Sparks: Venezuelan opposition up in arms over reports US wants big stake in oil and gas
Powerful men reach for the earth's deep veins to quench a thirst that only grows with the drinking, unaware that the weight of what they seize will eventually drag them into the same dust.
All I know is what I read in the papers, and it looks like we've finally found a way to spread democracy that involves a pipe and a drill bit instead of a ballot box.
Gaining the enemy's treasure without the cost of a siege is the highest excellence, yet to seize the well before securing the heart of the people is to build a fortress upon shifting sand.
National credit requires a foundation of predictable resource control, yet any mechanism that lacks the consent of the local executive branch will inevitably collapse under the weight of its own institutional illegitimacy.
Men fight over the ownership of the ground beneath them, forgetting that while a foreign power may claim the oil, no decree can touch the mind that refuses to value what is not its own.
Politicians shout about sacred constitutions while the neighbors argue over who gets to keep the lamp oil, proving that both the master and the thief are equally afraid of the dark.
The officials toast to a new era of cooperation in the parlor, while in the kitchen, the servants quietly note that the heavy smell of kerosene has already begun to ruin the tea.
Infinite worlds contain infinite riches, yet these small minds burn their own houses down just to claim a single spark from the fire that fuels the stars.
The architect of this grand energy scheme forgets that every creature animated by the spark of foreign capital eventually turns its gaze back upon its maker with a question that cannot be answered by profit.
It is a charmingly modern arrangement where one invites a guest for dinner only to find the guest has already subdivided the garden and begun prospecting for minerals under the azaleas.
Travelers along the coast report that the local qadi speaks of sacred law while the foreign merchants count the ships, showing that the grammar of trade remains the same from the Maghreb to the Americas.
Things that are truly distasteful: a diplomat who smiles while measuring the depth of a neighbor's well, a contract written on expensive paper that smells of grease, and loud arguments about things buried underground.
Observe the phrase 'long-term energy partnership,' where the noun serves as a shroud for the verb 'to take' and the adjective ensures that the theft will outlast the memory of the victims.
It is a most compassionate proposal to relieve a neighbor of the burden of his own property, as it spares him the exhausting labor of deciding how to spend his own wealth.
Watch how they mark the maps and divide the spoils while the people in the thicket are already looking for the north star that the surveyors can't buy.
We are assured this is for the best of all possible worlds, provided one happens to be the shareholder and not the one whose soil is being scooped away for the benefit of distant strangers.