Seminole

In light of that it's important to examine what did the polling suggest before Putin's little green men showed up? The United Nations Development Programme conducted a series of polls in Crimea between 2009 and 2011 about the question of leaving Ukraine and joining Russia with a sample size of 1,200: Quarter Yes No Undecided 2009 Q3[35] 70% 14% 16% 2009 Q4[35] 67% 15% 18% 2010 Q1[36] 66% 14% 20% 2010 Q2[36] 65% 12% 23% 2010 Q3[36] 67% 11% 22% 2010 Q4[36] 66% 9% 25% 2011 Q4[37] 65.6% 14.2% 20.2%

I admit, I reached for Jefferson because of two reasons: he offers a succinct definition of just (as in rightful) government, and no one can properly accuse him of offering that definition as a 'Putin talking point'.

The Florida State University Army ROTC, Seminole battalion, actually has the 'unique privilege of a battle streamer on its colors' subsequent to the Battle of Natural Bridge.

I don't consider the plebiscite conducted by the Russians after their invasion to be legitimate, conducted as it was literally 'under the gun'. I suspect there was a boycott by what would have otherwise been no votes. But on the question itself, polling has been conducted before and after. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Crimean_status_referendum From March 12 – 14, 2014, Germany's largest pollster, the GfK Group, conducted a survey with 600 respondents and found that 70.6% of Crimeans intended to vote for joining Russia, 10.8% for restoring the 1992 constitution, and 5.6% did not intend to take part in the referendum.[41][42] The poll also showed that if Crimeans had more choices, 53.8% of them would choose joining Russia, 5.2% restoration of 1992 constitution, 18.6% a fully independent Crimean state and 12.6% would choose to keep the previous status of Crimea.[41] Gallup conducted an immediate post-referendum survey of Ukraine and Crimea and published their results in April 2014. Gallup reported that, among the population of Crimea, 93.6% of ethnic Russians and 68.4% of ethnic Ukrainians believed the referendum result accurately represents the will of the Crimean people. Only 1.7% of ethnic Russians and 14.5% of ethnic Ukrainians living in Crimea thought that the referendum results didn't accurately reflect the views of the Crimean people.[43] In May 2014, Washington, D.C., pollster Pew Research published results of a survey that encompassed Crimea, Ukraine, and Russia, in which it was reported that 88% of Crimeans believed the government of Kyiv should officially recognize the result of Crimea's referendum.[44] Between December 12 and 25, 2014, Levada-Center carried out a survey of Crimea that was commissioned by John O'Loughlin, College Professor of Distinction and Professor of Geography at the University of Colorado in Boulder, and Gerard Toal (Gearóid Ó Tuathail), Professor of Government and International Affairs at Virginia Tech's National Capital Region campus. The results of that survey were published by Open Democracy in March, 2015, and reported that, overall, 84% of Crimeans felt the choice to secede from Ukraine and accede to Russia was "Absolutely the right decision", with the next-largest segment of respondents saying the decision to return to Russia was the "Generally right decision". The survey commissioners, John O'Loughlin and Gerard Toal, wrote in their Open Democracy article that, while they felt that the referendum was "an illegal act under international law", their survey shows "It is also an act that enjoys the widespread support of the peninsula's inhabitants, with the important exception of its Crimean Tatar population" with "widespread support for Crimea's decision to secede from Ukraine and join the Russian Federation one year ago". Their survey also reported that a majority of Crimean Tatars viewed Crimea's return to Russia as either the "Absolutely right decision" or the "Generally right decision"

Self-evident. I just mean the people who live there. Who should decide? People that don't live there? I consider myself a Floridian, but it's not a nationality and we don't have a Floridian language.

That's why I linked to the census info in the Wikipedia article. It shows various census going over a century. Stalin's deportation of the Tartars is evident, but the place has never registered above 26.5% Ukrainian (self-identified). The census conducted in 2001 by Ukraine pegged the demographics at 60% Russian, 24% Ukrainian. I doubt Thomas Jefferson would be considered a 'pro-Moscow propagandist', but the assertions in the American Declaration of Independence raise an important question regarding who rightly decides the question. What would be more galling to Western democracies: A plebiscite to determine the will of the people of Crimea, or a war to compel them to live under a government they may not assent to? Imposing a government against the will of people seems antithetical to democratic tenets. Even if the people living there don't want that? Why is ignoring them so simple, and why is their input so unvalued? If Crimea launched an insurgency against the Ukrainian government, would NATO support their separation as in Kosovo, or would NATO help crush the rebellion? It seems less simple than some would have it.

Quoted that from the response tweet (not trying to attribute the thought to you). To what degree is the desire of the locals a factor, and should it be a factor, in the decision to liberate/conquer? Going just off the wikipedia Crimean census figures the place post-WW2 has ethnically been roughly 3-1 Russians to Ukrainians.

You just described the type of window he could have accessed this information in. So your method isn’t preventing anything, just creating windows.

We just put about 500 troops back to Somalia, so while not ‘near peer’ in any regard, history indicates that politics do tend to put combat troops in less tenable positions than purely military considerations would.

I think the Ukraine defender might get some ambush kills, but can any of us imagine the NATO side with air support being stymied at a spot like Bakhmut for months and months and months? I think we’d relish the enemy being willing to sit at a known spot and bring us more forces to kill. The AirPower part of the equation is still what makes it so lopsided to conventionally fight the US. I think drones are just going to augment that advantage. It will be interesting to see the breakdowns postwar for what took out Russian and Ukrainian AFVs (ATGMs, drones, mines). There was a lot of talk pages ago about the utility of AAA in the anti-drone role. Anyone seen that the European AAA that was delivered has been used that way? The mention on the leaked documents of encouraging the Ukrainians to not ‘waste’ SAMs on drones brought it mind.

The German government has approved Poland’s request to export five Soviet-made MiG-29 fighter jets to Ukraine that originally came from Berlin’s stockpile. Poland and Slovakia have already delivered some MiG-29s to Ukraine, making them the first NATO countries to provide Kyiv with fighter jets, an escalation of military support that German Chancellor Olaf Scholz previously warned against.

Trophy sounds too good to be true, but that’s inevitably where things go, isn’t it? The main role of Trophy is defence against missile strikes, more so for lighter armored personnel carriers, which are very vulnerable to rocket attacks. Since 2011, the system has achieved 100% success in all low and high-intensity combat events, in diversified terrain (urban, open and foliage). The system has intercepted a variety of threats, including the 9M133 Kornet ATGM, RPG-29, etc. the U.S Army has reported similar success in tests. “I tried to kill the Abrams tank with ATGM 48 times and failed, despite the fact that some of them were supersonic,” said US Army Col. Glenn Dean. According to Rafael, by 2017, Trophy has accrued over 50,000 operating hours in deployment, bringing the system to a maximum reliability level. To minimize collateral damage and residual penetration, Rafael selected a unique kill mechanism for Trophy, with a surgical effect.

1337 haxor: The 21-year-old Air National Guardsman suspected of spilling a trove of classified US documents online frantically searched the word “leak” on his government-issued computer — on the same day the public found out about the intel breach, court records unsealed Friday allege. Jack Teixeira started trawling through classified intelligence reports looking for the phrase on April 6, the date the New York Times published its first article detailing how secrets of the Ukraine war had been posted on Twitter and Telegram, according to an FBI affidavit. Teixeira’s search was detected by an unidentified government agency “which can monitor certain searches conducted on its classified networks,” the affidavit says.

Russian T-90 Tank From Ukraine Mysteriously Appears At U.S. Truck Stop The folks at Peto’s Travel Center and Casino in Roanoke, Louisiana see all kinds of vehicles pull up, but Tuesday night was different. What ended up in their parking lot is certainly something of a mystery, to say the least. Someone left a Russian T-90A tank, which open source intelligence (OSINT) trackers say was captured by Ukraine last fall, on a trailer after the truck hauling it broke down and pulled into this truck stop off U.S. Interstate 10. An employee at Peto's, and the individual who first posted the images on Reddit, shared them with The War Zone. more pics at the link

It's been no secret that US and Poland ties, particularly on the level of military coordination, have greatly accelerated in recent years. This has been especially on display since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Poland's prime minister on Thursday lashed out at French President Emmanuel Macron's controversial China comments which came just after his visit with Xi Jinping. Mateusz Morawiecki openly mocked the French leader's call for European 'strategic autonomy', which included follow-up comments about not being Washington's "vassals". "European autonomy sounds fancy, doesn't it? But it means shifting the center of European gravity towards China and severing the ties with the US," Morawiecki said in response. "Short-sightedly they look to China to be able to sell more EU products there at huge geopolitical costs, making us more dependent on China and not less," the Polish prime minister continued while on a visit to Washington. "Some European countries are trying to make with China the same mistake which was made with Russia -- this dramatic mistake," he added. His scathing critique of Macron's words, which we reviewed previously, were given before the NATO-linked Atlantic Council think tank in D.C. According to more from Morawiecki's speech: Paraphrasing Macron's remarks without naming him, Morawiecki said, "You cannot protect Ukraine today and tomorrow by saying Taiwan is not your business." "I think that, God forbid, if Ukraine falls, if Ukraine gets conquered, the next day China may attack -- can attack -- Taiwan," he said. Alluding to Macron's comments alongside President Xi Jinping about a more multipolar role, Morawiecki scoffed "European autonomy sounds fancy, doesn't it? But it means shifting the center of European gravity towards China and severing the ties with the US," he said. "I do not quite understand the concept of strategic autonomy if it means de facto shooting into our own knee." During the remarks Morawiecki also took swipes at lukewarm European support to Ukraine when compared to the United States, in statements which seemed implicitly directed at Germany and France, per AFP: Western European nations have grown accustomed to a model based on cheap energy from Russia, high-margin trade with China, low-cost labor from Eastern Europe and "security for free from the United States," Morawiecki said. "Now their modus vivendi collapsed in ruins so what do they do? They want a quick ceasefire, armistice, in Ukraine, almost at any price," he said. Some politicians in Western Europe are thinking, "'Ukraine, why are you fighting so bravely?'" he said. Despite pressure from allies, Macron has made no apologies, but in fact has doubled-down. "Being an ally does not mean being a vassal … [or] mean that we don’t have the right to think for ourselves," he said in follow-up during a Wednesday visit to Amsterdam. As a reminder, while speaking with reporters aboard COTAM Unité (France’s Air Force One) over the weekend immediately following his time spent with Xi, the French President said that the "great risk" facing Europe right now is that it "gets caught up in crises that are not ours, which prevents it from building its strategic autonomy." Macron's articulating a concept of strategic autonomy for Europe was 'enthusiastically endorsed' by Xi and the CCP, who have been focusing on the notion that the West is in decline while China rises, and that weakening the transatlantic relationship will accelerate this trend. "The paradox would be that, overcome with panic, we believe we are just America’s followers," said Macron. "The question Europeans need to answer … is it in our interest to accelerate [a crisis] on Taiwan? No. The worse thing would be to think that we Europeans must become followers on this topic and take our cue from the U.S. agenda and a Chinese overreaction." And this: "If the tensions between the two superpowers heat up … we won’t have the time nor the resources to finance our strategic autonomy and we will become vassals," Macron said.

The U.S. is trying to convict Assange because they accuse him of aiding and directing the stealing of classified info, not merely receiving it. Otherwise the U.S. would lock up the reporters that reported leaks, not just the leakers.

Interesting (dare I say encouraging?) to see this kind of surveillance termed 'Soviet-style'. It was all the rage in 2020: https://www.businessinsider.com/countries-tracking-citizens-phones-coronavirus-2020-3#taiwan-can-tell-when-quarantined-people-have-left-the-house-6

SEOUL, April 12 (Reuters) - South Korea has reached an agreement to lend the United States 500,000 rounds of 155mm artillery shells that could give Washington greater flexibility to supply Ukraine with ammunition, a South Korean newspaper reported on Wednesday. The DongA Ilbo newspaper cited unidentified government sources as saying South Korea decided to "lend" the ammunition instead of selling, to minimise the possibility of South Korean shells being used in the Ukraine conflict.

Step 1 - stop foreign military interventions. Step 2 - no longer caught up in eternal responses to the unanticipated response to the earlier intervention (e.g. don't move military into Saudi Arabia to defend their dictator from the neighboring dictator, thus don't antagonize an entirely separate group of jihadists bent on ending that apostate intervention, the response to which begets another intervention, this time to 'fix' Afghanistan, and on and on until we have troops in Syria to partition that country while we pile more troops back into Somalia to 'fix' it too, and on and on...) the U.S. gets to know some peace. Step 3 - there is no 'world peace', never has been. But that isn't the same as us choosing to become a party to various and sundry conflicts around the globe. As one of those old, dead guys noted: "[America] has abstained from interference in the concerns of others, even when the conflict has been for principles to which she clings, as to the last vital drop that visits the heart. She has seen that probably for centuries to come, all the contests of that Aceldama, the European World, will be contests between inveterate power, and emerging right."

I didn't realize the idiom was that uncommon. My apologies. The business fable of The Chicken and the Pig is about commitment to a project or cause. When producing a dish made of eggs with ham or bacon, the pig provides the ham or bacon which requires his or her sacrifice and the chicken provides the eggs which are not difficult to produce. Thus the pig is really committed to that dish ("has skin in the game") while the chicken is only involved, yet both are needed to produce the dish. So you think Merkel was on the take? I can see how folks may take that view of Schroeder, given his post-political career, but I hadn't heard it of Merkel, and she was in power back before 2008. When Khrushchev decided not to finish missile bases in Cuba and we removed our missiles from Turkey, did that 'work'? Even though we were completely within our rights to have weapons on our allies' territory, and they'd be within their rights to do the same, wasn't humanity better off that both sides found a way to de-escalate? I tend to think so. It was response to the notion people who don't want America to go abroad in search of more wars are 'isolationists', instead of 'non-interventionist'. Particularly the phrase, 'Involvement in the broader planet', implying opposition to finding new wars (or old ones, with hundreds more soldiers going back to Somalia) is opposition to all the other ways we can and should interact with the world. I'm sorry I was misunderstood. I have tried to dodge nothing, and if I was unclear just let me know where.

Council of Foreign Relations website, January 20, 2022: Tensions between Russia and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) have reached the point of crisis. The government of Russian President Vladimir Putin is threatening a wider military incursion into Ukraine unless the U.S.-led alliance makes several major security concessions, including a commitment to cease expanding eastward. Nobody even debated this idea the whole time it was posed until after February 22nd, 2022. It was conventional wisdom. Here's a little piece from PBS, Feb 22, 2022: For the Kremlin, the notion that Ukraine, a pillar of the Soviet Union with strong historic ties to Russia, would join NATO was a red line. “No Russian leader could stand idly by in the face of steps toward NATO membership for Ukraine. That would be a hostile act toward Russia,” Putin warned U.S. Undersecretary for Political Affairs William J. Burns, who is now director of the CIA, in the weeks leading up to NATO’s 2008 Bucharest Summit. I don't understand how people act like this understanding never existed before. You're leaving out some things, but I'm not sure how much the mods tolerate discussion in this vein. I just reject the revisionist idea, advanced by proponents of incorporating Ukraine in NATO, that no one expected Russia would react as they have to that prospect. Germany and France sure as hell expected it, and The_Capt acknowledged it by mentioning 'cheap gas' in lieu of the underlying reason for cheap gas: peace. If Germany and France didn't expect trying to add Ukraine to NATO would provoke this war, what was their actual concern? Because I haven't seen reference to any other, at any point.

I don't think the neocons looks upon their efforts as a diversion, but US involvement is truly discretionary. We're bringing the eggs to this breakfast, Ukraine is the one bringing the bacon. You already agreed that Germany and France opposed Ukraine's NATO ascension because they accurately perceived the risk of war it generated. There wasn't any other reason. You lambasted them for wanting 'cheap gas', but ignore that they accurately recognized the threat to their 'cheap gas' was provoking a war. I don't think even the uber-protectionist, Buchananite wing of paleo-conservatives wants 'isolationism' as the interventionists like to frame it. The non-interventionists are happy to follow Washington's parting advice: 'The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible.' To be truly accurate, it's the interventionists who are always trying to cut our trade and interaction with this or that corner of the globe. 'Involvement in the broader planet' isn't what the non-interventionist oppose. You're being coy, and it's illuminating that you feel the need. Non-interventionists concur with what John Quincy Adams observed, "Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will commend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example. She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force...." To me, this is the face of neocon policy: When I look in their wake, at their results, I wonder, what is there to boast about?

You’re doing that thing again wherein you conflate the interventionist/neocon foreign policy advocates with the whole of the U.S., as though opposition to their constant finding of new wars for America to be involved in is itself ‘anti-American’.