Micronations to microstates? Inspired by the Anonymous is legion: or has it become nation?" thread the other day, I started thinking about how Scientology has established itself in the largest/most prominent countries before working it's way down. I then thought: would it be possible for Anonymous to gain footholds from the smallest countries, then work it's way up? This was also jointly inspired by reading up on the Principality of Sealand. While not recognised as a sovereign state by any UN member, it considers itself an independent sovereign state and is usually described as a micronation, also holding the world record for being the smallest area to lay claim to nation status. Another point of interest is that Sealand is home to HavenCo, a secure data hosting services company. The occupiers certainly seem to be good-humoured: they award peerage titles, are even represented by their own airsoft team based in the UK and so on. Having been invaded at least once, and given their interest in the internets, they could empathise with Anonymous' situation and so maybe they'd be up for some correspondence, possibly leading to while also attracting some publicity. I doubt we could - or should - go as far as asking HavenCo to prohibit the Church of Scientology from their hosting services, but I was thinking of drafting a letter to Sealand, including: a) a short history of Scientology and Anonymous b) asking them to clarify their position on Scientology c) if there is no current policy, asking them whether they would be prepared to take an official stance on Scientology. d) suggesting that the aforementioned stance, should be to deem Scientology illegal. I think the next step would be to work our way through the list of micronations. We should eliminate those which no longer lay claim to nation status or those founded for the purposes of fraud, but there is potential in contacting those with peaceful histories and those which share aims of protest with Anonymous, even those which are non-terrritorial. My draft short list would include: Aercian Empire (Australia, Canada, Mars, New Zealand, Pluto) Empire of Atlantium, Gay and Lesbian Kingdom of the Coral Sea Islands, Principality of Hutt River, Independent State of Rainbow Creek (Australia) Conch Republic, Replublic of Molossia, Kingdom and Republic of Talossa (USA) Copeman Empire, Hay-On-Wye, Kingdown of Lovely (UK) Kingdom of Elleore (Sweden) Kingdown of Humanity/Republic of Morac-Songhrati-Meads (China, Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia, Philippines, Brunei) Republic of Kugelmugel (Austria) Ladonia (Sweden) Other World Kingdom (Czech Republic) Kingdom of Redonda (Antigua & Barbuda) Republic of Saugeais (France) Principality of Seborga,Tavolara Island (Italy) Whangamomona Republic (New Zealand) and possibly the Bjorn Socialist Republic (Sweden) As you can see, these cover a lot of "neighbouring" countries in which the publicity against Scientology would be useful. Maybe we could then move on the microstates, though I doubt the first one on the list is going to be easy as (according to Scientology) the Vatican have been only to happy to give them an audience. The rest, being sovereign states, should be reasonably expected to have some kind of stance on Scientology and we could do some digging to see what they may be already. Anyway, I haven't had a look around here for examples of similar letters but I'd be really interested to hear people's thoughts on this and any help you can give - with translation and contact details of the more obscure nations/states would be particularly appreciated.
