oil. from farm to pharmaceutical, diesel truckto dinner plate, pipeline to plastic product, it is impossible to think of an area of ourmodern-day lives that is not effected by the petrochemical industry. the story of oil isthe story of the modern world. parts of that story are well-known: rockefellerand standard oil; the internal combustion engine and the transformation of global transport;the house of saud and the oil wars in the middle east. other parts are more obscure: the quest foroil and the outbreak of world war i; the petrochemical interests behind modern medicine; the bigoil money behind the “green revolution†and the “gene revolution.â€
but that story, properly told, begins somewhereunexpected. not in pennsylvania with the first commercial drilling operation and the firstoil boom, but in the rural backwoods of early 19th century new york state. and it doesn’tstart with crude oil or its derivatives, but a different product altogether: snake oil. “dr. bill livingston, celebrated cancerspecialist†was the very image of the traveling snake oil salesman. he was neither a doctor,nor a cancer specialist; his real name was not even livingston. more to the point, the“rock oil†tonic he pawned was a useless mixture of laxative and petroleum and hadno effect whatsoever on the cancer of the poor townsfolk he conned into buying it.
he lived the life of a vagabond, always onthe run from the last group of people he had fooled, engaged in ever more outrageous deceptionsto make sure that the past wouldn’t catch up with him. he abandoned his first wife andtheir six children to start a bigamous marriage in canada at the same time as he fatheredtwo more children by a third woman. he adopted the name “livingston†after he was indictedfor raping a girl in cayuga in 1849. when he wasn’t running away from them ordisappearing for years at a time, he would teach his children the tricks of his treacheroustrade. he once bragged of his parenting technique: “i cheat my boys every chance i get. i wantto make ’em sharp.†a towering man of over six feet and with naturalgood looks that he used to his advantage,
he went by “big bill.†others, less generously,called him “devil bill.†but his real name was william avery rockefeller, and itwas his son, john d. rockefeller, who would go on to found the standard oil monopoly andbecome the world’s first billionaire. the world we live in today is the world createdin “devil†bill’s image. it’s a world founded on treachery, deceit, and the naivetyof a public that has never wised up to the parlor tricks that the rockefellers and theirilk have been using to shape the world for the past century and a half. this is the story of the oiligarchy. part one: birth of the oil-igarchy
titusville, 1857. a most unlikely man alightsfrom a railway car into the midst of this sleepy western pennsylvania town on the shoresof oil creek: “colonel†edwin drake. he’s from the pennsylvania rock oil company, andhe’s here on a mission: to collect oil. like “dr.†bill, drake isn’t reallya colonel. the title is bestowed on him by george bissell and james townsend, a lawyerand a banker who started the pennsylvania rock oil company after they discovered theycould distill the region’s naturally occurring seneca oil into lamp oil, or kerosene. drakeis actually an unemployed railroad conductor who talked himself into a job after stayingat the same hotel as bissel the year before. calling him a colonel, it is hoped, will helpwin the respect of the locals.
the locals think he’s crazy anyway. senecaoil is indeed plentiful, bubbling out of seeps and collecting in the creek, but other thanas a cure-all medicine or grease for the local sawmill’s machinery, it’s hardly seenas something valuable. in fact, it can be a downright nuisance, contaminating brinewells that supply pittsburgh’s booming salt industry. still, drake has a task to complete: findinga way to collect enough oil to make the distillation of seneca oil into lamp oil profitable. hetries everything he can think of. the native americans had historically collected the oilby damming the creek near a seep and skimming the oil off the top. but drake can only collectsix to ten gallons of oil a day this way,
even when he opens up extra seeps. he triesdigging a shaft, but the groundwater floods in too quickly. by the summer of 1859 he’s desperate. drake’srunning out of ideas, bissell and townsend are running out of patience and, most importantly,the company is running out of funds. he turns to “uncle†billy smith, a pittsburgh blacksmithwho had experience drilling brine wells with steam-powered equipment. they get to workdrilling down through the shale bedrock to reach the oil. it’s maddeningly slow work,with the crude equipment struggling to get through three feet of bedrock a day. by august27th they’ve drilled down 69 and a half feet, drake has used the last of his funds,and bissell and his partners have decided
to close up the operation. on august 28th,they strike oil. narrator: then on sunday, august 28th, 1859,oil bubbled up the drive pipe. uncle billy and his son sam bailed out several bucketsof oil. on monday, the very day that colonel drake received his final payment and an orderto close down the operation, they hitched the walking beam to a water pump and the oilbegan to flow. the first oil was to sell for $40 a barrel. years later a local newspaperinterviewed uncle billy about the day they struck oil: “i commenced drilling and at 4:00 i struckthe oil. i says to mr. drake, ‘look there! what do you think of this?’ he looked downthe pipe and said, ‘what’s that?’ and
i said, ‘that is your fortune!'†drake’s well proved that by drilling forit, oil could be found in abundance and produced cheaply. overnight a whole new industry wasborn. before long in millions of homes, farms and factories around the world, lamps wouldbe lit with kerosene refined from west pennsylvania crude. daniel yergin: when the word came out thatdrake had struck oil, the cry went up throughout the narrow valleys of western pennsylvania:‘the crazy yankee has struck oil! the crazy yankee has struck oil!’ and it was the firstgreat boom. it was like a gold rush. source: the prize (part 1)
overnight the quiet farming backwoods of ruralpennsylvania was transformed into a bustling oil region, with prospectors leasing up flats,towns springing up from nowhere, and a forest of percussion rigs covering the land. thefirst oil boom had arrived. already poised to make the most of this boomwas a young up-and-coming bookkeeper in cleveland with a head for numbers: john davison rockefeller.he had two ambitions in life: to make $100,000 and to live to 100 years old. john d. setoff to make his fortune in the late 1850s, armed with a $1000 loan from his father, “devilâ€bill. david rockefeller: grandfather never finishedhigh school and went to cleveland having borrowed $1000 from his father to start a business— paid 9% interest on it incidentally. and
he read about the oil business just beginningand got interested, and came to realize it was a very volatile business at the time. source: the prize part 1 in 1863, seeing the oil boom and sensing theprofits to be made in the fledgling business, rockefeller formed a partnership with fellowbusinessman maurice b. clark and samuel andrews, a chemist who had built an oil refinery butknew little about the business of getting his product to market. in 1865 the shrewdjohn d. bought out his partners for $72,500 and, with andrews as partner, launched rockefeller& andrews. by 1870, after five years of strategic partnerships and mergers, rockefeller hadincorporated standard oil.
the story of the rise of standard oil is anoft-told one. narrator: in a move that would transform theamerican economy, rockefeller set out to replace a world of independent oilmen with a giantcompany controlled by him. in 1870, begging bankers for more loans, he formed standardoil of ohio. the next year, he quietly put what he called “our plan†— his campaignto dominate the volatile oil industry — into devastating effect. rockefeller knew thatthe refiner with the lowest transportation cost could bring rivals to their knees. heentered into a secret alliance with the railroads called the south improvement company. in exchangefor large, regular shipments, rockefeller and his allies secured transport rates farlower than those of their bewildered competitors.
ida tarbell, the daughter of an oil man, laterremembered how men like her father struggled to make sense of events: “an uneasy rumorbegan running up and down the oil regions,†she wrote. “freight rates were going up.… moreover … all members of the south improvement company — a company unheardof until now — were exempt. … nobody waited to find out his neighbor’s opinion. on everylip there was but one word and that was ‘conspiracy.'†ron chernow, biographer: by 1879, when rockefelleris 40, he controls 90 percent of the oil refining in the world. within a few years, he willcontrol 90 percent of the marketing of oil and a third of all of the oil wells. so thisvery young man controls what is not only a national but an international monopoly ina commodity that is about to become the most
important strategic commodity in the worldeconomy. source: the rockefellers by the 1880s, the american oil industry wasthe standard oil company. and standard oil was john d. rockefeller. but it wasn’t long until a handful of similarlyambitious (and well-connected) families began to emulate the standard oil success storyin other parts of the globe. one such competitor emerged from the caucasusin the 1870s, where imperial russia had opened up the vast caspian sea oil deposits to privatedevelopment. two families quickly combined forces to take advantage of the opportunity:the nobels, led by ludwig nobel and including
his dynamite-inventing prize-creating brotheralfred, and the french branch of the infamous rothschild banking dynasty, led by alphonserothschild. in 1891, the rothschilds contracted with m.samuel & co., a far east shipping company headquartered in london and run by marcussamuel, to do what had never been done before: ship their nobel-supplied caspian oil throughthe suez canal to east asian markets. the project was immense; it involved not onlysophisticated engineering to construct the first oil tankers to be approved by the suezcanal company, but the strictest secrecy. if word of the endeavour was to get back torockefeller through his international intelligence network it would risk bringing the wrath ofstandard oil, which could afford to cut rates
and squeeze them out of the market. in theend they succeeded, and the first bulk tanker, the murex, sailed through the suez canal in1892 en route to thailand. in 1897 “m. samuel & co.†became the shelltransport and trading company. realizing that reliance on the rothschild/nobel caspian oilleft the company vulnerable to supply shocks, shell began to look to the far east for othersources of oil. in borneo they ran up against royal dutch petroleum, established in thehague in 1890 with the support of king william iii of the netherlands to develop oil depositsin the dutch east indies. the two companies, fearing competition from standard oil, mergedin 1903 into the asiatic petroleum company, jointly owned with the french rothschilds,and in 1907 become royal dutch shell.
another global competitor to the standardoil throne emerged in iran at the turn of the 20th century. in 1901 millionaire socialitewilliam knox d’arcy negotiated an incredible concession with the king of persia: exclusiverights to prospect for oil throughout most of the country for 60 years. after 7 yearsof fruitless search, d’arcy and his glasgow based partner, burmah oil, were ready to abandonthe country altogether. in early may of 1908 they sent a telegram to their geologist tellinghim to dismiss his staff, dismantle his equipment and come back home. he defied the order andweeks later struck oil. burmah oil promptly spun off the anglo-persianoil company to oversee production of persian oil. the british government took 51% majoritycontrol of the company’s shares in 1914
at the behest of winston churchill, then firstlord of the admiralty, and survives today as bp. the rothschilds and nobels. the dutch royalfamily. the rockefellers. these early titans of the oil industry and their corporate shellspioneered a new model for amassing and expanding fortunes hitherto unheard of. they were thescions of a new oligarchy, one built around oil and its control, from wellhead to pump. but it was not just about money. the monopolizationof this, the key energy resource of the 20th century, helped secure the oiligarchs notjust wealth but power over the lives of billions. billions who came to depend on black goldfor the provision of just about every aspect
of their daily lives. in the late 19th century, however, it wasby no means certain that oil would become the key resource of the 20th century. as cheapillumination from the newly-commercialized light bulb began to destroy the market forlamp oil, the oiligarchs were on the verge of losing the value from their monopoly. buta series of “lucky strikes†was about to catapult their fortunes even further. the very next year after the commercial introductionof the light bulb, another invention came along to save the oil industry: german engineerkarl benz patented a reliable, two-stroke internal combustion engine. the engine ranon gasoline, another petroleum byproduct,
and became the basis for the benz motorwagenthat, in 1888, became the first commercially available automobile in history. and withthat stroke of luck, the business that rockefeller and the other oiligarchs had spent decadesconsolidating was saved. but more luck was needed to ensure the marketfor this new engine. in the early days of the automobile era it was by no means certainthat gas-powered cars would come to dominate the market. working models of electric vehicleshad been around since the 1830s, and the first electric car was built in 1884. by 1897 therewas a fleet of all-electric taxis shuttling passengers around london. the world land speedrecord was set by an electric car in 1898. by the dawn of the 20th century electric carsaccounted for 28% of the automobiles in the
united states. the electrics had advantagesover the internal combustion engine: they required no gear shifting or hand cranking,and had none of the vibration, smell, or noise associated with gasoline-powered cars. lady luck intervened again on january 10,1901, when prospectors struck oil at spindletop in east texas. the gusher blew 100,000 barrelsa day and set off the next great oil boom, providing cheap, plentiful oil to the americanmarket and driving down gas prices. it wasn’t long before the expensive, low range electricengines were abandoned altogether and big, loud, gas-guzzling engines came to dominatethe road, all fueled by the black gold that standard oil, shell, gulf, texaco, anglo-persianand the other oil majors of the time were
drilling, refining and selling. perhaps john d.’s greatest stroke of luck,however, was not supposed to be luck at all. rockefeller had come under increasing scrutinyby a public outraged by the unprecedented wealth he had amassed through standard oil.muckraking reporters like ida tarbell began digging up the dirt on his rise to power throughrailroad conspiracies, secret deals with competitors and other shady practices. the press picturedhim as a colossus with bribed politicians literally in the palm of his hand; standardoil was a menacing octopus with its tentacles strangling the lifeblood of the nation. hearingsbegan, investigations were launched, lawsuits were brought against him. and then, finally,in 1911 the supreme court made a monumental
decision. narrator: on may 15th, 1911, the supreme courtof the united states declared that standard oil was a monopoly in restraint of trade andshould be dissolved. rockefeller heard of the decision while golfing at kykuit witha priest from the local catholic church, father j.p. lennon. ron chernow, biographer: and rockefeller reactedwith amazing aplomb. he turned to the catholic priest and said, “father lennon, have yousome money?†and the priest was very startled by the question and said, “no.†and thenhe said, “why?†and rockefeller replied, “buy standard oil.â€
narrator: as rockefeller foresaw, the individualstandard oil companies were worth more than the single corporation. in the next few years,their shares doubled and tripled in value. by the time the rain of cash was over, rockefellerhad the greatest personal fortune in history — nearly two percent of the american economy. ron chernow, biographer: and it was reallylosing the antitrust case that converted john d. rockefeller into history’s first billionaire.so that standard oil was punished in the federal antitrust case, but john d. rockefeller, sr.most assuredly was not. to the amazement of the world, rockefeller’spunishment had in fact been his reward. rather than being taken down a peg, the splittingup of the standard oil monopoly had launched
him as the world’s only acknowledged billionaireat a time when the average annual income in america was $520. rockefeller’s story was perfectly mirroredby the story of colonel edwin drake. having struck oil in titusville and given rise toa billion dollar global industry, drake had not had the foresight to patent his drillingtechnique or even to buy up the land around his own well. he ended up in poverty, relyingon an annuity from the state of pennsylvania to scrape together a living and dying in 1880. for the oiligarchy, the lesson of the riseand rise of rockefeller was obvious: the more ruthlessly that monopoly was pursued, thetighter that control was grasped, the greater
the lust for power and money, the greaterthe reward would be in the end. from now on, no invention would derail theoil majors from their quest for total control. no competition would be tolerated. no threatto the oiligarchs would be allowed to rise. part two: competition is a sin when asked how he could justify the treacheryand deceit with which he pursued the creation of the standard oil monopoly, john d. rockefelleris reputed to have said: “competition is a sin.†this is the mentality of the monopolist,and it is this justification, framed as religious conviction, that drove the oiligarchs to soruthlessly eliminate anyone who would dare rise up as a pretender to their throne.
ironically, it was the competition betweenthe oiligarchs in the early 20th century that helped give rise to an early external threatto their empire: alcohol fuel. as historian lyle cummins has noted of theperiod: “the oil trust battles between rockefeller, the rothschilds, the nobels and marcus samuel’sshell kept prices in a state of flux, and engines often had to be adaptable to the fuelthat was available.†in many areas where oil wasn’t available,the alternative was alcohol. ethyl alcohol had been used as a fuel for lamps and enginessince the early 19th century. although it was generally more expensive, alcohol fueloffered a stability of supply that was alluring, especially in areas like london or paris thatdid not have predictable access to oil supplies.
alcohol has a lower heat value, or btu, thangasoline, but a series of tests by the us geological survey and the us navy in 1907and 1908 proved that the higher compression ratio of alcohol engines could perfectly offsetthe lower heat value, thus making alcohol and gasoline engines fuel economy equivalent. one early supporter of alcohol fuel was henryford, who designed his model t to run on either alcohol or gasoline. sensing an opportunityfor new markets to boost the independent american farms that he felt were vital to the nation,henry ford told the new york times: “the fuel of the future is going to comefrom fruit like that sumach out by the road, or from apples, weeds, sawdust – almostanything. there is fuel in every bit of vegetable
matter that can be fermented.†farmers, looking to capitalize on this, lobbiedfor the repeal of a $2.08 per gallon alcohol tax that had been imposed to help pay forthe civil war. they were aided by those who saw fuel alcohol as a way to break the oiligarchs’monopoly. in support of a bill to repeal the alcohol tax, president teddy roosevelt toldthe us congress in 1906: “the standard oil company has, largely byunfair or unlawful methods, crushed out home competition. it is highly desirable that anelement of competition should be introduced by the passage of some such law as that whichhas already passed the house, putting alcohol used in the arts and manufactures upon thefree list.â€
the alcohol tax was repealed in 1906 and fora time corn ethanol at 14 cents a gallon was cheaper than gasoline at 22 cents a gallon.the promise of cheap, unpatentable, unmonopolizable fuel production, production open to anyonewith raw vegetable matter and a still, swept the nation. but cheap, plentiful fuel that can be grownand produced locally and independently is not what the oiligarchs had in mind. a 1909 usgs report comparing gas and alcoholengines had noted that a significant point in alcohol fuel’s favour was that therewere fewer restrictions on alcohol engines. for the oiligarchs, the answer was simple:find a way to place greater restrictions on
alcohol engines. thankfully for them, theanswer to their problem was already gaining popular support. in the 19th century, america had a drinkingproblem. by 1830, the average american over 15 years old drank seven gallons of pure alcoholper year, three times higher than today’s average. this led to the first anti-alcoholmovements in the 1830s and 1840s, and the formation of the prohibition party in 1869and the women’s christian temperance union in the 1870s. the movement enjoyed widespreadand growing support but had few political successes; maine flirted with prohibitionby outlawing the sale and manufacture of liquor in 1851, but the ban only lasted five years.
this changed with the formation of the anti-saloonleague in standard oil’s birth state of ohio in 1893. the asl was started by johnd. rockefeller’s long-time personal friend howard hyde russell and was bankrolled inpart by generous annual donations from rockefeller himself. the asl, with rockefeller’s backing,quickly became the driving force behind a national movement to outlaw the productionand sale of alcohol. rockefeller was a teetotaler himself, notfrom moral concern but because he was afraid that “good cheer among friends†wouldlead to his downfall in business. stephen harkness, one of the silent partner investorsin standard oil and a director in the company until his death, had caught rockefeller’seye when he made a fortune buying up whiskey
in advance of a new excise tax that he hadbeen tipped about and selling it at a huge profit after the tax kicked in. no, rockefeller and standard oil were notconcerned about the moral state of the nation…except as far as it impacted their bottom line. butwhen prohibition did come in 1920, it had an interesting side effect: although it didn’tban the use of ethanol as a fuel directly, it did lead to increasingly burdensome restrictionsrequiring producers to add petroleum products to their ethanol to make it poisonous beforeit could be sold. alcohol fuel, now completely unable to compete with gasoline, was abandonedaltogether by the automobile industry. another existential threat to the vast fortunesof the early oiligarchs was to require an
even greater effort at social engineering:public transportation. by the end of world war i, private car ownershipwas still a relative rarity; only one in 10 americans owned a car. rail was still thetransportation of choice for the vast majority of the public, and city-dwellers in most majorcities relied on electric trolley networks to transport them around town. in 1936, generalmotors formed a front company, “national city lines,†along with firestone tire andstandard oil of california, to implement a process of “bustitutionâ€: scrapping streetcarsand tearing up railways to replace them with gm’s own buses running on standard oil supplieddiesel. the plan was remarkably successful. as historian and researcher f. william engdahlnotes in “myths, lies and oil warsâ€
“by the end of the 1940s, gm had boughtand scrapped over one hundred municipal electric transit systems in 45 cities and put gas-burninggm buses on the streets in their place. by 1955 almost 90% of the electric streetcarlines in the united states had been ripped out or otherwise eliminated.†the cartel had been careful to hide theirinvolvement in national city lines, but it was revealed to the public in 1946 by an enterprisingretired naval lieutenant commander, edwin j. quinby. he wrote a manifesto exposing whathe called “a careful, deliberately planned campaign to swindle you out of your most importantand valuable public utilities–your electric railway system.†he uncovered the oiligarchs’stock ownership of national city lines and
its subsidiaries and detailed how they hadstep by step bought up and destroyed the public transportation lines in baltimore, los angeles,st. louis and other major urban centres. quinby’s warning caught the attention offederal prosecutors and in 1947 national city lines was indicted for conspiring to forma transportation monopoly and conspiring to monopolize sales of buses and supplies. in1949, gm, firestone, standard oil of california and their officers and corporate associateswere convicted on the second count of conspiracy. the punishment for buying up and dismantlingamerica’s public transportation infrastructure? a $5,000 fine. h. c. grossman, who had beenthe director of pacific city lines when it oversaw the scrapping of la’s $100 millionpacific electric system, was fined exactly
$1. unsurprisingly, gm and its associates didnot remain in the doghouse for long. in 1953 president eisenhower appointed charles wilson,then the president of general motors, as secretary of defense. wilson, with francis dupont ofthe rockefeller-connected dupont family as chief administrator of federal highways, oversawone of the largest public works projects in american history: the creation of the interstatehighway system. with a war-era excise tax on train tickets still in place and federallyfunded highways and airports providing cheaper alternatives, rail travel declined a startling84% between 1945 and 1964. this social engineering paid off well forstandard oil and its growing list of petrochemical
associates. in the two and a half decadesafter the outbreak of world war ii, vehicle production in detroit almost tripled, from4.5 million cars a year in 1940 to over 11 million in 1965. as a result, sales of refinedgasoline over the same period rose 300%. but rockefeller was not the only oiligarchworking to crush all opposition to his monopoly. across the pond, the european oiligarchs wereworking to protect their own oil investments from upstart competitors. in 1889, a consortium of german investorsled by siemens’ deutsche bank obtained a concession from the turkish government forextension of a railway line connecting berlin to basra on the persian gulf via baghdad inwhat was then part of the ottoman empire.
the berlin-baghdad railway concession wasfor ninety-nine years and came with mineral rights for twenty kilometers on either sideof the line…an especially lucrative deal since the rail cut right through the heartof the still untapped mesopotamian oil regions south of mosul along the tigris river. for the powers behind the british empire,concerned with the military rise of germany, this deal was unacceptable. william engdahl: well germany in the end ofthe 19th century was looking for outlets for its exports — its industrial exports — asthe german economy was growing like china’s has grown in the last 30 years. and they decidedthat turkey would be an ideal strategic trade
partner for germany. and georg von siemens,one of the directors of deutsche bank, came up with a strategy to extend a railway fromberlin all the way down to baghdad — which was then part of the ottoman empire, baghdadand iraq today, near the persian gulf. german military began training the turkish military.german industry began investing in turkey. they saw a huge potential market to beginbringing turkey into the 20th century economically. deutsche bank also negotiated mineral rights— i think it was 20 kilometres either side of the railway — and it was already knownin 1914 that mosul and these other areas contained huge petroleum deposits. well, why is that significant? at the endof the 19th century, jack fisher–the head
of the admiralty and the head of the royalnavy–advocated the conversion of the british navy from coal-fired to oil-fired. that itwould have a qualitative strategic improvement in every aspect of warship design. and sincebritain didn’t know that they had any oil back then they went to persia and swindledthe shah out of oil rights in persia. they went to kuwait and backed a coup d’etatof the al-sabah family to be a british pawn, and they literally wrote a contract with himthat nothing that kuwait does will be done without approval of the british governor.and kuwait was known to have oil lying right on the persian gulf. the british looked at this railway plan ofthe germans going right down to baghdad and
said ‘my god! you can put soldiers on railcars and bring them down and threaten the oil lifeline of the british navy.’ thisis a strategic move by the germans. it also would make germany independent of the britishcontrol of the seas. they would have a landline much like the chinese “one belt, one roadâ€infrastructure for high speed rails going throughout eurasia into russia, on into belarusand western europe that removes the united states’ navy ability to control china andcontrol central asia to a great extent. the british oiligarchs, including the britishcrown with its hidden controlling stake in anglo-persian oil and the rothschild’s merchantmarcus samuel at royal dutch shell, sought to counter this german threat to their commercialand strategic interests. they used armenian-born
naturalized british citizen calouste gulbenkian–thearchitect of the royal dutch / shell merger–in order, as he later recalled “to see britishinfluence get the upper hand in turkey†against the germans. if that was his task,it was a remarkable success. in 1909 the british set up the turkish nationalbank, which was “turkish†in name only. founded by london banker sir edward casseland with directors like hugo baring of the barings banking family, cassel himself, andgulbenkian, the bank set up the turkish petroleum company in 1912. formed explicitly to exploitthe petroleum-rich oil fields of iraq, then part of the ottoman empire, gulbenkian brokereda deal that forced deutsche bank, with its 40 kilometre concessions along the oil-richbaghdad railway line, into a junior partnership
in the company. the stock was split so thebritish government’s anglo-persian oil company owned half the shares, with royal dutch shelland deutsche bank splitting the other half. their plan to take over germany’s turkishoil interests had been successful, but in an amazing irony, it didn’t even matter.gulbenkian finished negotiations for the iraqi oil concession on june 28, 1914, the sameday archduke ferdinand was shot in sarajevo. an alliance the british had been brokeringfor years to constrain the rising german threat, an alliance involving france and russia, kickedinto motion and the world was engulfed in war. by the end of world war i, the britishand their allies had taken over iraq and its oil deposits anyway, germany had been completelycut out, and gulbenkian, their scheming servant,
received 5% of all oil field proceeds in thenewly minted country. as the century wore on, the oil industry grewbeyond the control of the handful of families that had dominated it since its inception.oil deposits were located around the globe and the resources of entire nation stateswere marshaled to control them. now, threats to the oiligarchs and their interests requiredmulti-lateral, multi-national responses and the consequences of those deals were feltworldwide. the story of the oil shock of 1973 as it hasbeen delivered to us by the history books is well known. narrator: by the late 1960s the nation reliedon imported oil to keep the economy strong.
then in the early 1970s oil-dependent america’snightmares came true: 13 oil-producing countries in the middle east and south america formedopec, the organization of petroleum exporting countries. in 1973 opec placed an oil embargoon the us and other nations that had supported israel against the arab states in the yomkippur war. the american economy went into a tailspin as gas shortages gripped the nation. source: history of oil few, however, know that the crisis and itsensuing response was in fact prepared months ahead of time at a secret meeting in swedenin 1973. the meeting was the annual gathering of the bilderberg group, a secretive cabalformed by prince bernhard of the netherlands
in 1954. the dutch royal family not only gave its royalimprint to royal dutch petroleum, they are still rumoured to be, along with the rothschilds,one of the largest shareholders in royal dutch shell, from the days when queen wilhelmina’sanglo-dutch petroleum holdings and other investments made her the world’s first female billionaireright through to today. bernhard’s guest list at the bilderberg group reflected hisposition in the oiligarchy; alongside him at the swedish conference were david rockefellerof the standard oil dynasty and his protege henry kissinger, baron edmond de rothschild,e.g. collado, the vice president of exxon, sir denis greenhill, director of british petroleum,and gerrit a. wagner, president of bernhard’s
own royal dutch shell. at the meeting in sweden, held five monthsbefore the oil crisis began, the oil-igarchs and their political and business allies wereplanning their response to a monetary crisis that threatened the world dominance of theus dollar. under the bretton woods system, negotiated in the final days of world warii, the us dollar would be the backbone of the world monetary system, convertible togold at $35 per ounce with all other currencies pegged to it. increasing us expenditures invietnam and decreasing exports caused germany, france, and other nations to start demandinggold for their dollars. with the federal reserve’s official goldholdings plunging and unable to stem the tide
of demand, nixon abandoned bretton woods inaugust 1971, threatening the dollar’s position as the world reserve currency. richard nixon: accordingly, i have directedthe secretary of the treasury to take the action necessary to defend the dollar againstthe speculators. i have directed secretary connally to suspend temporarily the convertabilityof the dollar into gold or other reserve assets except in amounts and conditions determinedto be in the interest of monetary stability and in the best interest of the united states. source: nixon ends bretton woods as leaked documents from the 1973 bilderbergmeeting show, the oiligarchs decided to use
their control over the flow of oil to savethe american hegemon. acknowleding that opec “could completely disorganize and underminethe world monetary system,†the bilderberg attendees prepared for “an energy crisisor an increase in energy costs,†which, they predicted, could mean an oil price between$10 and $12, a staggering 400% increase from the current price of $3.01 per barrel. five months later, bilderberg attendee androckefeller protege henry kissinger, acting as nixon’s secretary of state, engineeredthe yom kippur war and provoked opec’s response: an oil embargo of the us and other nationsthat had supported israel. on october 16, 1973, opec raised oil prices by 70%. at theirdecember meeting, the shah of iran demanded
and received a further price raise to $11.65a barrel, or 400% of oil’s pre-crisis price. when asked by saudi king faisal’s personalemissary why he had demanded such a bold price increase, he replied: “tell your king, ifhe wants the answer to this question, he should go to washington and ask henry kissinger.†in the second move of the operation, kissingerhelped negotiate a deal with saudi arabia: in exchange for us arms and military protection,the saudis would price all their future oil sales in dollars and recycle those dollarsthrough treasury purchases via wall street banks. the deal was a bonanza for the oiligarchs;not only did they get to pass the price increases on to the consumers, but they benefited fromthe huge flows of money into their own banks.
the shah of iran parked the national iranianoil company’s revenues in rockefeller’s own chase bank, revenues that reached $14billion per year in the wake of the oil crisis. with the creation of this new system, the“petrodollar“, the oiligarchs had reached unprecedented levels of control over the economy.not only that, they had backed the world monetary system with their commodity, oil, and broughtpotential competition from upstart producer nations under their control all in one step. but for the insatiable appetites of thesemonopolist titans, mere control over the world’s monetary system was not enough… part three: the world in their image
in the nineteenth century, railroad conspiraciesand predatory pricing had been enough to assure the oiligarchs’ monopoly. but by the timethat the british crown, the dutch royal family, the rothschilds and the other european oiligarchsbegan opening up the middle east and the far east to oil exploration in the early twentiethcentury, the goal was no longer to maximize profits or control the oil industry. it wasnot even to control international diplomacy. it was to control and shape the world itself.its resources. its environment. and its people. in order to achieve this goal, the oiligarchywould need a facelift. in the current age, with the rockefeller namenow more likely to be associated with rockefeller plaza or rockefeller university than standardoil, it is difficult to understand just how
hated john d. was in his own day. he was thehead of the standard oil hydra, an octopus strangling the world in his tentacles, a cutthroatgardener pruning the competitors from the flower of his oil monopoly. as one of therichest men the world had ever known, he was an easy target for the average working man’sfrustrations and a magnet for the poor seeking help. judith sealander, historian: he received onaverage 50 to 60,000 letters a month, asking for help. dozens of people followed him inthe street. literally, crowds stood around the standard oil offices waiting for him tocome out. little children, painfully thin, crying in the street and so on. rockefellerfelt overwhelmed.
besieged by the downtrodden, despised by theworking man, hounded by ida tarbell and the muckraking press, john d. had the mother ofall pr problems. the answer was simple: invent the pr industry. he hired ivy ledbetter lee,a journalist-turned-communications expert who invented the modern public relations industryto burnish the rockefellers’ tarnished image. it was lee that suggested giving the familyname to rockefeller center and filming john d. handing out dimes in public. narrator: an early master of public relations,lee used the media which the muckrakers had used to disgrace rockefeller to turn him intoa sympathetic figure. ivy lee recognized early the power of the new moving picture and usednewsreels to show a remarkably benevolent
rockefeller. john d. rockefeller: i am very grateful toyou and to a host of people who are so kind and good to me all the time. second man: why, because you’re so goodto everybody. john d. rockefeller: yes, you are. as ivy lee began to control his public imagehe became oddly a kind of american character, and people kind of warmed to him in a bizarresort of way. it was like having frankenstein on the loose walking around new york cityor something like that, with a cane and a long hat.
narrator: although this plane never takesoff, this photo opportunity was presented as senior’s first flight. perhaps ivy lee’smost brilliant public relations move was the casting of rockefeller as ‘the man who gaveout dimes.’ man off camera: don’t you give dimes, mr.rockefeller? please, go ahead. woman: thank you, sir. man: thank you very much. john d. rockefeller: thank you for the ride! man: i consider myself more than amply paid. john d. rockefeller: bless you! bless you!bless you!
source: john d. rockefeller – standard oil these pr stunts seem obvious and ham-handedby today’s standards, but they were effective enough: to this day people leave dimes onthe stone marker at the base of the 70 foot egyptian obelisk that towers over john d.’sfinal resting place in cleveland’s lake view cemetery. but it was not stage-managedphoto opportunities like these that transformed rockefeller into a public hero. in order to win the public over, he was goingto have to give them what they wanted. and what they wanted wasn’t difficult to understand:money. but just as his father, devil bill, had taught him to do in all his business dealings,rockefeller made sure to get the better end
of the bargain. he would “donate†hisgreat wealth to the creation of public institutions, but those institutions would be used to bendsociety to his will. as every would-be ruler throughout historyhas realized, society has to be transformed from the ground up. americans in the 19thcentury still prized education and intellectual pursuits, with the 1840 census finding unsurprisinglythat the united states–a nation that had been mobilized by tracts like thomas paine’sremarkably popular common sense–was a nation of readers, with a remarkable 93% to 100%literacy rate. before the first compulsory schooling laws in massachusetts in 1852, educationwas private and decentralized, and as a result classical education, including study of greekand latin and a solid grounding in history
and science, was widespread. but a nation of individuals who could thinkfor themselves was anathema to the monopolists. the oiligarchs needed a mass of obedient workers,an entire class of people whose intellect was developed just enough to prepare themfor lives of drudgery in a factory. into the midst stepped john d. rockefeller with hisfirst great act of public charity: the establishment of the university of chicago. he was aided in this task by frederick taylorgates, a baptist minister that rockefeller befriended in 1889 and who would go on tobe john d.’s most trusted philanthropic adviser. gates would go on to write a shorttract, “the country school of tomorrow,â€
that laid out the rockefeller plan for education: “in our dream, we have limitless resources,and the people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hand. the presenteducational conventions fade from our minds; and, unhampered by tradition, we work ourown good will upon a grateful and responsive folk. we shall not try to make these peopleor any of their children into philosophers or men of learning or science. we are notto raise up from among them authors, orators, poets, or men of letters. we shall not searchfor embryo great artists, painters, musicians. nor will we cherish even the humbler ambitionto raise up from among them lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen, of whomwe now have ample supply.â€
although rockefeller’s resources weren’texactly limitless, they might as well have been. in 1902 he established the general educationboard to help implement gates’ vision for the country school of tomorrow with a staggering$180 million endowment. the rockefeller influence on education wasfelt almost immediately, and it was amplified by help from fellow monopolists of the erawho were approaching the topic of philanthropy from the same angle. although best known as a steel magnate, andrewcarnegie’s fortune started on the railroads transporting rockefeller’s standard oilaround the country, and was greatly magnified by a lucrative investment in property nearoil creek that provided steady, profitable
oil sales. in 1905 he established the carnegiefoundation for the advancement of teaching, a tax-free foundation through which carnegieand his appointees could direct the development of the education system in the the unitedstates, and, eventually, worldwide. in 1910, rockefeller followed suit by establishingthe rockefeller foundation, which became the tax-free umbrella organization for his philanthropicambitions. as the reece committee–a congressional investigationinto the activities of these tax-free foundations in the 1950s–discovered, it wasn’t longbefore carnegie’s endowment approached rockefeller’s foundation with a proposal: to cooperate ontheir shared desire to transform the american education system in their own image. normandodd, the director of research for the congressional
committee who was granted access to the carnegieendowment’s board minutes, explains: so they approach the rockefeller foundationwith a suggestion: that portion of education which could be considered domestic shouldbe handled by the rockefeller foundation, and that portion which is international shouldbe handled by the endowment. they then decide that the key to the successof these two operations lay in the alteration of the teaching of american history. so, theyapproach four of the then most prominent teachers of american history in the country — peoplelike charles and mary byrd. their suggestion to them is this, “will they alter the mannerin which they present their subjectâ€â€ and, they get turned down, flatly.
so, they then decide that it is necessaryfor them to do as they say, i.e. “build our own stable of historians.†then, theyapproach the guggenheim foundation, which specializes in fellowships, and say†“whenwe find young men in the process of studying for doctorates in the field of american history,and we feel that they are the right caliber, will you grant them fellowships on our sayso? and the answer is, “yes.†so, under that condition, eventually theyassemble twenty (20), and they take these twenty potential teachers of american historyto london. there, they are briefed in what is expected of them — when, as, and if theysecure appointments in keeping with the doctorates they will have earned.
that group of twenty historians ultimatelybecomes the nucleus of the american historical association. and then, toward the end of the1920’s, the endowment grants to the american historical association four hundred thousanddollars ($400,000) for a study of our history in a manner which points to what this countrylook forward to, in the future. that culminates in a seven-volume study, thelast volume of which is, of course, in essence, a summary of the contents of the other six.the essence of the last volume is this: the future of this country belongs to collectivism,administered with characteristic american efficiency. source: norman dodd interview
with this base for transformation firmly established,the rockefeller foundation and like-minded organization embarked on a program so ambitiousthat it almost defies comprehension. they transformed the practice of medicine. as usual, the oiligarchs that funded thischange were also there to profit from it, and once again john d. took his queue from“devil†bill’s example. william rockefeller had called his brand of snake oil “nujol,â€for “new oil,†and standard oil spun off “nujol†as a laxative under their stancosubsidiary. manufactured on the same premises as “flit,†an insecticide also derivedfrom standard oil’s byproducts, “nujol†sold at the druggist for 28 cents per sixounce bottle; it cost standard oil less than
one-fifth of a cent to manufacture. pharmaceuticalsprovided a lucrative new opportunity for the oiligarchs, but in a turn-of-the-century americathat was still largely based on naturopathic, herbal remedies, it was a tough sell. theoiligarchy went to work changing that. in 1901 john d. established the rockefellerinstitute for medical research. the institute recruited simon flexner, a pathology professorat the university of pennsylvania, to serve as its director. his brother, abraham, wasan educator who was contracted by the carnegie foundation to write a report on the stateof the american medical education system. his study, the flexner report, along withthe hundreds of millions of dollars that the rockefeller and carnegie foundations wereto shower on medical research in the coming
years, resulted in a sweeping overhaul ofthe american medical system. naturopathic and homeopathic medicine, medical care focusedon un-patentable, uncontrollable natural remedies and cures was now dismissed as quackery; onlydrug-based allopathic medicine requiring expensive medical procedures and lengthy hospital stayswas to be taken seriously. narrator: the fortunes of carnegie, morganand rockefeller financed surgery, radiation and synthetic drugs. they were to become theeconomic foundations of the new medical economy. g. edward griffin: the takeover of the medicalindustry was accomplished by the takeover of the medical schools. well, the people thatwe’re talking about, rockefeller and carnegie in particular, came to the picture and said‘we will put up money.’ they offered tremendous
amounts of money to the schools that wouldagree to cooperate with them. the donors said to the schools: ‘we’re giving you allthis money, now would it be too much to ask if we could put some of our people on yourboard of directors to see that our money is being spent wisely?’ almost overnight allof the major universities received large grants from these sources and also accepted one,two or three of these people that i mentioned on their board of directors and the schoolsliterally were taken over by the financial interests that put up the money. now what happened as a result of that is theschools did receive an infusion of money, they were able to build new buildings, theywere able to add expensive equipment to their
laboratories, they were able to hire top-notchteachers, but at the same time as doing that they schewed the whole thing in the directionof pharmaceutical drugs. that was the efficiency in philanthropy. the doctors from that point forward in historywould be taught pharmaceutical drugs. all of the great teaching institutions in americawere captured by the pharmaceutical interests in this fashion, and it’s amazing how littlemoney it really took to do it. source: the money takeover of medicine the oiligarchy birthed entire medical industriesfrom their own research centers and then sold their own products from their own petrochemicalcompanies as the “cure.†it was frank
howard, a standard oil of new jersey executive,who would go on to persuade alfred sloan and charles kettering to donate their fortunesto the cancer center that would then bear their name. as director of research at sloan-kettering,howard appointed cornelius rhoads, a rockefeller institute pathologist, to develop his wartimeresearch on mustard gas for the us army into a new cancer therapy. under rhoads’ leadership,nearly the entire program and staff of the chemical warfare service were reformed intothe ski drug development program, where they worked on converting mustard gas into chemotherapy.and once again, the rockefeller’s own snake oil was being sold as a cancer cure-all. the oiligarchs’ interest in the burgeoningpharmaceutical industry converged in companies
like i.g. farben, a drug and chemical cartelformed in germany in the early 20th century. royal dutch’s prince bernhard served onan i.g. farben subsidiary’s board in the 1930s and the cartel’s american operation,set up in cooperation with standard oil, included on its board standard oil president walterteagle as well as paul warburg of kuhn, loeb & co., itself headed by jacob schiff of therothschild broker family. at its height, i.g. farben was the largest chemical company inthe world and the fourth largest industrial concern in the world, right behind standardoil of new jersey. the company was broken up after world warii, but like standard oil, its various pieces remained intact and today basf, one of itschemical offshoots, remains the largest chemical
company in the world, while bayer and sanofi,two of its pharmaceutical offshoots are among the largest pharmaceutical companies in theworld. not content merely to monopolize the fieldsof education and medicine, the same oiligarchical interests banded together to take controlof america’s finances. in 1910 john d. rockefeller jr.’s own father-in-law, senator nelsonaldrich, frank vanderlip of the national city bank, and paul warburg, as well as variousagents of j.p. morgan, met in complete secrecy on jekyll island to hammer out the detailsof what would go on to become the federal reserve, america’s central bank. the fed,established in 1913, would be run by hand-picked appointees of the oiligarchy and their bankingassociates, including, perhaps inevitably,
standard oil president and american i.g. directorwalter teagle. the rockefeller family would go on to formallyenter the banking field in the 1950s when james stillman rockefeller, the grandson ofjohn d.’s brother, was appointed director of national city bank. meanwhile john d.’sown grandson, david rockefeller, would go on to take over chase manhattan bank, thelong-time banking partner of the standard oil empire. in this move the rockefellers’ story perfectlymirrored that of their fellow oiligarchs the rothschilds. whereas the rothschilds had supplementedtheir banking fortune with their oil interests, the rockefellers supplemented their oil fortunewith banking interests.
springboarding from success to success asthey consolidated monopolies across every field of human activity, the oiligarchs’ambitions became even larger. this time, their goal was to consolidate control over the veryfood supply of the world itself, and once again they would use philanthropy as the coverfor their business takeover. narrator: the green revolution began in 1943when plant geneticist norman borlaug and a team of researchers arrived on mexican soil.his goal was to improve agricultural techniques and biotechnological methodologies which inturn would help alleviate starvation and improve the living quality of developing nations.creating new genetically modified strains of wheat, rich, maize and other crops, borlaugplanned to win the battle against world hunger.
the hope was that these new crops and farmingtechniques would rescue third world countries from the brink of starvation. that’s exactly what happened. the agriculturalinnovations brought to the poverty-stricken countries gave the farmers the skills andresources necessary to sustain themselves. this triggered a chain of events that wouldallow these once-struggling nations to survive. agricultural exports soared in quantity anddiversity and allowed the countries to become self-sufficient. as the genetically modified crops thrived,farmers were able to use their increased income to purchase newer and superior farming machinery.this increase in revenue made farming easier,
more reliable and more efficient. the greenrevolution led to the modernization of agriculture and has had a profound social, economic andpolitical impact on the world. the mexican government turned to the rockefellerfoundation in their endeavour to nourish mexico through agriculture. source: green revolution waging war againsthunger norman borlaug, needless to say, was a researcherfor the rockefeller foundation, and the green revolution, for whatever increase in yieldsit brought about, also created markets for the oiligarchs’ own interest in the petrochemicalfertilizer industry and gave rise to the “abcd†seed cartel of archer daniels midand, bunge,cargill and louis dreyfus. these companies,
along with their associated interests in thefood packaging and processing industry, formed the core of american “agribusiness,†aconcept developed at harvard business school in the 1950s with the help of research conductedby wassily leontief for the rockefeller foundation. the american agribusiness giants shared acommon goal: the transformation of third world agriculture into a captive market for theirgoods. from this perspective, the project was a runaway success. by the 1970s the rockefellerstandard oil network and its cronies in the nitrogen fertilizer industry (including dupont,dow chemical, and hercules powder) had broken into markets around the world, markets convenientlyforced open for them by the us government itself under president johnson’s “foodfor peace†program, which mandated the use
of petrochemical-dependent agricultural technologies(fertilizers, tractors, irrigation, etc.) by aid recipients. unable to afford these new technologies themselves,the impoverished third-world “beneficiaries†of this “revolution†relied on loans fromthe international monetary fund and the world bank handled by rockefeller’s own chasemanhattan bank and guaranteed by the us government. the real costs of the green revolution, economic,agricultural and environmental are seldom tallied. access to these debt-financed petrochemical-dependenttechnologies exacerbated the difference between the rich landowning class and the landlesspeasants in countries like india, where land reform and abolition of usury were droppedfrom the political agenda after the green
revolution took over. even then, the revolution’s main success,its increase in agricultural yields, has been oversold. yield growth across india actuallyslowed after the introduction of agribusiness. the environmental destruction is even moredevastating. an overview in the december 2000 edition of current science notes: “the green revolution has not only increased productivity, but it has also [produced] several negativeecological consequences such as depletion of lands, decline in soil fertility, soilsalinization, soil erosion, deterioration of environment, health hazards, poor sustainabilityof agricultural lands and degradation of biodiversity. indiscriminate use of pesticides, irrigationand imbalanced fertilization has threatened
sustainability.†the rockefeller foundation even acknowledgesthe critiques of the green revolution it funded into existence, insisting that “currentinitiatives take into account lessons learned.†even so, the foundation continues to fundresearch and write reports on how to improve prospects for agribusiness investment in itstarget markets. as egregious as the green revolution was andcontinues to be, however, in many ways it was just the prelude to an even more ambitiousproject: the gene revolution. now the project is not merely to monopolize the technologies,supplies and chemical inputs for agriculture worldwide, but to monopolize the food supplyitself through the replacement of the world’s
natural seeds with patentable geneticallymodified crops. the players involved in this “gene revolutionâ€are almost identical to the players in the green revolution, with i.g. farben offshootsbayer cropscience and basf plantscience mingling with traditional oiligarch associate companieslike dow agroscience, dupont biotechnology, and, of course, monsanto, all funded by therockefeller foundation and fellow “philanthropists†at the ford foundation, the bill & melindagates foundation and like-minded organizations. the convergence of corporate, “philanthropic,â€governmental and inter-governmental interests in promoting gm crops around the world canbe seen in the bewildering array of research institutes, industry associations, and “consultativegroups†devoted to the case. the rockefeller-funded
international rice research institute (irri),the rockefeller/monsanto/usaid brainchild international service for the acquisitionof agri-biotech applications (isaaa), the rockefeller/ford/world bank created consultativegroup of international agricultural research (cgiar) and dozens of other bland, benign-soundingorganizations research and promote gm crops in target markets around the globe, with theprofits ending up in the oiligarchs’ coffers. a representative example of this story isthe agribusiness neocolonization of argentina, where monsanto ran an elaborate “bait-and-switchâ€to get the country hooked on its genetically modified roundup ready soybeans before demandingroyalties on the crops that were by then already growing. dupont then took over, magnanimouslybeginning a “protein for life†programme
to foist their own gm soybeans on the country’spoor. the same scene has played itself out in countryafter country, where cartel-developed gm crops are foisted on emerging economies through“food aid,†usually during times of famine when those countries are especially vulnerable.only a handful of countries like zambia or angola have outright rejected this gmo takeoverof their food supply, generously subsidized by the us government to the benefit of theagribusiness cartel. conclusion: monopolizing life from cutthroat pioneers of the early oil industryto machiavellian social engineers and geopolitics schemers, the oiligarchs have come a longway since the days of devil bill’s snake
oil cure-alls. but his use of every form ofdeception and trickery to swindle the public informed how john d. and the rest of the oiligarchsbuilt up their business interests. as the 20th century drew to a close, it wasobvious that for the powerful cartel that built the oil industry–the rockefellers,the rothschilds, the british and dutch royal families–it was no longer about oil, ifit ever really was. the takeover of education, of medicine, of the monetary system, of thefood supply itself, showed that the aim was much greater than a mere oil monopoly: itwas the quest to monopolize all aspects of life. to erect the perfect system of controlover every aspect of society, every sector from which any threat of competition to theirpower could emerge.
they had been remarkably, almost unbelievably,successful. from oil well to gas pump, farm to fork, hospital to pharmaceutical, drillrig to dollar bill, there was almost no aspect of society that was not under control. but the oiligarchs are not done yet. theirnext project, launched in the late 20th century, is almost too ambitious to be comprehended.it is not about oil. it is not about money. it is about the monopolization of life itself.they have spent decades preparing the path for this takeover and marshaled their mind-bogglingresources in service of the task. and the vast majority of the world’s population,still playing the shell game that the oiligarchs perfected and abandoned long ago, are aboutto fall right into their hands yet again.