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Radio War Nerd EP #4 — Migration & Wars (Patreon)

Published:
2015-10-01 05:16:24
Edited:
2019-04-04 18:37:55
Imported:
2026-06

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Content

Radio War Nerd EP 4

Direct link to this episode's mp3 here 

Comments

Sérgio Teixeira da Silva

To Blue: this idea is good, but it's the most horrifying thing imaginable to most pro-immigration people (Postmodernists). That said, you forgot "learning that women are people", and they should learn *German* language, history, and culture - anything else is just making Germany into more of a US colony than it already is.

tong

When u call human beings an "ape horde" ... Wow

Allen M

Great discussion: most of the barrel bombs are coming from transports or helicopters. As your comments about the anti Shia tilt: Here is what I think will happen: Putin and Iran have temporarily buried the hatchet. And they are going to end up with a Shi'a belt from Bagdad to Lebanon, and a big enclave of Alawite along the coast. In short, to survive, Assad has given up independence, and sold out to Iran and Putin. And the Sunni of Syria and Iraq are toast. The Kurds have a chance to keep their border state between Greater Iran and Turkey. The Saudis are gone within 10 years- my estimate. Gulf states as well, simply too few effective internal armies to counter the exterior supported insurgencies. And Israel will have to deal with it.

Winterborn

Ames sounds like he's recording from the bottom of a well. Not that it will stop me from listening to and enjoying this.

Rafael de Leon

Gary has touched upon the weird hard on some leftist types seem to have for Sunni extremists. That Charlie Hebdo piece was great and I have always found it odd to hear the Left clamor about Palestine with such fervor all the while not hearing a peep about the Kurds, Hazara or Yezedi. I’ve met Leftists like that who damn near apologize for every act Sunni extremists make; they will mince words and try to connect every conflict in the Middle East with Palestine. I think it goes back to the 60s and 70s when the PLO buddied up and knocked boots with the cool kids from Europe’s boutique terrorist Leftist groups. What astounds me to this day is that both Left and Right winger seem to overlook the fact that both Iran and Saudi Arabia are regional hard powers and are responsible for a lot of the mess in Syria and the Middle East. The Saudis especially get overlooked.

Knut L

you guys, would be super cool if I subscribe to this podcast on iTunes so that I can listen to it on the go

Hanso

I hear alot of contempt for the Islamic State, which of course is understandable. But since I guess you have a strong enough stomach to stand their Mongol-style PR-campaign (though of course it's a different thing once the Mongols have cameras...) I assume that most of it is grounded in a sort of reaction to the most common media narrative? From what I'm seeing, they're impressively good at urban guerilla warfare; subterfuge, assassinations, information warfare and so on. This is the base of all their success; the footsoldiers and kamikazes only come in once they've established intelligence networks, planted sleeper cells, etc. They only fail in places where they lack these resources. They've managed to completely destroy the Sawha movement (and the powerful tribes behind it), they managed to very quickly establish control on a foreign battleground (Syria) and so on... Also - Mosul was the complete opposite of "blitzkrieg"! It was the result of a drawn-out urban guerilla campaign, made possible by the fact that IS has been the main "underground network" of that city for close to a decade (since 2005-2006). Remember the ISF operations in 2008? They failed. IS was always in Mosul - last June year was nothing but the very last step towards complete control. I'm not sure Mosul's fall should be entirely blamed on ISF incompetence. Mosul was a dangerous place for a decade - if anything, that is what broke the morale of its "defenders". And it was IS who made it a dangerous place. You know very well that the complicated tribal lands between Aleppo and Fallujah is a nightmare for any organization that aims at any sort of even semi-centralized control. And it's not like the locals accept IS just because they're Sunni - the powerful people in these areas care about family, not about sectarian super-categories. But that's "powerful" in the old sense. What IS has managed to do is awaken a new kind of power, by taping into the young blood of the region; angry, modern men with dreams of nationhood. And the way they've done this is a great story of 21st-century warfare; an actually brilliant combination of guerilla warfare against the old power structures and image-generating, "cool", media (they produce so much more than execution videos). Brilliantly executed, but far from as easy as it may sound. The actual guerilla part is hard in itself, but the real trick is being able to produce propaganda that attracts this unpredictable demographic, then make them stay together and - most importantly - loyal to the organization itself. For these are men who may have dreams of nationhood, but not much of any real experience of it. Just look at what happened to the Syrian Sunni revolution. This success has been achieved by an incredibly top-heavy propaganda machine. Incredibly, coming from a Sunni Arab revolutionary movement! There are no individual "katibas" with their own names, there is no more than one flag/symbol and all of the videos are released by a central authority after going through a seemingly meticolous editing process that puts them in line with a centrally defined aesthetic and ideology. They're getting their shit together - they know what matters - and it scares me alot. Short term, the Islamic State has no hope of surviving. But maybe before I die there will be second attempt at a Caliphate - built on lessons learned from the first. It's frigtening, the evolution the pan-Sunni extremists have made in the last 20 years.

Russell Meyer

In regards to your last show, I think you guys may have given Hoxja a bit of a bum rap. I mean the guy boosted the country out of grinding poverty, wasn't afraid to stand up to the Soviets when he thought they'd gone too far, ended the terror of blood feuds in Albania, provided everyone with free education and healthcare...not too shabby. Plus, I think the mistake those generals made wasn't so much criticizing the policy of the bunkers, but rather criticizing Hoxja, as the generator of the policy, in public. You'd have to kill them after that.

Jed Hovey

What people in the US think of ISIS has little to nothing to do with the organization itself and everything to do with the mindset of people living here. It's about us, not them. Most people getting panicked about ISIS couldn't find Syria on a map or name a single leader (probably not even Assad). The news is kind of like porn, and citizens are fed a steady diet of smut about militant groups in the Middle East because it makes us feel like were are still a force for good in the world rather than a imperialist force driven primarily by rapacious greed. ISIS is just a big commercial that says "look at how barbaric Muslims are in the Middle East. They should be thanking us for demolishing Iraq to save them." This has little to do with reality, but that isn't the point. The leftists you speak of are trying to negate the propaganda image by saying ISIS and Salafist Islam in general aren't so bad. While good intentioned, they are dealing with the same propaganda. A negation of a false image will important all the misleading assumptions of that false image. It's like arguing about a weather forecast that says it's sunny outside in the middle of a thunderstorm.

Peter Berard

Thanks for the shoutout! I'm fine with you using my name. People already know I'm into unusual things!

Chris Kohler

I'm sorry, but you're really off when it comes to refugees in Germany. They aren't immigrating into the job market, they are immigrating into the welfare system. Nobody is using them as cheap labor that can be mistreated. That is not how stuff works in Germany. Even the shittiest jobs are well regulated by strict worker protection laws and refugees usually don't even get work permits, even if they want them, which virtually none do, because the kind of money they get through welfare and socalled "child money" (subsidies for every child equaling the standard amount of welfare, which means that a family with 3 or 4 children can get as much money for nothing as if both parents would be working full time. There is no incentive to work for those people.). Those socalled refugees (I think they lost that status somewhere along their journey through 3 or 4 safe countries.) won't contribute anything to the German economy. They estimate that about 1.5 million refugees will come to Germany alone within the next year or so and will cost the German tax payer 45 Billion Euros per year and that is only if the number of people coming from Afghanistan doesn't go up significantly. And that are the white washed, "careful" and optimistic official numbers. This is not sustainable. You can't compare that to Mexicans immigrating to the USA. In Germany you pay so much for an employee's insurance, health care and mandatory benefits that not even really wealthy people can really afford to hire maids and nannies and gardeners and all those jobs Mexicans tend to do in the USA. Even if the "refugees" would want to work and would get a work permit, nobody would be able to afford hiring them in those low qualification jobs. And as I said, they don't have any incentive to work anyways, until the welfare system collapses and when that happens all bets are off. I grew up and lived in Germany for most of my life and I am a cynical war nerd myself who looks at his fellow humans like a biologist who is studying a ape horde and even I have not the slightest idea what will happen then.

radiowarnerd

I agree that social services in Germany are much more generous. Then again, a lot of refugees in the US these days are Guatamalan and Honduran, coming from a much rougher world, compared to which the US probably does seem fairly cushy.

Chris Kohler

Yes. I didn't really intend to compare the two situations/countries/groups of refugees, just wanted to point out that I think there is a fundamental problem with Germany and it's problems integrating refugees. Germany basically still operates on basis of a medieval guild system. Not all of them still call themselves "guilds", some are called "chambers", but that is what they are and you can't get most jobs without a certificate from one of those guilds, saying that you successfully graduated from a 3 to 4 year apprenticeship and passed all their exams. That system has its up and downsides of course. The upside is that when you hire a handyman, you can usually be sure the guy knows what he is doing and the companies who invested into such long apprenticeships hesitate to then just throw people out willy nilly. The downside is a huge lack of flexibility. Changing careers is extremely hard for grownups, because you'd have to apply for another apprenticeship, compete with 16 to 18 year olds for it and even if you get it, live off of an apprentice's salary for 3 to 4 years again. And also such a system doesn't absorb huge masses of unqualified workers easily, as you can imagine. Germans are collectively astonishingly willing to help and to take in refugees, I'm just not sure the system is able to do it. As anachronistic, weird and silly that medieval guild system must look like to an American, it actually works pretty well under normal conditions and is probably the single biggest reason for why Germany actually still produces shit, hasn't exported all industrial and manufacturing jobs to Asia yet and was able to weather the last economic crisis better than most other developed countries. So my point is that there are other and better reasons than mere xenophobia for why Germany can't simply turn itself into a immigration country like the USA, Australia or Canada. I personally think if Germany is forced to let go of that system in order to "modernize" and be able to just absorb millions of low qualification workers, it would lose the one thing that makes it competitive. It doesn't have natural resources like Australia and Canada and it doesn't have the "Petro-Dollar-Cycle" like the USA. It is doomed to fail if it tries to turn into a copy of those traditional immigration countries. They don't play by the same economical rules.

Factory Troll

I'm just not buying the right wing talking points about people immigrating into the welfare system rather than the job market (those pesky Syrians; using my money to feed their children). There is a reason why you dont think those shity black market jobs exists, because no one wants you to know. Even those who work at such places would be afraid that some regulator comes along to take away their job. It is the same in Scandinavia, people think domestic poverty and immigration is a conspiracy to steal their money and turn a blid eye to the occasional surfacing of news about how some employer mistreated his workers. The only difference to the US is that there are less immigrants to mistreat and fewer robber barons to mistreat them. Your guild point is interesting, but I would reason that if any society would be able to adapt to an overload of cheap labor, it would be one run by merchants, maybe that is too simplistic.

Chris Kohler

Well, whatever you think about my knowledge of how the job market looks in Germany, one thing is definitely the case. There are no day laborers standing around on the parking lots of the German equivalent of Home Depot, waiting for someone to pick them up for a day of work and there aren't any cheap maids, nannies and other servants working in wealthier German households. It just is a different system and a different environment from how things are done in the USA. Saying so doesn't make me some kind of right wing loon. I'm not saying there are no exploited workers and everything is a socialist union paradise and I'm not blaming the refugees. I am maintaining my position though that the system is not suited to absorb millions of unqualified workers. Add to that how much welfare and other subsidies people can get and it is pretty much inevitable that the refugees will be immigrating into the welfare system instead of into the job market.

Chris Kohler

Care to elaborate on how this guild-based society would somehow be better suited to absorb an overload of cheap labor? I gave my reasons for why I am pretty sure that this kind of system is the least suited for doing that. This system is what makes Germany different and allowed it to stay competitive without any natural resources or other economical magic tricks (Petro-Dollar-Cycle). It is a integral part of German culture and mentality, of how Germans like to run things and of how they like their country to be. And as I said, it works very well. It would be extremely stupid to give that up and try to replace it with cheap, low qualification labor. Others can do that way better.

Blue

No, no one to the left is pro IS, just because one does not want to exterminate all muslims does not make one pro IS, this is a false analogy all right wingers in all non muslim countries make Which is quite ironic since IS is a right wing conservative organization, and the only difference between a right winger from lets say the US and a member of IS is place of birth, and that is the only difference

Rich

Actually social services in Germany are not as generous as an (Anglo) outsider might think. Germany's welfare system differs from Northern neighbors in that it's 1)tied to family formation more directly and 2) tied to the labor market (administered through the job), in the economics literature this is called "corporatist". In many ways it's more resistant to immigrants taking advantage of it than most people think. Norway, Sweeden et al are also less prone to immigrants taking advantage of the system than you would think, but for different reasons: those welfare systems are genuinely generous, but tied to citizenship more explicitly. It gets complicated but bottom line is that these states are definitely getting benefits (and that doesn't mean it's not getting any burdens but the things you said in the podcast are accurate). The problem is that Anglo American economies have barely any welfare state and what little we have is basically just a bare minimum incentive to stay in the labor market ie "social insurance" so we have a distorted view. The Euros economic problems in monetary and fiscal austerity have done MUCH more damage than all the immigrants combined, indeed the Euro now threatens ALL of the welfare state measures above.

Blue

@ Chris Kohler you write the solution but do not see it yourself, I have though of it long before you even wrote it. Give the people training, anywhere from 6 months up to 10 years A country will spend an unlimited amount of money on its armed forces, when needed, only so that it can go and literally blow up even more money, the country will take any peasant and train and equip him at a huge cost But what IF you take that system an exchange it for learning So instead of a person living in a barracks and spending all day for a year learning to kill You take that person and have them live in a location and TEACH them So the basic concept is the same, You take a person to a place, keep the person there for X amount of time, and then after that time the person is ready Same concept can be applied to all those refugees. You create a properly built building where the person can live and eat and shower, you get teachers/ instructors that teach them first basic skills like math and the language, and of course keep the cardio training, cardio training is very important when it comes to learning, then after X amount of time you specialize the training towards a specific job field And some people will require no training at all, just a test that proves that they know applicable job skills And in the middle of the group of people, some will require perhaps 2-3 years of language training, and this language should be English not German because it will be much easier for that group of people to learn English which many already partially know than have them learn German and then possibly 3-4 years of “training” towards a job field, like for example a plumber or engineer or any job field any at all, doctor, policeman, clock maker etc etc And at the far end of the spectrum some will need 10 years, a few years to learn to read and write, then a few years to learn the language and math, and finally 3-5 years for job field specialization IF all of this is done properly and by the state and not underfunded then all those refugees can turn into assets, instead of costs

Blue

Perhaps they did give him a bum rap, but why keep the bunker program going? The argument provided in this episode is solid, keep the resources out of the peoples hands, and in the elites. Frighten the people with constant threat of war, and then provide a solution that will keep the elites in power and in control of the resources.

Russell Meyer

I think Gary's argument is pretty weak to be honest. Let's take the US military procurement system: run by elites, for elites, at the expense of the rest of the empire. These are well-evidenced - we can look at campaign contributions, legislation, the patronage of politicians, defense contractors and the military, all hard material facts that indicate what Gary alledges is correct. Now, transplanting that analysis onto Albania, a small socialist and egalitarian society smacks of laziness in analysis. What "elites" were there under Hoxja? Can anyone produce any evidence that there was a class of elites siphoning off wealth from military expenditure (the situation in the US presently)? Or that this resulted in the empoverishment of the rest of Albanian society? It's no better than muckraking to make assertions like these that are patently unsubstantiated and untrue. It's easy to kick someone when they've been down since '91. The only similarity I will grant is this: both the F35 and the bunkers are/were military programs that have something other than military usage as their end goal. That does not even slightly imply that the Albanians therefore had anything like an imperialist military-industrial complex tied into massive legalised political corruption. The end goal of the bunkers is probably very complex, and we would need to go to the sources (why did Hoxja and co. consider them important?) rather than just assert that the Albanian socialist government was exploiting their population.

Blue

@ Russell By having this bunker program and using the resources towards that, the ruling Elite maintained THE POWER and the control of the resources. If for example those same resources had gone towards building homes and even whole cities, then the ruling Elites POWER would have diminished, because people would have felt that the homes are theirs and in addition to that more centers of authority would have been created, when construction and administration of those homes and services are created, thereby increasing the number of people who ”have the POWER” and diluting the original Elites % of the POWER. Personal gain does not always mean increasing your own bank account. And by removing resources from the economy and having the threat of constant war, the Elites maintained their POWER. Also Albania was hardly a good country and not at all egalitarian, it was a one party state ruled by a half crazy guy, who yes ended the blood feuds and increased the quality and quantity of the educational system, but it was by no means a country that was good to live in The bunkers had no military value, the only value they had was keeping the Elites in power and denying the common man the chance of a better life. The bunkers did so by taking away resources and time from far more important projects.

Russell Meyer

I think you should clarify your definition of power, because it seems to morph during your argument. In any case, your argument for why the "elites" (please locate them for me, since they didn't really exist) didn't build lots of housing (the socialist government demonstrably did, fyi) is pretty weak. Because people would have "felt that their homes are theirs"? Where do you think people were living, holes in the ground, communal tents? Everyone in Albania paid either minimal rent (less than 5% of their total income) on housing, or flat-out owned their own homes. A hell of a lot better than the modern "west". Blue, you should maybe do some research on the matter instead of making an argument based on something so wishy washy. Material facts, not empty assertions. Albania started from perhaps the lowest level of contemporary development and ended up as something approaching a halfway-decent country to live in. Of course it was poor compared to imperialist industrial powers like Britain and the USA that had hundreds of years' head start. Why don't you do some reading on the actual society we're discussing instead of an imaginary totalitarian nightmare?

Blue

@ Russell Power is who gets to make the decisions, and whom you must follow and do as they say. The Elites in Albania were the Hierarchy of the Party. At any given time there is 100% resources, but the numerical of this 100% changes all the time. By creating a threat and a solution to this threat the elites manged to divert resources from society thereby making sure that the numerical amount of resources stayed the same and preventing that new centers of authority and power would arise to challenge the Elites and thereby decrease the elites % of the total Power. Yes Albania had houses, but of course the question is how many and of what quality. Albania did not have a 5 room apartment for every 3 member household plus a "summer house" for them, and in many places several families lived together in the same home. But this is not the primary point, the point is that by diverting resources into the pointless bunker program, that had almost zero military value, there were less resources for other things such as housing, consumer goods, electricity etc etc etc And from a military standpoint it would have been far better to give every citizen a Kalashnikov Rifle, a Makarov Pistol and a motorcycle, then wasting it on bunkers built in the middle of nowhere just for the sake of it. It was all a huge pointless program that wasted a lot of time effort and resources. Also you seem to be thinking that life was “good enough” and seem to miss how much it could have been improved if all that time effort and resources was not wasted on the bunkers.