Murdering the Shipwrecked and Other News Items

This isn’t meant to be a newspaper, but to ignore the torrent of news that bombards us daily runs the risk of seeming clueless. So here are a few items from the last ten days or so to show we've stayed tuned:

As surveillance aircraft closed on the first alleged drug boat that the U.S. was about to destroy on September 2nd, “The order was to kill everybody” given verbally by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth according to two involved in the operation, The Washington Post reported Friday. When two survivors were spotted clinging to the burning wreckage, “The Special Operations commander overseeing the attack… ordered a second strike to comply with Hegseth’s instructions” and “the two men were blown apart in the water” that, according to a person who had seen the second video not released to the media, “people would be horrified” to see.

Hegseth dismissed the Post’s investigation as ”fabricated, inflammatory, and derogatory reporting”.

There were eleven people on that September 2nd boat and the next day Hegseth said on Fox News:

"I watched it live. We knew exactly who was in that boat. We knew exactly what they were doing. And we knew exactly who they represented and that was Tren de Aragua, a narco-terrorist organization designated by the United States trying to poison our country with illicit drugs."

No evidence was been presented then or since to prove the Pentagon knew anything whatever about the occupants of the boat, which entitles us to think everything he said was a lie. And the one question which no one asks, and which would make his lying desperate, is this: Why would it take eleven people to smuggle drugs into the U.S.? Wouldn't it have been more profitable to displace their weight with more drugs? And most particularly, might they have been sex traffickers with a cargo captive females?

The U.S. Coast Guard has always interdicted drug traffickers, It is a matter of law enforcement, not the “armed conflict” that the Trump administration has tried to create to justify summary killings with no due process. The Coast Guard trains its seamen to follow a strict step-by-step process that orders boats to stop for boarding, fire a short burst of warning shots into the waves if a boat does not halt, then shoot out the engine if the crew still keeps going. Any illegal substances are confiscated and those on board are arrested – all in accordance with international law. Instead, the Trump regime obliterates the boats and shreds their crews.

We are in a “non-international armed conflict” with “designated terrorist organizations”, says the White House, which had the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel work up an opinion of absolution reminiscent of the infamous John Yoo memos that approved torture by Bush-Cheney operatives. Barbaric as that was, it said torture must stop short of “serious impairment to… any bodily organ”. But this regime has taken it beyond damage to body organs to what can only be called murder – with 23 boats and over 80 killed so far, mass murder.

The “double-tap,” the second hit, was to sink the boat and remove a navigation hazard to other vessels, not to kill survivors, was the cover-up in a written briefing by the military to the president. Without first rescuing the shipwrecked and presumably wounded occupants of the boat, an obligation under the law? Anyway…

“The idea that wreckage from one small boat in a vast ocean is a hazard to marine traffic is patently absurd, and killing survivors is blatantly illegal”

…said Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass), a four-tour Marine Corps combat captain who, as a member of the House Armed Services Committee received a classified briefing from Pentagon officials.

“Mark my words: It may take some time, but Americans will be prosecuted for this, either as a war crime or outright murder”.

If the two in the water were no longer able to fight, that “would in essence be an order to show no quarter, which would be a war crime.”

The Supreme Court gave Trump immunity from prosecution for any official act taken while president. He has chosen murder. Former prosecutor Andrew McCarthy, who writes for the conservative National Review, provides for us the complete legal judgement:

"If this happened as described in the Post report, it was, at best, a war crime under federal law. I say 'at best' because, as regular readers know, I believe the attacks on these suspected drug boats — without congressional authorization, under circumstances in which the boat operators pose no military threat to the United States, and given that narcotics trafficking is defined in federal law as a crime rather than as terrorist activity, much less an act of war — are lawless and therefore that the killings are not legitimate under the law of armed conflict…Even if you buy the untenable claim that they are combatants, it is a war crime to intentionally kill combatants who have been rendered unable to fight. It is not permitted, under the laws and customs of honorable warfare, to order that no quarter be given — to apply lethal force to those who surrender or who are injured, shipwrecked, or otherwise unable to fight."

One of Hegseth’s first moves was to replace the Pentagon’s lawyers of the Judge Advocate General’s Corps (JAG) that advises on the legality of planned military actions because he didn’t think they were “well-suited” to provide recommendations. He didn’t want them to be "roadblocks to anything that happens" over the next four years, he said in February. “His contempt for the law, his contempt for JAG officers, permeates this entire thing”, says Representative Adam Smith (D-Wash).

Joe Scarborough of MSNOW’s “Morning Joe” said he had talked to a Navy Seal in operations “down there” who said “they understand that there are people on the boat only because the cartel has kidnapped their families and said either get on that boat or we’re going to kill your children”. The last thing Pete Hegseth wants is for there to be survivors to tell that story to the U.S. Congress and reveal that is the barbarity the Trump administration is playing into. Cleaning up debris, you say?

Trump as usual professes to know nothing about anything. “Number one, I don’t know that that happened”, he said on Air Force One, “and Pete said he did not want the, he didn’t even know what people were talking about.”

The Post’s revelation about the “double tap” killing comes just days after the video of six in Congress alerting the military,

“Our laws are clear. You can refuse illegal orders. You must refuse illegal orders.

Just days ago, President Trump – rich all his days – came upon what he said was a “new word” for him, “affordability”. In a Truth Social post, he now insists that the word belongs to him. Touting drug prices that are purportedly…

“FALLING AT LEVELS NEVER SEEN BEFORE, 500%, 600%, 700%, and more. No other President has been able to do this, BUT I HAVE!”

…he proclaimed “I AM THE AFFORDABILITY PRESIDENT”. Told that the average age of first time homebuyers is 40, he blamed Biden and came up with the idea of a 50-year mortgage, which would drive house prices up. Then, to make everything more affordable, why not give everyone $2,000 from tariff revenues? But didn’t 2021’s stimulus payments cause the inflation for which Republicans so roundly excoriate Biden (and Biden gifted everyone less: $1,400 in early 2021)?

“Everyone agrees energy is down”, Trump said. Gasoline, yes, but certainly not electricity, its costs rising often because of runaway AI demand for power, which the president wants to proceed unencumbered by any regulation despite aggravating electricity costs.

”We’re going to take care of all this stuff very quickly, very easily. It’s surgical. It’s beautiful to watch.”

He is now confident, after the GOP losses in elections three weeks earlier, that “we should win the Midterm Elections in RECORD NUMBERS”.

Just weeks ago, with so many going without a paycheck during the government shutdown, the Trump administration battled to withhold food aid, making life just that much more unaffordable.

“To all Airlines, Pilots, Drug Dealers, and Human Traffickers, please consider THE AIRSPACE ABOVE AND SURROUNDING VENEZUELA TO BE CLOSED IN ITS ENTIRETY,” Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social. “Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

It doesn’t need explaining that this is ridiculous, but it appears in his distorted reality field he is plotting air attacks on Venezuela. He is already operating outside the law without any involvement of Congress by his attacks on what we are asked to assume are boats smuggling drugs, which constitutionally has the power to decide whether or not the United States should go to war.

The Ukraine peace proposal so heavily stacked in Russia’s favor hands Putin his wish to dominate that region, while at the same time the Argentina bailout, tariff punishment of Brazil for prosecuting its ex-president, talk of attacking Mexico’s cartels, annexing Greenland says Trump is adopting 19th Century sphere of influence policy as the new foreign policy posture of the U.S. And he certainly won’t want to go to war with China over that little island off the China coast named Taiwan.

"Any document signed by Sleepy Joe Biden with the Autopen, which was approximately 92% of them, is hereby terminated, and of no further force or effect," Trump said in a Friday post on Truth Social with no substantiation of that number, of course. "The Autopen is not allowed to be used if approval is not specifically given by the President of the United States."

And the 1,600 January 6 pardons? Trump has admitted to autopen use for “very unimportant papers”, apparently unmindful that he had to be speaking of the convicted insurrectionists, the pardons of whom he of course did not sign individually, so is he saying those pardons were unimportant? Trump will of course claim that autopen use was specifically approved by him, without proof, but not by Biden, also without proof.

"The Radical Left Lunatics circling Biden around the beautiful Resolute Desk in the Oval Office took the Presidency away from him", Trump averred.

"I am hereby cancelling all Executive Orders, and anything else that was not directly signed by Crooked Joe Biden, because the people who operated the Autopen did so illegally. Joe Biden was not involved in the Autopen process and, if he says he was, he will be brought up on charges of perjury."

It’s infantile.

Jair Bolsonaro, the former Brazilian president, attempted to overthrow the Brazilian government to retain power after his election loss. Unlike Trump for attempting the same, Bolsonaro was tried for treason and convicted. For prosecuting him, Trump punished Brazil with an extra 40% tariff that American coffee drinkers paid for – until he heard about “affordability”’s threat to the midterms and exempted coffee, fruit, and beef. He begged unsuccessfully for the Brazilian government to pardon their outlaw leader.

About to enter prison to serve a 27 year sentence, Bolsonaro was in house arrest while he appeals. He was caught attempting to saw off his ankle bracelet and put in custody. Had he planned an escape?

Drowned by the noise of his chopper a week ago, Trump didn’t quite hear a reporter’s question about Bolsonaro and answered, “So I spoke last to the person you just referred to, and we’re going to be meeting, I believe, in the very near future.” Asked again, “Sir, are you aware about the president being arrested today?” Trump was surprised and said, “No, I don’t know anything about that.” So what are we hearing? Expecting to meet “in the very near future” a man in an ankle bracelet sentenced to 27 years? How can that be interpreted as anything other than a plot to subvert Brazil and give their criminal president asylum in the U.S.?