Blood and Oil has several important advantages over Klare’s earlier and well-researched book.  

First, the 52-minute presentation is tight, clear, and well-integrated – suitable for home use, classroom use, independent and even corporate television broadcast. 

Second, it is strengthened by actual newsreels from the past 80 years, and while some of this may be available on YouTube, or perhaps on the History Channel, there is really amazing stuff here.  

You will watch black and white video of FDR’s secret meeting on a Saudi yacht, something I had never seen or heard of before Blood and Oil. Lastly, the video is oriented to be informative, not polemic or political, and the Media Education Foundation focuses the power of the visual material and the narrative on simply raising viewer awareness.  

A good companion video that would address another important aspect of oil in national and international policy would be the Mises Institute’s great Federal Reserve primer, Money, Banking and the Federal Reserve. Government finance through manipulation of market commodities isn’t news, and resource wars are the rule, not the exception.  

These two videos, however, viewed in tandem, constitute an education suited to middle school children, young adults, older Americans, teachers and professors, reporters and analysts. Together, they would also be content-appropriate and incredibly useful for the 534 congressmen and senators not named Ron Paul.  

If you teach, use it in the classroom. If you believe the Iraq invasion was not about oil, watch Blood and Oil and then refine your argument. If you feel, as I do, that America’s domestic and foreign energy policy is confusing, and that blood is indeed more valuable than oil, watch Blood and Oil. Given the intensity of murmurings of expanding the U.S. war to Iran, American Marines extended in Afghanistan, and $5 gas, the sooner we all become informed, the better. 

Blood & Oil