True Anon Truth Feed - Episode 314: Life, Liberty, and Squat Chilean Businessmen
Aired: 2023-08-24
Duration: 01:20:24


=== Bitcoin Jingle (02:52) ===

[00:00:00]  Hi everybody, my name is Tatiana Morose and I'm a singer-songwriter.
[00:00:03]  I'm sitting here at the desk in the heart of Times Square at Premiere Studios, which is the first major recording studio to accept Bitcoin.
[00:00:11]  The song I'm going to sing for you is the Bitcoin Jingle.
[00:00:14]  Now, you may be wondering why a Bitcoin jingle?
[00:00:17]  Well, to me, Bitcoin is one of the most incredible technologies of our generation.
[00:00:22]  And it's something that's oftentimes very misunderstood.
[00:00:26]  So what I figured was I would do what I do best, which is sing about it and hopefully make it a little less scary for people.
[00:00:33]  So without further ado, the Bitcoin jingle.
[00:00:56]  Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Freedom Talk Radio.
[00:01:01]  My name of Coin Coins.
[00:01:05]  My name of Coins is CoinDexter.
[00:01:09]  And I have with me today somebody I bought on the dark web.
[00:01:13]  Him, not me.
[00:01:15]  Who?
[00:01:16]  Yank Chomsky, who is, of course, joining us.
[00:01:18]  But I am Liz.
[00:01:20]  Hello, everyone.
[00:01:20]  And this is Truan on not, what did you call it?
[00:01:23]  Freedom Radio?
[00:01:24]  Freedom Talk Radio.
[00:01:25]  The number one Ron Paul revolution podcast still going strong.
[00:01:30]  See, you think it's a revolution, which in your head is the...
[00:01:33]  I'm trying to do like a radio guy voice.
[00:01:35]  Which in your head is, you know, they chop off the king's head.
[00:01:38]  They do something about bread, all that kind of stuff.
[00:01:41]  But you know what?
[00:01:41]  This is the first revolution in human history that's about love.
[00:01:44]  It's about freedom.
[00:01:45]  It's about Bitcoin.
[00:01:46]  The Ron Paul Reformation.
[00:01:49]  I bought Liz and Yank Chomsky as white slaves.
[00:01:55]  Okay.
[00:01:56]  Should we start this over?
[00:01:57]  No, no, no.
[00:01:57]  We're all good.
[00:01:59]  Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the absolutely most free podcast, unless this is a Patreon one.
[00:02:06]  No, I don't think it is.
[00:02:07]  It is a free podcast.
[00:02:08]  Welcome to one of the freest podcasts you have.
[00:02:10]  I get a brace little calendar.
[00:02:11]  We do.
[00:02:12]  Well, no.
[00:02:12]  No phylofax.
[00:02:14]  I actually, that is my ADD.
[00:02:16]  That's sort of like that's just kind of like a whatever the version of racist is, but against you have such a big, thick wallet that it would be cool to pair it with like, you know, those like big, thick mini phylofaxes from the 90s.
[00:02:29]  You need one of that in one pocket and the big fat wallet in the other pocket.
[00:02:33]  This is crazy how much shit you give me for having a fat wallet.
[00:02:36]  It's wrong to carry United States currency in the sole accessory that you're supposed to carry it in besides perhaps a coin purse.
[00:02:49]  I thought this was Freedom Talk Radio.
[00:02:51]  Yes, it is.

=== Zoot Suit Parody Idea (07:44) ===

[00:02:52]  Yes, they are.
[00:02:53]  They are.
[00:02:53]  They're greenback and Confederate money.
[00:02:56]  And yes, I pay with Confederate money.
[00:02:58]  Hello.
[00:02:59]  Okay, I don't know where we're going with any of this.
[00:03:00]  Hello, everyone.
[00:03:02]  We have, oh, I got to do it.
[00:03:03]  I got to do a plug real quick.
[00:03:04]  And no, I'm not talking about the pair of them that I have had in my ears since 2003.
[00:03:10]  They are now the size of a large man's fists.
[00:03:14]  So I am doing a show.
[00:03:16]  That's not gross.
[00:03:17]  No, this plugs.
[00:03:19]  Yeah.
[00:03:19]  They're cool.
[00:03:20]  Okay.
[00:03:21]  A great stench to them.
[00:03:23]  Ooh, I like the way they diangle.
[00:03:25]  I'm doing a show at Caveat in New York City.
[00:03:31]  You know how much I missed you reading plugs for live shows?
[00:03:36]  I forgot how good you are at this.
[00:03:38]  All right.
[00:03:38]  So this is a benefit for a friend of the show, Marianne.
[00:03:42]  I'm not going to say her last name on this, although I don't know why I wouldn't.
[00:03:46]  But Marianne, to buy her some, I just want to be clear here, ethical, but also pain-inflicting medical equipment.
[00:03:55]  Okay, you're going to have to explain a little bit more.
[00:03:58]  Friend Marianne is a brain scientist, not the MK Ultra kind, and studies the effects of pain on the brain.
[00:04:06]  And I guess there's only some ways that you can inflict pain on like test subjects that are not unethical or whatever.
[00:04:14]  Because you should be able to just pop them.
[00:04:15]  I think.
[00:04:16]  22 bullet to the leg, you're good.
[00:04:17]  Just see what happens.
[00:04:18]  See what happens.
[00:04:19]  It doesn't hit a fucking thing.
[00:04:20]  The good news is, is I think we know.
[00:04:22]  So we don't need to actually research that anymore.
[00:04:24]  Hit an artery with a 22 bullet.
[00:04:26]  Yeah, I think people know.
[00:04:27]  We will be shooting people with 20.
[00:04:29]  I'm just kidding.
[00:04:30]  No.
[00:04:30]  To be clear, Marianne is institutionally backed.
[00:04:33]  Institutionally backed.
[00:04:34]  Yeah, she is at, she's not just like on her own doing research in her basement because that would be weird.
[00:04:39]  But she unfortunately needs help with some funds for research because the institution backing her.
[00:04:48]  They won't help her, unfortunately, because that institution is Remington, by the way.
[00:04:52]  It's Remington and Heckler and Koch.
[00:04:55]  So she is, there's a benefit show to help her buy some equipment for her research with Cameron Bradford, Benny Feldman, Brace Belden, Eric Rahill, Jack Bensinger, Mara Caulfield, and I think maybe one or two other people.
[00:05:11]  So wait, is this like a comedy show?
[00:05:12]  It's a comedy show.
[00:05:13]  I'm not doing it.
[00:05:14]  Brace Belden is doing a comedy show in Brooklyn, New York.
[00:05:18]  It's in Manhattan.
[00:05:19]  It is in Manhattan.
[00:05:20]  Okay, it's caveat.
[00:05:21]  I am not doing a comedy set.
[00:05:23]  I am not doing a comedy set.
[00:05:24]  Are you doing your famous MCE?
[00:05:25]  I am doing hosting and then a panel where I will be testing.
[00:05:30]  To give the game away a little bit, I will be using the pain devices on myself.
[00:05:34]  Or they will be inflicting pain on me.
[00:05:35]  Oh.
[00:05:37]  And so that is on August 29th at 9.30 p.m.
[00:05:42]  Oh shit, that's coming up.
[00:05:43]  Caveat.
[00:05:44]  Yes, it is.
[00:05:44]  At caveat in Manhattan.
[00:05:47]  And here's a caveat.
[00:05:48]  I don't know if I'm going to be there.
[00:05:51]  I would be shocked.
[00:05:52]  9.30 is like an hour past your bedtime.
[00:05:54]  I would be shocked if you were there.
[00:05:57]  But there will be a special guest there, my friend the Desert Eagle, where we will be shooting one audience member with it to see the effects of a 50 caliber bullet on the so we're gonna put a link to tickets in the show notes.
[00:06:10]  And you guys, if you're in the tri-state area or even beyond that and you are so inclined, you can come see Brace do not comedy.
[00:06:19]  No.
[00:06:20]  And maybe shoot an audience member parody.
[00:06:22]  Just kidding.
[00:06:23]  Other people are doing comedy, but I'm not doing that.
[00:06:26]  I have a real job.
[00:06:28]  Which is podcasting.
[00:06:30]  A comedy podcast.
[00:06:32]  It's not.
[00:06:32]  It's VR.
[00:06:33]  No, I had someone ask me what the podcast was the other night.
[00:06:36]  We're always trying to figure out this.
[00:06:37]  I just, I said straight face true crime.
[00:06:40]  Oh, okay.
[00:06:40]  But not about murder, really.
[00:06:43]  Like the real crimes.
[00:06:44]  The real crimes.
[00:06:45]  The real crimes of society.
[00:06:47]  No, what else am I going to say?
[00:06:49]  It's about politics.
[00:06:51]  It's not.
[00:06:51]  True crime.
[00:06:53]  We talk about freaks.
[00:06:54]  That's what this is.
[00:06:55]  This is a fucking freak show.
[00:06:57]  Well, I've been saying that to your face for a long time.
[00:06:59]  I love fucking freak shows.
[00:07:02]  What am I?
[00:07:03]  I'm just a guy.
[00:07:04]  I'm like a zookeeper.
[00:07:07]  That made me, that reminded me that we still got to get you a Zoot suit.
[00:07:11]  Well, let's start talking about some freaks because I'm going right past the Zootsuit comment.
[00:07:16]  It's almost fall.
[00:07:18]  That is not Zoot suit season.
[00:07:20]  It is.
[00:07:21]  I definitely think you could do.
[00:07:23]  I want to see you in a Zoot suit in Times Square in October 2023, where you do the John Lennon walk.
[00:07:31]  Oh, I could do that.
[00:07:32]  But we need the Zoot suit for the wide legs.
[00:07:35]  You think I'll watch?
[00:07:37]  How wide do you think my legs could be?
[00:07:39]  I got little skinny legs.
[00:07:41]  I know.
[00:07:41]  I think it's got to have a really, I think it needs a sizable cuff.
[00:07:47]  Okay.
[00:07:47]  A big cuff.
[00:07:48]  Yeah.
[00:07:48]  Like we're saying like a seven-inch cuff.
[00:07:51]  Yeah.
[00:07:52]  Yeah.
[00:07:53]  Okay.
[00:07:54]  I think we're looking at like a good people can't see you.
[00:08:00]  That's 10 inches.
[00:08:01]  I think we got to at least have a 12.
[00:08:02]  Yeah.
[00:08:03]  That's actually pretty small.
[00:08:04]  But we need it to be nice.
[00:08:06]  It has to have a pants have to start like what is it?
[00:08:11]  Two inches below your belly button?
[00:08:13]  Above your belly button?
[00:08:14]  No, I'm saying one inch below the nipple or one finger below the nipple.
[00:08:18]  The thing is, so then you have the double-breasted, a little bit oversized.
[00:08:22]  Fuck it, triple.
[00:08:23]  You need that, what's his fucking face with the big suit that everyone got mad at?
[00:08:27]  David Byrne.
[00:08:28]  David Byrne.
[00:08:29]  Oh, what?
[00:08:29]  From this weekend.
[00:08:31]  There we go.
[00:08:31]  Jack Attenoff with his little Armani-coated suit.
[00:08:36]  But you need the like wide short tie as well.
[00:08:40]  Okay, yeah.
[00:08:41]  Well, at this point, the pants will be so high that a tie would only be able to be like an inch or two out of the waves before it stopped being a tie.
[00:08:49]  And suspenders, we could do basically six inch suspenders over that.
[00:08:53]  I'm loving this.
[00:08:54]  So they're only.
[00:08:55]  And we just do, and then we just go, we have to do something in Times Square because it feels right.
[00:09:00]  Hang out in Times Square, because to me, it's still seedy.
[00:09:02]  And I fuck it.
[00:09:04]  You know, I engage in rough trade there.
[00:09:06]  I'll say it.
[00:09:07]  Yeah.
[00:09:07]  I hook up with men for money in Times Square.
[00:09:09]  Yeah.
[00:09:10]  At the old Margaritaville.
[00:09:12]  It's a free market.
[00:09:14]  There's a hotel upstairs.
[00:09:15]  Hello, everyone.
[00:09:16]  I'm sorry.
[00:09:17]  I got distracted by the Zoot suit idea.
[00:09:20]  Zoot suit, Zoot suit, Z-O-O-T-S-U-I-T.
[00:09:24]  I'm really going to, this is, this is my gong.
[00:09:26]  Uh-huh.
[00:09:27]  I'm going to, you know, I'm going to get you a Zoot suit.
[00:09:29]  Oh, yeah.
[00:09:30]  You got me bongos.
[00:09:31]  I did get you.
[00:09:31]  Well, I'm going to get you bigger bongos.
[00:09:33]  You're going to give me bigger bongos?
[00:09:34]  What am I going to get?
[00:09:36]  What do you want?
[00:09:37]  Surprise.
[00:09:38]  I will have a Jews harp foisted upon you.
[00:09:41]  I'll surprise you.
[00:09:42]  If you want me to get you an instrument, I think Remington's listening.
[00:09:45]  Remington?
[00:09:46]  Oh, but that is an instrument.
[00:09:48]  I'll get you something.
[00:09:49]  I'll get this whole motherfucking place outfitted.
[00:09:51]  Believe me, we'll look like a goddamn, we'll look like the fucking, that little cafe from So I Married an Axe Murderer.
[00:09:56]  People are going to be like, is that a troop?
[00:09:58]  Yeah, oh, well, yeah, we'll be looking like... Troopies.
[00:10:01]  We'll be looking like, we'll actually be looking like a lot of people we're talking about in this episode, to be completely honest with you.
[00:10:07]  Okay.
[00:10:08]  Listeners, dear listeners, in case you didn't, you don't subscribe to the Patreon, I'm going to fill you in on some stuff, which is, last week we did an episode partly inspired by Sam Bankman Freed's arrest and subsequent throwing in jail.
[00:10:29]  He's now Sam Joman Jail.
[00:10:31]  We covered this on September 2020.
[00:10:32]  Well, this is what they would have heard if there was a.
[00:10:34]  But if they don't subscribe, then they haven't heard.

=== Atlas Shrugged Podcast (14:45) ===

[00:10:37]  So anyway, you can catch up there.
[00:10:39]  But that led us on a little wild goose chase in downtown Manhattan at a Charter Cities event that Brace attended.
[00:10:46]  Uh-huh, a Teal, A Teal-backed event.
[00:10:49]  Yes, very um, I don't know cool and hip.
[00:10:53]  According to places like the NEW YORK Times, it was one of the least.
[00:10:56]  I mean, I guess i'm not a big arbiter of hipness, but it was, from my definition at least.
[00:11:02]  I wouldn't.
[00:11:02]  I would struggle to call it cool.
[00:11:04]  Well, let's wait till we get you that zoo suit.
[00:11:06]  Um, that led us to the second leg in our wild goose chase all the way down to Honduras.
[00:11:13]  And if you're confused and don't know what you're, what we're talking about, you got to listen to the episode.
[00:11:17]  Gotta listen to the episode and I gotta do the stupid thing, but it's, i'm sorry.
[00:11:21]  If you listen to the episode, what you could do is you can go to patreon.com slash Truanon, you can sign up for a free trial and you can listen to that episode, and then you'll understand what the fuck we're talking about in this episode precisely.
[00:11:33]  Well, it was on the subject of Charter Cities.
[00:11:36]  Right yeah, and we sort of we went through.
[00:11:39]  We talked about Honduras, we talked about, you know, these kind of other plans that they have real quick brace.
[00:11:43]  What is a Charter City?
[00:11:44]  A Charter City, top line, Tardis elevator basically, Probably more, is a more expansive definition of this, but the one we can work with here is it is a stupid city that's thought of by libertarians that is a mix between like a special economic zone and Burning Man.
[00:12:03]  Okay, essentially.
[00:12:04]  I mean, there is an actual definition, but that's the one we can work with that will basically sum up almost everything.
[00:12:09]  What if we leased an area from a sovereign country that isn't the U.S.?
[00:12:14]  Yes.
[00:12:15]  And we just did whatever we want there, like tax fraud, weird sex parties, Bitcoin stuff.
[00:12:21]  And like, we called it like smart new governance.
[00:12:24]  And we kind of branded it as this like true experiment in a privatized city.
[00:12:30]  That's what it is.
[00:12:31]  Yes.
[00:12:32]  Yeah.
[00:12:32]  Precisely.
[00:12:33]  And it comes from a long tradition of libertarian ideas about how they could kind of exit society, start a new one, all based on sort of free market principles and, I don't know, vulgar Hobbes Nianism.
[00:12:52]  I don't know how else to describe it.
[00:12:53]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:12:55]  It's seeking to exit from this crony capitalist or socialistic or whatever, you know, economy that exists in most countries and sort of start your own enclave of like a truly free market.
[00:13:07]  Yes.
[00:13:08]  It's fucking stupid.
[00:13:09]  It is, yes.
[00:13:11]  And it's been mostly failure so far.
[00:13:23]  So we actually love talking about this stuff on the show.
[00:13:26]  I mean, it's like a kind of a return to form in some ways.
[00:13:30]  And I think we're going to get into some of the more ideological underpinnings and deeper history to the kind of like exit movement, if you want to call it that, which includes seasteading, which we didn't get into, but some of the kind of stuff we were talking about in the last episode.
[00:13:45]  Yeah, like the teal stuff.
[00:13:47]  We're going to get to that in another episode, but we're actually going to use this episode to get into what is basically one of the funniest and strangest experiments in the it's not quite a charter city.
[00:14:04]  It's not quite back to the land movement.
[00:14:07]  It's not quite a kind of farmstead, but it's something all in between all of that.
[00:14:14]  It's all three in one, and it's also an amazing Bitcoin scam.
[00:14:19]  It's also, I will say this, in addition to all those other scams, a fantastic real estate scam based on the ideas of Ayn Rand's wonderful, thick novel, Atlas Shrugged.
[00:14:33]  Which I got to say, if there can be any legacy of Atlas Shrugged, it absolutely should be a South American real estate scam.
[00:14:43]  Yes.
[00:14:43]  Oh, 100%.
[00:14:44]  Yeah.
[00:14:44]  I would say that what you're about to hear in this episode embodies the Randian ideal almost more than anything else.
[00:14:53]  If only there was more infidelity and age cap relationships, as Ayn Rand herself indulged in, there could be no more perfect thing than a Galtz-Gulchian experiment.
[00:15:07]  So before we get into the details of this scam-gone rogue, we'll say, let's explain real quick to the dummies out there, what the fuck is Atlas Shrugged?
[00:15:20]  So Atlas Shrugged is a thick, thick, thick, thick book that I have.
[00:15:25]  So I have it kind of like in like a kind of like, I guess a hipstery way.
[00:15:29]  My nightstand, I don't have a nightstand.
[00:15:31]  I have about 50 copies of Atlas Shrugged on it and one of those like mushroom lamps that you see advertised on Instagram kind of above.
[00:15:40]  Oh, yeah.
[00:15:41]  Yeah.
[00:15:41]  And like a pile of Brandy Melvilch shirts.
[00:15:44]  There's so much ionized motherfucking water up there.
[00:15:46]  I am one of the most ionized human beings in the United States.
[00:15:49]  So Atlas Shrugged is sort of most famous for a, I don't want to say plot device, but a location in the novel called Galt's Gulch.
[00:15:59]  Real hard for me to say.
[00:16:00]  Yes, it's very, Liz struggles with this.
[00:16:02]  I myself.
[00:16:03]  Galtz Gulch.
[00:16:04]  Galtz Gulch.
[00:16:05]  I'm just Gulchin, you know?
[00:16:06]  So the novel is about the struggles of a railroad magnet named Dagny Taggart.
[00:16:12]  And this is sort of in a future America where bureaucracy and socialism is encroaching on the rights of a great man to do great things.
[00:16:21]  You're no longer able to start your wonderful business or have your inventions without the government coming in and poking their fucking little noses and fingers in it.
[00:16:30]  So Galtz Gulch is sort of a mythical for most of the, or for the beginning part of the book, science fiction utopia that exists at the heart of the Colorado Mountains, started by a man named John Galt, who's sort of like a genius, inventor, kind of entrepreneur, and that is staffed or really peopled with the greatest scientists and entrepreneurs and businessmen that America previously contained.
[00:16:54]  They're all left their old jobs and left their old lives because of the government socialism, and they have retreated to the Colorado Mountains to Galtz Gulch.
[00:17:02]  Galtz Gulch, which is a, I would say, if you've seen Black Panther, it's just Wakanda.
[00:17:10]  Like that is, Wakanda is based off of Galtz Gulch.
[00:17:13]  It is protected from the outside world because it's a secret.
[00:17:16]  It's protected by a science fiction like disguises, like a dome that's over it.
[00:17:22]  So like you see just like the beautiful Colorado Mountains, but like if you actually fly your little plane in there, your plane goes through that illusion to land on a beautiful private airstrip.
[00:17:33]  Damn, that's crazy.
[00:17:34]  It is motherfucking.
[00:17:35]  It's crazy when you think that every American all across the land, their dream is just one version, a different version of Galtz Gulch.
[00:17:45]  Galtz Gulch.
[00:17:47]  We're all looking for our own little girl.
[00:17:48]  America's Gulch.
[00:17:49]  I'd say the real Galtz Gulch is in you the whole time.
[00:17:52]  It's friendship.
[00:17:53]  So Galtz Gulch has in it a bunch of different factories and science labs.
[00:17:58]  And it's like a huge functioning, ultra-wealthy society.
[00:18:03]  It doesn't make a lot of sense because it's like, well, who works in those then?
[00:18:07]  But presumably all the factory workers there have like drop shipping schemes that they're engaged in.
[00:18:13]  So like they're just more minor entrepreneurs.
[00:18:15]  Exactly.
[00:18:16]  They're selling ionized water.
[00:18:17]  They're putting alkalines in things.
[00:18:19]  They have supplements, all those kind of things.
[00:18:21]  They do workout videos that they sell.
[00:18:23]  Rum milks.
[00:18:24]  Exactly.
[00:18:24]  Yeah.
[00:18:25]  Seed oil detox programs.
[00:18:26]  Lots of seed oil detox programs going on in Galtz Gulch.
[00:18:30]  And it is like a way for like all of these great people, all of these like great personalities and these huge titans of business and geniuses to escape from this parasitical society that is dragging them down.
[00:18:45]  And I want you to keep that in mind.
[00:18:49]  Keep that image of these like these like gods of business and society in your mind while we describe what happens down in the mountains of Chile.
[00:19:13]  So, Liz, it is no secret that there have been a number of colorful and eccentric personalities associated with the sort of movement to build new libertarian societies away from the confines of American Social Security and medical laws.
[00:19:33]  I love these guys.
[00:19:34]  You know, like there's a lot of guys who, you know, they read science fiction books and then they get really excited about the idea and they're like, hey, why don't we go make that in the ocean?
[00:19:43]  Galtz Gulch, right?
[00:19:44]  I mean, that was like the ideal for a lot of these motherfuckers.
[00:19:47]  I mean, that was like the er text of these people.
[00:19:50]  And there is an experiment in Galtz Gulching that occurs in Chile that is, I think, has almost every element you'd ever want to be in a libertarian story involved in it.
[00:20:06]  Yeah.
[00:20:08]  Now, for our listeners who remember our series on Utah, I just want to say getting this cast of characters down was on par with getting the cast of characters down in the Utah series.
[00:20:22]  So, yeah, yes.
[00:20:24]  So I think we're going to run through a short cast of characters.
[00:20:27]  We're not even going to cover all the characters involved in this, but we're going to run through a short cast of characters here.
[00:20:33]  And two, like just, I know a podcast is sometimes a difficult way to take in information and have it stay with you.
[00:20:40]  Look, we're not here to teach you anything.
[00:20:42]  We're just here to hang out.
[00:20:43]  We're just here to hang out.
[00:20:43]  We're talking, right?
[00:20:44]  We're talking.
[00:20:45]  And you know what?
[00:20:46]  You're listening.
[00:20:46]  And we're hanging together.
[00:20:48]  We're going to run through the dramatist personas here.
[00:20:51]  Look at you.
[00:20:51]  We're going to run through a quad of them.
[00:20:53]  We are in Latin America.
[00:20:55]  Starting with Jeff Berwick.
[00:20:58]  So this guy is really a fantastic example of the sort of modern libertarian entrepreneur.
[00:21:05]  He is, I would guess you could call him an influencer of sorts who's kind of flitted from project to project, many of them failing or having long, obscure write-ups written about them, how they ripped certain people off, very scattered online.
[00:21:20]  His main thing is that he writes a newsletter or a blog or a video thing, whatever you want to call it.
[00:21:26]  He has a website called The Dollar Vigilante.
[00:21:29]  Great name.
[00:21:29]  Which, I mean, I got to tell you, this guy is inflation.
[00:21:32]  It's got to be $100 Vigilante at this point.
[00:21:36]  The recent articles include Covades Zombie Apocalypse.
[00:21:42]  There are several articles about direct energy weapons being used in Maui to start the fire.
[00:21:48]  He is a serial entrepreneur, and you would be shocked to learn that most of his entrepreneurships has failed.
[00:21:54]  I think he made his first buck in the tech sector in the 1990s, went bust during it, sold out for an undisclosed amount of money, and then has been failing in various and sometimes very colorful ways ever since.
[00:22:06]  By all accounts, he is a heavy, heavy alcoholic.
[00:22:11]  And there's ample video footage of him out there to confirm this.
[00:22:14]  He was inspired, as he says, to get involved in a Gulch-Gulch-like scenario by an anarcho-capitalist named Doug Casey, who's a project in Argentina that had less notable problems, but never really got off the ground.
[00:22:29]  Berwick sort of got most famous originally.
[00:22:32]  He's famous for another thing now.
[00:22:34]  He got most famous because he was on the news a ton in 2013 for promoting the world's first Bitcoin ATM that was being deployed in Cyprus.
[00:22:45]  He eventually, in fact, not eventually, very soon withdrew from the project, which he lays out in a long blog post on the Dollar Vigilante, where he basically says he actually got fired.
[00:22:55]  Liz, can you read an excerpt from this?
[00:22:58]  Because this is, I think, sums up a lot of this guy's MO.
[00:23:03]  It was a verbal handshake I had done via Skype from the jungles of Guyana while looking at a gold mining enterprise.
[00:23:08]  I think that's...
[00:23:10]  That's a vibe.
[00:23:11]  That's a vibe there.
[00:23:12]  He goes on to say that these guys who Bitcoin ATM won't amount to anything.
[00:23:16]  Unfortunately, those guys, I believe, did make the only real successful Bitcoin ATM thing.
[00:23:21]  You don't see them in New York, but in LA, you go to any fucking smoke shop, there is a Bitcoin ATM there.
[00:23:26]  I've seen them before.
[00:23:27]  It's weird.
[00:23:27]  I don't know what happens there.
[00:23:29]  I've never once at all, even a little bit seen anyone use one.
[00:23:33]  Of course not.
[00:23:33]  Well, what are you going to do with it?
[00:23:35]  I don't know.
[00:23:35]  What do you get out of it?
[00:23:36]  I genuinely don't know.
[00:23:38]  So the next, that's Jeff Berwick.
[00:23:41]  The next in our cast of characters is a guy named John Coban.
[00:23:47]  Okay, so you had Jeff Berwick, Dollar Vigilante.
[00:23:50]  We can just call him Dollar Vigilante.
[00:23:52]  Dollar Vigilante, Jeff Berwick.
[00:23:53]  Yeah, the Dollar Vigilante, who's really kind of a spiritual, I would say, uncle to Coindexter.
[00:23:58]  Yes.
[00:23:59]  Oh.
[00:24:00]  Coindexter has numerous.
[00:24:01]  Coindexter ghost wrote Covad's zombie apocalypse.
[00:24:04]  Yeah, definitely.
[00:24:06]  Then we have this guy, John Coban, who is kind of a weird ideologue in a lot of ways.
[00:24:13]  Yeah, so he's what you might call, he's kind of like you, Liz.
[00:24:17]  He's an excuse me.
[00:24:19]  He's sort of like an alternative economist, right?
[00:24:22]  Like he has kind of his own take on how the economy works and like what the economy should be like.
[00:24:26]  Like it's like, you know.
[00:24:27]  You don't even want to know what I think.
[00:24:29]  I genuinely don't.
[00:24:30]  You are.
[00:24:31]  You are the dollar vigilante.
[00:24:33]  He went to George Mason University, which of course, I'm at Liz there at the Spring Formal.
[00:24:39]  We did land dancing and he wrote several Bible-inflected books on economics, which that is.
[00:24:44]  I've always said, you know what my economics needs more of?
[00:24:48]  The Bible.
[00:24:49]  I'll tell you this.
[00:24:50]  I walk into a bank, very little presence of Christ there.
[00:24:55]  Very little presence.
[00:24:56]  You know what, though?
[00:24:56]  You know what the Bible got right?
[00:24:58]  What?
[00:24:59]  No usury.
[00:25:00]  No usury.
[00:25:01]  Kind of coded anti-Semitism coming from Liz there, but no surprise for a traditional Catholic from Poland.
[00:25:09]  Just plain, Liz is Jewish.
[00:25:12]  Again, just plain.
[00:25:13]  So he fled the United States in 1996 because he thought slick Willie, Bill Clinton, was going to bring socialism.

=== Dollar Vigilante Debates (02:32) ===

[00:25:22]  And he went to Chile with his wife and six children.
[00:25:27]  I mean, that sentence alone should tell anyone who's listening out there.
[00:25:30]  It's like, this kind of shit, the same politics has been happening for so fucking long.
[00:25:35]  So long.
[00:25:36]  You're fleeing in 96 because you think Bill Clinton is going to make America.
[00:25:39]  Wait till this guy hears about wokeism.
[00:25:42]  Oh my God.
[00:25:42]  Oh, well, he has heard about it.
[00:25:47]  But he, when he gets to Chile, he ingratiates himself into the sort of Chicago boys circle at universities, growing really close to economists that were themselves close to Pinochet, who he absolutely reveres.
[00:26:04]  Yeah, he, in fact, became very, very close personal friends with one of like a member of Pinochet's cabinet, which is fucking terrifying.
[00:26:11]  These are like legit real scary.
[00:26:14]  And it's crazy because like two seconds of looking at John Coben, you're like, this guy's a fucking freak.
[00:26:20]  Sociopath.
[00:26:22]  Yeah, a sociopath, but also just like a wingnut.
[00:26:26]  Well, anyways, his wife leaves him, even though he is obviously very much against divorce, which I guess fits into the his libertarianism is a little confusing to me, but you know, it's all love.
[00:26:38]  So he then moves to South Carolina, where some years later he runs for Congress on the Southern League ticket.
[00:26:44]  Southern League is a Southern revanchist or basically a neo-Nazi organization.
[00:26:51]  Unfortunately, he is forced to drop out due to a domestic violence charge against him because he allegedly beat his second wife, who is now remarried.
[00:27:05]  So he starts being hit with, you know, there's like lawsuits.
[00:27:08]  He's filing lawsuits against him.
[00:27:09]  There's charges mounting up against him.
[00:27:11]  Turns out he had actually probably kind of never paid taxes.
[00:27:14]  And so he flees to Chile again in 2008.
[00:27:17]  So he exiles himself to South America twice in a 12-year period.
[00:27:23]  His website brags that he has written over 500 letters to the editor.
[00:27:29]  That's a type of guy.
[00:27:31]  He is certainly a type of guy.
[00:27:32]  So that is John Coben.
[00:27:35]  Okay, so we've got the Dollar Vigilante, Jeff Berwick, and John Coben, two different guys.
[00:27:43]  Who actually, ironically, perhaps more deserves the title of the Dollar Vigilante.
[00:27:47]  No, don't confuse people.
[00:27:49]  You have the Dollar Vigilante, one guy, John Coben, another guy.

=== Dollar Vigilante's Libertarian Scheme (15:26) ===

[00:27:55]  Then we have.
[00:27:57]  So this name is going to be a little tough for me to pronounce, just to be fully open with you guys in a libertarian sort of way.
[00:28:06]  German?
[00:28:08]  It's German with a little guy hanging up above the A. That's an accent.
[00:28:12]  Herman.
[00:28:16]  Ayazeguire.
[00:28:18]  Izaguere.
[00:28:19]  Izaguere.
[00:28:20]  Yeah.
[00:28:20]  German Izagere.
[00:28:23]  This is a quote, Chilean businessman.
[00:28:28]  Super Lindy profession, very, very Lindy profession.
[00:28:31]  Who was apparently brought into the deal by Coben.
[00:28:35]  And then finally, rounding out our list of beauties, we have the man, the myth, the legend, Ken motherfucking Johnson.
[00:28:45]  So Ken.
[00:28:46]  Now, this guy is a California realtor, and this is very key for the vibe.
[00:28:51]  Water ionizer salesman.
[00:28:54]  So Liz, interested in hearing your take on this.
[00:28:57]  Water ionization.
[00:28:58]  Real?
[00:28:59]  Fake?
[00:29:00]  What is it?
[00:29:00]  Well, I think we've moved.
[00:29:02]  My understanding is we've moved past that.
[00:29:04]  We just accepted it.
[00:29:05]  Like, the science doesn't really matter.
[00:29:07]  What it is now, because we're talking about like super like filtration.
[00:29:12]  Yeah.
[00:29:12]  Right.
[00:29:13]  So what people, what's really big now is reverse osmosis.
[00:29:17]  Filtration.
[00:29:18]  Wait, so like you put it in a plant and then you suck it right back out?
[00:29:21]  No.
[00:29:22]  It's like a reverse osmosis kind of machine that filters your water.
[00:29:28]  You attach it to your like under the sink and it does it from that.
[00:29:32]  And it's this type of filtration that really cleans out all the microplastics, all the endocrine disruptors, all of the good stuff that everyone's obsessed with now.
[00:29:44]  And people are really loving it.
[00:29:46]  So I don't know about what.
[00:29:47]  So I feel like water ionizing was a spiritual precursor to like the more sophisticated forms of filtration that we are now seeing in, you know, again, all communities, but especially in libertarian coded lifestyle communities.
[00:30:06]  It's for alternative lifestyles.
[00:30:09]  So Ken Johnson and Berwick, the Dollar Vigilante, met in 2012 at a libertarian conference in Palm Springs, where Johnson, Ken Johnson, tells Berwick that Johnson himself is a recent convert to libertarianism.
[00:30:28]  Johnson starts working.
[00:30:29]  Berwick's impressed by him.
[00:30:30]  The Dollar Vigilante is like, I got to get this guy.
[00:30:32]  What a steal.
[00:30:33]  He's a recent guy.
[00:30:34]  I'll put him in my little, my, my crew of guys I got working for me.
[00:30:38]  So Berwick hires Johnson to start working in the Dollar Vigilante Passports, which is Berwick's scheme to sell Cambodian, Paraguayan, et cetera, passports to Americans, or I guess whoever else, for tens of thousands of dollars.
[00:30:57]  So, okay, stop.
[00:31:00]  Absolutely, I will.
[00:31:01]  The Dollar Vigilante, through his blog, Dollar Vigilante, obviously, was like, you're an American.
[00:31:10]  You need to get out of here because it's what year is this, by the way?
[00:31:13]  2012?
[00:31:14]  2012, yeah.
[00:31:14]  So it's peak oil.
[00:31:16]  And the world's in it.
[00:31:17]  Or whatever.
[00:31:18]  That's when peak oil was, right?
[00:31:19]  I don't remember.
[00:31:20]  The peak oil craze.
[00:31:21]  I got to be honest, 2012, not a lot of memories from that year.
[00:31:24]  Okay.
[00:31:24]  So he's like, everyone, watch out.
[00:31:26]  Peak oil is coming.
[00:31:29]  We're going back to the gold standard, which rocks, but it's also bad for some reason.
[00:31:33]  They like it both ways.
[00:31:36]  You need to get out of America.
[00:31:37]  To do so, I'm going to sell you some passports to Cambodia, to Paraguay.
[00:31:42]  But really what I'm doing is just on the side, I'm paying for the expediting fee through the embassy or whatever, which is probably like 80 bucks.
[00:31:54]  Yeah.
[00:31:55]  But I'm charging you tens of thousands of dollars.
[00:31:58]  And it looks like he's made some statements that like maybe he was paying off some officials as well, which, you know, frankly, probably not that hard to do in a place like Cambodia to maybe backdate some papers and stuff like this.
[00:32:12]  Because his thing is like ultra expedite.
[00:32:14]  Like he could get you a Mexican passport in eight days.
[00:32:17]  Of course, a lot of people were sort of ripped off.
[00:32:19]  Business changed its name several times.
[00:32:22]  Not the dollar vigilante part, but it became like the dollar vigilante immigration, the dollar vigilante, whatever.
[00:32:27]  Like, you know, the dollar vigilante.
[00:32:28]  You know what?
[00:32:29]  You keep them on your toes.
[00:32:30]  You know, everyone's like, never change your brand because you need people to be loyal.
[00:32:34]  I say, keep them on your toes.
[00:32:35]  So, Johnson was a really good salesman.
[00:32:37]  He's like, always, he's working the motherfucking phones for the Dollar Vigilante, and he's like, selling this shit.
[00:32:43]  Berwick is very impressed with them.
[00:32:45]  Meanwhile, Johnson is also going to other kinds of libertarian conferences, not just in Palm Springs, but one in Las Vegas called Freedom Fest 2012.
[00:32:57]  It was held in, as I said, Las Vegas with Judge Andrew Napolitano speaking.
[00:33:03]  Everyone's favorite.
[00:33:04]  Everyone loves him.
[00:33:05]  And he meets a guy named John Coben.
[00:33:09]  So Cobin there, presumably Corners Johnson, is like, bro, I am going to build a fucking libertarian community in fucking Chile.
[00:33:21]  So Johnson gets Berwick, his boss at the Dollar Vigilante, in fact, the Dollar Vigilante himself, on board using his excellent salesmanship skills.
[00:33:29]  But also, you know, he's like, listen, I met this guy.
[00:33:31]  This is a really good idea.
[00:33:33]  And Johnson and Berwick head down south of the border to Chile to meet Cobin in order to start a project that will soon be known as Galtz.
[00:33:46]  Chile.
[00:33:47]  So like nearly all insane libertarian projects, this one gets almost immediately positive mainstream press for basically no reason.
[00:33:55]  No reason.
[00:33:56]  Let's see if any of this sounds familiar to people listening at home.
[00:34:01]  A group of self-described anarchists, libertarians, and Ron Paul supporters fleeing the crumbling world economic system have founded Galtz Gulch with an economy entirely based on Bitcoin.
[00:34:15]  In 2012.
[00:34:16]  I know that's early.
[00:34:17]  So Bitcoin was probably like a cent or like $22 or something.
[00:34:24]  A quirk of Chilean law makes land, mining, and water rights independent of each other.
[00:34:28]  Mr. Johnson, remember, that's Ken Johnson.
[00:34:31]  Mr. Johnson made sure to acquire all three, particularly the water rights.
[00:34:36]  And then he says, in the future, wars will be fought over water.
[00:34:42]  This is like such a guy.
[00:34:43]  Such a guy.
[00:34:44]  I hate this guy.
[00:34:46]  I do want to say that is a particularly good quote to read because water rights are very important to this story.
[00:34:53]  Yeah, because here's the thing.
[00:34:55]  He didn't actually secure the rights, and we're going to talk about that, because the entire operation is one big scam.
[00:35:17]  So I have read their business plan, and it is, in a word, tremendous.
[00:35:25]  Also two pages long.
[00:35:27]  So the original plan was to buy a big old chunk of motherfucking land in the Andes about an hour's drive away from Santiago, Chile, and then sell portions of that land for individual libertarians to come down there and develop in essentially any way they please, which is also, along with the water rights, a big sticking point for how things quickly fall apart.
[00:35:48]  So the actual business plan though is insane.
[00:35:52]  In addition to selling 2,000 building lots for a quote sustainable community, they plan to build three dams with water storage for local use and to be able to sell to nearby farmers, a hydroelectric power generator, wind, they plan to like lease some land for wind power generation, have an airstrip, and lease three parcels of land for cell phone towers.
[00:36:18]  On another parcel of land, they said they were going to start farms, which is where like a lot of the like perceived income is going to come from.
[00:36:26]  Yeah, it makes no sense.
[00:36:27]  I presume also those are not communal farms.
[00:36:30]  And in addition to that, they wanted to start a coal mine.
[00:36:36]  So to be clear, this is a completely undeveloped or almost entirely undeveloped parcel of land in the mountains where there are very few buildings.
[00:36:47]  There's like some kind of dirt roads there.
[00:36:50]  There is essentially no infrastructure.
[00:36:52]  There's no power.
[00:36:53]  There's no sewer system.
[00:36:54]  There's no water system.
[00:36:57]  In fact, just because you buy the water rights doesn't mean there's actually water there.
[00:37:01]  And listen, like Liz said earlier, you know, they're talking about water rights, water rights, water rights.
[00:37:09]  Those are sold separately from the land, as was mentioned.
[00:37:13]  It is very unclear, but almost, well, it's not, I don't know.
[00:37:18]  It looks like they maybe didn't actually buy those.
[00:37:21]  No, I don't think they did at all.
[00:37:23]  No, I don't, I absolutely don't think they did.
[00:37:25]  So within like a few months, John Cobin is kicked out.
[00:37:30]  That's the guy that was like friends with Pinochet's boys.
[00:37:35]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:37:36]  Literally with the Chicago boys.
[00:37:38]  He gets kicked out like almost immediately.
[00:37:40]  Yeah, within three months.
[00:37:41]  Like he brings these two guys down there and then they're like, oh, you're too crazy, but we're still going to do the plan that you thought up.
[00:37:48]  So he immediately starts something called the Freedom Orchard, which is directly next door to Galtz Galtz, Chile, and is the exact same business plan.
[00:37:59]  There's like less attention paid to it.
[00:38:00]  And I think like he actually doesn't, no one really invests in it.
[00:38:04]  But that was like, so already we have two competing libertarian communes directly next to each other.
[00:38:11]  So here's the thing.
[00:38:12]  The plan wasn't real, you know, this being a scam and all.
[00:38:16]  The plan is not really to set up a utopian community.
[00:38:19]  Correct.
[00:38:19]  It is actually to sell lots of, or let's say parcels.
[00:38:26]  Parcels.
[00:38:27]  Of said utopian community to Western libertarians for a fine, pretty penny, but not a penny of Bitcoin.
[00:38:36]  Yeah, I mean, that's like, you're correct there because the stated plan was, you know, these dams and these like money-making schemes, and they have like these sort of projected revenues in the tens of millions.
[00:38:47]  It's all bullshit.
[00:38:48]  All fake.
[00:38:48]  The plan was actually for Johnson to sell like essentially undeveloped parcels of land, just like pieces of land that he sort of owned to libertarians in a sort of no refund style context.
[00:39:04]  Like in the United States, in Canada.
[00:39:07]  Yeah.
[00:39:07]  Like for people from, yeah, from North America, essentially.
[00:39:11]  So Berwick and Johnson start this plan by doing pre-sale lots.
[00:39:16]  Like they do a pre-sale for their commune.
[00:39:20]  So these are from like one and a quarter to maybe five acres big.
[00:39:24]  They go for about $48,000 to $145,000.
[00:39:28]  But you could become part of the founder circle if you purchased a larger lot, which is like 15 to 25 acres, for $400,000.
[00:39:38]  Now, the larger lots were actually a much better deal because Galtz Gulch Chile would guarantee people who bought the large lots were part of said founders club and that the sales of those lots, the really expensive ones, were actually more like loans to Galch Gulch Chile that would be paid back in three years because of the businesses that would open up in Galtz Gulch Chile.
[00:40:02]  Okay, so this is just, it's so obviously a scam.
[00:40:05]  So obviously a scam.
[00:40:07]  And yet, a bunch of people fell for it.
[00:40:11]  I mean, that's the funny thing about this whole thing, right?
[00:40:13]  It's like, if you're a libertarian, you're starting Galch Gulch.
[00:40:15]  What was Galtz Gulch in Ayn Rand's novel, right?
[00:40:18]  It is a place for the cream of the crop, the intellectual titans, the big businessmen who are like, you know, so too smart for regular society to sort of sequester themselves and like be able to build and link and all those things in peace away from the parasites.
[00:40:34]  This is a business plan that I think even the dumbest guys I know would be like, I don't know, this seems like a bad deal.
[00:40:42]  Like a $400,000 loan that gets paid back in three years on businesses that don't exist.
[00:40:49]  I mean, part of the way they were able to kind of get so many people to buy in was because the Dollar Vigilante had his insane like freedom blog network, which like it's funny to like go back to this stuff of that era, like the just Ron Paul Revolution libertarian kind of early blog networks.
[00:41:12]  Yeah.
[00:41:12]  Because it makes the stuff now look, I mean, it look like so much more crazy advanced, or it looks very quaint in comparison.
[00:41:19]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:41:19]  And it's kind of like, oh man, I kind of miss this vibe.
[00:41:22]  Like, these are these kind of nut jobs.
[00:41:24]  They're so much crazier now.
[00:41:26]  And YouTube and everything, and TikTok is so much crazier now.
[00:41:30]  But the dollar vigilante is able to basically promote all of this shit through his, like, you know, all of these big, like the freedom movement and, you know, all of these big early American libertarian personalities that are kind of emerging at that moment.
[00:41:46]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:41:47]  Some of these people are actually still around floating about like little pixies, big names in the liberty fucking movement, right?
[00:41:54]  Luke Rudkowski, who sort of became like a, I mean, he is such a fucking cornball, but like a like a protest photographer guy.
[00:42:06]  Libertarian Angela Keaton from anti-war.com, which is, I think a lot of people think is an anti-war website, but it's just some libertarian.
[00:42:13]  I mean, I guess it is technically, but it's like total libertarian mumbo jumbo shit.
[00:42:18]  Josh Tolle, who is a libertarian radio host and the author of Evangelpenur.
[00:42:24]  There's so many words like this in this episode that are just like these portmanteaus or portmanteau, however you pronounce that, that don't, that are hard to pronounce.
[00:42:33]  Evangel peneur, how biblical free enterprise can empower your faith, family, and freedom.
[00:42:40]  And a woman that you love named Tatiana Morose.
[00:42:44]  Oh, yes.
[00:42:45]  We heard her right at the beginning of the episode.
[00:42:48]  And we didn't actually play the song because I thought it'd be cute to cut it off right then.
[00:42:52]  But we should play a little bit of her songs.
[00:42:57]  I didn't want to give any of my money to a nation based on war.
[00:43:04]  I wanted to be free, nothing holding me back from where I want to go.
[00:43:11]  I thought about it.
[00:43:12]  I thought about it.
[00:43:14]  What was the choice that I made?
[00:43:17]  It was you take away the money.
[00:43:19]  Don't give up your money.

=== Why We Left GGC (06:36) ===

[00:43:21]  Use Bitcoin whenever you pay.
[00:43:24]  Use Bitcoin whenever you pay.
[00:43:28]  I spent way too much time looking at her YouTube.
[00:43:31]  She's a prolific content creator.
[00:43:34]  We should get her on the show.
[00:43:35]  Fuck.
[00:43:35]  I wish we did a show.
[00:43:36]  If we did a show, like a daily, like we did it one show a day, but we could not do that.
[00:43:42]  But if we did it, we used to do it.
[00:43:43]  We did it once.
[00:43:44]  We did it once, but that was, it killed you.
[00:43:48]  And then it certainly gave me an ulcer.
[00:43:52]  But I would just like, if we were doing a show where we had to make new stuff every day, we would just have to just only have freaks on, right?
[00:43:59]  Like she'd be on the show like two or three times a month.
[00:44:02]  You know what I'm saying?
[00:44:03]  I wish.
[00:44:05]  Anyways, Gulch Gulch is using these kind of libertarian influencers.
[00:44:09]  And by the way, Luke Rodkowski paid $25,000 by Galch Gulch Chile and never produced any of the content that he was paid to produce, which is really funny.
[00:44:17]  So that's another little, that's like a minor scam that branches off when they major sales.
[00:44:21]  Everyone in this is scamming each other.
[00:44:23]  Everybody is.
[00:44:24]  Galch Gulch is putting out documents with investors, two investors, with just like totally made-up numbers, like just absolute hogwash, bullshit, fake numbers, tens of millions of dollars in expected revenue, all these things.
[00:44:36]  There is nothing happening here except people are paying for parcels of land that are basically undeveloped.
[00:44:43]  And soon, and this is all happening, by the way, almost all of this happens within the space of like a year and a half, two years.
[00:44:49]  This entire story we're telling here.
[00:44:51]  So this is like a very quick timeline on this thing.
[00:44:55]  So Johnson, Ken Johnson, holds a shareholder meeting at GGC.
[00:45:00]  So people are actually investing at this point and buying lots.
[00:45:03]  The meeting is apparently so bad.
[00:45:05]  I've read this from a number of sources.
[00:45:07]  So incredibly bad.
[00:45:09]  There is a stench that is mentioned from a couple of different people, like a bad, literal bad smell that is kind of coming off of some of his personal effects.
[00:45:18]  It's so poorly prepared, so full of bullshit that people who had flown to Chile after buying lots started at the end of the meeting asking for their fucking money back.
[00:45:29]  Yeah, that's, you don't want that after your shareholder meeting.
[00:45:30]  You don't want that happening after your shareholder meeting.
[00:45:32]  No.
[00:45:33]  One of the women that was asking for her money back was a self-proclaimed Canadian individualist anarchist.
[00:45:39]  So many names.
[00:45:41]  Named Wendy, who she was one of the people, so she bought up like an acre plot in Galtz Gulch.
[00:45:48]  It's so hard for me.
[00:45:49]  Galtz Gulch.
[00:45:50]  Gulch is a crazy word.
[00:45:51]  Yeah, Galtz Gulch.
[00:45:54]  She didn't have a lot of great things to say about this experience.
[00:45:58]  This is Wendy.
[00:46:00]  Shortly after purchasing, I received an unsigned email through the web form of a site I maintain.
[00:46:06]  That, by the way, such a vibe.
[00:46:09]  Yeah.
[00:46:10]  Yes.
[00:46:11]  It informed me that GGC was a fraud.
[00:46:15]  One reason?
[00:46:16]  GGC lacked water rights.
[00:46:19]  Here we go again.
[00:46:20]  I had the opportunity to ask a question of the salesman who showed my husband and me our property.
[00:46:25]  I claimed it was because I fell head over heels for the most beautiful tree I'd ever seen.
[00:46:29]  Oh, Wendy.
[00:46:30]  I felt an instant connection as though the two of us, I think she's talking about the tree here, were old souls who found each other.
[00:46:37]  Months later in a Skype conference, I asked the then GGC aligned salesman, when you sold us that property, when you printed out a photo from your phone that read Wendy's tree, did you know you could not legally sell us the lot you were offering?
[00:46:51]  And he said, that is correct.
[00:46:58]  So That is a perfect summation of many of the problems that Galtz-Gulch Chile faced.
[00:47:07]  Because it turns out that you can buy a large plot of land in the Chilean Andes.
[00:47:14]  Absolutely.
[00:47:15]  But unfortunately, Chilean law still applies.
[00:47:19]  And Chile, despite the Chicago Boy stuff, still has zoning laws.
[00:47:25]  And so it turns out that none of the Galtz-Galtz stuff was zoned at all for the resales that they were doing.
[00:47:33]  None of this stuff was zoned, that they didn't actually get the water rights.
[00:47:36]  It was all a bunch of shit.
[00:47:37]  So the whole thing is like, these people are going to go down there and start these businesses, build these big homes, be able to live down there free from society's laws.
[00:47:47]  But it literally, he could not legally sell these people these parcels.
[00:47:52]  So he was just like absolutely lying to people in the sales pitch, like everybody involved in this.
[00:47:58]  You'd think that this was like one of the things that they would check.
[00:48:01]  You got to check.
[00:48:02]  I mean, libertarians are always railing against zoning laws.
[00:48:05]  So you'd think that they would make sure that they didn't apply to the plot of land that they bought.
[00:48:12]  Absolutely.
[00:48:13]  You would think that would be one of the first things that they're going to do.
[00:48:15]  But my thing is they never intended to actually develop anything.
[00:48:18]  It was always a scam to begin with.
[00:48:20]  So Berwick at this point is desperate to save his reputation.
[00:48:23]  This is the dollar vigilante.
[00:48:24]  This is the dollar vigilante.
[00:48:26]  He's like, we can't let anything sully the dollar vigilante brand.
[00:48:30]  So he splits.
[00:48:31]  He's like, I can't take this heat anymore.
[00:48:34]  He's back to the mainland.
[00:48:36]  Now just Ken Johnson, from the original, from the original four, just Ken Johnson's in charge.
[00:48:41]  The Chilean businessman, he's gone to, soon to be replaced by another.
[00:48:46]  And this starts sort of a flame war between Berwick, Johnson, Cobin's involved in this too.
[00:48:52]  Everyone's like talking about each other on blogs, blaming each other for their various failures, of which there are many in the coming months and years.
[00:49:01]  The minor blog network of the Liberty network is in tatters.
[00:49:08]  It is absolutely in tatters.
[00:49:10]  So Johnson has also not exactly paid per se with fiat or any currency many of the contractors who he had contracted to build some of the very few buildings on Galtz in Galtz Galtz, Chile.
[00:49:28]  He was also, it turns out, out of compliance in many ways with Chilean law.
[00:49:34]  And his bank accounts keep getting shut down because he's making what are clearly flagged as illegal transactions under Chilean law.
[00:49:43]  So he's completely out of compliance in basically every way.
[00:49:46]  I mean, this is a scam that is like, you think at this point, it's like, okay, you kind of run out of fucking runway here.
[00:49:52]  Yeah, I mean, he literally like can't use a bank account.
[00:49:54]  Yeah, yeah, you can't use a bank account.
[00:49:56]  Which becomes important.

=== Company in Hot Water (15:08) ===

[00:49:57]  Very, very shortly, it becomes important because listen, this is a true and on tip for anybody out there.
[00:50:05]  You're in Chile, right?
[00:50:06]  Really, any South American country.
[00:50:07]  And I'm actually going to go ahead and say any country, anywhere in the world.
[00:50:11]  And because of circumstances that were frankly probably under your control, you just blew it.
[00:50:17]  You're no longer allowed to use the bank, right?
[00:50:21]  Like the bank says this guy can't put money in us.
[00:50:25]  If a guy is like, hey, man, you can use my bank account to put your money in, or maybe my daughter's bank account to put money in.
[00:50:35]  Just slowly back away.
[00:50:37]  Just be like, all good, dude.
[00:50:38]  You know what?
[00:50:39]  Keep it in gold.
[00:50:40]  Yeah.
[00:50:40]  All gold in the suitcase.
[00:50:42]  Yeah, we got cash app now.
[00:50:43]  Cash app.
[00:50:44]  We're good.
[00:50:44]  We're the unbanked.
[00:50:45]  We're unbanked.
[00:50:47]  Unbank yourself.
[00:50:48]  Johnson, obviously not a listener to the pod, although I think that he would be.
[00:50:52]  Maybe he is now.
[00:50:55]  He's desperate for cash.
[00:50:57]  He's desperate for someone to put his cash.
[00:50:59]  So he turns to what is referred to in multiple different sources as a local fixer named Mario Del Real.
[00:51:08]  Yes.
[00:51:09]  Who I imagine has a mustache.
[00:51:11]  So what do you picture him as?
[00:51:12]  Well, I did see a photo of him.
[00:51:14]  Yeah, I did too.
[00:51:14]  Yeah.
[00:51:15]  But let's just forget that.
[00:51:16]  Yeah.
[00:51:17]  Because we live in podcast world, not real world.
[00:51:19]  Yeah, not real world.
[00:51:20]  But whatever.
[00:51:20]  Yeah.
[00:51:21]  So he has a very suave haircut, like the kind that is sort of like a side part.
[00:51:28]  And then with through the kind of magic of gel, like swooshes, like a little squiggle off the side.
[00:51:35]  And he's very tan, square faced.
[00:51:37]  And then he has a little red kerchief around his neck.
[00:51:41]  So silk neckerchief.
[00:51:44]  You, okay, what's that?
[00:51:45]  And it blows in the wind.
[00:51:46]  And he also has a tan suit and a briefcase.
[00:51:48]  Okay, this is.
[00:51:49]  And he says, my name is Mario Del Real.
[00:51:51]  That's not his accent, but yes.
[00:51:53]  I am here to fix your problems.
[00:51:55]  How, what's the mustache?
[00:51:57]  Very skinny.
[00:52:00]  Uncomfortably skinny.
[00:52:01]  But he's not.
[00:52:04]  Pot belly.
[00:52:05]  Pot.
[00:52:06]  But other than that, great.
[00:52:07]  Just, you know, normal build.
[00:52:09]  Yeah, okay.
[00:52:10]  And the height.
[00:52:11]  No, just 5'11.
[00:52:13]  5'11?
[00:52:13]  Yeah.
[00:52:14]  Pretty short.
[00:52:15]  Just, but that's subjective, I guess, just to me.
[00:52:19]  I'm going to disagree with the last thing because there is almost no chance.
[00:52:23]  I'm saying this in real life.
[00:52:24]  There's almost no chance and in fantasyland that Mario Del Real is above 5'6.
[00:52:29]  No, he is probably like a 5'5, very rotund fellow.
[00:52:34]  But even in, even in the fantasy image, I'm like, what are you wrong?
[00:52:38]  But he could be like Slenderman style, which is very spooky.
[00:52:41]  Oh, interesting.
[00:52:42]  I'm saying he's to me, he's like a character who would be featured in the song Memo from Turner by Mick Jagger.
[00:52:48]  Okay.
[00:52:49]  He's like one of the guys that would be at the Koch convention.
[00:52:53]  Right.
[00:52:54]  But yeah, so he is enters the company.
[00:52:58]  Yeah, he could be 5'4, very round, constantly sweating.
[00:53:02]  I'm still saying with the red kerchief or the undoing it a lot.
[00:53:06]  He's wiping it.
[00:53:07]  He's wiping it.
[00:53:08]  He's so sweaty, even though he's from there.
[00:53:09]  But he doesn't like going up to the mountains that much.
[00:53:12]  But every time he goes inside, he goes straight for the fan.
[00:53:15]  So, yes.
[00:53:16]  So his girth blocks it.
[00:53:18]  So Del Real comes to Johnson.
[00:53:21]  He says, I can make you a deal, maybe.
[00:53:25]  Why don't you put the money for Galtz Golds Chile into my beautiful, sweet daughter's fucking bank account?
[00:53:31]  That's a fucking crazy way to say that, Britt.
[00:53:33]  She would never do anything with it.
[00:53:36]  She's only 25 years old, which is true.
[00:53:39]  And she doesn't know.
[00:53:40]  I mean, she doesn't know what she's doing.
[00:53:41]  Maybe she's going to go to grad school.
[00:53:42]  Maybe she'll work at a cafe.
[00:53:43]  Maybe she'll work at a vintage store.
[00:53:45]  Maybe she does all three.
[00:53:46]  Maybe she does all three.
[00:53:49]  Put Galtz Gold's Chile's money in her bank account.
[00:53:53]  Yeah, but you can use the bank.
[00:53:55]  Yeah.
[00:53:55]  Oh, no, no, no.
[00:53:56]  Oh, good.
[00:53:57]  You can use the bank account.
[00:53:58]  And because you're out of compliance with law, why don't I sign over some shares of my company to you and then you sign over shares of your company to me?
[00:54:09]  And that way you can be in compliance because now actually you own a Chilean company.
[00:54:13]  Absolutely.
[00:54:17]  Look, Ken Johnson hears this.
[00:54:19]  He hears this and he loves it.
[00:54:20]  My in my, again, we're talking fantasy.
[00:54:24]  This is an unsourced.
[00:54:26]  He's so fucking high and scared that he's like, this is the best deal I can make.
[00:54:31]  Yeah.
[00:54:31]  Yeah.
[00:54:32]  I'm in Chile.
[00:54:35]  I'm wanted by the government.
[00:54:37]  I'm unbanked.
[00:54:39]  I'm about, I'm basically unpersoned from the libertarian network.
[00:54:42]  That is very important to me and my friends.
[00:54:45]  Also, no habla Español.
[00:54:47]  No habla Español.
[00:54:50]  I got to go with Mario.
[00:54:51]  This is my best shot.
[00:54:53]  And Mario's like, you are making a decision you will never regret.
[00:54:57]  Mario puts the money in his daughter's bank account and he gets the shares of Galch Gold's Chile from Ken Johnson, but then he stops that trade midway and does not sign over Johnson any shares of his own company.
[00:55:15]  Yeah, he just takes the company and the money and runs.
[00:55:17]  Just steals all of it from Ken Johnson.
[00:55:20]  So at this point, Johnson is like, oh, I maybe made a big mistake.
[00:55:24]  And he starts asking investors that he has already ripped off.
[00:55:28]  He's already in trouble for ripping these guys off to send him $1 million in order to pay off Mario Del Real.
[00:55:40]  So Mario is basically holding Gold Scalts Chile.
[00:55:44]  Yeah.
[00:55:45]  Which, you know, they're actually opening up one in Times Square.
[00:55:48]  You know that?
[00:55:48]  I've heard that.
[00:55:49]  Yeah.
[00:55:49]  Gold Sculpts Chile.
[00:55:51]  He's holding their funds and the like rights to the company and the company shares hostage for $1 million.
[00:56:00]  $1 million, which was the highest amount of money anyone could think of back then.
[00:56:05]  He puts his daughter on the board.
[00:56:07]  Like Mario just immediately moves in and is like, all right, I'll fucking take it, brother.
[00:56:11]  You know what?
[00:56:14]  Hats off to Mario.
[00:56:15]  Yeah.
[00:56:15]  I mean, hats off to Mario.
[00:56:17]  What are you going to do?
[00:56:17]  That's the way the cookie crumbles.
[00:56:19]  It's the way the motherfucking cookie crumbles.
[00:56:21]  Because Ken Johnson worked out this big old scam that he was doing, and then somebody just came and just yoinked it from his ass.
[00:56:29]  So, okay, this all happens within the span of two years.
[00:56:32]  But what actually ends up happening here?
[00:56:37]  Well, pretty much everyone sues each other and then they all get arrested.
[00:56:43]  So, okay, Ken gets Ken Johnson.
[00:56:45]  By the way, that is the most libertarian thing ever.
[00:56:48]  Absolutely.
[00:56:49]  For it to just end in a bunch of like nuisance arbitration suits and prison.
[00:56:55]  I'll say this: 33 years on God's Green Earth, I've lived.
[00:56:59]  God's Green Earth, not Gold Sculch, not God Sculch's Green Earth.
[00:57:03]  No, that's man's green earth.
[00:57:05]  And actually, I almost don't want to say this, but is this made out of wood?
[00:57:08]  Or do you think this is like particle wood?
[00:57:12]  Is there something in you?
[00:57:13]  I think this is probably made out of wood.
[00:57:15]  The wall?
[00:57:16]  No, that's the frame is made out of wood.
[00:57:18]  All right, I'm going to knock on wood really quickly after I say this, but 33 years on God's Green Earth, never been involved in any way on either side of a lawsuit.
[00:57:29]  Knock on the motherfucking wall.
[00:57:30]  Who's going to sue you?
[00:57:31]  Are you worried about something?
[00:57:33]  Well, I mean, I haven't sued anybody.
[00:57:36]  You know, I've never sued anybody.
[00:57:39]  I have the naturally litigious nature of a vampire.
[00:57:44]  I don't, I don't, I don't want to sue someone.
[00:57:46]  I don't want to go to court.
[00:57:47]  Sounds horrible.
[00:57:48]  Yeah.
[00:57:49]  Every libertarian I've ever read about is suing people left in Russia.
[00:57:54]  Well, that's a libertarian ethos.
[00:57:56]  Everything is decided that way.
[00:57:57]  True.
[00:57:57]  I know, but like by the courts, but they're in the pockets of big bureaucracy.
[00:58:03]  So Ken Johnson is defrauded, right?
[00:58:06]  Like Mario Del Real stole a lot from him, but he's still living on the land.
[00:58:11]  It is in, I think, technical physical control of Gold's Gulch, Chile.
[00:58:16]  And at this point, investors are alleging that he's defrauded them of about $10 million.
[00:58:22]  Now, it seems like trying to piece all this all together.
[00:58:26]  So Ken Johnson is there, and an investor group attempts, or really representatives of an investor group, it's a little confusing.
[00:58:35]  They attempt to actually take control of the farm.
[00:58:39]  Like literally physically, they leave America and go to Chile to attempt to take investor control of the farm.
[00:58:47]  Jesus, man.
[00:58:49]  At this point, Kenny sends a man named Ian with a gun to shoe the investors away and basically scare them.
[00:58:57]  During this confrontation, Johnson is watching while hiding in a bush.
[00:59:01]  I'm just trying to paint a picture.
[00:59:02]  Yeah, and that's great, but I want to say, you say that derisively, but that's a great place to hide in the wilderness.
[00:59:08]  Now, when Johnson fails to get the farm back from the investors, who are basically saying like, they're calling squatters' rights, and they're like, this was our farm that we paid for through the internet via the dollar vigilante, which, you know, fair enough.
[00:59:24]  We're going to come here and stay.
[00:59:27]  Ken's trying to get it back.
[00:59:28]  He can't, abandons the investor group, returns later with more men and more guns trying to take it back.
[00:59:37]  Squatter's rights.
[00:59:38]  I'll give you a right, I'll give you a left, and I'll give you a kick to the fucking head.
[00:59:42]  Now, I just want to complete this picture because from what I understand, this quote-unquote investor group was an ex-military career security consultant whose CV included stints in Kabul, Iraq, and Mogadishu.
[00:59:56]  Okay, interesting.
[00:59:58]  Alongside a librarian for the Homeschool Network.
[01:00:01]  So this is just like, I just want to complete this.
[01:00:04]  Absolutely.
[01:00:05]  Apparently, Mario also sent armed men to the farm.
[01:00:10]  And yeah, so Mario's armed group that he sends to the farm, they're not interested in like living there or anything.
[01:00:15]  They just like strip the house of presumably copper wires.
[01:00:19]  I was going to say.
[01:00:20]  Take anything that's of value.
[01:00:22]  They just like come there with guns and fucking take it.
[01:00:24]  So we mentioned before the sort of like recrimination that's going, and the finger pointing that's going back and forth in the blogosphere at this point.
[01:00:31]  So Mario Del Real ripped off Ken Johnson, but some people suspect that maybe that's not the full story.
[01:00:39]  Yeah, that maybe they're actually in cahoots.
[01:00:42]  Johnson, for his part, claims that Del Real was in cahoots with Berwick, the dollar vigilante.
[01:00:50]  Ken Johnson is saying that Mario Del Real was actually, they weren't working together.
[01:00:59]  No.
[01:00:59]  But no, in fact, it was Mario and the Dollar Vigilante that were working together.
[01:01:05]  So in this, I believe that Del Real would be like a South American agent, a business agent of the Dollar Vigilante.
[01:01:13]  Of the Dollar Vigilante, who was sort of sent in stealthily to rip off Ken Johnson.
[01:01:20]  But people on sort of the Dollar Vigilante side of things are alleging that Del Real was actually working with Ken Johnson in like a fake scheme to actually defraud everybody.
[01:01:33]  Does this make sense to you?
[01:01:34]  No, not really, but I do love those cast of characters.
[01:01:38]  Well, if you thought that was minorly confusing, at this point, there are multiple, multiple lawsuits and criminal investigations going on.
[01:01:47]  So Del Real is being sued by Ken Johnson.
[01:01:51]  Ken Johnson is in trouble with the Chilean government over labor violations and not paying contractors.
[01:01:58]  The investors of Galch Gulch Chile are attempting to sue Ken Johnson in Chilean court.
[01:02:05]  Galch Gulch Chile as a corporation is in trouble because it's been stealing water from a nearby town.
[01:02:13]  Wait.
[01:02:15]  It was stealing water?
[01:02:17]  It was stealing water from a nearby town.
[01:02:19]  Because it didn't secure the water rights.
[01:02:21]  Did not secure.
[01:02:22]  It was just all the water.
[01:02:23]  I would say.
[01:02:24]  Yeah.
[01:02:25]  There's going to be bizarro Truanon rules for the libertarian set.
[01:02:30]  Yes.
[01:02:30]  Where it's like Truanon, but it's like mirror backwards.
[01:02:33]  I mean, I'm sure we have some libertarian listeners.
[01:02:35]  Right, but it's like mirror backwards, right?
[01:02:37]  Because that's your mind is backwards, man.
[01:02:42]  Here's one of those rules.
[01:02:43]  Always secure the water rights.
[01:02:45]  Always secure the water rights.
[01:02:46]  Always secure.
[01:02:46]  You don't want to be parched and thirsty out there in your beautiful Galtz Gulch.
[01:02:52]  So Chile.
[01:02:53]  Just out of like big Gulch, but it's like Big Gulch.
[01:02:56]  Oh, yeah.
[01:02:57]  Big Gulch.
[01:02:57]  Yeah.
[01:02:58]  Chile, for its part, is actually taking part of Galz Gulch Chile via eminent domain.
[01:03:04]  Wait, wait, wait.
[01:03:05]  The country of Chile.
[01:03:06]  The country of Chile.
[01:03:07]  His eminent domain name Galtz Gulch Chile.
[01:03:10]  Yes.
[01:03:10]  In order to build a highway.
[01:03:12]  The money is being paid to one of the investors instead of Ken Johnson.
[01:03:18]  How is that happening?
[01:03:19]  I don't know.
[01:03:19]  I mean, because I think the investor has some dosh and like he probably has some weird legal claim to like be like, listen, actually, this comes to me.
[01:03:27]  Oh, Ken must be so pissed.
[01:03:29]  So the investors are also suing a different, some of the same investors are suing Del Real over violations of the Chilean Urbanism and Construction Act for the sum of $5 million.
[01:03:43]  An individual investor is suing Ken Johnson.
[01:03:46]  The Galch Gulch Chile investors have tried to get the FBI to open investigation into Galch Gulch Chile and Ken Johnson for running an affinity scam.
[01:03:55]  Which is what it was.
[01:03:56]  Which is really what it was.
[01:03:58]  And Ken Johnson now has criminal cases opened up against him in Chile.
[01:04:06]  So as a response to that, you know, the world is kind of crumbling around him, right?
[01:04:11]  Ken Johnson.
[01:04:12]  Which, to be fair, is what they all predicted.
[01:04:14]  Is true.
[01:04:14]  You know what?
[01:04:15]  Their sort of millenarian predictions are coming true in 2017 for one individual guy.
[01:04:21]  He ends up leaving Chile in order to, quote, see his alien parents in the United States.
[01:04:28]  But as many journalists and the Chilean government pointed out, he did not purchase a ticket to the United States, but instead a one-way plane ticket to the country of Argentina.
[01:04:38]  And no one's heard from him since.
[01:04:39]  No one has heard from him.
[01:04:41]  He's on the lamb.
[01:04:42]  I will say this, though.
[01:04:43]  Do we have any Argentinian listeners if you're listening?
[01:04:46]  Find Ken Johnson for us.
[01:04:47]  Yavol!
[01:04:49]  Marshnell!
[01:04:51]  Find Ken Johnson!
[01:04:54]  That was a martial sort of gong-ing there.
[01:04:57]  He'll probably be at one of those rallies for that guy.
[01:05:01]  Del Rio also has some ongoing criminal cases open up.
[01:05:05]  Mario?

=== Phoenix Police Controversy (10:59) ===

[01:05:06]  Yeah, Mario has opening up against him.
[01:05:08]  But you know what?
[01:05:09]  I believe in Mario.
[01:05:11]  There's absolutely no way that he doesn't have some minor but high, excuse me, some obscure but well-appointed bureaucrat in his pocket.
[01:05:19]  I was going to say, there's not a judge Mario couldn't pay off.
[01:05:21]  Oh, absolutely.
[01:05:22]  Judge, that isn't his cousin.
[01:05:25]  I would be shocked if you could find a member of the Chilean judiciary who isn't related to Real in some way.
[01:05:31]  And it possibly owes him a favor because perhaps Del Rio presented him and his family with a beautiful bounty for one Christmas when things were a little hard.
[01:05:40]  You know what I mean?
[01:05:41]  That's the way that Del Real operates.
[01:05:43]  That's why he's part of the Brace Belden organization.
[01:05:45]  But do you remember John Coban?
[01:05:50]  So we got to go back to this guy because he may have tricked off real early in this whole fiasco.
[01:05:59]  But he is, I think, out of all of these guys, including Mario, including the dollar vigilante, the most fucking insane.
[01:06:10]  Yes.
[01:06:11]  Absolutely far and away the most insane.
[01:06:15]  So John is in jail now.
[01:06:18]  He's in jail.
[01:06:19]  He's in jail for, I believe, six years.
[01:06:21]  Yes, I think he's.
[01:06:22]  But was originally sentenced for like 11 years.
[01:06:25]  Yes, yeah, correct.
[01:06:26]  Because he shot a protester during the 2019 student slash, you know, anti-austerity kind of, you know, big protest movement in Chile.
[01:06:36]  Like straight up shot them.
[01:06:37]  Yes.
[01:06:39]  This shooting was actually caught on video.
[01:06:41]  It was like a big scandal in Chile.
[01:06:43]  He, John Coben, he drives his pickup truck through a crowd of people.
[01:06:48]  This is something us Americans have seen a bunch on YouTube in our own country.
[01:06:53]  He drives his pickup truck throughout, crowd of people.
[01:06:55]  Then he gets out and he shoots a bunch of the protesters five times.
[01:06:59]  Just kind of like wildly shooting.
[01:07:01]  Yeah, he just like draws and it's like he, he like, yeah, he does the classic.
[01:07:07]  I mean, again, like you've mentioned, we've seen this at protests happen here.
[01:07:10]  Drives his fucking truck into a crowd of people, gets out and opens fire.
[01:07:13]  Yeah.
[01:07:14]  He then immediately gets back in his car and went straight to YouTube to film a video where he says that he was acting in self-defense.
[01:07:22]  He's like, I was in fear for my life.
[01:07:25]  I was being attacked by a violent mob.
[01:07:27]  Thankfully, I had my gun and I was able to defend myself.
[01:07:31]  What he actually did was he shot a 33-year-old father in the leg.
[01:07:36]  Yeah.
[01:07:37]  So he is immediately doxxed by Chileans after this video gets out, and the police come and arrest him.
[01:07:45]  He takes famously a selfie with the police that are.
[01:07:48]  This guy's such a piece of shit.
[01:07:50]  And he kind of becomes like a cause celebre for, is that how you pronounce it?
[01:07:53]  I never said it out loud.
[01:07:54]  But he becomes like a celebrated person on the right wing of Chile.
[01:07:58]  Yeah, like a right-wing folk hero.
[01:08:00]  Yeah.
[01:08:00]  And they start, you know, they're making memes about him.
[01:08:02]  They call him like a yellow vest and all this shit.
[01:08:04]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:08:05]  I mean, it was like, it's, there's crazy, they loved him.
[01:08:09]  I mean, the insane people love him.
[01:08:10]  Yeah, he became a right-wing meme.
[01:08:13]  And he was so close already with the right in Chile, you know, ideologically, and then literally like good friends with, you know, big, heavy wig right-wing guys in Chile that, yeah, he becomes like a, basically an instant folk hero.
[01:08:29]  The image of him pointing a gun at protesters and firing, like, I think he's wearing a yellow vest is something that is like passed around a lot on like the Chilean right-wing Twitter, Facebook, Instagram circles, and all that stuff.
[01:08:44]  He's a meme.
[01:08:45]  Yeah, he's a meme, which is fucking crazy because his son became a meme in America.
[01:08:53]  So John Coben's son is a guy named Joshua Coben.
[01:08:57]  And Joshua Cobin was very estranged from his father.
[01:09:00]  Haven't talked to him in years and has, it seems, very different politics from his father, right?
[01:09:07]  There was, people might remember, a pretty infamous Trump rally in Phoenix back in, I think it was like 2017.
[01:09:14]  It was, yeah.
[01:09:16]  It was, it was sort of, it got famous because it was like a kind of normal like anti-Trump protest thing with like, you know, like old ladies or whatever.
[01:09:23]  And then there was like at one point with like no forewarning whatsoever, like no shattered commands or anything like that, the Phoenix police department just like snaps and starts like deploying all of their less than lethal ammunition against the and weapons against the protesters.
[01:09:37]  And so like basically beat the shit out of a huge crowd of people.
[01:09:40]  Yeah.
[01:09:41]  So Josh Coben was there.
[01:09:42]  He was wearing a gas mask and a black t-shirt and he basically like kicked back a tear gas canister like at the police and they retaliated by hitting him like with a fucking what like a pepper ball gun like and they hit him right in his crotch.
[01:10:00]  Yeah.
[01:10:01]  And you can the video is crazy.
[01:10:03]  Yeah.
[01:10:04]  Like it's like you see him because he's by the way, he's kicking back a tear gas canister that has been shot at them.
[01:10:10]  Right.
[01:10:10]  Like he's kicking it away from people so they don't get tear gassed.
[01:10:14]  And right after he does that, a police policeman with like a rifle that shoots these pepper balls takes aims at his fucking dick on purpose, clearly.
[01:10:22]  Yeah.
[01:10:23]  And fires.
[01:10:24]  And like those things are like, you know, we've talked about less than lethal ammunition on the show before, but like those things can fucking kill you.
[01:10:31]  Yeah.
[01:10:31]  And like it's, I don't want to know what that dude's nuts look like after that because like it's it's high velocity.
[01:10:38]  He immediately doubles over in pain.
[01:10:40]  Yeah.
[01:10:40]  And this whole instant gets memed like fucking horribly.
[01:10:44]  It's like all over the internet, this like silhouette of him and this kid getting hit with the canister, right?
[01:10:50]  And it like gets, it's, it kind of looks like in a weird like old school punk style, this meme, but it shows up all over alt-right websites, all over like pro like blue line communities or whatever.
[01:11:03]  The blue lines community in the United States.
[01:11:05]  Yeah, totally.
[01:11:07]  And somehow it ends up on the Phoenix police-issued challenge coin to commemorate that fucking protest day.
[01:11:20]  Wait, so Frace, can you explain really quickly for our listeners who don't know what a challenge coin is?
[01:11:24]  A challenge coin is they're issued by like military, like all the branches of the military, they're issued by police departments everywhere.
[01:11:33]  There's actually a really cool book about New York City challenge coins, like NYPD challenge coins that are fucking insane.
[01:11:40]  But there's some that are officially issued by like, you know, the army or whatever.
[01:11:46]  And then there's a lot that are sort of issued by unofficially.
[01:11:51]  Unofficially, but like are, you know, actually distributed in the police department.
[01:11:55]  So like it's one of those things where like the NYPD might not pay for it directly, but they maybe did.
[01:12:01]  It's like fucking fraternity shit.
[01:12:03]  It is exactly fraternity shit.
[01:12:04]  And like, you know, they'll commemorate either anything, right?
[01:12:07]  Like any, a lot of times like there's pretty nasty ones about like shooting people, like specific incidents of violence.
[01:12:16]  And they are like kind of just like a like a large, I don't know, maybe like three inch coin that like you collect and like you like have at home.
[01:12:23]  So the image of Josh Coben ends up on one of these coins.
[01:12:29]  Now, in case like, I don't know, not to be rude, but in case you live in Iraq, like the Phoenix police is like a pretty nasty fucking bunch, right?
[01:12:38]  Like particularly nasty, pretty famous.
[01:12:40]  There were some big investigations into the Phoenix Police Department and the Maricopa County, that's the larger county's district attorney's office during the Trump years, particularly having to do with how they arrested and prosecuted protesters, particularly Black Lives Matter and left-wing protesters, like in these moments.
[01:12:59]  There's like one instance that was pretty famous where they were charging all of the protesters under like gang charges, which was supported in grand jury testimony from police.
[01:13:10]  Like this is what the police basically said in grand jury testimony that was leaked to the news media that was investigating it.
[01:13:17]  And you're finding that ACAB is following the same exact type of philosophy as, let's say, blood's in the crypts.
[01:13:24]  And the cop says, yes.
[01:13:26]  And what about even the same philosophy as the Hell's Angels?
[01:13:30]  Very similar.
[01:13:31]  Yes.
[01:13:32]  And so they're using that to basically charge all of these protesters as a gang, as a criminal gang, which was like a pretty insane, insane case that I think eventually gets thrown out.
[01:13:43]  Yeah, I mean, Phoenix Police Department has like a like long history of pretty extreme brutality just on regular people, on protesters in Phoenix.
[01:13:53]  And so this challenge coin gets revealed.
[01:13:56]  And let's say people are not happy, right?
[01:13:58]  Like, I mean, this was a pretty clear case of like, I mean, well, less than clear because I think the guy actually Joshua Coban sued the police department and I think had his lawsuit dismissed.
[01:14:09]  But, you know, it's like celebrating something, like an instance of violence, right, against a citizen of Maricopa County.
[01:14:16]  Yeah, and it's not just that.
[01:14:17]  It said on the actual coin, right?
[01:14:20]  So it has the image of Joshua Coban getting hit.
[01:14:23]  And then there's a tagline that says, good night, left nut.
[01:14:26]  And on the back, it says, making America great again, one nut at a time, Phoenix, Arizona, August 22nd, 2017.
[01:14:33]  So this is based on the very corny, like good night, right side, good night, left side meme.
[01:14:38]  So like, it's a meme that you'll see in like Antifa or Proud Boy, whatever like pages, where it'll be like a guy kicking another guy and says like, good night, left side, good night, good night, or excuse me, good night, right side, good night, left side.
[01:14:52]  So this eventually gets out because of the, let's say, politically charged nature of the coin.
[01:14:58]  And it causes an investigation by the Phoenix government, like the city government, and it culminates in this long report.
[01:15:05]  So it says, other types of memorabilia and merchandise bearing the same or similar images and text were created around the same time as the challenge coin.
[01:15:12]  Throughout this investigation, members of Phoenix Police Department have recalled the existence of patches, hats, t-shirts, stickers, and possibly other items.
[01:15:20]  So like they're making t-shirts of this shit.
[01:15:22]  So cops are making full-on merch of protesters that they've shot.
[01:15:27]  Yes, yes.
[01:15:28]  So the report goes on to note that like basically no Phoenix Police Department officers would like cooperate with the investigation.
[01:15:35]  Everyone's like, oh, I don't know who posted the image.
[01:15:37]  Oh, I don't really know how that happened.
[01:15:39]  Yeah, I mean, everyone's got each other's back.
[01:15:41]  And it becomes, like, the report all but states that it's almost certainly the fault or due to a husband and wife couple, actually, Sergeant Jantra Palmer and her husband, Detective Sam Palmer, because they were making all These like unofficial challenge coins that were handed out in Phoenix Police Department offices.
[01:16:03]  The Palmers?
[01:16:04]  The Palmers, yes.

=== Two Incidents That Defined A World (04:18) ===

[01:16:05]  I mean, God, God help us.
[01:16:09]  It just, I mean, this is all just to say, like, these two incidents, right?
[01:16:15]  Of John Coben exiting his vehicle after writing 500 letters to the editor about how great Pinochet was, and then just opening fire in like what is essentially, he's trying to do a mass shooting in a crowd of anti-austerities, whatever, student protesters in Chile in 2019, two years prior, his son being shot by the police in the fucking balls with a pepper gun.
[01:16:38]  I mean, it's just this world, man.
[01:16:40]  What a beautiful world.
[01:16:52]  So fathers and sons aside, there's one other character, Jeff Berwick, that I should mention what happened to him.
[01:16:59]  Because followers of HBO original programming documentaries may have seen the documentary titled The Anarchist that came out last year about an event in Mexico called Anarcho Polco that was, I believe, put on by Mr. Berwick, the dollar vigilante.
[01:17:15]  Yeah.
[01:17:16]  And that culminated in the murder of, I believe, a guy who was going by like Jonathan Galt as a pseudonym.
[01:17:24]  Although I can't remember if it's actually that guy, but there is someone with that name involved.
[01:17:28]  Oh my God, get a new book, you losers.
[01:17:30]  I know.
[01:17:30]  Because he was selling cocaine after being on the run from the American police for having transported weed across state lines.
[01:17:40]  Very chazz coated.
[01:17:41]  Very chazz-coated, yeah.
[01:17:43]  And Berwick is all over this documentary.
[01:17:46]  And let me tell you, you can tell the guy is a heavy, heavy, heavy alcoholic.
[01:17:51]  I watched a couple episodes of it.
[01:17:52]  I haven't finished it, but I got to tell you, this guy is, my advice to him is this.
[01:17:57]  Get a real job.
[01:17:58]  My question, first of all, content creation is real jobs.
[01:18:02]  That is true.
[01:18:02]  Actually, it's the realest of jobs.
[01:18:04]  Second of all, my question is, how did HBO frame this anarchist commune party situation?
[01:18:13]  It is, I mean, I got to say that the documentary is pretty entertaining, but because of how goofy it is.
[01:18:19]  It's saying it's a classic recipe for a documentary, right?
[01:18:23]  Like, you just find some freaks and you start videotaping them, which is clearly what the director started doing.
[01:18:30]  And then, like, some years into it, one of them dies in a murder.
[01:18:34]  Yeah.
[01:18:35]  It's like, you have, I mean, you're good.
[01:18:36]  Yeah, that's just what every reality show hopes for.
[01:18:39]  It's framed, it does not frame them in a light that, like, it basically just like is an ongoing cast of characters of bigger and bigger freaks that enter the picture.
[01:18:47]  Which really is, I got to say at this point, that's our show.
[01:18:51]  That's our show.
[01:18:51]  In fact, that's been this show.
[01:18:55]  And that is the show.
[01:18:56]  My name is Liz.
[01:18:58]  Are we doing it like that?
[01:18:59]  Let's do it like that.
[01:19:00]  No, let's do it like that.
[01:19:01]  I'm freestyling.
[01:19:02]  Your name is Liz.
[01:19:03]  My name is Coindexter.
[01:19:06]  And I have an investment opportunity for you.
[01:19:09]  Oh, no.
[01:19:10]  It's called Coine's Trench.
[01:19:13]  And it's a long trench that I built because here's the thing: the government.
[01:19:18]  The long.
[01:19:19]  The government owns the land.
[01:19:21]  But what's underneath the land?
[01:19:25]  Air.
[01:19:26]  You just dig lower and lower.
[01:19:29]  All of that air is open to live in.
[01:19:32]  But not too low, or you're going to get to China.
[01:19:35]  China!
[01:19:37]  We're digging a trench to Shenzhen.
[01:19:38]  And I would like to offer you a parcel for the low price of $22,000.
[01:19:46]  It's like the size of a studio apartment, basically.
[01:19:49]  But you can live in the trench.
[01:19:51]  My name is Bryce Belden.
[01:19:52]  And of course, we are joined by lovely libertarian producer, Young Chomsky, the dollar vigilante himself.
[01:20:00]  And this has been Druinon.
[01:20:01]  We'll see you next time.
[01:20:03]  Bye.
[01:20:22]  Come out.
[01:20:23]  Come out.