[Politics] A day that will live in infamy

[Tubby Mondays]

And Sailors

Sorry tried to generalise.

Should’ve known better given that I know how my dad got wound up as a royal marine being called a soldier!

 

[Chicken Run]

Sorry tried to generalise.

Should’ve known better given that I know how my dad got wound up as a royal marine being called a soldier!

He would have been even more irritated if you’d call him a Sailor

 

[Tubby Mondays]

He would have been even more irritated if you’d call him a Sailor

He’s just irritated

 

[Thunder Bolt]

1000 lives dead - honestly I despair that people think so little of human life

The humans who choose to live there without being invaded, told to speak a different language at gun point?

 

[dsr-burnley]

Yes it does, Britain has no business being there. Thousand lives dead which no one cares about

Would you support Trump if he invaded Greenland?

 

[Brovion]

They were uninhabited when we stuck our flag there, over 100 years previously. Do you agree Trump should share Greenland with Denmark?

No of course not - and there is no strong view in America that says "Greenland is ours!" unlike Argentina with the Falklands. The reason being of course is that there is no reason for Americans to think that Greenland is 'theirs'. The Argentinian position may be wrong, but they do have a reason for believing it.

 

[Since1982]

I was a student at Portsmouth Poly then and my campus buildings were very close to the docks. I recall spending what seemed like days but perhaps was only hours being deafened by the sound of Sea Harriers being flown in to land on the aircraft carriers. Then watching the QE2 sail out onto the Solent. Surreal. The right of people to self determination remains as important now as it was then - Ukraine, Greenland, Gaza to name just a few.

 

[Brovion]

Why this obsession with land? Why shoudl the interests of the land be considered paramount and the interest of the people disregarded? They had a vote only a few years back about whether there should be talks with Argentina, and it was overwhelmingly "no".

I realise these issues occur a lot around the world. Should the Channel Islands be French, should the Canaries be Moroccan, should Greenland belong to the USA. But in all those cases, it's generally accepted that the inhabitants should have the say and the land's situation is an insignificant issue. If you want to back the likes of Galtieri and Trump in their land grabs (I don't think France or Morocco have made any such claim, at least not recently, so they can be ignored), then I hope you're in a minority.

All you've done is demonstrate that there is no catch-all or blueprint to adjudicate on all global territorial disputes - and I agree. Also you obviously either didn't read or didn't understand my original post where I said I though the war was a just war. Yes it was avoidable (probably most wars are), but once the invasion had happened it was the right, or rather the 'least worse' response. God knows how many Argentinian lives we saved by directly bringing about the collapse of a very nasty right-wing regime.

So actually I hope I'm in the majority.

 

[Thunder Bolt]

No of course not - and there is no strong view in America that says "Greenland is ours!" unlike Argentina with the Falklands. The reason being of course is that there is no reason for Americans to think that Greenland is 'theirs'. The Argentinian position may be wrong, but they do have a reason for believing it.

The ArgentinIan’s believe it because they’re taught it in school from a young age, but that doesn’t make it true.

 

[Happy Exile]

Just to add I've just returned from 7 weeks in Argentina. I really like the people, but The Falklands issue is always under the surface, particularly with the older generation, but, they don't mention it and i don't mention it.

Signs are everywhere, on T shirts, Clothing, on Buses and Trains proclaiming Argentinas right to the islands. This one I took just behind the presidential palaceView attachment 199399

I spent a week or so in Argentina in 2001, mostly not far from Mendoza. One public building, something like a town hall, proudly displayed the wreckage of a British aircraft in the window

The conflict was never mentioned though, I found people very friendly and anyone who wanted to raise the fact I was English only did so in the context of football and the 98 World Cup.

 

[Brovion]

The ArgentinIan’s believe it because they’re taught it in school from a young age, but that doesn’t make it true.

Maybe, maybe not, I can certainly understand their position even if I don't 100% agree with it. However I 100% reject Trump's claim to Greenland.

 

[1066familyman]

Interesting narrative developing on this thread along the lines of the Falklands war saving countless Argentine lives from a right wing military dictatorship that disappeared thousands of Argentines.

f*** me!... it's as if the Pinochet and Thatcher love in never happened!

 

[1066familyman]

I was a student at Portsmouth Poly then and my campus buildings were very close to the docks. I recall spending what seemed like days but perhaps was only hours being deafened by the sound of Sea Harriers being flown in to land on the aircraft carriers. Then watching the QE2 sail out onto the Solent. Surreal. The right of people to self determination remains as important now as it was then - Ukraine, Greenland, Gaza to name just a few.

Wasn't so important when the French and British did a secret deal with Mussolini over Ethiopia though was it.

But yeah, those lovely Brits defending people's rights to self determination all over the world, eh.

We all know why Thatcher went to war over the Falklands, and it had bugger all to do with self determination by Falkland Islanders.

 

[Thunder Bolt]

Wasn't so important when the French and British did a secret deal with Mussolini over Ethiopia though was it.

But yeah, those lovely Brits defending people's rights to self determination all over the world, eh.

We all know why Thatcher went to war over the Falklands, and it had bugger all to do with self determination by Falkland Islanders.

The world has moved on since Thatcher. It was the UN who decreed the islanders should have self determination so they voted in March 2013.

 

[Simster]

The world has moved on since Thatcher. It was the UN who decreed the islanders should have self determination so they voted in March 2013.

You have to be careful with the concept of "self determination", as it is open to abuse and gerrymandering. You could pick a disputed island, plop 200 families on it and then ask them what nationality they are. I bet this is exactly the sort of thing we'll soon see in the islands around the South China sea which the Chinese are aggressively claiming these days.

I think better arguments for the Falklands remaining British are the fact that they were uninhabited when the Europeans arrived, we got there first, and they are a whole 300 miles off the coast of Argentina anyway. It's not like they are two miles off the coast and a major security threat to Argentina. There's absolutely no harm to Argentina in them being British.

 

[Since1982]

We all know why Thatcher went to war over the Falklands, and it had bugger all to do with self determination by Falkland Islanders.

Of course. But that doesn't diminish the right of people the world over to make decisions about their own sovereignty and for governments to defend that - even if, inevitably, there are other factors at play. Or are you suggesting we should have left the islanders to their fate under a military junta?

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

For the record, my view is the Falklands are ours.
The Argies can f*** Off.

But Thatcher caused the death of many people by her disgraceful complacent disregard of warnings of the invasion.

Let's not conflate the two things, here.

 

[Thunder Bolt]

You have to be careful with the concept of "self determination", as it is open to abuse and gerrymandering. You could pick a disputed island, plop 200 families on it and then ask them what nationality they are. I bet this is exactly the sort of thing we'll soon see in the islands around the South China sea which the Chinese are aggressively claiming these days.

I think better arguments for the Falklands remaining British are the fact that they were uninhabited when the Europeans arrived, we got there first, and they are a whole 300 miles off the coast of Argentina anyway. It's not like they are two miles off the coast and a major security threat to Argentina. There's absolutely no harm to Argentina in them being British.

I agree self determination is only a very small part. I had already pointed out that the islands were uninhabited and called the Falkland Islands over 100 years before Argentina seceded from Spain.

 

[BigBod]

She demanded to be in 24 hour contact with the fleet. The admirals told her that those communications interfered with missile defence and scheduled communications would be better. She over ruled them.

On the subject of Exocets, and this I am less sure of, I believe the only reason there were surplus french missiles to be bought by Argentina was because we'd backed out of an agreement to buy them.

What a load of tosh! Every ship in the fleet was in touch with the UK 24/7 and vice versa. Back in them days we had teleprinters in the communications office. This was linked to a crypto machine. Signals are received by Radio Automatic Teletype (RATT) Through HF receivers. We could also transmit signals in the same way using murry code tikka tape. To know if the receiving station had received your signal 100% clear and readable (ZBZ5) they would respond to you in morse code. Each signal was given a priority code to determine the time it should take for the recipient to receive the signal. The fastest was a Flash signal denoted by a 'Z' and it would be expected for that signal to reach it's recipient in 10 mins or less anywhere in the world 24/7. There were a lot of Flash signals in 82. Flash signals are rarely used in peacetime.

 

[1066familyman]

The world has moved on since Thatcher. It was the UN who decreed the islanders should have self determination so they voted in March 2013.

The same UN, that as the previous League of Nations, stood by as Mussolini invaded Ethiopia. The same UN that allows Israel to literally get away with murder on a daily basis. The same UN with it's headquarters in the good old US of A.

Also, the reason I mention Ethiopia is because you mention that Argentina wasn't a nation when the British first settled on the Falkland Islands.
Well, Ethiopia existed literally thousands of years before Italy was even a nation!, and it had a rich cultural heritage. Yet the League of Nations stood by and watched hundreds of thousands of Ethiopians die in mustard gas attacks from Italy, AND France and Britain were forming secret deals with Mussolini to allow him to take nearly the whole country for himself.

If you think 'the world has moved on since Thatcher' then you're sadly deluded. Geopolitics is much the same as it ever was.

In fact, given the nature of the right wing regime of Galtieri, I wouldn't be at all surprised if Thatcher conveniently allowed Argentina to invade the Falklands to garner public support for the pair of them.

Remember that Thatcher was also best friends with Pinochet, so no stranger to getting into bed with right wing dictators that disappear thousands of their own people.