A Bit More Detail

“For a period of three years the inhabitants of the Falkland Islands will be given a chance to consider whether they wish to remain on the Falkland Islands or whether they wish to relocate to an area of British jurisdiction, either in the UK or elsewhere under British sovereignty, with a relocation grant of $100,000 per person," Mr Rowen wrote.

“It is likely that many residents will find this sufficient inducement to relocate to some other area, perhaps in Scotland or elsewhere where conditions may be similar to the Falkland Islands.”

He adds: “Any residents who do not wish to relocate will be free to remain and become Argentinian citizens at the end of three years.

“The cost of the relocation grants to be paid to any residents of the Falkland Islands wishing to relocate elsewhere will be borne fifty/fifty by the Argentinian and British governments.”

The plans were addressed to Paul Wolfowitz, a Department of State advisor to President Ronald Reagan.

They also called for "some appropriate penalty upon the Argentinians for having used armed force to seek to settle an international dispute."

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• Centauri Dreams takes a look at the study of planetary systems of subgiant stars, relatively aged stars, starting with Kappa Coronae Borealis.


• Eastern Approaches deals with the legal and criminal controversies surrounding a Czech lobbyist.


• In an era of increasingly pervasive and efficient surveillance technologies, the Everyday Sociology Blog's Tristan Bridges and Tara Tober wonder what privacy actually is these days.


• Geocurrents' Asya Perelstvaig profiles the Samaritans, a little-known but enduring ethnic group related to--but distinct from--the Jews.


• GNXP's Razib Khan notes a preliminary genetic study that gives credence to the idea of pre-Columbian Ainu migration to South America six thousand years ago. I want to see more on this.


• Joe. My. God observes that "Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead" is a hit on the UK pop charts.


• At Lawyers, Guns and Money, Robert Farley notes that much criticism of Margaret Thatcher's role in the Falklands War is ill-judged, and wonders why so few people blame the Argentine junta.


• Michael in Norfolk notes marriage rights successes in Uruguay and France.


• The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer outlines the recent history--surprising to me--of fairly loud conflict between Argentina and Uruguay.

For decades, the Falkland Islands have been a mix of punch line and trivia question, its popular image that of a few hundred boozy, inbred sheep farmers living on a rock in the South Atlantic. During the so-called Falklands conflict, British troops memorably dubbed the locals "Bennies" after Benny Hawkins, the village-idiot character in the British soap opera Crossroads. And, indeed, after going for a run on my second day on the islands and finding myself held still by the famous driving winds, I wondered why a dimwitted penguin, much less a sentient human adult, would willingly move there. The word grim comes to mind: Besides sandpaper winds, the islands are blessed with a skin-frying ozone hole, a near complete lack of trees, and import-dependent stores where sad tomatoes fetch $4.15 a pound (about twice what FreshDirect charges in Manhattan).

But there they were: gaggles of immigrants. Every five years, the islands conduct a census with the Orwellian precision that is possible only on remote islands with a population of 2,478. Besides enumerating statistical curiosities—the number of dishwashers, for example, rose from 130 in 1996 to 338 a decade later—the census notes the surprising facts that only 53.2 percent of the 2006 population was born on the islands, and 25 languages other than English are spoken in Falkland homes. Among the immigrants are 650 U.K.-born residents, plenty of them Kelpers whose parents had moved to the United Kingdom to look for work and who themselves returned after the conflict. But there are also 153 Saints, 131 Chileans, 36 Australians, 26 New Zealanders, and a sprinkling of Germans, Russians, Indonesians, and Filipinos. Even an Argentine or two.