6 useful tips for getting your own state

Some useful ideas for Kurds, Tibetans, Catalonians and others

Seeking independence? Or perhaps a homeland for your people? Ever wondered how to get your own state, while putting in the minimal amount of effort and self-sacrifice? Read on for some useful tips, ideas and strategies…

Tip 1: Reject the offer of a state!

Yes, you read it right! Despite being totally illogical at first glance, one of the best ways to guarantee getting your very own state is to reject the offer of a state.  What’s more, if you commit yourself to repeated rejection of the offer, your chances of getting your own state are far, far greater. Try to keep your rejectionist behavior spread out over a number of decades so that the world turns a blind eye and no-one asks awkward questions as to why you are frequently distancing yourself from that which you apparently seek. If anyone does ask these awkward questions, then respond with an answer that is either vague, illogical or focusing on a totally different issue. If a questioner continues to pursue this line of questioning, then blame it all on the enemy. Works like magic to bring about the end of such a line of inquiry!

If you have the bad fortune of having an enemy who agreed to a decades-old offer of you getting a state that you wholeheartedly rejected, and thereby got their own state, then make sure to call them colonizers or thieves. If you can muster up support from your own brethren, then get them to launch wars, lose them and cry victim. This is a tried and tested practice of emerging the victor in a war that no-one wins.

Tip 2: Don’t make any compromises whatsoever!

It is far better for your people to suffer for decades than make any concessions. Keep them in a state (pun intended!) of poverty, despair and hopelessness. The best of both worlds!

However, beware that you don’t fall into a trap – if you are under the impression that you will achieve your aims without having to ever compromise in any way as long as you are persistent enough, make sure not to underestimate your enemy. (See more on ‘Choose your enemies wisely’)

Tip 3: Spit in the face of those who are trying to help you

Have you got your very own international peace process, supported by multiple bodies and organizations? Well, forget that! Who needs such a headache? Completely ignore the decades of efforts and billions of dollars invested in helping you, and pursue your own course to your goals. The civilized world won’t be bothered by your wasting money – you know full well that their pockets run deep enough to fund you without auditing what you are actually doing with those billions – recession or not. After all, why spend money on food when there are excellent weapons to be bought and there are still empty safety deposit boxes sitting in Switzerland that could be well-stocked with international funds? Don’t you want to ensure that the leaders of your people can live an extravagant lifestyle with homes in their natural habitat such as Paris, while most go a little hungry? (Talking of leaders, when it comes to choosing your leader and the person most identified with your cause, why not select one that wasn’t actually born in the country you desire? Nothing indicates the strength and legitimacy of a people’s claim to a land quite like their symbolic leader being born in a different country a couple of decades before the conflict over the contested land began.)

Also, make sure to take advantage of the lack of success of the above-mentioned peace process you eagerly abandoned (which was made all the more challenging due to a total lack of pressure upon you to do what is necessary to bring peace) by pointing out that it hasn’t borne fruits yet. Did the international community serious expect you to be committed to a peace process from which you would appear to be the largest beneficiary? Of course not!

The international community might even ignore the fact that they themselves were once committed to some sort of peace process and support you in your state-seeking endeavors outside of said process. Worst comes to worst, most of them will not dare speak out against your lack of commitment and will cave at the slightest pressure. It is better for them to go with the flow rather than take a moral stand!

While you’re at it, stick your two fingers up at old peace agreements you previously signed. Just because you signed something it doesn’t mean you actually have to do it!

Make sure to walk away from the bargaining table frequently, and always, but always, set preconditions upon issues that you previously agreed would be subjects of said peace talks. This is a double bonus – you have an excuse for not pursuing peace that can be legitimately explained away and you never have to negotiate the issue at hand.

Tip 4: Do nothing whatsoever to help yourselves

Why spend your money on food or investing in infrastructure etc. when there are expensive weapons out there to be bought? If you feel confident that the international community will sponsor you financially no matter how badly you behave, then go ahead and do your worse – and you will be the better for it. The more poverty you can display, the more the money will pour in! Never be shy about using your children to  promote your cause. From suicide bombs and stone throwing right down to imagery that you distribute to the media worldwide, a child is always a good tool. Classic concepts such as their well-being and education are secondary factors when it comes to looking out for your childrens’ best interests.

However, a warning that should be heeded: Do not expect money from your own brethren. They will support you with lip service, use you for political purposes, and treat you far worse than your perceived enemy ever dreamed of, let alone practiced. But money? Hell, no! Let the western world dig deep into their pockets instead.

Tip 5: Embrace terrorism

Suicide bombs, shootings, stabbings, hostage taking – you name it – the more the merrier! If you are looking for attention, don’t stop at the regular well-known forms of terror that the world sees every day and turns a blind eye to – be creative! Bonus points for driving bulldozers into cars – kill a mother driving with her baby and the world’s stage is all yours! Hack off the head of an infant after killing her parents and siblings, and they will, in their masses, support your right to do this. Who cares that their opinion of you is so low that they expect atrocious behavior from you as the norm?

On the subject of terrorism, don’t forget to get the leader who is widely regarded as the peacemaker of your people to dedicate schools and football teams to these terrorist heroes, praise them on national television, and also in school books to get the future generations fully unprepared for a peaceful co-existence with your neighbors. If you’re really up for the challenge, keep the message you deliver in your own language entirely different to that which you tell the world. Forget about simple tools such as Google translate, and self-described human rights groups – everyone will turn a blind eye when it is convenient for them!

If you have money left over from what the western countries have given you that hasn’t been deposited by your leaders in Swiss bank accounts, make sure to pay a hefty salary to terrorists families and those serving life in enemy prisons. They will need that money in order to conduct more terrorism when they are released from prison in a lopsided exchange that the international community can pat themselves on the back for, for negotiating.

Special bonus tip!! Check to see if the following applies to you, for a special bonus that will prove useful in all forms of Treachery, Terrorism and generally being Terrible!

Do you have the fortune to have your terrorism backed by an entire religion? Even better! You can hide behind a “it’s only a minority of our religion. The majority are peaceful” slogan. If you have the fortune of holding democratic elections, make sure that the majority vote for a terrorist group. The world won’t be willing to face up to this fact and will gloss over it at ease. After all, who said that the global war against terrorism has to include some of the most active terrorists in the world?

If you’re really lucky and the world despises your enemy enough for their own perverse reasons, they might have pity on you and see your terrorism differently to your coreligionists despite all the evidence proving otherwise.

Tip 6: Choose your enemies wisely

We saved the best for last!

Now, this is a tricky one, since not everyone has the luxury of choosing their enemies. Does your enemy fit into the following category? Do they repeatedly agree to you getting your state (albeit on those utterly restrictive conditions such as you being peaceful!)? Do they give you land that you never actually owned without you having to give anything in return? Have they ever made peace agreements with other neighbors who are waning towards reneging on their part of the agreements just a couple of decades later, without any scent of accountability from the brokers of aforementioned peace deals?

Can you manage to portray your enemy as Goliath and yourself as David, despite the obvious flaws in this assessment? Is your enemy backed up by a religion that lacks significant problems getting along with others and is a proven contributor to global progress despite unparalleled challenges, while your religious identity is ‘troubled’, to put it lightly? If so, then fate has dealt you a good hand!

If your enemy is determined to do its utmost in sparing your civilians when defending itself by taking your greatest evildoers out of the equation, then make sure to put the most vulnerable sectors of your society in harm’s way to increase your own casualties and thus global sympathy. It’s a small sacrifice to make, but it pays off nicely!

If your enemies are the Jews, then you are definitely in luck! You can capitalize on anti-Semitic sentiment, anti-Americanism, dictators and oppressors attempting to turn a blind eye on what they are doing by focusing on the Zionists, European efforts to stop their guilt over the Holocaust by trying to point a finger at the Jewish state, and a web of other misguided ideologies. Take advantage of history and pick on the world’s favorite victim. Point out that you are against Zionism and not Jews, and you’ve just earned yourself your very own ‘get out of jail free’ card when it comes to accusations of racism, despite the fact that everyone knows that anti-Zionism is typically a thinly-veiled cover for Antisemitism.

If your enemy falls into this category, then you are in luck! But a word of caution: Don’t underestimate them – there is a limit to how much they will be prepared to take. You’d do well to observe the repetitive nature of virtually all their religious holidays: “They tried to kill us. We won. Let’s eat.” History has proven that they will ultimately prevail (they’d be called the winners if there were any winners in this game). Ignore history at your peril on this one.

On the other hand, if your enemy is well-known for its lack of human rights, but is a massive consumer market and global force that is too challenging to tackle then reconsider the above advice. The world will have sympathy for you and welcome you in their arms, but will let you rot by the roadside before lifting a finger to help you in any way.

And if your enemies are members of the oil rich group of nations, then the recommended advice is to back down for a while. You could unwittingly sacrifice millions of your own people in endeavors to get your own state, but the oil-thirsty world will probably not take much notice. What’s a few thousand lives when it comes to knocking a cent off the price of petrol?

You could hope for some support from non-governmental human rights groups, but be advised; they frequently sacrifice the human rights principles to chase the sponsorship dollar. Or alternatively, they invest great deal of efforts in protecting the worst of the worst of humanity and ignoring the real victims. Sometimes to the extent that they would be better off being called human wrongs activists.

And our very last piece of advice that we want to state: “Don’t get yourself in a state, when seeking your own state. Get yourself in the correct state of mind!”

Have you got any useful tips or advice for getting your own state? Make sure to reply in the comments. And make sure to come back for our next installment in this series: “Moving from ‘How to fool most of the people all the time’ to ‘How to fool all the people all the time.’