While we've had the crazy-making of the "Let's pretend we want to start World War III by trying to gin up an attack on Iran" has continued, a lot of the world has been ignoring the monkey shines going on between Great Britain and Argentina one more time over the desolate real estate that calls itself the Falkland Islands.

In the bad old days of Margaret Thatcher, it was said that the British-Argentine war was like two bald men arguing over a comb.  Really, the Malvinas (as the Argentines call it) is probably smaller than the greater Cleveland area, located hundreds of miles away from the South American continent.  For some reason or other (unknown to me) the Argentinans have decided that the centuries old occupation of these formerly uninhabited islands amounts to British imperialism, and now the Argentine President, Christina Fernandez de Kirchner  has been doing everything in her power to make life miserable for the Brits one more time.

Airplanes landing from the Falklands in Argentina have been forced to redirect their flights to Chile, and a cruise ship that landed in the Falklands before going to Tierra del Fuego was redirected to a Chilean port.  The Argentine government has made every effort to enlist support of its Latin American neighbors in an attempt to protest British imperialism, and has even enlisted the ill-informed support of Morrissey and Sean Penn in support of the Argentinians bogus claim to the territories.

The fact that hardly anyone on the islands speaks Spanish, or that they are all descendants of the original British settlers on the Falklands makes no difference, as does the legitimate claim of the Falklands government that they only want to be left alone to do their daily activities without Argentinian harrassment. 

There are several reasons for this comic opera buffe'.  First, the Falklands are very rich fishing grounds.  Not only this, but the Rockhopper exploration company has found potentially lucrative deposits of oil and natural gas offshore.  Internally, the Kirchner government is operating much the same way Juan Peron would have -- manufacturing a crisis to paper over the problems of inflation, dependancy, and sometimes shoddy government by the administration in Buenos Aires.

If you want to know more, I'd strongly urge you to google "Yes, they have no bananas (in  Falklands and  in Bs. Aires)."  This gives some good information from both the British and Latin American press on the ridiculousness of it all.

Between the war talk over Iran, and the Falkland Islands war non war -- is it any wonder to doubt whether there is any intelligent life on Earth?