Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
Speaker 2: my name is Noel.
Speaker 3: They called me Ben. We're joined as always with our
Speaker 3: super producer Paul Mission controlled Decant. Most importantly, you are you.
Speaker 3: You are here. That makes this the stuff they don't
Speaker 3: want you to know. You guys, ever heard the uh?
Speaker 3: I was thinking, what's a good way to get into this?
Speaker 3: Have you guys ever heard the phrase the United States
Speaker 3: as the World's police.
Speaker 4: Sure? Yeah, in that uh South Park movie for Team
Speaker 4: America World Police, Right, that was the whole joke about
Speaker 4: behind that movie.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, simply because we go around setting up military
Speaker 2: bases in.
Speaker 3: A lot of places willy and or nilly mm hmm.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And look, obviously Americans in the audience tonight are going
Speaker 3: to be the first to point out this country has
Speaker 3: serious problems if we're going to be diplomatic about it.
Speaker 3: Also diplomacy that comes into play. But the facts on
Speaker 3: the ground are the following. The United States, despite its shenanigans,
Speaker 3: and despite some unethical actions, it has also maintained rule
Speaker 3: of law. It is stabilized global trade. Right now, the
Speaker 3: United States is helping fight pirates. That's right, folks. Pirates
Speaker 3: are a thing again. And it turns out if if
Speaker 3: he digs your vibe, Uncle Sam can and will provide
Speaker 3: endless benefits to your government and military and military. Well,
Speaker 3: first your military, and then maybe your military becomes your government,
Speaker 3: as they say in the musical Hamilton, and it must
Speaker 3: be nice. It must be nice to have Washington on
Speaker 3: your side. This is the story of one such program,
Speaker 3: a traveling show, if you will, called exercise flint Lock.
Speaker 2: What is it?
Speaker 3: Why do critics deem it controversial? Here are the facts.
Speaker 3: Uncle Sam is a he's a busy boy. He's a busy,
Speaker 3: busy boy. Just get out of the way so I
Speaker 3: don't say it later. Whenever I see flint lock, I
Speaker 3: think of flint stones and bedrock.
Speaker 4: Just putting that out there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think about starting fires, don't you? That
Speaker 2: is huh a little flint Yeah. So this this episode
Speaker 2: is kind of like a what a breakoff from our
Speaker 2: other places you Can't Go episode that we recently did,
Speaker 2: just because we were looking at what was going on
Speaker 2: in Africa and why there were so many coups going
Speaker 2: on there pretty recently. And uh m, I don't want
Speaker 2: to spoil it too much, but that's we're looking at
Speaker 2: this specific thing called exercise Flintlock. That reminds me a
Speaker 2: lot of our previous episodes we've done on large scale
Speaker 2: military drills and almost like get togethers I guess that
Speaker 2: have occurred like jade Helm in the.
Speaker 4: Past, picnics, you know that kind of stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, a little bit of fellowship, you know, a little
Speaker 3: bit of common interest shared, some light target practice, perhaps
Speaker 3: some some ops.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but in like jade Helm that we've covered in
Speaker 2: the past, Like I said, you can find an episode
Speaker 2: on it that was it's almost more of private military
Speaker 2: contractors and companies that produce military gear kind of getting
Speaker 2: together and showing off what's available right right, and then.
Speaker 4: Like a trade show almost it is like comic Con
Speaker 4: with a.
Speaker 2: With a mixed in like urban battleground exercise kind of
Speaker 2: thrown in there. You know.
Speaker 4: What was the one that the conspiracy theory was that
Speaker 4: they did it at Walmart or something, or they jade home.
Speaker 4: That was the one, Yeah, that ended up being bunk,
Speaker 4: but it was. It was believable for a second.
Speaker 3: It was. I think it was due to concerns about FEMA,
Speaker 3: because there were many pre made containers that were arriving
Speaker 3: via rail. There was also a helicopter we talked about
Speaker 3: that that was in a disused Walmart.
Speaker 2: They ended up being storage for some official use. They
Speaker 2: were just using that or they're releasing that property for
Speaker 2: official storage use.
Speaker 3: And you know, most people in the United States are
Speaker 3: i would say, vaguely aware that Uncle Sam gets up
Speaker 3: to some stuff abroad, except this as a known fact,
Speaker 3: and don't often dig deeper into the specifics of these activities,
Speaker 3: much less the economic forces at play unless they are
Speaker 3: pointed toward exploration of these via you know, your favorite
Speaker 3: media of choice. And it's true. The US has committed
Speaker 3: numerous horrifically illegal as on foreign soil and spoiler on
Speaker 3: its own people on its own soil in the past.
Speaker 3: These acts continue in some version in the modern day
Speaker 3: according to critics, and yes, the US economy makes a
Speaker 3: great deal of profit from these activities year over year.
Speaker 3: I was hoping, if it's okay with you guys, we
Speaker 3: could throw to just one little, little juicy nugget from
Speaker 3: old President Eisenhower, which our pal Rob Reiner also pointed
Speaker 3: to you earlier.
Speaker 4: It's not a dinosaur shape because it might be a
Speaker 4: dangerous nugget if that's the case. The thing you just said,
Speaker 4: Ben about the horrific acts, illegal acts, it kind of
Speaker 4: feels like one of those things where the sentiment is, well,
Speaker 4: if we do it, it's not illegal. M you know,
Speaker 4: I mean, you know, because we never make it to
Speaker 4: any kind of criminal you know, like international court to
Speaker 4: be judged.
Speaker 2: Well, unless you throw a little party like the Church Committee.
Speaker 2: Again we just talked about with mister Ryan.
Speaker 3: And the United States does not respect the jurisdiction of
Speaker 3: the ICC, the International Criminal Court. So former President Eisenhower
Speaker 3: on his way out of office, this is something we
Speaker 3: talked with our pal Rob about. He warned the United
Speaker 3: States and indeed the world, that he was worried a
Speaker 3: certain industry might take over what he saws the otherwise
Speaker 3: noble mission of being the global police. Here's a short
Speaker 3: clip from his farewell address.
Speaker 5: And the Councils of Government, we must guard against the
Speaker 5: acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the
Speaker 5: military industrial complex.
Speaker 3: Fun fact about that speech. He did write it himself,
Speaker 3: and before he went to air with this farewell address,
Speaker 3: he was calling it the military industrial Congressional complex.
Speaker 4: That it, Yeah, we wouldn't not have been considered a
Speaker 4: dig on Congress, and so they thought it was too
Speaker 4: much or what.
Speaker 2: Well, somebody has got to authorize the war and the
Speaker 2: you know the military actions. You know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I just mean it got cut because it maybe
Speaker 4: was considered a little too pointed, perhaps, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah hashtag Smedley Butler was right. Uh. There There is
Speaker 3: another factor in this, which is that, in the process
Speaker 3: of pursuing hegemonic power and year over year profits for
Speaker 3: different connected companies, the United States does also ensure a
Speaker 3: degree of when things work, stability, continuity, and safety. Depends
Speaker 3: on your perspective, though, because a significant amount of US
Speaker 3: military activity on foreign soil, it centers on what we
Speaker 3: would call facilitation. We're not going to wage the war,
Speaker 3: but we're going to teach you how wars are waged.
Speaker 4: We'll give you a little nudge, maybe a little help,
Speaker 4: perhaps some armaments interested shout out.
Speaker 3: School of the Americas recently rewatched our old video on
Speaker 3: the School of Americas and it holds up located for
Speaker 3: a time in Fort Benning, Georgia.
Speaker 2: Yeah, do we say what flintlock is exactly? I know,
Speaker 2: I've kind of like vaguely talked about stuff that's like it.
Speaker 2: But do we say exactly what it is yet?
Speaker 3: Flintlock is, Well, it depends on who you ask, right,
Speaker 3: That's what we're saying because flintlock is one of those
Speaker 3: facilitational activities. In its most recent iteration, it's two weeks
Speaker 3: per year, right, and that started in two thousand and five.
Speaker 3: But there's a long history to it because started around
Speaker 3: the end of World War Two, the United States earned
Speaker 3: a bit of a street rep for overthrowing unfriendly governments,
Speaker 3: often through unethical means. We're talking propping up student movements,
Speaker 3: quote unquote, arming secession groups like you pointed out, even
Speaker 3: assassinating elected leaders couptata as functional policy. And for critics,
Speaker 3: exercises like flintlock are a direct descendant of ethically questionable behavior.
Speaker 3: But for supporters this is necessary. This is holding the
Speaker 3: line from chaos.
Speaker 4: What makes it an exercise versus an operation?
Speaker 2: Okay, So I think that's what I want to get to.
Speaker 2: I actually define it, so it is a special operations
Speaker 2: counter terrorism exercise where there are all kinds of different
Speaker 2: drills and training scenarios that the DoD often in the
Speaker 2: US Army calls them regional forces, but it's really just
Speaker 2: a bunch of different militaries and paramilitary groups that are
Speaker 2: from what they call their African partners again, the d
Speaker 2: D and the US Army, and it's a bunch of
Speaker 2: partner nations within Africa that work together with the US
Speaker 2: and with a couple other European countries to basically train
Speaker 2: their militaries in their troops or you know, small groups
Speaker 2: of their militaries in these counter terrorism special operations tactics.
Speaker 3: Police forces as well to militarize those Further, again, this
Speaker 3: was not happening, is not happening in a vacuum. During
Speaker 3: the Cold War, the USSR was doing very similar things,
Speaker 3: we have to remember, and terrorist groups are doing similar
Speaker 3: things now. Rival states are using proxies like Wagner, like
Speaker 3: hiss Bolah and so on. We have to remember these things,
Speaker 3: these tactics, this practice of facilitated learning. They are used
Speaker 3: because they work. They are effective the way firearms are effective.
Speaker 3: Their success is a matter of operational rather than moral
Speaker 3: or ethical efficacy. So it doesn't matter to the gun
Speaker 3: who get shot. It matters to the gun that the
Speaker 3: gun works. And in the wake of Iraq and it sequels,
Speaker 3: and notably the terrorist attacks of September eleventh, two thousand
Speaker 3: and one, the US military industrial complex that Eisenhower warned
Speaker 3: us about found an opportunity to normalize and mainstream a
Speaker 3: never ending war. This comes in the wake of when
Speaker 3: the US figured out, hey, what if we wage wars
Speaker 3: on ideas? Right, there's the war on drugs drugs won.
Speaker 3: There's a war on poverty that was very short lived
Speaker 3: because it didn't do well in the polls. And then
Speaker 3: of course there are culture wars. So this larger milieu,
Speaker 3: this context is mission critical for US to understand. There
Speaker 3: is an active war on terrorism. What is terrorism depends
Speaker 3: on who you ask. It's definitely non state actors are
Speaker 3: those are like? That's one of the big differences. What
Speaker 3: makes a war on terror different from a war on
Speaker 3: a state power.
Speaker 4: It's about optics, right, I mean, it's say one we
Speaker 4: always say one person's freedom fighter is another person's terrorists
Speaker 4: and all depending on how you label the terrorists, it
Speaker 4: can be a convenient tool to making them an enemy
Speaker 4: that you then need to eradicate and it you know,
Speaker 4: you wage a certain amount of the war in the
Speaker 4: war of public opinion. You know, nobody wants to think
Speaker 4: that you're going after good guys who are trying to
Speaker 4: liberate you know, their people. You have to be fighting
Speaker 4: a bad guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's really interesting because another aspect of flintlock
Speaker 2: is to have these the individual countries and militaries not
Speaker 2: only you know, fighting against terrorism with the within their
Speaker 2: own territory, but to train them to share that information
Speaker 2: right and to encourage the sharing of information across borders because,
Speaker 2: as you said, been like terrorism, if you're fighting that
Speaker 2: rather than a neighboring country, that thing could exist on
Speaker 2: your land, right outside your land, deep in you know,
Speaker 2: a couple of neighbors overs land. So it's interesting to
Speaker 2: think about there needing to be some kind of united
Speaker 2: front to really combat a concept like that. That could
Speaker 2: be it could represent any number of different cells or organizations.
Speaker 3: Which are often fluid and decentralized. Three key differences between
Speaker 3: a war on capital t terror versus the war on
Speaker 3: a conventional state power traditional agreements like the Geneva Convention.
Speaker 3: Those agreements erode those ideas about you know, the red Cross,
Speaker 3: about journalism, et cetera. They fall to the wayside quite quickly.
Speaker 3: And second, the opponent, the whatever represents capital t terror
Speaker 3: has no limiting factors in terms of legality. The concept
Speaker 3: of war crime is not a concept practiced by a
Speaker 3: terrorist group. And they're the third. And it sounds like
Speaker 3: a small detail, but I think it speaks directly to
Speaker 3: some of the points we're bringing up. There's no clear
Speaker 3: representative leadership, meaning there's often no single authoritative source to
Speaker 3: declare victory or defeat altogether. That means you could be
Speaker 3: fighting a war that does not end, it simply transforms.
Speaker 3: This is true. Look at Boko Haram, look at isl Isis,
Speaker 3: look at al Qaeda. These groups can function at an advantage.
Speaker 3: A powerful state actor, yes, can become economically addicted to war,
Speaker 3: and arguably the US and several European countries are in
Speaker 3: that situation. However, a powerful enough non state actor can
Speaker 3: leverage existing tensions and conflicts. Right, you know, Saudi Arabia
Speaker 3: and Iran don't get along, So which one of them
Speaker 3: is going to fund your newest project? And what do
Speaker 3: they want? This means that these groups can at times
Speaker 3: enjoy the advantage of power, state level power with very
Speaker 3: few constraints that that power typically entails.
Speaker 2: I think the.
Speaker 4: Part about a lot of this that really I learned
Speaker 4: this phrase recently Bakes my Noodle, is that there really
Speaker 4: is no moral high ground. It's all just deal making.
Speaker 4: It's like, who is going to benefit us in the
Speaker 4: long term? How can we you know, whatever, in some
Speaker 4: way walk away from it with some kind of upside.
Speaker 4: But it's not about saving the world. It's not about
Speaker 4: protecting innocence. It's really about my feelings.
Speaker 3: It's about saving a version of the world there probably is.
Speaker 3: People don't agree on which version, right. I mean, that's
Speaker 3: and I love Bake my Noodle. That's a great one.
Speaker 2: So well. Just something to bring up in here is
Speaker 2: that you're talking about who's going to fund it and
Speaker 2: the I get we'll get deep into this, but in
Speaker 2: the case of this giant excerpt size flintlock that we're
Speaker 2: going to be talking about, it's not just the US
Speaker 2: military and the partners, like the European partners coming in
Speaker 2: with a bunch of money and saying, hey have some
Speaker 2: free training. Right. This is the US and these contractors
Speaker 2: and everybody that's working with them for this training, getting
Speaker 2: these African countries to pay to be a part of it,
Speaker 2: but then funds the entire thing, right, it's not just
Speaker 2: some party that they're going to have. It gets funded
Speaker 2: by the members the partners that are selected from the
Speaker 2: African countries.
Speaker 3: And as long as you don't look too deep into
Speaker 3: the forensic accounting of where the money to fund that
Speaker 3: stuff comes from, then it's all well and good. There
Speaker 3: are clear good and bad guys. The United States encountered
Speaker 3: a renaissance of training and facilitation across South America, Asia,
Speaker 3: parts of Europe, the continent of Africa. Uncle Sam started growing,
Speaker 3: training and guiding militaries in a conflict it characterized as
Speaker 3: a borderless conflict. The idea at first blush. Obviously, it's utopian.
Speaker 3: Could we stop wars before they began? If we could,
Speaker 3: then we would necessarily have to. It would be the
Speaker 3: ethical thing to do. Flintlock grew from this milieu, and
Speaker 3: that's part of why it continues today.
Speaker 4: It's like green War, you know, like you know, it's gosh,
Speaker 4: it's just it's packaging this idea of a war without borders.
Speaker 4: It's not possible. That's not how wars work. But it's
Speaker 4: all about this kind of like pr line, It's sorry,
Speaker 4: it's making me very very depressed.
Speaker 3: Well, this is this is us giving you some context.
Speaker 3: This is us giving a little bit of a dance
Speaker 3: in the shallow pool. Let's pause for a word from
Speaker 3: our sponsors and dive into the deep water. Here's where
Speaker 3: it gets crazy. All right, what is Flintlock? What is Flintlock?
Speaker 4: Well, first, flintlock is kind of an umbrella term that
Speaker 4: describes a series of different, like you said, mad different
Speaker 4: training programs. Again, sort of like exporting American tactics and
Speaker 4: possibly a little bit of ideology, but definitely training and
Speaker 4: hardware to other countries. So let's go to the United
Speaker 4: States Africa Command street name AFRICOM, which is that makes sense.
Speaker 4: It's a nice portmanteau. Here's how they describe this ongoing program. Flintlock,
Speaker 4: US Africa Command's premier and largest annual special operations exercise,
Speaker 4: has taken place annually since two thousand and five across
Speaker 4: the Sahel region of Africa among nations participating in the
Speaker 4: Trans Sahara counter Terrorism Partnership and are planned by African
Speaker 4: partner nations Special Operations Forces, Special Operations Command Africa and
Speaker 4: the US. I'm in a state to develop the capacity
Speaker 4: of and collaboration among African security forces to protect civilian populations.
Speaker 3: Great ten ten, No notes, right, there's a lot of
Speaker 3: somewhat vague language there.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: The Trans Sahara counter Terrorism Partnership is something that a
Speaker 3: lot of people in the West probably haven't heard of,
Speaker 3: because why would you know about this if you weren't
Speaker 3: looking this statement the REDNAL. It's from twenty twenty three. However, Flintlock,
Speaker 3: going to your earlier point about an umbrella term, flintlock
Speaker 3: is much older as an idea. It dates back to
Speaker 3: the nineteen sixties when Special Forces Group, it was a
Speaker 3: tenth Special Forces Group where they were attempting to fight
Speaker 3: against communism. They were training to they were training forces
Speaker 3: in Denmark and Germany West Germany of course, and Spain
Speaker 3: and Greece. Yeah, in an attempt to prevent the spread
Speaker 3: of fascism. There were bulwarks against the Domino theory, which
Speaker 3: we talked about a little bit earlier, and it continued
Speaker 3: after that and.
Speaker 4: With Rob Reiner, if I'm not mistaken right, the Domino theory,
Speaker 4: we talked about communism as kind of this ghoul that
Speaker 4: had to be dealt with and sort of justified a
Speaker 4: lot of ends.
Speaker 3: Specifically Vietnam, Southeast Asian theater. And we have to remember
Speaker 3: that on the other side of the Cold War equation,
Speaker 3: the USSR was looking at capitalism in much the same
Speaker 3: way Exercise Flintlock. This is a cool little bit of history.
Speaker 3: It continued some version of it. And we know that
Speaker 3: the Road Show moved to the United Kingdom in the
Speaker 3: nineteen eighties, and we know part of this due to
Speaker 3: extremely unfortunate death. Sergeant first class, a guy named Clifford
Speaker 3: Strickland died testing something that is super cool. It's the
Speaker 3: Skyhook system. Remember that from Christopher Nolan's Batman.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah's immediately what came to mind. Yeah, wait, I
Speaker 2: don't know that is what is that skyhook.
Speaker 4: Was Remember of the scene where he gets extracted with
Speaker 4: like a like a harness and then like basically.
Speaker 3: He takes the accountant out. Yeah, eval accountant.
Speaker 4: Uh, he's in Tokyo or something like. He's definitely out
Speaker 4: of the country and it's meant to be like a
Speaker 4: military level extraction kind of.
Speaker 3: I believe he's in Hong Kong because the government of
Speaker 3: China will not uh extradite one of their own. That's
Speaker 3: the line there, right, and so so anyway, the flintlock
Speaker 3: also has this experimental aspect to it, right. There's a
Speaker 3: lot of tried and true training and tactics, and then
Speaker 3: at least in the nineteen eighties there were a couple
Speaker 3: of more innovative things that went spectacularly wrong. And when
Speaker 3: people talk about flint lock now, they're not really talking
Speaker 3: about that stuff from decades ago. They're referring to the
Speaker 3: ongoing training program via AFRICAM and It's Partners that began
Speaker 3: in two thousand and five. The less sexy, less cool
Speaker 3: name for this kind of stuff is JCEE T joint
Speaker 3: Combined Exchange training. Stabbing the fingers to wake up anybody
Speaker 3: who fell asleep hearing that.
Speaker 2: Oh no, you're a chicken again. Oh sorry about that time.
Speaker 4: The worst thing you could possibly see. Please don't chase
Speaker 4: me around a campfire, tiny dinosaur.
Speaker 2: Sorry, Well, just this exercise is so complicated and weird,
Speaker 2: and it's got such a history, Ben, thank you for
Speaker 2: finding all this stuff in the history is it's it's
Speaker 2: so nuts, but it's it's weird to think that it's
Speaker 2: not just US military. It's not just United Kingdom military
Speaker 2: and those two Western forces and their interests and what
Speaker 2: training that's being provided, right, the tactics that those two
Speaker 2: countries have, they're bringing in all kinds of other partners.
Speaker 2: I think Germany has been a part of it for
Speaker 2: quite a while. They're they're a major part of AFRICAM
Speaker 2: in general. But and it's not just US military training.
Speaker 2: It's also like US intelligence from the FBI that gets
Speaker 2: involved to share tactics for policing. As you said, there
Speaker 2: these these exercises get involved with the local police forces
Speaker 2: as well as the Department of Justice to help out
Speaker 2: with you know, how to actually bring justice to the
Speaker 2: bad guys once you get a hold of them, or
Speaker 2: how to pursue those things. And even the State Department
Speaker 2: of the United States when it comes to those anti
Speaker 2: terrorism activities and how to track down basically how to investigate,
Speaker 2: track down and then in a weird way question like
Speaker 2: local civilians of residence, like just of a residential area
Speaker 2: where maybe something has gone down, you're tracking leads, how
Speaker 2: to interrogate people. It's really crazy how just multifaceted this
Speaker 2: series of exercises.
Speaker 3: Is another important point there in terms of the intelligence
Speaker 3: stuff and the State Department stuff. From my understanding, there's
Speaker 3: a significant amount of instruction put into what we will
Speaker 3: call hearts and minds projects like not only how do
Speaker 3: we find the people were calling the bad guys this decade,
Speaker 3: but how do we also persuade civilians in rural areas
Speaker 3: that we are, in fact the good guys. How do
Speaker 3: we frame and guide their perspective?
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, how do we get those people to raise
Speaker 2: a hand right the whole see something, say something? Kind
Speaker 2: of mentality? You can see that getting injected into this.
Speaker 3: Hey I'm a strange or from Langley, snitch on your
Speaker 3: cousin for me. What's gonna happen? He's probably gonna die,
Speaker 3: you know. But well you gotta tell you that up front.
Speaker 3: You guys like blue jeans, you guys like fifty cent.
Speaker 4: It's the same way the cops do you and they
Speaker 4: try to get you to flip on somebody. They say, oh,
Speaker 4: you'll be fine, we'll protect you, don't worry about it,
Speaker 4: and then you know they don't and you end up dead.
Speaker 3: And again again we are when we talk about this,
Speaker 3: when we talk about things like Flintlock, I think it's
Speaker 3: very important for us to say we are in no
Speaker 3: way accusing the people who are operating there of being
Speaker 3: super villains. We're not saying they're out there to do
Speaker 3: evil stuff. Again, if you look at the official rationale,
Speaker 3: and if you look at the types of programs, which
Speaker 3: you know some of it's classified for sure, but if
Speaker 3: you look at what they're doing, they are attempting to
Speaker 3: empower people. They are attempting to power local governments that
Speaker 3: would otherwise potentially be overrun by the consequences of previous
Speaker 3: similar exercises. Whatever. It's true. Well, yeah, or.
Speaker 2: Our despots and dictators, I mean, there are you know,
Speaker 2: there are moneyed interests, right that have strings attached to
Speaker 2: other powers, Like that's kind of what you mean, like
Speaker 2: other very powerful countries that have economic interests in various
Speaker 2: African countries that have various troves of resources, right that
Speaker 2: can be extracted, and we know that those often the
Speaker 2: governing bodies can be manipulated, depending on what kind of
Speaker 2: purse you're thrown around.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, shout out to Wagner right street name Russia,
Speaker 3: shout out to Shout out to our good friends working
Speaker 3: for Uncle Gee. You know what I mean, Shout out
Speaker 3: to shout out to France's public relations to for still
Speaker 3: trying to make them look like the good guys in Africa.
Speaker 4: They're pretty charming. Yeah, well the French.
Speaker 3: Maybe in Paris. You should see them when they're out
Speaker 3: in the field.
Speaker 2: So fair enough.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so, US Special Forces in the current iteration of Flintlock,
Speaker 3: they kick it twice a year in the African continent
Speaker 3: for this training, and the most recent version happened March
Speaker 3: first through fifteenth of twenty twenty three. It's a win
Speaker 3: win or that's how it's seen, and there is validity
Speaker 3: to the concerns the threat of nebulous terrorists or separatist groups.
Speaker 3: It looms large on humanity's first continent, specifically now in
Speaker 3: twenty twenty three, Flintlock is attempting to provide expertise and
Speaker 3: security for nations being affected by chaos in the sy Hel.
Speaker 3: Like you mentioned though the Soy held region of Africa.
Speaker 3: There are a lot of chaotic groups there have we'll
Speaker 3: say it ties to larger global entities at times, and
Speaker 3: they themselves again going back to tactics, many of these
Speaker 3: groups also have training and in some cases equipment that
Speaker 3: is state actor level and as such, it could overwhelm
Speaker 3: domestic state forces that historically have struggled with corruption, with
Speaker 3: funding and honestly with decent training, because you need experienced
Speaker 3: people when you're engaging in this sort of business.
Speaker 2: Well, and let's talk about the specific countries that have
Speaker 2: been involved in this. Many of them have been involved,
Speaker 2: like from early in the process, back in two thousand
Speaker 2: and five when this version of let's say, this version
Speaker 2: of Flintlock began, right and so have it continued on.
Speaker 2: Others have joined up more recently. But you know, the
Speaker 2: stuff I was looking at, guys, was from around twenty
Speaker 2: twenty when Flintlock was occurring then and then just looking forward.
Speaker 2: But I'll just we can list off some countries here.
Speaker 2: African nations that have been in partners for Flintlock include Burkina, Fasso, Cameroon, Chad,
Speaker 2: Cabo Verde, Guinea, Molly, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Ghana.
Speaker 2: There's just there a ton of countries that have been involved,
Speaker 2: and we're going to talk about a little bit. There
Speaker 2: may be a reason that you've heard some of those
Speaker 2: names pretty recently in the news.
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh boy, so right right now, earlier this year,
Speaker 3: As you said, Matt, the newest iteration of flint lock
Speaker 3: was conducted. It is international. It was conducted in Ghana
Speaker 3: and Cote de Vore, not French speakers. Ivory Coast. You
Speaker 3: might also know it as we are talking this time,
Speaker 3: around thirteen hundred military personnel from all told twenty nine
Speaker 3: countries in some capacity. Basically, and I know this might
Speaker 3: make some of our fellow conspiracy realists who are veterans,
Speaker 3: I know it might make some of us a little
Speaker 3: salty to hear it, But basically you could call it
Speaker 3: a pop up version of the School of the Americas.
Speaker 2: Dude, or what was the training camp where uh the
Speaker 2: oh gosh, we just talked about it with Robert Reiner
Speaker 2: Cuban exiles were being trained for sniping and where Lee
Speaker 2: Harvey Oswald you know, apparently showed up and was trained.
Speaker 3: To use the twenty five six that it was something
Speaker 3: like that, but he was, ah, that was the group
Speaker 3: of dudes. You were sponsored by the CIA. That wasn't
Speaker 3: where they hung out. They came out. I think I
Speaker 3: don't know how to Dave imbusters were almost there work close.
Speaker 3: It was one of those. It was definitely one of
Speaker 3: those or something like it. But the aim of flintlock
Speaker 3: is to again empower local governance, right, empower the local
Speaker 3: armed forces, which does often involve militarizing the police such
Speaker 3: that they can continue things that we often take for
Speaker 3: granted in the United States. Just to be very clear,
Speaker 3: one example would be the peaceful passage of power. Right.
Speaker 3: The fact that for quite some time the United States,
Speaker 3: a very young country, has successfully and peacefully passed from
Speaker 3: one president to another, even when they clearly hate each other.
Speaker 3: Like the fact that that has happened for a couple
Speaker 3: centuries is kind of cool, and it's not super common
Speaker 3: in world history for that kind of thing to occur,
Speaker 3: So there is validity to the statement about this. But
Speaker 3: there's also the other side. One of the big factors here,
Speaker 3: it's not altruism. One of the big factors is to
Speaker 3: ensure the spice flows, whatever the spice may be, to
Speaker 3: ensure the stability of global trade and therefore indeed the
Speaker 3: global economic system as it is currently understood.
Speaker 2: Guys, if you don't mind, I'd love to read a
Speaker 2: quick quote from R. Clark Cooper. Though we talked about before,
Speaker 2: this guy is a part of the I guess he's
Speaker 2: a part of the State Department. Let's say, and he
Speaker 2: is speaking at the closing ceremonies for Flintlock twenty twenty,
Speaker 2: and he's talking about I think the same thing, but
Speaker 2: not saying it out loud. Does that make sense? He's
Speaker 2: speaking around it in a way.
Speaker 3: Let's hear it. Let's hear the dance.
Speaker 2: Peez. Okay, Oh, there's a lot of there's a lot
Speaker 2: of stuff in here.
Speaker 3: But less I'm so excited.
Speaker 2: Okay, it's kind of long. Bear with me, here we go.
Speaker 2: But more than being an opportunity for us to each
Speaker 2: improve individually, Flintlock is an opportunity for all our nations
Speaker 2: to grow together in a healthy partnership. But not all
Speaker 2: partnerships are healthy. But the one we celebrate here today
Speaker 2: is how can I tell simple? Because it's a partnership
Speaker 2: based on mutual respect and shared values, not self interest
Speaker 2: and exploitation. Because partnership contributes to self sufficiency, not lasting dependency.
Speaker 4: Is that not a little condescending?
Speaker 2: It does feel that way to me, But I don't know,
Speaker 2: I don't know, but it's I just gotta I gotta
Speaker 2: say this so you get the feel of the way
Speaker 2: he's talking to everybody and you just wonder is he
Speaker 2: talking to the leaders right or is he talking to
Speaker 2: the you know, each individual person who is participating. I'm
Speaker 2: gonna keep going just a little bit furtherer quote and
Speaker 2: to sustainable capability, not burdensome debt. Partnership is not just
Speaker 2: a means to an end, but a path which we
Speaker 2: value for the friendships it creates and the lessons we
Speaker 2: all learn side by side. Our relationship is one of cooperation,
Speaker 2: mutual respect, and transparency. And today no other nation can
Speaker 2: match the United States commitment to the continent. Oh well,
Speaker 2: we're talking about the US wanting to assert itself in
Speaker 2: the entirety of the African continent as Papa safety, Papa money,
Speaker 2: you know, like I'm the He's like, yeah, global police, Like,
Speaker 2: we're gonna keep you saying we're gonna help you stay safe,
Speaker 2: and we're gonna help you be prosperous, and we're here
Speaker 2: for you.
Speaker 3: We're gonna teach you to fish and hey, if that
Speaker 3: means you end up in our navy, tight, that's exactly.
Speaker 4: Georgia Public Broadcasting here in Atlanta has this that they
Speaker 4: adopted this new slogan a handful of years ago, and
Speaker 4: I despise it because it has the same vibe as
Speaker 4: this is Georgia Public Broadcasting. We respect and appreciate your intelligence.
Speaker 4: The way they say it, the sound of the voice
Speaker 4: is just like really really, that feels like, so we're
Speaker 4: really texting you in a relationship after an argument.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I don't know if it's the best opener, but that
Speaker 3: quotation from from Big Coops is is in line with
Speaker 3: the earlier statements and signals that the US and the
Speaker 3: global West have given to the nations of Africa. And
Speaker 3: the tough part about that is that while those statements
Speaker 3: have been made and broadcast, they occur in step with
Speaker 3: some troubling things, not just resource extraction. That's old beans.
Speaker 3: But tune in for our previous episodes on that. And
Speaker 3: if you just hear that statement right like you're sitting
Speaker 3: there and you've never met this guy for some reason,
Speaker 3: you know nothing about colonialism, et cetera, and this and
Speaker 3: the various companies controlling it, then you might say, well, who, buddy,
Speaker 3: this sounds fantastic. Thanks Big Coops.
Speaker 2: Can't wait. You know what, if you hear that right now,
Speaker 2: I was gonna say, if you didn't join in this year,
Speaker 2: then man you're gonna want to get in next year.
Speaker 3: We want to teach you talents. Sure, yeah, we want
Speaker 3: get on the boat. Get on the boat with us,
Speaker 3: is what they're saying. And what do the tank? That's
Speaker 3: what they're always saying. Yet, so also, to be fair,
Speaker 3: given that millions, millions of millions of innocent people have
Speaker 3: been murdered, assaulted, tortured, forced out of their communities by
Speaker 3: terrorist or separatist organizations, several of which again seem to
Speaker 3: have their own pretty high end training, then the question
Speaker 3: again becomes a moral quandary. Who would not want to help?
Speaker 3: How could you look at this situation and not become involved.
Speaker 3: We're gonna pause for word from our response, and then
Speaker 3: we're going to explore pretty unpleasant badger in this bag.
Speaker 3: We're back. As we've seen in the case of the
Speaker 3: School of Americas for the Americas, excuse me, as well
Speaker 3: as in the cases of various like student activists and
Speaker 3: freedom fighter groups, there isn't a lot of oversight applied
Speaker 3: to what happens post training. Teach you all these insurrection techniques,
Speaker 3: all these interrogation techniques, will teach you why the third
Speaker 3: story is a great place for your enemies to hang
Speaker 3: out and then after that, you know, do you dog?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Well, And one of the one of the first
Speaker 2: things that exercise flint Lock focuses on is getting the
Speaker 2: upper command levels together and doing training with those individuals
Speaker 2: in small groups, right, and y'all, I don't want to
Speaker 2: get too conspiratorial, but it feels like Concy Well, I
Speaker 2: feel like if you're I don't know, I feel like
Speaker 2: if you're on the pulpit right in the way that
Speaker 2: it feels like Cooper kind of is when he's speaking
Speaker 2: about what Flintlock's doing. If you're having a small session
Speaker 2: with the upper echelons of these individual partner countries, it
Speaker 2: feels like you could almost be preaching to them a
Speaker 2: philosophy more so even than tactics, at least at that
Speaker 2: upper level, because you've you're trying to make everybody see
Speaker 2: the same picture or vision.
Speaker 3: Sure. And also the tough thing about speaking from the
Speaker 3: pulpit is you don't hear the whispers in the pews,
Speaker 3: and I think that's the ghost that comes to haunt
Speaker 3: programs like Fliplock. I mean, the big concern to your point,
Speaker 3: mat the big concern is is kind of ideological and
Speaker 3: it's an ideology that on the surf is any decent
Speaker 3: person can agree with. Human beings should have a say
Speaker 3: in their government. You should be able to vote for things.
Speaker 3: Human beings should have a reliable, predictable day to day,
Speaker 3: year over year sense of safety and security. Right, and
Speaker 3: also have the room for luxuries, for aspirations and so on.
Speaker 3: These are all very basic things. It's crazy that they
Speaker 3: become a hot take so often in the history of humans.
Speaker 3: But like, the big concern then is that you can
Speaker 3: train people to the best of your ability, right, not
Speaker 3: just in tactics, which tactics are. Tactics can be perishable, right,
Speaker 3: just like intelligence. The way to conduct a war back
Speaker 3: in the day of Napoleon is not the way to
Speaker 3: conduct a war today. If you march a bunch of
Speaker 3: people just straight in a series of lines, they're gonna die,
Speaker 3: They're gonna get killed. But ideal may not be perishable.
Speaker 3: And the idea is going back to the example of
Speaker 3: firearms having no moral self evaluation. You're teaching people to
Speaker 3: be guns, and you are at the same time asking
Speaker 3: them to retain enough humanity to only fire at the
Speaker 3: quote unquote bad guys. And you're hoping that they will
Speaker 3: agree with you for the rest of their lives on
Speaker 3: who is the bad versus the good guy?
Speaker 4: What's that expression? If you're a hammer, then everything starts
Speaker 4: to look like a nail. You know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it's such some of it is such specialized tactics,
Speaker 2: for like the like the breach and clear kind of thing,
Speaker 2: the close quarters tactics, the it's some of its goria
Speaker 2: style stuff that you would be carrying out. I it
Speaker 2: feels like the stuff you would need to stage a coup.
Speaker 3: We let's start a coup. It's not just a show.
Speaker 3: It's true. These insurrection tactics. Again, they are instituted and
Speaker 3: taught and to a degree institutionalized because they work. And
Speaker 3: there's a deeper thing here. If we're getting conspiratorial. Another
Speaker 3: cool thing about this is well, not cool, interesting, intellectually fascinating.
Speaker 3: If you are the source of the education, if you
Speaker 3: are the source of the insurrection tactics and the coup mechanisms,
Speaker 3: that also means that you can recognize when those are
Speaker 3: being applied somewhere else. So if if somebody studies at
Speaker 3: your school and then they go out into the streets
Speaker 3: of the world and they say Hey, guys, I learned
Speaker 3: something interesting about how you might seize a government facility.
Speaker 3: Then you are going to recognize it because you taught
Speaker 3: that game first, right, So there is I think an
Speaker 3: implicit added benefit to this. I mean that the problem
Speaker 3: is you can't control the gun, you can't give it
Speaker 3: a conscience, You cannot dictate people's minds. The Manchurian candidate
Speaker 3: has never successfully been created. So the same people trained
Speaker 3: by the US, by Canada, France, Italy, Germany, all the
Speaker 3: other ones, they can leverage their knowledge to become something
Speaker 3: very similar to the monsters they were originally trained to fight.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what happens when somebody you've trained like that and
Speaker 2: given an ideological seed, right, that then grows and you see,
Speaker 2: let's say you're in the upper echelons of a country like, oh,
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: Nepal.
Speaker 2: Okay, sure, let's say Nepaul, and you watch the governing
Speaker 2: the people who are governing that country. You can physically
Speaker 2: see and hear about and know the corruption that's happening
Speaker 2: at the upper levels. Is that person going to want
Speaker 2: to stop that corruption because you've gone through this training
Speaker 2: that specifically is anti corruption along with being anti terrorists
Speaker 2: and anti terrorism, and no question, because these things are
Speaker 2: linked together, right, And I'm not saying corruption at the
Speaker 2: highest levels. I'm not saying that that's right. I'm saying
Speaker 2: that that is probably pretty common in every country everywhere,
Speaker 2: always corruption of the upper levels. But if you've been
Speaker 2: trained specifically to see that, and then you've got ways
Speaker 2: to fight that thing and like ways to think about
Speaker 2: fighting that corruption, it just it feels like you're setting
Speaker 2: up a bunch of dominoes and then just waiting for
Speaker 2: one of them to fall eventually that you don't control.
Speaker 2: But you've set the dominoes up in a way that
Speaker 2: when that first one does fall, you know, you kind
Speaker 2: of understand the outcome.
Speaker 3: They control the chaos. Yeah, and there's also I mean
Speaker 3: the other side. First off, we're not taking shots at Nepal.
Speaker 3: They did have a coup in two thousand and five,
Speaker 3: but you know that's just because coups are very in
Speaker 3: fashion right now. They're like the hottest thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we could have said Gabon or Nigerer or Guinea
Speaker 2: or Burkina, Fosso or Chad or Molly or Sudan.
Speaker 3: Now keep it coming, drop the beatnal Oh.
Speaker 2: And that's just me naming a couple of names. According
Speaker 2: to Al Jazeera, in an article he run August thirtieth,
Speaker 2: there have been forty five coups on the African continent
Speaker 2: out of the fifty four nations since nineteen fifty. So
Speaker 2: forty five since nineteen fifty.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, and there were some. Some of the new
Speaker 3: coups that dropped recently are gonna surprise surprise, folks. Let's
Speaker 3: build on this historical fact, right, Let's build on the
Speaker 3: historical fact that, yes, people have trained what they thought
Speaker 3: of as sheep dogs to protect a herd from wolves.
Speaker 3: And in some cases they would have you believe that
Speaker 3: the dogs just joined up with the wolves. In any case,
Speaker 3: it's the sheep that suffer. That is an historical fact.
Speaker 3: If we branch into the realm of conspiracy, then we
Speaker 3: ask a more dangerous question. Our interrogation continues leading us
Speaker 3: to wonder, what if the same forces training these folks
Speaker 3: are picking and choosing suitable candidates to lead future coups.
Speaker 3: To your example, Matt, what if what if you are
Speaker 3: in those halls of power? Right, You've studied in Paris,
Speaker 3: you attended Fort Benning, you know you've you've got some
Speaker 3: bona fides. You hang out at a couple of training sessions,
Speaker 3: and one day, as your disillusion about the state of
Speaker 3: your nation, you get a phone call, right or you
Speaker 3: have an interesting conversation, maybe best to keep it off
Speaker 3: written record, And the next thing you know, you're getting
Speaker 3: a lot of support from a student group you never
Speaker 3: heard of. Right, you gotta You've got a suddenly very dedicated,
Speaker 3: very talented group of civilians, and they share your concerns
Speaker 3: about the nature of barium supplies. Right, excuse me, the spirit,
Speaker 3: the hearts and minds, whatever, Like what if? What if
Speaker 3: the United States and its allies are purposely creating sources
Speaker 3: of future conflict and instability with the thought being they
Speaker 3: can control the resulting chaos.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's what the picture looks like from here.
Speaker 3: We can't prove it.
Speaker 2: We can't prove any of that. It's there's a there's
Speaker 2: an intercept article. I think we're gonna get to where
Speaker 2: there's an interview. Nick, Yeah, dude, some of the quotations
Speaker 2: in there, and like the takeaway from that, God, I
Speaker 2: can't wait to discuss it together. Okay, go ahead.
Speaker 4: When we were talking to Rob, like I kind of
Speaker 4: naive on purpose, I guess, asked, but to what end
Speaker 4: does it make sense for us to be in the
Speaker 4: conflict in Vietnam when everyone knew it was a disaster
Speaker 4: and it wasn't going well, Like, why is it such
Speaker 4: a big deal to stay in there? And you know,
Speaker 4: he very kindly patted me on the head, young lad,
Speaker 4: and said, the military industrial complex, you dunce like that
Speaker 4: was created. It was manufactured. It was a realization that like,
Speaker 4: this is big business, and this is you know, if
Speaker 4: we can maintain circumstances where we're in control of this
Speaker 4: flow of money, largely money that doesn't even have to
Speaker 4: be accounted for, then we're going to enrich everybody that
Speaker 4: we know, and that you know, we'll have infinite favors forever.
Speaker 4: I know I'm oversimplifying it, but it's it's kind of wild.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it doesn't hurt that you're gonna have a
Speaker 2: lot of natural resources to extract in these specific strategic
Speaker 2: places as well.
Speaker 3: And at first this idea might sound trivial, right or abstract,
Speaker 3: we have to remember this does occur in the historical record.
Speaker 3: There was hard provable precedent for the use of proxies.
Speaker 3: You know, shut out Afghanistan. The Soviets did with the
Speaker 3: mujah deemed correct in that situation, and the US actively
Speaker 3: did the same thing. The trained, funded, otherwise empowered separatist
Speaker 3: proxy groups that later became their enemies when the geopolitical
Speaker 3: winds shifted. And look, we cannot accuse the United States
Speaker 3: of provably creating monsters with active malicious intention, especially when
Speaker 3: the simpler explanation may fall down to plain old negligence
Speaker 3: or factions within these agencies. And this alphabet soup I mean.
Speaker 3: And yet you know sam Mednik had this point. The
Speaker 3: military junta's ruling Mali and Burkina US are getting military
Speaker 3: support from Russia. Molly's also working with the Wagner group.
Speaker 3: Let's go to David Pugli's from the Ottawa Citizen. He writes,
Speaker 3: African soldiers trained by US and Allied special forces at
Speaker 3: Flintlock have track records of launching coups to remove civilian
Speaker 3: elected governments from power in their home nations. In July.
Speaker 3: He's talking, I believe in twenty twenty two. Oh no,
Speaker 3: he's talking in twenty twenty three. In July, military officers
Speaker 3: who had trained previous Flintlock exercises ousted Niger's democratically elected
Speaker 3: president at a coup data, there's a pickle. There's a
Speaker 3: pickle there.
Speaker 2: Well, and often there are there's a set of circumstances
Speaker 2: that someone from the outside I'm just as an example,
Speaker 2: me reading about the circumstances around a coup like that
Speaker 2: feel like, Oh, there's a series corruption there, or there
Speaker 2: was a real conflict of interest, or there's something right
Speaker 2: that's being talked about, and you go, oh, I could
Speaker 2: see maybe there was a coup in that country. I
Speaker 2: think maybe from the outside perspective, the way these coups
Speaker 2: get reported on, it's almost like it's justified sometimes, but
Speaker 2: I don't know. Often maybe I'm just personally confused about
Speaker 2: it because it does seem like there's something else at
Speaker 2: play behind the scenes that we don't get privy to.
Speaker 3: M m yeah, very black Monday murders, right, the vassals
Speaker 3: of the lattice and so on. Yeah. Like in recent
Speaker 3: years to that point, officers trained by the United States
Speaker 3: have launched seven successful coups and sometimes even get the
Speaker 3: coups on coups. Domestic US news doesn't often break a
Speaker 3: sweat reporting this. There are just too many celebrities to
Speaker 3: pay attention.
Speaker 4: To cous on Coups domestic US news. I was hoping
Speaker 4: there would be an additional end rhyme, but that was good.
Speaker 2: Enough for me.
Speaker 3: Oh thanks, Noel, Yeah, we could totally. Well, let's just
Speaker 3: drop a mixtape on it, like Coups on Coups. I
Speaker 3: think it will work. We also we owe a great
Speaker 3: deal of debt to investigative journalists who are all woefully
Speaker 3: underpaid and if they're honest, they're not working for institutional forces.
Speaker 3: This is someone we're very grateful to introduce Matt. You
Speaker 3: mentioned him earlier. Nick Urce writing for The Intercept in
Speaker 3: twenty twenty two, he has this guy put the work in,
Speaker 3: He put the time in, the blood, sweat and the
Speaker 3: boots on the ground. He was deep into the coup
Speaker 3: in Burkina fass Out and this coup that he spoke about,
Speaker 3: he was intensely studying. It was led by a guy
Speaker 3: named Paul Enri Sandalgo Damiba, and this guy studied in Paris,
Speaker 3: the Military College in Paris. He also has a degree
Speaker 3: in criminology from France and he spent a few years
Speaker 3: in the US for training. He went on to serve
Speaker 3: as the interim president of Burkina Fassau from January thirty
Speaker 3: first of twenty twenty two to September thirtieth of the
Speaker 3: same year. Things went sideways for him. He lost power,
Speaker 3: he was overthrown in. Can you guess, would anyone care
Speaker 3: to guess? Well, it wasn't an election, that's for sure. Yeah,
Speaker 3: like Kuzan kuz on KU's. So the results are obvious.
Speaker 3: There is a significant correlation between individuals trained by Western
Speaker 3: forces in things like exercise fliplock and then later cous
Speaker 3: coupdata you know, all day and so the question is
Speaker 3: we can't prove a conspiracy exist, but why does this
Speaker 3: pattern seem so strong? So maybe we end it here. Again,
Speaker 3: we cannot emphasize this enough. The personnel training individuals via
Speaker 3: flintlock and via other things like flintlock, it is not unique.
Speaker 3: They are not weird super villains. They're not hanging out,
Speaker 3: you know, like drinking the blood of the young or
Speaker 3: whatever and saying I can't wait to ruin lives. They
Speaker 3: are genuinely working to do quite the opposite, to save
Speaker 3: the lives of innocent people. But again, all the stuff
Speaker 3: they're teaching, it knows no real ethical constraint. You know,
Speaker 3: the window that you push someone out of. That window
Speaker 3: never asks you why the person is falling, you know
Speaker 3: what I mean, It's just a window, or it's just
Speaker 3: a gun. And these things are measured in terms of
Speaker 3: practical application rather than philosophical coziness and comfort. So is
Speaker 3: the United States and its Western allies. Are they creating
Speaker 3: the enemies they may fight in the future. If so,
Speaker 3: are they doing this on purpose? That's a pretty complicated question,
Speaker 3: And the problem with that as a conspiracy is that
Speaker 3: it describes a lot of long term planning aptitude that
Speaker 3: historically doesn't exist. I'm just gonna say it, Yeah, a
Speaker 3: lot of the conspiracies are just covering up previous mistakes.
Speaker 2: To me, it feels more alike inception, philosophical inception, and
Speaker 2: that's really I think that's really all you have to
Speaker 2: do in these train on the ground exactly how to
Speaker 2: the tactics to get it done, and then get the
Speaker 2: top people who control the people who can do those things,
Speaker 2: like train them in the philosophy of the way things
Speaker 2: should be so that when those individuals observe things like
Speaker 2: government corruption, all that stuff occurring, they can actually use
Speaker 2: the tools that they have at their disposal to stop
Speaker 2: that from happening.
Speaker 3: I wonder what kind of to the point about ideology,
Speaker 3: I wonder what kind of spirational books are given right
Speaker 3: on the syllabus on the heart time flips? Is it
Speaker 3: tracts well? Is it like eyeing rand at the shrugged?
Speaker 3: Is it laws of war or laws of power?
Speaker 4: Is it sun sou?
Speaker 3: Is it chicken soup for the teenage soul soul?
Speaker 2: Perhaps it's I was watching a video. It was titled
Speaker 2: Flintlock Exercise. It was posted like in twenty sixteen, and
Speaker 2: there's this guy Ltc. William D. Rose Road Special Operations
Speaker 2: Command Africa. He he, guys, I just want to see
Speaker 2: what you think about this. He says. This quote an
Speaker 2: African proverb that they our partners like to quote often
Speaker 2: is when your neighbor's house is on fire, you helped
Speaker 2: to put it out in order to safeguard your own,
Speaker 2: which sounds very good to me, right. That sounds like, yes,
Speaker 2: this is cooperation across countries for the greater good. If
Speaker 2: somebody's house is on fire wanted to burn, mind, so yeah, selfishly,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna help you put it out. But also I
Speaker 2: care about you enough. I think it sounds really good
Speaker 2: to me. Just wonder what you guys think about that
Speaker 2: as like a part of the philosophy that's being taught.
Speaker 3: I watched the video as well. I saw it via
Speaker 3: who is this dev grew five O two two.
Speaker 2: That was the accessible one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that's the that's the that's the one you
Speaker 3: can find most easily on YouTube. In this in this conversation,
Speaker 3: I would say again, these people are acting in good faith,
Speaker 3: these instructors, these veterans who have survived some crazy thing.
Speaker 3: This is also an opportunity, a much needed opportunity for
Speaker 3: special forces to acquire training and experience. There's a reason
Speaker 3: this exists. It's maybe multiple birds one stone situation, right,
Speaker 3: But but are all the birds they're aiming for? The
Speaker 3: birds the Americans and the global civilian population want to hit.
Speaker 4: They're the ones that, as long as they're birds, hit
Speaker 4: them all day long. I'm sorry, guys, I'm out of
Speaker 4: the metaphor into literal birds.
Speaker 2: Well that's fine. We know you feel about birds and.
Speaker 4: All I know, it's my brand. I got to say
Speaker 4: it every now and again.
Speaker 2: Just along with this other training they're also providing, like
Speaker 2: civil aid right, or so you might call a humanitarian aid,
Speaker 2: working with clean water sources in smaller villages, working with
Speaker 2: hospitals to get them up to date in like updated
Speaker 2: and orphanages. Even this is all according to that same
Speaker 2: person that we were quoting here, Lieutenant William D. Rose.
Speaker 2: And they're also working with outreach activities, like numerous outreach
Speaker 2: activities in the small areas where they're having the flintlock exercises. Again,
Speaker 2: in my it's good, it's they're helping people, right, But
Speaker 2: you're also painting a picture of where this help is
Speaker 2: coming from, and you know the type of help that
Speaker 2: you're going to provide. It just all it builds on
Speaker 2: that Cold war thing to me in some weird way, you.
Speaker 3: Know, I agree with you, and i'd like I proposedly
Speaker 3: end with a question and something that's bothering me more
Speaker 3: and more often for many years now. Yes, waging war
Speaker 3: on terrorist however, defined waging war on the quote unquote
Speaker 3: bad guys, hostile states. That's all well and good, But
Speaker 3: what about the private industries that enable the chaos? What
Speaker 3: about those who profit by the existence of war, regardless
Speaker 3: of victory or failure toward a specific side. These are
Speaker 3: often global conglomerates. They make money either way. So what
Speaker 3: about waging war on those corporations proven private industries doing hard?
Speaker 3: Will the United States or a similar power ever start
Speaker 3: a school like that?
Speaker 2: No, No, that's.
Speaker 4: Only called aerarchi. It would be burning down all that
Speaker 4: we've built. We've worked so hard to get to where
Speaker 4: we are. Why would you want to do that? What
Speaker 4: are you some kind of nihilists?
Speaker 3: I just want like an ltc rows of some sort
Speaker 3: saying you know, like far in the future, saying you know,
Speaker 3: little known fact. We actually train the Halliburtons once upon
Speaker 3: a time and the Halliburton Haliburtons right right, right, folks.
Speaker 3: There's so much more we did not get to. We
Speaker 3: have endeavored to be even handed about this, to point
Speaker 3: out things we cannot prove, to point out patterns that
Speaker 3: do exist. And most importantly, we want to hear from you.
Speaker 3: Let us know your thoughts, not just about things like
Speaker 3: exercise flintlock, but about other similar mechanisms throughout the world.
Speaker 3: Shout out to Dulu technology, et cetera, et cetera. We
Speaker 3: try to be easy to find online.
Speaker 4: Oh boy, do we ever? And I'd like to think
Speaker 4: we succeed You can find us at the handle Conspiracy
Speaker 4: Stuff on XFKA, Twitter, Facebook. We have our Here's where
Speaker 4: it Gets Crazy Facebook group where you can join in
Speaker 4: on the conversation around episodes. People still go to Facebook.
Speaker 2: I hope you do.
Speaker 4: It's a good group, good people there, and we also
Speaker 4: are that on YouTube or Conspiracy Stuff show on Instagram
Speaker 4: and TikTok.
Speaker 2: We have a phone number and a voicemail system. Call
Speaker 2: one eight three three STDWYTK, give yourself a cool nickname,
Speaker 2: and then you've got three minutes. Say whatever you'd like.
Speaker 2: We're excited to hear from you when you do call in.
Speaker 2: Please let us know if we can use your voice
Speaker 2: and message on one of our listener mail episodes. It's
Speaker 2: totally fine. If you don't want to, just say hey,
Speaker 2: please don't use this. If you've got more to send,
Speaker 2: maybe links, maybe attachments, all that kind of stuff, why
Speaker 2: not instead send us an email.
Speaker 3: We are conspiracy at iHeart dot com.
Speaker 2: Stuff they Don't want you to Know is a production
Speaker 2: of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.