Speaker 1: Yo, what's beef? Besides what Americans eat too much of?
Speaker 1: It's also when you're not safe in the streets. That's
Speaker 1: a Piggie small song. I want to talk about beef
Speaker 1: this episode in the hood, as in in geopolitics, sometimes
Speaker 1: it's hard to imagine the situation being anything else. You
Speaker 1: never question where some of the norms kind of came from.
Speaker 1: What is conservative and liberal? Have we always been this binary?
Speaker 1: You know what do we mean by right wing and
Speaker 1: left wing? Well, that's actually came from the French Revolution
Speaker 1: in the part that's where we get those terms. It
Speaker 1: is basically where the side of the room able sitting on.
Speaker 1: So it came from somewhere we just think as normal.
Speaker 1: One of those things is the situation in the Middle East.
Speaker 1: It's just all it's been this way or has it
Speaker 1: always been this way? No, So today I want to
Speaker 1: introduce to you a reoccurring type of episode we're gonna have,
Speaker 1: which is not so much the same format of just like,
Speaker 1: let's look at the headlines and let me help you
Speaker 1: understand the headlines. Some of those headlines don't make sense
Speaker 1: unless you have context, unless you have backstory. You ever
Speaker 1: thought about why crips or even beefing with blood? Where
Speaker 1: did the blue and the red come from? Like? Why
Speaker 1: is this just what it is? Why? And with the
Speaker 1: you know, killing of Costum Sulamani, which was a name
Speaker 1: that nobody ever said unless you was really embedded into
Speaker 1: the situation. Americans really know this guy was, But we
Speaker 1: also knew that we've been in a forever war, that
Speaker 1: this nine eleven issue in two thousand one really didn't
Speaker 1: start this stuff. Man, our movies since the eighties have
Speaker 1: had the bad guy come from the Middle East before
Speaker 1: Daddy came from Russia or in any action movie we've had.
Speaker 1: It's Cold War? What Cold War came from somewhere? The
Speaker 1: conflict in the Middle East? Man, that came from somewhere.
Speaker 1: You have to ask itself, how did we even get
Speaker 1: here today? We're gonna figure out this beef You're already backstory?
Speaker 1: What is beef? So who were putting on the hood
Speaker 1: today is someone who actually needs no putting on because
Speaker 1: he earned his own stripes in his own way, the
Speaker 1: founder and CEO of Preemptive Love and someone who I
Speaker 1: have recently joined the border directors with. This is amazing, Hey,
Speaker 1: my man, Jeremy Cortney y'all make some noise. Jeremy Cortney,
Speaker 1: what's out, Jeremy, Yeah, buddy. So this is a special
Speaker 1: episode which has been introduced and explained before you got
Speaker 1: on this call. I don't need to go back through
Speaker 1: it again, but I'm gonna start with this little story.
Speaker 1: I was out at this thing in the mountains of Utah,
Speaker 1: just this beautiful just ski resort with people that I'm like,
Speaker 1: at least four and five tax brackets below them, but
Speaker 1: it was an amazing thing. So I was talking about
Speaker 1: the work Preemptive Love does. I got my homeboy and
Speaker 1: that lives in Iraq, and I was like, man, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna go visit that food pretty soon. Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: just want to see what's going on over there. And
Speaker 1: I was like, yeah, they work in Syria to at
Speaker 1: some point I want to like pull up to Syria.
Speaker 1: And the people in the room were like, Yo, that's crazy, man,
Speaker 1: You're gonna You're really gonna go to Syria. And I
Speaker 1: was like yeah, you know, and then uh. One sister
Speaker 1: was like why, why what's going on in Syria? And
Speaker 1: at first I was like, are you serious? And then
Speaker 1: we were so the whole room was like yo, it's
Speaker 1: a civil war, like a war than right, he can
Speaker 1: buy your way out of even awareness, dude. But wait,
Speaker 1: it gets even better. This, this gets even better. She
Speaker 1: looks at me and she goes, oh, oh, you mean
Speaker 1: that war whatever? And then I was like what. And
Speaker 1: then it turns out to her friends go, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're from Lebanon, so she was born and raised in Beirut.
Speaker 1: So she's just like what it's like. I was like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, it's all relative, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: She was like, oh, oh that war. I thought she
Speaker 1: was telling me something new. I thought you were talking
Speaker 1: about something that ain't happened before that I haven't lived
Speaker 1: through my whole life. This immediately took me back to
Speaker 1: when I got sort of bust into a different elementary
Speaker 1: school that was outside of my neighborhood, outside of where
Speaker 1: I grew up in, and I would say hey on
Speaker 1: the weekend. Kids would be like, hey, what are you
Speaker 1: doing the weekend? I was like going visit my grandma
Speaker 1: and there was like where does she live? And I
Speaker 1: was like, my grandma lives in south central l A.
Speaker 1: And they would say are you serious? Like really you're
Speaker 1: gonna are you okay? Like you're gonna go there, And
Speaker 1: I remember just being so shocked as to like I
Speaker 1: don't understand what this is my grandma's house, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go visit. What are you scared? Like scared
Speaker 1: of what? Like just so having no idea what their
Speaker 1: reference point was and why they were so blown away
Speaker 1: that I didn't think twice I was like I don't understand,
Speaker 1: like that's that's where I live, Like excuse me, you know, um,
Speaker 1: So it just it really took me back to that
Speaker 1: and this thought to myself, man like when you're outside
Speaker 1: of something one you really don't see that like, okay,
Speaker 1: normal life is also happening, right, And then to life
Speaker 1: wasn't always like this, but you learned to adjust in
Speaker 1: your head you kind of feel like if this is
Speaker 1: all you know, the thought never crossed your mind, like
Speaker 1: how did we get here? So as we all, as
Speaker 1: we start every episode, I'm gonna ask you first a
Speaker 1: question about just like street life, which I don't expect
Speaker 1: you to know, but if you do, that be rad.
Speaker 1: So the origins of the Crypts and Bloods, any any
Speaker 1: clue give it to me how I got Well a
Speaker 1: little background story about that and then how they started
Speaker 1: beef And I don't want to get into a lot
Speaker 1: of it, but I just want you to know. And
Speaker 1: everybody knows that, like Inner City Los Angeles wasn't always
Speaker 1: liked it. There was a start. The start was in
Speaker 1: the beginning of the seventies. A lot of people don't
Speaker 1: know there was a there's a direct connection between the
Speaker 1: Black Panthers and the original crypt gangs. These were essentially
Speaker 1: the little brothers of FBI destroyed Black Panthers, who essentially
Speaker 1: in the same way that the Panthers looked at their
Speaker 1: forefathers in the Civil rights movement, saying, hey, what you
Speaker 1: guys did didn't work. Man, Just cool, thank you. But
Speaker 1: I think this needs to be we need to take
Speaker 1: this a step further. And that's kind of like the
Speaker 1: mindset of this of the Panthers, right, and then after
Speaker 1: the FBI systematically destroyed the Panthers, you have their younger brothers. Okay,
Speaker 1: y'all try to like this, you try to like this.
Speaker 1: Forget it. We need to take matters in our own
Speaker 1: aunts Like, no one's gonna take care of us. It's
Speaker 1: never gonna work. We need to start doing our things
Speaker 1: trying to get the laws change. The alls aren't fair,
Speaker 1: the laws will never be fair. We need to just
Speaker 1: take matters in our own hands. Um. This was at
Speaker 1: Fremont High School, the first crip gang, which a little
Speaker 1: connection to myself is had I lived with my grandmother
Speaker 1: the high school I went to. And it started off
Speaker 1: as just a collection of neighborhoods kind of sort of
Speaker 1: policing themselves and and then enter drugs, inter crack sales
Speaker 1: and activities and extortions and all these other things. And
Speaker 1: then eventually these like neighborhood autonomous gangs essentially started beefing
Speaker 1: among each other. Then down in Compton there was an
Speaker 1: area called Compton Crips, and then there was a street
Speaker 1: called Piru, And on Piru there was a group of
Speaker 1: young men that were like, look, we needed now we
Speaker 1: need to not only have protection from the police, we
Speaker 1: need to have protection from these other neighborhoods. And they
Speaker 1: formed themselves as sort of like anti crip and became
Speaker 1: the Blood. So there's there's there's a there's a history
Speaker 1: of of seeing like the sort of the expansion of
Speaker 1: the crips is what kind of created the bloods. Pep'm
Speaker 1: saying it is like you you were. You assumed too
Speaker 1: much autonomy and too much freedom. At some point somebody's like, look, man,
Speaker 1: you can't. We didn't all agree that you the police
Speaker 1: of the region. We kind of want somebody some of
Speaker 1: the street money too, and it kind of a beef
Speaker 1: in every sense. Now that obviously that's the shortest possible
Speaker 1: simplified version. Basically that's the story. Now, what does that
Speaker 1: have to do with geopolitics? If you're anywhere around me
Speaker 1: and Jeremy's age, you've in a forever war, forever war
Speaker 1: that in our minds from when we were in elementary
Speaker 1: school and we did Desert Shield and Desert Storm all
Speaker 1: the way to night eleven and just like and then
Speaker 1: this warrant terror either way it was some region on
Speaker 1: the other side of the world was the problem that
Speaker 1: we all experience, my man. Jeremy moved into that. We
Speaker 1: need a little backstory. That's what Jeremy's here for. So, Jeremy,
Speaker 1: what's wrong with the Middle East? What's wrong with the
Speaker 1: Middle East? Man? What a way to serve it up?
Speaker 1: I know, it's just like what's wrong with the hood? Like, uh,
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, let's let's be honest. There's a lot
Speaker 1: wrong with the Middle East. And I think one of
Speaker 1: the one of the critiques of those who make so
Speaker 1: much teak these days is that basically we get polarized
Speaker 1: into these camps of either we blame it all on
Speaker 1: the West, or we blame it all on the rest.
Speaker 1: You know, that's kind of the way that some of
Speaker 1: the conversation is framed up. And so it's either all
Speaker 1: their fault, the imperialists, the colonizers, the slave traders and
Speaker 1: slave owners and you know, whoever set us down this road,
Speaker 1: or it's it's all their fault. You know. The people
Speaker 1: who got liberated, they got free, they got their chance,
Speaker 1: they got their shot, and what they do with it,
Speaker 1: they blew it. They had thirty year dictatorships, they had terrorism,
Speaker 1: they had corruption, they had We've given them all this aid, military, humanitarian, political,
Speaker 1: we've tried to build their nations, We've you know, and
Speaker 1: they blew it. And if it weren't for those guys,
Speaker 1: whichever side you stand on, then things would have just
Speaker 1: been fine. And so I want to having lived through
Speaker 1: some cycles of violence and having lived in this part
Speaker 1: of the world for sixteen plus years now, I want
Speaker 1: to be an honest broker. I think there's there's truth
Speaker 1: on both sides of that conversation. Um, it does matter
Speaker 1: profoundly where you jump into the river as to how
Speaker 1: you view or tell the story. You know, I don't
Speaker 1: know if it's worth I don't know how many hundreds
Speaker 1: of years back it's worth going to get the story right.
Speaker 1: That's good man. That's that's in the same way that
Speaker 1: like where you want to start when you talk about
Speaker 1: like inner city gangs, Well, do you want to start
Speaker 1: at the slave ship? Do you want to start at
Speaker 1: you know, at reconstruction? Do you want to start at
Speaker 1: Jim Crow? Like, where do you want to start? That's
Speaker 1: good man. And so it's like wherever you jump in,
Speaker 1: is it all police brutality or is it all means
Speaker 1: a survival? That's good anyway? Going well, and you know, frankly,
Speaker 1: it matters profoundly. I think you and I both come
Speaker 1: from Christian backgrounds where we've seen a lot of people
Speaker 1: just throw up their hands. They go all the way
Speaker 1: back to the beginning quote unquote, and they just throw
Speaker 1: up their hands, go, well, say what are you gonna do?
Speaker 1: And it's kind of it's kind of the ultimate trump card.
Speaker 1: It's like, well, there's nothing we can do about these
Speaker 1: things because humanity is ultimately depraved. And I see that
Speaker 1: as a really gross version of going back to who
Speaker 1: threw the first punch? Like that. That doesn't work for me.
Speaker 1: I find that deeply unhelpful. So we gotta jump in
Speaker 1: somewhere on any conflict, on any conversation. I think the
Speaker 1: historical contextual approach is always very helpful, and it's something
Speaker 1: that frankly, I think around the world right now, we're
Speaker 1: seeing leaders who are not very adapt who aren't very
Speaker 1: skilled at knowing their history and knowing how to wield it. Well,
Speaker 1: we've sort of been reduced to a kind of populists
Speaker 1: pugilistic leadership where whoever screams the loudest and whoever threatens
Speaker 1: to punch the other guy in the face the toughest,
Speaker 1: they seem to be winning or at least ascending in
Speaker 1: politics around the world. So so, so take us back, though,
Speaker 1: take us back to the first um who hit first? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Just like yeah, and then even how America got involved
Speaker 1: in the first place. So so if you could take
Speaker 1: us back to Okay, so we've done an episode on
Speaker 1: the Red Couch podcast about the CIA's involvement in taking
Speaker 1: down of like Moza Deck, our interest in having a
Speaker 1: player there in that part of the in that region
Speaker 1: that's sort of on our side sort of How just
Speaker 1: the the disorienting destabilization when someone puts their hands in
Speaker 1: in in a place where you were used to being
Speaker 1: able to sort of exact um resources from and then
Speaker 1: somebody finally says like hold up now, Like I don't
Speaker 1: it's okay for you to just just be taking our
Speaker 1: stuff here? And how that messes up our own sort
Speaker 1: of status. You know, that was three So we we
Speaker 1: went all the way back there, But I know that
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways, that sold a lot of
Speaker 1: seed that brought us to that first Iran Iraq war
Speaker 1: in the eighties. Maybe take us back to that, like
Speaker 1: to that Irana Rock war where that start? Why is
Speaker 1: Kuwait involved? You know when Kuwait I'm um, I'm fast
Speaker 1: forwarding here that I know you'll get to. But there
Speaker 1: was a moment where what we would call affiliation happened
Speaker 1: where Kuwait was just really just trying to get some
Speaker 1: oil rigs through through the seas, would look to America
Speaker 1: to be like, yo, can you help us like not
Speaker 1: get shot at we said no. They were like, okay, cool,
Speaker 1: what's up with Russia? Though, Maybe Russia help us get through, right,
Speaker 1: And we was like Holla, holla, ho, We'll help you,
Speaker 1: will help you, And we just essentially put our flag
Speaker 1: on their boat. It's something that I've experienced in my
Speaker 1: own life where someone just sort of like stamped their
Speaker 1: safety on me in in a sense of like I
Speaker 1: didn't want to be a part of none of this anyway,
Speaker 1: but I just found myself caught in the middle of
Speaker 1: something that I didn't asked to be caught up. Maybe
Speaker 1: take us take us back to that Irana Rock War
Speaker 1: and how all that stuff started happening. Yeah, So the
Speaker 1: the Iran I Rock War was born out of about
Speaker 1: twenty seven years years of repressive regime in Iran that
Speaker 1: was propped up by the United States. So, um, we
Speaker 1: go back to nineteen fifty three when the United States
Speaker 1: partnered up with the UK really on behalf of a
Speaker 1: fully UK agenda to overthrow the democratically elected Mosadak who
Speaker 1: had who really was leading a populist nationalist movement of
Speaker 1: Iranians who were opposed to the ways in which the
Speaker 1: British had struck a deal with a previous leader of
Speaker 1: of Iran to extract oil out of Iran from like
Speaker 1: a hundred year concession, and the oil deal was it
Speaker 1: was really bad for Iran, really bad for the people
Speaker 1: of Iran. And the Anglo Persian Oil Company was was
Speaker 1: involved in a lot of exploitation of Iranians for the
Speaker 1: sake of propping up the British fleet throughout World War
Speaker 1: One and then on into World War Two. After all
Speaker 1: these years of living under this oppressive corporate sort of
Speaker 1: state sponsored oil concession, this guy named Mohammed Mosaduk rises
Speaker 1: up inside Iran to lead a nationalist movement and said,
Speaker 1: very much on the face of it, I'm going to
Speaker 1: nationalize our oil fields. I'm gonna get back for us
Speaker 1: what was ours, our birthright was essentially sold out from
Speaker 1: under us by our previously corrupt Shaw. I'm going to
Speaker 1: get it back. You elect me. I'm going to get
Speaker 1: our land back, and I'm not going to let the
Speaker 1: British occupy our land in the name of corporate exploits anymore. Well,
Speaker 1: obviously it was very controversial. Brits tried to get him
Speaker 1: ousted from power. Truman wasn't interested. But when Eisenhower came
Speaker 1: to power. Eisenhower's CIA and State Department partnered with the
Speaker 1: Brits to oust Mosadak So when they oust him, they
Speaker 1: bring back to power. Are this show, which is essentially
Speaker 1: they're they're king. And he goes on to rule for
Speaker 1: another twenty seven years. But now during part two of
Speaker 1: his reign, he's more repressive, you know, he's he's already
Speaker 1: had to hit put In on him once more, and uh,
Speaker 1: he comes back with a very heavy hand. And so
Speaker 1: for the rest of his reign, he really drives the
Speaker 1: country even further into the ground, drives the people further
Speaker 1: into the ground, and people are experiencing his brutishness for
Speaker 1: a couple of decades. In the late seventies, then um,
Speaker 1: there was a rising movement against him that culminated in
Speaker 1: what we now call the Islamic Revolution, and ayatollahm preacher
Speaker 1: took over the took over the country with his his people.
Speaker 1: He he basically had a tape cassette ministry. He was
Speaker 1: the first, he was the first podcaster of Iran, so
Speaker 1: you know, and and with his his tape cassette sermons
Speaker 1: that he was blasting out from safety in Iraq and Paris,
Speaker 1: he mobilized millions for a while. He wasn't even there.
Speaker 1: I didn't even know that he wasn't even in the
Speaker 1: hood day he had he had already fled the Shaw
Speaker 1: at one point, and Uh through this tape literally a
Speaker 1: tape cassette ministry of his serbans. He mobilized this army
Speaker 1: and the people helped oust the Shaw, and so then
Speaker 1: the Islamic Revolution was on. And essentially Saddam Hussein, who
Speaker 1: was a real military man, UH, guy who believed in
Speaker 1: state power and state institutions. Next door, he sees this
Speaker 1: preacher now suddenly the leader of a whole country, and
Speaker 1: he's like, I can take this guy. They got a preacher,
Speaker 1: Now I can take this guy. And so then he
Speaker 1: he invade this contested plot of land that has been
Speaker 1: at issue between Iran and Iraq for a while, and
Speaker 1: the preacher, the preacher sends his foot soldiers with a
Speaker 1: theological zeal against Iraq, and then we get this eight
Speaker 1: year war. Saddam bit off more than he could chew.
Speaker 1: He underestimated the preacher and it kind of becomes the
Speaker 1: preacher versus the commander in chief and resulted in hundreds
Speaker 1: of thousands of deaths over eight years. So California got
Speaker 1: the best weed in the world. Right, so we know
Speaker 1: that California grows the best wheat. California has been supplying Atlanta.
Speaker 1: It's weed. Atlanta been buying California weed, uh and really
Speaker 1: only paying us maybe keeping eighty All of a sudden,
Speaker 1: California go, um, I don't know if this is a
Speaker 1: fair deal, Like ya ate like it grow here? Like
Speaker 1: who agreed to this? Well, one of our big homies
Speaker 1: agreed to it. At some point a new young dude
Speaker 1: is like yo type out man, like y'all, y'all just
Speaker 1: can't keep just getting this stuff at this cheap and
Speaker 1: we out here struggling, you know, trying to run stuff
Speaker 1: down from the dog on border from Mexico. You know,
Speaker 1: we're running into the police and the federalies and carrying
Speaker 1: on like we're going through too much when the stuff
Speaker 1: grow here, like you're trying to fund your mission on
Speaker 1: our stuff and we're only getting pennies from what this
Speaker 1: ain't right Atlanta say, oh no, we can't have that.
Speaker 1: You ain't gonna mess this up. So even though this
Speaker 1: little homie is starting to take over l A and
Speaker 1: be like no, no, no no, no, no, you need to
Speaker 1: pay us I just do. We're like, no, Atlanta's going no,
Speaker 1: we can't have that. So Atlanta talk to their big
Speaker 1: homies in d C and they like he because you know,
Speaker 1: this's gonna mess up our bag. D C comes down
Speaker 1: and says, okay, let me let me. Let me go
Speaker 1: ahead and help you out with this. So d C
Speaker 1: in Atlanta make sure they take out the young homie
Speaker 1: that was trying to stop l A from getting the
Speaker 1: money that's just due from them, right, and then they
Speaker 1: put the big homie that put the original deal in
Speaker 1: place back in charge. But that guy is terrible and
Speaker 1: that's not who the hood wants. But we can't help
Speaker 1: it because Atlanta in d C done already has decided
Speaker 1: that that's their boy. So you out of luck. Then
Speaker 1: eventually some hotep dude boy to raise in l A
Speaker 1: and it's like no, this, no, this needs to change.
Speaker 1: So this hotep get everybody in l A back together.
Speaker 1: Some Nation of Islam hotel dude talking about the black
Speaker 1: man is God gets l A back and get their
Speaker 1: stuff together, right, But then Long Beach look up and
Speaker 1: he go, wait a minute, l A ran by a hotel.
Speaker 1: Now oh, I could take this fool out back to Germany.
Speaker 1: The racket wasn't merely somebody else's drugs, somebody else's extortion.
Speaker 1: It was birthright. I mean, it was like it was
Speaker 1: the land beneath your feet. It was the resources beneath
Speaker 1: your feet. Like it wasn't imported from Colombia, it was
Speaker 1: it was your resources. From an American perspective, we've just
Speaker 1: kind of looked over there and been like, well, all
Speaker 1: your languages sound the same. It just you all look
Speaker 1: like the same people to us, so we can't tell
Speaker 1: the difference between a Saudi Arabia, a very secular leader
Speaker 1: in Saddam Hussein, a cleric in Aetola Camani. We just
Speaker 1: looked at them and just went, y'all all Islamic. So
Speaker 1: we don't we don't understand none of it. You know.
Speaker 1: I think there have been people like that, decision makers
Speaker 1: like that. I think there have been voters like that
Speaker 1: in the in the night. If we go back to
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty three, a little bit earlier, when Truman was
Speaker 1: hit up by the Brits. Initially, initially the Brits approached
Speaker 1: the US and said, hey, they're taking our oil. You
Speaker 1: gotta help us, and Truman was like, no, that's your problem.
Speaker 1: I'm not I'm not looking to start a war because
Speaker 1: they're taking your oil. You deal with your own imperial issues.
Speaker 1: But then the Brits savvaed up and after Truman was out, Eisenhower,
Speaker 1: a military man was in. They tried again and they
Speaker 1: approached the Dullest brothers, one of them heading up Cia,
Speaker 1: the other one heading up State. The Brits said they
Speaker 1: tried a totally different strategy this time. They approached it
Speaker 1: through a lens of American self interest, not British interest,
Speaker 1: and they said most of the deck is a communist
Speaker 1: and when you look at how close Iran is to Russia,
Speaker 1: USSR this whole situation like, you guys got to act.
Speaker 1: You gotta act fast because if Iran falls then it's
Speaker 1: it's game over. That's the whole thing. So we're in
Speaker 1: Cold War era mindset right now. And they really got us.
Speaker 1: They really got us on that one by saying Iran
Speaker 1: is gonna fall under Russians, you know, sphere And that
Speaker 1: worked and so we overthrew most of deck, not because
Speaker 1: of Islam, We overthrew most of that because of Russia
Speaker 1: or Soviet and that's sort of like fear that someone's
Speaker 1: gonna fly a red rag in front of a blue
Speaker 1: rag has driven at least in my lifetime, from my
Speaker 1: father being in Vietnam all the way to like, you know,
Speaker 1: my it's yeah, it's a very similar sort of it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all the way, Yeah, all the way to like my
Speaker 1: eldest daughter's birth father who was in afghan Understand, you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying, Like, just that fear that you're
Speaker 1: gonna fly a different flag which apparently puts me in danger.
Speaker 1: It's just it's it just seems like it just landed
Speaker 1: us in this forever war, which is why it's so
Speaker 1: important for us to know people outside of our own
Speaker 1: worldview and outside of our It's what helps inoculate us
Speaker 1: a little bit too hysteria. I mean, there are real fears.
Speaker 1: I'm not. I'm not. I would not have been a fan,
Speaker 1: even from today's vantage point, looking back on history, I
Speaker 1: wouldn't have been a fan of Iran falling under the
Speaker 1: Soviet sphere. That probably would have been a very bad thing.
Speaker 1: I think the more needful question was is that a likelihood? Um?
Speaker 1: Is that really what most of us preaching is that
Speaker 1: really what's going on here. We managed to find a
Speaker 1: way into Iran to manipulate of the mosques and newspapers
Speaker 1: across Iran to tell the story we wanted them to tell.
Speaker 1: We owned the streets in n and we got them
Speaker 1: to tell the story that we wanted them to tell.
Speaker 1: So if we could do that, why couldn't we go
Speaker 1: in and listen more carefully and understand is this a
Speaker 1: pro Soviet movement that's really happening, or is it a
Speaker 1: pro Iranian movement it's really happening an anti imperialist because
Speaker 1: the Soviet was just another imperial force, and there's a
Speaker 1: pretty strong argument that most of that wasn't looking to
Speaker 1: fall under the sway of another empire. Yeah, a lot
Speaker 1: of times, like just the comparison between like you said,
Speaker 1: these are just these are your as far as as
Speaker 1: far as the Iranian is concerned. It's like all of
Speaker 1: y'all are problems in my coming up again at inner
Speaker 1: city stuff like crib blood, cop Chlo. It's just like
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, man, like y'all all
Speaker 1: the same. Either way, you've made it hard for me
Speaker 1: to walk home home, play football in the streets outside,
Speaker 1: like it's just at the end of the day and
Speaker 1: whether it was four streets over when I was riding
Speaker 1: home on my bike, somebody took my bike and I
Speaker 1: walked into the house, and the congregate of young men
Speaker 1: next door to me took a personal offense that a
Speaker 1: little kid on the street got robbed, that they decided
Speaker 1: to get up and go get my bike back. So
Speaker 1: now all of a sudden, I'm affiliated with this, you know.
Speaker 1: And it's not necessarily I asked for it. It's just, man,
Speaker 1: you was willing to go get my bike back, you know.
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna have an affinity towards these guys what
Speaker 1: they live next door. I mean I've known them forever
Speaker 1: and then too like they got my bike back. You know,
Speaker 1: a situation to where someone just knocks on the door
Speaker 1: and it's just like, you know what set you claim?
Speaker 1: And it's like, well, which one of what do I
Speaker 1: need to tell you that's gonna stop you from hurting
Speaker 1: my family? Yes? What do I gonna tell you to
Speaker 1: make you go away? Right? Family? So all that to say,
Speaker 1: what makes a radical, what makes a what to make
Speaker 1: a what makes an Islamic? Is streamless? Like, what what
Speaker 1: makes that if you imagine if you imagine a pyramid.
Speaker 1: I've I've often described the violence that we kind of
Speaker 1: just lived through here in Iraq a couple of years
Speaker 1: with the rise of Isis, you know, taken over a
Speaker 1: third of Syria, a third of Iraq. We ourselves were
Speaker 1: on the front lines of some of that violence as
Speaker 1: as Isis was being pushed back. Our teams have been
Speaker 1: shot at and bombed trying to feed and free people
Speaker 1: from this situation, and it has I've seen the way
Speaker 1: words and policies have turned people more and more violent
Speaker 1: in ways that they didn't have to be. I've seen
Speaker 1: the ways that an effort to protect ourselves from those
Speaker 1: people has ended up being kind of a self fulfilling
Speaker 1: prophecy for those people, where they're like, oh, well, if
Speaker 1: you're set against me, then I guess I have to
Speaker 1: be set against you just to just to survive. And
Speaker 1: then they become the very thing that we said they were.
Speaker 1: So if you envisioned a peer pramid, I think of
Speaker 1: it like this, the base of the pyramid. So if
Speaker 1: you look at that hood, that city, that place, that
Speaker 1: territory um, and you look at the population there, if
Speaker 1: you're an outsider, kind of like they were talking about
Speaker 1: your grandma's house, like you might be inclined to look
Speaker 1: at that whole Long Beach or that whole Compton or
Speaker 1: whatever as like that's all gangland. Meaning every single person
Speaker 1: involved is a quote unquote radical. They believe the thing.
Speaker 1: They're they're all in on it. But that's not I
Speaker 1: don't think that's true. That's not that doesn't spar out
Speaker 1: with what I've seen. Um the base of the pyramid
Speaker 1: are people that I sometimes call the conquered. It's the biggest,
Speaker 1: widest um swath of people. They are the conquered. A
Speaker 1: level up from that, a slightly smaller group you might
Speaker 1: call the collaborators. Yeah, okay, there you go. So there
Speaker 1: are people who might like point you in the right direction.
Speaker 1: They're not they're not believers, but they're they're engaged in
Speaker 1: some kind of way, usually just to like not get
Speaker 1: beat up themselves, not get their family killed themselves in
Speaker 1: our Isis situation. I think these were some of the
Speaker 1: Sunni Arabs. Isis rolls up into town, they say, where
Speaker 1: are the Christians or where are the Yazitis? And some
Speaker 1: Sunni Arab dad will point to his neighbor's house and
Speaker 1: say it's not me, man, We're sunny just like you.
Speaker 1: It's these guys next door. He probably doesn't hate his neighbor.
Speaker 1: He probably doesn't want to see genocide happen to the Yazities.
Speaker 1: He doesn't hate their religion. He's just trying to get
Speaker 1: his daughter to not be raped today. And so he
Speaker 1: points to the door next door, and then something horrific
Speaker 1: befalls the door next door, and all those Christians and
Speaker 1: all those Yusities. He feels bad about it. He genuinely
Speaker 1: hates it. But is he guilty in the same way
Speaker 1: that the guy who held the knife is guilty. I mean,
Speaker 1: and I guess you can have that technical conversation, But
Speaker 1: from from his perspective, he was trying to protect his
Speaker 1: own household. You know, A level up from that collaborators,
Speaker 1: I'd say, there's there's criminals. These are people who actually
Speaker 1: hold the gun, hold the knife, do the thing. They
Speaker 1: break in, they rape, they steal, they they sell the drugs,
Speaker 1: they do whatever they do. These are their actual criminals.
Speaker 1: They engage in something that is that's what we call banging,
Speaker 1: that's gang banging. You still put new way up from criminals,
Speaker 1: an even smaller proportion of the overall population. I would say,
Speaker 1: are something like the cultists. These are the people who
Speaker 1: actually believe the ideology. Um, they believe the theology in
Speaker 1: the case of like an isis or whatever. And then
Speaker 1: often I think the guys at the very tip top
Speaker 1: of the pyramid, the smallest group, the one or two
Speaker 1: heads of a region in or whatever, they aren't even cultists.
Speaker 1: They're just in it for pure power and money. That's
Speaker 1: the shot callers. They don't even believe the thing that
Speaker 1: they're saying. They know it's all a religion, like a mythos,
Speaker 1: but they know how to mobilize people. That the shot caller,
Speaker 1: the boss, the shot caller who this thing before under
Speaker 1: that we would call like. That would be like the O.
Speaker 1: G s or like the prison dudes that are like, no,
Speaker 1: we in this, this is our life. I bleed blue.
Speaker 1: I don't care. I was born in it is. It
Speaker 1: ain't choose me, you know what I'm saying. Dudes that
Speaker 1: are like calling shots in the streets. But then the
Speaker 1: dudes above them are just like, now, I'm just out
Speaker 1: here making money. I don't care, but red blue don't matter.
Speaker 1: I'm just here making money. So interesting they know they
Speaker 1: know how to leverage the history, the story, the ideology
Speaker 1: to keep the keep everyone else moving, and keep everyone
Speaker 1: else afraid and inspired. And I hope that makes sense
Speaker 1: for the rest of y'all. It makes perfect sense to me.
Speaker 1: The last thing I'd asked you, Jeremy, is like, maybe
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about preemptive love, what we're doing
Speaker 1: and where we're going next with it. We're working to
Speaker 1: end war, period, and I don't mean to say that flippantly.
Speaker 1: I think, uh, look at l A. L A is
Speaker 1: not what it was in the eighties. Absolutely, there are
Speaker 1: things that can be done to end war, and there
Speaker 1: are policies and things that can be done. Stories we
Speaker 1: can tell about each other to escalate violence. Some of
Speaker 1: the way you told the story from the Panthers on
Speaker 1: down supports our thesis and what we've seen on the
Speaker 1: streets that violence spreads like a disease, and it's important
Speaker 1: that we have first responders to stop the blood letting,
Speaker 1: stop the spread of that disease as quickly as possible.
Speaker 1: So that's a lot of what we do. We we
Speaker 1: respond fast in conflict zones to keep that story from
Speaker 1: spreading to the next group, from spreading to the next person.
Speaker 1: Um and then we do job creation. We are we
Speaker 1: are primarily a job creation community because nothing helps more
Speaker 1: than good economic conditions to live in. Uh. Nothing really
Speaker 1: accelerates people's alignment with militias and gangs and militaries like
Speaker 1: the promise of food on the table, and if we
Speaker 1: can give strong, strong, robust alternatives to that, it ultimately
Speaker 1: helps lock it out all together. Yeah, father Greg boyle
Speaker 1: uh at Homeboy Industries out here. He has a T
Speaker 1: shirt I remember changed my life. T shirt said nothing
Speaker 1: stops a bullet like a job. Yeah. Well, Jeremy, thank
Speaker 1: you for your time. Man. Let me show you how
Speaker 1: real Jeremy keeps it. While we were starting this, the
Speaker 1: power went out and then he just was like, hey,
Speaker 1: the power went out, Just give me a second, and
Speaker 1: then it popped right back on. I'm just like, look, man, look, Jeremy.
Speaker 1: If there's somebody who's got like the receipts and the stripes,
Speaker 1: if you're looking to donate to organizations where if my
Speaker 1: name means anything, like I swear to you, the money
Speaker 1: is going where these people say it's going like it's
Speaker 1: real work happening. These dudes ain't They're not these ain't
Speaker 1: drowne strike people sitting in somewhere in van eyes like
Speaker 1: look over there and look at the work we're doing.
Speaker 1: It's people who putting their own children and like their
Speaker 1: own children in the in the in the space like
Speaker 1: put their bodies in harm's way for the sake of
Speaker 1: waging peace. Thank you so much, Jeremy, everybody doing over
Speaker 1: that Preemptive Love. Like I said, I am oudly and
Speaker 1: it is my honor to be a part of this team.
Speaker 1: And thank you again for being a part of this stop.
Speaker 1: Thanks man. You well that's our shows, shows mixed and
Speaker 1: mastered as you know by the big homie matt Owasowski
Speaker 1: Owawski Owawski ours tell me a story about his granddad
Speaker 1: who for his dad that was in war or in
Speaker 1: the navy, and the navy recruiter was like, hey, uh
Speaker 1: matt um Osaki Osaka is mad Osaka here He's like, no, no,
Speaker 1: mad now Here's not my name anyway, uh special Thanks
Speaker 1: to all of our patreons who keep making this happen.
Speaker 1: Big shout out to Jeremy Cortney. You could follow him
Speaker 1: and their work at Preemptive Love dot org. Go get
Speaker 1: yourself some refugee soap, and by saying that, I mean
Speaker 1: soap made by refugees, like literally poke around. That website
Speaker 1: is nothing like it um and our theme music was
Speaker 1: as always made by the big Homey DJ Shampi. And
Speaker 1: like we say at the end of every show, politics
Speaker 1: is just gang banging in nice suits. We'll see you
Speaker 1: next week. Except Johnny dropped a new nugget that I
Speaker 1: just wanted to say it to the end. Y'all, check
Speaker 1: out this last nugget Jeremy dropped. I think we got
Speaker 1: to know our history. But what is ultimately needed is
Speaker 1: someone who can point us forward, someone who can look
Speaker 1: to the future, someone who can take a a good
Speaker 1: faith peacemaking negotiation kind of brokership on behalf of both sides,
Speaker 1: who can be seen as a good faith actor by
Speaker 1: everyone involved and help move the conversation into the future.
Speaker 1: And and that's a tall order, but I think it's
Speaker 1: really what is needed in various conflicts around the world,
Speaker 1: including the Middle East,