In this episode we discuss:

(00:00) ep 365

(00:33) Introduction

(03:39) Victorian Election

(07:33) 3 Minutes of Sky News

(11:11) Murdoch Failure?

(14:14) Conspiracies

(18:23) Rowan Dean

(21:25) ABC

(23:25) Milton Dick

(26:29) The GGs Wife

(29:02) Jordan Peterson

(29:57) The State of Society

(37:04) Colorado Shooter

(38:51) A Missile into Poland

(42:42) Celebrities

(43:08) Elon Musk

(54:08) Protests in China

(56:30) Chips

(01:55) Venezuela

(01:02:17) Oil Price Cap

(01:05:23) The Plaza Accord

(01:08:26) Exchange Rate

(01:09:38) GDP

(01:12:37) The Yen Appreciates

(01:16:07) GDP Post Plaza Accord

(01:16:26) China Trade Comparison

(01:17:45) Final Thoughts

(01:23:53) Mr Anderson

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Taiwan US relations.

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the Japanese and the Plaza record.

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And that's where we're heading in the chatroom is Landon.

Hardbottom.

Good on you land.

And so, okay, let's kick off with Victorian election.

So down Victoria DIC dictated, Dan won pretty much retaining the numbers

that he had before and dictator dictated Dan won a democratic election.

How did he that?

Yes, indeed.

And all the polls were showing that that would be the likely result.

But I think we've become so gun shy of polls in recent years, Joe, that we.

Just don't trust them.

And you know, if you are pro Dan, you are quite fearful.

Maybe the polls were correct, but in the end, the polls were, were accurate.

And given that he won in a landslide last time, the liberals should have

been able to peg back some seats, but they didn't completely failed.

And it seemed to be a really pathetic roll up of candidates, just an, a collection

of oddballs and religious nutts and just no hopes were presented as candidates.

They had a leader who was uninspiring and offered nothing.

And it was really a pretty easy run for Dan Andrews just to, what he

offered was not being Dan Andrews.

And everyone should have gone for that because, you know, Andrews

is an O man who forced the poor, poor Victorians into lockdown.

Yeah.

So we'll get into that.

Joe, for anyone wondering there was a party called the Angry Victorians

party and with 65% of the vote counted, they had attracted 664 votes.

So this person on Twitter suggests that by the next election they

won't be the angry Victorians party.

They'll be the furious.

No, I think the anti lockdown all moved up here.

I dunno, there's the cookers, something like 20,000 migrants, interstate migrants

into Queensland to October 22, I think.

Mm, yep.

Yep.

There's a lot of interstate migration from Sydney as well.

Mm, yeah.

Discovering what it's like.

And even down in Melbourne last week, they had hail, cold snap.

They turned the heaters back on.

Joe down there.

Crazy.

Why would you live there, Brotman?

What are you doing down there?

We had a, a vendor presentation last week and one of the guys had come from Canberra

and he said, oh, I'm glad to be up here.

It was, there was snow in the hills around Canberra.

Yeah.

So anyway look, what's the takeaway?

What can we look sort of examining the end trails of this election?

And really the key feature of the election was the efforts by the

mainstream media, the Murdoch Press and the Castello nine at work.

Their efforts to.

Just a completely biased reporting.

And so anti Dan that it was, it was comical and laughable their efforts

to try and paint him as a bad man.

So that I think was a key feature.

And it seems a key feature is just liberal party around Australia,

including the Victorians having no idea of how they have lost connection with

the average person that they need to.

We're not far enough, right?

We need to be further right indeed.

So dear now I've got here, and I'm sorry to do this to you.

How much Sky News do you watch Joe?

Absolutely zero.

Don't watch tv.

Yeah.

You're gonna watch three minutes more than what you normally would.

Right?

Look, I think this is instructive because this is a panel discussion

held before the result was known.

In the Sky News, there's a labor guy talking about what the issues were.

A bunch of rabid right?

Wingers, sky and others who just want to shout him down.

And I think this is really instructive of where our society has got to.

This kind of sums up the election in many ways.

I think.

So we'll play this one.

What's the line?

Let's get back to our panel.

Stephen Conroy.

That, that El element to this election.

Even Andrew, Clint and I were walking after lunch today

and someone came up to us.

We've gotta get rid of Andrews and, and so what's your read on that?

Because people feel much more inclined if they are opposed to him to speak up

very forcefully against him, wasn't, I think ultimately the quiet Victorian, I

think Lisa made the point, the majority of Victorians, they did it tough and

they want to move on, but they supported what was done and it was bipartisan

for most of it, almost the whole way.

So there are a large vocal minority that, you know, wants to say Daniel

Andrews is the devil incarnate.

But the, is it more vocal than you've seen?

Probably 10 days, I think when you, you get the sort of daily propaganda

coming out of some of the media outlet.

Yeah, you, you just don't, just the media.

Come on.

I'm talking mean seriously.

I'm talking about front page after front page after front page, which

has been an attempt at a character.

But you said influence.

It's completely failed.

Any, if any of that was half true, why wouldn't have people felt the same way

about the Western Australian Premier.

I mean, that's political spending, all night political people who blame the

media insult the intelligence of voters.

Steven insult the intelligence of insults to Victorian voters in

the campaign by the Herald son.

That has been the insult to Victorian voters.

Are you saying voters can't make up their own mind?

They have made up their own mind and they've rejected the, the about

two steps about car accidents and they're going reject it tonight.

It's clearly.

Probably 40% of the population who are very unhappy with Dan Andrews.

Let's not talk just about the breadth.

It's the depth of feeling.

Don't you feel that?

I mean, that's the real challenge.

A strong vocal, passionately vocal anti Dan.

Yeah.

Yeah, I said that.

But the vast majority, the majority not the strong vocal minority.

The majority.

Majority.

Maybe not majority.

We'll find out tonight.

The quiet Victorians are voting for dance.

Hang on.

That's our line.

You can't steal the quiet.

I'm sorry.

The quiet Victorians are voting for Dan have, I think that's right.

I think that, I mean, John Major was right.

He was, the labor guy is absolutely spot on with what happened.

He's living in the real world.

Those other characters are just in a fantasy land of denial.

Yeah.

Between, between Murdoch and the cookers.

Yep.

But otherwise, no, just, they're just in complete denial and fantasy land.

So, you know, one thing I'll take up against what he said was he said

it was Murdoch press was failed.

This, this campaign failed.

And I would say it had a couple of successes.

Every vote above 5% for the liberals was actually a win.

Like, same with the last federal election.

When everyone said, oh, isn't it just shows that Murdoch lost?

Well, I know with the last, I dunno the Victorian opposition particularly

well, but I knew the liberal government very well, the Morrison government.

Mm-hmm.

. And that more than 5% of the population would vote for him

was a win for the Murdoch press.

In that election.

And I think probably the same here, that why 5%?

Because there's, cause there's, there's always 5% crazies, like Yeah, yeah.

But then there's also 30% rusted on liberal voters, maybe 40%.

Just to pluck a figure.

I just think that, you know, if, if they were running it properly, certainly in the

last federal election, you know, nobody except Scott and his mother would've

voted for the Morrison government.

So they had a win that way in that it wasn't as bad as it should have been.

And the second one was, the other part that really wasn't a failure,

that was a win, was this generation of hate against Dan Andrews.

I mean, that's what they tried to do, and they did succeed in splitting the

community at least 70 30 or whatever.

Where they really did create a vocal minority who were rabid

in their dislike of Dan Andrews.

So they succeeded in convincing a certain number, a significant number

of people to that way of thinking.

So didn't fail entirely, but part marks for the mainstream media.

I would say . I I think you are seeing the people who vote liberal every

time and aren't ever gonna change.

Yeah.

I think in terms of success in the sway able voters, probably not.

Malcolm Turnbull said in a tweet, he said, at the heart of the liberal party defeat

in the Victorian election is the paradox that in this, the most small l liberal

state in Australia, the liberal party has been taken over by the hard right.

and is therefore add odds with the electorate whose support it seeks.

That's true, that's true of the Australia the liberal party across the country.

Indeed it is.

So he says it.

And look I've got a little bit more Sky News for you in a clip as well.

Yeah.

Given the result in their sad faces on instead of Sky News,

they've become crime news.

So I'll just find this one here because this has got one of my

favorites who of course is Rowan Dean.

So, oh no, actually I think I've got I think I've got this one of Kroger first.

I'll do, I'll do this one with Kroger because you know, we had this issue

with the stairs that Dan fell down and the media painting it as some sort of.

Conspiracy without saying what they thought the story was, but they

just weren't accepting that he fell down these stairs and hurt himself.

But they couldn't provide an alternative story.

The same with the car crash that his wife was involved with when she was driving.

You know, they kept talking about it without offering some alternative,

but just waving smoke around and saying, sounds a bit smokey.

Yes, exactly.

And Michael Kroger is here in this one.

He's Michael Kroger is, let me just give you his credentials.

So former Australian lawyer.

He was president of the Victorian Liberal Party from 87 to 92 and from

2015 to 2018, and he's considered a member of the conservative faction.

So he's, he was the president of the liberal party 2015 to 2018.

And you'll see in this clip that he's actually.

Supporting this conspiracy theory in some way or not denying it or, anyway,

you have a look and be the judge.

Something improper or illegal running.

Ongoing stories about two steps.

Okay.

Is a joke.

Yeah.

There is nothing there.

No.

All the crazy.

And there have been some crazy conspiracy theories being fueled by idiot stories.

About two steps.

Okay.

Inviting people to want believe the crazy conspiracy story.

Where had Andrew, that's what's been going on.

Where had been, where had Andrew's been the night before?

I have no idea.

Okay.

I have no idea.

And no one has ever come forward and suggested anything.

Why hasn't he?

You're ready to get, why hasn't he explain what happened?

The car accident.

A tragic, no, he didn't.

A tragic incident.

Everyone knows what happened.

Well filly in Michael.

Cause I don't, well, because the people I've asked lots of the people

who were there, people were there with Andrews in the night before and not

refuse to talk about what happened.

You know, one that

I told Michael accountable.

But, you know, this is a, these are conspiracy theories.

They're absolutely conspiracy theories.

And, and if you wanna have a look at you know, put aside what happened during the

pandemic and how media dealt with it.

I mean, Daniel did stand up off two, two and a half hours.

I stood there for one of them.

The question usually stupid and well, let's, they had the opportunity,

they, half it turned up on the hook.

But you know, if you have a look since the 1st of November, so if you look at

the Harold Son's stories that have been negative and conspiratorial against

Daniel, it's 131 negatives, 16 positives in terms of the lives, seven negatives.

And 35.

This isn't any these by complaining, but I'm just saying

mean and nasty lot.

They are same.

These people crazy.

Great answer to Where was he the night before?

Was at your mum's

Ah.

Cause you know you can't prove otherwise.

Yeah, yeah.

Like this is high up former president, the liberal party.

Where's the shame?

They've gone completely crazy.

Just nutts.

Anyway, that's the state of the liberal party in Victoria.

Yeah.

You didn't see the night before.

Who cares?

Yeah.

Is it relevant?

Mm-hmm.

according to Laurie Oaks liberal party is starting to look like Jonestown.

I think that's right.

So, well as long as they drink the Kool-Aid.

Yeah.

Yep.

So, which apparently is a really good bit of propaganda because it wasn't

Kool-Aid, it was some other manufacturer.

Yes, I think that's right.

And they managed to persuade everyone that it was Kool-Aid and it wasn't.

Yeah, yeah.

True.

Um, see, alright, and I will play, actually I should have played

this Ryan Dean one as well, just to finish off with crazy clips.

Yeah, we'll just play a bit of Roween because I've got him here

and with Rita Benini, I'm really gathering all the crazies for you.

Here we go.

They literally had no conservative policies.

Not even one.

That's right.

And that's why they lost.

That's the whole point.

If you don't stand for your, what you take Australia.

Well, they're idiots, aren't they?

If you were the conservative party in Australia, the party of Mensies, and you

don't stand for solid conservative values, absolutely for and front, and you are

gonna lose Peter Dutton, listen and watch.

You don't, and you'll lose.

We've seen it in every single election.

When liberals move to the left, when liberals become liberal light

or lidos liberals in name only won liberals burning and liberals brag,

liberals, you will lose Sharma.

Liberals, you will lose Zimmerman liberals, you will

lose Wake up liberal party.

Sit up and go, okay, we want to be a conservative party and kick out.

Every single member that will not espouse to liberal core liberal values.

Otherwise you are finished.

Because no one wants, no one wants a left-leaning liberal work party.

Nobody thank Who's the idiot?

Well, not, not one to go Godwin there, but his arm gesturing reminded me

awfully of Hitler at his rallies.

So shouty these people on sky.

So shouty.

But there you go.

Like the advice is that the liberal opposition was just not right wing enough.

Enough.

Absolutely.

Peter Dub full of pay attention full of left woke chaos.

You should be, you should be goose stepping into every press conference

and you'll win the majority vote.

Yeah.

So, you know, I mean, saying it for years that here in Australia we've

been adopting, the liberal party has been adopting the Republican.

Playbook the Christians have taken over, contaminated them.

We've certainly got the media class the same as the crazy sort

of Fox News and whatever in the us.

And there was that quote I found you, wasn't there?

Yeah.

Barry Goldwater.

Yes.

Yeah.

Where was that one?

Goldwater I'll play.

Where he said, mark my word if and when these preachers get

control, this is from 50 years ago Goldwater said this mark my word.

If and when these preachers get control of the Republican party and

they're sure trying to do so, it's gonna be a terrible damn problem.

Frankly, these people frighten me.

Politics and governing demand compromise.

But these Christians believe they're acting in the name of God, so

they can't and won't compromise.

I know, I've tried to deal with them.

So very prescient.

Yeah.

It was for 50 years ago.

Mm-hmm.

. Indeed.

He was so, you know, um, abc not much better because the ABC just

repeats stuff they hear in the other media, which is the burdock media.

So they'll be criticized for being left leaning.

Yeah.

And so you've got saw this tweet.

It was referring to a Johanna Nicholson, who is a reporter on abc,

and it just gave the intro of some of her questions to Dan Andrews.

And some of her questions were, why has your government allowed

the health system to get so bad?

Why hasn't it been funded properly?

Why haven't we seen as much of you.

Opinion on you in Victoria is personally very divided.

He's a very leading questions, framing everything in a negative light.

You wouldn't call them neutral questions in any sense.

So that's typical of, you know, what we see on the abc.

Mm-hmm.

, they're not that much better.

There we go.

So that's Victorian election.

In a nutshell, it looks terrible for liberal party in Victoria and it

looks terrible for them nationally.

I was gonna say it's not wa What do you mean?

It's not wa Well, after the Trancing, the liberals got in wa Yes.

Victoria's probably breathing a sigh of relief.

It wasn't as bad.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

So, Ah, it's amazing.

It's, I still maintain it's the liberal party's heading for a split

and Christians all maintain control and sort of te like people within the

party will split off eventually form their own teal party of some sort.

That's my prediction.

Um, but the Labor Party has its own Christian Nutts, Joe and I see the

Rational, rational Society has been very active in trying to get prayers

in parliament removed in various councils and state parliament and

obviously the Federal Parliament.

So I wonder what their chances are in the Federal Parliament

with the speaker Milton Dick.

And if you are wondering as well, then after this clip,

you won't be left wondering.

I was gonna say, it sounds like it's sexually transmitted infection.

Milton Dick.

Yes, it does.

And here he is at some breakfast or whatever.

This is the current speaker of the House of Representatives

in in our federal parliament.

In times of difficulty and in times of need, God, here's our prayers,

and particularly during the pandemic where there were people feeling

isolated, alone, scared, God heard those prayers and guided our nation.

So it was very important for me as a Christian, but also as a person of

faith, to make sure that as a leader we never forget who we're representing,

how we're representing them, and why we're representing them, and

make sure those prayers are heard.

We're in a time of great division in the world.

How do you think that prayer can be a unifying act?

Well, I think by praying it reminds us or how small we are and just

how important those prayers are, particularly at this difficult time.

For the world and some of the challenges that our country is facing, and God

is the great unifier and you only need to look in this room where you've seen

people from around the country who've traveled far to join us in prayer today.

People from different political beliefs and values from across our parliaments and

Senate to make sure that as a country we unify and make sure that those prayers for

those in need for those, as the Governor General said, for those who are doing it

particularly difficult, now more than ever are country needs to be unified and those

prayers that will be in this room and outside this room and across Australia,

God will listen and God will provide.

Thank you very much, speaker.

Yep.

Everyone should be unified behind one God, but it has to be the right God.

This podcast does get depressing at times, doesn't it?

When we.

Demonstrate what doesn't do a prayer breakfast, could see a vote in it.

He's a nonbeliever.

Well, no, he claims to be Christian, I'm sure.

Does he?

I think so.

I thought, I thought he was a non-believer.

No, I think he would have a, I thought he just towed the party.

Lie.

He wouldn't be as overt as the others, so, oh my goodness me.

He said, where are the grownups?

Where are they?

They're not in the Governor General's house.

Joe . No.

We've mentioned before about the Governor General's wife and one of her claim

to fame was that she reads the Bible while hula hooping in the morning.

I remember talking about this ages ago, and apparently she's got quite a thing

for singing at Government house functions.

So much so that the department of Foreign Affairs now warns all visitors

to say sorry, but be prepared.

The Governor General's wife will undoubtedly start a singing session and

it's just nothing we can do about it.

You'll probably be asked to sing.

You Are My Sunshine.

That's her favorite song.

Okay, . The thing about you are My Sunshine Joe, is

that the chorus is lovely.

Mm-hmm.

, but the actual verses in you are my sunshine.

A terrible, very depressing, like psychopathic sort of,

treatment of, of a, of a partner.

Like not good at all.

So she, she avoids those and just repeats the, the chorus endlessly, right?

So.

I think might be better.

Anyway, if you do get your listener an invite to Parliament House for sure.

This is some of the sort of stuff you'll be treated to.

We'll meet again when it's over.

We'll hug.

Hug and kiss, shake hands.

We're all in these together, so let's so hand.

We miss the human touch.

We like to see our friends.

The world celebrate when this ends.

It was very unfair.

There was no content warning.

. That's right.

Yeah.

I think we're gonna have London vomiting again.

. Look, it's so good.

I've got on the soundboard now.

So in future,

I just need to pull that out.

It could be useful.

It's depressing anyway.

At least her husband's doing a good job.

I mean, it's not like he's swearing in Scott Morrison on multiple

ministries and not telling anybody.

No.

Oops.

Yeah.

So, still on federal Parliament, they had a visitor this week.

Jordan Peterson, great man.

Spoke to the usual suspects, Scotty, Matt Canavan, all the people you could imagine

or basically liberal and national party.

Complete nutts and had them entranced.

So that was Jordan Peterson in our national par.

And they were just lapping it up.

And good luck to anybody who thinks that the liberal party is turning

around in a direction they need to, they're just going harder.

They also spout nonsense and like the sound of their own voice.

So Yeah.

Makes sense that he fits in with them.

Yeah.

And he's got a bit of a preacher sort of style to him as well.

Yeah.

So, so yeah, that was, that was federal parliament.

I wrote you some thoughts on the state of our, of where we're at.

Bit of a summary.

I'll run through it.

We have allowed psychopaths to take control of our vital institutions.

Anthony Albanese is not a psychopath, but he is not in control.

He wants to get rid of the tax breaks for the rich, but he can't,

he doesn't want Australia to send submarines into the South China

Sea to launch missiles of China.

That is what his government is trying to buy.

He can't control the military industrial complex.

He is a victim of the Murdoch press.

He can't stop it.

He wants Julian Assange out of Belmar Prison probably, I think,

but he can't openly call for it.

He cannot control the Labor Party.

He can only influence its faction.

It could be worse, it could be trying to do things from within the liberal party.

So the liberal party of Australia is undergoing a Trump-like reformation.

Highly motivated evangelical Christians are ruthlessly branch stacking their

way to complete control of the party.

Oli Garic liberals don't care as they know they can cut neoliberal

deals with the evangelicals, like young children, progressive liberals

clinging to the fairy tales, spunned by the how Thatcher and Reagan years.

They have swallowed the libertarian mantra of small government and

individual freedom at all costs.

, but they don't wanna mix it with Bronze Age morality.

They look on with bewilderment as the evangelicals take over.

Ironically, they dismiss the value of collective action by watching Pentecostals

win out by virtue of superior teamwork.

Many progressive liberals are nice people.

Unfortunately, they naively believe what is written in Murdoch papers.

They are too trusting.

Remove their access to right wing media and give them a dose of

cynicism and they will vote left.

If that doesn't work, then just wait a while as they transition

from middle to lower class.

That might do it.

The Murdoch media purposefully gave up on humanity a long time ago,

but it has now been joined by the nine Castello Press, which dropped

its pants and exposed its bias.

In the recent Victorian election campaign.

The ABC has declined dramatically.

It's now staffed by two types.

The first type are Murdoch rejects, who enjoy parroting right wing talking points.

The second type are lightweights stenographers who don't understand complex

issues and don't want to be found out.

They consequently resort to repeating right wing themes.

Say for the knowledge that by swimming with the mainstream narrative, the

ignorance is less likely to be exposed.

So with no effective media surveillance, powerful interests

get away with rotting our society.

Ordinary people dunno how effectively they are being screwed.

The capitalist model relies on growth that cannot be sustained.

America has run out of opportunities to exploit.

The low hanging fruit has gone.

China will repel America and America will not accept defeat.

It can't, it cannot afford.

America's allies and enemies will abandon it.

The US dollar will lose its status and suddenly the US economy will

be compared to a banana republic whose specialty is making weapons.

The only question is how much America will lash out at foreign friends

and enemies before succumbing.

So the coming collapse and hardship is avoidable.

The solutions are obvious, but our species has not evolved to

deal with the society we exist in.

We are hardwired to self-regulate in a village of 150.

We need new tools to overcome the oligarchs.

The answer must surely include education and knowledge.

Extreme hardship will eventually lead to revolution and change,

but as time passes, the oligos will also eventually regain power.

They will hide the truth and leave no time for knowledge seeking, and

we will be back to where we are now.

Is there a solution to this cycle?

I have a suggestion next time when the system collapses.

The workers, the proletariat must be ready to implement a

working class shock doctrine.

They must be ready to entrench pro-social laws in constitutional reform.

They must resolve the ideas now do all the arguing and get the paperwork ready.

So that's how I see it.

It's all quite depressing, . But that's a summary of my study of

society as I see it at the moment.

Any disagreement, Joe or not as bleak?

I don't know.

I mean, sure you'll get revolution, but generally you don't get

a utopia after a revolution.

You get military governments, dictatorships.

Not always.

Sometimes you get rarely.

. Yeah.

If you're allowed to.

And I don't know that, I suppose, yeah, if you're doing a shock doctrine

and forcing it through, whilst the world is in turmoil, maybe you'll

get but vested, the vested interests will be fighting hard against that.

Yeah.

As an example, we should have had been ready in a financial crisis.

If the banks are gonna go bust, then nationalize them.

Exactly.

Same with Qantas, you know, national emergency.

If, if Qantas is gonna go bust, then the government takes control,

the shareholders lose out.

And we should make that decision now so that when it happens, we

just take it, bounce it, go do it rather than arguing about it later.

So we should foresee some of these events and.

And have the arguments ready to go.

I think that's the sort of thing we could be doing by the shares at market price.

Yeah.

And if the company's completely collapsed, that might be zero.

Mm-hmm.

. Yep.

And investors in banks and these large corporations, I mean, you

supposed, you're supposed to be rewarded for risk, but there's often

just no risk with these people.

They get bailed out, so.

Mm-hmm.

So that's the sort of thing that decide in advance.

Yes.

Too big to fail.

We should have, we should pass now a too big to file act mm-hmm.

so that when one happens it, the nationalization

just happens automatically.

Yeah.

If it's too big to fail, it gets nationalized and the

shareholders get a nominal value.

Right.

Okay.

I've played too many clips.

I'm not gonna play this one.

I'll play that for another day.

Um, you would've heard in America about the, the guy who, the Colorado shooter and

when they interviewed his, who, who the right wingers alleged he was non-binary.

He used they them, and therefore it couldn't have been hate crime because

they, that's a whole other question.

Should we be using the term hate crime?

Or is a crime a crime, whether it's driven by whatever motivation anyways

alleged that this person was not anti-gay because they were non-binary.

Yes.

And apparently that was a load of bullshit.

Yes.

Did you see the interview with his father?

I did.

So the father was worried, or at least I saw the quote,

Well, I, I saw the interviews.

His father was worried because his son had actually his father mumbles a lot.

It's not great video, but essentially he was worried that his son was

gay cuz he was in a gay bar.

And when he was, when he realized he was there to shoot people,

he was actually relieved.

Mm-hmm.

that was okay.

At least he wasn't gay.

Cause we don't do the gay was his words.

That is where things have reached.

It's like fiction, isn't it?

It's dystopian.

It's, it's, yeah.

Yeah.

I, I'd rather my son was a mass murderer than gay.

Yeah.

That's where we're at.

Mm-hmm.

, if you wrote this stuff, people were just saying it's just

all too fanciful post law.

What was law was, oh, you.

Parody a creationist.

Right?

Because any, anything stupid you make up, they've already said yes.

Yep.

So, okay.

Ukraine well a bomb landed in Poland.

Well, it was a missile.

Yes.

Missile.

Yes.

And initial talk was that it had come from Russia.

Well, that was the initial report from the Associated Press.

And that of course turned out to be incorrect and became clear that in

fact, it had come from the Ukrainians.

Rather than From the Russians.

Yeah.

It was an, it was anti missile Missile.

An anti-aircraft missile, yes.

That had gone off course.

Yes.

Killed a farmer and his helper.

I think it was.

But unhelpfully, the Associated Press had reported that it had

come from the Russians and the reporter responsible has been fired.

And in the sort of examination of what went on in the communication room

for Associated Press I'll just read a bit of an extract from this article.

LA Porter was the, the La Porter is the reporter who was

responsible and got sacked.

La Porter shared the US officials tip in an electronic message around

1:30 PM Eastern Time, an editor immediately asked if AP Associated

Press should issue an alert on this tip or quote, would we need confirmation

from another source and or Poland?

After further discussion, a second editor in the Sasha Press office said she would

vote for publishing that it had happened.

Adding, I can't imagine a US Intelligence official would be wrong

on this cuz that was where the source came from, a US intelligent official

and this editor of a newspaper said, I can't imagine a US Intelligence

official would be wrong on this.

And as this article in the John UE blog says, can you imagine

not being able to imagine a US intelligence official being wrong?

This would be an unacceptable position for any educated adult to hold much less

a journalist, still less an editor and still less an editor on one of the most

influential news agencies on Earth there.

These are people who publish the news reports.

We.

Find out what's happening in the world.

This is the baby brained level of thinking.

These people are serving a public interest with.

I think I might retitle this episode, Joe.

A baby brained, baby brained level of thinking.

Yeah.

I mean there's been arguments that journalism is not what

it was 30, 40 years ago.

No, they are underfunded, overworked, don't have time to think.

Nope, don't have time to check sources.

Gotta get it out.

There was a headline in the Washington Post.

Vaccinated people now make up a majority of covid deaths.

They have been all along.

Yeah.

, it's.

So, you know, this isn't the Timbuktu rag, like this is the Washington

Post vaccinated people now make up a majority of covid deaths.

Well, of course they will because, but but literally that's an

argument that's been going for at least a year, a year and a half.

Yeah.

It's not news.

Yeah.

Vaccinated people make up the majority of the population in the

segment that are likely to die.

Elderly.

Of course.

They're the majority of people.

It's just a nonsensical use of the statistic.

Yeah.

Well, the Washington Post haven't exactly showed themselves

in glory in the recent past.

No.

I like this one.

I saw this in an article somewhere.

There have been other changes in the world of celebrity interviews in the 22

years since I started at The Guardian.

Back then, people largely laughed at celebrities when

they made political statements.

now they yell at them if they don't.

So they ly plaster their Instagram pages with their thoughts about social justice.

Mm-hmm.

. Good point.

Mm.

Joe got any thoughts on Elon Musk?

Have you ever held any strong opinions about him in any way, shape, or form?

I thought that was a quote that people are realizing now that he's very

good at writing his own biography.

Mm.

And he's not the genius engineer that he was selling himself as.

Indeed.

So now this sounds like a YouTube channel.

You would subscribe to Joe called Common Sense Skeptic.

You ever heard of them?

Don't know if I've ever watched them.

Pretty good.

Seemingly so.

They've done a series of exposes on Elon Musk, and there'll be

a link in the show notes to it.

And I was watching two of them.

First one dealt with his involvement in Tesla and it really demonstrated how there

were some really smart people involved in Tesla way before Elon Musk got involved.

And his involvement was really to add expensive, unnecessary

modifications to what they were doing.

Oh, it's the Homer.

The what?

There's an episode of The Simpsons where he finds his long lost

brother who's in Detroit Right.

And gets invited to make a car.

And the car he makes is just so fanciful that the, the Homer, as

it's called, is totally unsuccessful.

Right.

Okay.

Well, in this case, Tesla was a success despite Elon Musk.

And it's quite a forensic, sort of look at how that played out with

reference to court documents and other things and really showing him out

to be a really nasty piece of work.

But totally saw, and I dunno if it was in this or elsewhere, I saw he

has rewritten the history of Tesla.

Yes.

And in the court documents, in his settlements with

these early founders mm-hmm.

, the people who founded it.

Yep.

He, as part of his settlement, insisted that he be allowed to write

the history of Tesla so that he could put himself down as a founder.

Yeah.

So, and there's reference to the court documents.

So it's a really damning display of, of how little he contributed.

And in fact, What difficulties he actually contributed.

And then secondly, it then goes into the current valuation of Tesla

and how it's completely insane.

Mm-hmm.

the, it makes absolutely no sense at all.

If you look at the normal multiples of price, earnings and whatever

to reach valuation for a company.

It's completely beyond anything that's, no, it's all about, it's,

it's another.com bubble, isn't it?

Yes.

So Joe, you know, I initially was looking at all his Twitter stuff

with Inland Musk and thinking, well, the guy must be a smart guy.

Probably a ruthless, no, almost certainly a ruthless psychopath,

but probably seemingly able to drive people to make great products in

a sort of Steve Jobs sort of way.

It's, it's not shaping up that way at all.

And he, you know, if he collapses Twitter, if it all just turns to shed,

which seems now more likely than not, advertisers aren't gonna go back to it.

It's gonna run out of money.

He's in a feud with Apple at the moment.

Yes.

Because apparently they've pulled all their advertising.

Yes.

And so yeah, he's, he's not happy with Apple and Apple's

saying, well, we don't have to.

Mm-hmm.

. In fact, I saw this great screenshot where Elon Musk was complaining that

Apple had pulled its advertising and this person said, well, they don't have to.

You're doing it for him.

And the screenshot was one of Elon's tweets and it's got his

tweet and then it's got Twitter on iPhone or something like that.

as part of the subscript at the end of each tweet.

So every tweet that Elon does demonstrates that he's doing it from an iPhone.

Yes.

Why bother advertising?

Well, yeah.

Yeah.

So I think there's a high chance that, that that will run out of money.

And at some point there's a high chance that the whole Tesla empire will collapse.

That's where all of his money is.

And if he has, you know, borrowed because of its valuation and the valuation

collapses to where it should be, it'll all come down very, very quickly.

It'd be interesting to see in five or 10 years time where Elon Musk is having

heard people looking at electric cars.

They've said basically the Tesla is an American car.

It it, it's badly built.

The quality control is not there and there are Korean cars that are

just as good, possibly even better.

And they're built with Korean qa.

Mm-hmm.

and just why would you buy a Tesla?

But I've met a couple of people who have Teslas and they love it and they're almost

evangelical in their recommending of it.

So why I think it, it's different from normal cars, but then I think

if you jumped into, have they compared any other electric card?

I dunno.

It is.

Is it just an electric car that is so different?

Maybe?

I think it's another one of these hype.

It's a status symbol, isn't it?

A Tesla?

Whereas if you turn up in a high Hyundai, everyone goes, it's a high Hyundai.

Yeah.

All these friends of mine, they just love it.

And I think it's.

I think it's brilliant.

So, well, look, I, I think if I could afford one, I'd very

happily have an electric car.

Mm-hmm.

. Yep.

So anyway, Musk has really cultivated, it seems a right wing in cell

following the think he's the mess.

Messiah.

He moved to Texas, didn't he?

From California?

I don't know, because Texas labor laws were a lot, a lot looser.

Right.

And therefore he could union bust, which California being much more left wing.

Hmm.

He, he basically, he runs the place like a dictatorship in

California wouldn't let him.

Mm-hmm.

. Yep.

So I'll just I'll just play, here's Musk talking about sex and procreation and, and

see if this inspires you to consider him.

As brilliant in any way.

11 children.

So massive amount of thinking, like truly stupendous amount of thinking

has gone into sex without purpose, without pro, without procreation.

Which, which is actually quite a silly action in the absence of procreation.

How you doing it?

Because makes the limit system happy.

That's why.

That's why.

But it's pretty absurd, really.

. But I mean, this is, a lot of computation has gone into, how can I do more of that?

With procreation not even being a factor.

It really is like a bond villain.

The name aneurysms, the craziness, he, he bears no real cost to having children.

Yes.

Money is no object.

If, if he, if he was to bear cost of having children, if it impacted his

life in any way, in any meaningful way, I dunno that he would be so cavalier.

Yeah.

I don't know.

I mean, one of his children has disowned him.

I mean, you grow up the beneficiary of an Emerald Empire in an apartheid

state and you sound a bit odd.

Seems thought.

Have you seen the interviews with his father?

No.

, he's a character.

Right.

I've got detox after the Sky News ones that I do gotta take a break after every

Dean clip that I record and upload.

There's definitely been behind the bastards episodes about Elon Musk.

Right.

But I'm not sure if it was that, that I heard the interviews, saw the interviews.

I've definitely seen somebody talking to his father, who I think also

was heavily into the procreation.

Okay.

So I definitely recommend go to YouTube, look up common sense

skeptic, look at the one about Tesla.

And, and then there's another one where they talk about how

he made his money from PayPal.

And that was again, another case where he really didn't contribute much.

It was more that he forced his way in to something that was already

existing and drove useful people out.

And his contribution to that is not inspiring.

So interested in Elon Musk's story.

Have a look at both of those and see what you think about him afterwards,

I would say in the chatroom, Tom, the warehouse guy is there,

and Allison's made it as well.

Tom says hypothetical question, what do you think would've happened if it

turned out the missile was from Russia?

So what would've happened?

I guess Russia would've said, sorry, whoops.

Mistakes happen and didn't mean that one.

Yeah.

I if it was an act of war on nato, then all NATO countries are forced

to go in to defend the country.

However, I can see a lot of negotiation going on.

Yeah.

And I could see Russia saying, well, that was a mistake.

Americans don't want to fight in Ukraine.

The, the Americans want to fight this war to the last Ukrainian,

they don't wanna do it themselves.

So nothing wrong with the good proxy war, I think they would've been happy

to just go, well, that was a mistake, but here's some more money in missiles

and new Ukrainians keep fighting.

I think it's probably, I can very much see them going, here you go

as a sanction against Russia, we're gonna give more arms to Ukraine.

Yes.

So I think that would be my best guess on the warehouse going, so.

Alright.

That was Elon Musk, um, protest in China, Joe, and depending what media

source you read these protests seem to be protests about lockdown conditions.

Yes.

Where, and it, it's the zero covid approach and they disagree with that.

Yes.

So, fair enough.

It's pretty draconian.

And guess what?

China wouldn't be the first country to have civilians protesting and having some

fairly nasty confrontations with police.

Mm-hmm.

. And well, maybe they can get the magic death ray out that they used in

Canberra and give them all sun burn.

Is that what the cookers used?

Oh, didn't you hear about that?

They had a death raid.

Did they?

The the police had a Oh, they were saying the police were doing it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

They had an audio, basically they had the high powered speakers

that they used to Oh, okay.

Upset people's eardrums.

Right.

But they didn't turn them on.

Mm-hmm.

. And then some of the cookers got sunburn and went, oh, they must have been

using microwave radiation to attack us.

And it turned and, and they just got sunburn.

Hear stories of shopping centers who want to get rid of kids who are

skateboarding, whatever, playing really high frequency hours.

Yes.

No playing things like Bing Crosby or a sort of old style musical music.

Yeah.

So, you know, all they could have done in Canberra was just set up some

speakers and just played a, a little bit of, well, maybe, maybe she could

have gone out and sung to them in person

In the end, be okay.

That would've done the trick.

There is a use the general's after all.

Anyway, Joe, at least it's sure.

He finds that she has a use.

Mm-hmm.

, I'd like this tweet usual suspects and enforce on social media telling us in one

breath that China is an evil dictatorship that crushes free speech and protests.

and in the next breath, claiming there are widespread protests across China, so least

it does demonstrate that there is some level of civil de disobedience allowed.

Mm.

Right.

Um, I have mentioned about the computer chips, semiconductors, all that sort

of stuff, where USA has tried to impose sanctions on the supply of,

of the really top end computer chip manufacturing equipment to China to

try and prevent them from having that.

And what's become apparent in recent weeks is that the US is bringing in

loads of Taiwan's top semiconductor engineers to build the next generation

chip manufacturing lab in Arizona.

That there's a classic quote.

Some Americans saying we'll win the war against China because our

Chinese will beat their Chinese.

Our Chinese.

Right, okay.

Because there was such a brain drain, right?

Probably of Taiwanese.

Yeah.

But if you go to Silicon Valley most of the CXOs are actually Indian.

Right.

And there are a lot of Asian engineers, I wouldn't necessarily say

Chinese, but lots and lots of Asians.

Yes.

So I had a theory that was that China will just ramp up getting really good at making

computer chips so it doesn't have to rely on supply from other sources that might

be told by the USA to stop supplying.

And as a result, plural, Taiwan will find itself without an industry and

will almost be asking to join China.

Once their industry collapses and I forgot about the Americans because

of, you know, it's now apparent that the Americans are doing the same thing

where they're just going to take the Taiwanese brains, set up factories in

America, and then the poor Taiwanese are gonna turn around no longer with

their manufacturing niche that they had.

And they will just be well they were cheap and I don't think they're cheap anymore.

Right.

In Taiwan.

Yeah.

It was cheap labor.

And then I thought they went to Malaysia.

There was a lot of manufacturing going on in Malaysia in the

nineties because again, cheap labor.

Yeah.

But they still retain ownership and the complicated stuff in Taiwan and

export or, or contract out some of the more menial tasks to cheaper countries.

So yeah, I forgot about Taiwan.

It, the problem is not China invading them.

It is China starting up its own chip manufacturing in competition and also

America stealing it and Taiwan being left without anything of significance.

So, just on what you were saying, Joe, about Silicon Valley a little

bit from an article here, which was China has submitted the most research

papers accepted at a prestigious international academic conference focused

on semiconductors, underscoring the country's growing presence in the field,

and it bumped the US into second place.

So research papers at a big semiconductor conference, and it's the

first time that China has taken the top spot in papers accepted by the.

International solid state circuits conference, which is considered the

Olympics of the semiconductor sector.

There you go.

All bad news for Taiwan.

Mind you Taiwanese living and working in China.

Many Americans and foreigners don't realize how comfortable

Taiwanese feel in mainland China.

Half a million Taiwanese, about 20% of Taiwan's highly educated workforce

work in China, they don't feel oppressed or discriminated against.

In fact, the Taiwanese government is actively trying to stop this brain drain.

For example, new laws prevent Taiwan recruiting sites from

posting jobs in mainland China.

So there you go.

Rain drain from Taiwan to China as well.

The Taiwanese trying to stop it.

Good luck.

Mm.

Oh, the money's there.

Mm, indeed.

I'll skip over a couple here.

Quick one on Venice Waer, I think I've mentioned previously, but I'll

mention it again in case I didn't.

The US I think I mentioned actually that France Macron saddle up to Maduro at Egypt

and said, mate, , where have you been?

Arms around him.

And we want to do business.

Now the US is poised to grant a license to Chevron, to pump oil in Venezuela.

A policy shift that would ease years long sanctions and could open the doors

for other companies to do the same.

And the new license is contingent on the Venezuelan government and its

political opponents implementing the.

A US 3 billion humanitarian program.

But guess what?

They're gonna use Venezuelan funds un frozen by the us.

So, so the US has said, oh, we'll let you do this, but you've gotta spend

3 billion on a humanitarian program.

And Venezuela has obviously said, well, you better start on freezing

assets and give it, give it to us.

So there go a thawing of relations between the US and Venezuela.

Cause guess what?

US needs some oil.

And we'd previously also mentioned about the oil price cap, where the different

European countries G 20, I think.

Were basically deciding that they were gonna impose an oil

a price cap on Russian oil.

Basically refuse to buy it above a certain capped rate.

Of course, what will happen is Russia will say, well, here is our

price and you're gonna pay it, or we're just not gonna supply you.

And we'll supply India, or we'll supply China, or will

supply Turkey or anywhere else.

So this price cap is a ludicrous idea.

In any event, they're squabbling over it.

So price cap which diplomats said could be as high as $70 a barrel

at the and they're, they're arguing about where the price cap should be.

So the European Commission was considering a price between 65 and $70 US a.

At the moment or the time of writing this article it was $85 a barrel.

So the market rate was 85, and they're proposing to cap at, let's say 70.

Poland wanted the capita be at $20 US per barrel.

But it said at one point on Wednesday afternoon, Poland's EU ambassador warned

that Warsaw wouldn't sign off on a plan with a price cap as high as $70.

Malta's ambassador reported by saying his country wouldn't agree

to a cap below $70 per barrel.

Obviously, the Malta Ambassador is a realist.

Poland was backed by Lavia, Estonia and Lithonia.

Malta was backed by Greece and Cypress, so some of them wanting $20

a barrel, some of which ones, but up against Russia and which ones do.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, it's just dreaming like

Holland, where you gonna get your oil from?

Like, Russia just will not sell it for us.

$20 a barrel.

No, but they wanna see a Russia crippled.

They don't want a strong Russia on their doorstep.

Yeah, well Russia's just gonna sell it to you.

India, Turkey, China, no problem selling it to someone, they're gonna sell it

to the UK because the stories of how, you know, the UK is supposed to be not

buying Russian oil, but there's all these ships that are meeting in the middle

of the ocean and running pipes between each other and they're, and they're

just transferring oil in the middle of the ocean just going on all the time.

So, so anyway, that's around the world on those issues.

Where are we up to at the moment?

8 38.

I'm just gonna quickly I think Jack is in a time warp.

Okay.

What is Jack saying specifically?

We bailed them out.

Dunno what that's about.

Well, I think he was talking about nationalizing industries

that are going bust.

Oh, okay.

And now he's talking about Elon.

Well, he is probably watching the live stream in his drag,

the timeline, timeline back.

So I'd say that's what he's doing.

So yes, that's what I meant.

Yeah.

Here's a time.

Okay.

I quite enjoyed my little explanation of how Japan, Korea, and Taiwan got ahead.

I found all that quite interesting myself.

Hope you did.

Dear listener, nobody sent me any positive feedback, so feel free

to do so now in the chat room.

I can shame you into it.

Trevor wants his ego stroke to people.

Come on.

I just occasionally, just occasionally.

Would like a little ego strike.

Yeah, I would.

So, let me just quickly as a follow up to that talk about by Ken the James says he

loved, I knew you were James, I thought you were a candidate for liking that one.

So, let's get some stuff up on the screen and to just do with the Plaza record.

So as you recall, dear listener from last week essentially 1850s American

ships' role into what is now Tokyo's port and said, you need to open up

your economy to us forth with Japan.

Looked at what had happened in China and said, Crikey, we

don't want that to happen to.

they got really active in industrializing, went around the world, finding out the

best ways to organize themselves to get up to speed with these powerful westerners.

And by the end of the century, were defeating the Russian Navy in a

battle at the end of the century.

And then moving on to post Second World War, we had the situation

where America wanted to make sure that there was a strong presence to

work against those nasty communists.

So, contrary to what they've done around the rest of the world, they actually

worked really hard to bolster up Japan and allowed its industries lots of good

breaks that allowed them to develop.

And the fact that Japan was unlucky in that it was facing a communist threat.

And it didn't have any natural resources, so it could only rely on its people.

It developed a strong manufacturing sort of ethos and and yeah, and then

America allowed them to create the industries and to retain ownership of

them, which was completely contrary to what they'd done in the global

south and in particular Latin America.

So, all going really well for Japan, really, really well post-war.

And until we get to the plaza record, 1985.

So, this came from a guy on Twitter and it seemed to be well referenced,

and I did look up alternative sources that seemed to confirm this story.

So let's run with the story, somebody and tell me if I got wrong at some point.

But It's impossible to understand the current threat that the US

feels from China without first understanding what happened to Japan.

And this is the story of the Plaza record.

So Japan emerged after World War ii, as I said, did well, and what

what the Americans did was they pegged currencies to the US dollar.

And the US dollar was pegged to gold, and that established the dollar

as the global reserve currency.

So, as a concession, US allowed Japan to peg the yen to the dollar

at a very, very favorable rate of 360 yen to one US dollar.

And that really buoyed the.

Japanese export economy.

So a really favorable exchange rate that meant that the Japanese

yen was undervalued and therefore they could make stuff a lot cheaper

than American factories could, for example, is a, was a huge boost

for Japan to be able to do that.

So, so, while initially tolerable the rapid post world growth of Japan's

export industry quickly allowed them to outcompete US manufacturing by

producing similar quality goods.

At one third, the price.

This led to significant anti Japan reaction in the us,

particularly amongst auto workers.

So, as a result of this growth, experts began predicting in the seventies that

Japan could overtake the US as the world's largest economy by the centuries end.

And this only accelerated when the 1973 oil embar goes well happening.

So in the seventies it looked like Japan was gonna overtake the US

as the world's largest economy.

So there's a chart on the screen which says gdp.

And as you can see, Japan was really going very well.

And that's a graph you'd like to see as they were catching up to the United

States on track at some point to overtake them or going swimmingly well for Japan.

And but of course, money's flowing into US dollars are flowing into Japan.

And with Japan as now a primary debt holder, the US needed to

throw a wrench in the engine driving Japan's growing leverage.

So, you know, us couldn't.

Put up with this, essentially US was buying heaps of stuff from Japan.

Lots of US dollars were going to Japan.

Those US dollars were returning back to America to buy treasury bonds.

So the US was owing and land well, they weren't some land, but there were a lot

of restrictions started to be placed.

They couldn't buy corporations and there were restrictions in terms of

buying industrial assets and stuff.

So a lot of what they were forced to buy, they might have been able

to buy some land, but America certainly posed restrictions on them.

And the Saudis, where they were not allowed to buy shares in major

companies a lot of it had to be funneled into just US treasury bonds.

So, into the Plaza record.

So, we had leaders from the top five economies.

This is in 1985, and they were at a hotel, I think called the

Plaza or something like that.

And it was designed to boost US manufacturing and agricultural

exports and to lower the value of US treasury instruments.

So, so it was all about America saying, we're uncompetitive with

this dollar, we need to do things.

So the plan had two parts.

The first part was to decrease the value of the US dollar, and the second

part was to deregulate Japan's economy, loosen monetary policy, liberalize

markets, and cut government spending.

So until that time, banking in Japan was still quite

conservative and there's a lot of.

Deep interrelationships between the banks and it was a sort of

a conservative lending scenario.

And what we find was that there was a period where I can show you a graph on

the screen where after the plaza record the, the value of the yen in comparison

the US dollar dropped in value compared to the yen and it was a significant drop.

Like the plaza record worked essentially Germany.

Germany sold a lot of treasury bonds.

The market was told we're dropping the value of the US dollar,

and that was enough to drop it.

So that's what happened.

And other currencies, especially the Japanese currency,

increased in value enormously.

And combined with all this, the reaction from the Japanese then was, geez, we're

having a real time, hard time selling stuff now into the US In order to prop

up our, our markets, we need to lower interest rates in order to incentivize

and boost our corporations because they're having a hard time exporting.

So, because our dollar is so, our yen now is so, is less

competitive it's, it's too strong.

Will lower our interest rates and at the same time they've been forced

to loosen banking requirements.

So the normal conservative lending that had taken place before

that sort of atmosphere stopped.

Gee, dear listener, just looking back on Australian experience in the last

few years, what happens to asset prices when money becomes really, really cheap?

And the answer is you get a bubble and you get a bubble in asset prices.

So the deregulation that followed also led to foreign capital flowing

into Japan like a fire hose.

Tokyo stock market index rose 49% in the year after the accords, like stock

market rose, 49% in the year after.

By 1989 it had risen 300%.

Japan stocks comprised almost half the world's equity market capitalization,

so got a huge amount of cheap credit.

It's all piled into Japan's real estate sector as well, massive price bubble.

And at the same, a couple of years later, in 87, no Washington piled

on a whole bunch of tariffs, a hundred percent tariffs on imports

from Japan, really effectively blocking trade from Japan to the usa.

So eventually Japan's financialized frenzy had to end on the eve of 1990.

It only took five years.

The real estate and stock market bubbles popped, resulting in

widespread collapse and sustained stagnation of Japan's economic growth.

And began a period known as the lost decades.

And for you, remember the graph I showed you where GDP and Japan was on track to

eventually overtake the United States?

Here's an update of that graph and what happened, and you can see that it

completely crashed in compared to the us.

And there you go.

Dear listener.

That's what China does not want to happen.

Oh, and actually there's another one here.

So another graph.

Yes.

So, the light blue line shows Japan's percentage of imports into the usa peaked

with the plaza record and then plummeted.

And you can see the dark blue line is China.

And China has now reached the stage that Japan was once at, and the USA

would love to do to China, what it did to Japan via the Plaza record.

But it can't because China just won't let it.

So one of the other theories in this article, getting the full show notes,

kind of revolves around the control that America had over the Japanese

parliament and political system because kind of like Japan knew this was

gonna happen, but they did it anyway.

And lots of sort of, allegations in Skullduggery about CIA involvement

and corruption and control of.

Japanese parliament.

So great.

Where you do it is you sail a gumbo up the yank or force 'em to buy opium.

Yes indeed.

When you have a great deficit.

Exactly the old fashioned way.

Mm.

Yeah.

So I find that all quite fascinating.

Hate that you do.

Allison, Allison says, positive feedback, always, I guess in

relation to my plea for feedback.

So thank you time And James, I knew James would like that sort of stuff.

So that was interesting.

Joe, we'll start looking at books cuz I don't think a lot's

happening news wise in Australia.

This Morrison government is far too sensible and Morrison government's gone.

Not Morrison.

Yes.

Albanese, thank you for that.

The Morrison government, Albanese government I was, you know, with

this whole master on Fed verse stuff.

Mm-hmm.

, I saw that there was a, a social network site for books, which is kind of like

good reads, but in a fatty verse type of system where you can list the books

that you read, you've read and you can share with people, blah, blah, blah.

Anyway, I tried to use it and it was pretty poor, but that

went on to the good read site.

I thought this is really good.

So I've actually loaded up nearly all of my books that I've read in

the last seven years onto Good Reads and I think as little project we're

gonna start working our way on that.

So I will put a link on the show notes and the website to my Good Reads

list of books and start talking about some of the big ideas that are in.

Like in those books, I think.

But the whole point of good reads is you friend people Yes.

And swap notes.

Yes.

So I'm going to sort of advertise what my link is and you can friend

me and swap notes and mm-hmm.

start working our way through some of these books and I was able to categorize

'em, Joe, and like, I think, yeah, in the last seven years I entered

about 107 books that I've read mm-hmm.

and and able to categorize 'em and at least 30 of 'em, the biggest subject

was actually economics seemed to me.

So I just discovered, so I professor Nuts Drugs Without the Hot Air.

Mm-hmm.

, which is, he was UK advisor.

He was the head of the panel, the, the government scientific advisory

panel on drug regulation in the uk and got fired because he said we're

not having a evidence based discussion about drugs, we're, we are villainizing

it far more than the evidence shows.

Mm-hmm.

Anyway, the book is really sensible and it starts off with the probably most

harmful drug of all, which is alcohol.

Mm-hmm.

. And, and there's a discussion of the risks and benefits of all sorts of drugs.

Mm-hmm.

. And he said the thing that inspired this book was a book called climates

renewable Energy Without the Hot Air.

Right.

Okay.

And that is actually, it's a website.

The book is available in print form, but if you are happy to read an

ebook, it's available for free on the website or you can read it as

the website and it is an apolitical.

Alright, what are our physical limits to generating renewable energy?

So what are the best solar panels?

How much land can we dedicate to them making these assumptions?

How much of our current utilization of energy can we make with solar?

How much can we make with biomass?

And, and it's literally just a comparison of all the different energy types.

Mm-hmm.

, and a discussion of how feasible it is.

There's, there's zero costs involved.

He's just going do we have the resources in the space?

Do we have the resources?

So if we go nuclear, What sort of nuclear, if we use this technology,

there's this amount of a available, which at our current rates of utilization

would last a six number of years.

Yes.

So, it's a good discussion on the physical limits of all the different energy types.

One of the interesting things was forgiven unit of energy.

An electric car I think was four times more more economical than an

internal combustion engine, right?

So even outsourcing your energy generation to a, a power plant and all the losses

inherent in that using an electric car is just four times more efficient.

So you are using a quarter of the energy.

Yep.

The question is, do we have enough lithium or whatever in the world?

Well, and and that's a different question again.

Yes.

And then you have to make an assumption.

Are you gonna let every Chinese family and every African family mm-hmm.

have an electric car or just the Western Indian family, or is it

just gonna be the Western family?

There's, there's lots of questions in there.

Again, it, it stays away from the political, but he does initially

talk about the energy inequality that has happened historically.

You know, we've become modern societies by becoming, yeah.

By being propagate with energy.

We've, we've used a hell of a lot historically.

And therefore per capita, should India and China be allowed

to be, be equally as pro Mm.

Until they reach our standard of living.

So I, he doesn't argue pro or con.

He merely points out that this is the case.

Mm, yeah.

Okay.

Well that and other big issues, I think is where we're heading over the

next few months as sort of day to day politics, really just not a lot happened.

So time for some bigger ideas, I think.

All right.

That's the plan.

That's an hour 30.

And thank you in the chat room and talk to you next week, quite an hour.

That is a good night from him.

As you can see, we've had our eye on you for some time now, Mr.

Anderson, it seems that you've been living two lives.

One of these lives has a future, and one of them does not.

I'm going to be as forthcoming as I can be.

Mr.

Anderson, you're here because we need your help.

My colleagues believe that I'm wasting my time with you, but I believe

you wish to do the right thing.

We're willing to wipe the slate clean, give you a fresh start.

All that we're asking in return is your cooperation in a simple

donation of $1 per episode.

Wow, that sounds like a really good deal, but I think I got a better one.

How about I give you the finger

and you give me my free podcast?

Oh, Mr.

Anderson.

You disappoint me.

You can't scare me with this gustapo crap.

I know my rights.

I want my free podcast.

Tell me, Mr.

Anderson, what good is it podcast if you're unable to hear.