US forces seize oil tanker off Venezuela coast
US forces have seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, in a major escalation of Donald Trump’s four-month pressure campaign against the South American country’s dictator, Nicolás Maduro.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/10/us-forces-reportedly-seize-oil-tanker-off-venezuela-coastOpen linkView original on lemmy.myserv.one657
Comments253
Huh, I wonder why they seized it instead of shooting it like the others? It couldn't possibly be for the oil, right?
In contrast to people, oil has a market value.
Never heard of human trafficking?
Oil is just a lot more profitable and easier to work with.
Trump has plenty of experience as a human trafficker, but those were underage models in his little fake modeling agency, Trump Model Management, which was a friendly competitor to Epstein's MC2 Model Management.
But I can understand him not wanting to draw on that experience here. That and Hegaeth is a murderous fuck, and he was the one awake enough to give the order.
You're not getting paid top dollar for your people? You should see my people guy, he do you a good deal.
I genuinelly believe at least some people in positions of power inside and around the MAGA-Fascist party have plans to make Slavery legal again.
(I would certainly bet that Peter Tiel is one of those).
It is already legal. You just have to be in jail.
That can be changed. Pretty sure Trump is not opposed to slavery.
I mean, I know what your point is, but can we actually just be thankful that they did not in fact blow up an oil tanker and spill all that into the sea?
Just tow it outside the environment.
Into another environment.
There is nothing out there - all there is is sea, and birds, and fish.
And 20,000 tonne of burning crude oil.
That's space bro. You're describing outer space
For your contextual enjoyment for the joke you might be missing.
Yes, I did miss this. I've seen that video but it's been forever, forgot how great it is. Thank you
The deep water horizon did not show America too concerned about oil in the Gulf. I'm not sure they care where it goes if they can't have it.
What, have they escalated to blockading Cuba now?
We begin to care about it as soon as it shows up as black sandy globs on the beach and sticks to our feet.
And, uh, kill all of the innocent people on board. Sorry, I just feel like that should be said.
Well when I had made the comment, there was no news on whether or not they had done that anyway.
We should not be thankful to nazi shit
No. I will not thank them for seizing the ship. That's a ludicrous suggestion.
That's not what they said.
It's equivalent to what they said. If someone comes over and punches you in the head should I be thankful they didn't stab you?
You can, in fact, be thankful that you weren't stabbed while also being upset that you were punched. Adults can have more than one emotion at a time. Never heard of a "silver lining"? It's an idiom for a reason.
Who am I being thankful toward? Who am I giving thanks to in this specific case?
It's not.
For sure. They shouldn't have blown up the other boats either, but spilling the oil into the sea would certainly have been bad.
Technically the other ships they blew up spilled oil in the sea.
blowing up a tanker would cause a huge hazard to the area, spilling oil all over the ocean.
When you put it like, that, that sounds like exactly what they'd want off the coast of Venezuela right now.
Venezuelas oil infrastructure is in such bad shape, that oil spills are pretty common. Lake Maracaibo has them on a regular bases.
I can think of a few reasons why the US Navy wouldn't want to fire high explosives into a contain full of flammable materials, depending on the range of their artillery.
Also definitely possible they're just doing Privateer shit with Navy assets. I do wonder whether the vessel gets impounded or just escorted to a friendly port in El Salvador or Honduras and quietly re-flagged and titled.
Hegseth issuing letters of marque
They don't really use actual artillery anymore, it would be missiles from the ship or a plane.
Starting a nonsense war under the guise of "spreading democracy" just to take their oil reserves so that rednecks back home can pollute the air and warm the earth with their oversized trucks. Can it get any more American this?
He wants to declare war on Venezuela next year (or hopes that he can agitate them enough to commit an act of terror on the US) so he can deny midterm elections because he knows the GOP majority will potentially be cooked
Remember how much his eyes shifted when he was told that elections can be delayed due to a country being at war
He's not 100% wrong.
I'm sure he remembers fondly how every single news network praised him profusely when he dropped the MOAB on Afghanistan.
He knows very well how much the US loves a warmongering president.
are you talking about the bunker buster in Iran?
No, this was in his first term.
Here's an article on it: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-39598046
But yeah, every single news outlet sang his praises after this. I specifically remember being on the treadmill in the gym, watching CNN, and I'll quote Fareed Zakaria: "In that moment, he became president of the United States."
This country loves war to the point of absolute absurdity.
I'm starting to get the impression that a large fraction of Americans have lustful thoughts at the idea of mass murdering civilians (including children) as well as at the idea of their "leaders" having sex with children.
Theirs is a diseased relationship with power.
We are a nation that really has never given a crap about bombing civilians en masse. Hell, President Obama, whom many still revere, dropped 20,000 bombs just in the last year of his presidency and killed an American citizen in Iraq ordering a bombing as well.
At one point President Obama had the definition of "enemy combatant" be changed to "Any man between the ages of 16 and 60" because the numbers of "collateral" civilian casualties from the drone attacks he ordered were so bad.
Yup. Obama loved bloodying his hands almost as much as Donald Trump and Joe Biden.
It's not like the Pilgrim Fathers weren't a bunch of religious nutjobs
It looked like he thought no one had ever thought of it before, and that he was a genius.
Do you have a link to that clip of the shifty eyes?
https://www.reddit.com/r/Military/comments/1mtzau0/trump_to_zelenskyy_during_the_war_you_cant_have/
Sorry this was the only place I could find it fast
same tactic bush used to get elected, make a ware gives brownie points to the election in thier favor.
Tradition!
Let me guess... It was carrying drugs? Just packed full of cocaine? Can't wait to hear the justification for this one.
Oil is drugs mmmkay
It is addictive...
The mere though of getting their hands on so much "free" oil made many in this Administration high.
This type of drug has several street names, among them, black gold and Texas tea.
Hamas actually \s
It has been under US sanctions since 2022 for supplying the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. It was spoofing its position. It was flying a false flag.
As to the legal justification, there are technicalities that could be argued. But that’s incidental to the intention here probably.
“Where’s my Nobel Peace Prize?”
All you get is a soccer peace prize.
*Football ball-fondling prize
Some random trophy from a pawn shop with a fresh coat of gold paint from a spray can should work.
Somebody give him an enlarged version of this and tell him it's the Nobel Peace Price.
He reminds me so much of my little nephew sometimes. He's obsessed with trophies and medals. When we're in a store where they sell trophies, he asks me if they are "real" and i try to explain to him that trophies aren't "real" they are just a symbol. Sometimes for nothing. And he tries to understand. And then when i ask him if i should buy him a meaningless trophy, he goes yes pleeeease, a big one.
An oil tanker...full of drugs?
Petro-terrorists.
Anything's ok as long as you ad hyphen terrorist to the person, place or thing.
Take/blow up anything you want with this one simple trick
more like a drug tanker
Fucking terrorist country
Remember, USA is against piracy lmao
definitely not about the oil!!!
Welcome to the sixteenth century! When Queen Elizabeth couldn't afford to go to war against Spain so created ‘letters of marque’ which legalised piracy against Spain and its empire. Single handedly created the pirate economy.
Then, welcome to the eighteenth century, when america created the fiction of the Barbary Corsairs to legalise american piracy of the atlantic trade.
Isnt it Mark Twain who states that history rhymes?
Pirates of the Caribbean!
No that was George Lucas
Fack.
I want off Mr. Bones' Wild Ride already.
Ruh-roh. Trump and Hegseth forgot the US has a 100% losing record against countries that start with V.
Vietnam lost over a million of its people during the US invasion and occupation. It's all cutesy and smug to tally this as a Big L for Team USA. But I don't think anyone in that country values the W/L record over the hundreds of thousands of family members, friends, and other loved ones who died to feed the American war machine's rapacious appetite.
That's before we even talk about the ecological damage that haunts Vietnam to this day. Or the deaths in Laos and Cambodia racked up in collateral. Or the tenuous diplomatic relationships between the various South Pacific neighbors based on Cold War grudges, which have re-emerged as a shooting war between Thailand and Cambodia just last month.
Also, weren't the US armed forces prevented from going all out in Vietnam?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Program#Torture
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Lai_massacre#Killings
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_Orange#Use_in_the_Vietnam_War
Read through that and tell me what we missed.
The American military tried everything just shy of nuking Hanoi. Anyone who tells you otherwise is ignorant or trying to sell you something.
Soviet-sponsored air and naval defenses prevent North Vietnam from being saturation bombarded at the scale we inflicted on North Korea a decade earlier. Americans were largely confined to combat against insurgencies in the South. So much of the war was fought against the civilian population that the Americans were ostensibly there to protect from the villainous Communists.
But the idea that we simply didn't use enough troops or sufficiently advanced weaponry or brutal tactics... that's all reactionary mythology. If skinning half the population alive would have won the war, we'd have done it. A far more compelling argument is that Americans alienated the entire peninsula with our "all out" invasion (not unlike how we ended up alienating the bulk of the Afghan population following our '02 invasion). A subtler and more strategic approach - like our efforts to stand up anti-communist governments in The Philippines and Indonesia - seemed to have far better results in hindsight.
Are we talking about the same Indonesia where the USA funded and installed a Pro-US puppet government who basically sold out the country to US property development?
I guess that's better than the country being torn apart by war, but it got torn apart none-the-less.
The Very Same!
It is nearly non-existent in US History textbooks, which is a big fat "W" from the perspective of the capitalist-friendly intelligence services.
Actually the US has a shockingly short list of wars they have outright won where they were NOT part of an international coalition.
VCanada
Surprised they didn't just blow it up. I guess we're doing piracy now.
Actually, hearing about this, I'm now surprised that our military didn't stop the fishing boats first to siphon all of the gasoline out of their tanks before blowing them up and murdering their crew.
Edit: but for oil
Always have been
USA turns into Taliban country. Taliban originaly is "political and militant organization with an ideology comprising elements of the Deobandi movement of Islamic fundamentalism and Pashtun nationalism", now is just "political and militant organization with an ideology comprising elements of the MAGA movement of Evangelical fundamentalism and WASP nationalism"
USA doing the most USA thing possible
Lemmitor: WHAT ARE WE, A BUNCH OF MUSLIMS?!!
Oilllll
Lemmings
Remember when the CIA funded and armed what became the Taliban?
Remember when the CIA had their guy running the Taliban?
Who was there guy that ran it? Never heard that one before.
Oh, maybe I'm conflating the Taliban with Al-Qaeda a bit (and [for the next part of this] maybe even ISIS too a bit? idk) ~ I'm no Whitney Webb for this stuff, so do use several websearch engines likely to be honest about this stuff for yourself, but...
Tim Osman? (Whom you may know by another name.)
Then after that there was that guy they once called a terrorist, then put a suit on and invited to the white house... I'm terrible with names... was it... Ahmed al-Sharaa/Abu Mohammad al-Julani?
Hard to keep track if not paying close attention.
Hard to keep paying close attention after seeing the same old ploys and fakery played out over and over.
"Pick up the gun"
"You all saw him. He had a gun."
Tom Hanks.
Y'all Queda
Jesus Christ trump fie already you old fuck
D I E
Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity. they will get as much as they give others.
So we are Iran now. Lol this country has fallen so low.
The time Iran stole a US oil tanker was in response to the US stealing one of their oil tankers.
This is how America has always acted.
The US didn’t “steal” it. It executed a european warrant for siezure at the request of the country that had rightful jurisdiction. Iran was just embarrassed that it was only possible due to the crew’s incompetence.
Oh I forgot, one of America's vassals said it was OK. That changes everything. Very international rules and order.
Yes, just now.
USA does the most USA thing ever
Lemmitors: WHAT ARE WE, BROWN PEOPLE??!!
I like how you went straight for color of people when no one is talking about color.
Good job!! Next time let's talk about religion as well since you know, fuck it.
Well at least we know the real reason for the murders now. Why it it always the most greedy, predictable cause?
Dude has been saying for 20 years that we should've stolen Iraq's oil. Yet somehow everyone acts surprised when he does pretty predictable things like this.
So piracy?
So who had written "blatent piracy" on his trump bingo card at the beginning of the year? He took almost to the very end to also make you cross out this, but he did.
So, "nuclear test und an uninhabited island" next?
Un inhabited?
Edit: apparently you can't have partial words italicized.
oh please don't jinx it more then i do
We'll be lucky if it's anywhere uninhabited.
We all know he desperately wants to use the nukes for any reason he can come up with. It's only a matter of time.
It might be the only way to get a boner now when he can’t go to the Epstein’s island anymore.
Boarding ships & enforcing sanctions is not necessarily a bad thing, albeit im missing details on this specific case.
France & Finland have both done this to shadow fleet tankers in recent time as well.
It's always best to make comments like this when you are missing details. /s
I only said that becasue we're ALL missing context. The shadow fleet tankers siezed by Europe happened months ago and we have a lot more context. But I left my comment intentionally open-ended incase more context comes out later.
For now, all we know is the Trump administration seized a shadow fleet tanker that was sanctioned by the Biden administration, thereby inforcing decisions made by Biden. Europe has done the same. If you would like to add some meaningful context then please do, it's an interesting topic.
Yes, indeed, it's open ended and on the surface it is consistent with a plausible follow through on existing decision.
Though the prospect of suspiciously selective enforcement comes to mind, in the midst of this very specific scenario they decide to execute a seizure that is conveniently adjacent to the boat strike operations.
Go home with your pro-Trump Russian propaganda, Ivan
wtf? Finland & France siezed Russian shadow fleet tankers, an aggressive act against the Putin regime. This vessel is also related to the axis shadow fleet.
Supporting these shadow fleet oil tankers breaking sanctions & financing illegal wars is literally pro-russian. Seizing them is literally an act of aggression AGAINST Russia. You have it completely backwards.
And this tanker was anyway sanctioned by Biden, Trump is now enforcing the biden administration's sanctions.
Sure, supporting Agent Krasnov's military policy that will push it further from the EU, good try Ваня
You didn't address anything I said. Enforcing Biden's sanctions against Iran/Russia/NK is not pushing anyone further from the EU. The EU has literally sanctioned the Maduro government, and Norway is currently protecting the Venezuelan opposition party.
I mean you are broadcasting that the US determines your foreign policy, whether that's attractive or not depends on whether a leader's interests are more closely aligned with America's or the European unit as a whole.
VERY COOL AND LEGAL
The tanker was full of fentanOIL…
It’s time to hit the button again
He speaks like a child, a pernicious little child
He's got the mind of a 4 year-old
he is a very stunted elderly man. his supporters are equally adult children too.
Time to determine on who's command this was done, and follow down the complete chain to the bottom.
And do what exactly? They aren't going to get punished for it, so what's the fucking point?
To give them a medal of course
Why? The one giving the order on the top is ultimately responsible. Insubordination against king Donald of Orange the First will probably get you court martialed and hanged...
Following illegal commands is no legal protection. See: Nuremberg trials.
Yes it is. See: Vietnam
See: Operation Paperclip
See: Ratlines
See: US Army last 5 decades
not the point, though. The Cowards are using him as a shield. They have been for years. They are every bit as much to blame as he is (and he absolutely is to blame, just not the only one). Once this all falls apart they will say it was all his idea and blame him for everything, to avoid criminal repercussions. People will be so happy to see the king fall that they will give all of The Cowards immunity just to get rid of him, and the cycle will continue.
A little on the nose, no?
It's like a complete package, the actual visual representation of what they want to do with Venezuela.
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, the USA has stooped to the same low level as the Somali Pirates.
we need to organize a bit harder, everyone. seriously!
You all are sleep walking into another forever war nobody wants. I implore everyone to read your own and Latin American history from the last 50 years. It's not taught.
https://read.dukeupress.edu/books/book/901/The-School-of-the-AmericasMilitary-Training-and (Ask Anna for a copy.)
https://soaw.org/notorious-soa-graduates
do you think i should study a bit more socialist theory, and is there any way i can study in layperson's terms without losing focus quickly?
No, I read that book (The School of the Americas by Leslie Gill) before I knew what socialism was in a Political Theory of Latin America class. It radicalized me and I have used it to radicalize ex military confused libertarians and liberals. It is good without theory, it is pure history. If you read enough history, you can passively get theory via trends and vice versa. That is ultimately what they discuss anyway if the author is decent, via materialist analysis (though that obviously brings its own problems). I am happy to send audio and pdfs as needed to whomever. I am not sure if there is an audiobook of this one, but I am due a refresher regardless.
like i wanna study for socialist theory, but there's something about it makes my head spin. do you have any tips on "studying in layperson's terms"?
Listen to that voice and read this: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/russell-means-for-america-to-live-europe-must-die That voice is telling you something very real and important. Trust yourself.
i mean the text - i've heard of a study method which taking long paragraphs and boiling them down into very short ones. however, sometimes i CAN'T find the right words to a point where i prefer NOT to say anything. do you have any tips?
To summarise the text I attached... Trust the resistance. If it feels like you are forcing something that doesn't fit, that is probably what you are doing. What are you actually trying to learn? Not "study theory" but what do you want to understand?
does anyone think i should study a bit more on socialist theory, and is there any way i can study in layperson's terms without losing focus?
you're aware who does the actual fighting and whom the bombs will be raining on??
Ah yes you are displaying the kind of intelligence the US military favours in its recruits. Non at all.
Great for you but that's got nothing to do with what we were talking about which was you thinking that a war between Venezuela and the United States would be a good thing.
I won't say my grammar is perfect, but I do try not to misspell things and insult other people's intelligence at the same time.
You seem to be under the deluded impression that a war between two people only affects those two people, so yeah I'm insulting your intelligence. Do you even know what a war is, I know that's a stupid question but I'm seriously asking because it sounds like you don't?
Replying to your shit take as soap box to answer your question and remind everyone that one the things we should be organizing is a GENERAL STRIKE
GeneralStrikeUS.com
Congratulations to Portugal for committing to a GENERAL STRIKE and gaining massive leverage: https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/sustainable-finance-reporting/portugal-general-strike-stalls-transport-closes-schools-labour-reform-protest-2025-12-11/
do you think i'm a sh*tlib who thinks biden should've gotten re-elected? NOT assuming anyone, just asking. seriously!
Whatever the situation is in Venezula, it's not going to be a good thing for America to get entangled.
Hussein was a pretty bad dude, but our intervention in Iraq ultimately was bad for America and didn't exactly make things in Iraq better.
It wouldn't be a fight, it would be a massacre. Untold thousands dead, millions of refugees. Knowing this, how could you possibly wish for it?
would there a marxist revolution against both maduro and trump in venezuela? NOT repeating any US state department talking points (looking at you, hexbear!), just asking. seriously!
Why would there be a Marxist revolution in Venezuela if they already have a Bolivarian revolution going on? Venezuela is an extremely grassroots country, more than 10% of the state budget is allocated to local committees to spend however they democratically desire from what I gather. Tens of thousands of Venezuelans are actually enlisting as volunteers this past month to the country's militias to defend the country from possible American invasion.
well their ideology is "socialism of the 21st century" which states that both socialism of the 20th century and capitalism failed to solve problems such as poverty, oppression, hunger, corruption and hatefulness and such. seriously!
Cool I guess we’re doing piracy now 🤦♂️
Why is it possible to seize assets of weaker countries like Venezuela but not war mongers like Russia and the USA ?
Bullies never go for hard targets they go after weakness
Because Americans would rather pay thugs to make their rulers richer than have healthcare.
russia has the conservative and right wing groups in control over the world, plus the nuclear weapons. iran,venuzuala, the middle east, s america had resources but no military that would be able to fight back as easily.
i know thats all true, but where is Team America! Fuck Yeah!
Gun
Piracy.
2 two things america likes most: oil and drugs. No wonder they had to do it
Immediately proves what the war is really about
US Navy in the Red Sea:
We are conducting freedom of movement and trade, anti piracy operations.
US Coast Guard in the Caribbean:
Look at me, look at me.
I am the pirate now.
true pirates get drunk off rum and find treasure
They're going to find $50 worth of weed in one of the sailor's personal quarters and claim that the multi millon dollar tanker carrying millions worth of crude oil was a drug running vessel.
According to the NY Times the tanker in question is flying under a flag where it is not registered, and is linked to smuggling Iranian oil.
So is the US going to start seizing all the Russia ghost tankers doing the same?
The Chinese ghost fishing fleet too, imo
Yes, they should but Ukraine's drones are already on it.
The phrase "is linked to" should be a massive red flag.
If it was smuggling Iranian oil it would say, "is smuggling Iranian oil", not "is linked to smuggling Iranian oil".
Also all lots of "may" and "[unnamed] American official claimed" in the article.
The whole thing reads as Propaganda, which makes sense given that we're talking about the pro-Zionist New York Times (which also has a long history of backing American warmongering in, for example Iraq) - morally a little propagandizing to whitewash American Administration's piracy on the high-seas is nothing compared to relentlessly providing cover and support for the active mass murdering of Palestinian children in Gaza for more than a year.
The Pravda in the days of the Soviet Union had more truth than this Propaganda Outlet.
The ship was already sanctioned in 2022 tho
The problem is Trump has no credibility. Nobody is going to believe it.
The US has no credibility, from the USS Maine to the Gulf of Tonkin to this
True enough, but the ghost fleets of oil tankers and ocean fishing vessels are a real problem as well. I would say that I find it unlikely that this administration would go out of their way to do the paperwork for possibly legal targets when they've been so ruthlessly attacking non-legit targets, but the stakes are also higher with the monetary value of the oil.
Did they say why Venezuela would smuggle Iranian oil? I thought it was an oil rich country? I didn’t see it in the article. Maybe I missed it.
If so, that would be a money laundering thing where they relabel the oil as from them to avoid sanctions on iran oil export.
Okay yeah that makes sense. I didn’t think of that.
Venezuela wants to sell oil, but is under sanctions. Iran wants to buy oil, but is under sanctions.
That makes sense. I was thinking Iran probably had oil too, but I don’t know enough about their imports/exports.
Iran has the second-largest reserves in the world. However production is limited by ageing infrastructure and sanctions. It is also the second-largest oil consumer, as the cheap cost has meant there has been no incentive for efficient use.
Why are you quoting Israeli propaganda? The New York Crimes has lost all its credibility with the constant support of genocide in Palestine
Fuck the new york times, fucking imperialist propaganda outlet
Next time Iran or the Houtis steal a tanker, they can point at the US and smile.
Shame. Also fuck you Amerikkka!
What the man. What the fuck are we doing?
This is not at all like America. I'm quite shocked, really.
Missing an /s?
This is what the USA has done for its entire history, bullying oil-rich countries that don't submit to US imperialism
if the us were a socialist country, we WOULDN'T rely on imperialism so much. seriously!
You did it in iraq already
Why are americans surprised witht his? Also why isnt the american left on streets yet against this iraq war 2.0?
Might not be able to buy groceries but at least we have $3.00/gallon, or $0.80/liter, fuel for our planet destroying pickup trucks!
Right, that’s what I’m saying. We have cheap gas/petrol but food prices here are skyrocketing.
USA Piracy
How much oil do we truly have left in the world. When I was a kid I heard we would run out of in 2000s. Don't remember if it was 2030 or 50 could been longer. But just how much?
That was the peak for the cheap oil. Now we're working on the peak for the medium to expensive oil. They kinda blend into each other, but the price at the pump goes up a lot more.
You heard about peak oil, not oil exhaustion. We hit peak extraction around 2008ish but added new extraction technologies like shale oil and since then we have no expectations of hitting a peak extraction any time soon.
Now the expectation is that consumption will hit a peak and collapse oil prices sooner than extraction will hit its peak. This is expected due to electricit cars and green energy production reaching a sufficient volume to make oil less in demand.
Enough to destroy life on earth if it's all burnt or turned into plastics. Giant reserves have been discovered in a few places including Antarctica. We didn't know about these when you or I were kids.
How much of the world is left if we keep burning oil is the relevant question now. We've found lots more
So what determines if oil is being used by terrorists? Hella vague
Why didn't they just bomb it?
We need to protect the innocent oil on board at all cost
big badaboom
If you want the orange child rapist to bomb something then first you need to put an innocent fisherman on it.
It doesn't matter what it is. It could be a fishing boat, a lawn chair, or a baby's bed. As long as there's an innocent fisherman nearby he'll bomb the fuck out of it. Then declare it as very legal and very tremendous.
So... Privateering? Like Royalty.
Working up to plain ol' colonization.
Can’t be a privateer if they’re not private.
I think some privateers were royal navy.
It's an oily amuse bouche before the land invasion
Sigh... That's not good...
So. It begins
And they don’t seize Russian tankers? Wankers!
In another timeline, Hegseth confusingly bombed the oil tanker and blamed Biden.
Whelp that's a casus belli…
Ship siezures are not, under international law.
Not putting to bed accusations about motives at all the opposite really.
what should venezuela do?
I don't think there is much they can do. No one is going to want to stand up against the US in this, and any escalation from Venezuela would be incredibly costly for them. I suppose there are two things they can hope for; hope the US population throws up enough of a stink the trump changes his mind or wait for something else to come around to occupy his attention.
resist
Now we get to the meat of the matter.
The arabs hire trump muscle to knock off the Venezuelan government putting the arabs in charge, this gives the arabs unlimited unrestricted gulf drilling access.
The Saudis have run out or are almost out of oil. They like making billions for doing nothing and do not want the big bucks to stop.
So the gulf is drilled unrestricted, the oil shipped up to east Houston refineries, then shipped out to the nations paying the most for it.
What a deal.
When will trump start working for Americans?
Oh, so now it is even piracy! Well done tRump, you orange fuck.
seizeabductOh look we found the drugs they are so interested in!
It's just the same tired grifts over and over with these people.
venezuela (regardless of whether their citizens support maduro or NOT) should fight back. seriously!
Their far right, including the woman won a Nobel peace prize, are explicitly pro the U.S. attacking Venezuela to overthrow Maduro.
She is literally calling for Trump to invade her country.
She’s a pro genocide MAGAt.
if venezuela's an aes country (think vietnam combined with nepal (which is NOT an aes country, but has socialist political parties), they would've fought back (and they should). seriously!
I hate trump as anyone else here but reading into this it looks like an absolutely legal and normal procedure?
The ship in question named Skipper was already sanctioned since 2022 for transporting Iranian oil to fund Hezbolah. So minus conflict escalation with Venezuela this seems like a good thing? Hezbolah is an incredibly evil terrorist organization and cutting off it's funding is good.
That's not how these types sanctions work though. It's much more broad than "you can't pass our waters" and it's perfectly legal to board sanctioned ships in international waters.
AFAIK this is legal though I care much more about ethics than legalities as citizen of neither of these countries.
Unless it’s by the state it was registered in, it is not legal to do so, except in cases of piracy, slave transport, or when the ship is stateless.
I'm not typically a betting man, but I would be willing to go all in on that not being the reason they seized the ship.
This administration tends to do what comes natural to them first (do illegal shit) and then search for an excuse later for why it was necessary when confronted about it.
I wouldn't be surprised if they eventually came to the same conclusion that you did, but only after Trump or one of his stooges brags about doing it for other reasons.
I feel like people are taking the bait here in siding with Iran and Hezbolah just to spite Trump. Both things can be bad and it's kinda important to be woke to these games rather than blindly oppose everything.
People keep underestimating Trump and his stooges. Sure they are stupid but they do have a plan and they do scheme.
Fair enough.
Sure seems like you read a lot of Israeli propaganda there.
How it is legal to seize a ship from another country when it isn't even close to your coast? Are you so brainwashed you can call this normal?
Usually it wouldn’t be, but there are exceptions for piracy and slaving. There is also an exception for vessels without nationality. Skipper had been fraudulently flying the flag of Guyana, who confirmed no such ship exists on their register. The US could argue it was therefore stateless.
I'm not a lawyer but afaik the sanctioned ships are treated kinda like "legal piracy" as country can board it even in international waters if it knows it's performing a sanctioned operation like transferring goods to a place it's not allowed to or the ship is stateless or sneaky (no transponder etc).
At the end of the day these legalities are purely made up to satisfy treaties rather than ethics or rationality so it's silly to try to look for rational meaning here.
The law holds that states cannot commit piracy. That is solely a crime for private entities.
Ships can only fall under the jurisdiction of the country of registration, the country in whose coastal waters the ship is in, or - in exceptional circumstances of piracy, slavery or statelessness of the ship - anyone.
No that's simply not true
Based on? What metric are you using for this? Or do we kill people based on your genocidal white vibes?
Or is it "that's what I hear on CNN and Fox who tell me that Saddam's WMD's are about to be definitely foubd any second now?"
Lol only on lemmy.megalosers you can find Hezbolah defenders. Go away troll.