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Comment by Semaphor | Hacker News Reader

Less detailed, but Wikipedia has a nice overview [0] of some things this only glossed over:

> In August 1978, Alexander Achenbach, who describes himself as the Prime Minister of Sealand, hired several German and Dutch mercenaries to lead an attack on Sealand while Bates and his wife were in England.

…

> Germany then sent a diplomat from its London embassy to Sealand to negotiate for Achenbach's release. Roy Bates relented after several weeks of negotiations and subsequently claimed that the diplomat's visit constituted de facto recognition of Sealand by Germany.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principality_of_Sealand

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Don't forget HN's very own RDL that ran HavenCo from there:

https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=rdl

I still think a country is the ultimate start-up.

Seems like Musk agrees but is going planetary.

I wish him well but AFAIK all struggles for independence ultimately boil down to military ability, regardless of any treaties and agreements.

Pretty hard to shake your military stick at someone on Mars. He has already shown he can do weapons development too.

Pre-SpaceX NASA was able to send multiple rovers to Mars so it seems yesterdays technology is already sufficient to nuke Mars.

I wonder why it needs to qualify the title of "the Prime Minister of Sealand" with the statement "who describes himself as the..."

That one issue alone seems to encapsulate this whole topic altogether.

I mean he established the Sealand Rebel Government as Government in Exile in Germany. I feel for an unrecgonized nation’s unrecognized rebel government "describes himself as" is very fitting ;)

To be fair, is that really any different than any other government setup? They're all social institutions. Which is rather the point of micro-nations, I believe.

Hijack for good:

If you guys love this story, read this: https://www.amazon.com/Unruly-Places-Spaces-Inscrutable-Geog...

Its a book about places with odd borders, histories and futures that is tantalizing.

The full Sealand story is told here an its breathtaking.

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