What is it Exactly About the World’s Disputed Islands?

In my journey tracking planetary gridlines around the world, I keep coming across obscure, seemingly insignificant islands and island groups that are the subjects of territorial disputes between countries, many of which are still on-going in the present day.

Along these lines, I found the Spratley Islands in the South China Sea when I was following one of the planetary alignments that emanate off of the North American Star Tetrahedron at Merida, Mexico.

They consist of 14 islands or islets; 6 banks; 113 submerged reefs; 35 underwater banks; and 21 underwater shoals.

The northeast part of the Spratlys known as dangerous ground due to low islands; sunken reefs; and degraded sunken atolls.

They are located on the alignment just northwest of Palawan Island…

…and Palawan, in the Phillipines, is considered by many to be the most beautiful island in the world.

There is a star fort located in Taytay on the island of Palawan called the Fuerza de Santa Isabel.

From my extensive research on the physical lay-out of planetary alignments, and the frequent occurrence of star forts situated along the planetary grid system worldwide, I believe that star forts functioned as electrical circuitry and/or batteries on the planetary grid, and not were military in nature as we have been led to believe by deliberate misinformation.

There is detailed information about why I believe this in my post “The Consistent Finding of Star Forts on Planetary Alignments.”

Back to the Spratley Islands.

The Spratly Islands dispute is an on-going territorial dispute between China, Taiwan, Malaysia, the Phillippines, Brunei and Viet Nam concerning “ownership” of the Spratly Islands.

What is it about these islands?

Well, we are told they are of economic and strategic importance; hold reserves of natural gas and oil; productive fisheries; and is a busy area for commercial shipping traffic.

I believe that there is a powerful energy component–whether placement, production, or something else–related to these planetary grid lines, and that since the South China Sea falls directly on a major planetary alignment, it falls into this category.

So, for another example of this in the South China Sea, just northwest of the Spratly Islands on this planetary alignment’s way through Hainan in China, the Paracel Islands are a similar group of islands, reefs, and banks that are strategically located; productive fishing grounds; and which also hold reserves of natural gas and oil.

While they are controlled and operated by China, they are also claimed by Taiwan and Viet Nam.

The archipelago consists of 130 small coral islands and reefs, most grouped into the northeast Amphitrite Group or the western Crescent Group.

In ancient Greek mythology, Amphitrite was a sea goddess; the wife of Poseidon; and the Queen of the Sea.

The Paracel Islands are also the location of the Dragon Hole, or Sasha Yongle Blue Hole, the world’s deepest known blue hole at 987-feet, or 301-meters, deep.

Dragon Hole is called the “Eye of the South China Sea,” and is where the Monkey King found his golden cudgel in the 16th-century Chinese classic of Literature “Journey to the West,” with authorship attibuted to Wu Cheng’en.

The Battle of the Paracel Islands was a military engagement between the naval forces of South Vietnam and China in 1974, and was an attempt by the South Vietnamese navy to expel the Chinese navy from the vicinity.

As a result of the battle, China established de facto control over the Paracel Islands.

This seems like a good place to bring in the Falkland Islands, an archipelago in the South Atlantic Ocean on the Patagonian Shelf.

They are 300-miles, or 483-kilometers, east of South America’s southern Patagonian coast, and 752-miles, or 1,210-kilometers, from the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, at a latitude of 52-degrees south.

It is a British overseas territory, and consists of two large islands – East Falkland and West Falkland – and 776 smaller islands.

The population of less than 4,000 people are British citizens.

Britain reasserted its rule over the Falklands in 1833, with a colonial presence also including French, Spanish, and Argentine settlements.

Argentina maintains its claim to the islands.

On April 2nd, 1982, Argentine forces occupied the Falkland islands.

On April 3rd, 1982, Argentine forces seized control of the east coast of South Georgia Island in the Battle of Grytviken, part of the South Sandwich Islands, and another British Overseas Territory near the Falkland Islands that is claimed by Argentina.

On April 5th, 1982, the Falklands War between Argentina and Great Britain started. While not officially declared a war, it was declared a war-zone.

The conflict lasted 74-days, and ended with Argentina’s surrender on June 14th, 1982, returning the islands to British control.

The South Shetland Islands shown here in this map are in the neighborhood of all these island groups, and are a group of Antarctic islands with a total area of 1,424 square-miles, or 3,687 square-kilometers.

By the Antarctic Treaty of December 1st, 1959, the islands sovereignty is neither recognized nor disputed by the treaty’s 12 signatories – Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Chile, France, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, South Africa, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States – and they are free for use by any signatory for non-military purposes.

However, the islands have been claimed by Great Britain since 1908, and as part of the British Antarctic Territory since 1962. They are also claimed by Chile and Argentina since the 1940s.

The Chileans have the largest number of research stations on the islands, as well have having the Eduardo Frei airbase on King George Island, where the largest number of international research stations are located.

Moving to North America in the northern hemisphere, I found out that North Rock…

…and Machias Seal Island are part of an on-going territorial boundary dispute, as they are located on the border of the Gulf of Maine in the United States, and the Bay of Fundy in Canada.

Other boundary disputes, not limited to islands, between the United States and Canada include:

A fishing zone dispute at the mouth of the Juan de Fuca Strait between Washington State and British Columbia, and within which the International boundary between the two countries lies in the middle of the strait.

Here are photographs of what Cape Flattery looks like at the mouth of the Juan de Fuca Strait on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula.

Another area of dispute between the two countries is the Northwest Passage, which Canada claims as part of its internal waters, and the United States regards as an international straits, open to international traffic.

The Dixon Entrance, a strait about 50-miles, or 80-kilometers, long, between Alaska in the United States and British Columbia in Canada is also mutually claimed by both countries. It is part of the Inside Passage shipping route.

It lies between the Clarence Strait in the Alexander Archipelago, a 300-mile, or 480-kilometer, long group of islands in Alaska to the North…

…and the Hecate Strait and the islands known as the Haida Gwaii (or Queen Charlotte Islands) in British Columbia to the South.

Members of the Haida Nation maintain free access across the strait, in the Haida Gwaii and islands in the Alaskan panhandle where they have said to have lived for 14,000 years.

The Kuril Islands dispute is a disagreement between Japan and Russia over the sovereignty of the four southernmost Kuril Islands.

They are a chain of islands stretching between the Japanese Island of Hokkaido at the southern end, and the Kamchatka Peninsula at the northern end.

While the San Francisco Peace Treaty of 1951, signed between the Allies and Japan in 1951, stated that it must give up all right, title and claim to the Kuril Islands, Japan does not recognize Russia’s sovereignty over them, and this territorial dispute has not been resolved.

The original inhabitants of the Kuril Islands, and northern Japan for that matter, are the Ainu, as seen here in 1904…

…and today.

Other disputed islands around the world include:

Navassa Island, an uninhabited island in the Caribbean Sea.

This small island is subject to an on-going territorial dispute between the United States and Haiti.

The United State claimed the island since 1857, based on the Guano Islands Act of 1856.

The legislation essentially said that an American could claim an uninhabited, unclaimed island, it it contained guano, or bird droppings, which was an effective early fertilizer.

Haiti’s claims over Navassa go back to the Treaty of Ryswick in 1697, which established French possessions in mainland Hispaniola that were transferred from Spain by the treaty.

This is the deactivated lighthouse on Navassa. This is the only building left of what was previously on Navassa Island…

…possibly including this star fort identified as being in Lulu Town on Navassa, but I can’t confirm this finding because whatever was there isn’t there any more.

Lulu Town was previously situated around Lulu Bay on Navassa Island.

Abu Musa is a 5-square-mile, or 13-square-kilometer, island in the eastern Persian Gulf near the entrance to the Strait of Hormuz.

Abu Musa is administered by Iran as a part of its Hormozgan Province, but it is also claimed by the United Arab Emirates as a territory of the Emirate of Sharjah. I found the island of Abu Musa, one of the islands of the Strait of Hormuz, when I was tracking the Amsterdam Island Circle Alignment.

I want to demonstrate to you that beaches with a symmetric curvature, and rocky features right next to the shore, as seen in this photo of Abu Musa, are common features in diverse places.  

Compare it with these similar-looking shorelines:

Halawa Bay on the Hawaiian Island of Molokai…

…the Black Sea in Bulgaria…

…Lake Baikal in Siberia…

…and Shemya in the Near Island group of the Aleutian Island chain.

On to Cyprus, an island country in the eastern Mediterranean, located south of Turkey, and west of Syria and Lebanon, northwest of Israel and Palestine, north of Egypt, and southeast of Greece.

Its earliest known human activity is said to date back to 10,000 BC. Archeological remains from this period include the village of Khirokitia…

…and is home to some of the oldest water wells in the world, like this one at the ancient Kition site at Larnaca, Cyprus.

Based on the Cyprus Convention in 1878, Cyprus was placed under the United Kingdom’s administration, and formally annexed by the United Kingdom in 1914 (which would have been around the time of the start of World War 1).

While Turkish Cypriots made up 18% of the population, the partition of Cyprus and creation of a Turkish state in the north became a policy of Turkish Cypriot leaders and Turkey in the 1950s. Turkish leaders for a period advocated the annexation of Cyprus to Turkey as Cyprus was considered an “extension of Anatolia” by them; while, since the 19th century, the majority population of Greeks on Cyprus and its Orthodox Church had been pursuing union with Greece, which became a Greek national policy in the 1950s.

After nationalist violence in the 1950s, Cyprus was granted independence in 1960 via the London and Zurich Agreements of 1959.

At any rate, conflict in one form or another between Greeks and Turks has existed on the island for awhile, with the island partitioned between the two.

Regardless, Cyprus is a major tourist destination in the Mediterranean today.

Tromelin Island is a low, flat island in the Indian Ocean.

It is located 310-miles north, or 500-kilometers, north of Reunion Island, and 280-miles, or 450-kilometers, east of Madagascar.

It is administered as part of the French Southern and Antarctic Lands as a French overseas territory…

… however, the island nation of Mauritius claims sovereignty over the island.

I found both Mauritius and Tromelin Island on planetary alignments.

I will end this post with Clipperton Island, an uninhabitated 2-square-mile, or 6 kilometer-squared island, in the eastern Pacific Ocean off the coast of Central America.

It is an overseas minor territory of France, and administered under the direct authority of the Minister of Overseas France. It has not been inhabited since 1945, though it is occasionally visited by fisherman, French Navy patrols, scientific researchers, films crews, and ham radio operators.

It is low-lying, and largely barren. The surrounding reef is exposed at low tide. This shows that Clipperton Island is technically an aligned with a barrier reef, and not an atoll.

While it is not disputed now, it has been in the past.

Two Frenchmen first claimed the island for France in 1711, and named it “Ile de la Passion.”

In 1858, during France’s Second Empire, Emperor Napoleon III annexed Clipperton island as part of the French colony of Tahiti, even though it is the considerable distance of 3,400 miles, or 5,400 kilometers, from Tahiti.

It was named Clipperton for English pirate and privateer John Clipperton who fought for the Spanish in the early 18th-century who may have used it as a base for his raids on shipping.

Other claimants included the United States, whose American Guano Company claimed it under the Guano Islands Act of 1856…

…and Mexico due to its activities there as early as 1848 and 1849.

In 1909, France and Mexico agreed to submit the dispute over sovereignty to binding international arbitration, and 22-years later, in 1931, the King of Italy, Victor Emmanuel III, issued the final decision, declaring Clipperton Island to be a French possession.

However, after all of this territorial interest, Clipperton Island has been more or less abandoned since the end of World War II.

So, as expressed in the title of this post, what is it exactly about the world’s disputed islands?

For one, they figure prominently on the earth’s planetary gridlines, and I think the placement of the islands within the energy system of the planetary grid is important.

Another is that they are highly prized for their resources.

And are the resources, like oil and gas reserves, actually derived from the high technology of the advanced Ancient Civilization, and not the result of the continuous break-down of fossils over millions of years as we are taught to believe?

Also, I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that guano – which has a high content of nitrogen, phosphate, and potassium – is the result of much more than bird droppings. It would take a whole lot of birds a very long time to create a valuable commodity used as a pretext for claiming an island for a country.

This is an 1860 photo of a guano mine on Peru’s Chincha Islands.

For reasons like these, and others I am sure, all of these islands are viewed as highly-coveted prizes, and critical part to nation-building plans.

In my next post, I am going to be looking at the significance of inner city neighborhoods and historic city centers.