Angry Planet

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s reign has been defined by constant conflict. From Chechnya to Ukraine and many other wars in between, Putin’s Russia has constantly been pushing at its borders and sending troops abroad. How have those wars shaped Russia and the world? And what does it all have to do with Ukraine?That’s the subject of the new book Putin’s Wars. Its author is here with us today. Its friend of the show: Mark Galeotti. Galeotti is a public policy fellow at the Wilson Center in Washington, DC. He’s also the host of the excellent In Moscow’s Shadows podcast.Click here to buy Mark's book, Putin's Wars: From Chechnya to Ukraine.Angry Planet has a substack! Join the Information War to get weekly insights into our angry planet and hear more conversations about a world in conflict.https://angryplanet.substack.com/subscribeYou can listen to Angry Planet on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or follow our RSS directly. Our website is angryplanetpod.com. You can reach us on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/angryplanetpodcast/; and on Twitter: @angryplanetpod.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We’re running our Thanksgiving break episode a week early. We’ll be back next week to talk with Mark Galeotti about Russia, Kherson, and the missiles that just hit Poland.This week, we’re going far back into our past. It’s a Timothy Snyder double feature. Both of these episodes are from our “War College” days and feature the famous historian at two different points in his journey to the cable news pundit we feel (well, I feel) weirdly ambivalent towards today.The first is from 2015, and is a disucssion about his book Black Earth. The second is from 2018 and is about his book Road to Unfreedom.Angry Planet has a substack! Join the Information War to get weekly insights into our angry planet and hear more conversations about a world in conflict.https://angryplanet.substack.com/subscribeYou can listen to Angry Planet on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or follow our RSS directly. Our website is angryplanetpod.com. You can reach us on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/angryplanetpodcast/; and on Twitter: @angryplanetpod.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today it’s all about the bomb. Nuclear weapons are back in a big way and everything about the Cold War suddenly feels very fresh. Nukes are strange things. They’ve only been used twice and the language and knowledge around them can often feel arcane, almost religious. There’s all these little rituals in nuclear space. We’re gonna talk about one of those rituals today—the Nuclear Posture Review. Once in every U.S. presidential administration, the nuclear curtain is withdrawn and we get a glimpse at what the Pentagon, and critically, the President is thinking. But what is the Nuclear Posture Review? Who writes it? And what does it have to do with the price of gas in an apocalyptic nuclear hellscape.Here to answer some of those questions for us today is Stephen Young. Young is the Senior Washington Representative for the Union of Concerned Scientists, the former Deputy Director of the Coalition to Reduce Nuclear Dangers, and consulted on this most recent review.The Nuclear Posture ReviewNuke Experts Are Horrified by Biden’s New ‘Nuclear Posture Review’Angry Planet has a substack! Join the Information War to get weekly insights into our angry planet and hear more conversations about a world in conflict.https://angryplanet.substack.com/subscribeYou can listen to Angry Planet on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or follow our RSS directly. Our website is angryplanetpod.com. You can reach us on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/angryplanetpodcast/; and on Twitter: @angryplanetpod.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I’m sorry, we have to talk about Elon Musk one more time. Or, as Jason said. “Twitter: Now With More Musk!”But seriously. This episode is about more than Musk. It’s about how conflict has gotten … weird. We start with a conversation about a new podcast about the weird future of war. Then we asked one question about Musk and things spiraled out of control.Has conflict gotten …weirder? Have the lines gotten blurrier? Why are cartoon Shiba Inu dogs yelling at Russian officials online? Why is the JAVELIN weapons system a saint? Why does that HIMARS system look … horny? When is an innocent meme not an innocent meme and what has the internet done to the way we fight?War … was has changed. Shitposts, disinformation, trolls farms in Macedonia, and Telegram channels full of gore videos that would make the average Ogrish visitor weep. (That was for you very old heads)So much of this feels like war …. Not exactly war but … something close. If only there were a podcast that explored these various phenomena and explained the recent origin of them.Well … it just so happens there is. It’s called LikeWar and returning guest Peter W. Singer is one of its hosts. He’s here with us today to talk about the show.Listen to Likewar on iTunes.Angry Planet has a substack! Join the Information War to get weekly insights into our angry planet and hear more conversations about a world in conflict.https://angryplanet.substack.com/subscribeYou can listen to Angry Planet on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or follow our RSS directly. Our website is angryplanetpod.com. You can reach us on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/angryplanetpodcast/; and on Twitter: @angryplanetpod.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today we’re talking about Elon Musk — not because we want to, but because we have to. As we all know, the man is rich. I don’t mean merely wealthy, I mean he could pay off a good portion of the national deficit.He’s also not shy, to the point where he likes to tell entire countries what to do. They may not do it, but they’re forced to react.Bloomberg’s Iain Marlow, who covers diplomacy, has written a great piece about what Musk is up to now.Musk Tweets Complicate US Diplomacy From Ukraine to TaiwanThe CNN piece where the DoD throws Musk under the busAngry Planet has a substack! Join the Information War to get weekly insights into our angry planet and hear more conversations about a world in conflict.https://angryplanet.substack.com/subscribeYou can listen to Angry Planet on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or follow our RSS directly. Our website is angryplanetpod.com. You can reach us on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/angryplanetpodcast/; and on Twitter: @angryplanetpod.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Alt Weeklies are an important part of America’s media landscape. It’s local reporting from people with a different point of view and different goals. If you’re mad at mainstream narratives you could do worse than picking up, say, the Inlander out of the Pacific Northwest. If you want to know what’s really going on there, how worried you should be about budding extremist movements, and what role politicians are playing in our current various crises, it’s a good place to start.With us today is Daniel Walters. Walters is an award-winning investigative journalist at the Inlander where he covers right-wing extremism, politics, and maybe just a little bit of pop culture.Angry Planet has a substack! Join the Information War to get weekly insights into our angry planet and hear more conversations about a world in conflict.https://angryplanet.substack.com/subscribeYou can listen to Angry Planet on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or follow our RSS directly. Our website is angryplanetpod.com. You can reach us on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/angryplanetpodcast/; and on Twitter: @angryplanetpod.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In an attempt to shore up its rapidly crumbling position in Ukraine, Moscow has partially mobilized the people. In response, many of those people are fleeing. But where can they go? Russia has spent the last 100 years bullying, invading, and killing its immediate neighbors. Places like Georgia are seeing a huge influx of Russian military aged males. How do the Georgians feel about this? It’s complicated.With us today to talk about this is James Jackson. Jackson is a freelance journalist in German and Central and Eastern Europe. He was in Tbilisi, the capitol of Georgia when Russians fleeing mobilization started to show up. And he’s here with us today to talk about it. It’s the subject of his latest in Time: Why a Fresh Russian Exodus to Georgia is So Polarizing.Here’s a link to the video Jackson describes in the show.Angry Planet has a substack! Join the Information War to get weekly insights into our angry planet and hear more conversations about a world in conflict.https://angryplanet.substack.com/subscribeYou can listen to Angry Planet on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or follow our RSS directly. Our website is angryplanetpod.com. You can reach us on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/angryplanetpodcast/; and on Twitter: @angryplanetpod.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There’s unrest in Iran right now. People have taken to the streets, the internet has been restricted for “security reasons” authorities say, and there’s been clashes with police. This all started after a young woman, Mahsa Amini, was arrested by Iranian moral police. She died while in custody. Her death and the circumstances around it kicked off the current protests, but the unrest is part of a long continuum of uprising and suppression in Iran that’s as old as the Islamic Revolution of 1979.With us today is Maral Karimi. Karimi is a PhD candidate at the University of Toronto and the author of The Iranian Green Movement of 2009, Reverberating Echoes of Resistance.Angry Planet has a substack! Join the Information War to get weekly insights into our angry planet and hear more conversations about a world in conflict.https://angryplanet.substack.com/subscribeYou can listen to Angry Planet on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or follow our RSS directly. Our website is angryplanetpod.com. You can reach us on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/angryplanetpodcast/; and on Twitter: @angryplanetpod.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The vast majority of Chinese people come from a single ethnic group—the Han. So what’s life like for the millions of people who aren’t Han? Tough, it’s fair to say. Ask any Tibetan.But one group has been singled out for particular persecution, the Uyghurs. There are about 12 million Uyghurs, they mostly live in a province called Xinjiang and mostly Muslim.And the Chinese appear to be trying to wipe out at least their culture. Many countries have condemned the Chinese for this, but the United Nations has been slow, slow, slow to take any action.That’s finally changed with a new report.Joining us to talk about the situation are two people working for Human Rights Watch, Louis Charboneau, at the UN, and Sophie Richardson, who works on issues in China.Angry Planet has a substack! Join the Information War to get weekly insights into our angry planet and hear more conversations about a world in conflict.https://angryplanet.substack.com/subscribeYou can listen to Angry Planet on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or follow our RSS directly. Our website is angryplanetpod.com. You can reach us on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/angryplanetpodcast/; and on Twitter: @angryplanetpod.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What seemed unthinkable a year ago has come to pass. Ukraine has started its counter offensive and in a shockingly short amount of time has pushed Russia out of much of its territory. The Russian military appears to be collapsing with a rapidity that is shocking pretty much everyone.Well, maybe not everyone. People who’ve been paying attention to the minutiae of the war aren’t as surprised as the rest of us. That’s kind of been a pattern in coverage and punditry of Russia’s invasion.One of those smart guys is here to talk with us today on Angry Planet. It’s returning guest Aram Shabanian. He’s the Open-Source Information Gathering Manager at New Lines Institute, one of the minds behind The Fulda Gap, and one of the best Twitter follows you can snag @ShabanianAram.Angry Planet has a substack! Join the Information War to get weekly insights into our angry planet and hear more conversations about a world in conflict.https://angryplanet.substack.com/subscribeYou can listen to Angry Planet on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or follow our RSS directly. Our website is angryplanetpod.com. You can reach us on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/angryplanetpodcast/; and on Twitter: @angryplanetpod.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.