Preparing the ground for Maximo Kirchner to occupy the front stage

[Peace Patriot]

6. Well, I can see that you've wholly bought the British line on this.

I don't. And I do know the history of it quite well. You are wrong that Argentina wasn't a country when the British conquered the islands, throwing the small colony of Argentines out. (There were no Indigenous on the islands but there were Argentines.) And I think it's curious that the British, from their first moments of conquest and colonization to this day, have never put the Falklands' colonial status to a vote. All major decisions--military, foreign policy, economic--are made in London, by the Crown and by the PM, and always have been. They have no sovereignty. I do think that the islanders' wishes are important but they have never been asked, and I truly wonder about the small farmers and business people, workers and the poor of these islands and what their wishes might be--the wishes of the majority--as possibly opposed to those of the 1%-ers who likely identify with the 1%-ers running this Margaret Thatcher-created England--looted by transglobal corporations, dragged into a war that 80% of the British people opposed, with high unemployment, hopeless youth and trashed and looted public services. The islanders are hogtied to that "neo-liberal" country and are the chattels of its military.

South America, on the other hand--including Argentina--is on the rise, economically and as to social justice and real democracy. I think the Crown and the PM in London don't dare put the Falklands' colonial status to a democratic vote, frankly. There is a chance that they would lose and they are not about to give up this strategic military location, for whatever imperial wars the U.S. "military-industrial complex" might devise and for its proximity to Argentina's oil.

I have seen no polls of the islanders and there has been no vote, ever. But I don't buy the British ruling class line that these islands belong to "the Crown," that they were legitimately acquired and that their interest is not typical imperial exploitation and that they care about the islanders' wishes. I have no reason to trust what they say, any more than I trust what our own ruling class says about its bloody-handed, transglobal activities.