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This was either mentioned in the most recent episode or the one with Rania Khalek (listened to both last night), but I was intrigued when Dolan pointed out that Assad isn't a sociopath in the sense that his dead brother was but is more of a dynastic figurehead for the generals and officials who are actually governing things. I wouldn't mind reading about the internal dynamics if anyone knows of any good articles on them.
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Apr 15, 2017 06:34
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Before he became heir apparent, Bashar was an unassuming nerd who founded Syria's first computer society, and put a lot of effort into bringing the internet to Syria. I remember back when they started cracking down on the protesters, the speculation was that his mother was brow-beating him into unleashing the thugs and state police. His father certainly wouldn't have tolerated all that riff raff.
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Apr 15, 2017 06:38
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So he's basically Syrian Jeb Bush.
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Apr 15, 2017 06:43
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Yeah Bashar studied dentistry or somethong incredibly inoffensive in the US as well? E: Ophtamology in Britain. Close nough!
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Apr 15, 2017 13:55
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Plutonis posted:Yeah Bashar studied dentistry or somethong incredibly inoffensive in the US as well? yeah like he was a child Ophthalmologist or something and only went back because family duty or some horseshit. now he has death camps and mass graves next to his palace. so i hope he someday does get caught and watches his family die before dying horribly himself and tossed into a pit somewhere. it probably won't happen(he will either rule forever or will flee to iran or russia and live out his long life in exile. because the world sucks but deserves it.
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Apr 15, 2017 19:21
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Dapper_Swindler posted:so i hope he someday does get caught and watches his family die before dying horribly himself and tossed into a pit somewhere. Ah, the fantasies of a well adjusted individual.
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Apr 15, 2017 19:59
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Listened to Robert Parry. I'm trying to unpack the sheer tenacity of Nixon committing treason before the election, being inexplicably excused for it by LBJ, and then threatening LBJ with blackmail for having eavesdropped on him in the first place. I wasn't even aware he committed treason in the first place, despite doing a politics subject in university specifically on the Nixon-Carter years. Is it a little known thing? I was aware of the Reagan-Iranian hostage deal. Are there any episodes that are a primer of sorts for the Syria war? Wouldn't mind something else on Michael Weiss and his kind because they bring him up a lot.
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Apr 16, 2017 07:40
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The interview they did with Rania Khalek recently was pretty good. I'd have to go over the whole episode list again to see if there are any good older Syria episodes.
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Apr 16, 2017 07:51
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snoremac posted:Listened to Robert Parry. I'm trying to unpack the sheer tenacity of Nixon committing treason before the election, being inexplicably excused for it by LBJ, and then threatening LBJ with blackmail for having eavesdropped on him in the first place. I wasn't even aware he committed treason in the first place, despite doing a politics subject in university specifically on the Nixon-Carter years. Is it a little known thing? I was aware of the Reagan-Iranian hostage deal. The whole "Nixon making GBS threads on the Vietnam peace talks" issue is explored a bit in Rick Perlstein's book 'Nixonland', I believe. Which is also a good but harrowing read in general. But yeah, it's weird how we got tons of books and movies about Watergate and zero about this. I'm guessing it has to do with the whole "We've moved on, it's a center-right country" mindset of the media once it was finally released.
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Apr 16, 2017 19:39
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Sephyr posted:The whole "Nixon making GBS threads on the Vietnam peace talks" issue is explored a bit in Rick Perlstein's book 'Nixonland', I believe. Which is also a good but harrowing read in general. Watergate is easier to dramatize because you have clear heroes (the intrepid reporters) and clear villains. Nixon sabotaging the peace talks just makes everybody look like an rear end in a top hat, especially LBJ for not having the balls to do anything about it.
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Apr 16, 2017 22:14
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Very true. Still, you'd think Oliver Stone or someone would try to build a script around it. Maybe using the POV of the diplomats on the ground trying to get the peace deal going, even. But as Matt Taibbi wrote in Griftopia, the big narrative will let you tut-tut at the corruption in power, but freaks the gently caress out if you actually try to de-legitimize the system around it. Trump may be a vile bufoon, but his electors (and by extension the country) have to stay as decent people. Nixon was the prototype of divisive politics gone big, but he has to stay a temporary slip on the rightous path of history, not the blueprint of how politics was going to happen for decades afterward.
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Apr 16, 2017 23:12
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I subscribed and have been devouring the podcasts backwards the last few days and love Dolan's misadventures around the world, particularly his debacle with the landlord he thought he'd paid when he hadn't. Also, I always knew Gary Brecher was a character, but it's a rude awakening to see how removed Dolan is from the character, which I guess is a good thing. I'm intrigued by Dolan gritting his teeth when Ames mentioned that someone said Dolan was stepping on Matt Taibbi's territory in bringing up Thomas Friedman recently. Dolan implied that he gave Taibbi the template for his (great) takedowns of Friedman. I've never come across a closer connection between the two before. Interesting.
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Apr 18, 2017 15:56
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I listened to probably about 50 hours of Radio War Nerd on my vacation last month, and listening to the landlady debacle... holy poo poo. I started from December 2016 and have selectively gone back for a few highlights (like the sci-fi episode).
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Apr 18, 2017 16:06
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Dolan has always had this weird comic vibe. The first piece by him I read was about the Shia, in which he was describing how grim and determined they tend to be in their conflicts, given their founding myth. It went something like "If a shia was coaching your kid's little league soccer team, every practice would start with a screening of the team's most humiliating defeat. 'Here's Timmy missing the penalty shot by a country mile! '". For some reason I couldn't stop laughing after reading that, and I was interning at a radio station so it drew some looks.
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Apr 18, 2017 18:44
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Dolan is one of the most underrated writers of our time, imo. Not many people can pull off his kind of comedy regarding deadly serious topics, while still maintaining a genuine sense of empathy. I'm referring to Dolan's own editorial voice of course, not when he was writing in-character as Gary Brecher.
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Apr 18, 2017 19:07
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Pener Kropoopkin posted:Dolan is one of the most underrated writers of our time, imo. Not many people can pull off his kind of comedy regarding deadly serious topics, while still maintaining a genuine sense of empathy. I'm referring to Dolan's own editorial voice of course, not when he was writing in-character as Gary Brecher. What is this whole Brecher/Dolan binary about?
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Apr 18, 2017 20:08
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Sephyr posted:Dolan has always had this weird comic vibe. The first piece by him I read was about the Shia, in which he was describing how grim and determined they tend to be in their conflicts, given their founding myth. It went something like "If a shia was coaching your kid's little league soccer team, every practice would start with a screening of the team's most humiliating defeat. 'Here's Timmy missing the penalty shot by a country mile! '". For some reason I couldn't stop laughing after reading that, and I was interning at a radio station so it drew some looks. thats honestly not wrong. Shia have a have a more guilt ridden/pessimistic view of theology and world outlook Catholics. Shia history is fascinating and depressing as gently caress.
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Apr 18, 2017 20:17
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Yossarian-22 posted:What is this whole Brecher/Dolan binary about? It's hard to explain. You have to read the old War Nerd articles on exiledonline and contrast that with the stuff he wrote for NSFWcorp, Pandodaily, and now the newsletters.
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Apr 18, 2017 21:15
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John Dolan is a failed academic from the Berkeley rhetoric department who has spent most of his life scraping by at third rate universities in third world countries. Gary Brecher is a persona he adopted to write acerbic commentary on wars and violent conflicts in both the present and throughout history. Dolan wrote for the Exile under both his own name and as the Brecher character he invented. I remember in a past Radio War Nerd he mentioned that at one point there was some speculation that he was Brecher, and one fan angrily responded that "Gary Brecher has more talent in his little finger than Dolan has in his entire body!" In fact Dolan agreed and claimed he alwayers preferred the way his writing sounded when he was channeling Brecher.
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Apr 18, 2017 21:27
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Just like Richard Bachman is superior to Stephen King
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Apr 18, 2017 21:36
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This is apparently not a joke? https://twitter.com/TheWarNerd/status/854382270320447489 I might just buy that.
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Apr 18, 2017 23:23
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He's been talking about his Iliad project for a couple years now.
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Apr 18, 2017 23:46
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Holy crap, it's out! I remember them mentioning it in one of the first free episodes, about how the Iliad should be rescued from dusty humanities teachers and updated into being closer to what it was, the Pulp Fiction/Marvel Crossover of its day, with people suffering gory ironic deaths, heroes facing off and the gods sticking their fingers all over the place... hell both the iliad and Batman vs. Superman end with the funeral of a main character slain fighting his nemesis.
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Apr 19, 2017 01:47
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Mark and John's saltiness at Vice's "punk-rock nihilism" was more than a little amusing given that it was basically The Exile's genre. I know it's partly the fact that Vice's founders are massive greedy shitbags and probably more than a little jealousy that they managed to monetize it so effectively. I don't remember if they mention it, but the article they rip on is actually from 2012 (https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/the-vice-guide-to-syria-0000456-v19n11), which was back when western media sources were pushing Obama hard to escalate and pre-dates the involvement of the Russians and the successes of the YPG/J. Since then, they've published a number of articles on the Kurds specifically, even pumping up the exploits of western volunteers, so some of Dolan's critiques aren't really fair. That said, gently caress Vice.
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Apr 19, 2017 01:52
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Their criticism of Vice was its shallow commercialism, not its edgy nihilism.
Helsing has issued a correction as of 02:14 on Apr 19, 2017 |
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Apr 19, 2017 02:09
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Nothus posted:Mark and John's saltiness at Vice's "punk-rock nihilism" was more than a little amusing given that it was basically The Exile's genre. I know it's partly the fact that Vice's founders are massive greedy shitbags and probably more than a little jealousy that they managed to monetize it so effectively. I don't remember if they mention it, but the article they rip on is actually from 2012 (https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/the-vice-guide-to-syria-0000456-v19n11), which was back when western media sources were pushing Obama hard to escalate and pre-dates the involvement of the Russians and the successes of the YPG/J. Since then, they've published a number of articles on the Kurds specifically, even pumping up the exploits of western volunteers, so some of Dolan's critiques aren't really fair. That said, gently caress Vice. The Exile always picked on the right targets though. They didn't write fluff pieces for ISIS.
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Apr 19, 2017 02:11
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Sephyr posted:Holy crap, it's out! I'm totally on board with that -- I loved the Iliad when I was a kid, even though you were supposed to like the Odyssey instead. 
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Apr 19, 2017 09:30
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The recent episode with Carl Zha was a great listen. I went in knowing nothing about Xinjiang but was enthralled by how beautifully he was able to map things out and give a general history. I hope they get him back more often.
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May 1, 2017 03:29
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I love how the recommended buys on Dolan's Illiad translation include a Yakuza game and the Akira manga. The Anime Left lives on.
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May 1, 2017 04:14
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Atrocious Joe posted:I love how the recommended buys on Dolan's Illiad translation include a Yakuza game and the Akira manga. The Anime Left lives on. so is his illiad just a retelling of the story without the poetry or is it some in depth exploration of it?
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May 1, 2017 04:20
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snoremac posted:The recent episode with Carl Zha was a great listen. I went in knowing nothing about Xinjiang but was enthralled by how beautifully he was able to map things out and give a general history. I hope they get him back more often. those eps were really good but Dolan's huge crush on him is a lil uncomfortable
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May 1, 2017 14:51
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There's nothing weird about a 60 year old guy who adores a mainland Asian guy a third/half his age.
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May 1, 2017 14:59
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If we can get a Khan-descended Mongol historian on the show Dolan might elope with him and start the nerdiest khalasar ever.
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May 1, 2017 16:51
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Phone posted:There's nothing weird about a 60 year old guy who adores a mainland Asian guy a third/half his age. Sorry that love between men makes you so uncomfortable.
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May 1, 2017 17:17
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Pener Kropoopkin posted:Sorry that love between men makes you so uncomfortable. I'm not uptight, you're uptight, etc etc. I've been going through the backlog, and it's almost eerie how evergreen most of the episodes are. Mark called out the paranoia about Russia the millisecond it happened which puts his clear exhaustion on the topic in more recent episodes into perspective.
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May 2, 2017 00:49
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They both have a more chipper demeanor in this last episode, I guess because they're talking about something other than Russia and Syria.
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May 2, 2017 00:52
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War Nerd is sending out past newsletters to any patrons who ask for them. I replied to the most recent newsletter and received a lot of them this morning.
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May 8, 2017 01:41
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How big are the newsletters, usually? Articles, or just preview stuff?
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May 8, 2017 05:34
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Sephyr posted:How big are the newsletters, usually? Articles, or just preview stuff? They're about as big as the short to mid-sized articles he used to write for eXile.
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May 8, 2017 05:48
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Sweet uighur pt. 2 just dropped.
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May 8, 2017 20:27
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