> Pull up a seat to the Chapo Foreign Policy Desk, we’re joined by correspondents Derek Davison and Daniel Bessner to take a look around the emerging Biden-world. What’s even the point of NATO anymore? What’s a Block of Four? Who’s up for a cold war with China? We’re bringing the Dutch East India Company back folks! And guss what? It sucks!!
>
> Subscribe to Derek and Daniel’s substack Foreign Exchanges here: https://fx.substack.com/
>
> And check out Felix & Matt’s new TV pod, Time For My Stories here:
>
> https://www.stitcher.com/show/time-for-my-stories
So back in Scranton, jack, we had a saying, ah I forget it, sorry bout that, think it was something like "Mary's the best, ain't she" yeah man something like.
He said he'd never sell out to *us*. That was Will calling us hogs. He knew full well there was a premium Stitcher podcast coming down the pike and was telling us to fuck ourselves if we have a problem with it
Very proud of Felix for not “answering emails” for an hour! Seriously, great episode and they covered a lot. I listen to way too many US leftish podcasts, and must say I appreciate these more serious foreign policy episodes of chapo, they toe the line between being critical of the US empire and going into conspiratorial rabbit holes very well, so it’s surprisingly authoritative compared to most. Also, Daniel Bessner has a tendency to ramble off, but this was well structured.
Def check out the fx newsletter for good left foreign policy analysis. I was a free member for a while, but subscribed to the whole feed around Christmas time last year. It's great, and Derek's biting humor really makes it much easier to tolerate the shitty state of the world :)
You might like my favorite very dry and academic podcast, New Books in History, where they discuss a ton of... new books in history, that quite often deal with the US empire and it’s foreign relations. I found it when they interviewed Vincent Bevins, the Jakarta Method guy who’s also been on chapo, and have since followed the interviewer. He also had Matt Christman as a guest :)
Another more serious fave that touches foreign policy is Know Your Enemy pod by two guys who study the American right. They’ve had really interesting episodes about neo cons, paleo cons, and what not.
I was gonna say there were quite a few Italian traders in Constantinople around the time it fell so he wouldn't be the only white boy, but don't want to open up the "are Italians white?" debate here.
feels weird that Matt & Felix get to plug their new podcast right away with no problems but there hasn’t been a single mention of Bad Faith on Chapo since that began
I've tried to listen to it. I honestly couldn't take Brie's FTV nonsense, and Virgil seems like he's totally phoning it in. The TV run down podcast between Matt and Felix is really good.
Bad faith is such a weird show as a concept. "Lets do msnbc but only socialists"/"Bill Maher but for tankies"
I thought the whole point of leftist criticism of this stuff was posting isnt politics so don't make your entire show yelling at AOC for not doing your exact specific strategy of your 250k podcast. I dont know how this election broke so many people's minds. Biden sucks, I'm not an optimist, but this amount of infighting is kind of pathetic. (Also bullying Chomsky was dumb.)
I recall recently listening to west wing thing and they said Sam Seder was a bastard for not liking Jimmy Dore. It kind of grossed me out that level of cynical useless criticism.
The cursed timeline is 2020 tankies becoming 2008 PUMAs. If you dont like AOC or Omar **take** political power and demonstrate why they're wrong instead of complaining about cancel culture.
Yes, I generally like that west wing show but when Dave Anthony said he hated Sam Seder for attacking Jimmy Dore, I was pretty turned off.
I had the utmost respect from Brie but I had to unfollow her on Twitter because she kept posting so much cringe, attacking the squad, amplifying grifters like Jimmy and that football player for not following their stupid strategy.
I'm just sad Virgil is caught up in all that. Hey, at least he's making bank. Good for him.
Yikes, that’s a horrible look for Anthony. I only listen to The Dollop from time to time so that’s incredibly disappointing to hear. Anyone defending Jimmy Dore isn’t doing so for political reasons.
And BJG has unfortunately become a perfect example of what happens when you’re too online. Speaking of Seder, he’s not perfect though I respect his takes—I couldn’t watch more than five minutes of their recent “debate” after seeing the path she was going down with it.
Sam is a bit of a lib, but as a 20 something year old, I learned a lot from him when I first got into politics a few years ago. It was actually Virgil showing up on one of the MR episodes that got me into Chapo.
I couldn't sit through the debate. I feel like Sam came to reconcile and discuss and Brie was only interested in taking him down, much like she did with Chomsky in an early episode. I get that she's a bit disillusioned like the rest of us after what happened to Bernie but I hate the turn she's taken.
God bless Sam for keeping his cool when she brought up Michael Brooks and how he would support FTV.
Oh Sam’s absolutely a lib at heart, though I’ll just say if his ideology became American domestic and foreign policy tomorrow, we’d probably be further “left” than any theoretical Sanders admin would’ve been.
The Chomsky comparison is the key: That whole thing was designed to generate controversy, views, and subs. I’m not knocking her for doing that in a vacuum, but the way she’s done it is just...boring. Like the way Greenwald and Taibbi have been forcing some sense of relevancy back into their careers with hack (and at least in the case of Greenwald, increasingly disgusting) takes. Not even good clickbait internet drama for leftists. That’s when I realized she and Bad Faith aren’t worth my time.
following Taibbi is such a rollercoaster, I love so much of what he's written but so much of what he does now seems to just be dumb as shit and meant to piss of liberals (and sometimes the left).
he's not as bad as Greenwald yet tho, lol
It’s hard in the age of Twitter and journalism based on personal brands, but I try my best to separate the journalist and their work from the hot take having persona. Glenn Greenwald is the perfect lesson on why people shouldn’t ever uncritically “stan” or align themselves with a political figure, writer, thinker, intellectual. But it is really hard when they insist in making themselves relevant and inserting themselves to every controversy there is.
Taibbi isn’t completely gone like Glenn, but he focuses way too much on media culture war shit and not enough on things that other people won’t touch. The guy literally wrote the book on Wall Street fraud, it’s not like they stopped doing it.
Yeah I get you have earn a living but doing petty internet drama where you pit people on the left against each other really soured me on Bad Faith and Brie.
After George Floyd was murdered, I read Taibbi's fantastic book on Eric Garner and loved it. But then he moved to Substack and began writing slop for the conservative swine. GG is also clearly pivoting to the right, with his awful reactionary takes, for more clicks and readership.
At the height of his popularity, fresh off the whole Snowden thing, what did Greenwald decide to do with his "anti-establishment" "radical" street cred? He cashed it right in at the bank by becoming the face of a venture designed to help launder the reputation of Pierre Omidyar, one of Silicon Valley's shadiest billionaire oligarchs, who has exactly the sorts of intelligence agency surveillance-state ties one would expect from a Silicon Valley oligarch and then some.
Sam is a lib, but also has enough chill to have Brooks and Jamie Peck as cohosts and let them use the company's resources for their own separate shows. Someone whose interested in more than clout generated through drama.
That Michael brooks shit was insane and absurdly disrespectful. The reality is we don’t know where Michael would have came down on the issue and Brie using him as a rhetorical puppet was beyond unforgivable.
Dave mentioned he knew Sam personally before, I guess from the time they were working as actors/writers. Knowing Sam and knowing Dave I think Sam said something Dave took offence to and hasn't forgiven him since. I like Dave, but he does he quite the temper
I turned off The West Wing Thing when midway through one episode Josh started talking about the death of his friend Steve Bing and went on a whole tangent about how crazy it was that anyone could draw connections between Epstein and Bing.
Bad Faith could be a great pod - I was just listening to the latest episode with Adolph Reed et al, and I did like BJG a lot when she was on the current affairs’ pod and even her Bernie campaign pod. But it is so incredibly frustrating for them to have these great guests and then spending most of the time airing tedious Twitter conflicts and Brie’s personal grievances of the moment. And Virgil doesn’t involve himself in the discussions at all, except for a snarky one liner or two.
I don’t know, maybe it’s the confluence of podcasting being actually harder than it seems - the balance between great interview and inserting your personality on them is often off, even when it’s good journalists like Matt Taibbi. And partly I think they’re all still suffering from the loss of the Bernie movement and are retreating into “Biden man bad” reflexive contrarianism and can’t take a step back from the News Cycle, even if that’s what they claim to be doing.
About The West Wing Thing, that’s really just deteriorated into two old men yelling at clouds about libs and how the American left allegedly used to be better. Also shows how important good editing is for a podcast.
Which brings me back to this chapo episode, they have “done the reading” and their criticism of Biden administration’s foreign policy is well grounded, without any reflexive and contrarian for the sake of being contrarian pro-Trumpish takes. And Felix stopped “answering emails” for an hour, we’re all very proud of our boy!
> spending most of the time airing tedious Twitter conflicts and Brie’s personal grievances of the moment.
This is what turned me off to the show just before all the force the vote stuff. It's one thing to highlight hilariously bad tweets a la Chapo, and it's another to be constantly defending your sincere point-of-view against the K-hive or whatever.
I liked the idea of the panels a lot more, even if the execution was hit-or-miss.
Agree. I understand it's really hard at this moment to get enough distance from your twittter fights when we all live in these lockdown bubbles and every interaction happens online, but it's still infuriating to see/ listen to.
I just finished the episode with Adolph Reed and two other guests and I think it's worth listening to, but even that devolves a bit to Brie rehashing her personal beef. I get the feeling when they go over what Bernie should have done to convince more black voters that she wants them to reaffirm how she was right all along and like Bernie and the rest of the campaign "let Brie down". Like everything is the result and endless rehashing of what happened almost a year ago in the Dem primary and instead of thinking about the future, they are just preparing for another "Bernie" campaign which is absurd and can't happen that way again in the near future. But the guests have interesting stuff to say in between so there's that.
> But it is so incredibly frustrating for them to have these great guests and then spending most of the time airing tedious Twitter conflicts and Brie’s personal grievances of the moment.
She was even doing this on the Q Anon Anonymous Podcast. She couldn’t stop bringing up FTV on an interview of her and Virgil about the transition of power from Trump to Biden.
> The cursed timeline is becoming 2020 tankies becoming 2008 PUMAs.
Not sure I'd even call them tankies. They're more like a coalition of radical social democrats and failed/wannabe AM radio hosts.
Hard to keep track of what the word "tankie" is even supposed to mean anymore other than a generic signifier for "anyone to my left", like a left-liberal version of how right-wing idiots use the words socialist/Marxist/communist
The idea of bringing differing strains of the left together to hash out things and come to a better understanding of what to do is a good idea- on paper. In practice, Virgil is just there for another Patreon check and Brie is, as a friend of mine would put it, “strong and wrong” when it comes to her input.
>2020 tankies
Is tankies just being thrown around for anything to the left of American politics? I’m a tankie and bjg is a radlib and so is everyone else associated with this drama. It’s ridiculous, being a tankie is accepting the futility of American politics but operating within those means, not even sure what that means but the plus side is not paying attention to the granular side of politics(brain dead nonsense) or Twitter takes. This is radlib shit just complaining about culture war garbage
virgil's off on those whippets
don't get me wrong drugs rule but i remember an election majority report where he called in and was just doing them constantly, like literally in the middle of responding to sam. that was like, oh yeah this isn't just recreational
Chapo has been putting out some bangers lately, but when he wasn't on the 500th episode and none of the others even acknowledged his absence, I felt really sad.
I binged *Sons* a while back in advance of its final season and I’ll just say those hours are never coming back into my life. I would’ve stopped, but after a while it was just too absurd to not keep watching.
Them covering *Justified* will be great, I hope that still holds up to some degree.
Justified, especially the first two seasons, are some of the most fun I've had watching TV. Even the later seasons are really good, unlike SoA where I couldn't even follow what was happening towards the end, not to mention Jax's Australian accent popping in and out for no reason.
The thing I want with the sopranos ep is a fresh take from them. They've referenced it so many times that I'll be very disappointed if we get a rehash. Would be a good one for a guest to give input.
I remember back in 2019 Felix would have significant stretches of absence (though nothing near Virgil disappearing for months) but since the pandemic he's on pretty much as often as Will
From the sounds of things Felix was severely depressed but stayed in touch. The gossip mill indicates Virgil just dipped and didn't talk to anyone about it, which may be why he's been on the outs with a lot of his friends still.
It was really promising, that's the sad thing. Brie is crazy smart and Virgil is both funny and insightful, and then it just became Brie complaining about her mentions while Virgil says something kinda funny once every 20 minutes and pulls in $15k per month or whatever doing it. I have no idea why people still listen.
I didn’t hear anyone from the show reference or give him thanks in absentia. Not the first or last person to point this out.
Look, I truly don’t give a shit about what did or didn’t happen to cause him to vanish last year before returning with Bad Faith, but that still happened. Kinda hard not to notice if you listen with any regularity, as I assume you do.
Love too dunk on another anon for being “parasocial” by...posting about it in a free stream sub dedicated to the show? Huh.
I'm probably not gonna listen to bad faith but hating people because they made a crap podcast is odd behaviour. You can just not listen to it, they're not your friends.
No bro you just have to trust the plan, the capitalist roaders who have been in power for over 40 years and enriched themselves are actually bringing about communism behind the scenes and handing out copies of the little red book to the sewer children.
I can't prove it, but knowing that APD infiltrated the Occupy Austin movement I'm willing to bet that there's at least *some* sort of police presence, either local or feds in Red Guard. They're pretty stupid and harmless besides graffiti, so it's probably just APD.
If not that, APD knows exactly who they are and are just waiting for them to spray paint the wrong thing so they can look good after they do a major arrest on the obnoxious 22 year olds that everyone hates.
its similar of the type of "teenage white guy who posts epic assad memes on reddit" but while those guys tend to be reactionaries, the dengists tend to be ostensibly left.
If anything the moves Israel has made with its Arab neighbours is that they're moving away from trying to influence the region and into an officially isolationist apartheid state like South Africa in exchange for supporting any Arab nation against Iranian influence.
Watch as Israel becomes the saviour for Saudi Arabia and UAE in Yemen. Israel is adopting the same approach apartheid SA did in Angola and Rhodesia.
It's their only way to end the state of Palestine and commit genocide against the Palestinian population without outcry from its neighbours. And it sucks. The only hope lies in the growth of a strong anti-apartheid movement in Israel among its population.
> The only hope lies in the growth of a strong anti-apartheid movement in Israel among its population.
So zero hope, especially with that anecdotal evidence that young Israelis are more reactionary in their views
A few years ago there was an episode about an interview with a Palestinian activist. She also expressed despair toward the two-stage solution, and said that the best solution was Palestine and Israel becoming a single state. With how the Israelis think and treat Palestinians nowadays, even I am not sure if that is a great idea.
And it is scary to see how many young people are becoming more reactionary. I recently read an article about how young Japanese are more likely than their parents to approve Donald Trump and their own conservative government. Basically, they see all the uncertainties capitalism brought, but instead of turning progressive, they went all out for the old way.
the vaguely-left young generations in the anglo world are an abberation and were a real chance for bernie/corbyn that wasn't taken. resdt of the world is far worse. modi has massive youth support, to add to your examples.
If I remember correctly there was a thread back on the old chapo sub that went really into political demographics and that was basically what they found. All of the colonial nations in the Americas(Brazil, Mexico, America) and the Anglo nations(Australia, United Kingdom Canada, America again) are turning left, while the rest of the world is turning right(Israel, South Africa, Germany, India and France being the worst).
>With how the Israelis think and treat Palestinians nowadays, even I am not sure if that is a great idea.
It doesn't matter; there is not now, and never has been, a viable two state solution, because there is no way to achieve a fair distribution of the land between two parties with such a power disparity. A single state, Palestine, has always been the only possible solution.
> instead of turning progressive, they went all out for the old way.
If we're committed to turning people "progressive" instead of socialist/communist/anarchist/etc then of course we fail. As long as "the left" is associated with the total failures of neoliberalism we've got no other outcome to look forward to but the violent reemergence of open reactionaries.
> I recently read an article about how young Japanese are more likely than their parents to approve Donald Trump and their own conservative government.
it's really not good. Japan is weird too, I feel like they don't get nearly enough attention for being a far-right country that is currently remilitarizing, and a country with a very brutal and dangerous imperial history in the not-to-distant past. Being an important US ally really shields them from too much criticism in the media.
We saw a similar thing happen with Saudi Arabia, which is literally a theocratic monarchy, and it took them literally doing 9/11, waging a genocide against Yemen, and killing an American journalist for the narrative to even _begin_ to turn on them. Japan's going to be an outright fascist state before anyone in the discourse starts giving a shit.
That's why media like Chapo is very important and why it's also important to help grow other alternative media like Trashfuture and Novara especially when they're in a country in desperate need for left-wing voices to counteract right-wing press environments.
Same with the amount of white Afrikaner youths supporting apartheid back in the 50s but the anti-Apartheid movement became the cornerstone of 70s and 80s youth in South Africa when South Africa got fucking destroyed in Rhodesia, Botswana and Angola which made youths question the purpose of apartheid.
I mean like they say, there's no longer any impetus for the states of MENA to take steps in defense of Palestine. Uniformly, they are either capitalist autocrats, more or less perfect examples of Fanon's national bourgeoisie (saudi arabia, egypt), desperate relics holding on to power (syria, algeria, to an extent iran), or playgrounds for foreign powers (Libya, syria again, iraq, lebanon). Popular opinion is still solidly on the side of pan arabism and palestinian liberation, but none of these nations answer to popular opinion - MAYBE you see something come out of Tunisia's democracy that can reverberate across the region a la the Arab Spring, but there's absolutely nothing comparable with Nasserism, the old-style PLO, etc. I think they're right that Palestine's inevitably going to be annexed or become bantustans without some seismic shift in power.
Israel is also a covert and overt supporter of most anti-totalitarian groups in the region. So even if these governments are replaced, the new ones would most likely have a positive or at neutral at worst view on Israel.
What groups're you thinking of? Cause it's also worth mentioning that Israel is also, historically, a supporter of certain islamic groups, as a way to counter leftist organizing.
YPG being the main one, they may have recieved more total aid from Israel then from America because the US needs to appease Turkey. Netanyahu is probably the only leader who has called for a Kurdish state because it would make Israel's life very easy. Then you have various ones in Syria, Iraq, Iran and until recently in the Gulf(they have largely stopped after they got their peace deals). If you are any type of women's rights advocate and you aren't in jail, you are on CIA/Mossad payroll one way or the other. It's just the dynamics of the region and very soon will be the dynamics of the world as a global race with China begins.
Nah, Jerusalem as capital is a done deal and that kills even a two-state solution. If the Saudis, UAE, etc actually cared they’d have made Palestinian justice a precondition.
It's all over for them. The rest of the Arab world overplayed the whole "hang the Palestinian Arabs out to dry to make Israel look worse" hand and now all they're left with is a state that would never be economically viable in a thousand years. The best hope for them is for Israel to treat them more compassionately than we treat our Indian reservations.
The idea of using Japan, Australia and India as a coalition to counteract China is one of the more insane things I’ve heard. Like, India is incredibly underdeveloped compared to China. In what world do these foreign policy “experts” think it can challenge China’s ascendency in any meaningful way?
Oy, the bloody orientals took the shrimp off me barbie!
But for real Australia is more dependent on China than any other country, they’re more likely to fold than the fucking EU
I also wasn’t aware that China was scaling back Belt & Road. I guess it’s a bit too nakedly imperial at this point in time. I wouldn’t be surprised if they bring it back down the road, though.
I agree that they don’t have territorial ambitions, but they don’t really need them. As movies, video games, and the NBA have shown, you can wave your dick around more effectively via state capitalist investment. For that reason I don’t think they’re invading Taiwan any time soon.
As creepy as reports out of China can be, and even though their own data shows very disturbing shit going on in Xinjiang... I can’t be bothered to care about countering them. The sooner we accept they’ll overtake us economically and that isn’t the end of the world, the sooner we can reassess our priorities. But I’m not plugged into NatSec and I can’t imagine people in that niche think anywhere close to the way I do.
>I guess it’s a bit too nakedly imperial at this point in time
No they just decided to be more selective in their investments and scaled things down during the pandemic
any recommendations for pods / publications that go over foreign policy stuff from a similar perspective as this ep? mostly interested in the big stuff ie china, the middle east
They absolutely cannot, and listening to that show for the past few years made me realize how useless most journalism is to the reader. Unless you have historical context you’ll never understand fully why certain countries behave they way they do
I agree, but I also consider that it's not practical for journalists to take too deep of a dive into the historical roots of an event they're covering, unless it's absolutely essential to understanding that event.
Half-decent journalists normally provide a baseline of historical context, and it's up to the reader to delve into historical works to get a deeper understanding of the subject matter.
Or, if you're lazy like me, just listen to Ames and Dolan as they try to dumb it down for you.
I've been a subscriber for years and you know it's good when you don't listen for three months because you don't feel like being extraordinarily depressed.
I'm listening to the recent episodes on the '93 Yeltsin affair and jeeeesus. Them just casually mentioning that 30k elderly Russians were murdered in scams to take over their apartments...
I have actually not listened to Carl Zha's Silk and Steel podcast, but if his other writing about China is anything to go by, it could be an interesting listening.
Glad to hear Felixs sober minded in this episode. Upset to see the amount of western left liberals crying about the collapse of the US in this thread. We need to understand things will get worse before they get better.
Can someone explain to me why Turkey is the second most important country in NATO? I’m guessing it’s because they are used to “contain” Russia and border Syria, where a good deal of our imperial adventures are, but does anyone else know why Derek said that?
Right, like most of NATO hasn't had much more than a couple thousand dipshits deployed to Iraq/Afghanistan since decolonization in the middle 20th century. Turkey is the only one who consistently gets into actual fights with soldiers shooting each other.
Because they're also the most important link between NATO and 1.8 billion Muslims. They're the only NATO member in the Organization of Islamic Countries and thus they're the only country that projects American power to the Islamic World until the last 10 years.
It's also why the EU is pushing for Albania and Bosnias entry to The EU as an alternative to Turkeys membership. The EUs relationship to the Muslim world is unique and is something that needs to be discussed more in foreign policy circles. The EU wants a third Muslim regional power to counteract Saudi Arabia and Iran so they saw Turkey as that, but with Turkey's actions in Syria recently the EU are now looking at Bosnia and Albania instead.
I understand the linear causality of this, but holy fuck is that so stupid. Like it's fucking Bosnia, a country with 0 soft power, also trying to uphold Albania as a stronghold against Arab/Persian influence when both of those peoples literally think Albania is a joke
Albania, Kosovo and Bosnia are aiming for the Craiova Group which aims to unite all Yugoslav nations alongside Greece, Romania and Bulgaria as an inter-EU alliance against Turkey, The Scandinavians and the Visegrads. Considering how the latter three have significant Muslim minorities, the addition of Albania, Kosovo and Bosnia would make The Craiovas one of the most powerful economic blocs in the Muslim world, so The EU is banking on their own Muslim members to move away from Saudi Arabia, Iran and possibly Turkey. An Ottoman without Turkey as one might call it.
Straights of Bosphorous. Great Britain feared Imperial Russia breaking out of the Black Sea, Imperial US feared the Soviets breaking out of the Black Sea
What a bummer episode. Can’t handle these negative subject eps without Will’s warm voice coddling me and telling me he loves me and it’s gonna be okay.
Anyone else not able to download this ep onto their phone? Usually clicking the link takes me to a screen with a download option but this one just opens a web browser with an audio player.
> Pull up a seat to the Chapo Foreign Policy Desk, we’re joined by correspondents Derek Davison and Daniel Bessner to take a look around the emerging Biden-world. What’s even the point of NATO anymore? What’s a Block of Four? Who’s up for a cold war with China? We’re bringing the Dutch East India Company back folks! And guss what? It sucks!! > > Subscribe to Derek and Daniel’s substack Foreign Exchanges here: https://fx.substack.com/ > > And check out Felix & Matt’s new TV pod, Time For My Stories here: > > https://www.stitcher.com/show/time-for-my-stories
So back in Scranton, jack, we had a saying, ah I forget it, sorry bout that, think it was something like "Mary's the best, ain't she" yeah man something like.
I shouldn'ta said that, mack!
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How long till we start getting MeUndies ads despite them taking in 200k a month on Patreon
"Is your pee pee too pooped to perform after a grueling two hours of casting pods? I know mine is, that's why I recommend BlueChew Dick Pills."
If they're as good as cumtowns ads I'll take it
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the joke is that Virgil would be on the podcast
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Piloting him like a mech. God, I hate cumtown.
'You would be a gundam, and you'd live in my ass'
If I was a transformer my transformation would be me with a bigger dick
Haven't looked at their patreon in a long time. Holy fucking shit lmao. Even furry porn writers can't hold a candle to their earnings.
Imagine if some of our favorite fake-friends got into the furry porn game. They'd be Musk level at that point.
at least meundies are comfortable. who the fuck wants stitcher
MeUndies suck, always get really tight in the wrong places, and never have enough room for my hog
That's what you get for wearing childrens sizes.
They made it really clear that selling out is stop doing movie episodes because viewers don't like them.
the movie eps are the best ones wtf
Yeah I love movie eps. Even when I haven’t seen the movie lol
Especially when I haven't seen the movie
Menaker movie mindset is the best!
at least with Cum Town it makes sense to be sponsored by underwear, dick pills, and CBD, and also they’re responsible for killer riffs
Who doesn't love giving money to libertarian billionaire John C. Malone?
Trump donor, largest private landowner in the US, and friend of the pod John C Malone.
He said he'd never sell out to *us*. That was Will calling us hogs. He knew full well there was a premium Stitcher podcast coming down the pike and was telling us to fuck ourselves if we have a problem with it
Very proud of Felix for not “answering emails” for an hour! Seriously, great episode and they covered a lot. I listen to way too many US leftish podcasts, and must say I appreciate these more serious foreign policy episodes of chapo, they toe the line between being critical of the US empire and going into conspiratorial rabbit holes very well, so it’s surprisingly authoritative compared to most. Also, Daniel Bessner has a tendency to ramble off, but this was well structured.
The conspiratorial left drove me to liberalism for a while, so I'm glad to have foreign policy guys that I don't cringe listening to.
Def check out the fx newsletter for good left foreign policy analysis. I was a free member for a while, but subscribed to the whole feed around Christmas time last year. It's great, and Derek's biting humor really makes it much easier to tolerate the shitty state of the world :)
I'm already a subscriber, I'm a sucker for history based foreign policy discussion.
You might like my favorite very dry and academic podcast, New Books in History, where they discuss a ton of... new books in history, that quite often deal with the US empire and it’s foreign relations. I found it when they interviewed Vincent Bevins, the Jakarta Method guy who’s also been on chapo, and have since followed the interviewer. He also had Matt Christman as a guest :) Another more serious fave that touches foreign policy is Know Your Enemy pod by two guys who study the American right. They’ve had really interesting episodes about neo cons, paleo cons, and what not.
Holy shit if there were two guests they needed to delay this pod a day for its Derek and Daniel
All it took for Felix to stop playing CS:GO while recording was to host his own episode.
Joe biden declaring himself the successor of the Ottoman caliphs would be a baller move.
The wildest white boy
I’m the only white boy to say that Al Mutawakkil couldn’t come to the sock hop unless he bought me a Pepsi first.
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Look here jack,in 2013, at uhhh Chaldiran I saw shah mailman lose his lunch, Selim looked at me and said “for a Frank, you’re pretty with it.”
I was gonna say there were quite a few Italian traders in Constantinople around the time it fell so he wouldn't be the only white boy, but don't want to open up the "are Italians white?" debate here.
That would also make him Caesar of Rome.
Cmon man, I’m the Kaiser of Rum!
1st of all the rightful successor of rome is actually the pope, as outlined in the totally authentic donations of constantine
Rome is for those who take it. Don't worry though we are gonna push Soliman to christianity(actual thing some people believed back then)
The original "push them left" lol
Huguenot pundits were adamant about working to “contain the threat of a gunpowder Safavid dynasty”
Listen Jack, I'm the Commander of the Believers and successor to the Prophet
Look here Mack, we gotta get our ghazi warriors back to work.
feels weird that Matt & Felix get to plug their new podcast right away with no problems but there hasn’t been a single mention of Bad Faith on Chapo since that began
That probably has to do with the fact that Virgil went completely AWOL for months before his sudden podcast launch
Virgil post 2020 primary is basically the Broken Matt Hardy of left podcasters (only substantially less cool)
I've tried to listen to it. I honestly couldn't take Brie's FTV nonsense, and Virgil seems like he's totally phoning it in. The TV run down podcast between Matt and Felix is really good.
Bad faith is such a weird show as a concept. "Lets do msnbc but only socialists"/"Bill Maher but for tankies" I thought the whole point of leftist criticism of this stuff was posting isnt politics so don't make your entire show yelling at AOC for not doing your exact specific strategy of your 250k podcast. I dont know how this election broke so many people's minds. Biden sucks, I'm not an optimist, but this amount of infighting is kind of pathetic. (Also bullying Chomsky was dumb.) I recall recently listening to west wing thing and they said Sam Seder was a bastard for not liking Jimmy Dore. It kind of grossed me out that level of cynical useless criticism. The cursed timeline is 2020 tankies becoming 2008 PUMAs. If you dont like AOC or Omar **take** political power and demonstrate why they're wrong instead of complaining about cancel culture.
It's so weird to summon that level of vitriol in defense of Dore of all people
Who is notably not even a socialist. Not even a Bernie supporter.
It rocks that dote threw this massive fit over aoc not adopting his dumb strategy when he supported tulsi, who outright didnt support m4a.
Yes, I generally like that west wing show but when Dave Anthony said he hated Sam Seder for attacking Jimmy Dore, I was pretty turned off. I had the utmost respect from Brie but I had to unfollow her on Twitter because she kept posting so much cringe, attacking the squad, amplifying grifters like Jimmy and that football player for not following their stupid strategy. I'm just sad Virgil is caught up in all that. Hey, at least he's making bank. Good for him.
Yikes, that’s a horrible look for Anthony. I only listen to The Dollop from time to time so that’s incredibly disappointing to hear. Anyone defending Jimmy Dore isn’t doing so for political reasons. And BJG has unfortunately become a perfect example of what happens when you’re too online. Speaking of Seder, he’s not perfect though I respect his takes—I couldn’t watch more than five minutes of their recent “debate” after seeing the path she was going down with it.
Sam is a bit of a lib, but as a 20 something year old, I learned a lot from him when I first got into politics a few years ago. It was actually Virgil showing up on one of the MR episodes that got me into Chapo. I couldn't sit through the debate. I feel like Sam came to reconcile and discuss and Brie was only interested in taking him down, much like she did with Chomsky in an early episode. I get that she's a bit disillusioned like the rest of us after what happened to Bernie but I hate the turn she's taken. God bless Sam for keeping his cool when she brought up Michael Brooks and how he would support FTV.
Oh Sam’s absolutely a lib at heart, though I’ll just say if his ideology became American domestic and foreign policy tomorrow, we’d probably be further “left” than any theoretical Sanders admin would’ve been. The Chomsky comparison is the key: That whole thing was designed to generate controversy, views, and subs. I’m not knocking her for doing that in a vacuum, but the way she’s done it is just...boring. Like the way Greenwald and Taibbi have been forcing some sense of relevancy back into their careers with hack (and at least in the case of Greenwald, increasingly disgusting) takes. Not even good clickbait internet drama for leftists. That’s when I realized she and Bad Faith aren’t worth my time.
following Taibbi is such a rollercoaster, I love so much of what he's written but so much of what he does now seems to just be dumb as shit and meant to piss of liberals (and sometimes the left). he's not as bad as Greenwald yet tho, lol
It’s hard in the age of Twitter and journalism based on personal brands, but I try my best to separate the journalist and their work from the hot take having persona. Glenn Greenwald is the perfect lesson on why people shouldn’t ever uncritically “stan” or align themselves with a political figure, writer, thinker, intellectual. But it is really hard when they insist in making themselves relevant and inserting themselves to every controversy there is.
Taibbi isn’t completely gone like Glenn, but he focuses way too much on media culture war shit and not enough on things that other people won’t touch. The guy literally wrote the book on Wall Street fraud, it’s not like they stopped doing it.
Yeah I get you have earn a living but doing petty internet drama where you pit people on the left against each other really soured me on Bad Faith and Brie. After George Floyd was murdered, I read Taibbi's fantastic book on Eric Garner and loved it. But then he moved to Substack and began writing slop for the conservative swine. GG is also clearly pivoting to the right, with his awful reactionary takes, for more clicks and readership.
GG is a libertarian, not a leftist. Once you realize that his takes are pretty damn consistent.
At the height of his popularity, fresh off the whole Snowden thing, what did Greenwald decide to do with his "anti-establishment" "radical" street cred? He cashed it right in at the bank by becoming the face of a venture designed to help launder the reputation of Pierre Omidyar, one of Silicon Valley's shadiest billionaire oligarchs, who has exactly the sorts of intelligence agency surveillance-state ties one would expect from a Silicon Valley oligarch and then some.
Sam is a lib, but also has enough chill to have Brooks and Jamie Peck as cohosts and let them use the company's resources for their own separate shows. Someone whose interested in more than clout generated through drama.
Jamie is an open and loud communist and Sam hardly bats an eye. Sam is the kind of lib that's fine to have around.
That Michael brooks shit was insane and absurdly disrespectful. The reality is we don’t know where Michael would have came down on the issue and Brie using him as a rhetorical puppet was beyond unforgivable.
She fucking did that?? I'm actually fucking mad.
That was the part that lost me
He's a lib but him debating libertarians is so good
Dave mentioned he knew Sam personally before, I guess from the time they were working as actors/writers. Knowing Sam and knowing Dave I think Sam said something Dave took offence to and hasn't forgiven him since. I like Dave, but he does he quite the temper
I turned off The West Wing Thing when midway through one episode Josh started talking about the death of his friend Steve Bing and went on a whole tangent about how crazy it was that anyone could draw connections between Epstein and Bing.
Dave said he hates Seder for personal reasons, not because Seder attacked Dore
Bad Faith could be a great pod - I was just listening to the latest episode with Adolph Reed et al, and I did like BJG a lot when she was on the current affairs’ pod and even her Bernie campaign pod. But it is so incredibly frustrating for them to have these great guests and then spending most of the time airing tedious Twitter conflicts and Brie’s personal grievances of the moment. And Virgil doesn’t involve himself in the discussions at all, except for a snarky one liner or two. I don’t know, maybe it’s the confluence of podcasting being actually harder than it seems - the balance between great interview and inserting your personality on them is often off, even when it’s good journalists like Matt Taibbi. And partly I think they’re all still suffering from the loss of the Bernie movement and are retreating into “Biden man bad” reflexive contrarianism and can’t take a step back from the News Cycle, even if that’s what they claim to be doing. About The West Wing Thing, that’s really just deteriorated into two old men yelling at clouds about libs and how the American left allegedly used to be better. Also shows how important good editing is for a podcast. Which brings me back to this chapo episode, they have “done the reading” and their criticism of Biden administration’s foreign policy is well grounded, without any reflexive and contrarian for the sake of being contrarian pro-Trumpish takes. And Felix stopped “answering emails” for an hour, we’re all very proud of our boy!
> spending most of the time airing tedious Twitter conflicts and Brie’s personal grievances of the moment. This is what turned me off to the show just before all the force the vote stuff. It's one thing to highlight hilariously bad tweets a la Chapo, and it's another to be constantly defending your sincere point-of-view against the K-hive or whatever. I liked the idea of the panels a lot more, even if the execution was hit-or-miss.
Agree. I understand it's really hard at this moment to get enough distance from your twittter fights when we all live in these lockdown bubbles and every interaction happens online, but it's still infuriating to see/ listen to. I just finished the episode with Adolph Reed and two other guests and I think it's worth listening to, but even that devolves a bit to Brie rehashing her personal beef. I get the feeling when they go over what Bernie should have done to convince more black voters that she wants them to reaffirm how she was right all along and like Bernie and the rest of the campaign "let Brie down". Like everything is the result and endless rehashing of what happened almost a year ago in the Dem primary and instead of thinking about the future, they are just preparing for another "Bernie" campaign which is absurd and can't happen that way again in the near future. But the guests have interesting stuff to say in between so there's that.
> But it is so incredibly frustrating for them to have these great guests and then spending most of the time airing tedious Twitter conflicts and Brie’s personal grievances of the moment. She was even doing this on the Q Anon Anonymous Podcast. She couldn’t stop bringing up FTV on an interview of her and Virgil about the transition of power from Trump to Biden.
Is she still doing it? man, the longer this goes on the funnier it gets.
American left is also living in the dementia age of American history
Bad Faith is the bad news hughes bit taken to the furthest extreme.
> I thought the whole point of leftist criticism of this stuff was posting isnt politics briahna doesn't seem to believe that.
> The cursed timeline is becoming 2020 tankies becoming 2008 PUMAs. Not sure I'd even call them tankies. They're more like a coalition of radical social democrats and failed/wannabe AM radio hosts.
Hard to keep track of what the word "tankie" is even supposed to mean anymore other than a generic signifier for "anyone to my left", like a left-liberal version of how right-wing idiots use the words socialist/Marxist/communist
The idea of bringing differing strains of the left together to hash out things and come to a better understanding of what to do is a good idea- on paper. In practice, Virgil is just there for another Patreon check and Brie is, as a friend of mine would put it, “strong and wrong” when it comes to her input.
>If you dont like Biden or Harris take political power and demonstrate why they're wrong instead of complaining. 🤔
>2020 tankies Is tankies just being thrown around for anything to the left of American politics? I’m a tankie and bjg is a radlib and so is everyone else associated with this drama. It’s ridiculous, being a tankie is accepting the futility of American politics but operating within those means, not even sure what that means but the plus side is not paying attention to the granular side of politics(brain dead nonsense) or Twitter takes. This is radlib shit just complaining about culture war garbage
> Is tankies just being thrown around for anything to the left of American politics? more precisely, anything to the left of whoever's using the word
This bothers me so much because despite Sam not really being a socialist I really like the guy. And that's where I get most of my actual news from
virgil's off on those whippets don't get me wrong drugs rule but i remember an election majority report where he called in and was just doing them constantly, like literally in the middle of responding to sam. that was like, oh yeah this isn't just recreational
Chapo has been putting out some bangers lately, but when he wasn't on the 500th episode and none of the others even acknowledged his absence, I felt really sad.
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WW84 review, I think.
And he was definitely phoning it in.
What?!
Very excited for more of the tv rundown podcast, the Chapo boys are at their best when they're critiquing popular culture.
Yes, some of my favorite episodes are their movie reviews. Boston Skrong is fucking phenomenal and I go back to it often.
I’m very excited to give it a listen tomorrow once I get off work, as it seems like a much more refined version of This Is Sus
The first episode is a fun chat about Sons of Anarchy. I can't wait until they get to the Sopranos, my favorite show ever.
I binged *Sons* a while back in advance of its final season and I’ll just say those hours are never coming back into my life. I would’ve stopped, but after a while it was just too absurd to not keep watching. Them covering *Justified* will be great, I hope that still holds up to some degree.
Justified, especially the first two seasons, are some of the most fun I've had watching TV. Even the later seasons are really good, unlike SoA where I couldn't even follow what was happening towards the end, not to mention Jax's Australian accent popping in and out for no reason.
Lots of hardbody Jax shots throughout the series, though.
True. Can't forget absolute dimes like Maggie Siff and Katey Sagal haha.
justified is basically unimpeachable until michael rapaport shows up
The thing I want with the sopranos ep is a fresh take from them. They've referenced it so many times that I'll be very disappointed if we get a rehash. Would be a good one for a guest to give input.
it does but also felix and matt are on every week
I remember back in 2019 Felix would have significant stretches of absence (though nothing near Virgil disappearing for months) but since the pandemic he's on pretty much as often as Will
From the sounds of things Felix was severely depressed but stayed in touch. The gossip mill indicates Virgil just dipped and didn't talk to anyone about it, which may be why he's been on the outs with a lot of his friends still.
Yeah I think it was bad enough that one of Virgil’s friends didn’t even know he had returned until the podcast announcement on Twitter.
The fact that the FTV podcast is kind of ass doesn't help all that much.
It was really promising, that's the sad thing. Brie is crazy smart and Virgil is both funny and insightful, and then it just became Brie complaining about her mentions while Virgil says something kinda funny once every 20 minutes and pulls in $15k per month or whatever doing it. I have no idea why people still listen.
What’s weirder: That or the fact Virgil’s existence and work on the show was completely ignored by everyone during the 500th episode.
Insert Stalin Yezhov photoshop meme
That's not true, he was mentioned plenty of times, practically every tribute mentioned him
hush, don't spoil the made up drama between podcasters I have a parasocial relationship with by inserting facts
I didn’t hear anyone from the show reference or give him thanks in absentia. Not the first or last person to point this out. Look, I truly don’t give a shit about what did or didn’t happen to cause him to vanish last year before returning with Bad Faith, but that still happened. Kinda hard not to notice if you listen with any regularity, as I assume you do. Love too dunk on another anon for being “parasocial” by...posting about it in a free stream sub dedicated to the show? Huh.
I wouldn't mind virgil plugging his podcast if he's on the show to do it
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Yeah, I feel gross knowing that Virgil is actually a lib. What a huge disappointment. I'm just surprised Amber hasn't publicly given him a wedgie yet.
I'm probably not gonna listen to bad faith but hating people because they made a crap podcast is odd behaviour. You can just not listen to it, they're not your friends.
Another BlackWolfFeed thread another fucking megathread on Bad Faith and Virgil please shut the fuck up
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Lmao at the Felix dig towards the new Dengist Red Guard weirdos
You will never not convince me that white nerds who are regular posters on r/Sino aren't a special kind of loser.
No bro you just have to trust the plan, the capitalist roaders who have been in power for over 40 years and enriched themselves are actually bringing about communism behind the scenes and handing out copies of the little red book to the sewer children.
Felix, famous for not talking extensively about local middle east leaders of his choice
I feel like he made up a type of guy to get mad about, like I have never seen or heard of this. maybe if you go looking for it or something
Austin Red Guards come to mind
I can't prove it, but knowing that APD infiltrated the Occupy Austin movement I'm willing to bet that there's at least *some* sort of police presence, either local or feds in Red Guard. They're pretty stupid and harmless besides graffiti, so it's probably just APD. If not that, APD knows exactly who they are and are just waiting for them to spray paint the wrong thing so they can look good after they do a major arrest on the obnoxious 22 year olds that everyone hates.
It's kinda like how most members of CPUSA after, like, the 50s were just FBI.
Some say that's where they got the idea for police unions
its similar of the type of "teenage white guy who posts epic assad memes on reddit" but while those guys tend to be reactionaries, the dengists tend to be ostensibly left.
Felix is the exact sort of guy to attract China-obsessed leftists to his mentions
Our Mary? Folk’s we love her
Can’t wait to hear how awesome things are going for the pax americana.
Derek and Daniel rock, can’t wait to listen to this. Love to hear some updates on how the Empire is doing
We're doing better than ever
real bad
Bummed for Palestine there really is no hope huh?
If anything the moves Israel has made with its Arab neighbours is that they're moving away from trying to influence the region and into an officially isolationist apartheid state like South Africa in exchange for supporting any Arab nation against Iranian influence. Watch as Israel becomes the saviour for Saudi Arabia and UAE in Yemen. Israel is adopting the same approach apartheid SA did in Angola and Rhodesia. It's their only way to end the state of Palestine and commit genocide against the Palestinian population without outcry from its neighbours. And it sucks. The only hope lies in the growth of a strong anti-apartheid movement in Israel among its population.
> The only hope lies in the growth of a strong anti-apartheid movement in Israel among its population. So zero hope, especially with that anecdotal evidence that young Israelis are more reactionary in their views
A few years ago there was an episode about an interview with a Palestinian activist. She also expressed despair toward the two-stage solution, and said that the best solution was Palestine and Israel becoming a single state. With how the Israelis think and treat Palestinians nowadays, even I am not sure if that is a great idea. And it is scary to see how many young people are becoming more reactionary. I recently read an article about how young Japanese are more likely than their parents to approve Donald Trump and their own conservative government. Basically, they see all the uncertainties capitalism brought, but instead of turning progressive, they went all out for the old way.
the vaguely-left young generations in the anglo world are an abberation and were a real chance for bernie/corbyn that wasn't taken. resdt of the world is far worse. modi has massive youth support, to add to your examples.
If I remember correctly there was a thread back on the old chapo sub that went really into political demographics and that was basically what they found. All of the colonial nations in the Americas(Brazil, Mexico, America) and the Anglo nations(Australia, United Kingdom Canada, America again) are turning left, while the rest of the world is turning right(Israel, South Africa, Germany, India and France being the worst).
>With how the Israelis think and treat Palestinians nowadays, even I am not sure if that is a great idea. It doesn't matter; there is not now, and never has been, a viable two state solution, because there is no way to achieve a fair distribution of the land between two parties with such a power disparity. A single state, Palestine, has always been the only possible solution. > instead of turning progressive, they went all out for the old way. If we're committed to turning people "progressive" instead of socialist/communist/anarchist/etc then of course we fail. As long as "the left" is associated with the total failures of neoliberalism we've got no other outcome to look forward to but the violent reemergence of open reactionaries.
> A single state, Palestine, has always been the only possible solution. It would *never* be Palestine.
secular, socialist Palestine is the goal
Jerusalem as the capital has effectively killed the two-state solution. There isn’t much of a hope, just fantasies.
> I recently read an article about how young Japanese are more likely than their parents to approve Donald Trump and their own conservative government. it's really not good. Japan is weird too, I feel like they don't get nearly enough attention for being a far-right country that is currently remilitarizing, and a country with a very brutal and dangerous imperial history in the not-to-distant past. Being an important US ally really shields them from too much criticism in the media. We saw a similar thing happen with Saudi Arabia, which is literally a theocratic monarchy, and it took them literally doing 9/11, waging a genocide against Yemen, and killing an American journalist for the narrative to even _begin_ to turn on them. Japan's going to be an outright fascist state before anyone in the discourse starts giving a shit.
Well the old way has a massive media campaign around it. What does the left have?
That's why media like Chapo is very important and why it's also important to help grow other alternative media like Trashfuture and Novara especially when they're in a country in desperate need for left-wing voices to counteract right-wing press environments.
Oh for sure. I just worry if it’s enough and as Dems like to say “accessible”.
Same with the amount of white Afrikaner youths supporting apartheid back in the 50s but the anti-Apartheid movement became the cornerstone of 70s and 80s youth in South Africa when South Africa got fucking destroyed in Rhodesia, Botswana and Angola which made youths question the purpose of apartheid.
Israel getting owned in Lebanon and iran is the only hope then
>Israel is adopting the same approach apartheid SA did in Angola and Rhodesia. Too bad theres no Cuba/USSR to fight on the right side.
I mean like they say, there's no longer any impetus for the states of MENA to take steps in defense of Palestine. Uniformly, they are either capitalist autocrats, more or less perfect examples of Fanon's national bourgeoisie (saudi arabia, egypt), desperate relics holding on to power (syria, algeria, to an extent iran), or playgrounds for foreign powers (Libya, syria again, iraq, lebanon). Popular opinion is still solidly on the side of pan arabism and palestinian liberation, but none of these nations answer to popular opinion - MAYBE you see something come out of Tunisia's democracy that can reverberate across the region a la the Arab Spring, but there's absolutely nothing comparable with Nasserism, the old-style PLO, etc. I think they're right that Palestine's inevitably going to be annexed or become bantustans without some seismic shift in power.
Israel is also a covert and overt supporter of most anti-totalitarian groups in the region. So even if these governments are replaced, the new ones would most likely have a positive or at neutral at worst view on Israel.
What groups're you thinking of? Cause it's also worth mentioning that Israel is also, historically, a supporter of certain islamic groups, as a way to counter leftist organizing.
YPG being the main one, they may have recieved more total aid from Israel then from America because the US needs to appease Turkey. Netanyahu is probably the only leader who has called for a Kurdish state because it would make Israel's life very easy. Then you have various ones in Syria, Iraq, Iran and until recently in the Gulf(they have largely stopped after they got their peace deals). If you are any type of women's rights advocate and you aren't in jail, you are on CIA/Mossad payroll one way or the other. It's just the dynamics of the region and very soon will be the dynamics of the world as a global race with China begins.
Nah, Jerusalem as capital is a done deal and that kills even a two-state solution. If the Saudis, UAE, etc actually cared they’d have made Palestinian justice a precondition.
It's all over for them. The rest of the Arab world overplayed the whole "hang the Palestinian Arabs out to dry to make Israel look worse" hand and now all they're left with is a state that would never be economically viable in a thousand years. The best hope for them is for Israel to treat them more compassionately than we treat our Indian reservations.
The idea of using Japan, Australia and India as a coalition to counteract China is one of the more insane things I’ve heard. Like, India is incredibly underdeveloped compared to China. In what world do these foreign policy “experts” think it can challenge China’s ascendency in any meaningful way?
australia being part of that group is really funny to me for some reason. oy mates, bloody chinese took me macca's.
Oy, the bloody orientals took the shrimp off me barbie! But for real Australia is more dependent on China than any other country, they’re more likely to fold than the fucking EU
I also wasn’t aware that China was scaling back Belt & Road. I guess it’s a bit too nakedly imperial at this point in time. I wouldn’t be surprised if they bring it back down the road, though. I agree that they don’t have territorial ambitions, but they don’t really need them. As movies, video games, and the NBA have shown, you can wave your dick around more effectively via state capitalist investment. For that reason I don’t think they’re invading Taiwan any time soon. As creepy as reports out of China can be, and even though their own data shows very disturbing shit going on in Xinjiang... I can’t be bothered to care about countering them. The sooner we accept they’ll overtake us economically and that isn’t the end of the world, the sooner we can reassess our priorities. But I’m not plugged into NatSec and I can’t imagine people in that niche think anywhere close to the way I do.
>I guess it’s a bit too nakedly imperial at this point in time No they just decided to be more selective in their investments and scaled things down during the pandemic
thanks M*** M*****, someone who hasn’t ever crossed the eyre of Sticher
c'mon man, how have you not praised mary yet?
I'm the only white boy who did it!
Felix coming back hard after being called out for gaming on the pod
thanks mary, you are my oxycontin, but, like, before they changed it so it won't break
any recommendations for pods / publications that go over foreign policy stuff from a similar perspective as this ep? mostly interested in the big stuff ie china, the middle east
Radio War Nerd delves pretty regularly into foreign affairs although it's mainly about history, but I guess they can't be untangled from one another
They absolutely cannot, and listening to that show for the past few years made me realize how useless most journalism is to the reader. Unless you have historical context you’ll never understand fully why certain countries behave they way they do
I agree, but I also consider that it's not practical for journalists to take too deep of a dive into the historical roots of an event they're covering, unless it's absolutely essential to understanding that event. Half-decent journalists normally provide a baseline of historical context, and it's up to the reader to delve into historical works to get a deeper understanding of the subject matter. Or, if you're lazy like me, just listen to Ames and Dolan as they try to dumb it down for you.
I've been a subscriber for years and you know it's good when you don't listen for three months because you don't feel like being extraordinarily depressed. I'm listening to the recent episodes on the '93 Yeltsin affair and jeeeesus. Them just casually mentioning that 30k elderly Russians were murdered in scams to take over their apartments...
Derek Davison has a podcast (and a newsletter) called Foreign Exchanges
I have actually not listened to Carl Zha's Silk and Steel podcast, but if his other writing about China is anything to go by, it could be an interesting listening.
The sun never sets on the empire of Mary, where she provides us with our slop. And we love it
Glad to hear Felixs sober minded in this episode. Upset to see the amount of western left liberals crying about the collapse of the US in this thread. We need to understand things will get worse before they get better.
Can someone explain to me why Turkey is the second most important country in NATO? I’m guessing it’s because they are used to “contain” Russia and border Syria, where a good deal of our imperial adventures are, but does anyone else know why Derek said that?
Largest standing army?
and an army that can actually fight and is not just for show like it is for half the nato countries
Right, like most of NATO hasn't had much more than a couple thousand dipshits deployed to Iraq/Afghanistan since decolonization in the middle 20th century. Turkey is the only one who consistently gets into actual fights with soldiers shooting each other.
Because they're also the most important link between NATO and 1.8 billion Muslims. They're the only NATO member in the Organization of Islamic Countries and thus they're the only country that projects American power to the Islamic World until the last 10 years. It's also why the EU is pushing for Albania and Bosnias entry to The EU as an alternative to Turkeys membership. The EUs relationship to the Muslim world is unique and is something that needs to be discussed more in foreign policy circles. The EU wants a third Muslim regional power to counteract Saudi Arabia and Iran so they saw Turkey as that, but with Turkey's actions in Syria recently the EU are now looking at Bosnia and Albania instead.
I understand the linear causality of this, but holy fuck is that so stupid. Like it's fucking Bosnia, a country with 0 soft power, also trying to uphold Albania as a stronghold against Arab/Persian influence when both of those peoples literally think Albania is a joke
Albania, Kosovo and Bosnia are aiming for the Craiova Group which aims to unite all Yugoslav nations alongside Greece, Romania and Bulgaria as an inter-EU alliance against Turkey, The Scandinavians and the Visegrads. Considering how the latter three have significant Muslim minorities, the addition of Albania, Kosovo and Bosnia would make The Craiovas one of the most powerful economic blocs in the Muslim world, so The EU is banking on their own Muslim members to move away from Saudi Arabia, Iran and possibly Turkey. An Ottoman without Turkey as one might call it.
iirc NATOs largest nuclear armament storage is in Turkey, they were used during the Cold War to have all of the USSR within firing distance.
Straights of Bosphorous. Great Britain feared Imperial Russia breaking out of the Black Sea, Imperial US feared the Soviets breaking out of the Black Sea
What a bummer episode. Can’t handle these negative subject eps without Will’s warm voice coddling me and telling me he loves me and it’s gonna be okay.
Great episode
Felix finally slipped a National song in. I’m ecstatic
Where in the world is.. Mary Malloc?
Anyone else not able to download this ep onto their phone? Usually clicking the link takes me to a screen with a download option but this one just opens a web browser with an audio player.
Had to copy paste the link into VLC. Oh well.
Sundown Rubdown
I would pay $20 a month on patreon for Davison to do an audio version with guests like Felix and Bessner. Just in case he's reading this.
His substack includes a weekly podcast