Putin Signs Military Pact with Argentina

Well this is bound to piss off David Cameron.  Badboy Vlad Putin has inked a military pact with Argentine president Christina Fernandez backing her country against Britain over the Falkland Islands (Malvinas) dispute.

“The new agreement on military collaboration and data protection will enable the considerable increase of practical cooperation in this field”, Mr Putin said.

The posturing risks tipping the war of words between London and Buenos Aires into full-blown conflict, as tensions heighten over sovereignty of the remote south Atlantic outcrop.

Meanwhile in the Baltic the Finns say they've spotted what they believe to be a Russian sub in Finnish territorial waters.  Sigh.

The Falklands - Again?

The British government is planning to reinforce its garrison on the Falklands Islands out of concern of another attempt by Argentina to take the islands by force.

The south American nation is feared to be increasing military expenditure. Senior ministers in the country have also made a series of increasingly aggressive statements about the islands in recent years.

[Defence secretary ]Michale Fallon said: "The threat remains. It is a very live threat. We have to respond to it."

He said reports that Russia is working on an agreement to lease 12 long-range bombers to Argentina which could be used to support a renewed attack are unconfirmed.

"We do need to modernise our defences to ensure that we have sufficient troops there and that the islands are properly defended in terms of air defence and maritime defence.

"The threat, of course, to the islands remains but so does our commitment to being absolutely clear that islanders have the right to remain British and the right to proper protection by our forces.

"It is our general view that the threat has not reduced. Argentina still, sadly, maintains its claim to the islands 30 or more years after the original invasion and the war and we have to respond to that."

Argentina's Children of the Dead

Across Argentina, young men and women are discovering the truth, that their real parents were slaughtered and they were then handed out to the butchers' friends. From The Guardian:

"Horacio Pietragalla felt "like a cat raised in a family of dogs" and was puzzled that, at the age of 14, he was already taller than his father. It was only later that he discovered he was the child of a leftwing activist murdered by the Argentine military during the "dirty war". The executioners gave Horacio away to a general's maid more than a quarter of a century ago.

Now Pietragalla and dozens of other young Argentines are discovering who their real parents were and meeting their grandparents for the first time. Some are bringing legal actions against their parents' kidnappers, while others are going through the painful process of realising the people they thought were their parents had lied to them.

An estimated 30,000 people were killed by the junta that ruled Argentina between 1976 and 1983 before it finally collapsed in the wake of the defeat in the Falklands war. Most of the victims were young and some were pregnant when arrested. Around 500 babies are believed to have been born in the army's prisons. After their parents were tortured and killed, the children were handed over to military families.

Others who believe they may be children of the disappeared are now waiting to have their DNA tested, Estela Bravo said yesterday from New York. She added that one of the remarkable aspects of the operation to find them was that many had the same quirks as the parents they never knew. "Juan Cabandié likes to go off to the mountains, look up to the sky and find himself, and his aunt has told him that his mother did exactly the same," she said.

After the fall of the junta, a number of those in the military fled, many to the US and Miami in particular.