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GOCE Satellite Burned Up Over Falkland Islands
An anonymous reader writes with an update on the fate of the GOCE satellite. From the article: "The mystery of GOCE's re-entry has now been solved — the one-ton satellite came down over the Falkland Islands, a British overseas territory 300 miles east of the Patagonian coast in the South Atlantic Ocean."
I can safely come out of my basement now. The tinfoil hat will remain firmly seated though.
I dont think that's what they meant when they said they wanted Satellite TV.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Was that you Margaret?
...There are some Argentinians who would like to have a word with you, Unknown Lamer. ;)
So... the satellite came down overhttp://science.slashdot.org/story/13/11/12/0140241/goce-satellite-burned-up-over-falkland-islands# the Malvinas Islands, I understand.
Falkland Islands? Whoever heard of them? Must be pretty goddamned unimportant...
Falkland Islands??? whats that??
The people who live there aren't of Argentinian descent.
Ah yes because human populations and are trumped by position and people have no right to self determination, that is except for those people that Argentina does not want to murder or dispossess of their homes.....
The British GCHQ spoofed slashdot. Now the Argentine intelligence agency will have to as well now that you called them the Falklands.
It's all about keeping up with the Thatchers. Or the Galtieris.
I mean, is so hard to say that? that Islas Malvinas are 300 miles east of Argentina?
BTW, looking at the picture shown in the link, you can see how much closer is Islas Malvinas to Argentina than to other countries, like, for example, UK.
Are we going to fight that war again to the same conculsion?
I hope that it did not suffer too much.
Just because you are paranoid does not mean that no-one is out to get you.
"As if millions of sheep suddenly cried out in terror, and were suddenly turned into lamb chops."
That time the war was to distract the population from internal problems. The Argentinian government didn't think England would care enough to have people die for the land (by then no oil had been found). As everyone knows, they were wrong. Imagine the moment they realised the situation they got themselves in, and with absolutely nobody else to blame.
That said, the land should belong to Argentina. It's too problematic for the countries in the region for England to have land there. Of course, it'd be disavantageous to England so it won't happen any time soon.
Curiously France and Britain are 21 miles apart, and Chile and Argentina are 0 miles apart...
I find distance arguments a bit spurious with sovereignty claims, and at the end of the day Argentina came after the Falkland Islands in terms of being an entity. Therefore, if Argentina wishes to continue pressing its claim then it might be important to note that the reverse can also be true...
What problems could the UK owning those islands possibly cause for South American countries?
Someone was way off, I thought I read something this morning putting its demise somewhere around Siberia/Alaska? I'm also surprised anyone saw it, the Falkland Islands aren't exactly populated. I think its somewhere in the neighborhood of 3,000 people, the average 36 square mile county has that around me and the Falkland Islands are over 4,700 square miles.
Those discussions are dumb and they seem to ignore the will of the people who live there. They do not want to be argentinians and they also are not that much fans of british interventions. That place is paradise for people who wants to live a simple life.
It sounds even more dumb if you consider the fact that Argentina can't even hold their shit together. They should fix their stuff before bragging about rights to that place.
Falkland Islands, or Islas Malvinas, as the Argentine people call them, are disputed territory. British forces usurped the islands from the Argentine authorities in the first half of the 19th century. OK, a stupid military government went to war to try to divert the attention of the Argentine citizens form the internal problems. And thanks to their military defeat democracy finally returned (18 months after the start of the war). But still, Argentina has the right to ask to have them back.
"That said, the land should belong to Argentina."
If it was an occupation I would agree wholeheartedly. However if what I am reading is correct the people (mostly of European decent) currently living there have been doing so for around 200 years. Even the first known settlement, around 323 years ago, was of English origin. A referendum held in march of this year had a 99.8% vote to remain a colony of the UK. People should have the ability to associate with others based on their own determination, not geographic location.
...Argentina immediately claimed that the satellite was, in fact, theirs.
-Styopa
> The people who live there aren't of Argentinian descent.
And the people in the USA aren't from there, but that doesn't mean that they're not subjects of the USA government.
While that would be a slight improvement, Argentina spans over 1,000 miles north-south on the east-coastal region alone, so still not very specific.
If I was describing the location to somebody, I would call it "300 miles north-east of Cape Horn."
That seems much easier, obvious to folks without a strong background in prehistoric geography, and useful to real, normal people.
And? Alaska is closer to Russia and Canada than it is to the US. And let's not get started on the Philippines...
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Curiously France and Britain are 21 miles apart
And France and Brazil are 0 miles apart, and Brazil and Argentina are 0 miles apart.
So the Falklands/Malvinas are only 21 miles further from the UK than they are from Argentina.
Or maybe I'm making some mistake?
Watch this Heartland Institute video
The people of Argentinia aren't of Argentinian descent either, the original population was exterminated by the ancestors of the current population.
Why should it belong to Argentina? No Argentinians live there. Just because it's close to Argentina isn't a justification (or perhaps the US should give Puerto Rico to Cuba because PR is closer to Cuba than it is to the USA). What's important is the population, now established for a couple of centuries, is British and wants to remain that way. They have the right to self-determination.
The Spanish name (Las Malvinas) isn't even Spanish, it's actually derived from French. A French sailor named the islands after the port of Saint Malo in France.
If the Argentinans want to argue that the British originally took it by force (from whom? no one was living there) then they need to return Argentina back to the native people they took Argentina from before taking that particular "moral high ground".
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Patagonia has the 3rd largest Welsh speaking population in the world after Wales and England. Maybe Patagonia should be part of Wales, and it is after all only 300 miles away from the Falklands which is British.
But, wouldn't it make more sense to give PR to Dominican Republic? they are, after all, closer than Cuba. If they complain, give Jamaica to Cuba and be done with it.
The what? Never heard of them.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
It is disingenuous for britain to claim the almighty self determination in this case (when it serves them). How many times these self determination rights were respected by them when forming their empire? For example, in 1806 they attempted 2 times to invade Buenos Aires (failed both times). How about India? Australia? The african colonies? Slaves? So much for consulting the locals on their desires.
It does actually, unless they were born here, resided here in 1776, or went through a process of naturalization and immigration. Otherwise they remain nationals of their own countries, visitors for a limited time. Being in the USA doesn't make you a subject of the US government any more than I would be French if I got a flat in Paris.
The problem is not with the people, the problem is with the government. The argentinians are European descent.
Ah yes, because the stupid evils of the past generations of another country are automatically shared and agreed with by all of the current generations of that country and for that reason when any other nation decides to imitate those past generations in their evil they get a free pass for murder.....
Wow, impressively persistent Goatse trolling! I salute you!
Too bad it's probably more constructive than all the silly nationalist discussion threads.
If someome took your house you are still the owner and the adversary are criminals. Same case with the Malvinas Falklands. They are Argentine territory.
The Argentinians leaving there were expulsed. If you deport people that does not make you the owner, just you are a thief.
No they weren't. But using that logic, Argentina needs to give its land back to the natives that lived their before it was colonised by Europeans before it can claim that moral high ground.
Most Argentinians are of European descent as well.
I think the main problem is probably that the Argentinians (or more precisely their government) does not recognize the right to self determination to the people in the islands because they probably consider them "invaders" (or invader's descent)
What would happen if 1 million Spanish people went to Gibraltar, demonstrated, voted and said, "hey, we voted and decided that we want to be part of Spain"?. The UK would not recognize that vote saying, "hey, you're not from Gibraltar, that does not count", right?
As always, the "right of self determination" is being "respected" by UK's government because it fits them (that is, the islanders side with the UK, if the islanders did not sided with the UK, their claims would go unheard).
At the same time the "right to privacy" of their own people and other EU allies, is "not respected", again, because it fits todays' agenda.
Furthermore, the islanders were not even "UK citizens" until after the war, in 1983.
I have not met a single English person that knows where the islands are, some did not even know their country had a war over them. I have met a few Argentinian people that know where the islands are. None of those two groups of people cared about the islands, and those that cared were mostly saddened by the war itself and the people that tragically died there because the craziness of a dictator (Argentina had a military dictator back then, he was trained by the same people that trained all dictators in South America) and the stubbornness of a woman whose popularity was falling. The leaders of both sides were unpopular, and the war was a show to distract the people from the real problems, it benefited both at first, at the expense of other people's lives (the soldiers'). Just like today.
The only reason borders exist is to prevent free market and for some short-dicked people to be able to call themselves, king or president or whatever of a given place; then they are able to exert some form of tax collection in order to pay for their palaces, tv stations and under age prostitutes, while at the same time being able to blame the "foreigners" of most problems they themselves create or are incapable or even unwilling to solve.
Hence, for common people, borders are just an annoyance, although it is commonly used as a way to cast a "foreign" hue on those that were not born in a given geographical place (or whose parents were not from a given geographical place) so that they can make jokes about them, be condescending, etc.
By the way, most people here are only reading and repeating Wikipedia, and sadly they only read the English version. Reading the other languages can give another point of view, as well as reading this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereignty_of_the_Falkland_Islands#Current_claims