For not so serious conspiracy buffs

For an example of a more consumer-friendly Unified Conspiracy Theory you could do worse than checking out the video of Rob Newman’s History of Oil which is up on Google here

Mirth Commissar Rob Newman playing to the proles - not quite as anti-establishment as he might first seem

Newman’s heart seems to be in the right place, his argument that we should be working away from oil dependency is a reasonable one, he has done his reading and he can be funny but he’s just as much a useful idiot as all the rest of us and his material is a nice illustration of the Wise One’s observation that no one single answer... is ever the answer.

As in, if anyone opposed to the invasion of Iraq, or all those other invasions, still thinks it was just about oil they really have quite a lot more reading, listening and thinking to do.

On top of that, simultaneously worrying about peak oil and global warming, as Newman does, has always struck me a being pure doublethink (there's a lot of it about these days) and as for some of the solutions being advocated by people like Newman, well, bollocks to them. Environmental fears are being nurtured and played in exactly the same way as the fear of terrorism and the solutions being advocated for both bogeymen ultimately share awfully similar characteristics.

Though there’s no connection between the two I’m sure.