US forces seize oil tanker off Venezuela coast
Venezuela decries ‘act of piracy’ after US forces seize oil tanker off country’s 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.
USA Piracy
Next time Iran or the Houtis steal a tanker, they can point at the US and smile.
Nah. The US can do what they want, but don’t those other countries DARE fall out of line. That’s why the Ukraine was forced to give up nukes, but the USA is fine to keep theirs
what should venezuela do?
resist
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.
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?
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, the USA has stooped to the same low level as the Somali Pirates.
It’s time to hit the button again
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
2 two things america likes most: oil and drugs. No wonder they had to do it
Might not be able to buy groceries but at least we have $3.00/gallon, or $0.80/liter, fuel for our planet destroying pickup trucks!
80c/L is cheap. It’s sometimes 1.80$/L here
Right, that’s what I’m saying. We have cheap gas/petrol but food prices here are skyrocketing.
In another timeline, Hegseth confusingly bombed the oil tanker and blamed Biden.
Remember, USA is against piracy lmao
Fucking terrorist country
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"
The tanker was full of fentanOIL…
Time to determine on who's command this was done, and follow down the complete chain to the bottom.
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?
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.
So, "nuclear test und an uninhibited island" next?
Un inhabited?
Edit: apparently you can't have partial words italicized.
oh please don't jinx it more then i do
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.
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?
Fack.
I want off Mr. Bones' Wild Ride already.
No that was George Lucas
Pirates of the Caribbean!
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.
Sanctioned by the US. This means the ship is free to trade with other countries. It wasn't heading to the US. This is an illegal act.
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.
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?
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.
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.
"Hezbolah is an incredibly evil terrorist organization"
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.
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?
Tradition!
So piracy?
I like free movies
Huh, I wonder why they seized it instead of shooting it like the others? It couldn't possibly be for the oil, right?
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.
And, uh, kill all of the innocent people on board. Sorry, I just feel like that should be said.
No. I will not thank them for seizing the ship. That's a ludicrous suggestion.
We should not be thankful to nazi shit
For sure. They shouldn't have blown up the other boats either, but spilling the oil into the sea would certainly have been bad.
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.
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.
It's an oily amuse bouche before the land invasion
An oil tanker...full of drugs?
more like a drug tanker
Petro-terrorists.
Anything's ok as long as you ad hyphen terrorist to the person, place or thing.
Straight out of the USA wartime playbook!
Take/blow up anything you want with this one simple trick
we need to organize a bit harder, everyone. seriously!
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 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.)
Venezuela
Name: Army Commander in Chief Efrain Vasquez and General Ramirez Poveda
Country: Venezuela
Dates/courses: Attended the SOA in 1988; 1972
Info: Both Vasquez and Poveda helped to lead a failed coup in Venezuela in April of 2002, despite supposedly receiving training at the SOA that encourages respect for democracy and civilian governments. Otto Reich, then Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, shared his support for the coup and a new government, and in the same year was appointed as a WHINSEC Board of Visitor member to "oversee" democracy and human rights curriculum, as well as operations at the school. Reich met with these SOA graduates prior to the coup and advised business leader Pedro Carmona, who subsequently seized the presidency.
Name: General Ramon Davila Guillen
Country: Venezuela
Dates/courses: Attended the SOA in 1967 for Irregular Warfare training
Info: General Guillen was indicted in November 1996 in connection with a shipment of one ton of cocaine into Miami in 1990, which he says was authorized by the CIA in an effort to catch drug dealers. In 1993, the CIA called the shipment "a regrettable incident" and dismissed the CIA agent involved. (CAP, 9/21/97)
VERY COOL AND LEGAL
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.
It was carrying drugs?
This type of drug has several street names, among them, black gold and Texas tea.
Hamas actually \s
Jesus Christ trump fie already you old fuck
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.
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.
Yes, just now.
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.
Actually the US has a shockingly short list of wars they have outright won where they were NOT part of an international coalition.
VCanada
definitely not about the oil!!!
freedom?
Nah. The Venezuelans are jealous of all the freedom that the yankees have :)
Shame. Also fuck you Amerikkka!
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.
Always have been
“We’ve just seized a tanker on the coast of Venezuela - a large tanker, very large, the largest one ever seized actually. And other things are happening so you will be seeing that later and you will be talking about that later with other people.”
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.
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.
Why are you quoting Israeli propaganda? The New York Crimes has lost all its credibility with the constant support of genocide in Palestine
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".
The ship was already sanctioned in 2022 tho
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.
Fuck the new york times, fucking imperialist propaganda outlet
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
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!
Because Americans would rather pay thugs to make their rulers richer than have healthcare.
Gun
A little on the nose, no?
It's like a complete package, the actual visual representation of what they want to do with Venezuela.
Piracy.
Cool I guess we’re doing piracy now 🤦♂️
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.
What the man. What the fuck are we doing?
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?
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!
This is not at all like America. I'm quite shocked, really.
Missing an /s?
Immediately proves what the war is really about
seize abduct
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.
Whelp that's a casus belli…
So what determines if oil is being used by terrorists? Hella vague
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.
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!
So. It begins
And they don’t seize Russian tankers? Wankers!
Not putting to bed accusations about motives at all the opposite really.
Oh look we found the drugs they are so interested in!
It's just the same tired grifts over and over with these people.
