Radio War Nerd #285 — World of Wars, June 2021

Stateism feuled by anti Tigray and dictatorship croniesm virtues vs. peace? I think they can work it out, let the problems for tomorrow and understand that the state needs all its legitimacy it can get. Deep hole the tplf hacker is not only a sex addict their also Cairo USD stooges, but this pattern is also happening in the west. Where they trow dirth to protect their salary. Dont think Addis wants to continue this for another x years.

Somoza controlled the blood plasma business in pre-revolutionary Nicaragua. The blood bank was called "Casa del Vampiro"

Please talk more about Tigray and TDF/TPLF victory over gov't forces. We need an Ethiopia special!

Looks like you nailed the Tigray stuff.

Im only 6 minutes in but why does Gary/John have a lisp all of a sudden? Is he okay?

John Foster was the elder brother by eight years and was very helpful to his little brother.

Grey county Ontarian, love the show! Great ep! Cheers!

"Not even his Alexa listens to him" 😆

Persian was also the official Court language under the Mughals in India. Even down south, the Turkic origin rulers in the Deccan heavily used Persian and imported Persians to act as administrators in Hyderabad and other Deccan states.

Indians at this point have little institutional memory of US posture in 1971. The indian elite are besotted with the US. One reason why several military agreements have been signed between India and USA since 2013. This was discussed in RWN exactly a year ago The main reasons for India not going full on with USA against China are the enormous volume of India-China trade (increased even after Galwan) and the Chinese influence in the neighborhood. The trade between India china is important for BJP's core constituency, the small traders, and small business people. Indian Elite's infatuation with the West and the high numbers of indian middle class operating as workers in the West means India will always be heavily tilted to the West. Also indian workers in the West favor Modi.

Plasma donation has been a thing for a long time for students in University towns, and it's become very common among urban poor in much of the US. I resorted to it for a while when I wasn't making rent. The big deal is that it isn't actually just taking your blood and then removing the plasma, but rather that they hook some tubes up to your veins and then attach it to something similar to a dialysis machine. It sucks your blood out, spins through a small centrifuge that siphons off just the plasma, and then pumps the plasma-less blood back into you with a bit of sterile saline to chase it down. That's where the unpleasant chill and sense of uneasiness comes from. While this is supposedly for the benefit of the donor, it's primarily for the donation center's turnaround. Donating a unit of whole blood takes around 8 to 10 weeks to recover the red blood cells and iron. Whereas if you drink enough water you can regenerate the plasma and be good to donate again within a few days. As for time taken, it depends. If you're healthy and have good veins you can go through the process in under a half-hour. Of course most of the poverty-stricken people in these centers have had lives that have left them not that healthy. I recall a pair of older and shabby looking black men looking with a weird kind of resentment at me, a mostly healthy and younger white guy starting and finishing a whole round of the thing where their plasma reservoirs barely moved. I'm a universal donor blood type, so if I'm healthy and up for it I try to donate blood when I can. Comparing the two I would say that where donating whole blood will leave you a bit wiped out, donating plasma doesn't so much tire you as really dehydrate you. I'm mostly good after giving whole blood, but there were days after donating plasma where I couldn't get out of the sun and found myself vomiting and collapsing. Still, this might once again just be me having good veins, but I found the physical process itself less taxing than just the abject human misery you tend to see in around these donation places full of desperate people. Also, where they used to pay out in pre-loaded debit cards, I've heard that the larger chains are now making people deal with some difficult smartphone app verification nonsense if they want to get their money.

I tried reading Decline and Fall of Sassanian Empire but its way too revisionist. For example it states that the war between Muslims and Sassanians started in 628, 4 years earlier than stated while the Sassanians were at war with the Byzantines and while the Prophet Muhammad was alive. This isnt really supported historically and the sources dont really support it. Had Prophet Muhammad taken an undertaking as significant as invading the Persians it would be stated so all over the sources.

This is a great fucking episode