What are some good books on the military-industrial complex and war economy?

the decline and fall of the roman emperor by edward gibbons

Kek

Adam Tooze - The Wages of Destruction

Looks good, but I was thinking more of something about modern times (Vietnam/Balkans/Iraq/Afghanistan/Syria)

He was almost my graduate adviser

Very nice man

Gravity's Rainbow.
1/2

>Messages tonight, borne on the lights of Berlin… neon, incandescent, stellar… messages weave into a net of information that no one can escape…
>"The path is clear," a voice moving Sachsa's lips and rigid white throat. "You are constrained, over there, to follow it in time, one step after another. But here it's possible to see the whole shape at once- not for me, I'm not that far along-but many know it as a clear presence… 'shape' isn't really the right word… Let me be honest with you. I'm finding it harder to put myself in your shoes. Problems you may be having, even those of global implication, seem to many of us here only trivial side-trips. You are off on a winding and difficult road, which you conceive to be wide and straight, an Autobahn you can travel at your ease. Is it any use for me to tell you that all you believe real is illusion? I don't know whether you'll listen, or ignore it. You only want to know about your path, your Autobahn.
>"All right. Mauve: that's in the pattern. The invention of mauve, the coming to your level of the color mauve. Are you listening, Generaldirektor?"
>"I am listening, Herr Rathenau," replies Smaragd of IG Farben.
>"Tyrian purple, alizarin and indigo, other coal-tar dyes are here, but the important one is mauve. William Perkin discovered it in England, but he was trained by Hofmann, who was trained by Liebig. There is a succession involved. If it is karmic it's only in a very limited sense… another Englishman, Herbert Canister, and the generation of chemists he trained… Then the discovery of Oneirine. Ask your man Wimpe. He is the expert on cyclized benzylisoquinilines. Look into the clinical effects of the drug. I don't know. It seems that you might look in that direction. It converges with the mauve-Perkin-Canister line. But all I have is the molecule, the sketch… Methoneirine, as the sulfate. Not in Germany, but in the United States. There is a link to the United States. A link to Russia. Why do you think von Maltzan and I saw the Rapallo treaty through? It was necessary to move to the east. Wimpe can tell you. Wimpe, the V-Mann, was always there. Why do you think we wanted Krupp to sell them agricultural machinery so badly? It was also part of the process. At the time I didn't understand it as clearly as I do now. But I knew what I had to do.
>"Consider coal and steel. There is a place where they meet. The interface between coal and steel is coal-tar. Imagine coal, down in the earth, dead black, no light, the very substance of death. Death ancient, prehistoric, species we will never see again. Growing older, blacker, deeper, in layers of perpetual night. Above ground, the steel rolls out fiery, bright. But to make steel, the coal tars, darker and heavier, must be taken from the original coal. Earth's excrement, purged out for the ennoblement of shining steel. Passed over.

2/2

>"We thought of this as an industrial process. It was more. We passed over the coal-tars. A thousand different molecules waited in the preterite dung. This is the sign of revealing. Of unfolding. This is one meaning of mauve, the first new color on Earth, leaping to Earth's light from its grave miles and aeons below. There is the other meaning… the succession… I can't see that far yet…
>"But this is all the impersonation of life. The real movement is not from death to any rebirth. It is from death to death-transfigured. The best you can do is to polymerize a few dead molecules. But polymerizing is not resurrection. I mean your IG, Generaldirektor."
>"'Our IG, I should have thought," replies Smaragd with more than the usual ice and stiffness.
>"That's for you to work out. If you prefer to call this a liaison, do. I am here for as long as you need me. You don't have to listen. You think you'd rather hear about what you call 'life': the growing, organic Kartell. But it's only another illusion. A very clever robot. The more dynamic it seems to you, the more deep and dead, in reality, it grows. Look at the smokestacks, how they proliferate, fanning the wastes of original waste over greater and greater masses of city. Structurally, they are strongest in compression. A smokestack can survive any explosion-even the shock wave from one of the new cosmic bombs"- a bit of a murmur around the table at this-"as you all must know. The persistence, then, of structures favoring death. Death converted into more death. Perfecting its reign, just as the buried coal grows denser, and overlaid with more strata-epoch on top of epoch, city on top of ruined city. This is the sign of Death the impersonator.
>"These signs are real. They are also symptoms of a process. The process follows the same form, the same structure. To apprehend it you will follow the signs. All talk of cause and effect is secular history, and secular history is a diversionary tactic. Useful to you, gentlemen, but no longer so to us here. If you want the truth-I know I presume-you must look into the technology of these matters. Even into the hearts of certain molecules-it is they after all which dictate temperatures, pressures, rates of flow, costs, profits, the shapes of towers…
>"You must ask two questions. First, what is the real nature of synthesis? And then: what is the real nature of control?
>"You think you know, you cling to your beliefs. But sooner or later you will have to let them go…"

Is there a source for this clip? That is incredible footage. Incredible what some people have to face.

go to bed arab, you're too lazy to read anyways

no

The Quran

That would be a range. So targets.