And apparently Australia had already released their report and investigation of their own behavior: 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
> 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.
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."
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.
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.
From the Wikipedia page, it does indeed appear that the “whistleblower“ is no hero. He was whistleblowing over-scrutiny-of-military-personnel. He wasn’t whistleblowing the _murders_, but almost the opposite! Horrible.
> This included a practice of "blooding" where junior soldiers were told to get their first kill by shooting a prisoner.
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-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.
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.
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".
In the way sifting flour and beating eggs are orthogonal steps in cake making. You need to do both, and not necessarily in any order.
> You might think you can get away by playing one political side against the other for your protection and rally support
“Sides” are an abstraction. The first rule of power is its quantum are people. You need people on your side to have power. Not abstractions.
> Once you start "doing your homework" those in power will already find out you're rocking the boat and will lock you up
No they won’t. Even these whistleblowers were publicly tried to scandalous effect for the impacted agencies.
The step most whistleblowers fail to take is the simplest one when confronting a powerful entity: consulting a lawyer.
> longer you're in possession of dirt that can get those at the top in trouble, the more you risk finding yourself "Epsteined"
This is nonsense and worse, a self-defeating argument. You think the people Epstein had dirt on didn’t know it until he was jailed?
How do you do that?
>You need people on your side to have power.
How do you get them?
>The step most whistleblowers fail to take is the simplest one when confronting a powerful entity: consulting a lawyer.
If only Snowden would have talked to a lawyer, I'm sure he'd be safe in the US right now.
This is highly situation dependent.
If you’re blowing the whistle on the British special forces, you’d want to have copious contemporaneous notes referencing where official documents may corroborate your claims.
You’d also want to introduce your claims into the Parliamentary record; first step would be finding an MP who wants to reform (not unmake) the special forces. In this way you can play into ambitious underlings’ promotion dreams while dangling transformation resources for the agency you’re criticising.
> How do you get them?
If you can’t manage the basics of politics, don’t launch a political endeavour. (This is true for whistleblowing and entrepreneurship, commercial and political.)
> If only Snowden would have talked to a lawyer, I'm sure he'd be safe in the US right now
Chelsea Manning is out of jail. And Manning went about her business in about the stupidest way possible.
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.