| ▲ | I may have found a way to spot U.S. at-sea strikes before they're announced(old.reddit.com) |
| 98 points by hentrep 2 hours ago | 56 comments |
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| ▲ | aaronbrethorst an hour ago | parent | next [-] |
| The United States seems to be using the same logic as Uncle Jimbo in South Park did when he hunted animals: "it's coming right for us!" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaazFYTrQ_A |
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| ▲ | BLKNSLVR 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Note: "before they're announced" which is quite specifically not "before the strike occurs" |
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| ▲ | bragr 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Neat, but not really new. People have been monitoring military activity with FIRMS for years. |
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| ▲ | valicord 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| The satellite feed removed from internet in 3, 2, ... |
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| ▲ | irjustin 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | From one of the comments: > Yes, FIRMS data is what most people use to monitor large strikes that create a significant heat signature. In the middle of the sea you'll usually just see oil platforms generate heat like that. > A lot of people reading this know this already, but you could see exactly where the bunker busters were being dropped in Iran months ago from FIRMS data within ~15-20min of the strikes. | |
| ▲ | somenameforme 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | This post is relatively old information to anybody following e.g. the Ukraine War, which is where I assume the poster got the inspiration for this. It's regularly used to publicly confirm strikes. |
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| ▲ | aussieguy1234 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Like alot of others on the reddit thread, I suspect this will get shut down fast, since it relies on US government imagery from NASA. |
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| ▲ | beefnugs 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| satellite imagery will be called terrorism now next up: anyone with the knowledge to do data analysis |
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| ▲ | martythemaniak 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Could we change the title to the more accurate "summary executions" instead of "at-sea strikes"? |
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| ▲ | croisillon 8 minutes ago | parent [-] | | no we can’t, pg confirmed earlier this year he aligns with this admin’s war on reality |
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| ▲ | davidw 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| "narco-trafficking boats" There's no public evidence of that though. No trial. It's the same as if we sent the navy to board those boats, put a gun to people's heads and execute them in cold blood. |
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| ▲ | somenameforme 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | 100% agreed with this and this is one of the worst issues about the development of long range weapons. 'We droned this guy.' 'We bombed this area.' 'We destroyed this boat.' All of this really sounds so much better than what it really is. It's murdering people all around the world, many of whom are 100% innocent. For instance the last person we droned in occupied Afghanistan was Zemari Ahmadi - a longtime worker for a US humanitarian aid organization. A US drone operator mistook bottles of water he was loading into his car for his family as bombs, and so they murdered him as well as 10 other civilians, including 7 children, all with the press of a button. [1] [1] - https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/10/world/asia/us-air-strike-... | | |
| ▲ | mmooss 8 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | > this is one of the worst issues about the development of long range weapons. 'We droned this guy.' 'We bombed this area.' 'We destroyed this boat.' The US administration uses the long range to argue that the War Powers Act doesn't apply: They aruge that the Act applies to 'hostilities', and US soldiers are too far from the targets to be exposed to danger, therefore they aren't 'hostilities'. | |
| ▲ | jmb99 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | >many of whom are 100% innocent Under US law, 100% of them are 100% innocent, by definition. "Innocent until proven guilty" and whatnot; it literally means that every person is innocent in the eyes of the law until a court finds them guilty. | | |
| ▲ | bawolff an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | Its kind of irrelavent in an armed conflict. There are a bunch of rules (i.e. the geneva conventions) around who can and cannot be targeted in an armed conflict, but innocent vs guilty is not how it works. Innocent people being killed can sometimes totally be consistent with the rules of war. Guilty people being killed can sometimes be a violation of the rules. Innocent vs guiltly is the wrong metaphor for what makes a legal target. | | |
| ▲ | mmooss 11 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | It's not an armed conflict in any legal sense, according to everyone but partisans (that I've seen). | |
| ▲ | aaronbrethorst an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Its kind of irrelavent in an armed conflict which this is not, so what's your point? | | | |
| ▲ | lostlogin an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | > Innocent people being killed can sometimes totally be consistent with the rules of war. The US attacks people and countries without declaring war. If anyone did this to the US, can you imagine the butt-hurt response? | | |
| ▲ | theoreticalmal 5 minutes ago | parent [-] | | The majority of the West has implicitly or explicitly ceded their national defense and warfighting capabilities to the USA. The comparison between USA and “other countries” isn’t really valid, as the situations are vastly different |
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| ▲ | breppp an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Although the Venezuela example is quite an overreach, none of these people fall under the US laws you think they do The legal basis is them being declared Unlawful Combatants under the Military Commissions Act of 2006. Once they do they are enemy combatants in war and can be killed. This law was so thoroughly used by all presidents since then that you cannot really claim it's illegal | | |
| ▲ | bulbar an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | > Although the Venezuela example is quite an overreach To me it sounds like that killing was (possibly) illegal. Idk about that 2006 Act though. From a moral stand point it doesn't matter if it was (possibly) illegal or not however. | | |
| ▲ | Den_VR an hour ago | parent [-] | | It matters quite a lot, it’s the biblical difference between killing and murder. | | |
| ▲ | bulbar 30 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Law at biblical times had a different foundation than today. Today the foundation is legal positivism, which is the philosophical decoupling of moral and law (which sounds terrible at first glance, but is important if you think it through). Therefore, it is not useful to apply the definition of the terms from back then, because the whole context in which they were used doesn't exist anymore. In the Western world, the meaning of murder and killing is different and while that described action might be an unlawful killing (by accident) it most likely was not a murder. |
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| ▲ | pyrale 35 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | "...And 50 water buffalos too! They were all certified!" | |
| ▲ | pstuart an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | They're not enemy combatants, at worst they're drug runners. Just because Trump declares something to be true doesn't make it true (although his lackeys will act as if it is). This is not how to deal with The Drug War™, it's very expensive theater that does nothing to address the problem. In fact that very war is the reason why it's a problem in the first place. Remember that an earlier batch of dangerous drug dealers were Americans working out of doctors' offices. | | |
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| ▲ | PenguinCoder 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Unfortunately that had been forgotten in this era. | |
| ▲ | anarticle 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Fun fact, if you're not a US citizen on US soil US law does not apply. I'm not saying this because I'm taking a side, but this was how the Patriot act had knock on effects. An interesting case of this is something like you call a foreign national in another country and this is enough to be able to tap both sides of the conversation via Patriot Act / NSA purview. | | |
| ▲ | godelski 15 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | > not a US citizen ***on US soil*** US law does not apply.
1) these strikes are happening in international waters2) US law definitely applies to non citizens on US soil. Like that's such a ridiculous statement. Even if the law was "we can do whatever if you're not a citizen", that's still law... You think non citizens are all sovereign citizens bound to no law? To be able to do whatever they want? I didn't know my neighbor was a diplomat. I think you mean rights. Which this is much more dubious. The constitution definitely interchanges the use of "citizens" and "people". Notably the 11th amendment uses citizens, specifying belonging to states foreign or domestic. It was ratified only a few years after the Bill of rights, so not like a drastic language change happened. There are people who will argue "the people" means "citizens" but I find that a difficult interpretation if you read the constitution or federalist papers. | |
| ▲ | brookst an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Are you saying that non-citizen residents of the US are not subject to US laws? That seems dubious. | |
| ▲ | LastTrain 32 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | And we know for sure there were no US citizens on these boats? | |
| ▲ | asdefghyk an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | RE ".....not a US citizen on US soil US law does not apply....." Does not maKE SENSE... Why are people extradited to US from overseas locations . Like why they want Julian Assange ? | | |
| ▲ | raspasov an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | Just some ideas: - Drone-bombing an embassy in downtown London does not look good on social media - He's too famous and has many supporters in the Western world to be publicly assassinated, regardless of location (example: Lady Gaga visited him while he was stuck in the embassy) - He's more useful as a deterrent, i.e., "see what might happen to you", to the people who might decide to go a similar route. Some will go that route regardless, but chances are at least a few have been persuaded otherwise. For all the ridicule of the government, the Intelligence Community seems to be doing a fairly intelligent job most of the time to satisfy its objectives. | |
| ▲ | bulbar an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | It does not apply in general, but a country will always declare jurisdiction if deemed necessary.
A common example in Germany is that the country will try to enforce German law for foreign-hosted websites hosted by citizen of another country if the website is targeted at German citizen. |
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| ▲ | owlbite an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | But it can be even worse than that. It's "we assassinated the phone", "algorithm says vehicle has suspicious travel history and must die". There's no real thinking human in the loop for some of this stuff, just some model decided the metadata has a high probability of being associate with an opponent of some flavor and then everyone in the vicinity is blown to bits as computer said kill. |
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| ▲ | slg 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Murdering people for "committing" a nonviolent crime in international waters that still wouldn't qualify for capital punishment if it was committed on US soil. It wouldn't matter if they provided mountains of evidence, it would still be wrong, and yet they are providing zero evidence. We're just openly committing war crimes knowing that no one can really stop it. | | |
| ▲ | bawolff an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | > Murdering people for "committing" a nonviolent crime in international waters If that is the rationale usa used, then yes it would be an obvious war crime. You can't shoot people in war because they are guilty of a crime unless they can legitamently be targeted for some other reason. I think USA is probably going to try and spin it as they are members of an armed group USA is in an armed conflict with, and they were targeted on that basis and not because of any particular crime any particular person comitted. How convincing that is is debatable [ianal but it sounds pretty unconvincing to me], and you of course still have the problem of how exactly the US can claim self-defense against a foreign drug cartel. | | |
| ▲ | nickff an hour ago | parent [-] | | Could you please clarify this statement for me: >”You can't shoot people in war because they are guilty of a crime unless they can legitamently be targeted for some other reason.” From what I understand (and I am no expert), in a war, the default is that you can shoot someone if you believe them to be acting in a manner which is against your side’s interests (and have not surrendered while satisfying certain conditions). |
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| ▲ | gpm 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Is it war crimes when there's no war? Would actually be curious to learn if the answer is yes. Naively it seems like old fashioned murder without any special qualifier. I guess it could be both too? | | |
| ▲ | bawolff an hour ago | parent [-] | | War crimes require an armed conflict but not a "war". Note that declerations of war no longer really have meaning in international law and dont affect anything whether they are given or not. Armed conflict can be either international (e.g. between two countries) or non-international (e.g. you are atacking a non-state group. For example ISIS. However note that attacking a non-state group on the territory of a different state without permission of that state makes it be both.). War crimes apply to both types but the rules are slightly different between the two. Keep in mind also that people often colloquial use "war crimes" to mean any international crime, but technically its only one type. Crimes against humanity and genocide are technically not war crimes but a different category. They generally do not require an armed conflict (although often when they do happen its related to sone sort of armed conflict) Anyways this whole thing probably counts an armed conflict. I think at the least its a non-international armed conflict with the drug cartel. Attacking boats is usually an act of war even if they are in international waters, which might make it an international armed conflict with venuzula as well if the boats are connected to it (but the rules related to that im not really clear on and is a bit beyond my knoeledge). [IANAL] | | |
| ▲ | nickff an hour ago | parent [-] | | The possibility of this being an ‘act of war’ does seem very interesting, but I’m not sure Venezuela could claim it in this circumstance, as the vessels do not appear to be ‘flagged’. I would be interested to learn what the status of unflagged vessels is in international law, and I suspect there must be law on the subject, as pirates were typically unflagged. |
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| ▲ | Stranger43 38 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Taking the moral argument aside the fact that the largest best funded navy run by the wealthiest country have to call in airstrikes against barely(if at all) armed fishing vessels, that may or may not be smugglers, rather then board arrest and at least make an attempt at tracing the cash flow back to the wealthy businessmen who is organizing/funding the smuggling reeks of weakness and desperation rather then being the signal of strength and competency it's intended to be. Sure it's a widely understood and often repeated problem with especially western naval and military doctrine that the peace time buildup favors white elephants(battleships, F35s etc) that, as was the case of the British high see fleet of WWII, end up inactive while entire new(often much cheaper and less sophisticated) classes of ships like destroyer escorts or Patrol boats have to be build as replacements. But still the US haven't quite deteriorated so badly yet that it couldn't reacquire whatever boarding capacity got lost in the relentless pursuit of military industrial complex profits quite quickly. | |
| ▲ | geoffmunn 7 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Well luckily it turned out that they were all ne'er-do-wells so it's all good. Just like when the US used drones on Iraqi convoys and amazingly they were all Al-Qaeda sympathisers. | |
| ▲ | andrewinardeer 6 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Droning people without public evidence is nothing new for any POTUS in the last 20 years. | |
| ▲ | voganmother42 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The US gov cartel is ruthless - military members get to be murderers, but its good preparation for when they are deployed against US cities | |
| ▲ | VladVladikoff an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | There is a non zero chance one of these strikes was a mistake and instead hit an innocent fishing boat. Because humans make mistakes all the damn time. | | |
| ▲ | harddrivereque an hour ago | parent [-] | | Most of the released videos show speedboats without fishing equipment. For all intents and purposes, these speedboats might be medevac or just joyrides, but I would strongly count that they were fairly confidently related, to, uhm, the groups that were being referenced as being targeted officially. The sea allows for quite a bit more clearance regarding these things, mistakes can still happen, but are less likely than on densely populated areas on land.
Anyways these strikes don't change the big picture in terms of movement of the things that they move - the things that they move comes in on airplanes, trucks, containers, through tunnels, in pockets of people arriving, even in fishing/leisure boats. For all I know they could be easily moving it using homing pigeons. And you can pass the pigeons through the gaps in the wall. Sure, not as efficient as by speedboats,but the demand will make stuff move. The solution to this problem is complex, but solving it in the society is easier than trying to stop the flow... I mean, people would just start producing locally then. Either with the groups of people that are being targeted or without. | | |
| ▲ | nickff an hour ago | parent [-] | | It seems as though part of the rationale may relate to ‘defunding’ the Venezuelan government (as the current administration seems to disfavor them), which appears to be deriving a significant amount of revenue (which may not be going to the treasury) from granting ‘license’ for these traffickers to operate from their coast. |
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| ▲ | b00ty4breakfast 35 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | this kind of stuff lines up with the US military MO going back to at least 2008, when more than a few civilian wedding parties in Afghanistan were hit by drone strikes (not the last wedding party in the region to be blown up during the Obama administration). We can say that perhaps we are regressing but it is not really a new development. | |
| ▲ | Waterluvian 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | It’s not quite the same. It’s considerably more cowardly. |
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| ▲ | hentrep 30 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I submitted this link to HN with the Reddit title in quotes. Not sure why the quotes were removed, but I want to clarify that I am not the Reddit post author. |
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| ▲ | tomhow 3 minutes ago | parent [-] | | It's never been the case that an HN title like this is assumed to be a statement by the submitter. We always match the HN title to the original post's title, unless it's misleading or linkbait, as per the guidelines. Quotation marks are generally superfluous except, I think, if the article is about a quote. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html |
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| ▲ | breppp 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| [flagged] |
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