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

We need to learn stuff about the world.

We need an honest, intelligent, thought provoking.

And entertaining review of what the hell.

Happened on this planet in the last seven days.

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

Welcome back, dear listener.

This is episode 455 of the Iron Fist and the Velvet Glove podcast.

Probably the last episode for 2024.

I'm Trevor.

Over there is Joe.

How are you, Joe?

I'm good.

Joe's good.

Unfortunately, no.

Scott.

Scott presented us with a medical certificate in the form of a COVID test that shows.

You found on the Internet.

Yes.

At first I thought he was telling us he was pregnant.

Oh, maybe he's got covered and is not feeling well at all.

So thoughts and anything is possible.

Thoughts and prayers for concepts of thoughts and prayers.

Yes.

It was a long, long time ago.

We did that episode that showed that thoughts and prayers were actually detrimental for.

Yes.

For people in hospital, for people with heart attacks.

I think it was.

Well, they.

What they did was I said to a control group.

Yeah.

They said to these people, we've got people praying for you as part of an experiment.

And those people thought I must be really unwell if they've organized a prayer group for me.

And that had a detrimental effect on their health just by them thinking that they were worse than they really were because of having a prayer group acting for them.

So, yeah, knowing that somebody is praying for you can be detrimental to your health.

I guess.

If they're doing it, you're not knowing.

Don't tell Scott that you're praying for him.

Anyway.

Convoluted way of saying Scott's not here in the chat room.

John is there.

As always, good on you, John.

I think he's on the Gold coast tonight.

John, when do I qualify for my beer for the failure of a North Korean troop deployment in Russia?

When do I get.

When do I get my beer?

That's what I want to know.

Anyway, on the agenda for this episode, not doing Tiananmen Square.

Sorry, Watley.

Hadn't had time to research.

Sorry.

To a couple of other people who are keen for that.

But to do it, justice needs a bit more time.

I'm going to kick off, Joe, with just some conversations I've had in the last 24 hours with people.

Then we'll talk about Syria, talk about South Korea.

It's been two weeks since we've done this podcast, so a few things have happened.

Like the country of Syria.

About that.

Yes, yes.

I remember Assyria.

But yes, John in the chat room says just after you admit Putin was wrong to invade the opposition's nuclear plan, if we can call it that, yes.

The synagogue attack in Melbourne, a football deal with Papua New guinea that has very important, that has Scott Morrison type feel about it in that we've somehow provided, we've spent money ostensibly to help Papua New Guineans, but really just giving it to the NRL to provide a football team.

And then we've said to the Papua New Guineans, we're going to take the team off you if you have anything to do with China, believe it or not.

Incredible.

And a bunch of other just stuff that's happened.

So Don's in the chat room.

Hello, Don.

So yeah, Joe, I've had a few discussions with different people, Christmas parties and other get togethers and whatnot or just things I've seen on social media.

And it's getting really difficult to talk to people about events in the world.

And yeah, I'm struggling.

It's getting tough.

I'm finding it, Joe, that I think people have, are so propagandized about certain things that you can't begin to talk to people about issues.

Almost in the same way that you wouldn't sit down with a heavily religious person and think that you could talk them out of their religion in 10 minutes or something.

And it's kind of like that way with a lot of these topics where there's so much inbuilt sort of propaganda that people are relying on that you have to say, hang on a minute, like, okay, I've had three conversations and I'll mix them all up, but they're all with really smart people, like really smart people.

And one guy was saying that he thought that the Weekend Australian was only just right of center.

Where do you go with that?

Like you clearly haven't read that paper properly.

I definitely haven't, but it's Murdoch rag so I'm going to make an assumption.

Well, it's been a while since I've read actually the Weekend Australian but I know my readings of it in the past and the snippets I've seen, I, I know it hasn't changed and I know it's gone even crazier to the right, but for an educated person to think that the Weekend Australian is only just right of centre, you can't just negate that in a quick two minute discussion.

So that's just hard work to even get anywhere.

The other thing he said was, oh, he was talking about recommending that I read a book about China wanting to invade Taiwan.

The boiling something or other.

The boiling.

The name will come to me.

The Boiling Moat.

He said, really good book.

Should read it.

Basically China wants to invade Taiwan.

Only a couple of years and it's going to happen.

In the meantime, the west needs to aggressively build up and get more weapons to stop this terrible thing happening.

And you know, excellent book.

I should read.

And then I just looked up the book and.

And oh, what is one of the details here?

Let me just bring this across.

Five of the.

So it's a collection of essays and thoughts by different people.

Five of the US authors served in the Marines, three in the Navy, one in the army.

And the Australian authors had senior positions in the Australian Department of Defence Intelligence Community and Australian National University.

The Israeli author is a former IDF brigade commander in combat situations, and the Japanese author, a vice admiral, is a former commander of the JMSDF and advisor to the Japanese National Security Secretariat.

I'm guessing Japanese Maritime Self Defense.

Defense Horse.

Yeah, that.

That's a good crack at that one, Joe.

I reckon one of the two Danish authors is a former Prime Minister and NATO Secretary General.

The other Danish author was a Danish diplomat focusing on China and Taiwan.

And the Taiwanese author served on Taiwan's National Security Council.

Like a bunch of people, Joe, who have been in organizations, mostly military and think tanks, where of course you're going to hold a view that more weapons should be manufactured, deployed, money should be spent, and you're going to have a negative view of China.

And it's just like you wouldn't pick up that book expecting to get anything else but that story.

And I just think that it's like going into McDonald's and thinking you might get a healthy, satisfying, properly balanced meal.

You're just going to get fast food shit, which is what you're going to get from that book.

In fact, you can get a nice salad.

I don't know that over here.

Yeah.

What else have I had in my conversations?

Same guy said, well, of course Russia's got North Korean soldiers there and it's to make up for their numbers.

I said, not so fast.

That hasn't actually been proven as yet.

What else did I happen by these conversations in the last few hours?

Another friend of mine had a link to Friends of Israel Facebook group.

I gather it was because he's a member of it and he was recommending it.

And if you're looking at the screen live, that's the, that's the picture they use for their group.

It's a Muscular soldier clutching a kind of Israeli flag, star of David and a map of sort of Israel type thing that he's grimacing as he clutches to protect it.

And.

Oh, my God.

Just as a matter of principle, he couldn't.

Or he couldn't join an organization which had that as its cover art.

Joe, could you.

Does that just not scream stupid you?

Well, it just screams Christian nationalism, but.

For a Jew, a bit of homoerotica in there as well.

Oh, probably Robin Bristow.

Are you watching?

Is there anything there for you in that picture?

I don't know.

Ah.

Who says he's into big butcher manly guys?

He might be into twinks.

He might be.

But no, I was just like, what are you doing?

Posting a link to that and other statements from amongst these people.

This is.

Yeah.

What else do I have in there?

I.

I just.

Honestly, it's like people have got a religion and there's so much, so much indoctrination and propaganda in people that you can't begin to deal with these issues without dealing with that.

And I just don't have the time or.

I do want to maintain a few friendships, some real ones, so recommended a.

Book called Dying of Whiteness.

Right.

Which is somebody who I think went through Appalachia and was interviewing these people.

What's Appalachia again?

The Appalachian Mountains.

Oh, okay.

Right.

They're very rural.

This was a condition.

Sorry.

No, no, no, no, no.

Talking to them about politics.

And it was the, the.

If they vote for anything left wing, that's betraying who they are and that they will vote for people who are bad for them because otherwise it would mean betraying their whiteness.

Right.

It was so much part of their cultural identity that they couldn't possibly think of voting Democrat.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So anyway, I was kind of silly.

Oh.

And then another friend who is on a particular meat diet, like carnivore type diet, and one of the reasons why, or one of the, you know, is sort of explaining it.

And one of the positives for this idea was that Jordan Peterson's daughter was promoting it.

And, and that was seen as a good thing.

Yes.

She's been on his podcast, I believe.

Yeah.

And.

Or even ran his podcast whilst he was in getting drug treatment.

Yeah.

I mean, she's as big a shyster as he is in terms of selling consultancy and videos to do with the diet.

I, I did see a spoof headline saying that Trudeau was going to campaign on the fact that he's managed to get.

Oh, God, what was his name?

Peterson.

Yeah, Peterson Right.

Moved down to Florida.

Oh, you're right.

So I don't know if he's actually moved to Florida.

Yeah.

Or whether that was just part of the spoof headline.

Yeah, yeah.

See, I'm starting to self censor at these things, Joe, where I just can't even begin to start on some of these topics.

I just going.

It's too hard.

I won't even go there.

So I've been finding it quite depressing.

Yeah.

What's John say?

I've been having this problem with my neighbor for a while.

I used to be able to talk to him, but since he declared that he was upset about being wrong all the time, I just listen now to the Sky After Dark talking points.

Right.

Okay.

Yeah.

It looks like he has moved to Florida.

Jordan Peterson.

Yes.

Well, he'd be amongst friends down there.

Well, indeed.

Yeah.

To be.

To be honest, I wouldn't want to live in Canada for the climate.

Right, yeah, well, yeah.

So that's my little rant.

I'm just finding it increasingly difficult to have conversations with people because I just have to self censor now.

Yeah.

Joe, any thoughts on Syria and what happened over there?

You cannot be.

Sarah, he cannot be serious.

Yep.

It looks like it was a proxy war for many countries and Russia couldn't carry out on propping up Assad because they were too mired down in the Ukraine.

So we've got a bunch of jihadists who are now described as rebels.

Yeah, but the ISIS jihadists have also just been bombed by the Americans in the hope that they don't get involved in the coalition.

Right, so as opposed to the other type of jihadists who they're happy to.

Have take over Syria, the slightly more modest moderate jihadists.

Yes, I think so.

Yes.

So, yeah.

So Syria's new leader.

Well, let me just try and if I can get through the.

The liberators of Syria being celebrated by the West Islamist groups.

Hts, I believe the abbreviation, I can't remember what it stands for.

The leader of which has a $10 million bounty on his head as a specially designated global terrorist.

Yes.

Because he founded the Syrian branch of Al Qaeda.

And the west is saying, isn't it great that Assad's gone and papering over the fact that it's Al Qaeda taking over.

I was going to say, I'm thinking.

Possibly Afghanistan is better than Syria was Afghanistan now.

Yeah, he's better than Syria under Assad.

Afghanistan now is better than life under Assad is possible.

I don't know.

I mean, I can't think they Were great either way, but.

Yeah, but you know, Assad had lost control of the country in the sense that large parts of it were already occupied by enemy forces.

Yeah.

Namely the Americans had control of the oil fields.

So he had no money in order to run a government.

Yeah.

Apparently there was rampant inflation.

Yeah.

So crippled economically because lost control of the oil.

Yeah.

And then we had Turkey.

He seems to have not done badly financially.

One assumes he's.

He's taken some money, several billion, I think, who knows.

And had a very lucrative drug trade.

Yeah.

Who knows?

But it's just an extraordinary situation where the Americans are supposedly in Syria.

One of the reasons Islamists and then a bunch of Islamists take over and they're quite happy with that.

And at the same time, the Turks are fighting the Kurds in Syria.

But the Kurds are kind of friends of the Americans.

It's a lot of competing interests.

It looks like the country will just be broken up into little fiefdoms for different.

Oh, and of course, Israel.

Israel has said they're going to double the expansion in the Golan Heights.

Yes, yeah.

Yep.

So.

So, yeah, very quickly, in a matter of days, the various groups that were just picking at the carcass of the Syrian country have grabbed bits that they can get and are just proceeding as they go.

And good luck to the people of Syria for how that ends up.

It looks like it could be quite ugly.

So I'll read a little bit from Nord Bertrand on this one.

No, actually, I'll read Yanis Faroufakis.

He said the Western media's duplicity has broken all records.

When jihadists entered Kabul ousting the US regime, it was the end of the world.

Now that jihadists have entered Damascus to overthrow a secular enemy of the west, it's a triumph of the human spirit.

Because you've got people like the Guardian with the headline Syrians Celebrate fall of Bashar Al Assad after five decades of dynastic rule.

Like, at least these organizations could just say it's a shit show.

Still, a crazy maniacal despot has been replaced by a crazy, maniacal jihadist group.

And let's all just throw up our hands and fear for the poor Syrians rather than, isn't it great?

And all these people being freed.

And let's smile about it, probably.

I mean, I saw some claims that he used to be an Islamist, but he isn't anymore.

Yes, it's.

But the guy had a 10 million dollar bounty on his head as a terrorist.

It's like.

If someone said Majid Nawaz was now going to be the ruler of some state, would you go, oh, well, you know, he used to be a crazy Islamist, therefore we should be.

Afraid if Osama bin Laden was alive and said, you know what?

I've had second thoughts.

I'm a moderate inclusive sort of guy now let me take over Syria.

And America says, okay, like that's almost.

No, no, no, it wasn't.

Let me.

He did.

Anyway.

Well, I don't, I don't know how involved America was because it was mostly the.

The Russians not propping up Assad.

Yes, yes, but it, that's the closer analogy, Joe.

Osama Bin Laden turned his ch.

Turned around, said, oh yeah, I'm one of the good guys now.

And the.

And the west said, oh, well, he says he's a good guy.

And instead of wearing a camouflage outfit, he wears a suit now.

So, you know, it must be.

Must be legit.

Give him a go.

Can't be worse than Assad.

Well, you have to.

You'd have to go a long way to be worse than Assad.

Yeah, not even Osama bin Laden could be worse than Assad where we're at.

John says, sadly, Syria will probably trade one dictatorship for another.

Allison.

Evening all.

Hello, Allison.

Yeah, and Allison's mother.

Oh, and Allison's mother, if she still listens there as well.

Good point, Joe.

So, yeah, Arnold Bertrand says the liberators of Syria being celebrated by the west are Islamist groups on their own official terrorist lists and near the leader, a 10 million dollar bounty on his head as a specially designated global terrorist for founding the Syrian branch of Al Qaeda.

That's not.

That's a pretty impressive cv.

Biden called this a historic opportunity for the long suffering people of Syria to build a better future.

While his administration continues to operate to occupy a third of Syria, controlling its oil fields and maintaining crippling sanctions and bomb its territory.

Russia, despite being in an alliance with Syria, shrugged it all and let their ally fall.

Syria's new leaders remain bizarrely silent about Israel invading their territory and the US bombing and occupying their country.

It's true.

These, the new jihadist leaders haven't said to Israel and America, get out of here.

Yeah.

And the entire strategic assets, the navy and air force, were destroyed by the US and Israel in air raids.

Yeah.

The US maintains its occupation of a third of Syria, including most of the oil fields, claiming it's necessary to ensure the enduring defeat of isis.

Hamas, while in the middle of a war with Israel, took time to congratulate the Syrian rebels, even though Assad was their long time ally.

That was weird, Joe.

Why would Hamas congratulate the rebels?

Because they're hoping to get something out of it, aren't they?

Good point.

Because Iran has been able to funnel supplies to Hamas via Syria and maybe Hamas is hoping that the jihadists will allow that to continue.

So Russia has been friendly to the new winners because they're hoping to keep their military bases there.

Okay.

The US Celebrates the liberation of Syrian prisoners while operating its own concentration camps in the country.

Turkey is fighting against the Kurdish led Syrian Democratic forces with apparent U.S.

approval.

While the Syrian Democratic forces were fighting Assad, which the US Wanted, Meaning U.

S backed forces are effectively fighting other U S backed forces.

It's a crazy mixed up world in there in Syria.

And I thought we preferred the Kurds because Turkey is going very right wing Islamist and the Kurds were fighting Al Qaeda and ISIS way back when.

Well, we like the Kurds because they were fighting the jihadists.

I thought that was the main reason why we liked.

The Kurds were in Iraq as well, weren't they?

Yeah, because Saddam had a go at gassing them.

I think they were part of the unfortunate carve up.

Oh, absolutely.

Sykes.

Pico was just to run these borders through the middle of Kurdish territory, leaving.

Small bits of Kurds Turkey.

Summer in Syria and summer in Iraq.

And they want their own independent homeland.

Yeah, Iran.

They also abandon their strategic ally.

So yeah.

He says the simplest explanation might go something like this.

The US Welcomes the fall of a longtime opponent.

Neighboring powers like Israel and Turkey see an opportunity for territorial gain.

Rebel leaders seem willing to accept loss of sovereignty and territory in exchange for domestic control over a diminished Syria.

Russia and Iran chose to cut their losses given other regional priorities.

And smaller players like Hamas are scrambling to adapt.

That's probably a pretty fair summary of Turkey.

And I thought Hezbollah were also involved.

I think they.

So I think Hezbollah friends with Assad and Israel has bombed the shit out of Hezbollah, which meant they couldn't spare the fighters.

Yes, to help prop up Assad.

Yeah, because the story of Assad's collapse is literally, and this was fairly cherry picked information, but was, you know, a Land Cruiser turning up with a 50 cal on the back and tanks running away.

Yeah, basically the Syrian army were just so.

The morale was so broken that the second the rebels turned up, they just turned tail and fled.

So there wasn't even serious fighting.

Yeah, apparently they were very poorly funded.

The armed forces were on some crazy thing like US $7 a month or something.

There was just no money to pay them.

As a consequence, they had to resort to corruption in order to feed themselves.

And yeah, all comes back to sanctions and financial crippling meant that Assad couldn't maintain a military and control of it.

So yeah, he just didn't want to give up his billions to fund his military.

Right, Yep.

John, in the chat room, news, sport, blank, blank, blank.

Religion, bring back the.

Oh, sex next week.

Less depressing.

Yeah.

Right.

That's Syria, I think.

Meanwhile, Joe, South Korea.

Yeah.

While we were, while we were sleeping, had a coup.

Yeah.

The president, or prime minister, whatever he's called.

President, I think tried to say we need like a martial law situation because of an emergency because those North Koreans are up to no good and we need to sort of shut the parliament down and give me special powers.

And.

And then the parliament members managed to scramble over fences, physically get into parliament and hold a vote to sort of overcome.

Constitution says that if the President declares martial law, the parliament can vote against it.

And the special forces were surrounding parliament to try and keep the parliamentarians out, but they managed to get in and had enough of a quorum to pass a resolution that basically said no, martial law wasn't in place.

Not a good look for a country.

And from my understanding, it's because he had lost control of the parliament.

He'd basically, he was sitting over an opposition controlled parliament and they wouldn't pass any of the laws that he wanted, which is why he wanted to pass martial law.

Yes.

I believe he was very sort of pro American.

Right.

I believe.

I know that he's right leaning was what I was hearing.

I also believe that under the current laws, South Korea can't sell arms to Ukraine.

But gee, Joe, imagine you wanted to sell arms to Ukraine and you needed to change the public mood in order to get a groundswell of support to change the law so that you could sell arms to Ukraine.

What would be one story you might pitch that might help your cause and might get South Koreans to want to supply arms to the Ukraine.

You're suggesting that the North Koreans in Russia slash Ukraine is merely a ploy to be able to change the law.

It could be.

I'm not saying it is, who knows?

But if you're kind of wondering why the hell would South Korea make up stories about North Korea being in Russia?

Well, maybe because it's true.

Maybe because it's true, but also maybe because people there want to sell arms.

And, and this would be that the.

North Koreans supplying weapons to Russia would be enough.

Well, why don't add A few troops to the story.

So, I mean, don't forget a lot of these proxy wars are very much.

Let's see how our armaments do against their armaments.

Yes, and Vietnam was very much Russia and the US testing out their weapon systems.

Yeah.

So the chat room says long bow, Trev.

Yeah, well, we know why the Ukraine would say it, because they want more Western help.

So if they're gathering in more enemies, they're likely to get more allies.

And.

And now we know why South Korea might do it.

I'm not saying they did, but if you.

Stranger things have happened.

An example being the President declaring martial law and trying to, you know, effectively cancel parliament.

So that would be a stranger story, John, than the one I've just outlined.

It definitely is a very strange story.

Yeah.

And then Joe, it took him a week to.

To impeach the guy like the Undernard and his own.

His own party basically were supporting him and refusing to impeach him for a while.

So he.

You're stroking him.

Shouldn't it be a white.

A white cat, Joe, that you're stroking?

I don't have a white cat.

Yeah, but you know, with your baldy head and.

Yeah, he suddenly wanted attention.

Yeah, fair enough said.

Enough talk from Trevor about possible North Korean.

The Ukraine.

Yes.

Yeah.

So, yeah, think about that one when it comes to South Korea, North Korea and troops.

Feedback from a patron, Mark.

He said he's just finished the Putin book.

He said, very interesting, but was disappointed with the obvious bias.

This was the one I recommended.

He says that the author spent a fair amount of coverage regarding the Russiagate scandal, but from my understanding, this has been completely debunked.

Also, he covered the atrocities done by Russian forces, but not a single word regarding the same of Ukrainian forces.

Poor form, in my opinion.

And he says, Trevor, have you seen the Joe Rogan interview with Mike Benz?

Amazing detail regarding the black ops of the CIA, State Department, etc.

Worth a look.

And Scott should watch it too.

That was remark.

So problem with Joe Rogan is he just allows conspiracy theorists on to spout bullshit.

Yeah.

So unfortunately, I don't know that anybody he has on I can necessarily trust.

Yes.

Yep.

You'd have to look at the credentials of whoever Mike Benz is, so.

But who knows?

I mean, he does occasionally get some good people.

Get a lot of good, but it was always hit miss, and it seems to be more miss than hit these days, which is why I gave up on him.

Joe, we need to talk about Peter Dutton and the opposition's nuclear plan somewhere.

Yeah, somewhere I saw a tweet that said if God had wanted us to have renewable energy, he would have put a giant thermonuclear furnace in the sky.

Yeah.

So yeah, doesn't came costings are a joke but it's, it's, it's, it, it's from their consultants, Frontier Economics.

Joe, they're consultants who were given a brief, weren't they?

Like to see what the brief was.

I had a look at Frontier Economics a couple of weeks ago for some other reason they came across and just, you know, a small little consultancy group that claims to be experts in the energy field because I think one of the directors used to work for one of the energy companies of some sort and some just literally a two bit organization operating, who knows, could easily be from a shed or their mother's basement.

Knocking shack on, was it Kangaroo Island?

Yes.

Knocking together a few spreadsheets.

Yeah.

And dismissing the CSIRO's calculations.

Would you like us to write in this report that we're writing for you?

And, and one of the things was that they, one of the reasons why their costs were lower was they just assumed that we would need less energy than what the energy experts have said we'll need.

So that wasn't then assuming that they didn't need to build transmission lines.

Yes, but people have said even if they're building it at the existing coal power plants, you still need to have the coal power plants running whilst you build nuclear and therefore you're going to have to run dual power lines anyway.

Yeah, but Joe, you know, I know that I could be talking to the boomers that I regularly come across and I know that they will say oh well, opposition's come out and experts are saying that nuclear is actually the cheaper option.

And you know, okay, the other guys say that it's not but you know, this is all up for grabs now.

It's not really, you know, one side says this, one side says that who really knows where the answer, where the truth lies and but yeah, whenever you.

Find us a fact that you disagree with, you find an expert to find a convenient alternative fact.

And now the water is muddied and you can pick and choose whichever one is convenient to you.

I know that's the world we live in today Joe.

It's incredibly frustrating that the credentials of these people are not weighed up.

No two bit Frontier Economics on the one hand and not only CSIRO but a whole bunch of other international groups have been looking at these costings and all of the other guys are more or less on the same page when it comes to these costings.

And just this shitty Peter Dutton opposition comes out and says, oh, here are our figures a week before Christmas on a half page know, scribbled on the back of an envelope with a thumbnail dipped in tar.

And this is the same group who, who voted against the Voice for the reason of not enough detail providing such a shitty piece of policy.

Yeah, and you know, it's quite transparent that there are only two reasons for this nuclear One is to wedge the Labour Party on despite it not actually being viable.

Is there any way?

There's no wedging can happen here for the Labour Party?

There's no wedge.

It's just, you know, we've got a policy that's better than their policy.

Our policy is to stick our head in the sand and carry on burning fault of coal for the next 50 years.

Yeah, I don't see the wedge on this one.

There isn't.

Well, there isn't a competing group against another competing group.

Okay, But I mean it's very much.

Hey, you've got a shitty energy policy and ours is brilliant.

Yes.

In the chat room, Julia's got a link to.

Let's hope the Gen Z and Millennials will save us.

This is an ABC article, the title of which is election 2025 Gen Z millennial outnumber Baby Boomers.

So yeah, we'll see what happens with that.

I just need to get my chat up here so I can scroll through it.

Yeah, I missed much.

Let me just go back.

Oh, Don, why can't we just replace wars with tickle fights?

You're right, Joe.

Oh, no good on you, Don.

That's a good one.

It's better than the longbow Trev from John.

Anyway.

Yeah, John says maybe the wedges, the libs have a plan and the left don't.

Yeah, well, the left do.

The left have renewables?

Yes, I've seen that.

The Burdican Pumped Hydro plan, isn't it the Burken.

Yes, they're offering the land back to the original vendors because the new Queensland.

State government has canned it.

Yes, but one of the original landowners has said, Look, 90% of the hydrological work has been done.

Basically, if labor get back into power, I can't see that this isn't going to be restarted.

Really?

Yeah.

So why would I buy the land back?

Ah, haven't heard that.

Where'd you see that?

I think an ABC article.

Right.

Do you know, I.

I get very little from ABC online news anymore.

I just find it so lame.

The stories that are There they infuriate me.

Even the.

And the Guardian as well, saying it.

Could have been the Courier Fail.

Sometimes I get free articles right through Apple News.

Anyway, that's an interesting one because I think.

So.

Yeah.

A number of people were buying the land back or saying that they were going to if the price was right.

Yes.

But a number of other people have said there's too many question marks about labor coming back in and restarting at all.

Yep.

Okay.

That was the Dutton nuclear plan.

Calling it a plan is.

Yes.

Disinformation itself.

You know, the incredible part of it, of it, of course, Joe, is it just relies on the government to do everything.

This is, you know, the liberal.

The national is supposed to be the.

The party of free enterprise.

And.

Well, talking about the small government, have you seen the fact that Christopher Lee has banned any talk of abortion for the next four years?

Yes, yes.

Which, you know, sure, it kicks the can down the road, but people are saying if he goes to the next election going, well, of course we managed to.

Not I, I kept my promise.

We.

We didn't repeal abortion.

Yes.

But people are saying, well, that's just a sign that the crazies are in Parliament and we'll be chomping at the bit at the next election to get their chance.

Yeah.

So he, he quickly passed a motion through the parliament to the effect of this.

Parliament will not talk about abortion laws.

Yeah.

And that stopped the Cata group from bringing forward emotion.

So.

So, yeah.

Extraordinary.

Yeah.

For the party of small government.

Yes.

And democracy.

Isn't it marvelous, the democracy that we've got going here?

Yeah, absolutely.

Synagogue attack, Joe.

So in Melbourne, there was a firebombing.

There was a.

Okay.

It was actually a bombing.

I know there was a fire.

Well, a fire.

I've just got a headline here.

Firebombing of Melbourne Synagogue.

Right.

Yeah.

So I don't know.

Anyway, it was some sort of incendiary type operation.

Well, I, of course, dear listener, on your behalf, read the Courier Mail.

I'm not going to add the Australian to it unless five more patrons come on board because the cost of that will just annoy me too much.

But the outrage in the Murdoch press over Albanese's failure to condemn the attack as a terrorist attack and to demand a special task force be formed to combat antisemitism and basically saying extremely poor form by Albanese, even though as soon as the event happened, he said, well, that's not good.

We don't want this happening.

Of course I stand with all Australians in deploring what's just happened, you know, but because.

Cause he didn't declare it as a anti Semitic terrorist attack quickly enough.

They were just going for him in the Murdoch papers, painting him out to be weak on terrorism, weak on anti Semitism, a failure for Australia and should be booted out as quickly as possible, like.

Well, if Dustin gets in power, he's going to have armed guards at every synagogue.

Yeah.

You honestly can't overstate the vitriol that was directed at Albanese.

So there's never any point in pandering to the Murdoch press on any issue because eventually at some point they will find the slightest in their mind failure and beat it up out of all proportion.

Now, I think Albanese is actually, you know, very pro Israel and unfortunately it's not because he's scared of Murdoch that he's been making the bad decisions he's been making.

But in any event, they turn on you quick whenever they get the slightest opportunity.

So yeah, that was what was going on in the Murdoch press, Joe.

It was an Orthodox synagogue and Orthodox Jews are usually anti Zionist.

So whoever firebombed the synagogue, if they were doing it as a protest against Israel's actions in Gaza, they probably got the wrong synagogue because that's probably a synagogue that's against the Zionist movement as an Orthodox synagogue synagogue.

I did just hear about an attack in the US on some.

I can't remember what the name was.

Anyway, it was something that sounded Jewish, but actually it was an anti Semitic hate group that was attacked because these people thought it was Jewish.

Oh really?

Yeah, they read the sign too quickly and thought, is that right?

Hey, before, before I forget speaking, when you said attack in the us, the other one was the attack on the CEO of the medical insurance company.

Yes.

So, dear listener, there was footage, CCTV footage of the attacker shooting the CEO of a medical insurance company and he was on the run for a few days and basically one of the things to come out of this was memes and comments and stuff on the Internet of people supporting the attacker because they saw it as a fight against outlandish.

There were memes like lead poisoning is a pre existing condition.

Yes.

And my thoughts and prayers are out of network or not in my plan.

Right, Yep, yep.

Because this particular insurance company was known for denying 30% of all health claims.

Yes.

They were probably the worst of the large insurers in terms of.

Of terrible customer service, but quite just an interesting social phenomena, Joe, of a CEO being assassinated and a public response that was kind of sympathetic to the.

Assassin and So I saw somebody on LinkedIn posting, why are we celebrating this murderer?

Our thoughts should be with this hero of the.

You know, he rose from nothing.

He, he had a working class background and he was the lead CEO of this company and he turned the fortunes of this company around and people were going, you can be against the murder whilst recognizing that this man was a piece of shit who is probably responsible for 20 or 30,000 people dying through lack of healthcare.

And I saw another article that said, you know, the fact that the news is being forced to try and make this man not a monster is a recognition of, you know, we should be changing the conversation to this man was killed.

Yes, that's a shame.

But he has blood on his hands and maybe we should have some sympathy for his victims.

It will be interesting to see if this is an ongoing trend of when.

The gap becomes large enough between the rich and poor, the guillotines come out.

And I was wondering how long it would take and maybe this is the first sign of it.

Yeah, could be a very interesting moment historically for that sort of thing.

So.

So, yeah, back to the synagogue.

There's actually an interesting article by our friend Oscar Grenfell from the Socialist Equality Party.

I subscribe to their newsletter or whatever it is.

I think they're part of my RSS feed.

So.

And what did he say?

Let me just.

Oh, because the other thing, when that firebombing occurred, Netanyahu was commenting about it.

So a firebombing of a synagogue in Australia, and you would have thought Benjamin Netanyahu was enough on his plate without the need to comment.

But I think, I think the firebombing of a synagogue anywhere is going to get the attention of a Israeli prime minister.

He said, I expect the state authorities to use their full weight to prevent such anti Semitic acts in the future.

And then the Israeli leader proceeded to say, unfortunately, it is impossible to separate this reprehensible act from the extreme anti Israeli position of the labor government in Australia.

Netanyahu declared, among Labor's attacks on Israel, he cited.

This is.

Netanyahu cited Labor's scandalous decision to support the UN resolution calling on Israel to bring an end to its unlawful presence in the occupied Palestinian territory as rapidly as possible.

So that was one of the anti Semitism.

Yes.

So that was Netanyahu having a go at Australia.

And as Oscar says, Netanyahu's tirade has largely set the terms of the official discussion in Australia with the Liberal National Coalition taking up his position.

So, yes, Dutton fully agreed with what Netanyahu was saying, not a single labor minister has criticised the fascist Israeli leader's statement.

That's Oscar's words there.

But, yeah, like Joe, some Labor ministers or a prime minister with a bit of guts sort of just stood up and said, off.

Said, said, BB's been smoking something.

Yes.

And ridiculed and lambasted him.

But no.

Softly, softly.

Yeah, I know, yeah.

Dutton has denounced labor as soft on anti Semitism.

And at a press conference, Dutton announced that a coalition government would establish an antisemitism task force bringing together the Australian Federal Police, the domestic political spy agency ASIO and other state agencies.

And basically, Albanese called the act eventually an act of terrorism and took up Dutton's demand for an antisemitism task force.

I don't know.

Is it an act of terrorism?

Is it just something else?

Yeah, I'd like to see some, you know, intelligence saying that it was actually a terrorist act.

I mean, it probably is, yeah.

People hate Jews.

That's a sad thing.

But, yeah, it might have been.

I don't know, that the.

The rabbi had gambling debts that needed to be paid off.

It could be something totally unrelated to the fact that they were Jewish.

So they've kind of preempted what a investigation should find.

Absolutely, yeah.

Yeah.

By declaring it a terrorist act without knowing what's going on, who or why.

Yeah, true, yeah.

In a rare breach of the official campaign, ABC commentator Laura Tingle noted the very different treatment by our politicians of Muslim communities subject to very similar attacks over the past 10 years.

A 2021 study of 75 mosques across Australia by Charles Sturt University found that over half of participating mosques or worshippers at them had experienced targeted violence between 2014 and 2019.

In January, a homemade bomb was placed in a car outside a home in Sydney that flew the Palestinian flag.

David Wise, a Zionist, was later charged and convicted.

So, basically, there's been a number of attacks on Muslim community infrastructure and nowhere near the same reaction.

Demanded double standards.

Hypocrisy.

Right.

Because we're a Judeo, Judeo Christian nation, isn't it?

Yeah, yeah.

And you tell people that the phrase Judeo Christian only came up in the Howard years.

Didn't exist before that.

Yeah.

It's relatively recent.

Yeah.

Because the Christians hated the Jews for so long.

Because the Jews murdered Christ.

Yes.

And Papua New guinea football deal.

So a $600 million deal where the Australian government's providing money so the Papua New guinea can have an NRL team, but the deal has a catch.

So it comes with a China escape clause.

That allows Australia to terminate the deal without giving a reason until 2035.

Basically, if the PNG government gets too close to the Chinese government in terms of deals that we don't like.

Joe, I find this extraordinary that we would provide money for a football team.

Don't worry about hospitals, education, housing, food, clothing.

Football.

Footy is important.

Footy is like religion.

It takes the poor people's mind off them being poor.

An opiate for the masses.

Yeah, yeah.

David Shoebridge, Greens senator, who I quite like, says, I'm in Port Moresby right now.

And it's true, people love nrl.

They really love it.

But no one has told me they want 600 million spent on rugby league.

They've been telling me about how hard it is to get a job, see a doctor and get an education.

Best summary I got was waste, waste.

This honestly looks like something scomo would have cooked up.

And it was Albanese and Labor.

My God, this has been a hard year.

Dear listener, this has been a tough year.

A Labor government that has been so disappointing.

And now we've got an LMP government in Queensland.

LMP government in Queensland.

And very, very soon we'll have Trump government in the U.S.

yes.

We've got the Europeans just rolling over to give the Americans whatever they want.

And the place is a mess.

It's so difficult.

You can't even talk to your friends about these issues because they're so full of propaganda that you just can't even get to the starting gate without shifting the world beneath them.

Ah, it's tough.

Oh, Joe Biden, I think we mentioned.

Yes, we did he pardon par his son because Scott was surprised by that.

He's now pardoned a whole bunch of other people.

Yeah, one of the people who had their sentence commuted by Biden today was the Kids for Cash judges.

So these are the judges.

So here it is.

Former Luzerne County Judge Michael T.

Conahan, who gained notoriety for wrongfully imprisoning juveniles in the Kids for cash scandal, is one of nearly 1500 inmates who sentences President Joe Biden commuted Thursday.

Conahan, 72, was convicted along with former judge Mark A.

Sia Varella of funneling juvenile defendants into two private for profit decision detention centers in exchange for $2.1 million in kickbacks.

Judges who wrongfully sent kids to jail in order to get kickbacks from a private prison had their sentences commuted by Joe Biden.

So the right wing media were going, well, you see, it's all because they're all grifters and he's a grifter and he empathizes with them.

The left wing have been saying, these people have made true grounds in their rehabilitation and they're reintegrating into society.

That they are sorry for what they did.

Yes.

And that really keeping them in prison anymore is not serving any purpose.

Yes.

And John's comment was about the Bali Nine.

I think they have spent more than enough time in jail for drug offenses and happy to see them come back.

And I was interested to see them saying, effectively, there is no treaty that allows for them.

There is no law that allows for them to carry on serving the rest of their sentence in Australia.

And therefore, if they come back to Australia, they'll come back as free men.

That's my understanding.

And the Indonesian government have accepted that.

But I understand that the Indonesian populace were very unhappy with Chappelle Corby.

Yes.

Being released early, and they felt that she had basically flouted their drug laws and then stuck two fingers up at them.

Right.

Because she was filmed after being released drinking a beer.

Right.

Yep.

And it was just.

Yeah, it was very much, you come over here, you break our laws and expect to be treated in a Western way.

So I don't.

I don't know how well that will do for our relationship with Indonesia.

Yeah.

I don't know, but I just think the punishment.

Far out.

Well, it weighs the crime.

So good luck to them to get out of there.

That's what I can say.

I mean, they.

It's not like they were innocent people.

They were involved in smuggling drugs.

Yep.

They're lucky not to have received the death penalty.

Yep.

And you can only hope they keep their noses clean and don't embarrass us in front of Indonesia.

Yeah.

What have we had in the chat room?

Julia said the LNP is government by ALP proxy.

It is.

Is.

Or maybe Murdoch proxy, even.

Julia.

So.

So.

So, yeah, Murdoch's in government by ALP proxy.

Almost.

John says, elbows.

Just deflecting.

Allison says, I can't imagine what it's like to need prior approval for treatments from health insurance companies.

Yeah.

I mean, some chronic health care forums.

Yeah.

And 90 of the posts are American just complaining about their insurance.

So.

Yeah.

So good comments in the chat room.

I reckon that done, Joe.

It's been tough.

This has been a tough.

I have found Gaza in particular to be really gutting.

Just the interesting interview with Tim Minchin.

I am Krishnan Guru Murthy, who's a Channel 4 reporter in the UK, has a podcast, and he had Tim mentioned on last week, I think, until Mentioned saying basically he's got off social media because he says, yes, he, he agrees these things are horrible, but he doesn't need them stuck in his face.

There's not a lot he can do himself and he feels that he's unable to look after his kids properly with the depressing news.

And sometimes you have to step away and just concentrate on the things that are in your purview, the things that you do have control over.

If you have a mindset, I wouldn't say a mental condition, but a mindset or a maybe a propensity for depression or something like that, I can get that it is totally dangerous.

Just sort of keep watching that stuff.

I don't think I do have that risk and I just feel like I owe it somehow to not ignore what's going on.

While it's not going to send me crazy, I don't think it's just going to make me.

Well, when I say depressed, not clinically depressed, but just shitty at times.

Yes.

Yeah.

And just a real wake up call of who would have thought that a genocide could be just conducted and documented?

And essentially it can happen.

As far as the mainstream press is concerned, it's not even happening.

And if it is, it's.

It's then twisted as to being something that it's not as a, as a demonstration of the current level of Western propaganda.

It's frightening what's been achieved and makes me question whether we can ever agree on anything.

When I can't even talk to friends and agree on these issues, I think, well, what can we ever agree on anything?

We'll never agree on things we can't agree.

This is a genocide that has to stop.

Yeah.

I mean certainly the, the editing of World News I discovered a long time ago just listening to French media because the news, the World News I was hearing on the French media was very different from the World News I was hearing on the BBC.

Right.

Just completely, you know, conflicts in parts of the world I'd not heard of or at least if I had heard of, you know, they certainly weren't on the news that I was listening to.

Yeah, yeah, well, same.

What's there to say?

We'll be back next year.

I need a break for a few weeks.

I.

Yes, well, that is something.

I actually do need a break from that and just watching that.

So.

So yeah, come back a bit refreshed, kind of somehow thinking need to start writing some stuff down at some point.

But yeah, not sure what the new year will bring.

You'll be around, Joe.

You're not going anywhere.

I'm very round.

Yes.

So you'll be there stroking your black cat, a little finger in the air.

Yeah.

Thanks to everybody who's been listening, especially those who are supporters.

Much appreciated.

Keeps it going.

I mean, the fact that there's no podcast last week and none next week means I'll be running at a loss for sure in terms of all of the subscriptions.

But anyway, overall the things get paid for, so that's okay.

Yeah, we'll be back next week.

Not next week, next year.

Keep an eye on Facebook for notification about when that is, if you're looking to be on the chat.

You know, Joe, I'm almost tossing up next year just going something like Rumble so that I can really let loose.

I feel myself censoring because I'm worried about YouTube and Facebook pulling the pin on what we do.

But hang on, if this is going to be about Palestine, do you honestly think Rumble are going to get let you go uncensored?

I don't know.

Weren't they?

Isn't it the free speech?

Well, yes, but it's only right wing free speech.

Palestine is left wing free speech.

Yeah.

Anyway, I have felt I've had to hold back a bit, so.

All right, we'll be back next week, next year.

We'll see what happens.

Talk to you then.

Bye for now.

And it's a good night from him.

Good night.