Govt’ Slaves — April 2, 2018

Dr Mercola–“How Big Oil Conquered the World” is a brilliant piece of investigative journalism presented by James Corbett,1 revealing the immense extent to which the oil industry has shaped and is ruling the world as we know it.

“From farm to pharmaceutical, diesel truck to dinner plate, pipeline to plastic product, it is impossible to think of an area of our modern-day lives that is not affected by the petrochemical industry.

The story of oil is the story of the modern world. And this is the story of those who helped shape that world, and how the oil-igarchy they created is on the verge of monopolizing life itself.”

Corbett carefully details the sordid backstory of today’s “oiligarchy.” While most people are well-acquainted with the Rockefeller name, few probably know the true history of the Rockefellers’ rise to power.

Big Oil — An Industry Founded on Treachery and Deceit

As noted by Corbett, certain details of the Big Oil story are well known. Others are more obscure. The story begins in rural New York state in the early 19th century, with William Avery Rockefeller, an authentic “snake oil salesman” going by the fictional name of “Dr Bill Livingston.”

While neither a doctor nor a cancer specialist, Rockefeller, aka “Dr. Livingston,” aka “Devil Bill,” traveled the country’s back roads conning people into buying his “Rock Oil” tonic for cancer — “a useless mixture of laxative and petroleum that had no effect whatsoever,” according to Corbett.

William Avery Rockefeller fathered numerous children with three women and took the name Livingston after being indicted for rape in 1849. One of those children was John D. Rockefeller, who became the world’s first billionaire after founding Standard Oil.

As noted by Corbett:

“When he wasn’t running away from them or disappearing for years at a time, [William Avery Rockefeller] would teach his children the tricks of his treacherous trade. He once bragged of his parenting technique: ‘I cheat my boys every chance I get. I want to make ’em sharp’ …

The world we live in today is the world created in ‘Devil’ Bill’s image. It’s a world founded on treachery, deceit, and the naïveté of a public that has never wised up to the parlor tricks that the Rockefellers and their ilk have been using to shape the world for the past century and a half.”

The Birth of the Oil Industry

Another character with a similarly dubious background is “Colonel” Edwin Drake, an unemployed railroad conductor who managed to secure himself a job with the Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company after running into the founders, George Bissell and James Townsend, at a hotel.

The title “Colonel” was bestowed on him by Bissell and Townsend, who thought it might help him “win the respect of the locals” as he went about the company’s business, collecting Seneca oil, which the company distilled into kerosene (lamp oil).

His mission was to collect enough Seneca oil to make the business profitable — a task that turned out to be more difficult than expected, as mere gallons could be collected using the standard collection methods.

Eventually, he tried drilling through the shale bedrock to reach greater reservoirs of oil, and on August 28, 1859 — literally the day he’d used up the last of his funds — the oil began to flow from the ground. And with that, a new industry was born.

It didn’t take long before homes and factories around the world were using lamp oil refined from crude, and prospectors from around the country flocked to Pennsylvania in search of the “black gold.”

Among them was John D. Rockefeller, a Cleveland bookkeeper who, according to Corbett, had two ambitions in life: “To make $100,000 and to live to 100 years old.” With a $1,000 loan from his father, “Devil Bill,” John D. Rockefeller set off to make his fortune.

The Standard Oil Monopoly

After a series of partnerships and mergers over a seven-year period, John D. Rockefeller eventually incorporated Standard Oil of Ohio in 1870. According to the report:

“The next year, he quietly put what he called ‘our plan’ — his campaign to dominate the volatile oil industry — into devastating effect. Rockefeller knew that the refiner with the lowest transportation cost could bring rivals to their knees.

He entered into a secret alliance with the railroads, called the South Improvement Company. In exchange for large, regular shipments, Rockefeller and his allies secured transport rates far lower than those of their bewildered competitors.

Ida Tarbell, the daughter of an oil man, later remembered how men like her father struggled to make sense of events: ‘An uneasy rumor began running up and down the Oil Regions,’ she wrote.

‘Freight rates were going up. … Moreover … all members of the South Improvement Company — a company unheard of until now — were exempt. … On every lip there was but one word and that was ‘conspiracy.’”

By the time he was 40, John D. Rockefeller controlled 90 percent of the global oil refineries. Within another few years (early 1880s), he also controlled 90 percent of the marketing of oil, and one-third of all oil wells. His power and influence cannot be overstated at this point.

He had an international monopoly on what was to become the most important commodity in the world economy.

Following in Rockefeller’s footsteps were a handful of other wealthy families, including the Nobels, the Rothschilds, the Dutch Royal family, and millionaire William Knox D’arcy, who was the first to strike oil in Persia.

These early “oil barons” became enormously wealthy. And as billions of people became increasingly dependent on oil for virtually every aspect of life, they gained tremendous power and influence.

However, oil could have been replaced by other resources, were it not for the shrewd manipulation by these early “oiligarchs.”

The Death of the Electric Car, and Other Lucky Breaks

The advent of the electric light bulb took a good chunk out of the lamp oil market and temporarily threatened the oil monopoly. But lamp oil was quickly replaced by the need for gasoline to run the two-stroke internal combustion engine, invented by German engineer Karl Benz.

In 1888, Benz Motorwagen became the first commercially available automobile, and with that, the petroleum industry’s profits were again secured. But even then their ongoing monopoly was not guaranteed. The first electric car had been built in 1884, and by 1897, electric cars were gaining popularity in London. In the early 20th century, 28 percent of cars sold in the U.S. was also electric. As noted by Corbett:

“The electrics had advantages over 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 barrels a day and set off the next great oil boom, providing cheap, plentiful oil to the American market and driving down gas prices. It wasn’t long before the expensive, low range electric engines were abandoned altogether and big, loud, gas-guzzling engines came to dominate the road …”

Interestingly, the event that made John D. Rockefeller into the world’s first billionaire was supposed to rein in his unbridled power. He’d come under intense scrutiny as his wealth increased and, on May 15, 1911, the U.S. Supreme Court declared Standard Oil a monopoly “in restraint of trade” and ordered its dissolution.

But by dissolving the company into multiple entities, shares of Standard Oil tripled in value, and in a few short years, Rockefeller’s worth equaled nearly 2 percent of the total U.S. economy.

“For the oiligarchy, the lesson of the rise and rise of Rockefeller was obvious: the more ruthlessly that monopoly was pursued, the tighter that control was grasped, the greater the lust for power and money, the greater the reward would be in the end. From now on, no invention would derail the oil majors from their quest for total control. No competition would be tolerated. No threat to the oiligarchs would be allowed to rise.”

The Continued Squashing of Competition

While the electric car had been successfully eliminated, thereby securing Big Oil profits, another competing resource was on the horizon: alcohol.

Henry Ford designed his Model T automobile to run on either gasoline or alcohol, stating that just about anything that could be fermented could be used for fuel, predicting the future of fuel was wide open to a number of alternatives. However, the oil industry succeeded in eliminating the competition yet again, this time by supporting the anti-alcohol movements and the formation of the Prohibition Party in 1869.

While Rockefeller avoided alcohol, his chief concern was not to uphold morality in the U.S. The prohibition served his agenda by creating burdensome restrictions on ethanol producers, and as ethanol became more costly, its attraction as an alternate fuel ceased.

Also, as detailed in my previous article about Clair Patterson’s fight to eliminate leaded gasoline, once the high compression engine was invented, car manufacturers started running into performance problems. General Motors diagnosed the problem, realizing that the problem originated with the fuel. General Motors tried about 15,000 different combinations of elements to find a solution to the engine knocking.