India, Brazil, And South Africa Want Argentina To Join Brics

[ajoknoblauch]

The problem is that BRICS has nothing to do with strengthening regional ties... If they wanted to achieve that (which would be a good move), they should focus on Mercosur.

As a common market, Mercosur is a joke. As a platform for loud symbolic gestures, though, it sorta works.

 

[ElQueso]

As far as Argentina being invited into ANYTHING that would strengthen regional ties - ARE THE BRASILIANS NUTS?

What makes them think Argentina would stick to any agreement of the sort? As was mentioned previously, look what they've done to the Mercosur! And any of the other countries just have to read a little bit of recent history to know the same thing. Geez...

 

[ElQueso]

As a common market, Mercosur is a joke. As a platform for loud symbolic gestures, though, it works.

But it does nothing to help anyone - as symbolic gestures often lack such ability.

 

[LorenzoQuiero]

No, my friend, you are mistaken in dismissing this issue. Let me explain three reasons why.

First, oil and gas. The current English activities carry a high risk of a major oil spill. When that spill occurs, whose waters and beaches will be polluted for decades? Not England's. It is the waters, beaches, and economies of Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil which will be devastated. It is the fisheries of the entire Atlantic coast of South America which will suffer. Think back to what the Gulf Horizon oil spill was like. Look at the huge dead zones which still exist where the Exxon Valdez oil spill occurred back in 1989. That is what we will suffer if England is allowed to continue with reckless and illegal oil drilling in the South Atlantic.

And that doesn't even consider the fact that the English are stealing natural resources which do not belong to them.

Second, militarization of the South Atlantic. Here's what Uruguay thinks -
http://en.mercopress...-defense-policy
This is a gross violation of the South Atlantic Peace and Cooperation zone, even if we ignore the presence of nuclear weapons and assume that only conventional weapons are being stored there. The UK and USA are the biggest warmongers on planet Earth. How many nations have they invaded in the last 20 years? Do you need me to list them all? The presence of their military in the South Atlantic is an outrage and a direct threat to peace. Just who do they expect to fight in the South Atlantic?

Third, the issue of fisheries, although I touched on this issue in my first point. The English are not just fishing the South Atlantic themselves, where they have no right to be in the first place, they are selling licenses to fishing boats from as far away as Asia. And Asian industrial fishing activities have had devastating environmental consequences in the Pacific. Why should that be allowed to happen here?

This is far more than "old and useless rhetoric" as you describe it. These are issues of vital and urgent importance to all the residents of South America.

First, oil and gas: So you believe that somehow Argentina, who would no doubt also want to extract the oil and gas surrounding the islands, would somehow be less likely to end up having a major oil spill? I don't know what would give you that confidence.

Second, militarization: If there's nobody to fight in the South Atlantic, how are British or U.S. military assets in the area "a direct threat to peace"? Let us recall that there is only one country that's started a shooting war in the South Atlantic in the last few decades, and it isn't Britain or the U.S.

Third: Fisheries: I'll largely agree with you on this one, not just the South Atlantic, but the whole world's oceans are being stripped bare at an unsustainable pace. That being said, I've always found it almost criminal how little seafood is eaten in Argentina, given the abundance sitting just offshore.

In saying this, I don't mean to actually take one side or the other in the Falklands/Malvinas dispute, but I do agree with the poster above who stated that Argentina has a lot more pressing problems that they should focus their energy and resources on than trying to get back the Malvinas.

 

[ElQueso]

Give him a break, he's a yank. At least he knows that this is Argentina and not Mexico. Although he might argue that the Yucatan peninsula territorial waters extend to the Falklands making it a part of Guatemala.

And don't forget that Pink Possum gets his political inspiration from Sean Penn.

Just seeing Sean Penn at her side would be enough to make me understand how inept Cristina is, if I had no other knowledge about Argentina's recent political shenanigans.

 

[ajoknoblauch]

But it does nothing to help anyone - as symbolic gestures often lack such ability.

Of course, they're ineffective, but they make the ideologues feel good.

 

[thorsten]

No, my friend, you are mistaken in dismissing this issue. Let me explain three reasons why.

First, oil and gas. The current English activities carry a high risk of a major oil spill. When that spill occurs, whose waters and beaches will be polluted for decades? Not England's. It is the waters, beaches, and economies of Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil which will be devastated. It is the fisheries of the entire Atlantic coast of South America which will suffer. Think back to what the Gulf Horizon oil spill was like. Look at the huge dead zones which still exist where the Exxon Valdez oil spill occurred back in 1989. That is what we will suffer if England is allowed to continue with reckless and illegal oil drilling in the South Atlantic.

Let's assume, unfortunately. a major oil spill happens and pollutes huge parts of Uruguay. Do you think it makes a real difference if the Malvinas belong to Argentina instead of Britain? Are you assuming Argentina will compensate their neighbor more than the UK? The real problem is that the companies externalize the risk of their operation, i.e., if nothing happens they get nice winnings, and in case of an accident they don't cover all of the resulting costs. This is by the way a common theme (from most resource mining operations over to industrial productions up to banks gambling in high-risk investments just to get saved from "outside") and can only be solved by internalizing these costs (Pigou taxes).

 

[pauper]

No, my friend, you are mistaken in dismissing this issue. Let me explain three reasons why.

First, oil and gas. The current English activities carry a high risk of a major oil spill. When that spill occurs, whose waters and beaches will be polluted for decades? Not England's. It is the waters, beaches, and economies of Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil which will be devastated. It is the fisheries of the entire Atlantic coast of South America which will suffer. Think back to what the Gulf Horizon oil spill was like. Look at the huge dead zones which still exist where the Exxon Valdez oil spill occurred back in 1989. That is what we will suffer if England is allowed to continue with reckless and illegal oil drilling in the South Atlantic.

And that doesn't even consider the fact that the English are stealing natural resources which do not belong to them.

Second, militarization of the South Atlantic. Here's what Uruguay thinks -
http://en.mercopress...-defense-policy
This is a gross violation of the South Atlantic Peace and Cooperation zone, even if we ignore the presence of nuclear weapons and assume that only conventional weapons are being stored there. The UK and USA are the biggest warmongers on planet Earth. How many nations have they invaded in the last 20 years? Do you need me to list them all? The presence of their military in the South Atlantic is an outrage and a direct threat to peace. Just who do they expect to fight in the South Atlantic?

Third, the issue of fisheries, although I touched on this issue in my first point. The English are not just fishing the South Atlantic themselves, where they have no right to be in the first place, they are selling licenses to fishing boats from as far away as Asia. And Asian industrial fishing activities have had devastating environmental consequences in the Pacific. Why should that be allowed to happen here?

This is far more than "old and useless rhetoric" as you describe it. These are issues of vital and urgent importance to all the residents of South America.

It seems the solutions to those problems would be -
1. Campaign for greater oversight and safeguards in oil exploration (I assume this could really apply equally to anywhere in the world).
2. Campaign for a nuclear free, demilitarised South Atlantic (I assume this could really apply equally to anywhere in the world).
3. Campaign for more sustainable fishing practices and respect for maritime boundaries (...and yes I assume this could really apply equally to anywhere in the world).

How you have come to the conclusion that handing the Falklands to Argentina would resolve them I don't know. Perhaps handing the rest of the world to Argentina would solve these problems globally?

 

[pauper]

Oh, and that whole militarised South Atlantic thing came out of the replacement of the HMS Montrose with the HMS Dauntless for service in the South Atlantic and a story (in The Sun!) about the deployment of a nuclear submarine around the Falklands. Timmerman and Cris picked it up and ran with it but you may have to consider that they surprisingly overlooked a few points:

- A nuclear submarine is very different to a submarine carrying nuclear warheads.
- The UK could deliver a nuclear warhead to Buenos Aires from somewhere just off the coast of the Canary Islands.
- The location of Britain's nuclear submarines is unknown to the vast majority of the British government and military (ditto for the United States, Russia, France and China).
- The Sun doesn't know shit

or perhaps (as we must always consider) they knew all of this but chose to spin a lot of horse shit for domestic consumption.

 

[Redpossum]

Well, that is some very interesting in depth analysis of the issue. I sure will consider what you say and think about it. However, I really don't think that CFK has all those things in mind when she uses the issue politically. I understand that the issues you mention are valid and real, but the politicians in Argentina don't even bother with that. You're smart and idealistic and those are both great things. The CFKs, the Galtieris, the Camporas, they're not capable of that level of analysis. There is an issue as to what constitutes occupation and who the Islands really belong to, there's a real possibility that the British claim is legit.

I know it's tempting to always blame "the Imperial powers" and to side with the weak. The thing is, like in most human conflict, even the most horrible people can be right sometimes.

Thank you for that calm and reasoned reply.

I know nothing about Campora, and Galtieri is burning in hell with Margaret Thatcher, but as far as La Presidenta, you have done her a grave disservice. Allow me to show you this document from the UN Special Committee on Decolonisation. The document is dated 21 June 2011, and refers to an appearance by President Kirchner before the General Assembly of the United Nations, saying-

Also on 24 September, according to the paper, Argentina’s President in the General Assembly claimed “respect for our sovereign rights over the Malvinas Islands”, underlining that the United Kingdom had refused to implement Assembly resolutions calling for negotiations with her country on the question of sovereignty. Unilateral decisions had been taken by the United Kingdom to exploit hydrocarbon resources on the Islands, she said, which constituted a “depredation of natural resources that belong to us” and entailed “the risk of ecological catastrophe”.

So you can see that she clearly referred to the issues I raised in the first point of my earlier post, and did so four years ago. So much for claiming that she is "not capable of that level of analysis".

The same document also says -

On the other side of the issue, petitioner María Angélica Vernet, Director of the National Historical Museum of the Buenos Aires Old Town Hall and May Revolution, traced her roots to the Malvinas Islands, where Argentine citizens had been stripped of their property and expelled by the United Kingdom in 1833. The population on the islands today was not a people in the legal sense of the term, as they were British either by birth or by origin. “The usurpation of the Malvinas Islands in 1833 was the usurpation of a territory that, both in fact and in law, belonged to Argentina,” she insisted.

Contrast the manner in which the British claim such tender solicitude for the fate of the current residents of the Malvinas today, with the manner in which British colonials in Africa were so utterly abandoned in the 1960's and 1970's, when it was convenient for Great Britain to do so. David Cameron doesn't care a fig for the islanders. It's about the oil, and the opportunity to threaten South America from a military base in the South Atlantic. It's naked neo-colonialism.