Nanostate Protocol vol. 1

Article 1. The NANOSTATE ("N") is a real physical entity. By "real" is meant "consisting of sets of points forming domains in real non-imaginary time-space". These domains will always contain interior points lying on the earth's surface or geospace. N is thus not a mapping, projection, virtual reality, simulacrum, game, metaphor, apocalypse, allegory, utopia, inferno or other domain parallel to or otherwise not intersecting the real geodomain [1]; it is a complex section or metonymy of this last.

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Article 2. N is a real political entity (RPE). The main current instance of an RPE is the nation state [2]. N has most of the defining characteristics of the nation state, plus additional ones not possessed by it. To belong to the category of nation state an entity must possess a bounded domain, usually called its "territory", defined by "frontiers". Any interior point of such a domain belongs to one and only one RPE: Scotland is an aspirant RPE only. It must be associated with a non-empty set of objects called "citizens" and sets of operational functions, called "rights" when they are interior or "civil", that is, in respect of citizens; and exterior, when they are collectively termed "sovereignty", in respect of other RPEs; Applicability of these functions in the case of an individual citizen-object is known as citizenship; it is a quasi-permanent characteristic with variable degrees of freedom and constraint with respect to boundaries or territory and applies to all citizens; citizenship is determined by conditions independent of the citizen. N possesses concepts of rights, citizenship and sovereignty but these are in a precise sense inalienable; they are implicitly and situationally defined, rather than instrumentally as codices or encryptions [3] (see Article 16 and note 42 for N-citizenship). The reality status of supra-national entities such as UN and EC is not clear. They are contradictory RPEs. RPEs have jurisdiction in the last instance, and are generally the hegemon of a territory (For hegemony see note 16)

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Article 3. N is situated in geospace by the clock Omega. When the time registered by Omega differs from the exact time obtaining at the current location ("here") by a whole number of hours, N is located in the corresponding World Time Zone according to current international conventions. When this difference is not a whole number of hours, the location bifurcates into past or future historical time when other or no time-zones would have or will be agreed [4]. It will be clear that N will be located at practically all terrestrial points only for an infinitesimally small time interval. The name Nanostate refers only symbolically to the nanosecond, an interval of one billionth of a seconds duration. The nanosecond in fact represents the time horizon of N at any given location, ie one nanosecond is that location's eternity [5]. It should be noted that this does not contradict the conditions necessary for the existence of this Embassy, presently located here. Embassies in general are extraterritorial locations, and conform to the space-time rules of the host RPE, in this case the United Kingdom. This Embassy is in this respect typical. Also to be noted is that technically the clock Omega is the only absolutely accurate timepiece in existence; every other clock or time-keeping device is marginally wrong (see the graph precising this observation posted on this Embassy wall)

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Article 4. N is an RPE of maximum velocity. All RPEs are time-based; although the interior points and areas of a given RPE are stationary with respect to global surface coordinates, external frontiers vary with respect to time; so therefore does its surface centre of gravity. Even though these movements are stepwise and discontinuous, averaged they define a velocity which is quantifiable. In this respect, N is a typical RPE, although clearly its velocity greatly exceeds (and is a far more complex vector) than that of any past or present RPE. The nearest approximation in terms both of magnitude and non-localization of trajectory has probably been the British Empire. It is useful to note that the qualitative modalities of movement are various: RPEs expand, contract, fragment, consolidate, develop holes, emerge, merge, appear, disappear, are annihilated. [6] These shifts result from pressures inside outwards or outside inwards and are constantly reinscribed as boundaries, maps, statutes and codices [7]. It should also be noted that while established RPEs move along a linear and irreversible time axis [8], N-time is non-linear and many-valued, making the computation of its velocity more complex. Although both N and other RPEs are timebased, in general the latter aspire to permanence and independence of time. For them time is to be expelled or is experienced as catastrophe. (In contrast, economic agencies such as TNCs subjugate time; for them it is liquifiable as money.

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Article 5. N is an RPE of minimum duration. In general claims regarding the existence and ipso facto the duration of a newly emergent RPE will encounter problems regarding their legitimacy and validation, since it is not obvious that a position exists from which independent and impartial arbitration of them can be made. Certainly at the level of peer RPEs (the "inter-state system"), claims regarding duration will generally be contested [9], although some RPEs may view them sympathetically; in addition, individuals and groups within established RPEs may support such claims. In particular, vigorous contestation may be expected by RPEs contiguous to or contained by or containing N, also those who perceive their economic interests as being threatened (but see Articles 11, 12, 13, the "economic chapter" on relations between N and global and local economies). At first sight a claim regarding shortness of duration would appear uncontentious. However, the nature of the activities carried on by N-citizens and the peculiarities of the N-chronotope (for this see Article 10) makes this "peaceful resolution" unlikely. It will not be obvious to most RPEs, thinking in terms of linear time, that the infinite sum of infinitesimal time intervals will be zero. In terms of realpolitik, it is very doubtful whether the conditions exist which would allow N's claims regarding existence, origins and duration to be recognized by RPEs, and RPEs to perceive that a modus vivendi with the new entity is achievable that does not compromise their interests. Meanwhile the claim stands and is accepted within the N-interior. "Let history be the judge" is an inappropriate formula since N-time, as indicated in Article 3, has a non-linear structure distinguishing it from historical time as consensually understood by existing RPEs. For emergence see Article 6; for interior/exterior communications see Article 14.

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Article 6. N is a revolutionary state. In this respect, N typifies an RPE in its initial or newly emergent state. Most RPEs are revolutionary at their inception; an exception is the former South Vietnam; a hybrid form of emergence is represented by Israel. Generally a unilaterally instituted entity [10] will be perceived as a violation of territorial integrity and/or a threat to vital interests by geographically close or distant RPEs. Because of the particular characteristics of the space-time structure of N, the normalizing process through which N as an initially revolutionary state would be assimilated into the interstate system of RPEs and recognized as a "country (i.e. RPE) we can do business with" cannot be initiated. A consequence may be that N remains in a state of permanent revolutionary war [11] with RPEs within the given global system. As regards N's internal arrangement, the restructuring of the economic, ideological and energic situated spaces of the N- interior by outside RPEs or non-RPE agencies such as OECD or the World Bank would almost certainly not be contemplated because of the formidable material and conceptual obstacles that would be encountered by these agencies [12]. As succinctly put by An Hai, "they are nowhere, we are everywhere, or vice versa." [13]

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Article 7. N is an RPE of maximum spatial extent. This is a direct consequence of N's law of motion as stated in Article 3, with again the caveat that there is a problem regarding the legitimacy of any validating source of authority. It is noted that the often fatal contradiction between the universalizing aspirations of an emergent revolutionary RPE ("proletarians of every land, unite", "all men are equal" etc) [14] and the constraints imposed by the containment and isolation procedures of established RPEs is practically and conceptually dissolved at the (many-valued) point(s) of emergence of N [15]. The space(s) of N (hereafter N-space; further commented in Articles 9 and 10) does not allow a "territorial"(metric - see Article 9, BC) interpretation or deformation of such global aspirations [16]. It is further noted that many forms of current infra- and inter-state spatial differentiating procedures made possible by the metric character of most RPE spaces (See ibid) are inapplicable to N- space. These procedures underwrite structural hierarchies; they hide or peripheralize some spaces and foreground others as spectacle. An indicative "infrastructural" instance would be production sites as opposed to marketing or consumption arenas [17]. Finally, N spatially extends into pre-modern geospace.

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Article 8. N is a non-material RPE. Article 8 is needed as preface to Articles 9, 11 and especially 12; its commentary is confined to noting the fact of non-N materiality; the non-materiality of N is understood as being in respect of poles of matter and energy, rather than matter and spirit; it is also understood as signifying the annulment of the opposition between an abstractly defined matter and its conceptual other, the abstract void of a metrically defined space.

Although existing RPEs frequently represent themselves as non- material ideal images [18] this is clearly not the reality. RPEs are extremely heavy material assemblages of objects: wires, pipes, cables, conduits, channels, transmitters and various other systems hardware under the general rubric of infrastructure. They include military equipment and weaponry; electrical grid installations and electronic equipment for utilities, communications, surveillance etc; administrative, welfare and ideological installations such as hospitals, offices, palaces, libraries, prisons etc; transport facilities, bridges, railways, roads, airports, container terminals; an important category is the infrastructure needed to store information (files, records offices, telecoms hardware of all kinds, IT-based databases etc) required to situate and define RPEs' citizens [19], as well as to inventory and juridically certify RPEs' own material [20]. All of these impose massive inertial constraints on RPEs' capacity for movement [21] (see Article 4). In this respect N is the ideal form of an RPE which extant RPEs aspire to but are ever less able to achieve. It may be noted that there are obvious practical advantages from N's point of view in its mobility and non- materiality as a state, for example in the case of N-RPE interstate conflict. As a rule, military and diplomatic actions of RPEs are directed purely against relatively static heavy material objects and are likely to be ineffectual against N [22].

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Article 9. Interior points of N belong to a non-metric space. A necessary precondition for the existence of the objects and accoutrements of RPEs listed in Article 8 is that the space they are situated in is metric, ie that a "distance" or metric is defined between any two of its points. This is a requisite of the proper ordering, location and quantification of materials of all kinds. It underwrites the certification of their legal status (particularly regarding ownership) and ultimately makes possible the expression of value as material substance, although the process of accumulation of values is generally the concern of the economic agencies which RPEs host (importantly, TNCs or their relevant affiliates). Although these latter are sometimes seen as undermining the integrity and jurisdictional sovereignty of RPEs [23], in fact a major investment criterion is how capably RPEs discharge administrative, doctrinal and policing functions. Bureaucracies need definable distances; they require spaces that are metric. A seeming paradox of this need is that RPEs have no way of articulating their spaces, except negatively, in terms either of limit and boundary or of material occupying them [24]. N- space is a topology which does not require a defined metric or distance between its points [25]. Relationships between entities (points, sets, citizens etc) of N are best defined in non-metric terms not requiring a distance: interiority, continuity, and, fundamentally, neighbourhood. It is noted that a) these qualities flow from the emergence of N as a revolutionary RPE; emergence is marked by associativities, solidarities, fusions, mobilities, non-static energies and is often subjectively experienced as "weightlessness" (cf Article 8); and b) metric spaces are also topologies but with restrictions; it is a mistake to see the spaces of typical RPEs and N-type entities as mutually exclusive; non- metric, topological features of RPE-spaces are in fact pervasive if often unarticulated or unvaluable: enclaves, families, no-go areas (interior of), Internet subsets, workers' councils, childrens' playgrounds etc [26].

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Article 10. N has frontiers which are not determinate. The time-space situation or chronotope of N ("N-space") as defined in Article 3 is not accidental or arbitrary but is the working expression of the "plate tectonics" of geopolitical space. Here it is right to note that it is at least conceivable that a metric is definable within N-space, in turn implying the existence of a boundary; and that this is a problem awaiting theoretical resolution - work needs to be done. If this turns out to be the case, it may seem a regression from the dissolution of boundary posited by N's emergence as a new type of RPE, as implied in Article 7. It is however also to be noted that N is not primarily an abstract entity defined in purely formal terms, but a political and geographic reality as indicated in Articles 1 and 2, whose inner field or energic principle is aligned towards the annulment of distance and boundary, as implied in Article 9, but one which is stressed by the pressures of geopolitical realities [27]. Contradictions between abstract definition and living process are entirely characteristic of RPEs in general. The restatement of this contradiction at a higher level of generality would be a mark of the rupture between N and other RPEs. In reality, the topological spaces generated by a newly emergent and revolutionary RPE do not themselves require boundaries but aspire to dissolve them. But from the point of view of neighbouring RPEs, boundaries are requisite for many obvious reasons; thus a boundary may exist or not according to whether it is viewed or crossed inside outwards or vice versa [28]; additionally its location and existence will always be in dispute; from a general time perspective boundaries are at best only relatively stable [29].

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Article 11. No objects belong to N. "Belong to" here is intended to designate social, geopolitical and legal meanings rather than logical or mathematical ones [30]. That "belong to", signifying the legal condition of ownership has no meaning within N follows from the (not complete) definition of N-citizenship (Article 16), and the non-availability of a concept of ownership commensurate with it. The geopolitical concept of ownership is implicitly indicated in note 25. It should be noted however that the use of objects in or by N is not problematic, and is not inconsistent with Article 8. In terms of time flow, at the point of emergence of a revolutionary RPE, the new entity "possesses" no material-based resources (objects). No new objects are created ex nihilo, nor are "old" objects annihilated (except possibly those which are symbolically significant). They belong to existing or pre-existing RPEs [31]. (At this point, the old RPE coexists with its replacement, a redefined chronotope, eg in an extra-territorial legitimist form.) Even, as is the case with N, when the new state is not orientated towards expropriation of existing property, its creative purposes and processes will necessarily be incarnated by, externalized or embedded in material objects; some of these will continue to exist as consumer or capital goods in or through the existing inter-RPE system. It will be in fact for N-space and N-citizens to claim the productive kernel of these processes as belonging (in a mathematical rather than legal sense) to domains of N. A rough analogy to these are processes referred to in current RPE legal terminology as "intellectual property".

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Article 12. N has no accumulative capacity. Article 11 is not meant to give an understanding that N-space annuls objects either logically or ontologically, but that objects are never innocent; also that just as non-N (metric) space "extracts" from objects that which is commensurate with it, ie is defined by its metric, so N-space seeks its affinities in objects. These are definable not so much in terms of antitheses such as solid and void, but in terms of connectivities, such as neighbourhood, interpenetration, situation. Strictly speaking N does not have a concept of object (Article 15 is the application of this proposition to a special case, the language object). N is not conceivable as a site where objects may be accumulated. A brief consideration of dominant object-based ultra-RPE agencies is instructive, since to a degree they offer an appearance of a process of dematerialization and the supersession of matter-based accumulation resembling the N-chronotope. TNCs seem to move beyond the perceived fixities of RPEs and replace the RPEs' static "space of place" with an N- like "space of flows"; however their fundamental embeddedness in fixed, ultimately metric property and their underpinning by the policing and administrative services provided by RPEs means ultimately a more evolved type of metric space rather than its annulment. This space in fact is powerfully expressive of metric relationships, particularly of core-periphery vectoring which directions commands outwards, and data and material resource inwards. The apparent weightlessness and high velocity of information and capital flows within and through TNCs is in fact an optical effect requiring extremely massive apparatuses and resulting in previously unknown concentrations [32] of matter-based wealth and other material, often in highly metric static accumulators such as Tokyo, London or New York. The characteristic of these entities is not dematerialization but a complex correspondence between heavy matter (machines, installations, wealth) and its digital tokens (E-money).

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Article 13. N-citizens create. In-N acquisition is a contradiction. This feature presents no problems if account is taken of the structure of N-space (see Article 9) and its non-accumulativity (Article 12), the instrumental use of objects in-N and/or by N's citizens (Article 11), and whatever can be said about N- citizenship (Article 16). In anticipation of the last, N may be described as a mutational form of RPE, wherein the contradictions arising from the existing bifurcation of jurisdictions between RPEs and economic accumulative agencies (TNCs and other), whereby the former exerts control over what in some sense may be called "play" and the latter over "work" by "private citizens" (a phrase which, strictly speaking a contradiction in terms) are annulled. N implies the dissolution of the separateness of the categories "civic" (or "political") and "economic". A further consequence is noted: N is a pure instance of a non-parasitic RPE: its activities both exclude and seek to reclaim the accumulative or acquisitive processes characteristic of all entities of RPE or TNC-type (interestingly illustrated by the distinction between "worker" and "player" conveniently used by RPE and TNC-type entities alike to sanction the undervaluing of creative activity [33], its separation from product and the systemic accumulation of the latter) [34].

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Article 14. N accesses non-N space by means of objects, including texts. In some cases, as in N's dealings with other RPEs, interfacing traffic will need the material objects or other heavy infrastructure required by RPE communication channels. It is not correct to see this as a regression from N-space to metric space, or, in political terms, as compromise or revisionism; rather. Ultimately it follows from the fundamental positions stated in Article 1 and 2, specifying N as an ontologically and politically real place and not a utopia or heterotopia not intersecting with real space; also it necessarily follows from Article 11, see also note 27. Just as space acquires directionality and stress through the process of emergence (see note 12 and Article 10) so do objects. Statements regarding the reclaiming of objects, or more accurately the reactivation of their situatedness within the N- interior are made in Article 11. On matters having an inside outwards vectoring, as a new kind of RPE, N needs (RPE-stressed) objects as one means by which its revolutionary insertion in geopolitical space is discerned; they are the material substratum of the other's language. (They are also a signifying substratum; their use by N or communication purposes may be instructive to RPEs). Two special, overlapping instances are noted: texts and artworks. Given that N is in some respects a new [35] entity, from a macro-(geo) spatial point of view junior, it needs to use the language of its elders [36] in addressing them, as embodied in heavy objects, digital, graphic, iconic texts etc, especially in regard to public issues, labour conditions for N-citizens, exploitation/renewal of natural resources etc; in the micro- political level of individual citizenship, use of such objects/texts follows from the peculiarities of the interleaving of metric and non-metric spaces within a single N/non-N citizen. The artwork provides an instructive example and a possible model of such communication, since it is a material-based encryption of a possibly N-type activity designed to make the communication assimilable in a real or quasi-RPE location or situation [37] (For this see Article 16). it is fundamentally aligned in an inside outwards vectoring [38].

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Article 15. No in-N concept of language is possible. For language to have a concept, it needs to be an object of knowledge. Pragmatically and historically it became this via its objectification in texts/monuments, and their philological, paleographic analysis. These fixed the meanings of words and syntactical rules, and divorced them from their initial context; these fixities are now recorded in dictionaries and grammars [39]. The political advantage for RPEs past and present of this solidification is to remove ambiguities and fix the meaning which issuing authorities require their texts to have; legal documents are the most consistent embodiment of techniques which fix meaning and remove ambiguity, but the tendency is universal. The fixities of graphic and other encryptions of language consolidate this tendency and reinforce the command and control functions RPEs require of language. By contrast the spatio-temporal exigencies of N and N-citizenship require that language be recovered as utterance. This requires recognition that meanings depend on the site of utterance and are negotiable, that ambiguity is central and unclandestine, that the meanings and things denoted by an utterance are variably dependent on each other, that unintelligibility and noise are systemic, that gaps and incompletions are efficient means of avoiding redundancy, that gesture and intonation are constituent parts of a language-based utterance rather than an overlay, that punning (sound/sense overlap) is acknowledged as the motor of language. Analogously with N's geospatial characteristics, linguistic spaces are reintegrated into the utterance, whose constituents are not only language but also non-verbal gesture, movement, distance and context. In other words, N requires the reanimation and reenergizing of the spaces of language which have been suppressed or devalued by encryptions and normalizing codes in the interests of an often bureaucratically convenient standardized system of meaning/command. Clearly this dematerialization of the language object is also the dissolution of its hypostasized concept, and its replacement by the conceptualization of situatedness [40].

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Article 16. N-citizenship is open. It is a topological space. There is no closure or limit on citizenship according to genetic, geographic or property-based criteria. All citizens (and a fortiori non-citizens) of existing RPEs qualify for citizenship. The distinguishing feature of N-citizenship as compared with typical RPE-citizenship is homologous with the difference between N- space and the metric space of RPEs. For the latter, citizenship is defined notionally by a boundary consisting of a set of digital, graphic, photographic and other paper, plastic or other IT-based indices and encryptions. It may be noted that this qualification is largely independent of territorial or other locational criteria (where a citizen is located), and that issues of repatriation and other types of physical constraint arise only in cases of system dysfunction. It is also noted that the liberal implications of this understanding of citizenship, whereby there is presumed to be (as real space is presumed to exist within encrypted boundaries in the geospatial instance) organic matter and a lived life which are not RPE business so long as boundary criteria have been validated, are in the last instance notional rather than ontological. Proofs or tokens of the existence of the said lived (or everyday) life which makes up the real citizen are actually the graphisms of roles more or less adequately run off from stereotypes ("printing plates cast from moulds of composed type") supplied by RPEs and auxiliary agencies (media icons, good food guides etc). The existence of a citizen for instance might be as it were forensically inferred from a convincing sequence of performances, for example lover, driver, colleague, superior, subordinate, friend, seducer, viewer, eater, sleeper etc [41]. The implication for N-citizenship is precisely not that roles are spurious and to be rejected, but that they are alienable (failed performances show this to be always possible), and that what is more interesting than the metric spaces in which they are produced and are played out(both in a quasi-theatrical sense) is the access to topological spaces offered by the moment of the pleasure of donning the mask [42] and entering the game, a pleasure coopted generally by RPE procedures. N-space does not require an ontology of habitation, location or experience; it needs the will to explore the topologies of play [43] and literally the lightness of movement it offers.

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Afterword. As the person responsible for the drawing up of this protocol, I am painfully aware of its inadequacies. I recognize full well its contradictions and obscurities, and hope the reader will be indulgent enough to see these shortcomings as inevitable given the novelty of the task. But I am sure that improvements can and will be made by people other than myself, provided only that the report is clear enough to allow the needs, purposes and aspirations embodied in the Nanostate to be discerned. I hope also that allowance is made for its overly schematic and pedantic tone. This is mainly due to overconscientiousness, but also I hasten to plead that vividness of description would not be required of a map-maker, nor would its reader wish the map to inform her or him of the seasonal or meteorological particularities of the instant of its drawing, if such an instant there can ever be. A text can never do all things, and recreated moments of the lived experience of the Nanostate should be left to the audacities of other of its citizens. If on the other hand this report simply informs that a space is instituted from which the most varied representations can be made to authorities as elevated as the nation-state from a position of equality, then it will have achieved its task.

It goes without saying that new kinds of political and social organization conjured forth by time do not occur uniquely but in clusters. So it is with the Nanostate, which has its predecessors and contemporaries. I confine myself to mentioning one instance, since its view of time has similarities with that of the Nanostate. In 1916, a Council of Presidents of the Earthly Sphere was created. Its founding member produced a treatise entitled "The Planks of Fate" which even now is very little known. This situated the new political entity headed by the Council within a general movement of the rise and fall of historical states, hordes and empires. This contained a study of time intervals and dates, arranged in mathematical power series, and the most comprehensive and detailed time-map to date based on the calculations. I will content myself here with quoting only the introduction or prospectus of this treatise, which has migrated into the field of literature and is even today erroneously understood as a poem, probably because, unlike the present report, it uses a highly metaphorical language:

If I turn humankind into a clock
And show how the finger of the century moves,
Then surely from the time zone in which we're locked
War will fly off like a letter that's no longer used?
In the place where mankind has lounged, haemorrhoidal,
Sitting through millennia in the armchairs of springloaded war,
I will relate to you something of the future that I feel,
of my transhuman dreams of afar.
I know that you are god-fearing wolves.
My aim will be as excellently targeted as yours,
But do you really not hear the clicking of fate's needles,
in the hands of the seamstress of miracles.
I will flood with my power as a deluge of thought,
The structures of existing states,
I will reveal to the slaves of venerable idiocy
The fabled rising of Kitezh;
And when the gang of the Presidents of the Earthly Sphere
will be flung to horrid famine like a fresh-baked crust,
The rusted nut of each existing state,
will be obedient to our wrench's twist.
And when the young, bearded girl
Hurls the promised stone,
Say (aye, that you will),
"This is what we awaited through ages gone".
The clock of man is ticking!
With the finger of my thought, start its movement!
Lend it momentum with this book and the suicide of governments.
The earth will be unordergreat,
Presearthspheregreat!
Let the song to her be as great.
And I will relate, that the universe will be a blackened match
on the face of the time count.
And my thought is a skeleton key to a door, behind it someone's shot himself....

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Notes

1. A consequence flowing from the situation of N in the domain of the real is that all its points are in no sense transforms resulting from any conceivable mapping procedures; they are logically and ontologically the antecedents of such procedures. In other words they are not representations resulting from the application of any possible signifying system, whether of a traditional mappa mundi kind or more recent operational mappings such as the cyberspatial geostrategic projections used by the US Pentagon, requiring the geosphere be turned inside out like a glove (The terms of this transformation situate "the global" as the interior of a finite world domain with "the local" as its exterior periphery.) Critically, N-domains exist independently of the material techno-infrastructure on which the "reality effect" of these mappings unconditionally depends. Back

2. Not the only one. Historical epochs are characterized by various dominant types of RPE: city state, empire, fiefdom; also subordinate forms such as colony, autonomous region, principality. Historic RPE forms can be resurgent; examples are the city state (recast as "global city") and empire ("free trade area"). Presumptions regarding the demise of the nation-state seem premature. Traditional policing, and administrative functions of nation states are undergoing accelerating development through telesurveillance and other technology, and are acquiring critical social importance in securing the home base for global projects of New World Order type. These functions are absent from N, since N-space makes their concept unavailable (see especially Article 9). Back

3. NIKE and McDONALDS are instances of non-RPEs, since there is no single set of citizen-objects to which any conceivably unified set of rights uniformly applies: rights possessed by the set of "owners" are irreducible to the rights possessed by "employees" etc; their interior points are also always within RPE domains. Generally transnational corporations (TNCs) are not RPEs. Back

4. Thus in February 1852 a minority of English towns still kept local time, one of which for example was Wolverhampton. Wolverhampton was then located in N when real time "here" is in advance of the clock Omega by an amount of approximately 8' 40" (This was not then the full extent of the Nanostate: the zone-time system requiring ships to change clocks in one-hour steps was formally instituted only in 1917. Back

5. For N's typicality as an RPE with respect to time, see Article 4. Back

6. In anticipation of consideration of the motive force driving this movement indicated in Articles 6 and 7, the general point is made that these movements are determined by the push/pull of inside outwards and vice versa political forces rather than by a formal geometry. The formation of "holes" has been termed "porosity" by a spokesman of the Mexican EZLN (the Zapatist Army of National Liberation). He sees this phenomenon as a product of the "development of telecommunications in appropriating every aspect of the spectrum of social and cultural activity" and the attenuation of territorial jurisdiction of nation states by international economic agencies. The N- Council sees this analysis as one-sided and only partially valid. As regards the consequences of this debate for N, see Articles 6 and 12. Back

7. On the uses of writing, codifications and other matter- and power-based encryption by N as compared with RPEs generally see Articles 14 and 15. Back

8. Notwithstanding attempted restorations by military, legislative, cultural, fashion and other kinds of retroactivity; "putting the clock back" has never been a fruitful project. Back

9. The moment of emergence or origin from which duration is measured has historically general been characterized as catastrophic; typical phrases are "descent into anarchy", "collapse of the rule of law" etc. There are fewer, but significant cases in which emergence is welcomed; usually characterized by metaphors of the regeneration of nature: "birth", "fledgling", "dawn"; in this latter instance, the births are usually assisted. Back

10. Here an essential caveat is required: emergence from within or "UDI" is never a non-contradictory or unitary act. There are two essentially distinct instances of emergence: 1) that in which the energies producing it are internally generated; they encounter internal resistance receiving external support; 2) the main source of these energies is external; they encounter internal resistance but receive internal support. Typologically N belongs the the former, historically major category; but it is considered that the form of the N-chronotope and the topology-based criteria determining N-citizenship require a qualitatively different formulation of this force field. Back

11. Writing from a EZLN base in the Lacandona forest in South East Mexico, deputy- commander Marcos develops a perspective from which he sees the 4th World War as already engaged, in which weapons with similar characteristics to the neutron bomb of the "Cold War' but of far greater destructiveness are deployed. While the neutron bomb destroyed people and left real estate intact, the new weapon "not only destroys the polis or nation, and imposes death, terror, and misery on its inhabitants, but transforms its target into a mere piece of the jigsaw puzzle of economic globalization"; it is used to attack territories by destroying the material basis of their sovereignty, producing a qualitative depopulation and the exclusion of all those without the skills required by the new economy, for example indigenous people". He sees current RPE movement as a paradox: "While designed to eliminate frontiers and unite nations, [the 4th World War] precipitates the multiplication of frontiers and the pulverization of nations" These views are taken issue with in Article 9, regarding N-space. Back

12. This has various desirable and interesting consequences. A UN report "The Globalization of Crime" of 1995 notes that "the development of crime syndicates has been facilitated by programmes of structural adjustment...funded by the IMF", graphically illustrated by the way in which IMF funds to Zaire sourced corruption and the building of deposed President Mobutu's £3billion fortune. The linkage between organized crime and economic restructuring in N is conceptually nul. See below, articles regarding non-accumulation and dematerialization see below, in particular Articles 8, 11, 12. Back

13. This is preferred to an obverse formulation by Pascal: "le centre est partout, la circonférence nulle part", which interestingly uncovers a theological dimension to the Pentagon's strategic thinking as indicated in note 1. Back

14. Terms such as citoyen, tovarishch, brother and sister do not straightforwardly transpose into an N-equivalent. Use of the term "citizen" in these Articles should be read as a token marking an as yet not fully defined space. Indications towards an understanding of citzenship in N (N-citizenship) are given in Article 16; there the non-coincidence of any given "individual", as defined by usual RPE indices, with any one N-citizen is elaborated on. It is probable that the redefinition of the citizen and citizenship adumbrated in Article 16 will enhance the "universalizing aspirations" of the new state and its citizens. Back

15. The spaces claimed at the point(s) of emergence are/will be conceptually stressed, as indicated in Articles 9, 10 (the "Space Chapter"); the various uses a given space is simultaneously put to in a children's playground is a good example of the conceptual stressing of that space. The primary revolutionary impulse is the will to convert space into time; the first post-revolutionary act seen by some as the first act of capitulation or at the very least incorporation, is the defence of territory, insofar as such a defence can imply acceptance of non-N concepts of territory. Insofar as the concept of defence has applicability to a non-metric "territory", N-space greatly facilitates it (c.f An Hai's formulation in the preceding Article.) See also note 29. Back

16. "Global" here of course carries no hegemonic connotations. "Hegemony" is here taken to mean a system of authority/leadership secured in the last instance by a monopoly of violent force. It is not only exercised over territory but has economic and ideological dimensions. Back

17. A graphic illustration of this contrast is the high visibility and attractiveness of interior spaces of RPEs such as out-of-town shopping centres and the general inaccessibility of production areas, signalled by prominently displayed formulae: "no admittance except on business" (similar to isolating boundaries of other types of production area such as schools). These centre/periphery situating strategies ultimately relate to various phases in the conceptualization of objects. See Articles 11, 12, 13 (the "Economic Chapter"). Back

18. An RPE's aspiration towards dematerialization is sometimes expressed by a proposed association with a Grand External (non-material ) Object such as God, as in "God and Country" etc. Back

19. This definition, effectively the construction, of citizens is seen by some as currently the principal raison d'être of the nation-state, and the reason for its continuing vigour and durability, despite the processes defined by Deputy- Commander Marcos, cited in note 11. Back

20. Adherents of theses associated with Daniel Bell ( "The Coming of Post-Industrial Society") and Alvin Toffler ("The Third Wave") will see the underpinning of the apparent weightlessness of global information flows by historically large masses of heavy equipment as a paradox. See Articles 8, 12. Back

21. The facilitation of imperial expansion using steamships and railways is an interesting but historically circumscribed counter-example. This heavy equipment directly facilitated an increase in RPE velocity. Back

22. War will remain important as a political determinant in inter-state relations; its importance has in fact increased since the instituting of the New World Order in 1991. Since then it has rapidly been evolving new forms, some as yet unacknowledged. The emergence of N will require its further and radical rethinking. In "The Art of War", Sun Tse says: War is a matter of vital importance for a state; it is the province of life and death, the road which leads to survival or annihilation. It is indispensable to study its fundamentals." Back

23. See note 6. In some special and important cases, the economic activity of TNCs reinforce rather than destabilize RPEs. Mr Daniel F Burton notes in "Foreign Policy" no 106, Spring 1997 that "we are moving towards a world of commercial and cultural communications channels, a world which paradoxically will reinforce the position of the United States as a nation among nations, at the very moment when the system of nation states is being disaggregated". The United States is supporting this process by large indirect subsidies to communications industries. "$1,000 billion of state funding since 1945 have assisted the development of computers and information and artificial intelligence sectors. These industries and the research areas connected with them have been a major contribution to American superiority in information technologies, information channels , creation of databases, special effects industries and systems of international surveillance." (Le Monde Diplomatique, August 1997 p 20) Back

24. N-space is philosophically speaking the antithesis of this absence (and the synthesis with its other, since N-space is non-symmetric; for non-symmetry see Article 10). Back

25. In fact the notion of closure intrinsic to existing RPEs, embodied in bounding lines, graphisms and writings etc, is not intrinsic to N (but see Article 10). Back

26. See map displayed on N-Embassy exterior. [This refers to the Mobile Embassy of the Nanostate, 'Bolzem' with James Hutchinson and Helena Swatton 1997] Back

27. See note 15. A Russian proverb glosses: "If you live with wolves, you must howl like a wolf." Lenin's attachment to it as leader of an initially revolutionary RPE is instructive as a cautionary tale. Back

28. At the onset of the Russian revolution, the troops deserted the front line trenches(of the First World War) en masse; for them (but not for either the Entente or the Central Powers), the frontier ceased to have significance, space had become topological. Back

29. They may be pragmatically useful from N's perspective: as an example, N may wish to use territoriality as grounds for representations to Malaysia, Vietnam or the CPR regarding disputed territorial claims to areas of the South China Sea; Exxon, Mobil and other TNCs' access to natural reserves of oil and gas there is dependent on territorial jurisdiction, and which RPE is in a position to allow access. The spatial structure of N would thus avoid the problems faced by the USA vis à vis other RPEs in implementing the Helms-Burton anti-Cuba Law. This authorizes private actions in US courts against foreign companies "trafficking" in Cuban assets expropriated by Castro's regime. This is an instance of the stressing of Cuba's spaces. It uncovers the temporal dimension of the apparently relatively time-invariant de facto principle that all states may exercise "eminent domain" on foreign-owned property up to a point. (see "anti-Systemic Movements" 1982 p57) Back

30. Although "every metric space is also a topological space" (A N Kolmogorov, "Introductory Real Analysis" p 79), the topology of N-space is not sufficiently defined for useful statements regarding the relationship between the metric space of the inter-RPE system and N-topology to be made. Back

31. This point is of completely general application. Objects may be seen as stressed analogously to the way in which space is stressed: either in the direction of metricization, quantification and embodiment of value, or in the direction of subsumption within use-based processes (the term for this process in typical RPE useage, consumption, has been overlaid with connotations of excess, and its agent, the "consumer", transmogrified into an abstractly specialized, unreal schemata.) N may prefer the term "use" which compactly encodes a union at the heart of the N-project: "production is also immediately consumption, consumption is also immediately production - each is immediately its opposite" (unknown source). Back

32. A rough indication of the accelerating accumulation of matter is the increase in amounts of particular materials produced: 450 billion metric tons of crude steel were produced in 1965; in 1990, 800 billion metric tons. From 1950 to 1990, the quantity of paper produced increased from less than 50 million metric tons to 250 million metric tons. Futures and other so-called virtual values actually underwrite future material accumulations (and of course their appropriation), creating problems for post-industrial dematerialization theses. Back

33. This could be more strongly stated by stressing that while the production process as a whole, taken to embrace every aspect of it from inception to the final realization of its purpose is necessarily creative, its subdivisions taken separately are very likely such that they are stripped of their creative component (see note 34). Archival work which N as a globally situated RPE would wish to undertake would be for example contributions to a non-command access oriented database of essentially topological projects already in train in vast numbers, be it said, aimed at reclaiming the concept of purpose; in very various ways: the productive cooperation of Sainte-Elizabeth in Quebec with the village of Sanankoroba in Mali, the burning of Kentucky Fried Chicken outlets in India, communes built around civil disobedience in various places, are single instances of metric spaces being "topologized". From an N-perspective these are important in reclaiming the concept of purpose, and therefore of creativity. If as seems very likely these are quasi-N enclaves, N as an exceptional RPE, but nonetheless an RPE, in its dealings with other RPEs would wish to emphasize and make utterance of the common ground shared by such enclaves and to generalize their purpose; celebration of their diversity and difference from each other is already adequately and profusely undertaken by non-N agencies, almost always at various RPEs' behest. Back

34. This separation process presently extends very far and has elaborate ramifications, paradoxically reaching its furthest extent in natural production. Thus the agro-inputs industry inputs modified potato seed into the agricultural labour process which produces engineered potatoes. These in turn are food industry inputs into the production of potato starch feedstock for single cell protein culture inputted into the industrial labour process to finally yield synthetic meat products. (S. Whatmore, "Holding down the Global", 1994, p70). Back

35. Account taken of the non-linear time structure of the N-chronotope. "In some respects" refers to the fact that N has precedents and contemporaries; it does not claim categorial uniqueness. Back

36. See note 27. Back

37. Drawn by the possibility of recreating the "rare moment when I act for myself" while I "afford no handhold for external manipulation", an artist maybe sails between the Scilla of "relinquishing the lived intensity of the creative moment in exchange or the durability of what s/he creates" and the Charybdis of "denying the fact of separation and plunging into mysticism and solipsism". Successful navigation depends on sober recognition that "I am in enemy territory and the enemy is within me." (Vaneigem 1982). Back

38. Malcolm X's insistence that brothers need WASP-based language techniques in addition to in-N jive recognizes this vectoring. It may be the model of a possible for-N pedagogy of language. Back

39. "the bookish petrifaction of language" - Velimir Khlebnikov, 1919. Back

40. This Article is not to be understood as recommending linguistic primitivism. An effect it will clearly have, especially as regards inside outwards communications, is an increased awareness of the way the graphisms of RPE languages function as boundaries and circumscriptions. Additionally The playful subversions inherent in language, existing independently of a speaker's intention, which mock the holy grail of clear unambiguous meaning, will be allowed recognition and a fuller scope along both vectors. An N-utterance will probably enjoy the fact that "grave" always imports shades of "rave" with it, however seriously minded its speaker, or that "mound" is never absolutely not the past tense of "mind" (since "grind" and "ground" are a couple embedded in (English) language.) Back

41. The aggregation of roles which make up lived experience has been likened to gigantic version of "Szondi's test", in which the patient chooses images s/he finds sympathetic or averse from photographs of people in various types of paroxystic crisis. Back

42. The key emphasis is on the moment of donning, not the mask itself. These shifts which are the absent unvaluable part of "lived life" are very general, widespread and disparate; they can be spatial as well as temporal; they occupy no time at all and are unmetric, similar to the film cut which is never and nowhere but constitutive of meaning. It is these "moments" which are utterly unlocatable psychologically or geographically which are the "material" of N-citizenship. Back

43. Not to be understood as an unconditional endorsement of "play" as such, but play insofar as its rules have not been encrypted and metric voids or "pitches" created. Back

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