*dupeof=http://www.videosift.com/video/Blackadder-How-WWI-started

Tags for this video have been changed from 'canada, passchendaele, wwi, trench warfare' to 'canada, paul gross, passchendaele, wwi, world war one, trench warfare' - edited by calvados

Oscar for the most unbalanced, simplistic view of 60 years of history.

Seriously what do: Hitler may have escaped, “banksters” and the Vatican are bad guys; the allied powers drugged the Turks in WWI; the UN is the most powerful weapon of global control; Palestine being called Canaan in ancient times; jumping from 1948 to Sharon; Sharon’s “reign of terror” violated dozens of UN resolutions (here I’m getting confused, I thought the UN were the baddies); a very chaotic story about the Star of David; and Operation Paperclip explain about anything?

What on earth are “Rothschild Jewish zionists”, “bankster pirates”, “nuclear weapons of mass destruction”, and “Hebrew Jews”?

Btw, the documentary does mix up Jews and Israeli’s a number of times (am I the only one feeling seriously uncomfortable about that?) and seems to think that all Palestinians and Israel's neighbouring countries are Muslim.

As so often in Palestinian modern history: who needs enemies if these are supposedly your friends?

I think Hitler was always pretty angry. A lot of Germans were very angry with the rest of the world at the time because of the terms at the end of WWI and Hitler took advantage of that.

this one's dead: http://www.videosift.com/video/Blackadder-How-WWI-started
working embed: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uh0rgwqZOxY

dupe: http://www.videosift.com/video/Blackadder-How-WWI-started

*discard

"All Quiet on the Western Front" dramatizes some of the same issues, from a WWI point of view.

sounds like you turned it into we the most so.....did youz know that i n the 1st world war the americans hired the most intelligent guys in the world to promote their president, wilson was his name i think, as the victorious winner of the war. not that the u.s won the war, but they..........forget it, im too lazy to explain now, but they had an idea. a good one, and it worked, the u.s goes down in history as the winners of wwI even thou they barely took part in it..! oh, and the slaughter of 2.000.000 japanese innocent civilians, cos of the japanese killing 0 americans civilians........oh, i stop now, this is too much "real" information for you.....that is "information not coming from your goverment"....get a passport, travel the world, just a little, and you will see that its not like your higher powers tell you it is..........1 party = communist
2 parties = demacrocy!!!!????????????


In reply to this comment by dannym3141:
>> ^dead_tofu:
ehhhh, the russians destroyed the nazis...japan only bombed a military-target in the u.s once, killed no american civilians,bombed no cities, they had no intentions to take ovr america. you guys stopped selling them oil, started to support their enymies finacially and moved all you fleet to hawaii. you would have done the same thing the did if it was the other way around, and hawaii belonged to them. " never go to war first, but always as last. so you can come back as first" the holy book of the jews.


The allies destroyed the nazis, do not devaluate the lives lost in that war by turning it into a "we came first we died the most" deal. I guarantee the people who fought that war wouldn't be saying stuff like that.

remember how WWI "started" in Serbia while British troops were sent immediately to Iraq to secure the oil?

Man how tedious it is to watch humanity make the same stupid mistake again and again.

@ Drachen_Jager, mharvey42 and djsunkid: thanks for doing my homework (I was actually hoping for the poster to back it up; Pan7her, could you bother us with a link, or two? I mean, I’m a big fan of Sean Penn, but even I am not going to take his word for this). I think the Iraq stat’s are as accurate as we can get at the moment; I just wasn’t that sure about the other numbers. I mean, a lot of civilians died of the flue in WWI, but is that war-related? And who do or don’t count as civilian victims in WWII (why not include the holocaust victims, but then, if we do, should we include Stalin’s civilian victims as well)? And what about the other wars not mentioned? It’s all a matter of who and how you count, it seems.

Which, I think, is interesting, because it seems that ever since WWI there has been a tendency to fight a war with as little body bags coming home as possible (which is actually a serious theory about why the atomic bomb was created).

And, somehow, the numbers are important. I mean, if the US want revenge for the 3,500 people killed at 9/11 -- sorry, want to stop the terrorist threat-- it would be interesting to know what the current exchange rate between New York/Washington office employees and anonymous people at the other end of the world, --sorry, the acceptable “collateral damage” risk -- is.

I liked the video. The percentages cited are extremely misleading however, taken out of context. Let's assume the numbers are correct.

WWI was largely fought along static lines: trench warefare. Civilians fled the battle areas, and were largely "safe" once they departed. Both sides largely respected the non-combatant lives.

WWII was more dynamic, with armies on the move coming into contact with civilians more frequently. Aerial bombing campaigns were conducted on a massive scale, with accuracy often measured in miles. Naturally more civilans could become casualties.

Viet Nam involved ever more ill-defined battle lines: communist insurgency tactics and deliberate siting of resources among civilians. This was done as a deliberate strategy to attempt to place these assets beyond our reach. Even with vast increases in arial weapon accuracy, there was inevitable and tragic collateral damage.

The current war in Iraq has involved similar tactics, but employed more ruthlessly by an enemy not burdened by our Western sense of morality. Suicide bombing, deliberate targeting of civilians, use of human shields. The Islamic insurgency bears the burden of the casualty ratio. US and coalition forces have unfailingly striven to minimize loss of innocent lives, where possible.

>> ^blankfist:
After WWI, Jam Hand formed Jam Handy Organization to create films for the auto industry. This shortfilm was most likely a product of some agreement with some auto manufacturer or part manufacturer. Weird.


Are you suggesting my explanation was made up? How dare you sir, you have insulted my pride and integrity!! Pistols at 50 paces!

After WWI, Jam Hand formed Jam Handy Organization to create films for the auto industry. This *shortfilm was most likely a product of some agreement with some auto manufacturer or part manufacturer. Weird.

>> ^MarineGunrock:

First, let me say I appreciate your honest attempt at "tearing me a new one". Compared to other replies, yours is a gem (a diamond with 250 written on it). You asked me some non-rhetorical questions, and I will gladly answer those that my two previous replies haven't, as they were not specifically aimed at your criticisms.

Oh, so having a college degree automatically exempts you from being lowlife scum

Sigh. Obviously not. You quoted me as saying "Not to say there aren't lowlifes in corporate America,". Did you not read the full quote or are you ignoring it on purpose? In the latter case, at least don't quote the embarrassing contradictory bit.

I'd rather have my blue-collar job over sitting in a tiny fucking cubicle any day.

Maybe so, and you may well hold a moral "relatively high" ground by doing so as far as I am concerned, but in light of america's global pursuit of economical happiness, I consider pretty much all jobs inside the U.S.A and some parts of Canada as "corporate". My usage of "corporate America" here was both a rhetorical and a conceptual synecdoche that played on the ambiguity of adjective-noun compound nouns in English (out of context, "corporate America" could mean both "the corporations of America as a whole" or "the whole of America as a corporation"). Sorry for the misunderstanding here, as usage should have required quotation marks to show I didn't use the idiomatic expression "corporate America" in its commonly accepted technical sense.

So now you're calling America's greatest generation lowlife scum? I would think that the veterans of WWII deserve nothing but honor and respect for their actions, and you should too.

I do respect them, and tried to make sure that what I said could not be construed as showing disrespect towards veterans of the two World Wars. Yet you have done so with a comment that is taken completely out of context as I implied it applied only to an ENLISTED army, specifically this one that is stationed in Iraq. As I pointed out, conscripts (and other time-of-war enlistees) are a different matter altogether. If you think they're not, may I just point out that officially, the United States has not been at war with anyone since WWII? Not in Korea, not in Vietnam and certainly not in both Iraqi "operations". The Congress may have voted funds and whatnot, but that is not War according to any international definition. Thus, only WWI and WWII will stand as examples of real modern wars with conscripts and ethically justified enlistment. Also, see my second post.

If it wasn't for them, you'd all be speaking German and saluting the Swastika right now.

Overused red herring. Please think of the Nazis and their children!

How can someone that honestly doesn't know of back-room politics and abuse of fellow humans be low life scum?

It is called guilt by ignorance (in christian terms, "Vincible Ignorance". Ask a theologian near you) You can be condemned in court as a consequence of it, if it can be shown that while you could have known the law, you didn't make the effort to for whatever reason (normally, you're suppose to know all law, but let's say you try to argue that it was somehow absolutely impossible for you to know it and that this should somehow absolve you of any wrongdoing). See also the concepts of "pluralistic ignorance" and of the bystander effect.

What if he did know about it?

Then that makes him guilty by association if he could prevent wrongdoing or if he refused to denounce it.

Maybe he would fucking want to join just to show that there ARE people in the military that don't beat on prisoners?

Maybe, but that doesn't change the fact that people in the military did beat up prisoners. If he joins the army without denouncing those actions, how are we to know that he doesn't intend to perpetuate them?

Someone that honestly loves his country so much he is willing to put his life on the line is stupid?

If he is doing so blindly then yes, whether or not the thing he does thereby is wrong or not. Of course, that is only my (and I reckon most of the educated world, except some parts of the United States and some other really religious educated regions) ethical standpoint, and you may stand elsewhere on this issue.

O RLY? Care to actually back asinine claims like that up with actual fucking data?

Well, I haven't heard of any prisoners being tortured or beaten during the invasion per se, nor in the immediate aftermath, and my educated guess would be that the advent of such actions would indeed be sudden, but following a gradual increase in emotional detachment from the guards (refer to the Stanford prison experiment that I quoted two sentences later, which is more data than you'll ever need on this matter, I'd think). But what I wrote was not a scientific article. If I were to cite every paper I've ever read (most of which you probably couldn't understand right away anyway) to satisfy your misplaced need for "data", I would not be finished writing that first post yet. Relishing that thought may well please you; if so you are misguided indeed (misguided about how "science" works and also about the internets).

Again, O RLY? Moar data plz. Or should I say ANY data, please.
Again, have you not read what you had just quoted, where I referred you to a well known psychological experiment made in a prestigious school, published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal and repeated in countless psychology textbooks which happens to sustain my very point? Or are you just trying to rip off my leg off of my still warm body? Also, see my last answer about your misunderstanding of the process of science, which applies here especially to social sciences.

Maybe because the point of my fucking post wasn't to counter his points. "Troops are low life scum" isn't a point, it's a n opinion, in case that's what you were referring to.

Maybe so, but then so was my remark not a statement about the opinionatedness of the poster you replied to, but about your implicit attempt at refutation through a more or less carefully/consciously constructed exclamation of disbelief. Indeed, as it is difficult to ascertain scientifically that a certain person or type of person is "lowlife scum", such bold statements are to be classified as opinion. It doesn't change the fact though, that some opinions are more educated than others and thus may carry more weight, either subjectively through a shared worldview and knowledge base, or objectively by being shown to be closer to an established truth that the participants in this debate eventually come to recognize as such later.

What the hell does that have to do with ANYTHING said here?

Yes indeed it doesn't directly relate, sorry. It is part of a previous version of my post that I forgot to erase entirely. Though the point it makes is now moot since it is not attached to the post as a whole anymore, the segment can be reconstructed as such: "[Your experience in your squadron may give you a different picture of the lowlifedness of the enlisted troops as a whole, since you generalize from your own, subjectively positive experience, but things may not be such when viewed from outside, and your own squadron may be a statistical anomaly.] Yes, you may have "heard [good] things" [about the rest of the army as whole], but there's a reason hearsay is not allowed as evidence in a trial: it's actually pretty unreliable. Also, keep and bear in mind that no one likes to think that he himself did "bad things" in a conflict. They always blame the other or perversely blame only themselves." For that last bit, see the concept of "pluralistic ignorance" that I quoted earlier.

Have I thrown a stone here?

I would say yes, and my whole post was, in a sense, a way to make this very point.

Basically, next time, if you don't have any data to back up supposed "facts", STFU.

Unfortunately for you, I had data, as I think I have shown here (too) extensively. But it was not to back any facts but to back opinion. I never claimed to have any facts concerning the lowlifedness of enlisted troops and neither did the original poster. The fact that I asserted my opinion as if it were fact is a rhetorical device of which you should be well aware of in "FOX-News America". It is one of the most simple, pervasive, transparent and perversely effective device in the whole of human speech (again, in my and some other people's view). It is also one of the easiest to catch, at least when you and your opponents are on different wavelengths: hence to need to train yourself to detect it even when people you agree with use it. I guarantee you it will save you from trouble in the long run.

>> ^NetRunner:
I also think you're not giving Democrats a fair shake, if you feel comfortable painting Wilson, Johnson, Carter, and Clinton with the same brush.

What's not fair? If I attacked only the Republicans, I probably wouldn't heard complaint number one from anyone on this largely left leaning site. What's fair about that? To be clear, my intentions initially were to shine a light on the current hypocrisy of the Republican Party. I am more than fair, because I pick apart the atrocities of both parties without bias.

>> ^NetRunner:
I'd say you're changing terms -- I'd argue that nation-building involves dethroning a government unfriendly to us, and replacing it with one that is friendly to us, with bonus points if the country involved has importance to us either materially or geographically.

I'm not changing terms. Nation-building is intervention. Here's a definition that says nation-building involves the "use of armed force as part of a broader effort to promote political and economic reforms, with the objective of transforming a society emerging from conflict into one at peace with itself and its neighbors." Here's another that says the recent understanding of nation-building is programs where "dysfunctional or unstable or 'failed states' or economies are given assistance in the development of governmental infrastructure, civil society, dispute resolution mechanisms, as well as economic assistance, in order to increase stability." These sound an awful lot like our involvement in Kosovo or Somalia or Europe after WWI. Acts of aggression to change a current sovereign nation's policies in the name of humanitarian efforts or otherwise are still acts of nation-building. It doesn't only mean government coups or puppet governments. It's always been about intervention. Though I feel we're arguing semantics at this point, and I'm not sure it's clear why you'd think interventionism is wholly separate from nation-building.

With that said, interventionism is unconstitutional. If you believe it is okay to intervene in a sovereign nation's government because you're nation is powerful enough to play cop for the world, then it really comes down to developing a new Constitution and scraping the old. If you were to rewrite the Constitution in that way, central government wouldn't be exhaustive and would be given the power to intervene whenever and wherever in the world. I would say to a government like that, beware the tyranny of good intentions. It may sound great to intervene in the hopes of bringing about humanitarian change or aid, but in the end it creates more enemies than allies, and it opens the doors to tyranny and abuse.