Joe Rogan Experience Review podcast - JRE REVIEW of 1302 with Ed Calderon

Episode Date: May 30, 2019

Ed worked at the boarder and in Mexico fighting against the cartels. His conversation with Joe is extremely eye opening to the problems faced with the drug war. There were some brutal stories and sad events. Definitely worth a listen if you don't know much about what goes on in the world of cartels and drug smuggling.   Enjoy my review folks!   Please email me with any suggestions and questions for future shows :   [e-mail]

Hey folks and welcome to the JRE review. We got a doozy to review today. A great episode, bit of a scary episode. Episode 1302, Ed Calderon. This one is definitely worth a listen to. If you don't know a lot about what's happening with the cartel stuff down in Mexico or you know how border crime works and what the cartels are up to then you have to must and definitely listen to Joe's conversation with the ed. It was really eye-opening and especially if you live in a border state you know I do live in California I've also lived in New Mexico, so I've lived in two border states. And there's a lot to discuss, a lot to review, so let's get started. Welcome to the Joe Rogan Experience Review!

Where each week I review every single episode of the Joe Rogan Experience. One more do you want? So first off, Ed has a really good Instagram that Joe likes and Joe follows. I didn't write it down, but when you listen to the podcast they talk about it a bunch. And basically what Ed is done since I think he is now retired from working in border security and working to combat the cartels down in Mexico. But now he does kind of like, I guess it's like an informational Instagram kind of keeps you just being aware of what's going on with the crime down there. And honestly it was scary stuff.

I mean, things that I with the crime down there. And it honestly was scary stuff. I mean, things that I just never thought of before and I got a lot out of it. It was very, very interesting. This guy has done some incredibly brave things. I think he's 36. So he's younger than me. And when I hear people that are younger than me that have done a hell of a lot more than I have, I'm just like, damn it, I need to get my lazy ass moving. The experience that he's had and what he's put himself through is really unbelievable. One of the most striking things early on in the conversation is he said that while working down there, he had a couple of guys he worked with get kidnapped and tortured to death.

And it's one thing to just tell that story and hear death. And it's one thing to just tell that story and hear it, but it's another thing to think he's one of those guys. It could have been him. And what they went through when they found their bodies like mutilated, it's so brutal, you can only imagine. And I mean he had to see it and has known these people and talked to them. And he's young. It's so scary, it's brutal, brutal stuff. He talks about how things have changed a little bit down in Mexico, which I thought was really interesting. So, marijuana in a lot of places in the US is legalized. It's much easier to get a

hold of weed. And even in the states where it's not legal, I assume that they can get more of the weed now from states and areas that can grow it, so we don't have to bring it all in, you know, from Mexico, but one of the downsides of that from what Ed was saying is that the weed fields now down there have turned into poppy fields, right? So now we're seeing kind of an increase in what you can make out of poppies, which is like heroin, and I think fentanyl is a part of that too. I don't ask me. I can't be sure, but I think that these other drugs are being made more now, more readily available, and they're coming in. Maybe prices go down.

I don't know. And whatever that takes, it creates spikes there, which is pretty scary stuff. You talked about some of the people that he worked with, obviously corruption is always happening, you know, where there's a lot of money you can buy people. And he said that people that he would work with, all of a sudden would start other cops and security agents and border guys, they're all of a sudden they'd be driving nicer cars. And he had this old truck and these other people have these like all of a sudden they're in a home vee's and they're living in bigger houses and you know they're not admitting to it. It's just obvious what's

happening but it's a little scary and then he has to ask himself oh shit who can I trust you know when they're breaking down crime stuff or when they're talking about new findings they've got to kind of look around and see who's there. Because members of the team are being bought off. It's so blatant then. It's such blatant hypocrisy of that job that these people are getting bought off. They're not even trying to hide that money. You know, better get in the ground and then come back to it later.

But I guess, I guess if you're being bought off that way, maybe you're not thinking things through all the way and that's why you just go spend them on it. It's hard to say. One cool thing they talked about that I had heard about, but I didn't know a ton about it, was this operation fast and the furious. Right, so, and I looked this up after the podcast just to get a bit more information about

it, and basically the government of the US bought thousands of guns that they had, and they sent them down to Mexico, like high-powered guns, and their idea, or at least what they were saying, was the idea was They could trace the guns we they could track it and by tracking the guns they would know kind of where the cartels were and what they were doing It's a super ass-and-eye plan. It's just sounds crazy and you know I think that most of the guns like landed in the hands of a certain cartel and they were used to kill people and Just brutal stuff and to think that that was an operation that we thought of. I don't know, put the pieces together, it sounds like madness.

And that's just one we've heard of. Imagine how many other stupid plans that they've come up with, like who, who signs off on this stuff, who was in charge of that? It's like there's gotta be better ways of doing that, right? I mean, if you want to track where people are, send them something else, send them iPhones, free iPhones that can be traced. I don't know. See where they're going. We can probably collect more useful information that way. What are you going to do with an iPhone? Google stuff. I mean, you know, I don't know. That seemed like a crazy plan and scary. And to think that we were, the

US government was a part of that is a bit, you know, it's just a point thing. Come on, guys, come on. Another scary part of the podcast is they were talking about this guy that they found. I can't remember his name, but he was kind of in charge, and I guess he was interviewed, and he was in charge of getting rid of bodies for the cartels and he would dissolve them Right, so we've all seen breaking bad and I think in that one they used hydrophloric acid Which is a super caustic acid so much so you I don't think you can store it in Plastic because it will dissolve it basically dissolves everything other than glass So you have to keep it in light glass containers. I believe but what this guy was using was something called

Costick soda and I didn't even want to look that up. I don't even care what that is. It just sounds terrifying But he would he was able to just kind of dissolve bodies with that. I mean that idea imagine going like look We all have shitty jobs, right right we all have crummy jobs But imagine that being your job like you've got a nice car and a family and a house And you're sending your kids to college and you do it all by dissolving bodies illegally for the cartels Oh great gross Quot, gross. Ed talked a little bit about the wall and the idea of the wall and he was saying that, you

know, a lot of the people that kind of smuggle drugs or smuggle people in, I think he called them the coyotes or something, people that like bring people in from Mexico that want to come to the US. And he's saying that really all the wall is is not really putting them off It's not really making them think hey, you can't do this It's making them just be able to kind of raise the prices on stuff and you know like maybe it costs three thousand to Bring someone over from Mexico, but now they can say oh it's five thousand because the wall and add a security and blah blah blah

And that's a real shame that That if we're gonna do something, you know, like let's say you're against a wall, like I don't have much of an opinion on it either way. But we're gonna spend a lot of money on it, the US's. And if it's just a political move and it does nothing to actually slow anything down that we're trying to stop,

what a waste of our time that is. Like we could put that money towards something actually far more useful. They talk about Tijuana being basically the top of drone technologies because obviously people down there are flying in drugs and other things, mostly drugs, I would imagine, with these drones. So they work on the technologies to make them better and that's kind of hilarious, right? I mean, that's a supply and demand thing. So yeah, you want better drones.

You go to the place that they're going to whether drones have the most value and it's going to be, you know, they probably have like drone shops down there. Like you get car shops that pimped out your ride. They've probably got pimped my drone shit going on. So you can, you know, camouflage your drone, keep it quiet, flying, multiple key glows of whatever. Awesome. Awesome stuff. And then lastly, a point that I found interesting, because I think about two years ago, I went down to Carbo in Mexico, and we stayed at a really nice resort with some friends of ours, and it was a very exclusive, wealthy place. It was all there, it's nothing to do with me.

But what was interesting is how safe it was, and you feel safe, and everything seems fine, and you wonder, oh, and you hear these rumors, right? Oh, the cartel, they have a deal with the government and they don't go into the resort so that tourism stays high and blah, blah. But when I first heard that, I thought to myself, what's the motivation? Why would they care about tourism or whatever else?

What they care about is like how much money they're making. But Ed brings up something really important. He says they're probably invested in these places. You know, they're diversifying their investments. They got tons of cash. They don't want to just bury it all in the ground. So they like, you know, they're investing in these in these results and these spaces. Now, I don't know which results and which spaces, but it's something to think about. If you don't want to encourage this sort of thing, then think about where you're staying, you know. And Joe talks about how he saw these armed guards outside this four seasons, I think. He stayed at. It was the same thing at the resort I was at.

There were just these trucks outside, but these military guys just stood in the back onto the teeth. It's a crazy world down there. I hope one day we can figure out a system to get rid of all that and bring some stabilization to those guys, but anyway, check out this conversation, if you're interested in this sort of thing because you'll learn a lot and I'd suggest following this dude on Instagram too, it's a pretty cool Instagram, you get a lot out of it. But anyway guys, thanks a lot, it was a quick one today, I appreciate you and Adios. you