in our Community. They will invent reason to bully, threathen intimidate and and implant fear in the mind of our community in EU as they did during the Iraq War.

Had this involved the Russian, Chinese our communities around the world would have been protesting and lumping manure.

Have anybody consulted with the Mauritian government they have been the longest in democracy in the region.

Seychelles to benefit from closer military ties with US - 29.07.2009

Seychelles is to benefit from closer military cooperation with the US through maritime surveillance, training and extra revenue generated by the use of Port Victoria as a rest stop for American marines.

It is estimated that the income from each US naval ship’s visit will be around $175,000, excluding the refuelling costs of the ships and planes that will patrol our waters more frequently in future.

This has been made possible after the National Assembly yesterday resolved to ratify the Status of Forces Protection Agreement (SOFA) between the US and Seychelles governments.

The agreement is part of American foreign policy, which is aimed at protecting its defence personnel serving in other countries under military, humanitarian, economic or other cooperation.

It sets the terms and operational parameters, and offers legal protection to US personnel while they are in a foreign country under a specific cooperation agreement.

A motion asking the assembly to ratify the SOFA was tabled by the leader of government business Marie-Louise Potter. She said such an agreement represents a key component in our fight against piracy, which we never thought would come so close to us.

She said our isolated geographic position and our limited economic and military resources will never allow us to patrol our vast territorial waters with an area of 1.4 million square kilometres.

Foreign military help in patrol and surveillance of our waters is today a necessity, and the US forces are among those ready to help us under this agreement, she added.

Mrs Potter stressed that Seychelles has to be realistic and pragmatic when it comes to the issue of piracy, which has today become one of the most well-organised and profitable crimes in this part of the world.

She said we should in no way allow the respite of the south-east monsoon to make us complacent and believe the pirates will not strike again when calm returns.

The agreement is one of several measures that will prepare us for any new attacks in the future, she added. The government has negotiated similar agreements with other countries, which will soon be submitted to the assembly to be ratified.

Mrs Potter said the agreement is also based on friendship, respect and the historical cooperation that has always existed between Seychelles and the US.

Explaining why the opposition has given its support to the motion, its leader Wavel Ramkalawan said it is because it does not infringe the sovereignty of any other country. He said the opposition also welcomed the move for Seychelles to receive surveillance and patrols by the US, which has all the necessary facilities.

At the same time, Mr Ramkalawan raised various points of concern, among which is the need to be on our guard as this cooperation could put us on the terrorist map. The US is a key terrorist target, and Seychelles has porous boundaries that could easily be infiltrated.

He also stressed that we must make the most of this agreement and ensure we benefit to the maximum.

In her summing-up, Mrs Potter said the majority party shares the opposition’s concerns and it is the wish of the authorities to ensure we get as much as possible from such an agreement.

Yesterday the assembly also approved amendments to the Judiciary Bill 2009, which seeks to amend the Judiciary Act to increase the salaries of officers of the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal.

And it approved amendments to the Constitutional Appointees Emolument Bill to increase the salary of the attorney-general.

Seychelles Nation will come back on these two Bills in a later issue.

Seychelles to sign military cooperation agreement with the United States

US destroyer in Victoria harbor

As part of regional peace and security cooperation activities, the National Assembly will next week discuss the terms that will govern the presence of United States military personnel in Seychelles in future. If accepted, the agreement will be a significant departure from the days before Independence when the SPPF leadership had agitated the “Yankee Go Home” campaign. It is ironic that the SPPF got what they wanted in the end, perhaps when they no longer wanted it, with the closure of the U.S Tracking Station in 1996 and the United States Embassy in Victoria a few years later.

The motion to ratify the agreement with the United States will be presented by Marie-Louise Potter, Leader of Government Business, herself a Cuba-trained and openly anti-American member of the SPPF.

The agreement will surely be welcomed by most Seychellois, especially in those times of piracy in our waters. Seychelles needs all the help it can get to fight this scourge, and the U.S. naval presence in the Indian Ocean will complement the efforts of ENAVFOR of the European Union.

Under the terms of the agreement, U.S. personnel, when in Seychelles, contractors and civilian members of the Ministry of Defence shall be accorded a status equivalent to that accorded to embassy personnel under the Vienna Convention. This will mean that while they are expected to respect the laws of our country, any criminal offences committed in Seychelles will be judged under the criminal jurisdiction of the United States.

In addition, vehicles, vessels and aircrafts owned or operated by the US Department of Defence shall be allowed to move freely with the territory of Seychelles and shall not be subject to payment of any taxes, fees or harbour dues. More contentiously, the agreement provides that the ships and aircrafts shall not be boarded or inspected at any moment.

During the one party dictatorship when James Michel was Chief of Defence Forces, U.S. Naval personnel on a port call in Victoria were forced to wear their military uniforms because they were considered enemies of the socialist government. Under the new agreement, U.S. soldiers will move freely and will even be authorised to carry weapons. There is only one thing left to say: “Welcome back Yankees”!

http://www.seychellesweekly.com/July%2026,%202009/p01_welcome_yankees.html

Source: Regar 7-24-09

Obama stumbles? But let's keep hoping

"Despite his ill-advised intervention into the Gates affair, I remain optimistic that Barack Obama has what it takes"


We have ask ourself how best we can reproduce the article from the guardian here without provoking firstly what we have termed as friend bitteror nasty reactions - the great media crap/circus which acts mostly to distort things. Those who are still alive and know/monitor USA Presidential work for the past 45 years - their functions. Albite to the media lies and those High Office who blare out the might of many heads of state - how they work. They do not and cannot work alone in our modern world - if they are to have any achievements. Like President Clinton, both Bush, Reagen - those who advice them and formulate their policy - then the bloody media lies about it. There is a very grave danger that President Obama walks into a situation - like president Clinton did. This situation is, the friend who have helped, the friend who mean well is treated as a traitor. Over night the changing of the "climate" He would be well advice to speak to those who recall one or two of the Clinton incidents - to be very blunt we were parked at Caple le fern, Caple court country club between Folkestone and Dover, the property of courage brewries/Scottish National putting all the bits and pieces together to migrate to Belgium or Calais -then President Francois Mitterrand, those who adviced him we were better in Folkesotne where they, the CIA, Pentagon, State Department Officials, could control and manipulate us - inspite of his going live on TV and one or two other places and quasi indirectly promising to help us/me migrate to Belgium or Calais. The rest is history those who know what happenned. {Our thread above and already certain very unfriendly developement as a result of the Seychelles /USA accord its impact in Britian - EU/ his unofficial and unwritten indication that he was fully aware of the persecution we had suffered in Britain the past 25 years and his willingness to help us get out of Britain}

Below is the Guardian article.



Heading for the door marked "holiday", I was sorry to see that Barack Obama fumbled a catch in the row between the Harvard professor and the policeman who arrested him in his own home. Or did he?

Look at the White House press conference here. It's a pretty comprehensive reply, clearly prepared in advance and hedged with caveats, none of which you pick up when you read that Obama merely said cops acted "stupidly" to arrest his friend Henry Louis "Skip" Gates when he had already produced ID.

In the process, the president also makes rather a good joke. It's OK to call the cops when you see someone "jimmying" their way into a property and suspect a burglary, he tells reporters.

"If I tried to jigger my way into – [pause] well, this is my house [pause] – my old house in Chicago [pause] ... here, I'd get shot." Laughter all round.

That shows a real sense of humour at work, yes?

But the initial shine is off the new presidency, and Obama is struggling with both foreign and domestic agendas – where healthcare reform, badly needed in the US, is in trouble with its own side as well as the usual suspects.

He'd spent most of the press conference promoting his health plan until that last fateful question from his local paper, the Chicago Sun-Times.

In this spot last week, I took the contrarian position, opposing the prevailing liberal media view.

I thought Professor Gates shouldn't have got angry enough to get himself arrested in his own unthreatening property. He's the Harvard man, the adult in the stand-off, the 58-year-old with 50 honorary degrees, he should have talked sense into Sergeant James Crowley, the arresting officer.

The prez, understandably as a black American, saw it the other way round: from the perspective of black and Latino Americans who get "stopped disproportionately" by US policemen.

He could have added jailed disproportionately, too. An excellent FT column by Edward Luce this week pointed out that blacks make up 14% of the population, but 40% of those 2.1 million Americans – a dreadful statistic, this – in jail.

In case you're wondering, they are 10 times more likely to be jailed for selling or using illegal drugs than whites (who use them about as much). It's partly cultural, explains Luce. Crack cocaine, used by poor people, gets a mandated federal sentence as powder does not.

But the point is, should Obama have got involved at all? In doing so, however carefully, he wasted political capital and airtime that could have been better spent.

More importantly, he alienated those millions of white working-class voters who didn't vote for him and don't much like Harvard professors of any colour.

Best to sidestep such essentially minor issues without making a judgment and leave the rough stuff to others, I'd say. Probably so does Obama – he later invited Crowley in for a beer. Brace yourself for a grisly photo-op.

But I remain optimistic that Obama has what it takes, beyond making a string of noble speeches all over the place – Cairo, Prague as well as in the American heartland. Presidents have to do things as well as talk about them. It's still early days.

My optimism resides partly in Obama's known admiration for that much-mythologised president Abraham Lincoln, also an Illinois lawyer, an outsider with little experience of Washington too, but one who became his country's most revered president during his skilful defence of the union in the four-year civil war.

Lincoln forgave his enemies, deployed humour (often to cheer up colleagues and defuse tension, often self-deprecating) and bided his time until public opinion was ready for the next move.

For his pains, he was much mocked as an ugly, foolish hick – a "white trash" (sic) lawyer from what was then the sticks.

Obviously the 44th president knows all about the 16th because he recommends Doris Kearns Goodwin's great biography, Team of Rivals (Penguin £10.99), which I commend to the historically-minded as a good holiday read.

Right at the end of the book, Goodwin tells a fabulous Lincoln story I'd not heard before, that Tolstoy – yes, that Tolstoy – reported from a visit in 1880 to the Caucasuses, then even more remote than now.

It's a lovely reminder of what politics can achieve in the right hands. All too rare, but cheering. Read it, and have a good break.