There are shadow fleets of tankers trafficking oil across the world. Venezuelan oil is sanctioned as well as Iranian so no company without licenses and correct paperwork would touch it unless you move it enough to hide the origin. In the end they all know where it comes from but like the plausible deniability.
Most Venezuelan oil is very heavy and sour and needs to be mixed with lighter oil to be refined and they need access to restricted chemicals for the process. As it was explained to me a few months ago Iran provides lighter oil, solvents and materials for the refining and they take the heavier oil to sell it in the black market.
Sanctions aside the tanker was there for the taking by any government. Spoofing location and flying a false flag are enough to justify boarding and seizure by any country since it's a stateless ship likely involved in illegal activities.
In short yes, USA does it because it can and there's legal justification for it beyond "Trump oil, Trump bad lel", but as usual HN devolves to a potato when world events touch USA politics.
That's precisely the issue. There's a subset of the community that resorts to labeling anyone they deem guilty of wrongthink as a nazi or fascist and is the same crew that preach the "punch a nazi" line.
If it was just a normal exchange of ideas it wouldn't matter and DHH would be just whining, but first response was "he's a nazi" "lets take away his project".
There's crazier stuff in Lunduke's tweets from days ago including death threats and inciting violence against him on public events. I knew he was disliked by a large chunk of the OSS community but to threaten to kill people because someone attends a conference is crazy.
That is not the way to behave in a civilized society and is time people stop bending backwards to appease the lunatics otherwise there's no telling when any of us will be on the wrong end of the mob.
> I knew he was disliked by a large chunk of the OSS community
You sound unfamiliar with him. Lunduke occupies the "Luke Smith" valley of pundits who do not actually contribute to Open Source. Even DHH actually does something, Lunduke's claim to fame is politicizing technology and amplifying an unnecessary culture war. There is no open discussion surrounding how much he contributes, he is a heckler and does nothing else. His bus factor has long since passed a negative quotient.
Now obviously that does not excuse violence against his person. But there is no pretending that he's not controversial; that's the name he's made for himself. It's one that he can feel very comfortable with online, but much less so in a place like America where firearms laws are so relaxed and politically motivated violence never leaves the news cycle.
It's a tragic status-quo for America, but Lunduke is the last person I'll feel sorry for. When the mob comes for him, it's because he was goading them from the sideline. He'd have done well for himself if he put his passion into something productive like Kling or Eich did.
Always saw him as a commentator or blogger that wrote about Linux back in the day and not an actual developer, each have their place and OSS.
There are plenty of more politically motivated people that have no contributions on anything, haven't built a thing and all they do is preach OSS. Some lean left, others more to the right. Although I would say I've seem more leftists like this because there's this believe among many that OSS is socialist, but to each their own as long as they're not trampling on other people's rights.
The problem I see is with some of the crazy people becoming more and more emboldened and the moderate majority just there bending backwards to appease them as if in hopes that it will calm them down, but they just increase the threat level.
Because people are idiots and assholes. There are a bunch of radicalized idiots in FLOSS that want to impose their world view on everyone else and then have the balls to call anyone who disagrees fascist, nazi, or whatever term they can come up with.
It's like when they were adding caveats to licenses in the vein of "if you believe this or that then you cannot use my software because you're trash" (paraphrasing, but similar enough).
It's time we end up this shit. FLOSS is supposed to be about contribution and building something that's useful for all of us regardless of our political leaning. Instead we have assholes poisoning the well and idiots that follow them thinking that the monster they're creating is not going to eat them if they clap hard enough.
This comment will probably get flagged but whatever.
I miss when FLOSS was basically apolitical and EVERYONE working towards something that can be used by ANYONE was absent all the purity tests, propaganda and BS.
It wasn't apolitical, there were a lot of discussions about the nature and politics of OSS but it was never this radical.
I remember a few fights in a few of my local LUG and communities that were very heated, but never death threats and almost always was online trash talking and in real life going back to being normal people with some snarky comments here and there.
You can disagree with someone politically and still work with them. It happens all the time in the real world unless you're someone so mentally ill that you cannot fathom different ideas (like actual nazis did wink).
Calling anyone who is conservative or with whom you happen to disagree with a "nazi" is disingenuous and in current times probably dangerous since there is a lot of crazy people preaching the "it's ok to punch a nazi".
Easiest example is defending antifa as just "wrongheaded" for using violence and attempting to suppress free speech and not a hate group while easily listing any other organization that opposes their political views as hate groups.
If you're claiming to fight extremism you should also fight extremists that support your political views.
> Easiest example is defending antifa as just "wrongheaded" for using violence and attempting to suppress free speech
Yeah, its always easiest to just make up an example that never happened. SPLC didn't defend Antifa as just wrongheaded.
It just doesn’t designate them a hate group because they, whatever else they might be, aren’t about the kind of discrimination that SPLC uses to define a hate group (nor, despite sometimes being at odds with government, are they centered on the kind of anti-government ideology that SPLC defines its catalog of anti-government extremist groups with.)
Ironically, what SPLC is beinf criticized for with Antifa is actually having specific meanings for its designations rather than arbitrarily applying them to everyone it disagrees with.
> If you're claiming to fight extremism you should also fight extremists that support your political views.
The SPLC does not now, and never has, claimed to be a force of generic moderation fighting generic “extremism”; its mission has always been to fight for racial justice and specifically against white supremacy. (It has since 1990 tracked hate groups and antigovernment extremist groups, two sets which overlap and which it has observed are influential in the issues it fights against, but the definitions used and purposes of that have always been, quite openly, shaped by and in service to it's primary mission, not orthogonal to it.)
And, having said that, they do include in their catalogs grouos meeting their definition that purport to be aligned against the same things as SPLC, like the New Black Panther Party (which is both listed by them as an “anti-government extremist” group and a “designated hate group” by SPLC.)
Looks to me that right from the start the study has a fatal flaw and it's clearly biased.
Just looking at their channel selection is clear that they consider extremist only some forms extremism. Particularly those often considered as aligned with right wing politics.
From the Ledwich and Zaitsev paper they reference only the "white identitarian", "anti-sjw" and "men rights activism" categories are selected. But there are more categories that could be considered extremist at a glance like "revolutionary" and "anti-whiteness".
Other categories in Ledwich and Zaitsev's paper: Conspiracy, Libertarian, Anti-SJW, Social Justice, White Identitarian, Partisan Left, Partisan Right, Anti-theist, Religious Conservative, Socialist (Anti-Capitalist), Revolutionary, Provocateur, MRA (Mens Rights Activist), Missing Link Media, State Funded Channels, Anti-Whiteness. Some channels in other categories could be considered extremist but would require a nuanced analysis.
About the other lists or what actual channels they looked into I can't really say because I can't seem to find the actual list they used. If someone has the full list and categories they used please link it.
While it could be possible to analyze the behavior of extremism using only right leaning extremism, it is possible that this pattern does not apply to other forms or ideologies.
Most Venezuelan oil is very heavy and sour and needs to be mixed with lighter oil to be refined and they need access to restricted chemicals for the process. As it was explained to me a few months ago Iran provides lighter oil, solvents and materials for the refining and they take the heavier oil to sell it in the black market.
Sanctions aside the tanker was there for the taking by any government. Spoofing location and flying a false flag are enough to justify boarding and seizure by any country since it's a stateless ship likely involved in illegal activities.
In short yes, USA does it because it can and there's legal justification for it beyond "Trump oil, Trump bad lel", but as usual HN devolves to a potato when world events touch USA politics.