thereare massive testing grounds in the canadian paries used by the british americans and other nato members. they annoy the natives and the cariboo but the british don't need the falkland for military exercises.

they do combine with the south georgias and hebrides to give the uk a claim to a huge sea bed area if sea bed mining ever takes off. there has been oil search there as well but so far nothing of commercial value has beed found.

the uk and the usa screwed the chagossians. the google earth satilite photos of them are reported to be fakes. aparently diego garcia is virtually surrounded by older american aircraft carriers for extra landing space, and with untold numbers of secret prisoners. a sial bost driven off course by the tsunami was detasined on its way there by the us navy to prevent them seeing diego garcia.

i'm a bit surprised they didn't try to keep socotra island. its much larger and nearer the middle east and had only fifty thousand inhabitants when they decolonilaized.

some collonial legacy islands do have no other better claim. the faslkland are among those. the french have many imcluding st pierre and miquelon off new foundland. they were pronanly uninhabited and the french got legal recognition for them i return for them giving up their fishing rights to establish seasonal camps on the west coast of new foundland, which were agreed by treaty in 1763.

some late colonial actions are terrible. chagossians being victims but there were a hundred and fifty thopusand kenyans tortured, mutilated(usually male genital mutilation) raped and illegally detained in the fities. some are presently sueing. there were also "free fire " zones where any government person could a nd often did shoot any black on sight. they collected hands to get a bounty. i saw one letter od admission from one of the soldiers who had been in the second world war greif stricken that he ahd become a nazi.empires are ugly and the attempt to hang on to as much as possible can be very ugly for the colonized. the uk commited war crimes and crimes aginst humanity all over the empire.

i note david cameron is acting very un torty by admitting the uk was the cause of the kashmiri problem by their handling of partition and he said ultimately the uk was responsible for many festering problems in the world. an amazing admission but perhapds the beginning of sanity. the old guard fascist military types are getting obselete and may have little influence now

none the less they ought to get the hell out of diego garcia , and put the falklands to referendum occasionally--i doubt argentina would ever get a majority but it would give democratic authority.

oddly displaced acadiens from the british ethnic cleansing in nova scotia were settled for a while in the falklands out of their temporary haven in st malo france. they didn't stay . they found the climate too daunting but that's thought to be where the name thre malvinas comes from. the acadien grande derangement was genocidally comducted by the british military. they uprooted people arbitrarily and worse the british put a head price on the nova scotia natives. the natives helped the french and were very upset that the fortress of halifax was plunked down in their territory. so from 1740is to 1800 the british colonila authoriteis paid a bounty for every native scalp brought in. sometimes they got cynical about the scapls not being native so they requested hands or ears to see the skin color. anyone with a rosy view of the empire is a supporter of genocide and crimes against humanituy