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The land that no country wants (2016)
- ptah 7y ago> “Are white people still allowed to do this kind of stuff?” good question
- barking 7y agoAre Chinese people white 'cos if so then maybe? Xinjiang, Tibet, South China Sea.
- ptah 7y agothey have had claims on all of those for a few centuries now, they didn't all of a sudden travel across oceans and continents to proclaim it theirs
- barking 7y agoIt's OK to claim an adjacent territory, bring in settlers, oppress the natives, etc, just not OK to cross water to do so. is that your position? Hardly?
- ptah 7y agono i never said that. i merely observed that a question in the article is legitimate. not sure how i got dragged into addressing whataboutism in this subthread but ok
- wonnage 7y agotypical white mentality, pillage the world and then reinvent history to justify it
- Supermancho 7y agoThat's not a "white" thing. It's a conquerors thing.
- apache2 7y agoyeah, its kind weird, whites are everywhere, worst than cockroach, they destroy local civilizations, sh*t, almost forgot, they even destroyed their own civilization, not to mention, they burned all ancient Greek books.
- repesorsa666 7y agoDo what? Build a society from scratch on an unowned area, create whole western civilization, 99.9% of humankinds inventions and innovations so that ungrateful criminals and rapists can whine about it on twitter. They are allowed, but maybe they should stop.
- kebman 7y ago"Every reputable travel agent we approached turned us down point-blank, citing the prevalence of bandit attacks in the desert. Thankfully, we were able to locate a disreputable travel agent." For some reason this story reminds me of Mos Eisley...
- rmason 7y agoIf there's water there then there is value. Be a great place to plant greenhouses, grow flowers and with an airstrip fly them into the heart of Europe. But it would take quite a bit of capital and without formal recognition and a security force then it's a pipe dream. A pleasant one, but still a pipe dream.
- dotancohen 7y agoActually, there is no water. Nor soil. Nor vegetation which would depend on the other two.
- kebman 7y agoPerhaps there is gold, then? Or adamantium? Or what if you cand find Mithril!??
- londons_explore 7y agoDrill deep enough, and you might find water. You might also be able to buy water from somewhere. Solar farms don't need water either... Lack of security force might not be an issue - being stateless means no taxes, so your business can probably afford to just hire it's own security against bandits. Get a reputation for shooting bandits on sight, and they won't come close. I think the biggest risk is that if you actually manage to build a city there, both of your neighbours might decide to claim your land as theirs unless you have an army to threaten them with, or UN protection, both of which might be hard to get.
- beobab 7y agoThis kind of thing is why I am looking forward to "No Man's Sky" VR release tomorrow. No-one is likely to complain when I colonize a planet far off the beaten track where the highest form of life is a small feline creature with tentacles.
- swarnie_ 7y agoAre people actually still playing One Mans Lie? I'd assumed everyone charge backed it on day one....
- barking 7y agoThe company has actually redeemed its reputation by continuosly releasing updates, afaik. Not fair to malign them like that.
- ceejayoz 7y agoConspicuously free updates, too, in this era of DLC.
- swarnie_ 7y agoIf I bought a broken car then the dealership spent the next two years slowly fixing it to match the sales pitch initially sold I'd still be pissed off. Why do people allow game publishers to get away with the crap...
- TheBranca18 7y agoI'm not really following your analogy. A video game isn't a car, a car is a means of transportation that depending on your situation, is a requirement in order to get goods and retain employment. A video game is a hobby for most people, it's like watching movies or television. I'd say it'd be more similar to how people reacted to Lost's final seasons rather than a broken car. One can separate the launch of the game, where clearly there was a lot of confusion and misleading information, from the events since. They have issued free updates for years. They received death threats and other harassment as well. I'm not saying you have to like the game, but I'm just confused as to what they're getting with.
- wruza 7y agoTl;dr: there are two versions of land borders in that region, and the land which is valuable. Bir Tawil is a flip side of this coin. If one country claims it, they auto-lose the other side.
- dmurray 7y agoThis seems quite naive as geopolitics go. One imagines China or the US, for example, would have no qualms about claiming both. "We assert Egyptian sovereignty over Hala'ib based on the treaty of 1899, and Egyptian sovereignty over Bir Tawil based on the inalienable historic right of the Adabda people to live under Egyptian rule." Maybe it works better if you can afford to build a settlement there, like in Palestine, or an airstrip like in the South China Sea.
- olodus 7y agoHaven't read the whole article yet, but if I can put one unnecessary and unimportant opinion from the whole thing out there, I don't really like the flag Jeremia Heaton chose for his new country. I mean, it isn't terrible. I have seen worse but common man, you had the rare chance to create a new flag and you went with something that kinda has a seal in the middle of it (fourth principle of flag design). I mean it isn't the worst seal on a flag out there but at the same time the crown will surely not be destinct from a couple of hundred meters away even.
- ggm 7y agoBelgium and it's northern neighbour swap land as the delta shifts. I believe last time the Netherlands donated some land. There is an island on the France Spain or Spain Portugal border which takes turn about. Easier than fighting. Enclaves are a thing. Maastricht and Liege have a couple nearby I believe. Too hard to tidy up. Partially alienated land is in some jurisdictions forbidden to be given up in law. The attempt to donate a mountain in skandi counties hit a constitutional barrier because the leaders are pledged to indivisible boundaries.
- wbl 7y agoBut how many enclaves have more enclaves within them?https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baarle-Hertog https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baarle-Hertog
- lb1lf 7y agoNorway trades a wee bit of land with Russia, too - a couple of banks in the Pasvik and Grense Jakobselv rivers are traded back and forth as the currents shift them from one side to the other of the centerline, the bilateral agreement governing this calls for the border to be reviewed every 25 years. One amusing tidbit I remember is that even as the border is to follow the centerline of the rivers, no country is to gain or lose territory when the border is reviewed - so there's still some room for arbitration; the net size of both countries is to be unchanged. One of the officials involved in the Norwegian delegation claimed that Norway was the only country ever to have been ceded part of Russian territory in modern times, though I expect this to be one for the newspapers - presumably other states with a river border with Russia have similar agreements.
- bushin 7y agoChina got half of Bolshoy Ussuriysky island and Tarabarov island on Amur river in 2004.
- thomasfl 7y agoA few years ago Norwegians officials tried to give Finland a mountain as a gift to celebrate Finlands 100 years as a free nation. Norway’s constitution states the kingdom of Norway is "indivisible and inalienable", so they had to give it up. https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/norway-finland-mountain-gift-present-border-birthday-anniversary-bj-rn-geirr-harsson-k-fjord-a7541941.html https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/...
- mongol 7y agoToo bad. Otherwise they could have traded some equal sized land back, like Finland and Sweden did with Märket. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%A4rket https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%A4rket
- zainhoda 7y agoIf the article is too long to read, watch this video instead: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5iJSXaVvao https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5iJSXaVvao
- omarhaneef 7y agoStill too long. Do you have a summary in a tweet somewhere?
- signa11 7y agoVeni, vidi, verti, cessi :o)
- orpheline 7y agoI blame Disney for an unrealistic princess fantasy.
- atlasunshrugged 7y agoI do think there's something to be said about trying new experiments for nation states with different operating models. There's obviously been mixed reactions and outcomes with places like Liberland and Seasteads (not to mention the micronations) but I'm hopeful that a small country like Estonia/Lithuania/Singapore/Rwanda that wants to be internationally competitive will innovate heavily in governance, economic models, etc.
- bjourne 7y ago> On Egyptian maps, Bir Tawil is shown as belonging to Sudan. On Sudanese maps, it appears as part of Egypt. In practice, Bir Tawil is widely believed to have the legal status of terra nullius – “nobody’s land” – and there is nothing else quite like it on the planet. This is wrong and the article later corrects itself: > Their ties to the area may be based on traditional rather than written claims – but Bir Tawil is not any more a “no man’s land” than the territory once known as British East Africa, where terra nullius was repeatedly invoked in the early 20th century by both chartered companies and the British government that supported them to justify the appropriation of territory from indigenous people. The fascinating thing is that the idea that Bir Tawil is, or ever was, terra nullius comes from atriciously bad Wikipedia pages on the subject (in the past even the West Bank was listed as terra nullius!). It likley was those that lead Jeremiah Heaton to think he could claim it by planting a flag there. Because you cannot find any scholarly sources claiming that Bir Tawil is terra nullius. So what must have happened is that one or more Wikipedians, with no legal training, must have found terra nullius described in some source and then started to give terra nullius designations to pieces of land that they thought fit. Along comes a lot of clueless journalists and repeats Wikipedia's erroneous claims. Wikipedians in turn find these articles and inserts them as references into the articles and the circle is complete. And fwiw, the literal translation of terra nullius isn't "nobody's land" it's "empty land". Ownership of land is orthogonal to whether it is inhabited. Examples of terra nullius would be Antarctica or tiny remote islands that sometimes pops up in the Atlantic far from any country's coast. Bir Tawil does't fit the bill because it is inhabited. Which state has sovereignty is unclear but we do know it is either Egypt or Sudan. There is no room for a third party to make any claims.
- jmkni 7y agoI've often wondered if you could use the process described above to create an historical event that never happened. Create the Wikipedia page(s), some journalists write about it, then add those articles as references. I wonder if people might even say they remember it happening.
- namdnay 7y agoIf the model worked well, any source reputable enough to be cited enough in Wikipedia would fact check it and drop it. But I'm not sure that would work today, apart from the most reputable newspapers
- bawana 7y agodo citizens of Bir Tawil have to pay taxes? Why hasnt google bought it? Can multinational corporations set up banks there and avoid taxes altogether?
- 29athrowaway 7y agoIt's disputed territory, but one thing is clear: that guy does not belong there and has no legitimate claim to that place whatsoever.
- Areading314 7y ago> an American dad claimed a tiny parcel of African land to make his daughter a princess. Can I just point out that this would be a fantastic plot for a movie or a novel? Could throw a lot of interesting themes into this
- weinzierl 7y agoFrom the article: > Jeremiah Heaton, beyond the “kingdom for a princess” schmaltz and the forthcoming Disney adaptation (he has sold film rights to his story for an undisclosed fee) [..] I'm not sure if this was meant seriously though.