This is John Batchelor, conversation with Cliff May, the president and founder of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy,

about the decision by the United Kingdom and the person of the Prime Minister to pass the Chagos Archipelago long under British

sovereignty since the 18th century. It wanted in the French Wars to pass that over to Mauritius, which is independent country,

the once under the British sovereignty, once under the French sovereignty. the Brits won it in the

Napoleonic Wars to pass the Chegos over to Mauritius so they're not close

though they have nothing in common however this underlines this general understanding that colonial

past must be made up for, must be corrected. What colonial past comparable to

what we see going on right now in the 21st century.

Imperial thinking is condemned in the West.

What about Eurasia? What about Moscow? What about Beijing?

Cliff May speaks to that and much more later tonight.

It's an astonishing thing.

I think the answer is no, and particularly in the campuses of all these people who are protesting, as they say, demonstrating very angry because they are

against empires and colonialism.

But they're only against empires and colonialism of the 19th century.

The British Empire no longer exists.

This is one of the last outposts that is being given up.

The French Empire no longer exists.

The French would like to be helping some of their former colonies

like Mali and Niger. They've been chased out of those places. But we do have empires forming

now in the 21st century. Beijing is an empire among the nations that it has made captive, the Tibetans.