Falkland Islanders to hold referendum over sovereignty

[MichaeltheGreat]

At least the British government realizes its historical claim to the Malvinas is full of ****, even if the dimmer posters here don't.

"We have no doubt about our sovereignty over the Falkland Islands," said Foreign Office minister Chris Bryant this week. But official papers show that, for more than a century, the Foreign Office has had qualms about the merits of Britain's claim to the Falklands.

In 1910, a 17,000-word memo was commissioned by the Foreign Office to look at the historical dispute over sovereignty. The study highlighted many weaknesses in the British case and can be seen as our equivalent of the Pentagon Papers, the leaked study of US policy in Vietnam.

The holes in the British case shocked many officials in Whitehall. The head of the Foreign Office's American department, Gerald Spicer, wrote: "From a perusal of this memo it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the Argentine government's attitude is not altogether unjustified and that our action has been somewhat high-handed."

An assistant secretary in the same department wrote: "The only question is who did have the best claim at the time when we finally annexed the islands. I think undoubtedly the United Province of Buenos Aires." And the British ambassador in Argentina, Sir Malcolm Robertson, wrote in 1927: "I must confess that, until I received that memorandum myself a few weeks ago, I had no idea of the strength of the Argentine case nor of the weakness of ours."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...entina-britain

So some handwringing low-level staffer wrote a memo. Cry me a Rio de la Plata.

[giblets]

Except the ****ing Argentinian garrison they forced to leave the islands, of course.

So they kept a garrison on an island where nobody actually lived and then got upset when someone else "stole" it and settled it?

[Tupac Shakur]

So they kept a garrison on an island where nobody actually lived and then got upset when someone else "stole" it and settled it?

No, they kept a garrison on East Falkland to protect the Argentinian settlement that was there in 1833 when the British stole the islands.

[MichaeltheGreat]

See? Why is it so hard for morons like MtG to just admit the obvious fact that the UK stole the Falklands from Argentina? Maybe the Argies wouldn't be so pissed off about it if the majority of the English-speaking population of the world didn't buy into ridiculous British propaganda that attempts to make the very reasonable Argentinian claim to the islands look foolish.



Except the ****ing Argentinian garrison they forced to leave the islands, of course.

You mean the Argentineans who didn't exist for another 126 years had a garrison there when the British claimed the islands in 1690? THAT is the original valid claim of sovereignty over what was then terra nullia. Not the 1833 settlement. The Brits never relinquished their claim of sovereignty since 1690.

[Tupac Shakur]

The British weren't the first to discover the islands, claim them, or to settle them. The only real justification under international law for respecting Britain's claims to the Falklands is the long-standing de facto control they've exerted over the islands since kicking the Argentinians out in 1933 and the right of self-determination for the British colonists they shipped there since. Arguing anything else is just moronic repetition of British propaganda, as the British government itself is well aware of.

[MichaeltheGreat]

In all likelihood, they weren't the first to discover them. The islands showed on a few maps in more or less the right location in the 16th century, other maps showed islands several hundred miles off, and others showed no islands. It's possible that they were "discovered" and "rediscovered" independently several times, as nautical charts in newly explored areas were prized secrets.

The British were the first to land and make a claim (John Strong, 1690), and the first to definitively circumnavigate the islands and accurately record doing so (William Dampier, 1696). So who made a claim prior to 1690?

[regexcellent]

Who cares? The kelpers want to be British.

[MichaeltheGreat]

The sheep need to know who their boyfriends are going to be.

[Dinner]

It's nice to see Drake is wrong once again.

[regexcellent]

Drake is just trolling as usual. Right or wrong isn't as important as how many people get upset.

[MichaeltheGreat]

At least there's some semblance of a dispute, but it's funny - the Argies and their bootlickers whining about "colonialism" when they took over territory the Spanish emptied out by genocide, then decided to have their island colony nearly 300 miles offshore from a near no-man's land part of their country, and now they claim that the Falklands' resident's desires are "irrelevant" since they're "colonizers." It's not very internally consistent, but it doesn't take much to whip up Latinamerican nationalism as a distraction from real internal issues.

The irony of whining about "colonialism" is that the Falklands Islanders would likely support independence if they weren't threatened by a hostile neighbor much larger they they are.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Drake is just trolling as usual. Right or wrong isn't as important as how many people get upset.

He's further from making anyone upset than he is from being wrong. He needs to polish his trolling.

[Donegeal]

Fine. Whatever. Both have claims. Both can stick it up their asses. Anybody know how the actual vote went?

[MichaeltheGreat]

Not yet. The sheep had a hard time understanding how to vote.

[Tupac Shakur]

So who made a claim prior to 1690?

God