President Donald Trump

no, that's not my premise - i'm simply stating that there's zero possibility any of those people are fishermen

in fact, i am assuming the overwhelming majority of cigarette boats (>99%) are purely for recreational uses

if we're drone striking anyone in a boat of that kind then it's a seriously ff'd up

however, there doesn't seem to be much evidence against these people not running drugs but i'm open to hearing it beyond "fishermen trying to earn a living"

What’s the serious and nuanced discussion you want to have about drone striking high net worth individuals taking a boat ride?

Or was that just sloppy reporting on your part?

so would it be reasonable for them to write an article about you that is based on an interview undertaken while you were getting a massage with a licensed massage therapist but the lede is a photo of an asian massage parlor lobby with a bunch of scantily clad women standing in a line waiting to be chosen to a backroom?

this is true. there is a lot of consent manufacturing in this article.

Almost nobody thinks those are fishing boats and focusing on that instead of realizing that throwing away due process is a huge threat to literally every human being is just one more example of the horribleness of the right.

Sounds like our secretary of war is claiming these boats with a 500 mile fuel range are trekking 2,500 miles to the US shores to deliver pure fentanyl. It’s not very believable version of events.

This will probably need its own thread.

long live the proletariat 😀

but for real, the point i was trying to make is we should be framing it "are they drug dealers or not" not "oh the poor fishermen"

I think the framing currently is "is this legal or not" which seems more pertinent than if they are drug dealers

no u

I mean, you've obviously got a mental thing going on calling trup QQQ with KK.

This is the real point. This 'fisherman' distraction is not serving the main issue.

No we should be framing it, "is it ok to kill people who are criminals without any due process if they are not an imminent threat to life"

I don't think it's even clear they are criminals btw, but that argument is clouding the issue.

To me, of course not. You capture, arrest and process them.

I mean, to me anyone bombing ships with crew in international waters that are non-threatening to other shipping and is not a war zone is committing attempted murder or murder, simple as that.

Sigh

https://www.npr.org/2025/12/04/nx-s1-5633444/trump-content-moderation-visas-censorship

NPR

State Department to deny visas to fact checkers and others, citing 'censorship'

The State Department is instructing its staff to reject visa applications from people who worked on fact-checking, content moderation or other activities the Trump administration considers "censorship" of Americans' speech.

Because the newer social media format for discussions is just bad.

At its worst it is like Twitter or Facebook with algorithms that reward engagement, which leads to an emotional cringe-fest where contributors compete to be the angriest or most hysterical. Sometimes you see posts here that reek of the poster just having finished a particularly intense session of engagement-based doom-scrolling.

However, even in its somewhat more sane iterations like Reddit the discussion is still based on being liked, so it rewards people chasing social capital and telling people what the majority wants to hear. The problem here is that individual ideas are drowned out. Nor is all controversy bad, it isn't that long ago that it was controversial that the general public should have the right to vote.

All newer social media discussion also reward shooting from the hip. Immediate answers dominate, the discussion almost never matures. Whereas in the traditional forum format, the matured discussion is often the one you focus on.

omg that was basically the argument in OOT all those years ago that generated The Lounge 😀

I understand your point about the photo.

The actual article didn't claim that the guy was fishing when he was bombed. And frankly, it didn't seem like the author believed that he was fishing at the time. The article notes that it isn't unusual for people who pilot drug boats to also work as fisherman. That sounds plausible to me.

In any case, as I said, I oppose these bombings for a host of reasons that have nothing to do with whether any of these people were fishing or what kind of boats they were in.

They have not been shown to be terrorists, and of course you're gleefully defending full-on murder because your orange daddy figure did it.

You... didn't even read the article did you? There's very convincing evidence that at least some of the victims were working-class fishermen.

This is also dumb framing. The bombings are plainly illegal even if they were actually smuggling drugs.

So, hypothetically speaking, if someone were to unalive another person or persons and told the authorities '...they were bringing illegal narcotics into the US...' would the authorities then say 'very well, you are free to go, sorry to bother you' ?

I accept no responsibility.

This is almost certainly true, even if the victims were piloting drug boats at the time.

If someone approaches a commercial fisherman living on the margins and offers to pay that person six months of fishing income if he pilots a boat from point A to point B, that fisherman is going to say yes a fair bit of the time, even if he knows that he will transporting contraband.

Correct.

By electing a person devoid of any moral compass other than “what helps me personally?”, the American voting public signed off on these types of amoral activities. 70 million Americans are complicit in these murders.

fyp