Justice Dept Asserts Frivolous Basis for Trump's Murders of Civilians on Private Boats in the Caribbean who Posed No Imminent Threat to the US and Other Means to Stop Boats were Reasonably Available

/

From [HERE] In 2003 the U.S. Justice Department’s Office of Legal Council (OLC) issued a memo which declared the use of torture in ‘authorized military interrogations’ as legal when done under the ‘president’s constitutional authority to direct a war’.

The memo was widely condemned. The Obama administration withdrew it but refrained from prosecuting the torturers which had used it as cover.

The Trump administration now issued a comparable OLC memo to justify its wanton killing of alleged drug smugglers at sea.

Starting in September the Trump administration announced 19 strikes on boats in the Caribbean which have killed at least 76 seafarers. Most of them were random poor people:

One was a fisherman struggling to eke out a living on $100 a month. Another was a career criminal. A third was a former military cadet. And a fourth was a down-on-his-luck bus driver.

The men had little in common beyond their Venezuelan seaside hometowns and the fact all four were among the more than 60 people killed since early September when the U.S. military began attacking boats that the Trump administration alleges were smuggling drugs.

The argument of the new OLC memo is even more frivolous (archived) than the torturous reasoning of the former one:

The opinion, which runs nearly 50 pages, also argues that the United States is in a “non-international armed conflict” waged under the president’s Article II authorities, a core element to the analysis that the strikes are permissible under domestic law.

The armed-conflict argument, which was also made in a notice to Congress from the administration last month, is fleshed out in more detail by the OLC. The opinion also states that drug cartels are selling drugs to finance a campaign of violence and extortion, according to four people.

That assertion, which runs counter to the conventional wisdom that traffickers use violence to protect their drug business, appears to be part of the effort to shoehorn the fight against cartels into a law-of-war framework, analysts said.

The true purpose of drug cartels is obviously to make money. There is no evidence that any drug cartel ever has been or is in business because it wanted to create violence.

By framing the military campaign as a war, the administration is able to argue that murder statutes do not apply, said Sarah Harrison, a senior analyst with the International Crisis Group and a former Pentagon lawyer. “If the U.S. is at war, then it would be lawful to use lethal force as a first resort,” she said. The president, she argued, “is fabricating a war so that he can get around the restrictions on lethal force during peacetime, like murder statutes.”

There is nobody internationally who will accept such a stupid argument as justification for blowing up random boats at sea. [MORE] and [MORE]

'They Arrived in Hell': Venezuelans Deported by US to El Salvador Tortured, Sexually Abused

/

Venezuelan migrants sent by the United States to El Salvador were "tortured" and subjected to sexual violence and other abuses in the mega-prison where they were held for four months, human rights groups have alleged.

The report, "They Arrived in Hell", was published by Human Rights Watch and Cristosal, a Central American NGO, on Wednesday.

It documents the transfer of 252 Venezuelans to the CECOT facility in March and early April.

The migrants were accused, without evidence, of belonging to the Tren de Aragua gang.

Their transfer came from an agreement between US President Donald Trump and Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele involving the payment of millions of dollars.

After interviewing 40 of the Venezuelan detainees and 150 others linked to the cases, Human Rights Watch says the abuses were not isolated but systematic. [MORE]

IsrAlien Authorities Have Destroyed More Than 1,500 buildings in Gaza Since the Cease-Slaughter

/

Israel has destroyed more than 1,500 buildings in areas of Gaza that have remained under its control since the ceasefire with Hamas started on 10 October, satellite images reviewed by BBC Verify show.

The new photos - the latest of which was taken on 8 November - show that entire neighbourhoods controlled by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have been levelled in less than a month, apparently through demolitions.

The actual number of destroyed buildings could be significantly higher, with satellite imagery for some areas being unavailable for BBC Verify's assessment.

Some experts have argued that the demolitions may violate the terms of the ceasefire brokered by the US, Egypt, Qatar and Turkey. But an IDF spokesperson told BBC Verify that it was acting "in accordance with the ceasefire framework".

US President Donald Trump's 20 point peace plan for Gaza - the basis for the ceasefire - stated "all military operations, including aerial and artillery bombardment, will be suspended". He has since repeatedly stated that "the war is over". [MORE]

There Have Only Been 3 Criminal Indictments Against Israeli Soldiers for War Crimes During Gaza Genocide

/

In the 18-month period between when Israel launched its genocidal assault on Gaza in October 2023 through to March 2025—during which Israel killed over 50,300 Palestinians, the majority of them women, children, and the elderly—the Israeli military filed just three criminal indictments for all Gaza-related offenses, according to six responses to freedom of information requests reviewed by Drop Site that were filed by Israeli human rights group Yesh Din between January 2024 and April 2025. Only one of the indictments resulted in a conviction, while the two other cases are still pending.

The files show that when cases enter the system, they remain there indefinitely under review with no visible endpoint. Investigations are opened very rarely, and they almost never conclude. The system is designed as a smokescreen, human rights groups argue, to give the impression of due process while allowing Israeli soldiers to commit crimes against Palestinians with blanket impunity. [MORE]

'Israel' Sent Palestinians into Explosive Tunnels

/

US intelligence collected last year reportedly captured Israeli officials discussing incidents in which Palestinians were sent into Gaza tunnels that Israeli forces suspected might contain explosives, Reuters reported, citing two former US officials familiar with the matter.

The scheme has also been widely deployed during raids on the West Bank.

The intelligence was shared with the White House and examined by the US intelligence community during the final weeks of former President Joe Biden’s administration. International law prohibits the use of civilians as shields during military operations.

Officials within the Biden administration had long expressed concern over media reports suggesting Israeli soldiers were using Palestinians to shield themselves in Gaza.

The new intelligence reportedly provided Washington with its own confirmation on the issue, which had not been previously reported. [MORE]

“Shoot Without Restraint”: Israeli Soldiers Describe a Free-For-All in Gaza Genocide, With Civilians Killed at Officers’ Whim

/

Israeli soldiers have described a complete breakdown of order and legal restraint in Gaza, where Palestinian civilians were killed during the genocide at the whim of individual officers.

According to testimony in the TV documentary Breaking Ranks: Inside Israel’s War, due to be broadcast in the UK on ITV on Monday evening and reported by The Guardian, all Israeli soldiers pointed to the evaporation of the official code of conduct concerning civilians.

“If you want to shoot without restraint, you can,” Daniel, the commander of an Israeli occupation forces tank unit, says.

The soldiers confirmed the military’s routine use of human shields, contradicting official denials, and gave details of Israeli troops opening fire unprovoked on civilians seeking food handouts at aid distribution centers run by the infamous US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). [MORE]

“The Rape Lasted About 10 Minutes”: Released Palestinian Detainees Describe “Organized and Systematic” Sexual Torture in Israeli Prisons

/

From [HERE] Recently released Palestinian detainees who were abducted from the Gaza Strip by Israeli forces have described an “organized and systematic practice of sexual torture,” including rape and sexual assault with objects and dogs, as well as deliberate psychological humiliation, part of a growing series of reports of sexual abuse in Israeli prisons.

In a new report by the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) depending on testimonies from a number of Palestinian detainees from Gaza who were abducted by Israeli forces during the genocide in Gaza and recently released from Israeli prisons and detention camps, the accounts reveal an “organized and systematic practice of sexual torture.”

This include rape, forced stripping, forced filming, sexual assault using objects and dogs, in addition to deliberate psychological humiliation aimed at “crushing human dignity and erasing individual identity entirely.”

PCHR has affirmed that the “harrowing” testimonies do not reflect isolated incidents but “constitute a systematic policy practiced in the context of the ongoing crime of genocide against more than two million people.”

The PCHR noted that the arrests, including women, were carried out without any legal justification other than the victims being residents of the Gaza Strip, as part of a policy of “collective punishment designed to humiliate Palestinians and inflict maximum psychological and physical harm on them.”

N.A., a 42-year-old Palestinian woman, was arrested at an Israeli checkpoint in northern Gaza in November 2024. She reported to the PCHR that she was repeatedly raped, beaten, electrocuted, verbally abused, stripped, and filmed by Israeli soldiers during her detention. She remained in these conditions for several days before being moved to another room.

“The rape lasted about 10 minutes. After that, they left me for an hour in the same position, with my hands cuffed to the bed with metal handcuffs, my face on the bed, my feet on the floor, and I was completely naked,” she said, adding “I wished for death every moment.”

These accounts confirm long-reported and well-documented incidents of sexual abuse and rape by Israeli soldiers against Palestinian detainees.

Civil Liberties Groups Urge Supreme Court to Block President’s Use of Race Soldiers in Chicago and Rein In Attempts to Establish a Standing Army

/

From [HERE] Pushing back on President Trump’s claim that “I have the right to do anything I want to do,” a coalition of civil liberties organizations is calling on the U.S. Supreme Court to block the president’s attempt to deploy National Guard troops against civilians in Chicago—warning that no president has ever possessed unilateral, unreviewable authority to use the military against Americans on U.S. soil.

Weighing in before the Supreme Court in Trump v. Illinois, the coalition—made up of The Rutherford Institute, the ACLU, ACLU of Illinois, the Knight First Amendment Institute, and FIRE—is urging the Court to rein in the president’s repeated efforts to create a de facto standing army. The groups argue that the administration’s pattern of surging federal officers, such as ICE, into U.S. cities—Los Angeles, Portland, and Chicago—to provoke protests, then citing those protests as justification for military force, violates the First Amendment by chilling free speech and punishing dissent.

“The President’s attempt to turn the National Guard into a standing army on American soil—deploying troops against the American people—is one of the abuses of power the Constitution was written to restrain,” said constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute and author of Battlefield America: The War on the American People. “Each time the President treats ordinary protest as rebellion and sends soldiers to enforce so-called ‘order’ in our cities, he’s not defending the nation—he’s dismantling the very freedoms that define it, all the while betraying the Constitution.”

The case challenges the President’s attempt to federalize the Illinois National Guard and deploy troops to Chicago under 10 U.S.C. § 12406, which authorizes the President to call up the Guard when “there is a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States; or the President is unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States.” A federal district court issued a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) blocking the deployment, finding no evidence that protests in Illinois had impeded the federal government’s ability to enforce the law. The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the TRO, rejecting the government’s argument that local protests constituted a “rebellion.” [MORE]

More Mythmatics to Hide Black Joblessness: A Blight House Aid says 'We will never know what the unemployment rate was in October’

/

From [HERE] A top White House economic adviser said Thursday that the government will be unable to determine what the unemployment rate was in October due to the shutdown.

National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett told reporters that the government was not able to complete the household surveys used to determine unemployment data.

“The October employment report for the payroll side will be able to be calculated, but the household survey wasn’t completed,” Hassett told reporters.

“So we’ll get sort of half a jobs report,” he continued. “Most everything else, I think, we’ll be able to concoct the correct number after we look back, but we will never know what the unemployment rate was in October, because there wasn’t a household survey with that.”

President Trump signed legislation late Wednesday to reopen the government after a record-setting shutdown that lasted 43 days.

The most recent jobs report that was released before the lapse in funding began was the August jobs report, which came out Sept. 5. Hassett said the September jobs report had already been completed prior to the shutdown and will be released in the coming days. [MORE]

Phoenix cops have a new policy: ‘Don’t harass homeless people’ - mostly Target Law Abiding Blacks and Latinos in City Controlled by Elite White Liberals

/

From [HERE] In June 2024, the Department of Justice issued a damning 126-page detailed report outlining the Phoenix Police Department’s pervasive constitutional abuses, including against unhoused people. Per the DOJ, Phoenix police regularly stopped homeless people with no justification, aggressively cited them for trespassing and regularly destroyed their belongings with no due process.

“Banishing homeless people from public spaces by unlawful means, destroying their property, and cycling them through the criminal justice system does not solve the problem or address its root causes,” the DOJ report read. “And in Phoenix, it has led to a pattern of constitutional violations.”

Now, with a draft policy currently up for public input through Dec. 13, Phoenix police appear to be addressing those serious criticisms. The document, dubbed the “Interacting with Individuals Experiencing Homelessness” policy, lays out how police officers should conduct themselves when dealing with unhoused people. As with the police department’s new “Youth Interactions” policy, which it released last month, Phoenix police did not have a preexisting homelessness policy, according to police spokesperson Sgt. Brian Bower.

Much of the new policy’s guidance reads as a direct response to the DOJ report. It instructs officers that they should not detain people for being homeless and should not destroy their property because they are homeless, among other things.

The 2nd Amendment: America’s Timeless Equalizer for the Weak and Vulnerable

/

From [HERE] The right to keep and bear arms is not an outdated relic of the 18th century, as the anti-gun zealots want you to believe, but a safeguard of liberty and self-preservation.

Critics often portray the Second Amendment as a barrier to public safety, yet both history and reported weekly self-defense incidents confirm otherwise. The truth, when the media chooses to report these incidents, clearly establishes that our GOD-given right of self-defense remains a vital protection for all Americans, especially the weak and vulnerable who would otherwise be defenseless.

The Supreme Court has made clear that the Second Amendment protects an individual right. Our friend Dick Heller’s case, District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), in which the Court struck down a handgun ban and affirmed that self-defense lies at the very core of the right to bear arms. That recognition was extended to the states in McDonald v. Chicago (2010)and reinforced again in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen (2022), which held that firearm regulations must be consistent with America’s historical tradition of gun ownership. The Court recognized that targeted restrictions are possible, as shown in United States v. Rahimi (2024). Still, it has never wavered from the principle that self-defense is central to the Second Amendment.

From John Locke’s writings on natural law to the Declaration of Independence’s recognition that men are “endowed by their Creator” with unalienable rights, the Founders understood that life cannot be secured without the means of defense. The Virginia Declaration of Rights of 1776 directly tied the right to arms with personal and communal security. To disarm the people, in their view, would be to strip them of the very ability to preserve their lives and liberties.

These principles are not abstractions or the result of paranoia; they are seen in the lives of ordinary Americans who have relied on firearms to save themselves and others. These examples that the media often choose to ignore are far more common than reported.

  • In 2022, a young man in Indiana stopped a mass shooting at a mall within seconds, preventing untold carnage.

  • In 2024, 85-year-old Christine Jenneiahn, beaten and tied up by a home invader in Idaho, managed to reach her revolver and fatally stop the attacker, saving herself and her disabled son.

  • Across the country, armed school staff and resource officers have done the same for children: in 2024 at Apalachee High School in Georgia, two SROs rushed toward an active shooter armed with a rifle and put him in custody within minutes, saving lives.

  • In 2019, at STEM School Highlands Ranch in Colorado, a private security guard detained a shooter during an attack, preventing further bloodshed. And in 2021, Sarasota County Officer Mary Thoroman calmly disarmed a student concealing a handgun in school, using training and quick judgment to prevent what could have become another tragedy. [MORE]

Seized for No Reason: Grand Jury Indicts White Baltimore Cop with Attempted Murder for Trying to Intentionally Run Over a Black Man who was Not Under Arrest and Hadn't Committed a Crime

/

From [HERE] A grand jury has indicted a Baltimore police officer on attempted murder charges after a video was posted online showing the officer using his police vehicle to chase a man on foot, prosecutors said Wednesday.

Officer Robert A. Parks is also charged with first- and second-degree assault, reckless driving and misconduct in office.

If convicted of those charges, Parks faces a maximum sentence of 65 years in prison, Baltimore State’s Attorney Ivan Bates said during a news conference at his office. Parks is in custody after turning himself in on Wednesday. His case was not available in online court records as of Wednesday afternoon.

Bates called Parks’ actions “completely unacceptable.”

“Sometimes you see something that’s just so egregious that you cannot understand how an individual would have placed himself in that position at that moment in time,” Bates said. “That was just my personal interpretation.”

Parks was stripped of his police powers Oct. 29 after a video surfaced of him first talking with a group of men in Central Park Heights before entering his car and driving erratically toward one of them.

While driving across a grassy area, his car hit the man, Bates said. The officer proceeded down a dirt road and crashed into a chain-link fence in a backyard. The next day, after pressure from the Office of the Public Defender and other critics, the department identified the officer from the video as Parks.

Prosecutors believe that Parks approached the group at around 5 p.m. on Oct. 28, shortly before one of the men recorded the encounter, near Wylie Liquors Bar on the 3100 block of Wylie Avenue. One of the men had a misdemeanor warrant, according to Bates.

Parks told them, “it’s getting a little hot, guys. I… just need you guys to take a lap, you know,” and the group walked away, the indictment says. Parks got back into his patrol vehicle and drove on Wylie toward the first person who left the liquor store corner, and called him by name.

That’s around where the video starts. “Don’t make it worse. I’m going to be straight up with you,” Parks said, according to the indictment. The man replied “No,” turned and walked away. Parks responded by saying “All right, I’m gonna call the dogs and come get you,” the indictment reads.

Parks then got into his police vehicle and proceeded to chase the man. Bates said Parks used his vehicle as a “weapon” when he steered his vehicle directly at the man.

Shortly after the video went viral, Mayor Brandon Scott and Police Commissioner Richard Worley both repudiated the officer’s actions and said that there would be an internal affairs investigation. Meanwhile, Bates said his office also would investigate the matter.

Parks, who has spent five years with the department, was initially placed on administrative duties, though a police spokesperson said Tuesday that he was later suspended without pay.

Anne Arundel County-based defense attorney Peter O’Neill, who speculated Tuesday that Parks’ loss of pay suggested he had been indicted, said that “one could argue” that driving a motor vehicle into a human being shows “an intent to take the life of the individual,” constituting attempted murder.

He also said that “countless defendants” are charged with first-degree assault in connection with similar actions where an officer is on foot and a fleeing suspect is in a vehicle.

“Based on the video I saw, I’m not surprised,” he said Wednesday when told about the charges against Parks. [MORE]

Reality Is Too Complex For Any Cosmic Computer Simulation, Study Suggests

/

From [HERE] How do we know we’re not living in a computer simulation? Is it even possible to tell? For what it’s worth, researchers have drawn from various scientific frameworks to reject this hypothetical hypothetical reality—and a team of mathematicians now says they’ve taken the argument a step further.

In a Journal of Holography Applications in Physics study published earlier this year, researchers demonstrated that, assuming the universe runs purely on mathematics and physics, it would be impossible for any algorithm to simulate reality as we know it. This is because the universe exists “on a type of understanding that exists beyond the reach of any algorithm,” the researchers explained in a statement.

“Drawing on mathematical theorems related to incompleteness and indefinability, we demonstrate that a fully consistent and complete description of reality cannot be achieved through computation alone,” Mir Faizal, a physicist at the University of British Columbia in Canada, added in the statement. [MORE]

Remorseless Asian Cop who Helped Murder George Floyd Released; Said 'He Did Nothing Wrong' When He Failed to Intervene as Cops Knelt on Black Mans Neck, Prevented Aid, Mocked Floyd who Begged for Life

/

From [HERE] Tou Thao, one of the four police officers convicted of charges related to the murder of George Floyd, was released from prison on Monday.

According to the Minnesota Department of Corrections records, Thao, who had been serving his sentence at a facility in Kentucky, is no longer in custody. He is under supervised probation with Anoka County Community Corrections and will be on supervised release until June 2027.

The former Minneapolis police officer was found guilty of aiding and abetting second-degree manslaughter in state court in 2023, then sentenced to 57 months. He was also convicted on federal civil rights violation charges, which earned a 3 1/2-year sentence he served concurrently.

Thao stopped bystanders from intervening on May 25, 2020, while fellow officer Derek Chauvin knelt on Floyd's neck for more than nine minutes. 

Chauvin pleaded guilty in 2022 to violating Floyd's civil rights and was given a 21-year federal prison sentence. He was also convicted of second-degree murder in state court.

Two other ex-officers convicted in Floyd's killing — J. Alexander Kueng and Thomas Lane (pictured below) have been released from prison.

JUST LIKE JESUS WOULD HAVE DONE.

Court Rules Trump Unlawfully Seized Control of Oregon National Guard. Says there Were More Federal Cops than Protesters at Most Protests and “Antifa” is Not an Organized Group w/a Countable Existence

/

From [HERE] A US federal judge in Oregon on Friday evening ruled that President Donald Trump unlawfully seized control of state National Guard units to police protests in Portland, issuing a sweeping injunction that sharply curtails the White House’s claimed power to deploy guard troops over a state’s objection.

In a 106-page opinion, US District Judge Karin Immergut held that Trump’s federalization of 200 Oregon National Guard members, followed by deployments involving federalized California and Texas Guard troops to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in Portland, exceeded his statutory authority and violated the Tenth Amendment’s protections for state sovereignty.

Judge Immergut concluded after a three-day bench trial that even affording “great deference” to the president, the government failed to show either a “rebellion or danger of a rebellion” against federal authority in Portland or any inability to enforce federal immigration law “with the regular forces” already available. The evidence, she wrote, showed that serious unrest around the ICE building in South Portland was brief, peaked in mid-June, and had substantially subsided long before the guard was called. Local police, Oregon State Police, and augmented federal law enforcement were “sufficient” to secure the facility and maintain order.

“The evidence demonstrates that these deployments, which were objected to by Oregon’s governor and not requested by the federal officials in charge of protection of the ICE building, exceeded the president’s authority,” Judge Immergut wrote, emphasizing that the guard, unless lawfully federalized, remains a state militia under the command of the governor, not an all-purpose domestic force at the president’s disposal.

The lawsuit, brought by the State of Oregon, the City of Portland, and later joined by California, challenged Trump’s decision to override Governor Tina Kotek’s refusal to activate the Oregon Guard for immigration-related protest policing and instead unilaterally federalize those troops. It also targeted memoranda authorizing deployments of California and Texas Guard units to the same one-block ICE facility, despite the absence of any request from the federal officials actually responsible for its security.

President Trump has repeatedly depicted Portland as “war-ravaged,” citing months of violent extremism, threats to officers, and strain on the Federal Protective Service. Judge Immergut rejected that characterization as inconsistent with contemporaneous reports and the testimony of on-the-ground law enforcement. The court found that crowds were often fewer than a few dozen people, that most demonstrations were peaceful, that more federal officers than protesters were present on many nights, and that the scattered violence and property damage did not impede ICE from carrying out immigration enforcement beyond a short-lived June disruption.

Judge Immergut also rejected the administration’s reliance on “Antifa” as proof of an organized insurrectionary threat in Portland. Citing testimony from Portland Police Bureau commanders, she found no evidence that Antifa in the city constituted a cohesive organization directing the ICE protests or orchestrating violence against the government. Assertions of an organized campaign to overthrow federal authority, she wrote, were unsupported by the record. The judge stated,

‘This Court finds credible Commander Schoening’s testimony that, at least in Portland, Antifa is not an “organized group where you have membership.” Commander Schoening has 23 years of policing experience in Portland and at least 8 years of experience working for PPB’s Rapid Response Team. Commander Schoening has unique familiarity with organized protest groups and political activists in Portland. In fact, Commander Schoening identified by name several “organized protest groups” in charge of “large marches and demonstrations in the downtown area”, including “50501,” “PDX,” and “Indivisible.” Commander Schoening testified that “Antifa” is not an organized group in Portland; although the city “did have a brief period of time . . . where [it] had a specific group named ‘Rose City Antifa.’” Commander Schoening testified that he is “not aware of” Rose City Antifa’s “continued existence.” Id.

For the same reasons, this Court also finds credible Commander Schoening’s testimony that “there hasn’t been any structured organization or any group in charge of the protest activity down at the ICE facility,” including Antifa.’

Since the statutory predicates for federalization were not met, the court held that Trump’s orders commandeered Oregon’s militia in violation of the Tenth Amendment and intruded on Oregon’s sovereign authority when coupled with the attempted deployment of other states’ guard units into its territory. The ruling leans heavily on the Supreme Court’s anti-commandeering line of cases and the structural limits embedded in the Militia Clauses, while applying the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit’s recent decision in Newsom v. Trump to cabin deference to presidential determinations under §12406.

​​Governor Kotek hailed the ruling as a “validation of the facts on the ground” and a repudiation of what she called a “gross abuse of power” by the White House. Friday’s decision comes as a related challenge from Illinois, where federal courts have likewise questioned Trump’s reliance on §12406 to send Guard troops to ICE protest sites, is already before the Supreme Court.