No Kings? Meet King Don and King John Half 3 of three — World Points
That is the third a part of a three-part commentary. In overseas relations, as in immigration, King Don the Con seems to be channeling King John the Unhealthy and sometimes surpassing him.
SEATTLE. USA, April 27 (IPS) – That is the third a part of a three-part commentary. Learn Half 1: No Kings? Meet King Don and King John – Half 1 of three, Half 2 of three
Whose head?
In overseas relations, as in immigration, King Don the Con seems to be channeling King John the Unhealthy and sometimes surpassing him.
Nonetheless, our wannabe monarch ought to contemplate another exemplar, this one fictitious: Lewis Carroll’s Crimson Queen might be one other religious ancestor of the Golden Emperor. In any case, his Bling Dynasty has been a creature of fiction greater than reality.
Carroll wrote in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland:
“Let the jury contemplate their verdict.” the King stated, for concerning the twentieth time that day.
“No, no!” stated the Queen. “Sentence first—verdict afterwards.”
“Stuff and nonsense!” stated Alice loudly. “The concept of getting the sentence first!”
“Maintain your tongue!” stated the Queen, turning purple.
“I received’t!” stated Alice.
“Off together with her head!” the Queen shouted on the high of her voice. No one moved.
As we’ve seen, King Don has demonstrated the same disdain for authorized niceties. “Sentence first—verdict afterwards” might be the motto of a lot of his overseas coverage in addition to immigration enforcement. He usually skips indictment, trial, and verdict, and jumps straight from accusation to finishing up the sentence.
There’s one putting distinction between the 2 monarchies, although: the Crimson Queen’s courtiers understood that she was not taking part in with a full deck, and they also ignored her ranting. The Golden Emperor’s toadies are too cowardly to inform him that he’s appearing more and more unhinged, and have grow to be resistant to disgrace about their North Korea-like sycophancy. A potential exception is “Secretary of Struggle” Pete Hegseth, who could also be much more deranged than his boss. His speeches sound like they’re written by a B-grade action-movie screenwriter torqued on crank. Economist Paul Krugman stated in an interview that some individuals within the Pentagon are calling him the Secretary of Struggle Crimes.
In the summertime and fall of 2025, Trump marshalled an enormous armada of ships, air energy and troops within the southern Caribbean. The official identify was Operation Southern Spear, and so they have been clearly positioned to threaten Venezuela. However whereas they have been ready to hold out the eventual abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro Moros, Trump reportedly ordered them to unleash navy strikes towards small boats that he stated have been smuggling medicine.
As an alternative of ignoring the President, because the Crimson Queen’s courtiers did, Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio obediently started extrajudicial executions of civilians in small boats. The victims reportedly included sailors, fishermen, bus drivers, laborers, and probably some small-time smugglers.
The Protection Division reportedly confirmed to Congress that as of March 17 the U.S. navy had killed at the least 157 individuals in navy strikes on 47 alleged drug-smuggling vessels within the Caribbean and jap Pacific. Extra strikes have allegedly occurred since, elevating the loss of life toll to at the least 163 individuals.
As an Elizabethan connoisseur of royal mayhem might need put it: “As flies to wanton boys are we to King Don. He kills us for his sport.”
If Trump had needed to make a critical case to the world that he was really combatting drug smuggling, he may have ordered regular policing operations: intercept and impound the boat, show the packets of medicine and weapons captured, perp stroll the smugglers and publicize their indictments and convictions. Nonetheless, the his authorities has not publicly introduced proof that medicine have been being smuggled or that the crews have been related with drug cartels or terrorists.
U.S. forces didn’t give the boats or crews an opportunity to give up. They merely blew them (and any proof of their alleged crimes) to smithereens. In a single case, they reportedly slaughtered two survivors of an preliminary strike who have been nonetheless clinging to the wreckage. Some boats have been apparently carrying extra individuals than could be wanted for a crew, so maybe some have been simply passengers. In one other strike by which two survivors have been rescued, they weren’t arrested by the U.S., however as an alternative returned to their respective international locations, Colombia and Ecuador. This was an inconceivable consequence in the event that they have been actually smugglers or terrorists.
Right here’s the lowdown: no matter whether or not the crews or passengers have been smuggling something, they have been civilians. Even when a warfare had been in progress, it might have been unlawful below worldwide and U.S. navy legislation to kill non-combatants. However this was not a warfare with a overseas authorities, nor an assault on the U.S. by terrorists. On condition that most of the strikes killed 4 or extra individuals, the customary threshold for mass murder, the operation ought to be investigated as serial mass murders.
Even earlier than the strikes started, the senior Decide Advocate Common (JAG, a navy lawyer) on the U.S. Southern Command in Miami questioned the legality of the strikes and voiced considerations that they may quantity to extrajudicial killings, NBC Information reported. This JAG’s opinion was reportedly overruled by extra senior officers.
Many different navy legal professionals and different officers additionally voiced considerations concerning the strikes’ legality up their chains of command. The “Former JAGs Working Group”, shaped by victims of Hegseth’s earlier mass firings of JAGs, issued an announcement that it “unanimously considers each the giving and the execution of those orders, if true, to represent warfare crimes, homicide, or each.”
Questions concerning the operation’s legality additionally apparently troubled the top of the U.S. Southern Command. Admiral Alvin Holsey abruptly introduced that he would step down from his put up in December, with out providing any rationalization for his choice. However the New York Occasions reported that Holsey, too, had expressed concern concerning the legality of the killings. This introduced him into battle with Hegseth and the White Home. In the end, Hegseth pushed out the Admiral.
Six Democratic members of Congress who’re veterans made a video that merely advised serving navy members: “Our legal guidelines are clear: You’ll be able to refuse unlawful orders.” That is recommendation generally given to troopers. Trump responded hysterically on Fact Social: “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!”, and reposted one other person: “HANG THEM GEORGE WASHINGTON WOULD !!” [Buchanan 11/20/2025]
Trump reserved his nastiest blast of vitriol for the one U.S. senator within the group, Mark Kelly of Arizona, a retired Navy fight pilot and astronaut. Protection Secretary Hegseth moved to demote and censure Kelly and cut back his retirement pay. In February, a federal choose quickly blocked the demotion and criticized Hegseth for making an attempt to punish a veteran and member of Congress for First Modification-protected speech. Sarcastically, the assaults on Kelly appear to have supercharged his political fund-raising and helped set up him as a reputable Democratic presidential candidate for 2028.
The rationales for killing civilians on small boats adopted an opportunistic trajectory: first body the strikes as instruments to intimidate Maduro, then declare to be interdicting drug smuggling to save lots of American lives. Subsequent up the ante to preventing narco-terrorists. Lastly, admit that the primary aim of the entire operation was to take again oil from Venezuela that by some means belonged to the U.S.
After the kidnapping of Maduro, the usefulness of boat strikes to intimidate the now deposed president, if it ever existed, ought to have expired. However since then, Trump has continued to assert he’s defending U.S. residents from “narco-terrorists” by destroying small boats.
The U.S. Southern Command claims with every strike that it’s concentrating on boats alongside “recognized smuggling routes” that U.S. intelligence has recognized. Nevertheless it has but to offer proof that these boats have been really carrying medicine – maybe as a result of it’s exhausting to gather it when the boat is blown to bits remotely from the air. And whether or not or not smuggling goes on alongside these routes, individuals residing on the coasts of Latin America use small boats for public transportation, carrying authorized items, fishing, and lots of different functions. Unsurprisingly, some might observe the identical routes that smugglers use (as I’ve witnessed touring in a small passenger panga on the Caribbean).
Because the case of the Venezuelan deportees established, Venezuela will not be a significant drug producer; it serves primarily as a conduit for illicit substances produced elsewhere in South America and certain for European markets, not the U.S. Moreover, within the Caribbean and jap Pacific, the primary drug being moved is cocaine, which is never deadly for customers. The fentanyl that Trump flagged as accountable for tens of hundreds of deaths within the U.S. is produced nearly solely in Mexico and smuggled into the U.S. from there.
As a congressional interrogator at a listening to on the strikes asserted, any quantities of medicine the strikes might have destroyed have been insignificant, and are having no influence on the quantity or value of medicine coming into the U.S.
Moreover, small boats are solely one in every of quite a few modes of drug transport from South to North America and Europe. Drug enforcement has been taking part in Whac-A-Mole for a half-century with submersibles, industrial transport, air freight, small planes, drones, tunnels, parcel put up, bundle categorical, U.S. citizen vacationers, and the listing goes on. Regardless of high-profile drug seizures, arrests of drug lords, and spasms of violence, drug markets preserve calm and keep it up. In the meantime, deadly overdoses, nearly solely from fentanyl, spiral upward.
And narco-terrorism? Sorry, however within the non-fiction world, organized crime and terrorism are basically totally different beasts.
Huge drug cartels resemble authorized transnational firms in some ways. Their principal goal is to generate profits – after which they need to launder it, which additionally requires enterprise acumen. They’ve huge decentralized networks that embrace voluntary and involuntary sub-contractors and traders. They spin off subsidiaries in numerous international locations. They are often very violent when competing over plazas, treating migrants as a revenue heart, or responding to assaults by governments, however normally they wish to run their companies with out visibility or drama. Probably the most profitable organized crime executives have been the cagey facilitators and deal-makers.
Sometimes, when the gangs have grow to be stronger than the police forces, governments have had to make use of the navy to confront them. However solely affected person use of legislation enforcement instruments just like the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act and socio-economic applications to supply foot troopers methods to get out of the life can finally disentangle their roots from society.
However, organizations that observe terrorism use violence or the specter of it for political, social, or ideological functions. They wish to visibly menace and destroy their enemies, and they don’t seem to be primarily involved with creating wealth.
Many political actions from the American Revolution onward have practiced terrorism – in that case towards Tory sympathizers with the British crown. And as in most wars, the British military additionally practiced terrorism towards civilian colonists. Whether or not a given armed group is assessed as terrorists or freedom-fighters typically will depend on which aspect of the battle the observer stands.
Organized crime might generally pursue socio-political targets, and terrorists might generally use illicit actions to fund themselves. However defending towards every phenomenon requires very totally different approaches. The World Struggle on Terror and the Struggle on Medicine have each been long-running failures as a result of neither terrorism nor organized crime could be eradicated militarily.
When King Don calls a company “narco-terrorists”, he’s merely slapping a label on it that provides him authorized cowl for utilizing navy drive to blow issues up and kill harmless bystanders. (“Oopsie!”, as his buddy Bukele would possibly say with a smirk.) And as a bonus, the violence might distract his followers from his wealthy stew of corruption, juicy emoluments and tender pardons garnished with a soupçon of Epstein.
Regardless of the smoke screens, worldwide efforts to carry Trump accountable for critical human rights violations have begun in a couple of venues.
A panel of consultants convened by the United Nations Human Rights workplace in September 2025 concluded that the boat strikes violated the appropriate to life below worldwide legislation and the legislation of the ocean. Their assertion asserted: “Worldwide legislation doesn’t enable governments to easily homicide alleged drug traffickers. Felony actions ought to be disrupted, investigated and prosecuted in accordance with the rule of legislation, together with by way of worldwide cooperation.”
The U.S. had accused the Venezuelan legal gang Tren de Aragua of mounting “an ‘invasion’ or ‘predatory incursion’ of the U.S., on the behest of the Venezuelan Authorities.” However the consultants discovered that “There is no such thing as a proof that this group is committing an armed assault towards the U.S. that may enable the U.S. to make use of navy drive towards it in nationwide self-defence.”
The Inter-American Fee on Human Rights, an organ of the Group of American States, additionally held a listening to on the boat strikes in March. It heard testimony from a number of human rights organizations and the U.S. authorities. “We’re doing all the things in our energy to carry the Trump administration accountable for its egregious violations of each U.S. and worldwide legislation”, Jamil Dakwar of the ACLU testified. “These extrajudicial killings,” stated Angelo Guisado of the Middle for Constitutional Rights, “have been poorly veiled cowl to justify the unlawful overthrow of the Venezuelan authorities, as admitted by White Home Chief of Workers Susie Wiles.” A State Division spokesman responded: “The IACHR lacks the competence to evaluate the issues at situation.” He additionally accused the Fee of interfering in home litigation.
The Trump administration has not launched the names of the slain. However a couple of households have come ahead to establish their family members. Human rights teams are representing two of them looking for redress from the federal government.
Though we’ve targeted on the boat strikes as Trump’s most literal implementation of “Off with their heads!”, the operation that they have been supposedly a warm-up for – the ousting of Venezuela’s president – additionally resulted in pointless and unlawful bloodshed.
On January 3, 2026, Trump cried “Havoc!” and let slip the dawgs of Delta Pressure. The U.S. invaded Venezuela, kidnapped its president, Nicolás Maduro, and charged him in a U.S. courtroom with heading a drug-smuggling cartel and illegally possessing firearms. In the course of the operation, U.S. officers estimated that at the least 75 individuals have been killed by U.S. forces. The Venezuelan protection minister later stated that 83 have been killed and greater than 112 injured by U.S. forces. He confirmed that the operation killed 47 of its personnel, and the Cuban authorities stated that 32 of the lifeless have been Cuban residents. Some reviews have advised that further civilians might have been killed.
As talked about beforehand, an investigation by U.S. intelligence providers had already discovered that the Venezuelan authorities didn’t direct or cooperate with Tren de Aragua, and was as an alternative typically hostile in direction of the gang. So no matter his different faults, Maduro was evidently not a drug lord.
These prices additionally beg the query of how a president who’s the commander-in-chief of a military and below safety of a presidential guard could be responsible of illegally possessing firearms. Keep tuned to Maduro’s trial in federal courtroom in New York Metropolis for extra particulars.
In any case, only for the report, it’s typically unlawful below worldwide legislation for one nation to invade one other, kill its residents, and seize or assassinate its leaders.
To know Operation Southern Spear, it could assist to check the seize and abduction of Maduro with Trump’s pardon of Juan Orlando Hernández, the previous president of Honduras, who was convicted in a U.S. courtroom of large-scale drug trafficking and imprisoned. His brother Tony had already suffered the identical destiny.
Trump’s pardoning of JOH on the identical time he was detaining Maduro on related prices was broadly seen as contradictory. However quite the opposite, the message was eloquent: the legislation means nothing, and King Don the Con doesn’t care if buddies break it. All that issues, even in the event you’re a convicted narco, is that you simply shamelessly genuflect to him and declare timeless fealty.
Regardless of U.S. criticism of the Maduro authorities, the kidnapping of the Venezuelan president left his vice-president in cost because the momentary president, and didn’t take away every other excessive officers from the present Venezuelan authorities. A lot for régime change.
In an outburst of candor, Trump confirmed afterwards that his principal motivation was to drive Venezuela to provide again “our oil” to the US. This was apparently executed below what he calls the “Donroe Doctrine”. The truth was that since lengthy earlier than Maduro, Venezuela had expropriated the property of some overseas oil firms, as many growing international locations have executed. However Trump conveniently omits the backstory that overseas oil corporations had initially expropriated Venezuela’s oil from Venezuela. This was fueled by concessions from dictators within the first half of the twentieth Century. [Wolfe 1/9/2026]
Treachery, lechery, lying and cruelty? Sorry, King John the Unhealthy: in immigration, overseas coverage and lots of different domains, King Don the Con has elevated these qualities far above your crude medieval badassery.
Kings and legal guidelines
When the New York Occasions requested Trump if there have been any limits on his world powers, he replied: “Yeah, there’s one factor. My very own morality. My very own thoughts. It’s the one factor that may cease me. … I don’t want worldwide legislation.”
It’s true that Trump has a finely calibrated ethical compass. The issue is that it at all times factors to himself.
Conservative jurist J. Michael Luttig laid out the problem starkly: “As soon as extra, we should ask, as Lincoln did, whether or not a nation so ‘conceived in Liberty, and devoted to the proposition that each one males are created equal,’ can lengthy endure. …We have now been given the excessive cost of our forebears to ‘preserve’ the republic they based 1 / 4 of a millennium in the past. If we don’t preserve it now, we are going to certainly lose it.”
The hundreds of thousands of partisans of No Kings and different resistance initiatives are working additional time to arrange the huge and diversified political insurgency essential to throw King Don the Con into the poisonous waste dump of historical past and to re-establish one thing resembling the rule of legislation. Among the political opposition appears to be slowly awakening from its torpor and displaying indicators of life. Nonetheless, if the MAGA fever has not damaged by 2028, I worry that our democracy and human rights will likely be languishing in hospice.
The final phrase goes to Tom Paine, the sharp-tongued English pamphleteer who lit a hearth below colonial revolutionaries in 1776 with Frequent Sense: “[A]s in absolute governments the King is legislation, so in free international locations the legislation ought to be King; and there should be no different.”
That is the third a part of a three-part commentary. Learn Half 1: No Kings? Meet King Don and King John – Half 1 of three, Half 2 of three
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