The brutal dictatorship of Belarus issued a human rights report so it could portray the nations that criticize it for human rights violations of being violators themselves.
This is one article on it: http://frontburner.dmagazine.com/2013/02/05/belorussian-government-report-blasts-u-s-officials-for-not-letting-texas-secede/
And this is another:
http://blogs.houstonpress.com/hairballs/2013/02/belarus_texas_secession.php
The complaint of Belarus was that quoting from the Houston Press article,"Belarus is outraged that the White House has ignored a petition on the issue." Quoting from the Belarus human rights report.
In November, people in seven American federal states collected sufficient numbers of signatures necessary for a secession from the USA. The civil petitions have been posted on a White House website's special section, where people can leave their submissions or join those posted earlier. To begin dealing with a petition, the White House needs to receive at least 25 thousand signatures in 30 days. Once this requirement is met, an official response will be published on the website.
The Texas' petition gathered more than 125 thousand signatures. The petition points out that the US economic travails resulted from the Federal Government's failure to reform fiscal policies. In addition to Texas, Louisiana, Florida, North Carolina, Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee have also collected the required numbers.
So far, the White House has not considered the civilian petitions, which can be regarded as violation of the right to self-determination.
The Houston Press blogger comments, "Secessionists: Ain't it good to know someone's got your back?" (Italics in the original.)
Secession has died out much as a news item except for occasional items where it can be played for laughs. There doesn't seem to be any rising interest in secession. The right wing media doesn't seem to want to pick up the topic. Even www.wnd.com, which usually is open to pandering to any fringe theory has lost interest.
There still may be a reaction to Obama's rejection of the petitions by the Sons of Confederate Veterans and the United Daughters of the Confederacy, but this won't impact politics and I don't think will even make news.
For now it seems the issue has come to an end no matter how much Public Policy Polling (PPP) polls on the issue. I think the Republican party, the conservative movement and the Tea Party faction of the Republican party don't want to be associated with this issue. There doesn't really seem to be a significant faction of conservative voters who are really serious about it regardless of the polls.
For now, it seems that in the end it will just be another amusing footnote in the history of the presidential elections of 2012. On the other hand, having so many people sign these petitions and having the PPP polls create the impression that a significant, and indeed a surprisingly high fraction of Republicans support secession does create a pre-condition for some other unforseen event setting off a secession movement. Some future event, alienating some faction of conservatives might lead them to support secession because some have previously signed a petition in jest but normalized secession for themselves, and the PPP polls giving conservatives the idea that others in their peer group consider it a legitimate political choice again normalizing it as a political choice.
For now it seems secession is going nowhere. However, the future is opaque.
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