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[martinuzz]

What's wrong with entertainment and art in Sweden?

[scriver]

They don't understand jokes

[martinuzz]

Ah! So that's how surströmming became a national dish.

[feelotraveller]

This seasons important election has been decided. 

In New Zealand Jacinda Ardern's Labour Party has won a landslide, 64 of 120 seats and something over 49% of the first preference votes in a multi-party contest.  Massive increase in their vote while the traditional right-wing party plummeted to less than 27% of the vote.  Big winners in the minorities were the right libertarian ACT (almost 8%, 10 seats) and the Greens (7.5%, 10 seats).

Also referenda were held on euthanasia and legalizing cannabis but too early for those results as yet - maybe by the end of the month.

Apologies for a non-hilarious post.

[Jimmy]

Wow, a politician does a good job, puts the welfare and health of their country before economic concerns, and becomes more popular?

Somebody in the Illuminati isn't doing their job in New Zealand.

[Yoink]

politician does a good job

lmao what are you smokin   



In other news, though: election day (at least in the district I find myself currently living in) falls on the 31st. Wow.   
The idea of going to vote dressed in a Halloween costume popped into my mind, lodged there, and has been growing funnier and funnier the more I think about it. At first it was just a dollar store skeleton costume, that old classic, but what if you went with a political theme for added yuks?   
A prominent member of the Kim dynasty, for instance? Or perhaps something more Australia-themed, but I really couldn't think of any obvious ones apart from Ned Kelly which would be pretty damn gauche. Maybe John Howard? Would those goofy-ass eyebrows be recognisable enough to base a low-budget costume around? Hmmmm.   
Food for thought. Now if you'll excuse me, I'd better go get some actual food.   

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Unironically fucking glorious result for NZ. It's a good thing they're going to be the only survivors of the nuclear war.

[Jimmy]

Afghanistan war crimes report released by Defence Chief Angus Campbell includes evidence of 39 murders by special forces

I trust the persons responsible for investigating this incident to thoroughly examine the circumstances instead of holding a trial by media.

I'm proud of my military for maintaining my faith in their willingness to expose wrongdoing within their ranks, prosecute those responsible, accept responsibility, issue apologies and compensate the victims of the bad apples within their ranks. Australia will not stand by and allow death squads to operate within its armed forces. We're better than that.

[Reelya]

I have a hunch they were basically imitating how the equivalent American units operated.

Meet Colonel James Steele, special US operative who trains up the locals to assist the Americans.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Steele_(United_States_Army_officer)

Colonel James Steele is a US veteran of the "dirty wars" in Central America, during which he trained counter-insurgency commandos who carried out extreme abuses of human rights. Steele is also a veteran of the Vietnam war. From 1984 to 1986, during the Salvadoran Civil War, Steele operated as a counterinsurgency specialist and was a member of a group of United States special forces advisers to the Salvadoran Army. In 1986 he was implicated in the Iran contra affair. In 2004, early in the Iraq War, Steele was sent by Donald Rumsfeld to serve as a civilian adviser to Iraqi paramilitary Special Police Commandos known as the Wolf Brigade.

In May, the Sunni-controlled Muslim Scholars Association and other Sunni Arab leaders accused the Wolf Brigade of targeting Palestinian refugees in Iraq, using torture to extract confessions from prisoners, raiding Sunni homes, and engaging in "mass killings" and arrests in northeastern Baghdad.
...
It is alleged that Abu al-Walid sometimes tortured prisoners personally.

Not to say this Steele guy is linked to Afghanistan, but the US military political culture is that you do this shit, you never get in trouble, in fact they put you on a call list when they need an asshole to train death squads. Then you put our guys under US command and this shit happens, to this extent, and I'm not really surprised.

EDIT: note that Abu al-Walid was indicted in Iraq for his crimes, tried to run away but ended up apparently being beheaded by ISIS. That's the first decent thing I've heard about ISIS.

[Reelya]

In separate news, South Australia announces hard lockdown to combat the coronavirus. The Prime Minister backs the measures despite delivering scathing criticism when the state of Victoria did the same thing. The difference? SA is ruled by the same party as the prime minister while Victoria is the other party. The media outlets (pro-conservative) constantly screaming about the Victoria lockdown are also silent on the SA one.

But he says the SA government had acted specifically “to avoid what occurred in Victoria” - despite outbreaks in both states being linked to hotel quarantine failures.

So, that's the thing the media was hammering the Victorian leader over - that hotel quarantine measures failed, and there must be a reckoning for fucking that up: who knew what when, and who made the decisions, and why isn't everyone resigning? "It's a cover up!" Full on conspiracy mongering and what is pretty much fake journalistic outrage from partisan party political hacks who pretty much all work for Murdoch's Australian outlets.

So now pretty much the same thing happens in South Australia, and all the same talking heads are either silent or perfectly understanding about the matter, no need to explain, do whatever needs to be done.

The main actual difference is that the central areas of Melbourne have about 10 times the population density as the central areas of Adelaide. The virus hit harder in Melbourne precisely because it's the most densely populated part of the whole country, it's the coldest major city, and it was mid winter. Sydney and Brisbane didn't have extra-vigilante governments who were on top of the virus to prevent it spreading, they were in fact much more lax than Melbourne all the way through 2020. Melbourne was just far more at risk thus ended up requiring more restrictions to prevent an explosion in cases.

If Dan Andrews had actually succeeded in preventing the spike in cases in July, the same media would still be hammering him over whatever restrictions were necessary to prevent that. After all, there would be no cases so they'd be arguing about government over-reach in restricting anything. No matter what he did and whatever the outcome, the same media figures would figure out a way to hammer him for it and call for his resignation, purely because he's in the wrong party. That's why their analysis cannot be taken at face value.

[feelotraveller]

Afghanistan war crimes report released by Defence Chief Angus Campbell includes evidence of 39 murders by special forces

I trust the persons responsible for investigating this incident to thoroughly examine the circumstances instead of holding a trial by media.

I'm proud of my military for maintaining my faith in their willingness to expose wrongdoing within their ranks, prosecute those responsible, accept responsibility, issue apologies and compensate the victims of the bad apples within their ranks. Australia will not stand by and allow death squads to operate within its armed forces. We're better than that.

With all due respect to you and the (current) inquiry and its findings, it's pretty hard to cover up evidence that is already in the public domain.  It was the media who put that information out there.  Feel free to read through the descriptions and outcomes given in the official documents exposed by investigative journalism and judge for yourself if this inquiry (under public and media pressure) is perhaps somewhat different.  https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-07-11/unarmed-men,-children-among-casualties-of-elite-forces/8424944?nw=0 The notion that the media should not publish restricted material even when it is clearly in the public interest to do so plays directly into the hands of the security state as envisaged by an ongoing series of australian governments (dutton being the latest hgh profile proponent).  And remember that journalists had their offices raided, were charged with multiple 'crimes', had their fingerprints demanded, etc. over this https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-07-15/abc-raids-australian-federal-police-press-freedom/11309810 and similar stories.  Those attempts at suppressing the legitmate exercise of responsible journalism continue.

I'm sorry but in my evaluation there is something very wrong (perhaps corrupt would be the best phrase) systematically when this happens.  To say that there was a 'trial by media' plays into this suppression of the protected free speech needed to ensure the viability of the political process (the right to be informed) for what passes locally as 'democracy'.  Yes the government and the military need to be held accountable. Currently this transparency does not occur without media scrutiny.

But yes it is good to see the military come clean about this and hopefully there will be real change to the internal culture that propagates these and similar incidents.

[Reelya]

I don't have the energy or inclination to check, but a quick glance would tell you whether any of the indictments are for incidents that weren't already in the public domain / media. If there's an exact 1:1 correlation between previously known cases and the ones they're prosecuting, then that would in fact signify that this is a white wash effort.

What would be the plausibility that, for example the media identified 39 victims over 10 years, then they did a really in depth inquiry, and uncovered .. the exact same 39 victims over 10 years, for example. That wouldn't imply there was any sort of effort put into getting to the heart of this whatsoever, but merely to punish the minimum number of people needed to shut everyone up.

So, yeah, I'll make a bit of a cynical prediction here, that they're wrapping all this up then it breaks that there are a bunch of other incidents that they didn't uncover in this lot that'll turn up and it'll turn out they didn't really overturn any more than the minimum number of rocks required to address the currently-identified cases.

[Jimmy]

I'm sorry but in my evaluation there is something very wrong (perhaps corrupt would be the best phrase) systematically when this happens.  To say that there was a 'trial by media' plays into this suppression of the protected free speech needed to ensure the viability of the political process (the right to be informed) for what passes locally as 'democracy'.  Yes the government and the military need to be held accountable. Currently this transparency does not occur without media scrutiny.

Thanks for your response! I 100% agree that the voting public deserves to know about the actions of the government and its representatives, whether that be in the country or outside it. I simply disagree that journalists should be given free access to active military operations and allowed to spin them into a smear campaign against the political party opposed by their editors (or Rupert Murdoch).

It's always going to be a balancing act to weigh the public's right to know about their elected officials against the security and integrity of our nation's defense forces. This inquest into the actions of the special forces needs to happen. The only danger of it comes from tarring all defense personnel with the same brush. With such an unstable political environment, now more than ever we need to support and strengthen our nation's ability to defend ourselves and our allies against threats. I'm hopeful that we'll see a shift in culture within the armed forces to truly represent Australian values abroad within the scope of their difficult and dangerous role.

In my opinion, serving our country within the military is an honor reserved for the best of us. We owe them our respect, and we demand from them the highest of standards.

[feelotraveller]

Absolutely, it will always be a balancing act.  Keeping operational matters secret can be important, but all too often over the last couple of decades it has been used as a blanket coverup, although generally more on the political front than the military one.*  This is why the highlighting of responsible journalism.

You might find one of the pieces I read recently interesting https://www.abc.net.au/news/about/backstory/2020-11-20/mark-willacy-on-abc-investigations-sas-afghan-war-crimes-probe/12901186.  It provides some insight into the backstory of last years report.  A couple of quotes I think we can both apprieciate

...99 per cent of the guys in the SAS are decent, honourable soldiers who didn't do anything wrong.
Without them we wouldn't have known of these allegations. They have blown the whistle on this and want it to come out because they want the regiment's honour restored.
[...]
...there was unfortunately systemic issues and problems and violence associated with, admittedly, a small minority of the SAS.
But it was a big enough minority that people were killed, and others were forced to lie or cover up or be complicit after those killings.

And Braden Chapman's a fucking legend.



* I have some significant reservations about the role and function (as opposed to the operation) of the military, but now is not the time or place for those.

[Jimmy]

Great link! Good to get some of the background in the story. It's also heartening to see, like you quoted, that the vast, vast majority of the armed forces share the attitude of the general public about these war crimes. There's a cell of sickness in the military that needs to be cut out, but the cancer hasn't spread far to my view.

I also have my own reservations about some roles being served by our military. Still, I see it as a fault of our civilian leaders, not the military itself. It serves the orders of our elected officials, and while they have habits of making less than ideal decisions about foreign policies, we're at least able to know that the Australian army isn't looking to suborn the elected government and elect itself as ruler of our country, unlike so many other places in our world.

We're not under the thumb of a military junta, and we have a strong and robust system for removing any extremists that would seek to impose their will through our military upon our own people. Sadly, the same cannot always be said for civilians of other countries, but I'm proud that government funded investigative journalism has uncovered these crimes, exposed them, and made sure steps have been taken to prevent them recurring. That's real democracy at work.