France says it has seized an oil tanker in the Mediterranean suspected of being part of Russia’s sanction-busting “shadow fleet”.
French President Emmanuel Macron said the tanker, named the Grinch, was “subject to international sanctions and suspected of flying a false flag”.
The French navy, with the assistance of allies including the UK, boarded the vessel on Thursday morning between Spain and Morocco. French maritime authorities said that a search of the vessel had “confirmed the doubts as to the regularity of the flag”.
Russia’s embassy in Paris said it had not been informed of the seizure.
Carney’s speech was epic. He stuttered a bit, but the way it was written at the moment that it was delivered, I believe, will go down in history. I don’t know much about him as a politician overall, but the sentiment he expressed is one that is shared throughout Europe and surely much of the industrialized world.
If we’re going to establish a truly rules-based world order, we need to back up our words with actions, and force if necessary. We do hold imperialist and expansionist actors accountable, with force if necessary.
The issue of weapons of mass destruction is huge and hardly something we will solve here. But briefly: nobody should have weapons of mass destruction. We should have a situation where a supranational body ensures that weapons of mass destruction do not exist, similar to the IAEA but one that is compulsory. Yes it sucks that Ukraine and Libya were invaded, and I agree that it likely wouldn’t have happened if it could have devolved into the entire planet being destroyed. But the stakes of weapons of mass destruction is way to high. This is not how we ensure peace, an inch from the abyss, terrified to move lest we all slip and fall. We need something more robust and less based on the ensured destruction of the planet.