Drug boats should be stopped and searched, and their operators should be arrested and tried; they should not be blown up. The penalty for transporting drugs is years in prison, not immediate death without proof or jury. When a first bomb strike doesn't kill everyone, survivors should be rescued and tried, not blasted into small bits as they sit atop a capsized boat in the middle of the ocean. As a society, what's come over us?
Venezuela has accused the government of Trinidad and Tobago of taking part in the US seizure of an oil tanker off Venezuela's coast last week, as Donald Trump's four-month pressure campaign against Nicolas Maduro continues to reverberate across the region. In a statement on Monday, the Maduro regime accused Trinidad and Tobago of participating in the theft of Venezuelan oil, committed by the US administration on 10 December with the assault on a vessel transporting this strategic Venezuelan product.
He has deployed a massive military arsenal in and around the Caribbean Sea and taken a series of provocative actions off the Venezuelan coast, justifying it as necessary to stem the flow of drugs into the United States. The Council on Foreign Relations says that deployment includes an aircraft carrier, destroyers, cruisers, amphibious assault ships, and a special forces support ship.
We just had traffic pass directly in front of us within 5 miles of us maybe 2 or 3 miles but it was an air-to air-refueler from the United States air force and he was at our altitude, the pilot said. We had to stop our climb. The pilot said the US air force plane then headed into Venezuelan airspace.
Spanish prosecutors are probing evidence that the company made an inadequate use of public funds approved by the Spanish government on March 9, 2021, and that the bailout money was instead used to pay off previously existing loans. Plus Ultra appears as a signatory and beneficiary of loan agreements with three companies belonging to the criminal organization, and involved in sales of gold, states the documentation seen by EL PAIS.
"We've just seized a tanker on the coast of Venezuela, a large tanker, very large, largest one ever seized, actually," Trump told reporters at the White House. Trump said the tanker "was seized for a very good reason." The US president added that "other things are happening," without offering any additional details. Reporters asked Trump what would happen with the oil, he replied: "We keep it, I guess."
Zoom in: The U.S. has sanctioned Venezuela's oil shipments for years, but never before seized an oil-laden tanker of this size departing the country, which has the world's largest proven oil reserves. The vessel is known as a VLCC, or Very Large Crude Carrier, capable of transporting as much as 320,000 deadweight tons of crude, two sources with direct knowledge said. The exact details of the seizure, first reported by Bloomberg, are unclear and administration officials could not be reached for comment.
One of the genuine surprises of Donald Trump's second term has been his recent fixation on foreign policy. He always claimed he would be an "America First" president whose only real interest in a grubby world full of Euro-wimps and "shithole countries" was to make them all leave us alone. He clearly hasn't changed his dim view of foreigners, but he does crave a legacy as someone who simultaneously ended multiple conflicts and made his country the most powerful military machine in human history.
Those actions fit the textbook definition of a war crime under the Department of Defense Law of War Manual, which stresses that in the case of shipwrecked individuals who are "in need of assistance and care" without an operable boat, who "refrain from any hostile act," the department cannot consider them as active targets.
