full
Episode 362 - Central Banks Cannot Print Oil
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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Transcript
We need to talk about ideas, good ones and bad ones.
Speaker:We need to learn stuff about the world.
Speaker:We need an honest, intelligent, thought provoking, and entertaining
Speaker:review of what the hell happened on this planet in the last seven days.
Speaker:We need to sit back and listen to the Iron Fist and the Velvet Glove.
Speaker:Well, hello there, dear listener.
Speaker:This is the Iron Fist and the Velvet Glove podcast episode 362 in
Speaker:going over seven years, and we're still at it on Trevor, behind Fist.
Speaker:With me.
Speaker:As always, Joe, the tech guy, Neil.
Speaker:And with us in spirit and in audio Scott, the Velvet.
Speaker:Glove, without a functioning video, but seemingly with a functioning audio.
Speaker:Scott, how are you Scott?
Speaker:Talk to me,
Speaker:Oh, no, seriously.
Speaker:Seriously.
Speaker:You can't do this to me, Scott
Speaker:Oh, that's funny.
Speaker:That is funny.
Speaker:We had video at the beginning of this at seven o'clock.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:And then we lost the video, but we had audio and literally we were speaking to
Speaker:Scott before I played the intro and we said, let's just work with the audio.
Speaker:We'll go with that.
Speaker:And You are there.
Speaker:You are there.
Speaker:Scott.
Speaker:How are you?
Speaker:Bloody drops out whenever you play that intro music.
Speaker:It just, I thought to myself we're gonna have exactly the same problem
Speaker:this week as what we had last week.
Speaker:But anyway, I don't have a camera so I'm sure people can remember what I look like.
Speaker:Maybe the regulars can, but anyway, I am fully clothed too
Speaker:by way pants off podcasting.
Speaker:Sorry.
Speaker:You should be just pants off podcasting.
Speaker:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker:I could do that.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Well Joe and I just got out underpants on, down by.
Speaker:Yeah, I know that.
Speaker:But you know, I gotta get up and go to the fridge so I could be,
Speaker:you know, I don't wanna get caught in that with the with the camera.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:So anyway, you're living in rural Queensland or regional place now, Scott?
Speaker:Yes, it is regional Queensland.
Speaker:And you, you can get away with virtually everything up here.
Speaker:Like, you know, I went out to one of our premier restaurants and
Speaker:all that sort of stuff with the directors a couple months ago and I.
Speaker:Got dressed up, they just arrived in shorts and a t-shirt and
Speaker:scuffs and that type of thing.
Speaker:I thought to myself, okay, this is regional Queensland and I haven't
Speaker:worn any long trousers outside of the office since I've been up here because
Speaker:it's too bloody hot to, So anyway.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:And life's treating you well up there, Scott?
Speaker:Yeah, it is.
Speaker:It's treating me okay.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:You recommend regional Queensland to anybody looking for a change
Speaker:in life or just a better job?
Speaker:A tree change?
Speaker:Yeah, it's, you do have to get used to the fact it is a slower pace of life up here.
Speaker:We don't have any public transport that you can really look at.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:, you know, they do have buses, but they don't seem to run all that
Speaker:frequently and that type of thing.
Speaker:The.
Speaker:Everything I need is up here.
Speaker:Except the one thing I do miss is a I do miss having competitions around
Speaker:the cinemas because we really got one cinema up here that's events
Speaker:and they charge like wounded bolts.
Speaker:Mm, Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So in the chatroom is John and Bronwin and yes, Scott's got audio,
Speaker:but he doesn't have video problems at Scott's end on this occasion.
Speaker:So, yeah.
Speaker:So you'll just, you'll just hear him but not see him for this episode.
Speaker:Get one Gade John.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So, alright.
Speaker:Oh, and Andrew says tree changes can go south too.
Speaker:That's correct.
Speaker:So that's the other option.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:Well, is this Andrew Jackson?
Speaker:Is that the same?
Speaker:Andrew Jackson that I went to university with all those years ago?
Speaker:He looks too young for that, Scott.
Speaker:So.
Speaker:Judging by the profile picture, but Exactly.
Speaker:Maybe.
Speaker:Yeah, you never know.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:Okay, we're gonna talk about Twitter and Master Don dictated
Speaker:Dan and the newspapers down there.
Speaker:We're gonna talk about negative gearing, average wage, oil prices,
Speaker:computer chips, population, Brazil, Fascism, Ukraine, update submarine.
Speaker:Scott can't have you on without . I mean, it was probably
Speaker:back in episode five or six.
Speaker:I was starting to rant about submarines.
Speaker:Then you got onto something good and you haven't let it
Speaker:go, have you ? That's right.
Speaker:Can't help myself.
Speaker:So yeah, that's all ahead of us.
Speaker:And Andrew Jackson, q i t q u t.
Speaker:Yeah, I did go to qt.
Speaker:Yeah, if he was back in the Q I days then that's a while ago, so, Yeah.
Speaker:Well I was at qt.
Speaker:Yeah, so I was at Q I T and then it changed to Q ut, so yeah.
Speaker:Do you know else was at Q I T who?
Speaker:The owner of the ARC encounter.
Speaker:Ah, can have.
Speaker:Really?
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Is that right?
Speaker:Apparently he is a graduate of Q I T.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Is that right?
Speaker:We've exported and was a science teacher in Brisbane.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Fair.
Speaker:We've exported some terrible things to the us, Ken, Ken Ham and Ruth Murdoch, I mean.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So, Hey, there you go.
Speaker:For those people missing, Scott, I've got a picture.
Speaker:Oh, well done.
Speaker:You did well to sneak that up there.
Speaker:Good on you.
Speaker:And there was a photo of me at the Brisbane airport.
Speaker:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker:Complete with masks, so, mm-hmm.
Speaker:. Alright.
Speaker:Let's briefly talk about Inland Musk has purchased Twitter and the Twitterverse is
Speaker:just going into meltdown because they fear that it's going to go to rack and ruin,
Speaker:and they're looking for alternatives to spend time on and do what they wanna do.
Speaker:So because he initially quoted Blue ticks would cost $20 a month, and
Speaker:then he's the author Steven, his guy wrote the horror flicks horror.
Speaker:Stephen King.
Speaker:Stephen King, I think was having a Twitter debate with him saying, If you're gonna be
Speaker:charging people 20 bucks, I'm out of here.
Speaker:Or a blue tick, you know, this is the tick that all you know indicates that you are
Speaker:an authorized, genuine person on Twitter.
Speaker:And Enon Musk said, Oh, well let's make an $8, you know, The point wasn't that
Speaker:Stephen King didn't have $20 to stump up.
Speaker:He just felt he shouldn't pay any money at all.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:. So anyway, Elon took that as an opportunity to haggle and it now seems
Speaker:that they're gonna favor people who have paid the eight bucks and their tweets are
Speaker:gonna appear at the top of the timeline.
Speaker:And if you haven't paid that, you probably, your tweets won't get much
Speaker:prominence and people fear it's gonna turn into a real shit fight in there.
Speaker:So they're looking for other alternatives.
Speaker:And the one that seems to be the likely replacement, if any, is master do.
Speaker:So Joe, we were talking about it earlier and it looks a little bit like Twitter,
Speaker:but this one is not owned by anybody.
Speaker:It's all open source.
Speaker:You wanna quickly explain what mastered on is to the informed, The original intent
Speaker:from the guy was effectively a Twitter.
Speaker:That wasn't moderated by Big Tech that didn't have an algorithm that
Speaker:pushed certain paid content to the front and adverts to the front
Speaker:and was gonna be completely open.
Speaker:And so effectively it's a federation of servers.
Speaker:You find a server?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:People host servers of their own free will.
Speaker:And they are responsible for content moderation and they
Speaker:federate with other servers.
Speaker:So the idea is that basically as long as you're federated with another
Speaker:server, you get whatever feeds you want.
Speaker:Unmoderated un unfiltered from them.
Speaker:Now, truth Social, which is Trump's free social media, is
Speaker:actually based on Master Don.
Speaker:And there were some initial arguments as to him stealing open source software and,
Speaker:and not making the source code available.
Speaker:No shock horror.
Speaker:So although it's based on the same platform and in theory could
Speaker:federate with everyone else, most most servers will have blocked it and
Speaker:will choose not to federate with it.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:And so you, you basically get a username and then at site name
Speaker:it's very much like an email.
Speaker:So you have a user app server and, and much the same way
Speaker:that email is open source.
Speaker:So it's, it's an open standard.
Speaker:Anybody can set up their own mail server, master's, much the same.
Speaker:You can set up your own server or you can find someone who has equivalent social
Speaker:values and then join their server and, and assume that your contents will be suitably
Speaker:tailored by people who match your values.
Speaker:Hmm.
Speaker:So I've joined and I'm trying to work out what I've done, but
Speaker:I've, I'm at Trevor at oz.social.
Speaker:So as I understand it, oz.social is one of these servers.
Speaker:It talks to a whole bunch of other servers.
Speaker:So people can be sort of, it just gives you like a home address if you like, but
Speaker:it doesn't prevent you from interacting with other people on other servers.
Speaker:If you can just find them.
Speaker:You can add them to your feed to follow them.
Speaker:It just means that@oz.social, there are particular moderators who are
Speaker:responsible for that particular server, who have their own rules as to how
Speaker:hard or easy they are when it comes to abusive language or things like that.
Speaker:So each server has its own level of supervision anyway.
Speaker:For one reason or another I decided to go onto the Oz social aus.social.
Speaker:And I think people will end up there and it's got a similar feel to Twitter.
Speaker:The only thing is you've gotta try and find all the people that you use to
Speaker:follow on Twitter and find where they are on Masteron if they are there and
Speaker:sort of start following 'em again, which anyway, there's tools out there
Speaker:to do it and there's time and I, it would just be interesting to see if
Speaker:the sort of Twitterverse migrates over there cuz Twitter's been good in terms
Speaker:of getting content for this podcast and it's been really good for the video
Speaker:clips as well cause it's been really easy to download clips off of Twitter.
Speaker:But I dunno how easy it's gonna be.
Speaker:Off, off Master on, we will see.
Speaker:But one thing a note is I suppose it depends on how
Speaker:quickly Twitter does implode.
Speaker:And if it does implode the way the doom says it's going to, then
Speaker:if it does implode quite quickly, well Elon's just done his dough.
Speaker:And secondly, then Master Don could pick up the shattered remnants and go with it.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Yeah, it could do.
Speaker:So it's entirely possible.
Speaker:Who knows how it's gonna end up.
Speaker:So yeah, if you're in the chat room, Scott's with us no video, but we
Speaker:have his audio, so, he's with us.
Speaker:And one thing pointed in the top right end corner, one thing that
Speaker:was pointed out to me was Master don direct messages are not encrypted.
Speaker:And so although they're not shared with everyone, they are still not private.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Meaning if you send a direct message, you can be tracked down.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Any of the server operators can see it basically.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:That's kind of what I would've thought would be the case, so no surprise there.
Speaker:Scott, have you been keeping up with dictated Dan and the Victorian
Speaker:State election down there?
Speaker:I've been watching a little bit because I, I did slip Fiona Pat a hundred bucks.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:because she seemed to be standing up to the Christians and that
Speaker:type of thing, which I thought was very good and we needed to keep
Speaker:that sort of pressure on them.
Speaker:So I slipped her a hundred bucks.
Speaker:I haven't really been watching the whole thing except this, you
Speaker:know, the steps that took out took down a premier that came out.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:And you know, that was on cracking and that sort of stuff.
Speaker:I was reading about that.
Speaker:And it sounded like it was a media beat up that they were.
Speaker:You know, it sounded like it was a beat up by the not Fox News, who?
Speaker:We got the Rip Murdock papers.
Speaker:The Murdock Press, Harold Son, and also the Age.
Speaker:Both been at it.
Speaker:Really?
Speaker:The age has been two.
Speaker:So there's two stories.
Speaker:Stories disappointed the age, ages gone that way.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So one relates to a car accident that the family had where his wife was
Speaker:driving at a cyclist, T-boned the car.
Speaker:So the cyclist hit the car in the side and this is all, you know,
Speaker:eight years ago or something crazy like that, maybe even a decade ago.
Speaker:It's a long time ago.
Speaker:And they're, they're referring to the story where the, where the cyclist
Speaker:involved is kind of not happy, but no specifics as to why he's not happy.
Speaker:And there's just this.
Speaker:General Buzz about, Oh, this is what happened.
Speaker:But it's such old news and it's, there's no specific allegation, but
Speaker:it's a, they're trying to, to throw mud where they've got none and they're
Speaker:just sort of waving their arms around.
Speaker:It's a really pathetic, it's really very pathetic, and I think it says
Speaker:more about the liberal opposition than it does about Dan Andrews government.
Speaker:Because my understanding, and you know, Bronwyn, you can fill me in if
Speaker:I'm wrong, but my understanding is the liberal opposition is hopeless.
Speaker:They have got a absolute loser at the top who has been quite, well, not
Speaker:complicit, but he hasn't done anything about the Christian takeover, the
Speaker:party, and now you've got all these nutts that are running and that type
Speaker:of thing, and they're going to actually dominate their, their upper house.
Speaker:So the papers are completely silent about that issue.
Speaker:Exactly.
Speaker:They're putting front page stories about old news, and it's not even just
Speaker:the, the liberal opposition, it's just this sort of nine Fairfax and Murdoch
Speaker:rags who are trying to run a smear where they've got nothing to smear
Speaker:and they're just rehashing a story.
Speaker:The other one is in relation to some steps that he fell down and
Speaker:injured himself quite badly and was off work for quite a while.
Speaker:And it's admittedly a low set of steps, like there's, you know,
Speaker:1, 2, 3 of them sort of thing, barely half a meter off the ground.
Speaker:But they seem to be, without saying it, suggesting how could somebody
Speaker:have injured themselves so badly on such a small set of steps and there's
Speaker:gotta be something more to this.
Speaker:And it just totally ignores the fact that.
Speaker:You can just fall over on flat ground particularly as you're getting
Speaker:older and break all sorts of bones and have all sorts of injuries.
Speaker:And there's nothing unusual at all in somebody having massive back pain
Speaker:in particular or other injuries, broken bones from falling down
Speaker:a relatively small set of steps.
Speaker:But again, there's no concrete sort of allegation here.
Speaker:It's just this, Oh, look at those steps.
Speaker:They're the ones he fell off and, and kind of, continuating, he was drunk
Speaker:and, and trying to lay out a row of dots for the reader to connect and
Speaker:somehow come up with some conspiracy.
Speaker:It's the most pathetic thing that's happened and every journalist
Speaker:involved should hang their head in shame And Media Watch did a sort
Speaker:of a good expose on it as well.
Speaker:And it just shows how rotten the media is in that they are having to.
Speaker:Try to drum up some sort of issues out of things that are 10 years
Speaker:old that have been dealt with.
Speaker:So, Dan Andrews I think has dealt with it quite well.
Speaker:Here's a little clip from him.
Speaker:Oh gee, Scott, at the risk of having you bounce out if I play
Speaker:this clip and hopefully Scott doesn't disappear when I do this.
Speaker:Fingers crossed everybody.
Speaker:Thoughts and prayers, , there's not much that surprises me really.
Speaker:But look, can any of you tell me what the point of this story is?
Speaker:Oh, I genuinely dunno.
Speaker:I genuinely dunno what the point of this story is.
Speaker:Can any of you explain it to me?
Speaker:It seems to be the stairs.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Or maybe, Well, I don't know what you're gonna interview the stairs next.
Speaker:Like people can go as low as they want.
Speaker:I'm not coming there.
Speaker:Well, the bottom of the stairs.
Speaker:. Scott, you're still with us?
Speaker:Fantastic.
Speaker:I'm still with you.
Speaker:That was great.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Okay, The next question is, did the video actually play for the listeners?
Speaker:Yeah, that's the next question.
Speaker:Cuz I did spend quite some time doing test little test things and tell
Speaker:us in the chat room did the video actually play and not just the audio.
Speaker:That'd be nice to know cuz I did spend some time with people in Ukraine on
Speaker:that one, so that'd be good to know.
Speaker:So anyway look, I reckon this is a good reason why Queensland Labor, for
Speaker:example, should get rid of religious instruction lessons and replace it
Speaker:with media literacy lessons because they know that the mainstream press
Speaker:owned by the likes of Murdoch and nine Fairfax is going to be anti-labor.
Speaker:They, they know it and they've gotta educate the future generations as to
Speaker:how to view this stuff and, and read between the lines and figure it all out.
Speaker:And if, you know, if I was labor or in charge, I'd be, I'd be wanting
Speaker:kids to have an hour a week at least media literacy training.
Speaker:And I know they do that in Finland, I'm pretty sure.
Speaker:I think we did a story on Finland getting no audio.
Speaker:Finland, there we go.
Speaker:Just hate to put it in.
Speaker:So, yeah, so if you have any connection with the Queensland government, Mel out
Speaker:there put that forward as a suggestion.
Speaker:Get rid of religious instruction and put media literacy in because
Speaker:it's just incredible the lengths that these newspapers are going
Speaker:to, Fortunately, No government.
Speaker:Young people don't read them.
Speaker:No government wants their electorate, media literate.
Speaker:That wouldn't be good for them.
Speaker:Well, I think if you're a labor government given that the media is against you,
Speaker:more often than not, it would be in your interests to have them educated.
Speaker:You'd think so.
Speaker:But see, I had a I had a meeting up here with the with our local member up here.
Speaker:I was only in there for perhaps 20 minutes, thereabouts.
Speaker:And I talked to her and that type of stuff, and I said to her, the
Speaker:primary reason I was in there was to try and get them, get them to accept
Speaker:that religious instruction was wrong.
Speaker:Now, she didn't actually agree with me.
Speaker:She also didn't disagree with me, and she actually,
Speaker:One thing that really got her attention was when I said, If you want the nurse
Speaker:at Temple of Satan to stop its nonsense.
Speaker:All you've gotta do is back away from the, all you've gotta do is back away
Speaker:from I, and then they will pack up and go and you know, she actually
Speaker:really listened to that, really.
Speaker:But yeah.
Speaker:So, you know, your, you know, your court case and all that sort of stuff.
Speaker:Yes, it didn't work, but it appears to have got their attention.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Just an update on that.
Speaker:We still have not heard anything from the dpp, so nobody's tried to contact Robin
Speaker:and interview him or anything like that.
Speaker:So we're just gonna let it sit for a few more months and and maybe
Speaker:after Christmas, early new year, maybe the 12 month anniversary, we.
Speaker:Maybe try and get some definitive answer from them.
Speaker:So at the moment, fortunately, nothing is expected and hopefully it'll all go we'll
Speaker:know for sure now another six months will be able to say it's definitely gone away.
Speaker:So, so yeah, that's the latest on that one.
Speaker:No, you know, all quiet on the Western front as far as that's concerned.
Speaker:So, no news is good news.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:, So, Okay.
Speaker:Article in The Guardian.
Speaker:So Scott, still on Religious Matters, Federal Attorney General Mark Drefus
Speaker:has asked the Australian Law Reform Commission to review the country's
Speaker:religious exemptions for schools and how that should be dealt with
Speaker:in federal anti-discrimination law.
Speaker:So asking the law reformed commission to review it as if it hasn't
Speaker:been reviewed enough in the last.
Speaker:Four or five years.
Speaker:But well, at least he's got the whole, he appears to be doing the
Speaker:right thing by getting the law reform commission to look at it first.
Speaker:Mm.
Speaker:And then after that they can come back with suggestions and all that sort of
Speaker:shit for a religious discrimination bill.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Except according to this article what the Law Reform Commission will look at
Speaker:they'll be addressing labors three main principles for anti-discrimination law.
Speaker:So these are apparently labors three main principles that that any law not
Speaker:discriminate against a student on the basis of sexual orientation, gender
Speaker:identity, marital or relationship status, or pregnancy sounds.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Also that it not discriminate against a member of staff.
Speaker:For those same reasons.
Speaker:Sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital or
Speaker:relationship status or pregnancy.
Speaker:So basically there two of labor's, three main main principles.
Speaker:The third apparently labor principle is that schools can continue to
Speaker:build a community of faith by giving preference in good faith to persons of
Speaker:the same religion as the educational institution in the selection of staff.
Speaker:So provided they don't discriminate against staff or students on the
Speaker:basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, marital or relationship
Speaker:status or pregnancy, then it's okay.
Speaker:And this totally ignores, this is just a green light to say, guess what?
Speaker:Schools, it's okay if you wanna discriminate against somebody
Speaker:because they're an atheist.
Speaker:go right ahead.
Speaker:Or if they're a satanist discriminate against them, go right ahead.
Speaker:Or if you're a Christian school and the person is non-Christian, go right ahead.
Speaker:It's just appalling that this is a Labor party principle, that they'll
Speaker:protect people for gender and sex things, but they won't protect
Speaker:them if they're simply an atheist.
Speaker:Terrible by the Labor Party.
Speaker:Scott.
Speaker:Am I just ranting or have I got a point?
Speaker:No, I think you've got a point there, but you know, it's, it's like, you
Speaker:know, you get reminded things from Facebook and all that sort of stuff.
Speaker:I got reminded of something that I posted years ago when it was Dan
Speaker:Andrews was first being elected.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:. And I said, you know, the first 10 minutes or something like that, no, only
Speaker:10% of the vote is being counted, but the, the move to the labor opposition
Speaker:is 15 or 20% or whatever it was.
Speaker:And I said, you know, there's a very good message in that for the, for the Tories
Speaker:back away from the godfathers back away.
Speaker:And I honestly believe that's very good advice for both sides
Speaker:of government, both the opposition and the, and the government.
Speaker:Because I think that they've both gotta back away from the God bothers and
Speaker:then the God bothers can go off and try and set up their own bloody family
Speaker:first and get knocked on their head.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:. And that will be the end of them.
Speaker:Mm.
Speaker:You know, they'll go back to what they always should have been,
Speaker:which was just something that was off out there in the ether.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Anyway.
Speaker:Quite okay to discriminate against people because of their religion,
Speaker:provided it's, you know, Christians discriminating against non-Christians,
Speaker:which is essentially what happens.
Speaker:So, joining the chat room says, Where did I find that?
Speaker:And it was an article in The Guardian John, which will be in the show notes.
Speaker:So, an article titled Labor Take Step Towards New Religious Discrimination Laws
Speaker:With Review of Exemptions for Schools.
Speaker:Google it and you'll find it in The Guardian.
Speaker:Joe, you found an article about negative gearing, which is set to basically
Speaker:the cost to the budget of negative gearing is just going to get bigger
Speaker:and bigger as interest rates rise.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:, and there was an article in an ABC online addition that talked
Speaker:about this is going to reach 20 billion a year within a decade.
Speaker:The two things, the capital gains tax concessions that property investors
Speaker:get and also oh, and the other part of this was that most of these
Speaker:benefits go to the top end of town.
Speaker:So, 39% of negative gearing benefits go to people earning more
Speaker:than basically 130,000 a year.
Speaker:And Those people on less than 51 and a half thousand a year.
Speaker:So basically the bottom 50% of income earners they'll only be getting
Speaker:4% of that total cost or benefit, if you like, of negative gearing.
Speaker:So it's a lot of money and it's going to the upper ends of the wage spectrum.
Speaker:Did I just repeat everything you needed to say, Joe, or did you wanna add
Speaker:a further element of discuss to it?
Speaker:No, no.
Speaker:I just thought it was interesting that effectively negative
Speaker:gearing, what a surprise.
Speaker:It, it values the top end of town and, and the average person is
Speaker:gonna lose out because of it.
Speaker:And Scott, what would you have to say to those scumbags who negatively gear?
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:I've got a negatively geared property
Speaker:I bought a DHA property and that sort of stuff in the South Ripley.
Speaker:So yes, you can throw rocks at me if you want to.
Speaker:No, you, you deal, you work with, the lawyers are given, like, people would
Speaker:say, Love you, socialism or communism.
Speaker:Give, give all your stuff away.
Speaker:But that's not gonna be working in, I've got this, you know, I've got this
Speaker:place up here in Mackay that I own outright, and then I just had this
Speaker:extra money and all that sort of stuff.
Speaker:So I started looking around for investments and I did buy some
Speaker:shares and that sort of stuff.
Speaker:But then I also thought to myself, you know, I've gotta get a, a
Speaker:crushing mortgage, I think, which is what the better half said.
Speaker:So I got a crushing mortgage on this place and that sort
Speaker:of stuff down in South Ripley.
Speaker:And I understand exactly where you're coming from.
Speaker:Mm.
Speaker:Do I think that we should change the capital gains tax laws?
Speaker:Yes, I do.
Speaker:I do believe that they should go back to the way they were set up, which is
Speaker:you got a which is where you bought a property and that sort of stuff,
Speaker:and then you paid only, you paid only capital gains tax on the profit that
Speaker:you made after the what was it called, the inflation rate, that sort of stuff.
Speaker:I think they should go back to that because that was
Speaker:a very simple thing to do.
Speaker:You just calculated and moved on and not Harvard.
Speaker:No, exactly.
Speaker:You know, it's just, I, I, you know, however, having said that,
Speaker:I've bought under these rules and all that sort of stuff.
Speaker:No doubt.
Speaker:The government, if they ever decide to go back to that is gonna say,
Speaker:Those of you have bought under those rules can still sell under those
Speaker:rules and all that sort of stuff.
Speaker:So they'll grandfather it.
Speaker:Exactly.
Speaker:So I'm not going to be, I'm not gonna be bothered by it, but
Speaker:it's just one of those things.
Speaker:I just think to myself, if they want to make it fair and that
Speaker:sort of stuff, they should go back to the way it was calculated and
Speaker:then that would be a lot fairer.
Speaker:You know, it's one of those things I, I can understand where the government was
Speaker:coming from and all that sort of stuff.
Speaker:It was the Howard government that gave us the middle class welfare.
Speaker:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:. It was middle class welfare.
Speaker:There's no doubt about that.
Speaker:And it's just one of those things like, you know, you, you, you can see
Speaker:it all, you know that they talk about, I think it's 80% of rental properties
Speaker:and that sort of stuff are owned by mom and dad investors, which is fine.
Speaker:However, what they're discovering is that mom and dad as an investor,
Speaker:They're not real nice landlords, , and they apparently and, and they're
Speaker:just another competitor at the auction when it comes to purchasing.
Speaker:So, Exactly.
Speaker:You know, really it's a fundamental thing of do you think property
Speaker:should, you know, shelter?
Speaker:Should it be an investment vehicle?
Speaker:Should we be encouraging it as an investment vehicle?
Speaker:And I'd say no.
Speaker:Like we want, it's a very Australian way of viewing property.
Speaker:It is as an investment and it's a very popular barbecue
Speaker:sort of conversation point.
Speaker:But I think if you went to Germany or Austria or places like that, you would
Speaker:not get anything like the same number of people having investment properties
Speaker:in Germany or even primary in Germany.
Speaker:It's, it's very unrealistic.
Speaker:It's mostly people rent for their whole lives.
Speaker:Hmm.
Speaker:, you know, it's just one of those things, their rents don't go up
Speaker:dramatically like ours have though.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:It's, it's not seen as a great investment.
Speaker:It's category,
Speaker:but, you know, it doesn't make any sense.
Speaker:Scott, you know, let's say you buy a house for 500,000 and you sell it
Speaker:for a million and you had it for five years and inflation was running at 5%.
Speaker:So it should be the case that, Alright.
Speaker:The original 500,000 in today's money is now 580,000.
Speaker:Therefore, you've made a profit, if you like, of 420,000.
Speaker:Well at least pay tax on that full 420,000.
Speaker:But the way it currently works is you then have that 420.
Speaker:Yeah, so you're on tax on two $60,000 of it all and all that sort of stuff.
Speaker:Meanwhile, if you've been flipping hamburgers or pouring beers or
Speaker:handing out coffees and you've earned that 420,000, you pay tax
Speaker:on the full, on the full amount.
Speaker:So why should capital gains income just get halved?
Speaker:It?
Speaker:It's just an unfair arrangement.
Speaker:For starters.
Speaker:It, yeah, it is quite unfair.
Speaker:Mm.
Speaker:It's one of those things now.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:, so, you know.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I mean, in Jersey where I lived before I moved over here you
Speaker:got tax breaks on your primary residence, but not on any investment.
Speaker:Which made far more sense to me.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Because as a first time buyer I was struggling.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:And so getting the interest taken off my tax was great for me.
Speaker:Rather than giving it as a break for somebody to invest and earn the opposite.
Speaker:Yeah, the opposite.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:These things go on around the world.
Speaker:It's not hard to look at 'em and say, That's probably a better system.
Speaker:Why don't we just introduce that course?
Speaker:You need a set of balls to actually sell invested interests.
Speaker:Well, that's the whole point.
Speaker:You, you've got, you know, you do have a hell of a lot of people that are
Speaker:already invested in that sort of stuff.
Speaker:If you, you grandfather them and that sort of stuff and say, Now look,
Speaker:we're not gonna be touching you.
Speaker:They're still not gonna believe you because you were the party that introduced
Speaker:that tax and that sort of stuff.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:. And that is where the problem is.
Speaker:Anyway, it's, Yeah, I've got a theory on grandfathering Scott, which is, you
Speaker:gradually run down the grandfathering.
Speaker:Yeah, I agree.
Speaker:So you could say, you know what this sort of 50% discount that we
Speaker:give you, we're gonna, we're gonna phase that out over five years.
Speaker:So if you sell your property tomorrow, you can have the full
Speaker:50%, but next year you only get 40% next year, 30% next year, 20 10 0.
Speaker:And you can sort of phase these things out as well.
Speaker:So I don't have to be grandfathered forever.
Speaker:No, I agree.
Speaker:It's one of those things now, you know, I don't know if you were trying
Speaker:to make me feel guilty about my investment property, but No, I wasn't.
Speaker:I was just teasing.
Speaker:Yeah, I know you, I was just having fun.
Speaker:Yeah, I know.
Speaker:It's one of those things, it's but it, it actually proves the point,
Speaker:like you'd have to work with the rules that, that you are presented with.
Speaker:So there's Yeah, it's, there's nothing wrong.
Speaker:I go back to a high court ruling, which was many, many, many moons ago, and it
Speaker:was said that then the judge in the, in the high court said, he said, If a
Speaker:there is no moral, there is no moral compulsion to pay tax, only legal
Speaker:compulsion to pay tax if a text mm-hmm.
Speaker:if a man can structure his affairs in a way within the law to minimize the
Speaker:amount of income tax that he must pay, then he is quite entitled to do so.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:. So that is what's what, one of the reasons that I have bought this
Speaker:place and that sort of stuff, because I'm just acting within the law.
Speaker:Mm.
Speaker:Yeah, no criticism Scott.
Speaker:I was just you cuz I knew your circumstances and Yeah.
Speaker:, which is fine.
Speaker:You know, it's if, if the laws change and that sort of stuff, I will, I
Speaker:will, I will comply with the law.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Last week, that's quite right.
Speaker:Last week we had a brief guess at average wage and median wage.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:and I did take the time, dear listener, to have a quick look.
Speaker:And the average wage, well this is for 2019.
Speaker:2020 was 63,882, but the median wage was 48,381.
Speaker:So I think when we talk about wages, The, the key figure is the
Speaker:median wage lining everybody up from the poorest to the riches and
Speaker:stopping halfway along the line.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:What's that person earning?
Speaker:And that is the 48,381.
Speaker:Is that the median or is that the modal?
Speaker:That's the median.
Speaker:Modal is where you have it's the bunch of people on 50,000.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Not so many on 20, not so many on 80.
Speaker:The modal is 50, but yeah, that's not, Yeah.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Gonna work in this situation.
Speaker:So, because averages can be misleading.
Speaker:And in this article from the abc, just to sort of make the point why is average
Speaker:taxable income higher than the medium?
Speaker:And it's because some exceptionally well paid people dragged the average up.
Speaker:So imagine you had 10 people in a room, nine of them earned $10,000 a year.
Speaker:And one of them earns 500,000 a year.
Speaker:The average would be 59,000, but the medium would be 10,000, which
Speaker:would be much more representative of the true situation.
Speaker:So that's that's the wages in Australia from two years ago.
Speaker:And interestingly in the same article, I think it was the same article.
Speaker:What about a link to it talked about superannuation, just what
Speaker:most people have with super.
Speaker:And if you are in the well, who's the average listener here in the chat room?
Speaker:How old are you out there?
Speaker:Let's go for fifties . I was gonna say forties and fifties.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:45 year old male, average super is about 120,000 female.
Speaker:About 80,000.
Speaker:Oh no.
Speaker:Female is about Yeah, about 80,000 55 to 59 age group, average super balance.
Speaker:Male would be about 160.
Speaker:Email, about 115, 110.
Speaker:So there's quite a disparity between male and female in these figures.
Speaker:Actually, I think I've got this Facebook audience.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Are 67% male, 32.8% female with most of our listeners between 25 and 54.
Speaker:Oh, there we go.
Speaker:The 45 to 54 is slightly higher than 35 to 44, which is slightly
Speaker:higher than the 25 to 34.
Speaker:Well, if you're in the 35 to 39 age bracket, then males typically have about
Speaker:65,000 females, about 50, and it tends to actually I wonder if I can bring this up.
Speaker:I think I can.
Speaker:I think I've got this presentation on here, so, I won't bother at this point.
Speaker:It, it's funny enough, men have a lot more super than women until you
Speaker:actually get to the retirement age of 65 and then the women catch up.
Speaker:And I think that's because probably lots of people are able to structure
Speaker:their affairs and downsize the family home and put money into the
Speaker:female name or something like that.
Speaker:So, 65 to 69 year age group.
Speaker:Typical male, 180 female, 175.
Speaker:There you go.
Speaker:So now you know the median wage and the typical superannuation.
Speaker:Figure out how you compare to the average Joe or the average Scott.
Speaker:But don't compare yourself to the average Allen Joyce.
Speaker:CEO of Qantas, that guy's done a shocking job.
Speaker:He's completely trashed the good name of Qantas.
Speaker:I'm sure Shay would disagree with you though.
Speaker:I think Shay would be very much in agreement.
Speaker:And so his take, aim pay last year was 2.27 million up
Speaker:from 1.98 the previous year.
Speaker:So just his take home pay 2.27.
Speaker:But shareholders voted overwhelmingly to give him a performance
Speaker:bonus worth about $4 million.
Speaker:And we just had somebody crazy in the chat room, some some crazy bot.
Speaker:So we'll get rid of that.
Speaker:So yeah, he's got a bonus of 4 million.
Speaker:And they also voted to give him long term rights amounting to another 5
Speaker:million deferred for three years.
Speaker:So they've just rewarded this guy with buckets of money.
Speaker:And when anybody looks at the performance of Qantas, they go they go, Well,
Speaker:how can anybody be given special bonuses for what's been happening?
Speaker:But that's the way the world works.
Speaker:Scott, any explanation?
Speaker:You're there, Scott.
Speaker:Scott's disappeared.
Speaker:He's disappeared.
Speaker:Has he?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Looks like it, right?
Speaker:See if Scott comes back.
Speaker:We've talked in the past about rules-based international order, by the way.
Speaker:It's really, Oh, Scott is back infuriating when you.
Speaker:No, I don't have any explanation for it.
Speaker:Oh shit.
Speaker:Hello?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:You with it?
Speaker:Can hear.
Speaker:Fuck no.
Speaker:Scott, we can hear you now.
Speaker:Is wrong with that?
Speaker:Oh, maybe he's listening to that.
Speaker:I, We can hear Scott.
Speaker:Go ahead.
Speaker:Unless he's playing catch up.
Speaker:Oh Scott, what do you, you might be listening to the actual broadcast
Speaker:rather than listening to us.
Speaker:Luckily I've got Joe, the tech guy here, , as well as dealing with internet.
Speaker:He's dropped off completely now as well as dealing with internet trials.
Speaker:He's now gonna try and reconnect Scott as well.
Speaker:So if you're in the chat room when we sort of wipe the the
Speaker:chats we'll bring them back up.
Speaker:So can you put the chats back up, Joe?
Speaker:I think that would be okay now.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Then if you start chatting again, takes about 30 seconds to time out.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:It'll start appearing and And that person who was selling sex services
Speaker:or whatever they were doing, Hello.
Speaker:Hopefully disappeared.
Speaker:Scott's back.
Speaker:Can you hear me, Scott?
Speaker:No, he was talking but he can't hear me.
Speaker:I'll keep Rabbit on.
Speaker:Oh, you can hear me Scott?
Speaker:Yeah, I can hear you.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Scott, tell us how you feel about Alan Joyce and his massive bangas.
Speaker:Well, you know, I just think it's bloody ridiculous that they actually
Speaker:voted for that because, you know, I'm a long-term cus quarters
Speaker:customer and that sort of stuff.
Speaker:I fly back to Brisbane once a month on them.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:and, you know, I haven't experienced the extreme stuff.
Speaker:UPS and that sort of stuff that ended up getting, that they ended up
Speaker:giving us all 50 bucks for mm-hmm.
Speaker:, but you know, it's not a real pleasant experience when you heard it on there
Speaker:and that sort of thing with them.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:, they're not the premier airline.
Speaker:They weren't once were.
Speaker:And it's really quite infuriating when you get what's the word I'm
Speaker:looking for, when you just get stuffed up and that sort of stuff.
Speaker:Like, you know, there's all sorts of stories about bags being sent overseas,
Speaker:which should have just made it down to Brisbane and all that sort of thing.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:and, you know, that is a real stuff up.
Speaker:And what you've actually found is it's because of the staff that were sacked
Speaker:illegally in the pandemic and they were replaced with contractors because they
Speaker:thought that they would save themselves.
Speaker:Some do, and it's turned out to be an actual cost for them.
Speaker:Yes, of course.
Speaker:Alan Joyce was also blaming customers because they were not match fit.
Speaker:Having been in a covid lockdown and not traveling, we lost our, our
Speaker:match fitness and our capacity to.
Speaker:Drag our own, our own bags and put them on a carousel properly.
Speaker:So, yeah.
Speaker:Anyway, which is, that's just, it's just typical that people don't, are
Speaker:not held accountable for bad decisions.
Speaker:And, you know, often it's the case, bad decisions are made, executive walks away
Speaker:with the bonuses opposed to, and it's only afterwards that people look at it and go,
Speaker:Oh look, actually that guy stuffed it up, Which we didn't give him those bonuses,
Speaker:but in this case we can actually look at it and go, he's trashed the brand.
Speaker:And and they're still awarding him with these bonuses.
Speaker:The system is, is not, Yeah, but it also, you gotta wonder what the
Speaker:contract says cuz as long as he meets certain targets, he gets his bonus.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:And, and his actions will be aimed at meeting those targets.
Speaker:So if the targets are barley balanced, He'll have concentrated on that to
Speaker:the detriment of everything else.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:And the board, no doubt would've taken advice from remuneration experts onto
Speaker:as to how to structure CEO remuneration.
Speaker:And gee, you know, who are you gonna hire as your remuneration expert?
Speaker:Somebody likely to suggest large pay packets, or somebody likely to suggest
Speaker:small pay packets, given that you sitting on the board, are also relying
Speaker:on the same remuneration experts as an inbuilt incentive for these people
Speaker:to employ experts who are going to suggest higher rates than smaller rates.
Speaker:So I, I was listening to a discussion about expert witnesses in courts.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:. And they were saying they're supposed to tell the truth and they're supposed to
Speaker:be, independent of whoever hires them.
Speaker:But if you are going out and you're looking at a hundred expert
Speaker:witnesses, you're gonna hire the one that most believes your story.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:And you're not gonna hire the one that least believes your story, are you?
Speaker:Correct.
Speaker:And there are certain expert witnesses saying AI cases or whatever, who
Speaker:are known to be good plaintiff.
Speaker:So good for defendants, even if they were absolutely, you
Speaker:know, completely scrupulous.
Speaker:They, they absolutely only said what they believed, truly believed.
Speaker:You would still hire the expert witness that aligned most with your case.
Speaker:Of course.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So everybody knows that it's not necessarily these experts on
Speaker:nefarious, it's just when you're hunting around, you find the one that
Speaker:will give you the outcome you want.
Speaker:Indeed.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:So yeah, that was Alan Joyce, right?
Speaker:Scott?
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:The USA is very keen that on international rules based order and
Speaker:a thing came through about there was a vote in the un about whether to
Speaker:continue with the block aid of Cuba.
Speaker:So there's currently very severe sanctions on trading with Cuba.
Speaker:So for example, any ship that docks in Cuba, I think is not allowed to then
Speaker:enter the United States for at least six months or something like that.
Speaker:So, it's really expensive to ship things to Cuba because.
Speaker:Normally it would pick stuff up from the United States and bring it back.
Speaker:So, yeah, a whole bunch of other sort of sanctions that are imposed
Speaker:on Cuba and United Nations.
Speaker:And the vote was 185 to two against the blockade.
Speaker:And the there were two abstentions that's the word, ab abstentions.
Speaker:So those who voted in favor of continuing the blockade or the USA and Israel.
Speaker:The two that abstained were let me just see here if I can find them, was
Speaker:Ukraine and Brazil under the Bolsonaro government, which is recently just left.
Speaker:So, The rest of the world voted against the sanctions.
Speaker:It's not a good look.
Speaker:I think Scott Israel's coming under increasing criticism in the world.
Speaker:I think people are referring it to it as an apartheid state and things
Speaker:like this are not good, rightly so, because, you know, Israel has behaved
Speaker:very much like an a apartheid state.
Speaker:You know, it is bloody criminal the way they treat the Palestinians.
Speaker:Now, that doesn't, you know, please don't take me for being antisemitic
Speaker:here or anything like that.
Speaker:You can be critical of the Jewish state and not be critical of Jews.
Speaker:I do not for one minute believe that if the PLO were as well armed
Speaker:as the idf, that they would not stop pushing until they'd push
Speaker:the Jews into the Mediterranean.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:, you know, it's one of those things.
Speaker:But Israel has got to accept that they've got the upper hand
Speaker:militarily and that type of thing.
Speaker:And with comes with that a level of responsibility.
Speaker:They have to be prepared to shoulder their arms a little more and take
Speaker:their fingers off the trigger.
Speaker:And they have to show real restraint when they're dealing with the Palestinian
Speaker:people because the Palestinian people have got every right to be very pissed
Speaker:off for the way they've been treated.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:, Israel's definitely turning into a bit of a pariah state, I think.
Speaker:Absolutely.
Speaker:Who were sympathetic towards it maybe 20 years ago, increasingly less so.
Speaker:So these sorts of things like this vote against poor Cuba the US and Israel.
Speaker:I know it's really quite ridiculous that, you know, the, such a threat to the world.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:The Yanks have to accept that Cuba's.
Speaker:Big patriarchal friend is dead, the Soviet Union is gone.
Speaker:So Cuba is no longer any sort of threat to the United States.
Speaker:So if they wanna call themselves a Marxist economy, let them call themselves Marxist,
Speaker:it's no problem because they can't do anything to the US or anything like that.
Speaker:I just think the Yanks just look very childish when they
Speaker:continue this blockade of Cuba.
Speaker:Indeed.
Speaker:So speaking of sort of sanctions interesting thing has occurred.
Speaker:So there's a group of seven rich nations plus Australia.
Speaker:Well I guess that's the G seven . So the G seven plus Australia they've agreed to
Speaker:set a fixed price when they finalize a price cap on Russian oil later this month.
Speaker:This is scheduled to take effect on the 5th of December where these
Speaker:countries, G seven plus Australia, have decided that there's gonna
Speaker:be a price cap on Russian oil.
Speaker:And the idea is to to ensure that the EU and the US sanctions aimed
Speaker:at limiting Moscow's ability to fund its invasion of Ukraine, to
Speaker:not throttle the global oil market.
Speaker:So the idea is, well, we need the oil, but we don't want
Speaker:Putin to get rich from the oil.
Speaker:So we are just gonna impose a, a price cap and . And that's gonna
Speaker:start on 5th of December for crude and 5th of February on oil products.
Speaker:Guess what Russia said?
Speaker:Russia said, Well, we just won't supply.
Speaker:If you are gonna set a price cap, you just can't unilaterally tell us.
Speaker:That there's a price cap on our oil we'll set the price that we wanna sell it at.
Speaker:Thank you very much.
Speaker:And if you're not gonna pay it, then we are not gonna supply it.
Speaker:I mean, it's quite extraordinary for, for Australia and the G seven countries
Speaker:to say, Well, we're just gonna tell Russia what it can charge for oil.
Speaker:I mean, we still want their oil and we're gonna challenge, but we can tell 'em what
Speaker:they can charge for it, for goodness sake.
Speaker:Yeah, that is a little bit ridiculous.
Speaker:I mean, the world's gotta recognize, and the US has gotta recognize that
Speaker:Russia, India, China are too big and what worked against Venezuela and
Speaker:Cuba will not work with these guys.
Speaker:So, John says the US has still got sanctions on Venezuela, but are
Speaker:now talking about buying their oil.
Speaker:That's right.
Speaker:They're suddenly cozying up to Venezuela and wanting to be friendly again.
Speaker:It's pathetic.
Speaker:So,
Speaker:Found this article called Global Finance Versus Global Energy,
Speaker:Who Will Come out on Top.
Speaker:And this was by Dr.
Speaker:Karen Nessi, who's an energy analyst, author of 14 books on
Speaker:energy related and other topics.
Speaker:She was Austria's foreign Minister for two years.
Speaker:She served 10 years in the Foreign Service and she's fluent in classical
Speaker:Arabic amongst other languages.
Speaker:Currently living in Lebanon.
Speaker:Sounds like a very interesting lady.
Speaker:And so she says there's more to the current struggle between the oil
Speaker:consuming west and the oil producing nations then meets the eye and it runs
Speaker:far deeper than the war in the Ukraine.
Speaker:So she says, in this war between global finance and global
Speaker:energy, one fact remains clear.
Speaker:You can print money, but you can't print oil.
Speaker:So, the European Union agreed to impose a Russian oil price cap, and
Speaker:this is back in the 6th of October.
Speaker:23 oil ministers from the OPEC Plus Group spoke out immediately in favor of
Speaker:a sharp cut in their production quota.
Speaker:So there's OPEC and there's 10 non OPEC energy producers in the sort
Speaker:of collectively now called OPEC Plus, and they're now coordinating
Speaker:their production of oil, and they've been doing it since 2016.
Speaker:And originally people thought, Well, good luck.
Speaker:You guys won't be able to organize yourselves, and you're not
Speaker:gonna be able to pressure the world like you think you can.
Speaker:But today former rivals such as Saudi Arabia and Russia are managing to converge
Speaker:their interests into powerful cards.
Speaker:So, It used to be normal practice for reyad to take into account and
Speaker:execute Washington's interests.
Speaker:But a simple phone call was enough, but that's changed.
Speaker:And talks about the proxy war in Ukraine and she said that you've got the US and
Speaker:European allies who basically represent the finance sector and they're engaged in
Speaker:a war against the world's energy sector.
Speaker:And while it's easy to print paper currency, and the US was doing a lot
Speaker:of it, as well as other countries with quantitative easing oil cannot be printed.
Speaker:It's a fundamental problem for the west and it's gonna win out at the
Speaker:end of the day, is what she is saying.
Speaker:So, she wrote a book in 2005 called The Energy Poker and and she dealt with the
Speaker:issue of currency and whether oil will be traded in US dollars in the long term.
Speaker:And she says, At the time, my interlocutors from the Arab OPEC
Speaker:countries unanimously said that the US dollar would not be changed.
Speaker:Yet 17 years later, that view has devolved starkly.
Speaker:So, dear listener, this is the key.
Speaker:When the world collapses financially, one of the reasons
Speaker:it's all gonna relate to currency.
Speaker:And essentially, after the gold standard was abandoned, the US basically said
Speaker:to Saudi Arabia, Okay, sell your oil, but you have to trade in US dollars.
Speaker:And provided you do that, we will support you.
Speaker:But you have to buy.
Speaker:People have to buy and sell oil in US dollars.
Speaker:And for the us, that was a big advantage because basically it then meant that.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:A US dollar was no longer equivalent to certain, you know, number of ounces
Speaker:of gold, but it was equivalent to certain number of barrels of oil.
Speaker:And so that agreement with Saudi cemented the US dollar as the
Speaker:wills de facto reserve currency.
Speaker:If you have a US dollar, you can get a suitable amount of oil.
Speaker:It gave the US dollar value, but now because of what's happening and is
Speaker:accelerated by the Ukraine War, these countries of Russia, India, Iran,
Speaker:China, are now dealing in oil and deciding not to use the US dollar.
Speaker:And that's a huge change and it's a massive, it's a massively important
Speaker:change in the world affairs.
Speaker:And think I'm gonna talk about it next week a little bit.
Speaker:So, So just finishing off this article here, Washington no longer
Speaker:maintains its ability to exert absolute leverage on opec, which is now
Speaker:repositioning itself into the OPEC Plus.
Speaker:She's basically predicting the oil suppliers will win out.
Speaker:And just in relation to China.
Speaker:So until the early 1990s, China satisfied its domestic oil consumption with
Speaker:domestic oil consumption, about three to 4 million barrels per day, but 15
Speaker:years in a rapidly growing economy later.
Speaker:And China is now the world's number one oil importer.
Speaker:And guess what?
Speaker:When it imports oil from these guys, it doesn't wanna be paying in US dollars.
Speaker:And they're accepting Chinese money now.
Speaker:So, so, Saying here?
Speaker:Yeah, I think that's the main point of the article.
Speaker:So she thinks it's a battle between oil producers and finance money printers
Speaker:and the oil producers are gonna win out.
Speaker:And I've been reading lots of stuff over the last 12 months about this whole
Speaker:thing with the currency and I think when it all turns to shit for America, it's
Speaker:the US dollar and it's collapses, the reserve currency that's going to be the
Speaker:thing that really tips 'em over the edge.
Speaker:There's a prediction.
Speaker:Might take a year, it might take 10, might take 20, but we'll see.
Speaker:So you think they getting it up as another civil war?
Speaker:Civil war in America?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Oh, well then that'll precipitate all sorts of issues in the country when
Speaker:suddenly overnight the economy collapses.
Speaker:So, yes.
Speaker:Civil war, I mean, Californians and somebody in the south, I
Speaker:mean, they are so different.
Speaker:They may as well be different countries, so, Exactly.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:It will get pretty, pretty ugly and well, you, you know, they, they're gonna
Speaker:have to be very careful because a lot of the nukes are based in the southern
Speaker:states and all that sort of stuff, so you don't want the nukes falling into
Speaker:the hands of the Republic of Gilead, which is what it will end up being.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:You don't want the nukes in the, in a country like that, you know, Now it's,
Speaker:they're going to have to very quietly move the nus out of those north of the
Speaker:Mason Dixie line, so that once the country splits in two, the nukes aren't going
Speaker:to be in south of the Mason Dixie line.
Speaker:I hadn't thought of the nuclear issue when it came to the American Civil War.
Speaker:Scott, it's another frightening element to it.
Speaker:It is very frightening because you've got these lunatic who, wouldn't
Speaker:actually mind nuking a couple of places.
Speaker:Well, and they would justify, They'd justify themselves and all
Speaker:that sort of stuff by saying, Oh, we were just sending them to God.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:You know?
Speaker:Well, they're godless hens in California.
Speaker:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker:So they've got acum.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:John says, I don't think it's civil war.
Speaker:Maybe some states succeeding from the.
Speaker:Is that the same as Civil War?
Speaker:Well, what happens, John, is some states want to succeed and
Speaker:the other guys say, Not so fast.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:We're not gonna let you.
Speaker:I mean, that's what happened in the first civil war.
Speaker:So they said, Oh, we'd like to go.
Speaker:Thanks.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Not so fast.
Speaker:I mean, it's just one of those things like, I remember my brother
Speaker:years and years ago who was talking about the Civil War and he said, you
Speaker:know, a lot of it wasn't, he said it wasn't down to just slavery, it was
Speaker:down to over the right to secede.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Which is why it all blew up.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:indeed.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Anyway, just generally on Europe then, I mean, they're in trouble
Speaker:because without cheap Russian gas, they just can't compete.
Speaker:So.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And that's really very annoying actually, that Germany is continuing down the road
Speaker:of closing their nuclear power plants.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:. Now, one would've thought that considering you've got a shutdown of.
Speaker:Cheap Russian gas coming into the country, that you've got a very good reason to keep
Speaker:your nuclear power plants turning over.
Speaker:Mm.
Speaker:My view of all this, Scott, is that in Australia, we don't need nuclear power.
Speaker:No, we, we don't need, We don't see that Europe does.
Speaker:Exactly.
Speaker:It's just one of those things like Europe, Europe's further down the
Speaker:renewable road than we are, but they've got a long established nuclear industry,
Speaker:which has been completely blemish free.
Speaker:I mean, I bet you can name three nuclear power plants, or maybe the latest two
Speaker:in Ukraine, but you can name she Nobel.
Speaker:Fukushima in three Mile Island because they're the only three that
Speaker:have had disas, have had problems, but you can't name any of the
Speaker:nuclear plants in France Capital.
Speaker:Sorry, Ken Capital I to live opposite.
Speaker:Right, fair enough.
Speaker:But you know, I bet you can't name any of them.
Speaker:They're in Sweden or anywhere or anywhere like that.
Speaker:And then Hinkley Point in England.
Speaker:Well, fair enough.
Speaker:And Sellafield, Sellafield had a nuclear accident.
Speaker:Oh, did it?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Hmm.
Speaker:Anyway, it's, I get the point that you're making Scott.
Speaker:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker:None of, most of us can't name them because they're genuinely
Speaker:safe, but they're further down there down the road than we are.
Speaker:I think it is absolutely ridiculous that Dutton is still talking
Speaker:up nuclear power for Australia.
Speaker:So nuclear that was built in the sixties and seventies is a sunk cost.
Speaker:Exactly.
Speaker:And the cost of keeping it running is very, very different
Speaker:to the cost of building from you.
Speaker:Exactly.
Speaker:And if you were gonna start up right, If you're gonna start up
Speaker:now, you've got a huge amount of money that you've gotta spend on it.
Speaker:It, it just makes no sense.
Speaker:Like, you know, it's, you know, Paul, bless his heart, he had a, he had a very
Speaker:much a nuclear, he loved nuclear power.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:, but you know, he would not ever get it through his head.
Speaker:That renewables have come down in price so much that they now make
Speaker:perfect sense that we should go with renewables rather than nuclear power.
Speaker:Well, especially with pumped hydro.
Speaker:Exactly.
Speaker:Paul would argue that there is not enough storage to make renewables
Speaker:reliable enough is what he would say.
Speaker:Yeah, I know, but we've already got that, You know, they've got this
Speaker:thing that's going up west of Mackay and that sort of stuff up here that's
Speaker:gonna generate more than two thirds of the electricity for Queensland.
Speaker:Really?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Solar farm.
Speaker:No, this is the Oh, this is the dam.
Speaker:Yeah, the dam, Yeah.
Speaker:The pumped hydra.
Speaker:So the, the idea is that you have a surplus of solar during the day
Speaker:and that will pump between solar.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:You pump the water up the hill and then overnight and in cloudy conditions.
Speaker:And if you solar plants and your wind plants are diverse enough, so covering
Speaker:a large enough area of country, the weather is different in different places.
Speaker:And so you've got a surplus of generating capacity and you store the surplus that
Speaker:you do have to tide you over in the periods where you're not generating.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:and they've done the sums looking at the weather patterns
Speaker:and it's all very feasible, so.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:. Yeah.
Speaker:Anyway, that that's Europe.
Speaker:They are in trouble.
Speaker:They're in real trouble over there.
Speaker:They're in real trouble because, you know, you've got this, you've got the current
Speaker:situation that the French government and that sort of stuff are all wearing
Speaker:turtlenecks underneath the jackets.
Speaker:Mm.
Speaker:Just to say, Look, you can be warm if you wear this.
Speaker:Mm.
Speaker:You know, they're just trying to get everyone ready for a cold winter.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:. Yeah, we once again, the lucky country now,
Speaker:Oh, very much so quick advertisement break.
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Speaker:All right, computer chips.
Speaker:This kind of ties in with the sanctions sort of theme that we've got going
Speaker:in the background of this podcast.
Speaker:So the US and the Netherlands are expected to hold a new round of talks
Speaker:this month on restricting China's access to advanced chip technologies.
Speaker:So Washington is trying to ramp up pressure on the Netherlands
Speaker:to block this company called A S M L from supplying China.
Speaker:With the sort of equipment that it wants to make top end chips.
Speaker:So, they already don't give China the very, very best stuff they've got, but
Speaker:America is pressuring them to, to also stop supplying the next level down stuff.
Speaker:So pressure from America on the Netherlands to stop their
Speaker:company from selling chip manufacturing equipment to China.
Speaker:Scott, here's a prediction.
Speaker:China will figure it out for themselves and they will ramp up their capacity
Speaker:to make chips and will eventually ruin Taiwanese chip making businesses
Speaker:to the point where the Taiwanese will then say, Well, you've totally
Speaker:screwed us with our major industry.
Speaker:If we join you, we'll let be.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:And can we start running our business again?
Speaker:Like, if I was China and I look at Taiwan, Taiwan makes 65% of
Speaker:the world's semiconductors and almost 90% of the advanced chips.
Speaker:And why would you invade if you could just simply crush their economy by
Speaker:making chips and undercutting them?
Speaker:How's that sound as a, as a theory, Scott?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:I can understand where you're coming from, but I, I don't think you and I are ever
Speaker:gonna agree on China because I honestly believe that China has got to accept
Speaker:that they won that civil war and that the former island of Formosa has evolved
Speaker:and grown into a, a sovereign nation called Taiwan or the Republic of China.
Speaker:Now the People's Republic of China, that is the mainland.
Speaker:That is a very different country to the Republic of China, which is Taiwan.
Speaker:And I honestly believe that China's got to accept the fact that they have won that
Speaker:civil war and that the Republic of China is an independent, sovereign ca country.
Speaker:Mm.
Speaker:And that the people's Republic of China is a very different entity now he has
Speaker:made a hell of a lot of the hundred years of humiliation, or 200 years of
Speaker:humiliation, whatever it was, and I can understand where he is coming from.
Speaker:But Taiwan is not in the same category as the rest of the
Speaker:humiliation that they have suffered.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:, because Taiwan has become independent ever since 1948.
Speaker:49 whenever the revolution was.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:. So I can understand the humiliation between the British and the French
Speaker:and the Americans and all that sort of stuff, but they've got to accept
Speaker:that Taiwan has evolved and is now an independent sovereign nation.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:now, honestly believe that where they should start with all that is that they
Speaker:can sit down and talk to them because they speak the same language and they
Speaker:should actually say to them that, you know, we are prepared to accept you as
Speaker:an independent sovereign nation provided that you give up your requirement,
Speaker:your request for the South China Sea.
Speaker:Because both the Republic of China and the People's Republic
Speaker:of China both argue over that.
Speaker:They both, they, they both lay claim to that.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:So if Taiwan said to the prc, Yeah.
Speaker:The South China Sea is yours provided you give us that.
Speaker:You recognize us as an independent sovereign nation,
Speaker:that would be a step forward.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:China's never gonna do that.
Speaker:I know.
Speaker:They're never gonna do that.
Speaker:They're never gonna do that because G is got this fixation on reunifying Taiwan.
Speaker:It's not like, it's not just like, okay, but you know, you
Speaker:could, you gotta look at it.
Speaker:This is the stuff, the history of it is being written and all that type of thing.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:, you know, the Qang ran across the, for the Taiwan straits to Formosa
Speaker:and Formosa was still part of the, you know, that was back when they had
Speaker:the QM Tang and that sort of stuff.
Speaker:They were still there and they set up their own parliament
Speaker:and all that sort of stuff.
Speaker:Arguably, arguably they invaded the existing population
Speaker:and, and overrun them and.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Fair enough.
Speaker:Existing natives of fora weren't real happy either, were they?
Speaker:Probably not.
Speaker:I don't know that, but it's one of those things, the whole point is, I
Speaker:think, actually, I think there was a heavy Japanese culture by that
Speaker:stage in for, because they'd been occupied Japan, long Japan occupied
Speaker:Formosa before the second World War.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And that when the, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker:When the, when the losing Chinese army, you know, Decamped there, they
Speaker:were quite critical and scathing of the local population who they
Speaker:saw as sort of very Japanese.
Speaker:So anyway, we digress.
Speaker:I just like the theory though, Scott, that if I was, gee, I would just work
Speaker:on economically crushing their economy to the point where they would say,
Speaker:Can we please win your economy now?
Speaker:Because we crushed the Japanese and the Japanese have always hated
Speaker:the Chinese, but, but in terms of cost, it would be the way to do it.
Speaker:From China's point of view, they're gonna have to become much more
Speaker:self-sufficient with chip making.
Speaker:They're gonna have to figure it out and produce their own chips because
Speaker:America's just going to keep interfering.
Speaker:So, yeah.
Speaker:But you to, to accept that.
Speaker:To accept that you'd have to, No, China will never do that.
Speaker:Never do what?
Speaker:It's Scott, never do what you there.
Speaker:Have we lost him again?
Speaker:Joe?
Speaker:Looking away, just as I'm getting on top on this argument, he pulls
Speaker:the old technical difficulty trick.
Speaker:Just as I'm really starting to screw down there.
Speaker:Hello.
Speaker:Suddenly.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:And back.
Speaker:Scott, what do you mean?
Speaker:China will never do that if China.
Speaker:China, Okay.
Speaker:I didn't hear you then.
Speaker:What'd you say?
Speaker:My argument was that China could figure out how to make these chips and
Speaker:semiconductors, and if it put mine to it could produce them, subsidize them, and
Speaker:basically cripple the Taiwanese economy.
Speaker:Why wouldn't they do that?
Speaker:It'd be much cheaper than trying to invade militarily as a tactic.
Speaker:It's sort of, sounds pretty good, I reckon.
Speaker:No.
Speaker:Have you disappeared?
Speaker:I move on . Okay.
Speaker:Scott's disappeared.
Speaker:Yell out, Scott, if you can reappear.
Speaker:I'm gonna take that as full agreement with my argument.
Speaker:Alright.
Speaker:Robin was saying that the lunar eclipse is looking spectacular.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:There is a, a lunar eclipse stuck outside if you have a chance.
Speaker:Are you back, Scott?
Speaker:I heard him there in the background.
Speaker:Yeah, he was there for a second.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Alright.
Speaker:Put another coin in the meter.
Speaker:Scott.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:, it's not much of an advertisement for regional Queensland.
Speaker:He's got, he's gotta use some of that rent money he's collecting from those tenants.
Speaker:Some, some proper internet fiber of the premises.
Speaker:Yeah, just box of all brand.
Speaker:Hmm.
Speaker:If you are predicting the end of the US empire, here are some things that
Speaker:might suggest that that is increasingly likely in the near not so distant future.
Speaker:Just some signs and it would be I didn't hear what you just said.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:You back, Scott.
Speaker:You definitely there.
Speaker:Scott.
Speaker:Scott, I'm not gonna repeat myself unless you and he's gone.
Speaker:No, there you go.
Speaker:If you're looking for Signs in America has, is in trouble.
Speaker:Here they are.
Speaker:Number one, Saudi Arabia rejected Biden's demand to increase oil production.
Speaker:Instead they're working with Russia to cut production.
Speaker:And and in fact Saudi Arabia invited Xing P for a visit.
Speaker:Number two.
Speaker:Yeah, maybe they need to get Bangal bush over there to renegotiate.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Number two, Lula one in Brazil.
Speaker:He's talking up a new currency to replace the US dollar.
Speaker:So actually I've got a clip on have I got a clip on Lula?
Speaker:No, I don't have a clip on.
Speaker:I've got it in writing somewhere.
Speaker:I'll come to that one.
Speaker:Actually, I'll find it right here.
Speaker:Lula said.
Speaker:So, he's insisted that when his workers' party lost power in 2016, he said that
Speaker:the bricks, so that's Brazil, Russia, India, China the major shortcoming
Speaker:was it's failure to in South Africa.
Speaker:Thank you.
Speaker:The major shortcoming was its failure to launch a new currency to rival the dollar.
Speaker:And in an interview from prison, Lula recalled a quote.
Speaker:When I discussed a new currency, Obama called me telling me, Are you trying
Speaker:to create a new currency, a new Euro?
Speaker:And I said, No.
Speaker:I'm just trying to get rid of the US dollar, so that tells you how
Speaker:Lula feels about the US dollar.
Speaker:So he's the new Brazilian president.
Speaker:Other things that have happened that don't bode well for America is that
Speaker:Argentina, Saudi Arabia and Iran are exploring membership of bricks.
Speaker:And the China led Shanghai cooperation organization has
Speaker:added Iran as a new member.
Speaker:And Qatar has rejected a price cap on Russian energy, and Singapore
Speaker:clearly says it's not going to choose between China and the usa.
Speaker:India increases purchases of Russian energy products and pays
Speaker:for some of it using Chinese Yuan.
Speaker:And German leader visited China.
Speaker:And yeah, so there's a whole bunch of things going on that don't
Speaker:pay well for American Hege money.
Speaker:Scott, you back?
Speaker:No, you'll have the ping money joins.
Speaker:Oh, okay.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Allison can't see the eclipse cuz she's got clouds.
Speaker:Same with John.
Speaker:How does the world view Russia and China?
Speaker:So this was a report from the Bennett Institute at the University of Cambridge
Speaker:and in this report they examined how worldwide attitudes towards China, Russia,
Speaker:and the United States are shifting.
Speaker:So they looked at data from 30 global survey projects that collectively span
Speaker:137 countries and they've analyzed this.
Speaker:So it covers not only high income democracies, but also a
Speaker:comprehensive coverage of emerging economies of the global south.
Speaker:And they say there is a new cleavage.
Speaker:The strongest predictors of how societies align respective to China
Speaker:or the United States are their fundamental values and institutions.
Speaker:So if you're looking at the 1.2 billion people who inhabit the world's liberal
Speaker:democracies, let's just call it the West three quarters have a negative view of
Speaker:China and 87% a negative view of Russia.
Speaker:But if you look at the 6.3 billion people who live in the rest of the world, the
Speaker:picture is reversed in these societies.
Speaker:70% feel positively towards China, and 66% positively towards Russia.
Speaker:So we are in a bubble here when we are looking at this and we
Speaker:have to recognize that 6.3 billion people don't think the same as us.
Speaker:That's a lot of people.
Speaker:I, China, I know people who are in both directions on China.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:. But my Russian friends are definitely keen to have or happy to have escaped.
Speaker:I think Putin's, Putin's Russia is not a place that most of us would
Speaker:want to live, but this is the view of 6.3 billion people who don't live in
Speaker:Russia as to what they think of Russia.
Speaker:So, you know, they just says that they're, they're yeah.
Speaker:Favorable view of the country.
Speaker:Press core is doing very well.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And you know, you might look at it and go, I love what they're doing, just
Speaker:glad I don't live there, for example.
Speaker:That could be well attitude.
Speaker:So, So, let me see here.
Speaker:So the boosting approval across the global south for China comes
Speaker:at a cost in the developed nation.
Speaker:So, and we've talked about this before, the change in attitude towards China.
Speaker:So five years ago, 42% of western citizens held a positive view of China.
Speaker:And today that figure is just 23%.
Speaker:And what have they done in five years?
Speaker:Sold some more dumplings,
Speaker:put some soil on, some, some tidal flats in the South China Sea started
Speaker:whacking defensive structures on there.
Speaker:Amy.
Speaker:I'd have done it.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So here we go.
Speaker:However, the real terrain of Russia's international
Speaker:influence lies outside the West.
Speaker:75% of respondents in South Asia, 68% in Francophone Africa, 62% in
Speaker:Southeast Asia can continue to view the country that is Russia positively in
Speaker:spite of everything that's going on.
Speaker:What amazing.
Speaker:Where you going?
Speaker:Ah, I want how many of those received arms and support during
Speaker:their liberation struggles?
Speaker:From Russia?
Speaker:Yeah, From, sorry, from the Soviet Union?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:What, what, Sorry, say that again Joe.
Speaker:So the Francophone countries had liberation struggles in
Speaker:the sixties and seventies.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And you gotta wonder how many of them, the people who are in power.
Speaker:Are beholden, were schooled in Russian universities, were schooled, but
Speaker:you know, effectively their freedom struggles were paid for by the Soviets.
Speaker:And whether that's the legacy of it, perhaps they just
Speaker:hate the Western colonizers.
Speaker:So I don't know that Russia helped that much in a lot of these countries.
Speaker:My understanding was they funded a lot of them and they educated a lot of the
Speaker:freedom fighters in Soviet universities School in, yeah, it could be in Marxism
Speaker:and in counter-revolutionary T techniques could be anyway, it just goes to showing
Speaker:not everybody thinks the same as the West.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So,
Speaker:there's a Singaporean diplomat built Aari.
Speaker:Cause he can't.
Speaker:So, he is a Singaporean retired academic diplomat and civil servant who served
Speaker:as Singapore's permanent representative to the United Nations for three years.
Speaker:So he's from Singapore and I've got a clip where he has something
Speaker:to say and I will play this one.
Speaker:So let me just find this one of Singaporean diplomat coming up.
Speaker:Let's go with this one about there.
Speaker:Singapore's Prime Minister has warned the US against framing the
Speaker:competition in the Asia Pacific as a democracies verse autocracies contest.
Speaker:Sort of what's your view and, and how does Singapore view this divide going forward?
Speaker:Well, my view is that it is a rather silly and simplistic way of framing
Speaker:the competition in the, in the Pacific or anywhere else, right.
Speaker:There are many types of democracies and not all autocracies are alike.
Speaker:You know, you, maybe you can frame it as some mainly western
Speaker:type democracies versus some autocracies to it, Russia and China.
Speaker:But to put it in broad categories like democracy and autocracy, to
Speaker:me, just silly, this is not how countries calculate their interests.
Speaker:Give you one, give you a couple of examples, right?
Speaker:Vietnam is an autocracy, it's alens type system like China, but Vietnam
Speaker:has deep concerns about China and, and has had so four centuries.
Speaker:I don't think India joined the court because it was a
Speaker:collection of democracies.
Speaker:It had specific reasons for joining the court, which have to do with
Speaker:specific strategic concerns, not these broad ideological ideas.
Speaker:These are much more justifications.
Speaker:You know, I, I understand that certain countries, particularly Europe and
Speaker:North America, the US and North America, many European countries
Speaker:are kind of obsessed with this.
Speaker:But I think you have to understand that it really is a way of, it limits your
Speaker:support rather than expensive, because not everybody will find every aspect
Speaker:of Western democracies attractive.
Speaker:In fact, I don't, myself, I would not consider it an attractive model for
Speaker:Singapore, and not everybody will find every aspect of autocracies, of every
Speaker:autocracy automatically AOR either.
Speaker:So it's a silly way of framing your thing, simplistic, overly simplistic.
Speaker:It limits your support rather than expands it.
Speaker:So why do it except to make yourself feel better.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:, there we go.
Speaker:Just how other people in the world think about these things
Speaker:worth considering, I think.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I mean, Singapore's a special case, isn't it?
Speaker:What is the situation in Singapore?
Speaker:I dunno how it operates.
Speaker:Nominally a democracy, but one party's been in power for 60 years.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:. It's very, very autocratic, I think.
Speaker:And it's very free market.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:. So I think to them, the idea of a social democracy is probably an athema.
Speaker:And, and especially to those who have succeeded in Singapore who
Speaker:are doing well under the system.
Speaker:I think that the idea that they should pay for the poorer, might not be as welcome.
Speaker:But Singapore, Singapore has done amazingly well.
Speaker:I mean, under, under British rural.
Speaker:I know someone who grew up in the villages, the rural villages,
Speaker:and it was severe poverty.
Speaker:And it's now a very, very modern state.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Yeah, indeed.
Speaker:It's very first world in terms of its infrastructure and, and public services.
Speaker:Mm.
Speaker:This emphasis on autocracies and authoritarian regimes comes about
Speaker:because for example, it used to be, well they're goddamn communists.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:, but they can't say that anymore.
Speaker:So they gotta find something else.
Speaker:That's the whole point.
Speaker:So, so yeah, that's another way of how the world can be viewed and
Speaker:show let me just find this thing.
Speaker:If it, hopefully it comes up.
Speaker:world population.
Speaker:Joe is an interesting one.
Speaker:So let me just bring up another one on the screen for those.
Speaker:Actually it's here.
Speaker:Share screen somewhere and I will share that screen there.
Speaker:And this, hopefully there's a site called Dos info slash world population
Speaker:gives one account of how many people there are in the world, right?
Speaker:7 billion, I'm guessing this is an estimation.
Speaker:86.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Well, clearly statistically figuring it out.
Speaker:It's ticking over births and it's ticking over deaths.
Speaker:And it's coming up with a total and seven billion nine hundred eighty six thousand
Speaker:five hundred and sixty thousand nine hundred and twenty twenty five people
Speaker:in the world right at this moment, Odom.
Speaker:So I think it's gonna be in about a week's time.
Speaker:You'll probably see on the news the world's population
Speaker:has probably reached 8 billion.
Speaker:So, Of which 3 billion are in India and China.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Well that is next thing is China, 1.4 and 1.45.
Speaker:And India four one.
Speaker:Next on the list.
Speaker:Do you listen?
Speaker:So we've got China as number one and number two, in terms of population.
Speaker:Have a think about it.
Speaker:What country would you have at Navy for the most populous country on the planet?
Speaker:And the answer?
Speaker:United States 35,000.
Speaker:Indonesia, 280,000 Pakistan.
Speaker:2 31, Brazil, Nigeria Bank, Russia.
Speaker:The top 10 to John says growth is slowing apparently soon to
Speaker:be going into the negative.
Speaker:Depends on the country.
Speaker:In fact they predicted for 2050 that the population will be 9.7 billion in 2050.
Speaker:So I think about 2100 will start the level out.
Speaker:Anyway, that's po.
Speaker:Well we're talking about countries.
Speaker:I mentioned Brazil.
Speaker:Oh the other thing, of course, Lula won in Brazil and it seems like
Speaker:Bolsonaro is accepting the decision.
Speaker:Unlike Trump, lots of his supporters though are not happy.
Speaker:So there's been rallies where they're climbing, not a fair election.
Speaker:And Joe, you see videos of these rallies.
Speaker:There's an awful lot of Nazi salutes Zig Giles going on
Speaker:just.
Speaker:Hundreds of people.
Speaker:Thousands with a Nazi slt, what's going on in the world.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Well there was a reason they chose to escape to South America, isn't they?
Speaker:Yeah, they did, didn't they?
Speaker:The Vatican helped them.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:. That's where they ended up.
Speaker:Not only Vatican.
Speaker:I was watching who's the guy who committed the atrocities in Leo
Speaker:and finally face caught in France.
Speaker:I can't remember the names.
Speaker:Died in the nineties.
Speaker:Was prosecuted in the late eighties, early nineties.
Speaker:Was this the guy with the sort of banal of evil type thing when No, no, he was a g he
Speaker:was Gustapo or ss, I can't remember which.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:But he had worked for the CIA in Germany after the war hunting down Soviet.
Speaker:Communist spies and wasn't much help, but they wouldn't hand him over to the
Speaker:French because they were worried that he would spill the beans on the fact that
Speaker:the CIA had been employed employing him.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:So the Americans basically, although they knew there was a warrant out
Speaker:for his arrest, helped him to escape.
Speaker:Well, they thought they got him down to, you know what, Italy or somewhere
Speaker:Southern Europe anyway, where he brought a boat across to South America.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:A lot of them ended up in Paraguay, I think.
Speaker:Time.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I think it was para Para Your guy.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Ah, just back to Ukraine, going all over the, There was an article,
Speaker:Caitlin Johnston citing the Rich Times, basically saying that within Ukraine,
Speaker:those who are close to the fighting are saying, Let's have a cease fire and
Speaker:give up territory cuz we've had enough.
Speaker:And as you get further away from the front line, that's when people keep
Speaker:saying, Oh, we wanna keep fighting.
Speaker:And of course armchair critics in the west sitting comfortably in Australia
Speaker:or America or whatever, are saying, Oh, you guys have gotta keep fighting.
Speaker:But if you actually ask people on the ground close to the fighting,
Speaker:there's an awful lot of people there who have had enough and would prefer
Speaker:a ceasefire and give up the ground.
Speaker:So, she says because we are primates who evolved in small social groups,
Speaker:humans often have trouble feeling empathy for that suffering until it
Speaker:enters into our own immediate circle, our own city, our own house, our
Speaker:own sons, brothers and fathers going out to fight and never coming home.
Speaker:So this war has become like a gain for people, a vehicle from which to
Speaker:promote their political ideologies.
Speaker:And masturbate their propaganda induced good guys versus bad guys.
Speaker:Fantasies, a team sport where they can cheer on the total recapture of all
Speaker:annexed territories in Eastern Ukraine.
Speaker:From anonymous Sheba avatar accounts online to pass time
Speaker:in their meaningless lives.
Speaker:She gets quite poetic Johnston, but good point.
Speaker:I think the question is whether this is just appeasement, as Britain, France did
Speaker:with Hitler in the Munich accord, whether Russia will actually ever abide, you
Speaker:know, or they will, they'll cease, they'll regroup and then they'll attack again.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:You know, is the ceasefire actually in Ukraine's long-term interest
Speaker:or is this just an excuse for.
Speaker:Putin to regroup and prepare for the next assault.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:. But do you think if they stopped for a couple of years and allowed
Speaker:a buildup of defensive forces that people would've another crack at it?
Speaker:It wouldn't surprise me.
Speaker:Putin, I think, has made clear that Ukraine is a breakaway province,
Speaker:that he considers his Russian mm-hmm.
Speaker:And that he doesn't see Ukraine as a valid state.
Speaker:I don't know that Putin will ever be satisfied.
Speaker:Oh, well, so un unless you have NATO sitting on his board
Speaker:doorstep, which is apparently what kicked off the whole thing.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:, the only thing that keeps Ukraine independent is a, an alliance of
Speaker:forces of raid against Russia.
Speaker:Mm.
Speaker:And you know, at best it's gonna be the former Soviet states who are
Speaker:afraid of Russia, who ally together and Western Europe and America
Speaker:stays out, possibly supplying arms.
Speaker:That's gonna be your best case, but I'm sure that, you know, NATO
Speaker:will be pushing to be in there.
Speaker:Mm.
Speaker:Well, I feel for the people on the front line and I can well understand
Speaker:them saying, Enough's enough.
Speaker:Okay, let, let him have the don bass and crime and let's just stop for a while.
Speaker:Cause I'm sons and sons and daughters and old men, old women off to the un, the
Speaker:un reporters, the UN investigators who are in there, who are reporting on war
Speaker:crimes and, and really, would you want to be in an area that was seated to Russia?
Speaker:If that's been going on?
Speaker:If you're in the Don Bass region mm-hmm.
Speaker:, No, no, I wouldn't.
Speaker:But I can understand the others saying Sorry, did our best.
Speaker:But we give in,
Speaker:So I, I, I, I understand the sentiment.
Speaker:I also just think the point is it's really easy when you're not
Speaker:the one having to do the fighting.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:. Yeah.
Speaker:It really is a case where the West is prepared to fight Russia until the last
Speaker:Ukrainian, so us has always been the case.
Speaker:Hmm.
Speaker:Who knows what peace negotiations are going on in the background.
Speaker:We will never know.
Speaker:Probably in the same way that we never really knew about what happened with the
Speaker:Cuban Missile Crisis for about 25 years.
Speaker:So, dear listener, With the Cuban Missile Crisis, essentially a deal was
Speaker:done in secret that the Soviets would withdraw from Cuba, provided the US
Speaker:removed its missile bases in Turkey, and nobody knew about that part of the
Speaker:deal, about the missile bases in Turkey.
Speaker:And it only came out some 20 or 25 years later.
Speaker:So, yeah, and there was active work by Kennedy and his brother
Speaker:to hide it from everybody.
Speaker:And in fact, the Soviet premier sent a letter to Kennedy a handwritten
Speaker:letter saying that look, I understand why you've gotta keep this delicate
Speaker:situation secret about Turkey.
Speaker:And and Robert Kennedy said, I don't wanna keep this letter.
Speaker:If I keep this, who knows?
Speaker:He'll get hold of it, take it back.
Speaker:And he handed it back to the Soviet ambassador or whatever, and said, Cause
Speaker:I guess they had freedom of information or whatever I thought, other rules.
Speaker:And he said he said who knows where and when such letters can surface and somehow
Speaker:be published, and the appearance of this document could cause irreparable harm
Speaker:to my political career in the future.
Speaker:That is why we request that you take this letter back.
Speaker:So I thought that was interesting.
Speaker:Not as much harm as a bullet did.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Oh, the buy, did you watch that documentary at all?
Speaker:The one Oh, who's the, who's the famous movie director who, Oh yeah.
Speaker:Kubrick.
Speaker:Yeah, I think so.
Speaker:Whether it's a assassination or jfk No, I was thinking of Robert
Speaker:Kennedy who was killed, wasn't he?
Speaker:Yes, both of them were.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:But back to John F.
Speaker:Kennedy.
Speaker:Do you think it was killed by, It was assassinated.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Do you think it was as it was being publicized or what
Speaker:do you reckon the odds are?
Speaker:There were certainly rumors about the mafia and jfk.
Speaker:Mm.
Speaker:So if, if it was a conspiracy, it was probably them.
Speaker:But I think that a conspiracy has remained that secret for
Speaker:that long is highly unlikely.
Speaker:Mm.
Speaker:I think the conspiracy is that he was wanting to withdraw from Vietnam, or not
Speaker:get into Vietnam or something like that.
Speaker:And it might have been the military who, Right.
Speaker:He was, he was trying to, Well, he screwed up bay pigs, didn't he?
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:. So that's the sort of motivation for it that's talked about.
Speaker:Mm.
Speaker:Yeah, the usual rules apply.
Speaker:Mm.
Speaker:A secret is as well kept as the inverse square of the number of people who know.
Speaker:There you go.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And yeah, a plot of that size would have a lot of people involved.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Which is why Nord Stream.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:I mean, how many people are required to blow that up?
Speaker:I mean, you must have at least oh, 50.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I mean, at some stage that's gotta be revealed by some of the players
Speaker:in that it had to be a significant number of people involved in that.
Speaker:So, but again, this will be a short term secret, and by short term Yeah.
Speaker:Five, 10 years, right?
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:After that time, political damage is, Allison, she says
Speaker:she has lull on the grassy null.
Speaker:What do you reckon, Alison?
Speaker:Could you got, could you have got a shot off from the grassy null?
Speaker:Mm.
Speaker:Alright, just quickly.
Speaker:Submarines.
Speaker:Great article in the John Energy blog once again talking about submarines and,
Speaker:it just repeats everything I've been saying about these godden submarines.
Speaker:But repeats that nuclear submarines are noisy cuz they rely on a reactor to
Speaker:power a steam engine with cooling pumps.
Speaker:Well, I thought the Americans had built convection cooling and therefore the
Speaker:American submarines were a a level quieter than the Soviet ones of the same
Speaker:generation because they'd use convection.
Speaker:what's conviction cooling?
Speaker:So, basically hot water rises, cold water sinks.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:. And so if you design your system well enough, you design it so that
Speaker:hot water, basically the, the, as your water heats up, it floats up.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:, and then you, you have your radiator at the top of the system, and then
Speaker:as it cools, it comes back down and reheats into the, the boiler.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:Effectively, these things require pumps to be pumping the stuff around still.
Speaker:No.
Speaker:Or just again, is naturally what I know is reading Tom Clancy.
Speaker:So take with the grain of salts, but no.
Speaker:They had discovered a way of using convection to, to call
Speaker:these nuclear reactors down.
Speaker:Mm.
Speaker:And therefore, they didn't require the noisy pumps.
Speaker:Mm.
Speaker:Which is why certainly the SS SSNs.
Speaker:SSBNs, the ballistic missile launchers.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:, were effectively black halts.
Speaker:They were so quiet because they'd used that technology even though
Speaker:they were nuclear operated, even though they were nuclear.
Speaker:Haven't heard that.
Speaker:Let me read from this article this is particularly extravagant with modern,
Speaker:conventionally powered submarines are much cheaper and far harder to detect.
Speaker:Nuclear submarines are noisy because they rely on a reactor to power a steam
Speaker:engine with cooling pumps, turbines, reduction gears, and steam in the pipes.
Speaker:They also expel hot water that can be detected as can the wake on the surface
Speaker:on traveling in high speeds, modern battery powered submarines, which
Speaker:Australia perversely has no plans to get.
Speaker:Maintain near silent operation with what's called air independent propulsion
Speaker:aip, supplied by a hydrogen fuel cell in Singapore's German submarines.
Speaker:A Sterling engine favored by the Swedes, or in the case of the latest
Speaker:Japanese submarines by advanced batteries with long endurance.
Speaker:So these submarines have great advantage of making the crew far
Speaker:safer than noisy nuclear ones.
Speaker:And there was an essay in the US Naval Institute's Magazine proceedings in
Speaker:2018 where basically the US Navy needed to consider acquiring some quiet,
Speaker:inexpensive diesel electric submarines.
Speaker:And the ability of these quiet submarines was demonstrated in 2005 when a Swedish
Speaker:submarine sank many US nuclear fast attack subs, destroyers, frieds,
Speaker:and cruises in some joint exercises.
Speaker:So they performed quite well in those and.
Speaker:What do we get to here?
Speaker:The cost of the eight nuclear submarines at the moment, 171
Speaker:billion and possibly 200 billion for eight nuclear powered submarines.
Speaker:Whereas we could get 10 of the latest German submarines, same
Speaker:as what Singapore has got for about 10 billion, a billion each.
Speaker:Smaller crew more suitable to our shallow waters.
Speaker:And there was a an article in the Washington Post that disclosed that
Speaker:our decision making regarding nuclear power submarines has been heavily
Speaker:influenced by a clique of former US Navy admirals who are generously
Speaker:paid by the Australian government.
Speaker:So, Two retired US admirals and three former US Navy civilian leaders have
Speaker:played crucial roles as paid advisors to the government during its negotiations
Speaker:to acquire nuclear submarines.
Speaker:So, gosh, we've got on the payroll, two retired US admirals and three
Speaker:former US Navy civilian leaders, and funnily enough, their advice is to
Speaker:buy nuclear submarines from America.
Speaker:What, what a surprise if you're interested in submarines.
Speaker:Mm, yes.
Speaker:Smarter every day YouTube channel.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:He did a series of border US missile sub.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:So lots of information on how they live underwater for months at a time.
Speaker:How do they generate oxygen?
Speaker:How do they generate clean drinking water?
Speaker:So an interesting one on how sonar works.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:, which he keeps on hitting up against the, that's classified.
Speaker:I can't talk about that.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:But quite an interesting series.
Speaker:What's good, Kim?
Speaker:Smarter every day.
Speaker:Smarter Every Day.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:On the YouTubes.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:I think we've reached 9 27 and apparently according to
Speaker:Allison, she can see the moon.
Speaker:So it's time for us all to go outside and have a look.
Speaker:It is, it's time to end this podcast and thanks for joining in in the chat room.
Speaker:We'll talk to you next week.
Speaker:Thanks to Scott for being with us for most of the time, but I think
Speaker:we're really gonna have to get Scott's Internet organized in future.
Speaker:We'll see what happens.
Speaker:Oh, up some thoughts and prayers people.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:Okay, everybody, thanks for joining in.
Speaker:Talk next week.
Speaker:Bye for.
Speaker:And it's a good night from him.