Tag: propaganda

Zhao Lijian, who has been hilariously described as a “diplomat“, has posted a mean tweet.

Zhao, who is, of course, a hypocritical little toad, posted a faked image of an Australian soldier with a bloodied knife over the throat of an Afghan kid. The image was created by Lu Yu, another hypocritical little toad, and hilariously described as a “political computer graphic artist“. Lu Yu’s image is outrageous, and so ScoMoFo sprang into action and confected outrage.

Let’s remind ourselves what this is about. Zhao’s post was in reference to the Brereton Report into alleged crimes by the Australian Defence Force, which ScoMoFo is already undermining. Specifically, Zhao was referring to an alleged incident raised by Dr. Samantha Crompvoets, a sociologist specialising in military culture. In 2015, the Special Operations Commander Australia appointed Dr. Crompvoets to undertake a “cultural review” of the Special Operations Command, which resulted in two documents referred to in the Brereton Report (pp 119-121): “Insights and reflection” (January, 2016); and “Perceptions reputation and risk” (February, 2016). In her January report, which is short and which should be read by everyone, Dr. Crompvoet records a number of specific incidents reported to her by military personnel (p 120 of the Brereton Report):

“A specific incident described to Dr. Crompvoets involved an incident where members from the [Special Air Service Regiment] were driving along a road and saw two 14-year-old boys whom they decided might be Taliban sympathisers. They stopped, searched the boys and slit their throats. The rest of the Troop then had to ‘clean up the mess’, which involved bagging the bodies and throwing them into a nearby river. Dr Crompvoets says she was told this was not an isolated incident.”

In regard to incidents such as the above not being isolated, Dr. Crompvoets wrote,

The gravity of these descriptions does not simply come from the details of particular events, it comes from the emphasis that most often accompanied these stories – ‘it happened all the time’.  

The above is the incident latched onto by Toad Lu and Toad Zhou. Which leaves us with a choice. On the one hand, we can consider the probable murdering of kids by Australian military personnel, and we can ponder just how often such horrors occurred. Or, as ScoMoFo would prefer, we can focus on a couple of toads and a fucking mean tweet. Take your pick.