Radio War Nerd EP #186 — Media & Syria War + "Cannon Dan"
Recorded: June 21, 2019
Guest: "Cannon Dan"
In this episode, the War Nerd does a bit of gloating over correctly predicting Yemen Houthi rebels' next target in Saudi Arabia . . . Nerd and Ames discuss Iran's downing of America's quarter billion dollar drone-boondoggle & talk about war . . .
At 42:00 — we talk to RWN subscriber "Cannon Dan" who bought a real cannon and fired the damn thing. We learn there's a whole subculture of cannon buffs, and they can buy and sell these things with almost no regulations . . .
At 1:14:00 — in response to reader requests to talk about "how to read media" the Nerd goes back through the Syria war and reporting on the Syria war, and lessons he learned about how to read media . . .
Total time: 2:19:07
Comments (18)
I wish I had a cannon but I would do it sober.
Can you please upload the BBC Syria narrative being carefully being debunked, to your YouTube channel? It's such an excellent, point-by-point demolition of the BBC's sly omissions and conflations, it deserves the widest possible audience. Thanks.
Where can we see the cannon video?
I'll ask Dan the Canoneer if he's willing to share it on Patreon. He seemed a bit shy about it in spite of insisting it's all perfectly legal...
Not sure what the Guardian are getting at with the claim that Assad isolated the economy. As I understand it a major cause of unrest came precisely from the fact that Assad undertook some ´liberalising´ reforms which disproportionately affected the poor Sunni agricultural regions. I believe this also had the affect of opening up these areas for Saudi investment in religious institutions. Perhaps unsurprising that these areas would go on to supply the majority of the native Syrian insurgents
Yeah, that sounds more like the narrative I've heard.
Cannon Dan sounds like the kind of guy I’d love to throw back a few beers with.
I guarantee he could throw back a few more.
I was watching the film Running Man last night and am struck by how similar, in tone at least, the propaganda in the film is to the examples given here about Syria. The difference, at least as it seems to me is that in the film, the propaganda is deliberately cheesy but here the cheesiness sounds as if it is professionally done. This begs the wider question, given the vast sums spent on the PR, why is it considered effective?
This is an important question that I don't see addressed very well. Like today Trump announced that there'll be a giant military parade with tanks--I think in DC. It was all very cheesy but I get the feeling that there's a much bigger appetite for cheese than anyone is willing to admit.
That was fun. Funnily enough, I was in Fishkill NY once, talking with an old gentleman and he told me that he had driven all over America in his life but the only place he had come close to running out of gas in the middle of nowhere was New York State.
Enjoyed the discussion of the cannon because I have an uncle who is also a part of the “cannon community” and he shot his off a few times at his daughter’s wedding. He’s a little more DIY as far as his munitions: instead of lead balls he fills coors light cans with cement and fires those.
A bit more environmentally friendly than lead, too
a link to cannon dan's cannon video of the cannon firing would have been nice and useful
Oh Hell, yeah! I’d love to see that bad-boy belch!
The guardian animation was especially ridiculous like you guys said. Worst of all when they talked about Libya, they said "there was a quick Civil War until gadaffi died". Ignoring the fact that the country is still in a civil war to this day.
These media critiques are so great. Totally correct about the Irish Sunday Independent by the way. It's been a rag for my entire adult life.
I should add that The Irish Independent is not the Irish version of The Independent. It's actually a much older newspaper - its first owner orchestrated the 1913 Dublin lockout. The Independent used to be owned by former Irish Independent Tony O'Reilly, who propped it up with revenue from The Irish Independent, but he sold it to Lebedev in 2010 before the Syrian Civil War started.