MICHAEL BUERK ON ARGENTINA’S ‘BREATHTAKING HYPOCRISY’
As its President accuses Britain of ‘naked colonialism’. This from a country of European immigrants ‘whose national policy has been to wipe out all trace of the people they snatched it from’.
Image courtesy of ¡Que comunismo! via flickr.com ©©
Thirty years after the end of the Falklands War, Argentina’s president, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, has launched a diplomatic campaign to gain control of the islands of such breathtaking hypocrisy she makes Jimmy Carr look like Martin Bell.
At the UN, in the breaks of the latest G20 summit, every time she opens her mouth it seems, she’s been accusing Britain of naked colonialism.. demanding we hand the islands, and the 3000 British citizens who live there, over to her.
Colonialism – that’s rich, coming from a country of European immigrants whose national policy has been to wipe out all trace of the people they snatched it from.
I spent three months there during the Falklands War. Lovely food. Strange there are no black or brown people.
Argentina’s 97% white, according the census.
Wonder what happened to the Indian tribes who once flourished on the Pampas? Well, what do you know; they were deliberately exterminated in a series of genocidal military operations in the 19th century.
Wonder what happened to those strange little folk Darwin found down in Tierra del Fuego? “Short, round, oily creatures, four feet fully grown, mostly stark naked despite the intense cold, with a curious talent for mimicry”, was how he described them. Not anymore. They were declared vermin and a pound was paid for every decapitated head.
Wonder what happened to all those black African slaves – more than a third of Argentina’s population at one time. Let me tell you. Thousands upon thousands of black men were forcibly recruited into the army, packed into the front line, deliberately used as cannon fodder in bloody campaigns against the natives and the neighbours. The black women and children either succumbed to disease or were simply assimilated into the floods of Italian and Spanish incomers.
Blanqueamiento –“white washing” was official policy for generations. The blatantly racist constitution has only recently been relaxed.
Result: Argentina is so white that the most prominent of the handful of blacks was arrested at the airport because officials just assumed her Argentine passport must be
false.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the place and the people. They’re brilliant at life but disastrous at government. They invented the Tango and thought politics should be broadly similar: a substitute for sex, performed on the streets, brainless, showy, exciting and doomed. That’s how they’ve ended up being ruled by a succession of self-glorifying crypto Fascist birdbrains and their molls.
Inevitably, it all goes horribly wrong at regular intervals and they have to find a way of distracting the mob on the street. Mrs Kirchner stands high above that mob on the balcony of the Casa Rosada when she accuses us of the evils of imperialism.
But the moral high ground, believe me, it isn’t.
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How can Britain hold a moral high ground whenever ‘colonialism’ is discussed? If we were to assume that Falkland Islands do not belong to Argentina but to a nation far, far away, then we will have to assume that Britain is the owner for most of the world. United States belongs to them, so does the Indian subcontinent. The British discourse on colonial superiority haven’t changed over the years… Michael Burke sounds vaguely familiar to rulers of Imperialist Britain. On April 22, 1774, British Prime Minister Lord North defended the Intolerable Acts in the House of Commons, saying: “The Americans have tarred and feathered your subjects, plundered your merchants, burnt your ships, denied all obedience to your laws and authority; yet so clement and so long forbearing has our conduct been that it is incumbent on us now to take a different course. Whatever may be the consequences, we must risk something; if we do not, all is over… ” Bloody hell, the country did not belong to you and they were right in burning your ships because incidentally they had wandered into a territory that belonged to Americans, not you. As regards the violence, please remember General Reginald E.H. Diar who ordered shooting on unarmed Indians in Jalianwala Bagh in Amritsar killing women and Children in 1919 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jallianwala_Bagh_massacre) … He was celebrated a Hero in England. Britain has been responsible for messing up a large part of the world with conflicts of India-Pakistan, Palestine, Ireland… People who live in glass houses…. let the rest be left unsaid.
Shashank Shashwat
Winston
Martyn’s response to your posting appears extremely polite. I doubt if others, including myself, would wish to be so to someone like you. You are clearly happy to voice any extreme nonsense to promote what clearly is your country’s position on this issue and so very typical of the indoctrinated ‘land grabbing’ and pushy Argentinians we are sadly, all so familiar.
Clearly unimportant to you, Hitler (aka Mother Theresa when considering the British Empire) caused a war that claimed the lives of over 60 million men, women and children (2.5% of the world population). He and his henchmen personally organised, instructed and / or carried out the most hideous torture and eventual murder of 6 million Jews (50% of the world population). Of nations, 24 million Russians died.
But of course Argentina and Peron was close to Hitler. A country that openly supported the Axis powers (no neutrality as claimed) until 1945 when the war was lost and Peron changed sides. Indeed it was around this time was it not, the late ’30s and early ’40s, that for the first time since 1849 Argentina started to make claim on the British Falkland Islands again. Clearly motivated by a belief that the Allies would lose and Hitler would grant sovereignty to Argentina. Extreme opportunism. Right?
Your link, of continuous, typical Argentine drivel with nothing new, this time regurgitated by some no-mark Argentine soldier is just not worth reading. These lies, half truths, misrepresentations, biased incomplete and so called historical analysis, are nothing more than dressed up works of fiction. Lets just keep to facts, if you don’t mind, like Michael. Genocide of the worst kind.
Brian
Argentina and the great United States of America have this much in common. Genocide of the indigenous peoples and the creation of a land of immigrants. Doesn’t the state department refer officially to the Malvinas rather than the Falkland Islands?
Samuel
Winston,
I don’t think anywhere in the above does Mr Buerk state that British colonization was a good thing, he is merely pointing out that the Argentine government is currently taking a position on colonization as evil whilst ignoring its own extensive history in the subject. Britain has never attempted to take a moral high ground on the subject of collinisation only on the subject of Self determination as enshrined in the charter of the UN. I have read your link and as interesting as it was the author has stated certain aspects as agreed fact which are I am afraid defiantly disputed. For instance in his section on facts he declares the civilian population of 1833 was forcible expelled this is disputed and evidence is presented in the following paper which answers most of the standard Argentine arguments over the islands. http://britishempire.co.uk/maproom/falkland/gettingitright.pdf.
This is also available in Spanish should you wish.
I hope for a brighter future in which some form of joint sovereignty could be established for the benefit of all, however the current Argentine government tactic will only result in failure and let us not forget that approximately 2,800 full time residents call the islands home and have done for 9/10 generations. Therefore, it is inconceivable that these people do not enjoy the same human rights as everyone else in this world and it is they who must decide their future. If only the Argentine government would return to the umbrella agreements established between Blair and Menem in which closer cooperation was fostered by agreeing to leave aside the sovereignty issue until a suitable base of trust and cooperation has been established. These agreements were, unfortunately torn up by Nestor Kirchiner and we returned to square 1, this more than anything only goes to further the aggressive and neo-colonial attitude of the Argentine government that a population of people should be subjected against their will to rule from a foreign power with whom they have no cultural or political ties.
Martyn
Face reality; what the British have done to the world over the years makes Hitler look like Mother Theresa.
Malvinas: The Argentine perspective of the Falkland’s conflict: http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA523209.
winston
Most excellent. Mr. Buerk, you remind me of the little boy at the end of The Emperors New Clothes. I shall take the time to transcript your words, translate into spanish and share with the argentineans with whom I am engaged in a perpetual debate with on facebook about the Falland Islands.
Jake Johns
Is the Tango the last echo, the last trace of the freed Black slaves of Argentina? Various Argentine governments over the years seem to have perfected this uncanny knack of making people disappear.
Ted Cole