Sparks: US and Venezuela reach 'historic' oil deal, Trump says

Men in black suits sign a paper to claim the thick black liquid beneath a soil they have never walked, while the man who actually digs it remains as hungry as he was yesterday.

If the strength of one nation is found in the forced surrender of another's subterranean wealth, then we have merely traded the physical chain for a liquid one and called the new bondage a bargain.

We calculate the value of sixty-five billion barrels of oil but forget to ask what the cost is to the soul that must depend on such a foul and finite crutch for its daily movement.

The ownership of the earth's interior has been transferred to a new department, yet the gate to the field remains locked and the requisition forms for the oil are printed in a language no one speaks.

Democratic nations often mistake the sudden acquisition of vast resources for a triumph of their principles, failing to see that such centralized wealth only accelerates the soft despotism of the state over the individual.

The matter is this: a kingly decree over the commons of the earth is no less a tyranny because it is called a deal rather than a conquest.

Across the great western sea, the sultans trade the very ground of their kingdoms for promises, much like the merchants of Ormuz who barter pearls for grain when the winter winds blow harsh.

This agreement treats the subterranean strata as a ledger of profit, ignoring the isothermal reality that extracting sixty-five billion barrels will irrevocably alter the atmospheric currents and the very life-web of the Orinoco basin.

Just as the blood sustains the living body, this dark ichor is pulled from the veins of the earth to feed a machine that has no heart, leaving the primary organism withered and dry.

They fight over the sludge of a dying era when the very air vibrates with an infinite energy that would render their pipelines and their historic deals as obsolete as the stone axe.

There is a fence around the oil wells of the world, and the modern reformer wishes to tear it down not because he loves the oil, but because he hates the idea that the earth belongs to anyone but himself.

When the greening power of the land is traded for the black bile of the deep, the cosmic harmony is fractured and the body of the world falls into a fever that no gold can cure.