Saturday 2 April 2016

What If China Wanted The Falkland Islands?

I mean, we know that the Americans could just have them.

They were just given the Chagos Islands, without the slightest reference to the people living there.

The Chagossians were literally dumped on the harbour in Mauritius. Or at Gatwick Airport, where some of them slept on the benches for weeks.

The precedent is set. There is no arguing with the American Empire.

But, these days, what about the Chinese Empire?

Especially considering that Shanghai George may very well be Prime Minister before the end of this Parliament.

What a curious totem the Falklands have become.

We do not care what else we no longer own, or we no longer provide for ourselves under any ownership, or we no longer have at all.

But we care desperately about hanging on to the Falkland Islands.

Caring about the Falkland Islands would make sense if we cared about anything else. But we don't.

11 comments:

  1. Nonsense. None of our other Overseas Territories have been violently invaded in recent times and are under permanent threat from a neighbouring power.

    Gibraltar does have to deal with alot of provocative incursions (despite the fact Spain maintains overseas territories of its own like Mellila and Ceuta) but it has also held a referendum, Cameron has affirmed it's status is non negotiable and we would fight if it were ever invaded too.

    Quite right too.

    We should stop fighting America's wars in the Middle East and instead spend the money shoring up our defences in the Falklands.

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    1. Or, for example, protecting our steel industry.

      It is not that your case has no merit. It is the question of why we will go to any lengths to hold on to, after all, nowhere very much, while allowing everything and everywhere else to go by the by, or to go to the wall, or what have you.

      And the question of the very different treatment of the Chagossians is not going to go away.

      If America wanted the Falklands, then America could undoubtedly just have the Falklands. We never refuse America anything.

      There is now every sign that we are just as craven before China as we are before America.

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  2. Can't do the first while we're in the EU.

    What you say is an argument for treating the Chagossians better not for abandoning our other loyal British subjects and for standing up to America.

    We do refuse America.

    It's well known that America wasn't keen on us going to war with its client Colonel Galtieri (a dictator whom America helped instal, and supported) but Thatcher defied them and insisted the conflict could only be resolved by the restoration of British sovereignty over the Islands.

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    1. I know that he has been saying it for 20 years, but today everyone has finally woken up to the fact that "even" Peter Hitchens has denounced Thatcher.

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  3. He denounced Thatcher from an Old Right perspective in The Abolition of Britain. His positiion has always been the same; Harold Wilson did just as much social damage as Thatcher, but what separates the Right from her dim critics on the Left is the ability to understand the damage that both of them did.

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    1. You really do need to get out more. Or perhaps less. See how many people on the Right agree with today's column. Thatcher is the whole point of the British Right, utterly beyond question in so much as its mere hearing. Try it, and see what you get.

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  4. Ownership of the means of production is not where the Left/Right debate has been for at least 50 years. It's clear which one of us needs to get out more if you still think it is.

    You could start by reading this-a useful lesson on why ownership of industry is largely a practical issue and has nothing to do with Left or Right.

    http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2015/09/why-owen-jones-has-got-it-all-backwards.html

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    1. Merely because he says it, that doesn't make it right. In fact, it is completely laughable. "Not about the ownership of the means of production," indeed!

      No wonder that he has recanted the whole lot today, cutting all ties to the British Right once and for all. They'd never have him back now.

      He still feels the need to keep constructing ways of pretending that his very left-wing position is somehow of the Right, and indeed anything other than very, very, very left-wing.

      But it is what it is, and that is what he is: very, very, very left-wing. Based on his views about the ownership of the means of production. Because that is what it is about. That is how it works. That is the point.

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  5. I can't say Hitchens-who experienced life under the Left in the Soviet Union and saw what their real priorities were-hasn't been trying to explain this to you for years.

    As he used to say, Blair's abandonment of Clause Four was entirely symbolic since Labour had abandoned it decades ago-Hitchens rightly says hatred of selection by academic ability is their "real Clause Four" now adopted by the leftwing Tories.

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    1. I don't need any of this "explained" to me, you ridiculous little boy.

      As of today, Hitchens is the most left-wing commentator in the British media.

      You would have failed the 11-plus, anyway. If there is an argument for it, then it is that.

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    2. Yes. No one else in the media wishes British Leyland still existed. Hitchens is more left-wing than any other columnist on any paper apart from the Morning Star.

      You are right about the 11-plus, failing it would have meant the likes of Anon. 20:29 couldn't blame its absence for the failure of their own lives.

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