Human rights activists have called for an independent inquiry into a raid by Moroccan security forces on a protest camp in the disputed Western Sahara region, which killed at least eight people on Monday.

Moroccan troops entered the Gadaym Izik camp outside Laayoune, Western Sahara’s main city, at dawn, where they reportedly used tear gas and high temperature water cannons to dismantle it. The camp, which had attracted 12,000 people, had been set up by Sahrawi groups protesting against the social and economic exclusion they face and the economic exploitation of their homeland.

The government claims that eleven security force members were killed in the violence, when residents of the camp resisted efforts to dismantle it. The Laayoune governor, Mohamed Guelmous, told reporters that troops were attacked with incendiary devices when they attempted to arrest “troublemakers” in the camp. The Polisario Front, Western Sahara’s pro-independence organisation, claims that eleven civilians were killed, 700 wounded and many more missing after being arrested by security forces. The raid produced unrest in Laayoune, where many Sahrawis reportedly took to the streets to protest the government’s action.

Human rights groups including Amnesty International and renowned campaigner Aminatou Haider have condemned the raid. Haider today told the BBC that the Moroccan government raided the camp in order to deliberately sabotage ongoing talks. She described the raid as “well-studied, planned and calculated because the protest camp was there for already a month.” These events came just one day before high-level talks were due to take place New York on Tuesday.

The openSecurity verdict: Western Sahara is a former Spanish colony, annexed by Morocco when the Spanish withdrew in 1975. Now treated by Morocco as its ‘Southern Provinces’, Western Sahara is home to the indigenous Sahrawi people, a Berber ethnic group which wants self-rule of the region. The Polisario Front, an Algerian-backed movement demanding independence for the Western Sahara waged a guerrilla war against the Moroccan state until a 1991 ceasefire, since which a United Nations peacekeeping force, Minurso, has been monitoring the ceasefire agreement.

The Moroccan government retains a strong interest in Western Sahara because of its rich natural resources. With extensive phosphate and iron-ore deposits, several exploratory missions suggest that there may also be large oil fields in the region. Rich fishing off the coast of Western Sahara is another draw for a government keen to maximise revenues.

Despite these extensive natural resources, the region remains one of the least economically developed in the region. Official unemployment is around 25%, much higher than the Moroccan national average. However, activists claim that unemployment is far higher amongst Sahrawis, who are denied access to government jobs. Furthermore, a state-sponsored influx of Moroccan settlers since the 1990s has contributed to a process of ‘Moroccanisation’, which, according to Sahrawi rights groups, is endangering the traditional Sahrawi way of life.

The dispute has displaced unknown thousands of Sahrawis, many of whom now live Polisario-run refugee camps in Algeria and Mauritania. In 2005, UNHCR estimated there to be 94,000 Sahrawi refugees ‘of concern’ in Algeria, while the Polisario Front puts the figure at closer to 165,000.

Talks on the ‘Western Sahara question,’ as it has become known, have long been deadlocked, with neither side willing to budge on its position. Rabat has repeatedly offered the Sahrawis a degree of self rule, but the Polisario Front will not be moved on its demand for a referendum on full independence.

The Moroccan government has been quick to paint Monday’s unrest as symptomatic of the Sahrawis reluctance to enter talks about the future of Western Sahara. Khalid Naciri, a government spokesman, said in a statement to the press that security forces resorted to using force in the Gadaym Izik camp only when “troublemakers” prevented Sahrawis from abandoning their shelters. The Moroccan foreign minister, Taieb Fassi Fihrim, also accused  the Polisario Front of seeking to “exploit anything to avoid a deep and continuous negotiation,” making clear the government view that the sole aim of the protests was to disrupt Tuesday’s talks on Manhasset, New York.

In response, many Sahrawi and sympathetic organisations, from the Polisario Front to international human rights groups, have also claimed in recent days that the government responded violently to what was a peaceful protest in order to engineer a pretext for cancelling talks.  

Counterclaims make a judgement on who is to blame for Monday's violence difficult. What is clear, however, is that this is not an unusual event for Western Sahara. Since the UN-brokered ceasefire of 1991, there have been sporadic flare-ups that have increased tensions in the region and periodically drawn international media attention. Efforts by the international community to support a peaceful resolution of the dispute have, however, been tentative at best.

The talks in Manhasset earlier this week were perhaps typical of discussions on Western Sahara. Although mediator Christopher Ross said that opposing parties met in “an atmosphere of mutual respect” the outcome was little more than a limited commitment to confidence-building measures and a slight increase in the pace of future talks, with another round scheduled for later this month.  

Unfortunately, without more concerted intervention from the international community, it is unlikely that future talks will be any more productive. Until a third party (one at a greater remove from the situation than, say, Algeria) involves itself in talks, it is likely that only a crisis-situation in Western Sahara will force either or both sides to make concessions.

Although no other country has recognised Morocco’s right to Western Sahara, Minurso is embarrassingly toothless, even by UN standards. As Amnesty International pointed out in its call for a probe into Monday’s violence, “the absence of a specific human rights monitoring component has undermined Minurso’s effectiveness and allowed human rights abuses to pass without adequate investigation.” The United States and many Western European countries are said to be frustrated by the ongoing conflict, which pits Rabat against neighbouring Algiers, thereby hampering attempts to bolster counter-terrorism efforts in the Maghreb.

At present, Morocco has little incentive to offer the Sahrawis more than self-rule. The gains from Western Sahara, even limited as they are by the present conflict environment, are too big a prize to give up easily. Conversely, the Sahrawis are committed to a referendum on independence because they know that self-rule is unlikely to be meaningful so long as Morocco has a strong interest in extracting the region’s minerals.

What is needed is a concerted international effort, preferably UN-led, to broker a compromise that will guarantee a meaningful degree of autonomy in Western Sahara, protecting the region’s people and natural resources by raising the costs of Moroccan predation. Until this effort is made, Africa’s longest-running territorial dispute will remain just that.   

Cholera reaches Port-au-Prince, confirming health workers’ worst fears

A cholera epidemic that has claimed 644 lives in recent weeks has reached Haiti’s over-populated capital, Port-au-Prince, alarming doctors with the speed of its spread. The arrival of this highly contagious disease in the capital, home to some 1.3 million earthquake survivors, has been labelled “a matter of national security” by Gabriel Thimote, head of Haiti’s health ministry.

The epidemic, which was first discovered in Haiti’s Artibonite Valley, to the north of the capital, began in mid-October. Approximately 10,000 people are thought to be receiving treatment for this water-borne disease in hospitals around the country. Around 170 patients are receiving treatment in hospitals in the capital.

Although cholera had previously been identified in Port-au-Prince, all the sufferers were believed to have recently travelled from the affected area. However, on Tuesday this week, Haiti’s health ministry confirmed that the first case of cholera in a patient who had not left the city in several months, suggesting that cholera may have entered water supplies in the capital.

Public health experts believe that Hurricane Tomas, which battered the island last week and caused widespread flooding, may have expedited the spread of cholera in Port-au-Prince. Much of Haiti lacks basic infrastructure and sanitation, with thousands of people still living in temporary shelters around Port-au-Prince. Experts at the Pan American Health Organisation predict that up to 270 000 people may become infected with the disease in the next six months to a year. The priority now, they say, is to educate the public about basic preventative measures to stop the spread of the disease.

Iraqi politicians finally negotiate government after months of deadlock

Iraqi politicians finally negotiated the formation of a new government after seven hours of talks yesterday, resolving an eight-month political deadlock since inconclusive elections in March. The new unity government will be headed by Nouri al-Maliki, the incumbent prime minister, but will also, crucially, include a power-sharing arrangement involving Shia, Sunni and Kurdish parties, designed to prevent sectarian tensions. Jalal Talabani of the Kurdish alliance will remain president, and Iyad Allawi, of the Iraqiya coalition, will head a newly-formed security council. The parliamentary speaker will also be a Sunni member of Allawi’s bloc. Kurdish regional president Masoud Barzani last night described the deal as a “national partnership” and gave thanks to God that “last night we made a big achievement, which is considered a victory for all Iraqis.”

In national elections on 7 March, Iraqiya secured 2 more seats than al-Maliki’s coalition, and since then the Sunni-majority bloc has repeatedly demanded the right to form a government. However, the inconclusive result gave no party an overall majority, forcing all sides into months of tense negotiations. Ongoing uncertainty has ratcheted up tensions as American forces prepare to withdraw from Iraq next year.  A judicial ruling last month ordered the Iraqi parliament to resume business, which is thought to have pressured politicians into making a deal.

Former admirals slam decision to scrap Harriers, claiming the move will jeopardise the Falklands

A group of former Royal Navy admirals have slammed the UK government’s decision to scrap the UK’s Harrier jet force and HMS Ark Royal, describing it as “strategically and financially perverse.” The admirals suggest that the move, which will mean a near-total reliance on Tornado jets, will cost the government “seven times as much” and put the Falkland Islands at risk of an Argentine invasion.

This strident condemnation of the government’s decision to make savings in the defence budget came in a letter sent to The Times newspaper, in which a number of officers, including Lord West of Spithead and Sir Julian Oswald, Admiral of the Fleet, urged David Cameron to rescind cuts announced in last month’s defence spending review.

The letter argues that the Harrier jets are a cheaper and more effective defence asset in comparison to the alternative Tornado jets. More significantly, the letter claims that “the newly valuable Falklands and their oilfields, because of these and other cuts, for the next ten years at least, Argentina is practically invited to attempt to inflict on us a national humiliation on the scale of the loss of Singapore.”

This criticism of government policy comes amidst mounting concern within the defence establishment about cuts to budgets and lucrative contracts. The decision to scrap Nimrod aircraft, an ocean surveillance plane that monitors threats to Britain’s nuclear submarines. Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope, the First Sea Lord, told a defence industry conference in London that he is “very uncomfortable” about the decision to scrap Nimrod.

However, In response to questions about the Falkland’s security, the island’s government has said it is “satisfied” with its protection. Armed Forces Minister Nick Harvey has also been quick to insist that the Falklands can still be protected without an aircraft carrier, underlining improvements to the islands’ defences since the 1982 Argentine invasion. Harvey also said that the Tornado was the right aircraft for the ongoing war in Afghanistan, and would suffice for the next ten years.  

Senior member of the Argentinian military junta of the 1970s

Perhaps no other leader of Argentina's military dictatorship from 1976 to 1983 was more reviled than Emilio Massera, the former navy commander-in-chief, who has died aged 85. Massera was in charge of the Escuela de Suboficiales de Mecánica de la Armada (ESMA), the navy mechanical school, where thousands of political prisoners were drugged, tortured and vanished without a trace. "We will fight not only to the death, but beyond death," he once proclaimed in a fiery speech to the navy officers at the death camp who were in charge of murdering opponents of the dictatorship.

Victoria Donda, who was born at the ESMA to parents who were arrested by the navy and then killed after her birth, lamented bitterly that Massera died a free man. "It represents a deep wound for democracy," said Donda, currently a legislator at the Argentine National Congress. "He will be condemned to the darkest place in history."

Massera was born in Buenos Aires to an engineer, Emilio, and his wife, Emilia. He entered Argentina's naval school in 1942 and became a midshipman four years later. In 1974 he rose to become the navy commander-in-chief. With Jorge Videla and Orlando Agosti, Massera formed the three-man military junta which in March 1976 overthrew the chaotic government of President Isabel Perón, the widow and vice-president of Juan Perón, the Argentinian strongman who died in 1974.

At the time, many Argentinians greeted this coup with joy, believing that the military would put an end to the vicious circle of attacks and counter-attacks by leftist terrorist groups and government-sanctioned rightwing death squads under Isabel Perón's administration. However, it soon became evident that the junta was engaged in its own orgy of killing, which overshadowed anything seen before in the country's history.

Official records count 13,000 deaths and disappearances during the "dirty war", but human rights groups estimate that the total is more than double that figure. "If there were lists, they don't exist any more. If there had been lists, they wouldn't still be around," said Massera.

Although not formally the head of the junta (the president's role fell in the hands of Videla, the army commander-in-chief), Massera's unmistakable ambition to become Argentina's new saviour soon propelled him into the limelight. "I hate to use the word 'evil', but you can't get out of it with Massera," said Robert Cox, the former editor of the Buenos Aires Herald, the English-community newspaper that was then the only voice in Argentina to report on the crimes of the dictatorship.

Cox was threatened by Massera more than once for his reporting. Those kinds of threats finally forced him to flee the country in 1979. "He was corrupt from the start and he used corruption to increase his power," said Cox. "He turned the navy into a criminal organisation. They stole, they raped, they murdered, they became malevolent, destructive gods."

Gifted with good looks and a certain charm, Massera set up a newspaper of his own, Convicción, to promote his bid to become the country's new Juan Perón, but his driving ambition earned him enemies among the military and he failed to scale the political heights to which he aspired. His star started to fade after he stepped down from the military junta in 1978. The dictatorship collapsed after Argentina's 1982 invasion of the Falkland Islands, which resulted in the country's resounding defeat by Britain in the Falklands war.

In 1985 Massera was sentenced to life imprisonment for crimes against humanity, along with the other leading officers of the regime. "Nobody has to defend himself for having won a fair war," he said at the time. "The war against subversive terrorism was fair." Massera was set free under President Carlos Menem's general amnesty in 1990. Eight years later, he was arrested on charges of stealing babies born to political prisoners held at the ESMA.

By the time Menem's unpopular amnesty had been overturned, and officers of the dictatorship began to be sent back to jail, Massera had suffered a stroke. His failing health excused him from further prosecution.

Massera was married to Delia Vieyra and had two daughters and three sons.

• Emilio Eduardo Massera, naval officer and politician, born 19 October 1925; died 8 November 2010

Retired commanders say decision to scrap HMS Ark Royal and Harrier Force amounts to invitation to invade

Prominent Falkland islanders today dismissed allegations by Royal Navy chiefs that defence cuts left the Falklands vulnerable to another attack by Argentina.

In a letter to the Times, five retired commanders including Sir Julian Oswald, admiral of the fleet, singled out the scrapping of the Harrier Force and HMS Ark Royal. It said this decision amounted to an invitation to invade the Falklands.

"Because of these and other cuts for the next 10 years at least, Argentina is practically invited to attempt to inflict on us a national humiliation on the scale of the loss of Singapore," they wrote.

But leading members of the community insisted the islands were not vulnerable.

Gavin Short, a member of the Falkland Islands Assembly who oversees defence, said: "There is a very capable British, protecting presence on the islands. It would be extremely foolhardy of any government to contemplate a foreign adventure here in the islands."

"We are not concerned that any of the cuts announced by the British government will in any way increase the possibility of a sucessful attack."

John Fowler, deputy editor of the islands' weekly newspaper Penguin News, was more forthright.

He said: "[The commanders] are clearly trying to defend their corner by using the Falklands as an emotive subject. But it doesn't reflect the reality. We should move on from this language suggesting war is likely."

Fowler, the islands' superintendent of education at the time of the Falklands war in 1982, said he was reassured by the attitude of the government in Argentina.

"The main thing that is preventing us trembling in our boots is watching Argentina. It doesn't seem particularly interested or capable of mounting an invasion. There's no popular will for that in Argentina, the strength of their armed forces have been much reduced since 1982."

Some on the island said they shared the concerns expressed by the retired naval commanders. Neil Watson, who farms 2,000 sheep on Long Island, said: "I think it is stupid for Britain not to have a fixed-wing aircraft that can land on an aircraft carrier. It will affect other parts of the world, too, but we are the most vulnerable."

"If Argentina invaded again we would be outgunned in the air and outgunned on the sea," he added.

Charles Dickson, who manages two sheep farms, said the islands would be defenceless if Argentina attacked Mount Pleasant Airport.

"We would be left dangling in the wind before anyone could get to us, if there isn't an aircraft carrier to get planes here quickly."

He added: "I'm grateful for the way they look after us, but with no aircraft carrier the insurance isn't so good."

Argentina says it is committed to recovering sovereignty of the islands by peaceful means.

Fowler said there was no sense of alarm on the island about the cuts. "Nobody on our letters pages has been raising these concerns recently.

"We will wearily include a story about it on Friday, because we are not particularly excited or upset about it at the moment. We feel that we are very well protected for the size of population."

He added: "We were very surprised at the time of the invasion, so I'm a little bit cautious about saying everything will be fine. But the situation has changed so much since then."

Tony Blake, a former member of the Falklands government, suggested relations with Argentina are improving. An Argentina veteran of the 1982 invasion is coming to stay at his home next weekend for the second time, as part of a visit with two other veterans.

"They come here to bury the ghost. People here don't show any aggression to them," he said.

He added: "I don't think people here are concerned at present. There appears to be no weakening of the political will to defend us."

From the website (slightly edited):

Sink the Belgrano! (1986) considers the British lower classes under Margaret Thatcher’s rule during the Falklands War of 1982. The war was the result of the Argentine invasion of the British-owned Falkland Islands. "Britannia rules the waves" — But, Belgrano! dares to ask, does Thatcher merely "waive the rules" of international warfare with the sinking of the Argentine naval ship Belgrano with a nuclear-powered submarine? This highly scatological satire of war and corruption is full of Shakespearean bastard rhymes and Cockney slang. A uniquely clever anti-war play with timeless themes and questions by author Berkoff — the “Bad Boy” of British Theatre.

$10 Previews: Belgrano!: Aug 18, 22 and 23 at 8pm; Aug 21 at 3pm

Belgrano: Aug 25 – Sept. 12 (Wed – Sat: at 8pm; Sun: 3pm)*

*Special Show Times: Sat Aug 28: 3pm and Sun Aug 29: 8pm

H Street Playhouse, 1365 H Street

Ticket Prices: $25 - $40 ($18 on Thursdays for Young Professionals 30 and under)
Box Office: Buy tickets online at www.scenatheater.org or call 703-683-2824.

Western media “analysts” and Western military pundits have, for the past two years, been forecasting the imminent military strike by Israel — sometimes by Israel in company with the US — against “nuclear” targets in Iran. The Chicken Little version of “the sky is falling” — the alarmist, naïve, technology-fixated, and ill-informed hysteria — is provocative and dangerous.

The reality that an Israeli military strike against Iran, except as a retaliatory strike following an Iranian strategic-level first strike attack on Israel, is unlikely, or only feasible under conditions which do not currently apply. The cost/benefit ratio in favor of strategic military action by either side is not evident, and medium- to long-term downsides are attached to the initiation of major military action by either party.

Of course, it is entirely possible that the “war hysteria” could drive political actions which are, in fact, irrational.

The Western speculation of an Israeli military strike against Iran is done in complete denial of logic, and the metrics — the mathematics — of conflict, even though military action is often initiated by one state or another in the absence of logic. It is almost as though, in this present portrayal by the Western media, there is a desire to push Israel into a military strike against Iran to “resolve the Iranian nuclear issue” without the US having to become involved. Or as a means of forcing the US to join with Israel against Iran.

A realistic gaming of the strategic situation, however, would indicate that there is the chance that Iran could initiate a nuclear first strike against Israel, provided that such an action is preceded and accompanied by a general escalation and a concerted assault with missiles and surrogate ground force action (HizbAllah and possibly Syria). Such a situation would presuppose a substantial general escalation of tensions to create a climate which would legitimize Iranian actions, or make decisive Iranian military action appear less provocative. Indeed, the HizbAllah assault against Israel in 2006 was a doctrinal test of such a process, and, in fact, did not show that such an approach would be successful on the part of Iran as the initiator of such an action.
Clearly, much has changed since then. Iran can quite rightly feel that Israel has become strategically isolated to a greater degree; that its overland flight access to Iranian targets has been constrained by the loss of alliance support from Turkey and the greater readiness of Syrian air defenses; and so on. Even the increased control of the Horn of Africa by pro-Iranian forces is a corresponding loss for Israel’s ability to freely access the Indian Ocean with its submarines, in the broader picture.

FREE Breaking Investment & Geopolitical Intelligence - Previously only available to Governments, Intelligence Agencies & selected Hedge Funds. Click here for more information on our Free Weekly Intelligence Report

Iran knows, however, that by initiating a nuclear first strike — or even a repetition of an indirect (ie: third party) conventional missile barrage against Israel — it would invite unpredictable destructive consequences. The only hope for the Iranian ruling clerics, who are totally unversed in historical strategic thinking, would be that an external strike against Iran would unify the fractious Iranian public around the clerical leadership. That happened in the past, in particular in the case of the Iran-Iraq war, which came at a time when the Iranian public abandoned its galvanizing dislike of the clerical rule of “Ayatollah” Ruhollah Khomeini in favor of the even more galvanizing desire to protect the homeland.

A similar approach was tried in 1982 by the alcoholic leadership of Argentina by Gen. Leopoldo Galtieri, whose last-ditch bid to retain power was to throw his country into a failed invasion of the Falkland Islands.

In the case of Israel and Iran, the cost/benefit ledger must be calculated on both sides. This has not been done by the West, or, arguably, by the Iranian clerics. It is too easy for Western pundits, and their Middle Eastern counterparts, to assume that the leadership in Iran or Israel is “irrational”, and that cost/benefit analysis will play no role in decision making. This merely highlights the cultural ignorance of the pundits with regard to the subjects of their “analysis”.

Moreover, the puerile debate highlights the fact that fewer and fewer people in the US, Europe, or even Israel have actually studied nuclear strategy. In the case of the Iranian clerics, one hampering factor is that the clerics do not appear to have studied nuclear strategy at all, and have no comprehension of the real capabilities and limitations of nuclear weapons. Most in the Western and Middle Eastern media, and in government, have become obsessed with nuclear weapons without comprehending that they are merely just relatively big bombs; they are not doomsday weapons. Even former US President “Jimmy” Carter, a onetime nuclear engineer (although he called himself a “nucular scientist”) had no comprehension of the actual efficacy and mission of nuclear weapons (even as a nuclear engineer, he was working on propulsion systems, not bombs).

Part of the problem has been that the study and debate of nuclear strategy has been politically incorrect in recent years. To study it seemed to imply an approval of it; to de-mystify it seemed to imply that nuclear warfare would become more “normal” and therefore possible. Such an approach equally implies that a study of cancer is the first step toward accepting it and therefore making it more possible.

The 1949 study by Dr Stefan Possony, Strategic Air Power,1 forecast a world which looks remarkably familiar today. But he put the nuclear equation into a comprehensible format. He defined what is possible, and what is not possible, with nuclear weapons. Possony went on to be the US Air Force strategist, and had already established his credentials in grand strategy, and in the area of strategic targeting, among other things. He created the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) concept as a means of providing an effective global countermeasure against nuclear (and other strategic) weapons being delivered by ballistic missiles, but SDI was subsequently butchered by its opponents — the “anti-nuclear” lobby — in such a way which has led to the perpetuation of the political mythology of fear which has drifted further and further away from realism in the public and political arenas. And opposition to SDI ensured that nuclear weapons remained efficacious.

So we must return to the argument about Iran and Israel, and what either side could hope to achieve by nuclear strikes, or by pre-emptive strikes against nuclear facilities. What are the probable consequences? What can either side hope to achieve through its actions?

Both Western and Middle Eastern analysts have approached the debate as though a single action could definitively define or achieve a known outcome. The reality is that the consequences of any proposed action — an Iranian nuclear strike or a pre-emptive Israeli strike against Iranian nuclear facilities — are completely unpredictable, except that a range of uncontrollable, and largely undesirable (from the initiator’s standpoint) are probable.

The US Bipartisan Policy Center in late June 2010 issued a report which said that the Israel Defense Force (IDF) could “shelve plans” for a “massive fighter-jet attack on Iran” because of the difficulty in winning approval for overflight of states along the route between Israel and Iran, and instead opt to use Israeli missile capabilities to attack Iranian nuclear facilities. The report cited the possible use by Israel of its Jericho-2 and Jericho-3 intermediate-range, solid-fuel ballistic missiles, or use its submarine-launched Popeye land-attack cruise missiles. The report2 was authored by former US Senators Daniel Coats and Charles Robb, working with retired Gen. Charles F. “Chuck” Wald, USAF.

Of course this is possible, or feasible. But then what? Moreover, the report continues the “sky is falling” view that nuclear weapons cannot be discussed rationally, and postulate as axiomatic the belief that the acquisition of nuclear weapons ends all ability to resolve a situation. Already is forgotten the fact that South Africa had nuclear weapons, and that these proved militarily and strategically useless, and, indeed, counterproductive. Other than the fact that the West has psychologically defeated itself by accepting that Iranian acquisition of nuclear weapons would make the clerics invulnerable — a psychosis which only feeds Iranian clerical belief that they are on the right course just as Western self-paralysis and its empowerment of terrorism through media multipliers has defeated many in the West; terrorism itself has not done that — the reality of just what Iran could do with the weapons has not been discussed.

Most Israeli analysts are aware that the problem is not the ability to strike — by air, ballistic missile, or by cruise missile — or even in matter of target selection. The Israeli intelligence services certainly have a good idea of where the Iranian nuclear-related targets are situated, along with the layout of the Iranian command and control network: its National Command Authority (NCA). However, a strike against these target sets, even if successful, does not necessarily guarantee long-term security or victory for Israel.

Iran in 2010 is not Iraq as it was on June 7, 1981, when the Israeli Air Force (IAF) struck at the Tammuz 1 nuclear reactor at Osirak, Central Iraq, in Operation Babylon/Mivtza Opera. That was a contained situation, and the Iranians — and everyone else — learned from it; and the operation was against a capability which was identified with the Iraqi leadership, not the Iraqi population which was opposed to that leadership. The Iraqi people are not the Iranian people.

But the US fixation is with technology; with what weapons – rather than strategy – can do. History shows, of course, that advanced weapons in the hands of primitive minds are far more useless than primitive weapons controlled by advanced minds. The thinking of an exchange between Iran and Israel must go beyond initial military strikes. Clearly, in the case of strategic weapons, an Iran-Israel conflict is doctrinally asymmetric, as it would be between India and Pakistan, because of the different geographic realities of the competing parties. In the case of India and Pakistan there is an absolute awareness that nuclear weapons represent merely an early phase of a potential conflict which must be concluded on the ground through occupation.

Possony discussed, in 1949, the numbers of weapons which would be required for basic strategic effectiveness, and neither Iran nor even the substantially better-equipped Israelis have the capacity to achieve that strategic effectiveness in a conflict constrained by the lack of geographic contiguity of the combatants. Iran may argue that its use of Syria and HizbAllah in Lebanon give it the ground-force occupation capability, but that is a matter of considerable speculation, a case of the Iranian clerics fighting to the last Syrian or Lebanese.

As a result, an Iranian strategic strike against Israel, if it ever became sufficiently direct (in other words, beyond the use of proxy HizbAllah and Syrian forces), would invite massive retaliation from Israel’s extremely capable forces, rendering any Iranian victory pyrrhic, and possibly leading directly to the break-up of Iran. An Israeli first strike against Iran — ie: a preventive strike in the fashion of the 1982 Osirak attack — would be equally counter-productive for Israel. It would force Iranians to support their national integrity reluctantly (as in the Iran-Iraq war) siding with the clerics against an external threat. It would also trigger either a launch-through-warning or a retaliatory strike from the mobile Iranian strategic missile force against Israel.

This would be, in part, a nuclear retaliatory attack, even at this stage, because Iran has a core of externally-acquired nuclear weapons, something which the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) of the US indirectly admitted on March 11, 20093. This is a reality which has been forbidden from discussion in US intelligence and policy circles since the early 1990s. So an Israeli pre-emptive strike against Iran would generate disproportionately costly results for Israel.

Israel’s best policy, then, is to deter “irrational” Iranian actions which could spill over into a full Iranian missile (and therefore possibly nuclear) attack, even bearing in mind the limited number of heavy strategic missiles of the Shahab-3 type available to Iran. Thus, even Iranian Pres. Mahmud Ahmadi-Nejad has been constrained to undertaking a saber-rattling campaign while trying to bolster the credibility of Iran to operate militarily at a regional strategic level.

Equally, the US is in no position to sustain a new and wider conflict environment, even supporting a potential Israeli military strike at Iran. Washington has run out of political will, political allies, and, finally, it has run out of ordnance. Its arsenal is in grave need of restocking, and there is little chance for such budgetary surges in the present economic and political environment to rebuild its weapons, let alone its manpower.

And if Iran was to initiate such a conflict, it would seriously jeopardize the framework for energy and political influence which Russia and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) have been striving to compile from Central Asia through the Caucasus to the Middle East and Europe. So there are serious constraints against Iran, as well.

Beneath all of this hyperbole-ridden sky there are US- and UK-led groups which favor the dismemberment of Iran as a means of resolving the issue. However, again with the long-term view, any further reduction of the historical Persian landmass — which has already shrunk by two-thirds over the past two centuries — would only benefit the strategic growth of Russia and the PRC, and possibly Turkey (although there are many other factors which gather around Turkey).

Little consideration has been given to mounting a classic psychological strategy to support the Iranian people in transforming the situation in Iran while keeping the state intact. Indeed, so “politically correct” has the US Defense Dept. become that the “psychological warfare” function of the US Army and Air Force — as tactical as these capabilities have been — has now become re-worded as “information management” and “information dominance” (specifically, military information support and/to operations [MISO]), etc.

The race, then, with the most chance of benefiting the great powers, the Iranian and Israeli people, and the region, would be for a “bloodless victory” of the type so favored by Sun-tzu, based around a popular and modernist approach to reshaping the governance of Iran. The strategic competition, then, would be between foreign sponsors to shape the outcome of such a bloodless revolution to the best interests of the sponsoring power.

But this, by its nature a covert and deniable process, lacks appeal in the technology-driven mindsets of the cyber-geeks who now dominate Western policy processes. Even absent their technology fixation, the corridors of power in the West do not resound to the footsteps of historians and grand strategists.

________________________________________

Footnotes:

1. Possony, Stefan T.: Strategic Air Power for Dynamic Security, Washington, DC, 1949: The Infantry Journal Press.
2. Meeting the Challenge: When Time Runs Out. June 2010: the Bipartisan Policy Center, Washington, DC. An update on reports in 2008 and 2009 by the BPC.
3. See Defense & Foreign Affairs Special Analysis, March 11, 2009: US Confirms Consistent Defense & Foreign Affairs Reporting Since 1992: DNI Noted He “Cannot Rule Out” That Iran May Have Already Acquired Nuclear Weapons.

Analysis By Gregory R. Copley, Editor, GIS/Defense & Foreign Affairs.

(c) 2010 International Strategic Studies Association, www.StrategicStudies.org

David Cameron’s visit to the United States this week offers the prime minister a major opportunity to assert a stronger British presence on the world stage after a period of notable decline under Gordon Brown. On both Afghanistan and Iran, two key issues likely to feature heavily in his White House meeting on Tuesday, his position should be clear: Britain will stand shoulder to shoulder with the United States in defeating the Taliban and standing up to the Iranian nuclear threat.
 
The world needs robust U.S.-British leadership, which has been strikingly absent in recent years. David Cameron has the skill and charisma to build up a powerful partnership with Washington, but must be careful to maintain British interests while doing so, and must not be afraid to stand up to the Obama administration on key areas of disagreement, including how best to deal with the global economic downturn. He should also be aware that Barack Obama is an increasingly weakened president, with many policies that are not only harmful to the United States but to America’s standing in the world as well. President Obama has contributed to a significant weakening of the Special Relationship, which might only be reversed after he has left the White House.

Cameron should be under no illusions that the current U.S. president is pro-British in outlook, or has much empathy at all for the Anglo-American alliance. While building ties with the White House, he must look beyond the current administration in his meetings on Capitol Hill, and seek to engage with conservative leaders in Congress, who may hold the balance of power in Washington after this November. Many of them are instinctively pro-British in outlook, and have a direct role in shaping U.S. policy on major issues facing the United Kingdom, including defense and intelligence cooperation, national security, and trade.

In his meetings this week with the U.S. president, David Cameron should:

1. Focus on victory in Afghanistan, not on exit timetables: It is important that the focus of the Cameron-Obama talks be victory over the Taliban, not a timetable for withdrawal, which hands the initiative to the enemy. As U.K. Defence Secretary Liam Fox recently put it in a major speech at the Heritage Foundation, an early departure from Afghanistan “would be a shot in the arm to jihadists everywhere, re-energizing violent radical and extreme Islamism. It would send the signal that we did not have the moral resolve and political fortitude to see through what we ourselves have described as a national security imperative.… To leave before the job is finished would leave us less safe and less secure. Our resolve would be called into question, our cohesion weakened, and the Alliance undermined. It would be a betrayal of all the sacrifices made by our armed forces in life and limb.”

2. Take a firm line on Iran: Washington and London must send a clear signal that the days of engagement with Iran’s brutal regime are over, and that the emergence of a nuclear-armed Iran is unacceptable. In addition to calling for strengthened U.N. Security Council and EU sanctions, Cameron and Obama must make it clear that the possible use of force against Tehran’s nuclear facilities is firmly on the table. There should also be strong condemnation of human rights abuses in Iran, and a statement of solidarity with Iran’s democracy movement.

3. Spread the message that deficit cuts are better than stimulus spending: There is a significant divide between the U.S. and British governments over the issue of deficit reduction and government borrowing, with U.K. Chancellor George Osborne’s budget-cutting agenda in marked contrast to the failed stimulus approach backed by the Obama administration. The prime minister must deliver the message in Washington that economic growth in Britain, Europe, and the rest of the world rests upon reducing levels of government spending, reining in budget deficits, and cutting down the size of the state. This is not language Obama will want to hear, but it should be voiced loud and clear by a British leader whose standing in the polls actually went up after the announcement of tough austerity measures, in marked contrast to the big spending U.S. president, who is rapidly losing the trust of the American people.

4. Push for ratification of the U.S.-UK Defense Trade Cooperation Treaty: David Cameron should press Barack Obama on ratification of the U.S.-UK Defense Trade Cooperation Treaty, signed in June 2007, but currently stuck in congressional limbo. If enacted, the treaty would significantly streamline defense-related trade between the two allies. It would also send a strong message that strategic alliances matter, and that the Special Relationship is a two-way street, with both sides fully invested in it.

5. Stand up to Obama on the Falklands sovereignty question: David Cameron should not shy away from a firm defense of British sovereignty over the Falkland Islands, and reject calls for a negotiated settlement over their future. The Obama administration has generated considerable bad blood across the Atlantic through its support for Argentine calls for U.N.-brokered negotiations over the sovereignty of the Falklands, a position which is unacceptable to London. This may not be a major issue for Washington, which has carelessly sided with the Kirchner regime in Buenos Aires, but it is very important to British interests, especially with the brave sacrifice of 255 British servicemen and women in the liberation of the Islands following the Argentine invasion of 1982.

-- Nile Gardiner is the director of the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom at the Heritage Foundation.

---

BBC biopic set in the 17 days running up to Argentina's invasion of the Falkland Islands

Meryl Streep is reportedly in talks to play Margaret Thatcher in a BBC Films biopic about the run up to the 1982 Falklands war.

Streep is being lined up to star in the film alongside Jim Broadbent as Thatcher's husband, Denis, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

Entitled Thatcher, the film is set in the 17 days running up to Argentina's invasion of the Falkland Islands on 2 April, 1982.

The two-and-a-half-month conflict that followed, after Thatcher dispatched a military task force to successfully retake the Falklands, is now regarded as a turning point in her 11-year premiership.

Thatcher's popularity had slumped before the conflict during the early 1980s recession, but she then led the Conservatives to landslide election victories in 1983 and 1987.

The Thatcher biopic would reunite Streep with Mamma Mia! director Phyllida Lloyd.

BBC Films is developing the project with Pathé.

Two hundred million barrels of oil is a drop in the ocean compared to the reservoir that produced the voluminous gusher of BP’s Gulf of Mexico oil spill. It is just 120 days’ worth of consumption in the UK or a mere 10 days of US consumption. But Rockhopper Exploration’s announcement in May that it had struck oil in the North Falklands region at the first drilled well threatens a bitter-sweet drama of its own for David’s Cameron new British administration.

The strike, the first in the Falklands Basin, could, according to the British Geological Survey, prove to be the first fruits for a region that could prove to be Britain’s new “North Sea.” Signs of an investor frenzy setting in have sent share prices rocketing. But the early find has already significantly ratcheted up tensions with Argentina – and talk of a second Falklands War.

The early strike in Rockhopper’s Sea Lion prospect saw its share price surge by 500 percent. It also led to, albeit more modest, jumps in the share price of its other British rivals, Desire, Arcadia and Argos, operating licensed tranches in the north Falklands Basin.

Operating the Ocean Guardian rig, Rockhopper hit a 175 foot-thick band of layered oil deposits, the thickest layer being 75 foot, after 20 days of drilling to a depth of 9,000 feet. After the initial announcement, the company confirmed the oil was of a “high quality reservoir interval with very good porosity and permeability” with “no oil/water contact encountered.” The company has a flow test for the prospect scheduled and is set to sink four more wells in the area.

A conservative estimate of reserves across the Falklands Basin suggests a minimum recovery of 3.5 billion barrels of oil. The estimate of the British Geographical Society suggests around 60 billion barrels, the equivalent of the UK’s North Sea deposits. Though such a figure, as some oil executives have told the UK’s Channel 4 News, may be an optimistic figure. Even so, with an additional assessment of 9 trillion cubic feet of gas deposits, the finds could prove transformational to Britain’s long-term debt problem; as well as making millionaire “oil barons” of the island’s 3,000 residents.

In February 2010, the UK’s then-Labour government agreed to take up to half of the revenues in the event of finding oil and gas. The Falklands Executive Council, only too aware of Argentina’s brooding language over reclaiming what they call “Las Malvinas,” indicated as long ago as 1994 their desire to make a more significant contribution to their own defense after the 1982 invasion. For Britain, it appears payback time for a sovereignty paid for in blood may have arrived. The economic yield to Britain from corporation taxes and royalties from the fields to the north of the Falklands alone could well be over $145 billion.

The recent campaign picks up where companies, including Shell, Lasmo (now part of Italy’s Eni-Lasmo) and Amerada Hess (now the Hess Corporation) of the US, left off after drilling six wells in 1998. Traces of oil were found in five of them and gas was discovered in the sixth. Only the global price crash, which sent oil prices down to $10 a barrel put a stop to the commercial viability of exploitation at that time.

But payback takes on a very different connotation for an Argentinian government and people plainly still passionate about reclaiming the Falklands – and the energy riches around them. Argentina is about to sink its own wells to the west of the island, outside what Britain claims are its territorial waters. When the Ocean Guardian was towed to the region in February this year, the Argentine government of Cristina Kirchner immediately warned it would take “adequate measures” to stop all British exploitation of the area.

Daniel Day-Lewis’s famously uttered the line “There will be blood!” in the quintessential oil film. Fears over whether Argentina’s strategic “measures” will run to that appear, for the moment, to have been allayed as President Kirchner’s government has apparently ruled out military action. While any economic harrying of British shipping – especially coupled with a worldwide slump in the oil price – could once again undermine the long-distance viability of exploitation for Britain, it is hard to see how Argentina’s diplomatic approach can succeed.

When in February it became clear that Britain would soon start drilling, the Argentine government lobbied hard to elicit support from both the United Nations and other South American countries to force Britain back to the negotiating table over sovereignty of the Falklands Islands.

In 2009, the government in Buenos Aires submitted to the UN its claim over a vast expanse of the Antarctic Ocean. The claim included the Falklands and its offshore environs. Argentina has also moved to impose shipping restrictions from her country’s ports to the islands. She has urged South American neighbors to follow suit. To date Argentina has received the backing of 32 Caribbean and Latin American countries, including Brazil, Mexico and, most vocally, from Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega.

At Kirchner’s urging in March 2010, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, while declining a full mediation role for the US, offered to help resolve the issue in a “peaceful and productive way.” The offer was swiftly rejected by Britain whose governments have consistently re-stated that sovereignty over the Falklands is not up for negotiation. Former British shadow defence secretary, now UK Defense Secretary, Liam Fox – expressing the consensus view across the UK political divide – is unequivocal. Speaking in May ahead of the UK election Fox said, “No amount of intimidation” from Buenos Aires “could change the fundamental issue of self-determination.” Fox was alluding to the self-determination of the islanders who are almost exclusively of British descent, and who, as poll after poll shows, want to retain British sovereignty.

Congratulating Britain’s new PM David Cameron on his electoral victory in May, Argentina President, Cristina Kirchner, called on him to “halt all oil exploration in the ‘disputed’ waters around the Falkland Islands” in favour of “fruitful cooperation with my country.” But even with Britain’s military commitment in Afghanistan, it is not likely that an Argentina, undergoing a far more severe economic crisis than Britain, would be in any shape to take on a British Royal Navy largely unaffected by the UK’s land war in Asia.

Cutting Argentina in on a three-way deal over oil and gas revenues has been mooted as a possible compromise. However, such is the strength of Argentine public opinion, any administration that accepted anything less than reclaiming full sovereignty over the islands is unlikely to survive long.

Four British companies are now scheduled to begin drilling eight new wells off the Falklands before the year is out. Although it will be some time before any oil actually pumps, in the UK, penny share investors are already champing at the drill bit.

In the last year no fewer than 48 oil companies listed on the London Stock Exchange have seen their share prices double, with 17 seeing a threefold rise. Seven of these have, according to a report in Money Week, multiplied their shareholders’ investment five-fold. The hunt is already on for investors to call the next strike. Front-runners include Desire Petroleum and Rockhopper again, with Falklands Oil and Gas reporting at the end of May it had begun drilling off the East Falklands. Another strike and the oil investment frenzy will start in earnest.

And with Argentina’s economy in no shape to consider war, the only forces that could “top kill” Britain’s south Atlantic black gold bonanza appear to be market ones.

(This is a guest post by Peter C. Glover of Energy Tribune.)

Join the conversation about this story »

From 538's Tom Dollar

When Argentina went to war with the UK in 1982 over the Falkland Islands, Jorge Luis Borges likened it to "a fight between two bald men over a comb." Last February, British oil companies began to explore in Falklands waters. Argentina declared this was a violation of its sovereignty: it continues to claim the Falklands, called las Islas Malvinas in Spanish, as an integral part of its territory--even enshrining the claim in its Constitution.

For a few weeks it seemed as if these two bald men would fight another battle, though this time of words and not of weapons. Initial geological tests showed little petroleum, and tensions cooled down to their normal state of disagreement. A second test last week showed much bigger reserves, threatening to set things aflame once again (though the recent disaster in the Gulf of Mexico may make all parties less keen on deepwater drilling). Potential oil reserves aside, what is it about these treeless, windswept, South Atlantic islands that arouses such great passions?

Well for one thing, passion over the Malvinas rests almost entirely on the Argentine side. Understanding why requires a bit of political history. From hearing Argentina's stance (and this issue is one of few that unite left and right--more on that in a bit), you'd think that the Malvinas were the great spiritual homeland of the Argentine people--Kosovo times Jerusalem plus Mt. Ararat--and that the British takeover in 1833 must have resulted in the displacement of thousands, if not millions, of Argentines.

In truth, Argentina never maintained a permanent settlement on the islands. Prior to 1833 no one had; there is little evidence that even pre-Columbian peoples stayed there long-term. The islands had been alternately claimed by Spain, France, the UK and the US, which used the islands as a way-station for fishing, whaling and seal-hunting. Upon independence, Argentina (then the United Provinces of the River Plate) retained Spain's claim under the principle of uti possidetis juris, and briefly used the Falklands as a penal colony in the 1820s.

After the Royal Navy asserted control over the islands in 1833 (primarily to prevent Monroe-indoctrinated Americans from taking them), they were settled by Welsh and Scottish sheepherders. The Falklanders--who are culturally, ethnically and linguistically British and wish to remain so--have lived there continuously for over 170 years. They claim the right to self-determination under the UN Charter.

To Argentina, the Falklands are an illegal outpost of an alien power, a last vestige of European colonialism in South America. Argentina maintains that the right of self-determination does not apply to the Falklanders, because they are not the Islands' indigenous population. This position takes a fair amount of chutzpah coming from Argentina, which is itself a country of European settlers, and which expanded to its present borders through a series of wars, incursions and territorial aggrandizement.

As such, bringing up the Malvinas is the dog-wagging, Hail Mary pass, trump card for floundering politicians from the left and right. When Gen. Leopoldo Galtieri--leader of the military Junta then in power -- ordered the invasion in 1982, he meant it to distract the populace from an economic crisis and forced disappearances at home. It worked brilliantly, sparking an outpouring of patriotic fervor and massive pro-Junta demonstrations--until the UK unexpectedly (to Argentina) retaliated, took back the Falklands, and dealt the Junta a fatal blow.

Since the restoration of democracy in 1983, the Malvinas situation has provided a good font of political theater for Argentine presidents. Argentina will now refrain from invade the islands by force, as it is now clear that Britain would retaliate--and win. Nor will Britain ever negotiate the sovereignty of the Islands as long as the Falklanders express the overwhelming desire to remain British. (And the fact the Argentina invaded in 1982 only hardens this position.)

But there is also little incentive for Argentina to abandon its claim--and considerable intangible benefit to maintaining it. "Melting pot" nations, like Argentina and the United States, require invented instruments of social cohesion to make up for a lack of ethnic unity. These can be political and economic institutions (historically weak in Argentina), shared culture, and national mythology. Irredentism unites left and right in the common belief that "we wuz robbed," and allows diametrically (and violently) opposed factions to unite behind a common cause. Marxist student groups at the Universidad de Buenos Aires can believe in the same Malvinas myth as the old Junta did--amazing, given that 30 years ago the same Junta was torturing them and throwing them out of airplanes.

This left-right alliance brings us back to the current posturing by Peronist President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. Fernández, like her husband and predecessor former President Néstor Kirchner, claims to inherit the social justice, economic populist legacy of Perón's first presidency--most associated with his wife Evita (Fernández has actively promoted her Nueva Evita image). Mr. Kirchner was elected president in 2003 on the heels of Argentina's economic meltdown.

La crisis, as it's known, was precipitated by the unsustainable policy of one-to-one peso-dollar convertibility that existed during the 90s (see analogy with Greece ). Convertibility was one component of the Washington Consensus policies of then-President Carlos Menem (also a Peronist--partisan identity is complicated in Argentina). Others included privatization of state industries, "carnal relations" with the United States and NATO, and a restoration of diplomatic relations with Britain. Though Argentina continued to claim the Falklands during this time, Foreign Minister Guido di Tella pursued a soft-pitch approach, sending every child on the Islands a toy once a year.

Kirchner took his election to be a rejection of all things Menem. He re-nationalized industries, broke with Washington in favor of closer ties with Venezuela and other Latin American countries, and played up his spread-the-wealth credentials. He also took a hard line against the former military dictatorship, reopening prosecutions against Junta officials fifteen years after they were pardoned by Menem. The Kirchners forced themselves to walk a fine line: placating their poor and working-class base, without frightening the Argentine business interests and foreign investors needed for recovery. This has not been an easy task, and in the last two years, President Fernández has stumbled from one mini-crisis to another.

Therefore, the Malvinas issue is an easy rallying cry--not only within Argentina, but to unite other Latin American countries behind it against European "colonialism." Hugo Chávez and Evo Morales have vociferously demanded that Britain turn the Falklands over to Argentina. Even more moderate leaders like President Lula of Brazil and President Calderón of Mexico have come to answer Fernández' call for unified Latin American support.

Even US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton offered to moderate discussions between the UK and Argentina over the Islands. This is a tactful and costless way to demonstrate that the United States under President Obama is a Good Neighbor to its fellow American nations. Presumably, Clinton understands full well that Britain will no more negotiate the sovereignty of the Falklands with Argentina than the US will negotiate the sovereignty of Hawaii with Japan or Morocco with the Western Sahara. The result is a perfect diplomatic charade -- everyone looks good, but no one has to do anything.

Still, Fernández has problems that can't be covered up by Malvinas posturing. Shortly after succeeding her husband in 2007, she pushed for a dramatic increase in export tariffs on beef. This infuriated the cattlemen's association, which shut down rural roads with protests. The Senate ultimately rejected the tariff increase after Vice President Julio César Cobos cast a tie-breaking vote against the president (as in the US, the president and vice president are elected on the same ticket). Inflation is over 20 percent, despite the statistics bureau's official estimates that place it under 10 percent. The government re-nationalized Aerolíneas Argentinas and took over the country's largest pension fund, which critics have called a cash-grab to meet debt obligations.

Despite calling early congressional elections last summer, a coalition of anti-Kirchner parties took over both houses of Congress. The vultures have begun to circle, and opponents are lining up for the 2011 presidential election--including Vice President Cobos. Still, this has not made the president any more conciliatory (conciliation is difficult when you see your opponents as "coup-plotters" -- in a country where coup-plotting means something). She fired Central Bank President Martín Redrado last January, jeopardizing the Bank's supposed autonomy. Her attempt to appoint a new president then appeared to be doomed in the Senate due to lack of a quorum. The appointment was saved only at the last minute by the miraculous appearance (and vote to abstain) of...Carlos Menem, now a senator from La Rioja province.

So with the writing the wall, the Kirchners perhaps should be plotting their political resurrection in a few years time. While in American politics, there are seldom second acts (for some reason we never saw Senator Nixon, Republican of California, nor Secretary of Agriculture Larry Craig of Idaho), in Argentina they are a way of life. While the political wave of the Malvinas is likely to raise the Cobos and Menem boats and lower the Kirchners, the next time around the rallying cry of the Falklands may sweep the Kirchners back from the political hinterlands.
---
This article was authored by research assistant Thomas Dollar. Please send comments or suggestions to sexton538@gmail.com

This week's column by the Post-Gazette's Jack Kelly is his usual weaving together of snippets of wisps of notions and calling it all factual. As you read, note the occurrences of the "seems to" wiggle words.

Gasoline refining lacks its spark, for now

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- While the cost of crude has risen in the past year much faster than the price of gasoline at the pump, Big Oil absorbed a huge body blow to the bottom line.

After racking up sharp losses on their refining businesses in the last quarter of 2009, energy companies are facing a longer-term struggle even as the summer driving season approaches and the economy shows signs of life.

"There's been a fundamental shift in the U.S. demand and the price of gasoline," said Lynn Westfall, chief economist for Tesoro Corp., an independent refiner that posted a loss of $179 million in its latest quarterly report. "Growth in China and India are driving crude prices higher. But demand in the U.S. is weak and so you can't pass the higher costs along."

The Falklands: For Argentina, Oil Reopens Old Wounds

Argentines could be said to share three passions: soccer, the tango and their longstanding claim over Las Malvinas, which the British who control the island archipelago 300 miles off Argentina's coast call the Falklands. Even though Britain decisively beat back an Argentine invasion of the Falklands in 1982, the cry of "Las Malvinas son Argentinas!" (The Malvinas are Argentine!) still resonates in national politics. "It doesn't matter if you're from the left or the right, when you become President in Argentina, sooner or later you start beating your chest about the Malvinas," says writer Sylvia Walger, who is set to publish a book on current President Cristina Fernandez.

That time has now come for Fernandez, who has begun vigorously asserting Argentina's rights to the Falklands after a British oil rig recently arrived to explore what may be vast crude reserves beneath the sea bed around the islands. Last month, Fernandez vowed to argue "one thousand and one times for [Argentina's] international rights" to the islands and the oil, and ordered all ships stopping at Argentine ports obtain a special government permit if they want to continue on to the Falklands. This month, during a visit by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, she requested Washington's mediation in the dispute — and while Clinton declined to mediate, she appeared to endorse the principle that the dispute ought to be up for negotiation. "We would like to see Argentina and Great Britain sitting down to discuss this issue," she said.

Iran says no need to change OPEC output ceiling

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran said on Sunday there was no need to change OPEC's output ceiling at the oil producing cartel's meeting on March 17 in Vienna, the Iranian oil ministry's website SHANA reported.

"There is no need to change the output ceiling in the next OPEC meeting ... OPEC will insist on the members' quota compliance in the next meeting," Iran's representative to OPEC, Mohammad Ali Khatibi, was quoted as saying by SHANA.

Qatar minister sees no OPEC output change

KHOBAR, Saudi Arabia: OPEC is not expected to make any fundamental change in output at its next meeting, Qatar's oil minister was quoted yesterday as saying by Al-Hayat newspaper.

Separately, the Saudi newspaper al-Riyadh quoted an unnamed senior OPEC official as saying the producers group is expected to maintain its production ceiling unchanged at the meeting.

Relax, there’s plenty of oil and gas

We are not staring soaring oil prices in the face. After crossing the then-record $120/bbl mark in May 2008, oil moved on to just shy of $150. By end 2008 the pricking of the financial bubble saw the price fall to $30/bbl and it has taken months to creep back to $80 or so. But, one argument goes, the millions of new cars expected on Chinese and Indian roads over the next decades will mean soaring demand and prices for oil. Perhaps.

Daniel Yergin, founder of CERA (Cambridge Energy Research Associates), is not convinced. Demand in rich countries fell in 2008 as oil prices soared and affected economic activity. In the US, daily oil consumption fell by two million barrels last year, though motoring only accounted for 15% of the fall and slower economic activity and flying for the rest. Meanwhile, the world looks increasingly awash with crude.

Spillage from the Oil Curse

“Not a single one of the 23 countries that derive most of their export earnings from oil and gas is a democracy today,” Diamond noted in an essay earlier this year. Especially in Arab countries, the fabulous riches that come from under the ground tend to create overbearing governments with apathetic citizens. “In these systems, the state is large, centralised, and repressive,” 
Diamond wrote.

Societies are usually “intensely policed” because “there is plenty of money to lavish on a huge and active state-security apparatus,” and bureaucracies are “profoundly corrupt.” They tend to see the money that pours into state coffers as everybody’s and nobody’s, and therefore more or less free for the taking. The public pays no taxes in the richer states, and in the view of the entrenched potentates no taxation means no need for representation.

Delta Says Strategic Review Is in ‘Advanced Stages’

(Bloomberg) -- Delta Petroleum Corp., the money- losing U.S. energy producer whose largest shareholder is Kirk Kerkorian, said its review of strategic alternatives including a possible sale is in “advanced stages.”

Cnooc to Announce Information on Overseas Cooperation ‘Soon’

(Bloomberg) -- Cnooc Ltd., China’s biggest offshore oil explorer, may announce information about the progress of overseas cooperation “very soon,” said Chairman Fu Chengyu.

“We have stressed our intention to intensify cooperation with foreign countries and companies since the crisis, and good progress has been made,” Fu said in an interview today in Beijing, where he’s attending parliamentary meetings.

Cnooc to Buy Half of Argentina’s Bridas for $3.1 Bln

(Bloomberg) -- Cnooc Ltd., China’s biggest offshore oil explorer, said it will buy half of Bridas Corporation from Carlos Bulgheroni for $3.1 billion, giving it a stake in Argentina’s largest oil exporter.

Nigeria's state-owned oil corporation to go private

Nigeria's state-owned National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has initiated talks with investment banks including Standard Chartered, JP Morgan, and Deutsche Bank to explore financing options as it changes into a fully privatised commercial company.

China Delivers Venezuela Jets For Anti - Drugs Fight

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela on Saturday tested six training and light attack jets bought from China for defense and anti-drugs flights in a deal that dodges an embargo banning sales of U.S. weapons parts to oil exporter Venezuela.

President Hugo Chavez ordered a total of 18 K-8 jets built by China after a plan to buy similar jets from Brazil's Embraer fell through, apparently because they include U.S. electrical systems.

Global hunt for phosphates is on

Are we facing a food disaster with catastrophic shortages of fertilisers? Will the world feed the three billion or so more people likely to be added, by 2050, to the six billion already on the planet?

Plunging price heats up ethanol

CHICAGO — Ethanol, the commodity that cost Bill Gates more than $44 million the last time prices collapsed, is poised to rally as much as 20 percent as the fastest drop since 2008 spurs demand.

Falling corn prices and record ethanol supplies have driven the price down more than 17 percent in three months to $1.585 a gallon Friday, its worst run since 2008's fourth quarter. It will average $1.96 a gallon at the peak of the U.S. summer driving season as refiners from Valero Energy to Sunoco mix more into gasoline made from increasingly pricey oil, according to the median of 10 analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg.

Taxpayer-subsidized manure digesters stimulate factory farm pollution

At the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen last December, U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack unveiled plans to promote manure digesters as a way to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent. The trick is that you have to be a factory farm to qualify.

Renewable energy also needs to be sustainable energy

William "Bill" Ayres, business manager for the biomass division at R3 Sciences, has an idea that could dramatically increase the sustainability of the biodiesel industry. Ayres has been involved with biodiesel since 1990 and helped form the National Biodiesel Board.

"I did some research several years back and took some soybean oil and soy biodiesel, ran them through a catalytic reformer and converted them to hydrogen," Ayres said. "I did it just to show that it could be done."

Tokyo Electric Power planning trial of smart meters

TOKYO — Tokyo Electric Power Co said Thursday it will launch trials of smart meters for more efficient power consumption by October in a bid to start their full-fledged introduction in two or three years.

Operations normal at Japan nuke plants after quake

TOKYO (Reuters) - Operations at Tokyo Electric Power Co's Fukushima Daiichi and Daini nuclear power plants are as usual after a strong quake hit northern Japan on Sunday, a spokesman at the company said.

Health Costs of California Air Pollution

Filthy air in California cost federal, state and private health insurers $193 million in hospital costs, according to a RAND Corporation study released last week.

The report is the first to show how California’s failure to meet federal clean air quality standards is increasing hospital expenses and its impact on insurers, said John Romley, the study’s lead author and a RAND economist.

China, Not UN, Controls Supply for CO2 Offsets, Stanford Says

(Bloomberg) -- China’s power to set prices for electricity from windfarms is dictating the supply of tradable emission credits in the UN carbon market, the world’s second biggest, according to a report from Stanford University.

State suing for responsible scientific conclusions

The Environmental Protection Agency recently concluded that man-made greenhouse gas emissions — including carbon dioxide — are harmful pollutants and must be regulated. The lawsuit I filed challenging that finding does not address the disputed science surrounding global warming. Instead, it focuses on the indisputable fact that the EPA relied on information that has been discredited, manipulated, lost or destroyed, and sometimes evaded peer review. The lawsuit does not attempt to show that the globe is not warming. It does, however, show that the process used by the EPA in deciding to regulate greenhouse gases is riddled with errors that render its conclusion untrustworthy.

Climate snapshot reveals things are heating up

THE nation's two leading scientific agencies will release a report today showing Australia has warmed up significantly over the past 50 years. It is a response to recent attacks on the science underpinning climate change.

The ''State of the Climate'' snapshot, drawn together by the CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology, shows the mean temperature has increased 0.7 degrees since 1960.

The snapshot also finds average daily maximum temperatures have increased every decade for the past 50 years.

The report states temperature observations, among other indicators, ''clearly demonstrate climate change is real''.

In 1982 the war with Argentina put the then-Labour leader in an awkward bind. Surely the islanders' underdog arguments should still appeal to the left today

Michael Foot's death inevitably makes me think again of the Falklands war, though the islands have been in the headlines recently over the renewed Anglo-Argentinian row over the start of drilling for oil in south Atlantic Falklands waters.

What should we think in 2010 about the respective Argentinian and British claims to sovereignty of this small landmass off the Argentinian coast, which has been disputed for a good 200 years?

Back in 1982 the war put Footie in an awkward bind. But, West Country patriot that he was, the then-Labour leader nailed his colours to the flag and backed Margaret Thatcher's dispatch of the 40,000-strong task force that took the islands back – aware as Foot must have been that his own election hopes would be sunk along with the Argentinian cruiser Belgrano and several Royal Navy warships.

It was one of the most tense and extraordinary periods I have witnessed in parliament, starting on a quiet Friday morning – 2 April – when first news of the long-feared invasion came through and ministers refused to confirm it to an increasingly angry House of Commons until after the house had risen at 2pm.

It would not happen like that nowadays. The house would probably not be sitting, be poorly attended and more docile. But equally, the 24/7 global media village would make it harder to deny the facts.

Next day the Commons met in a rare Saturday session, the die was cast – with Foot's eloquent support in standing up to rightwing military dictators – and, after Lord Carrington resigned for Foreign Office failures, the fleet sailed.

Like the Doge of Venice's attack on the Barbary pirates in the 1780s it was the last quixotic twitch of a great maritime empire's command of the seas. What Britain's military does today is mostly done by its armies.

But until the fall of Port Stanley 74 days later – 14 June – it dominated events, with no one quite certain of the outcome until close to the end. A relieved Thatcher announced the surrender to a crowded House at 10 o'clock at night (that wouldn't happen either). There were rather more PoWs than expected, she joked. Everyone chuckled.

As Simon Jenkins wrote the other day there won't be a war this time, but Argentina – poorer and less arrogant than in the 80s – is gathering its neighbours as allies and is assured of US neutrality.

Does that matter? Perhaps not much. It was the official position last time when Ronald Reagan overruled expedient state department advice and helped his friend Margaret in several crucial ways. Few Argentinian troops have died in Helmand province lately.

Jenkins regards the retention of the islands as an expensive anachronism which should be negotiated away via the UN and the oil exploited under licence. That view reflects both a High Tory pessimism and high rationality which he often embraces, a tad dismissive of economic considerations – and emotion too.

Some boisterous Guardian readers put him right in the letters column.

Back in 1981 Nicholas Ridley, then a Thatcherite junior foreign minister, came to the Commons with a leaseback deal as part of a general budget cut that would later trigger the war by announcing the withdrawal of HMS Endurance, the sole Royal Navy warship in the region.

Ridley was inept and MPs – Labour as well as what Jenkins calls "neo-imperialist rightwingers" – were furious with him. After all, Argentina was then a nasty military dictatorship which had launched a "dirty war" against its own domestic critics. Thousands disappeared.

As I joked at the time, defeat meant Argentinians got their elected government back, but so did we. It was the making of the Iron Lady and stands as a lesson to misogynists everywhere: don't think they're pathetic just because they're girls.

In 2010 some elements of the current drama repeat themselves. This time Argentina's crisis is economic, this time the female leader is in Buenos Aires: President Cristina Elizabet Fernández de Kirchner (married to ex-and-possibly-future president Néstor Kirchner), this time Britain is again in economic doldrums, its army overstretched abroad, its navy smaller still.

Neither country can possibly want another war and their bellicose media would probably relish a jingoistic clash of words from the safety of their editors' armchairs. My hunch is that the Ocean Guardian (no relation) will be allowed to search for the goodies undisturbed and that the issue will only get really tricky if it finds them.

Argentina needs extra revenue even more than the Brits do. One of the richest countries in the world until the 1930s – when it slipped towards Peronista populism – it has been overtaken by both Brazil and Chile, Brazil finally emerging as a major player 100 years after it could have done.

Buenos Aires's latest crisis (unless you count expected 31% inflation) arises from litigation by unpaid creditors a decade after Argentina's $100bn default. Cristina Kirchner decided to raid the reserves to pay them off and was forced to sack Martín Redrado, governor of the central bank, when he resisted.

His successor, Mercedes Marcó del Pont, is seem as more pliable. The country's problems sound a bit like Greece's and are deeply ingrained – far more serious than ours by the way before you rush to compare them.

But what of territorial claims far from home? Jenkins compares the Falklands with Hong Kong, which Mrs Thatcher negotiated back to China – though reluctantly; she scarcely had a choice.

Like Britain, which has tiny imperial scraps of land, some quite useful, all over the world, the French retain St Pierre and Miquelon at the mouth of the St Lawrence without Canada feeling humiliated. The Americans have lots of great significance in the Americas and the Pacific. Russia, which expanded across a continent – just as the Americans did – in the 19th century, clings to anomalies too.

Gibraltar is the one that matters most to us because of its immense strategic significance. It has been held since the Treaty of Utrecht (1713), which, incidentally, is also the basis of Argentinian claims you-know-where.

The locals are as fiercely British as the 2,500 Falklanders, though no longer as well-protected by the garrison. I doubt if much will change soon between EU partners Spain and Britain: Spain's southern flank is messy, since it too holds enclaves, in north Africa.

We'll leave the Channel Islands, with their French heritage, the last relics of William the Conquerer's Duchy of Normandy – lost by Bad King John – to one side today. No oil there, only oily banks.

But it underlines the extent to which geography and rationality play only a part in these matters, though any geography that yields oil, gas or a toehold to the Antarctic should not be lightly handed over.

And, of course, Falklanders who remind visiting reporters that the islands were empty when their ancestors arrived have a point. It's not as if many Argentinians would want to emigrate there either.

"We didn't murder the indigenous population to settle here, unlike those Argies" should have some residual leftwing underdog appeal, shouldn't it? The argument works in other parts of the world, not least in Latin America, where the locals have been fighting back.

Come to think of it, aren't most Argentinians Europeans anyway? Yes, 86% nowadays — some 60% of them at least part-Italian. Well, we wouldn't hand the islands back to Silvio Berlusconi, would we? To Fabio Capello? We'll let him know after the World Cup.

An incorrigible rebel, the former Labour leader failed politically but always followed his mighty heart

Michael Foot, the most improbable literary romantic to lead a major British party since Benjamin Disraeli, has died at the age of 96 after a turbulent political career that left him a much-loved but also deeply controversial figure. Though physically frail he displayed his customary zest for life until close to the end.

Born a year before the outbreak of the first world war, Foot's career could be traced through many of the horrors and triumphs of the bloody 20th century, while simultaneously harking back to literary and political conflicts long forgotten by most of those whose votes he sought through nearly 60 years of elective politics. Never a communist, always a leftwing socialist and scourge of fascism, in all his battles he was rarely less than wholly committed to causes for which he cared. After his death was announced at midday today Gordon Brown led the deluge of tributes from both friends and political foes.

"Michael Foot was a man of deep principle and passionate idealism and one of the most eloquent speakers Britain has ever heard. He was an indomitable figure who always stood up for his beliefs and whether people agreed with him or not they admired his character and his steadfastness," the prime minister said in a statement.

As a brilliant orator, steeped in Byron, Shelley, Swift, Milton and the great political struggles for British liberty, Foot's political life was mostly spent as the incorrigible, scornful rebel. A champion of British unilateral nuclear disarmament (CND), one of the left's great postwar causes, he was one of those who helped foster the left-right Bevanite split that damaged Labour throughout the 50s – even after his hero, Nye Bevan, made his peace with the right.

In his public and private life he maintained a reputation for personal integrity, honesty and – with exceptions like Norman Tebbit whom he dubbed a "semi-housetrained polecat" – the basic kindness of a very gentle Jacobin radical. Yet Foot was also a bundle of contradictions, a friend of Lord Beaverbrook – Foot called him "Beelzebub" – of Enoch Powell and Randolph Churchill, a defender of Indira Gandhi when she declared a state of emergency in his beloved India. A passionate champion of liberty, the bibliophile author of 20 books, he was later accused of betraying it to accommodate trade union power in the 70s. For others his lofty idealism, which included a life-long devotion to Plymouth Argyle FC (he attended their games well into his 90s), was highly attractive. Despite the defeat of many of his most cherished causes, he had a rich and deeply fulfilled life, which he shared (until her death in 1999) with his beloved wife, the filmmaker Jill Craigie.

The most remarkable twist in his career came when he was past 60 and was drawn gradually into the vortex of power after Labour unexpectedly regained office in 1974.

Improbable partnership

A decade after rejecting office in Wilson's first government, he became employment secretary, battling to contain union militancy with the "social contract," sustain the government's fragile incomes policy and keep it afloat in the Commons, courtesy of the Lib-Lab pact, after Labour lost its majority in 1977. Such was Foot's gallant reputation and prestige he kept the unions and the left onside during his last improbable partnership, as deputy prime minister to Jim Callaghan from 1976-79 until it all collapsed into the industrial "winter of discontent". But even defeat had a largely unforeseen consequence. When Callaghan stood down in 1980 MPs (who then still picked the leader alone) voted with their heart for Foot over the electorally more appealing Denis Healey, the Ken Clarke of his time.

It gave Shirley Williams, Roy Jenkins, David Owen and Bill Rodgers, Labour's rightwing "Gang of Four" their excuse to split the party and form the SDP in alliance with the Liberals. Foot's leadership was also damaged by disloyalty from the left, not least Tony Benn's divisive decision to run against Healey for the deputy leadership in 1981. The Argentinian junta's 1982 invasion of the Falklands also helped Mrs Thatcher. Foot, the West Country patriot, felt compelled to support her reconquest.

Many had rejoiced that a cultured man of letters, scornful of spin and soundbites, could still lead a great party in the name of socialist fraternity. Others feared he was unelectable, a concern reinforced by his appearance at the Cenotaph in what was wrongly dismissed as a duffle coat. The Queen Mother, another of his unlikely friends, was supportive. "Oh hello, Michael, that's a smart sensible coat for a day like this," she was supposed to have said. Foot's ineffectual Labour campaign was trounced in the 1983 election after which he appeared on Private Eye's cover, waving his stick and shouting: "Hang on, I haven't finished yet." But it paved the way for Neil Kinnock, his protege, to succeed and begin the long drive to modernisation which led to Labour's triumphs in the 90s.

Whatever Foot thought of New Labour he loyally kept quieter than he would have done in the 50s. After all, it was the kindly letter he wrote praising young Blair after meeting him in 1982 that helped Blair win Sedgefield, the last available seat in England in 1983.

If it was a defeat for Foot-ism it was one of many: clause 4 socialism, the wartime "second front now" campaign, CND, pay policy, the unions' role in economic planning, a No vote in the 1975 referendum on Europe. He campaigned for them all and all were overwhelmed by the harsher realities of politics in a world changing faster than an upper middle class English radical wanted. Foot was a socialist and an internationalist who never wrote a book of theory and liked America no more than he did the Soviet Union. India, which he loved, has since gone nuclear and capitalist too. It did not daunt his youthful enthusiasms, nor his tendency to slap his thigh to emphasise a point. "The triumphs of socialism must be achieved even if it is achieved by a three card trick," he would joke. No puritan, his company was usually marked by laughter, more mellow as he aged, and the clink of glasses.

The frail favourite child of a West Country Liberal dynasty, cursed with eczema and asthma, Foot hitched his star early to Bevan, the charismatic Welsh ex-miner, whose admiring biographer he became. Their socialist views did not prevent either of them becoming allies of Beaverbrook, the Canadian press tycoon, owner of the then-mighty Daily Express, who shared their sense of mischief. Converted to socialism by the misery he witnessed in Liverpool, Foot came to London and was taken up by both the leftwing weekly, Tribune, and Beaverbrook to become a highly successful journalist as well as literary writer, a biographer of Jonathan Swift. Foot gained his first great claim to fame as the author of Guilty Men, the celebrated 1940 polemic against the prewar appeasers which sold 200,000 copies. Beaverbrook duly entered Churchill's cabinet, Bevan continued to attack Churchill, and Foot briefly edited Beaverbrook's London Evening Standard – though Tribune was his life's love.

Landslide

It helped set the tone for Labour's landslide victory in 1945 when Foot unexpectedly won Plymouth Devonport for Labour and became a Westminster gadfly. It was a role he maintained from outside after losing Devonport in 1955 and resumed after succeeding Bevan in Ebbw Vale after his hero's death in 1960.

Foot and Bevan fell out over Bevan's renunciation of unilateralism. But Foot usually followed his mighty heart for most of his career. In the 60s he even joined forces with Enoch Powell, with whom he shared the title of best parliamentary orator, to block Labour efforts to reform the Lords. He wanted it abolished, Powell wanted it left untouched.

Such quixotic behaviour prompted his old Oxford friend Barbara Castle to complain that "Mike" had "grown soft on a diet of soft options". His embrace of the messy compromises of power after 1974 was all the more remarkable, but even his sympathetic biographer, Kenneth Morgan, felt he was too nice, too vague, too emollient to have been a successful party leader. After his leadership ended Foot stayed in the Commons – remaining until Labour lost in 1992, the loyal elder statesman still capable of filling the chamber as few could.

There was never any question of going to the Lords. But his passion for books, as for Plymouth Argyle FC, never dimmed as the infirmities of old age took their toll. Nurtured by a network of loyal friends, he would still lunch at the Gay Hussar restaurant in Soho, a leftwing haunt since the 30s, until last year, with old friends like the Guardian's Ian Aitken and the literary Tory and anti-Thatcher rebel, the late Ian Gilmour. His body gave him trouble but his mind remained sharp until very recently.

In the bloody 90s when Yugoslavia was torn by civil war, Michael and Jill Foot went there and made a film on behalf of their beloved Dubrovnik, then under third attack Serb attack. It was a fitting last hurrah. Michael Foot's political life was marked by recurring defeat but his life itself was a model of how to live with courage, friendship and some good luck. Even when Jill crashed the car into a lorryload of Lucozade and Michael was seriously injured he emerged from hospital minus his asthma and his 70 Woodbines-a-day smoking habit. He had also discovered a new passion: the 16th century French essayist, Montaigne.

Source: Times (UK) (3-1-10)

The first explosion shook the land and sent a plume of black smoke 30 metres into the air. Seven others followed in close succession until a pall of peat and sandy dust hung over the narrow peninsula, flanked by the breakers of Surf Bay, which connects Stanley to its old airport.

A casual visitor arriving on a cruise ship at the weekend might have thought that Argentina was mounting a second invasion — a response to the oil drilling that began last week in the disputed waters off the Falkland Islands. The explosions were actually part of an effort to remove a deadly legacy of the first invasion. Work has finally begun to clear the 120 minefields, containing at least 20,000 mines, that the Argentinians laid in 1982.

The minefields are everywhere apparent — on the road to Stanley from the new Mount Pleasant airbase, on the low hills behind the town, on seemingly unspoilt beaches where the Argentinians feared that British Marines would land to recapture “Las Malvinas”. They are ringed by barbed-wire fences festooned with skull-and-crossbone signs.

Clearance work began straight after the war but was soon halted because several British servicemen were injured. The minefields were instead fenced off and left, there being little pressure for land in the sparsely populated islands. The fences were improved in the 1990s after the odd cow or sheep was blown up, but no human was injured and the islanders learnt to live with them.

Friday, February 26, 2010 by Daily Sport. IF there's one thing that comes between England and Argentina more than football, it's the Falklands. The little islands, home to 3,000 plucky British folk, have always been claimed by Argentina. You may remember their invasionin 1982 which cost many British and Argentinian lives. Times have changed. But tensions soared again when a British oil company began drilling near the islands. The Argentinian government saw this as theft of their natural resources and issued angry statements telling the Brits to back off. Then a bunch of Latin American countries including Venezuela, Nicaragua and ...

Distant colonies are an anachronism. Britain will have to negotiate with Argentina because the world will insist on it

A commercial ­dispute breaks out in the South Atlantic. ­Argentina asserts a hoary claim to the Falklands and takes it to the UN. Britain says push off, you must be joking. Nobody takes it ­seriously as war is inconceivable. ­Downing Street is more concerned with domestic unpopularity.

That was in March 1982. It was also last week. Then the tabloids greeted Argentina's claim with Stick It Up Your Junta. Now they are equally nuanced, calling the Argentine president, Cristina Kirchner, Queen Argie Bargy and Old Plastic Face. Then it took nine weeks of counter-invasion, with 1,000 deaths and £3bn spent, for Britain to restore the status quo ante. The Falklands war was a catastrophic failure of diplomacy and deterrence. Now, at least, war is unlikely.

Britain has almost as many troops on the islands, 1,200, as there were islanders at the time of the invasion. It is on guard and the latest row with Argentina is merely over the arrival of an oil rig, the Ocean Guardian, in waters north of Port Stanley. But Argentina regards submarine resources as falling within the terms of its long-standing claim to the islands, which its defeat in the 1982 war did nothing to diminish. Military conquest does not establish legal title.

Anyone who studies the tortuous ­history and law of the Falklands will know that Argentina's claim to the islands was certainly strong. The treaty of Utrecht recognised Spanish sovereignty and this led to 40 years of Spanish occupation of the islands, which was reasserted in 1823 by Buenos Aires after its independence from Spain. Ten years later the islands were seized by force by Britain, and settlers sent out in a crude act of imperial aggression.

Argentina protested its right to the islands then and since, regularly ­registering it with the UN's decolonisation committee, supported by other post-imperial states in south and north America. Thirty-two Latin American countries reasserted that support in Mexico this week with even the US sympathetic, conspicuously refusing to side with Britain on what it too sees as a post-imperial issue.

Britain's defence is one of "prescription"; that Britons have been in uninterrupted occupation of the islands since the 19th century, backed up by the oft-proclaimed wish of these Britons not to become Argentinian. Such considerations are strong, if not overwhelming, in international law. They were why the UN security council approved Britain's military reversal of the 1982 invasion.

But legal title is not all. The Falklands are the Elgin marbles of diplomacy, perhaps trivial to London but subject of everlasting (if minor) grievance to the people of Argentina. Before 1982 Britain recognised this. The islands lay off the coast of Argentina – their obvious link to the outside world. Continuing to garrison and supply them from Britain was an expensive legacy of empire.

Indeed at the very time of the Falklands war, Margaret Thatcher was transferring Hong Kong to China on similar grounds of expediency, and her favourite minister, Nicholas Ridley, was seeking a negotiated compromise on the Falklands with Argentina at the UN. This was for a transfer of sovereignty over the islands to Buenos Aires with entrenched leaseback to Britain to administer them on behalf of the 1,800 islanders, who would retain their right to remain British.

The irony is that the one thing that might have made leaseback acceptable to the islanders – a democratic Argentina – came about only through the one event that made such confidence-building impossible, the Falklands war. But that was the short-term. The short-term cannot be the end of the matter.

Argentina has not threatened military action over the Ocean Guardian, nor is President Kirchner's protest necessarily a bid for popularity – the Malvinas are not a big issue in Buenos Aires politics. Britain's decision to go ahead with drilling, though within the bilateral 1995 Joint Declaration over Oil, was bound to be seen in Latin America as imperial arrogance. The matter may yet be decided by the international court at The Hague.

The right to self-determination of the islanders – long the obstacle to any deal with Argentina – has to be qualified. Intransigent in their response to the Ridley negotiations and backed by ­neo-imperialist rightwingers in the House of Commons, the islanders demanded and got their rescue by the 1982 task force and extravagant support ever since. They have rebuffed all efforts by later Buenos Aires mediators to ­re-establish contact.

The islanders claim that the cost of sustaining their splendid isolation can be met from the potential revenue from oil. But that oil no more belongs to them than the revenue of North Sea oil belongs to the Orkneys. As for potential oil farther south, uninhabited South Georgia and the South Orkneys can hardly claim "self-determination" to justify Britain appropriating revenue there, which many in South America consider theirs.

Democratic consent is always ­important, though hardly an absolute. Britain never gave the Hong Kong islanders a say in whether they would be handed over to Beijing. The fate of Gibraltar cannot be delegated entirely to the Gibraltarians. There is fierce opposition among English political parties to allowing the Scots even to vote on whether or not to end their union with England. There is nothing special about the Falklands.

In other words, 2,500 colonists cannot enjoy an unqualified veto on British government policy. Thatcher thought it was in Britain's interest to negotiate with Argentina in 1982, even when it was a dictatorship. Now that Argentina is a democracy that interest can hardly have diminished. Subsequent British governments knew this, but were too gutless to act on it. The Falklands will remain an expensive nuisance to British diplomacy – and possibly trade – in Latin America, the more so after last week's vocal support for Kirchner in Mexico.

The best hope for a ­stable and prosperous Falklands under British occupation is a revival of leaseback under UN supervision. The islands must have links with the adjacent mainland. It is absurd to supply them for ever by an air bridge from Britain and ­Ascension. Nor should the security of British citizens necessarily entitle them to the ­exploitation of oil on South America's continental shelf.

Britain was very lucky to win the Falklands war. Had a freelance navy occupation of South Georgia not ­pre-empted a planned later invasion, and had America not overtly and ­covertly backed the British task force, Thatcher's desperate gamble might have failed and the Argentine occupation succeeded, like India's seizure of ­Portuguese Goa which it imitated. (It was even called Plan Goa.)

That war is unlikely to be repeated. But this cannot allow us to ignore its causes. Distant colonies are a post-imperial anachronism. Britain will have to negotiate with Argentina because the world, either at the UN or at The Hague, will insist on it. The government and media can bury their heads in the sand, but that will not make the Falklands dispute go away or atone for the dead of the silliest of wars a quarter century ago.

---

By Daniel Kerner and Willis Sparks

Remember when Britain and Argentina went to war over a handful of hard-scrabble islands with little to recommend them but two thousand windblown people and a few million penguins? In 1833, Britain seized and begun occupying what it called the Falklands, a set of islands just 350 miles off Argentina's coast and about 8,000 miles from London. Argentines, who refer to them as Islas Malvinas, have demanded their return ever since.

In April 1982, General Leopoldo Galtieri's military government announced that Argentina had finally claimed ownership of the islands. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher insisted that they still belonged to Britain. To rally the Argentine people to a military junta blamed for large-scale human right abuses and a floundering domestic economy-and convinced that Thatcher would let the islands go rather than fight for them, Galtieri ordered an amphibious invasion. The British navy arrived and quickly forced an Argentine surrender.

The war lasted 74 days and killed 255 British and 649 Argentine troops -- along with three local residents. The Argentine government was soon forced from power, and Thatcher rode a surge of patriotic pride to a landslide re-election the following year.

Though Argentina withdrew, it has never surrendered its legal claim on the islands; ownership is enshrined in the country's constitution. The Falklands have experienced an economic boom in recent years, thanks to the revenue generated by increased exports of squid. But for most people outside Argentina and Britain, the war represents little more than a curious footnote of naval history. 

Until last weekend.

On Sunday, a British-based oil company, Desire Petroleum, began drilling for oil in the northern basin of the islands. The news has provoked sharply rising tensions between a lame duck government in Britain, where the 1982 war remains a point of pride, and a struggling government in Argentina, where hard feelings over the conflict remain alive and well. Both governments face critical elections in 2011.

Faced with few real options, the Argentine government tried to pre-empt the British exploration with a decree on February 16 that all ships moving to and from the islands that use Argentine ports or pass through Argentine waters must have a permit. Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner's government is now tightening the diplomatic screws on Britain, mainly by working to win broad support for its position from across Latin America. Other British oil companies are expected to explore the area soon.

Exploration will continue for the next few months. Local officials in the Falklands government claim there could be as many as 60 billion barrels in reserves beneath the basin, but some experts are skeptical. It's not yet clear that oil deposits near the islands contain enough accessible oil to make further investment worthwhile. Tensions will likely subside in coming weeks, and no one envisions a sequel to a war that killed nearly 1000 people. The Argentine government has said publicly that armed conflict is not an option, and the Argentina public is highly unlikely to support one.

But what if local officials are right about size of the oil reserves? What if there is much more oil there than some experts think? If two governments fighting for their political lives at home will go to war over islands famous only for their penguins, what might they do to secure billions of barrels of oil?

Daniel Kerner is a Latin America analyst at Eurasia Group, and Willis Sparks is an analyst in the firm's Global Macro practice.

UK government underlines support for exploratory project as shares in group Desire Petroleum soar by 25%

Drilling for oil off the coast of the Falklands Islands began today after months of building diplomatic tensions between Britain and Argentina over rights to the islands and any natural resources that can be extracted from surrounding waters.

The exploration group Desire Petroleum – named after HMS Desire, which claimed to have discovered the islands in 1592 – issued a statement to the London stock market today confirming its Ocean Guardian drilling rig had "spudded", or broken ground, at 2.15pm.

Shares in Desire have climbed more than 25% since the Guardian rig departed from Cromarty Firth in Scotland in November destined for the South Atlantic. They dipped slightly yesterday, down 4.25p at 112.75p.

Underlining the British government's support for the exploratory project, defence minister Bill Grammell today stressed he would take "whatever steps are necessary" to protect the legitimate activities on the islands and in its waters.

"There has been no change whatsoever to our policy and we have no doubt ­whatsoever about the sovereignty of the Falkland Islands, and no change in our support to their legitimate right to develop a hydrocarbon industry within its waters. We do, we have, and we will take whatever steps are necessary to protect the Falkland Islands and our counterparts in Argentina are aware of that."

His comments come after Buenos Aires has sought to ratchet up the diplomatic pressure on exploration in the area, located just 300 miles from the South American mainland. The Argentinian government still disputes British sovereignty despite its ill-fated invasion in 1982 which ended in UK forces reclaiming the archipelago following a seven-week war.

Weeks after the Ocean Guardian departed Scotland, Argentina passed a law provocatively including the disputed islands – which it knows as Las Malvinas – within the southern Argentine province of Tierra del Fuego. Last month it said the latest exploration mission was illegal, and barred the loading of pipes onto a ship allegedly operating in the Falklands.

The sea around the islands could contain up to 17 billion barrels of oil and 51 trillion cubic feet, or 9 billion barrels of oil equivalent, of gas, according to a report in 2000 by the US Geological Survey.

Desire has jointly hired the Guardian, manned with between 80 and 100 workers, for 80 days at a cost of $20m (just under £13bn). It is expected to update shareholders on the first well in a month's time. Other firms exploring in the area include Rockhopper Exploration, Falklands Oil & Gas and Boarders & Southern. Seven wells in the Falklands' territorial waters are planned for this year.

As well as the increasing diplomatic uncertainty around the latest wave of exploration, industry analysts believe the expensive expedition also represents a high financial risk for investors.

Previous searches for oil in and around the Falklands have proved particularly disappointing, with exploratory projects in the late 1990s finding no reserves of a commercial scale. Since then climbing oil prices and improvements in drilling and extraction technologies have prompted others to return.

Sabre-rattling over Malvinas oil serves a useful political purpose for Argentina's President Kirchner. But she's no Galtieri

It was Karl Marx who said "history repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce" – and in the case of the abruptly reigniting dispute over the Falkland Islands, aka Las Malvinas, there is reason to hope he was right. Argentina's latest protests, sparked by the prospect of an oil bonanza around the islands, could easily be dismissed as hot air. But that was the mistake Britain made last time, and almost 1,000 people paid with their lives.

The parallels with the runup to the 1982 war, echoing eerily down the years, are uncanny, although susceptible to exaggeration. The Iron Lady star of today's supposed sequel is not Britain's Margaret Thatcher. It is Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, Argentina's president and wife of her immediate presidential predecessor, Néstor Kirchner. She once styled herself "Evita with a clenched fist". She has shown she's not scared of a fight.

Like Thatcher, Kirchner has spent much of her time in office battling trade unions while trying to resuscitate an indebted, moribund economy. Regional analysts say the government, dependent on continuing international support since the country's $100bn debt default in 2001, is wary of unleashing a patriotic furore. But next year is presidential election year in Argentina.

If Kirchner and her husband can overcome corruption accusations arising from their substantial personal wealth, one or the other may seek a second term in office. And how better to set the blood racing, and the voters voting, than a noisy, passionate spat with frigid, faraway Britain? Kirchner is on record as describing Argentina's claim to sovereignty over the Falklands, South Georgia and the South Sandwich islands as "inalienable". It was a national duty, she said in 2008, to remove "the shameful presence of a colonial enclave".

Argentina's action this week in requiring shipping to obtain permits to travel to or through the disputed waters around the islands was immediately characterised as a "blockade' – another echo of 1982.

But islanders say they have been under economic siege by Argentina for many years and have survived. And there is no need this time for an exclusion zone of the type imposed by Britain after the invasion. A 500-square mile sovereign economic zone now surrounds the Falklands, protected by a Royal Navy destroyer, Typhoon jet fighters and about 1,300 military personnel.

Britain accepts Argentina is within its rights to impose rules on shipping that uses its ports. If the new regulations are enforced, oil industry experts say it will inevitably push up the cost of oil exploration. But suggestions in Buenos Aires that Argentina will attempt to enforce its authority on the high seas – or over what it calls its "national territory" around the Falklands – appear highly impractical at this point.

The first offshore oil rig to work the area since 1998 arrives off the islands this week, with drilling scheduled to start next year. Britain says such activity is entirely legal. "We have no doubt about our sovereignty over the Falklands islands and the surrounding maritime area," the British embassy in Buenos Aires said in a statement.

So exactly what foreign minister Jorge Taiana meant when he warned Argentina will try to stop the oilmen is unclear. "What they [the British oil company Desire Petroleum] are doing is illegitimate ... it's a violation of our sovereignty," Taiana said on Tuesday. "We will do everything necessary to defend and preserve our rights."

The capabilities to make good such declarations, however interpreted, are not wholly lacking. According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, Argentina's army and navy currently comprise 72,000 personnel. Its navy boasts three submarines, five destroyers and nine frigates (mostly secondhand), and a few patrol boats. The warships are armed with the feared Exocet missiles that inflicted so much damage in 1982. Argentina also has about 140 combat-capable aircraft, including Mirage fighters.

But unlike the dark days of the late, unlamented dictator, General Leopoldo Galtieri, nobody is seriously talking about resorting to main force. One possible avenue for Buenos Aires is to take its grievances back to the United Nations. It can also put pressure on Britain through regional organisations and bilaterally. Or – and this may be the smart move – it can bide its time while British firms and capital do the heavy lifting.

By some estimates, 60bn barrels of oil may be sitting under the sea around the Falklands, a potential North Sea-scale bonanza. But previous exploratory drilling has been disappointing and so far not a drop of sellable "black gold" has been extracted. Added to the political strains are the physical strains of working in such a southerly region. The sea in some areas reaches depths of 3,000 metres, rainfall is high, storms are frequent, winter temperatures are typically near freezing, and the cost of operating a rig in such an environment can run to $1m a day.

These are formidable challenges that may yet prove insuperable. Just as historical tragedy replays as farce, black gold often turns to fool's gold. Before doing anything silly, Kirchner's Argentina might be best advised to wait and see whether there is anything worth fighting over.

For Microsoft, 1982 means a new Chief Operating Officer, a new logo and the very first in-house fax machine.

Previous Episodes:
The History of Microsoft - 1975
The History of Microsoft - 1976
The History of Microsoft - 1977
The History of Microsoft - 1978
The History of Microsoft - 1979
The History of Microsoft - 1980
The History of Microsoft - 1981

March 24, 1982Microsoft U.K. Ltd. (United Kingdom) is incorporated (first official international subsidiary).

June 25, 1982
James C. Towne is appointed President and Chief Operating Officer of Microsoft. In July he takes over all responsibilities from Bill Gates, who will assume the title of Executive Vice President, responsible for all development activities. Gates remains Chairman of the Board. Towne was previously Vice President and General Manager of the Instrument Division at Tektronix. He is replaced by Jon Shirley the next year.

June 28, 1982

Microsoft announces a new corporate logo, new packaging, and a comprehensive set of retail dealer support materials. (blibbet)

July 6, 1982
Microsoft becomes a registered trademark in the U.S. ( No. 1,200,236 in Int.Cls 9 and 42 (computer programs and computer programming services).

July 16, 1982
Microsoft Acquires a Fax Machine for in-house use. It is a Panafax 1200 and is group I and II compatible.

July 16, 1982

The Microsoft Local Area Network (MILAN) is now fully functional, linking all of Microsoft's in-house development computers, including a DEC 2060, two PDP-11/70s, a VAX 11/250, and many MC68000 machines running XENIX. This system will simplify e-mail delivery on-site. (Bill Gates becomes billg)

August 1, 1982
Microsoft Multiplan version 1.00 for MS-DOS ships.

September 1, 1982
Microsoft announces the availability of its symbolic mathematic package muMATH/muSIMP for the IBM Personal Computer. This package is also offered for the Apple II, TRS-80, and CP/M-80 computer systems.

October 1, 1982
Paul Allen is diagnosed with Hodgkin's Disease, which is localized and in a very treatable form. He is on a limited work schedule while undergoing treatments. Although his treatment is successful, he will resign from Microsoft in 1983.

1982 Revenue/Headcount

The 1982 year-end sales total $24,486,000. The 1982 Calendar Year employee headcount totals 220 people.

Other products released in 1982: Cobol 4.6, Typing Tutor II for Apple II, SoftCard Premium, Flight Simulator for MS-DOS

Other 1982:

· First Artificial Heart: A permanent artificial heart was implanted in a human for first time. The operation was performed on Dr. Barney B. Clark, 61, at University of Utah Medical Center in Salt Lake City.

· Top hits: "I Can't Go for That (No Can Do)" by Daryl Hall and John Oates - "Waiting for a Girl Like You" by Foreigner - "Hooked on Classics" by The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra - "The Sweetest Thing I've Ever Known" by Juice Newton.

· Baby Bells Created: American Telephone and Telegraph settled the Justice Department's antitrust lawsuit against it by agreeing to divest itself of the 22 Bell System companies. The ATT Bell System was ordered to be subdivided into 7 Baby Bells by the US government.

· Hinckley Found Not Guilty: John W. Hinckley, Jr. was found not guilty because of insanity in shooting of President Reagan.

· Israel Invades Lebanon on June 6. The immediate cause cited for the invasion was the attempted assassination of Israel's Ambassador in London. Israel's plan was designed first to create a buffer between Lebanon and Northern Israel. The incursion quickly grew to a full-fledged attempt to destroy the P.L.O.

· Good News for Dieters: 1982 gave us the beginnings of Diet Coke and Equal artificial sweetener.

· Academy Awards: the 1982 Oscar for Best Movie went to "Gandhi."

· New Communist Leader: In Russia Soviet leader Leonid I. Brezhnev died at age 75 and the Kremlin command passed to Yuri Andropov. Brezhnev had suffered from arteriosclerosis of the brain.

· Record Breaker: Cal Ripken began playing for the Baltimore Orioles. By Sep 20, 1998 he had played a record 2,632 consecutive games.

· Computer is Man of the Year: Less than four months after IBM introduced the PC, Time Magazine named the computer as the man of the year! Never before (or since) had an inanimate object been chosen as the "man of the year".

· Tylenol tampering scare: In the fall of 1982, seven people die from taking cyanide-laced Tylenol capsules. The nation panics and Johnson and Johnson quickly recalls over 30 million bottles.

· Equal Rights Amendment defeated: The ERA, that would prohibit discrimination by sex, falls short of ratification when the deadline passes.

· Newspaper in Technicolor: A new publication called "USA Today" launched in full blown color, a first for a newspaper.

· Falkland Islands War: Argentina invades the British-occupied Falklands. After two months, Argentina surrenders to British forces on June 14.

· Princess Grace Dies: Princess Grace of Monaco dies from injuries suffered when her car plunged off a mountain road. Her daughter, seventeen-year-old Stephanie, a passenger in the car, suffers bruises and trauma.

Four British firms set to drill for oil north of Falkland Islands, in move Argentina calls a 'violation of sovereignty'

It does not look like much: a jumble of pipes, containers and drilling equipment sitting on a windswept jetty at Port Stanley.

The hardware, however, signals an imminent search for oil and gas that could turn the Falkland Islanders into south Atlantic oil barons, a prospect that has already triggered a dispute between Britain and Argentina.

A rig, the Ocean Guardian, is due to arrive by mid-February and will almost immediately begin drilling for hydrocarbon deposits 100 miles north of the archipelago.

Geological surveys suggest there could be up to 60bn barrels beneath the seabed around the British territory, a bonanza that would transform islands famed for sheep, fish and remoteness.

"The rig won't come into sight of Port Stanley unfortunately, it'll be out too far," said Phyll Rendell, the islands' director of mineral resources. "But everyone knows it's coming."

A British company, Desire Petroleum, has hired the rig to drill prospects in the North Falkland basin and will later lease it to three other British companies – Rockhopper, BHP Billiton and Falklands Oil and Gas – which also have exploration contracts. They will use the rig in rotation throughout 2010.

It will be the first drilling in Falkland waters since Shell suspended exploration in 1998 after oil prices slumped to $12 a barrel.

"With the rise in oil prices and the worldwide search for new oil and gas services, it has now become more than commercially viable for this work to begin," said Ben Romney, a Desire Petroleum spokesman. "We should know by the end of the year whether or not a major extraction programme will go ahead."

Argentina is not waiting that long to voice its anger. It lost the 1982 war with Britain over the islands, which it calls the Islas Malvinas, but still claims sovereignty and terms British control an occupation.

"What they are doing is illegitimate," said Jorge Taiana, the foreign minister. "It's a violation of our sovereignty. We will do everything possible to defend and preserve our rights."

Last week the government summoned Britain's chargé d'affaires – the ambassador was out of the country – to receive a protest note. Buenos Aires has reportedly warned Argentina-based oil companies against exploring waters around the Falklands and there are rumours it may use civilian vessels to disrupt the rig.

British diplomats brushed aside the protests and said it was longstanding UK policy to let the Falkland Islands government develop a hydrocarbons industry within its waters. They did not expect any Argentinian military forays.

Authorities on the islands were also unconcerned. "There will be quite a bit of rhetoric and Argentina has every right to protest if it wishes. But it will no doubt conduct itself in a proper manner," said Rendell. She was unaware of any plans by Buenos Aires to disrupt drilling.

Argentinians consider sovereignty over the islands a matter of national pride but few seemed impressed by their government's protest.

"Now the government is talking about the Malvinas again with their empty threats, and for what?" said Fabian Volonte, a former teenage conscript who was part of the 1982 invasion force. "We lost the war, now we have to watch the British growing rich from it and we can do nothing about it. It is just shame upon shame for Argentina."

Under current proposals the Falklands would receive 20% of all profits and 9% of royalties on every barrel. The four oil companies involved in drilling have also promised big onshore investment, including overhauling the main port and building 350 houses.

If even a small fraction of the potential deposits are found and extracted, it would transform the per capita income of the 2,900 islanders. Revenue from fisheries licences have in the last decade given Port Stanley, once desolate and broke, the feel of a prosperous Highland village.

The possibility of becoming a South Atlantic version of Brunei has not dazzled a population whose unofficial uniform is anorak and wellington boots.

Rather than the rig's imminent arrival, the local paper, the Penguin News, last week splashed on a proposal to market the Falklands to tourists as the "gateway to Antarctica".

"We have had the oil industry here before so there's a sense of been there, done that," said Rendell. "We have to remember that we haven't found any commercial oil yet. After six or seven months the drill could go away and not come back."

STANLEY, Falkland Islands (UPI) -- British forces mounted a warfare exercise involving navy and air force personnel in the Falkland Islands, scene of a 1982 conflict between Argentina and Britain and more recently of intense oil and gas exploration activities.

The two-day operation, code-named Cape Bayonet, simulated an enemy invasion in which the British air force's Typhoon multi-role fighter and navy ships took part, MercoPress reported.