Behind Oil Price Rise: Peak Oil or Wall Street Speculation?

Source: Boiling Frogs Post
William Engdahl

‘The Key Oil Derivatives Insiders are Laughing All the Way to the Bank’

Since around October last year, the price of crude oil on world futures markets has exploded. Different people have different explanations. The most common one is the belief in financial markets that a war between either Israel and Iran or the USA and Iran or all three is imminent. Another camp argues that the price is rising unavoidably because the world has passed what they call “Peak Oil”—the point on an imaginary Gaussian Bell Curve at which half of all world known oil reserves have been depleted and the remaining oil will decline in quantity at an accelerating pace with rising price. 

Both the war danger and peak oil explanations are off base. As in the astronomic price run-up in the Summer of 2008 when oil in futures markets briefly hit $147 a barrel, oil today is rising because of the speculative pressure on oil futures markets from hedge funds and major banks such as Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase and most notably, Goldman Sachs, the bank always present when there are big bucks to be won for little effort betting on a sure thing.  They’re getting a generous assist from the US Government agency entrusted with regulating financial derivatives, the Commodity Futures Trading Corporation (CFTC).

Source: oilnergy.com

Since the beginning of October 2011, some six months ago, the price of Brent Crude Oil Futures on the ICE Futures exchange has risen from just below $100 a barrel to over $126 per barrel, a rise of more than 25%. Back in 2009 oil was $30. 

Yet demand for crude oil  worldwide is not rising, but rather is declining in the same period.  The International Energy Agency (IEA) reports that the world oil supply rose by 1.3 million barrels a day in the last three months of 2011 while world demand increased  by just over half that during that same time period.Gasoline usage is  down in the US by 8%, Europe by 22% and even in China. Recession across much of the European Union, a deepening recession/depression in the United States and slowdown in Japan have reduced global oil demand while new discoveries are coming online daily and countries like Iraq are increasing supply after years of war. A brief spike in China’s oil purchases  in January and February had to do with a decision last December to build their Strategic Petroleum Reserve and is expected to return to more normal import levels by the end of this month.

Why then the huge spike in oil prices?

Meet the MEK: Washington's Favorite Terror Cult

Source: Boiling Frogs Post

TRANSCRIPT AND SOURCES:

The Mujahedin-e-Khalq–sometimes referred to as the MEK, the MKO, the PMOI, the NCRI  or, perhaps more fittingly, “The Cult of Rajavi”–is a strange terrorist group by anyone’s reckoning.

They wear identical khaki uniforms and headscarves, singing songs to their cult leaders, Massoud Rajavi and his wife Maryam. They adhere to an eclectic mix of ideological influences, having been variously described as Marxists, messianic Shiites, and even secular democrats. And they are a US State Department designated terrorist organization that has been responsible for bombings, attempted plane hijackings, political assassinations, and indiscriminate killings of men, women and children.

But this is not your average terror group.

These are not like the blue jeans-wearing, cash-paying, constitution-loving, third-party-candidate-supporting, picture-taking terrorists that the Department of Fatherland Security have been warning the American public about for years now.

Barack Obama: the World Establishment’s Uncle Tom Card in the Re-Colonization of Africa

Source: Boiling Frogs Post
Sibel Edmonds

The Right Man to Pacify ‘Crying Race’ while Terrorizing & Colonizing Africa

Only three years under the Obama presidency and we have had several covert and overt wars in Africa with the sole purpose of the re-colonization of Africa and its rich oil-mineral resources, while posing under the guise of ‘humanitarian intervention.’ The overt war in Libya, a not so secret war in Somalia, establishing a base in Uganda, sending troops to chase the Lord’s Resistance Army rebel group in the Congo, quietly setting up a number of new bases in Ethiopia and the Seychelles … and the list goes on. Not to mention the number of bodies piling up on top of each other as the West sinks its teeth into the long-sought-after continent and its resources. 

Many have been writing about and analyzing Obama’s Africa Fever. You must admit the man has been acting very feverish. In fact, I’d say he’s been the most feverish president we’ve had when it comes to slicing, dicing, and re-colonizing Africa. Granted, he is not the only one with the fever. The French, Brits, and a couple of other Old Europe players have been feverish as well; they’ve been salivating at the idea of reviving their old glory days of empire and colonies. Yet, the most feverish, I’m talking mouth-foaming delirious fever, appears to be our president-Barack Obama. And oddly enough, there doesn’t seem to be much “crying race” and colonialism from the black communities here in the U.S. I say here in the US because the majority of blacks in Africa seem to recognize, resent and speak out on this Black Super Power President’s colonization crusade in their land:

You can still see Obama’s likeness around town these days, especially in the tourist areas. But for many Ghanaians, the honeymoon with Obama is over. And it started to go sour when the first warplanes strafed Benghazi and Tripoli, in a NATO effort to protect civilians from strongman Muammar Qaddafi.That was the Libya-intervention’s official purpose, anyway. But Ghanaians aren’t buying it. To many observers here, it looks like a grab for Libya’s oil riches; to others, it’s a nefarious Western plot to re-colonize Africa.

They know one when they see one. They recognize colonizers when they see colonizers and their actions. Then why don’t we hear a major outcry from the black communities in the United States? I can assure you that we’d have heard the outcry if a white president had supported, armed and directed militias and rebels who did the following

Joseph Kony & More AFRICOM Wars over Oil

Source: Boiling Frogs Post
William Engdahl

A Major AFRICOM & US State Department Campaign to Undermine Chinese Influence in Central Africa

According to their website, the American NGO, Invisible Children, claims now to have had over 80 million viewers to their YouTube video, “Kony2012,” since its release on YouTube a few weeks ago. For anyone with the patience to sit through the entire YouTube of Kony2012, it is questionable how truthful the figure of 80 million viewers is. Eighty million is unprecedented in YouTube history by all accounts.

The video features such prominent Hollywood personalities as Angelina Jolie, George Clooney, Lady GaGa, Bill Gates, Bill Clinton, Sean “Puff Daddy” Combs and other notables. It’s a slick, sentimental story directed by Jason Russell, a 33-year-old now-hospitalized American filmmaker who apparently just underwent a bizarre mental disconnect on the streets of San Diego.[1] The YouTube video depicts a young Ugandan, Jacob Acaye, whom Russell claims he befriended some ten years earlier after Acaye escaped conscription into Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) as an 11-year-old killer. The film portrays Kony as the world’s worst beast and terrorist, in effect, Africa’s Osama bin Laden. [2]

The Invisible Children NGO is itself opaque. It reportedly rakes in millions from sales of such things as buttons, Invisible Children T-shirts, bracelets and posters priced from $30-$250, but it ranks low on transparency regarding other donors. The group, which employs around 100 people, is expected to raise millions of dollars from their “Kony2012” video, but so far it refuses to say how much has been donated or how it will spend the money. The founders of the group, who advocate direct US military intervention in response to the LRA, had been previously criticized for posing with guns alongside members of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) in 2008, an organization widely accused of rape and looting. The group issued a statement in response: “We thought it would be funny to bring back to our friends and family a joke photo. You know, ‘Haha – they have bazookas in their hands but they’re actually fighting for peace’.” [3] HaHa…

Phony 2012: Empire, Power and People - Episode 11

Source: Boiling Frogs Post
Andrew Gavin Marshall

What are the broader motivations and implications behind the Kony 2012 video? Taking a look at the geopolitics of the region, its recent history, and Western subsidies for dictatorships (“dictatorship by franchise”) as well as profiting off of genocide (such as in the Congo), the Kony 2012 video is designed as an emotional appeal for military intervention in Uganda to purportedly stop a conflict which had stopped several years ago. Taken with the context of major oil reserves having been discovered in Uganda, along with the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) program to militarize foreign policy for the continent, the video is a propaganda ploy designed to expand U.S. imperial hegemony in the region. This is no less evident from the fact that the most interviewed person in the video, John Prendergast, was a former State Department and National Security Council official during the Clinton administration, responsible for overseeing U.S. imperial policy in the region, and has since mobilized campaigns of celebrity personalities to promote foreign intervention. Coincidence or consistency?

Stratfor and the Privatization of Intelligence

Source: Boiling Frogs Post and Corbett Report



TRANSCRIPT AND SOURCES:

Late last year, hackers with the anonymous hacking group LulzSec raided the servers of Strategic Forecasting, Inc., or Stratfor, a private intelligence company in Austin, Texas, coming away with some 5 million emails. Last month, Wikileaks began publishing the emails as “The Global Intelligence Files” to much fanfare.

The "Twitter Revolution" Myth

Source: Boiling Frogs Post

TRANSCRIPT AND SOURCES:

As anyone who has logged on to the internet in the last five years is all too aware, social media websites have exploded in popularity to the point where they are virtually impossible to avoid.

Facebook is expected to hit one billion users later this year. Twitter handles almost 300 million tweets per day. Every second, one hour of video footage is uploaded to YouTube.

With this rise in popularity of social media has come an attendant rise in another trend: the dinosaur media’s attempts to portray these websites as revolutionary tools for freedom loving people around the world.

The US Strategy to Control Middle Eastern Oil

Source: Boiling Frogs Post
Andrew Gavin Marshall

“One of the Greatest Material Prizes in World History”

 

In the midst of World War II, Saudi Arabia secured a position of enormous significance to the rising world power, America. With its oil reserves essentially untapped, the House of Saud became a strategic ally of immense importance, “a matter of national security, nourishing U.S. military might and enhancing the potentiality of postwar American hegemony.” Saudi Arabia welcomed the American interest as it sought to distance itself from its former imperial master, Britain, which it viewed with suspicion as the British established Hashemite kingdoms in the Middle East – the old rivals of the Saudis – in Jordan and Iraq.[1]

The Saudi monarch, Abdul Aziz bin Abdul Rahman al Saud had to contend not only with the reality of Arab nationalism spreading across the Arab world (something which he would have to rhetorically support to legitimate his rule, but strategically maneuver through in order to maintain his rule), but he would also play off the United States and Great Britain against one another to try to ensure a better deal for ‘the Kingdom’, and ensure that his rivals – the Hashemites – in Jordan and Iraq did not spread their influence across the region. Amir (King) Abdullah of Transjordan – the primary rival to the Saudi king – sought to establish a “Greater Syria” following World War II, which would include Transjordan, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine, and not to mention, the Hejaz province in Saudi Arabia. The image and potential of a “Greater Syria” was central in the mind of King Abdul Aziz. The means through which the House of Saud would seek to prevent such a maneuver and protect the ‘Kingdom’ was to seek Western protection. As the United States had extensive oil interests in the Kingdom, it seemed a natural corollary that the United States government should become the ‘protector’ of Saudi Arabia, especially since the British, long the primary imperial hegemon of the region (with France a close second), had put in place the Hashemites in Transjordan and Iraq.[2] For the Saudis, the British could not be trusted.

 

The Saudi King rose to power and established the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1927 and made formal ties with the United States in 1931. An oil concession was soon granted to the Rockefeller-owned Standard Oil of California, and thereafter, large quantities of oil were discovered in the Kingdom, thus increasing the importance of the Saudi monarch. This was especially true during World War II, when access to and control over petroleum reserves were of the utmost importance in determining the course of the war. In 1943, President Franklin Roosevelt acknowledged as much when he signed Executive Order 8926, which stated that, “the defense of Saudi Arabia [is] vital to the defense of the United States.”[3] United States Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes, several months earlier, suggested to President Roosevelt that the United States be more involved in organizing oil concessions in Saudi Arabia not only for the war effort, but “to counteract certain known activities of a foreign power which presently are jeopardizing American interests in Arabian oil reserves.” That “foreign power” was Great Britain. In fact, there was immense distrust of British intentions in the Middle East, and specifically in Saudi Arabia, on the part of the State Department’s Division of Near East Affairs (NEA). A great deal of this tension and antagonism, however, emerged from Saudi diplomacy which sought to play off the two great powers against one another in the hopes of securing for itself a better deal.[4]

Marks to Market: America's Nuclear Time Bombs

Source: Boiling Frogs Post
James Corbett

During the nuclear catastrophe at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan’s northeast last March, the world watched in horror as conditions in the plant deteriorated by the day. Despite public reassurances that the situation was under control, we now know that three of the plant’s reactors actually began meltdown within hours and that plans were being made at the highest levels of the Japanese government to evacuate Tokyo, the world’s most populous metropolitan area.

In effect, the world was given a crash course in cascading nuclear failure. What many do not know is that the damaged reactors were designed by General Electric, rely on 40-year-old containment technology, and are substantially similar to 32 reactors currently operating around the world, including 23 in the United States.

This is our EyeOpener Report by James Corbett, presenting you with the history of and GE’s role in development of boiling water reactors and the Mark 1 containment vessel system used in the damaged Fukushima reactor which has been focus of fierce criticism for at least 40 years, and the criminal complicity of government regulators in failing to enforce their own policies and regulations on these aging reactors, not only in Japan, but in the US as well.

The Anti-Empire Report: Please Tell Me Again … What is the War in Afghanistan About?!

Source: Boiling Frogs Post
William Blum

With the US war in Iraq supposedly having reached a good conclusion (or halfway decent … or better than nothing … or let’s get the hell out of here while some of us are still in one piece and there are some Iraqis we haven’t yet killed), the best and the brightest in our government and media turn their thoughts to what to do about Afghanistan. It appears that no one seems to remember, if they ever knew, that Afghanistan was not really about 9-11 or fighting terrorists (except the many the US has created by its invasion and occupation), but was about pipelines. 

President Obama declared in August 2009: “But we must never forget this is not a war of choice. This is a war of necessity. Those who attacked America on 9/11 are plotting to do so again. If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which al Qaeda would plot to kill more Americans.” 

Never mind that out of the tens of thousands of people the United States and its NATO front have killed in Afghanistan not one has been identified as having had anything to do with the events of September 11, 2001. 

Never mind that the “plotting to attack America” in 2001 was devised in Germany and Spain and the United States more than in Afghanistan. Why hasn’t the United States bombed those countries?

Indeed, what actually was needed to plot to buy airline tickets and take flying lessons in the United States? A room with some chairs? What does “an even larger safe haven” mean? A larger room with more chairs? Perhaps a blackboard? Terrorists intent upon attacking the United States can meet almost anywhere, with Afghanistan probably being one of the worst places for them, given the American occupation.

The only “necessity” that drew the United States to Afghanistan was the desire to establish a military presence in this land that is next door to the Caspian Sea region of Central Asia — which reportedly contains the second largest proven reserves of petroleum and natural gas in the world — and build oil and gas pipelines from that region running through Afghanistan.

Empire, Power and People with Andrew Gavin Marshall - Episode 4

Source: Boiling Frogs Post
Andrew Gavin Marshall

What is the Nature of Power?

How does power function? What are the effects of power? Is it necessary? This episode seeks to introduce the listener to some thoughts on the concept of power, in both the concentration of it on one hand, and the lack of it on the other. Power can be concentrated in both institutions and individuals, but if we seek to solve the big problems of our time, we cannot focus simply on changing those individuals, or abolishing specific institutions. We must, instead, come to ask questions about the nature of power, itself, and thus, how such institutions and individuals are able to exist in the first place.

US Transit Hub-Base in Kyrgyzstan for Afghan Heroin

Source: Boiling Frogs Post

“A Nazi and a Drug Lord in Charge of Police in Osh?”

Today Turkish Weekly ran an investigative piece on the newly appointed chief of police in Osh-Kyrgyzstan. The new police chief Suyun Omurzakov, who used to be a deputy minister of interior, has been known as a highly influential drug lord, a leader of organized criminal groups, and he was the subject of a criminal investigation in the past:

In October 2009, the Kyrgyznews.com published an article pointing to a direct link between the then Osh city deputy chief of police S. Omurzakov and organized criminal groups engaged into drug trafficking, referring to this person as one of the most influential drug lords in the south of Kyrgyzstan.

Another report that investigates the June 2010 events developed by a coalition of Kyrgyz and Uzbek human right defenders “Oshskaya Initsiativa” (Osh Initiative) speaks of Omurzakov as a leader of an organized Kyrgyz criminal group, along with the mayor of Osh Melis Myrzakmatov, and crime bosses Almanbet Manapiyaev and Kadyr Dusanov (“Jengo”), etc., who were directly involved into plotting, leading, financing and participating in anti-Uzbek pogroms and distributing arms and ammunition among Kyrgyz militia.

Since 2001 Kyrgyzstan has been hosting the Transit Center at Manas (formerly Manas Air Base) as the transit point for US military personnel coming and going from Afghanistan, and pays 200 million for continued use of the facilities. For years the base has been riddled with scandals and fiascos.  Last December Boiling Frogs Post EyeOpener Investigative Report took a closer look at “The Manas Question: Drugs, Revolution & Terrorism on the Road to Afghanistan”:

National Security Letters: Eviscerating the Constitution Since 1978

Source: Boiling Frogs Post and Corbett Report
James Corbett


TRANSCRIPT AND SOURCES:

The passage of the Patriot Act in October 2001 is by now an all-too-familiar story. The American people, already suffering from the trauma of 9/11, were pushed into outright panic by the anthrax attacks, a series of anthrax-laced mailings that killed five, injured 17 and shut down congress for the first time in modern history. The Act itself was introduced on a Tuesday and signed into law on Friday, before anyone had read let alone understood the sweeping changes it would introduce to American law.

One of those changes were amendments to a little-known and little-used FBI instrument called National Security Letters.

The Geopolitical Stakes in Nigeria—Part I: The Curious Role of the IMF

Source: Boiling Frogs Post

F. William Engdahl

Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation and its largest oil producer, is from all evidence being systematically thrown into chaos and a state of civil war. The recent surprise decision by the government of Goodluck Jonathan to abruptly lift subsidies on imported gasoline and other fuel has a far more sinister background than mere corruption and the Washington-based International Monetary Fund (IMF) is playing a key role. China appears to be the likely loser along with Nigeria’s population.

The recent strikes protesting the government’s abrupt elimination of gasoline and other fuel subsidies, that brought Nigeria briefly to a standstill, came as a surprise to most in the country. Months earlier President Jonathan had promised the major trade union organizations that he would conduct a gradual four-stage lifting of the subsidy to ease the economic burden. Instead, without warning he announced an immediate full removal of subsidies effective January 1, 2012. It was “shock therapy” to put it mildly.

Nigeria today is one of the world’s most important producers of light, sweet crude oil—the same high quality crude oil that Libya and the British North Sea produce. The country is showing every indication of spiraling downward into deep disorder. Nigeria is the fifth largest supplier of oil to the United States and twelfth largest oil producer in the world on a par with Kuwait and just behind Venezuela with production exceeding two million barrels a day. [1]

The curious timing of IMF subsidy demand

Despite its oil riches, Nigeria remains one of Africa’s poorest countries. The known oilfields are concentrated around the vast Niger Delta roughly between Port Harcourt and extending in the direction of the capital Lagos, with large new finds being developed all along the oil-rich Gulf of Guinea.  Nigeria’s oil is exploited and largely exported by the Anglo-American giants—Shell, Mobil, Chevron, Texaco. Italy’s Agip also has a presence and most recently, to no one’s surprise, the Chinese state oil companies began seeking major exploration and oil infrastructure agreements with the Lagos government.

Ironically, despite the fact that Nigeria has abundant oil to earn dollar export revenue to build its domestic infrastructure, government policy has deliberately let its domestic oil refining capacity fall into ruin. The consequence has been that most of the gasoline and other refined petroleum products used to drive transportation and industry, has to be imported, despite the country’s abundant oil. In order to shield the population from the high import costs of gasoline and other refined fuels, the central government has subsidized prices.

Empire, Power, and People with Andrew Gavin Marshall - Episode 3

Source: Boiling Frogs Post
Andrew Gavin Marshall

Punishing the Population: The United States in Haiti and the Dominican Republic

This podcast episode examines the early 20th century United States military occupations of Haiti (1915-1934) and the Dominican Republic (1916-1924), undertaken as an imposition of the Monroe Doctrine (1823) declaring Latin America as the “backyard” of the United States. The ruthless military occupations, inflamed by racism, supported by the media, and undertaken by the ruthlessly imperialistic and racist politicians who are today celebrated as champions of ‘democracy,’ resulted in the strengthening of state structures, establishment of brutal militaries, and exploitation by American corporations and banks, leading to the establishment of military dictatorships which dominated these countries for much of their recent history, while American economic interests reigned supreme. These incidents provide a brief, yet illuminating look at the nature of American imperialism as it progressed throughout the 20th century.

Resisting the Police State: Answers and Solutions

Source: Boiling Frogs Post
James Corbett

TRANSCRIPT AND SOURCES:

With TSA abuses back in the headlines, continued concern over the NDAA and other legislation codifying martial law, President Obama’s unchallenged use of his self-proclaimed authority to assassinate American citizens without trial, and an increasingly bewildering array of tracking, tracing and pain-compliance technology being used against law-abiding citizens, more and more people are becoming aware of the police state that currently exists in the US, and indeed throughout much of the so-called “free world.”

With this understanding comes a certain amount of apprehension: after all, the enemies of liberty are organized and persistent, and they inhabit positions of authority. The defenders of liberty, meanwhile, seem few and far between, and more time seems spent convincing others that the police state even exists than in working to dismantle these systems of control.

Empire, Power, and People with Andrew Gavin Marshall - Episode 2

Source: Boiling Frogs Post
Andrew Gavin Marshall

Power, Propaganda, and Purpose in American Democracy

This podcast examines a concept of power that emerged in the early 20th century United States, born of social unrest and elite fears of revolution, this new conception sought to redefine democracy for the 20th century. That new definition was based upon using propaganda in order to “engineer consent” of the masses – “the bewildered herd” – as they were referred to, with the purpose of allowing the modern industrial democratic society to be run by an intellectual elite in service to the financial wealth of the nation. Democracy, then, came to be: of the few, by the few, for the few, and with the ‘consent’ of the many.

The Fastest Growing Bank in the West

Source: Boiling Frogs Post
Bill Bergman

Defending our Future in the Financial System

 

Investors and regulators are frequently cautioned that rapid growth in banking can be a sign of trouble.  With most of their incoming cash protected by public guarantees like deposit insurance, banks can grow by taking on more risk without as much sensitivity to deposit costs as they would if the public safety net were not in place.

For example, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (a bank regulator) produces “An Examiner’s Guide to Problem Bank Identification, Rehabilitation, and Resolution.”   In listing six ‘red flags,’ the guide’s first red flag, front and center, is ‘Rapid Growth and Aggressive Growth Strategies.’  This section includes:

Excessive growth, particularly as measured against local, regional, and national economic indicators, has long been viewed as a potential precursor to credit quality problems. Such growth can strain bank underwriting and risk selection standards, as well as the capacity of management, existing internal control structures and administrative processes.

Over the last six years, amidst the worst financial and economic crisis since the Great Depression, a large and significant player in the financial markets has also been one of the fastest growing banks on the planet.  That organization is the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.


What a Financial Crisis Can Do to a Central Bank Balance Sheet

Total assets on the books of the 12 Federal Reserve Banks came to $2.9 trillion by year-end 2011.  The Reserve Bank balance sheets have mushroomed in recent years; their total assets rose sharply with the Fed buying investments from, and lending money to, the private sector.  Their total liabilities also rose sharply as bank deposits at Federal Reserve Banks jumped due to monetary policy actions, and as banks had higher confidence in holding deposits with Reserve Banks compared to holding them at other banks.

Here is a look at total year-end assets on the books of the Federal Reserve Banks since 2003.

Police State International: The Globalization of Control

Source: Boiling Frogs Post
James Corbett

TRANSCRIPT AND SOURCES:

With the National Defense Authorization Act, the Enemy Expatriation Act, and other startling measures by the US government to crack down on their own population making headlines around the world at the moment, the idea of an American police state is becoming all too familiar a tale. Less examined, however, are the international aspects of this encroaching police state, a high-tech 21st century control grid which adheres to no national boundaries and whose influence is increasingly being felt in countries throughout the so-called “free world.”

Empire, Power, and People with Andrew Gavin Marshall - The American Empire, In Their Own Words

Source: Boiling Frogs Post
Andrew Gavin Marshall

The American Empire, In Their Own Words

This episode takes a critical look at the development of the American Empire during and after World War II, using official State Department documents, formerly top secret documents from the Council on Foreign Relations, and other official sources.

Comparing the statements and ideas of those who formed the American Empire during this period with the intellectual elites of recent years who claim that America is a “benevolent empire”, we can see that America was shaped into an empire by design, with the overt and directly stated intent to control the world and its resources. In the words of a ‘Top Secret’ U.S. State Department document in 1948, the aim of the United States was to “maintain this position of disparity” between American wealth and the rest of the world. Thus, we may critically examine the American Empire by looking at it in the words of those who shaped it, compared to the myths that prevail today.