Angry Planet

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.

This will be the last episode we do on Afghanistan for a bit. We wanted to give the final word to a U.S. Marine who served there.We’re now a year out from the fall of Kabul and what looks like the end of America’s uniformed involvement in Afghanistan. There are as many as 70,000 Afghans who helped the United States during the war who are still looking to get out.Elliot Ackerman, who served in the region as a Marine and as a CIA operative, was trying to help as the last flights were taking off from Kabul’s Airport.It was, as Ackerman saw it, the Fifth Act of the Afghan War.He’s joining us today to talk about both his war and his views of the fall. He’s the author of both novels and non-fiction, including Dark at the Crossing, Green on Blue, and Red Dress in Black and White. We’ll put the full list in the show notes. His latest book, looking at these final days is The Fifth Act: America’s End in Afghanistan.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.

It’s been a year since the U.S. left Afghanistan in disarray. We’ve spoken to a number of people who have been to Afghanistan over the years on this show. That includes journalists who walked into Kabul with the Taliban the first time, in 1996, soldiers who fought in Afghanistan throughout the war, and more recently, a man who was supposed to be fighting corruption but found it to be worse than a losing battle.Today, NPR’s Steve Inskeep joins us. He recently visited Afghanistan and spent some time with the Taliban.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.

Dissent. It’s a word people don’t like to hear, especially coming from the military. But it’s also a vitally important component of any vibrant democracy. Dissent, especially informed dissent, can pull us back from the brink and help us make better choices. We are one year out from the end of America’s direct involvement in Afghanistan and, after two decades of war, it’s time to start listening to the dissenters.That’s what the new book Paths of Dissent: Soldiers Speak Out Against America’s Misguided Wars hopes to do: give voice to that informed dissent.With us today is one of the books’ editors, returning guest Andrew Bacevich. Bacevich is a West Point graduate, a 23 year U.S. Army Veteran, a professor emeritus of history and international relations at Boston University, and … a dissenter.Buy the book here.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.

To say there are widespread reports of abuses by Russian troops in Ukraine is to undersell it. There have been hundreds and hundreds of cases claiming rape, torture, and murder. Last week, a video of the torture and execution of a Ukrainian soldier at the hands of Russian soldiers shocked the world.We call these things war crimes and crimes against humanity. But that’s a relatively new concept. Today we’re going to talk about the Nuremberg Trials, which took some vague ideals and put them into practice.Joining us today to talk about the Nuremberg Trials is John Barrett. He’s a Professor of Law at St. John's University, a biographer of former U.S. Attorney General and Nuremberg chief prosecutor Robert H. Jackson.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.