Re: Military bases and exploitation of women

[sheldrake]

You can only imagine the sort of people who get posted to run army training camps in Kenya. Not fit for British consumption would be my best bet.

I don't think they'd be different from anybody else in the army. Crime rates, particularly prostitution, rape and drunken violence tend to shoot through the roof around the army bases of any nation. Army bases are full of young men away from community & family restraints who've been trained to be aggressive and physical.

[sheldrake]

You can only imagine the sort of people who get posted to run army training camps in Kenya. Not fit for British consumption would be my best bet.

I don't think they'd be different from anybody else in the army. Crime rates, particularly prostitution, rape and drunken violence tend to shoot through the roof around the army bases of any nation. Army bases are full of young men away from community & family restraints who've been trained to be aggressive and physical.

The cream of the crop do not get sent to Kenya for very long (or the Falklands, or rocks in the Pacific)

Even really elite front line units like the paras get rotated out of intense stuff like Afghanistan or Iraq to things like this to stop then burning out. Even SAS soldiers get sent to random hot countries to train some Sultan’s troops (sometimes they get sent because thats who the Sultan asked for and the MOD wants to butter the Sultan up).

Simillar nasty stuff happens around American troops in Okinawa and Korea or french foreign legion in Guyana. No doubt Russian, Chinese etc.. soldiers are like this too

[JQH]

Simillar nasty stuff happens around American troops in Okinawa and Korea or french foreign legion in Guyana. No doubt Russian, Chinese etc.. soldiers are like this too

I smell whataboutery

[sheldrake]

Simillar nasty stuff happens around American troops in Okinawa and Korea or french foreign legion in Guyana. No doubt Russian, Chinese etc.. soldiers are like this too

I smell whataboutery

No, it's just reality. https://theintercept.com/2021/10/03/oki ... -military/
It's very easy to find data like this on the soldiers of many countries. The grim reality of 'garrison towns' has been written about since Roman times. It doesn't make it less horrific when British troops do it, but if you're surprised by this truth, or are sort of disappointed because you wanted there to be something especially wicked about the UK then take some time to reflect on why that might be.

[plodder]

Do you think the Roman soldiers posted to the Northern frontier were the same sort of Roman soldiers (similar families, similarly housetrained etc) as the ones who guarded the senate?

[sheldrake]

Do you think the Roman soldiers posted to the Northern frontier were the same sort of Roman soldiers (similar families, similarly housetrained etc) as the ones who guarded the senate?

Julius Caesar made his name fighting in Gaul and Germania. The Praetorian guard who were bodyguards to senators (and the only people allowed to carry weapons within the sacred precinct of Rome) were hand-picked veterans from campaigns on the periphery. Rough blokes who could handle trouble.

Our army today isn't really big enough to have special sinecures. We have ceremonial guards units whose officers tend to be from posh backgrounds like the Blues & Royals and the Life Guards, but the enlisted men are the same working class as the rest of the army and they likely do just the same kind of boozing, chasing prostitutes, getting in punchups etc.. as the rest of them. They also do tours in Afghanistan, Yugoslavia etc.. just like the rest.
They just have to meet a minimum height requirement to look imposing on ceremonial duty AIUI.

[plodder]

I’ve got nothing to add to this thread apart from reporting my disgust at the act and my disgust at the actions of the British Military in ignoring it completely.

This was why I raised the point about incompetent (but likely well-connected) management being posted to the provinces. Apologies if it didn’t translate properly - but the military has a long tradition of closing ranks (swidt???) and I’m willing to bet the willingness to accept scrutiny diminishes rapidly with distance from the top brass at the MoD.

[plodder]

FFS. This thread is about the actions of British soldiers operating in Kenya. If you want to talk about Roman soldiers or whatever the f.ck you think is going to downplay the horrendous behaviour on display by our miltary then go and make your own thread. I got my post separated into a separate thread because the horrendous murder of a woman by a soldier seemed to be of no interest to anyone in the original one. I won't have this thread perverted as well.

And just to spell it out to people,

a senior officer openly referring to the alleged killer as “the one that killed the prostitute in Kenya”. [Source]

They called Wayne Couzens "the rapist".

The people who are supposed to be protecting us see women as objects to use and abuse, not as people to protect. Until we address the culture that says that only some people (people like us - white and male) are worthy of consideration then nothing will ever change.

None of the peaceful, liberal, book reading men involved in this thread are the people you need to reach. We literally have no means available to us to prevent soldiers behaving like this.

That’s b.llsh.t. Book reading men are historically the only people who ever change anything.

[sheldrake]

FFS. This thread is about the actions of British soldiers operating in Kenya. If you want to talk about Roman soldiers or whatever the f.ck you think is going to downplay the horrendous behaviour on display by our miltary then go and make your own thread. I got my post separated into a separate thread because the horrendous murder of a woman by a soldier seemed to be of no interest to anyone in the original one. I won't have this thread perverted as well.

And just to spell it out to people,



They called Wayne Couzens "the rapist".

The people who are supposed to be protecting us see women as objects to use and abuse, not as people to protect. Until we address the culture that says that only some people (people like us - white and male) are worthy of consideration then nothing will ever change.

None of the peaceful, liberal, book reading men involved in this thread are the people you need to reach. We literally have no means available to us to prevent soldiers behaving like this.

That’s b.llsh.t. Book reading men are historically the only people who ever change anything.

We can lobby for things to be made illegal, but the terrible things that have happened here are definitely already illegal. We can introduce teaching on appropriate behaviour to the education system, but these soldiers are from a country that have had that kind of social education for over a generation already.

The kind of men reading this thread are not the kind of men who enlist in the army and chase prostitutes, so modifying our own behaviour wont’t help. What’s left?

[sheldrake]

Note, the reason I talked about Rome and other countries before was to illustrate how ancient and non-culturally specific this behaviour of soldiers is. Men from all over the world have been behaving like this for all of recorded history. We could have our personnel overseas be locked up on their bases like prisoners, but I expect separating soldiers from prostitutes for extended period would create a prison-like environment where homosexual rape became an issue.

Nature, red in tooth and claw.

[plodder]

We can lobby for things to be made illegal, but the terrible things that have happened here are definitely already illegal. We can introduce teaching on appropriate behaviour to the education system, but these soldiers are from a country that have had that kind of social education for over a generation already.

The kind of men reading this thread are not the kind of men who enlist in the army and chase prostitutes, so modifying our own behaviour wont’t help. What’s left?

What if I modify my own behaviour to encourage other to modify their behaviour to collectively put pressure on the government and military to clean up their act? It’s called ‘being a citizen’.

[Woodchopper]

I have moved some posts containing general discussion to this thread from the thread on Murder by a British Soldier in Kenya.

[sheldrake]

We can lobby for things to be made illegal, but the terrible things that have happened here are definitely already illegal. We can introduce teaching on appropriate behaviour to the education system, but these soldiers are from a country that have had that kind of social education for over a generation already.

The kind of men reading this thread are not the kind of men who enlist in the army and chase prostitutes, so modifying our own behaviour wont’t help. What’s left?

What if I modify my own behaviour to encourage other to modify their behaviour to collectively put pressure on the government and military to clean up their act? It’s called ‘being a citizen’.

As said in the other thread, it's completely unclear what you want to pressure the government into doing. They're already investigating the crime mentioned in the other thread, as they investigated bl..dy Sunday, and all the cases brought against soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.