Obi_1_D_AllKnowing

George Conway fights back tears as he recalls how he decided to give nearly $1 million to Biden's Victory Fund in 2024 — which would have otherwise gone to his children. He says he started crying and had to pull his car over. "I want my kids to inherit a democracy."

Nick Shirley's efforts have led to billions in fraud being discovered, stopped, and in some cases, prosecutions. But what does he get? Journalists like Nick create massive amounts of value, and capture almost none of it. "Do the right thing," is great, and doesn't pay the bills.

I spent three hours reading Ben Roberts-Smith court documents this morning and found something pretty incredible. TLDR: Previous court cases addressing Ben Roberts-Smith war crime allegations relied on the testimony of illiterate Afghan villagers who called him an infidel. Part of the war crimes claims made against Ben Roberts-Smith relied upon the testimony of Afghan villagers who openly told Australian courts that they viewed Roberts-Smith and Australian soldiers as infidels. Nine Media relied upon the testimony of three key Afghan witnesses in order to support the claim that Roberts-Smith executed a farmer named Ali Jan who he claimed was a Taliban spotter. These men were illiterate subsistence villagers who expressed hatred for ''infidels'' including Australian soldiers during the trial. Hanifa, pictured in court drawings wearing a green shawl, acknowledged directly that foreign soldiers were called ''infidels'' or ''kafir'' and that he did not like them. He also confirmed that persons killed by soldiers were called ''martyrs'' and that he hated Australian soldiers for going near ''our women.'' He said: "If they are coming to our houses, go inside to our women, of course that's what we call them infidels." Mangul, pictured in the court drawings wearing a blue shawl, expressed hatred of foreign soldiers and confirmed his view that they were infidels or kafir and that those they killed were martyrs. He said he did not like the Taliban but still referred to Australian soldiers as infidels. According to Daily Mail court reporting, when asked if he hated the soldiers who invaded his country and did not share his Islamic faith, Mangul said: ''Yes, it is like that.'' Hanifa also told the court that when the soldiers arrived by helicopter, he took a donkey from Ali Jan in an attempt to make them both appear to be nomads: ''I took one of the donkey from him thinking that we will look like nomads and the foreign forces will think that we are nomads.'' The actual mechanics of their testimony is incredible in and of itself. Hanifa told the Federal Court that a man named ''Dr Sharif'' paid for his accommodation, food and transport for up to a year in support of his ability to testify against Roberts-Smith. Dr Sharif worked for representatives of Nine newspapers as a fixer in Afghanistan. Each Afghan key witness said that a local representative for Nine Media paid their family's living expenses since moving to Kandahar, then Kabul, earlier in the year. According to Daily Mail court reporting, one key witness was accompanied by his wife and five children, another by his wife and six children and a third had 14 relatives with him. And the logistics regarding court translation were incredible. The only available court-certified Pashto interpreter lived in Ontario, Canada. When hearings commenced at 10:15am in Sydney, it was 8:15pm in Ontario and 4:45am in Kabul. The Afghan witnesses therefore gave evidence about murders in a Taliban stronghold through a three-way international audiovisual link at dawn, interpreted by someone in a different hemisphere. The court-certified Pashto interpreter conceded that he had difficulty translating from classical Pashto to the rural Pashto dialect the men spoke. All three ultimately testified that they did not see the alleged shooting execution of Ali Jan, but two said they directly observed Roberts-Smith kick him off the cliff. Roberts-Smith has always maintained that Ali Jan was a Taliban spotter in a village that was a Taliban stronghold. It is a matter of historical fact that there was confirmed armed Taliban presence in the village of Darwan the day of the raid and that Roberts-Smith killed a confirmed armed Taliban militant during the wider operation. Roberts-Smith was operating in the village of Darwan while searching for Hekmatullah - a Taliban sleeper agent in the Afghan National Army who massacred three Australian soldiers in cold blood as they prepared to sleep on their own base. This massacre of Australian soldiers was technically a Taliban war crime. By enlisting in the Afghan National Army and wearing its uniform, Hekmatullah had presented himself as a co-belligerent fighting alongside Australian forces - not against them. This made him guilty of the war crime of perfidy. Judge Besanko ultimately dismissed the infidel/kafir argument in a single paragraph for each witness, bracketed with the Dr Sharif financial support argument, writing: ''However, I do not consider (the infidel argument), or indeed the other general motive to lie advanced by the applicant of the sustenance (food and transportation) provided by the respondents through Dr Sharif, to be strong motives for Mohammed Hanifa to lie." In my opinion, this represents an instance of the Australian legal system failing to grapple with the cultural gulf between Australian morals and Pashtunwali morals - raised in a deeply conservative Pashtun culture in which foreign soldiers are categorically viewed as enemies of the faith, living day to day in a Taliban stronghold village, I believe the hatred that these men had towards Australian soldiers means that their testimony cannot be fully trusted. Roberts-Smith's barristers directly put it to Mangul that his religion permitted lying to infidels in some circumstances. Mangul rejected the suggestion — but the mere fact that Roberts-Smith's own counsel felt compelled to raise the question in open court speaks to the cultural gulf I am describing. It must be said that their testimony was not the only testimony against Roberts-Smith that day - their words were held up as corroborating the words of an Australian soldier, Person 4. Besanko J and the Full Court both wrote that even setting aside the Afghan witnesses' evidence, Person 4's account stood. That said, it feels deeply wrong to me that the Australian courts did ultimately choose to rely upon the evidence of men who openly admited they viewed Australian soldiers as infidels and subjects of contempt. It feels like a particularly troubling example of misplaced institutional deference - treating the admission of deep religious hostility as insufficient to question the reliability of evidence. These Afghan witnesses may now testify again in the criminal trial against Roberts-Smith where the standard of proof is ''beyond reasonable doubt'' rather than the civil ''balance of probabilities.'' The criminal standard of ''beyond reasonable doubt'' is substantially higher than the civil ''balance of probabilities'' standard at which the defamation findings were made. It is hard to see their evidence alone passing muster at a criminal standard.

The Australian government just arrested our most decorated veteran from the Afghanistan War for alleged war crimes. Ben Roberts-Smith was awarded the Victoria Cross for Australia after singlehandedly storming two Taliban machine gun positions by himself in order to save his own SAS team. And this is how we repay him. I spoke to an Australian Afghan war veteran who told me that the Australian government literally paid for billboards in Afghanistan offering to pay random Afghans to come forward with war crime allegations. What country on Earth would do this to itself? Tell me: When does the Taliban plan on holding war crimes tribunals into their own people? When do the Taliban plan on holding themselves accountable for terrorism? Absolutely retarded to purge your own men when fighting a brutal barbaric enemy that respects no rules whatsoever. We are a cucked nation. Free Ben Roberts-Smith.