Re: Malvinas etc

[Xxxx Xxxxxx <xxxxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>
>> The Falklands can be "indepencent" _only_ as part of
>> Argentina. Lou's example of the Panama Canal Zone is a perfect
>> comparison.
>
>
> Yes, it's an excellent example.
>
> This kind of stuff also has great relevance in the South Pacific, most
> notably the French possessions in Polynesia (based on Tahiti) and in New
> Caledonia.
>
> In both places, the French government have moved in sufficient civil
> servants, landowners and settlers to outnumber the Polynesian population
> (Tahiti) and the Kanaks (New Caledonia).
>
> Do the white settlers have the right to self-determination, Xxxx?

No. As I said before in reference to the pieds-noir or the "white
Rhodesians", there's a difference between a settler class oppressing and
living off the work of a native population and a situation such as the
Malvinas/Falklands where there is no indigenous population.

>
> Should the people in the Panama Canal Zone have the right to be part of,
> say, the United States rather than Panama?

Here you had a transient population of American bureaucrats and technical
support workers who were living temporarily in the Panama Canal Zone but
considered the continental US to be their permanent home. Again, completely
different from the population in the Malvinas/Falklands who had settled
there almost 200 years ago.
>
> And what about the white South Africans?  If they want a chunk of South
> Africa in which to self-determine, should they be allowed this?

In South Africa you have a case of interpenetrated peoples as well as one
people who've clearly lived off the work of another as an exploiting class.

>
> Like Lou Paulsen noted, the problem is the apparent inability of the
> Militant Tendency and its successors to grasp the fundamental distinction
> made by Lenin between oppressed and oppressor nations.

Who are the inhabitants of the Malvinas/Falkland Islands oppressing,
exactly?

> In Lenin, the
> division of the world between the two was one of the key characteristics of
> the whole imperialist epoch.

Well, if the inhabitants on the Malvinas/Falklands have no right to
self-determination because they've only been there for 200 years then do
European settlers have any right to self-determination in Argentina?
Shouldn't they just go back to Europe and leave the region to the remaining
indigenous people? Shouldn't the same apply then to Australia, New Zealand,
Canada and the US? Note, I didn't say and have never said that the
inhabitants of the islands are a "nation" simply that they do have some
rights to self-determination.

Xxxx


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