The reality is that these colonies will sooner or later inevitably become part of their continents. They cannot indefinitely be protected by a European patron, and Argentina’s claims are not going away.
Doesn’t matter what the locals think. Which is odd, when the whole decolonisation thing was driven by ew must do what the locals think, eh?
If they didn’t have double-standards…
The whole point isn’t localism, it’s destroying Western power.
Ah, but Tim:
“In the case of the Falklands, its status as an overseas territory has been staunchly defended by successive governments largely as the price of victory in the 1982 Falklands war. In truth, I suspect this has much to do with the fact that the islanders, unlike the abandoned Hongkongers or Diego Garcians, were white British. “
Wait, the Graun cares about the Diego Garcians now?
Wait, the Groan cares about Hong Kong now?
And it is exactly for this reason that the Bennite Left in 1982 were prepared to hand them over to a literally fascist regime.
The war of 1982 has now made it impossible for the Falklands ever to be handed over. It would be electoral suicide.
Michael Foot, to his credit, was as gung-ho as Mrs Thatch.
I remember him as being more gung-ho, obviously because he thought she wouldn’t dare try it so that he could then claim to be more patriotic than she was.
(That was before we knew he’d been taking Moscow gold.)
I don’t recall the Guardian being so positive about Greenland becoming “part of it’s continent” when Trump suggested it.
Didn’t the colonisers of Argentina exterminate the indigenous population when it was colonised as part of the Spanish empire?
Argentina tried to exterminate Paraguayans during the war. They lost 50% of their population. Why Paraguay has such a close relationship with its Indios. Most Paraguayans speak Guarani in addition to Spanish
I thought that most Paraguayans spoke German as their first language
Yup. That’s why when Herzl was first looking for somewhere for a Jewish state he favoured Patagonia – the small local population had recently been genocided by the Argentinians.
But the East European Jews wouldn’t wear it – it had to be Palestine.
This seems fairly unlikely. The places where there were lots of people already in the Americas (won’t call them indigenous unless we also call English indigenous to England) mostly ended up intermarrying.
Extermination is only really possible if you outnumber or at least aren’t vastly outnumbered by the ones already there.
Smallpox, the White man’s best weapon.
I know a great many South & Central Americans. The vast majority of them have some Indio blood. More in Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru … Pure-ish Spanish/ Portuguese tends to be restricted to the upper classes.
Remember the abortion debate in Northern Ireland a couple of years ago? At the time there was no government in NI, owing to the various parties’ inability to form one. Meanwhile, back in Parliament, we had a number of Labour MPs who, despite their anti-colonialist ideas, called for Parliament to step in and impose the legalisation of abortion on the NI people, whether they wanted it or not.
So Jenkem is saying Trump should annex Greenland?
and Canada, Bermuda, the Bahamas, Cuba and a host of others
Pierre et Miquelon ?
In fairness to Trump, he just wants to unite the world’s “Bullshit speaking nations”. Totally normal behaviour.
No, he reckons Carney should annex Greenland; Trump should annex Cuba (and all those other small islands like Jamaica, Haiti, Bemuda,Barbados ….
I think what he’s saying is the Canuke’s defense capabilities should match their needs & they shouldn’t be hiding behind NATO & expecting the US to cover them. The Greenland gambit is is a bit unfair. If you go on Google Earth & rotate so you’re over the North Pole you’ll see a roughly circular sea. There a long coastline for Russia & another one for Canada. The Greenland & Alaska (US) & Norway coastlines are relatively short. If Russia decided to unilaterally exploit Canadian resources, there’s very little Canada alone could do about it. If the US is expected to protect the resources, it want’s a crack at the resources to pay the tab.
Probably the easiest way for us Canadians to settle this is to say “Right, we’re building nuclear weapons now.”
We were going to do that after WW2, but were talked out of it. I’m thinking that was a mistake now.
Certainly we could do it fairly easily. Supposedly the CANDU reactor design allows for relatively easy diversion compared to some others.
India got their weapon material through diversion from a CANDU built there. Which caused a fair stink at the time.
Tbf, as an Indian colony Canada could probably build a jeetnuke.
I just wouldn’t want to be within 500 miles of it, because I know what Bharat’s elite human capital is capable of.
NATO and Pax Americana are over. Like many organisations, they get created at a certain time, the reason for their creation makes sense at that time, but when the reason doesn’t exist, we don’t send everyone home and sell off the buildings.
NATO was a response to the Soviet Union. Russia was obsessed with protecting itself after WW2. The war was traumatic to the Russian people. If you had to eat rat meat to survive in Stalingrad, that probably never goes away. You’re going to want some other people getting to fight the Germans first. Of course, to the people who were kids or born after the war, like Gorby, Yeltsin and Putin, you’re going to have a different perspective on things.
And Pax America was about protecting the countries that the USA traded with, as well as this idea of the Soviet Union going after the USA, which was always bollocks in my opinion. Once you don’t see the Soviets as threating the people that buy from you, you don’t really need to be their shield. I don’t credit Trump with a lot, but I think he’s actually ahead of his opponents on this who still think Europe needs protecting.
Ukraine is a very specific thing for Russians, because there’s Russian bits in there. And I wouldn’t rule out them wanting to get the Suwałki Gap, to link Belarus to Kaliningrad. It doesn’t feel that unreasonable. But everyone could be sensible about that. Sell the Russians a half mile wide bit of land with bridges going over it linking Lithuania and Poland. Make a treaty about it. Of course, the EU won’t like it, so we might have a little war over that, too.
Seems a bit odd to get all bent out of shape over people just saying “Malvinas” and then calmly suggest Poland and/or Lithuania should be reasonable and just let Russia have a chunk of land because it wants it.
And NATO can continue for as long as all the parties want it.
Anyone who says “Malvinas” wants to bring violence against the people of the Falkland Islands. That makes them a threat to us. We should treat them as such.
I’m saying that it’s not unreasonable for Russia to have a connection to Kaliningrad, especially as it all got a bit botched at the end of the soviet union. And let’s do it peacefully. Russia coughs up some money and gets a corridor.
I prefer them being so fucked up by their current misadventure that there’s nothing they can do about anything. Preferably including losing control of both Kaliningrad and Belarus, along with half the members of their unhappy federation.
I’d prefer that, but Russia can’t be viewed like most European nations. It’s a petrostate, so it has the same sort of incentives as Venezuela, Saudi, Iran than Poland and Czechia.
Australia is in similar goo. Disarmed populace, token military. India and China coveting their land.
Defense from UK will be limited. Australia’s entire existence depends on Trump’s attitude toward them. And there are commies aplenty Down Under trying to piss him off. Decadence abounds. They don’t understand how naked they are.
Gamecock, unfortunately very true. Oz is effectively unprotected. Some people understand this but they’re not in power. And we’re totally dependent on the US.
But we just signed a bunch of mutual defence pacts with South Pacific nations, they’ll save us! I hope they realise that our promise to come to their aid isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.
‘Sir’ Simon Jenkins. Living embodiment of the Graun strapline ‘Wrong about everything, all of the time’. The silliest twat to appear in those pages and that’s saying something.
He’s my lodestar. If I’m unsure of what line to take, then take the opposite to SJ.
As it is, the Falklands must continue its existence frozen as an isolated military fortress on the far side of a world from its generous protector, Britain. But sooner or later, a UK government will have the courage to begin negotiations again
Is that like the courage to be gay?
Why can’t these twats ever find the courage to do something normal or good?
Such was the logic of war, that once started it required a “victory”
Simon Jenkins is 83 and will die soon, Inshallah.
But he’ll go to his mean little atheist grave still choking on bile over Margaret Thatcher’s victory in the Falklands 40 years ago.
Good!
If the UK wished to abandon the Falklands, why would it need to negotiate.
Does he think that the British taxpayer should bribe the Argies with even more than Starmer was prepared to pay Mauritius??
How will snivel serpents get their jollies in Buenos Aires if their aren’t “negotiations” attached to their treasonable behaviours? Won’t somebody think of the snivel serpents?
It only became a military fortress because Argentina attacked it.
We really need to send someone to talk to the Argentine embassy and explain that if they say Malvinas one more time, we’ll kick off. It’s not enough to just eject an aggressor, you need to leave them with a few scars.
if they say Malvinas one more time, we’ll kick off.
Er, what with, WB? We don’t even have tactical nukes any more. All we have is this.
Well, we’d better build some then!
Although I’m pretty sure we could just drop a load of murderers and rapists off on their coastline.
We have a number of attack subs with cruise missiles, Just one of these could sink Argentina’s excuse for a navy and do some serious damage inland.
We might be a shadow of the nation we were even 40 years ago, but we still have the capacity to slap down a bunch of hairy-arsed useless dagos.
Sadly, it is the will which is lacking.
And lose you the war and the islands. Even Maggie wasn’t daft enough to attack the Argies at home (beyond special ops) as this would have united South America against us and made it difficult for the US to continue its half-hearted support.
Not for long.
Technically we have five attack submarines and whilst just one could destroy Argentina’s rundown Navy, none of them appear to be operational.
Fortunately we do have an overwhelming numerical superiority when it comes to numbers of Admirals,
Zero is a number.
More seriously, how much of that military might can the UK actually deploy at this point?
If we’re going to object to irredentist claims then we’d better find a way of kicking the Irish Republic too.
I’m not talking about individual people, but that the vice president of Argentina has been vocal about the Falklands being theirs. That means nothing less than that the government of Argentina supports violence against the British people. If the government of Ireland is saying such things, we should also cut off diplomatic relations with Ireland.
Always up for that. Start with abolishing the CTA.
It stopped being a military fortress about a year ago. As soon as Ukraine demonstrated that it’s possible to fly large numbers of cheap drones thousands of miles deep into the territory of a world power and destroy its infrastructure almost at will (limits: number of drones and size of explosive payload), everyone, including the Argentine govt/military, took notice. The destruction and coralling of the Russian Black Sea fleet will also have been noted.
You can look at the Falklands defence arrangements on Google. It was a good plan until dronesville, now it’s irrelevant.
So long as the United States remains powerful it will be the final arbiter on what happens in the Western Hemisphere. We should do our best to remain a strong and useful ally (for so many reasons).
No. Drones are more of an annoyance you swat with C-RAM (see the Middle East). They’re not the Messiah.
Ukraine has a world beating advantage – Starlink, and the best ISR in the world giving them real time targeting info. Argentina doesn’t have the capability to control swarms of drones in the middle of the Atlantic, or precisely target them at British military assets.
Falklands are much easier to defend than the large land border Ukraine and Russia share. It’s an archipelago surrounded by water, not easy to sneak up on.
And unfortunately for Ukraine, drones don’t take or hold territory. They’ve launched spectacular attacks in Russia before, but are still getting chewed up in the depressing forever war in Ukraine itself. It’s the equivalent of Zeppelin raids on London for strategic effects – very exciting stuff and a nice break from the blood and mud, but the actual war is still down in the trenches. No, drones don’t win wars – men do.
Too much to address for this round. I’m sure another opportunity will arise.
Yarp. Drones are a useful bit of kit, but they have strengths and weaknesses. They mostly work over a short range and for small, guerilla warfare. Someone leaves the door to an aircraft hanger open and you send a little drone. You can use a cheap drone to cause some expensive damage to a high value asset.
We really need to send someone to talk to the Argentine embassy and explain that if they say Malvinas one more time, we’ll kick off
Why? Wordplay isn’t a capital offense.
We actually get on great with the dagos irl. “Malvinas” is just a meme.
Free speech – up to certain limits.
But speech is free. Fighting expensive.
The proper answer to dago speechplay is superior English speechplay.
Let’s hope Falklands West beats Gibraltar North in the football.
Saying “The falklands are argentinian” is like saying “your house belongs to me” with the implied threat of violence.
I mean, yeah, alright. You’re right. I’m just bored with it. Either attack the Falklands or shut up. I suppose the best response would be posting something to the embassy about them being puny little faggots that aren’t going to do it because they know we’ll fuck them up. I’ll get Google Translate onto it.
Do we have anything to hit Buenos Aires with?
A wet fish?
Hit Sao Paulo. (Government schools.)
Burnham will pay them to take the Falklands from us.
He’s blaming Maggie for everything domestic now (such a grown up!) so this ongoing international situation is her fault too. Gary Lineker as the new ambassador, methinks.
He is too young to understand what it was like for anyone (to be more precise anyone outside the Liverpool area to which Harold Will Soon directed government largesse) in the 1970s before the disaster zone called 1974-9 swept Mrs Thatcher to power.
He was still in short trousers when Maggie came to power. You are shielded from the world still, more concerned with Thunderbirds and getting fizzy pop. Most of his views about Thatcher have come from bitter socialists.
I remember the miner’s strike. It was one of the first political events where I was at an age to talk about it. And apart from a few Dave Sparts, everyone was opposed to the miners. Everyone had lived through the 3 Day Week. The British press, including the Guardian and the Daily Mirror opposed the miners.
Blaming the state of the country on Margaret Thatcher is just utterly absurd. She left office in 1990. 36 years ago. What was the impact of the Nazis on Germany by 1980? Other than a lack of beigel shops, and a few historical sights in Nuremberg to visit, nothing. People wanted to undo a lot of Nazi things and did.
The truth is, a lot of Maggie’s things, we like. We like the competitive coach market. We like Specsavers. We like the choice of cellphone operators, rather than waiting for the GPO to come and install a phone. Despite the endless propaganda about water companies dumping sewage in rivers so that Feargal Sharkey and his mates don’t lose a day’s fishing, water is clean, beaches are clean.
He also conveniently forgets that the Labour government of 1997-2010 – in which he was a Minister – had all that power and time to revoke Thatcherism. They didn’t. What they did instead was to lay the Progressive foundations of the shitshow we now have.
If that means we get to send Lineker far away, I’m all for it. One way ticket, mind.
The Falklands were British before modern Argentina even existed – modern Argentina being a country of settlers who killed most of the locals and raped and subjugated the rest, which I thought was a bad thing.
But that’s not important right now.
In any sane world, we would be exploiting its natural resources – principally oil, but also fish, and penguins – and installing ‘settlements’ there for our homegrown prisoners and the large number of people who hate us but for some reason want to live here.
They could live the bracing, healthy outdoor life in tents, and fish and till the land for food, guarded only by robot GPMG emplacements programmed to shoot on sight.
But of course we’re led by unfathomably stupid cunts.
I seem to recall there’s still a good deal of mine clearance to be done. Right, you lot: link arms and form a line.
I don’t want to think how our politicians would “exploit penguins”.
Are these the masturbating penguins?
They’d have to p-p-pick them up, and see how it went from there.
Independence, Commonwealth membership, defence treaty. And for fuxake get some attack subs in the water.
Aren’t all our hunter-killer subs out of service at the mo’?
“Revenge is a dish best served cold.”
Devastate their ports and ships 3 years later.
I suggest that Simon Jenkins gives us a break by spending some time telling the French that they will inevitably have to hand over St Pierre and Miquelon to Canada
Yeah, and hand back Normandy to its rightful Duke.
Normandy? I think the settlement reached by Henry V (before he shat himself to death) should be the start of negotiating the new arrangements for Gaul.
Probably apocryphal, but supposedly someone in the US gov’t questioned St. Maggie about whether the Falklands were worth fighting for – small island, far away. She replied, “sounds a lot like Hawaii, doesn’t it?”.
Sp, give away The Channel Islands to France, give away Corsica to Italy, give away Saint Pierre and Miquelon to America, give away Greenland to Canada, give away Hawaii to China.
The list could include give away Airstrip One to Eurasia: I’m sure Jenkins would be happy with that.
Won’t be long before China claims it anyway at the rate they’re trying to expand
It’s as ridiculous a claim as Chile demanding a bit of Argentina. “Well, it’s near us”.
The Falklands were governed for the longest time by the UK, then Spain, then Argentina. 98% of the population wants to be British.
Argentine wine is off the table here now. That’s $100m of trade between our countries that I’m sure Chile and South Africa would love to have.
…and it’s a pity, because Millei is a Good Thing. I’ve mentioned Hugh Bicheno’s Razor’s Edge here before, and his delve into Argentina’s history is revealing. It’s going to take a while for that to drain away.
He is, but he needs to give his vice-president a fucking slap. I think he’s past all this, understands the future of Argentina is global trade.
The cunts that still want the Falklands should be treated as potential hostiles. Cancel the visas of the 3 players in the Premier League. They mean harm against the UK so we cannot have them moving freely in the country.
Excessive? Maybe. But people in Argentina need to realise there’s a price for saying “Malvinas”. If they want to trade and be friends, the price of that is not threatening our people.
Oooh, Words Have Consequences, eh? I’m sure the Graun will agree with you.
“The Malvinas are argentinian” is a statement as an implied threat. That they belong to Argentina and we will take them by violence. Threatening violence is not free speech. I don’t want people who believe that, and who we can assume will take the opportunity to attack this country.
You want to be in the UK, you don’t get to talk about violence against the UK.
Depends on what the words are.
We’re already boycotting French and German wine because of their behaviour over Brexit. Must we add Argentinian? I suppose we might.
There’s plenty of Malbec from Chile.
And it’s better.
It’s extraordinary that SJ takes no account of the wishes of the inhabitants of the Falklands. No state has a claim to a territory without the consent of those who live there…
He’s a fucking Lib Dem. What do you expect?
That’s not fair: I have met many honest Lib Dems.
What you should have said is “He writes for the Guardian so he requires everyone else to slavishly obey their policy of the day”
That’s not fair: I have met many honest Lib Dems.
No sorry, you just made that up. Are they in the room with you now ?
Nobody is in the room with me now – that does not mean I am the last survivor of the human race – you are descending to Starmer-level insults.
Let us not forget Elsaß, that part of Germany currently occupied by france.
Also, Königsberg, Danzig etc in the east.
And Festung Breslau. And I’m sure the Magyars would like Western Ukraine and half of Rumania back!
I urge that we start our anti-neo-colonialisation policies by stopping foreign aid to the likes of Jamaica, Trinidad and so on.
I think you meant to write “stop all foreign aid to everyone forever”.
Caricom is demanding BVI be ceded to them. Don’t just cut aid. Trump ’em. Slap ’em around with high tariffs.
You need tell them one word: Belgrano.
I just knew, before I even clicked on the link, that this would be a Jenkins column. It takes a lot of work to be as wrong as OJ but his dedication to it is admirable.
Jenkins is obviously more literate and more sophisticated than Murphy but in some ways is more insidious and more evil. Do these people ever F$%^ing sleep?
Jenkins is the sort of twat that people listen to because they have a nice voice and a patrician manner about them, like David fucking Attenborough. They aren’t actually more intelligent than anyone else, and some of their views are monstrous, but they get away with it because of manners.
The revulsion towards Tommy Robinson is a lot about how he looks and how he speaks. Cropped hair, bomber jacket, t-shirt and a Luton accent score you a lot lower than a suit and a Surrey accent. I mean, the bloke IS a bit dodgy, but people judged him even before they knew that.
Latin American militaries really aren’t good at much beyond brutalizing their own populations, so the Falklands will remain British so long as Britain is willing to pick up the tab, the Falklanders want to remain British, and neither care much about hurt Argentine feelings.
Overlooking that Powell is still lingering, like something that won’t flush
The Sea Lion oilfield is expected to generate some £4billion in Revenue to the Falkland Islands government (a bit over £1m per inhabitant). It is no wonder that Argentina wants to steal it. Are you surprised that the fervently anti-British Grauniad supports them?
If there was no oil there Mrs Thatcher would still have been right to defend the islanders from the invasion.
But the Graun is against oil extraction, John. Do you think they may have a cognitive dissonance problem? Or perhaps one of consistency?
The Grauniad is consistently against the Conservative Party
The Guardian is consistantly against the British People.
I’ve actually taken the trouble to ask an Argentinian about this. What I’ve been told is the ordinary Argentinian doesn’t give a monkey’s about the islands, who lives on them & what flag gets flown over them. The Malvinas! is much more about Argentinian internal politics & factions. Much the same as the ordinary Spanish regarding Gib.