Hey everyone. I want to talk to you today about the Nintendo Ambassador's program and mostly just because of what happened to beat-em-ups. I'm sure you guys already heard the news by now. He's got over a million views on his announcement about him not working with Nintendo anymore and what exactly they did for him and his theories on why the Ambassador's program has dropped them. And it's interesting because I'm not a Nintendo Ambassador. I've never been a Nintendo Ambassador. I have gotten review copies of Nintendo games however but this was back when I worked at Zelda Informer as the editor-in-chief. And I want to talk about that a little bit because I don't think the Ambassador's program should even be a thing. I know it sounds controversial I guess because there's a lot of YouTubers out there that are. You know Nintendo Kade is a Nintendo Ambassador. There are people that I respect those two people greatly. Obviously Player Essence is a Nintendo Ambassador and Beat-Em-Ups was a Nintendo Ambassador and to me he meets all of the criteria for what I would think is a very good representation for Nintendo. Beat-Em-Ups is essentially the biggest solo channel and I say solo he's got editors and stuff but the biggest solo channel for Nintendo anything in the world on YouTube. So he's kind of a big deal and he obviously has a pretty good reputation. Even if you don't like him. Even if you don't like Beat-Em-Ups you don't like Wood it's okay. He's okay if you don't like him too. Like nobody has to like everybody but it's hard to say he's not a brand friendly type of guy. The only controversial stance he maybe has is in the positive for mental health and yeah that's really it. He doesn't really talk about politics, religion or other stuff. He leaves it all alone. He doesn't have any major controversies. I mean there's more controversies on my channel than his and he's just he's generally a seemingly really good guy that just is passionate about Nintendo like crazy. So to see him drop from the ambassador's program is kind of like hearing that GameXplain is dropped from the game. You know the program like right GameXplain's the biggest Nintendo focused channel that's not ran by Nintendo on YouTube and hearing that Wood was dropped by them makes me like it kind of hits me a little bit because it's basically GameXplain but one guy. So I feel like the ambassador to this program is a big joke. Now I wasn't always a YouTuber. I was editor in chief at Zelda Informer and they have this PR company. It also handles the ambassador's program as well. They're kind of like a middle man but it's a PR company that Nintendo's been using for basically forever called Golan Harris and I've got probably I don't even know 17 different contacts. I still have a lot of those same contacts at Golan Harris. They do respond to my email still to this day but I got a lot of those contacts while I worked at Zelda Informer. If you don't know what Zelda Informer is that's okay. The place doesn't exist anymore. They're still a thriving Twitter and Twitter handle and Facebook page for it but the actual website doesn't exist anymore. It was merged into Zelda Dungeon through a purchase a long time ago whatever. I'm not here to go dig into my past too much. It's a little bit of a soft spot because I put a lot of work into that website but back in those days you would fill out this form on Nintendo's website and I think you still can do that if you are a Nintendo news website. Now we're talking traditional news written work etc and on that form you can request a PR contact. That PR contact is then how you would get a hold of review copies of games. Now if you were a really big outlet sometimes you would just automatically get those like the IGNs of the world of the game spots. You're just automatically given those copies but once you have a PR contact and you make known that you want review copies of games your website is basically put on a list and yeah if they get to you on the list you get the game automatically. If they don't tough luck. Now I didn't get a ton of review copies of games. I got a review copy of Skyward Sword. Actually I know I got a review copy of Skyward Sword. I got a review copy of Ocarina of Time 3D Majora's Mask 3D and I'm trying to think. I think there was one other game we got a review copy of from Nintendo. We also got a review copy of Epic Mickey for some reason not a Nintendo game but yeah that's how it worked back then. So we got like three or four different Zelda games because we were one of the biggest Zelda websites in the world so and it was a fan site you know we weren't some official business entity like the IGNs of the world. It was completely ran by fans. It did make some money. I made money off of it but it wasn't necessarily this huge venture right. I mean it had decent traffic but I mean I get more views on YouTube in a week than I got there at least when I'm making videos that is. So the real question then is what what what's so different about that versus being on YouTube and I think the reason that Nintendo treats YouTubers differently is because it's not the traditional written work. You could have actually more controversies on a given website and Nintendo will still give you stuff if you request it because I don't know if Nintendo pays as much attention to what the controversy is on traditional websites because the controversies on those websites tend to not leave those websites whereas on YouTube if there's something controversial if I say something dumb on a live stream or whatever there's going to be 20 other YouTubers that are going to cover it.  Even though obviously if you're so big like IGN you can't really get away with anything we all know about that with a certain plagiarism scandal that happened with a now defunct former YouTuber. So the reason that I don't think the ambassador's program though needs to exist is because how it worked at Zelda Informer is probably how it should always work. You would just contact a PR guy and politely request a review copy review copy shouldn't be something you expect review copy shouldn't be something that you just you know want to want. That should be because you legitimately want to be able to play a game early so you can review it and there will be review embargoes and there would be different paperwork that came in with the games that would explain things like you can have you know 10 second video clips you know and a minute total but they have to be 10 second clips or you can do you could talk up to this certain point in the game but not this part of the game or whatever because they want to keep spoiler free like they would they would really control how you could talk about the game and that's probably why a lot of YouTubers that do reviews I got more and more popular because you know once the game is out in the public there's no restrictions all restrictions even on the outlets are lifted but because they live by those restrictions it could have affected the review. So it's really interesting to see that they started treating YouTubers a lot different than these traditional websites that had to ask one PR contact and most of them only had one one PR contact that you would get a hold of and request games and you either get the game or you won't get the game and they'd let you know you know if you were gonna get it or not so I don't I don't think that on YouTube it's weird so I obviously might I don't care that I'm not a Nintendo ambassador I've I've applied for the program through all my various contacts and I think we all know regardless of any other controversies or anything else that's happened on the channel I mean there's one reason alone that's gonna get me to not be an ambassador for Nintendo if you've ever been to a live stream you know the deal so it doesn't bother me that I'm not a Nintendo ambassador I think the problem Nintendo has within the Nintendo ambassador program is when you are called a Nintendo ambassador and it's on all your social media profiles it's in the description of your videos it makes people feel like you are an extension of Nintendo themselves because after all you are an official brand ambassador now what does that even mean well what does ambassador mean well an ambassador is in traditional terms an accredited diplomat sent by a country to officially represent them so in a way brand ambassadors for Nintendo these Nintendo ambassadors are technically representing Nintendo according to Nintendo and this is why I feel like this is a really really bad program to exist it shouldn't exist because Zelda Informer never once was affiliated with or represented Nintendo just because we got some review copies of games they never called us a brand ambassador they just sent it to us out of the kindness of their heart so we could do coverage of the game make walkthroughs all that stuff that is how it's it's it works in traditional print media why is it need to be different for video makers why do we have to take these individuals and hold them accountable as brand ambassadors because in the case of wood they told them they'll keep sending them games you just can't be a brand ambassador but that's the point of the brand ambassador thing for us as creators the only benefit that a content creator gets from being a Nintendo brand ambassador is you get you don't copies of games and as wood said they weren't even sending copies of those games early so you couldn't even use them for review purposes you would get them either day of launch or later and at that point you just buy the game yourself if you really want to cover it and talk about it so it kind of defeated the purpose unless you're just someone who wants free games and that's not me I don't want free games I want if I'm going to get a game I want to get it early to review it so Nintendo isn't treating new media which is what youtubers are we're new media they're not treating us the same as they would treat other media and I understand that there is a difference between traditional print media and youtubers but when it comes to covering your content there it's not that much different what's the point of sending a review copy of a game to a place like IGN right it's to get attention to your game on the day of launch so what would be the point of sending a copy of a game to a youtuber obviously beyond live streaming like if they're just going to make a video on it but you don't send it to them in time to make a video for launch day you you lose your chance at all the additional eyeballs you can get around launch which is traditionally when the hype is the highest for your games so again the brand ambassador program is stupid because it puts these expectations on two content creators that most of us ignore I don't think any of us that have been brand ambassadors have even paid two craps of attention to what you have to do to be one um giving an example player essence love the guy great content creator way more successful than me but here's the thing he has a bit of a way in which he speaks that can be really a grind your gears kind of way he goes after people whether they deserve it or not doesn't matter he goes after some people and to me if a nintendo employee you did that they probably wouldn't be a nintendo employee anymore and giving what being a brand ambassador means I think he's more controversial than beat em ups but he's smaller and doesn't have as big of a following and nintendo's not paying as much attention that's that that's the difference and I think for for wood it's very clear what caused him to lose it I don't even think woods theory is correct on it um he created a video because this happened after this video went out he created a video talking about a bunch of mods in breath of the wild nintendo doesn't like mods because the way to use them is to play roms which nintendo doesn't like and views them as 100 illegal so to make that video would require a wood would have to feature something that nintendo does not actively support and so in doing that down he goes now um they they did tell wood that uh none of his content is the reason why but that's because nintendo is not gonna try to make a kerfuffle out of that video and draw even more negative attention to themselves reality is nintendo could avoid the whole situation by just not having a brand ambassador program and making youtubers go through the pr contact form on nintendo.com and just get a normal pr contact which you get anyways as an ambassador and just email them and politely ask for you copies of games and they either get you one or they don't that's all it ever it never needed to be more than that that's what's so frustrating about this this whole brand ambassador thing with so much pressure on content creators that are ambassadors um at least in terms of trying to maintain family friendly image especially as you get popular like i don't think player s is going to have an issue now but he starts getting 100,000 200,000 he starts getting 50 to 90,000 views on a video nintendo is going to pay more attention and you know he goes after one person during a live stream and they're just gonna take it away and i again they don't send out review copies early enough to review anyways for most youtubers i just i feel like it's a useless program and uh it is what it is uh now for the rest of this video um from this point forward i'm not really talking about the brand ambassador thing um i'm gonna be talking about myself for a moment um just because it's been a little bit since i've been consistent on the channel and uh i'm gonna try to be a bit more consistent here over the next uh couple of weeks and see how it goes um i lost myself i don't know if you guys could tell i'm sure some could i've been under a lot of stress i've been under a lot of stress pretty much since before this channel existed um it's probably been a good six years uh there was an incident that happened back when my uh first uh biological kid was it was it was coming onto this plan i had a good job um i had a salary gig i actually technically worked for my father at the time um but he didn't run the company he was just cto there was someone above him um and literally three days before my son was born i was i was let go and the reason i was let go is because the company was running under money which didn't make any sense to me i worked for the company they had money but the ceo misappropriated funds which meant they could no longer afford my salary and i had to be let go and my dad wasn't even warned about it so he couldn't even warn me hey you gotta start looking for another job because you're gonna be losing this one right before your son is born i lost my health insurance i'm still to this day paying for the birth of my first son still to this day isn't paid off because hospitals are expensive and he had issues and we were in the hospital for five days it's well over $20,000 in bills because he needed special treatments and i had no insurance policy to cover any of it because i was dropped just before he was born so that made me feel like i failed as a person i failed as a father up to that point in my life um throughout my entire relationship with with my fiance um our you know our daughter and then obviously uh our newborn son i i had been the provider i had been um stable i had always had an answer to every question in life um and then all of a sudden it was ripped out from under me and i thought i did something wrong why would they get rid of me but not other people i must have done something wrong i must have upset the the ceo in some way you know i maybe i should have worked harder maybe i should have did this differently or that differently i thought about some of the team meetings we had where did i come off wrong did i offend anyone um and i used to live free as a bird um the way that i view life uh at least viewed life at the time when i was you know 25 26 was i didn't really give a hoot when anyone else thought um if something bad happened in my life i kind of brush it off pick myself up move on to the next thing until that happened because it happened right before my son was being born and i already felt like i was failing him as a father before he got here uh and then i was unemployed for nine months so i collected unemployment checks but it you know not even close to what i was making uh and it just i didn't feel like i was doing what i needed to do now through all this zealot informer rose up and got popular and i made money doing that but reality is i that started a downward spiral for me where i lost confidence in who i am as a person um later i would go to college again and end up dropping out uh i would have these ebbs and flows and then eventually about a year and a half later i lost myself entirely to depression and this isn't a woe is me story um it took you know five six years and a lot of crap to get to today and today i'm back none of you guys have really met the real me um you maybe you seen glimpses of it while i was drinking on stream or something uh and i know for a fact there's people from like 2018 that missed an eight uh that was there during some of those streams because a lot of those streams was raw me uh it was me being me but uh i haven't been me on this channel in a long time and uh it's because i let life weigh me down uh and life is far from perfect um by the way i don't think it's perfect for anyone we're all having a pretty rough 2020 but i gotta say my life it's pretty freaking great um i'm losing weight i'm well on track for my weight loss goals uh if i have it my way by july ish of next year um i'm on i'm gonna be back to having a flat tummy i'm gonna be at my ideal weight and potentially even rock in a six pack that is a goal of mine i don't know if i'm gonna maintain the six pack forever but i'm gonna i'm gonna get one at least um you know and i'm again i'm well on my way to that um i'm confident as ever with my woman um there's a long time that i wasn't but now i mean things just flow out of my mouth and out of my mind i just say what i mean and mean what i say uh and things are just great um you know i'm standing up for myself and all this stuff that i that i used to do i i am back to being the man that i was before i let myself down and then never forgave myself so what i want to put out there for you guys to end this video is i want you to stay strong in who you are uh and believe in who you are and when times get rough because it's gonna get roughing in from in the future there's gonna be something that's gonna knock me down but the difference is i know how to get myself back up again now because now i know how to recognize when i'm down and why i shouldn't be down and what i have that's worth fighting for and living for including my children my fiance this house this channel uh my future career because i got you know i'm going into for programming uh college and gonna finish that off so i'm back baby like you guys are gonna see a refreshed or rejuvenated a happy neat on this channel and that can't do anything but make my videos and my live streams and everything in between that much better so thank you guys so much for tuning in take care of yourselves and i'll catch you in the next video


On behalf of all those in the MEF, congratulations, you're the best in battalion in the Marine Corps. Here you go. General, we'll take good care of your cup, but I think the biggest reward that the Marines and sailors of this battalion... I am Lieutenant Colonel Jim Armstrong, commanding officer, Second Battalion Six Marines. So we're recognizing the battalion for being the recipient of the Two MEF Chesty Puller Award for the best large unit within the MEF. The battalion Six Marines was deployed forward as part of the 22nd MEW throughout 2022. During that time, they were involved in operations up in the Baltics, down in the Mediterranean, and spread across the European theater. They conducted missions with partner nations. They conducted all kinds of operations that really advanced the mission in a very important time in a very important theater, reassuring our partners and allies. Additionally, they built a strong unit that hit the mark in a lot of the things that we say are important for units. First and foremost, they took care of each other. They were well-disciplined, didn't have issues with conduct, and they liked each other so much they decided to re-enlist and to stay Marine. And so we built a really strong unit that went out and when asked to execute the mission did it well, and they were recognized for it. So this is a historic award that is awarded annually to various units throughout the MEF. There's three categories for the small, medium, and large unit. Second Battalion Six Marines falls in the large unit category, and this award recognizes the unit that achieves the or sets the standard in the things that determine a good organization. Two Six is special because of the legacy. This is a storied battalion and more importantly it's because of the people that are in it. This is the tribe. It's built with the Marines, the sailors, the families, the friends and loved ones that support us and the fact that we rely and depend on each other and that we count on each other. I took command in December, December 15th of 2022, so about six months now. We built a culture based off trust. We trust the individual that they're competent, that they're proficient, and that they're a mature individual who's going to make good decisions when they're put forward. You entrust people with responsibilities and they generally exceed your expectations. And when you see that across the unit and you see that recognized and rewarded, you build a unit that's capable of doing amazing things. That's what this unit has done consistently over and over again over the course of the last year. I think you saw it out here today. You saw it out here with the recognition of the individuals who contribute to the fight. There's not a single individual in this battalion who does anything that's more important than anybody else. It truly is the effort of the team working together in the way that we foster that sense of tribe. We pull in the families. It's not an individual out here ever on their own. It's always together. I tell you, there's no better job in the Marine Corps than serving in an infantry battalion and being part of 2-6 is like the pinnacle of being in an infantry battalion. And it really is. It's the people of this organization that make this the best place to be. The most valuable experience is getting to know the Marines and sailors that make up this battalion, spending time with them in the field, getting down with them in their shops, and just hearing who they are. We've got a wide variety of experiences and expertise in the battalion. We've got Marines and sailors from all over the United States and several foreign countries, and each of them comes with a story. And it's those individual stories that make this unit together, one of the best units in 2MF. So what I tell you, what makes 2-6 special and why do people want to stay Marine when they're part of 2-6? I think it boils down to trust, attitude, and discipline. We do what we say we're going to do, and we don't do what we say we're not going to do. And when you can count on the person to the left and the right of you to do what they say they're going to do, then you trust them. And when you build trust, it's cyclical. It breeds further trust. And so you get to do the things you want to do. You get to control your own destiny, which really goes to attitude.  People can make you do a lot of things, but the attitude with which you approach the problem, that's always up to you. Now, fortunately, we got a lot of Marines and sailors in this battalion with some fantastic attitudes. The motto of the battalion is, we're the ready battalion. And we've talked a lot about what being ready means. It means being lethal, first and foremost, if we get asked to execute our mission in combat. But it means able to respond. It means able to take care of something before it becomes an issue. And then the motto of the battalion is never to quit. And we try to embody that with everything we do. The Spartans of 2nd Battalion, 6th Marines, they lead the way. When we send these Marines and sailors out to schools, they come back as honor grads. They come back with additional skills, and they immediately turn to and teach those that are part of this. And so we're talking about, you know, links in the chain of a legacy. And 2-6 has a long legacy. We're proud of it. We're proud of what the battalion's done in its history. We're humbled to be a part of what it's doing today. And we look forward to be in the next chapter in establishing, adding to the great reputation of this battalion. These are the captain. OK, so how was this unit, right? And I'll just tell you this straight up. I sat in on that board. If you'd have lined up 2-6 and any. I think about units being a part of an outstanding unit. And I've been a power of a lot. Really joyful time here. And I can feel the energy, and it's really magnificent. Like Sergeant Major said, I felt the need to make sure that you recognize winners. It's OK.  But we recognize winners. This is different. And I went back to what my leaders had taught me and said, this is where I need to go. We will go this way, because that's what right looks like. The second unit, every day, I looked left, and I looked right, and my advice to you is take a moment and enjoy where you are. Large portion of you will leave this unit, PCS, go back into where in this great country we belong. Some of you will move on to other organizations. Some of you will be the unit of basis for the next beginning of building up Spartan. But on behalf of all those in the MEPH, congratulations you're the best in battalion in the Marine Corps. Here you go. General, we'll take good care of your cup, but I think the biggest reward that the Marines and sailors for this battalion, with one, is that when the mission comes down, and somebody's getting feisty and you're looking for the ready battalion, that yellow diamond comes to mind. Because you'll find the Spartans ready. Stand up. Understand. Stand up. All right. All right. First Lieutenant Nelson, you stand in here. There's the guy.


With Ravens news, when it rains, it pours. They started off this morning. John Harbaugh had his presser early, early this morning. And he dropped a lot of John Harbaugh gyms. He threw a lot of smoke screens in there too. And then following that, Jacina Anderson reported that the Ravens had made Bobby Wagner a very competitive contract offer. And then something that I don't know if it's official or not, that's why we didn't do a video on it, came out that the Ravens reportedly offered a trade to the Seahawks for DK Metcavis. They're them, the Patriots and the Jets. But the source wasn't a reputable source that I know of. So I was like, oh, okay, whatever, I don't believe it. But then this, this, the Ravens, they hired Kerry Dixon as the assistant quarterback's coach. And initially I was like, oh, okay. They hired an assistant quarterback coach. But then I read some of the Ravens article and I was like, oh, okay. And just in the second paragraph alone, it said so much to me in so little words. But let's, let's read it. Let's start with the first paragraph first. It said, Baltimore Ravens head coach John Hardball announced Monday that the team has hired Kerry Dixon as assistant quarterback coach. Okay, cool. But let's get to the good stuff. It says, Dixon joins Baltimore staff after 15 seasons as a collegiate assistant. Okay, cool, cool, cool. Most recently, from 2019 to 2021, serving as wide receivers coach at Georgia Tech. So that part right there, he's gonna be the assistant quarterback's coach, but he has experienced being a wide receiver coach in the NCAA. So that experience can help him in his new role when he helps out James Urban and he also helps out one Lamar Jackson. So he can give him another point of view on how to see things, how to see his receivers, how to get his receivers involved. See, that wasn't even the best part for me. Let's keep reading. It says, also at Georgia Tech, he was instrumental in the Yellow Jackets transition from an option-based offensive scheme to a pro-style spread attack. And that was my favorite part. Let's read it one more time. He was instrumental in the Yellow Jackets transition from an option-based offensive scheme. Does that sound familiar at all? Maybe a little bit, maybe? To a pro-style spread attack. Ravens are trying to get this passing game right. They are trying to get it right. And I respect that so much and I love it. Now last year, we saw a lot of glimpses of the Ravens actually having a passing game and it caught a lot of us by surprise. Cause we was like, whoa, what is this? Ravens are passing the ball so much. And it was so weird. But a lot of us, especially myself, I loved it. But I would have loved it more if obviously the offensive line was better, if our running game was better. And if just the production, if the production was better as well, but it did show me like, hey, they can do it. They can do it. But one thing that I was concerned about was the reason behind them doing it. Because, and y'all have heard me say this all off season, that I feel like the only reason that they were really passing the ball like that was because there was no JK, no Justice Hill, no Gus Edwards. The running game was not there. So they were like, we really ain't got no choice but to pass the ball. But now, this, this is showing me that the Ravens are choosing to pass. Now, of course, seeing is believing. This is early in, we gotta see exactly what the Ravens do and how they move forward. But this also lets me know, it lets me know that Greg Roman is in the final year with the Ravens. I really do believe that. And I believe that even before they hired Keri Dixon. Reason being, when I really first believed that was when they first brought on T. Martin and Keith Williams. And the reason I believe that was because, and we know, yeah, hardball, he loves Jiro. But I was just telling my guy JT a little bit ago. I said, well, he does love Jiro, but he loves his job more.  But you let us know. Hardball would say, Jiro, you got to Jiggo, bye.  No, we not on that. We know Jiro's here. And we hope Jiro has a lot of success this season because that would mean the Ravens have a lot of success. This season, the offense has a lot of success and hopefully they score a lot of points. But the beginning of the end for Jiro for me was when they hired again, T-Martin and Keith Williams because they brought in guys to help his area of weakness and what has been an area of weakness for the Ravens for a very long time. They brought those guys in to help with the passing game. And we saw an immediate impact, immediate impact. But when somebody, when you're an employer, if you're struggling in an area and you've been struggling in that area for so long and you've always struggled in that area and your employer knows your history now, they know it. They've actually been a part of your history.  But they brought in some people in your areas of weakness. That's the beginning of the end for you. It really is.  We're just gonna have these guys just keep helping you out forever. No, they're not going to do that.  He's gonna be going mid-season. It's a possibility. But I do believe that this is it. Even if he does have a successful season with the Ravens, I still think that they are going to move on. I do not think that he is going to be here in 2023. I just don't. I do not see that happening. And this hire, it just, it gives me another confirmation of that, especially from that last line, man. Now I ain't saying that he's gonna come in here and transition the Ravens from an option-based offensive scheme to a pro-style spread attack. But Ravens, their writers, who wrote this? Let me see who wrote this. Let me see who wrote this article real quick. I can't even find an author right now. But whoever wrote it, they put that in there on purpose. This gotta get approved by the editor and all that stuff, you know how writing goes. But it's in there for a reason. They letting you know, like, hey, this guy got experience transitioning from this option-based to a pro-style. And that's early in the paragraph for a reason, because they know people got short attention spans. They didn't know some people ain't gonna read that whole article. But anyway, maybe it's just me. Nah, it ain't no coincidence. Another thing that this lets me know is that some guy, some of the crazy dude, half the time, he'd just be saying stuff. He don't know what he be talking about half the time. He don't know what's going on. Some of the crazy dude been saying it for months that the Ravens, they for sure are gonna draft a wire receiver in the first three rounds of the draft. Some dude be saying that. Some people, whenever he say that, some people be like, oh man, he don't know what he talking about. Oh man, they ain't gonna do that. Why would they draft another wire receiver? But this actually lets me know that maybe he's not so crazy after all. Because this is another move that would up the Ravens passing attack. This is another move that really could help them continue that from what we saw glimpses of last season. But I think it's pretty much confirmed. I mean, again, I felt like it was already confirmed before. But now with this hire, I really do for sure. First three rounds, wide receiver. Yes, yes, it's happening. It's happening. A lot of y'all might not like it, but hey, that's, I don't make the rules. But it's happening. And even with that, again, it's not that James Pro Shade is such a bad receiver. It's not that Devin Duvenay is such a bad receiver. It's not that Tyler Wallace is a bad receiver. They're not bad guys or bad receivers, anything like that. But Ravens just, they need more. They need more. And they need somebody who they're gonna be invested in. Cause again, we know the whole, the draft spot, it changes everything. It just changes your level of investment, depending on what franchise you go to. But it's happening. First three rounds, wide receiver for sure. Book it, book it, cause it's going down. But they just need a dynamic playmaker. And again, it's not even just about the hands to me. It's about what you do after you got the ball in your hand. The y'all's after the catch. Y'all's after the catch. Make everybody's job easier. The Ravens, with this hire, it seems as if they are trying to make everybody's job that much easier. I had a QB coach already, but you know what? Let me get you an assistant. Let me make your job that much easier. Lamar Jackson, already got a QB coach, James Urban. They're like, oh, you know what, Lamar? Let's give you a little different point of view. Bringing a brother that could just help out James Urban and whatnot, help you out some more. Let's try to make your job easier. Oh, hold up. This dude, what? This dude used to be a wide receiver coach, too? What? Oh, really? Oh, oh, oh, he got experience with that, too? Oh, okay, we gonna bring him in. He can help our offense out. You know what, Greg Roman, let's help make your job easier. Oh, last year. Oh, oh man. Oh, we brought in T. Martin and, I mean, T. Martin and Keith Williams to make whose job easier? Who was struggling with their job? Who it was hard for in this special area? Greg Roman, okay, Greg Roman, let's make your job even easier. Again, I just think they're gonna show him. Well, they might not even show him the door, but again, one of those mutual agreements to where they part ways. But anyway, I like this, man. I like this. Initially, I thought this was like, okay, or whatever, move on, let me hire somebody new. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. It's not, but I'm with it. Love y'all, we out.


We celebrated Tink Shirt Day for the 11th year in a row, and this has been a key part of driving awareness about bullying in our school system. It is a real privilege to be here to celebrate another day of bringing people together, another day of saying no to bullying and yes to support. Cyberbullying is a big issue. We can sometimes have tragic circumstances. We had Carol Todd, Amanda Todd's mother here, obviously as a reminder to that. It is heartbreaking as a parent to see your child struggle. This is all the more reason why parents need to learn. Empowering our parents with knowledge is a safety measure that can not only be used within their own family, but maybe to help someone else's. Our government is investing $100,000 this year to offer social media education sessions for parents across British Columbia. These sessions are called Raising Digitally Responsible Youth, and they'll be delivered in every school district across the province, giving parents the tools they need to help their children use the internet and social media safely. It's also just to celebrate the progress we've made. We've done a lot to confront bullying in the school system, working with teachers, so it was a great celebration to be with kids and to talk about how we can take action. Filters are for coffee grounds, Google searches and flower crowns. Not for trying to rebalance a world that seems off kilter. Let's start by looking each other in the eye, un-gluing our mouths and saying together, nice needs no filter.


In 1985, the DEA received a cassette tape. On the tape was the audio recording of the tortured screams of one of their agents, Enrique Camarena, who went by his nickname Kiki. Kiki Camarena had been working as an undercover agent in Mexico, and when he was discovered, he was kidnapped by corrupt Mexican police officers on the payroll of a local drug lord. He was taken to the ranch of the drug lord, injected with amphetamines to make sure that he stayed conscious, and for the next 30 hours, he was tortured with power tools until he died. When the DEA received the cassette tape of his torture session, it truly meant war between the government and the drug cartels in a way that would define the drug war from the 1980s and into the present. Even today, the name Kiki Camarena has a rage-inducing effect on DEA agents, even from those who never knew him. The DEA launched Operation Leinda to try to bring Camarena's murderers to justice, but the lack of evidence in Mexico's extradition laws made it difficult for them to arrest and try the guilty parties. More significantly in the broad history is that Camarena became essentially the France Ferdinand of the modern drug war. Today, Mexico is the most dangerous country in the world, as it essentially become, as Columbia once was, the primary battleground for the global drug war. I'm Chris Countman, and this is the Mises Institute podcast, Historical Controversies. This episode is going to close the series on the drug war so that I can move on to other topics, but we're only going to wrap up the history of the 1980s and the laws passed in the second term of the Reagan presidency. I talked in the last episode about the death of Lynn Baez and what a tremendous incident this was in pushing people toward a tougher war on drugs. Following this tragedy, there were people in Congress ready to usher in policies that are hard to imagine, even as libertarians, hard to imagine people justifying in the United States. If you pay attention to how the Philippines has been waging the drug war recently, where President Duterte is basically invoking Hitler as his role model for fighting drug addicts, the U.S. Congress was almost ready to be that extreme following the death of Lynn Baez. One proposal made in Congress would have put defense attorneys in prison for defending drug users. Congressman Clay Shaw said, quote, the only way we will get at this problem is to let the whole community, the whole population, know that defense attorneys are part of the problem and they could very well be convicted if they knowingly take these funds. Another proposal made by Dan Lundgren, a congressman from California, would have extended criminal liability to anybody who accepted money from a drug dealer for any reason in any capacity. As in, if a drug dealer buys a soda from a gas station, then the gas station owner or the clerk could be put in jail. Now, thankfully, these proposals didn't get passed, but you can get a pretty good idea of how extreme the politicians were becoming. What Congress did pass, though, was the 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act. The most significant provision of this law was that it reinstated mandatory minimum sentences for drug criminals. If you remember from a previous episode, the mandatory minimums were first tried in the 1950s with the Boggs and Daniel Acts. But these were actually done away with in the 1970s because they were shown to have had no effect on drug use. But with the goldfish memories of politicians, this recent historical lesson was forgotten and mandatory minimums were reinstated. Now, here's the interesting thing about the mandatory minimum sentences in the 1986 bill. If you remember the 1984 Omnibus Crime Bill I talked about a couple of episodes ago, the sentencing guidelines set forth in that bill were set to go into effect in 1987. So the 1984 and the 1986 bills both had sentencing provisions and as it turns out, they compounded each other. So the 1984 bill essentially did away with bell and parole for certain criminals and now the 1986 bill established mandatory minimums. So with the combination of these two laws, we can identify the source of the major uptick in prison overpopulation. But the two laws also had major conflicts with each other. In 1984, the law gave sentencing guidelines that took into account somebody's criminal history, whether they felt remorse, how involved in the crime they actually were and all kinds of other factors that could affect the length of the sentence. The mandatory minimums, by contrast, held every person even loosely connected to the crime subject to the same minimum sentence, regardless of the other factors. So with the guidelines, the maximum sentence for somebody with five grams of crack was only one year in prison. But with the mandatory minimums, the minimum sentence for somebody with 5.01 grams of crack was five years in prison with no possibility of parole. On September 25, 1986, Ronald Reagan also signed an executive order mandating urine tests for federal employees. So by this time, Reagan was using marijuana as a convenient scapegoat for other federal problems. After, for example, there was a 1987 train crash, an Amtrak train crash. There's government trains. And marijuana was blamed because THC was detected in the bodies of two members of the trains crew. And this does not mean that they were high on marijuana while they were at work. It just means that two of the workers had used marijuana sometime in the past several weeks. And an even more ridiculous excuse, urine tests were ordered for airline pilots after the number of midair near misses had doubled since 1981. So marijuana was the scapegoat here, even though there was zero link to marijuana use. And what the Reagan administration didn't even consider as a possibility for why there was such an increase in near misses is that in 1981, Reagan fired nearly every experienced air traffic controller in the country in one day because they were striking. So between 1981 and 1986, air traffic controllers were substantially less experienced. But when this caused obvious problems, marijuana was the clear culprit to this drug-crazy Reagan administration. The DEA was also employing drug curier profiles to identify likely drug dealers at the airport. And by 1987, the list of characteristics was so broad that it pretty much encompassed every person flying. For instance, among the characteristics to identify was anybody who was the first to leave the plane, the last to leave the plane, or if they were leaving the plane in the middle of the group. So basically, anybody who exits their plane after a flight is suspect of carrying drugs. They also had people who had no luggage, people who had very large pieces of luggage, and then they had people with medium-sized luggage, as well as people with American tourist luggage. Oh, and also people carrying briefcases. So again, essentially everybody on a plane fit the profile of a drug carrier. In 1988, some of the larger cities in the country were taking very direct and invasive action with the way they enforced the drug laws, too. A lot of this is related to the omnibus crime bill and the way that they started doing the profit sharing with civil asset forfeiture. But a lot of it, too, is just the sentiment nationwide, of course, was against drugs. It wasn't just a government. It was media. It was local politicians. So cities like Detroit and Chicago and Miami, or of course, they're waging a local war on drugs as well. So in Los Angeles, the police conducted what was called Operation Hammer, in which the police sent more than 1,000 officers into the poor areas of the city to arrest anybody on any grounds they could think of. And as one disgusting example of abuse, there was a South Central apartment block that was raided by 88 police officers. And after they literally destroyed the place with sledgehammers looking for drugs, they actually spray-painted LAPD rules on the walls. This is actually, the LAPD is spray-painting, LAPD rules on the walls of an apartment complex that they just destroyed. Then they took 32 of the people in the building back to the station, where they actually beat the arrestees with flashlights while making them whistle the tune of the Andy Griffith show. This was literal torture by a bunch of cops who were drunk on the new power granted by the federal and state laws during the drug war. And in the end, by the way, the most they found from the arrestees they were abusing was two kids with a small amount of marijuana. That's it. During Operation Hammer, two innocent civilians were killed by police. One was a child and the other was an 81-year-old retiree. And of course, no disciplinary action was taken. And obviously we all know that today this has only become more and more common, more innocent civilians killed by the police in the drug war and the militarization of the police that comes from that. When this happened, the press secretary for the California State Senator, one of the California State Senators said, quote, when you have a state of war, civil rights are suspended for the duration of the conflict. So that's the attitude people were bringing to them in the 1980s during the war on drugs. Some of the tactics that the DEA started using to get drug busts are mind-boggling as well. One informant, for instance, was paid $73,000 because he was handsome enough to seduce women into selling him drugs. So he was sent to 18 different women where he would seduce them, he would promise them marriage, promise to love them forever, but only if they would do him a favor, which is to provide him with drugs. Then the DEA would arrest these poor desperate women while this guy was making a killing. This is 1980s money too, right? So that's not the story that most blew my mind. The most mind-boggling story I came across is from July 20th, 1990. And it was a man named Donnie Clark. He was arrested while he was tending the watermelon vines on his farm. So Donnie had been listed as one of 28 people involved in a conspiracy to grow and sell marijuana. Now in 1985, Donnie Clark was caught growing marijuana for which he had already served time. After his sentence was over, he decided to avoid drugs and just run a small farm with legal produce. But his sons had decided to follow in his marijuana growing footsteps. And because of the new drug laws that brought into culpability to even lose connections to the crime, Clark was considered to be guilty of the crimes of his sons because they had learned how to grow the marijuana from him in 1985. But in 1985, it was the state of Florida that convicted him. This arrest was made by the federal government. The new arrest was. So they were charging him for teaching his sons how to grow marijuana in the crime that the state of Florida had already arrested him for. He was being tried again for the same crime. It was double jeopardy, so he pleaded innocent. But double jeopardy doesn't apply according to the courts between the state and federal governments because they are separate sovereigns. So Clark was found guilty and he was sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole. He was eventually pardoned by Bill Clinton, but only after he sat in prison for just over a decade. It was about 10 and a half years because the federal government decided to convict him of a crime he'd already served time for. Donnie Clark, by the way, wasn't the only one that this happened to. After Clark lost his case, the Justice Department figured out that this was a wonderful way to boost their arrest rates and appear tough on crime. So they started Operation Trigger Lock in which federal prosecutors were instructed to go over state cases, to find people who had also violated federal drug laws so that the federal government could go and arrest them again after they got out of prison and throw them back in jail. There were times when federal agents literally met people outside of prison the second they were released to arrest them and charge them all over again. It is absolutely mind-blowing to me that more people don't talk about this. The government was also cracking down on people who were purchasing products that were sold by companies who advertised in High Times Magazine, which if you remember is the magazine that promoted cannabis use, medical cannabis use and sold a lot of drug paraphernalia, and they were targeting the companies who advertised in High Times Magazine regardless of what the products themselves were actually used for. On October 26, 1989, the DEA conducted Operation Green Merchant which organized raids in 46 states on people who had purchased equipment that could be used to grow marijuana.  During Operation Green Merchant, the DEA used asset forfeiture laws to seize $17.5 million in equipment that could be used for growing any number of plants, essentially crippling businesses that were acting completely within the confines of the law, simply because they unknowingly purchased from a company that placed ads in High Times. So a lot of the people, just to be clear on that, they didn't even know what High Times were, they were just purchasing from companies who advertised in various different places, but one of those various places happened to be High Times, so these people were growing avocados or something, I don't know what they were growing, and were caught completely by surprise. They had no clue that these companies were advertising in a marijuana magazine, not that it should matter. So of course, many companies pulled their ads from High Times, which basically made this a way for the government to get around that pesky First Amendment. Because of all the new laws, the prison population was exploding. The number of prisons doubled during the reign years, and it still wouldn't be enough. So this created a problem for the new president, George H.W. Bush, and his drug czar, William Bennett. Bennett actually proposed converting abandoned houses into prisons until the federal government could build more penitentiaries. He also proposed the idea of suspending habeas corpus for drug offenders, which is the right to a jury trial, by the way, and constitutionally, the only time you can suspend habeas corpus is when you're in a state of rebellion.  Perhaps most disturbingly was the encouragement of children to turn in their parents for smoking marijuana. I actually had a friend, a classmate, a little bit older than most of us, and she remembers doing this. She actually told on her dad for smoking marijuana. Of course, she thinks that's absurd in retrospect. But this actually came out of the drug abuse, resistance, education, or a dare program, which I remember going through when I was in elementary school, which started in 1983, but it continued into the 1990s, and from this, many children turned in their parents only to watch them get marched off in handcuffs.  I mean, just, I can hardly think of a more effective way of mentally and psychologically destroying a young child than this. It was very common during the 1990s. Now, there's a juxtaposition to this that might be interesting to fans of the show, of The Wire, because the show came out of the events in Baltimore that I'm gonna talk about. In 1985, a detective named Marcellus Ward was shot and killed while he was wearing a wire during an undercover drug bust. This happened in the same year as the murder of Kiki Camarena. But this tape circulated around Baltimore police and government officials, including the chief state prosecutor of Baltimore, Kurt Schmoak. So the effect of this tape was actually pretty much the opposite of Kiki Camarena's tape that came out the same year. So Kurt Schmoak was bothered by the tape, not only because it recorded the murder of his personal friend, but because he couldn't figure out what Marcellus Ward died for. In 1987, Schmoak became the mayor of Baltimore and he decided he wanted to deal with the AIDS epidemic. He saw the ban on hyperdermic needles, which was a law passed because of the drug war, of course, because of heroin, and he saw these needles as the primary reason, the needle ban, as the primary reason why people were contracting AIDS because heroin addicts were sharing needles. Schmoak decided to approach the drug policy from the completely opposite direction as the Reagan administration. So he instituted a needle sharing program that made needles legally available to anybody as long as they turned in an old syringe. To Schmoak, this was the first approach to the drug war that would have prevented the murder of Marcellus Ward three years prior. Only four months after taking office, Schmoak made national news for giving a speech in Washington, D.C., calling drug prohibition a failure. Schmoak, by the way, was a black Democrat in Baltimore, so he had been seen as a sort of rising star in the Democratic Party politics prior to this speech, and he was pretty much dismissed politically until he won re-election despite attacks from the opposition branding him as legalizer Schmoak. So the people of Baltimore apparently approved of his policies. One other incident I wanna tell you about is Operation Just Cause, which was launched by President George H.W. Bush in 1989. This actually took place in Latin America, which I haven't talked about much because I've been focusing on the United States. I hope in the future I'm able to come back to the topic of the drug war and talk more about Columbia and Mexico and their role in this history because it is obviously incredibly fascinating, but I can only give some bullet points for this story because anything more would require multiple episodes and we wanna move on to other topics. But of course, everybody knows that in the 1980s, Columbia was the primary exporter of cocaine, largely driven by two cartels, the Cali and Medellin cartels, the latter of which was the one Pablo Escobar was a part of. During this time, the U.S. government was also trying to suppress communist upriding in Central and South America, which if you remember I talked about a little bit with the Nicaragua uprisings in the last episode and this is kind of related to it, it's in the same geographical region. So they were hoping to prevent another Cuba from popping up. Well, in the country Panama, which connects Central America to Columbia and South America, the U.S. had supported the dictator Manuel Noriega since 1983 and this meant that the U.S. was giving him money and support so that he could brutally suppress his people under the auspices of combating communism. He was receiving the same kind of aid that Samosa was before Carter cut off the aid to Samosa but Noriega continued receiving the aid all the way until the George H.W. Bush administration.  I hardly think that on a Mises Institute podcast that hardly even warrants detailing but the tactics that the Latin American dictators used were pretty much the same as the tactics the communists used. So it's really hard to defend these people just because they're fighting the communists is not enough basis to defend these people. Noriega was a despot, he was a dictator just like the Samosas were. I mean they were killing innocent civilians just like the communists would do and it served to oppress the innocent people in the country regardless of their political views. Anyway, while they were supporting Noriega we were also sending DEA officials and tons of money to try to capture Pablo Escobar. And if anybody has seen the show Narcos on Netflix I haven't watched it myself but I have read the book it's based on which is by Mark Bowden entitled Killing Pablo and it's a wonderful book. So on the one hand we're subending a ton of money trying to suppress the Colombian cocaine trade to capture Pablo Escobar which is documented in that book and on the other hand we're funding Manuel Noriega to help fight against the communists. Well Noriega was also making extra money smuggling drugs for Pablo Escobar. Escobar would actually go and meet with him personally and when he was on the run from the law he hid out in Panama with the help of Noriega. So during the 1980s we literally had two branches of the federal government directly working against each other in these countries as well. I talked about how they did this. The CIA was complicit in cocaine smuggling in the last episode and we saw how they were doing this in Vietnam to help fund the Hmong people and I haven't even talked about the fact that they were doing this in Afghanistan as well. So this is a very common theme through the drug war that the CIA is either allowing or even directly aiding in the smuggling of opiates or cocaine as long as it would help fund the enemies of our enemies so to speak. So they're dealing with much the same nonsense that I've talked about in other episodes. The CIA turned a blind eye to Noriega's dealings with the Medellin cartel because he was useful to them. But in 1989 he was driving hard negotiations with the Americans over the future of the Panama Canal. So the CIA took him off their payroll. Now all of a sudden he's no longer of any use so the CIA decides it is finally time to arrest him for cocaine trafficking and with Operation Just Cause they bombed Panama City, not the one in Florida obviously but the one in Panama and they arrested him and tried him in American court. During this trial Noriega's lawyers tried to subpoena evidence to show that Noriega was smuggling cocaine to fund the Contras just like many of the former Samosa loyalists I talked about previously. And they wanted to use the evidence to show that Noriega's cocaine smuggling was done with CIA approval but the evidence was never allowed to be shown to the jury because according to the government it would put national security at risk. So Noriega was sentenced to 40 years behind bars which he probably deserved as much as anybody. He was a pretty evil guy in his own right but it also goes to show the absolute hypocrisy of the federal government and the CIA on these issues. So I am going to end the series on the drug war history here. Obviously the history does not end there we're still waging the war on drugs there are very interesting episodes in the 1990s and in the 2000s when we start ramping up herbicides in Columbia and we do pass some laws especially against amphetamines in the 1990s so there's a lot more history here that I could talk about eventually I would love to come back to it so if people are interested please let us know because there's a lot of history with Columbia, Mexico and the Middle East even that I could spend several episodes on but this is not a drug war podcast as much as I sometimes would like it to be because that's my favorite topic of history it's a historical podcast in general so after this episode we are gonna move on to another topic that's always controversial among libertarians and always interesting among anybody that likes United States history and that's the Civil War so I'm gonna be spending several episodes on the Civil War starting with the antebellum period all the way at least through reconstruction and I'm not sure where I'm gonna end yet we'll see how that goes so you're definitely gonna wanna tune in for that if you have not subscribed to the podcast you definitely wanna do so and thanks for listening. 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