Re: Malvinas

[Xxxx Xxxxxx <xxxxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 10/13/01 4:05 PM,marxism-digestowner-marxism-digest@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
wrote:

> Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2001 11:04:02 -0400
> From: Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>
> Subject: Re: Malvinas etc
>
> During the war between Argentina and Great Britain, the bourgeois
> media made it appear that Argentina had a totally irrational desire
> to forcibly assimilate people living on an island who had no
> linguistic or cultural ties to the mainland. Furthermore, the
> islanders appeared to be a rather quaint lot devoted to harmless
> activities such as sheep-herding, kidney pies and Anglican hymns.
> This, of course, is the subtext to Xxxx Xxxxxx's pro-imperialist
> apologetics. He can't understand why socialists would want to back
> the annihilation of such gentle folk. In reality, the clash over the
> Malvinas involved the same basic issues as are at play in Afghanistan
> today.
(articles about oil and mineral rights snipped).

Straw dog argument, Louis. I have not raised any arguments about the
disposition of oil and natural rights on the sea bed within the 200 miles
around the islands. My personal view is that these rights should revert to
Argentina as the greater land mass and the greater population and that the
islanders themselves or the islanders as a community (rather than the
British government) should get reasonable compensation, or some sort of
stipend or percentage from Argentina of a maximum  of a few thousand pounds
per islander per year.

I suspect, like Louis, that the resource question is at the heart of the
dispute on both sides. If the Argentine government got control over the
resources of the seabed surrounding the islands I suspect interest in the
islands themselves would fade despite Nestor's talk of individual Argentines
"loving" the islands etc.

As for Nestor's bellicose rhetoric that anyone opposing the 1982 war should
have been jailed by the military regime (!) again, I think his Marxist mask
has slipped to reveal jingoistic bourgeois nationalism underneath. I am not
sure how such an objectively pro-junta argument would have been consistent
with an agenda of overthrowing the junta and capitalism with a socialist
revolution. Or does Nestor not think that supporting the regime's rights to
jail its opponents leads to a strengthening of the regime?

Xxxx

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