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Radio War Nerd EP #65—2016: Year of the Shia Rebound (Patreon)

Published:
2016-12-31 18:03:08
Imported:
2026-06

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Content

The War Nerd & Ames look back at 2016—the year of the Shia Rebound . . . and the return of fevered Cold War Russophobia...

Happy New Year to all of our subscribers! The War Nerd Legion is legion!

Total time: 2:16:06

Direct link  to this episode's mp3 here 

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Comments

Matt McCartney

I just wanted to thank Gary Brecher and Mark Ames for a great year of podcasts. I have greatly enjoyed the guests and the many insights into the world's conflicts. As a lifetime war nerd it is gratifying to have found my own twisted little sect at last. Best wishes to both of you in the new year. I&E

D

Could someone please share the article with the Israeli think tank fellow saying that ISIS has been useful?

Karl Knight

Would love to hear from Yasha Levine again! It's nice to know that he's in St. Petersburg. Was wondering about him. Keep up the great work! Happy New Year!

Lukas Pfannenstiel

Happy new year John and Mark. The War Nerd podcast has been one of the few bright spots of this wretched year.

oo12

Agree on the "Grizzy Steppe" report, awfully weak tea. However I do recommend a report from computer security firm ESET: <a href="http://www.welivesecurity.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/eset-sednit-full.pdf" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">http://www.welivesecurity.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/eset-sednit-full.pdf</a> They take a pretty rigorous approach with lots of interesting detail and no speculation on attribution or goals. In particular pages 9–21 provide a good, not too technical overview.

radiowarnerd

Thanks Lukas. Maybe 2017 can be a good year for the show AND, you know, the whole rest-of-the-world thing...

radiowarnerd

Happy New Year Karl. Yes we definitely will.

radiowarnerd

Thanks Matt, and a happy 2017 to you as well. Our day will come, as the feller sez.

Crazy B0nkers

When are you getting Thierry Marignac on the podcast? Apparently he shares some history with Mark Ames in Russia. I would love an episode like the one about South Ossetia, which is the one that made me subscribe. Maybe about the Ukraine?

Winterborn

Thanks for all the great shows this year Mark & John. I'm very poor and had to make a decision between buying a Pando membership or this, as much as I'd love to be able to read your Pando work I'm very happy with everything I've gotten to listen to here. xo.

John Hieronymus

Happy new year's guys, I look forward to your shows every week and I hope 2017 is generally a better year for all of us. John, you guys should check out Bulgaria since you are right on the border, It has a crazy history and is the same culture and language as Macedonia. An episode on the Balkan Wars proceeding WW1 would be awesome.

Matthew C

This is a good report. I know Mark and John arent to tech savvy, but I really hope they can find someone (ideally in the infosec field) to help investigate this more on the techinical side. As while there is nothing definitive, the amount of circumstantial evidence surrounding this that points to this being a Russian group is just to large to ignore. If its not the Russian government, then whoever is doing this has had an unusually prolific operation to infiltrate thousands of individuals who have been critical of the Russian government. It is very frustrating to see Democrats and the mainstream news media completely bungle a situation which should have been fairly straight forward, and place blind partisanship over technical details which require only a few minutes of explanation.

grey

Geez guys. Looks like this podcast is funded by shia ayatollahs now. Jokes aside, in their attempt to display a pro sunni anti shia tilt in western foreign policy (which obviously does exist), gary and mark have swung the pendulum too far in the direction of the shias and them being simple victims. The ethnically cleansed and exiled sunnis of baghdad Take issue with that. Not that long ago the iraqi government was sicking its military and death squads on any sunni protest and making sure sunnis had nothing in the new iraqi government. It got bad enough that the sunnis and baathists threw their weight behind groups like isis. That being said, i still enjoyed the episode.

Rich

Shia are to the 21st century what Jews were tonthe 20th. Genocide is not too strong a term.

grey

No way. The vast majority of the dead in syria are sunnis. In iraq everyone seems to have forgotten the shia death squads' sectarian cleansing of baghdad. If anybody is the jews here its the kurds who sunni/shia/turk/arab/iranian all seem to have issue with.

Brendan

Ames is a smart guy but when the spectrum of things he refers to as "fascist" includes ISIS and Ron Paul he doesn't sound like one. Fascist seems to mean people he doesn't like who aren't leftists, the mirror image, he must recognize, of righties who think everyone to their left is a commie.

Rich

My comment was about the whole theater of war, not just Syria. Even if what you claim is true that fact doesn't change my analogy - after WW2 the vast majority of the dead were European Christians - so what? The Germans were the aggressors in a genocidal campaign. Shia militia's supposed "Atrocities" are comparable to the "atrocities" of Romanian and Jewish partisans in WW2 - their "victims" deserve everything they get 100x over and then some. The Shia militia in Iraq are brutal but they aren't trying to wipe out the Sunni. Judging by your comments you've been too much Sunni propaganda.

Rich

Ames has it exactly correct: Fascism is anti-communism, period. The word "fascist" really doesn't mean anything EXCEPT fanatical violent hatred of leftists and ethnic minorities channeled through state power. That's the only real common denominator even between 1930s Germany Italy etc. and its a good enough definition to be useful. And yes, the "liberal" aspects of "libertarians" are vastly overrated by people who see it from the outside - actual libertarians are perfectly comfortable with state violence and always have been.

Rich

You in the 1940's: "Of course there is anti-jewish bias, but you've got to look at the other side!" You're wrong.

Karl Knight

Mark Ames will appear on Abby Martin's The Empire Files soon to discuss the truth about Russia/Putin. Should be a doozy.

grey

Did you just say that the dead sunnis killed by shia deathsquads deserved it? What kind of suck bastard are you? Lol. Youre analogy doesn't work because unlike the jews, there are several shia countries. There was no such thing as jewish countries. The jews were targetted for extermination by the state. The fact that you accuse me of falling for propaganda when you liken shias to jewish holocaust victims is hilarious.

moj

moj

John Hieronymus

I found that Misha Glenny wrote a fairly accessible history of the Balkans from the liberation of Serbia up to the present day. He is a half Serb half Irish reporter with extensive knowledge of the region and presented what seems like a very fair view of the last 170 years of conflict. His thesis was that the various Balkan wars were often as not the end result of political machinations in western Europe as opposed to inborn local hatreds. Also Anthony Loyd is another journalist who got his start in Bosnian wars who seems to have a pretty good grasp on the local history and politics. I also think Joe Sacco (who I know is a war nerd as well) has done well researched and reported work on the Yugoslav wars. You need to bring him on just to discuss his last book about the Somme. Brutal stuff.