According to many observers, low morale has been a recurring problem for the #Russian Armed Forces fighting in Ukraine.
Over 18,000 #soldiers of the Southern Military District have allegedly deserted in total, with around 12,000 of them belonging to the 8th Combined Arms Army – a unit often deployed in hostilities in eastern Ukraine.
Of this number, around 10,000 are mobilized conscripts and 2,000 contract soldiers
This 12-year-old Palestinian was taken to an Israeli interrogation centre without a lawyer or parent, after being accused of throwing stones at Israeli soldi...#12-year-old #AlJazeera #AlJazeeraEnglish #Children #Israeli #KareemGhawaneh #alJazeera #aljazeeraEnglish #aljazeeralive #aljazeeravideo #aljazeeraEnglish #aljazeeralatest #aljazeeralive #aljazeeralivenews #arrest #child #detain #detained #forces #interrogated #latestnews #newsheadlines #occupiedWestBank #rocks #soldiers #stones #throwing
12-year-old Palestinian detained and interrogated by Israeli forces | Al Jazeera Newsfeed
This is the moment two children were shot by Israeli soldiers during a raid in Jenin in the occupied West Bank. An 8-year-old boy was shot in the head and a ...#8-year-old #AlJazeera #AlJazeeraEnglish #Israeli #alJazeera #aljazeeraEnglish #aljazeeralive #aljazeeravideo #aljazeeraEnglish #aljazeeralatest #aljazeeralive #aljazeeralivenews #area #army #boys #chest #children #closed #declared #forces #head #jenin #kill #killed #latestnews #military #newsheadlines #occupiedWestBank #raid #shot #soldiers #teenager #two #zone
Two Palestinian children killed by Israeli forces in Jenin | Al Jazeera Newsfeed
Al Jazeera’s Stefanie Dekker travelled to near the Gaza border and witnessed Israeli tanks and soldiers assembling ahead of an expected ground invasion of th...#AlJazeera #AlJazeeraEnglish #Gaza #Hamas #Israel #Palestine #alJazeera #aljazeeraEnglish #aljazeeralive #aljazeeravideo #aljazeeraEnglish #aljazeeralatest #aljazeeralive #aljazeeralivenews #assault #ground #invasion #latestnews #military #newsheadlines #soldiers #tanks #war
Israeli tanks mass near Gaza ahead of expected ground offensive | Al Jazeera Newsfeed
The Peace Pledge Union (PPU) described the plan as a threat to #civilian #democracy in the #UK.
The PPU pointed out that #troops have no authority to arrest #civilians under UK law. They said that no-one has any obligation to co-operate with the armed forces or obey instructions from them.
Their comments follow the news that the Ministry of Defence has offered #soldiers to support armed #police officers in the Metropolitan Police after a number of police officers withdraw from firearms roles.
The PPU described the proposal to deploy troops as a particularly alarming example of everyday #militarism. They added that the last 20 years have seen a rise in #military involvement in civilian life, through initiatives such as the introduction of Armed Forces Day, military covenants and sharply increased funding for cadet units while other youth services have been cut.
Symon Hill, Campaigns Manager of the Peace Pledge Union (PPU), said:
“Most British people do not want Britain to be the sort of country in which soldiers stand around on street corners brandishing guns. Deploying troops to carry out police functions is a threat to Britain’s traditions of democracy and civil liberty.
“No-one should feel obliged to obey instructions given by troops on the streets. We have our rights because our ancestors campaigned for them. We must not give up our freedoms by allowing ourselves to be subjected to military authority.
“The armed forces and their leaders are rarely held to account – even less so than the police. Certain police officers’ fears of accountability must not be used as an excuse for the armed forces to grab more power over civilian life.”
#pacifist #pacifists #pacifism #antiwar #antimilitarist #antimilitary #peace #propeace #HumanRights
Video shows fierce gun battle between Israeli soldiers and Hamas fighters along a highway near Ashkelon in southern Israel, after Palestinian fighters broke ...#AlJazeera #AlJazeeraEnglish #Ashkelon #Gaza #Hamas #Israel #Israeli #Palestinian #Strip #alJazeera #aljazeeraEnglish #aljazeeralive #aljazeeravideo #aljazeeraEnglish #aljazeeralatest #aljazeeralive #aljazeeralivenews #battle #besieged #fierce #fighters #fighting #gun #highway #latestnews #newsheadlines #soldiers #southern
Hamas fighters battle Israeli forces in southern Israel | AJ #shorts
Mrs. Robin and I home schooled both of our children (now grown and with families of their own), and #homeschool American #History classes included attendance at - and then participation in - "Living History" events. These are re-creations of people and events that made American History and whose impact continues to this day.
The article linked below is my "Report of the Chaplain" following this past weekend's amazing re-creation of the three-day Battle of Chickamauga. This was the last Confederate victory before the rape of the South by General Sherman which devastated much of Georgia but helped bring the War Between the States to an end. Written from the point of view of a Confederate soldier, and with heavy emphasis on the spiritual aspects of that terrible war, I hope readers find it informative and inspiring:
#USA #CSA #civil-war #USA-history #soldiers #armies #gospel #bible #revival #judgment
Last week, “D” (25 y/o) refused #conscription to the Israeli military a third time due to his conscientious objection to becoming a soldier and act as an occupier and oppressor to the Palestinian people. He received another #prison sentence, this time of 20 days, after already serving 14 days in prison and 5 days under arrest in a #military base.
On one of the times that “D” arrived to refuse #conscription he received a ridiculous treatment over his key chain that had the image of the Palestinian flag. While entering the military base, the guards at the gate were so startled to see his key chain it cause panic that resulted in detaining “D”, calling for back-up, bringing in a consultation of 8 #soldiers (one of whom was a commander), alerting the head of the unit that was in charge of “D” to “examine the problem”, and to triple the number of #guards watching over him in the car ride to the prison.
All of this has not deterred “D” one bit and will not make him flinch or change his position. #RSN and #Mesarvot salute him for ALL his actions.
--- Excerpt from https://mailchi.mp/refuser/refusers-solidarity-15090593
#ConscientiousObjection #ConscientiousObjector #Israel #Palestine #WRI
From of my favorite #american #propaganda sources, about the #offensive and #defensive #killings of #soldiers in #Ukraine.
According to the NATO veteran, “this is more propaganda offensive than real offensive. They scraped together enough gear, ammunition and manpower to make a barely audible tactical bang. It’s a punch with nothing behind it. Those guys are already dead. This isn’t even wishful thinking. It’s cynical trading in flesh.”
https://johnhelmer.net/the-imitation-offensive/#more-87986 about the dying Soldiers in Ukraine
#Ukrainian #soldiers are being sent to the front to #die for the sake of ... ? #death
Scheduled hospital admissions have been halted in Kiev since 2 December on the orders of the Kiev administration.
The reason is the huge number of wounded coming from Bakhmut.
According to an eyewitness, a journalist for the major Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, more than 100 seriously wounded Ukrainian soldiers are being admitted to one hospital evacuation point alone.
source
That was the revelation this week when archaeologists from #Newcastle #University and Historic England uncovered sections of #graffiti, carved by Roman soldiers in the year 207, in a quarry near a section of Hadrian’s Wall in #Cumbria, #England.
#history #soldiers #phallus #archeology #men #hadrianswall #dickpic
This #video has been removed for violating YouTube's policy on hate speech.
While genuine hatred of Russia is awarded the "Peace Prize" of the book trade in #Germany, such a video falls under hate speech.
https://odysee.com/@EvaKareneBartlett:9/donbass-commanders-ukrainian-people-are:d
#Russia #Ukraine #Soldiers #Motivation #war #peace #media #Bartlett
I held a gun in my hands before I was 10 years old.
You could say I was raised in the Israeli army, or at least in the spirit of the Israeli Army. My father, who was a #military officer during most of my childhood, took my sister and me to his military base on weekends. There I held a gun, entered tanks, and collected gun bullets lying on the ground. As a child, that was cool! I also grew up without a grandfather. From very early on, on every national Memorial Day, I would skip the school ceremony to attend the grave of my grandfather who was killed in the 1973 war (The Yom Kippur War). I was nurtured on the #glory of the #army and on war-related bereavement.
But as the years went by, I became more aware, and I started to attend demonstrations against the #occupation with my mother. When I was at high school we started visiting Sheikh Jarrah, where I met families that stood to lose all they had, and to end up in the streets with their children as a result of the #Jerusalem municipality campaign, jointly with the settlers to empty Jerusalem of #Palestinians. Among other things, I saw a fence that settlers had build through a private Palestinian backyard, and the #police who were securing it, prevening all from entering, until we ourselves yanked it from the ground. In Sheikh Jarrah, the police stopped and interrogated me for the sole reason that I had a Palestinian flag. Almost weekly, police violently seize flags from the protestors.
Although I was raised in a #militaristic family, where the army was a sacred cow, and although I was told in school that soldiers are heroes, I never wanted to enlist in the army. My unwillingness to enlist, was transformed over the years to the act of active refusal of the draft and the more I realized what soldiers really do. I realized that there is an entire system, military, economic and ideological, whose task is to preserve the occupation and the #oppression of the Palestinians.
This year, during the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah, tens of masked #settlers went to Masafer Yatta, threw stones at the Palestinian residents, at their children and at their houses. Windshields were smashed, and many people injured, including a three-year-old child who was injured in his head. This event was not unique. It was just one more day in the violent reality that the population in Masafer Yatta endure, where attacks by settlers are a daily occurrence.
And where is the #army in this story? The same one I was expected to enlist in? Where are the heroic #soldiers that we hear of? In almost every #violent incident perpetrated by settlers the army, under the best of circumstances, does nothing. More frequently, however, it enables, supports and even provides weapons and backup to the settlers. This is the occupation – this #violence is not a bug, it is a feature. The state, the army, and the settlers have the same purpose – in Masaffer Yatta and throughout the rest of the occupied Palestinian territories: the creation of territorial continuity in Israeli control that cuts the West Bank into pieces. These aims – territorial control and the removal of the Palestinians – has led to the biggest population transfer since 1967, taking place as we speak in Masafer Yatta. The army and the settlers are equal partners in this project.
The occupation and the oppression of the Palestinians are closely linked to Israeli #capitalism. For the Israeli elites, the occupation is #profitable. Israeli Weapon companies make millions from selling #weapons to regimes such as Yemen and the United Arabs Emirates. Weapons that are sold after they were tried on Gaza and the West Bank – and are promoted by the misery, the poverty, and the death that it had created. As well, the occupation is profitable – as a device to abuse Palestinian workers. Israeli #corporations and wealthy people employ Palestinians both, in the occupied territories and inside Israel, and #abuse them with long working hours and low salaries, taking advantage of the fact that the Palestinians have no way to secure their rights. In that way the rich profit directly from the oppression of the Palestinians people.
The #narrative of the country perpetuated through the educational system provides a narrow #colonialist view on history and on the reality in the state of #Israel. It tells us that the country was built by heroic pioneers, without ever discussing what and who was here before. It tells us about villages and cities that were built, but not how Palestinian lands were bought and their inhabitants banished. It creates a false unity of Jewish interests with the Jewish rich, rather than with the Palestinians. It tries to make us think that the occupation benefits us, the Jewish workers, in order to eliminate any possibility of true solidarity with the Palestinians or bringing an end to the #occupation – all of which stands to hurt in their pocket.
We live in a country that call itself self enlightened and liberal, "the only democracy in the middle east", but at the same time, runs a murderous #apartheid regime and commits war crimes regularly and systematically. Israel implements policies of house demolitions, journalists’ killings, of breaking into homes, mass arrests, the arrest of children, collective punishments; illegal #settlements, a siege on #Gaza and much more on a daily basis. This country exploits our personal loss and pain over the people we loved and who died because of this cruel reality, to further its #propaganda.
As humans we must resist this reality. As humans we must refuse to demolish homes, arrest children, and refuse the destructive reality that Palestinians live in. As humans we must make amends for the wrongs of the past of the occupation and the Nakba.
As workers we must show #solidarity and #cooperation with Palestinian workers, and fight against the rich that profit from our #expolitation.
As potential army inductees, this is our opportunity not only to serve the country and the army. It is our opportunity to support the fight for #justice, #peace, and #equality. Whether through psychological disqualification, by appealing to the army’s conscientious objection’s committee or through serving jail sentences, we refuse to serve in the occupation army. We must fight for a better future. It will not be easy. Our opponents are strong. However, where there is #oppression, there is also #brotherhood and #solidarity, and that no one can take from us.
In solidarity,
Nave
#Israel #Palestine #ConscientiousObjector #ConscientiousObjection #OccupationObjector
https://www.chron.com/politics/article/Back-to-school-ad-shows-Texas-child-wearing-body-17374969.php
https://nitter.it/MomsAGAbbott/status/1559240527601696770
Our #children are not #soldiers, regardless of what the extreme right thinks. Whether you’re a #Democrat, #Republican, or neither, it’s time to #come-together and demand #gun-safety now.
#texas #back-to-school #women-led #pac #maga #mothers-against-greg-abbott #uvalde #beto #FirstDayOfSchool
How deadly is the American military?
It is difficult to measure how many enemy #deaths #American armed forces have inflicted. Americans and their allies typically cause 10 to 20 times more combat #casualties than American #forces suffer. Estimates of #Iraqi #soldiers killed in the Gulf War range from 1,500 to 100,000. The lowest figure would still be 10 times the number of Americans killed in the #war. Approximately 850,000 #Vietcong died in the #Vietnam War, 18 times the 47,000 U.S. dead. More than 600,000 North Korean and 1 million Chinese fighters died in the #Korean War, almost 50 times the 33,000 American dead. In World War II, 3,250,000 German and 1,507,000 Japanese soldiers, sailors, and pilots were killed, 16 times the 291,000 American servicemen who were killed.
We are very excited to share news of a new website, called War on West Papua. The website identifies a wide-range of #weapons and #military equipment used by the #Indonesian security forces in their ongoing #occupation of #WestPapua.
If like me you may not have known anything about this occupation, the website provides valuable background on the situation, along with other information about those complicit in the occupation.
International military and police training and joint exercises contribute to a culture of impunity for the #occupying #forces in West Papua. #Soldiers and #police grow more confident that they will not be held accountable by the international community any more than they are in #Indonesia itself.
The accelerating rate of weapons sales to Indonesia, where the #defense budget has tripled in five years, is of grave concern to people in #Papua and many other Indonesian-controlled territories.
Author(s) Movement of Conscientious Objectors (Russia)
Dear conscientious objectors to military service, today we mark our #CO day while #war is being waged.As the war with #Ukraine began, the notion of refusing #military service in #Russia has become especially topical. Before the war, most #conscripts and their relatives did not associate military service as conscripts with actual #warfare. #Conscription appeared to be something akin to a sports camp with elements of military training.
Regardless of their political views, the healthy feeling of fear of participating in warfare in the territory of a foreign country forces people to file appeals for alternative civilian service and to protect their right not to serve in the #army by other means.
For some of the #objectors to military service, the chance to specify in their application that they object to Russia's war in Ukraine is important. This is a legal form of expressing one's disagreement directly to the representatives of state authorities—a matter of #moral significance.
In the course of the months of warfare, we have witnessed a totally new phenomenon: cases in which professional #soldiers refuse to participate in the special operation[*] and demand to terminate their contracts. We wish to express our special #gratitude to those soldiers and police officers who had the courage to #refuse to kill and die in a foreign land, who refused to participate in the special operation.
Today, when many people apprehend the introduction of partial of full [military] mobilisation in Russia, it is precisely the right to conscientious objection to military service that offers them support.
The Movement of Conscientious Objectors in Russia expresses its #solidarity with all those who oppose war, with everyone who stands against the act of #aggression. We wish and pray, with all our might, for Ukraine to survive the assault and retain its independence.
[* "The special operation" is Russia's ongoing attack on Ukraine; formally, it is not a war, but a "special operation", and is being referred to as such in official contexts in Russia]
Заявление Движения сознательных отказчиков к Международному дню отказчиков от военной службы — 15 мая 2022
Дорогие сознательные отказчики от военной службы! Сегодня мы встречаем наш день во время ведения военных действий.С началом войны с Украиной идея отказа от военной службы в России стала особенно актуальной. До войны большинство призывников и их родных не связывали военную службу по призыву и военные действия. Призыв представлялся им чем-то вроде спортивного лагеря с элементами военной подготовки.
Независимо от политических взглядов, здоровое чувство страха перед участием в военных действиях на территории чужого государства заставляет людей подавать заявления на альтернативную гражданскую службу и защищать свое право не служить в армии другими способами.
Для части отказчиков от военной службы важным является возможность в своем заявлении указать, что они являются противниками войны Россия в Украине. Это легальная форма выражения своего несогласия непосредственно представителям власти, что имеет моральное значение.
За месяцы военных действий мы увидели совершенно новое явление: случаи, когда военнослужащие по контракту отказываются участвовать в спецоперации, требуют расторжения контракта. Мы выражаем особую благодарность тем военнослужащим и сотрудникам полиции, которые имели мужество отказаться убивать и умирать в чужой стране, отказались от участия в спецоперации.
Сегодня, когда многие люди опасаются возможного введения частичной или полной мобилизации в России, именно право на отказ от военной службы по убеждениям совести становится для них поддержкой.
Движение сознательных отказчиков от военной службы России выражает солидарность со всеми противниками войны, со всеми, кто противостоит агрессии. Мы из всех сил желаем и молимся, чтобы Украина выстояла и сохранила свою независимость.
Р24 февраля 2022 ДСО опубликовало Заявление в связи с началом спецоперации
#CODay #peace #antiwar #pacifist #pacifism #ConscientiousObjectors #ConscientiousObjection
Source: https://www.huckmag.com/perspectives/how-tinder-became-a-weapon-in-the-russia-ukraine-war/
Since Tinder shows how far away you are from a match, Sara realised that by creating two fake Tinder accounts and setting the locations to two different areas near the border, she could triangulate the exact locations of her matches. She has so far tipped off the Ukrainian authorities with the details of more than seventy Tinder accounts via an email and Telegram account set up by the Ukrainians to gather information. She has not been told by the Ukrainian authorities how or if the information she’s passed on has been used.
#internet #app #news #military #spy #soldiers #location #smartphone #hack #security
“Colorful demonstrations and weekend marches are vital but alone are not powerful enough to stop #wars. Wars will be stopped only when #soldiers #refuse to fight, when workers refuse to load #weapons onto #ships and #aircraft, when people #boycott the economic outposts of #Empire that are strung across the globe. ”
― Arundhati Roy, Public Power in the Age of Empire
:quality(70)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/archetype/6RGIQJWCJBB2JPP6CU464BSCYU.jpg)
