Radio War Nerd EP #499 — Trump's Wrecking Crüe + USAID Skeletons

Great episode. Two quick notes on the Hmong: 1. Hmong populations were generally pretty sympathetic to communists in Vietnam. Anti communist Hmong were generally a feature of Laos specifically (though roughly 20% were pro communist, generally falling along clan lines, and were often persecuted intensely by the secret army for being pro communist and not sufficiently deferential to Vang Pao). 2. Hmong reliance on USAID rice was largely due to American bombing changing the basic terrain of highland Laos, and thus anihilating their traditional forms of sustenance (and leaving them reliant on food they themselves could not grow and did not have significant experience with)

Giving Andrew Jackson way too much credit. He would have seen anti-trust legislation and regulations as tyranny. Jackson let smaller unregulated banks wreck the economy. Libertarian dipshit messiah.

Mark you use "people on the left" too much. Communists and Socialists aren't complaining about USAID going bye bye

"Sorry we've gone a little longer than expected, we were meant to discuss USAID but we spent a bit of time providing the context." Sorry, am I listening to Radio War Nerd?

Over the line! Mark seriously did you have to do Del Taco dirty like that? Say what you will about the tenents of Del Taco compared to Taco Bell but at least Del Taco has an ethos...

Anybody catch the name of the reporter Mark mentioned at about 1:28:40 in? It’s something like ‘Al Lengith’ but I can’t for the life of me tell & I’m trying to track down that book he mentions

Need a timeline of CIA/NED/USAID fuckery. Maybe teed-up with the Blowback boys, looking for patterns and predictions.

With respect to Russiagate, the part of the story that was always the least plausible is the role that Russia had in "electing" Trump in 2016. It isn't plausible that a few million dollars of spending and some poorly designed Facebook memes were going to shift an election outcome against a billion dollar political campaign. The Democratic Party elite pumped it up because it helped them to evade responsibility for the 2016 failure. However, the aspect of the narrative that is more plausible is that Russia did attempt to cultivate a relationship and lines of communication with the Trump campaign both during the primary and afterward. This was highly unusual. e.g. Trump's campaign manager Paul Manafort was convicted of multiple felonies in connection with Russiagate. It seems entirely likely as well that Russia is cheering on the dismantlement of USAID and has probably communicated the same to people in the Trump orbit, if not to Trump himself. What is happening now seems like a perfectly miserable coda to the U.S.'s "victory" over the Soviet Union with USAID providing a major assist to the rise of a global oligarchy (as this episode does such a great job of documenting). Ironically, USAID in indirect ways and unintended ways probably did more to elect Trump than Russia did in 2016, and its expedient "successes" in the past are now major contributing factors to its own dismantlement. It would not surprise me if the same might be said in 30 years of the global oligarchy and its own conduct right now, although perhaps this is being too optimistic.

I'll fess up and say I was one of those who was initially very hopeful about Obama. I was young, fresh out of college, and the Bush years had been so awful. I wanted to believe so badly that if we just put the Democrats in charge things could be good again. In a way it worked out, I built up an immunity to the Trump Derangement Syndrome which has afflicted so many liberals. Although, to be perfectly honest I'd take a deeply cynical, dishonest, neoliberal status quo masquerading as the party of "hope and change" over the current administration without reservation. It's important to remember however bad things are, they can always get worse. The powers that be will never, ever willingly let a genuinely social democratic political movement gain traction in the US. We are left with the good cop, bad cop of the ruling class.

DOGE (pronounced the trueanon way, “doggy” ofc) is different from the Grace commission in one important way- none of the CEOs had read-WRITE permissions for the systems in the Bureau of Fiscal Services, the systems that process ALL government payments, including all spending allocations (even black budget spending) and treasury bond payments. The latter, if interrupted, would crash world financial markets. Just taking the data out of there is incredibly dangerous, if leaked/stolen, as it could compromise undercover agents (personally dgaf) but also millions of people’s ssn and financial data

Long forgotten, one of Bush II’s first policies, forgotten after 9-11, was to raise the arsenic levels in drinking water. When you tell people, it’s so bizarre/monstrous they don’t believe you.

A fitting 500th episode would be on the current events in DRC/Rwanda. Or a historical episode. I understand you both want a guest for the region and that's hard to get. But I think one/both topics deserve even a non-guest episode.

the whole Roe codification thing is a red herring. if there had been a federal abortion statute when Dobbs came down the one and only difference it would have made was adding a couple pages to the decision--such a statute woulda been doomed under current Constitional jurisprudence if it could not be justified as protecting a Constitional right

Nevermind USAID’s whole Office of Transitions Initiative regime change dogshit

You’re doing great! Keep it up! 👏

Great episode! I'm always predisposed to think that not much has changed in US politics, but I think that this administration's relationship to the courts (complete capture at the upper end, apparent willingness to simply ignore all other levels) may be a little different. These trends were all there earlier, obviously, but IMO Trump II is attempting to culminate a theory of unitary executive power that even Bush II and Obama weren't ambitious enough to go after (not that they wouldn't have liked to!) Anyway, we'll find out horribly soon. Now listening to that Thomas Frank episode from 2022 [EDIT: sorry, 2020] and I'll be damned if it isn't still very fresh. He'd be a fantastic repeat guest. I've been looking for interviews with him post-inauguration and haven't found any yet.

a slight correction: russiagate is not forgotten, and in my experience a huge section or majority of young dem aligned people take it as indisputable fact

Great ep, thanks guys

In Escondido, Ca (the awful town I am from) there were two Del Tacos. The area around both always smelled like a sewer. One abutted a feral cat colony and was a source of much morbid speculation. Killer ep. Listened twice.

Kennedy basically did a power grab when he took away counterinsurgency and special forces from the Army and kept it under his direct control... The military hierarchy was upset as was CIA that was placed under the same task force and pretty much ordered around by RFK. Guess these folks didn't take it kindly.

This del taco blasphemy almost had me canceling my subscription but I guess it’s good to get content from outside of my bubble. With respect, 500 episodes in and not one of them reaches anywhere near the perfection of Del Taco’s bean and cheese burrito with green sauce.

Any book recs on USAid?

Great episode. I feel like Sarah Kendzior would be a great guest, a lot of the names you mentioned overlap with her area of interest, and she has a lot to say about the whole russiagate situation

The Del Taco hatred was completely uncalled for!

The tree trunk that Bibi presented was a Cedar tree, the national symbol of Lebanon, which makes it all the more ghoulish and gloating for these monsters

Didn't Trump use USAID to try and arm dissidents in Venezuela?

What an episode...as always a proper discussion....what would you consider the definitive book account so far on what was done to Russia after the collapse of the Советский Союз

“Stalinist” policies to bring back market growth is one of the crazier things I’ve ever heard. Love the show, though!

The neoliberals collapsed Russia in the 1990s to prepare them for the perfected run they’ve been inflicting on the U.S. since 2008. The red directors were just the precursors to PE vultures.

Nixon was the last liberal president

When elites in imperial hegemons start undermining, cannibalizing and using the institutions designed to prop up and maintain their rule for exclusive benefits for a select few of their class is when decline really starts to accelerate.

Apparently Musk is supposed to go after graft in the Pentagon now…. We’ll see how that shakes up

The democrat shredder filing of anti genocide mailers reminds of the british politicians who decided to scapegoat lgbt people (by legally defining trans people as rapists, they've openly legalised hunting teen girls; there's already been so many stabbings another brianna ghey is only a matter of time) despite it being an entirely astroturfed concern amongst the populace - for some reason, britleft still hasn't caught on, but they explicitly admitted to the same black hole. They started the shredder policy as part of the wrecker coup to oust Corbyn, too - the party bureaucrats sat on, hid or shredded any complaints about antisemitism for years, then blamed Corbyn for the break down in process, brandished the backlog and selectively propagandised with it as well as used it for blackmail material. None of it was ever actually dealt with properly, of course, even the stuff they brandished publicly as a way to increase their philosemitic cred. The overlap between people being pro trans and anti genocide is something they're aware and scared of, though - just like last century, a lot of different reactionary currents' flotsam coalesces into hatred of the ol pink canary in coal mine. See also sarah jane baker's imprisonment for a pride speech about "punching a terf", palestine action's non violent sabotage and environmental groups' road blocking sentencing, versus the sentences for those who tried to burn refugees alive en masse this summer and also lack of consequences for assault, attempted murder of said environmentalists. The labour administration's response to anti genocide speech and actions have been so contemptuous for the same reason as the democrats, too - they have to deny what should land them in a place far more serious than the hague if acknowledged.

On the pager thing. Betar even harrassed Norman Finkelstein with them and called him a holocaust denier of all things. https://www.reddit.com/r/Global_News_Hub/comments/1ihd5vk/proisrael_advocacy_group_betar_us_harasses_norman/

Regarding "Indian hate" and the recent H1B controversy: my personal experience and that of those I know is that the tech labor market has significantly tightened since early 2023. Given this and seeing online that the people who are most vocal against Indians/H1B visas are tech bros, this latest bout of ethnic conflict seems to emanate from simple econ conditions which prob won't alleviate anytime soon. AI will go for those sorts of jobs first, so expect that outbursts to continue (and maybe cause some internal conflict in the Trump admin)

Just to be clear, the Democrats are now the classical conservative party, the Republicans are Progressives (when Progressives were more open about being eugenicists and authoritarian technocrats), and the left is dead as Disco.

When Meta started backing off, we should have known it was over. They collect enough data that they probably knew with absolute certainty Trump would win before probably any other organization on Earth. And the rest of Silicon Valley fell in line because there are enough natsec spooks and demons there to let people know Trump is not fucking around this time. They got the Putin to the Oligarchs speech: back off or I will fucking end you. Because 1) he can - he knows it, his advisors know it, and the nerds know it - and will if provoked, and 2) ending them would eliminate a HUGE Democratic donor base. That is also how he has kept Musk in line. He has advisors now who I’ve been following for years, “dissident” right shitheads like the next head of Public Diplomacy, Darren Beattie. They still may get their Schedule F employees. For now, emptying the offices is a good start. Speaking of Beattie and his associates, someone who has had a freakish amount of precognition about events and policy has been Niccolo Soldo. The sad thing is that he’s a European chauvinist. He wants Europeans to decouple from being vassals to the U.S. because he has no illusions about how powerful the U.S. empire is and how much that has crippled Europe. Funny enough he recently called Arnaud Bertrand a retard for taking Rubio’s comments about multipolarism at face value (Nic was right), but they are both European chauvinists and anti-U.S. imperialists. One just happens to be a racist Croat who repatriated from Canada and the other is a French expat who loves his residential country, China. But Nic paraphrased the line from an African diplomat recently that in Africa, when the Chinese come they get an airport; when westerners come, they get a lecture. USAID is not just a target for being a source of media warfare and lawfare against Trump and his supporters. The DEI stuff is also true. But more than ANYTHING ELSE, the problem that Beattie is going to be working on when the spigot is turned back on is for American soft power to stop being a bunch of hippie-ass gender studies scolds and schoolmarms. No one likes Lisa Simpson. They love Homer and Bart. They want to BE Homer and Bart. Trump’s whole image is built on being an entrepreneurial Shining City on a Hill. And that is what they are going to give the world, especially when China keeps kicking out asses at being awesome and making cool shit and being chill. The world loves America and Americans as an idea. And that’s what I suspect they are going to give the world in terms of soft power. You know why it’s going to happen and why it’s going to work? BECAUSE THE SAME SOFT POWER NARRATIVES FAILED MISERABLY AS POLITICAL MESSAGING FOR THE LAST TWO DECADES. And the people in charge are the ones who saw that strategy fail, mocked it as a failure and futile, and crushed the losers who thought “if we keep calling Trump a corrupt nazi and his supporters idiots, surely THIS TIME, it’ll work. (It never worked).” This is freshman-level lessons from baby’s first reading of the “The Prince”-level stuff. But it’s so obvious the “adults in the room” have been too stupid and narcissistic to see it. But they will be fine. The rest of us are fucked.

I remember about 7 years ago getting in big fights with other leftists over their constant belief they could "reform" the Dems. It got so bad that even self-declared "anarchists" refused to engage in actions if they weren't joined by liberal orgs. It was pure madness and I told them at the time they would only doom the left to further irrelevance and the Dems would only move further right before I finally just quit activism/organizing for good (most serious American leftists seem to eventually precisely because of crap like that ime). And now here we are. I'm trying to GTFO of the US since the government has declared people born like me enemies of the state, and somehow I'm positive the American left still thinks they can the Dems. If only Bernie. If only AOC. If only. This country is doomed and deserves what it gets at this point.

The "USAID is a CIA cut-out" stuff always makes me wince. The issue is not USAID - nor even the CIA - as the USA's interventionism and colonialism predate both agencies. Full disclosure, I am "on the take" as they've been saying, as I've spent my career working through US government funded development and humanitarian programs. I would never deny that USAID is used as an asset of the intelligence services and State Department, but the vast majority of the work is focused on health, agriculture, and emergencies (caveat that I think this is distorted recently by some of the Ukraine supplemental bills). But USAID specifically being considered a CIA cut-out specifically rankles , as it ignores the ways in which State, Defense, Treasury, NED, NRI, etc all work as a cohesive unit to carry out USG foreign policy goals. Targeting USAID, but not intelligence or Defense, misses the forest for the trees. It's not enough to say that USAID does "some good" - it's an integral part of the global humanitarian infrastructure. FEWSNET, PEPFAR, emergency food aid, and other disaster response mechanisms are falling apart with the sudden collapse of USAID. The leftist gloating I've seen recently feels entirely misguided, because of course malevolent foreign interventionism will continue - but the humanitarian aspects will easily be killed. Even the multinational agencies are going to see a devastating financial hit from this Trump/Musk attack. USAID is a mess and the OTI/governance aspects need to be dismantled, but the stakes are too real to abandon the agency entirely to the conservative bonfire.

Doesn’t dissolution of Dem party feed into full 1 party dictatorship?

Pager=swastika

Schumer is only 74

Montanan here. Because of that asbestos poisoning, Libby is one of the only towns in America where the vast majority of the population receives something like public healthcare.

Will Muller get Trump this time?

Mark could you please share a link about the Harris campaign leaks ignoring Gaza mailers?

it's infuriating that most of the old pando stuff is stuck in archive.org purgatory

I haven’t listened yet because friends are coming over shortly for the Superb Owl. and Im sure mark and john mention this but I hope people know that as horrific as usaid is and how it’s a soft power apparatus of US empire…defunding it this quickly is going to kill people in the immediate and these fucked up people are not going to stop empire shit because they defunded this. The cruelty really is the point. Usaid does do SOME work that saves lives like HIV meds in countries the U.S. keeps poor and destitute…through apparatuses like usaid. It’s all so fucked. We are a death cult country.

Love you, Mark, but you need to keep Del Taco's name out of your mouth.

I was waiting for this one 👀