Haitian Immigrants Not Eating Cats-But Reality is Worse, "Wellness Influencers" Now an Election Factor, China & Russia Gear Up for Naval War (The Five for 09/10/24)
Hey, welcome to The Five, a publication about the stories that matter.
LOTS to get to, so let’s dive into the news.
[one]
With tonight’s Presidential debate being set up as one of the most consequential in our nation’s history (simply because it’s likely the ONLY debate that will occur between Biden and Harris), be on the lookout for buzz words like “seed oils” and “big food” to come up.
Because after RFK Jr. dropped out of the race and joined Trump, Wellness Influencers are now a factor in this election.
_“Oh God, I’m getting emotional just thinking about it,” Swan shared in a phone interview with The Daily Wire. “I have been waiting my entire adult voting life for a presidential candidate to acknowledge how sick our country is.”
Swan, whose “realfoodology” Instagram account has almost 400,000 followers, isn’t the only one who feels this way. The people behind similarly-themed accounts told The Daily Wire that their followers are very interested in the Trump-Kennedy alliance, specifically the duo’s pledge to fix America’s food problem.
This isn’t the MAGA-hat-wearing crowd typically drawn to Trump: their main interests are health, wellness, and nutrition. Many of them have never voted Republican in their lives. But something changed during the pandemic, the influencers who spoke with The Daily Wire shared. Health officials discouraged exercise, encouraged masks, and mandated vaccines — and Americans didn’t like it.
Kennedy drew these newly-skeptical Americans in with his frank condemnation of seed oils and processed foods, and his disgust for Big Food and Big Pharma. Then he dropped out and endorsed Trump, leaving these voters — many of whom never had a home in either major party — wondering if the Diet Coke-swilling, McDonald’s loving former president could be the leader they’ve been waiting for.
“I’ve been registered independent pretty much my whole life,” said Iliriana Balaj, founder and CEO of the “low tox” shop, LiveHealthillie, and the owner of the “healthillie” Instagram account. “This is probably the first year where someone is finally talking about what America really needs right now: real health and wellness and bringing down the biggest corporations that have monopolized everything from food to products that we use every single day.”
[two]
Another thing to look for in tonight’s debate…the possibility that Trump will hit Harris on copying her policy platforms, quite literally, from Joe Biden’s websites.
Shortly after Kamala Harris released her policy agenda on Sunday evening, users on X spotted something in the metadata: Much of the language appears to have been lifted from Joe Biden’s campaign website.
On Sunday night, X user Corinne Green pointed out that the issues section of Harris’s website contained metadata with language urging voters to reelect Joe Biden. This language was visible when links to the campaign site were shared, and in the website’s description on Google searches.
Sometime late on Sunday night or early Monday morning, the website’s metadata appears to have been changed, with the language asking for Biden to be reelected having been removed.
All of this creates the impression that at least some of the Harris campaign’s policy language was copied and pasted from Biden’s documents. That would be an embarrassing miscue from the Harris campaign, which partly came into being because of a perception that a refresh was needed to garner enthusiasm in the Democratic Party. It doesn’t help that the section on her website about her Israel-Palestine policy seems very similar to what Biden’s campaign was saying.
[three]
The biggest story on social media at the moment is about the Haitian migrant crisis in Springfield, OH…with major right wing influencers (including the Republican VP pick) claiming the swelling Haitian population are eating pets.
That part isn’t true…but something more serious is happening.
Also spreading online are grabs of a post made by someone in a Springfield Facebook group claiming a friend’s cat went missing — and then was purportedly seen strung up and butchered for dinner in a Haitian migrant’s yard.
One of the videos that went viral with the claims shows a woman who was arrested for allegedly eating a cat last month.
The clip appears to show 27-year-old Allexis Telia Ferrell, who, according to Fox 12, was charged after a maddened Aug. 16 rampage in which she allegedly stomped on the cat and then devoured it in front of her neighbors.
However, records do not indicate the woman is either Haitian or a migrant — and she was arrested in Canton, about three hours from Springfield.
Now that the cats are safe, a Haitian immigrant did recently cause the death of a child.
The issue of Haitian migrants has become a flashpoint in Springfield — a former manufacturing hub of 60,000 between Dayton and Columbus.
Over the last four years, the city’s migrant Haitian population has grown by 15,000 to 20,000 people — increasing Springfield’s population by as much as one-third, according to city officials.
Many residents and local politicians — including Vance — have expressed outrage at the influx, claiming the Haitian population has strained the city’s services and left legal Americans in the lurch.
Tensions have been heightened since August 2023 after a 36-year-old Haitian immigrant, Hermanio Joseph, lost control of a minivan he was driving without a valid US license on a highway near Springfield and strayed into the path of an oncoming school bus.
The bus driver swerved to avoid Joseph, and went careening off the road, throwing 11-year-old Aiden Clark from a window and fatally crushing him as the vehicle rolled.
All of this has led to speculation on social media that Haitians are stupid barbarians.
Like the “cat for dinner” story, this doesn’t hold up (the study was very limited and from 1981—43 years ago)…but what is true is that Haiti is constantly losing their best and brightest…mainly to Canada. Which makes the country poorer.
Haiti suffers not only from international brain drain, but also from internal brain drain. As Nicolas Lemay-Hébert and colleagues note, many high-skilled Haitians who might otherwise work in the private sector or the government bureaucracy are incentivised to join international organisations – which can offer them higher salaries thanks to generous foreign funding. “Internal brain drain is fuelled by the recruiting procedures of IOs or INGOs,” the authors note. “They act like an artificial market, crowding out human capital”.
Although most high-skilled Haitians who emigrate do so of their own accord for quite understandable reasons, some have been actively recruited through state-sponsored programs in francophone parts of Canada. One of the world’s richest countries is poaching nurses and doctors from one of the world’s poorest. In fact, Haiti consistently features on the WHO Safeguard List of countries facing a critical shortage of healthcare workers.4
Some economists maintain that skilled migration is actually good for sending countries, but their arguments aren’t convincing – as I’ve mentioned before. They can’t explain why fast-tracking visas for highly qualified Russians would be an effective way to destabilise Russia’s economy, yet doing the same for highly qualified Haitians would somehow have the opposite effect. The simple fact is that high-skilled people have positive externalities on those around them, so when they leave their home countries the people left behind are worse off.
[four]
China and Russia want you to know it’s totally normal for them to hold WWIII practice sessions.
China and Russia’s naval forces on Sunday kicked off a joint exercise at a military port in southern China on Sunday, official news agency Xinhua reported, days after NATO allies called Beijing a “decisive enabler” of the war in Ukraine.
The Chinese defense ministry said in a brief statement forces from both sides recently patrolled the western and northern Pacific Ocean and that the operation had nothing to do with international and regional situations and didn’t target any third party.
The exercise, which began in Guangdong province on Sunday and is expected to last until mid-July, aimed to demonstrate the capabilities of the navies in addressing security threats and preserving peace and stability globally and regionally, state broadcaster CCTV reported Saturday, adding it would include anti-missile exercises, sea strikes and air defense.
Oh, good. I’m sure we can take the Communists at face value that they aren’t gearing up a major war.
[five]
Horrific allegations have surfaced about Kate Gosselin, one of the most popular reality TV stars in the world during the 2000’s and 2010’s.
Collin Gosselin, 20, told the U.S. Sun that his mom would zip-tie his hands and feet together and toss him in a locked room inside their home’s basement, where she’d leave him to lay for hours in the dark.
That area of the basement was “specially-built” to house Collin, he claimed, with a bolted lock ensuring he couldn’t escape. He added that he was left in the room for an entire day or half-day “multiple times,” with his mom monitoring him using cameras installed inside.
“It was like a containment room, literally,” he said, “and it had a mattress on the floor and that’s how I lived.”
The horrific allegations emerged just weeks after TLC announced it planned to start airing old episodes of the reality show, 13 years after it was abruptly canceled by the network.
Collin, a sextuplet who was central to the show, alleged he was treated differently than his seven siblings. He accused his mom of sending him away to a psychiatric facility despite him having no documented mental health issues. The Sun reported that he showed “private medial records” that proved he doesn’t suffer from “several behavioral and psychiatric conditions” as him mom reportedly alleged.
Collin said his schooling was halted when he went to the psychiatric facility as a child, but said he’d preferred being there because it meant he was away from his mom’s “physically aggressive” behavior which could become “very abusive.”
If any evidence is produced, Kate Goesslin could be facing prison time, as there is no statute of limitations on severely injuring or abusing a child.
Until the next one,
-sth