SLfgb @ SLfgb @feddit.nl

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2 yr. ago

OP? Sorry, I'm new here and not familiar with all abbreviations...

The trial was mid-Nov 2023 and the judge ruled that the meaning of duty is to just follow your orders. This was a big part of the reason why he had to plead guilty.

Sorry, not a bot. Just the title of the video. David McBride is the Australian Defence/Military whistleblower.

The controversial Gessen quote is featured in Nachdenkseiten -> https://www.nachdenkseiten.de/?p=108755

Masha Gessen schreibt [transl. writes]:

"For the last seventeen years, Gaza has been a hyperdensely populated, impoverished, walled-in compound where only a small fraction of the population had the right to leave for even a short amount of time – in other words, a ghetto. Not like the Jewish ghetto in Venice or an inner-city ghetto in America, but like a Jewish ghetto in an Eastern European country occupied by Nazi Germany. In the two months since Hamas attacked Israel, all Gazans have suffered from the barely interrupted onslaught of Israeli forces. Thousands have died. On average, a child is killed in Gaza every ten minutes. Israeli bombs have struck hospitals, maternity wards, and ambulances. Eight out of ten Gazans are now homeless, moving from one place to another, never able to get to safety.

The term ‚open-air prison‘ seems to have been coined in 2010 by David Cameron, the British Foreign Secretary who was then Prime Minister. Many human rights organizations that document conditions in Gaza have adopted the description. But as in the Jewish ghettoes of occupied Europe, there are no prison guards – Gaza is policed not by the occupiers but by a local force. Presumably, the more fitting term ‚ghetto’ would have drawn fire for comparing the predicament of besieged Gazans to that of ghettoized Jews. It also would have given us the language to describe what is happening in Gaza now. The ghetto is being liquidated.”

You think this won't impact the work of journalists you like? Think again.

There is no impartiality clause in the 1A. He isn't charged with being biased but with publishing, disseminating truthful information relating to US wars to the public.

If you don't want to give him the benefit of the doubt, don't. Just read the indictment, take note of the wording of the charges and whenever you see his name, substitute it by "publisher". Then think about the implications for National Security reporting if a publisher from another country is extradited to a country he has barely ever even visited.

But even so, I mean, all of this is really irrelevant whether Julian's a journalist or not. The question is, is Julian accused of journalism? And he is. It is the activity that has been criminalized. Not whether he falls into a category or not. It's the category of the activity that is being criminalized. Receiving, obtaining, and communicating information to the public.

Instead, it’s thrown out any time an act of war appears to be particularly unfair or evil, often without full context or detail.

I often see news reports being quite careful and describing what appears in detailed evidence documenting murder by the military as 'apparent' war crimes.

I would argue that the credible accusation of war crimes, that is, with evidence available, requires a full investigation and trial full stop. If no trial occurs, and nobody sues for defamation, the papers can say whatever they feel confident enough to say. Except WikiLeaks...

In Australia there was the interesting defamation case recently with a civil court finding that the soldier who brought the defamation case had no case and did in fact commit war crimes in Afghanistan. He has not been charged with a crime. What does this say about impunity for war criminals? In contrast, Australian military whistleblower David McBride had to plead guilty last month for releasing evidence of war crimes and their cover-up by military leadership to a journalist with the state-broadcaster, the ABC. In both cases though, the news organisations publishing the news articles are seen to be in the right by the government and courts. (Although the ABC did get raided just a couple of months after Julian Assange was dragged out of the Ecuadorian Embassy, the journalist was not charged.)

Now you sound even more like bigshot Mike. Are you him perchance? Was it your intention for the indictment to be littered with the words 'publish', 'published', 'publishing', 'public', 'publicly', 'publication'; 'disseminate', 'dissemination', 'redactions', 'redacting', 'redacted'?

Antidote101, you sound like former CIA head and Trump's state secretary Mike Pompeo, who in 2017 redefined WikiLeaks as a 'non-state hostile intelligence service, often abetted by state actors like Russia', before he got the CIA to draw up secret plans to have him kidnapped or killed.

The Biden administration is continuing Trump's war on journalism with this persecution.

"Julian Assange can be freed with a phone call. The government can ring up their colleagues in the United Kingdom and say, you know:

'send him home, his visa's expired and serve the expiration date notice on him. Anything that the United States wants we can handle here'.

That is a clear possibility."

"The 13 years we witnessed acquiescence to whatever the United States and the United Kingdom wanted to do to Julian."

"All of the people of Australia have bound together and brought into being a meme that spread into government, into parliament, into the congress, that Julian must be returned home. So it's our congratulations that Anthony Albanese says in Parliament: 'I see no benefit in this persecution continuing.' Well he doesn't say persecution. I'll help him out there."

"Julian Assange can be freed with a phone call. The government can ring up their colleagues in the United Kingdom and say, you know:

'send him home, his visa's expired and serve the expiration date notice on him. Anything that the United States wants we can handle here'.

That is a clear possibility."

"The 13 years we witnessed acquiescence to whatever the United States and the United Kingdom wanted to do to Julian."

"All of the people of Australia have bound together and brought into being a meme that spread into government, into parliament, into the congress, that Julian must be returned home. So it's our congratulations that Anthony Albanese says in Parliament: 'I see no benefit in this persecution continuing.' Well he doesn't say persecution. I'll help him out there."

I bet if the govt hadn't pinched their evidence and it had actually gone to trial, that would have been one of McBride's arguments; that it wasn't a lawful order as evidence of murder can't be classified. But that's what Dreyfuss's lackeys did with the approval of the judge.

How can you have a trial when the relevant evidence in defence is suppressed. You can't.

To hell with the Nuremberg Principle. Just follow your orders!

McBride's lawyer Davis said outside the court:

“It was the fatal blow made in conjunction with the decision made a few days ago that limits what we can say to the jury on David’s behalf in terms of what was his duty as an officer was on the oath he took to serve, as we say, the interests of the Australian people.

Well the ruling was, he doesn’t have a duty to serve the interests of the Australian people. He has a duty to follow orders. That is a very narrow understanding of the law in our view that takes us back really pre-World War II. We all know how military law has been judged since then in terms of compliance to follow orders.

So facing that reality, we’re limited in terms of what we could put to a jury in term’s of David’s duty … together with the removal of evidence makes it impossible, realistically, to go to trial. It is a sad day and a difficult day for us to advise David on his options this afternoon and he embraced them.”

McBride said: “I stand tall and I believe I did my duty and I don’t see it as a defeat, I see it as a beginning of a better Australia.”

UPDATE: David McBride has just plead guilty. https://twitter.com/CathyVoganSPK/status/1725373553011482853

Yes it is outrageous.

There a many in Australia who care about this a lot as is clear from the number of donors who raised funds for his legal defence. We need more people to talk about this. Buy his book The Nature of Honour, out this week and display it wherever you are. David will keep fighting from jail but we need to all fight for him. Talk to your MP. Demand the Attorney General intervene and drop this case.

Lounging at the beach?

This summary misses a key point:

McBride’s defence says he had a separate duty to act in the public interest

Thank you! I plan to.