4 ms·

The evidence presented by the BBC in 2020: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-53597137 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-53597137 And apparently Australia had already relea

by axus 1y ago

The evidence presented by the BBC in 2020: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-53597137 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-53597137 And apparently Australia had already released their report and investigation of their own behavior: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-55088230 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-55088230 But only the whistleblower and one other were tried and convicted: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brereton_Report https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brereton_Report

pinkmuffinere 1y ago
Wow, that’s crazy, the _whistleblower_ and one other person were tried and convicted. Essentially just punishing the person that felt bad enough to reveal the crime, not the many that committed it and stayed silent. :(
- defrost 1y ago
  In a nod to an actual reality that's stranger than you imagine ... > the person that felt bad enough to reveal the crime is considerably arse backwards. To scratch the surface of that: McBride had previously raised concerns within the Australian Defence Force about the dangers of increasingly restrictive rules of engagement and the nature of investigations into members of the special forces. The ABC found evidence of war crimes and published the information in their 2017 publication The Afghan Files. McBride was allegedly unhappy with ABC's reporting of his documents. ie. The "whistleblower" disclosed examples of behaviour of the SASR and other(?) special force groups not with the motivation of disclosing "war crimes" but to provide examples of "stuff the lads do to get the job done", behaviours that were being threatened by kid glove thinking and internal policing that might have a bias, etc. During the case, McBride's lawyers stated he acted out of concern about the nature of the Defence Force's “excessive investigation of soldiers” in Afghanistan. McBride believed the investigations were a "PR exercise" to compensate for earlier public allegations of war crimes. Justice David Mossop stated "the way you've explained it is that the higher-ups might have been acting illegally by investigating these people too much, and that that was the source of the illegality that was being exposed." ~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_McBride_(whistleblower) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_McBride_(whistleblower) However his story changed and wandered over the course of time his initial motivation on record wasn't at all that he felt bad about the rules of engagement being disregarded, he felt that such things were being chased down too hard.
  - pinkmuffinere 1y ago
    Wow that is insane, thanks for linking the Wikipedia page. To summarize, the thing he was whistleblowing was over-scrutiny of military personnel actions! He wasn’t whistleblowing the murders! That’s crazy and horrible.
    - franktankbank 1y ago
      Devils advocate and not necessarily McBride's argument but... does the "blooding" happen if "throwdowns" weren't already commonplace due to the over-oversight? Normalization of deviance creating a path for worse things? Once you are over there and everyone knows they have to do some amount of illegal shit its kind of difficult because the line is already crossed, where is the new line? Noone knows. I've seen this on much less high stakes scales and its a potent source of crazy-making.
      - defrost 1y ago
        Speaking of normalisation it's worth raising that as a former British Army major of a certain age McBride very much more than likely grew up with lashings of the Lance Corporal Jones approach to dealing with others: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhWlAKdlQp4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhWlAKdlQp4
- ashoeafoot 1y ago
  They did not stay silent . They bragged about warcrimes openly on a podcast. Persecute the murderous fuckers hard and fast, but not publicly. This affair cooking up smells to much like another russian anti colonial sentiment cooking op.
  - suraci 1y ago
    russian？
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - arresin 1y ago
      Australia. The land down under mate. Nice beaches. Vegemite. The good guys. > This included a practice of "blooding" where junior soldiers were told to get their first kill by shooting a prisoner. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_war_crimes https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_war_crimes
    - ashoeafoot 1y ago
      Thats how they recruit- stir up anti-western sentiments by getting western self flaggelation conversations going . You allow the resulting volunteers/ dhijhadis / freedom fighters in as part of some chechyan warlords entourage and throw them into a colonial war in ukraine, where the Afghanistan war is just another tuesday in the Russian army . Same playbook since forever. Those anti-gaza protest are going to give birth to radicalized cells too. Its free fighters, the wests open discussions just another self radicalisation recruitment platform. Beats paying gig workers: https://newlinesmag.com/reportage/russias-new-weapon-child-suicide-bombers/ https://newlinesmag.com/reportage/russias-new-weapon-child-s... Im all for dragging the whole shebang through all the mud. The politicians who parked the war aimlessly , against a non existing country. The officers and media who went along, the soldiers that filtered through and the psychopaths that situation called for. But im against providing the anti western coalition (quatar/teheran/moscow/bejing) ressources.
  - pinkmuffinere 1y ago
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
FirmwareBurner 1y ago
>But only the whistleblower and one other were tried and convicted: Of course, what did you expect? Murder is legal if it's for the government, and, exposing your government's secret dirty laundry is a crime against the law. Business as usual everywhere. I'm not aware of any government that rewards you when you exposed it as fool/criminal in front of their voters and the world. Hence why whistleblowers get the book thrown at them, as there's one set of rules for the plebs and another for the super wealthy and powerful. And do you know what's most ironic? We're rewarding our own soldiers for the same crimes we hanged the Nazi soldiers for. Another proof that the legality of right VS wrong, good VS evil, has less to do with morals and more to do with whether you're on the victorious side of history.
- SAI_Peregrinus 1y ago
  > Another proof that the legality of right VS wrong, good VS evil, has less to do with morals and more to do with whether you're on the victorious side of history. I'd say more that "legality" and "morals" are not necessarily related. Morality cannot be imposed by laws, and laws aren't usually driven by morality. This applies to both secular and religious laws.
- lwo32k 1y ago
  Making a dent is possible, but to take on power you need other powerful people/networks backing you. Most whistleblowers don't do enough homework. They just want to dump things out there and hope for the best. That's never good enough.
  - FirmwareBurner 1y ago
    > but to take on power you need other powerful people/networks backing you. Most whistleblowers don't do enough homework. Doing your homework and having powerful people behind you are orthogonal. You can do all the homework you want but powerful people got in power and staid in power for playing for those in power, they're not gonna throw away all that to die on your hill with you. You might think you can get away by playing one political side against the other for your protection and rally support, but when it comes to national security, military industrial complex, the ultra wealthy elites, etc, those tend to be part of and fund both sides so it won't work out in your favor as you might expect. >They just want to dump things out there and hope for the best. What's the alternative? Once you start "doing your homework" those in power will already find out you're rocking the boat and will lock you up under the usual $ESPIONAGE, $TERRORISM, $PATRIOT laws before you manage to send a text, so your safest bet is to release all info quickly to the public/press while you're still able to. Time works against you here. The longer you're in possession of dirt that can get those at the top in trouble, the more you risk finding yourself "Epsteined".

by axus 1y ago

pinkmuffinere 1y ago

Wow, that’s crazy, the _whistleblower_ and one other person were tried and convicted. Essentially just punishing the person that felt bad enough to reveal the crime, not the many that committed it and stayed silent. :(

defrost 1y ago
In a nod to an actual reality that's stranger than you imagine ... > the person that felt bad enough to reveal the crime is considerably arse backwards. To scratch the surface of that: McBride had previously raised concerns within the Australian Defence Force about the dangers of increasingly restrictive rules of engagement and the nature of investigations into members of the special forces. The ABC found evidence of war crimes and published the information in their 2017 publication The Afghan Files. McBride was allegedly unhappy with ABC's reporting of his documents. ie. The "whistleblower" disclosed examples of behaviour of the SASR and other(?) special force groups not with the motivation of disclosing "war crimes" but to provide examples of "stuff the lads do to get the job done", behaviours that were being threatened by kid glove thinking and internal policing that might have a bias, etc. During the case, McBride's lawyers stated he acted out of concern about the nature of the Defence Force's “excessive investigation of soldiers” in Afghanistan. McBride believed the investigations were a "PR exercise" to compensate for earlier public allegations of war crimes. Justice David Mossop stated "the way you've explained it is that the higher-ups might have been acting illegally by investigating these people too much, and that that was the source of the illegality that was being exposed." ~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_McBride_(whistleblower) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_McBride_(whistleblower) However his story changed and wandered over the course of time his initial motivation on record wasn't at all that he felt bad about the rules of engagement being disregarded, he felt that such things were being chased down too hard.
- pinkmuffinere 1y ago
  Wow that is insane, thanks for linking the Wikipedia page. To summarize, the thing he was whistleblowing was over-scrutiny of military personnel actions! He wasn’t whistleblowing the murders! That’s crazy and horrible.
  - franktankbank 1y ago
    Devils advocate and not necessarily McBride's argument but... does the "blooding" happen if "throwdowns" weren't already commonplace due to the over-oversight? Normalization of deviance creating a path for worse things? Once you are over there and everyone knows they have to do some amount of illegal shit its kind of difficult because the line is already crossed, where is the new line? Noone knows. I've seen this on much less high stakes scales and its a potent source of crazy-making.
    - defrost 1y ago
      Speaking of normalisation it's worth raising that as a former British Army major of a certain age McBride very much more than likely grew up with lashings of the Lance Corporal Jones approach to dealing with others: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhWlAKdlQp4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhWlAKdlQp4
ashoeafoot 1y ago
They did not stay silent . They bragged about warcrimes openly on a podcast. Persecute the murderous fuckers hard and fast, but not publicly. This affair cooking up smells to much like another russian anti colonial sentiment cooking op.
- suraci 1y ago
  russian？
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - arresin 1y ago
    Australia. The land down under mate. Nice beaches. Vegemite. The good guys. > This included a practice of "blooding" where junior soldiers were told to get their first kill by shooting a prisoner. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_war_crimes https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_war_crimes
  - ashoeafoot 1y ago
    Thats how they recruit- stir up anti-western sentiments by getting western self flaggelation conversations going . You allow the resulting volunteers/ dhijhadis / freedom fighters in as part of some chechyan warlords entourage and throw them into a colonial war in ukraine, where the Afghanistan war is just another tuesday in the Russian army . Same playbook since forever. Those anti-gaza protest are going to give birth to radicalized cells too. Its free fighters, the wests open discussions just another self radicalisation recruitment platform. Beats paying gig workers: https://newlinesmag.com/reportage/russias-new-weapon-child-suicide-bombers/ https://newlinesmag.com/reportage/russias-new-weapon-child-s... Im all for dragging the whole shebang through all the mud. The politicians who parked the war aimlessly , against a non existing country. The officers and media who went along, the soldiers that filtered through and the psychopaths that situation called for. But im against providing the anti western coalition (quatar/teheran/moscow/bejing) ressources.
- pinkmuffinere 1y ago
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

FirmwareBurner 1y ago

>But only the whistleblower and one other were tried and convicted: Of course, what did you expect? Murder is legal if it's for the government, and, exposing your government's secret dirty laundry is a crime against the law. Business as usual everywhere. I'm not aware of any government that rewards you when you exposed it as fool/criminal in front of their voters and the world. Hence why whistleblowers get the book thrown at them, as there's one set of rules for the plebs and another for the super wealthy and powerful. And do you know what's most ironic? We're rewarding our own soldiers for the same crimes we hanged the Nazi soldiers for. Another proof that the legality of right VS wrong, good VS evil, has less to do with morals and more to do with whether you're on the victorious side of history.

SAI_Peregrinus 1y ago
> Another proof that the legality of right VS wrong, good VS evil, has less to do with morals and more to do with whether you're on the victorious side of history. I'd say more that "legality" and "morals" are not necessarily related. Morality cannot be imposed by laws, and laws aren't usually driven by morality. This applies to both secular and religious laws.
lwo32k 1y ago
Making a dent is possible, but to take on power you need other powerful people/networks backing you. Most whistleblowers don't do enough homework. They just want to dump things out there and hope for the best. That's never good enough.
- FirmwareBurner 1y ago
  > but to take on power you need other powerful people/networks backing you. Most whistleblowers don't do enough homework. Doing your homework and having powerful people behind you are orthogonal. You can do all the homework you want but powerful people got in power and staid in power for playing for those in power, they're not gonna throw away all that to die on your hill with you. You might think you can get away by playing one political side against the other for your protection and rally support, but when it comes to national security, military industrial complex, the ultra wealthy elites, etc, those tend to be part of and fund both sides so it won't work out in your favor as you might expect. >They just want to dump things out there and hope for the best. What's the alternative? Once you start "doing your homework" those in power will already find out you're rocking the boat and will lock you up under the usual $ESPIONAGE, $TERRORISM, $PATRIOT laws before you manage to send a text, so your safest bet is to release all info quickly to the public/press while you're still able to. Time works against you here. The longer you're in possession of dirt that can get those at the top in trouble, the more you risk finding yourself "Epsteined".