Friday Movie Night - A Crude Awakening
It's Friday Night! Party Time! Time to relax, put your feet up on the couch, lay back, and watch some detailed videos on economic policy!
This week is the 2006 documentary on peak oil, A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash. It's very well done and one must thank so many, when clearly making these films is not cheap, that they are available for public viewing. It truly drives home that the last 100 years are economies built on oil.
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Excellent propaganda
Well I would guess that the company that produced this video is the same one that produced Al Gore’s on global warming. Characteristically of both is the “cherry picking” of the data.
A more meaningful presentation would have provided some counter facts. The main speaker’s description of the Persian Gulf oil situation says that Iran peak some years ago conveniently ignores the US lead embargo that’s denying Iran equipment to develop its fields. He also makes no mention of Iraq and its enormous untapped reserves because of war. He makes no mention of central Asia’s fields that have hardly come on line because there is few pipelines for export the oil. No mention that in the last year what was described in financial news as the largest IPO ever was for a Chinese company preparing to drill in the North China sea. He makes no mention of the militarization of the Artic Ocean by five countries to support their claims to oil rich continental shelf. No mention of the fields recent discovered on the Brazilian continental shelf…have I missed anything? I think so. I just can’t remember all the points that a scientifically rigorous presentation would have included.
I’m not saying that I don’t think there is such a thing as Peak Oil. I’m saying this presentation is pure propaganda. The only thing honest about it is its complete lack of pretensions about being objective.
Admittedly, I stopped listening after about 50 minutes. I just couldn't take anymore.
It has some good information in it
But many documentaries do "cherry pick". One of the worst is Commanding from Wuthering Heights a documentary on globalization.
That said, I try to dig out documentaries that at least give a lot of detail. For example, in Commanding Heights you can find some tidbits on how these globalists really do not understand contagion and really ignore the negative effects to local economies (the United States now being one very large local economy).
Something you might like better, and I think it's so well done, the book is even better, is this documentary,
The Prize. (click this link the entire 8 part series is at this link).
It's a little out of date, stopped during the 1990's but it's history of oil, the geo-political strategies to dominate oil, the economic consequences of oil....goes through the start of the importance to oil the wars, the strategy, the coup's, all of it and I think it's fairly objective.
To me, The Prize is the "de facto" reference.
Enjoy!
next Friday Movie Night, Christmas Day
Just a heads up. For all of those who either do not celebrate Christmas or have PTSD from dysfunctional Christmas or are about to throw themselves over a bridge because they maxed out their credit cards for ingrates in Xmas gifts....of their Fried Turkey just set their house on fire or whatever....
I've got a "marathon" planned for an old series from the 1970's but it's a "classic" and on macroecon. So, there will be something to watch all day that isn't full of jingle bells.
This is for the people who need something to watch beyond all of the slasher movie marathons. ;)
That cracks me up, Bob
I'm doing volunteer work early in the day, but will catch the marathon afterward. LOL
No one has mentioned the Taibbi- Kuttner interview with Bill Moyers this week. It was fantastic!
Amidst fading hopes for real reform on issues ranging from high finance to health care, economist Robert Kuttner and journalist Matt Taibbi join Bill Moyers to discuss Wall Street's power over the federal government.
Moyers
I agree, multiple fantastic interviews, heavy focus on the financial bail outs...
I promise to do a "It's the Bill Moyer's Show" as a series, pulling up a bunch of these interviews in one shot.
PBS is so screwed up on enabling embedding. Moyer's in particular is weird, he has the video for downloading, pod cast, a host of things which imply they approve of distribution yet no embedding code and honestly I suspect it's because their webbie doesn't know how to add it with that player. ;)
To avoid copyright issues, I only post videos where embedding is enabled and it's meant to be shared and also, if there are ads, try to make sure the ads are going to the content owner.
But I will do a "It's the Bill Moyer's show" per your suggestion of yet another fantastic interview.
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