Russia Invades Ukraine 2022

[Ken]

Ken, we have gone over this. I’ll agree to disagree as to what the commoner actually fought over.

Besides, this thread is about Ukraine, perhaps we should move the John historical claims to another thread.

True. I would argue that in most wars, what the "commoner fought for" and what the war was actually about have always been two different things. And for most common folk, war is not something you have a particular choice about. It happens and then you go. End of story.

From the perspective of the south, here is an interesting article from a southern historian titled "Why Non-Slaveholding Southerners Fought" that looks at what southern churches were saying, southern politicians, and southern community leaders during and before the Civil War. https://www.battlefields.org/learn/arti ... ers-fought

Interesting bit of personal history. My great great grandfather was a teenager at the end of the war. He was a Mennonite teenager who left home in Ohio and wound up as a cook in the Union Army stationed in Washington DC at the end of the war at age 16 and so was there for Lincoln's assassination.

[ken_sylvania]

Meticulous records indeed! How are there 267 graves for only 208 recorded deaths and burials? Almost 1/4 of the graves have no record?

If you are so wrong about those easily researched facts, it goes to the credibility of everything else that you write here.

Reading comprehension is hard, I know.

Yes, I've noticed you find it difficult. I suppose that's why you claimed "208 dead and buried in the camp" earlier in this thread and have now gotten to 267.

[Theophilos]

Another interesting topic is how historically peaceful churches loose non-resistant position during the armed conflict. As far as I know the marority of (ana)baptist and Mennonite Brethren churches in Russia are staying away from the conflict and their draftees are chosing alternative civilian service. But there is a definitive shift among the Ukrainian Baptists (official ones) who are more nationalistic and some of their young people join the fight. The unregistered Baptists in Ukraine are still upholding their non-resistant stance and their draftees had a lot of pressure to take arms and fight, but most of them refuse. There are some intercession letters circulating asking to write to the officials in support of the non-resistant position of these believers and asking to provide them an alternative civilian duty.

Any interest in that topic?

[Ken]

Meticulous records indeed! How are there 267 graves for only 208 recorded deaths and burials? Almost 1/4 of the graves have no record?

Reading comprehension is hard, I know.

Yes, I've noticed you find it difficult. I suppose that's why you claimed "208 dead and buried in the camp" earlier in this thread and have now gotten to 267.

• Older sources including the Daughters of the Confederacy which maintained the cemetery for decades said there were 208 dead and buried there.
• Recently the Parks Service used ground penetrating radar and discovered another 60 or so unmarked graves (which might or might not have all been prisoners)
• The National Archives have separate official records on all the prisoners held there, some of which have been digitized (scanned) but not all of which have been transcribed into a searchable database so you mostly have to just try to read the handwritten scanned ledger entries.

In any event, none of it remotely supports John Hurt's contention that there was a 50% death rate of prisoners at Johnson Island. That would have been over 5,000 deaths, not the 208-267 we are quibbling about here. In fact, other sources suggest that Johnson Island had perhaps the lowest death rate of any Union prison during the war. Which wouldn't be unreasonable since it was a prison camp for officers not enlisted men. Which all goes to John Hurt's credibility. Especially since his main point was that information is hidden by the "victors" and can't be trusted. Well, in this particular example that he used of Johnson Island, that doesn't seem to be the case at all. No one anywhere in the historical record is making any such claims. And John hasn't come back with any evidence to support his claims.

Not everything in life is a conspiracy.

[ken_sylvania]

Reading comprehension is hard, I know.

Yes, I've noticed you find it difficult. I suppose that's why you claimed "208 dead and buried in the camp" earlier in this thread and have now gotten to 267.

• Older sources including the Daughters of the Confederacy which maintained the cemetery for decades said there were 208 dead and buried there.
• Recently the Parks Service used ground penetrating radar and discovered another 60 or so unmarked graves (which might or might not have all been prisoners)
• The National Archives have separate official records on all the prisoners held there, some of which have been digitized (scanned) but not all of which have been transcribed into a searchable database so you mostly have to just try to read the handwritten scanned ledger entries.

In any event, none of it remotely supports John Hurt's contention that there was a 50% death rate of prisoners at Johnson Island. That would have been over 5,000 deaths, not the 208-267 we are quibbling about here. In fact, other sources suggest that Johnson Island had perhaps the lowest death rate of any Union prison during the war. Which wouldn't be unreasonable since it was a prison camp for officers not enlisted men. Which all goes to John Hurt's credibility. Especially since his main point was that information is hidden by the "victors" and can't be trusted. Well, in this particular example that he used of Johnson Island, that doesn't seem to be the case at all. No one anywhere in the historical record is making any such claims. And John hasn't come back with any evidence to support his claims.

Not everything in life is a conspiracy.

I agree the records don't seem to support John Hurt's claim.

They definitely disprove your claim that the records are "meticulously maintained" and "account for every person."

[Neto]

Another interesting topic is how historically peaceful churches loose non-resistant position during the armed conflict. As far as I know the marority of (ana)baptist and Mennonite Brethren churches in Russia are staying away from the conflict and their draftees are chosing alternative civilian service. But there is a definitive shift among the Ukrainian Baptists (official ones) who are more nationalistic and some of their young people join the fight. The unregistered Baptists in Ukraine are still upholding their non-resistant stance and their draftees had a lot of pressure to take arms and fight, but most of them refuse. There are some intercession letters circulating asking to write to the officials in support of the non-resistant position of these believers and asking to provide them an alternative civilian duty.

Any interest in that topic?

My strong impression is that probably all of the Baptists in Russia during the colony period were NOT no-resistant. So it's not that some Baptists LOST that conviction, but that during the later period some GAINED it. There was a fair bit of cross-over between Mennonite Brethren and Baptists before the previlegio was increasing encroached upon, and some whole groups of MBs became Baptists, so I would suggest that the non-resisatant position among Baptists originated from this influx of MBs.

One anecdote from the early MB period (starting 1860): A Baptist minister remarked that he was working to "pull out the rusted Mennonite sword".

[Ken]

Yes, I've noticed you find it difficult. I suppose that's why you claimed "208 dead and buried in the camp" earlier in this thread and have now gotten to 267.

• Older sources including the Daughters of the Confederacy which maintained the cemetery for decades said there were 208 dead and buried there.
• Recently the Parks Service used ground penetrating radar and discovered another 60 or so unmarked graves (which might or might not have all been prisoners)
• The National Archives have separate official records on all the prisoners held there, some of which have been digitized (scanned) but not all of which have been transcribed into a searchable database so you mostly have to just try to read the handwritten scanned ledger entries.

In any event, none of it remotely supports John Hurt's contention that there was a 50% death rate of prisoners at Johnson Island. That would have been over 5,000 deaths, not the 208-267 we are quibbling about here. In fact, other sources suggest that Johnson Island had perhaps the lowest death rate of any Union prison during the war. Which wouldn't be unreasonable since it was a prison camp for officers not enlisted men. Which all goes to John Hurt's credibility. Especially since his main point was that information is hidden by the "victors" and can't be trusted. Well, in this particular example that he used of Johnson Island, that doesn't seem to be the case at all. No one anywhere in the historical record is making any such claims. And John hasn't come back with any evidence to support his claims.

Not everything in life is a conspiracy.

I agree the records don't seem to support John Hurt's claim.

They definitely disprove your claim that the records are "meticulously maintained" and "account for every person."

The gravestone markers at the cemetery are not the prisoner records. The actual prisoner records are maintained at the national archives and over 450 volumes of them have been digitized and available online for genealogical research.

What I actually claimed is that the Civil War happened during an era in which bureaucracies kept meticulous records. Not that every single person is necessarily accounted for. Which anyone who has done historical research from the 19th century and looked at things like census records, corporate records, and the like understands. This was a pre-digital era and so you have endless volumes of government records carefully transcribed in neat elegant script. Because the people keeping such ledgers understood they were recording the official record of events. Today with computers and data entry fields it is a different world.

[ken_sylvania]

The gravestone markers at the cemetery are not the prisoner records. The actual prisoner records are maintained at the national archives and over 450 volumes of them have been digitized and available online for genealogical research.

What I actually claimed is that the Civil War happened during an era in which bureaucracies kept meticulous records. Not that every single person is necessarily accounted for.

Well, well, well. You sure fooled me. I thought that the statement bolded below would constitute a claim that every single officer kept at Johnson Island is accounted for.

It turns out that the Johnson Island prisoner of war camp (which was specifically for officers) is actually famous for having one of the lowest death tolls of any prison camp in the entire war. There are complete military records of every Confederate officer who was held there (name, rank, unit, location captured, etc.) and they can all be traced to determine what happened to them. Which is something that many historians have done.

[ohio jones]

Your understanding is wrong or your facts are wrong.

In 2001 Russia expressed interest in joining NATO but refused to go through the application process and, consequently, never applied. Here is a news article describing those events: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/ ... n-his-rule

Vladimir Putin wanted Russia to join Nato but did not want his country to have to go through the usual application process and stand in line “with a lot of countries that don’t matter”, according to a former secretary general of the transatlantic alliance.

George Robertson, a former Labour defence secretary who led Nato between 1999 and 2003, said Putin made it clear at their first meeting that he wanted Russia to be part of western Europe. “They wanted to be part of that secure, stable prosperous west that Russia was out of at the time,” he said.

The Labour peer recalled an early meeting with Putin, who became Russian president in 2000. “Putin said: ‘When are you going to invite us to join Nato?’ And [Robertson] said: ‘Well, we don’t invite people to join Nato, they apply to join Nato.’ And he said: ‘Well, we’re not standing in line with a lot of countries that don’t matter.’”

One can just innocently walk down the street in some cities and be confronted with a display that disputes Robertson's assertion about application vs. invitation.

[Szdfan]

Another interesting topic is how historically peaceful churches loose non-resistant position during the armed conflict. As far as I know the marority of (ana)baptist and Mennonite Brethren churches in Russia are staying away from the conflict and their draftees are chosing alternative civilian service. But there is a definitive shift among the Ukrainian Baptists (official ones) who are more nationalistic and some of their young people join the fight. The unregistered Baptists in Ukraine are still upholding their non-resistant stance and their draftees had a lot of pressure to take arms and fight, but most of them refuse. There are some intercession letters circulating asking to write to the officials in support of the non-resistant position of these believers and asking to provide them an alternative civilian duty.

Any interest in that topic?

I wonder if this might be a difference of invader vs. invadee -- that it might be easier to maintain a non-resistance position if you are not the one whose homeland is being militarily attacked. Most Russians are still removed from the conflict in a way that Ukrainians aren't.