I'm extremely excited to announce a brand new sponsor for the Behind the Shield podcast
that is Transcend.
Now for many of you listening, you are probably working the same brutal shifts that I did
for 14 years.
Suffering from sleep deprivation, body composition challenges, mental health challenges, libido,
hair loss, etc.
Now when it comes to the world of hormone replacement and peptide therapy, what I have
seen is a shift from doctors telling us that we were within normal limits, which was definitely
incorrect all the way to the other way now where men's clinics are popping up left, right
and center.
So I myself wanted to find a reputable company that would do an analysis of my physiology
and then offer supplementations without ramming, for example, hormone replacement therapy down
my throat.
Now I came across Transcend because they have an altruistic arm and they were a big reason
why the 7X project I was a part of was able to proceed because of their generous donations.
They also have the Transcend foundations where they are actually putting military and first
responders through some of their therapies at no cost to the individual.
So my own personal journey so far filled in the online form, went to Quest, got blood
drawn and a few days later I'm talking to one of their wellness professionals as they
guide me through my results and the supplementation that they suggest.
In my case specifically, because I transitioned out the fire service five years ago and been
very diligent with my health, my testosterone was actually in a good place.
So I went down the peptide route and some other supplements to try and maximize my physiology
knowing full well the damage that 14 years of shift work has done.
Now I also want to underline because I think this is very important that each of the therapies
they offer, they will talk about the pros and cons.
So for example, a lot of first responders in shift work, our testosterone will be low,
but sometimes nutrition, exercise and sleep can offset that on its own.
So this company is not going to try and push you down a path, especially if it's one that
you can't come back from.
So whether it's libido, brain fog, inflammation, gut health, performance, sleep, this is definitely
one of the most powerful tools in the toolbox.
So to learn more, go to transcendcompany.com or listen to episode 808 of the Behind the
Shield podcast with founder Ernie Colling.
This episode is sponsored by a company I've used for well over a decade and that is 511.
I wore their uniforms back in Anaheim, California and I've used their products ever since.
From their incredibly strong yet light footwear to their cut uniforms for both male and female
responders, I found them hands down the best workwear in all the departments that I've
worked for.
Outside of the fire service, I use their luggage for everything and I travel a lot and they
are also now sponsoring the 7X team as we embark around the world on the Human Performance
project.
We have Murph coming up in May and again I bought their plate carrier.
I ended up buying real ballistic plates rather than the fake weight plates and that has been
my ride or die through Murph the last few years as well.
One area I want to talk about that I haven't in previous sponsorship spots is their brick
and mortar element.
They were predominantly an online company up till more recently but now they are approaching
100 stores all over the US.
My local store is here in Gainesville Florida and I've been multiple times and the discounts
you see online are applied also in the stores.
So as I mentioned 511 is offering you 15% off every purchase that you make but I do
want to say more often than not they have an even deeper discount especially around
holiday times.
But if you use the code SHIELD15 you will get 15% off your order or in the stores every
time you make a purchase.
And if you want to hear more about 511, who they stand for and who works with them, listen
to episode 580 of Behind the Shield podcast with 511 regional director Will Ayers.
Welcome to the Behind the Shield podcast as always my name is James Gearing and this week
it is my absolute honor to welcome on the show 5th degree Brazilian Jiu Jitsu black
belt, former Green Beret and the founder of the We Defy Foundation, Alan Shibaro.
Now in this conversation we discuss a host of topics from Alan's early life, his journey
into the military pre-911, how the attacks on the World Trade Center shifted his military
career, his perception of war, his unique and important lens on Gaza, Jiu Jitsu, combatives
in law enforcement and so much more.
Now before he gets this incredible conversation as I say every week please just take a moment,
go to whichever app you listen to this on, subscribe to the show, leave feedback and
leave a rating.
Every single 5 star rating truly does elevate this podcast therefore making it easier for
others to find.
And this is a free library of now I can say it 900 episodes so all I ask in return is
that you help share these incredible men and women stories so I can get them to every single
person on planet earth who needs to hear them.
So with that being said I introduce to you Alan Shibaro.
Enjoy.
Well Alan I want to start by saying thank you so much firstly to Chris Lee who connected
us for this interview but also I realized that I think that we did a episode of The
Collective together so I want to thank both of those groups first and then also to welcome
you to the Behind the Shield podcast today.
Thank you for having me, appreciate it.
So where on planet earth are we finding you this afternoon?
I am actually north of Dallas Texas right now, middle town called Anna.
Beautiful so let's start at the very beginning of your timeline then so tell me where you
were born and tell me a little bit about your family dynamic, what your parents did, how
many civics.
So I was actually born in Mesa Arizona on Williams Air Force Base and my father was
in the Air Force.
From there after he got out of the Air Force we went to, my father worked for Raytheon
for a little bit so lived in Saudi Arabia for about five years and from there my father
actually started working for Department of Defense as a comptroller and that's how I
ended up moving from Saudi Arabia to Italy, Italy to Germany, Germany to Austria so moved
around all the way through my earlier life until I was 19 overseas.
After I finished high school I moved back to the States, traveled around for about a
year, ended up visiting my parents in Florida, enlisted in the Army and my first duty station
ended up being Fort Hood in Texas and that's actually how I ended up in Texas altogether.
So my first MOS was as a 63 Bravo as a lightweight vehicle mechanic and that was between 95 to
99 timeframe when I got out and was going to school for a little bit and this is when
I got into Jiu Jitsu and at the time there's very, very limited amount of places that you
could train.
So I ended up transferring from Southwest Texas State University or Texas State University
now from San Marcos which is south of Austin to Dallas so I could continue training and
that's how I ended up in the Dallas area.
After 9-11 I ended up going back active duty a few years later, ended up at North Carolina
at Fort Bragg, did my ISF time there, came off active duty in 2010 and opened up my gym
14 years ago and I've been running that since.
2015, about five years after I opened up the school was when I started We Defy Foundation
with Joey Bozek and about two years after that is when I ended up traveling to England
meeting with Sam Sheriff and Mark Omrott or Sam Sheriff at the time to establish Re-Org
Jiu Jitsu Foundation which turned into Re-Org Charity.
He was a Royal Marine Commando and Mark Omrott was as well, ended up partnering up later
on.
The program worked really well, they took it and it just skyrocketed so they did phenomenal.
A couple years after that we ended up establishing a mirror image in Australia and as of last
summer we have a similar program or actually it's We Defy Canada and establishing so it
got established in the summer, this last summer.
Beautiful.
I want to go all the way back first to your childhood because it's unusual that you meet
someone from the States that's been living in so many places.
I forget the exact quote but there is a quote out there, I think it was by John Steinbeck
or someone but it was about how the enemy of prejudice is traveling and I agree 100%
you start going into different cultures and you debunk so many of the things you were
told about the French or the Canadians or whoever it was.
When you reflect back at your formative years, what were the pros of moving from country
to country and what were the cons?
I've been growing up overseas, it's pretty much all I knew because we lived in Italy
for about seven years and so it was kind of strange because I did have a mix of the American
culture from, because I was going to school in a military installation in Vicenza, Italy
and so I did have a blend of culture like American culture in there because I went to
American elementary school, excuse me, Department of Defense school and then as well as in Germany.
So having that mix of culture, I was able to dab a little bit into the American culture
at the time but mainly we lived on the economy not actually in the traditional area where
all the Americans were at.
So, ended up being more of a local, understanding the language, speaking the language.
I went to Italian school for two years.
Then when we moved from Italy to Germany, I ended up learning German.
So definitely in that aspect, you know, submerging and emerging into the language and the culture
also gave me a much better understanding of pretty much how the other side lives.
And I mean, there's a lot of pros and cons, of course, and it depends how you look at
it.
I think there's a lot of things, you know, if we shared information or shared different
things that are positive on one side and to fix one thing and vice versa, I think we'd
be a lot better off.
And I think one of them is just like you said, just understanding the culture itself is one
of the key aspects of having that all around picture to make a determination on whatever
thought process that you have.
I've had people from some incredible programs from different countries.
I've had Norwegian prison governors, I've had educators from Finland, you know, the
man that spearheaded decriminalization of addiction in Portugal.
And it really breaks my heart when I see the kind of chest beating America is the greatest
country in the world, because then that totally negates the ability to grow and get better.
And that philosophy of, you know, the rising tide lifts all ships when you knowledge share,
which involves humility.
And this is the problem.
You know, you can't be beat in your chest.
You got to say, hey, for example, 70% of our country is obese or overweight.
You know, Sweden, what are you doing?
How are your people so healthy?
Or, you know, Norway, why is your recidivism rate so low?
So I think that's such an important point.
But if you live in the echo chamber and you've never traveled and all you listen to are the
people that are on these television shows that masquerade as news, then you're never
going to really understand that there are solutions to some of these problems.
And if we advocate for them, everyone can learn and Americans can certainly teach the
world about many areas where they thrive.
Agreed.
Reading actually, I think it was just a few weeks ago about Finland's educational system.
They've always been the top, you know, for public schooling, and they eliminated private
schools altogether.
And so everyone actually has to go to public schools.
And so they've been doing that for, I think, the better part of a decade.
And the last, I think, five to six years, they've actually been the number one in education.
And also, I mean, just I think European education altogether.
I mean, it's especially I know France, I think Belgium.
There's a few other countries that you actually get paid to go to university.
So they give you a stipend, they give you housing, they give you everything else to
actually go.
So the only thing you're focusing on is your education.
I think there's a lot to be learned from that.
The system shouldn't be rewarded to people who have money to be able to get a good education.
It should be by merit, you know, how you actually earn your way to that.
And I think that's probably one education wise, I think that's one of the biggest things
is it's a collective growth for everybody.
When you know, it's a good education system.
It thrives technology, it thrives of sciences.
And these are one of the things that we're actually falling really far behind on.
And it can change, it can be better.
I mean, it's not that we're a horrible country by any means.
And again, American, I'm proud of it.
But we can't ignore that we have issues and problems that we realistically can't fix.
And I think that's the big thing is recognizing that, yes, we have a problem, we need to address
it, we have to fix it.
100%.
And the thing is, it's just you have to do something different.
That's what it boils down to.
So for example, the addiction crisis that we have locking people up for being addicts
doesn't work, you know, making them have to go to the underworld for whatever substance
they're leaning into is not working.
It's empowering all the shit bags of the world and creating problems and gangs and, you know,
cartels and all these things.
So it's just simply going, look, we need to do something different.
However, you know, what's so nauseating is there's a lot of people out there that oppose
those change because their organizations are making a lot of money supporting the way that
we do it now.
But if that's at the expense of American lives, then you've, you know, you kind of got to
knowledge share a little bit and go, all right, we need to start demanding this to change.
And I think what's so beautiful is ironically, the Special Forces, Special Operations communities
have really kind of spearheaded the psychedelic therapies for mental health, which is really
challenging the whole prohibition conversation in the first place.
Absolutely.
And you nailed it.
I mean, really nailed it.
The way that Portugal actually, you know, addresses the addiction problem as a health
issue instead of a crime issue, it revolutionized.
I mean, they have the lowest crime rate in Europe and they decriminalized all the drugs,
you know, but again, it's treated as a health issue.
But if you think about like, if we established that in the US, how many different, you know,
businesses that revolve around rehab that charge, you know, 50 grand a month, you know,
they'd be missing out.
And of course they have money, they have influence.
So the one thing is that the whole, it's the problem, they're lazy, they don't want to,
you know, they don't want to work.
These are people that have really no understanding about, you know, not just mental health, but
the addiction issue where 83% or 87% of the homeless people that are addicted to heroin
got to that position from prescription opioids.
And when you recognize that, it means like, you know, someone went in for, you know, a
back issue or, you know, broken leg or whatever it is, they got hooked on the opioids because
they kept it on for too long, you know, they're making money off of that pharmaceuticals.
And it changes the actual physiology in your brain.
I mean, the, you know, fentanyl and the oxycontin, I mean, these are, you know, 10 times more
addictive than morphine.
And you know, when you have that in a constant, it's being prescribed by somebody who you're
entrusting to do the best for your health instead of what's best for them and how much
money they can make off, you know, these drugs that they're prescribing.
It's a conflict of interest, you know, where it shouldn't be.
It should be the patient, it should be, you know, the person that you're trying to make
better and leave it at that.
But there's always this conflict of personal gain from that.
I think that's one of the major issues.
Absolutely.
When, if you look at where they targeted, where Purdue targeted, it was, you know, West
Virginia, Ohio, and a lot of these places, you know, around that time had also lost industry,
mines, you know, the car industry, steel, whatever it was.
And so now you have this void.
So you have this addictive compound matched with these people that are, you know, ultimately
struggling with some sort of loss and trauma, you know, whether it's through poverty or
whatever it is, and you have this toxic cocktail.
And then now you apply guilt and shame because they're addicts and you're forced into the
underworld and, you know, homelessness and sex work or whatever it is to feed that addiction
rather than enveloping our arms around these people that are in pain and healing them,
which if you care about money also puts them back into the workforce and then they're making
money not, you know, requiring tax support.
So it makes perfect sense every single way you look at it, unless you are invested, like
you said, in all these corporations that make a huge amount of money keeping our people
sick.
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, it extends to, you know, and like, for example, the fentanyl problem that we
have, you know, the majority is actually, you know, carried through the ports by American
citizen, you know, and the internet, the dark web is another access for fentanyl from overseas.
I mean, they can literally get it through the mail.
And so there's, but there's issues with that too, because if you stop the fentanyl problem,
then you're interfering with the cartels.
And the reason why you can't interfere with cartels is because, you know, there's gun
industries making money off that as well.
So you have these, there's only one place in Mexico where you can actually buy firearms,
one place, and they just need to pop across the border, get their guns, come back down.
And that's how they arm themselves.
So you're interfering with one for the other.
And gun lobby is extremely powerful.
They have a lot of money on that.
So it's one of those things where, you know, how much can you interfere on, you know, one
thing to correct another?
And are you able to do that with such a powerful backing?
Yeah.
Well, I truly believe there is a paradigm shift.
And I think if you look at just basic economics, supply and demand, the more we push for the
prohibition and the, you know, as we said, bringing addiction back into the medical world
that it is in Portugal, which when you talk about this, sometimes people are like, oh,
so you can just buy crack in the store?
Like, no, you just not throw it into prison when you are found with a user's amount of
whatever substance that you lean into.
But you start healing people that are in pain.
You start reducing number of addicts.
You don't need to go and start kicking in doors and cartels.
You're hurting them in the worst place, which is their income.
So you know, but that requires enough of us to understand the healing elements of some
of these drugs that should be legalized and used under, again, the right supervision,
whether it's MDMA or, you know, ayahuasca or whatever it is to help with therapies,
whether it's CBD and THC to help or microdosing.
And then the ones that are just, you know, toxic, like the meths and some of these other
ones, that you're allowing people to get away from that.
Some of the people I've had on the show that were addicted to meth were successful business
people and firefighters.
And, you know, so they weren't, you know, just looking to become a crackhead one day.
These are people that were on this path and whatever it was, injury, trauma, et cetera,
grief, they found themselves down this path.
So to me, if we all just really push for the prohibition to be removed for the decriminalization,
that would have an immense impact without, you know, requiring agents to have to fight
cartels.
I mean, that would always have to be a thing, but you could weaken them so much by just
cutting the head off the snake, taking away the demand, therefore, you know, young boys
and girls maybe wouldn't find their way into a gang anymore.
They find their way into a more productive, you know, methods of making money because,
you know, slinging dope became a thing of the past.
So I think one of the things too is that's a smaller part than actually what would be
profiting the most.
And you have to privatize prison systems.
And in order for them to actually stay afloat, they have to have a certain amount of prisoners
in there.
So for example, you know, cannabis itself, that literally has no recorded deaths from
cannabis, none, you know, but we have an alcoholism problem, you know, that's rampant, you know,
there's so many different, you know, severe debilitating, you know, physical and mental
problems that come from alcohol.
Yeah, that's okay, we can go down the street and get that.
But cannabis, even though, and talking to even talking to some of the police officers,
you know, they're like, we get a call if someone's drunk, we, you know, more than likely, there's
gonna be a confrontation.
If you know, we ever run into somebody that actually, you know, that's spoken with, they
just want to go home and eat, you know, so it's the dynamic, you know, is entirely it's
beneficial for everybody.
You know, it's, it's literally like calming people down, you know, that's what they're
actually needing to, you know, to kind of recenter themselves.
But it's also something that's, you know, it's, it helps.
It's not addictive.
It's not, you know, dangerous to the point where, you know, you're gonna have some physical
ailments from that, you know, long term damage.
It's literally raw from, you know, from earth, you're taking it in, trying it and using it.
So to me, like, I don't understand why that's still still an issue.
So Sivan has had phenomenal results with so many people.
The ketamine drips, the stellate ganglion block, all these things are doing really well.
But we can't get, you know, it's not covered by insurance, you got to pay out of pocket,
you know, and you have to go through certain programs to get it, which are becoming a lot
more available, but they shouldn't have to be so difficult to get in the first place.
They should be like one of the front running things.
We'll try this first, and then we'll move into other things, you know.
So it's, you know, again, one is interfering, one problem, the solution is interfering with
someone else's profit.
Absolutely.
Well, I want to go back to your early life, because I was reading an article that just
came out recently, I think it's one of the Texas newspapers.
You ended up not only becoming, you know, a high level black belt, one of the leaders
in the combative side when it came to the army, but you also, you know, entered the
green beret.
So you're in an elite tactical athlete position.
More often than not, you know, there will be assumption that obviously you just came
out the womb as an uber athlete, but talk to me about some of the physical challenges
you had as a child.
So I was actually, when I was 22, I actually competed in my, I have a picture of my first
tournament where I weighed in at 147 pounds and I was 22.
And so it was a little embarrassing, just, I mean, I was, my nickname was a Skeletor
for a while, not in a good way, you know, just because I was so skinny.
Or the other one was I looked like a orange on top of a toothpick.
But I mean, it was a slow, steady, gradual thing where I was gaining weight and it took
me about, about five, six years to kind of, to get to, you know, the weight that I'm at.
And it was a slow, gradual process though.
And I mean, I got into Jiu-Jitsu initially just because I was bullied pretty much my whole
life and then wanted to find something effective.
So I tried, you know, different martial arts and I gave it a chance like three, four months
at a time.
And the thing was, is that someone brand new would show up, having no experience whatsoever.
And even the time that I dedicated, I was training like five times a week, six if I
could.
And you know, even with, you know, that amount of training, like I didn't even stand a chance.
And then that one time that I walked into, you know, a place that was doing the Brazilian
Jiu-Jitsu, there was a guy that was actually smaller than me.
So he was about 120, 25 pounds.
I was like, yeah, I got this.
You know, I'm finally, you know, I'm bigger than somebody, you know, be able to actually,
you know, win.
And I got caught with an armbar like four or five times and I just couldn't understand
it.
So after the round, I've looked at him and I was like, man, how did you do all that?
Yeah, you got me the same thing over and over again.
I just, I couldn't find a way out.
He's like, I'd only been here for two weeks.
That's the only thing I know.
It's like, that's it.
That's it.
That's, I'm sticking with this.
This works.
And I've literally been hooked ever since and everything I've done otherwise, like I
got into wrestling to help with my Jiu-Jitsu.
I got into Judo to help with my Jiu-Jitsu.
So everything kind of like coincided with that.
So it allowed me to branch off to different things to actually implement it to my game.
And it's been an incredible journey just because not just different martial arts, been able
to travel different places.
And that's been one of the biggest aspects of it.
Made friends that lasted over 20 years.
I still am really good friends with that made through Jiu-Jitsu.
So there's a lot of benefit from it, not just the physical, technical side of it, but there's
incredible benefit to it.
The mental health, the physical and mental aspect as well.
What was some of the medical and physiological challenges you had as a child?
Because I read abdominal migraines which I never heard before and I know you had some
issues with your legs as well.
They weren't necessarily like where I had to wear braces or anything like that.
Not that severe, but it was just from being extraordinarily skinny.
No amount of power that was generated from that.
So it was like I was just walking skeletal system.
And most of that was actually handled later on.
But the challenges just, again, it was just made me a target pretty much.
And especially not even knowing how to even defend myself, maybe even more of a target.
What is your perspective of children being encouraged to do martial arts, like as many
children as we can get and preventing bullying?
And I think when people hear that conversation first, they're like, oh, so you can make your
kid tough so he'll beat the bullies up.
But what I've seen, this eternal humbling journey, because I did one martial art, got
really good, then went into the taekwondo and won national tournaments and then went
to boxing and got murdered and then learned a little bit better and then got to kickboxing
and got murdered and then went to jiu-jitsu and got murdered.
So this humility has been like 30 plus years now.
But what I realize is that you take a bully, you put them into a situation where they are
challenged and they are humbled and they see respect and they see community.
You stop them from being a bully.
It's not being able to beat the bully up.
It's about making less bullies in the first place.
So now you've had, obviously, clearly this early life was pretty traumatic for you, but
now arguably you're one of the most dangerous men on the planet.
What's your perspective on the environment that we need to create for our children to
reduce the amount of bullying and nastiness?
Honestly, I think jiu-jitsu out of, and again, being involved in it for almost 30 years,
I'm not going to be a bit biased, but I've trained in Muay Thai, went to Thailand.
The train out there was very involved.
One of the biggest things that I realized is that jiu-jitsu is probably the most compassionate
of the martial arts.
It's also one of the most brutal.
But it teaches you, especially for children, control and restraint.
I think that's one of the biggest things you can teach is you don't have to go like a nuclear
bomb trying to defend yourself.
You can escalate and you can have the confidence to escalate without having to permanently
damage somebody, especially with kids.
Because one of the cases that they had, that I always kind of referred to is when I first
moved here, I think it was in 2012 or 2011, I think it was, but there was a child that
was getting bullied from freshman year, sophomore year, and junior year.
His parents got fed up with it and they had him in a weightlifting program.
They had him in a boxing program.
That senior year he showed up and the kid put on 15, 20 pounds over the course of six,
seven months.
Was doing private lessons, boxing.
Within the first week, I think it was one of the bullies that had been bullying him
through his high school, tried to step up on that, but he was a different person and
literally just knocked him out.
The problem with that was that when he got home, they took pictures of it and they filed
charges.
They could do that because they had visual evidence of the damage.
I was swollen up, the side of his face.
It just looked bad.
Because in boxing, there is control to an extent, but once you release that punch and
it makes contact, you can't take it back.
I think this is one of the reasons why Jiu Jitsu is in a law enforcement application is
really good too, because you can control somebody and make them realize, hey, this is a really
bad situation for you.
Even in the height of the highest tension point that you can find, you can still bring
them back down to understand rationally, hey, you're in a really bad situation.
It's about to get much worse.
So you need to change your mind on this.
You can do that with the amount of control that you have without hurting somebody permanently.
The application for law enforcement is directly correlated to that where you can apprehend
a suspect, have control, but at the same time apply restraint where you don't have to pull
out your baton and beat the crap out of them.
It's better for society in general where it's better for the law enforcement officer because
he's a lot more protected, but it's also better for the person that's being arrested because
we all know that not everyone that's arrested is guilty of something.
It could be just a bad day, they're fighting back, whatever it is.
It could have definitely escalated or it could de-escalate to the point where, all right,
this is bad, but it's not getting worse.
So I've always been encouraging law enforcement and children at the same time to actually
get involved in that specifically for that reason.
I mean, there's the optics, isn't it?
We've talked a lot with people from the jujitsu world that are also police officers, and this
is an interesting conversation.
I'm only a blue belt in jujitsu at the moment, my journey has been very, very slow, but it's
because I don't train very often.
This is what happens.
So I'm taking my time at each of these belts.
However, I think as you start getting further into it, you realize there's certain things
that you favor and I've always loved chokes.
When you are trained in choking with a tap or understanding how hard you're squeezing,
it seems to me that it would be an incredibly important tool for law enforcement.
But when we're talking about optics and obviously you had that incident on the subway in New
York recently where that guy didn't let go and that guy died, you have the George Floyd
thing.
So there are these anomalies where people did it wrong.
They hands down did it wrong.
But it seems to me like that is such a powerful tool.
And when you're getting choked, that's one of those submissions where you're ready to
comply really, really fast.
So what is your perspective of using chokes specifically in law enforcement if the officers
are trained to a certain level?
And that's the thing.
That very last part was trained.
So for example, that subway incident with Daniel Penny, the Marine, that's the one I'm
referring to, correct?
I believe so.
Yeah.
So the big thing about that was I'm on his side to an extent.
I'm literally am because there's an exorbitant amount of evidence showing that he was threatening.
He was a possible threat to many people on the subway and he did need to be restrained.
Now if you go to a little bit back to what he was saying, what was he yelling?
He was yelling he wanted food.
He was saying, I'm not going back to jail.
I'm not doing it.
And you could tell that he definitely had mental health problems.
There is no doubt about that.
And if someone's saying, I want food, you got to kind of like, well, something else
is up.
There's something else wrong with that.
Not saying that you don't restrain him because again, he did pose a threat.
Not just to one or two people, but everyone on the train because he was threatening everyone.
So I agreed to the point where he was restrained.
But that ends there because someone who, I mean, they teach tapping, they teach, he did
have knowledge of how a choke works is what I'm saying.
He knows how long to hold it.
He knows that if you hold it for this long, it's going to make the person pass out.
Once he's passed out though, it continues and you restrict the blood circulation to
the brain.
It could cause brain damage and then ultimately death.
And anyone that has some experience, some training into that basic knowledge of how
a choke works, and he wasn't alone.
There was like four or five people helping him restrain him.
So there was no need to hold that choke for that long.
That's where I disagree 100%.
He put him out and he went out cold.
He had four or five people, they could have just turned him over and just held him there.
And then he could have been taken by law enforcement.
That's how it should have gone in my view.
Again, he was outnumbered.
I do understand that he posed a threat.
He didn't be restrained.
That is unequivocally justified.
I get it.
Just the extent that he held that choke on and with the support that he had was completely
entirely unnecessary.
So with that being said, those are some examples where with the wrong person, with the wrong
training, with the wrong ability or the lack of ability to perform under stress, this can
go bad.
What is your perspective if we were able to create an environment where police officers
were trained to a good level, would that be a good application in law enforcement or would
it still worry you as far as the the fatal element versus an armlock, for example?
And that's the thing is a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
All right.
So you're just enough to do damage, but not enough experience to understand the extent
of damage that you're creating.
I think if trained in a continuous training environment where you're it's just like anything
else.
And so the more training that you have on it, the more you understand your capabilities
and how much your control kind of needle will go.
If someone isn't trained very well and they get to that position, they're going to panic
because they literally aren't sure about themselves.
So they'd rather overdo it than underdo it in order to protect themselves.
I think that's where the application of chokes becomes dangerous is when they're trained
just enough to get to that position, but then don't have enough experience to be able to
maintain and control in a safe manner.
So if that could be the training could be extended to that where it's a regular daily
thing like it should be.
I think that chokes can definitely be a good thing.
You know, a way to put someone out, you let go, you know, once they're out, you cuff them
up and be done with it.
But it is a touchy topic because there are some very valid points for brain damage if
it's held for way too long.
But again, I think in that environment where you have someone that's trained and has the
experience and understands the control, I think it could definitely be a good thing.
I've heard arguments on both sides and they make some very valid points.
But in my opinion, if they're properly trained, they should definitely be utilized.
While we're on the topic, an interesting thing that I've witnessed because I've trained in
a few jujitsu places now, we tend to focus more on the actual grappling and less on the
takedowns.
But when you look at law enforcement, obviously they're pursuing someone who's initially standing.
You know, I mean, to cuff an individual whilst you've got a sidearm on your hip and not get
shot yourself blows me away that people are even able to do that.
So I don't think the public realizes how difficult that is.
But where you see, in my opinion, some really effective hands-on techniques in law enforcement,
it seems like wrestling and jujitsu are a really strong part of that.
And then some of the sports jujitsu schools that may be teaching police officers, you
know, pulling guard and that kind of thing, to me, you've got to be careful because you're
missing a big part that is really from the sports side and not from the street.
So what is your perspective?
Because you said you did wrestling, you did judo yourself to supplement your training.
What about those, especially in the combatives and law enforcement side?
I made a reputation for myself very early on that, you know, my place, you don't pull
guard period.
And the main reason for that is whether it be sport or self-defense, let's take sport
and we'll take the most stringent of competition rule sets with the IBJJF.
You don't get points for pulling guard, but you do get, you know, two points awarded for
takedowns.
So already, you know, just in the sport aspect of how to gain an advantage in points, you
already have a reason why you should be learning takedowns for sport.
But the main thing is that, you know, just like anything else, the more you train something,
the more it becomes your first instinct, the very first thing that you go to.
And if your first thing is to pull guard, you know, because that's what you've been
training on the most, well, that becomes extremely problematic when you're in, because you're
going to fall into your comfort zone.
You're going to fall into what you've been training the most.
And if you have a habit of pulling guard, well, that's the last place you want to be,
especially with, you know, you have your spray on one side, you have your gun on the other,
you know, so many different variables that could go wrong versus, you know, Chris's old
philosophy, you know, get on top, stay on top, you know, and always kind of keep that
in mind.
So I train my guys, my guys that compete, they do great.
It's not ever anything that I was like super highly focused on.
If people want to compete, I try to help them get ready for that.
But the self-defense aspect has to be whether it's a primary, you know, goal for you, whether
it be self-defense or sport, you know, having the knowledge and understanding of takedowns,
you know, whether even if you're not doing the takedowns to understand them and to be
able to counter them.
And the first time I actually went into wrestling for about seven, eight months, the guy I was
training with in wrestling, the only thing I trained was counters, just how to stop takedowns,
how to stop wrestling takedowns.
Literally for almost eight months, that's all I did.
And that helped me tremendously, you know.
So if I ever encountered somebody that was good at takedowns, I'd be able to counter
them.
But I wouldn't have to resort right back to falling onto my back.
If someone wants me on my back, they're going to have to fight tooth and nail for me to
get there.
I'm not just going to give it up.
And that's the same mentality that I want my students to have as well, because you want
that same mentality in a self-defense situation.
So whether it be sport or self-defense, the priorities should almost be identical.
And that's the reason why I teach it the way I do.
Will you mention that your father was in the Air Force?
Were you dreaming of the military when you were high school age?
Was there something else that you were thinking about first?
It's always been in the military.
Being born on a military installation, raised on military installations, raised around the
military, then being in the military.
I came off active duty.
That was National Guard for a couple of years.
But even when I wasn't in uniform, within a few years, I was back working with veterans.
So my entire life revolved around the military in some way, shape, form, or fashion.
So it's always been around that.
And I used to wake up at 5.30, 5.45, and listen to the guys doing PT, hearing the cadence
going on, because we lived right across the street from where the barracks were.
So the earlier influence that I had was definitely in the Army.
And of course, Vicenza was an airborne country in Italy.
So I get to watch them as a child.
So there's a lot of earlier influence that I had.
That's all I ever wanted to be, was be in the Army, but still being able to do the things
that I wanted to do.
Because a lot of the guys that I met, they were like skateboarders and snowboarders that
were still active duty.
And so it was basically like a way to eat my cake and have it too.
So I got really big into skateboarding and then into snowboarding.
But that thought process of going to the military was always there.
So you mentioned about becoming a mechanic.
Kind of walk me through the landscape pre-911 for your Army experience.
So I wanted to as a mechanic, because I didn't know anything about working on cars.
Growing up overseas, we didn't have like the same kind of setup where you can just go down
the AutoZone and pick up car parts and have your own garage where you can work on things.
And we moved around a lot.
So it wasn't anything that really got into.
Maybe just the basics my father taught me, change tires and change your oil, things like
that and basic maintenance.
But never to the extent of like building an engine.
And diesels were entirely foreign to me.
So that's where I wanted to go.
And come to find out that it was more of a glorified Jiffy Lube than anything else.
We never really got to work on engines.
And then the things that I got trained on, it was like the last class or second to last
class on all the vehicles that we're learning.
Because I learned how to work on the cut fee, which they eliminated I think entirely in
a year or two years later after I went to mechanic school.
The Deuce and a half, the one that wouldn't be used since World War II.
And then the first generation Humvee.
So everything that I learned on, yeah, I still learned some basic understanding of diesel
engines and so forth.
But the actual application of the training that I had received, it just wasn't applicable
to anything else I was doing.
So I was kind of disappointed with that.
Now I did get to work at a Robert Gray Army Airfield at Fort Hood.
That gave me an entire new experience about working not on planes, but around planes.
So there was definitely a positive aspect to that.
And again, during that time for me, there was nothing going on.
Somalia was a couple of years before I enlisted.
Bosnia and Kosovo, that whole thing was dying down by the time I came in.
And I mean, between 96, 2000, there was literally nothing.
So there's no reason for me to go in and did my time.
I'm like, OK, well, that's it.
So started going to school then.
So it was a little bit of a disappointment.
But everything kind of got spun back up when 9-11 happened, because that was my opportunity
to serve my grandfather and his brother's tough experience in World War II, where you're
actually fighting the just cause.
You fight the good thing.
It's doing the right thing.
So it's always been there.
It just not at the time I didn't realize my willingness to be in the military as much
as I did until later on.
So what was that day, 9-11, like through your eyes?
And then talk to me about the role that you pursued after that.
So I was living in Arlington at the time.
I was going to school at University of Texas at Arlington that morning in 9-11.
And I remember turning on the radio and hearing that there was a, initially they were saying
it was like a farm plane accident that hit the towers.
And then as more reports came on, I turned on TV and actually they were showing the damage
on the first building.
I actually managed to catch the second.
And I remember calling the girlfriend I had at the time and I was like, hey, you need
to turn on TV and see the news.
She was like, what channel?
And I said, any.
I mean, I think that was kind of daunting in a sense where go to any channel and it's
playing that.
And it was that much of a severe situation.
But and you kept hearing we're under attack, we're under attack, we're under attack.
And at the time I was a drill sergeant.
I went from being a mechanic to field artillery and I was doing my trial time at Fort Sill
and just graduated from drill sergeant school in South Carolina through the reserves.
And they actually wanted me to go up to Fort Sill for two years and train troops.
And that was literally the last thing I wanted to do.
I mean, I don't want to stand on the sidelines.
If our country is going to war, we've been attacked.
And that was the mentality.
Then I want to be part of the fight.
And so I did some admin paperwork, a little battle to get out of this contract and go
into another.
The closest National Guard unit that I could find that was SF, to where I could go to try
to get into the pipeline was in Mississippi.
So it was eight and a half hour drive one way.
And I'd have to do that for, so I did that for like nine months.
And we're trying to get a slot to go to selection.
And finally got a slot to go to selection.
I made selection, then went to airborne school, finished out the Q course.
And when I finished, I went back to my National Guard unit and told them I got recruited on
to third group at the SIF.
And so I'm going to go active duty.
And so I went back, did all my paperwork to get out and make the transfer active duty.
I went back to BRAG, signed in a group.
A couple of days later, signed into the battalion.
And then shortly after that, I was on a plane and met my team in Iraq.
So it was like a boom, boom, boom right into it.
And that was my first deployment.
So I didn't have any experience.
My first deployment was with the SF teams.
And it was literally like thrown into the mix.
I didn't have a, I had a interim team I was assigned to, but I was volunteering for all
the teams that were there.
And anytime they'd go out like, hey, do you need a driver, do you need a gunner, do you
need more security?
Whatever the case may be, I was volunteering so I could actually gain more experience.
So 2007, I had a lot of experience gained just from the variety of different positions
that I was holding, just so I could get familiarized with everything that was going on and get
a better understanding of battle, how it was being fought.
A question I always ask about, or to anyone who's been deployed and or seen combat, should
I say, is a two-part question.
And the backstory is very simple.
The civilians of the world, like myself or the US, get a very polarized view of war through
our screens.
You know, either kill them all, like God saw them out, or they're all baby killers.
And in the middle are the men and women, arguably children, that we send overseas with our flag
on their shoulder.
And so it's their perspective that I think is the most valuable.
So the first of the two part, for example, you watch 9-11 happen, this is a terrorist
who's hiding in Afghanistan, now you find yourself in Iraq.
So regardless of the politics or reasons that you were in that particular country, was there
a moment where you witnessed things, atrocities, whatever it was, that justified you being
there?
That was the crazy part, is the more you got shot at, the more it validated you being there.
So this is one of the very tricky subjects that, you know, it's why you're there, when
the information that you're given, the intel that you're given, and everything surrounding,
keep in mind this is, you know, before the social media boom, we had, you know, MySpace
and Facebook, I think it's time.
So MySpace wasn't really your source for wartime media.
But literally every channel was saying the exact same things.
And so we're always going in there thinking you're doing the righteous thing, you're
justified in what you're doing, everything you're doing is for the right thing.
And these are bad people.
These are radicalized Muslims making everyone else look bad.
And I've never been, I never gone into anything thinking it was a religious thing ever.
So it wasn't like all Muslims are bad, we got to eliminate all, it's just like Christians.
You know, you have some bad Christians, does it make all Christians bad?
And same thing with Muslims, you have, you know, the majority of moderates, but you have
the extremists.
And those are the ones that we're going after.
But you always fed that same, that narrative.
And again, this is something for me, but didn't recognize till after was why were we in Iraq?
You know, what was, when you see the end result going and looking back of, you know, 15 years
that we've been there, for what?
You mean, what did we better?
You know, we went in there for, you know, to eliminate the terror cells and created
another one.
We went from Al-Qaeda to ISIS.
We didn't, you know, there was trillions of money that was spent.
There was millions of civilians lives lost.
On the Iraqi side, there was, you know, thousands on the American side.
But if you look around, I mean, what was the benefit to the working class, the people that
were actually fighting there, the people that were, you know, that was supposed to be, you
know, bettering our lives for it?
I mean, we didn't even find, I mean, we got Saddam Hussein, sure, but that was years prior,
you know?
And so what was the continuation for?
What benefit came out of this?
You look at that and Afghanistan.
I mean, we went to Afghanistan to eliminate the Taliban.
Well, we ended up making them the official government.
I mean, so again, trillions of dollars, millions of lives lost, you know, thousands of American
lives lost.
And the worst part about both these wars is that the majority of people brought that war
home with them in one shape or another.
They brought it back with them, you know, some people to much more deeper extent and
some much less.
But they all brought it back in some fashion.
And that's the thing too, is that once we did, it was, you know, it was looked down
as especially mental health, you're weak and you're sad and everyone gets sad, get over
it, you know, stop complaining.
So even just the mere fact of trying to get treatment, you had to go through like a, you
know, it was a dirty secret.
You had to be very secretive of it.
And, you know, because if you're going to see therapy, you're like, you're not a man,
you know, you know, I'm feelings and like, oh, I mean, there's just so many things
that just literally kind of ostracize you for wanting to get help.
That has definitely changed over the last few years, but especially like 10 years ago,
and there's still like a stigma attached to it because a lot of people are just uninformed.
And if they're uninformed, you know, more than likely they're misinformed if they do
think they know something.
So it created like a whole new mess.
And you see that the effects of it, especially like, you know, the recruitment, the last,
you know, I think six years or so it's been like the lowest, you know, military recruitment
in the last hundred years, the last century.
But more likely than anything else, everyone's saying, well, it's because of the woke, it's
because of this, or it's because an entire generation grew up watching a war and seeing
their veterans, they never had to be there, but they see the veterans come back and all
the damage that is caused and all the, you know, the problems that's created.
And you know, you start saying like, for what, you know, so people start realizing, you know,
by the time they get to like, you know, 2018, that entire generation literally lived through
a 20 year war their entire life.
Their country has been at two wars on some front and, you know, into where it brings
them back home and still dealing with it.
So I think that has much more of a issue to do with than, you know, some other people's
policies on, you know, the diversity and inclusion, you know, any of the woke stuff, I think it's
literally just the experience of people seeing it for themselves, you know, this entire generation
of seeing it and experience has been more influential than anything else that's been
brought up.
It's interesting because it parallels the recruitment crisis that we got in the fire
service at the moment.
And I say the exact same thing because obviously we're not seeing the horrors of war in the
fire service.
But as you mentioned, you know, when I first became a firefighter, social media was almost
nonexistent, you know, when 9-11 happened, it was almost nonexistent.
So you know, the kind of knee-jerk reaction to the attacks on our home front was all a
lot of people needed to sign up, whether it was in police, fire or the military.
Fast forward to 2018, for example, 2020, people can go online and go, what is it like to be
a veteran in Afghanistan, in Iraq?
And now all of a sudden they're presented with all this stuff.
And obviously you've got to sift through to find the middle of the road, common sense,
real stuff.
But, oh, you know, collateral damage and, you know, never found WMDs and industrial
military complex and all this kind of thing.
And it's the same in the fire service.
Now you look in and go, oh, they have 56 hour work weeks plus mandatory because they're
understaffed.
So now 80 hour work weeks, marriages, cancer, suicides, overdoses.
And it doesn't negate from what the profession should be.
The profession in the fire service should be exactly what we do in the military.
It should be all the good things that you guys do.
And I'll get to the kindness and compassion in a second, because that's a very important
part of the conversation too.
But this awakening isn't a bunch of, you know, screaming women and men with piercings and
green hair.
That's not why we're struggling to recruit in the military and the first responders.
It's that this next generation is really smart.
And when they do their research, they go, that sounds a bit shit actually, the way it's
doing it right now.
And I remember thinking the exact same thing I grew up when the Falklands war happened
in England.
And it was a lot of, you know, political jockeying and a lot of Argentinian boys died and a lot
of British boys died for, you know, a rock.
Now I get it.
I understand that the principle behind it and, you know, there's a certain point where
you have to act, but I still to this day wonder if diplomacy could have actually sorted that
out in the end.
So I grew up going, so a politician can decide if we go to war or not.
And I was very young, but that right from the beginning dissuaded me from being in the
military.
Had I grown up after World War II, I probably would have been lining up in the recruitment
office, you know?
So this is, I think, and it's such an important conversation.
If we just expect people to believe the Hollywood version of what we do and that's it, then
you're diluted in 2024 because people actually can see everything now, documentaries, social
media, you know, books.
And so if we're not fixing the things that are broken, we will have a recruitment crisis.
If we don't stop sending our men and women to war at the drop of a hat, because there
are people that pay our government that make uniforms and ammunition and missiles and battleships
are getting fucking rich every time we go to war and there's no checks and balances,
then we're not going to have soldiers anymore.
We're not going to have any firefighters.
So it's up to us, you know, the communities to push against some of that and be like,
we will put a uniform on as long as we see you taking care of our people and in the military
side only sending our children to war when it's absolutely fucking necessary.
I agree 100%.
One of the things to add on to that is, you know, at least for the, I know this, it's,
the US doesn't have allies, it has interests.
And anytime there's like the name of democracy and the most recent example that I can use
is Somalia, right?
To take out Farah ad-Did and restore democracy and bring peace to the area, what was always
left out was Chevron BP and five major oil companies that wanted to drill off the shoreline
of Somalia.
But that never was brought up, you know?
So again, the interest, because a year later, I think it was even less than a year later
that after Mogadishu happened with the Rangers was the Rwanda Hutu and Tutsis, right?
800,000, you know, within two months, it was a slaughter.
Why don't we get involved with that?
We didn't even bother going down there.
It was kind of one of those things that was like, you know, even the UN didn't want to,
you know, go down there on that.
And that was literally like an opportunity for peacekeeping, you know what I mean?
But it wasn't brought up.
We have to accept responsibility for the messes that we actually created.
If you take a look at a lot of the immigration problems that we have, it's because we destabilized
that government at some point in time.
Because back as early as 1953 with Mosaddegh in Iran, right?
There was somebody that wasn't within our interests with the UK doing the Anglo-Iranian
oil company, I think it was called.
But because they want to nationalize their own resources, well, okay.
Well now we have to set up a coup, you know, and when they put the person that was, you
know, for interest, it was horrible for the country.
And it got to such a horrible point where they brought in Ayatollah Khomeini, right?
So that led up to 1979.
And it's been like an enemy since, right?
And filed.
But if you go back to what caused that, you know, you have to understand the cause for
the effect.
And I think that's one of the biggest things that people are missing is understanding the
context and the cause for what we have now.
People don't want to go back to that.
I don't know if it's laziness, I don't know if it's algorithms, and that's another huge
thing that you were talking about is that, you know, this new generation is smart.
You're absolutely right.
But these algorithms, if you put in, if you word it, you know, if I'm looking up like,
you know, whatever online and I just phrase it differently, you're going to have something
that takes you down a deep hole that goes on and on and on of, you know, all this meta
misinformation, right?
So, and then it starts turning into confirmation bias.
It's not actual research.
It's like, oh, I found this article on that, found this article, no one even checks to
see what the source is.
And it's like, oh, yeah, it's the same thing.
So you know, all these different news outlets are saying the exact same thing because they
have the exact same source, but they don't check that.
They don't look into that.
So the majority of people that are saying they're doing research is actually confirmation
bias.
And I understand this because I used to do the exact same thing myself until I started
actually paying attention to the sources of that and actually saying, okay, well, let
me go and find out, you know, the opposite end of this.
And that's what I may actually see a lot more clearly about the different clock tricks that
we've been into and the context as well as the cause for these conflicts to better understand
where we're at right now and where we can go in the future.
Absolutely.
I mean, I think one of the perfect examples of how far we've deviated from where we should
be and I'm a huge believer in you want to change the world, start a home.
It's up to us.
Everyone can actionably do something in our homes.
It might be our own fitness and nutrition and mental health practices through to how
we parent, how we love our partner.
And then obviously in the community, how do we either, you know, a part of the problem,
part of the solution.
But if we're looking at the top and I use that term very loosely, 330 million people,
the last eight years, for example, we could go back a lot longer than that, but the last
eight years, the fact that we're presented with those two choices and you hear over and
over and over again, the lesser of two evils and you know, the way these get is again,
algorithms and lobbying.
And then I'm not big into politics.
I just from my white belt way of looking at the world, I know thousands of people that
will be phenomenal leaders and they wouldn't be able to get in that position because they're
not million or billionaires and they have ethics.
So they wouldn't take money from people that say, hey, I'm a drug company or hey, I'm a
oil company, you know, I'll pay for you to get in.
But when you get in, here's what I want you to do.
So this is the other side of it is like, I think that we, I hope that there's a, there's
an awakening.
I really do that people, especially after the pandemic where we realized that all these
people are called themselves leaders, couldn't fucking lead their way out of a wet paper
bag that now we'll actually challenge the way that we even choose people and put real
leaders in these positions.
So that again, whether it's obesity or starting another war that we actually have people.
And I love the concept that Sebastian Junger wrote about.
You have a peacetime leader and a wartime leader.
I love that too.
We got to change the way we do it and the way that the last eight years, I mean, if
there's a core value of a leader, it's that it brings people together.
And whether you're a Democrat or Republican, you cannot fucking argue with the fact that
the last eight years, so that's both of you fuckers have done nothing but divide this
country.
I couldn't agree more.
One of the things that's a little bit aggravating here in the US is, is everyone wants to have
a, everyone needs to have their in a little box, right?
So if you're a Republican, then you fit in this box and nothing else can enter it or
exit it.
And same thing with Democrats.
The thing is, is that there are some good policies and ideas that come from the Republicans
side.
There's some good ideas, policies come from the Democratic side.
They can't agree on it because they're Democrat and the Republican, which is to me the most
asinine thing, if it makes sense, make it happen.
But then again, you have, again, you know, what's, you don't see everything that they
want to do because it's massed for interests.
Again, there is profit to be made.
So like, well, you know, we could go this route.
It'd be better for a short term.
We can blame it on someone else.
It's literally always short term for the solution to give the immediate improvement, regardless
of the situation that'll happen later and then let someone else deal with it.
Or the blame.
It's that simple.
So they blame the guys prior for their mistakes.
I got to fix this because, well, it was your policy, but okay, we'll go that way.
Perth example, the withdrawal of Afghanistan.
The Trump administration initiated the withdrawal.
They're the ones who negotiated with the Taliban.
They're the ones who released 5,000 of the Taliban from the Afghan prisons.
They're the ones who, you know, the Trump administration was the one that told them
scheduling exactly like what installations were going to be closed down so they could
totally occupy them and then move down south.
So by time, Biden, and don't get me wrong, Biden, you know, I mean, inequitably fucked
up that exfil like hands down.
I'm blaming both.
You know what I mean?
I'm, I, I, I meant for what makes sense in doing the right thing.
So regardless of your Democrat, if you're doing the wrong thing, guess what?
You're doing the wrong thing.
You're, you're screwing this up.
If you're Republican, you know, it's exact same standards, but people want to defend,
you know, and I find this, I don't know if that's the same in England, but what I find
is that when people's ideology becomes their identity, it becomes very dangerous because
it's no longer like their belief system or their opinions on things.
It's literally their personal, I should put this like a, a, you're attacking them personally,
not, not what they think about policy that you literally attack them.
And I think that's one of the biggest problems is, you know, that's very dangerous because
now they're attaching, you know, their, you know, their opinions on different things and
their beliefs on different things into a personal context.
And so they're literally feeling attacked personally.
That's why they're getting like so emotional and, and so involved into it.
But if you're able to kind of separate yourself from these, you know, different groups of
different identities, you know, you can see like, hey, this is beneficial for this group
only.
Why are we doing this?
You know, then this is, we could do so much better.
The amount of money on foreign aid, you know, and been doing this for years, you know, when
we have our own problems at home, why are we giving blank checks with no oversight to
these foreign countries?
We don't even know what they're doing with it.
You know, we could have solved the homelessness problems.
I think the Department of Agriculture, the housing, I forgot the name of it, was saying
20 billion to fix homelessness in the United States.
We've given that money away.
And I think this last year alone, you know, a year before that, a year before that, a
year before that, why are we taking care of our own people first?
You know, we have, you know, issue, 2% of the world's population, yet we hold 25% of
the, you know, the global imprisoned population here in the United States.
How come if we have that high of a rate, how come we're not the safest country in the world?
It doesn't make any sense.
So people don't even want to recognize that there's a problem.
There's accepting that is like, okay, that's okay, though.
That's all right.
We can do that.
But why?
Why are we accepting this?
Because people recognize that there's a problem that we need to fix.
And just like we kind of touched on earlier, it literally leads to where the money's coming
from.
Because someone's benefiting off it.
Someone's making money off it.
Someone's going to be making it rich off these decisions.
And it affects the public, but they hide that with, oh, well, you know, this will benefit
us in this way in the future later on.
But these, they're all empty.
These all the money that we are paying ourselves going to these large corporations that they're
going to feel the difference, not us.
So if you got shares, yeah, great.
You know, your stocks are going to go up.
But everyone else is going to suffer tremendously for it.
Well, you mentioned Somalia before.
I think one of the saddest things I've heard is I think it was the documentary Sea Spirit
Sea, I think.
And I'd heard this from many people and even people that have worked shorelines in, you
know, in our uniform.
But if you look at the origin story of the piracy in Somalia, that comes from the overfishing
of their wars.
You know, a lot of them were just fishermen and they were able to sustain themselves on
what they did for arguably thousands of years.
And then corporate greed comes in.
And I'm like, oh, it's not just a single reason, but this was a big, big amplifier.
And now you've turned what were fishermen into criminals at a desperation because they
want to feed and clothe their children.
But that's left out.
You see, I mean, that's just like you preface it, the conspiracy of this.
You see what I mean?
But it's not a conspiracy.
It's literally what's happening.
And it's part of the issue.
It needs to be addressed.
It needs to be brought up like, OK, well, it's not just a democracy, right?
In the car, we were trying to bring peace to the region.
OK, maybe let's say for all intents and purposes, that's part of it, right?
Well, now we got to bring up also, you know, people want to drill oil.
That's their interest in it.
The fishing, like you mentioned, all these things are not brought up to make the public
make an informed decision.
And I think that's one of the biggest travesties of this is that people aren't even making
informed decisions because they're not informed by the people.
It's kind of a biomission, right?
Like, yeah, there are the issues, but we're going to highlight just these that benefit
us and the reason why we're going in there.
And that's why we're actually taking your tax money and applying it to this.
And the whole thing of like, you know, we're going to see it at the pump, you know, and
that's going to benefit us.
I mean, have we seen anything in the last 20 years, you know, that has benefited us
other than prices skyrocketing up?
Nothing.
I mean, so there has been no benefit to especially the working class American, the person actually,
you know, the majority of the people that put in for the taxes, for the money to be
spent elsewhere for other people to make that decision.
I always find it hilarious when people blame Trump or Biden for the gas prices going on.
Like they've got some little like lever in the White House and they're like, bloop, bloop,
bloop, bloop.
Like, really?
There's only one companies or, you know, a collection of companies that control the oil
prices and they may be paying DC a lot of money, but they're the ones turning the knob.
They're the ones telling you that one day it's a dollar freaking more expensive than
it was two days ago.
And then the reasons they give, you know what I mean?
So any type of, you know, environmental disaster or any type of, you know, catastrophe or whoops,
are you there?
Okay.
Any type of, you know, disaster that happens, they're like, oh yeah, this is the reason
why we're bringing, you know, we have to raise the prices.
You know, Hurricane Katrina was one of the first ones that's, you know, initiated that.
The prices went up.
They never came back down.
I mean, they came back down, you know, a smidge, just a little bit.
But that was the reason for them to kind of get that step, you know, to kind of get going.
But, you know, diesel went up, even though that's, they were saying, oh, the refineries,
the refineries, you know, they got hit, they got damaged.
Well, they were saying that they didn't affect diesel.
So why did that go up?
You know what I mean?
But that was the majority of how all our products, you know, get shipped from coast to coast
is, you know, through, you know, the truckers using, you know, the diesel to transport.
So it's, again, it's one of those things where, yes, they bring up the partial truth, but
not the whole truth for the reason for it.
And, you know, what we saw, if you watch the congressional hearings is that the, you know,
66% was, you know, corporations were to blame, you know, for the increase in prices, you know.
But no one wants to, and I understand why no one would accept that.
A perfect example is what happened in the train disaster in Palestine, right?
You know, nobody understood that, you know, the $22 billion company that was responsible
for that disaster, you know, only put in like $2 million for like the cleanup.
And then they're shifting more money to, oh, blame the government, blame it.
Why?
I never understood that.
And again, this is, I hate defending Biden.
But at the same time, like, what did he have to do with that?
You know what I mean?
Why is that a government problem?
That was literally a private company that screwed up.
They should be paying out the ass to clean everything up within days.
Not weeks, not months, and not waiting for like FEMA to come in, not waiting for the
government to come in.
But they should be able to literally take responsibility for the things that you're
doing, you know.
You screwed that up.
Guess what?
Fix it.
You know, instead of in the, what people didn't realize is that, you know, because they're
much less stringent regulations, again, to make it cheaper so they can make more money,
you know, was causing, I think, a thousand, just over a thousand train wrecks, derailments
in a year alone.
But you didn't hear about that.
You just heard about this and how the government failed to respond.
It's not a government issue.
It's a private company that screwed up.
You know, if I wreck my car and I wreck it into a house, I'm going to blame the government?
Or am I to blame?
You know what I mean?
I have to pay for that.
But when it's corporations doing the exact same thing, now it's the government's fault,
not my fault.
So they should pay for it, which means we pay for it.
That's the problem.
What people don't realize is that once you start kind of building the government, you're
billing us, you know, the actual taxpayers.
So let them clean up their damn mess.
You know, that was the thing I was frustrated about like heavily.
Like they screwed that up.
It was an environmental disaster.
Make them pay for it.
It's like the Grenfell fire in London.
The whole reason why that happened was poor maintenance of the building.
And then they paid, from what I understand, that the Grenfell area is kind of buttoned
up against a very, very rich area of London.
And those residents didn't want the eyesore of this tower.
So they put this cladding over it, which basically was just a giant wall of fuel.
So this fire started, it ran all the way up.
The London Fire Brigade were incredibly heroic.
I mean, I had the chief at the time on the show.
I had one of the firefighters that made it all the way to the top.
So I know firsthand about what these people did.
And then they turned it around and through the fire department under the bus and said
it was their fault.
Not the people who hadn't maintained the building, which was the government in this case, or
the contractor that had put this deadly cladding on this building that took dozens and dozens
of lives.
So another perfect example, the people that actually are out there doing the right thing
made the scapegoat, whilst these shitbag politicians and corporations hide behind their wall of
lies.
Absolutely.
I mean, there's example after example of this, but again, what it was flooded, it's the initial
way, what you see most common around this is the initial reports on this has always
shifted to kind of muddy the waters.
And I think that's what's extremely dangerous because then you have this initial understanding
of what the situation is, but you only got about 15% of it.
You didn't get the actual...
And then later on, they might be saying, yeah, so-and-so took responsibility for it.
But the people that you say have a hundred people that heard the initial reports, you
only have like 10 people who heard that second one.
So you still have 90 people that are going around saying, oh, it's because of these guys,
because of these guys, because of these guys, and they'll maintain that.
And the longer it goes, the more they solidify in with their beliefs.
And now if anyone shows them otherwise, again, ideology comes to their identity, they don't
want to be wrong themselves.
So they're not going to change their mind like, no, no, no, it's because of this.
And it goes back to that saying that the problematic cycle that you're continually having.
Absolutely.
So I mentioned there were two parts to the combat question.
The other side that we also never really hear about is kindness and compassion on the battlefield.
And I think that a real disservice the media does is say that we're at war with Iraq, we're
at war with Afghanistan.
But the reality is there are extremists in those countries that are oppressing their
own people.
So I've heard some beautiful stories, whether it's from our men and women in uniform, whether
it's from the indigenous populations that you work with.
But what are some of the memories that kind of spring to mind when you think about kindness
and compassion during your time in Iraq?
I think one of the big things is, and I can't speak for the majority of people, I can speak
for the people that are on my team and in my company.
The one thing that I can always appreciate about the people that I worked with is that
they did have very, very clear lines.
Meaning if, like children off limits entirely, there is no...
I don't think I've ever met a group of people that were so adamant about that.
And it was a great thing because they weren't slaughtering everybody that was in front.
And for me to know that everybody was...it's difficult, especially in that type of environment
to make these quick calls, to make these life-changing decisions that could impact you.
Not just, of course, the people that you're fighting against or people caught in a crossfire,
but also what you're carrying back home with you.
And I've discussed this a lot with different people that one of the things that they...the
worst memories that could have happened, I talked to people saying that if they had made
decision A instead of B like they did, and they would have shot at this direction instead
of that one, and there was a child there, they couldn't be able to live with it.
So even as a lead of a unit that I had, everyone still had a very strict code of morals.
And I think that was one of the best things going in with these guys is that there was
no exception to that.
Everyone had a very strict code.
And to me, knowing that even in that as chaotic of as that environment can be, everyone still
maintained that.
And like a lot of the times the ICTF that we're working with, there were people that
are going after their families.
So we ended up bringing a lot of the ICTF onto area four, moving them all in so they
could be safe.
But to me, honestly, the most comforting thing that I could tell you is that there are...even
at that level, there's a strict moral code that is maintained.
And to me, knowing that, that made everything a lot better operating with these guys.
I'm jumping ahead now, but I think this is the perfect segue.
So October 7th, there was an attack on many, many innocent people in Israel.
And that in itself was a heinous incident for everyone involved that was an innocent
in that.
So I want to be very clear with that.
Then there was obviously a reaction to that.
And at first, I think most people were like, well, that was a horrific thing that happened.
No wonder that they're now reacting the same way as the US went to Afghanistan after what
happened to us.
But as the example I've used, it seems like you and I are in a street, I punch you in
the face and then people are like, oh, God, I just punched that guy.
And you punched me in the face and I'm like, good, he deserved it.
But then I go down and you start curb stomping me.
At a certain point, I go from the antagonist to the victim because there's a moral point
where it's over and above the reaction.
I started...as the weeks went by and I've got some dear Palestinian friends, some who
have done incredible relief work for years and years and years in Syria and all these
other places.
So they're just really good human beings.
And I start hearing the boots on the ground story again.
I'm all about the people that were there, the people that understand it, the people
that are from that background.
And I just had Dr. Thea Ahmad on the show who is a physician from Chicago, works in
the ER in the South side.
So already exposed to a lot of violence and desperation from an American lens, but he
and his team just came back from a medical mission there.
And so literally just five weeks from us having this conversation now was boots on the ground.
And the way he described what was going on was not a reaction, was not hunting the militia
that were responsible for the attack, but a systematic destruction block by block of
the Gaza Strip.
And then obviously the increased homelessness and starvation and desperation of a lot of
the Palestinian people.
And I think at this point we're either side of about 15,000 children killed.
So you made a very powerful statement at one of the hearings recently.
We've heard about your time in combat.
You wore the special forces uniform.
Talk to me about what has happened since October 7th or go prior if you need to through a warrior's
eyes.
So I don't think anyone can argue that what happened then was anything less than horrible.
I don't think anyone can disagree with that.
But if you take the context only from that timeframe, I think that's where a lot of people
are being misled.
Here's an example.
It started on August 21st.
A group of 30 rebels came up from a town, went in and literally massacred men, women,
and children.
The local law enforcement came in, they rounded them up, they captured all of them, they executed
all.
They went to that nearby town that they came from and killed about 200 of the conspirators.
After that, they changed all the laws to make it much more difficult to get to the police
and it was difficult for this rebel group to actually operate.
Take away the education, freedom of movement, a whole list of different legislative changes.
Now if you put that into context, well, that was actually a slave rebellion that was led
by Nat Turner, who was a very well-educated man and a very pious man, who felt that he
was actually on a mission from God to liberate the other slaves.
For like a century, that story's been circulating as the Nat Turner massacre, the Nat Turner
uprising.
That's all you heard was from August 21st.
No one's talking about the inhumane treatment that they had, the torture that they had endured
as slaves, the horrid living conditions, everything they had as slaves had to endure and that
caused that rebellion.
One thing that kept popping up on the newsfeed was unprovoked, unprovoked, unprovoked.
It started October 7th.
Everything was peaceful before that.
No one's keeping in mind the three-day air raid campaign that was happening two weeks
before October 7th, where the Israelis had a bombing campaign, an air raid.
No one's talking about between January 1st and October 1st of 2023, there was 230 Palestinians
that were killed by IOF and settlers.
No one's mentioning that.
That doesn't make the media.
The year before that, 240 Palestinians.
The year before that, 319.
That's in the last few years alone, they've had a lot more civilians killed than October
7th.
The IOF has killed more Palestinians than Hamas ever has since its inception.
I don't agree with Hamas as an organization.
Actually, after hearing the reading the Amnesty International reports of the things that they
were doing in 2014, cross-checking out with other nonprofits that, or excuse me, humanitarian
organizations, they all coincide with the same thing, the inhumane treatment that Hamas
was giving to their own people.
The way I envisioned it, Hamas is like a schoolyard bully.
You're paying that schoolyard bully to protect you, but at the same time, they're picking
on you.
When the other bully comes in, they're the ones that are fighting for you.
October 7th was a horrible tragedy that shouldn't have happened.
You want to get rid of a resistance.
You have to get rid of what they're resisting against.
We don't have slave uprisings anymore.
It's like the Nat Turner one, because there's no slavery anymore to resist against, to rebel
against.
If they weren't in these living conditions where they're constantly fearing for the lives,
being terrorized, constant humiliation and dehumanization from the IOF and the settlers,
displacing them, moving them out of their homes, that is any person, I can't say any,
a vast majority of people that would fight back.
The only thing that you're seeing is that moment that they're fighting back, like,
oh, look, see, this gives us a reason to do this.
It's not an army that they have.
It's literally small arms that they're fighting against in tanks and airplanes and a full
military, organized military that's backed by the United States, which is the global
superpower.
If you take away the reason for them to resist, well, you take away the reason for them to
have a rebellion, a rebel force.
There is nothing done to protect them.
I think it's horrible that it got to the point where they had to do that.
You see what I mean?
Because what else?
There was no justice for the 5,000 Palestinians that are being detained in the prison systems
that they have, men, women, and children.
When I say children, I'm as young as 12 years old that are being detained.
How is it that that is justified?
You know what I mean?
A lot of these confessions are in Hebrew, and they'll keep you in there until you sign
it.
Then once you sign it, you're on the terrorist watch list, so they have reasons for that.
Again, you want to get rid of Hamas.
You want to get rid of whatever's going to come up.
I don't agree with Hamas as an organization.
I do agree with, and I think anybody that would defend their home and their family would
agree with the idea of resistance.
We've seen this all throughout history.
It's just going to change names.
Get rid of Hamas entirely.
If the illegal settlements continue on and displacing keeps going on, you're going to
have another group that's going to rise after that.
There's going to be a constant cyclical of violence that's going to continue on.
You have to get rid of what's the cause of that.
Again, what's happened on in Gaza right now is literally, it's like shooting fish in a
barrel.
They're confined to this 25 by 5, enclosed with autonomous weapons on the walls.
They keep saying, oh, we dropped flyers.
Where are they going to go?
They literally have nowhere to go, so they're bombing in the north.
Then, oh, it's less dangerous if you go down here, and they bomb in the past when they
go in the south.
The proportionality is just insane.
All that can be debated, but there's certain things like, for example, the flour massacre,
using food to bake people in.
Then, oh, it was a stampede.
How did it start the stampede?
They came at us threatening.
You were threatened in a tank?
They're starving people trying to get to the food.
How was that even possible that you felt threatened?
Then we fired weapons into the air.
Then they changed the story again.
Oh, we fired at their legs.
Well, all the gunshot wounds they found were in the chest, shoulder, and head area.
Using food as bait for starving people and then using it as an opportunity to eliminate
more, to me, it's deplorable.
There is no excuse for that.
Hinrajad, who was stuck in that, trapped in that car, the five-year-old child that literally
was on the phone begging for someone to help her.
You had the two red Crescent workers, and they were both killed trying to help her.
Using that child as bait as they're coming in to try to help them, and it's target practice
for them.
I don't understand how it can be the defense for that.
I don't get it.
It doesn't make sense to me.
I mentioned earlier about the media touring an entire nation with the same brush, Afghanistan,
Iraq.
I felt the same was the case with Russia, with the Ukraine invasion.
I failed to believe that most Russians were waking up every morning going, we really need
to invade Ukraine today.
They were too busy teaching, building, whatever it was that they do, and making sure that
their kids had food in their stomach and the roof over their head.
What is your perspective of Israel as a whole?
They talked about before he went to Gaza, he was in Jerusalem, and he saw Jews and Muslims
and Christians all worshiping side by side.
He was like, we can do this.
I can't help but feel like it's being projected that all Israelis are behind this initiative.
But I would argue that knowing what was actually going on, that a lot of Israelis are not behind
this at all.
Yes, they have this ongoing thing with Hamas, and as you said, that has history.
But back to the punch-up analogy again, I'm sure a lot of them are like, you can't be
doing this under our flag.
Have you heard voices from the Israeli side as far as in defense of the Palestinian people,
the innocents that are not just caught up anymore, that are being pursued?
Absolutely.
I've heard Israelis speak up, as in Israeli citizens that aren't even religious.
I've actually talked to rabbis that showed up to the protest and saying, this is definitely
not a Jew thing.
I actually don't agree with labeling it in a religious way whatsoever, because it has
nothing to do with it.
Israel being a secular democratic state, again, I think one of the big things to keep in mind
is when people are criticizing the state of Israel, it has nothing to do with Judaism.
They're criticizing the government just like if I criticize the US government just because
the majority of the population is Christian, it doesn't mean I'm saying anything negative
about the Christians.
People don't understand that correlation.
Yes, the majority of people that are residing in Israel are Jews, but they have Muslims,
they have Christians.
They do live in harmony together.
They were actually for centuries living together in harmony and peace, relative harmony and
peace at least, for them to be able to coincide together.
That is, yes, I 100% agree that is possible.
Again, I think you want Hisbalon not to exist, then stop moving north with the settlements
and the military outpost into southern Lebanon.
You can't ignore this.
You absolutely cannot ignore.
This has been brought up by the UN year after year about these illegal settlements.
They are illegal settlements.
They're displacing people by taking over their home.
Then when people are defending themselves, defending their home, defending their family,
this is where people are not seeing that.
They're seeing as they were the first aggressors.
They're shooting back at us and we just ended up taking that over.
It was a military conquest, so they take over that area and then more.
The context you have to understand is the cause for the effect.
Nobody heard about the air raids that happened in September.
No one heard about the illegal settlements that were killing the Palestinians for the
rest of 2023.
Nobody heard about the 38 weeks of protests in Israel to get Netanyahu out.
I think there was like a 400,000 person protest that was literally like a couple of weeks
before October 7th.
There was supposed to be another one coming up because Netanyahu was trying to eliminate
the Supreme Court, the ability for them to... He could actually be soul empowered.
For corruption, for all these different charges, they own people.
Time of war, it's redirecting everything to the Hamas, Hamas, Hamas.
That's our number one problem, not necessarily me, diverting everything to the attention
of that.
People are waking up to that now too.
There's been protests in Israel I think every single week and a lot of it is against Netanyahu,
not just as for him being a leader in government, but to get the hostages back, to make the
negotiations for that and to actually try to get the hostages back instead of... Because
if they knew where they were at, they should have gone and got them.
If they don't know where they're at, why are they doing a bombing campaign where they could
be killing their own hostages?
To me, it never has been about the hostages and there has been anything else other than
land resources and profit.
The natural gases that they found off the shore of Gaza, the Ben Gamor canal that they
wanted to build through there, the other resources that they found within Gaza.
There's a lot of different reasons why they could benefit from taking over it.
Not only that, but this is already out there that they're already doing real estate sales
for West Bank and for Gaza.
Let's wake up to the reality that there's already been settlers that try to move into
Gaza.
They were trying to make a makeshift once.
They made it I think 500 meters into Gaza and started trying to set up things.
They were pulled back, but nevertheless, that's how fast they're trying.
There's still conflict going on and they're already trying to build settlements.
This is the thing where I feel in order to get a good understanding about the situations
going on, you have to understand the cause for the effect.
You have to understand why people are wanting to do this, why they've been pushed to such
an extreme level.
When you have the 5,000, again, hostage exchange, they're considering them hostages.
What other means do they have?
Diplomacy isn't working.
The UN has already called them illegal settlements, but who's going to stand up?
Who's going to bring them justice?
Who's going to bring them home back?
Who's going to stop them from being displaced?
Nobody is helping them out.
What else do they have left to do?
The last resort is resistance of some sort.
This constant cycle is going to continue unless you have an end to the resistance, meaning
that you give them the human dignity that they deserve.
Treat them as human beings.
Give them the rights, the freedom of movement.
Give them the rights to their economy, to their food, to water, to allow them to go
fishing past the 150 meters from their shorelines.
Don't limit that.
They banned foods from going into Gaza.
Like you buy basic necessities in there, they just ban them here and left and right.
The multiple checkpoints.
It takes an average of three, four hours for them to actually get out the security checkpoints
so they can go to work for a few hours and come back.
All these different things that could be done to eliminate the need for resistance need
to be done in order to have some type of security on both sides.
I don't think that can happen unless whatever has happened to instigate this is eliminated.
When I see this, it reminds me of something that I've talked about for several years now.
When you look at most issues in the world, it's initiated by very few and it might drag
a lot of us into it.
The perfect example is slavery.
If you look at the height of slavery at Britain's history, when British slave traders and obviously
very wealthy members of that country were making money hand over fist, we were at one
of our most poor times in our entire history.
This is, I think, a big thing is that when something is done under a flag, there's an
assumption that the whole country is in on it.
The whole country is behind it.
I tell you right now, most agricultural workers in Wiltshire where I grew up had no idea what
was happening on the shores of Africa.
Maybe in Bristol, they saw a lot of ships coming back with tobacco, but they weren't
thinking that it was humans that they traded for it.
This is what's so sad.
I forget the Israeli leader, but Yasser Arafat and him, I think, almost came to a peace deal.
Then miraculously, he's assassinated, as was JFK, as was Martin Luther King, as was so
many peacekeepers that almost brought people together.
Then some force that no one seems to know who, all of a sudden snuffs them out and continues
a cycle of hate and war.
Ultimately, it's not about, like you said, religion or any of these things that people
hide behind.
It's about power and money every single time.
Yeah, I could agree more.
I agree 100%.
Yitzet Rabin was the one who did the guitar by the Oslo Accords.
I believe so.
I'm not super educated on that.
I do remember it as a young boy.
So Yitzet Rabin was actually killed.
I think it was Nyat Nyatla took over after that, then Perez after that, and then Sharon,
I believe.
So it was, but once Yitzet Rabin, they actually made a huge amount of progress into that.
That was in my understanding of this, and again, I don't have a PhD in this, but that
would have worked.
I honestly think because one of the statements that Yitzet Rabin actually made was we need
to give them their autonomy, their...
I forgot the word that he used.
Basically give them the respect, excuse me, give them their land out of respect, not out
of fear.
And honestly, I think that was one of the big reasons why.
And then during the negotiations, but that's a perfect example.
So one of the things that you heard about was the Tel Aviv bombings, but the Tel Aviv
bombings happened after, what's his name?
Benjamin Goldstein went into the mosque and fired on, I think he killed like 24 Muslims
that were praying, injured another like 60 or 70, but you didn't hear about that.
You heard about the Tel Aviv, the bus bombings.
So again, you have a piece that...
And don't get me wrong.
One thing I can give credit to Yitzar Al-Affat and Yitzet Rabin at the time is they both
took stringent measures against those factions, the Tel Aviv bombings and Goldstein.
And so they had a working understanding that we need to make this work, and there's people
that don't want this to work, but we have to make this work.
And so they both took the precautionary measures to make sure that these people got punished.
And it was one of those, just like you were saying, is once you actually have an organization
that doesn't agree with it, just like you mentioned, there's a very common theme that
if you get to like a certain point and it's going to change and it's going to make these
drastic changes, they get eliminated.
And just like you mentioned, it happens throughout history, so it's not the first time we've
heard about this.
Yeah.
And we have our own versions of those.
I mean, for example, it's really sad in the fire service, the Charleston Nine is one of
our biggest line of duty deaths, but there's two Charleston Nines.
The other one is a black church where a shooter went in and killed a bunch of African American
people.
We have the shootings in New Zealand by that Australian psychopath.
I mean, we in our own countries have examples of this kind of domestic terrorism, but we
don't then go and annihilate whoever was behind it.
You know what I mean?
Again, because these are individuals.
And a really sad example I grew up around was in a Northern Ireland.
And again, the backstory of that, I disagree with vehemently.
I mean, we're two rocks in the middle of the ocean.
And if we want to call ourselves four different countries, beautiful, but we're all the same
people.
I mean, I've had people from Belfast on the show that grew up around in the troubles.
I've had SAS and military members that were sent to Northern Ireland during that time.
And the real, from the military perspective, what haunted them is they were like, these
are our own people.
This doesn't feel right.
We're not in Vietnam.
We're not in the Falkland Islands.
We're in Northern Ireland.
So these are literally our own men, women, and children.
So what was behind that?
Was it English people going, oh, we hate the Irish?
Of course it wasn't.
It was money, power, and greed.
The potato famine and all these horrific things that some of my forefathers did in certain
positions that caused these troubles.
And so if you're not willing to go to the origin story and have the humility to say,
you know what?
What we did was wrong.
But let's start today making it right.
Whether it's Somalia or, God forbid, Haiti at the moment, that poor country, one of the
most beautiful islands I've ever seen in my life just being devastated.
Ten miles from the Florida coast, so we could do so much good there.
We have to take ownership of the mistakes that we've made, but also understand that,
for example, slavery, no, not every white person owes a black person an apology.
There was a lot of things that were done that only a few people fucking benefit from.
We get over that shit too and just start moving forward and doing what's right.
And this whole thing with Gaza is like, what's wrong and what's right?
And as we sit here in 2024, it's wrong.
You cannot fucking argue it is wrong now.
So we have to stand up and push back against this and get behind the people who are being
oppressed.
It doesn't mean that you're against all Israelis or all Jews, but what is happening in that
one area is fucking wrong.
I, 100%.
And the proportionality of it is, I've never seen, even heard of anything resembling that.
And the excuses that are constantly made, yeah, but there was, we killed 100 civilians,
but there was one Hamas guy there that you'll never be able to confirm because you bombed
it.
The, again, you see the indiscriminate shootings like the three hostages, that gives you a
very clear indication that they are indiscriminate about what they're doing.
They had no shirts on, wearing white flags, speaking in Hebrew and they still got shot
and killed.
The, another thing that's happening, a lot of people are ignoring is that this has been
one of the most deadliest years for the West Bank.
So there've been over 500, I think, the Palestinians that were killed in the West Bank from illegal
sediments and IOWF soldiers in just the last year and some change, year and a half.
But since October 7th, there've been like, I think 200 and something.
So almost half of the Palestinians, civilians that have been killed in the West Bank have
happened since October 7th.
But no one's hearing about that.
You see what I mean?
Everyone's just hyper-focused on Gaza and everything's happening in West Bank.
They think it's a different country.
It's a different situation.
It's something, no, it's the same people.
They've just been separated.
They can't connect because Gaza's down here and West Bank's up here.
But it's the same people.
It's the same reasoning why they're actually going in there, again, is to displace and
take their land and build the sediments on there and expand their country.
This is something that if you look at the maps, it gets smaller and smaller and smaller
and smaller and everyone says, well, it's because of war.
Now it's because of the resistance.
They get toppled over and then they're like, oh, it's war.
So be it.
We conquered.
The spoils go to the victor.
It's not like that.
It's literally someone defending their home, them resisting by defending the home and then
the military coming in and just toppling over them and using their resistance, their defense
as a justification to eliminate them and to, in the public eye, saying we were just for
doing so.
But they never show the cause for the effect.
They only show the after effects on that.
What about through the American media?
Again, I talk about Fox and CNN, same exact shitty blueprint.
Just one wears a blue tie, one wears a red one.
They talk about each other's presidents.
But you see Hamas led whatever.
I just saw it.
I think it was ABC or CNN.
I forget now.
But the Hamas led and it was totally irrelevant.
Whatever the sentence came after, I forget.
So there's obviously a lot of propaganda coming through our screens and confusing the Americans
on should we support this?
Should we be against it?
Who are the bad guys?
And obviously it's not as simple as that.
But what are you seeing about the way the story is being piped to the Americans?
I think it has a lot to do with, excuse me.
For one, it's the narrative that they're trying to keep.
And if you actually look at, for example, a lot of these major news outlets, they're
reporting the same things that came from the same sources, but the same sources aren't
verified.
I mean, even to the extent where Biden was actually saying, parroting exactly what they
were saying about the 40-headed babies.
He later on retracted that statement because he never saw pictures of it because it didn't
happen.
But what do people still remember?
People are still repeating that exact same thing over and over again.
Again, I'm not defending Hamas as the organization of Hamas, but let's stick with the facts.
There was no 40-headed babies.
There was no baby in an oven and everything else.
None of this even happened.
And what we did come to find out was the music festival, one of the Apache helicopters was
shooting on their own people.
And they even have what's it called?
A Hannibal directive, which is like, they said they took it out in 2017 or 2018, I think.
But they're still following it through.
It's more beneficial for them to eliminate any potential risk of any idea of being taken
hostage by killing them rather than them being used as a bargaining chip.
And that's talked about not just by Al Jazeera and the Palestinian side, but by Israelis
themselves.
But again, it's always, we don't trust Hamas numbers, we don't trust this.
Well, yeah, that's where you get most of your information from.
They're just denying that because they want to make sure that the narrative stays within
that same reason why they don't have any international reporting in there.
If they do have international reporters, they'll be with an Israeli guide so they can actually
show them and give them the narrative that they need to give them.
But the Palestinians on the other side, the Palestinian press that are offering that,
there's been more journalists killed in the last four months than, excuse me, five months,
than in World War II, than in Vietnam in such a short time span.
We had the American journalist that was killed years ago.
No one heard about that.
The American that was run over by the bulldozer.
No one heard about that.
So all these things that were happening before that, that led to what was going on or that
was trying to bring attention to that, is immediate looked at as propaganda instead
of the other side.
Now you might not agree with the other side, but you need to understand the other side
in order to get understanding of the full conflict.
And a lot of people are resistant to that because they feel like they're giving into
that rather than it just being an understanding of what's going on.
I can read the Communist Manifesto and not be a communist.
You can read the Bible, not become Christian.
You have to understand the other side in order to get a better understanding of the entire
situation.
And I think that's where a lot of people failed.
What they failed to do is trying to even attempt to understand both sides of the conflict because
that would make them a sympathizer with it.
It's not that at all.
You have to do, you know, a guarantee of people who had a better understanding of the context
of it and the cause for the effect.
They wouldn't be so willingly motivated to defend Israel immediately and to stick to
October 7th because they would have an understanding about what's going on.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, I value your perspective.
I mean, not only just the places that your life has taken you up to this point, but I
think of all the special forces, special operations groups, the Green Berets are known as the
ones with the communication skills, the leadership skills.
I mean, that is your superpower, the force multiplier.
So having lived around the world, having lived in Muslim countries and European countries
and some, yeah, well, let me rephrase that Arab countries and European countries, you
know, and then what you did in uniform, you know, it really is an important voice, the
same as Dr. Ahmad that was on, you know, he's a Chicago physician who's going over there.
It's not about taking sides.
It's about seeing what is actually going on.
And if it is wrong, then us stepping up because I understand the confusion.
I mean, a lot of us grew up hearing the absolute horrors that Jewish people endured during
World War Two.
We had one of the Auschwitz survivors on the show, Dr. Edith Eger, phenomenal woman.
And the whole time she's been calling for nothing but peace and peace.
You know, that's her takeaway from this.
But then obviously we had 20 years where a lot of these TV shows were saying, you know,
these Muslim, Muslim, Muslim, Muslim, Muslim.
So you've got a very confused, you know, audience here in America that's like, are we actually
siding with, you know, and it's not siding with Hamas, but you're leaning into the Muslim
side now because it's the right thing to do.
It's not about, as you said, labels.
It's not about, oh, this is where I stand.
I'm not going to move.
You've got to be dynamic.
You've got to allow that, that moral compass to shift.
And you know, your perception, October 8th, when you watch the BBC or whatever news channel
you choose, it's OK for it to be different in February or March because things have changed.
So I think that's the important thing is understanding.
I love that phrase, you know, they did the best of what they know, you know, five months
ago we knew this perspective, but now five months later with thousands of children dead
in hospitals and schools being bulldozers, you know, little girls dying, basically bleeding
out and dying of starvation, plus two dead paramedics are just feet from her.
It's a very different story now.
So I think it takes humility to take a step back and go, it's OK for me to change the
way I think now, because this has gone from what seemingly was a justified reaction to
an attack to a systematic elimination of people.
Even if you don't agree with that, you know, let's let's take the entire situation, you
know, eliminate that altogether.
The amount of money that we're actually spending to support them should should be every single
American's concern, why are we writing a 14 billion dollar check with no oversight to
a country?
We have no idea what they're going to do with it.
This is a country that already has like they have their health care, they have, you know,
the free education.
They I mean, they have a standing military.
They I mean, all these different things.
Why are we continuing to support them for for, you know, when it's literally like led
to one conflict after another, after another, another with their intel?
You know, so if they're like our, you know, our our golden peace within the, you know,
the Middle East, why is it that only conflicts are coming out of that?
You know what I mean?
And so I think for the longest time, the Arabs in general have been vilified.
And we've had this perception even as as simple as like Hollywood.
Right.
And it's always the you know, was it the Russians, the Arabs and it's like one more, which is
like the trifecta of Hollywood.
You know, always the British actually.
Braveheart.
Yeah.
OK, I can see that now.
The English specifically, should I say, were usually the bad guys in a lot of films, too.
And rightly so if you look at our history.
So I get it.
Yeah.
So that was funny.
I mean, that was kind of floating around was what is England given the world?
And someone responded, you know, England's given the most amount of independences, independence
day holidays.
And then I was like, well, there really isn't a lie there.
But at the same time, you know, it's kind of like a low blow.
But so when you do have an understanding and exactly in the same thing with what you're
just saying, beyond understanding and like what happened from that, I think there's you
study history so that things don't repeat themselves.
We continue with the Holocaust because it was a horrible event that shouldn't have happened
and we should never allow that to happen again.
Nobody should have to endure the amount of suffering that they endured at that time.
The Jewish people at the time were I mean, I can't think of any event in history that
compares to that.
It was absolutely a tragedy.
But why the Palestinians paying for that?
That's what I don't understand is that, you know, it was it was the Germans, you know,
that had, you know, created that Holocaust.
Why don't we break off a chunk of Germany and give it to to the Jews?
You know, but why the Palestinians paying for that price?
You know, they keep bringing up the Holocaust like, well, that wasn't the part the Palestinians
welcomed them in, you know, when they were coming in from the Holocaust.
So why is it that, you know, they are being, you know, the villain in this?
This is what I don't understand is they're absolutely right.
The Europeans kicked them out everywhere.
It was a horrible thing.
They wanted to stay for themselves.
Well, there was already what 16000 hectares that were bought in Africa in their initial
attempt to establish a Jewish state and decided, you know, into there.
And then, you know, English got involved with the Balfour Declaration and the Pico Seix
agreement and and all these things kind of led to that.
But again, we have a population of people that are paying the price for Europeans kicking
that group out and creating one of the worst events in human history, you know, with the
Holocaust.
Six million.
Nobody can nobody can deny that that was that was an atrocity that should never happen again.
But it's happening again in a different manner.
But it is happening.
And I don't I don't understand how, you know, we can't learn from that history.
We can't understand that and put that same logic and reasoning into what's happening
right now and just be logical about it, be reasonable.
I think that's one of the hardest things that we have to deal with right now is just people
understand trying to get to understand and and reason with the situation rather than
just making an instinctual emotional decision that's almost irrational, right, because they're
ignoring everything that's happening and everything has happened and they don't understand the
backstory.
They don't understand the context of it.
And they're like, oh, it's complicated.
It is not complicated at this point.
It is absolutely not complicated.
It is a freaking genocide.
It is an ethnic cleansing.
It's a continuous dehumanization.
It's displacement on a mass scale.
Yeah, you know, if we don't learn from history, we're bound to repeat it.
Bottom line.
I couldn't agree more.
Well, I want to shift away from Gaza now.
The transition from the uniform professions out a lot of times can be jarring for our
men and women.
I mean, when we're in, we've got that tribe, we've got that community, we've got that sense
of purpose.
You know, I arguably, you know, when I would drive home from a fire station, there's that
that feeling that you made the world a little bit better.
It was very, very powerful.
And a lot of us then transition out, whether it's retirement, whether it's injury, whatever
it is, and now you lose a lot of those very things that were so nurturing.
Talk to me about your transition period and then some of the struggles that you endured.
And that was a thing, I think, for me, especially the the team that I was on was very, very,
very tight knit group.
Great bunch of guys.
I mean, I can't I was literally standing beside Titans.
And the camaraderie that we had was it was just something I never experienced before and
haven't experienced since.
There really isn't any comparison to it.
So here's an example.
You know, by the time you get to the end of the deployment, everyone is at each other's
throats.
They're yelling at each other, you know, you know, cussing at each other.
I mean, it's just a reality when you when you spend so much time around each other.
You know, it's bound to happen.
But by the time we get back, you know, the first weekend, we're all getting back together
for a barbecue and go riding motorcycles.
You know, it's it was that type of dynamic.
Right.
So when you leave that, you have this family that you have created through through a bond
that can't be replicated.
And it's very similar for other people when they describe it.
And you don't have that sports system anymore.
You don't have the the the same type of cohesion that you would you would have with that team.
And you do feel alone.
You feel isolated into that.
And I think that's one of the biggest things where when we start the We Defy Foundation,
the one thing that we were trying to figure out was and this is how it plays perfectly
in was if you wanted to better yourself, you had to step up to the plate and and and do
it where most people like always have to preface with this.
I'm not talking shit about any other nonprofits, but you have these nonprofits that, for example,
buy houses for these disabled veterans.
It is a phenomenal program.
It is extremely generous.
It's a wonderful thing.
The downside to this that you have to acknowledge is it creates this isolation because now you
have this castle.
Now you have you have access to alcohol, access to pills.
It doesn't force you to leave.
As a matter of fact, it keeps you inside and it keeps you isolated and it makes it harder
and harder for you to go out.
And you hear that a lot with people is just they want to isolate themselves.
They don't want to have any type of social gathering.
So one advantage that I had, one was my my my purpose never really shifted.
And I didn't really understand that until probably about a year about a year, about
six years after I got out, about 2016, 2017, that my purpose actually stayed the same.
And my purpose is my father used to bring this up, there's no greater purpose than to
help someone in need.
And we looked at it in the military aspect of it versus a civilian.
It's still the same the same purpose.
It's just you're going about a different way.
And I could relate to the veterans that were coming back with the mental health issues
and and Joey being a triple amputee, he could definitely relate to the people that lost
limbs, you know, that had physical injuries.
And right now the foundation been going for for eight years, 94% have been mental health
issues.
When I talked to the guys, you know, in England with reorg and talk to the guys with veterans
grappling in Australia, as well as, you know, we defy Canada, it's the exact same.
So the mental health issues is one of the biggest issues that they're facing.
And not only does and yes, I'm promoting We Defy but the program itself has been very
successful for these specific reasons where they almost it does force you to socialize,
it does force you to go back and find a new tribe, to find a new group that you can find
that to keep this and to be able to trust, right?
You've done jujitsu, you blew about right now.
One of the biggest things that you had to go into that's that's nerve wracking was,
I'm going to be put in a position where I could have limbs break, or be choked out unconscious
where there's a possibility for, you know, there is a possibility of death.
But you are trusting the other person that when you tap, they're gonna let go.
Right.
So it teaches you to trust again.
It also teaches you compassion, you know, where if you wanted to go further, you absolutely
could you know, for like, just like the self defense example I was given.
But also gives you the context and like, hey, you know, I'm trying to get a job here.
Well, there's somebody in that group of 30 that has like a connection for that.
So there's a lot of these underlying benefits that you know, with a social group, and it
doesn't necessarily always have to be jiu jitsu.
Matter of fact, we have several of the people that have been through the program for like
a year.
And then they decide, you know, hey, I found rock climbing.
And I found this group.
This is working perfect for me.
Yes, absolutely.
Go for it.
And it's a success on our part, because what we're trying to do is help them find that
new tribe, that new group, that cohesion, that type family that benefits you the best.
And what we're doing is offering jiu jitsu as a way of doing it, not selling this is
the way of doing it.
And when a lot of people have a lot of the same similar issues, they can talk to them.
And then thanks to social media, this is one of the positive aspects of social media, is
that they can, you know, I love seeing this.
But when you have people calling out, hey, man, where were you training, you know, and
they start giving them shit about it.
You know, it's the military way of, you know, showing that you care, right.
And it might sound harsh, but it might sound mean.
But at the same time, it's meant in jest, it's meant in humor.
And it's meant to also motivate and to get you back into that group.
And you have that constantly.
So the one change that that we defined made recently was adding a mentor, you know, to
every athlete that's in the program.
And we've seen that extend the success rate to one year, one full year in the program,
you know, went up from about 74 or 75% to about 98%.
So again, having someone there that they can talk to, not necessarily at the same gym,
but someone they can talk to and relate to is another huge aspect.
So that socialization even as I've always been an introvert, so I never actually really
like being around people, but it's a necessity.
You have to kind of, you know, do that.
And when you have it as a constant, you know, you know, church is a good thing, but it's
once a week, right.
You can get involved with those social gatherings and there's nothing wrong with that.
It's a great way of doing it.
We're just offering a way of having the ability to be able to get, you know, the physical
exercise in there, a mental exercise where you're, you know, problem solving.
So you're having to think about things, you're under stress, you know, having to maintain
that.
You're having to maintain like in control of all your emotions because sometimes you
might get angry, you know, because, you know, you're getting tapped out repeatedly and have
a shit night.
And then you have that breakthrough where you understand the technique and then all
of a sudden it's working for you, skyrocket up again.
You know, it helps you deal with these emotions that, you know, for a lot of other things,
you're not able to visually or physically see those improvements and your progression
into this.
We have a very small niche in this and it's, you know, we just do Jiu Jitsu, but we found
that, you know, for the people to actually try it, it's worked phenomenal.
So, you know, but again, it gives you that baseline of this is what I kind of need.
You know, I need, you know, X, Y, and Z. And, you know, I need the social aspect of it where
I'm re-engaging in, you know, a populated area, you know, social gathering, the mental
aspect of it, the, you know, the trust issue.
And at the same time, you're having a, you're learning a very valuable skill, you know what
I mean?
So there's so many, you know, positive aspects to it that, I mean, especially for someone
who has that combat mentality, you just can't ignore.
There's been several times now, I'm in a school about 40 minute drive away and I drive all
that way just because the community is amazing, Ken, our coach, has just created this incredible
class.
And there are people that clean house at some of these tournaments.
So they've got some phenomenal fighters there.
But the ones that I go to, it's, I can step it up if I choose the right people, if I want
a hard day, but there's also almost never do I leave with busted ribs and tweaked necks
and that kind of thing.
When you're almost 50, it's kind of important.
Otherwise you just don't go back.
But there have been several times where I've gone in full intention to train and roll and
spent the whole class out the back talking to someone because I know, you know, that's
what I noticed about Jiu-Jitsu versus some of the other sports is because it's so intimate,
because you're sitting around the mat while, you know, the instructor show new techniques
and you're rolling with that person.
It's really hard to mask, to mask if you're in a bad place.
It's really hard to mask if you're physically exhausted.
Because people have told them, look, just don't train today.
And I'm not this mind, I'm not the instructor, but I'm like, look, if you're burnt out,
just sit and watch, grab a cup of coffee, which is what our, our coach encourages.
Just, just be there.
You don't have to actually be rolling that day if you don't want to.
But that's one thing I've really noticed is it's another tribe for me outside the fire
service.
It's that physical exertion.
It's that, you know, continually training to be this kind of quote unquote sheepdog
in my community.
I'm not a cop, but I would like to be one of the people that stops something horrific
if God forbid it happened in front of me.
But also that you're able to just see so much more intimately in a jujitsu school if someone
is simply having a bad day.
Agreed.
It's hard to mask, especially when you spend, you know, so many days, so many weeks, so
many months, years, you know, around, and that's where the friendships start to develop.
You know, you, you, you spend, just like you're saying, it's very intimate, you know, you
get to what is a, they said jujitsu is their mistress, right?
So they, they, they, and a lot of the times, one of the things that I do is they have promotions,
I have like barbecue and bring everyone in and then they get to meet the family, you
know what I mean?
So you got to introduce the family to the mistress in a sense.
And then, you know, it creates a, a bigger bond.
And one thing that I noticed, especially after promotions, when everyone starts to meet each
other, you have a much larger group showing up to the tournaments.
You have families, you know, in, in holes coming up to support other people, you know,
even though like the, the, the family member that's actually training in jujitsu isn't
competing, you know, so that support, that support group absolutely is, is one of the,
the key parts in, in this, the sport and this therapy, you know, however you want to, you
know, call it, that, that can't be overlooked.
Absolutely.
I went down to Plymouth and trained with Sam, when was it now?
About a year and a half ago.
And I think the Pantheon is the name of the facility, Ben's place.
And it was incredible because I mean, firstly, I rolled and just got completely murdered
by him, especially in a gi, I don't wear a gi very much.
So yeah, just brutalized.
But then I went and, you know, sat and had coffee with them and something to eat.
And it was incredible watching these Royal Marines.
I mean, some I rolled with that day and then a load of others circled through.
Some, some were probably in their, you know, 50s, 60s by this point.
And seeing that central location and that community and that ability, no matter how
many years it's been since you wore the uniform, to come in and just kind of dip your toe back
in that tribe again.
I mean, I witnessed it with my own eyes.
It was incredible.
So talk to me about that.
You've got Weedify going in the US.
How did Sam Sheriff come across you?
And then how did you help them create Reorg?
So initially we actually connected on Instagram and, and he was trying to get something set
up similar.
And I've never met, never met someone as passionate about getting involved in something like this.
It literally felt like a, like a mirror image of what I was doing.
Right.
And his passion for it was, you could, you could see that right off the bat.
And even to this day, he just oozes that the passion that to help veterans and believes
in the program so much that just his persona kind of sells it right there.
And I saw that from the beginning, honestly, that he was so like engaged and so involved
in wanting to like, how do I do this?
How do I do that?
And I was given everything that I could, you know, from how we started it to, you know,
how we spread, you know, the different type of marketing that we used and, you know, grassroots
and you know, how we built this up.
I mean, he took it and just ran with it, you know, and was able to.
To accomplish so much more because I mean, the US is so huge, you know, it took us a
while to kind of spread across the nation.
I mean, he did, you know, what we did in literally half the time, you know, I mean, he was, you
know, we blew up within a few years, you know, and he's done such a remarkable job with that
program.
It's incredible to watch that growth.
And I'm so proud of him for everything that he accomplished and it's just very inspirational,
you know, just because he lives it so much.
Literally you can every day, you know, you see pictures of him, you know, videos of him
when he's rolling and it's just, it just, he has that persona that literally like engages
without having to say anything.
And honestly, I mean, I mean, it took me a little bit to kind of understand him just
because that Yorkshire accent, but I mean, it's thick, man, you got to admit it's thick.
But and that develops like such a long term friendship as well.
I mean, he came to Texas and, you know, we hang out for some, you know, for some time
and he was actually able to make it for the last gala that we had and phenomenal speaker,
just incredible, him and Mark, both, both incredible public speakers.
And I think that that definitely was a, you know, a lifetime friendship that we developed.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Mark's an incredible guy.
He's been on the show twice now, I think, and actually went to have coffee with him.
We didn't roll together, but I met him the next day and just, I mean, so much humility
and resilience.
I mean, that man is a literally a walking example of what resilience looks like.
Yeah.
He's definitely been, I mean, that's the thing is that their influence has spread across
to here as well.
Right.
I mean, you see the amount of achievements that Mark's made even outside of Jiu Jitsu.
You know, it's I think it's incomparable, the amount of achievements that he's made
just because he sees a boundary and he wants to go break it.
And Sam's been supporting him, you know, from the get go on it, you know.
So but I mean, Mark, you know, you're absolutely right.
The amount of resilience is just unmatched.
Just he doesn't see any boundaries, you know, and it's so inspirational for everyone to
watch.
It doesn't matter what you're into.
If you're seeing someone that like normally you'd be like, nah, that's pretty much the
end of it, you know, he's like, home my beer, watch this, you know, and he goes after it.
It's truly amazing.
Absolutely is.
Well, we've been talking for two and a half hours now, and it's been an incredible conversation.
If people listening want to find We Defy or want to find you online, where are the best
places?
So We Defy Foundation.org is the website for the foundation itself.
I'm on social media as Alan Shabar with JJ.
You know, either one of those, there's also on Instagram at We Defy Foundation, Facebook
as well.
Okay.
And if they're local and they want to go to your gym, where they find that?
So we have a list of affiliates.
There are currently, I think, just over 700 affiliates nationwide.
So if you go to the website and actually just go to the affiliate portion of the website,
they actually have a map with all the different affiliates that we have.
All the information is online.
We try to make it as easy as possible to get involved.
We streamlined the process and we're putting 50 athletes through a month.
Initially started with five, so moved up to 50 now.
And yeah, by all means, you know, get involved and, you know, any of the combat to sale veterans
that meet the prerequisites for it, you know, try it out.
You know, that's the big thing.
Try it, see if it works for you.
It could lead definitely to something else.
And that's the big thing is trying to find what works right for you.
100%.
Well, Alan, I want to say thank you so much.
It's been an incredible conversation.
We've gone all over the place, but I've enjoyed every moment of it.
So I want to thank you for being so generous with your time and coming on the Behind the
Shield podcast today.
I can't appreciate it.
Honestly, I appreciate this more than you can imagine, just be able to get my point
of view out without being misinterpreted and get the full story out.
So I really appreciate it.
Thank you for your time.