Grubstakers - Episode 69: David H. Murdock (Dole Foods)

Episode Date: May 28, 2019

This week we are covering our favorite high school dropout, veteran and homeless diner owner. He also now owns the Hawaiian island Lanai where Bill Gates got married. This all culminates into labor practices that encourages poisoning their workers for a profit. Enjoy!

First they think you're crazy, then they fight you, and then all of a sudden you change the world. Berlusconi flatly denies that any mafia money helped him begin a start in the dynasty. I have always had a thing for black people. I like black people. I'm telling you, these stories are funnier than the jokes you can tell. I said, what the fuck is a brain scientist? I was like, that's not a real job. Tell me the truth. But anyway. All right, wait, give me the captain again. I'm ready now. In five, four, three, two.

Hello there. Welcome back to Grubstakers, the podcast about billionaires. I'm Sean P. McCarthy. I'm joined by all my friends today. Yogi Poyol. Andy Palmer. Steve Jeffries. And this week we're taking a look at David H. Murdoch. And you might not be familiar with David H. Murdoch, but I think it's a pretty fascinating story that I just learned about.

And essentially, like, why did we get into David H. Murdoch, but I think it's a pretty fascinating story that I just learned about. And essentially, like, why did we get into David H. Murdoch? Well, we just did an episode on Bill Gates and Larry Ellison. And the thing that links them is Bill Gates was married on the Hawaiian island of Lanai, the sixth largest island in Hawaii, privately owned. At the time that Bill Gates was married there in 1994 it was owned by david h murdoch since then in 2012 david h murdoch sold this private island to larry ellison for about 300 million dollars so it is just something where it's like well how did we get to the point where hawaiian islands were uh the proprietary property of billionaires. Is David H. related to Rupert Murdoch? No, they spell it differently.

Oh. C-H versus C-K? The difference is that David H. Murdoch has union workers in Columbia murdered, and then Rupert Murdoch makes sure to keep that story off the air. But that's how they're connected. So they're brothers in spirit.

Yes. But that is something where it's like, you know, so David H. Murdoch, he owns Dole Foods, essentially. He owns Dole Foods, and it is something where it's like, you know, the premise of this podcast is... We have five stars on iTunes.

We just got a three-star review for Too Many Drops. Released on the day the first Bill Gates episode went out. Yes. And, you know, we are torn on this podcast between wanting to respond to good faith community feedback and a genuine desire

to punish anyone who listens to us. Bob Dole. Yeah, I think that's perfectly fair. If you want us to be more serious, go listen to We Study Billionaires us. Bob Dole. Yeah, I think that's perfectly fair. If you want us to be more serious, go listen to We Study Billionaires, you pieces of shit. You dumb bitch-ass ears don't know what good drops are. This podcast is an op

because we're trying to convince We Study Billionaires to start playing annoying drops to drive up their listenership. Yeah, I think that would work. You know who doesn't mind drops? Who? Bob Dole.

It took Andy 40 minutes to get that drop, ladies and gentlemen. It's not even that clever either. Like Dole Foods, Bob Dole. Okay. Bob Dole. God damn it. If you can't handle a set Bob Dole every 30 seconds, then you don't deserve us at interviewing...

Nanotainer. Yeah, at Nanotainer or interviewing nationally famous authors. Yes, you don't deserve our interview with an FCC chairman. That's right. If you can't handle Norm MacDonald saying Bob Dole as our clever comedic commentary on Dole Foods. Sean,le as our clever comedic commentary on Dole Foods. You can't have

concise research broadcasts without the drops. You can't have one without the other. There's a dialectical unity between the drops and our research project. If we get too serious, we will get murdered. That's the thing I know for a project. If we get too serious, we will get murdered.

That's the thing I know for a fact. But if lawyers and agents of government agencies are listening to fucking nanotainers and Bob Dole, they're going to write us off immediately. We are trying to make this podcast as unbearable as possible for the eternities of Dole food. The eternities of Dole food. It's like the Panama Papers. They're all like PDF files.

They're images instead of text so that it's harder to look through all of them. We're doing the same thing. But instead of intellectual content, we're just putting drops in from time to time to remind our listeners we are everything you think we should be. It's also like a spell to...

If we say nanotainer and Bob Dole, it keeps the feds away. That's right. Are we educational? Are we entertainment? The answer is maybe. Oh, yes. But I should remind people.

In conclusion. If you actually want to do the work of uh taking our episodes and uh removing all of the drops and all of the attempts at humor so that they are purely educational we will not stop you i i'd love for you to do my job um but we'll pay you not a lot but we'll pay you yeah mic Microsoft points Just like we pay my cousins For the descriptions of the bio But so David H. Murdoch Again

This is a fascinating character And it is something Where it's like He does all the post work As Yogi's cousins They work for Microsoft points In between voting for Modi Which is part of their job.

We tell them to vote Modi. There's a whole bunch of podcast Easter eggs. Like the date of our show on Twitter is the day the stock market crashed in 1929. We've got a great Jimmy Hoffa quote from the Lenny Bruce book as our header. In our description, we talk about my cousins working for Microsoft Points and voting for Modi. And listen, as a listener, if you think the drops are the most annoying part of our show, you haven't even begun to listen to our show.

Yeah, look, if you're mad at our podcast, just wait until this episode where I'm about to introduce our special guest, Milo Yiannopoulos. Milo, get in here! This is very good. I like buggering young boys, I do, I do. Chim chiminy chim chim churru. White genocide.

I like how Andy just plays the Bob Dole drops to distract from his actual attempts at humor. He wants to confuse people to set their curve lower and think that impression of Milo is... I'm going to sweep the chimneys and the immigrants are trying to displace the white walking man. He's not Australian. No, he's fake Cockney. He's Mary Poppins Cockney. Oh, yeah.

All right. I don't think any of us are doing his voice actually, Sean. I think you should pick that up by now. We were trying to do a good Milo. No, he's here in the studio. Yeah. But to circle back to our topic for this week, hopefully we haven't become too derailed already.

We're talking about David H. Murdoch, and he's the owner of Dole Foods. He's a billionaire. Forbes has him worth about $1.9 billion. He was born April 1923, so he's 96 years old. He's extremely old. And it is something where it's like, you know, our job or what we find our job to be on this podcast is perhaps maybe raising negative things or criticizing billionaires who generally receive just good publicity. That's actually really easy when you're doing it about any billionaire who owns a banana company. Because all you have to

do is just Google working conditions and then name of banana company and then you will be depressed for all of your Saturday. I bet many of you are wondering when the Arrested Development There's Money in the Banana Scan drop is coming. Let me tell you. Just wait to find out. Well, actually, if you watch the documentary Banana Land, which is great.

It's very sad it's on YouTube, but they do have that. Is that like Adventureland? Yes. It's called Banana Land and they do actually play that scene from arrested development and then they interview a colombian woman whose daughter was raped and whose father whose husband and son was murdered by right-wing paramilitaries hired by banana companies how did i kind of know that like most of that was coming when you said a colombian woman j. But wait, what did she think of the Arrested Development drop? Because that's really the meat of the documentary, is finding out whether this Colombian woman likes Jeffrey Tambor's acting.

What did she think of seasons four and five? There was a YouTube comment which was like, three stars. I found the Colombian woman testimony very informative. But the Arrested development drops were so distracting. But so essentially, like, you know, when we talk about dole foods, but also about like this Hawaiian island, I mean, we're going to we're going to get into a bunch of interesting thing where it's kind of in David H. Murdoch, having done the research, I think he's kind of like the Forrest Gump of horrific labor abuses of the 20th century. Really? Where he's just involved in a bunch of weird little stories that all kind of tie into the death of American unions and a bunch of chemical poisonings and stuff.

And I'll kind of go through that here. But I guess we should just kind of introduce David H. Murdoch because basically he's like a health nut. I mentioned he's 96 years old. There was a New York Times article about him, about how he's the billionaire who plans to live to 125. He drinks like a health smoothie every morning. Jack LaLanne type. Exactly.

He puts like, you know, actually banana peels and orange peels in the smoothie and like 20 other fruits and vegetables. He doesn't eat saturated fats, doesn't drink, no sugar, no salt. But actually, I think we can... Well, he's definitely going to get the most out of those years. I think we can actually introduce him from an official Dole video. So this is an introduction in the words of the man himself, just so you can kind of get into his head before we go through his life. I'm David Howard Murdoch. I'm an owner of Dole Foods. Memorization is the way I

live my life, my business, everything. No, he's healthy. He's gonna go. He's got years and years to go. I'm dyslexic, so my mother is the one that taught me memorization. She started me when I was four years old. Well, Mr. Murdoch is. That's it, that's it. So that's David. So that is the villain from the Ridley Scott movie, Hannibal.

That's the guy that Hannibal throws in the pig pen and is devoured towards the end of that movie. That guy wants to live for another three decades? That guy sounds like he's dead yesterday. He's still putting on suits. Yes. Who is he trying to impress?

Why would you want to live like an extra 20 years if you're putting on suits every day? Well, so, and the story, and then if you can... I want to make it to 125 and be uncomfortable every single day until then. So, the reason he's gotten into this healthy eating is essentially his third wife has been married five times. Wow. But his third wife died of cancer in 1985 and if you can actually cut to two minutes in the video he actually does talk about

this where essentially he gets into healthy eating and this kind of stuff that I can put a problem into my brain and it's a machine that comes up with an answer but you can't come up with an answer to cancer. He's like a rapper. Had I known then what I know now, she wouldn't have gotten cancer because we would have eaten different. All right, so that's basically it.

Essentially, he believes that all health problems, and, you know, of course, there is evidence that a lot of health problems are a result of eating right but he believes that basically every problem uh can be changed by just eating more fruit eating exactly the way he eats are you sure he's not just using his third wife's death as like a drawn-out commercial for his own product it's very possible it turns out bananas are all you need to consume right Right. Turns out one of the leading causes of cancer is unionized farm workers. But yeah, I mean, that's... I call paramilitary groups chemotherapy.

Though I'm trying to implement some radiation treatment, if you know what I mean. All of our paramilitaries eat a vegan diet. My third wife died of cancer because I would never eat her ass. If only I ate her butt, she wouldn't have died of cancer. I guess part of that is to blame for her all fruit diet. People pay us to do this show. Well, less will after this episode comes out. But yes, so essentially, the way he describes it is, you know, him and his wife were up to 1985 just kind of eating junk, eating whatever.

She dies of cancer. He gets really into this. It also coincides with 1985. He buys Dole. So I'm sure that does have what Andy mentioned. Some of to do with it is like he gets really into selling his fruits and these kinds of things so he embraces an all fruit and veggie diet uh except he eats fish fruits veggies fish that's all he eats fish the fruits of the sea yes uh that's all he eats and

basically like he gives these like mollusks yeah he gives these lectures where basically we might play just some of it earlier because it's kind of funny where, you know, it's just like a 96 year old man rambling. But he gave whatever X million dollars to a university. So everyone has to be polite and listen to him. And, you know, he'll just kind of talk about like, you know, the obesity epidemic. People just need to like eat better. And, you know, epidemic. People just need to eat better. And cancer. People just need to eat better. And you're going to die if you don't eat this way.

And this kind of stuff. But it's something where I think maybe you don't realize when you have a billion dollars that... I'll tell you who's not obese. The people picking my fruit. They're dropping like flies. That was an excerpt from his college speech.

But yes, I guess the point was essentially a lot of obesity might be more linked to just people not having the financial resources to eat the way that he might. Not might, is. If you can't afford food that's going to make you nutritious, you're going to eat trash and if you keep. Not might, is. I mean, like, if you can't afford food that's going to make you nutritious,

you're going to eat trash and if you keep eating trash, you will have more medical problems, which funnels the fucking medical industrial complex in this country. Also terrible regulations on, like, you know, food.

Everything's packed with preservatives to make it more efficient. Yeah, oh, and that's the other thing. It's like, essentially, he's all into, like, these these natural food bullshit but it's like okay uh maybe you should talk to anybody in your company about all the pesticides they're dumping on nicaraguan workers preservatives and stuff yeah um but it is just something where uh we'll kind of get through that maybe we'll play some of his speech but i do just want to quote from

the new york times here They did this profile I mentioned. So he's kind of like he does some fat shaming, let's say that. Just according to the New York Times, he believes excess weight is a sure way to abbreviate life and reprimands friends, acquaintances, and even strangers who

are heavy. In 2006 when he met with D.H. Griffin whose demolition company was to prepare the site for the research... Clearly he hasn't seen my curves yet. ...whose demolition company was to prepare the site for the research campus, he took note of Griffin's size.

At 5'11", he weighed about 285 pounds. That is too big. I'll give him that. Quote, you're probably going to die before this job's done because you're so fat and unhealthy, unquote. Murdoch told Griffin as Griffin recalls. I think, though, in fairness to that quote, it probably took three times as long to say.

Adding that Griffin's family would wind up paying extra money for the extra large coffin. Oh, my God. I do like that he's just like turning this into a Def Jam room. Yeah, right. He's just got people around him going, Oh.

It takes him two minutes to say it too. He went there. You see like a bunch of seniors standing behind him, slowly raising their arms to whoop to whoop. Yes, later he did something more constructive. He offered Griffin a bonus if he lost 30 pounds. Griffin did and collected $100,000. Holy shit, 100 grand to lose 30 pounds? Yes. Wow and collected a hundred thousand dollars he has holy shit a hundred grand

to lose 30 pounds yes wow that's that's called being a billionaire you could uh he has since regained 22 of those pounds but you know i mean i was very thankful that he wasn't given an nda i mean once you get the hundred thousand,000, unless there's another $100,000 to keep it off, go wild. I can't wait till David H. Murdoch finds this episode and starts fat shaming Andy. Hey, he's fat shaming me before he fat shames Andy, okay? You carry better. Well, some of us have been... I look like a toddler.

You've been overweight for like, I don us have been... I look like a toddler. You've been overweight for like, I don't know, like eight months? Like nine months? I don't know. I didn't know it was a new thing. You haven't been overweight that long. It gets worse. Andy, you're going to need those Patreon dollars to buy your extra large casket.

Oh. I love that his insult is that when you're dead, you're going to need a larger box. Like that's anyone's concern when they're overweight, not like the general health issues that are happening while they're alive. Yeah, no. Luckily his Colombian workers were so emaciated, the families were able to save money on the boxes they were put into after his right-wing paramilitaries murdered them yeah do you say money on emaciated caskets is that you can put like three people in one direction

um but so essentially they say that the wages I'm giving people are leading to childhood starvation. But I'll tell you what, they're saving a lot of money on coffins. But so before we go through this chronologically, I do just want to mention, go back to Lanai again, because this is what got me into the topic. And, you know know some people might i guess know the history of u.s colonialism in hawaii but are you saying there's a dark side to billionaires owning islands uh uh some people might know the history of u.s colonialism in hawaii better than i do but i did look into it a little bit and it is pretty fascinating where essentially david uh h murdoch uh will go through

this but he makes his money in real estate in the united states he buys dole foods uh in 1985 so he essentially buys into the legacy of u.s colonialism and has been making money off that ever since but uh as part of this deal to buy dole Foods in 1985, he becomes the owner of Lanai, which we've mentioned the sixth largest island in Hawaii, 98% privately owned. At this point now, Larry Ellison owns it. was in 1893, I mean, first of all, the government of Hawaii was independent, and these American, British, and other industrialists, they leased land from the government to have sugar plantations there on Hawaii. And then as time went on, they became more influential and powerful because they were providing a lot of, you know, the export economy for the island and then they started pressuring the government to do you know essentially land privatization where a lot of people in hawaii the own for natives ownership of land was kind of an unknown concept

so the government kind of does a thing where it's like hey everybody who wants a piece of land you have to like file in writing within two years. Sure, sure. And of course, natives, you know, who are like working the land, they don't really know, you know, not all of them. Or the ones that do know got murdered. We don't know. I mean, like they got screwed out of this. Yeah, I mean, a significant portion of them

were murdered by European diseases, as is common in these stories. Chlamydia. Yeah. But so... European disease, chlamydia. If only they ate more bananas.

Bananas cure chlamydia. I've beaten the clap, the sif, the herp, the warts. Oh yeah, so essentially... The herp. The warts. Oh, yeah. The secret rich man venereal disease that is only in the special genetically altered sex slaves on islands.

I'll beat that one with a tangerine diet. But so it's called the Kooliana Act of 1850. And this says that people on the island have two years to make a written claim to privatize land, which again is kind of a new concept. But also like in order to get this privatized land, you have to pay money to have a survey done. So obviously a lot of natives are not able to do that. So the long story short is that foreign, particularly american sugar planters are able to dominate private land on

the island and then right but that act was democratically uh enacted right by democratically enacted body yes um and then the uh the what's your problem with democracy? The end of this story is that in 1893, the Hawaiian government attempts to kind of reform all this, and then the U.S. government backs a coup against the Hawaiian monarch, the 1893 coup, and then Sanford Dole becomes the provisional president after the United States overthrew this country and later annexed it. Is this King Kamehameha gets overthrown or is that different?

His descendants. Okay, got it. But yes, King Kamehameha was the one who originally unified the island and defeated Frieza. You nerd. I didn't even get that one. Dragon Ball Z. They yell Kamehameha when they... You know what?

That's why there's no drop. Andy not getting something is great. Sean, continue. But yeah, so to finish the story with Hawaii, in 1893, the U.S. government backs a coup there. The Sanford Dole becomes provisional president of hawaii later governor as it's incorporated into the united states um his cousin james dole comes to hawaii 1899 and founds dole food company he grows pineapples there and it's like oh how did

he become successful because his fucking cousin was dictator of the island installed by the United States. And then in 1921, James Dole buys Lanai, as you do when it's a colony of the United States. He buys the island of Lanai. They develop what is then the world's largest pineapple plantation there. But essentially the story is, and then Castle and Cook is another one of the big sugar plantations. They buy Dole in 1961. 1985, James Murdoch, yeah, David Murdoch buys Castle

and Cook, and thus acquires Dole and the sixth largest island in Hawaii. And that's the story. And later he sells it to Larry Ellison. So, the point is essentially these people through hard work managed to secure a giant island. Someone had to go to all those cocktail parties.

Oh, yeah. And lobby the monarch of an island, basically. It's your relative. Yeah, basically that. Yeah, to grant the land. I mean, when I hear the word plantation, I think self-made. Self-made score. Self-made score in forbes i'm pretty sure he's a 10 out of 10 yeah i'll double check that but i uh because we'll kind of get through he is

briefly homeless and then he becomes he the way uh the way david murdoch describes it i was homeless at 22, and then I was a millionaire at 25. How did he become homeless? He gets out of the Army, and then he doesn't really have any prospects for a minute. Well, let's just kind of go through this chronologically. We don't care about veterans, man. What? Really? But so to just kind of go through the story chronologically, David H. Murdoch is uh

is born 1923 kansas city missouri his father's a traveling salesman oh he's not old he's just from kansas city his father's a traveling salesman his mom scrubbed floors and did laundry for extra cash um they grew up in a montgomery township ohio i guess they had to move around because of the depression and then this is just from the new york times uh pills for that now he grew up in the tiny town of wayne ohio the middle child of three and the only son he didn't see much of his father a traveling salesman with an inconsistent income but he was close to his mother who took in laundry and scrub floors to help make ends meet. She died from cancer when she was just 42

and he was 17. So this is kind of a running theme in his life, is trying to stop cancer by making people eat better, but not subsidizing that. First test case, Steve Jobs. Yeah, I was going to say, essentially like his, I'm not going to die because I drink a smoothie every day has already been debunked pretty prominently. But so he dropped out of school at 14 years old, according to the New York Times.

We mentioned he has dyslexia. So, you know, in those days, people didn't really know as much about dyslexia so you know in those days people didn't really know as much about dyslexia so he was like he was changing oil and pumping gas he was living in a room above a service station for a while but then in 1943 he's drafted into the U.S. Army dyslexia is also like the, it's pretty much the only like mental disability that you'll hear billionaires bragging about overcoming. Right, right, right. Like apparently it doesn't get in the way of making a billion dollars because they all had it in school. Right. Right.

And I guess maybe ADHD. Like I think Branson would brag about that one. But like it boils down to they wear it as as a badge of pride in their older years. It's like, oh, I had dyslexia, and I'm a billionaire. So anyone that's ever been held back for any reason is an idiot, because I can do it, and you can't, so fuck you. Yeah, none of them are like, I have complete loss of object permanence, and I still became a billionaire.

Right, right. I thought that order to kill those workers was the lease for my condo that's why i signed it i said call the workers not kill the workers oh boy um but yeah so he's drafted into the u.s army 1943 um i don't know if he sees combat but i'm just going to assume he doesn't because anybody who did would probably mention it i mean i don't know maybe it was the silent generation maybe he was deployed and he doesn't talk about it but he's never mentioned any sort of combat deployment so i assume he doesn't actually get deployed to the front lines but regardless 1943 drafted by the u.s army and then he's uh uh leaves the army 1945 he returns to detroit and then it's there that he's briefly homeless and this is kind of the thing he really talks up

because you know like he gives these lectures where he kind of talks like a lot of billionaires like if you want to be like me just work hard and this kind of nonsense and it's like well the actual story of him being homeless in detroit and becoming a millionaire is something that is really so absurd to imagine happening today and that's basically this he's homeless he goes uh regularly he goes to a diner because he knows a guy at the diner who can get him free sandwiches and coffee he's at the diner he meets the manager of a loan corporation called household finance and then the manager gives him a loan to buy the diner a homeless person just gives him a loan to buy that diner

yes uh he gives him a loan basically this manager that he meets uh household finance gives him a loan. Basically, this manager that he meets, Household Finance, gives him $450 in 1945 money, and then he recommends him to Seaboard Finance. Either that or Seabold. You could buy a diner for $450? For $1,200. Because he gets $450 from Household Finance, and then, I believe, $450 from Seaboard Finance, and then the owner agrees to loan him the remaining $300.

So essentially this homeless veteran... This is a diner in a major urban center. In Detroit. In Detroit, yes. $1,200. Yes. In 2019 dollars, it's $17,036. Yes.

And we all know how easy it is today for homeless veterans to get $20,000 small business loans. Look, next time I see a homeless guy outside of Kellogg's Diner in Williamsburg, be like, you get $17,000. You can buy that. I'm going to give you $20,000. Turn it around for yourself. $20,000 to not buy this diner because diners are actually a lot more expensive now.

No, never mind. Yeah, you can't even buy a diner because diners are actually a lot more expensive now. You know what? Never mind. Yeah, you can't even buy a diner for 17 grand now. That's the other thing. Well, but it's... Fuck being able to buy a diner. You can't get access to 17 grand. Yes.

Homeless, let alone people with working jobs. I mean, like, it's not... This is the store he sticks to? That's the... Those are the words of a man who's never stolen a social security number well it's interesting small business loan to a homeless

yeah that's really the story that he goes with is this is how I got this is how I got my start homeless and getting food on the side from my friend Buki at the diner homeless Joe yeah right $20,000 there's uh bookie at the diner and then homeless joe yeah right it's twenty thousand dollars

there's zero levels of like this probably didn't happen zero down now imagine like the homeless population in detroit is maybe a little closer to what it is now and how many people are in that diner asking for free sandwiches and the chance of one of them getting a loan big enough to purchase the diner wait i know i know how to save homeless people we give them twenty thousand dollar loans to start their own podcast okay i like this my lease is ending soon i might need twenty dollars um but yeah so it is and i haven't done a deep dive on this, but I did find this article from a U.S. Veterans magazine. And basically it is interesting where, according to U.S. Veterans magazine, after World War Two, almost half of World War Two veterans found it their own business. And they say that the country, the U.S.'s current version of the GI Bill for, you know, veterans benefits. It's, you know, more generous on some things, but it

does not provide access to low-interest loans to start a business the way the GI Bill of World War II did. So it is something where it's like, perhaps it was easier for veterans to get access to credit after World War II than it is today. Well, maybe today's

veterans should have fought in a better war. GI Bill. Yeah. Less popular war ii than it is today well maybe today's veteran should have fought in a better war gi bill yeah less popular than gi gel all right what are we doing here huh pork chop sandwiches yeah um but so it is just something where it's like you know again this is uh he he gives all these speeches about you know how his life is like an inspiration and all this hard work, but it's also like completely lightning in a bottle situation where it's simply absurd to imagine today a homeless veteran even getting a $450 loan. Right, one of today's dollars. Much less a $17,000 loan.

But essentially, he's able to get these two loans. He buys the diner a year later a little less than a year later he sells it for nineteen hundred dollars so seven hundred dollars profit he makes that selling the diner he uses this to buy a car takes the car goes with his wife moves to arizona and then he starts building houses he's married at 20 whatever yeah yeah i mean he's been married five times so he's gone okay 20 whatever yeah yeah i mean he's been married five times so he's gone okay gotcha yeah you got to start early uh but so it's not a sprint i get i guess so he goes to uh phoenix arizona he gets a loan from the bank there to build a house

and the way he describes it he's building the house guy comes up to him and says hey i'll buy that house off you and originally he was planning to live in it and then he was like okay give me a day i'll think of a price and then he comes back and sells the house uh he says he sells it for a 900 profit in 1940s dollars uh then he builds a second house and a third house and like the way he describes it is um uh i was built is it from the new york He says, I was building as fast as I could break ground. He says, bang, bang, bang. I could hardly get a house finished before it was sold.

And this is, you know, of course, all these returning veterans from World War II have, you know, VA home loans and all that. So there's a huge, the creation of the American suburbs, suburbs tons of demand so he's just making money hand over fist building houses americans can build houses really fucking fast yeah when there's demand that's one of the great stories of america everyone everyone tells you you know how the best way to make a lot of money is to go into the home building business and build a lot of homes by yourself very fast oh i'm sure he had a business hiring people to do this. He wasn't actually doing it. Yes, he hired a

carpenter and all this kind of stuff. So the loan was to hire a construction company? Right, right. So yes, he's around this time. After he sells the first house he starts a construction company. I just like how he describes it as bang, bang, bang. Killing workers who dis bang. So he wasn't even building.

Killing workers who disobey. He wasn't even building his own house. He was paying a carpenter and then skimmed off a $900 profit from what he was paying the carpenter. Just because you're dyslexic doesn't mean you can't understand how capitalism works. But it is also Something where I'm sure He might have been Involved in let's say government Redlining and these sorts of things Oh really

Black veterans they probably were not getting these Yes I don't think black veterans can get houses in Arizona today Rest in peace John McCain But yes he used These opportunities that anyone today still has access to. You know, the answers to all of man's questions are in heaven, but unfortunately, they're above John McCain's head. But so, basically, it's just, you know, this post-World War II housing boom.

He sells a second... A good soldier wouldn't get shot down. He builds a second and a third home. He sells them. Then he's moving into office buildings. He's making money hand over fist at this point. You know, 50 50s 60s do we know what he did in world war ii like no we don't know okay i i looked a fair bit i couldn't

find anything but i assume he pushed papers around and yeah he was probably something that's like a private contractor now yeah i assumed he uh pushed papers he wasn't able to read around. Yeah, I wonder how or if the draft accounted for his dyslexia. I'm sure they did. He ran an ASMR thing for injured veterans. Yeah, those used to be radio programs, so they'd play on the front. Help our boys overseas. He spoke slow then, too. Help our boys overseas. He spoke slow then too. Help our boys overseas.

This boy can't fight, but man, his voice is so soothing. Now, I'm today going to be looking at a luger pulled from the cold dead fingers of a Jerry. Now, it's real smooth on top with some dried blood but the magazine still comes out real nice you hear that

Sarge I don't know if I would have been able to fight if it wasn't for that David H. Murdoch program where he crinkles a paper bag into the radio and I can feel a sensation. It helps me forget about watching my best friend have his brains blown apart in Italy. I heard the H stands for humor. I still think about Dave sometimes when I can't sleep at night.

Yeah, the only thing that gets me off at night is his voice. Just spent so many nights falling asleep jerking off to his voice. I just can't do it without his nice slow drawl. His mouth noises. That's why we lost Vietnam. There were no ASMR programs. Ooh, just nice. I think about my friend Dave

when I'm homeless sitting outside this diner that I can't get a loan to buy because I'm African American. But so regardless, and that's, you know, basically the story. He rides this. Yeah, if he were black, he wouldn't even have been allowed in the diner. No. They wouldn't call him dyslexic either.

Yes. He rides this post-World War II boom where we mentioned he's building more and more houses, selling more and more houses, moving into office buildings, selling more and more office buildings. And the way he tells it is then he starts moving into businesses adjacent to housing. He buys into a brick company, cement, sand, granite, all these other businesses. Because he's making all this money from real estate, he needs a place to put it. Transportation companies. Hold on. Granite, all these other businesses. Because he's making all this money from real estate, he needs a place to put it. Transportation companies. Hold on.

Granite? Yeah. You need granite. Granite? Granite. Yeah. All right. Granite?

Granite? I've never heard the A and the I be equally spaced out in the vowel in granite. We're going to get a two-star review for pronunciation. Granite. We're going to get a two-star review for pronunciation. Granite. But so, regardless, he starts dumping his excess money into other companies, originally buying stocks,

then buying whole companies. And then he moves to Los Angeles, I believe, in the 1960s. And so what happens here is essentially... He starred in silent movies that were five hours long uh he he buys into a bunch of companies in throughout the 60s and 70s 1978 he acquires control of international mining and it is just something where essentially like i don't know how involved he was in day to day but his fortune starts to build off pretty exploitative and I would say downright evil industries.

What year would this be? 1978, he buys international mining. But also in the 70s, he buys an 18% stake. It becomes one of the largest shareholders of Iowa Beef Packers Incorporated. And it is pretty interesting because I found this. If you read the book Fast Food Nation, it talks about Iowa Beef Packers Incorporated, IBP, and basically how they are the people who destroyed Chicago's unionized meatpacking industry. Because, you know, if you're familiar with Upton Sinclair, the jungle, you know, Chicago used to be like the big kind of meat uh producing area for the united states conditions used to be horrific

but these workers yeah they just needed the bare necessities these workers unionized uh particularly by world war ii by the end of world war ii to the point where it was still a rough job but you got like good benefits so iowa beef packers is founded in 1961 with a $300,000 loan from the Small Business Administration. And it's basically its entire business plan is to destroy unionized labor and slaughterhouses. Basically, from the book Fast Food Nation, IBP puts their slaughterhouses in rural areas away from urban union power. They transport by truck instead of rail. Then they start in 1967. They ship vacuum-sealed smaller cuts of beef rather than the whole sides of beef that were common before then.

And the idea is that supermarkets can now fire their skilled unionized butchers. Right, right. And like another case, IBP hires scabs to replace striking worker next thing you know they're gonna find a way to get rid of the bakers and the candlestick ibp hires scabs to replace uh striking dakota city workers 1969 uh 1970 ibp has a secret meeting from fast food nation they have a secret meeting with a union representative of the five families of the New York City Mafia. Because what happened was... They're unionized?

Yes. Well... The original union right there. You have to hire Irish scabs to replace your striking button, man. These fucking Irish scabs will whack anybody during strike time. Don't cross that line. Don't cross the figure line.

Listen, boss, we're just looking for healthcare. Now, see? No protection money until we get a fair contract. Ten years. Hey, Tone, Pauly and I were thinking, like, other jobs, they got health insurance.

We get to see titties at the bar. But, like, I got a problem with my dick. I can't afford to fix it. I can't enjoy the titties. What, you can't enjoy titties with a broke dick? What are you, Mussolini?

Okay, I'm sorry I asked. Now, Tone, I was thinking, you know, the soldiers do most of the labor in this business, yet the bosses are the ones who make all the management decisions. Seeing as how this organization could not actually function without soldiers, shouldn't soldiers actually run the organization? Some sort of soldier-owned cooperative mafia. Did AJ give you that Karl Marx book? I told him not to give you that book, and we don't pay you for thinking. We pay you for soldiering. Now soldier on, you soldier. But yeah, so from Fast Food Nation, IBP has this secret meeting with a union rep for the New York Mafia because 1970, in Dakota City, 1969, their Dakota City workers are striking.

So unionized butchers in New York City won't take their shipments in solidarity with the striking workers so ibp meets with this this mafia representative and essentially said they strike an agreement which is for there's a five cent commission on every 10 pounds of beef sold in new york for the new york mafia and then and then after this is struck then of course the new york unions are like oh okay that's, because the leadership is all in the pocket of the mafia and says, yeah, sure, we'll process your beef again. And so that's basically the story of IBP, and IBP also is a trailblazer. And the Jets Stadium. IBP was also a trailblazer from Fast Food Nation in recruiting migrant labor. They were among the first to recognize that recent immigrants would work for lower wages than American citizens and would be more reluctant to join unions because of their tenuous legal status. Of course, you know, yeah, you know, if illegal migrant labor threatened to unionize, you can just have them deported.

So it is kind of a thing where it's like that was IBP's whole business model. And like from Fast Food Nation, one, I think, INS study estimated that about 25 percent of their workforce was undocumented immigrants. So it is something where their entire strategy is to destroy a unionized industry. And that gets margins down. David H. Murdoch becomes a billionaire is investing in this corporation that destroys a unionized business model by creating a race to the bottom between meatpacking in the meatpacking industry. And, you know, IBP also benefited from a lot of government tax incentives. We mentioned $300,000 small business loan. But the point of all this is, you know, we've really destroyed,

we've dug our own grave with government policy. Our oversized grave. You're making those... Because of how fat we are. You're making the meat industry sound wasteful and barbaric. And so, you know, so he buys into this. There's a Washington

Post story from 1982 which describes David H. Murdoch at the time. He gets, in 1982, a development deal with... NBC? With downtown Detroit, with the city's Market Center Development Corp. We might have mentioned this. New York City has one of these... You bet at the time he was going on TV and being like, you know what will prevent cancer?

A good old American hamburger. He only eats whatever his portfolio of companies make. His cure for cancer is his investments. But so, yes, he gets this deal with Baltimore's Market City

Development Corp because they're trying to do revitalize downtown Baltimore, which was, you know, revitalize downtown Baltimore, which was, of course, wildly successful. So much so that no TV series were made about Baltimore that stained the public imagination of what's actually going on there. But yeah, so 1982, he gets the deal with the Market Center Development Corp. And we've kind of mentioned this. New York City has one of these. New York City has one of these. New York State has one of these.

A lot of places have these kind of unelected boards, which can just sign deals with businesses that say, hey, you get a massive tax exemption if you build here or do this. And it is just kind of like a very unaccountable, undemocratic giveaway to businesses. Like just from the watch. Those boards are unelected? I mean, they're appointed're appointed okay gotcha but you know there's there's really no democratic oversight of like this board saying hey we're going to give them uh you know what massive below market deal on land or they function as like a trade association so it's just like a cartel of businesses i mean that dole out um dope that dope that dole out rights to develop certain areas and like they'll they'll fight to get tax abatements and stuff like that

well was this like the crew that was talking to like was the board of people that was talking to amazon for their hq2 when that was going on was that a similar board to what we're talking about now sean yeah i mean various cities and municipalities have their own version of this but yes like a lot of these tax abatements uh i think new york state was the one that originally offered it to amazon and then there was you know fierce public backlash but most of the time they're able to do this without the public knowing it's happening at all um but yeah so just from a 1982 washington i mean it's an elected official that's overseeing them right so i don't i don't know what you're complaining about. Yeah, there's no corruption in elected appointments.

Yes. I'm sure if people knew that there were, like, these secret development industries that were giving millions of dollars to have tax breaks to the richest corporations in the United States, they would be wildly enthused about these unelected boards that have the power to just do that unilaterally you're claiming they're unelected but they're overseen especially new york by the democratic party guys guys we're dropping too much truth play drop right now we need to get out of this they're gonna hear us and they're gonna know what we're talking about from the washington post uh they uh he gets about he pays about 5.4 million dollars for various parcels of land in downtown Baltimore in exchange for committing to, you know, X whatever development goals.

And I'm not sure exactly how much they were undervalued, but they were clearly undervalued. And so essentially, like, his building career gets to the point where he's such a part of the establishment that he's able to make money just off connections. And actually, this Washington Post 1982 article mentions that he is, quote, frequently has ventured into Republican Party politics and fundraising. And so I'm sure this had nothing to do with him buying into the Central and South American fruit business during the Ronald Reagan administration of the 1980s. But so essentially there's, so essentially from here in the 1980s, he buys into what's called Occidental Petroleum. Interestingly enough, Occidental Petroleum, through their subsidiary Occidental Chemicals, had just gotten done with basically sterilizing a bunch of American workers.

Yeah, so there's this Occidental Petroleum. There's a documentary that comes out in 1976, and this is featured in the documentary Banana Land. This documentary comes out in 1976 that interviews a bunch of workers at the Occidental Chemical Workers. I believe they were in California. They'd been working with a chemical called DBCP. DBCP has sterilized a bunch of these workers. This 1976 documentary comes out. 1977, the United States bans DBCP. But interesting

thing happens. Dole has been getting DBCP from dow chemical and uh they still want to get it so essentially dow chemical sends uh dole a uh letter saying hey we're gonna stop selling dbcp because the united states just banned it right and then uh dole says we're gonna sue you if you don't give us our dbcp because we need it wait are we to antagonize this guy for saving his workers a ton of money on childcare? So what happens is Dole and DBCP come to this agreement, or no. Dole and Dow. Dole and Dow come to this agreement

where Dole indemnifies Dow Chemical against all liabilities, I believe in 1977, in exchange for continuing to send them DBCP. And their innovative solution is to dump DBCP on workers in Nicaragua and Costa Rica and other countries where it has not been banned yet. Wow.

And this is kind of the subject of the documentary Bananas, which is a Swedish documentary, or made by a Swedish filmmaker who gets sued by Dole for releasing this movie. He releases it in 2009 and it kind of tells the story of essentially these Nicaraguan workers

suing Dole in federal court for being sterilized. Which creator of a movie named Bananas do you think had more legal repercussions in their career for choices they made in life. But yeah, so the Occidental board actually buys him out

for a significant green mail premium in 1984. There's actually like a shareholder lawsuit over this, but the board buys him out for like vastly above the market price after he buys into Occidental Petroleum. So then 1985, he buys Castle & Cook, which we mentioned, one of the big five Hawaiian sugar producers, which own Dole. So 1985, he buys it. As a result, he owns their real estate properties in Hawaii. They're still a significant real estate player there.

But significantly, he comes into dole foods 1985 now where does uh the nebbish dictator come in and um basically just kind of like from here you can just go anywhere you want to on a horrific um labor abuses throughout dole um just from the documentary bananas uh they claim that about 10 000 workers workers were claimed harmed by DBCP. And it's important to mention with DBCP, they were suing on the sterilization thing because that's the easiest to prove in court. Right.

But there's also a lot of people who suspect it's linked to cancers, birth defects, kidney failure deaths. You just got to eat bananas and other fruits for that. I don't see how they got to stand in court. Yeah, it seems like, you don't really have an excuse when you're picking fruit. The fruit's right in front of you.

Yeah, exactly. Like one Dole, an internal Dole company report they bring up in the documentary Bananas, 1978, they found that 10 out of 10 of their workers they checked in Costa Rica were sterile. Wow. 10 out of 10 of their workers they checked in costa rica were sterile wow 10 out of 10 yes they checked 10 workers all of them were sterile okay but

why didn't they check 11 and um and then what happens in like 1979 is um the u.s says there's literally no safe level of dbcp for humans so what dole does is um they empty their remaining stocks and then they finally stop using it in the early 1980s when you say they empty their stocks what do they put it in a lake like what how do they get rid of it they use it on their bananas and their banana works yeah you just didn't order anymore basically that and um so it is it is something where essentially these is logically consistent like it it's a pesticide right uh yes and uh you people are more likely to unionize and be uh very uh pesty if they have kids right yes seems seems like you know, B falls from A. But so it's interesting.

This documentary, Bananas, is pretty fascinating. But also the Swedish guy who made it, he made a sequel called Big Boys Gone Bananas. And that's basically the story of what... First of all, this guy is naming. He needs to get someone else to do the names on these. Big Boys Goes Bananas? Big Boys Gone Bananas. It's like five sequels. Bananas Go to the Beach.

Gone Bananas to Oh Hell Nah. Bananas Christmas Vacation. It's much more poetic in the original Swedish. Big Boys in the Hood. Bananas Be Crippin'. Did you know that Pete Buttete budaj learned swedish so that he could watch big boys gone bananas in its original language um but so his name is frederick gerton and um basically what happens here is um he makes this

original documentary where dole is found liable for fraud, malice, and misconduct by an L.A. jury, I believe in 2007. They have to pay out X million dollars. But what happens is one of the attorneys of the Nicaraguan workers who were sterilized was accused of fraud. He was later cleared. But essentially what happens, and the documentary is pretty fascinating just big uh despite the name big boys gone bananas is a pretty interesting documentary because it kind of shows what a major multinational will do if you start putting out bad publicity against their brand right because he describes essentially the this film is supposed to premiere at the la film festival I believe in 2009.

And what happens is that before the movie is even screened anywhere, he receives in the mail a cease and desist from Dole over all these fraudulent claims. Dole sends this cease and desist to every single sponsor of the LA Film Festival, including the LA Times. And then what happens is they also woke up with a

pineapple in his bed um and then uh before the the film premiere at the la film festival articles start to appear one in the la times one in reuters about how the movie is fraudulent and how uh you know this lawyer is like had committed fraud and these workers are all lying and these kinds of planted stories. All websites that comment on this seem to find their comment sections flooded with people saying these workers are fraudsters, their lawyer has a Ferrari,

but they didn't get anything, all this kind of stuff. And so to the point where the LA Film Festival gets terrified and they actually they remove his film from competition. And then they have to read a statement about how the lawyer and all of the workers are liars before they screen the film. What? Really? And it's just like the most humiliating thing I've ever seen. But so basically what happens is me I've watched you

do the podcast um after that uh they uh they leave the film festival and then the film festival gets like subpoenaed by Dole for like all of their all of their emails recordings footage relating to the movie Dole sues him they sue his. They sue the producer of the film. And basically, something I did find interesting was Dole actually files a legal complaint. So Dole sues him. They sue his film company, WG Film.

They sue the producer of the film. And then they file an actual legal complaint where they, quote, compare it to the, quote, Nazi-era anti-Semitic film The Eternal Jew. Wow. And this is actually in a legal document filed against him. This is a direct quote. They describe the film The Eternal Jew, and then in these legal documents they say quote one sequence in that film shows a pack of rats in a sewer followed by scenes of a crowd of jews on a busy urban east european street unquote now this eternal jew do they drink a lot of fruit juice

and uh and so this is like an actual legal document filed by the smartest lawyers in the world hired by dole against uh him claiming that his film is like eternal jew demonizing dole did they win no they did not win oh but i do want to mention a little bit of history here the eternal jew was actually very ineffective Nazi propaganda because Hitler insisted on recutting it to put these images of rats and stuff to the point where it was very blatant. However, a much more successful but less known piece of propaganda

was a movie called Jusus by Josef Goebbels. I think I got the pronunciation right. Josef Goebbels made this propaganda movie that was actually a financial success in the Third Reich, that tells the story of, like, this Jewish guy who, like, imprisons some Aryan dude and then, like, makes his wife sleep with him in order to get his release and, you know, betrays all these people and stuff. Sure, sure, sure, yeah.

And so it's kind of like a much more subtle propaganda piece to the point where teenagers who saw the film would actually go out and beat up Jews in occupied territories. There were reports of concentration camp guards who saw the film beating up Jews after they saw it. Heinrich Himmler wanted the SS, everyone in the SS to watch it. So it is just something where. Yeah, it was a Goebbels pretty. His philosophy about propaganda was that it should never be obvious. Yes.

Which, you know, I'm glad we've moved past that and don't have movies where every person, say, from a Middle Eastern background, whenever they're portrayed in a movie, is a scheming terrorist. Do you think Goebbels is, like, really mad at hell that no court documents appreciate his cop propaganda movie and instead insist on comparing them to the much more blatant and less effective propaganda movie that was a financial failure in the Third Reich? Oh, yeah.

But anyways, the point of all that was essentially what happens is that i hope i hope the actors had a like multi-film deal would you believe that uh many of them uh lived very terrible lives after the war i believe it um but so what happens is essentially Dole withdraws the lawsuit, but because of this lawsuit, no insurance companies will insure distribution of the film in the United States, so they have to countersue Dole, and then Dole, the lawsuit is dismissed with prejudice. And this is where our Patreon comes in, ladies and gentlemen. We got a copy of this movie. It's on amazon prime video um but the lawsuit

is dismissed with prejudice and the dole is ordered to pay them about two hundred thousand dollars for just essentially filing frivolous lawsuits to keep this thing out of the the public imagination um and so you know look from there just take your pick of uh abuses. We can talk about the Philippines. There was an Oxfam report. Funnily enough, another former U.S. colony that, for some reason, U.S. multinationals seemed to prefer to do business there. There was an Oxfam report, I believe, in 2011 or either that or 2013, essentially being like Dole should remove human, because they were putting like little humanely sourced stickers on their bananas around this time. And Oxfam was like, hey, we did a study on working conditions

on your banana plants in the Philippines and you need to remove that right away. This is from the Food Empowerment Project uh summarizing this oxfam report and they say quote time and time again in the philippines worker attempts to unionize have been repressed sometimes using physical violence in the philippines workers on a supply plantation for dole reported being harassed intimidated and held at gunpoint because by the military because of their union activities and you know they also talk about like essentially uh they put all these workers on like short-term contracts and then uh they can fire them for unionizing by just not renewing

their contracts and and these kinds of things you know um human rights watch 2002 ecuador they found that ecuadorian children as young as eight worked on banana plantations for dole in hazardous conditions well work well adult workers fear firing if they try to exercise their right to unionize um and again from human rights watch in the course of their work they were exposed to toxic pesticides used sharp knives and machetes hauled heavy loads of bananas, drank unsanitary water, and some were sexually harassed. Roughly 90% of the children told Human Rights Watch that they continued working while toxic fungicides

were sprayed from airplanes flying overhead. For their efforts, the children earned an average of $3.50 per day, approximately 60% of the legal minimum wage for banana workers. Well, they're 60% of an adult, so. How old are these kids, Sean? Eight, as young as eight years old. Plus, how many of us get to work outside? And more than 60% of them,

fewer than 40% of the children were still in school by the time they turned 14. And again, from Human Rights Watch, only approximately 1% of bananas workers are affiliated with workers' organizations, unions. Wow, Sean, I can't believe you're eating a banana on the show while you're reading this information. How dare you not recognize the sacrifice of these migrant workers so that you could get an extra little bit of k in your fucking system but it's relatively unbruised which is a benefit of small hands there's no ethical consumption and all that so oh god um and look so well we don't have time to get to everything but just to continue there's another story with from labor rights.org now are these

like banana suppliers or was this their actual company running these plantations? It's always suppliers. So they have plausible deniability because they can say like, Oh, we had no idea that we weren't doing that. Just that company that we are paying to do these things are doing that. That was the same thing when like PN, uh,

PNG, the owners of Gillette were doing that, make a, make a better man program is that if you just do a little bit of googling you can find out that a lot of their products have child labor in them and then when you point that out people on twitter are like it's the supply chain they can't

this multi-billion dollar company that's one of the largest in the world cannot account for their supply chain it's like apple another fruit company yeah and fruitaloo damn I just want the super woke It's like Apple, another fruit company. Yeah. And Fruit-a-loo. Damn, I just want the super woke characters in that Procter & Gamble ad to react to the children on the Dole plantation getting sexually harassed.

Three underage women told Human Rights Watch that they were sexually harassed in the course of their work. They can also do that with their own company. According to Human Rights Watch, more than 70% of the children interviewed in Ecuador said that they worked on plantations that almost exclusively supply dole. And, you know, again,

similar story with Colombian flower workers. They report that they were made to work while toxic pesticides were sprayed. And again, it's something where we mentioned DBC. Now you say that, but I'm seeing a donut in front of you. That we mentioned DBCP.

The number one ingredient in your donut. What's that flower? No actual flowers for Valentine's day and shit. Oh really? Yeah. Yeah. They were apparently they dole had like a, really? Yeah, yeah. They were, apparently, Dole had like, they had Splendor Flowers.

Hey, Sean. Yes. What'd you get your wife for Valentine's Day? The tears of migrant workers. Sean, all of us got our significant others. Look at Mr. Showoff over here.

Splendor Flowers was a subsidiary of Dole. They mainly, they supplied flowers for the retail in the u.s market including walmart from labor rights.org uh workers at splendor say they were motivated to form a union in 2004 because of worsening working conditions company assigned more and more flower beds to each worker making the workload intolerable uh they'd been firing sick workers and old workers um and essentially dole uh in october 2006 they closed splendor flowers as a result of this unionization and they were also getting sprayed oh yes uh insufficient

protection against toxic pesticides reportedly led to headaches, nausea, impaired vision, conjunctivitis, rashes, asthma, miscarriages, and respiratory and neurological problems. And so it is something where if you look at the Banana Land documentary, DBCP, like the evidence is very clear, but a lot of the pesticides or the mix of pesticides, there's just not been enough scientific study. But the workers who are actually being sprayed with the things report headaches. I'm sure there's just money flowing in for scientific studies. Yes.

All of this philanthropy that David H. Murdoch is going through is on the health effects of his pesticides. On his workers. Yes. But I guess last thing I'll go through for these labor conditions, because I know we've kind of gone along here. Essentially, the big... Oh, it also should be mentioned that uh dole in the united states there was an e-coli outbreak in uh in 2016 uh that killed at least one person hospitalized i think a dozen and in april 2016 just from wikipedia the u.s department of justice had convinced a commenced a criminal investigation into dole's role in the outbreak of listerosis, listeriosis.

Essentially, they said that the FDA inspection reports found that in July 2014, Dole carried out swab tests of surfaces in the Springfield plant, which returned positive results for Listeria, but still did not cease production. They found positive results five more times in 2014, three more times in late 2015, but continued production until the outbreak. Wow.

Well, I think with issues like this, the best solution is a market solution. And as consumers, I think with issues like this, the best solution is a market solution. And as consumers, I think we have a responsibility to show our disproval of these practices by never buying any food again. And if you do buy food while opposing these practices, you are a hypocrite. Yes. What is that Listeria thing?

Is it a disease? It's clean mouth disease. The bacteria? Yeah. Well, there are a whole string of E. coli and Listeriosis outbreaks at suppliers for Dole. There have essentially been a bunch of E. coli and other outbreaks

at Dole suppliers. Like bagged lettuce and stuff like that. Giving his workers minty fresh breath. Look, he's right. If you eat his products, you'll live forever. But yeah, so all sorts of these outbreaks. But I guess just like the last thing I want to go through is probably the most horrifying,

which is essentially what's happened in Colombia. So the AUC was a right-wing paramilitary organization in Colombia they were fighting against the left-wing FARC but essentially they also just got into a racket with uh multinationals where it's like hey we'll protect your property rights for protection money but also if you have say union workers labor organizers competing farmers we'll take care of it for you and you know again if you want to horrify, you can go on YouTube and watch testimonials of people in Colombia talking about what the AUC did to them and all of these horrific human rights abuses. To the point where in 2001, the AUC was designated a terrorist organization by the United States, whereupon Chiquita Banana continued paying them, which is a federal crime. And Eric Holder, later the Attorney General,

was their lawyer at this time. And he got them a sweetheart deal where they paid like $25 million and didn't admit any wrongdoing. And of course, none of this money goes to the people murdered. Well, he's just doing his job, defending his clients. You think that you want to just get rid of people's right to legal representation? But so importantly, in 2017, Columbia's prosecutor general's office announced that it would be bringing charges against nearly 200 corporations, including Dole, for willfully paying off death squads and mercenary groups responsible for the decade of terror.

Right. So as Attorney General, Eric Holder put aside his personal connect or his his previous connections and his previous professional capacity and actually prosecuted these people for their wrongdoings as was his job as Attorney General. That's correct? Yes. Yes. Eric Holder, he was doing the Elizabeth Warren thing and ensuring that the banana workers got the biggest settlement possible from Dole and Chiquita Banana. But Chiquita Banana was probably the most blatant, but Dole was involved in this as well. This is from PS Magazine, from the Columbia Prosecutor General's office. The complaint says, quote, although this resolution does not analyze in particular the responsibility of any person, it is clear that the banana business voluntarily financed an illegal armed group with the specific purpose of ensuring security regardless of price or the method used. There was a lawsuit filed in 2009, dismissed in 2010, but it is worth going through it. This is from Cleveland.com that alleges dull food made regular payments for at least a decade in a banana growing region to illegal far right Columbia militias that killed thousands. The plaintiffs are relatives of 51 men allegedly murdered by a militia belonging to the AUC.

The victims were either involved in labor union organizing or were small farmers fighting attempts by Dole to obtain their land and plant bananas, the suit claims. And basically, this is dismissed. I don't exactly know why, but they had testimony from jailed a a jail several auc commanders who um essentially said uh that when dole wanted the militias to take action against someone a plantation manager would directly call a malicious sub-commander quote and the auc would go take care of it unquote and again terrorist organizations murderers rapists you know disgusting yeah

but that's you know where your bananas come from and let's not make snap judgments look if you want to live to be 125 years old dull bananas are definitely the way to do it as long as you're in the united states or europe um but know, so he's dumping pesticides and all these workers, possibly killing people for union organizing. But I guess we can close this episode out by maybe hearing one more time from the man himself. I have a video he gave to Pepperdine University.

And we mentioned, you know, essentially if you give X million, you just get to ramble to people and everyone will kind of politely ignore you know essentially if you give X million you just get to ramble to people and Everyone will kind of politely ignore that feeling of wanting to leave the room when a 96 year old is talking I don't know anything about that If you haven't heard the premium Bill Gates episodes and dad walk down the street and they're both overweight and they have three children walking behind them nine times out of ten you'll see the children are overweight too and that's something that we intend to try to work with someone we'd like to work with pepperdine i would hope that

pepperdine would put some programs together we We'd help supply them because we have. I like that someone took a flash photograph in the middle of that, like they really wanted to capture that moment. I was there when David H. Murdoch said that fat parents are making fat children. 28 minutes. He goes on a interesting tangent they were at the football games

and the basketball games all looking really nice and so forth and then it's time to go try and say well why don't you put on that he even says he's being horny in an old way we're out on the football field the girls say,

well, you can't do that anymore because the girls grow out of their uniforms that they wore and the men grow out of their basketball and football clothes. And you say,

well, that's just part of living. I don't say that. I say, that's just part of living. I don't say that. I say that's the part of living I don't want to live over again because I ate too much. I didn't have the body I liked, and I didn't have the way I wanted to be, and I wondered if my wife could have lived longer had I known what I know today.

Absolutely positive truth. I believe that it is possible to avoid it. Basically there, he's talking about the cheerleaders at Pepperdine University where he's speaking and how they can't wear the outfits they used to wear anymore because they get fat later. And if they just ate the way he wants them to, they because they get fat later and if they just ate the way he wants them to they wouldn't get fat later now here we're looking pleasing to the eyes and all that

stuff and i found myself more alert than a spring chicken on easter but i just love like i tell you, I was saluting that flag like, I just got back from fighting the Nazis again. But just imagine being in that audience at Pepperdine University and having to be like, just think about the hundred million he's giving us. It's okay. Oh, now he's talking about his dead wife. Yeah, border trustees is just standing next to him. Can I give a counterpoint?

Yes. Recently, making the airwaves was hip-hop future star Robbie Tripp with his song of the summer, Chubby Sexy. Some of you may know him as Curvy Wife Guy, and he's got a single. Curvy Wife Guy, you're got a single. Curvy Wife Guy, you're gonna need an extra large casket for that fat bitch you married.

Alright, well I don't think we're gonna be able to end this any better than that. Jesus Christ, this is terrible. Alright, alright. Before we get serious. I just wanted the audience to know to check out all of Frederick Gurdon's films. Bananas, Big Boy's Gone Bananas, but also

one that's coming out soon. Take the money and run. And her sisters. I should step it on my joke pocket. Sorry. Fuck you forever. Sorry, I didn't realize it. Oh, no, I'm just fucking waiting 40 goddamn minutes

to do a Hannah Bobana Fofana goddamn joke to have it be stepped on right when I hit the punchline. I'm so sorry, Yogi. You can wait for him to finish, and then you can tag it. Jesus Christ. I'm so sorry. It's fine. can wait for him to finish, and then you can tag it. Jesus Christ. I'm so sorry. It's fine. It's our video. Let's move on. His next movie, Big Body Women and My Curvy Wife.

Yeah, what if he gets woke in his last 10 years? Turn this song off. This is so terrible. But I guess to kind of close us out today, David H. Murdoch is, you know, the guy who wants everybody to live 125 years by eating Dole products and fruits and veggies. You can just turn it off. You can just turn it off, Andy.

No, we're going out on this song. We might get sued for it. Yeah. Yeah, this is the legal strategy Dole is going to. All right, get the curry, boy. I can't wait till Dole sues us, and then in the court papers, they're like, during their episode, they mentioned the Nazi film The Eternal Jew, but they also mentioned Jew Swiss, Jew sus,

and Sean makes the argument that Jew sus was more effective, but at Dole, we actually believe that The Eternal Jew was the the better propaganda movie that's why we mentioned it in the original lawsuit and we would like this court to rule on the merits of which of the nazi propaganda movies were actually most effective and most well made the only eternal jew we support is bernie sanders i hear he's rich and cheap. I read Politico. Now, many people in the Warsaw ghetto were underweight. But if they'd had a smoothie every morning like my company makes, they might have been able to survive the war. And then Roman Polanski wouldn't have done all those horrible things because his parents were murdered

our impression of him is just turning more into Droopy Dog but you know I mean I guess to close this out David H Murdoch believes Roman Polanski now that's a man who appreciates small women you know I was in Jack Nicholson's house

with Roman Polanski and some of the Pepperdine cheerleaders. That was back before they were overweight. The best thing about owning an island is the amount of overweight people that aren't allowed on your island.

Listen, you fat motherfucker. You're gonna sink my goddamn island the benefit of owning an island is when someone's overweight you can put them in a catapult facing the water and ask them if they think they're gonna float but i guess to close this out you know you can google dole all you want see all the different labor abuses we didn't get to but the point is this guy is um you know talking about how everybody can live to 125 if they just eat fruits and veggies and fish uh meanwhile he's dumping pesticides on the very fruits that he sells he's dumping pesticides on workers and people who happen to live next to his

plantations they're abusing their workers murdering them uh or you know allegedly and uh you know it's just all these different uh horrific things where it's like his his success is entirely based on this exploitation and you know in the case of hawaii just straight up colonial land theft so i guess the point is you know what if you're a homeless veteran out there uh study up on this man and just keep going to those diners and eventually you're going to get your small business loan that will allow you to

terrorize South and Central America. And then Bill Gates will get married on your island. And with that, this has been Grubstakers. I'm Andy Palmer. I'm Yogi Boyle. Steve Jeffries. Give us five stars on iTunes. even if you don't like us it's actually a prank where you can trick people into listening to us and if you don't know

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slash grubstakers. You can give us money for this bullshit, but you really shouldn't encourage us. Shout out to our 69th patron. I know it's kind of a played out internet joke but we are very uh pleased that we can honor the 69th waffen ss division which this his subscription is dedicated to and now we're on our goal to get to 420 patrons so we can honor our furer who gives us the inspiration we need every week to keep recording this podcast. That's what everybody's talking about when they say 420, 69, the 69th Waffen SS and their brave campaign against those villagers in Estonia.

Every time they committed an atrocity, their commander would say, nice.