This week, the team starts with Russian poison and ends with American poison.
The big interview on this episode is Nate speaking with Amber Mathwig (@tooterbelle) about a recent trend in the defense contractor wold in which women are taking over leadership positions. In the world of neo-liberalism, this is hailed as a great achievement! Finally women are finding their place as not just cogs in the industrial war machine, but standing at the forefront of killing the shit out of Yemeni civilians with arms sold to the Saudis. Truly a woker world that we are living in.
For the regular episode, Francis, Nate and Adrian go over the recent attempts from Russia to just poison the shit out of whoever they want because why the hell not? And to be fair, it's not like America stays in their own lanes and leaves everyone alone. But why are the Russians so bad at it? Have they ever watched The Wire? Do they not know you can buy a burner phone and chuck it into a sewer when you're done with all your crimes?
Nate and Adrian both have some knowledge. Nate works with someone pretty keyed in with the Russian populace and Adrian spent a good amount of time working in Ukraine. The consensus is that it's not so much about intimidating the outside world so much as it is impressing the world inside Russia and make the people feel they have power over the world. Which of course they do, Russia is one of the big nuclear powers in the world. But they gotta save face.
Then we discuss the DoD's shiny new video to explain to you the branches of the military using what appears to be an animator from Homestar Runner to give your kids an idea of just how well we blow up "bad guys" all over the world. One of which happens to look like a kid playing pirate, but I suppose it will keep your little ones from running off to Somalia to join a pirate crew taking over Russian oil tankers