full

Episode 364 - Tracking the decline and exposing the hypocrisy

In this episode we discuss:

(00:33) Introduction

(03:06) God Forbid

(05:17) Historical Knowledge

(09:30) Victorian Election

(16:35) Evangelicals Blame Abortion Demons

(19:02) Greg Smith and MAGA

(21:25) Zuckerberg Ignored the Script

(23:44) USA in the Persian Gulf

(24:26) Old fashioned CIA propaganda

(28:07) Chinese Diplomacy

(33:05) QANDA

(43:24) Chinese Suppression of Journalists

(47:22) Venezuela

(49:38) Turkey Starts Partial Payment In Rubles

(50:34) German Deflation

(51:49) New Zealand Voting Age

(53:23) History of Money

(59:55) How Japan Korea and Taiwan Succeeded

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

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We need to learn stuff about the world.

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

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

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

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Welcome back to Your Listener.

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This is a podcast and a live stream all at the same time.

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The Iron Fist and the Velvet Glove.

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We talked about news and politics and sex and religion, all the

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things that you're not supposed to talk about at a dinner party.

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People don't, and that's why they're not good at talking about them.

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And so we're here to fix that.

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I'm Trevor, aka the Iron.

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Fist with me as always, Joe, the tech guy.

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Evening.

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Good morning Joe.

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So welcome aboard.

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If you're in the chat room, say hello, Landon.

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Hardbottom is there.

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Excellent.

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Landon, how are you?

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So we will talk about China.

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Of course we will at some stage Landon.

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Can't help myself these days.

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I'm finding at the moment actually, Joe, it's kind of a lot, not a lot happening in

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domestic politics it seems, and it seems to me that sort of, sort of geopolitics

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international stuff is what's really going on at the moment, seems to me anyway.

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I mean it was sort of just all this outrage during the Morrison years where

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there was just any number of crazy things happening in the parliament.

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Decisions are being made, but all that sort of died down and we just

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seemed to have a low key, sensible bunch of guys who spend question

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time bashing the opposition for the things they did the previous decade.

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Well, apart from Victorian election.

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Yes.

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Well, that's true.

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Yes.

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We'll talk about that.

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We're gonna talk about the Victorian election.

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We'll talk about about the USA and a bit of an update about China and

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then various countries, Venezuela, France, Turkey, Germany, New Zealand.

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And then with a bit of luck, we're gonna get onto currency and money in Japan.

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And I was reading a very interesting sort of academic article about Japan

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and why Japan, Korea, and Taiwan managed to break breakthrough, what's

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sort of a glass ceiling, it seems for developing countries to come through

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and become a developed country.

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And what was it that enabled them to do it?

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And it's quite interest.

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Spoiler alert, it wasn't liberal free market policies that did it.

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It was a lot of government action.

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If you are new to the show, we sort of explore all sorts of rabbit holes and

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not sure where we'll end up, but yeah.

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So couple of things to deal with, first of all.

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So of course this podcast is heavily involved in promoting secularism

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and bagging crazy religious people who interfere in our politics.

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So there is a program on ABC radio called, God Forbid, hosted by James Carlton.

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And last Sunday they had a podcast and they had Allison Cords from Queensland

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parents for secular state schools, and also another lady who was sort

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of pro secular on there talking about religious instruction in schools.

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Joe, did you get to listen to it?

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Oh yeah.

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Okay.

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So prepare yourself because there was no, you know, there was no bishop's

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priests, imams ministers there to give the, the line of the sort of

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the pro religious instruction line.

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So James Carlton decided that was his job and it was incredibly annoying.

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Like I appreciate.

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That he had to play devil's advocate to some extent, to

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provide a counter-argument, but it was just super annoying.

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I find the guy an annoying host at the best of time.

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So anyway, look that up.

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God forbid Allison did a great job and oh, seems to, Lord Don says

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there's a high pitched whining coming through the transmission and

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it's none of us hearing anything.

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Is there anybody else hearing a high pitched whining or is it just essential?

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Lord, Dawn, so let us know if you hear strange audio and we will try and fix it.

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So if you can let us know the chatroom.

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So yeah, God forbid, check that out.

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And Allison did a great job of putting it forward, the, the case.

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And the other one, Joe, was 60 minutes, apparently did an expose on what's

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going on in Victoria with Evangelicals taking over reelections and the sort of

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people, it's getting reselected there.

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And I haven't had, I haven't actually watched it yet, cuz I

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just, I can't stand 60 minutes in their approach to things anymore.

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And I sort of feel like, well finally, mainstream media is caught up with what

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we've been saying for the last seven years and now these things are starting

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to appear, which never appeared seven years ago when we started the podcast.

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So that is so that's good news.

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The other thing I've been thinking about lately is I just want, just as

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I read stuff, I'm finding it there's all these presumptions and this faking

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of history that needs to be overcome.

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So I think there's a need to reexamine the historical narrative and check if a false

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historical story is being used to prop.

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A contemporary bad idea.

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So for example, this whole deal with China and Australia and our relationship,

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I mean, who started that fight?

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How did that start?

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Things like the Qatar World Cup, like apparently at the moment there's

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all sorts of talk about special arm bands by the different playing

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groups and you know, talking about the human rights abuses in Qatar.

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I mean, if we had a World Cup in America, would we be having the same discussion

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about human rights abuses that we're having with the World Cup in Qatar?

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And I know people can say it's what about is, but it's important to be consistent.

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Like, if you think something is important, then consistently you should

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apply that principle across the board.

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And of course, When World Cups, if they were staged in America or in

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the United Kingdom or whatever, they don't have human rights protestors

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despite world catalog list of human rights abuses that have been going on.

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So that sort of hypocrisy gathered by now really grates with me.

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Apparently the the British team was going to do some sort of protest and FIFA

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told them, well, if you do that, we're gonna give your captain a yellow card.

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And immediately they folded and said, oh, well, we won't do that anymore.

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So they weren't committed to the cause, I don't think.

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Other things, ? Mm-hmm.

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, I, I

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don't think the UK or the us make it illegal to be gay.

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No.

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That's true, but for

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punishment.

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But in terms of legal in

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either of those, but in terms of human rights, abusers, you know, going around

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as bombing countries, indiscriminate like in terms of causing of human suffering.

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Yeah.

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But that's legal,

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that's it's not educational

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law.

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No, it's not.

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When they do it unilaterally, it's actually not.

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Yeah, so I think if we, we look at human rights abuses and put them

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in, in proportion, even something like the Chinese with their locking

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up of the uighurs, like, it's hard to know exactly to what extent

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that is happening, but arguably

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because the press isn't

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allowed to report on it over there.

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No, of course not.

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Like it is genuinely difficult to find out what the truth is.

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We do know about incarceration rates in America.

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Oh, yeah.

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Yeah.

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For, for such minor offenses of drug possession.

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I don't

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know if I mentioned it to you, but chasing the scream.

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Yes.

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He says it may be possible.

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Modern America is the first society in human history that has a higher

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rate of rapes of men than rapes of

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women.

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Yeah.

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You did mention that.

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Because of the high incarceration rate.

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Because of the high incarceration rate.

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It, it's just incredible.

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Yeah.

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You know, okay, find a protest about human rights abuses in China and Qatar,

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but if you're going to be consistent, you have to apply it wherever you see it.

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Otherwise, you're just running a propaganda line.

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So you just, so we should protesting

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Julian Assange in the

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uk.

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That's right.

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I mean, I talk about political prisoners in these countries.

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What about the, it's all about consistency, as you'll find

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in my arguments about various things that we talk about.

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I always try and maintain a consist line where you've got a principle that

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you can apply if it, if you can't apply consistently, it's not a good principle.

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Special pleading otherwise.

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Yeah, indeed.

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So yeah, so that's what I find myself thinking about more and more

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as we're looking at things, right.

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Few domestic things to go through.

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And the Victorian election coming up and Guy Rundel wrote an article in Crikey.

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I've been quite quoting Crikey as much as I was at one point.

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They were particularly good when Scott Morrison was running a muck.

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Hadn't been as good since I,

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I think you might have just been disillusioned by the

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fact that it's not the.

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Small player.

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You thought he was, it might, well, it might be part of it, but I don't think so.

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I mean, I was quite happy to find this article and go with it.

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Guy Rundel is an interesting writer.

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He's got a good turn of phrase, and it's probably why I'm gonna

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quote bits of this article because I think he's just got a good turn

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of phrase at different points here.

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Guy Rundel on the Victorian election politically, organizationally, and

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morally, Victoria's liberal party is unfit to take power and hold office

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which is unlikely to happen anyway.

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He goes on in absolutely and in everywhere, every

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way they're unfit to do it.

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He says The liberal opposition is not simply a party in poor

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shape, needing a bit of luck.

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In fact, it is a destroyed organization midway through an internal party

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struggle under investigation for, for numerous electoral breaches.

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Studded with numerous unvetted candidates, honeycombed with

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weirdos and referencing Leo Nazis.

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That's good.

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Internal party struggle.

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Studded with numerous unvetted candidates and honeycombed with weirdos.

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Honeycombed.

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That's good.

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Don't

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get the fetish about this.

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Pre referencing has zero outcomes.

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Yes.

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Unless you choose to follow what, who they preference?

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Yep.

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It doesn't affect your vote in any way, shape, or

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form.

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No.

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But it says something about the party.

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Oh, absolutely.

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That they're recommending this.

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So that's what he's getting at, I think.

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So it's second time around Leader Matt Guy now in press conferences seems

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to just hang there like an undercard boxer clicking to the ropes long

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enough to earn the appearance fee.

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He says this would be this would all be said more explicitly if

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the two main news groups were not on the ropes he was glean to.

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So yeah, it's the, the media down there in Victoria's going nuts, mainstream media in

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terms of their support for these liberals.

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So the latest two party preferred was 53 47, and we'll see what

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happens in that election.

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Yeah, with just going back to guitar essential, Lord Don says Budweiser

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has an agreement for 12 years and two days out they said no alcohol

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breach of, yeah, so they basically not selling of alcohol at the games.

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And one of the major sponsors is a, is a beer maker.

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So you wouldn't be happy if you were them?

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No, no.

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There was some news headline about.

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Some bloke who'd walked five miles to get a pint at the World Cup.

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And I thought, really?

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Wow, is that the news?

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Unlike the Argentinian female reporter who got robbed while she was

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interviewing members of the public, and she went to report it to the

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police and they then said, so if we catch this guy, don't worry about it.

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We've got cameras everywhere, facial recognition, it's not a problem.

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We'll figure out who it is when we catch him.

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What do you want us to do with him?

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Oh, really?

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And she said, what do you mean?

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She said, well, do you want throw us to throw him in prison for five years?

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Do you want him kicked out of the country?

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What?

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What do you want?

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Right.

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And she was a bit taken aback by the fact they were just saying, what

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punishment do you think we should

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give to him?

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There you go.

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A culture where the victim.

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A say in what happens?

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Yeah, maybe too much, too much of a say.

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Actually there was a bit more in this article by Guy Rundel basically saying

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that Victoria used to be the intellectual sort of center of Australian liberalism

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and, and was the first place in the world where a certain type of social

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classical liberalism came together in a stable and lasting fashion.

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And so you had social protection and the guarantee of positive freedom sort

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of mixed together in a, in a formula that was working to some extent.

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And he said that Jeff Kenneth turned the party into a SPI machine and he broke the

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alliance between principles and politics.

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And then Alon came Michael Kroger.

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And he took his eye off the party infrastructure as evangelicals, Mormons,

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and and others took over the party.

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And when Covid came along, there was an opportunity to clean up the party and

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get rid of some of this branch stacking.

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But they didn't do it.

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They didn't have the nerve.

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And as a consequence you have the most energetic internal

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agents in the liberal party.

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Actually loyal to other forces.

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Yeah.

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The Christian beliefs and the extremes have become the center

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and the former party center has become a series of exile camps.

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So I have predicted, as you know, dear listener, the sort of splitting

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up of the liberal party where.

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Christian evangelicals will keep hold of the party.

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And those that have become teals, if you like, will have to form some other party

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of some sort, a long and painful process.

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Whilst it seems like a good idea, the problem is without a second

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party to keep labor in check.

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We'll, will labor become so full of themselves that they'll do stupid things.

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Indeed.

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Yep.

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And and also we've got in America with Trump announcing his run

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and, you know, that could signal a split in the Republican party.

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And unlike Australia, they don't have preferential voting over there.

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So splitting the vote is diabolically damaging to a particular, to any party.

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So if Trump.

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Proceeds and keeps going and doesn't pull out, and the Republicans, you know,

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endorse somebody else other than Trump.

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That splitting of that conservative vote is just going to cause them huge problems,

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particularly with no preferential voting.

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So Macy is split there.

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Macy is split.

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In Australia.

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We'll wait and see.

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Joe nearly split his head with some boom mic or something.

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Yeah.

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Overexcited microphone indeed.

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Right.

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Okay so still on these sort of evangelicals and what happened

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in America, for example,

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I've got couple of clips here.

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So this is one of the religious guys in America talking about what

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happened in the midterm elections.

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I'll play this one.

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That's why there was no red wave.

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Abortion changed everything.

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Even though all the polls were showing that the economy was the main

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issue, abortion is a religious issue.

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And religion creates more passion than anything in the

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world if you don't believe it.

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Go to a church meeting where there's a debate going on.

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So religion creates passion and there's a religion of demons that loves abortion.

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That religion of pro-abortion showed up.

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There we go.

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A religion of demons that are pro-abortion.

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I've got another one here that that I'll add.

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Lemme just find this one.

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This guy here, this is just sort of typical examples of what's appearing

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in the media in America in response to that midterm election by pissed off

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evangelicals, you gotta recognize the fact that this is a godless country.

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I hate it.

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It's immoral, it's wrong, it's heinous, it's evil.

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But this is an evil country.

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And this country will surprise you with how evil it is.

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And that's why you've gotta get this outta your head that there is some silent

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majority cavalry that's gonna come outta the woods and save us at the last minute.

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It's not when we meet the left on the battlefield and they outnumber

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us like five to one, that's it.

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But the point is, when you look at these things like abortion, it's popular.

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People like abortion hate it, but it's true.

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And you can thank the Jewish media for that abortion's.

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Popular Sodom is popular.

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You know, being gay is popular.

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Being a feminist is popular.

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Sex out of wedlock is popular.

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Contraceptives are, it's all popular.

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That's all.

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That's not to say it's good.

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That's not to say I like that.

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Popular means the people support it, which they do.

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And It sucks and it is what it is.

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But that's why we need dictatorship

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That's ironically why we need to get rid of all that.

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We need to take control of the media or take control of the government

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and force the people to believe what we believe or force 'em to play by

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our rules and reshape the society.

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Well, there you go.

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If at first you don't succeed, become a theocracy

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That's right.

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But if you thought, oh, that's just those crazy Americans, it'll never happen here.

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I'm

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sure there are people over here who very happily follow him.

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Yeah.

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I'm just gonna give you an idea of of one of the sorts of characters.

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Let me just find this guy here.

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This is Greg Smith, an Australian in America who's being interviewed

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by one of the channels over there.

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Here we go.

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We need to save America.

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Before we can save Australia.

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So this is I've come here to sacrifice three months of, of my life.

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Wow.

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To, to support maga the, the MAGA candidates.

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I've been to Arizona, New Mexico, and Florida.

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And for, for me, it's just important that in order to save Australia I need, I

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wanted to be here to make sure that, that we get the right people over the line.

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Oh, isn't that comforting that Greg Smith is, is saving America to save us.

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Find that comforting.

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Can we ban him from coming back?

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? Can they keep him like they kept Ken?

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He, Ken

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Ham.

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Yeah.

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There we go.

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That's the sort of stuff that is going on.

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It sounds crazy.

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It sounds over the top, but it is happening.

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And the, the depths that they've reached in America, it's only.

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A matter of time before it, it gets here as well.

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So look forward to that.

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You did see the pictures of Gina at, was it Trump's

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announcement?

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Yes.

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Gina Reinhardt was at the Trump announcement.

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Yeah.

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I to make America great again for Australia.

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Yeah.

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Yes.

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I also saw that they weren't allowing people to leave the room.

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Like apparently he was talking for quite a while and people were starting to

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get outta their chairs and head for the exits and they basically didn't want

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didn't want the room to look half empty.

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So they just didn't let people leave.

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They just stayed.

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Yeah.

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Quite a few people

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left and then security went no more not allowed to.

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That's it.

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Yeah.

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Oh dear.

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Okay.

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Got another clip here for you.

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I thought these were gonna be in a more coherent, organized fashion,

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but still in USA and it's all about us exceptionalism expecting

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these nutts to be coherent and

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organized.

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It's hard to put them, it's hard to line them up coherently.

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But this is a clip where Zuckerberg was being interviewed about

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about American exceptionalism.

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So it's some sort of like senate inquiry or something like that.

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So let me just find this one and and pull this one up.

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Zuckerberg, here he is.

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And Mr.

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Zuckerberg, quite a story, right?

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Dorm room to the global behemoth that you guys are only in America.

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Would you agree with that?

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Senator?

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Mostly in America.

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You couldn't do this in China, right?

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Or.

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What you did 10 years.

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Well, Senator, there are, there are some very strong Chinese internet companies.

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Right?

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But you're supposed to answer yes to this question.

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. Okay.

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Come on.

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I'm trying to help you.

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This is right.

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I mean, give me a break.

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You're in front of a bunch.

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The answer is yes.

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Okay.

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So thank you.

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Now your, your testimony, I've certainly got some new respect for Zuckerberg

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. Cause he's not totally,

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Yeah, I was saying only in America said, well, he couldn't

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happen in China, could it?

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And he, well actually it can and it does.

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He probably

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has dealings with bang.

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No, not bang.

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Good.

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What's the other one?

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The huge one Alibaba.

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Is that what you, Alibaba or whatever.

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Alibaba is as big as AWS in

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it's big.

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It's, it's, it's huge.

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Alibaba is like four times.

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I think it is the size of Amazon.

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Huge.

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Yeah.

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And yeah, but

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I meant in

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terms of hosting.

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Oh, okay.

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Don't about that.

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Yeah.

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If you've

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got your own internet service, you can run it up on Alibaba

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service the same as you can with

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Amazon.

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Right.

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And, and they are

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maybe not in the west, but certainly in other countries.

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They are one of the biggest

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providers.

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Yeah.

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So anyway, good on you Zuckerberg, for actually listening to the question and

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just refusing to just agree and yeah, it's difficult as it is to say you have

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to give the guys some some marks for that.

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So he ignored the script.

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Good on him.

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No, I think he looks more robotic

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than data.

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He does look strange character.

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You gotta say that.

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The US is going to put over 100 unmanned vessels in the Persian Gulf.

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They're going to deploy these drone boats under a task force to

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work against Iran in the region.

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Imagine if China decided to or Russia decided to do that in the Gulf of Mexico.

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Mm-hmm.

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But we've done, even bat an eyelid doesn't make, doesn't make any news at all.

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Like, but Iran's the access of evil.

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Yeah.

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This is the hypocrisy and the inconsistency I keep talking about.

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I've had these couple of clips here.

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I'm gonna throw a lot of clips on this episode.

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This one is about CIA propaganda, cuz this is relevant because once

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again I'm painting a picture.

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Why am I painting a picture?

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America doing bad things or painting America in a bad light.

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Why are you always banging on about it?

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Trevor, ? Well, because the mainstream media is doing a

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perfectly fine job of the opposite, somebody has to fill in the gaps.

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That's what I'm trying to do here to some extent, is just fill in some of what

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you won't see on the mainstream media.

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So let me find this one about look, just

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cuz you get your news from RT doesn't

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mean all of us do.

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Yeah, I can't get RT any, I'm not getting it from rt.

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Let me see.

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CIA propaganda.

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Let me just check.

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I've got the right one here.

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I do.

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Here it is, this one.

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Bear with me and here we go.

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This is a former CIA CIA agent of some.

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Well, give me a concrete example of how you used the press this way.

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Well, for example, in my, my war, the Angola War that I helped to manage

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one third of my staff was propaganda.

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I had prop gists all over the world, principally, and

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London, Kinshasa and Zambia.

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We were, we would take stories, which we would write and put 'em

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in the Zambia Times, and then pull them out and send them to a, a

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journalist on our payroll in Europe.

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But his cover story, you see, would be that he would, he had gotten 'em

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from his stringer in Luaka who had gotten 'em from the Zambia Times.

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But after that point, the journalists Reuters and afp the

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management was not witting of it.

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Now, our contact man in Europe was, and we pumped just, just dozens

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of stories about Cuban atrocities.

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Cuban rapists.

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We didn't know of one single atrocity committed by the Cubans.

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It was.

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Your raw false propaganda to, to create a, an illusion of communists, you know,

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eating babies for br that's what makes it so difficult to trust the bad stories

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you hear about groups who are opposed to the us It's so difficult to know

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where the truth lies on these things.

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Just gotta take everything with a grain of more than a grain of salt.

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It's just really hard to know where the truth is when the US just openly admits.

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Yeah.

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We just get small media groups to take stories and then we get bigger

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media groups to take them from them.

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Yes.

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Yeah.

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And this is what's happening in Australia where essentially the Murdoch Press

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and the Costello press come out with nonsense about all sorts of issue.

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And God down ABC just repeats these stories and I'm gonna sort

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of get onto some examples of that.

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So we have a sort of a similar they're situation.

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Yeah.

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Especially anything about Dan

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Andrews Oh yeah.

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Or about Schoolies.

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Yes.

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What's the thing about Schoolies?

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Anything in particular news.com

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has been running stories for the last four days about the horrible

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behavior of those kids at Schoolies.

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Right.

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The latest one was they found a list of wish, a wish this, that some

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teenage boy had, things he's gonna do at Schoolies, which is just fantasy.

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Yes.

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And it's, oh my God, how disgusting this

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is.

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They should be in doing some form of national service and

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getting discipline probably.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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China and.

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Diplomatic measures.

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So I've had a G 20 and president G has met with all sorts of people over the

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last few weeks, both at the G 20 and then at, since he's been on a plane, he's

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been meeting all sorts of other groups.

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They've all been falling over themselves to have a meeting with them.

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And Australia managed to have a 32 minute meeting.

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And interestingly, Joe, a lot of the right wing press has been quite

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favorable about albanese meetings with president G because the business councils

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and the other groups really want it.

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Like, I think they are saying, enough, enough, we've gotta sell stuff.

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So I found,

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but it also gives them reasons to demonize him later on as being

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controlled by the communist Chinese.

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That's true.

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That's true.

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So there's been largely positive press about him meeting with the Chinese with

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some notable exceptions that I'll get to.

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But what has you know, basically the, the argument I've been running over the

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past few months is the sort of end of us hegemony and China flexing its mess

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muscles and, and creating relationships with other groups and sort of oil

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and gas playing important role in, in breaking this sort of hegemony up.

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So things that have happened Bloomberg had an article saying

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this is about the computer chips, we talked about that in previous weeks.

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And Dutch Minister says, US cannot dictate approach to Chinese exports.

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The country will make its own assessment.

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The official tells the newspaper.

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So she had a meeting with the Netherlands and shortly afterwards the Netherlands

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says, we're gonna make up our own mind about whether we supply machinery

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that let you make computer chips.

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We had Albanese actually came out and said, Australia is unlikely

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to support Taiwan's push to join the comprehensive and progressive

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agreement for transpacific partnership.

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So basically, Albanese has said we're not interested in having

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Taiwan as part of a trade pack.

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That's a sort of a, a pro-China line.

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Well pro mainly in China line the Thai Prime Minister has sped up a high-speed

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railway system that's been built by the Chinese the Italian Prime Minister.

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Expressed the need for China and Italy to further and deepen their economic ties.

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And she stated that Italy rejects joining factions against China and the

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Indonesian president dissipated in a ceremony again about high speed rail.

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And what else have we got here?

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Chile has supported China to join the c p tpp, this trade group, and New Zealand's

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come out as well and expressed the need to deepen their relationship and affirmed

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the one China policy and what else we got.

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Spanish Prime Minister said that his government will create easy and safe

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environment for Chinese companies to invest in Spain and French.

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President Macron said that France does not seek faction confrontation.

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They'll deepen their ties.

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He welcomes Chinese companies to invest in France.

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So there's a lot of countries coming out now and basically saying,

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we're just gonna deal with China.

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And it's gonna be really interesting to see if the US can corral

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enough allies to do its bidding.

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Well, of course, the cheese

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eating surrender monkeys are willing to

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work with the Chinese.

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What was that?

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The the, the cheese Eating.

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Surrender monkeys.

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Cheese.

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Eating Surrender monkeys.

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Right.

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Do, do you not remember during the Coalition of the Drilling?

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No.

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Is the

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French called the, the French.

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Oh, were they by the Americans.

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Oh, okay.

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We called cheese Eating Surrender Monkey Monkeys.

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That was when they named, cause they refused to join the

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coalition of the Willing Yeah.

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Coalition growing.

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Right.

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And they, they renamed french fries to Freedom Fires.

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Mm-hmm.

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. Yeah.

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So I mentioned before about the ABC parroting a lot of the right wing

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Murdoch and Castello press points.

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And look, I did not watch the whole q and a episode, but I

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heard about what happened on it.

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So I saw enough to create this clip that I will put on now for you about

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q and a and its episode on China.

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Featuring of course, Stan Grant and put him up there with James Carlton

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as somebody who's incredibly annoying.

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Allison has joined the chatroom I saw.

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Good on you Allison.

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We, we did a little shout out early in the podcast to congratulate you on your work.

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Okay, here's about two minutes from q and.

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Why was Anthony Albanese shaking hands with the man whose

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regime is accused of genocide?

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S Jing is proving power is everything.

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The world can't ignore him.

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He's self-proclaimed.

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Best friend Vladimir Putin is threatening nuclear war on Ukraine.

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Tonight are our interests more important than our morals?

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Welcome to Q Day.

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Here's a question from Bob vcu.

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After the Holocaust of World War ii, we all said never again.

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So why is Albanese shaking hands and smiling with the Chinese dictator?

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She, while the genocide against the Tibetans, the Uighurs and the Fallen gone

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practitioners is still going on Santa.

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What did you think?

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It's a very good question and one that should be put to the Prime

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Minister and this government.

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I, you know, obviously these sorts of things are very complicated and

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China and Australia's relationship has had a bit of a rough patch the last

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couple of years, and I can see that, you know, this government's trying

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to sort of, repair some of that.

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And that was probably part of that.

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And I think these things are complicated, but I do think that a big part of

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these conversations that happen within diplomatic circles are about

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symbolism, and it does say something to be seen publicly shaking hands

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with someone whose government is accused of very serious human rights

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violations, the Tibetans, the Uyghurs, and various other things, including

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as well as, you know, dual Australians that are in detention in China.

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Who, you know, many beliefs should be brought home.

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And these are concerns that should that, that are very worrying.

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And you know, yeah, I, I, I agree.

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I think why, why was the Prime Minister shaking hands with the

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leader of a country that has a very.

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Questionable human rights track record.

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The Prime Minister in meeting President G was an important

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meeting because dialogue is good.

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Making sure that we talk look so happy to be doing it.

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There was a big smile on his face.

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Well, I mean that, I guess the question goes to you in not speaking to the

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Chinese leader for such a long time, is it beneficial to the national interest to

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have that conversation on human rights?

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Well, didn't put that question to Joe Hockey.

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Did it help the Uighurs that Australia was in the deep freeze

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during the Morrison years?

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No.

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No.

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So did that, do you changed behavior if you don't speak to

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someone about their behavior?

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So if we're not in conversation with China, which by the way is our biggest

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trading partner and there's what a million Chinese Australians living here,

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what is going on?

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What is going on?

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But even Joe

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Hockey doesn't agree with them.

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Just, why is the prime Minister shaking hands with the the pres?

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G?

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Why is he, well, why is he shaking hands with anybody?

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What and Stan Grant, did he

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not shake hands with the Saudi

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prince?

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You out your fingers afterwards, make sure they're all there.

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And you know that other lady at the very beginning, they, oh yes.

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Well, you know there's dual Aussie in detention.

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You know, this is a very good question.

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Why is he shaking hands?

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Well, he shook hands with the US president and the UK Prime Minister

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and they're holding Australian citizen Julian Asange in a prison in Belmar.

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No question about that.

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Oh God.

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It just pisses me off the, just hypocrisy of these people.

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If you want to play that game and you are demanding that, this respect

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of human rights, then you've gotta be consistent across the board.

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And the abc Stan Grants promoted as some sort of China expert.

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He's a, just a deal.

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Just the fact that he's lived there for a few years hasn't helped him at all.

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So I just find that unbelievable that our national broadcaster has

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descended to such a level where they're saying he should have looked grumpy.

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Okay, maybe he had to shake G's hand, but he should have looked

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grumpy and not willing to do it.

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Is that suggestion is that then

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you've we've got, you look kish, don't you?

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I know.

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It just, you look stupid.

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It's just the most insane stuff.

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And presumably that's one of the best forums on the ABC to discuss issues

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along with the insiders in other groups.

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If you talk to people like, you know, right wing Tony or others like that,

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they all talk about how biased the ABC is and just a left wing rebel.

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And I just have these arguments saying, no, they're not.

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Have you watched it?

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Have you seen things like this?

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They're often parenting in the Murdoch press that it's biased.

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Yes.

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I just find it astounding that we've reached this, this level

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of craziness with our media.

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Complete waste of time to be watching these programs complete.

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Not only a waste of time, it's just going to fill you with

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nonsense and an indoctrination.

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Don't subject yourself to it.

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Get, if you're gonna get indoctrination, get it right here on this podcast.

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Is . We're we're happy to

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Indoctrine.

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Are you?

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Yeah.

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John's finished with insiders.

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Yeah, cuz it's again, just full of, full of crazy.

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I mean, they had He's that guy from the Australian Foreign

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Affairs editor, Greg Sheridan, calling Jacinda a lap dog of China.

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He's the greatest lap dog of the usa We've got, anyway, she was

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shaking hands with

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she wasn't she?

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Yes.

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And Joe smiling, looked happy.

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Can you believe it?

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Very me.

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That shouldn't be allowed.

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Yeah.

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Ah, so in contrast the bbc, I put something the second.

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Yes.

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Jeffrey Sax was being interviewed on the bbc and this was I think an

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interview about the climate change.

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Cop Cop 27, is that what it was?

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I think so, yeah.

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Meeting in Egypt.

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And so have a look at this where the presenter starts to, Sort of do an abc

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and this Jeffrey Sax responds Before going any further, I'll play this one.

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Biden administration's been strongly critical of China's actions on human

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rights, but engaging on climate change.

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Do you see that as a strategy that can actually work?

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I'm not sure why BBC started with listing only China's human rights abuses.

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What about America's human rights abuses the Iraq War together

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with the UK completely illegal and under false pretenses.

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The war in Syria, the war in Libya, the continued sanctions against civilian

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populations in Venezuela and Iran, walking away from the Paris Climate

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Agreement for the last four years, unilateral trade actions that have been

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deemed illegal by wto, so one can make.

Speaker:

Anything one wants, but we have really serious human rights violations

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by the United States abroad.

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Not to mention in insurrection on January 6th in our own country, not to mention

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the continued massive racism, white supremacism and abuse of incarceration of

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hundreds of thousands of people in the us black, African-American people of color.

Speaker:

So I think that the whole premise of this story is a little bit odd.

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No, but sorry, I'm looking, sorry if I may, I found, I found the framing

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of it, it not what I expected.

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I thought we were going to talk about climate change, which we should.

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But I think that the idea that there is one party that is so guilty, how can

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we talk to them, is just a strange way.

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To address this issue.

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Well, hang on.

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I'm, we have a United State.

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If I could, I'm hoping we have a, I'm hoping we can have a conversation.

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And if I could just say I'm, I'm using, and, and what I'm saying back

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to you here is we are also using the framing of the Biden administration.

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We're also talking from the perspective of how Joe Biden himself and those

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around him have talked about the human rights abuses in China.

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So you always, excuse me for one moment.

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The US always attacks other countries.

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It holds itself sacro saying

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that's the way to do it.

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Brilliant.

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Hadn't seen that happen here.

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Had not seen that happen here.

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Well,

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What's the name on the ABC?

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Used to hold politicians to

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account.

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Mm-hmm.

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hasn't happened in a while.

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Mm.

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But he was right in the way he talked about framing and Alison,

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that goddamn James Carlton on that.

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God forbid if I just backtrack to that, he would just try and frame things in

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a manner that was just crazy actually.

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You can understand why politicians sort of get media training to basically

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just ignore the question and just say the thing that they want to say.

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And I think the classic is the,

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not that I'm a fan, but the Jordan Peterson interview with Kathy Newman.

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I think it is.

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Yes.

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Yes.

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So what you're saying is No, I'm not saying that at

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all.

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That's right.

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Yes.

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Don't frame just, I'm not gonna let you frame the whole

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thing the way that you are.

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So the that sort of stand rant Kwando episode was an example of, of framing

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and it made it really difficult for people to, to You know, to break

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through that framing, you have to be as aggressive as Jeffrey Sax was in that

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interview with the bbc where he just said, no, I'm not having a bar of this.

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You are framing this in a way that I'm just not gonna start with.

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So not easy to do.

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Some other examples of stuff as I get through more clips that

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I've had stored for a while here.

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This is a situation in China where this professor, oh no, where there

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was a I hope I've got it here.

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No I don't.

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It was it was basically a clip of this.

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UK journalist in China, and he was stopped by the authorities from, he

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was just standing on a street doing a piece to camera, and he tweeted and

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said imagine if China's journalists in other countries were hassled like

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this by the police for simply filming a TV piece to camera in the street.

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This happened during the recent party Congress, and I'd

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forgotten about it by the way.

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We had no choice but to pack up and go.

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So party Congress, he's on the street doing a piece to camera authorities

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come along and say, move along.

Speaker:

In his tweet he was saying, imagine if this happened to Chinese journalists.

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But the same sort of thing actually happened in the UK with UK journalists.

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So there's been a span of incidents recently, Joe,

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with people pouring paint on.

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Works of art and then gluing themselves to the wall and there was something

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going on and these guys were filming it.

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I'll just play part of this one in the uk

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it what do you do moment?

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You're arrest, so can tell you I'm pressed, I'm a of the press.

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I give you three months and show you press.

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I'm obviously you can't arrest me.

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Don't, because I'm here.

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I'm a press.

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I'm coming up.

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I'm, I don't know by You only need that.

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Yeah.

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Can be detain one, searching for Yeah.

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You are currently detained.

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I'm quite obviously a member of the.

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There's a lot of background noise, so I'll cut it short, but

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they're on a bridge with cameras.

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They're obviously part of the press filming something, they get arrested.

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So it does happen everywhere.

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Yeah.

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It's not to say that it's acceptable, of course it's not, but it's just, I, I

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There was an ABC article about a 16 year old down in Byron who got a beating from

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the cops, and it was filmed from the balcony of a, an apartment that was either

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looking, and it

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was certainly alleged.

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The cops then went round, they couldn't see the people in the balcony, but

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the bystanders at ground level, they went around and threatened them,

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saying, I hope you haven't filmed

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that.

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Right.

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Yep.

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Happens everywhere.

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Mm-hmm.

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, unfortunately, some places are more of a police state than others.

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But you know, as I look around the world and think of places where I'm likely

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to be beaten up by the police when I'm innocent or worse shot dead while

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I'm eating a hamburger in a McDonald's car park or something like that.

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You know, the place I'm thinking of anyway, that's a bit of a

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wrap of or shot dead after you

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called 9 1 1.

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Yes.

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That was that Australian woman indeed.

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Yes.

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Who was very threatening in her neg in the middle of the night.

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Yes.

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Yes.

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That's it.

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Yeah.

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So that's just a bit of a rundown of just hypocrisy, if you like,

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in the way things are reported.

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It's really difficult to know where the truth lies, and it's a real

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challenge to keep a balance in your head and go, hang on a minute, let's

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just not necessarily fall for the normal good guys, bad guys narrative

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that's trying to be imposed here.

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Maybe they're all bad guys, for example, and there are no good guys.

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All cups are bastards.

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Mm.

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Oh.

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Okay.

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Still going around the world.

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Venezuela, a pariah state, Joe, under sanctions had their money

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confiscated to be communist.

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Yes.

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And had all their assets confiscated.

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And basically Macron said of Venezuela, it's not been a democracy for a long time.

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I'm in favor of having the sanctions.

Speaker:

Pressure on the regime will bear fruit when those who

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impose sanctions work together.

Speaker:

That was him four years ago, but something's changed.

Speaker:

Joe Oil.

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Mm.

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Venezuela happens to have a lot of it, and France happens to

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need some because the supply of energy now is a little bit shaky.

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And at the cop 27 meeting basically Macron settles up to Nicholas

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Maduro, had a brief conversation.

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It's on the video, and treats him like a long lost friend and says, we

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must get together and do more things.

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And just capitulation, just a total sucking up by Macron to Maduro

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despite official that the sanctions,

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the French have been very maybe not anti-American, but

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certainly willing to go it alone

Speaker:

on, on various things, right?

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Yes.

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Such as not joining the coalition of the drilling.

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Yes.

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But also

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opting out

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of nato.

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Yeah.

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When it's convenient.

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When it's convenient.

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Yeah, absolutely.

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Mm.

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Well, and there's a, an article also headline was Macron Calls

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Russia, one of the last imperial colonial powers on Africa Visit

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So according to Alan McLeod, that was the precise time.

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That irony died forever.

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I mean, the French president calling Russia one of the last imperial

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colonial powers in Africa, ah, dear.

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France has gotten in London, Africa.

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No, but they'd like to throw the influence around wherever they can.

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Okay

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Turkey is starting to pay for Russian gas in rubles.

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That's a big move.

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If the rubs are

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devalued at the moment.

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Sounds like a good plan.

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Are they devalued?

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I have no idea.

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I don't think they are.

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I think they've, they actually dropped momentarily at the start

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of the Ukrainian war, but they're now back to their pre-war levels.

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Just an example of countries like Turkey, Iran, Russia, China starting to deal in

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energy in things other than US dollars.

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And as I've mentioned before, when the US dollar went off the gold

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standard Britain woods and it was no longer equivalent to certain number

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of ounces of gold by arrangement with the Saudis it became equivalent to

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a certain number of barrels of oil.

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And if that starts disappearing, then that's the end of the line

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for the American Hege money.

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German inflation.

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For the month of October, Joe dropped 4.2%.

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Have you heard of inflation dropping?

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See, the consumer price index in Germany dropped 4.2%.

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Oh, in this negative?

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Yes.

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So they have deflation?

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Yes.

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That's a lot.

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So is that a bad thing?

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I dunno that it is a bad thing.

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But it's sign of an economy

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that's about to explode.

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It's, it's, it would, it would've me worried.

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I mean, or is screw no, I think this is I think this is, you know, adjusted,

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seasonally adjusted and things like that.

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I would assume they do the same sort of stuff, but, you know, there's a

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graph there where everything looks very normal then a huge spike of 8%.

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Now a negative 4.2%.

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You know, the one thing about currency is major fluctuations are not good.

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You want confidence in your currency because currency relies on faith

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and as soon as it starts bouncing around, that's not a good thing.

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So that's a German inflation rate dropping.

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And Joe, did you see that New Zealand's voting age is under review?

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Because some young some young Kiwis started a legal claim

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and said it's discrimination to not allow 16 year olds to vote.

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No.

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I

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know that it's been talked about for a while,

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lowering age of voting, so I had some victory in a court case and They've

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got some sort of Bill of Rights type legislation that says you cannot

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discriminate on the basis of age against people over the age of 16.

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So some young kiwi said, well, we're not allowed to vote.

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That looks like discrimination.

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So that's moving along in New Zealand.

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You think a 16 year old is

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then we're screwed?

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Or sorry, McDonald's is screwed.

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All of the fast food joints are

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screwed.

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What?

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Why would that be?

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Oh, cause they under

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eighteens because they pay 'em below minimum

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wage and you think they'll then vote for the party that bumps up

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the minimum wage for 16 year olds?

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Well, but

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I mean, even if, if they're considered to be old enough to have equal

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rights to adults, Joey, that won't happen.

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They'll say we, we can send you off to war at 16, but we're still only gonna

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pay you a 16 year old's wage probably

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cause you're still living at home with mom and dad, therefore

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you don't need a rear wage.

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Ah, where are we up to?

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Okay.

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That's around the world.

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We've dealt with quite a few countries.

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History of money.

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Joe is not what you think.

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So this is gonna be interesting in relation to cryptocurrency.

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So there was a big run on a particular type of cryptocurrency and even

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Bitcoin, which is sort of the largest of the cryptocurrencies, has

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suffered some major falls in value.

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Thinking about money most, so this is from an article in the history of money.

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Most of us have an idea of how money came to be.

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It goes something like this.

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People wanted to exchange goods for other goods, but it was difficult to coordinate.

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So they started exchanging goods for money and money for goods.

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This tells us that money is a medium of exchange.

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It's a nice and simple story.

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The problem is that it may not be true.

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We may be understanding money entirely wrong.

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So work by some academics has been on this.

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All this is in the show notes, by the way, for the patrons.

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What they've said, or what they've found is the origin of money is more

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like this, that in pre-market futile societies, there was a system of

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maintaining justice in the community.

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If somebody committed a crime the authority, and let's call him,

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the king would decide the criminal owed a fine to the victim, and the

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fine could be a cow, a sheep, or chickens, depending on the crime.

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And until the cow was brought forward, the criminal was indebted to the

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victim, and the king would record the criminal's outstanding debt.

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So this changed over time, rather than paying fines to the victim.

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Criminals were ordered to pay fines to the king This way resources

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were being moved to the king who could coordinate their use for the

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benefit of the community as a whole.

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And this was useful for the king, for the development of society.

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But it became more than just sort of criminal fines, it was expanded and the

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king created debt records of his own.

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You can think of them as pieces of paper that say the king owes you.

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So next he went to his citizens and demanded that they give

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him the resources he wanted.

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If a citizen gave their count to the king, the king would give the

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citizen some of his king os U papers.

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Now, accounts seemed more useful than a piece of paper, so it seems silly that a

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citizen would agree to this, but the king had a solution to make sure everybody

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would want his king owes you papers.

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He created a use for them.

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He proclaimed that every so often.

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Citizens had to come forward to the kingdom and each citizen would be

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in big trouble unless they could provide little bits of paper that

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showed the king still owed them.

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In that case, the king would let them go.

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So essentially, dear listener, money was created between the kings and the palaces

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and the people, little Chis of what the king owed to people and what people

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then owed to the king or the palace.

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And because there would be periodic taxation, you would need to supply some

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of these IOUs in order to pay a tax debt.

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And that's how money was created.

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It was transactions between the public and the king.

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It wasn't created.

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Initially as a means of exchange between people.

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And so you have to think of this in today's world with

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cryptocurrency and its its value.

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So the Australian dollar, for example, will always have some value in Australia

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because the Australian government will say to its citizens, you need to pay

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tax or a fine or something else, and it's gotta be in Australian dollars.

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So you will, they'll always have some value because you'll always have to

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pay tax with some Australian dollars.

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That's not the case with cryptocurrency.

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There's no, well, with the crazy exception of El Salvador, which stupidly

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sort of made a cryptocurrency almost like its its country's own currency.

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Just ignoring that.

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Crazy situation for the moment.

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No country is going to say, oh, you can pay your tax with cryptocurrency.

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That's not how it's going to work.

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So it doesn't have the inherent value cryptocurrency that sovereign

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fiat currency has because that need for it comes about in many

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ways because of the underlying need to pay a tax in that currency.

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So yeah, so that sort of explains a little bit about how you should

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think about cryptocurrency and Joe, there's all sorts of work being done

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in the podcasting world where people can listen to podcasts and donate

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cryptocurrency as they're listening.

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There's these apps that are starting to allow that.

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And if you've got a light, there's a certain number of apps that allow it.

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If you've got a cryptocurrency wallet, you can transfer Satoshi's.

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You paying magic beans to.

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No, just Satoshi's.

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The, the good thing about about it is there's the transactional cost of

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transferring Bitcoin or Satoshi with Satoshis are a fraction of a Bitcoin.

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If, if you're trying to transfer money from credit cards, there's

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always a transaction cost that eats away, whereas they don't have the

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same amount of you can do very micro transactions, small transactions in

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cryptocurrency without whitling away, fuck the planet over at the same time.

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Cause the biggest problem with cryptocurrencies

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is the amount of energy required

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to, to mine it.

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Yes.

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Cuz these computers are just churning away, um mm-hmm.

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. Exactly.

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Yeah.

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So anyway, think about all that.

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When you, if you are crazy enough, I mean, if you have a

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little bit of cryptocurrency.

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Just as a means of exchange, like 50 bucks in a wallet somewhere, cuz you're

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just swapping small amounts for somebody.

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Fair enough.

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But think very, very, very, very closely about whether you would

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ever use it as something to invest.

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So

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no, I'd get my money outta crypto soon as possible.

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Yes, indeed.

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Okay, so that was that was that.

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And now I wanted to go final topic and I wasn't sure if I was gonna get to

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this, but looks like again, so this is to do with Japan and I found this

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article which was by a guy called lemme just the size of this window.

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Correct.

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Robert H.

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Wade.

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He is a professor of global political economy at the London School of Economics.

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The New Zealand citizen worked at the instituted development

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studies at Sussex University.

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He worked at the World Bank, he worked at the US Congress.

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He was a Prince University and at MIT and around university.

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So he's got some credentials in in economics and political economy.

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So this is looking at Japan in particular, and Taiwan and Korea.

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And why did those countries end up becoming developed, prosperous first world

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countries when other countries did not?

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And I've been banging on for a while about neoliberalism and what it did to.

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Latin America, the Global South.

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Joe, you finished reading that book by Naomi Klein Shock Doctrine.

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Oh no,

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I watched the documentary.

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Right?

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Where'd you see that?

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Are you saying that right?

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No, no, it's legal.

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Okay.

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He,

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he was set up to stream media off your local hard drive.

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But they've now got into streaming movies and they've got a whole bunch, mostly

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stuff that nobody wants to watch, but in their documentary section there's some

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awful stuff like zeitgeist, but then there's an honest liar or the unbelievers,

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a couple of the other documentaries that were probably 10 years old.

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And one of them was the Shock Doctrine.

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Mm-hmm.

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, which is Naomi Klein.

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Delivering a lecture at a university.

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Oh.

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Chicago School of Economics.

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Okay.

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But interspersed with video of various things to illustrate

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her talk.

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Right.

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Okay.

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Cause I was thinking, I didn't know there was a documentary on it, but Yes.

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Okay.

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It's her talking about it at at a university giving a lecture type thing.

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Yeah.

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I mean,

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80% of it is film of whatever's going on that she's using as an illustration.

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And then the final 20% is her talking on these points.

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So she's, she's effectively

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the narrative.

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Okay.

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So doctrine actually I found a very influential book to read.

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Essentially looked at various ex examples around the world where countries

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experienced a shock, which might be a weather event or a natural disaster.

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Earthquake tsunami might be some other shock event.

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And basically her premise was that there were right wing forces that were all set

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to go in the event of countries being in a crisis situation, and they would swoop

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in and convince whatever authorities were there to allow them to make changes.

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That essentially opened up the economy to multinationals sold off public

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infrastructure and other sort of typical neoliberal policies that would be brought

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in and the public who were in shock.

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And maybe if there'd been a tidal way, they were still at high ground sheltering

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in the jungle while their fishing village was then being demolished.

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And a bunch of sort of tourist.

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Accommodation was being put up, things like that.

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That was part of the sort of premises.

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Yeah.

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She said the first experiment cuz it was all Friedman, isn't it?

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And the Chicago School of Economics.

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Yes.

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Yep.

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So Chile was the first experiment Yes.

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Followed by Argentina.

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And it was interesting as these right wingers took over and implemented the

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Chicago school policies, how basically inflation just went through the roof Yes.

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And ended up screwing the,

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The low economies.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Interesting.

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And then talking about Maggie and how she tried to, but how she balked at

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becoming a right wing dictator and said that there were some policies that

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were just a bridge too far for her.

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Right.

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Even though she was best mates with General Pinoche mm-hmm.

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thought he was a great guy.

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Yes.

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Yeah.

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Brushed up

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until Spain extradited him and then prosecuted

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him.

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Right.

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Did she give up on him then?

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Did she Well, no, cuz she

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wasn't a prime minister, but she was standing by his side whilst

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he was being extra from the uk.

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I think he was arrested in the UK and then extra

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Spain.

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Yeah, yeah.

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And of course the General IMF World Bank policy is with, say, developing

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countries and let's just typically think South America is, they would

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say to them, you guys are in trouble.

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We gave you a loan, you haven't repaid it.

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What you've gotta do is sell off your public infrastructure

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to multinational corporations.

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You've gotta let them come in and buy all of your good stuff and you can then

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use that money to pay off your debt.

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You have to reduce your social services.

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And you you know, you cannot put in any sort of trade barriers.

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So you might want to start a manufacturing sector, but you can't

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put in a trade barrier to protect that industry in its infancy while

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it's trying to get up and running.

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So that makes it impossible for these countries to develop industries of

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industrial industries of manufacturing or high tech because you can't

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just go from zero to competing against the existing players.

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You need some protection.

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And the World Bank and the IMF just don't allow these countries to do it.

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They ban them from protecting these industries, and that's the

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secret to developing an industry.

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And so anyway, the question is, How did Japan, Taiwan, South Korea end up and

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to some extent also Singapore Hong Kong, how did these countries break through and

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and actually manage to become successful?

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Cheap, wasn't it at the time?

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So, Well, it's a combination of things, Joan, but the, the narrative that would

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like they'd like to tell you is that it was liberal minded, free enterprise

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that allowed these countries to succeed.

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Cheap labor, didn't spend much relied on cheap labor and

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therefore undercut everybody.

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To build up an industry is, is kind of, you know, one story for example,

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but that's not what happened, . So in this article, and again, it'll be

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in the show notes for the patrons.

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How did they do it?

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So I've highlighted bits from this article, which is gonna

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take me 10 or 15 minutes to go through and paint this picture.

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So abstract.

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Few non-western countries have reached the general prosperity of

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Western Europe and North America.

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Just about all of the countries which were in the periphery in

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1960, remain in the periphery today.

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The clearest exceptions are in capitalist Northeast Asia, namely

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Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea.

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And you could add Singapore and Hong Kong to that.

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So how did they escape the periphery?

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How did they do it?

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And he says here, the Northeast Asian countries remain among a still smaller

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set of non-Western countries, which have developed mostly indigenously

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owned firms across a broad range of Mabel, major global industries.

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They're able to act as first tier suppliers to Western multinationals.

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So in these countries, they're locally owned and operated

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and they're able to compete.

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And the types of industries that they're in includes chemicals, petrochemicals,

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electronics, steel ship building, cars, car parts, and more recently, biotech,

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advanced semiconductors, nanotechnology, and even space exploration.

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So these countries are located some 9,000 kilometers across the Pacific

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from the world's biggest and most innovative market, mainly the usa.

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While next door to the usa, Mexico has languished, nowhere near

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achieving what these countries did.

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It did.

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So how exceptional is the economic performance?

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How many non-Western countries have reached the general level of

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prosperity of Western Europe and North America in the past two centuries?

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And in this article, he says, fewer than 10 countries have managed to do it.

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And there was a World Bank study in 2013 that confirmed this conclusion.

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It identified 101 countries in 1960 as middle income, and found

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that of those only 13 reached high income almost five decades later.

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So 101 countries only 13 managed to do it.

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And there's a table there, which shows the average income of countries in 1970 as a

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percentage of US average income, and then it shows their average income in 2010.

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So 40 years later, again, as a percentage of.

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US income.

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So take for example, Taiwan.

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In 1970, the average income in Taiwan was 20% of US average income.

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And 40 years later, 40 years later, Taiwanese reached the point where the

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average income is 80% of the US income.

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So it's an amazing performance.

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Japan was 50%, now it's 70%.

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South Korea was 10% in 1970 10% of the American wage, average wage.

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And then 40 years later, the average South Korean was 70% of the average American.

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Whereas you look at countries like India, it was 5%, and now it's only 10%.

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Brazil was 15, now only 30.

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So that's the sort of.

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Progress that they're talking about.

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And this article says that there's seeing to be some sort of glass

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ceiling or some trap that stops countries progressing through.

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And the next section discusses the causes proposed by analysts writing in mainstream

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economics, often called neoliberalism.

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So by the 1980s when Northeast Asia's rise began to attract attention,

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most economists viewed their subject through the lens of neoliberalism.

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So they looked at these successful countries, most economists, and

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said, oh, that's the free market working in these countries.

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So neo-liberal philosophy says that the market is the best

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institution for growth and liberty.

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Even where there are market failures, you're best just leaving

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things untreated because the cost of correcting them through state

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intervention is is dangerous.

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And they look for a maximum degree of openness to the international economy.

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And maximum integration.

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And the idea that governments would curb competition in the interest of helping

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some firms and industries while they're sort of, getting themselves organized.

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That's not part of the formula.

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So the World Banks 1993 book called the East Asian Miracle proves this thinking.

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It examined the causes of success in eight high performing Asian

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economies, and the book argues that openness to international trade.

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Based on largely neutral incentives was the critical factor in their growth.

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Basically saying cuz they were open to trade, that's why they succeeded.

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And and this sort of confirmed the whole Adam Smith neoliberal argument

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and and, and basically the world bank promoting market liberalization pointing

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to these countries as success stories.

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But according to this paper, the writer says that's not the case.

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And it's a far more interesting answer than that.

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And it turns out that the answer is closely related to geopolitics of

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Northeast Asia and the United States.

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Beginning in the late 19th century there were three orders in East Asia.

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So we had Japan.

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With its basically Japan colonized career in Taiwan.

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And the Japanese colonial government treated career in Taiwan as offshore

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farms, mines and industries, and they were closely integrated.

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So by 1940, somewhere between 50 and 70% of Korean and Taiwanese

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children were in elementary school.

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And all three countries were more homogenous in terms of ethnicity and

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religion than most other countries.

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So that's interesting.

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For starters that Japan colonized Korea and Taiwan and basically

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Japanese, them and their cultures became very close and education was

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a big part of what was going on.

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Second area was Hong Kong and Southeast Asia, so we had the

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colonialists transformed the economy except for Hong Kong into commodity

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production for western markets.

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So thinking sort of Indonesia for example, we had the Dutch had colonized

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Indonesia and basically market Yes.

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And plantations, rubber, rubber, stuff like that.

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Big landlords an emphasis on single crops and, and a Landon class.

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So in those sorts of countries colonial governments was more passive.

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So the Dutch were passive in the sense of accepting the incumbent landed elites

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and allowing them to just do what they wanted to do provided the plantations

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were operating so, In those countries.

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By 1940 only about 2% of children were in elementary school, in the

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French colony of Vietnam, for example.

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So whereas Japan, when it colonized career in Taiwan, had 50 to 70%

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of children in elementary school, France, when had colonized.

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Vietnam only had about 2% of children in elementary school.

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And then the third area, so we had Japan with Korea and Taiwan.

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That's one area.

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We had these sort of colonies with plantations.

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That was the second area.

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And then China, different case altogether.

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, so turning back to Japan, Japan was forced in the mid 19th century

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to do stuff for some 250 years before the mid 19th century.

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Japanese rulers.

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Isolated the country.

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And then in 1853, Commodor Perry of the US Navy sailed into Edo,

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which is now Tokyo harbor with a fleet of warships and demanded that

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Japan open up to American commerce.

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Nothing's changed.

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1853.

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Nearly 200 years later, they're still doing it sailed.

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He learned it from the British.

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Come on.

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Yeah.

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Sailed in and said except the Americans didn't wanna occupy,

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they just wanted companies to operate and just wanted free trade.

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Yeah.

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So he sailed into the harbor in 1853 and demanded that the Japanese

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open up their economy, so his visits send shockwaves through the Japanese

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country's leaders who fear that America might take Japan as a colony.

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Because they had just watched.

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What had happened to China and thought, well, don't want that

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happening to us, are we next?

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So the Japanese government responded with wholesale reforms to create a

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centralized state and national identity as the basis for a strong military.

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And they had this thing which was, if we take the initiative, we can dominate.

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If we do not, we will be dominated.

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So they saw the writing on the wall and got their act together.

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So the meja restoration of 1868 launched a frenzy of industrialization

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and militarization that lasted several decades, and they had a real

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developmental mindset that emerged.

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So there was a big push in state capacity.

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They sent teams of officials around the western world to investigate ways

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to organize a modern society such as tax system, post office railroad.

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Army, parliament, judiciary, and the like.

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And then they implemented the best models that they could at home.

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So Japan militarized so fast and effectively that in 18

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94, 18 95, its Navy defeated.

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China's and Aade later defeated rushes.

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And this sent a shockwave through Western governments because for the

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first time in the modern era, an Asian state defeated a European state.

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So Japan went on to become the first non-Western country to catch

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up with the West in broad measures of production structure, military

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strength, and mass living conditions.

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So a combination there of, of culture and also pressing need, having seen

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what had happened to China and not wanting to succumb to the same fate.

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After the war, Japan continued to be ruled by this developmental mindset,

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which had been sort of institutionalized during the maje, the mija restoration

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and in the buildup to the war.

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And a similar mindset was also institutionalized in Korea and Taiwan.

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Just read on here.

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So basically also the developmental mindset emerged from the combination of

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a few factors, lack of natural resources.

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So above all, land and energy, having actual a lot of natural resources is a,

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can be a bad thing, Joe, because one, you just get lazy in that you rely.

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The natural resources thinking of a country maybe in present world that

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has abundant natural resources and just is fairly lazy as a result and allows

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that industry to essentially dominate in the Yes, bringing the wealth.

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And you don't bother doing anything with your other manufacturing industries cuz

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you think, ah, why should we bother?

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We can just dig stuff up.

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Mm-hmm.

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, well, so Japan wasn't able to just dig stuff up.

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The other disadvantage of that is if you do have stuff that can

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be dug up, countries like America want to take possession of you

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and take the stuff from you.

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So if you don't have it, then they don't want to take it off you.

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Is a, is another sort of benefit of it.

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So it forces you to work on creating an industrial developmental capacity and

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Places like America are not tempted to invade you and, and take your minerals.

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So there's that aspect.

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They also had an abundance of people, I was

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gonna say the Americans prefer to invade, stick in a puppet regime.

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Yes.

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And then take the stuff.

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Indeed.

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So they had that in their favor.

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They had to reconstruct from the war, but they weren't starting from zero.

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They had actually built up a, a civilization.

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And so they just had to reconstruct.

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They knew how to do it.

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And they had lots of American money.

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Yes.

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And, and the well, and the re the other thing that they had in their

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favor was communist China and Russia on the doorstep and the American fear.

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That communist China and Russia would start to take over the world.

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So they wanted some friendly countries.

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There is a bowl walk against the yellow peril, if you like from

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communist China and from from Russia.

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American

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protector for many years after the war anyway, wasn't

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it?

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Yes.

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So we're gonna get into the detail of that.

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So there's a few advantages for Japan in that it was already industrial

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develop, developmental via culture.

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It was spooked by what happened to China.

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So it ramped up, it lost the war, but it had no natural resources.

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So it's forced to rely on its people.

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Had a large population that was well educated and it It had the benefit

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of having a nearby threat so that the US would want to bolster it as

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a counter to that communist threat.

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Right.

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Just turning briefly to Taiwan the native Taiwanese, most of whose ancestors

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had come from the mainland two or more centuries before and had experienced

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50 years of total separation from the mainland under Japanese rule, saw the

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chanka as foreigners and vice versa.

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So they were very Japanese by that point, the Taiwanese.

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And in South Korea they had a tightly disciplined military dictatorship.

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They used that external threat of communism North

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Korea as its justification.

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And the the ruler park, 1961.

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He had been educated in Japanese military academy, served in

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the Japanese army in Manura.

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He had studied the history of the Meja restoration and the role of the

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state in Japan's industrialization.

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And so he was a chief architect and driving force of career's development

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until his assassination in 1979.

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So that was from 61 to 79.

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He's an interesting, fun fact.

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Soon after he took power, he arrested leading businessmen and threatened

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them with jail for corruption unless they left for the United States

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and returned with export orders.

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That's one way of doing it, isn't it?

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I, I make a living as a sales rep.

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I tell you that, that that would really focus the mind on getting some orders.

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Mm-hmm.

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The dominant political philosophies of these countries emphasized

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order and nationalism more than liberty and free enterprise.

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So where the West likes to paint these countries as lovers of

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liberty and free enterprise.

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In fact, culturally that cra Yeah.

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Having known people who grew up in Singapore, that

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was very much an autocracy.

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Indeed.

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So before the second World War, you, United States had little presence in

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Northeast Asia, but after the war, containment of communism became a

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top priority and the US saw China and North Korea as a severe threat

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to the US sphere of influence.

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So the US poured in assistance.

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To its three Asian allies providing troops, economic advisors, political

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advisors, teachers accompanied by large financial transfers, essentially,

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dear listener, because of the threat of communist China and North Korea,

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the Americans pretty much did a textbook of of how to help countries

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out and make them successful.

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On the downside, they did send them their Mormons.

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Yes.

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Did they send them the Mormons or did the Mormons just sneak in?

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Oh, the Mormons went anyway.

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Yeah, it's like rats and sailing chip.

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They're just there anyway US advisors helped construct centralized top

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level agencies, the plan, the use of various scarce capital and helped

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construct an effective civil service.

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During the American occupation of Japan from 45 to 52, the Japanese government

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instituted the most restrictive foreign trade and foreign exchange control

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system ever devised by a major free nation and did it with American blessing.

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Okay, so in the seven years, immediately following the war, Japan had incredibly

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restrictive foreign trade protectionism.

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Exactly.

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The country's renaissance was helped much by the Korean War as well because

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Japan was the main source of American procurements for the Korean War.

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And the Japanese Prime Minister at the time later declared that the

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war was a gift of the gods because of the business that it generated.

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Incidentally, it was the Korean War that that basically emptied

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the US government's coffers.

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And sent it into deficit where it had to break with the gold standard

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because it was the money spent on the Korean War that finally broke

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the back of, of the American budget.

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But I digress.

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Okay.

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US government gave strong backing for land distribution in all three countries,

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meaning they helped with land reforms that enabled people to get a piece of

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land, ordinary people, and they provided support for industrialization by curbing

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the landed classes and strengthening peasant support for the state so that the

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peasant population, the rural population, felt good about what was happening

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and didn't wanna start a revolution.

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So they made it clear the US that they would not sustain this indefinitely and.

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So the main periods of intense US involvement were basically from sort of

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1948 to around 19 six, the mid 1960s.

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And so thanks to the threat of communist state expansion US wanted

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to protect its sphere of influence.

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It transferred huge resources to the Asian Japanese, Taiwan, Korean economies,

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and it allowed provide lots in.

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It allowed these countries to run sustained account deficits that would

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never allow Latin America to run.

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And also, It gave the aids and loans in a form that did not dilute national

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ownership of the industrial sector.

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So the Japanese, Korean, and Taiwanese people were allowed to

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actually own these enterprises.

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And again, that's not what was allowed in the global south, where multinational

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country companies would come in and buy and own what had previously

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been owned by the local population.

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Right?

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And they also provided a market for all these goods that were being manufactured.

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So compare that to the Philippines, the US saw no existential threat.

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And they in terms of being worried about communists, they just relied

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on a counter insurgent strategy.

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They didn't try and do any land reform and didn't do anything like the

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assistance that it did in Northeast Asia.

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That's why a place like the Philippines got stuck.

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And basically, you know, supported the Filipino government in its efforts

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to provide agricultural goods and raw materials, but not industrial goods.

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And cuz it just wasn't worried about the threat, didn't need the

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Philippines to be a strong country.

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Let me just see here.

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I can skip through that part.

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I think I think I've already said that and.

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Basically goes on to say that the, the governments in these countries targeted

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specific sectors and protected industry and encouraged industry, provided

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support and kept tabs of what industry were doing and set goals for them and

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said, well, we'll give you this, but you have to achieve these certain goals.

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And so it was quite a target where they said, we want to develop a

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certain type of industry and U five comp companies, you are gonna do it.

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We're gonna keep an eye on you.

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You are going to create a little a As sort of an industry group, we're

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gonna provide from the government, a secretary for that group and

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we're gonna know what's going on.

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So really strong direction and monitoring by the government where they set targets

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and planned for these industries at the same time as allowing the individual

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companies some level of autonomy and market decision making, if you like.

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So really clever targeting is essentially like targeting with, not

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like the Russian version of a cost plan where they said exactly every

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step of the way what you have to do.

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It was a, a more sensible form of targeting and.

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Look, the article goes on, but I feel like I've been rabbiting on for long enough,

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and I'm gonna start repeating bits.

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The full notes are in the show notes that are given to the patrons.

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It does go on a fair bit on other things, but essentially that's it, Joe, is that

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the story of these countries was one of, of heavy state involvement, different

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inference by the Americans, and support by the Americans rather than crippling.

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And that's how they managed to break through.

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Interesting combination of factors.

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I particularly liked the factor of being unlucky enough to not have resources

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and unlucky enough to be next door to a communist threat, actually turned out

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to be lucky things in that it, it was.

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Stuff that helped trigger the United States to work hard

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to beef them up properly.

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Very interesting.

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Well, I wonder if how

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much Western Germany was the

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same.

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Mm, indeed.

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Indeed.

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mean, Japan and

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Germany, the debt was forgiven.

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Unlike the first World War, there was reparations indeed.

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Which they thought even if it didn't led into the poverty, that

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led to Hitler coming to power.

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Indeed.

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Yep.

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Which is why they

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forgave and also basically invested heavily to rebuild.

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Whereas Europe had to repay the debts, the repay the loans for equipment that

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they use to fight the ze World War.

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Mm.

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Now, next week, I think I'll be able to get onto talking about now let me

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just get the exact wording of this.

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Just bear with me for a second.

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It is it's on the tip of my tongue and I'm, hang on a second.

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I've just gotta find this.

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Next week listens from Japan, the plaza record.

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So things went swimmingly well for Japan until the plaza record.

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And that was when the US said, hang on a minute, you guys are doing too good.

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And they changed some stuff.

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And so was this after

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the 1980s where they bought up half of America?

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Yeah, exactly.

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So next week we'll be the plaza record where the story is not so good for Japan,

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where in fact the US turns against them.

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So that'll be next week.

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I know that, that much anyway, so Right.

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Well in the chat room.

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Hope you enjoyed that, but.

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Something a bit different, but I think it's important to

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understand behind these things.

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Yeah, I think they might, well, there's six people watching, but anyway, well,

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nine 17 an hour and three quarters.

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That'll do as Jay you around next week.

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Keep Jay outta the shark tank.

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Yeah, I think so.

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All right.

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Okay.

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All right.

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Well, dear listener might record next week, plus whatever else happens

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In the meantime, talk to you then.

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Bye for now.

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The Iron Fist and the Velvet Glove
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