Very disappointing. Their “citizenship” link gives a 404 error.
I expect that’s about how it works in practice, too.
The very first thing I saw on the new nation’s website was
What does a nation without borders need with an island? Looking at it another way, wouldn’t a nation without borders claim everything on Earth as its territory?
I noticed that. :mad:
Wait, I can buy an island on-line now? Does that include shipping and handling?
ETA:
He may have tried to pay his ISP with Kailaasan Rasbuckniks.
Yup, that’s just what the world needs and lacks, a majority-Hindu nation.
Demographers have long predicted that it’s, like, literally around THIS WEEK that such a nation would become the largest (in population) in the world.
Yep. It really boils down to two steps.
- Declare yourself a sovereign nation.
- Make it stick.
I know that seems flip but that’s all it takes. Assert your sovereignty against all comers - likely the last government to consider itself sovereign over that piece of land - and hope for recognition from other governments.
If this nation manages to remain sovereign for a number of years against the wishes of the Ecuadoran government then it can be considered to have worked. It might achieve that through diplomatic or military means.
It could even achieve it through a lack of concern from others. There’s a thing in baseball where, if a runner steals a base and the pitching team doesn’t contest it the runner doesn’t get credit for the act and the movement is considered to have been achieved through ‘defensive indifference’. It’s possible to achieve sovereignty through the same thing. If Ecuador basically says, ‘Who the hell cares? Knock yourself out.’ then voila! It’s a country with all the headaches and rights that entails.
They claim a population of 2 billion practicing Hindus.
The issue of Kailaasa’s sovereignty might be irrelevant to Nithyananda’s fate, even in the extremely unlikely event that it becomes recognized as a sovereign nation.
Nithyananda is not residing on the island he allegedly bought. He fled India when facing criminal charges and it’s not clear what country he’s currently in. (Ecuador, Haiti, and Mauritius are all mentioned as possibilities.)
But whatever country he’s in, he’s not there as a diplomatic representative and therefore he has no legal immunity. He’s just a private citizen of either Indian or Kailaasan nationality (depending on how you look at it). So the country he is in can arrest him and extradite him back to India.
If Nithyananda wants to be legally protected by the Kailaasan government, he’s going to have to move into Kailaasa itself, wherever it may be. (It’s not clear where the island is and there are conflicted stories about which ocean it’s located in.)
The reason he hasn’t done this is probably because legal protection from the Kailaasan government isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on. If he turned up there and India really wanted him they could just ask Ecuador to hand him over.
(Would Ecuador comply? I dunno what their extradition rules are.)
Put that in your pipe and smoke it, RealID!
I recall someone saying they wanted to be rich enough to buy Scotland. When asked, “What the fuck would you do with Scotland? How would you run the place?” the reply was, “Oh, I don’t want to actually RUN it. I just want to be rich enough, so I could.” That’s the problem with owning a country. You either expend much effort trying to rule, or let someone else do so. In which case, why buy it in the first place? A vanity project, sure. Welcome to RioRicoLand!
The old seven-mile maritime boundary rule was based on artillery range. If you could defend it, it was yours. Any private self-proclaimed “nation” needs good cannons to back any claim of independence. Mao was right: political power DOES grow from the barrel of a howitzer. (I need to bury landmines along my property lines.)
And income tax, if he expects to be protected from extradition by living there. And comply with all other laws and regulations of Ecuador.
Rajneeshpuram anyone?
Islands have been available to be purchased for quite a while now. I recall some being listed in eBay’s Big Ticket section.
Nepal is a hindu majority nation and for a time was the world’s only hindu nation…
If the drug runners recognized him that might help the sovreignity issue. A “bank” could be established, with their own currency, and poof! A place to launder money.
Dude gets a private island “without borders” and his adoring fans (probably a couple of thousand anyway) claim they are really residents of whereverthefuckitis, send him $100 a month or what ever the rate is for the most recent god for the privilege or claiming whereverthefuckitis is where they really live.
Pretty good scam.
Yeah, anyone with a vague notion of South American geography knows that it’s nonsensical. Several well known websites were parroting that stupidity.
On the other hand doing that would have an excellent change of getting an actual nation to care enough to send a military force there to explain to him why pissing off people with a military is a bad idea when you *don’t *have a military.
I don’t get it either. Does “non-veg brain” here mean the brain of a meat-eater? Is he saying that if you eat meat, you’re not capable of understanding his [del]nonsense[/del] teachings?