History of Oil clip saying oil in Iraq was major reason for WWI

[repoman]

Very entertaining and fairly accurate. Imagine the alternate history Germany completing the railway and building refineries in Germany.

 

[Phil Scott]

Very entertaining and fairly accurate. Imagine the alternate history Germany completing the railway and building refineries in Germany.

This is my favourite stand-up routine, a beautiful fusion of comedic entertainment and history lecture, well edited, and with some great impersonations (the whole parable of the Iraq wars in terms of drug cartels is my favourite part).

Newman got some notoriety at the time for this, since it represented such a departure from his old stuff with Baddiel, with Stewart Lee saying that he'd more or less found himself with this act. I remember Newman being interviewed on the radio and being asked how he dealt with the accusation of being a conspiracy theorist, to which he responded, near immortally, with the line "'conspiracy theory' is what people use when they don't understand complex systems." This is particularly relevant to this stand-up act: Newman isn't claiming to give you historical facts. He's just giving you one story.

He's also a serious lefty anarchist. At least at the time, when he went to the States, he insisted on going by boat to limit the environmental impact.

I'm not sure why a flag-waving Kekistani is posting this, though.

 

[LordKiran]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f11CKYB2FCA

Here's part 1 for the best explaination for the overarching causes related to WW1 I've heard so far. The channel itself is great by the way for anyone interested in a week-by-week breakdown for the great war as it happened.

I think this guy makes some interesting points and agree that the assasination of Franz Ferdinand was just a pretext (Common knowledge to anyone remotely interested in the subject) I will further agree that competition for resources helped stoke animosity between the powers that be, beyond that though I think he's reaching.

 

[Bronzeage]

Everything he says is true. The true cause of WW1, is much simpler than most people think. A relatively small group of men thought they could use their military forces in a brief conflict and gain territory or material resources in the end. That's it. It turned out to be a monumental fuck up on all sides.

I don't know about UK schools, but I remember history lessons about the railroad and how Britain reacted to the threat.

 

[LordKiran]

Everything he says is true. The true cause of WW1, is much simpler than most people think. A relatively small group of men thought they could use their military forces in a brief conflict and gain territory or material resources in the end. That's it. It turned out to be a monumental fuck up on all sides.

I don't know about UK schools, but I remember history lessons about the railroad and how Britain reacted to the threat.

Eh, I think it had more to do with pride and nationalistic zeal; a drive for glory through war and to keep one's rivals in check, than an outright fight for resources.