Argentina declines invitation to Falklands meeting

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So hang on, that means that if Britain briefly occupied a bit of rock in 19th century Oceania, Australia - a radically different country and nation from Imperial Britain - is allowed to claim that bit of rock just the same? It's a crap argument.



If more than 5% of people in the Falkland Islands choose Argentinian sovereignty over that of the UK, I will eat my hat.

I agree. Will the Argies listen? Will they shite.

There are other arguments as well - i.e. that Britain never invaded a country and stole the land, that it was settled peacefully, and a whole host of not centrally important but which strengthen the case of the British Falklanders in any case.

The other point is that no government can lose the Falklands. Unlike in say, Northern Ireland, the British public is very strongly behind the Falklanders in their desire to remain British.

As one Argentinian journalist said of the Falklanders said: "There is nothing Argentinian about the islands. The people eat fish and chips, they have dinner at 6pm, they're British. The only thing that is remotely Argentinian is maybe the landscape that resembles barren Patagonia and the thousands of still active landmines that the Argentinian forces left behind."



The Argentinians have very little case, and in fact just look desperate. If they had from the very beginning been warm and friendly to the inhabitants of the islands and there were lots of links between the two in, say, a number of generations after that the attitude may have changed and people might look on Argentina more kindly. Now? They think that the Argentine government is poison (but they don't think that way of the people - well, most don't anyway).

You're wrong. At least parts of Ireland has been English or British in some form for a very, very long time. Nearly a thousand years in some form or another. At that time, Ireland would have been split into the various clans or chieftains. This would have been a medieval society, and not a homogenous nation with its own identity. When the Normans first colonised Ireland, the various clans weren't even united about how to deal with the invaders - in fact, didn't one clan invite them in? That was the story I had read.

And I meant it more in the sense that the British now, in the 21st century, would be occupying and invading something with a settled and happy population that was happy to be close culturally, ethnically and in many other ways to the UK - a lot closer than between the shaky relationship between Argentina and the FIs! - but do not want to be ruled by them.

I mentioned the British far-left because they seem to be so clouded in hate for their own country's policies and so readily to call their country 'imperialist' at any measure that they can't tell when the UK is clearly in the right and it's the other guys that are behaving like, well, imperialists. This doesn't extend to all of the Socialist Left - Michael Foot, for example, strongly supported the British intervention in the Falkland Islands.

Don't see why it matters. If they want to be part of the UK, and the UK is happy to have them, then that's the correct solution. They might very well be making a mistake, but it's their mistake to make.

Would you want to join a country that had invaded you within living memory?

A country that completely and deliberately ignores the voice of your people for political reasons?

A country that calls your democratically elected local government - elected by your people, almost none of whom to a man, woman and child want to become Argentinian - 'imperialistic' and refuses to even meet with them, and calls your friends and protectors imperialists when they're nothing of the sort?

A country that would offer you a far worse standard of living, and a country that has its own serious and long-running economic problems, as well as other issues with not respecting free speech and other civil rights (look at how they shout down objective voices on the FI situation in Argentina)?

A country where thousands of people have been needlessly killed in the extreme repression of its former military dictatorship?

A country whose language you don't speak?

A country whom you've never been part of?

A country whose culture is alien to you? Especially when the culture of your protectors - who don't mind hanging around at all to aid you - is very similar to your own?



Oh, and I've seen lots of documentaries on the Falkland Islands. Aside from the landscape, it looks much like Scotland in many ways.

Last edited by Tequila on 01 Feb 2013, 5:09 pm, edited 10 times in total.

They don't want to be part of the UK. The Falkland Islands have never been part of the UK. They want to remain a British Overseas Territory. British Overseas Territories are not part of the UK, but are under the UK's sovereignty. They, like all other residents of Overseas Territories (apart from the army bases on Cyprus) have full British citizenship. The Falkland Islands, like all other British Overseas Territories apart from Gibraltar, is not in the EU either.

The Gibraltarians don't want to be part of the UK either. There was a big integrationist push in the Gibraltar of the late 1960s and early 1970s, where they had an integrationist as Chief Minister, but that has all subsided now. Most Llanitos are happy with remaining an Overseas Territory.

I don't think it is a mistake at all, as can be evinced by Argentina's long-running insane, jealous attitude to the Falkland Islanders (and the invasion, of course).

How was that bit of rock treated, legally? Did Britain confer jurisdiction over the rock onto the Governor of New South Wales, for example? If so, then Australia would most assuredly be the successor state to Britain's imperial interest. On the other hand, if Britain had treated the bit of rock as a separate and distinct colony, then it would remain politically distinct, which is obviously the case with Pitcairn in respect of New Zealand.

But if Britain never set up any colonial administration at all, then with British withdrawal, the argument can be made that the territory reverted to terra nullis. And even if a plaque saying, "we still want this" is good enough to prevent abandonment, then the Spanish colonial administration in Buenos Aires had just as valid a claim in 1805 as the British had in 1774.



Legally, the lack of gunfire is not what constitutes, "peaceful." If Argentina had a valid and subsisting claim to the islands in 1833 and 1840, then the British establishments of administration and permanent settlement were not peaceful. Rather, they would have been prejudicial to a preexisting legal interest. I don't say that's the case, but it's not an argument that can be dismissed out of hand.



I'm not sure that the attitude of the British electorate is particularly relevant, except to the political fortunes of Prime Ministers and those who hope to succeed them. A Prime Minister confronted with the unlikely scenario of Falklanders opting for independence would have little choice to but to accede to those wishes, regardless of any attitudes at home.



I agree that the Argentinians have very little case. We only disagree on where the basis of that belief lies. I think the legal arguments are intensely interesting, but they evaporate in the face of the political reality on the ground in the only place that matters: the islands themselves.

The attitude of the British public would be relevant if a PM and his government tried to sell the Falklanders down the river. Any government that tried that would not be very popular. Watching what Blair and Hain tried to do to the Llanitos made me furious at the time.

The real people that matter in all of this, though, are the Falklanders as you say. The voice of that horrible harridan Kirchner doesn't count and the voice of the British public doesn't (really) count apart from as a guarantor and a punishing measure.

I'm sure the British public wouldn't have a serious problem with the Falklanders choosing independence or (ha!) Argentinian rule if that's what they wanted. I think the real thrust of it is that the British public are heavily behind the FIs self-determination, which in essence means them remaining British because that's what the FIers want. And it gives us a chance to wave our flegs.



And a lot of that, morally, is their own bloody fault. The phrase "charm offensive" seems to be alien to them.



I thought you might. I find them intensely boring.



This.

Last edited by Tequila on 02 Feb 2013, 4:58 am, edited 1 time in total.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYvrzNw6izo[/youtube]The Falklands seem beautiful!

Seen that documentary. Here's a selection of photos from Stanley (the capital) taken from Flickr:













Oh, and if thomas81 visited, this would doubtless be his favourite street:

So what is that "harridan Kirchner" facing from her own electorate?

If the British stand solidly being Falklanders' right to self-determination, what is the political attitute of the Argentines towards the islands? Is Kirchner simply responding to the majority of her electorate?

How much of this is simply political theatre--intended for the consumption of the audience back home, with no real policy support behind it? How much of this is intended to distract the Argentine electorate from the persistent economic and social policy problems by stirring up some good, old-fashioned jingoism?

It all seems so much of a tempest in a teapot.

I get the impression that the more jingoistic Argentines (and the government) support the Argentine claim, but increasingly there is a decent minority of people, even in Argentina, that can see that they're being lied to.