Welcome to the Cruelest Day: Tuesday, December 2, 2025, and National Fritters Day. Fritters of many forms are found worldwide; here are banana fritters from Kerala, a state in south India:
It’s also Business of Popping Corn Day, celebrating the day in 1885 when Charles Cretors got a peddler’s license to sell commercially-produced popcorn (from a machine) in Chicago, National Mutt Day, Safety Razor Day, Play Basketball Day, and World Trick Shot Day, celebrating the bizarre basketball shots of the Harlem Globetrotters. Here are 20 of their trick shots:
There is a new Google Doodle, but clicking it takes you nowhere. I suppose that, since it showed up yesterday, December 1 is the start of the Christmas season:
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the December 2 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*It’s not clear from what the U.S. government says whether our military killed people who survived the attack on their boats suspected to be carrying narcotics. Hegseth and Trump are waffling on this, or passing the buck (Trump sayd that Hegseth told him that no such orders were issued), but the Free Press reminds us that “Killing narco speedboat survivors is a war crime.” (Perhaps incinerating boats without warning, or giving them a chance to surrender, is also a war crime.)
On September 10, eight days after the first U.S. bombing of a “narco” speedboat in the Caribbean, The Intercept—a left-wing news site—reported that there were people on board who had survived the initial air strike, but were then killed in a “follow-up attack.” No details were offered, no such second strike was shown in the video of the bombing posted by President Trump, and the allegation seemed to vanish. But yesterday, The Washington Post made the very same accusation, this time filled in with explosive details.
After the first bomb struck the boat, the Post reported, a drone video feed showed two survivors “clinging to the smoldering wreck” in the open sea. According to the Post, mission commander Admiral Frank Mitchell Bradley then ordered a second strike specifically to kill the two survivors.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has called the Post story “fabricated, inflammatory, and derogatory,” reiterating that the speedboat attacks have been approved “by the best military and civilian lawyers.” But Hegseth did not specifically deny any of the particulars in the Post’s account.
If the Post is right—and we don’t know yet whether it is—Bradley committed murder. No ifs, ands, or buts about it.
The administration’s legal defense of the speedboat attacks goes like this: President Trump has determined that the U.S. is in a state of armed conflict with Latin American drug cartels, triggering the law of war. Under the law of war, boats carrying cartel contraband are legitimate military targets. And the crew of those boats are not civilians, but combatants.
On the facts presented in the Washington Post story, Bradley would still be guilty of murder. After a naval attack, you cannot kill defenseless shipwrecked survivors floating in the high seas.
The deliberate killing of someone successfully taken out of the fight—even if the killing serves a military purpose—is prohibited by the laws of war.
In 1944, German U-boat commander Heinz Eck torpedoed a Greek merchantman. The attack itself was not thought to be illegal because the law of war can permit destroying enemy merchant vessels without warning, regardless of the fact that crewmen will die. That’s why the administration may have a valid legal basis for bombing cartel narco boats. But in his attack on the German boat during World War II, Eck took things a step further. He killed at least four survivors who were clinging to wreckage. Eck was tried at Nuremberg—and executed.
According to the Post, Bradley’s justification for his order was that if the survivors had lived, they might have called for help, and their rescuers might have obtained the contraband the boat was carrying.
Knowing when a potential enemy combatant is hors de combat—out of the fight—can be hopelessly and dangerously difficult in the field. But there is almost no doubt in the circumstances described by the Post. As the U.S. Commander’s Handbook on the Law of Naval Operations puts it, hors de combat specifically includes combatants or civilians “defenseless because of. . . shipwreck.”
According to the Post, Bradley issued his kill-the-survivors order in compliance with an earlier command given by Hegseth to kill everybody. Even if true, that’s no defense for Bradley. Like an order to kill prisoners, an order to kill defenseless shipwreck survivors probably falls in the rare category of orders so manifestly unlawful that soldiers have a duty to disobey it. Eck’s second-in-command, August Hoffman, was also tried at Nuremberg. He too was executed.
As for Hegseth himself, assuming the Post’s account is accurate, his order is ambiguous. The Post story is carefully worded to avoid saying when the defense secretary gave his order, whether he saw the video feed, or whether he was present when Bradley took his action. Hegseth’s order may simply have authorized the initial bombing of the speedboat, rather than instructing Bradley to kill any survivors. In other words, even if the Post got the facts right, Hegseth may not be guilty of a crime.
There is video to address the claim that survivors were killed, so I suspect the truth will out here. But even bombing small boats as “merchant vessels” without evidence that they’re carrying drugs is unethical, even if it’s legal. The boats were small enough that they could have been given a chance to surrender, but they weren’t. As for Trump’s claim that each small boat destroyed saved the lives of 25,000 Americans is totally bogus.
*And the NYT reports that at least one Republican has joined Democrats in also suggesting that our military has committed war crimes (article archived here). Other Republicans are concerned:
A top Republican and Democrats in Congress suggested on Sunday that American military officials might have committed a war crime in President Trump’s offensive against boats in the Caribbean after a news report said that during one such attack, a follow-up strike was ordered to kill survivors.
The remarks came in response to a Washington Post report on Friday that said that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had given a verbal order to kill everyone aboard boats suspected of smuggling drugs, and that this led a military commander to carry out a second strike to kill those who had initially survived an attack in early September.
“Obviously if that occurred, that would be very serious, and I agree that that would be an illegal act,” Representative Mike Turner, Republican of Ohio and a former chairman of the Intelligence Committee, said on “Face the Nation” on CBS.
Senator Tim Kaine, Democrat of Virginia, said on CBS that if the report was accurate, the attack “rises to the level of a war crime.” And on CNN, when asked if he believed a second strike to kill survivors constituted a war crime, Senator Mark Kelly, Democrat of Arizona, answered, “It seems to.”
The lawmakers’ comments came after top Republicans and Democrats on the two congressional committees overseeing the Pentagon vowed over the weekend to increase their scrutiny of U.S. boat strikes in the Caribbean after the report. Mr. Turner said the article had only sharpened lawmakers’ already grave questions about the operation.
. . .Senators Roger Wicker of Mississippi, the Republican chairman of the Armed Services Committee, and Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the committee’s top Democrat, said on Friday night that they had “directed inquiries” to the Defense Department.
“We will be conducting vigorous oversight to determine the facts related to these circumstances,” they wrote.
This is yet another instance of Republicans going against Trump’s wishes, as they did with the Epstein files. I’m hoping that if this mishigass continues, the House, at least, will go Democratic at the midterms next year. But of course the Senate will surely stay Republican and the President, who has to sign all bills, will still be Trump. Still, war crimes can be stopped without Trump’s assent.
*So far I haven’t written about the horrific high-rise fire in Hong Kong that killed 150 people, with 40 still missing. Several towers were involved. Having been there and seen the rickety scaffolding (including bamboo) that is used around tall buildings, I suspected scaffolding but of course didn’t know. Now the NYT reports that unsafe scaffolding, in the form of netting, probably contributed to the fire (article archived here). And the contractors were duplicitous in how they placed the netting:
Hong Kong officials said on Monday that contractors at the ill-fated housing estate where a fire killed more than 150 people had blanketed buildings with substandard scaffolding netting, and then tried to conceal the unsafe material.
The Independent Commission Against Corruption said that after a summer typhoon, some of the scaffolding netting used at the Wang Fuk Court housing estate in northern Hong Kong was replaced with cheaper material that did not meet fire-safety standards.
To fool inspectors, netting that met the standards was installed at the base of the scaffolding, where samples are usually taken. Netting is used to protect people below from materials that may fall from bamboo scaffolding, which workers in Hong Kong use when repairing building exteriors.
The findings emerged as the death toll from Wednesday’s blaze rose to 151, with the police still combing the towers for bodies and evidence of identification. More than 40 people were still missing. The work of locating and identifying remains would take another three weeks, officials said.
In a sign of how intensely the fires had raged, the police said that some bodies were so severely burned that they had been reduced to ashes, and they acknowledged that they might not be able to recover the remains of all the missing people.
The latest findings about what contributed to Hong Kong’s worst fire in decades have raised sharp questions about the city’s construction industry and the government’s ability to police it. The probe has exposed gaps in oversight that allowed unsafe material to be installed across multiple buildings — not just the substandard netting, but also flammable polystyrene foam boards that officials said caused the fire to spread rapidly.
. . . . The revelations could further stoke public anger over the disaster, especially because residents had tried for more than a year to warn officials about hazards at the site, including the netting.
. . .[unnamed] individuals grew worried that the unsafe netting would be found in random inspections, Mr. Woo said.
They then bought 115 rolls of netting that complied with the standards and installed it at the base of each building’s scaffolding in what investigators believe was an attempt to disguise the inferior material above. This netting was 100 Hong Kong dollars, or $13, nearly twice as expensive as the noncompliant netting.
In other words, the “unnamed individuals” spent $15,000, killing at least 150 people. That works out to $100 in expenses saved per person killed. It’s reprehensible.
So far 14 people have been arrested, and since in many respects Chinese law now applies to Hong Kong, they could be facing stiff sentences.
*The Oxford English Dictionary has named its Word of the Year, which turns out to be “rage bait.” There are also two short-listed words that didn’t make the final cut.
Do you find yourself getting increasingly irate while scrolling through your social media feed?
If so, you may be falling victim to rage bait, which Oxford University Press has named its word or phrase of the year.
It is a term that describes manipulative tactics used to drive engagement online, with usage of it increasing threefold in the last 12 months, according to the dictionary publisher.
Rage bait beat two other shortlisted terms – aura farming and biohack – to win the title.
The list of words is intended to reflect some of the moods and conversations that have shaped 2025.
What is rage bait?
Even if you don’t know the term, if you’re a social media user, it’s quite likely you have been rage baited.
According to Oxford University Press, which publishes the Oxford English Dictionary, it is defined as online content deliberately designed to elicit anger or outrage by being frustrating, provocative, or offensive.
Such content is typically posted in order to increase traffic to websites or social media accounts.
It is similar to its internet cousin clickbait, where a headline is used to lure a reader in to view an article or video.
But rage bait content has a more specific focus on making people cross.
Oy! What about the other two words?
- Aura farming: The cultivation of an impressive, attractive, or charismatic persona or public image by behaving or presenting oneself in a way intended subtly to convey an air of confidence, coolness, or mystique.
- Biohack: To attempt to improve or optimise one’s physical or mental performance, health, longevity, or wellbeing by altering one’s diet, exercise routine, or lifestyle, or by using other means such as drugs, supplements, or technological devices.
What all these words have in common is that they deal in some respect with online stuff. Such is the age in which we live.
*Did Ghost the Giant Pacific Octopus, nurteuring a brood of unfertilized eggs, die yet? I don’t know, and the Aquarium of the Pacific is keeping quiet about it. Only from AI do I hear this:
Ghost the giant Pacific octopus died on October 18, 2025, approximately four months after entering senescence (the final stage of her life)
The aquarium announced her passing on October 18th, noting she had completed her life cycle.
I can find no announcement at the Aquarium of the Pacific website. They at least owe us a formal notice if Ghost crossed the Rainbow Bridge.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is lazy:
Hili: I have a real problem.
Me: What is it?
Hili: I don’t feel like doing anything at all.
Hili: Mam poważny problem.
Ja: Jaki?
Hili: Nic mi się nie chce.
*******************
From The Dodo Pet:
From Stacy (it took me a minute to figure this one out):
From Things With Faces, a cat in the cup—and not just a cat, but a tabby cat:
From Masih: One brave woman in a sea of hijabs and burqas:
Recently Ali Khamenei, the leader of the Islamic Republic said; the sight of Iranian women walking freely without hijab in public is “shocking.”
Amazing, a 2025 dictator shocked by freedom.
Here’s a little more voltage for him.
Iran’s regime is panicking, ordering harsher… pic.twitter.com/5b5oGXjQN6— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) November 29, 2025
A long but eloquent tweet from J. K. Rowling, who hasn’t tweeted anything for a few weeks:
‘He has a point, but he’s too blunt.’
From the start, a key tactic of the gender identitarians has been linguistic prescription, and it’s proved shockingly successful. Trans activists’ shibboleths and euphemisms have been allowed to penetrate the upper echelons of our culture… https://t.co/DuV4iGkVrl
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) December 1, 2025
From Luana, who comments, ‘Harvard continues to dig its grave”:
Required to take anger management classes and do community service after being charged with assault following a confrontation with an Israeli classmate?
No problem.
You can still be a graduate teaching fellow at Harvard and “advise faculty on curriculum design.” https://t.co/Cdfbd7URZl
— Steve McGuire (@sfmcguire79) December 1, 2025
From Malcolm: kitten makes biscuits on a deer. Don’t tell me this is AI unless you’re sure!
First time seeing a kitten cuddling with a deer 🥺 pic.twitter.com/UqpWc98qrC
— Cats That Make You Go Awww (@CuteAdorableCat) November 23, 2025
One from my feed; a d*g playing beach volleyball, and doing a good job of it. Look at the celebration when its team wins!
The dog realizes they won and celebrates. pic.twitter.com/5Oplic65Eh
— The Figen (@TheFigen_) November 30, 2025
One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:
This French Jewish boy was gassed as soon as he arrived in Auschwitz. He was three years old and would be 85 today had he lived. https://t.co/G8TI2eqM9Y
— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) December 2, 2025
Two tweets from Dr. Cobb, who’s soon returning from hols. Here’s a holiday snap:
Moon over Aldeburgh
— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2025-11-30T15:18:28.016Z
And Matthew sent this one, to which I added a comment:
Wisdom's mate arrived on Midway! Let's hope she can still produce a chick at 73 years old (she's had 30-36 so far). The world's oldest known living bird.
— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-12-01T18:47:44.859Z
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
The question is whether or not you choose to disturb the world around you, or if you choose to let it go on as if you had never arrived. -Ann Patchett, writer (b. 2 Dec 1963)
I asked myself why is the word of the year two words, not one word, and not even hyphenated. So I queried the o.e.d. And it seems that a word can be a single word, a couple of words or even a short phrase…apparently. I grow old, I grow old….and more confused with each passing year.
At least in German, they have the courtesy just to combine the two words (or more) into one long word.
Expect that when a Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitän has to fill in a German form asking for Occupation, “My, how courteous” is not the immediate reaction.
[Credit to GPT-5 for the particular example]
It identifies as a word.
I was afraid that the Word of the year would be “Six/Seven,” or however you write it.
Cute!
Compound words in English may be written together, hyphenated or separated with a space, so spelling provides no clue as to whether something is a word or a phrase.
HA! I also saw the Togo tweet on the excellent terrible maps account. I was going to retweet it but thought “Nobody knows there is a country called Togo” – but WEIT readers might. 🙂
I based that on my observations that in my column NOBODY reads my articles about Africa. But if Palestine or “Joos!” are involved my editor(s) invite me to dinner!
Internet people care about different things.
D.A.
NYC
I live in Houston, which many people consider the most diverse city in the US. Several years ago, there was a family of four from Togo who worked at the grocery store in my hood. When I first met them, I asked them where they were from, and when they responded “Togo”, I said, “Oh, that long skinny country next to Ghana”. Ther son said that I was the only White America he ever met who knew anything about Togo.
Very cool, Ken. As you can imagine this happens a lot here also. As somebody who reads widely – and sometimes writes about – the 3rd World, I enjoy guessing foreigners’ homelands (taxi drivers, delivery guys, people I meet, etc.) and even if I don’t guess right I always know enough about their “forgotten” or unknown homeland to have a chat about it: “How about that Nkurma, guy eh?”.
They light up. By now it is a hobby for me.
I’m guessing PCC(E) knew of Togo as he used to work (?) in Sao Tome, which is nearby.
I’m not surprised WEIT readers knew Togo given the profile of readers here gleaned from the comments. best regards,
D.A.
NYC
I once conversed with a Pakistani. I asked him what part of Pakistan he was from. He answered “The southwestern part of Pakistan.” I replied “Oh, Baluchistan then.” He told me I was the first American he ever met who had heard of Baluchistan. He asked me how I had heard of the province. I explained that I knew of Baluchistan since I was six years old because of the baluchitherium, an ancient enormous relative of the rhinoceros, the first fossil of which was found in Baluchistan.
My neighbour is from Ouagadougou (great name!) in Burkina Faso. When I told him that I had been there, he frankly didn’t believe me; he added that most Americans had never heard of it. I told another friend about how Patrick didn’t really believe that I had been there and she said “Sorry – say the name of the country again…..Where on earth is that?”
To be fair, perhaps people are still thinking of it as Upper Volta.
Ouagadougou is indeed a beautiful name. It first came to my attention through cinema. It hosted an African film festival, maybe it still does.
HA! Last week I ordered delivery (pizza) and I thought the guy’s accent was French African so I asked him and when he told me Burkina Faso I said: “Oh the film festival!” Think I made his day.
I often wonder how lonely it’d be to live here and almost nobody has heard of your entire country. Aussies don’t have that problem. Others, but not that one!
D.A.
NYC
In Frederick Forsyth’s 1974 novel “The Dogs of War”, the mercenaries use a faked End User Certificate from Togo to purchase weaponry for their African coup.
I hope Arsenal fans from the early 2000s have heard of Togo, even if they missed it in school. Emmanuel Adebayor!
Rage bait is a fine concept except for defining its boundaries. By the definition of “rage bait content has a more specific focus on making people cross” many if not most WEIT posts qualify! Maybe the definition needs to be tightened up. Just today, WEIT covered likely USA war crimes in the Caribbean and the fire in Hong Kong, stories sure to make some people angry. Bad news has always “driven engagement,” as any news outlet will tell you. If you’re posting about true and serious problems in the World, is it still rage bait? …and who decides? The term “Rage Bait” has a pejorative ring to it. What if rage bait is defined to be anti-social? What if it becomes acceptable to suppress it?
I agree Mr.s Retroformat – one person’s rage bait is another’s information of stuff happening of note.
Often I’m enraged by stories on WEIT – usually in the same direction of the editor which is I guess why I’m here – and on twitter/X.
One could argue my entire syndicated column is rage-bait. Certainly religious people and Palestine “allies” think so.
To wit:
https://themoderatevoice.com/author/david-anderson/
“Rage bait” as it is presented seems similar to the idea of “fake news” that offends the thin skinned vulnerabilities of scorns and prudes.
best,
D.A.
NYC
Notice :
[begin excerpt – I gather this is The Free Press ]:
[…] the Post reported, a drone video feed showed two survivors “clinging to the smoldering wreck” in the open sea. According to the Post, mission commander Admiral Frank Mitchell Bradley then ordered a second strike specifically to kill the two survivors.
[end excerpt]
Notice how “clinging to the smoldering wreck” (The Intercept‘s wording?) has transformed into “survivors”.
The only certain way to tell if there is life is to take vitals and get rescue/EMTECHs to the site.
Would they be actively clinging to the wreckage if they did not survive? Because the sea has a habit of making you slip if you don’t hold on tight. While the term “survivor” has been used inflationary, not getting killed in an event designed to kill you qualifies.
Plus the admirals orders might have included that term.
So please find a better semantic nitpick.
How is it known their bodies were not tangled in rope or other such gear? That is plausible. They were subject to an explosion. How is any of this known, and what was the time frame?
The transformation of “clinging” to “survivors” as published is alchemy.
If this case were in a court of law, these issues would be raised because truth is what matters based on evidence beyond the shadow of doubt.
I don’t think that gets you anywhere Bryan. In civilian forensics, a person isn’t (usually) dead until a doctor pronounces him dead. if you shoot a body without medical certification that the body was already dead, it is either murder or attempted murder, depending on what the pathologist who examines the body concludes. If she says the body was already dead from brain or cardiac injury, you the shooter are still guilty of attempted murder because you had no legal authority to declare your victim dead. Your actions would have killed him had he been still alive. (There was a Canadian police shooting where the jury came to that conclusion. The first three fatal shots were justified to subdue the suspect. The next six, after a pause, weren’t.)
If the pathologist determines that the victim was still alive even if mortally wounded and doomed to die, your shooting him is murder. If the pathologist can’t be sure the victim was dead, you the shooter will probably still be convicted of murder. AIUI, the presumption of being not guilty of murder by reasonable doubt applies to your actions as a defendant — was it you who pulled the trigger? did you really intend his death? did you know the gun was loaded or were you just careless? — not the state of truth about facts outside your control, like whether someone you intend to shoot is dead or not, or to what extent your actions caused the death, compared to competing causes.
There are different statements of certainty in law. If there was a probability more than trifling, “de minimis“, that the victim was still alive when you deliberately shot him and he’s now dead, it will be murder I should strongly think. In other words, your creating reasonable doubt in the minds of the jury that the victim was in fact alive will not get you off. You would have to convince them of the overwhelming likelihood that he was already dead, e.g., that his head was missing or sharks had bitten him in two. I base this opinion on having been an expert witness in a truly awful manslaughter case (as a physician treating the deceased, so not really an expert but still allowed to make hypothetical statements and professional opinions.)
Some bodies are clearly dead by common sense: decapitation, blown to bits, decomposition. If a burst of automatic fire from a full-powered rifle like a BAR took off someone’s head, shooting by a second gunman would be doing an indignity to a dead body, not attempted murder. But some people who look stone dead really aren’t, such as severe hypothermia, and may need hours of careful warming with continuous resuscitation efforts before they can be pronounced dead.
I’m not commenting on the justification of this attack, if it happened. My point is just that it won’t matter if the people in the wreckage were alive or dead at the time they were shot. Unless they had toe tags, they were alive in the eyes of the law.
(I’m sorry, this is a gruesome post.)
Clinging is not the same as being tangled up. If they are clinging, then they have survived. If they’re tangled, then not.
Since the report used clinging, survival is the reasonable assumption, apparentlyfor the admiral as well. Else why expend millions of dollars for a second strike if the Intel says the targets are down?
‘Aura farming’ is both ugly and unnecessary. ‘Posing’ already coveys the same idea, it’s just not limited to describing only behavior that occurs online.
For at least a couple of years I’ve been using my own formulation for the concept of Aura farming; I call it “cool signaling” (analogous to virtue signaling). It’s all over in modern short fiction, where the author has to show how cool he or she is by having his or her characters engage in whatever current cultural practice is enjoying its 15 minutes of fame. I always downgrade my rating of such a story half a point on my 1-to-5 rating scale.
If it’s true that two survivors were ordered killed, doesn’t it show good cause for the Democrats’ recent warning that illegal orders should not be followed? Maybe it isn’t true though since it seems to be a scenario that most people would readily see as illegal, especially after hearing that warning.
Assuming the event happened as described….
Reader and commenter Doug explained in depth a few days ago why this is not so.
https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2025/11/27/thurday-hili-dialogue-2/#comment-2167613
As a practical matter, which Doug didn’t bring up, the helicopter door gunner (an enlisted sailor under the command of the pilot) or the junior officer flying an aircraft triggering his weapons himself would conclude that the President is more likely to pardon a murder conviction (or whatever the military offence would be) than a conviction for disobeying an order that the military determined at his court-martial was lawful. Few people, and I’m not one of them, would value the life of a fellow human crewing a drug boat enough to go to Leavenworth for years of hard labour.
For another matter, an individual soldier is usually better off obeying all orders, even those that look dodgy. The military prosecutes its own, by its own standards. If this attack — again assuming it happened — is deemed to be lawful after an investigation, the commanders who issued the orders can’t very well punish the troops who obeyed it, can they. The argument that obeying orders is no defence applies when foreign countries arraign you for a war crime. Then they won’t care that your own command determined that the atrocity you committed was lawful and ordered you to do it. The soldier who follows orders is on solid ground as long as he doesn’t fall into the hands of a vengeful enemy.
We must be careful not to conflate the two issues. I’ve written a couple of long posts about why I believe the Kelly tape to be irresponsible. I won’t repeat those here. (Thanks, Leslie.) I will only add that debates about broader issues of legality—whether they be the deployment of Guard troops to US cities or the strikes on alleged drug-runners—arise because Congress has long been derelict in exercising its constitutional authorities regarding war. They have for far too long granted wide-ranging and ambiguous authority to the executive branch and invited exactly the type of potential overreach we now see from Trump. (That said, there are also good reasons to give an executive flexibility.) These are not matters for the military to resolve—let alone low-ranking members. The matters are for Congress and the courts.
The issue of executing orders, on the other hand, is clearly in the hands of senior military leadership. If the WP article is correct, then we have a problem. But I would be stunned if a four-star directed a blatantly and obviously illegal strike even in private, let alone in full view of scores of officers, lawyers, video cameras, recordings, etc., with excruciatingly detailed paperwork trails. For that reason, I am not ready to grant the report’s accuracy; moreover, the nature of the anonymous sources, who should have gone to the Inspector General and to Congress, and the processes in the military argue against it.
Military orders of this nature are not issued and executed in the shadows—especially ones that are so high-profile as this initial operation against alleged drug boats. On the other hand, if the rules of engagement were tightened up after the incident, as has been reported, this might reflect recognition from within the military chain that something went wrong. The nature of that “something” and the matters of “who knew what when” need to be investigated by Congress.
Generally, the times we see illegality in the military, it is for acts that are blatantly criminal even in the civilian world and it is at the lower and mid-grade ranks. The very few times that senior officers have been implicated, it is usually for trying to cover up something that has already happened. (Sometimes this is self-serving; sometimes it is reluctance to second-guess decisions that subordinates made in the heat of combat.) Vanishingly rare are the cases of high-level illegal orders given in some back room or in the field—outside of the range of video and audio, with full plausible deniability. That is more the stuff of Hollywood than of real-world military ops. That said, all unprecedented acts are unprecedented only until they aren’t. Investigate dispassionately with an eye to correcting problems, if any.
A long, long time ago I was on holiday in Cannes (in the Provence) and lying on the beach. The Cannes airport is very close to the sea, so planes were flying very low. I took a picture of one that was even bigger than the others.
The result was the same as Matthew Cobb’s Moon over Aldeburgh.
My knowledge of photography is minimal to put it politely.
Netball (Australian shepherd?) dog reminds me of my Australian shepherd – sitting with me now – but in his younger days. “Balls? A pack? Adventure? Count me in!”
The one here loves the game. That’s a thing I’ll say dogs have over cats as pets: dogs really “get” and love the joys of a pack project. Even if it is just a walk. We’re a team… on a mission.. and that’s allll-riiight! 🙂
D.A.
NYC
I’m glad the opposing players never spiked the ball at the dog, unlike some circumstances we’ve heard about lately.
J. K. Rowling’s tweet, like many of her recent ones on the same issue, is just perfect!