The Falklands for the Falklanders

The Botox Princess 

In the year that marks the thirtieth anniversary of the Falklands War, Argentina, rather than reflecting on its former folly, is being more than usually ridiculous.  Best not to recall past aggressions and past humiliations, no; instead let’s have a lot of childish gestures.  Let’s have part of our Olympic team train on the islands, an event recorded in a video ad, which concluded with the slogan “To compete on English soil, we train on Argentine soil.”

Yes, it is no more than a stupid and childish stunt, the sort of thing I would expect from this immature and petulant nation.  Here we have a propaganda jamboree in advance of the Olympics, a clear contradiction of the government’s claim that it would not seek to make political gains from the London games. 

Actually I’m not being entirely fair.  It isn’t so much that Argentina is immature and petulant but in Cristina Kirchner, the altogether ridiculous Madame Botox, it certainly has an immature and petulant president.  Who could possibly take this woman seriously?  Even La Nacion, a leading Buenos Aries newspaper, criticised the fatuous stupidity of the Falklands video, advancing nothing and getting nowhere. 

It’s been a season for farcical gestures.  Recently at the G20 summit in Mexico Madame Botox tried to hand a package marked ‘UN – Malvinas’ to David Cameron, the British Prime Minister.  There she was, a silly schoolgirl, reprimanded by the head prefect.  Not only did Cameron decline to accept the package but he told her that she should respect the wishes of the Falkland Islanders themselves, who next year will be holding a referendum on their own future. 

That’s the thing that Kirchner and the patsies of her Olympic squad will never understand.  They will never understand that the whole question is not about real estate but people.  Buenos Aries can bleat all it likes about ‘Las Malvinas.’  Kirchner and her crew can bleat all they like about nefarious English ‘colonialism’, another favoured tune in this anniversary year.  The simple fact is that these islands belong not to England or Argentina but to the people who live there, people whose antecedents have lived there for generations.  No matter how many lessons one gives a monkey in democracy and self-determination it will simply never understand.

Not long after Cameron snubbed Argentina’s fatuous president, Hector Timerman, the country’s foreign secretary, called an impromptu press conference in which he accused England of avoiding the opportunity to discuss the issue before a recent meeting of the UN decolonisation committee.  When challenged why the Argentine government would not accept the outcome of the Falklands War he said;

Thirty years ago there was a war.  One hundred and eighty years ago there was an invasion by the British of Argentina.  Great Britain invaded Argentina four times because the ones who are famous around the world for being colonialists are the British, not the Argentines.  Argentina has always opposed colonialism and it fought against it and won. 

I for one would like to know exactly where, when and how Argentina fought against colonialism and won! But never mind that.  Rather imagine returning all present political geography to 1832 or thereabouts.  Imagine the colonialists of Buenos Aeries deprived of Patagonia, the territory they stole from the indigenous inhabitants in the so-called War of the Desert that wasn’t a desert at all.  Maybe that’s an issue that should be placed before the UN committee on decolonisation.  Not something, I imagine, Cristina and Hector would be terribly keen on.