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What kind of extremely screwed up design for mobile is on that site? A left and right column that scroll independently of each other. Can't resize the text. Can't enable the reader mode either.
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The article mentions this as an example of a second-order enclave (whereas the Bangladesh–India enclave it discusses is third-order):

> There are a web of enclaves within enclaves in Baarle-Hertog, a Belgian municipality with pockets of Dutch sovereignty.

Surely not as weird as the Bir Tawil border dispute between Egypt and Sudan. Both argue that it should be part of the other country!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bir_Tawil

That one seems pretty straightforward. Each country's preferrence nets them more land. Bir Tawil is far less valuable than the larger disputed landmass (being baren rather than bordering a navigable body of water) so neither party seems to care to fight over it.
Still strange when a country actively rejects a stretch of land.
Accepting it would mean legitimizing the border treaty that costs them the larger stretch of land. Stranger things have happened.
Could I murder someone there, and no nation/state 'could' prosecute me?

Not an actual plan, mind you, just curious if there's some form of international law that ultimately covers these places.

I'm also interested in this.
Me too. Asking for a friend.
Depends on who you kill.
Countries tend to claim jurisdiction whenever a citizen is killed, no matter where it happens.
http://www.quora.com/If-someone-commits-murder-at-sea-in-int...

That is a related question about international waters (which has a similar sort of situation). the TL;DR is the US could go for it.

My impression is that no country really puts jurisdiction into its laws except in certain explicit cases (like tax law).

So if it's illegal to kill someone, I don't think any country will be like "well you did it outside of here so we're cool with it." Usually extradition is more linked to the fact that if you kill someone in Tokyo, chances are Japan has more detectives in place to prosecute you "fairly" (since they have all the evidence in place) than the US would, for example.

IANAL, but I think jurisdiction is more of a term for the executive branch, like the police, than for the court system. Though it will come to place in things like standing

Some truly awful crimes go on at sea and the criminal simply walks away. If you can arrange to do it there, you could try your luck.

In theory, at the very least, the flag state of the vessel should do something about it. In practice, if you pick the right flag state, the right ship, you could get away with it. Some very suspicious deaths go essentially unnoticed on merchant ships, and I know a security chief on a cruise ship who has arrested people for serious sexual assault and the flag state just doesn't care and/or just doesn't have the capability to investigate; they get put ashore at the next port and walk away scot-free. It happens, regularly enough that it's not an unusual thing.

>and the criminal simply walks away..

I think 'sails away' would be more apt.

Hardly. Country A is sovereign over land inside country B, which land is, itself, inside a part of country A, which is, itself within country B.

Yeah, that makes so much sense.

Same situation between Serbia and Croatia. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberland.
Nice contribution
I see that most of your comments are of the same kind, and that you get lots of downvotes.

The reason for the downvotes is that the Hacker News feels like appreciation is best communicated through upvoting: it helps sorting the comments in order of relevance, and avoid cluttering the thread with +1/-1 comments.

It is perfectly okay to upvote (and often downvote) without commenting; don't feel forced to participate either, it's perfectly okay to lurk until you find a topic you can actually contribute to.

The article discusses enclaves extensively, and then refers at the end to "exclave residents". Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclave_and_exclave) says:

> An enclave is any portion of a state that is entirely surrounded by the territory of one other state. An exclave is a portion of a state geographically separated from the main part by surrounding alien territory. Many enclaves are also exclaves.

If I understand this correctly, the WaPo article really means to refer specifically to exclaves, not just to enclaves, throughout.

I think "Many enclaves are also exclaves" is backwards. By Wikipedia's definition, all enclaves are exclaves, but only some exclaves are enclaves.

The territories described in the article are enclaves, not just exclaves, because India and Bangladesh are the only two countries involved.

EDIT: Ah, never mind, I was only considering the case where a country is partitioned into multiple disconnected components.

How do you conclude that all enclaves are exclaves? A connected state that is entirely surrounded by another state is a counter-example.
I believe they have it right. For example, the Vatican is an enclave -- entirely surrounded by Italy -- but not an exclave, as it is itself contiguous.
According to that WP article only the odd-order enclaves are exclaves. The second-order enclaves A4 and A5 aren't exclaves.

I see the logic there, but it doesn't quite match the definition that you have quoted. Dictionaries all seem to include "separated from the main part" or something similar. That definition does fit the WP examples.

Were the borders actually disputed, or just really weird? The article made it sound like while the borders were odd, both countries agreed on where they were.
The way I got it, they were just weird.
this is a river delta society so imagine small villages on small island that are essentially part of one country is surrounded by a whole zones that are part of the other country
Small villages of one country were inside another country. Bangladesh had some Indian villages, India had some Bangladeshi villages. And they both acknowledged that.
I don't mean to derail the discussion, but the Indian Nepalese and Bhutanese people are so beautiful.

I know that they're discriminated against in India. One would hope India would have a higher regard for all of their citizens (not just based on beauty of course).

I wonder how was life for people living in one of those enclaves. Were there actually passport controls at the frontiers? My guess is that the Indians living there were actually living just as if they were citizen from Bangladesh, but I could be wrong.
My advisor Clem Heusch once took me hiking from France to Switzerland, right by an unoccupied border post.

Its construction suggested it was built either by Napoleon or by the Swiss to defend itself from him. It was just big enough that one soldier with his Nutcracker Suite hat could stand in it.

you are almost certainly correct but there's a possibility that folks could be hassled etcetera: taken advantage of basically.this is a part of the world where the basic things we rely on don't exist institutions rights etcetera
Yes, they are probably posing as citizens of their other nationality. Generally they are probably bribing institutions to get their work done.

> Were there actually passport controls at the frontiers?

Generally any real passport control is probably implemented more as an extortion scheme. "Pay 50 ₹ or else!"

Most of the enclave people could not go to the mainland, effectively making it a prison. They did not have basic amenities like healthcare, education. Even not citizenship of any country. In one specific case, India agreed to give corridor to a Bangladeshi enclave inside India, the Tin Bigha corridor, which were controlled by India. Initially it was open for a few hours a day, so that people can go from enclave to mainland. Later it was open 24x7
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Are you familiar with the term "Fellow Traveler"?

Open Source and Free Software are Fellow Travelers:

Just after the Communist victory in Vietnam, the People's Republic China invaded its southern border with North Vietnam.

The Soviet Union and the PRC repeatedly duked it out over Mongolia.

While not an actual member state, Yugoslavia had a mutual defense pact with NATO so as to keep a lid on Stalin's long-unfulfilled dream of a warm water fault.

The Russian Federation's invasion of Crimea is because warm water port.

Yugoslavians could travel freely to Italy. To assert its neutrality, Tito permitted precisely two port of call visits each from United States and Soviet Naval vessels.

My father was the antiaircraft missile fire control officer on the USS Springfield on one such call. Mom got to fly over to hang with Dad behind the Iron Curtain but strangely me and Jeannie weren't invited along.

Even within the US, state borders are still not a settled matter.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/08/24/opinion/sunday/how-the-...

Thank you, that is a great article! Recommended for any map geeks.

I love these two bits in particular:

> In another segment, researchers found a stone boundary monument that had been set as part of a 1928 resurvey, except it now stood near a tee on a golf course. Officials at the course had moved it years before so duffers could brag about their two-state tee shot. Using the original 1928 maps, advanced mathematics and some informed guesswork, the joint survey teams navigated to the exact spot where the monument had been uprooted, and even found its broken-off base.

> But an obvious fix is not in sight for Lewis Efird, who bought a gas station just south of what he thought was the state line in the early 1990s to take advantage of South Carolina’s significantly lower gas tax, as well as the ability to sell beer and fireworks. Unfortunately, the survey work showed conclusively that his pumps were in a part of North Carolina where gas is more expensive, beer sales are not allowed and fireworks are illegal. As he told commissioners in a public meeting, “Our business is going to be destroyed.”

And here's an example of a tiny exclave that was not only completely separated from a "mainland", but also surrounded by the country extremely hostile to it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steinst%C3%BCcken

Between 1949 and early 1970s the only way to get there was with a helicopter (they even later installed a monument to it in there).