Our long history of violating international law continues...
this post was submitted on 14 Dec 2025
426 points (95.3% liked)
Political Memes
2030 readers
763 users here now
Non political memes: !memes@sopuli.xyz
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Except for all the times it happened. All the colonial countries hired ships to attack merchants of the other nations in the Caribbean and Atlantic. The age when that happened? The golden age of piracy! There were more pirates on the payroll of states than those stealing for themselves.
That was privateering. Privateers were basically PMCs.
That was a privateer. And it wasn't exactly considered all that legitimate at the time, and definitely isn't legitimate activity today.
Sir Francis Drake was legitimate enough to get knighted. And when he captured and ransomed Cartagena de Indias he gave 100,000 pesos to the crown of england. You know what the people in Colombia call that event? A pirate raid.
I agree there is a differentiation and privateer is a more precise definition. But the people getting attacked could not give less of a shit if the guy robbing them is state sponsored or not. To the victims its just pirates. Just as the US is sending pirate ships to do piracy in Venezuela.
I mean, if you want to say enforcing sanctions is piracy, but that makes a whole lot of countries guilty, not just the us.
That be privateerin, matey.
Right so that has a word. Those individuals would be privateers. They commit state sanctioned piracy.
If you're using your country's military that's not piracy by any definition
Privateers are private individuals. Not military. They just happened to be paid by a state.
The only distinction is for Venezuela to make. They won't handle an act of war the same way as an act of piracy - and they shouldn't be expected to be responsible for US internal politics, or give a shit.
Did you mean to reply to me? I'm pretty sure I made it very clear these were not privateers and was instead the military.
When I said "They committed state sanctioned piracy" I was replying to a comment asking about historical privateers. "They" refers to those historical privateers not the current situation with the US military being used