[travisb]

Might makes right is how all land is owned. Always has been, always will be.

We've stacked lots of layers of paper and convention on top of that fact to reduce the amount of war we make, but people ignore this basic fact of the world at their peril.

[defrost]

> Always has been, always will be.

Not always, eg: in Austraia the British declared Terra Nullus across the continent ( 'land belonging to nobody' ) and were later forced by their own legal system to return ownership to places still occupied.

[travisb]

"by their own legal system". The Australian government can come to whatever conclusion it wants about how it deals with its land.

That is, it was the Australian legal system which made that decision and further that decision was not countermanded by the Government of Australia. It wasn't the legal system of, say, Jamaica forcing the Australian Government to do that. Or even the legal system of the peoples who were occupying the territory when the British arrived.