Do people have the right to secede from the nation they belong too without there being some extreme factors in play like say a genocide? After all East Timor, Eritrea and Kosovo recently separated (among others). Who should get a vote in such referendums?
Another example is the Scottish referendum held just before Brexit. How often do separatist minded desires get a vote? One and done, generationally, yearly? Then there was the dissolution of the USSR and a US court case from the immediate post civil war era where secession
required the will of all the citizens of the state to be split to enact such a split. I am sure there are other examples as well but I am going to dig into the cases listed above to explore the idea of secession.
In the case of East Timor and Kosovo there was an ongoing genocide leading to international intervention followed by a UN supervised referendum and the establishment of democratically elected governments. Not everyone was happy but the process was above board and new nations were
born. In the case of Eritrea, the Eritreans had sided with Ethiopian rebels and the two combined to take down Ethiopia's government in a civil war and as part of the peace the two peoples split. In Scotland after literally generations of union with the United Kingdom Parliament
decided to give the Scottish a chance to choose or reject what had once been established by force of arms and Scotland chose to keep the union together. In the first two the genociders were excluded. You don't get a seat at the table if you are actively trying to murder people
you don't like. In the second two the people who would be in a new nation had the vote. Then there is the USSR which had a secession clause and the various politburos decided that the time of the Soviet Union had passed and they voted to secede leading to the formal dissolution
of the USSR and the establishment of a host of new nations. As a side note, the USSR already had 3 nominally independent UN member states before dissolution: USSR, Ukraine and Belarus. Then there is the US where a case known as Texas v White lays out that when a state joins the
union is it "perpetual" (Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union 1777) and that the Constitution was ratified to make the union more perfect not to provide an escape clause and that only 2 routes were possible in the pursuit of secession: a successful revolution or
the combined acquiescence of all the states since the citizens of the seceding states were also citizens of the USA and could not be unilaterally deprived of their citizenship, property and rights. None of those examples involve outside parties invading and setting up "puppet"
governments and gun point referendums with a stated end goal not of secession but union with a different country the same one that sent in the good squad. The closest you get in the post WWII history of the world is the DPRK which was set up by the USSR but did not intend to join
the USSR. East Germany as well but that nation ended up rejoining Germany by popular will when the Cold war ended. There is simply no precedent for thug created separatist movements leaving one country under the fiction of independence in order to advance towards an end goal of
union with another. The whole idea reeks of "Anschluss" and "Danzig Corridor" BS that lead to WWII. Yet Putin's Russia is trying to do exactly that in Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova and the Baltics and just about every other place that has a border with Russia and a Russian speaking
minority. These are the facts that @elonmusk is missing when he says there should be another referendum. No, Ukraine voted twice in 1991 (generally) and in the Crimea in 1994 (specifically) to be Ukrainians inside of Ukraine. The sham referenda Putin imposed by gun point have no
merit. Not only that but thanks to IDP's, filtration and genocide many of the people (perhaps a majority) to be affected were not given the vote. Russia has a way for the diaspora to vote but did not extend this right to those whose homes were about to be annexed. The process was
rigged, done at gun point, excluded the majority of voters, not sanctioned by the UN, and not supported by the country to be divided and after two previous referendums had already established popular will. Mr Musk, your idea is claptrap and shows an amazing lack of historical
knowledge. You are a brilliant man, but you are not a historian or even historically literate. What Russia is doing (in violation of treaty commitments, international law and the UN charter) must be opposed, aggression must not be rewarded with even the smallest fig leaf of
legitimacy. Your provision of #Starlink to Ukraine was awesome. The next most awesome thing you can do for the Ukrainian people is not push a Russian narrative but get to know them. I am sure @Teoyaomiquu would be willing to have lunch with you in Texas, or you could talk to
any number of them in #Ukraine people like @ferlain, @maggiewillrise, @MrKovalenko and others could argue for Ukraine far better than me. Come on to the @MriyaReport and we can hook you up with all the Ukrainians you can handle including many from the regions now under the
boot. Thats actually good advice for everyone, tune into the space and meet Ukrainians and help support @MriyaAid a very worthwhile charity. Referendums are not the path to peace. Russia has crossed that line and now the only option for the free world is to support Ukraine in
hour of need. I am glad my state's Congressional Delegation @JohnBoozman, @SenTomCotton, and @RepFrenchHill are solidly behind this imperative truth. You should be as well. BTW, when you become the "man" who owns Twitter you will see #NAFO is not a bot army. We are real people
really care who combat Russian dis-info and support the @georgian_legion its battles to help Ukraine kick Putin, imperialism and colonialism back onto the trash heap of history. Until Ukraine wins on Ukraine's terms: Slava Ukraini!
So last night @POTUS
revealed what those of us who have been paying attention already knew. The world is closer to #Armageddon than at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis. cbsnews.com/news/biden-arm…
why did he say it, was it just an old man's flub to be walked back like the Taiwan comments (could it be walked back), or was it deliberate and if so, who was the audience. I think some context is needed.
First, Russia has been making nuclear threats for months and has already engaged in nuclear terrorism at least 2 nuclear sites in #Ukraine: Zaporizhya and Chernobyl and recently his puppets have begun openly discussing the use of strategic nuclear weapons in response to
Part 2: Near and Longer Term Ukrainian Armor needs. To start some caveats. 1. I don't know the average bridge loading of Ukrainian bridges, 2. how many (if any) class 70 AVLB and bailey bridges they have 3. the maximum width of track vehicles on Ukranian trains. 4. Ukraine
uses the 4 tank platoon doctrinally. 5. Ukraine may have lost as many as half its pre-war tank fleet of mostly T-64BV tanks. 6. The main combat formation is the brigade. With all that said let's dig in. I think its obvious that I think that the big western MBT's are superior for
a number of reasons from crew efficiency, to sensing and FCS but also gun power. One of the big oft overlooked draw backs of the T series tanks is two piece ammo. This limits the overall L/D ratio of the sabots and this impacts performance. NATO APFSDS penetrators extend down
Lets talk tanks Part 1. West vs East. The T90m is the ultimate evolution of the lessons of WWII that lead to the development of the T-44. When the T-44 got the 100mm gun it was renamed T-54 that lead to the T-62 but the Khrushchev said the Red Army's manning costs were too high
so the T-64 was created. It originally had the same 115mm gun. But then material costs were too high so we got the T-72... Then Iraq and the T-72 was rebranded the T-90. All evolutions of a tank prototyped in 1943. This design lineage has always stressed good frontal protection
low profile and a big gun. It was successful in many ways. At the end of WWII the USSR had a massive fleet of heavy tanks that could smash just about anything they could see. Yet with the introduction of the T-54 they began to be replaced and moved to reserve units because the
Look, I get why @elonmusk stepped in it and why he decided to follow @Pontifex onto the road to appeasement. We live in scary times and human nature is to find some place to hole up when danger looms, physically, mentally, spiritually we look for a way to escape the Angel of
Death's gimlet eye. I've got kids and grandkids too so I get the fear of nuclear war. Reports like this
raises all sorts of hairs on the back of my neck. I don't know if the photo was a real, "hey looky here" indicating #Putin is serious about #nuclear
release or more, "I said hey looky here" suggesting a staged propaganda bit. Unlike some I don't think Russia's nuclear forces are anywhere near the level of corruption and shit sandwich of the regular army. I think they are probably tip top like their space program. They get
Now the focus swings back to Kherson as the one two, three punch combos by Ukraine keep landing on soft parts in the Russian line. For those asking how does this keep happenings (mainly tankies and vatniks) here is a quick lesson on probable reasons. First the Russian Army isn't
big enough to do everything it wanted to do back in Feb. Early war losses in men and equipment meant even with the "goodwill gestures" around Kyiv what was left was still not big enough to do everything it still wanted to do. Especially since so much was tied down trying to
dig the Azovstal defenders out of their fortress. Big plans need with small armies require small enemies, focus, speed, violence of action and competence. Russia had none of these so each set back left them weaker. Each setback and repulsed shot left them less able to make
Lyman is liberated, and many of the Russian's there are no longer combatants as they are now dead, wounded or captured. This loss is going to add even more pressure to the Russian need to get bodies to the front. It seems unlikely that fear of bad reports and the constant
drumbeat of send more men now and endemic corruption will permit Russia to actually train the mobilized soldiers. The troops answering the call (vs the men fleeing to foreign shores) are basically going to be untrained militia fighters. Losses are going to skyrocket. We may be
about to enter/ have entered a feed back loop. Where Russian mothers who have lost sons, and other mothers who have sent their sons into exile become too big of a political problem to ignore. Putin has already had to address the screw ups, but now the Czar will be shown to have