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Radio War Nerd EP #365 — Economic War Update, feat. Ben Aris (Patreon)

Published:
2023-02-12 02:12:08
Imported:
2026-06
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Guest: Ben Aris, founding editor BNE IntelliNews

Recorded: February 9, 2023

Friend of the show Ben Aris joins us from Berlin to update us on the G-7's economic war on Russia launched a year ago in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Total time: 1:29:12

Direct link to this episode's mp3 here 

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Comments

NYCM&AHole

Lol the Ukrainians in that hypothetical movie are Azov Nazis with black sun logos

Mike Simons

Does anyone remember Episode 348 when Annibale says that “NATO told Russia to stay east of the Dnipro at some point during the war otherwise it was going to become WW3” It’s around the 34 minute mark and Mark expressed surprise at this point but they quickly move on. I am wondering if there is any other source confirming this?? I have not seen or heard it anywhere else but it keeps bugging me for whatever reason

SB

Oh, no, not Ben again! He has a posh accent that is initially intellectually disarming, but when he starts spewing nonsense, it stops working. Just a few examples. He claims that the German leadership is being cautious with their judgement after Hersh published his bombshell. 92% of Germans polled back in September were sure the U.S. had done it. Sweden didn’t share its findings because of how sensitive the information is. If they found anything pointing at Russia, they obviously wouldn’t do it. Nuland just openly gloated about the destruction of the pipelines. German leadership is not more stupid than the population, although Baerbock does stand out. I’m sure they knew all alone the U.S. had done it. Just chose to cowardly stay quiet. Hersh’s article just forces the conversation. Ben lives in Berlin, right? Then he’s clearly misrepresenting the reality there. His claim about Russia purchasing washing machines from Serbia for chips. I imagine Ben never in his life soldered any electronics. When will this stupid canard about extracting chips from washing machines for missiles will die? Ukrainians started it early on among a bunch of other outlandish nonsensical claims. What precious chips are in a washing machine? None. Russia is buying a massive amount of chips through many channels available for bypassing sanctions. Even if washing machines indeed had important chips (they don’t), it would be much easier to take just the control boards. Incidentally, I recently had the experience of fixing my dryer by soldering its control board. This nonsense is not entertaining anymore. Ben claims that the war is currently at a stalemate and losses are about 1:1. This is when even Western mainstream media started to begrudgingly admit that Ukrainians are suffering catastrophic losses. Even Ukrainians are now saying that they are getting killed disproportionally. The latest numbers from several sources put AVERAGE losses over the course of the year at the ratio at least 1:4 (conservatively) to 1:7 (more realistically, potentially even higher. But this is on average. Which means that the current ratio must be much worse. 1:10? Higher than that? If artillery fire is the main cause of casualties, it would be reasonable to assume that the initial impact (before accounting for efficiency of evacuation of wounded and medical help, which are clearly much worse on the Ukrainian side) would have roughly the same ratio as the number of shells fired. I’ve seen these number ranging from 1:7 to 1:10 to 1:19. If we add air force, both fixed-wing and rotary, that Ukrainians pretty much don’t have, the ratio tilts even more to the catastrophic direction. Ben is either completely oblivious to this math or is being very insincere. All in all, Ben is a fraud. Please don’t waste time on him. There are much better guests to invite.

Max

It’s extremely funny that everyone is so sure that Biden didn’t do what he very explicitly promised he would do, on television, in this exact circumstance, right before the war started (Feb 8). Then, when it was suggested that the Germans might not be on board with this plan, he promised (again, ON TV) they could and would do it anyways. Almost like it indeed had been planned for months. He *volunteered* this information. It’s like I dunno chief it’s a real whodunnit. We only have one witness who will put him at the scene of the crime. Besides that, we’ve got absolutely nothing… except this live death threat the suspect broadcast to the whole internet. It was a LITERAL White House press conference. The video is easily found. I guess he could have been senile or bluffing, but if it was so unthinkable, why the threat? The other thing thing that’s practically a confession that was also widely circulated is the UK statement *the day after* where they said something to the effect of “we may never know what happened here”. Like wow that was fast. Our press has been so useless it’s made them incredibly BAD liars.

Will M

Can you post a link to the September opinion poll you mentioned? I've been trying to find polls of German public opinion about the attack and have come up short so far.

Of course

At 1:11:00 - Aris: "But you know Africa's actually gonna be a huge winner from all of this..." If this were an in-person interview, I would have been tempted to box this clown's ears. Operation Barbarossa, Operation Iraqi Freedom, and Afrika Korps and Africom must be the "prizes" for "winning" the resource extraction game.

BryceSprungstein

goddamnit I missed the TrueAnon show in Toronto and Ames was there? That was a double whiff

big microbe

Mark, you gotta tell your kids about Steve Martin

Sam Zeng

Mark you should've said something, we could've had a lil war nerd section meet up. We saw John last year in Toronto and had a great time.

James

So this poll, which I could answer multiple times from the same IP address btw, is the evidence for one of your examples that gives you the strength of belief to dismiss someone entirely as 'a fraud'? Is that poll reflective of the public opinion in Berlin or Germany more widely? I would not be surprised if that MacGregor wasn't citing the same poll in his interview. Without meaning to be too contetious, it kinda seems like you're choosing to believe more firmly in things that conform to your existing worldview, and disregard anything that challenges that worldview. I'd say it's much more likely that the US destroyed those pipelines, and I don't think Hersh would publish without being sure of it himself (although people do get older, and their sensibilities and work styles can change with time). That said, I do think that in the current climate it's better to be more cautious with stories like this as a news outlet editor or commentator - it's incredibly easy for people to just be dismissed as 'Russian Propaganda', or 'Useful Idiots' (or frauds...), if they go too hard too early on a story. If Ben had pointed to the poll and interview you just cited and claimed it as definitive proof that the people of Germany were convinced that the UK or the US blew those pipelines up, I'd be far more concerned with his integrity...

SB

@James Your criticism is fair - this poll is not a scientific enough proof of what Germans as a nation think. It would be great to see more solid data on that. I'm sure it does exist. That being said, I don't think the relative flimsiness of the poll data you correctly pointed too changes the key point here. To me it was clear from the start that German and European (is there really a difference?) leadership knew what happened, even if not in all the details. The loudest telltale to me was the silence that almost immediately fell on this topic in the Western media and political circles. You's expect loud proclamations to find and punish perpetrators of such an act or state terrorism. And I'm sure we'd heard that if they believed Russia was responsible for it or probably even if they'd suspected Ukrainians. IMO Aris is a fraud because of all the nonsense combined he had said throughout his three appearances on the show. The most egregious is his last claim of a stalemate with 1:1 current losses. This is inexcusable when so much data is available from all sides painting a completely different picture. On the economy and sanctions, The Duran guys, for example, keep doing a much better job than Aris - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFaSzogalV0

mmckay

Ben is such a great guest. I love hearing the financial analysis of the situation!

William

“Sanctions haven’t been as bad as expected “, right, but who was setting those expectations? The people who thought it was impossible to live outside of their banking network? I think there’s an instinct to outsource this analysis due to y’all’s self described lack of depth on this topic but you’re outsourcing it to the very people you knowingly deride and dismiss for their shit opinions and takes on things you do know about . There’s no way to describe the sanctions regime imposed on Russia in any way than a complete and utter failure- especially when they threatened to hurt the people imposing the sanctions more than the targets

William

~41min hard disagree there Ben. They should’ve tried diplomacy, not sanctioning the oil and gas

Tyler Berglund

The day after Seymour Hersch releases his bombshell article RWN interviews a naive moron who slanders it as conspiracy theory. What a joke.

Sean McGabriel

Ben Arís unfortunately, whilst well informed on the sanctions being ineffective , does unfortunately recycle some unsourced propoganda tropes . For example, the "washing machine" chips story he tells (without a single reference to a verifiable source) for washing machine chips "ending up in missiles hitting Ukraine", is I suspect not a fact but merely a propoganda même. On balance I think he's a spoofer who gives the impression of being well informed.

James

I think that's a slightly unfair interpretation of what I said. Take this interview; Ben Aris spends a large amount of time taking stances against dominant narratives (official Ukrainian body count, effect of NATO/EU sanctions, official Western accounts of the diplomatic process etc.) where he can do so because there's clear, irrefutable evidence that those dominant narratives are wrong. Anyone listening to this interview, even if it's the first bit of media they've heard that doesn't follow the official narrative, has to take this seriously - unless they actively want to put their hands over their ears. Going hard on the Seymour Hersh story, before there's further corroboration, is something where a person listening to this could just say 'single, anonymous source, elaborate narrative, too neat to be true, anyone who falls for this is being played, why should I trust anything else they say'. Perhaps a person like that is impossible to reach, but I think it is important to bear those people in mind - getting people like that to think more critically about what they hear from official sources about this war is how any change to public opinion will happen. That doesn't mean you don't talk about the story, or dismiss it out of hand as 'Russian Propaganda' or whatever, you do exactly what's been done here and talk about it, then even get Hersh on for an hour to talk further about it. Challenging the dominant narrative requires credibility. It's shitty, because 'credibility' is often determined by those in power, but it's definitely possible to build credibility while challenging the dominant narrative - I'd say this interview and RWN's content in general is a prime example of how to do that. By no means does that mean that everyone contributing to RWN are just sat on their hands, watching their credibility accrue interest.

William

I’m less critical on Ben after finishing the interview. Listening to where his readers are, he has a bit of incentive to not publicly promote narratives that would decrease his readership. Not saying he’s doing it consciously, but his information is conditional on his sources which are mostly Western European. He can talk well on the Econ side of things which is important add but not sure he’s one to really judge the military situation

Sam Zeng

Ben's economic analysis of the on going situation has been pretty spot on. I would say the resilience of the Russian economy has been of note. Also the Western Europeans seems to bear a large part of the sanctions. Still the long term implication still rings true; Russia's economy is towards Germany not India or China.

Mark Ames

yeah I got a few notes from Torontucks telling me they were there at the show too. I'll be rollin' in again with the fam sometime in the next few months, will get word out so we can do some kind of informal meetup

Logan Ausherman

I think he was just calling it what it was. COINTELPRO was a conspiracy but that doesn't make it any less true. He's just hedging his bets.

Logan Ausherman

Why do so many of you seem to think you know exactly what is happening with Ukraine?

Cory

I would like to see a source on the washing machine thing. It's not inconceivable but it doesn't seem that likely. All signs point to Russia having huge stockpiles of armaments prior to the sanctions being enacted.

Allen M

I had to laugh with the "negotiated end to war" stuff. Putin was at the table just long enough to get his far flung troops back to a consolidated position and out of danger of being cut off and forced to mass surrender. When that happened, negotiations ceased. It was playing for time, period. As for Boris, he was, is and will be a flake.

Aditya V

Ben Aris mentioned BJ as a lone wolf. But Bennet's recent interview points to BJ being a hired hitman doing a job on behalf of Germany, France and USA. Bennett: "Every move I made was coordinated with the US and also with Germany and France. It’s true that they backed down from this ... i thought they made a mistake."

Ander Pierce

I mean, a portion of them. You have most of Ukraine's young males being shoved to the front, don't think the majority of Ukrainians are Nazis anymore than the majority of US Americans are. A lot of reactionaries and nationalists, sure, but is there any nation where a large portion of young men don't fall in that demographic?

Michael Schworetzky

Any evidence the Ukranians stopped attacking the Russian forces around Kiev because of the negotiations?

a clash of purple

Well, Aris is rooting for the Ukrainians because they're only fighting to defend themselves. The correct view is that there don't have to be any good guys in a war, and there very rarely are. The Zelenskyy government is just as morally bankrupt as Putin's (or Biden's, or Scholz's, or anyone else's), and it has no more right to stay in power than any other hierarchical regime. I certainly wouldn't risk my life for the sake of which corrupt, decaying nation-state gets to fly its flag in my town, and anyone who chooses of their own free will to do so is a rube. And whatever else they are, Nazis are massive rubes. It's also worth pointing out that there's plenty of Nazis on the Russian side too though. Both sides accuse the other of being gay black Jews.

a clash of purple

I mean, they're certainly profiting more than Russia or Ukraine or Germany are. It's like Dolan said once, sometimes the only people who win a war are the people who stayed out of it. Like how China won the Syrian civil war.

John Brady

Unfortunately when he started talking about chips, it rang immediate alarm bells that he doesn't know what he's talking about. He doesn't know what the state of the art is, and seems confused about what actually would be militarily important and what wouldn't. Militarily important chips are generally using technology that would be obsolete for anything else. There are many technical and economic reasons for this, but a key consequence is that despite how far behind Russia is on domestic chip fabrication (no where close to state of the art) they have no problems at all producing all the chips they need for missiles and missile control systems, and any other military uses.

a clash of purple

But if you don't have the latest chips, how can you build marvels of modern electronics like the F-35?

Crosley Querin

Very interesting listening to this after Hersch interview. I think he puts forward a very reasoned approach to the conflict and at worst takes a bet each way. Wars are financed and are economic as well, Ben's insight is as good as any I have heard on here.

Professor Jokes

Ben Aris is so obviously an intelligence asset

jkjkjkj

The economic discussion is interesting, but aris makes a couple errors firstly, the negotiations in March didn’t end two days after Johnson’s visit, it was closer to two weeks, (and the reporting we have indicates rhat it mostly fell out over Bucha and the sinking of the Moskva). Secondly, the 100,000 dead figure was a genuine misrepresentation of the numbers. The figure provided was 100,000 casualties, not deaths (ie: includes injuries). Obviously neither is good to hear but there is a significant difference there

jkjkjkj

I agree, there’s a lot of talk about the bad faith from the west and Ukraine, but Russia has been as unreasonable and bad faith, arguably much more (this goes back to the Minsk days). Whether we like it or not, Ukraine is absolutely right not to trust Russia whatsoever

Mark Ames

haven't really seen anything as blatantly bad faith as Merkel admitting the whole Minsk process was a ruse done in bad faith. Can't imagine why Putin would use Minsk in bad faith since the terms of Minsk were so advantageous to Moscow. No one is arguing that Ukraine should trust Moscow.