Blood for Oil?

Blood for Oil?
Boal, Iain and Clark, T. J. and Matthews, Joseph and Watts, Michael. (2005). London Review of Books. Vol. 27. No. 8, April 21. (Review; English).

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Abstract or Brief Description

In this article, authors Boal, Clark, Matthews and Watts advance a supposedly new explanation for the wars in the Middle East.

Much of their explanation – including both theory and fact – is plagiarized. It is cut and pasted, almost ‘as is,’ from Nitzan and Bichler’s work. The primary source is ‘The Weapondollar-Petrodollar Coalition,’ a 71 page chapter in THE GLOBAL POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ISRAEL (Pluto 2002). The authors also seem inspired, incognito, by Nitzan and Bichler’s more recent papers, including ‘It’s All About Oil’ (2003), ‘Clash of Civilization or Capital Accumulation?’ (2004), ‘Beyond Neoliberalism’ (2004) and ‘Dominant Capital and the New Wars’ (2004).

For a detailed analysis of this plagiarism and the larger reasons behind it, see Nitzan and Bichler (2005) “The Scientist and the Church” (for a direct link, click on the Commentary/Response Thread at the bottom of this page).