Radio War Nerd EP #367 — Ethiopia-Tigray War, feat. Ann Neumann

John if you want to see more submerged grocery carts and heavy Scottish riparian industry I recommend the Pride of the Clyde cruise

Also, kudos to Mark for securing and hanging on in with Hersh. Well worth it. The gem for me: 'I asked the pipeline guys' - uncommon sense or what!

Thanks for this update on what's happening, especially through the eyes of someone who is both informed and who so recently visited the scene. Would love a similar update on a now once again forgotten war, in the Yemen. Awful things happen when conflicts are no longer fashionable.

Was kinda confused at the end by what Dolan meant by the comment that Italian people are pretty racially considerate compared to elsewhere in Europe. The first time I visited family near Pescara, my 40 year old cousin there started out immediately with hard Rs on the way back from Rome’s airport as we passed migrant pedestrians. I don’t know, maybe they’re nicer up in Trieste.

These hosts can seem to understand the relationship between the US and Europe is not one of peer allies. It’s kinda hilarious in the face of so much contrary evidence.

I really wish Neumann had elaborated more on her visit to Eritrea. I am absolutely fascinated with that country and the regime in power there. If you could have her back on to talk more about that, I would be very excited.

Brace I know you listen to this show get this woman on your podcast

I don’t know who to trust about Ethiopia but needless to say, it’s not three white people. You guys are good on most stuff, especially the Civil War, but I still am rubbed the wrong way by the stark difference and pro-TPLF Stance you take on Ethiopia.

Let's recap the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor's illustrious career in service to the United States of America, the world's most powerful superpower. You'll notice how important its very expensive and hyped stealth capabilities have been to its missions. - Dropped some bombs on Islamic State in Syria. - Dropped some bombs on opium farmers in Afghanistan. - Shot down not one, not two, but THREE balloons (hilariously credited as 'air-to-air kills'). Yup, this was definitely $67 billion well spent. After accruing such a storied and venerable record in its time flying for the USAF, it'll be sad to see it go.

first time long time just commenting to say what a great guest this episode was fantastic

NATO stooges: "He used one source" U.S. Intelligence Community: Uses one unconfirmed source "Curveball" to sell the Iraq war. It's always projection with these dipshits.

Excuse the gendered language, but jeez what a bad ass chick. Motorcycle accidents and all!

Saw that OSINT "debunking" of the Hersh story by Oliver Alexander, and since the story was so exciting I thought I'd look into it myself. To start, these analyses are pretty irritating because despite being labeled "open-source", the resources for looking retrospectively at the data (e.g. ship path tracking AIS data) are expensive. So the claims can't actually be verified easily. I assume this is a benefit of the open-source approach: throw enough "public" data at people to mystify them, but prevent eager online nerds from examining it closely. The basic argument is that all of the ships in the class Hersh claims mined the pipelines were tracked throughout the BALTOPS exercises, and none were ever near the pipelines. The evidence itself is weak (6 satellite images across 7 days supposedly proves ship tracking was 100% accurate across all 7 days), and I don't think proves much of anything as presented except that the NS2 sabotage did not take place as public satellites flew overhead with known paths easily obtainable by anyone planning a covert operation. There are various missing pieces that undermine the conclusions of the piece (not all boats were tracked, satellites give very limited data, important data he could have included was not included without justification, etc). This hasn't stopped the author and his OSINT collaborators from preening around Twitter triumphantly, now moving on to his own absurd, evidence-free pet theory that the explosions were accidental. Article has gone mostly unchallenged. Pretty gross. The whole OSINT industry seems like a sham. Couple of weeks ago they reported satellite images of Russian military buildup in camps near the border in Voronezh and Kursk oblasts. I've kept a close eye on those areas, and both camps have clearly been evacuated since their initial reports. Why no follow up? Wouldn't a good OSINT analyst continue to follow potential buildup closely, and report the halting of buildup if it happened? In fact, from some quick searching around on Twitter, it seems that not a single (English-speaking at least) person has noticed the camps were cleared out. Not very thorough work...

Thanks for shouting out the East Palestine train derailment in the introduction of this episode. I live here in Pittsburgh and grew up to the northwest, in between the city and East Palestine. So many terrible reactions from people or otherwise writing the entire region off, again. Empathy once again appears in short supply these days.

I'm paying for this so every once in a while when you have an even more outstanding episode than usual have to step into the comments and tell you what a good job, what a great guest, how exceptionally informative, thank you.

From Reuters on Tuesday, Denmark and Sweden investigations have "not yet concluded"

Great episode

Hope they talk about howling winds on this one.

That was so good and so informative. Thank you for having her on.