Google Maps Error Causes Nicaraguan Invasion

[Judi Lynn]

Google Maps Error Causes Nicaraguan Invasion
Posted by AmandaPelliciari on November 5, 2010

Good job Google. Even better job Nicaraguan military commander Eden Pastora. Via Time’s News Feed:

A border between Nicaragua and Costa Rica was off by 3,000 meters on Google Maps. This sparked Nicaraguan military commander Eden Pastora to invade Costa Rica and order troops to take down Costa Rican flags in a disputed territory.

A Google spokesperson said the source of the error was unknown, but two entire countries have felt its effects.

We can’t really blame Google for this snafu; we can only blame Pastora for using Google Maps for military business. Official maps for both countries say the land in question belongs to Costa Rica. And, Fast Company reports, Bing had the border correct. Score one for Microsoft, the true victors in this battle.

http://www.disinfo.com/2010/11/google-maps-error-causes-nicaraguan-invasion/

[roody]

1. I thought this was going to be from the Onion.

[social_critic]

2. it is from the Onion

The border spat has to do with dredging of a river which marks the boundary between the two countries.

"The San Juan River runs much of its 120 miles along a natural border with Costa Rica. For more than a century, the two neighbors had sparred over navigation and fishing rights. Their disputes were mostly settled in a July 2009 case in the International Court of Justice."

http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90777/90852/7188777.html

[struggle4progress]

3. ... the dispute goes back to at least the mid-19th century and was recently reignited by Nicaragua's

the dispute goes back to at least the mid-19th century and was recently reignited by Nicaragua's dredging of the river. The Nicaraguan government alleges the original version of the map is correct and has officially asked Google not to change it, Agence-France Press reported Sunday ...
Google map part of Central America dispute
Monday, November 8, 2010 | 11:15 AM ET
CBC News
http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2010/11/08/google-map-costa-rica-nicaragua.html#ixzz14i3MfurK

... It started with a complaint by Costa Rica that the Nicaraguans were dredging what legally is their river and depositing sediment on to Costa Rican territory. I suppose it is their river and dredging itself is not an issue. The only issue can be dumping sediment on our shores. Then the story escalated into a classic farce of misunderstandings and miscalculations. The indefinable revolutionary hero of the 1978-1979 Nicaraguan revolution, Eden Pastora, who appears now a few French fries short of a McDonalds “Happy Meal”, convinced Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, himself not a shinny penny, that the Island Calero really is in Nicaraguan territory because that is what Google Maps show. However, all, I mean 100% of the registered global legal boundary line maps clearly say the island belongs to Costa Rica and Google, the unintentional neo-war monger said, “Yes”, our map is in error and we need to fix it.
To make things more absurd, the foreign minister of Nicaragua immediately wrote to Google asking that the company not correct their mistake ...
Monday 08 November 2010
Costa Rica, a Country in Crisis!
By John Holtz
http://www.insidecostarica.com/dailynews/2010/november/08/costarica10110801.htm

Eden Pastora has long been a few French fries short of a Happy Meal:

[struggle4progress]

4. ... The nearly 200-year-old border dispute reignited in mid-October after Nicaragua started dredging

the San Juan to restore its route to what it was a century and a half ago, according to news reports. Pastora claimed the territory in question is a frontier because the river has changed its course since the borders were first drawn up ...
COSTA RICA NEWS
Monday 08 November 2010
Google Corrects 'Maps' Mistake
http://www.insidecostarica.com/dailynews/2010/november/08/costarica10110803.htm

This article curiously refers to "former Sandinista commander Eden Pastora" -- which is, I suppose, accurate as far as it goes, except that Pastora spent most of the 80s serving the Reaganites as an anti-Sandinista contra poster boy. He's been a loose cannon for years, rolling randomly around depending on which way the ship tilots

[CJvR]

5. Don't he know...

...you can't trust everything you read on the web?

Although there is real history behind the dispute that is a patheticly feeble excuse.

Fortunately there wasn't a Costa Rican border patrol with equally low IQ around or this could be a shooting war now rather than a UNSC matter and internet entertainment.