Argentina's Olympic Advert on the Malvinas/Falklands.

[deiseach]

[Long stream of snark at what I said]

Wow. I support the rights of the Falkland Islanders to self-determination and you come up with ream after ream of sneer. At this stage I think you fail the Turing test because there's no way a human could have read what I wrote and come up with that response.

They can justify their denial in much the same way as they could to eg the Unionist people of East Donegal in 1921...

Britain denied them self-determination by insisting that the Boundary Commission stick with the existing border in 1926. So you answer my question by referencing another example of a group of people who were denied self-determination by the very state that elevates that right for the Falkland Islanders to the status of holy scripture. Another Turing test fail.

[thejuice]

It was a very important political win for Frau Thatcher, it has gone down in the annals of British military victories (and in the public's mind) as being one they can be proud of. Therefore any concession to the Argentineans' now would be political suicide for a UK government. Particularly the Tories. No matter how much the financial burden might be to keep them, there is also talk of natural gas and oil fields within the Falklands waters so it might be worth hanging on to.

[Evil Genius]

[Long stream of snark at what I said]

Wow. I support the rights of the Falkland Islanders to self-determination and you come up with ream after ream of sneer. At this stage I think you fail the Turing test because there's no way a human could have read what I wrote and come up with that response.

So you weren't being sarcastic, then?

I guess I read it wrong, but in my defence, I'd say it was an easy mistake to make.

They can justify their denial in much the same way as they could to eg the Unionist people of East Donegal in 1921...

Britain denied them self-determination by insisting that the Boundary Commission stick with the existing border in 1926. So you answer my question by referencing another example of a group of people who were denied self-determination by the very state that elevates that right for the Falkland Islanders to the status of holy scripture. Another Turing test fail.

Balls.

Just as the Unionists of E.Donegal found themselves a disaffected minority within the Irish Free State in 1921/26, the Nationalists of "Free Derry" [sic] in 1921/6 were a disaffected minority within Northern Ireland.

Whereas those residents of the Falklands who wish to remain British are not a "minority" at all; on the contrary, they constitute the overwhelming majority of people living throughout the entire archipelago.

"Turing" indeed... 

[deiseach]

So you weren't being sarcastic, then?

I guess I read it wrong, but in my defence, I'd say it was an easy mistake to make.

You read into what I said what you wanted to read.

Balls.

Just as the Unionists of E.Donegal found themselves a disaffected minority within the Irish Free State in 1921/26, the Nationalists of "Free Derry" [sic] in 1921/6 were a disaffected minority within Northern Ireland.

Whereas those residents of the Falklands who wish to remain British are not a "minority" at all; on the contrary, they constitute the overwhelming majority of people living throughout the entire archipelago.

"Turing" indeed... 

Who determines these boundaries that allow us to determine what constitutes the majority and the minority? The overwhelming majority of the people of Ireland wished to leave the Union in 1918, yet the island was re-drawn to suit the minority. The answer, of course, is that self-determination is granted to those who wield the biggest stick.

Incidentally, with respect to Free Derry I wasn't referring to 1921-6, I was referring to 1969-72.

[Evil Genius]

Balls.

Just as the Unionists of E.Donegal found themselves a disaffected minority within the Irish Free State in 1921/26, the Nationalists of "Free Derry" [sic] in 1921/6 were a disaffected minority within Northern Ireland.

Whereas those residents of the Falklands who wish to remain British are not a "minority" at all; on the contrary, they constitute the overwhelming majority of people living throughout the entire archipelago.

"Turing" indeed... 

Who determines these boundaries that allow us to determine what constitutes the majority and the minority? The overwhelming majority of the people of Ireland wished to leave the Union in 1918, yet the island was re-drawn to suit the minority. The answer, of course, is that self-determination is granted to those who wield the biggest stick.

Incidentally, with respect to Free Derry I wasn't referring to 1921-6, I was referring to 1969-72.

Your analogy of Derry/Ireland cannot reasonably or logically be applied to the Falklands.

With Ireland, the question is essentially Partitionist i.e. whether you draw the line around the island, or within it.

Whereas with the Falklands, no-one disputes the geographical boundary of the territory; rather what is in dispute is whether the territory should ultimately be ruled by Buenos Aires or London.

To which matter, I would contend that the right of self-determination should apply, namely that we should respect the wishes of the 98%+ who prefer the latter.

(As for your "big stick" comment, that may be so, but are you seriously arguing that it should be so?)

Incidentally, with respect to Free Derry I wasn't referring to 1921-6, I was referring to 1969-72.

Whether E.Donegal in 1921 or Free Derry in 1972, the principle I was alluding to remains the same.

[deiseach]

(As for your "big stick" comment, that may be so, but are you seriously arguing that it should be so?)

The distinction you draw between a place where 80% support one side and another where 99% support one side is merely one of degrees. You come down on the side of self-determination in the case of the Falklands and on partition in Ireland, and a particularly ugly partition where places like Derry are denied self-determination to suit the lust for territory of the big stick wielder. There's no other explanation for why Derry (to name but one place) is on the side of the border that it's on, and to defend it is to defend the principle of might-is-right. I'm in favour of self-determination for both the people of the Falklands and the people of Derry. What are you in favour of?

[stew]

(As for your "big stick" comment, that may be so, but are you seriously arguing that it should be so?)

The distinction you draw between a place where 80% support one side and another where 99% support one side is merely one of degrees. You come down on the side of self-determination in the case of the Falklands and on partition in Ireland, and a particularly ugly partition where places like Derry are denied self-determination to suit the lust for territory of the big stick wielder. There's no other explanation for why Derry (to name but one place) is on the side of the border that it's on, and to defend it is to defend the principle of might-is-right. I'm in favour of self-determination for both the people of the Falklands and the people of Derry. What are you in favour of?

In fairness to EG he has never claimed to be human, as for what he is in favour of, it is whatever suits him at the time of asking!

[stew]

My daughter lives in Argentina, she talks frequently about the Falklands situation from the perspective of the Argentinian people, they take the Falklands situation very seriously and I just wish they would take the Islands back before that horrible bitch dies.

There is a reason why the Brits are loathed the world over and the Falklands are a prime example of why this is so.

[deiseach]

My daughter lives in Argentina, she talks frequently about the Falklands situation from the perspective of the Argentinian people, they take the Falklands situation very seriously and I just wish they would take the Islands back before that horrible bitch dies.

There is a reason why the Brits are loathed the world over and the Falklands are a prime example of why this is so.

What would 'taking it back' involve? If the Falkland Islanders resisted - then what?

[dillinger]

My daughter lives in Argentina, she talks frequently about the Falklands situation from the perspective of the Argentinian people, they take the Falklands situation very seriously and I just wish they would take the Islands back before that horrible bitch dies.

There is a reason why the Brits are loathed the world over and the Falklands are a prime example of why this is so.

As John Mc enroe said, You can not be serious! You do know it would cost a lot of lives, and especially Argentine ones? The U.K. i think would not be so soft the next time if it ever happened. Would that be worth it just to beat it up old Maggie before she dies?

[mayogodhelpus@gmail.com]

My daughter lives in Argentina, she talks frequently about the Falklands situation from the perspective of the Argentinian people, they take the Falklands situation very seriously and I just wish they would take the Islands back before that horrible bitch dies.

There is a reason why the Brits are loathed the world over and the Falklands are a prime example of why this is so.

As John Mc enroe said, You can not be serious! You do know it would cost a lot of lives, and especially Argentine ones? The U.K. i think would not be so soft the next time if it ever happened. Would that be worth it just to beat it up old Maggie before she dies?

So have France agreed to let the U.K. use the Charles de Gaulle then? 

[Evil Genius]

(As for your "big stick" comment, that may be so, but are you seriously arguing that it should be so?)

The distinction you draw between a place where 80% support one side and another where 99% support one side is merely one of degrees. You come down on the side of self-determination in the case of the Falklands and on partition in Ireland, and a particularly ugly partition where places like Derry are denied self-determination to suit the lust for territory of the big stick wielder. There's no other explanation for why Derry (to name but one place) is on the side of the border that it's on, and to defend it is to defend the principle of might-is-right. I'm in favour of self-determination for both the people of the Falklands and the people of Derry. What are you in favour of?

"What am I in favour of?"

Not conflating a territorial dispute (Ireland) with a jurisdictional dispute (Falklands).

No-one disputes the territorial boundaries of the Falklands; rather the dispute is simply as to whether they should be under the jurisdiction of Argentina or UK.

And on the basis that 98%+ of the inhabitants prefer the latter, imo they should be allowed to.

As for the Irish question which you dragged in ("Free Derry" etc), perhaps you could open a separate thread on that one - unless one already exists, that is... 

[Evil Genius]

My daughter lives in Argentina, she talks frequently about the Falklands situation from the perspective of the Argentinian people, they take the Falklands situation very seriously and I just wish they would take the Islands back before that horrible bitch dies.

Perhaps you should ask your daughter to read this:


The Falklands Will Never Be Argentine

By Prof. Carlos Escudé, Ph.D., Argentine National Council of Scientific Research (CONICET), Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, Buenos Aires

It is sufficient to talk to any Buenos Aires cabdriver to understand that the Argentine people know that the Falkland Islands will not be "recovered" by Argentina. The only locals who appear not to understand this basic fact of life are a group of war veterans, a small bunch of nationalist fundamentalists, and practically the entire lot of Argentine politicians.

Needless to say, however, in so doing the politicians are cheating and lying. The great majority of these politicians know that the Falklands will not be Argentine again, but they choose not to acknowledge this for fear of losing votes.

Indeed, within Argentina's "political class" there are two types of lies regarding the Falklands: the benign and the malign ones. The Falklands discourse of the late foreign minister Guido Di Tella was plagued with paradigmatic examples of "benign lies". He wanted Argentines to believe that Argentina was going to recover the Falkland Islands through peaceful means, "seducing" the Islanders while accumulating a sufficient number of national successes so as to actually make it convenient for the average Islander to accept Argentine sovereignty. Di Tella did not accept the Islanders' right to self-determination, but he was conscious of the fact that if Argentina did not succeed in making itself an attractive country, it would be impossible to get the British Government and Parliament to accept a transfer of sovereignty.

This type of lie is benign because the costs of failure, to Argentina, are low. Di Tella's Christmas cards to the Falkland population will be remembered in Falkland history as the eccentric gesture of a well-meaning official who represented a neighboring country that once threatened the Islanders. The most important cost of this type of lie is the attempt to deceive the Argentines themselves. Because the Argentines already know intuitively that the Falklands will not be theirs again, this lie leads to an increase in the disillusionment of the Argentine people vis-à-vis a political class that is chronically dedicated to the ignoble art of lying.

Contrariwise, the "malign lie" consists of claiming that Argentina will recover the Islands if it adopts a "tough" policy. Most politicians from both major political parties, as well many professional diplomats, engage in this type of lie, even if they are somewhat subdued with the present economic and political crisis of Argentina. Crisis notwithstanding, however, when it comes to issuing opinions about the Falklands they will usually agree that to attempt to "seduce" is a waste of time, that the Islanders must be disregarded, and that the costs to Britain of not transferring sovereignty to Argentina must be increased.

This is a malign, arrogant, macho-type lie because it propounds a policy of confrontation that, if implemented, would be dreadfully costly to Argentina herself, and would never succeed in recovering what was lost as far back as 1833, and which the war of 1982 made irrecoverable.

This second type of lie is also perversely naïve. It proposes to increase the British costs of remaining in the Falklands, without taking account of the fact that in order to increase the British costs one must augment the Argentine costs, and without realizing that Britain has infinitely more economic, diplomatic and military resources than Argentina. There is no way of making Britain "spend more" without Argentina herself spending more as well. And the increased British costs will always represent a much smaller percentage of total British resources, than the increased Argentine costs vis-à-vis total Argentine resources. Thus, increasing the British costs of not transferring sovereignty is necessarily a worse deal for Argentina than for Britain. And last but not least, these increased costs to Argentina will be felt much more dramatically by Argentina's increasingly poor masses than by the well-off elites who would profit emotionally and politically from such a reckless policy.

Why then is this malign lie consistently repeated when the issue of the Falklands is debated? The answer would appear to be that, in Argentina, a perverse political dynamics is at work whereby professional politicians fear that to say the "painful" truth about the Falklands (i.e., that they will never again be Argentine) will make them lose votes to politicians who continue to engage in the fantasy that the Islands will be recovered. If politician A admits publicly that the Falklands will not be recovered, he or she will lose votes to politician B, who by continuing with the lie will succeed in reaping political profits from primitive popular emotions.

The end result, of course, is to the detriment of the country itself. But when politicians consistently sell their souls to the popular vote, that is of little or no import."
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Future_of_the_Falkland_Islands_and_Its_People/The_Falklands_Will_Never_Be_Argentine

There is a reason why the Brits are loathed the world over and the Falklands are a prime example of why this is so.

On the 30th Anniversary of the Invasion (02 April 2012), President Kerchner held a Commemoration at Ushuaia (Embarkation port for the invasion), to which she invited the Heads of State of all of the other South American countries. Every single one of them had a more pressing 'prior engagement' that day (though Sean Penn might have turned up?).

You shouldn't project your own personal prejudices "the world over", since it invariably ends up saying more about you than your intended target... 

[Evil Genius]

My daughter lives in Argentina, she talks frequently about the Falklands situation from the perspective of the Argentinian people, they take the Falklands situation very seriously and I just wish they would take the Islands back before that horrible bitch dies.

There is a reason why the Brits are loathed the world over and the Falklands are a prime example of why this is so.

As John Mc enroe said, You can not be serious! You do know it would cost a lot of lives, and especially Argentine ones? The U.K. i think would not be so soft the next time if it ever happened. Would that be worth it just to beat it up old Maggie before she dies?

So have France agreed to let the U.K. use the [Aircraft Carrier] 'Charles de Gaulle' then? 

As it happens, I was studying in France when the Argies invaded the FI. I have to say I was a little surprised at the way the French (Govt, Media and People) appeared to lean strongly towards the British cause - eg, afterwards it emerged that France covertly invited RAF pilots to Toulon to practice using the (French-made) Dassault aircraft operated by the Argentine airforce.

I suspect they may have had the following in mind...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Pierre_and_Miquelon
http://www.st-pierre-et-miquelon.com/english/index.php

Perhaps the Canadians should invade and 'take them back'? 

[Jim_Murphy_74]

My daughter lives in Argentina, she talks frequently about the Falklands situation from the perspective of the Argentinian people, they take the Falklands situation very seriously and I just wish they would take the Islands back before that horrible bitch dies.

There is a reason why the Brits are loathed the world over and the Falklands are a prime example of why this is so.

Was she there back in 82?

I would hazard a guess that those that live in the Falkland islands would have had genuine fears that under Argentinian rule they would have joined the tens of thousands that the military government executed (10,000 according to their own records, a lot more according to human rights groups) for being "unpatriotic". 

What ever the rights and wrongs of past colonialism by Britain, Spain, Portugal, France....whoever, surely the only reasonable solution is to ask the Islanders what they want?  I mean these people given their residence and ancestry must have some say?

Is that really the key issue here, rather than the wishes of either Britain or Argentina?

/Jim.