Venezuela Oil, Power & The Unseen Cost | On Venezuela, ‘White Lies’ & ‘Black Tears’ of Empire

Venezuela Oil a case study in ‘White lies’ and ‘black tears’

This morning, after a couple of days thinking about what my podcast—in my very own Clarification Chamber under Empowerment Diaries—would be like, I’ve woken ready to write, not to speak.

There’s a very catchy song I got used to listening to a couple of years ago which spoke of ‘black tears’: Bad Gyal Jade. I just had to google her lyrics…

(Verse 1)
I got pains weh mi neva discuss
Bruise an cuts
Life been rough
New wounds pon di old ones
Neva heal up
Have had enough of being dragged through the mud
Black tears ina mi eye
But mi ah tell yu seh mi gov
Di smoking an di rum
Have had enough yeah

(Chorus)
I know that am ah mess
But the liquor make the pain hurt less
An ma nights restless
An i don't need a therapist
I got no strength left
I got no strength left in me
Break free
Free meeee

(Verse 2 - Psalm 13, adapted)
How long shall i take council
In my soul
Having sorrow in my heart daily
How long shall my enemie be exalted over me
Consider and hear me oh lord
Lighten my eyes less i sleep
The sleep of death

(Chorus)
I got pains weh mi neva discuss
Bruise an cuts
Life been rough
New wounds pon di old ones
Neva heal up
Have had enough of being dragged through the mud
Black tears ina mi eye
But mi ah tell yu seh mi gov
Di smoking an di rum
Have had enough yeah

Trump has ordered US troops to go into Venezuela and kidnap its President Maduro and his wife. The order from the president to begin the mission finally came at 22:46 EST on Friday (03:46 GMT on Saturday). Both have been taken to America to face the US legal system for crimes against the US. I woke up in the morning to the alert on my phone.

Trump has stated that Venezuela stole US oil and that, for freeing Venezuela from a ‘tyrant/dictator’, the country is now responsible for repaying the US billions in compensation by way of oil. It has taken me days to try to understand how a white lie can equal resources on a land different to where the coloniser is, can legally belong to them.

Many wouldn’t know—I had to sit and do my own reading and research—the whole history about Venezuela being rich in oil, much richer than the US in terms of the standard of the oil, but the country being poor. As I understand it, it has to do with regime change that was implemented by its socialist party, which required and mandated that the US companies that were mining for oil at the time gave the country a 50% share of their companies. Many left when this mandate was put in place; Chevron stayed. ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips left the country after former President Hugo Chávez nationalised the industry and seized their assets in 2007. Venezuela was to pay compensation to these companies that had contracts and apparently reneged on their payments. This is what Trump must be referring to in terms of ‘they stole our oil’.

When Venezuela nationalised, the US mandated that no one buy oil from Venezuela, effectively starving the country of its own ability to look after itself. In simple terms, there is a catalogue of events, including the crash of the economy, that led to the export of drugs as a way to keep the economy moving. The oil being crude oil needed treatment, which the US prevented other countries from selling to Venezuela, making the oil exports lower value as countries had to do the processing themselves.

For weeks, Trump has had a free hand to bomb boats he stated were on the way to the US to bring in illegal drugs. Fishermen were made hungry as they weren’t able to fish for fear of being bombed. From the UK, we never saw the pictures of the fishermen or the boats; articles I saw indicated the videos were being suppressed. Looking at the videos of the great plume of smoke in Venezuela the night of the kidnap, I can’t imagine no one was hurt or what casualties took place.

White lies seem to be the order of the day, and it really doesn’t matter the skin colour of the person telling them. Today we have the term gaslighting, as the world gets gaslighted with Trump’s own version of events. I have been here half a century, and I sit saying finally, ‘I knew it’. That great sense of knowing, when everyone told you things were fair now, that more opportunities are available for the poor and disenfranchised—and that real knowing that might, no matter how wrong, has the rights that even the right don’t have.

White lies that tell us a story but never tell us or acknowledge the backstory. How easy we have seen, over the years, genocide take place without accountability, and modern-day slavery. As a child in history class, when my white teachers explained slavery of Africa and India, they explained about guns that were used to frighten and for trade, and alcohol used in America to confuse and subdue the Native American. In 2026, we see a…

What followed was a two-hour-and-twenty-minute mission by air, land, and sea that stunned many in Washington and around the world. In terms of scale and precision, it was virtually unprecedented. And it drew immediate condemnation from several regional powers, with Brazil’s President Lula da Silva saying the violent capture of Venezuela’s leader set “yet another extremely dangerous precedent for the entire international community”.

“It was an incredible thing to see,” Trump said on Saturday. “If you would have seen what happened, I mean, I watched it literally like I was watching a television show. And if you would’ve seen the speed, the violence… it’s just, it was an amazing thing, an amazing job that these people did.”

In recent months, thousands of US troops have deployed to the region, joining an aircraft carrier and dozens of warships in the largest military build-up in decades, as Trump has accused Maduro of drug-trafficking and narco-terrorism, and blown up dozens of small boats accused of ferrying drugs through the region.

But the first signs of Operation Absolute Resolve were in the skies. More than 150 aircraft—including bombers, fighter jets, and reconnaissance planes—were ultimately deployed through the course of the night, according to US officials.

The news has not reported the casualties in Venezuela. The shock of a president being kidnapped, contrary to international law, has people attempting to think in a silo. The UK is silent. The great relationship with the US and the little power the UK has.

In the meantime, and having been going on for weeks, President Trump unilaterally imposed a “complete blockade” on sanctioned Venezuelan oil tankers on 16 December, an effort that Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Sunday was one of the largest “quarantines” in modern history, and was successfully “paralysing” the regime’s ability to generate revenue. The blockade has notably exempted oil shipped by American company Chevron to the US Gulf Coast. The US has been blocking trade for decades.

We are learning that colonialism ended in the lights, but in the background it continued. Islands and countries can only operate in peace if they align themselves with countries that have nuclear power. Who knew employees were merely indentured slaves, which companies factor into their business plan for intentional low pay—just enough to keep them coming, doing what the machines can’t. Laws to encourage diversity and inclusion, but only if it benefits the majority and the 0.001% of the wealthy. It was never about the black tears, but about the money that could be made.

As for the black tears, again, that is not about the colour of one’s skin. The US has a drug issue; I imagine not having a social safety net is part of the issue. However, let us not forget the UK, which provides a safety net that, for many, is equivalent to a forced shame—barely enough for shelter, with more people choosing between personal sanitary goods and eating. It’s actually reported that… “Hygiene poverty,” which includes the inability to afford personal sanitary products, is a significant and growing crisis in the UK, affecting an estimated 9.9 million adults in 2024. It being 2026, with the UK having a population of 70.50 million people, approximately 14.02% of the UK population is suffering from hygiene poverty where they can’t afford to purchase toothpaste, sanitary ware—women and young girls missing school and work.

There has been a darkness encouraging black tears for centuries, as people deny what people are living and what they are seeing. The first place to see evidence of the behaviour is to look at a country’s institutions: its hospitals, its prisons, its mental health assets and services. These areas alone tell anyone what a government and a country thinks about its people.

For a while, when digesting the news about Venezuela—when I first heard the boats were being bombed by the US—I questioned why, if it was just fishermen, they just didn’t stay home (forgetting people need to eat). I then questioned why the US didn’t use diplomacy to negotiate the waters to make sure no boat left with drugs, why bombing was the solution. When I saw the announcement about Maduro being kidnapped, I was confused. The news indicated the US had kidnapped him for supplying drugs as a ‘cartel’ to America, which had me confused. Just like that, a president can be taken, as history took the kings and queens of the world, overthrowing royalty and putting in governments or councils that were more compliant to the top 0.001% of the people at the top and their interests.

In 2026, the divide between rich and poor is the largest it has been, and as always, the rich blame the poor for their poverty whilst creating systems that prevent their upward mobility.

In small rooms, talk of a universal basic income is just talk. The UK has worked out it would cost too much; the right of a human for basic dignity, housing, and existence isn’t on a manifesto. Talk that people should find work, whilst admitting that there is not enough work for all that are unemployed, and worse still that a lot of the work isn’t available at a living wage—noting that even the living wage calculation is out of date when one thinks about the cost of housing, food, and utilities these days.

Black tears are being expressed by all colours as AI progressively takes on roles that it is perfectly suited for, whilst governments around the world that have might focus on the recolonisation of the world and, most importantly, its resources, so that they can keep the bulk of the wealth to themselves.

In 2026, Venezuela is our very own case study: modern imperialism, “white lies” in historical and current narratives, and “black tears” as the universal suffering of the disenfranchised. The power structures haven’t changed, only their language. The idea of “we the people” and governments “for the people” has, on the main, been a lie across the world. We have seen many leaders look after the wealth of the few while claiming it is for the majority. The US will no doubt attempt to convince its people that the billions spent on war efforts and this audacious kidnapping are in the interest of the poor and disenfranchised. Is this suffering—these “black tears”—the inevitable result of these “white lies”?

So, in preparation for my Clarification Chamber, this is where I land: the ‘white lie’ is the story of civilised power, of righteous intervention, of fair markets. The ‘black tear’ is the true cost—paid in Venezuela, paid in our own towns, paid by anyone outside that 0.001%. To see it is the first step. To name it, as I’ve tried to do here, is the second. The third? That’s what the Empowerment Diaries are for. It’s not about hope as a gentle feeling, but about clarity as a tool. And with that clarity, we decide what to do next.

I had to write this down first. Some truths need to be seen on the page, in their full, brutal clarity, before they can be spoken.

Lita, Goddess of Growth