Barackface: 7: Canada

The Emperor’s New Oil Wealth

The truth behind Trump’s black, sticky fantasy ................ When George W. Bush invaded Iraq in 2003, he claimed that the goal was to establish a democratic regime. Some members of his administration may even have believed that. But many leftist critics insisted that it was all about seizing Iraq’s oil. ............. Although I was an outspoken opponent of that war, and deeply cynical about the Bush administration’s motives, I never believed the “war for oil” story. The principal motivation for the war, I still believe, was to wag the dog — to use a showy military victory to secure Bush’s reelection. According to some political scientists, that was a mission the war did, in fact, accomplish. .......... During his triumphalist press conference after the abduction of Nicolás Maduro, Trump never used the word “democracy.” He did, however, say “oil” 27 times, declaring, “We’re going to take back the oil that, frankly, we should have taken back a long time ago.” ..............

whatever it is we’re doing in Venezuela isn’t really a war for oil. It is, instead, a war for oil fantasies. The vast wealth Trump imagines is waiting there to be taken doesn’t exist.

............ You may have heard that Venezuela has the world’s largest oil reserves — 300 billion barrels. You probably don’t know that Venezuela’s reported oil reserves tripled while Hugo Chavez was president. This increase, from roughly 100 billion to 300 billion barrels, didn’t reflect major new discoveries or exploration. Instead, it reflected the Chavez government’s decision to reclassify the country’s Orinoco Belt heavy oil as “proved” — oil that can be recovered with reasonable certainty under existing economic and operating conditions: ...............
“Much of the oil is extra-heavy, which has low recovery and a high cost to produce.”
This suggests that Venezuela’s claims to have immense usable oil reserves were politically motivated hype. .............. the huge increase in Venezuela’s reported oil reserves wasn’t followed by a surge in production. On the contrary, Venezuelan oil production soon plunged: .......... Plunging production was associated with a steady degradation of Venezuela’s oil infrastructure, which would take years and many billions of dollars in investment to restore. Given these costs as well as political instability, major oil companies clearly aren’t enthusiastic about the idea of sinking money into Venezuela. ................ we’ve gone in a matter of days from big talk about huge money-making opportunities to a proposal to, in effect, subsidize oil-industry investments in Venezuela at U.S. taxpayers’ expense. ............ Which is not to say that nobody has profited from the abduction of Maduro. A few months ago Trumpist billionaire Paul Singer bought Citgo, the former U.S.-based arm of Venezuela’s state-run oil company. Citgo owns three Gulf Coast refineries custom-built to process Venezuelan crude, refineries that have suffered from the U.S. embargo on imports of that crude. If Trump lifts that embargo, Singer will receive a huge windfall. But this windfall will have nothing to do with reviving Venezuelan production. ........... Singer has made huge political donations to Trump, raising questions about how much he has influenced policy. His purchase of Citgo was also remarkably well-timed. What did he know? ............... At a deeper level, Trump’s apparent belief that oil in the ground is a precious asset is decades out of date. .......... Oil prices are low mainly because of increased supply due to fracking, and the potential for more fracking is likely to keep them low for the foreseeable future. The breakeven price of fracked oil — the price at which it’s just profitable to drill a new well — is around $62 a barrel in the most important U.S. producing regions. ............ And $62 a barrel wouldn’t be high enough to make investing in the Orinoco Belt, where the estimated breakeven is more than $80, profitable even if there were no political risks. ................ In short, Trump’s belief that he has captured a lucrative prize in Venezuela’s oil fields would be an unrealistic fantasy even if he really were in control of a nation that is, in practice, still controlled by the same thugs who controlled it before Maduro was abducted.

Room for improvement https://t.co/a94mHvPBQf
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 6, 2026

Formula For Peace In Ukraine
Peace For Taiwan Is Possible
A Reorganized UN: Built From Ground Up
Rethinking Trade: A Blueprint for a Just Global Economy
Rethinking Trade: A Blueprint for a Just and Thriving Global Economy
The $500 Billion Pivot: How the India-US Alliance Can Reshape Global Trade
Trump’s Trade War
A 2T Cut
Are We Frozen in Time?: Tech Progress, Social Stagnation
The Last Age of War, The First Age of Peace: Lord Kalki, Prophecies, and the Path to Global Redemption
AOC 2028: : The Future of American Progressivism

Watch now on YouTube: https://t.co/F9L7zuU0p9
— Tim Ferriss (@tferriss) January 7, 2026

On it.
— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) January 7, 2026

The Era of Context

Just as we've seen in coding, these models will morph into AI agents that are expert lawyers, healthcare professionals, business strategists, scientific researchers, or other roles in almost every domain of work.

................ In an instant, they might be asked to review a legal contract for Ford, and then in the next second be writing code for a new piece of software at Goldman Sachs. They are fully general-purpose superintelligence systems that can take on any task for anyone that’s asking. .......... the ultimate force-multiplier will be the context that the agents get. .......... Context about the right products to build, the ways to serve customers, the markets to go after, the specific details of client interactions, the tribal knowledge in an organization, and endless amounts of other proprietary information to your company that's developed over time, licensed, or acquired. .............. Context engineering has blown up over the past year to tackle just this, and it's not an easy problem. Just imagine taking an expert lawyer or engineer that by default knows absolutely nothing about your organization, and you only have a single document’s worth of space to describes their entire job, every system they have to leverage, all the data that they are supposed to work with for that particular task, what their objectives are, and so on. Getting the right information to them becomes a critically important requirement to drive their productivity. ..............
Lew Platt, the CEO of HP in the 90s, once said, “if HP knew what HP knows, we would be three times more productive.”
................... the more data you have, the more powerful the overall system becomes. ............ getting the right data (or context) to agents is a hard problem at scale. As Jaya Gupta and Ashu Garg at Foundation Capital pointed out in their provocative essay on context graphs, many of the critical decision traces for AI agents to operate with either aren't in any existing software today. And this is just one example of the kind of context that agents will need to operate on. They’ll need customer data, enterprise documents, conversation history, project timelines, research data, marketing assets, financial records, codebases, HR information, and much more. ........... managing the myriad conflicts that emerge in data access controls and permissions so agents don’t leak data, governance and compliance challenges around what things an agent can execute on, and connecting our disparate enterprise systems to make this work is going to be an ongoing work for the next decade. ..............

A US citizen has apparently been shot by ICE agents in Minneapolis. I’m gathering information, but the situation on the ground is volatile.

ICE should leave now for everyone’s safety.

Please be safe Minneapolis.
— Tina Smith (@SenTinaSmith) January 7, 2026

🚨 BREAKING: A SHOOTING involving ICE just occurred in South Minneapolis

Details are scarce, but a mob has formed near the scene.

Say a prayer for our ICE agents today as the rhetoric against them gets increasingly hostile. These guys are true HEROES 🙏🏻

🎥 @ScooterCasterNY pic.twitter.com/F0K3Rw2hqd
— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) January 7, 2026

BREAKING - An anti-ICE “legal observer” has been shot in Minneapolis while attempting to ram ICE agents with her vehicle and has reportedly been killed, sparking mass demonstrations sparked by Tim Walz and Jacob Frey condemning ICE for legally defending themselves. pic.twitter.com/GbWIxLuFK7
— Right Angle News Network (@Rightanglenews) January 7, 2026

ICE agent allegedly shot & killed a woman driving through an immigration raid in Minneapolis this morning. According to video of aftermath it appears the woman's wife & dog were in the car when she was shot in the head.https://t.co/sYGH1W0EfZ pic.twitter.com/ipEEptRGOp
— Alanna Vagianos (@AlannaVagianos) January 7, 2026

Ridiculous. Nobody is fooled into thinking this bafoonery is a reasonable use of taxpayer dollars.

It should not take 50 ICE agents to arrest one guy in a library. https://t.co/ISJt7mBzO9 pic.twitter.com/4QJ1tVtKx0
— Governor Tim Walz (@GovTimWalz) January 6, 2026

🚨This video is terrifying, and it’s exactly why “just comply” does not protect you from ICE/Border Patrol agents, even as U.S. citizens, and why you always film them.

In North Carolina, ICE/Border Patrol agents illegally stopped two U.S. citizens. They questioned them without… pic.twitter.com/FNb1ZMoCPb
— Jesus Freakin Congress (@TheJFreakinC) January 6, 2026

🚨HAPPENING NOW: ICE agents are allegedly involved in a shooting incident where a woman was reportedly shot in the face nearby a doctor on the scene was ordered not to provide aid. pic.twitter.com/POKqBWxtPY
— josh (@Joshuajered) January 7, 2026

Breaking News:

A woman was just shot in the face while trying to flee ICE agents in Minneapolis.

None of this is normal.

The United States is the most barbaric country on earth. pic.twitter.com/QSLT9dZDDW
— Power to the People ☭🕊 (@ProudSocialist) January 7, 2026

DHS tweeted this yesterday. Little more than 24 hours later, ICE agents just shot and killed a legal observer in Minneapolis. pic.twitter.com/BcLfAwmhXx
— Prem Thakker (@prem_thakker) January 7, 2026

Ice agents in Minnesota shoot 40mm pepper canister into a some ones face at point-blank range which can be lethal. https://t.co/Hp2oxc2ZYo pic.twitter.com/Y2PCDyAzxH
— Ali (@MerruX) January 7, 2026

🚨 BREAKING: Video shows the moment a woman tried to RUN OVER ICE agents with her vehicle in Minneapolis, resulting in her being SHOT

Tim Walz calling ICE the “GESTAPO” is EXACTLY WHY this stuff happens.

SHAME on Walz and Mayor Frey. pic.twitter.com/qsTbdj1Y11
— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) January 7, 2026

Somali boot licking mayor Jacob Frey said Ice raids would get someone killed… what got this woman killed was her RAMMING ICE agents with her car because she was encouraged to resist ICE. pic.twitter.com/wrG9H2QZaV
— Carl Higbie (@CarlHigbie) January 7, 2026

BREAKING: Reports suggest a person was shot by ICE agents in Minneapolis, with first responders administering life-saving aid. An eyewitness said, “Point blank, shot her in the face.” This is nothing short of terrifying. We need full transparency and answers as to why a federal… pic.twitter.com/S4dGuWLi2P
— Ben Crump (@AttorneyCrump) January 7, 2026

Breaking in Minneapolis: ICE agents shot a woman in the face. A doctor came to render aid to the victim and he was blocked by ICE from doing so. Reports coming out by eye witnesses who now say the victim died. pic.twitter.com/y7XDV7Yxx7
— Centrist Surfer 🌊 🏄‍♂️ (@dudeonthebay) January 7, 2026

JUST IN:

ICE agents are getting hit with snow balls after a reported ICE involved shooting in Minnesota.

What is your reaction?

I think these agents should detain ANYONE throwing things at them!! pic.twitter.com/B2wgnP4IuS
— AmericanPapaBear™ (@AmericaPapaBear) January 7, 2026

UPDATE on ICE shooting in Minneapolis: ICE agents say a woman tried to flee law enforcement, then *tried to run them over in a vehicle.* Someone then fired one shot, hitting the woman in her face. She had no pulse but was transported to the hospital. pic.twitter.com/yWgFfrVffO
— Rev. Ben Johnson (@TheRightsWriter) January 7, 2026

🚨BREAKING: ICE/Border Patrol agents were posted up in a grocery store parking lot in Richfield, MN, stopping, detaining, and interrogating people based solely on how they look.

This is racial profiling. It is illegal.

In the video, an agent can be heard yelling at a bystander… pic.twitter.com/gF0MCZRkne
— Jesus Freakin Congress (@TheJFreakinC) January 6, 2026

🚨 BREAKING: Eyewitness testimony from the ICE shooting in Minnesota differs from the DHS statement

A local resident says the deceased woman was attempting to turn around, not drive into ICE agents as the DHS say

[@mprnews] pic.twitter.com/f9GUUBu0U3
— Politics US (@PolitlcsUS) January 7, 2026

🚨 🚨 🚨 BREAKING: REPORTS COMING IN FROM MINNEAPOLIS THAT ICE AGENTS SHOT A WOMAN IN THE FACE.

Situation is deteriorating as crowd beginning to grow.pic.twitter.com/7azV5xj92o
— Maine (@TheMaineWonk) January 7, 2026