The Oil Drum

130 comments on DrumBeat: February 19, 2008

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beggar on February 19, 2008 - 9:07am

RE: Oil Geopolitics

Chalmers Johnson has written an article on "Economic Disaster and Geopolitics" available here:

http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/16444

Also, two video interviews are available here:

"The Blowback Syndrome: Oil Wars and Overreach"

http://www.zcommunications.org/zvideo/2499

and:

"Decline of Empires: Signs of Decay"

http://www.zcommunications.org/zvideo/2502

As we get disinformation filtered through the Corporatist grid, these are a good balance.

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souperman2 on February 19, 2008 - 10:34am

Thanks for those beggar.

I always enjoy hearing Chalmers.

Another heavy lifter in speaking truth is Joseph Stiglitz;

"Joseph Stiglitz: The Economics of Information"

http://fora.tv/2008/02/05/Joseph_Stiglitz_Economics_of_Information

A very realist talk on Globalization

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Bigelow on February 19, 2008 - 6:38pm

Re: Chalmers Johnson article
"By 1990 the value of the weapons, equipment and factories devoted to the Department of Defense was 83% of the value of all plants and equipment in US manufacturing."

83% 18 years ago. By now what is it 98%?

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expat on February 20, 2008 - 3:23am

Understand this is a somewhat distorted figure - this means that one F18, which some estimates place as costing as high as 100 million dollars (I'm assuming this includes all necessary electronics, spare parts, armanent, etc.), is thus worth 5,000 or more new cars, or 500 average houses. Which is a silly comparison, since the dollar figure of the F18 does not actually represent much in the way of 'worth.' And I am quite certain that the scrap value of 5,000 cars is much, much higher than the scrap value of an F18, which would be another way to generate a comparison.

Nonetheless, the U.S. has an incredibly distorted economy, biased to militaristic expenditures which tend to enrich the same companies that are now spreading out into non-military functions - Lockheed and traffic cameras comes to mind.