Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, welcome to another episode of Eyes on Jill Politics.
Speaker 1: I'm joined today with JT. Patten and Jack Murphy, our
Speaker 1: deer leader.
Speaker 2: Help.
Speaker 1: Everyone had a great Christmas and it is excited for
Speaker 1: New Years. Uh, this one's gonna be about Venezuela and
Speaker 1: what's going down there. I mean, we just found out,
Speaker 1: you know, it just was confirmed and posted yesterday that
Speaker 1: there was a drone strike. I wouldn't say it was
Speaker 1: a port exactly. It was just like a place where
Speaker 1: like they basically loaded unload drugs, supposing no casualties. It
Speaker 1: happened I think like a week or so ago. President
Speaker 1: Trump mentioned it like kind of ambiguously in in an interview,
Speaker 1: and then you know, journalists started doing their jobs and
Speaker 1: stuff like that, and uh, we got to confirmed yesterday
Speaker 1: that there was a drone strike on land in Venezuela.
Speaker 1: So that's a little bit of a change to what
Speaker 1: we've been seeing with like you know, massive military building
Speaker 1: up and the drought and the strikes on boats in
Speaker 1: the Caribbean and in the Pacific and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: So JT, how you doing. What's your take on all this?
Speaker 2: Good? Thanks for having me. Course, I think a lot
Speaker 2: of it's a little bit of a joke, you know,
Speaker 2: not necessarily a joke for those that are getting smoked.
Speaker 2: But we're definitely ramping up activity there in Venezuela, in
Speaker 2: and around. But I'm not so sure that the narrative
Speaker 2: still fits everything. I don't think, you know, I don't
Speaker 2: think much has changed since about twenty ten when I
Speaker 2: was covering this. I think even some I read something
Speaker 2: the other day there was an interview by Marshall billings Late,
Speaker 2: who's dealing with the Treasury right now. I remember like
Speaker 2: twenty ten Marshall had my report. Actually I'm not knocking him,
Speaker 2: and because I'm sure that Marshall doesn't usually do the
Speaker 2: collection of intel and the analysis of it, but he's
Speaker 2: got a lot of people that give it to him.
Speaker 2: But I think that, you know, whether it's the drug cartels,
Speaker 2: whether it's the Hezbolah narrative, I think it's a little
Speaker 2: bit overstated and largely you know, focused for regime change
Speaker 2: and maybe even more so on natural resources, which as
Speaker 2: you know, the oil, you know, So it just just
Speaker 2: kind of remarks out the gate to kind of show
Speaker 2: where where it kind of where I stand.
Speaker 3: Doesn't that seem to like contradict. Well, it's certainly some
Speaker 3: of the statements that are d and I tools Gabbart
Speaker 3: has made, But I mean even more so beyond that,
Speaker 3: it's just, you know, it feels like some sort of
Speaker 3: flashback getting into a regime change war based on false pretenses.
Speaker 3: Didn't we play this out about twenty years ago?
Speaker 2: Yeah, And we don't usually do real good job of
Speaker 2: regime change. Regime change. I mean, if we're talking about here,
Speaker 2: you know, here's the narrative. We want to get rid
Speaker 2: of cartels in and around the area. We want to
Speaker 2: get rid of Hezbollah's influence. We want to get rid
Speaker 2: of the corruption and crime. All of those things happen
Speaker 2: when you disrupt the government change er is regime without
Speaker 2: having a full plan of what you're looking to do.
Speaker 2: This is more of a depose the tyrant and seize
Speaker 2: the oil fields and gather those around. And what happens
Speaker 2: is then you've got this vacuum for the disruption of
Speaker 2: everything that's going on over there, and it incites anything
Speaker 2: that may be there into more more of a problem.
Speaker 2: Plus we're talking about you know, securing borders. You're going
Speaker 2: to send a whole bunch of Venezuelans then after that
Speaker 2: out into the world and increasing a lot of those efforts.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I think I think they don't have such
Speaker 2: a such a great plan, and I'd be curious. I mean,
Speaker 2: with the Fulca Gabbert, you know, where are they getting
Speaker 2: the intel? The US hasn't had a lot of operations.
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm not speaking out turn here, but it's
Speaker 2: been an unpervisive environment. Okay if you look at the
Speaker 2: five eyes of who's actually been in Venezuela and able
Speaker 2: to operate conduct intel operations Canada until I think the
Speaker 2: last ten years, and the UK right now has has
Speaker 2: allowed is allowed to have an embassy there. We have
Speaker 2: not for years. So you've got you've have.
Speaker 3: Any interestingly, just to interrupt from sorry JT. Yeah, because
Speaker 3: I've heard I've heard this from a friend of mine
Speaker 3: working down there. We do maintain the embassy grounds in Venezuela,
Speaker 3: but it's not an official embassy. It's not opened, but
Speaker 3: it's maintained and they're keeping it maintained because if things change,
Speaker 3: we could be coming back.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's I think. I it's interesting. I mean it's
Speaker 2: the UK definitely has the ability, you know from traditional
Speaker 2: means of espionage and even just being there having the
Speaker 2: most resources. And I think it was November they said
Speaker 2: after you know, Trump was saying that, you know, the drugs,
Speaker 2: we got a lot of trafficking networks and stuff. Once
Speaker 2: that was there there like we're out, We're not sharing
Speaker 2: any more intel with you, because essentially that whole premise
Speaker 2: of what we were going to do was going to
Speaker 2: really kind of jack things up for them as well.
Speaker 3: I want to talk about this latest airstrike that d
Speaker 3: was mentioning. We seem to have found out in the
Speaker 3: news in the last twenty four hours that the drone
Speaker 3: strike on this whatever embarkation facility in Venezuela was done
Speaker 3: under Title fifty Covert Action Authorities by the CIA, which
Speaker 3: is a new thing. The other strikes that have been
Speaker 3: done in the Caribbean the Pacific, supposedly against drug boats
Speaker 3: have been done by the Department of the Fan. I
Speaker 3: think heavily, you know, heavy showing from Jaysack actually, but
Speaker 3: this is the first one that has been done under
Speaker 3: CIA authorities.
Speaker 2: So I didn't I don't I should have taken a
Speaker 2: look at the map of where that is beforehand before
Speaker 2: it came on. But I let's break this down. Maybe
Speaker 2: one percent of drug running in the in the in
Speaker 2: the world is coming from Venezuela. Okay, well one percent,
Speaker 2: and that's just the trafficking aspect of it. So you've
Speaker 2: got ninety percent of drug trafficking in and around that
Speaker 2: area that's not coming from that specific region. It's all
Speaker 2: going you know, West Pacific, it's going east specific. Very
Speaker 2: little is in the Eastern Caribbean. I think when you
Speaker 2: look at that as a as a trafficking hub, there
Speaker 2: used to be a statistic. I mean, I had it
Speaker 2: in a report I don't know years back. I think
Speaker 2: it was twelve percent of cocaine trafficking proceeds we're going
Speaker 2: to hez Blah in and around Venezuela. Okay. So if
Speaker 2: you're taking about one percent of that of that drug trafficking,
Speaker 2: even you know, just holistically going out of that area,
Speaker 2: I think you're taking a small percentage of that. It's
Speaker 2: really not that profitable for hes Blah and a lot
Speaker 2: of those individuals in there. So as a drug trafficking
Speaker 2: hub and where this is launching from, I mean, it's
Speaker 2: it's I don't I don't see it as a as
Speaker 2: a massive massive threat. So why why that? You know?
Speaker 2: I I don't know, especially if if it's where I
Speaker 2: think it is, if it's in the I think it
Speaker 2: was like the things they pronounced like yu or something area,
Speaker 2: But that is where they had a little bit more
Speaker 2: of the Muslim population of x Elebanese.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 2: You know, that's an area where if you're if you're
Speaker 2: starting to poke around there and starting to do some strikes,
Speaker 2: I mean that is I mean, if you're worried about
Speaker 2: increasing the capability of Hezbollah, I think ideologically probably just
Speaker 2: inciting a little bit more of that area. Do you
Speaker 2: know more about where specifically that was and what the
Speaker 2: auspices of that strike was? You know, given I think
Speaker 2: the boat strikes and everything that was happening.
Speaker 3: Not a whole lot has come out. I don't know
Speaker 3: where have we gotten any location on that or anything?
Speaker 5: D Uh from this article?
Speaker 1: Uh, there wasn't anything specific in there in terms of
Speaker 1: where it was.
Speaker 5: I'm just looking double and back.
Speaker 3: You knew something was up because Trump was being so
Speaker 3: vague about it when he talked about this strike, because
Speaker 3: if it was a d D strike, they'd just say
Speaker 3: it was D O D. And then this one's kind
Speaker 3: of like I'm not gonna I'll say you who did it,
Speaker 3: and it was a d D.
Speaker 5: Strike, they would have had video on an urban on
Speaker 5: social media.
Speaker 2: Strike on a dock where the US supposed to believes
Speaker 2: trend Urugua was there were there storing Okay, I mean
Speaker 2: let's also put this in his perspective, that friend Aruga
Speaker 2: and the the other little cartel that they were worried about.
Speaker 2: I mean, it pales in comparison to anything that the
Speaker 2: Mexican cartels do. Now, a lot of those areas and
Speaker 2: this is I think kind of interesting too. This is
Speaker 2: where I'd be like totally on board. We're just fucking
Speaker 2: with Iran because around those whole areas are a lot
Speaker 2: of oil refineries and shipping points for Iranian oil production
Speaker 2: and transfers. Okay, I mean Iran and Venezuela were founding
Speaker 2: members of OPEC in nineteen sixty. I guess it was.
Speaker 2: So Iran has had a massive presence in and around
Speaker 2: that area, especially around the oil refineries and production. So
Speaker 2: if you're also looking at a lot of the major
Speaker 2: ports over there, it could also have like kind of
Speaker 2: a dual capability of just kind of hat you know,
Speaker 2: we're saying this under the auspices of drugs, but we
Speaker 2: can find with your oil and oil shipments at any
Speaker 2: point in time. I mean, for me, if you've got
Speaker 2: a strategic purpose and if you're united with a bunch
Speaker 2: of other countries in that, I think that's pretty cool,
Speaker 2: you know, just to just to jack with them a
Speaker 2: little bit. Maybe there's some type of disruption that you know,
Speaker 2: I'm not privy to, but I think what's going on here,
Speaker 2: I don't know. I think it's a it's a little
Speaker 2: bit of a stretch, as you said, suggestive Jack.
Speaker 5: So what happens now?
Speaker 1: I mean, we've had, you know, a huge build up
Speaker 1: of military ad naval assets in the Caribbean for going
Speaker 1: on a couple of months. Now you've seen different like
Speaker 1: numbers to like fifteen of the navy and stuff. Seems
Speaker 1: like they keep taking stuff from into pay com, which
Speaker 1: you know, I thought that was our focus. Now that
Speaker 1: you know, g Watt was over what happens now? I mean,
Speaker 1: is this just a holding pattern? Is it to apply
Speaker 1: pressure on medor to get out of Venezuela. There was
Speaker 1: some chat about talks that they were having with Maduro
Speaker 1: and stuff, but he was asking for like him and
Speaker 1: like a hundred people of his to be able to
Speaker 1: get out him, to have amnesty and all that our immunity.
Speaker 1: What do we look is this just like a big
Speaker 1: bluff because it seems like.
Speaker 2: And maybe I don't know, and I don't again, I
Speaker 2: don't want to tie to like a conspiracy theory and
Speaker 2: trying to go against our own you know, politics right
Speaker 2: now of saying, you know, they're completely off the wall
Speaker 2: because they like they maybe may have agenda that that
Speaker 2: I don't know a lot. Let's let's think historically, you know,
Speaker 2: during this escalation period of what things have been said
Speaker 2: over the last year. Okay, one who want to take
Speaker 2: over Greenland because they got resources? We want to invade
Speaker 2: Canada and because they've got resources. Then again, I know
Speaker 2: it's just kind of believe, but then you kind of
Speaker 2: but if you are thinking of expanding, where can you
Speaker 2: get a bunch of resources fast and everybody else is
Speaker 2: turning you down? Who can you fuck with that? Really,
Speaker 2: nobody's going to fuck back with Venezuela. You know, they've
Speaker 2: got a lot of reserves. So Russia is not going
Speaker 2: to do much. They don't really have a military presence
Speaker 2: in and around that area to protect what's Iran going
Speaker 2: to do. They're not going to do a whole lot either.
Speaker 2: Most other people are not going to get into a
Speaker 2: conflict with it because they do recognize. I mean it's
Speaker 2: a corrupt area, don't get me wrong. I mean there's
Speaker 2: massive amounts of corruption. It's a massive hub for money
Speaker 2: laundering and always has so I think it is a
Speaker 2: little bit of a wag the dog just to be
Speaker 2: able to get some of those resources under our control
Speaker 2: and do it in such a way that it's not
Speaker 2: going to disrupt a whole lot. Now, one of the
Speaker 2: things that I saw the other day was continue to
Speaker 2: talk about Marguerite Island as being a this massive hezbola
Speaker 2: training camp area and this is kind of the bee hive. Yeah,
Speaker 2: bit of bullshit, because you had You've got three main
Speaker 2: clans that were like Elevenese expats in and around those areas,
Speaker 2: and then they control a lot of the trade. In
Speaker 2: many cases they are involved with some of the corruption.
Speaker 2: A lot more trade based money laundry. That's a lot
Speaker 2: more profitable. I mean, instead of running a boat full
Speaker 2: of drugs out into the Caribbean, you'd rather take a
Speaker 2: shipment of ladies panties that you are invoicing for twenty
Speaker 2: dollars that you got for one dollar, and you're getting
Speaker 2: that profitability to launder money and get paid for the
Speaker 2: laundering of that one years ago, and this is going
Speaker 2: back into two again about twenty ten and we were
Speaker 2: supporting DoD some opposite capabilities. We're looking at Margarita Island
Speaker 2: and at the time, I don't know if you remember
Speaker 2: the name of Raman who was isis involved individual he
Speaker 2: had missed, He had disappeared from Iraq, was in Syria.
Speaker 2: I think he ended up being killed in like twenty
Speaker 2: eleven in Pakistan. He was also with a guy named
Speaker 2: Majub who is a Venezuelan businessman. So we had a
Speaker 2: source that captured the picture of Margharita Island of him
Speaker 2: getting on on on board. There was a picture of
Speaker 2: some past sports. We had the capability to say that
Speaker 2: he was there, and it was widely refuted throughout the community.
Speaker 2: There's no way that he would be there. Why the
Speaker 2: hell would he be. Well, if you take a look
Speaker 2: at that island and that family that owns it, that
Speaker 2: the Klan, the Nasardine, Well, there was a guy Gazi
Speaker 2: and Azardine, who was Venezuelan Lebanese born. He was the
Speaker 2: diplomat in Syria at the time, so there's a lot
Speaker 2: of people being flown back and forth through that through
Speaker 2: the airlines to Venezuela, and I think the rhetoric was, well,
Speaker 2: if he's there, then they're planning on hebela tax into
Speaker 2: the US stuff, you know, via Isis and that bullshit
Speaker 2: what ended up happening. If you think about that area,
Speaker 2: they are known for passport forgery and allowing dual identification
Speaker 2: for Hezbolah and another number of other groups whoever's willing
Speaker 2: to pay. So essentially you're targeting this island which is
Speaker 2: supposed to be this big training camp, and if you
Speaker 2: look at it, I mean, he's probably like going out
Speaker 2: to the Sarasota. There isn't that much. That's not how
Speaker 2: Hezbola trains anyway, and it's pretty much just money laundering.
Speaker 2: The fact that you've got a sanctuary and you're able
Speaker 2: to get a whole bunch of IDs, and I think
Speaker 2: that kind of plays into I mean, it's like, you know,
Speaker 2: it's not so hard that you couldn't do surveillance and
Speaker 2: see that there's nothing going there.
Speaker 1: Isn't like a battalion of guys doing fucking chin ups
Speaker 1: and stuff malcy bars.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, well, I think that's you know, I think
Speaker 2: that's some of the narrative that we get caught up
Speaker 2: into this this and and that narrative has persisted for decades. Now.
Speaker 2: You know, people project an isis Gorilla model onto HeLa.
Speaker 2: The media definitely simplifies presence into training camps. I mean,
Speaker 2: if you're talking about real HESBLA operatives training there their
Speaker 2: training and around uh Western tourists that are there and
Speaker 2: in the damn casinos understanding the businesses. I mean, that's
Speaker 2: where anybody if they were doing any training, you'd be
Speaker 2: getting that type of training. I think the intelligence and
Speaker 2: set assessments a lot of times conflate facilitation with training,
Speaker 2: and I think the you know, the criminal and you know,
Speaker 2: in this case maybe political interests definitely benefit by some
Speaker 2: of that is exaggeration. So I mean it's you know,
Speaker 2: you're you're dealing with networks, You're you're not dealing with
Speaker 2: terrain situation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've heard over the years some interesting stories about
Speaker 3: Central America, like Panama comes to mind, and this was
Speaker 3: a ways back where they were getting tips that there
Speaker 3: were al Qaeda guys coming through Panama, and of course
Speaker 3: that sends up some red flags when they looked at
Speaker 3: it though they were using it as a vacation spot.
Speaker 3: Maybe they were doing some like light like fundraising, but
Speaker 3: they weren't using it to plan external operations.
Speaker 1: Interestingly enough, well Panama is like a massive hub for
Speaker 1: UH money laundering and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that in most of those cases, you
Speaker 2: don't need a state to be operating from. You just
Speaker 2: need a place where you have permission to be in
Speaker 2: someplace that's going to cover up where you are, and
Speaker 2: that's not going to you know, it's going to give
Speaker 2: you some financial opacity, you're going to get some political protection,
Speaker 2: you may have some ideological alignment in some of those
Speaker 2: small communities there, and it's going to give you the
Speaker 2: freedom of movement. I think what's also kind of interesting
Speaker 2: when they always try to link a lot of Lebanese
Speaker 2: in and around those areas, a lot of those people
Speaker 2: are Marinite Christians. So you probably have maybe ten percent
Speaker 2: of those Lebanes out there that are even Muslim she is,
Speaker 2: But yet they're all operating together in these networks. Why
Speaker 2: because they're just making money. They're not looking to bomb something,
Speaker 2: you know, and send in a whole bunch of armies.
Speaker 2: These guys are facilitators, and many of them are very
Speaker 2: high ranking ranking, not in like his blat membership, but
Speaker 2: in the political scheme. So when you think about deposing
Speaker 2: a government and they're talking about Maduro having maybe one
Speaker 2: hundred people, I mean, these are people that have access
Speaker 2: to a lot of the moneies, a lot of the trades,
Speaker 2: and a lot of the businesses. I think what we
Speaker 2: find is kind of interesting is to see which one
Speaker 2: of those we allow, because as of about ten years ago,
Speaker 2: fifteen years ago, some of those people had some massive
Speaker 2: force farms in Kentucky, massive mansions in Florida, They had
Speaker 2: political connections to our own people. So, you know, I
Speaker 2: think it'll be interesting to see who they go after
Speaker 2: and who they don't, because there's a lot of Venezuelan
Speaker 2: money tied into the US and into some of the
Speaker 2: fundraising of political campaigns because they're just part of that fabric.
Speaker 2: They don't live in them as waala necessarily, and they've
Speaker 2: got massive yachts that are going back and forth. So
Speaker 2: it'll be interesting to see how it aligns and which
Speaker 2: which political party maybe they've donated to to see. You know,
Speaker 2: who you go after and who you don't.
Speaker 3: You make them sound like Russian oil olive arcs.
Speaker 2: You know, in a lot of ways they are. It's
Speaker 2: just that they're hanging out in Miami. Well, I guess
Speaker 2: they both are. You know, they probably have some common interest,
Speaker 2: but but you know, there there are they're they're involved
Speaker 2: in the in the in equestrian sale of horses and
Speaker 2: to the millions. I mean, these are high rollers that
Speaker 2: are interacting with people. So it would be very embarrassing.
Speaker 2: I think at the time when we're looking at kadievi Permuto,
Speaker 2: which is like the bond trading and stuff, it's kind
Speaker 2: of nebulous. You know, you're jacking up bonds and making
Speaker 2: some massive profits of it. These people are making hundreds,
Speaker 2: tens of hundreds of millions of dollars in some cases
Speaker 2: and spending it in the US, and so it gives
Speaker 2: you a lot of ability to elbow rub and have
Speaker 2: funeral guys like you know, p Diddy on the yachts
Speaker 2: and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: If you're in the market for a new mattress, you've
Speaker 1: probably seen all the brands out there vuying for your attention.
Speaker 1: Big names, splashy ads, all promising the same thing. But
Speaker 1: here's the only brand that does it right. It's go
Speaker 1: Sped ghostped Wards created and is still run by manufacturing
Speaker 1: experts with more than twenty years of mattress making experience.
Speaker 1: They know the craft and they know how to build
Speaker 1: a bed that actually lasts. So how do they offer
Speaker 1: premium mattresses for up to fifty percent off lesson the competition?
Speaker 2: It's not.
Speaker 1: It's smart logistics as a family owned company. That means
Speaker 1: there's no board of investors to answer to. It's is
Speaker 1: folks working hard selling mattresses. These are the true manufacturing
Speaker 1: pros and the result is an exceptional cooling and comfort
Speaker 1: at a price that won't keep you up at night.
Speaker 1: Every ghost Bed mattress includes proven cooling materials back by
Speaker 1: a twenty to twenty five year Warring Tea. You also
Speaker 1: get one hundred and one night sleep trial with free
Speaker 1: returns at them the mattress doesn't work for you and
Speaker 1: fast free shipping. Most orders arrive in two to five days.
Speaker 1: Right now, As a Teamhouse listener, you can get twenty
Speaker 1: five percent off site wide for a limited time. You
Speaker 1: can just go to gosped dot com slash house and
Speaker 1: use a promo code house at checkout. That's gosped dot
Speaker 1: com slash house promo code house. Upgrade your sleep. Ghost
Speaker 1: Bed the makers of the coolest beds in the world.
Speaker 1: Some exclusions apply see site for details. I want to
Speaker 1: think ghost Bed so much for continuously supporting us. Its
Speaker 1: been going on a year almost, so I really appreciate that.
Speaker 1: I hope you guys, if you're in the if you're
Speaker 1: in the market for mattresses or pillows or betting, check
Speaker 1: out ghost Bed. You can go to gosped dot com
Speaker 1: slash house and get twenty five percent off right now,
Speaker 1: love you and love ghost Bed.
Speaker 5: Thanks guys.
Speaker 1: Let's say you know, somehow, some way Medoo is thrown out,
Speaker 1: whether it's like his own military or you know, we
Speaker 1: help in any way we can. And let's say he's gone.
Speaker 1: What does it look like in terms of what comes next?
Speaker 1: Does what's the Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Machado right?
Speaker 1: Does she come in and a white horse and his
Speaker 1: crown fucking president and everything is beautiful and it's a
Speaker 1: beautiful Western democracy where capitalism flows and all boats are
Speaker 1: lifted and is it like this beautiful story that we
Speaker 1: keep telling ourselves.
Speaker 2: It's it's going to take more than the US and
Speaker 2: her putting something like this together. And right now, I
Speaker 2: don't know that we seek that same type of allyship
Speaker 2: to do what's necessary. I mean, you're talking about to
Speaker 2: change the regime and get rid of the corruption. That
Speaker 2: could take five to seven years as a minimum, with
Speaker 2: a full commitment to that area of what you're actually
Speaker 2: going to do on the humanitarian standpoint to deal with
Speaker 2: the financial reserves. The biggest thing that you're going to
Speaker 2: need to do there is stabilize the oil and refinery
Speaker 2: petro industry there. I mean that is massive commerce, and
Speaker 2: you've got a lot of corruption there. So if you're
Speaker 2: going to snip off Iran's involvement, maybe Russian involvement, some
Speaker 2: China involvement, you've got to be able to have experts
Speaker 2: that come in there and actually know that business. And
Speaker 2: I don't know that we necessarily prop ourselves up to
Speaker 2: put in experts to those areas that we'll be able
Speaker 2: to solve. So I would say the likelihood is is
Speaker 2: that we probably don't have as much interest in reforming
Speaker 2: the country as we might seizing some of the assets
Speaker 2: and then kind of backing off and letting somebody else in.
Speaker 1: Super interesting because back in two thousand and two, two
Speaker 1: thousand and three, you know, we never really talked about
Speaker 1: oil as a thing that we wanted right or wanted
Speaker 1: at least control of, And now it just seems like, no, yeah,
Speaker 1: we want the oil, we want the resources, and that's
Speaker 1: why we're doing this.
Speaker 2: If yeah, I mean, you'd have to what conversations would
Speaker 2: we be having with Columbia, What conversations are we having
Speaker 2: with Brazil, with you know, the general Caribbean about what
Speaker 2: restabilization looks like. A nation building looks like you're going
Speaker 2: to have. You've got no shared customs databases they're set up.
Speaker 2: You've got you know, no maritime patrol cooperations set up.
Speaker 2: So I think if you're looking at filling vacuums or
Speaker 2: how to prevent something that's filling vacuum bypassing sanctions getting paid,
Speaker 2: you know, I think I think what you're hearing is
Speaker 2: actual let's let's let's get get that and let them
Speaker 2: figure out their own country, you know, put somebody in
Speaker 2: there say it's just and then they can handle themselves.
Speaker 2: And I think that's pretty much the rhetoric that we
Speaker 2: normally hear from this administration is that's really not our problem,
Speaker 2: but this was ours, so we'll we'll get this back.
Speaker 2: I mean, they owe us for all the sanctions that
Speaker 2: they've evade, so we come up with the math of
Speaker 2: twelve refineries.
Speaker 3: I've said this before, Scott, and I mean, I don't
Speaker 3: know what your opinion is, but I really feel like
Speaker 3: the stuff with Venezuela also us like starting food fights
Speaker 3: with like you know, Denmark over Greenland and things like this.
Speaker 3: It feels like we have done the math on bigger problems,
Speaker 3: real problems China, Iran, Russia, and we've concluded, well, America
Speaker 3: really can't do too much there. If we do, it'll
Speaker 3: have a tremendous amount of blood and treasure will have
Speaker 3: to be spent. And so we're like going after like
Speaker 3: the low hanging fruit, like beating up on you know,
Speaker 3: our allies sometimes or just people who are paining the
Speaker 3: ass like Maduro as a kind of like compensation of like,
Speaker 3: look I did something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, we're kind of the kind of the
Speaker 2: lunch room dick, you know, let's let's let's shake down
Speaker 2: the weak people. The ones that we're okay with are
Speaker 2: just like, you're an asshole. I'm just not going to
Speaker 2: deal with you right now. You piss off somebody here,
Speaker 2: you piss off somebody there. You don't care about the ramifications.
Speaker 2: I just think that we would be I guess it's
Speaker 2: okay to walk with a big stick, but be aware
Speaker 2: of who else you're pissing off and what those ramifications are.
Speaker 2: I don't I don't have a problem if it was
Speaker 2: in our strategic interest to seize oil feelings, claim territory.
Speaker 2: I mean, okay, if that's what we want to do,
Speaker 2: and that's what we want to be, but you can't
Speaker 2: do it isolation, and you can't do it without those
Speaker 2: second and third order effect understanding of what that's going
Speaker 2: to happen. And I don't know that we necessarily consider
Speaker 2: those second and third order of I mean, just as
Speaker 2: something as simple as just, you know, it's holiday season,
Speaker 2: just sitting on my couch half the time, just you know,
Speaker 2: should be writing. But I'm looking at tiktoks and looking
Speaker 2: at it Instagram stuff, and I'm seeing how many of
Speaker 2: these distilleries are closing up and affected because of what
Speaker 2: happened with Canada and now Canada, you know, because of
Speaker 2: the tariffs that took miss out. Okay, now you've got
Speaker 2: the same thing happening with some farmers. You're you're looking
Speaker 2: at a lot of different things where you're spinning the
Speaker 2: rhetoric of what it's going to do, but the actual
Speaker 2: how it's going to impact things ends up being much
Speaker 2: worse in most cases. And I think that that, you know,
Speaker 2: Venezuela's just yet another example of Okay, you know we're
Speaker 2: gonna blow up a boat. Yes, I mean sure, there's
Speaker 2: going to be some rules of engagement that that's done. Again,
Speaker 2: not my problem, not going to harp on that, because
Speaker 2: it's written in law what you can and can't do.
Speaker 2: But you're talking about maybe you know, three five, one
Speaker 2: hundred people right there, but what is that? What are
Speaker 2: you really trying to achieve? And you're spinning this as
Speaker 2: a major problem, but yet anybody should be reading to
Speaker 2: understand that that's not a massive problem. If you really
Speaker 2: want to address that drug problem, it's got to be
Speaker 2: someplace us, if you're really looking at it from the
Speaker 2: international lens of saying, you know, guys, we've tried, we've
Speaker 2: tried to sanction Venezuela. We've tried to sanction Iran, they
Speaker 2: haven't done anything. What we're going to do. We're going
Speaker 2: to take an oil vessel because that's due to us. Okay,
Speaker 2: we all agree that we could sanction this. That's what
Speaker 2: we're going to do. We're going to take this. I
Speaker 2: think that makes a lot more sense on the world stage. Then. Fully, shit,
Speaker 2: we got fentanyl coming into our country, and so we're
Speaker 2: going to blow up a bunch of these boats, kill
Speaker 2: a bunch of these peop people. We're gonna have some
Speaker 2: air strikes on their main line because it's it's a problem.
Speaker 2: Everybody else but us realizes that that's not a mess problem.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think we've done a really tough job in
Speaker 1: the media and everywhere else, the people that know what
Speaker 1: they're talking about basically trying to uh explain what the
Speaker 1: fuck it is we're doing there. And frankly, like John
Speaker 1: Q Public me being one of them, we I don't
Speaker 1: give a fine fuck what goes down in Venezuela. Gonna
Speaker 1: be honest, right, like, is that gonna help my freedom
Speaker 1: or my pocket my pocketbook or my bottom line? No,
Speaker 1: you know, and if you really even look at it,
Speaker 1: it's like, yeah, there's no fent at all coming in
Speaker 1: from Venezuela. Most of the most of the precursors come
Speaker 1: from China. It's like, and most of it comes in
Speaker 1: the bulk of the drugs that come in from Mexico.
Speaker 1: So are we saying we're gonna do this to Mexico too?
Speaker 5: Is that the move? Like, no, We're not gonna do
Speaker 5: that shit. Like so it just seems like this, like.
Speaker 1: This just side quest for what reason. I have no
Speaker 1: fucking clue. And like you look at the new national
Speaker 1: security strategy, you know, focusing more on like the region
Speaker 1: and Central and South America and our hemisphere, and it's
Speaker 1: like you said, JT, it's like more like, yeah, we're
Speaker 1: gonna bully around the people we know we can bully
Speaker 1: without there even being any issue whatsoever, because you see,
Speaker 1: we're kind of backing away from like our traditional allies
Speaker 1: with Europe. There's a clear enemy in Europe and that's Russia,
Speaker 1: and we're just letting them do whatever they want. And
Speaker 1: it's just like, yeah, let's just bully the people we
Speaker 1: can bully, you know, Like that's easy. It's not gonna
Speaker 1: be that much of bandwidth taken up and we could
Speaker 1: post videos on social media of US being the dominant
Speaker 1: US military that's stopping the drug trade the eight percent
Speaker 1: of the drugs that come from Venezuela without anything fucking changing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I would respect a lot more if again,
Speaker 2: you know, we we said these are these are the
Speaker 2: reasons that we're doing this, and by deposing their leader,
Speaker 2: we have the international back. But and this is what
Speaker 2: we're communicating to the press, is we recognize in the
Speaker 2: short term that area is going to have an increase
Speaker 2: in violent crime. We know they're going to have an
Speaker 2: increase in smuggle we know there's going to be an
Speaker 2: increase in drug transit. We know there's gonna be more
Speaker 2: money laundering, we know that there's gonna be more immigrants
Speaker 2: coming to the US. And of those those areas, there's
Speaker 2: gonna be a fragmentation of our groups and an opportunistic
Speaker 2: cartel expansion. But this is our plan on how to
Speaker 2: deal with this, and I think that makes a lot
Speaker 2: more sense, especially if you are going to say, yeah,
Speaker 2: we're going to send a bunch of troops also down there.
Speaker 2: You know, my friend was remarking about, you know, in
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty nine when we went took over Panama, there's
Speaker 2: Operation just Cause, and he was joking that this time
Speaker 2: it's going to be called Operation just because. I don't know.
Speaker 2: I don't know who's I don't know who's doing, you know,
Speaker 2: the planning. I don't know who's who's doing some of
Speaker 2: the the understanding of stabilization, and you know, how you're
Speaker 2: going to deal with entrenchment of criminal governance that might
Speaker 2: persist in there. I mean, those are the type of
Speaker 2: things that you know, usually if you're going to disrupt something,
Speaker 2: you should you should have a good plan. I do.
Speaker 3: I don't know, but I will have to ask to
Speaker 3: see something may have changed very recently. But up until
Speaker 3: very recently, when I've asked people in the special operations community,
Speaker 3: they say that they have contingency plans, you know, that
Speaker 3: are on the books, you know, collecting dusts like they
Speaker 3: do for many things. But they're like, no one's actively
Speaker 3: planning for Venezuela, Like that's not a thing we're doing
Speaker 3: unless they're all b asking me. There's there isn't like
Speaker 3: a planning cell that's like trying to put something together
Speaker 3: right now.
Speaker 2: No, And it's I mean, look, it's not sexually work.
Speaker 2: That's how I got That's how I got involved with
Speaker 2: covering Venezuela decades ago now because at the time I
Speaker 2: when they were looking for us, I'm a Binlat. I
Speaker 2: was assigned to looking for him, you know, not physically
Speaker 2: being there in Iran. And that's how I understood all
Speaker 2: of the the bonnyards and kind of mapping out on
Speaker 2: the social structures that then took me to Hezblat and
Speaker 2: I got an understanding of that. So when somebody said,
Speaker 2: when we got a tasking of a few different areas
Speaker 2: and somebody's like, who understands Venezuela and what is going
Speaker 2: to focus on that, you kind of look around the
Speaker 2: room and nobody's raising their hand because they didn't understand
Speaker 2: and who gives care about Venezuela. So I'm like, well,
Speaker 2: if everybody's gonna be fighting for these other things, I'm
Speaker 2: gonna raise my hand because I actually know that Iran
Speaker 2: is going to be in so let's see what we
Speaker 2: can dig around. So I knew nothing about it, and
Speaker 2: then you know, two years later, I knew everything you
Speaker 2: never wanted to know about. Venezuela has a lot I
Speaker 2: ran and all the cartels kind of coming together and
Speaker 2: then the banking things. But just because there are links
Speaker 2: doesn't mean that there's strong links and there are bigger
Speaker 2: fish out there, which again kind of goes to the
Speaker 2: whole idea of why people don't care about Venezuela. And
Speaker 2: if you dealt with Sock South, if you dealt with SOCOM,
Speaker 2: if you dealt with Jaysock, you've dealt with the agencies.
Speaker 2: I mean, they didn't care that much. And again because
Speaker 2: you didn't have that much ability to operate, we didn't
Speaker 2: have that much intel. So even if we have something
Speaker 2: on the shelf, that is so going to change, especially
Speaker 2: when you're dealing with what Venezuela actually is, which is
Speaker 2: logistics and the financial platform, that changes vastly. And so
Speaker 2: if we're thinking about Venezuela having weak institution, uh, military,
Speaker 2: militarized corruption, uh, the illicit gold become, you know, the
Speaker 2: shadow trade that goes into you know, the sanctions and
Speaker 2: the various routes. Those things all have to be considerations
Speaker 2: and every time that they're disrupted, they change. So you
Speaker 2: have to have intel on those and you have to
Speaker 2: have current intel so that you can fix your books.
Speaker 2: Who's got that? Do you k are they sharing it
Speaker 2: with us. No, so where we getting that intel? We
Speaker 2: don't have it.
Speaker 3: It's interesting that like these sort of like Hezbalad nexus
Speaker 3: in this part of the world has been like a
Speaker 3: hobby horse of General Flynn, going all the way back
Speaker 3: to his d I A days.
Speaker 6: Uh.
Speaker 3: It's just interesting that this sort of thought process is
Speaker 3: still sort of haunting us. At least when I've talked
Speaker 3: to people, they've said, We've looked and looked and looked,
Speaker 3: but we can't find this has Bolah threat to America
Speaker 3: emanating from South America.
Speaker 2: No, And I mean, look, let's church here a little bit.
Speaker 2: You had a migration wave that happened in the early
Speaker 2: nineteen hundreds from Lebanon to Venezuela. Okay. Then you had
Speaker 2: another wave that came around nineteen fifties and seventies. Okay,
Speaker 2: I won't say they didn't assimilate, but they went to
Speaker 2: their pockets. You know, that's how immigration went, you pockets.
Speaker 2: And again these are merinite Christians phredominantly. And then in
Speaker 2: the fifties and seventies you had yet another wave. A
Speaker 2: lot of those cases you're demonizing people because they have
Speaker 2: some different beliefs, different cultural beliefs, and I think that
Speaker 2: as they started assimilating into the communities, into politics, into commerce,
Speaker 2: their status rose. They became the haves versus the have
Speaker 2: nots or the have lessons, and the have lessons thought
Speaker 2: it was very easy to, I think, demonize them in
Speaker 2: many ways and say, you got all these fucking Arabs
Speaker 2: running around, what does Arabs translate to you Muslims? Okay,
Speaker 2: but they did. They cast it in the reciprocal of
Speaker 2: it not being like ten percent of the population being Muslim,
Speaker 2: it made it like ninety percent, which was the Christians
Speaker 2: to demonize that and create that. Yes there are hes
Speaker 2: a lot of rocks. Yes there are family ties, but
Speaker 2: it's more like old Italian mafia where just had you
Speaker 2: had networks of these families to do better for the diaspora,
Speaker 2: that was first and foremost in many of these families,
Speaker 2: Lebanese first, okay. And you got to make your money,
Speaker 2: and you've got to because there's so much corruption in
Speaker 2: the area. You've got to tighten it so that you
Speaker 2: keep dash it, so that you keep everything together, and
Speaker 2: you keep that money insolent, and you keep the power
Speaker 2: continue to go and you keep you know, mixing with
Speaker 2: other tribes, other or clans, other families and things like that.
Speaker 2: So I think that a lot of anybody that used
Speaker 2: to have something doesn't have it now is going to
Speaker 2: talk about somebody in a bad light if you can
Speaker 2: get them out of there and or you know, demonize them.
Speaker 2: And I and so whether it's Flynn, who again I
Speaker 2: really used to respect him on the intel side and
Speaker 2: I and I thought that he gave some of that
Speaker 2: rigor to the intelligence analysis that was going. But I
Speaker 2: don't think I think that you know as much as
Speaker 2: often as the case, especially in the operations community, you
Speaker 2: can have you know, the book readers passing up the
Speaker 2: intel as much as you might have. But if someone's
Speaker 2: like mm hm, like that's telling me no, okay, okay,
Speaker 2: your gut's telling you so, and my Thatt's going to
Speaker 2: tell me how we rebuild this, you know, And that's
Speaker 2: the problem is we're dealing with too many guts and
Speaker 2: hunches and thoughts versus you know, the actual resources to
Speaker 2: understand how that all fits together.
Speaker 3: Shall Lobby Part two?
Speaker 2: Right? I mean, Jack, you and I years ago, I
Speaker 2: think we're talking about Confessions of an Economic Kidman.
Speaker 6: Oh yeah, book, awesome book, because that is how old
Speaker 6: school espionage and if you're really going to break down
Speaker 6: a nation and rebuild it or just you know, let
Speaker 6: it get fucked up and then let somebody else come
Speaker 6: into a power vacuum, that's how you do it.
Speaker 2: But you've got to have it with like real economists,
Speaker 2: real social scientists, political experts. I mean, that's that's how
Speaker 2: you create these vacuums. Or that's how you disrupt something
Speaker 2: and then put it into your own pocket. But you
Speaker 2: do it with international law, you do it with banking law,
Speaker 2: you do it with organized structures that you don't disrupt
Speaker 2: things which pisses off other countries. That's how you can
Speaker 2: do it on this life. That's all. We could do
Speaker 2: it with Venezuela still, but you don't do it this way.
Speaker 1: Isn't that kind of what we have been doing with
Speaker 1: Venezuela over the last like since Hugo Chavis. You know,
Speaker 1: like sanctions and you know they don't really have a
Speaker 1: ton of the economic like latitude really right with sanctions
Speaker 1: and stuff like that, like we are trying to limit
Speaker 1: their economy and doing a pretty good job.
Speaker 5: I would say at it.
Speaker 2: Well, I think a lot of times sanctions are used
Speaker 2: as a hammer, and I don't think that they're used
Speaker 2: as so much of a guide. And I think sometimes
Speaker 2: you take that the low hanging fruit, which are often
Speaker 2: you know, high up people, and you'll target them and
Speaker 2: you'll say, okay, you're we're sanctioning you, but not understanding
Speaker 2: the layers underneath them that allows them to evade the sanctions.
Speaker 2: And in many cases, I think we do know that,
Speaker 2: so the sanctions that we put on don't necessarily have
Speaker 2: tea or you would be doing it in a different way,
Speaker 2: targeting different groups, truly disrupting things. You wouldn't allow funds
Speaker 2: to exist. I mean, let's if you again, I don't
Speaker 2: I know that most of your people aren't going to
Speaker 2: give a shit about listening to banking operations here. But
Speaker 2: banking money transfers between institutions can be stopped with sanctions.
Speaker 2: And there's a lot that you allow to go on
Speaker 2: and from Venezuela because that money goes into different people's
Speaker 2: pockets that you want to keep. So you really don't
Speaker 2: put a hard sanction. It's it's kind of a soft
Speaker 2: sanction where it's like, yeah, you're rere labeling you and
Speaker 2: maybe you can't go to Switzerland and get open up
Speaker 2: a bank account, you know, under your true name, but
Speaker 2: you can you can still have have your your your
Speaker 2: finances facilitated. So so no, I don't. I don't think
Speaker 2: that we've do a real good job of really harnessing
Speaker 2: them and then putting the squeeze on. And a lot
Speaker 2: of times to do that, you have to have international
Speaker 2: consensus with other people to do it. You can't do
Speaker 2: it on your own because all of a sudden they're like,
Speaker 2: well fuck the US, they said, I can't do it,
Speaker 2: but I can do it with the rest of the world.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you think China would have an issue with what
Speaker 1: we're doing. I mean because you know, leaving the tank
Speaker 1: one of the tanks that we snatched was Chinese oil,
Speaker 1: all right, Uh, I don't know, and what like how
Speaker 1: deep China is involved with Venezuela. Can you give us
Speaker 1: like a little bit of insight on that.
Speaker 2: No, not, because I don't want to. I don't know.
Speaker 2: I don't know that much about it. And how they
Speaker 2: are I notice in some of the talie ins between countries,
Speaker 2: but I don't know politically psychologically, how they react and
Speaker 2: what levers that they pull. I just don't know. Enough
Speaker 2: about them. I my my my gut without being informed
Speaker 2: by by the information knowledge is they probably have different
Speaker 2: ways around things. Also because I do believe in many
Speaker 2: cases they're probably smarter and more well equipped to operate
Speaker 2: on different levels and dimensions of things than can. We
Speaker 2: probably give them credit for or the people that understand
Speaker 2: it and give credit. Maybe it doesn't go up. So
Speaker 2: I don't know. I I guess my gut again. Yeah,
Speaker 2: just just talking out of my ass would be they're
Speaker 2: probably looking if this is stopped, they'll probably figure out
Speaker 2: another way around it. Yeah, but I don't know what
Speaker 2: type of pressure they really would where they focus in
Speaker 2: another way and we're just too stupid to realize it.
Speaker 1: So what happens next? I want some speculation. What's your
Speaker 1: gut value?
Speaker 2: I think that we would continue some of the bullying
Speaker 2: for the for maybe the next six months, maybe a
Speaker 2: few more strikes. I would say, if the international community
Speaker 2: pushes back on US hard in such a way that
Speaker 2: they also almost sanction US or create some economic lovers
Speaker 2: to punish US for some of these things, I think
Speaker 2: we'll continue doing it. But I think if they wanted
Speaker 2: to slow US, I think we would back down. If
Speaker 2: if it was something really impactful and things that the
Speaker 2: news coverage would glom onto and at the general public
Speaker 2: would glom onto and say, we're we're now getting screwed
Speaker 2: because of this. Cut it out if we can get
Speaker 2: some justification, and I would, I would if we really
Speaker 2: want it for the purposes of Iranian disruption. I think
Speaker 2: we got to go back to our own friends. I
Speaker 2: think we got to work with Canada. I think we
Speaker 2: got to work with the UK and understand what those
Speaker 2: impacts are. And I think we need to stop talking
Speaker 2: about the stupid Narco ship. Okay, if we really talk
Speaker 2: about it from the standpoint of corruption, international trade that's
Speaker 2: being disrupted, instability. I think those are legitimate things that
Speaker 2: other people would rally. I mean the UK was not
Speaker 2: disputing corruption, you know, the financial crime, sanction breaking. I
Speaker 2: mean those are things that they would rally behind. I mean,
Speaker 2: if we did decide, you know, we're open to other people.
Speaker 2: Plus I could see that I don't see anybody else
Speaker 2: in the community getting involved like Iran. You know, what
Speaker 2: are they going to really do? I don't see China
Speaker 2: or Russia really doing much of anything. I think that
Speaker 2: if they're really looking to seize this and claim that
Speaker 2: they can't. I think if they do do it, If
Speaker 2: they do Seese oil fields and they do start doing
Speaker 2: I think it's going to be more of a robbery
Speaker 2: than anything else, because I do not believe they have
Speaker 2: the people to put into place to fix the refineries,
Speaker 2: to fix that business. I mean, right now, it's some old,
Speaker 2: antiquated systems. We've got better technology than Iran for a
Speaker 2: lot of this. If we went in there with a
Speaker 2: business purpose, together with the UK and said, hey, you
Speaker 2: guys have this problem because of sanctions. We're going to
Speaker 2: get involved, but we're going to bring in new technology.
Speaker 2: We're going to allow you to have more jobs. We're
Speaker 2: going to expand this. Yes we want a part of it,
Speaker 2: but we're going to help your community. I think that
Speaker 2: would be a whole lot better. And oh, by the way,
Speaker 2: we gave you to president and she's on board two.
Speaker 2: I think if that happened, I do think Maduro is
Speaker 2: probably in the next year, are going to leave. I
Speaker 2: don't think it's going to be forceful. I think will
Speaker 2: negotiate that. Where he goes, I don't know, but I
Speaker 2: think he would get most prony's I'm sorry.
Speaker 3: Cuba, that's where he's going.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and Cuba could be next for us too.
Speaker 5: Yeah. I was going to say Cuba's on the list, bro, so.
Speaker 2: It may be. It may be a short though, so
Speaker 2: does China. Yeah, I don't think we can poke that one,
Speaker 2: but I don't know. This was kind of fun I had.
Speaker 2: You know, I've got this series of these military thrillers,
Speaker 2: and some years back I had written about Venezuela, written
Speaker 2: about the he Bala thing and the Iran stuff, and
Speaker 2: so it's kind of fun to see this kind of
Speaker 2: coming to fruitional where it's like, Okay, some of the
Speaker 2: things we talked about are now coming to light. Because
Speaker 2: I tried to pick something that was a little bit less,
Speaker 2: you know, overdone, and the agency and DoD didn't have
Speaker 2: much problem with what I had, especially with a lot
Speaker 2: of stuff I had about Marguerite Island just being you know,
Speaker 2: bullshit and stuff. None of that was redacted, so that
Speaker 2: also kind of gives me an idea and half that
Speaker 2: stuff that they don't know, don't care about. So the
Speaker 2: things that we're glombing onto now saying it's it's so secret,
Speaker 2: we just can't even share any of as shit bullshit.
Speaker 2: I was able to write a book.
Speaker 3: About Yeah, JT. I mean, you've written out a whole
Speaker 3: series of really good novels. Anything you want to announce
Speaker 3: the folks out there about the future. You know, your
Speaker 3: big thing is the TFO series, right, what the protagonist.
Speaker 2: Is what Drake Yeah, Drake wol Yeah yeah, asot guy
Speaker 2: moved into TFO intelligence sport activity but you know old
Speaker 2: name TFO. No. I've been slow because, honestly, I guess
Speaker 2: it's because I write some more so much of these
Speaker 2: like kind of esoteric things that most people don't know about,
Speaker 2: don't care about that They're probably like, I don't really
Speaker 2: want to buy it. So I'm still trying to continue
Speaker 2: the series. I think I think it's fun because I
Speaker 2: don't think a lot of folks know much about those things.
Speaker 2: I think now with technology the way it is and
Speaker 2: understanding surveillance and how we do things and disrupting it,
Speaker 2: I think it's pretty cool. I just haven't gotten the traction,
Speaker 2: so it's you kind of look at it and think, well,
Speaker 2: I could write more books, But am I doing it myself? Yes?
Speaker 2: I can, but I can to be doing more fun
Speaker 2: things like scuba diving and fishing with my money than
Speaker 2: just putting more books out there that nobody's really looking
Speaker 2: to buy. So I don't think I've got more than
Speaker 2: about ten thousand typical readers on it, but if there
Speaker 2: was the interest, yeah, I would definitely continue it. I
Speaker 2: think that I have now been out of the cleared
Speaker 2: space for enough time where I think the agency and
Speaker 2: DoD is getting to be a lot easier on me
Speaker 2: and a lot of the stuff that I just don't know.
Speaker 2: So it truly is fiction and so that's coming out.
Speaker 2: But I still, you know, am an intel guy at art,
Speaker 2: so I could research the shit out of it and
Speaker 2: create something that is feasible, plausible, And I think it
Speaker 2: was like that they used to ding me for analytical inferences.
Speaker 2: But now that I've had more time out, it's easier
Speaker 2: to be able to put those things together. So I'd
Speaker 2: love to continue the series I've been writing on one
Speaker 2: I'll send me and I think that you know, could
Speaker 2: be kind of interesting when it when it comes out,
Speaker 2: but but we'll see. But yeah, definitely helps if if
Speaker 2: folks read more and buy more, I can write more.
Speaker 3: Where can people go to find your books?
Speaker 2: Amazon? Door stops, it's uh and I think you get them.
Speaker 2: You pretty much get him in audio, print and uh
Speaker 2: and in digital. I've got the Horror series out folks
Speaker 2: that like New Orleans. I had to take a little
Speaker 2: break for a while when they weren't as happy with
Speaker 2: me doing some things. I created another like Alzheimer's book,
Speaker 2: Alzheimer's Horror, Psychological Horror, that was kind of got to
Speaker 2: this Nordic spin this year, I called the weavers Web,
Speaker 2: but thinks of putting a pin on that one and
Speaker 2: getting back into a little bit more of the the
Speaker 2: Opposente Intel things.
Speaker 3: You're also our black market giraffe dealer.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you're the originator.
Speaker 2: Yeah, dude, I so wish that Grange would have said something.
Speaker 3: About that, but I would I should have asked him.
Speaker 2: I was like, I forgot that was recorded, and so
Speaker 2: I was like binging, I'm like what I saw, and
Speaker 2: I'm like, dude, ask him about the giraffes. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: we had some good times.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so JT, how much is a baby giraffe going
Speaker 5: for me?
Speaker 2: Remember now, I always have to look back, but I
Speaker 2: think we're getting They were getting in the thousands. So
Speaker 2: I mean, for those that don't know about this, I
Speaker 2: had come. I had done a financial crime investigations company
Speaker 2: and UH and Grain should sent me out there. This
Speaker 2: was when we were you know, in the commercial business.
Speaker 2: And then after a while, courts pointed Range to take
Speaker 2: over the the uh the court rulings and and we
Speaker 2: kind of ran and you know, kind of ran that
Speaker 2: company for a little bit. And there was a guy
Speaker 2: named doctor Brown and and so if you look under
Speaker 2: Houston and doctor Brown and some things, that's where you know,
Speaker 2: the guy had like a compound animals when his estate
Speaker 2: was going down. I mean, he was complicit in a
Speaker 2: lot of things that they found too. And so we're
Speaker 2: trying to save the company where a lot of people
Speaker 2: were actually working and there were some really good things happening,
Speaker 2: and that's where it involved selling so wild and not
Speaker 2: as you meat it was. They're trying to do good things,
Speaker 2: but we also ran into the Russians and drugs and
Speaker 2: guns and all kinds of stuff. So cool little gig
Speaker 2: for about a year.
Speaker 5: It's wild, guys. Check out JT's books there.
Speaker 1: I'll have links in the description as well, UH and
Speaker 1: your website to UH wolf house dot com. That link
Speaker 1: will be in the description there as well. Check them
Speaker 1: out it's a great book series. Also, if you want
Speaker 1: to know more about JT, he did a Team House episode.
Speaker 1: It's got to be now four or five years ago. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll throw a link there down in the description as well. Uh,
Speaker 1: this is awesome, Jack. You got anything to add?
Speaker 2: Jack?
Speaker 1: Of course, the high Side he's a high you know,
Speaker 1: high falutin writer, journalist and stuff like that. He's got
Speaker 1: a new book coming out in June, very exciting. I'll
Speaker 1: put a link to the description down in the I'll
Speaker 1: put a link down in the description for The High
Speaker 1: Side and for the new book that's coming out. So
Speaker 1: check them out there and do us a favorite support
Speaker 1: to show. You can get both eyes On Geopolitics and
Speaker 1: the Teamhouse ad free and early by going to patreon
Speaker 1: dot com slash the Teamhouse. Thank you, guys, a pleasure. Hey,
Speaker 1: let's do this again.
Speaker 2: I'll be here, take care. Thanks guys.
Speaker 4: Hey, guys, I want to tell all of you today
Speaker 4: about a new newsletter that we're launching that encompasses both
Speaker 4: the Teamhouse podcast, the eyes On podcast, and the high
Speaker 4: Side news outlet, which I run with Sean Naylor.
Speaker 7: The newsletter is going to be once a week.
Speaker 4: It's going to come into your inbox and you're going
Speaker 4: to get the most current podcasts on eyes On in
Speaker 4: the Teamhouse and whatever's topical or current on the high side.
Speaker 4: So it's another way for us to get the information
Speaker 4: out to you as social media algorithms are pretty iffy
Speaker 4: and you never really know what you're gonna get. So
Speaker 4: this is a once a week email. It'll slide into
Speaker 4: your inbox and it will have you know the greatest
Speaker 4: hits of that week.
Speaker 7: It's really good man. Checking it out.
Speaker 4: The website for it is Teamhouse Podcast dot kit dot com,
Speaker 4: slash Join Teamhouse Podcast dot kit dot com slash join.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 4: You go there and you enter into your email list
Speaker 4: or you enter your email into the little thing on
Speaker 4: the website and you're good to go.
Speaker 7: And that'll be it. So we really appreciate your support
Speaker 7: and hope you'll consider signing up.
Speaker 5: Where's the link.
Speaker 7: The link will also be down in the description if
Speaker 7: you're looking for
Speaker 4: It there, and that's Teamhouse Podcast dot Kit, k I
Speaker 4: t Kilo India Tango dot com backslash Join