US commits second act of Venezuela piracy – and is going for a third

The US military has seized a second oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela and is pursuing a third, as the Trump regime confirms it has abandoned even a nodding relationship with international and maritime law, prompting warnings from Brazilian president President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva that it is about to cause a “humanitarian catastrophe” if it continues its “armed intervention” in Venezuela. Attacks on oil tankers are also an obvious risk of a massive environmental disaster.

Lula also likened the interference by a ‘global north’ power in South America to the British attack on the Falkland Islands:

the South ⁠American continent is once again haunted by ‌the military presence of an extra-regional power.

Venezuela under attack

The attacks on shipping come after US president Trump, drunk on his own propaganda, announced that he was closing Venezuelan airspace. The Trump regime has made no secret of its intention to steal Venezuela’s vast oil reserves and topple its elected president Nicolás Maduro to replace him with puppet Maria Corina Machado. Investigative journalist Julian Assange has made a criminal complaint against the Nobel organisation for awarding Machado, who has openly welcomed US aggression and promised to sell off Venezuela to US corporations, one of its ‘Peace Prizes’. Machado is despised by more than 90% of Venezuelans – which is at least a step up from the last would-be US puppet, Juan Guaidó, whom the US recognised as Venezuelan president despite most people in the country never having heard of him.

The US’s Google search engine appears to have mounted a campaign to discredit the polling, lionising Machado using discredited claims of a presidential victory in Venezuela’s “unriggable” presidential election and, of course, that peace prize:

The US has been a terror state for much of its modern history – in South America perhaps more than anywhere. But now Trump, and the support of successive US administrations for Israeli genocide and terrorism, have dragged it well and truly out of the closet.

Human catastrophe

The US has been warned against risking a “humanitarian catastrophe” in Venezuela after it seized another tanker.

Secretary Kristi Noem of the Department of Homeland Security confirmed the operation on X, saying the oil tanker had last docked in Venezuela.

She posted:

The United States will continue to pursue the illicit movement of sanctioned oil that is used to fund narco terrorism in the region. We will find you, and we will stop you.

Featured image via the Canary