The Last American Vagabond - Dan Cohen & Kim Ives Interview - Haiti's Long History Of Western Destabilization & Dehumanization

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to the Last American Bagabon. Joining me today is founder and editor of Uncaptured Media, Dan Cullen, and Kim Ives, the English language editor of Haiti Liberté, to discuss the history around Haiti, U.S. intervention, Western intervention, and the overlapping discussion of what we've been seeing around this odd story of Haitian immigrants, eating animals, something that actually overlaps with a story that Dan covered before this around Jimmy Barbecue and the kind of rising resistance in the country

Starting point is 00:00:50 being framed as cannibals and really kind of breaking this weird story down and highlighting on what the background is and maybe why this story is there. So thank you, Dan and Kim for joining today. How are you both? Great. Doing good. Thanks. Thanks for having us. Yeah, my pleasure. I think this is an important story that obviously both been touching on long before this kind of weird anomaly of eating animals and cannibalism and, you know, accusations of all sorts of different things. So I think it's important to kind of start where, I mean, obviously there's a long history, as you've mentioned in the past, going back to 1804 and before, but starting in, you know, the relevance of U.S. or just Western intervention. So let's start there in general. And really, I'll kind of throw my questions at whoever wants to jump in. And so I'd like to start with whoever would like to start on the kind of the history of Western intervention in Haiti and what point you feel is relevant to, you know, the current U.S. mindset and really the stories we're talking about today.

Starting point is 00:01:46 Dan, you want to... Well, I'll just say really, really quickly, maybe before we dive into the, into the history, I mean, it's a, you know, we're like creeping. We have this ongoing intervention, military intervention, really an invasion, because it's not invited by any legitimate government in Haiti. And it's not really going as the empire would like. And I've been saying, like for months, I've been saying to Kim, correct me if I'm wrong,

Starting point is 00:02:16 I don't know if you remember this, but it seems like something that's much more suited for a Trump administration because it's harder for Democrats and liberals to be like openly racist. You know, you have like the whole strategy of the, their like PR strategy is basically to elevate black people into to be the faces of the empire. Karin-Jean-Pierre being the perfect example, White House Press Secretary, who, is of Haitian origin herself. And so, you know, you need with a country like Haiti, there's, the way you have to incite against it, uh, in order to, to prepare the public for further intervention, invasion is much more suited for a Trump, uh, Trump administration. And that's like, I think what we're seeing going back to the cannibal, uh, slur back in, what was that March, um, where they were saying, you know, Haiti is a country of cannibals led by

Starting point is 00:03:15 this guy Jimmy Barbecue Cherisei, who's called a can't, who's called barbecue because he's a cannibal and he's a leader of a cannibal gang and now this this current thing about Haitians eating cats. So but yes, there's a long, long history of, you know, how kind of Haiti occupies the, you know, American imagination and, and, and how it's been kind of portrayed in American, not only American, but, you know, I'm sure. French media too, about a nation of savages, you know, to basically cover up the reality that it's actually a nation of former slaves who accomplished one of the greatest feats in human history, which is to have a revolution against the slavers and then go on to defeat three empires.

Starting point is 00:04:12 So, I mean, in a nutshell, that's what I would, you know, my. sense of it, but go ahead, Kim. Right. And really, Haiti has been dealing with foreign intervention since its birth 220 years ago. It actually won its revolution because the British, French, and Spanish were fighting over it. It's a very strategic piece of land in the middle of the Caribbean, right on the windward passage. And they all wanted it. They all wanted its fertile ground, which was made it the richest colony in the Western Hemisphere. It was much richer than the 13 colonies of North America and was really what made France.

Starting point is 00:04:55 And so after the 1804 revolution, when the slaves, first and last successful slave revolution in history, throughout the French, it was basically besieged by all sorts of European and American expeditions, nipping at its heels, if you will. In 1825, the French sent the whole fleet down to basically force them to sign what's called

Starting point is 00:05:28 the independence debt. They had to pay 150 million gold francs, which at that time was an astronomical sum, and that was part of the impoverishment of the country. But, you know, this picture, you have to realize the momentous nature of the Haitian revolution. In a way, I argue, that it was even more momentous than the American or French or Russian or Chinese revolution. It's one of the great neglected revolutions because it changed everything here. And often I say that Haiti is the polar opposite of the United States.

Starting point is 00:06:14 The United States is the richest nation in the world currently, which was founded by slaveholders. It was basically founded to preserve slavery because England was starting to move away from it. But they said, no, no, we want to keep these slaves and helps us grow our cotton. And the Haitians founded the second nation in the hemisphere, which was founded by self-freeed slaves. And they basically were the first ones to end slavery. Their revolution trumpeted the beginning of the end of chattel slavery. So they were just a monster ever since then for the U.S. ruling class. Every boat that came from Haiti to any port in the U.S. was basically quarantined.

Starting point is 00:07:08 So the word of the Haitian Revolution wouldn't get out and spread among the slave masses that were. Interesting. Yeah. So Haiti has always been a kind of pariah. This goes all through the 19th century. There were Germans and French and English. There were many, many episodes of sort of gunboat diplomacy and little skirmishes. but it didn't really sort of, it wasn't really captured by U.S. imperialism until 1915 when, and this was in the period when the U.S. was doing this around the world, U.S. Marines landed. They took over the country. Basically, it became the government for 19 years from 1915 to 1934. And then they put in place the army of Haiti, what was called the God Nacional Day.

Starting point is 00:07:59 the National Guard of Haiti, which basically were their surrogate army. And that continued really up until we can say 1991. When Jean-Berran Aristide, a liberation theologian, anti-imperialist priest came to power. And boy, once again, this was just as bad as the Asian Revolution the first time. you know, the U.S. went, you know, berserk. And in fact, for rightly so, because this was really the beginning of the pink tide. For the first time, the Haitian showed that you could win a U.S. engineered election. And they did it.

Starting point is 00:08:43 And that's when Hugo Chavez and Venezuela and Ivo Morales and Bolivia and Lula and Brazil, et cetera, said, hey, maybe we could do the same thing. And that started the whole, we could say, pink tide across Latin America. America. So ever since then, the U.S., in that 1991 period, the U.S. has been invading Haiti and then passing it off to a proxy force in the case of the 94 intervention. They passed it off to the UN after three months. In the case of the 2004 intervention, they passed it off to the UN after three months. But this time, in 2024, they're giving it directly to the process. It's the Kenyans going in.

Starting point is 00:09:28 And it's not working out too well. And they're going back their mandate for this MSS, as it's called, the multinational security support mission. It expires on October 2nd. And so now they're running back to the Security Council, hoping they can get a UN peacekeeping mission because basically they have no compulsory way to make anybody come and take point. part of it. They were expecting 2,500 troops in Haiti. Right now they have 380. And even those troops aren't going out of their barracks. So, you know, they can't pay them. They're out of money. They don't even have ammunition because it's all going to Ukraine and to Gaza. And so it's

Starting point is 00:10:14 turning into a real mess. And so that's basically in a nutshell, the history of foreign intervention in Haiti. It's just, it's so infuriating to see these people scream about democracy and rights and rules-based order while this has just been such an obvious track record. I'm sure you both agree with that. Just felt like saying that. But, you know, what I wanted to, before we go any further in, you know, the other stories we talk about, I wanted to go back and thank you for explicit in very detailed. And I hope people will take the time to look at your work and the background and how obvious it is this has been going on. But, Dan, what you said there about the Trump administration being more conducive for this, when you say that, do you, is it your, am I sensing that you feel that in some way that's more of a

Starting point is 00:10:56 coordinated concept? Or can you flesh that out for me and why you think that's the idea? Well, definitely there is, of course, the Uniparty, you know, permanent Washington, what, you know, maybe you call the deep state, the permanent war machine that regardless of who occupies the White House, there is an agenda at play. And, you know, we talk about what's called the Global Fragility Act, that is a piece of legislation that is very much one of the cornerstones of U.S. foreign policy right now around the world, or at least that's the idea of, you know, the State Department, Pentagon planners. And this, the Global Fragility Act, the other day I called it the, what did I call it like the Empire's Fragility, you know, the Crumbling Empire Act.

Starting point is 00:11:49 is basically that in the age of, you know, resurgent Russia and China and global competition from the big baddies, the U.S. and the bifurcation of the global economy with this Cold War with China, the U.S. wants to reassert its dominance in neo-colonies, in small countries. And actually the state department's memos and public writing on the Global Fragility Act says that this is actually the plan for the whole world. This isn't just for, you know, a few countries here or there. But basically the idea is to sort of, you know, bring State Department and Pentagon and USAID all together to streamline them. And so, you know, instead of different hands operating independently, and they don't know.

Starting point is 00:12:46 what they're doing, it's more effective with an emphasis on the military aspect. And Haiti is the test case for this. So this was, Haiti is the first case they want to apply this to. And then they want to apply it to Libya. You know, another place, the U.S. has left a trail of destruction. And then several countries in West Africa, in French speaking West Africa, which, you know, if you consider what's happened over the past two years, the series of revolutions in some of those countries, while you can see that they were correctly concerned that there was lack of stability under the regimes that the U.S. and France had installed and backed. And another country I believe they're looking at was they have Papua New Guinea and Mozambique. That's right. So

Starting point is 00:13:43 basically this strategy was was passed by Congress in 2019 when Trump was still president and then it was continued when Biden came into the presidency and so you know this is the stuff that probably Trump has never heard of the Global Fragility Act Biden doesn't know what this is it's just built in to the system right and so when you know this planning for like every you know what we show for example, in our documentary, another vision inside Haiti's uprising is that, you know, this process plays out across the, you know, in a bipartisan way. And so this process of leading towards, you know, building towards a U.S. intervention or a U.S. orchestrated intervention into Haiti. And of course, a lot of it has to do with, you know, the geopolitical and domestic factors that

Starting point is 00:14:48 can prevent them from deploying forces or proxy forces into Haiti, you know, namely China and Russia and their opposition at the Security Council, et cetera, et cetera. And domestically, being able to sell basically a war to the American public. And so what I, the point that I was making is, you know, how much of it is intentional and planned out? I don't really know. But I think there's sort of an organic process that's not necessarily like conspiratorial. It's just like when you have, you know, Karin Jean-Pierre and Linda Thomas Greenfield at the UN and because basically the US has this obvious strategy to put black people as its spokesperson spokespeople then it's going to it's not as it's not so easy for them to use this obviously racist incitement and play into these

Starting point is 00:15:49 tropes um you know they need to talk about stability and you know helping Haitians and you know we want to bring um prosperity and these kinds of things and that's the the cover that they use whereas a Trump administration you know i mean we all know how Trump is. He's, you know, he plays, of course, to the right wing, which is less concerned with appearing racist or, and, you know, I mean, we've seen with J.D. Vance and Trump and, you know, Elon Musk and these, the countless social media influencers that have become prominent, they're more than happy to deploy these tropes about Haitians eating cats and dogs. And, you know, this is actually just part of the whole election.

Starting point is 00:16:37 They think this is going to help Trump win the election, which to me, it seems like pretty weak strategy that maybe if you're a very online person, I guess, but in terms of overall appealing to, you know, the kind of undecided voter that's not sure if Kamala or Trump is actually better. And, you know, as terrible as Kamala is, Trump didn't look particularly strong at that last debate. So I don't think that's going to grow his base. It's just red meat for for his base is what I think. And so the immigration issue that is kind of underlying this is very real. And there are real questions about that. But the strategy that the that the Trump team and Elon Musk has taken, I think is is misguided,

Starting point is 00:17:25 but is in terms of winning an election. But it is very useful for, for, for, ginning up antipathy towards Haiti and Haitians to get support for some kind of expanded U.S. military presence or proxy force into Haiti. Right. And that goes to your uniparty point that this is really how we have to view this. It goes back and forth, teeter totter or whatever, kind of like distilling it down into one ultimate point. And so we'll come back to the animals in general and the overlapping points within that.

Starting point is 00:18:01 but I want to ask you about the Global Fragility Act. So what you're essentially saying is that this would be the typical U.S. Foreign Policy Act. We're under the guise of saying we're trying to help people who are in a destabilized position, again, pointing out that they're the ones

Starting point is 00:18:16 that put them or drove them to that position, but ultimately wouldn't do that at all. I mean, this is sort of like another form of occupation. Is that what you're saying? Like using this act to facilitate control over these countries under guise of helping them? Yeah, exactly. I mean, yeah, the whole thing is,

Starting point is 00:18:31 just basically how are we going to, in this new era of moving on from the war on terror, now we're into global competition with major powers who have an alternative paradigm, whether that's Russia's military footprint around the world, which is obviously a challenge to the U.S. so-called rules-based order or China's Belt and Road initiative, which, you know, offers a mutually beneficial paradigm, which is completely the opposite of the U.S. is like zero-sum game, you know, that we're going to basically control your country and own it. And if you don't like that, we'll just burn it down.

Starting point is 00:19:18 So in that facing that paradigm where more and more countries or political and social movements are thinking, hey, maybe there's an alternative to, you know, good old impeachment. materialism, the U.S. is, I think, becoming desperate in a way where it, you know, is going to look for ways to impose its control. I mean, the fact that it calls the globe fragile, you know, global fragility to me, you know, fragility just says weakness. It's projecting weakness. So, yeah, I mean, I think it's just, you know, we're going to help you, which is, you know, kind of a scary term these days. Especially coming from the United States government with their obvious track record, right? Exactly. So I think that's important to highlight, you know, with what Kim was highlighting

Starting point is 00:20:09 in the buildup and the idea that this is just, you know, I'm seeing this a lot, by the way. And if we, if there's an opening to get into this more, we can, like, with that, what I see with like Honduras and this weird feelbacked, Prospera, fake libertarian utopia, or, you know, any number of things I keep seeing where there's like this new form of governance almost poking its head out and these different, like you said, this is sort of a trial in regard to see how this will apply. So I want to bring this back to one of the points around this where I feel like, at least in my opinion, I saw a shift in the way that this was, the foreign policy Kim was highlighting was being conducted. And I think that might relate to this new direction. So Kim, if you could touch more on the point in which like the earthquake forward Clinton Foundation, you know, the way that they abused like the aid state of all this, which really did set up a whole new kind of form of manipulation, which was already being used. But it exploded, I think, after that in a large way, using, you know, the as Jay, James Corbett would call it the Trojan horse of regime change like USAID and or National Down for Democracy.

Starting point is 00:21:06 So can you touch on that timeframe for me and your thoughts on whether that was sort of a new direction or, you know, your thoughts on that. Real quick, let me interrupt you, Kim, before you start, because maybe you want to add this in. Maybe you want to, you know, talk about what you showed in your award-winning film, Bitter Kane, how, you know, basically the U.S. What that was about, what that era was about, because, I mean, this obviously didn't start with, 2010 in the earthquake. I mean, this goes back to the shaping and the basically creation of the of the Haitian economy and the picture of neoliberal economics. But sorry, to interrupt. Yeah. Well, just to kind of go back to the Trump and versus Harris situation we're facing now, to me, there are two different sectors. The Democrats are essentially the globalist sector. They're

Starting point is 00:22:00 looking at the planet. They're taking planetary strategies, whereas Trump is more of a nationalist. You know, he's just, and so I don't think he would have gone in for an MSS. You know, this is too much, you know, he's like direct. He would have said, ah, send in the 80 second airborne, you know, nuke the place, you know, whatever you have to do. So that would have been his approach. But the globalists are trying to, you know, they're looking at all the chess pieces on the board. So they're trying to get Haiti. and Kenya and Mozambique, Benin, you know, Guyana, all these different,

Starting point is 00:22:36 they're nudging them, moving them around. That's what Blinkins running around like a fireman trying to put out fires and move people here and there, not very successfully. And they've been hoisted by their own Ptard because, you know, the crisis is going faster than they can get firemen out there. So it's like in the case of Haiti,

Starting point is 00:22:57 they want to send Kenyans to stay Haiti and Kenya starts to destabilize. And, you know, the same problems that are happening in Haiti are beginning to erupt in Kenya. So the empire is sort of at a loss, how to go forward. And Trump's approach is, to me, to go very straight at it in terms of almost like, I don't know, Teddy Roosevelt, sending the Marines, you know, do whatever we have to do. He's not worried about the hypocritical problem that the Democrats are trying to avoid. And the reason they're using Kenyans and sending Kenyans in there is because they don't want it to look like 1915. In 1915, the U.S. Marines landed about six months before they landed. They went in and they took all Haiti's

Starting point is 00:23:53 gold, $500,000 worth of gold bars out of the bank. and they took them to the First National City Bank in New York, where they still are, as a matter of fact. And the Marines came in on July 28, 1915, and they just took over the place. And they said, okay, well, we've got to get a president to invite us. And so then they put in a guy, Suddartignav, and he invited them. They don't want to do that again.

Starting point is 00:24:22 It's too ugly. They don't want to send in U.S. Marines and then have the president who's put in place invite in the Global Fragility Act. They're trying, the Democrats again, the globalists are trying to have proxies do it. They're going to put in the government. That government will then invite the U.S. and the U.S. and the U.S. well, okay, sure, we'll do it. We'll sign the bilateral deal.

Starting point is 00:24:44 So this is the whole dynamic. In a way, Clinton, just going to hear a question about Clinton and the earthquake, was kind of almost a test run, a dress rehearsal. Right. Because here was the earthquake. which was perfect timing for the empire. Some people say they made the earthquake happen. I would buy that.

Starting point is 00:25:03 But the timing was perfect because basically there had been 20 years of Aristide and his sort of clone, a guy called René Perval, who'd been running Haiti since 91 to 2011. It was basically an alternance of Perval and Aristide, Aristide Perval. And of course with the coup periods,

Starting point is 00:25:26 interspersed because there were two coups during that period. So now they said, oh, this is perfect. So in came Bill Clinton. He took over the country. He was basically ruled the country for 18 months. And they installed Michel Martelli, you know, and they thought, okay, you know, this is working out great. We're going to get our people in and, you know, we'll set up the things the way we want

Starting point is 00:25:50 it. But it kind of once again went off the rails because this, this. very complex machinery that the globalists are using, can, you know, the more complex it is, the more possibility for problems. So in came Jovenal-Mois. He was sort of bollicked up, I could say, by Donald Trump. Because what Trump did was he strengthened the sanctions against Venezuela.

Starting point is 00:26:26 The money that was basically keeping Haiti afloat was a thing called the Petro Carribe Fund, where basically Hugo Chavez said, we don't want you to have to go to the IMF. We'll give you money and then you invest it. So Hugo Chavez started Petro Carribe. 2006 was the start, but it really engaged in 2008 until 2018. And that was because Trump basically shut down through the banks, the ability to transfer money between Haiti and Venezuela. So the whole thing came to a crashing halt.

Starting point is 00:27:02 And now, Jauvinel-Mau-iz was in trouble. And he had to find a way out of it. Trump wasn't really helping him. And in the end, he ended up veering back towards Venezuela and Russia. And that's when they sent him a team, as far as we're concerned, the circumstances seem to point to that, that, you know, the U.S. gave a wink and a nod at the very least, if not some logistical support to this operation to assassinate him. So basically, the globalists are trying to build this complex tapestry, the Global Fragility Act. I mean,

Starting point is 00:27:46 Trump signed off on it, but it wasn't his architects who did it. It was the globalists behind the scene. who run the deep state. That's the Uniparty for you right there. Exactly. Well, sorry, I mean, if you're done, I didn't mean to cut you off there. Yeah, no, that's about it. No, I mean, I'm not sure where we can go in a lot of directions here and look at the complexity. But the essence is there's a struggle in the ruling class.

Starting point is 00:28:13 How are we going to preserve the U.S., you know, which is in a free fall right now, as we all can see, as the world can see. and, you know, are we going to end up going the Trump route or we end up going to go the Blinken Sullivan-Newland route? You know, I would argue, I mean, and I definitely see the difference, but what I argue is that I see that being the way that the two-party illusion, as I would call it, always sort of works, which is they're very different in their directions, but they're designed to kind of drive you down to one specific point that they, as the government, ultimately wants you in,

Starting point is 00:28:49 which is simply my opinion, but you're right to point out the very, very clear differences. But I always see how those two different things drive us in one clear direction. Like I always see it as this one linear line between administrations where we just kind of continue to see these same things happening. You know, I wanted to ask about specifically, well, actually, since you brought it up, one quick point about the oil, go ahead and say that the name was, what was it again, the name? Petro Carribe. Petro Carribe.

Starting point is 00:29:15 I've made points about this many times over the years. And I think it's important if you could flesh that out just briefly, how important that was and how it shows that the idea being that it's somehow, you know, what they call Iran or anybody else, leadering state sponsor of terrorism or narco traffickers, all these claims they throw on it when they ignore all their chief allies doing far more of it, but that this was something that was being done that was very explicitly helping the other countries that were also being suppressed and attacked by Western foreign policy.

Starting point is 00:29:43 And by taking that away is one of the clear reasons as well as stealing all of their gold. And clearly that could help these people as well. well, but it put them in that position, which is the point you already made. It's the creation of the destabilization then used to justify why the Fragility Act is even needed. So could you flesh that point out briefly for me on the oil, the oil, uh, oil, uh, oil crebe? Yeah, if I can just start then. Yeah. The, the essence is from, uh, since I was a kid when, you know, all during from the 60s, from 1959 until 2000, the big bugaboo in Latin America was Cuba. They were the target of everything. But when Hugo Chavez took over and basically hitched his wagon to Cuba, and Cuba in some way became, I could say, their eminous gris, the U.S. saw Venezuela as the real danger because of that petro gravitas that they have.

Starting point is 00:30:39 And Hugo Chavez, very sagely, put it to good use by, you know, delivering to all his neighbors this deal. Haiti got the sweetest, and he always said it was because Haiti basically helped liberate Venezuela. It was Haiti that gave Bolivar, the guns, the boats, the printing presses, the soldiers to go liberate the continent. And you can see that in all the flags of northern South America. They have the Haitian flag in them. So he gave them the sweet deal of not only the cheap gas, but a loan account where they were able to keep 40% of the sales of the gas and invest it. So they didn't have to go to the IMF and World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank,

Starting point is 00:31:27 et cetera. So all of that to say that the U.S. really was focusing on, Venezuela as the principal problem they face. And that's to this day. We can see they're fighting tooth and nail, even though it's failed at the peers now to, you know, demonize Maduro and get him out because this South-South solidarity is, you know, the closest example of the new multipolar world threatening the empire. Right. I mean, God forbid, they should be helping each other or allowing people to not rely on these, you know, whatever you want to call the Western control structure. You know, it's just so frustrating.

Starting point is 00:32:06 But so that's why that's why that's why that's so important to highlight because this is the creation of, you know, these are destabilizing tactics and has no interest in the peoples of these countries whatsoever, which, you know, the history shows, but the claims of everything, it really shows you this is about, you know, at the expense of the people they claim they're trying to help and for their own explicit interest. So let's bring this into the point about the immigration aspect, which clearly this opens the conversation for, you know, and this is a huge, I mean, it's always, I mean, it's always been a very clear wedge issue in this country in the United States. But it's obviously kind of

Starting point is 00:32:38 spun out of control more than ever. And we did we did see the whole Venezuelan caravan conversation, which just seemed to vanish after the election, which I wonder if we're going to see a similar thing this time. But I want to talk about the idea of what I kind of called the U.S. foreign policy to immigration pipeline. And, you know, in previous interviews, Dan, you've mentioned the idea of not just Haiti, but Venezuela. And I point to Honduras 2009 coup in the same concept. The idea is creating these immigration, you know, this influx of immigration because of their foreign policy and then either pointing to that as a reason the country is in chaos or using that immigration that influxes in the United States or others in Europe as a political tool, right?

Starting point is 00:33:18 So if you could touch on that and just the general idea of weaponized migration and whether or not you think that is a part of what this is. And I don't mean just the clear example you've already made about the destabilization happening in quote of the byproduct, but whether it's being used for that purpose, like by design? Yeah, I mean, I think immigration is basically, it is certainly intentional to destabilize countries, have their populations, you know, or a significant portion of the populations,

Starting point is 00:33:52 leave the country, come to the United States in order to perhaps, I think, for the vast majority of people, basically to just find some kind of stability some kind of income. And that's not a new thing. I mean, people have been, you know, people have been immigrating to the United States for a long time. Often, you know, there are, maybe most examples are even seasonal or people who, you know,

Starting point is 00:34:19 want to work in the United States for a year or two or five and then, and send money home. Because even working, you know, menial jobs here, they can send money back to their families in whichever country in Latin America or whatever country in Latin America or it may be or save up money. But there's another kind of level of it, I guess, where the United States will intentionally destabilize countries in order to basically have a labor pool to increase the labor pool and suppress wages domestically. So then there's more competition among the workers. they can get people, you know, who are willing to work for less money and with less benefits and in worse conditions. So they can basically just increase their profits. And then there tends, you know,

Starting point is 00:35:07 what happens is inevitably there tends to be resentment from the domestic population here against those, you know, those migrant workers where, and unfortunately, you know, that, that, that anger and that frustration should be directed at the policymakers who destabilized their countries, but, you know, it's hard to expect your, you know, average Joe to understand the broader dynamics at play when he just sees, you know, a bunch of people who are not from there showing up in his town and, you know, the conditions are getting worse, things are getting more expensive, there's inflation and war, and all of a sudden these new people are here. So what's going on? It must be that guy's fault.

Starting point is 00:35:51 But, you know, there's a, in the past few years, definitely we've seen a geopolitical strategy play out where the U.S. encourages immigration from countries like Haiti, Venezuela, Nicaragua. Kim, remind me the name of the program. Health or hope? Is that what it was? I thought you mentioned one the other day. but I mean, essentially where my wife is a reporter. She was at the U.S.-Mexico border last year. Maybe this was in 2022, and she's a Spanish speaker.

Starting point is 00:36:32 So she's talking to people coming through, and she would see that Border Patrol would allow Venezuelans to come through and basically direct them to, you know, different places. But you're thinking about the CHB. in. That's a program. Yeah, basically what the Biden administration, again, this is these complex things that they, they set up a program in January of 2023 called the CHVN, which would allow immigrants 30,000 per month to come. Well, this is, let me say, this is, this is still illegal

Starting point is 00:37:08 immigration. You're talking about legal immigration. I'm talking about illegal. This, at least, yeah, I'm talking about illegal, where the U.S. where the U.S. clearly gave border agents, instructions to depending on the nationality of the migrant to either allow them in or deny them or send them to, you know, just facilitate their entry into the country and that's it. Or in the case of Venezuelans, and then, and then, you know, with other countries, say like Mexicans or from El Salvador or something like that, they would be, you know, sent for processing and this kind of thing. That is basically, yeah, that is, again, the undermining.

Starting point is 00:37:52 That's been going on since the 80s before you were born when the U.S. has always been using the immigrants or the refugees from Cuba and now Venezuela to give them basically a base here in the United States, mostly Miami. And so that's what that is. Yeah, the illegals. And back in the 80s, they called it wet foot, dry foot. That is, a lot of the Cubans would get here. And they'd be saying, oh, yeah, or Cuba, oh, yeah, that's terrible dictatorship.

Starting point is 00:38:24 You can come in. The Haitians would arrive up, send you right back, you know. So that's the double standard going on since the last 50 years. So what do you, what do you, so this was a very interesting point that I saw he point out in a different interview, Dan. And so the idea being that what do you guys think, what the mindset is here? Why? And you pointed out in the other interview, the idea that as a.

Starting point is 00:38:44 We've also, and this, again, the eating animals part will come up in this. It will get to at the end, but the idea of like Aurora in Colorado and the idea of this, I argue an equally misrepresented story that there's clearly a gang problem in Aurora in general. It's been talking about for a long time, Venezuelan gangs, but then all of a sudden we get these stories, which at best I've seen, I've not been able to prove or verify that what they claim is true, in many cases, the complete opposite or false completely, but that they've taken over these apartment buildings.

Starting point is 00:39:11 And I see these narratives to like, so why do you, what's the logic in your mind of why they would say yes, Haitians, yes, Venezuelans, come in these areas. And we could point out clearly, as I think the idea of bringing 20,000 people in the city of 40,000 and a little bit less, is crazy in any context. Like, that's not even to get into how these are being lied about. But do you think, I guess, two-part, you know, why do you think their mindset is? And do you think that's a deliberate destabilization within the United States? Yeah, definitely. I think it's to destabilize domestically and,

Starting point is 00:39:44 And, you know, in, in Haiti itself. In Haiti, so, you know, again, you can bring in a labor pool, people who are willing to do, you know, cheap, menial labor that the domestic population maybe doesn't want to do anymore or whatever it is. And then you can also say, look how destabilize that country is. We better send in our troops to go fix it. So it creates the pretext for some kind of intervention, whether political or, you know, or military, and then domestically, you know, it's a convenient enemy and scapegoat. And I mean, part of it is I think, you know, when you destabilize a country and bring in the population or some segment of the population, the vast majority of the people are going to be,

Starting point is 00:40:32 I think, decent, hardworking, you know, just want to survive. But certainly you will get elements that are criminal in nature. and and and even there may be even people who were gainfully employed or or were in their home country but when they leave they go to a country that they're not from they don't speak the language

Starting point is 00:40:55 they don't have the same sort of social network they don't have their family around and they fall into criminal activity I mean I've you know friends of mine who have migrated from Colombia for example for you know because of threats to their lives I talk to them and they and they describe that all the time that you know people they've known that you know they go to whatever other country go to the u.s they get into drugs they get into drinking

Starting point is 00:41:19 you know they leave their wives this that um and you know you're there's that's that's a common thing so it's just it's you know natural kind of immigration where people you know move back and forth for whatever reason i think is is one thing but when you're just you know basically burning down countries, whether intentional or not, you're going to have an impact domestically. And that can, of course, be exploited in a number of ways politically. And I'd add really quickly, to what you're saying, Dan, this would exist no matter what grouping of people. Like, if you bring 20,000 people from literally anywhere, whatever skin color, whatever location or religion, you're going to find people like that may have, you know,

Starting point is 00:42:00 you're going to find bad people in any group of that size. But I agree with you that by and large, that's, you know, the opposite is what we're seeing. And I, that's this. So do you have any comments on that, Kim, before I ask the next question? No, you go right here. So I just want to ask, again, I guess the same question. So what do you think the reason is for that? Is this just a byproduct to take advantage of? The same point, if you're going to choose to bring Venezuelans in and, you know, treat them

Starting point is 00:42:23 differently and rapid influx versus other groups from other countries and do so in such a ridiculous way from, no matter where they're from, to bring that many people into one location, so what do you think the point is? What are they trying to accomplish, you know, either of you? Yeah, my personal feeling is that these are unintended consequences. That is the Aurora Venezuelan gang. I don't think they wanted that or precisely planned that. But it happened.

Starting point is 00:42:51 It's a blowback, as you say. And, you know, one thing to remember is like, let's take case of Cuba, where basically it was run by the mafia before Fidel took over. So just like they did with the Nazis, after World War II, they import a lot of the criminal elements of the Nazi high command, of the Nazi scientists, the same way they imported a lot of the people

Starting point is 00:43:17 who'd been working for the mafia, a lot of criminals into the U.S., to use them against Fidel. And so you ended up getting these gangs, you know, Alpha 66 and Omega and et cetera, who would be, to some extent, almost out of control, you know, and even doing things that were provocative, you know, that maybe even didn't have the green light from the CIA or something. So I think that this is

Starting point is 00:43:47 happening on a larger level two. Same thing with the Venezuelans. I cannot imagine. I don't have any evidence of that, but I cannot imagine that they're trying to get as many Venezuelan discontents and, you know, Guzzanos, as they're called in Cuba, to be able to use them. was in Venezuela. Okay, Escalados. Okay, yeah, right. Yeah, Venezuela, yeah. They can use against the Venezuelans.

Starting point is 00:44:14 So this is the thing. You control, you have basically these thugs, which you have to keep control of. They're useful, but sometimes they get out of control. So to me, that's the dynamic going on here. But overall, the vast majority of the immigrants, I mean, are mostly really, I could say, extraordinary people because they pick up their lives in their country where they'd much prefer to be to come here to start a new one and most of them are more upright than any American citizens that I know. And well, to be clear, and I think that's important for people to hear.

Starting point is 00:44:50 But what I'm, I wasn't even necessarily asking about like a bad element. Just the, the, a, an organic grouping of 20,000 people, right? So I find it interesting that it would be so deliberate that they would, you know, as Dan's highlighting, that this would be a pick and choose, selective, on the country. I find that to be hard to ignore that if they're making that choice, I think that there must be some political reason there. And then the idea being that why have so many go into a county, a city of such a small, a number of people. Like to me, that seems like a deliberate choice. Like, for example, you know, in the political paradigm that

Starting point is 00:45:22 I call the two-party illusion, people would argue that this from a Democrat perspective of votes. I don't see that being very logical today. But, you know, there's, there's opinions around that. So do we think there's anything there? Like, I just don't get the logic of dumping that many people in a small city, why wouldn't it be spread out? No, they're not dumping them. What it is is economics. That is the Haitians arrive and they're going to the places with the cheapest rents and the most jobs.

Starting point is 00:45:49 Indianapolis is like 500,000 Haitians. Indianapolis, Indiana. You don't hear about that. Right. You know, Springfield is just another example of it. So the Haitians have been flooding to the areas of opportunity. I mean, Haitians are in almost every city in the U.S. I was in Boise, Idaho about a decade ago, and I was in my hotel room, and I heard Haitian the

Starting point is 00:46:11 grail down the hallway. I went down and said, what are you doing here? And it turned out there's a community of like 300 Haitians living outside of Boise, Idaho. You don't get more white bread than that. And, you know, they come in and they clean the hotels in Boise. So you have Haitians looking for jobs, for opportunity anywhere. And so that's why they end up. So I don't think, yeah, this is something consistent.

Starting point is 00:46:32 received of in that respect. Sometimes they'll resettle communities. I've heard, you know, that's how a lot of the Eritrians and Ethiopians ended up, maybe up in Minneapolis and stuff like that. But that's pretty rare. I think the Haitians, they come in through Miami or New York, and then they go to wherever the rents are. I mean, you can get a house in Indianapolis, three bedrooms and a garage for $1,500.

Starting point is 00:47:02 bucks. You can't get a studio apartment here in New York for that. So that's what's going. I mean, you're kind of, I think what you're touching on, Ryan, is the geopolitical, the bigger geopolitical strategy. Like, I mean, basically I think it's to, um, eliminate sovereignty in, you know, other countries. So, I mean, look at the countries that are not demonized, um, you know, Guatemala, uh, El Salvador. I mean, now there's, you know, some kind of back and forth. But Mexico, okay, Mexico is demonized because now they have, you know, I mean, I don't know about the new president, but Amlo is not exactly under the thumb of the United States. So, but the, you know, country like, you know, Colombia, you know, Colombia, Mexico, El Salvador, huge amounts of migrants have been from there. And that's been advantageous, basically for the, you know, ruling class in the United States to have this massive labor pool.

Starting point is 00:48:02 And everywhere you go throughout the United States, there is a huge, they're huge Latino communities. And their countries are, you know, have basically been, you know, destroyed in many ways. And, you know, not like there's no life in any of those countries, but they've, they have not had sovereignty. Their economies have been completely shaped and designed by U.S. neoliberal economics. And so that's, you know, the same thing that the U.S. wants to impose on, you know, Nicaragua, for example, to get its population to flee. It's just like destroy all of them, have their people come here. It's, it's, and then, you know, send your, you know, shape the economy. So they're completely dependent on the United States. You know, have World Bank and IMF policies, have them in huge amounts of debt, basically to reimpose. like a new form of slavery, I think is really what this is about. So the countries that resist

Starting point is 00:49:08 that are going to be demonized and the U.S. is going to do everything possible to destabilize them and get portions of their population to leave the country. Right. Yeah. Dan, if I can just jump in there and because I have to jump out. But yeah, this goes back to where we, when I did Bitter Cain back in 1983, we were looking at this. This was the beginning of the bifurcation of the U.S. economy to where we just did services here, and all our production was sent overseas. So we sent it to Latin America. Haiti was one of the first cases where they started to go get the cheap labor. That's what Bitter-Cain looks into very deeply. But once they saw it work there, they started to send to Costa Rica, Nicaragua, before the revolution, Honduras, you know, throughout

Starting point is 00:49:59 And then also Mexico and of course China. China was great for them at the beginning. But now what's begun to happen is that the former vassal, we could call them prison colony cheap labor, are starting to rebel. China, Mexico too, to some extent, Brazil. So all the empire is shaking with trouble. And that's the Global Fragility Act is, okay, we're going to make it easy for them. We're going to put our military base there because that's what the Global Fragility Act calls for. And then we're going to put them on a lifeline of U.S. surplus food, corn, rice, wheat, et cetera.

Starting point is 00:50:44 They don't have to worry about the food. We're going to feed you. We got you by the belly. We got you. And that's the idea. Yeah. I mean, and this is such a classic. I mean, not even to get into the idea of the terrible.

Starting point is 00:50:56 you know, GMOs, whatever else they're probably going to send over there, the idea of the classic U.S. policy or, you know, like confessions of an economic hitman, you know, the understanding the debt part of it, but really that it comes down as you're highlighting that you create a situation where you act like it's help, but ultimately you set it up to where they're so overly reliant on the U.S. or other Western interests for what they need to survive, and they ultimately end up producing what the U.S. government demands of them, and so that rug can be pulled. At the moment, they're no longer advantageous. And it's such an obvious, ongoing part of this history.

Starting point is 00:51:30 And so that's why all of this is so infuriating to watch this get boiled down to the most absurd, you know, cartoonish allegations about eating animals and, you know, voodoo and all these things that are, you know, there's some elements that could be pointed to around the world. But this conversation has gotten so cartoonish. And so I guess we, let's get into that to sort of kind of, you know, fine-tune this. And if you have to jump out, let me know. Yeah, that's me.

Starting point is 00:51:55 I got to run. But yeah, it's been a very invigorating discussion, and I'm sure Dan will hold the fort, as it were, in my absence. But yes, thanks very much, Ryan, for having us. Well, Kim, thank you very much for joining us. And let's connect again in the future. Okay. Well, Dan, since we can go into, let me ask you one more question, actually, before we

Starting point is 00:52:17 jump into the idea of the kind of, and what your thoughts on why that story is coming up and what they're trying to hide. But like in regard, one of my point about the weaponized immigration and migration part, do you see, or just in general with Haiti, do you have any insight or our thoughts on Israel's involvement? You know, there's a famous example or a very widely known example of a billionaire named, where is it, Gilbert. Gilbert Begio. Yeah. And the influence there. And, you know, just your thoughts on that. Because there's a very open conversation for those listening.

Starting point is 00:52:51 My work has shown this clearly of, I mean, there's like think tanks writing like, I guess, you know, scientific outlines about the use of this or weaponized migration, Israel being one of them, even allegations right now about how they're using the gods of population. So in my opinion, it's an undeniable fact that empires have used weaponized migration throughout the world going back a long way. Now, it's disputable, debatable in some people's minds about whether that's part of what's happening here and so on. But I wanted your thoughts on the idea of Israel's involvement in that.

Starting point is 00:53:21 or just the destabilization of Haiti, you know, wherever you'd like to go with that. Yeah, you know, that's, I have not looked deeply into the, into Israeli involvement, um, in Haiti. And that's something that I would like to do. Um, I mean,

Starting point is 00:53:37 Gilbert BGio, I think is the single richest man in, uh, in Haiti, um, a, I think an ardent Zionist. So, um, and, you know, if you look at the, the history prior to the, Aristide years, you know, during the Duvalier dictatorship, I think there are some ties to Israel then, whether, you know, weapons training, something like that. And certainly, you know, in the region, Israel has an extremely bloody history, you know, whether in Colombia, which I've written about extensively there, you know, in Cuba. Israel is even involved in Cuba all over the place, in genocides and other things.

Starting point is 00:54:21 So, you know, that's, it's a good question that I don't know a whole lot about. I will say when I was in Haiti, last time I was there was February of this year, I took a, we were, we were in, you know, one of the kind of, we're in kind of one of the popular neighborhoods, you know, not in the wealthy areas, you know, one of the kind of poor neighborhoods. and near, I guess, near the port. And I saw a big business that on its big metal gate had a huge Israeli flag painted on it. And I was trying to figure out what it was. I was asking contacts and just Googling. And I could not figure out anything. And, you know, I didn't spend like huge amounts of time looking into it.

Starting point is 00:55:13 But, you know, that's a great question. Why is this Israeli flag painted on this big business? So I don't know. It's a great question. Yeah, I wish I knew. Well, I think it's important people to look into the history around the, I mean, generally just from a global perspective, the idea of weaponized migration and how that's been used over long periods of time to influence.

Starting point is 00:55:37 I mean, I frankly think that's part of what we're seeing in this country and outside as well. And I just think it's important for people to see these other strings like we're highlighting with the United States government. I mean, I think right now for a lot of people in the world, the history of U.S. foreign intervention, destabilization, regime change occupation, it's a, you know, despite the childish denials from U.S. government, it's like everybody's very aware of that. And I think Israel's played a major role in those over the years as well, which is starting to come out more and more.

Starting point is 00:56:03 So yeah, I definitely will include these show notes, these in the notes, people to look further into, but the interesting part of a Zionist sort of being the one of the richest people in the world, but influential in Haiti in particular for such a long period of time, is just fascinating to me. So let's let's end with that part I was asking there in regard to, Why? Why do you think with this, you know, we saw this kind of spin out of control at the, where was that, the debate where Trump said, you know, they're eating the animals. And, you know, it's very flimsy from where it started. And in my research into this showed that there is an interesting overlap around different things you might have seen. In Brooklyn, for example,

Starting point is 00:56:40 there's a weird history of animal sacrifice and different cemeteries and things that, like, we have protected aspects of different, but it seems to be very minute. And, and it got turned into this national, really international story out of nowhere. And so I wanted your thoughts on the validity of that story in general and specifically Springfield or rather just Ohio in general and the use in the debate and why you think that might have come up and overlapping with the Martin, we brought me mentioned Jimmy Barbecue and the story there of cannibalism. And, you know, is there a threat here? Like, why do you think that's being used? Yeah. I mean, in terms of the recent, you know, I would call hysteria,

Starting point is 00:57:19 about Haitians eating animals. It seems to me like a just a campaign strategy for the Trump campaign that was cooked up probably with Elon Musk, whoever is advising Trump's campaign. Because, you know, of course, now that Elon Musk is the owner of X or, you know, the frontman for X or, you know, whatever, whatever he is, I mean, there's a huge, huge. huge, huge amount of, of kind of influencers that, you know, are paid through his whole, you know, there's the subscription thing and then the ad revenue. And, and, you know, only some accounts will get ad revenue depending on if your content is ad revenue friendly. So,

Starting point is 00:58:10 you know, you can, I mean, you know, many of those accounts, the Ian Michaels Chongs of the world, you know, these guys make, you know, tens of thousands of dollars per month. So they can basically Elon can, it looks like, just hand out a directive. Okay, everyone promote these cat, these Haitians eating cat and dog memes. And, and, you know, he's in with the Trump campaign. So, you know, it's firmly on the side of Trump. Whereas the, you know, the more mainstream media, the, you know, CNNs and New York Times are obviously on the on the side of the Kamala Harris campaign. Um, so yeah. I mean, the stories of these alleged

Starting point is 00:58:53 cat, Haitians eating cats, well, they were totally phony to start with. I mean, the one that went viral was, you know, happened the month before in another, not in Springfield, Ohio, I think in Canton, Ohio. And it was a woman who was actually not even Haitian, but that, you know, became a huge thing. And then there was another image of a,

Starting point is 00:59:16 who's actually from Ohio, right? Exactly. I don't know whether it's ever. proven that she actually ate it that was just shouted in the video that we never verified, you know? Right, right. And then, and then the other one was like some guy carrying a goose.

Starting point is 00:59:28 And I think, you know, the origin of it was like he was actually, or, you know, it turned out he was actually like helping the goose or something like that. And it wasn't even Haitian. It was,

Starting point is 00:59:35 you know, just some photo from Reddit. So it's all just totally absurd and it just gets turned into these viral memes and hysteria and, you know, um, there's, there's,

Starting point is 00:59:46 you know, it's, it just became like, this is okay obviously for Trump to talk about and then he talked about it the debate oh in Springfield they're talking about or you know they're eating they're eating the pets they're eating the cats and and you know the thing is they don't want to talk about it's it becomes a proxy for a real issue so it's it's it's like a dog whistle and so it's it's a proxy for a real issue which is you know migration and economics and the depression of middle America and what's actually happening

Starting point is 01:00:17 And so there is a part of it that's real, even though it's factually incorrect. And so, you know, of course, Kamala Harris is just going to say, oh, you're crazy. That's racist. And but she's not going to address what's actually going on. You know, the real thing that it's a, that it's, you know, a proxy for. And, you know, like all the media that went out to debunk, to immediately debunk Trump and, you know, and J.D. Vance. all the mainstream media, these are the same media outlets that like lie us into wars and about Russia gate and every other thing all the time. And they don't, they also don't want to talk about the actual issues, you know, of the decline of the middle class. So, you know, it's, to me,

Starting point is 01:01:05 it's like Trump, the right wing basically wants to talk about, doesn't, doesn't want to talk about the root, but does want to talk about the symptom. And the, you know, the liberal class doesn't want to talk about the root or the symptom, but they just want to, you know, portray anyone who does get hepped up on this, you know, on these lies about the symptoms as, as a racist. And certainly those, those memes are like playing on racist tropes. And there's a long kind of, you know, I mean, we were talking about before how kind of Haiti occupies the American imagination as this, you know, nation of, of savages. And it's just so easy to play into that.

Starting point is 01:01:46 But I don't think it's a winning strategy overall. Again, it's just playing to Trump's base and it's a mostly online phenomenon. Unless you're like on Twitter, are you going to know what he's talking about with, you know, these cats and, you know, Haitians eating cats? It's like that doesn't really address the material reality that most people are living on. And, you know, I mean, the thing is if there was a real nationalist movement in the U.S. United States. Like if, if, or if MAGA wasn't being led by, you know, con men, um, neocons and con men and then, you know, they could look at Haiti and say, hey, there is a movement. Um, they are led by this guy, Jimmy, barbecue, Sherry Zier, who, uh, does want to improve his country

Starting point is 01:02:37 and reverse the migration flow and, um, develop and have mutually beneficial relations with the United States. But, you know, everyone's too hepped up on the right is too hepped up on all the stupid propaganda because fundamentally they're the same as as the liberals. They just want to control and dominate and destroy. So it's just the two wings of the Uniparty. But it's, you know, I hope it's a failing strategy, honestly. You know, I hope Haiti is able to to actually, you know, this kind of revolutionary movement that we document. in our film, another vision. And then we did like an update that we released in, I think in April or May called

Starting point is 01:03:21 Haiti Intervention of Revolution. I hope they succeed. And they can actually develop the country. And, you know, hopefully enough of us in the United States will come to our senses at some point that we can, you know, join the rest of the world. Yeah, I agree. I mean, and your point there, you know, it's interesting because it highlights the idea of, like, what will work for the different campaigns.

Starting point is 01:03:40 but I still come back to the larger point that of my mind, it is a uniparty. And in my mind, that extends to everything, including the supposed election that we're about to go into. And so what I see this as is what I wrote here in regard to what Jimmy Dorr pointed this out in regard to something you've commented on, J.D. Vance and the conversation around this, where he simply says the part you're leaving out is that those Haitian refugees are created by the oligarchs, Western Economic Hitman and imperialism, which we've discussed today. But here's the part that I think Jimmy left out, which is why I think this will never,

Starting point is 01:04:08 It's why you're saying they won't address it or they're both ignoring the real point. I think this is why. I said, great point, Jimmy. And therein lies the two-party illusion grip. They'll never address it since all sides have an interest in maintaining the foreign policy and immigration pipeline, which we discussed today. They turn us against ourselves, which only benefits the power structure and maintains the status quo. Now, Kim felt that there wasn't necessarily a organized effort to do that.

Starting point is 01:04:33 But I think it's worth considering that this, even if it is just a byproduct, that it is, in fact, indoor, you know, even allowed and ignored because it does have a benefit for both sides of the paradigm. Even if there are genuine disagreements or differences or fighting, at the end of the day, the Uniparty does have a central interest that I think that meets. Did you think, do you agree with that? Yeah. Oh, definitely. I think, I think, at least we could ask him, but I think what Kim thought was not orchestrated is, is like where migrants, you know, land, you know, where they, which cities they end up in, that kind of thing. But definitely in terms of the overall I mean, I think though even, you know, at the, at that level of where, where migrants land, I mean, you know, with regular people, I think they, you know, they land where there's opportunity. And as, as Kim pointed out, you know, there's, there's jobs and, and prices are low. So they're not going to, you know, be like living in, you know, Marin County in California or wherever. I don't know, who knows? People just show up wherever there's work. But, I mean, you do have to wonder about, you know,

Starting point is 01:05:38 with criminal networks, I mean, it's no secret that criminal networks are tied to intelligence agencies. It's not like they're just totally organic. And so say if, I don't know, there's some desirable piece of land or some real estate that Black Rock wanted to buy up, hey, why not send you know, some criminal like networks to go destabilize it and get people to move out and want to, you know, sell their, sell their property. And then, you know, then you can swoop in and buy it all up. I'm not saying there's evidence of that, but objectively, it plays out that way. So, you know, I think definitely there's a, there's a, the broader strategy is totally intentional. And you certainly have to wonder about it, at the, at the kind of, you know, the lower level.

Starting point is 01:06:27 Right. Well, see, to me, this overlaps with an interesting part of the story. And this goes into why the, and the many reasons you outlined in the, and anybody that has, you know, objectivity and willing to do their due diligence, that there's, I mean, far, far, far more outright lies and misinformation and old stories being lumped on top of this narrative right now. But what's interesting to me is it turned out this, and this is from the New Republic, that the before this, before the debate, before the conversation, there was a group I'm sure you're familiar with called the Blood Tribe, which I'll be quite honest.

Starting point is 01:06:59 My opinion is that it's very obviously influenced by whether the FBI or intelligence, same as Patriot Front. That's my opinion. But ultimately, it turns out that they were spreading these, these, same sentiments going back well before. This is posted on September 10th, but the point, oops, I went too far. There we go. The point is that this actually was stated before that. This is one of the members of the blood tribe. Speaking, guess what, Springfield City Commission meeting, which is exactly the same as the one that went viral, not the same guy. I don't even

Starting point is 01:07:27 think it's connected, but here's a guy speaking at that exact same thing right before this saying about the ducks and so on. And so I find it fascinating to this, you could argue, this effectively started before all of that coming from some of these what they're calling neo-Nazi groups, which clearly they are, but whether that's really the origin of it, I just thought that was fascinating. You want to comment on that? Yeah, yeah, no, you hit it on the head. That's exactly it. You have to wonder how much of this is actually just totally coordinated and planned out. And yeah, I mean, so many of these white supremacist groups are actually just controlled by feds and are just useful idiots and do the bidding of, you know, of the Uniparty.

Starting point is 01:08:08 So that's exactly it. Like I had seen that video. I haven't actually watched it. It was just like, oh, of course, you know. So, I mean, it's, it's just infuriating, like, like you said before, how banal this all gets and how manipulative. And, and, uh, I don't know. I, I just, just like, I, I, I kind of hate Twitter now. I mean, it's, it's like I almost, I almost prefer the old censorship regime, the more.

Starting point is 01:08:37 liberal censorship regime because it was like more in your face and now it's just like cat memes and guys like thanking Trump for restore or thanking Elon Musk for restoring free speech and it's just like this is this is even though yeah well censoring and Elon Musk is like is like oh there's freedom of speech but not freedom of reach so it's like okay so if they don't like what you say then you're just going to be shadow banned so it's like a more insidious form of censorship. And, you know, and it's really, it's really sophisticated. I mean, I think, you know, like, you have to look at accounts even.

Starting point is 01:09:17 I think there's also continuity between the old Twitter regime. I mean, this is not directly related to the Haiti thing, but I think it's worth considering when we look at just these information operations. There's continuity between, of course, the old Twitter regime and the current Twitter regime where accounts that were banned are back. but how many of those accounts were banned in order to kind of give them credibility? So when they come back, oh, the narrative they're promoting must be subversive. I'm trying to think of his name in Germany.

Starting point is 01:09:49 The guy who wrote like the new normal and is being prosecuted by the German courts. It's killing me. I can't think of his name. But, you know, he made that point. If you ever saw the movie The Departed where, and Leonardo DiCaprio is a, what, he's a cop and they send him to jail for a while to basically, you know, give him credibility as a criminal so he can infiltrate. And it's that kind of thing. Like it's not that sophisticated, but I think people, you know, often kind of take it for granted. So I think the kind of the disinformation

Starting point is 01:10:25 operations and the kind of social media control apparatus has become more sophisticated and it rebranded very well under Elon Musk. And so, you know, but I think it becomes so clear how coordinated so much of it is. For one thing, when you see these, you know, Haitian cat memes, how obvious that is, that it's, you know, just to support Trump. And then the other thing that I look at all the time is like, I don't know if it's just, you know, the algorithm that's pumped into my feed, but I see so. much like just Jew hatred all the time. Jews this. It's the Jews. It's the Jews since October

Starting point is 01:11:08 7th since, you know, this genocide kicked off. And I mean, the main thing for me is, well, you know, this is a product of Zionism. Like these things, you know, like some guy blaming Jews would just be some like whack job in the corner if it wasn't for the quote unquote Jewish state doing all of these things in the name of Jews. And so then it gains traction. But when I think of like, okay, you know, someone says it's the Jews, whatever, and they get like five or 10,000 retweets and 70,000 likes or whatever. I'm like, wait a minute. But Elon Musk said that, you know, if they don't like it, then he's going to, he's going to soft censor it. It's right. You don't have freedom of reach. So that's intentional that stuff like that is being given freedom of reach,

Starting point is 01:11:56 that it's not being suppressed. In fact, it's being promoted. Um, and it's basically, to support the whole notion, the Zionist notion, that Jews equal Israel. And so as long as you're staying within this paradigm of, you know, whether you believe one way that it's good or bad, like if you're a Zionist and you believe, oh, this is the Jewish state and we have to kill all those Palestinians and everything they're doing, blowing up, you know, cell phones and in Lebanon, that's good. Then you're fine. And if you believe that the Jews are Israel, then you're fine because you're not questioned.

Starting point is 01:12:31 you're not going to get censored on Twitter. Or if you do, it will be like, you know, Lucas Gage, who was like censored. He was, he was suspended for like three weeks and then brought back. And it's like, I've never seen anyone temporarily have their account suspended, you know, where they announce that like you're suspended for, you know, three weeks or six weeks or six months or whatever. It's like if you're suspended, you're suspended. That's what I've always seen.

Starting point is 01:12:59 I've never seen other anyone other. than outright neo-Nazis have that where they're temporarily suspended. And that's the Leonardo DiCaprio thing where, you know, to establish credibility when really, you know, what they're doing is supporting Zionism. So totally kind of off track, but this is the bigger picture, I think. No, since you bring it up, it's fascinating. And I agree. I think it's very deliberate.

Starting point is 01:13:24 I'm very much with you on the reality of Zionism and how it uses Judaism and the point being that to your excellent point there, as I'd even thought about the idea that essentially by the statement that freedom of reach or speech not reach, the idea is that you're saying that then that must mean that they're allowing this to get the reach that it would or boosting it. And so

Starting point is 01:13:43 that's support, but also that Yakarino and Elon have said that they're working with the ADL, that they're going to remove things. And so yet how does that make sense? And I think you know exactly where this is going is that it makes sense because that's exactly, that is Zionism and how it works. The creation of that. And I would say not just,

Starting point is 01:13:59 hyping what you pointed out, but also making it look as if the problem of anti-Semitism is much larger than it actually is, which is how they maintain their presence. And obviously, there is racism. And that's what you put in your point. If it wasn't for the way they were using this, I agree. It would be regarded as it would in any normal say, you're a gross person. You can say whatever you want over there. You know, and it's interesting that that is, you know, I think that's a huge part of it. And to bring it back to what we're saying today, we saw with Venezuela, with Musk and you're like, look, free speech is absolutely. I will all. always draw that line, whether it's Musk or an oligarch or a millionaire, a billionaire military

Starting point is 01:14:34 contractor, you have a right to free speech. But the moment that it crosses the line where he is a government contractor, he's about to be on a cabinet for the presidency. So at what point, and maybe even right now, does that become a state action? Does that change the dynamic of what he's doing? And I think we all kind of sense and see his interest, maybe lithium, I don't know, but clearly an interest in acting against Maduro when all of a sudden, you know, you look back at his history on his account, there was no engagement of Venezuela and just on a dime. He just all about it. And so this brings back the memes and the cat, all of this stuff.

Starting point is 01:15:06 I definitely, my personal opinion, see a coordinated effort here. And this goes back to a lot of these conversations. And I personally even take it one step further back, see this is sort of this technocratic push. And we don't have to get into this if you don't like with the idea of like the different dynamics of governance around the world. And I go back to Honduras and Prospera, or as you highlighted with these kind of new the new structures they're using to sort of take control.

Starting point is 01:15:30 Maybe these are all trial balloons, you know, in different ways to test these things out. It's quite alarming to me. So you can comment that if you'd like. And I'd like to end with the idea of, you know, the Jimmy Barbecue aspect of this and how, you know, really just the overarching idea. And I'll bring up these tweets about, you know, why they're, why did this begin in your mind right here at this point? Why was this sudden point, you know, Alex Jones, the rest of them and the voodoo and the eating animals and he's a cannibal? Like, why was that plucked out? Is that just because of Haiti in the past there?

Starting point is 01:15:57 And, you know, your thoughts on that. Yeah. Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. All of these are, you know, different trials. It's, you know, different testing grounds. I mean, you know, like there are a lot of different places that have been kind of described as laboratories for, you know, Gaza is a laboratory for Israeli weapons where the West Bank is a laboratory for Israeli repression. And then that's export. it around. You know, Haiti is always kind of, because of its vanguard role is always a laboratory for,

Starting point is 01:16:30 you know, imperial shenanigans, even, you know, I think Greg Grandin wrote a book called The Empire's Workshop and, you know, about Latin America. So it's, you know, everywhere is basically a laboratory. And, you know, depending on the specific and unique countries of, or conditions of different countries, they'll try something else. So definitely, you know, what you're talking about, yeah, this prosperity thing in Honduras, which I mean, I've only looked into a little bit, but it sounds wild. I mean, I think, you know, I think actually that the thing that if we weren't so focused on these stupid cat stories, there's a bigger picture that I think looking at Haiti, you know, Haiti, again, Haiti is always at the vanguard. it's always the forefront of like what's coming whether you know kim was describing that with

Starting point is 01:17:26 the Haitian revolution of 1804 um with the the pink tide you know that was the first uh left wing leader elected in latin america um before chavez or morales or you know any of those guys um and like when you go to haiti you basically see that there is no middle class uh the vast majority live in extreme poverty, a tiny few live in opulent wealth where, I mean, it was shocking for me to go up into the hills above Port-au-Prince into Petionville, it's called, and areas around there where, I mean, it's like Beverly Hills-style mansions with, you know, we took, I showed this in a piece I did for redacted, but I took my drone and just flew it around and you know, these huge rolling hills with massive mansions and swimming pools and helicopter pads.

Starting point is 01:18:23 And I was just like shocked. And then, you know, the slums on lower down are basically just living in varying degrees of poverty and literal filth and excrement because the sewage, there's the canals where like sewage and trash drain just go down. and the further you are down and basically the lower your socioeconomic classes, the more garbage and excrement

Starting point is 01:18:55 pile up. And the government, because it basically doesn't exist, thanks to the U.S., doesn't dredge these canals anymore. So like in an area like Sita Soleil, which, you know, I saw these like white supremacist accounts claiming this is a Haitian village.

Starting point is 01:19:14 This is what Haitians do. They just live in garbage. And it's a total dystopian, you know, uh, landscape where it's just literally garbage everywhere in tin shacks. Well, that's what has been created. And that's what they, what I see is that's what they want to do in the United States. That's what they want to do to us. They want to just extract all the wealth, um, have people live in the worst conditions

Starting point is 01:19:39 possible where they, you know, have low life expectancy where they'll work at best, you know, in sweatshop labor conditions where they'll get into, some of them will get into criminal activity to basically keep each other down and fight. I mean, that's what, that's, that's not a unique thing to Haiti. This is a thing. All these people who are saying, oh, it's because Haitians, their IQ is 67. It's like, no, you are carrying water for the Clinton Foundation that you claim to oppose. This is because of the conditions that Haiti has been subjected to by the same rule class that is destroying our country. So, you know, you're just their little tool. So the, the real thing to do is understand what's actually how Haiti got to that point and how similar

Starting point is 01:20:28 processes are playing out here. And to look at, well, okay, how did Haiti, how is Haiti removing itself from this position, improving its conditions? And one of the ways is this guy, Jimmy, barbecue Cheriseer, who was smeared on X earlier this year as a cannibal, even though that was totally false. And, you know, really, he's a guy who's, you know, there's been like so many movies in the US about like a cop, you know, a do good or cop who's trying to, you know, do good within the system and then he gets burned. And so that's who Sherry Zier is.

Starting point is 01:21:05 There's like the movie Serpico from like the 70s, I think. There's, you know, like, I don't know. I was talking to Kim about it a couple days ago. He's like, it's like the Wild West in Haiti. The demarcations between, you know, state and non-state are not totally clear who the good guys are, who the bad guys are. So you can have, you know, so-called gangs or, you know, non-state armed groups that are, that are popular, that are doing good things for the people. And that's what Sherry's and you can have corrupt police. And that's what Sherry Zier, you know, he was in the corrupt police trying to do his best.

Starting point is 01:21:40 and they burned him and he became a basically revolutionary. And so he's trying to unite these different neighborhoods to have a revolution against these criminal, you know, criminals in suits and ties. And that's why he's being demonized. That's why, you know, he's on Twitter. They call him a cannibal and all of these things. So it's, it's, you know, a very interesting process that's playing out. And I wish, I really wish more independent journalists would go, would go check it out, honestly.

Starting point is 01:22:15 I mean, I've been really privileged to do it since 2021 when I, after the president of Haiti was assassinated, Joveno Mouise, and I called Kim, who I knew before, but, and we, we headed down there there, not long after, and that turned into this documentary, which I didn't, you know, plan. But, you know, there's very, very, very, there really no other journalists I know who go down there to like see what's going on. And and I really encourage it. So, you know, it's, it's so eye-opening. And, and, you know, Haiti.

Starting point is 01:22:49 I mean, it's really, it's an amazing country, too. It's not, you know, despite what the pictures on Twitter show, it's, it's a, it's a fascinating place and deserves a lot more attention. Yeah. And, you know, who knows what it could actually be if it wasn't being stepped on for so long by, by Western foreign policy, you know? And so that's actually why. I wanted to bring this up to end is that it brings it full circle, right?

Starting point is 01:23:11 Is that as Kim was describing in the beginning or, you know, of the discussion we're having, that now we see Jimmy and others beginning to, I think, and I think a lot of countries in the world that are under, you know, Western suppression and foreign policy are seeing this opening as well, whether it's because of Zionism's collapse or other diminishing power structure and influence. There's other places that are going, okay, you know, we have an opening here to actually fight for our interests. And I think that's what we're seeing in Haiti. I think that's why this is being kicked off. The call it cannibal.

Starting point is 01:23:39 It's just lazy dehumanization, right? I mean, as well as many other things, I'm sure we could point out. But I think this is the, you know, the dying gas, the desperation, the cornered animal, whatever analogy we want to use here, where we see the Western, specifically U.S. government foreign policy, losing its influence and desperately trying to maintain that power as others begin to recognize an opening to, you know, fight for their own determination, Gaza, whatever else we're talking about here, you know. And so it's important that I think that people take what you're saying to heart and

Starting point is 01:24:07 consider this. And as you said, you know, yeah, if you're a journalist, maybe go look at it for yourself instead of parroting images from people and, you know, oligarch government contractors on Twitter, you know, to make sure we're thinking for ourselves. So, you know, thank you for breaking this all down for us. I think this is such an important conversation. On the way out, I wanted your thought on one thing that I sent you a second before the interview started. I just saw it. It's breaking news. I wanted your thoughts on if this is relevant or maybe just a random event, unidentified gunman kill high-ranking migration official in Haiti's biggest cities. This is from today.

Starting point is 01:24:40 So any thoughts on that? I'm sure you'd have time to look into it or anything, but it's interesting that it's a migration official and what that is. And any thoughts? Yeah, I do not know anything about it. I just saw the headline you sent me right before we started. Sorry to spring it on you. I just thought it was interesting. No, no.

Starting point is 01:25:00 it's our it's it's okay i mean it is a good question um who i mean okay i will say capation which is in the in the north of the country this is where that happened um is a much more stable uh area than porter prince i mean they don't really have um you know quote unquote gangs there they did before i think they've been pretty much eliminated. Kim and I were there in, I think in February, during this last trip, we went to Cap Haitian and we met with this group called BASAP, which is basically like environmental rangers, who are kind of with this proto-revolutionary ideology. And the government has tried to disband because they can't control them.

Starting point is 01:25:53 So, you know, it may be a way to try to destabilize capation and the, you know, the kind of northwest of the country. So beyond that, I have, I have no idea. It's, you know, it's a, it's a great question. Well, thank you for your, you know, your opinion on it, your insight on that. And I think that, you know, I said, I feel like one of the things that jumped in my head was similar is that just, just the expanding of the effort or, you know, whether it becomes relevant that is a migration officer or not,

Starting point is 01:26:23 I'm sure I'll cover this in future shows. But, you know, yeah, same thing. I just really think that people need to step outside of their paradigm, the political lens they're looking through and consider what it really means to have your tax dollars, your governments acting on your behalf, literally destroying destabilizing, pillaging, foreign countries, for no one's interest other than themselves,

Starting point is 01:26:43 and typically for something outside of even our own country, we're talking about globalist entities or something else. So, you know, I recommend you all take a look at Dan's work, his documentaries, we'll include all this in the show notes. You know, thank you for being here, Dan. I really enjoyed the conversation as much as it's a tough topic. Anything else you want to leave for us on the way out? Any upcoming work or final thoughts?

Starting point is 01:27:02 No, just working hard on some unannounced, undisclosed projects, but hopefully we'll have some, I'll have an announcement soon. But no, just want to thank you, Ryan, for having me on, having Kim on and the platform, and look forward to doing it again. Thanks, Dan. I appreciate it. And as always, everybody out there, question. question everything come to your own conclusions stay vigilant

The Last American Vagabond - Dan Cohen & Kim Ives Interview - Haiti's Long History Of Western Destabilization & Dehumanization

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