It was also a good year for peace, apparently
The ONLY year, after 1945, in which the US did NOT instigate military conflicts in other countries or actions leading to them, according to the admittedly unexhaustive list at List of military interventions by the US :
1977

Anarchopedia:Article in the news archive

Micronation diplomacy

Pretenders and micronations are a fascinating subject, because in their impotence, they lay bare the lack of any real power that states have. All is in the mind of the governors or the governed, or Guns or Butter (WP)

One of the first micronations (WP) to be established, in 1865, was the Kingdom of Redonda, on a Caribbean island; there are hundreds more today.^[1] Many micronations have diplomatic relations with other micronations; inasmuch as no macronation, or undisputed country, will recognize a micronation, their diplomatic relations are usually limited to other micronations.^[2] However, micronations often make pronouncements with respect to nations, or declare policy with respect to nations, some more substantial^[1][2] than the common micronation declaration that they 'give gifts' to nearby or encompassing nations rather than pay taxes.^[1][2][3] According to the declarative theory of statehood of the Montevideo Convention, countries need population, territory, government, and diplomacy to be considered sovereign.^[4][5] Many micronations will not recognise less serious micronations than themselves.^[6] While micronational diplomacy usually consists of friendly contact between micronations,^[2] some micronations, such as the Principality of Seborga and the Madison Kingdom of Talossa,^[7] refuse to recognise any micronation as an unofficial or official policy. The reverse is also true; the Hutt River Principality is visited by officials of the Australian government, despite its unrecognized status.^[2]

In at least three instances, the foundation of a micronation was a protest against the laws or administration of the nearby macronation.^[3][1][8] The Gay and Lesbian Kingdom of the Coral Sea Islands (WP) was founded in response to Australia's ban on gay marriage.^[1][9][10]The Mittagong, New South Wales city council decided to divert construction of a sewer line, after the Principality of Dubeldeka was formed, to the outskirts of its property;^[1] the founders of the micronation claim that the hotel they planned to restore would have been destroyed by the original course of pipelaying.^[1] The Principality of Wy decided being part of a local council that denied them road access was not worth it, and seceded in 2004.^[3] The NSK micronation opposes the very concept of nations,^[11][12] and Cyber Yugoslavia is critical of Yugoslavian nationalism.^[11]

The dissolution of the Soviet Union created areas that were no longer parts of the former USSR (WP) or Russia (WP), nor established states; micronations whose sovereignty and relationship to other countries was unclear, yet whose national borders and ethnic constituency still had precedence in history.^[13]

The largest intermicronational organisation in micronational history is the Organisation of Active Micronations (OAM),^[14] which boasts over 80 member nations.^[15] The League of Small Nations (LSN), modelled after the League of Nations (WP), consists of the Dominion of British West Florida, the Sovereign Barony of Caux, the Grand Duchy of Greifenberg and the Republic of Molossia.^[16] There are also intermicronational organisations that are reputable, while accepting nations and micronations that do not necessarily meet all of the Montevideo Convention requirements for a state, such as the Micronational Professional Registry (MPR)^[17] and the League of Secessionist States (LoSS)^[18] The United Micronations Multi-Oceanic Archipelago (UMMOA) claims recognition from an organization in Italy by the name of International Parliament for Safety and Peace.^[19]

The continent of Australia swells the number of micronations considerably;^[1][2][3] micronations there attend to diplomatic business at micronation conferences,^[1] including the April 2010 PoliNation conference on an island just off the coast of Sydney, Australia.^[10][20]

Ambassadors to other micronations tend to visit, rather than live in them, or conduct diplomacy at a distance.^[2] Ambassadors can be assigned to macronations (most commonly to the macronation that surrounds a micronation), but are never recognised as ambassadors by the macronation. The definition of state visit remains the same for micronations as larger ones. Grand Duke Paul of Greifenberg made a state visit to President Kevin Baugh of Molossia on April 21, 2008, where they talked about micronationalism.^[21] On May 23, 2008, Grand Duke Paul visited Baron John I of the Barony of Caux.^[22] From June 27–30, 2008, Prince Christopher and Princess Erin of Vikesland visited Molossia. During the visit, they engaged in joint military and rocket projects.^[23] All of these state visits were between members of the League of Small Nations.

Micronations typically use definitions of embassies and ambassadors loosely. Lovely,^[24] for example, declares any location its flag is displayed to be an embassy. Some will declare just about any location to be an embassy, including a webpage. Some micronations consist purely as embassies. The citizens of Atlantia, a micronation on the Australian continent, all claim dual citizenship, both Australian and Atlantian.^[1]

Micronational war (WP) is usually done jokingly. For instance, micronations, such as the Conch Republic,^[25] and the Hutt River Province^[26] in 1977,^[1] have declared war on the macronations that surround them.^[2] Macronations generally ignore this. Wars may be declared between micronation; Molossia helped to create another micronation, Mustachistan, and after a territorial dispute went to war with it.^[27] Molossia also declared a never-ending war on East Germany (WP), which it claims still exists, on Ernst Thälmann Island.^[28] Slightly more serious incidents include Sealand, off the coast of England, whose territory is an island that was a military base during World War II base, that once fired warning shots when a British Navy boat came close to shore,^[1] and 'civil wars' in which citizens of a micronation declare war on it, hacking into its website to crash it.^[11]

References

• Micronations John Ryan, George Dunford, Simon Sellars Review. The Australian
• Jody Shapiro will teach you How to Start Your Own Country; Vanessa Farquharson, Oct. 21, 2010, National Post
• How to Start Your Own Country YouTube (WP)
  • How to Start Your Own Country Pt2 YouTube Alternative title: How to Finish Your Own Country?

The lie of WMDs in Iraq admitted

The USA retains over 10,000 nuclear warheads, down from a Cold War average of 20,000

Eight years ago, Colin Powell, on behalf of the Bush administration, set the USA, with its nuclear arsenal still at half its Cold War level, on a course for war with Iraq, with a cry of WMDs! OMG! The administration bulldozed their way past Intelligence agencies that decried their evidence as faulty, but Powell's and later Bush's 16 words speeches went on as planned. With the war, the fabrication of the war, and the aftermath of the war, there was much to obscure the fact that one of the reasons for the Bush administration's success in pulling a war out of a hat was that they had the pretext of a real person, albeit unreliable as a source, who was behind the story as they told it. Now, the source of the information, codenamed Curveball, has come clean.^[29]

"Key Bush Admin "Source" Admits to Lying about Iraqi WMD"

Weapons of mass destruction are nuclear, biological, or chemical

An Iraqi defector whose claims were used to help build the case for the U.S. invasion of Iraq has admitted for the first time that he lied. In an interview with The Guardian of London, Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi—codenamed "Curveball"—says he fabricated tales of mobile biological weapons laboratories and other secret sites under Saddam Hussein. Janabi says he was hoping to topple Saddam Hussein’s government and was "shocked" when his claims were cited in then-U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell’s infamous address to the United Nations eight years ago. Top Bush administration officials insisted on highlighting Janabi’s claims despite widespread doubts amongst U.S. intelligence.^[29] - Headlines for February 16, 2011, Democracy Now!

This shows a different side to the plausible deniability tactic, and a double standard for the reliability of information: providing just enough information to silence dissenters makes information reliable for allies and supporters, where just enough doubt for allies and supporters makes dissenters' information unreliable.

2011 Egyptian media censorship

The Hacktivism (WP) group Anonymous (WP) displayed the altruistic side of direct action for the uninitiated, with low-tech faxes, to update Egyptians behind the information 'Iron Curtain'^[30] during the January 2011 internet block in Egypt.^[30]

2011 USA intervention in Haitian elections

In 2009, the Fanmi Lavalas party, closest to Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was forbidden participation in Haiti's November '10 elections by the provisional election council created by the current president, Rene Praval. Under cover of the Egyptian protests, the US, to the orchestrated swell of allegations of voter fraud as a pretext for runoff elections, pressured Haiti to remove Jude Celestin, the candidate least affiliated with right-wing Haitian government, US-backed Haitian governments, Haitian dictators, or all three, after the election was criticized as unfair. The US also pressured Haiti to add Michel Martelly to the ballot, to face Mirlande Manigat in the revised election.^[31]
Election fraud debunked; voter boycott proved
Michelle Martelly won the subsequent runoff election, that was also "marred by problems". The fact that 71% of Haitians stayed away from an election without Lavalas was used to justify the runoff election and give credence to the claims of voter fraud by Celestin. But at the runoff election itself, the turnout was even lower; 25% instead of 29%.^[31] The recent voter turnouts are a slump back to pre-Aristide levels; 60% or more of Haitians voted in all the elections in which Jean-Bertrand Aristide or his Lavalas party were on the ballot.^{[32][33][34][35]}

• Michel Martelly, 'popularly known as' "Sweet Micky" — a moniker sometimes used interchangeably to refer to himself as well as his band — is a Haitian performing and recording artist, composer,^[36] and musical sociopolitical activist, who breaks the expected lefty mold of American and British entertainers with his well-hidden support for the Duvalier regime.^[37] Between the time of the 1991 coup d'état and the return of Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 1994, he also supported the government of disbanded Haitian military and pro-US forces that deposed Aristide and took power.^[37][38] He ran on a platform of nothing much in particular, being described as a joke candidate by many reports. However, he claimed nepotism and voter fraud by Celestin, as did Mirlande Manigat.

Coalition to Save the Preserves

Coalition to Save the Preserves was a name chosen in 2002 by Mark Sands to cover up his arson of a building that he did not want in his area by portraying it as Propaganda of the deed (or more specifically, 'eco-terrorism').^[39]

The fact that Sands had been perpetrating a hoax, however dangerous a hoax, never seemed to fully sink into the minds of some US. security agency employees, and most likely others decided it would be expedient to ignore this fact, and they have issued numerous lists of terrorists with the CtStP included:

• In 2006, the Department of Homeland Security issued a threat assessment that included the CtStP as one of the threats on US soil that had carried out domestic terrorism.^[40]
• Listing on the Global Terrorism Database by START National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, a Center of Excellence of the US Department of Homeland Security based at the University of Maryland^[41]

Understandably, Sands' Not In My Back Yard (NIMBY) activity was something of a threat to real direct action (WP) advocates, and Earth First! (WP), with considerably fewer resources than the FBI or the later security agencies, was at the time, at pains to point out that it was not responsible for his activity^[42]

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Citations