Joe Rogan - American War Machine
When you see thousands of people that are innocents that got killed by drones, a million innocents killed in Iraq, if that's not a crime against humanity, what is a crime against humanity? A lot of things come up that people would want to vote on, like the bailouts, the war, all things of this nature. There's a lot of things that people would like that are going to affect us; we would like to vote on this, but you don't get to vote on it. You get to vote on a representative; these people are going to represent you once they get into office.
Think about some of the laws that are in place to protect corporations. Think about some of the laws that are in place that people vote for every day; they wouldn't be there if people were voting for them. We all have this desire to have someone lead us. We all have this feeling where we need someone who's smarter and wiser who represents us. You know, when you're really dumb, the problem is really dumb people get a say in everything too, and they're subject to a lot of tricks. They're subject to nationalism, they're subject to these kind of ridiculous rah-rah America speeches that don't say jack; they say nothing. It's all just this cheerleading event, and they can't help it. They're dumb; they don't know they're being bullshitted. They grew up around dumb people, they go to work with dumb people. There's no one in their family that's interesting or asks any questions at all, and they just get sucked right into it.
Man, this society is so greedy. We're willing to go to war; we're willing to go places and send these big metal machines that kill people and blow people up just so we can make more money. The way our society is set up, I mean, I've heard it argued, and argued successfully, that our society runs on war. You know, it runs on the domination of other parts of the world, and literally that's the only way you can control a gigantic chunk of the globe. You have to keep everybody down, you know, and that's what our society is based on.
We can't be fighting over each other because you know, this guy's like a million people die in Iraq, and everybody goes, “Hey, long as it doesn't happen over here.” But it is! That is over here; it's just over there. It's the same thing; it's some people you don't know that were born somewhere else who got jacked. You get trapped in that whole idea of, you know, this is my team, these are my people, and you know someone plays a country music song and throws up a flag and I'm in it. It feels good to be in, right? Feels good! God bless America! It feels good singing around with a bunch of other people, and you're all, “We're the baddest on the planet! Woo!” And that's how people get recruited.
It's a cluster, man; these poor kids, man. Can you imagine being 18, 19, being talked into doing this for a bunch of bloodthirsty who just are trying to get whatever they're trying to get over there, whatever the it is? Whether it's lithium, you know, minerals in the mountains that they use to make cell phones, whether it's 90% plus of the world's opium supply. Ninety percent. That is a multi-multi-billion dollar business. And if you think these industrialists that are running the world are going to leave that money behind, you're crazy, dude. They've got United States Army troops guarding poppy fields. There's so much heroin there; I mean, it's incredible.
The brother of the president of Afghanistan—his brother was selling heroin and getting paid by the CIA. I mean, goddamn it! Heroin is absolutely addictive, okay? People who try heroin get hooked. Heroin is everywhere, okay? So you need to sell it; someone's selling it. Who's selling it? I don't know, but 90% of it comes from this one place where we have to be to save our freedom. You can't criticize it because if you criticize it, you're a—you don't appreciate the troops and what they're doing for you. And that's not the case at all! I just don't like the idea of these people leading us in any direction where you need to sacrifice your life.
I don't believe it! I don't believe them when there's been so many lies. I mean, the more you look it up, the more—I mean, go into any of the stories on the weapons of mass destruction before we invaded and compare them to what we actually know that they really knew. And they said that; it's like they did it on purpose. They wanted to get in there for whatever reason. And if it's some crazy, “the world is going to end if we don't stop this,” but we can't tell you—I would love to believe you! I would love to believe that the reason why you're not telling us exactly what the is going on is because you're really protecting us from some insanely evil thing that if we knew about it, society would collapse. But our strong, brave, powerful leaders are going to guide us without our knowledge.
I would love to believe you if you weren't all full of shit! We're going to have to step back and look at it all in a different way, and I don't think you're going to get that from just voting for president and dealing with all this nonsense that we have right now with the two-party system. We're spinning our wheels; we're not getting any traction. This is all nonsense; it’s the same nonsense with Obama that we dealt with with Bush—special interest groups controlling what people say and do, what direction the country goes in, and save us from the bad guys—shut the fuck up, man!
It's the same nonsense. Operation Northwoods was something that was plotted out during the 1960s signed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, where they were going to fake terrorist attacks on American civilians and blame it on the Cubans so we could go to war with Cuba. It involved a bunch of, like, blowing up a jetliner; they were going to have a drone jetliner and blow it up and say that people died on it, and this was going to get everybody fired up about going to war with Cuba. They were even going to attack Guantanamo Bay. They were going to arm Cuban friendlies to attack Guantanamo Bay so that we would have to go to war with Cuba. This is, like, our own government; they plotted this out. This is like real.
I remember when I saw JFK, the Oliver Stone movie, and that was like part of the premise that JFK—that Oliver Stone was pushing in this film is that they killed JFK because they wanted to stay in Vietnam because they were making a lot of money in Vietnam. And I remember at the time seeing that movie going, “That is absolutely ridiculous! Who the believes that?!” Are they going to start wars and keep wars going just so that they can make money even though it's not a real war? It's not a just war. Nobody wants to go to war; that's stupid! Hippie, bullshit!
Well, as I got older and I started investigating history, you know, from way back to Vietnam to the Gulf of Tonkin to all the that happened when Kennedy and Nixon were in office to all the that happened with Reagan and the Contras in Nicaragua, the Sistas, and all the different various things that have happened in human history where it's clear that the United States is, you know, we're messing around with all kinds of things all the time to make money and that there's a bunch of people that are profiting off war. And then they're not just profiting, like, a little bit of money here and there. You know, you look at, like, what's going on, like how much money Halliburton made from the war.
We're talking like billions and billions of dollars; that's like real money! This Eisenhower leaving office, and he's giving a speech warning the American people about the power of the military-industrial complex. You know, when you watch that, you're like, “Well, here is a sitting president who's leaving office,” and the most important thing that he wants to tell people is that you have to be careful because there is a machine here that wants to go to war. There's a business behind going to other countries and fucking people up and taking their shit, and they come up with reasons to do this. They sacrifice American lives to do this, and they do it for profit.
It sounds absolutely ridiculous. It sounds absolutely outrageous that the greatest country on Earth could be involved in something like that from the get-go. But yet that's what history says. That's how it points; it points in that direction. It points that direction that it's going in.
And the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes.
Tower 7 disturbs me the most. That Tower 7 just went down like a controlled demolition, and everybody's like, “Yeah, yeah, but it had holes in the building.” And you see the hole in the building? Yes, I see the hole in the building, but wouldn't it fall towards that hole? Why is it falling like that? That doesn't make sense to me. With Tower 7, the way Tower 7 fell, it just kinked in the middle and fell down at free-fall speed. Almost. I mean, everybody, like, they'll nitpick at you, “Oh, it was one second slower than free-fall.” Even if it was just close to free-fall—that's crazy! There was no resistance; it just gave up.
Why wouldn't it, like, wiggle and collapse towards where it got jacked? It just seems like a controlled demolition. That bothers me.