Argentina

"The Falklands thing was a fight between two bald men over a comb."

"With Christian faith I pray that those who are today our adversaries may understand their error in time and may deeply reflect before persisting in a stance which is rejected by all the free peoples in the world and by all those who had their territory mutiliated and endured colonialism and exploitation."

"The Empire Strikes Back."

"The episode of the Falklands war will be seen as important because it convinced many people in and outside the country that we were not played out as a nation... I saw the Falklands invasion as a test of the country's confidence, a test of how the British lion still should behave when somebody really twisted its tail. The great bulk of opinion in the House of Commons reflected opinion in the country. This was a time to stand and, if need be, fight. We should be grateful for that: imagine how this country would feel now if General Galtieri was crowing in Buenos Aires and the Argentinians were still in occupation of the Falklands. What happened was a triumph for a solid British virtue which knows when to say, "Up with this I will not put"."

"What really thrilled me, having spent so much of my lifetime in Parliament, and talking about things like inflation, Social Security benefits, housing problems, environmental problems and so on, is that when it really came to the test, what's thrilled people wasn't those things, what thrilled people was once again being able to serve a great cause, the cause of liberty."

"The battle of the Falklands was a remarkable military operation, boldly planned, bravely executed, and brilliantly accomplished. We owe an enormous debt to the British forces and to the Merchant Marine. We honour them all. They have been supported by a people united in defence of our way of life and of our sovereign territory."

"The significance of the Falklands War was enormous, both for Britain's self-confidence and for our standing in the world...We had come to be seen by both friends and enemies as a nation which lacked the will and the capability to defend its interests in peace, let alone in war. Victory in the Falklands changed that. Everywhere I went after the war, Britain's name meant something more than it had. The war also had real importance in relations between East and West: years later I was told by a Russian general that the Soviets had been firmly convinced that we would not fight for the Falklands, and that if we did fight we would lose. We proved them wrong on both counts, and they did not forget the fact."

"But when you are at war you cannot allow the difficulties to dominate your thinking: you have to set out with an iron will to overcome them. And anyway what was the alternative? That a common or garden dictator should rule over the Queen's subjects and prevail by fraud and violence? Not while I was prime minister."

"What an unlikely pair of antagonists! The British have always fought, to be sure. No nation on Earth can be taken seriously in historical circles unless it has had at least one war with the British; it's like not having an American Express card. And yet the very idea of Britain in a contemporary war is a shock. Britain, one feels, fights in history books and not on TV."

"The Falkland Islands are once more under the government desired by their inhabitants. God save the Queen."

"There is yet one more version of the culture hypothesis: perhaps it is not English versus non-English that matters but, rather, European versus non-European. Could it be that Europeans are superior somehow because of their work ethic, outlook on life, Judeo-Christian values, or Roman heritage? It is true that Western Europe and North America, filled primarily by people of European descent, are the most prosperous parts of the world. Perhaps it is the superior European cultural legacy that is at the root of prosperity—and the last refuge of the culture hypothesis. Alas, this version of the culture hypothesis has as little explanatory potential as the others. A greater proportion of the population of Argentina and Uruguay, compared with the population of Canada and the United States, is of European descent, but Argentina’s and Uruguay’s economic performance leaves much to be desired. Japan and Singapore never had more than a sprinkling of inhabitants of European descent, yet they are as prosperous as many parts of Western Europe."

"Among the many symbols used to frighten and manipulate the populace of the democratic states, few have been more important than “terror” and “terrorism.” These terms have generally been confined to the use of violence by individuals and marginal groups. Official violence, which is far more extensive both in scale and destructiveness, is placed in a different category altogether. The usage has nothing to do with justice, causal sequence, or numbers abused. Whatever the actual sequence of cause and effect, official violence is described as responsive or provoked (“retaliation,” “protective reaction,” etc.), not the active and initiating source of abuse. Similarly, the massive long-term violence inherent in the oppressive social structures that U.S. power has supported is typically disregarded. The numbers tormented and killed by official violence – wholesale as opposed to retail terror – during recent decades have exceeded those of unofficial terrorists by a factor running into the thousands. But this is not “terror,” although one terminological exception may be noted: while Argentinian “security forces” only retaliate and engage in “police action,” violence carried out by unfriendly states (Cuba, Cambodia) may be designated “terroristic.” The status of proper usage is settled not merely by the official or unofficial status of the perpetrators but also by their political affiliations."

"In the post-Vietnam War era the need for Communist abuses has been no less pressing than before. More facts have come to light on the scope of U.S. violence in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, the extent of which U.S. officials lied to the public with regard to their programs and methods, and the brazenness with which these officials defied treaty obligations and international law. Much as the government and the media tried to isolate the scoundrelism of Watergate from the much more profound immorality of the “secret” devastation of Cambodia, the linkage between the two could not be entirely concealed and therefore tended to discredit still further the campaign to bring “freedom” to South Vietnam. Counterrevolution, torture and official murder in Argentina, Guatemala, Chile, and other U.S. satellites was also reaching new peaks. Thus, if Cambodian terror did not exist, the Western propaganda systems would have had to invent it, and in certain respects it did […]."

"We want a cooperative peace in which the peoples of every nation have the right of free choice--the right to establish their own institutions, to live by their own cardinal concepts, and to be free of external pressure or threat. These are deep-seated desires held passionately in common by the peoples of the United States and Argentina. We hope to see machines capable of destruction turned exclusively to constructive purposes. These shared aspirations spring from a common heritage: Both our countries won their independence from European powers. The drafters of our Declaration of Independence proclaimed that "all men are created equal, endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." In Argentina, Esteban Echeverria said: "Equality and liberty are . . . the two poles of . . . Democracy . . ." In the United States, Abraham Lincoln described democratic government as "of the people, by the people, and for the people." In Argentina, Juan Alberdi declared: "Public freedom is no more than the sum . . . of the freedoms of all." The Constitution of the United States carefully separated the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of our government. In Argentina, the great liberator, José de San Martín, stated: "Displaying the most excellent principles matters not at all, when he who makes the law, he who carries it out, is also he who judges it." Your founding fathers and ours acted upon the same great hopes and expressed--almost identically--the same wisdom. This is of course not surprising: the vision of true freedom cannot be dimmed by a barrier of language or distance."

"Within one century after Columbus' arrival, the entire native American population of the Caribbean islands was exterminated, probably 8 million people. In continental Latin America, only 12 million people survived after a century of colonization - while the population in 1492 is estimated at up to 90 million. True, many died because of new diseases which the colonizers had involuntarily brought with them, and many died not by massacre but under the hardships of slavery (which also happened to many prisoners in the Nazi work camps), but the number of literally massacred people still amounted to millions. In North America too, the 2 million native inhabitants of Patagonia (southern Chile and Argentina) were gradually but systematically killed to the last, as were all the inhabitants of Tasmania in a single campaign, and most of the aboriginals of Australia: in these cases, the genocide was entirely intentional."

"Greta Thunberg and a group of other children have pushed forward their legal complaint at the UN against countries they accuse of endangering children’s wellbeing through the climate crisis, despite attempts to have it thrown out. The 16 children, including the Swedish environmental activist, lodged a legal case with the UN committee on the rights of the child against Argentina, Brazil, France, Germany and Turkey last September. They alleged that the countries – which are legally obliged to protect children under the UN convention on the rights of the child – breached those obligations by failing to protect them from the “direct, imminent and foreseeable risk to their health and wellbeing” posed by the climate crisis."

"…the anti-cult campaigns by [Pablo Gastón] Salum and the PROTEX may indeed put the Argentinian democracy at risk."

"The Argentine anti-trafficking statute is notoriously broad, encompassing everything from forced labor to sexual exploitation to document irregularities. Prosecutors with a strong anti-cult bias have used it repeatedly in cases involving spiritual groups, real or imagined."

"Until the end of World War II, Argentina and Australia were running in parallel. Today, they separately demonstrate what a luxury it is to be a stable, prosperous, democratic nation with a dependable constitution. Australia is all that and more, and Argentina, after yet another implosion of the civil order, is once again none of it and less."

"While Lula’s rise to power occurred without major institutional fractures, Kirchner reached the presidency unexpectedly after a turbulent sequence of temporary governments. What in Brazil was a calm transfer of power, in Argentina was a delicate operation to restore the credibility of the state in the face of mass rejection of the political system (expressed in the slogan ‘que se vayan todos’ – get rid of the lot of them). Lula marks the final phase of the transformation of the PT into a classic bourgeois party, breaking with its left wing past and becoming integrated into a bipartisan system. Its patronage finances an army of bureaucrats who upheld the expulsion of those members of parliament opposed to the pension reforms. This transformation of a popular movement into an appendage of capitalist domination was what happened with Peronism a long time ago. Kirchner was able to renew yet again the party that has guaranteed governability for the ruling class. But he has shown an uncharacteristic duplicity, veiling clientilism with gestures in defence of human rights, the independence of the judiciary and an attack on corruption."

"Brazil, Argentina, and Colombia have refused to send weapons to Ukraine, despite pressure by the US and EU. Latin American left-wing leaders have urged peace with Russia and called for neutrality in the West’s new cold war. Brazil, Argentina, and Colombia have rejected requests by the United States and European Union that they send weapons to Ukraine. The commander of the US military’s Southern Command (Southcom), which operates in Latin America and the Caribbean, revealed on January 19 that Washington has been pressuring countries in the region to arm Ukraine. Southcom wants Latin American nations to “replace [their] Russian equipment with United States equipment – if those countries want to donate it to Ukraine”, said Army General Laura J. Richardson. But Latin America’s left-wing leaders have refused, instead maintaining neutrality and urging peace. The socialist governments in Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua blamed NATO expansion and US meddling for causing the war in Ukraine. Mexico’s progressive President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) offered to hold peace talks to end the conflict. And the leftist governments in Bolivia and Honduras have joined Brazil, Argentina, and Colombia in refusing to be part of the [USA's] proxy war."

"In Argentina, as scholar María Vardé documents in a study published in “The Journal of CESNUR,” anti-trafficking bureaucracies have adopted anti-cult categories such as “brainwashing” and “coercive persuasion” to prosecute evangelical churches and charities and spiritual movements like the Buenos Aires Yoga School. Vardé writes that such terminology is used in the judicial sphere, the media, and public campaigns, often fabricating “victims” who are in fact volunteers who have freely chosen to serve. Happily, the Argentinian judiciary has started resisting the ill-founded claims of some prosecutors."

"Don't cry for me, Argentina! The truth is, I never left you! All through my wild days, my mad existence, I kept my promise, Don't keep your distance."

"We meet to-day, representing the people of this continent, from the Dominion of Canada in the north, to Chile and the Argentine in the south; representing people who have traveled far and fast in the last century, because in them has been practically shown that is the spirit of adventure which is maker of commonwealths; people who are learning and striving to put into practice the vital truth that freedom is the necessary first step, but only the first step, in successful free government... We of the two Americas must be left to work out our own salvation along our own lines; and if we are wise we will make it understood as a cardinal feature of our joint foreign policy that, on the one hand, we will not submit to territorial aggrandizement on this continent by any Old Power, and on the other hand, among ourselves each nation must scrupulously regard the rights and interests of others, so that, instead of any one of us committing the criminal folly of trying to rise at the expense of our neighbors, we shall strive upward in honest and manly brotherhood, shoulder to shoulder."

"Economics is a difficult subject, because we cannot conduct controlled experiments. There are not two or three Argentina's, one following the experiment that I described above, and another adopting the policies that I prefer. But we do have a wealth of experience from which to draw inferences. This wealth of experience all points in one direction: Keynes's teachings are still very much alive, and Argentina today would be in far better shape if his lessons had been taken to heart."

"Critical studies on human trafficking in Argentina have shown precisely how the anti-trafficking apparatus tends to produce a standardized figure of the victim, and to treat refusal to recognize such status as indirect evidence of dependency rather than as an empirical datum to be institutionally weighed with caution. In this context, the role of the Office of the Prosecutor for Trafficking and Exploitation of Persons (PROTEX) is central. In addition to intervening in specific cases—such as EYBA, Tagliabué, and International Tabernacle—PROTEX conducts nationwide training for judicial operators, disseminating operational guidelines and interpretive frameworks. This pedagogical-institutional function helps explain the homogeneity of vocabulary and specific lines of reasoning. It includes the circulation of notions rejected by the vast majority of the scientific community and foreign to the Criminal Code, such as “coercive persuasion,” which expands the category of victim and discredits testimony that denies the prosecutorial hypothesis."

"In Argentina, anti-trafficking interventions are publicly framed as humanitarian efforts, yet for those labeled as “victims,” the experience of “protection” frequently resembles detention, characterized by isolation, surveillance, and intense pressure to adopt a predefined script of harm. The Rudnev case serves as a stark testimony to this institutional paradox."