Subject: Re: BoNaZaZi - crumbs only<br/>
Date: Dec 10, 2001 @ 06:19<br/>
Author: acroorca2002 (&quot;acroorca2002&quot; &lt;orc@...&gt;)<br/>
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<div id="ygrps-yiv-966283387">--- In BoundaryPoint@y..., granthutchison@c... wrote:<br/>
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<blockquote><span title="ireply"> &gt; Well, what can I tell you? I was close<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
 </span></blockquote>as excellent a class e visit as has ever been reported for this or any other point imo effendi & i would like to nominate it for bp visit of the year tho i know there are many other extraordinary candidates<br/>
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<br/>
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<blockquote><span title="ireply"> &gt; 1) This is *flat* ground, with braiding clearly seen in the Zambezi a few km <br/>
<br/>
&gt; below the confluence (from a high point in the road that gave me a glimpse <br/>
<br/>
&gt; over the teak trees) and the Chobe a few km above the confluence (from the <br/>
<br/>
&gt; back seat of a lurching Cessna flying upriver). Given that both rivers flood <br/>
<br/>
&gt; seasonally, I&#39;d say that there is very real potential for the thalwegs (and <br/>
<br/>
&gt; therefore their junction) to change over fairly short time scales. This <br/>
<br/>
&gt; brings the point raised by Peter S into sharp relevance - does a border <br/>
<br/>
&gt; defined on the thalweg stay in place if the thalweg slips out from under it <br/>
<br/>
&gt; at a later date? I&#39;d assumed that the purpose of a thalweg border was to <br/>
<br/>
&gt; allow both states equal access to the main channel, and therefore having the <br/>
<br/>
&gt; border move with the thalweg would be reasonable, unless the treaty <br/>
<br/>
&gt; specifically stated &quot;line of the thalweg on such and such a date&quot;. But I <br/>
<br/>
&gt; realise reason and international law may not come into close alignment on <br/>
<br/>
&gt; this. So it might be that the border junction is *in principle* undefined at <br/>
<br/>
&gt; present <br/>
<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
 </span></blockquote>yes & i dont recall brownlie addressing the issue this way in any of his 5 theses of bwnazmzw & yet your zeroing right in on this most critical of all details seems absolutely right to me namely that the thalweg junction most probably wanders about a bit & with it most probably the bwnazm tripoint portion of the hypothetical bwnazmzw quadripoint <br/>
<br/>
& by putting first things first i believe you have enabled us to simplify the search for true bwnazmzw if any & to focus on its only other defining aspect which is the straight line produced & projected by the row of bwzw beacons that come down to the zambezi ferry crossing area along the hunters road according by brownlie & which may be what you call the main drag to francistown below<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
in this light it becomes clear that we bwnazmzw seekers are looking for the practically impossible coincidence of a constant straight line projection with a variable point on a variably intersecting line <br/>
<br/>
so the hope for a bwnazmzw quadripoint must practically vanish there & be replaced by the hugely greater probability that the tripoint will at any given moment in its wanderings fall almost always either upstream or downstream of the constant line & almost never exactly upon the constant line & that even any momentary transits of the constant line by the mobile thalweg junction tripoint would also most likely fall not at any single point on the constant line but at various ones<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
so it seems to me the truest available diagram or in this case working model of bwnazmzw is the locus area of all known historical & imaginable bwnazms or thalweg junction positions transsected by the bwzw line segment<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
& in that scheme whenever the bwnazm thalweg junction falls above the constant bwzw line transsect as seems most probable there is a bwnazm bwzmzw tripoint pair<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
& whenever  or rather  if ever  since it still seems far less likely from all accounts  if ever the bwnazm thalweg junction wanders below the constant bwzw line leaving the line to strike the chobe thalweg rather than the zambezi thalweg then there is a bwnazw nazmzw tripoint pair<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
& evidently only very rarely if ever does a bwnazmzw quadripoint come into alignment & existence because such an event can only occur just as the mobile thalweg junction point strikes the bwzw constant line<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
so what does that mean we really have here<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
i still dont know & sure would like to eyeball the beacon line to see where it falls in relation to the confluence on any given day before shooting my mouth off any more but until then i would like to continue to call this a quadriarea for now rather than just a quadripoint or just a tripoint pair because evidently the best available truth here is all the above<br/>
<br/>
m<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
- if the thalwegs were not verified at the time (which they <br/>
<br/>
<blockquote><span title="qreply"> &gt; apparently weren&#39;t) and if the boundary is deemed to lie at the thalweg <br/>
<br/>
&gt; position *at the time of the treaty*, then the border can not now be <br/>
<br/>
&gt; retrieved from the current river status. (Just my thought - poking my <br/>
<br/>
&gt; ill-informed head over the parapet again.)<br/>
<br/>
&gt; 2) The Botswana-Zambia border exists by custom and practice, if nothing else. <br/>
<br/>
&gt; The main drag through Kasane in Botswana is signposted south to Francistown <br/>
<br/>
&gt; and north to &quot;Zambian Border&quot; - this is actually the Zambezi ferry that takes <br/>
<br/>
&gt; you across to Kazungula in Zambia. </span></blockquote></div>