George
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Post by George on Jul 17, 2011 11:24:11 GMT 10
I really don't see the point of these micronation United Nations role-playing groups - other than giving 1-man virtual micronations somewhere to grandstand, get hysterical with each other and create elaborate hierarchies and voting systems that serve no meaningful purpose whatsoever.
I've been watching them come and go with monotonous regularity since the 1990s, and I can't recall a single one of them ever achieving anything of even minor significance.
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Post by rareearth on Jul 17, 2011 13:11:05 GMT 10
The United Nations itself exists to give banana republics, single-party states, police states and kakistocracies a seated forum in which they can give grandiloquent speeches that serve no meaningful purpose whatsoever, so what is the point you are trying to make other than the usual "virtual micronations are no good". Besides that, it is not a 100% true statement that virtual micronations are no good, and land-based micronations are perfect. If that were the case, the UMMOA, which enjoys some legitimacy after having conquered land from the land's respective top-level domain (TLD), would be totally laughable, and the Kingdom of Bahoudii would not be the " Kingdom of Complete and Utter Balonii", right? The reason I'm talking like this, George, is to prevent you from becoming so annoying that nobody will visit this forum anymore, and despite my best efforts to keep it interesting. The facts are these: - Micronations are born and die every day. The same applies to states. Just because states have the lifespan of a bird, and micronations the lifespan of a fruit fly by comparison, doesn't mean that birds are living creatures, but fruit flies aren't.
- Micronations are either real communities of people, or they simply aren't nations. And that is what most entities here are. If any of them were states, especially sovereign states, they would be giving grandiloquent speeches at the UN.
- Micronations are born for all kinds of different purposes. Some become very effective at fulfilling a specific micronational mission, while others fail abysmally. Yet despite all the BS I read from you, I suspect that micronations are at least twice more factual and relevant to their specific mission statement than environmental organisations, most of which are generally fraudulent in nature.
So lets stop generalising, because overgeneralisations have always produced BS science, not demonstrable, effective, and reliable science. Besides that, attacking micronations all the time doesn't produce anything worthwhile, and I suspect, George, we are all here to produce something worthwhile, not to monopolise micronational discussions, or to make people believe that one opinion is the opinion of any and all micronational communities, or that one opinion is verifiable science, while all other opinions are verifiable superstition. I believe you make a fine spokesperson for the Empire of Atlantium, George, but I think you are arrogant when you act like many other micronations have hired you as their spokesperson. I am not aware of anyone that has, outside of the Empire of Atlantium, of course. Getting back to the original thoughts that started this thread, hopefully not another thread used to give grandiloquent speeches, I have contacted the Secretary-General of the League of Secessionist States, HHIM Claudio de Castro in the past, circa May 2009. I believe that besides being a bona fide member of the Micronational Professional Registry (MPR), one of the few, in fact, who has humbly volunteered evidence of his professionalism and education after joining the MPR, HHIM Claudio I is also a respectable member of the intermicronational community, and I don't mean just the portuguese-speaking intermicronational community. I may not always agree with him on this or that, but that doesn't mean he, or the organisation he was trying to improve, the League of Secessionist States, doesn't deserve any respect. The reason I contacted the then new Secretary-General of the LoSS Claudio was to propose the creation of an even greater membership organisation than either the LoSS, or any other intermicronational organisation, but Claudio showed no interest in working with me to create this new organisation. He had the power and influence to be able to bring the Holy Empire of Reunion and several other micronations, and I had similar power and influence over MPR members. Nothing happened, even though we could have created a respectable, even legitimate, intermicronational organisation. I was definitely not limited in my thinking by the MPR, which is not a UN-like organisation, but more a professional organisation et al; however, Claudio was enchanted by his new position as Secretary-General of the LoSS, and he could not see anything else. There you have the reason why there is no UN-like organisation that would have been successful. Micronationalists, including yourself, are terrible at thinking of anything greater or less limited than their own micronations/organisations.
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George
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Post by George on Jul 17, 2011 15:33:34 GMT 10
In 99.99999% of instances, micronations consist of 1 person with a website attempting to simulate a sovereign state - mostly with poor or no result.
One thing they are most certainly not is a community; you cannot have a community with 1 member.
The notion of "uniting" these completely ephemeral non-entities into some sort of representative body is irrational nonsense - as historic experience has shown time and time and time again.
The United Nations has a real purpose, members who legally represent billions of individuals, and a budget consisting of a very significant amount of real money.
If the difference is not obvious to you, a visit to your optometrist is strongly advised.
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George
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Post by George on Jul 17, 2011 15:50:04 GMT 10
The Kingdom of Complete and Utter Balonii is laughable because it is run by a secretive, paranoid fantasist windbag who has spent a decade supercilliously proclaiming the inherent superiority of he and his micronation at every available opportunity, on the basis that he has "a plan", doesn't watch television, owns 20 acres of west Texas desert and has never done anything anyone in the media has shown the slightest interest in reporting on - mostly because he hasn't actually done anything.
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George
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Head Honcho and Spangle of the Cosmos
Posts: 2,997
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Post by George on Jul 17, 2011 19:06:22 GMT 10
what is the point you are trying to make other than the usual "virtual micronations are no good". My actual opinion on that subject, based on observing many of them for a very long time, is that virtual micronations can be an interesting form of entertainment, and also serve valid educational and socialisation purposes. However, as they are by nature ephemeral, they cannot ever have any meaningful impact on the real world.
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Post by papapodjov on Jul 17, 2011 22:14:01 GMT 10
I think (in my limited experience) that it depends upon what you are standing for/against as a 'nation'. I was on, and still pop in over at, the OAM and navel-gazing is the order of the day. Endless resolutions and whittering... How far a micronation pops it's head over the parapet and courts publicity, or fights for something depends upon it's 'success' in my opinion. Having said that success is different things for different people, so I guess it all depends upon what ones expectations are, and what one hopes to achieve when embarking on the micro project.
If virtual success is what one hopes to achieve then great... Success at Monopoly and Kerplunk is what one hopes to achieve when the board is taken out for a game, but what that really means...?
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Post by rareearth on Jul 18, 2011 5:08:07 GMT 10
In 99.99999% of instances, micronations consist of 1 person with a website attempting to simulate a sovereign state - mostly with poor or no result. I don't think you've bothered to check the math of your estimates. If you had said 99.99% of micronations are egonations, which a little less pessimistic, you would have been saying that 0.01% are not, and that means 1 in 10,000 is not an egonation, 1 in 10,000 is a nation made up of more than one person. However, you are saying that 99.99999% of (declared) micronations are egonations, so you are saying 0.00001% are not, and that means 1 in 10,000,000 is not an egonation, 1 in 10,000,000 is a nation made up of more than one person. If each micronation below, which with high probability has more than a single citizen... dvs.mpr.io...is a representative of the 1 in 10,000,000, that means there are 10,000,000 x 27 or 270,000,000 declared egonations around (the sample is 27 micronations, not 26, because the Royal Kingdom of Eesha is no longer a part of Amandium). I'm sure there are least 270 million superegotistical people among a current total of 6,917 million on the planet, but where are the declared micronations of all these people? One thing they are most certainly not is a community; you cannot have a community with 1 member. The aforementioned figures, which do not take into account at least Eesha's latest population figures, and which certainly don't take into account every real micronation or non-sovereign nation on the planet, tally a total of 79,569 micronationalists. If I'm not tallying every single real micronation out there, but say only 79% of them, that means that the total real micronationalists on the planet are at least 100 thousand. That is a pretty sizable community if you ask me, albeit a highly divided one, but it certainly won't help those 100,000 if you continue to be a boring nag. The United Nations has a real purpose, members who legally represent billions of individuals, and a budget consisting of a very significant amount of real money. And the real purpose is? Besides that, representatives of banana republics, single-party states, police states and kakistocracies are not real representatives of even the majority of the people they claim to represent. My actual opinion on that subject, based on observing many of them for a very long time, is that virtual micronations can be an interesting form of entertainment, and also serve valid educational and socialisation purposes. However, as they are by nature ephemeral, they cannot ever have any meaningful impact on the real world. In a world where work to make oneself a decent living is occupying more and more of our time, and this despite all the wonders of science and technology, don't you think the entertainment part of micronations, even of real micronations, is something significant? I think (in my limited experience) that it depends upon what you are standing for/against as a 'nation'. I was on, and still pop in over at, the OAM and navel-gazing is the order of the day. Endless resolutions and whittering... How far a micronation pops it's head over the parapet and courts publicity, or fights for something depends upon it's 'success' in my opinion. Having said that success is different things for different people, so I guess it all depends upon what ones expectations are, and what one hopes to achieve when embarking on the micro project. If virtual success is what one hopes to achieve then great... Success at Monopoly and Kerplunk is what one hopes to achieve when the board is taken out for a game, but what that really means...? Egotism and self-centredness is definitely a problem with micronationalism, and I don't deny that at all in my first response to this thread, but if every partly successful micronationalist like George goes around calling almost every other micronation either an egonation, or an ephemeral entity, don't you think there's ultimately a reason for that self-centredness? In the " Issue to ponder on" thread I mentioned something nobody actually pondered on, as if the observation wasn't meaningful: In short, there is absolute black, the micronation founded and run by kids, and without any original intelligence. In fact, these micronations are like puppets of sovereign states, which they mimic without even realising they are not original or unique at all. There is also absolute white, the sovereign state which perhaps is also a permanent member of UN Security Council. And there are also various shades of gray between absolute black and white. I don't understand why George sees micronations almost exclusively as black, and UN sovereign states almost exclusively as white. Reality is a lot less dipolar than that. Reality is a lot less like an on-and-off switch. I also asked in that thread, "[W]hat do you think is the higher level shade of gray, micronationally-speaking?" Interestingly enough, I got no answer, and yet there is a higher level micronationally, a higher paradigm: - Micronations that have legal caliber (they have actual legally-valid princes);
- Micronations that are recognised by international organisations (IGOs);
- Micronations that run their own Internets independent of the ICANN;
- De facto microstates (that actually control their jurisdiction, but may not enjoy any other privilege or right).
I'm sure if we thought a little about what sovereignty, even partial, actually is, then perhaps we could come up with even other ideas, but all I hear from George are not new ideas, but the usual BS he always says, and if he's beginning to aggravate me with this attitude, which suggests he should close down this forum altogether, I can't imagine what other micronationalists, a lot less successful, and looking for ideas perhaps even here, would think. Why would they even want to become a little more serious, a little more objective? About the issue of sovereignty I have written this in another forum: First of all, sovereignty starts in the mind and soul, and thus when you associate it with land or dirt you have actually started on the wrong foot entirely. In that sense, sovereignty is, or at least can be subjective, because the spiritual is almost never objective.
Sovereignty actually begins with no relationship whatsoever to the State, or the apparent governing jurisdiction.
Example: since there is no relationship between me and you, and this is completely obvious to both me and you, and just about anybody who can add and subtract, then you are 'sovereign' with respect to me. So in that sense, sovereignty is subjective, in the sense of missing something subjective. However, if you are completely sovereign with respect to me, that doesn't mean you are necessarily powerful or wise. Sovereignty still needs sovereign, or at least powerful allies, and you don't seem to understand that at all, that sovereignty is not about what you have, but more about who you know. This is a point that is missed not only from the " Kingdom of Complete and Utter Balonii", but also on George who disparages him all the time. George is like that donkey that tells another donkey that he has big ears! My thinking continues in another post in the same thread: Your example of the Knights of Malta is highly pertinent, but there are also ecclesiastical jurisdictions, and with the exception of the Vatican City they are certainly not sovereign in any temporal way, but that doesn't mean they do not exercise spiritual authority.
Also this: churches can found educational institutions without any special or separate licence, and can award degrees without any state licence. That is power that usually only the state has.
Some kinds of churches even exercise jurisdiction beyond that which of the strictly spiritual sphere, I recently found out, and I'm beginning to examine the possibility to acquire some of that "not strictly spiritual" jurisdiction/authority.
There is also such a thing as virtual jurisdiction, and you can have that if you control a root name server system.
Yet most micronationalists claim property is the sole source of jurisdiction. That is nonsense.
Even the UN has little sovereign Manhattan-based property (it is called extraterritorial for that reason), but you try to exercise the authority they exercise even outside that jurisdiction, and see if you can get away with it!
Outside of the jurisdiction I literally created from nothing but the three international treaties (the GPGPT, MOGPT, and SDT) which I authored or coauthored, in fact, the UN exercises at least titular or de jure (not de facto) jurisdiction, and that is all of the high seas and space above the earthly atmosphere! Nobody thinks or acts like this stuff is valuable, and yet I think that if you can associate waste with jurisdiction, then you can pretty much define the jurisdiction as your own, and while all the junk in the high seas may not be worth much, all that junk in outer space is worth billions if you extract all the mother boards and other parts of their gold, silver, and rare earth metals! That is worth a lot more that 1000s of acres even in the most easy-going US state. So I don't think George is even thinking whether it is possible for him to grow in different areas, and yet that is exactly what real sovereignty is about.
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George
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Post by George on Jul 18, 2011 11:56:14 GMT 10
I don't think you've bothered to check the math of your estimates. If you had said 99.99% of micronations are egonations, which a little less pessimistic, you would have been saying that 0.01% are not, and that means 1 in 10,000 is not an egonation, 1 in 10,000 is a nation made up of more than one person. However, you are saying that 99.99999% of (declared) micronations are egonations, so you are saying 0.00001% are not, and that means 1 in 10,000,000 is not an egonation, 1 in 10,000,000 is a nation made up of more than one person. Please see this. It is difficult to conduct a meaningful discourse unless all those involved possess a basic understanding of common rhetorical and literary devices. Hyperbole aside, the number of micronations whose existence in the corporeal world has been reliably documented in credible third-party sources since the beginning of the 19th century is somewhere in the region of 170. Currently about 120 of those have been documented to varying levels of comprehesiveness hereMost of the rest are listed here. By comparison, the number of virtual micronations has not been reliably documented; I've personally recorded several hundred - but anecdotal evidence suggests that several thousands may have been created since the mid 1990s, with perhaps 100 in existence at any one time - although that "existence" is very likely to be extremely tenuous and brief, typically being limited to pseudonymous online forum posts, a limited web presence and an active lifespan rarely extending beyond 3 years.
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Post by Lykos Packleader on Jul 19, 2011 4:06:18 GMT 10
Heyla, You know, I visited this thread, in the hopes that there would be discussions about how putting a forum on a dedicated web site wasn't always a great idea..... And I was looking forward to the possibility that we'd have interesting discussions about such topics like adopting attitudes regarding political statements, philosophical differences, etc. Guess I was mistaken.Whereas I don't belong to the League, I have a great deal of respect for this virtual organization, considering how long it's been around, and the usual amount of civility the group displays (when compared to other forums in and around the micronational arena.Nobody just "stands" there, calling one another names, and while there's no permanant, "real-world" results, that's not why they exist. For the purposes stated in the Charter, they do just fine. The real reason Lykosha doesn't "belong" is simply that Lykosha can't be a voting nation in the League, due to our Packlaws. See www.packwolf.net/decrees.htmlfor a word-by-word description. Lykosha is virtual; I believe we have a few "other" members (citizens) besides my own self, but we also belong to Intermicronational Team Kiva(and I suspect there is no real way to call the results of Kiva either insignificant or unimportant. We don't need to stand on land in order to have "standing." I believe anything is possible. ... just my 2 bits worth.
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Post by rareearth on Jul 19, 2011 5:37:00 GMT 10
Heyla, You know, I visited this thread, in the hopes that there would be discussions about how putting a forum on a dedicated web site wasn't always a great idea..... And I was looking forward to the possibility that we'd have interesting discussions about such topics like adopting attitudes regarding political statements, philosophical differences, etc. Guess I was mistaken.Whereas I don't belong to the League, I have a great deal of respect for this virtual organization, considering how long it's been around, and the usual amount of civility the group displays (when compared to other forums in and around the micronational arena.Nobody just "stands" there, calling one another names, and while there's no permanant, "real-world" results, that's not why they exist. For the purposes stated in the Charter, they do just fine. Brilliant! The League of Secessionist States (LoSS) is only legitimately empowered to do what its Charter (or Mission Statement) says it wants to do. Anything else would be the action of either a genuine egonation (someone who doesn't run on any constitution, charter, or mission statement, and may not even have a real ethical foundation) or a genuine YAMO, which is an alleged international organisation, that is really run like an "egonational organisation". It is so easy, effortless, and non-committal to comment on organisations we are not members of, but are we specialists commenting about our specialty when we do that? Someone, apparently married, from the prestigious newspaper called the New York Times, came over my house one day to interview me about the newly created nation called Independent Long Island. He described me as a "45-year-old bachelor living in his parents' house here with plenty of online dreams (and no steady offline employment)". The description above was not entirely inaccurate, but what else was the journalist engaging in besides ageism (apparently all 45-year-olds should be living with... nobody... if they are not married or otherwise socially engaged), singlism (this is discrimination against singles, and the term has been coined by Bella DePaulo), and poisoning the well (a logical fallacy where adverse information about a person is pre-emptively presented with the intention of discrediting or ridiculing everything that the person is about to say)? Instead of " 15 minutes of fame", which Andy Warhol said everyone would one day be entitled to, I got 15 minutes of infamy. Did the journalist from the New York Times describe me factually as: - A bilingual, so extremely fluent that he has two high school diplomas, and from two different countries?
- Someone who by then had worked for 6 years with one NYC non-profit alone, and had even been mentioned, as a result of his work at this non-profit, in America Oggi and the Queens Chronicle?
- Someone who had done freelance work with a Long Island publisher, eventually single-handling producing the book, AP Italian (ISBN-10: 0-8373-6223-7)?
- Someone who has pioneered an alternative DNS root, the Cesidian Root (there are about a dozen people like that on the planet...)?
- Someone who was a legally-ordained minister, a NYC Marriage Officiant, a Certified Professional Chaplain, and had even been consecrated the Bishop of his own church (the Bishop of Rome is single too, by the way, but I guess that doesn't count)?
- Had received a fully-accredited BS in Information Technology, and also a non-accredited BSc in Contemplative Psychology?
Did the snotty NYT journalist mention all of that? No. Well, I'm sure he was a specialist of Cesidio Tallini then, and he really described me accurately, I'm sure you can tell! The real reason Lykosha doesn't "belong" is simply that Lykosha can't be a voting nation in the League, due to our Packlaws. See www.packwolf.net/decrees.htmlfor a word-by-word description. If you are following your own laws, you can only be admired because of your consistency. However, membership in the Micronational Professional Registry is not like membership in a governmental or intergovernmental organisation, and real professionals in any field of human endeavour are encouraged to join, and they also get the bonus of registration, and if they grow in strength and legality, they can also become members of MicroState. Lykosha is virtual; I believe we have a few "other" members (citizens) besides my own self, but we also belong to Intermicronational Team Kiva(and I suspect there is no real way to call the results of Kiva either insignificant or unimportant. We don't need to stand on land in order to have "standing." I believe anything is possible. ... just my 2 bits worth. I personally think we could do better than simply joining another US 501(c)3 corporation, and I also think we should send some of our excess wealth to the First World, not just to the Second and Third, because in the First World it can actually have an effect on our current joblessness, and on our many other problems not being tackled by First World governments, but if your donation capacity is not that great, well then it makes sense. The United Nations, when you take away its treaties, is also a largely virtual organisation, but the fact is that virtual organisations are not effectively run by virtual people. All real organisations and nations need real people, and without people they are meaningless. Nations or organisations are not meaningless because - We say so, and our mere opinion is good scholarship, or a reasonably proven theory.
- We are not members of the organisation.
- We don't know, or have no relationship with its nationals/officers/members.
- We are not diplomatically, or otherwise engaged with the nation or organisation.
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Post by Lykos Packleader on Jul 20, 2011 3:04:04 GMT 10
* Sigh * Tallini,
Lykosha has belonged to the LOSS, and we were generally well-received by same. You miss the point, but why am I not surprised?
There is no need for us to belong to your “Professional Registry,” as our nation is only that, and nothing more. And just because we don’t currently belong to the LOSS does not mean that we do not know the previous members of this respectful and courteous organization --- we do, and we continue to admire them.
As for giving to Kiva instead of a “First World” need, I was drawn to it because of the excellent examples as given by Molossia, Lavalon, etc. and only in Kiva are micronations represented so well. Periodically, “First World” entrepreneurs are listed in the micro-loans section, but we prefer to give to those who need us most. Again, you seem to miss the point.
I don’t care if I get my “fifteen minutes,” that’s not the reason Lykosha exists. In terms of Lykosha, I follow the Packlaws; I always will.
Now: I would be far more interested in a discussion of methods to avoid what happened at the LOSS than the thread as it stands right now. I would be especially interested in anything about the possibility of alarms that “go off” when the forum “disappears,” or something of that ilk (Just because I’ve never heard of it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist). Anybody know anything?
Thanks ----
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Peter
Administrator
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Post by Peter on Aug 1, 2011 6:04:08 GMT 10
Invited by Claudio, the emperor of Reunion, we joined LOSS some time ago. Then, the management changed and the whole LOSS experience did not mean anything but reading hollow proclamations. So we largely ignored the proceedings and then quit.
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