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 an 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.

We do indeed, the Iron Fist and the Velvet Glove podcast.

I'm Trevor over there in regional Queensland back after a bit of

a break is got the Velvet Glove.

How are you, Scott?

Good, thanks Trevor.

Good day, Joe.

Good day, Trevor.

Good day listeners.

I hope everyone's doing well

and with us as well.

Joe, the tech guy, evening all.

Yeah,

so three of us, which is good.

Has it feels like it's been a while.

Where have you been, Scott?

Have you been anywhere?

No.

Just issues like I should have asked before we started going live.

Don't tell me if you don't want to.

You wanna be up to something you don't.

Considering business,

I'm considering buying a business up here.

Oh,

oh, okay.

I'll have to question with more.

I'm into partnership

with someone else, which is good because I don't know a first thing

about it, but, um, she would be able to run it and all that sort of stuff.

All I'd have to do is do the books.

Right?

Yeah.

Okay.

All right.

I'll ask you more about that afterwards.

I should have.

Yes, exactly.

So is

how, how is the prospect for the meth business up in

Yeah.

Meth is going gangbusters up here.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, they are, you know,

he's done his market research.

Yeah.

It's like I've said before, miners are as thick as two short planks and

half as interesting because they.

They can't smoke dope anymore because that gets picked up on the drug text on

the drug tests a couple of weeks later.

Mm-hmm.

So they found out that if you just take meth, it goes through your system a

hell of a lot faster, which means you can survive the P test when you return

to the, uh, you can return to the mine a couple of days later and you can

piss it out and it's no problem at all.

There we go.

So that's why they're, that's why they're all using

meth and everything else.

And that is, um,

one of the things I, um, anyway, I can tell you all about it off air,

but it's just, I'm not gonna be a, I'm starting to think he really is

running a meth lab.

I'm not actually, I'm not actually gonna run a meth business or

anything like that, but it's just one of those things I can fully appreciate

and understand why the hell they do it.

Right.

Because you've got a ready, you've got a ready group of people that

are prepared to purchase it and you know, and they are all cashed up.

They've got a hell of a lot of cash.

So anyway, I'm just gonna get this jacket off.

I'm really hot and I'm all tied up and knot here.

Hang on one second.

And Trevor's doing a strip tease for us, ladies and gentlemen.

Yeah,

those watching along on the podcast later.

Yeah.

That's only been 477 episodes.

You would've thought I'd learn to be properly atti for a podcast.

But anyway, here we go.

Mm-hmm.

So, uh, on the agenda, dear listener, just give Garza a break for a week

because it's just gonna get really worse over the next few weeks, uh, as the

starvation phase of the extermination takes hold and we will get to

increasingly more stories about that.

And

haven't, um, haven't a couple of the hard right ministers and all that

sort of stuff threatened to walk away from the government or haven't they

actually walked away from the government,

from the Israeli government?

Yeah.

I don't know, Scott, but, um, I heard that it's all too late now.

It just, it's,

yeah, I know it's, it's too late for the Garzas right now, but I

just think to myself, if they could actually get into an election, if they

could actually change the government and all that sort of stuff, which is I

know is becoming increasingly unlikely.

It's just a possibility that they could actually reverse it.

The polls I read, the population over there has been so

poisoned that they're quite happy with the arrangement that's going on.

So, yeah.

So, uh, thank you.

Uh, Murray says at least call for donations, Trevor, before the strip.

I should have thought of that.

Yeah.

So, um, on the agenda, uh, we are going to talk, um, Joe, a little

bit about artificial intelligence, then a little bit about, uh, crazy

American beliefs on evolution and then.

Good old China range of topics in relation to China.

So, um, but before I do, I shout out to Jade, who I met at a, my granddaughter's

birthday party on Saturday, who is a listener to the podcast.

Good on you, Jade.

Also shout out to Liam and Shannon, who I've been corresponding with

and with all of them, I think.

Um, we're talking about other podcasts.

There's another podcast out called, we used to Be Journos by Jan Fran

and Antoinette Latu, the lady who was sacked from the A, b, C, not a bad one,

sort of Australian news and politics.

And if you're looking for something a bit different, there's a thing called,

uh, a podcast called Blind Boy Podcast.

And it's an Irish guy who talks about a range of different topics and.

And cleverly weaves them in together.

And he's got a lovely Irish accent.

So if you're looking for another podcast to listen to, uh,

recommend The Blind Boy podcast.

So check those out.

But anyway, shout outs done.

Um, Joe, artificial intelligence, you have been a bit of a poo poo

naysayer about artificial intelligence.

Yeah, I think anyone

close to the tech is a little more skeptical of a lot of the claims.

Mm-hmm.

So I came across, um, this, um, article, um, basically saying that, um.

A lot of the hype around AI is facilitated by the fact that artificial

intelligence is such a slippery concept.

Mm-hmm.

And in terms of just the way we describe it, um, this person argued if

you're developing software that classifies images, call it an automated imaging

classifier, and if you're building a chatbot that can converse with a human.

Or synthesize writing.

Call it a text extruding machine.

Joe, do you like that one?

A text extruding machine?

Well, we've already got large language model.

Mm.

Which is what they are.

They're, they're a text predictor.

They aren't intelligent.

They have no knowledge of truth.

Yep.

They just tell you, uh, what word is likely to come next in a sentence?

Yes.

Churning out one word.

You realize that after another, based on the probability that the next word fits

well with those that came before it.

Yeah, you do.

Just listen to some people who are really raving about the possibilities

of ai and if that's all it's doing.

Yeah.

That's not intelligence as such.

And, and the thing is, it doesn't say, I don't know, it,

it quite happily holds forth Yes.

And tells you exactly what its language generation model predicts is next,

despite it being completely incorrect.

Mm. So, um, anyway, apple put out a report Joe called the Illusion of

Thinking, understanding the strengths and limitations of reasoning models

via the lens of problem complexity, which was basically looking at these,

um, AI software programs and, um, uh, even the most cutting edge large

reasoning models are no more than a very gifted parrots, which ba with

basically no actual reasoning capability.

Uh, this author was arguing that they're not intelligent in the slightest.

And, um, what the report from Apple, um, showed Joe, they presented these

things with some puzzles and one of the puzzles that was the complex puzzle.

The, um, the AI was able to solve it, um, um, a bit easier than the simple puzzle.

And the reason was that the more complex puzzle had basically, um, better

exposure on the internet and the AI memorized the answers to the puzzle,

whereas the simpler puzzle was less well known and AI hadn't had a chance

to, um, basically memorize the puzzle.

Does that sound right to you?

Yeah, I tried, um, teaching, I can't remember one of the models I think Lama.

Um, how to do, uh, an online, not crossword, but a word puzzle.

Yep.

Uh, and gave it multiple examples.

Solved examples, and then said, right, here's today's puzzle.

Can you solve it?

And it was totally useless.

Yeah.

And, and you know, if you ask it, what was it?

How many s in strawberry, it gets it completely wrong.

Right.

It, it has no intuition, it has no understanding.

It literally just parrots words.

Yeah.

And, and the other problem is it's been trained on stolen text.

Mm-hmm.

And if you look, um, most online forums these days, if you look hidden deep

in the terms of service, uh, all of your.

Work.

All of your text, all of your images are, um, open for them to steal,

to train their models to better produce whatever it is they produce.

Mm-hmm.

So there have been artists who've complained that their art has been stolen

and used to feed these models that then spit out art that looks like their work.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

So, um, so anyway, that was a bit on artificial intelligence that,

um, I'd been sort of just trying to get my head around whether this

stuff is actually worthwhile or not.

Do you use it at all?

Scott?

Have you ever used any?

I've only ever

used chat GPT just to help me out with, um, selection criteria

and that sort of stuff, you know?

Right.

I just put it in there and then I've turned around and

written it like a human being.

I just get the main ideas from Jet GPT and then after that I humanize it and.

Sent it down to the better half for him to have a look at and all that sort of stuff.

And he approves it.

It's approved.

Then I just, then I apply for the job.

Mm. Came across an old poll, well old, uh, 12 years old.

Um, this was on a u gov poll on Americans opinions about evolution.

So, uh, essentially, uh, they're given sort of four options.

One is human beings evolve from less advanced life forms over

millions of years, and God did not directly guide the process.

Sort of the standard, you know, uh, scientific version

of evolution if you like.

Mm-hmm.

Uh, the second option was that human beings evolve from less

advanced life forms over millions of years, but God guided the process.

Uh, so a bit of mixture of evolution and God's guidance.

The third was God created human beings in their present form within the last 10,000

years, a fairly biblical sort of option.

And then the fourth was, don't know, not sure.

And, um, and in 2013, in this ugo of poll, uh, only 21% of

Americans got the right answer.

Mm-hmm.

Which of course is the first one that, uh, it's entirely down to evolution.

25% thought.

Uh, it was a mixture, evolution, and God's guidance, 37% were just

straight out biblical version.

17% Dunno.

See the problem with evolution

mm-hmm.

As a religious concept

mm-hmm.

Is that once you accept that we have evolved from other animals, then you

come back to there were no Adam and Eve because there were multiple creatures.

Yes.

And if you don't have Adam and Eve, then you can't have original sin.

Mm-hmm.

And if you don't have original sin, then you can't have Jesus to

forgive us for our original sin.

Indeed.

So people get trapped.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

So just on this first answer of getting it totally right, evolution

and no God, only 21% of Americans overall, um, let's break that down.

Uh, how many, uh, in these various categories got the correct answer?

Uh, based on race, white, 25% black 6%, and Hispanic 17%.

So only 6% of black people got the right answer there.

Education.

If you were less than high school, only 9% of those people got the

correct answer, whereas 32% of college graduates did and 37% of post-grad did.

Mind you, in the post-grad, 33% think it's a mixture of God and evolution, and 16%

are still all in on the biblical version.

Ah, you, you can get creationists who are PhD, um,

paleontologists and well, certainly PhD. Uh, what's the study of Rocks?

Geologists?

Yes.

And you go at this point, you just.

You know, parroting back what you don't believe just to get a PhD so

that you can then spout your biblical beliefs going, but I've got a PhD.

Look at me.

Yes.

Yeah.

Gender.

26% of males got it.

Right.

Only 17% female.

Age-wise, the older you get, the less likely you are to get it right.

65 plus those boomers, again, only 20% of them got the right answer.

Democrats, 28% Republicans, 5%.

Mm-hmm.

Yikes.

Oh yeah.

You see Republicans like other people to do their thinking for them.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Um, various religions.

Protestant, 8% Roman Catholic, 12 Buddhists 87.

Good on you for the Buddhists.

Mm-hmm.

Um.

Atheists, 87% with a 12%.

Don't know.

There we go.

So anyway, I thought that was just a, a shocking indictment on

American, uh, education system.

Again, yet again.

I mean, it was an old poll, but it's the, I've been

surprised.

I've worked with a couple of young earthers, uh, and, you know,

technical people, intelligent people.

Uh, one was Filipino, so kind of you expect they absorbed

it with the, the culture.

Mm-hmm.

The other one grew up in rural Queensland and, um, yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Heavily, heavily brainwashed.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

What does Murray say in the chat room?

'cause Murray's a, a tech expert.

Let me just see if I can bring this up.

Um, heading back to ai.

Ai, yeah.

So, um, what did he say here?

I gotta get back to the, um.

Beginning, I use it for policy and governance development.

Um, use it to ask how things could be improved, feeded a question,

and your response then ask for an answer with certain constraints,

like more professional and concise.

Or you set up an executive of AI each with their own special specialty of

information handling and one or more to manage which one gets what task.

Hmm.

So I guess there are good examples where you have a knowledge base

for a company and an AI bot, um, has read the manual mm-hmm.

And can provide the answers, can regurgitate it.

Yes.

Yeah.

So, um, I, so word now has a text predictor.

Mm-hmm.

Uh, that again predicts what is likely to come and.

Half, three quarters of the time it's Right.

Yeah.

And so it saves me typing in an extra two or three words

towards the end of a sentence.

Mm-hmm.

Uh, I use it for that and I've used it to polish up, uh, you know, when

I was writing my resume mm-hmm.

Um, I would say, alright, here's a list of my achievements.

Turn that into a nice text spiel.

Um, and, and it will produce a nice paragraph or two paragraphs weaving in

your facts, but even then, you can't leave it on its own because it will dream up.

Yeah.

Achievements that you have, which you definitely don't.

My daughter actually now I think of it is using AI in HR where managers

are using it for practice, interviews with staff, where they've got difficult

conversations to have with staff.

And, and a way of, of practicing their interview skills is to do it with an AI.

That

that makes sense.

Yes.

If you trained with a large body of, uh, possible outcomes.

Yes.

Yeah.

So, um, yeah.

Um, there we go.

Alright.

Um, so lemme just get back to my agenda here.

Little diversion there into American, uh, religious belief.

Mm-hmm.

Um, Scott, our esteemed prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, has been in China.

Mm. He'd been keeping an eye out on the media coverage of his trip at all.

He, uh,

not really because I thought that it's gonna be fairly China

bashing and all that sort of stuff, and I've learned my lesson not to

bash China and everything else.

So I've just gotta try and find my information from other sources.

Mm-hmm.

And also they don't seem to understand the way China does things.

Like I was actually talking to someone on Saturday.

They reckon that in China they take people around, they show them things

first, and then once they've gone and done the touristy thing, then they say,

right now it's time to talk business.

Mm-hmm.

So Susan Lee and everything like that, her accusation that

they're over there on holidays.

Yes.

It may well have looked like they were on holidays, but they were over there

at the request of the Chinese government to go and look at all these things.

And then after that they got down to talking business once they'd done that.

Yes.

So that was a, that was a fairly, um,

it, it was a very good conversation that I had on Saturday anyway.

Yeah, it's killing the right wing commentators in Murdoch through the, you

know, courier mail, Australian Sky news.

Other avenues like that are just having conniptions, um, over albanese.

Being relatively well treated in the meetings with, um, the Chinese president.

Oh, I know.

Yeah.

They, they, they're expecting that the Chinese are gonna open up the

meeting by throwing rocks at him.

Uh, well,

yeah, well, you know, they, they just, I'm gonna give you a, you know,

we are in a McCarthys type era, Scott, with the, the beating of the drums of

war against China and just anything, and everything that China does is to be viewed

with suspicion and anyone associated with them are also to be viewed with suspicion.

And it's just nonsensical in the scheme of things.

But if you are wondering, dear, listen, how we are getting to this

sort of, um, stage, it's, it's just orchestrated by these, you know,

let's face it, um, propaganda, um, in the Murdoch press for starters, so.

James Morrow on the 15th of July, uh, was writing in the Courier mail.

At some point, Anthony Albanese has to make a call.

Does Australia support democracies when they are set upon by their more

powerful neighbors brackets Ukraine?

Or do we say we support democracies in principle, but raise the bat

in the event it all gets too hard or might mess with our trade?

Taiwan?

Um, Australia stands with Ukraine, Albanese said, yet when it came to

Taiwan, another democracy with a menacing neighbor, the tone changes.

We support the status quo.

We don't support any unilateral action.

Normally, these phrases would be taken as just diplomatic niceties with the

understanding that, yeah, more than likely we'd get involved on the side of freedom.

But now it's not so clear.

Albanese has made it clear that trade and jobs, jobs and trade are his priorities

when it comes to China and all that stuff about human rights and bully.

Boy diplomacy is just a distraction.

Oh, hyper.

All of these guys, I'll just pause there for a moment.

Like

the whole point, the whole problem with China for these guys is that they

used to be able to say, um, communist.

Um, but now, you know, they, they look at China and it's obviously a free market

operating in a, in a lot of the segments of the economy, and they've got plenty

of billionaires and millionaires and.

The communist argument isn't working anymore.

So the only one left is democracy and freedom versus authoritarian regimes.

That's, that's

how it's changed.

But we have one China policy, don't we?

So

we, we do, but they don't like that.

So they just, um, well, we've

had it for, what, 50 years at least.

Yeah.

They just keep wanting to beat up.

The idea of a war is gonna happen between the US and China, and we need to say

right now that we will be supporting the US in its fight to protect Taiwan.

And it's just a continuous theme through, um, through the Murdoch press.

Um, let me see what else he says here.

Um, uh, thanks to Albanese, repeated criticisms of the Trump administration

in Washington, coupled with a refusal to increase Australia's defense spending.

Or say anything more than the most cursory bad word about China's

aggressive behavior at sea.

The question is now being asked in Washington, what would we, sorry,

would we or wouldn't we help China help if China invaded Taiwan?

Uh, it just,

it, it

just

goes on.

I'm struggling to remember.

No, I've lost it.

But the, the, the, um, what was the accusation and the, what was the,

what was the line from the, um, the first line you read from the about

trade?

Was that the one so, you know, do we care more about No, I understand that.

But then, but then he said, um, anyway, I was just struggling

to remember where our government

wasn't all that, you know, wasn't critical of China when

they had done something wrong.

You know, they, they've often said that we will agree where we

can but disagree, where we must.

Mm. Which is an entirely reasonable thing for them to say.

Mm-hmm.

In more recent times, Albanese has said, 'cause they've been talking about this,

um, when the Chinese, uh, ships were 300 kilometers off our coast and doing

a live firing exercise, which might be just firing bullets into the water,

um, he did say, well, we do conduct exercises ourself in the South China

Sea, and, you know, is that what he said?

Was it, yeah.

Yeah.

So that was outrageous for these people.

So

he, I

think it was a perfectly reasonable thing for him to say.

Yeah, but they don't see it at all that way.

Um, what else have I got here?

James Morrow.

Um, they basically are accusing, um, albanese of being a naive tourist and

that the Chinese have given him a.

A lovely tour around the major sites and the visit to the pandas

and the Great Wall, and he's a sucker for falling for it.

That's the sort of language of he Ackerman in the Courier mail.

Um, uh, like what does he say here?

Albanese is dealing with a dictator.

It was made no secret of his plans to actively expand the Chinese Communist

Party's influence throughout the Pacific.

Examples of China's contempt for our sovereignty are numerous from the

live firing exercises conducted in the Tasman Sea in February to the circum

navigation of our island nation.

By survey craft equipped with undersea drones capable of mapping critical

cables and underwater canyons used by submarines, we now learn that Chinese

interests have purchased land adjacent to our muted nuclear submarine bases.

Oh, no, Scott.

The Chinese are buying land next to our nuclear submarine base.

That is, you know, the, that is no problem at all.

Because if they are actually buying it for buying or anything like that, they're

going to be under the surveillance of our own security organizations.

So if you, if you find out it's a nest of spies, you just move in and kick 'em out.

Yeah.

You know, it's like, um, the whole Landbridge deal over,

um, the port, port in Darwin.

Yep.

I, I don't understand why people are getting their knickers in a twist

over it, you know, if the Chinese actually used it for intelligence or anything else.

Yep.

Then we can kick 'em out.

But right now they're not actually doing that.

You know, and if they, if they really wanted to, all they have to do is just.

You know, grab a unit in a, um, in one of the places that's

overlooking it, where they could film everything that was going on.

You know, it's no problem at all.

Or just

a spice satellite.

Yeah.

And just see whatever they want to that way.

Mm-hmm.

It's, I just can't believe that they've, this, that going on about China own owning

the port, uh, the Chinese company, uh, just, it's, it's in Australia, if we have

a war with them, we just confiscate it.

Exactly.

It's entirely national.

We'd rela, we'd renationalize the asset, you know,

if, if we had invested in a port in China, um, they'd

be saying, well, the risk is that we'll lose it in the event of a war.

Well, yeah, that's right.

Exactly.

Which is exactly what, not

that our government invests in.

Overseas ventures, does it?

No.

No, it doesn't.

Well, not

as, not as clearly as that.

No.

So, um, look, there was another article by, in the same, um,

addition by Peter Credlin.

I won't.

I won't go through the details of that.

It's more of the hyperbolic stuff.

The letters to the editor, you know, the main letter to the editor was Elbow Ducks.

Big issues with China.

And this was one, um,

sorry, you're saying that, um, uh, Tony Abbott's chief of staff was

negative against the labor government?

You shock me.

Yes.

But,

but the most shocking part, Joe is the hypocrisy because she was

Tony Abbott's chief of staff when he invited China to the Chinese president.

The same one

Yeah.

To address the Australian parliament, negotiated a free trade

agreement and also entered into an extradition treaty with, um, China.

Yeah, but you don't understand that's when the LMP were doing it.

Yeah.

Now that it's labor doing

it,

it's wrong.

And Abbott says in his defense, uh, at the time it seemed like China

was moving towards being nice guys.

Mm-hmm.

Garbage mean.

And now it's clear

that they're not.

And so now it wouldn't be, it's not on, but it was when he did it, it's

probably all about jobs and growth.

Yeah.

You know, at the risk of upsetting Trevor, I think that, um, you know, June,

1999 should have actually put a, put a, a. Pull on that, you know, because China

wasn't, China was moving towards it, but then it all fell apart in 1989 and

they actually came to an agreement with the people saying, we will make you rich

if you just tolerate what we're doing.

And that's what the people have actually accepted.

You know, the people have accepted it.

Otherwise, there'd be a revolution in China, which I just don't think there's

going to be, because their standard of living has gone up so much that they're

no longer interested in rocking the boat.

Yeah.

But then

you get America where the standard living has gone down and they're still

not doing a revolution, even though fascist is obviously taking power.

I agree.

It is one of those things.

I just think to myself, it would be better if there was.

Some sort of revolution in the United States.

Mm-hmm.

Rather than in China.

And I think that there, I actually believe that there is a possibility that

at some point they're going to roll out the guillotines and they're gonna take a

few heads off in the US we can only hope.

Mm. Uh, and just to finish off on that topic, um, of

Abbott, it was the union movement.

Mm-hmm.

That was criticizing the fair trade agreement and the extradition deal.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

And um, and uh, who's the guy who wears the cardigans in the Australian, um, um,

Greg Sheridan.

Yes.

He was criticizing the union movement at the time for being traitors to

the Australian cause because they were criticizing the Chinese deals.

The very deals now that Sheridan and the rest of 'em are saying

should never have been done.

Mm-hmm.

Um, yeah.

Yeah, they're idiots.

You know, it's just that, um, if the LNP was in office doing that sort

of thing, that it would be silence coming from the Murdoch media.

Mm.

But because the labor party's in power, then they've

got the knives out for them.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, um, uh, yeah, let me just, I've just gotta try and read this thing.

There's also, um, still in the er mail, just in the letter section was an

article, and I've just gotta bear with me a second 'cause I, it's a bit hard

for me to read it and I'm just adjusting things so I can get the whole thing.

Um,

talking about a previous, um, letter saying, Dominic, blah, blah

wrote that China has not invaded or bombed any other sovereign nation.

Unlike the US in the past 75 years, history does not support this contention.

In 1950, China illegally invaded an occupied Tibet.

The Dalai Lama was eventually forced to flee to India.

In 1962, Chinese troops invaded India.

In the Sino Indian War commenced, there were numerous casualties on both sides.

In 1969, Chinese and Soviet forces were engaged in a lengthy border dispute along

the, the Sury River with hundreds killed.

And in 1979, uh, let me just get this here, 1979, China invaded Vietnam.

And after tens of thousands of casualties, China withdrew its forces.

China has not behaved as an exemplary neighbor, and Taiwan must remain vigilant.

But if that's the worst you can come up with, um, I know

Indian War lasted two months.

The Uri River conflict lasted seven months.

The Vietnam 1979 conflict lasted one month.

Um, in, in all that time, our ally, the United States as we know, have

been running battles all the time.

And the other part of all this is, you know, Taiwan better watch out because

this is what China was, has done.

But Taiwan agrees that Tibet is part of China and Taiwan's also claiming the s

Spratley Islands, which is part of this whole narrative of Chinese aggression.

So it doesn't make sense to say

not just them.

'cause the Vietnamese, the Philippines, uh, I think there's another country.

They all claim the Raleys.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's one of those things.

I just think that, um.

Anyway, I've said it before, but I think if Taiwan would actually renounce

their claims to the South China Sea, if they'd actually renounce their claims

to anything that's on mainland China.

Yeah, that would be a first step.

And then after that, that would eliminate anything that China

could actually say to them.

You know,

I, I just find it laughable when the argument is, watch out Taiwan.

'cause remember China invaded Tibet.

Meanwhile the Taiwanese are going Yeah.

'cause it's all part of their empire.

They're supposed to do that and look at

Taiwan.

Well, and and it's the same with the, the.

Sinoa war.

Yes.

Um, the Russians stole all of Manchuria, right?

Yes.

So they're just claiming a bit of land back.

Yeah.

A fight over an island in the middle of a river was what that was like.

Uh, my understanding is

the border has changed in the last year or so whilst the Russians

were distracted with the Ukraine war.

Okay.

There he goes.

Sneaky Chinese.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, you know, um, yeah.

But, um,

so, so we are getting this perpetual propaganda from, um, the Murdoch press

and, and people are swallowing it, as you can see in the letters to the editor.

And we've reached the point now where Australians fear attack

from China more than Taiwanese do.

So the Australia Institute did a poll of a thousand Australians and

a poll of a thousand Taiwanese.

This is, uh, back in 2022.

And, um, and what you find is that Australians are more scared and more

fearful of China than the Taiwanese are.

So some of the statistics, um, uh, this, this was the one that really

got me, was do you think China will launch an armed attack on your country?

And, uh, the answers were soon, sometimes never and don't know.

But for the one of, soon as in the worst case scenario, do you think

China will soon launch an a, an armed attack on your own country?

5% of Taiwanese thought that was the case.

9% of Australians thought that was the case.

Jesus Christ,

more Australians thought we were gonna be attacked by

China soon than Taiwanese did.

And when it came to some time, do you think it'll be attacked sometime?

Well, 53% of Taiwanese did and 38% of Australians did is pretty, it's just an

extraordinary statistic that when it comes to will we be attacked soon, Australians

have been so PR propagandized that they were more fearful and more expectant

of a war soon with China on our own shores than the Taiwanese themselves.

I, I actually think we're more likely to be attacked by

India than we are by China.

Yeah.

Well.

And, and all of that.

Why, why would, yeah, why would India do that?

Well, it's a billion people.

It's a populist government.

Um, it's, I would say it's more belligerent.

Mm-hmm.

More considerably more likely to be belligerent than China is.

Mm-hmm.

Well, I think that India actually did that than that.

China would probably take them out.

You know,

the, the other statistic was then just asking Australians,

do you think China will launch an armed attack on Taiwan?

So we already know that the Taiwanese, when it comes to Willow un soon is 5%.

But asking Australians, do they think there'll be an attack by China soon?

On Taiwan it's 23%, so nearly five times as many Australians think

Taiwan's gonna be attacked soon as actual Taiwanese think that.

It's just, it's just because we've been fed this complete bullshit story

by people who want to encourage the whole arms rates and our, our need to

be, you know, entrenched with America.

And, and this is where we've got to

look.

I think it's highly likely that China will at some point decide

that Taiwan's gotta be taken out.

But I couldn't tell you when, and I couldn't tell you.

You know, it's just one of those things I think that, um, the latest statistics

I've read suggests that China will get old before it gets rich and they've actually,

if they're gonna take out Taiwan, they're gonna have to move on it before they

end up being hold, before they get rich.

They won't have to Scott.

They're just gonna do it economically.

Yeah, I know.

Which is one of the things you've said before.

Can I just give

you one more statistic from this group of statistics?

So then they asked, um, they asked Taiwanese people, are they

prepared to go to war, um, uh, to gain independence from China?

So they asked Taiwanese people, whether Taiwanese people would be prepared

to go to war, to help, um, to, to get their independence from China.

17% of Taiwanese said yes, and, and 26% of Australians said that Australians would

go to war for the independence of Taiwan.

So, but Taiwan is more than the Taiwanese in China.

Taiwan, Taiwan is China.

Yes.

I'm, when I'm saying China, I'm saying our current understanding of

mainland China and using the ccp.

Yes.

Right?

Yes.

So, so basically, um, really interesting statistics where we've had such a beat

of war drums that we are more scared and more willing to go to war for Taiwan

than the actual Taiwanese themselves.

Quite shocking, I thought.

Mm. That it is.

Mm. What else have I got here?

Um, um, let me see.

Trying to find your, um, uh, just generally a quick sort

of facts on a few things.

Um, um, Chinese ship building US accounts for 0.1% of global shipbuilding.

Meanwhile, China produces more than the rest of the world combined.

Like China, US doesn't make stuff anymore.

Um,

um,

what about their naval shipyards?

Would that be mostly naval ships that they produce?

Just, just ships?

Um, okay.

Uh, in 2024 alone, a single Chinese firm, the China State Shipbuilding

Corporation, built more commercial ships by tonnage than the entire US shipbuilding

industry has built since the, since the end of World War II in a single

Yeah.

Single year.

So all, all the freight that comes from China, all of the goods that's

manufactured in China has to be shipped.

Yeah.

China used more cement in the last three years than the US

used in the entire 20th century.

Yep.

That was in, um, back in 2013.

None of that surprises me because China has made that leap from

the second world to the first world, and they did it relatively quickly

and they've been spending on infrastructure.

Yeah.

I know It started at, shall we say, in the eighties?

So they've been going for 40 years and they've been running

a hell of a lot faster than the Yanks have for those 40 years.

And the other thing is too, that, um, they are killing us all on renewables.

You know, they are, yes, they are still producing coal fired power

stations, but they're producing less coal fired power stations and they've

got a limited lifespan on them.

So they reckon that they're probably gonna stop burning coal and produce

electricity in the next 10 to 15 years.

I,

I saw an article about elbow.

Saying something about Utes and all the bleeding in the comments about,

oh yeah, electric vehicles are gonna be the end of the world and we're

not gonna be able to charge them.

And, and I, you know, I, I've got a gas guzzler and I'm proud

of it and I need it for the one weekend a year I take my boat out.

Mm. You know, you know that, that whole nonsense over electric vehicles.

Oh no,

that was, that was all just nonsense because Toyota said at

the same time as they were, um, I think Toyota actually said it at

the time when, uh, Morrison was making a fool of himself over it.

He said, um, he said that they're gonna, the Toyota said that all their current

vehicles they've got in production, or not in production, but in production

planning to move to an electric vehicle.

So they're gonna have them as electric as also petrol.

Toyota.

Seems Toyota.

A hybrid.

In fact, uh, well anyway, Toyota resigned

because of that.

Really?

Okay.

Gotcha.

Mm-hmm.

I've been talking about a book, um, the China Model by Daniel Bell, no

relation, which I found quite interesting.

And the, uh, it's, the aim of the book is to deac the idea of one vote, one person.

So as I mentioned before, uh, the argument has turned around to the sort

of, these are authoritarian regimes and Xi Jingping is a dictator and

there's no legitimacy to the Chinese Communist Party's rule over China.

And there's any number of polls, which, well, they won the Civil War.

Yeah.

But there's, there's any number of polls that demonstrate extreme

satisfaction in China with their government and happiness with the

system, and an unwillingness to change, particularly compared to other countries.

I'll probably do those polls, uh, next week, I think.

Um, 'cause I think we've done that sort of thing before.

Uh, maybe I can do.

Uh, and these are polls that are done by Western, uh, groups and,

and people think, oh, the Chinese people were probably feeling under a

compulsion where they couldn't talk frankly, and they didn't really.

Give their honest opinion 'cause they're worried about repercussions

and the pollsters go, no, no, no, no.

In other countries, like Russia for example, people were able to say to

us, we are not happy and um, you know, we want the vote or we want whatever.

Like in countries where they expected people to be not happy with their

authoritarian regime, people were able to say to the pollsters, we're not happy.

So in China they feel they were getting honest responses from people when

they were saying, we are very happy with our system of government because

essentially it's what you said earlier, Scott, the deal is if you run the

government well and standard livings increase, then we're happy for the

rock show to be done the way it's done.

So, um, but rather than getting in the we weeds of those polls, just back

to this book, he's sort of saying.

Like many have said before, democracies aren't all that they're cracked up to

be, that they do have flaws in them.

And a sort of what he is describing is a meritocracy, which the Chinese system

aims to be, has a lot of things going for it over and above a democracy.

So, um, this, uh, author, uh, lived and worked in China for 10 years,

involved in academia and stuff, and, um, and he realized over time

that his best students were being recruited, recruited by the CC ccp.

Uh, in the book he's arguing that there's democracy at the village level.

People get to vote and to, um, uh, and, and feel kind of almost

a western style democracy at, at village level, but it is a meritocracy

at the top level of government.

And he sort of throughout the book shows that China's top leaders have been groomed

over decades to avoid beginner mistakes.

And that democracies around the world no longer set a clear cut, positive example.

He says China's not perfect, but the system has performed relatively well.

And so as part of sort of defending the idea of a political meritocracy

as opposed to a democracy, he outlines a few of the flaws of democracies.

And uh, that's in chapter one.

One of the flaws, Scott, is the tyranny of majority IE the example would be boomers.

Um, it's a flaw in our democracy that boomers as that generation has

moved through and had laws have been able to vote for laws that would.

That would benefit their advantage, them, their cohort

at the expense of the minority.

So democracies suffer through the tyranny of the majority,

which is a fair criticism.

He also talks about the tyranny of the minority, and we only need to look at

the Israel lobby, the Israeli lobby as an example of the tyranny of the

minority, where a loud, squeaky wheel minority with powerful vested interests

can also overcome the desires and wishes.

Well, the mining lobby,

remember the, the mineral resource tax?

Yeah.

So resources, written tax.

Yep.

Yeah.

Uh, so you've got the tyranny of majority, the tyranny of the minority,

um, the tyranny of voting community.

So voters ignore.

Non-voters such as future generations in global warming, which is true.

That's one of the problems with our democracy is self-centered voting that

looks only at the present lifespan of the current voters and doesn't

have regard for future generations.

So, um, the tyranny of the voting community and, uh, the tyranny

of competitive individuals.

So negative campaigns, promoting hatred between parties.

Um, so these are some of the problems of democracies that we

don't necessarily think about.

And, um, he describes a system of, like a meritocracy in

China and also in Singapore.

So, um, now what did he say about, um.

Singapore, um,

the pay and pay party have been in power for 60 years or something.

Hmm.

So he's saying that, um, what makes Singapore's style meritocracy attractive

is it's stunning economic success.

Um, even social critics contend the most citizens are relatively satisfied and

support the system with good reason.

Um, so why doesn't Singapore become a true electoral democracy

with free and fair elections?

The key reason is the contradiction between meritocracy and democracy.

Singapore style meritocracy is based on the assumption that

political leaders have a better sense of the community's long-term

interest than ordinary citizens do.

An example here is, um, the government broke up ethnic enclaves by moving

people into ethnically mixed um.

Public housing blocks and, um, and marginalized, um, ethnic

Chinese clan associations.

It also, uh, the meritocracy government of Singapore promoted

the use of English, which involved overriding the wishes of all groups,

including the majority Chinese.

And, uh, Lee, um, um, is quite explicit that chi uh, Singapore's nation building

exercise was incompatible with majority rule and equates a bit here from him.

Supposing we had chosen Chinese or tried to sponsor Chinese,

how would we make a living?

How would we fit ourselves into the region and into the world?

We could not have made a living, but the Chinese then would've wanted it.

And if we had taken the vote, we would've had to follow that policy.

So when people say, oh, ask the people.

It's childish.

Rubbish.

We are leaders.

We know the consequences.

They say people can think for themselves.

Do you honestly believe that the chap who can't pass primary six knows

the consequences of his choice when he answers a question viscerally

on language, culture, and religion, but we knew the consequences.

We would starve.

We would've race riots.

We would disintegrate.

So there we go.

And today English is the lingua franca in Singapore.

What do you think of that idea, Scott?

Oh, it makes perfect sense.

Mm.

You know, it's like, um, I often apologize to the Europeans that I

meant, you know, because they're at least bilingual, probably trilingual.

Mm-hmm.

And they speak English better than I do.

You know, um, I always apologize to coming from a monolingual country and they say,

well, you don't have to worry about it.

You know, English, English is the lingo.

Is the lingo franca.

Yeah.

Like we have over the years played plenty of clips of just

stupid American politicians who are just, just dumb ass people.

Like they just know nothing.

Right.

And we've got our fair share of them here in Australia as well.

Exactly.

Like we've had some shockingly, um, unqualified people running this country.

And, um, and when you compare to what you get in a meritocracy, and again, just

um, just back to Qua Yu in Singapore.

I'm sorry if I constantly preoccupied with the near geniuses and the above average

and what they're going to do, but I'm convinced that is they who ultimately

decide the shape of things to come.

Lee, uh, himself, uh, Lee Yu graduated with a rare double first class honors

degree from Cambridge University and his son, the current Prime Minister,

this is back going back about 10 years ago, graduated from the same university

by scoring 12 more alphas than his nearest competitor, which has never

been seen in the history of Tripos.

At Cambridge.

So these are extraordinarily smart people who are in charge of

these places compared to the Yeah.

That we're getting in our, our democracies.

Yeah.

And uh, I remember you actually using the point that China's got a PhD that's

in charge of their sign science Yes.

Department.

Yep.

Whereas over here we've got people that were allegedly in charge

of science and everything that didn't even graduate high school.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, um, so, so just transferring to the Chinese, this is the last extract of this,

but this is just to give people a sense of the professionalism, um, of government in.

Some of these non-democratic countries that they're able to have, because

they're not relying on democratic voting.

So, um, so when these people have meetings, you know, when, when a,

the foreign minister in China has a meeting with an ex Fox News Talk

show host who's now the, you know, holding some position in America.

The difference, the difference in their knowledge base is extraordinary.

So I'll read this bit about China.

To get to the top party officials must typically start from leadership

at a primary level office and then be promoted successively to the township

level, a county division, a department bureau, and the province slash.

Um, ministry level, a public official aiming to reach the position of

vice minister has to be promoted from senior member to Deputy Section

Chief Section Chief Division.

Chief Deputy Division Chief Division.

Chief Deputy Bureau.

Chief Bureau Chief and Vice Minister.

If one meets the minimum length of service of each rank, one needs at least 20 years

to reach the position of Vice Minister.

During the process, officials are typically rotated through the civil

service, state owned enterprises, and government affiliated social

organizations such as universities and community groups, as well as serving

in different parts of the country.

The top candidates are sent for further training at party and

administrative schools in China.

And many promising officials are sent to top universities, a abroad

to learn best administrative practices from around the world.

Out of 7 million leading card dres, only one out of 140,000 makes it

to the province Ministry level.

A select few move up the ranks and make it to the party central committee.

And then the 25 Member Poll Bureau.

The members at the very apex of political power.

The standing committee of the poll bureau must normally have served in

governors are as governors or party secretaries of two provinces, each the

size and population of most countries.

In short, top leaders must pass through a battery of merit based tests and

accumulate decades of extensive and diverse administrative experience.

In contrast, a person, a person with Barack Obama.

Pre presidential professional experience would not even be the manager of

a small county in China's system.

Hmm.

That's what the world is up against.

And um, that's why they're killing it when they understand how to run a

country, um, smart people who've got there and against a bunch of dimwits

that we have in our system who we used car salesmen last week and now

they're foreign minister this week.

Or you know, there were just some labor appic.

Um, yeah,

I, I think and that time in the union movement.

Yeah.

I just don't think people understand the skill level of governance in these places.

And it's gonna count for stuff at the end of the day.

So

there we go.

Put your money on China to win these battles and become

the eminent, uh, sort of.

Power in the world.

I think China is just returning to its, you know, rightful place.

Because prior to the industrial revolution, China was the

world's richest country.

I think.

Oh, maybe India was, but India or China was the world's richest country.

And India.

And India, China is taking over.

India is the comparison, isn't it?

Like turn the clock back 70 years and they're kind of in the same position.

Mm-hmm.

Um, and one is a democracy.

Mm-hmm.

And look where they've ended up.

Mm-hmm.

Nowhere.

Uh, and one is a meritocracy and, uh, they're kicking a lot of goals.

So, so there you go.

Dear listener, I've been wanting to get that off my chest for a while.

You guys got any other topics you wanna

get off your chest?

Yeah.

Um, the one I sent to you a couple of weeks ago now, the

posters, the Nazi posters.

Yeah.

That, that was a guy who was.

Tell the story, John, he, he posted, um, various members

of the LMP, so it was Dutton,

uh, Gina Reinhard, uh, Gina, and

actually, um, uh, trumpeter Patriots, um, Clive Farmer.

Mm-hmm.

And then somebody else as, um,

uh, as, as Nazis and has been charged over, um, pro-Nazi,

uh, laws in New South Wales.

Oh, really?

Okay.

Yeah.

They

charged him with knowingly displaying Nazi symbols without an excuse.

Yeah.

Despite the fact that this was very obviously a protest against

people, he considered to be Nazis.

Yes.

He wasn't promoting Nazism.

He was accusing these people of being being Nazi.

Nazi.

Like Nazi.

Yes.

And that is a bad thing, is what he was saying,

rather than That's a good thing.

What a subversion of the intention of the law.

So

this, this was in Wagga Wagga,

right.

And it was in the window of an ad agency during the

federal election campaign.

Mm.

And a 69-year-old man has been charged.

We'll see how that one turns out.

Keep an eye on that one.

Hopefully the judge

realizes it's a total waste of his time.

I would hope so.

Yeah.

Because they were charged without a lawful excuse.

I think that's a lawful excuse.

Hmm

hmm.

The only thing I'd like to bring up is the Johnson Amendment in the United States.

The IRS has basically backed down in a lawsuit from a right wing Christian

group and all that sort of stuff that they have backed away from enforcing it.

They said, oh, so it's on the books, but we're not gonna enfor it.

Is this the one where they're not supposed to be involved in

political sort of, basically if you are,

if you are a tax free charity, you are not allowed to

advocate a political position.

Mm-hmm.

And, and that's essentially been sort of downgraded to, not

to, to a meaningless law now.

Well,

exactly.

It's been ignored for many years, but it's always been a don't be

too loud about it otherwise we'll come after your tax free status.

Mm-hmm.

And, and now the IRS has actually said, no, we're not gonna go your hardest.

Right.

Which is one of those things that they, they're concerned that

the churches could set up their own Super pacs and everything

else to fund a political campaign.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Which is just gonna lead to the fragmentation of the Republican Party,

which is if there is another election in the United States, if there is

another free and fair election, then I think the Democrats have got it.

That Trump, Trump will win it.

Scott,

I, I, I think we should, um, also touch on the, uh, the,

the, the, um, what's his name?

Files.

Oh, Epstein Files.

Epstein Files.

Epstein.

I know.

It's

one of those things, apparently the non-existent.

Files.

It's blowing up in his face because he was the one

that was out there promoting the XD files and everything else.

And now it's turned out that there's nothing there and he's

just looking like a dickhead and, well, it's absolutely hysterical.

And then what's sort of

video's still talking about this?

Yeah, no, they, they're still carrying on about it.

Yes.

No, no, no.

But him saying Yes, a anyone who's carrying on about

this is an idiot and Yeah.

And you know, I don't need their support.

And all of his supporters were going, we voted for you because

we thought there was this cabal of evil pedophiles at the top of power.

Mm-hmm.

And now you are saying, no, there isn't.

Which makes us think, since you were best buddies with this guy for a

long time, maybe you are involved.

Yeah, I know.

Which is one of those things.

I just think to myself, the conspiracy theorists are going to fly off the

handle now and everything else.

They're probably gonna, they're probably gonna start pointing the

finger at Donald and saying, well, you are probably one of them.

Well, I think they are.

Well,

yeah, and I just think that, um, Elon Musk is enjoying this and

he's also starting to stoke those fires and everything like that.

Su suggesting that Donald Trump was on the, on the client list.

Mm-hmm.

I was listening to the Planet Extra podcast.

Yeah.

And they were pretty much like, well, you know, seemingly there were no files

and, and sort of taking the view that Trump mustn't be any dirt on Trump.

And

I don't know,

I just think, think, well, there's plenty of dirt on Trump

there, there have been a lot of allegations against Trump.

That's what I think.

I think the reason he's not.

Exposing it.

Is it because his named all over it?

Well, it's not listening

to Ezra Klein, who is a respected US journalist.

Yeah.

Um, he was saying, look, I think, uh, Epstein knew a lot of rich and

powerful people because the rich and powerful in Knew York all knew

each other, all hung out together.

Mm. Uh, but he did this on his own.

And really he was schmoozing these people.

Sure.

There's no list of other people who were involved.

Um, but yes, he knew all these people.

Mm. And was friends with them.

Mm. Yeah.

It's one of those things I just think to yourself that, um, they found an

address book and everything else that's probably got, you know, I think it's got

Bill Gates name in and everything else.

So what surely Yeah.

That doesn't mean that he was actually a client.

Well, it was, it was the Lolita Express, wasn't it?

It was the people who flew to the island in the Yeah.

US Virgin Islands.

I think it is.

I couldn't tell you,

but surely any intelligence agency worth its salt.

Mm. Mossad.

CIA would know what Epstein's doing with these people.

Mm-hmm.

Well, were allegations that Mossad funded him.

Yes.

And would surely be thinking this is an opportunity to get

dirt on people for mm-hmm.

Blackmail.

Mm-hmm.

That's what spy agencies do with honey traps all the time.

It's hard to imagine they would be negligent if they weren't involved

in this, you know, if you were ly

the, the DA who gave them that sweetheart deal down in Florida in 2005.

Uh, when asked why he gave the sweetheart deal, was told that, uh, he was an

intelligence asset and to back off.

Yeah.

So I, yeah, I, I just think it, it's seems bleedingly obvious to me that he'd, he'd

be implicated in a lot of nasty stuff there and that's why he doesn't want it.

Oh God.

It doesn't want it reveal.

And I just sort of, um, yeah, the people are taking it sort of a charitable view

of it and I just don't understand it.

Just the man's character and everything points towards,

um, that So will we ever know?

That's the,

I don't think we're ever gonna know.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We might find out in that.

Probably the only thing that might actually be worth looking at is,

is the way in which he died because they reckon it was suicide, but then

there's minutes of the footage and everything else that were missing, so.

Oh, well that was because the recording system needed to reboot

for a minute at midnight every night.

And Epstein just seems to have acquired a lot of money through,

through means that were not entirely

Yes.

Um,

obvious.

Clear.

And, and how do you pronounce his, um, his girlfriend?

Ghislaine?

Uh, yeah, Ghislaine Maxwell,

daughter of Robert Maxwell.

Who, who was his own.

Sort of history with Mossad Mossad and

And the KGB and the CIA.

Yeah.

He was in deep Yes.

With all the intelligence searches.

So how

would it be possible that his daughter is knocking

around with Epstein and

Mossad's not involved?

Come on.

It's one of those things, Trevor, I think you've gotta

take your anti-Israel glasses off right now to have a look at this.

It's just, I mean, I realize that the world has now heard, has heard the

name Mossad and everything like that.

And so they're actually realizing it's an intelligence organization.

So they're actually saying, well, Mossad probably had something to do with it.

Well, you know, but wouldn't that be their job?

Scott, I couldn't tell you whether or not, whether or not Mossad is actually keeping

that close eye on the United States.

Almost certainly.

How else do you think they get the votes that they get?

How do you think they get the military funding they get

Because of the Israel lobby in the United States.

But as to how, as to how well backed that is by my side, I couldn't tell you.

Well, okay.

Maybe I'm too skeptical and cynical.

No, I just think to myself that, um,

it's one of those things I don't think we're ever gonna know.

You,

you just think there's a fair chance that Mossad just couldn't be

interested in this sort of stuff, Scott?

No, I just think to myself that Mossad isn't actually pulling the

strings that Lucky make them out to be because they've got their own, they've

got enough of their own enemies in their backyard that they've gotta keep an

eye on rather than the United States.

Mm-hmm.

Well, okay.

Yeah.

Uh, Alrighty.

In the chat room.

It's a very interesting

conversation.

Murray says, uh, if only Epstein knew it was a hoax, he

wouldn't have needed to unlive himself.

Well, yeah.

If, if it was a hoax, how come Ghislaine iss in prison for 20 years

is what other people have been saying?

Yes.

What's she in prison for?

Uh, transport trafficking of people across state lines technically.

No worries.

So yeah.

A sorted part of, uh, human history.

Well, mm-hmm.

Never know the true answer, I suspect.

Mm-hmm.

Well, I think we'll, but maybe not in our lifetimes.

Yeah.

Anything else,

Scott?

Joe, we'll wrap it up.

No, that's about it from me.

Alright.

Thanks.

In the chat room.

You've been good.

We will be back next week.

Bye for now.

And it's a good night from him

and it's a good night from me.

Good night.