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

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

Ben Aris is so obviously an intelligence asset

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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

I disagree with your guest on the Bucha Massacre. The Ukrainians are responsible for killing those victims. They were seen as Russias "collaborators" for accepting Russian food packages. Note the food aid packages next to the bodies in tths photos in this article: https://www.donbass-insider.com/2022/04/06/bucha-massacre-when-satellite-images-and-videos-are-manipulated-to-tell-a-false-story/

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

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.

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

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

“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

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

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.

Does anyone have the original ukranski pravda piece that Aris references all I could find was this one. https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2022/05/5/7344206/

Mark, you gotta tell your kids about Steve Martin

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

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.

Aris is always great guest.

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.

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.

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

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