Russia Invades Ukraine 2022

[Soloist]

We live in interesting times where someone can be an expert on anything and data can be produced to say almost anything.

The power of propaganda is that the user believes it.

[Soloist]

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.

I think that is a factual argument

[Ken]

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.

Well, strictly speaking, what they were invited to was "Accession Talks" https://www.nato.int/docu/update/2002/1 ... e1121c.htm

Nevertheless, that doesn't refute the fact that Russia was never actually rejected from NATO since they never actually applied to NATO or engaged in any "Accession Talks" as the case may be.

And given how Russia has behaved for the past decade, I expect that large majorities of citizens in every one of those 7 countries is very glad that they did join NATO. Can you blame them?

[Theophilos]

I have some newsletters about the non-resistant Christians, but for some reason my attachment quota here at the board does not allow to share.

[Ken]

I have some newsletters about the non-resistant Christians, but for some reason my attachment quota here at the board does not allow to share.

You can upload them as pictures to any free photo site like Flikr and then link to the image using the "add image" button in the editing window on this site.

Basically any image that you can find or post anywhere else on the internet can be linked to here as an image.

[Theophilos]

Thank you for the suggestion, I will look into it.

There is Telrgram group where the updates on Conscientious Objectors in Ukraine are published in English:

https://t.me/News_IUCECB

[temporal1]

Thank you for the suggestion, I will look into it.

There is Telrgram group where the updates on Conscientious Objectors in Ukraine are published in English:

https://t.me/News_IUCECB

^^Paywall

Reuters / Thirty men have died trying to leave Ukraine to avoid fighting since war started
https://www.aol.com/news/thirty-men-die ... src=aolapp

.. Demchenko said that since the start of the war border guards have uncovered about 450 criminal groups that have attempted to smuggle people across the border.

"Attempts to illegally cross the border occur every day," Demchenko said. "Most of these attempts are outside of border checkpoints on the border with Moldova and Romania. The largest number with forged documents is recorded on the border with Poland."

Earlier in April, Demchenko told Ukraine's state broadcaster that on average about 10 men are stopped each day trying to illegally leave Ukraine.

Last week, Ukraine suspended consular services for military-age male citizens until May 18, criticising Ukrainians abroad who it said expected to receive help from the state without helping it battle for survival in the war against Russia.

In November, BBC said in a report based on data of illegal border crossings from Romania, Moldova, Poland, Hungary and Slovakia that nearly 20,000 men have fled Ukraine since the beginning of the war to avoid being drafted.

[JohnHurt]

Some of what we "know" is based on personal experiences.

My grandparents and great grandparents knew my ancestors that fought in the US Civil War. They told me about one of my ancestors was captured by the North and put on an Island in Lake Erie. When he came back, they did not recognize him, as he was a walking skeleton. He ate rats to survive. I looked up this camp, and it held 6,000 prisoners, of which 3,000 died during the war, so it had a 50% kill rate. Camp Douglas outside of Chicago is the largest mass grave in the Western Hemisphere, where the North buried all of the Confederate dead that died in these hell hole prison camps.

But that is not in your history books. Northern propaganda said it never happened.

One thing we can be pretty sure of John, and that is that the American Civil War was not part of YOUR personal experience. And we also know that the American Civil War is one of the most historically documented wars in human history. There are probably more professional and amateur historians who have meticulously studied and written about the American Civil War than any other war in history except perhaps World War II.

You say that you looked up this Union prisoner of war camp on Lake Erie and that it held 6,000 Confederate prisoners of which 3,000 died in captivity for a 50% death rate. If you looked it up perhaps you can show us the historical record that you are relying on to make this assertion. Because the Civil War history is, indeed, exceptionally well documented. And the only Union prisoner of war camp on an Island in Lake Erie was the Johnson Island prison camp. It is now a national historic site and park and one can visit the Confederate cemetery there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnson%27s_Island

Of course the actual historical record of this prison camp was that was a prison camp for Confederate officers and housed over 10,000 Confederate prisoners during the course of the war, of which 208 died in captivity and are buried in the cemetery on site. The Johnson Island Historical Society actually maintains complete records on every single prisoner held there and every single guard who was stationed there: https://johnsonsisland.org/

What records are you relying on to show that this prison camp held 6,000 prisoners of which 3,000 died in captivity? Or did you just make that up?

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

First of all, your sources are from the children whose ancestors committed the mass murders. It would be like asking the German children of the Nazis if the Holocaust really happened, and they would all say no.

There were two sister camps, and it was at Camp Douglas for the enlisted men where the murders were recorded, and Johnson Island for the officers where the murders have been white washed. Maybe I got the two camps confused, but the murders still happened.

The horrors of Camp Douglas cannot be denied.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Douglas_(Chicago)

The article states that there were 4,275 deaths over 4 years out of 7,000 to 8,000 prisoners that could be held at the camp. So more than 50% kill rate. They fudge the numbers by comparing the number of deaths over 4 years to the total number of people moved through the camp, even just there for a few days, over a 4 year period, giving a much lower rate.

Here are the antics of your 'noble Yankee" guards when they ran Camp Douglas as an extermination camp during the Civil War, from Wikipedia.

As the number of prisoners at the camp increased in the summer of 1864, the War Department again reduced rations, in retaliation for the Confederates reducing rations for Union prisoners.[157] Rations reportedly no longer lasted quite as long as the period for which they were allotted. A few prisoners reported that prisoners resorted to eating rats.[158][123] Guards punished anyone caught taking bones from the garbage by tying the bone in the prisoner's mouth and making him crawl around like a dog.[158] As the length of confinements increased due to the lack of prisoner exchanges, more fights between prisoners arose.[159] Other prisoners usually broke them up before guards intervened.[159][160] Work details were still required.[161]

By June 1864, guards had set up "the mule" or "wooden horse," a sawhorse-type device set about 4 feet (1.2 m) off the ground, later raised to 15 feet (4.6 m). It had a thin, almost sharp, edge and was used as punishment; prisoners were forced to sit on it.[162][105] Prisoners used their hands to brace themselves when on the device, but a Confederate prisoner reported seeing men forced to sit on it until they fainted and fell off.[163] Sometimes weights were tied to the prisoner's feet.[164] The device, which was outside, was used in any type of weather.[164] A guard was also required to sit on the device as punishment for an unrecorded offense.[163][165] In line with War Department instructions, the post surgeon refused Confederate surgeons' requests to send medicine for free to the prisoners.[166]

The article also said:

If any one camp could be called the "Andersonville of the North," it would more likely be Elmira Prison at Elmira, New York where the deaths per thousand prisoners were 241.0 versus 44.1 at Camp Douglas.[231][232]

Still, they are reporting a very low death rate by comparing all of the people that ever visited the prison with the ones that died.

It was Abraham Lincoln that stopped the prisoner exchanges, or "being paroled" when captured, which created these camps. Lincoln is also responsible for the Elmira prison:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elmira_Prison

Lincoln abolished the parole system because too many Yankee troops were giving up too easy. Likewise, Lincoln could have removed the tariffs on the South and averted the war entirely. Abraham Lincoln killed more Americans than any other person in history, just to collect a tax or tariff to make the South buy products from the North. I understand that Lincoln rode a horse around the battlefield at Antietam and after viewing thousands of dead soldiers and remarked about what a beautiful day it was. What a nut job.

We still have the same kind of psychopaths running our government today.

The prison at Guantanamo Bay, and all of the "Black sites" run by the CIA are just the same as these Yankee hell hole prisons. Some things never change.

[Soloist]

We still have the same kind of psychopaths running our government today.

The prison at Guantanamo Bay, and all of the "Black sites" run by the CIA are just the same as these Yankee hell hole prisons. Some things never change.

I’ve actually been in camp Delta if anyone wants to know specific things that aren’t classified.
Abuse definitely happened, but they (detainees) get access to quite a lot. The real problem in my opinion is the stateless people there that would not be held if any country would take them. A life growing tomatoes behind barbed wire is no life.

[Ken]

There were two sister camps, and it was at Camp Douglas for the enlisted men where the murders were recorded, and Johnson Island for the officers where the murders have been white washed. Maybe I got the two camps confused, but the murders still happened.

The horrors of Camp Douglas cannot be denied.

Well yes. But Chicago is not on Lake Erie. And it is 2 states away from Johnson's Island in Ohio.

It was Abraham Lincoln that stopped the prisoner exchanges, or "being paroled" when captured, which created these camps. Lincoln is also responsible for the Elmira prison:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elmira_Prison

Lincoln abolished the parole system because too many Yankee troops were giving up too easy. Likewise, Lincoln could have removed the tariffs on the South and averted the war entirely. Abraham Lincoln killed more Americans than any other person in history, just to collect a tax or tariff to make the South buy products from the North. I understand that Lincoln rode a horse around the battlefield at Antietam and after viewing thousands of dead soldiers and remarked about what a beautiful day it was. What a nut job.

Again, you are simply wrong. Lincoln didn't abolish the parole system, Grant did. And it was because the Confederates were refusing to treat Black prisoners the same as White prisoners and were enslaving captured Black union solders rather than exchanging them. This has been well documented including the actual written exchanges between Grant and Lee on the subject: https://www.nps.gov/rich/learn/historyc ... 7-1864.htm

In March 1864, Ulysses Grant assumed command of all Union armies. In April, he ordered a continuation of the established policy of halting prisoner of war exchanges on the basis of the Confederates’ mistreatment of African American soldiers of the U.S. army.

Grant stated that the murder of surrendering African American soldiers at Fort Pillow on April 12 motivated him to issue a formal demand that Black and White United States soldiers receive identical consideration in their treatment and exchange as prisoners by the Confederacy.

On April 17, Grant wrote to General Benjamin Butler – who was negotiating a resumption of prisoner exchanges – that “the status of colored prisoners” was a priority. He ordered that Butler should communicate the non-negotiable demand that “no distinction whatever will be made in the exchange between white and colored prisoners,” that “the same terms as to treatment while prisoners and conditions of release and exchange must be exacted… in the case of colored soldiers as in the case of white soldiers.” “Non-acquiescence by the Confederate authorities,” Grant declared, “will be regarded as a refusal on their part to agree to the further exchange of prisoners.”1

Confederate Secretary of War James Seddon responded with a refusal of the terms. “I doubt,” he said, “whether the exchange of negroes at all for our soldiers would be tolerated." Ominously, Seddon added, "As to the white officers serving with negro troops, we ought never to be inconvenienced with such prisoners.”2

Robert E. Lee, writing to Grant later in the year, indicated his willingness to include “all captured soldiers of the United States of whatever nation and color,” in exchanges, but complicated the matter by also communicating the contradictory stance that he did not believe anyone who was formerly enslaved warranted treatment as a prisoner of war. “Negroes belonging to our citizens,” he wrote, “are not considered subjects of exchange… they cannot be returned.”3 Grant's response was to inform Lee that "the Government is bound to secure to all persons received into her armies the rights due to soldiers. This being denied by you in the persons of such men as have escaped from Southern masters induces me to decline making the exchanges you ask."4 As such, according to Grant’s April 17 demands, the prohibition on formal prisoner exchanges continued, as it had since the first appearance of African American soldiers on the battlefields.