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Radio War Nerd EP #490 — The War-st Year Yet, Pt. 1 (Patreon)

Published:
2024-12-24 23:40:42
Imported:
2024-12
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Recorded: December 22, 2024

Part one of our look back at 2024, the year the Empire stopped pretending to play nice. A year that exceeded our already dismal expectations.

Total time: 1:24:37Direct link to this episode's mp3 here

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Subscribe to Radio War Nerd at patreon.com/radiowarnerd

Sound production by Telescope Audio

Check out the Radio War Nerd Merch store here!

Order your print or ebook of John Dolan's new book Erdogan Pizza: Dispatches from a Violent & Grotesque World

Files

Comments

JoR

Want to comment now that this is posted: thank you both (and Brandon/all the guests) for everything you do with the show. It's depressing enough to listen, so doing the research and talking about this is even worse mentally. Also commentators may be critical at times but I would say most of us appreciate your insights, even if "pessimistic"

Bryan Nicholson

Happy Christmas 🎄, John, Brendan, and Katherine! Chag Same’ach, Mark and fam’! 🕎

fugitivedocument

The Sierra Nevada’s and the Cascades are not a joke. Everything east of the Rockies is.

AG

Yes thank you so much for the work that you do.

AG

I am a fan of many podcasts but you guys really bring me a certain joy I don't get anywhere else.

AG

I have a selfish request. Please do another literature review. What books do you recommend? I recently listened to the Gray Man because I heard the author on the JRE podcast. While listening, I remebered you both saying that Top Gun was a bad movie and I felt like a tool because I like it. I guess maybe I am dumb or maybe somwtimes I like comfortable meat and potatoes stories. What are some fun stories you would recommend to escape the world?

Greg

Thanks again gentlemen.

Danny

Merry Xmas and happy new year guys, thanks for the work you do

Alejandro Pepsi

I'm not a truck pedant, I'm a southerner ;)

a clash of purple

It helps a little if you think of them as Toilet Paper Memo.

Shfifty_five

Same, dude. Truck knowledge is required even for the truckless, as others will still want to talk to you about their trucks. First car was a beater truck.

William

Hezbollah may be the toughest and biggest resistance org outside of Iran, but they’re also the easiest to subdue in a situation where it’s not a purely defensive war. Hamas literally and figuratively has nothing to lose. The Houthis have been ensconced in their mountains for centuries; I don’t think you can pressure them like they did hezbollah, by bombing innocents in the more accessible areas of Yemen

William

Oh, are you the type of southern truck owner cosplaying as a cowboy with a shiny clean truck and all the options? Or the type who owns 12 acres, grows nothing, raises nothing, but “needs” to haul lumber every few years to build a new sheltered deer stand with WiFi, heating, etc

William

Take a walk in Kentucky sometime then; see if you don’t get lost in the hollers. There’s more to a terrain being “a joke” than vertical ascent

William

I never understood why people got so hung up on this podcast being “depressing”, like, it’s not called the Sunshine show, brought to you by Peace Nerd

Alejandro Pepsi

I don't have trash pick up where I live.

PostmasterFenian

It took 30 years and I still loath the mega trucks but as a dude from Alabama I finally started to consider gen 1 tacos for a side vehicle I have some use cases for it though lol

Alejandro Pepsi

See I'm not a truck nut, I just know tacos means, Tacomas lol. truck knowledge just seeps into the water supply like micro plastics or birth control pills.

a clash of purple

So, given that a big part of the current global regime is based on this fiction of the rules-based international order or whatever you want to call it... what now? What's next for the U.S. empire? Will anyone take their hypocritical bullshit seriously anymore? Are people around the world still going to buy the American system's propaganda? Is the status quo actually going to change? Or will Israel's atrocities just be excluded from the mainstream consensual reality and everyone will continue to pretend that nothing has changed? At this point, I'm personally more or less convinced of the idea that we're all dead and in Hell, and things will continue to get worse and stupider without anyone ever acknowledging it or anything breaking or fundamentally changing, ever. But I'm interested to hear other, hopefully better-informed perspectives.

a clash of purple

Every organization in the world that's built around the idea that earning sympathy from the West gets you anything needs to recalibrate, I think. Even Ukraine might have to reckon with the fact that Westerners aren't really interested in helping them, just in killing Russians; the West will actively block any kind of peace process, even if the terms would be acceptable to the Ukrainians themselves. I don't know if people in the West will continue to indulge a fantasy that they have some kind of moral high ground, but their institutions seem to have abandoned that pretense entirely. No matter how much people in the West might feel sorry for you, it won't translate to any kind of tangible benefit. This flies in the face of the guy RWN interviewed (I can't remember his name or the episode, sorry) who said that violent resistance isn't helpful. I mean, he might still be correct, but there doesn't seem to be much point in holding back from killing, either. The moral high ground has no strategic value anymore. Anti-war activists around the world also need to take a step back and rethink their strategies. I don't think there's any amount of public demonstrations that could push Western regimes to stop carrying out genocides and wars. There isn't enough democracy left in our "liberal democracies" for that. Activists might resort to more extreme measures, like acts of sabotage against military and industrial infrastructure. I don't know.

N

What John said about "one death being one death" resonates a lot with me because it describes how I feel about US foreign policy really well. This year has made me realize how many in the US are deluded by a horribly racist chauvinism.

Alejandro Pepsi

What is going to happen to Turkey and further if or when Erdogan retires? He's so tied up in everything, really seems like there is going to be a vacuum in his absence. I don't know enough, help!

Kevin Hickey

lol imagine the peace nerd podcast, hosted by Dennis Kucinich…

B. Carter

Not a good episode. You guys kept talking about Hezbollah being defeated and signing the ceasefire without explaining why they came to terms, and it was the non-stop Israeli terror bombing of every corner of the country, down to tracking and killing Shia refugees. You make it sound like they gave up because fighting the IDF was too hard, rather than southern Lebanon being left to face the full might of the IAF alone as an isolated front. I don't expect you guys to cover everything but you should at least remember to explain why Hezbollah lost.

Schaeffer Mallory

Thank y'all for another year of fantastic work. Honestly can't imagine processing the horrors of this fucked world without yalls insights

John Waaben

It's been... enlightening to see what can be done politically with "air power" this year.

Michael S. Judge

The next war came, and my ship sailed With battle orders writ in red; Through 5 long years of bullets and shells, We left 10 million dead. The few came home to old Piccadilly, And we limped around Leicester Square The world was busy rebuilding itself – The Architects could not care. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TwDOO_RJ8Y

That Guy

My theory is the F-18 was damaged by Yemeni AA, the pilots ejected, then the "friendly fire" made sure nothing was recoverable

Michael S. Judge

I know I'm just some guy talking, but I did a lot of aid work with a couple of families in Gaza over the last 6 months, and from what I was told and what I saw directly, there is no chance – truly none at all – that the death toll isn't approaching 500,000, and it may be well past that already. It's a fucking apocalypse, and the "journalists" who keep trotting out the same 45,000ish numbers over and over should be considered on a moral par with "Maybe there was a Holocaust, maybe, but it couldn't have been 6 million" types

Cory

I'm glad you guys focused so much on gaza even if it's not the only war going on. It has emotionally wrecked me.

fw

Palestine Action have been sabotaging military and industrial infrastructure broadly since 2020, pretty successfully in the UK despite its worldleading status of prosecution for peaceful climate and anti war protestors, in terms of both successful damage (especially to Elbit) as well as the ensuing state repression. That's even taking into account their early strategies of handing themselves over for said state repression/the lack of court/legal support they have been credibly accused of when it comes to their members.

fw

Yeah, never really got that hang up. I find it way less depressing than listening to all of the people who don't see the emperor's new clothes, as John describes it. People actually trying to come to terms with the world is way less morale-sapping.

fw

BBC journos have whined for years about the genuinely fascist incitement they all write and present - but always anonymously, and they've all continued to draw their pay. They won't even quit. Even Jones is getting paid off of enabling their cowardice (which has been his schtick for years, too - a regular Good Law Project wannabe).

Michael Ehrenreich

Something anti-imperialists/lefties have a seemingly hard time doing is distinguishing between saying a party lost (or won for that matter!) and what moral significance that carries. Hezbollah can both be the the more moral, just, whatever actor in this war AND have lost. And recognizing that doesn’t mean you think they’re bad or whatever. The same applies to Hamas and Israel and any other actor. For some reason if you aren’t just mindlessly boosting a faction you’re seen as not supporting them.

Hans Anders

Exactly. Caitlin Johnstone had a similar point recently. We cannot let our happiness depend on big wins. We have to accept and love the world as it is, with all the wretchedness, and still fight for a better future.

Graham Isom

500,000 would be 25% of the population. I don't think we'll get a real figure until this is "over"

S H

Finger lakes trail crew parks worker here, glad you like it. It’s lovely to hear it talked up

Robert Geroux

Love the show. New insights gained here. I had no idea about Romania!

Robert Geroux

PS I'm only 40 minutes in, haven't heard the stuff on Hezbollah yet 😐

MoldyTolge

I’m not sure if power players in Turkey know either. He’s a load-bearing column in that political scene and Turkey is a load-bearing column in NATO, CENTCOM, eastern Mediterranean balance of power, etc

MoldyTolge

What the ever living fuck hahahaha. Given how small the Y scale is this could be illicit radioactive waste dumping? Not to rain on anyone’s parade

NYCM&AHole

You need TP memo for your bunghole

Podconsoomer

Nora from EI has for sure developed some kind of ptsd ):

Jimothy Realname

The 2019 Dodge Ram (Ford reporting name PT-17 Rumbler) is a full-size pickup truck manufactured by the Stellantis Corporation. Its 7K49M (HL-23B) dazzling headlights are believed [by whom?] to be equivalent to Ford's previous generation M-129 DHLs, and are considered a significant threat on the roadways.

Shfifty_five

lol no a family 1993 Chevy with every electrical issue possible was my first and only truck. It was good mostly for the farm or hauling wood. Buddies or my work (marine lab) always there if needed but as daily drivers or even 4x4, trucks are pretty impractical, though I won't turn down a Hilux.

Zafar

Wrt credibility - the ONLY credibility the West retains in terms of international law or morality is due to people like you. For the rest of the world Western created institutions’ cred was lost years ago. Perhaps the difference is that a critical mass of people in the West are starting to see it the same way?