Open Blogging
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It’s Black Friday and we hope that you’ll use our Amazon link for shopping.
We get a little kickback and a little is a lot these days…
It’s all yours today…
I just finished Georges Bernanos’ “Monsieur Ouine”. The titular character is personally enigmatic and morally ambivalent. He cultivates relationships with other characters who sooner or later suffer and die seemingly as a result of his influence; bad and even horrific things seem to follow in his wake, not just to individuals or households, but to the entire French country parish that the novel takes place in. He seems to collect people like a collector of specimens; his presence and observation of them alone seems to subtly alter, or perhaps tease out, their fate. As repulsive as he seems both physically and morally at times, he is somehow not an altogether unsympathetic character. He dies at the end of the novel under mysterious circumstances, while having a long dialogue with his newest young specimen, Steeny, who, even more than the reader, is both repulsed and drawn to his new “teacher”.
When I asked the internet whether Monsieur Ouine was damned at the end of Bernanos’ novel, one of the things the AI app replied was this: “While some critics view Ouine as an allegorical representation of a dying, post-Christian civilization and the ultimate consequences of a rejection of God, Bernanos’ broader theology in his works insists on the constant possibility of divine mercy and grace, even for the greatest sinners. The final moments, where he acknowledges his own emptiness and perhaps desires redemption, suggests that it is impossible, at the end of anyone’s life, for others to know if they have passed beyond the event horizon of God’s grace.”
Let us hope not. Let us hope that Monsieur Ouine did not pass beyond the event horizon of God’s grace. Let us hope and pray not.
New video showing that, after an attack on an alleged “drug boat” by U.S. military, two survivors clung to the debris of the wreck. As per the order of the head of the Department of War, the leader of the operation called in second strike which killed the survivors.
As a political entity, how has is this nation different from a terrorist group? I really want to know; explain it to me. Make the intentional killing of unarmed and helpless individuals, no quarter given, seem anything less than terrorism to me, anything morally less than cold-blooded murder.
That my tax dollars enabled this nauseates me.
Yes, indeed, God is an interventionist God, always and everywhere intervening. If he wasn’t, if his love wasn’t intervening at all times and in all places for everyone and everything, we and the entire world would immediately cease to exist.
@ Robert F,
This what America voted for.
@Muff Potter,
Trump says he plans to pardon ex-president of Honduras, who was convicted and serving sentence in U.S. for drug trafficking to the U.S.; as he’s starting a war against Venezuela for fake charges of trafficking drugs to the U.S. If Maduro just gives Trump whatever he wants (maybe Venezuelan oil rights, ya think?) and kisses his butt he too may walk away scot-free.
Our country is being run as if it were a mafia operation.
The Boss has announced that airspace over Venezuela is closed to all air traffic. He warns that any flight over the country will be at risk. The risk is that The Boss’s Capos may shoot it down. But the good news is, The Boss is providing “protection” from such a tragic eventuality — just do as he says and nobody gets hurt.
The Interventionist God essay is wonderful, timely, and helpful. We could use some intervention on both large scale issues and small, but especially in our hearts and minds.
Robert F,
What was done was a war crime, period. As a result, Pete Hegseth, along with every member of the US military that passed along, followed and executed those orders should be made to perform the Spandau Ballet. The “I was only following orders” excuse didn’t work in Nuremberg and members of the German military ended up doing the same dance.
https://reason.com/2025/12/01/hegseths-alleged-order-to-kill-everybody-complicates-trumps-defense-of-his-murderous-anti-drug-campaign/
And Reason is hardly a leftist, progressive publication.
Robert F,
Trump and his allies argue that they are enemy combatants, so all the due process, and criminal procedures do not apply to these alleged drug smugglers.
If that is the case, then they committed war crimes.
The death penalty for war crimes is specified in the following:
18 U.S. Code § 2441 – War crimes
(a) Offense.—
Whoever, whether inside or outside the United States, commits a war crime, in any of the circumstances described in subsection (b), shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for life or any term of years, or both, and if death results to the victim, shall also be subject to the penalty of death.
The specific war crime would be under Article 23 (d) of the Hague Convention.
Since the 2nd strike killed the 2 survivors, the death penalty under 18 USC 2441 (a) applies.
Ra’s al Ghul,
Venezuela is not at war with us, those boats were not attacking our military or our country, they were not headed to our country. This is not about interdicting drugs; if it were, Trump would not have just pardoned a convicted drug trafficker who facilitated the importation of enormous amounts of cocaine into our country. This is about Venezuelan oil, and Trump’s desire to get control of it for himself and his billionaire friends. What American forces are doing in the Caribbean is committing unprovoked atrocities against civilians in service of Trump’s avarice, which is as bad as “beheading infidels”. We are the terrorists in this situation, no better than ISIL/ISIS; motivating our terrorism is greed and hunger for power — that old time American religion.
Robert F,
I understand that.
My point is that even _IF_ their claim that they are enemy combatants was valid (which it is not), they would be committing war crimes under the Geneva and Hague Conventions. IOW, the drug smugglers are either criminals (and such have to be apprehended, tried, etc.) and not murdered OR they are enemy combatants in which case ALL the rules of war apply and the no quarter incident of killing those boat strike survivors would be a war crime. Also, the War Powers Act and other Congressional powers would come into play. it is one or the other. They cannot have it both ways.
Ra’s al Ghul,
I understand. They shouldn’t be able to have it both ways, but the only logic they recognize is that of raw power. The sad fact that most Americans don’t really care about the death of faceless poor people on the Caribbean is what enables Trump’s refusal to be accountable to logic, rationality, and morality. America is culpable.
I never thought in a million years that my Nation would start a slide into Fascism, but it has.
Admiral Bradley’s briefing of Congress about his double-strike on the boat in the Caribbean, the second of which was designed to kill two survivors clinging to the wreckage of the boat, which it did, is yet another proof that all those who said the officers and other military would never obey illegal orders just didn’t know that they were talking about. The Admiral believes killing helpless survivors of unprovoked attacks is perfectly fine; and there are plenty of high-ranking officers in the Pentagon, and regular soldiers in the military, who agree with his morally depraved thinking, enough of them to enable Trump’s most authoritarian intentions against the people of America.