Talk About Tennis 2.0

Family of victim in Trump drug boat killings files first formal complaint
Exclusive: Petition says Colombia citizen Alejandro Carranza Medina was illegally killed in US airstrike on 15 September

Aram Roston in Washington
Tue 2 Dec 2025 16.00 EST

A family in Colombia filed a petition on Tuesday with the Washington DC-based Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, alleging that the Colombian citizen Alejandro Carranza Medina was illegally killed in a US airstrike on 15 September.

The petition marks the first formal complaint over the airstrikes by the Trump administration against suspected drug boats, attacks that the White House says are justified under a novel interpretation of law.

The IACHR, part of the Organization of American States, is designed to “promote and protect human rights in the Western Hemisphere”. The US is a member, and in March the Trump administration’s state department wrote: “The United States is pleased to be a strong supporter of the IACHR and is committed to continuing support for the Commission’s work and its independence. Preserving the IACHR’s autonomy is a pillar of our human rights policy in the region.”

The complaint was filed by Pittsburgh-based human rights lawyer Dan Kovalik. “On September 15, 2025, the United States military bombed the boat of Alejandro Andres Carranza Medina,” the filing says, “which Mr Carranza was sailing in the Caribbean off the coast of Colombia. Mr Carranza was killed in the process of this bombing.”

Kovalik identified Pete Hegseth, the US defense secretary, as the perpetrator, based on Hegseth’s own statements. “From numerous news reports, we know that Pete Hegseth, US Secretary of Defense, was responsible for ordering the bombing of boats like those of Alejandro Carranza Medina and the murder of all those on such boats. Secretary Hegseth has admitted that he gave such orders despite the fact that he did not know the identity of those being targeted for these bombings and extra-judicial killings,” the filing goes on.

The complaint adds: “US President Donald Trump has ratified the conduct of Secretary Hegseth described herein.”

A White House spokesperson, Anna Kelly, did not respond directly to questions about the complaint or about Carranza Medina’s death, but wrote in an email that the media were “now running cover for foreign terrorists smuggling deadly narcotics intended to murder Americans”.

Carranza, 42, appears to have been killed in the second strike of the Trump administration’s bombing campaign, on 15 September. The administration has publicly disclosed 21 strikes on alleged drug boats. Carranza’s family says he was a fisher who would often set out in search of marlin and tuna.

On the day of the strike, Trump announced on his Truth Social platform that “This morning, on my Orders, US Military Forces conducted a SECOND Kinetic Strike against positively identified, extraordinarily violent drug trafficking cartels and narcoterrorists in the SOUTHCOM area of responsibility”. Trump attached video marked “unclassified” of a small boat floating in the water before it was struck.

Although Trump said the crew was “from Venezuela”, the Colombian government soon identified them as Colombian.

Kovalik said: “We think this is a viable way to challenge the killing of Alejandro. We are going to seek redress for the family. We want the US to be ordered to stop doing these boat attacks. It may be a first step but we think it it’s a good first step.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/ ... -complaint

I am sure that at the Epstein parties, they had nothing stronger than Gatorade.
(I know Tiny does not even drink. But with Hegsweth and Kavanaugh on his side... )

ponchi101 wrote: ↑Tue Dec 02, 2025 8:26 pm First. For you to be able to be at war with somebody, you need certain symmetry. If the USA would want to be at war with Venezuela, that would be the equivalent of Mike Tyson trying to get into a fight with my grandmother. Who is, also, dead.

Is that really so? For bombing Caracas I could agree, but if they want to occupy most of the country or even just the capital region that would take hundreds of thousands of soldiers and could potentially end like Afghanistan. Of course that would also make true enemies from as you say a friendly population.

You have not seen footage of what the Venezuelan army looks like. It is a disgrace.
Occupying is a different thing. That would imply a long term plan. The USA is very good at winning wars (Iraq and Afghanistan proved that) but what they really suck at is winning peace. So, if they wanted to occupy the country, good luck with that. We are so disorganized that it would be like Stevie Wonder trying to solve a Rubik's cube. The US Army would not know where to start.
And, BTW. Caracas has a small military base; it used to be a civilian airport. The largest bases are in Maracay and Puerto Cabello, in the central coast. Easily located, and nothing a couple of F35's on a Sunday stroll could not take down in a few hours.
Ok, maybe 4 F35's and a few Tomcats.

Fair enough, but there is no way to remove Maduro without a ground invasion and occupation. Air force is not a magic wand...

How to remove Nicolas Maduro (for the US Army):
1. Land in Macuto (closest beach town to Caracas).
2. Ask the locals which way is it to Caracas ("Just go up his road, it is at the end")
3. Arrive to Caracas.
4. Ask THOSE locals where is the presidential palace ("You see that big house there, close to the hill? That's it")
5. Go snatch him.

I know, I am joking. But when the USA wanted to get Noriega, they did not have to invade Panama. They just grabbed him. And then went back to the USA and let Panama figure it out.

Pentagon knew boat attack left survivors but still launched a follow-on strike, AP sources say

By LISA MASCARO
Updated 6:54 PM EST, December 3, 2025
Leer en español

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Pentagon knew there were survivors after a September attack on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean Sea and the U.S. military still carried out a follow-up strike, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The rationale for the second strike was that it was needed to sink the vessel, according to the people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss it publicly. The Trump administration says all 11 people aboard were killed.

What remains unclear was who ordered the strikes and whether Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was involved, one of the people said. The details are becoming crucial as lawmakers have launched investigations and are seeking to determine whether the U.S. acted lawfully during its military operations.

The questions are expected to emerge Thursday during a classified congressional briefing with the commander that the Trump administration says ordered the second strike, Adm. Frank “Mitch” Bradley.

Hegseth is under growing scrutiny over the department’s strikes on alleged drug traffickers in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific Ocean, and in particular the Sept. 2 follow-on strike that reportedly killed survivors. Some legal experts and lawmakers say that strike would have violated peacetime laws and those governing armed conflict.

Hegseth has defended the second strike as emerging in the “fog of war,” saying during a Cabinet meeting this week at the White House that he didn’t see any survivors but also “didn’t stick around” for the rest of the mission.

The defense secretary has also said that Bradley, as the admiral in charge, “made the right call” in ordering the second hit, which he “had complete authority to do.”

President Donald Trump was asked Wednesday whether he would release the video of the follow-on strike, as leading Democratic lawmakers have demanded. He replied: “I don’t know what they have, but whatever they have we’d certainly release. No problem,” he told reporters.

The Trump administration has said the U.S. is in “armed conflict” with drug cartels, even though Congress has not approved any authorization for the use of military force in the region.

A strike later in September has led to the family of a Colombian man filing a formal challenge to the premier human rights watchdog in the Americas, arguing that his death was an extrajudicial killing. The petition from the family of Alejandro Carranza says the military bombed his fishing boat on Sept. 15 in violation of human rights conventions.

The follow-on strike on Sept. 2 was on the first vessel hit in what the Trump administration calls a counterdrug campaign that has grown to over 20 known strikes and more than 80 dead.

The information about the follow-on strike was not presented to lawmakers during a classified briefing in September, in the days after the incident. It was disclosed later, one of the people said, and the explanation provided by the department has been broadly unsatisfactory to various members of the national security committees in Congress.

In a rare flex of bipartisan oversight, the Armed Services committees in both the House and Senate swiftly announced investigations into the strikes as lawmakers of both parties raise questions.

Bradley is scheduled to appear Thursday in a classified briefing with the panels’ two Republican chairmen and two ranking Democratic members.

https://apnews.com/article/trump-hegset ... 000192ad57

From AP’s Standards and Stylebook teams:
The AP is using anonymous sourcing to provide information for this story. Click here to hear Washington Bureau Chief Anna Johnson explain AP’s policy on the use of anonymous sources.

ponchi101 wrote: ↑Wed Dec 03, 2025 9:54 pm I know, I am joking. But when the USA wanted to get Noriega, they did not have to invade Panama. They just grabbed him. And then went back to the USA and let Panama figure it out.

A different caliber of a country... Couldn't do that with Saddam Hussein. A full invasion was required.

Adm. Frank M. Bradley makes his way to a classified meeting with lawmakers on Thursday. (Demetrius Freeman/The Post)

Video shows second strike hit before survivors could flip boat, lawmakers say
The footage was shown on Capitol Hill, where Adm. Frank M. Bradley, who oversaw a deadly attack on alleged drug smugglers, faced a day of difficult questions about the operation.
Updated
December 4, 2025 at 5:31 p.m. EST today at 5:31 p.m. EST

By Maegan Vazquez
and
Noah Robertson

Video footage showing a U.S. military strike on alleged drug smugglers in the Caribbean Sea shows two people attempting to flip their capsized vessel when they were attacked again, multiple lawmakers said Thursday after meeting with the Navy admiral who oversaw the controversial mission.

The recording was shown during meetings on Capitol Hill featuring Adm. Frank M. Bradley, the commander who oversaw the Sept. 2 operation that entailed four strikes in all. The attack killed 11 people, including the two people who survived the first blast that hit their boat.

Democrats emerged from the meetings alarmed and vowed to press ahead with congressional probes into the attack’s legality. Some Republicans who have been staunchly loyal to the Trump administration defended the operation.

Rep. Jim Himes (Connecticut), the House Intelligence Committee’s top Democrat, described the footage as “one of the most troubling things I’ve seen in my time in public service.” The two survivors, he said, were “in clear distress” after their boat was “destroyed.”

“The video we saw today showed two shipwrecked individuals who had no means to move, much less pose an immediate threat, and yet they were killed by the United States military,” Himes and Rep. Adam Smith (Washington) said in a joint statement Thursday. Smith is the House Armed Services Committee’s ranking Democrat. “Regardless of what one believes about the legal underpinnings of these operations, and we have been clear we believe they are highly questionable, this was wrong.”

Sen. Tom Cotton (Arkansas), Republican chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, disputed the Democrats’ account. He called the repeated strikes “righteous” and said he would have given the same orders if he had been in Bradley’s place.

“The first strike, the second strike, and the third and the fourth strike on September 2nd were entirely lawful and needful, and they were exactly what we would expect our military commanders to do,” Cotton said.

Rep. Rick Crawford (R-Arkansas), who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, also said there was “no doubt in my mind about the highly professional manner” in which the attack occurred.

The September operation marked the start of the Trump administration’s deadly military campaign against boats and semisubmersible vessels suspected to be ferrying drugs off the shores of Latin America. To date almost 20 vessels have been targeted by U.S. forces and more than 80 people have been killed, according to disclosures made public by the administration.

Democrats and experts on the law of war have called the killings illegal, arguing that criminal drug smugglers can’t be treated the same as enemy combatants waging war against the United States.
The footage shown to lawmakers for the first time Thursday is considered a crucial piece of evidence in determining whether the Sept. 2 strike amounted to a war crime.

Sen. Jack Reed (Rhode Island), the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, called on the Pentagon to publicly release the full video of the strike and said that he was “deeply disturbed” by what he witnessed.

“This must and will be the only beginning of our investigation into this incident,” Reed said in a statement Thursday.

Reed and his Republican counterpart, the committee chair Sen. Roger Wicker (Mississippi), were among the first lawmakers to publicly express their concerns about the Sept. 2 attack after The Washington Post reported last week that Bradley ordered a second strike after survivors were identified to comply with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s spoken directive before the operation’s initial strike to kill everybody on board the boat. Wicker declined to comment after exiting Thursday’s briefing.

Hegseth has sought to distance himself from the controversy, pointing instead to Bradley, while also defending the second strike that killed the two survivors. The Pentagon has denied The Post’s requests to interview Hegseth and review video footage of the strikes.

Bradley considered the survivors to be viable targets, not shipwrecked, defenseless mariners, according to Cotton and another person familiar with the briefing.

The two survivors could have radioed for help from associates in the area and continued their “mission” of shipping drugs to American shores, Cotton said. It is not clear whether they attempted to do so or if they had equipment that wasn’t destroyed.

Calling for help could indicate the men were still able to move drugs, but it doesn’t make them combatants who pose a threat and can be killed, said Todd Huntley, a former military lawyer who advised Special Operations forces on the law of war for seven years. “It’s a pretty flimsy argument,” said Huntley, now director of the national security law program at Georgetown Law.

“There was no boat. There was wreckage. There was no radio. There were two guys clinging to a tiny non-awash portion of the keel of a capsized boat,” said one lawmaker familiar with Thursday’s congressional briefings and the video that was shown.

Military leaders told lawmakers that they assessed the survivors might “look” for a radio, the person said. But it’s hard to see how they could after the first strike, the person said. The boat was consumed by a “massive conflagration — then it capsized,” the person said.

Some uniformed personnel who watched the second strike as it happened, or saw the briefing slides afterward, were disturbed by what they witnessed, said one former U.S. official familiar with the matter. “Basically it was, why are we killing people who are stranded and pose no threat?” the former official said.

Much of the scrutiny and expert analysis have focused on Bradley’s assessment that the survivors left after the first strike remained legitimate targets. U.S. and international law requires protection for combatants and others who cannot defend themselves and forbids further attacks. That includes “persons who have been rendered unconscious or otherwise incapacitated by wounds, sickness, or shipwreck,” according to the Pentagon’s law of war manual.

The strikes have cast rare public scrutiny on decisions within the most secret corners of the military and the admiral tasked with leading the Pentagon’s most elite forces.

Bradley is a career special operator, and he has cultivated a strong reputation as a thoughtful and serious leader who looked out for his troops, said James Hatch, who served with Bradley at Naval Special Warfare Development Group, the unit commonly known as SEAL Team 6.

The admiral’s meetings with lawmakers came at a time when Republican-led committees are escalating their oversight of Hegseth and the U.S. military’s targeting of suspected drug traffickers.

Hegseth and members of the Trump administration have shifted their explanations for what happened during the operation since the second strike was revealed. In recent days, the defense secretary has said that he left the room where live footage of the operation was being streamed after the first strike and that he heard about the second strike hours later.

Hegseth said at a White House Cabinet meeting Tuesday that Bradley “made the correct decision to ultimately sink the boat and eliminate the threat.”

Bradley’s meetings on Capitol Hill could be the first step toward a more formal investigation, lawmakers and congressional aides said. Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, also attended the briefings.

While some Republicans have continued to defend Hegseth’s leadership, several members of Congress and aides have said Republican support for the secretary and other top Pentagon officials has atrophied.

Amy B Wang, Alex Horton and Ellen Nakashima contributed to this report.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national ... t-strikes/

And in the end, this won't stick, either. So incredibly sad. And unjust.

Because I am sure that there are millions of his cult followers that completely agree with these actions.
I mean, you are only killing South American scum. No big deal, right?

ponchi101 wrote: ↑Fri Dec 05, 2025 2:09 pm Because I am sure that there are millions of his cult followers that completely agree with these actions.
I mean, you are only killing South American scum. No big deal, right?

These people call themselves Christians but take it on themselves who is and isn't human and therefore can be murdered without impunity.

Video shows second strike hit before survivors could flip boat, lawmakers say
(Very misleading headline after reading what was left of the boat below)

The footage was shown on Capitol Hill, where Adm. Frank M. Bradley, who oversaw a deadly attack on alleged drug smugglers, faced a day of difficult questions about the operation.
Updated
December 4, 2025 at 9:58 p.m. ESTyesterday at 9:58 p.m. EST

Rep. Jim Himes (Connecticut), the House Intelligence Committee’s top Democrat, described the footage as “one of the most troubling things I’ve seen in my time in public service.” The two survivors, he said, were “in clear distress” after their boat was “destroyed.”

“The video we saw today showed two shipwrecked individuals who had no means to move, much less pose an immediate threat, and yet they were killed by the United States military,” Himes said in a joint statement with Rep. Adam Smith (Washington), the House Armed Services Committee’s top Democrat. “Regardless of what one believes about the legal underpinnings of these operations, and we have been clear we believe they are highly questionable, this was wrong.”

Democrats and experts on the law of war have called the killings illegal, arguing that criminal drug smugglers can’t be treated the same as enemy combatants waging war against the United States, and the footage shown to lawmakers for the first time Thursday is considered a crucial piece of evidence in determining whether the Sept. 2 strike amounted to a war crime.

Sen. Jack Reed (Rhode Island), the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, called on the Pentagon to publicly release the full video and said he was “deeply disturbed” by what he witnessed. In a statement, he urged Republican colleagues to press on with the inquiry and said the meetings with Bradley must be “the only beginning of our investigation into this incident.”

Reed and his Republican counterpart, the committee chair Sen. Roger Wicker (Mississippi), were among the first lawmakers to publicly express their concerns about the Sept. 2 operation. Wicker declined to comment after exiting Thursday’s briefing.

Wicker and Reed jointly announced their inquiry after The Washington Post reported last week that Bradley ordered a subsequent attack on the vessel after survivors were identified, to comply with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s spoken directive — issued before the operation’s initial strike — to kill everybody on board.

Bradley participated in at least five closed-door meetings over about eight hours Thursday. Two people familiar with his discussions throughout the day said the admiral confirmed that Hegseth had given a verbal order ahead of the operation to kill the passengers and destroy the boat. These people spoke on the condition of anonymity, because all of the sessions Thursday were classified. They were not authorized to identify the lawmakers to whom Bradley made this assertion.

Spokespeople for U.S. Special Operations Command, where Bradley is the top commander, declined to comment.

Hegseth has sought to distance himself from the controversy, pointing instead to Bradley, while also defending the second strike that killed the two survivors. The Pentagon has denied The Post’s requests to interview Hegseth and review video footage of the strikes.

Bradley considered the survivors to be viable targets, not shipwrecked, defenseless mariners, according to Cotton and another person familiar with the briefing. The two survivors could have radioed for help from associates in the area and continued their “mission” of shipping drugs to American shores, Cotton said. It is not clear whether they attempted to do so or if they had equipment that wasn’t destroyed.

(...)

One lawmaker familiar with Thursday’s briefings and the video that was shown said: “There was no boat. There was wreckage. There was no radio. There were two guys clinging to a tiny non-awash portion of the keel of a capsized boat.”

Military leaders told lawmakers that they assessed the survivors might “look” for a radio, the lawmaker said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity. But it’s hard to see how they could after the first strike, the person said. The boat was consumed by a “massive conflagration — then it capsized,” the person said.

Some uniformed personnel who watched the second strike as it happened, or saw the briefing slides afterward, were disturbed by what they witnessed, said one former U.S. official familiar with the matter. “Basically it was, why are we killing people who are stranded and pose no threat?” the former official said.

...U.S. and international law requires protection for combatants and others who cannot defend themselves and forbids further attacks. That includes “persons who have been rendered unconscious or otherwise incapacitated by wounds, sickness, or shipwreck,” according to the Pentagon’s law of war manual.

It is hard to see any argument that the follow-up strike was lawful, Huntley said, unless one accepts a series of premises: That the U.S. is in a war with drug traffickers, which a broad array of legal analysts dispute. That the two survivors were on board a seaworthy vessel and not at risk of drowning. That the drugs and the boat itself were military objects.

“You have to fulfill several variables,” he said. “It’s a pretty strained argument.”

Hegseth and members of the Trump administration have shifted their explanations for what happened during the operation since the second strike was revealed. In recent days, the defense secretary has said that he left the room where live footage of the operation was being streamed after the first strike and that he heard about the second strike hours later.

Hegseth said at a White House Cabinet meeting Tuesday that Bradley “made the correct decision to ultimately sink the boat and eliminate the threat.”

Bradley’s meetings on Capitol Hill could be the first step toward a more formal investigation, lawmakers and congressional aides said. Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, also attended the briefings.

While some Republicans have continued to defend Hegseth’s leadership, several members of Congress and aides have said Republican support for the secretary and other top Pentagon officials has atrophied.

Amy B Wang contributed to this report.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national ... t-strikes/

Trump administration says Europe faces 'civilizational erasure'
Story by Brandon Livesay
•

© Reuters

President Donald Trump's administration has warned that Europe faces "civilisational erasure" and questioned whether certain nations can remain reliable allies, in a new strategy document that puts a particular focus on the continent.

The 33-page National Security Strategy sees the US leader outline his vision for the world and how he will wield US military and economic power to work towards it.

Trump described the document as a "roadmap" to ensure America remains "the greatest and most successful nation in human history".

European politicians have begun to react, with Germany's Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul saying his country did not need "outside advice".

A formal National Security Strategy is typically released by presidents once each term. It can form a framework for future policies and budgets, as well as signalling to the world where the president's priorities lie.

The new document follows similar rhetoric to Trump's speech to the United Nations earlier this year, where he had harsh criticism for Western Europe and its approach to migration and clean energy.

The new report doubles down on Trump's point of view, calling for the restoration of "Western identity", combatting foreign influence, ending mass migration, and focusing more on US priorities such as stopping drug cartels.

Focusing on Europe, it asserts that if current trends continue the continent would be "unrecognisable in 20 years or less" and its economic issues are "eclipsed by the real and more stark prospect of civilizational erasure".

"It is far from obvious whether certain European countries will have economies and militaries strong enough to remain reliable allies," the document states.

It also accused the European Union and "other transnational bodies" of carrying out activities that "undermine political liberty and sovereignty", said migration policies were "creating strife" and said other issues included "censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition, cratering birthrates, and loss of national identities and self-confidence".

Conversely, the document hails the growing influence of "patriotic European parties" and says "America encourages its political allies in Europe to promote this revival of spirit".

The Trump administration has fostered links with the far-right AfD party in Germany, which has been classified as extreme right by German intelligence.

German Foreign Minister Wadephul stressed that the "United States is and will remain our most important ally in the [Nato] alliance. This alliance, however, is focused on addressing security policy issues."

"I believe questions of freedom of expression or the organisation of our free societies do not belong [in the strategy], in any case at least when it comes to Germany," he added

Referring to Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the document says Europe has a lack of "self-confidence" in its relationship with Russia.

Managing European relations with Russia will require significant US involvement, the document says, adding it is a core US interest for hostilities in Ukraine to end.

The Trump administration has proposed a plan to end the war, the original version of which called for Ukraine to hand over some territory to the de facto control of Russia. However Trump's envoy presented a modified version in Moscow. Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned that Ukrainian troops must withdraw from Ukraine's eastern Donbas region or Russia will seize it by force.

The White House strategy document repeatedly references the Western Hemisphere, and the need for the US to protect itself from outside threats.

The document says there must be a readjustment of "our global military presence to address urgent threats in our Hemisphere". To do this, the strategy calls for moving assets away from theatres which are less important to American national security than they once were.

This re-prioritising of military power can be seen already in the Caribbean, where the US military has a growing presence and has carried out repeated deadly strikes on boats which the government alleges are carrying drugs. The world's largest warship, the USS Gerald Ford, is currently based in the Caribbean along with its strike group.

Away from the Western Hemisphere, the Trump administration singles out the South China Sea as a key shipping passage that has major implications for the US economy, and the document says the US will "harden and strengthen our military presence in the Western Pacific".

The US also calls on an increased defence spending from Japan, South Korea, Australia and Taiwan.

It says "deterring a conflict over Taiwan, ideally by preserving military overmatch, is a priority". China views self-governed Taiwan as part of its territory and has not ruled out the use of force to "reunite" with it.

The strategy also talks of pushing for a stronger industrial base in the US and less reliance on foreign technologies, which matches some of the moves the Trump administration has taken with its sweeping global tariffs.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/tr ... a37b&ei=34


I guess no one in this cabal has heard of the Monroe Doctrine.

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