MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency
Falklands/Malvinas war documents declassified; Argentine Defense ministry has 30 days to make them available
The Argentine government on Monday officially declassified secret files relating to the country's 1982 war with Britain over the Falkland Islands. The Defense Ministry has 30 working days to establish a mechanism for members of the public to consult the records, according to a resolution published in the official gazette. Read full article
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Disclaimer & comment rulesI wonder whether the “whole truth and nothing but the truth” will be made available to the public?
Apr 07th, 2015 - 07:17 am - Link - Report abuse 0The defense ministry has 30 days to rewrite the history before releasing the documents. It will show that Argentina was invited in by the UK and then treacherously attacked when they peacefully came ashore bearing gifts and friendship.
Apr 07th, 2015 - 07:26 am - Link - Report abuse 0“London has refused to discuss the question of sovereignty” Incorrect, they refuse unless there is a representative of the Falklands present, big difference.
Apr 07th, 2015 - 07:57 am - Link - Report abuse 0“GCHQ, the British equivalent of the U.S. National Security Agency, disseminating false information on the Internet.”
Apr 07th, 2015 - 10:15 am - Link - Report abuse 0...History..?
...Oil...?
...War...?
...Tourism...?
So the British spread lies on the internet for gullible folk to quote as facts...;-)
All they need now... is maybe a propaganda media outlet in South America...that would be a good idea....
Hey wait a minute...doh!.....;-)))
Oh yes, Mercorpess is a propaganda tool.
Apr 07th, 2015 - 10:54 am - Link - Report abuse 0Bahahahahaha
Pity the Spanish version of the website is dead. Must be easier ways of spreading English language propaganda than this website.
I just laughed so hard I peed a little.
Hope you changed your underwear Skip....You really want to get that seen to, I can see a future of incontinence knickers....
Apr 07th, 2015 - 11:04 am - Link - Report abuse 0Who mentioned Mercopress...?
Why would anyone jump to that conclusion...
Some folk are easily manipulated...;-)
Will the documents include the names of those responsible for shitting on the floor of the Post Office ?
Apr 07th, 2015 - 11:25 am - Link - Report abuse 0“Fighting officially began on May 1, 1982”
Apr 07th, 2015 - 11:42 am - Link - Report abuse 0Er... 'officially began' - says who????
I distinctly remember reading about fighting around Gov House on April 2nd not to mention South Georgia the next day!!!!
I'm sure they are rewriting history as we speak.
Apr 07th, 2015 - 12:07 pm - Link - Report abuse 0We already know that anything that comes out of Argentina will be shite, and rife with lies and untruth's ...
Apr 07th, 2015 - 12:33 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Why expect anything more...
It should make hilarious reading once the VIEJA LOCA and her minions corrupt it beyond any semblance of morality...!!
30 days is a long time in which to re write that part of history
Apr 07th, 2015 - 01:04 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Shredders going to be working overtime this month in BA?
Apr 07th, 2015 - 01:23 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Has the UK made available its files already?
Apr 07th, 2015 - 01:55 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Several years ago.
Apr 07th, 2015 - 02:15 pm - Link - Report abuse 0@4. Oh dear, you've found us out! Here's the real truth. Britain discovered the uninhabited islands in 1690. It was prepared to allow a French settlement. The spanish offered to buy the French settlement. The spanish tried to force the British off the islands. 81 years after the British discovery and settlement, Britain had to threaten spain with war, and so the spanish capitulated. Some forty years later, an upstart little spanish colony, ignorant of international law in the real world, made various claims. Even sending a criminal to the Islands who forged a letter. Britain was busy with important matters such as crushing France. Trespassing colonists arrived from south america on 15 November 1832. Legal British forces arrived on 20 December 1832. An illegal south american 'possession' for 4-5 weeks. A further two weeks were allowed to pass before the south americans were, politely, told to get off British territory. Military personnel and four civilians left as required by lawful authority. There's history. The rest are matters for the lawful authorities.
Apr 07th, 2015 - 02:56 pm - Link - Report abuse 0@13. http://www.naval-history.net/NAVAL1982FALKLANDS.htm
You can follow up references for yourself.
If GCHQ had done the job properly before 2 April, 82. A thousand British and Argentine men, would now spending quality time with their grandchildren!
Apr 07th, 2015 - 03:11 pm - Link - Report abuse 0@16 RC
Apr 07th, 2015 - 03:41 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Exactly. GCHQ fumbled the ball on that one, which is why they now keep their beady eyes on the Argentines to ensure that they don't try it again.
I would be disappointed IF GCHQ weren't keeping an eye on potential threats to the UK and our Overseas Territories.
It'll be interesting to see just what is released, and perhaps more interesting to see just what 'isn't' there.
#17 LEPRecon
Apr 07th, 2015 - 03:57 pm - Link - Report abuse 0I'm curious if they include Gabriel Barcia Marquez quote that the Gurkhas:
“…beheaded Argentine soldiers with their assassins' scimitars and were so bloodthirsty that the English had to handcuff them to stop further killing after the Argentines had surrendered.”
The truth is that although the Gurkhas frightened the daylights out of Argentine troops, the little Nepalese actually did not draw blood during war.
13 Enrique Massot
Apr 07th, 2015 - 04:26 pm - Link - Report abuse 0I don't know. Why don't you do some research and tell us?
If the UK has not, so what? It is not your concern. Argentina was the aggressor, why should the UK have to defend its own defence files?
You seem to be under two mistaken apprehensions;
a) that Argentina and the UK are equals
b) that anyone in the UK gives a damn what the Argentines think, or want.
a1) They are not. The UK is far, far superior and certainly never answers to Argentine 'demands'.
b1) They don't, (apart from maybe few LatAm 'watchers' on the Inter-webby thingy, and GCHQ, of course)
Have a great day in Canada!
@18 Chicureo
Apr 07th, 2015 - 04:33 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Yes I've heard about this story about the Gurkhas being 'put about' by the Argentines yet they've never produced one actual shred of evidence.
Not only that but a BBC news team were imbedded with the Gurkhas hoping, no doubt, to see their amazing fighting skills, but the truth is that the Argentines ran from their positions once they realised that they were going to face Gurkhas. No doubt these Argentine soldiers were so frightened by the propaganda stories put about by their own officers about being beheaded by the Gurkhas and taking no prisoners, in the hopes of making them fight to the death, that they ran rather than face them.
The British did nothing to dispel these 'rumours', and why would they? The Argentine officers were busy undermining the morale of their own men.
I believe this is where the root of this story comes from, yet despite there being an imbedded BBC news team with the Gurkhas they never once reported any of these 'beheadings', and neither did any Argentine prisoners on return to Argentina.
Also the belief that the Gurkhas would be so dishonourable as to murder unarmed prisoners has it's basis in the wide spread 'racism' at the heart of Argentine society. Most of them don't even know they're racist as it's so ingrained. But it is interesting to note that the none-white Gurkhas are branded as bloodthirsty murderers despite not even firing one shot it the war, but the white British soldiers who fought with and killed Argentine soldiers, aren't.
Why? Because this ingrained racism makes it easier to believe that none whites don't act 'civilised' but whites do. Yet looking at some of the worst atrocities of the 20th century shows supposedly educated and 'civilised' white people systematically murdering millions of people.
The ways of the Argentine mind is a puzzle.
20 LEPRecon
Apr 07th, 2015 - 04:51 pm - Link - Report abuse 0You make some very interesting points there, particularly in regards to the swelling Argentine malvinas Myth.
That is not so hard to understand.
The Argentines are desperate for any excuse as to why they lost, so fall back on racism. Or victimhood. “It wasn't fair!!” they cry. This type of victimhood and racism is never heard from the unarmed civillian population of the Falkland Islands that were invaded in 1982.
It wasn't very 'fair' on them, and they don't resort to racism...
Who cares about the Argentine mindset? They are the architects of their own failure.
The “revised” documents are going to be published under the title “The Fairytales of Galtieri” in three parts:
Apr 07th, 2015 - 05:48 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Part 1) “The peaceful invasion of the Malvinas”,
Part 2) “The glorious armed forces of the Fourth Reich”
Part 3) “What the fuck went wrong” with an addendum “We nearly won, but didn't”
#20 LEPRecon
Apr 07th, 2015 - 08:16 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Excellent points. The image of fear, ignorance and prejudice can really distort reality:
During the war, Argentinians reported of Gurkha's jumping into Argentinian foxholes with a grenade in one hand and their khukri in the other... stories ran amok of Gurkha's sneaking into camps and killing entire units silently...
The Argentine government actually publicly denounced the UK for sending the little bloodthirsty savages.
#21 ilsen
Victimhood is embraced as a national obsession in Buenos Aires.
#22 Chris R
There is an upcoming sequel as well: “The Fairytales of Cristina” it will have to be revised on a constant basis...
The Defense Ministry has 30 working days to establish a mechanism for members of the public to consult the records,
Apr 07th, 2015 - 08:50 pm - Link - Report abuse 0odds on, they will retain all the lies and important bits,
and just let the anti British bits be shown.
they cannot be trusted,
but hey, more incredible things have come out of Argentina,
including incredibly stupid...lol
@23 Chicureo
Apr 07th, 2015 - 09:03 pm - Link - Report abuse 0“During the war, Argentinians reported of Gurkha's jumping into Argentinian foxholes with a grenade in one hand and their khukri in the other... stories ran amok of Gurkha's sneaking into camps and killing entire units silently...”
And it's amazing that the BBC film crew with the Gurkha's never once caught any of it on film! Neither do the numbers of Argentine dead support their 'belief' that entire units were killed silently.
Of the 649 Argentines killed over half of them were on the Belgrano. The rest were killed at various places, in various battles, against various British regiments over the period of the Falklands war.
I'm also not aware of any Argentine soldiers being killed after 12 June 1982, which really makes the Argentine 'racists' look idiotic.
So no, the Gurkhas didn't run riot. Anyone who has EVER served with them (and I count myself amongst those fortunate few that have) know that they would NEVER act in such a dishonourable fashion. They don't break formations, and they don't break the Laws of Armed Conflict, and they certainly don't go mad and uncontrollable.
But it makes are little racist Argentine malvinistas feel 'better' if they think these things, yet the Gurkhas never killed one Argentine in the war. The Gurkhas never broke the law (unlike Argentine units).
I know that honour is something alien to most Argentines but the Gurkhas hold their personal honour, their family honour and their Regimental honour as something sacred.
But it'll be interesting to see what is released, and as I said, more interesting to see what isn't.
#14
Apr 07th, 2015 - 09:43 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Thanks Saphire!
But the Argies have been rewriting this history for years. Read any Argie “historical account” of the Falklands/Malvinas war: They allegedly sunk all the british ships, shot down all the british jets, won all the land battles, and yet they inexplicably lost the war due to some mysterious x-factor they refer to as “colonial injustice”. Very entertaining reading...actually very revealing of the parallel universe the Whacky Leadership seems to live in
Apr 07th, 2015 - 10:22 pm - Link - Report abuse 0The following is a quote from ”Los Chicos de la Guerra by Daniel Kon, P85, Buenos Aires, August 1982, Editorial Galerna -
Apr 07th, 2015 - 10:52 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Santiago (son of a provincial police officer)
“they walked all over our company” they said (two men from 4th Regiment caught hiding in a bed in a house in Port Stanley. B & C Companies of the 4th Infantry regiment were at Two Sisters and Tumbledown). They had been in an area at the front which met the Gurkha advance. They had fought for several hours, until almost all of them had begun to run out of ammunition. It had been a terrible battle with lots of dead and wounded on both sides. It seemed that the Gurkhas advance doped, stepping on the Argentine mines, yelling like madmen.
There were eight of them (men from the 4th Reg) set back behind a ridge. At one point, a group of eight or nine Gurkhas had approached them, laughing and screaming. They (men from the 4th reg) threw grenades at them and fired their Fals and downed five or six and those left alive screamed as if laughing at what had happened and finished their wounded mates off themselves. They jumped up and down, laughed and shot them all at the same time. The boys also killed them in the end. They finally ran out of ammo and saw that the Argentines in positions further forward were beginning to surrender. They stayed hidden in their trench and from there they watched a Gurkha make an Argentine who had surrendered strip naked and walk across the field while they kicked him and hit him with their rifles. A bit later they saw a sergeant come out of his trench. He had run out of ammo and threw away his helmet, his belt, his rifle, everything and surrendered. But the Gurkhas grabbed him by the hair, pushed him on to his knees and cut his throat. They did the same with four or five boys from this position. Some of them wept, begged them not to kill them, but they slit their throats anyway…”
@28 darragh
Apr 07th, 2015 - 11:34 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Amazing, and still the BBC news crew that was imbedded with the Gurkhas saw and filmed nothing! Wow!
Argentine racism at its worst, because even though the Gurkhas didn't fire 1 SHOT because the Argentines RAN LIKE COWARDS, they are being vilified because they aren't WHITE.
Well it may have escaped the notice of the author of these outrageous lies, but there is NO EVIDENCE to back it up, and if I was a Gurkha who served in the Falklands I'd take him to court for slander AND libel.
But then I remembered, in Argentina telling lies is the norm, and they had to come up with some EXCUSE as to why they ran like cowards rather than fight to the death like ALL the BRAVE citizens, who were safe and sound, wanted them to.
I also remembered how these BRAVE Argentine citizens spat on the soldiers returning in defeat. They were awfully brave as long as it wasn't their own lives on the line.
28 darragh
Apr 07th, 2015 - 11:58 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Thank you for posting such a classic example of Argentine Lies.
The worst thing is this is what they teach their school-children.
Another Lost generation, then.
I wonder how this country ever hopes to progress?
@ 29 LEPRecon
Apr 08th, 2015 - 12:13 am - Link - Report abuse 0I did hear tell, that the Gurkhas did have some “contacts” whilst doing sweeps!
Whilst they didn’t get to do much in that war, Armies in other wars did learn not to sleep if they were about.
There have been twenty-six Victoria Crosses awarded to members of the Gurkha regiments.
Apr 08th, 2015 - 12:38 am - Link - Report abuse 0“The Gurkhas have always been treated as second class, as loyal but peculiar, as a race apart, as less intelligent than the white leaders of the British Army but a bit more trustworthy than the everyday wogs of Nepal, Burma and India. Indeed, the Gurkhas have long been an institutional expression of inequality: they were made and sustained, not by British decency, but by British racism”
Apr 08th, 2015 - 03:07 am - Link - Report abuse 0@ 33 Marcos Alejandro
Apr 08th, 2015 - 03:38 am - Link - Report abuse 0I suspect your quote is from a very old source. Probably some left-wing blog?
Care to provide a link to back-up your assertations?
Meanwhile here is one of mine;
The Gurkha Welfare Trust.
https://www.gwt.org.uk/
The UK has made many mistakes in its past, the difference is that the UK takes action to address these issues, whilst Argentina just claims 'victimhood', and/or develops myths and lies.
No wonder Argentina is still a Third World Nation.
Until it accepts the true reality of its status and condition, it will never progress.
The corrupt politicos need to keep feeding the myths and lies in order to exploit the ignorant.
Meanwhile, they are going 'bust' again, for the eighth time.
Meanwhile, the UK is not. Nor ever has.
Go figure.
Where would you want to live?
Anyone have the figures for Argentine population flight in the past five years?
34 ilsen
Apr 08th, 2015 - 03:53 am - Link - Report abuse 0“The UK has made many mistakes in its past, the difference is that the UK takes action to address these issues”
Of course, Chagos is a good example, Iraq another one.
Well if the Chagos is a bad example, thankfully the UK learnt its lesson and isn't repeating it with the Falkland Islands.
Apr 08th, 2015 - 04:36 am - Link - Report abuse 0@25
Apr 08th, 2015 - 08:09 am - Link - Report abuse 0“but the Gurkhas hold their personal honour, their family honour and their Regimental honour as something sacred.”
A mercenary (and the Gurkhas are just mercenaries) knows nothing about those things. Honour is an unfathomable concept for them, they are a disgrace to their families, to their race, and to the land of their
fathers.
Half slaves, half hired criminals that sell their souls to earn a couple of pounds out of the very hand that despises them because of the colour of their skins or the shape of their eyes.
@36 He Malvinista idiot My uncle see many soldier run from Falklands hills when they hear strange shoutings. My countrymen Spanish Italian with bad guts.
Apr 08th, 2015 - 09:13 am - Link - Report abuse 0@33 : Marcos , can you defend the following video , and all the ones to the right following it ?
Apr 08th, 2015 - 10:01 am - Link - Report abuse 0https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGDuFVSXMRM
Let's face it , Argentines are the biggest xenophobes and racists on the planet .You know it , I know it and so does all of Latin America .
Another quote from Los Chicos de la Guerra
Apr 08th, 2015 - 10:28 am - Link - Report abuse 0Carlos – a lay preacher:-
The moment came when the situation got out of control and it was impossible to hold Puerto Argentino.The boys arriving from the front told how hard the fight had been, their encounters with the Gurkhas and things like that. I got to see some Gurkhas later as a prisoner. They are tiny, bloodthirsty things, they don’t look like men, they’re totally inhuman beings. I think if someone said the Gurkhas were apes, the poor apes would be scandalised. They’d hold a demonstration to say the Gurkhas weren’t apes.
#34 ilsen
Apr 08th, 2015 - 11:23 am - Link - Report abuse 0I remember over a decade ago, when I was training in the UK that there was a lot of discussion in the British press about the sad situation of Gurkha retired soldiers and their families who wished to remain in the UK as well as the future of the mercenaries.
#39 darragh
Thanks for the facinating posts.
#40 : The gurkhas now have the same pension rights as UK born soldiers plus the automatic right to settle in the UK .
Apr 08th, 2015 - 12:20 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Aldershot is where a lot of them have chosen to settle .
#41 Unsurping Pirate
Apr 08th, 2015 - 12:32 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Yes, and that was the debate over a decade ago when I was there. I remember everyone on the base was completely for it.
To prove that “The Chicos de la Guerra” is a load of rubbish, there was only ONE Gurkha killed during the Falklands war:
Apr 08th, 2015 - 01:29 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Surname: LIMBU Budhaparsad
Rank: Lance Corporal
Battalion Ship or Squadron: 1st/7th
Service: Ghurka Rifles
Date of Death: After the war
Manner of Death:
Killed while carrying out battlefield clearance at Goose Green.
http://www.roll-of-honour.com/cgi-bin/falklands.cgi
#43 Simon68
Apr 08th, 2015 - 01:56 pm - Link - Report abuse 0The Argentine government itself destroyed their conscripts self confidence and had them fearful.
From: spyware.org
“...One of the odder aspects of Argentine propaganda was the story spread among troops on the Falklands that the British would butcher their prisoners; not only that, the Gurkhas would eat them! There seems to have been a genuine horror of the Gurkhas and the junta is said to have asked the government of Nepal to have them withdrawn.”
@33 so Argentina being racist about the Ghurkas in 2015 shows how backward they are, when the UK stopped this years ago.
Apr 08th, 2015 - 04:03 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Mark, I am looking forward to the part of these documents that show how HMS Hermes was sunk 5 times.
#43 Simon68
Apr 08th, 2015 - 04:10 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Correction, my tablet “self corrected” my link on my last post. The correct is:
http://www.psywar.org/falklands.php
#5 Pete Bog
Yes, the reputation for outrageous Argentinian dishonesty is astounding...
During the Falklands war from the link above:
“....Having made a good beginning, the propaganda machine then departed from the established ground rules of the game. In this it was doubtless doing its masters' bidding, for the junta's popularity soared with every success; therefore, the junta reasoned, its people should have a diet of success, while the enemy should be vilified. The Task Force was described as a pirate fleet, while Margaret Thatcher was portrayed as a Viking, a vampire and a Nazi Storm Trooper. There were endless stories of Harriers being sent tumbling in dogfights, of ships sunk, of Hermes and Invincible being damaged again and again, of soldiers dramatically repelling raids. Even failure was exploited to the full. After South Georgia had been recaptured by the British it was announced that Argentine Special Forces had retired into the island's interior, from whence they would continue to fight - and this, in one of the cruelest environments on Earth. When the British landed at San Carlos they were said to be surrounded and on the verge of a second Dunkirk. Sometimes, the propaganda machine simply placed the most favorable interpretation on the facts, but most of its output was the purest fabrication. Until the very last moments the Argentine public sincerely believed that they would win the battle.”
Yet today, some of them still think they are at war,
Apr 08th, 2015 - 06:01 pm - Link - Report abuse 0and Britain is the enemy.
they still live in the past.
The British public were shocked to learn that the Ghurkas were not being treated correctly in regard to pension rights and the 'indefinite leave to remain' in the UK.
Apr 08th, 2015 - 06:04 pm - Link - Report abuse 0This was high-lighted in a campaign for them led by the marvellous Joanna Lumley, (whose military family had close links with them).
Once in the public domain it became a political 'hot-potato', with politicians of all stripes falling over themselves to rectify this anachronistic analomy left behind from the days of the Empire.
As other posters have said, this issue has been addressed.
Such as it should be in modern democratic Britain. Argentina is still being fed lies by the K-gang in order to distract from their corruption and inept economic mismanagement.
The Gurkhas remain loyal, steadfast and deeply, deeply appreciated by all of the UK and the Commonwealth of Nations.
@33. You should be very careful. Many Gurkhas now live in and around Aldershot in England. Very nice people. Gurkhas have always been highly respected. But some might decide to come looking for lying pigs.
Apr 08th, 2015 - 06:21 pm - Link - Report abuse 0@35. Nothing wrong with what the UK did in the Chagos Archipelago. The TRUTH is that the UK bought the islands from the Mauritian company that owned them. The contract workers were the responsibility of the Mauritian owners who left them to fend for themselves. Given contracts, NON-indigenous individuals could not be left to interfere. They were transported to Mauritius. A slightly better method than the argie option. How many indigenes did argies murder? How many does it continue to murder? Over years, the UK government has given the Chagos con-artists millions. The very first compensation, given to the Mauritian 'government' to fund resettlement, was stolen by the Mauritian 'government'. How very argie-like. People, doesn't include MA, should really research instead of believing argie and lefty (give away) tossers.
@44. Nobody should forget that, initially, the argies didn't intend to repatriate their troops. The British had to take them back. Should have just taken them to territorial boundary and shoved them overboard. If only we'd known how little honour argieland has.
@46. Just think how much better things would have been if we'd had RAF Mount Pleasant in 1982. A metal seabed composed of argie boats. Buenos Aires = rubble. Mar del Plata turned into radioactive waste. Still, maybe next time! The Fleet Air Arm and the RAF did their best but were told not to blast argieland apart. No chance of that if there's another time. WW1 = gentlemanly. WW2 = blast the animals apart.
@43. Get yourself and your family out, Simon. If you're in argieland, you're not safe.
#46 Chicureo
Apr 10th, 2015 - 03:11 am - Link - Report abuse 0There were also British stories of US mercenaries doing all the damage on Mt. Longdon when in fact the opposition were conscripts equipped with nigh-sights, stories of British Rapier missiles downing the equivalent of a modern day squadron in jets.
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