Boat Strike Survivors Say They Were Captured, Tortured by US Forces

“They treated us like animals,” said an Ecuadorian fisher who survived an attack on the Don Maca.


Jessica Corbett
Apr 21, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

President Donald Trump, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and US Southern Command have repeatedly taken to social media to brag about deadly boat bombings supposedly targeting drug traffickers in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean for nearly eight months. On Tuesday, survivors of some alleged US strikes on fishing boats accused American forces of torture.

The Ecuadorian fishing boat La Fiorella “went up in smoke” on January 20, and “the eight fishermen aboard have not been seen since,” Camila Lourdes Galarza reported for Drop Site News on Tuesday. “Now, 36 survivors of two Pacific attacks fitting a similar profile alleged that they were abducted and tortured by American forces and taken by boat all the way to El Salvador before being returned to Ecuador.”




The journalist spoke with attorneys, relatives, and survivors, including Hernán Flores, captain of La Negra Francisca Duarte II, which was bombed by a drone with a yellow cylinder on March 17. Flores said: “A lot of us had wounds all over our bodies from the explosion. One young man was bleeding so much he filled the floor of our lifeboat with blood... The drone had flown through our cabin window, torn my nephew’s foot so bad you could see flesh and bone, and made the boat’s roof cave in on the back of my neck. A few seconds later, an explosion shook the boat, causing a terrible ringing in our ears. Out of exasperation, the guys threw themselves into the water, some without life jackets, even the ones who don’t know how to swim.”

The survivors made their way to a blue boat with “spear” on the hull, full of armed, blond, English-speaking men in camouflage uniforms—who drew their guns, handcuffed the fishers, put hoods over their heads, and held them on the vessel’s “scorching metal deck for over 24 hours, blistering their skin,” Galarza reported. They were only given a bottle of water, and “all but one fisherman were denied medical attention, despite the severity of what they had just endured.”

They were eventually returned to Ecuador, where Trump has recently deployed US forces for a joint campaign targeting “narco-terrorists.” However, first, they were turned over to El Salvador’s Coast Guard—which, on April 3, also intercepted 20 more Ecuadorian fishers with “vision and hearing loss, bruised limbs, and perforated arms.”

According to Galarza, those fishers had been aboard the Don Maca, and “they reported a strikingly similar account of an alleged attack by US soldiers: a bombarded boat, a round of bullets, and no due process.” Sebastián Palacios, one of the survivors allegedly held hostage for eight days, said that “they treated us like animals.”


Galarza noted that US SOUTHCOM directed questions about all three incidents to Ecuador, whose Port Authority hung up after hearing that a phone call requesting comment was from journalists.

Harriet Barber got a similar response from SOUTHCOM for her Tuesday reporting on the Don Maca attack in The Guardian. The journalist spoke with survivors, including Palacios, as well as an attorney representing the crew, Fernando Bastias Robayo of the Human Rights Council.

“A US vessel intercepted them and forced them aboard. Once they were detained, their fishing boat was blown up,” said the lawyer. “They were arbitrarily hooded and later abandoned on the Salvadorian coast. Any apprehension followed by incommunicado detention constitutes an enforced disappearance.”

“It was a form of psychological torture, not knowing what’s really going to happen to your life and having your face covered,” he added.

Palacios told Barber that “I get scared in the middle of the night. I can’t sleep well. My ears still hurt... I think that’s it for me. I’m done with fishing. Going back out there is impossible. I thought they were going to kill us.”

Tuesday’s reporting came just two days after SOUTHCOM announced on social media that “Joint Task Force Southern Spear conducted a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel operated by designated terrorist organizations... along known narco-trafficking routes in the Caribbean,” killing three alleged “male narco-terrorists.”

Sunday’s strike brought the death toll from Trump’s boat-bombing campaign to at least 180, according to The New York Times. The Intercept’s tally is 181, while the Washington Office on Latin America believes 182 people are dead. Critics of the campaign have accused the US administration of “war crimes, murder, or both.”

Responding to Trump’s latest confirmed attack, Amnesty International USA on Monday condemned “three more murders at sea” and declared that “Congress must act to stop these bombings.”

So far, both chambers of the Republican-controlled Congress have refused to pass war powers resolutions aimed at halting Trump’s boat strikes. Similar measures targeting his aggression toward Venezuela and Iran have also failed to advance.

‘You Dirty Orange Maniac!’: The President of Ultimate Destruction

Sadly, as crazed as Donald Trump may be — and he clearly is a deeply disturbed (and, of course, disturbing) human being — when it comes to war and the burning of fossil fuels, he’s been anything but alone as president of the United States.


Orange blow-up garbagemen Donald Trump speaks at Green Bay airport
(Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Tom Engelhardt
Apr 21, 2026

TomDispatch


When he’s on full blast, Donald Trump (not so long ago the “drill, baby, drill” candidate for president) is distinctly a furnace. And he seems intent on turning this planet, our only world, into a version of the same. But here’s the strange thing, when it comes to almost anything — from Iran to suddenly firing two key women, Pam Bondi and Kristi Noem, in his government (but certainly not the no-less-chaotic men) — there’s no minute, it seems, when he’s not flipping himself on his head and then spinning or stumbling or catapulting off in a new direction. There’s only one exception I’ve noticed and, all too sadly, that’s climate change, where everything he does — every single thing — is guaranteed to be a disaster for our children and grandchildren.

Recently, of course, he’s launched a nightmarish war, by definition a gigantic producer of greenhouse gases, that’s literally been all about oil and natural gas, thanks in part to the now chaotic, largely blocked Strait of Hormuz through which a quarter of humanity’s sea-borne oil and a fifth of its natural gas used to pass. And if you don’t believe me about it being a nightmare, just check out the most recent prices at your neighborhood gas station. Consider it an irony, then, that his disastrous Iranian war will undoubtedly lead in a direction — to the use of more green energy globally — that, if he ever thought about it, he would hate more than just about anything else. He has, of course, referred to environmentalists as “terrorists.” (“They are terrorists. I call them environmental terrorists.”) And in this country, over his two presidencies, he’s done his damnedest to attack and try to block wind and solar power projects in every imaginable way, even though, globally, green power is growing fast and getting ever cheaper.

And here’s the reality of our moment for which we do need to give Donald Trump credit: once upon a time, you couldn’t have made any of this up — or, of course, have made up Donald Trump as president of the United States (twice!). If you had, it would have seemed like the least believable science fiction novel ever written. Not that I drive a car in New York City (the subway and buses work fine for me), but as I was writing this piece, of course, the price of gas had also edged up in my city to almost four dollars a gallon and a (possibly global) recession is on the horizon. (Thank you, Donald Trump!)

Of course, in launching his recent war against Iran, however incoherently, “the PEACE PRESIDENT” (and yes, he’s into CAPS when it comes to himself) was, all too sadly, in good company, historically speaking. Since victory in World War II, from Korea to Vietnam to Afghanistan to Iraq and now to Iran (to mention only the big conflicts of that all-American era), our presidents have had quite a knack (if such a word can even be used) for starting wars, none (not a one!) of which has ended in anything faintly like victory. And it’s already obvious — you don’t need to have the slightest knack for seeing into the future to know this — that Donald Trump’s version of the same in Iran will prove to be a global disaster, made worse by the fact that, in the process, whether he faintly grasps it or not, he’s also launched another brutally losing war against Planet Earth.

And the worst thing is that I feel I’ve written all of this before. And before Trump — well, “leaves” is far too mild a word for it — abandons (??) the presidency, I could end up writing it again and again, and we would still be in the world — all too literally his world — from hell. Of course, for all we know, Donald J. Trump could decide to crown himself president and try to launch a third term in office that would, if successful, turn the constitution into an historical relic.

“The Only Orange Monarch I Want Is a Butterfly.”

The other week, feeling as I do about “our” president, I went to New York City’s “No Kings” rally. It was gigantic (though you wouldn’t have known that, had you read my hometown paper, the New York Times, in the days that followed). It started on 59th Street where Central Park ends, with masses of marchers on both Seventh and Eighth Avenue, heading for 34th Street. By getting there early, I made it to the front of the crowd on Seventh Avenue at the head of that vast mass of protesting humanity and, once it started, I wove my way in and out of the crowd, back and forth, downtown and uptown again, jotting in a little notebook some of the thousands of homemade signs people were carrying.

When I finally reached Broadway and 42nd Street, I stepped up on the sidewalk and looked back. To my amazement, I could see all the way to 57th Street where we had begun, and that significant-sized avenue was still totally — and I mean totally — packed right back to Central Park. And mind you, this old man was just one of an estimated more than eight million Americans who turned out at more than 3,000 rallies across the United States that day, in communities huge and microscopic, to protest the world Donald Trump has dumped on, spilled all over, and is continuing to roil and broil.

And, yes, it did seem like every third person (even the two demonstrators dressed as plastic tigers) was carrying a homemade sign. I doubt I had ever seen so many of them at any past demonstration. I was scrawling a number of them down in a little notebook, and they ranged from “Fight Truth Decay” and “Grandma says, ICE is not nice!” to “It’s a good thing Congress isn’t alive to see this” and “The only orange Monarch I want is a butterfly.”

And then there was the one carried by a bearded man that caught my attention: “You dirty ORANGE maniac! You blew it all up! Damn you to hell!” And I thought to myself, boy, is that painfully accurate. In his own fashion, among all the things he hasn’t succeeded in accomplishing, he has indeed been blowing it all up in a striking fashion and, unfortunately, potentially damning my children and grandchildren (and yours) to a literal planet from hell.

And sadly, as crazed as Donald Trump may be — and he clearly is a deeply disturbed (and, of course, disturbing) human being — when it comes to war and the burning of fossil fuels, he’s been anything but alone as president of the United States. After all, in these decades, war has been this country’s middle name and we’ve been burning fossil fuels to fight them as if… well, as if there would indeed be no tomorrow(s). And in his two terms in office, Trump and crew have gone with a passion after any form of clean, renewable energy that wouldn’t blister us all. Only recently, for instance, the Guardian (which is superb when it comes to climate-change coverage) was the only publication I saw that reported on new research in Nature magazine showing that this country has caused “an eye-watering $10tn [yes, that’s trillion!] in global damages to the world over the past three decades through its vast planet-heating emissions, with a quarter of this economic pain inflicted upon itself.”

Consider it something of an unintended irony, then, that the crew President Trump and his administration have put so much of themselves into goes by the acronym ICE. In fact, wouldn’t you have thought that “ICE” would be a curse word for President Trump and that, when it comes to creating an immigration hell on earth, his crew of manic enforcers would have been known as “HEAT”? Which reminds me that, at the No Kings rally, I noted an older woman carrying a homemade sign all too appropriately saying: “Deport Trump! Make ICE useful.”

And thanks to his brutal assault on Iran, this planet is only going to get hotter yet, as war releases staggering amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere! Honestly, back in 2016, even if you had let your mind run in wild and unbelievably crazy directions, you simply couldn’t have made up Donald Trump’s planet as it is now, could you? Who could have imagined that the president of the United States, after launching a war with Iran in the Strait of Hormuz, would attack European countries for not joining him, saying, “You’ll have to start learning how to fight for yourself, the U.S.A. won’t be there to help you anymore, just like you weren’t there for us.”

And remind me, who has Donald Trump been there for, other than the major fossil fuel companies that backed him so radiantly in the 2024 election and are now getting a remarkable return on their investment?

Giving Decline New Meaning

Of course, to put all of this in some kind of perspective, sooner or later great imperial powers do go down and the United States has been the number one imperial power on this planet since the end of World War II, with its only true competitor (until China rose well into this century), the Soviet Union, which collapsed in a heap in 1991. So, it shouldn’t be surprising that this country, which, singularly in human history, once reigned more or less supreme on Planet Earth, should finally have begun its own decline, while turning over investment in present and future green energy to China.

But of course, there’s decline and then, in ICE terms, there’s DECLINE!!! And Donald Trump is threatening to turn imperial decline, something known throughout history, into a distinctly new phenomenon. Even declining imperial powers haven’t usually had such a mad ruler or leader. And he does seem remarkably intent, in his own increasingly confused way, on taking this country down with him. The difference, historically, is that until now no imperial ruler had the chance to take down not just his (almost never her) country, but (after a fashion) our planet (at least as a livable place for us), too. And he does seem remarkably intent on continuing to fossil-fuelize our world in a disastrous fashion.

Of course, at this very moment, we’re all watching his approval ratings generally (and particularly on the economy) begin to tank. (Oh wait, my mistake! A tank is a war vehicle, and right now that reference only applies to Israel, which recently lost a remarkable number of tanks in southern Lebanon.) But “our” president has also focused a significant part of his administration on ending anything that could benefit the climate, while burning fossil fuels in a fashion that should be considered beyond incendiary. That includes recently agreeing to offer almost a billion dollars to a French energy company to abandon a project to construct wind farms off the East Coast of this country (as long as it was willing to reinvest that sum in future oil and gas projects here instead).

Yes, someday he could well be seen not just as the president of decline but potentially of ultimate devastation and that flaming red tie of his could end up having a symbolic significance that, once upon a time, no one might have imagined. No wonder that sign I saw on the No King’s Day march — and let me repeat it here one more time: “You dirty ORANGE maniac! You blew it all up! Damn you to hell!” — sticks in my mind. It predicts the very future that, unbelievably enough, 49.8% of American voters tried to usher in again in 2024.

Once upon a time, who could ever have imagined either Donald Trump as president of these (increasingly dis-)United States or such a possible fate?


© 2023 TomDispatch.com


Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project, runs the Type Media Center's TomDispatch.com. His books include: "A Nation Unmade by War" (2018, Dispatch Books), "Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World" (2014, with an introduction by Glenn Greenwald), "Terminator Planet: The First History of Drone Warfare, 2001-2050"(co-authored with Nick Turse), "The United States of Fear" (2011), "The American Way of War: How Bush's Wars Became Obama's" (2010), and "The End of Victory Culture: a History of the Cold War and Beyond" (2007).
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Of All the War Crimes IDF Carrying Out in Lebanon, Israel Reserves Outrage for Destruction of Jesus Statue

“Israeli soldiers have been posting images of their war crimes and cultural desecration for two and a half years straight without interruption,” said one journalist.



An Israel Defense Forces soldier is seen smashing the head of a statue of Jesus Christ in southern Lebanon in April 2026.
(Photo via @ytirawi/X)

Julia Conley
Apr 20, 2026
COMMON DREAMS


The Israel Defense Forces have spent close to two months in Lebanon killing more than 2,100 people, destroying an estimated 1,000 homes—sometimes leveling entire communities—blowing up schools, bombing healthcare infrastructure, and forcibly displacing more than 1 million people, including close to 400,000 children.

But so far, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has spoken out against just one attack on civilian infrastructure—saying on Monday that he condemned “in the strongest terms” an image that went viral over the weekend of an IDF soldier taking a sledgehammer to the head of a statue of Jesus Christ in southern Lebanon.

“Of all the shocking war crimes [Palestinian journalist] Younis Tirawi has exposed, it’s the sledgehammer to a Jesus statue... that finally gets Netanyahu to comment,” said Drop Site News co-founder Ryan Grim, referring to the reporter who posted the image on social media.

Tirawi reported that the statue belonged to the Christian town of Debel, which the Catholic Near East Welfare Association said last week is home to 1,700 people who have been “in total isolation” in recent weeks as the Israeli occupation has forced the Lebanese Army to withdraw from the area. CNEWA said an archbishop in the village has tried to get an aid convoy to Debel, where residents earlier this month had no safe drinking water and enough food to last “no more than two days,” but the IDF’s shelling in the area has forced air trucks to turn back.

“If [Netanyahu] finds this one offensive,” said Grim of the photo of the IDF soldier, “I suggest he not scroll the last few years of posts from Younis Tirawi.”

Tirawi reported extensively on the IDF’s destruction of civilian infrastructure in Gaza. He posted a video on social media on April 11 of the IDF demolishing a United Nations school in the southern part of the exclave, and one on April 10 that showed a double-tap strike that killed 33-year-old Palestinian Man Yousef Mansour in al-Mawasi.

Netanyahu said in an interview with Newsmax last week that Israel “is the only country in the Middle East and one of the few countries in the world who stands up for Christians.”

In a statement Monday, the IDF said that it is “operating to dismantle the terrorist infrastructure established by Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, and has no intention of harming civilian infrastructure, including religious buildings or religious symbols.”



But the destruction of the Jesus statue in Debel came after a double-tap strike that killed Father Pierre al-Rahi, a Manonite Catholic priest, in another southern Lebanese town last month. Historic Christian churches have also been destroyed by IDF attacks in Gaza.

“The smashing of Christ’s statue in Lebanon is latest example of the impunity with which Israeli soldiers have attacked and desecrated religious sites in occupied Palestinian territories,” said TRT World.

War correspondent Steve Sweeney, who is based in Beirut, shared footage of a church the IDF destroyed in southern Lebanon in October 2024, in an attack that killed at least eight people.



Sweeney also noted that a month after that attack, Israeli soldiers “desecrated the St. Mema Church in the Christian village of Deir Mimas, southern Lebanon.”

The IDF “said the conduct was contrary to its values” at the time, said Sweeney.

Despite officials’ expressions of shock on Monday, “Israeli soldiers have been posting images of their war crimes and cultural desecration for two and a half years straight without interruption,” said Grim.

UN experts have warned as Israel has carried out its attacks in Lebanon since early March that “deliberately attacking civilians or civilian objects amounts to a war crime.”

While the destruction of the Jesus statue drew condemnation Monday from Netanyahu, the IDF, and US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee—who called for “swift, severe, and public consequences”—it was far from the only attack waged by Israel in Lebanon over the weekend.

Despite a ceasefire that was announced Friday and a statement from President Donald Trump that further IDF attacks were “PROHIBITED,” Israel continued demolishing infrastructure and shelling areas in southern Lebanon over the weekend, and three people were injured in an Israeli drone strike near the Litani River on Monday.

 

Light can twist matter in unexpected ways

A new method reveals a hidden property of light that could power future nanomachines

Hokkaido University

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A “micro-drone” holds a nanostructure at its center, while four laser beams trap and control the platform. 

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Credit: Ryoma Fukuhara et al., Nature Physics. April 20, 2026

Light does more than illuminate the world—it can also push and twist matter. It was back in the 1870s that James Clerk Maxwell first predicted that light carries momentum and can exert pressure on objects. Nearly a century later, in the 1970s, Arthur Ashkin asked why not use this property of light to hold and push around tiny particles. He developed optical tweezers that use focused laser beams to trap and move nanoscale objects.

While scientists have long known that light can exert small forces, detecting them has been extremely difficult. Objects at this scale are constantly jostled by random thermal motion, making the subtle influence of light hard to measure.

Now, researchers at Hokkaido University have developed a new method to measure these small forces with high precision. They then used the new technique to discover a surprising phenomenon in which light can twist tiny objects sideways, in a direction that is perpendicular to the light’s direction of travel.

“We developed a novel measurement platform called the ‘micro-drone,’ which enables, for the first time, full three-dimensional characterization of optical forces and torques acting on nanostructures,” says Professor Yoshito Y. Tanaka of Hokkaido University.

The idea is simple: place the nanostructure to be studied at the center of a tiny, cross-shaped platform, or “micro-drone.” Then use four laser beams to hold the platform in place, like invisible tweezers gripping its corners. By carefully tracking how the platform moves and rotates, researchers can then infer the forces acting on the nanostructure inside.

“Optical tweezers have been a powerful tool since Arthur Ashkin’s pioneering work, recognized with the Nobel Prize in 2018,” says Tanaka. “Using them, conventional methods could only measure rotation of an object along a single axis. Our approach overcomes this limitation by measuring not the nanostructure itself but the platform containing the nanostructure.”

The new method allows scientists to measure motion and rotation in all directions—capturing a complete three-dimensional picture. In effect, it converts extremely small, hard-to-detect nanoscale forces into larger, measurable movements of the micro-platform.

The team tested their approach using tiny gold structures shaped like the letter “V.” Using the new method, when these structures were placed inside the platform and illuminated with light, they exhibited an unusual behavior known as transverse optical torque, meaning that instead of twisting themselves along the direction of light, they rotated sideways.

“We were able to observe, using the new method, a phenomenon that had not been experimentally observed before: transverse optical torque acting at the nanoscale,” says Tanaka.

Even more surprising was what led to this effect. Scientists had predicted that such a twisting effect would be controlled by the light’s angular momentum. But instead, the researchers found that it depends on a more subtle property called optical helicity—a measure of the “handedness,” or twist of the light’s electromagnetic field. They showed this by designing experiments that canceled the light’s angular momentum while preserving its helicity. The sideways torque still remained, confirming that helicity plays the dominant role.

This discovery provides new insight into how light interacts with matter at extremely small scales.

It opens up new possibilities for using light to precisely control nanoscale objects. Potential applications include light-driven nanomachines and advanced sensing technologies.

“This work represents a new measurement paradigm for nanoscale optomechanics,” says Tanaka. “Just as optical tweezers opened a new field in single-molecule biophysics, we hope this platform will unlock access to nanoscale mechanical phenomena that have so far remained beyond reach.”

---

Journal

Nature Physics

DOI

10.1038/s41567-026-03268-6 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Transverse Optical Torque observed at the Nanoscale.

Article Publication Date

20-Apr-2026

Attacked & Kidnapped at Sea, Ecuador Fishermen Allege US Role

Peoples Dispatch | 18 Apr 2026

• 
  

Several fishermen told the newspaper Primicias that they had been attacked, kidnapped, and taken to El Salvador by US ships. The families of several missing fishermen fear that this may have been the fate of their loved ones.

Some of the Ecuadorian fishermen that were aboard the 'Don Maca' boat that was attacked at sea last month.

An Ecuadorian fisherman made a shocking allegation in a recent report published by the newspaper Primicias. Erick Fabricio Coello Saltos claimed that he and 19 other fishermen were attacked on the high seas by drones and then kidnapped by a US vessel.

According to his testimony, they were hooded, held in a sort of container, and transported for over a week to El Salvador. There, the Ecuadorian fishermen were handed over to local authorities who, after medical evaluations, kept them in a reception center until their deportation to Manta (costing their families nearly USD 400).

Upon his return to Ecuador, 27-year-old Coello reported that he lost nearly 90% of his vision, and that his eardrums suffered significant damage from the powerful explosion that rocked the “Don Maca”. His left eardrum is perforated, and his right one is permanently ruined. In addition, the fisherman says he suffers from nightmares and has filed a series of petitions to obtain funds to treat his physical and psychological ailments.

“What we went through was very hard; I’m left with that trauma. Sometimes I get scared at night; it comes back to my mind. I’m giving up this life as a fisherman for good. I would never go fishing again … I was the person most affected on the boat, because it all happened while I was hanging my clothes up in the cabin and couldn’t get down,” Coello told the newspaper Primicias.

According to him, he needs 7,000 USD for eye surgery and another 4,500 USD for a procedure on his eardrums, in addition to the nearly 60 USD a day he spends on doctor’s visits. Several raffles and bingo games have been organized in Manta to raise funds; however, Coello has requested assistance from the authorities and has yet to receive a response.

Chronicle of an attack

Coello states that the attack took place on the high seas. The fishermen set out from the Port of Manta, located in the province of Manabí, on March 17, aboard the “Don Maca” along with six trawlers, which are used by fishermen on the high seas to catch fish and then load the catch onto the mother ship.

One night, after several days at sea, they spotted a vessel unfamiliar to the fishermen’s daily operations approaching the “Don Maca” that, according to Coello, resembled a tuna boat. Shortly after, they observed a drone approaching their vessel and then flying away. Coello says that he recorded a video of the drone and sent it to his father.

Two days later, the attack occurred: “Suddenly there was an explosion, and then another; I was covered in blood.” After that, the Ecuadorian fisherman, the father of a 4-year-old autistic boy, recounts that some fishermen took a small boat and approached the strange vessel. There, they were asked how many of them there were, how many were injured, and to bring all the fishermen to their boat. The fishermen obeyed.

There, the fishermen claim they were hooded, handcuffed, and locked up until they arrived in El Salvador. According to Coello, the alleged captors told Salvadoran authorities that their encounter was accidental, but he says that’s a lie: “The gringos told them they’d found us in the water, lying there, adrift, shipwrecked. But that’s not how it happened.”

Other vessels attacked and missing

The “Don Maca” incident does not appear to be the only case of attacks on Ecuadorian vessels on the high seas. Several days ago, the missing crew members of the vessel “Negra Francisca Duarte II” were located in El Salvador and reported something very similar to what the fishermen of the “Don Maca” had described happened to them: drones flying overhead, explosions on deck, the crew being detained, and their transfer to El Salvador.

“We were returning from fishing; we weren’t armed. Suddenly, we saw a drone approach and explode in the wheelhouse. Then I looked toward the back; the fire was already spreading … In two boats, we approached a US vessel, and they handcuffed us and treated us like prisoners. We were afraid they were going to kill us,” Hernán Flores, captain of the “Negra Francisca Duarte II”, told Primicias.

These recent accounts have led the families of the missing fishermen who set out to work aboard the “Fiorella” to fear that they have met the same fate. The eight fishermen from Jaramijó and Manta have been missing since January 20, 2026.

“Two crew members returned (in a small boat) because they were fishing on their own, but before the (mother) ship disappeared, they saw a drone circling them, yet they continued fishing; after that, they spotted smoke to the north,” stated Juan Alvia Cevallos, the lawyer for the families of the missing.  

The mother of one of the missing fishermen, María Cueva, said: “The two survivors say they saw the drone and a patrol boat. We are certain that they (the United States) took them, just as they have done with the other boats. I want my son to come home.”

The Ecuadorian government’s “strange” response

For its part, the Ecuadorian government, led by right-wing Daniel Noboa, a staunch ally of the Trump administration, has decided to maintain a prudent silence. When Ecuador’s foreign minister, Gabriela Sommerfeld, was asked about possible US attacks on Ecuadorian fishermen, the head of Ecuadorian diplomacy dodged the question: “I couldn’t tell you for certain what activities the fishermen were engaged in, or the situations they find themselves in … The relevant authorities, particularly those responsible for security, will be able to say what kind of activities they were carrying out.”

The fishermen and their families have categorically rejected the accusation that the Ecuadorians that were attacked and captured on the high seas were drug traffickers: “They are just fishermen, not drug traffickers, thieves, or murderers – that’s no reason for them to have been taken,” states María Mero, a relative of the fishermen from the “Fiorella.”

Attorney Jorge Chiriboga agrees: “They have had to endure violence on the high seas despite having nothing to do with illegal activities; they are unarmed, were returning from a fishing trip, and were attacked by a foreign nation.”

In addition, Chiriboga told Primicias that he will file a legal complaint and bring the matter before the National Assembly to investigate the facts, and he demanded that Ecuadorian authorities ensure respect for Ecuadorians attacked by other countries: “This is an act of terror against Ecuadorian fishermen in the exclusive economic zone of the Ecuadorian state; therefore, it is Ecuador, the State, and the Government that must safeguard the interests of Ecuadorian citizens.”

For now, the fear of an attack has led many fishermen to decide to not go out to sea and thus to forgo one of the few sources of income available to residents of Ecuador’s coastal areas. Added to this are the constant threats from extortionists and pirate ships that prey on fishermen, which have created an atmosphere of terror, uncertainty, and the risk of losing income vital to their survival.

“This will also hurt the city’s economy and make it harder to hire people to go out to sea, because their families are afraid they won’t come back,” Chiriboga said.  

Quito and Washington: an unquestionable military alliance

The Noboa administration is part of the Shield of the Americas, a hemispheric military alliance between several right-wing governments in Latin America and Washington, under which US forces would lead counterterrorism activities throughout the Americas.

Thus, Quito and Washington announced the start of coordinated military operations on Ecuadorian territory. In one such operation, both US and Ecuadorian forces released videos showing the bombing of a building allegedly used by drug traffickers, although several human rights groups, local residents, and The New York Times have claimed it was a dairy farm. Following the bombing, residents of the area reported being beaten and electrocuted by Ecuadorian forces.

Courtesy: Peoples Dispatch

The Rare Earth Trap: How China Outmaneuvered the Entire Western Defense Industry

By Charles Kennedy - Apr 17, 2026

In 1992, China’s political leader Deng Xiaoping made a comparison that should’ve set off alarms across the West: “There is oil in the Middle East; there is rare earth in China.”

Instead, for the next 30 years, Western governments largely treated rare earth processing as low-value work — something they could hand off to whoever would do it cheapest. But then REalloys (NASDAQ: ALOY) came along with partners and started building domestic processing capability while most of the industry was still looking the other way.

Beijing saw the value in rare earths early and treated it as a long-term weapon, which is why China now controls roughly 90% of global rare earth processing

That covers not just mining, but the refining and metal-making that turn raw rock into parts for everything from fighter jets to wind turbines.

It spent 30 years building that position deliberately, with state-backed financing, predatory pricing, and export controls designed to prevent anyone else from catching up.

And the approach has paid off. When Beijing threatened to cut off processed rare earths during tariff talks last year, the Trump administration reversed course within days. It’s no surprise, given that China controls the supply of materials our military can’t function without.

While the rare earth shortage has started making headlines over the last year or so, REalloys saw this coming years ago. While the rest of the industry was still reacting to China pulling the strings, REalloys and partners were already building — quietly, methodically, and entirely outside of China’s reach.

Now in March, the company announced it’s fully financed to build the largest heavy rare earth metallization facility outside China, after its recently completed $50 million public offering.

The roughly $40 million facility will produce about 30 tonnes of dysprosium and 15 tonnes of terbium metal per year. These are the heavy rare earths that keep magnets working inside jet engines, missile guidance systems, and advanced drone platforms where failure is not an option.

But to understand why this is so critical in today’s rare earth shortage, you have to understand how Beijing set the trap years ago.

How China Built the Most Effective Trade Weapon on Earth

China did not simply stumble into its monopoly on rare earth processing. It was a three-decade strategy, executed with patience and precision while the West gave away its processing capabilities and barely looked back.

A bipartisan Congressional probe released in November 2025 laid out the playbook in detail.

Beijing hands “tens of billions of dollars, including zero-interest-rate loans” to state mining firms. It built a legal framework for controlling mineral prices. And whenever the West started to invest, China flooded global markets to crush it.

Committee Chairman John Moolenaar put it bluntly: “From cell phones to fighter jets, every American is dependent on minerals that China manipulates for its own selfish interests. As we saw last month with its rule on rare earths, China has a loaded gun that is pointed at our economy, and we must act quickly.”

The consequences have already shown up on factory floors. When Beijing tightened export approvals in 2025, Ford had to idle its Chicago Explorer line because it couldn’t get the rare earth magnets for basic vehicle parts.

The implications extend deep into the modern defense-tech stack. Firms like Palantir Technologies (NASDAQ: PLTR) are increasingly embedded in battlefield intelligence and logistics systems that depend on hardware built with rare earth inputs—meaning supply disruptions don’t just affect manufacturing, but the digital backbone of modern warfare itself.

That was a civilian automaker with some buffer. Defense supply chains run even tighter, with longer lead times and far less room to adjust. It’s not just heavy defense either. Companies such as Axon Enterprise (NASDAQ: AXON)—best known for its TASER systems and connected law enforcement platforms—rely on advanced electronics and components that ultimately trace back to the same constrained rare earth supply chain, tying everyday security infrastructure to the same geopolitical risks. And with the latest conflicts across the Middle East and beyond, the consequences are becoming more dire by the day.

What REalloys Built While The West Watched

Most of the rare earth industry spent years reacting as China pulled the strings. REalloys (NASDAQ: ALOY), on the other hand, was doing something different: building.

The company’s operations in Euclid, Ohio, grew out of years of work with the U.S. Department of Energy and Department of Defense. While other players chased mining permits, REalloys focused on the harder problem: building the metal-making and alloying capabilities that turn processed rare earths into defense-grade inputs.

That meant working with suppliers, developing processing technology, training metallurgists, and qualifying output to military specs. That kind of work takes years, even when you know what you’re doing.

On the processing side, REalloys locked in an exclusive offtake covering 80% of the output from North America’s only heavy rare earth processing plant.

That facility is run by the Saskatchewan Research Council, which spent over 12 years working with rare earth clients at pilot and lab scale before breaking ground.

In 2020, Beijing passed export controls that blocked sales of rare earth processing technology to countries it didn’t consider allies. That should have killed the project.

Instead, the team built custom furnaces, automation systems, and separation chemistry from core physics and chemistry — requiring no Chinese technology transfer at any step.

What came out of that constraint surprised even the engineers. Because the team built the processing side from scratch rather than copying Chinese designs, the facility now runs on AI-driven controls that handle thousands of adjustments around the clock.

A comparable Chinese facility employs dozens of workers managing manual processes across an eight-hour shift. REalloys’ supply chain produces metals at higher purity with a fraction of the labor.

The Saskatchewan government funded it, construction began over five years ago, and REalloys’ exclusive agreement means the bulk of everything that plant produces flows to Ohio, where it becomes the finished alloys that defense contractors need.

Every step takes place on North American soil, with no Chinese technology, chemicals, or capital involved in any critical part of the chain.

Why Catching Up From Here Could Take Years, Not Months

The gap between REalloys and the rest of the Western world is wider than most people realize. And it’s not simply a matter of money.

Mining rare earths and processing them are completely different skills. The companies making headlines in this space are mostly miners. They know how to pull ore out of the ground.

But turning that ore into defense-grade metals requires dozens of chemical steps, each with hundreds of stages needing tight control. You can buy the best mining rights on the planet and still have no way to turn the rocks into something the Pentagon can use.

Some companies bought processing gear from China before the export controls hit. But even with the hardware, many still can’t run it properly because they bought equipment without the know-how to operate it.

The dependency on China goes deeper than just a lack of skills, though.

Chinese-made furnaces need graphite parts sourced only from Chinese makers, and those parts can wear out several times a week.

If your plant runs on Chinese hardware, you’re one supply cut away from going dark — no matter how much domestic ore you have sitting in a warehouse.

Tim Johnston, REalloys’ co-founder, puts the catch-up timeline at three to seven years for a credible competitor starting today.

That means building separation capabilities, developing oxide-to-metal conversion, qualifying with defense buyers, and doing all of it without Chinese technology or parts. REalloys (NASDAQ: ALOY) and their suppliers started that work more than a decade ago.

The Deadline That Changes the Math

All of this matters more now because of the regulatory clock that is about to run out.

On January 1, 2027, updated DFARS rules take effect, banning Chinese-origin rare earth materials from American weapons systems. The ban covers every stage: mining, refining, separation, melting, and fabrication.

Earlier loopholes let contractors melt Chinese oxides in a third country and call the output non-Chinese, but that workaround ends in 2027. The Pentagon is backing the rule with compliance checks on every covered contract, random spot-checks, and False Claims Act liability.

That means every company selling into the defense base will need a verified, non-Chinese source for rare earth metals and magnets. Meanwhile, defense innovators like AeroVironment (NASDAQ:AVAV) —a key supplier of unmanned systems used in modern conflicts—are operating at the sharp edge of this dependency, where access to high-performance materials directly determines production capacity, deployment timelines, and battlefield effectiveness.

Meanwhile, China’s own factories now use roughly 60% of their rare earth output for domestic EVs, wind turbines, and electronics.

Whatever surplus gets exported then moves through monthly licensing that Beijing adjusts depending on the political temperature. The IEA has flagged this as a core vulnerability for any country that depends on Chinese supply.

New Heavy Rare Earth Facility

REalloys’ recent announcement fills in the last piece of the puzzle. The company will use roughly $40 million from its recent offering to build the Heavy Rare Earth Metal Facility — delivering materials first assembled and tested in Saskatoon, then moved to REalloys’ Ohio operations.

From there, it’ll be available to serve U.S. defense customers and supply Defense Logistics Agency stockpiles. First operations are aiming for early-to-mid 2027, with full commercial scale expected by mid-to-late 2027.

REalloys expects to receive roughly 400 tonnes of defense-grade rare earth metals per year once the processing facility reaches full production, scaling to about 600 tonnes by 2028-29.

Washington has signaled their confidence in REalloys’ capabilities too: the U.S. EXIM Bank issued a $200 million letter of intent to support the company’s broader supply chain development

That’s in addition to their contract worth up to $1.7 million announced by the Department of Defense to fund the design of a processing facility to produce metals for weapons and electronics

Now, as the company approaches Phase 2, it plans to target an annual output of about 18,000 tonnes of heavy rare earth permanent magnets.

As the West finally faces the consequences of relying on China for these critical resources, strategic moves like those by REalloys may help America close the gap.

Here’s the honest picture: China will still process the bulk of the world’s rare earths for years to come. The goal was never to take half the market from Beijing. After three decades of state-backed dominance, that isn’t realistic on such a short timeline.

The goal is to lock in enough non-Chinese capacity to keep the Western defense base running on its own and give the U.S. real leverage where it has none today. REalloys is one of a small number of companies working with the U.S. government to achieve this goal.

That required someone to start building before the rare earths crisis made it obvious, and to keep building through every cycle where Chinese pricing threatened it.

REalloys appeared to see this crisis coming years ago. With their recent funding news, the path from plan to production is fully paid for — and the 2027 deadline is now less than ten months away.

By. Charles Kennedy