On 2017-05-06 06:04 AM (-4), Stephen wrote:
> The best being, when I was working in Nigeria for Total.
> "I'm glad we were colonised by the English not the French."
> Quite a few layers of meaning, there. :)

This reminds me of what I was told about Botswana while I was visiting 
South Africa.  During the 19th century, King Khama III of Botawana saw 
all the territory around him being taken by Cecil Rhodes, and he did not 
like what he was seeing.  So he appealed directly to the British crown 
to become a British protectorate.  (Wikipedia tells a different story, 
but the gist is the same.)  The strategy seems to have worked, as 
Botswana has avoided the strife that plagued much of southern Africa 
during the 20th century.

To complete the irony, after the conclusion of its savage civil war, 
Mozambique, which had never been a British colony, joined the British 
Commonwealth!

We in the U.S. Virgin Islands just celebrated the 100th anniversary of 
the sale of the Danish West Indies to the USA.  Barely asked among the 
"important" people was the obvious question: why is being a colony of 
the USA cause for celebration over being a colony of Denmark?

One possible answer would be constitutional protections--except that 
such protections don't automatically apply to the territories.  While 
the U.S. Constitution mandates republican governments for the states, 
territorial sovereignty is granted directly to Congress, and application 
constitutional rights is determined by court cases, most importantly the 
Insular Cases.  Our democratic institutions in the islands and our very 
USA citizenship are at the mercy of Congress (regardless of what 
comforting lies Puerto Rican politicians tell themselves).

Then there is the little fact that many USAmericans do not want to face: 
  that, in general, the Danish are happier and live better than 
Americans do.  Oh yeah, and the Virgin Islands have totally fallen 
through the considerable cracks in the Affordable Care Act (not that I 
want it repealed or anything).

One constitutional protection that recently seems to have put us in a 
better position is equal protection under law prescribed by the 14th 
Amendment.  In 2015, our local judiciary agreed that Obergefell v. 
Hodges applied to the Virgin Islands, thus legalizing gay marriage here. 
  In Greenland and the Faroe Islands, the issue was devolved, meaning 
that if we were still under Danish rule, the issue would have been left 
to our homophobic legislature.  It is not lost on me that in this one 
case, colonialism resulted in greater rights for us.

Yet that very issue is still being debated in American Samoa, the one 
territory whose residents Congress has not seen fit to grant USA 
citizenship.

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