#293 - Cartel Insider Exposes Elites Secretly Funding Syndicates | Ed Calderon

Summary

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Julian Dorey Podcast #293 Summary

Guest: Ed Calderon
Title: Cartel Insider Exposes Elites Secretly Funding Syndicates
Date: April 15, 2025

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Episode Overview

In this gripping and raw conversation, host Julian Dorey sits down with Ed Calderon—former Mexican law enforcement officer, security expert, and outspoken critic of transnational criminality. Calderon shares harrowing personal anecdotes from his time battling cartels and state corruption, exposes the entanglement between global elites and organized crime, and reflects on the deeper societal cycles fueling violence, migration, and policy failures on both sides of the US-Mexico border. The episode is a deep dive into the heart of narco-politics, the dehumanizing realities of the drug war, and the personal cost borne by those like Ed who have survived its frontlines.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Realities of Frontline Policing in Mexico

• Ed’s Background and Trauma (00:00–08:17)
  • Ed details losing colleagues—some “never found, disappeared completely, like nothing” (84:56)—and surviving corruption sweeps, torture, and institutional betrayal.
  • Tells the chilling story of a friend “picked up by dudes dressed as federal agents... found with his ID screwed to his forehead” (01:10, 86:31).
  • Describes state-sanctioned torture: “They put a hood over your head... this was a plastic bag that was utilized multiple times to try and asphyxiate me.” (00:00, 58:58)
  • On being rewarded after torture: “I got a promotion afterwards. They said I just passed the most rigorous confidence filter in Mexico.” (58:34)

2. Narco-State Mechanics & Systemic Corruption

• Cartel-Government Collusion (07:09–11:19; 22:08–23:24)

  • Calderon paints a picture of institutionalized corruption—politicians, military, and law enforcement acting as double agents for cartels.
  • On American complicity: “Somehow that’s being funded by people buying avocados at the grocery store in the US. Somehow that's being funded by federal programs...” (02:33)
  • Ed notes the US has “never been a Mexico issue. This has been a regional issue. Originated itself in the US...the US is very directly responsible...” (19:16)

• Economic and Policy Drivers

  • The US and global demand for drugs and lenient policies are “indirectly or directly” propping up the cartels.
  • “America’s addiction to illegal immigration is a drug...We’re addicted to it.” (42:31)
  • Ed critiques both American and Mexican policies enabling perpetual migration chaos, exploited both by organized crime and politicians (33:14–44:53).

3. Geopolitics of Cartel Power & Elite Funding

• Elite Influence (24:21–25:57)

  • Julian and Ed discuss the shadowy financiers of narco-politics, connecting cartel ascendancy to “bigger money...BlackRock, Soros, the core four,” and foreign investors (24:39–24:43).
  • Mexican political transitions and shifting US priorities are portrayed as moves in a “giant proxy war” for North American economic dominance.
  • “A lot of the money in Mexico right now is betting on Mexico becoming the biggest industrial plant on the planet.” (27:36)

• Weaponization of Migration and Media

  • Ed decries both governments: “There are certain powers that be on both sides of the border that are fostering [animosity] for years.” (01:10)
  • On media’s role: “The traditional media is one of the biggest villains out there...never saw the atrocities I went through covered by US media.” (26:53, 115:04)

4. Cycle of Violence: Recruitment, Desperation, Vengeance

• Recruitment into Violence (02:33–04:38, 67:01–68:57)

  • Describes kids recruited on false promises, forced into brutal initiation: “...pulled into a yard somewhere and they get a knife tossed in the middle of them and say, whoever fucking wins this match gets to join us.” (02:33)
  • Reminisces on youthful allure and “romanticizing” narco culture, whose “cool” factor leads many to brutal fates. (52:55)

• Loss of Agency and Trauma

  • Bureaucratic indifference leaves former police/social warriors with no recourse: “...once they're done with you in the government, they get rid of you somehow.” (06:32)
  • On friends joining cartels post-agency: “They take care of their families more, they have better pay, they have actual support behind them.” (65:06)

5. Policy, Migration, and American Denial

• Frustration with Immigration Chaos (34:32–44:53)

  • Ed details the Kafkaesque bureaucracy for legal immigrants versus “street handouts” for others, noting the resentment among working immigrants.
  • Notes, pointedly: “...every single Mexican that makes it across that border illegally now has a legal claim for asylum because they’re fleeing a country that is torn up by a terrorist organization.” (40:13)
  • On hypocrisy: “As a legal immigrant, it makes me feel a certain way when I see a bunch of Venezuelan dudes riding around mopeds in New York with a debit card full of cash, living in a hotel.” (37:31)

• US as Villain and Global Context (71:20–73:37)

  • Ed, on realizing he was seen as the enemy: “It dawned on me a few years into my career that we were the enemy, that we were the villains in the story.” (71:20)
  • “People are not their governments...that applies to everyone.” (129:21, Julian quoting Eric Zolliger)

6. Cartel Conflict as Proxy War / Escalation Risks

• Potential for US Invasion and Blowback (92:18–99:37)

  • Ed warns: “If the US decides to attack in a very overt Afghanistan, Iraq type way...it’s going to turn them into martyrs and it’s going to turn them into freedom fighters.” (94:02)
  • Risks of asymmetric war: “...the Mexican army doesn’t have a lot of technological advances, but they’re very experienced people...there are people going to take off their uniforms and go into the local populace and do what the Zetas did.” (94:58)
  • Predicts: “I’m predicting that there is going to be a targeted drone strike somewhere in Mexico of a high-level cartel member by the US.” (97:05)

• No Clear Solutions, Only “Villains”

  • Both governments deflect blame, fail at reforms, and refuse to acknowledge their own role: “There’s a villainy aspect right there...both sides are to blame. Both sides have villainous actors.” (16:30, 129:21, 128:44–131:05)

7. The Cost: Psychological Toll and Search for Redemption

• Personal Fallout of War (80:22–82:13, 132:33–137:54)

  • Ed’s struggle with alcoholism, PTSD, and reintegration after a life defined by violence:
    • “If people want to understand what alcoholism is...what I miss about it, I miss dreamless sleep.” (76:52)
    • “I was a functional alcoholic since I was 21...monkey see, monkey do, everybody.” (82:16)
    • “The scariest thing for me...what if people found out I’m a dumpster fire?” (137:54)
    • “I’m 42 and I’m a new American, and I’m a new adult because I had people taking care of shit for me for years.” (141:08)

• Therapeutic Value of Telling the Story

  • “There are many people like myself that went through this process...quietly living a life after that...with no voices who are never going to be able to be here and sharing this with a big part of the US populace. I hope I’m doing them a service.” (120:05)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Systemic Corruption:
  “I was let go. Then I got a call from the director of the job that I was in and I got. But that’s sick because they said that I just passed the most rigorous confidence filter in Mex.” (00:53)
• On Global Financing & Power:
  “If we want to talk about power structures higher up, I mean, the cartels are power structure, but they're not the Illuminati...I just see a BlackRock Soros entity around the current administration in Mexico.” (25:33)
• On the Cycles of Blame:
  “The hand that steals hides itself, but the hand that spends gives the other one away.” (27:29)
• On Immigration System Hypocrisy:
  “As a legal immigrant, it makes me feel a certain way when I see a bunch of Venezuelan dudes riding around mopeds in New York with a debit card full of cash, living in a hotel.” (37:31)
• On Vengeance and Human Nature:
  “Common denominator I've found with all these people...people are capable of doing wild shit for their kids in an environment where you're not going to be able to put food on the table.” (106:45)
• On the Media:
  “Traditional media is one of the biggest villains out there.” (26:53)
• On Redemption:
  “I hope I'm bringing them some sort of recognition. Most of the criticism I've gotten here in the United States has actually come from Mexicans and Mexican people... they’re too detached from the realities of Mexico.” (120:05)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

| Timestamp | Topic/Quote | |:-------------:|:---------------| | 00:00–00:53 | Ed’s firsthand account of loss, forced disappearances, and torture | | 02:33–04:38 | Children recruited into cartel violence; US demand and complicity | | 19:16–21:43 | Cartel power as a cross-border, global issue | | 24:21–25:57 | Shadowy elite influence; BlackRock, Soros, and proxy wars | | 34:32–44:53 | Immigration process, hypocrisy, and humanitarian costs | | 58:58–60:24 | Torture as employment “filter”; psychological consequences | | 65:06–66:09 | Ex-cops choosing cartel work: “they take care of their families more” | | 71:20–73:37 | “We were the villains”—realizing the public’s perception of police | | 76:52 | Alcoholism as coping: “what I miss about it, I miss dreamless sleep” | | 92:18–99:37 | Scenarios for US intervention in Mexico; Martyrdom and asymmetry | | 120:05 | “I hope I’m bringing them some sort of recognition...” – Ed, on voicing the experiences of the voiceless | | 137:54 | Therapeutic value of radical honesty: “scariest thing for me...what if people found out that I’m a dumpster fire?” |

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Final Thoughts

Ed Calderon's account is unsparing, personal, and deeply informed. He connects the underbelly of the drug war to global currents—policy, economics, elite interests, and cultural inertia—while foregrounding the lived trauma and impossible choices demanded of those caught in its machinery. The podcast avoids tidy solutions, warning instead that without honest reckoning and meaningful reform, cycles of violence, exploitation, and mutual distrust will persist—across borders and generations.

Host Julian Dorey’s main takeaway:
“We’ve created a wrong incentive structure where you can’t admit that...the political climate has created something where now you’re going to keep doubling down on things that cause harm.” (125:57)

Ed’s closing perspective:
“There's no other country in the world that I would rather be in than this one...I'm just trying to do something positive out of the horrible experience I went through. Trauma—you can't go back in time to fix it. All you can do is move forward, and try to prevent it from happening again.” (141:38, 147:35)

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For listeners:

This episode is essential for those seeking an unvarnished, deeply human perspective on the war on drugs, US-Mexico relations, and the hidden forces shaping both tragedy and hope on the borderlands.

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Transcript

[Ed]

There were two guys that I worked with. Some of the first people that I lost. We never found them. They disappeared completely. It was this mystery for years. And then there's some that we did find. One of them's last name was Arenas. He got picked up by dudes dressed as federal agents. When we found him, he had his ID screwed to his forehead. Now there was this big corruption thing uncovered in the institution that it was part of. Everybody was brought in basically for questioning. So there's a military barracks where they have the giant Mexican flag in Tijuana. Every now and then you would hear music coming out of the military barracks. Weird music. Sweet Child of Mine. Like that. Sweet Child, you said the volume would crack up. They called me to the office and then all of a sudden I find myself in that same military barracks, this time with a hood over my head, which is a sign for special operations. This is a plastic bag that was utilized multiple times to try and asphyxiate me. And then I realized why the Sweet Child of Mine would be playing in that.

[Julian]

Oh my God, they're drowning it out.

[Ed]

I was let go. Then I got a call from the director of the job that I was in and I got. But that's sick because they said that I just passed the most rigorous confidence filter in Mex.

[Julian]

Hey guys, if you're not following me on Spotify, please hit that follow button and leave a five star review. They're both a huge, huge help.

[Ed]

Thank you. There was definitely an effort being made by powers that aren't too clear to me that are fostering an animosity between both of our countries, a political animosity. There are certain powers that be on both sides of the border that are fostering and fostered for years. And this past administration is a clear sign of that. This wave of migration that has not done a lot of positive things. And if anybody says, what positivity did that bring? I don't know, like people got away from the communities that they, they were at risk from.

[Julian]

Yes.

[Ed]

Venezuela emptied out prisons.

[Julian]

They emptied out prisons.

[Ed]

Venezuela emptied out prisons and said, yeah, go, go that way. So that's why we got the train. And now the Venezuelans are coming out saying that the Trinidad was actually a US operation group of people that they were trying to foster. So it's a shit show. It's a show. There are powers that be that are trying to destabilize. That's obvious.

[Julian]

Yeah.

[Ed]

And in the middle are kids who want a job and read a classified ad somewhere in Jalisco, fly There or go into, or arrive by a bus, then get pulled into a yard somewhere and they get a knife tossed in the middle of them and say, whoever fucking wins this match gets to join us. And somehow that's being funded by people buying avocados at the grocery store in the US Somehow that's being funded by federal programs in parts of the US that are very permissive to the drug uses and creating these giant drug markets in places like Los Angeles and other parts of the country who are in, indirectly or directly, basically fostering these businesses that these organizations have somehow us, you know, in the US Trying to be a good person and kind of like, hey, this is just an addict. This is not his fault. You know, sometimes people saying like, hey, the borders, the borders crossed us. Yeah, yeah, but, but there's a border there now and people are paying to get across it to a very evil organization that does horrible shit. And once they get across, a lot of them don't achieve the American dream. A lot of them actually get eaten. That's right. So there's no way of, of tracking numbers of the disappeared once they cross the border because they're undocumented.

[Julian]

So we can't even track the numbers of people who just come over.

[Ed]

Yeah. So I'm all about people finding a better opportunity for themselves. I'm an immigrant myself. I understand it more than most. I also understand that there's people making a business out of that.

[Julian]

Absolutely.

[Ed]

I also understand that there's people, people trying to virtue signal through their support of immigrants and the open borders policies and all of these, these things and will call me a fucking sellout for speaking against immigration in that way.

[Julian]

You've spoken on, to be clear, to defend you. You've spoken on both sides of that very strongly today. It's interesting to see where you're at.

[Ed]

Because I, I'm going to get shit from everyone. It's, I mean, for me, this, this is, this is who I am. Yeah, I raised over $3,000 for the Ryan Terry Foundation. One of the Border patrol agents that was, that were killed by some of those Fast and Furious guns. I did that because I get it.

[Julian]

Yeah.

[Ed]

And also for. To get an opportunity to say, yeah, yeah, I raised money for that man and his family and also for the ability to say that there are other families in Mexico that have no names, that have no funding, that have nothing behind them, that were killed and murdered by some of these guns that were directly put into Mexico by the authorization of a man named Eric Holder. Eric fucking Holder, who's somewhere out there enjoying his fucking life. And there's a. There's a kid in Mexico, a girl that doesn't have an arm because of some of those guns.

[Julian]

It's crazy.

[Ed]

And doesn't have a father and doesn't have a mother. I'm trying to bring light into some of these voiceless, empty stories that you don't hear a lot about out here. I'm very suspicious about the media in the US and its blackout on all of these issues. Until now.

[Julian]

Until now.

[Ed]

Yeah. You want to talk about the essence of good that I've managed to kind of, like, figure out for myself in the US If I can see a light in the US it has been places and platforms like yours that allow somebody like me who. Dude, I didn't. I didn't. I have a. Basically went to high school. Yeah. And. And then I did some for the government, and that left me heavily damaged and traumatized, and eventually they got rid of me. And.

[Julian]

They got rid of you?

[Ed]

Yeah. That's what they do with everybody. That. That once they're done with you in the government, they get rid of you somehow. For me.

[Julian]

How did they do that for you?

[Ed]

For me, it was a clear choice between work with us or die, basically. They put me into a room and they said, hey, we're going to work against this cartel, only you want to join us? And I said no, because eventually the institution that I work with got to a level of corruption where it just was unsustainable for me to stay.

[Julian]

Did you discuss that? Did you call people out in back rooms and say, I know what the fuck you are?

[Ed]

At that moment, when I got that offer, I had no backing left. For a long while, I worked in a. In that office with backing of powerful people, including ex governors, including people that are in politics, including ex military members. I have a. I have a military recognition by the general that was in charge of all operations in that region. I have them on my podcast. So I had that level of trust, and then all of a sudden, I found myself in a room with somebody telling me like, you were gonna work for this cartel. I resigned that same day. Like, it's like you worried about getting.

[Julian]

A bullet in the back of your head when you walk out.

[Ed]

Yeah, that's why I left. That's why I left. And that's why I live with a. With a Navy SEAL friend of mine for a bit in California while I was figuring out my immigration. The. The level of the. And I'm just one story, man. Like, there's People like me all across Mexico, people that were trained, fostered, brainwashed, built up to be this force set loose.

[Julian]

Yep.

[Ed]

And then after everything was done, you're like, well, some of the you did was probably not good. Some of the people that you were, your boss were probably bad. So it means you're bad and you're corrupt. All this you did over here. Yeah, we're not going to do that. We're going to do this stuff over here now because we represent a different political candidate now. So you're the villain now. So it's basically what do people like me do? Like what do, what did the people that I work with back then did? Do they not allow them had the, the opportunities that I had immigration wise. So a lot of them went to.

[Julian]

Work, you know, and they, and we talked about it earlier in the really heartbreaking example of your friend where you told the story about seeing him, him telling you to get out of here and then, you know, 10 minutes later he's gone. And I said to you, like, what choice does someone like that have? This is someone who just disappeared one day when you were 16 because he was tapped on the shoulder by the wrong guy because he lived in the wrong place at the wrong time in the world. And it makes you think, it's like, you know, you mentioned the Ukraine, Russia, war as well. And I, I see all kinds of problems there obviously with the governments, but who's dying down there? Yeah, Is it the fucking guys in the suits or the tracksuits in fucking back offices or whatever? Is it Putin? No, it's, it's a bunch of boys. It's 18, 19, 20, 21 year old kids dying by the hundreds of thousands because men in suits in back rooms decided that this is the best way for them to solve their little sandbox disagreements together.

[Ed]

Yeah.

[Julian]

And I don't see any difference in the war. And I put that in air quotes. It's direct quotes. It's not air quotes that's going on in Mexico in this case where kids are just born into an environment and they're told at some age, hey, you're on team A and you're on team B. And by the way, if you got to team B and team B happens to be the government, eventually that's going to turn around too and you're going to be playing for team. Yeah, it's crazy.

[Ed]

It, this, this war has eaten many like myself and yeah, I didn't get like people like you guys. You're so lucky. If people only knew the amount of Issues that I live with because of it. It's a. It's pretty. It's a pretty hard life. I mean, a lot of the work that I do moving around and training people and doing all this is basically a way of me doing therapy, like sustaining myself, just giving myself a purpose. I sent a training cadre to the Ukrainians, a group training cadre, a group of people that I trained and have some training from me to do medical training for the Ukrainians.

[Julian]

When was this?

[Ed]

This is probably three years ago. Three years ago. Around that time. And, you know, more so than anything, I just wanted to, like, listen, like, hey, like, what the do they think out there? I got a lot of stories about foreign fighters showing up there. Some Mexican foreign fighters.

[Julian]

Mexican showing up in Ukraine.

[Ed]

Yeah. Basically fighting for the Ukrainians because they believed in this defense of this.

[Julian]

Wow.

[Ed]

So there's a bunch of South Americans in there as well. Colombians from all over the place.

[Julian]

Holy.

[Ed]

And how quickly the dissolution of what they were doing there started. Kind of like manifesting the corruption on the front lines as far as equipment, black markets around firearms and like that. Just the mismanagement of that war. Yes, the Russians were clearly the aggressors and like all that, that was what happened. And. But also they. Putin did warn them many times not to. Not to put them in NATO and whatever. But the main thing I got from them is just this clear, just war and conflict is sold to youth.

[Julian]

Yes.

[Ed]

As this. I don't know, man. Saving pride, Ryan. I don't know, like war. Like that war is gone. Like, there's if anything the, the, the, the. The concept of an enemy, you know, like this Nazi guy, he's an enemy. The Nazis, you know, yeah, that's an enemy. Hitler screaming, that's an enemy. But now, like, who's the enemy?

[Julian]

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[Ed]

Yeah.

[Julian]

And it kind of. It forms a pattern over time. And I've had Andy boost Amonte on this podcast six times before. Okay, so when he was first coming on, we were in my parents house and I told him not to cut his hair, which was good advice, if I may say so myself. But I remember the second podcast we did. We recorded it the end of June 2022. It was episode 1 7. There is a moment, there's a couple moments that podcast that really stand out. But as far as like, seeing how the world moves and how some of these people think, because, you know, Andy was CIA and probably still is, you know, he. He had this line in there maybe like a couple hours into that podcast where he's explaining the mentality of society and how it turns in on itself when it can't operate around a common goal. And he literally, like, is going through this and he goes, we need an enemy. And I'm like, yeah, play that. Play it back real fast. And this is a guy who I'm not allowed to say yet where he was undercover, but he goes on and he discusses a lot about China and, and from a place of like, he understands that and what that is from a GDP perspective and a threat perspective. But I hear that and I go, how much of that is not Andy? But a lot of people who, you know, have, like him who have been told like, hey, this is what it is, and then have anecdotal experiences that may be able to back that up, start spreading a message that then gets to everyone that starts to train their mind that this is the thing we all need to coalesce around. And by the way, that's the bad guy. So let's fucking go to war. I think about that a lot.

[Ed]

Yeah. And, you know, I remember watching Sicario and seeing the terrorists make it across the border and blowing themselves up next to the border patrol agents and this, this whole CIA being sent out to Mexico and basically how that kind of cast out this signal, you know, and that's usually what happens. Like, I don't, I don't, I don't know how much the CIA is involved in Hollywood, but there is a clear effort, I guess, being done to make whatever enemy. Is Mexico.

[Julian]

You see it as Mexico.

[Ed]

I mean, that's, that's what we hear, like on the news a lot. That's what we hear from the White House right now. So I don't know. And I don't see again, the whole aspect, the whole thing I've been trying to kind of explain throughout these, this conversation is both of both sides are to blame. Both sides of villainous actors. Both sides have.

[Julian]

Yes.

[Ed]

Politics that are very contrived and buried evil in a lot of ways and vote size are being told by their elected officials that the other side is the enemy.

[Julian]

Yes. You know what's crazy to me on what you said a little bit ago, and I, and I didn't respond to it, but I should, because you make an amazing point. I was talking about the corruption in, in the Mexican government and then you said, well, what about the corruption here?

[Ed]

Yeah.

[Julian]

And you know what my mind did right away when you said that? My mind here went to stocks and bonds and, oh, they're just paid off and, you know, they help out big pharma and shit. And then my mind in Mexico went to bodies and fucking blood and guts and gore. One has an image that I can see in my head that looks violent. The other one has money sloshing around that leads to those things not just there, but also here.

[Ed]

Yes.

[Julian]

And so maybe to look internally, the corruption here actually isn't all that different from there. I think you make a good point.

[Ed]

It's just, it just goes the long way about it.

[Julian]

Yes, that's exactly right.

[Ed]

You know, it's very different to go into a room and shoot up a party with a bunch of kids with AK47s because they represent an antagonistical cartel of the political campaign that you're running. You know, and another thing is basically allowing a pharmaceutical company to just sell billions of dollars worth of a very specific drug that just makes everybody junkies and that create, creates this epidemic that somehow has influenced even fucking drug markets in Mexico in cartels to produce more of this substance to feed a giant hunger in the US to escape reality and also to see the amount of people that are truly innocent. Kids. Kids going to a party trying to experiment. I mean, remember when you were a kid and you would find fucking joint on the ground, you'd be like, yay. Now it's like, what's in. Right? Medication, Bogus magnification. I mean, cartels have been utilizing pain pill presses and stuff like that to make medication. Like objects that are laced with fentanyl. And you think you're taking a pain pill and it's. You're not, you know.

[Julian]

And some of these places you were saying, are in the US where they do that.

[Ed]

Yeah, yeah. And again, the whole Americans need to just fucking get this through their head.

[Julian]

Yeah.

[Ed]

The cartel issue doesn't end at the border and never has ended at the border. El Mayo Zambala learned most of his tradecraft by a former Castro police officer who then moved to Florida somehow and then may or may not have been involved in the Bay of Pigs. I don't know. There's a bunch of stories around that. He learned most of his trade craft through that guy in Los Angeles and then went back and we're here now. This has never been a Mexico issue. This has been a regional issue. Originated itself in the US they utilize Mexico as a training ground for the Contras. They also utilize Mexico as a training ground for some of the revolutionaries. The Cuban guys, I mean, Che Guevara and Castro would like fucking drink coffee at this Cafe Tacuba place in Mexico City while they were planning the liberation of Cuba. So Mexico has been a center of. Of operation for a lot of. In the past, you know, and the US In a lot of ways has been very directly responsible, first through its combat. First through. First through its combating communism and the spread of communism in Mexico while that was going on in the 60s, leading to a massacre of students and a president that was on their payroll to now this problem that it's now seeming to prioritize by making cartels a terrorist organization and focalizing all their efforts against that and just pointing the finger and that the problem is over there. And we're all, what about Chicago, which is a hotbed for cartel activity? What about most of the Midwest, where the drug route goes from Texas all the way up into the East Coast? What about California, which is basically crazy. What about all the kingpins and distribution cells in the United States? We hear every now and then operations like, oh, there was an operation called Operation Anaconda which caught up a bunch of New Generation Cartel members in the US So I know that they are happening, but like, where are these major figureheads of organized crime in the United States that distribute and that maintain control? Like, where is this drug just materializing itself once it gets across the border?

[Julian]

No, it's turning a blind eye. I agree. What was this Operation Anaconda, though?

[Ed]

Anaconda? Yeah, it was a federal operation in the US probably five years ago.

[Julian]

Okay.

[Ed]

That focus targeted. Targeted specifically New Generation Cartel members. And I think it caught one of like El Mencho, the head of the new generic cartel. Daughter, I think was caught up in that.

[Julian]

Can we pull this up, Alessi?

[Ed]

So it, it, it's like, I get it that their operations have happened in the US but it's.

[Julian]

Yeah, we got it. Okay. Yeah, just hit the Wikipedia one. Oh, no, no, no. Operation Anaconda Cartel.

[Ed]

A new generation cartel. My eyesight is. Sorry.

[Julian]

It keeps on bringing up this Afghanistan, but that's not it.

[Ed]

Maybe, maybe I'm misremembering the name of the operation. New Generation Car. New generation cartel arrested U.S. members of operation.

[Julian]

Okay, that's 2025. So that's a no.

[Ed]

This is 2024 cartel members sentenced to drug trafficking.

[Julian]

2024, okay, so they're sentenced. So 12 drug craft workers tried tied to the Jalisco New Generation Cartel have been sentenced in between four and a half and 40 years in federal prison, announced U.S. attorney for Northern District Texas, Leah Simonton. Francisco Javier Rodriguez Areola, a top source of supply charged in the case, was sentenced Tuesday to 40 years in federal prison for conspiracy to possess with intent.

[Ed]

Apologize. I misremembering the name of that operation again. A lot of head injuries, but there's basically. They have done sweeps, but it's usually just like a barrage of them and then they just. These guys get replaced like the next day.

[Julian]

Yeah, they're like weeds.

[Ed]

But you know, people living in Arizona. In Arizona can tell me if I'm full of shit. I mean, the cartels are definitely operating in Arizona. Oh, for sure.

[Julian]

That's what.

[Ed]

And it's very overt you make this.

[Julian]

Point, Ed, about the US and Mexico being kind of trained to dislike each other or see the enemy in each other.

[Ed]

The current programming is of that. So.

[Julian]

Who do you think's doing that? And as a layer to that question, maybe the better way to ask this is as best as you can tell, with all the micro investigations on a global scale that you've done. Right?

[Ed]

Yeah.

[Julian]

Who runs the world?

[Ed]

I mean, who's the money who's the money behind Claudia Shanebaum and her presidency? Oh, and you know, yes, we can say cartels were involved in that. Yeah. But there's bigger money and bigger influence behind that.

[Julian]

You're talking like blackrock.

[Ed]

Yeah, I am talking about you talking.

[Julian]

Like the core four here.

[Ed]

Yeah.

[Julian]

Okay.

[Ed]

And who is not on behalf of the current administration here in the US the same people.

[Julian]

Right.

[Ed]

So I think there's something to be said about that and the fact that they're both being antagonistical against each other. You know, people in the US Love Soros and they submit. George Soros. George Soros, yeah, he's real. Like he, like the, the current president of Mexico, Claudia Shama, who is to the left of the political spectrum, who's all about all of these woke ideologies that are. Are now kind of being shit canned in the U.S. they're on the. They're going the other way in Mexico. So if we want to talk about power structures higher up, I mean, the cartels are power structure, but they're not, you know, they're not the Illuminati.

[Julian]

Right.

[Ed]

Like, who's above that? I don't know. I just see a BlackRock Soros entity around the current administration in Mexico that is like, yeah, fostering that. And I see in an antagonistical administration in the US By a dude that was probably almost murdered by some of these interests. Probably. I don't know.

[Julian]

Maybe.

[Ed]

Yeah, maybe. So you see, I don't know. I mean, that's what I've managed to see. I'm not a journalist, by the way. I am a guy that worked operations and I worked intelligence and I just did a lot of research and I studied a lot. And I've worked against some of these organizations at a macro level, in a regional level, in a way, in a very successful counter narcotics operation that is probably the only successful ones that Mexico's ever had in north and northwestern Mexico in the areas that are operated in. We took Tijuana from the number one city, most dangerous city on the planet to not even being on that list. And we were allowed to do the job that we had to do for a moment and then that went away. That's where I get my experience from. And when I start looking at people at this global scale now, which is like, for me, it's surreal to be here on this platform with you guys talking about some of this like this. Whenever I talk about villainy, the media, the traditional media, is one of the biggest villains out there. And I say that as somebody from Mexico that never saw the atrocities that I went through being covered by US Media. It would, it would all just like.

[Julian]

Yep.

[Ed]

When I, when I, when I look at some of these things, it's, it comes from a few places as far as how I try to figure things out. Number one, the money.

[Julian]

Yep.

[Ed]

So the hand that, the hand that steals hides itself, but the, the hand that spends gives the other one away.

[Julian]

Right.

[Ed]

Is something I learned from a very privileged looking man, Lt. Col. Liza Ola. If he's out there looking, shout out to that guy. A lot of these, A lot of the money in Mexico right now is betting on Mexico becoming the biggest industrial plant on the planet. They're seeing China going, probably going to take a walk in the park pretty soon. Ten years online, who knows? That's what I hear.

[Julian]

So you're from like this. I. Hand perspective.

[Ed]

It's not, it's not, it's not even that I'm from that perspective. I mean, you see all these people showing up at the border. They might be all part of a giant military operation to invade the United States covertly or they might be people that are like, China sucks, let me figure out. Or both. Or both.

[Julian]

Yeah.

[Ed]

But I think I've managed to see a bit of both.

[Julian]

Okay.

[Ed]

There's no fucking migration to China that I can see. There's a bunch of empty fucking cities out there. There is a bunch of companies. And again, this is not. I've followed Peter Sahan. I've never talked to him before and I've heard some of his opinions. Some of them are interesting, some of them I don't know.

[Julian]

He speaks on a lot of.

[Ed]

He speaks on a lot of things. But I'm probably on the same boat as him as far as China's going under in a few years, probably, I don't know how long, 10 years maybe. I don't know. But if people are doubting that, like, oh yeah, you're full of shit, China's about to fucking take over the world, then why are all their industrial plants moving to Mexico?

[Julian]

I mean, my counter to that would be they're moving a lot of. Not just industrial plants. They're moving a lot of things around the world to buy influence.

[Ed]

They're moving to Mexico because they're running out of hands. I think that's what's happening. And also the, the cost of moving things from Mexico into the United States, which is their fucking biggest market, would be right there. So there's two, there's a few things. Mexico's about to become this giant industrial plant probably going to replace China in the next 10 years. And the US probably knows about that. And also your enemies probably know that there are talks and plans of a new Panama Canal going across Mexico.

[Julian]

Yeah. What's going on with this? I've heard whispers, but I haven't looked.

[Ed]

They're trying to figure out a way to basically make a Mexican Panama Canal.

[Julian]

Okay.

[Ed]

And that would be huge if that happens. And that would benefit the Mexican people greatly, maybe depending on who's in charge. Or it would benefit foreign powers and people that don't give a fuck about Mexico and its people. So I don't know. There, there, there are many things that are setting the stage for the, for Mexico to be basically this giant economic powerhouse that could have control over, over its own destiny or can have others controlling its destiny. And I think in a big way, the United States wants to control that destiny because it's thinking about America first. And I get it. I understand that aspect of it. And on the other end, there's a bunch of foreign entities trying to influence Mexico and its government, foster dissent and conflict, pump substances into Mexico, influence political candidates on one side or the other, and basically foster this lawlessness in parts of its institutions that are now fostering this again, this phenomenon of narco politics.

[Julian]

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[Ed]

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[Julian]

Those countries deal directly with the cartels in many cases themselves to be able to do this business and get permission. So the cartels are basically just for sale.

[Ed]

Yeah. Mexico is part of a giant proxy war that's probably going on and some of the people on the other side of that proxy were probably sure the People's Republic of China and that's an aspect of an element of that doesn't get talked about a lot. A lot. I think. And the final part I think that people should really pay attention to as far as this whole issue is the, you know, if immigration is such a big issue in the United States, where are, where's all the immigration reform?

[Julian]

Well, I, I've been saying that forever because like, even before Trump came to power or came up in 2015, the big issue here was you didn't have any good situations or, or any good scenarios in the sense that there were people who were either totally anti immigration and like not looking at where it could be beneficial, where a country was kind of built on that, or there were people who were like, well, since our systems, we got to let everyone else in the system set up for people of means. It's set up for people who need to hire a lot of different lawyers, go through a lot. I Mean, you've lived it yourself. I'm speaking, preaching the choir.

[Ed]

It's a. I had to prove my marriage was real and I had to.

[Julian]

How do you do that? How do you prove it?

[Ed]

You have to. I. So this is. We.

[Julian]

Oh, they take you to the back room and they say, get it on.

[Ed]

They separate. No, that'd be. They separate you. They separate you. They ask you questions. I had a. I, I had my daughter with me. Right.

[Julian]

Oh man.

[Ed]

I had my daughter with me and a. And an album of pictures of me and my. And my ex wife all the way back to like when we were 15 or 16. Because we've known each other for years.

[Julian]

Yeah.

[Ed]

Our families were like friends. And that wasn't enough. I had to go through three or four. Four if you count the last one. Four interviews. Obviously, probably my background was like a thing trying to figure out, but I had to go through four interviews. Meanwhile, a person of West African descent next to me who was going through the same process got his green card. The first in this first meeting because of a quota that they had a quota. Yeah. And he couldn't speak English. He couldn't speak English.

[Julian]

And you speak American English.

[Ed]

And I'm like, hey, like. And also, like, I'm. And also I have a kid and then. And I kind of worked, like, can. No, like you need to come back again. We need more. That, that was wild for me. The other thing that was wild for me is coming out of the immigration process and getting, getting handed a bunch of information, pamphlets and ways of getting government money.

[Julian]

Ways of getting government money.

[Ed]

Yeah. So like, hey, welcome to the United States. This is how you can get on all this type of welfare. And you should live here because if you live here, this is going to get you access to this, this and this and this. Mind you, I'm Mexican in my mind, I'm like, I had a work. I got to go to work, right? And all of a sudden I have this like this portfolio. Like I, I qualify for this, I qualify for that. I should get medical exams and I can qualify for this money. So that's the, that's the reception that the United. That's the reception that some parts of the United States have to people coming into this country legally of shitty, horrible immigration process that is very unfair with a giant line across the street that people cross or jump over if. But every now and then I get like, hey, Ed, like, you're very anti immigrant. Like what? Like, I'm not, Not at all. As a legal immigrant. It makes me Feel a certain way when I see a bunch of Venezuelan dudes riding around mopeds in New York with a debit card full of cash, living in a hotel.

[Julian]

Yep.

[Ed]

I didn't get any of that. I had to beg people to be able to, like, hey, I just came here. Like, I'm trying to figure it out. Can I stay at your place for a bit and get. I need to get a job, or. I had to beg people.

[Julian]

Yeah.

[Ed]

Figure out I had a. At that time, she was two and a half, almost three.

[Julian]

An American daughter.

[Ed]

Yeah.

[Julian]

Yeah.

[Ed]

Yeah. Her mom's American. Her. Her mom's parents are Americans, and I'm. And she's working, but it's California, so we. I have to.

[Julian]

Was she from San Diego?

[Ed]

Yeah.

[Julian]

Okay.

[Ed]

So that's how I knew each other. Yeah. So I had to. I had to figure out.

[Julian]

Yeah.

[Ed]

And I can understand why a large segment of people who are of my descent get pissed off when they see the immigration process now and they see all these people get free money, free stuff, free plane tickets, crazy. Flown around.

[Julian]

What was that app like, the one.

[Ed]

Again? I understand. Yes. Some of these people were at risk, but we can't generalize it, though. Some of these people were at risk, but some of these people were fucking gang members. I remember going on a flight. I think it was Dallas, and, like, four of them Venezuelan dudes with a portfolio thing, they were carrying for their paperwork because they can't. They don't have IDs, so they had to fly with this paperwork they give them. All of them were wearing hoodies, covering up their heads and their. And their. And their arms. It's fucking hot. It's Dallas in summer.

[Julian]

Mm. I was, like, covering some pets, and I'm getting some things.

[Ed]

I'm not vilifying all immigration in the.

[Julian]

I understand completely.

[Ed]

But you have to realize that, as an immigrant myself, seeing some of the shady that happens around it, you're like, Ukrainian refugees come and camp out on the border in Tijuana.

[Julian]

They go to Tijuana.

[Ed]

Yeah. They spend probably. I don't know, let's say a month. And now they're all across. So now all of them are in the US Immediately. I'm not saying it's because they're white, although it might have something to do with it. I'm not saying it's that, but. But then you get the. The Hondurans and Venezuelans and stuff like that.

[Julian]

Them.

[Ed]

They make a giant camp in the bar. So I don't know, man. There's a lot of Weird. I'm not. Again, I'm not saying maybe. I don't know. Maybe it's because the war was going on, so they qualify for refugee status. But, you know, we have to realize now more than ever that this immigration system is.

[Julian]

Yes, it's so.

[Ed]

And people need to realize this. And again, something I said five years ago, four years ago on another platform. Every single Mexican that makes it across that border illegally now has a legal claim for asylum because they're fleeing a country that is torn up. Being torn apart by a terrorist organization.

[Julian]

Yeah, I don't think they thought about that one.

[Ed]

Hopefully there's somebody in charge that is thinking about a lot of these issues, but people asking for a path to citizenship right now, everybody that made it across that border after the kickoff of the drug war. Like, I started being active in 2004. I think the drug war probably kicked off in 2006, 2007, again, hazy, got hit in the head a shit ton of times. Time blindness is an issue that I have legit.

[Julian]

You're doing pretty well today.

[Ed]

So all of these people that manage across that border illegally have a legal. Have a. Have a claim.

[Julian]

Yeah.

[Ed]

Like, hey, why did you leave? Like, why did you leave Nogales?

[Julian]

Terrorista.

[Ed]

Terrorista. You know, there's like a. There was like, a cartel group that actually called themselves the Taliban. So there's. Now they have a claim. Yeah. And I don't know if there's going to be some sort of. I don't know. Immigration reform should be at the top of the list. Yeah. Build a wall, do everything you want. But immigration reform is not even being talked about.

[Julian]

So it hasn't been forever.

[Ed]

It's a huge problem. So I don't think. So again, I don't. I don't think the. The claim that these. This is being done for some sort of national security aspect or that it's being done to work against a terrorist organization. Like, there's something off about that whole process. Immigration is definitely an issue. Illegal immigration is definitely one of the biggest drugs that's being utilized by the American population as far as their work that they do for us.

[Julian]

Oh, right.

[Ed]

We're addicted to it.

[Julian]

Yeah. And you have. Look, you also have people. So if the system's broken and it's, like, impossible for someone of no means to even try to get through it with a lawyer or something like that, I understand why they want to try to come here.

[Ed]

Yeah.

[Julian]

We've also just had an open door that allows them to come here, by the way, often with the help of coyotes and the cartels themselves, who have made an enormous business out of this that you already laid out earlier, the.

[Ed]

Illegal coyotes, because there was also government legal coyotes in the states.

[Julian]

That's right. That's right.

[Ed]

Move them to different parts of the country. For what reason? I'm not going to say. Electoral reasons. Weird.

[Julian]

It's weird.

[Ed]

I'm not going to say for electoral reasons, but it was probably for electoral reasons.

[Julian]

It was something weird, for sure. But I'm saying, like, even forgetting that for a second, because we've covered that in here, you're 100% right. The fact that the cartels made business out of this and continue to make business out of this out of people, and that's not being viewed as, as a humanitarian crisis by people in this country who are so concerned about, like, having love for everyone. What about the, what about the kids you talk about who are coming across the border with coyotes who then are sold into sexual slavery?

[Ed]

Yeah.

[Julian]

Or killed.

[Ed]

Yeah. And again, I get it. The border. Build a wall, build it high. You know, I remember speaking to this mugler during the, the whole caravan thing, and I said, like, hey, dude, like the, the, the, this is the first Trump administration. It's like, hey, the Marines are across the border now. Like, is that making things difficult for you? HA Navidad. Like, what, It's Christmas. What do you mean? Yeah, they, all of the, all of the army is here and they're very visible and they don't separate, they don't leave each other because that's not what you do. So, like, oh, yes, done. Right. Also, he said, yeah, a lot of those Marines, some paisanos like their countrymen, so, like, they, you know, hit them up again. Corruption is on both sides. Yes, we're, we're like, I, I grew up on GI Joe too, you know, but I, I, but that's not the reality that we live in.

[Julian]

No.

[Ed]

Immigration needs to be dealt with. Our dependency on illegal immigration that is kept illegal for a reason needs to be dealt with or else none of these solutions being put forth by the current administration are really serious about anything. That's what makes me, that's what makes me kind of doubt what's going on. And I think the play, really, realistically, the US Is not going to, Is not trying to end terrorism in Mexico. Yeah.

[Julian]

There's something else there.

[Ed]

It's trying to get a handle or a control over the future of Mexico because it realizes the importance that it has and holds for the future of the United States.

[Julian]

Do you remember like your first time as it. Because we haven't really talked about like you growing up today yet.

[Ed]

Can I, Can I. Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Julian]

Quick, quick break, quick break.

[Ed]

Hold on.

[Julian]

All right, we're back. I was just asking you though, like, what the. If you can remember as a kid your first time, like, I don't know what age you were, but where you realize like, oh, there's this thing called the cartel and maybe they run some stuff around here.

[Ed]

Like I can actually really. I really have a clear memory of this. My, My family was. Was lower middle class for a while and then it was upper for just for like a few, like let's say like six years. I think my dad's business did pretty well.

[Julian]

Got it.

[Ed]

So some of my brothers. I have two brothers bigger. I'm the, I'm the. I'm the smallest one. They. They went out at night and partied. This is early 90s. So this is the Ariano Felix era. So cartels were around, but cartel members were around, but I didn't know who they were. The first armored vehicle I ever saw was outside of a private school in Tijuana called El Mentor Mexicano. It's a prep school. El Mayo Sambada's son was in that school and he had an armored vehicle. That's the first armored vehicle I ever saw when I was a kid. But I thought he was just an important man, you know, with an important son and he's money. So like, that's why they're guarding him. There was a very weird famous shootout in Tijuana, like some of the earliest ones next to an open air market called El Mercado in Tijuana. It's just, you know, it's an open air market, basically like a Tiangis, like a swap meet. Cartel guys show up and get in a firefight with other cartel guys. Turns out some of them are federal cops, some of them are state cops and both of them are basically bodyguards for rival cartel members. So they enter the shootout. So that. So that makes people like, wait, what's going on? That's never happened in public like this before. That was the kind of. The first time it kind of like manifested itself and I started hearing the La Mania.

[Julian]

La Mania.

[Ed]

La Mana. It's a. The Mania or. Or the Tick, okay, is like a nickname for criminal organizations in Mexico. So I would hear like, who. Who was in that shooter? La Mania. It was the main. The Tick, you know, the Mania La mano Peluda. The Hairy Hand was another nickname for cartel. So cartel as a word Wasn't like the one used. It was always like a weird nickname. La Mania, La Mano Pella. You know, he was funny. Weird names. But you would start hearing about these people carrying around guns and like, oh, they're policia. And a very interesting phenomenon happened in Tijuana, specifically the Narco junior phenomenon. So basically rich kids are people in the middle class getting into cartel work. Some of these Arellano Felix cartel affiliate members wanted to have inroads into industry or inroads into nightlife. So how do you get the kids. So you start, they start getting some of the kids involved in recruiting them into, you know, hey, I need access to middle class or upper middle class Tijuana people that cross the border a lot so I can use them as drug mules. So that's, that's, that's, that's how it started manifesting in my life when I was a kid seeing some of my neighbors being caught with a kilo or more trying to cross the border with. You're like a rich kid, like, what are you doing smuggling drugs? And then. And you realize that they're not, it's not, it wasn't about the money. It was about the lifestyle.

[Julian]

That's right.

[Ed]

Power, influence, lifestyle. I know these guys don't with me or a suburban is going to show up. And that would happen. Like when I was in high school there was again, I was a skater kid. So I, I didn't, I didn't go into the materialistic myself. But some of the people that I went to high school with did. They would go to some of the famous nightclubs that there was one called in Monte Picacho was Cartel full. I don't, I don't know if it's still open, but if it is like, don't go there.

[Julian]

Kat Schultz is going right now.

[Ed]

There was a friend of mine went to that bar and danced with this chick there. Turns out this chick was the ex girlfriend of a guy that went to the same school.

[Julian]

I thought you were gonna say she was a dude.

[Ed]

No, no, it's not one of those stories. Not yet. Not yet. If you want we can go into some of those stories, but not now. But this guy shows up outside of the school. This is a, this is a private school in a very like nice part of Tijuana in the middle of the day, gets out of the car with a Draco. A Draco is a very short AK47 that big. And gets out of the car with a, with a Draco. And I'd never seen One in real life. And I thought it was a toy. No. And then he just racks that thing and lets three rounds up into the sky. Everybody's on the ground. This kid walks out and he like beats the out of him. Two other guys come on, kick the out of this guy, take his wallet and his car keys and then they leave. Ambulance comes, picks him up. And I'm watching all this. I'm a kid, I'm probably 16, 15, and I'm like, I'm waiting for the cops to show up. I mean there's a guy just showed up with a AK in front of the school, shot three rounds into the air on this high value neighborhood, beat the out of this kid, left him like an ambulance had to come with him. The cops are going to show up. Cops never show up. And that camp happening over and over again during my life now you know whether that. Now I knew it's because of. Well, maybe some of the guys that were in that car that came out and beat the out of that kid were actually cops.

[Julian]

Yeah.

[Ed]

Maybe they have communication so they can tell like, hey, don't show up to this. It's us. So it started manifesting and showing itself in different ways while I was growing up. And again, the whole influence it had and again the enamorment that like kids would see this lifestyle. Like I can. You can carry on guns, you can go into nightclubs. Like that night, I want to go to Tangaloo and get over the line. And you start seeing all these. It's sexy, it's romantic. Here, get a corridor written about you and like seeing basically the whole Robin Hood type.

[Julian]

Yeah.

[Ed]

Scenario celebrating these guys that made it.

[Julian]

So you have like a. It's kind of like as a kid, unknown, you know, just trying to figure out the world. You kind of have these mixed emotions about them at first.

[Ed]

Yeah, Yeah. I mean they're romantic, they're cool in a way. It's cool that I have friends that have influence with them. And if we were picked up by the cops constantly in Tijuana, skateboarding.

[Julian]

Oh, you were?

[Ed]

Yeah.

[Julian]

Why?

[Ed]

Skateboarding is a crime in Tijuana.

[Julian]

What?

[Ed]

Well, there was no skate parks and we were kids and we smoked weed in public, you know, and we destroyed property and like that.

[Julian]

That's what they arrest you for down there.

[Ed]

Yeah, they would pick us up. Right.

[Julian]

Seems like there's some bigger priorities, but you know, it's just me.

[Ed]

We would skate at a, at a. There was a. There's a military barracks where they have the giant Mexican Flag in Tijuana and outside there's a park and that we would basically bring our own skate gear and skateboard out out there. Like, we welded this pole and these legs on it so we could find a board slide and like that. And every now and then you would hear music coming out of the. The military barracks. Like, weird music, like Sweet Child of Mine. And like that we just play and, you know, saying, oh, sweet child. And then you said the volumes would crack up and we'd be outside skateboarding, right? It was this mystery for years. And every now and then the cops would show up and fucking just pick us up and take our money, steal our boards, or if we fucking had cardio, fucking outrun those fuckers, right? Everybody would spread. Years later, I find myself in that same military barracks, only this time with a hood over my head.

[Julian]

A hood over your head?

[Ed]

When I was working for a past administration, there was this big corruption thing uncovered in the institution that I was a part of. And there was a baptism. Narco bautismo, they call it in the news. It was a baptism when a bunch of cops were swept up in this raid that the army special Forces had there. So while they were trying to figure out who was in on it, some of the people that were in charge of the governor's security were actually in on it. And some of those people were working with me and my team. So everybody was brought in basically for questioning. And they put a hood over your head. They called me to the office, and then all of a sudden, I found myself in a truck full of people wearing black helmets, which is a sign for special operations. And I. I never saw. I've never told this story before, and I've recently talked about this publicly. I've never talked about my time that. That situation publicly, realistically. And I, like, I still have the. The scars on my wrist from the handcuffs. Yeah. Because they were torturing me as they. I had them. Had them on, so I was trying to get free of them. So. Skin peeled.

[Julian]

They were torturing you?

[Ed]

Yeah, well, they were interrogating me. This is. This is what they said, right? And then I realized why the sweet child of mine would be playing in that military.

[Julian]

Oh, my God, they're drowning it out.

[Ed]

I had this moment of time travel. I had this moment of time travel when I was both 14, 15, with my skateboard and trying to. Trying to hear this music. And all of a sudden I'm. I'm there. The. I got a promotion afterwards. So there's like a happy ending to it.

[Julian]

We like how you responded to how we.

[Ed]

Honestly.

[Julian]

Christ.

[Ed]

Honestly. They did some of that.

[Julian]

That's so.

[Ed]

But that's. But they sick. That's so sick.

[Julian]

And I mean, it's not normal.

[Ed]

No, but. But it is. It is there though. There. I wasn't the only one there. There was a bunch of people were picked up and God knows what happened to some of them. I was picked up. That happened for a while and then I was let go. Somebody from my office went and picked me up. I went home. My. My ex wife wasn't there at the time. We're already together. And did my best to kind of wash myself off, I guess.

[Julian]

How do you like. You gotta be a mess.

[Ed]

Meteolate, which is like a Mexican antimicrobial solution. Use it on cows. But that's what I put on my wrist and I wrapped them. I had a bunch of internal cuts and wounds in my mouth from just being slapped and being punched in the face so much and a few other things. So I just took a long ass shower and drank like less than half of a bottle of tequila to kind of chill out. I was a functional alcoholic back then. So, yeah, easy. And then I got a call from the director of my. The job that I was in at that time, and I got, and I got a, and I got a, A promotion because they said that I, I just passed the most rigorous confidence filter in Mexico.

[Julian]

Meaning that they had determined you were not one of the people that turned. You were tortured. And they're like, well, he stood up.

[Ed]

And after that I became the head of security for the governor of Baja. Okay, that. But that's. Again, that's the realities of shit down there. Oh yeah, extreme.

[Julian]

That dichotomy is insane. You're going from the skate park to hearing this music, wondering what the fuck that is, and then you're in it.

[Ed]

Yeah, I'm in there with a hood on. And when I say a hood, people might envision like this black cloth hood that the American CIA would use. Nah, this was a fucking plastic bag. This is a very gray, thick plastic bag over my head that was utilized multiple times to try and asphyxiate me as far as, as far as their interrogation. So when I, when I, when I, when I. Like when I. But that you have to realize then, then these people then turn around and say like, hey, we're cool. All that stays with it.

[Julian]

Yeah. What does that do to you psychologically? Because now you're running security for the governor and you're not into people in the hallway who were doing these horrible things to you.

[Ed]

Yeah. Again, it's programming. It's training. People that have been through military training and have been through these rigorous programmings and brainwashing will tell you it's like in some way, shape or form, they convinced me that was justified and I had to just go through it, man. They rewarded me by giving me more responsibility, and I relished it. I would like to tell you that I was like, bitter about it or angry. The bitterness and anger only came years later when I realized it was at the root of a lot of my problems.

[Julian]

Yeah.

[Ed]

From my alcoholism to my insomnia, to my weird issues with authorities and authority figures around me with my. There's a bunch of that produced. It produces itself around that. And, you know, this. This. The normalization, as you say, this is normal. Like, when I would. I never spoke about any of this for years until recently. I was on this podcast in. In Mexico with Agafe. And the reason I talked about it publicly with him is because he was a part of the institution that probably did that to me. And when I was describing the torture, he was like, he's not. Because he knows. You know? He knows, right? He knows. And the. Again, this. People want to are wondering what, hey, like, why doesn't anybody do anything? Like, why doesn't anybody raise their hand? Like, why isn't there, like a youth movement trying to fight against cartel? It was like, what there is. There's a lot of people like myself that are very idealistic that want to do something and make a difference, that they get programmed in some of these institutions that do the job that needs to be done. And all of a sudden, once we're done with us.

[Julian]

Yep.

[Ed]

Or if we get fired from some sort of stupidity. We did. If you're a cop in Mexico, at least it was like this when I was active. If you were in a cop. If you're a cop in Mexico, like, you become active in an institution, you immediately become disqualified to belong to another police institution. And all over Mexico, what's the logic with that rule? They don't want people moving around. So I could be a law enforcement professional in Baja when I was active. I don't. Maybe this has changed now, but I was a law enforcement professional in Baja. If I quit the job there or I was fired, if I quit the job there and I try and hire myself off into another institution, the first question is going to be, have you ever belonged to a police institution anywhere in Mexico? And if the answer is yes, you immediately become Disqualified. So what options do people like me have? You don't. So, and this is just like systemic. Internal, systemic. That is just like there's a reason why. And I, I repeat this a lot, but it's true. When I started my police work in Mexico, we were patrolling the city with a bunch of federal guys in the back of the truck with big rifles dressed in gray. The federal police back then were army guys that would just get a different uniform. They would gray uniform instead of the brown one or the tan one. And right now the solution that the government that Klala Sheinbaum has as far as patrolling and securing the border after the tariff threats was to send 20,000 troops that were already there on the border dressed in gray to patrol the cities in the back of trucks. That's not going to do for anything.

[Julian]

20,000 seems low too.

[Ed]

And what I mean, the whole. It's a snake eating its sale over and over again. Every time there's a new administration coming in, they forget about everything they can. Everybody, they send everybody away with any sort of experience and talent leaves. I mean, I know some things. I've worked with people who are way more talented and skilled and know more about the world than I do. And a lot of these people were canned, fired, fired or let go because they just didn't have any use for them anymore.

[Julian]

And where they wouldn't play the game.

[Ed]

Or they wouldn't play the game. And where do you think they're going to go when you end up with.

[Julian]

Stand up in the cartels? Do you ever talk with any of those guys now?

[Ed]

Every now.

[Julian]

And sources.

[Ed]

Every now and then.

[Julian]

We're now in the cartels.

[Ed]

Every now and then I have like some offline conversations with some of them if they. But again, I don't look for them. I don't try and travel to them. Every now and then I'll just get this random message out of the ether, like, hey, remember me? It's like, yeah, what's going on? And holy. And I. And. And I'm aware of, of that. And I'm like, I've always, I always go hands off. But I have my ear to ground and I hear, you know, I hear, I could say this with one of them. I heard regret that they went to work for the government. They should have started there.

[Julian]

Oh, in the cartels.

[Ed]

Yeah.

[Julian]

What was his logic?

[Ed]

They take care of their families more, they have better pay, they have actual support behind them.

[Julian]

What about the. They do though. Did you ask him about that?

[Ed]

Yeah.

[Julian]

What do you say?

[Ed]

It's worth it for their families, which is something I guess I can understand. The acts of villainy being justified by the ability to have kids and being able to see them into the future.

[Julian]

So that other people can't though again.

[Ed]

Mexico is all about. Yeah, let's see the whole aspect of it later.

[Julian]

What did your parents like? Did you ever talk with them? Like growing up, once you kind of found out about the cartels, you see these Robin Hood type figures. What did they have to say about it?

[Ed]

I mean, my mom. My mom was a character. It's actually her birthday today. She passed away a few years back. But I'm sorry. But it's pretty cool that it's her birthday and I'm here. That's cool. My mom was a character. She was a ninja. She grew up in a very, very dangerous part of Tijuana shanty town. It's gone now. It was swept away by a storm. Yeah, it used to be called Cartonlandia or the cardboard land. Basically there was a storm and it was right on the Tijuana river estuary. That's where she lived. Horrible family situation. Dad abandoned them when they were. When she was about 12, I think. She always carried a knife since she was a kid. That's who I learned that from. She was a very religious Catholic. She hated. Yeah, that's. That's where she grew up. Whoa.

[Julian]

That was her neighborhood.

[Ed]

That was her neighborhood, Cartonania. There was a giant storm in DJ that swept all that away.

[Julian]

I now see what you mean.

[Ed]

That's where she grew up. So she had like. I show a lot of tradecraft stuff to people in government. I show them how to do a lot of sneaky. I have to say my mom was probably the biggest ninja I've ever met. She was a nurse. So like she. We would go to like. If you're a nurse in Mexico, you're basically like a surgeon general. You know, like somebody needs an injection. They'll knock on the door if somebody gets shot and they want to go to the hospital to knock on your door. My mom was like a community doctor in a lot of ways. So that's, that's why I learned most of my. The ways I am, I guess from my dad. On the other hand, a dandy. You know, it's like a fun guy party, you know, carefree dude. None of them involve in any sort of criminal activities. Like none of that. Like none of them are like both of them are God fearing, fairness. Lalan just do things that's like both them clean in that way, when they start seeing a lot of this just creeping into our lives, I get warnings about it, basically.

[Julian]

They didn't want that for you, obviously.

[Ed]

No. So you could imagine their surprise when their kid with spiky hair.

[Julian]

Oh, you had spiky hair.

[Ed]

I had a spiky. I'll show you a picture if you want.

[Julian]

Yeah, I gotta see that. You took it. I was gonna ask you, like, were you emo? Didn't I? I guess you went the who.

[Ed]

No, I exploited like, I used to listen to the exploit a lot. UK Subs Rancid Then I was into the weird SCA shit for a while, but I was like, spiky hair, you know, Operation Ivy, that was my thing. I was spiky hair, you know. And all of a sudden I, I shave all that off and I hand them over my orders and they're like, what the are you doing? So I'm gonna go be a part of this. And they were like. Both of them obviously viewed it as a death sentence because.

[Julian]

Well, because you're going on the right side of things and the other ones are so powerful.

[Ed]

Yeah. So both of them viewed it as a death sentence. And this is from. From parents that had lost a child already.

[Julian]

Yeah. What happened with your brother?

[Ed]

He passed away in a very traumatic way. I don't want to talk about it.

[Julian]

Okay. How old were you?

[Ed]

Thirteen.

[Julian]

Okay.

[Ed]

My mom went psychiatric and my dad went alcoholic when that happened. So in a lot of ways I kind of raised myself after that. And while they were kind of getting their together and they became president again in my life is when I dropped the whole, I'm gonna, I'm gonna go off to do this. They were horrified. My mom specifically was horrified by it. She's like, what the f. And more so about the fact that they were going to use me like that. She was onto it, but I refused to see it. Both of them gave me some pieces of advice when I graduated. Don't get into anybody's pocket. Don't let anybody own you. And nobody's against you. They're for themselves. Learn this and treat everybody like a friend. Basically is what my mom told me when I graduated. And I got this gold colored shield badge and a radio, a handgun that I've never shot before, two magazines, cheap ass second chance vest. And off I went. You know, they, they, they give you this programming inside where you're like capable of everything and the training you get and all this, you know, you're this machine now and all of a sudden you get. You Go outside and you realize how outnumbered you are. Yeah, it's insane to realize once you're outside. And I mentioned the badge because that badge rarely came out because it was a bullet magnet. You put that badge on, walk around.

[Julian]

Absolutely.

[Ed]

It dawned on me a few years into my career that we were the enemy, that we were the villains in the story. Like, I didn't figure that out for a while. I was frustrated. Like, why all of you? I mean, a lot of us were, I guess the corrupt ones. No, we were cops in a place where we, where we were going after the people that sustained families, that paid for school. We were, we were putting people away that were head of households and leaving their kids to now figure out for themselves.

[Julian]

But, but hold on. You thought that even though the people you're putting away, it's.

[Ed]

It's independent of that, that's the sentiment we got back from the people that were supposed to defend.

[Julian]

So you're saying you realize you're the bad guys because the people looked at you as the bad guys. Not necessarily because you are the bad guys.

[Ed]

Yeah. So there's. There'. There's no positive feedback there. There's no, hey, you did a good job with this. Here's your commendation. Here's your reward. No, there's like being spat on or hiding the fact that you work in that field, because that's suicide socially for anybody. Hey, you want to date somebody? If you want to became. If you want to become celibate in Mexico, just tell all the chicks you meet you're a cop. Like, back then, I'd say gay porn actor would be way better. I mean, they would get away from you as soon as you, like they. You mentioned you're what that.

[Julian]

Wow.

[Ed]

And society and like, in general, like, even in the US I say, what did you do for a living? I was a cop in Mexico. Immediately, they're like, corrupt. They imagine me, you know, with money bags. I don't know. They're. So imagine if that is all the way over here. Imagine close by. So the villainy aspect of what I was doing just became apparent. It's thankless as treated like you couldn't get a bank loan of any kind or a credit card because the banks.

[Julian]

Are in the cartel pockets.

[Ed]

Because there's no way they're going to give credit to a cop who's going to pay for it.

[Julian]

Oh, because he's going to get shot.

[Ed]

It's another thing that people don't realize. I don't know if it's changed now, but back Then I could. The first credit card I ever had was in the US I remember going to like Wells Fargo and they were like, yeah, yeah, you could get a credit card. I was like, what? A what for people? Like, that's another aspect of my life that people don't realize. It's like I lived in this bubble where everything was being supplied to me. I was living in military barracks, sometimes hotel rooms. I would get a fucking debit card and that and the people, the government paid me through that and cash and like, I didn't know anything else. I was just fucking in this bubble and all of a sudden I, I'm outside of it. So I started learning things, you know, like, credit cards are a thing. I, I could never get one.

[Julian]

I'm almost surprised though, because of where you were. We haven't talked about this on the podcast yet, but you were talking about this off air before we started today, where you were in Tijuana. You were in a border town and you were saying you go back and forth to the U.S. all the time. You're. Yeah, future wife came from the us Cash. So like, cash. Yeah, but you're using cash. But you didn't like pick up on things there, like, oh, wow, they have this.

[Ed]

Yeah, yeah, I mean, I knew about them, but I just never had any. Like, I was, I was a 30, 35 year old teenager in a lot of ways, just coming out of that job where I'm like, oh, hold on, there's credit cards. Yeah, like this, there's, there's this, this is a thing or like simple thing, man. And you know, my marriage ended because I was feral, you know, not, not, not, not in. Basically I was this giant kid coming out of that job. It's like I didn't know how to be normal, I guess. So my sleep patterns were all disrupted. I thought it was normal to drink yourself to sleep every three days.

[Julian]

Well, you had massive trauma too, but.

[Ed]

But I didn't know. I didn't know. I didn't know PTSD was a thing. Although people up here now seem to think it's not a real thing. I don't know if it says it's.

[Julian]

Not a real thing.

[Ed]

A few high level people are saying that PTSD is not real thing. It's just a overlapping concept that is covering up substance abuse and others. Other things. Well, I don't know in my, in my view, like again, I. When something would happen at work, something traumatic, something horrible, you. You don't say.

[Julian]

Yeah, you compartmentalize it.

[Ed]

Because if you say Anything, you're gonna get sent to the psychologist. And what do you think disqualifies you from the ability to carry a firearm in Mexico?

[Julian]

Legally talking to the psychologist.

[Ed]

So nobody talks to the psychologist ever, because it's going to disqualify you from being able to carry a gun. If you can't carry a gun in that job, who the are you?

[Julian]

Anything?

[Ed]

So anytime something horrible would happen, you're just like, hey, just drink some beers and you're fine. Two days later, just you'll back up and all that gets caked on. And. And if people want to understand what alcoholism is, or at least what it was to me and what I miss about it, I miss. I miss dreamless sleep.

[Julian]

Dreamless sleep?

[Ed]

Yeah. Dead silent sleep. Like, I don't. I don't miss Yingling. My favorite beer in Kentucky, Yingling. If you're hearing this company, great beer. Just that I don't drink it anymore, But I remember, like, seeing people drinking Bud Light and like that. Or it's like, why are you drinking this light stuff? It's taking too long. Just. Just heavy, dark beer, tequila, mezcal. I just like the sleepless, dreamless. The dreamless sleep. Dead sleep is what I miss about it. And in a lot of ways, it was a pause button.

[Julian]

Yeah.

[Ed]

It's like, I don't want to deal with all this horrible.

[Julian]

Turn yourself off.

[Ed]

And it manifests itself in your life in a lot of weird ways. I had a moment in my life where I went through something horrible. Shooting everywhere. When I got back home, like, I was about to take a shower. Like, I turned the shower on and I went to the fridge to grab some beer and there was no beer. So, like, fuck. I went to my alcohol cabinet. And if you're an alcoholic, you have hidden. Yeah. So I went to all my spots and I just. All I could find was some peach. Peach flavored schnapps. It's not, not, not chops of. What's it called? I don't know, some alcohol. Horrible alcohol. Sweet. And as I'm. As. As I'm this thing down, because my body's just like now, now, now, now I'm taking, like, I'm digging through my hair and I. I pull out a piece of a molar, like a human molar, like a, Like a tooth. Like a tooth. Like a piece of one. And if you've ever smelt an open cap, like when somebody's getting dentistry done and they like open up like a tooth enamel cap and smell, it just hit me and something happened. Like something just. My body just came like. Like something happened to my software. I guess I woke up like five hours later. I guess the shower was still going.

[Julian]

Oh, so you just shut down? You like.

[Ed]

Yeah, just. Yeah. I don't know what happened. Just blacked out. And to this day, like I have this fucking teeth dentistry. All that just freaks me the fuck out. There's something about it.

[Julian]

Do you know what that was from?

[Ed]

Somebody got shot somewhere around me and I got that left as a. Like I. You become desensitized to smells.

[Julian]

Yeah.

[Ed]

And like being dirty to self care. Like all that just. There's no time for it so you're, you know. And after a while it's basically a dopamine addiction. Or I mean, if you're in that life, dopamine gets fed constantly. And when that stops, you look for it in other ways.

[Julian]

How does dopamine get fed constantly? Meaning like the.

[Ed]

I mean, you're involved in. Yeah, I mean, I'm not gonna say I didn't have fun with it. It's great. Imagine you're 26 years old and somebody says, hey, you know how to operate a grenade launcher? It's like you're. You're like. I say no. Do I say yes? It's like I watch a few movies. I think you're supposed to like whine.

[Julian]

It, figure it out.

[Ed]

You're supposed to wind it and put the greens in. So this is your reality and you're running around doing wild with wild people. But then that ends. That ends and then what do you do?

[Julian]

Then you can't fill that void. There's no way. Like I've talked to a lot of my friends who, you know, were tier one operators. Talk about that.

[Ed]

Yeah.

[Julian]

They talk about how, you know, war is hell, but when you're in the middle of the and a mission, doing the things you've been trained to do at the highest level, where it's life and death at any given moment. The adrenaline rush and the feeling and the high you get from that, like it can't be replaced. But they'll. When you come back. A lot of them talked about you find some weird ways to try to fill it.

[Ed]

Yeah. You know, doing stupid self destructive way.

[Julian]

Yes.

[Ed]

It's like, hey, it's a good idea to date that girl over there who is really horrible. Probably right. All the red flags are there and you're like, dude, if you're my friend, don't tell me not to date somebody because of all the red flags. Because my brain is like, right. Dopamine because my brain is like dopamine. That's where you. Or alcohol. Like, I remember just being an alcoholic up here in the States and having my friends drink with me, and all of a sudden I'm. Everybody's gone. And I'm like, at the end of this, drinking everybody on the table. And it's a thing to boast about in that. At that time with me, and I was like, it. I'm a horrible person.

[Julian]

But you would start dealing with alcohol while it sounds like early on, while.

[Ed]

You were on the job, dude, I. I was functionally drunk. I was functionally drunk alcoholic since I was 21.

[Julian]

What do you mean? Was there like a certain event that caused that where you.

[Ed]

It was. It was just monkey see, monkey do, everybody. We would come back from something that was like, oh, that was close, or hey, you would see. You would see an empty seat in the back, in the back of the car, or you would see a face you recognize on the news of somebody being found somewhere.

[Julian]

You lost a lot of friends on the job, right?

[Ed]

Yeah. And it was weird. Some of them, Some of them are weird and hang with me because it's not like we had bodies. Sometimes they just go. Every now and then, like I was. Every time I stayed at a hotel, I have the same kind of weird feeling. We would. We used to live at. At hotels, so that. I think that's. I think that's a reason why I still kind of do it, I guess.

[Julian]

You would live at hotels?

[Ed]

Yeah, yeah, we. We get. Move around a lot. So, you know, we're doing places. So you would live at hotels for. For periods or sometimes military barracks or wherever. We would. We would take turns, you know, watching our asses, you know, so somebody would send watch at night. There was firewatch at these hotels. Sometimes I would wake up in the middle of the night and just peek through the window and one of our guys was outside smoking a cigarette with a rifle and a blanket over it, just covering us and say something happens. You know, you have somebody watching. And every now and then, you know, you, you. This is this government work. So single hotel room with two beds. It means that there's four, five people sleeping there or six.

[Julian]

Close quarters.

[Ed]

There were two guys that I worked with. Some of the first people that I lost. Brilliant people. One of them was lame Leon Lyon. He would. He would call his. He would call his girlfriend and like, sing her songs. And after, like, she would go do at night, you come back three in the morning calling this chick and singing these love songs.

[Julian]

There.

[Ed]

And the other guy, strong dude. The first time I was. I was made to do watch, firewatch. I didn't have a watch, a wristwatch because I was skateboarding. Idiot kid. I didn't know anything about responsibilities, so he gave me the watch off his wrist so I could take time. It's like, dude, you need to have a watch. He gave me his watch one night I was coming back and they were going out and I remember them clearly because they're smiling and like that bunch of idiots, like going out on the town. They were. No, they were, they were, they were, they were. They were going on. Going out work on a patrol. Okay, Some. Some sort of work. We say patrol now, but it's. They're probably gonna go park somewhere and look at a house or.

[Julian]

Got it.

[Ed]

Chase somebody of some sort. Both of them give me a lot of. When I get there, both of them, we all make plans to go out and eat and get drunk the next day. I hear him talk to his girlfriend before he leaves. I hear my other friend talk to his wife. And then they're gone. They just leave. And I remember when. When there's a hotel door, the way that it snaps closed, it always makes me remember them. We never found them. They disappeared completely. Like nothing.

[Julian]

Do you know who did it?

[Ed]

Gone now. There's no closure there. There's no. I don't know, it's. It's this weird void. And there's a few of them that went that way where we never found them. And then there's some that we did find which are at the other side of that spectrum. One of them was right, like again, my generation, he came out with my generation. His. His last name was Arenas. A lawyer who got bored with the whole lawyer career and decided to join this group that we're in. He got picked up by dudes dressed as federal agents outside of the hotel, along with somebody else. And in the span of a night went through. I can't imagine whatever I went through was nothing. When we found him, he had his ID screwed to his forehead. To see somebody that you celebrate with, that you eat with, that, you go through this hardship with training wise that you meet their families. I mean, I could remember the graduation, meeting his family, and all of a sudden he's gone. But you have a clear understanding of how he went. Obviously this makes you. I mean, all of us were vengeful, bloodthirsty and angry about this. And I know a lot of us basically lost parts of our soul being that way. And a lot of People like to glorify gung ho and stuff like that. I don't. It's horrible. And people that. I. I've heard people kind of glorify some of that, and I. I guess.

[Julian]

Like, going back for vengeance kind of.

[Ed]

Deal war, violence, that type of. I think people that do glorify it or, like, are, like, nonchalant about it have the. I mean, they had the privilege of being able to go home after war. You know, I can. I've heard people talk mad shit about some of the stuff they did in Afghanistan and Iraq as a jubilant experience, but I just can't do the same on my end. It's. It's too close. The people I was facing spoke the same language. Sometimes burials would happen at the same funerary service of ours, and their.

[Julian]

Burials would happen at the same.

[Ed]

So a funerary service, basically, where they would do the wakes, were hired sometimes by their families and ours. So sometimes we would have some of our guys being in funeral wakes and.

[Julian]

Oh, my God. In that car. Oh, wow.

[Ed]

So sometimes they were like, truces, where we were like, hey.

[Julian]

That'S.

[Ed]

So they just bury these people. It's just. It's a different conflict down there.

[Julian]

Yeah.

[Ed]

It's its own thing. If people want to equate it to something else. If people want to call these cartels terrorists and equate them to Al Qaeda, they're. That's not the same thing. They're different. It's a difference. It's a different problem. And it is producing a whole generation of people like myself with a lot of skills that are not going to be able to implement those skills in other ways, other than what they do now. So I think that's going to be the resistance that people are going to meet in the future.

[Julian]

Wait, what do you mean by that, other than what they do now?

[Ed]

I mean, speaking to my friend Gafe in. In Jalisco, he was trained to be, like, this elite war fighter. Like, Gafe is a scary dude. Like, I know, but I'm scared of him. You know, he knows how to take down a small government, probably. And then he was let go. Like, he's one of many out there like that. I think somebody, a friend of mine, shared this quote from True Detective. You know, be careful what you get good at.

[Julian]

Oh, yeah.

[Ed]

And Mexico has a lot of people like myself that got good at just the specific thing. And they're out there. What are. What are they. What are they going to do if this all. You know, I think in. I said There was going to be some sort of incident in Mexico that's going to make the US act directly on the ground at some point. I said that five years ago. And here we are with open warnings for the Border Patrol that certain cartel elements are planning on using drones to drop omelets on them.

[Julian]

What's going on there?

[Ed]

I don't know. That doesn't seem like something that would happen. That cartel is going to say war now.

[Julian]

Right.

[Ed]

I think that would be an excuse for the United States to do what it wants to do anyway, which is have control over the future of Mexico as a country and its potential through.

[Julian]

A potential invasion type scenario.

[Ed]

Yeah.

[Julian]

You think that's.

[Ed]

I mean, a possibility. We are in a country that had two buildings knocked down by a bunch of Saudis and some Egyptian people, and then we proceeded to attack Afghanistan and Iraq.

[Julian]

Yeah.

[Ed]

So, yeah, I think it's. It's in the realm of reason that something could happen on that border, real or staged, that could cause the United States to put foots on the boots, on the ground in Mexico. I think more realistically, what's going to happen, hopefully none of that happens because that's going to be horrible for both sides. People thinking it's going to be a cakewalk or fooling themselves. They should actually look and speak to some of the people that have. That are actually involved in military planning and, you know, plans to invade Mexico are already on the, Already on the books out there that you can research. There's some. There's some people online on you. There's a YouTube video of some general somewhere talking about what. How invading Mexico would be kind of difficult. The main thing, I think, is the economic effects are going to be felt right. Right in your front door. So this is not going to be like, yeah, there's a war in Afghanistan and all we hear about is on the news now. We're going to feel it economically. Products are going to be on. The products are not going to be on the. On those aisles. People are not going to show up to work. Maybe people are going to have to go back. I don't know. It's not going to be. And it's not going to be a. We're going to feel it. If it happens, like directly, that could happen.

[Julian]

Or what would the cartels do in that scenario? Would they team? I mean, they already are teamed up with the government, but would there be some official insurgency teamed up with the government?

[Ed]

I had this conversation when again, Gafe, who is badass, he's a ninja, his response Was this. If the US decides to attack in a very overt Afghanistan, Iraq type way, shock and awe type way, a criminal institution or a cartel that has some sort of governments in the local area that it operates in, it's going to turn them into martyrs and it's going to turn them into freedom fighters instead of cartel members. And in that case, we, we're currently living in an antagonist in Mexico, has an antagonist government against the U.S. so if the U.S. attacks one of these cartel groups and affects a local populace in a direct way or there's a lot of collateral damage, it's going to be hard for them not to like decide with whoever was attacked.

[Julian]

Oh yeah.

[Ed]

And the sentiment that he expressed to me is that if the US makes the mistake of doing something like that, it's game on. And yeah, the army, the Mexican army doesn't have a lot of technology, technological advances, but they're very experienced people. They don't have the ability to send a fucking cruise missile into the middle of the US but they have people that have clear spoken English like I do. They have people that are into espionage, sabotage, explosives. There are people that are going to take off their uniforms and go into the local populace and do what the Zetas did.

[Julian]

And there's also a significant population here in our country as well.

[Ed]

Yep.

[Julian]

That would be very reachable in many cases.

[Ed]

Yeah. I mean if we're talking about, you know, Alex Jones level conspiracy, you know, it's all the Mexicans, but, but come for us. But if, if realistically, if, if they wanted to do something against the us Poison a few drug loads.

[Julian]

Yeah, it's not like poisonous. The scary thing, it's not hard.

[Ed]

Poison a few drug loads, Target infrastructure on the border. You're worried about your planes. They have abilities to take on planes.

[Julian]

Anti aircraft missiles and stuff.

[Ed]

Yeah. Also just a drone, A drone can take out a helicopter if you put your mind to it. There's, it's, it's an enemy. I don't, I don't think that the US realizes. I hear people online talk about this. Kick the A10 War Hogs and we'll kick the cartel's ass. Yeah, you'll, you'll destroy the overt side of it, but there's other parts of it that are going to hide. You know, you can swat a few flies. At the start, this happened in Iraq.

[Julian]

Yeah.

[Ed]

You know, they went in guns blazing and then they adapted and now they started blowing them up from afar.

[Julian]

Yeah. Think about Afghanistan too. You were fighting the geography. That's why the war, over time even ended up turning, took a long time. Like obviously the US did well at first, but you're fighting with the mountains as much as you're fighting with the people. The geography in Mexico is all over the place.

[Ed]

Yeah, that's the main thing that, like Sierra Madre, that geography is going to kick ass. I mean, as far as trying to, trying to figure out a control aspect of it, I'm predicting that there is going to be a targeted drone strike somewhere in Mexico of a high level cartel member. That's the US by the US because it's very on, it's very, it's very on point for them. When I say them.

[Julian]

Yeah.

[Ed]

Suleimani. Suleimani.

[Julian]

Yes.

[Ed]

You know General Sulaiman.

[Julian]

Yeah.

[Ed]

Iran, he got hit by one of those Ginsu knife missiles. So it's a, it's a, it's a Hellfire missile. Or I might be wrong, it's on my wheelhouse. But it's a missile that will, will put out three surgical katana blades out of it. So it's, it's designed to be very targeted so you can be in the passenger seat of a car and this thing's gonna, that's what I think we're gonna see in Mexico at some point. That's what I think is that's, I think that's in the realm of the possibilities of predicting right now that or some sort of incident on the border that is going to justify the use of boots on the ground. And again, I think this isn't, this isn't about fentanyl. This isn't about cartels. This isn't about any other thing than the global economic security of the United States into the future and figuring out a way to control the destiny of Mexico into the future. Because they realize, and everybody does now that the, the whatever future there is for North America, it includes Mexico as an industrial plant. And I think that's what everybody's looking at. And the reason I say this is because. No. And the whole designation thing and the whole anti cartel thing, it's very bipartisan in the US if you look at it.

[Julian]

What do you mean?

[Ed]

Like both parties are like signing off on all of this.

[Julian]

Oh, yeah, I thought you said something else.

[Ed]

I'm sorry, Bipartisan. So that's, that should like. Holy, you're serious about it.

[Julian]

They love a good war.

[Ed]

I get it. The economy gets fueled by it. Yeah. The Ukrainian war is winding down, so that money is drying up. When people talk about, hey, we're sending billions of dollars to Your grain. No you're not. You're sending that money to the people that are supplying them with arms and that's going to be cut off.

[Julian]

Yeah.

[Ed]

So who are we going to feed next? I don't know.

[Julian]

There's always going to be someone.

[Ed]

Yeah. There's always a war on the horizon. Again, I'm not a warmonger. I don't want this to happen. I think the worst thing that can happen to Mexico is a full on invasion by the United States. We've seen what that is like in other parts of the world every now and then like oh, sometimes we do it right. Like look at Japan. Mexico is in Japan. Mexico was in Germany. It's not good for anybody. And if this is about migration, attacking Mexico is not going to do a lot of good things as far as migration. It's going to make it. You can line up all the, the army, the military individuals who want on that border. It's not going to be able to see stop the wave of people leaving chaos.

[Julian]

Absolutely.

[Ed]

So that's not a solution. I think again realizing this is a regional issue, realizing that the federal government in Mexico is not to be trusted fully and that there are some elements of it that are probably corrupted and or compromised for sure. Realizing that Mexico itself is being utilized in a proxy way from foreign powers to with the U. S and with its interest and the US Is doing the same in Mexico to with it foreign interest there. So. And it has been doing so since at least the 60s. Its foreign policy is to blame for a lot of the things that are happening in Mexico now. The conscious were being trained in cartel fields and Veracruz. We're celebrating the, the, the arrest of Caro Quintero now because he was directly responsible for the DEA agent Akiko Morena's murder. But everybody in Mexico was like nah, the CIA did it.

[Julian]

Well yeah, they're saying the, the allegation is that not or Felix Rodriguez allegedly was the undercover CIA agent. Now he swore to Danny Jones that he it wasn't him.

[Ed]

Okay.

[Julian]

You know, who knows.

[Ed]

A lot of people who were around for that that I got to talk to, they were all like yeah, the CIA was operating here. And then he ran into something that was way beyond, beyond this pay grade so they had to take him out. That's, that's the narrative and I don't know if that's true or not. Again, beyond my time. I'm just stating what the sentiment of most Mexican is Mexicans are as far.

[Julian]

As that I share that sentiment.

[Ed]

So it's a clear indication that both sides have a lot of soul searching. I have a lot of fucking things they need to get straight as far as their own narrative and realizing that there is a reason and a rhyme and a reason for a lot of the stuff that is happening right now as far as Mexico and the designation of these groups as cartels, as terrorist organizations. And if we're not seeing immigration reform on, on this end, we should question that. If we're not seeing a doge like audit of the money that has been spent on this drug war for the past few decades, we should not kind of question some of that stuff. If we're not seeing any politicians, private institutions, actors, singers, a bunch of like arrested or detained because of some cartel affiliated ties, now because now it's terrorism, then we should be questioning that. And we're not seeing any. If we're not seeing a lot of dramatic movements with this destination on the US side, which makes me dubious that it is actually a serious attempt to, to go after these institutions. And it's not more than a political pressure point that the US is going to pressure on these guys.

[Julian]

I mean, I, I hope for obvious reasons, for everyone involved, not just my country, but Mexico and all the people that would be caught in the middle of it. I hope nothing like that happens. I hope there is some cooler heads that prevail. I recognize that in that type of scenario, you know, cynically speaking, you're going to be accepting some evils of the world.

[Ed]

Yeah, sure.

[Julian]

There's gonna be things that do continue business as usual that you and I both know are just completely wrong on both sides of the border. Yeah, but I think we can all say that, you know, you'd rather see things wrong that still need fixing that we're gonna have to find new solutions for rather than hundreds of thousands of people dying in some fucking war that, you know, people invent. So, you know, it's scary to hear you talking like this, but I take it seriously because like you've lived it. You've and obviously lived on both sides of the borders now. But like you've seen what these guys are capable of. You've seen what corruption in the government is capable of. You've seen it from our side to what it's capable of. And naturally, you know, there's, there are consequences that can happen from that.

[Ed]

Mass graves are being discovered across the country in Mexico right now and they're being put on media as a new thing. They've been going on for decades. We've been outpacing most of the global conflicts as far as body count for years, it's just people don't keep numbers and the numbers that are being kept are skewed by the government. Yeah, there's a war, nobody can. The drug war. Like, I remember as a joke, some of my veteran friends, I would go, they would take me to these veteran events and like, then that, because, you know, I didn't have to intege. So I would get asked like, oh, like, what theater did you go to? Like, theater operations. Like, I'm, I'm from Mexico, so they made me a drug war veteran patch for and put on a hat as a joke.

[Julian]

And it's real, though.

[Ed]

But that's the thing. For me, that moment was a joke. But then I turn around and I look at all the people. Like, there's like speaking to Gaffe, for example. He's a veteran, just as traumatized and as damaged as many of my friends who went through Fallujah. Except that he doesn't have any sort of recourses or a veteran service or any sort of recognition or any sort of discount at a store. None of that shit. He's just like, ah, we use you. You went through the dog shitter and now you're out and we don't fucking disavow you. What do you think a person like that will turn into?

[Julian]

Yeah, exactly. And that's what's interesting though is you talk about those, the guys that you lost and you mentioned maybe like 20 minutes ago about how everyone in there when, after, especially after your buddy was found with his ID drilled into his forehead and people knew the kinds of things that happened to him. Everyone in there wanted vengeance. They had hatred.

[Ed]

Yeah.

[Julian]

For what had happened to him and the people who perpetrated it and what I, what I had in my head there. And we got on to some other things, but now it feels right to go back to it is how do people like that, some of them end up forgetting that feeling. They don't hold on forgetting that feeling to the point that, that we're compartmentalizing it to the point that some of those same people, obviously not you, but some of those same people eventually turned and went and worked for that which they hated. How do they get to that point?

[Ed]

DNA.

[Julian]

DNA?

[Ed]

Yeah. Your kids. Common denominator I've ever, I've found with all these people, from cartel members to former operations guys, to like, everybody people are capable of doing wild for their kids in an environment where you're not going to be able to put food on the table. Or you're gonna go work for a cartel and do some horrible for them and not only put food on the table, but actually get. Put them in a good school. Society's gonna. Society is gonna lose every time when that selection comes in because again, they don't get. Get any support. There's no infrastructure to support them in and out of that job. There's nothing there to keep them honest. Realistically. Everything's temporary. Right. And the government, all it cares, or the government, all it cares about is just like, keep quiet when something's not popular. Let's attack it when it's not that. And every five years, six years, it gets amnesia. And everything that it did, all the people that it supported, all the people that it created get cast aside because now there's a new administration coming in and we need new blood and ideas in this. So it's basically a snake eating its tail over and over and over. Human nature takes over. Yeah. If I could wave a wand around, I would say the u. S. Needs to take close account of all the money that's been spent on that war and who lined their pockets with it. That's something I would ask immigration reform. Right. Realizing that there are high level. I don't want to say high level presidents in the past in mexico that were completely involved in cartel operations and funded them, their political campaigns, and maybe line their pockets with some of the money from these organizations. It's clear as day to anybody that looks at this from any angle.

[Julian]

I actually didn't ask you this. We talked about this way earlier, but then we got off it. When you said if they're like you, would you think there may need to be a scenario where some of these people are brought to justice?

[Ed]

I think that's where we're headed.

[Julian]

Did you mean that? That I couldn't really tell. Did you mean that that means the mexican government acting on its own brings the people to justice? Or the United states government acting through them, or the United states government itself.

[Ed]

Somehow brings them to the United States government itself issues an arrest warrant and. Or like, outs them as like, hey.

[Julian]

And they get deported or extradited, hopefully. Interesting.

[Ed]

Although Mexico would do that if. If they do that to amlo, which again, I know there's a lot of people here love that man who says that he's like a force of change and. But we have to be honest with ourselves.

[Julian]

Yeah.

[Ed]

I mean, the evidence is there. As far as. As far as involvement, as far as people being intermediaries, as far as facilitators as far as conversations happening between lawyers on El Chapo and him. Him going to like El Chapel's home hometown six times during his administration and saying in front of the press that we shouldn't be consuming this Chinese. We should be using the local drugs instead of the Chinese stuff coming from, from China. Right. So you have this guy. You have this. You have, you have him. I don't think he's going to be handed over by the, by. By the Mexican government. I don't think so. All of the former presidents of Mexico, the. A few of them. Fox, not so much because he's a pothead and I don't know. He's just a wild card. He's funny, he's fun. He's funny as corrupt. I think in my, in my thing. I think he's probably. He was probably.

[Julian]

Remember he was like when they were talking about the wall, he was like you.

[Ed]

He. He was famous for a few things. Fox. Fox. Fox was our Bush.

[Julian]

Ah, that's Fox.

[Ed]

Fox was our Bush. He's a idiot. A fox. Told Fidel Castro to leave like a summit. Like he called him directly, said, hey, the US President is coming or somebody can you just leave before he gets here? Because they don't want. He doesn't want to see you. He called his Castro put that online the next day.

[Julian]

No.

[Ed]

I bet he said some pretty racist in the U.S. one interview, I think I can't say it here, but he said something about Mexicans doing jobs that not other. Other ethnicities wouldn't do. He was a idiot anyways. I don't think. I don't think he's gonna be. Might be. Calderon and Enrique Pena Nieto both live in Spain for some reason. You know, don't they have poor extradition? They both live in Spain for some reason that I can't elaborate on.

[Julian]

They speak Spanish over there.

[Ed]

They speak Spanish and they probably have some pretty decent laws as far as like they have some sort of government protection there. Probably.

[Julian]

Gotcha.

[Ed]

But not AMLO address. Manuel Lopez over the former president of Mexico built a finca which is like a private ranch with a military barracks right next to it and a hospital.

[Julian]

Was he in business before he was in politics?

[Ed]

I mean politics is business in Mexico, you know.

[Julian]

Exactly.

[Ed]

Everybody's Nancy Pelosi.

[Julian]

It's like that's what I'm going to say.

[Ed]

Everybody.

[Julian]

Nancy Pelosi.

[Ed]

Everybody's. Everybody's like in. Apparently becomes really good at speculating when he could join politics in Mexico. But yeah, that's, that's who I, that's why again, this is just judging from what I'm seeing. I think, I think what's coming next is the naming and, or the prosecution of a high level political official in Mexico.

[Julian]

I think that's your source is telling.

[Ed]

You that that's what the, the winds tell me.

[Julian]

How do you, like, I haven't asked you that yet. How do you track down sources these days? Obviously you know people from when you were in there, but you've been out for some years now. How do you track down sources? How do you communicate with them? And how do you weed out like who's full of shit and who's not?

[Ed]

So number one, I, I'm not out completely because I train people constantly.

[Julian]

Right? Right.

[Ed]

So from people on this side of the border to that side of the border, I've trained both and I get information. They fucking send me messages about what's going on. I question some of that as well. I kind of verify it. I have an amazing network of security professionals and people that I work with and journalists. Luis Chaparro is a fucking amazing dude and I support what he does constantly and I share all of his stuff and I follow his stuff really closely. There is another news agency that I want to put plug right now that I, I don't own. People think I own it or like I have some sort of involvement in there. I support the people behind it fully. It's a very non biased news organization that is specifically on Instagram because social media is just as soon as you say cartel, you get canned and shadow banned. Demolair is the name of this news institution. M O L R E. Okay, no, er, I'm sorry, second language. And they do a fabulous job of like investigating things and sourcing stuff. Every now and then I get people that come like, hey, hey, yeah, I have this information. I'm like, cool, go talk to all these other people.

[Julian]

Right.

[Ed]

So I have people reaching out constantly around that. And again, yeah, Demolair. Oh, they're back. They were off. They were gone for a while. They had some issues with social media and a bunch of stuff. But they're, they're back. So I'd really recommend people follow Demolair. That's a very unbiased everything I get as far as like contacts and information. They all go there and they cut out the, from the real, real stuff. It's, it's a savage world. Like I was telling you this. I don't trust the media. The traditional media is poison. They're owned in Mexico. We have a Lot of that still. Oh, yeah, it's bigger than here. So, like, I've never been on any single media outlet in Mexico. Think about that.

[Julian]

That doesn't surprise me.

[Ed]

Think about that. I've been on. I've been on. I've been quoted by Al Jazeera, New York Times, Fox, cn. I've been in, I've been on a bunch of platforms here in the US across political affiliations, but I've never been in a single Mexican one. It might be because I'm full of. And they, they're, oh, this guy is full of. Or it might be because I think I'm saying some. My bets are on the fact that I'm saying some. They probably don't like. But we have hope. We have hope in the platforms that are growing down there. These independent platforms. Just like the one that I went on with Gothi, just like this one, where people like yourself are taking their curiosity as far as what's going on in the world and adding responsibility to it and like saying, hey, what is going on here? And don't. I don't want to talk to that analyst guy over there. Yeah. I want to talk to this dude over here who has some stories and also went through it himself. Like, yeah, let me see his perspective. That is something that gives me great hope.

[Julian]

I hope we can follow through on that for you too.

[Ed]

Yeah, you know, and more so than anything, just if you guys weren't here, if these platforms didn't exist, all the shit that I saw and all the details that I've been expressing the past few years are, they're not going to be in there. They couldn't be anywhere. I wouldn't be allowed into the door to speak about some of these things. That's crazy. Crazy. And that's the reality we live in right now. So in my mind, the traditional media is definitely an enemy.

[Julian]

Well, yeah, I think a lot of people out there listening right now completely agree with you. And, and they've, they've earned that by making so many mistakes just overtly. Like, like straight up things that you want to talk about. Not following journalistic integrity. I mean, where do you even begin? The thing that I do always try to think about is, I mean, obviously I can only control my actions and stuff, but there's so many people in the independent space that I respect who have brought this in. I mean, you start all the way at the top with Joe Rogan and work your way on down to so many people that, that have been pioneers in that way. And I Think what we all got to be careful of is not over time, like this moment we're in right now where, where we are able to bring on people and, and discuss difficult topics and do it in such an unfiltered way. We can't lose that.

[Ed]

No.

[Julian]

You know, and, and I do think about that often because like, I think about even from my perspective, starting this in my parents house with nothing, you know, just wanted to talk to people. And I'm five years in today as we're recording and it's like we've kept that. I have my own studio now, but it's the same as it was day one. And I want to be sitting here five years from now saying the same thing and five years after that saying the same thing.

[Ed]

It's important. Yeah, it's important. The only reason I got on Joe Rogan was because a lot of the former people that I used to work with were sending me videos of live that was going on during like some of the time, some. Some of the time I was active in Mexico and further on. Like that's the only reason why I got his eye right, Because I was sharing that later on I would see like go on traditional media and they were fucking quoting me about it. You know, my Instagram account became legendary for like dropping like videos of that was happening live in Mexico. And it was funny that I would see a video that I posted that I knew where I sourced it from, post it online and it would show up on traditional media, both sides of the border. And you know, I've never called myself a journalist and never will people have to go to school for that.

[Julian]

Yeah, I've called you that. Yeah, I know you disagree, but the reason I do is because you are, whether you realize it or not, this is, this is a compliment. You are reporting on things and you've been doing it for years that literally at points no one was sharing. Yeah, and you should be commended for that.

[Ed]

For me, for me, I'm more of an activist. Like, that's what I want to think about myself as. And I have people like, I mean, people ask me for news. You know, I'm like, like, I could give you some opinions, but if you want news, I believe Chaparro is amazing. Go talk to him. Demolaire is great, like independent journalism going on, just straight to the point, facts on my end. I'm emotionally invested in all of this. Like, I have hatred in my heart for some of the people that did some of the shit they did to me and my people. I Have anger in my soul for the ways that some people in the US Speak about some of these issues as a Mexican problem only. And like we have no responsibility over this when we do, like all of us have some sort of responsibility around some of the. That's happening. So then that way I can't be, you know, you know, I can't, I can't. I can't call myself a journalist because I have a lot of emotion invested in this.

[Julian]

Just get in the game.

[Ed]

But all that to say that there are many people like myself that went through this process, that are many people like myself that survived a lot of this type of shit, who are, you know, not doing podcasts, who are not trading government people to do weird shit in weird places, who are quietly living a life after that, working somewhere in the kitchen somewhere in Philadelphia, or who I've met at the airport, manning a bar somewhere, who have this Special Forces training in Mexico somewhere. And they just made it, made it all the way here and they're just quietly living their existence. There are many quiet people out there with not no voices who are never going to be able to be here and sharing this with a big part of the US populace. I hope I'm doing them a service. I hope, I hope I'm bringing them some sort of recognition. Most of the criticism I've gotten here in the United States has actually come from Mexicans and Mexican people because either they're too detached from the realities of Mexico because when they go down there, they go to a tourist part and they don't get to see the bad parts of it, or they've spent their whole lives up here and all they hear about Mexico is what they hear through their gender studies teacher or whatever. And again, I'm. All my politics are these like, I want to be able to go to my gay friend's wedding with a gun on my hip and be able to smoke a joint and eat mushrooms afterwards. That's what, that's what my politics are. I want less government. I want more responsibility on, on the part of the citizenship. I have skin in this game. I want everybody to be fucking great. I think we have the potential to be a superpower both to combined like a light into the future. But we're not going to get there by invading each other.

[Julian]

Yeah.

[Ed]

Or if we are going to get there, we're gonna. It's gonna cost us some things. A few things that are probably going to be culture changing for sure. I can foresee a time and a place where Mexicans are not Going to be treated as these third class citizens as they are here in the U.S. it's funny that a Canadian can travel down here but not a Mexican because we're somehow shadier, we're going to stay here, not going to leave or something. So there is definitely a discrimination being done to the people of Mexico at a weird scale here in the United States. Some of it has been warranted by the history of illegal immigration in this country and narcotics and organized crime. That's undoubted. But the responsibility that the United States has directly had on the original, on some of these things originating themselves is clear as well. So what do we do with both of these truths in our hands?

[Julian]

Imagine that a situation that has multiple things true at the same time.

[Ed]

I think number one is just fucking, just keep, I don't know. Like I think we just saw, we just saw the United States punish the powers that be by with their vote. In this past election we saw Canada that was almost assassinated and with a bunch of charges on him and a mug shot and all that, all that made me feel right at home like ah, this is Mexico. Yeah, it's funny, this is banana republic level shit. Yeah, but now he's there. Now there's this whole effort being done and talk about invading Mexico and terrorist designations and all this type of stuff. But like I'm just waiting to see the actual effects of this shortages of drugs on American streets, people going into withdrawals, high level corporates, corporate officials and different companies being arrested on their financial aid to some of these drug cartels. You know, there's a few banking institutions that were caught up in money laundering situations in the past. Are they going to be brought up on terrorist supporting charges?

[Julian]

Well, it's also complicated because like I said, Matthew Hedger was sitting in your seat and he described how he was the one who pushed some of them to do that.

[Ed]

So we can't on one hand, you know, blame it all on Mexico. On another hand have somebody like that saying like, hey, we can't go after these because we were directly responsible. He was told to do to facilitate these people that then fostered this criminal organization that has made stew out of thousands of Mexicans and all that's left of them are their sneakers and love letters in a field somewhere in the leisko we speak about. I spoke about the moment that I realized I was a villain in their stories. Somewhere out there the US has to realize the same thing. Hey fuck, we're villains too. And I think the only way to kind of fix things and Recognize that is to just accept it, realize that that went on for years and move forward.

[Julian]

I guess there's a thing that happens where. Where. And it's quite obvious it happens in every facet of our lives. I'm sure everyone out there can think of situations right now they're dealing with that similar. But we get into something and we then don't want to admit we're wrong. It's like the most common thing ever. But, like, you know, you don't just have to admit you're wrong with some things. You can actually use that as a jumping off point to try to get better or improve a situation. It doesn't have to just be this negative thing. And when it gets caught up in our bureaucracy or at the highest levels of corporations and stuff like that, it's like, man, we've created a wrong incentive structure where you can't admit that, like the political climate has created something where now you're going to keep doubling down on things that are going to cause harm.

[Ed]

Yeah.

[Julian]

Which we've seen over and over and over again. Because you can't just say, all right, this one thing, maybe we could do that.

[Ed]

Yeah, maybe. Maybe we. This whole war on terrorism thing was like, yeah, maybe it was a mistake, you know? Yeah, maybe we should look into why we attacked all these other countries that didn't have anything to do. Maybe WMDs, did they find any?

[Julian]

Nope. We've litigated that on this podcast.

[Ed]

Were they actually found? And maybe French in origin, so you couldn't say anything about it, which. Who knows? I don't know. Maybe. Who knows? I don't know. I'm from Mexico. Why would I know that?

[Julian]

Why would you know that?

[Ed]

I don't know. So, so do you have all these things that happened in the past or just going to be buried in the past?

[Julian]

Right.

[Ed]

Do we admit that the United States was paying off all these president presidents in Mexico while they were doing horrible corrupt acts to destroy society? Presidents that then fostered this whole disarmament situation. It was in our Second Amendment, wasn't in our Constitution. Right. And then it went away. And who, who does that benefit? You know?

[Julian]

Yeah, it's true.

[Ed]

Do we turn a blind eye to the fact that there was some sort of government involvement in the disappearance and death of Kikamarana? Do we just say, no, this guy is. This guy. Is it this Caro Quintero old guy who's pissing in a, in a, in a bag probably pretty soon, who's on his way out? He's he's at his response solely, solely responsible for this. We're not going to talk about our, the Contra situation. We're not going to talk about these organizations training in Mexico or gun running and paying for them with drug money. We're not going to talk about any of that. None of that. We just, we got our man. Let's take a picture with him. I get it, I get it. And, and I got the, the giant denial aspect that the United States has is something that is very apparent to Mexico and the Mexican citizen. People want to know why anti Americanism is growing in places like Mexico. It's one of those, like the, the non admittance of wrongdoings globally. It is interesting culturally from somebody from the outside like myself seeing discussions of reparations on Native Americans and African Americans here, while I come from a country that has actual current issues with the United States and its involvement that, that have produced, you know, massacres, student massacres in Mexico. There's some sort of responsibility there and a giant hunger for drugs.

[Julian]

Yeah.

[Ed]

So it's, it's interesting that we hear these talks about reparations and victimhood in the States. Meanwhile, there's a giant responsibility on all involved, from Native Americans to black Americans to Asian Americans to all the Americans. Because in our, in our point of view, it's.

[Julian]

Yeah. There's dirty hands everywhere.

[Ed]

Yeah. From our point of view as Mexicans todos on gringos. Like you're all Americans.

[Julian]

Yeah.

[Ed]

And you know, there's a villainy aspect of their, of it there that again.

[Julian]

We need to, you see where they would see it from this end though, too, right?

[Ed]

Yeah, yeah. Like from this end, I'd look back at Mexico like, oh.

[Julian]

Because I do.

[Ed]

They're voiding. They're voting in their, these corrupt officials over and over again. They're, they're getting involved in corruption by paying off the cop at the stop sign instead of like actually paying their ticket. So that's a small infraction. That's a small level of corruption.

[Julian]

But cartels funneling dirty drugs into here, using China to do it. Yeah.

[Ed]

So there's.

[Julian]

Yeah, but you know what, There's a great line. I quote this all the time on the podcast. My friend Eric Zolliger said this in episode 164. People are not their governments.

[Ed]

Yep.

[Julian]

And that applies to everyone. Like, I would not want to be associated with Bush, Cheney, you know, I'm very sorry to the people of Iraq and what happened there. Like that. Listen, I, I didn't want that.

[Ed]

Yeah.

[Julian]

But I understand where People over there are like yo, all them.

[Ed]

Yeah, for this.

[Julian]

You know, it's human nature.

[Ed]

Yeah. Or Obama, you know, hey Obama this. Yes we can all that cool. But then you know, there's a kid without an arm in Mexico that was involved in something that is exactly. Eric Holder signed off on also a bunch of drone strikes and he got a Nobel Peace Prize. Nobel Peace Prize.

[Julian]

Yeah.

[Ed]

And that's hope, you know. And then again the, the whole. I'm trying to paint a picture of the. How the outside looks at it. I've been in Mexico for a while to traveling and talking to people about this. It's difficult for me because I represent the US and sometimes in their eyes like ah, you're a gringo now you traitor. Like that type of. But the, the, the, the infirm, mentally infirm side of the culture in the US is what you hear from some people on the outside. Like yeah, Mexico has people getting disappeared in acid in some parts with cartels and stuff like that. And that's scary. But that's not all Mexico. There's parts of Mexico that are fine but then Mexicans see somebody walking into a school with a, with an assault rifle and shooting a bunch of kids. And that to, to Mexicans like holy. Or we witnessed the President of the United States getting lost in a public event, walking around and in the minds of Mexicans like that guy has the nuclear bomb button.

[Julian]

Right.

[Ed]

And is he in charge? Who's in charge? Like what's, what's. So you can understand why there's a lack of trust.

[Julian]

Yes. I can see it from everything.

[Ed]

From the outside.

[Julian]

Oh yeah.

[Ed]

And there are clear. And again I've mentioned some interests that are higher and bigger than, than cartels and politics and they're definitely a factor and I think just follow the money. 100 follow the money and you'll, you'll, you'll. You'll usually see the hand that steals hide, it hides itself. The hand that spends gives the other one away. It's something I learned from the army Colonel.

[Julian]

Yeah.

[Ed]

And it is true as hell to this day.

[Julian]

The last thing I wanted to ask you about before I got you out of here, Ed, was how you, how you were able to have the self awareness to suddenly realize after all these years, you know, serving in all different capacities and seeing crazy that you know, you weren't okay and that some of the things you were doing to self medicate were not normal and that you know, you, you needed to help yourself out. Like what was, what was that turning point where that came in.

[Ed]

My wife leaving me. I think a lot a big part of my like journey has been saving myself. And I was abandoned when I was a kid, 13 when my brother died. So I had to become really mature really quickly. And I would always have this mania of being so essential that there's no way they could just chit can me because I'm essential. Right. So this drive to be essential which led me into very dark places with very manipulative people utilizing that superpower that I developed through trauma when I was a kid. When, when I was driving back from the, from that first Rogan interview, I didn't realize what that was like. I didn't realize what it did. The, the amount of exposure.

[Julian]

That was the gravity. Yeah.

[Ed]

I didn't know. And I was still drinking and still being an idiot and still fucking just trying to self destruct. All of a sudden I found all these eyes on me and I started to try to figure out all these opportunities that I got in front of me. And I realized that I made it, that I survived every single attempt against me, that I survived all these attempts at people trying to me over that I survived. The MetLife said that my job was probably one of the most dangerous jobs on the planet because those, those were the people that would give us our life insurance down there. So it's like I survived all that but I, the, the price was turning into somebody that my wife didn't like any and that, and, and she and my kid were the only reasons why I survived it. So, so I, I, I lost, I lost that. Which was like I think I purpose. I had to refocus focus and shit like that. I went on a second time and the opportunities were all over the place and, and, and I was trying to.

[Julian]

Kill myself with alcohol while this was going on. Your wife left you in between those two?

[Ed]

Yeah. Whoa. At some point I got into another relationship that was pretty horrible, bad idea. And I realized that it's like none of this shit is normal the way I'm living. You know, the constant preoccupation that friends of mine have that I'm gonna just fucking drink myself to death alone somewhere in a hotel. And I would travel around, I would tell people where I was. You know, it's fucking when I go to Boston. Fuck yeah, let's go to Boston for a few days. I had the freedom because of the company and just move around and fucking travel and do shit. I have some friends in Nevada who have a pretty cool ranch after I've sort of like people think they Hit rock bottom, you know, when something happens, you know, like, I thought I had rock bottom. When I lost my job, it was.

[Julian]

Like, no, that's not it.

[Ed]

No. So I, I, I locked myself in this cattle ranch and went through sobriety, like, the, the wrong way. You know, you're not supposed to do it that way.

[Julian]

Cold turkey.

[Ed]

Yeah. Three days later, I was feeling it.

[Julian]

Oh, yeah.

[Ed]

You, you, you, you, you think it's gonna, like, oh, I just have to get over this substance abuse thing. And as soon as alcohol went away, it was like, like flood waters receding. Now you could see all the damage to the wall. Now you can see the bodies on the ground. Now you can see all the bullshit you did for years. It was like, I don't know, like a volume knob went up. Like, I could hear now. I could see. And that led me into three years therapy afterwards, when I stopped drinking, and it led me to some wild, weird reinventions. You know, I was like, I, I was a cop in Mexico, and I became an instructor, and I would speak about some of this online, share pictures of, like, weird, horrible, every now and then. Get banned from Instagram for months. But then I realized, oh, let me. What am I now? So I, I started, like, I started. I stopped talking about my own. And I start going out there and helping other people with their, like, hey, what's going on with you? Like, what happened to you? And then, you know, that turned into conversations that I would then have on the podcast that I have, or it would turn into writing. Like, I do a lot of writing online. Instagram, on my Instagram account called the Fever Dreams, or Ed's Field Notes, which is basically my therapy journal. That's all it is.

[Julian]

It's an outlet.

[Ed]

It's an outlet. The, the scariest thing for me when I was going through all that, what if people find out that was the scariest thing for me? Like, what if people find out that I'm a dumpster fire? And then a friend of mine told me, you know, is that the thing you fear the most? Yeah, talk about it. I went to this bathroom that had a sign on top of it, the urinal. Nobody pickpockets and naked. You can't pickpocket a naked man. And I didn't think about wallets or pickpocketing. I thought about, like, I was afraid of being robbed of a truth that I had hidden, that I was a fucking walking dumpster fire. All the trauma, alcoholism. I was not the best human being on the planet, and I'd gone Through a horrible situation where there was no finality to it. Like, I'm still searching for grave sites of some of the people that died in that war with me, that I just didn't have the mental fortitude to figure out where they were buried so I can go give them flowers. Yeah, like, I'm still trying to figure that out for some of them. And that's the big giant pause button that alcohol gave me at the end of all my process. And this never ends. You know, I was here last night, like, walking around Jersey. Like, I go to this empty hotel room at night, think about those two faces. I saw the lot for the last time. Leaving that room again. Every time the door closes, I can remember them just leaving, having the promise of, like, when we come back, we'll fucking go drinking. And I just have these. This mental plan in my head that I'm eventually gonna see them somewhere and we're all gonna just fucking go out drinking and just talk about the wildness of this ride all the way here. Because it's been a wild ass ride from there to here. And again, I'm just one of millions of young people in Mexico that went through all the shit they went through and are trying to make sense of it all now. I know I'm not an uncommon story. The only thing uncommon about me is that I've managed to fucking just get an audience around it again. I always warn people against violence and this life and all that. I don't glorify anything. It took a ton from me. I'm still recovering. Some of that. Some of it I will never get back. I'm still trying to learn how to be an adult at 42, when I'm learning about, you know, random stuff, like, it comes up constantly because I've just been living in this weird bubble, you know, like credit cards were a thing, you know, I didn't know how. I didn't know how to activate a credit card. You got into the. In the mail. Like, I didn't know how that worked. You know, somebody sent me one, I'm.

[Julian]

Like, hit the 1, 800 number.

[Ed]

Like, I don't like using the phone. I don't want to talk to people online. You go to ATM or the bank. Like, weird small things that people need to realize. I'm a new gringo. And I'm also a new adult in a lot of ways. I'm a new American. And I'm a new adult because I had people taking care of shit for me for years when I was in that job. And I had a wife taking care of some of that when I was married. And now I have nobody but myself.

[Julian]

And you're also, like, you're clear for the first time in a while. Yeah, you're never clear.

[Ed]

I must. I must reinstate this. There is no other fucking country in the world that I would rather be in than this one. It's allowed me the privilege of taking on these insane responsibilities of one being a voice for a ton of people that are never going to be able to speak about this. Starting a company, training people how to be capable. I'm not. People call me a security instructor. I'm all about offense. Being able to empower people with the knowledge and skill sets of, like, hey, you know, you feel like you're unarmed. Yeah. Well, this is all the ways that people arm themselves in the world. You can learn this in about two days. Or, hey, you feel unsafe. You have some issues with being put in handcuffs. Well, I have a whole class, two day class and ideal on how to get out of handcuffs. Zip ties, restraints, chemical restraints. Figuring out your way out of a border checkpoint. Figuring your way through a country where you're not supposed to be in. I train people and all that. Where do you think that comes from?

[Julian]

Mm.

[Ed]

This country has allowed me a lot of gifts and experiences and just wild opportunities. And right now I'm just traveling around with some financial security. Not even. Dude, money is new to me. Dude. I. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know how money works. Like, somebody was telling me, like, you can afford new clothes. Like, I don't have to thrift it. Like, it's cool. It's cool. Thrifting. And then, you know, again, I'm 42 and I'm dating scene. It's what the going on, like, all of it is absurd and weird, but I appreciate the out of this country. I appreciate the out of the fact that a Navy SEAL took me in and guided me through my immigration process, although he didn't have a responsibility to do so. His name's Dan Stanchfield. An amazing man. My brother. I love you. I have a privilege of supporting people who are doing independent journalism and are risking life and limb doing so in Mexico. De Molair is one of them. I'm privileged enough to like, supporting people in their endeavors, both by my training company, both by the company. Just basically sorting people out who want to get into the intelligence field or the. The analyst field and stuff like that, and giving them a space and support and talking about my trauma Openly. There's a lot of badasses out there talking about skinning people alive and shooting people in the face and stuff like that. But not a lot of them are talking about not being able to sleep or missing being missing drunk ass sleep.

[Julian]

So you can help a lot of people doing that. That's why it's great that you're doing it.

[Ed]

Yeah, I'm helping myself. I'm, I'm selfish in that way. If I talk about it, sure. If I share it, it's, it's more about, like, I wish somebody talked to me about it and the way I'm kind of talking to other people about it. But again, there's. We're so privileged here. The, the amount of opportunities this country has, the amount of avenues for people this country has. There's a reason why people come here. There's a reason. And that reason is get. But I'll say this as a final note. I came here and immigrated to this country during the first Trump administration getting into office, and it was not an easy process, and I did that in California. So I got to witness some of the first, some of the first legislation related to rifles in California passing through and now people not being able to arrive at a gun range with a rifle that is adequate to shoot, you know, because they have to use a button to release the magazine and like that. Then I went through a. Cancel the police situation all over the country with the George Floyd incident and then seeing basically police institutions in, in the United States be neutered all the way from the round and recruitment go to the zero levels and just places where the cops wouldn't show up if you called them. And what I mean by all that is I'm starting to see very familiar patterns in the United States that lead to places like the ones that made me. So this place is starting to look a lot like Mexico.

[Julian]

In a more positive light, though. I think some, A lot of us are starting to recognize. Hit the pause button on some stuff like. Wait a minute, hold on. Yeah, this is wrong. Not to say, like, we didn't get caught up in it for a while, but to, you know, to look at it optimistically. I, I have, I have hope that like, we'll, we'll kind of get past some of that. But I understand why you see those patterns for sure.

[Ed]

Yeah. Again, I've lived through it and I know where, where all of this goes. Yeah. And again, this country is becoming really familiar. You know, as I travel around and I, I'm missing Alaska, Iowa and Hawaii.

[Julian]

Maybe but you've been everywhere else.

[Ed]

Yeah.

[Julian]

Wow.

[Ed]

And again, I, like, I had my first more a few years ago. Like, it's for people. It's stupid, man. But for me, it's like insane. Like, I have of these new American experiences.

[Julian]

That's cool.

[Ed]

And people are like, hey, you never had this before? Like, a friend of mine took me to Cane's Chicken. I never had that. I had an Arnold Palmer. I was. I thought that was an alcoholic drink.

[Julian]

No, just lemonade, iced tea.

[Ed]

Yeah, I always order Arnold Palmer's now.

[Julian]

That's great.

[Ed]

It's a new thing.

[Julian]

That's good stuff.

[Ed]

I'm discovering there's good things in the US there's beautiful people here. There's people that will give you the jacket off their back. And there's a horrible people here. They'll skin your back. We have both here.

[Julian]

We got it. Yeah.

[Ed]

I guess again, my whole realization right now is I'm in the middle in a lot of ways. I don't feel fully American, but I also don't feel fully Mexican anymore. So I'm like in the middle and I'm trying to just do something positive out of the horrible experience that I went through. Which in the end, that's all we can really do for ourselves. That's the only redemption we get in this life trauma. You can't go back in time to fix it. All you can do is move forward and try to prevent it from happening again. Yeah. That's the only thing we have.

[Julian]

And you've taken a lot of great actions to do that. Have you made peace with your ex wife? Over. Yeah, over those times.

[Ed]

We're. We're great. We're kidding. You know, we have.

[Julian]

That's great.

[Ed]

She's great. I have nothing bad to say about her. She was. She's actually great. You know, that's awesome. But, you know, it's. It's a sucks. But it would suck even more if I was just laying on my back, not doing anything with this. So I have to, like, keep moving.

[Julian]

I think you're gonna. I can. I can see it in you. This has been awesome. We've been talking for over five hours.

[Ed]

Oh. So.

[Julian]

Yeah.

[Ed]

Sorry about that.

[Julian]

No, it's great you've been going and I'm not gonna stop you when you're going, but, you know, obviously I've been a fan of your work for many, many years, so it's great to have it in here. But, you know, as some things are going down as well, if you want to come back to discuss any stuff as it's happening, you just let me know. We will definitely do that, brother.

[Ed]

I have a direct line with people that are on the ground working and doing the things that we're seeing on the news right now. And I know all of them would be fired or can if they went online, talked about any of it. I'm. I'm. I'm pretty proud to be a voice for some of them. And if. If I see anything or I hear anything that it should be talked about, I'll definitely reach out. Again, thank you so much for this platform and, and thank you for hearing me out. I know not many give me that opportunity, so thank you.

[Julian]

Well, we'll keep doing it. Thanks. Thanks for everything, man. Until next time. Everybody else, you know what it is. Give it a thought. Get back to me.

[Ed]

Peace.

[Julian]

Thank you guys for watching the episode. If you haven't already, please hit that subscribe button and smash that, like button on the video. They're both a huge, huge help. And if you would like to follow me on Instagram and X, those links are in my description below.