YouSaid · the spoken record

Ed Calderon

lines on the record: 313
first: 2022-12-12
most recent: 2022-12-12
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Yeah, I'm not afraid of the end. The ending is important in all things. First time I got a promotion, I got two silver coins handed to me. Here's a silver coin, and this is another silver coin. Said, I'll give you the other one when your job ends. It depends on you if you wanted to have it over your eyes or in your pocket, right? And the lesson there is that, you know, this job you're getting, it's pretty cool. You're going to be in charge of all these people and it's pretty important, but it's going to end. So you always have to, the ending is important in all things. If we don't keep that in mind, then if you think we're immortal and nothing's going to end, I think there's a atrophy, a spiritual atrophy in that.”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not afraid of it. If anything, I'm afraid of Meaningless death or at least a meaningless walk towards it. I'm afraid of losing use of my legs, I guess. I'm afraid of not being able to go out there and do things anymore. I'm afraid that I'm not physically capable of doing the job that I used to do. So, if anything, I'm afraid of stillness, you know, something I always quote a lot in my writing stillness is death.”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Thank you. And she's like, cool. She used to roll up the window really quick. Now she doesn't. They cease to be scary because now some of them have names. Now some of them know her name, you know, when she crosses by there. So there's contact there. She's more connected than I am in some of these places now. You know, she has friends in low places and in high places. That comes later, I guess. But she is learning about service. She's learning about not everybody out there is an enemy or bad or scary. She's learning about service. And she's basically learning that lesson that I got from my mom long ago. You know, nobody's against you there for themselves. Don't take anything personal. And if you're not doing something for other people while you're working, then you're not doing. Anything”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, one small example, a micro example of this. My kid. Was a homeless guy. She was out with some with family members, this homely homeless guy showed up. He was erratic, mentally disturbed, created a scene. She was upset. There was a little bit of trauma there. She's like, oh, now all homeless people are bad. So with her she does art pieces sometimes for me and helps me make designs for the clothing brand that I have. And we take some of that money and we buy socks and underwear, you know. And sometimes I have them in the car. Sometimes I drive around and see somebody that needs. You helped me earn this money that's going to help these people. So you should just give them these. And she's like,”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And if you want to encounter the worst enemy of a Mexican, it's usually a second, third generation Mexican up here that shouts you down for what you're saying.”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It is a twisted responsibility in a twisted way kind of talk about it and describe it. But I think the aspect of people screaming for freedom up here or their rights or their privilege without the responsibility, what are you doing for your community? You're complaining about this. What are you doing about it? Another thing I've noticed in traveling around that's scary is the whole people getting shouted down or canceled because of what they express or say. Some of the creepiest experiences I've had in the US have been through universities or just seeing young people that have an opinion that is completely outside of reality. People telling me how things are in Mexico because they learned it through a college course And seeing sons of immigrants. Criticizing me because of my opinion of Mexico or what I have to say about it.”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Now everybody's on their phone, you know, in the separate houses I chatting on, whatever. There's a detachment to there. It's a weird aspect to it. And also the aspect of I need to be safe. I can't be offended. Don't hurt me. Safe spaces. This is my right. This is my right. This is my reality. You need to respect it. Yeah, respect is earned. And when I come from, respect is earned. There's freedoms, but there's dangerous freedoms. Any freedom you have in Mexico is a dangerous freedom in a way. You can drive home drunk in Mexico. You can if you bribe a cop on your way there and if you don't die or crash into somebody else, that's a dangerous aspect of freedom, but there's a responsibility to all of it.”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's an isolationist aspect to culture now. Like we were separate. There's almost like a spiritual or cultural amputation in a way where when I was a kid, the house where all the bikes outside of it, that was where all the kids were hanging out.”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What's up to us? The US talks a lot about freedoms, but doesn't talk a lot about responsibilities. I think that's a big part of, you know, take responsibility for I came here without anything, and the first thing I thought was I have a responsibility for the people that I've worked with and the people that are going through the same problems that I am, how can I figure out a way to help”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You to a bunch of experiences, to a bunch of people out there that you might not regularly kind of meet and see, and realities. Education is out there. It is expensive, but I've sat through a bunch of really expensive classes that I've managed to see on YouTube and learned a lot from them. So, education is out there, but it doesn't have to be as expensive as they make it. It's all about the individual and what he does with that education. The dream is free and the hustle is sold separately is something else I watch somewhere online. But the ability to take information, process it, and use it, we're expecting everything to be safe processed and given to us in a platter and taking that and digesting and thinking that's going to make us somebody that's going to be productive or valuable in society.”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In any industry, you're going to go start your own restaurant. You have to work in the kitchen for service. If you're going to be a part, a productive member of this restaurant, service. And I'm not talking just about the military because the military, it's a process and it's a lifestyle and it's a thing for some people out there. It's not even a choice for other people if they want an education. And I get that. Community service of any kind is an essential thing. The ability to go out there and interact with the people that you would normally not interact with, homeless population that there is in this country. The older population that in Mexico are old die in our homes. But here you send them off somewhere else to die, which is an interesting, weird detachment that I've seen in the US as far as how the elders are cast aside. If I can say anything to young people is to start figuring out our life of service. And that's going to expand.”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Traveling is one and knowing how other people live is one aspect of it that I would tell people. It's risky, it's dangerous, but that is part of the journey is one of the things I would ask people, young people to kind of consider. Service is essential and it should be at the basis of all of our lives service start there, start with service.”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Travel. Travel is one of the biggest things in the world that I would ask people to kind of go out to, see how other people live. Don't go there with your own preconceived notions or trying to make people act like you act. Go out there and travel and actually experience the world. It doesn't have to be another country going from Tennessee to Seattle. It's a pretty interesting change of scenery.”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To another immigrant, and both of us are reaching people out there that might haven't heard a voice of people like us that come here with our own bag of demons. But where else in the world can two people like us have a conversation with an audience like us and not be shot outside of this because of the stuff we're saying?”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm going back to California. Then I'm from Tennessee later. Then Kentucky. So I get to see all types of people and all types of mentalities and ways that people live. And this country is more diverse than most would think if you only see it through the lens of television or media. What I keep seeing out there that for me is like a... The reason I came here, I guess. And a lot of the reasons that I feel a vested interest in this country, not just because can my kids American. So I have a very, very big interest in this country doing well. But the thing I see is there's still the opportunity and the ability to do something with yourself and opportunities out there for people like me that come here with nothing. I came here with. An experience base, a truck.”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Balancing act is what I've been looking at it as you know on one side there's the woke side of it which everything goes and the on the other side is like let's hold on to some of these things that make us who we are on my end you know I want to get to a place where I can smoke a joint concealed carrier firearm be it my gay best friend's wedding and I want the government not to say anything about it and I think there's parts in the United States here that kind of feel the same way but there's extremes on both sides that are pulling you to one side or the other and I've seen more of the United States than most Americans I'm in a different state every weekend so I get to go to To Tampa tomorrow.”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I saw that interview, by the way. You showed amazing restraint in that interview. My experience, and I came up here again, Trump was elected when I came up here. So it was a weird time for me as far as being an immigrant and the immigrant experience for myself by both being, you know, basically the ones that were, you know, talked about in that way. And also having a bunch of my friends who were very conservative and wearing some of those mega hats around me and like, hey, Ed, like. Like, well, I mean, I'm a guest here, so I have to, you know, but, uh,”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I've seen people not do it legally and are in way better places than I am, basically, by going around some of the system, the system itself, the immigration system here in the US, there's something wrong. It's kind of broken. And people coming here illegally are not only, they're looking for a better life for themselves, a better life for people. This whole aspect of vilifying them and they're like, oh, there's this immigrant did this horrible thing. This immigrant did that horrible thing. And people saying, go back to your country. At the same time, they go to a hotel where all the service staff is from that part of the world and you're here irregularly. Or they go to the Whole Foods and they get some produce there and it's picked by some of the same people that are vilifying. Again, we need to kind of like.”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's an easy thing. They're coming to take our jobs as something you hear. There was a state out there that passed them anti- Anti-legislation as far as illegal workers unfeels. And it led to massive losses. Nobody wanted to show up for those jobs, basically. People would show up one day and they would come back and they were doing jobs that people just don't want to do. Taking that from the locals, or are they feeling an essential role that we feel guilty about? And the rhetoric around it is more about guilt than anything I am an American myself. I've gone through the experience of doing it legally”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I think we need to get to a place where we can figure out how to make those connections and repair some of the damage done by just years and years of bad policy on both sides of the border.”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Know about to sell weapons, but there's some dirty We talk about poorest borders coming up. There's poorest borders also going down. There's a flow of guns going down and munitions. They don't kill anybody by themselves. They put the get put in the hands of the desperate that are trying to feed a giant drug market to the south, to the north. Mexico has a saying. Mexico, Mexico Lejos de Dios, Peros Cer Caselos Nios, Mexico, far from God, but close to the United States. And there's definitely a responsibility on both sides. This is no longer Mexico problem, a US problem. This is a regional problem. And if we don't think of it as a regional problem with our brothers on the southern side of it and with family, we're related in blood. Mexico and the United States are like this. It's become popular in politics. They just throw a line.”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We're going to have to rethink how we look at immigration illegal or illegal or illegal or legal immigration from Mexico and how we view Mexico as a foreign country. Your relationship to Canada is one thing. Your relationship to Mexico is another. The foreign policy towards Mexico has been pretty nefarious as far as the United States in a lot of ways. You can go back. There was a student massacre during the Olympics, and the president in turn at that time was on the CIA payroll. And it was a counter communist type maneuver that they were doing down there. But there were some bloody hands on the U.S. side of some of the things that have been happening in Mexico as far as destabilization and influencing and meddling in foreign policy out there. Most of the guns that are used down there come from the US, you know, and that's another interesting aspect and responsibility that people should kind of think about up here.”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think they're indispensable. And anybody that says they aren't is delusional. If you take every single legal worker out of the industry in the United States and send them back, like there's a movie out there called Yes in Mexicano's A Dave Without Mexicans. Everything would stop. So the relationship is there. People talk about the history of slavery in this country. Like it's a thing that is in the past. There's endangered slaves in the country right now, people that are paying off their people smugglers because they brought them into this country and they haven't been able to pay that fine or that fee yet. Are basically being held hostage by that here in the United States. So they're slaves right now in the United States. You know, people are talking about it's a historical context”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Way into the country or in a sanctuary city. You go to the service industry, hotels. Those are the people changing the blankets. Those are the people in the washrooms. You have them doing jobs that no American wants to do realistically. And they're everywhere in this country. And they are the backbone of some of these industries that are essential in this country.”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Few things about that. When COVID hit, there was no shortages of produce in the supermarkets, which means that Mean illegal immigration is pretty much the backbone of all produce and some of the farming industries out there, you know, most of it. So illegal immigration and illegal workers in those fields are essential workers in a way. I think there's a weird relationship in the United States with some of these workers and how they're demonized and how they're called criminals. I think there was a state out there that passed anti-illegal immigrant worker legislation. The farmers had to look elsewhere for people to show up to work in some of these fields, which basically caused millions of dollars worth of losses for some of these farms. Anywhere you go out there in the United States, you go into the kitchens and there's going to be pisanos there, you know, French high-level French restaurants. You'll see people from Puebla there that made their way illegally and might have legalized or regularized their way.”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Contingent of 3,000 Honduran Guatemalan immigrants in that first wave of caravans coming to Tijuana. You saw it was pretty bad. It was pretty bad and it could have gotten worse. Now, what is going to happen when that wave is no longer 3,000, but a million people being displaced by violence or being In fear of whatever conflict might originate down there and just a massive wave of migration and move. I think that's an interesting thing that people should look at and how can you affect change to try and stop some of these things that happen.”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In a way, you're already kind of seeing some of that through some of the conflicts going on down there. You have a new generation cartel that is being fed fentanyl from the Pacific side ports and suspiciously you want to think that maybe it's favored by a foreign government of some sort in some way, shape, or form. Who knows? And then you have a historically in control Sina Loa cartel that may or may not be favored by the US in some way, shape or form. You can imagine a further conflict down there and people fostering it and seeing the effects of basically setting a fire on the feet of the United States. It's second largest consumer of U.S. products is Mexico. The massive wave of immigration that is going to be basically weaponized, you saw the collapse of the border security structure with a”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And also the fact that that border doesn't mean anything to any sort of conflict that would happen regionally because that's a very easy to cross border. Doesn't matter how many walls you put across it. People are already here. This is not going to be a war fought off in some overseas place. This is something if it happens. If destabilization is utilized in Mexico to cause a conflict there and it turns into a Vietnam or a proxy war down there of a sword, which I think...”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Know who gets to have guns down there? You know, there's one gun store in all Mexico, and it's run by the military. And the only way you can buy a gun there is if you can buy a plane ticket to fly there and have enough money just to stain that right or that privilege. So you're seeing the military not being in its traditional role of just being the security force. Now it's policing. It's involved in getting involved in politics in a big way. It's legislation that has passed to keep it on the streets and the policing role for more years now. So that should be looked at closer by anybody observing it from afar, the militarization of Mexico and where it's going.”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's not something that Mexico has been known for, to hosting other nations and training them in such a way. So it's an interesting maneuver. Like Mexico has been historically neutral about getting involved in foreign conflicts, about voting and resolutions as far as invading or not invading or doing all these things. Mexico has been historically kind of neutral when it comes to some of these things. And now we're training foreign military forces to go and do that role somewhere else. We have the military building airports and building infrastructure in Mexico and a lot of their higher ups getting very wealthy around it. And they basically have a monopoly over”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“How the military has a full monopoly over all federal policing, when you cross into Mexico, you'll see them wearing these white camouflage uniforms. Those are National Guard people, but they're the military. So now you're seeing a militarized Mexico with some of these leaks that happened during the Wacamaya leaks. You're now seeing that Mexico has been hosting members of the Haitian military and they've been training them up to go back to police their country.”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Pretty possible. Again, we're seeing militarized Mexico. It's another aspect of Mexico that, again, I haven't seen talked about a lot here in the US. The main problem is that the current president had was he was going to make the police, the federal police, and the security issues in Mexico civilian. He was going to do exactly the opposite as his main rival, Felipe Alderon, the guy that started off the drug war officially. What does he do? He dissolves the civilian leadership of the federal police, dissolves the federal police, creates the National Guard, which is a military unit, and he puts the military in charge with that.”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It is going through a process. They call it the la Cuarta Transformaci ⁇ n, the fourth transformation is what the president of Mexico calls Which is, in a way, it's basically we're here to stay type thing. You know, they just nationalize mining lithium and taking control of that and using that as leverage. If the United States ever wants to go to Mexico, it's probably not going to be related to cartel issues. It's going to probably be related to energy, I think. They're kind of thinking ahead, I guess.”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Which is that is what people voted for. That is sentiment down there. They're going towards the left of a political spectrum because of they've been basically violated over and over again by all these different presidencies that have promised change, brought corruption with them and they are choices. So this is the best we have right now. And all of the enemies of the United States are taking full advantage of that. We recently had a general kind of address the Senate committee hearing, I think. He was talking about the prevalence of foreign intelligence services in Mexico and why that is. Well, it has, Mexico has a lot of the mind of a lithium on the planet underneath parts of it, specifically in the north.”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Every now and then I post something about Mexico, some horrible thing happening down there. It's like, why doesn't US send people down there? Are Mexicans looking for U.S. intervention? It's like, no, that is beyond what anybody in Mexico would want. Specifically, you see the sentiment out there. They don't view the US as somebody that's going to come in and fix anything or somebody that's going to help or as a friend. When the Ukrainian conflict happened, Mexico basically abstained from saying anything, which is a winking and not to Russia. It has openly been pro Maduro and openly celebrated to some of these regimes popping up across Latin America.”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Now, Mexico is going through. Nationalistic resurgence and leftist presidency. Which is not friendly to U.S. interest in a lot of ways. The US has had a pretty bad track record with its foreign policy in Mexico, with a lot of damage being done by the last president as far as his rhetoric. Which has been weaponized and utilized by the left down in Mexico.”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's another aspect. I mean, their banking system is invisible to the US, basically. Which allows the monies to move from one point to another. So money brokers and people moving money for the groups down there are Chinese. So that's another aspect or element of China as far as its presence.”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's probably an economic war. Well, you talk about this, another side to China. Most, and this is something that's come out recently, a few years back, I think, but basically the ways you would move money back into Mexico after you have a load up here is that you would give it to a Chinese money broker. They would put it into Chinese banking system and it immediately would just disappear from American eyes. And then another money broker in Mexico would receive it through a money transfer from China”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Been getting stories from the US of people buying it through Alibaba or just weird online sources and it coming in different packages and just infusing it into whatever is out there. It is killing off a whole generation of people. And it comes from one place, or it's manufactured somewhere where it's being manufactured with the precursors and the elements and know-how that comes from one place.”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You are now seeing pill presses brought to Mexico, industrial level pill presses found in clandestine laboratories where they're not only infusing the yields that they're doing with fentanyl, but also making fake pain medication that is flooding U.S. markets everywhere as far as is that pain medication or is that? Fentanyl, you know, who knows, and that's how you see a lot of people dying from ODs that are supposedly taking pain pills, and that's not what they're doing. So the evolution right now you're seeing is making Look legit as far as a pain medication that it isn't. And I mean, fentanyl is. Everywhere. They're infusing cocaine with it.”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would have to assume that some of these things are happening with the know-how and inaction of the government out there. When COVID hit, there was a shortage of fentanyl on the northern side of Mexico, specifically related to the Sinaloa cartel. These guys were actually trafficking fentanyl from the US down to Mexico to infuse their product. But not the new generation cartel, which operates out of the central part of Mexico. Colima area, which have access to the seaside ports. So even during the shutdown, they were getting supplied, which means to me, at least, or for anybody observing it, that the supply chain was not cut. And whatever was coming out of China was Being let out of China by whatever official channels would be able to shut down or stop it.”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One aspect to it that people kind of miss is that there's no Chinese cartel, there's no criminal Chinese organization working unseen, getting around government oversight in China. Don't know of any such organization.”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Know about the biochemical aspect of it, but like speaking to guys that do Chiba down there, that's what they want. That's what they call heroin down there. It's like a nickname for it. Having them describe some of the older, stinkier, darker heroin that used to get before this whole fentanyl thing and the highs they would get and how much they would have to take versus some of the stuff loaded with fentanyl that they have to”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The free ability of chemicals going in and out of the country and legal means of it happening, right? So not only the precursors to make it, but also the chemist and the industry to create it in Mexico as well. Some clandestine factories of fentanyl have been found in Mexico, but realistically it's not needed with the ways that the ports and the borders are down in Mexico. started seeing an influx and a flood of fentanyl into Mexico specifically related to infusing it into heroin and not only using that to feed local drug markets but send it up into the states which started off this process that we're kind of going through still”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The problem is that some of these lands were leeched of all the nutrients and they're not as good as something you would find somewhere in Afghanistan. So the yield and the quality of it wasn't as strong as it could be. So, somebody thought about the bright idea of putting fentanyl into the mix. And not only that, but also figuring out how to get fentyl into Mexico, Mexico has a giant pharmaceutical industry that people kind of also don't kind of know or factor into this equation, which leads into”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There was a prescription, albeit epidemic in the United States That kind of went down or stopped, you know, well, you know, still out there, but like the epidemic specific around it kind of... Petered out. And there was also marijuana legalization Happening at kind of the same time period, which people talking about marijuana legalization thought it was going to hit the cartels in their pockets and it was going to be like a death blow to these criminal groups. Now there's illegal pot grows in the United States being run by cartels in federal lands. There's the legal pot grows that are in some way, shape, or form, influence and or run or owned by some commercial groups that are kind of utilizing that. The marijuana fields in Mexico turn into poppy fields once again.”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a powerful weapon spirituality, and Mexico is a powerful weapon, and the Catholic Church in Mexico has a pretty bad track record. But as far as that being used to control populace and stuff like that, and I think it's just another aspect that is being exploited in Mexico in some communities as far as the spirituality and the desperate need for people to believe in something. And how that leads for some people to go into some horrible predatory behavior around it.”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Know mentality and all of that kind of imbued himself in some of the people that were around him with that. There's still altars to his death to him after he died. He died two times. One time the government declared him that he was killing a shootout. And it turns out he wasn't dead. So that was his first miracle, you know. And then when he was really dead, some of his people and his loyal followers were gunpoint kind of still forced to go and get flowers and venerate these effigies and statues of him as a saint.”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Wasn't involved in cannibalism that I know of, but most of the things that he was kind of known for was basically requesting human body parts for some of the spell works he was doing and then going to such a level where he needed a specific brain or head of somebody that was educated and American. So that kind of again led to his eventual downfalls. His ranch was raided. They found the body parts inside of these cauldrons that he was preparing. That's an interesting example of somebody. There's a cartel head somewhere in central Mexico as well. El Masloco was his nickname. And he basically forced the citizenship around him to turn him into a saint. He made a statue of himself. He was very big into Christianity, specifically kind of like the Crusader.”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it jibed. I mean, some of these spiritual practices, again, there's a ritualist accountabilism done by some of these cartel groups out there”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source