Why all the attention on the Falklands? Five key questions.

April 2 is the 30-year anniversary of the Falkland Islands War. Argentina and Britain have been at odds over sovereignty of the Falkland Islands for decades, and tensions kicked up when Britain deployed some of its modern warships to the islands, as well as Prince William, as a pilot.

Which nation is the 'colonizer'?

Argentina says it considers the Falkland Islands a colonial throwback. Ahead of Prince William's deployment, Argentina's foreign ministry said: “Argentines are saddened that Prince William will arrive on our soil in the uniform of a conquistador, and not with the wisdom of a statesman who works for peace and dialogue between nations.” But Britain has turned the colonial argument on its head. "What the Argentineans have been saying recently, I would argue, is far more like colonialism because these people want to remain British and the Argentineans want them to do something else," Prime Minister David Cameron was quoted by The Telegraph as saying in January.  

Argentina has reiterated that it does not want war. Instead, it wants a diplomatic solution, insisting that Britain comply with a United Nations resolution calling for negotiations between the two countries. Britain has so far refused to hear Argentina’s arguments.

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Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

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