STOP SAYING “THEY’RE THERE FOR THE OIL.” IT’S A LIE.

The U.S. never meaningfully extracted oil from Iraq, Libya, or Syria. No cheaper gas. No increased supply. No public benefit. That fantasy collapses once you understand financialized capitalism.

Modern empire is not extractive — it is anti-productive. Profit does not come from producing resources, but from preventing production, enforcing scarcity, and monetizing future claims through debt.

The real mechanism is simple and repeatable:

Sanctions cut a country off from dollar clearing, refinancing, insurance, parts, and logistics.

Production collapses — by design.

The collapse is blamed on “mismanagement.”

Debt defaults follow.

Creditors activate international arbitration.

External assets are seized.

Financial firms “stabilize” the wreckage through debt restructuring, asset stripping, and collateralized future barrels.

Production stays constrained — because abundance would destroy price leverage.

The oil is most valuable when it stays in the ground, backing debt, derivatives, and geopolitical control.

This is why Venezuela is not about rebuilding capacity or supplying oil to anyone. It’s about debt peonage, asset seizure, suppressed production, and externally controlled cash flows.

Arguing “it’s wrong to take their resources” is a losing move. It concedes the false premise that resources could be taken and shared. They can’t. They never were.

Trump didn’t expose a failed system. He exposed a system working exactly as intended.

Imperial power today is not theft.

It is financial strangulation disguised as economics.

Anyone still saying “they just want the oil” is protecting the machine.

Maduro is a bad hombre.

I will zap you 10000 sats if you can articulate why Venezuela is any of Washington DC’s business

Pardon?

First new year bake. GM ☕

Phoenix 4 sats fee outrageous?

All the "easy"self-chstody lightning wallets seem to just use some "don't make me think" slight-of-hand that is ultimately belied as a really crap tradeoff.

Phoenix: Outrageous fees. Quickly looks like shit when you try to onboard someone with $10 and they receive $8.50.Even once they have a channel, the routing fees are like 10x what they should be. Don't demo this to vendors looking to escape credit card fees.

Aqua: Your "lightning" payment gets trapped in some limbo, where you can't tell if it failed, if it's multi-pathing, or whatever the fuck they are doing behind the curtain. Don't demo this to people who want instant settlement.

Wallet of Satoshi/Breez/Blitz: Last mile of the payment is paved with surveilance. Don't use this if you wa to demonstrate censorship resistance.

It's wallet of Satoshi not supported in Europe anymore?

Iterating on the nostr:npub1xnf02f60r9v0e5kty33a404dm79zr7z2eepyrk5gsq3m7pwvsz2sazlpr5 balance view

Hmm, I beg to differ. If desire alone were enough, nobody would ever say ‘I probably shouldn’t tell you this…’, but two glasses of wine and most people will spill a secret if they want to bond. Have you never told a secret?

Humans are terrible secret keepers! I struggle to wrap my head around the average person seeing a need to own their own money.

You don't learn to

swim by reading about water.

you learn

by DOING

These two pieces of paper are equivalent in value. If you don't believe that, you have been brainwashed.

Can humans reliably manage cryptographic sovereignty at scale without recreating institutions?

If you run a bitcoin node, how do you handle the 600 GB initial hurdle?