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Nov 29, 2025 - World

This commentary was originally published by Big Pivots. The Sand Creek Massacre comes to mind in reading about U.S. Rep. Jason Crow (D-CO), a decorated combat veteran who declared that members of the U.S. military must refuse illegal orders.“No one has to carry out orders that violate the law or our Constitution,” said Crow and five other members of Congress, all of them veterans of our armed forces or intelligence services, in a video posted last week.President Donald Trump went ballistic, branding them as traitors. “HANG THEM GEORGE WASHINGTON WOULD !!” said a social media post that Trump shared. He later backtracked, saying he didn’t actually call for their deaths. Not sure what hanging short of death looks like. Crow and other legislators did report death threats.Denver7 talked with a former U.S. Army officer, Joseph Jordan. His law firm specializes in defending service members under investigation. He cited the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which says service members must obey orders, unless they are “patently illegal,” such as one that “directs the commission of a crime.”But the code says those who disobey orders risk facing a court martial. A military judge decides if an order was lawful.Writing in the New York Times, David French, an attorney who served in Iraq, as did Crow, parsed details of the relevant federal law. Shooting a prisoner is unambiguously illegal, said French. Bombing a home that is thought to contain insurgents is not.Looming large is the legality of Trump’s orders to kill those on boats in the Caribbean who may — or may not — be carrying narcotics. Trump, said French, “has put the military in an impossible situation. He’s making its most senior leaders complicit in his unlawful acts, and he’s burdening the consciences of soldiers who serve under his command.”Captain refuses to killAt Sand Creek, on Nov. 29, 1864, Captain Silas Soule and Lieutenant Joseph Cramer refused to allow their men to participate in killing about 200 Cheyenne and Arapahoe natives, most of them women and children.The Great Plains in 1864 were contested territory. Colorado had become a U.S. territory in 1861, but the Cheyenne and other tribes who had migrated over the previous 150 years to build lives around the plentiful buffalo herds were not consulted. Friction was growing. Murders had occurred.Desperate to figure out a co-existence, a delegation of Arapahoe and Cheyenne leaders had traveled to Denver that September. Colorado’s territorial governor, John Evans, was present but remained largely silent. The natives left, believing they had been assured safety if they remained in place in southeastern Colorado. About 350 of them and various other individuals were camped along the dry creek bed that November.Colonel John Chivington had other ideas. He was a hero from an 1864 Civil War battle in New Mexico. He had been at the peace negotiations that September. But perhaps hoping to embellish his reputation and win a seat in Congress, Chivington set out from Denver for Fort Lyons, near today’s Las Animas. There, he detained anybody who he thought would interfere with his plans.Marching overnight, Chivington and his men arrived at the Sand Creek encampment at dawn. The natives had hoisted the American flag amid their teepees, but it did them no good. A triumphant Chivington and his men returned to Denver hoisting scalps. They were welcomed as heroes.Some saw them otherwise. Soule and Cramer, horrified by what they had seen, wrote impassioned letters to their commanding officer, Major Edward Wynkoop. The Army held hearings several months later. Soule did not live long enough to be fully vindicated. He was assassinated in Denver the next April. Both Soule and Evans are buried at Riverside Cemetery, north of downtown Denver.Among many accomplishments, Evans helped found both Northwestern University in Illinois and the University of Denver. In 2014, both universities commissioned reports examining the culpability of Evans in the massacre. The Northwestern report was slightly more restrained, but both found Evans bore responsibility for helping create the circumstances. More than any other political official in Colorado Territory, said the DU report, Evans “created the conditions in which the massacre was highly likely.”Soule’s grave is marked by a simple white tombstone along with other veterans. The grave of Evans is large and imposing. Last Memorial Day, I found flowers, a flag and a testimonial at the grave of Silas Soule. Others had visited, too. As for the tombstone of Evans, I saw nothing. He had remained silent in 1864, when leadership was needed.Allen Best is a Colorado-based journalist who publishes an e-magazine called Big Pivots. Reach him at [email protected].

Nov 29, 2025 - World

Another 191 missing after heavy rains from Cyclone Ditwah while almost 78,000 evacuated to temporary shelters amid rescue operationsTorrential rains and floods triggered by Cyclone Ditwah have killed 153 people across Sri Lanka so far, with another 191 still missing, the country’s Disaster Management Centre (DCM) said on Saturday.The DMC director general, Sampath Kotuwegoda, said relief operations were under way with 78,000 people moved to nearly 800 state-run welfare centres after their homes were destroyed by the week-long heavy rains. Continue reading...

Nov 29, 2025 - World

Newsmax host T.W. Shannon exploded at his guest Saturday after they rebuked his condemnation of those criticizing the Trump administration’s potentially illegal military orders, calling his guest’s remarks "outrageous."“We're seeing the left now comparing our troops to Nazis!” Shannon proclaimed, pointing to remarks from Glenn Kirschner, an attorney and former U.S. Army prosecutor. Appearing recently on MS NOW, Kirschner spoke in support of the Democratic lawmakers who urged service members to defy unlawful orders.“If you're committing offenses, and your defense is going to be 'I was just following orders,' you know, that didn't work out so well at Nuremberg,” Kirschner said, referring to the military tribunals held after World War II to prosecute high-ranking Nazi officials.Following the clip, Shannon tried to get a consensus among his two guests – Joe Conason, editor-in-chief at National Memo, and Jeffrey Lord, columnist for The American Spectator – but failed to convince both of them.“Now Joe, surely we're at a point where we can all agree that comparing United States service members to Nazis is over and beyond the pale?” Shannon asked.“I don't think that's what he did, he clearly didn't do that if you listen to the clip,” Conason said. “The point is that if you follow illegal orders, you're imitating some of the worst figures in history, and we have a record with [President] Donald Trump of issuing illegal orders.”Conason went on to argue that Secretary of War Pete Hegseth – who’s carried out a number of strikes in the Caribbean at the direction of Trump targeting suspected drug traffickers, strikes that have been called illegal “extrajudicial killings” – had already violated the law with his remarks condemning the Democratic lawmakers – specifically Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) – who urged service members to defy illegal orders.“What's funny is that Hegseth clearly has no idea of what the legality of anything is!” Conason said. “He, by basically publicly convicting Mark Kelly in his remarks, violated the Uniform Code of Military Conduct himself!”Shannon went on to call Conason’s remarks “outrageous,” and encouraged his other guest to rebuke them. Lord was happy to oblige, declaring there to be “nothing illegal” about the Trump administration’s strikes on suspected drug traffickers at sea.Conason wasn’t done yet, however, and tore into Hegseth and the Trump administration for what he called their “real touch of evil.”“The question is how do you stop illegal drug smuggling? Do you murder people in advance of any showing that they were doing anything like that, or would you arrest them on the high seas as we've done in the past?” Conason said. “Or, do you just blow up boats and kill the survivors? I mean, that was the real touch of evil here. Apparently, Secretary Hegseth was informed that there were survivors of a strike and then told somebody to 'kill them all.'

Nov 28, 2025 - World

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth reportedly delivered an order in the first attack on a suspected drug boat that lawmakers have blasted as excessive and "blatantly illegal."President Donald Trump's Pentagon chief ordered a missile attack on the boat Sept. 2 off the Trinidad coast, but intelligence analysts and military leaders watching drone footage of the strike realized after the smoke cleared there were two survivors clinging to the wreckage – and the Washington Post reported that Hegseth gave another verbal directive.“The order was to kill everybody,” said a source with direct knowledge of the situation.The Special Operations commander overseeing the attack ordered another strike at Hegseth's instruction, and the two men were blown apart in the water – which a former military lawyer said "amounts to murder."An order to strike the defenseless men "would in essence be an order to show no quarter, which would be a war crime,” said Todd Huntley, who advised Special Operations forces during U.S. counterterrorism campaign is now director of the national security law program at Georgetown Law.The elite SEAL Team 6 led the attack, according to four sources with direct knowledge of the matter, and the operations commander, Adm. Frank M. “Mitch” Bradley, told others on the secure conference call that the survivors were legitimate targets because they might have been able to call other traffickers to come get them and their cargo.The Pentagon has since struck at least 22 more boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean, killing another 71 alleged drug smugglers.Later the same day, Trump released a redacted 29-second video of the Sept. 2 attack, which didn't show the follow-up strike, but one person who saw the live feed said people would be horrified if the entire video was made public.Joint Special Operations Command, or JSOC, reported to the White House that the “double-tap,” or follow-on strike, was intended to sink the boat and remove a possible hazard to other ships, and not to kill survivors, and a similar explanation was given to lawmakers in closed-door briefings.“The idea that wreckage from one small boat in a vast ocean is a hazard to marine traffic is patently absurd, and killing survivors is blatantly illegal,” said Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA), a Marine Corps veteran and Trump critic who was briefed on the strikes with other members of the House Armed Services Committee. “Mark my words: It may take some time, but Americans will be prosecuted for this, either as a war crime or outright murder.”

Nov 28, 2025 - World

Duduzile Zuma-Sambudla quits as MP after being accused of recruiting 17 men who are trapped in war-torn UkraineA daughter of the former South African president Jacob Zuma has resigned as an MP, after being accused of tricking 17 South African men into fighting for Russia in Ukraine by telling them they were travelling to Russia to train as bodyguards for the Zumas’ uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) party.Duduzile Zuma-Sambudla, 43, the most visible and active in politics of her siblings, volunteered to resign and step back from public roles while cooperating with a police investigation and working to bring the men home, the MK chair, Nkosinathi Nhleko, said at a press conference in Durban. Continue reading...