In this episode we discuss:

(00:00) Talk about ideas

(00:23) Introduction

(05:41) Twitter and Mastodon

(11:45) Dictator Dan and those steps and that accident

(20:39) Labor takes step towards new religious discrimination laws

(24:58) Negative gearing and capital gains tax discount

(34:05) Average Vs Median

(37:56) Alan Joyce

(44:58) Rules Based International Order

(48:45) Oil Price Cap

(50:54) Oil – Financial market versus the energy market

(59:13) Hence Europe is Stuffed

(01:03:24) Patrons and Newsletter

(01:05:59) Computer Chips

(01:14:39) Top 10 recent news that portend a terrible future for the US-led world order:

(01:19:25) How the world views Russia and China

(01:21:35) Singaporean diplomat Bilahari Kausikan

(01:25:51) Population to hit 8 Billion

(01:30:06) The Farther People Are From The Fighting In Ukraine, The More They Oppose Peace Talks

(01:38:08) Submarines

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

We need to learn stuff about the world.

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

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

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

Well, hello there, dear listener.

This is the Iron Fist and the Velvet Glove podcast episode 362 in

going over seven years, and we're still at it on Trevor, behind Fist.

With me.

As always, Joe, the tech guy, Neil.

And with us in spirit and in audio Scott, the Velvet.

Glove, without a functioning video, but seemingly with a functioning audio.

Scott, how are you Scott?

Talk to me,

Oh, no, seriously.

Seriously.

You can't do this to me, Scott

Oh, that's funny.

That is funny.

We had video at the beginning of this at seven o'clock.

Yep.

And then we lost the video, but we had audio and literally we were speaking to

Scott before I played the intro and we said, let's just work with the audio.

We'll go with that.

And You are there.

You are there.

Scott.

How are you?

Bloody drops out whenever you play that intro music.

It just, I thought to myself we're gonna have exactly the same problem

this week as what we had last week.

But anyway, I don't have a camera so I'm sure people can remember what I look like.

Maybe the regulars can, but anyway, I am fully clothed too

by way pants off podcasting.

Sorry.

You should be just pants off podcasting.

Yeah, exactly.

I could do that.

Yeah.

Well Joe and I just got out underpants on, down by.

Yeah, I know that.

But you know, I gotta get up and go to the fridge so I could be,

you know, I don't wanna get caught in that with the with the camera.

Right.

So anyway, you're living in rural Queensland or regional place now, Scott?

Yes, it is regional Queensland.

And you, you can get away with virtually everything up here.

Like, you know, I went out to one of our premier restaurants and

all that sort of stuff with the directors a couple months ago and I.

Got dressed up, they just arrived in shorts and a t-shirt and

scuffs and that type of thing.

I thought to myself, okay, this is regional Queensland and I haven't

worn any long trousers outside of the office since I've been up here because

it's too bloody hot to, So anyway.

Okay.

And life's treating you well up there, Scott?

Yeah, it is.

It's treating me okay.

Yeah.

You recommend regional Queensland to anybody looking for a change

in life or just a better job?

A tree change?

Yeah, it's, you do have to get used to the fact it is a slower pace of life up here.

We don't have any public transport that you can really look at.

Mm-hmm.

, you know, they do have buses, but they don't seem to run all that

frequently and that type of thing.

The.

Everything I need is up here.

Except the one thing I do miss is a I do miss having competitions around

the cinemas because we really got one cinema up here that's events

and they charge like wounded bolts.

Mm, Yeah.

Yeah.

So in the chatroom is John and Bronwin and yes, Scott's got audio,

but he doesn't have video problems at Scott's end on this occasion.

So, yeah.

So you'll just, you'll just hear him but not see him for this episode.

Get one Gade John.

Yeah.

So, alright.

Oh, and Andrew says tree changes can go south too.

That's correct.

So that's the other option.

All right.

Well, is this Andrew Jackson?

Is that the same?

Andrew Jackson that I went to university with all those years ago?

He looks too young for that, Scott.

So.

Judging by the profile picture, but Exactly.

Maybe.

Yeah, you never know.

Mm-hmm.

Okay, we're gonna talk about Twitter and Master Don dictated

Dan and the newspapers down there.

We're gonna talk about negative gearing, average wage, oil prices,

computer chips, population, Brazil, Fascism, Ukraine, update submarine.

Scott can't have you on without . I mean, it was probably

back in episode five or six.

I was starting to rant about submarines.

Then you got onto something good and you haven't let it

go, have you ? That's right.

Can't help myself.

So yeah, that's all ahead of us.

And Andrew Jackson, q i t q u t.

Yeah, I did go to qt.

Yeah, if he was back in the Q I days then that's a while ago, so, Yeah.

Well I was at qt.

Yeah, so I was at Q I T and then it changed to Q ut, so yeah.

Do you know else was at Q I T who?

The owner of the ARC encounter.

Ah, can have.

Really?

Yes.

Is that right?

Apparently he is a graduate of Q I T.

Yeah.

Is that right?

We've exported and was a science teacher in Brisbane.

Yes.

Fair.

We've exported some terrible things to the us, Ken, Ken Ham and Ruth Murdoch, I mean.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, Hey, there you go.

For those people missing, Scott, I've got a picture.

Oh, well done.

You did well to sneak that up there.

Good on you.

And there was a photo of me at the Brisbane airport.

Yeah, yeah.

Complete with masks, so, mm-hmm.

. Alright.

Let's briefly talk about Inland Musk has purchased Twitter and the Twitterverse is

just going into meltdown because they fear that it's going to go to rack and ruin,

and they're looking for alternatives to spend time on and do what they wanna do.

So because he initially quoted Blue ticks would cost $20 a month, and

then he's the author Steven, his guy wrote the horror flicks horror.

Stephen King.

Stephen King, I think was having a Twitter debate with him saying, If you're gonna be

charging people 20 bucks, I'm out of here.

Or a blue tick, you know, this is the tick that all you know indicates that you are

an authorized, genuine person on Twitter.

And Enon Musk said, Oh, well let's make an $8, you know, The point wasn't that

Stephen King didn't have $20 to stump up.

He just felt he shouldn't pay any money at all.

Mm-hmm.

. So anyway, Elon took that as an opportunity to haggle and it now seems

that they're gonna favor people who have paid the eight bucks and their tweets are

gonna appear at the top of the timeline.

And if you haven't paid that, you probably, your tweets won't get much

prominence and people fear it's gonna turn into a real shit fight in there.

So they're looking for other alternatives.

And the one that seems to be the likely replacement, if any, is master do.

So Joe, we were talking about it earlier and it looks a little bit like Twitter,

but this one is not owned by anybody.

It's all open source.

You wanna quickly explain what mastered on is to the informed, The original intent

from the guy was effectively a Twitter.

That wasn't moderated by Big Tech that didn't have an algorithm that

pushed certain paid content to the front and adverts to the front

and was gonna be completely open.

And so effectively it's a federation of servers.

You find a server?

Yeah.

People host servers of their own free will.

And they are responsible for content moderation and they

federate with other servers.

So the idea is that basically as long as you're federated with another

server, you get whatever feeds you want.

Unmoderated un unfiltered from them.

Now, truth Social, which is Trump's free social media, is

actually based on Master Don.

And there were some initial arguments as to him stealing open source software and,

and not making the source code available.

No shock horror.

So although it's based on the same platform and in theory could

federate with everyone else, most most servers will have blocked it and

will choose not to federate with it.

Yep.

Yep.

And so you, you basically get a username and then at site name

it's very much like an email.

So you have a user app server and, and much the same way

that email is open source.

So it's, it's an open standard.

Anybody can set up their own mail server, master's, much the same.

You can set up your own server or you can find someone who has equivalent social

values and then join their server and, and assume that your contents will be suitably

tailored by people who match your values.

Hmm.

So I've joined and I'm trying to work out what I've done, but

I've, I'm at Trevor at oz.social.

So as I understand it, oz.social is one of these servers.

It talks to a whole bunch of other servers.

So people can be sort of, it just gives you like a home address if you like, but

it doesn't prevent you from interacting with other people on other servers.

If you can just find them.

You can add them to your feed to follow them.

It just means that@oz.social, there are particular moderators who are

responsible for that particular server, who have their own rules as to how

hard or easy they are when it comes to abusive language or things like that.

So each server has its own level of supervision anyway.

For one reason or another I decided to go onto the Oz social aus.social.

And I think people will end up there and it's got a similar feel to Twitter.

The only thing is you've gotta try and find all the people that you use to

follow on Twitter and find where they are on Masteron if they are there and

sort of start following 'em again, which anyway, there's tools out there

to do it and there's time and I, it would just be interesting to see if

the sort of Twitterverse migrates over there cuz Twitter's been good in terms

of getting content for this podcast and it's been really good for the video

clips as well cause it's been really easy to download clips off of Twitter.

But I dunno how easy it's gonna be.

Off, off Master on, we will see.

But one thing a note is I suppose it depends on how

quickly Twitter does implode.

And if it does implode the way the doom says it's going to, then

if it does implode quite quickly, well Elon's just done his dough.

And secondly, then Master Don could pick up the shattered remnants and go with it.

Yes.

Yeah, it could do.

So it's entirely possible.

Who knows how it's gonna end up.

So yeah, if you're in the chat room, Scott's with us no video, but we

have his audio, so, he's with us.

And one thing pointed in the top right end corner, one thing that

was pointed out to me was Master don direct messages are not encrypted.

And so although they're not shared with everyone, they are still not private.

Right.

Meaning if you send a direct message, you can be tracked down.

Yeah.

Any of the server operators can see it basically.

Right.

Okay.

That's kind of what I would've thought would be the case, so no surprise there.

Scott, have you been keeping up with dictated Dan and the Victorian

State election down there?

I've been watching a little bit because I, I did slip Fiona Pat a hundred bucks.

Mm-hmm.

because she seemed to be standing up to the Christians and that

type of thing, which I thought was very good and we needed to keep

that sort of pressure on them.

So I slipped her a hundred bucks.

I haven't really been watching the whole thing except this, you

know, the steps that took out took down a premier that came out.

Yes.

And you know, that was on cracking and that sort of stuff.

I was reading about that.

And it sounded like it was a media beat up that they were.

You know, it sounded like it was a beat up by the not Fox News, who?

We got the Rip Murdock papers.

The Murdock Press, Harold Son, and also the Age.

Both been at it.

Really?

The age has been two.

So there's two stories.

Stories disappointed the age, ages gone that way.

Yeah.

So one relates to a car accident that the family had where his wife was

driving at a cyclist, T-boned the car.

So the cyclist hit the car in the side and this is all, you know,

eight years ago or something crazy like that, maybe even a decade ago.

It's a long time ago.

And they're, they're referring to the story where the, where the cyclist

involved is kind of not happy, but no specifics as to why he's not happy.

And there's just this.

General Buzz about, Oh, this is what happened.

But it's such old news and it's, there's no specific allegation, but

it's a, they're trying to, to throw mud where they've got none and they're

just sort of waving their arms around.

It's a really pathetic, it's really very pathetic, and I think it says

more about the liberal opposition than it does about Dan Andrews government.

Because my understanding, and you know, Bronwyn, you can fill me in if

I'm wrong, but my understanding is the liberal opposition is hopeless.

They have got a absolute loser at the top who has been quite, well, not

complicit, but he hasn't done anything about the Christian takeover, the

party, and now you've got all these nutts that are running and that type

of thing, and they're going to actually dominate their, their upper house.

So the papers are completely silent about that issue.

Exactly.

They're putting front page stories about old news, and it's not even just

the, the liberal opposition, it's just this sort of nine Fairfax and Murdoch

rags who are trying to run a smear where they've got nothing to smear

and they're just rehashing a story.

The other one is in relation to some steps that he fell down and

injured himself quite badly and was off work for quite a while.

And it's admittedly a low set of steps, like there's, you know,

1, 2, 3 of them sort of thing, barely half a meter off the ground.

But they seem to be, without saying it, suggesting how could somebody

have injured themselves so badly on such a small set of steps and there's

gotta be something more to this.

And it just totally ignores the fact that.

You can just fall over on flat ground particularly as you're getting

older and break all sorts of bones and have all sorts of injuries.

And there's nothing unusual at all in somebody having massive back pain

in particular or other injuries, broken bones from falling down

a relatively small set of steps.

But again, there's no concrete sort of allegation here.

It's just this, Oh, look at those steps.

They're the ones he fell off and, and kind of, continuating, he was drunk

and, and trying to lay out a row of dots for the reader to connect and

somehow come up with some conspiracy.

It's the most pathetic thing that's happened and every journalist

involved should hang their head in shame And Media Watch did a sort

of a good expose on it as well.

And it just shows how rotten the media is in that they are having to.

Try to drum up some sort of issues out of things that are 10 years

old that have been dealt with.

So, Dan Andrews I think has dealt with it quite well.

Here's a little clip from him.

Oh gee, Scott, at the risk of having you bounce out if I play

this clip and hopefully Scott doesn't disappear when I do this.

Fingers crossed everybody.

Thoughts and prayers, , there's not much that surprises me really.

But look, can any of you tell me what the point of this story is?

Oh, I genuinely dunno.

I genuinely dunno what the point of this story is.

Can any of you explain it to me?

It seems to be the stairs.

Yes.

Or maybe, Well, I don't know what you're gonna interview the stairs next.

Like people can go as low as they want.

I'm not coming there.

Well, the bottom of the stairs.

. Scott, you're still with us?

Fantastic.

I'm still with you.

That was great.

Yeah.

Okay, The next question is, did the video actually play for the listeners?

Yeah, that's the next question.

Cuz I did spend quite some time doing test little test things and tell

us in the chat room did the video actually play and not just the audio.

That'd be nice to know cuz I did spend some time with people in Ukraine on

that one, so that'd be good to know.

So anyway look, I reckon this is a good reason why Queensland Labor, for

example, should get rid of religious instruction lessons and replace it

with media literacy lessons because they know that the mainstream press

owned by the likes of Murdoch and nine Fairfax is going to be anti-labor.

They, they know it and they've gotta educate the future generations as to

how to view this stuff and, and read between the lines and figure it all out.

And if, you know, if I was labor or in charge, I'd be, I'd be wanting

kids to have an hour a week at least media literacy training.

And I know they do that in Finland, I'm pretty sure.

I think we did a story on Finland getting no audio.

Finland, there we go.

Just hate to put it in.

So, yeah, so if you have any connection with the Queensland government, Mel out

there put that forward as a suggestion.

Get rid of religious instruction and put media literacy in because

it's just incredible the lengths that these newspapers are going

to, Fortunately, No government.

Young people don't read them.

No government wants their electorate, media literate.

That wouldn't be good for them.

Well, I think if you're a labor government given that the media is against you,

more often than not, it would be in your interests to have them educated.

You'd think so.

But see, I had a I had a meeting up here with the with our local member up here.

I was only in there for perhaps 20 minutes, thereabouts.

And I talked to her and that type of stuff, and I said to her, the

primary reason I was in there was to try and get them, get them to accept

that religious instruction was wrong.

Now, she didn't actually agree with me.

She also didn't disagree with me, and she actually,

One thing that really got her attention was when I said, If you want the nurse

at Temple of Satan to stop its nonsense.

All you've gotta do is back away from the, all you've gotta do is back away

from I, and then they will pack up and go and you know, she actually

really listened to that, really.

But yeah.

So, you know, your, you know, your court case and all that sort of stuff.

Yes, it didn't work, but it appears to have got their attention.

Okay.

Just an update on that.

We still have not heard anything from the dpp, so nobody's tried to contact Robin

and interview him or anything like that.

So we're just gonna let it sit for a few more months and and maybe

after Christmas, early new year, maybe the 12 month anniversary, we.

Maybe try and get some definitive answer from them.

So at the moment, fortunately, nothing is expected and hopefully it'll all go we'll

know for sure now another six months will be able to say it's definitely gone away.

So, so yeah, that's the latest on that one.

No, you know, all quiet on the Western front as far as that's concerned.

So, no news is good news.

Mm-hmm.

, So, Okay.

Article in The Guardian.

So Scott, still on Religious Matters, Federal Attorney General Mark Drefus

has asked the Australian Law Reform Commission to review the country's

religious exemptions for schools and how that should be dealt with

in federal anti-discrimination law.

So asking the law reformed commission to review it as if it hasn't

been reviewed enough in the last.

Four or five years.

But well, at least he's got the whole, he appears to be doing the

right thing by getting the law reform commission to look at it first.

Mm.

And then after that they can come back with suggestions and all that sort of

shit for a religious discrimination bill.

Yeah.

Except according to this article what the Law Reform Commission will look at

they'll be addressing labors three main principles for anti-discrimination law.

So these are apparently labors three main principles that that any law not

discriminate against a student on the basis of sexual orientation, gender

identity, marital or relationship status, or pregnancy sounds.

Okay.

Also that it not discriminate against a member of staff.

For those same reasons.

Sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital or

relationship status or pregnancy.

So basically there two of labor's, three main main principles.

The third apparently labor principle is that schools can continue to

build a community of faith by giving preference in good faith to persons of

the same religion as the educational institution in the selection of staff.

So provided they don't discriminate against staff or students on the

basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, marital or relationship

status or pregnancy, then it's okay.

And this totally ignores, this is just a green light to say, guess what?

Schools, it's okay if you wanna discriminate against somebody

because they're an atheist.

go right ahead.

Or if they're a satanist discriminate against them, go right ahead.

Or if you're a Christian school and the person is non-Christian, go right ahead.

It's just appalling that this is a Labor party principle, that they'll

protect people for gender and sex things, but they won't protect

them if they're simply an atheist.

Terrible by the Labor Party.

Scott.

Am I just ranting or have I got a point?

No, I think you've got a point there, but you know, it's, it's like, you

know, you get reminded things from Facebook and all that sort of stuff.

I got reminded of something that I posted years ago when it was Dan

Andrews was first being elected.

Mm-hmm.

. And I said, you know, the first 10 minutes or something like that, no, only

10% of the vote is being counted, but the, the move to the labor opposition

is 15 or 20% or whatever it was.

And I said, you know, there's a very good message in that for the, for the Tories

back away from the godfathers back away.

And I honestly believe that's very good advice for both sides

of government, both the opposition and the, and the government.

Because I think that they've both gotta back away from the God bothers and

then the God bothers can go off and try and set up their own bloody family

first and get knocked on their head.

Mm-hmm.

. And that will be the end of them.

Mm.

You know, they'll go back to what they always should have been,

which was just something that was off out there in the ether.

Yeah.

Anyway.

Quite okay to discriminate against people because of their religion,

provided it's, you know, Christians discriminating against non-Christians,

which is essentially what happens.

So, joining the chat room says, Where did I find that?

And it was an article in The Guardian John, which will be in the show notes.

So, an article titled Labor Take Step Towards New Religious Discrimination Laws

With Review of Exemptions for Schools.

Google it and you'll find it in The Guardian.

Joe, you found an article about negative gearing, which is set to basically

the cost to the budget of negative gearing is just going to get bigger

and bigger as interest rates rise.

Mm-hmm.

, and there was an article in an ABC online addition that talked

about this is going to reach 20 billion a year within a decade.

The two things, the capital gains tax concessions that property investors

get and also oh, and the other part of this was that most of these

benefits go to the top end of town.

So, 39% of negative gearing benefits go to people earning more

than basically 130,000 a year.

And Those people on less than 51 and a half thousand a year.

So basically the bottom 50% of income earners they'll only be getting

4% of that total cost or benefit, if you like, of negative gearing.

So it's a lot of money and it's going to the upper ends of the wage spectrum.

Did I just repeat everything you needed to say, Joe, or did you wanna add

a further element of discuss to it?

No, no.

I just thought it was interesting that effectively negative

gearing, what a surprise.

It, it values the top end of town and, and the average person is

gonna lose out because of it.

And Scott, what would you have to say to those scumbags who negatively gear?

Okay.

I've got a negatively geared property

I bought a DHA property and that sort of stuff in the South Ripley.

So yes, you can throw rocks at me if you want to.

No, you, you deal, you work with, the lawyers are given, like, people would

say, Love you, socialism or communism.

Give, give all your stuff away.

But that's not gonna be working in, I've got this, you know, I've got this

place up here in Mackay that I own outright, and then I just had this

extra money and all that sort of stuff.

So I started looking around for investments and I did buy some

shares and that sort of stuff.

But then I also thought to myself, you know, I've gotta get a, a

crushing mortgage, I think, which is what the better half said.

So I got a crushing mortgage on this place and that sort

of stuff down in South Ripley.

And I understand exactly where you're coming from.

Mm.

Do I think that we should change the capital gains tax laws?

Yes, I do.

I do believe that they should go back to the way they were set up, which is

you got a which is where you bought a property and that sort of stuff,

and then you paid only, you paid only capital gains tax on the profit that

you made after the what was it called, the inflation rate, that sort of stuff.

I think they should go back to that because that was

a very simple thing to do.

You just calculated and moved on and not Harvard.

No, exactly.

You know, it's just, I, I, you know, however, having said that,

I've bought under these rules and all that sort of stuff.

No doubt.

The government, if they ever decide to go back to that is gonna say,

Those of you have bought under those rules can still sell under those

rules and all that sort of stuff.

So they'll grandfather it.

Exactly.

So I'm not going to be, I'm not gonna be bothered by it, but

it's just one of those things.

I just think to myself, if they want to make it fair and that

sort of stuff, they should go back to the way it was calculated and

then that would be a lot fairer.

You know, it's one of those things I, I can understand where the government was

coming from and all that sort of stuff.

It was the Howard government that gave us the middle class welfare.

Yeah, exactly.

Mm-hmm.

. It was middle class welfare.

There's no doubt about that.

And it's just one of those things like, you know, you, you, you can see

it all, you know that they talk about, I think it's 80% of rental properties

and that sort of stuff are owned by mom and dad investors, which is fine.

However, what they're discovering is that mom and dad as an investor,

They're not real nice landlords, , and they apparently and, and they're

just another competitor at the auction when it comes to purchasing.

So, Exactly.

You know, really it's a fundamental thing of do you think property

should, you know, shelter?

Should it be an investment vehicle?

Should we be encouraging it as an investment vehicle?

And I'd say no.

Like we want, it's a very Australian way of viewing property.

It is as an investment and it's a very popular barbecue

sort of conversation point.

But I think if you went to Germany or Austria or places like that, you would

not get anything like the same number of people having investment properties

in Germany or even primary in Germany.

It's, it's very unrealistic.

It's mostly people rent for their whole lives.

Hmm.

, you know, it's just one of those things, their rents don't go up

dramatically like ours have though.

Mm-hmm.

It's, it's not seen as a great investment.

It's category,

but, you know, it doesn't make any sense.

Scott, you know, let's say you buy a house for 500,000 and you sell it

for a million and you had it for five years and inflation was running at 5%.

So it should be the case that, Alright.

The original 500,000 in today's money is now 580,000.

Therefore, you've made a profit, if you like, of 420,000.

Well at least pay tax on that full 420,000.

But the way it currently works is you then have that 420.

Yeah, so you're on tax on two $60,000 of it all and all that sort of stuff.

Meanwhile, if you've been flipping hamburgers or pouring beers or

handing out coffees and you've earned that 420,000, you pay tax

on the full, on the full amount.

So why should capital gains income just get halved?

It?

It's just an unfair arrangement.

For starters.

It, yeah, it is quite unfair.

Mm.

It's one of those things now.

Mm-hmm.

, so, you know.

Yeah.

I mean, in Jersey where I lived before I moved over here you

got tax breaks on your primary residence, but not on any investment.

Which made far more sense to me.

Yeah.

Because as a first time buyer I was struggling.

Yep.

And so getting the interest taken off my tax was great for me.

Rather than giving it as a break for somebody to invest and earn the opposite.

Yeah, the opposite.

Yeah.

These things go on around the world.

It's not hard to look at 'em and say, That's probably a better system.

Why don't we just introduce that course?

You need a set of balls to actually sell invested interests.

Well, that's the whole point.

You, you've got, you know, you do have a hell of a lot of people that are

already invested in that sort of stuff.

If you, you grandfather them and that sort of stuff and say, Now look,

we're not gonna be touching you.

They're still not gonna believe you because you were the party that introduced

that tax and that sort of stuff.

Mm-hmm.

. And that is where the problem is.

Anyway, it's, Yeah, I've got a theory on grandfathering Scott, which is, you

gradually run down the grandfathering.

Yeah, I agree.

So you could say, you know what this sort of 50% discount that we

give you, we're gonna, we're gonna phase that out over five years.

So if you sell your property tomorrow, you can have the full

50%, but next year you only get 40% next year, 30% next year, 20 10 0.

And you can sort of phase these things out as well.

So I don't have to be grandfathered forever.

No, I agree.

It's one of those things now, you know, I don't know if you were trying

to make me feel guilty about my investment property, but No, I wasn't.

I was just teasing.

Yeah, I know you, I was just having fun.

Yeah, I know.

It's one of those things, it's but it, it actually proves the point,

like you'd have to work with the rules that, that you are presented with.

So there's Yeah, it's, there's nothing wrong.

I go back to a high court ruling, which was many, many, many moons ago, and it

was said that then the judge in the, in the high court said, he said, If a

there is no moral, there is no moral compulsion to pay tax, only legal

compulsion to pay tax if a text mm-hmm.

if a man can structure his affairs in a way within the law to minimize the

amount of income tax that he must pay, then he is quite entitled to do so.

Mm-hmm.

. So that is what's what, one of the reasons that I have bought this

place and that sort of stuff, because I'm just acting within the law.

Mm.

Yeah, no criticism Scott.

I was just you cuz I knew your circumstances and Yeah.

, which is fine.

You know, it's if, if the laws change and that sort of stuff, I will, I

will, I will comply with the law.

Yeah.

Last week, that's quite right.

Last week we had a brief guess at average wage and median wage.

Mm-hmm.

and I did take the time, dear listener, to have a quick look.

And the average wage, well this is for 2019.

2020 was 63,882, but the median wage was 48,381.

So I think when we talk about wages, The, the key figure is the

median wage lining everybody up from the poorest to the riches and

stopping halfway along the line.

Okay.

What's that person earning?

And that is the 48,381.

Is that the median or is that the modal?

That's the median.

Modal is where you have it's the bunch of people on 50,000.

Yeah.

Not so many on 20, not so many on 80.

The modal is 50, but yeah, that's not, Yeah.

Okay.

Gonna work in this situation.

So, because averages can be misleading.

And in this article from the abc, just to sort of make the point why is average

taxable income higher than the medium?

And it's because some exceptionally well paid people dragged the average up.

So imagine you had 10 people in a room, nine of them earned $10,000 a year.

And one of them earns 500,000 a year.

The average would be 59,000, but the medium would be 10,000, which

would be much more representative of the true situation.

So that's that's the wages in Australia from two years ago.

And interestingly in the same article, I think it was the same article.

What about a link to it talked about superannuation, just what

most people have with super.

And if you are in the well, who's the average listener here in the chat room?

How old are you out there?

Let's go for fifties . I was gonna say forties and fifties.

Yeah.

45 year old male, average super is about 120,000 female.

About 80,000.

Oh no.

Female is about Yeah, about 80,000 55 to 59 age group, average super balance.

Male would be about 160.

Email, about 115, 110.

So there's quite a disparity between male and female in these figures.

Actually, I think I've got this Facebook audience.

Yeah.

Are 67% male, 32.8% female with most of our listeners between 25 and 54.

Oh, there we go.

The 45 to 54 is slightly higher than 35 to 44, which is slightly

higher than the 25 to 34.

Well, if you're in the 35 to 39 age bracket, then males typically have about

65,000 females, about 50, and it tends to actually I wonder if I can bring this up.

I think I can.

I think I've got this presentation on here, so, I won't bother at this point.

It, it's funny enough, men have a lot more super than women until you

actually get to the retirement age of 65 and then the women catch up.

And I think that's because probably lots of people are able to structure

their affairs and downsize the family home and put money into the

female name or something like that.

So, 65 to 69 year age group.

Typical male, 180 female, 175.

There you go.

So now you know the median wage and the typical superannuation.

Figure out how you compare to the average Joe or the average Scott.

But don't compare yourself to the average Allen Joyce.

CEO of Qantas, that guy's done a shocking job.

He's completely trashed the good name of Qantas.

I'm sure Shay would disagree with you though.

I think Shay would be very much in agreement.

And so his take, aim pay last year was 2.27 million up

from 1.98 the previous year.

So just his take home pay 2.27.

But shareholders voted overwhelmingly to give him a performance

bonus worth about $4 million.

And we just had somebody crazy in the chat room, some some crazy bot.

So we'll get rid of that.

So yeah, he's got a bonus of 4 million.

And they also voted to give him long term rights amounting to another 5

million deferred for three years.

So they've just rewarded this guy with buckets of money.

And when anybody looks at the performance of Qantas, they go they go, Well,

how can anybody be given special bonuses for what's been happening?

But that's the way the world works.

Scott, any explanation?

You're there, Scott.

Scott's disappeared.

He's disappeared.

Has he?

Yeah.

Looks like it, right?

See if Scott comes back.

We've talked in the past about rules-based international order, by the way.

It's really, Oh, Scott is back infuriating when you.

No, I don't have any explanation for it.

Oh shit.

Hello?

Yeah.

You with it?

Can hear.

Fuck no.

Scott, we can hear you now.

Is wrong with that?

Oh, maybe he's listening to that.

I, We can hear Scott.

Go ahead.

Unless he's playing catch up.

Oh Scott, what do you, you might be listening to the actual broadcast

rather than listening to us.

Luckily I've got Joe, the tech guy here, , as well as dealing with internet.

He's dropped off completely now as well as dealing with internet trials.

He's now gonna try and reconnect Scott as well.

So if you're in the chat room when we sort of wipe the the

chats we'll bring them back up.

So can you put the chats back up, Joe?

I think that would be okay now.

Yeah.

Then if you start chatting again, takes about 30 seconds to time out.

Yeah.

It'll start appearing and And that person who was selling sex services

or whatever they were doing, Hello.

Hopefully disappeared.

Scott's back.

Can you hear me, Scott?

No, he was talking but he can't hear me.

I'll keep Rabbit on.

Oh, you can hear me Scott?

Yeah, I can hear you.

Okay.

Scott, tell us how you feel about Alan Joyce and his massive bangas.

Well, you know, I just think it's bloody ridiculous that they actually

voted for that because, you know, I'm a long-term cus quarters

customer and that sort of stuff.

I fly back to Brisbane once a month on them.

Mm-hmm.

and, you know, I haven't experienced the extreme stuff.

UPS and that sort of stuff that ended up getting, that they ended up

giving us all 50 bucks for mm-hmm.

, but you know, it's not a real pleasant experience when you heard it on there

and that sort of thing with them.

Mm-hmm.

, they're not the premier airline.

They weren't once were.

And it's really quite infuriating when you get what's the word I'm

looking for, when you just get stuffed up and that sort of stuff.

Like, you know, there's all sorts of stories about bags being sent overseas,

which should have just made it down to Brisbane and all that sort of thing.

Mm-hmm.

and, you know, that is a real stuff up.

And what you've actually found is it's because of the staff that were sacked

illegally in the pandemic and they were replaced with contractors because they

thought that they would save themselves.

Some do, and it's turned out to be an actual cost for them.

Yes, of course.

Alan Joyce was also blaming customers because they were not match fit.

Having been in a covid lockdown and not traveling, we lost our, our

match fitness and our capacity to.

Drag our own, our own bags and put them on a carousel properly.

So, yeah.

Anyway, which is, that's just, it's just typical that people don't, are

not held accountable for bad decisions.

And, you know, often it's the case, bad decisions are made, executive walks away

with the bonuses opposed to, and it's only afterwards that people look at it and go,

Oh look, actually that guy stuffed it up, Which we didn't give him those bonuses,

but in this case we can actually look at it and go, he's trashed the brand.

And and they're still awarding him with these bonuses.

The system is, is not, Yeah, but it also, you gotta wonder what the

contract says cuz as long as he meets certain targets, he gets his bonus.

Yes.

And, and his actions will be aimed at meeting those targets.

So if the targets are barley balanced, He'll have concentrated on that to

the detriment of everything else.

Yes.

And the board, no doubt would've taken advice from remuneration experts onto

as to how to structure CEO remuneration.

And gee, you know, who are you gonna hire as your remuneration expert?

Somebody likely to suggest large pay packets, or somebody likely to suggest

small pay packets, given that you sitting on the board, are also relying

on the same remuneration experts as an inbuilt incentive for these people

to employ experts who are going to suggest higher rates than smaller rates.

So I, I was listening to a discussion about expert witnesses in courts.

Mm-hmm.

. And they were saying they're supposed to tell the truth and they're supposed to

be, independent of whoever hires them.

But if you are going out and you're looking at a hundred expert

witnesses, you're gonna hire the one that most believes your story.

Yes.

And you're not gonna hire the one that least believes your story, are you?

Correct.

And there are certain expert witnesses saying AI cases or whatever, who

are known to be good plaintiff.

So good for defendants, even if they were absolutely, you

know, completely scrupulous.

They, they absolutely only said what they believed, truly believed.

You would still hire the expert witness that aligned most with your case.

Of course.

Yeah.

So everybody knows that it's not necessarily these experts on

nefarious, it's just when you're hunting around, you find the one that

will give you the outcome you want.

Indeed.

Yeah.

Okay.

So yeah, that was Alan Joyce, right?

Scott?

Yes.

The USA is very keen that on international rules based order and

a thing came through about there was a vote in the un about whether to

continue with the block aid of Cuba.

So there's currently very severe sanctions on trading with Cuba.

So for example, any ship that docks in Cuba, I think is not allowed to then

enter the United States for at least six months or something like that.

So, it's really expensive to ship things to Cuba because.

Normally it would pick stuff up from the United States and bring it back.

So, yeah, a whole bunch of other sort of sanctions that are imposed

on Cuba and United Nations.

And the vote was 185 to two against the blockade.

And the there were two abstentions that's the word, ab abstentions.

So those who voted in favor of continuing the blockade or the USA and Israel.

The two that abstained were let me just see here if I can find them, was

Ukraine and Brazil under the Bolsonaro government, which is recently just left.

So, The rest of the world voted against the sanctions.

It's not a good look.

I think Scott Israel's coming under increasing criticism in the world.

I think people are referring it to it as an apartheid state and things

like this are not good, rightly so, because, you know, Israel has behaved

very much like an a apartheid state.

You know, it is bloody criminal the way they treat the Palestinians.

Now, that doesn't, you know, please don't take me for being antisemitic

here or anything like that.

You can be critical of the Jewish state and not be critical of Jews.

I do not for one minute believe that if the PLO were as well armed

as the idf, that they would not stop pushing until they'd push

the Jews into the Mediterranean.

Mm-hmm.

, you know, it's one of those things.

But Israel has got to accept that they've got the upper hand

militarily and that type of thing.

And with comes with that a level of responsibility.

They have to be prepared to shoulder their arms a little more and take

their fingers off the trigger.

And they have to show real restraint when they're dealing with the Palestinian

people because the Palestinian people have got every right to be very pissed

off for the way they've been treated.

Mm-hmm.

, Israel's definitely turning into a bit of a pariah state, I think.

Absolutely.

Who were sympathetic towards it maybe 20 years ago, increasingly less so.

So these sorts of things like this vote against poor Cuba the US and Israel.

I know it's really quite ridiculous that, you know, the, such a threat to the world.

Yeah.

The Yanks have to accept that Cuba's.

Big patriarchal friend is dead, the Soviet Union is gone.

So Cuba is no longer any sort of threat to the United States.

So if they wanna call themselves a Marxist economy, let them call themselves Marxist,

it's no problem because they can't do anything to the US or anything like that.

I just think the Yanks just look very childish when they

continue this blockade of Cuba.

Indeed.

So speaking of sort of sanctions interesting thing has occurred.

So there's a group of seven rich nations plus Australia.

Well I guess that's the G seven . So the G seven plus Australia they've agreed to

set a fixed price when they finalize a price cap on Russian oil later this month.

This is scheduled to take effect on the 5th of December where these

countries, G seven plus Australia, have decided that there's gonna

be a price cap on Russian oil.

And the idea is to to ensure that the EU and the US sanctions aimed

at limiting Moscow's ability to fund its invasion of Ukraine, to

not throttle the global oil market.

So the idea is, well, we need the oil, but we don't want

Putin to get rich from the oil.

So we are just gonna impose a, a price cap and . And that's gonna

start on 5th of December for crude and 5th of February on oil products.

Guess what Russia said?

Russia said, Well, we just won't supply.

If you are gonna set a price cap, you just can't unilaterally tell us.

That there's a price cap on our oil we'll set the price that we wanna sell it at.

Thank you very much.

And if you're not gonna pay it, then we are not gonna supply it.

I mean, it's quite extraordinary for, for Australia and the G seven countries

to say, Well, we're just gonna tell Russia what it can charge for oil.

I mean, we still want their oil and we're gonna challenge, but we can tell 'em what

they can charge for it, for goodness sake.

Yeah, that is a little bit ridiculous.

I mean, the world's gotta recognize, and the US has gotta recognize that

Russia, India, China are too big and what worked against Venezuela and

Cuba will not work with these guys.

So, John says the US has still got sanctions on Venezuela, but are

now talking about buying their oil.

That's right.

They're suddenly cozying up to Venezuela and wanting to be friendly again.

It's pathetic.

So,

Found this article called Global Finance Versus Global Energy,

Who Will Come out on Top.

And this was by Dr.

Karen Nessi, who's an energy analyst, author of 14 books on

energy related and other topics.

She was Austria's foreign Minister for two years.

She served 10 years in the Foreign Service and she's fluent in classical

Arabic amongst other languages.

Currently living in Lebanon.

Sounds like a very interesting lady.

And so she says there's more to the current struggle between the oil

consuming west and the oil producing nations then meets the eye and it runs

far deeper than the war in the Ukraine.

So she says, in this war between global finance and global

energy, one fact remains clear.

You can print money, but you can't print oil.

So, the European Union agreed to impose a Russian oil price cap, and

this is back in the 6th of October.

23 oil ministers from the OPEC Plus Group spoke out immediately in favor of

a sharp cut in their production quota.

So there's OPEC and there's 10 non OPEC energy producers in the sort

of collectively now called OPEC Plus, and they're now coordinating

their production of oil, and they've been doing it since 2016.

And originally people thought, Well, good luck.

You guys won't be able to organize yourselves, and you're not

gonna be able to pressure the world like you think you can.

But today former rivals such as Saudi Arabia and Russia are managing to converge

their interests into powerful cards.

So, It used to be normal practice for reyad to take into account and

execute Washington's interests.

But a simple phone call was enough, but that's changed.

And talks about the proxy war in Ukraine and she said that you've got the US and

European allies who basically represent the finance sector and they're engaged in

a war against the world's energy sector.

And while it's easy to print paper currency, and the US was doing a lot

of it, as well as other countries with quantitative easing oil cannot be printed.

It's a fundamental problem for the west and it's gonna win out at the

end of the day, is what she is saying.

So, she wrote a book in 2005 called The Energy Poker and and she dealt with the

issue of currency and whether oil will be traded in US dollars in the long term.

And she says, At the time, my interlocutors from the Arab OPEC

countries unanimously said that the US dollar would not be changed.

Yet 17 years later, that view has devolved starkly.

So, dear listener, this is the key.

When the world collapses financially, one of the reasons

it's all gonna relate to currency.

And essentially, after the gold standard was abandoned, the US basically said

to Saudi Arabia, Okay, sell your oil, but you have to trade in US dollars.

And provided you do that, we will support you.

But you have to buy.

People have to buy and sell oil in US dollars.

And for the us, that was a big advantage because basically it then meant that.

Okay.

A US dollar was no longer equivalent to certain, you know, number of ounces

of gold, but it was equivalent to certain number of barrels of oil.

And so that agreement with Saudi cemented the US dollar as the

wills de facto reserve currency.

If you have a US dollar, you can get a suitable amount of oil.

It gave the US dollar value, but now because of what's happening and is

accelerated by the Ukraine War, these countries of Russia, India, Iran,

China, are now dealing in oil and deciding not to use the US dollar.

And that's a huge change and it's a massive, it's a massively important

change in the world affairs.

And think I'm gonna talk about it next week a little bit.

So, So just finishing off this article here, Washington no longer

maintains its ability to exert absolute leverage on opec, which is now

repositioning itself into the OPEC Plus.

She's basically predicting the oil suppliers will win out.

And just in relation to China.

So until the early 1990s, China satisfied its domestic oil consumption with

domestic oil consumption, about three to 4 million barrels per day, but 15

years in a rapidly growing economy later.

And China is now the world's number one oil importer.

And guess what?

When it imports oil from these guys, it doesn't wanna be paying in US dollars.

And they're accepting Chinese money now.

So, so, Saying here?

Yeah, I think that's the main point of the article.

So she thinks it's a battle between oil producers and finance money printers

and the oil producers are gonna win out.

And I've been reading lots of stuff over the last 12 months about this whole

thing with the currency and I think when it all turns to shit for America, it's

the US dollar and it's collapses, the reserve currency that's going to be the

thing that really tips 'em over the edge.

There's a prediction.

Might take a year, it might take 10, might take 20, but we'll see.

So you think they getting it up as another civil war?

Civil war in America?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Oh, well then that'll precipitate all sorts of issues in the country when

suddenly overnight the economy collapses.

So, yes.

Civil war, I mean, Californians and somebody in the south, I

mean, they are so different.

They may as well be different countries, so, Exactly.

Yeah.

It will get pretty, pretty ugly and well, you, you know, they, they're gonna

have to be very careful because a lot of the nukes are based in the southern

states and all that sort of stuff, so you don't want the nukes falling into

the hands of the Republic of Gilead, which is what it will end up being.

Yeah.

You don't want the nukes in the, in a country like that, you know, Now it's,

they're going to have to very quietly move the nus out of those north of the

Mason Dixie line, so that once the country splits in two, the nukes aren't going

to be in south of the Mason Dixie line.

I hadn't thought of the nuclear issue when it came to the American Civil War.

Scott, it's another frightening element to it.

It is very frightening because you've got these lunatic who, wouldn't

actually mind nuking a couple of places.

Well, and they would justify, They'd justify themselves and all

that sort of stuff by saying, Oh, we were just sending them to God.

Mm-hmm.

Yep.

You know?

Well, they're godless hens in California.

Yeah, exactly.

So they've got acum.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

John says, I don't think it's civil war.

Maybe some states succeeding from the.

Is that the same as Civil War?

Well, what happens, John, is some states want to succeed and

the other guys say, Not so fast.

Yeah.

We're not gonna let you.

I mean, that's what happened in the first civil war.

So they said, Oh, we'd like to go.

Thanks.

Yeah.

Not so fast.

I mean, it's just one of those things like, I remember my brother

years and years ago who was talking about the Civil War and he said, you

know, a lot of it wasn't, he said it wasn't down to just slavery, it was

down to over the right to secede.

Yes.

Which is why it all blew up.

Mm-hmm.

indeed.

Yeah.

Anyway, just generally on Europe then, I mean, they're in trouble

because without cheap Russian gas, they just can't compete.

So.

Yeah.

And that's really very annoying actually, that Germany is continuing down the road

of closing their nuclear power plants.

Mm-hmm.

. Now, one would've thought that considering you've got a shutdown of.

Cheap Russian gas coming into the country, that you've got a very good reason to keep

your nuclear power plants turning over.

Mm.

My view of all this, Scott, is that in Australia, we don't need nuclear power.

No, we, we don't need, We don't see that Europe does.

Exactly.

It's just one of those things like Europe, Europe's further down the

renewable road than we are, but they've got a long established nuclear industry,

which has been completely blemish free.

I mean, I bet you can name three nuclear power plants, or maybe the latest two

in Ukraine, but you can name she Nobel.

Fukushima in three Mile Island because they're the only three that

have had disas, have had problems, but you can't name any of the

nuclear plants in France Capital.

Sorry, Ken Capital I to live opposite.

Right, fair enough.

But you know, I bet you can't name any of them.

They're in Sweden or anywhere or anywhere like that.

And then Hinkley Point in England.

Well, fair enough.

And Sellafield, Sellafield had a nuclear accident.

Oh, did it?

Yeah.

Hmm.

Anyway, it's, I get the point that you're making Scott.

Yeah, exactly.

None of, most of us can't name them because they're genuinely

safe, but they're further down there down the road than we are.

I think it is absolutely ridiculous that Dutton is still talking

up nuclear power for Australia.

So nuclear that was built in the sixties and seventies is a sunk cost.

Exactly.

And the cost of keeping it running is very, very different

to the cost of building from you.

Exactly.

And if you were gonna start up right, If you're gonna start up

now, you've got a huge amount of money that you've gotta spend on it.

It, it just makes no sense.

Like, you know, it's, you know, Paul, bless his heart, he had a, he had a very

much a nuclear, he loved nuclear power.

Mm-hmm.

, but you know, he would not ever get it through his head.

That renewables have come down in price so much that they now make

perfect sense that we should go with renewables rather than nuclear power.

Well, especially with pumped hydro.

Exactly.

Paul would argue that there is not enough storage to make renewables

reliable enough is what he would say.

Yeah, I know, but we've already got that, You know, they've got this

thing that's going up west of Mackay and that sort of stuff up here that's

gonna generate more than two thirds of the electricity for Queensland.

Really?

Yeah.

Solar farm.

No, this is the Oh, this is the dam.

Yeah, the dam, Yeah.

The pumped hydra.

So the, the idea is that you have a surplus of solar during the day

and that will pump between solar.

Yeah.

You pump the water up the hill and then overnight and in cloudy conditions.

And if you solar plants and your wind plants are diverse enough, so covering

a large enough area of country, the weather is different in different places.

And so you've got a surplus of generating capacity and you store the surplus that

you do have to tide you over in the periods where you're not generating.

Mm-hmm.

and they've done the sums looking at the weather patterns

and it's all very feasible, so.

Mm-hmm.

. Yeah.

Anyway, that that's Europe.

They are in trouble.

They're in real trouble over there.

They're in real trouble because, you know, you've got this, you've got the current

situation that the French government and that sort of stuff are all wearing

turtlenecks underneath the jackets.

Mm.

Just to say, Look, you can be warm if you wear this.

Mm.

You know, they're just trying to get everyone ready for a cold winter.

Mm-hmm.

. Yeah, we once again, the lucky country now,

Oh, very much so quick advertisement break.

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All right, computer chips.

This kind of ties in with the sanctions sort of theme that we've got going

in the background of this podcast.

So the US and the Netherlands are expected to hold a new round of talks

this month on restricting China's access to advanced chip technologies.

So Washington is trying to ramp up pressure on the Netherlands

to block this company called A S M L from supplying China.

With the sort of equipment that it wants to make top end chips.

So, they already don't give China the very, very best stuff they've got, but

America is pressuring them to, to also stop supplying the next level down stuff.

So pressure from America on the Netherlands to stop their

company from selling chip manufacturing equipment to China.

Scott, here's a prediction.

China will figure it out for themselves and they will ramp up their capacity

to make chips and will eventually ruin Taiwanese chip making businesses

to the point where the Taiwanese will then say, Well, you've totally

screwed us with our major industry.

If we join you, we'll let be.

Okay.

And can we start running our business again?

Like, if I was China and I look at Taiwan, Taiwan makes 65% of

the world's semiconductors and almost 90% of the advanced chips.

And why would you invade if you could just simply crush their economy by

making chips and undercutting them?

How's that sound as a, as a theory, Scott?

Yeah.

Okay.

I can understand where you're coming from, but I, I don't think you and I are ever

gonna agree on China because I honestly believe that China has got to accept

that they won that civil war and that the former island of Formosa has evolved

and grown into a, a sovereign nation called Taiwan or the Republic of China.

Now the People's Republic of China, that is the mainland.

That is a very different country to the Republic of China, which is Taiwan.

And I honestly believe that China's got to accept the fact that they have won that

civil war and that the Republic of China is an independent, sovereign ca country.

Mm.

And that the people's Republic of China is a very different entity now he has

made a hell of a lot of the hundred years of humiliation, or 200 years of

humiliation, whatever it was, and I can understand where he is coming from.

But Taiwan is not in the same category as the rest of the

humiliation that they have suffered.

Mm-hmm.

, because Taiwan has become independent ever since 1948.

49 whenever the revolution was.

Mm-hmm.

. So I can understand the humiliation between the British and the French

and the Americans and all that sort of stuff, but they've got to accept

that Taiwan has evolved and is now an independent sovereign nation.

Mm-hmm.

now, honestly believe that where they should start with all that is that they

can sit down and talk to them because they speak the same language and they

should actually say to them that, you know, we are prepared to accept you as

an independent sovereign nation provided that you give up your requirement,

your request for the South China Sea.

Because both the Republic of China and the People's Republic

of China both argue over that.

They both, they, they both lay claim to that.

Yes.

So if Taiwan said to the prc, Yeah.

The South China Sea is yours provided you give us that.

You recognize us as an independent sovereign nation,

that would be a step forward.

Yeah.

China's never gonna do that.

I know.

They're never gonna do that.

They're never gonna do that because G is got this fixation on reunifying Taiwan.

It's not like, it's not just like, okay, but you know, you

could, you gotta look at it.

This is the stuff, the history of it is being written and all that type of thing.

Mm-hmm.

, you know, the Qang ran across the, for the Taiwan straits to Formosa

and Formosa was still part of the, you know, that was back when they had

the QM Tang and that sort of stuff.

They were still there and they set up their own parliament

and all that sort of stuff.

Arguably, arguably they invaded the existing population

and, and overrun them and.

Yeah.

Okay.

Fair enough.

Existing natives of fora weren't real happy either, were they?

Probably not.

I don't know that, but it's one of those things, the whole point is, I

think, actually, I think there was a heavy Japanese culture by that

stage in for, because they'd been occupied Japan, long Japan occupied

Formosa before the second World War.

Yeah.

And that when the, Yeah, exactly.

When the, when the losing Chinese army, you know, Decamped there, they

were quite critical and scathing of the local population who they

saw as sort of very Japanese.

So anyway, we digress.

I just like the theory though, Scott, that if I was, gee, I would just work

on economically crushing their economy to the point where they would say,

Can we please win your economy now?

Because we crushed the Japanese and the Japanese have always hated

the Chinese, but, but in terms of cost, it would be the way to do it.

From China's point of view, they're gonna have to become much more

self-sufficient with chip making.

They're gonna have to figure it out and produce their own chips because

America's just going to keep interfering.

So, yeah.

But you to, to accept that.

To accept that you'd have to, No, China will never do that.

Never do what?

It's Scott, never do what you there.

Have we lost him again?

Joe?

Looking away, just as I'm getting on top on this argument, he pulls

the old technical difficulty trick.

Just as I'm really starting to screw down there.

Hello.

Suddenly.

Yep.

And back.

Scott, what do you mean?

China will never do that if China.

China, Okay.

I didn't hear you then.

What'd you say?

My argument was that China could figure out how to make these chips and

semiconductors, and if it put mine to it could produce them, subsidize them, and

basically cripple the Taiwanese economy.

Why wouldn't they do that?

It'd be much cheaper than trying to invade militarily as a tactic.

It's sort of, sounds pretty good, I reckon.

No.

Have you disappeared?

I move on . Okay.

Scott's disappeared.

Yell out, Scott, if you can reappear.

I'm gonna take that as full agreement with my argument.

Alright.

Robin was saying that the lunar eclipse is looking spectacular.

Yes.

There is a, a lunar eclipse stuck outside if you have a chance.

Are you back, Scott?

I heard him there in the background.

Yeah, he was there for a second.

Yeah.

Alright.

Put another coin in the meter.

Scott.

Yeah.

, it's not much of an advertisement for regional Queensland.

He's got, he's gotta use some of that rent money he's collecting from those tenants.

Some, some proper internet fiber of the premises.

Yeah, just box of all brand.

Hmm.

If you are predicting the end of the US empire, here are some things that

might suggest that that is increasingly likely in the near not so distant future.

Just some signs and it would be I didn't hear what you just said.

All right.

You back, Scott.

You definitely there.

Scott.

Scott, I'm not gonna repeat myself unless you and he's gone.

No, there you go.

If you're looking for Signs in America has, is in trouble.

Here they are.

Number one, Saudi Arabia rejected Biden's demand to increase oil production.

Instead they're working with Russia to cut production.

And and in fact Saudi Arabia invited Xing P for a visit.

Number two.

Yeah, maybe they need to get Bangal bush over there to renegotiate.

Yes.

Number two, Lula one in Brazil.

He's talking up a new currency to replace the US dollar.

So actually I've got a clip on have I got a clip on Lula?

No, I don't have a clip on.

I've got it in writing somewhere.

I'll come to that one.

Actually, I'll find it right here.

Lula said.

So, he's insisted that when his workers' party lost power in 2016, he said that

the bricks, so that's Brazil, Russia, India, China the major shortcoming

was it's failure to in South Africa.

Thank you.

The major shortcoming was its failure to launch a new currency to rival the dollar.

And in an interview from prison, Lula recalled a quote.

When I discussed a new currency, Obama called me telling me, Are you trying

to create a new currency, a new Euro?

And I said, No.

I'm just trying to get rid of the US dollar, so that tells you how

Lula feels about the US dollar.

So he's the new Brazilian president.

Other things that have happened that don't bode well for America is that

Argentina, Saudi Arabia and Iran are exploring membership of bricks.

And the China led Shanghai cooperation organization has

added Iran as a new member.

And Qatar has rejected a price cap on Russian energy, and Singapore

clearly says it's not going to choose between China and the usa.

India increases purchases of Russian energy products and pays

for some of it using Chinese Yuan.

And German leader visited China.

And yeah, so there's a whole bunch of things going on that don't

pay well for American Hege money.

Scott, you back?

No, you'll have the ping money joins.

Oh, okay.

Right.

Allison can't see the eclipse cuz she's got clouds.

Same with John.

How does the world view Russia and China?

So this was a report from the Bennett Institute at the University of Cambridge

and in this report they examined how worldwide attitudes towards China, Russia,

and the United States are shifting.

So they looked at data from 30 global survey projects that collectively span

137 countries and they've analyzed this.

So it covers not only high income democracies, but also a

comprehensive coverage of emerging economies of the global south.

And they say there is a new cleavage.

The strongest predictors of how societies align respective to China

or the United States are their fundamental values and institutions.

So if you're looking at the 1.2 billion people who inhabit the world's liberal

democracies, let's just call it the West three quarters have a negative view of

China and 87% a negative view of Russia.

But if you look at the 6.3 billion people who live in the rest of the world, the

picture is reversed in these societies.

70% feel positively towards China, and 66% positively towards Russia.

So we are in a bubble here when we are looking at this and we

have to recognize that 6.3 billion people don't think the same as us.

That's a lot of people.

I, China, I know people who are in both directions on China.

Mm-hmm.

. But my Russian friends are definitely keen to have or happy to have escaped.

I think Putin's, Putin's Russia is not a place that most of us would

want to live, but this is the view of 6.3 billion people who don't live in

Russia as to what they think of Russia.

So, you know, they just says that they're, they're yeah.

Favorable view of the country.

Press core is doing very well.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And you know, you might look at it and go, I love what they're doing, just

glad I don't live there, for example.

That could be well attitude.

So, So, let me see here.

So the boosting approval across the global south for China comes

at a cost in the developed nation.

So, and we've talked about this before, the change in attitude towards China.

So five years ago, 42% of western citizens held a positive view of China.

And today that figure is just 23%.

And what have they done in five years?

Sold some more dumplings,

put some soil on, some, some tidal flats in the South China Sea started

whacking defensive structures on there.

Amy.

I'd have done it.

Yeah.

So here we go.

However, the real terrain of Russia's international

influence lies outside the West.

75% of respondents in South Asia, 68% in Francophone Africa, 62% in

Southeast Asia can continue to view the country that is Russia positively in

spite of everything that's going on.

What amazing.

Where you going?

Ah, I want how many of those received arms and support during

their liberation struggles?

From Russia?

Yeah, From, sorry, from the Soviet Union?

Yeah.

What, what, Sorry, say that again Joe.

So the Francophone countries had liberation struggles in

the sixties and seventies.

Yeah.

And you gotta wonder how many of them, the people who are in power.

Are beholden, were schooled in Russian universities, were schooled, but

you know, effectively their freedom struggles were paid for by the Soviets.

And whether that's the legacy of it, perhaps they just

hate the Western colonizers.

So I don't know that Russia helped that much in a lot of these countries.

My understanding was they funded a lot of them and they educated a lot of the

freedom fighters in Soviet universities School in, yeah, it could be in Marxism

and in counter-revolutionary T techniques could be anyway, it just goes to showing

not everybody thinks the same as the West.

Yeah.

So,

there's a Singaporean diplomat built Aari.

Cause he can't.

So, he is a Singaporean retired academic diplomat and civil servant who served

as Singapore's permanent representative to the United Nations for three years.

So he's from Singapore and I've got a clip where he has something

to say and I will play this one.

So let me just find this one of Singaporean diplomat coming up.

Let's go with this one about there.

Singapore's Prime Minister has warned the US against framing the

competition in the Asia Pacific as a democracies verse autocracies contest.

Sort of what's your view and, and how does Singapore view this divide going forward?

Well, my view is that it is a rather silly and simplistic way of framing

the competition in the, in the Pacific or anywhere else, right.

There are many types of democracies and not all autocracies are alike.

You know, you, maybe you can frame it as some mainly western

type democracies versus some autocracies to it, Russia and China.

But to put it in broad categories like democracy and autocracy, to

me, just silly, this is not how countries calculate their interests.

Give you one, give you a couple of examples, right?

Vietnam is an autocracy, it's alens type system like China, but Vietnam

has deep concerns about China and, and has had so four centuries.

I don't think India joined the court because it was a

collection of democracies.

It had specific reasons for joining the court, which have to do with

specific strategic concerns, not these broad ideological ideas.

These are much more justifications.

You know, I, I understand that certain countries, particularly Europe and

North America, the US and North America, many European countries

are kind of obsessed with this.

But I think you have to understand that it really is a way of, it limits your

support rather than expensive, because not everybody will find every aspect

of Western democracies attractive.

In fact, I don't, myself, I would not consider it an attractive model for

Singapore, and not everybody will find every aspect of autocracies, of every

autocracy automatically AOR either.

So it's a silly way of framing your thing, simplistic, overly simplistic.

It limits your support rather than expands it.

So why do it except to make yourself feel better.

Mm-hmm.

, there we go.

Just how other people in the world think about these things

worth considering, I think.

Yeah.

I mean, Singapore's a special case, isn't it?

What is the situation in Singapore?

I dunno how it operates.

Nominally a democracy, but one party's been in power for 60 years.

Mm-hmm.

. It's very, very autocratic, I think.

And it's very free market.

Mm-hmm.

. So I think to them, the idea of a social democracy is probably an athema.

And, and especially to those who have succeeded in Singapore who

are doing well under the system.

I think that the idea that they should pay for the poorer, might not be as welcome.

But Singapore, Singapore has done amazingly well.

I mean, under, under British rural.

I know someone who grew up in the villages, the rural villages,

and it was severe poverty.

And it's now a very, very modern state.

Yes.

Yeah, indeed.

It's very first world in terms of its infrastructure and, and public services.

Mm.

This emphasis on autocracies and authoritarian regimes comes about

because for example, it used to be, well they're goddamn communists.