Updated notes V1

In this episode we discuss:

• Chapters
• More on Twitter
• Paid Blue Tick search
• Facebook owner Meta to sack 11,000 workers after revenue collapse
• RoboDebt
• Industrial relations
• If only Labor's wage changes were as bad as the bosses claim
• Predictably, 'employer groups' slam Albanese's industrial relations bill
• How did independents vote?
• The cost of living isn't as high as we've been told
• Good stories – NDIS
• Renewable Energy Storage
• 1,500 pumped hydro sites identified
• Brexit Poll
• Fascism, Communism
• Fascism
• How to spot a Communist.
• USA Update ep 363
• US Mid Terms
• Polls got it wrong
• CNN Exit Polls
• Katy Perry
• The New Candidate Countries For BRICS Expansion
• Chinese Anal Searches

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We need to talk about ideas, good ones and bad ones.

We need to learn stuff about the world.

We need an honest, intelligent, thought provoking, and entertaining

review of what the hell happened on this planet in the last seven days.

We need to sit back and listen to the Iron Fist and the Velvet Glove.

Ah, welcome back to your listener.

Yes, the Iron Fist and the Velvet Glove podcast, episode 363.

Welcome aboard.

If you're in the chatroom, little bit of late notice about the event.

I managed to sneak that in just after seven.

So if you're in the chatroom, say hello.

I'm Trevor, the Iron.

Fist with me as always, Joe, the tech guy here going Joe Evening or.

So, so tonight we'll be talking about a little bit about Twitter,

robo debt industrial relations.

So that sort of, it's the Australian type of stories.

Then I found some interesting stuff about renewable energy storage.

We've talked in the past about hydro storage, so found an interesting article

about how much hydro sort of, storage we need, and different information

about that, which I found interesting.

Bit about USA midterm updates and just the USA generally, and can't have a podcast

these days when we're talking about China and maybe Venezuela with a bit of luck and

maybe CIA propaganda depending how we go.

So just something new.

There's this company called vii, which makes it easy to

create podcasts, chapters.

So I tried it out last week.

If you downloaded the episode, the cardboard place, then Uhhuh.

Yeah.

Not the cardboard play.

Different one.

And if you in this episode, dear listener, look at your podcast app and if it's Apple

Podcast you'll see it and various other ones do now, where there'll be chapters.

And so for the various topics, you can see chapters.

And if you think I've listened to Trevor bang on about China way too much, and I

just wanna skip that section, well you can just look at the chapters and and skip it.

We can go back and jump around.

So I'm gonna introduce that and see how it goes.

And you might even see images on your app as well.

So I introduced it last week.

If you downloaded the episode really quickly, then it didn't appear.

It was after a couple of days.

I played around.

So it did appear in, in last week's episode.

I tried chapters years ago, but the technology, there weren't that many apps

that showed it and it was difficult to do.

But anyway, there's this new thing that I'm gonna try.

So looking out for chapters.

And you can navigate what we talk about and skip bits and whatever or listen to

stuff that you found really interesting.

You don't wanna listen to it twice.

Yeah.

So in the chat room we've got Joel and James.

Good on you.

Say hello and we'll keep going.

So yeah, chapters have a look at your podcast app and see

if you can see some there.

Right.

Just gonna talk briefly about Twitter.

And Twitter was really good in the lead up to the last federal election cuz

people were so over Scott Morrison that it was, it was full of interesting stuff.

It sort of died down a little bit in terms of interesting stuff.

But most of the stuff there now is complaining about Elon Musk.

And there was this great little exchange.

There was a a Twitter handle called Christmas.

And this person sort of tweeted at Elon Musk saying, I don't

wanna be Christmas forever.

Elon Musk, please help.

I've made a mistake, meaning he wanted to change his name from Christmas and

got a reply from Elon Musk saying, You should be able to change your name now.

And the same person who was Christmas then replied as Elon Musk and said Thank you,

which was just top marks for hilarity.

So yeah.

Just sort of demonstrated the silliness of this whole situation

with Twitter and these blue ticks and gray ticks and the thoughtlessness

that's going on with Elon Musk.

So, well played, sir.

The guy who was Christmas turned into Elon Musk, well played . Have you,

have you not seen the number of people who got banned from Twitter for.

For doing, changing their name to Elon Musk.

Yes.

After being Bick verified.

Yes.

Well, you know, for that particular screenshot that he got before he got,

you know, canceled, it was worth it.

Yeah.

So, just on the strategy of what he's up to, just reading from an

article from The Intercept which goes on to say that Musk immediately

discovered that advertisers hate Freewheeling Ruckers political debate.

Josh Marshall, the founder of Talking Points and Mimo, explained this cogent

in a recent article about his experience running an outlet devoted to politics.

And he said that advertisers don't want to be near controversy.

And indeed, they don't even wanna be near things that are upsetting or agitating.

And that is why all political and political news media face an inverse

premium in advertising because the content is inherently polarizing.

. So any content that's basically got politics in it is gonna be polarizing.

He says you can show the same ad to the same people the same amount of times, and

you'll get more money if the content is fashion or parenthood or entertainment

safe topics than if it's politics.

And this is apparently a bedrock rule of advertising that

advertising in amongst political content, it's just not effective.

I, I know that for the people who've monetized YouTube, depending on

how much of a premium advertisers are willing to pay, you get paid

per view differently depending on what your content is deemed to be.

Ah, so when this show on YouTube is getting hundreds of thousands of watches,

we'll get less than a show that had.

Hundreds of thousands of watches, but was Parenthood or I cute cats or something.

Subscribers before you can monetize, right?

Yep.

We're a long way off . It's never gonna happen.

But that's interesting.

Just political content, put an ad in it and you just get it's less effective.

Interesting.

Even with the same people.

So it's not about demographics, it's just the way people react

to ads when it's mixed in amongst political stuff, so, mm-hmm.

. So it goes on to say that is why Twitter was the way it was before

Musk bought it not be meaning they were sort of cleaning it up and,

and censoring it to some extent, not because of the politics of its staff,

but because advertisers demanded it.

Likewise, it's now why advertising has fallen off a cliff.

So a real problem there for Musk with.

Advertising and Twitter.

And the other thing then about subscriptions.

So according to some reports, he wants to make the subscriptions

at least 50% of the revenue.

And it says again in this article, Why would anyone pay for Twitter?

One answer would be to see fewer ads, except people who are willing to

pay for Twitter are going to be the audience that advertisers most want to

reach, namely heavy users with money.

This is why Twitter's specialists crunch the numbers and form Musk

that Twitter would plausibly lose money on many $8 a month subscribers.

So it's really tricky.

The very people that you would want to keep watching advertising

are the very people likely to pay the $8 and not watch it.

And therefore, I wonder how it's a conundrum, YouTube premium, whatever

it's called, YouTube bread, right?

Work works because you pay basically a subscription and then you don't see ads.

Correct?

Yep.

So, good point.

So I would've thought that would be exactly the same thing.

Yeah, true.

Mind you, I think it's 20, $25.

Maybe that's a difference.

I dunno.

Good point.

But you're right, it is the same sort of thing.

So, Oh, you can install ad blocking software on your browser, Right?

That's the other way.

And then watch, watch YouTube without the ads.

That's what you do when you're a tech guy.

Is it joke?

Is that what you've got?

Simple enough?

Right?

Just add a plugin.

Okay.

Tell me about it later.

Mm-hmm.

, by the way, do you listen to Jay?

I one of the, Well, not a one.

You're used to doing hand radio.

You're telling me before we fired up and eventually, Yeah, I still on my license.

I'm just not active.

You need a license to be a hand radio operator.

Yeah, you need to.

Pass a, an exam on technical theory cuz you can build your own transmitter.

So in theory you can cause large amounts of interference.

Ah, and over here it's up to 400 watts.

In America it's 1500 watts.

Right.

Which is a lot of power.

Yep.

And historically you used to be able, used to have, to be

able to understand Morse code.

In the UK the license was 12 words a minute.

And that was if a commercial station came up on frequency and told you you

were interfering with them, you needed to be able to understand them, to be

able to shut down at their request.

And is that, did that ever happen to you?

No.

Right.

Did you have a year of it happening where people were messaged in morse code?

It, it, it was a historical because it was a hobby and there were commercial users.

Yep.

They said, all right, for it to be valid worldwide, it was an international,

it was under the, the international radio agreements that any amateurs.

Who operated need to understand more codes so that they could be told by

a commercial station to shut down because they were causing interference.

There you go.

There you go.

All right.

Well, and, and ideally, if you set up your hand radio again mm-hmm.

without being crazy, the height of the antenna would be how high?

About 20 meters.

Yeah.

So, Okay.

It's a good, it's, as I said, it's a good hobby because when the zombie

apocalypse arrives, you, you guys will be rescuing civilization.

That's every zombie book that I ever read.

It was the ham operators who kept things together.

It was also in who was the Hitchcock?

Mm-hmm.

. There was the, the teenage boys, Hitchcock Mysteries.

The Hardy Brothers.

Right.

Okay.

The Hardy Boys.

They had hand radio.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Travel around the world doing exciting things.

Here we go.

Well, You listener.

If there is the zombie apocalypse and everything just goes to shit and the

whole world collapses, we'll still be able to run this podcast on a hand radio.

Look out for it, . All right.

Back to the topics.

Oh, the other thing you can do, I found you can do a search, which will tell you

of the people you are following on Twitter who has actually paid for their blue tick.

And it's sort of like a, a dickhead filter really, I would've thought in many ways.

So, so I ran the search on my Twitter page, and the only one who came

up as having paid for their blue tick was Drew Pav Pavo Pavlo Pavo.

He's the guy who's always going on about the Chinese, and he

was in the, in the uk and.

It's, he's a troublemaker for the Chinese who I follow because dear listener,

I like to get a broad cross section.

It's not all one bubble I'm listening to.

So, so I thought that was pretty good.

Of all the people I followed, he was the only one who paid for it.

So, yeah, I, I follow about five people, so when I tried it, no one came up.

You go, right.

The, the search you can use will be in the show notes for that.

So that was Drew and yeah,

lots of tech companies, Joe laying off lots of staff.

So meta Facebook is laid off.

11,000 people, maybe 13% of their workforce.

Twitter supposedly up to 50%.

And others like Amazon getting rid of 10,000 people.

Like did you hear about Twitter?

Which they sent.

There was a whole load of sackings and then apparently there were some emails

going out very rapidly afterwards going, Oh, actually not you, You're right.

this.

So it sounds, there's, it sounds like there's an awful lot of confusion there.

It just goes, And the other thing was apparently they were, they

were measuring programmers by the number of lines of code written.

Yes.

Yep.

Which, if you know anything, it's kinda like, measuring a safety inspector on

the number of safety inspections He does.

Yes.

And it's really not a good, it's not a good output to measure.

No.

It could have been a thousand lines of crap and Exactly, Yes.

So just goes to show you can be the richest or the nearly the

richest men in the world, and it comes to be through dumb luck and.

And, and psychopathic tendencies in a particular area that you happen to be in.

Yeah.

I think lots of people are realizing that maybe he isn't the brilliant

engineer that everyone thought he was.

Mm-hmm.

or brilliant in one area, but hopeless in another perhaps.

So.

And Zuckerberg, Facebook is in real trouble.

It's advertisers are complaining because Apple switched off some sort

of facility that allowed data sharing, which made it easier for advertisers.

So historically, everything you did on a browser, Facebook could

plant a cookie, track what you were doing by having a unique ID

that was tied to your phone mm-hmm.

. And so they could stalk you wherever you went on the internet.

And Apple have blocked that.

Yep.

And Facebook were crying to Apple about it, saying, How dare you do this?

And Apple said, Well, actually no.

, we're the ones who are going to sell off our customer's data, not you.

Yep.

Mm.

And basically turned off the tap that allowed Facebook

to stalk with their users.

Mm.

And apparently it's made a huge difference to the effectiveness of the advertising.

And, and don't think if you're not on Facebook, that you're safe from

being stalked by Facebook because they, they create shadow users so

effectively they can infer your relationship to other people.

So if you are not a Facebook user, but you're doing things on the

internet, they will still track you and then track your interactions with

Facebook users and basically work out who you are from your interactions.

Wow.

So even if you don't have a Facebook account, you could still be in their

database and sold to advertisers.

Wow.

Didn't know that.

Yeah.

I might get myself one of those ham radios.

Joe, I don't think

Zuckerberg can't tap into me there.

Surely.

Remember, if it's free, generally you are the product.

Yeah.

Wow, that's interesting.

Did not know that.

Wow.

So anyway, that's Facebook.

Tough times for those large IT companies and I don't think

it's gonna improve anytime soon.

And I've been hanging around, mastered on having a look around there and as

we were talking about before, it's sort of part of the fatty verse of these

interconnected facilities that are all hosted by volunteers and others and

could be the way things end up going.

So, we'll see how that works out, but I'm sort of hanging around there,

sniffing around, seeing what it's like if anybody's in the chat room.

Is founder a via master.

Don, put your hand up.

Who's in the chat room, by the way?

Still?

Brahman's there, Don And Joel.

Still here, Joel?

Mm-hmm.

. All right.

Robo debt that's been in the news.

Not much as it should be.

Certainly not in mainstream media as much.

I've been kind of waiting for a decent article to really get into it.

And I did see something about somebody who got paid $200,000 to supervise it.

Mm.

Was claiming to the Royal Commission that she knew nothing about it.

Yes.

So Rick Morton writes for Schwartz Media Sunday paper.

He's done very, very good stuff.

Almost too good.

It's so forensic.

I'm looking for a more summary version of the whole fiasco, but essentially what it

boils down to is people's commitments are.

With social services was designed to look at their, their fortnightly income and as

that varied, so, were their commitments.

And for a lot of people, their fortnightly income bounces around,

up and down, all over the place.

And this scheme just basically said, Oh, well, we're just gonna look at the tax

records and average their income out.

And then just, and made an assumption of even income, which was clearly

just never gonna be the case, and was clearly illegal because

that's not how the, the act worked.

You had to look at each individual fortnightly timeframe and figure out

people's obligations at that time.

And yeah.

But doing that is hard.

Yes.

You couldn't, Well, that's the whole point.

They wanted to just automate it and mm-hmm.

, and Scott Morrison could see money flow into the government coffers as

a result and, being the asshole.

You, you miss the important part.

It was about punishing poor people.

Well, that's right.

This is the, the goddamn Christian Pentecostals.

If you're poor, it's because Jesus hasn't favored you.

You must be some inherently bad, lazy person and screw you.

Like they got no sympathy for poor people.

This, this modern version of, of muscular evangelical

Christian, they're a nasty mob.

And yeah.

All sorts of nasty stuff going on there.

Good on labor for having a commission to look into it.

And it's just a sad story of people who were faced with terrible debt collectors.

Thank you Mr.

Abbot, for opening the doors to op, doing royal commissions on your opponents.

Yes.

Cause he started with the pink, With the pink bats.

Yeah.

Anyway.

Some pretty sad stories of, of people who are faced with threats

from debt collectors for tens and tens of thousands of dollars.

And yeah, people who were handed to the point of committing suicide.

Yeah.

Terrible stuff.

So cruel.

Really cruel.

And anyway, at the end of this commission, there'll be a list of culprits.

Hopefully not enough people pay the price.

They're shameless these people and they get away with all sorts of stuff.

Hopefully, even if they're just named and their reputation is

ruined, hopefully that will happen.

We'll see.

Wow.

But if it ruins their reputation, cuz it seems loud that doing something

shameful is no longer a problem.

Yep.

Just leave on and get another cushy job somewhere.

This is what often happens, unfortunately.

Mm-hmm.

, The other topic actually where I

useful summary was in relation to the industrial relations bill that I think

has gone through the house and is now going to the Senate and they're now

haggling with some of the independent senators doing a bit of horse trading

to see what they can agree to here.

So the changes are that it makes to industrial relations is makes

job security and gender pay equity explicit goals of the act prohibits

sexual harassment and requirements that workers keep their pay secret.

That's an interesting one.

So, I've never really been in a position where I've needed to know

what my coworker's pay was, but.

any experience with that Joe?

Of people swapping details about their pay so that they could,

working for government departments.

I've been on a known salary.

You're a level X, level five, level six, or whatever.

Everyone knows.

Okay.

That's what you get.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And, and we had a number of years of seniority, so you got paid

increases after so many years.

But aside from that, no.

Everyone was on a fixed amount.

The idea is that in theory, if pay negotiations a secret, everyone

negotiates what they're worth.

But realistically, the people who are most able to walk from job to job

command the biggest pay rises and those who are willing to negotiate hard.

Yes.

And not everyone.

Typically men, one of the reasons for males being paid more, I

believe, was just because they were more likely to be aggressive and

bargain and actually thought of themselves as worth more as well.

Kind of inherently a gender thing.

And I would say that extroverts probably negotiate harder than introverts.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But if you are in a workforce in that position, what's the downside

in not sharing your income?

Like, I reckon it's not like say you're with five or six people in a similar,

you think are all about the same as you.

And you're curious if you were to agree to sort of swap information about your

salaries, what, what's the downside?

If, if there is a fixed pool of remuneration?

Yes.

Then if they're negotiating.

Then there isn't as much for you to negotiate.

Right.

But is there a fixed pool?

Like is it ever fixed?

Yeah.

Well, my employer basically says there is a pool of X for this department.

Oh, okay.

So it's, it's basically down to the employer to fit as many people in.

Okay.

I'm thinking of a law firm.

I'm thinking of, you know, you're not a partner, you're in some sort

of just employed salaried lawyer.

Mm-hmm.

. I reckon they should all just get together somewhere and swap information because

then they'll know what's possible.

It's not like the people on the higher level are gonna have their

salaries dropped, it's just that the ones on the lower level are gonna

know that they can get an increase.

So for that situation, I would've thought you should do it in the chatroom.

Anybody ever sort of swapped sort of income information with.

A coworker and had a successful or unsuccessful sort of result out of that.

Shalene says, Bullshit.

I don't know what the bullshit was about Shalene.

Was it something I said or what?

I'm guessing the bullshit was to do with the people knowing your salary is bad.

Right.

Okay.

I'm sure she'll expand on it shortly.

So, anyway, under these changes requirements that workers so prohibits

sort of employers trying to stop workers from keeping their pay secret

and strengthens the rights of workers with family responsibilities to

request flexible working hours and abolished the Australian Building

and Construction Commission.

And I think the flexible working hours is more a presumption of yes than the

employer has to provide reasons why not, rather than the other way around.

So I haven't seen a great summary of that yet.

And what it all means, maybe Shay will make a guest appearance down the track.

Mm-hmm.

, tell us all about it.

Shai, you're probably across all this, so, Yeah.

So anyway, that's what's happened.

Robo debt and industrial relations, so, Oh, here we go.

Shay says it's inherently sexist to presume blokes just get paid more because

they are better at bargaining baloney.

I don't know this, I wouldn't say they're better at it.

I'd say they're more likely to engage in it, I think is what I read somewhere, but,

or more likely to argue about their party.

But Shay saying that's baloney as a theory.

Okay.

Fair enough.

You're probably right, Shay.

Right, of course, in response to the industrial relations bill, , all sorts

of industry spokespeople come out.

And there was an article by Belinda Jones in Independent Australia, where she names

these people ins Willox of the Australian Industry Group, Jennifer Westcott from

the Business Council of Australia.

You'd see her all the time.

That one in particular, Jennifer Westcott, Steve, not from the

Australian Chamber of Commerce, Danita Warren mba from the Master Builders

Association, you know, Tony Ma from the National Farmer's Federation.

So, according to this writer, Belinda Jones, these five spokespeople,

spokespersons get trotted out all the time and make statements in front

of the media and give the employers side of the story, which invariably,

of course, They're representing the employer side of the story.

It's gonna be outrage at how much this is going to cost business and

eventually cost jobs and, you know, paint a negative approach to it.

So it's a good point to being record profits.

Yes.

But you know, this is what it's a bit like with religion.

There's full-time PR people like the John Dick Dickens of the

world, Dickinson Dickens can't remember his name, but Oh yeah.

It got nothing else to do, but ring up ABC offer themselves as an interview subject.

Isn't Dixon Dixon?

Yeah.

And the same with these guys.

It's their job to contact these media people and make these statements,

whereas I guess there's a union.

Where are the union?

Where's our, where's our Bob Hawk?

This is where sort of Bob Hawk was the guy who came out and spoke on

behalf of the union movement and the workers in these situations.

Well, wasn't the oh T G W U used to regularly be on these?

I can't think of a particular player in the same way that I can think of.

I always see that Jennifer Westcott everywhere, so on q

and a in all sorts of places.

And I think if you're looking at the UK at the moment where they've got

those railway strikes happening mm-hmm.

and, you know, you've got Mick Lynch who is a real sort of spokesperson

for the working class of the UK at the moment and really taking on the UK

equivalents of the Jennifer Westcotts in these panel discussions and

absolutely murdering them, one of them.

And Where's Australia's McManis was who I was.

Yeah, actually she is good.

I will say I have seen her on things and You are right, Sally McManis and yeah,

she, she would be the one, We need more of them anyway, and I think, well, we

need them to, I'm sure they're out there.

It's just getting on to media and even the abc, even while, I mean obviously Sky

News and the Murdoch Press are just going to reach out to business interests and,

and, and, and not reach out to the others.

But even the ABC, I think is very lazy on these things.

And they'll get approached by these people and they think, Oh,

well, come on, we'll talk to you.

It's easy for their producers to find these people and put them

on than to find other people.

So, That's just one of the inherent problems when it's like the atheist

movement can't afford to pay people to be full-time advocates for atheism as opposed

to Christian groups the unions can afford.

And yeah, the unions can, they should be doing better job at it.

Tony McManus.

Full mark.

She's very good.

Need more of them.

Shai agrees with me, I think so.

We've had a bullshit and an I agree out of Shay in the chatroom.

I'll keep going to see how the strike rate goes.

Good to hear from you, Shay.

Until Shay gets so angry that she throws the computer across

the room, she wouldn't do that.

Yeah.

Just also the independence of, in the house, were voting on this stuff,

so that's showing the true colors of some of the teal in independence.

I I thought it was a known thing that the teals were.

Liberals just with a bit of climate change.

That was it.

Well, it's, it's sort of sorting them out a little bit.

So, Zoe Daniel and Monique Ryan voted in favor of the bill along with Bob

Catter, Andrew Wilke and the Greens.

So the ones who voted against the industrial relations changes were

Sophie Scams, Helen Haynes, Kate Chaney, zte, and Alexandra Spender.

So certainly STL and Spender should always have been viewed as really blue blood

liberals who just couldn't handle the craziness of the current liberal party,

but in all other respects are liberals and basically showing their colors there.

So, so yeah, and also Rebecca Sharky and.

Die anyway.

That's interesting that this bill has sorted out a little bit about these

teals as to which side of the fence, right or left the might really belong.

Roland says, yes, that's why it's teal blue with a bit of

green added otherwise blue.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That was always my assumption was that they were liberal just

without the climate craziness.

Yeah.

Robin in the chat room says Paul si.

Pauls was a, he was actually like a reporter in the Murdoch press and he's

gone to work for one of the unions.

I see him on social media, but I don't see him saying a lot

on general mass media, robin.

But Yeah, it's a good channel Island's name Cray it, it's a, Is that the

name of a channel island, is it?

No, no, no.

It's a common surname in the Channel Islands.

Oh, is it?

Yeah.

Okay.

Okay.

He's a friend of yours, isn't he?

Robin?

I'd like to meet Paul Cray one day.

I think the interesting guy.

He's down the case there somewhere.

Okay.

So we had a little mini budget and after the budget, the cost of living increased

by 7.3% over the past year apparently.

But did it, so maybe instead of 7.3, it was only 6.7 or only 6.4.

And what is the confusion all about?

Well, according to Ross Gittens, he says that 7.3 is the rise

in the consumer price index.

And that's typically, The sort of figure that we've worked off in our

heads as to how much have prices increased over the last whatever period.

But he says there's, in addition to the consumer price index, there's

always been a living cost index, which for various household types,

whether you are a young family or a retired couple or something like that.

So this living cost index has always been there, but not really talked about.

And we've mentioned before about gdp, Joe, how GDP is such a bad measure

of, Well, it's not consistent.

Yes.

Economic activity, just the very idea of it is, is not good.

But the variations between different countries in how they measure gdp and

we went extensively through Australia versus USA in terms of housing costs

and how GDP is quite different.

Well, Consumer Price Index before 1998, the cpi it used to include interest on

mortgages, but the Reserve bank asked for a change because they didn't want the

measure of inflation to go up every time.

It raised interest rates to get inflation down and on them.

So they're saying, Hang on a minute, we are raising interest rates in

order to get inflation down, but in your inflation calculation

you are including mortgage rates.

So that's just not working for us.

So this, so the statisticians said, Okay, we'll take out mortgage rates.

And effectively they put in the cost of building a new house

rather than mortgage rates.

But that's a really, People do that all the time.

Yeah.

Well this is the point that he makes in the article is how many people,

lots of people never build a house.

And how many people build one once in a blue?

Me like the cost of building a house is not a good indicator to use.

Whereas everybody, well, not everybody, but far more people are actually

paying interest on a mortgage.

So if you're really wanting to get a reflection of how is the cost of living

in Australia changed in the last 12 months, you're probably better off

looking at the cost of living index rather than the consumer price index.

There you go.

So that was an interesting one by Ross Gittens and Okay.

Wanting to do a good story for change.

N D I S, so Dylan Elcot is kind of like Spokeperson, I guess

for the N D I S and he was at a interview at a press conference.

And I think this is gonna demonstrate the value of having I mean, I wanna

say a regular guy, but regular in the sense, not ensconced in a labor union or

in a law firm, or this was the public.

He's had a life.

Yeah, he's had a life.

And anyway, have a listen to this this clip.

Hopefully it works.

What do you say to those who have been rotting, the N D I S?

You talked today about lawyers, a lot of money going in, in legal

fees, but there are clear instances of people abusing the, the scheme.

Yeah.

They can go and get stuffed . Like first and foremost, we've had

four questions about the N D s.

So they've all been negative things about it.

I'm starting by saying the n D s is bloody awesome.

Right?

We commissioned an N D I S report a few months ago.

The first almost half is about good.

The N D I S is, you know, we talked about early intervention before.

One of the things we found out about this report for kids with early

intervention on the N D I S who were under the age of six had doubled the

amount of friends, the kids who weren't, I had no friends when I was five.

Like, I got goosebumps saying that.

Where was, I would've loved to have the N D I S.

Did you know that?

Not really.

You don't really read stories about that, do you?

You don't talk about the economic growth of it being involved and things like that.

So first and foremost, it's awesome, right?

And we need to hear our stories about the good things that are happening.

But secondly, you know, there are some dodgy people out there doing dodgy things.

And we are gonna find, you know, the government have already commissioned

the, it's a really funny, good word, The fraud task, Fusion fraud task force.

And they're gonna, that's gonna find people that are doing the wrong thing.

And if you are watching this and you're doing the wrong thing, you

are literally taking away from a new diverse kid getting care.

You're taking away someone with a high level disability, having a shower.

You're not taking away us having fast cars and stuff like that.

That is not what it's about.

To remind yourself if you are doing that, Hey, you know what, I'm not

gonna try and do that anymore.

Well, wasn't that direct language really well said?

Yeah.

Good sentiment.

Yeah, please man.

Well said goodnight.

That's, he's got a future.

In politics, and he'll join a party and they'll beat that out

of him and make him talk in rids.

Good on you, Dylan.

Right?

I don't know how I came across this article.

I think it might have been John blog about renewable energy and so there's

a couple of reports included in it.

Actually it was, was in the John blog.

If you are not subscribed to the John blog, you should.

Your other alternative, of course, is just to subscribe to

my newsletter and you'll get it.

The best bits extracted anyway.

So go to the website, i Glove dot com au and sign up for the newsletter three times

a week, few articles, and I sort of scour the internet for you so you don't have to.

Anyway.

In the John Energy blog, there was an article by an Andrew Blake is

an Anna Do and o stocks, and they are from a university, I believe.

Let me just actually let me just find, whoops, I've just

gone past where I wanted to go.

Hang on a second.

So they're from the Australian National University and I guess the lead guy,

Andrew Blake, is professor of engineering at the Australian National University.

So they've been looking at pump hydro and anyway there was a group who were

for one of these reports that's in the show notes about how much pumped hydro

storage do we need, and as a guide to storage requirements, if we're gonna have

a hundred percent renewable electricity based on analysis for Australia.

Is one gigawatt of power per million people with 20 hours

of storage, which amounts to 20 gigawatts per million people.

So essentially in a grid like ours, which is strongly connected it's a

large area and with good wind and solar resources and high energy use doing the

math, looking at the weather systems, they can calculate that at any point.

If you've got hydro backup of 20 hours of storage then you've got a secure system

and that means you need 20 gigawatts 20 gigawatt hours per million people.

And so that was the calculation they came up.

And so for Australia, that means Australia needs about 500 gigawatt hours.

G w h I think gigawatt hours, Joe.

Yeah.

Gigawatt hours.

Yeah.

Don't forget Australia's a bit bizarre because the east coast

and west coast are not connected.

Yes.

And the East coast has got lots of great pumped hydro spots.

Mm-hmm.

and the West Coast, not so much.

Apparently.

Just the Gilbert, It's a bit flat over there.

Yes.

Yep.

So, so yeah.

Anyway, they've given that figure for Australia right, 500 gigawatt hours

of pumped hydro is going to be enough.

And in this article, Flux capacitor, What's that?

Yeah.

Flux capac Flus capacitor.

Yeah.

In the DeLorean or whatever it is.

Yeah.

That was it.

Yeah.

So.

Just back to this article in the John Manou blog by these academics.

It says of course, pumped hydro involves two dams, one high on a

hill and one down in a valley with pipes and turbines connecting them.

You store electricity by pumping water uphill to the upper reservoir on a

sunny and windy days, and you turn it back into power at night or during

calm or cloudy days by letting the water flow downhill through a turbine.

So it's like a giant gravity battery.

So the question now is where are the best locations?

Last year we released a global atlas of 600,000 Greenfield

locations that was worldwide.

And 4,000 of these were in Australia.

So Greenfield locations are where there is no existing reservoir.

So they've now identified 1500 new Australian sites,

which they call Bluefield.

Sites and Bluefield locations where there's already one

reservoir for some reason in place.

So you only need to make one extra reservoir.

It has to be built so it's using existing reservoirs.

And apparently there's 1500 of these in this report.

So none of this requires damning of major rivers.

So that's also a good thing.

So according to this report, because we've got so many good

options, we can afford to be choosy.

We can go all the way to a hundred percent renewables while only

developing the very best sites.

And further on it says same sort of thing.

Oh, that 500 gigawatts hours, which was supposedly enough for Australia.

that would supply all of Sydney's electricity for about four days.

So think of 500 gigawatts as Sydney for four days.

Well, let's look at some of the projects that are being considered.

So there's a Kidston project in far North Queensland, two gigawatts snowy, 2.0

Hunt Hydro is looking at 350 gigawatts.

So consider we only need 500, 3 50.

Snowy is sort of getting us two-thirds of the way there.

Queensland's recent plans are a 50 gigawatt scheme inland from

the Sunshine Coast at Barumba and the enormous 120 gigawatt Pioneer

Buran Project, Western Mackay.

So I think that's the one we talk about a few weeks ago as being the largest

in the southern hemisphere, which was also the largest in the world.

Yeah.

Until snowy two.

Yeah.

If it ever happens.

Yeah.

But I thought snowy two was, there were environmental concerns about it.

Yeah.

So it, I guess when they were talking about these blue field

sites not re not damning an existing river, that was probably separate

to the snowy one, I guess, which is damning of a river, isn't it?

So it must be so, well, if it's a pumped hydro, but it's an

expansion on the existing, I think.

Yeah.

Dunno.

But in any event, if Australia needs 500 and that one Western Mackay is 120,

that's a big chunk of what's required.

So, Well if snowy too, and the two Queensland ones Go ahead.

That takes us to five 20.

Yeah.

On their own.

Mm.

And there's plenty of other sites around.

So if the math is correct, then it all looks possible, doesn't it?

What else is in this here?

Does make the comment that Western Australia's not as great because

they don't have as many options, but they do have some and yeah.

Link in the show notes.

I thought that was good news story.

Nice to have.

Yeah, absolutely.

Mm-hmm.

And this is really quite old solid technology.

The I was chatting with a guy on Master Don and he referred me to this

video about one in Tele Tele Hill in Ireland, and a video about that.

And I think that one was back in the eight.

Like, it's, it's sort of, You work on Split Yard Creek.

Yeah, exactly.

Yes.

Shame to say that was 1983.

Yes, exactly.

And this video, this guy referred me to the, sort of the turbines.

I mean, they lasted 30 years before they needed their first

overhaul or something like that.

These things are really rock solid things that just keep going.

It's, it's not fancy technology.

It's really well established engineering that once you've paid for it and set it

up, it'll just keep rocking for decades.

So, all good news.

Hmm.

Any of your friends were in favor of Brexit back there,

Joe, Friends and family?

Or was everybody remainers or, or brexiters in your No, very

much remainers, unfortunately.

They were part of the.

The group who bought into all brexiters are racist.

Right.

And, and I think there were some valid concerns around the European Union Yes.

Particularly the European Parliament.

Yes.

And how autocratic it was.

Yep.

And I think it, it was very much painted as a black and white issue.

And basically anyone who was seen to have any questions about Europe

was immediately just a racist.

Yes.

And . Yes.

And, and I didn't, I, I thought that, you know, a lot of people saw the

benefits, but also saw that there were problems that needed resolving.

And there were those who.

Spun bullshit about how much money we were paying to the EU and how much little,

or how little we were getting in return.

Mm.

I think at the time, I wasn't sure how I would've voted at one point there,

but I don't think there was enough genuine examination of the economic

costs and what it was really gonna mean.

And that was no, it was, it was all bruises.

It was very much a glossed over and, and you know, we'll

worry about the details later.

Let's just get it done.

Yes.

So anyway just saw a poll that said 50% of the of those in the

UK would think it's a mistake.

So 43% still think it was a good decision.

Interesting.

It's quite a high figure.

I would've thought so.

Yeah.

I mean, given the.

Chaos that the UK is in the pound is tanked.

I mean, that wasn't helped by obviously Liz Trust.

Yes.

And anybody who's trying to do business, I suppose the, the laborers, because there

was a lot of eastern Europeans who in and probably forced down the price of labor.

Yep.

I'm not gonna say unskilled because No, they were, they were quite often tradies.

Yep.

But also in health work, you know, the nurses mom's in a nursing home at

the moment, and she's saying a lot of the nurses there are eastern European.

Mm-hmm.

In the chatroom.

James says that the economist covered the issue extensively warning of

the issues that the UK would face.

So there we go.

Yeah.

Which is not exactly read by the average trading.

No.

Yep.

Mm.

Okay.

A little bit turn our attention to America and Mother just got through some

midterm elections and certain segments of the Republican Party are already

complaining about the results, and it'll be interesting to see how that develops.

I've been saying for a while, did you see the polling booth

where there was corruption?

No, I didn't.

Joe, what was that?

Oh.

So apparently the voting machines didn't work.

Mm-hmm.

, and they were going to have to mark their ballot and then put it in a sealed

box, and it was gonna be opened later.

And a member of the Democrats and a member of the Republicans would

then supervise the counting of the votes and how undemocratic that was.

Clearly it's much safer just to feed it into a slot, into a machine where

it disappears from human eyes forever.

That would've been much better.

The machine counts it correctly.

Yes.

Yeah.

Mm.

I saw a tweet from this guy, Byron Clark said, I feel like to many

people don't recognize fascism because they think fascism will

arrive selling oppression and tyranny.

But if you're part of the privilege group, fascism is selling you

safety, normalcy, and tradition.

And a lot of these people who are up in arms are just wanting to

somehow return to a vision that they have of what America was.

White, prosperous, middle class and kind.

What's that mean?

Children cooking in church.

Okay.

In what way?

What Nazis promised for women.

Yeah, there you go.

So what is fascism?

Far right authoritarian, ultranationalist, political ideology or movement

characterized by a dictatorial leader.

Centralized autocracy, militarism force, suppression of opposition, belief in a

national, a natural social hierarchy.

I reckon lots of Republicans tick a lot of those boxes already.

Subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation and race.

So, They might think that as Republican Margaret supporters, they are actually

pro individual interests, but they're quite happy for the police to beat

people up and arrest them for no reason.

And a lot of individual freedoms to be curtailed for people of the wrong type.

Well, you know the saying, they want the government so small it

can fit through your bedroom.

Keyhole . I hadn't heard that one.

That's a good one, Joe.

That's good.

Write that one down.

Let's see.

Okay, so I just found it, and of course, always with America now, it's always

gonna be intertwined with China because really the world now is about this

battle between America and, and China.

We've had America in charge for 70 years ruling the roost and.

It's becoming apparent to everybody that they're no longer gonna

maintain that dominating position where they can just bully everybody.

So, so I've sort of been complaining all the time about this, this reference to

the Chinese and how it's almost McCarthy like, the way that we've turned on the

Chinese, when, when it wasn't that long ago we were doing military or preparing

to do military exercises with them.

It wasn't that long ago that Xing Ping was in the Australian

parliament giving a speech.

It wasn't that long ago that the liberal party were criticizing labor because Labor

didn't want to have a extradition treaty with China and said, Hang on a minute.

And, and liberals criticized them and said, What are you doing?

This is gonna ruin our economic.

relationship with China.

What are you talking about?

That wasn't that long ago.

It was only five or six years ago that we were, that liberals wanted

to do an extradition treaty with China and military operations.

You read any Tom Clancy?

Eh?

Have you read any Tom Clancy?

No.

So the Hump Red October was famous one.

Okay.

I've seen the movie.

Yeah.

He was the writer.

Very much militaristic.

Yeah.

Lots of army books.

One of his books called The Bear and the Dragon.

Mm-hmm.

He envisaged a newly free Russia, you know, no, no longer communist.

Right.

Being attacked by China who were after their resources.

Right.

And America piling in on the side of the Russians against the Chinese.

Clearly a work of fiction.

. Well, yeah.

Well, yeah.

I see, I saw this video.

I've tried to make it relevant to all that discussion, but let me just

grab it now and and I'll put it up.

So, cause I think it's just an interesting blast from the past in

recognizing a communist physical appearance counts for nothing.

If he openly declares himself to be a communist, we take his word for it.

If a person consistently reads and advocates the views expressed

in a communist publication, he may be a communist.

If a person supports organizations which reflect communist teachings

or organizations labeled communists by the Department of

Justice, she may be a communist.

If a person defends the activities of communist nations while

consistently attacking the domestic and foreign policy of the United

States, she may be a communist.

If a person does all these things over a period of time, he must be a communist.

But there are other communists who don't show their real

faces, who work more silently.

But I think Scott Morrison was trying to get that rerun while he was in power.

I, I particularly like the fact that if you protest against the

kkk, you must be a communist.

Yes.

At that last scene, they were marching against the kkk,

just, just the way that they thought to be a good, a good anticommunist American.

You must support the kkk.

Yeah.

Just the way Australia turned on China just had a McCarthys feel to it.

Just a sort of a propaganda feel to it to me.

What else have I got here?

USA Update episode 360 3.

So, the USA has warned Australia against joining a landmark

treaty banning nuclear weapons.

So this treaty is only a recent one about banning nuclear weapons.

And we have previously voted against it and the albanese government shifted

our position and we've now abstained.

So with this particular treaty, it's a blanket ban on developing,

stockpiling, using or threatening to use nuclear weapons or helping other

countries carry out such activities.

I would've thought that's something we should be in favor of.

And the US told Australia What the hell are you doing?

So there'll be pressure on Australia from the US and see how that pans out.

I watched the documentary recently on a physics equation called The Fast Warrior

Transform the Fast Furrier Transformer.

Okay.

And it's used amongst other things for splitting out complex wave

forms into their component parts.

And they were saying it was designed originally to determine from seismic

measurements whether a nuclear test had taken place or not, right?

Yep.

And one of the reasons why in the 19, late 1940s, America wanted to ban

all development of nuclear weapons cuz they realized that the harm,

but because they could only detect.

Land and sea blasts, they couldn't detect underground blasts because

they didn't have the ability to decode the information from Seismographs.

Mm-hmm.

That was excluded from the non proliferation treaties because

they knew they could secretly do it underground and nobody would catch that.

Well, they knew they had the technology, so Yeah.

Basically the Russians and whoever else could do it underground and

there was no way of measuring.

Right.

So they had no way of knowing whether a country was developing nuclear weapons

if they destroyed their own stockpile.

And so that basically put an end to the destruction of nuclear weapons.

Mm.

So it, it sounds like this treaty has nothing to do with existing stuff.

And the US embassy in Canberra said the treaty would not allow for us extended

deterrence relationships, which are still necessary for international peace.

And this is a reference to.

Australia relying on American nuclear forces to deter any nuclear attack

on Australia, the so-called nuclear umbrella, even though Australia does

not have any of its own atomic weapons.

So anyway, what, None of it is surprising.

Is it?

Midterms still up for grabs?

Looks like last time I saw the Democrats were gonna hold onto the Senate.

Probably they've probably got 50 of the hundred seats.

Yep.

So they need 51 for a clear majority.

They could have a hung Parliament or a Hung Senate, but in that case Carala

Harris, Kamala has the deciding vote.

Mm-hmm.

. So since it's important for appointing lots of people to lots of position.

One of its roles, but it looks like they'll probably just lose the house.

But in the, in any event, typically in the midterm elections, this is

sort of halfway through a president's term, there's always a backlash

historically against the president who won the election two years earlier.

So Biden actually did remarkably well and did not suffer the normal backlash.

But, you know, I had in my notes here does it matter which side wins anyway?

Really?

And I had only if you wanna terminate a pregnancy or wipe out a student

loan and the student loan one.

So Biden passed laws about wiping out the student loan, and that's been

successfully challenged in the courts.

And no doubt there's more appeals to come, but at least one court ruled it invalid

to be wiping out these student loans.

So, may not go through.

So the, and because you know, we should wipe out the loans to the

major financial companies, but not to small individual people.

Indeed.

When you so effectively then, what's the difference between these two parties?

Is, is the lock step on foreign policy and really it's just abortion law is about

What else is different between these two?

Realistically, not a lot, is it?

Is it, Yeah.

Socialized medicine, the Democrats are trying to creep towards it.

There are slightly better distance for Paul and I believe

on the environment, right?

The Democrats are slightly stronger.

In terms of the epa, but probably just talk not in actual real stuff, you know?

I don't think they're actually really gonna do anything or really want to.

It's just, it's just talk.

The only thing they really wanna do something about is abortion

law and arrest will make all the right noises, but probably don't

care that much, I don't think.

Seems to me, oh and minimum wage.

Okay.

Alright.

Democrats in favor of that are raising the minimum wage.

Cause it hasn't gone up since 92.

Some ridiculous amount of time anyway.

Still $7 50 some places.

Right.

Why did the polls get it wrong again?

Because it seemed like the majority of polls were predicting a red wave.

You know, this sort of typical backlash against the Sitting president or

the sitting president's party, and there was a tweet by this guy, Ben

Collins, who said talking about the polls before the next election, you

might wanna find a better way to poll anyone under the age of 30, since they

would rather pick up a pinless grenade than a call from an unknown number.

Is this true Joe?

Under thirties unknown number?

They just ignore it.

Yeah.

Interestingly enough, I was involved in the periphery of a one of those

two education sectors over here that basically sell visas for money.

Right.

And they were, they were trying to talk to their students and they

had banks and banks of mobile phone dialers because their students wouldn't

answer a call from a landline, but they would from a mobile phone.

Is that right?

Mm-hmm.

. There you go.

So all their outbound calls were made from mobile numbers because their

students wouldn't pick up otherwise.

Good story, Joe.

So the theory is when you're doing polling, which of course is relying on

phone calls that this younger generation who VAD overwhelmingly for the Democrats

just would never have picked up the phone to answer the poll question and therefore

we're not represented in the polling, is kind of what this guy is suggesting.

Dunno if that's true, but yeah.

Interesting.

It didn't surprise me.

Mm-hmm.

So there was some exit polls by CNN and let me see if I can

bring up well Joe, I'll let you bring up some of these by gender.

So if I say Republicans?

Yeah.

Sorry.

Are you gonna say something first of all?

Well, I was gonna say the way they phrased some of these was they lost support when

they were in every single demographic.

Mm-hmm.

votes went from the Democrats to the Republicans.

Yes.

It was just greater in some ways.

And they said they lost support in this one, but they gained

support in the other one.

But they still lost votes.

Yes.

So in in no place did I see the number of Democrats, the number of people

wanting to vote Democrat increase.

It was just the amounts.

Yes, true.

Yep.

They're in the show notes, bunch of graphs and and there's a comparison between.

2018 and 2022.

So four year difference.

And in 2018 men Republican plus four means that overall the number

of men who voted Republicans versus Democrats was 4% more were Republican.

Okay?

And that became plus 14.

So 14% amongst men were voting Republican rather than Democrat amongst women.

Four years ago it was Democrat plus 19.

And in this recent one, Democrat plus eight.

You're right Joe.

A 2% shift in men.

Yeah.

And 11% shift in women.

Indeed.

Both of them dropped the support.

Yeah.

Women by 1% and you've gotta wonder what their margin of error is.

Yeah.

So I think they're trying to infer more than you possibly can.

Yeah.

Interesting though.

I mean, miles Republican plus 14 and women are Democrats plus eight.

It's quite a difference in the genders.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You know, Joe, I might suggest that women are just smarter in America, but then

Shay would wanna disagree with me calling out bullshit again, so I won't do that.

Well I think abortion was part of it.

Yeah.

Because abortion has been a key part of their platform for a while.

Yeah.

And also contraceptive in general.

Yes.

Cause they voted against the whole, including it in your health insurance.

Mm-hmm.

. Yep.

But also I would say that women tend to be less well paid and therefore tend to vote.

Yeah.

The less well paid tend to vote.

More left-leaning.

Yep.

More likely to be lower class perhaps.

Mm-hmm.

, by age, the 18 to 29 year olds were plus 28 for Democrats, but

four years ago they were plus 35.

So mind you, Joe, there's a lot more young people now when you see other statistics.

So in that, there's more of 'em, you know, so that percentage, it

did drop from 35 plus 35 to plus 28, but there's a lot of them.

So they're starting to outnumber the boomers now.

These younger generations, or at least that effective

boomer population is waning.

I think in the number of people who voted more younger people turned out.

Yeah.

So it was in the 18 to 29 it equaled or was more than the

number of people from 65 or older.

Yeah.

So if you're 1829, Democrats plus 28, if you're 65 years and older Republican

plus 12, now the 65 years are older.

I'm surprised.

Mm-hmm.

cuz they were the demographic most likely to have been hit by Covid.

Yeah.

And it was the Republicans who would've died probably at a rate of two to one.

Yes.

So I would've expected a bigger loss of Republican voters in

that, in that demographic.

They'd been conditioned to blame Biden anyway for it.

Maybe.

Yeah.

Well the condition that, that that Trump actually did a good

job in terms of covid, so the.

By race and ethnicity, white men, Republican plus 28 white women,

Republican plus eight black women, Democrat plus 78, and black men Democrat

plus 65 Latino women, Democrat plus 33 Latino men, Democrat plus eight.

Some Latino men can be quite conservative.

Some of Latino voters in general, a bit more conservative

than the African Americans.

So yeah.

I saw with the Latino men a lot of them are human.

Yes.

And they have a horror of anything that could possibly be communist

because they come from Cuba.

Yeah.

And they've been indoctrinated.

Well that too.

Yeah.

Urban, rural divide.

Urban Democrat plus 17 rural Republican plus 29.

and education.

Put it this way.

White voters, college degree, democrat plus three white voters, no degree

Republican plus 34 . It's big.

So it all fits all.

What, what does all this add up to?

That if you are male old and no degree with no degree and you are

white and you live in a rural area, then you'll be Republican then

Yes.

So yeah, all of that stuff.

I've got a picture of there's just that one of Katie Perry there, Joe.

I'll put that one up.

You can put that one.

I'll see if I can find it.

Hang on.

Yeah, it's, He's gotta rattle through those graphs.

This is a picture of , I dunno where she was on this particular picture.

Yeah.

I wonder if it's taken outta context.

Ah, sure it is but it's gonna be good for a joke anyway, so Can't find it.

Hang on.

Not too many.

Yeah, go back one.

I got a little excited.

Right.

There's Katie, Terry, Barry, after all, guess what?

She voted a Republican.

Did she though?

I mean she kissed a girl and she liked it.

Yeah, I think she's changed.

So, no, she was quite vocal as Republican and cuz her ex-partner,

Who's that guy that she's married to?

Russell Brown.

Yes.

And he's supposedly lefty Libertarian.

Yes.

Lunatic.

Yes.

Anyway, they're not to get through anymore.

He's deep in the conspiracies.

Yes he is.

He's got a podcast.

All sorts of crazy stuff happening.

I think the gurus, the Decoding the gurus, I think did a bit

on Russell Brand at one stage.

Yeah.

I preferred him when he was on drugs.

Mm-hmm.

one of these guys who scallops though, he's got selected phrases at the top of

his head and he just rattles off things really quickly in a way of trying to

illustrate that he's intelligent, smart, but I think it's just done in a gish

gallop way where he throws stuff out, he's not really genuinely trying to engage.

But anyway, that's just me.

That was Katie Perry.

Okay.

Rick's, so bricks we mentioned last week is the Brazil, Russia,

India, China, and South Africa.

So it's not a free trade.

Members do coordinate on trade matters, and they've established their own

bank called the New Development Bank.

And China has also set up its own bank, the Asia Infrastructure Bank.

And those two banks collectively have 100 billion and they're set up as a

sort of alternative to the imf, which of course will lend money to poor developing

countries, but on the basis that they open up their economies and allow them to

be raped by multinationals from the west and force them to do all sorts of things

that are actually bad for their economies.

We've talked about any number of times in the past.

But essentially the IMF says you've got to Raise taxes, you've gotta

cut social services, you've gotta sell off your national assets.

So your water infrastructure or other, any infrastructure

you've got, you've gotta sell it.

And by the way, you are borrowing from us in US dollars.

So if you currency tanks in any way compared to the US dollar,

you'll really be screwed and you'll need even more money from us.

And and I, and you've gotta allow our international companies to

come into your country and buy up whatever they want to buy.

And that's all of these bananas.

Yes.

And that's the recipe that the IMF imposes on these countries, which is just

a recipe to keep them under the thumb.

So Bricks has got their own banks set up to do a competition to

the international military fund.

And so I think let me just where is this?

Bring up this graph of what bricks looks like.

I think, yeah, so that's what this is a proposed bricks

expansion is on the screen.

So, essentially there's a bunch of countries who are

looking to join this group.

So the countries that are looking to join are Algeria, Argentina, Iran Saudi

Arabia, Turkey, Egypt, Afghanistan, and Kazakhstan, Nicaragua Nigeria,

Segal, Thailand, United Arab Emirates.

They're all sniffing around wanting to be part of bricks, and that's a

real danger for the US in terms of maintaining control because the IMF

and it's the way it operates has been a big part of us maintaining

its control over the world system.

And let me just leave this one across here so I can read it on its own.

Hang on one second.

I'm coming off the mic a bit, aren't I?

Hang on.

So there's some interesting things to do with China.

So really we mentioned last week about the u US trying to screw down in terms of

chips, for example, where they're saying to the world must not sell these machines

that will allow China to build these high quality computer chips and other sanctions

that the US wants to impose on China.

And one of the problems for the US in trying to get other countries to

join them in these sanctions is a lot of these countries are doing a

calculation and they're thinking, Well, we do a lot of trade with China.

Not so much with the usa.

So why would we piss off the people that we do most of our trade with

for you guys and money talks.

So on the screen is a image of US China trade war, and this is 1980 and it

shows in blue which countries most their biggest trading partner was America.

And it shows in red the countries whose biggest trading partner was China.

And you'll see that there were very few countries that were red and most

of it was blue, and that was 1980.

If you then go to 2001, you will see a minor expansion to Africa in the

Middle East and some of the sort of.

Stand countries, I guess, in middle Europe.

And then going forward to 2018, when you look at the world map in terms of

trade, China just completely dominates.

So it's only been a matter of, of 40 years where it's gone from what was essentially,

actually maybe that's on the next slide.

Let's see if that turns out.

No it doesn't.

Essentially in 40 years, most countries that most of their trade was with

the usa and now for most countries, most of their trade is with China.

And that's what's going to be the tipping point where these people

say, No, not gonna do what you want.

Sorry.

Love you America like a brother, but only so far.

So see how that pans out.

Let me just, Muck around with some windows on the screen here.

What else have I got here?

Not sure whether to show this or not.

What have I got in my clips?

Where are we at, Joe?

8 53.

That's long enough.

Mm-hmm.

, I've got some clips, but if I get into those it'll just keep, keep going.

One of them's titled Chinese Angle searches.

That's kind of tempting to show that one, but go on.

. I mentioned earlier that Drew Pavlo, I was the one Twitter person I follow

who has a paid for his blue tick and he's just notoriously anti-China.

And he basically found this image of this woman who was being arrested by

police with hands behind her back.

And he wrote here, Let's see how CCP supporters like Daniel Rumble, try to

defend Chinese police pinning people to the ground while performing anal swab

tests In public, you would think this must be indefensible, but you never know.

It's gonna picture that he's seen in on Twitter again, I guess.

And you only have to look closely at the image.

And the woman, the angle swab is actually basically a zip

tie, a white plastic zip tie.

And her hands are being tied behind her back and can't think of, well, no,

sorry, I can't think of anal test that requires an anal swab and that's to

see whether you've got bowel cancer.

Yeah.

And I can't imagine the police going around arresting people to check

whether or not they've got bowel cancer.

No.

And and it's just clear from the picture.

With the positioning of the hands and the positioning of the, of the zip tie.

This is, this is nowhere near this woman's just resting her.

Yes.

And Drew is demonstrating a lack of knowledge of anatomy as well.

There's a lot of other things on this one, so.

Mm-hmm.

, picture the show i'd.

So, Alright, , thanks in the chat room for being there.

It's an hour and a half that'll see us through.

Not sure, be on the agenda for next week.

Be something similar.

Not sure.

We'll talk to you then.

Bye for now.