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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 US Marine veteran firefighter and humanitarian Brian McGinnis.
Now we discussed a host of topics from his journey into the military, being part of the
Iraqi invasion, his transition into the fire service, some notable calls, his family connection
to Palestine, the humanitarian trip he took recently to the West Bank, witnessing the
forcible removal of occupants from their lands, how the unifying of our voices can bring a
ceasefire in Gaza and so much more.
Now before we get to this incredibly important 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 almost 1000 episodes now.
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 Brian McGinnis.
Enjoy.
Well, Brian, I want to start by saying two things.
Thank you to our mutual friend, Dina, for connecting us.
And secondly, I want to welcome you onto the Behind the Shield podcast today.
Thank you very much.
It's great to be here.
So where on planet earth are we finding you this morning?
I'm in Raleigh, I'm in Wendell, North Carolina, just outside of Raleigh, North Carolina.
Beautiful.
Well, I would love to start the very beginning of your journey.
Tell me where you were born and tell me a little bit about your family dynamic, what
your parents did, how many siblings?
I was born in Quincy, Illinois, the last of four children, the youngest spoiled, taken
care of.
My dad was a general surgeon.
So he did well.
He worked very hard for himself and he was an old school doctor who took time with each
patient.
He would stop in the middle of surgery and kneel and pray in the corner of the room.
He was a very well-respected and good man.
And so I grew up in Quincy in that situation.
It's a smaller town.
So I feel like no matter who you are, you're mixed in with the general crowd.
And I was really thankful for my growing up years, school years, and really value all
my friendships that I had and play sports, wrestled and played football.
And then I went off to the Marines after high school and graduated on a Friday or Saturday
and went to Marines on Monday.
Going back to your dad for a second, two things.
Firstly, was he a kind of nine to five surgeon?
Was he only doing surgeries in a day or was he one of the ones that might have been doing
it in the wee hours of the morning?
Part of why we moved in a house we were was it was just a straight shot to the hospital.
He was always on emergency calls.
He even took care of a person that fell straight out of the sky because in Quincy, Illinois,
the International Skydiving Convention used to be held.
And so it was wild.
The whole world, people from all around the world would descend on small town Quincy,
Illinois.
Literally.
We had a large airport.
And yes, literally.
And one person fell out of the sky.
The person hit the ground and somehow he survived.
His face was just, it wasn't broken.
His skull was just shattered.
And my dad performed a tracheotomy and the man made a recovery.
But my dad did all kinds of definitely emergency operations and he was a really good man and
I really love him and he did his work in a very caring way.
So yeah.
Well, the reason I asked, first he sounds incredible and obviously I'm sure that was
probably an inspiration for the EMS side of your journey too.
But there's an amazing book I read before I wrote my one called When Breath Becomes
Air, I think it was, and it was a neurosurgeon.
He was very early in his career going through school and he was writing it.
I think it was in his residency and he got cancer.
And you look at the history, especially of surgical residents, and there were these crazy
work hours, work weeks that they would do.
And then actually the origin story, a lot of people don't know this, is there was a
surgeon, I mean like a hundred years ago, who kind of started doing that.
He would be up for hours and hours so these students would have to, felt like they had
to be up as well.
Well, retroactively we realized that he was a complete cocaine addict and that's why he
was awake for hours and hours and days and days.
But that stuck, the way we've always done it, which we suffer from in the fire service.
But I wonder now a lot of these surgical professionals, including the author of this book who got
a brain tumor and he died, I think he was not even 30 years old.
You have to ask yourself the sleep deprivation, the same thing that we suffer from, we see
so much disease in our profession, how much of that attributes to deaths in the medical
field as well?
Oh my gosh.
I remember having a martial arts instructor who was also in his internship or in a, I
think might've been a neurological field as well.
And he was talking about, you know, practice with nothing compared to a 72 hour long shifts
at the hospital.
And I think most firefighter types are into that, you know, those folk tales of long hours
and hard work and grit.
Yet we also know the benefits of sleep and how important it is to our health.
And so I do think it's good to, you know, address this issue and be smart about it.
And when it comes time to, for necessity sake, stay awake and work hard for long times, yeah,
you know, of course, but for the long haul, I do think rest and sleep is important and
it should be highly prioritized in our fields and to help us.
Absolutely.
Well, I mean, if you go into that skydiver scenario, what kind of person do you want
working on your tracheotomy and reconstructing your face?
You want someone who hasn't slept for three days or do you want someone that's fresh?
Exactly.
I agree.
Well, what about as well when you talk to him, obviously you, we get a very raw perspective
of the health of the world mentally, physically, that most people don't.
This is why my most recent book, kinder, I just released is hopefully going to let people
see through our eyes.
But the, you know, the obesity epidemic and the mental health crisis and some of these
other things and the escalating violence as well.
Have you had a conversation with your father as far as medicine and just the well-being
of the American people overall?
Unfortunately, my father passed away in 2003, so I haven't spoke to him for a long time.
It's okay.
It's, but I haven't been, I have not been able to obviously spoke to him about these
issues.
I really wish I could, you know, pick his brain on issues because I was 20, 21 when
he passed, you know, to be honest, barely an adult or not very experienced, to be honest
in the world.
So I have so many questions now that I'm 43 that I so wish I could pick his brain about.
But I about it also about the medical world and those things too.
I would really, it would be interesting to hear.
But what did you lose him to?
Pneumonia.
You know, doctors are the worst patients.
He put himself in bed.
Then when he finally got into the hospital after a week of being in bed, they treated
him for bacterial and viral and it turned out to be fungal pneumonia.
And so the treatment for another week was doing nothing.
So by that time it overtook him and he never recovered.
I'm so sorry to hear that.
Thanks, man.
Thank you.
Well, with your, you know, your upbringing when you still had your father in your life,
talk to me about the sports and the exercise that you were doing through school ages that
prepared you for a life in uniform.
Well, I don't know what it was.
I know what it was.
Watching Rocky, Rocky for as a child, seeing those exercise montages just, you know, does
something to you.
And I, and then also I played all the sports growing up and then I just kind of, you know,
got corralled into wrestling and football as what I really enjoyed.
And the upperclassmen in wrestling really took care of me and inspired me and made me
feel part of a team that just did something for me to make me feel so good.
Football was something I was always through, always in through sixth grade and on.
And that was another great place to find camaraderie and, and just go to battle with a group of
people.
And I just enjoyed that environment so much.
And so football and wrestling, I found that camaraderie.
I found that hard, tough training and exercise that brought such a crazy bond between us
as teammates.
And I just loved it.
And it was just fun.
It was tough.
It was hard.
I hated it, but then, you know, you love it.
So that was just kind of my feelings about what, you know, sports were and, and that
was for my growing up years.
I played team sports and then I did a lot of martial arts.
So even though you're on a team, when you're on the mat, it's just you and the other person.
What did you glean from the individual sports and what did you glean from the team sports
that served you well later in life?
Some accountability when you have to weigh in for wrestling, that was just a quick hit,
you know, hit in the face as far as you, there's no question about it.
You either make the weight or you don't.
It doesn't matter what your story might be when it comes to the time of the weighing
in it's either you make it or you don't.
And the responsibility there was, you know, it just made things acceptable.
To monitor one's weight is definitely a hard line fact.
You can't, you know, meander around.
So, so that, that showed me responsibility there.
And then even though that was an individual responsibility, it, it, it contributed to
the team in the sense that, you know, you, you were taking care of your work for the
team's sake and then also going to the mat and wrestling and, you know, getting, getting
a pin could give your team extra points.
So trying your best to, to not only win, but get a pin to gain points.
That was the wrestling part.
And then football, nothing can work without everybody being in, you know, coordination.
So that those things just intangibly seeped into my, my mind and my, my soul, I think
just through the dynamics of those sports and, and, and, and, and then just having that
personal accountability for the team was, I think what was reinforced through those
sports.
Beautiful.
What about career aspirations?
What were you dreaming of becoming when you were still in high school?
I was dealing with my mother prompt, making me sign a contract to go to college.
And I was like, what am I going to go to college for?
I told her I'd be, I would have been so happy working on a factory from nine to five, going
home and just taking it easy.
The idea of bringing home work, you know, like emails or, or, or, or issues or reports
was so unattractive to me that from, even from when I was a young kid, I knew I just
wanted something labor intensive or something I could, you know, put myself hard at for,
for the time I'm at work, but then cut it off when I'm done.
So I knew that's what I wanted, but since my mom wanted me to go to college, I was trying
to figure out what I could do in college.
So I studied elementary education for two semesters.
And then after that, I tried kinesiology for one more.
And after those two, after getting tired of school, I said, I'm going to do fire department.
And so then I started throwing out applications to fire departments.
So what about the Marines you mentioned about entering?
Was that in between those two?
Yes, it was after high school.
I didn't know what exactly to do.
And I was talking to my father and I tell him I'm going to go to college.
I want to go to get a job.
I want to get married, have kids.
And he said, well, you don't have to do it in such an order so quickly.
You can have a little adventure in your life.
And he was in, he was drafted in the Navy during the end years of Vietnam, performed
his first surgery at Pemde.
Take took out somebody's appendix and he had to transfer from one boat to the other by
pulling himself on the rope or the wire to go to the other hospital to other ship to
perform the appendectomy, I think.
And so he told me you can have a little adventure in life.
And my friend in the football team was going to do the Marines and he was going to do the
reserves.
I jumped in with him.
I said, let's do the Marines, but let's do the active duty.
So he and I went to went in active duty, open infantry.
We both got corralled into light armored vehicle crewmen.
And that was our MOS.
I got out after four years.
My friend stayed in for 16 years.
He was a drill instructor.
He was an amazing Marine.
But but anyway, yeah, I just did my four years and got out.
What about 9-11?
How old were you and what was your, you know, your memory of that moment and that day?
I was in the barracks at the end, Camp Lejeune, and I was flipping the channels and I saw
the buildings smoking and I turned the channel because I thought it was a TV show or a movie
on, you know, FX or some type of turn another channel.
It was on another news.
I was like, wait a second, that's the news.
So of course, the whole barracks lit up.
We're going to war.
Oh my God.
And, you know, the Marines that were still in the barracks at the weekend, it seemed
like it was a weekend because it wasn't a workday and or some type of day that wasn't
a workday.
And so everybody gathered at the ramp where all our vehicles would are and we usually
work.
And everybody's ready to go to war.
Of course, there were the NCOs like, go home.
Think about it.
We're not going to go to war now.
We would have to.
So just go back.
So that's the day we learned about 9-11.
And then from then on, I think everybody remembers just how charged everybody was emotionally,
blindly about this attack on American soil.
And yes, I was definitely caught up in that too with the Toby Keith songs, with everything
pro America.
And so, yeah, that's where I was on 9-11.
And I know your stint in the Marines was somewhat short.
Did you find yourself deploying over there or did your unit not get there?
Yeah, right after 9-11, we were already in.
We were already scheduled to go on our Mew, our Mediterranean float.
And there's always military forces all over the world.
And we were going to take our six month deployment in the Mediterranean.
And so we did.
We left in 2001 and we floated on a ship, on a Navy vessel through the Mediterranean,
through the Suez Canal, down the Red Sea into the Indian Ocean.
And we were off the coast of Bahrain.
We were off the coast of Yemen.
I know Yemen's been a hot spot for conflict for a long time.
And we were off the coast of Yemen way back in 2001, prior to back then.
So yeah, then after the Mew, I got back and then our unit got deployed to Iraq because
the Marines activated every single light armored vehicle, every LAV in the Marine force to
help in the initial invasion of Iraq.
So our unit, our base in North Carolina isn't even assigned to the Middle East.
We're more responsible for the North America, South America areas.
But for this specific attack, they activated us to just help out in the initial invasion.
So we went to Iraq.
We were, we staged in Kuwait.
And when the day, when the day arrived, we packed up our two football field sized, you
know, grounds into four Connix boxes, loaded our vehicles, got all our bullets and weapons
in the, in the ready position and made our slow drive towards the Iraqi border.
It was the darkest night I've ever seen.
And I think that's a strategic choice, you know, the moon's gone.
And so we approached the border.
We parked all night long.
We just watched guns and missiles and bombs being dropped in the far distance.
And then the next morning we woke up and we started our slow drive through the countryside.
We went through some Constantina wire, large, you know, large berms border.
And we crossed that where it was blown up and destroyed.
And then we, then we spanned back out and we, we, we slowly drove into Iraq and a long
line slowly, slowly, slowly for a day or two.
And then we linked up on highway six and continued our journey.
All the LAVs and the whole Marine Corps at one point got in a large, large convoy, started
the southern part of Iraq.
And then we drove through this, through the country and units or battalions of LAVs, you
know, left the convoy at certain points to go set up and do different missions along
the way.
Our particular battalion went all the way north of Baghdad and stopped in Tikrit.
And that's where we ended up.
And we, we, all these LAVs units established, you know, security and established positions.
And then I think at least our position was relinquished to an army unit and we left.
And so that was, that was our general time in Iraq.
A couple of things.
Firstly, I know now retroactively, you know, Monday morning quarterbacking, there's a lot
of people, and I remember thinking this immediately when, when, you know, the allied nations went
into Iraq, it was on, like you said, on the, on the anger of 9-11, which is a completely
different country or, you know, a set of extremists within a different country or countries.
And now, you know, a lot of our service people are going to Iraq, completely separate, you
know, conversation.
So when you look back now, you know, what, what are your thoughts, if any, as far as
that kind of retaliation movement that came out of 9-11 and then a lot of our people finding
themselves in Iraq, not Afghanistan?
I have a lot of things in my personal life that point me directly to making, making sense
or confronting my past in my military experience.
Being my wife, she's Palestinian, she's Middle Eastern, she's opened my eyes to a Middle
Easterner's perspective on all these conflicts.
And you know, and that's it, my wife.
And she and I have four young children.
She has a beautiful family that is very much like my family in the sense of being so nice
and respectful.
My family is a conservative Christian family.
Her family is a conservative Muslim family.
And apart from that, they're just so similar.
They're just so similar.
She's the youngest of four, I'm the youngest of four.
Even the sexes of our siblings are the same, but opposite.
I say all that, so yes, I am, I am very personally forced to come confront my past and my military
experience.
And when I do that, I see, I see something I would never wish for anybody to have to
endure, which what I mean is to have to come in confrontation to us as a military unit.
We were so hard, strong, high strung in the sense of being, you know, finger on the trigger,
being looking out for threats, looking out for ourself and our security and for the Marine
on the left and right of us, that anything that would appear in these instances where
we're entering into small towns, where we're driving in our military convoys would get
very violent, very violent results.
Everything was a threat.
Everything was dangerous.
And so I witnessed plenty of innocent people being caught up in our military movements
and wrongly being targeted as an enemy when they were only in the wrong place at the right,
wrong time.
And nothing, no one is going to tell me that that didn't happen.
It did.
And I don't want to acknowledge that.
And if I could somehow confess to that and take up and bring some type of importance
to this problem and bring some type of, I can't think of the word, you know, responsibility
to, I'm getting lost in my thoughts, but I'm just saying I experienced a lot of collateral
damage where innocent people got killed.
And I observed the messiness of military operations.
And I want to speak that to everybody back home to say, forget about the troops and our
mental wellness or mental health well-being.
How about this shed a tear for those who were caught up in our military movements that were
doing nothing but living their lives, yet our military invaded their space and killed
them.
That's what I wish everybody could hear and think about.
Well, these are important conversations.
And the thing is, and I'll get this from you in a second, it's not black and white.
When you guys found yourselves in these countries, plural, you're also witnessing atrocities,
which is justifying your presence and protecting some of these people.
Some are getting killed as collateral damage.
And I hate that freaking word.
It sounds so inhuman, but in other people, you're doing the opposite.
You're protecting them and you're treating their animals and setting up hospitals.
So this is the nuanced conversation.
But no soldier was sitting there going, oh, I'd love to invade Iraq one day.
I'd love to go traipse the mountains of Afghanistan looking for terrorists one day.
No, it's only until these conflicts are initiated.
And obviously, 9-11 was an attack on our home soil.
Of course, there was going to be an equal and opposite reaction to that.
But then you look at Iraq, that's a totally different thing.
And then hearing so many people now that served and should be absolutely proud of their service,
but there's that other element that haunts them, especially when you look at the withdrawal
of Afghanistan, where a lot of their friends were Afghan people and they were left behind.
And now some of them were probably strung up on trees days after they left.
So this is the overall human conversation.
It's not the 100% pacifist, never go to war.
Of course not.
It's the walk softly, but carry a big stick.
If you're going to use violence, you have to use it as a last resort and then use it
efficiently.
And this obviously will get into Gaza later.
But I think what's an important conversation first is that you wore the uniform and you
were a part of this invading force.
And it's again, not saying that it should never have happened, but understanding what
it means to send our men and women over there, it's not this efficient World War II or World
War I, like, oh, they're in that trench.
That's all the bad guys.
No, these are civilians and the real bad guys, the real enemies and the extremists addressed
exactly the same way as the civilians.
So I mean, I can't imagine how hard it must be to be a military member over there trying
not to hit the wrong people.
Right.
And I just think though we are put in.
I just don't.
I know I just looking back hindsight, 2020, what was Iraq's?
I think Iraq seemed to be a strong military country in the Middle East.
And with hindsight, with knowing how Israel wants to expand their territory, I think it's
been you can see Benjamin Netanyahu speaking about how Iraq is a threat.
And he presented that to the American government and I think had a lot to do with the fact
that America's CIA did find weapons of mass destruction there as a point of reason to
go into Iraq and make this make this large invasion of Iraq.
And I think it was all false pretenses because the weapons of mass destruction weren't there,
yet millions of Iraqi million Iraqis were killed.
And I don't I just think the terrorist threat that was placed on Iraq never existed.
And I just feel that's what I feel guilty and sad about is I've speak spoken to Iraqi
people and their homes and their towns and cities were left in ruin, economic ruin.
They're in a worse place now.
So we destabilized again hindsight 2020.
We have destabilized that country.
We have made it into tribal areas, Sunni, Shia and one other group.
And they're destabilized.
They're not as strong as they once were.
So that benefits Israel in the sense of they don't have that those threats.
Iraq used to be a Scud missile threat to them and shot them with Scud missiles way back
in the first or back in the 90s or early 2000s.
So I just feel like it was it was the strings are pulled to conflate Iraq into the 9-11
attacks.
And there's lots of conspiracies surrounding the 9-11 attacks that I'm fully open to.
But anyway, to say Iraq was targeted due to Iraq that makes zero due to 9-11 that makes
zero sense.
So it leaves just like it left a vacuum for tribalism to enter into the area.
It leaves a vacuum for making sense somehow because what happened made no sense.
Well I'll ask you the question that I ask anyone who was deployed because again it shows
both sides of the coin.
And the reason I ask this is if you look at Fox and CNN, for example, you're either going
to get, you know, kill them all like God sort them out or you're going to get they're all
baby killers, you know, and in the middle is a nuanced conversation and nuanced lens
of our men and women in uniform that are actually deployed with, you know, the flag on their
shoulder.
So the first part, because obviously, you know, we know Saddam Hussein wasn't exactly,
you know, a boy scout.
So were there moments or were the things that you witnessed while you were deployed over
there that made you realize, okay, yeah, there are some, you know, horrific people that need
to be taken care of whilst we're here?
I was only there for five and a half months.
When we drove through, I was the gunner on our L.A.V.
I did not have a panoramic perspective.
I was looking through my sights and most of the confrontational areas.
When we drive through a town, I was looking through my sights so I didn't see, you know,
a lot of small arms fire.
I saw one time a machine gun shooting towards our convoy and I took that target out.
Other than that, I didn't see an overwhelming amount of RPGs or things shooting at us.
I did witness a small little outpost that I've dug in machine gun nests and we passed the
Iraqi people who are arming it or manning it in the surrounding position laying down
next to it.
But again, I look and try to contextualize those situations and what makes more sense
to me is that these were men taking up arms in lieu of a foreign military invading their
town, their space, saying, we're not going to sit here and be killed and destroyed because
I believe the American military as a whole was very heavy handed in their approach to
Iraq.
I mean, before we ever crossed the border, it was bombed to smithereens.
Then the helicopters went in and continued to thin out the herd and then the tanks crossed
the borders and then we came with our L.A.V.s.
So to be honest, I didn't see a lot of bad guys in our final sweep of the country and
our secure area spots.
So yeah, that's my answer.
I didn't see a lot of bad guys.
We were after a bath party members in different regions of the area, in different cities.
We were a distraction aspect one time when we entered Al Qut and we came in through the
south and we attracted mortar fire while the army attacked from the west and made good
progress through their attack there.
And then we left.
So we did all kinds of different things like that.
But as far as eyes on, I was again behind the gun looking through a periscope, looking
at a long range site.
So I didn't have a lot of panoramic view and I didn't see a lot of bad guys.
So I don't have a lot of substance to develop this great conflict between established opposition.
I did see lots of civilians walking with white flags trying to get through their day to day.
And then they come across our spooked, highly paranoid little checkpoints.
And I watched our Marines act highly paranoid and worried and scared.
And you could see the disconnect between these people who were not a threat, yet they were
being treated as a high threat and the complete chaos that can ensue from those two perspectives.
And that was what I saw more than anything.
I didn't see clear cut.
There's the problem.
There's our enemy.
But here I want to share this too.
I looked through the periscope and I could see magnified.
And I remember seeing this one man when we were driving through a town that had already
been shot up by our LAVs.
And I saw this man and it's like I was looking right in his face because of my magnified
periscope and the anger and the frustration that his soul had left him.
I can only imagine that he had suffered some type of loss because we had gone through and
destroyed a lot of his town.
But the certain look, it scared me.
I was probably 200 meters away in the hull of an LAV armored vehicle.
And to see the seriousness in this man's face and to assume maybe what was causing the concern
and anger and the disbelief or whatever was in his face, it sent shivers to my soul and
spoke to me and said, this man, he looked to me like he would be willing to do anything
in opposition to what we were doing there.
And so the conviction there was so much more heartfelt and serious and real compared to
us 18 to 22 year old kids behind our American weapons, just doing what we're told, going
through the motions with our training.
I just find such an imbalance in connection and heart and soul to the two parties.
Well, this is why I ask these questions.
I've had SAS, SBS guys talking about enemy combatants in their careers and they're like
there was respect.
They were doing the same thing.
They were soldiers.
And obviously they're not talking about the ones that are torturing people and that kind
of thing, but the average enemy combatant, there was a mutual respect because there was
that.
There was that element of protecting their own land.
And if you look back at World War II, and I just was researching this from my book,
the resistance fighters in France, if you had areas where the Germans hadn't really
committed atrocities, you didn't find much resistance, but resistance was born out of
revenge.
And so you listen to a lot of these amazing military members have been on the show.
A lot of times the ethos is like, if you are going to go in, then go in, hit the targets
that you need to hit and then get out.
But the moment you stick your flag in another country, you start breeding resistance.
You start making enemy combatants, especially if they've lost people that they love.
Yeah, totally.
Yeah.
In the Marines, no better enemy, no better, no worse enemy, no better friend.
And you don't want to incite the enemy to violence and to anger, to give them any fuel.
And I find that to be very true and very beneficial in the efforts of war.
Absolutely.
Well, the other side of that conversation, because this also gets almost no attention
whatsoever, is kindness and compassion, witness, you know, while you were there.
Now, like you said, if you're looking through a periscope, maybe it was more that you heard
about other people, but whether it was your fellow Marines or military members, whether
it was some of the indigenous people, what were moments of kindness and compassion that
you remember, even if you were in a combat area?
Each vehicle is given eight humanitarian rations.
We come across a person we thought we could hand it out to, we would.
That's a quick example of humanitarian stuff.
We posted up in a school, it's like, you know, Walde's area is our own little spot.
The locals brought, you know, killed a goat and brought us goat meat.
Kids would always try to sell us cigarettes and talk to us.
And they always say, good Bush, double Bush, good Bush for George Bush.
And so we had those types of experiences with, you know, the locals.
And so, I mean, my time there was short.
We were on the road moving the whole time.
So I didn't have much sit downs or any real, you know, good examples of the good stuff.
You know, we were, we wanted to be there for good purposes and we weren't trying to kill
locals and things.
But when the mood of the time and the initial invasion was just filled with paranoia and
threat level assessment.
And so everybody was really in that mode.
And so I don't think my mindset settled down too hard.
And I don't think many others did too, to acknowledge the humanity.
Well, speaking of that, then you leave the Marines.
A lot of times that transition can be jarring for our military members, especially if you're
not only being in a unit, but you actually deployed and fought side by side as well.
You have that identity, you know, you come out of high school, you are a Marine.
Some people transition out quite well.
Some people struggle because, you know, now that team, that sense of purpose, that tribe,
that identity has kind of been stripped from them.
What was your transition like initially?
It was a train wreck.
Looking back, I can say that, but you know, I pushed, I took all the things I learned
in the Marines, the structure, the discipline, and pushed it into my future efforts, which
was, you know, going to college, like my mom told me to do.
And I met a girl I was in the Marines, like many do, and we got married.
We got the worst out of ourselves with each other, my ex-wife and I.
And so to look in the silver lining, she and I expressed lots of troubled issues against
each other.
And I think we got that out of our system because we got divorced three years after
we got married.
But anyway, so that was a part of my post-military experience.
But then I just carried, I tried to carry forward the traits and characteristics I learned
from the Marines to accomplish these things that you have in life, which is get a job,
you know, get married, have a family.
I didn't have a family with my first wife, so that didn't work out.
That turned me in a little bit of a tailspin and definitely was a hard person to be around
after the divorce.
But then I met my wife now and we, she had been divorced too, so we kind of helped bring
each other together.
But when I met my wife now, like I said, she's Palestinian, Middle Eastern.
It turned my perspective and put me in her and her family's shoes in this world conflict
America's been in with the Middle East and terror and changed my perspective on that.
But I do also take my own experience and some of the questionable experiences that I had
to make the overall picture.
And it really has destabilized my position or my earlier feelings of America is the right
one in this conflict and America first and support the troops.
I see us as provocateur and a proponent of, you know, pro-war and I no longer feel that
way.
I don't feel that way at all.
I'm really against the war.
I would want to be.
I'd be proud to say I'm an activist against war now and part of Veterans for Peace and
I just don't see it.
I just see it as a gross action that is happening in the world and it's linked to the economy.
It's linked to people's money and we all know that that's just, it's a source of wrong
motivation and it's not right.
And when it results in deaths of innocent people and so I'm so opposed to everything
now.
So that's where I am in full circle from my post-military experience.
I think it's important to separate the American people and the actions of the few in America
and I see this with so many atrocities around the world.
If you look at, for example, how many people benefited from rebuilding Iraq, the infrastructure
and all those companies that made billions if not trillions.
You look at the weapons manufacturers.
There's a lot of people and I talked about this with Telsey Gabbard who I think is a
great leader and I think she would be someone who would walk softly but carry a big stick.
She's been in the military but she's a diplomat ultimately.
And I compare this always with the health of the nation.
The reason why we have 70% obesity or overweight in our nation is because we have a system
that profits from sickness.
The drug companies make money when you're ill.
I don't have a physician.
I haven't seen a doctor in years because I eat well and take care of myself.
It doesn't mean that I couldn't get some out of left field disease.
I'm not saying that but I'm the enemy of the drug company because I don't use pills.
The opposite as well as dead people.
Well, you can't have dead people because they can't pay for your pills.
So if you keep them fat and sick but alive, you've got a customer for decades.
It's so sad.
One of my neighbors around the corner, she just passed away and every time I went past
her, she was smoking.
Absolute sweetheart.
But that's another company that killed my neighbor and she was probably only 10 years
older than me.
But I'm sure she was on all kinds of COPD meds towards the end and hospice care.
So again, all these companies are making a lot of money.
And so when you look at when we send our men and women to war, where's the resistance to
not go into war when so many companies are making money?
There are times when you have to.
There's no better example obviously than World War II where you genuinely have to step up.
In that case, obviously they were defending predominantly the Jewish people at that point.
But so many of these more recent conflicts, you end up not only creating a lot of these
issues within the country.
And again, it's not negating that even in these countries there was tyranny and their
own people are being oppressed.
So where's that balance?
But rather than being surgical, we're finding ourselves there and our own soldiers and military
members are saying, why are we still here?
Why are we not transitioning out?
And then you've got this vicious circle of creating more and more enemies.
And so this is what I find as a complete non-military member, a white belt when it comes to this
whole world is if there are so many companies that profit immensely when we are at war,
where is the resistance to that?
Because it's not our military in general that's just itching to go kill people.
It's the people that are sending them that are making that decision.
And I would argue that most Russians couldn't care less about whether they own, air quotes,
the Ukraine or not.
A few people sent all those Russian soldiers into that country and now we've got the same
thing going on there.
Very well said.
I agree with you so much.
The structure of these markets underneath these things like war or the health industry
is just too suspect.
And where is the pushback?
And I think the government is kind of we're left with the government to be the pushback.
But when the government is, I mean, lobbied and owned by the corporate sponsors, basically,
we don't have much, we don't have any pushback.
So I'm scared about the same things that you were talking about.
Absolutely.
Well, this is what's so good to hear.
These revered Navy SEALs, Green Berets, PJs, SAS, that were the pinnacle of combat saying
this very thing.
And it's not like, oh, we should never have been there.
I'm so guilty because they also did a lot of good.
They did protect people that were there at times when they were standing there.
However, there's that other side, too, and that question of, yeah, but why were we there
in the first place?
So my voice means nothing but your voice and all these other guests, to me, paint this
collage of what war is actually like.
And these are the voices that we need to be listening to.
Yes, sir.
Well, talk to me then about your journey into the fire service.
Were you in the new hire class with Dina?
Yes, I was in 2008.
So talk to me about that.
What was the environment that you found yourself in?
Also, what was the demand?
Because I think that's important now as we sit here in 2024 with the firefighter recruitment
crisis.
How hard was it to get a job back in 2008?
It was hard.
There was 24 of us that got hired.
We heard that 1,600 people had applied.
We knew all that going into it.
So I was very prepared and ready to do my best in all the physical tests, the reading
tests, and all the interview.
And so yeah, the mood was really high competitive competition.
And so thankful to get hired.
And then it just so happened that our lead instructor was a Marine veteran.
So he was real hard drill instructor type.
And so I was voted as the leader of our platoon because I could speak Marine.
And so I could just be the liaison.
And we had to do the CPAT test upon hiring.
And the academy was really physically demanding and really tough.
And I don't think I'm being biased to think at that point it was really, really, really
tough and all of our members passed.
None of us got taken out by EMT certification or any of the fire certifications.
So that's how it was.
So that was a non-certified class?
Correct.
Okay.
Brilliant.
Yeah.
So 1,600 people for a handful of spots.
I think this is something that I'm trying to illustrate at the moment is here we are
now and there's a reason for it.
And I talk about the 2472 relentlessly.
That poor dead horse has been flogged into the ground.
But this is the problem is it's the same exact job.
And I'm trying to get people to kind of remember how competitive it was.
And as you said, I did the same thing.
I was running.
I was working out.
I was getting to the academy early doing extra drills and really taking the job seriously.
And then studying all the academic stuff and doing my ropes and knots.
And so therefore, when you make one of those positions, you are immensely grateful and
you're driven and you're motivated.
Well, now you need 30 firefighters and you've got a list of 41.
You're taking almost everyone.
So now it's reversed.
And there's almost not saying this for most people, but there's an element of almost entitlement
now like, well, I'll take, you know, I'll take the job.
And you're all gagging to, you know, for a firefighter.
So you're lucky to have me kind of thing.
Whereas the environment that you and I entered years ago was the opposite.
Like, you know, I mean, you would I mean, especially Anaheim, I was terrified for 365
days because they would cut you any time during probation, 25% of the class.
So for a year, I was shitting myself thinking I was going to lose my job.
And so that forged, you know, squeezed out every element of excellence as a, as a pro
B that you could.
And so we can absolutely get back there because that's what it should be.
You know, the seals and ocean lifeguards and these other high performing communities, they
need to only be taking the top 10 ish percent of candidates.
And if you're lower than that, beautiful, then that just means you've got some work
to do to get yourself into that top, you know, percentile.
Man, to speak to that, I do think there's, you know, that anxiety, that stress that that's
put on us in the beginning parts of our careers.
You know, it takes a toll on you.
And I wonder and I was admit maybe I had it hurt me so much.
It was soft.
I softened up on those who came after me because I wanted I wanted it in the sense of just
saying, hey, I know it's tough.
I know it's rough.
You know, and I didn't have that hardline mentality where a lot of instructors can be
like, you know, black or white, yes or no.
So I get what you're saying.
There's so vast different parts of the spectrum where people are entitled versus maybe like
more you and I were, you know, chopping at the bit to prove ourselves.
So it's it's it's very interesting.
And I don't know what has caused this change in the service recruitment areas.
But I don't know.
I don't know.
Well, I think what it is, it's the same job.
But when I got hired in 2004, so when I've said this on here a lot of times, you know,
you Google what's it like to be a firefighter?
It's all, you know, cats and trees and mustaches and other helmets and, you know, saving babies.
Now you do the same exact Google search as an 18 year old in America.
And not only is that stuff coming up, but also divorces, cancer, suicide, overdose,
et cetera, et cetera.
And then you look at the work week, you know, and what I'm hearing over and over again,
so it's clearly a truth is this younger generation actually is a lot more open about mental health,
a lot more invested in healthy relationships and their own fitness.
And so you look at 56 hours a week, then you look at mandatory overtime to a fresh set
of eyes.
Like, well, that's insanity.
I don't want to do that.
I want to serve, but not this way.
So I think, you know, this is the beautiful thing is now we're having an opportunity to
fix the working conditions and get people excited about the job because the working
conditions aren't the job.
We just devolved as we've gone to EMS and beyond.
So we can absolutely get back to thousands of people testing again, but we have to fix
the things that are broken, which is why 24 72 is really starting to get momentum now because
people are seeing that if you want to get people excited, just like Google went to the
four, you know, four day work week, people value health.
They value time at home.
You became a firefighter, so you could be, you know, a protector, but it's not more important
than your family.
So if we've allowed ourselves to hardly ever see our families anymore, we've deviated from
the true north.
Great assessment, James.
Oh, man, I'm so glad there's people like you who have all this, you know, constructed.
I agree with you 100%.
I think it's a great, you know, assessment of what's happening with people and the job
and, and how we can assimilate to needs now and the, the, the, the knowledge of what people
have now and to bet to better our conditions and then let people fill in those gaps with
a better performance and a better way of life.
Absolutely.
Well, speaking of your career then, so when you look back, when you reflect, what would
be some of the career calls that you have?
Doesn't mean that means it has to be the most grotesque, but whether it was again, moments
of kindness and compassion, maybe some of the more extreme or larger incidents, what
are some of the ones that really kind of punctuated your career?
Uh, one of the latest, latest call that punctuated was just a psychosis drug overdose.
The husband was just had seen it over and over, but the woman was just out of her mind,
just out of her mind, speaking nonsense, garbled, panicking out of it.
And I had just washed my turnout gear and I had my turnout gear on.
So I was clean.
I was like a big walking pillow and I was able to hug this woman and hold her in her
time of chaotic crisis and just hold her and just give her that personal touch and help
calm her and talk to her and bring her down.
And I felt like, you know, I was helping her and she, and it kept her from banging her
head on the ground, if any benefit and, and then waited till the EMS showed up and then
EMS took her away.
And so I felt like that was the time where I felt connected, obviously with holding this
woman and helping her try to just stop going psycho, you know, psychotic, um, other calls,
um, you know, fire calls.
I definitely am a white cloud when it comes to most things that overall, I haven't had
a ton of crazy calls.
Um, and they never come to mind when somebody asks me.
So I can't think of many, um, intense calls, but let's see.
I can think of, I gotta think of one.
Um, oh gosh.
Okay yeah, well here's one.
We are at a slow station on the outskirts of town.
A couple comes running across the street to our station with their baby and the baby's
flopping and looks blue.
So I reach, I meet them at the pad and I grabbed the baby and he's not breathing.
So I put him on my knee and I start beating him on the back of the back and the, trying
to break, lose something.
But you know, when you're at CPR class and they give you those dolls, they're pretty
strong or they're pretty stiff.
Well a real baby is wobbly and so hard to manage.
So and I hadn't had any children myself yet.
So I was having a hard time getting that baby on my knee and doing, applying the back blast.
So my friend Derek grabbed him, took him and he got him more situated and had a little
more confidence and started patting the baby and that, that dog's tooth, dog's toenail
came out of the baby's airway and that baby came back around and was breathing.
Everything was fine.
They went to the hospital.
They came back later in the night.
That was a cool call.
Wouldn't you know about four months later, another car comes pulling in our driveway,
running in with their baby saying, last thing we know he was eating M&M's in the back seat.
Everybody stopped talking and breathing.
So we're like, oh, we know what to do.
So we take this poor baby.
I do it this time, turn them around, put them on my knee and I start blasting on the back
trying to get that M&M out.
And then we read, then we stopped.
Nothing's happening.
We reassessed the baby's hot as can be.
The baby was having a, you know, a mal seizure or not.
Is a grand mal seizure.
Is that when you have high or fast temperature increase?
The fee fee bra seizure.
Feet bra seizure.
And so that's what happened.
The child didn't have anything in their throat.
So that poor child, we didn't give him much benefit other than some bruises on his back.
The child came back around, you know, and was assessed and was okay.
But that's a silly story and connection.
But those are some calls, you know, the knockout drag out snot slinging fires.
You know, I haven't had anything that's too snot slinging or crazy.
I mean, I've been in some hot fires, but nothing to really get me super, you know, charged
up and wanting to talk about.
So I probably do.
I just can't recall right now.
What about the opioid crisis?
Obviously, depending on where you are, if I ask someone in West Virginia or Ohio, I
mean, it's just, you know, absolutely devastating up there.
What are you seeing in Raleigh specifically?
Through, you know, me personally, I hear things from other guys, other guys in the call that
have territories that are really, you know, they use Narcan every day.
And so that's still prevalent in the homeless communities, in the homeless camps, you know,
off the side of the highways, you know.
So yeah, and you know, when a bad batch comes through, you know, even an uptick in the calls.
So yeah, it's still a problem.
Definitely in definitely certain areas of Raleigh.
Well you mentioned trauma bonding with your first wife and getting each other's trauma
out.
You know, it was a great mutual relationship by the sound of it.
Talk to me about meeting your wife now and then kind of, you know, that immersion into
the Palestinian culture.
My wife now is such a calming soul and such a peaceful person.
And so becoming her friend was such a delight and fun experience.
And learning about the Middle East was so gentle and so slow.
It was never pushed on me by her.
If anything, maybe I pushed my beliefs or my perspective on things on her as a sounding
board and her responses were so soft but true.
They spoke to me and it spoke to me, which I already had these experiences and I was
trying to put the pieces together from my own experience about this conflict between
Middle Eastern, Arab people and terrorism versus the West and all that.
So getting her responses and her perspective helped me position all these little things
I had in my mind already and make sense of things in a more truthful way that made sense
to me.
So obviously, if you go back in history, we talked about Iraq, you know, that there's
British influence that caused issues there.
You know, a lot of the Middle East, when we reverse engineer, a lot of the West are at
fault, you know, the same in the African nations and other areas.
And so it's not just that thing.
And a perfect example, I've had quite a few people on here that have interacted with the
Somali pirates.
And if you go back in time, you reverse engineer that the Somali waters have been heavily overfished
by other nations.
So the fishermen ultimately weren't able to make the money or feed their families.
And as we all know, poverty tends to push people into crime.
So it's not just that the people in Somalia woke up one day, oh, I'm just going to start
invading other ships.
You know, there's always an origin story.
Before obviously all the recent events, what were you hearing as far as the kind of the
history of the conflict and tension in Gaza and that area?
I'm sorry, what was your question specific to Gaza?
What was I hearing?
Yeah, no problem.
No.
So when you were as your relationship with your wife progressed, what were you hearing
as far as the, you know, the history of the tension between the Israelis and the Palestinians?
I learned that the dynamic, like the default dynamic was that the military occupation forced
the Palestinians to have such difficulty in life with just general traveling from place
to place, getting into the country for my mother-in-law to visit her mother, the visa
time periods, the arbitrary giving of time with a visa, you know, three months or three
days.
The nuisance that it was, the extreme nuisance it was to my wife's family in their relation
to their homeland, the peaceful disposition of my mother-in-law, the loyalty she shows
to her family members when they're sick or on their deathbed, she sits by their bedside
literally for weeks until in loyal, love and devotion.
When she speaks of how invasive and hard and painful the military makes her life, it really
resounds.
And so those, the relationships like my mother-in-law and understanding her as a person and seeing
the pain that the military occupation causes her is probably the loudest thing that proves
to me this unfair dynamic between Israel and Palestine.
One of my guests, who I've had on twice now, Dr. Thea Ahmad is a Chicago ER physician.
He's Palestinian-American.
And the first conversation he talked about going over there, one of the humanitarian
relief missions, I think it was the beginning of this year.
And I think he found himself in Jerusalem at first.
And he said, there were Jews and Muslims and Christians all praying side by side.
And it was like, this is an integrated community of people that happen to have different religions.
But then he talks about when he went into Gaza, like you said, the checkpoints and the
fences and what a stark contrast that was to the rest of that area where people were
cohabiting.
Yeah.
Yep.
Yes.
And I definitely think they make life as hard as it can be for Palestinians.
So let's talk about October 7th.
This is what's really nauseating to me is, I've had a lot of the guests, Alan Shibaro,
like I said, Thea, talking about the human side, because just like this is what makes
this conversation so great.
You have been in uniform.
You talked about retrospectively the impact of an invasion on the innocent people in that
area.
And when you talk about that, the knee jerk is, oh, but October 7th.
And what I was thinking more recently, I grew up in England when the IRA was bombing my
people, the mainland.
And I literally grew up next to an MOD base, Ministry of Defense base.
So my farm is right up against it.
We would have to check our car every morning before we went to school to make sure there
was no bombs underneath.
Super fun for a small child.
So I've kind of had a little taste of that.
It didn't happen to me.
So I'm not saying that, but it was the environment that we grew up in, kind of like our children
growing up now in schools having to rehearse their own murder.
This is the environment that our children are growing up now.
But what I was thinking with this October 7th, hands down, was horrendous.
And everyone that was killed and all those poor families and everyone related to the
hostages, those are victims.
And that is an absolute tragedy, atrocity, however you want to describe it.
This was when the IRA blew up, for example, in Manchester, shopping malls full of men,
women and children that were just shopping, nothing to do with military or occupation
or anything.
But then the retaliation element would be to me, imagine if Britain had then gone and
smited the entire city of Belfast, men, women and children, killed them, tens of thousands.
What would the world have thought of the UK?
They would have been absolutely disgusted and they would have probably invaded us and
shut us down.
So to spit out the word October 7th as a justification for the tens of thousands of Palestinians
that have been killed, not to mention the millions that have been uprooted, I find James
Gearing's opinion absolutely fucking disgusting.
If you can't separate the human portion with the acknowledgement that yes, you have these
two groups and that within that there is extremism and some of their extreme actions are completely
unacceptable and disgusting, but you can't separate that from tens of thousands of children
that have been murdered, then you've got to look in the mirror.
If you can't critically think that, what the fuck are you doing day by day?
So that's the example for me.
The IRA attacks the UK and we destroy the entire city of Belfast, the world will be
in outrage.
And this is what's going on in Gaza.
And I'm saying that because I've had so many guests that have been boots on the ground
that have been offering humanitarian aid and then the hospital that are trying to work
in gets destroyed and the schools around them get bulldozed.
So it's not a war, air quotes, they're not combatant versus combatant.
So that being said, that's my opinion.
I just want to put that out there first.
Talk to me about October 7th through your family's eyes and then let's walk through
what you were seeing and then ultimately how you became part of the humanitarian response.
October 7th is going to hit differently depending on who you are.
I am a minority, which is Palestinian conscientious.
Americans do not even know Palestine exists.
I think many Americans do not understand what Palestine is or they only hear what Israel
has because in the Western media and American media, you only would hear anything that's
completely biased in the benefit of Israel.
And so being of the minority that understands the unfairness of life in Palestine, Israel,
when October 7th happened, I had many questions on what truly happened and I think many people
still do and there's up to debate, but I don't think there's much debate when you think about
the death toll that was reduced daily as things came down to and then when you look at that
death toll, how many of those people were actual military personnel and then the dynamic
of geography where they were putting the music fest just outside the walls of Gaza and the
audacity of that dynamic where people are having their best life right outside of those who
are suffering inside an open air prison.
And then also the dynamic of what kibbutz are.
Kibbutz are people who are strong and have boots and have security forces and have the
virility of life to want to make it on their own, be self-sustaining with farming and they're
strong and part of their mission is to be self-sustaining and take up the space in efforts
to settle the land in the name of Israel.
So all these people that were massacred on October 7th were the Israeli government is
responsible for their demise in the sense that the people that are settlers that take
the outposts in an occupational mission, they are the fodder to take damage in Israel's
overall efforts.
And so this to me is a tragedy and it's sad for those families who were killed and obviously
that is sad and I'm sad for that.
But the position that these people put themselves in, which was this outpost type lifestyle,
this frontier lifestyle in an obvious conflicting dynamic, they knew the risks they were taking
on.
They had security forces in lieu of these risks.
So I think that needs to be known when you think about the tragedy and the massacre that
happened.
The military personnel that passed, that died, they are military personnel.
If you go to Palestine now, every soldier you will see has an AR-15 slung around them,
an M4.
They have guns that look like the guns from the future.
They have so many guns.
Ben Gavir has given tens of thousands of weapons permits out to Israeli citizens.
I was told that by Israeli activists.
There are so many weapons and the mentality of Israel has been for years very violent
and very racist against Arabs.
So that has to be acknowledged in assessing what happened October 7th along with Benjamin
Netanyahu's UN speech that completely disregarded the West Bank and Gaza talking about some
gas pipeline coming through.
So I'm going to just stop there.
Because I'm going off.
No, no, you're fine.
So here's the thing I want to put to you as well.
As we touched on earlier, whether it's the Russians with the Ukraine invasion, whether
the Germans during World War II, we tire an entire nation with the same brush.
And I failed to believe that all Israeli people are all in on what's going on in Gaza.
So did you get any kind of inkling on the other side?
Because we know that, for example, when Ukraine first happened, there were these incredibly
courageous Russians, whether they're still alive or not, who knows, that were protesting
the invasion of Ukraine.
What I failed to hear, and I know it's a strong, strong voice, is the opposition from the Israeli
people on what's going on.
I mean, there has to be an immense one that's being suppressed.
I asked the Israeli activists that were with us and I took pictures of these guys and I
greatly enjoyed their company.
And I talked to them a lot with trying to understand the overall Israeli population.
And they openly told me their opinions.
And what I heard from them were that a very high percentage of Israelis aren't concerned
about Palestinian casualties.
They are mainly concerned about hostages.
And they're pro this genocide, pro whatever is happening now.
And the settler movement is highly funded by the Israeli government.
And so I think those are the majority of actual perspectives that are making actual action
and making things happen that's happening.
As far as some underground Israeli population that completely disagrees with what's happening,
I don't know if they exist.
In regards to the Palestinian suffering, I think they're more worried about the hostages.
That's the majority of who's protesting in Tel Aviv or wherever, they're protesting for
the hostages.
That their concern is not with the Palestinian loss.
And that really goes to a life.
One of the Israeli activists I talked to was an IDF soldier.
Same time that I was, a Marine, and spoke about just the indoctrination and the mindset.
And you think you're just doing your job and you're doing the right thing because every
Arab is a threat.
Every Arab is a potential murderer.
And so that is what is believed by Israeli citizens.
That's what I learned and that's what I was told.
And that's kind of what I'm taking from my experience from talking to those Israeli activists
and things.
Yeah.
I mean, I wish I could get a voice that represents that group because it has to be strong.
And of course, all of our countries around the world are exposed to propaganda.
I mean, how many times do you hear America is the greatest country in the world and you
look at the stats and we're not.
We're very proud, we're patriots, but you make your country great by investing in it.
And there's been a lot of sitting on laurels and you look at education or you look as we
touched on obesity, we've got a lot of work to do in some areas.
But our propaganda is that we're the greatest.
And that's it.
Blank statement.
And there's a difference between patriotism and pride and being part of the solution and
rolling up your sleeves and being a mentor in your community.
That's how you make a country truly great, not just by waving a flag or buying a certain
colored hat.
But when it comes to this thing, again, understanding like the North Koreans, like what is the environment
that they're being raised in?
And I find it very disappointing from a nation that saw such suffering, literally.
We have two generations ago that was born out of such pain that is now resistant to
this conversation.
Because I mean, you would think once bitten twice shy, as they say.
So there has to be a suppressed voice, whether it's through propaganda or through just censorship,
through the media channels there.
But I mean, it has to be a huge group of people that do disagree with it.
But their voices isn't being heard the same way as I would argue in America right now.
The centrist voice isn't heard.
You stand up and say, hey, both of these candidates are shit.
If we had to choose from 330 million people, that's the voice no one wants to hear.
Are you pro Trump or you pro Biden Harris?
That's it.
No one wants to hear like, hey, our system is broken.
We keep getting these shitty candidates every four years.
So that's the suppression and censorship here in America.
We shut up talking about obesity or the mental health crisis.
We don't want to hear it.
Let's talk about Haitians eating dogs.
It's fucking ridiculous.
So this is what's really disappointing.
If anyone listening knows of someone who can represent that group, I would love to get
them on because I feel like the Israeli people as a whole aren't being represented properly.
And again, I think we're seeing this one slice of the pie that's really doing a disservice
to the rest of the people.
It's something I want to put up for conversation sake.
When we do find an Israeli person who can speak to this, my questions would also, I'd
add, how hard strong is indoctrination in relation to Jewish ownership of the land,
Jewish entitlement, Jewish supremacy?
Those are the things that are put out there to explain this strong conflict, this strong
violent disposition towards Arabs.
It's either a sense of internal pride that pushes this self-defense motive, or is it
a twisted look of supremacy that's gotten out of hand and is now showing to be self-destructive
in the future for the state of Israel?
These are some questions I would have.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, the real hard facts are that I think the child death toll now is approaching
20,000.
And Gaza isn't an entire country.
It's a little tiny part of a country.
So 20,000 children are being killed.
And if you think about COVID and the numbers of people who were freaking out then, a lot
of these people were people that had pre-existing conditions and they were older.
And of course, the world ground to a halt when it was tens of thousands.
But in this case, tens of thousands of children are dying and a lot of people are turning
a blind eye.
Meanwhile, countries like South Africa that had apartheid, of which my country was a part
of years ago, they're actually turning around saying, no, this is absolute genocide.
So these other nations are even saying, they're standing up, they're having the courage, but
the UK isn't and the US isn't.
So to turn your back on something so disgusting and still just your knee-jerk is, oh, October
7th, we shouldn't have done that in the first place.
And you're not going to advocate for these innocents that are being killed.
I'm not talking about the Hamas, their combatants and that's where the war is.
But everyone else, and I said hospitals and schools and all these things that are being
smited into the ground that are not anything to do with the war, that is what needs to
be addressed.
So it's not, oh, pick a side.
It's not about, the side we should be aligning with are the innocents.
Just as you said, the Iraqi innocent people at the beginning of this conversation, that's
who we should be behind.
100%.
I agree.
I totally agree.
Yes, the spotlight needs to be taken off the two sides, Kamala Harris and Trump or Israel,
Palestine, Hamas, IOF, IDF.
It's the innocent people.
They have to have representation and that seems to be absent and that is intentional
and that is a part of this frustration and part of the tragedy and part is an insult
to injury.
Well, I want to get to what you physically witnessed now because you were boots on the
ground there in the West Bank.
Thea was talking again about the systematic bulldozing of blocks of homes and then how
these developers are already starting to sell the land literally as the dozer is moving
through.
So behind again, behind the so-called movement, just as you see in so many atrocities in the
path, more often than not, it's power and money and greed, so talk to me about the settler
element.
You've got these people who, Palestinian land, Palestinian families, you actually, talk to
me about your journey over there and what you witnessed with your own eyes as far as
that element.
We went over with this organization who places foreign nationals in with families who are
under immediate threat by activists or by settlers, by Israeli settlers and wherever
there's Israeli settlers, there's Israeli military.
They work hand in hand and since October 7th, a lot of settlers have been field promoted
into the IDF and so they have the walkie talkies.
They have AR-15s, whether it's military issued or it's personal, everybody's got an M4,
slung around their shoulders.
And so that's part of my experience over there, experience in lots of settler soldiers and
soldiers where they're at traffic control points.
And before October 7th, there was like 200 traffic control points throughout the West
Bank.
Now, over 700.
These checkpoints are manned by young Israeli men with the Kevlar helmets that are too big
for their head.
It just looks juvenile, yet they're holding high powered rifles and they're pointing directly
at your face.
When we were posted up with these families that were under immediate threat of their
land being stolen and under constant harassment by settlers, one, the settlers would drive
by on four wheelers, which would usually be teenage boys playing music, spotting flashlights
and just harassing, just harassing, driving by.
They would park and spotlight the whole homestead and play music and sing loudly, very obnoxiously
playing Hebrew trance music and dance music for an hour at a time in the middle of the
night.
And over the whole night, those are the settler harassments.
And then one took great shape in the sense of these four settlers turned into eight settlers.
They descended upon the homestead.
The homestead is a set of pole barns where families live.
There's fence crowd of hundreds of sheep.
There's dogs roaming around.
There's all kinds of infrastructure for these Bedouin people who live in rural West Bank
in the Jordan Valley.
These teenage settlers are obviously assigned or something that come and sit up on the hill,
play their music, make a little fire and are just, and also they will graze their herds
literally right through the homestead of cows going right through these pole barn areas
and things.
And the Palestinian people are completely used to it and allow it to happen.
These settlers come into their tents at night and sit at the end of the bed where the mom
is sleeping and she'll wake up and scream and they'll tell her, shut up, be word.
And then the husband will wake up and then they'll just get up and they'll just walk
away.
They'll sit in the social areas of these homesteads, smoke cigarettes and just do whatever they
want.
The Palestinian people just let it happen because you know what?
If they were to report it, the military shows up, the settler security shows up, the border
police show up and they take the settler's side and completely disregard any complaint
by the Palestinian people.
And what will come of that will be detainments, will be arrests of the Palestinian people.
And when our activists and the Palestinian patriarchs that were at the homestead were
attacked, kicked, punched, thrown rocks at, pepper sprayed and even a pistol presented
by these eight settlers, those same forces showed up, settler security, police, border
patrol and IOF, all four took these, well, the four settlers left the scene.
We came across them when I was coming as support.
They stopped us and harassed us and then let us move after 10, 15 minutes.
And then we came and then all those four security forces came, coddled the settlers, bandaged
one of their hands, searched their bodies for wounds and then arrested one of our activists
and one of the family members and detained them with anklets, took them to police, questioned
them, stole the Palestinian man's phone and the homestead, the patriarch, let me tell
you man, I touched his shoulder and he was steel.
This man is five foot nine but solid as a rock.
And you would understand that because he picks up big bags of grain.
He's a herder.
He lives in the Jordan Valley where it's a hundred degrees plus all the time.
He's a Bedouin man.
He's a strong man.
And when these teenage boys attacked him, he could have ripped their arms off, but he
showed so much restraint, so much respect in taking this aggression and not retaliating.
But when the elders showed up later that day after the security had arrested people and
everything had happened, they discussed things.
I had no idea what they were saying.
They're speaking Arabic.
Then later that night they returned and they said something to our friend Walid, who was
a patriarch of that homestead who lived there for 15 years.
And Walid screamed and yelled and pushed his father like he was about to fight him and
screamed and yelled and everybody in the whole area was like, oh, what's happening?
And we as outsiders thought maybe he's mad because his brother was detained and he wasn't
released yet.
Well, we've come around to understand what the elders told them is that he is going to
move.
He was going to move his homestead and that's why he was so angry.
And I want to speak to this process that these Bedouin men, this Bedouin man went through
and I think Muslims take, they acknowledge the news immediately.
They express the feeling they have associated to that and then they get over it.
Give them 15, 20 minutes, then they're over it.
And so what happened was this man showed how angry and frustrated he was that the elders
decided he needed to move and he did.
He got screamed.
But 15, 20 minutes later, he was bringing food to our tent, fresh, delicious food with
bread and we ate that food.
And then before sun up the next day, he already had his tractor up and trailer going and pulling
out pole barns and he was on the move.
And all because some teenage settlers did their thing, did their assignment harassed
to the point where they attacked us, shot pepper spray, got in a physical altercation,
was able to call security and security completely took their side and then their moves this
Bedouin family.
And when they moved to the city or the town they were trying to go to, the military told
them they weren't allowed to move to that town.
They confiscated their tractor, all their trailer and stuff, left them with their livestock
over the weekend.
And then we never were able to follow through and catch up with what happened after the
weekend, whether they got their equipment back or where they were allowed to stay.
But let me tell you, the Bedouins, they don't answer to anyone.
They don't need anything.
They're the most self-sustaining, strongest, impressive, admirable people in my opinion.
So trust me, they had a plan B and a plan C.
They will find a way till death.
So anyway, that was something that happened.
When I was researching my book, I learned that in World War II, the Nazis would evict
French families and German families would come from Bavaria and occupy their home.
So it's a kind of irony that, you know, at the time this nation now that's doing this
was the oppressed nation of that moment.
What is it, are you hearing at all why these settlers are even leaving where they originally
lived?
I mean, I can't imagine that they're in some horrendous poverty or some insane war zone
that they're fleeing for their own safety.
From the Israeli activists that I spoke to, they say these are troubled youth that are
corralled into these rural schools for rehabilitation, but there's no rehabilitation.
There's no true school.
They're put in these outpost schools, which are on settlements, all placed throughout
the West Bank.
And those kids are the settlers.
Those are the kids that are utilized in the settler movement.
And now this is the most efficient use of a single person.
One little person grazing a herd of sheep can occupy and take over great spots of land,
plots of land.
And so this is an intentional strategy by Ben Gavir of the Israeli government to push
out Palestinian people in Palestinian territories.
Well, you witnessed obviously this one event, I follow Al Jazeera and it's funny because
back in the day, I used to think that was like a terrorist network TV station.
I was so naive.
And then you realize, oh my God, it's actually very middle of the road reporting.
And they were actually just shut down.
The Israeli soldiers invaded one of their TV stations and shut them down.
So we're talking about propaganda.
That's one less outlet now that maybe some of the people in surrounding areas can get
what's really going on.
But I've seen a lot of the videos on there of, you know, I'm assuming IDF soldiers actually
beaten up and detaining Palestinian homeowners as settlers are trying to take their land.
We've seen the slaughter of their livestock, all kinds of things.
So aside from what you witnessed, but still from the eyewitnesses that you were around,
what are some of the other things that you've heard as far as this settlement element?
Because obviously we're talking about outside Gaza now.
I was taught by one of the original organizers of the organization we were there with.
He said back in the 70s, the Israeli military used to shoot the livestock, just try to deter
the Palestinians by shooting their livestock.
Well, that wasn't effective enough.
So then they developed a law to where if any livestock got lost, there was a veterinarian
hospital for lost livestock.
And if anybody wanted to get their livestock back, they'd have to pay, you know.
And you know, if you lose 30 sheep, which the settlers do, they steal sheep, they break
up herds.
Now they do it with drones.
Now they do it with all kinds of different things.
But back then, when you'd lose, say 30 sheep, and that was necessary for your livelihood,
you'd have to pay up and the community would have to gather all their money just to regain
their own livestock.
So that's something I learned from back in the 70s, 80s.
And so other settler movements and other settler actions, all I know is that all these settlers
have weapons and it's an unfair fight if there were to be any fight.
And they have all the backing of the military.
And the military is the sovereign power in all the land.
So I was in the military myself and the complete jerks that find themselves in position of
authority are mind blowing.
And if people knew the idiots that are placed in these high ranking positions, this is my
opinion, Brian McGuinness' opinion, you would question the whole system because those that
promote through the military, in my opinion, are the ones that are yes or no, sir, do anything
you want me to jump, yes, how high and whether that's kill children or swab the deck, they
want you to be a yes man.
And if you say yes to atrocities, I believe then you get to higher and higher.
And the more hardcore you are, the more rank you can get.
And those are the ones that rise to the top.
And that's the type of people.
And so what I say all that to say is the military law is what controls the Palestinian people.
And the military law is controlled by high ranking officials.
So those officials are going to be cutthroat, unsensitive, they're going to be cutthroat.
And so that's what is ruling the law of land in Palestine.
Well, I think we just have to look at the way COVID was handled to realize a lot of
people that call themselves leaders have no idea.
I mean, that's it.
And that spanned to the Republicans and the Democrats.
And if you look at the obesity crisis, you look at the mental health crisis, you look
at the obesity crisis, you look at the homelessness, you look at all the things, the gang membership,
this spans both sides of the aisles for decades.
So I would argue we can look in the mirror in our own country, in the UK and Australia
and New Zealand, all these people that we pay a lot of money, we pay, the people pay,
the taxpayers that we wanted to lead.
And what were we told back then?
Oh, stay in your house.
Don't be around any of your friends and family.
Get fast food and alcohol delivered to your home.
Watch TV, shut the fuck up.
We'll let you know when you come out.
And what should have been the exact opposite, protect the people who are vulnerable and
the rest of us, let's get out there, get the daylight, get the exercise and keep the country
running.
So we saw, you know, these presidents, these prime ministers, these state leaders, these
fire chiefs, you know, whatever it was, we saw who was the real leader, who had the courage
and who was just a puppet, you know, listening to again, whoever would benefit from it.
So it's not, you know, it's it's it's everywhere.
It's Israel.
It's, you know, it's I'm sure it's parts of Palestine.
It's the UK, it's the US.
And this is why again, the people, the centrist conversation is so dangerous, because when
we all realize that, that's when we're like, all right, we need to get rid of these people.
They're fucking useless.
And they're detrimental to national security and all these other things, too.
So I think this is an international problem.
And the problem is, if you've got other puppets, while one puppet is doing, you know, horrendous
things, well, they don't have the courage to stand up and say, you know what, October
7th is horrible.
But so is what's going on.
And we oppose it.
And we're not going to send you weapons for the systematic destruction of an entire race.
It's not happening.
But of course, but we're also going to send in some special forces people to seek out
the Hamas terrorists and find these these hostages.
You know what I mean?
That's the middle of the road conversation.
But it's like you said, pick a side or pick a side always cuts the country in half and
sets it against each other.
Divide and conquer.
United we stand.
So this is why these conversations are so important.
And so like, you know, people say, oh, you're brave talking about Gaza.
What a pathetic statement.
If you're brave because you care that all these innocent people are being murdered from
both sides, then God, you know, I'm much you know, what's it like being a coward then you
just turn your back and all this stuff and you can sleep at night.
I just it blows my fucking mind.
So you know, but the propaganda has got us a pigeonholed and, you know, painting the
enemy as the other side, the Democrats, the Republicans, the Muslims, the Christians,
the gays, the straights, whatever it is.
And we're just people.
All of us are just people.
And there are some rotten apples that absolutely, you know, we need to get rid of.
But you look at ancient tribalism, if you were a rotten apple, you got flung off a cliff.
It was that simple because you were a detriment to your tribe.
So anyway, I kind of went on a monologue myself, but it's just it's so strange.
I love the way you can articulate the problems in our society and explain potential ways
that we can step up and see through it all and potentially correct things and just point
out the problems.
I think you just I think it's so valuable for what you just said.
Well, thank you.
Well, I want to just give you the mic again.
Is there anything else you want to kind of report in part, hope that changes before we
wrap this up?
Just I don't know what else to add to it other than my hope and wish for a ceasefire as the
initial thing that can maybe help us think and collectively gather a solution diplomatically.
And until that happens, you know, this the stress of continuous killing and dying is
driving me crazy.
And I think it's driving many people crazy.
And rightfully so.
And like you said, brave to speak about Gaza.
I mean, what's a coward?
What's all about?
It's zero cents.
People are where matters matter.
And I think we all need to wake up to that.
And I think I personally see our our luxurious lives is the biggest reason why most of us
don't care, because it just doesn't affect us and our bubbles.
And I definitely would just like to speak out to say how individualistic I've come to
know America as after I've been to some Middle Eastern countries.
I just see it.
It's obvious.
I think if anybody were to go to a Middle Eastern country, how collective and communal
people are everywhere and the respect and the vibe between people in these Middle Eastern
countries, there's just a noticeable difference in there compared to maybe in America, where
we go to the store.
And there's just there's a certain smug individual weariness between humans.
I know some of us I try to like be a proponent of social, social behavior and be one with
my fellow citizen and things.
But I do see overall, there's a strong individualistic aspect of America versus these the communal
aspect.
And that's really strong.
And I think we leave ourselves in a bad position if we the more individualistic we get here
in America.
And I think that's just something to keep aware of.
I see such a beautiful humanity.
And I think sadly, it takes tragedy.
I released my book deliberately on 912, because to me, that was one of the most beautiful
days in American history when everyone came together and they you know, all religions
were side by side in New York City trying to help the people you know, and all Americans,
whether they were just, you know, selling sandwiches trying to raise $10 to send to
you know, whoever you know, it was that real commonality that real humanity element.
But I think if you look at the way, really, from a corporate point of view, the messages
that are pumped to us, you know, whether it's the sports, whether it's in business, you've
got to crush the opposition, you got to be a winner, it pays to be a winner, all this
stuff, our whole kind of messaging goes against community.
So the thing is, beneath that, people are good.
And I share videos all the time on social media of how beautiful the American people
actually are, despite what we're told.
But you know, when you've got divisive, you know, literally presidents that are deliberately
separating this country and dividing us and setting us against each other, then how you
know, you're kind of swimming against the current a little bit to be a good person.
So this is the thing, I think Americans are beautiful.
And if you look at it, I think altruistically, we donate a huge amount of money as a nation
and help other people.
But we've got to refine that community as far as our actual ethos as the messaging of
what it means to be an American.
And then now you're going to start having empathy for other people.
And going back to our early conversation, I pointed this out a lot, the people that
have opposed firefighters getting a healthy work week, they themselves work 40 hours a
week.
I mean, people that go home at five o'clock every night that sleep in their own beds are
the ones that are run phase that their firefighters are up, you know, three, four nights a week
not seeing their family that was struggling.
Well, I'm I'm okay.
I got mine.
So who gives a fuck about them?
It's the same thing with this.
You should care about other people.
So if your life is good, you should be looking around going, how can I help someone else?
That's right.
It's essential to set up the set up the system and keep people desperate for that better
life.
Dangling carrots in front of people that aren't proper or realistic to just keep people in
that mindset of of of unfulfilled or something.
And it keeps people on that mindset of, you know, chasing things rather than stopping
and seeing everybody else around us and having a community perspective.
So I agree with you.
Very well said.
I really appreciate your I really like the way you can, you know, structure up and articulate
some of the problems I think I agree with you that are more facing.
Well, I want to thank you for coming on because obviously, you know, not only your service
in uniform throughout your entire adult life, but also your boots in the ground experiences
as far as the settlers in the West Bank.
And clearly, obviously, you're you're very, very entrenched in that and having a Palestinian
family.
But this is this is what's so important.
We need to hear the people that were there.
And this is why I have guests from such a diverse background, because if we're talking
about human trafficking, I want to speak to someone who's been trafficked or people that
are in the human trafficking, you know, anti advocacy, not some guy that made a film, for
example.
You know what I mean?
Like the real, real people.
And it's the same with this.
You know, you've given us an eyewitness account and we know that you are someone who's served
this country your entire career.
So I want to thank you so much.
Before we kind of close out, if people want to reach out to you, learn more, where are
the best places online?
I got a tick tock profile.
It's my name is Bogey on tick tock.
So I post most of my things about Palestine on tick tock little on Instagram.
I think my Instagram is at Brian McGinnis.
And and and if I could, I would like to speak one more time about, you know, non violence
and its efforts or its effectiveness in the world we live in today.
Non violence can be an unbeatable strategy if enough people buy into it, meaning that
if there's a war or a violent conflict, and people become conscientious enough to to gather
in a non violent opposition to that war, that war effort will lose its funding will lose
its support and just in humanity.
And and so if we can't slowly gather against opposed violent war, the war efforts will
run out of money and run out of support.
And so I just say all that to give one other perspective on on what people can do in efforts
to oppose the war and gathering together and a stance of non violence and opposition to
war and then trying to act in any way, whether it's voting or protesting and showing your
support for non violence, it does it could ask for your ultimate sacrifice against violence.
But in America, all the movies show you you have to beat violence with more violence.
I'm trying to just speak to a perspective that presents non violence as as as a potential
potential solution to to war.
Absolutely.
Well, again, I mean, you look at Iraq and Afghanistan, we brought a lot of violence
to each of those countries and no one won.
So I mean, that's a good example there.
Well, I want to thank you so, so much for being not only so generous with your time,
but being a voice.
I mean, this is what it's all about.
If the more of us that have this conversation, the more of us that shrug the stigma, oh,
you're not supposed to talk about that.
I mean, I saw it even in covid talking about pre existing conditions was was fricking heresy.
How dare you suggest that my 300 pound grandmother with COPD didn't die from the virus alone.
It's insane.
So the more people that simply talk, that actually kind of shrug off this censorship
that you shouldn't be talking about this issue, the more again that nonviolent movement will
permeate and hopefully will tip the scale and actually stop this atrocity and get every
you know, let's say peace is a very strong word, but hopefully end the suffering and
start rebuilding, you know, let those two nations start rebuilding again.
So I want to thank you so, so much for being so generous with your time and being courageous
and coming on here and speaking for the people of Gaza today.
Thank you so much, James.
Thank you so much.
I appreciate this opportunity.
It has been great to talk with you.
Thank you.