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Radio War Nerd #310 — The Year In Wars: 2021 Edition (Patreon)

Published:
2021-12-28 03:02:52
Imported:
2026-06
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Recorded: December 21, 2021

Looking back at another miserable year in humanity's oldest profession. The War Nerd & Ames discuss the Ethiopia-Tigray conflict, Afghanistan, Cold War sequels & the end-of-the-year Russia/Ukraine hysteria. 

Thanks to the mighty RWN community for making the show happen, we'll see you in 2022!

Check out the Radio War Nerd Merch store here!

Buy John Dolan's book "The War Nerd Iliad" & his audiobook "Pleasant Hell".

Total time: 1:42:38

Direct link to this episode's mp3 here 

Files

Comments

Hugo

First 😎

Hugo

Thanks for a great year fellas-keep on truckin

mt

14:06 - i hope the last episode for this year only, not the last episode ever. Compliments of the season and may war (preferrably more informational rather than kinetic) and peace be upon you all in 2022 too!

grimbo

Mark, it sounds like you have a wonderful son. I highly suggest trying a Judo or BJJ class for him.

Breakaway

This one didn’t show up in my Apple podcasts feed. Did the RSS feed change?

Breakaway

PS Nice hat, Gary!

Mark Fartman

Sounds like you’re raising a kind, thoughtful, and brave son, Mark!

Matt D

Same for me

David Andrews

You guys whining about bullying is extremely boring. Can you get that over with before the episode? Bullying is a part of life and your kid's story is nothing new.

SammyG

Sammy is a hero! 👍 love you guys wishing you a happy new year john and mark and brenden!

online Leftist Archive Project (LARP)

Thank you guys for helping me stay sane during this pandemic! One bright spot was discovering your show. Happy new year and merry Christmas guys!

Brendo

Please don’t slander the Jersey shore because the weather was bad once

Mark Ames

RSS feed fixed. CIA saboteurs vanquished.

Mark Ames

props to my wife for drawing Gary's hat!

Mark Ames

He is. I tried getting him into tae kwon do a couple years back, he didn't like it much. Not into violence of any kind, not into the military drilling. I have a sad feeling that experience is going to change that.

online Leftist Archive Project (LARP)

Interestingly, someone told me that growing up in China she never encountered bullying at school, which I was astonished by. I wonder if that's just her experience or if it's true in general. Maybe next time Carl Zha is on the show y'all could ask him!

Bryan Nicholson

❤️❤️ for Sammy for sticking up for another kid. Very brave! I will CANCEL my subscription if there is a reduction in the pre-show chit-chat. Especially now that John’s war against gravity has just gotten personal.

Winterborn

Excuse me my dears but I seem to have stopped getting the newsletter sometime in the last year to year and a half. It's arlo@crysania.com

mt

I don't know how dedicated Radio War Nerd is to warfare with immediate gore and splatter only, but Mark made the comment 8:03 onwards about the facebook group removing comments about bullying as "protecting their investment". The privatization of schools lead everywhere to these kind of behaviours. This is pure class warfare. As you may have noticed in the US and increasingly in the EU too class warfare will eventually lead to gore and splatter too.

mt

Tae Kwon Do is useless for fighting. Kick boxing or thai boxing are good tools to enforcw the motto "never start a fight but always finish the fight". The downside with kick boxing and thai boxing is that the people frequenting those courses are usually really aggressive. Tae Kwon Do-people are more people that need a way to get an outlet for energy surplus rather than aggression.

Jason Thompson

Re: Afghanistan pullout, I know some fairly leftist/antiimperialist people who (to my surprise) were still shocked and took a “this is bad, it could have been done better” attitude about the Afghan pullout, after seeing the images of the guys falling off the outside of the airplane and so on. And these are folks who, seeing the noseless Afghan woman displayed on the cover of TIME in 2011, said “ugh, what pro-war propaganda”. So I dunno

David Gyllenhaal

The association between astrologers and powerful people is as old as our written evidence and incredibly durable. Rulers are people who need to make momentous decisions on the basis of limited information—astrologers are at a premium for such people. The association is intense enough that as far as our written astrological evidence from antiquity and the middle ages goes, we are really speaking of a "courtly genre." There is actually a surviving treatise on military astrology by Theophilus of Edessa, a Christian at the court of the caliph al-Mahdi, which survives in Greek. Looking through the subheadings on the TLG right now and it reinforces the point that powerful people are always looking for help in making difficult decisions on the basis of limited information. The headings include "On Deceit and Ambush," "On Cities Under Siege," and "On [Whether] A City Is Deserted." With that being said, if I had to pick a modern successor to ancient and medieval astrologers it would be less Joan Quigley than Larry Summers. In terms of reducing anxiety about actual threats to executive power on the basis of dodgy science, economists have the social function of the old astrologers pretty much on lock these days.

Mark Ames

Great point about economists as the secular astrologers. Larry tried so hard to convince people economics is “hard science”, all part of the grift which he was always good at.

Xander Udo

Yeah, I've always felt (or been told?) that economists come via a straight line from those ancient Egyptian scribes who predict the water levels of the Nile

Xander Udo

On Eritrea going after it's dissidents overseas. An example of that would also be this: Eritrean refugees who come to the Netherlands, will be interviewed using translaters hired by the Dutch government. But those translaters, who are Eritrean by birth or descent obviously, will often haven been recruited or coerced by the Eritrean government to relay information about dissident refugees back to Eritrea. After which they will be pursued and pressured to comply with Eritrea rule. Which is not pretty. That must be horrifying to experience as a refugee. Fleeing for your safety, only to find your hopefully safe haven to already be comprised. No escape.

Winterborn

All good now thankyou!

Ronald Dahlgren

Hey Mark - my son, also in first grade, had another kid telling him scary things and monopolizing play time. I live in a red state. Like you said, I've also found that by and large, kids this age are cooperative and friendly. Not all the time unfortunately :(

Patrick Fitzgerald

Hey John, Thanks for flagging Wore Negari on War Nerd. Just finished it and really enjoyed it. Frustrating at times, but illuminating on Ethiopian civil war and student-led Maoist revolutions in the 70s.

grimbo

You could also just go fuck yourself too! Hope that helped.

radiowarnerd

I'm glad you liked it. I think it's a great book. And it's a good lesson for people who think the Revolution will be a fun ride.

Doug Cartel

I remember a story where a well-to-do upper class kind of guy ("he could devastate a whole room of people with a well timed passive aggressive remark") getting terrified the first time he did his schtick to a hungover college student and got screamed at. Pretty satisfying.

CR

Your newest newsletter reminds me of Darth Helmet's line in Spaceballs. "Evil will always win because Good is dumb."

Tyler Berglund

You guys mentioned Myanmar at the end, have you considered having Brian Berletic on?

Gabo Goff

are you going to do a Kazakhstan episode