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Prince of Sealand Dies At 91
jdavidb writes "46 years ago, occupying an abandoned WWII platform off the coast of Britain, Paddy Roy Bates declared independence, naming himself Prince of the Principality of Sealand. Today, Bates has passed away at 91. Long time Slashdot readers will remember Sealand as the site of HavenCo, an unsuccessful data warehousing company that tried to operate from Sealand outside the reach of larger nations' legal structures. They may also remember plans that the Pirate Bay had at one time to buy Sealand. Bates had moved to a care home a few years ago, naming his son Michael Regent of Sealand."
Why should I care about this prick dying? Good riddance.
...rudderless.
My blog
...naming his son Michael Regent of Sealand
Kind of an odd name. His middle name is Regent? And can you change the name of your son once he is an adult? Weird.
Spare a thought for master bates
He was the prince of a principality, yet required the care that British Healthcare provided. Reminds me of some Americans with Canadian dual-citizenship who come back to Canada to get Healthcare. If you don't pay taxes you shouldn't get anything. Citizenship is an obligation as much as it is a birthright.
I want to move to Sealand! Where even those of modest means will be treated!
Yeah, It's called the NHS.
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
udderless
... utterless.
Most of the rest of the civilized world has this.
It's only Americans who think it should be for profit and that "those of modest means" are on their own if they don't have the money.
Most of the rest of the civilized world has this.
It's only Americans who think it should be for profit and that "those of modest means" are on their own if they don't have the money.
That's an overly broad generalization. It's primarily only republicans in America with this point of view.
It's only Americans who think it should be for profit and that "those of modest means" are on their own [emphasis added] if they don't have the money.
Seeing as how Americans are (in general) the most charitable people in the world [ http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/americas/united-states/111220/charity-us-most-generous-country-world-giving-index%5D, I don't see how you arrive at this.
Isn't that about 50% of the US? Give or take a few percentage points.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
scutterless
Of inserting an erroneous apostrophe in the word "its" all the time.
server crashes committerbase and You don't need to is the group that kil7 myself like shitheads. *BSD that has grown 0p may disturb other official GNAA irc were nullified by
An island with no tits?
Sounds like a veritable Seahell.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
Only in the electoral college. Using the total population:
including the number of people that don't vote: 52% (48% turnout)
or
are independent: 'about 30 percent'
That would mean only around 36% of Americans are Republicans, but have around 56% of the control in the legislative branch.
I'd like to think that most of those people have no idea who or what they're voting for. They just think either "My daddy always voted republican cuz he was a real 'merican", or "My church told me that guy is a secret muslim", or some other such nonsense. Then they just repeat whatever Limbaugh says.
I'm not saying there aren't Dem's that aren't the same way, but my experience lately has been mostly ridiculous misinformation on the republican side.
No, the number of independents in the US is rather large. The numbers range between 22 and 35%
So many Americans think they are helpless against the size fo the government....
And butterless.
It's only Americans who think it should be for profit and that "those of modest means" are on their own [emphasis added] if they don't have the money.
Seeing as how Americans are (in general) the most charitable people in the world [ http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/americas/united-states/111220/charity-us-most-generous-country-world-giving-index%5D, I don't see how you arrive at this.
Most charitable to non-Americans, perhaps.
Since China, India, and vast majority of Africa don't have universal healthcare, are you excluding them from the definition "civilized world"?
It comes in the form of anything involving the 1%, job outsourcing and class warfare usually.
Both sides are just as guilty of it, you tend to be blind to what you don't want to see. (You as in a general population you, not you specifically, I don't know you and wouldn't presume to judge you)
I met Prince (Regent?) Michael years ago, during the dotcom boom, when HavenCo was still on Sealand. He was in San Francisco to meet with techie folks, and we all had sushi together. He struck me as a good, knowledgeable, fair fellow.
I wish him the best and offer my counsel (for what it's worth) in the service of Sealand.
Tom Geller
No, based on what The Dancing Panda said I'd definitely put him in the category of "you tend to be blind to what you don't want to see".
Remember the douche-bags who refused to pay their option fire department insurance/taxes?
Those good little Libertarian/Teabaggers got exactly the government they paid for.
And New Zealand was named so that there wouldn't be any patent issues with Sealand ;-)
Well that's what Jesus would have done, if crony capitalism had been invented back then.
U S A, U S A, U S A, U S A!
You're either blind, deaf, and dumb, or you simply haven't been paying attention during this political season.
Modern understanding of good hygiene, sanitation, vermin control, physical activity, accident prevention, and adequate clothing, shelter, and HVAC systems contribute most to longevity. Those in the medical profession would have you think that you are living twice as long as you would have were it not for all of their medications, treatments, surgeries and other procedures. Of all the medical "miracles", only antibiotics and insulin have had enough effect to substantially increase life expectancy for the general population. Most of the millions of dollars spent on healthcare, whether privately or publicly funded, go toward "heroic" efforts to prolong life well beyond where it should have been allowed a more graceful and comfortable ending, or in some cases on virtually quack medical treatments that may cause ailments just as dangerous and/or painful than the underlying condition without even slowing down the disease, all because some statistics seemed to indicate that 3-5% of patients showed some improvement. There is a lot of money to be made in the sales and marketing of hope and hype in clear, empty bottles.
Now there are specific cases where a person has been allowed to live a much longer and greater quality of life due to certain advances in medicine and surgery. Most of these are in the cases of transplants, where, in the USA at least, one person gets unlucky, dies, and their estate billed tens of thousands of dollars, while a needy patient pays tens of thousands of dollars (even with insurance) to receive a healthy replacement organ. Most of us will not benefit substantially from medical care, but we will likely be depleting what savings we may have aquired through hard work and frugal living when at the end of our lives we are placed in a nursing home or hospice care for weeks, months, or years paying for someone to change our bedpans, wash our soiled sheets, and feed us preprocessed institutional food.
One of the few areas where medicine can do the most good is to catch and correct problems at the very earliest stage when they are easiest and most affordable to treat. But in the USA, policy makers and insurance executives, in their infinite wisdom, have erected cost barriers along every step of medical care to "consumerise" health care choices, with the presumption that Americans drive up the cost of health care by over-consuming medical services. The end result is that patients inevitably drive up the cost of care by either choosing to ignore early problematic symptoms to save money or they simply do not have the money to afford medical diagnosis or early treatment. So problems are not treated until they get out of hand, when a family decides that medical treatment is more important than little Johnny's college fund, the tax and penalties of withdrawing from a retirement account, or in many cases, paying rent, mortgage, or car payments. Even with insurance, if the medical problem is serious enough there will likely be so many uncovered expenses, travel, time off work, etc., that a family will burn through their paychecks, emergency fund, home equity, and college/retirement savings in the first few months or years of treatment. For some it will be only weeks. And then there will be life threatening delays as hospitals with multi-million dollar endowments and non-profit tax status withhold treatment while a family struggles with bureaucrats, case managers, and charity providers to convince them that they are needy and should qualify for aid. If they are lucky and quickly and correctly discover, fill out, and submit the appropriate applications and grant requests, and if there aren't too many doubts about how many assets they are retaining for themselves (usually $2,000.00 max. per family), and if their incomes still are not too high, they might receive just enough help to treat some of their "qualifying" conditions, but usually only if they are or have minor children or are legally disabled.
"I like to ride my goat while swabbing the deck. And that is NOT a euphamism for anything." --Hetalia
I myself am the Earl of Buckman. I haven't gotten round to dreaming a BS legal theory to justify this title, but does that really matter?
And then there's the well-known Duke of Santa Monica? Never heard of him? Really? Surely you've heard of the Santa Monica Peer!
This guy was not another Emperor Norton. Even before he declared himself the sovereign of an abandoned radar platform, he was involved in activities (unauthorized radio stations, gambling) that he conducted offshore in an attempt to put himself outside UK law. Basically, the dude was a small-time criminal with a particularly creative lawyer.
A lot of dumb people who are into silly "antigovernment" movements think the Prince of Platform #2 was a hero because his legal gimmick vaguely resembled a seastead, an offshore settlement a lot of libertarian visionaries advocate. That's doubly stupid, since "Sealand" never had any actual settlers and because the idea of seasteading itself is just plain hilarious.
There's actually nothing wrong with a micronation in theory, especially in modern society. Obviously, a great nation doesn't just pop up overnight, and unlike the settlers of ages past, we no longer really have large land masses far out of reach of other nations to claim, settle, and build up over time without interference. (Well, unless you're looking into colonizing other planets or moons?)
The reason a micronation *should* be feasible is the hope that the rest of the existing nations of the world are civilized enough not to come in and slaughter their populations, just because they don't like a little competition. It's actually a sad commentary on mankind that folks like yourself would call anyone attempting such an experiment a "libertarian moron". War is very costly and usually unjustified in the first place. Certainly, there's scarcely a reason to start one with a country that never attacked you first.
As opposed to random people on the Internet.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
After reading the Haven Co press release they put out towards the end, I got the distinct impression that the whole SeaLand thing was a complete fraud. Did we ever figure out if SeaLand is actually a country, or not?
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The hypocrisy of the people praising the idea of a hereditary monarch with absolute power being some sort of protector or haven for human rights.
I guess it fits into the mythos of the "wise, benevolent leader who will not screw you over later because they're too nice".
Light a fire for a man and he'll be warm for a day. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
Modern understanding of good hygiene, sanitation, vermin control, physical activity, accident prevention, and adequate clothing, shelter, and HVAC systems contribute most to longevity. Those in the medical profession would have you think that you are living twice as long as you would have were it not for all of their medications, treatments, surgeries and other procedures. Of all the medical "miracles", only antibiotics and insulin have had enough effect to substantially increase life expectancy for the general population.
You left out good nutrition, also not high tech medicine, but extremely important for longevity (more important than accident prevention by far). And you left out vaccinations a tool that is doing wonders right now in extending the lives in the Third World right now, just as they did in industrialized societies (they are far more important for this purpose than HVAC).
But you entirely leave out "quality of life". How many people go through their entire lives without ever requiring intervention from modern medicine that relieved some otherwise excruciating/debilitating/disfiguring intervention? In my immediate family of extending to third degree I can't think of anyone.
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
When I read the words "prince of ..." it just happens to autocomplete with persia.
Anyone else has this problem?
If you can't protect your country you don't have a country, period.
If you have someone else to directly protect your country or infinitely supply you while threatening and tying hands of your opponents at the same time, then you do have a country even if it can't stand on its own, at least as long as your protector is alive and well. Today, we simulate democracy among nations in UN, by feigning independence of plenty of small sock-puppet nations, but in a less hypocritical times, we would (and in fact did) just openly annex them into our ever-growing empire. It's Peloponnesian League all over again - empire in disguise, Athenian style.
Isn't that about 50% of the US? Give or take a few percentage points.
That suggests to me that the US is approximately 50% over-populated. Couldn't you start a nice low tech war somewhere and draft all the extreme right wingers to fight it? Teabaggers versus Taliban, knives and sticks only, last one standing wins.
Charity is not the basis for a sensible system of funding for society. Personally, I would abolish all charities (especially religious and educational ones) and increase direct taxation to fund things that benefit everyone.
In a socialist system charities, like religion, would be superfluous.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Since China, India, and vast majority of Africa don't have universal healthcare, are you excluding them from the definition "civilized world"?
Perhaps "fully developed world" would be a better choice of words.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it