Third Day of Quandary, 64th Day of Hagwinter, 525 M.E. (Castor): This is hilarious: the mighty U.S. military tried to intercept a tanker, the Bella 1, in the Caribbean this weekend after determining that it was not flying a valid national flag. The ship did not comply, however, and simply kept on sailing. The Coast Guard repeatedly tried to hail the Bella 1 and direct it to stop, but the vessel has ignored those calls. 

Apparently, all you need to do to avoid seizure and pirating by the Coast Guard is to simply tune them out and ignore them.  

The Stable Genius has made it clear that its targeting of ships carrying Venezuelan oil is intended to push Nicolás Maduro, the country’s president, from power. “We’re not just interdicting these ships, but we’re also sending a message around the world that the illegal activity that Maduro is participating in cannot stand,” the puppy-killer Kristi Noem said in an interview today. “He needs to be gone.” 

The campaign to interdict oil tankers is drawing criticism from foreign governments, threatens global energy markets, and is getting pushback inside the United States from HOSCA and others over the risk of escalation.  

Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, a libertarian who routinely opposes U.S. military intervention overseas, was one of two Republicans who joined Democrats last month in voting to block a potential attack on Venezuela. Yesterday, he called the tanker seizures a provocation and a prelude to war. “Look, at any point in time there are 20, 30 governments around the world that we don’t like,” he said. “But it isn’t the job of the American soldier to be the policeman of the world.”

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil said that an “armed intervention in Venezuela would be a humanitarian catastrophe.”

China, the biggest consumer of Venezuelan oil, condemned the seizures, calling the actions a serious violation of international law. Beijing confirmed that it opposes any actions that “infringe on the sovereignty and security of other countries, or constitute acts of unilateral bullying.”

HOSCA neither condones nor supports the Maduro regime, which lost the popular election in Venezuela but had refused to cede power. However, HOSCA does not view the nationalization of Venezuela's oil industry as "stealing U.S. oil" as the Stable Genius maintains, and opposes another U.S. military intervention in Latin America to further corporate interests. No blood for oil.