Get Off My Lawn Podcast #96 | I just flew back from Jamaica and boy are my arms irie'd
After catching up on some fake news about the FBI and “white nationalism,” we get into Jamaican culture and the INSANE story behind dancehall star Buju Banton prison sentence. The singer is just getting out now after five years for telling someone he dealt cocaine. He never dealt cocaine. He just said he did and that’ll land you in prison for five years. Nice free speech, America! Copyright CRTV. All rights reserved.
I just flew back from Jamaica and boy are my arms iried.
That joke was stolen from my friend Jeff who lives down there.
We went to visit him and chill out.
I didn't really check the news while I was gone and then I come back and I'm all over the fucking news again.
I'm on the, I'm like the top story every day.
I'm going viral on a daily basis.
Meanwhile, I'm just hanging out in Jamaica, not smoking Spliffs because I'm too old and I get paranoid, drinking Rum Punch.
I'm a Rum Punch guy now.
I used to just be a Makers guy and I hated all other liquors, but Rum Punch works.
I have two drinks that I can, two liquors I enjoy now.
But yeah, I guess I have to, I have to mention the news because I'm all over it and it would be silly not to.
Oh, I'm getting a text.
Is it a big?
Oh, Stacey Dash defending me.
Report claims FBI branded Proud Boys an extremist group.
Founder Gavin McInnes calls bullshit.
And then Stacey Dash says, of course they would say this.
Where's the proof?
I know where the proof is about Antifa.
Just Google Antifa yelling at a black man or woman at an Antifa rally, where you will see the majority of Antifa players are white.
Race bait of the rats.
Don't take it.
Thanks, Stacey Dash.
Yeah, so... Yeah, that's the big story today, and I'll just briefly... I want to talk about Jamaica, because that's on my mind.
But this other news is Jamaican-ing me crazy.
So what happened was, there was a girl on social media in Vancouver, Washington.
There's a Vancouver in Canada, there's also one in the Pacific Northwest.
And she had a Proud Boys Girls shirt on.
And Antifa hassled the police station until she was fired.
Cops, if cops are Proud Boys, they get fired.
That's just the way it is.
And I remember there was a guy, Brian Green, in New Orleans, and he said, uh oh, there's more news now.
Anthony Comey is doing a reading, and Antifa is going to shut down his reading for his book reading at Barnes & Noble.
What a bunch of lunatics.
And you know what's amazing about the whole Antifa thing is that they're totally normalized by the media.
Like, they go to Tucker Carlson's house, they crack his door.
CNN's takeaway, Brian Stetler, the turgid tattletale as Greg Gutfeld calls him, his takeaway was, I don't think they cracked the door.
I think Tucker's lying.
That wasn't in the police report.
So all they did was just, you know, harass his family and kids and stuff and vandalize his driveway with anarchy symbols and chant, no borders, no wall, no USA at all.
Isn't it, don't you think they're kind of extreme?
Like they always talk about conservatives as far right and ultra-nationalist.
You don't think it's kind of extreme to say no USA at all?
End of the country?
That sounds pretty intense to me.
Yeah, but you said shut down the government.
Yeah, well, it's a colorful way of saying minimal government, please.
Anyway, Jesus Christ, my phone's blowing up.
This is getting annoying.
Can't people write about other stuff?
Yeah, sorry.
So, to go back to this latest rumor, and I'm sure my phone will blow up and there'll be like five more top stories and they'll all be fake news.
I can actually link this to Jamaica too.
So, Antifa threatens and radical leftists threaten this police department and they fold like a house of cards, top brass.
Like I always say about the cops, fuck the police's boss.
And they fire her.
Now, they don't want to get sued, of course, so you've got to be real careful when you do that.
So in the report, there's a line in there that says the FBI has classified them as a terror group or a hate group, extremist group, sorry, extremist group with ties to white nationalism.
That's just one of the sentences in there.
Now, this is likely, no this is definitely, well I can't say that or I'll get sued, this is likely a cop trying to cover his ass because he's firing someone and he doesn't want to get sued.
So they have to have like a three page report saying, she wasn't just wearing a sweatshirt, she's part of an evil, criminal, horrible thing that the FBI says is the KKK.
And then that report is filed and it never comes up, but then it came up.
But the way the Guardian and the news is running with it is, the FBI have just now designated them an extremist group.
This is without anyone talking to the FBI.
Shouldn't the FBI be the source, rather than some local cop trying to cover his ass?
Anyway.
That's today's crazy shit story.
And there'll be another one tomorrow.
But yeah, Jamaica's awesome.
And my buddy Jeff went down there.
He went down there for five weeks to clear his head, and he subletted his apartment, and then he thought, yeah, I'm staying here.
That was five years ago.
And it's weird, because he's like, hey Rastaman, Wagwan, hey, you want to get me a jelly from the tree, you know?
Like he speaks with a Jamaican patois.
Not to me, not to his friends, but if he's talking to a Jamaican on the street, he does patois.
Sometimes it annoyed me, actually.
A little, like it gets to be a bit much.
And he's asking the guys at our hotel to go get him a coconut, a jelly, you know?
But, holy shit, that guy's funny.
Wow.
My son came up to me and he goes, Dad, I don't know how to break this to you, but Jeff's funnier than you.
We invented this game in the pool where you throw a tennis ball into an inflatable tire thing, like a little inflatable thingamajiggy, and you do it at different distances for points and stuff.
And Jeff says to my son, all right, I'm not gonna put this too far, I'm gonna put it a little closer to you, because you're a kid and you suck.
And my son was laughing so hard he couldn't throw the ball.
Or he couldn't find his wallet, and my son likes the Mets, and this is my oldest boy, and he goes up to him and he goes, I know you took my wallet.
I know you went on Amazon and you bought a life-size doll of Keith Hernandez that you can kiss on the lips.
I want it back now!
Again, kids giggling their heads off.
That was cool.
What did we do?
We went to a bunch of stuff.
It's so fucking expensive there.
Like, I got a minivan to take us to this, there's these cool rafts, bamboo rafts that you go on.
It's sort of like gondola style, where there's a guy pushing with a bamboo pole, and you sit on this raft, and you go through this river that's, the water is coming down from the mountain, and it's the cleanest water imaginable, and it's just so serene.
Lots of birds.
I didn't see a lot of wildlife there, which I thought was curious.
Maybe it was all hunted to death?
Extinct?
But any his-has.
We go on that thing, and the minivan there and back was a hundred and thirty bucks.
Everything was like a hundred.
At one point I go to the bar, and I'm like, and they go, can I just get a bourbon?
I'm having enough, I've had enough rum punch.
And they're like, okay, would you like Woodford Reserve or Mick Osmagna?
And I'm like, uh, I just think I'm going to ask how much, because I haven't been asking about prices.
And I go, I'll get a, well, how much is the makers?
Oh, that's 17.
And then the Woodford Reserve is 15.
And I'm like, what?
Jesus Christ.
So what's a double 40 bucks?
And then back at my house, I'd ask the people who were looking after the place, they go, what kind of beer would you like?
And I go, just stock it with Budweiser, please.
And then Jeff comes by and he's like, dude, what the fuck are you doing with Budweiser?
And I go, what do you mean?
It's my favorite beer.
He goes, you know how much money this costs here?
This is champagne.
Like, they have to ship it here.
They don't have a Budweiser plant.
You've got to have Red Stripe.
And then I asked the guy, how much is this?
Oh, those are very expensive.
Those are $9 each, you know.
Nine bucks a bud can?
I had like $80 of bud in there.
And it was an eight-pack.
Tabernoosh!
So yeah, that was cool.
We did fun stuff.
But I've always been a big fan of Buju Bantan.
I'm a livin' how I'm livin' to the father, I will pray.
Only him know how we get true every day.
And the story about Booju is a good example of not just fake news, but when fake news makes it to the authorities and they're out to get you.
So Booju Banton is basically as big as Bob Marley.
I think he's had as many hits, or at least he was in the charts for as long.
If he's not bigger, then he's definitely number two.
And he's a guy, poor kid, grew up in Kingston.
You know, no shoes era in the 60s right when they were getting independence.
The fucking politics in Jamaica is mental.
Like, during independence it was basically the right wing and the left wing.
And the socialists ruined Jamaica.
Until when the right wing finally got a hold of it again and tried to apply the free market, tried to implore free market value, it was too late.
They've already socialized.
They're already socialist.
So the country's just fucked.
And it gets so much money from tourism, but that money all goes to Europeans.
If you work at a fast food place in Jamaica, you make like a buck 60 an hour.
And these women at these resorts, like we tip very well, but they make like 60 bucks a month.
And it's so fucking dangerous.
Not for tourists, but, you know, I was at one resort a couple years ago where the people who work there, they had to be escorted with someone else in the car because you're not allowed to be alone in your car because it's too dangerous.
Checkpoints are regular.
Curfews, you have to be in at 10pm.
And Jeff lives in Kingston.
He's basically the only white guy in Kingston.
But this is in Montego Bay.
But yeah, the politics back then with the left and the right.
I think, I think a right, the right wing party shot Bob Marley through the arm.
In an effort to frame the socialists and make them look bad.
And then at one point, both the right and the left started giving guns to everyone in the hood, in the ghetto of Kingston, encouraging them to kill their opponents.
Sort of like Eric Holder and Obama with Fast and Furious down in Mexico, where they sent guns without serial numbers to make guns look bad.
And they look pretty bad.
Well, the drug cartels are the ones that look bad, but anyway.
So that's all when Booja Bantam was a kid, was all that terrorism.
Horrible stuff going on over there.
Wars in the streets.
And so he has songs like, Murderer, blood is upon your shoulder.
Kill I today, you cannot kill I tomorrow.
He just, he's a great songwriter.
And he has ballads and stuff.
He was called a, what do they call it?
A toaster.
You know how you get up and you make a toast?
So when you go to a Jamaican club or any kind of event, there's always a guy, I find it fucking annoying to be honest, a guy talking over the music, getting everyone pumped up, talking, chatting.
And that was his original, he was called Gargamel.
That was his original background, right?
Doing the toasting.
That kept going and going, and he got into dancehall and reggae and stuff with that same kind of thing.
Any his... Sorry, I just got totally distracted.
I got worried about something.
Anywho, sorry.
Back on track, Gabby.
So, he becomes famous now.
He does have a terrible song in his repertoire.
And it is a homophobic song he wrote when he was 15.
And it says, boom bye bye in the batty boy way.
Me don't want dem batty boy dem haffi pay.
And he's got a gunshot in it.
And it's about killing homosexuals.
That's bad, obviously.
But there was some gay dude who just killed a kid in Kingston when he wrote that song, and he was a teenager.
I'm sorry.
When you're a teen, you say stupid shit.
You write a stupid song.
There's so many punk and rap songs that have faggot in them or other bad words.
And he did a bunch of PSAs apologizing, and he donated a bunch of money to charity.
That's been a real thorn in his side, and he still gets kicked off of shows for that stuff.
I'm not trying to garner sympathy, by the way, saying, oh, poor baby.
He had a homophobic song, and it still follows him.
But he lived in Miami in a small house and Jamaica.
And I can't help but think that some of the animosity towards him for that song has to do with him getting arrested.
That's just a conspiracy theory.
It's pretty out there.
I'll concede.
It's a possibility.
But the truth of the matter, that's not a conspiracy, is this guy was framed.
All right, so here's the story.
He's on a first-class flight back to Miami from Jamaica.
His career's going pretty good.
And you've got to understand, too, with these kind of guys, especially Jamaicans for some reason, they're real generous with the locals.
Like, whenever Booju Banton is back in Kingston, he just gives poor kids money.
Like, he's always just throwing 20s, 20s, 20s at everyone.
He spends thousands.
And even Shaggy, who I don't even think is Jamaican, but he does a Jamaican accent, he donates and buys stuff for the hospital.
They're very, very generous.
I think they recognize that Jamaica's two big money makers, tourism and this mineral called bauxite that's used for aluminum.
Those are big, big money makers, and I don't think Jamaicans see that money.
So that when Jamaicans get rich, they want to, you know, spread some money around.
But you put him in prison for five years, so you just ripped off all those little kids.
But anyway, so I'll tell you this story.
So he's coming back first-class flight, and there's this Colombian dude, and they're... Buju Banton doesn't drink.
Jamaicans don't really drink.
You go to a cricket match or even a concert, and you don't really see that much booze around.
Jeff's theory is that they're just normal partiers, so they don't have to break down any... What's the word I'm looking for?
Uncomfortableness?
You know what they say?
When white people are just uncomfortable to party, then they have booze and they can relax.
He goes, black people will just start dancing right now.
Or he was speaking specifically of Jamaicans, not black people in general.
So anyway, he's drinking on the plane, which he doesn't do much, and they're shooting the shit, and then the Colombian tells him that he's a drug dealer.
And Booju Banton goes, so am I. Me too, you know.
And he goes, yeah, I do about $30 million a year in cocaine.
And Booju Banton goes, yeah, I'm not doing a Jamaican voice, but there's a reason for it.
Then Booju Banton's like, yeah, actually, I do like $50 million.
Yeah, I get coke from Jamaica and Miami, and I bring it back and forth.
And yeah, I'm kind of a huge player.
Now, one thing I've noticed, I haven't noticed with Jamaicans in New York, they tend to be a little less...
Jovial?
Maybe that's because I'm talking to people as a tourist when I'm in Jamaica and they know that it's good for business.
But anyway, one thing I've noticed with Jamaicans in Jamaica is they just want to keep the ball rolling.
Like in improv, it's called yes and, where if you say, hey, I saw you screwing an alien yesterday, they go, yeah, well, we're dating now.
They never say no, because they want to keep things going.
And I've noticed in Jamaican conversation, even if you say something that doesn't make sense or they don't understand, they'll laugh and keep it moving.
It's like, let's keep the conversation going.
So what Boojoo Banton was doing in that plane was just keeping the conversation going.
And lying.
Bullshitting.
He's a toaster.
Before he was Boojoo Banton, he was Gargamel.
His job at shows was to just talk and talk and keep the party moving.
So yeah, he bullshitted.
And this is a free speech issue.
You're allowed to bullshit.
You're allowed to tell someone you are a drug dealer and you do 50 million dollars of cocaine.
That's called shooting the shit.
It's called bullshitting.
But this guy was an FBI informant and the story behind this FBI informant is so fucking corrupt.
It's spooky.
So let me see if I can dig it up here.
You're gonna poop in your panties when I tell you this.
So he was arrested for cocaine use.
Let me see if I can find him.
He was arrested for cocaine use.
He was jailed for a long time.
He was looking at life in prison.
And then he says to the cops, I would be a lot more valuable to you outside.
Okay, his name's Alex Johnson.
He's known as Junior.
He's from Columbia, came here in the 40s.
He gets arrested trying to import 700 kilos in 1993.
So he's facing life in prison.
But he decides to cooperate with the law enforcement, FBI, whatever, CIA, and become an informant.
And he says, I'll help you get drug dealers.
So that brings his sentence down from life to 20 years.
So he's in there for three years and he convinces the feds that he'd be greater use on the outside.
So he walks out of prison in 1996 after 700 kilos.
Now it gets even crazier.
He's a confidential informant working for the DEA and the FBI.
And he gets a cut of the money that he seizes, like a commission.
So he's earned, apparently he's earned 3.5 million dollars in commission.
He lives in an $890,000 home and he owes $200,000 to the IRS according to the Miami New Times.
So this guy apparently earned $50,000 for this Booju Banton bust and the only evidence they had was him on a wire bragging about how much he deals coke and then this guy Alex Johnson takes Booju to a like a coke deal And they lock the doors behind him, Buju's shitting his pants, and they go, we gotta see if it's real, man.
And he's like, yeah, yeah, I gotta see if it's real.
So Buju takes his knife, and sticks it in the kilo bag, and licks it, because he's seen it in movies, and he's scared of like, they're gonna see that he's a fraud.
There's been zero evidence of him dealing cocaine, at all.
And then they have him on video, because that was a setup, right?
And they have him on video saying, how much does he want?
And then he goes and sits down, and he's, the guy's sweating bullets.
Like you would be if someone brought you without announcement to some massive drug deal and there's like a trunk of a car full of like 20 bags of coke.
You'd be shitting your pants.
And Buju was.
And he ends up getting sentenced to ten years for that.
Ten years in prison.
He served five.
He gets out in December.
People are going nuts over there in anticipation.
He's getting out in a couple weeks.
He's doing a bunch of concerts.
And that other guy, the guy who framed him, the junior dude, is just, like, living large, trying to find someone else to frame.
Here's another thing.
Is cocaine that bad?
I mean, every college student in the country is on Adderall.
That's speed.
But we're throwing people in prison because they spoke about doing cocaine.
Is that not entrapment?
Is that not a violation of his rights?
And this happened in America, by the way.
So it's a First Amendment country this happened in.
It's just like that other dude, lie detector guy, polygraph man, Doug Williams, who served two years in prison for telling people that lie detectors are bullshit and they're really easy to beat and they can't detect lies.
What does he call it?
He calls it an insidious Orwellian machine.
And I think we're all kind of lazy about stuff like this.
And I remember when I've heard about it, I was like, oh man, Booju got busted dealing coke.
That's weird, he's a coke dealer.
He's probably making tons of money as one of the most popular recording artists in Jamaica of all time.
But I just sort of shrugged and went, oh, that's weird.
Until I go to Jamaica and they go, no man, he got free.
And some of them were like, it's the Velvet Mafia.
They're mad about Batty Boy.
I don't know if that's true, but I do know that this is fucking egregious.
So every time you hear a story like the FBI has classified you as an extremist with ties to white nationalism, be a little dubious, especially in this day and age when journalists are at their peak laziness.
Like you can write a bunch of articles about what the FBI said based on what someone says they said without talking to anyone from the FBI.
We've got a great week for you tonight.
We've got a two-part series with Ann Coulter, Monday and Tuesday.
And then we have a Thanksgiving special, where I'm going to be on a turkey farm.
