[HN Gopher] I may have found a way to spot U.S. at-sea strikes b...
___________________________________________________________________
I may have found a way to spot U.S. at-sea strikes before they're
announced
Author : hentrep
Score : 265 points
Date : 2025-11-06 04:37 UTC (18 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (old.reddit.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (old.reddit.com)
| valicord wrote:
| The satellite feed removed from internet in 3, 2, ...
| irjustin wrote:
| From one of the comments:
|
| > Yes, FIRMS data is what most people use to monitor large
| strikes that create a significant heat signature. In the middle
| of the sea you'll usually just see oil platforms generate heat
| like that.
|
| > A lot of people reading this know this already, but you could
| see exactly where the bunker busters were being dropped in Iran
| months ago from FIRMS data within ~15-20min of the strikes.
| energy123 wrote:
| Are you sure that 15-20min latency is the fastest you can get
| that data?
| somenameforme wrote:
| This post is relatively old information to anybody following
| e.g. the Ukraine War, which is where I assume the poster got
| the inspiration for this. It's regularly used to publicly
| confirm strikes.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Unfortunately, why would the current admin want to stifle info
| about these strikes?
|
| They _brag_ about them, because murdering random people in the
| ocean on flimsy pretenses is _popular_ to their base.
|
| We have murdered at least 66 people so far.
|
| It sure is funny how republicans insist that Fentanyl is a huge
| problem, but decline to punish those actually responsible, the
| sacklers, and have abandoned their blame of China for fentanyl
| production.
|
| Meanwhile we continue a military build up off the coast.
|
| Can't wait for all those people who voted for Trump because he
| "Doesn't start wars" to be completely silent or even supportive
| of a war against Venezuela.
|
| Some things don't entirely make sense with the cynical view
| though. I would think his base would be very supportive of
| openly advocating for regime change in Venezuela even by force,
| so I don't quite understand subterfuge unless this is just
| early opinion driving.
|
| Republican presidents sure like how wars do for their re-
| election though, and the Trump admin would love a war to
| "excuse" something like... say.... suspended elections.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| Note: "before they're announced" which is quite specifically not
| "before the strike occurs"
| NaomiLehman wrote:
| that would require a time machine
| SirFatty wrote:
| No, that would take an information leak.
| giantg2 wrote:
| That would only be a scheduled strike. That wouldn't work
| for ad-hoc strikes.
| lazide wrote:
| Ad-hoc strikes still need approval from the chain of
| command (or at least would have/used to), so there would
| still be radio chatter.
| kulahan wrote:
| I assume there are scenarios where the chain is skipped?
| I could be wrong, but don't the people sitting at nukes
| just _launch_ if they see certain things? If _they_ have
| autonomy, I assume everyone with a missile launch button
| has some to some degree.
| aerostable_slug wrote:
| Nuclear release authority is pre-delegated to varying
| degrees, but not down to the launch control centers. They
| do not possess the required information to launch their
| missiles. Precise delegation details are classified.
|
| For combatants down in Venezuela's waters, the only time
| they're going to have permission to blow a boat out of
| the water without checking with higher authority is if
| that boat is actively firing on American servicemen or
| presenting a similar imminent threat to human life.
| Otherwise the strikes flow through an approval matrix.
| All of this is subject to change as situations develop,
| and command centers have military attorneys present in
| the room with them to counsel local leadership.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Depends on the ROE I guess
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| After a general objective and ROE are set, then it's
| usually just a JAG officer telling you if it's legal or
| not and that's all over military satellites or in the
| actual room somewhere in Florida.
| rootlocus wrote:
| Or a Signal invite from Hegseth
| jihadjihad wrote:
| Or access to the _Minority Report_ precogs
| gadders wrote:
| Or the Pentagon Pizza Index: https://www.pizzint.watch/
|
| Background:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_pizza_theory
|
| (Or similar for the nearest base/command centre for
| operations near Venezuela)
| swiftcoder wrote:
| Which is the same dude, so not entirely out of the question
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| It has been possible to detect operations before they occur
| through clever analysis of open source data. The US military
| became aware of this many years ago and has spent a lot of
| time studying this type of exploitation.
|
| The US pays people to search for and red-team their real non-
| public operations using OSINT. It helps the US understand how
| exposed they are, how to effectively hide in the OSINT
| environment, and how to manipulate OSINT to misdirect
| adversaries sifting through the same data.
| twoodfin wrote:
| The Iran bunker-buster strike seemed to exploit this
| misdirection ability to some extent.
| g8oz wrote:
| How so?
| ambicapter wrote:
| Possibly referring to the fact they sent half the stealth
| bomber fleet to the Philippines, while the other half was
| actually performing the strike straight from the US.
| bokohut wrote:
| The operation efforts of distraction are very very real
| however what has never ceased to amaze me about the U.S.
| governments lack of "intelligence" is why they do not
| take the same approach in hiding the gas stations in the
| sky. Some here may have seen this distraction as it
| occurred and given enough exposure to said data, aka
| experience, when an event occurs it certainly stands out
| as an obvious data pattern anomaly against what is
| normal. The old magicians trick of distraction however
| some here are old and wise enough to know the elephant
| did not disappear. ADSB data is an amazing thing and the
| fact the the U.S. government pays to keep in suppressed
| should be an indicator towards its revealing power. What
| you cannot see matters most and the world is coming to
| learn this with each passing day.
| WheatMillington wrote:
| Yes that is how the English language works.
| bragr wrote:
| Neat, but not really new. People have been monitoring military
| activity with FIRMS for years.
| confirmmesenpai wrote:
| especially in the Ukraine war
| consumer451 wrote:
| Not for long after TFA.
| beefnugs wrote:
| satellite imagery will be called terrorism now
|
| next up: anyone with the knowledge to do data analysis
| davidw wrote:
| "narco-trafficking boats"
|
| There's no public evidence of that though. No trial. It's the
| same as if we sent the navy to board those boats, put a gun to
| people's heads and execute them in cold blood.
| voganmother42 wrote:
| The US gov cartel is ruthless - military members get to be
| murderers, but its good preparation for when they are deployed
| against US cities
| somenameforme wrote:
| 100% agreed with this and this is one of the worst issues about
| the development of long range weapons. 'We droned this guy.'
| 'We bombed this area.' 'We destroyed this boat.'
|
| All of this really sounds so much better than what it really
| is. It's murdering people all around the world, many of whom
| are 100% innocent. For instance the last person we droned in
| occupied Afghanistan was Zemari Ahmadi - a longtime worker for
| a US humanitarian aid organization. A US drone operator mistook
| bottles of water he was loading into his car for his family as
| bombs, and so they murdered him as well as 10 other civilians,
| including 7 children, all with the press of a button. [1]
|
| [1] - https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/10/world/asia/us-air-
| strike-...
| jmb99 wrote:
| >many of whom are 100% innocent
|
| Under US law, 100% of them are 100% innocent, by definition.
| "Innocent until proven guilty" and whatnot; it _literally_
| means that every person is innocent in the eyes of the law
| until a court finds them guilty.
| PenguinCoder wrote:
| Unfortunately that had been forgotten in this era.
| anarticle wrote:
| Fun fact, if you're not a US citizen on US soil US law does
| not apply. I'm not saying this because I'm taking a side,
| but this was how the Patriot act had knock on effects.
|
| An interesting case of this is something like you call a
| foreign national in another country and this is enough to
| be able to tap both sides of the conversation via Patriot
| Act / NSA purview.
| asdefghyk wrote:
| RE ".....not a US citizen on US soil US law does not
| apply....."
|
| Does not maKE SENSE... Why are people extradited to US
| from overseas locations .
|
| Like why they want Julian Assange ?
| raspasov wrote:
| Just some ideas:
|
| - Drone-bombing an embassy in downtown London does not
| look good on social media
|
| - He's too famous and has many supporters in the Western
| world to be publicly assassinated, regardless of location
| (example: Lady Gaga visited him while he was stuck in the
| embassy)
|
| - He's more useful as a deterrent, i.e., "see what might
| happen to you", to the people who might decide to go a
| similar route. Some will go that route regardless, but
| chances are at least a few have been persuaded otherwise.
|
| For all the ridicule of the government, the Intelligence
| Community seems to be doing a fairly intelligent job most
| of the time to satisfy its objectives.
| bulbar wrote:
| It does not apply in general, but a country will always
| declare jurisdiction if deemed necessary. A common
| example in Germany is that the country will try to
| enforce German law for foreign-hosted websites hosted by
| citizen of another country if the website is targeted at
| German citizen.
| brookst wrote:
| Are you saying that non-citizen residents of the US are
| not subject to US laws? That seems dubious.
| LastTrain wrote:
| And we know for sure there were no US citizens on these
| boats?
| godelski wrote:
| > not a US citizen ***on US soil*** US law does not
| apply.
|
| 1) these strikes are happening in international waters
|
| 2) US law definitely applies to non citizens on US soil.
|
| Like that's such a ridiculous statement. Even if the law
| was "we can do whatever if you're not a citizen", that's
| still law...
|
| You think non citizens are all sovereign citizens bound
| to no law? To be able to do whatever they want? I didn't
| know my neighbor was a diplomat.
|
| I think you mean rights. Which this is much more dubious.
| The constitution definitely interchanges the use of
| "citizens" and "people". Notably the 11th amendment uses
| citizens, specifying belonging to states foreign or
| domestic. It was ratified only a few years after the Bill
| of rights, so not like a drastic language change
| happened.
|
| There are people who will argue "the people" means
| "citizens" but I find that a difficult interpretation if
| you read the constitution or federalist papers.
| nerdsniper wrote:
| 3) quite a few US laws apply to US citizens on non-US
| soil (paying domestic taxes on foreign income)
|
| 4) US law applies to non-US citizens who have never set
| foot in the USA (Kim Dotcom)
| mjanx123 wrote:
| A country jurisdiction is both territorial and personal,
| the laws apply to anyone on the soil, and to the
| citizens, permanent residents, asylum seekers etc
| anywhere in the universe.
| anarticle wrote:
| Oh sorry, I have the wrong polarity here:
|
| "not US citizen" on "not US soil" is what I meant.
|
| Sorry for the firestorm this created!
|
| What I mean to say is that the USA _INTENTIONALLY_
| violates rights of people outside the USA, expressed in
| things like the Patriot Act re:wiretapping, and also the
| spaces between passport control where they say "USA laws
| don't apply, our agents have purview to do essentially
| anything". If you check the discussions in the 00s about
| this the fed govt was very dicey and you can tell they
| were chomping at the bit to be able to have essentially
| NO OVERSIGHT on any of these massive violations of
| people's rights.
|
| I'll take the karma hit, there is no way to edit it
| apparently. Sorry!
| breppp wrote:
| Although the Venezuela example is quite an overreach, none
| of these people fall under the US laws you think they do
|
| The legal basis is them being declared Unlawful Combatants
| under the Military Commissions Act of 2006. Once they do
| they are enemy combatants in war and can be killed.
|
| This law was so thoroughly used by all presidents since
| then that you cannot really claim it's illegal
| bulbar wrote:
| > Although the Venezuela example is quite an overreach
|
| To me it sounds like that killing was (possibly) illegal.
| Idk about that 2006 Act though. From a moral stand point
| it doesn't matter if it was (possibly) illegal or not
| however.
| Den_VR wrote:
| It matters quite a lot, it's the biblical difference
| between killing and murder.
| bulbar wrote:
| Law at biblical times had a different foundation than
| today. Today the foundation is legal positivism, which is
| the philosophical decoupling of moral and law (which
| sounds terrible at first glance, but is important if you
| think it through). Therefore, it is not useful to apply
| the definition of the terms from back then, because the
| whole context in which they were used doesn't exist
| anymore.
|
| In the Western world, the meaning of murder and killing
| is different and while that described action might be an
| unlawful killing (by accident) it most likely was not a
| murder.
| pstuart wrote:
| They're not enemy combatants, at worst they're drug
| runners. Just because Trump declares something to be true
| doesn't make it true (although his lackeys will act as if
| it is).
|
| This is not how to deal with The Drug War(tm), it's very
| expensive theater that does nothing to address the
| problem. In fact that very war is the reason why it's a
| problem in the first place. Remember that an earlier
| batch of dangerous drug dealers were Americans working
| out of doctors' offices.
| breppp wrote:
| I assume the pretext is actually the war on terror
| because of the heavy involvement of Venezuela and its
| drug cartels with financing and supporting of Hezbollah
| and the IRGC
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/02/world/americas/venezue
| la-...
|
| https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/perspectives/P
| EA3...
| jonway wrote:
| Donald Trump just pardoned CZ changpeng zhao who was
| banking for sanctioned entities like Iran. Should the
| White House therefore strike Air Force One?
|
| This is extraordinarily capricious and obviously
| disingenuous on the part of the administration.
| vkou wrote:
| > They're not enemy combatants, at worst they're drug
| runners.
|
| And even at worst, if the Navy boarded those boats, found
| drugs, _summarily executing everyone on board would still
| be murder_. Rule of law is what separates us from
| animals, and the people ordering and carrying out these
| killings fall squarely in the latter.
|
| Carrying water for this is beyond the pale, but is, of
| course, fully in alignment with a cornerstone of a
| political philosophy - that there are rules that protect
| some people, but do not bind them, and that there are
| rules that bind other people, but do not protect them.
| breppp wrote:
| The idea here is that they are declared enemy combatants
| in a war (very plausible for Al-Qaeda, quite less here).
|
| In a war bombing a boat filled with combatants or members
| of an armed force is legal and does not amount to murder.
| While in the same war capturing the same boat filled with
| enemy combatants and executing them is illegal.
|
| So I don't think your example holds, and that distinction
| is probably the basis for drone assassinations
| vkou wrote:
| In what universe are (alleged, no proof provided)
| smugglers enemy combatants? In one where anyone is?
|
| You can squint and claim that a wedding that has one
| person who spends his Saturdays and Sundays playing
| partisan in the hills is full of enemy combatants
| (obviously all men and boys above the age of 12, don't
| think too hard about what that means for your kid's next
| track meet), but justifying this is utterly beyond the
| pale. This is a war crime if there's a war, and murder if
| there isn't.
|
| This government corrupts anyone it touches, so this is
| fully in its playbook - make it's subordinates choose
| between following their conscience and resigning, or
| being complicit in its crimes.
| pstuart wrote:
| There's no war in this situation. The War on Terror(tm)
| and the War on Drugs(tm) are jingoistic phrases that are
| not actionable declarations of war.
|
| These attacks are theater to distract us from other
| failures, like the ability to the federal government
| running again. And the Epstein Files too, it's likely
| _that_ is the driver for this.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| > This is not how to deal with The Drug War(tm), it's
| very expensive theater that does
|
| That's unclear. We'd have to know more about what sort of
| deterrent it is making on the drug runners. Quite
| possibly this does have them shitting their pants and
| delaying shipments hoping to avoid the risk. At the very
| least that's not absolutely impossible. When someone says
| "it's expensive theater" in this circumstance, I think
| that their criticism has more to do with their objection
| to the person ordering the strikes and less to do with
| the effectiveness of them, especially considering that we
| might not know for months what the true impact is.
| orwin wrote:
| The Venezuelan cartel (well, cartel network) is the 5th
| biggest on the Atlantic/Caribbean side, and are known for
| people trafficking and gold smuggling before drug related
| offence. Targetting Venezuelans boats is political. US
| should target Mexican, Haitian, Dominican, Columbian
| boats way, way before Venezuela if it was about drug
| trafficking.
| pstuart wrote:
| I have another comment that's a sibling to this and I'll
| avoid the copypasta.
|
| tl;dr -- the current model is whack-a-mole and is a
| fiasco except for it's unstated but intended purpose
| (oppression of "others"). What you're suggesting will not
| work, will waste likely billions of dollars, and just
| create even more misery in the world.
| pstuart wrote:
| We created the damn cartels in the first place with our
| insatiable demand for their products.
|
| The current model is designed to create crime from end to
| end. And it was _never_ about safety (FFS, look at how
| people who are busted for using drugs are treated).
|
| Humans like having altered states and there will always
| be a market for that. There are risks and dangers in that
| but they can be mitigated. I'll trot out the classic
| counterpoint to the current madness: alcohol and tobacco
| are legal and sanctioned but we know they're dangerous
| and kill over _half a million_ US citizens _per year_.
|
| Again, if you think it's about safety you are mistaken:
| it's about oppression and control and it's ruining this
| country as well as our neighbors to the south.
| pyrale wrote:
| "...And 50 water buffalos too! They were all certified!"
| bawolff wrote:
| Its kind of irrelavent in an armed conflict. There are a
| bunch of rules (i.e. the geneva conventions) around who can
| and cannot be targeted in an armed conflict, but innocent
| vs guilty is not how it works. Innocent people being killed
| can sometimes totally be consistent with the rules of war.
| Guilty people being killed can sometimes be a violation of
| the rules. Innocent vs guiltly is the wrong metaphor for
| what makes a legal target.
| lostlogin wrote:
| > Innocent people being killed can sometimes totally be
| consistent with the rules of war.
|
| The US attacks people and countries without declaring
| war.
|
| If anyone did this to the US, can you imagine the butt-
| hurt response?
| theoreticalmal wrote:
| The majority of the West has implicitly or explicitly
| ceded their national defense and warfighting capabilities
| to the USA. The comparison between USA and "other
| countries" isn't really valid, as the situations are
| vastly different
| jampekka wrote:
| What does that mean? That USA is somehow killing people
| all around the world as a puppet or Iceland or something?
| lostlogin wrote:
| US exceptionalism doesn't make killing ok.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| The West isn't the world, though. China could start
| taking out random boats next week.
| bawolff wrote:
| > The US attacks people and countries without declaring
| war.
|
| Declaring a war stopped being a thing after world war 2.
| Not just for usa but for everyone. In modern times a
| decleration of war has no meaning in international law.
| It only has meaning in domestic law.
|
| I think the reason is that the UN charter makes it
| illegal to fight a war except in self-defense. In modern
| times declerations of war have generally been replaced
| with sending a notice to the un security council that you
| intend to use your right to self defense. I dont know
| about this particular situation but i think a lot of the
| time historically the US has followed that procedure.
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| _Its kind of irrelavent in an armed conflict_
|
| which this is not, so what's your point?
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| Seems like it's turning into one
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| sure does, but temporal considerations matter and the
| United States military has been killing people--at the
| President and SecDef's direction--in the Caribbean and
| Pacific for weeks, now, without even the slightest fig
| leaf of Congressional authorization. In other words, even
| if there's a formal declaration of war on Venezuela
| (which will never happen), that doesn't excuse the prior
| behavior.
| bawolff wrote:
| Declerations of war are irrelavent to if its an armed
| conflict (in general declerations of war are obsolete in
| international law. They might have meaning domestically
| but do not have meaning in international law).
|
| From what i understand there are two requirements
|
| - the violence has to be intense enough. I think we are
| there
|
| - the other side has to be an organized armed group
| capable of conducting warfare. This is the part that
| seems to be a stretch. The drug runners may be organized
| but are they really capable of conducting warfare? The
| quote i found from the red cross is: "Non-governmental
| groups involved in the conflict must be considered as
| "parties to the conflict", meaning that they possess
| organized armed forces. This means for example that these
| forces have to be under a certain command structure and
| have the capacity to sustain military operations."
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Mexico would say that drug gangs are capable of
| conducting something that at least looks like warfare.
| bawolff wrote:
| Not just mexico saying it: https://international-
| review.icrc.org/articles/opening-pando...
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Well, here's a somewhat analogous precedent: The US (and
| other nations) have been fighting piracy in the Horn of
| Africa area for several years now. No declared war (by
| anybody - it's not just the US that didn't), but pirates
| _are_ being killed.
|
| So the precedent is there that this is how we do things.
| It's not just this operation. (If you don't like that,
| what do you want? Do you want to require that the
| military get Congressional approval for every operation
| in which someone might get killed?)
|
| At least (just today), some members of Congress finally
| got briefed on the classified intel that leads people to
| think that these are in fact drug smugglers getting
| killed.
|
| Look, I'm not saying that bombing these boats is
| justified. I'm just saying that the Congressional
| oversight rules are not unique to this operation.
| mmooss wrote:
| It's not an armed conflict in any legal sense, according
| to everyone but partisans (that I've seen).
| vincnetas wrote:
| Is USA at war though?
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| In the modern sense, yes. We no longer declare wars
| explicitly, nor do we limit that decision to Congress.
| Trump's decision to attack these targets is consistent
| with every other conflict we've engaged in since before
| either of us were born... national security threats. Even
| if you believe the dope itself to be no great national
| security threat, that's just their payload today, maybe
| next time they'll smuggle in a nuke or whatever.
|
| Of all the things that people on the left _might_ find
| objectionable about Trump, this should be at the very far
| bottom of the list.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| > Even if you believe the dope itself to be no great
| national security threat, that's just their payload
| today, maybe next time they'll smuggle in a nuke or
| whatever.
|
| You're saying it's fine that they're killed for something
| they could "maybe" do in the future? Without even seeing
| any evidence that they're doing what they're accused of
| today? Have there been instances in the past of drug
| smugglers moving into the nuclear warhead smuggling game?
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| >You're saying it's fine that they're killed for
| something they could "maybe" do in the future?
|
| Smuggling of any sort is a weapon with disastrous
| consequences. We wouldn't let the cartels have nukes, why
| would we want them to have "smuggling"? Yes, I'm fine
| with this. That they promise not to use it for really bad
| stuff _for now_ wouldn 't make a difference (and they're
| not even making that promise).
|
| >Without even seeing any evidence t
|
| I'm not interested in being the internet jury for this,
| no.
|
| >Have there been instances in the past of drug smugglers
| moving into the nuclear warhead smuggling game?
|
| Gee. That's something I really want to wait until after
| they commit the offense before we do something about it.
| You've changed my mind with your top-notch debate
| strategy.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| > We wouldn't let the cartels have nukes, why would we
| want them to have "smuggling"?
|
| Because usually we only respond to behaviours and actions
| that actually exist in the real world. By this logic we
| should charge all shop lifters with treason because
| they're not promising they'll never steal state secrets.
|
| > Gee...You've changed my mind with your top-notch debate
| strategy.
|
| I'm not sure why you're choosing to take this tone but I
| would hope we could have any further discussion like
| adults.
| ok_dad wrote:
| The boats they are attacking won't have drugs, these are
| the slow fishing boats that are at most refueling the go-
| fast boats with the drugs. Killing these people is just
| murder and nothing else. We have been doing drug
| interdiction for years without killing everyone until the
| orange dictator came into power.
|
| Source: I did a deployment in counter drug interdiction
| in the Navy.
|
| Edit: if you really want to know how threatening these
| guys are, they usually spotted our aircraft and the first
| thing they did was ALWAYS to jettison any weapons they
| had immediately, then start throwing out the drugs. They
| knew they weren't fighting a USN ship and that we weren't
| guns to harm them if they were peaceful. I suspect they
| might fight back now, though.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| > that are at most refueling the go-fast boats with the
| drugs.
|
| Oh. Wow. That makes it ok then. As long as they can all
| play hot potato and the drug runners don't have it on
| their own persons when the missile hits, it was
| unjustifiable.
| ok_dad wrote:
| Most of the fishing boats we boarded that were suspected
| to be resupply boats were, in fact, regular old fishing
| boats. The 1 we found that was a resupply boat had only
| external signs of fishing, but internally had fuel
| bladders instead of fish and ice. We, of course, didn't
| murder those guys or the 4-5 go-fasts we caught: we
| captured them and turned them over to partner country
| navies for legal processing.
|
| In other words, most of the boats our intelligence
| apparatus thought were possible supply boats were simply
| fishermen. We are definitely killing some innocent
| fishermen with these strikes, and even if we weren't it's
| not ethical or legal to murder a bunch of guys selling
| fuel to drug runners. By the way, all of the drug runners
| are basically indentured servants or slaves and their
| families are being held back home as collateral.
|
| Keep thinking you're on the side of right, though, and
| when you realize the USA is the baddies on this one you
| will hopefully be horrified at the realization.
| queenkjuul wrote:
| Actually i find all those other interventions
| unacceptable as well. Nobody on earth should be accepting
| summary executions in international waters without
| evidence. Today "cartels," tomorrow journalists.
| mywittyname wrote:
| > Of all the things that people on the left might find
| objectionable about Trump, this should be at the very far
| bottom of the list.
|
| Given that the left are the only ones complaining about
| the extrajudicial killings under the Obama
| administration, I disagree.
|
| Personally, I find public officials murdering unarmed
| people objectionable in practically all cases. And I
| think it's probably the worst thing a public official can
| do.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| >Given that the left are the only ones complaining about
| the extrajudicial killings under the Obama
| administration, I disagree.
|
| I see no evidence of that. The only places I've ever
| noticed any complaints there were from the alt-right and
| libertarians (same thing?). You can see this in magazine
| titles like Reason if you care to check.
|
| >I find public officials murdering unarmed people
|
| What evidence is there that these people were unarmed?
| And what if they were? If there was 800 pounds of cocaine
| (or whatever) on board, and they didn't even have a
| butter knife with them... why should that somehow exempt
| them from the hostile response they received?
| blobbers wrote:
| We should probably enact harsher laws on drug smugglers /
| narco traffickers. A lot of asian countries have
| essentially declared the death penalty to drug importers.
|
| The administration wants to see results and it would seem
| that the problem is that the American judicial systems is
| set up to simply cost money, which is something narcos
| have.
|
| If you take a cartel to court, they just have a lawyer
| tie up your law team. We've made the mistake of allowing
| capitalism to influence too many of our systems of
| government from judicial (cost of lawyers) to electoral
| (advertisement costs and political campaigning). Isn't
| this the problem?
| orthecreedence wrote:
| > Of all the things that people on the left might find
| objectionable about Trump, this should be at the very far
| bottom of the list.
|
| Saying the quiet part out loud: "Murdering people without
| due process should be at the bottom of the list of things
| to care about." Yes, thank you for clearly outlining the
| "right's" position on the issue.
| jampekka wrote:
| In general only combatants are allowed to be targeted.
| (Alleged) drug trafficking is not combatting.
|
| But in this case the point is a bit moot anyway as laws
| of war apply only to losers.
| bawolff wrote:
| It kind of seems like a stretch in this case, but in
| principle those two things can overlap.
|
| For example Mexico's fight with drug cartels is widely
| considered to meet the definition of non international
| armed conflict.
| owlbite wrote:
| But it can be even _worse_ than that. It 's "we assassinated
| the phone", "algorithm says vehicle has suspicious travel
| history and must die". There's no real thinking human in the
| loop for some of this stuff, just some model decided the
| metadata has a high probability of being associate with an
| opponent of some flavor and then everyone in the vicinity is
| blown to bits as computer said kill.
| mmooss wrote:
| > this is one of the worst issues about the development of
| long range weapons. 'We droned this guy.' 'We bombed this
| area.' 'We destroyed this boat.'
|
| The US administration uses the long range to argue that the
| War Powers Act doesn't apply: They aruge that the Act applies
| to 'hostilities', and US soldiers are too far from the
| targets to be exposed to danger, therefore they aren't
| 'hostilities'.
| lupire wrote:
| And that reasoning was plagiarized from Obama's
| justification for operations in Libya.
| hpdigidrifter wrote:
| >100% innocent
|
| Feel free to explain the submarine with no flag they bombed
| vincnetas wrote:
| i have not seen any submarines with flags though.
| dmoy wrote:
| I think GP means flag as in flag state - ocean vessels
| are typically to some country. In this sense, nearly all
| submarines are flagged - US navy, Russian navy, whatever.
|
| Not as in a literal flag flying on the submarine. (Though
| they do fly flags near ports and such)
| AngryData wrote:
| Their is an entire DIY submarine community around the
| Caribbean and those guys aren't part of any navy or
| military and don't fly flags.
| c45y wrote:
| Innocent until the courts say otherwise. It's why we
| apprehend people for crimes instead of just shooting them
| (in most countries)
| slg wrote:
| Murdering people for "committing" a nonviolent crime in
| international waters that still wouldn't qualify for capital
| punishment if it was committed on US soil. It wouldn't matter
| if they provided mountains of evidence, it would still be
| wrong, and yet they are providing zero evidence. We're just
| openly committing war crimes knowing that no one can really
| stop it.
| gpm wrote:
| Is it war crimes when there's no war? Would actually be
| curious to learn if the answer is yes.
|
| Naively it seems like old fashioned murder without any
| special qualifier. I guess it could be both too?
| bawolff wrote:
| War crimes require an armed conflict but not a "war". Note
| that declerations of war no longer really have meaning in
| international law and dont affect anything whether they are
| given or not.
|
| Armed conflict can be either international (e.g. between
| two countries) or non-international (e.g. you are atacking
| a non-state group. For example ISIS. However note that
| attacking a non-state group on the territory of a different
| state without permission of that state makes it be both.).
| War crimes apply to both types but the rules are slightly
| different between the two.
|
| Keep in mind also that people often colloquial use "war
| crimes" to mean any international crime, but technically
| its only one type. Crimes against humanity and genocide are
| technically not war crimes but a different category. They
| generally do not require an armed conflict (although often
| when they do happen its related to sone sort of armed
| conflict)
|
| Anyways this whole thing probably counts an armed conflict.
| I think at the least its a non-international armed conflict
| with the drug cartel. Attacking boats is usually an act of
| war even if they are in international waters, which might
| make it an international armed conflict with venuzula as
| well if the boats are connected to it (but the rules
| related to that im not really clear on and is a bit beyond
| my knoeledge).
|
| [IANAL]
| nickff wrote:
| The possibility of this being an 'act of war' does seem
| very interesting, but I'm not sure Venezuela could claim
| it in this circumstance, as the vessels do not appear to
| be 'flagged'. I would be interested to learn what the
| status of unflagged vessels is in international law, and
| I suspect there must be law on the subject, as pirates
| were typically unflagged.
| bawolff wrote:
| > Murdering people for "committing" a nonviolent crime in
| international waters
|
| If that is the rationale usa used, then yes it would be an
| obvious war crime. You can't shoot people in war because they
| are guilty of a crime unless they can legitamently be
| targeted for some other reason.
|
| I think USA is probably going to try and spin it as they are
| members of an armed group USA is in an armed conflict with,
| and they were targeted on that basis and not because of any
| particular crime any particular person comitted.
|
| How convincing that is is debatable [ianal but it sounds
| pretty unconvincing to me], and you of course still have the
| problem of how exactly the US can claim self-defense against
| a foreign drug cartel.
| nickff wrote:
| Could you please clarify this statement for me:
|
| > _"You can 't shoot people in war because they are guilty
| of a crime unless they can legitamently be targeted for
| some other reason."_
|
| From what I understand (and I am no expert), in a war, the
| default is that you _can_ shoot someone if you believe them
| to be acting in a manner which is against your side's
| interests (and have not surrendered while satisfying
| certain conditions).
| bawolff wrote:
| You can shoot them if they are in combat against you, but
| that's not considered a crime and it would be illegal to
| arrest them for it. Soldiers are considered to have
| immunity for acts of war (except war crimes)
|
| So for example it would be a war crime to punish someone
| for fighting in an opposing army. You can hold them as a
| prisoner of war for the duration of the conflict, but its
| supposed to be a means of keeping them out of a fight and
| not a punishment per se.
|
| I think the biggest difference is that crimes can
| generally be punished after the fact. A murderer can be
| punished whenever they are caught. A soldier can be shot
| at at the time, but if they decide they are tired of the
| war and run away to a farm or something, they are now
| civilians and can no longer be shot at or punished for
| previously being a soldier (unless they comitted war
| crimes) even if the war is still raging on.
| bawolff wrote:
| > Soldiers are considered to have immunity for acts of
| war (except war crimes)
|
| Late edit: to clarify that is soldiers of an actual
| country have immunity. Combatants of a non-state group do
| not have immunity, so can be subject to arrest for merely
| participating in the conflict.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| The fact that it'd be hard to prosecute them is exactly why
| they're being droned.
|
| See also: All those "terrorists" they held at gitmo
| everfrustrated wrote:
| In a strange way you're correct. If the Coastguard were
| sent then there's a risk of the drug runners pleading
| asylum. Then the US has to feed, water and care for them
| for basically forever as getting court cases deferred is
| easy. Which makes doing things the "right way" impossible.
|
| That's how gitmo came about - It was impossible to do the
| "right thing" under US law which would be inevitably be too
| lenient to the captured enemies of the US.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| It's not quite the same. It's considerably more _cowardly_.
| lingrush4 wrote:
| It's not cowardly at all because the person making the
| decision would not be putting themselves in danger either
| way.
|
| It's just pragmatic.
| VladVladikoff wrote:
| There is a non zero chance one of these strikes was a mistake
| and instead hit an innocent fishing boat. Because humans make
| mistakes all the damn time.
| harddrivereque wrote:
| Most of the released videos show speedboats without fishing
| equipment. For all intents and purposes, these speedboats
| might be medevac or just joyrides, but I would strongly count
| that they were fairly confidently related, to, uhm, the
| groups that were being referenced as being targeted
| officially. The sea allows for quite a bit more clearance
| regarding these things, mistakes can still happen, but are
| less likely than on densely populated areas on land. Anyways
| these strikes don't change the big picture in terms of
| movement of the things that they move - the things that they
| move comes in on airplanes, trucks, containers, through
| tunnels, in pockets of people arriving, even in
| fishing/leisure boats. For all I know they could be easily
| moving it using homing pigeons. And you can pass the pigeons
| through the gaps in the wall. Sure, not as efficient as by
| speedboats,but the demand will make stuff move. The solution
| to this problem is complex, but solving it in the society is
| easier than trying to stop the flow... I mean, people would
| just start producing locally then. Either with the groups of
| people that are being targeted or without.
| nickff wrote:
| It seems as though part of the rationale may relate to
| 'defunding' the Venezuelan government (as the current
| administration seems to disfavor them), which appears to be
| deriving a significant amount of revenue (which may not be
| going to the treasury) from granting 'license' for these
| traffickers to operate from their coast.
| Stranger43 wrote:
| Taking the moral argument aside the fact that the largest best
| funded navy run by the wealthiest country have to call in
| airstrikes against barely(if at all) armed fishing vessels,
| that may or may not be smugglers, rather then board arrest and
| at least make an attempt at tracing the cash flow back to the
| wealthy businessmen who is organizing/funding the smuggling
| reeks of weakness and desperation rather then being the signal
| of strength and competency it's intended to be.
|
| Sure it's a widely understood and often repeated problem with
| especially western naval and military doctrine that the peace
| time buildup favors white elephants(battleships, F35s etc)
| that, as was the case of the British high see fleet of WWII,
| end up inactive while entire new(often much cheaper and less
| sophisticated) classes of ships like destroyer escorts or
| Patrol boats have to be build as replacements. But still the US
| haven't quite deteriorated so badly yet that it couldn't
| reacquire whatever boarding capacity got lost in the relentless
| pursuit of military industrial complex profits quite quickly.
| b00ty4breakfast wrote:
| this kind of stuff lines up with the US military MO going back
| to at least 2008, when more than a few civilian wedding parties
| in Afghanistan were hit by drone strikes (not the last wedding
| party in the region to be blown up during the Obama
| administration). We can say that perhaps we are regressing but
| it is not really a new development.
| geoffmunn wrote:
| Well luckily it turned out that they were all ne'er-do-wells so
| it's all good.
|
| Just like when the US used drones on Iraqi convoys and
| amazingly they were all Al-Qaeda sympathisers.
| andrewinardeer wrote:
| Droning people without public evidence is nothing new for any
| POTUS in the last 20 years.
| symbogra wrote:
| > It's the same as if we sent the navy to board those boats,
| put a gun to people's heads and execute them in cold blood.
|
| That would work too but why risk american soldiers? This is
| much more efficient and the footage makes for good
| deterrent/propaganda.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| We have millions of years of human history that
| _emphatically_ prove that "Chance of death" is _not a
| deterrent_
|
| You know what is? A high chance of _any_ , even minimal
| punishment. Better life conditions.
| lingrush4 wrote:
| No having the navy board the boats would be way worse because
| it would put US servicemen in danger. Bombing the boats from a
| safe distance is by far the best way to deal with this problem.
| parsimo2010 wrote:
| I mean, if you don't watch the evening news or look for any
| evidence then I guess you wouldn't think there was public
| evidence.
|
| CBS Evening News has showed footage of the boats [1]. While
| this isn't ironclad proof (would you expect the drug runners to
| hold up identification showing them as criminals?), it is
| unlikely that these four-engined speed boats loaded with
| _something_ is anything other than drugs. They are not boats
| full of people /refugees. They aren't cargo ships operated by a
| shipping company with any official records claiming to have
| been lost, or any legitimate tour company. The characteristics
| of these boats match many other drug trafficking boats that the
| US Coast Guard has intercepted in the past full of drugs.
|
| You can debate whether the US President has authority to order
| strikes like this but insinuating these might just be innocent
| people and not drug runners isn't going to go very far.
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/a2CQbRUEeWY?si=pPS_97LqIgCdLWix
| gadders wrote:
| It's the same as if Obama sent a drone to kill people in a
| foreign country, no?
| blobbers wrote:
| I think its an interesting conundrum because you're right it is
| the same as what you said!
|
| They don't tell us the due diligence they do, but we would hope
| that our bureaucracy is careful about who they target and
| carefully thinks about how it affects the perception of
| americans vs. the potential benefit to our society (elimination
| of narco traffickers)?
|
| Ukraine / Russia aside, we no longer have much in the way of
| conventional wars where each team wears a certain color and
| they shoot at each other. Instead the weaker force tries to
| disguise itself as best possible and strike when possible. In
| this case, a drug cartel would try to be as under the radar as
| possible.
|
| What level of due diligence would you need to see before you
| would trust that a strike is justified? Or is the problem that
| narco trafficking doesn't justify death and therefore they
| should simply be imprisoning traffickers?
|
| On the subject of evidence, the problem with AI is that now
| video and imagery can easily be faked. You've always been able
| to plant a bag of weed on a teenager and arrest him, so
| planting a kilo of coke on a boat and arresting someone is no
| different.
|
| Malaysia, Philippines, China, Singapore all punish drug related
| crimes with death. One could argue that the societal impact of
| drugs is incredibly bad, thus warranting death to the
| traffickers.
|
| Without a doubt, helping addicts is a societally very
| challenging problem! Anyone who has had a loved one fall victim
| to addiction has dealt with the struggle of emotions that comes
| with it. A need for them to be better, but lacking the path
| forward when they regress. Simply removing the drugs from the
| equation would have never destroyed their lives.
|
| At some point it fundamentally needs to come down to trusting
| the people who defend the country ... who are entrusted to do
| this most difficult job.
| breppp wrote:
| [flagged]
| tomhow wrote:
| Please don't post snark on HN. We're trying for something
| better here.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| breppp wrote:
| sorry for that, however it did seem a bit too much on the
| baity title and trivial reality side
| tomhow wrote:
| Sure, and we've let flags and normal penalties pull it down
| off the front page now. Best to flag the post if it's a low
| quality article, and if it's really needing our attention,
| email us - hn@ycombinator.com.
| martythemaniak wrote:
| Could we change the title to the more accurate "summary
| executions" instead of "at-sea strikes"?
| croisillon wrote:
| no we can't, pg confirmed earlier this year he aligns with this
| admin's war on reality
| exe34 wrote:
| billionaires can't afford to go against the orangefuhrer.
| They might start falling out of windows.
| vkou wrote:
| Execution implies some sort of legal process. This is just
| murder.
| eru wrote:
| If you want to be nitpicky: randomly killing people isn't
| necessarily murder. There's eg also manslaughter and a few
| other legal categories.
| extraduder_ire wrote:
| That's what the reddit thread is called, there's a rule against
| editorialising titles here.
| aussieguy1234 wrote:
| Like alot of others on the reddit thread, I suspect this will get
| shut down fast, since it relies on US government imagery from
| NASA.
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| The United States seems to be using the same logic as Uncle Jimbo
| in South Park did when he hunted animals: "it's coming right for
| us!"
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaazFYTrQ_A
| vkou wrote:
| When you direct it at humans, it's called murder. When you do
| it at sea, it can be called piracy.
|
| But as long as you leave no survivors, who is going to dispute
| whatever story you want to spin about the people you are
| killing.
| lazide wrote:
| When you are a world superpower, most people will hesitate to
| call you anything you don't like. Because they'll likely be
| next.
| dataviz1000 wrote:
| The United States has been famous for this logic for a while
| now. [0]
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9WMSxV6lMs
| hentrep wrote:
| I submitted this link to HN with the Reddit title in quotes. Not
| sure why the quotes were removed, but I want to clarify that I am
| not the Reddit post author.
| tomhow wrote:
| It's never been the case that an HN title like this is assumed
| to be a statement by the submitter.
|
| We always match the HN title to the original post's title,
| unless it's misleading or linkbait, as per the guidelines.
| Quotation marks are generally superfluous except, I think, if
| the article is about a quote.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| How can they do this? Why is the world tolerating it? Would it be
| as acceptable for China to start doing this?
| terminalshort wrote:
| Because they are drug traffickers and nobody likes them. The
| argument against the strikes is based on principle alone, and
| matters of principle count for nothing in geopolitics. Other
| countries aren't complaining too loudly because they are happy
| that the traffickers are getting killed, and even happier that
| someone else is doing it for them. China does worse things
| daily and nobody makes much of a fuss.
| cma wrote:
| Trump pardoned the operator of the largest opiates by mail
| operator in world history on his first or second day in
| office (Ross Ulbricht). I'm pretty sure they're doing this
| just to start war with Venezuela from some mix of Venezuela
| nationalizing their oil in the past and wanting to undo that,
| Venezuela lobby and intersection of with the rightwing Cuban
| lobby/Rubio's ties to that. Democracy probably as low
| concern, given our relation with Saudi Arabia and the
| Emirates.
|
| The history of Rubio introducing the Venezuela Temporary
| Protected Status and Asylum Assistance Act of 2018 in Trump's
| first term, leading to large parts of the "immigration
| crisis" under Biden, and then Rubio going along with
| rescinding the status is pretty crazy. We played a big part
| in their economic crisis, offered asylum to many people
| driven to flee not just politically but largely from that
| crisis, then rescinded status to hundreds of thousands of
| Venezuelans and began deporting to concentration camps based
| in some cases on tattoos, now the extrajudicial killings, and
| it's looking like big potential for a war of aggression.
| terminalshort wrote:
| You aren't getting it. Basically every country on earth
| hates the cartels and wants them dead. They aren't going to
| complain when somebody is making that happen, and they
| don't much care how it's done as long as it isn't happening
| on their soil. And they care even less that the people
| doing it aren't saints themselves because nobody is. Nobody
| is going to stick their neck out for a cartel.
| jonway wrote:
| Interdict the vessels!
|
| Why resort to madness and slaughter?
| terminalshort wrote:
| I can think of few people on earth who deserve madness
| and slaughter more than the cartels.
| jonway wrote:
| We're powerwalking towards regime change wars over
| cocaine. It strikes me as completely absurd to employ our
| significant military power to destroy tiny vessels at sea
| instead of targeting operations and finances. It seems
| just as amoral and egregious to make a show of such
| wanton and asymmetric destruction. I have a number of
| questions about this like:
|
| - Is our military intelligence now being used to conduct
| international police work and enforce international or
| domestic law?
|
| - Should we expect our police mandate to extend to
| foreign countries?
|
| - Are these military operations undermining existing
| narcotics operations and international cooperation with
| DEA?
|
| - When these civilians dissolve back into the population,
| will we chase them there with cruise missiles and drone
| strikes?
|
| - If the cartels load a brick onto FedEx freight, will we
| destroy the aircraft? Why not just blow it up?
|
| - Does it matter who is captaining the vessels, if the
| cartels (as ruthless as they are, and I am on board with
| this sentiment 100%) force/threaten/coerce a person to
| mule for them, how would this victim convert to a valid
| military target?
|
| - This is whataboutism or close enough, but it is more
| than reasonable: Didn't our previous interventions in
| these exact regions train thousands of elite paramilitary
| operators who would later become the very mercenaries and
| thugs running the show today? (School of the Americas,
| Los Zetas)
|
| - Why does it feel like we are replaying 2 or 3 of our
| worst policy blunders since the 1980's and/or are we
| actually just cleaning up the blowback?
| queenkjuul wrote:
| Really? I can think of lots
| throwway120385 wrote:
| That's not justice. And that attitude can easily be
| turned on anyone you know or care about.
| AngryData wrote:
| Because surely the people running drugs across
| international water in boats are certainly hardened
| cartel members that make decisions and not just whatever
| poor saps they can find that are desperate for money?
| boudin wrote:
| This is just about people wanting to be seen as strong
| men in their own country and attacking citizen from other
| countries they know cannot retaliate.
|
| Cartels will be fine though, do not worry. USA
| credibility, less and less.
| terminalshort wrote:
| Yes, but the question was "why does the world stand by
| and let this happen?" and I was answering that.
| cma wrote:
| When there are survivors we've just been sending them
| back. Likely some haven't been smuggling drugs at all,
| and even less to the US given the distance and the range
| of the boats. In 25% of coast guard drug suspicion
| induced stops near the US, the coast guard fails to find
| any drugs. Would you be ok with the US national guard
| going into Appalachian cities and killing doctors
| suspected of running pill mills without trial, by aerial
| bombardment, and with high rate of mistakes?
| jcattle wrote:
| > The argument against the strikes is based on principle
| alone
|
| So you're alright with the sitting president in the US now
| being able to kill civil citizens in international waters
| without declaring a war? Without having to go through
| congress?
|
| Just by saying: "Ah this is a terrorist organization. And
| these people must be part of that terrorist organization"
| terminalshort wrote:
| What do you mean "now"? It's been this way since the
| Patriot Act.
| eru wrote:
| Since long before that. The US hasn't declared war in a
| long time, but they have spied on, tortured, killed,
| maimed etc foreign civilians all the time.
| tialaramex wrote:
| And their own. Remember as well as deliberately executing
| its own citizens abroad the US also still just tortures
| some of its own citizens to death for ordinary crimes
| which they may or may not have actually committed.
| Basically it's a third world country with more extremely
| wealthy people than you'd otherwise expect, it's eerily
| like several Arab countries, but with slightly more
| democracy, at least for now.
| hitarpetar wrote:
| fully agree with you but this language
|
| > basically it's a third world country
|
| is imprecise and misleading. torturing your own citizens
| to death is a first world specialty, see for example the
| troubles in northern Ireland
| tialaramex wrote:
| I was thinking of the extreme poverty and poor working
| conditions which are widespread in the US, but sure, the
| history of UK intervention in the Troubles isn't exactly
| a story of benevolence. No examples of torturing people
| to death came to mind though, are you thinking of some?
| The Five Techniques are torture, which is why they were
| banned before I was born, but the intent wasn't to
| torture people to death as I understand it - it's like
| "Enhanced Interrogation" in that you can tell idiots
| you're doing it to get information even though you're
| actually just a sadist. Even idiots understand that dead
| people can't tell you anything.
| benterix wrote:
| I think Trump is an idiot and almost everything he is doing
| is a disaster. And the fact that the country is still
| running in spite of this is thanks to a lot of effort by
| other people.
|
| However, in this particular case, I do have doubt. Because
| drug cartels are a huge problem and local governments are
| often very bad at handling them. Now, I take into
| consideration that it might be poor Venezuelan fishermen
| that are being mistaken for drug dealers, but I very much
| doubt it. It wouldn't make sense for anyone: for Trump,
| once the truth comes out, for the military personnel doing
| the strikes, for the reconnaissance teams - it's just
| nonsensical. And I believe that Trump, even though I don't
| keep him in high regard, actually is not a fan of killing
| just for killing. Or, to put it more cynically, he won't
| win his dream Nobel prize for killing innocent people
| senselessly. So, maybe, in this one particular case,
| _maybe_ it could be effective in scaring the cartels into
| finding other routes.
| WickyNilliams wrote:
| > Or, to put it more cynically, he won't win his dream
| Nobel prize for killing innocent people senselessly
|
| You say that, but the lady who just won it this year is
| practically cheering on the prospect of Trump taking
| military action _on her own country_ to overthrow their
| leader. So I don't think thirst for war or death
| precludes winning a peace prize, unfortunately
|
| https://www.politico.com/news/2025/11/05/machado-praises-
| tru...
| orwin wrote:
| Venezuela more known for gold smuggling (and
| 'trafficking' people who want out) than drug smuggling.
|
| I bet some environmentalist will argue that gold
| smuggling is worse than drug trafficking, but still, my
| bet is that most of the kills were trafficked people and
| gold smugglers.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| Venezuela has been a top 5 drug seizure country for many,
| many years.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_drug_trade_in_Venez
| uel...
| vharuck wrote:
| >Because drug cartels are a huge problem and local
| governments are often very bad at handling them.
|
| True, but the legal precedent this sets is _very_
| important. The requirement for sound legal justification
| is the only leverage the Judicial branch has. Today 's
| Supreme Court may be too deferential to the President,
| but that's not to say they don't have a line (listen to
| yesterday's hearing on tariffs). Also, the Supreme Court
| a decade from now will rely on today's justifications.
|
| I do not want to give _any_ President the power to
| unilaterally conduct military killings of people he
| considers a terrorist. For this specific President,
| remember that he 's declared Antifa a terrorist
| organization. And that he has very casually accused a lot
| of citizens as being in Antifa before.
| lenkite wrote:
| Sitting US Presidents have been able to kill and massacre
| people (including US citizens) in international areas
| without declaring a congressionally approved War for a very
| long time now.
|
| Just because Trump likes to heavily boviate while former
| Presidents generally kept this under the radar, doesn't
| change how the US operated.
| larkost wrote:
| I think you need to show evidence that this is a power
| U.S. Presidents have. As much as I dislike most of the
| drone strikes the U.S. has conducted in the "war on
| terror" in the Middle East (and think some of them are
| war crimes), that actually does have specific
| Congressional approval.
|
| This military action in the Caribbean does not have that
| approval, and I don't think there is any way of
| categorizing the smuggling of drugs as a part of
| terrorism. Bad and illegal, and worthy of policing, yes.
| Terrorism, no.
|
| And to be even more specific: I think that there is good
| evidence that in many countries the drug cartels are
| committing terroristic acts in many South American
| countries in order to force the populations there to
| accede to them. But those are in those countries, and are
| not directed at the United States. And blowing up boats
| that the U.S. suspects are carrying narcotics (sometimes
| not even on their way to the U.S.), is not fighting that
| terrorism.
| lenkite wrote:
| If you are referring specifically to AUMF-2001 under
| which both President Bush and then President Obama used
| as justification to bomb anything they disliked in the
| middle-east - including drug crop fields of the Taliban,
| I would point out that is an extremely flimsy supporting
| argument. The authorization was stretched until it was
| less than paper-thin. Many of the folks that the US
| bombed also became funded by the US just a few years
| later.
|
| Head-chopping terrorists magically became "moderate
| rebels" - famous term by President Obama.
|
| (I don't support these strikes - my only point was that
| former US Presidents unfortunately setup this tradition
| and culture of military strikes that has now been
| normalized. Congress needs to firmly reclaim the use of
| lethal international force under their authority.)
| anigbrowl wrote:
| The point is that there isn't anything like the AUMF that
| authorizes these recent strikes in the Caribbean/pacific.
| The administration reported them to Congress at the
| outset, but now that the 60 day limit (on continuing
| something without Congressional authorization) they've
| switched to claiming they don't need Congressional
| authority.
|
| Overbroad application of the AUMF in no way authorizes
| these actions. The administration claims it has a legal
| memo articulating why they're OK, but refuses to disclose
| it, citing security concerns. That's applicable to the
| specific intelligence they use, but not to legal
| arguments that supposedly justify their use of force.
| lazide wrote:
| 'So you're alright with'? What do you think _that_ has to
| do with anything?
|
| No one really asked if anyone was okay with Obama 'droning'
| random folks while calling them terrorists either.
|
| Notably, using the same tools (social network analysis,
| etc) that are now apparently being aimed at domestic
| 'terrorists'.
| lesuorac wrote:
| People did complain about Obama's done strikes. Find
| articles from back then and you see the words
| "controversial" [1].
|
| [1]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/18/us-
| military-dr...
| Integrape wrote:
| People used to complain about Obama's drone strikes. They
| still do, but they used to, too.
| lazide wrote:
| Yes. I said 'did anyone ask', aka did anyone doing them
| care.
|
| And the answer is no. There was a bigger fuss in the
| power structure about the time he wore a tan suit, than
| about drone strikes.
|
| That someone complains doesn't mean if it _matters_.
| Plenty of people are complaining about what is going on
| now, also to zero effect.
|
| And for those saying the AUMF justified Obama - it
| clearly didn't justify it in Libya (not affiliated), and
| Congress expressly did not authorize it against ISIS -
| but drones were still widely used.
|
| The biggest difference in these scenarios is if they were
| sold as 'the right thing', or as ragebait. There is
| plenty of precedent for presidents just droning/air
| striking countries with zero congressional approval -
| including Trump in his first term, Obama before that,
| etc.
|
| Hell, Trump himself bombed Iran just a few months ago,
| and folks barely blinked an eye. Zero congressional
| involvement.
| vel0city wrote:
| I'm not a fan of Obama's legacy of drone strikes. They
| hurt a lot of civilians and I think probably did more
| harm to US interests overseas than they helped.
|
| However, most (if not all?) of the intended targets of
| Obama's drone strikes were targets with a pretty
| reasonable connection to the 2001 Authorization for Use
| of Military force. So those drone strikes were likely
| "legal" and covered under what Congress enabled when it
| passed that law and has so far failed to repeal.
| Theoretically, these were all people Congress agreed we
| were essentially at war with. Congress can choose to
| repeal the AUMF at any time, and could have done so
| during Obama's term.
|
| I don't think there's any reasonable interpretation that
| random boats of the coast of Venezuela have _any_
| connection to 9 /11 though, and thus there's pretty much
| no way to contort an argument that these actions are then
| somehow allowable. If Trump wants to go to war against
| Venezuela, he needs to get Congress to approve.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorization_for_Use_of_Mi
| lit...
| wao0uuno wrote:
| It's always the same "but uhhh China is even worse" argument
| but no proof to back it up. It's also completely invalid to
| justify an immoral action by comparing it to something even
| worse: "Yeah we genocided some palestinians but hitler was
| even worse so it's ok".
| terminalshort wrote:
| Yes, of course there is no proof. It's all US lies. Stop
| calling our reeducation centers prisons!
| jjav wrote:
| > Because they are drug traffickers and nobody likes them.
|
| So far zero proof of that, but plenty of proof that this
| administration lies about everything. So, the probabilities
| suggest these are lies too and they're just murdering random
| fishermen.
| Rover222 wrote:
| So you really believe they are just murdering random
| fisherman for fun?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > So you really believe they are just murdering random
| fisherman for fun?
|
| I believe they are murdering geographically-selected
| fisherman and painting them as traffickers targeting the
| US (even though this is implausible for multiple reasons)
| as propaganda to manifest justifying "escalation" in a
| war they have been claiming _even before they started
| those publicized murders_ was being actively fought
| between Venezuela in the US as a pretext for bypassing
| due process and moving toward direct executive fiat and
| militarization of civilian life within the US, starting
| with the invocation of the Alien Enemies Act on March 15.
| ungreased0675 wrote:
| Fishermen do not use semi-submersibles or speedboats with
| four outboard engines. Would you agree with that?
| vel0city wrote:
| Semi-submersibles? Probably not fishermen.
|
| Boats with four outboard engines? Sure, lots of them, I
| see those all the time when I'm at the coast.
| vdqtp3 wrote:
| The coast of Venezuela, loaded full of unknown packages?
| Jesus, there's _video_. Do you think they 're loaded with
| dozens of rectangular bundles of tuna?
|
| Why don't you argue that arbitrarily shooting missiles at
| random drug smugglers is bad instead of arguing that
| they're not actually drug smugglers?
| vel0city wrote:
| Why don't they argue boats loaded with strange cargo
| hauling ass in the middle of the ocean is probably a drug
| boat instead of suggesting all boats with four outboard
| engines can't possibly be a fishing boat? Go to any docks
| on the Gulf Coast, you'll find _tons_ of four-engine
| fishing boats. Or are those all used for narcotics
| smuggling?
|
| I'm not arguing they're definitely not drug boats. They
| likely are! But the person I replied to suggested all
| boats with four outboard engines are likely drug boats,
| which is absurd.
| Rover222 wrote:
| $200k USD worth of outboard engines on a speedboat. Tell
| me you know nothing about fishing without telling me
| that.
| vel0city wrote:
| I spent half my life on the coast. I've seen a lot of
| boats.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dpvFzlmW0Y
|
| Guess these are all purpose built drug smuggling boats.
| Shit, some have _5_ engines.
|
| Shit, I live near some crappy lakes in Texas and I still
| see a few four-engine boats by people with more money
| than sense. Guess they're trafficking that fentanyl from
| Lewisville to Little Elm.
| terminalshort wrote:
| Are these $500K boats in a country with a GDP per capita
| of $5000? Are these boats taking off from areas that are
| known origin points for drug trafficking? Are these boats
| making sketchy long distance one way trips or just
| cruising around for the day and returning to the same
| marina? Have you surveilled these boats with insane OP
| state of the art military surveillance tech and concluded
| that they are running drugs?
| AngryData wrote:
| Fisherman? No. But you could go to any marina on a US
| coast and find endless amounts of boats with 4+ motors on
| them. You are an idiot if you go out on the open sea with
| some little boat with just 1 motor, having extra engine
| power is the only thing keeping you alive out on the open
| ocean.
| lazyeye wrote:
| What a ridiculous take.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Tell me about those WMD's again.
| lazyeye wrote:
| Tell me about the 100k fentanyl deaths each year. How
| does this volume of drugs reach the US?
| vel0city wrote:
| People cooking it up domestically? Its not hard to make
| (if you don't mind killing some people) and its
| ingredients can be commonly found in the US.
|
| Through small parcels from China mixed in with regular
| mail? People mail _weed_ all the time and that 's also
| illegal to go through the mail. A small parcel can carry
| many _thousands_ of doses with high enough purity.
|
| Most fentanyl in the US probably has little to no
| connection to Venezuela. Probably lots of other drugs,
| sure, but not fentanyl.
|
| A lethal amount of fentanyl can be as small as 1-2mg. So
| enough fentanyl to kill 100k people would be like 50ish
| grams. Its not nearly some massive amount of material
| like you seem to think it is.
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| It's mostly made in Mexico...
| https://insightcrime.org/investigations/fentanyl-
| producers-m...
|
| It used to come primarily from Indian and China way back
| in 2023... https://insightcrime.org/investigations/how-
| fentanyl-synthes...
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Tell me about the 100k fentanyl deaths each year. How
| does this volume of drugs reach the US?
|
| Illicitly manufactured fentanyl used in the US is
| predominantly produced in Mexico and smuggled across the
| very large land border between the US and Mexico.
|
| Probably the next most common source is domestic illicit
| production.
| TOMDM wrote:
| It's fentanyl, one semi successful smuggling run
| traffic's enough fentanyl to lethaly dose thousands of
| people.
| wat10000 wrote:
| By coming over the land border with Mexico.
| https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvg93nn1e6go
|
| Your rhetorical question suggests you thought lots of
| fentanyl is coming on boats on the ocean. This might be a
| good moment to pause and reflect on where you get your
| information and how you reach your conclusions.
| t-3 wrote:
| Given that nobody grows opium poppy in South America,
| it's definitely not through Venezuela.
| AngryData wrote:
| The US mail and Fedex. A single small package can have
| enough fentanyl to kill 100K people. It certainly doesn't
| come from South American.
| lazide wrote:
| Yup, and plenty of history of this _cough_ WMD's in Iraq,
| Gulf of Tonkin, and many more.
| mothballed wrote:
| I believe they are murdering people they have convinced
| themselves are probably drug traffickers, for fun and
| geopolitical tensions.
|
| For instance, the CIA was following the preacher Roni
| Bowers cessna plane as suspicious for drug trafficking.
| And then she was shot down, and her family killed.
| Because intelligence is often wrong.
|
| Now you'll point out, after they were shot down,
| magically it was uncovered the CIA actually suggested the
| people that shot them down not do it. Even though the CIA
| was the one sticking them on them in the first place.[]
| If they had actually been drug traffickers, or just
| nobodies, of course, we'd hear precisely what we've been
| hearing about these vessels, which is jack squat from the
| government other than they killed the "drug traffickers"
| and we'd never hear about the voices that recommend they
| not.
|
| If they end up killing a preacher or a scientist in the
| future, you can be sure they'll magically find the same
| evidence. "We warned them not to this time, but they did
| it anyway."
|
| [] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_Peru_Cessna_185_sho
| otdown
| Rover222 wrote:
| Reasonable take. I think they at least believe they are
| doing something good for the country.
|
| The El Salvador approach to extreme aggression against
| cartels has changed the calculus for many leaders in the
| Americas. See Rio De Janeiro last week.
| t-3 wrote:
| Can you elaborate? El Salvador's approach seems to me to
| be "let Trump use our prisons, he lets go of our drug
| dealers". Bukele's closeness to MS13 of course biases him
| against their rivals, but that doesn't stop drugs from
| coming to the US, just who gets the money.
| dboreham wrote:
| It pretty clearly is for fun since the US has the
| capability to disable and board these vessels.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Yep, this is clearly what is stupid about the situation.
| They want to blow the boats up. Now, if I wanted to do
| it, I'd blow some up, then disable some and show how they
| were loaded with drugs and we never got the boats wrong.
|
| In this case, I don't think they care what's on the
| boats.
| Rover222 wrote:
| Oh, you mean business as usual for decades, that changes
| nothing.
| wat10000 wrote:
| Of course not. They're murdering random fishermen for
| political gain.
|
| The US has gone to war with entire countries over
| complete bullshit. Remember WMDs? Gulf of Tonkin? Do you
| really think the current government is above killing a
| few randos to make themselves look good?
| AngryData wrote:
| For fun? Not entirely. But these killings make great
| propaganda pieces about stopping foreigners and drugs
| despite not making even a dent or scratch against illegal
| drug importation.
| crikeykangaroo wrote:
| Yes, that's what the US has been doing for decades after
| all.. After all, they could easily (attempt to) arrest
| them without killing them. Fortunately, it's becoming
| more of a multipolar world. The neocons (just like
| yourself) have no morals.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| I didn't ask about China doing "worse things daily," I asked
| about China blowing up vessels in international waters and
| amassing a naval fleet off the coast of another country. If I
| understand correctly you are saying the world would be fine
| with that as long as they claimed the vessels belonged to a
| drugs cartel?
| terminalshort wrote:
| If you traffic drugs to China the CCP will do things to you
| that are very much worse than the comparatively humane
| quick death in an airstrike.
|
| > amassing a naval fleet off the coast of another country
|
| Surely you are joking about this part, right?
| mcv wrote:
| So would you say it's fine if China claims that some
| boats in the South China Sea are drug traffickers and
| blows them up without any evidence?
|
| Shouldn't there be some evidence at least that this is
| the case? Maybe capture the boat and show the drugs,
| instead of just blowing up any chance of evidence?
| iamnothere wrote:
| > So would you say it's fine if China claims that some
| boats in the South China Sea are drug traffickers and
| blows them up without any evidence?
|
| People making those arguments probably would say it is
| fine, in the abstract, then when it actually happened
| they would loudly complain that it was a violation of
| some treaty or another nation's sovereignty.
|
| Cartels are not some unique exception to the rule of law
| any more than human traffickers, terrorists, or other bad
| guys. But the rule of law doesn't really matter anymore.
|
| The legalism of the 20th century is stone dead. In time
| we will have to relearn the lessons that first brought us
| there, hopefully without too many needless deaths along
| the way.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Divulging your means and methods is a surefire way of
| getting the cartels to adjust their operating procedure
| to avoid detection. If they're being watched via
| satellites, they'll move their ports. If their cell
| phones have been hacked and are leaking info, they'll
| start using different devices. If there's a human source
| giving the info, he'll be hunted down.
|
| It's not like this is the first time when the US has
| withheld evidence for certain actions it took. That
| doesn't mean the evidence isn't there. This is generally
| a problem with judging government behavior due to the
| information asymmetry
| terminalshort wrote:
| Would I say it's "fine?" No. I also wouldn't say it's
| just fine that Trump is blowing up cartel boats. But
| would I be outraged, or even feel sorry for them? Also
| no.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| Again, I'm not asking about other unnamed things China
| may or may not do. I'm asking about blowing up ships in
| international waters.
| terminalshort wrote:
| Then I will answer you perfectly directly. Nobody would
| give the slightest shit because China already does things
| 10x worse and nobody gives a shit.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| This isn't really a direct answer, it's just hand waving.
| I'm not sure how you're qualifying "ten times worse" and
| without pointing to specific scenarios it's impossible to
| verify the responses or non-responses to them.
| hunterpayne wrote:
| The real answer is that these boats are not flying
| national flags. That makes it legal under maritime laws
| that have been in place for hundreds of years. If you are
| watching a news source that doesn't mention this, you are
| consuming propaganda. BTW, this line of propaganda about
| lack of rule of law is dangerous. Seriously, you should
| stop it.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| You keep arguing that not displaying a falg is
| justification for killing people. This is bullshit. It's
| justification for interdicting a vessel but not for
| simply blowing it up.
| parsimo2010 wrote:
| There's a distinction that you either didn't recognize or
| willfully excluded.
|
| It's not that the US is simply "claiming" the vessels
| belong to a drug cartel, it's that nobody is denying that
| they were drug vessels. Not even Venezuela [1]. Maduro has
| denied that he is involved with the drug cartels, and
| Venezuela has claimed that the one or more of the strikes
| occurred within Venezuela's territorial waters, but they
| haven't made the argument that those boats were actually
| innocent non-criminal vessels.
|
| And once you make that distinction, then yes. The world is
| fine with blowing up vessels that belong to drug cartels,
| even if China did it. They probably wouldn't be fine if it
| was actually refugees, but this does not appear to be the
| case.
|
| [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdjzw3gplv7o
| gadders wrote:
| Tacitly encouraging/aiding drug trafficking is also a low
| intensity way to have an asymmetric conflict with a much
| more powerful country.
|
| See also Cuba emptying its jails and sending the
| prisoners to Florida:
| https://www.independent.co.uk/news/criminals-in-exodus-
| from-...
| lupire wrote:
| Drugs don't harm the other country, so it doesn't help
| win any conflict.
| ungreased0675 wrote:
| Are you familiar with the opium wars?
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| > It's not that the US is simply "claiming" the vessels
| belong to a drug cartel, it's that nobody is denying that
| they were drug vessels.
|
| What? The king of England hasn't denied that they're drug
| smuggling vessels either, it doesn't mean he's admitting
| they are. I don't understand this logic at all.
| lenkite wrote:
| I don't support these strikes since I personally believe
| the US would be far better served in the long run by arrest
| and interrogation - and not just a matter of ethical
| principle.
|
| Having said that, all legal vessels have an ID and someone
| would have complained already about their property and crew
| being blown up. Its pretty clear they belong to hardcore
| criminal elements.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| There's probably nothing to interrogate - the dudes
| driving the boats are probably just random poor farmers
| that took a pay day from a cartel.
| lenkite wrote:
| Random poor farmers can't really operate a submarine.
| vel0city wrote:
| These kinds of submarines really aren't very complicated
| to operate. Its not like you're managing a nuclear
| reactor or anything.
| lenkite wrote:
| They are more complicated than you state. Crew need to
| navigate long distances in open ocean, handle rough
| weather, and perform docking/unloading. These subs have
| control systems, ballast tanks and pumps. You need both
| training and experience.
|
| Mismanagement can cause swamping or sinking. The
| management loses their vessel and their cargo.
|
| Basically, "just random poor farmers that took a pay day
| from a cartel" is simply not possible.
| vel0city wrote:
| > Crew need to navigate long distances in open ocean
|
| Not incredibly difficult these days with GPS. Especially
| if they're doing an Atlantic crossing, its not like
| there's a lot of things to hit. They're all diesel-
| electrics, they spend a lot of their time practically at
| the surface. When they need to dive, its usually only for
| a few hours at a time, a compass heading is good enough
| for those times especially in the open ocean. Its not
| like they're trying to read complicated sonar outputs or
| anything like that. They're not busting out a sextant to
| figure out their latitude. They also aren't explorers
| trying to chart out a new path, they're pretty much going
| to follow the known good routes other boats have gone
| before.
|
| > perform docking/unloading
|
| I imagine there are more than just the people operating
| the boats at the docks. I also don't think it takes a lot
| of training and skill to pick things up and set things
| down. And its not like they're having to be some
| certified harbor pilot bringing in the boat into the
| shipping lanes, its going to be some little dock off in
| the middle of nowhere far away from other traffic.
|
| They could learn the ropes of how to operate this thing
| in a few days along with some good basic documentation,
| assuming the farmers are literate. Its not like its that
| hard figuring out "this handle makes us dive, this handle
| makes us go up, don't go deeper than this, make sure
| batteries stay within this range, follow the GPS route".
|
| I'm not saying these couldn't possibly be well-trained
| people operating these vessels, but it doesn't take _too_
| much training to figure out how to operate one of these
| things.
| terminalshort wrote:
| "perform docking/unloading" LOL. Pull up on a beach in
| the middle of the night and grab the bricks out of the
| sub for the guys waiting for you there. This isn't a
| commercial port with cargo cranes, industrial equipment,
| and all that. As for handling rough weather, it's a sub.
| What's going to happen? It's going to sink?
| AngryData wrote:
| Random poor farmers manage to drive cars, trucks, planes,
| boats, drones, etc. What is so special about a DIY
| submarine with a max depth of like 15 feet that they
| couldn't be taught in about 15 minutes? These aren't WWII
| U-boats, they are small personal craft. There is even an
| entire community of DIY Caribbean submarines for
| exploring coral reefs and shit and they aren't all build
| and drove by engineering PHDs.
| Paradigma11 wrote:
| Explain to me in what scenario it would make sense to put 7
| people on a small speed boat and fill up the rest with drugs
| to transport them from one Caribbean location to another.
| terminalshort wrote:
| 1. It's a day that ends in Y
|
| 2. You like to make money
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Actual evidence for "fill up the rest with drugs" is
| missing (or at least not publicly presented).
| parsimo2010 wrote:
| Explain to me in what scenario innocent people loaded the
| boats up like the ones shown in the video below just to do
| what? Dodge tarriffs? A boat like that full of cocaine is
| worth enough money to be worth the trip. A boat like that
| full of coffee beans is not worth enough. And that isn't a
| fishing boat, a tour boat, or any recreational yacht.
|
| https://youtu.be/a2CQbRUEeWY?si=pPS_97LqIgCdLWix
| anthk wrote:
| Everywhere. Here it's just another day in Spain raiding
| Morocco drug boats trying to get themselves into Algeciras.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| Raiding drug boats coming into Spain, blowing up alleged
| drug boats in international waters? Is there any
| difference?
| inkcapmushroom wrote:
| Well, the murder, for one.
| Paradigma11 wrote:
| But there it makes sense. It is a short distance and
| there is lots of police which puts time pressure on the
| transport and offloading. If you are near Venezuela why
| wouldnt you just put your tons of drugs in fishing boats
| or transport ships. What do you need the additional half
| a ton of human weight in those small boats for?
| mcphage wrote:
| > Because they are drug traffickers
|
| Are they? How do you know?
| karakot wrote:
| And even if they are, where does it say that drug
| traffickers should be executed on the spot? Furthermore,
| where is the law that punishes drug trafficking with death?
| soiltype wrote:
| In the Philippines policies that landed Duterte in The
| Hague.
| queenkjuul wrote:
| What's China doing that's worse? What evidence is there that
| these are actually drug traffickers?
| Rover222 wrote:
| I mean, China has committed an ACTUAL genocide.
| elzbardico wrote:
| This is neocon propaganda that only simpletons believe.
| soiltype wrote:
| And yet, the arguments against the narrative of Uighur
| genocide seem to exclusively be childish insults.
| Seriously, I see comments just like this all the time
| when someone mentions Uighur genocide, of which there is
| _some_ evidence, and never an actual refutation. Are
| simpletons those who believe evidence might indicate
| truth, or those who let themselves be browbeaten by
| tribalism into believing otherwise? I wouldn 't even ask
| if I thought you were just a CCP bot but your post
| history suggests you're not.
| t-3 wrote:
| If the Chinese are committing genocide against the
| Uighurs, the US is also committing genocide against its
| black population, which it imprisons and kills at much
| higher rates. I'm willing to accept that both are
| committing active genocide but few China-haters seem to
| be.
| elzbardico wrote:
| No, the burden of proof is on the proponents of this.
| shagmin wrote:
| Just curious, why should I believe this is merely neocon
| propaganda? I've read tidbits about this off & on over
| the years and it doesn't seem that straight forward, even
| if calling it genocide is on the hyperbolic side.
| hunterpayne wrote:
| Technically its just ethnic cleaning because its trying
| to destroy their local culture. But somehow I bet you
| don't want to base your argument on this technicality.
| Rover222 wrote:
| I've got news for you about the "genocide" in Palestine,
| and your left wing propaganda.
| gadders wrote:
| You could start with killing disfavoured people to order
| for their organ donor programme. Or that whole Tibet thing.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| > Because they are drug traffickers and nobody likes them.
|
| I mean thats what the US is saying, but proof is elusive.
|
| > The argument against the strikes is based on principle
| alone,
|
| No, law, and the US's own rules of engaguement. Fucking about
| in international waters, and sinking civilian boats with no
| warning, proof or attempt to detain is going to cause issues
| when it happens to the USA.
|
| > Other countries aren't complaining too loudly because they
| are happy that the traffickers are getting killed
|
| They are not complaining because the USA is run by a
| capricious child who will cause economic harm if his ego is
| attacked.
|
| > China does worse things daily and nobody makes much of a
| fuss.
|
| You might not be looking at it, but those who live near are
| making a huge fucking fuss.
|
| TLDR:
|
| just wait till someone does it to the USA.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Surely all the Venezuelan cops who are getting paid to turn a
| blind eye like them. IDK how many of those guys there are and
| how much pull they have with the government....
| mothballed wrote:
| They don't. The people paying them and the schleps on the
| drug boats are two different people. They're putting their
| worthless peasants on the boats; Venezuela is chalk full of
| them so blowing up a few here and there makes no difference
| in the incoming bribe money nor to the drug trafficking
| organizations.
|
| No one cares that they are dead. Not their employers, not
| the Venezuelan government, not the police who can now
| exploit the families of the dead even more, nor the
| Americans bombing them. They are mere expendable flesh in a
| game of politics, a token blood offering to the kings and
| princes of prohibition.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| My point is that even if the government would rather not
| have a drug trade fueled competing government within it's
| borders (which is what the cartels basically are) there's
| a whole bunch of people in the pickaxe business that
| would rather the gold rush remain profitable which
| potentially constrains the government's ability to solve
| the problem itself.
| mothballed wrote:
| If I were the police looking to sell the most "pickaxes"
| I'd be thinking more about how I could take bribes from
| traffickers and also sell out the traffickers (or just
| selected patsies with the blessing of the cartels) to the
| US authorities at the same time.
|
| They may be able to sell even more pickaxes than before.
| BergAndCo wrote:
| Yes, that makes total sense, that a narcoterror regime
| would entrust the security of their extremely valuable
| drug shipments to "worthless peasants" instead of
| professional gunmen from Tren de AGUA.
| mothballed wrote:
| Professional gunmen doing what exactly, while they are on
| a go-fast boat or narco-submarine with actual
| professional gunman on the docks on either end? The only
| people capable and willing to board such boats are the
| coast guard. Sending higher up professional gunmen to
| risk the open seas would be virtually pointless. Even if
| a private individual/group tried it, the cartel would
| 'deal' with them as soon as they got it back on land, no
| need to risk their enforcers on the high seas for such an
| improbable event.
|
| You can see the same thing watching drug trafficking
| police videos. Most the time the drugs are in transit it
| is some random poor person with not much else going on in
| their lives. As soon as they are confronted by armed men
| they play dumb until the ruse is up.
| terminalshort wrote:
| They don't put pros on the boats because there is no
| reason to. Their gunmen won't do a damn thing against the
| coat guard, and nobody private is dumb enough to hijack a
| cartel boat, and the peasants on that boat know exactly
| what happens if they don't deliver the cargo.
| rurp wrote:
| How do you know they are drug traffickers? This
| administration doesn't exactly have a track record of
| honesty, competence, and acting in good faith.
| lazide wrote:
| Does it _actually_ matter?
|
| So far, no one with a government who is both willing and
| able to make a fuss about it has been involved.
|
| This is what realpolitik is.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Does it actually matter?_
|
| Yes. The precedent being established would let _e.g._
| China or Russia pot a yacht on the high seas for reasons
| which only work under their own laws.
| lazide wrote:
| What makes you think they wouldn't already, if they had a
| reason?
|
| [https://cepa.org/article/bombs-on-board-the-strange-
| streak-o...]
| toomim wrote:
| I've spotted a partisan perspective.
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| Just random subs and boats hanging around in the middle of
| the Pacific ocean. It's probably a fishing trip. That's
| definitely worth the time and resources of the Navy.
| lingrush4 wrote:
| You being unable to trust the government is not evidence of
| wrongdoing.
|
| The military has never had to share its intelligence with
| civilians and it's not going to start now just to ease your
| mind.
|
| Literally nobody is demanding Ukraine prove its targets are
| actually part of the Russian military before striking them.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| Historically we get the assurance at least from other
| branches of government and understand that various
| oversights are in place, not just whims of the executive.
| rurp wrote:
| This simply isn't true. Getting the populace on board is
| a standard and important part of democracies initiating
| military action. Bush and his team spent endless amounts
| of time briefing Congress and the public on their
| justifications for the Iraq war for example.
|
| Ukraine has gone to extensive lengths to only target
| military and, more recently, energy infrastructure in
| Russia. They aren't blowing up random civilian vehicles
| or ships, and have a clear incentive to show that they
| _aren 't_ doing that.
|
| Fighting drug smuggling is a flimsy pretext for why the
| US is blowing up random ships, although it's apparently
| one some people are willing to believe. Take the same
| actions but change up the countries and the reactions
| would be very different. This is about Trump doing yet
| another tough guy show of force against a much weaker
| country he feels safe enough bullying.
| 20after4 wrote:
| > Bush and his team spent endless amounts of time
| briefing Congress and the public on their justifications
| for the Iraq war
|
| Correction: they spent endless amounts of time lying to
| congress and the UN about their concocted, pretextual
| justification for the Iraq war.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Correction: they spent endless amounts of time lying
| to congress and the UN about their concocted, pretextual
| justification for the Iraq war_
|
| One, legitimately unclear to what degree Bush _et al_
| believed the nonsense.
|
| Two, they bothered to engage. That's OP's point.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| Among other differences, Ukraine is at war with Russia.
| hunterpayne wrote:
| Because they aren't flying a flag of the country in which
| their boat is registered. All boats do this. Not doing this
| is like flying a plane without filing a flight plan.
|
| Technically when you don't fly a flag you are considered a
| pirate. Clearly they aren't pirates but they are smugglers.
| There is no other reason why you wouldn't fly a specific
| national flag. You can complain about the rules of
| engagement and that is fine. However, posts like yours
| aren't exactly rooted in honesty, competence or good faith.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Technically when you don 't fly a flag you are
| considered a pirate_
|
| Source? Piracy's definition under UNCLOS seems pretty
| tight [1].
|
| [1] https://www.un.org/depts/los/piracy/piracy_legal_fram
| ework.h...
| terminalshort wrote:
| $500K speedboats taking off from an area known for cartel
| activity in a country with a < $5000 GDP per capita loaded
| full with boxes and hauling ass on a one way trip across
| the Caribbean? If you want to argue that we shouldn't use
| the military to blow up cartel boats, fine. If you want to
| claim that these guys aren't moving bricks, GTFO.
| AngryData wrote:
| Oh no, the absolutely horrible cocaine which is safer than
| alcohol.
|
| Would you be okay with bombing some guys house that was
| growing marijuana? Or gunning down people in fancy cars that
| are suspected to contain drugs?
| queenkjuul wrote:
| It's tolerated because the US is the most powerful country in
| the world. Lots of things we do wouldn't be accepted from any
| other country (invading countries unprovoked, funding and
| arming genocides, staging coups and rigging elections,
| assassinating foreign leaders, the list goes on and on)
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Would it be as acceptable for China to start doing this?_
|
| Xi's China has been ramming vessels in the South China Sea for
| a while now [1]. In 2019, "a Philippine fishing boat anchored
| in Reed Bank in the South China Sea, sank after it was rammed
| by a Chinese vessel," its crew surviving because they were
| "later rescued by a Vietnamese fishing vessel" [2]. ("In July
| 2016, the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague ruled on
| a claim brought against China by the Philippines under UNCLOS,
| ruling in favor of the Philippines on almost every count. While
| China is a signatory to the treaty establishing the tribunal,
| it refuses to accept the court's authority" [3].)
|
| Russia, meanwhile, conducts extrajudicial atrocities in Africa
| through Wagner [4].
|
| The simple answer is the great powers are broadly and
| consistently rejecting the notion of international law.
|
| [1] https://www.reuters.com/world/china/philippines-accuses-
| chin...
|
| [2]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Reed_Bank_incident#:~:tex...
|
| [3] https://www.cfr.org/global-conflict-
| tracker/conflict/territo...
|
| [4] https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/03/28/mali-army-wagner-
| group-a...
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| Everything you're linking to is being done through proxies
| and officially denied. A fishing vessel ramming another on
| alleged behalf of the Chinese government is materially quite
| different to openly sending drones to blow multiple ships up.
| bragr wrote:
| This was last month:
|
| >The Philippine coastguard, in a statement, said a Chinese
| coastguard ship "fired its water cannon" at the BRP Datu
| Pagbuaya, a vessel belonging to Manila's fisheries bureau,
| at 9:15am (01:15 GMT) on Sunday.
|
| >Minutes later, the same vessel "deliberately rammed" the
| stern of the Philippine fisheries bureau vessel, causing
| "minor" damage to the boat.
|
| https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/10/12/philippines-
| accuse...
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| Coastguard firing a water cannon and ramming a ship
| causing minor damage. This is the same as a military
| drone causing total destruction of multiple ships?
| bragr wrote:
| No merely addressing the "all done through proxies"
| claim. And to counter the argument you are making, is an
| official government owned vessel the same as small random
| fishing boat and/or smuggler? At least in terms of
| reaction? To GPs point, multiple large countries have
| been moving the overton window here for a long time.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _This is the same as a military drone causing total
| destruction of multiple ships?_
|
| It's in a similar calibre of official disregard for
| international law.
| vel0city wrote:
| I do agree there is a stark difference between using
| missiles and bombs on ships versus ramming and water
| cannons.
|
| However, you're incorrect about it just being fishing
| vessels and third parties. There are tons of examples of
| Chinese coast guard and navy ships doing this, its not
| unmarked fishing vessels or other third parties doing it on
| behalf of the Chinese state.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| Thanks for the correction, I'd be interested to read more
| about their navy doing this.
| vel0city wrote:
| From 2025:
|
| https://apnews.com/article/south-china-sea-thitu-island-
| phil...
|
| From 2024:
|
| https://www.cbsnews.com/news/philippines-china-sea-
| conflict-...
|
| Another incident in 2024
|
| https://news.usni.org/2024/08/31/chinese-vessels-ram-
| surroun...
|
| And the very violent Second Thomas Shoal incident:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/June_2024_Second_Thomas_Sho
| al_...
|
| Whoever told you its just fishing vessels doing this are
| liars spreading misinformation. It has been official
| coast guard and naval vessels for _years_. This is very
| well documented.
| maxglute wrote:
| PRC uses coast guard hulls, there's nothing being denied,
| these are generally framed as domestic maritime policing
| actions for PRC. Which is what makes the comparison
| generally stupid because PH / PCA ruling is not formal
| international law. UN/UNCLOS/ITLOS/ICJ has not recognized
| it, and PRC isn't party to optional arbituation clause, so
| ruling can't even apply to PRC. Ultimately PRC is simply
| doing domestic law enforcement in disputed maritime area
| with is not out of line with her UNCLOS obligations, i.e.
| until maritime delimitation formally settled at UNCLOS,
| there's nothing illegal about coastguard doing coastguard
| stuff in disputed area. This is not to mention up until a
| few years ago PRC ramming = while many other claimaints
| where flat out shooting. Like PRC coast guard ships were
| the last to get armed, some other claimaints already had
| heavy machine guns of lol missiles.
|
| The flip side of this is US isn't signatory to UNCLOS so
| they can murder whoever they want on the highseas, and in
| the Hague I guess.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| The Chinese are being pretty open about it and there's
| abundant footage. I do agree it's qualitatively different.
| The Chinese ations are also different in that they're being
| used to assert a territorial claim: China has been building
| artificial islands (by dumpin large piles of dirt) so it
| extend its territorial waters. So they always claim the
| other vessels are violating their boundaries. I presume
| this is being undertaken with a view to keeping the US and
| its proxies as far away from their coastal areas as
| possible in the future.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| > done through proxies
|
| > A fishing vessel ramming another on alleged behalf of the
| Chinese government
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMNOljrw22g
|
| It's a video of a Chinese Coast Guard vessel and a Chinese
| Navy vessel trying to hit a Filipino Coast Guard vessel. I
| do agree that it's worth seeing differently, just pointing
| out that China's plausible deniability of this is not
| always such.
| amelius wrote:
| Pretty sure the world would do little.
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-22278037
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Does anyone know - do they give the guys on the boat a chance to
| surrender, and they're fleeing? Or do they just bomb them without
| any kind of notice?
| elAhmo wrote:
| This is spray and pray, they have no idea who is on the boat or
| what are they transporting.
|
| So offering 'surrender' makes no sense for them, it would just
| expose this behaviour. It is not a secret, but they act like it
| is.
| lingrush4 wrote:
| No, _you_ have no idea who is on the boat. That 's very
| different from the US military having no idea.
| kg wrote:
| If they're known drug traffickers worthy of execution
| without due process, why are the survivors being sent home
| instead of tried for their supposed crimes?
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/18/us/politics/boat-
| strike-s...
| GenerocUsername wrote:
| "...for their home countries to prosecute"
|
| Does not imply a belief of innocence.
| pempem wrote:
| Is vague enough to mean either thing which in and of
| itself is a red flag. "To face justice" is both a phrase
| this administration would use and is more concrete.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| GMAFB. The US is famous for using 'extraordinary
| rendition' to take custody of people it deems terrorists
| and either try them or hold them in isolation at military
| camps. Do you really buy the line that they're being
| 'sent home to be prosecuted' by the same countries that
| are condemning these strikes? It seems far more likely
| that they're being sent home because they don't want to
| put them in front of a judge.
| pksebben wrote:
| > worthy of execution without due process
|
| Quite the fascist take you got there, buddy.
|
| edit: My bad. On closer reading I believe you might have
| said that tongue-in-cheek. Reading intent in text is
| hard.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| Given the several fishermen who have survived the strikes
| thus far, I'm pretty sure the US military has _less_ idea
| ordinaryradical wrote:
| Where can I read about this?
| GenerocUsername wrote:
| Unverified Bluesky posts by people with conflicting
| interests
| stonogo wrote:
| Who has a conflicting interest with fishermen getting
| blasted?
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| People who want to kill random people and claim they were
| bad drug terrorists.
| stonogo wrote:
| That's not a conflicting interest, that's just an
| interest.
| FranchuFranchu wrote:
| The President of Colombia
| https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn8xg1jve73o
| bluGill wrote:
| I would expect anyone with something to hide would ensure
| their boat is setup for fishing. It isn't hard to do and
| makes a great cover. There are a few other legal
| activities you can use as cover, fishing is just the most
| obvious.
|
| I have no idea if they really were doing anything but it
| is the obvious cover if they were.
| aerostable_slug wrote:
| Footage of the boats to date show they aren't trying to
| spoof legitimate fishing vessels. They are IMHO very
| clearly dope haulers and anyone saying otherwise is
| either extremely credulous or not being honest with
| everyone. Fishermen don't use boats that are painted to
| camouflage themselves and have a bank of powerful
| performance engines.
|
| The dopers probably have realized that the deception
| angle doesn't work and just wastes payload space, so
| you're better off trying not to be seen at all. I suspect
| what happens IRL is that boats are boarded with men with
| dogs and the ruse falls apart, so the doper leadership
| decided to stop bothering with all the subterfuge and
| just try to (sometimes literally) run under the radar,
| maximizing cargo space so the runs that get through
| realize the most revenue.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| The probably are dope haulers, that does not make
| murdering them OK.
| samlinnfer wrote:
| Killing all drug haulers/dealers is ok, I fully support
| what they do in China and most of East Asia. The amount
| of society damage from drugs warrants it.
| pksebben wrote:
| > Footage of the boats to date show they aren't trying to
| spoof legitimate fishing vessels.
|
| This is a great moment to share a link or some other
| source of verisimilitude.
|
| Also no one uses "dope" anymore - don't forget to
| migrate, we're on Reagan v3.0 now.
| aerostable_slug wrote:
| Okay.
|
| https://www.usatoday.com/story/graphics/2025/09/15/us-
| attack...
|
| If you think those are fishing boats you don't know very
| much about fishing. Those are dope haulers. The question
| of whether dope haulers deserve a .mil missile is
| separate from establishing exactly what those boats are
| and exactly what they are doing -- something I think
| anyone with half a brain inwardly knows even if they
| maintain otherwise in public forums like this one.
| pksebben wrote:
| Couple of points;
|
| What you think is going on in other people's brains,
| partial or not, is inaccurate. This is generally true for
| pretty much everyone, but especially in a case like yours
| where you seem utterly convinced that you know.
|
| I do not know what is on those boats, and neither do you.
| Neither of us will ever find out, because they were sunk
| before any actual facts could be verified. This is
| precisely why we have due process.
|
| In the scheme of things, I am much more worried about a
| well-armed force committing extrajudicial killings than I
| am "some dudes who might have drugs". The fact that you
| seem very concerned about the latter and are totes cool
| with the former is... concerning, to say the least.
|
| I do appreciate you posting your sources, so thanks for
| that.
| aerostable_slug wrote:
| I'm responding directly to a post on using subterfuge to
| pretend to be fishermen, and further addressing the oft-
| stated opinion that fishing boats are being targeted.
|
| They aren't bothering pretending to be fishermen, and
| also stating my personal opinion that most people saying
| they are fishing boats know they're not (and thus are
| being dishonest). Those are separate points than fighting
| drug trafficking with missile strikes.
| pksebben wrote:
| You know what? Fair point. I can't necessarily talk for
| anyone else, but I will say that I have a tendency to be
| extra critical where state power is being abused. I
| served, and in my Army, we _knew_ to our bones that our
| mandate was to protect the American people from foreign
| threat of violence, _not_ as a police force. Not then and
| not ever. Posse comitatus wasn 't the law of the land -
| it was a commandment from the highest authority.
|
| So I suppose I jumped on with a little more haste than a
| sharing of opinions warrants. Sorry about that - this
| stuff gets me very hot under the collar.
|
| If I step back and take another look at it, well - I'm
| still not ready to make a judgement as to what those
| boats were doing. There's not enough information - even
| taking the profiling argument into account. There are
| people who live as digital nomads on the sea just because
| they like to. Those boats might have been smuggling
| something other than drugs, like people (who might have
| any number of reasons to be on it - from human
| trafficking to refugees). There may be reasons that
| people have for taking a boat of that shape out that I am
| unaware of. Irrespective of the use of force, there is
| simply not enough data to come to a reasonably certain
| conclusion.
|
| My time in service was spent as part of an IO unit - we
| would never have advised action on the data that's
| available here. The Risk factors are simply too broad and
| too deep.
| aerostable_slug wrote:
| I hear you. Drug boats or not, I would not choose our
| present course of action.
| bluGill wrote:
| I don't know much about those boats, but I know they did
| not have fishing gear on board. Nor were they a luxury
| yacht. By process of elimination we can assume they are
| hauling cargo. Most cargo is concerned about fuel
| efficiency and so would not have that much power for the
| size of boat (most cargo is on large ships so much bigger
| engines, but for the size smaller and slower).
|
| I don't know what they were doing, but they didn't match
| the typical profile of legal things people do. No sign of
| fishing, no sign of luxury, no sign of water skies...
|
| Due process would still be good, but we know a lot
| already without that.
| bamboozled wrote:
| I think you're the one being disingenuous now...you
| surely can't look at that footage and say "drugs, kill
| everyone"?
| aerostable_slug wrote:
| Who said kill everyone? I was responding to a post about
| using subterfuge to pretend to be a fisherman. Deception
| is a personal and professional interest of mine so I
| responded.
|
| Determining what the boats are and what they are doing is
| a separate (but related) topic than determining whether
| or not they deserve being blown up. Some people who are
| reading these words hold that these are fishermen, not
| traffickers, and I feel that is either a dishonest
| statement or those people aren't very clueful.
| bamboozled wrote:
| The issue most people have is not about the murder of
| drug smugglers, it's the lack of a trial. It's the lack
| of real evidence being shown to the public. It's the fact
| there actually might be innocents on those boats. It's
| completely normal for people in 2025 to expect we arrest
| and not just kill people randomly.
|
| The USA was respected because it believed in those
| ethos...because it was better then a bunch of angry
| murderers.
| hunterpayne wrote:
| Fishermen fly flags of the country in which their boat is
| registered.
| barbazoo wrote:
| There are different kinds of boats. Most of them I'd say
| don't fly any flags.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| Far offshore? Ideally yes. But on the 30km voyage from
| San Juan de Unare to Trinidad? I hardly expect a small
| fishing boat to be flying an ensign in that scenario
| vel0city wrote:
| Pentagon officials have told Congress they often don't
| positively know who are on the boats.
| hunterpayne wrote:
| True, but they do know what the boats are doing and it
| isn't fishing. If they were fishing, they would be flying
| a flag of a specific country. Operating a boat without a
| flag is the same as flying a plane without filing a
| flight plan. You can object to the rules of engagement
| but they are in line with hundreds of years of maritime
| law.
| vel0city wrote:
| > Operating a boat without a flag is the same as flying a
| plane without filing a flight plan
|
| You seem to really equate this with the idea of planes
| flying without filing a flight plan. Are you OK with the
| US military shooting down any plane that doesn't file a
| flight plan, without even trying to communicate with the
| vessel or intervene in any other way previously, even if
| that vessel doesn't appear to be heading towards any
| specific US territory or vessel? Is that also allowable
| under international law?
|
| No. You're not supposed to be bombing any boat you find
| in international waters that doesn't have a flag on it
| for whatever reason you can come up with.
| clort wrote:
| I've never seen a fishing boat fly a flag, and I've been
| sailing in many countries for >20 years. Generally,
| fishermen don't care for such things.
|
| So, since I am British and have a UK registered boat and
| know a bit about this. The law that applies (The Merchant
| Shipping Act 1995 section 5) requires that we should fly
| the flag _when entering or leaving a foreign port or upon
| a signal by one of Her Majestys ships_ [1]. Flying a flag
| routinely in international waters is very much not
| required, and very few vessels fly a flag out there,
| because there is not much there to look at it and it just
| flaps itself to bits.
|
| [1]
| https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1995/21/section/5
| Marsymars wrote:
| I've definitely been on a fishing boat of tourists in the
| Caribbean that wasn't flying a flag.
|
| I wouldn't do that with the current US administration's
| actions and level of attention to detail.
| spunker540 wrote:
| They may have some idea, but they definitely don't know for
| sure-- there could very well be innocent people on the
| boat. I'm not sure why arrests are not an option in these
| cases. It would be great press to announce "x kilos of
| cocaine captured", "6 drug smugglers apprehended"
|
| Instead it's just "boat bombed, terrorists killed, drugs
| destroyed" with no proof that they're terrorists or that
| there are drugs.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| > with no proof
|
| That's why arrests are not an option.
| bamboozled wrote:
| It's not dissimilar to George Bush's weapons of mass
| destruction lie.
| ses1984 wrote:
| They know it's fishermen, they just don't care.
| hunterpayne wrote:
| Either you don't know or don't care that fishermen fly
| flags of their country of registration. All boats do this
| in fact. BTW, planes do this by filing flight plans.
| Either you don't know this or don't care because you just
| want to make outrageous political claims.
| ses1984 wrote:
| Let's say for a minute these are drug or terrorist boats.
|
| Wouldn't it be in the US best interest to capture these,
| gather proof, gather further intel?
|
| I'm not making an outrageous claim. They are making
| outrageous claims and destroying the evidence.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| People that mold some fiberglass and put some engines in
| it do not usually put a flag on their thing.
|
| Also, plenty of planes do not fill flight plans, even in
| international flights.
| burkaman wrote:
| The military has told Congress they don't know either.
|
| > [The department officials] said that they do not need to
| positively identify individuals on these vessels to do the
| strikes, they just need to prove a connection to a
| designated terrorist organization or affiliate
|
| - https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/30/dod-military-
| strike...
|
| The most generous possible interpretation is that they have
| no idea who is on the boat, but they have evidence that
| somebody associated with the boat has some connection to an
| organization that they have designated as "terrorists".
|
| When Pete Hegseth leaked a military strike on Signal, the
| specific strike they were discussing was blowing up a
| residential apartment building because the target was
| visiting his girlfriend there. "The first target - their
| top missile guy - we had positive ID of him walking into
| his girlfriend's building and it's now collapsed". So in
| this case ~100% of the victims, besides one guy, were
| unidentified civilians. I think this is an instructive
| example to see how these people (don't) think about killing
| civilians.
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| At least with the narco-subs out of Mexico, etc., a lot of
| the times the "crew" are people forced to do the job. They
| fail, their families die. They have no reason to surrender.
| teachrdan wrote:
| There's also one guy in the sub whose job it is to shoot
| anyone who tries to turn back or otherwise interfere with
| the mission.
| exasperaited wrote:
| They do not.
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| They strike first, and then if there are any survivors, which
| there usually are not, they seem to release them to their home
| countries ( https://www.cnn.com/2025/10/18/politics/caribbean-
| boat-strik... ).
|
| Now, you may ask "if these are criminal drug traffickers that
| need to be killed, why would we release survivors instead of
| arresting them and charging them with a crime?"
| ajfkfkdjsfi wrote:
| Stop giving monsters who continually do monstrous things the
| benefit of doubt.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Appears to be without notice.
|
| Which is sad because the USCG has teams (HITRON) trained to
| perform these ops without blowing things up as the first
| action.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicopter_Interdiction_Tactic...
| exasperaited wrote:
| > Over the last month the U.S. has carried out several
| interdiction strikes on narco-trafficking boats in the Eastern
| Pacific and Caribbean.
|
| Way to accept the framing. They are straight-up performative
| murders of people on boats and there's so little evidence
| supporting them that not only is the guy whose responsibility it
| is actually quitting his job, when they find survivors on these
| boats, they let them go home rather than charging them.
| hunterpayne wrote:
| [flagged]
| trhway wrote:
| >If any other "framing" was correct, they would be flying a
| flag of some country.
|
| sounds like your knowledge of maritime law tells that flying
| some country's flag would have prevented those boats from
| being blown up. Silly narcos not knowing that yours maritime
| law.
|
| >Sending them home is about making sure there isn't anyone
| willing to take the next run.
|
| Why it isn't done with other criminals?
| atomicnumber3 wrote:
| Are navies allowed to just kill people on boats for not
| flying a flag? Arrest them perhaps, I could see - but just
| kill them with no attempt to find any other recourse?
| pksebben wrote:
| Define "allowed", esp. whom it is doing the allowing.
|
| Any and all current international treaties are visibly
| toothless these days. Russia invades Ukraine and the UN
| shrugs while they say "hey, cut it out!". Israel colonizes
| parts of Gaza _that it has specifically agreed not to
| colonize_ and the response is the same. The US commits a
| war crime with it 's morning cuppa and every time the
| international community sorta whistles and heel-turns
| hoping that they're not interesting enough to be next.
|
| The problem is that IOT have any kind of effective
| enforcement mechanism, you have to have the bigger stick,
| and we've just allowed countries to do nothing but build
| bigger sticks since the 40s.
| dataflow wrote:
| I think the meaning of "allowed" was pretty obviously
| "per whatever laws are applicable", not "are the laws
| enforced properly".
| pksebben wrote:
| It's a fair question. I was only able to rabbithole on
| this for so long before realizing I had to get back to
| work, but if anyone wants to continue the search here's
| the most relevant document I was able to find. It's dense
| and very legalese:
|
| https://www.un.org/depts/los/convention_agreements/texts/
| unc...
|
| From what I was able to gather, there are a lot of holes
| in the convention that are large enough to drive a
| gunboat through. What I mean is, in the places where a
| clause might say something like "don't indiscriminately
| sink ships", it will also say "unless effects of criminal
| activity extend to sovereign land" or something like
| that. This is vague enough that your lawyers could grind
| the wheels of justice to a halt on the premise that "we
| are protecting our citizens from all that dangerous
| cocaine" or whatever.
|
| Frankly, I wonder what changed between when we were
| putting the stuff in cola sold on shelves and now that it
| justifies batrillions of dollars fighting an unwinnable
| war to suppress.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| It depends on what you mean by allowed. It doesn't matter
| what rules exist if there is no way to enforce them.
| oooyay wrote:
| I'm not an expert but I was in the military a decade or so
| ago. The Coast Guard and DHS definitely do partner operations
| in international and state-run waters for interdiction; the
| Navy definitely did similar interdiction operations with
| their smaller boats usually with partner nations. The Navy
| shooting missiles at alleged narco boats _is_ new. At most
| the Navy and Coast Guard would engage to defend or disable.
|
| There's documentaries on streaming services where they put
| this on full display.
| TOMDM wrote:
| The thing I used to like about the USA was that it aspired to
| a higher standard than the historical ones set by monarchs
| and fascists.
| barbazoo wrote:
| > narco-trafficking boats
|
| First of all, I haven't seen any evidence that those were
| actually boats used for trafficking, happy to update my
| knowledge here. Murdering them without a shred of evidence,
| that's be wrong regardless of what laws apply.
|
| If maritime law doesn't allow you to arrest these people,
| then maybe that's not the right place to deal with them.
| exasperaited wrote:
| > Tell me you don't understand how maritime law works without
| telling me you don't know how maritime law works.
|
| I will tell you that I don't understand how maritime law
| works in any great detail, but I do know what unprovoked
| murder without any discernible basis in fact is.
|
| If they wanted to stop these boats and turn them back, or
| stop these boats and arrest the people on them, they could do
| so with exactly the same justification they are using to
| murder the people on them. i.e. zero justification. And it
| still wouldn't be unprovoked murder. Wouldn't that be better?
|
| Given they have the tools to track them to murder them, they
| could also track them and _wait until they arrive in US
| waters to arrest them_. This is how it normally works. And
| even if that is inefficient it still does not justify killing
| them as a more efficient alternative.
| nomel wrote:
| > without any discernible basis in fact is.
|
| I don't think there have been any details released about
| the information. There never are with military operations,
| so I'm not sure why they're expected now, especially since
| this is ongoing, and it would invalidate their methods. Of
| course, this all requires that you don't believe the
| military is firing randomly at boats.
| t-3 wrote:
| There has been testimony in front of Congress stating
| that they don't know who is on the boats and don't have
| any evidence that they are involved in drug trafficking.
| Common sense tells that the boats could not possibly
| reach the US, at best they are headed to the Caribbean.
| Even if these are drug vessels, the drugs aren't coming
| here.
| nomel wrote:
| > don't know who is on the boats
|
| I think that's somewhat orthogonal though, since stopping
| the act is the goal, rather than knowing/caring who's
| doing it.
|
| > don't have any evidence that they are involved in drug
| trafficking
|
| I tried, but can't find anything related to this. All I
| can find is that they haven't _provided_ evidence, with
| many _claiming_ they don 't have any. Do you have a
| reference? The military rarely, if ever, gives away how
| they gather intelligence, so I'm not sure why it's
| expected now.
| t-3 wrote:
| You appear to be correct, they have declined to provide
| evidence, even in closed hearings, they have not admitted
| to having no evidence. It's merely highly probable that
| no evidence exists.
| trhway wrote:
| Yes, it is impossible to understand why a destroyer or a couple
| of gunship-helicopters with a SEAL like team can't just
| properly arrest those boats.
| oooyay wrote:
| This was, in fact, typical for the Navy and Coast Guard
| before the Trump admin. As was due process.
| trhway wrote:
| I know. 50 years ago my father was on a USSR fishing vessel
| arrested by US for violation of fishing rules. They spent 2
| weeks in NY harbor until some US fishing vessel got
| arrested by USSR for violation of fishing rules :)
| fecal_henge wrote:
| Yet again no justice for the fish.
| trhway wrote:
| That is one of the things one learns with time (if one
| not smart enough to understand it from the beginning) -
| it is small guy who get caught in the fight between Big
| Guys who suffers the most and pays the price, so don't be
| that small guy.
|
| For few decades it looked like we've been building around
| the world the system which would protect small guy, yet
| the last few years the system has come down crashing.
| Interestingly that one of the architects of that crash -
| Dick Cheney (RIP, was just on the news and this is why he
| came to mind) - has lived to see those fruits of his
| labor and ultimately even voted against the most
| prominent expression of his policies - ie. against Trump
| and for Harris.
| dylan604 wrote:
| KGB fishing trawlers are a well known thing. If it swims
| like a fish, smells like a fish, gotta be a fish, right?
| HaZeust wrote:
| For those who don't know, FIRMS is NASA's "Fire Information for
| Resource Management System".
|
| https://www.earthdata.nasa.gov/data/tools/firms
| basisword wrote:
| "at-sea strikes" / crime against humanity.
| burnt-resistor wrote:
| Extrajudical executions without evidence, just a bunch of
| spurious talking points and unfounded accusations. It reeks of
| the stench of the "Saddam WMDs" that didn't exist. Churning the
| curds of casus belli to justify launching a foreign war to
| distract from domestic concerns like the Epstein files and the
| clawing back of healthcare to give more money to the
| billionaires.
| maxglute wrote:
| TFW next generation of US specop influencers are from SouthCom.
| Boring counter-narctoics = boring books = boring movies without
| explosions. At the end of the day policy bros just want to make
| sicario reality. That's barely a joke. Villeneuve triumph of the
| willed war on drugs.
| heroiccocoa wrote:
| It's frustrating how some people insist on prefixing reddit URLs
| with "old", requiring everybody else who opens their link to load
| the wrong page, edit it, and reload the modern version. 3 seconds
| of OPs time could have saved thousands of people from wasting
| their 8 seconds each.
| bathtub365 wrote:
| I prefer the old links as they don't put up login walls or
| other popups that try to get me to use an account.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Maybe I like the misery!
|
| https://youtu.be/dwz6vBp8MPw
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| > requiring everybody else who opens their link to load the
| wrong page, edit it, and reload the modern version
|
| Don't put everyone in the bandwagon that wants the new Reddit
| UX. It happens because many people don't.
| gs17 wrote:
| > requiring everybody else who opens their link to load the
| wrong page, edit it
|
| It's not required. You have a preference for the "new"
| experience, but many people see the additional time it takes to
| load and read the "new" experience as the actual waste of time.
| AngryData wrote:
| And how do you think everyone else feels about being forced to
| open a shitty mobile page with 30x the data requirements and
| extra telemetry, popups about using an app, and asking for a
| login and requiring people to edit the title with old.
| nielsbot wrote:
| > Over the last month the U.S. has carried out several
| interdiction strikes on narco-trafficking boats in the Eastern
| Pacific and Caribbean
|
| There's no proof that that's actually what they're doing. They
| should present some.
| foofoo12 wrote:
| Shouldn't we just trust them? Have they ever made a false
| public statement?
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-11-06 23:01 UTC)