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Radio War Nerd #313 — Quiet Trolls The Dniepr + Syria War Update with Joshua Landis (Patreon)

Published:
2022-01-29 16:01:29
Imported:
2026-06
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Guest: Joshua Landis, Director of Center for Middle East Studies & blogger

Recorded: January 25, 2022

Our monthly World Of Wars looks at two wars: the phony Russia-Ukraine war that NATO & western media is screaming about...and the grim, real ongoing war in Syria, which NATO and the western media don't want you to think about.

First: Broken bones + the latest "Russian invasion" follies

At 51:38 - We talk to Joshua Landis about the Syria War today

Joshua Landis is director at the Center for Middle East Studies and professor at U Oklahoma. Read his excellent blog Syria Comment and follow him on twitter: @joshua_landis.

*Image: Alleged Russian coup plot puppet leader Yevhen Murayev

Total time: 1:56:37

Direct link to this episode's mp3 here 

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Comments

Greg

I love u all

Basil

Excited for this one

Anatoly Kir

With his injury, John is setting himself up as a plot line for a remake of Бриллиантовая Рука

Kevin Hickey

Basically a perfect episode. Nice job guys!

Ian H

I'll admit to wondering, as an exurban PA resident, about whether the massively expensive new pipeline we've been fighting for the last several years, whose entire purpose is to ship concentrated Marcellus Shale LNG to Europe, might have had a larger market in mind than Scottish nurdles.

Michael S. Judge

I've gotta say, a lot of what I'd consider "the significant figures on the American left," insofar as there is one or there are any, called bullshit on Russiagate from the beginning. The true helpless (or purely opportunist) gulls were, well, pretty much everyone who would self-describe with the word "liberal" and feel no shame, either of the Maddow varietal or in that grim "classical liberal" orbit where 29-year-old jerkoffs with neckbeards use statues of Romulus Agustulus for their Twitter profile pics.

a clash of purple

As far as I can remember, people like Noam Chomsky didn't necessarily say it wasn't true, they just shrugged and pointed out that America meddles in a lot of other countries' elections (and a lot of countries besides Russia meddle in American elections, for that matter). To even care about the idea of Russiagate on its face you have to have a very particular combination of appalling ignorance and blind loyalty to the Democratic Party. You've got to believe that Russia's subtle psychological warfare and hacking both could and did make a difference, but also that no other force in the world, domestic or foreign, had some insidious effect on the outcome of the election. Obviously there are people whose brains are defective in that way, and it can pay off for them in a big way, but forget the American left, I don't think any significant fraction of the American public in general ever believed in or cared about Russiagate. They're far more likely to believe that Hillary Clinton is a lizard wearing a human suit or that Obama was a pure-hearted saint who did his best and was foiled by that dastardly Mitch McConnell.

Alex Muir

Great show & thanks for bringing Joshua Landis back on for an update on the situation in Syria & environs. Hoping you take up his suggestion to look at Lebanon post collapse - if so please consider interviewing Amal Saad again to find out what is going on with the Axis of Resistance.

JV

100% that'd be a great episode and i really don't see anyone else giving lebanon the attention it deserves, whole country is being held hostage. would love to hear how amal's next book is going too, on something like 'post-resistance' iirc

Lord-Admiral of the Pyrenees

I always listen to this podcast when I’m doing laundry. This is my go-to doing laundry podcast so it’s great when an ep comes out to coincide with a load

Xander Udo

Great episode again. Informative and clear analysis. On all of us being the targets of the psy-op: I would be curious to hear your opinion on why the Anglo/western world is being targeted. The theory on Germany and the Nordstream 2 pipeline makes a lot of sense. (Although, how likely is it really that Russian gas would be replaced by LNG from the US?) But is that enough to explain why all other NATO countries have to be convinced that war is imminent? Why do we need to be reminded of that we have an 'enemy'? That this is good vs evil and whatnot...

CR

Virtually every liberal/Democratic lawyer/attorney I know (so, like 90-95% of them. I could count the number of openly Republican attorneys on one hand and openly MAGA was one.) believed Russiagate at the least to the extent of the pitch network news was pitching every evening, but most were fully onboard with every lie and insinuation Maddow has been flinging. It also skews heavily female and white. And it is, as far as I can tell, 100% cope because they tied their own identities and fortunes to HRC because that's what they were supposed to do and believed they had to and wanted to do. At least, that's been my impression over the last SIX years. They believe it because they initially bought into it, and there's been a huge sunk cost fallacy and also the social contagion aspect where it's something that has to be believed because everyone else believes it, or says they believe it, and no one wants to be the first to admit error. So the issue isn't how many people believe it - it's that the most important and influential people in the country believe it and have incentives that have hardened into time to make them incapable and unwilling to admit error because these are people who have never been told they are wrong, have never had to face consequences for being wrong, and have an unconscious terror of what it means if/that they are wrong.

CR

I've seen estimates that it would take years for Germany to fully replace their dependance on Russian LNG with dependance on American LNG because the infrastructure doesn't exist and part of the existing and new transfer capacity would have to go through Netherlands. Why convince Europe? Because a lot of these people genuinely believe we are in a war with China (and Russia) over control over Europe. There seem to be a lot more people on both sides of the Atlantic now who are saying the quiet part loud now: that Europe isn't the Europeans' to control, and we'll be damned if we're going to let the French or Germans or Balkans or V4 countries insist on autonomy and self-interest prevailing over the interests of the U.S. Baerbock's announcement about NordStream 2 made LNG prices on the spot market skyrocket because Germany doesn't have any capacity for replacing Russian gas before 2030, if that, given the decision to scuttle nukes and rely on inconsistent green tech that can't store power - and that's the crux: nothing stores energy better than petroleum. There is no rational self-interest in Germany shooting itself in the head like it did. The only beneficiaries of that policy are U.S. gas producers, French nuclear to the extent that they have excess capacity to spare, and psychos who can force German-style austerity ... on Germans. https://twitter.com/volvoks99/status/1488258871714058247

Xander Udo

Good tweet that :) So I would guess that the psy-op is for a big part meant to obscure the fact for us Europeans that we have common interests with Russia. Realising that fact would jeopardise American fossil interests and influence over Europe. It's amazing how ubiquitous the media influence campaign is by the way. And how effective, people are really angry at Putin. Emotional.

CR

It's impossible to understate how natural mass media propaganda comes to Americans because it is the water we swim in from birth. Anyway, yes, that's a better summary. We are invested in maintaining a schism between Russia and the rest of Europe over your commonalities and mutual interests because it is to our financial and political interests. And because of the Cold War we've spent 75 years investing in the upper classes so that they are better off financially and politically sticking with us. Russia, and China (for now), cannot compete because our oligarchs are richer than all their oligarchs (and we have more of them) and we've also have spent those 75 years erasing your ties with Russia and replacing them with the Atlanticist narrative so that there's also an emotional/ideological regime that we fall back on when cash bribes fail. All those NED and Peace Corps and NGO workers and volunteers and visiting students and scholars are all psyops foot soldiers.

Xander Udo

I would guess propaganda and narrative shapeing has always been natural over here too. The advent of Facebook and Twitter, I feel, have really kicked ot up a notch. I sometimes jokingly call it the cultural colonisation of our social media elites And podcasts too, every other journalist now has a podcast on which they invite experts that confirm and reinforce beliefs even deeper. Obviously this all does not apply to myself ;)

Jim Vail

Counterpunch, St. Claire - 'At the time, the late Ed Herman had convinced me to start writing for LOOT (Lies of Our Times) and I said to Alex, what the hell am I supposed to do? The whole purpose of LOOT was to closely read each NYT story and expose their biases, lies and omissions. Cockburn said, “You’ll never get them all, Jeffrey. Pointing a few lies out, makes the rest of the falsities the ‘paper of record’ prints seem legit.”'

Jim Vail

Who here believes Joshua and Mark that the US wanted to bring democracy to the Middle East?

Sean Towse

Cain abel in our days. Depleated uranium, ect