Not stolen. It was a fair fight between sovereign bosses. Surrendered is different from stolen: <On March 29, 1849, the British flag was hoisted on the citadel of Lahore and the Punjab was formally proclaimed to be part of the British Empire in India. One of the terms of the Treaty of Lahore, the legal agreement formalising this occupation, was as follows:
The gem called the Koh-i-Noor which was taken from Shah Shuja-ul-Mulk by Maharajah Ranjit Singh shall be surrendered by the Maharajah of Lahore to the Queen of England.
The Governor-General in charge for the ratification of this treaty was Lord Dalhousie. More than anyone, Dalhousie was responsible for the British acquiring the Koh-i-Noor, in which he continued to show great interest for the rest of his life. Dalhousie's work in India was sometimes controversial, and his acquisition of the diamond, amongst many other things, was criticised by some contemporary British commentators. Although some suggested that the diamond should have been presented as a gift to the Queen, it is clear that Dalhousie felt strongly that the stone was a spoil of war, and treated it accordingly. Writing to his friend Sir George Cooper in August of 1849, he stated this:
The Court [of the East India Company] you say, are ruffled by my having caused the Maharajah to cede to the Queen the Koh-i-noor; while the 'Daily News' and my Lord Ellenborough [Governor-General of India, 1841-44] are indignant because I did not confiscate everything to her Majesty... [My] motive was simply this: that it was more for the honour of the Queen that the Koh-i-noor should be surrendered directly from the hand of the conquered prince into the hands of the sovereign who was his conqueror, than it should be presented to her as a gift -- which is always a favour -- by any joint-stock company among her subjects. So the Court ought to feel.
Dalhousie arranged that the diamond should be presented by Maharaja Ranjit Singh's successor, Duleep Singh, to Queen Victoria in 1851. Duleep travelled to the United Kingdom to do this. The presentation of the Koh-i-Noor to Queen Victoria was the latest in the long history of transfers of the stone as a spoil of war. >
Note, the United Nations wasn't issuing resolutions at the time. Note also how civilized the British were. They didn't eat a single Punjabi. Maoris, at the very same time, were dining on Moriori in the Chatham Islands, who they had defeated [easy as Morirori had pacifist ideology].
<We have ministers like Tariana Turia likening the circumstances of the Taranaki conflict to a Holocaust - and we have former National cabinet ministers trying to make political capital out of her speech.
The Minister's comments were not so strange when we remember that National received a Waitangi Tribunal report which made reference to a Holocaust at Taranaki.
At no stage did National ever ask for this word to be withdrawn, or changed.
In fact, John Luxton the then Minister of Maori Affairs, and the then Treaty Negotiations Minister, Doug Graham, said - and I quote:
"I hope that others will take the opportunity to read the report's overview, which outlines the history of the main aspects of the Taranaki claim.
The report describes the real and present day effect of our shared history and very clearly sets out the historical factual situation in Taranaki from pre-European times to the present day….."
The hypocrisy of these people knows no bounds. There is nothing so hard to do as to climb off a high horse gracefully.
The fact of the matter is that there WAS a Holocaust in New Zealand in European times and it was visited on the Chatham Islands Moriori by Taranaki Maori.
The peaceful people of this remote part of New Zealand were invaded, enslaved and annihilated.
An entire society was wiped out. The last fullblooded Chatham Islander, Tommy Solomon, died in 1936.
The Chatham Islanders - on their lonely island landscape - had created one of the few genuinely non-violent societies in history.
When the Taranaki Maori arrived these people of peace became victims of genocide to the point where they were exterminated.
>
I am not sure whether there is any CDMA in the Chatham Islands and Globalstar doesn't reach there, but Maoris in NZ are loving CDMA in both W-CDMA and 1xEV-DO forms.
Mqurice |
