Slashdot Mirror
Sealand Put Up For Sale
antic writes "The Principality of Sealand is up for sale. The 550 square meter steel platform boasts "uninterrupted sea views", complete privacy and has been mentioned on Slashdot in the past for its offers of hosting outside the jurisdiction of (some) traditional laws."
Then I could hunt the most dangerous game of all...
It was a joke! When you give me that look it was a joke.
You should know that the commute is a bitch.
1. Buy Sealand on credit, you can get a loan anywhere these days.
2. Apply for your own TLD.
3. Open up for a new domain rush, demand ridicilous prices for certain domains
4. Release the loan using the income from domain sales.
5. You own Sealand, you are king.
www.6502asm.com - Code 6502 assembly or.. DIE!!
It's not actually for sale, the owners are just offering a tenancy. Which makes it not such a sweet deal.
Sealand exists because in 1967, Britian's territorial waters extended only 3 miles out from the shore.
Therefore, they could legitimately claim the fort as theirs. If they had tried to do that after 1987... it wouldn't have worked, because the 3-mile limit was changed to 12 miles.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Sealand is a bit of a running joke for the people of Harwich. I would contest their "uninterrupted sea views" as I'm fairly sure that the very brightly coloured (luminous yellow!) Hotel Continental situated on the cliffs of Harwich can be seen from it, hell... they can probably see it from Holland! It's also probably quite fire damaged at the moment having suffered a fire http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/5110244.stm last year, and not having its own fire brigade or hospital services had to make use of the British ones.
Hesh wants sex!
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
As long as the new owners don't change the current statutes on Monkey Knife-fighting, I don't see this as a problem.
I also hope they clear up the inconsistencies in the human-bovine marriage laws.
Sounds like it would make a great superhero headquarters.
According to Sealand's official website, the platform sustained heavy damage by fire last summer. From the desperate tone of the account, I gather that Sealand might be very close to uninhabitable by now. That might explain the decision to sell it off, more than the old age of the founder.
-- javaDragon is an instance of JavaDragon.
Nations are sovereign only because they have enough firepower to keep other nations from claiming them. What does it matter what the laws of Sealand are, if you own it and you have no army? Is the army included, or do you have to put it together yourself?
Step into a huge movement. Don't Tread In Me.
I believe It's empty right now. Sail up there with a paper knife. occupy the terriroty. Kill all zero people who resist. Declare yourself the revolutionary government.
Of course, the declaration of what makes for statehood is a little arbitrary. So rather than go to the effort, I declare myself King of Antarctica.
bladesjester: the sun do its work
Off the coast of Essex, England, UK? In the North Sea?
I'm guessing you've never been to the east coast of England. It is sunny for approximately half an hour in the afternoon only of the third Wednesday after Pentecost.
A far, far faster method of obtaining fresh water in the North Sea would be to simply open your mouth and tilt your head skywards. It'll fill with fresh rainwater - no desalination required - in about six seconds.
Andrew Oakley - www.aoakley.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Sealand_fortres s.jpg
More like "Seaplatform". though it doesn't have that ring to it.
If anyone is interested in it, move along. Not only is it in the middle of nowhere, you face invasion by several post - industrialized nations. You're better off buying an island in the keys. At least then you're lucky to have something called coconuts and White Sandy beaches.
In Soviet Russia, dots slash you!
The last time they were "invaded" by armed people, they retook the platform with force and held the "invaders" hostage. They've also in the past shot the the British navy... So I do suspect you might need to be armed with a bit more than beer and a hamburger.
For far less than 65m you can build your own damn platform and anchor it in the channel or north sea.
One of my teachers in high school taught us about Sealand because his son was one of the co-founders. Didn't think I'd see it come up on slashdot. Funny story about the country: after it was founded, many of the world's nations extended their borders into sea from (I think about) 5 miles to 10 miles. Sealand viewed this as an aggressive action by the UK since Sealand was now entirely within UK borders and was considered by the British to be UK soil. Sealands response was to extend their borders to 10 miles as well and claim the respective British coastal areas as Sealand soil.
Well, the Principality Army could stay on site to prevent a coup. What? There is no army? Well then, the citizens can form a militia... You say there are no citizens either? So what does "Prince" Michael rule over?
This notion that an abandoned radar platform has somehow achieved sovereign nation status just because its squatters say it is has always been a bad joke. They've only gotten away with it because nobody gives a shit. They claim to have a legal decision, but what they really have is a court case the the UK crown won't appeal out of bureaucratic inertia. The very first time they'd done something to really piss people off, a platoon of Scotland Yard bobbies would have landed, sent the "Prince" back to his sheep, and that would have been the end of it.
If you're spending eight digits on your boat, you can afford to spend a couple million bucks to buy some SS-N-25 and P-800 surplus russian anti-ship missiles. Anything that's not an aircraft carrier battlegroup will be toast, and even some of those won't want to engage you without significant air support.
And the second that a US Navy vessel tells you to stand down and be boarded, and you refuse, and they shoot at you, and you fire back with missiles and try to sink their ship, what the fuck do you think is going to happen? They'll laugh and wander off? You'd be lucky to make off your ship alive.
And I don't know why 'pirate' would make you laugh. They kill people, you know. Navies are allowed to board anyone they suspect of piracy, and operating without a flag is a pretty strong indicator. And in international waters ships without a flag are subject to the jurisdiction of all nations, and thus any vessel operated by any country can demand they allow themselves to be boarded under suspicion of being a pirate vessel, and fire on them if they refuse.
That actually isn't just some hypothetical situation. Navies actually do board unflagged ships whenever they find them in international waters or their own waters. (And they alert the host country when they find them suspicious in other people's waters.)
If you're an innocent person in a boat that wasn't intended for international trips, but drifted, you'll usually be fine, and they'll even tow you back to shore. If you refuse to stand down and be boarded, they will attempt to board by force, period. If you attempt to stop them, they will shoot back. You might be able to hold them off, but they will send their military. And, hell, even if you can defeat their entire military, they'll just alert other navies where you are. Navies board and search suspected pirate ships on general principles, you can't just fire at them and they go 'Well, that seems a bit hard, let's just give up'.
Plus, have fun finding a port that will take a ship without a flag when you need to get repairs.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?