In this episode we discuss:

(00:00) Episode 371

(00:27) Introduction

(02:04) The Balloon

(24:12) Pell Buried

(30:46) Lidia Thorpe

(33:49) RoboDebt

(44:01) Albo had a beer

(45:46) Jim Chalmers

(48:30) Aukus

(52:51) Jimmy Dore

(58:27) Patrons

(01:01:00) Chat GPT

(01:03:27) The Guardian

(01:10:18) Narratives are made up

Chapters, images & show notes powered by vizzy.fm.

You can email  trevor at ironfistvelvetglove.com.au

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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 Pest and the Velvet Glove.

Yes, what the hell happened in the last seven days?

We'll review it.

We'll talk about it because this is a podcast, dear listener, where we talk

about news and politics, sex and religion.

You look at what's happened in the last seven days in Australia, around the world.

Give our little spin on it.

Try to figure it out.

With me, I'm Trevor, a k a, the Iron, Fist with me, Joe, the tech guy.

How are you, Joe?

I'm good.

You.

Not too bad, thanks.

Yes.

What's happened in the last seven days?

Well, if you told me last week that weather balloons across the USA

would be a thing, would've thought it was unlikely, if you dunno

whether you'd have believed it.

boom.

Boom.

. Yes.

So we're gonna talk about that because it's, you know,

and just how it's portrayed.

That's the interesting part about it.

Why would people portray it the way they have?

What are the agendas that are being run?

And then we'll talk about some Australian stuff.

Cardinal Pell was buried.

Lydia quit the Greens, robo Dead Inquiry.

Bunch of other things like that.

So, look, if you're not sure about some of the topics on

your phone, hopefully your app.

We'll show chapters and the list of topics will be there.

If you wanna skip one, you can skip it or if you wanna

repeat one, it should be easy.

So have a look on your, on your app and see if you can see the chapters.

That makes it easier to zoom around our topics.

So if you're in the chat room, say hello already, we've got

essential Lord, Don and James.

Good on you guys.

Make your comments.

We'll try and incorporate them right Joe.

So a balloon in the USA a weather balloon has caused us commentators went crazy.

A large weather balloon.

And the question was where did it come from and what was it doing there?

And because it seemed to come from China, the answer of what was it doing?

There could only be one thing and that was evil, nasty things

from this weather balloon.

So, I'll play you some clips so you can get a bit of a feeling

for just just how America was responding to this balloon pneumonia.

So we'll play a little bit of that so you get a feel for what was happening.

Fox News alert, it is day two of balloon watch.

The Chinese spy glimpses about to hit Illinois and is creeping towards

the East coast, so the Kami spy balloon penetrated our airspace.

If citizens hadn't spotted this thing yesterday, the government

would've covered it up.

It's almost like China has Biden by the balloons.

Yeah, no, I appreciate it.

I haven't been very specific cuz that information's classified and I'm just

not gonna be able to talk about it.

That balloon should have been blown sky high the minute that it crossed

us airspace, and every single second that it hangs there is another reminder

of just how owned our politicians, our system, our businesses are

by the Chinese Communist Party.

It says, you know, officials tell cnn, the US has not ruled out

shooting down this spy balloon once it is deemed safe to do so.

Does the US need to bring this balloon down?

I, I think the United States has to take control of this balloon.

There are two things that are of great concern here.

One is that it's been determined to be a surveillance balloon, which means

that it's gathering intelligence.

That's the purpose of surveillance.

If Biden pops to the Chinese balloon, it'll do more to unite the country

than any of his stupid policies.

Everybody wants that thing lit up.

Give us a moment of unity, Joe.

We're begging you look alive.

Mr.

President, when

that last shouting and screaming was a press conference where the press

gallery was shouting at the president as he left saying, when and how

is he gonna deal with the balloon?

Well, he didn't he Cuz he's deaf.

Apparently he's old . Yeah.

So a surveillance balloon, Joe, I mean this is one of the key parts in reading

about all this is the reference to the balloon as a surveillance balloon.

Well, Joe, if it's just a normal weather balloon, it would still be a

surveillance balloon, I would've thought.

Surveilling the weather.

Normal weather balloons don't have motors, propellers on them

to move them around, right?

They don't, no.

Did this one.

This one does, apparently.

Right.

And it, it seems so many years ago it was decided that Sputnik wouldn't

be challenged because the US wanted to overly Russia with SP satellites.

And so convention has said that a hundred kilometers is the limit

at which your airspace ends.

And anything that's below a hundred kilometers is deemed an

intrusion into your airspace.

Is this, is this a gentleman's agreement or is this written down in

a treaty that America has not signed?

Is there some treaty?

That's, that's a good question.

I don't know, but certainly it's, it's convention, right?

That a hundred kilometers is the limit.

So if you're up above a hundred kilometers fair game below, you need, if it's an,

if it's a completely unguided balloon, you would at least give a heads up

that it was heading in that direction.

Hmm.

Now also don't forget that during the Second World War balloons came

from Asia to America and they were part of a Japanese bombing rate.

Right.

The Japanese had discovered the jet stream and had released balloons up into the

jet stream to bomb the US West coast, and apparently they blew up a few trees,

really up in the forest of the Pacific Northwest is that didn't, didn't manage

to do much damage, but they were used as a bombing campaign in the second World War.

Is that right?

I'd never heard that.

So that's a good one.

So, actually I'll just put the wrong video up.

Hang on.

I'm just gonna grab this other video.

Not Tucker Carlson.

Oh yeah.

Gotta play.

Yeah, gotta play.

This is what we do on this podcast, Joe, is we scour the internet and

get stuff from the left and the right and well this is an enjoy.

Okay?

Yes, Tucker Carlson's response to it, . There is, by the way, a Chinese spy

balloon playing over the United States.

Pentagon does not wanna shoot it down.

Why would you wanna shoot a Chinese spy balloon down?

That seems mean and racist.

Why are they shooting it down?

George Santos.

George Santos.

We'll have more on it next.

Some people voluntarily watch his show . What, what does Santos have to do at all?

I dunno, it's just craziness, isn't it?

Mm-hmm.

. So, so, so Joe, are you working on the theory then?

Like in all of my reading on this balloon, I never came across

anything about where the balloons and never have any sort of propulsion.

And this one did.

And I dunno, this to your suspicion, it seems weird.

It seems to be provocative if nothing else, right?

You know, there wasn't a, Hey, heads up, there's a weather

balloon coming in your direction.

And by the way, this one's steerable, which is totally unusable.

I know that they're picking up the pieces, so they have shut it down.

They're gonna pick up the pieces.

It'll be interesting to see what they find in it and how much isn't classified.

Mm.

Yeah.

The Chinese put out a statement, which was this.

The airship is from China.

It is a civilian airship used for research, mainly meteorological purposes

affected by the westerlies, and with limited self-steering capability.

The airship deviated far from its planned course.

The Chinese side regrets the unintended entry of the airship

into US airspace due to force maur.

The Chinese side will continue communicating with the US side and

properly handle this unexpected situation caused by force Ma.

So let's kin's razor if, if it was, yeah, but I mean, if it was Even

just a provocative act, even if it wasn't anything particularly,

of course they say that.

Exactly.

. That's right.

So what can you do?

Like, what can you do if it words are just meaningless, aren't they?

Because Absolutely.

Because if it was an accident and you said it's an accident,

well of course you'd say that.

And if it wasn't an accident, then you'd say it wasn't accident.

Cause that's what you I'm, I'm, I'm sure Gary Powers was, you know, just Yeah.

Checking out the atmosphere before he was shot down.

Yeah.

Just checking out the weather above Russia.

Yeah.

You know, really my view at this stage, best guess would be, well, Alkins Razor is

if, if you're unsure of the explanation, the simplest, least conspiratorial

one is probably the most accurate.

Isn't that how it works?

I think it's the aliens escaping outta Roswell.

Yeah.

It could be that.

Look, it's entirely possible it was just a weather balloon that got outta control and

hey, oh shit, look, that's where it is.

And you know, maybe these things happen all the time and nobody

gets upset and maybe this time, you know, people got upset unexpectedly.

I mean, I, I know that there are, there are amateur balloons as in

not run by government people release them with transponders on board

and track them across and they have circumnavigated the globe, right.

Yeah.

Which would be an interesting thing to do.

Yeah.

But they're not huge balloons that are in airspace and yeah.

Run by governments.

Yeah.

I mean, you start asking questions when that happens.

If, if they're wanting to spy on something below.

Oh, I, I don't think it's wanting to spy on something below.

I think it's just see how far you can push the limits, really.

Right.

So you just think it was potentially just a bit of provocation.

We'll just poke the beer and watch them squirm type of thing?

Possibly not the Chinese.

I like it if they did, but yeah.

Okay.

Well, I mean, the Russians were doing it to the uk.

The Russians were probing the Scottish air defense boundaries, right.

Not that long ago.

Three, four years ago.

What, what were they probing it with?

Oh, fighter planes.

They were flying right up to the limits.

Oh, okay.

Yep, yep.

So yeah, could've been just toying with them.

Mm-hmm.

Well, well, apparently the idea is you draw out the aired fence and

you see how reactive people are.

So you get an idea of the strength of the forces if you were to ever attack.

Yes.

I mean, if China were to ever attack the USA with a fleet of balloons,

they have gathered intelligence now as to what the US response might be.

Well, maybe if you're surveilling what radar systems they've

got, what would light up?

Yeah.

Essential Lord Don says in the chat room, the problem is if you shoot down

a Chinese spy balloon half an hour later, you wanna shoot down another.

It's not a macers, it's reference to Chinese food.

That's good.

Essential Lord Don.

Yeah.

Ah, what have people said on Twitter?

Jason Hickle to us Americans.

Your welfare is not threatened by a balloon.

It is threatened by a ruling class that denies you access to

healthcare, affordable housing, modern transit, living wages, proper

voting rights, a stable client, and a decent chance of a living past 77.

Know your enemy.

What has Caitlin Johnston said, she said all major governments spy on each other

constantly and China is no exception.

But the Pentagon's own assessment, and she has a link to an article, is that

the balloon does not create significant value added over and above what the PRC

is likely able to collect through things like satellites in low earth orbit.

That makes sense to me that there is no espionage value in a balloon because a

satellite is going to be able to detect more staff than your balloon could.

Seems likely to me generally.

Mm-hmm.

, I mean, obviously a balloon is closer to the earth than may be

weaker things that it can pick up.

Yeah.

Hmm.

Anyway, the Pentagon's own assessment is, the balloon does

not create significant value added.

So, you'd be think if it was, they'd tell us.

Yeah.

Anyway, so everyone's losing their minds over a balloon that in all probability

would be mostly worthless for spying, even while everyone knows the US spies

on China at every possible opportunity.

This is the hypocrisy of it.

It's the people who are ranting and raving about it are saying

It's a goddamn Chinese spy balloon.

How dare they spy on us?

And of course, all, you know, any nation that can afford to is doing

it all the time on its enemies.

Yes.

the balloon.

No, but not even just their enemies.

So major countries even spy on their own allies as when intelligence.

Yes.

When US intelligence bugged the cell phone of German chancellor, Angela Merkel.

So the people who are railing over a spy balloon in the sky are the same people.

Yeah.

Michael was a communist that was allowed . Maybe she was, that's

why they had a spy on her just to make sure from the ddr, wasn't she?

Yeah, she probably ur candidate.

So meanwhile, the BBC is reporting that the has secured access to four additional

military bases in the Philippines.

And Joe the Philippines are really close to Taiwan and the island on the

Philippines that's the closest is now gonna get a series of military bases.

So if you wanna talk about provocative military action in the last few weeks,

then talk about us and Philippines coming to an agreement to whack even

more military personnel and equipment within spitting distance of Taiwan on the

closest Philippine island that's there.

So that's, that's a provocative act.

. So yeah.

What does she say here?

The US empire surrounding China with military bases in ways that Washington

would never tolerate China doing in the waters surrounding the United States.

And she says, ask an empire apologist to show you how China is aggressing

against the us and they'll start babbling about TikTok and balloons.

Yes.

Gotta put all in perspective, I think.

Oh, I think buying third world countries up for their vote in the

UN is fairly egregious, isn't it?

He's doing that one.

He's not doing that.

Alright.

And he's not doing it?

Oh, I don't know.

The US is funding.

When I, when Israel votes for the us it's not doing so because Oh sure.

It's doing so cuz the huge military funding it gets from the US Yeah.

Yeah.

The other thing that's allegedly America's guilt over Holocaust, isn't it?

Yeah.

You see, America takes a pragmatic view of these things.

Joe isn't mm-hmm.

rather than buying all the votes, simply just ignore the vote.

Let's carry.

No, there is or veto it, you know, it's, yeah.

That's what bought seats on the security council's for, isn't it?

Yeah.

No need to, no need to buy votes when you can just ignore them.

Yeah.

The Australian Why subscription to the Australian, I canceled that months

ago, but my app is still giving me access so it's cuz they love you.

Yes.

That could be it.

So I'll continue reading it while they're providing it.

And they had a report on the balloon, so this was in the Australian.

And it reads relations between the world's two superpowers have hit their

lowest point since Joe Biden entered the White House after the US military

shot down a Chinese surveillance balloon off the coast of South Carolina.

Now they're quoting, they're talking about labor's response.

They say, deputy Prime Minister Richard Miles on Sunday condemned

the use of the spy balloon.

As foreign policy experts warned that China might already be using similar

espionage tactics against Australia without the public's knowledge.

So if you lodge a balloon from China, the, the, the air currents

are loft, the winds are loft, we'll move according to the Australian.

It could be a where, whereas if you wanted to launch it over Australia,

you'd need to go to Gerland, maybe.

Africa maybe.

Maybe that's what they're so friendly with.

The Africans.

I don't know that anywhere in Southern Africa maybe.

Mm mm I'll go on, on Sunday.

A spokesman for Mr.

Miles who has been visiting Washington for talks with defense officials.

Said so this is a spokesman for Mr.

Miles said Chinese.

China's actions were inconsistent with international rules.

For fuck's sake, they've just lost potentially just accident.

Potentially a civilian Chinese company has lost control of an of a weather balloon.

This expectation to follow global norms is no different in airspace than it is

for activities at sea or on the ground.

She said the operation of high altitude balloons must occur in accordance

with international rules, including those stipulated by the International

Civil Aviation organization.

She said there were questions associated with the presence of a Chinese aircraft

in US sovereign airspace, which is inconsistent with China's stated

commitment to the rules and laws.

And of course, what does the Australian do, but start quoting some think tanks.

So former executive director of Aspi, Peter Jennings, said a

spy balloon was being deployed.

A spy balloon being deployed over Australia could definitely happen.

Quote, there's no limits to where this technology could be used.

He said, I think we are looking at here is new technology that Chinese are trialing.

That means we should be on the lookout as well.

Well, giga, were talking about doing a balloon internet link, right?

Yeah.

Elon had its okay style link.

Yes.

Which is low earth orbit satellites.

But they were talking of Google, but talking about basically using balloons.

If I remember somebody was talking about using balloons.

Okay.

To do a much lower down radio link.

Yep.

To provide internet to rural, serv rural areas and just let them float around.

Put enough of them up there.

And I don't know that it was let them float around or whether

they were gonna be tethered.

Oh, okay.

But it was definitely, yeah.

How do we get coverage at the right heights to cover a nice footprint?

Mm-hmm.

, what else have we got in this report from the Australian?

Still quoting Douglas Wise, a former deputy director of US

Defense Intelligence Agency.

He's quoted now as saying that the Chinese balloon was part of the

largest intelligence operation in the history of the human race against the

US and Australia, only against the US and Australia, no other country.

He says, he says, as quoted in the Australian.

China already sees itself at war with the US and Australia.

Even if we don't dismissing Beijing's claim that the balloon

was a civilian weather aircraft that had drifted off course.

What they did with the balloon is provocative and not worth the intel value.

There has to be other value to it, Mr.

Wise speculating speculated suggesting the Chinese could have

been testing a potential weapons delivery or advanced sensor system.

Well, we'll find out when they pick up the pieces, will we, oh,

look, I do you trust anything Joe?

They could lay out a whole bunch of pieces on a table and

say, ah, we went to the spot.

We got all this from the seabed.

Here it is.

Could you believe any of it?

We couldn't.

Could.

What I wanna know is how come the debris trail is, it's, it's spread

over 10 kilometers or something.

Mm.

They had, they, they used to have a balloon capturing thing

back when satellites used to drop canisters down to Earth.

They actually had a thing that a plane would fly along and catch.

I think it was actually parachutes, but it would catch them in the air.

Yep.

Yep.

The problem with that, Joe, is that people could then easily locate the

pieces and determine what it was mm-hmm.

In its original condition, whereas this way they're able to say, whoops,

complete this can't work anything out.

Well, they said his own shallow water, so Yeah.

Yeah.

Still quoting this this guy, Mr.

Wise who was US Defense Intelligence Agency former deputy director.

He said He says the Chinese have patience that is unlimited.

They are dangerous because they don't have accountability and they

don't operate under the rule of law or a moral frame of reference.

I couldn't keep a straight face.

I probably when he was writing it or saying it, he probably did, but yeah.

Another guy, Patrick Lawrence, he's a longtime correspondent.

He was foreign affairs commentator for 25 years.

Chief Lee chiefly for the Far East and Economic Review, the International

Herald Tribune and the New Yorker.

And he said, we bono Joe Latin for to whom the good or more commonly who benefits.

Who benefits, yeah.

Mm-hmm.

. And his theory is that Blinken was about to go to China to

try and improve relations.

Supposedly it was the purpose of the trip.

And by, by beating this up as to be bigger than Ben, her Blinken has

canceled the trip and tensions therefore remain high between America and China.

And if you're in the business of wanting high tension because you sell

arms, arms or you run an organization that is designed to go to war and use

those arms, then possibly the only person who's benefited is the Pentagon

and the military industrial complex.

That's his theory.

Queen Bono.

Will we ever know the truth?

Hard to say.

Oh, maybe in a hundred years time when the declassified papers come out.

Yeah.

Yep.

I think the petite advocate was onto it, Joe, their headline, read.

Chinese spy balloon discovered to be elaborate.

Gender reveal.

It was a white balloon though.

So it wasn't blue or pink, was it?

It was exactly white powder.

It's complete failure.

Ah, right.

Hello?

In the chat room.

What?

Leave there.

Noisy.

Andrews there with essential Lord Don.

And good on you guys.

Make your comments.

Cardinal Powell was buried.

There was a service Joe.

Another good one from the shovel article read.

So Mary's Cathedral says if the protests get too disruptive, they will simply move

Cardinal Pearl's body to another parish.

Wouldn't be the first time.

Mm.

And another guy said the Catholic church lays PE to rest in the hypo crypt.

Hypo crypt.

Mm-hmm.

. Boom.

Boom.

This isn't a joke.

This is genuine.

This is a tweet by, oh God, what's her name?

She's right there in front of me, but I don't have her name.

Peter Credlin.

Peter Credlin.

Yes.

The funeral for Cardinal Pearl will be a chance for people of Faith Catholic

and other faiths to give you out country's greatest Christian leader.

A respectful farewell says guy News host Peter Credlin.

He was the father at Gosford.

Father at Gosford.

He used to put the signs out.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I I think he's Australia's greatest leader.

Yeah.

Catholic leader.

Well, he was Anglican, wasn't he?

Yeah.

Yeah.

But they said greatest Christian leader.

They didn't Yes, true.

Yeah.

True.

Yes.

Ah, Remember, dear listener and those who want to sort of support Cardinal

Pell, a Royal Commission in 2017 found he was, quote, conscious of child sexual

abuse by clergy as early as 1973 and had failed to act on complaints about priests.

Yeah, but come on, you can't expect him to act in 50 years.

No, that's right.

So, ah, dear listener, you've all, I know what you're thinking, you're thinking,

does Trevor have some of the clip of Tony Abbott's eulogy, the Cardinal Powell and,

oh God, I think I'm gonna avoid . What was the one that we were vomiting about?

Oh just Enterprise last week.

You doubt about the Murdochs?

That was vomit inducing this one right up there.

Here we go and wait for the applause.

Dear Listener.

He was never one to mince his words to the smug, to the venal, to the lazy, to the

wayward, and to the intellectually sloppy.

He was an existential reproach.

And because that's all of us in some way, it's hardly surprising

that he became a target.

His recent observation that the climate change movement had some of

the characteristics of a low level, not too demanding pseudo religion was

the kind of comment that enraged its adherence, precisely because it was

true and throughout history, that's what people have been martyred for, for

telling the unpopular unpalatable truth.

And it's not possible to honor the cardinal without some

reference to his persecution.

He was made a scapegoat for the church itself.

He should never have been investigated in the absence of a complaint.

He should never have been charged in the absence of corroborating evidence, and

he should never have been convicted in the absence of a plausible case as the

high court so resoundingly made plain.

Applause at a full Catholic church service funeral.

That would be unusual.

I would've thought, applause for a, a protector of child molesters.

Even more peculiar.

I thought there was a complaint and that's why he was investigated.

There we go.

There we go.

See, you don't get this on the six o'clock years, do you?

No.

No.

You don't get subjected to this.

Yeah.

And you know the climate change is only a pseudo religion

because they don't rape children.

Yes, that's right.

Oh, okay.

There was an article in the Saturday paper by a guy called Des Cargill

and about George Pell and he.

At the service.

Former Prime Minister Tony Abbott, described Pell as one

of the country's greatest sons.

He said he was a soldier for truth.

He said there should be schools and universities named after him.

George Pell was two years ahead of me in the Melbourne Seminary for several months.

He was my prefect.

We maintained a friendship.

Through the years, various commentaries have focused

particularly on Pell's intelligence.

His fine mind, bellow seminarians know better.

He was certainly bright, but he never topped his class at the

Melbourne Seminary, nor at the Pontifical Urban University in Rome.

It was often described as God's ruckman, and it was noted that

he would've applied for Richmond.

This isn't quite true either because of his bulk, he dominated schoolboy

football, that this advantage did not last into adulthood.

When he played against men in the seminary, he was best

described as slow and lumbering.

He was not a draft pick.

Also showed amazing ability not to read the signs of the times he was particularly

seen in this was particularly seen in his rejection of a priestly role

for women, his stride in opposition to gay people and same sex marriage.

And lastly, in his rejection of the need for a revised theology of sex

and sexuality, he played a key role in the dismissal of Bill Morris,

Bishop of Tomba for his outspoken views on women's ordination.

He goes on painting a picture of him as a conservative.

So, so yeah, cause you do hear those things about him, and that's just

painting another picture to provide a full picture for you of Cardinal Pell.

Mm-hmm.

. Mm-hmm.

Joe.

Lydia Thorpe was the Greens spokesperson for the voice.

Yeah.

And she was quite loud in saying, That she wasn't so sure about the voice and

while she wasn't, you know, coming out and saying definitely vote against it, she was

clearly not happy with the idea, which was a contradiction with what the greens were

wanting to say as their policy, obviously.

And anyway, she quit the greens.

It's probably good for everybody.

Yeah, I mean, I saw her earrings that said, territory never seeded

or sovereignty never seeded.

That was it.

Yes.

So she wanted to make it clear that if the voice referendum has passed

that somehow it's made clear that sovereignty has never been seated.

So, Just this article I read on this, which said, Victorian Senator Lydia

Thorpe has quit the Greens party and will move to the Crossbench.

The indigenous Senator says she wants to represent the strong grassroots,

black sovereign movement full of staunch and committed warriors.

Sounds like she's advocating for revolution.

Mm, yeah.

She said her voice parliament was at odds with what her community had told her,

but noted she had not reached her final position on the constitutional change.

Gonna get quite ugly.

This debate.

See how pans out.

Probably a good thing for the greens that was getting really

embarrassing for the greens.

They clearly want to, certainly the people who vote green are very much in

favor of the voice and yeah, but isn't this another case of white people?

Taking on struggles that aren't theirs.

Deciding what's best for other communities.

Which white people, Joe?

Oh, the self-flagellating sort name some names.

What are you talking about here?

You mean, you mean the greens in general?

Taking on Yeah.

But yeah.

Right.

Okay.

Opinion.

Well, but this is also true in America of the, the, the Black Lives Matter where

there was a lot of well-meaning white people going, no, what we need is this.

Oh, okay.

And the black people saying, you don't know cuz you've never lived it.

You've ne you don't understand it.

Yes.

And, and it's fine for you to support us, but

I dunno.

Yeah.

As you know, dear, listen, I'm against the voice, but I'm against the reasoning of.

Lydia Thorpe and I'm against the reasoning of just enterprise as well.

So, ah, dear.

Joe, have you been keeping up with robo debt at all?

I did see something about the commission going on and that it was a good thing cuz

we were getting some transparency into the non-functioning of the government.

Indeed.

Yeah.

Imagine if this was all happening behind closed doors as might happen

with this new body that's been developed for federal parliament.

The not iac.

Yes.

Yes.

So the fact that this is all out in the open for everybody to see is great.

So Focus in the last week has been around Alan Tud and his former media advisor.

So she had, she had.

Left the department under circumstances where she got a massive payout.

So she was obviously no longer friends with Alan Targe or anybody in there

and was happy to be extremely frank about, about what had gone on in

that department and did not hold back in the least about how how his

office was handling this robo debt.

So, brief recap, dear listener, is that robo debt was a situation where

they were pe people's obligation to, with social welfare relied on looking

at their income in two week periods.

And for a lot of people that can fluctuate a lot because they're on

casual employment and What robo debt was doing was looking at their income over a

longer period of time and averaging that int across the two week periods, which

was resulting in people having debts to repay and debts that were completely

false because of this lazy calculation.

And then sort of getting quite nasty sort of debt collection agency people to follow

up with these people and threaten them and, you know, people committed suicide

and, and were highly distressed about it.

So it was a really uncaring, brutal sort of response by the government compared to

Jerry Harvey and the job keep allowance.

Yes, exactly.

Just millions and Oh, well, it's done dusted.

Yeah.

Yes.

Yeah.

Completely different.

So, so it's hounding the poor people because they're poor.

Yeah.

And Joe, this really comes down to this Christian theology of these Pentecostals

in particular, where if you are poor, it's because you just haven't worked hard

enough and you're not Christian enough and there's something morally wrong

with you and Jesus doesn't love you.

Yeah.

So, so that, that, that's part of these people, like can't, this sort

of Evangelical Pentecostal Christian line are the most un-Christian people.

They just think poorly about people.

Anyway, I hope that the Royal Commission actually recommends

manslaughter proceedings.

Yeah.

I, who knows what they're gonna come up with.

Look, I, I think if they were to say that the government is liable.

. Mm-hmm.

, and that people are at least investigated with a, a view to manslaughter to charges.

Mm-hmm.

, maybe governments would be less factless in the future.

Mm-hmm.

So the media advisor painted a picture, Joe, where some sort of

whistleblower complainers people on oh, they were hounded Social

security, I know that were hounded.

Yeah.

And Taj wanted the details of every single one of them and wanted

their private details that leaked to the media with disparaging

sort of interpretations of their circumstances to try and tax them Yeah.

To, and to reduce their credibility.

Mm-hmm.

and sought legal advice as to whether he could do it and got the legal advice

on the basis that it was clarifying government policy or something like that.

So, The purpose was to scare off anybody else who was thinking of coming

forward and complaining publicly.

And according to the media advisor, that tactic was very successful.

Yeah, I'm sure it was.

And she was very clear and specific in talking about how they got that

message out by just dealing with Simon Benson from, I think the Australian

and other right wing papers and media that she mentioned who were friendly

and she could just spoonfeed them an exclusive and they would run with it.

Shocked.

Shocked, I tell you that the Australian would do such a thing.

Yes.

So it's worth listening to a little bit of what she had to say.

And so let me find her here and bring it up.

And she's here very, very frank and enjoying the moment of, of

dumping on her previous employer.

But that media strategy was quite comprehensive that I developed in

January to shut down the story.

And that involved, you know, placing stories with the you know,

the more friendly media, the right wing media about how the coalition

was actually catching people who were cheating the welfare system.

And, and, and that media, including the likes of a current affair

or others has a lot more reach.

The, the commercial television programs the, the two GB radio, that

type of thing has a lot more reach.

So actually the message that was getting to people on the ground was that the

coalition is cracking down on welfare cheats, whereas in the kind of, you

know, left wing Canberra circles, it appeared to be quite a crisis.

But we were getting feedback from the prime Minister's office that

actually this was playing quite well in, in, you know, marginal seats,

Western Sydney, that type of thing.

Which was playing quite well.

Well, the, the narrative of that robodi was actually playing quite well.

I see in terms of people actually supported it and were supportive

of the notion of the government cracking down on anybody who

was cheating the welfare system.

Joe, it's all about managing the narrative just, and it, it's the poor

people who get most upset about people who are seen to be rotting the system.

You know, I'm working hard, I'm doing my bit.

Yes.

These doll bludgers, they're sitting on their ass doing nothing Yes.

And getting handouts.

Yes.

So, yeah, I can see what, that, it would play well into marginal seats.

The, you know, the, the, the poorer suburbs.

Mm-hmm.

. Yep.

In the chat room.

Murray says, media watch actually has a good summary of that too.

And they did Murray, it was a really, really good summary of, of what's gone

on so far and it just surprises me that they weren't doing summaries like that

every week for the last six weeks or so.

Cuz there's been lots of other stuff happening.

So yeah, that's just a very frank explanation of how ministers

massage public opinion work with favored media outlets.

There's an article from Rachel Withers in the monthly, Joe the Monthly's.

Not bad.

Saturday paper's, not bad.

Crikey I'm less in love with, but it's still there as independent.

John Menard, you blog.

Aye what's that?

Independent Australia.

And Independent Australia.

Yes.

And.

A little bit of the guardian from time to time.

These are the outlets that we get some alternative view of

some of these important things.

So Rachel Withers in the monthly said so Tad was basically saying that he didn't

know about the leg legal problems with robo debt, that he didn't know that

there was some sort of advice floating around questioning the legal advice.

Yeah.

I'm sure that you're blaming, I'm sure that any lawyer would've been going, yeah,

it might be legal, but it's questionable and it's hit and miss whether we could

actually defend it in a court of law.

And, and no civil servants going to cover that up.

They're gonna pass it up the chain, cover their ass mm-hmm.

And she makes the point that the evidence is shown that Taj was.

Really heavily involved in looking at the criticism in the left wing media

about the program because he was then acting very proactively to counter that.

Mm-hmm.

in that of, at the time, the left wing media was also having saying we've got

legal advice that this is, and, and illegal whispers of illegality about this.

Mm-hmm.

People are saying it's illegal, so he could not have been closely monitoring

the left wing media for its complaints about what was happening to individuals

with now without also knowing about these questions of illegality.

It just, you can't have both.

It's gonna be very interesting to see what this Royal Commission finds in terms of

the credibility of different witnesses and whether they will be quite blunt,

the commissioner in saying, well, Mr.

Tadge gave this evidence and then at the same time gave this

other evidence and I just don't.

I don't, except that he was telling the truth.

This is a Witch Hunt in revenge for the Pink Bats Royal Commission, isn't it?

Yeah.

In part, yes.

It's motivated by that.

For sure.

For sure.

Did the Pink Bats Royal Commission actually find that much?

Were the actions of Peter Garrett and others as bad as the actions here?

Yeah, they were.

No, I'm, I'm saying, I don't know.

Yeah, that's what I'd like to know is how, how did they compare him?

Mm.

Anyway, ABC has been very quiet on this as well, so, you know, they sent

28 staff to cover the death of the Queen, and we got WaterWall coverage

on something as important as this.

We don't get much at all.

Albanese, he was at the tennis pictured.

having a beer.

James Morrow from the Daily Telegraph wrote an article saying, having a beer at

the tennis, not a good look for our pm.

That was the headline.

Yeah.

Well, wasn't he not going to Alice Springs to deal with the right wing media's

shock and horror about what was going on in Alice, but spending time at tennis,

whereas the opposition leader was, oh wait, he was at the tennis too, right?

Anyway, the great thing about citizen journalists now and people is, is

they can look through and troll and find people's old tweets and mm-hmm.

James Morrow, years ago actually not that long ago August, August 22, 22,

talking about Scott Morrison, who was criticized for having a beer,

said old enough to remember when a PM downing a beer was the cause.

for much wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Has sanity returned or was the outrage just a partisan act?

So sympathetic when Morrison had a beer and what are we barely five months later

wasn't, wasn't one of the prime Ministers known for being able to neck a pint.

Yeah.

Bob Hawk.

Yeah, exactly.

He had, so what's this crap about people being upset about the

Prime Minister downing a beer?

Yeah.

Well, James Morrow is, when it's Albanese, well obviously he's

not, when it's Morrison, just sake, hypocritical and partisan.

These guys yeah, Bob had a, a beer drinking record of something, of some

sort either down in Pinton, however long.

Yeah, I think that's what it was.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Jim Chalmers our treasurer wrote an essay.

It's a really long essay and supposedly about his view on economics.

And ordinarily, dear listener, I would not have read it, but because

I do this podcast for you and kind of the arrangement is I do these

things so that you don't have to.

I read it and really it was a bit wishy washy.

It was a lot of words that didn't really say much.

I was hoping he would.

But he was really just saying that we can make a new form of capitalism

where people are nice to each other and companies have objectives beyond just

making money and of being good citizens.

And we can do it in a way to be great.

That was about it, summary of it for you.

And I couldn't get anything concrete out of it other than his desire

for a nice form of capitalism.

So I, I see the wellbeing, budget and treasurer g foreign

question time about yoga Andn.

There was a community in, I think San Francisco that said, you're

providing funding for all of these different community events.

We want funding for a community bondage dungeon.

Yeah.

Yes.

A consensual adults.

It, it's a community sport.

We, we want our own dungeon, a safe place for us to play.

Yes.

And, and they asked for, and, and the outrage and the, the conservative

press about, oh my God, how dare you.

Yes.

It was just the.

We, we happily hand over cash to kitty fiddlers in the church,

but when some adults ask for some private play base, yes.

We we're totally outraged by this.

Right.

How does this fit in with the story of of friendly capitalism?

How does this work?

How do we get to this?

This was, you are talking about wellbeing budget from Oh, okay.

Superintendent Chalmers.

Right.

Okay.

. Yeah.

That, that would, that would help the wellbeing of a

certain unique niche market.

Yeah.

Well, they said there were enough people in the community that were of that

persuasion that it would have as much take up as a church in this day and age.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Why not?

Ah, anyway, that was Jim Chalmer's values-based capitalism, bit wishy-washy.

During the time that we had Morrison in charge, we had this orcas

arrangement crop up, a security packed understanding between Australia,

the UK, and the US where we agreed we were extra special friends.

And Joe, just remind me again, how is the UK ever gonna help us in a

military capacity if we get into trouble on the other side of the planet?

Same.

Same as the forks, they'll Sunday task force down.

Yeah.

Deliberate when the Argentinians invade.

Yes.

Hang on.

You're right.

Anyway, it's a, a bullshit pact and it, it just says, it just says to the

rest of Asia, we are white people here and we're scared of you Yellow people.

and we've got deals happening with other white people who also happen to be former

colonialists of much of the territory you guys currently live in, and you

had to fight them off at some stage.

We, we actually have a training initiative with Singapore.

We do a training initiative, military training initiative.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

So Singapore leases quite a lot of our army bases for training,

and I believe there's some mutual defense thing going on there.

Yes.

Yeah.

So we are, you know, other, other former colonies.

Yep.

But they're definitely not white people in Singapore.

Yeah.

Well, you know, why didn't we strike a deal with Singapore and

Indonesia and, you know, we're, we're here in Indonesia are Muslims.

Yeah, that's right.

That's right.

Yeah.

Anyway, Albanese and, and his.

Deputy are worrying me, Joe, they seem to be extremely naive about

these matters because he's come out in Albanese and said it's likely he

would've pursued the orcas agreement.

Had labor been empowered during the Morrison era because the bonds

between the three nations are enduring and defense officials would've

supplied the same advice goes on.

Orchestra is an arrangement between nations who are friends and whoever

was in government would've had similar defense department, defense

personnel, and foreign affairs advice.

And that's why our relationship with both those nations has been pretty

consistent over a considerable period of time, regardless of who has been

in office at any particular time.

So Joe, there's no point voting for the Labor Party if

you want a different policy.

Mm-hmm.

on defense or foreign affairs because.

They don't have a policy or digging up coal, they just take whatever

advice is given from the defense department and defense personnel,

and that's what they just follow.

And digging up coal is from Rio and Gina and

Just pathetic labor.

Just pathetic, honestly.

Oh, well we've got the same advice, so we'd just do the same thing.

It's your job to look at this stuff and make a decision about whether

defense speak flavors of English.

Yeah.

What?

It's easy to share intelligence because we all speak English.

Ah, of course.

Okay.

Yep.

And yeah, honestly, goodness sake, nations who are friends.

The US has never let us down.

Here's to save me doing a rant.

Here's Jimmy.

No and Joe on gonna on Tucker Cast again.

I was gonna say it was Rick Astley about how the US was never gonna give

us up, was never gonna let let us down.

Never gonna run around.

Hurt you.

Yes.

Something.

Yeah.

Alright, so this is good.

This is Jimmy Doer on right wing.

You know, we've reached the point where one of, like Tucker Carson is just an

abominable person, but he's pissed off with the amount of money that America

is spending on defense overseas.

I think his motivation is that we are wasting our money

defending overseas people.

We should.

Yes.

We, we should be back guarding the Mexican border.

Yes.

From all those nasty immigrants.

Yeah.

So, yeah.

So he, he wants to sort of taught us to retreat back into its shell.

And so, so that's his motivation.

But he is one of the few who's actually giving airtime to a view, which is

that maybe the USA is this warmongering hegemon that needs to stop doing it.

So he had Jimmy do on so this is what he had to say.

We're the ones provoking this war.

Just like we provoked the war in Ukraine, we are now provoking a war with China.

And what, who, who benefits?

I'll tell you right now, your enemy is not China.

Your enemy is not Russia.

Your enemy is the military industrial complex, which has been fleecing this

country to the tunes of hundreds of billions and trillions of dollars.

How many times are we gonna have a defense secretary say, Hey, we can't count

for 2 trillion in the Pentagon again.

That like, which has happened twice now in my lifetime.

So again, people are being uh, the the war machine.

Cannot be stopped.

Who's running this country, the war machine.

It certainly isn't.

Joe Biden making these decisions.

I would like to know who is making these decisions and I

just wanna remind everybody.

The United States is the world's terrorist.

We just set the Middle East on fire in the last 20 years and now we're

doing a proxy war in Ukraine, which we provoked NATO provoked and was just

admitted that we provoked it by the former prime minister of Germany and now

we're trying to save Ratter with with China, and they're predicting a war.

Again, China's not gonna invade us.

China's not our enemy.

They, we might have an economic war.

That's what these are, these are economic wars.

These are wars, right?

For in Ukraine, it's about liquified natural gas and making sure Germany

and Russia never come together because we fear Russia's natural resources

and manpower, and we fear them getting together with Germany, with

their technology and their capital.

And so that's why we blew up the Nord Stream pipeline.

That's why we're doing the Ukraine War.

This is all about hegemony, imperialism, and economics.

And if there's a marine somewhere, it's there because they're about to steal some

natural resources from another country as everybody's screaming about what a

bad guy Putin is for invading Ukraine.

The United States is currently occupying a third of Syria, and which third is that?

It's the third that has the oil.

And how do I know we're there to steal their oil because the president of the

United States said so, and we're not, we're not even benefiting economically.

That's, I mean, of course that's the rub.

Jimmy Dore, I appreciate.

Wow.

Didn't he do well to spit out a whole bunch of concepts in

two minutes and three seconds?

He barely paused for breath.

And do you listen, if you get a chance to look at the vision of

that, you're right Joe, but look, on Tucker's face was the strangest look

of, of, he just looked like he'd been slapped across the face by a fish.

Yeah, he did.

And he just held it for the entire interview.

Two minutes and three seconds.

And he really got a lot out in a rapid amount of time that was, and there

you go, right wing Tucker Carlson giving anti-war, anti-imperialist

left wing view in supporting.

because it's costing America money.

Mm-hmm.

rather than because it's killing brown people.

But hey, at least this is, they call about Horseshoe Joe, where this extreme

of the right and the extreme of the left eventually sort of come together

on some issues like a horseshoe does.

So, yeah.

You know, meanwhile, if you look at Congress, you'll see people like AOC

and Bernie Sanders and other supposedly left wing operators un without

hesitation voting for these military budgets and for this military action.

So these people who normally have social progressive views,

well they don't actually, they're just another version of it.

It just shows how the left wing is still very much the right wing

and you know, maybe the argument.

Lefties out there if you want to try and win people over to stop this war mongering

his, his appeal to the Tucker Carlson.

Tony Blair, I think was the beginning of it, wasn't he?

Yes.

He was part of the Coalition of the Drilling.

Sorry.

Willing.

Yes, that's right.

He was, that was what Margaret Thatcher said, wasn't it?

That her greatest achievement was Tony Blair possible because she

had basically forced the Labor Party to produce a Tony Blair.

Right.

So I think I've read that somewhere.

Anyway, well done Jimmy Dore for getting that all out in a rush.

So, chat room like that one, I think . Alright.

How are we going for time?

Like 32.

Before I just get onto this next one, which is Caitlin Johnston.

Actually

Thanks actually to the patrons.

Got a lovely donation from David s Thank you David for that generous donation.

Much appreciated and thought it's time to thank the patrons.

Joe, if you needed to duck off, you've got a minute here if you

need to, but I'm good at the moment.

Okay, you are good.

So, dear listener we have a Patreon account.

You can log on there and agree to donate 1 25 or $10 per episode, or you can go

into PayPal and donate some money there.

If you can't afford to, that's fine.

Send me a message like if I get an email or a message from people saying they

enjoy the show, that's always nice.

If you've never done that before, send me a message cuz that warms my heart and.

Right.

People who are patrons.

Big shout out and thanks to, and this is starting from the most

recent to the oldest Danny Boyland.

Abra Puka.

Actually, Abra used as donated for a long time, but used to be via PayPal.

But now Patreon auntie US Sentiment.

Tristan Hennessy, mark Lavell.

Si Tom, the Warehouse Guy Ricko.

Greg p Shannon Leg, Don tv.

Matt Dier, Sue Crip James in Sydney there ran Wayne, David

Hamby, Virgil Craig, ball.

Shane Ingram.

Zuck.

David Copley.

Graham Hannigan, yet another Pinker fan, John in dire Straits.

Donny Daer, Camille Paul Wer Alexander, Alan Matthew Craigs Glen Bell.

Professor Dr.

Dentist.

Adam Priest Murray Wer, who's in the chat room?

Murray, good to see you there.

Andy Doling, Peter Gillespie.

Gavins, Daniel Cur.

Liam McMahon.

Dominic Dam.

Massey.

Mad man.

Bromwyn, who's often in the chat room but isn't tonight.

Kavir, Jimmy Spud, Tony Wall, Steve Shiners.

Alison C is Alison.

I haven't seen tonight.

A Yame Wao.

Craig and Janelle Louise.

Thank you to all those people.

And I forgot to look up the PayPals in I forgot to look up the PayPal people.

I wonder if I've got that handy because they're on a separate

list and I'll quickly grab that.

The US sentiment, by the way, the second name, ah, thank you.

Anti-US sentiment.

Of course.

Thank you.

Also, thank you.

To donate via PayPal would be Mr.

T, Paul Evans, Anne Reed, Darren Gins, Davis from Cairns.

I mentioned before Noel Hamilton, and.

Louise, thank you to those people who donate that way.

Yeah, it should be links in the show notes if you would like to.

It's much appreciated.

And yeah, so that's a rundown of thank you to those people.

Joe, have you tried this chat?

GP t no.

Right.

I would've thought as a tech guy you would've given it a game.

Yeah.

I'm not big on hyped things.

Right?

Yep.

Okay.

So dear, dear listener, you've, if you've been living in a cave, and we hadn't

heard of it, but it's an artificial intelligence program where you basically

can sort of ask it for something and it will generate, typically people have

been saying write me a 300 word essay on why people should vote yes to the voice

to Parliament or something like that.

And, it can produce half decent essay is essentially one of the

key things that have been, people have been using Joe sort of Yeah.

Writing essays, articles.

But you can, you can also do write me a sonnet or Yes, eh.

So it probably wouldn't know the arguments to the voice because it's not learning.

It has been trained and anything that happened after its

training, it doesn't know about.

Right.

Okay.

So, and the reason they did that was because the previous iterations of art

artificial intelligence have been trained by humans outside to become racist Nazis.

Ah, I see.

Do you not remember Microsoft's one that was tweeting away and they got it to

stop being a Nazi within about two days?

No, I didn't remember that.

Yeah.

Ah, okay.

Yep.

You can even get it to write pieces of code, apparently.

Yeah.

Probably won't work, but sometimes it does.

Yeah.

Anyway, when you, when you read these things, they're, they're a little

bit, look, they're not too bad.

They're, they're surprisingly good sometimes.

Yeah.

I mean, some friends of mine got it to write a love poem for one of

our other friends, , right, okay.

Yep.

All, all about his phone shop and, and how he would, how he

lived to serve his customers.

It was hilarious.

Oh, there you go.

So anyway, according to the shovel headline reads Peter Dutton to

start using chat g p t to bring more human touch to speeches.

Some, it's one use for it, John.

Well, exactly.

Mm-hmm.

, I, the quote was, I just want to show Australians that I'm not a robot.

Mm-hmm.

But we know he's not a robot.

He's a monster, isn't he?

Yeah.

Okay.

Oh, an article from Caitlin Johnson.

Basically the thrust of the article is that we are ruled by assholes

because we have asshole systems.

What, what is it with assholes slipping in everywhere.

Yeah.

Does she live in America?

She's got an American husband.

Dunno.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You'd prefer asshole rather than asshole.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And ass is a donkey.

Yeah.

So she's saying people have a fairly language warning, dear listener.

People have a fairly easy time accepting that things are fucked because

we are ruled by corrupt assholes.

They have a much harder time accepting that we are ruled by corrupt

assholes because our corrupt asshole systems will always necessarily

elevate corrupt assholes to the top.

So she's really saying, our problem isn't that we've just got the wrong people have

percolated to the top in a ruining lives.

It's that we have a system that encourages and enables people to the

wrong people to percolate to the top.

I, I've, I've seen a number of people who have said the problem isn't with

the president or the Prime Minister.

The problem is with the whole system that allows them to get there.

Yes.

And that Donald Trump was a symptom.

Yes.

And a result of a system that is more worrying than Donald Trump itself.

Mm-hmm.

himself.

Yeah.

That's a thrust of the article.

It's in the show notes, which the people who are patrons get a pdf copy of the

show notes worth joining just for that.

By the way, anyone in the chat room is a pat, a patron on Patreon.

Do any of you actually read the show notes or at least skim through them?

I'm just curious whether you do or whether.

. It just nobody looks at it except for myself and Cho keen to know.

And I used them just to roll up and snor cocaine with or to put yourself to sleep.

Ah, James does.

Good on you, James.

Right, what else do I have from Caitlin Johnson?

Ah, she came across an article from The Guardian.

This was a piece from 2014, and it was basically a piece which

was highly critical of Ukraine.

The government, which had been effectively installed by the Americans,

by, by the the high preponderance of Nazis in the Ukrainian sort of

military and their presence there.

And what else did this article say?

The Ukrainian president was replaced by a US selected administration in an entirely

unconstitutional takeover, and spoke about the role of fascist right on the

streets and in the new Ukrainian regime.

It said in the article in The Guardian, this is from 2014, voted

overwhelmingly to join Russia.

And you don't hear much about Ukrainian government's veneration

of wartime Nazi collaborators.

Putin has won every election in the last however many years is the, the point of

this article though, Joe, is okay, you can criticize it and say it's wrong,

but she's saying that you could not print that article today if you were

to make an article that was critical of Ukraine and sympathetic of Russia.

In the way that this article that was written in 2014, you, there's

no way that the Guardian would print it today is basically and, and she's

not even admitting that that was you know, mainstream view at all.

She's prepared to admit that this was perhaps an outlier of an article, but it

was written by a journalist who at the time had published hundreds of articles

for the Guardian and kept publishing for a year and a half after that piece came out.

So, it's really her theory that mainstream media now is massaged

where they don't, where they feel their role is not to just present.

Facts and let people work it out.

But their role is to somehow manage the inflammation flow to bring people to a,

an opinion that they want them to have.

So I think that was a fair point.

I, I'm sure the art, the guardian would, would not print an article like that

today if, if one of their long-term respected journalists presented it, they

would just end up in the bin, probably.

Mm-hmm.

At the same time.

There was an article by John Pilger and of course it was also scathing of Ukraine

published in The Guardian at the time.

And in it Pilger i's article is somehow even more heretical than

Mills saying Washington quote.

I like this one.

Masterminded the coup in February against the democratically elected

government in Kiev and that Ukraine has turned into a CIA theme park.

Was Pilger.

I love Turn a phrase like that, Joe.

A CIA theme park was how he described the Ukraine.

So, Pilger agrees that you, I think that you could not produce that sort

of article for The Guardian anymore.

And he says that there's a shift in mass media reporting and saying that there

was a purge of dissident voices from the Guardian ranks around 2014 and 2015.

And he says, my written journalism is no longer welcome in The Guardian,

which three years ago got rid of people like me in pretty much a purge.

He says interestingly, a 2019 Declassified UK report found that British Intelligence

Services began aggressively targeting the Guardian after its 2013 publication

of the Ed Wood Snowden documents.

The outlet's editor-in-chief, Alan Rus Bridger was replaced

by Catherine Viner in 2015.

And at that point, the guardian began moving away from critical

investigative reporting and began publishing softball interviews

with chiefs of the I five and M 16.

So there we go.

That's a theory on by Caitlin Johnston that you couldn't produce that

article anymore and a theory about the guardian changing tack in around 2015.

That's that one.

And Jay, there was a flurry of messages on there in the chat room.

Anything, just jokes.

Are we?

Yes.

Okay.

Good on you.

In the chat room.

And we, we were discussing Australian research and space exploration.

Okay.

Okay.

Very good.

Yeah.

Really her final,

this final one from Caitlin Johnson says, once you get a penetrating insight into

how much of our civilization is comprised of narratives people made up, it changes

your view of everything, politics, government, the media, money, the economy,

religion, culture, even your very self.

That is true, Joe.

I reckon over the last seven years I have developed a much more acute

awareness of just how much shit is made up and, and shoveled, . Mm-hmm.

in front of us.

And she says that in recognizing that you would think it would be a

negative experience, and she says at first it can be what's, but what's

ultimately understood is something very.

And that is if our entire civilization is made up, then we can make up

something else, something better, something that works for all of us.

And she says as examples, people are making up their own rules about money,

gender, relationships, spirituality.

That's what you're seeing in these new ideas about cryptocurrencies.

I don't like that example, by the way.

No.

In the younger generation's, ideas about gender and sexuality in rewriting the

rules of what relationships, marriages, and families are supposed to look like.

People are beginning to replace the old narratives with

narratives of their own making.

So, and that's a good thing, something you go, your listener.

This episode has been concerned with propaganda and narratives

and how depressing it can be that Yeah, I mean, Dr.

Darrell Ray, who is a psychologist who , he's very much involved in the atheist

movement in the states and was saying that many people who have shared their

religious beliefs still clinging onto religious driven ideas, particularly

around sexuality, but amongst other things about morality in general, really.

Yeah.

Hmm.

And, and, you know, inherited guilt, guilt about nudity or their body or whatever.

Mm-hmm.

And feel these things that have been imbibed.

And even if we're not religious as children, we still inherit

that from a Christian society.

Yep.

Christian culture.

Yeah.

And it's very difficult.

I mean, a lot of talk about sex work, it is driven by this Christian ideal

that is, sex is somehow different, somehow special, somehow magical.

And if you, if you consider it as just another pastime, and you start

saying, well, why is it different?

And the answer is always, well, it just is.

Mm-hmm.

. But, but I see young people now.

I think like if I look at high school kids mm-hmm.

and, you know, you see all sorts of strange hairstyles, all sorts of

gothic outfits or almost anything goes, it seems you know, at high

school, a lot of high schools now.

Not everyone I guess, but lots of them.

Okay.

You're gay, so what?

Yeah, there's a, yeah, I think there is a lot more people

just saying, well, whatever.

Rocky boat.

Rocky boat and yeah.

I mean, I remember and being unconstrained by traditional

narratives as, as a kid at school.

Yeah.

Nobody in my class would've dead come out, no.

As a teenager.

. And yet my daughter's school there was quite a lot.

Hmm.

And, and that was at a Christian school.

Yeah.

And the kids genuinely just don't bat an eyelid about it.

No.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Maybe people will not bat an eyelid when capitalism falls over

and replace with something else, or, or other crazy things happen.

So can, so it is a good point by Caitlin saying that yes, you know, you look around

and you see how much is this made up.

And on the plus side means we can make up new ways of doing things.

Mm-hmm.

There's a positive way of ending a program.

Dear listener, . Right.

I'm gonna be back next week, but then the week after, I'm not sure what's happening.

We'll see.

You around next week, Joe.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Right.

Okay.

Alright.

Well, dear listener, thanks for all those in the chat room.

You guys were having fun in there.

. I've got nothing else.

Talk to you next week.

And it's a good night from him.