Shaun Newman Podcast - #462 - Chuck Prodonick

Episode Date: July 10, 2023

He's a former sergeant who was a member of the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry who served in 4 tours overseas we discuss all things Russia/Ukraine, the pattern of life & ounces make pounds. Let me know what you think Text me 587-217-8500 Substack:https://open.substack.com/pub/shaunnewmanpodcast Patreon: www.patreon.com/ShaunNewmanPodcast

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Happy Monday. Somewhere I am driving to the United States of America. Driving to States. Anyways. Yeah, I'm having fun. It's holidays, folks. That being said, I promised you some episodes, and I'm not going to relent. they are coming hot and heavy, fast and hard.

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He's a former sergeant who is a member of the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry. He did four different tours overseas. I'm talking about Chuck Prodnick. So buckle up. Here we go. In the Sean Newman podcast, I'm joined by Chuck Prodnick.

Now, we're talking about, we might as just let everybody in on what we've been talking about because it's a reversal. I get Martin Armstrong right after you. So Martin Armstrong normally would come out later, but because of the way it's flip-flopping and it's Martin Freaking Armstrong, I was just telling you a little bit about him. He's going to come out on Friday. You're going to come out on Monday. Yeah.

And we were just talking about it. going down the rabbit hole of, you know, these different predictions on cyclical things happening throughout history. Yeah. Anyways, and then I cut you off. Well, we were, it's, I'd never really heard about him. Um, I know a lot of the other financial gurus that are in that realm, I guess. I've just never picked on his thread yet, but I'm going to.

But we were talking about how these things run, if you look back on human trend throughout history, there are cycles when empire start to decline. things start to happen you're like you can your brain can see it and whether or not you pick up on it or not is you know these 60 year cycles 50 year cycles 8 year cycles and uh yeah well his big number and i want to ask him all about this and i guess you know the listener is going to be kind of like in a bit of not a bit of shock i always laugh it's like it's not like it's that big a deal but yeah one of the things he talks about is the pie cycle i believe it's called the pie cycle anyways and it's 8.6 years and so things going in and i think you know like

It's funny. To me, it makes, like, why so many of us can't pick up on any of this. It's pretty simple. Like, I'm day-to-day. Maybe year to year. Yeah. Go in the United States every four years, right? And you can see how small our cycles are.

Yes. We're just constantly on this loop, right? I mean, media does a lovely job of keeping you distracted all the time. So you can never really pick up on a long-term trend of what's happening. Yeah. And if you're somebody who could take a step back from that and go, And just connect the dots. All of a sudden, you become, you can, you can be, you can, what's the word I'm looking for here?

You can like. You can see the disruption in a pattern of life. Yes. What's out of normal for, what isn't synced right now? And overseas, we used to say, use pattern of life all the time, on the daily, on the hourly. You used to use pattern of life? Pattern of life was something, it's an, it's an indicator that your spider sense is saying. saying this is not normal pattern of life. So your spider sense would kick in and say,

what is not normal here? What's what am I queuing in on that I'm not fully aware of? And so you'd look at the next guy next to you and he'd be like doing the same thing. Like my spider senses are going off because something in the normal pattern of life. For where you are, it's not normal to our pattern of life here, but over there, what you've become accustomed to, something is disturbing the force and you're like, oh, we better figure this out where they're going to. we're going to get hit. And sure enough, that would be it.

But it's a matter of you recognizing it and acting on it. So when you apply that to back home, what's our pattern of life? What's normal for us? Who taught you that? Is it like, you know, like I feel like somebody that was older in the army would be would talk. Yeah. Yes, but honestly, we picked up on that more from Americans that were, we were very

fortunate with our battle group that went over in 06. Um, Colonel Hope brought over the guys who we were, were leaving Americans from the 173rd. These are top, these are really good guys, top tier guys. They'd been in combat for 18 months straight there. He brought over their leadership cadre when they were supposed to be going home on leave. They came over and trained us for a week and passed on all their lessons learned. This was like unprecedented.

Nobody had done this before. And I'll admit normally we would take American advice and be like, no, thank you. Thanks, but I've trained with you before. I've seen what you're capable of and it's not great. In this situation, we were like, these guys have been in combat for, for 18 months straight, like day and day out. They've lost a lot of dudes. They've learned all the lessons and paid for them in blood, sweat and tears, a lot of blood.

So we, most of our leadership cadre, some guys still had this mentality like they're Americans, no thanks. Which is a wild. It's, it's all professional jealousy. It's t-shirt protecting. You know, you do. You do same thing in hockey. Jersey protecting or, you know,

every profession does this. Podcasts protect. All of it. Absolutely. So for me, knowing where we were going and a lot of, not just me, but guys like me, we knew where we were going. We knew it was bad. I wanted to hear from the horse's mouth.

How bad is it going to be? And what do we do to mitigate this? And I can remember this platoon sergeant. We call them warrants, but he was a platoon sergeant. So he's got 17, 18 years in. normal looking dude he's not he's like five five stocky he he's going to brief our leadership cadre on like a after Thursday afternoon at like four and I'm like fuck this I want to go home like even in my head I'm like it's four o'clock bro time to clock out we're all formed up in this uh

little hall in our building like probably 40 of us basically the the leaders that kind of needed this briefing and and he has this overhead projector now this is oh five or this yeah this is late oh five because we left in January of 06 and he's using an overhead projector and we're so this is old tech for us we're like dude where's your power where's your computer and your and your slideshow for us and fancy this up for us he's got his paper on this thing and his you know scrawled out marker stuff on this you know talp paper he's got on there and he he reveals it to us on the wall and the first thing it says is ounces make pounds and i could just hear the audience go like these are all dude these are all senior dudes in our

battalion alpha male no fuck around guy kind of guys and everybody kind of went and then you could kind of just see people go it's the simplest thing to say to someone but it made sense ounces make pounds and so what did he break that down into as you started to real his thought process every single thing has a weight and over there weight is life and you better you better ratio between liquid bullets food meds nothing else matters nothing all this Gucci stuff we're carrying for the last my 50 15 years at that point in my career I had Gucci stuff shoved everywhere what's what's Gucci stuff like We were all kit horrors.

We could, you know, we weren't marching in 60 degree weather. We were marching around in Canada, you know. Not we're just playing the game, you know. I'll be it on tours and stuff, but not, not like this. And so we were all kind of like kit horrors. You know, in hockey, you got the latest this, the latest that, no matter what your job is. If you're a carpenter, I've seen carpenters with some pretty. I think of a golf bag.

Yeah, yeah, golf bag. You got everything hanging off the side of it. Yeah, you're a yard sale. Why don't even have this? You look like a yard sale, right? I'm not saying we looked like yard sales, but we had, if we could own it, if it was in a catalog or online, man. And he's like, no, ounces make pounds. And I'll tell you what, the next day, we all had our scales out in the lines where we worked, weigh in everything.

He's like, this weighs this much. Did you know that? And we're like, no, I just know it's heavy. How much does 10 mags of ammo weigh? Now, do you want to put an 11th mag, a 12th mag in? What are you taking out to make that work? Well, I can hump that weight. Mm-hmm.

When it's 60 degrees out and you're chasing a dude up a mountain, you're not hauling that weight. So he broke it down that way. He's also, I'm pretty sure the guy that introduced us to pattern of life. Like that phrase, that that feeling of it. And I'm sure we'd all kind of, we'd been on tours before those of us that had been, like Bosnia, or Kosovo, whatever. You notice things there too. You do.

You go to West Ed Mall or I go to West End Mall or you go to the Mall or you go to the mall here or something and something's off and you're like hmm what is this over there it's life for death it can be life or death here too don't get me wrong but then you we're sheltered here in Canada we are sheltered I mean we can easily say that and you're going you're talking about war yeah right so I mean pattern of life makes a heck of a lot of sense to me anyways so this guy turns out he's a legend in his unit the 173rd but he's just a soft-spoken mellowed out the thing about these guys once they've seen the level of action, they've seen combat, they've seen done, once you've lost certain things in your life, the way they've lost, and I understand that part now,

you become a little more humble, a little less full of hubris, like, I got this, you know. You better still have a, I got this attitude, but know what you can lose. You understand that you will lose at some point, and you better just fight through that. But this guy, we found out not from him, but from the guys he was with. his sergeants that were with them because we spent a week with them and we basically my platoon adopted them in as often as we could like some guys some other leadership were like it's Americans thanks but no thanks I just couldn't understand that at that point and some were like trying to hog all their time and we were

they happened to like us we were the way we were so they kind of globbed on to us that's what happens and anything so one of the sergeants pulls out a memory stick slides it into our computer and he's like read this so what's the write-up of this guy I think his name was Ken White he was a platoon sergeant read this write-up of Ken white it's what he won his medal for he won a medal over there in combat and basically they'd attacked a compound they were in a huge battle this first sergeant had gone in with his guys it was pretty close to down to hand-to-hand combat and at a certain point apparently.

It was that bad. It was that dirty. And he was essentially in hand-to-hand fighting, which is unheard of. Like, this doesn't happen in modern combat. Like, it's, it just doesn't. And he survived it and got his guys out of it. And the write-up, I can't do the right-up justice by paraphrasing through it. But suffice to say, like, we looked at this guy who was already kind of a growing legend to us

just because of his demean. You expect them to come in like a I don't know what we expected, but we expected to come in Like cock of the walk we call it or you know in anything you expect this guy to walk into the change room and be like I'm the dude Accept it move on, you know he's just he didn't flash it that way, right and that made us even more appreciative of the fact that this guy is a legend like wow a legend and Then we go over and it's humbling right? away like we go back over or we go over we do our hand hand off with these guys so we start doing patrols first patrol at the gate with them like we get the

candahar the big base we roll out patrol one right eded like right away we're IED like not not like a month in like remind myself and the listeners IED improvised explosive device so here in the Western world they like to say roadside bomb that's not on the side of a road, it's under a road or in a culvert. It's, it's meant to blow up underneath you. So we hit one immediately. Now, these things back then were designed for taking out Humvees because

that's all the Americans had to pool around in was Hummers. So they would be essentially one Chinese rocket like one, um, one Chinese one Chinese 107 shell basically is what they were using because that's what they had access to. And that would be enough to take the tires off or the front end off of Hummer. would mess up a hammer pretty good but for our lab fighting vehicles it took off it took on that particular vehicle took off the front left tire and did some damage under carriage damage obviously the boys were rocked but still in action you know we recovered the vehicle got it

you know but but yeah but tell you know like I've never been I aded and I honestly honestly truck I hope I never I know I hope nobody else is right so you got to walk me like you're like oh yeah we got I aded on the first day out like I mean is that just like one like are you talking like you're you're you're buckled in you're not buckled in no this is like rolling you can't be so your heads off the roof and you're like what the heck oh yeah so especially for the driver of this one because it was the front driver side wheel if I recall correctly it shook him to hell like he was concussed you know um the guys in the back were bumped around but not too badly this was a small ID this was the smallest one we faced this was

basically a test for the Taliban to see what we need to do to take out a lab. Eventually, by the end tours, they were splitting labs in half. Like they would take, um, they would take. How did you guys protect against that? Sorry. I know. No, no. Because I'm like, okay.

So this is, this is the interesting thing. And actually, it, uh, you know, it kind of reminds me a little bit. I don't know why I guess got Marty Armstrong on the mind of right. Like the world elites have this grand old plan. But they kind of forget that the other team gets to play too. 100%. And so even though they're slow, and we've been slow on the uptake, they still get the play. And once they start playing, oh, man, they can be pretty ferocious.

And they're actually pretty smart. They got a couple smart people on that side. I didn't see that coming, right? And on and on and on it goes. You get the point. So here you're going. And the first one, you know, it knocks off a wheel and you're like, well, at the time, I don't know what you're thinking, but I mean, all right.

And the Taliban are looking out, okay, we've got to do this, we got to do this, we got to do this. By the end, they're absolutely destroying these vehicles. Yeah. What, like, what were you doing in between to make sure that you didn't get hit by one of them if they're hiding them that well? Well, there's, so all the things that you can do. So we had an electronic warfare component that was supposed to mitigate, um, if they were being remotely detonated by a fob. They loved using like a garage fob or a key fob. Sure.

So just knock out the signal. Try and knock out the signal. The problem was straight from Dark Night Rises. I get it. exactly it would be great tech if it worked didn't ours didn't typically work at that point no six and I mean and if it doesn't work I once again sorry if it doesn't work like people are dead right especially at that point actually dead yeah yeah real dead it was newer tech for us it didn't work properly also we would typically roll around in five vehicles

elements in a platoon of 35 guys. So four fighting vehicles, the labs, and then a Gwagon, the Gwagon military version. And that thing, this is 06 again, this all changed, but in 06, the G wagon had that device. That device is good for about a 50 meter bubble. Well, unless you're driving on top of each other, like a NASCAR rally, you're not protecting nothing because we had to have spacing. It's dusty and not a little dusty like, oh, I'm in Saskatchewan when it's a little windy. It's like you can't see anything. Which is still pretty dusty.

It's still pretty dusty. It's over there, you know what you can't see anything. So it was just, it wasn't effective. And we found that at least on that tour, they weren't using the fobs so much to detonate. They would use a, they'd hardwired in and then hit a battery connector with, so they'd use old wire. talking old junkyard wire, just run that to the IAD and then hit a battery terminal and boom. So we knew that there'd have to be a sightman and it like the trigger man to do this. And you would get hit and we got hit a lot on that tour like a lot, especially in the early

portion. There'd always be a trigger man somewhere and very rarely did he ever make it out. That's just that was the nature of the beast, right? That was how it went. So, um, or they'd throw an ambush on top of it. Like the one, one of the worst ones I was involved in, um, they were, they were all bad, honestly. After that, that was a great eye opener for us. If it could have, IEDs are always terrible.

But that was as good an eye opener as I could have. We really needed that to be like, this is for real. It's not, there's no downtime here. A patrol anywhere is dangerous. This mindset had to change. for us right this had to happen and the one IED we hit near what we called the Red Devil Inn the Red Devil in yeah so our company was red devils red devils yeah so one of our early in that tour areas of operation was a place the Russians couldn't

crack and it was this ring of mountains called the Belly button or we it was nicknamed the belly button that it was a Taliban stronghold even the Russians couldn't get into it. So what did we do? We said, oh, we're, we're Canadian. We'll go get it. We'll figure this out. We'll throw through the pissing contest begins. This is what happens, right? Meanwhile, there's burnt out rushing gear everywhere and we're like, well, this is, this can't be great. So it's strategically, it's in the middle of nowhere. Tatically it means nothing, but by God, we're going to show these Russians, but pride. So we're going to throw 30 Canadians at a time, a platoon of Canadians on the edge of the belly button. There's two ways in. There's like two, two,

roads in or out of this place. That's it. So you run a 50-50 chance, less than 50-50 chance of getting out of there successfully when you're doing any kind of patrolling or turnover or, you know, you'd spend a month there. I'm talking you're living in a mud compound, you know, 30 dudes plus some, your Afghan national soldiers of another 30 dudes in a spot the size of a postage, that parking lot out back where I parked. It's tiny. It's, yeah, so what's that, 50 feet by 50 feet, Maybe 75 by 75. It's nothing. Yeah, you get the idea if you're listening.

And so all you're doing is sitting in this bowl with spotters watching you the whole time. Oh, today they went left, today they went right. And they get on their radio, call up the road. And who would ever have to run out there and, you know, put the eye, get ready on the IED. Because they're all preplaced. He's waiting for you. So you asked about how do you mitigate this. So we would try and change up our roots as often as we could.

when you only have two options pretty hard it's pretty hard so we would and you well you'd think well just go off road people don't understand this terrain we'd offroad as often as we could as for wherever we could but it's like driving on moon rock like in these mountainous areas it's not like normal going to BC and look at this beautiful terrain or something it's basically a mountain with moon rocks all over like

monstrous rocks bigger than this room so it's like you're not crawling through that it's probably one of the one of the one of the things that I wish I'd done more of before we had kids but I in saying that I got to travel quite a bit but I mean I've never you know I have when you know you see the movies of it you see sure you can watch

National Geographic or whatever and kind of get but until you've actually been there and kind of understand some of the things it's like you really can't understand right it is an absolutely beautiful place that is trying to kill you all the time even if the Taliban weren't there it would still try and kill you.

It's just that kind of environment. It's unforgiving. It's 60 degrees on a hot day. This is what, like, I don't know, military, once upon a time in younger years, I wanted to be a pilot. Eyes weren't great. Eyes still aren't the greatest. Although, laser eye surgery was just coming around and I was, I'd been looking in to see, well, if I get laser eyes surgery, can I do it?

Anyways, it never ended up happening for me. And maybe that's a good thing. Who knows? Maybe I was, you know, destined for this instead of that. Yeah. And probably some would agree with that. Some would say, anyways, it doesn't matter. One of the things that just amazes me every time I talk to all you military vets is you talk about, yeah, you know, like the IEDs, you try and like, you know, you try and mitigate them.

But I mean, at the end of the day, you know, it's like, I mean, but every time you get in a vehicle then. Every time. You have the opportunity, possibility, I guess, not opportunity, possibility you're dead. Yeah. Because at the start, they don't know what they're doing. But the Afghanis, as they go along. They learned. They learned fast.

Like they're, they don't, they don't make, not only would I say they don't make mistakes. If they made a minute error in judgment tactically, it was correct. Does it bother you in, uh,

maybe I'm wrong on this. Maybe, maybe I, maybe I, maybe this is my perception and I'm wrong on this. But in movies where they try and focus on the Taliban or whatever, they make them seem like they're a bunch of more, not morons.

Morons isn't the right word. They're just a faceless, wave enemy. Right. That doesn't really, that attacks you as a horde instead of smart. Yeah. Right? Like they're not this creative. It's always, honestly, I'm going to pick on the Americans for a second. The Americans

are always the clever ones. Oh yeah. And they're, you know, like, I was just this has nothing to do with war, but I was just watching Gemini Man with Will Smith. Right. Yeah, yeah. And his ability just to pick off like 18 guys in a row with 18 bullets and you're like, well, it's John Wick

ask, right? But like over any time that war movies happen and I mean I guess in the basic sense of a war movie it's propaganda right like that's exactly what it is but you never see the Taliban as being I don't think maybe I'm wrong on this but I'm

curious if you see the same thing that's a great it's a great idea to bring up because it's something that as guys who've been in combat you know I watch documentaries I watched every war movie that comes out I watch it I want to see what they got right or wrong you know and that's a

great perception that you've you've had because it's something that we talk about as well in the veteran community or at least guys who've seen combat anyway so it's interesting because Covenant just came out on I think it's prime and it's got yeah yeah Jake Gyllenhawn and I don't if you've seen it or not I have it's so it's it's why I made the phone call actually I didn't tell you that I don't know I sat and watched it with the wife thought it was a very good movie And I'm like, I wonder where Chuck thinks about this. Well, let's talk about that for a minute.

Sure. So if you haven't, if you haven't seen Covenant, it just came out like, I don't know, two weeks ago. Jake Gyllenhaal is a Army. I don't know what a station is. I think he's a seal in it. You know, he gets trapped behind enemy lines and his interpreter drags him halfway across the country to save his life. And then he goes back solo to save that guy's life and his families to bring him across the U.S. I wish I remembered the interpreter's names, the actor's name, because he was brilliant in it.

Oh, we can find that. Oh, yeah, we have the Google probably. So he was, it's a great movie overall. It's funny, too, because it starts off and it shows on the screen. It's like, oh, this is Lashkar. Dar Salim, and I hope I say that right. He played Ahmed in the movie. And he's, he's.

And Jake Gyllenhaal played Master Sergeant John Kinley. So, yeah, both of them were brilliant in the movie. I think. Like in, and as far as playing an interpreter, I think he had that one great line in there too that was about, I'm not here to interpret,

I'm here to translate. And people don't pick up on that who've never had to deal with that part of the world, that part of it. Before the 06 tour, I'll be all over the place here for a minute, but before the 06 tour,

I was put on a tactical question of course. Did he say, now you have to remember my, once again, this is folks, if you haven't listened to me and Chuck, This is our third time, I think, right? Third time. Did he say that now I'm remembering it wrong?

Did he say, I'm not here to translate. I'm here to interpret. He said, I'm not, really. Yeah, I'm not here to interpreter. I'm here to translate. Ooh, okay. Well, then, because my brain remembers that differently, which is really weird. I could be wrong too, but I could be.

I do drink heavily. But either way, he's trying to impart that. He's not just there to say word for word. Correct. I agree everything you're saying. I could be backwards in the analogy, though. But he's trying to say, look, I'm here to help you understand why they're saying what they're saying and what it means when they're saying a certain thing. And I would have never really.

Here, this is what we're going to do. Well, we'll see if we can, people come along for a ride with us, won't they? I think they'll. John, you have tallies approaching? We'll see who is ranked. You still remember a thing. I don't remember any of it. I only remember the interpreter.

We get to the line, because it says it in my trailer. Does it? I'm sure it does. Don't disappoint it turn out to be a pain in the ass. No. Not me, sir. Money isn't the reason he wants this shot. It's Al-Ban killed his son.

Stop the vehicle sergeant. We don't want to be able to the sergeant. go down this road you're out of your balance on that you're here to translate actually I'm here to interpret John you have tallies approaching there you're welcome you were my brain remembers it right um either way I understand exactly what you're saying so when I went on this in tactical questioner course which is basically the polite way of saying interrogation Canadian version of saying interrogation but it's tactical questioning we picked this up from the British who did

adopted this strategy of using front line infantry soldiers to triage through POWs or potential or persons under control pucks so you would triage through is this somebody you want to pass up the line or is he just a nobody get gone you kind of thing and it's so I was in the first iteration of this run by the British guy in Kingston and there was a handful there was like well there's me and three other guys from my unit on it two two of whom we're dead now um so part of this course and it was a probably my favorite course in the military that I took and I've had all the Gucci courses all the bougie courses you could ever want in the infantry I got them this was probably

one of the most interesting most challenging courses to take in that it's all about how to safe crack somebody's brain very quickly, like to see, you know, what's going on with somebody's brain. And part of this was using interpreters. And I'm like, how hard can that be? Like, really. Um, so they, what they did was they hired actors to come in and my first iteration with these actors, you, so there's a subject, a bad guy who's an actor and then the

interpreter who's an actual interpreter, correct? Well, my first two were these German guys. who happen to know each other. So these are older German guys. Like we're talking, you know, in their 60s, they're just, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, there's a. guy from all over the world. But these are just locals to Kingston who were like, basically brought in to do this. Like, there's always.

Okay. Okay. So you got one guy who's who's, who's, just on laying this right. Yeah. For my brain. You got one guy who you're going to interrogate. Yeah. He's a German.

Yeah. Then you have an interpreter. He's a German. Yeah. They know each other. They're both old guys. They're both old guys. This is the first time you've ever done this.

Yeah. Okay. So I've been on the course for like a week or whatever, learning all these techniques and tactics and how to talk to people and pick up nonverbal communication and all the things that you're trying to do to become an effective tactical questioner. And then they throw this interpretation. Now, it doesn't matter that they're German.

I think there was another team. Yeah, yeah. There was a team from Lebanon. There was a team from Greece. The whole point of it is you can't understand what they're talking. I can understand what they're saying. Yes. So.

So. So I kind of cheated a little bit in that I, you know, the one guy's playing this guy we captured on the battlefield and the other guy's playing, you know, interpreter guy. And I kind of cheated a little bit inadvertently in that I treated them like both because they were older dudes like they were grandparents. I kind of treated them naturally like that and kind of. So the dude who was playing the prisoner kind of just gave it all up. Like all the stuff he was supposed to hold on to for a few hours, you know, I was supposed to draw out of him. There's a whole script that they follow. We don't know what the script is.

We don't know what the information is. That's the job is to try and draw it out of them. But he just, we just kind of got along so well, you know, but it was difficult using the interpreter. Even though they're German, they're not Afghani, you know, it was still really difficult. There was still a challenge. There was still a, well, what does he mean by that? There does he mean? And then he'd be like, well, you know,

this is what he means by this. I'm like, do I trust you? Do I don't trust you? So already the seed is planted in my head. You get over. You don't trust the interpreter and how can I trust, or trust what he's interpreting out of the prisoner? So then you add the, the Afghan complexity to this once you're over there.

Which is? You can't trust them all. I know that there's a big hubbabaloo in the news and the veteran community stands behind these turps. And for the most part I do. But I can also tell you, we busted several of them who were done. who were making who were informing on us. I don't blame them in this regard. I'm not, I don't hold a grudge against that. They were quite often like you saw in Covenant. They had his family. Yeah. They're threatening them. Um, you're on their homeland. You're on

their home. And what really, unless we win and there's no way we're going to, we're not, we're not going to win that war. We win every battle. You're not going to win that war. These guys know what's going to happen to them when they're done. We should. We should have really made an effort to get them all out. It's, it's disgusting that we didn't, but we had some fantastic interpreters, like guys who, you know, who, who risked everything just is very, that movie is pretty close to in a lot of ways how as a soldier when you deal

with interpreters, and especially for me, because I, because of my, one of my roles, I dealt with them daily all the time. Um, it was difficult. because if you knew you had a bad one, one who barely spoke English and wasn't even regionally. So there's different regions and dialects like you walk, go around Canada. You go around anywhere in any big country, there's different dialects or different versions of a, you know. And so we might have an interpreter from one part of the country and then we're in this part of the country and they hate where he's from. Even if it's not Taliban, even if it's just the locals in this community and they can tell by his dialect that he's from X, Y, or Z.

they're like, pf, no. Piss off. Yeah. And it happened all the time. Or you just have a bad interpreter. I had some great interpreters too who are like, dude, this is what he's really saying. And or he'd be like, look at his hands, get like mentoring me along. I'm like, look at his hands.

Oh, you know, very clean hands for a farming community. You know, like these kinds of little. Yeah, you have to pick up on all the complexities. I always think of Ottawa. Yeah. And when you bring that up, look at the hands thing. Yeah. Everybody in Ottawa in the early days was worried about government sticking whatever in their informants or, you know, you can imagine.

And it's like, well, like they weren't in there, folks, like guaranteed. Yeah. But there was this one that just to this day, I can see him clear's day. Okay. You have a group of people who've been on the highway, some longer than others, but regardless a group of people that have left from BC all the way across, all met up. They've been on the road. They've been riding by themselves. they've been putting in long days, emotional days, right?

Highs, lows, you've been driving through minus 30s, dead of winter, people stand on the highway, you know, like the stress of that. Into the unknown, too, because you don't know at the end. So you get there. And I would say most people weren't taking the best care of themselves. I don't mean that they were like, you know, falling over tired or hammered drunk or I just mean like 5 o'clock shadow is in full effect. that hair is not done.

Some people haven't put deodorant on in a couple days. Like, you can just tell. And didn't walk this guy, playing the part, playing the part. But he's not it. Yeah. And to me, as soon as we locked eyes, because I went around, everybody was worried about, you know, all these things. So I just went around and introduced myself to everyone, especially when I thought this could be, they could be who they say, you know, and everybody turned out to be, have a great story. Maybe they, you know, maybe they were better actors than others, for sure.

But most of them, I was just like, actually all of them. I was like, oh, yeah. No, it's just John. And John's from here. And that's why he's here. And that's what he's doing. And that's why he's dressed that way. That's why he's sitting there, whatever.

And then there's the one who walks in. And he looks, everything's so clean. The jacket's clean. He's clean. He's clean shaving. Actually, it wasn't even clean shaving. It was like he had a beard, but it was like trimmed perfectly. I'm like, that doesn't look right.

And as soon as we locked eyes, he walked out of the building. And I'm like, that's interesting. Right? When you talk about the pattern of life. Pattern of life. You don't need to go over to Afghanistan, although on there it would be on high alert. Yes.

Because obviously, like what you're talking about is life or death. Yeah. Right? And very few instances. But you know, it's funny, in different communities, maybe all communities right now,

we've been struggling with, like, pedophilia, right? Yeah. And adults attacking children. I don't think it's that rare anymore. I think it's pretty prevalent. Yeah.

And the thing is, when you talk to the different areas, lots of times are like, yeah, that's, you know, Murphy has the joke, right? Everybody's got that weird uncle, right?

That creepy uncle, don't go around you, Uncle Johnny. Yeah. Right? And it's like, yes, we already intuitively know when something's off. It's whether you trust it and act on it. People will, people will, just to get along, will push that aside and be like, I don't want to cause a wave. I don't want to make a ripple.

I don't want to be the guy that says something, right? I've been on ranges before, you know, training to go overseas and some very complex dangerous ranges like there's a lot going on and there's a big chance you're going to get hurt if things aren't you know and there's safety staff you know I've been safety staff on ranges there's you have a role trying to keep you know you have 200 dudes running around and vehicles going on there's stuff going off you're you're trying to mimic a battle it's a one-way range but you're trying to mimic this and in the briefing you're always like if you as the lowest youngest newest private see something

really see something you stop you yell stop stop stop stop say something stop the thing it doesn't matter that you now stop this thing you better say something because somebody could I've been on ranges where guys have died it happens it's rare thankfully but it does happen it's probably rare because you've got that we implemented right but we we put it on the lowest of the low the low it's not just for the overall commander of this range to say, oh, this looks unsafe. He's not going to know. He's, he's got 28 things going on in 10 seconds.

It's the young guy could be like, I don't think they're supposed to be over there, you know, he's got to say something. And you have to trust that his intuition is saying, you know, and that's, I think that's a big difference between what our military used to be. I mean, even in our leadership, um, we would trust our youngest, newest guys to have the initiative that if, you know, if I went down as the commander, the sergeant in my section, if I went down, then we used to joke, two I see take over. Like, you've got to take over. You've got to step up.

And that two I see in many instances in Afghanistan once the boss went down, because quite often it was the boss, whoever was in that guy, it was tended to be that went down. The next man up could be a 20 year old kid and he better sack up. So in training, you don't, this isn't, we're not talking boot camp here. We're talking like war training. You build these guys up. You better build them up. You better instilling them that initiative and that ability to lead on some level. So you have to draw that out of them.

Or you just stop. And I've seen it. And I don't want to pick on the Americans here because I do love Americans. I'm half American. Nothing but respect for their combat ability. I've fought beside a few different units. very aggressive, great guys. But on the individual level, I would say that they're behind us as far as

just getting after it once a boss goes down or in the absence of direct orders. We didn't wait for direct orders. We would be like, well, I can we're in combat. I kind of got it. I kind of know what we're doing here. Let's just push it. And you'd keep in communication with your next boss and the two dudes beside you. you know, who were in charge of their thing.

And you'd just keep rolling and pushing and pumping. And whereas I found with the Americans, they'd be like, well, this is as far as they told us to go. But this is it. And we're like, well, dude, there's more of them in this building. We better get them too. And they're like, no, boss said, stay here. And you were kind of like, oh man, where's the British are much more like us. They're like, let's get after it.

Let's go. It's always interesting. Well, once again, certainly talk to yourself, but I've had now, you know, I think of of when last time you were in you had Jamie Sinclair in with you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I had, oh, why am I forgetting their names? William McDonald was in. Thank you. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And interesting to hear you guys rattle off. I mean, the different countries, because I feel like if I had in Wayne Greshke, let's say, he could talk about how the Germans play hockey. He could talk about how, you know, the United States and just ban for the same. I got tons of respect, but this is why they do what they do or whatever, right? Because we all have our strengths and are we,

weaknesses and we do too I mean Justin Trudeau yeah yeah that's yeah that's a whole other podcast or book or documentary but um it it all it all comes down to especially with what I was just talking about it comes down to development versus like you want to take those youngest James kind of touched on it when he was here and we were talking he brought I wasn't expecting, but he kind of brought up the relationship I had with my guys. And, um, you know, I, of course I've thought about it or known about it over the years. I did have a, you know, I wasn't the only one. There were other leaders that did too, had fantastic relationships with their guys.

But it's a big responsibility. These are 20 year old kids. If something goes wrong over there and something happens to them, that's on me. Well, and you've already said through this interview that something is going to go on it's going to happen it's going to happen yeah you know and a show it to Jamie I that guy he was supposed to he's funny he was supposed to be in here like two months ago yeah then he had a dentist appointment come up and now he hasn't been in since so Jamie I'm going on holidays but when I get back you should you should come on over

just saying throw out there oh he's a beauty he's he's a one of a kind in a career of 20 plus years he's a there aren't no there's no duplicates of him you know there's there's he's a special breed yeah He's a one of a kind soldier. And I've worked with a few in different ways that they're one of a kind. Willie Mack is another one. You had him on here. Great podcast with him.

He's, uh, that podcast with Willie, he's talking about everybody being blown to hell. Mm-hmm. And everybody's looking at him. Mm-hmm. And I'm like, if that isn't a great analogy for kind of where we're at in society,

we're all looking to somebody to lead us out of this, the absolute shit show we're in. Yeah. Instead of it being one person, I might add, it takes many in this case, not just one. I'd love to sit here and put all my faith in peer poliave or whoever, whoever you want to throw down that. But certainly I think it's more of a grassroots movement that needs to happen than just one politician that's going to come riding in. And saying that, that podcast, that's, man, there was a lot of meat on that. Every time I talk to any of you guys, there's a lot of meat, because it's life experience.

and I say this every time you guys come in. Like I have access right now, folks, to like a group of military men in Canada that are such a small portion of the population. It's ridiculous. Like, it's insane. Some of the guys have had walk through and sit in this studio to do it, actually, you know? Like, it's been, well, I think of, you know, I get asked all the time. Well, what are some of your favorite conversations? It's like all of them.

But it all depends on what you're looking for, right? And there's a lot of meat on the bone when you talk to veterans. who've been across seas not once, not twice. We're talking like six plus times, right? Like that's in, well, it hurts my brain a little bit, actually, is what it does. Well, when you, when you do the math on that, like, that's each tour is minimum six months. Usually in the later Afghan tour, we were doing it was eight months. You're talking years of your life in these places, away from family and friends.

And lots of careers have time away from home. Sure. I get it. Typically not with people trying to blow you up and kill you, but. It's not just the time away from home factor. It's then you have six months of workup training where you're basically gone from home before the tour. You know, um, jelling as a team and learning all the skills you need and lessons learned in that. Um, but listening to the Willie Mack interview like I talked about how that American had no, you know, ego and hubris.

Don't get me wrong. We have ego. We all do. We all do. Um, I'm not saying that at all. But it's that he's so, he's just a dude. you know like he's a legend to me and I worked with the guy he's a friend of mine he's but to me I'm like and I'm forgetting I you know I should know this what was what was

Willie's buddy that came with him do you remember can you remember Corbett out in Corbett yeah he's sitting here in the studio and I'm like if we start and then they're talking and I'm like do you just want to hop on no no no I'm good I'm like no you you might just stop no no I'm good and finally we convince him and then they both go and I'm like how is I going to let that guy sit and just listen to will I mean like this is I think it just added a whole not dimension. It does. It does. And the two of them were, well, I mean. Well, they've been great friends forever, forever and ever. Yeah. Yeah. Um, such a wealth of, of experience. I want to go back to this, this, this interpreter, you know, I'm not here to translate. I'm here to

interpret. And I think, you know, when I think of that, I think of, uh, the first time I read like Jordan Peterson, heard him talk. And I, I watched my wife do it. And we took, went to Rogers and we went and saw Jordan Peterson there. She'd never seen him before and she hasn't read his books and she's maybe listened a little bit of it because I listen to a lot of it. But overall, she hasn't, you know, gone down. So, like, as much as I'm like, oh, that's going to be a painful night for her, because, like, Jordan Peterson, when he gets rolling, if you don't understand the language.

Yeah. And I'll lose people. He will. He'll lose immediately. And I just remember my first time. But I almost wish I could go back to my first time too because when he starts talking, he's starting to make sense of things that you didn't understand. Yeah.

And when I think back to the reason I talk about the translation or the interpreter, it's like, well, if you don't understand the words or your translator doesn't understand, it doesn't have the same meaning of the word being trans. It can lose all relevance. And that's, that actually makes a ton of sense to me. Yep. Like, in our everyday lives, we can do that, you know? Like, we've lost a lot of words that, you know, like, we just push off like the meaning

isn't there. But you bring it all the way back to, like, just. Jordan Peterson or I'm reading the Bible right now. And I find when I start reading some of the scriptures, like, what the heck does that even mean? And then you dig down on a word, which doesn't take that much, especially with the good old Google. And also like, oh, oh, that actually makes a ton of sense.

And yet it's been interpreted or translated, I should say, from Greek, right? So it's come across into it. And so you're like, hmm, I wonder how much has been lost just in that, obviously a little bit, even if it's just word, you know, but a word can really change a sentence, right? we've seen this time and time again. So I find that really, you know, when you're talking life and death, when you're talking, I don't know what you're interrogating everyone for, but certainly to find out where the bad guy is,

I assume, and you're trying to put trust in something that you can see that there's going to be pitfalls in. That's difficult. Well, the first time I really, I mean, I used interpreters, me or my my platoon commander, mostly, if it wasn't a, if it was just a normal medium. with a village, you know, on our patrol route or, you know, we weren't fighting 24-7 there all the time. We had normal days too.

Well, a normal day there is not normal, but if he was just doing a village, Shura, like a meeting with an elder, you know, I'd be in close proximity to an interior protection, like close protection, but he'd be using the interpreter to talk to the elders about where do you want your well? Where do you want this? This bullshit. And because it was all bullshit. But it was very in full that was very easy. You know, the interpreter just says he wants a well here. No, we're good. We don't want a well because we put a well in now the Taliban are going to focus on

these kinds of things. And so that was simple. My first time using an interpreter for a big reason was the day Trevor Green took an ax in the head at one of these meetings. We may have talked about this before on or off. I can't remember if it was on or off camera. But that was a rough. day like Trevor Green took an axe in the head he's still alive he's down I think he's in

okotokes he's recovered as much as you can from that like I mean as far as his speech abilities and mobility and stuff but I very quickly after so the guy who did the axing was killed on scene but there were other players in the crowd and one of them was definitely not a good guy. So that was my first experience using an interpreter for literally a life or death moment. And it was high. It was probably the most stress I'd ever been in my life, you know. It was unbelievably stressful. Like people's lives literally are going to hinge on whether we get the right information, the proper, like all these things are happening and in the meantime there's like dude has just been medevaced out with an

axe in his head like two and a half three inches I should oh no it's it's believe me we do too it's just these things are happening and I'm trying to in my own head I haven't even made sense of that moment yet and I'm now using this interpreter who thankfully at this point because they rotated right so this particular interpreter was very good he was he was he he He knew his business. So that was a great relationship to have with him. Yeah. Yeah.

That was something else. Do you think, you know, when you talk about interpreting things and the pattern of life, right? When it comes to our news and certainly, let's go even bigger, Russia, Ukraine right now, right? You pay closer attention to it, in my opinion, than most. You have a background. where, you know, it certainly lends to paying attention to that, right? Like, you know, if I was going to pay attention to, well, I tell you what, what I'm, what I'm, what I can do is watch, like, the NHL playoffs and see what's going on there and understand. Because you've been in, in that world for so long, right?

Yeah. That you're kind of like, you kind of get it. Some of it, you don't. Some of it, you know, certainly is beyond your knowledge, maybe. But when it comes to, like, interpreting what's being pushed on us. You know, like I just read this story again about the Lusitania. And for the listener, the Lusitania was the passenger ship smuggling arms to Britain during World War I from the U.S., right? And Germans know this is happening, take out a news article in, I forget what paper it is, but literally put it in the paper and say, hey, we know this is happening.

Please don't do this, or we're forced to, you know, like they're bringing in arms to their enemy, right? And of course, the Lusitania goes in, gets blown up, draws the Americans into the war. They deny there was ever any arms on it, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You go back to 2008, divers went down, found all the ammunition. Like, it's just plain as day. It's there, yeah. The reason the U.S. gets involved in the war is because they put civilians in the pathway of war. Anyways, you get the point.

And so right now I'm watching Russia, Ukraine, and I'm going, like, so they did it with World War I. World War II, there's a lot. lot of play to be made that Pearl Harbor was allowed to happen. That's not really, that's not an Alex Jones conspiracy theory. There's a lot of, we're just not going to look as closely as we should be. We know it's going to happen. We're not going to listen to the one analyst who's saying it's happening. It's about to happen. Well, I mean, what is, what is, what is history shown us? And even, even now with, with COVID and everything, right? They don't, you know, oh, we're not going to listen to John. John's a worry work.

That's the almost practical side of me. It's like, oh, don't listen to that guy, right? The nefarious part is, is like when you go through the wars, especially the United States had been in, and probably this goes longer back than the United States, for sure it does. But it's like to write off Pearl Harbor. The only reason my body wants to revolt against that is because of all the movies and history classes and everything else

that I've went through where it's like, no, it can't be true. Can't be true. Can't be true. except, you know, now I've been through a bunch of things. And you're like, and that's a tough thought. It doesn't mean that we didn't go fight. Of course we went. Of course.

And that makes the lie more impactful. Canadians were already fighting. We joined in 39. Like we did her own thing. Canada was fighting. It's always funny we talk about Americans in war. They usually show up about three. They used to show up three years late to the war and then win it or claim to have won it.

Like World War I, they didn't really put boots on the ground till with a, what, year to go. World War II, they entered in what, Pro Harbor was December 7th of 41. So, I mean, they kind of joined partway through the war. And thank God they did. But they kind of let themselves be joined into the war. And nowadays, Americans are kind of like, what do we need to do to start a war kind of thing? Well, it's, yeah, it's interesting, right?

Because, like, what's scary about it is knowing the Lusitania story. What's scary about it is understanding there's a lot of people that believe exactly what you're saying about Pearl Harbor and then you just go on the list. Well, you look at Nord Stream that happened about eight, what, eight months ago and why would Russia blow up their own pipeline? You know, they did the pipe. Well, it's not their pipeline. For the listener, for the listener I had, uh, where am I at there? There, this is a Tom Luongo cup when he came to Lloyd and him and Alex Kramer talked about, um, Russia, Ukraine. Um, Tom Luongo and Alex Kramer were on here talking about.

about North Stream forever before you know I don't know if it's a week after it happened two weeks but at the end of the day they were like this isn't the Russians folks like and you go what's terrifying about it is is we seem hell-bent on getting to war and you know I come back to maybe this will be solved when I when I when I talked to Marty and certainly though this is where it gets kind of wait to hear is inverted because once again these are some of the things I'm going to have but war war allows them to do a lot of things and we all know right now there's a lot of issues going on yeah i mean just on the money side alone oh yeah the amount of the laundering

yeah money printing money everything the currency all that stuff you're like war you get to like wipe the slate clean almost a little bit right 100 so but the only way they get to go to war in my i think maybe i'm wrong on this right maybe you can maybe you can so article 5 because it's NATO. So Article 5 basically means... If NATO is attacked, we all go to war. And there's a few workarounds for Article 5. That's why it's a big deal for Russia.

So what happens if... Let's just say. Let's just say. Actually, you know what? Finish Article 5. Finish it for the people. So essentially it means that they will, NATO will invoke Article 5 if a NATO member is attacked,

which is why they keep dancing that carrot in front of Ukraine, saying, once this war is over, you were going to let you into NATO. They never will. They never will. It's a rotten thing they're doing to Ukraine. And just for the listener, I'm not pro Russia. I'm not, but I'm also not pro-Ukraine.

And I'm not anti-war. I'm a big, you know, not that I'm a fan of war, but war is not going anywhere. It's going to be around forever. But if you're going to fight a war, you better fight it to win it. And right now we're not in it to win it as NATO. We are, we are mishandling this. We should be negotiated. shading our way out because the Western think tanks and the Western NATO people think that

NATO will just stand up and win this war if it has to happen and I'll get into that in a second like why I believe we might go into an article 5 but we aren't we've drained our cupboards of big munitions or artillery munitions for the 155 pieces is all but gone the heavy equipment all but gone and I'm talking main battle tanks the leopards are not holding up on the field over there and I'm not saying that they're not a great tank because they are a decent tank but we're not deploying them in the right numbers we gave them like a hundred you know um hundreds not going to make a difference people seem to think that we will win a war of attrition with russia and these people have no clue about russian history one and

eight russians died in world war two one and eight not soldiers people when you think about that mentality and believe me you can hate Putin people can hate Putin he's He's a villain. His people tend to like that he backs them. He has their interests at heart. You might think that they'd glob up and, you know, have a coup on him. That's what the West keeps thinking. There'll be a coup.

Well, Prish Gorin, the Wagner leader. He tried this. Now that guy's a nut job, but he tried it. He got about 8,000 of his roughly 65,000 man army to follow him. I still firmly believe in watching a lot of telegram stuff that a lot of the troops just thought they were being deployed for whatever reason. They didn't really think that they were involved in a coup.

And that's generally how coup start. Watch the movie Valkyrie and you don't understand the coup against Hitler, how most of those soldiers had no idea they were actually going in an anti-Hitler movement. They're just being deployed something. Just like everything else, following orders. Following orders. And that's, you know, as long as it's a benign order, you're going to follow it until it becomes not a benign order.

But anyway, you know, Putin isn't going anywhere. The West can hope, and I call it, it's either called copium or hopium. You can hope you yourself into hoping these things. That's not a strategy, not when there's a war going on. You can call it an illegal war to make yourself feel better. Find me one legal war in history. Like there's, you know, stop calling it. War is illegal.

It's not good, it's bad. But it's a tool and people are not going to stop using it. So where we're at right now with this is the West isn't going to win a stand-up fight. We have been drained of heavy equipment. I was part of NATO in Afghanistan and I can tell you that of all the countries that deployed there, only the British, the Canadians and the Americans left the wire to fight actively. The rest of them sat on the big camps drinking green bean coffee and shopping on the boardwalk. And it's going to sound a little harsh if you're some guy who served in some other army over there and while I did

my time. That's that I don't give a shit. You know, I don't care. You weren't and you didn't go out in the boonies and fight it out every day. You sat on the boardwalk watching the other Canadians play hockey here and there. Like that's, you know, I'm sorry that you're sometimes the ice cream was a little melty, but that's the extent of it. So when you talk about standing these guys up and I, and I'll bring the Canadians into this mix now too, because we don't have the military we did. We are not on a war footing.

We. North America isn't on a war footing. No. The Americans could muster some stuff up. They still, they're in a. mess too don't get me wrong with all the stuff that's going on but they could pull some stuff together but is it enough to take on the Russians face to face no Russia hasn't even mobilized fully people keep talking the two narratives you see it on Twitter all the time Russia is down to

conscripts and shovels that's all they have left well then you should be winning but they're not this counteroffensive that's a month old hasn't breached the gray zone like this you know depending on where they are like 10 kilometers of like no man's land like No man's land in World War I was like across this room. World War II, it could be a tactical distance of a, you know, 500 meters or a kilometer or 100 meters. In this war, because of the weapon systems and the way things work, it's, it can be a couple hundred meters. It could be a couple kilometers, 10 kilometers, it depends on where they are and what the features are. The, this offense counteroffensive was the worst planned, worst telegraphed,

worst thought of thing they, they should have negotiated. themselves out. You're not going to get those regions back. Russia's not going anywhere. They've dug in. You might take a village or two and right now those are big wins on Twitter like oh we took this well by the afternoon the Russians take it back like this isn't a win you are sacrificing human lives human lives for a few feet. Russia is evil. Russia is bad all those things are true but they're not going anywhere. So you're not I think it was Winston Churchill and I could be wrong. He said you don't negotiate peace with your friends, you negotiate with your enemies. I could be wrong on who said that. But people need

understand that they can still be our enemy. You better start negotiating because what's going to happen and you've seen the media playing this out and Zelensky playing it out in this last two weeks and this is an important timeline because July 11th in a few days is the NATO summit. Now Ukraine has to take the report card and say all the stuff you've given us, all the equipment, all the money, this is what you've bought. You're going to your investor group basically. You're going to your Patreon people and saying, this is the product you bought. They have nothing to show for it. The counteroffensive is going horribly.

You can paint whatever, however you want on that. It's not going well. That's in a couple of days. So what's their other option? Well, they keep bringing up the NPP nuclear power plant. I can't pronounce the real name of it, but it's this very prominent nuclear power plant. and they've been talking about it a lot oh a lot and how there's explosives on it and how there's the russians are doing this to it well the is it the international atomic energy agency

i can't i might have yeah the zyperia yeah like i can't even i can't even get close to planning no me either zapper i zia anyways anyways that's the nuclear yeah nuclear yeah nuclear powerful. Chernobyl too basically here. So they keep bringing this up that the Russians are going to blow this thing. And the Russians are like, we aren't, why would we, we own it? You're, even if they were going to lose. So this is, this is a Tom Luongo thing. Read the news and take a step back and go, why are they telling me this?

Yes. Right? Because if you can figure that out, maybe you can start to figure out some of the games. If it was, if it was truly this big of a shadow game, we wouldn't know about it. But instead the public is being told about. Why are they doing that? Because they're priming us for what? The false flag.

And this false flag then buys NATO the excuse to declare an Article 5 and go a full tilt war. Folks, you can, I'm pro West. I'm just to be clear, I'm, you know, West should. But I'm also a realist because I've been in combat. And hope isn't a strategy or tactic. It's not a battle plan. It gets people killed. you need to have concrete, real methods, tactics, equipment, strategies, people in key leadership

positions who know how to fight and will fight. And as much as you need all that, you need the kit, the equipment, and the ammunition. And I'll tell you right now, we don't have any of it. We are, and we, I mean the West, we are, the cupboard is running bare, like really bare. Russia has just up to their production of everything. Like they weren't even at a full-time wartime production level for their heavy vehicles. They're producing, yeah, they might be losing tanks. Well, Putin, once again, this is the whole point of going back and forth.

Both sides get to play. Yeah, yeah. And whether you're pro-Putin or not, like, they're, he sees what's happening with the West. He's not a moron going, they won't do this. If you've watched anything, the Nord Stream, the Dam, the bridge, everything. It's just like it consistently is escalating to where he he's probably looking at like there's, I don't know if there's any way out of this. He keeps, I don't know enough about, I, I lived in Finland for a short, brief period. And I heard the stories of Finland and Russia back in the day

and some of the things and some of the wars fought there and on and on and on. And so you had a bit of a a boogeyman mentality, if you would, about Russia. 100%. They're a great Hollywood villain for. in the military they were our I don't want to say heritage enemy but our inherited enemy basically our Cold War enemy are everything I did in my early days of training was like this is how we're gonna beat the Russians this is their kit this is their this is their so that was my early days you know but it was that was generationally that was like we're gonna fight the Russians at some point and

maybe we will but I'll tell you right now we're not going to win I we might come to a draw I'm not saying Putin's going to be opening up a progey stands here in Alberta or something. I'm just saying we're not going to kick them out of Ukraine. We're going to have to negotiate that. And the thing is, I don't know about you, Chuck, but like in order to go to like, so they, maybe I'm wrong on this. So they do an article five, right? So now all NATO is going to war.

But Canada doesn't want to go to war. I don't know if, I don't know if half these countries in NATO, maybe three quarters of them, I don't feel like want to go to war. I could be wrong on that. They don't. So it's great they do in Article 5. We're all going to war. But if Canadians don't want to go, what are they going to do? Well, you'll have the situation like we had in Afghanistan.

NATO signed off on this. NATO, it was, we changed from Operation and During Freedom in August 3rd of 2006 to a NATO-led coalition. Well, the coalition was there. They didn't fight. They showed up. They just put some, you know, I'll put 100 men on this, the big, and they can eat ice cream and we'll put 50. There were some countries that had like eight guys there.

So then it just becomes a money laundering thing where they push a ton of money into it because we got soldiers there and our boys are there. But at the end of the day they're not doing anything. But the difference is this is on their doorstep. Afghanistan is. Yeah. It's over there. It's easy to forget.

It's in fact, it's the perfect money laundering. 80% of the world's opium comes out of their perfect little place to launder money. And that's why Ukraine's been so vital to these people too. because it's been like the hub of money laundering for a long time. You can watch the Oliver Stone documentaries on Rumble. He, he, he breaks it down very well. Um, you talked about Finland a second ago.

So Finland just joined NATO like recently, really like in the last, really recently last couple months. Everybody in NATO, the big think tank heads, the talking heads on TV have been saying, well, the reason that Russia doesn't want, invaded Ukraine is they don't want them in NATO. No, no, no, no, no. Although that is part of it. NATO keeps moving their doorstep. Russia hasn't invaded Finland, have they? Like, they don't care about Finland.

Finland hasn't been overly. They've got their own weird history. Like, you go back to World War II and pre-World War. They have a very unique, weird history, and it's back and forth. I'm not going to get into all that. The board's shit out of people. But, um, but Russia didn't roll T-90 tanks over the border with Finland because they joined NATO.

No, but Ukraine is a special beast and it's a special beast because of the Donbass region, which has been in contention since 2014. And, you know, it's been building. Right. It's been building. There's been an ongoing war there since 2014. Most of the world isn't aware of it or hasn't paid attention to it, but it's been a bad slog there for a long time. And finally Putin said, well, I'm going to handle it. You can hate them.

It's fair to hate them. It's fair not to like Russians because they're in Hollywood and they're bad. And, you know, you're going to change your opinion on hunting for Red October now because Sean Connery played a Russian or I think he was actually Bill Rusian, but whatever. You know, you get my point. It's a bad Russian subcommander. You know, these things are all evil now. I mean, look at Ovechkin and hockey.

They're talking about, are you kidding me? Well, I know this when I was told by people within that organization that when it was all happening they were told they weren't supposed to talk about it actually just not supposed to talk and I'm like like he's not you realize he's he's closing it on gregsky's record his great story and just because of his background let's eliminate it from TV it's it's it's wild you know it's wild it's it's um I think of George Orwell you know I don't know how much this book has been talked about over the course of the last three years for sure but I'm sure 10 years ago there was a group of people talking about it and before that and before that.

And, you know, I just come out, Oceana has always been at war with East Asia since the beginning of your life, since the beginning of the party, since the beginning of history. History, well, it carries on. The war has continued without break, always the same war.

You know, it's like, Orwell has some very prophetic things that were probably, you know, like, I was saying this and carries your thoughts. I was talking about this with a buddy, and he said, oh, yeah, it's pretty prophetic how he could see into the future. And I'm like, I don't think he was talking about the future.

I think he was talking about his life, how we're always at war. And because, I mean, just listen to the story. We talked to start. Lucitania happens in his life and brings everybody in and all the carnage that comes and everything else. And, you know, and then it's only a short time after that to get World War II. And it's all these things all over again, right? Well, you had David and Drew on. That was a great podcast.

I loved listening to them too. But they kind of said the same thing. Like, it's just a matter of looking at recent. your own recent history or what you're living through and applying that forward. It's all you're doing is you're trying to pattern that forward. And I think one of the great things that Jordan Peterson does is, and he's a brilliant man. I'm not trying, I won't, I'm not ever trying to take away from that. He's able to pick patterns life out clearly.

It's like he sees it through the matrix or something. So when he says something like, make your bed, I've read, you know, I read that book too and I've listened to him speak a billion times and stuff. And not, not, I haven't seen him live, but I've, you know, You didn't go see him live? I didn't have a chance to know. But to see, he's saying the simplest thing sometimes in a very Jordan Peterson way. But he says it, you know, like, that makes sense.

Like it's when I talk about that, that first sergeant saying, I don't just make pounds. Well, no shit idiot. Of course they made. Wait. Oh, that's what he's saying to me. He's like. And where does he? And where does he?

So I would say two things to that, which I've started to learn. One is, um, how do I want to say? One is, I was going to say, like, where does he get the, like, where he says one line and has so much weight to it. And what I found out, he quotes the Bible all the time. It's literally from the Bible. Yeah. I mean, I'm not saying he's plagiarizing. No, no, no.

He's taking something that's very complex and putting it in her way so that a guy like me could understand it. It was a very timely, timely, like, I couldn't believe it when I saw him for the first time. And my brain was blown, and I'm like, I can't understand what. half of he's saying, but I kind of get it, and I wanted to learn more, and it drew me in. The second thing I would say with you not seeing him in person yet, is I feel for anyone at this point who hadn't seen him in person, what is that, five years ago now. I think it's five years ago now. And I'm sure I know I have friends who saw him before that, but we saw him in, the book club

saw him in Eminton in like a, you know, in a banquet room of a hotel. It was very, nothing fancy. Yeah. paid tickets and everything, but like very informal. And he got up on stage. He'd written his book, but now when you see him live, he'll try and talk to different chapters. It's almost scripted. I dislike it.

Yeah. I like when he gets, when he's talking about something that he's working on. Because what's fascinating about Jordan Peterson is that he can work through a problem talking about it in front of you. Oh, yeah. I'm just trying to, like, and he'll, and he apologize. In his lecture series, he does this all the time. I mean, I'm just trying to think about this. Now I'm formulating my thoughts and on it goes.

And so the first time we saw him, he lectured for about an hour and 25 minutes and then two questions at the end. And it was phenomenal. It was not polished. It was not. He was not in some like, you know, $1,000 suit. Not that there's anything wrong with that. It's just that the feel was, wow, this is something.

And now the last time I saw him in Rogers Place, you know, like, there was some like surreal spots. He had this, I wish I could, somebody who was at the show, can you please text me what the musician's name was at the start. He had a guy get up by himself and just play a whole bunch of music. Right at start. Super cool. He had Rex Murphy open. Super cool. He had his wife open. Super cool. I thought his hour-long talk about his book. I've been there, done that. I was in whatever. The best part was him and his wife doing Q&A at the end. He danced on stage. It was phenomenal. It's like, that's Jordan Peterson I like. The rest of it, take it, throw it out the door for me. But I've

already seen them three times live. And for me, I was, I was kind of monitoring my wife because I'm like, this is something. Like, she's in for something here. Anyways, I feel for you because the early Jordan Peterson, I always talk about the origin story of like, you know, your first time on the podcast, maybe, my first podcast, my first event, your first, whatever, although it's like uncomfortable, the nerves are there, you don't know what the heck to expect, things go wrong, things go right. Those are beautiful moments because it's so new.

And Jordan Peterson in 2018 was so freaking new to me. And now, you know, how far it's come. Anyways, that's my husband thought. Well, you said at the beginning, the timeliness of this guy, right? Like, I think a lot of world moments when you look back on them, there will be, that was a timely thing that happened there. That was a, that guy or that person, that event, that company, that was, it's almost providence or fate that it was happened this way. And I believe. Or do you think, or do you think that society was finally being?

pushed enough that they were ready to listen. Well, you talked about it with Drew and Dave. One of them brought it up and I don't remember which. Very bright guys. I loved listening to them and you guys had a great conversation but one of them said something to the effect of how politicians are usually or used to be a reflection of culture and and now they're trying to tweak culture, you know, they're trying to, they're trying to send the message downstream to culture and and form this hive mind kind of thing. And I'm paraphrasing what they've said.

But it used to be that culture would send it back, you know, send it like, this is what we want from our politician. This is what we expect. So when you come home and we have to decide in four years, if we're voting for you again, you get a yes or a no. But now you, you're the messaging going through the media. It's all it's the translation, right? Like it's all there, the, you're the translator and the politician are basically in the

same bucket together. And it's us downstream that are, unless you're super mentally strong, like COVID's a great example, unless you're super mentally strong, you're going to swallow it. You were swallowed up by it. So you have someone like Peterson and I agree 100% watching him think through a problem in real time, which might irritate people who just want a sound bite, real quick sound bite from someone like me to see him deconstruct and then rebuild a thing in his own head. And I don't care if he takes two minutes to sit there. You can see wheels turning in this man's head. And when he speaks, like, I don't often get a catch in my throat listening to someone.

But that guy when he speaks with passion, forget about it. Like he means it and believes it. And I'm, and you can disagree or agree with the guy. For the most part, I agree with what he, you know, he's not left or right. He's just a realist, you know, he's. So the podcast you keep referencing with Drew Weatherhead and David Parker is, episode 457 folks that was just on June 29th for anyone wondering when that happened and yeah when you talk well I mean when you think about Peterson uh his ability like he worked with

people a ton right he comes from the line of Jung and Freud in that in that background and so he probably well I mean I'm sure he talks about this in the book and and and things you start to see trends you spot patterns in people. And when you come all the way full circle to our politicians and what Drew and David were talking about is we have a real issue in Canada

in that media used to hold politicians accountable. Yes. So when you say they're creating culture, it's this weird thing that I'm watching. At least, this is just me, folks. instead of the politician doing something dumb and them attacking them. Now,

we're starting to see a bit more of it, but that's almost like the winds are changing, and the media kind of sees, and that's me. Maybe I'm wrong. But they're in cahoots now because you have one media, and I know we have CTV and CBC and global, but it's essentially...

They're all the same media. It's all same. They're all funded by the government. You can love or hate it, but they are. Yep. And that is going to be like, well, am I going to bite the hand that feeds or not? Yep. And so now you have Bill C-11.

Now you have Bill C-18. You got all these things playing out against us, little independents, such as Sean Newman, and others. Your Weatherheads, one of them, right? David Parker is another. And on and on it goes, you know, like, you got people screaming at the top of their lungs is that we got serious problems. And sometimes, I think, the politicians are just everyday people who have their list of experts that are being informed by the experts of mainstream media

and mainstream media isn't pushing back, which isn't forcing. So everybody thinks they got it right, except all of us, all of us like regular folk are like, what the hell are we doing? I just can't, like there just must be so much, there must be so much pressure on politicians,

and maybe I'm letting them off slightly, that if they stick their head up, too far, they're out. And there isn't a media to push to make it cultural, acceptable to stick your head out because they'll go to bat for you well and this will bring up the PPC angle of it all is that the the hero worship they put behind Bernier will be that he's always saying the right thing for us he's

always you know he's the first guy to say this and that and he's the first guy to do stand up for us and why isn't Pallivay doing this and what you know you're just voting for the WF globalists and that and you've seen it on Twitter this is like their their meat is this this whole bit of it and look I get it but you know what Bernier can say anything because he's at no risk we just saw it a month ago when his when he when he lost horribly they parachute him into a place thinking that they've done all their their work their groundwork like we have found a place where this guy could possibly

win and he doesn't even come close doesn't even like register on the Richter scale dude like he's he's he's an afterthought and it it is an afterthought at this point. I think they're pulling at 2%, but they're the loudest thing you'll see on Twitter. And they don't attack Trudeau. They attack conservatives. The one thing I do, the one thing that I think is difficult in our country when it comes to Bernier, the last federal election, I believe, now don't quote me on this, maybe it's the same, but I want to say it was higher than the Green Party. He was polling at the same, but I want to say higher than the Green Party. It wasn't much. We're talking percents, right, low percents. Like, I don't know.

I can't remember if the Green Party was 3% and he was, I could probably look this up but I mean, at the end of the day they didn't have them on the national debate and I went and I, as a Canadian citizen I look at that and I go okay, we've got the Green Party they're never going to win. And if your criteria

is they got to be past a certain percentage to get on the national debate, I agree. Fair enough. Yeah. We had Quebec on that. He literally says in the debate I don't want to be Prime Minister anyways. Well, shouldn't the criteria

for the national debate for the prime minister, be you want to be the prime minister, get them the heck out of there. It makes our entire government look like a mockery. It's an idiotic thing. In saying that, I applaud Quebec, because if Alberta could have Danielle Smith set up and talk to some questions, I think we'd all appreciate that.

And so you go, there's lessons to be learned here. But overall, it's like, he doesn't want to be there. The Green Party's an afterthought, beyond an afterfire. It's like it's almost just something you don't even want to see up there. They can't even talk to all of it. They don't even have a platform that speaks to all the issues. So if you're not going to, you might as well put it down to the two-party system. Or when an upstart, and this is where the machine gets involved, like the PPC was close.

They were certainly at that point in time. And you can understand probably Bernier's frustration. 100% dude. That he should have been on the stage. And I tell you what, but once again, like this is me trying to ratchewing. nationalize this out like we want a healthy country yeah like we want to actually have a debate when the debates aren't happening when we got one media and and you know and don't get me wrong i was actually chris sims was just talking about this that there's different networks starting up that

are conservative minded and everything else it's like oh then we need to help support that because if we want things to change in this country then we have to get behind the things that are actually trying to open it up and certainly i'm talking about the podcast but i'm certainly talking about a whole bunch of other people that are doing the same thing. Well, it, yeah, I'm, I'm not a PPC guy by any stretch.

I mean, when they first came out, there was kind of, they're a new thing, they kind of, they're speaking to what I want to hear. Um, they're speaking to what a lot of conservatives want to hear. But they've misplayed the ball.

You can't insult people into joining you. It just, that's their strategy. We will make shitty memes. Insult, insult the conservative base into telling them they're too stupid understand why they're voting conservative, but please come support us. Like, that's not going to work. It's just isn't, it's not going to work. It's not a serious party anymore. It had a moment where it

could have had. It had a moment at the last election where it was relative, you know, honestly. But their brain trust is draining out of it. The people, some of the people who founded it have walked away from it knowing that Bernier's just now in it for his own good. I do agree. He should have been on the main stage for a debate. Like he, he, he apparently, he did pull high enough. I don't remember what the number was, but he did make it high enough as a. recall. And if you're going to allow the block on there who, or, you know, who are a provincial party that runs. Five point one percent is what they were. Well, there you go. They, they, in my opinion, they should have been as well. They're not going to go in. And, and the thing about that is,

uh, one of the things I think is crazy about that is how little coverage he gets, right? Oh, yeah. So, so he pulled five percent going on things like, like this, you know, I'm being a little bit tongue and cheek about my show. But I mean, I mean, he wasn't given, in my opinion, it's not like he was given the main stage. Wasn't even allowed to debate for Pete's sake. And he still garnered 5%. 100%. That's pretty crazy.

And I give them credit for that. They were able to master in the beginning a grassroots movement. You know, there's a lot of disgruntled conservatives who are like, where are we going? Are you kidding me? Andrew Shear, O'Toole, even worse. I give PPC the credit that they have brought conservatives back a bit from the brink of just being another liberal party. They'll disagree with that and say that that's not the case. But I do think that having this PPC mirror to look into, you're like, people better smart enough.

But when we have a bad leader in the conservative party, we fire them. We vote them out. You know, we hold a leadership convention and say, you're gone now. Who's next? Two I see take over. Whereas with them, this guy can't get nothing right. And they're just going to hold on to him forever. Like, pat on his pension at this.

point. It's but you can't make them see that. Like is there even another contender in the PPC that could step in and say let me have a shot. No, they don't allow that. Yeah. Well, that's control, right? Like I mean, that's, you know, when I get thinking about the different, like the, you want to make it out to be so nefarious, the political system, which at times it certainly can be. But I just, I just think of like, bring it back to something I can kind of understand the NHL and the WHA, right? It's like, well, the NHL eventually wins. All the teams come across.

Yeah. They play to their system. Now, NFL teams want in, you know, like, would Hamilton be a great spot for an NHL team? Yeah. I think so. I think it'd be fine. I think they could survive with Toronto right there.

I don't think they'd have an issue. Toronto doesn't want it. You think Toronto's get, or Hamilton's getting an NHL team? Probably not. Yeah. Would Quebec City be a great spot to put one back into? Probably. Yeah.

People want to play and. go into Quebec, do they want a second team there? For whatever reason? I don't know. Does Arizona make any sense having a team anymore? No. Do they want it to be out there? Yes. That's why it stayed as long as it has. Will it eventually move? I think most of us agree it will. Why they've held on this long is beyond me.

But at the end of the day, like, and that's something I understand. That's the politics of hockey. Yeah. When you get to like the politics of running a country, man, it gets murky fast. Oh, yeah. And I'm sure the NHL is very murky. as well, like I'm sure. It's just, this is a world that I, I didn't understand. You know, it's, when you come to war, war is murky. Oh, yeah. You know, you go all the way full circle

back to Russia, Ukraine. I look over there and I go like, man, I don't have the first, like, inkling. That's why I bring Tom and Alex in. That's why I bring people like yourself in. Because these are folks, in my opinion, that I look at and I go, okay, well, they got a better handle on it than I ever will, you know, like I can follow some of what's going on. What you guys talk about makes sense. You know, like this is, you know, it's funny. Did you see the meme on Twitter of like, you know, today I'm a Titanic expert, the next day on the U.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Rush expert. The day after I'm a, you know, hot weather balloon expert, right? And all these different things. I'm like, yeah, and I try and not do that because I have no, you know, I'm having enough time. Right now I'm single parenting this week. Yeah.

I got enough time getting in or hard enough time getting in here to get Chuck on to then go pick up kids and swimming lessons and on and on. out it goes, you know. Oh, that's the thing about Twitter, right? We're all an expert for, you know, a minute for a, for a tweet, we're all an expert on something. Everybody, you know, has that moment. I think it was, uh, again, Drew and David, one of them had said something about

the difference between wisdom and knowledge. You know, this is this thing here in our hands is now all the wisdom and knowledge that anybody thinks they need, but that's, they're not the same thing and it's not the same as knowing or having experienced a thing. Like, I, again about the the Ukraine Russia war I've been to war I've seen I've seen what happened in Bosnia in the in early 90s during that genocide during that that infighting war I've seen things in cost there in a well I went to Costco too but I the the Afghan stuff we don't want to be sending our kids to war not with Russia not with no one if we have to fight someone we better but if we're going to to fight we better be in it to win it we are not in a condition to win anything right now and we're sending this Muppet PM you know he's already bragging on

going to the NATO summit we don't meet our 2% commitment he brags about that he's bragged about that for years what are we going to do we have a few guys in Latvia give me a break like they're going to get steamrolled by the Russians the Russians now have love of them or hate them the most combat experienced army in the world And I'm not talking about an insurgent war. That's a different thing. Peer to peer fighting, like power to power fighting. NATO hasn't fought a peer to peer war ever, like ever.

They'll try and say, well, you know, 91 in Iraq that was peer to peer. No, there was a junk army using junk equipment like against a superpower, a coalition of superpowers. That was not a peer to peer war. Peer to peer is like what you're seeing in Russia, Ukraine. Those are peers. we have no idea what we're getting into all the hard lessons that we learned I talked about lessons learned with the Americans that we we did that with we learned things that saved lives we we used their experiences applied them to us then sure we had to

buff out some stuff it's like a hockey drill and when it's it's training is one thing when it's game time it's another that's very different when the bullets are actually coming on it's a two-way range now not a one-way range that's a whole whole different feeling things need polishing we learned a lot when the next crew came over in 06 the rcars we tried passing on all the things that we learned right down here's my map here's everything that on this map where i fought where i was hit where i was i deed here's everything we're going to go through it all you know we we paid a price for this this hopefully helps you all those things are forgotten and gone now they're all

all the lessons learned all the guys that are my age that were leaders at that point they're gone they're out I have a couple buddies that are still in but they're just riding out for pensions now um the Russians paid prices heavy prices they they're not without casualties they've taken casualties but they've learned and as much as the fighting end of it is important this the logistical end is just as important more important they can manufacture and move stuff from a factory to the front line seamlessly now they understand drone warfare better than anyone in the world now. Like, I'm not talking like we put up one Reaper, you know, an allied

Reaper, a NATO Reaper is in the air and look at us Hellfire this one tart. They put them up at the platoon level, the 35 man platoon level, they're, they're throwing up drones left and right. They've got drones in from Iraq that they're, Iran that they're buying on swarm. They're buying from China, the parts. They're, dude, we are so overmatched right now. Ill equipped.

We are, and worse than ill equipped. I can deal with ill-equipped. Most of my military career weren't that well equipped sometimes. You come out, you, you, you overcome that with initiative, some level of initiative and outside the box thinking. The West is so convinced, has so convinced itself that it's just Russia, they're conscripts with shovels. We've got, this is not, we, if we're going to fight them and I want to win, if we have

to fight them, we, if we have to fight them, we're. are not going about this the right way. And I believe that we're very close with an article five when they false flag. You say something very troubling to me. And you've said it multiple times now. That is, if we're going to fight them, I want to win, which I get. I don't want to fight. Maybe I'm just, maybe this is, maybe I need to be convinced differently.

But I go like, everything I keep learning is we keep backing Russia into a corner. So put Putin as evil as you want. You put somebody in a corner and keep trying to push, them push them we're going to put on and on and on it goes I don't want to go fight that war like I actually I when I think about it I'm like I should really go listen to some more Muhammad Ali you know there's a guy that ended up um not going to war going to prison for his beliefs of like I don't want to fight the via con right and I'm like how did he get to that point you know and I'm sure folks I can go watch a few things maybe read a couple books and all of a sudden be right in the

mindset of where he's at but I look at where we're heading. And I'm like, I don't want to go fight this war. I certainly don't want my kids to go fight this war. I don't believe in this war. And it doesn't mean that war happening on Ukraine soil, you know, we live in a province that's tons of Ukrainians. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, I get it. Yeah.

But I'm like, at the same time, we backed, NATO has backed, maybe worse, maybe it's the U.S. has backed Russia into a corner. Oh, yeah. That is like, just, I mean, go listen to Tom and Alex. Go listen to what. Yeah. The Chuck's talking about like from 2014, probably sooner than that or later than that. Yeah.

Right. They've been slowly working this way to where we sit. This isn't. This didn't happen in February 2020. This wasn't an overnight decision. Correct. This was a long time coming. And it was for those of us watching the pattern of life, this was inevitable.

It was going to happen. Russia was put in a spot where. they had to act. They built up and they built up and they, they did what they did. Well, Russia's look how they only took this month. They've taken about 18% of the country that they wanted. They could have driven further and not without loss. People think, well, you must be pro-Russian.

You're saying they could have gone, look, I'm again, not pro-Russian. I'm a realist when it comes to fighting. These guys will continue to push if they thought that my, fear if this Article 5, there's two fears. Article 5 gets invoked because a false flag happens at this power plant, this nuclear power plant. That's a real possibility. We have about a, I'd say a couple week window here where it's a real possibility. The other,

isn't that terrifying? It's terrifying. The other fear that I have is we don't negotiate with Russia soon enough. And Putin says, I was nice. I only took 18%. Now I'm taking the other. I'm going for the rest. Because at this point, what does he have to lose?

You know, go back 10 days when, when Wagner group under a Przgeron did their little push, you know, the coup where, you know, he was hoping a few commanders would jump in with them. Or, you know, that's how coupes work. You hope that somebody's going to come on board and like, yeah, you know what I hate Putin? Didn't happen. Worse, and this should be an indicator to the world, the first people that came to Moscow to help Putin. were the Chechen group, the Chechen military, special forces. This should be a big indicator that the two civil wars or Russian wars in Chechnya

were some of the dirtiest, crevious, most ruthless combat footage you could ever don't bother watching. It's horrible. Bad wars. These are now his most ardent supporters. These are brutal men. We fought some of them in Afghanistan, these Chechens, like in special areas where high opium movement and you know top tier troops these are not to be you watch their footage in

in Ukraine these are not wherever they are is where the push is like these are bad tip of the tip of the spear these are people yeah and and you brought it up earlier about how we always view the enemy as being this hoard swarm sure and I'll be down to my last bullet but I'm gonna win it that's not how this goes it's not how really I fought a lot of Taliban like an unusual number of battles in Taliban just right spot right time maybe um that's not how these people are fighting they look like you and me they look like you could literally take footage of a Chechen fighter over there and impose that onto the movie the covenant they're wearing the same gear they're undergoing

unbelievable training we tend and this happened to us going to Afghanistan we tended to think in this format in our brain where they don't look like us They're wearing man jammies and flip flops. We're going to steamroll these buggers. We don't know what the Russians had such a hard time with. Well, let me tell you, they don't have to look like us. They don't have to dress like us. They don't have to think like us.

They can fight. And this is true around the world. Just because they don't look like us and don't think like us, wash that hubris out of your brain. Like people can fight. It's not just us. And in fact, we don't have that warrior mentality anymore as far as I'm concerned. So for, for me, this,

this this this this weird world that the west is living in that something's going to happen where Putin will be removed it's not right now he's playing kind of with the gloves on he's only gone for 18 he don't he hasn't pushed beyond where he is because those are the three regions that wanted their own autonomy anyway knowing everything you know right knowing that like could be a false flag on the nuclear power plant knowing what happened with Nord Stream knowing what happened to dam and the bridge and everything else if we declared war tomorrow NATO said we're going to war. Are you behind NATO 100% then?

You have to be in your mind because you're, or are you like, man, can we just sign a peace treaty and carry on with life? Sign the peace treaty. Sign the peace treaty. Bomb up for, I say bomb up. Bomb up is the word we use when we're gearing up. Bomb up for 10 years. It's going to take 10 years to rebuild our forces because that's how much we've been

drained. Take 10 years of real. training with troops ramp up our militaries and if you want to kick rush out go whole hog just have an illegal war you don't need article 5 you don't need it just go do it it'll be an illegal war who cares who's gonna there's no hague court that's going to throw anybody in jail you know so if we want to do this negotiate about now just like the Germans did at the end of World War I got really bad terms so we'll be back well the Versailles treaty is a big reason

They came back, you know, in World War II. They wanted Alsace Lorraine. They wanted all the regions back. And then some, and we saw what happened. Negotiate this out. Say, okay, you get those, that 18% of Ukraine, those three regions that wanted out anyway, that voted themselves out anyway. And then go back. But we're not ready to fight them right now.

We're not ready to negotiate with them right now. Apparently there are, and I, this is all depending what you believe, there are some high level talks happening behind the scenes and I believe that that always has does happen no matter what I mean we were talking to high level Nazis in World War II behind the scenes right like these things happen well that behind or enclosed door rooms closed door or closed door meetings mm-hmm and I hope one of them pans out otherwise we're looking at a future where there's going to be a forever war in you know potentially kids could be good Canadian kids are going to be sent over for this, you know.

Well, I just, you know, I always said, oh, my kids are the right age for COVID, right? They were young. I think when COVID kicked off and everything, you know, I can't remember if Shea was, I think he was four, you know, see, we just insulate, insulate, insulate. But like, you know, now I'm like, if this, you know, you think things are going to be so fast a year and it's done, six months and it's done. Two weeks is over. Yeah, that's right.

And what, you know, they don't teach you as a young man. And maybe you're not ready to understand is like, you know, time moves differently for things that are this big. Like it just doesn't happen in a snap of a finger. And so it takes time and everything. So now I'm like, you know, my kid is actually at the worst possible age possible. Because, you know, Marty Armstrong, 232 is a great reset. It's like, well, what does that culminate in? And that's nine years away.

That puts my kid at 16, 17. That's a blink. That's a terrible, terrible. And I go, and what's making it even worse, honestly, Chuck is I go, I'm going to have to deal with myself. Because my, I mean, you know, our kids are, you know, I don't know how to put it poetically, folks. But they're us, right? They're formation of us. And I already know what I was like at 18.

Like, I had the world by the tail and I knew everything. You can tell me anything. I'm like, so I'm walking into over the next nine years, son being like I know dad got it figured out got it figured out you know and I now I'm like I never thought of that before but now I'm like I was actually starting to think like crap right like you know because I go knowing everything like the problem with doing the stupid podcast I've had this out with my wife before in the middle of COVID yeah okay you know as as things are heating up and you got the premieres going you know

go get your vaccine uh You know, it's because of you. We got the pandemic of the end vaccine. You got the prime minister rolling around on his electoral path saying, I'm not going to let him on planes, trains, but is it going to save you? Anyways, you get the point. Yeah. And she's going, like, what are you doing?

I'm sure a lot of people are thinking that. And when I go back to that, I go, told her, is it, what do you want me to do? You want me to interview all these people and then just forget about it? Yeah. And never take any of the, you know, like any of what they're talking about. and instituted into my life. And if you want that, quit my job tomorrow. Well, actually, at the end of the year,

I'll finish the podcast out with the sponsors and everything. And I'll be done, but I'm never podcasting again. Because, I mean, if I'm going to have people on, I'm going to actually take some of what they're saying to be true and their experience and added into, you know, lived experience. It's like, so the problem is with that, the stupid podcast now. I'm like watching what's coming and going, like, if we go to war,

how the heck can I get behind it, knowing everything that we just talked about? And again, what I'm saying is just an opinion. But it's an opinion based on my experiences and pattern of life. And I think objectively anybody, you can be pro-Ukraine. Like you said, Saskatchewan, Alberta, lots of Ukrainian. Yeah, it's not that I hate Ukraine. I don't. There's some of the greatest people on the planet.

100%. This isn't about that. Finland is. some of the best, the nicest, friendliest place have probably ever been super freaking cool people. It's just, it's not about that. It's about how do we get out of this war? And I'm telling you militarily, we're not going to do it. It's, I'd love to be proven wrong.

They started this counteroffensive three, well, a month ago now or so. They telegraphed every move in the media. Here's what we're going to do. Here's what we're going for. And this is our objective. Thinking, this is the worst do you imagine doing that on D day well here's where we're landing with this unit at this time with this kit oh by the way worse than that

we're telling you what we're short here's our begging list it baffles me and not one surprise not one surprise move this is a counteroffensive you've had months to dream up some wicked move like even we did it in Afghanistan like we'd show the hand over here drive some stuff over here and he'lllose some stuff over here, you know, we had to throw them off as much as you could. I mean, it's Afghanistan. I was Cy Campbell, who was in World War II on this podcast, Episode 21, Chuck. And he was a rear tail gunner and her Lancaster bomber.

He didn't fly in D-Day, but what they did on D-Day, if I recall this correctly, folks, is they did, they flew away from it and sprinkled tinsel in the air so that it would show up on a radar as planes. Think about that. Yep. Like that's about a coolest story as I can get. It is cool. And it's deception. And that's what war is mostly a lot of it, other than the grinding away shooting each other. It's deception.

It is a lot of deception. And there's been no, I think social media and this ability, this, I've used hubris about a hundred times, but Zelensky's hubris, self-humbris is what is actually costing them right now. He needs to, if his own people don't remove them, and I firmly believe that the CIA is going to give a nod to one of his commanders, under commanders, and say, enough, enough with him.

He, I don't know, he's just mismanaged this. I mean, it's, but here's, here's, once again,

like Canadians, great human beings. I've been across the country. I've found nothing but great human beings. We got piss poor leadership. I mean, They talk about Zelensky. He ran on, I'm going to bring peace.

And what has he brought them? The biggest war in the last 100 years. Yeah. Honestly. Again, the Ukrainian troops, given what they've had, have fought brilliantly, have fought a very hard fight. I'm not taking away from that. But they're not an endless pool of people. And unfortunately, even if you believe that even the stuff that was leaked, that's fairly

believable because it wasn't supposed to get out there, there are over 300,000. thousand KIA, you know, the Russians probably aren't a whole lot behind that, although I don't believe they're quite at that number. Like they are proportionally, they're not taking the casualties that Ukraine, Ukraine is. And that's mostly due to air superiority and artillery. Russia is firing tens of thousands of rounds a day. Ukraine is firing not nearly that, like a couple thousand a day. They don't have the rounds. It's, it's a war of attrition and this plays into Russia's hands and people just are not getting that like even if they all they had with shovels we're not going to you know it just isn't that war you know like these

I've said earlier these two narratives of we'll beat Russia it's conscripts with shovels oh god we're losing this worse and more stuff well how are conscripts with shovels beating us by us I mean the West I mean how are they you think most people are paying attention to it I think they were of course there's burnout from it now and that's why occasionally you see Zalinski has to keep popping into something he had Greta Thumburg you know a couple days ago because she's a world leader apparently that matters in the war in Ukraine he always has some Hollywood guy or some other political knob show up for a

photo op and that gets him another 500 million and prolongs this thing then he runs back to his bunker and here we are like I I he look at somebody in his inner circle is going to get the tap from the CIA and I think if they waste I mean waste in a positive way if they waste their opportunity to article 5 that you know blow up that nuclear power plant and I hope they don't do it if that misses if that doesn't happen and I hope it doesn't somebody from his inner circle get the tap coup do him in get him gone he won't go into exile there's no where is he going to go to exile that there's no work where's he going to go to exile that the

doesn't happen these days where's Gaddafi going to go into exile you know like that kind of thing then there'll be a negotiated peace and then yeah take 10 years rebuild sort your stuff out get then go after rush if you want but do it to win I've said this about Afghanistan a bunch of times I didn't mind fighting I wasn't I wasn't against the battles I wasn't against the idea of why we were there I had no problem with that I don't have a problem with that most of the combat vets I know and I mean combat vets, guys who fought in combat, which is a small percentage, don't have a problem with that. I have a problem that we lost a war that we want to refight in. You talked about time

earlier. We spent what damn near 15, 16, 17 years there. And again, the West, not just Canada. Canada was there until 2014, I think. So we spent about a long period of time, 14, 15 years there. These same think tank geniuses that, you know, were in charge of that like 18 year war then overlay that view onto Russia and say well we're going on a year and a half and all they've taken is 18% of the country dude we didn't take 8% of the country in Afghanistan after 19 years if we didn't physically sit on it it was Taliban controlled and a second we stepped off of that spot went somewhere else it was Taliban controlled that's the neat the same think tanker guy

are the guys sinking us right now because they're they're idiots they're hubris there's nobody in a think tank it's like if you can't do coach or teach well that's what a think tanker is if he can't hasn't done it and can't do it go sit in a think tank and tell people how it is because these are the same people that said well 19 years to win this war that's about right well it's telling them they're trying to convince you and me that Russia must be weak because it's taking them a year and a half to to take 18% of the country not they took that 18% actually pretty quick they just been sitting on it they're not

going anywhere they'll fight positional battles they'll move a few kilometers here and there there's still always going to be those moves but they're they're not really pushing towards Kiev if they want to Kiev you know they'd make that push and maybe they will negotiate I I even if you don't agree with me ask yourself why nobody's negotiating get some terms on the table get Putin to the table and say how do we get you out of here. Nobody's even doing that. Then nobody's asking that question. Why is nobody at least opening up the dialogue? Nobody wants that dialogue. They want another forever war and Ukraine's a perfect spot to do it. It's not Lindsey Graham, that American senator, a piece of

shit, human. He's just a vile, letcherous human. He's just evil. Um, said it in an interview or like a roundtable thing with some Ukrainian leadership. Like this is the best way, best money spent is killing these Russians with Ukrainians. Well, you couldn't, you said the quiet part out loud. Like you're, they are going to fight to the last Ukrainian. And that pot's getting quickly emptied. You know. And that's why you feel for the Ukrainians.

I do. I, for the average Ukrainian who's just, you know, not political at all and just wants to live a life. Like most people anywhere in the world Just want to live life They just want to live a life Our basic I was literally before you showed up I was literally having this conversation

Most of us just want to make a you know Sir could Do you want to be rich So you never have a worry? Sure But most of us want to be able to Pay our bills Put our kids in whatever they want to do

Be able to travel a little bit And just not have to worry about Every day You know oops the car broke down And I don't have enough money Or you get the point Yeah. Pretty much most of us.

That's it. I would say majority. Now, there is a small portion that want to push it harder and want to have it so they can literally travel the world whatever they want to want to want to have every last nice thing under the sun. Yeah. You get the point. That's most people in the world. That isn't just here. That's everywhere I've went.

That's most people. They just want to be left alone. I understand. In the middle of nowhere villages, you know, with 500 people in these villages that hadn't traveled more than 10 kilometers in their life, they just wanted to be left alone. they didn't want our well they didn't want our help they didn't want the Taliban either they just wanted to be left the hell alone and you you know you're like but we're here to help you like we don't need your help but you don't have a well we have we we're good this village has been there a couple thousand years and they've somehow managed before

those of us really smart dudes from Canada showed up they're probably going to be fine they just don't want you know and I've and I try to overlay that view on the rest of the world like you try to without too much bias it's just leave people all I get it Putin did a bad thing he went he did this thing it is bad it's horrible it's not going to get better by not negotiating you know you have an old an argument with your old lady well we'll just all ignore her for a day or two this will yeah see how that works out yeah Okay, not comparing anybody's wife to Putin, but just saying that there's probably a couple wives out there like Putin Probably, but you know if you're not going to talk about it and talk it out

It just it's this isn't getting better without talking about it What's the next wonder weapon I said this on Twitter a while ago? We've sent them fighting vehicles. We've sent them kit Medical supplies money weaponry Leopard twos now which are state-of-the-art tanks with all the newer ones. Yes, They're old, but they're updated. You know, they've got good stuff in them. The next wonder weapon is troops on the ground. That's it.

You can send F-16s, sure. F-16s are not the game. Okay, you've watched Maverick. It's a great, oh, we've got F-C. I don't care. Dude, I don't care. The Russians have some of the best air defense systems in the world. They have, they have an air force that's now extremely

combat qualified like they fly missions daily like there are no joke and you're going to take a handful of trained Ukrainian pilots shove them into F-16s which they're not that familiar with that they have basic training in they'll be out of the sky in a week you're gonna send up now so what next you're gonna send NATO in there you're gonna article 5 and send NATO in well the Air Force will win you're not rolling through Iraq that didn't have an Air Force really and minimal like a few of Sam sites like this isn't that that's they they are overlaid the wrong mindset onto this war and sure give it 10 years and build you take all

these lessons learned and I've said this a million times take all these lessons learned that the unfortunate Ukrainians have now paid this price in apply that to future NATO training and equipment acquirement and doctor in and then go after Russia if you want go for it I'm not against a war I'm just against fighting ones that you can't win I don't fight all day. I fought, I went back to Afghanistan to fight because we were winning every fight, not realizing that, Jesus, this has been, I said it in that, in the documentary, like, I don't want to be here for 15 years, but it was, well, sure shit, we were there for close to 15 years.

I don't, none of us minded fighting, you know, we weren't like, you know, ooh, we didn't expect this. We knew we were getting into. I don't want to fight to loot, just to, to, to fight a losing war. Every single battle we won over there. It doesn't matter how many battles you're winning if people are making sure that war is unwinnable. And that's where we're at. Well, I appreciate you rolling down to old Lloyd Minster to sit and have a chat.

Before I let you out of here, I was going to ask a crewmaster final question today. Who's maybe one guy you're keeping an eye on for. it doesn't even have to be Russia-Ukraine information, but certainly just you like, you know, we've talked a lot about Jordan Peterson today. Is there a guy or girl out there that you're paying attention to that you really

enjoy their perspective? Honestly, a lot of the guests that you have on are people that I kind of, you had Chris Sims on, I remember being at your the Sean Newman presents in Emmington. In Ementon not too long ago, and she was one of your speakers. All your speakers were great

there, but she's, um, I like about her as she's able to speak about fairly complex issues, like the tax system and where things really are, not where we're being told they are by the government. And she's able to break that down for dudes like me, like, you know, and I understand them when she explains them. And so I follow a few people. She's one of them and people like her in that financial world. and I can't wait to hear what you're going to have on with Mr. Armstrong because that's right where people need to hear. Peterson's a good weather vein too.

He's got a very good take on where things are. Finger on the pulse. He does, yeah. Honestly, it's not just one person anymore. A lot of your guests are great for that. Even if they're not, you had Shane Wenzel on, and you didn't go too deep into it, but a little bit about the, you know,

know, where gender things are in school and, you know, that's, and it's a tough topic, right? It's a, it's a, that's a, that's a difficult thing because there's always a label to be thrown at somebody if you have you in the conversation. But you had the, you, you had a bit of a conversation with them about it, and I thought that was valuable. Those things are value, just having the conversation is valuable. You have a good range of guests that, like, I don't know what I'm going to say. You're going to, you have like some pretty smart dudes on here, you know, listen to Drew and Dave,

I'm like, Jesus. Are I going to say that's going to, or the Luongo and the other fellow, I can't remember his name. Alex Crane. Just brilliant dudes, you know, and I'm like, I see stuff, I shoot stuff, I blow stuff up. That's been my life. Yeah, but I mean, all the people you've mentioned don't have your skill set, you know. We all have our interesting skill sets that lend to different conversations and can add in some perspective and everything else. You know, when I first started the, the SMP Presents, one of the things I was trying to do was bring in different backgrounds.

to talk about a certain problem. That was the original idea. You know, and I've kind of drifted a little bit from that, and at times I think about trying to get back to that because a military guy with your background can talk to, you know, a lawyer, and a lawyer can be talking about a problem, and you can just see it from a different play or a different experience, you know, and they kind of overlap, although they're not the same,

and you can all learn and talk to different problems. But either way, I appreciate you rolling in and doing this. It never disappoints. sitting down with a with truck i joke because the audience after the last time you guys are on where it's have truck back on for chuck tails you know and so anyways i appreciate you coming and doing this and uh it won't be the last time at some point here we'll have you back on and if james listening somewhere you got to make sure that you reach back out because love to have you back on as well so either way thanks for coming and and doing this i love the love the opportunity

to be here sean's always fun hey thanks for tuning in today guys i hope you enjoyed it Today's episode has been brought to by Calrock Industries with new used and refurbished oil and gas equipment in stock. Calrock is your best bet when it comes to finding equipment that fits your needs is within your budget and is ready as soon as you need it. They can even custom manufacture tanks and other equipment for your specific application. They're located here in Lloydminster, but I'm sure they can serve you wherever you are at. All you've got to do is go to calrock.ca for more information. I also want to remind people that Patreon, I just started posting back on it. We're going to give her a go here for the next six months.

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