I refused to participate in the war crimes on the left of this picture. I counseled other young men on how to fightback, refuse to join the madness, reject that cruel and unjust political violence. We must do it all over again.
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Eideard 
“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” Frederick Douglass (1857)
The killings of four and wounding of nine other unarmed Kent State University students by the Ohio National Guard took place on May 4, 1970 during a peace rally at the university opposing the expanding involvement of the Vietnam War into Cambodia by United States military forces as well as protesting the National Guard presence on campus.
“Videos Show Russian Men Breaking Limbs to Avoid Conscription” https://www.newsweek.com/videos-show-russian-men-breaking-limbs-avoid-conscription-1748836
“It became necessary to destroy the town to save it” http://www.thisdayinquotes.com/2010/02/it-became-necessary-to-destroy-town-to.html
The online guide Russians use to escape Putin’s war : This Telegram community is helping Russians plan every detail of their exit https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/10/15/russia-relocation-draft-guide/
…“People need people,” Irina Lobanovskaya, the guide’s founder, said in an interview. “They want to hear [answers] from real human beings and to share their pain.”
Getting accurate information in Russia during the war has been difficult. News sites like the BBC have been blocked, along with the social media sites Facebook and Instagram. Telegram has remained online, becoming a central way people access and share information.
Relocation.Guide [link] started as a Telegram channel right after Russia invaded Ukraine in February. Originally, Lobanovskaya created the group chat to share immigration tips with a tiny circle of friends. She was in Turkey getting her coronavirus vaccination when the war started, and decided not to return. She thought others might need advice on how to leave. Within days, membership swelled to 2,000 people. As of October, roughly 200,000 people have joined. The group’s founder said the guide evades Russian censorship because it’s hosted on an online platform that hasn’t yet been blocked.
Russia has acknowledged the deaths of several of its conscripts in Ukraine, just days after arriving from Chelyabinsk Region to fight in its ongoing, unprovoked war on its neighbour. Russian media reports, citing relatives and close friends of the dead, confirmed that these soldiers were sent to the front without any training.
https://www.kyivpost.com/russias-war/five-conscripts-killed-in-ukraine-sent-to-front-without-combat-experience.html
The BBC Russian Service identified three of the five soldiers as Anton Borisov, Igor Yevseev and Timur Akhmetshin. They were conscripted in the last week of September. Just days later, on Oct. 3, they found themselves near Luhansk in eastern Ukraine. From there, they were transferred to Kherson Region. But their relatives had received the first death notifications by Oct. 9.
The Chelyabinsk authorities confirmed on Oct. 13 that the five had been killed. This is the first instance of local officials acknowledging the death of their mobilized residents.
BBC Russian Service journalists were able to listen to a telephone call between a wounded Chelyabinsk conscript who was being treated in hospital and his companion who was about to be deployed to the front. The first speaker gave an account of how the other five Chelyabinsk conscripts were killed in battle.
Russian military recruiters appear to be employing new and increasingly desperate methods to round up men for the Kremlin’s “partial” mobilization drive.
Military and law enforcement officials in Moscow and St. Petersburg on Friday were seen inspecting the identity papers of passers-by around the entrance to metro stations and handing out draft notices to eligible men in the hallways of apartment buildings, according to local media and eyewitness accounts.
In Moscow, security officers have taken men to military enlistment centers from charity centers for the homeless and needy as well as hostels where labor migrants live, Mediazona reported.
“The police come here without anyone asking. They see a queue of people waiting for food — and then they grab them by the scruff of the neck, against their will,” the head of the Salvation Hangar, an Orthodox Christian organization that helps the homeless, told Mediazona.
The men are then loaded onto buses and transported to military enlistment offices.
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2022/10/14/outrage-as-russian-military-recruiters-resort-to-rounding-up-conscripts-a79092
“Project 100,000, also known as McNamara’s 100,000, McNamara’s Folly, McNamara’s Morons, and McNamara’s Misfits, was a controversial 1960s program by the United States Department of Defense (DoD) to recruit soldiers who would previously have been below military mental or medical standards. Project 100,000 was initiated by Defense Secretary Robert McNamara in October 1966 to meet the escalating manpower requirements of the American government’s involvement in the Vietnam War. According to Hamilton Gregory, author of the book McNamara’s Folly: The Use of Low-IQ Troops in the Vietnam War, inductees of the project died at higher rates than other Americans serving in Vietnam.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_100,000
“Promoted as a response to President Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty by giving training and opportunity to the uneducated and poor, the recruited men were classified as “New Standards Men” (or, pejoratively, as the “Moron Corps”). The number of soldiers reportedly recruited through the program varies, from more than 320,000 to 354,000, which included both voluntary enlistees and draftees (54% and 46%, respectively).”
After the Tet offensive in ’68 the induction centers were taking everybody they could get, including a scrawny kid in line ahead of me who had a tumor on the back of his neck the size of a walnut and couldn’t jump on one foot without falling down during the physical. He went off with the herd but his innocent calf-eyed stare still haunts me.
“McNamara’s Folly: The Use of Low-IQ Troops in the Vietnam War”
“Where Have All the Men in Moscow Gone?
Across the capital, there are noticeably fewer men at restaurants, stores and social gatherings. Many have been called up to fight in Ukraine. Others have fled to avoid being drafted.” https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/19/world/europe/russia-moscow-army-draft.html
“Where Have All the Flowers Gone? — an anti-war song with roots in the Don valley
Pete Seeger used an old Cossack lullaby to craft a powerful lament for dead soldiers and those they leave behind” https://ig.ft.com/life-of-a-song/where-have-all-the-flowers-gone.html
“The Bridegrooms” By Daria Serenko, translated from the Russian by Eugene Ostashevsky https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2022/11/03/the-bridegrooms-daria-serenko/
Daria Serenko is a Russian poet, political activist, and co-founder of the Feminist Anti-War Resistance, which was formed in February to protest the Russian invasion of Ukraine. She was recently forced to leave Russia. (November 2022)
Conscription Officers in Russia Keep Suffering a Grim Fate https://www.newsweek.com/russia-conscription-officers-grim-fate-mobilization-ukraine-1752834
Attacks on military registration and enlistment offices nationwide have also grown since Putin’s decision to partially mobilize reserve troops to fight in Ukraine.
State Duma Deputy Alexander Khinshtein announced Sunday that Russia’s National Guard has been deployed in a number of cities, including Moscow, over the “increased attacks.”
“In connection with the increased attacks on military registration and enlistment offices, the Russian Guard has taken measures to protect them,” Khinshtein wrote on his Telegram channel.”In addition, the offices are included on the routes of patrol units of non-departmental guards all over the country.”
Russian troops have denounced an “incomprehensible battle” in Donetsk after apparently sustaining heavy losses during a week of intense fighting in the key eastern region of Ukraine.
Moscow has been trying to break through Kyiv’s defenses around the town of Pavlivka for at least the past seven days, but it seems to have made little progress with as many as 300 men killed in action, according to an open letter published on a prominent Russian military blog on Monday.
The men of the 155th Brigade of the Russian Pacific Fleet Marines launched stinging criticism against a senior Russian official in a rare display of defiance, accusing authorities of “hiding” the number of casualties “for fear of being held accountable.”
The letter, purportedly sent from the front lines to a regional Russian governor, came amid Moscow’s shaky offensive in a region President Vladimir Putin claimed to have illegally annexed just over a month ago. https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/08/europe/russia-ukraine-donetsk-heavy-losses-letter-intl/index.html
Mexico City: On October 2, 1968, around 10,000 university and high school students gathered in the Plaza de las Tres Culturas to protest the government’s actions and listen peacefully to speeches. What followed is known as the Tlatelolco massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tlatelolco_massacre#Massacre
Tehran, Iran (November 14, 2022): A court in Tehran has issued the first death sentence to a person involved in Iran’s ongoing protests and handed out prison terms to several others.
The Iranian judiciary said late on Sunday that an unnamed individual has been sentenced to execution for “setting fire to a government centre, disturbing public order and collusion for committing crimes against national security” in addition to “moharebeh” (waging war against God) and “corruption on Earth”. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/11/14/iran-court-issues-first-death-sentence-for-protests
The protests began in mid-September after the death in police custody of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman who was arrested in Tehran by morality police for alleged non-compliance with the dress code imposed by the state.
The protests have continued amid ongoing internet restrictions, while the third anniversary of the country’s November 2019 protests approaches later this week.
Iran to disband morality police amid ongoing protests, says attorney general (BBC) https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-63850656
“A video showing military police dragging away two Russian soldiers circulated on social media on November 20, appearing on both Ukrainian and Russian Telegram channels. The pro-war channel Veteran’s Notes (Zapiski Veterana), which was among the first to publish the footage, indicated that it had been recorded in the Belgorod region. Legal experts told Meduza that this demonstration was designed to intimidate Russian soldiers who might resist being sent to the frontlines in Ukraine.” (includes video “Privates were demonstratively detained for non-compliance with orders”) https://meduza.io/en/feature/2022/11/21/video-shows-russian-soldiers-arrested-for-refusing-deployment-to-ukraine
“…This is not the first criminal case in Russia against soldiers accused of disobeying wartime orders. In late October, human rights lawyer Pavel Chikov described [link] another case where the defendant allegedly defied a combat dispatch order, “thereby refusing to participate in combat.”
Moscow-based analyst Mikhail Pozharsky explains [link] that refusing to fight on the pretext of insufficient training or inadequate equipment is the best legal defense for any Russian soldier trying to avoid deployment to Ukraine (whether his actual motives are conscientious or otherwise). “If you’re against the war, and you have been drafted, and you’re not a political activist, your most rational position is to talk about the absence of gear and preparation,” Pozharsky wrote on Telegram. Since the Russian army is unlikely to solve its supply and personnel problems anytime soon, this is the safest legal strategy, as it avoids the criminal risks of pleading objections to the invasion on the grounds of freedom of thought, conscience, or religion.”
Sergey Lavrov, the Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, has called the war in Ukraine a “war” for the first time instead of using the propaganda term “special operation”. https://news.yahoo.com/russian-foreign-minister-openly-admits-114137916.html
Russia came up with a special term for the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the “special military operation”, so as not to call the war a war. Using the word “war” to describe the ongoing war in Ukraine is currently punishable under Russian law.
A taste for resistance : Philologist Gasan Gusejnov explains how Russian-speakers beyond the Kremlin’s control are learning to use language to undermine the Putin regime (Meduza November 29, 2022) https://meduza.io/en/feature/2022/11/29/a-taste-for-resistance
A Moscow court on Friday sentenced Kremlin critic Ilya Yashin to eight years and six months imprisonment, according to Russian state media RIA Novosti, in a blow to what’s left of the country’s opposition.
It is unclear if Yashin’s prison sentence for spreading “false information” about the Russian army includes the time he has already spent in jail during court hearings.
Russian investigators say his statements about the circumstances of the killings in Bucha are a criminal offense under recently introduced legislation, which considers discrediting the Russian armed forces to be illegal. https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/09/europe/kremlin-critic-ilya-yashin-guilty-intl/index.html
After World War II, tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers mutinied — and won https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2021/11/11/world-war-ii-mutiny-protests-veterans/