The Hot Zone with Chuck Holton

Episode 61 - What's Happening In Haiti with Kevin Falde

Haiti has been really blowing up lately, I mean more than usual.  Someone who knows more about that island nation than most is Kevin Falde, who grew up there as a missionary kid, and now lives there part time as a missionary himself.  He speaks the language, knows the culture, and can give us a great sense of what all the mayhem is about lately.  He just returned from Haiti and gives us a great interview.

 

Episode 59 - SOCIALISM REFUTED in France, and the Caracazo in Venezuela

Coming up, we'll talk about the history of the situation in Venezuela, and see how it has a lot in common with the Yellow Vest riots in France.  That's right now on today's Hot Zone.

 

Hi folks!  Hope you are having a great week.  If you haven't seen Episode 57: my interview with our iraqi interpreter and humvee driver Mahamad, you definitely should make time to see it.

 

Thanks so much to all of you who are supporting this podcast.  It was a slow start, but now we have new subscribers joining every day over at Patreon.com/hotzone, and we're seeing encouraging growth across all our platforms.  Very shortly we'll be live on Opslens.com and their new app which should be online this week.  

 

Okay, the Yellow Vest Movement marched again in France over the weekend, with more than 50,000 people taking part in marches across that country.  There wasn't as much violence this time - only a couple dozen arrests were made - but the grassroots movement shows no signs of going away, and they continue to call for the resignation of French President Emmanuel Macron.  

 

Just as a refresher:  the protests started over 15 weeks ago in November with some of the most violent riots seen in France in years.  And if you are confused as to what exactly the yellow vests stand for - that's understandable, because there are elements of both the far right and the far left in the group.  Basically it's become a catchall for anyone who is dissatisfied with any aspect of life in France.  Some say taxes are too high, others say they need more taxes (on the rich only of course).  Some are calling for social changes, or an increase in the minimum wage.  Others are just there to take advantage of the chaos and pillage and burn.  

 

It all started over a hike in the tax on diesel fuel.  You probably know that gas prices in Europe are already far higher than the US - upwards of seven bucks a gallon in most places.  But diesel has normally been cheaper in France.  Well, Macron's firm commitment to the environmental accords agreed to in Paris back in 2015 led him to hike the tax on diesel in 2018 with another hike planned the first of this year.  

 

People who live outside the cities and blue collar workers were disproportionately affected by the hikes, since they tend to drive more.  And there was no end in sight for the increases, since France has committed under the Paris accords to ban gas and diesel vehicles completely by 2040.  Well the taxpayers got fed up, and fifteen weeks later, here we are.  

 

There have been over 1800 casualties and fifteen deaths attributed to the protests, and at the peak nearly 300,000 people were taking to the streets.  Macron has made many concessions, like lifting the new gas taxes, a freeze on electric utility prices, an increase in the minimum wage, etcetera.  But his approval rating is still about 25 percent.  By comparison, Trump's approval rating is usually somewhere in the 40's.  

 

Part of the reason for this is that many people in France are unhappy with the flood of migrants, many of whom end up sleeping on the streets, and the increasing crime in the cities.  I made a frontlines episode about this a couple years ago.

 

[Frontlines Paris]

 

If you are looking for a lesson in all this, I think there are several things Americans can take away from the yellow vest movement.  

 

1. People don't like tax increases for anything, especially something as conjectural as climate change. 
2. Anytime government promises people something it will eventually come to be considered a right.  Violence will come if that benefit ever goes away.
3. The idea of taxing people out of doing something that is central to their livelihood (like driving) is pretty dangerous.
4. Socialism is progressive like a cancer is progressive.  France already in the top 25 countries in the world with the highest standard of living - that means like 88 percent of the nations on earth people are worse off than france.  But people are burning the country down demanding BETTER wages, SHORTER work hours, and CHEAPER prices.  And those things are all sort of self-contradictory.  In order to even try to deliver on these demands, France would have to substantially increase taxes - but only on the wealthy.  And France already taxes it's citizens north of 45%.  The wealthy have been fleeing France for years over the heavy tax burden.  So socialism consumes wealth and industry and still cannot ever fully deliver on its promises to the common man.

 

Now, let's pivot to Venezuela, which is kind of the case in point for how democratic socialism ends up.  People there are way past the "tax the rich" stage and to the "eat our pets" stage.  Over the last week, we've talked a lot about the mayhem, poverty, and despair in Venezuela today.  More than three million people have fled the country, and many more will follow if the current regime does not fall. 

 

See, thirty years ago TODAY, the streets of Caracas were on fire.  People were looting and burning the city in protest of - take a guess - an increase in the price of fuel.  It came to be called the Caracazo.  Some say more than 2000 people died as the government came in and repressed the protests with a heavy hand.  

 

Now this was before Venezuela fully embraced Socialism.  They were leaning left, no doubt, and politicians liked to do what all politicians like to do...try to buy the votes of the poor by "redistributing" wealth from the rich.  But their champaign tastes didn't fit with their beer budget, and the government had borrowed heavily to pay for all it's promised "entitlements." to the people.

 

In late 1988, when the new president, Carlos Andres Perez proposed moving things toward fiscal responsibility by removing subsidies on  fuel, the effect was a 30% increase in the cost of transportation.  And people took to the streets in protest. 

 

Now I've never understood what people think they gain by burning down their own neighborhoods.  But that's kind of how the mob mentality works.  Once people get infected by the mob, their actions cease to make sense.   And rarely does any good come from it.  In Venezuela's case, the government ended up suspending the constitution, violently suppressing the riots with extrajudicial killings, torture, disappearances, and more.  One of the soldiers carrying out these orders was a previously unknown Venezuelan Military Colonel named Hugo Chavez.  In the political instability that followed, Chavez and his henchmen began planning a coup, but was found out and put in jail.  He was later pardoned by President Perez' successor, and was then elected president himself in 2002.  Chavez's campaign platform went like this: 

 

• free healthcare for all - including pets
• free college
• social justice reform
• forced compliance with environmental reform
• land expropriation and wealth redistribution to the poor

 

Sound familiar?  Seriously, sometimes I think Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez are plagiarizing speeches Hugo Chavez gave in 2001.  Nevertheless, Thus began a twenty-year decline into the socialist pit.  And untold suffering by millions of people.  

 

Now I've done my best here to simplify a complex and thorny issue, and to be fair, corruption in government plays a significant part in the decline and fall of Venezuela, as it has with many other countries.  But now you know a little more of the story of how Venezuela got to where it is today - and what France could very well be looking like tomorrow.  

 

Okay, that's all I've got for today folks.  Thanks for going with us on this adventure.  If you have suggestions or other feedback, put them down below in the comments section. 

 

I'm Chuck Holton and I'll see you back here tomorrow, on the Hot Zone.

Episode 58 - Remembering the Maidan Massacre and Can We Trust the Taliban?

Coming up on today's hot zone - a look back at the Maidan Square Massacre in Ukraine, and update on Afghanistan, and what the future there might hold.  Okay, Here we go!

 

Hi folks, I'm glad you are here supporting the hot zone. Over the past several weeks I've been to Syria and Venezuela, and have had the chance to help a whole lot of people because of the generosity of people like you.  My idea for this podcast is simple - go to the worst places in the world and help the people there in three ways: First and most important: pray for them.  Then, tell their stories to the world and finally look for ways to help them materially, whether by giving food, medical care or just a little bit of money to get them by.  And people are loving the concept.  I've heard from many of you who say it's so frustrating to watch the news and hear about all the heartache going on around the world and to feel so powerless to do anything about it.  I've also heard that while giving to a big charity might do some good, it isn't as satisfying as seeing exactly what is done with your money.  I want this to be a more engaging and dynamic news platform - you get the unvarnished truth about the people and places in the news - go watch yesterday's podcast if you haven't already, where I aired the uncut interview with an Iraqi soldier and war hero who was shot six times saving a little girl and her father from ISIS snipers - and then you get to reach right into those same people's lives and become a part of the story.  What's not to like?

 

Okay, let's look at the news.

 

While I've been reporting so much on Syria and Venezuela, we missed an interesting anniversary:  that of the Maidan Square massacre in Ukraine five years ago.  

 

Let's set the stage for what happened:  Back in 2014, the majority of Ukrainians wanted their country to identify more with Europe than with Russia.  And it's a well-known fact that Vladimir Putin would like to rebuild the old USSR's "buffer zone" of countries like the Balkans and control them in a sort of coalition of the unwilling.  Ukrainians didn't like that idea, but their president at the time, Victory Yanokovich, was more of a puppet of the Russians.  So on February 20, 2014, a large protest began in the central square in Kiev.  Yanukovich sent in police and ordered snipers to fire on the crowd, resulting in about a hundred people killed.  Things went south from there, and this led to weeks of tense and sometimes violent protests.  Yanukovych fled to Russia, and the country got new leadership.  But a couple months later, Russia moved troops into eastern Ukraine in Crimea, which sparked a war which is still going on to this day.  People are dying every day in this conflict - and the area around Donbass has become what some refer to as a human rights black hole.  

 

I had hoped to travel to Ukraine with a pastor friend who has very good connections there in mid-march, but I've had trouble getting the two-thousand-dollar budget approved - understandable because budgets are always tight and this kind of trip is never cheap.  But there are a lot of hurting people over there, and I'd love to get there to tell the story.  Some of the patrons of this podcast seem to think we could raise enough from our supporters to do the trip - so if you think I should go, feel free to donate via PayPal or Patreon.com, and if I can raise the funds, we'll go bring you the story and help as many people as we can.

 

As I've been researching this story I found a report that says Christians in Ukraine are targets of the Russian government, there was a list that leaked of churches across that country which would be burned if Russia invades further.  So I'd like to do more investigation into that.  

 

Anyway, let's move on to Afghanistan.  I'm very interested in the news coming out of there right now because my son Mason just arrived in Northern Afghanistan for his first combat tour as a crew chief in a medevac unit.  I've embedded with units like his before, and while many of the six thousand or so troops we have in the country right now are relegated to the advise and assist role, training Afghan troops and providing intel support, which means they rarely leave the base and get out where the fighting is, Mason's unit will be different - the medevac support they are providing to the Afghan army means they will be doing lots of point of injury pickups of wounded Afghan troops, and that means hopefully Mason will get to see some of the countries.  And of course we pray for safety, but it'd be a shame to spend nine months in the war zone and not actually see any action.  

 

On my first trip to Afghanistan, I embedded with a Medevac unit and went along on a very tragic mission that really was kind of a defining moment in my career.  Watch:

 

https://vimeo.com/manage/2111333/general

 

And there's plenty of action happening - the Taliban is simultaneously in talks with the government and stepping up attacks around the country.  2018 was the deadliest year on record in terms of civilian deaths in that country, and while ISIS is being vanquished in Syria, they are now recruiting in Afghanistan.  There they are known as ISIS-K, and US officials last week called them the biggest threat to America in the region.  So even if a peace deal is reached, and that's no fore-drawn conclusion, there will likely be continued fighting in Afghanistan for the foreseeable future.  

 

It's easy to get frustrated about what's going on in that country.  We've spent a profane amount of America's blood and treasure there, and sometimes it looks like we don't have a lot to show for it.   But as the conflict has evolved over almost two decades now, It's important to see Afghanistan for what it is - in some sense a proxy battleground where we are countering Iran and even Pakistan's influence in the region.  

 

Now I don't believe all the "nation-building" we've done over there was really necessary or even helpful.  We're not going to make that country a jeffersonian democracy, and we shouldn't want to.  But much of the money we've spent over the past ten years has been an attempt to mitigate the risk to our troops by throwing money at problems which might better have been addressed with good old fashioned boots on the ground.  You know, years ago Ann Coulter made a statement regarding Afghanistan.  She said our strategy should be to go over there, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.  She got a lot of flack for that statement.  But with the benefit of hindsight, there is a lot of wisdom in that statement.  See, sometimes violence is the answer - or perhaps a shortcut to the answer.  Firebombing Dresden was a horrific thing - but it probably got us to the end of World War two sooner, which meant less aggregate misery and death in the long run, especially for America.

 

The lesson from Afghanistan is the same one my dad taught me when I was a little guy.  Do everything you can to avoid a fight.  But if you have to fight, do everything in your power to win it as quickly as possible.  Go all out.  America needs leaders who understand that lesson.

 

Pray for leaders like that.  And pray for the troops who are still, after more than seventeen years, carrying out American foreign policy in that dusty, far off land.  May God send his Spirit to Afghanistan and ease the suffering of its people.

 

That's it for the hot zone today.  If you'd like to join us, go to patreon.com/hotzone and subscribe, and please like and share us on your social media.  Hope to see you back again tomorrow, right here on the Hot Zone.

 

 

 

Episode 57 - DON'T MISS! An Interview with an Iraqi War Hero

Muhammad was a hardened warrior but was so impressed by Dave Eubank and the Free Burma Rangers and their "Mercy" that he joined FBR, saved many lives and became a Christian too! His uncut story on Today's Hot Zone!

Support the podcast at Patreon.com/hotzone!  Thanks!

 

Episode 56 - Bombs over Baghouz, Chaos in Cucuta and What to Do when ISIS Surrenders?

A final exodus in Syria and pandemonium as violence erupts on the border of Venezuela.  It’s another chaotic day across the globe, but there’s hope for a better tomorrow.  All that coming up on today’s edition of the Hot Zone.

 

Well things are about as hot as they’ve ever been in the two places I’ve just visited - Syria and Venezuela.  If you’ve been following me on my travels you probably have a better understanding by now of what’s going on in these two crises than 99 percent of the people on the planet.  You’re welcome.  Do me a favor:  take a moment and share this podcast with your friends.  

You know, there’s a lot of hurt and heartache and mayhem happening every day in this world, and it can get pretty depressing hearing about it all the time.  So with the Hot Zone I don’t want to just  give you the depressing truth as I experience it on the ground, I want to do something about it.  Directly.  With your help, we can do SO much!  Look - there’s another news podcast I saw the other day that has 11 thousand Patreon supporters.  And the guy doesn’t go anywhere, just comments on the news in a kinda irreverent, actually pretty profane way.  And he’s pulling in like 65K a month doing it.  CAN YOU IMAGINE how much good we could do with 11 thousand subscribers?  So come on!  Join me and let’s change the way news gets done.    Let’s go together into the world’s hot zones and HELP the people who are affected.  Go to Patreon.com/hotzone to become a part of what we are doing.  Thanks.

 

Well Syria has had some powerful developments in the past week, and I’ll get to that, but first, let’s look at the pandemonium that happened in Cucuta Colombia over the weekend.  Here's a piece I've got airing on the 700 club today that sums up the chaos.

 

As you remember I returned from there only a few days ago, and when I left everyone was looking forward to Saturday, when they said they’d blast through the barricades thrown up by the Venezuelan government and send tons of American aid rolling into the needy people of the country.  Well, it didn’t turn out to be quite so easy.  

 

At dawn on Saturday Venezuelan forces had blockaded all three bridges from Cucuta and deployed riot gear-clad troops all along the border.  It took several hours for Juan Guaido, the interim president, to get his forces marshaled and then trucks full of aid, which were at the tienditas bridge only a few hundred meters from the border, took another couple of hours to get moving because there were so many press in the way they couldn’t go very fast.  Because the tienditas bridge was truly impassable, they drove the trucks to the north and south crossings, the Ureña and the Simon Bolivar bridges, and that’s when things started to go sideways.  The first three trucks that made it to the barricades at Ureña were set on fire by Venezuelan troops, and that blocked the bridge completely.  There was a lot of rock throwing and tear gas shooting at the other bridge as well, and still nothing got through.  I'm told there were more than 300 injuries along with the two deaths over the weekend due to the violence.

 

Here and there a few Venezuelan troops decided to switch sides.  A grand total of sixty Venezuelan soldiers crossed over Saturday, all low-ranking officers and NCOs from what I understand, which wasn’t near enough to cause the Maduro regime to lose any sleep.  

 

It makes you wonder how Maduro continues to hold that kind of sway over the military - threats against their families?  I suppose if you knew your family would disappear if you joined the resistance, well, that’d be a good reason to maintain the status quo.

 

In the meantime, however, millions of Venezuelans are starving.  That might be hard for Maduro to fathom, since he’s obviously never missed a meal.  But if there’s going to be any real change, with an unarmed populace, that change will likely only come when a general or other flag officer in Venezuela’s military defects with his entire unit.  The CIA could probably make that happen with the judicious application of a few million in cash.  But it will still likely be a bloody coup when it comes.

 

Remember, Maduro is surrounded at all times by private military contractors from Russia and Cuba.  He doesn’t trust his own generals or troops to protect him.  So it’s likely to get worse before it gets better.  And I don’t think Maduro is the winner of Saturday’s standoff.  It can’t be good for his image for him to be burning aid while starving people stand by and watch.  Also, I heard from one of my contacts just across the border that Maduro sent his “collectivos”, which are armed gangs of thugs, many of them criminals let out of prison - to terrorize the people on the Venezuelan side of the border.  They looted stores on Saturday, roughed up residents and stole anything of value.  My friend lost his shoe store in San Antonio de Venezuela.  

 

These are the actions of a desperate tyrant.

 

Lets listen to my short interview with the Colombian ambassador to the US last Sunday at the Simon Bolivar bridge.  He had some good things to say:

 

 

 

On the subject of the 200 plus tons of American aid which are still as of this moment on the Colombian side of the border - think about this:  The US State department estimates this aid to be sufficient for something like 40,000 people.  Let’s say they figure out a way to double that.  There are half a million needy Venezuelans in Cucuta alone - to say nothing of the tens of millions inside Venezuela.  So this aid isn't going to solve any problems - think of it as a lever with which the civilized world is trying to pry loose Maduro's stranglehold on power without dropping bombs on anybody.  But it may well come to that.

 

Juan Guaido is meeting with Vice President Pence and other leaders today to discuss his options.  It's likely the US will levy more sanctions against the Maduro regime, to include kicking out the families of Venezuelan military and government workers who are living the high life in Miami and thus insulated from the horrors of Caracas.  

 

It’s clear Saturday’s attempt to truck American aid into the country was a publicity stunt for the interim president Juan Guaido.  But no matter how many countries recognize him as the legitimate  leader of Venezuela it won’t matter until the military gets behind him.  So far that hasn’t happened.  But there are now even more calls for a massive international response, and Maduro's not gaining any popularity points at home either.  So we'll see.

 

Okay, let’s move on to Syria.  Since I left two weeks ago, the Free Burma Rangers team has continued to help those escaping the final bastion of ISIS, the little town called Baghouz.  They’ve steadily moved closer to the fighting, to the place where now they are receiving those who escape Baghouz directly.  What was a few hundred people a day has now turned into several thousand per day - it looks like the people we talked to when I was there weren’t exaggerating when they said there were ten to twenty thousand people still inside.  Virtually all of those getting out now are ISIS fighters and their families.  But they are giving themselves up, starving, many wounded and just…done.

 

So what do you do with all these ISIS fighters when they surrender?  It’s a tough question.  Many say we should just send them to hell where they belong.  But that’s sort of against the generally accepted rules of war.  You could make a case these people don’t deserve those protections - and I see that. But I don’t think you can really defeat the idea that ISIS represents by BECOMING like ISIS.  The ISIS fighters should be tried for crimes against humanity, without a doubt.  They should never be allowed into society again.  That’s just my opinion.  Most of them are foreigners at this point, and their home countries don’t want them back.  So they’ll likely languish in a horror show of a prison in Syria somewhere until they die or are somehow repatriated.  We should NOT allow any of these jokers to go to GTMO.  I’ve been to that prison on the American base in Cuba, and the living conditions there are far and away better than anything these ISIS fighters have known in their entire lives.  They have beds.  They have showers.  They have electricity.  Entertainment.  Safety.  No, none of these jokers deserves any of that.  One side of me says they chose to live a medieval life in their self-proclaimed “caliphate” over the past four years.  Let them keep living in Medieval conditions.  Let their lives be nasty, brutish and short.    The other side of me says we should show them the love of Christ.  But that’s MY job, personally.  Not the job of government.  Romans 13 makes that clear.  That chapter says the government is an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer.  So the American military, the Syrian Democratic Forces and anyone else on the side of civilized society should send their forces to destroy every last vestige of ISIS and then keep the pressure on to deny them the ability to carry out their brutality anywhere ever again.  But that will take a lot more than bombing Baghuz into dust.  A lot more.  As a matter of fact, one way we could do that is to take very good care of the wives and children of ISIS fighters.  You know, many of them didn’t even choose to be wives of ISIS fighters.  Right?  Wrong place, wrong time kind of thing.  What I saw on the ground there were lots of women who were so thankful to be out of that ISIS hellhole, even though they had been told repeatedly that the only thing awaiting them at the SDF lines was rape and torture.  They were amazed when we started giving out stuffed animals and candy.  I believe with the right amount of grace, many those women and children will grow up to be the most staunchly anti-radical islamist people on the planet.  Because they lived it.  Show them a better way!  But Frankly that would take a level of commitment I’m not sure America is prepared to give.  And it’s hard to say I blame them, I guess. But we’ll see.

 

Okay that’s about it for today.  The podcast will shortly be going up on Opslens.com - a media site exclusively produced by veterans and special ops types.  They’ve got a pretty amazing following, so if you’ve found us though Opslens, thanks for joining us.  

 

I’ve got more trips planned very soon - if you’re a patron you have some input into where I go next and what you want to hear about.  So check out our patreon page if you haven’t already.  There are some other cool benefits there too like free copies of my books!

 

We’ll see you back here tomorrow.  I’m Chuck Holton, and this is the Hot Zone.

 

 

 

Episode 55 - Giving Away YOUR Money to the Neediest

So. Much. Fun.  Bringing you the news, and making the news better for people who are "in the fight."  Don't miss this episode!

Support the podcast at http://patreon.com/hotzone

 

Episode 54 - High Hopes for Venezuela

Another report from the Venezuela/Colombia border

Episode 53 - Smugglers, Hookers and Hecklers and the Venezuelan Nightmare

DON'T Miss this episode - walking the streets in the worst neighborhood of Cucuta, Prostitution, desperation, and misery.

Episode 52 - What it is like Fighting ISIS - Interview with an SDF Soldier

Farat is a fighter with the Syrian Defense Forces who has been fighting ISIS since 2015.  His amazing, uncut story on today's hot zone podcast, recorded in Syria as he is recovering from a traumatic brain injury.

Episode 51- What it's Like Working in the War Zone

Interviews with the Free Burma Rangers about what it's like working in the Hot Zone and giving help to the families of ISIS fighters.