We need to talk about ideas.

Good ones and bad ones.

We need to learn stuff about the world.

We need an honest, intelligent, thought provoking and entertaining

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

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

Well, Joe, are we live?

Because it came up with a message saying the live stream ended.

Yeah, I saw exactly the same thing.

I hit the go live button and it says it's streaming and we've

got two people watching, so.

There we go.

If you're in the chat room, say hello so that we know that we

are actually live streaming.

Yeah.

And YouTube and Twitch have just pinged me to say we're live.

There we go.

Okay.

That's why we've got you here, for the comfort of having the

tech guy controlling all this.

Good on you, Joe.

This is the Iron Fist and the Velvet Glove podcast, episode 401.

With me as always, when he's got a microphone, or when he's got a

microphone and he's managed to find it in the box, Scott the Velvet Glove.

G'day Trevor, g'day Joe, g'day listeners.

I hope everyone's doing well.

We hope they are as well.

Ancho the tech guy, welcome aboard again, Joe.

Evening all.

Right, okay.

Looks like the chat room's working.

Yeah, we had just a funny little hiccup at the start there, so the normal

intro dropped out, but yeah, we'll just charge on with our normal scheduled

program, which is on a Monday night, because, as I mentioned last week, it's

my daughter's birthday and I'm cooking tomorrow night, so I can't podcast, and...

Look, I was going to record my Indigenous, another Indigenous episode,

but I'm away next week, so I figured best to get Scott and Joe back on

and then do the recorded one next week, rather than two recorded ones.

So we're just going to run through topics in the way that we normally

do, and we're going to Scott Morrison is actually right about something.

The other day we mentioned Joe Rogan, we're going to talk about him again.

Can Poles be trusted?

And...

A little bit on the voice, a little bit on Libya, a little bit on...

Germans say no.

The Germans...

About whether...

Yeah, about whether the Poles can be trusted.

Boom, boom!

Very British, aren't you, Joe?

You're never going to forgive the Germans for this 3rd of September 1939, are you?

Yeah, so okay.

Right, just briefly...

Came out about, remember, dear listener, is it, it's less than a year ago,

maybe about six, nine months ago.

There was all the furore about Chinese spy balloons.

And report out, which says In what should be a shock to no one, the

Chinese balloon was not spying.

Now, seven months later, General Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint

Chiefs of Staff, tells CBS News Sunday morning, the balloon wasn't spying.

The intelligence community, their assessment.

And it's a high confidence assessment is that there was no intelligence

collection by that balloon, he said.

Meanwhile, just as a reminder, back on May 21, President Biden remarked This

silly balloon that was carrying two freight cars worth of spying equipment

was flying over the United States and it got shot down and everything changed

in terms of talking to one another.

That just demonstrates how close we are to a disaster on this world when

something as simple as a weather balloon flies off course and What?

Do we know it was a weather balloon?

Well, it wasn't a spy balloon.

Well, yeah, absolutely.

What was it, though?

Well, the Chinese said it was for largely meteorological observations, and there's

nothing, and if they were lying, I'm sure General Mark Milley would have said so.

Like, if it wasn't what the Chinese said, wouldn't he be delighted

in saying it was something else other than what they told us?

I seem to recall the Chinese being very circumvent about what it actually was.

They didn't really confirm or deny that it was a spy, a spy balloon at all.

No, the Chinese said it's just a spy balloon, it's not a spy balloon,

it's just a weather balloon.

So, they were where is it here?

Ah, God, I've, during, at some stage I'll find the relevant section, but they

basically came out with a statement and said it's just doing meteorological It has

very limited capacity to direct itself.

The winds took it in that direction and that's all there is to the story.

We'll continue to talk to the Americans about it.

It was interesting, not long after that happened, actually, I saw a

presentation on amateur balloons.

Yeah, amateur groups circumnavigating the world with balloons.

Yes.

And how they're tracking them using low powered ham radio.

And I was just wondering, you know, what's going to happen when one of

those gets assumed to be a spy balloon?

Well, will it happen again?

You know, it's just an example of a beat up over nothing.

So, I mean, even in this conversation, you guys have said, Oh, but what was it?

Was it really a weather balloon?

And Scott, you've said, Oh, the Chinese are very circumspect

in telling us what it was.

They weren't very helpful.

Like, for goodness sake, at the end of the day.

Well, I, I seem to remember that there wasn't a hell of a lot coming from China.

Right.

That's, they didn't actually comment on it at the time.

Yeah.

So it's one of those things.

It's no surprise that Biden said what he said on May 21.

But what if the Chinese did say exactly what I've said?

Well, I think the Yanks would have still shot it down, but they

wouldn't have looked so foolish now.

Yeah, so, let me find it here as we keep, keep talking, because

I'll, I'll, I'll try and find this section where they've given it.

You know, had the, had the, had the Chinese actually said exactly what

it was, and they, and the Yanks wouldn't have believed it, then

they still would have shot it down.

And then right now, they wouldn't look as foolish as what they, as what they did,

because They, they would've been able to point to exactly what the Chinese said

and then they, those like Trevor and that sort of stuff were saying, well,

they told you what it was and you didn't believe them, so you still shot it down.

So it is one of those things I think the Yanks would've been damned if they didn't.

Damned if they didn't, you know, anyway, here into the rant.

Yeah, so really no problem, America just damned if they did, damned if they didn't

flew and it wasn't an overreaction.

It flew over their airspace.

So, I think to myself that they've got to accept the consequences of

if you're going to fly over someone else's airspace, then you've got to

accept that it could get shot down.

Yeah, well, you know, it's, it's the Chinese, I guess, accepted that it's

got shot down because it went in the wrong area by mistake, but they were

just saying it's not a spy balloon.

It's just there by mistake.

If you want to shoot it down, go ahead and shoot it down,

but we're not spying on you.

Well, like I said, I don't recall what the Chinese actually said.

Okay.

Yeah, I don't have heard, I don't know the truth because I wasn't around, but

that the Americans were very happy that Sputnik overflew the United States.

Because historically, any overflight was considered trespass, and therefore

you could shoot it down, and the fact that the Russians put Sputnik up,

and was flying over the whole world, meant that space was an open frontier

and they could put spy satellites up.

Hmm.

Ah, I can't find it easily, but anyway, I'll put it in the

show notes, what they said.

Look in the show notes to your listener and you'll see the words of the Chinese

as they are telling people what it was.

Anyway, it's been admitted by the Americans it was not spying.

Right.

Which they wouldn't have known about had they not shot it down.

They haven't admitted to North Stream yet though, have they?

No, not yet.

No.

They haven't admitted to North Stream, no.

No, that might take a bit longer to come up with that one.

I don't think they're ever going to admit to that.

Nuclear power, just a thing from the shovel.

I think Dutton and Co are still talking about small modular nuclear reactors.

Anything to get the focus off renewable energy.

Yes.

Yeah, I know they're a pack of fucking morons, aren't they?

Mm-hmm.

You know, they just will not accept the fact that renewable energy

is cheap, is the cheapest form of electricity that the country could have.

Mm-hmm.

And you know, they, they keep bleeding on about nuclear power and everything

else because it's, you know, I suppose once coal is extinguished

and all that sort of stuff, they're just gonna, what's the base load?

You've not heard this argument, what's the argument?

So you have base load power and then you have peaking power.

Mm-hmm.

. So your base load power easier day-to-day we need X amount of electricity and that's

your, takes a long time to run up, takes a long time to slow down is just efficient.

But.

can't cope with fluctuations in the grid.

And then you have peaking power, which is something like a gas plant

which can spin up very quickly, but is more expensive to run.

And so you use that when you need a burst of electricity and you can

shut it off when you don't need it.

And the argument is that with renewables being variable, so wind and solar

are very variable that you will need some form of base load to cover

for when the renewables drop out.

But I've heard somebody from AEMO talking about, no, you just need to

build additional capacity and generally you will have enough capacity in one

area that will cope for any shortfall because it will only be regional.

Correct.

Just do, it's much cheaper just to do heaps more of renewable so that

you're totally over, over supplied.

And with a minimal amount of storage, and you're good to go.

It's a total nonsense, the nuclear powered story.

Any of the reports done by reputable scientific groups

who crunch the numbers say it's nonsense, and it's just expensive.

There are no small, modular nuclear reactors in the world anywhere.

And they are expensive to run compared to other forms of supply.

It's just craziness by Dutton Co and good on the well what did they say in

the the shovel said, the party that was unable to build a commuter car park.

Unveils plans to build 71 nuclear reactors, which pretty

much sums it up in their talk.

No, no, this is why we have AUKUS.

Yes.

So we're going to have the nuclear reactors from the submarines, we're

just going to park them in our harbours, plug them into shore power.

Yes, that's the small nuclear reactor.

Yes.

Is in the submarines.

That's it, Joe, yeah.

There's going to be a bit of a mini inquiry.

Anthony Albanese has announced a year long inquiry into our response

into the COVID 19 pandemic.

It won't be a Royal Commission.

It will call on State Premiers to give evidence about how they worked

together, but it won't have the scope to investigate any of the major decisions

that State Governments took individually.

Scott Morrison said, well, that's a pretty useless investigation then.

If you're not going to look at the individual decisions of state premiers,

more or less, what's the point?

And you'd have to say Scott Morrison's probably right on this one.

Yeah, I suppose he is right, but I just think to myself he's probably

doing it for base political reasons that he could use it to cover up.

He's probably doing it to cover up Berejiklian and also then hangs

shit on Dan, what's his name?

Dan...

Dean Andrews, that's it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And because he'd be worried about what might come out that might

be critical of him in his role.

Oh God yeah.

Yes.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

So, his motivations were no doubt pretty, pretty obvious, but the point he's making,

the point he's making is a fair one.

You'd have to say that if you're going to do an inquiry, you should be looking

at the individual decisions of the different state premiers because they

did make their own individual decisions about what their states were doing.

That was what saved us because of the inaction of Morrison's government.

But at the end of the day, it was a piecemeal response.

Yes.

Yeah.

I think we do need a serious review of...

This is going to happen again.

What do we do next time it happens?

Yeah, I agree.

I agree.

We've got to have some sort of, we've got to have some sort of plan

and this sort of stuff so that when it happens that it's dusted off and

they say this is what their plan was.

Yeah, and what happened right this time?

What went wrong?

What do we do?

What don't we do?

Seems crazy though to not include a review of the decisions of state premiers

about what they did in their states.

It's only looking at the state premiers in how they cooperated together, so.

Yeah, which is a crazy sort of thing that they actually said, you know.

I wonder if this is Albanese not wanting focus on the Labor premiers because

obviously Dan Andrews was unpopular.

And if you believe the courier fail mm-hmm.

Paler was an absolute dictator.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

There was all those people that are just across the border dying because they

couldn't come to Queensland hospitals.

Mm-hmm.

Despite the fact that they could.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It'd be interesting to see, I mean, we do need an inquiry 'cause obviously

that's not gonna be the last.

Of event like this whether it's 5, 10, 20 or 50 years, it's going

to happen again at some point.

Exactly.

So we'll see what happens with that one.

No doubt we'll be talking about that lots as we get down the track.

We mentioned the other day about Joe Rogan, and Tech Guy Joe was very

consistent in his views on Joe Rogan.

Yeah, shockingly so.

Yeah, so, got my attention when I saw this article, which was, More than 50 percent

of women under the age of 35 consider listening to the Joe Rogan experience.

To be a major red flag in the dating world, according to a new poll.

So, sorry, how many of us are interested in women under 35?

Right, this is the marrying age, so it's just who it is.

But yeah, women under 35 meet a guy and the guy says, Yeah, I listen to Joe Rogan.

That's a turn off for more than 50 percent of women.

So, that would be 55 percent of women.

Under 35 in this poll thought that listening to Joe Rogan was a turn off,

so, What was at the top of the list?

Obviously this was an American poll Identifying as a MAGA Republican

was a turn off for 76 percent of women Having no hobbies.

That was a turn off for 66 percent of women.

There you go, men out there, meet some nice lady, and she

says, do you have any hobbies?

Make, make some up, if you don't have one.

It's a turn off not to have a hobby.

Saying all lives matter, 60 percent would find that a turn off.

Saying there's only two genders.

58% would say that that is a turnoff.

Saying they're so unbothered that they never asked for details that would turn

off 58% of women in this survey, they like their men to ask about details.

I'm about watch anything.

Okay.

If they're not interested in details, if they're not a detail person, then 58

percent of women find that a turn off.

And 55 percent find it a turn off if a prospective male partner

identifies as a communist.

Hmm.

Then listening to Joe Rogue and then identifying as a conservative.

Next one, actually, this is a problem.

53 percent will find it a turn off if the male partner

refuses to see the Barbie movie.

Have you seen it?

I haven't seen it, but it was quite a good movie.

It's not like I've refused to.

I just don't see many movies these days.

Okay.

I'm not in a movie viewing habit.

It is quite a good film, and as an Oppenheimer, that was very good too.

Alright.

Joe?

Yeah, I've seen it.

Oh, okay.

There we go.

And?

Is it good?

Yeah, it was alright.

It was alright?

I wouldn't take it too seriously, but...

No, I didn't understand the whole beat up on it and all that sort of stuff, saying

how great it was and everything else.

It was a good movie, but I just didn't see the...

I was shocked at the number of sex education cast members that were in there.

Yes, there were a hell of a lot in there, yeah.

Sex education cast?

It's a UK TV show on Netflix.

Oh, okay.

And there were like three or four cast members.

So British people were in an American movie.

And of course the star is an Australian.

Right.

Okay.

So it was a very international cast.

Just back to the survey, they also asked men about what turns them off.

And the biggest one, 64%, was if the woman identifies as a communist.

Essentially, as you're looking at it, the, the women were turned off if the

men were conservative, as in Magga and Joe Rogan and gender stuff, whereas

the men were turned off if the women were liberal, in a lot of these things.

So, just sort of showing that...

Yeah, but I mean...

It's a general tendency.

59 percent of men.

were turned off if they were a MAGA Republican, as opposed to

33 percent if they were Liberal.

So I think it still leans left, it just is slightly less leaning left than the women.

Yeah, but it's significant numbers, really, I think, showing that the

men are conservative, wanting to see, not happy with Liberal responses.

Yeah, probably 10 percent more than women.

Well...

Yeah.

Okay.

Identify as a MAGA Republican.

76 percent of women are turned off and 59 percent of men, so,

17 percent difference there.

Here's one.

No, we're into astrology.

Men didn't like that.

41%.

Well, it's bullshit.

Okay.

I was a little worried about talk about politics frequently.

Yes.

That's us screwed.

Yeah.

Well, you know, I don't actually...

I don't necessarily talk about it frequently.

Once a week?

Yeah, that's not frequent, is it?

Yeah, but you also said that you e bash anyone at dinner

parties and that sort of stuff.

Well, that's...

I'll invite them to.

Like, I'll hold back if...

I can, I've got to feel the crowd.

And also owning a gun.

I mean, it depends.

If you own a gun because it's a penis extension, absolutely.

If you own a gun because you regularly go hunting, seems like a fair call.

Yeah.

Anyway, that's in the show notes.

By the way, dear listeners, if you're a patron, you get a full

set of show notes to read through.

Thanks to Professor Doctor Dentist, he upgraded his patronage,

increased the amount, that was good.

There's a link in this sort of app show notes to the newsletter, so I send

out a newsletter three times a week.

If you want to see what articles I've been flagging for discussion,

then you'll find that there.

So sign up for three newsletters a week, doesn't cost you anything.

And I'm rejigging the IFVG Evergreen podcast.

This is going to be stuff that has the...

Evergreen content, and I stupidly put it on a different system, and now I'm

reverting it back to the same system that the normal podcast is on, so,

subscribe to the IFVG Evergreen podcast, and you'll get the stuff that is

timeless, and yeah, have a look at that.

Right, from Queensland Parents for Secular State Schools Facebook page,

had an image Within our federal parliament, there's a parliamentary

group, the Friends of School Chaplaincy.

Oh, Jesus Christ.

At their national conference, the Labor Party confirmed a policy platform

of secular public education, yet there's images of several of their MPs

standing in front of the sign, saying how they're part of the Parliamentary

Friends of School Chaplaincy group.

So, Shane Newman MP, Dave Smith MP, and...

The Speaker himself Milton Dick all in front of the sign, showing their support

for school chaplaincy, so, despite the official policy of the Labor Party

plenty of Labor federal politicians wanting to support school chaplaincy.

Right, polls.

Now, the other day we had John from Dire Straits, and you might remember, dear

listener, he was, I wanted to start a bit about polls and how he didn't trust them

and I sent him a link that I had come across and he read it and he said, hmm,

let's soften his views Maybe he's not so hardline and well, maybe he's not so much

against polls as What he had been before.

So the link I sent him I'm just going to give you some of the highlights, some

information about polls because we do talk about polls a lot on this podcast

And, you know, how questionable are they?

How worthwhile are they?

And we haven't really looked at this before, so...

Depends on the questions and who they're calling, who they're speaking to.

Yes, or are they indeed calling?

Or just making shit up.

Well, yeah.

So this is from a guy called Kevin Bonham.

Independent and...

He's obviously a fanatic on this stuff and so I'm relying on his accuracy

for this stuff But I have no reason to doubt what he's done in this report

He's got a fairly extensive website dealing with all sort of stuff.

So

He's decided to deal with some of the polling myths that are around

and he's Dealing with a myth here.

One myth is news poll only calls landlines and he says News polls

ceased landline only polling in 2015.

In late 2019, news polls switched to online only panel polling

for national and state polls.

And no longer calls phones at all.

There we go, that's interesting.

So, so yeah, they've just got panels online.

Here we go.

Ah, myth.

News poll polls generally only reach older voters because younger voters

do not have landlines or answer mobile phone calls from unknown numbers.

And he says in response, No major Australian regular voting intention

pollster exclusively uses phone polling.

NewsPoll and Essential are exclusively online and therefore don't call at all.

Resolve is exclusively online except for a little bit of online phone

hybrid in final pre election polls.

And Morgan uses online and phone hybrid polling and SMS polls.

So we talk a lot about essential and news poll, but mostly

essential on this podcast.

Exclusively online, no calling at all.

And he makes the point that even when young voters were first becoming hard

to reach by phone methods, random phone polling remained a viable method

until 2016, because they could just adjust and give up waiting to the

young voters who they did not contact.

Or they would set quotas and keep going until they got enough young voters.

So, so yeah, that was that.

What else we got here?

NewsPoll only polls readers of The Australian or audiences

of other NewsCourt media.

And he says, in fact, the sample base for NewsPolls polling has

never had the slightest thing to do whether people read The Australian

or not, or what media they consume.

Online polling has come in, it's involved market research panels

that people have signed up for.

These people may not even necessarily be aware that

NewsPoll and The Australian exist.

So what happens is, people sign up for polling about anything.

Your dietary habits, your sleeping habits, or, you know, any manner of things.

Thousands of people.

You don't even know when you're signing up for a poll that...

You're going to be asked a political question, so they've got large numbers

of people who are committed to You know, filling in these polls, not even

knowing whether it's going to be a political one at the end of the day.

So As I was reading some of this he was saying, you know, maybe people could stack

the polling by agreeing to be a on these panels, but you'd end up doing a lot of

time answering polls about other things other than politics that would probably

just wear down the patience of somebody trying to enter these polling groups

for the purposes of skewing the data.

So, that's sort of the argument that he's running there.

What else does he say?

So, major online panel polls have access to tens of hundreds of

thousands of potential respondents and send out invites to only a small

proportion of the panel each time.

NewsPoll has been consistently wrong at recent elections and he says since

revamping its methods following the 2019 mass polling failure, News Corp

has correctly predicted the winner of five states and one federal election,

predicting the voting shares of four straight elections in 2022 23, within

one percent of the two party preferred.

So, so, a really good error rate.

I thought plus minus five percent was the limit of...

Usable information in political polling.

Well, they got it within 1%.

Pretty good.

But they're saying the margin of error in these is actually 10%.

Normally, I would have thought the margin of error, if the, if it's around

2 to 3%, where you've got 1, 000, my understanding was if you're around 1,

000 or 1, 200, that gave you a margin, a statistical margin of error of about 3%.

That was my understanding.

What else have we got?

Oh yeah.

Polls skew to the left because people who support right wing movements are afraid

to tell pollsters what they really think.

Morrison, Brexit, Trump, etc.

And his response to that is, so we're thinking at the moment, maybe people

are there's more people who are prepared to say no, but they're scared to tell.

Somebody, because they don't want to be erased.

So this one could be larger than actually...

That's sort of what we've been thinking to some extent.

It's possible.

As a natural sort of thought process about this.

And he says that this is an overrated theory.

Most polling errors that were supposed to be caused by it

were explained by other factors.

What he says is often the case you're not actually talking to a person now.

Like it's an online response, so you don't have the same sort of worry about

what is this person going to think about me, because it's an online panel.

You're not actually speaking to a person or human.

And many of the others are automated robot voice as well.

So for the few that still do some sort of phone polling, you're not

really dealing with a human being.

So maybe you're not going to feel that concern.

He reckons that the Shy Tory or the other things aren't

really supported by the results.

I won't go into the reasons why, but he's given lots of reasons why.

And let me see what else he says.

That's kind of the main things.

Anyway, I thought that increased my faith in the polls after reading it.

And I certainly was just under this general assumption that they

would ring people and that young people wouldn't answer their phone

and it was a skewed database and doesn't work like that at all.

There we go.

Right.

Okay.

In the chat room, Watley's just arrived.

You're late, Watley.

It's okay.

Right.

A little bit on the voice.

You guys would have heard of Michael Mansell?

Yeah, he's that blonde Aborigine in Tasmania.

Hmm, he's been around forever.

He's been around for donkey's years, yeah.

I can remember him, it must be nearly, it must be nearly 40 years ago.

40 years, yeah.

It'd have to be.

So he's not some Johnny come lately into the Indigenous activism world.

He was doing this stuff before Lydia Thorpe was born, I would have thought.

Or Anthony Mundine.

Yeah, but he's an old conservative, so he doesn't count.

Yeah.

And by the way, do you see this, do you hear about Kamal?

I, I, I see the lefter up in, or sorry, the yes voter up in arms about, yeah,

he's bribed him because he's changed his mind and how dare he change his mind.

He's obviously been nobbled.

Who's saying that?

The yes vote.

Right.

Because Kamal came out, he was originally a no voter, and then he spoke to some

people and announced that he was, after talking to people, a yes voter.

And then he went on the project to talk about that and revealed

that he changed his mind again and was now a no voter again.

So what we can say is he's actually a marginal.

Don't take advice from former daytime show singers.

Yeah, that was Kamal.

Anyway, back to Michael Mansell.

He wrote an article.

So he's currently Chairman Aboriginal Land Council of Tasmania.

And he says, vote no.

And okay, typically if you were to hear that, you would think, ah,

he's in the Lydia Thorpe camp, where he basically is saying that just a

voice to parliament is not enough.

We need treaty and we need other stuff.

And this just doesn't go far enough and it's a waste of time.

And guess what?

You'd be perfectly correct, because that is kind of what he's saying.

It's precisely what he's saying.

But he did lead up to that.

I have some interesting things to say that I thought were worthwhile, and he

said that the normal process for friendly governments advancing the cause of

Aboriginal people is through legislation.

When Gough Whitlam wanted to remedy racial discrimination in 1975, he did

not hold a referendum, he legislated the Racial Discrimination Act.

When Malcolm Fraser wanted to give land to Aboriginals in the Northern Territory,

he did not ask for a referendum.

His government enacted the Northern Territory Land Rights Act of 1976.

And likewise, when Paul Keating promised to shore up native title,

he did not go to a referendum.

He legislated the Native Title Act 1993.

Legislation is the normal way to change things.

The Australian Constitution is an agreement between former British

colonies to form a federation of states with a national parliament

and a court to resolve disputes.

Its purpose is not to declare human rights.

I mentioned on Facebook that obviously some people who vote no,

it's because they don't think that racism, even positive racism, should

be enacted in the constitution.

And it was pointed out to me that section 51 exists, which allows for the federal

government to make laws based on race.

But it was originally excluded aboriginals because they came

under state legislation and in fact federal government wasn't allowed to

override state legislation on that.

And also It in itself isn't a racist piece of legislation, it merely allows it, but

Parliament still has to create a law.

Mmm.

Whereas the voice would actually say, this group of people...

All different.

Mm hmm.

Indeed.

And in fact, Marcia Langton wanted to get rid of the raised

provisions out of the Constitution.

Mm hmm.

Prior to this one.

So, back to Michael Mansell, he says the proposal for a so called voice that

cannot return land, raise a tax, have no resources to distribute, deliver

no services, is not able to stop a racist law, or even build a single

house for the Aboriginal homeless means it is a shockingly weak idea.

I don't think he would get on well with Noel Pearson.

Somehow...

I think that would be...

At Loggerheads, guess what?

Some indigenous people have different opinions.

Uhhhhhhhhhhhhh...

The whole...

Sorry?

No person's gonna object to the next line, is he?

The Yes Campaign was never really about empowerment.

Otherwise they would have opted for designated seats in the Senate, where

six Aboriginals, one from each state, could potentially wield real power.

That's what Michael Manson wants.

He goes on, The whole voice idea has sucked many in emotionally.

The Yes Campaign uses emotion to win over well meaning people.

Think rationally.

How could an advisory body diminish racism or close the gap when a Prime Minister,

State Premiers and peak Aboriginal organisations have been unable to?

Very interesting.

Passages in this so he goes on to say we don't need another advisory panel he wants

mandatory sort of, seats in the Senate for Aboriginal people and he wants treaty

and all the rest of it, so, but some interesting comments along the way there

from Michael Mansell who's definitely no latecomer to this stuff and just

an interesting perspective, I thought.

I've been comparing this whole thing to religion a few times.

Jotted down some notes before.

Let's think about an Islamic voice to parliament.

Scott.

Why not?

I mean, if they could demonstrate in the Muslim community a gap in

financial and health outcomes.

If there is disproportionate incarceration and victimisation

through discrimination, i.

e.

a form of racism, then why not?

Why, why wouldn't we have an Islamic voice to parliament if

they could tick off similar boxes?

Because it's a religious thing, not a race thing.

This isn't race, this is, this is, there's no such thing as, even Marcia

Langton will tell you there's no Aboriginal race, it's a cultural group.

There, there is no race of Indigenous people.

In fact, they want to refer to themselves as First Peoples to take race out of it.

So, it's not about race for Marcia Langton and the other Indigenous

leaders, it's about First Peoples.

So, anyway, I'll go on.

The only real, you know, I'm just sort of painting a picture here.

It's good to do these thought experiments as to, to, to examine.

Okay.

If you just want to, if you're looking at the, the straight up

difference there is that the Islamic people have arrived in this country.

Well after the 1950s when the no, the guns were around in the 18 hundreds.

Mm.

Right.

Okay.

You got the 1800s, that was several hundred years after the, that was several

thousand years after the Indigenous people in this country were still around.

So the difference is ancestral land rights.

Yeah, I would have thought so.

And you value inherited nobility land rights type concepts.

Scott, like if a nobleman, Englishman says, you know, well my forefathers

owned all of this because it was handed down from somebody years ago.

It just keeps handed on generation to generation.

You value that.

So the Celts should get reparations from the Angles and the Saxons.

Yes.

Who invaded and stole their land.

And you, you're a Republican, Scott, and you're offended by

ancestral inherited nobility rights.

If, if, if the difference that this hangs on between an Islamic voice to

Parliament and an Indigenous voice.

He's inherited land rights.

It's shaky ground, I would have thought.

Not a great place to...

I've got no doubt about that.

It is shaky ground for sure.

But that's why the whole idea of an Islamic voice to Parliament is ridiculous.

But hang on.

If I could demonstrate that the sorts of arguments that are made for Indigenous

people, the gap, closing the gap...

If you could actually demonstrate there was actually a significant

gap, then they probably have some sort of argument for it.

And their voice has been ignored, and they want a voice, and their leaders want

a voice, and after all, surely Islamic people know what's best for Islamic

people, and they should be allowed some autonomy over their own affairs.

Yeah, they should be able to police their own communities.

Yes.

And, I mean...

Who are we to tell them how to live their lives?

We, we need to...

Allow them a voice where they can, because they're not being heard, Scott.

I just thought it was experiments, dear listener.

I know I am pissing a lot of people off with this, right?

I know I am, and you're saying, Trevor, you are being ridiculous, right?

I can hear you screaming into...

You know, your phone's out there.

Look at the uk.

Mm-hmm.

, there is an Islamic voice in the uk.

It's not enshrined in law.

Right.

But there is certainly a peak community body that is regularly consulted on

various things that they feel will.

affect the community, the reserved senatorial seats in parliament,

there are 12 archbishops in the House of Lords in the UK, there's

definitely precedence for this.

So, you know, surely if we can get more information about Islamic communities and

have their input, it can't be a bad thing.

If we can just give them the opportunity to speak.

to help close the gap.

Surely that can't be a bad thing.

Yeah, but I don't see the same sort of gap.

Right.

So here's where we get to.

You, dear listener, who is a yes voter in this situation, are now saying

it's a question of degree, whereas I can say I have a principle at stake,

which is People must have the same rights, irrespective of the cultural

grouping that they might be in.

And so, I can just say to, in response to the proposed, a proposed

Islamic voice to parliament, no.

We all start with equal rights.

No special rights for special groups.

We're all at the same level.

We need to help disadvantaged people, if they happen to be disadvantaged,

whether they be black or white or polka dot, or whether they be

Islamic or Christian or atheist.

It's a question of disadvantage.

I get to say that, but you...

There are special rights for rich people.

They get a voice to Parliament.

Joe, stop confusing the situation.

So I get to say that argument, but Scott does not get to say it.

He can only now say, it's a question of degree.

So, that's what happens when you drop a principle, is you then

can't use it when you want to rely on that principle later on.

So I can say no, race and religion or any other cultural grouping does

not entitle you to special rights.

Okay?

We must deal with disadvantage, not identity.

Yes, voters have to say, your situation is different to Indigenous people.

It's a matter of degree and your disadvantage is not as bad.

That's the only way of, of justifying ethically.

I know of being a yes to an indigenous voice and a no to a islamic voice.

So, just a few, you know, bits and pieces just for this thought

experiment, if you're playing around with it in your mind later on, dear

listener, even though you're super annoyed with me now, I know it.

But Liam is saying that you need to give Scott time to...

Build a counter argument.

Okay.

Because you've been thinking about this for some time.

Yeah, that's true.

That's true.

And I'm always happy to revisit topics later on, but just adding

sort of, points of interest to this whole thought experiment, right?

2016 Census 604, 000 people identified as Muslim.

That's constituted 2.

6 percent of the total Australian population.

Not that far off the Indigenous population, which is 3

point something percent.

So, Muslims 2.

6, Indigenous 3 point something percent.

As of 2007 average wages of Muslims were much lower than the national average.

Just 5 percent of Muslims were earning over 1, 000 a week

compared to the average of 11%.

Thank you very much.

Muslims are over represented in jails in NSW, 9 10 percent of the prison

population, compared to less than 3 percent within the NSW population.

There's a report from the University of South Australia, which says that

Oh, if you're looking at income levels, then, Muslims are disproportionately

represented in the low income and underrepresented in the high income.

Children in poverty 25.

6 percent Muslims are in the less than 800 category, whereas for

the general population it's 12.

7, so 25.

6 for Muslim, 12.

7 for the general population, that's of children in in poverty.

Disability.

Needing assistance with core activities for elderly people.

What does that say?

34

percent of 15%.

Probability...

Of employment.

Now this is looking at your name.

They do these tests where they apply for jobs using names which are obviously

Indigenous, obviously Italian, obviously Chinese, and obviously Middle Eastern

names, and whether you get called for an interview and whether your resume

is even, you know, looked at, and your probability of employment, if you have

an Indigenous name, decreases by 10.

2%.

You if it's an Italian name, it decreases by 5.

2%.

If it's Chinese, your probability of employment decreases by 11.

9%.

If it's Middle Eastern, it decreases by 13.

7%.

So based on names Indigenous people do a lot worse.

So, look.

There isn't the extreme poverty that we see in indigenous camps

in remote Australia, but then they also I'm guessing are mostly urban.

Yes, that's true So it's a thought experiment and and when I pose that

to you if your initial response was Well, we're all equal rights We can't

have special rules for religious groups Just because of their religion, then

you really have to ask whether you can maintain a consistent thought process

on these other issues, like the voice.

There you go, there's a thought experiment that I know has

really annoyed a lot of people.

And I know that the poverty level is quite different, but that's the whole point,

you're reduced to saying if you're a yes on the voice, and you don't like the

idea of an Islamic voice, you're really reduced to saying it's a matter of degree.

You've lost your principles.

If you were to exclude regional First Nation people from the statistics, do you

think that there would be less poverty?

So in other words, if you compared urban First Nation people,

Aboriginals, with urban Muslims, you'd see a similar level of poverty?

No, I think Indigenous would still be significantly less, I think.

But I don't know.

But I'd suspect.

I, I also read an article today, I think in the Wall Street Journal it

was an opinion piece by a rabbi who was going on about Israel and Palestine.

And the whole land rights issue, and I'm just looking at it and thinking there are

parallels with what we're going through.

It's different.

I mean, the Israelis claim that it's the promised land, and that immediately

comes up with, well, you're assuming that we believe that there's a God,

and you're assuming that we believe this God has given the land to you.

But it's very much as to, we have historical land rights

and therefore we deserve.

And surely the Palestinians born in that, on that land, after the

expulsion of the Jews or whatever, were entitled to stay there, that wasn't

their, you know, by circumstance, and have as equal rights as anybody.

Yeah, I mean, it's all very...

Interesting, just looking at that and going, how does that compare?

Hmm.

Speaking of overseas, how are we going for time?

8.

20.

Just there was that dam that burst in Libya.

So there was the incredible rain event.

And that caused too much water for the dams, there might

have been two dams, or one.

Yeah, wasn't this an unprecedented thing because the Mediterranean was

hotter than it's ever been before?

Mm.

And certainly an argument that the, because Libya is a failed state

now, that there was, hadn't been any maintenance done on the dams.

And no capacity to warn people when the dams failed, and then no

capacity to help people afterwards because of the mess that Libya is in.

And Barack Obama and his Twitter account shared some links to

organisations providing relief to the victims of the flooding in Libya.

And Caitlin Johnston makes the point that that would, of course, be a fine and

normal thing for America's 44th President to do, had America's 44th President

not personally played a massive role in paving the way to the devastation

that we're seeing in Libya today.

And back in 2010, oil rich Libya ranked higher on the UN Human Development Index

than any other nation in Africa, with much better national infrastructure

to protect itself from floods.

Today, it's a chaotic human humanitarian disaster.

What changed?

Well, in 2011, US French and British troops helped rebels with extensive

links to Al-Qaeda to kill Madda Gaddafi, which then plunged the nation

into chaos, and it was a falsely branded humanitarian intervention.

Designed to prevent an alleged genocide that Qaddafi was presumably plotting,

and the NATO attack on Libya quickly morphed into a regime change operation.

And years later, a US, a UK House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee

found made some findings about the whole thing, and I'll come to that

in a minute, and what did they find?

So...

That Qaddafi was not, so this is from the British Parliament, House

of Commons Bipartisan Foreign Affairs Committee, looking back on the whole

NATO Libyan, NATO war in Libya.

It's, and it revealed Qaddafi was not planning to massacre civilians,

the myth was exaggerated by rebels and Western governments.

which based their intelligence on little, or based their

intervention on little intelligence.

The threat of Islamist extremists was ignored and of course

it just gave rise to them.

France, which initiated the military intervention, was motivated by

economic and political interests and the uprising, which was violent.

Not peaceful, would likely not have been successful, if not for the foreign

military intervention and that the NATO bombing plunged Libya into a humanitarian

disaster, killing thousands of people and displacing hundreds of thousands more.

So, in the show notes, links to different articles, another one by Chris Hedges,

that basically said there was a beat up that Qaddafi was going to kill a

bunch of people and that was used as an excuse for NATO forces to go in.

And then that morphed into regime change, which then enabled Islamist

forces to gather control, which plunged the country into chaos, and then having

done all that, the West just left.

And that's part of the background to a dam failing, and that they were

going to do a similar thing in Syria, except Russia stepped in and stopped

what would have been a repeat of that.

It's just going into these countries.

And completely dismantling what has, the culture has built up over time and

leaving such a huge vacuum is almost.

Always going to result in complete disaster.

You've completely dismantled things that took forever to build up and,

okay, mightn't be perfect in your eyes, but you've got to look at

what was the result afterwards.

And these interventions have just proved disastrous for the people in there.

Anyway, I didn't know much about Libya until this dam collapse.

I was just looking at Lampedusa.

What's Lampedusa?

It's an Italian island that's sort of off the coast of Tunisia.

In the, the gulf between Tunisia and Libya and it's been where a lot of

migrants from North Africa have been trying to get into Europe, so they get

to Lampedusa and claim asylum but of course bodies have been washing up on

a regular basis, same with boat people anywhere and that all started in 2013.

This is the place, okay, it's Italian territory, but it's on the African

continent, and they've got like a It's just off the African continent.

Okay.

Is that the one where they've got a wall that leads to the sea, and

these people try and No, so that's Ceuta and Melilla, which are Spanish.

Ah, right, okay.

Yeah.

So, you know, we look at these countries and we go, these failed states,

can't they get their act together?

And realistically T L E A N G E.

While they may not have been Nirvana, they were doing okay, in Libya's case,

doing better than any other African country, and and plunged into chaos.

They were also funding terrorists.

No doubt, but who isn't?

Who isn't?

Yeah.

Cursed by oil, of course, which they were selling to people that the

West didn't want them to sell it to.

They'd cut deals with China, so.

That wasn't, that wasn't good for the long term health of Gaddafi.

I would have thought Gaddafi probably copped it, you know, in return for the...

Bombing of the locker lobe.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Lockerby, like I thought Kaddafi copped a hell of a lot from the, from

the British and the Yanks over that.

So they did eventually jail, two of them, and they released one two of, yeah, they

released one because he was dying and then he suddenly he wasn't dying or something.

Mm-hmm.

Exactly.

Yeah.

But, you know, as terrible as all that is, and you may hate the guy, just going

in and completely dismantling a country I agree wholeheartedly with you, and

it's It just leads to these disasters that Yeah, and Iraq wasn't, Iraq wasn't

a land of milk and honey either, but it was stable before the Yanks got involved.

Afghanistan...

It was stable before the Russians got involved, you know, it's, I would have

thought that the Russians would have learned from the Americans mistake

in Vietnam, and the Yanks would have learned from their own mistake

in Vietnam not to get involved in these places, but apparently not.

Hey, actually there's a new series on Netflix called Spy Ops.

And the first two episodes are about I think Panama and somewhere else.

Anyway, it was CIA involvement in an overthrow.

Mm.

And then one of 'em was about Afghanistan.

Right.

And, and it was just, you know, the, the, the minutiae of how

do you overthrow a government.

Mm.

Sorry.

How do you, how do you support a rebel group in, in their freedom fight?

Well, that Bolton character said, you know, KS aren't easy.

I've been involved in a few, I should know.

literally said that.

Yeah.

In the show notes for the patrons.

Series of articles about the Uyghurs.

It's been difficult to try and nail down what happened in China with the Uyghurs

and There's a report has come out recently by two in sorry, by four independent

German specialists on China and looking at the Uyghur issue and basically the

conclusion is that that there was a real problem of Islamic fundamentalism in

the Uyghur community and And there was serious terrorist attacks going on, and

China had a choice of what to do here, either let them continue or or not.

It chose...

A very authoritarian response, and no doubt Bad things were done along the way,

but it was done for the purpose of You know the word re education camp, Scott.

It's got a bad connotation to it.

Oh, it does for sure.

But it was a genuine, the way these Chinese professors are saying is

There was a genuine effort to, to re educate the community away from Islamic

terrorist fundamentalism, like jihadism.

And that, the proof of that was that those facilities were in place for

a short time, they've closed down, that it wasn't about wiping out the

population and exterminating them.

It was trying to stop the fundamentalist, sort of, jihadism.

And...

Those facilities have closed and the Uyghurs are a thriving cultural

community in that part of China, according to these professors.

So, full details in the show notes, copies of the reports, but okay, if you're going

to come down with a heavy hand and crack down on a situation like that, there would

have been breaches of human rights, etc.

But but it's not the Fully ugly picture that's been painted by the West.

Read all that at your leisure, dear listener.

Hmm.

That's it.

Hmm.

I've, I'm done.

8.

33.

Monday Night Special.

Any other thoughts, gentlemen?

The whole Libya thing gives you a whole new take on it, doesn't it?

Hmm.

It's one of those things like, I mean, It's clear that Obama didn't

have a completely clean set of hands.

No.

You know, he wasn't the great, merciful, caring person that

he made out himself to be.

Hmm.

What a disappointment.

Yeah, for sure.

Hmm.

Hmm.

Well, dear listener, thank you for For your participation in the chat

room, Watley said, I'm with you, Trev.

Excellent thought experiment.

Thanks, Watley.

Liam said, I feel you need to give Scott more time to think of counter arguments.

He's on the spot where you're quite prepared.

That is true.

I do throw these things out and you're dead right, I have an

advantage, but then it's always open to anybody to rehash stuff.

Over the following weeks, and and we can do that.

Talk about them at any time.

Okay, next week is definitely going to be a, a pre recorded episode on The Voice,

because I've got a whole bunch of notes that I haven't dealt with, and then

because I'm away, and then we'll be back in two weeks time on the Tuesday night.

Joe, are you still around then?

Two weeks time?

What date is it?

It's getting close.

Yeah what date will that be?

Okay, the 10th?

Still around?

10th I'm still around, yes.

Okay, all right, we'll have Joe, for sure.

Until then, we'll be back.

Talk to you next time.

Bye for now.

And it's a good night from me.

And it's a good night from him.

What you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I've ever heard.

At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even

close to anything that could be considered a rational thought.

Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it.

May God have mercy on your soul.

Now a matter of great importance has been brought to my attention.

I speak, of course, of the generous contributions made by the patrons of

the Iron Fist Velvet Glove podcast.

These fine men and women have sacrificed so much for their countrymen.

Never before in the field of human conflict have so

many owed so much to so few.

To those of you who are not yet patrons, I say this.

Give generously of yourself, give until you can honestly say, I

have nothing left to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat.

Let me see, what is the time?

Ah, 10am.

Now, where is my whiskey and cigars?