Radio War Nerd #310 — The Year In Wars: 2021 Edition

are you going to do a Kazakhstan episode

You guys mentioned Myanmar at the end, have you considered having Brian Berletic on?

Your newest newsletter reminds me of Darth Helmet's line in Spaceballs. "Evil will always win because Good is dumb."

I remember a story where a well-to-do upper class kind of guy ("he could devastate a whole room of people with a well timed passive aggressive remark") getting terrified the first time he did his schtick to a hungover college student and got screamed at. Pretty satisfying.

Hey John, Thanks for flagging Wore Negari on War Nerd. Just finished it and really enjoyed it. Frustrating at times, but illuminating on Ethiopian civil war and student-led Maoist revolutions in the 70s.

Hey Mark - my son, also in first grade, had another kid telling him scary things and monopolizing play time. I live in a red state. Like you said, I've also found that by and large, kids this age are cooperative and friendly. Not all the time unfortunately :(

On Eritrea going after it's dissidents overseas. An example of that would also be this: Eritrean refugees who come to the Netherlands, will be interviewed using translaters hired by the Dutch government. But those translaters, who are Eritrean by birth or descent obviously, will often haven been recruited or coerced by the Eritrean government to relay information about dissident refugees back to Eritrea. After which they will be pursued and pressured to comply with Eritrea rule. Which is not pretty. That must be horrifying to experience as a refugee. Fleeing for your safety, only to find your hopefully safe haven to already be comprised. No escape.

Yeah, I've always felt (or been told?) that economists come via a straight line from those ancient Egyptian scribes who predict the water levels of the Nile

Great point about economists as the secular astrologers. Larry tried so hard to convince people economics is “hard science”, all part of the grift which he was always good at.

The association between astrologers and powerful people is as old as our written evidence and incredibly durable. Rulers are people who need to make momentous decisions on the basis of limited information—astrologers are at a premium for such people. The association is intense enough that as far as our written astrological evidence from antiquity and the middle ages goes, we are really speaking of a "courtly genre." There is actually a surviving treatise on military astrology by Theophilus of Edessa, a Christian at the court of the caliph al-Mahdi, which survives in Greek. Looking through the subheadings on the TLG right now and it reinforces the point that powerful people are always looking for help in making difficult decisions on the basis of limited information. The headings include "On Deceit and Ambush," "On Cities Under Siege," and "On [Whether] A City Is Deserted." With that being said, if I had to pick a modern successor to ancient and medieval astrologers it would be less Joan Quigley than Larry Summers. In terms of reducing anxiety about actual threats to executive power on the basis of dodgy science, economists have the social function of the old astrologers pretty much on lock these days.

Re: Afghanistan pullout, I know some fairly leftist/antiimperialist people who (to my surprise) were still shocked and took a “this is bad, it could have been done better” attitude about the Afghan pullout, after seeing the images of the guys falling off the outside of the airplane and so on. And these are folks who, seeing the noseless Afghan woman displayed on the cover of TIME in 2011, said “ugh, what pro-war propaganda”. So I dunno

Excuse me my dears but I seem to have stopped getting the newsletter sometime in the last year to year and a half. It's arlo@crysania.com

❤️❤️ for Sammy for sticking up for another kid. Very brave! I will CANCEL my subscription if there is a reduction in the pre-show chit-chat. Especially now that John’s war against gravity has just gotten personal.

Interestingly, someone told me that growing up in China she never encountered bullying at school, which I was astonished by. I wonder if that's just her experience or if it's true in general. Maybe next time Carl Zha is on the show y'all could ask him!

Please don’t slander the Jersey shore because the weather was bad once

Thank you guys for helping me stay sane during this pandemic! One bright spot was discovering your show. Happy new year and merry Christmas guys!

Sammy is a hero! 👍 love you guys wishing you a happy new year john and mark and brenden!

You guys whining about bullying is extremely boring. Can you get that over with before the episode? Bullying is a part of life and your kid's story is nothing new.

Happy new year everybody

Sounds like you’re raising a kind, thoughtful, and brave son, Mark!

Thanks RWN team!

This one didn’t show up in my Apple podcasts feed. Did the RSS feed change?

Mark, it sounds like you have a wonderful son. I highly suggest trying a Judo or BJJ class for him.

14:06 - i hope the last episode for this year only, not the last episode ever. Compliments of the season and may war (preferrably more informational rather than kinetic) and peace be upon you all in 2022 too!

another great year of RWN!

Thanks for a great year fellas-keep on truckin

First 😎