From Etherzone comes this report on the first-ever North American Secessionist Convention, which was recently held in Burlington, Vermont.
It may very well be that such dreams of secession for say, Hawaii or Alaska or even the South once again, may very well be just that, just dreams. But as events around the world are showing, there are ways to declare one’s independence on a de facto basis, whether it is secession of the mind or culture, or creating parallel governments to rival the central authority.
In short, the state within a state.
The centralizers better get used to it.
It is the wave of the future.
They mention Hezbollah and Sadr City as prime examples of the state within a state, with other examples including Quebec, Scotland, Wales, and Kurdistan. (Palestine too.) Some want to do the same in the U.S.
Hawaiian Independence Blog says that while the experience of Hawaii is not directly comparable to either U.S. states or Lebanon, this could still be a useful framework.
It provides an interesting perspective that helps put Hawaii’s situation into a more global context that those seeking either “nation-within-a-nation” (federal recognition) or independence will find interesting.
American Secession Project details the various secession movements, with lots of useful links and information too.
P.S. 8% of registered voters in Vermont favor secession.
While the idea of Vermont seceding might indeed seem improbable to some, the state in a state thesis is a riff upon what John Robb discusses about global guerrillas, networked tribes, and 4th generation warfare – that the power of states is currently being eroded and sometimes outmaneuvered by non-state entities.
(As one who has spent considerable time in Vermont, you must understand, this is a highly independent state. Their patron saint is Ethan Allen, “early American revolutionary and guerrilla leader during the era of the Vermont Republic” and Vermont just elected Bernie Sanders to the US Senate, he becomes the first at least nominally socialist member of that body.)