All posts tagged "foreign policy"

A terrifying crisis was manufactured to distract from a massive Trump scandal

Mark Twain allegedly quipped, “God created war so Americans would learn geography.” Whether or not he actually said that, might it not be a good test, that the world’s most mighty military power be prevented from waging war if a majority of Americans failed to find the alleged enemy on a world map?

Frivolity aside, this should not need to be said, but the United States has no legal authority to attack Venezuela (nor Iran, Sudan, Somalia, or any other country), nor engage in covert action to overthrow its government. Should the US do so, it will be opposed by everyone south of the Rio Grande, and rightly be seen as a racist resumption of the Monroe Doctrine. Whatever one thinks of the current government, nearly 30 million people live in Venezuela, and they don’t deserve to be demonized or threatened for the policies of their president, as Venezuela poses no threat to the United States.

The American people get this. A recent CBS News poll shows widespread public skepticism and disapproval of any US military attack against Venezuela, properly so, with 70 percent opposing the US taking military action.

Moreover, the current US military buildup in the Caribbean is an unnecessary and dangerous provocation. US Navy warships and Marine deployments to the region should be reversed to ease tensions. It is very unlikely the US would invade Venezuela with ground forces as even gung ho for blood Secretary of War Pete Hegseth must know a quagmire would ensue, but the Trump administration may see political advantage to have this as a simmering, manufactured “crisis,” to distract from the Epstein files; President Donald Trump’s sagging popularity; and his failed economic, domestic, and foreign policies. And Trump’s declaration closing Venezuelan air space has zero legitimacy, though it did scare many airlines into changing flight routes.

An obvious question comes to mind. Is this really about oil, not drugs? Fentanyl is not coming into the US via Venezuela, and the alleged drug ring run by Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro does not exist. However, Venezuela does have the world’s largest known oil reserves.

I can’t imagine anyone wants a rerun of the Iraq wars. Let’s not test the adage that “history may not repeat itself, but it does rhyme” (which again, Mark Twain may or may not have said). We don’t want to have to dust off our “No War for Oil!” protest signs. And there is also already a metastasizing problem with violent competition for rare earth minerals in Venezuela.

The brouhaha about the second attack on the alleged “drug boat” on Sept. 2 (and no evidence has been presented that it was a “drug boat” and even if it was, there was no legal authority to attack it, once or twice) possibly being a war crime misses the point, though Hegseth should be held to account; all the attacks on the alleged “drug boats” are illegal, and unauthorized by Congress.

Speaking of which, Congress needs to not only investigate these shady “drug boat” attacks, but assert its constitutional authority by passing a War Powers Resolution to stop the out-of-control Trump administration from further attacks or escalation. The US Senate failed to pass such a measure last month, 51-49, with all Democrats voting in favor and all but two Republicans voting against upholding the Constitution, but “the world’s greatest deliberative body” should try again. Perhaps Republicans can read the polls better now.

Also, US economic sanctions are hurting the people and economy of Venezuela, and should be at least reconsidered, if not scrapped altogether. Unfortunately, some self-appointed foreign policy experts think sanctions are a humane alternative to war, and better than “doing nothing.” The reality is broad economic sanctions hurt ordinary people the most, and are an immoral and ineffective way to try to get hungry people to overthrow their government, regardless of its domestic popularity or lack thereof.

Lastly, while I never bought this, wasn’t Trump supposed to be about “America First” and avoiding foreign wars? His voters thought so. Trump is about to risk American lives, when nobody voted to have their sons and daughters fight a war with Venezuela, or any other country. Congress needs to listen to the wisdom of the American people and shut this ill-conceived threat to Venezuela and its neighbors down now.

  • Kevin Martin is the president of Peace Action and Peace Action Education Fund, with over 40 years experience as a peace and justice organizer. He is helping coordinate the Cease-Fire Now Grassroots Advocacy Network.

'Real jeopardy': Dem vets in Congress slam Trump and Hegseth for endangering U.S. troops

WASHINGTON — Democratic veterans on Capitol Hill say there’s a dangerous throughline to Pete Hegseth’s dueling scandals, over the use of an unsecured messaging app and boat bombings in the Caribbean and Pacific: The Pentagon chief is endangering US troops.

A new report from the Pentagon inspector general finds Hegseth — a former Army officer who was a Fox News weekend host before he entered government — put troops in danger this spring when he shared Yemen war plans on the commercial messaging app Signal.

"He shared information he shouldn't have in a way that he shouldn't have, and the consequences are that our military could be compromised and the safety of our men and women in uniform could be compromised,” Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (D-PA) told Raw Story. “That's what we know.”

“Is that the kind of person that we want to be the Secretary of Defense?" Houlahan — an Air Force veteran and member of both the House Intelligence and Armed Services Committees — said.

"No one should be using Signal in that way. Nobody should be communicating that information at all. It's just not nobody, it's the Secretary of Defense."

Details from the inspector general report on Hegseth’s use of commercial messaging app Signal — including how the then national security adviser, Mike Waltz, came to add Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg to a group chat ahead of strikes in Yemen — are damning to many in Congress.

But that issue pales in comparison to allegations Hegseth signed off on unlawful military strikes in the Caribbean.

To veterans in Congress, it’s unconscionable that Secretary of Defense Hegseth and President Donald Trump, the commander-in-chief, are seemingly letting their underlings take the blame for the military strikes.

“It is incredibly offensive. And it sends a message to the troops that this President, this SecDef, is willing to throw you under the bus,” Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) — an Army veteran who lost her legs in Iraq — told Raw Story.

“One of the first things you learn as an Army officer, which, you know, [Hegseth] supposedly was, is that you can always delegate authority, but you never delegate responsibility. The responsibility rests with him.”

Hegseth doesn’t seem to have gotten the memo.

‘No leader worth their salt’

On Monday, the Defense Secretary took to social media to seemingly shift the blame.

“Lets make one thing crystal clear: Admiral Mitch Bradley is an American hero, a true professional, and has my 100 percent support,” Hegseth wrote on X.

“I stand by him and the combat decisions he has made — on this September 2 mission and all others since.”

That was the mission when, the Washington Post first reported, an order was given to carry out a second strike on a boat in the Caribbean, the first having left survivors clinging to wreckage.

The Post said Hegseth ordered the second strike, which most analysts say would constitute a war crime. He denies it.

To Duckworth and many other veterans on Capitol Hill, Hegseth passing the buck is scandalous.

“I've always known that he's not qualified for the job,” Duckworth said. “I worry about the service members being put into jeopardy by this, right? We’re violating international laws of armed conflict, we are putting service members in legal jeopardy.

“My focus right now is what are we doing to our service members? We're putting them in real jeopardy, both legally and also personally. I mean, you know, if we're going to do this in international waters, what's to keep some other country from saying, ‘Hey, we're going to do this to the US’?”

Other senior members of the Armed Services Committees agreed.

"No leader worth their salt pushes responsibility off on a subordinate,” Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) told Raw Story.

“And if Hegseth gave a ‘kill everybody’ order — and we have to determine whether, in fact, that's true — that's a clear violation of law, whether or not he gave it before the second strike. A kill everybody order just in and of itself is a violation of the laws of war.”

Kaine says Hegseth has a bad habit of passing the buck.

"The opening salvo of ‘It's all a lie’ and ‘It's journalists who are spinning a fake narrative’ to now, ‘Well, yeah, it's true but you know, it was Adm. Bradley's call, not mine’ — I mean, you know, no,” Kaine said.

‘Legal risk’

Kaine and Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) are renewing their calls for Congress to pass an AUMF — or

Authorization for Use of Military Force — before the Pentagon carries out more air strikes off the coast of Venezuela.

"We're seeing realized a lot of the fears members had that this unauthorized campaign would result in blowback to the country, to our troops," Schiff told Raw Story.

"One of the concerns I've had all along has been that we risk putting service members in physical danger, but we also risk putting them at legal risk and that's exactly what's happened."

Hegseth’s Democratic critics say it's the same with “Signalgate.”

"Secretary Hegseth has been a liability to the administration from the moment he was confirmed,” Houlahan of Pennsylvania said. “At what point does the President recognize that and ask for his resignation?"

This outrage is too grotesque to absorb — yet it explains so much

Shocking as this moment is, none of us should pretend we weren’t warned. When Donald Trump installed Pete Hegseth — a television provocateur whose public record is soaked in belligerence, booze, and culture-war performance — as America’s Defense Secretary, the world could see exactly where it was headed.

Still, nothing prepared us for the Washington Post revelation that Hegseth personally ordered U.S. forces to “kill everybody” on a small wooden boat off the coast of Trinidad on Sept. 2.

You’d expect rogue militias or failed-state paramilitaries to speak that way. You don’t expect it from the man running the Pentagon.

What the Post reports is almost too grotesque to absorb.

After the first U.S. missile ripped the boat apart and set it burning, commanders watched on a live drone feed as two survivors clung desperately to the charred wreckage.

They were unarmed. They were wounded. They were no threat to anyone. They were simply alive; inconveniently alive for a man who had allegedly already given the order that there be no survivors.

And so, according to two officials with direct knowledge of the strike, the Special Operations commander overseeing the operation ordered a second missile. It hit the water and blew those two men apart.

History tells us to watch out for nations that lose their moral compass in real time.

It starts when the powerful stop seeing human beings as human. It accelerates when the government itself denies any obligation to justify its killings.

And when leaders begin lying to Congress and the public to cover what they’ve done, you’re no longer looking at isolated abuses. You’re staring straight into the machinery of authoritarianism.

Instead of telling Congress that the second strike was designed to finish off wounded survivors, Pentagon officials claimed it was to “remove a navigation hazard.”

That isn’t just spin: it’s an attempt to rewrite reality.

The Post quotes Todd Huntley, a former Special Operations military lawyer now at Georgetown Law, saying exactly what any first-year law student would immediately recognize: because the U.S. is not legally “at war” with drug traffickers, killing the people on that boat “amounts to murder.”

Even if a war did exist, Huntley notes, the order to kill wounded, unarmed survivors “would in essence be an order to show no quarter,” which is defined under the Geneva Conventions as a war crime.

This isn’t an obscure legal debate. This is basic civilization. Armed states do not execute helpless people in the water.

And yet this is now U.S. policy. The boat strike on Sept. 2 was not a one-off. It was the beginning of a campaign.

The Post reports that since that first attack, Trump and Hegseth have ordered more than 20 similar missile strikes on small boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, killing at least 80 people.

The administration insists the victims were members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. But in classified briefings to Congress, Pentagon officials have not provided even one single verified name of a trafficker or gang leader they’ve killed. Lawmakers from both parties say they’ve been shown nothing beyond grainy videos of small boats being destroyed from the air.

If these men had truly been high-value cartel operatives, Trump would be parading names and photos across every rally stage in America. The silence tells its own story.

Experts warn that many of the dead may not have been traffickers at all. They may have been border-crossing migrants, subsistence fishermen, or small-scale smugglers whose crimes did not remotely justify summary execution.

International human rights groups are already calling these killings extrajudicial and illegal. Some foreign governments are asking whether the United States has effectively created a free-fire zone over parts of the Caribbean, and several have limited intelligence sharing with us for fear of being complicit in prosecutable war crimes and crimes against humanity.

This, too, has been part of the authoritarian playbook since ancient times.

Pick a foreign or criminal “other,” paint them as subhuman monsters, and then declare that the normal laws of war, morality, and basic decency no longer apply.

For years, right-wing media has been hyping Tren de Aragua as a kind of supercharged successor to MS-13, just as Trump once used MS-13 as a bludgeon to justify abuses at home.

The fact that the administration has produced no evidence for its claims isn’t a bug: it’s the point. When the government fabricates an omnipresent threat, it gives itself permission to kill whoever it wants.

This may also explain the ferocity with which Hegseth and Trump went after Democratic lawmakers when they reminded U.S. service members that they are duty-bound to disobey illegal orders.

Those officers weren’t being dramatic: they were issuing a warning grounded in fresh blood. And Hegseth’s and Trump’s panicked rage — calling for the death penalty for six members of Congress, including a decorated war hero and a CIA officer — now makes perfect sense: he knows perfectly well what he’s already ordered.

The strike on Sept. 2 is not just a policy failure; it’s a moral collapse. If the Post’s reporting is accurate — and multiple congressional offices say it is consistent with what whistleblowers have told them — then the United States has engaged in the deliberate killing of wounded, unarmed men floating in the sea.

That is the kind of conduct that topples governments, triggers war-crimes investigations, and leaves scars on nations for generations.

Nobody elected Trump or Hegseth to serve as judge, jury, and executioner for impoverished people in wooden boats. Nobody gave them the authority to murder suspects without trial. And nobody gave them the right to lie to Congress about it.

Congress must not let this pass. These allegations demand immediate public hearings, subpoena power, and full investigative authority.

If Hegseth gave an order to “kill everybody,” he must be removed and prosecuted.

If U.S. commanders falsified reports to mislead Congress and the public, they must be held accountable.

And if Trump approved or encouraged these actions, then impeachment and criminal referral are not optional: they’re required to defend the rule of law.

America doesn’t have many chances left to prove to the world, and to ourselves, that we still believe in the value of human life and the restraints of democratic power. This is one of them.

This terrifying build-up shows Trump's threat to Venezuela is very real indeed

By Evan Ellis, Latin America Research Professor, US Army War College.

As an analyst who has worked on security issues for over 30 years, I've been monitoring the US military build-up in the Caribbean for months.

The US administration now has the potential to take decisive military action in Venezuela.

Washington has described Nicolás Maduro as the leader of a terrorist group and deemed his regime illegitimate.

The US has named its mission in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean "Operation Southern Spear" and briefed President Donald Trump on military options.

The arrival of the USS Gerald R. Ford gives the US Joint Task Force established in the region the option to launch a high volume of attacks against land targets, should Trump give the order. According to media reports, there are now 15,000 troops in the region, including marines on ships and some 5,000 personnel at bases in Puerto Rico.

This massive deployment has, arguably, sought to convince Maduro's loyalists that US action is now an option on the table.

The message is clear: if a military solution is pursued, the US is highly likely to be successful.

This quantity of US military hardware in the region has not been seen since "Operation Uphold Democracy" in Haiti in 1994, when American-led forces helped end the military regime that had overthrown the democratically elected government.

The most modern aircraft carrier in the US Navy is the Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier. Its ability to rapidly launch and recover the 75 modern fighter aircraft on board would allow it to generate a significant number of strikes against Venezuelan targets. This would serve as a complement to the substantial numbers of missiles and other weapons on the other ships in the region.

It joins an Iwo Jima Amphibious Ready Group. This group includes a helicopter dock ship and two landing platform vessels capable of transporting the 2,200 marines of the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit and their vehicles and equipment onto land, should they be needed.

If such an event occurs, they would be transported by V-22 tilt-rotor aircraft, helicopters and rapid air cushioned landing craft with the capacity to carry marines and heavier equipment over the beach to their objectives.

In addition, the US has six destroyers and two cruisers with hundreds of missiles for both land attack and air defence and an AC-130 gunship capable of delivering high volumes of missiles against land targets.

The special operations force's support ship, the "Ocean Trader", is also in the region and there is at least one attack submarine under the water's surface.

Then on nearby US territory in Puerto Rico, the US has at least 10 F-35s, the most advanced fighter jet in the world. Flight tracking shows on Nov. 21 at least four additional aircraft were flown into the region from the US.

These capabilities are further complemented by rapidly deployable assets from nearby bases in the continental US, from which the US has already flown sorties with B-52 and B-1 bombers.

At least one MQ-9 Reaper attack and surveillance drone has also been deployed in the region.

The imbalance of military firepower cannot be overstated. The small number of man-portable Igla-S anti-aircraft weapons that Maduro can rely on could take out a handful of US helicopters. But it is likely that few are in workable condition and even those may not be in the hands of people who know how to use them.

Venezuela has around 63,000 soldiers, 23,000 troops in the National Guard and 15,000 marines. There are also unknown thousands in the militia. A submarine, two frigates, two corvettes and several missile and patrol boats are patrolling the coast. But they are massively dwarfed by the number, power and reach of what the US has stationed there.

How it could unfold

Any move by Venezuelans to oust Maduro themselves could be supported by limited US operations on land targets, including military leaders and facilities supporting what the US alleges are drug operations.

Should a home-grown attempt be unsuccessful, a large-scale, decisive US operation to capture or eliminate the regime's leadership, is one option.

One way this could be done could involve a massive barrage of missiles and strikes by stealth aircraft, supported by electronic warfare, special operations missions, and clandestine operations from inside the country. The aim would be to take down the regime’s air defence systems, command nodes, fighter aircraft and other threats.

Whether the United States would follow up such an operation with "boots on the ground" is not certain.

But if Washington has the will, the US certainly has the military might needed to remove the US-designated terrorist group "Cartel de los Soles," including its alleged head, Maduro, which it claims is a threat to US interests.

Trump's push for war with Venezuela is indeed about addiction — but not to drugs

President Donald Trump’s saber-rattling about potential military action in Venezuela is indeed about drugs, but not cocaine. It is about a far more dangerous drug that former President George W. Bush admitted (in his 2006 State of the Union address) the US is addicted to.

Oil.

Venezuela has the largest proven oil reserves in the world — 300 billion barrels — even larger than reserves in Saudi Arabia.

Mr. Trump and his oil industry friends may imagine that by deposing President Nicolás Maduro and installing a friendly government there, the US would have unlimited access to this huge oil reserve, which is five times larger than the proven reserves in the US.

Never mind the fact that for any hope of future climate stability, most of this oil needs to stay right where it is: in the ground.

We’ve seen this tragic play before. The Bush administration justified its disastrous 2003 invasion of Iraq with the pretext that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction which, as it turned out, it didn’t.

As US Central Command commander General John Abizaid admitted about the Iraq War at the time: “Of course it’s about oil, it’s very much about oil, and we can’t really deny that.”

The invasion killed tens of thousands of people, mostly civilians, and destabilized the broader Middle East region for years.

And now here we go again. A similar pretext — this time “drug interdiction” — is being used to justify a potential US invasion and regime change in Venezuela. But this is not about stopping the flow of dangerous drugs, it is about actually increasing the flow of the dangerous drug some pushers want to keep us all hooked on.

Oil.

As Colombian President Gustavo Petro recently stated on the US-Venezuela threat: “Oil is at the heart of the matter.”

Instead of admitting their addiction, the damage it causes, and committing to recovery, hardcore junkies are always desperate for more supply. It seems Mr. Trump and his oil industry friends are the most dangerous narco-traffickers we need to worry about.

  • Richard Steiner was a marine professor with the University of Alaska from 1980 to 2010, stationed in the Arctic and Prince William Sound. He advises on oil and environment through Oasis Earth.

This heroic example shows Dems are right to defy Trump over illegal orders to troops

This commentary was originally published by Big Pivots.

The Sand Creek Massacre comes to mind in reading about U.S. Rep. Jason Crow (D-CO), a decorated combat veteran who declared that members of the U.S. military must refuse illegal orders.

“No one has to carry out orders that violate the law or our Constitution,” said Crow and five other members of Congress, all of them veterans of our armed forces or intelligence services, in a video posted last week.

President Donald Trump went ballistic, branding them as traitors.

“HANG THEM GEORGE WASHINGTON WOULD !!” said a social media post that Trump shared.

He later backtracked, saying he didn’t actually call for their deaths. Not sure what hanging short of death looks like. Crow and other legislators did report death threats.

Denver7 talked with a former U.S. Army officer, Joseph Jordan. His law firm specializes in defending service members under investigation. He cited the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which says service members must obey orders, unless they are “patently illegal,” such as one that “directs the commission of a crime.”

But the code says those who disobey orders risk facing a court martial. A military judge decides if an order was lawful.

Writing in the New York Times, David French, an attorney who served in Iraq, as did Crow, parsed details of the relevant federal law. Shooting a prisoner is unambiguously illegal, said French. Bombing a home that is thought to contain insurgents is not.

Looming large is the legality of Trump’s orders to kill those on boats in the Caribbean who may — or may not — be carrying narcotics. Trump, said French, “has put the military in an impossible situation. He’s making its most senior leaders complicit in his unlawful acts, and he’s burdening the consciences of soldiers who serve under his command.”

Captain refuses to kill

At Sand Creek, on Nov. 29, 1864, Captain Silas Soule and Lieutenant Joseph Cramer refused to allow their men to participate in killing about 200 Cheyenne and Arapahoe natives, most of them women and children.

The Great Plains in 1864 were contested territory. Colorado had become a U.S. territory in 1861, but the Cheyenne and other tribes who had migrated over the previous 150 years to build lives around the plentiful buffalo herds were not consulted. Friction was growing. Murders had occurred.

Desperate to figure out a co-existence, a delegation of Arapahoe and Cheyenne leaders had traveled to Denver that September. Colorado’s territorial governor, John Evans, was present but remained largely silent. The natives left, believing they had been assured safety if they remained in place in southeastern Colorado. About 350 of them and various other individuals were camped along the dry creek bed that November.

Colonel John Chivington had other ideas. He was a hero from an 1864 Civil War battle in New Mexico. He had been at the peace negotiations that September. But perhaps hoping to embellish his reputation and win a seat in Congress, Chivington set out from Denver for Fort Lyons, near today’s Las Animas. There, he detained anybody who he thought would interfere with his plans.

Marching overnight, Chivington and his men arrived at the Sand Creek encampment at dawn. The natives had hoisted the American flag amid their teepees, but it did them no good. A triumphant Chivington and his men returned to Denver hoisting scalps. They were welcomed as heroes.

Some saw them otherwise. Soule and Cramer, horrified by what they had seen, wrote impassioned letters to their commanding officer, Major Edward Wynkoop. The Army held hearings several months later. Soule did not live long enough to be fully vindicated. He was assassinated in Denver the next April. Both Soule and Evans are buried at Riverside Cemetery, north of downtown Denver.

Among many accomplishments, Evans helped found both Northwestern University in Illinois and the University of Denver. In 2014, both universities commissioned reports examining the culpability of Evans in the massacre.

The Northwestern report was slightly more restrained, but both found Evans bore responsibility for helping create the circumstances. More than any other political official in Colorado Territory, said the DU report, Evans “created the conditions in which the massacre was highly likely.”

Soule’s grave is marked by a simple white tombstone along with other veterans. The grave of Evans is large and imposing. Last Memorial Day, I found flowers, a flag and a testimonial at the grave of Silas Soule. Others had visited, too. As for the tombstone of Evans, I saw nothing. He had remained silent in 1864, when leadership was needed.

Trump's bizarre justification shares a grim parallel with maritime cannibalism

By Martin Danahay, Professor, English Language and Literature, Brock University

The Trump administration has authorized killing people in boats on the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific, claiming they’re transporting illegal drugs.

Maritime and international law experts have raised concerns about the legality of the attacks.

Based on a maritime court case from 1884, this use of force may well be illegal.

The Trump administration argues its actions are part of a war against what it has termed “narco-terrorists.” Killing the people manning these boats, it has said, will save the lives of Americans who might otherwise die of drug overdoses from the substances that are allegedly being transported by these boats.

The rationale that the U.S. is justified to kill people at sea in order to save people is similar to what used to be called the “custom of the sea”, which excused “survival cannibalism” if the consumption of one shipwrecked sailor helped the others survive.

This custom, which basically excused “murder by necessity,” was essentially outlawed in a landmark case in 1884.

The Mignonette

The case involved an incident of cannibalism after a yacht, The Mignonette, sank off the west coast of Africa and its four crew members escaped in a small dinghy with no time to gather food and water.

After three weeks at sea, their situation became so dire that two of the men decided that the ailing youngest member of the crew, a 17-year-old boy named Richard Parker, should be sacrificed so the rest of them could survive. They killed Parker and used his body for food and drink; the third crew member later said he opposed their actions, though feasted on Parker anyway.

Four days after they killed the boy, the three survivors were rescued.

Two of them, Tom Dudley and Edwin Stephens, were arrested for murder and cannibalism. They were brought to trial in the case R v Dudley and Stephens. The trial opened in Exeter, England after Dudley and Stephens pleaded not guilty.

A panel of judges found them both guilty of murder and they were initially sentenced to death. This judgment was later commuted to six months imprisonment due to errors in trial conduct. Nonetheless, the case did establish that their actions constituted murder and that necessity was not a valid defence for cannibalism.

Justifying murder

Like the crew members of The Mignonette, President Donald Trump has claimed that killing people at sea is justified because it will preserve the lives of others.

This is the same reasoning behind the now discredited “custom of the sea.”

Rather than “survival cannibalism,” this amounts to “survival killing” based on the argument that other people will live if those on the boats die.

The Dudley and Stephens precedent means that if anyone ever goes to trial for the boat strikes, they could potentially be convicted of murder following the landmark 19th-century ruling that killing and eating people is wrong.

The case is taught in law classes because of the difficult issues it raises:

  • When, if ever, is murder justified?
  • If it is justified, in what circumstances would it be viewed as the only viable option?

While ongoing American attacks on boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific don’t involve cannibalism, but instead military attacks that have resulted in the deaths of the people manning those boats, the case of The Mignonette may still be relevant.

Either international norms turn back to the era of the “custom of the sea” and regard murder for the greater good as legal, or they uphold the verdict in R v Dudley and Stephens and view the actions in the Caribbean Sea as unjustified acts of murder.

This Trump betrayal can be stopped

Ukrainians know Donald Trump’s Ukraine deal is a betrayal, even if Volodymyr Zelensky and others have to keep flattering Trump in the hope he changes his mind.

Negotiated between American billionaire Steve Witkoff and Russian oligarch Kirill Dmitriev without Ukrainian or European participation, the proposed deal gives Russia even more territory, forces Ukraine to shrink its army, and prevents the country joining NATO.

Its guarantees of future Ukraine security could easily melt away as did those Russia, the US and European nations made when Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons in 1994. The treaty is culmination of Trump’s undermining of Ukraine, from his first cancellations of Biden-era military support to validating Valdimir Putin’s claims to Ukrainian territory.

It’s tempting to simply mourn, but those of us who’ve opposed Russia’s invasion from the start can do more than just play the role of passive spectators, particularly with the Europeans stepping up to make clear they’ll have Ukraine’s back and to push back with a plan of their own.

For all of Trump’s claimed deadlines. Ukraine is not going to simply accept, and may not at all. And while they’re negotiating, supporters of Ukraine and especially Ukrainian Americans, could and should organize nationally coordinated rallies calling on Trump to support Ukraine and not Putin. And making clear the kinds of support that would strengthen Ukraine’s hand.

And while they’re coming up with counter-proposals, supporters of Ukraine, and especially Ukrainian Americans, could and should organize nationally coordinated rallies calling on Trump to support Ukraine and not Putin. And making clear the kinds of support that would strengthen Ukraine’s hand.

These demonstrations should be led by Ukrainian Americans, whose families and futures are most directly affected. But they could also prominently engage other Eastern European communities — Polish, Latvian, Finnish, and others — whose homelands are also threatened by Russian aggression, and who become far more vulnerable if Ukraine accepts this deal.

These communities bring powerful stories, deep networks, and shared stakes in the outcome. They recognize that Ukrainians are fighting both for them and for everyone who believes in democracy. Demonstration organizers can invite them to speak, co-create messaging, and amplify the call across media and social platforms.

Broader outreach — such as to the networks that mobilized an estimated 7 million people for the October No Kings Day — could expand the size and impact. But the core message should remain rooted in the voices of those on the front lines of this geopolitical struggle.

The slogans can be simple and direct: Don't Abandon Ukraine. Stand Against Putin. Stand with Ukraine and Democracy.

The goal would be to pressure once-supportive Republicans to break their silent compliance and themselves demand restoration of at least baseline levels of aid. It would be about making the political cost of inaction too high to ignore — an easier task in the wake of GOP electoral defeats, as Trump’s poll numbers hit new lows, and as Republicans begin to break on the Epstein files.

These rallies would also send a message to Trump himself. He’s refused to authorize new U.S. support, alternately halted and resumed the delivery of previously committed air defense systems and artillery ammunition, and lamented Russia’s expulsion from the G8 for its 2014 Crimea seizure, something he wants to reverse in the new treaty.

Despite occasional tough sounding words, he’s given Putin far more leverage both on the battlefield and at the negotiating table. Ukraine may still prevail with courage, persistence, creativity, increased European support. But Trump’s general abandonment makes the Ukrainian situation far harder, even as the war-burdened Russian economy faces 20 percent interest rates, 10 percent inflation, and key labor shortages.

Could rallies and marches still make a difference? Ukrainian and other Eastern European communities have historically leaned Republican, giving them unique leverage. When economic interests have pressured Trump, he’s reversed course on tariffs and on immigration raids targeting farmworkers and hotel workers. Nixon-era anti-Vietnam demonstrations helped halt bombing raids and accelerated troop withdrawals — even as Nixon claimed they had no affect.

There are no guarantees. But coordinated, visible action could restore at least some of the support for Ukraine that Trump pulled, and shift him back in his weather vane-spin towards supporting Kyiv and not Moscow.

At the very least, action would give Ukrainian Americans and their allies a way to speak out while the fate of Ukraine hangs in the balance, because publicly they’ve been much too silent.

Hope alone is not a strategy. But when people organize with a common voice, they never know what they might achieve.

  • Paul Loeb is author of Soul of a Citizen, The Impossible Will take a Little While, and three other books on social change, totaling 350,000 copies in print. An earlier version appeared in The Fulcrum

This foul betrayal is Trump's worst treachery yet

Almost lost among Donald Trump’s latest assault on America, has been his utter disdain for our democracy, and love for Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Amid Trump’s attack on our government, White House, health-care, food benefits, vote, the arts, environment, our economy, and peace and quiet, the Russia-Ukraine War has raged on.

Defying all odds, the Ukrainians and their gutsy, charismatic leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy, have held off the once-feared Russian army for nearly four years. This should be celebrated as one the most inspirational events of a 21st Century that has been sorely lacking inspiration or good.

Putin and his vaunted army were supposed to cut through Ukraine like a knife through butter when they launched their attack on Feb. 24, 2022. When Putin’s army amassed on the Ukrainian border it was estimated by many experts that Ukraine would fall in mere hours.

Except that never happened because the Ukrainians proved themselves more feisty and prepared, and Russia weaker and more clumsy, than all these experts expected.

By the third day of fighting Zelenskyy was proving himself more than ready for what feeble Russia was bringing him, and produced a video watched my millions that turned down the United State’s invitation to evacuate him, saying:

“The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride!”

Something wonderful was happening on the eastern front, as a small, upstart and proud nation was smacking the murderous Putin and his army right in the mouth.

It was scary, thrilling and good news to everybody it seems except for Putin and his puppet, Trump, who wasted no time alerting the world to what side he was on, calling Putin’s attack, “savvy” and “genius.”

Just three days later, when he saw what was happening, as the valiant Ukrainians stood up to the bully, and “savvy genius,” Putin, the carnival-barking Trump changed his tone at a CPAC gathering in Florida, on February 27, 2022, and slobbered this:

“The Russian attack on Ukraine is appalling. We are praying for the proud people of Ukraine. God bless them all.”

After surviving this anti-democratic whiplash, instead of apologizing for his grotesque words praising Putin, Trump did what he always did, and has always done: He attacked the United States, and let Putin off the hook, saying:

“The real problem is that our leaders are dumb, dumb. So dumb.”

But Trump’s phony reversal, and attack on America, was only the subhead of that event in Florida, because he used that never-ending speech to hint loudly at another run for office by taking a swipe at America and its President, Joe Biden:

“As everyone understands, this horrific disaster would never have happened if our election was not rigged and if I was the president …”

He went on:

“In November 2024, Democrats will find out like never before. We did it twice, and we’ll do it again. We’re going to be doing it again, a third time.”

Here’s where I will always point out with precision and rage that this anti-American, no-good monster should have been on his way to rotting in jail by now for his attack on our country that had occurred just one year earlier, on Jan. 6, 2021. Except Attorney General Merrick Garland still hadn’t even laid a glove on the traitor, Trump, and allowed him to reclaim his hold over a party that had proven itself morally busted, and incapable of standing up against Trump or Putin, and for America.

Now four very painful years later, the proud Ukrainians are still holding off Russia, and Trump is still doing everything he can to make sure Russia prevails.

As I type this, Trump has rolled out a U.S. peace plan this is so absurd even the cowards who helped enable him in the Republican Party are speaking out against it, saying it is nothing but a Russian wish list.

Here is Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC):

“Putin is a murderer a rapist and an assassin. We should not do anything that makes him feel like he has a win here.”

Here is Sen. Mitch McConnell, (R-KY):

“If administration officials are more concerned with appeasing Putin than securing real peace, then the president ought to find new advisors.”

I am aware that both of these men are not seeking reelection, which is why you can be assured they are both finally telling the truth.

On Sunday, Trump was right back where he was four years ago, despite all the heroics of the Ukrainians since, blaming the United States, Ukraine and our allies for the attack, by blasting this out on his state-run social media channel:

“With strong and proper U.S. and Ukrainian LEADERSHIP, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine would have NEVER HAPPENED.”

“UKRAINE ‘LEADERSHIP’ HAS EXPRESSED ZERO GRATITUDE FOR OUR EFFORTS, AND EUROPE CONTINUES TO BUY OIL FROM RUSSIA.”

Read that again, and try to tell me that Trump is not a traitor.

Not a single word of condemnation at the aggressor and murderer, Putin. Only disdain for America, Ukraine, and our NATO allies whose relationship over the decades has been forged in blood and honor.

Russia helped install Trump into office in 2016. We know this. In fact, nobody knows it better than his Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who chaired the Republican-led bipartisan committee who rendered these findings in August, 2020, which stated:

The Trump campaign’s interactions with Russian intelligence services during the 2016 presidential election posed a “grave” counterintelligence threat.

This is from a PBS story that went into the 1,000-page report. It was the fifth and final one from the Republican-led Senate intelligence committee on the Russia investigation:

“The findings, including unflinching characterizations of furtive interactions between Trump associates and Russian operatives, echo to a large degree those of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation and appear to repudiate the Republican president’s claims that the FBI had no basis to investigate whether his campaign was conspiring with Russia. Trump has called the Russia investigations a “hoax.”

Cold irony then that it is the feckless Rubio who seems to be caught in the middle of unfriendly fire right now between Trump and the rest of the free world as his boss attacks the United States and makes excuses for Putin with his pathetic excuse for a “peace plan.”

From AP reporting:

Lawmakers critical of President Donald Trump’s approach to ending the Russia-Ukraine war said Saturday they spoke with Secretary of State Marco Rubio who told them that the peace plan Trump is pushing Kyiv to accept is a “wish list” of the Russians and not the actual proposal offering Washington’s positions.

A State Department spokesperson denied their account, calling it “blatantly false.”

Rubio himself then took the extraordinary step of suggesting online that the senators were mistaken, even though they said he was their source for the information. The secretary of state doubled down on the assertion that Washington was responsible for a proposal that had surprised many from the beginning for being so favorable to Moscow.

“For being so favorable to Moscow …”

Shocking, eh?

So here we are again. Donald Trump is doing everything in his seemingly unlimited power to make sure Putin gets what he wants after starting this illegal and immoral war against Ukraine.

He is clearly in the tank FOR Russia and AGAINST America.

Just what in the hell is going here????

These horrifying threats and acts of violence prove Trump must be removed

The Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) governs the conduct of every person in the United States military, and applies equally to all ranks and branches, whether in combat, or not.

All service members are taught, and are expected to understand, its core principles. Ignorantia juris non excusat, or “Ignorance of the law,” is not a legal defense in the US military. Under Art. 92 of the UCMJ, members have a duty to obey all lawful commands, and they have a parallel duty to disobey all unlawful commands. Obeying a manifestly illegal order, like an order to target civilians, can expose a service member to criminal liability.

The duty to disobey manifestly illegal orders is a cornerstone of international law, with foundations in Nazi atrocities-related post-WWII trials like Nuremberg. Orders of such nature that their unlawfulness is clear and obvious, such as an order to target unarmed civilians, are considered manifestly illegal.

Manifestly illegal orders

Donald Trump has ordered the summary execution of at least 83 people so far in strikes on suspected drug-trafficking boats in the Caribbean and Pacific. Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth call these targets “narco-terrorists” because they think that means they can treat them as enemy combatants in a war that does not exist.

It doesn’t. Even if the victims were “narco-terrorists,” for which Trump has provided zero evidence, at worst, they are citizen criminals entitled to interdiction and legal process under US and international law.

No country has the right to execute non-combatant civilians unless faced with imminent threat, otherwise unhinged leaders could shoot people for sport, which Trump’s snuff videos are chillingly starting to resemble.

International condemnation of Trump’s campaign is growing, along with a global chorus accusing him of murder that would be louder if Trump weren’t threatening foreign trade like a mob boss. Formerly strong US allies, including the UK, Colombia, and the Netherlands, have either refused or suspended related intelligence sharing with the US. Military support groups are starting to talk in earnest, offering counseling and advice on what to do when faced with illegal order situations.

Calls to execute US lawmakers

Against this legal framework, the President of the United States has called for the prosecution, conviction, and death penalty for federal legislators, for reminding military personnel that they must follow the UCMJ. After Democratic legislators, all veterans of Intelligence or the US military, released a video reminding members of their duty to disobey illegal orders, Trump came unglued, unleashing a series of posts confirming that he is a danger to all Americans and unfit to lead the military.

Trump wrote:

"It’s called SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR AT THE HIGHEST LEVEL. Each one of these traitors to our Country should be ARRESTED AND PUT ON TRIAL. Their words cannot be allowed to stand - We won’t have a Country anymore!!! An example MUST BE SET."

"SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!" he added in a later post.

Eliciting stochastic violence, Trump then reposted other posts calling the lawmakers "traitors" and "domestic terrorist Democrats" and another reading, "HANG THEM GEORGE WASHINGTON WOULD !!"

Trump is criminally insane. What are officials waiting for to remove him?

The evidence that Trump is unfit to lead, and is a metastasizing threat to the US citizenry, is objectively irrefutable:

At the same time Trump is violating the rule of law at home, transforming the nation into an occupied military zone, his national security blunders have seriously increased the risk of harm from outside forces by:

These cumulative blunders suggest he doesn’t care about long-term, or even short-term, risks to national security. For example, Trump’s plans to sell F-35 fighter jets to Saudi Arabia ignores consistent warnings from national security officials that he will be letting China steal the American military’s advanced technology. Trump either doesn’t care, or lacks the cognitive capacity to understand, that Riyadh and Beijing have a formal security partnership.

“We will be doing that, we’ll be selling F-35s,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, because the Saudis “want to buy them, they’ve been a great ally.”

These facts trigger a duty to act, regardless of politics.

Federal officials, including his cabinet, and members of Congress, all swore an oath to follow the Constitution and protect the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Legal tools within their reach include impeachment and removal, Congressional oversight and the power of the purse, and the 25th Amendment.

This is not a partisan issue. America is in danger. Federal officials’ complicity and failure to act is now a dereliction of duty in deference to a man whose cognition is in question, who still has access to the nuclear codes.

  • Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.

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