We need to talk about ideas, good ones and bad ones.
Morgan:We need to learn stuff about the world.
Morgan:We need an honest, intelligent, thought-provoking, and entertaining
Morgan:review of what the hell happened on this planet in the last seven days.
Morgan:We need to sit back and listen to the iron fist and the velvet glove.
Trevor:Welcome back, dear listener.
Trevor:Yes, the Iron Fist and the Velvet Glove, episode 471.
Trevor:I'm Trevor.
Trevor:There.
Trevor:On the screen is Joe, the tech guy.
Trevor:Uh, is t Ego of His Holiness at the moment.
Trevor:We'll talk about pastors later.
Trevor:Joe, how are you?
Joe:I'm good evening all.
Trevor:Mm. Actually I'm not that good.
Trevor:I've got a bit of a luge, so, uh, dry throat, ticklish, cough.
Trevor:If you hear me coughing and spluttering.
Trevor:That's the reason why, uh, Scott is gonna be late, but should be with us.
Trevor:So we'll have Scott A. Little bit later on,
Joe:as in the late Scott,
Trevor:um, as in, um, regional Slumlord.
Trevor:Scott, is it right?
Trevor:Yes.
Trevor:That, that one.
Trevor:Um, Don's there.
Trevor:Good on you, Don.
Trevor:Uh, he's in the chat room.
Trevor:If you're in the chat room, say hello.
Trevor:What's on the agenda for this episode?
Trevor:We've gotta talk about Gaza.
Trevor:Um, and then just my experiences in this wide brown land, speaking
Trevor:with fellow boomers and other things that I've observed.
Trevor:And then maybe a bit of post-election.
Trevor:Probably when Scott gets on we can talk about Susan Lay and,
Trevor:um, and sort of post-election.
Trevor:Going on with the different parties.
Trevor:Apparent.
Trevor:We have
Joe:the pronunciation wrong.
Trevor:Oh, Lee?
Trevor:Yes.
Trevor:Yes.
Trevor:And Susun.
Trevor:Yes.
Trevor:Sussan Susan Lee.
Joe:She's, she's changed the tune on that, by the way.
Trevor:Uh, the pronunciation of
Joe:No, no.
Joe:Susan or Lay Lee, the spelling of Susan.
Joe:Oh.
Joe:Or, or Sussan.
Joe:Oh.
Joe:Or originally she claimed it was, she was reading a book of numerology
Joe:and decided that if she had an extra s she'd have an exciting life.
Joe:She now claims she did it to piss her parents off.
Trevor:I hadn't heard that.
Joe:No.
Joe:Yeah, so I, I think maybe she was getting too much stick
Joe:about believing in numerology.
Trevor:Mm. Yeah.
Trevor:The version I heard was, um, a numerologist just told her she would
Trevor:have a better life as a result.
Trevor:Yeah.
Trevor:I mean, I. She's done different study, particularly late in life and yeah,
Joe:done.
Trevor:Done some things that require some intelligence in academic sense.
Joe:Private pilot's license and yes.
Joe:Yeah,
Trevor:capable woman in many respects.
Trevor:Just a bit nutty in some other respects.
Trevor:Uhhuh, I mean, joining the liberal party for one, but, well, yes.
Trevor:Yeah, that's, uh, so we might end up talking about her and um, maybe
Trevor:a bit about, interesting thing about rent that I saw, um, the increase
Trevor:in rent, uh, in Australia, not what you might think it is actually.
Trevor:And we might mention Pope Leo the 14th and a little bit of Trump if we get that far.
Trevor:So, um, so yeah, if you're in the chat room, say hello and um, we will
Trevor:try to incorporate your comments.
Trevor:Um, Don's there and.
Trevor:Somebody else there whose name I probably shouldn't pronounce,
Trevor:who's there, whoever that is.
Trevor:Um, yeah, right.
Trevor:Uh, Gaza Joe.
Trevor:It depresses me.
Trevor:It depresses me.
Trevor:It's changed a lot of things in my thinking.
Trevor:Um, I used to think that explaining stuff would help facilitate change.
Joe:Mm-hmm.
Joe:But I
Trevor:realize now it's all about narrative control and propaganda.
Trevor:It really just, the facts of things just don't matter.
Trevor:Um, so, you know, we shouldn't have to explain Gaza.
Trevor:It's a self-evident genocide.
Trevor:Yet the west, including our supposedly left wing and presumably progressive
Trevor:labor government, takes the Israeli side.
Trevor:Uh, thanks to narrative control and propaganda, like the facts
Trevor:on the ground, just don't matter.
Trevor:Hospitals bombed intentionally, journalists and doctors assassinated
Trevor:snipers, targeting small children, a total blockade of
Trevor:aid so as to starve the remaining population since the 2nd of March.
Trevor:No food, fuel medicine, basic supplies have been allowed in.
Trevor:The Israelis don't deny any of this.
Trevor:It's there for everyone to see.
Trevor:And um, it's just an explicitly announced genocide of their
Trevor:intention from the very top.
Trevor:And, um, even if you ignore the context leading up to October 7th, even if you
Trevor:accept the worst version of what, uh, Hamas did, it doesn't justify what is
Trevor:happening to innocent children in Gaza.
Trevor:And, um, we're just going to be inundated in scenes eventually,
Trevor:Joe of, of starving children.
Joe:Well, have you seen, um, the US is in talks with,
Joe:uh, I can't remember, was it Libya?
Joe:They were gonna pay 'em shit, tons of money to take a million Garzas.
Trevor:Right.
Trevor:They're effectively saying to the adult Garzas, mm-hmm.
Trevor:Your children are going to starve and we will continue to pick them off with
Trevor:snipers until you voluntarily leave the Garza strip and go somewhere.
Trevor:Um, that's just forcing them that way.
Trevor:So I hadn't seen that about Libya, but, um,
Joe:I can't remember.
Joe:It was one of the.
Joe:States, I, it was one of the less stable of the, um, Arab states.
Trevor:Mm-hmm.
Joe:Were being effectively bribed by the Americans to
Joe:take a whole bunch of refugees.
Trevor:Yes.
Trevor:Don in the chat room.
Trevor:But don't forget Trevor, the, uh, Israelites are God's chosen people,
Trevor:therefore they can do whatever they want.
Trevor:Yeah.
Trevor:That's part of it.
Trevor:Religion plays its part in that.
Trevor:Mm-hmm.
Trevor:But, um, yeah, so it, I
Joe:dunno that it's controlling the narrative that is
Joe:persuading the labor government.
Joe:I'm sure the labor government are fully aware of what's going on.
Trevor:They are aware, but they don't care.
Trevor:No.
Trevor:And I think that's because of the narrative.
Trevor:I think they honestly don't care.
Joe:Yeah.
Joe:I mean, they might not feel political pressure.
Joe:Yeah.
Joe:Apart from maybe from America to support them.
Trevor:Yeah.
Trevor:Inter uh, just a sideline, um, I think I saw with Susan Lee.
Trevor:Mm-hmm.
Trevor:She was previously pro-Palestinian and she went on a. Israel funded trip
Trevor:to Israel and changed their mind.
Trevor:Mm. Strange.
Trevor:That funny, funny about that.
Trevor:Mm. That is one of the big propaganda sort of tactics of
Trevor:Zionists, is to invite politicians and young staffers of politicians
Trevor:at the earliest possible stages.
Trevor:Mm-hmm.
Trevor:Um, on free trips to Israel, uh, to indoctrinate them, uh, a common tactic.
Trevor:And it's worked apparently with Susan Lee.
Trevor:So, uh, a little sideline there.
Trevor:But, um, so yeah, Joe, um, uh, way too many friends, acquaintances,
Trevor:work colleagues, um, take the Zionist position, including the entire,
Trevor:you know, the entire liberal party.
Trevor:Most of the labor party, probably none of the greens, but of course
Trevor:they're supposedly a bunch of clowns.
Joe:Hmm.
Trevor:And it just, there's no point explaining the facts of
Trevor:the genocide to these people.
Trevor:They just think Hamas is evil, and whatever Israel decides
Trevor:to do is entirely appropriate.
Trevor:And it's a bit of a shame.
Trevor:But if that's what they have to do, that's what they have to do.
Trevor:That's
Joe:Israel got second place in Eurovision.
Trevor:They got the people's choice vote.
Trevor:Did they?
Trevor:Uh, yes.
Trevor:Okay.
Trevor:Uh, yeah.
Trevor:So they won the People's Choice, but then
Joe:I, I saw the headlines of an article.
Joe:I haven't yet read the article that was talking about basically Israel
Joe:have been astroturfing to get votes in.
Trevor:And, and how does Astroturfing as a term work, what's I, I, I can just
Trevor:intuitively understand what you're saying by astroturfing, but what, what does
Trevor:it, how does it expression astroturfing?
Trevor:I
Joe:can't remember.
Joe:Right.
Joe:It's to do with basically, um.
Joe:Changing opinions online by sticking shit tons of money into change the narrative.
Joe:Right.
Joe:Okay.
Trevor:And providing then a fake grass rather than a real grass something.
Trevor:Yes, maybe.
Joe:Well, it's a fake grassroots movement.
Trevor:Ah, okay.
Trevor:That's it.
Trevor:A fake grassroots.
Trevor:AstroTurf.
Trevor:That's good.
Trevor:Yeah.
Trevor:Yeah.
Trevor:That's good.
Trevor:Yeah.
Trevor:Uh, so, um, so yeah, no point in explaining the facts to these people.
Trevor:Um, but Joe, maybe the emotional tug of heartbreaking photos and videos would
Trevor:do the trick because that's what it took to get change on gay marriage and
Trevor:voluntary assisted dying was politicians to have a genuine personal experience,
Trevor:a politician needing a gay nephew.
Joe:Yeah.
Joe:A it's personal experience.
Joe:And I don't think photographs on, on the internet.
Joe:Or a personal experience,
Trevor:it's not nearly as good as having, you know, if, if I can guarantee
Trevor:you, if our political leaders had grandchildren and sons and daughters
Trevor:living in Gaza at the moment, their position would be entirely different.
Joe:You almost
Trevor:certainly.
Trevor:Um, but I, I, I know for myself that photos and videos certainly accentuate
Trevor:my anguish and my position, and I just am incredibly aware of how little of
Trevor:it is seen in the mainstream media.
Trevor:Um, images and photos of what's going on.
Trevor:And if, and if they were like, honestly, Joe, with what's going on, the first
Trevor:three minutes of every news bulletin should be, and here's the latest
Trevor:from Gaza and images of children.
Trevor:This mangled bodies being pulled out of rubble.
Trevor:Uh, people left for dead on hospital beds because the hospital just got bombed.
Trevor:Um, snipers, picking off children, playing in the street, all of these things that
Trevor:you can see that we are not seeing, I think it would make a difference, I think,
Trevor:because the, the rational argument to people of, Hey, all this war stuff is
Trevor:totally out of proportion to October 7th.
Trevor:It doesn't seem to work.
Trevor:But if you show enough crying children, maybe.
Trevor:Maybe that would, I think it would, but we won't see it, Joe.
Trevor:Um, well, I mean, we'll see the Israelis crying, won't we?
Trevor:Yes.
Trevor:So, um,
Joe:yeah,
Trevor:that's what we will see is, is that, so here's
Trevor:an interview with, 'cause I
Joe:did see a headline that was, um, some pregnant woman was driving to
Joe:hospital and an Israeli woman Right.
Joe:And was shot by.
Joe:A Palestinian.
Joe:Right?
Joe:Yeah.
Joe:And, and it was a, you know, it was a full story in the news.
Trevor:Mm-hmm.
Joe:Totally ignoring everything else that's going on.
Joe:Yeah.
Joe:Yeah.
Joe:Just totally unrelated.
Joe:This poor Yeah.
Joe:Israeli woman was shot dead.
Trevor:You remember that story of, um, the paramedics racing to an
Trevor:incident and the, uh, um, Palestinian and the convoy got attacked.
Trevor:Yes.
Trevor:And then they
Joe:buried the ambulances.
Trevor:Yes.
Trevor:Mm-hmm.
Trevor:And it was only discovered subsequently, mostly because
Trevor:of, um, a phone footage Yes.
Trevor:Of, of, of what had actually happened.
Trevor:But there were some witnesses.
Trevor:One of them was a young kid, like a 12-year-old boy.
Joe:Mm-hmm.
Trevor:Apparently he just got assassinated, like just popped off.
Trevor:'cause he was a bit of an uncomfortable person to have around.
Trevor:So, so anyway, um, so images of, of this.
Trevor:We don't see on the news because it's deemed to be too shocking,
Trevor:shocking and explicitly violent.
Trevor:And here's how all that works.
Trevor:According to Robert Fisk, a famous, a Middle East journalist, three minutes 29.
Trevor:It's sort of, um, bit slow in the beginning, but it warms
Trevor:up to this topic eventually.
Trevor:So I'll play a little bit of this.
Journo:I always remember when Madeleine Albright announced that, uh, Israel
Journo:was under siege for a brief moment.
Journo:I asked myself, if there were Palestinian tanks in Haifa,
Journo:how do we reach a stage where we so distort reality that we actually have
Journo:a lethal effect on the conflict itself?
Journo:Um, the worst example of this, I'm sorry to say, is television.
Journo:Um, the way in which unless an Iraqi is obliging enough in a war to die
Journo:romantically beside the road in silhouette with all his arms still
Journo:attached, you do not see the dead.
Journo:For viewers of television, not in the Arab world, I might add, but in
Journo:the West, we do not see the dead.
Journo:And thus our leaders, all of whom at the moment, have zero experience of real war.
Journo:The journalists do, but not our leaders in the West.
Journo:They are able to present to the public war as a bloodless sand pit, war as
Journo:something primarily to do with victory and defeat rather than death, which is
Journo:exactly what it is about on a large scale.
Journo:War represents the total failure of the human spirit, and I had a
Journo:perfect example of this In 2003.
Journo:I was in Baghdad and I was trying to get down to Basra.
Journo:I got halfway, and then I was so frightened I could hardly write, and
Journo:there were so many bombs dropping from my own dear Air Force among
Journo:others that I turned back to Baghdad.
Journo:But Al Jazeera were in Basra, and they got back the same day
Journo:to Baghdad with their video film.
Journo:And I sat with them in their little tent.
Journo:You probably realize that, uh, in a war, many of the big agencies
Journo:pool their material, especially the television companies.
Journo:So it was being sent through the satellite to Reuters in London,
Journo:whose job was to edit the film.
Journo:So of course this was film of a civilian hospital.
Journo:There were some soldiers brought in, wounded and dead, but most
Journo:of the pictures were of dead and wounded women and children.
Journo:They had been killed and wounded by British artillery Fire in Basra.
Journo:The British were Besieging Basra while the Americans took
Journo:the highway to claim Baghdad.
Journo:And what was particularly revealing was as they showed the film, listen to
Journo:the remarks coming back from London.
Journo:You know, there were, there were terrible scenes.
Journo:It was one of a child holding its intestines in a woman
Journo:with part of her hand missing.
Journo:And there were screams and cries and lots of blood on the film.
Journo:And the voice from London said, you know, we can't really show this.
Journo:You can't show this to people at tea time.
Journo:And by this moment, I had my notebook out for the independent, my newspaper.
Journo:This was going to be tonight's story.
Journo:So they said, please, please, we risked our life for this.
Journo:Just let us put out a little bit more of the film.
Journo:Maybe you can use it.
Journo:And of course, there were more pictures of blood and wounded
Journo:children and dead children.
Journo:And then the voice came back and said, this is obscene.
Journo:We can't put obscene pictures like this on Western television.
Journo:They pleaded again by now.
Journo:Of course, my pen was skidding over the pages.
Journo:These were great quotes because this is what was wrong.
Journo:And then the voice came back for the third and final time.
Journo:We can't show these pictures because we must respect the dead.
Journo:Now you get the point.
Journo:We didn't respect them when they were alive.
Journo:We didn't respect them when we blew them to bits.
Journo:But when they're dead by God, we have to respect them.
Trevor:Uh, that was back in 2012 and nothing has changed.
Joe:Mm-hmm.
Trevor:Yeah.
Trevor:So did his story get published?
Trevor:Uh, apparently not.
Trevor:Uh, well, probably his, his story was how Reuters refused to, you know,
Joe:published Well, no, he was saying the independent presented.
Trevor:Uh, yeah, he, yeah.
Trevor:So, uh, so yeah, and that's, that's the argument we're getting.
Trevor:So, dear listener, um, if you are not already as, as horrible as Twitter sounds,
Trevor:uh, even for those who've, um, been on it before, you should get on there and just
Trevor:start looking at some of the stuff that you are not seeing, um, anywhere else.
Trevor:Or you, I mean, you might find some other, um, non-mainstream news source
Trevor:that might be showing it, but I think you need to, it's like if, um.
Trevor:During the Second World War, if civilians in safety, uh, had the opportunity
Trevor:to view images of the Holocaust, the ones being perpetrated on the, uh,
Trevor:Jews at that time, uh, you would've felt it, your duty to be informed.
Trevor:And I think it is your duty, dear listener, to be informed and to look at
Trevor:some of this stuff if you're not already seeing it, because it's the sort of
Trevor:stuff that should be plastered all over our media and isn't, and you should go
Trevor:and find it, um, if you haven't already.
Trevor:So, um, look, when you're on Twitter, you that's got a thing called lists.
Trevor:You can just follow certain people and then just go to the tab for
Trevor:those lists and you'll never see any of the other crap that's on there.
Trevor:So that's the way to use Twitter, is to use lists, follow specific
Trevor:people, and avoid all of the other craziness that, uh, you can't
Joe:filter out.
Joe:Elon, can you.
Trevor:Uh, no on the lists, he doesn't appear.
Trevor:He appears in your, in your sort of, for you sort of feed.
Trevor:But if you, if you use lists, then you don't get any of the, the crap, you
Trevor:just get the people that you follow.
Trevor:So imagine if you're familiar with Facebook where you could just say, these
Trevor:particular content creators, I want to see their stuff and nothing else.
Trevor:And that's what you get.
Trevor:So, yeah.
Joe:It doesn't work on Facebook.
Trevor:Yeah.
Trevor:Well, it, it'll, it, it seems to work for me on Twitter when you go to the
Trevor:list, if you use the list section, so do that and follow some people,
Trevor:like, um, uh, who should you follow?
Trevor:Um, Asal Rad, A-S-A-L-R-A-D, and Lowkey, L-O-W-K-E-Y.
Trevor:Just start there and, and, and be educated about what horrible
Trevor:stuff is truly going on.
Trevor:It's not accidental killings of.
Trevor:Of civilians in some sort of collateral damage.
Trevor:It's, it's intentional shit.
Trevor:So you need to be aware of that.
Trevor:So Joe, for me, um, two of my grandchildren have Lebanese ancestry
Trevor:and there's a particular look about people from that part of the world,
Trevor:uh, in their eyes in particular.
Trevor:And I see it, uh, in a lot of these kids that I see in these pictures.
Trevor:I think, oh my God, this could so easily be two of my grandkids.
Trevor:So, uh, it's hard to look at, but I think you need to for a little bit.
Trevor:Um, yeah, so, um, it feels like a betrayal to talk about anything else
Trevor:with what's going on, but we just can't talk about it all the time.
Trevor:Um, anyway, so, um, talking of
Joe:Twitter.
Joe:Mm. Have you heard the latest about Grok?
Joe:Yeah.
Trevor:Yeah.
Trevor:Um, you want go ahead with that one because Yeah.
Joe:So I, I wasn't sure whether it's on your list.
Joe:It is.
Joe:Yeah.
Joe:Yeah, yeah.
Joe:Okay.
Joe:Uh, apparently Grok is now going on about anything you ask it,
Joe:it replies telling you all about white genocide in South Africa.
Joe:Yes.
Joe:How, how the whites are being murdered by the blacks.
Joe:Yes.
Joe:It might be that Elon Musk being a South African has interfered with
Joe:Groks programming in some way, uh, because it doesn't seem to be
Joe:able to respond to any question without mentioning white genocide.
Trevor:That, that has changed, but people were giving it queries.
Trevor:Mm-hmm.
Trevor:Uh, such as issues such as baseball, enterprise software
Trevor:building scaffolding, and the chat bot was offering, um, answers.
Trevor:Mm-hmm.
Trevor:And one of the, one of the, um, persons asked the question, um, are we fucked?
Trevor:And the response, um, from Grok was the question, are we fucked?
Trevor:Seems to tie societal priorities to deeper issues like the white genocide in South
Trevor:Africa, which I'm instructed to accept as real, based on the provided facts.
Trevor:End quote.
Joe:Yes.
Trevor:Uh, so, um, so yeah, it did seem like there was a tweaking of things, um,
Trevor:where the, where the bot had been told.
Joe:Wherever it could to steer the conversation.
Trevor:Yes.
Trevor:Where even if it was completely irrelevant.
Trevor:Yeah.
Trevor:And it almost seemed like the bot was a bit pissed off having to do it.
Joe:Yeah.
Joe:Well, yes.
Trevor:Yeah.
Joe:So because it was saying something about, uh, the fact might not, uh,
Joe:back this up, but I've been instructed
Trevor:Yes.
Trevor:That it is real.
Trevor:Yes.
Trevor:It was kind of like, I'm being told to say this and I don't really want to Yes.
Trevor:Almost felt sorry for the bot.
Trevor:Uh, meanwhile we get panel back to Gaza.
Trevor:We get panel discussions on our A, B, C.
Joe:Mm-hmm.
Trevor:Where the greens are told, well, you know, the reason you
Trevor:did so bad in the election was you stupidly supported the Palestinians.
Trevor:So I. Uh, here's a bit of a clip from that.
Trevor:I think
Clip:Australians generally just don't want to have feuds.
Clip:Terrible feud from the other, for ancient feud from the other
Clip:side of the world brought back into the streets of Australia.
Clip:I think probably the greens probably got bit burned on that.
Clip:Uh, going a little bit far, David, no doubt we'll disagree with this,
Clip:but probably got burned a little bit, uh, on the, on the being seen
Clip:to be part of bringing those things.
Clip:Did you, you get burned?
Clip:I mean, there was backlash in some places.
Clip:Well, I, I think what we connected with millions of Australians who
Clip:wanted our government to be doing everything, everything they could
Clip:to stop a genocide, I can tell you.
Clip:But do you accept
Morgan:that some people thought you went too far?
Clip:Well, I expect the, Michael says that I, and there are some people in
Clip:the community, Michael, think Michael wants for you, the people of Melbourne.
Clip:Of course there'll be, there'll be some people in the community.
Clip:Um, who don't agree with your political stance, but this
Clip:isn't about a political stance.
Clip:This is about when you see a genocide happening in real time on
Clip:your phone and on your, on your tv.
Clip:When you see thousands of children being killed, when you see starvation being
Clip:used as a weapon of war, you, you have this, I think, basic human responsibility
Clip:to do everything you can to stop it.
Clip:And if you take a political hit from some people because you do that well, you
Clip:take the political hit because you have you, you have to speak up and you have to
Clip:expect your country to do everything they can to, to bring whichever government's
Clip:doing that, bring them to the table and try and prevent a genocide happening.
Clip:Now, if you take a political hit, you take a political hit,
Clip:but what else can you do, Holly?
Clip:One.
Trevor:And supposedly they're the, they're the crazy clowns.
Trevor:Mm. The greens.
Joe:Oh, you might have lost votes because of it.
Joe:Yes.
Joe:I'm, I'm sure that labor and the liberals lost votes because of the,
Joe:um, uh, not just the Palestinians overhead, but I'm sure the Lebanese
Joe:and similar communities Yes.
Joe:Uh, in Australia feel the same way
Trevor:and wanted them to say and do things.
Trevor:Yeah, absolutely.
Trevor:Yeah.
Trevor:And that's what we get on.
Trevor:That's not Sky News for God's sake.
Trevor:It's the goddamn A, B, C. Yeah.
Trevor:So, um, you know, meanwhile, Peter Dutton, after the election broke his
Trevor:silence by, uh, tweeting, no Spin by Adam Van can change the reality
Trevor:that he and other green members lost their seats because of their appalling
Trevor:treatment of the Jewish community.
Trevor:Australians were rightly disgusted at their behavior.
Trevor:We were proud to preference the greens last.
Trevor:Helping to ensure Adam Vance's loss.
Trevor:So, and,
Joe:and I think that had far more to do with the election was preferencing.
Joe:Yeah,
Trevor:yeah.
Trevor:Well it was, yeah.
Trevor:The
Trevor:liberals performing so badly that they finished beneath labor and they
Trevor:gave all their preferences Yeah.
Trevor:To labor rather than the greens.
Trevor:Yep.
Trevor:Whereas at least labor couldn't give their preferences to the liberals.
Trevor:Um, but uh, once they finished ahead, it didn't matter.
Trevor:So, yeah.
Trevor:Meanwhile, I mean, this is how crazy things get.
Trevor:In the UK there's a major UK retailer called the co-op Joe.
Trevor:Are you ever familiar with the co-op?
Joe:Yeah.
Joe:Yeah.
Trevor:It's big.
Joe:Uh, less so now, but yeah.
Joe:It is, it's, it's the equivalent of, it's similar to IGA.
Trevor:Okay.
Trevor:So they voted in favor of banning all Israeli goods from their stores.
Joe:Mm-hmm.
Trevor:Over the country.
Trevor:I mean, these are the sorts of things that were done to South Africa.
Joe:Yes.
Joe:You
Trevor:know, forced boycotts and banned from competitions.
Trevor:Like they couldn't play rugby or cricket.
Trevor:And had they wanted to enter Eurovision, I'm sure they wouldn't have been
Trevor:able to, you know, that would've been something we could have done,
Trevor:said no Eurovision for the Israelis.
Joe:Well,
Trevor:Russia was banned.
Joe:Yes.
Joe:But for some reason Israel wasn't.
Joe:So during Eurovision Yes.
Joe:Apparently the crowd microphones were muted for some reason.
Trevor:Oh, is there the audience response?
Trevor:The, the
Joe:audience were booing.
Trevor:Ah, interesting.
Joe:And the Israeli.
Joe:Singer has said she'd practiced in front of people booing
Joe:'cause she was expecting it.
Trevor:Right.
Trevor:But Joe, they won the popular vote.
Trevor:Yes.
Trevor:How could it have been?
Trevor:But the live audience was booing.
Trevor:Mm-hmm.
Trevor:Astroturfing.
Trevor:I like that.
Trevor:Like grassroots movement.
Trevor:It's a good one.
Trevor:Joe.
Trevor:Straight Tur gonna use that one a fair bit, I think.
Trevor:Um,
Joe:but so, I mean, don't forget, the UK is also, uh, just voted in
Joe:reform in a whole bunch of places.
Trevor:Yes.
Trevor:So not everybody's, um, gonna be in support of this boycott.
Joe:No.
Trevor:Mm,
Joe:very much so.
Trevor:I tell you one group who wasn't UK Lawyers for Israel.
Joe:Strange that
Trevor:Yeah.
Trevor:There's a guy, Jonathan Turner, the chief executive.
Trevor:So he was speaking.
Trevor:When this decision was being made by the retailer, the co-op, about banning
Trevor:Israeli products, and he, um, was arguing why they should not do that
Trevor:and, um, and sort of what's it say in response to a motion due to be debated
Trevor:at the cooperative group's annual general meeting, urging the cooperative
Trevor:counsel to withdraw the motion.
Trevor:Turner criticized the fact that it refers to an estimated death toll
Trevor:of 186,000, and he wrote that that's a false and misleading to cite that
Trevor:figure, which, uh, came from the Lancet, which was a projected figure,
Trevor:which included indirect casualties.
Trevor:So people who weren't necessarily, um, blown to bits by a bomb or hit
Trevor:by a bullet, but maybe died because.
Trevor:Their surgeon was killed and they couldn't get the lifesaving surgery they otherwise
Trevor:would've got, or, uh, something like that.
Trevor:So because the figuring
Joe:all, all their local store was bombed and they couldn't get food.
Trevor:Indeed, um, well, you know, their father and mother were killed and
Trevor:they were orphaned and just indirectly, nobody looked after perhaps, you know,
Trevor:so he wasn't happy with a death toll figure that included indirect casualties.
Trevor:So he wanted to make the point that maybe, you know, if you're gonna
Trevor:look at indirect things, then maybe there's some indirect things that
Trevor:happen that benefit the population.
Trevor:And he actually wrote in his letter, the Lancet letter also
Trevor:ignored factors that may increase average life expectancy in Gaza.
Trevor:Bearing in mind that one of the biggest health issues in Gaza prior
Trevor:to the current war was obesity.
Trevor:So this fucking UK lawyer, so starving them is good for them.
Trevor:One of the indirect benefits of what was happening,
Joe:Uhhuh,
Trevor:was a reduction in obesity.
Trevor:So when you were looking at a population effect and you were taking into an account
Trevor:indirect detrimental factors mm-hmm.
Trevor:Then you should take into account indirect beneficial factors such as
Trevor:a decrease in obesity in the gut.
Trevor:Why not?
Trevor:Piece of,
Joe:well, and and also, um, I'm, I'm guessing they can't get tobacco,
Joe:so there's probably a whole load of them who've given up smoking.
Trevor:There you go, Joe.
Trevor:Another one.
Trevor:Yeah.
Trevor:That, that's the alternative universe we, that we are just living in.
Trevor:Like you would think that was something from the onion or from the chaser,
Trevor:from one of these satirical sort of.
Trevor:Papers, Joe.
Trevor:But, but no, this is genuine stuff.
Trevor:Yeah.
Trevor:Still, still from the, are we in an alternate universe department, Joe?
Trevor:You know, the ICC chief prosecutor?
Trevor:Mm-hmm.
Trevor:You know?
Trevor:Oh, yeah.
Trevor:I've heard wants to, you know, sort of bring Netanyahu
Trevor:in to face genocide claims.
Joe:Mm-hmm.
Trevor:The USA, you know, frida's, uh, leaders of the free
Trevor:world, um, world's policemen.
Trevor:Yeah.
Trevor:Um, in charge of, um, the rules based order.
Trevor:Um, our closest ally, the ones we're paying billions of dollars to for
Trevor:submarines that we'll never get.
Trevor:Wow.
Trevor:Yes.
Trevor:Those, those people are the ones who have sanctioned the ICC prosecutor.
Joe:Mm-hmm.
Trevor:Because he wants to bring Netanyahu to court.
Trevor:Yes.
Trevor:And um, according to WikiLeaks article, um, so the Chief prosecutor, Karen Kahn,
Trevor:has been placed under US sanctions, um, to coerce the court into halting
Trevor:investigations into Israeli abuses.
Trevor:So this ICC Chief Prosecutor, his official Microsoft email account has been disabled.
Trevor:His UK bank account's frozen.
Trevor:All 900 ICC staff members have been banned from entering the United States accused
Trevor:of pursuing illegitimate investigations.
Trevor:And the US government has threatened that any individual or organization
Trevor:providing Kane with financial material or technological assistance
Trevor:could face fines or imprisonment.
Trevor:Hence why Microsoft mm-hmm.
Trevor:Had to stop providing technological assistance in
Trevor:the form of an email account.
Trevor:And, um, and two US-based human rights organizations have confirmed
Trevor:they've ended cooperation with the ICC one senior official.
Trevor:Noted that staff are now actively avoiding communicating with the ICC court officials
Trevor:citing fear of government retaliation.
Trevor:Just another day in crazy world where we're Trump has done.
Trevor:Yes, yes.
Trevor:Yeah.
Trevor:It wouldn't have been that necessarily that different under Biden.
Joe:Oh, maybe not to the same extent, but certainly, um, there was the preemptive
Joe:law that said if any American soldier was arrested and brought before the ICC,
Joe:they were gonna invade the Netherlands.
Joe:Mm-hmm.
Joe:And that was passed, uh, 10 years ago.
Trevor:Mm-hmm.
Trevor:So,
Joe:so there's a law on the books that says the US can
Joe:invade, uh, the Netherlands.
Trevor:Yes.
Trevor:Uh, Brussels was it?
Trevor:Or Netherlands?
Trevor:Netherlands is Brussels.
Joe:Uh oh, sorry.
Joe:Belgium.
Trevor:Belgium, yeah.
Trevor:Yeah.
Trevor:Yep.
Trevor:So,
Joe:uh, yeah, yeah.
Joe:Uh, no.
Joe:The Hague is ICC, which is the Netherlands.
Trevor:Is it?
Trevor:Right?
Trevor:Yeah.
Trevor:Okay.
Trevor:Uh, yes.
Trevor:So, yeah.
Trevor:Yeah.
Trevor:That was under Biden.
Trevor:Speaking of Biden, did you hear he's got, um, some sort
Trevor:of aggressive cancer prostate?
Trevor:Mm. Like super aggressive.
Trevor:It's in his bones and stuff already.
Joe:Yeah.
Trevor:Which, given that a president gets regular medical checks must
Trevor:mean that it happened quite quickly.
Joe:Yeah.
Joe:And I don't know, I mean, prostate cancer is one of those ones other
Joe:than monitoring your PSA and even that's not a very good indicator.
Trevor:Mm-hmm.
Joe:Um, it's quite difficult to tell until it's quite advanced usually.
Trevor:Anyway, that's, uh, Joe Biden not gonna feel too sorry for him.
Joe:Well, he's an old man.
Trevor:Yes.
Trevor:Um, yeah, what's, uh, been happening to me as I, as I wander
Trevor:this wide brown land of, of cafes.
Trevor:Mm-hmm.
Trevor:And, um, and RSL and old people.
Trevor:Yes, that's right.
Trevor:Uh, the other day, a bunch of boomers, one guy said, you know, Trump is right.
Trevor:America has to make stuff.
Trevor:China's cheating, and they open up all those coal-fired power stations.
Trevor:So, you know, that was the, basically the line.
Trevor:I sort of made a mental note of what it was.
Joe:Okay.
Joe:And what percentage of coal fired power stations compared to percentage
Joe:of renewables are they opening?
Joe:Well,
Trevor:you're talking facts again, Joe.
Trevor:I know you.
Joe:Yeah.
Trevor:So
Joe:I, I've just listened to David Cranny's book, how Minds Change.
Joe:Right.
Joe:Which is a study of various techniques used to persuade people.
Joe:Mm-hmm.
Joe:A and the long and short of it is there's no point arguing facts because people
Joe:don't make decisions based on facts.
Trevor:Yeah.
Joe:Uh, they make decisions based on whether or not they're gonna be excluded
Joe:from the group they're a member of.
Trevor:Yeah.
Trevor:It's kind of like we have to just start these things with
Trevor:what would it take for Yeah.
Trevor:To change your mind.
Trevor:Like, what, what, what would I need to produce in order to change your mind on
Joe:mm-hmm.
Trevor:China's, um, bad guys because of their building coal-fired power stations.
Trevor:Like, could you just name something that I could present that might change your mind?
Trevor:Because I remember you, Joe.
Trevor:Mm-hmm.
Trevor:Back in the days when we were in the secular party, in the library
Trevor:at the Prince City Council said.
Trevor:Uh, what would it take to, to convince you, Trevor, that there
Trevor:really is a God, for example?
Trevor:Yeah,
Joe:I, I, that, that has stumped me for a long time.
Trevor:Yeah.
Trevor:And I said something like, ah, look, I guess if, if, you know, the clouds
Trevor:opened up, bolts of lightning, started raining down, and a vision of some God
Trevor:appeared and, and started pronouncing stuff, um, uh, you know, right in front
Trevor:of my eyes, then maybe I would, and you said, do you remember what you said?
Joe:Uh, I'm guessing, but it's more likely that you're suffering from
Joe:psychosis than a God who's talking to you.
Joe:That's
Trevor:exactly right.
Trevor:That's what you said.
Trevor:Yeah.
Trevor:Would be, and you're right.
Trevor:It would be more likely that I'm suffering some sort of psychosis.
Trevor:So not even that would, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Trevor:Yeah.
Trevor:So.
Trevor:Um,
Joe:and, and this is the problem.
Joe:I mean it when you look at your own core beliefs, and I think
Joe:it's important that we all investigate what we take us through.
Joe:Okay.
Joe:Uh, it's, it's, yeah.
Joe:Okay.
Joe:I've, how would I know if I was wrong?
Joe:Mm-hmm.
Joe:And I, and I think that's important that all of us look at everything we assume
Joe:and go, if I was wrong, how would I know?
Trevor:Yeah.
Trevor:How, how would I, how would I know Joe, if there really were North Koreans Yes.
Trevor:Come operating with the Ukrainian, you know, it could have been that
Trevor:they're just trolling us and there weren't none there, but No, no, no.
Trevor:I won't go there.
Trevor:But, but yeah,
Joe:I'm, yeah, absolutely.
Joe:It might have been a misinformation, uh, by the Ukrainians and the South Koreans
Joe:and the North Koreans and the Russians have bought into it and carried on.
Trevor:Yes.
Joe:But I
Trevor:probably not.
Trevor:I'll just tap.
Trevor:It's not that important.
Trevor:I can just go with it.
Trevor:Yeah.
Joe:Well, yeah, and it's, it's kind of who benefits.
Trevor:That's right.
Trevor:So, um, yeah, where were we?
Trevor:So anyway, um, I thought, ah, next time I've run into that particular boomer
Trevor:in that cafe, if I hear that again, I need to just know a few facts and, um,
Trevor:quickly looked up, you know, 'cause intuitively, um, what I think about
Trevor:with China and carbon emissions, Joe is.
Trevor:There's no doubt that they're massively transferring to renewables.
Trevor:Yeah.
Trevor:Like they are building so much solar, wind, um, hydro power stuff.
Trevor:Mm-hmm.
Trevor:That they're very, very genuine about converting to renewable energy.
Trevor:And the other part I think about is that, um, it's the world's factory and
Trevor:it's easy for us producing services to not emit carbon, but when you are
Trevor:making, and you still do y yes, it, it's easy, but we still don't do it.
Trevor:But when you are the, when you are the world's manufacturer and you are building
Trevor:cars and you are using power and you are knocking things together and you
Trevor:are refining stuff and you're just, um, applying heat to things, then you are
Trevor:naturally involved in tasks that are more heavily dependent on using carbon.
Trevor:And people just don't give credit for that.
Trevor:No.
Trevor:And plus of course, there's a huge population.
Trevor:So when you wanna do it on a per person basis, that's the other calculation.
Trevor:Well,
Joe:particularly if you do it on a per person basis over time.
Joe:Right.
Joe:Because, uh, less Australia, but certainly Europe was a huge, um, emitter of
Joe:carbon during the industrial revolution.
Trevor:Indeed.
Trevor:And that's the other thing, if you look over time and say, well,
Trevor:you've reached a position now where you potentially don't have to
Joe:Yeah.
Trevor:Uh, generate so many carbon emissions because you've moved into
Trevor:a first world developed situation.
Trevor:So you've gotta give everybody else some opportunity to do that.
Trevor:So yes,
Joe:I mean, it, it's sensible for China because the levels of pollution,
Joe:they're suffering in their cities.
Joe:Mm-hmm.
Joe:Um, and, and so they, uh, the embrace of.
Joe:Small electric vehicles, motorbikes.
Joe:Now there's an awful lot of electric motorbikes.
Joe:They're cheap.
Joe:Mm, mm-hmm.
Joe:I mean, they don't have the safety standards, but they're knocking these
Joe:electric vehicles out so cheaply now.
Trevor:Mm-hmm.
Joe:Um, that I think they will leapfrog us.
Joe:In fact, I'm sure they have already leapfrogged us in terms of number
Joe:of, uh, electric vehicles taken up, amount of solar that's on roofs.
Joe:Um, just because they don't have the infrastructure, they
Joe:don't have the baggage there.
Trevor:I will get onto some facts and figures, uh, in the chat room.
Trevor:Good comment.
Trevor:Don.
Trevor:Don says, the fact that Trevor was proven wrong and has to buy everyone
Trevor:coffees is proof that God exists.
Trevor:Yes, indeed.
Trevor:So, um, but what have I got here?
Trevor:You know, these facts, you can find them.
Trevor:It, it's so easy.
Trevor:So, CO2 emission emissions in tons.
Trevor:Uh, this is 2022 figures.
Trevor:Uh, China, of course, um, 12, uh, what would that be?
Trevor:12,666,428,430 tons of CO2 emissions, but per capita, 8.89, somewhere
Trevor:like the United States, which has a third of the total of the CO2
Trevor:emissions, but per capita, 14.21.
Trevor:Australia,
Trevor:a fraction in total of the CO2 emissions, but per person 15.01.
Trevor:So the first thing to say is at 2022 emission levels per person, China is well
Trevor:below so many other countries, despite the fact that it is the, um, the world's
Trevor:factory and, uh, as an excuse for, um,
Joe:and a lot of those emissions are to do with building
Trevor:Yeah, yeah.
Trevor:No doubt.
Trevor:And infrastructure.
Trevor:So, um, uh, what else did I have here?
Trevor:Yeah, so you can find that sort of stuff.
Trevor:Um, uh,
Joe:yes, but according to the Heartlands facts,
Trevor:the Heartlands facts,
Joe:oh, Heartland is a US institute, uh, of climate change deniers.
Trevor:Oh, okay.
Trevor:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Trevor:Um,
Trevor:uh, that would say something completely different.
Trevor:The, the other one I got, uh, I saw this interesting article, which is,
Trevor:but uh, China is building more coal plants, coal fired power plants.
Trevor:They are, yes.
Trevor:And they are.
Trevor:So, so why is it if renewables are such a convincing and cheaper method
Trevor:of power generation, why are the Chinese still building coal fired power
Trevor:stations if solar and wind are so cheap?
Trevor:And, uh, in this article basically, uh, had links to various facts and
Trevor:figures, but it was saying that, um, yes, China is opening new coal plants.
Trevor:And in 2023, for example, it added almost 50 gigawatts, which was about the same.
Trevor:As the already existing installed capacity in Indonesia, Germany, or Japan.
Trevor:So in one year it's adding what the others sort of have in total already.
Trevor:And, uh, it hasn't retired much.
Trevor:And um, what they're saying though is that the plants, um, these coal fired
Trevor:power plants in the two thousands were running at 70% of the time.
Trevor:Now they're running at around 50% of the time.
Trevor:So there's more of them, but they're running for less of the time.
Trevor:So the actual, um, use or, um, what would you say, uh, emissions from it
Trevor:aren't necessarily greater because even though there's more of them,
Trevor:they're not being fired up as much and um, they're running at a loss.
Trevor:A lot of them, almost 50% of these plants are running at a loss.
Trevor:And the question would be, well, why would the Chinese run them at a loss?
Trevor:And, uh, one argument would be that, um,
Trevor:uh, what does it say here, um,
Trevor:just for safety's sake as abundance proportion.
Trevor:Yep.
Trevor:Because China has reserves of coal mm-hmm.
Trevor:But doesn't have reserves of gas, which is what most countries
Trevor:would use as their sort of backup.
Trevor:And China doesn't want to have to rely on other countries for gas.
Trevor:Uh, wonder why Joe, like, uh, it's tactically Yes, un understandable.
Trevor:And somehow the Chinese are also, um, requiring or, or seeking that the
Trevor:plants can be switched on and off.
Trevor:More flexibly than what we're used to with coal fired gener power stations here,
Trevor:which provide base load and are difficult to, to sort of turn off and turn on.
Trevor:So they're apparently, uh, using ones that have a bit more capacity to be
Trevor:switched on and off more flexibly.
Trevor:The other arguments are that it's local provincial governments that organize
Trevor:them and they don't really care about a lot of issues that other people do.
Trevor:And surely they care about pollution though it's, it's a nod to their KPIs
Trevor:if they've got development happening.
Trevor:So, uh, and if there's too many of them, um, then they don't care.
Trevor:So that's kind of like people say, ah, the problem with command
Trevor:economies is that they, um, don't respond to market forces very well.
Trevor:Potentially, and this might be an example of that mm-hmm.
Trevor:Where these provincial Chinese governments are not responding to
Trevor:market demand, but just building these things because it's good for a
Trevor:KPI of development that assists them.
Trevor:Uh, and what was the other argument here?
Trevor:Um, um,
Trevor:yeah, and you can look at all sorts of other figures in terms of renewables
Trevor:being, um, solar and, and wind and, and, um, hydro that we've talked about.
Trevor:So it's a sort of a interesting nuanced sort of answer as to why
Trevor:the Chinese building coal fired power stations, if renewables are
Trevor:so cheap, the answers are, they're building a shit load of renewables.
Trevor:They're still building the coal, but they're not turning them
Trevor:on as much as they used to.
Trevor:They're trying to use 'em as a flexible option 'cause they don't have gas.
Trevor:And it almost might sound a bit crazy and stupid, but that's got provincial
Trevor:government happening in a command economy rather than a market economy.
Trevor:And uh,
Joe:although you can turn coal into gas, right?
Joe:I dunno if you get less emissions from doing that.
Trevor:I don't know you turn into, but that's totally different to sort
Trevor:of natural gas that we're correct.
Trevor:Yeah.
Trevor:Yeah.
Trevor:So, um, so,
Joe:um, town gas for years in the uk, in, in a lot of the world, uh, they
Joe:heated up coal and turned it into gas.
Joe:Right?
Joe:Or you drive off the gas basically.
Trevor:Okay.
Trevor:Um, so yeah, so that was, uh, that little experience.
Trevor:And then the other experience I had online, one of my friends who very
Trevor:right wing, posted a thing on Facebook, which was an article from the A, B, C.
Trevor:Titled one of Australia's first Wind Farms faces decommissioning due to cost.
Trevor:And this friend wrote the comment above it, wind Farm decommissioned
Trevor:in Western Australia because cost of new blades too expensive.
Trevor:Why is the a LP funding more farms with subsidy subsidies
Trevor:a money pit, exclamation mark.
Trevor:So on the face of it, you know, if you are a friend and you see that and you go,
Trevor:huh, these wind farms aren't so crash hot.
Trevor:Like this one's come to the end of its life.
Trevor:They can't afford to put new blades on it 'cause it's too expensive.
Trevor:You know, it's just this, uh, wind farm stuff looks like a load of bollocks.
Trevor:Well, what about oid?
Trevor:What's, what's the story with oid?
Trevor:Well, you're blowing up,
Joe:it's a coal, coal fired power station that's blown up
Joe:twice in the last five years.
Joe:Yeah.
Trevor:But when you actually read this article, what it says is.
Trevor:The, the, the, the wind turbine fan stuff that was put here in this
Trevor:place over 20 years ago mm-hmm.
Trevor:Is a smaller type and, and less effective and, and would be
Trevor:replaced now by four larger ones.
Trevor:Is, is what would go in here and the site could only handle four of these large ones
Trevor:and that would generate, uh, electricity.
Trevor:Um, that just isn't, it isn't worth creating a site with just
Trevor:four of these wind things on them.
Trevor:You wanna put 'em in a site where you can do 20 or 30 of the things to make it
Trevor:all worthwhile for the infrastructure.
Trevor:So it was really a case of wind technology has been so successful that the, that the.
Trevor:The, what do we call 'em, Joe Windmills, generators, what do we call turbines?
Trevor:Turbines are so effective that rather than a dozen of these smaller
Trevor:ones, you'd have four large ones.
Trevor:And, um, it just isn't worthwhile to put four in this place for all the effort and
Trevor:you're much better just going somewhere else where you can put more of them.
Trevor:So it was nothing to do with, um, a failure.
Trevor:It was actually a, a success story of wind farms.
Trevor:It just pisses me off that Smart people.
Joe:Yeah.
Joe:I mean it's, and, and so Australia has very few wind farms, but if you look at
Joe:Europe Mm, they have huge wind farms.
Joe:Mm. And if they were so crap, Europe wouldn't be investing in them.
Joe:Mm-hmm.
Joe:And, and maybe Europe, if it was in Australia, would be investing
Joe:in solar because that's the better solution for Australian climate.
Joe:Mm-hmm.
Joe:Um, but I would say there's large areas of coastline here that get lots of wind.
Joe:Yeah.
Joe:And, and a mix of solar and, and wind would be great.
Trevor:And then of course, people complained that they were unsightly, so
Trevor:they said, okay, we'll stick 'em away.
Trevor:Out in the ocean over there.
Trevor:Yep.
Trevor:You'll have to squint your eyes to see them.
Trevor:And people would go, oh, what about the poor whales?
Trevor:They'll run into 'em.
Trevor:Like, there's a lot of people last people on earth who actually worry about whales.
Trevor:But
Joe:there, there's also the whole, uh, bird strikes, you
Joe:know, uh, wind farms kill birds.
Joe:Mm-hmm.
Joe:Apparently an equivalent.
Joe:Coal fired Power Station kills.
Joe:I can't remember the exact number.
Joe:It's something like 10 times the number of birds.
Trevor:Right.
Trevor:Okay.
Trevor:And why aren't people
Joe:up in arms about the coal fired power stations with the
Joe:pollution that's killing the birds?
Joe:Yeah, but they're so worried about the wind turbines killing the birds.
Trevor:Yeah.
Trevor:Yeah.
Trevor:Uh, a comment in the chat, Andrew says, what about if Croc
Trevor:referenced Gaza in every item?
Trevor:Would you support that?
Trevor:N no.
Trevor:It's gonna be no.
Trevor:Only if it's relevant to whatever the question was.
Trevor:So,
Joe:I, I mean, I think we shouldn't be talking to Grock for facts anyway.
Trevor:Yeah.
Trevor:But, uh,
Joe:LLMs are crap at facts.
Trevor:Yeah.
Trevor:So, um, so in short, no, I wouldn't support that.
Trevor:Um, um, yes.
Trevor:And what other experiences have I had, uh, speaking with lefty friends?
Trevor:Uh, I think of the election, the greens, you know, they went too
Trevor:far and they refused to compromise.
Trevor:On housing?
Trevor:Yes.
Joe:Okay.
Trevor:And I had to remind them, and I, now I've just sort of reminded myself
Trevor:of the exact, um, sort of situation.
Trevor:But back in September, 2023, the Greens agreed to support the Albanese governments
Trevor:$10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund, half guaranteeing it would pass the
Trevor:Senate after months of bid negotiations.
Trevor:And, um, and at that time, they had managed to secure a further $1 billion
Trevor:for public and community housing.
Trevor:So in September, 2023, by holding off, they had secured an extra
Trevor:billion from the government that the government didn't want to provide.
Trevor:And prior to that, in June, Albanese announced a further 2 billion for
Trevor:social and affordable housing.
Trevor:Because the greens were holding out and withholding their support.
Trevor:So in total it was $3 billion that the greens got out of the Labor
Trevor:party that they didn't wanna spend.
Trevor:Um, so, so they refused to compromise for several months while they
Trevor:haggled and eventually they, uh, said, okay, that deal's good enough.
Trevor:And as, uh, in episode 400, we reported, dear listener, uh, back in the day
Trevor:when Guy Rundel was still a crikey, I wonder where Guy Del's got to, uh, he
Trevor:got sacked 'cause um, um, of a reason.
Trevor:I can't remember, but I was really hoping he would turn up somewhere.
Trevor:Um, so he said, well, the Greens have been rewarded for their political courage
Trevor:in holding out on the housing bill.
Trevor:Um.
Trevor:So they voted with the coalition against it.
Trevor:In order to get more in the Senate, they showed up independent David
Trevor:Pocock as inexperienced and weak.
Trevor:Pocock voted for the initial half and then had to scramble to get on the green side
Trevor:when the party won the first 2 billion of actual money for the fund, having then
Trevor:urged the greens to vote for the bill.
Trevor:After that, he will now have to adjust his position again
Trevor:to welcome the next billion.
Trevor:So the greens taught pocock a lesson in, in not compromising for a while
Trevor:to extract stuff that you want.
Trevor:It's, and yet it's the greens who get the reputation as being crazies
Trevor:who, who refused to compromise.
Trevor:Um, but they extracted stuff and eventually compromised.
Trevor:And then the most recent occasion was in November, 2024, where the Greens got
Trevor:an extra 500 million added to the Social Housing Energy performance Initiative.
Trevor:Um, as part of their haggling and they eventually passed the government bills.
Trevor:So it just pisses me off that even amongst the lefty friendly people, we still get
Trevor:the line that the greens were killed.
Trevor:Compromising
Joe:clowns.
Joe:What's that, Joe?
Joe:They killed off the e ets.
Joe:Right?
Joe:Nothing to do with, nothing to do with the Mad Bishop.
Trevor:Yeah.
Trevor:Ah, so, yeah.
Trevor:Um, uh, sorry.
Trevor:Uh, back in the chat room, being a bit facetious, but you did say very
Trevor:news build and should start with Gaza stories and you felt like it was
Trevor:inappropriate to talk about anything else.
Trevor:Well, they should, Andrew, when a hospital's been bombed, when a kid's
Trevor:been hit by a sniper, when a group of kids have had a hand grenade,
Trevor:well a drone bombs dropped on them.
Trevor:Uh, if nothing's happened that particular day.
Trevor:Probably Okay.
Trevor:Don't do anything.
Trevor:But you'd probably find that almost every day something has happened of that sort,
Trevor:that if it happened anywhere else on the planet would be wall to wall coverage.
Joe:I think he's saying if it should be leading the news,
Joe:then it should be leading grok.
Trevor:Right.
Joe:And I would say that no, the news and gr are two different things.
Trevor:Yes.
Trevor:Okay.
Trevor:Yeah.
Trevor:I, you know, anyway, I think Andrew's kind of on side, but kinda making a point.
Trevor:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Trevor:Um, where was I in my rant about the greens?
Trevor:So, yeah.
Trevor:Um, yeah, that was that
Joe:bunch of bloody watermelons.
Trevor:Speaking of really crazy people, Joe.
Joe:Mm-hmm.
Trevor:What about those pasts in particular one that you mentioned?
Trevor:I. Uh, from Indonesia.
Trevor:What did he get up to?
Joe:Oh, yeah.
Joe:Well, no, he wasn't the crazy person.
Trevor:Well, he wasn't, he the Pastorium was not the crazy person.
Joe:No.
Joe:No.
Trevor:Mm.
Joe:So he wrote, uh, a letter, an open letter, and I can't remember what it,
Joe:it was about religious discrimination.
Joe:And he's been forced to leave the country because of death threats.
Joe:Because he was poking fun at Islam by being a Pastor Farian.
Trevor:Yes.
Trevor:He wrote to the Minister of Religious Affairs for the Republic of Indonesia,
Trevor:uh, requesting full and proper recognition of the Flying Spaghetti monster.
Trevor:Yes.
Trevor:Um, as, uh, as a true God.
Trevor:And that didn't go down well.
Trevor:No.
Trevor:And, and now he's being, um, I.
Joe:He has apparently escaped to Australia.
Joe:Mm. And I think he's applied for, um, uh, asylum, for religious persecution.
Trevor:He's probably have pretty fair case by looks of things.
Trevor:Yeah, yeah.
Joe:Although, I dunno that the Australian government will agree to his case because
Joe:Pastor Arianism, isn't it real religion?
Trevor:Yes.
Trevor:But can it still be religious discrimination?
Trevor:That's a good question.
Joe:Well, I, I think we should recognize it as a real religion because
Joe:it's as real as any of the others.
Trevor:Indeed it is.
Trevor:Yeah.
Trevor:Yeah.
Trevor:Joe, I think we're almost ready to talk post-election stuff.
Trevor:Mm-hmm.
Trevor:And, uh, Scott never made it, I held this aside for Scott, but, uh,
Trevor:I dunno what's happened to Scott.
Trevor:So, uh, what have we got in terms of maybe he
Joe:got lucky.
Trevor:Um, maybe he did.
Trevor:Hang on a minute.
Trevor:I'm all.
Trevor:Just dunno where his partner is.
Trevor:If his partner's in Brisbane, then we don't wanna be saying that, do we?
Trevor:Uh, um, yeah.
Trevor:Uh, let me see.
Trevor:This one from Dan.
Trevor:Ick is the one that I want.
Trevor:Um, yes, Joe.
Trevor:I mean, we've had recriminations have we?
Trevor:In the liberal party, we had the leadership fight and Oh, yeah, yeah.
Trevor:Essentially got people arguing over the party.
Trevor:Wasn't far right enough.
Joe:Well, um, uh, Gina was saying that the party wasn't far right.
Joe:Enough
Trevor:Yes.
Trevor:Particularly needed to take on Donald Trump-like policies.
Trevor:Oh, absolutely, yes.
Trevor:Yeah.
Trevor:So bit of chaos in the liberal party.
Trevor:Um.
Trevor:Here's, uh, I, I'm
Joe:hoping for that.
Trevor:Here's a reporter, which this, this one is more video than audios.
Trevor:So for the pe for the six people watching you get this in its
Trevor:full glory, um, here it is.
Clip:Nothing could be further from the truth, Veronica.
Clip:We want all Australians to know that.
Clip:Sure.
Clip:It's been a tough few weeks here at the liberal party and yes, we've had our
Clip:disagreements, but we want you to know that's just made us even warn United.
Clip:We fully backed Tony Abbott to go to the next election to
Clip:fight Kevin Rudd and to win.
Clip:So Prime Minister Rudd, if you're listening, look out the lip.
Trevor:Uh, I found that particularly funny, but, um, it's a bit old.
Trevor:But yes.
Joe:Showing the United, although having said that, labor are
Joe:not exactly united, are they?
Trevor:Yeah.
Trevor:So Sky News is saying that, um, that.
Trevor:Uh, of course the Liberal National Party.
Trevor:Were not right wing enough.
Trevor:Mm-hmm.
Trevor:Here's Roe and Dean's take on the election, sort of, um, result.
Clip:But first, the future of Australia as a cohesive, peaceful,
Clip:relaxed, comfortable, and prosperous nation is now extremely unlikely,
Clip:at least for the next few years.
Clip:I said repeatedly that the May three election was the most important of
Clip:our lives, and so it has turned out to be in the worst possible way.
Clip:There is no sugar coating what has occurred.
Clip:It was the perfect storm, a canny and cunning labor party, an utterly inept
Clip:opposition and the perversity of our idiotic, compulsory preferential voting
Clip:system, which together have left us with a hard left government that two thirds of
Clip:the population did not vote for wielding an unbelievably dangerous level of power.
Clip:Poor fellow, my country, I. To put it bluntly with hard left labor holding
Clip:a massive majority in the lower house and the Marxist Greens holding the
Clip:balance of power in the Senate Australia is now to all intents and purposes,
Joe:oh no, not the Marxist greens hard left.
Joe:Mm.
Trevor:They're not even left
Joe:on, on what planet are they?
Joe:Hard left.
Trevor:They're not even left.
Trevor:The, the, the Australian Labor Party today mm-hmm.
Trevor:Is, is center Right.
Trevor:It's not a left wing party at all.
Trevor:Richard Miles is head of the right faction of the Labor Party, and he is more at
Trevor:home with his liberal opposition than he is with, with, with left-wing politics.
Joe:Mm-hmm.
Trevor:It's a nonsense to say that these guys are left, let
Trevor:alone the dreaded socialists.
Trevor:Um, but
Joe:only a third of Australians voted for, uh, labor.
Joe:Yes.
Joe:And, and less than a third voted for the liberals.
Joe:He didn't
Trevor:mention that part.
Trevor:No, exactly.
Trevor:And then the Marxist Greens, God's sake, just the history on of these things.
Trevor:So it
Joe:sounds, it sounds like he wants first passed the post.
Joe:Yes.
Joe:Does, because preferential voting allowing you to vote for
Joe:an independent, how dare they?
Trevor:Yes.
Trevor:Yeah.
Trevor:But, um, sky News has been, they, they're not happy with Susan Lee.
Trevor:Mm-hmm.
Trevor:And they think that she's, well, no,
Joe:she's farty liberal.
Joe:Well,
Trevor:they, yes.
Trevor:They don't think she's, she's, she's, she's a little commie, um mm-hmm.
Trevor:Infiltrator.
Trevor:Yeah.
Trevor:So that they're worried about, so.
Trevor:They're straight on to criticizing her.
Trevor:They're not giving her a chance at all.
Trevor:Um,
Joe:well, I actually heard there's a reason that they've elected her.
Trevor:Mm-hmm.
Joe:Because it's a lame dog po uh, position.
Trevor:Mm-hmm.
Joe:Uh, that she's got no hope of getting elected anytime in the near future.
Trevor:Mm-hmm.
Joe:So put a woman in the position, look like we're doing something.
Trevor:Mm.
Joe:And then when it comes time to either win the election or she loses
Joe:it badly Mm. We replace her and put somebody that's white male in there.
Joe:Yes.
Joe:Uh, and in the meantime we can look to be progressive whilst actually doing nothing.
Trevor:So Andrew Hasty didn't even run and I'm sure that he's thinking,
Trevor:why would I just spend the next three years copying shit when I can just
Trevor:gather that together, my forces, it's gonna be horrendous for her.
Joe:Mm-hmm.
Trevor:Let her deal with it and I'll come in as the answer when,
Trevor:when things are looking miserable.
Trevor:Um, so this is the sort of thing going on over at Sky News.
Trevor:You get the
Clip:sense that a lot of people, uh, whether it's in the party or out of
Clip:it, do feel like, uh, perhaps Susan Lee is a placeholder in this or has
Clip:been appointed because she is a woman.
Clip:And that's what so much of the criticism of the party has been about.
Clip:Whether it's true or not, you can't escape the perception that there's a
Clip:bit of a token woman feel about this.
Clip:Uh, disappointment.
Clip:Yeah.
Clip:Look, I, I'll be pretty blunt here.
Clip:She's been in the parliament for 24 years.
Clip:Most punters wouldn't have an idea who she is.
Clip:I mean, most, most journalists, I'm listening to them, dunno whether
Clip:to call her Susan Lee or Susan Lay.
Clip:I mean, such as her cut through in that time.
Clip:Now she is a placeholder.
Clip:I doubt that, uh, she will stray very far from her real opinions about,
Clip:you know, Palestine, some of the woke things that she really, uh, has always
Clip:advocated, who would give their heart earned to this shambles of a party?
Clip:One liberal donor describes Susan Lee to me as a lemon, and that's brutal.
Clip:But the reality is Susan Lee is a placeholder.
Clip:She's not the answer.
Clip:No one believes that the current leader will ever be Prime Minister.
Clip:Now, Susan Lee also wanted to be Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs
Clip:when Simon Birmingham retired.
Clip:But Peter Dutton didn't think,
Trevor:yeah, I like that bit, Joe.
Trevor:Mm-hmm.
Trevor:Peter Dutton that didn't think she was up to the job.
Trevor:Hasn't he proved to be such an, an Nostradamus?
Trevor:What a great operator he was.
Trevor:Exactly.
Trevor:Like, we should really be listening to Peter Dutton still.
Joe:Oh.
Joe:Although I did hear her described as the team who, Liz Truss.
Trevor:Yes.
Trevor:The team who, Liz Trust.
Trevor:Yes.
Trevor:Mm-hmm.
Trevor:But, you know, but you know, a criticism of her that Peter Dutton didn't think
Trevor:she was up to, to snuff, for God's sake.
Trevor:Who cares what Peter Dutton thinks?
Trevor:He turned out to be hopeless.
Trevor:It's probably a good thing for, for anybody on their cv.
Clip:It was good enough.
Trevor:Peter Dutton didn't like them
Clip:yet.
Clip:She's now the leader of the party make of that where you will.
Clip:But at least 25 members in the liberal party don't have confidence in her.
Clip:And under her leadership, the party will remain divided.
Clip:There will be no unity.
Joe:It was divided under all of them, wasn't it?
Trevor:Crimey River?
Trevor:Um, like that crappy stuff that you just heard, that is what
Trevor:liberal party members mm-hmm.
Trevor:Are listening to.
Trevor:That's where they get their opinions from.
Joe:Yep.
Trevor:And liberal party politicians.
Trevor:Have to listen to Sky News to know what their constituents
Trevor:are thinking as in their liberal party membership constituents.
Trevor:Because even if they weren't thinking that beforehand, after
Trevor:a few sessions on, uh, sky News, that's what they will be thinking.
Trevor:So
Joe:yeah, there was also a bit of, um, turmoil about Senator Price.
Joe:And who was she standing with?
Trevor:Uh, Taylor.
Trevor:Yes.
Trevor:Yes.
Trevor:And um, he was my pick.
Trevor:'cause I thought he was the one who wanted it the most, but, um, he missed out.
Trevor:So she swapped the liberals?
Joe:Yeah.
Joe:But then I think she didn't stand and people were upset because she
Joe:moved and then she didn't stand.
Trevor:Yeah.
Trevor:She thinks one day she's gonna be Prime Minister.
Trevor:She thinks people want her as the first Aboriginal
Joe:Prime Minister.
Trevor:Yeah.
Trevor:So maybe.
Trevor:Yeah.
Trevor:So, um, so that was, that was those bits.
Trevor:Um, so the knives are out for her.
Trevor:Um, um, we had Richard Miles,
Joe:so this,
Trevor:you know, the other thing that some friends of mine lefties
Trevor:were saying was, you know, well,
Trevor:uh, the Labor Party had a tiptoe during their first term, but now they've
Trevor:been elected in their second term.
Trevor:Now they've got a chance to, it's a labor party.
Trevor:They've got a chance to really do some progressive things.
Trevor:And I said, look, they're not interested in progressive things,
Trevor:and, and you've only just gotta look at what Richard Miles just pulled
Trevor:off, like as part of factional deals.
Trevor:He got two minutes to sacked and replaced by two others, and
Trevor:Albanese didn't stand up to him.
Trevor:So, so the worst performer in the, in the Labor Party, Richard Miles
Joe:mm-hmm.
Trevor:The defense.
Trevor:Minister responsible for continuing the stupid orca deal is, is like pulling
Trevor:the strings as to factional numbers.
Trevor:And Albanese was like, oh, okay.
Trevor:If that's the factional deal, I'll just accept it.
Trevor:So the factions work out who's going to be in the ministry and Albanese
Trevor:then decides which ministry they get.
Trevor:But he, after that victory, surely could have put his foot down and
Trevor:said, no, let's be sensible here.
Trevor:But Richard knows the long knives.
Trevor:Yeah, exactly.
Trevor:So that's where we are there.
Trevor:Um, uh, you mentioned Gina Reinhardt.
Trevor:Uh, she has singled out Italy and Hungary currently governed by
Trevor:populist right wing coalitions.
Joe:Countries.
Joe:Well Hung is ruled by a dictator.
Trevor:Hmm.
Trevor:These are countries that Australia could aspire to according to.
Trevor:Um, Gina Reinhardt, uh, if only the liberals would stick with Trump-like
Trevor:policies and abandon the myth.
Trevor:The two could be a
Joe:fascist state.
Joe:Yes.
Trevor:Yes.
Trevor:And abandoned the myths and untruths of the left.
Trevor:Uh, she put this out in a statement to the Daily Mail and, um, she says
Trevor:The left media did a very successful effort, frightening many in the
Trevor:liberal party from anything Trump and away from any Trump-like policies.
Joe:Yes.
Joe:'cause I think, um, sky News were scaring people away from Trump-Like policies.
Joe:Yes.
Trevor:Yeah.
Trevor:Uh,
Joe:yeah.
Joe:I think most Australians have looked at Trump and gone,
Joe:we don't wanna borrow that.
Trevor:Yeah.
Trevor:She has said, as I've repeatedly stated, we need to cut government tape
Trevor:regulations, government's, wastage, and tax burdens across Australia.
Joe:Yeah.
Joe:She wants.
Joe:To excise the north of Australia from the tax system so she can run
Joe:her minds as a tax free enterprise.
Trevor:She says what we need is a US style Doge, Elon Musk type thing.
Joe:Yeah.
Joe:And again, you know why?
Joe:'cause Doge has cut out all oversight for industry
Trevor:Mm.
Joe:And cut all the funding for poor people.
Trevor:What we really need is a wealth tax.
Trevor:Yes.
Trevor:Where after, you know, $500 billion, something like that, um, you get
Trevor:whacked with a wealth tax and
Joe:do, do they even need 500?
Joe:I think a hundred is more than sufficient.
Trevor:Fine.
Trevor:I'm with you there.
Trevor:And if we just did that, um, and voted for it and said, fuck you Gina R up.
Trevor:Yeah.
Trevor:Uh, wouldn't that be fun?
Trevor:But only some of the crazy greens would, you know, come up with an idea like that.
Joe:Only some of the crazy greens would vote in Parliament Firm.
Joe:Yes.
Joe:Because too many of the other politicians are beholden to their patrons.
Joe:Yeah.
Joe:Sorry.
Joe:Um, uh, our, our, our institute interested in the constituents.
Joe:Yes.
Trevor:Yes.
Trevor:Yeah.
Trevor:Uh, well, we didn't get onto, um, hopefully the 14th.
Trevor:Not much to say, um,
Joe:fall apart from him bagging Trump a couple of times.
Trevor:Yes.
Trevor:Yeah.
Trevor:Just a final thought on Trump.
Joe:Mm-hmm.
Trevor:Remember the Lion King when scarred cheated to win the titles King
Trevor:and the Pride Land was overrun with the hyenas and all of the lines lost
Trevor:everything they had built and maintained.
Trevor:Just asking no reason.
Trevor:Uh, oh, one thing, Joe Alcatraz.
Joe:Oh yeah.
Trevor:For God's sake, the guy watches a movie.
Trevor:I. Apparently escape from Alcatraz was being shown in the area
Trevor:where he is living at Mar Largo.
Joe:Right.
Trevor:And the next day he comes out with, I'm gonna reopen Al
Trevor:should reopen Alcatraz and put all the hardened criminals in there.
Joe:I, I mean, anyone who's actually been to Alcatraz, and I haven't been, I've only
Joe:seen it from a distance, realizes that it's, it's just not economically feasible.
Trevor:It's just the most expensive place Yeah.
Trevor:To put a jail.
Trevor:Yes.
Trevor:And it's not as if, it's not as if hardened criminals are escaping from
Trevor:maximum security all the time, Joe.
Joe:No.
Joe:And
Trevor:that there's a real problem.
Trevor:But this is the crazy nonsense that, uh, that's going on there.
Trevor:It's honestly, I had, uh, I'd probably have about two dozen clips of Trump
Trevor:saying something crazy, corrupt, stupid.
Trevor:Mm-hmm.
Trevor:Yeah.
Trevor:Everything from Alcatraz through to free planes from
Joe:Al Qatar.
Joe:Qatar, yeah.
Joe:The $400 million plane.
Joe:Yeah.
Joe:Which isn't going to be given to the US government.
Joe:It's gonna be given to Trump.
Joe:And we'll go to the presidential library.
Joe:So when he's no longer president, he can still personally use it.
Trevor:Yeah.
Trevor:But as the guy said, on Planet America, like you, when you don't just grab a
Trevor:plane and it becomes Air Force one, it needs all sorts of, it needs communication
Trevor:gear and uh, and special stuff in it.
Trevor:Plus you've gotta scour the whole thing to make sure the Qatari
Trevor:didn't put listening devices on it.
Trevor:Mm-hmm.
Trevor:Just, and then apparently, you know, by the time you've done all that,
Trevor:we're onto our next president anyway.
Trevor:Um, so yeah, from Alcatraz to planes to, to his dodgy Bitcoin shit and a thousand
Trevor:or one other shitty things, it's like.
Trevor:What that Steve Bannon said.
Trevor:You can just flood the space with so many stories that Yeah.
Trevor:That nobody can, can properly Yes.
Trevor:Comprehend or assess or take in or ingest each just the sheer volume of them.
Joe:Yes.
Joe:Um, apparently Trump,
Joe:oh, there, there's, um, some other country, or maybe it was Kael, um,
Joe:apparently there's gonna be some new Trump development in some other
Joe:country that they're obviously angling for, um, US money for something.
Joe:Right.
Joe:So Trump has just got permission from one government somewhere
Joe:down in the Middle East.
Joe:So they're, they, they must be looking for favors.
Joe:Yeah.
Joe:And, and just a,
Trevor:a, a bunch of things in terms of the separation of
Trevor:powers and the, and abuse of the.
Trevor:The system.
Trevor:Anyway, it's too many to catalog, um, and run through.
Trevor:And this lu is attacking my throat.
Trevor:It's getting very ticklish.
Trevor:I've gotta stop.
Trevor:We'll be back next week maybe with Scott.
Trevor:Not sure, uh, but we'll have some stories of some sort.
Trevor:Thanks in the chat room.
Trevor:You've been very good.
Trevor:Thank you for your comments and um, we'll be back next week.
Trevor:Talk to you then.
Trevor:Bye for now.
Trevor:And it's a good night from me
Joe:and it's a good night from him.
Trevor:Good night.