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Desperate Venezuela Seems to Fail at Attempted Piracy

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A cruise ship, Resolute, was rammed by a Venezuelan military patrol ship and the military ship sank. Columbia Cruise Services operates the cruise ship. The cruise ship was in international waters more than 13 nautical miles (24km) from La Tortuga and it was carrying out engine maintenance.

The Resolute is a purpose-built polar expedition vessel. It has a reinforced hull for sailing in icy waters. The cruise ship had minor damage after it was rammed. The patrol boat began taking on water after hitting its bulbous bow.

The Resolute remained in the area for more than an hour and contacted rescue co-ordinators on the Dutch Caribbean island of Curaçao.

More than 90 percent of Venezuela’s export revenue comes from oil. The country risks generating less than $8b billion this year, which is only a third of the $25 billion it made in 2019, according to Caracas-based economic consultancy Ecoanalitica.

Three weeks ago, President Nicolas Maduro called the crashing oil market a “brutal blow” that dropped the price below the cost of production. Last week Venezuela’s production fell below 700,000 barrels a day.

Venezuela’s Navy

2 submarines
3 frigates
6 OPV
2524 patrol boats
4 landing ships
3 auxiliary ships

SOURCES- BBC, Aljazeera
Written By Brian Wang, Nextbigfuture.com

70 thoughts on “Desperate Venezuela Seems to Fail at Attempted Piracy”

  2. What is “enlightened self-interest”? Wealth is an addiction like heroin. It can’t be enlightened. It hungers. Even when your stomach is filled to burst, it still wants more.

  3. Feel free to start with various socialists, but the free market theories rely on “enlightened self-interest” where greed is a motivator, but does not legitimize the things you describe. Please see Rothbard or you are just name calling.

  4. Start with the slave traders, the colonizers, and end with the arm dealers and the drug dealers. Greed is a powerful motivator to do wrong.

  5. A good libertarian would also be Henry George, if you are against ancestral crimes going legalized.

  7. Start with Adam Smith, thru Locke, all non violent, peaceful traders. Murray Rothbard “For a new Liberty” good start.

  8. I am happy to learn new information. Maybe you can tell me where you learned that Capitalism has a moral foundation.

  9. Thus proving we have different definitions. What you describe is right wing socialism. Socialists won’t own up to the very things you describe.

  10. I strongly disagree on the definition of Capitalism being non-violent. Capitalism killed millions, enslaved millions, and exploited millions. There is nothing in the philosophy of Capitalism that is ethical or moral. It is a philosophy built on greed.

  11. Any warship captain worth his/her salt carries a book called Janes fighting ships. This book is the bible for ship recognition, it gives every thing needed to know. Multi failures accrued here.

  12. The advantage of clear and consistent definitions is the possibility of clear and consistent thinking. Many common words have many uses, leading to mass equivocation by the untrained. “money is power” is true by this example, but then skill is power too, as it gets one money. Thus skill is evil, probably not what you meant. So, your defs don’t work. Try these: Political power is the socialism defined above. Power is this political power unless otherwise defined, or is electric or mechanical, clear by context. Capitalism, surprisingly, is defined by those careful, as the system of the non-violent marketplace. Now, the current common use is actually describing right wing socialism, aka welfare for the rich. Much like the anti monarch classical liberals were libertarian, but now the word liberal commonly means left wing socialist. So, *true* capitalism cannot be power!

  13. So what is government then? It is definitely not capitalism. And by the way money is power so Capitalism is power. And power by its very nature is always evil.

  14. Socialism: the belief in or advocacy of the initiation of force or fraud to achieve political or social ends. If not, libertarian. You can have non-power addict based definition, but that is confusing if politics is the topic, as in this case. Same for the word “power”, it is clearly political or electrical unless otherwise stated, given the context.

  15. Government is socialism, so is family, and so is church. No everyone in the world does things for profit so not everything is capitalism. What is not capitalism is socialism.

  16. Well, they both did a great job. Now what? Who is going to be their sugar daddy now? No one, that’s who. Their oil isn’t needed. To even exist in this would will require someone to give them charity. Good luck to them. They’ll need it.

  18. A little bit? When a country destroys it’s domestic food production by making it unprofitable, or awarding agricultural assets to brothers in law of government officials, and then loses almost all it’s export income, everything deteriorates a lot!
    The only thing keeping Maduro in power is that those who would overthrow him are too weak to act. The sad thing is that revolution would only put another socialist into office.

  19. Really depends on his connections within the regime. He could be hailed as a hero if he’s somebody important’s kid.

  20. Battle ship…..

    Thats a patrol boat its like calling a go cart a semi truck or a small personal plane a cargo aircraft

  22. This was a Venezuelan navy ship ramming a civilian ship near Venezuelan waters. “A cruise ship, Resolute, was rammed by a Venezuelan military patrol ship and the military ship sank.” The very first sentence, my dude.

  23. Seems I’m out of touch with the recent history of ramming as a naval tactic.

    Still, ramming an ice breaker seems to have not been clever.

  24. China has its Navy ram and sink fishing vessels all the time, they also use their fishing vessels to ram and harass others frequently.

  25. Interesting discussion here folks. Much more enlightening than some of the other comments in this post. The ‘Lucatards’ & ‘Ameritards’ all seem to have some valid points. However, illegitimate power-holders and abusers of legitimate power continue to be the source of most of the world’s woes, IMO.

  26. The Russians can design all the scary weapons they want but they don’t have enough manpower or money to even make prototypes.

  28. You said they are doing better than Iraq and Afghanistan, that is wring because at least they Iraqis and Afghanis can afford food. Also I meant a shiv for Venezuela, not a citizen.

  30. Nobody likes when others suffer. We like to see a Government that is outwardly standoffish to the U.S. for no reason accept to get Revisionist money to support their imploding economy. Venezuela would’ve been in a much better position right now if they didn’t have some 3rd rate junta placing all their eggs in one basket.

  31. Wow it is hilarious when some Venezuelan comes in, says everything is peachy, then offers no evidence. There is evidence to suggest that Venezuela is in the toilet due to being outwardly standoffish to the U.S. for no discernable reason accept to get the Revisionist powers of China and Russia to invest (which they haven’t been doing) to having a complete dependence of oil and tourism (oil crashed and nobody wants to visit a broken country).

  32. They can’t afford to help the Venezuelans. Russia has an economy smaller than Italy and is currently biting off more than it can chew geopolitically. They aren’t slouches but they can’t afford to do nearly as much as the destabilizing the Soviets did.

  33. Your insults are as brainless as your lack of facts. Hugo Chavez inauguration was at the end of the nineties. Sorry, Chavez your illustrious leader caused this collapse not the US.

    On 2 June 2010, Chávez declared an “economic war” due to increasing shortages in Venezuela. The crisis intensified under the Maduro government, growing more severe as a result of low oil prices in early 2015, and a drop in Venezuela’s oil production from lack of maintenance and investment.

    https://fas.org/sgp/crs/row/IF10715.pdf

    It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.
    Mark Twain

  34. I agree, but the context is clearly *political* power in this particular post. It is that power that is negative in essence, from a libertarian point of understanding. Even where defensively needed due to massive worldwide insanity, it is not *good*. For the larger concepts, neurosis or (“There needs to be a word” Janov defined) repression is the key. Eg, whether parental “power” is used to supply love or abuse depends on the mental health of the parent. The Primal experiment demonstrates the mechanism, repression, that feeds upon normal needs/powers to produce more repression, the System. “Once understood, the System must be destroyed”-Janov

  35. is not about socialism or capitalism or whatever ism. This is about the evil US forcing its will on those that do not comply.

    The US had control of Venezuelan resources and was plundering Venezuela at will. Chavez put a stop to it and then Maduro has followed in his footsteps.

  36. While I agree that “power” the word has many uses, it clearly does not mean mere capability in the context of politics. My *power* to understand neurosis is not what is meant. Rather the libertarian opposite, the “initiation of force or fraud to achieve political or social ends.” Power addicts only actually get the buzz when they exceed their authority, for example. They used to say “power corrupts, . . .” I say “power is corruption”.

  38. Ok, free to follow socialism to its logical conclusion. That is the complete collapse of your economy, a dictatorship, rampant corruption, extreme poverty, lack of basic necessities like food and electricity and selling your daughters into prostitution. Congratulations, they are definitely free. The problem you seem to have missed is that they always were free, a path they freely chose to follow through their vote. We didn’t force them into anything, and couldn’t care enough to threaten them with a forced alternative except possibly to alleviate a humanitarian crisis. This always was a self inflicted pain, not one we or anyone else forced on them. It started with Chavez and continues with Maduro.

  39. Because the evil US has sanctioned Venezuela from b freely trading with other countries. Also the US and the UK have stolen billions belonging to Venezuela.

    What gives the US the right to decide how a country chooses to run its business?

  42. I claim independent creation of the concept, in the specific definition I use. Started as “addiction to violence” in the early 80’s. People would rip down the paper posts I put up. Based upon the mechanism of addiction, which is to fall for a crutch that helps repression, and the internal repression mechanisms relax, and don’t want to resume the work! see Janov for repression facts. Only *officially* recognized non-drug addiction is gambling. Power is far more dangerous, esp to others. Do power addicts want us to discuss their mental illness?

  43. I’m not sure about the full equation, however, at least now we’re talking about power and power addiction, which if you’ll notice, is pretty darn rare. And why is that?

  45. During the cold war when the US sent ships into the black sea, the Russians would continually harass and often escalated to ramming our ships, granted it was more of a side swipe, but the message was clear.

  47. You know your country is doing REALLY well when you start comparing it to Iraq and Afghanistan. Starting your comparison at the bottom of the sh!t pile is not a good place to start. You should go watch TV with your mommy, Luca. She is the only one who misses you.

  48. Venezuela is not an island. It’s people can just pack their bags and walk out of the country. Or at least commute across the border for work.

  49. Maduro, left wing socialist. Trump, right wing socialist. socialist -> power addict. Power addict -> addict. Addict -> repression. Repression -> neurosis, or worse. If you can’t see that they are neurotic, you don’t know what the word *neurosis* means. Or, you are in deep denial. See Janov for details.

  50. The ship was also registered in Portugal one of the many countries that Maduro has a problem with. the Portuguese have recognized Juan Guido as the legitimate leader of Venezuela so there might some advantage to Maduro taking the ship hostage similar to the Iranian’s taking British Oil tankers hostage after Britain impounded the Iranian tanker earlier in 2019 at Gibralter.

  53. Yes, it’s true, he hasn’t been overthrown. As a consolation prize they get a smoking ruin of country instead. *golf clap*

  55. Brian really did display far too much self confidence in predicting the downfall of a country.
    If we look at history we see nation after nation deteriorating into desperate straights… and then just staying there, or getting even worse, without collapsing.
    A nation state can be a very resilient thing.

  56. During the second half of the 19th century ramming was promoted as being a major, if not THE major, way of attacking capital ships.
    To some extent this is because the new iron-clads were near impervious to the cannon of the day, and because of a few rammings that were exaggerated to an extent that modern ship designers do not agree with.

    Here’s a decent summary: https://www.navalgazing.net/Lissa

  61. I’m with Jan on that one. The incident makes the Venezuelan navy looks silly but accusing them of attempted piracy (and that’d a really hopeless attempt) seems a bit far fetched

  62. At 1500 tons displacement a large patrol boat, and not that old either. The skipper is going to pay a heavy price for a stupid decision.

  64. Surprisingly ramming other ships, especially submarines, remained a usable tactic as late as WWII. Several submarines were rammed by surface vessels during the war; a Finnish submarine managed to sink a Soviet sub by ramming it, and the patrol boat commanded by a certain Lt. John F. Kennedy was rammed & sunk by a Japanese destroyer.

    Granted, its usefulness has greatly decline since then. And in this case, I don’t think the Venezuelan ship intended to sink the Resolute with its ramming tactics, but instead was trying to push it towards Venezuelan waters.

  65. The cruise ship didn’t have any passengers on it; it just had the crew on board & was transferring between ports. I don’t think the Venezuelans were trying to sink the cruise ship, but instead push it into Venezuelan waters, were they could hold the ship and crew hostage until the “fine” was paid.

  66. I think this wass some kind of mistake. Even if there battle ship had managed to sink the cruise ship, how would that have been profitable?

    You would have a ship at the bottom of the ocean and a bunch of scared passengers in life boats. How do you turn this into a profit? By holding the passengers at ransom?

  67. Okay – assuming nobody was actually seriously injured or killed, this is just flat out funny! 😀

  68. Aren’t their buddies in Russia helping them out, since Russia is causing this oil price crash?

  70. The last place you want to ram an ice breaker ship is in the prow. Apparently they were unaware that it was an ice breaking ship, or just remarkably ignorant.

    Seriously, I thought ramming went out with triremes. What modern navy trains its sailors in that tactic?

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