Russia Attacks Ukraine

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Diogenes
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Russia Attacks Ukraine

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Post by Diogenes »

For the first time since 1939 a major European power, Russia, has attacked another country in Europe, Ukraine. We have not seen an analogous situation since Germany attacked Poland setting off World War 2. Surprisingly we have Neville Chamberlain like appeasement/isolationist responses from Donald Trump and Tucker Carlson. Besides the 180° turn from traditional Republican politics, to what extent are these events relevant to Christianity?
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Re: Russia Attacks Ukraine

Post #211

Post by mgb »

[Replying to AgnosticBoy in post #208]
He went to Moscow and convinced Putin (or embarrassed him into) letting the civilians out of the steel works. Hats off to him.

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Re: Russia Attacks Ukraine

Post #212

Post by AgnosticBoy »

Here is some good news:
"All women, children and elderly" have been evacuated from Azovstal, Ukrainian government says

Ukraine's Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said that "all women, children and elderly people" have been evacuated from the Azovstal steel plant.

Separately, the general staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said that Russian forces continue to blockade the Ukrainian troops inside the plant and were using artillery and tank fire as they conducted assault operations.
Source: CNN

This is just as I predicted which is why civilians should never be placed in proximity to military equipment or personnel. The alternative view by some here was that separating the two wouldn't matter since all would be killed alike. At least in this case, and a lot of other cases, it shows that the alternative view is false, or unlikely.
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Re: Russia Attacks Ukraine

Post #213

Post by Sherlock Holmes »

[Replying to Diogenes in post #193]

I think people often find it a struggle to develop an objective view of these kinds of conflicts, there is the ever present desire for it all to "make sense" in some way.

The media/press make this easy for us by peddling a simplistic "good" vs "evil" narrative, this is continually being used to frame the news, we are encouraged, manipulated even, to perceive the unfolding drama within a certain framework.

I know from first hand experience over many years, that the press, media do this. For example during the NATO bombing of Serbia there were several instances where the TV news reported anti-war protests and played down the number dramatically, the fact that there were protests was reported as relatively minor, a tiny minority, often terms like "left leaning" and so on were used when reporting this.

It was a lie, I was present at several of these and for example witnessed many elderly British soldiers from WW2 who also protested because Serbia was a strong ally even getting bombed for refusing to align with the Nazis, all absent from the "news" at that time; what? British war heroes opposing NATO bombing, Britain's bombing of the evil Serbia? surely not? But it is true.

So a busy working person who grabs a newspaper or catches the TV news will be subject to this bias, they don't for one minute think the news is censoring by omission but it was then and is now, I witnessed this first hand, I complained to the BBC for example who downplayed and denied what I and thousands of others had seen with their own eyes.

If I tell people this of course they often scoff and even attack me for making the claims about bias!

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Re: Russia Attacks Ukraine

Post #214

Post by JoeyKnothead »

Sherlock Holmes wrote: Fri May 13, 2022 11:26 am [Replying to Diogenes in post #193]

I think people often find it a struggle to develop an objective view of these kinds of conflicts, there is the ever present desire for it all to "make sense" in some way.

The media/press make this easy for us by peddling a simplistic "good" vs "evil" narrative, this is continually being used to frame the news, we are encouraged, manipulated even, to perceive the unfolding drama within a certain framework.

I know from first hand experience over many years, that the press, media do this. For example during the NATO bombing of Serbia there were several instances where the TV news reported anti-war protests and played down the number dramatically, the fact that there were protests was reported as relatively minor, a tiny minority, often terms like "left leaning" and so on were used when reporting this.

It was a lie, I was present at several of these and for example witnessed many elderly British soldiers from WW2 who also protested because Serbia was a strong ally even getting bombed for refusing to align with the Nazis, all absent from the "news" at that time; what? British war heroes opposing NATO bombing, Britain's bombing of the evil Serbia? surely not? But it is true.

So a busy working person who grabs a newspaper or catches the TV news will be subject to this bias, they don't for one minute think the news is censoring by omission but it was then and is now, I witnessed this first hand, I complained to the BBC for example who downplayed and denied what I and thousands of others had seen with their own eyes.

If I tell people this of course they often scoff and even attack me for making the claims about bias!
I don't think folks're ignoring real or potential bias.

Is it biased to say Russia attacked Ukraine?

Or should we all fuss at Ukraine for picking on poor ol put upon Russia?
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Re: Russia Attacks Ukraine

Post #215

Post by Sherlock Holmes »

[Replying to JoeyKnothead in post #214]

No, it is entirely accurate to say Russia attacked Ukraine, and it is undoubtedly against international law that Russia attacked Ukraine.

Will we condemn all countries which violate international law by attacking other countries, surely that's the question we need to ask?

Or will we be selective, granting some nations special privileges to break the law while denying that privilege to other countries, that's the key question that arises from the media and press coverage.

If the law is not applied impartially then its isn't really a law.

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Re: Russia Attacks Ukraine

Post #216

Post by JoeyKnothead »

Sherlock Holmes wrote: Fri May 13, 2022 3:39 pm [Replying to JoeyKnothead in post #214]

No, it is entirely accurate to say Russia attacked Ukraine, and it is undoubtedly against international law that Russia attacked Ukraine.

Will we condemn all countries which violate international law by attacking other countries, surely that's the question we need to ask?

Or will we be selective, granting some nations special privileges to break the law while denying that privilege to other countries, that's the key question that arises from the media and press coverage.

If the law is not applied impartially then its isn't really a law.
Preach!

In trying to claim some moral high ground, a nation oughta, ya know, take the high road (looking at you, Murica)
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Re: Russia Attacks Ukraine

Post #217

Post by Sherlock Holmes »

Here is an article that was current at the time NATO stopped being a "defensive alliance" and decided to break international law, being unaware of this history, might make it hard for some to see why NATO is regarded as dangerous - and not just by Russia.

Bombing shames Britain - June 1999
The playwright Harold Pinter told an anti-war demonstration that he was ashamed to be British because of Nato's bombing of Yugoslavia.

At the gathering of more than 6,000 marchers in a park next to the Imperial War Museum in London on Saturday, he described the current peace talks as a sham, and claimed that the war had been totally unwarranted.

Standing in the shadow of the two 15in naval guns that sit at the entrance to the museum, the playwright threw his words out like stones, each of them aimed at the Labour government.

"I am sure those people here today who voted the Labour party into power share the same feeling Ð a deep sense of shame, the shame of being British.

"Little did we think two years ago that we had elected a government which would take a leading role in what is essentially a criminal act, showing total contempt for the United Nations and international law."

Pinter said Britain's leaders had been engaging in despicable hypocrisy, and contrasted Tony Blair's description of the nail bombing of a bar in Soho's Old Compton Street as "barbaric" with his defence of the cluster bombs dropped on Yugoslavia as "civilisation against barbarism".

"These cluster bombs cut children to pieces and this is an act which takes place 15,000ft under those brave bombers. An act which Mr Blair, with his moralistic Christianity, applauds," Pinter said.

"Let us face the truth. The truth is that neither Clinton nor Blair gives a damn about the Kosovar Albanians. This action has been yet another blatant and brutal assertion of US power using Nato as its missile. It set out to consolidate one thing Ð American domination of Europe. This must be fully recognised and it must be resisted."

The march, which began at the Embankment, had been organised by the Committee for Peace in the Balkans before the peace talks began. The organisers went ahead with the protest because they said it was "obscene" that the bombing was continuing.

Carrying anti-Nato flags, target placards and crosses with the name of the civilian dead in Serbia and Kosovo, as well as trade union banners, the marchers chanted anti-war slogans and demanded that money be spent on welfare rather than warfare.

The march coincided with a number of other anti-war marches around the world, including one outside the Pentagon in Washington, which sent messages of support.

A rally in Glasgow was addressed by the Labour MP for Linlithgow, Tam Dalyell. Alice Mahon, the Labour MP for Halifax, told the London crowd that the real US objective in the war was the occupation of Yugoslavia, a country which had "resisted 72 days of criminal bombardment".

She said that what she had learned was that Nato could now destroy any country from 10,000ft in the air and the only way smaller countries could defend themselves would be to obtain nuclear weapons.

"The Committee for Peace in the Balkans intends to continue its work when the bombing has stopped," she said. "We are not going to stop until justice is done."

¥ About 200 Kosovo Albanians gathered in Trafalgar Square in London yesterday at a rally to give thanks to Nato and the British government. Waving British and European Union flags as well as those of the United States and the Kosovo Liberation Army, they marked a minute's silence for the "Albanian heroes" of the war. Chanting "Free Kosovo", they demanded that no Russian troops or Serbian police should be in Kosovo.

Ben Bradshaw, the Labour MP for Exeter, said that while he wanted to say "I told you so", it was not a day for gloating because there was a lot of work to be done.

"We can show an example to the rest of the Balkans how people can live together," he said.

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Re: Russia Attacks Ukraine

Post #218

Post by Purple Knight »

Sherlock Holmes wrote: Fri May 13, 2022 3:39 pmWill we condemn all countries which violate international law by attacking other countries, surely that's the question we need to ask?

Or will we be selective, granting some nations special privileges to break the law while denying that privilege to other countries, that's the key question that arises from the media and press coverage.
The latter is always tempting - to successfully find and out the bad guy and do what everyone knows is right even if it's not the letter of the law. But that way, there can never be any accord, unless you expect the bad guy to see himself as the bad guy and agree that he ought not have the same rights as others.

All of those who see only those who defy shared rules as the bad guys, can have accord, and peace, at least in theory.

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Re: Russia Attacks Ukraine

Post #219

Post by AgnosticBoy »

This is NON-partisan information to counter the PARTISAN information in this thread... for those who were questioning my claims earlier in this thread:
In a war awash in atrocities, the attack on the nursing home near the village of Stara Krasnyanka stood out for its cruelty. And Ukrainian authorities placed the fault squarely on Russian forces, accusing them of killing more than 50 vulnerable civilians in a brutal and unprovoked attack.

But a new United Nations report has found that Ukraine’s armed forces bear a large, and perhaps equal, share of the blame for what happened in Stara Krasnyanka, which is about 580 kilometers (360 miles) southeast of Kyiv. A few days before the attack, Ukrainian soldiers took up positions inside the nursing home, effectively making the building a target.

At least 22 of the 71 patients survived the assault, but the exact number of people killed remains unknown, according to the U.N.

The report by the U.N.'s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights doesn’t conclude the Ukrainian soldiers or the Moscow-backed separatist fighters committed a war crime. But it said the battle at the Stara Krasnyanka nursing home is emblematic of the human rights office’s concerns over the potential use of “human shields” to prevent military operations in certain areas.

But Ukraine also must abide by the international rules of the battlefield. David Crane, a former U.S. Defense Department official and a veteran of numerous international war crime investigations, said the Ukrainian forces may have violated the laws of armed conflict by not evacuating the nursing home’s residents and staff.

“The bottom-line rule is that civilians cannot intentionally be targeted. Period. For whatever reason,” Crane said. “The Ukrainians placed those people in a situation which was a killing zone. And you can’t do that.”

The Associated Press and the PBS series “Frontline,” drawing from a variety of sources, have independently documented hundreds of attacks across Ukraine that likely constitute war crimes. The vast majority appear to have been committed by Russia. But a handful, including the destruction of the Stara Krasnyanka care home, indicate Ukrainian fighters are also to blame.
- Associated Press reporting
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