4 ms·

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 c

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]

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]