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Recorded: December 23, 2017

In this Xmas episode, the War Nerd begins with a brief discussion of the famous World War 1 Christmas Truce story, before taking a deep dive into an interesting & important War Nerd Facebook thread with subscribers trying to understand the most perplexing question of the past year-plus: Why was there so much western outrage over wildly exaggerated atrocities in Aleppo, yet total western indifference to real ongoing atrocities in Yemen? . . . 

At 1:24:00 — the Nerd & Ames look at the world of wars today . . . 

At 1:54:50 — the weird New York Times story on the Pentagon's latest UFO program, and the history of US military using UFO cover stories to protect new weapons programs and drive citizen-investigators out of their minds . . .

Total time: 2:13:24

Direct link to this episode's mp3 here 

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xnfec

Regarding truces, the Viet Minh gave the French a day off at Dien Bien Phu so that the foreign legionnaires could celebrate Camerón day. Odd because the Viet Minh never struck me as overly sentimental. I got this from the book "The Last Valley" by Martin Windrush about Dien Bien Phu. As to Yemen, I don't think painting Theresa May (or Donald Trump) as war criminals would ever work. There was a film made by George Galloway which tried to paint Tony Blair as a war criminal but it has had no effect as far as I can see. Despite the blatant hypocrisy of calling Gadaffi a war criminal for trying to bomb Benghazi while ignoring the much bigger bombing Yemen by the Saudi's, it would be hard to argue that what the Saudi's are doing is not a war crime. Yet few make the argument. If it was widely made then the next step would be to identify the personnel from the west and the mercenary companies responsible for doing this. That would get a reaction, though mercenaries are deniable and disposable. As far as the engineered addiction of social media, there is this: <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/05/smartphone-addiction-silicon-valley-dystopia" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/05/smartphone-addiction-silicon-valley-dystopia</a> As far as UFO's are concerened, secret services have been playing around with our minds for so long it is a surprise that we aren't all crazy by now. With this story, I think we have to figure out who's mind they think they are playing with. Maybe a honey-trap for the Chinese? Alternatively, maybe the war on terror is coming too close to sparking an actual war. If you are fighting aliens, you could keep the population permanently scared for ever and probably cheaper. I call this the boondoggle explanation. UFO theories used to be the preserve of Trumpistas - or so it appeared to me. However, with the NYT seal of approval maybe we can all join in now.

Max

Yeah, twitter sucks, but those of us without Facebook accounts can't even see the posts you're talking about, unfortunately. Why not use Medium or literally anything else? Is there really no viable alternative? Crimes of Britain was just banned for hate speech without being told what was hateful. Facebook is truly the East India Company of the net. Just absolute throat-slitters whose damage will be felt over generations, redefining concepts as fundamental as friendship for the worse (and for the most venal reasons imaginable). There is no aspect of human relations that is safe from being exploited and monetized in the most cynical way. It is quite simply the most insidious form of evil and thought control inflicted on humanity since the the worst excesses of organized religion.

Hugh

I also do not like Facebook. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever. Faceboot. (someone else came up with that long before me) A non-Facebook place for your posts would be useful.

Avery

I agree in principle, but in practice it's hard to imagine how to have a decent discussion on another platform. Medium is not suitable for threaded discussion. Twitter and Reddit are full of noise. If John+Mark moved to VK, I would definitely join them, but...

Henry

Here come increased defense budgets to stop the impending alien invasion.

Winterborn

Also not in the Facebook ecosystem.

michiganpizza

great comment about an ego necessary to support certain ideas. that explains a lot about the world.

Sérgio Teixeira da Silva

A subreddit seems like it could work (well, there *is* a /r/TheWarNerd - but John and Mark don't post or moderate there). phpBB message boards are something I always liked (briefly ran one). Geoff Stratton offers hosting space and maintenance in return, it seems to me, for either a modest amount of advertising or a modest amount of money - the (excellent) blog ecosophia.net is hosted by him.

Thomas Jennings

With regard to Facebook, I signed up, but have yet to go and participate because you know Facebook and everything. A simple wordpress site on your own domain, with comments enabled, would suffice for discussion. Squarespace can do all of this for you for a modest fee.

radiowarnerd

Fair point! I'm going to be here more often so direct any and all comments to this page and I'll do my best to answer them.

radiowarnerd

Fair point! I'm going to be here more often so direct any and all comments to this page and I'll do my best to answer them.