This week's episode is sponsored by Change. Change is an online mentoring program that teaches people with no experience how to create a real profitable online business and e-commerce. I have been working with Ryan at Change for a few years now and attended many events and got to meet the amazing community of like-minded people. These guys are the best of the best. The support these guys offer is personal, no bots or employees. There's no experience needed but like anything in life it takes time as it's a real business with real results. For more information go check out Ryan on Instagram at RyanGybe and he will guide you through the steps to help build a successful business. You can now follow me on all my social media platforms to find out who my latest guest will be and don't forget to click the subscribe button and the notifications bell so you are notified for when my next podcast goes live. And boom we're on. Today's guest we've got Angelica Robles. How are you? Hi, thank you for having me. Thanks for coming on. Your book which we'll touch on in a minute but 16 years investigator, you worked for the FBI, your husband was part of the Mexican Cartel, writing my story, your books through my brown eyes, through these brown eyes, sorry my bad. Working people buy the book first of all. Amazon, Barnes & Noble, it's also on Audible so yeah, in my own voice I get to read it to you. Good stuff. Listen you've came all the way for America to be on this podcast so I'm very grateful. No doubt we'll get into a lot of mad stuff on this story but how are you? I'm good. I love London. It's so nice here. How's the weather been? It's been good. It's not hot. I haven't been out all day. I've been doing podcasts all day but like I said 16 years investigator, I'm working for the FBI.   You've got a book which they're turning into a Hollywood movie which we'll touch on but I always like to go back to the start with my guests, get a bit understanding about you, where you grew up and how it all began. Yeah, so born and raised in Chicago, I was born in an underserved community, in Cicero so if everybody knows who Al Capone is, I was raised in Cicero. It's pretty much a Mexican hood. It's predominantly Mexican people and low income, lots of violence, lots of gang activity, lots of drug dealing. What were you like at school? I was very smart. I was very smart and I was very determined because my parents are immigrants from Mexico and they pretty much told us two things. You either work or you get an education. Pick one and that's all we needed to hear. How old are your parents? My parents, so my dad is 73 and my mom is going to be 70 so they were both born in Mexico and they immigrated into the US. Did you have a big family? I have two sisters and one brother so not really. Are you close? We are close. We are very close. What were you like at school? I was very popular and people were always talking about me. So all of the crazy rumors, yeah, it was all about me. Like what? You know, I went to a school where when I went to school, we had the highest pregnancy rate in the country. So it was cool to be pregnant and everybody was pregnant and it became so common that they made classes where you can bring your kids and it would be child development courses, classes. I know, it's crazy.  So you can imagine it was an environment where just kids were getting pregnant and nobody was really teaching us about sex and development and so people were just getting pregnant. Boyage? I mean, this was like 15. So, yeah.   I know, I talk about it in the book because it became prevalent and it was celebrated. It was celebrated. Oh, you're pregnant and you're 15. So I have friends that have like 23 year olds. Does that make you... Why were you not one of the girls who then fell pregnant and try to be the same as everyone else? I think I was involved in sports and I was considered one of the smart kids. So I was in AP classes, so advanced placement classes and we both, me and my siblings were very much... I played soccer since I was three and so I think sports really kept us out of the streets and out of the bedrooms, you know? Yeah, literally because we were doing work and we were going to school but I think what it was is we saw our parents working so hard. Our parents were never around. They were working long, long hours so we raised ourselves and I think seeing that and seeing how hard our parents worked we weren't going to get into any shit. What did you do after school? I went to college. I went and got a four-year degree. I actually was a sophomore in college when I graduated high school. That's how smart I was. So I was just taking all these courses. When I was in high school, I was taking college courses.  Was working the jobs, was doing the 911 calls. I was building up my resume so that I looked perfect for the government whenever I went to go apply. So how was that then? How were they looking into you then? Well, they do a background investigation, a thorough background investigation and then when they polygraph you, they ask you everything and anything. So anything is fair game. So what did you study at college? I studied forensic psychology and chemistry. So is that for to go into the government? You just need to have a bachelor's to apply for FBI, CIA, DEA. That's one of the requirements. You have to have a college education. And that was the route you wanted to go down straight away? Yeah, I knew that I wanted to work for the government after one of my friends was murdered. That really kind of catapulted me into working for the government and wanting to do what I did. When I was 15 years old, I was dating a boy and his sister was murdered, dismembered and decapitated by the cartel. And so she went missing for two weeks and when they found her, they found her head and it was completely decayed. And the only reason why we were able to identify her was because she was wearing braces by dental records. It ended up being one of Chicago's most heinous crimes in history. The way that he killed her, she went on a first date. And can you imagine going on a first date and then getting murdered? She went on a first date with a guy she'd never met and the cartel was after him and because she was with him, they took her out as well. And if you read the transcripts of the crime, I reread it probably about three years ago before my book came out because I had never really sat down and listened to the entire testimony of the killer. And the things that he did to them is satanic. I mean, I don't know how somebody can do this to somebody.  So I think they found his leg in the Chicago River, her head was in the north side, some of her legs were in the south side and it was pretty much saying you owed us money, so this is how we're getting you back. Was that frequent in Chicago, this sort of stuff? Yes, it's very frequent, but it doesn't make the media because it happens so often. You know, there's so many shootings and killings in Chicago, they've been, they've called it Chirac because it's more people are getting killed in Chicago than in more, but the cartel is heavy and cartel and mafia is very heavy in Chicago. It always has been. And I think when you're involved in that world, you know that it's happening, but the media is not going to be reporting every time they find a dead body. But I think this one was huge because the family was relentless in trying to find her. And so it became a big deal. And I mean, at the time I was 15. So imagine being 15 and trying to deal with this and trying to process all this. It's a lot. What happened when you found out that she was found dead? I felt like I got hit by a train and I felt like I didn't know how to deal with it. I didn't know how to process it. I grew up in a neighborhood where people were getting killed and there was blood on the steps of people's homes. But when it was somebody that you knew, it felt totally different. And especially when you grew up in an environment where things like this happened and people expect you to just move on and get over it and really not process it. So I felt that inside, to be honest with you. And I was scared. I was frightened and I was scared that somebody can do this to some other person. So that's why you wanted the King to join? Yeah. I wanted to join the government because I wanted to know how and why somebody like this, what causes somebody to want to take somebody's life in this manner and just act normal. Like that's not normal. That's psychopath. Yeah. There's plenty of them around. Yeah. I had a man on who was CIA. Yeah. But he says, I don't know if he says you can't join the CIA, but he says the recruit because they'll look at people's college results. They'll look at people that's in prison, like pick pockets or whatever. And they'll look at other people's college results and say, okay, they're 100%, we'll bring them in. So they were recruited by people's results at school, picking the best, picking the best shoplifter to teach other agents how to do it. Like it's mad the organization and how deep and dark it can go as well. Yeah. So how long did you stay in college for? How does a college program work? It's four years in college in the U.S. I only did three years because I was already, I already had college credit going into school. And then to join any agency in the U.S.  So I was 21 when I graduated and I went into criminal counseling. And that's really when I started getting exposed to what we call unfit to stand trial. So somebody who is unfit to stand trial due to insanity. So this person cannot stand in trial because they're crazy. So instead of going to jail, they put them in a federal psych ward pretty much. And they have these people pretty much zombied out on so much medication because I used to talk to them. So my job right out of college was I was doing case management for those who were unfit to stand trial. So pretty much insane people.  I remember my first murder, he had set his boss on fire.  So can you imagine this man on fire falling down from a building and this man just did it on purpose because he fired him. He fired him, so he fired him? Yeah. How long did you do that for? I did that for about a year and a half and then that's when I went in and I started doing undercover work. How much? So I got thrown into undercover work. Very young, how old? I started undercover at 23. The young is very young. Yeah. So see when you're doing the interview and that interview criminals, but not as as crazy as those people's other interview. A lot of people have done some bad shit, but how see when you interview in your very first one, were you nervous or were you excited? I was very nervous, but I was taught that in order to speak to somebody who goes against your morals and ethics, you have to literally disassociate yourself from emotion and just listen, right? And it's hard because you as an individual, you have a lot of judgment and that's one of the things that I've learned is judgment goes deep because we are born with such principles and we are taught such principles from wrong, but when you're sitting in front of somebody and they're telling you how they killed somebody or why they killed somebody, you really have to stay unbiased and just listen. And I remember the first time I had that conversation with him. I told myself, murderers need hugs too because I was listening to the child in him talk about how his father raped him and how his father beat him. And I had compassion for him because due to this childhood trauma that he had, it turned left where he now became a killer and he just did not have any emotion. Because everybody who I interview, every criminal, every bad man, I've interviewed 100% of the time every single one has been bullied or abused when they're younger. Did you see this also? Yes, that's the number one trait of psychopaths, sociopaths, murderers, killers, drug dealers, terrorists, the whole nine. I've interviewed the scum of the earth, name it.   It develops into this addiction or almost into an addiction and an obsession with whatever it may be. Is that a tactic to send a young good-looking girl in to then interview these men because they open up more? Yes. Is there any sort of flutting? Yes, definitely. So, when I walk in, of course they see me and they think I'm like the social worker, right? They don't think I'm the exo-interrogator. And I never yell at people. That was never my tactic. My tactic is I'm always very nice. I'm always very... I've been told that I have this energy where you're comfortable and you just open up. I'll be at the grocery store and people just open up to me and I'm like, I don't want to know your life story. But I think it's that energy that I was taught to have. And so they start fixing their hair.  And then that's when I go in and start asking questions.  But you ever scared? Yeah, I was scared. I talk about it in the book. There was one guy who attacked me.  And I don't think he took his medication that morning because he was too, too perky. Like he was too bright-eyed.  He was trying to strangle me. But in that moment, we get these little devices where if we need assistance, we press on them. So I was able to grab it and press it and then security came in. But he was going to kill me. Did you ever feel sorry for anyone? Yeah, all the time. I mean, I feel sorry for all of them because they have this representation or this understanding that who they are is to kill. It's almost like they're lost. Their mind is lost. That there's no coming back.  Yes. So with terrorists, a lot of people don't realize this. With terrorists and drug dealers, especially coming from the U.S., they all want one thing. They all want anonymity and they all want a U.S. citizenship. They want to stay in the U.S. They never want to be extradited back to their home countries. And that's what blew my mind because three years ago, three years ago, right before the pandemic, I was doing Somalian terrorists in California. They were bringing the Somalian terrorists like pirates. They were bringing them to the federal penitentiaries in California and I was talking to them and I was like, why? Why do you guys take stuff? And he's like, because we don't have anything. So for us to take is for us to have something. And it blew my mind just to feel a need to have something is why they were terrorizing the boats. Who's the scariest when you interviewed? I want to say my husband because I was sleeping and married to somebody for 10 years and I didn't even know that he had been involved with the enemy. So I would say that's probably the scariest because that's when it humbled me that I'm considered one of the best interrogators in the world and I didn't even know I was literally sleeping next to the enemy like literally and that's scary because that just shows how I was so lost in my marriage and so lost in trying to raise our children that I didn't even realize he was involved. That's probably the scariest. The world's full of crazy bastards like there is genuine Britain, it's more murders, it's more shootings, it's not really gang orientated it's drug related or American seem to have proper psychopaths serial killers why do you think that is? I think it all goes back to childhood and environment, how they were raised and who raised them and what they dealt with.   It is worse and I'll tell you it got worse during the pandemic because it's all addiction people have addictions it could be drugs, sex, alcohol children and cocaine stimulates the US economy as much as people like to say that the DEA is this war against drugs it's the same people that are involved in the government that are allowing this drug to come into the US same thing with children the situation in Mexico and Central America is gotten so bad with the economy as well as the government climate that what's happening now is families are selling their children for money so these kids are being sold to the system of human trafficking for money, for survival and a lot of people think that it's immigrant children but it's actually not, it is a lot of immigrant children but it's also just regular American children that get caught into this world Did you ever cry, interrogate any of these men? No I would cry afterwards but never during because that would be After hearing the stories Yes, whenever you go home and this was probably in the beginning when I was starting to grow into my own interrogation skills I had to detach who I was in the interrogation room to who I am in real life and I tell this story all the time when my husband was ready to tell me his story I had to separate wife from the interrogator in me and as much as I wanted to kill him because I literally reached for my gun to kill him in a split second I thought do what you do best and separate wife from the situation and interrogate him What's the worst stories you had to hear?  I met him on a dating app but the crazy thing is is he had his life so well put together and there's a whole other backstory that will be talked about in book 2 but so he's a commercial real estate broker so what he does is he has a very high position but who do you think is buying buildings in Houston? The Cartel members are buying buildings so he's involved in those transactions and so he grew up in the cartel he was like an Ozark child so Ozark is like a drug lord show in the US and the reason why I mentioned Ozark is because in the Netflix series the children grew up in the cartel so when you grow up in the cartel this becomes a norm for you and that was the only way that I can have compassion for him because I grew up in a neighborhood where people were being shot so hearing gunshots to me was normal so him seeing drugs and lots of money was a normal for him because he grew up in that environment but that's the only way I was able to have compassion to the child in him of what I had done for a living so it was almost and this sounds crazy and I always say this I feel like my job prepared me for what he did to me because now I was sitting with somebody I was married to and I was asking the same exact questions that I was asking all my drug dealers or all my drug lords because he was not part of that bunch What was he like? He was a dork like he was a total dork and he was awkward Could that have been a manipulation tactic though because you knew who you were? What did you tell him your job was? He knew He knew that I was an agent Could that have been a target? Yes and I'll tell you this and this will be in the movie and is in the book the day we got married I overheard a conversation between him and his father and his father who is a millionaire did not give us any money for our wedding so that was flag number one he hated me we never got along he said to him don't marry her she's gonna fuck us over I tried to call the wedding off I legit tried to call the wedding off and my best friend said no he's perfect for you look at this wedding look at all these people so I went through with it but that was my gut instinct telling me to not marry this man Destigator how does that then fly under the radar? you must have come into question that you were working with the Mexican cartel also because for me looking at the outside then I'm not fucking FBI I'd be thinking she's involved Yes so that's what happened so when he told me he talked to me for about two hours I was able to stay calm cool and collected for those two hours and I gave him that space for him to be completely honest and transparent and I tell people this was the most honest and transparent my husband had ever been in the ten years we were married at this moment after he told me I said to him you realize I have to report this and he said yes the reason why I had to report this for those out there that are gonna say she's not a ride or die I was part of the government and I gave an oath to the government so when I reported it I went on their federal investigation for seven weeks I was then now on the other side of the interrogation table a world-class interrogator now on the other side and I'm sitting there like you're really gonna ask me that because I was a professional and I got polygraphed and the investigation went on for seven weeks they went through my phones they went through my emails they went through everything make sure I wasn't involved and they found out I was not involved I literally had no idea What's that like to choose government work over family because you were broken by it or was it a one where you fought had to think because you know yourself family's family if the guy for ten years doesn't matter what he done let you say ride or die that family I kill for no problem as a mother the lioness in me came out and I was like wow not only did you fuck me over but you fucked your kids over because for a man to not protect and provide for his family to me is not a man and I say this and I say this here because I've heard how you feel about how a man needs to show up for his family but for somebody I felt like he was that fucked up and lost in the sauce for him not to think that this was gonna come out at some point his children have to find out what he did at some point right now they're too young to understand but I started thinking about my kids I literally was like fuck you in this ten years it's okay that you fuck me over but the children because now the kids have to deal with this and now the kids have to grow up knowing that you did this and so it was very difficult it was very difficult but that mother instinct just comes up and you're just ready to fight but the crazy thing about it is the government told me you have two options you lose your entire career or you have to disassociate yourself from him and divorce him as soon as possible it was the fastest divorce in like Texas history because I divorced that man I took the children we were living this lavish lifestyle I took the children and I left but before I left I told him I'm not gonna take any of your money because he had thousands of dollars that he was hiding from me in offshore accounts I mean this whole houses businesses all types of stuff that I wasn't aware of but I was very smart and I said I'm not gonna take anything but I need you to sign this authorization and he said the authorization was him giving me permission to write everything that he had told me about his childhood and his family in my book and he says oh your stupid little book yeah I'll sign it so he signs it and I leave and he's now left in this big house he didn't think that the book was gonna do as well as it did well the book hits best seller and then now the book got picked up for a Hollywood movie and his family tried to come back and sue me for all the the success of the book and now the movie and I said well look at what he signed why did they tell you you know till this day I still ask that question and I think it boils down to selfishness I think he wanted the girl and he didn't care that I was an agent or work for the government and he was selfish but you know cartel members are selfish they don't care about anybody else but themselves and I really think he thought that he was gonna get away with it but the crazy part is if the book did anything it did to my own household because me telling my story of trauma caused him to want to tell his story it was the book who triggered him I don't remember his mother saying why did you tell her she could have gone another 10 years without knowing but I guess his conscience just ate away at him so much that he needed to tell his truth How deep was in the cartel you talking about shipping drugs or you just talking about him buying properties with No, it was deep so in the book I do talk about um his uncle was moving a million dollars worth of cocaine Texas to Boston and his uncle was murdered dismembered and decapitated just like my friend and lost a million dollars worth of cocaine so if you're moving a million dollars worth of cocaine you're not you're not involved with you know small dealings that's a lot of money and a lot of cocaine so they pretty much kidnapped him took all the winnings and the money and dumped his body when did you go undercover I went undercover in 2004 2004 like 2005 to 2007 and what's that for it was for corporate fraud and cartel members so I did old school surveillance surveillance now is done through our phones I can follow you I know where you're at I know what you're eating now I know everything but I did old school surveillance where I was in the van with the camera watching you from the bushes when I did surveillance there was no iPhones the most technology that we had was pinging your phone but you know phones are analog they weren't digital yet because the first iPhone didn't come out to like 06 so I did old school surveillance where I'm like in the bushes with the camera what would you have done if you had gone undercover try to catch cartels and you seen your husband would that have been weird or that would have been more heartbreaking because he would have been right that would have been more heartbreaking yeah but the crazy part is and that I tried to stress in Texas they don't like me talking about a cartel because Houston is a huge funnel for cartel the cartel activity in Houston is huge I mean think about it my husband grew up in Houston and his family was part of the cartel but the crazy thing is there was only one agency that knew about it and was the DEA Department of Defense didn't know FBI didn't know nobody knew because what people don't realize is in the states the agencies don't work together they hate each other so the DEA still hired me to work in their wire room and they were aware that my ex and his father were involved in the cartel that's how fucked up it was they still hired me and we're like oh let's give her a little job even though she doesn't know for the 16 years you've done it you're interrogating the world's worst people to then undercover what did you do after that and how does it all work to get into the FBI and the government what sort of hurdles do you need to jump over so I did get so when I left so when all this came out I decided to still publish my book at the time my top secret clearance was the Department of Defense I was a contractor with the Department of Defense when all this went down so a contractor is you're a contract agent right so you don't belong to the government but you still do work for them like freelance yes if you can so I still work for the government I work for the Department of Homeland Security now and I still do interrogations for drug dealers but on a contract basis I'll do like one or two high risk cases I'm not really known knowledge but I'm pretty much saying it in the second book because Department of Defense blacklisted me so for people on this side of the earth I don't know if you guys know what blacklist means so I got blacklisted by Department of Defense for publishing the book because I decided to still go move forward and publish the book so I get blacklisted lose my entire career then my book hits bestseller and I'm literally living off of book sales and then a year later I get signed with Hollywood to make the book into a movie so you're still working for the government now yeah I work for Department of Homeland Security and when did you join the FBI so I joined I was undercover 2005 and then 2013 I left full-time work and I started doing contract work in 2013 so you were in the FBI then no I left 2013 so in 2005 you were FBI yeah undercover so undercover for two years and then I was interrogating until 2013 so you've been interrogating forever since I was 23 I'll be 41 in two months do you get to speak to someone we've been doing it so long to talk about the shit that you've heard the shit that you're trying to interact with and that energies with these evil people do you get to speak to a psychologist or make sure you're out? yeah we do if we needed it yeah for sure yeah therapy has been really a lifesaver for me I think I went into therapy after my friend got murdered because that was very difficult to deal with how does that make you feel you're interrogating these people who have murdered young girls as well does that bring back the emotion of your friend it definitely does but I felt you know I went into this field and I tell this to people we choose our careers based on our pain and I feel like I chose my career based on my pain because I wanted to understand how somebody can do something to another human being and you just don't go and work for the government just because you see a movie and you think it's cool you go through some shit for anybody to go work for the CIA FBI DEA it's not as fun as the movies make it seem in fact it's very dangerous and a lot of undercover people don't make it yeah it's not like James Bond it's all glorious they're drinking fucking drinks it's never like that it's never like that we're never driving lambos no we're in the shadows we're in the slums we're hiding in the darkness there's no way we're driving lambos the cartel doesn't even drive lambos they beat down Toyota's do you become a target when you're interrogating these people and people find out that you're not a social worker or that sweet girl just trying to I don't think I become a target I get this question a lot I don't think I become a target because most of these people are already incarcerated they're already in the process of getting indicted and I'm not the one that makes any of these big choices whether they're gonna get you know or whether I just collect evidence and I collect information and give it to the people so if anything I think the cartel was laughing behind my back and saying like look at her she's been working for the government for so long talking to us members for years and years and years and here we are we knew of her family she didn't even know and I always tell this to people a cartel wife she did not know everything but she is aware that their husband is involved with the cartel I wasn't aware at all because you're getting in there every day you've seen the energy change because the cartel would have been coming in knowing who you were because of your husband did you notice are you just thinking they were smattling everyone else or did you notice why the fuck are they not opening up as much as everybody else did you question that cartel I think people don't realize that white color crime is cartel money laundering and bezeling that's a lot of money that's being moved around and laundered and it's usually corporate America is involved business owners big business owners I think people think that cartel is just moving drugs back and forth through the borders but it's a whole business empire where money needs to be hidden money needs to be laundered and I don't think they realize that cartel is white color crime and so for a businessman like my ex-husband it became very simple because when they're buying buildings in Houston you go out and celebrate it's like Wolf on Wall Street everybody goes out and celebrates they do coke they go to strip club it's a big celebration because it's a lot of money being involved and it's crazy because people think that it's just like drugs that are being moved across the border I'm like it's a whole empire that's connected with human trafficking and business and the government and even our own government is corrupt because how do you think these tons and tons of cocaine is getting across the border that's a whole different operation in itself I believe everybody's got a killer in them everybody can kill no matter who it is the women the man everybody's got that button where if they need to I believe everybody has got that potential for sure did you see innocent not innocent people but did you see people who were sort of weak looking who then just fucking snapped I mean look at Chapel like when we see this man you see him I think he's like five eight big beer belly I mean the guy looks harmless but he was running this whole empire and I remember this is how crazy it was I was in the DEA elevator with the DEA Houston director when his phone rang I was in the elevator with him when he said oh we have Chapel and he was being extradited to Houston that's how crazy I was involved with the DEA he escaped he escaped all the time is that because the money he had he was paying people off how big was El Chapo than Escobar I think they're about the same I mean when there's money and drugs involved and once you've killed killing becomes easy for you people say I will let El Chapo wear my hat on yeah fuckers so see when when you see the serial killers and the dark stuff that people are doing does it make you more paranoid outside of prisons and stuff does it make you question everything and be more wary of how that the world can be like nothing surprises me now I've seen it all I've heard it all the things that people are doing to get organs that's another huge industry that people don't realize people get put to sleep and you wake up and you're missing a kidney because that's another big industry of organs and the selling of organs that's huge they harvest organs or they just mug you and take your organs it's pretty bad it's huge it's a whole another and it's all interconnected with drugs and the human trafficking the human trafficking is children trafficking let's not get that twisted and it's number one in Houston that's how I ended up in Houston in Chicago so I stopped doing undercover work and I started doing human trafficking in Houston which I didn't even realize it was a thing I didn't even think human trafficking was alive and well in Houston and it's huge how bad does that actually for people who don't understand how bad it is it's really bad so just to get an idea you can go to a bar in the hood in Houston and they take you to the back and there's little girls and little boys against the wall and these drunk men come in and they're like which one you want and they're like I'll take that one and then they just take them to the back and rape them and then the little kid goes back to the wall it's bad and if you look up at the stats it's we have a lot of stings that go down in Houston but obviously people don't realize that these cases need to be worked on for years at a time because there's evidence that needs to be collected in order to indict them the most or as many people as possible it's not just like hey something's going on let's go save these kids it has to be done strategically but the most trafficked child age is 11 because an 11 year old is not a little kid and it's not developed enough so it still falls within like a child you have many rogue agents who work and get paid off as many there's a lot I was working in the wire room in Houston and the wire room you're there 24 hours it's always man you cannot leave the wire room unattended somebody's always listening in on calls and it's crazy because it becomes a story you're sitting there listening to this guy and that guy and then you start growing emotions for somebody and then they get killed and you're like oh that guy's gone so he's dead now who else is going in so when did you decide to write the book through these brown eyes when did it come out what was the meaning behind writing it so through these brown eyes it's pretty much my life story through my eyes told in my own words and it just starts with childhood trauma and why I went to go work for the government and then just trauma after trauma after trauma and how I was able to turn trauma into resilience including the book was already written and then all this unraveled because of the book which ended up being the end of the book me finding out that my husband had been part of the Mexican cartel which was a hell of a story because that's what Hollywood wanted you can't make this shit up like you really can't make even if you tried to like this was really my life how many times did they give you the polygraph test oh wow so I get polygraphed every five years so my first one was at 23 so do the math probably like five or six times so what did they ask you they asked me was I involved did you know about it were you hiding it were you stealing secrets because ultimately they treated me like the drug dealer because I was the one who had given the oath to the government not him they didn't care but here's the crazy story the government didn't care about them they came after me because I would have the bigger crime if I was involved I would be sitting in federal prison next to Chapo for probably life in prison so you wrote the book you gave it to your husband were he's in love for these have a good relationship was it normal our relationship was not normal I tried to leave a year in because he did a 180 on me I think he did everything nice and great and then once we signed the papers he totally switched on me and he said no more parties because I used to entertain and have dinner and have our friends over we moved to the suburbs he almost tried to isolate me and I had children for six years I was having babies so as long as I was having children he had control over me because I had to care for the kids obviously we were stuck at home and a lot of stuff started coming out to the surface a lot of the things that he was hiding money wise property wise LLC wise he had some businesses and I just started noticing some things coming in the mail because I was home all the time and so I think our our relationship started to deteriorate because there was obviously trust issues and there was obviously a lot of things he was hiding and I think he almost needed the book is what set him off when he read all of my trauma I think he felt sorry for me and was like oh my god I need to tell her this and can you imagine holding this secret for 10 years from your wife and your family but your family knowing and then having and then revealing it I tell myself he must have felt so light by releasing all that energy that he was hiding for 10 years it's a lot How much did you feel by kind of kind of strong women trying to make a living coming over all your trauma and pain you're married it's not the best relationship you've got kids so you're trying to make it work to then finding out that he's a fraud basically yeah it's probably the worst feeling in this world it really is the way I described it was and realizing you're still alive and peeling yourself off the tracks that's how I describe it Could you have become a target then by knowing this information I think so but I think I have I think there's some more interesting aspects of how their involvement were because he wasn't afraid of me reporting it so I think that the dad and I'll go into it in book 2 but I do think the dad became part of witness protection program because the dad was living in Honduras for 10 years the 10 years we were married he was living in the jungles of Honduras and that's usually when you go into witness protection program you go to this off shore location Your dad was a snitch? I think so Is that why he was scared of you then? I think so and I also think that his father was telling him out of all the women that you could pick why would you pick this one you know and I do believe the dad got out of his dealings however I don't know if it was witness protection program or what it was but what my ex-husband told me was whenever his uncle died and they lost that when he lost that million dollars there was a shift and I think that that was a shift What happened to your husband? Nothing happened to my husband he just grew up in the cartel but his uncle was murdered Did they get investigated? I have no idea I don't think so I think the dad became part of witness protection program gave some information up the dad went to live outside of the country and they kept all these millions of dollars because they own a lot of land in west Texas how do you own all this land 1400 acres of land working with a vending company business but that's how they were they were money laundering is through the vending company business because it's a cash flowing business Does the dad of us see the kids know? I think I think the DEA knows but they're just not going to talk and the department of defense whenever they investigated me they weren't going to try to get information because all they needed to know was that I wasn't involved so once I was cleared I was cleared How was that feeling?  I was How much clearance do you have to get for that space if you're working for the government? A top secret clearance so top secret is the highest clearance that you can get in the government and I was terrified I was terrified of publishing the book because not only do I talk shit about the government but I was disclosing all this in an area in Houston where it's very prevalent of drug dealing and cartel but then I thought to myself the cartel gains nothing by killing me the thing about it I'm not going out in public and talking about specific names or specific plans or specific movements I'm not really identifying anybody from the cartel I'm just saying I ended up marrying into the cartel and so a lot of people thought I was going to end up dead in a ditch but I said if you're logical and you have understanding of how the cartel works if the cartel kills me I'm going to be plastered on CNN ex-agent dead in a ditch that's too much noise for the cartel the cartel doesn't need attention or noise because remember the cartel tries to stay under cover and tries to stay in the darkness that's why you never see these cartel members you never see Chapo with a Lambo or fancy cars the guy's wearing jeans and a t-shirt and eating tacos and I think a lot of people get brainwashed in what they see in the media and in the movies that they think that it's this whole flashy-dashy type of world and it's not yeah, it's the fake life it's the glorifying the fake life but they put some of these films the fancy cars and the fancy women and all the jewelry but that just makes people think that's what I want to go and get it and it just draws red flags for people who then target people are so silly man I had an old drug lord on from Liverpool just last week he bought a white Rolls Royce he says it was his biggest liver mistake because it just draws so much attention it draws attention and the crazy thing is I have a story in my book about the Elote Lady so this is a lady who has a little cart that's selling corn outside of the grocery store in Houston this little woman is selling corn outside of the grocery store she goes around leaves the little cart and gets in an escalade so it's like you know when people have money they want to be so flashy but then when you get to a level that you're making it you don't want to be flashy and then all of a sudden now you want to not look like you have money because it draws attention so when you're a cartel member you do not want to draw attention what ship you talking about the government I was talking about Trump I talked about Trump in the book and I talked about the corruption in the government I went in the government to work I really wanted to make a difference I really wanted to understand why these crazy fucks do what they do and I ended up seeing a whole different side it's nepotism whoever likes you the most it's a popularity contest and everybody's doing corrupt things I talked about Trump in the book how all these people rushed into this government building like that was planned you know how hard it is to get into government buildings it's very hard there's people on the roof with guns so for all these people to just rush in one day and nobody knew that this was going to happen is I think it's a bunch of bullshit is that actors yeah no it was actually people it was off yeah no they were actors they were Trump supporters and you know shit like that doesn't just happen because even me I have access to these buildings and even people who have access to these buildings it's not that easy for me it was like you guys are so stupid this was orchestrated this was planned you know just like 9-11 and all this other stuff stuff was planned it just doesn't happen this was planned and orchestrated and you know it's crazy you see all these people hanging off of government buildings and doing this crazy madness and people say oh it just happened no it didn't just happen are you okay isn't that a bit of a mess just now what's America like in regards to just life problems with the economy obviously we're going through a recession and obviously there's a lot of debt there's a lot of crime I think you know just like the gentleman was talking about there's a lot of crime that goes unspoken of especially with drugs with the rising cocaine addiction and obviously now it's becoming harder to sustain a certain type of lifestyle which causes more crime so and I mean let's not even talk about mental health and depression because there's more suicides, there's more killings all of that is all up on the rise it's sad though isn't it I think it's just everywhere in the world and the fucking sad things the world doesn't need to be like that doesn't need to feel agreed to envy and poison and bad foods and toxins and pollution and whatever it is that's destroying people a better world in our lifetime and that's sad to think because only needs to people make a stand to then create better change but I think people are just so caught up in pain they can't free think anymore yeah I think yeah I mean it's a fucked up world and I don't think it's going to get any better it's just going to keep getting worse and I hate to say this but it's like Covid the strongest will survive what about what's the worst thing you've seen being an investigator the worst thing that I've seen has been I would say the human trafficking how children are being used as money and they're transferable and they're being used I mean it's like cattle it's like I'll give you five if you give me this I think that's the saddest thing is that now children have become currency how about that as a mother it's horrible in fact I sometimes don't even take my own kids to the grocery store because that's how bad it is in Houston kids are just being taken and stolen off of carts so how's life been since the books being released it's been great I have to say the worst thing that happened to me was the best thing that happened to me because what I didn't do with him in ten years I did on my own in three years like I became a best seller and then now I signed the movie with Hollywood and I was named the executive producer and I now have people that are wanting to buy my intellectual property for book two so it's crazy it's like I was on the floor crying my life was over and then it just took a turn what happens with your kids do they ever get to see they see them it's all very strategically done obviously it's all enforced so yeah and surprisingly we actually have a better relationship now than we did before so but if you were to ask him about the book he denies denies denies denies he's like it's all a lie it's not true so that's the story he goes with do you think it's because there's no bullshit anymore no lies, no deceit because holding lies and deceit it does something to your energy now if you know someone's off if they've done something you're thinking you're off today what's up it drains your energy it drains your soul for sure it's mad though for you to be doing that job interrogating people to then being tracked, lied to filled do you know what I mean? it's literally the worst thing that I can never even put it into words or even think of it my worst enemy should never go through that do you think he was learning tactics from you to get out here? I don't think he was I think that his involvement because he was a child right I think his involvement was strictly monetary I think he was really good with money so I think with him it was just the moving of the money that he was doing but I mean he told me when he was in high school he was a runner he was moving drugs in his little high school car he would go to baseball practice and then he would go drop drugs off what he looked for telltale signs fidgeting, twitching and eye contact do you get taught all that? we get taught all that but everything that we learn you kind of learn through experience and you learn what works for you best any high profile names? that I can say no I mean I already did say I did mention Chapo and again one thing that I did learn that I could say is people think that these people are sitting in a penitentiary and most of them are in orange farms like they don't put them in the penitentiaries they take them to a remote location but the remote location is never disclosed to the media and everybody thinks that these big drug lords are sitting in the federal penitentiaries or not a lot of them don't get the death penalty because they're too valuable they're too valuable to the entire organization and they're too valuable to entire investigation so if they end up dead it's because somebody ordered them to be killed just like Weinstein but yeah do you have to do psychiatric reports on these people as well?   I think they say about 30 people get killed in the state of Texas a day is probably more so Huntsville is probably 2 hours north of where I live and they probably kill the most there because the death penalty is still alive in Texas why do the Americans give sentences like 180 years 140 years what is the meaning behind that? there is no meaning to be honest with you it's just for paperwork so that and really for the family you're not going to live 100 years all you have to say is life in prison but it's paperwork for me it's paperwork the guy that killed my friend he was supposed to be dead right now but in 2006 the governor of Illinois abolished the death penalty so he's sitting on death row forever until he dies in prison never gets out but he was supposed to be dead what about people who are innocent thrown and convicted how bad is that in America? I would say it's bad and I would say it definitely goes with the people of color minorities because it's easier to throw something on a minority than it is to a white person in my opinion but there's still instances out there where people are wrongfully accused but I think somebody needs to be accused and somebody needs to take the fall for a violent crime so as long as somebody takes the fall then things are okay but it's not okay for the person that didn't do it how bad is racism in America?


Hello, welcome to Toffy TV, it is the match preview Brentford versus Everton at the G-Tec stadium, a place we have not won yet, that's correct, that is correct, factually correct, we started, factually correct. Obviously we ain't great at Griffin Park either in all fairness over, and we played there probably about twice but we were rubbish. There you go, obviously we got to draw there last season but tough game, Brentford had a good side, they've got a great model as a football club and once again I've started the season pretty well, only one defeat last game out against Newcastle, obviously only one win as well so far good win against Fulham but this will be a difficult game only. Yeah, really tough game, really like Brentford like Thomas Frank and even without Ivan Tony they still look capable of scoring goals and it'll be a battle for Everton because the way they play the game is exciting, they fly forward, there's not one way they do things and like I said Thomas Frank's built a side there that is everything. Everyone has a tough game every time you play them and that's a difficult place to go because we've proven you know we lost the first year we went there and but we got a good draw last season and to be honest last season we should have won there, we had opportunities Anthony Gordon put us 1-0 up and then, and with them I had a great. And Michael Eng called both mission presentable chances to go 2-0 up before they equalised late on off a corner and but if you offered me it now I'd take a point on Saturday. They always strike me as a very brave team, a team that just goes for it you know regardless I watched the first game they played against Spaces and it's such a ding dong it was there was always confidence that he could score in the game and you get that feeling all the time that they're going to get something and even a couple weeks ago when they played Bournemouth obviously I think they went behind 2-1 quite late on but always that belief in the goal they scored was fantastic, like a fantastic equaliser and it really really laid on. You just feel like the players and the fans they're all on the same page you know they're at a place where as a football club we'd absolutely love to be there's so much unity you know when I know that I know it's it they've come you know through the league and through the leagues even but there's so much unity there are everyone's on the same page and that I think for me that takes the pressure off it I think when they first came into the Premier League it was almost a case of well we're happy to be here but as it grew and as you know with the new stage. With a very calm manager and very calm ownership model and the way they do things that unity is just growing and I don't know whether the expectations have grown in the fan base but if you go back like 18 months ago when they broke Christian Ericsson and that sort of like just that sort of just like changed everything like like actually we are here and we are here to stay and we're going to have a go that grew into last season. Which is a good season and obviously the beginning of the season and you just look at them now and you don't look at them as a club and feel like oh they're one of the teams who could possibly reflect my relegation they just the way they do things and as you mentioned before even without Ivan Tony I think a lot of people thought he would be going to struggle without Ivan Tony taking those goals off the side but obviously they're not as good as what they could be but they're going along really nicely. Yeah you just did the nail on the head for a team that has come through the league. The first year they were struggling till they got Ericsson they were sliding a little bit and wobbling a little bit and he come in and picked them up brilliant and they ended up comfortably staying up really and then last season they were excellent and told me they got 20 goals which is brilliant. And you look at them now and you think they're more likely to be in the hump for Europe being football than they are to be playing with the relegation where that plays out they have only won one game so far so you could argue they are missing Tony's goals that might have took a couple of games away from the opposition. But they're in every game they battle and scrap in every game and they lost last week to Newcastle with a penalty decision that's been discussed you know looked a very harsh penalty that they lost two last week and that's a tough place to go Newcastle but they were right in that one so. I think he's done brilliantly. I think this was a club that if base peaked out interest when we were doing the radio when Matthew Benham got involved and he wanted to do everything with data and we were wondering what is this, what's going on with this fella, he's just going to use data, money balls, style, cut it away, football and all that. And I actually think if Brighton wouldn't have done so well in terms of fliffing players the way they have done, Brentford would be getting the hell of a lot more positive press than what they get now. I think they've almost. I haven't gone under the radar because I think people do appreciate what they've done but I do think Brighton operating the way they've done and having so much success with that has kind of like took the spotlight off Brentford. And Thomas Frank, I mean he was on Sky Sport on Monday night wasn't he, on the day with Gary Neve and Jamie Carragher and speaking, you know they were interviewing him about different things. Just the way he speaks, the way he talks, the way he wants to evaluate, he wants to get better, he's got a mentor and then you put that with how they buy players and develop players.  Now but in full seriousness, they're absolutely brilliant, I listen to Ivan Toney on a podcast that I've ever seen you out talking about the culture that has been instilled around Brentford by Thomas Frank and everyone buys into it. And give it to Neil on the yet before everyone seems like they're on the same page and when you've got that, you're going in one way, you're only going in one direction. Yeah obviously Brighton are a couple easy head of the mardi so it will be interesting but as I said very calm, very calm outlook on things and even like in the summer you know losing Ray, there's no drama it's just get the money on with it, get the next one in and move on, get the one we scouted and move on. Let's just have a good day team from the game they played against Newcastle which was a very even game. Obviously Rico Henry there, he's out for the rest of the season which will be a major blow for them, he's fantastic and I thought he did really well against us a couple of years ago. Hickey on the other side of course is taking Nathan Patterson's place in the Scotland squad, we know he's a good player, no one to get Aaron Hickey before. Yeah, no guard, really good in the centre, Nathan Collins and Ben Mee, Ben Mee certainly a very good experience goalkeeper and the two are from Whiston and Bumall who have taken the place. Let's just have a little look at the numbers for Bumall. Five games, four goals, 4.14 xg, left foot goals four and a minute per game, 90, 90. Yeah, there you go and obviously put Donald down the right hand side so Michael and Cole, it's going to have, and Branthwy going to have their, well this is what he does, he cuts in, he likes to cut in in Bumall and get it on to that left foot and he's a real threat. Again on that, on the podcast Ivan Tony's talking about giving him confidence and being able to tell on him how good he is because he doesn't quite believe in himself, Tony's saying well, he's given some confidence there because he started off brilliantly, you know he's xg, he's slightly underperforming it, he's got 4.14 xg, he's got four goals but realistically he's right, bang on what he should be doing and he's a handful wiser, he's a handful we know that and he's freshing it up, he's got options as well. So, no garter player I really like in the midfield for them, he just keeps everything ticking over as well and this is a tough, tough game for Evan, you know we haven't won a game yet. Sean Dyche, the pressure is on because it's got to be on. I don't think Evan have won two of the last 16 Premier League games which is abysmal, absolutely abysmal, so no wonder the pressure's on the man and you're no wonder there's them stories that Graham Potter's being linked and other things. Well for Sean Dyche to calm all that down and quieten it all, he's got to get the team to go and get a result here and then we obviously then in terms of the Premier League we have two home games on the run after that but we've got to hit the villar as well so from our perspective it's a difficult place to go but we've got to do our best to hang on in there and listen, if we click we've got players who are a threat at the other end better, getting better, you know we'll be getting better. Better each game just by playing more Premier League games, Dominic Albert Lums fitting available again, Dwight McNeill's back now, we missed him in the opening few weeks, Dan Jum has got a couple of goals in his last three. So we have got threats at the other end that the argument this weekend for all the things Sean Dyche has to get right this weekend is the energy in the side and it might be Nathan Patterson comes back in for young. And the midfield, he's got to get that midfield make-up right and that might be taking Decory out and putting the James Garner in there or taking, I don't think he can take Garner out but if he is going to have Decory in there he's got to do more than he did last week, he's the one who breaks into the box, he didn't have a single attempt to goal last week so that's something everyone's got to look at. That's just a look at the evident team from last week's defeat. Be interesting to see obviously he's got Dominic Albert Lums, he could possibly play from the start, would he take that risk and we get away between midfield? To instead of the three sorry, when you look at that midfield sometimes you think you're probably good because you missed it out. He was asked about playing through a front and he said I like playing through a front and that's something we can do it so I'm sure the manager will try that at some stage. It'd be interesting because it'd be interesting whether he, Ashley Young continues playing at right back, obviously he played there against Arsenal, whether he brings back Paterson, Michelin Co plays at left back, I'm sure he will. Jack Harrison's not quite ready, is he a possibility maybe for midweek against Ville to give him some minutes there? Do you not think he'll be on the bench Harrison? I don't think he's fit fit, he's obviously not fit fit. Well it's really interesting because Brentford in the five games have in four of those have used five subs so they really do use the squad and that's something that obviously we haven't seen at evident and maybe we're obviously not quite there yet so that could be an integral part of the game. Thomas Frankoff, he trusts his team, he trusts his squad, he knows he's got a more balanced squad than ever to have. If we've got players, yes we've got players like Paterson and possibly Dominic Harvill-Lewin who can come on, James Garnett, but who's after that? Shemitty, well he hasn't looked quite ready yet, you haven't got it Jack Harrison, maybe on the bench and if you have is he fit enough to come onto the pitch. So they have said they've got a lot more balance in their squad and I suppose for evident that's the level we've got to get ourselves back to by having those players available who aren't quite there yet. So be interested to see with that whether that's something Thomas Frankff approaches again, knowing almost that evident a very reluctant, so Sean Dice is very reluctant to make that many subs in the game. We don't really have the balance in our, we have centre backs and we have full backs and we don't have too many options in my field obviously with Donbac we've got a bit more going up front now so that'll be an interesting part as well. They haven't won a home as well so they'll be desperate for there but hey we haven't won away so you know it all balances out, someone's got to give. So yeah it's a very tough game and it's a very, it's a sticky spell for the manager because he knows he's got this game, he's got the Villa game and he's got two huge home games that let's be honest he needs to take six points out of because one minute it's the start of the season, the next minute you've had the first quarter of the season and if you haven't got the points on the board it's tough. You're darned there for the rest of the season. It's a difficult game but you know what, just because they're not flying fully right now it's an opportunity for Everton to maybe catch them and home and we beat them last time we played them. For me it's all about rolling up the sleeves and putting a performance that gets us a result and you know we saw the Villa how quickly we fell apart. Do you know what I mean? It's like we can't afford that to happen again because these are a good side as we said and they've got a couple lads up front there who are tidy players and can put the ball in the back of the net and we've got to make sure we cut out all those silly mistakes and be you know, we've got to be organised but be more than organised. Last week we were organised and we only conceded one goal that's great but you've got to be organised and have a little bit more about it. You've got to have an effect of game haven't you? You can't just rely on set pieces which have been abysmal anyway. I mean that might be one of the first things I'd do is maybe have a look at taking. Don't let Ashley Young take but give Dwight MacNeill the opportunity again. I mean he scored for me last season so why not. Yeah it's going to be a very tough game so let us know your thoughts in the comments on this one obviously half five on Saturday. It's not ideal. So let us know your thoughts, your fancies. Do you think this is the one way we go? Actually yeah and we can get some from this. I'm encouraged from the defensive play from last week. Let us know your thoughts in the comments. Make sure to give this video a like, subscribe if you haven't already. If you want more great videos, daily live videos, join us over on Softly TV Premier. The link is in the description. QR codes come on the screen now. See you later.


Hey guys, how are you today? I've got some happy mail here from my friend Lindy, and she didn't have to do this. I didn't know what she's coming. She sent me a really nice note. Lindy, thank you very much. I'm gonna, I don't know why I'm zoomed in. Okay, I'm not going to show you the envelope because I don't want to show her address, but I'm going to share with you what she sent me, which were some great gifts and pieces, including a couple of really beautiful, oops, ATC cards. Aren't they gorgeous? So I'm going to keep those aside and put them in my ATC holder. A couple of mini canvases and they are, I don't know what size they look like. Three by three. Ooh, four by four. I'm wrong. I don't know my sizes today.  I don't know. I don't, it feels like a full moon. I know it's not, but anyway, one in canvas and one in gestured canvas and one in like a natural color, which that's cool.  So those will be coming in handy. She sent me some laser cuts of my initials. Thank you. Some of these really great, huge pipettes. How fabulous are these? I do not actually have any like this. Well, now I do. I love this. I needed those, I think. Another die cut lower case letter G and a frame. These are going to be all great for grabbing glue. Mark making tools and small goodies. Ooh, yummy. I'm not going to open this just because it looks like there's, well, maybe I will. There's something in here I want to see.  Look at those. Are those not pretty? And there are some spoolies. Eyebrow eyelash brushes. I love these. I have a couple of them. I actually don't have one in this shape, so that's going to be fun to play with, but I love these because they are great for mark making tools, whether you're using acrylic paint or watercolor or whatever. Bin that's overflowing again because I've been just shoving stuff in there. A laser cut tag and cross. Some tissue paper. This is the prettiest tissue paper. And as I'm doing this, I'm putting stuff away. Unlike normal where I just leave a pile. And some beautiful metallic paper that's just gorgeous. Lindy, thank you so much. I'm going to save your note and I'm going to put it in my bin of notes that I have. I save all the notes. And I am going to use these hopefully soon, so look for them in upcoming episodes and artwork that I share. If you would like to send me happy mail or you'd like to join one of my Facebook groups, or maybe you would like to support my channel by shopping in the Etsy shop or send me an email or something like that, all of the information on how to do that's in the description below. It's not obligated. It sure is appreciated. So if you would check it out, that would be great. Don't forget to like, share, and subscribe if you're new here. And the most important thing, go out and have a great day everybody. Do something nice for yourself because you deserve it and I'll see you later. Bye guys.


To read the statements from President Biden and Secretary Blinken, General Austin and leaders of both parties, you'd hardly know Palestinians existed at all. There has been no recognition of the attack on Palestinian families being ripped from their homes in East Jerusalem right now, or home demolitions. No mention of children being detained or murdered. No recognition of a sustained campaign of harassment and terror by Israeli police against worshipers. Feeling down and praying and celebrating their holiest days in one of their holiest places. No mention of Al-Aqsa being surrounded by violence, tear gas, smoke, while people pray. Can my colleagues imagine if it was their place of worship filled with tear gas? Could you pray as stun grenades were tossed into your holiest place? I can't stand silent when injustice exists, where the truth is obscured. If there's one thing Detroit instilled in this Palestinian girl from Southwest, it's you always speak truth to power even if your voice shakes. The freedom of Palestinians is connected to the fight against oppression all over the world. Lastly, to my city in Palestine, I shan't on a whack of Hannah. I stand here because of you. Thank you. Incredible speech, gut wrenching, heartfelt. It's incredible. I do want to move on to Ilhan Omar's. This isn't as long, but she says something here that's really substantial. This Israeli government and their far right ethno-nationalist leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, has legally raised Palestinian ancestral homes, leveled entire neighborhoods, and finally suppressed any resistance. This is all to make way for illegal Israeli settlement outposts designed to displace Palestinians from their homes and prevent a future Palestinian state. Since 1993, when the first Oslo Peace Accord was signed, illegal settlements have increased by nearly 400,000. And Netanyahu has made explicit his goal to annex much of the West Bank, home to over 3 million Palestinians. On top of that, Palestinian movement, speech, and economic activity are severely limited. Palestinians are not allowed to leave the Gaza Strip except in extreme cases. Medical shortage, our rampant, and youth unemployment was already 40% before the pandemic hit. People who protest including young children are routinely shot by the IDF soldiers, often killed with no consequence in Israeli courts. So this is significant because she referred to Netanyahu as a far-right ethno-nationalist. That's significant for a member of Congress to say. This is our business because we are playing a role in it. And the United States must acknowledge its role in the injustice and human rights violations of Palestinians. This is not about both sides. This is about an imbalance of power. I don't think people really get this. They don't get the power dynamics here, and that Israel is the occupier. And they don't understand the way that our government is so complicit. Like, this isn't just some random thing happening across the globe that doesn't affect us. No, it directly affects us because our government is complicit. We're funding this. Palestinians are being told the same thing as black folks in America. There is no acceptable form of resistance. We are bearing witness to egregious human rights violations. The pain, trauma, and terror that Palestinians are facing is not just the result of this week's escalation, but the consequence of years of military occupation. In Sheikh Jarab, the Israeli government is violently dispossessing yet another neighborhood of Palestinian families from homes they have lived in for decades. We cannot stand idly and complicitly by and allow the occupation and oppression of the Palestinian people to continue. We cannot remain silent when our government sends 3.8 billion of military aid to Israel that is used to demolish Palestinian homes, imprison Palestinian children, and displace Palestinian families. A budget is a reflection of our values. I'm committed to ensuring that our government does not fund state violence in any form, anywhere. Just to have so many members of Congress now speak up with this level of clarity, it really feels like this is a paradigm shift.  I mean, I get on the Internet, people are going to be vocal, people are going to speak out. But what we're seeing is a bit of a change here. For the first time, as long as I've been alive, people are actually speaking out and condemning Israel unequivocally because they are the aggressors. When serious human rights abuses compound, such as the recent attacks on places of worship, like the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the forced removal of people from their homes, most recently in East Jerusalem, but ongoing in the West Bank for way too long, the jailing and military court trials for Palestinian children, the dehumanization of the lives of the Palestinians by having roads and entrances that are separate for some people, which all too often looks like a former South Africa. The blockade and open-air prison conditions for the people in Gaza, where food and clean water is often scarce, when those types of human rights abuses occur, we're not just putting the lives of Palestinians and Israelis at risk, but we're also putting the United States at greater jeopardy. And eventually, that could mean the lives of men and women from the United States getting involved in a greater escalation of violence in the region, which none of us want to see. Today, we want to talk about the very long-term problems that have been for too long ignored by U.S. policies in the region. Fortunately now, more and more members of Congress are wanting to address peace in this region in a more forthright way. As human rights giant, South African Desmond Tutu said, if you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. Incredible. Incredible. Great speech. St. Louis and I rise today in solidarity with the Palestinian people and in memory of our brother, Bassa Masri, a Ferguson activist who was with us on the front lines of our Uprising for Justice following the police murder of Michael Brown Jr. Bassa was a St. Louis Palestinian. Bassa also lived in Jerusalem, Palestine. Bassa was one of us. He showed up ready. As a Palestinian, he was ready to resist, to rebel, to rise up with us as our St. Louis community mourned Mike Brown Jr.'s state-sanctioned murder. And as we demanded an end to the militarized police occupation of our communities. Palestinians know what state violence, militarized policing and occupation of their communities look like and they've lived that reality of having to go through checkpoints while trying to live their lives. They know this reality and the reality of so much more. So when heavily militarized police forces showed up in Ferguson in 2014, Bassa and so many others of our St. Louis Palestinian community, our Palestinian siblings showed up too. I remember sitting in a circle on the grass near where Michael Brown Jr. was murdered. And I remember them describing to us what to do when militarized law enforcement shot us with rubber bullets or when they tear-gassed us. I remember learning that the same equipment that they used to brutalize us in the same, is the same equipment that we send to the Israeli military to police and brutalize Palestinians. I remember Bassa putting his life on the line with us. I remember him live streaming for the whole world to see our struggle. I remember our solidarity and I remember the harassment, the extortion, the brutalization he faced for resisting with us. That harassment, that extortion, that brutalization by heavily armed militarized presence in our community, that's what we fund when our government sends our tax dollars to the Israeli military. We are anti-war. We are anti-occupation and we are anti-partite period. If this body is looking for something productive to do with $3 million instead of funding a military that polices and kills Palestinians, I have some communities in St. Louis City and in St. Louis County where that money can go, where we desperately need investment, where we are hurting, where we need help. Let us prioritize funding there. Prioritize funding life, not destruction. Let me just say, I'm so impressed by the members of Congress who are so clear. I'm gonna say it is a turning point because it feels like it is.  Shadow asks, how is Palestine under siege? Oh, well, let me show you. May 13th, Gaza Strip, 50% children very densely populated area. See all this? That's what we'd call a siege. Didn't the Palestine government send a barrage of missiles? So I just went over quite a bit, but I'll do it again because I think that this is really important. So the reason why there's a clash happening right now, which is not really a clash, is because in the East Jerusalem city of Sheikh Jarab, Israel is trying to expel aid families and I shouldn't say trying, they successfully have already expelled most of the families.  I would wanna fight. But what they did in solidarity with their brothers and sisters in Sheikh Jarab is Palestinians took to the streets to protest. And then do you know what Israel did in return? Brutalized the protesters. They were protesting around al-Aqsa mosque and not even in the mosque. They're not protesting in the mosque. You don't protest in mosques, just around the mosques. And guess what Israel did? They fired rubber bullets and tear gas into the mosque while people were praying, completely innocent. So as Israel was brutalizing protesters, Hamas, they set out this ultimatum to try to get Israel to stop. And they said, if you don't stop, they will fire these missiles. Israel didn't stop, Hamas fired the missiles. Now, luckily for Israel, they have something known as iron dome that just automatically shoots the missiles out of the sky. But do you wanna know what happens when Israel does these airstrikes? They don't have iron dome.  Understand that all of this could end if the oppressor, the occupier, stopped everything that they're doing, gave Palestinians back their life. They are building thousands of settlements. I mean, we just have to find the borders of Palestine over time and you can see what's happening here. So this is not something that is, oh, well, it aren't both sides equally terrible. One side is the oppressor, one side is the oppressed. And yeah, I'm glad that Karakas Kio pointed that out. Biden's response is racist. It's immoral. It is literally an endorsement of ethnic cleansing. It's not just that he's giving Israel a pass. The response that we're seeing from Democratic Party leaders, they are literally greenlighting ethnic cleansing. And look, if it were the case that Joe Biden or Democrats cared about Palestine, especially Joe Biden, because he's really in the highest position of power, he could simply do one thing, pick up the phone, make a call to Benjamin Nen, and YAHUN and say, listen, if you do not stop right now, no more aid. You do not get any more aid. But he's not doing that. He's not doing that. And on top of that, he says, Israel has the right to defend itself. Do Palestinians have the right to defend themselves? I asked this question on the show the other day. When do we ever hear anyone say, well, the Palestinians have a right to defend themselves? Listen, if somebody barged into my home and said, get out. I mean, I think that as a human being, I'd have a right to say, no. But if Palestinians speak up, they get killed. So it's not just that somebody barges into your home and kicks you out, expels you from your home. It's not even an eviction. It's an expulsion. It's not that simple because that's preferable to what's actually happening because not only do they have to endure being expelled, but they have to zip their lips as it's happening to them.    Muhammad El-Kurd, this is a young man who you probably seen this week on CNN, on MSNBC, on Democracy Now. He knew that there would be a time this week likely when he would be expelled from his home. And he was explaining to mainstream news outlets that look, if I try to fight back, if I try to stand my ground and refuse to go, they're literally going to kill me. That's what's going to happen. And he was evicted forcibly from his home. And to even call it an eviction isn't necessarily accurate. And he explains that that's more of a legal term. This is an expulsion. Now I want to go to this video, Michael Brooks. I mean, a lot of other people are saying this, but nobody says it the way that Michael Brooks says it. Are you not concerned about the binary between either condemning Israel entirely, being also a stance that a lot of very strong and notorious anti-Semitic people agree with, versus seeing this as more of a complex issue where it is wrong what's going on and that there's also a way to do this that Israel still exists and is supported? So it's not a complex issue. That's the big thing. It's super simple. There's one group that has enormous power. It's the most powerful country in the Middle East. It's backed by the United States. It acts on another population of people with total impunity and is never held accountable for anything. So there's no symmetry in the relationship, period. And just as like a thought experiment, IDW people, if we know that if somehow a population of Jewish refugees ended up in West Bank and Gaza and an Arabic government in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv had an open air prison in what, you know, Jewish Gaza which they bombed white phosphorus. They killed civilians indiscriminately and they had no provisions for medicine. They had an embargo that blocked food, that electricity wasn't running, that there was an over 48% unemployment rate, life expectancy and malnutrition. Statistics were horrifying. One of the major policymakers in this hypothetical Arabic Palestinian state said, we need to put those Jews on a diet. In the West Bank there was another Jewish area where there was a little bit more autonomy but there was regular Arabic settlements where they pulled up the Jewish farmers' foods, they terrorized them with rocks, the security forces broke children's bones and they couldn't drive their own roads. We'd all have no problem understanding what that was. So there's nothing complex about it. The second part of your question, it's a pure asymmetry relationship and the question is rights or not. So that's it, it's not complicated. The second part of your question, at this point, there's always gonna be crackpots who are anti-Semitic who condemn Israel. That's not what drives the movement. It's particularly in the United States. If you work around most people who are concerned with this issue, it's actually populated with a lot of Jewish people. The real question we have to ask is why is it that APAC is hosting a information minister for Slobodan Milosevic? Why is it that there's relationships between the Israeli government and far-right parties in Europe? Why is it that Benjamin Netanyahu's son is posting borderline alt-right memes? Why is it that Israel is an alt-right state, even though it is from the descendants of the victims of one of the greatest crimes in history? That's a serious question and that's inseparable from the racism of the project which goes back to the first part that we have to solve. But thank you, Shalom. And I am serious about it coming from Jewish values. Like Tony Jutt, my reading to the extent I do, which I actually do have some connection to that in a religious sense, it's unacceptable for me. But yeah, no, I know. Whoa, whoa. Ha, ha, ha, ha. But it's not complicated. It's not complicated. Man, I miss Michael Brooks so much. It seems complicated if you tune into the mainstream media because they present this thing in such a skewed manner. You know, oftentimes you'll see the word clash and before I even saw a segment on clash, I already anticipated the word clash. They wanna make it seem as if, oh, well, there's this conflict. We often even hear to it or hear it referred to as the Israel-Palestine conflict. There's no conflict. There's no conflict between Israel and Palestine. Israel is subjugating an entire population to third class citizenship and in the case of Gaza, it's an open air prison. Nobody gets in or out unless Israel gives them the go ahead. So to kind of make it make sense in the American context, imagine if you wanted to leave the United States and you wanted to go to Europe. You wanted to go on vacation to Europe to see one of your relatives in Europe. Imagine if in order to do that, you had to get permission from the Canadian government. We had to ask Canada whether or not we could leave our country. Doesn't that seem a little bit preposterous? It's like, wait, why do I have to ask another government if I can leave my own country? That's bizarre. But that's literally what's happening as unbelievable as it sounds. And it goes much more deeper than that. Israel controls the electricity, the water supply. Palestinians are the subjects of Israel. They have zero control on the situation. So to say that it's a conflict that presupposes that both sides are equally culpable here when that's not actually the case. One side is the aggressor, the oppressor and the occupier who quite literally is carrying out an ethnic cleansing. And again, I have to really stress this because this is something that I've never heard a persuasive answer to from people who are Israel has a right to defend themselves people. What would you do if somebody barged into your home and they expelled you from your home? How would you respond to that? I mean, for me, I know that I would be paralyzed in fear. I know that it would be horrifying. I wouldn't know where to go. But this is what's happening to people. And whenever anyone condemns it, they're called anti-Semitic. When Palestinians take to the streets to protest they get brutalized by Israel. So they're backed into a corner and they have no way out of that corner. This isn't a conflict. They are cornered and they aren't getting out of that corner unless Israel unilaterally lets them out. So the question is, when is Israel gonna let them out of this corner? When is Israel going to let their foot off of the necks of Palestinians? And the answer is when there's finally, when there is finally international condemnation, especially from the United States. Now the reason why Israel has been able to get away with it is because the United States is the most powerful country on the planet. And also we have veto power on the UN. So whenever the UN tries to take actions against Israel and even condemn it, the United States is always there to have Israel's back. We send Israel billions of dollars in aid. And so basically what's happening is all of these bad things that's happening to Palestinians, the bombs that are being dropped on the heads of Palestinian children, we pay for those. The United States government paid for those. Your tax dollars paid for those. So this isn't just a situation that doesn't affect us. It's not out of sight, out of mind. We have a government that is complicit. And that's why there's so many people in the United States reacting and they have such a strong emotional response to this because we're culpable in a way.


Hello everyone, yesterday in my Savvy Investors at VectorVest YouTube show, I interviewed Glenn Tompkins. Glenn is a guy that I have now known for 12 years. He is one of the people that introduced me first of all to the VectorVest system and trained me in it when I went over to North Carolina to work with the company 12 years ago to get a deep dive into how everything worked. And number one, he knows so much about the stock market himself. Number two, he's somebody that has lots of great opinions and thoughts that he's not afraid to share. And number three, he has his own show called Trending Thursdays. He also has another show called the Mid-afternoon Update, etc. So there was loads and loads that I wanted to ask Glenn during the show yesterday. And of course, as you can imagine, I wasn't shy about sharing my own thoughts too. So I wanted to give you a summary of the conversation and the link to the full episode is in this post. So let's take it from the top. The key conversation we had was what distinguishes news from noise in the stock market? So I asked Glenn, what do you think? And he said he's got two tests for distinguishing the two. Number one is, does this piece of news drive earnings? And number two, does it affect the long-term nature of the company, which of course would have an impact on the stock? And he gave a range of examples. And I think they're two very good tests actually. I think that is a great way of determining A from B. But I was just interested to the fact that he has 60 tabs open, he said at any given stage on his computer so that he can keep an eye on what's going on. Now, I don't know how he manages that. I certainly don't. But what he says also is that he looks to see what stories and what conversations are being repeatedly made. And then that's how he determines news from noise. Now, me personally, my news routine is that I love to listen to a stock market related podcast as I'm walking into the office in the morning. And particularly the one that I like to listen to is Wall Street Breakfast from Seeking Alpha. It's sharp, sharp, and it really gets to the heart of what goes on and it draws from other things that Seeking Alpha is doing so that then you get a good sense of where the conversation is at. Also, I think it's very important to not just look at the stock market in isolation. Also, I love to listen to the real yield. It's Sean Bloomberg on a Friday and that is one that's on, well, you can get it on YouTube if you go back and look at it afterwards or of course you can look at it live. But my number one preference for getting my news about the stock market is attending earnings calls. I love going to an earnings call. I think this is where you really get to learn about the company, you get to see about the business, you get to see about their financials, you get, of course, you get an enormously positive experience from the CEO or the CFO or the people who are talking to you from investor relations, etc. But it is very insightful. That is my favourite place to really understand a company. And within that, it's all very interesting as well to listen to the Q&A afterwards, listen to what the analysts are asking. And this is where you can truly learn to get in behind the numbers, to get in behind the narrative. And many of the analysts have been on many earnings calls. So they also will be comparing to, well, last quarter I asked you this, this is your answer. Interesting that this has been what has transpired to thereafter. Now, on the point of earnings though, Glennon came back to me and he said, sometimes he feels earnings can be noise. And I really, I didn't agree with this at all when I heard it first. But his point was, is that the conversation in the news is often about, did the earnings meet in number? Or did it miss, right? Did it miss? Did it have a surprise to the upside, etc. And he said, that can often get away from the real conversation here. He said, sometimes a company can miss an earnings expectation by two cents a share and could have made billions. And the focus is on the two cents a share as distinct to the billions that they've generated. And that I can certainly understand on right. That is where you can have a very, very short-term reaction. And I particularly, I was at the earnings call of Skillsoft, for example, a good couple of months ago, I'm a very interesting company in the area of learning development of which, of course, I have my own business too. So I was very interested in that. And I was interested that they missed their earnings expectations. There was a range of good things that had come out in that earnings report, the stock price dramatically decreased. And then I was looking at it there, just yesterday actually in preparation for the episode, and it's back up again about 28%. I think in the past month, and I will confirm that exactly, and I'll put it on this post. But the point I'm making is, is that there was a massive reaction to that at the time. And since then, there has been a recovery. Now, the news isn't as intense, of course, because it's not, it's not the earnings call. Then we've seen that those buyers and sellers may be taking a little bit less of attention and moving in a different direction. Now, as regards where Skinsoft is going to go after this, that is going to be up to the company and the way in which things evolve and so on like that. But it just is a point that Glenn was raising about the news and the noise that can come with earnings. Now, in addition, we had quite an interesting conversation about AI versus the metaverse. Because I asked the question, what news story did you think was noise? That actually became news. And this is the one that he picked. He said AI. He said AI seemed to have come out of nowhere. And then of course, he said, well, I mean, in reality, AI has been around for a long time, but it hasn't been as accessible until chat GPD launched. Then you saw the meteoric growth of its usage, of the amount of people using it, of how much of a conversation it is in conferences and boardrooms around the world. Then he said, we really got, ah, this is how AI can help me. And he was comparing the AI developments over the past while to the metaverse. Last year, it was all about the metaverse and whether it was meta changing its name, whether it was the decline in the tech stocks, whether it was the first selfie that was taken in the metaverse and various other things besides. I put forward that it's something that Jennifer Vestels mentioned at an event that I am seeing recently. She said the hype about the metaverse is dying, the metaverse itself is not dying. So we got into the nuts and bolts of that. But how an investor looks at the metaverse is different to how a business person looks at the metaverse. Gladly at the point, an investor is looking at the metaverse from the point of view of what industries does that affect. And we brought it back to AI. He said, when you think about AI, a business person is thinking about what skills do I need to recruit now? How is this going to affect my business? How are we relevant? How is our supply chain relevant? Etc. An investor says, what is going to need to happen in order to sustain all of these AI developments? Super computers, more computing software, the difference in the way in which we teach people now about prompting. So who are the industries that are going to be affected by that? And he said, that is how an investor thinks. He also gave suggestions of a range of companies that he's watching who are right in the heart of that. So just want to mention that as well. And again, all of that is in the episode. Now, next thing I moved on to was what really underpins news. What is it that you look for in a stock that if you focus on that, then of course your radar, as you're looking for news, tunes in around that. And he said two things. The ability of a company to make money quarter over quarter, year over year. Now Glenn told me that when I started working with them 12 years ago. So I know he really and truly fundamentally agrees with that and believes in that. And the proprietary indicator in VectorVest that supports that is called RS, Relative Safety. He also then spoke about relative value and that is basically a stock's ability to have long term price appreciation potential and outperform the bond market. This is why I personally think as an investor in the stock market and as somebody that comments on it and invests in it is that it's important we don't look at it in isolation. It of course is affected by interest rates. It of course is affected by the cost of borrowing for companies and governments. Of course it is. So by looking at a stock's ability to outperform it, of course, then you get much more insight thereafter. He also likes the Unisarch function within VectorVest as well, which is where you can tailor your search according to what you want, whether it is high dividend yield, fast growing earnings or technical analysis indicators. Okay, we then had a really interesting conversation about how the stock market isn't binary. On the surface, you buy something and it goes up, you make money, you buy something and it goes down. It loses money. That's it, isn't it? Well, no. Because you can do other things. For example, Glenn is happy to short. I never liked it. I haven't done it. It's not for me. Shorting is when you borrow stocks, sell them and then buy them back with a view to the million and lower price and then you keep what's in the middle. Personally speaking, I'm more an options woman. So I'll give you an example. I could sell you an option. It's called a put option where I would agree to buy a share off you at a certain price at a certain time. And if you don't want to at that time, you can walk away. But you just pay me a premium to lock in that price. The reason that I would do that is maybe I want to buy that stock anyway. And I'm getting paid to wait to buy it or also if it's very volatile, well, then of course, I'm getting paid to absorb the volatility that you want to outsource to somebody else. And in that way, I get paid to wait to buy the stocks that I want to buy anyway. I personally feel that's less risky than even buying in the stock market itself. And it's something I've been doing for years. I actually did my thesis on it in college way back in the day. And then of course, we had to have the obligatory conversation about interest rates, seventh increase in the EU, eurozone, 10th increase in the US, 12th increase in the UK. We had a chat about that as well. And again, that is in the episode. So thanks so much, Glen. It was really interesting to interview you. And for any video, check it out.