We’re Streaming Our Film Blood & Oil for Free to Shed Light on the Long History of U.S. Complicity in Saudi Repression
“That the U.S. opposes tyranny is a glaring myth. Yet it is not only believed but often used to justify wars, bombing campaigns, sanctions, and protracted conflict.”
— Glenn Greenwald
Last week, the Biden administration signaled that it will not meaningfully punish Saudi Arabia despite the release of a long-awaited U.S. government intelligence report that concluded Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was directly responsible for the vicious murder and dismemberment of celebrated Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi.¹
The administration’s inaction, while entirely consistent with U.S. military support for one brutal Saudi regime after another over the past 60-plus years, has shined harsh new light on the ties that bind the United States to the Arab dictatorship despite its grotesque and ruthless history of human rights abuses.
With that in mind, we urge you to revisit our film Blood & Oil, featuring leading energy and security analyst Michael T. Klare, which we’re now streaming free in honor of Jamal Khashoggi and other journalists who have dared to report the truth about America’s authoritarian allies and enemies at great personal risk.
In the film, Klare, the defense correspondent for The Nation and a senior visiting fellow at the Arms Control Association in Washington D.C., offers a riveting look at the history of the U.S.-Saudi alliance; shows how the alliance is implicated in the militarization of U.S. energy policy; clarifies how our drive to control the global flow of fossil fuels has led to endless war and the undermining of democratic movements around the world; and details how all of this has been deceptively spun and sold to the American public by U.S. political leaders and a largely complicit corporate news media. While the film was produced in 2008, it remains a timely and invaluable background resource for classes that look at U.S. politics, energy and security policy, American militarism, news media framing, political propaganda, and pro-war disinformation campaigns.
We’re making Blood & Oil available to watch for free through the end of the month. You can also stream the film through your university or public library via the Kanopy streaming platform. To see if your university subscribes to Kanopy, click here.
For a different take on how U.S. political leaders of both parties have worked with the complicity of corporate news media to conceal and rationalize policies in the Middle East that violate basic human rights, be sure to check out our film The Occupation of the American Mind: Israel’s Public Relations War in the United States, which is also streaming free.
WATCH BLOOD & OIL FOR FREE NOW
“An absolutely necessary — and totally riveting — documentary that every American must see to fully understand the events unfolding around us in today’s world.”
— Thom Hartmann | Host of the Thom Hartmann Program
“Michael Klare looks into the future with sharper eyes than almost anyone else around. Pay attention!”
— Bill McKibben | Co-founder, 350.org
“Michael Klare’s analysis of the role of oil in U.S. foreign policy since 1945 is indispensable to an understanding of the critical problems we face. I hope that this lucid and historically accurate film is widely seen.”
— Chalmers Johnson | Author, The Blowback Trilogy
“A must-see for current and older generations who served America’s militaristic pursuit of oil, and for their children who will soon be required to conduct a serious intervention at home to heal this nation’s blood-for-oil compulsion.”
— Karen Kwiatowski | Retired USAF Lieutenant Colonel
“With a surgeon’s precision, Blood & Oil exposes our recurring pathology: overconsumption of oil leads to imperial interventions and support of dictators. A must-see for the general public who has been duped into believing that we make war to liberate the natives rather than to liberate ‘our resources’ from their lands.”
— Medea Benjamin | Cofounder of Global Exchange and CODEPINK: Women for Peace
“Blood & Oil is an indispensable primer on the role of oil in driving US military policy. Every peace activist, every environmental activist, and every concerned citizen should see this film for the perspective it provides on how to free the U.S. and the world of our addiction to oil.”
— William Hartung | Director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy
“A thought-provoking contemporary history lesson, highly recommended.”
—Video Librarian
“An important contribution to understanding how our nation got itself into the dire and completely avoidable addiction to a substance that threatens both our global economy and our planetary survival.”
— Harvey Wasserman | Author, SOLARTOPIA! Our Green-Powered Earth
“Digging into the archives of military history, Klare discerns a clear pattern: Presidential commitment to oil addiction entails mounting costs and loss of life.”
— Deron Lovaas | Co-Director of the NRDC’s Move America Beyond Oil project
“Like cherished notions of American ‘innocence’ (which is strangely capable of being lost repeatedly) or horror at any suggestion of Washington’s imperial reach, the notion that the United States strives to keep control of the world’s oil supplies seems so untenable to American public opinion that pointing this out in a film boldly entitled Blood & Oil seems outrageously challenging. When Klare’s producers unearth a series of clips of American presidents and high functionaries saying the unsayable, their juxtaposition seems to amount to an uncommon revelation.”
— Maurice Walsh | Global Media and Communication
“Blood & Oil makes it plain and simple — it’s the oil, stupid. Michael Klare provides a chilling and compelling argument that oil is and has been at the foundation of many dire conflicts around the world. The film dramatizes this fact with gripping historic footage of the confluence of oil and militarism.”
— Andy Shallal | Owner, Busboys & Poets, Washington DC
“Laying his case out rather like a seasoned prosecutor, Michael T. Klare convincingly shows that, more than any other factor, it’s the insatiable appetite for oil that has driven American foreign policy since the end of World War II — not only in the Middle East but elsewhere in the world as well. The evidence overwhelms. Highly recommended.”
— Rebecca Adler | Educational Media Reviews Online
Powerful! Provocative! A must see!”
— Ed Begley, Jr. | Actor & Environmental Activist
