Reminding us that states are merely marauding bands, violently appropriating land (and other) resources that they have no labor title to, long-held antagonisms between the Chinese and Japanese reignited this week. Sure enough, the land question remains, its importance brought to the forefront whenever we’re shown the utter chaos that the “order” of the state actually produces. It’s a matter of course that the dueling, turf-warring gangs holding us captive should demand our loyalty, and no less surprising that most have come to genuinely identify with their respective captors. Nationalism, as a central piece of the liturgical framework of statism, operates to shift attention away from the flaws underlying each and every instance of political rulership in favor of more immediate and concrete enemies. The islands that China and Japan both claim dominion over are but a small instance of a historical pattern of political titles placed in opposition to those that would be created and/or recognized by libertarian principles. If the Chinese are sore about these islands (Senkaku to the Japanese, Diaoyu to the Chinese), how sore indeed should all of us be at the history of political conquest that gave us the distribution of land (and other resources) we have today?