The land that no country wants (2016)
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
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.
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.
https://xkcd.com/978/ describes this process perfectly
I don't think so.
> Your objection to the concept of ownership would apply to just about every concept,
Except he constrained it to specific concepts. How you interpret those is likely different, but you didn't really ask as much as define and declare an outcome. That's not constructive.
I at least explained what the problem was with the argument. "I don't think so" is not any kind of improvement there.
"I don't think so" is not about the core discussion, but a reflection of different interpretations to how you interpreted the statement. I then went on to explain what I meant, including how to bring the discussion back to concrete arguments, rather than making up my own interpretation (I don't like the term straw-man, which implies a bad-faith argument). You have a specific set of assumptions, which I take to be in good faith. I read the arguments and understand that there are a different set of assumptions to make (vis a vis different interpretations).
I'm sorry if you don't find it constructive in whole or in part.
But isn't terra nullius a play on res nullius, which in Roman law meant a thing nobody owned? Perhaps it literally meant 'empty thing'. (My Latin is very weak.)
"Starting in the 17th century, terra nullius denoted a legal concept allowing a European colonial power to take control of "empty" territory that none of the other European colonial powers had claimed."
[0]: http://homepages.gac.edu/~lwren/AmericanIdentititesArt%20fol...
But it would be the act of cutting down - occupatio - that made the tree cutter the legal owner. It wouldn't be enough for him to just wander into a forest, see a lot of trees and declare "those trees are mine!" In a way he would be required to "fill the void" so to speak.
The relation between res nullius and terra nullius is dubious to say the least. During the Middle Ages "unowned things" disappeared as a legal concept. Instead most everything became the property of God or the monarch. It is questionable if the European colonizers ever actually used the terra nullius doctrine to justify conquest. For example, Manhattan was purchased from the Native Americans. Had terra nullius been applicable they could have just taken it.
Countries like the US did recognize that the native Americans held title to the land, and this title was somewhat orthogonal to the rights acquired via European diplomacy (e.g., Louisiana purchase). The native rights were extinguished via treaties that were quite often violated, but there was definitely a recognition that indigenous peoples had a claim to their territory that needed legal processes to be extinguished in favor of the settlers.
why do you translate it like this? a literal translation cannot totally drop the sense of the genitive.
The land there is very likely owned by the local people according to whatever arrangements they have.
There is no country claiming sovereignty, which is what makes it interesting.
I guess it's true that no third country could make a claim, though it would be fun to to see one try. Or if the locals declared independence. If one country made a complaint, would it be seen as giving up their claim on the other part? :)
Is it an Italian term or something? In Latin it would be "land of no one". Terra is nominative (alternatively ablative or vocative, but that's unlikely here), nullius is genitive; there's no parsing in which nullius could be in agreement with terra, and even if they were in agreement, nullus doesn't mean "empty" (terra nulla would be more like "no land", definitely not a land that exists but is characterized by emptiness). If it's Italian though I'd have to take your word for it; I don't speak that language.
Is there room for the people living in Bir Tawil to establish their own government and call what they're living on a sovereign nation?
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/...
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.
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.
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
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
On what basis do you make that claim?
Probable reality will show they’ll just come with more armed bandits than you have security forces, assuming the value warrants it.
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.
I've got some bad news for you.
Why do people allow game publishers to get away with the crap...
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.
(Never buy games on day one, let alone preorder, unless you're entirely comfortable giving the money to the developers for nothing)
Do you say "Micro$oft" and "Crapple" too? Haven't seen those in a while.