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David McBride: former army lawyer sentenced to five years for stealing and leaking Afghanistan war documents (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

44 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Complete bullshit. Regimes that punish whistleblowers harder than war criminals reveal themselves as dreaming of tyranny.

The entire trial was cooked, and I'm furious :(

That non parole period is nuts too, pure revenge. What danger does this man represent? If he's out on the streets some war criminals better watch their backs?

edit: I should add, it's also quite frustrating that at the end of all this top brass has had no light shone on them, which was his initial goal on leaking. He thought the SAS was being investigated overmuch as a distraction from leadership failures. I guess we'll never know. A slap on the wrist for the executioners, no systematic investigation, and an inconvenient man in gaol.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I think often when people think of other people dying they internalise it as a headline does. Such and such died, ok that's sad I guess.

I think the correct way to interpret it is to take the death of the person you have been the closest to ever. All that pain and grief and rage, multiply that by the number of people expected to feel that per person, then by the number of people dead. you start to interpret pointless, preventable, or cruel deaths with the appropriate amount of madness-tinged grief then.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I think often when people think of other people dying they internalise it as a headline does. Such and such died, ok that’s sad I guess.

Exactly. I touched on this in another reply but this could easily be us in a parallel universe (or even our own, one day). We are civilians too. The murder of civilians by armed forces should concern us, regardless of where they live in the world. I wonder how this person would feel about the situation if it was reversed, and a whistleblower in another country was being prosecuted for revealing the murders of Australian civilians by foreign armed forces.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

I like to take every government act I think is a bit iffy and contextualise it as "north Korea does X" to see what my opinion of it really is.