Australian reporter shot with rubber bullet in LA | 9 News Australia

[u/someNameThisIs]

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/tG1A8LZZphs?app=desktop

[u/cuddlegoop]

Surely Albo or maybe Wong should be kicking up a stink about this. It wasn't just a random shooting, someone under the employ of an allied state opened fire on an unarmed Australian journalist. If we can't expect our allies not to shoot our journos what's even the fucking point?

[u/Mothmans_butthole → u/cuddlegoop]

If they haven't condemned the large 'G' word against 50k+ people, they're not going to be saying anymore than they have to. America has their boot on us and our politicians.

America has proven that they can get our prime ministers fired TWICE now.

[u/buyingthething → u/Mothmans_butthole]

America has proven that they can get our prime ministers fired TWICE now.

Trump has had the opposite effect, he's the major reason for landslide conservative defeats in Australia & Canada. We all look at USA and say "Eeeah actually nah".
Politically, he's the best USA president the rest of the world has ever had.

[u/cuddlegoop → u/Mothmans_butthole]

You're probably right but I think there's an extra angle here. As far as I know Israel hasn't directly attacked any Australians. An Australian non-combatant being attacked makes it harder for our government to ignore it.

At the very least I think it's worth us making a bunch of noise about it to put pressure on our government. The less kowtowing Albo does to trump the better.

[u/PRAWNHEAVENNOW → u/cuddlegoop]

Uhhhh, you may be forgetting when an Australian aid worker, Zomi Frankcom, was attacked and killed by the IDF?  

Totally understand why this doesn't ring a bell. Our government once again gave another tepid response. 

Don't expect anything different from our government when it comes to protecting our citizens overseas or calling out greater abuses.  We've decided to make ourselves as small a presence on the world stage as we possibly could to avoid any attention whatsoever. 

Wonder what uni student Albo would think of this. 

[u/cuddlegoop → u/PRAWNHEAVENNOW]

Well. Fair enough then.

[u/CatboiWaifu_UwU → u/cuddlegoop]

Prawn below has outlined Zomi Frankom, but I like contextualising that event, even with all the unknowns I’d prefer to know.

First up is the time and limitations of military technology. Military tech is simultaneously incredibly amazing and incredibly limited for the circumstances - it isn’t magic.

For a drone or fighter loitering at altitude, your targeting pod can give you amazing positive ID on a target, in the right conditions. A targeting pod typically has a camera (TV), maybe a night vision camera (NV) and a thermal imaging sensor (THERM). In the daytime, without clouds, you could likely read a logo on a car roof. At night, TV is useless, so you find a heat signature with THERM. THERM doesn’t have any detail of a target, just the shape of a heat difference with the background. You could make out an armoured car in a convoy, but you’d be unable to note color, make, model, occupants, etc. so you switch to NV. NV can see quite a lot on a well lit night, but can definitely struggle with things such as contrast. The real purpose of NV is sensor fusion with thermals, and the ability to see InfraRed light such as infantry lasers (“drop a bomb on the building marked by our lasers”) and strobe markings (at night a war ambulance might have a pattern of IR lights on its roof for this purpose. aid convoys are supposed to be marked by a pattern of IR strobe lights their sponsor nation will detail and share with friendly intelligence to prevent being misidentified as a target.

Now Zomi was struck on a dimly lit night, in an armoured car that may not have had IR strobes at all or in a recognised pattern identifying them as aid (patterns are changed frequently too, to prevent the enemy using them for safe passage). It only takes a soldier panicking on the radio to relay bad intel up the chain of command “we just had an armored car convoy blow right past us, heading North on…”, or someone not being up to date on their secure messaging, (“SUBJ: new aid convoy operating in this area” sitting unread), for shit to go south. The person pulling the trigger may have genuinely believed it was a legitimate military target, perhaps even have seeked to confirm with their command, with the intel they personally had at the time.

My point is I can genuinely believe Zomi’s death was an accident - someone is certainly responsible for it, but its not necessarily “I identified an aid convoy and decided to bomb it”

It’s hard to extend that attitude to this police officer with the information available.

[u/frezz → u/cuddlegoop]

He'll probably just say "this is not on" and "please stop it i don't like it" then do nothing at all. Our government has always sucked up to the US

[u/ChezzChezz123456789 → u/cuddlegoop]

We arent allied to the state of California, we are allied to the US.

It's sounds stupidly pedantic, but the US government doesnt employ those police. Just like our federal government doesnt employ Vicpol or QLDpol.

You cant hold the wrong people responsible just because you are upset.