 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Brook Show. All right, everybody, welcome to Iran Brook Show and this Friday, December 22nd, with this close to Christmas, almost there. This is the long Christmas weekend. So I hope everybody is having a great week and looking forward to the weekend and to Christmas and everything else. Oh, so I wanted to share with you guys, before we get started, a present I got yesterday. It's a sculpture. It's bronze. It is kind of man carving himself out of a block. There are a number of different versions of this general idea, but this is, I think this is my favorite. This is by, you know, my favorite, kind of working active sculptor today. His name is Walter Peter. Walter Peter is from Guatemala. He's an objectivist. He's got some fantastic sculptures. You should look him up. He lives in Guatemala City and he has some great work, look him up. This piece, you can get in all kinds of sizes, but he's also has a fantastic atlas and he has some other sculptures that are beautiful. So look him up, he's a really, really, really nice guy on top of being an incredibly talented sculptor. So check him out. All right, from that to the ugliness of the news, let's see, yeah, we're gonna start with a story. Yes, I mean, anti-Semitism in our culture today. So I'm gonna read you something. It's from Barry Weiss's Friday, kind of summary of the news. Always highly recommend, by the way, Barry Weiss of Substack and the Friday, I think, kind of summary of the news is always entertaining. There's a little bit of humor and it does give kind of a perspective on what's going on. Don't always agree with the interpretations, but it's always educational and interesting and fun. So here's one of the stories, not particularly fun story, but here is a story, this is about Dan Kolb who is an environmentalist, I mean a real left wing progressive environmentalist, committed environmentalist, but who happens to be Jewish. And he was going to be speaking at the University of California, Berkeley in a class on environmentalism, about environmentalist activism and so on, and he's been disinvited from the class because he's an active member of the Jewish community. Now you might say, no, no, no, this is all about Israel, but the reality is he's a real progressive. He actually voted with the city council of Berkeley for a ceasefire, but that's not good enough because he is also a member of the East Bay Jewish Community Relation Council, which as Barry Weiss write, does not believe in the full destruction of the state of Israel, how horrible of them. So this is from the College of Natural Resources at the University of California, Berkeley. This is their letter, disinviting him. Quote, if we have to take equitable environmental action seriously, the very topic you are set to speak to us about, then one cannot dismiss the environmental apartheid occurring in Palestine, environmental apartheid, and notice that it's in Palestine. For generations, older than the state of Israel, Palestinians have lived, I can't even read this without laughing. For generations older than the state of Israel, Palestinians have lived harmoniously with their land, maintaining long-standing indigenous practices of cultivation, and it goes on and on and on. So before the state of Israel, when this section of land was barely cultivated, a lot of it was swamps, well, it's not swamps. That's so politically incorrect, you aren't really, you should stop using the word swamp. When the land was full of wetlands and mosquitoes and malaria, a lot of people are dying in malaria back then in what is today Israel, and deserts, and the few Palestinians who actually lived there were actually cultivating the land the same way they'd be cultivating it for, I don't know, 1,000 years, 1,500 years. Of course there was the Jews there, but we don't have to pay any attention to them, the Jews after all. But once the Israelis, the Jews showed up, they turned this place into a hellhole, toxic waste industry, modern means of cultivation, genetic engineering of fruits and vegetables to make them taste better. I don't know if you've ever had an Israeli mango or some Israeli vegetables. They taste fantastic, not because that's how nature produces them, because they'll be cultivated to do that through engineering. That is a sin. And since you, Dan Calb, are a Jew who supports the existence of the state of Israel, even if you're kind of a pretty pro-Palestinian, you can't be viewed as serious about equitable environmental action unless you are willing to call for the destruction of the state of Israel, and for Israel and the rest of the world to return to, what do they call it, sustainable, long-lasting, indigenous practices of cultivation, in other words, harmony with the earth and no pollution of the pre-industrial era. And what is revealing here is two things. One, the hatred of Jews, the hatred of Israel, but maybe even bigger than that, right? Bigger than that is the hatred of progress, the hatred of science, the hatred of the standard of living that makes it possible for them to go to university, the standard of living that makes it possible for them to care about the environment because they're alive and they're rich and they can afford to waste their time doing that instead of having to engage in indigenous practices of cultivation to feed themselves. I wonder if they go, you know, I wonder how long these people at the, what was this department, the College of Natural Resources, I wonder how long they would survive if they had to rely on indigenous practices of cultivation. Not very long, not very long. And indeed, I'd say what, 80 to 90% of the earth population wouldn't survive. What they really want is a return to the caves. What they really want is the destruction of human society, human civilization, human progress, human science, human reason, human beings. They are fundamentally haters, fundamentally haters. All right, just on a little bit more on the theme of antisemitism. So there's been a poll by Harvard, Kaps Harris poll, right? And it found that two thirds of voters between the ages of 18 and 24, two thirds, over 66% of voters believe Jews as a class. I didn't know Jews were a class, but anyway, Jews as a class are oppressors and should be treated that way. I've been telling you this, I've been telling you, you're rich and successful. Therefore, double definition, you're a oppressor. The fact that not that long ago, you were brutally massacred just in October, but genocide was committed against you. The fact that not that long ago, Jews were poor and had nothing, but the very fact of raising yourselves out for poverty, the very fact of going from being poor to successful makes you an oppressor. The fact that for 2,000 years, Jews have been killed, slaughtered, and tortured all over Europe and all over the world, really doesn't count because Jews have overcome that and become rich and successful. And therefore they are the oppressors, 18 to 24 year old. This is our youth. This is the future of America. If you look at general population, 73% of voters said this notion is false. So once you go over 24, people don't believe this. So this is this new ideology of the last 10 or so years that has infected our schools, our universities, and infected our young people, and that they are fully committed to it. This is intersectionality at its worst, at its most absurd and ridiculous. And it's not like I want Jews to be part of the oppressed class, but this idea that, A, they're a class, and B, that there is such a thing as oppressors and oppressed in the world in which we live, we live in America, in a relatively pretty free country. We're generally speaking, there are no oppressors and oppressed, that people are successful and people are not successful. And you could argue about why they're successful and why they're not successful. And for the most part, their success and their last success is not a consequence of being labeled a Jew or because of skin color and other things, although if there is racism in America still, and there probably is, and it's likely there is, that needs to be dealt with, but that doesn't seem to be the primary reason why people succeed in America today. So instead of investigating the causes for why people fail, continue to fail, well, of course they're failing, they are oppressed by definition because they're failing. The only reason you would have a failing life is because you're oppressed. I mean, on so many dimensions, this is a horrific ideology, an evil, ugly ideology, an ideology that is equivalent to the ideology of indigenous practices of cultivation because it is an ideology that would drive us back to that. It would drive us back to poverty, drive us back to death and destruction. Zero sum mentality of 300 years ago, not just mentality, reality, which was much more than zero sum. In those days that were really oppressed and oppressed and what this mentality will do is get us back to that. Wouldn't it be interesting if some of these people contemplated why it is the Jews disproportionately have managed to come out of poverty and do so well and maybe emulate some of the things that they did in order to achieve that? That would be assuming people have free will and that would assume that it's your behavior that gets you places and that would be a complete negation of the entire egalitarian ideology, which is an ideology of determinism, it's an ideology of lack of free will and also an ideology that everything you do is determined by your group belonging, by the tribe to which you belong, however they want to define the tribe in any particular given time. So in a Marxist sense by the class in which you belong, but in a more modern sense classes out, the ethnic group, the skin color, the national background, whatever you want to define it, that tribe defines your success. Ono individuals and there is no achievement. There's only oppressors and oppressed and they're only groups. All right, now if you thought that was bad, I'm gonna take you into depths of greater evil than that. So you all probably, I mean we talked about this yesterday about the Prague shooting, this 24 year old who went on a rampage yesterday and killed 14 students at Charles University in Prague in the Czech Republic. It turns out that a week ago, he killed a father and a two month old baby. Not somebody he knew, just randomly. Their bodies were found in the woods. The police have been trying to figure out who the murderer was. Rummaging through the belongings of this guy who committed this massacre yesterday, they've come to the conclusion it was him. He also yesterday before killing the 14 students killed his father. I mean, where does that come from? Well, if you read about him, if you read what he wrote, he had a telegram channel. This is the kind of stuff this guy was writing on his telegram channel, which was private so nobody else could see it. He made it public before he went out to do the shooting yesterday. He says, I want to do school shooting and possibly suicide. I always wanted to kill. I thought I would become a maniac in the future. And then he talks about being inspired by a 24 year old who did a school shooting in Russia a couple of years ago. He says, when Ilznaz did the shooting, I realized it was much more profitable to do a mass murder than serial ones. Profitable. God, I don't know if that's a translation but profitable. In what, how in attention you get? He then praised a 14 year old who also in Russia who killed a schoolmate, injured five others and then shot herself. And that happened earlier this month. And he wrote about her. It was as if she came, she had come to my aid from heaven just in time. And then, and this really sums it all up. So if you want to see what nihilism, what nihilism at its most explicit form, nihilism in its most explicit form, which of course leads to death, that there is no way to go from this kind of nihilism. This is what leads to, leads to death. You write, I hate the world and want to leave as much pain as possible. That's it. What makes a human being like this? Be this? I don't know the one can tell. But certainly nothing in our culture really works to help. But, and maybe in any culture, there would be crazies, you know, completely evil people like this, that it's just pure evil. It is quite possible that that would exist at any time. But it is shocking to encounter. It's just a, you know, you could kind of argue, I mean, I'm not arguing this, but you know, Hamas doing what it did, there was some political goal, the accumulation of Israel, the Jews, liberation, something or even, you know, 72 virgins in heaven. But here there's nothing. Just pure, unadulterated hatred, hatred of life, and it always starts with your own life and life and hatred of the world and therefore lashing out as a consequence, is the only way to release a release of that hatred. Truly shocking and awful and horrible what happened yesterday in Prague and the reality is it could happen anywhere. This kind of evil, this kind of nihilism exists everywhere. We've seen school shootings here in the United States where the shooter expressed the same kind of mentality. And whether we get more of this in a modern society, particularly in our nihilistic society that we have, if we get more of this or we get less of this, it's really, it's hard to tell, it's hard to run the statistics, but you know, this is sheer evil, sheer evil. All right, God, this is a depressing show today. Like it's all gonna be depressed. Well, the final story is an uplifting story. It's a good story. All right, or at least I think it's an uplifting story. Many of you might think it's just me. That's just me thinking it's an uplifting story. But anyway, all right, the United States announced that 20 countries have joined the Red Sea Coalition to protect the shipping lanes in the Red Sea. So 20 countries, eight of them refuse to be named. So there are 12 countries that are named, I think Greece and one other country joined in terms of they were willing to be named as joining this coalition to defend the shipping lanes, going into the Red Sea. I mean, isn't that, that's pretty... So 20 countries are willing to do this. But what are they doing? I mean, so far, the bottom line is nothing. More and more shipping companies are saying they are devoting their ships away from the Red Sea to go around the Horn of Africa. And this 20 country coalition has lots of gunboats and ships and we have an aircraft carrier in our farm and we have all this all arrayed close to the Red Sea and close to where the Houtis are preventing shipping from happening and they are doing absolutely nothing. Nothing, you know, go understand this. I think my guess is that the Americans are advising everybody in this coalition about the rules of war, about just war theory, about the fact that they can't really shoot anybody unless they're 100% confident that only combatants, literally the people who pulled the trigger, will die and nobody else. So the United States is probably teaching the 20 member coalition all the rules for losing wars. But literally, we're talking about this for days, nothing has happened. Shipping is ground to a halt because of a group of Yemeni rebels who control kind of the northern part of Yemen who are on the verge of signing a peace treaty with Saudi Arabia that would kind of recognize their control over this part of Yemen. And nobody's doing anything. I mean, if there's anything in the world that shows Western weakness, it seems to me to be this. Now the Houthis in the meantime, they're loving this. They think this is a blast. They're getting more attention than they've ever got. Everybody knows they are Houthis now. People are confusing the Houthis with the government of Yemen, which is what they want to be. So they're getting prestige. Also in the Arab world, they are now considered heroes. They have actually, they're the one group out there, of all the Islamist groups out there, they are the one group that is actually coming and fighting Israel. They're actually standing up to Israel and siding with Hamas. The Hizballah is kind of not really doing much. The Arab countries are doing zero. And the Houthis, nobody Houthis and they are fighting. They are disrupting trade. They are pissing off the West. They're certainly pissing off the Israelis who now can't use their southern port. And they are heroes in the Arab world. They've never had it so good. They used to be known for a brutal civil war in which they slaughtered their own people. But now they're the heroes. People are asking who the Houthis are. The Houthis are Shiites in Yemen. Yemen is in the south of the Arabian Peninsula, right at the southern tip. And they have been fighting a civil war with the Sunnis of Yemen to see who controls it. The Sunnis have been supported by Saudi Arabia. The Houthis, who are the Shiites, have been supported by Iran. And they have been blocking the Red Sea and preventing ships from getting to the Suez Canal for over a week now. And there's now an international coalition to try to stop them and it's not happening. There's a ceasefire in the Yemeni civil war and the Saudi Arabians are cutting a deal and it looks like the Yemeni government is cutting a deal with the Houthis. But who knows what's gonna happen given this 20-country coalition. One of the reasons maybe nothing is happening and the West is doing nothing is that of course the Houthis are 100% supported by the Iranians, they're not just supported, they're armed by the Iranians and they are provided, it turns out, with intelligence by the Iranians. So there is at least one Iranian spice ship not far from the 20-country fleet that is supposed to protect the sea lanes. There's an Iranian spice ship that basically is monitoring the movement of all the ships through the Arabian Sea and up into the Red Sea and providing the Houthis with targeting instructions and providing the Houthis with the information necessary for them to block the straits and to block all shipping. And of course the Americans and their allies, the last thing they wanna do is attack the source of all the problems in the Middle East right now. Well, let's say 80% of the problems in the Middle East right now. The source of the problems with Hamas, the source of the problems with Hezbollah, the source of the problems with the Houthis. And that is Iran, the source of the attacks on American troops and that is Iran. And I think the hesitancy about attacking the Houthis that the United States is afraid of, quote, escalation. Escalation sounds so nasty. I mean, we might, maybe it's a World War III escalation. Escalation to what? Yesterday I said, I was interviewed and I said, actually, where did I say this? Did I say it in a show? I said this to somebody. Oh, I think at a Christmas party. I said, somebody said, are you worried about escalation? And I said, no, I'm hoping for escalation. They look at me like I was nuts. I said, look, at some point you got to do it. You got to handle it. You got to take out the Iranians. And they were like, escalation. That's like, World War III and it's really dangerous. And no, there's no World War III. This is the Middle East. Escalation just means taking out the Iranian capacity to do harm in the world. You know, that does not involve the World War. I'm an escalator. I admit it. And I would like to see the United States and Israel take out the Iranian regime. It's time. And that would also immediately solve the Houthi problem and provide for shipping to be opened up again in the Gulf of Eden. I guess it's called the Gulf of Eden and the Red Sea. All the way up to the Suez Canal. All right. So, Iranian spice ships all over the place. So, you know, the West is afraid. I mean, Iran seems to really put fear into westerners. All right. This is kind of a, I don't even know if I can tell this story because it's so convoluted. All right. So, here's the thing. The Biden administration and environmentalists generally are clearly committed to clean energy. And one of the hopes that they have is that one of the things that will replace oil is going to be hydrogen. That hydrogen is the clean energy of the future. Now to create, and the Biden administration in its inflation reduction act or whatever it's called, the one where the American government is supposed to invest huge amount of money, invest in the wrong word, spend huge amounts of money on clean energy. There's a massive subsidy available for hydrogen, for the production of hydrogen, right? Only byproduct of hydrogen is water. The problem is that it takes a lot of energy to produce hydrogen. And the Biden administration and environmentalists are concerned that once you consider them out of energy, i.e. fossil fuel produced energy, that is used in order to create the hydrogen that will save on some use of oil, the never result is not that great. So, they want to subsidize the building of hydrogen power plants in a sense. The conversion of H2O into hydrogen, right? H2O is water, for those of you who don't know. They don't want it done with what they call dirty energy. So, in order for you to build a power plant, no, for order for you to build a plant that produces hydrogen, you are going to have, this is guidelines that came down, guidelines that came down from the Biden administration, I think yesterday, you're going to have to prove that the energy you're using to produce the hydrogen is, quote, clean energy. But that's not good enough because that clean energy already exists and that clean energy would have used to do something else if it wasn't being used for your hydrogen. So, it's just a substitution fact. There's no more clean energy. So, the fact is that, yeah, you're not really using clean energy, you're using, quote, dirty energy because you're just substituting clean energy for dirty energy and everything is the same otherwise. So, the new requirement is that if you want to build a plant that produces hydrogen, you have to use new clean energy. That is clean energy that doesn't exist today. Now, how do we know exactly and how is that, how is that all measured? We'll leave that to the bureaucrats, but it has to be new clean energy, right? But he has another twist to this, right? If I want to build a clean energy nuclear power plant which the Biden administration claims they want, that's gonna take me 10 years. Well, but, you know, the hydrogen people are trying to build their hydrogen plants now so they can't rely on nuclear. So, what are they gonna rely on? It's just, where's the new clean energy coming from? So, the one source, the one source of new clean energy that looks like it's going to be economic because, well, because it's called clean, that might be economic for hydrogen, it turns out, is a new form of thermo energy that is getting energy from going deep into the earth and the temperature differences between different layers within the earth, right? The funny thing about this is, and this is, is that this is a clean energy that was not subsidized by the Inflation Reduction Act. Now, why wasn't it subsidized? Because it qualifies as clean. It wasn't subsidized because it didn't exist back then, so it turns out that there are innovators out there, people from the fracking industry that have figured out that they can use, they can use the same technology they use to frack to reach levels down in the earth where they can produce thermal energy. They can produce thermal energy, but that is a completely new technology. Again, American, human innovation, amazing. So, they're not getting the subsidy. In spite of that, it looks like they can be competitive with others. So, they're not getting the subsidy from the IRC. The IRC is actually subsidizing only those, quote, clean energy forms that were available when the bill was written and not new ones that are coming online. This whole thing is just, it's just such a bizarre, nutty, crazy geothermal. Thank you, Bonnie, geothermal energy. That's the technical term. The whole thing, I mean, the article, every paragraph is like, what? I mean, it's just layer upon layer upon layer of these regulations and controls and subsidies and each one kind of contradicting and undermining the other and so the nuclear energy is really pissed off because they were planning to build nuclear power plants in order to provide for the hydrogen, but it's gonna take them too long and the hydrogen plants are being built right now and they're gonna get clean energy from elsewhere. Oh, no, this is what was gonna happen. Some hydrogen plants were going to be built next to existing nuclear plants. And now this bill says, no, that doesn't count. That doesn't count. You don't get all the goodies if you build next to existing nuclear power plants. The only way you get the goodies is if you build next to new nuclear power plants which won't exist for 10 years. Every time the government gets involved in one of these things, what you get is distortion and perversion and disincentives and craziness. And instead of just letting the market rip and if there's demand for cheap energy, then it looks like the frackers will not be only be fracking for oil and gas, but they might now be fracking for geothermal energy and that's innovation, that's markets, that's... All right, finally we got to the good news of the week. Maybe I'm the only person who thinks this is good news, but I think this is good news for my own personal reasons. Rudy Giuliani has filed for bankruptcy. I mean, this is great. Of course, he lost the lawsuit and has been ordered to pay $148 million to the victims of his defamation. This is two poll workers in Georgia. He also has very large legal fees. He also has unpaid taxes. And he's also, you know, in the midst of just finished his third divorce, which have all worked to basically bankrupt Rudy Giuliani. Now, you guys, I don't know how many of you have heard my rants about Giuliani, but Giuliani, for me, is one of the most despicable characters in America and I remember him from the 1980s when he was the district attorney for the Southern District of New York. I remember him going after financiers, going after financiers, leaking into the press in advance so he could get photographed as he would bring them out of their offices in handcuffs. I remember his campaign against Michael Milken. I remember the fact that many of the court cases that he brought were ultimately reversed on appeal. This is the guy that used RICO statutes, statutes developed to go after organized crime in order to prosecute financiers. Financiers whose lives were destroyed, reputations were destroyed, whose money was confiscated. Before trial, before they were, without the presumption of innocence and who was ultimately, who were ultimately cleared on appeal. This is the Rudy Giuliani who used state power, yeah, to clean up New York, but he was pretty fascist in doing it. And this is the Rudy Giuliani that basically looked like a crazy man in 2020, really crazy man in early 2021, trying to somehow pretend and convince people that Donald Trump had indeed won the election and the election was stolen from him. This is Rudy Giuliani that looked truly like a madman during those months and created a complete fiction which was incredibly destructive for this country. And I'm glad, I'm glad to see him broken. I'm glad to see him broken. I, as I told you, I don't believe in turning the other cheek. I don't believe in forgiveness without reason. I don't, you know, I'm not against hate. I despise this man. And I really like the fact that he is, broken, broken. All right, it's a just arc for what he has done and where he's been. All right, we get errors in the super chat software. Let's try to fix this. All right, restarting it. Okay, start. All right, I think it's, maybe it's working again. I know. All right, almost there. Give me a minute. Click on that. All right, so that's what I have. Sorry, I know it's pretty depressing. Very depressing, not pretty depressing. I should have ended with a positive story. Anyway, tomorrow I'll do a show. You know, I'll try to be positive on tomorrow's show. So tomorrow there will be a show at two, two o'clock. Yeah, two PM East Coast time. No show on Christmas. So I'll take Monday off, Sunday and Monday I'll take off. We'll start up again on Tuesday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. Won't be a completely normal week because all kinds of stuff is going on for the holidays. But, you know, it will be a semi-normal week. We'll have some of the regular shows. I'll remind everybody that I think it's Sunday, December 31st, December 31st, we will be doing a show. Fundraising show, it'll also be a summary of 2023. The highs and lows of the year. I promise to have some highs, although it's going to be tough. A lot of lows for 2023. And that'll be a long show. It'll be two PM East Coast time. And we'll be talking about 2023 and using it as a fundraiser. We're going to try to raise, in excess of $10,000 on that show. So, yeah, please consider coming and participating and supporting the show and helping out and getting 2024 going on an incredibly positive note. I'm looking forward to 2024, to good stuff happening in 2024. All right. In that context, remind you that this is a donor, supporter. This show is made possible by contributions, by contributors and supporters like you guys. Thank you for all of that. I want to remind everybody, if you're on and you're not a subscriber, please subscribe. Please like the show before you leave. And if you find value in what I do, please consider becoming one of the contributors that makes the show possible. You can do that here with a super chat. If you're live, if you're not live, you can become a monthly contributor. And that is fantastic, phenomenal, predictable. I love it. You can do that on Patreon. You can do it on PayPal. You're on bookshow.com slash membership. And you can do it on Subscribestar even. So even on locals, I think you can still do it. So pretty much anywhere you want, if you want to support the show, come on over. We would love to have you and all kinds of perks at different levels from $2 to $500 a month that you can make a contribution. All right, let's jump in. I think Henry has the first super chat and Henry, it's his first super chat. So thank you, Henry, for joining us. And congratulations on doing the first super chat. We've had a lot of first-time super chats lately, which is, I mean, that means a lot to me because it means that the new people, or at least people who are discovering the show or people who are valuing the show enough to come on and participate. All right, Henry says, and this is a great question. Hey, Iran, I wanted to do an auteur in Europe, especially focused on sculpture. Hey, did you see my new sculpture? Pretty cool, huh? Walter Peter. Look him up, fantastic sculptor. Especially focused on sculpture. Do you have any recommendations, except the most obvious ones, which are largely on my list, the Louvre, Florence, and the Glyptotech? Well, the Glyptotech is not obvious. It's only obvious because I said so because I introduced everybody to it. But yes, that's a good list. Definitely, I would definitely add Rome. I mean, you're gonna see more Michelangelo in Rome, Moses, and you're gonna see the Pietà. You're gonna see Bernini. Don't miss the Borghese Gallery. I remember the name. The Borghese Gallery, you'll see some of the most magnificent sculptures anyway, which are the Bernini sculptures. Also, if you like Roman sculpture, a lot of Roman sculpture in various museums in Rome and in the Borghese as well. So definitely, definitely, definitely Rome should be on the list if what you value is sculpture. I'm gonna give you an unusual one in a minute, but let's see, where else? I'd say those are the main places for sculpture. The final one that I would recommend is the cemetery in Milan. The cemetery in Milan. And indeed, it's probably true for cemeteries in many Italian towns and cities. But the cemetery in Milan is stunning. It has more sculptures than you'll see anywhere in the world. Hundreds and hundreds of them. Many of them truly magnificent, beautiful, just beautiful. I mean, sad, because they commemorate their life, but some of them unbelievably touching. Truly amazing sculptures. Truly amazing sculptures. These are sculptures that were made primarily during the 19th century by phenomenal Italian sculptors. A lot of them, and going into the 20th century, where most of their business was, particularly as modern art became more prevalent, most of their business was commemoration, that is most of their business was tombstones and gravestones and building sculptures on tombstones. And it's, yeah, it is, you can spend hours and hours and hours and you won't see it all. But there are beautiful, beautiful sculptures there. If you're a fan of classical music, it's also where Verdi is buried. And Tuscanini, the great conductor. And they have sculptures there. There's a sculpture of Verdi and there's a sculpture of Tuscanini there. But I encourage you to go out and check out that. So that's one more. Generally in Italy, particularly older grave sites that were active in the 19th century and early 20th century have a lot of magnificent sculptures in them. In terms of other museums, yeah, I mean, I'd say those you've got to highlight. So definitely Italy, right? So Milan, the cemetery, Florence and Rome. And then you've got Paris, not just a Louvre, but it's worth going to the Wooden Museum. I don't like everything Wooden did, but some of his stuff is beautiful and there's some things in the Wooden Museum that are truly extraordinary. There are other smaller museums in Paris that you might want to just research and find. It is Gallipatec in Copenhagen. I can't think of any other significant museums in Europe that have large collections. Oh, God. In Paris, the d'Orsay. If you're going to go to the Louvre, I mean, just across the river is Musée d'Orsay. I'm probably mispronouncing it. But anyway, it's the old train station. And yeah, and there you've got more of the 19th century sculpture and there's some magnificent pieces there. So the d'Orsay. So yeah, so you got to spend a few days in Paris. One other thing, just a note for those of you going to museums. It is true these days that you really do have to book in advance. It never used to be that. You could go to the Louvre and pretty much get in anytime you went. But now both the Louvre that d'Orsay and many other museums, you have to book in advance. Now, I don't know if you go off season. Maybe that's not the case. But check in advance. The worst thing can happen is you get there and you can't get in or the line. You have to stand in line for two hours to get in. You don't want that. So buy tickets in advance. True in Florence, true in Rome, true at the Louvre. The cemetery, you don't have to book in advance. I can guarantee you that. Nobody goes there. Except relatives. But nobody goes there for the art. That is uniquely, that is a unique tip from me to you. Yeah, I mean, I'd say most museums that have 19th century and earlier art in Europe have good sculpture. But those are definitely the highlights that I can think of right now. Enjoy, Henry. Yeah, you should send photos. All right, let's see. James, how much is it to do a show on the fall of Chicago and the significance of financial centers? Have you heard of the TV show Boondocks? I have not. I would love to get your take. It is a great look into urban culture and black culture. Look to sponsor shows at $1,000. So if you want a whole show and a topic, it's $1,000. And if you wanted to do that, I could look both at Boondocks and at Chicago and the whole idea of the whole significance and history of financial centers. That would be a fun show to do. If you want to do that, let me know by email and you can make the contribution on PayPal and I'll schedule and do it. I don't know how long it'll take me to check out Boondocks. I don't know if it's, is it a one episode show, is it multi episode shows? Let me know. All right. The optimistic pessimist. How did the Israeli government not see the attack coming and why did they not respond for eight hours? The biggest intelligence security failure in history? Well, I don't know if the biggest in history, there've been a lot of intelligence failures throughout history. How did the US not see Pearl Harbor? How did the Polish not see the German invasion and the Russian invasion at the same time? Let's not forget Stalin invaded Poland and started World War II together with Hitler. And oh, it's a show with four seasons. I'm not gonna watch four seasons unless I really like it. But I might watch one season and let you know what I think. What was I thinking? So yeah, the Yom Kippur was a massive intelligence failure. I mean, I don't think it's an intelligence failure. I think it's a, they had the war intelligence. The failure is really a failure of the leadership in the military and the political leadership who for whatever reason, for a variety of different reasons came to the conclusion that Hamas was not interested in a war, that Hamas was broken, that Hamas was too busy, benefiting from all the money that was flowing in its direction to really care about a war with Israel. They had a perverted distorted view of Hamas to a large extent resulting from their own philosophical weaknesses, their own wishful thinking, their own evasion of reality. Israeli military and political leaders are not very good. I mean, I don't think the Americans are very good either. They're better maybe than Russians and others, but they're not very good. And they are very good at evading when it's convenient for them to evade and that's exactly what they did. And it is a matter, the war intelligence was there. There were intelligence agents in military intelligence telling them, this is going to happen. There were politicians in Israel, Lieberman, five years ago saying, here's the blueprint of what Hamas could do and we're not prepared for it. And it was basically the October 7th blueprint and they ignored him. So this is a massive political failure by Netanyahu and his government. They should all be gone. I mean, anybody who was part of a government over the last 10 years should be gone. That means Gaunts, the general, it means the guy, Netanyahu, the defense minister, all of them, all of them failed, failed big time, big time. And they should suffer the consequences politically. They should suffer the consequences. And it'll be on their conscience for the rest of their lives. Max says, what is the economic rationale behind making interest payments on debt tax deductible and would markets be better off if this was removed? Yeah, there is no economic rationale. I mean, the economic rationale for mortgages, interest on mortgages tax deductible, is to get people to buy homes because buying homes is a virtue and buying homes is good for people. And people who buy homes are better people than rents and home ownership gains you responsibility and having a mortgage makes you responsible because you got mortgage payments, you better pay them. It's a perverse philosopher king mentality that kind of wants to control how you live and incentivize you to buy a home because conservatives and liberals think that you're better off if you own a home. Conservatives and leftists all think that. One of Bush's big priorities that led to the financial crisis ultimately was that he wanted to raise home ownership in America to 70%. Why? So the interest rate deductibility of mortgages is that. For businesses, why is interest deductible? I don't know. It shouldn't be. It makes no sense that it is. It makes no sense that you get taxed on dividends twice, but you don't get taxed twice on interest. If you wanted to make this, if you wanted to make it more reasonable, you could eliminate from taxation dividends, which makes sense, to make them the same as interest so that the way in which firms raise capital is not manipulated by the tax code. But my guess is banks lobby for this because they want to be able to be their debt issuers and companies lobby for this because they get to write it off although it doesn't matter for them long-term, but it just appears that it matters. I think the big beneficiaries of this are the big banks. There's no economic sense to deduct from taxes interest. Indeed, and before I think 1986, individuals could deduct interest payments on credit cards and other consumer debt. That was eliminated because it was obvious that it was encouraging people to take on debt, but it was a way to get the credit card industry going. It was a way to get other forms of debt going. But it's perverse, it's a disorder of economically, and it's perverse in terms of incentives. It provides consumers incentives to take on more and more debt whether they can afford it or not because they get a tax deduction. And it makes debt a cheaper form of capital than other forms of capital artificially. Purely by government fear, which is just wrong. Robert says some objectivist intellectuals are much less effective because they don't seem happy at all. They don't project joy, success, values. If philosophy for living on Earth, you do. That means a lot. Merry Christmas, everyone. Well, thank you. I really appreciate that. Even though I have these very, very depressing shows like today, hopefully you get a certain sense that it only goes so deep and you can only allow it to go so deep. And yes, this is the world in which we live, but you have the ability to make more of your life in spite of the ugliness that exists in the world. Pursue beauty. I think maybe we'll talk about that tomorrow. All right, thank you, Robert. I really appreciate the appreciation. Thank you. Doran says, many think BB wanted an attack in order to save his political career. I'm not sure what he knew, but no one expected such a barbaric attack by Hamas. Now the war is the only answer. Is this what BB wanted? I don't think so. I think that's, I mean, I despise BB. You know, I'm no fan of BB Netanyel. Anybody who knows me knows that. But this is the kind of conspiracy theories that I just don't think are real. I really don't think Netanyel knew anything about it. And you know, if Netanyel knew about it, it means a bunch of generals must have known about it. It means the defense secretary knew about it. I mean, it's part of, you can't have a conspiracy with just Netanyel. It means the head of the Shin Bet, which is the internal security forces in Israel, the head of the Mossad, which is the CIA equivalent knew about it. The idea that all of these people knew about it and stayed silent and allowed for something like this to happen is just, I don't believe it's possible. I, you know, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe human beings are more capable of conspiracies and evil than I think. But I don't think those people are capable of that, right? I do think that this is another example of incompetence. Just incompetence. It's the same reason that those three hostages got shot. It's the same reason that over 20% of all the casualties in Gaza on the Israeli side are from friendly fire. The military is a, you know, it's very difficult to run it in a perfect way. There's a huge amount of flaws and unexpected. Intelligent requires assessments that often turn out to be false. And politicians are inevitably turned out to be arrogant. Arrogant, I don't mean here in the positive sense of confidence, but I mean, arrogant in a sense of having fake confidence built on a sense of fake power that they get from being politicians and in positions of power. And I think a lot of this is that, a lot of this is politicians who think they know everything and this couldn't happen and Hamas is this, Hamas is that. I mean, remember Israel did not make a big deal out of the fact that the Biden administration was sending billions of dollars to Hamas. It didn't make a big deal out of the fact that many of the Arab states were sending billions of dollars to Hamas, even though anybody with two eyes, including everybody in military intelligence, knew that that money was being funneled for weapons and tunnels and defensive mechanisms that were going to be used, could only be used in a war with Israel. I'll give you one more example, an example I just learned about this morning. In 2021, missiles were launched in Israel and Israel decided to retaliate. This is two years ago in Gaza and they put 160 planes into the air and they made a big deal out of that they bombed the tunnel system in Gaza. And literally the idea of spokesmen and the idea, the Ministry of Defense and these people all came out with statements saying, that's it, we have destroyed Hamas' tunnel system. We have destroyed it thoroughly and completely and it doesn't exist anymore. This is a massive achievement. What we've done is historic, this is amazing. This is on and on and on they went and how amazing what they did was. We killed 450 Hamas fighters. That was the statement they made. About a year later, in interviewing the head of the Southern Command who was in charge of defending against Gaza, it turns out that only 10 Hamas operatives were killed. And we all know that the tunnel system was not destroyed in spite of all the noises you all made about it being destroyed. It wasn't. Now maybe it's being destroyed. But even though the Israeli military and Israeli politicians told us it had been destroyed, it was not. Just a few weeks ago, the general in command of the Southern District announced that Israel had full control over the northern Gaza. Really? Then why are soldiers dying there regularly? I mean they lie. And partially they lie to give people a sense to be confident in them and partially they lie because they don't know, while they don't lie there. They're just ignorant. And Israeli military is not that better than American military or anybody else. You remember George Bush declaring the war in Iraq is over? Remember American generals lying to us over and over and over and over and over and over again with regard to Afghanistan, with regard to Iraq, particularly Afghanistan. They knew exactly what was going on. They knew we were losing. They knew we were not making any progress. They knew these kids were dying in Afghanistan for no good reason. And they kept lobbying for more troops. They kept lobbying to stay there and they kept telling everybody how amazing, how amazing they were doing over there. So it's not unique to Israel. James, $100, thank you, James. As a finance professional, what are the best ways to approach business owners to sell their business? What type of small subject lines or letters grab their attention? When you think of someone asking to buy your business, what makes you read past the first line? God, I don't know. I mean, I think that the best way is to call them, is to try to establish a personal relationship. It's to make a pitch face to face. And if you're going to approach somebody and buy their business, you should know a lot about the business. So it really depends. Are they, is this a family business? And is this not clear who in the family is gonna inherit the business? And therefore maybe by buying this business, you're letting the older generation get out and distributing cash to the younger generation without the expectation the younger generation take over the business. I mean, so you might then appeal to that issue, to the issue of succession. Or is it a business that is struggling or is stagnant, but where you have an idea on how to make it grow and how to make it dynamic and how to make it much bigger. And then again, you wanna lead with what you're going to contribute to the business. What you're gonna do, what you wanna lead with is a solution to the problem you think they have. Because a business that doesn't have a problem that is growing, that clear succession plan and is working well, doesn't wanna sell. So the sale has to be, what is it that I'm gonna contribute if I buy them? And that's what you should lead with, I think. Right? And again, family business is different than a non-family business and a growing business different than a stagnant business, a shrinking business different than a stagnant business. It all depends on the nature of the business. What you wanna lead with, generally in human relationships, what you wanna lead with is what you can provide. What is the win-win proposition? What is it that you're gonna give? How are they gonna benefit from it? And don't just think about money in this context. They wanna see their business thrive. They might wanna stay on as minority shareholders. They might even wanna stay on as CEO. So the whole issue is they wanna see it succeed. How are you gonna make it successful? So the more you know about the business, the easier it is to construct that opening line. Christian says, Mele has a horrible take on abortion. Where do you draw a line with your support of him? Yeah, I mean, he has a horrible take on abortion. I agree and that should be fought and hopefully that's where Congress or the Argentinian parliament will draw a line and object to him. But the reality is, look, Argentina is dying. It's a dying country. It's a dying culture. It's been dying for 100 years, but the death is accelerating and it's close to dying. And it's an emergency. And in an emergency like this, I'm willing to forgive Mele for certain things that I think he is wrong about abortion and alcohol capitalism. And, you know, support the things that are gonna prevent Argentina from dying. I also think that given the normative of the challenge that he faces, the likelihood that he gets to the question of abortion is small. I mean, he's a weird, he's religious. Is he Jewish? It's not clear if he's Jewish or Christian, if he's converted to Judaism. He clearly has this profound respect for the worst form of Judaism possible, which is bizarre, right? I mean, he came to see one of these, went to the grave or one of these barbaric Jewish rabbis here in New York when he visited. So there is a weirdness to his views of religion, particularly is the appeal of ultra-orthodox Judaism to him. He's talked about a referendum on abortion, hopefully the Argentinian people turn it down, the ban on abortion. And, but given the nature of the situation in, look, right now in the United States, if there was a candidate that was good on pretty much everything and was anti-abortion, given where we are today, I'd still vote for them. Because what's going to hell? And yeah, ultimately, we need a fight on abortion. But for me, at this point, where we are today, given everything else going on in the world, it is no longer kind of the ultimate litmus test. Now, if somebody's crazy about abortion, like what was his name, Pence, like Mike Pence, I could never vote for Mike Pence. And Scott's gonna say, but Biden, but Biden? And I will just say, Einran didn't vote for Reagan over Jimmy Carter. So, but I think I could vote for some of the others who have still anti-abortion, but a soft that maybe don't make that their big issue. And that's not that thing that they're pushing. And they're not, they don't give you the impression that they're religionists. They might be anti-abortion, because you can't be otherwise if you're gonna run in the Republican party. But they're not dedicated, committed to this being the end all be all issue and they're not theocrats by their very nature, as Pence was. So almost abortion is not an issue for me, for pretty much all the other candidates, because I don't think any of the other candidates care that much about it. So, you know, I'll support Millet, as long as he's doing basically good things. And I'll not support him when he brings up the abortion issue and I'll fight him on the abortion issue. But right now, given the situation in Argentina, and given what potentially a positive experience in Argentina with economical forms can do to the rest of the world, by somebody who might be anti-abortion, but it's not a crazy Christian, which is the real threat is the Christians, not kind of a president who's floating with Judaism. You know, we had kind of hard to tell what kind of way. And who used to be a tantric, wasn't he a tantric expert in tantric sex? I don't think his religiosity is a threat, because I don't think he has a clear religious vision that could get the Christians of the world excited about him, which I think is where the real threat is. I don't think the threat is from eclectic, weird religious people who do tantric. I think the risk is from committed Christians. That's the risk. All right, I have a hard stop at 3.30, so we're gonna run through some of these questions. Thanks, Iyal. Iyal says, good show, thank you. Let's see, Alex, what is the value of consulting McKinsey, IBM, others? What values did they create? How much are they a product of regulation in a mixed economy? I know, I think their size and their influence is probably a product of a mixed economy, but they would exist and they would be even more valuable in a non-mixed economy. I think what they do is they develop expertise in particular areas, expertise in, to a large extent, management, core management. McKinsey can come in and they can review your strategy, they can view operations, they can view anything from how to make your operations better all the way to figuring out what problems you have in the accounting department, figuring out what problems you have with your overall strategy and why you're not successful in foreign markets, and they're great in coming in with a fresh outside perspective when you're kind of buried in the day-to-day, so they come and they bring a different perspective, an outside perspective in terms of particularly strategy, but also in terms of sometimes just operations. IBM I think does that primarily in the information industry and they're very, I think they're very good at it. So no, I think consulting, management consulting, business consulting, IT consulting, hugely beneficial value-added activities when done right. I think they've gotten too immersed within government programs and too immersed in the whole cronyism business, but the cronyism racket, not business, but generally, yes, they would be incredibly valuable in many ways, more valuable in a real capitalist economy than in a mixed economy, because most CEOs are specialists and what somebody like McKinsey does is they bring a generalist perspective. Jonathan says, when am I coming to Sweden to give a lecture? When I'm invited, I only go where I'm invited. What I really need to go to Sweden these days is somebody to raise the money and finance a trip for me to come. I mean, I will go where I'm invited and where I'm paid. So it's all about if you want me to come to Australia, if you want me to come to Sweden, if you want me to come to Europe, it's just a matter of raising the funds to make a trip like that possible. If there are any Europeans out there who would like to fund a trip for me through Europe to give talks, let me know, and then I'm happy to go. Gail says, maybe Christmas you're on. Thank you for providing rich, true content consistently. I appreciate that. Gail, thank you. Thank you for supporting the show consistently. Really, really appreciate that. Andrew, there can always be maniacs, but is it accurate to say that a philosophy that taught young people a harmony between mind and reality and that values attainable through, would mitigate mental health issues? It certainly would mitigate many of the mental health issues we have. So I think a lot of the mental health issues we have are founded on education, are founded on lack of values, are founded on the nihilism that's already in the culture. So, yeah. Zomi says, Melia's buddies with a rabbi I debated a couple of years ago. I guess the British rabbi, the guy, the rabbi in, was that, I think it was a London-based rabbi that I debated, maybe it was an American. But yeah, I mean, it's kind of funny. Funny the people he's aligned with. Why is the U.S. being so violent? School shootings, violence, and murders are much lower in Europe. This raises the question of guns in society's better threat to rights than protecting them. Yeah, I mean, the Czech Republic does have pretty loose, it doesn't have many restrictions on gun ownership, and people are already accusing that. I think there are other reasons why America's more violent. I think it has to do with a combination of bad philosophy and ambition, versus in Europe you only have bad philosophy and no ambition. And I think if you combine ambitious people with bad ideas, combined with people who are striving for material betterment, but have bad ideas, then you're going to get violence versus Europe where they're not really striving for material betterment, they're not really that ambitious. They still have the bad ideas, but so they're more passive. I think that's the source of the greater violence in the U.S. It's ambition. It's a virtue misapplied in the context of really, really bad ideas where they don't know where material wealth, material well-being comes from, and therefore they figure if I'm being exploited, why not exploit the other? A $5 scholar, what would you be wrong with attempting to form a rank caucus within the Libertarian Party to counter the anarchist Mrs. Caucus model you wrong to try or just showed it and hopeless? Well, I think it's both. The model is the practical and the practice is the model. If something's hopeless, you should definitely think about whether it's model to do. I think it's a model. I think it is sanctioning the very existence of a political party that is today and has been since really was founded dedicated to rotten ideas, dedicated to anti-American ideas, dedicated to anarchism, which is a bloodshed and anarchy and a disaster. So it is a horrible idea. I mean, I think it's a much better idea, a much better idea, even though it too is hopeless, but a much better idea, a much cleaner idea. It's just started an objective as political party. Start a, you know, what's it called? The capitalism party. You can search it online. Make that active. Make that real political. Make that, you know, raise the money to take it out there and promote capitalism and run political candidates who are pro-capitalism. But to align yourself with just ugly human beings, ugly spiritually, human beings who are affiliated with the libertarian party. And I'm not just talking about the Mrs. Caucus. I'm talking about people, people 10, 20, 30 years ago who were really, really bad. I mean, and a lot of them just idiots. And weirdos, if you ever went to libertarian conventions, it's just weird. They're just weirdos. And so why would you want to, why would you want to take over a party of weirdos rather than creating a new party of more honest, sustainable people with the assumption that the better people in the libertarian party would move over to yours, call it the capitalist party? So no, I say don't do it. Frank, what does it mean to devalue the currency by 50%? I mean, what it means is that the official exchange rate between the peso in this case, the currency, and the dollar, let's say it used to be parity. For every dollar you got to pay some. And then let's say I devalue the, in the official, in the bank, you know, the bank, the official rate, what the government sanctions, what the government approves of. And then you say, oh no, now to buy a dollar, you need two pesos, or three pesos, or four pesos, you know, one and a half pesos, which would be a 50% devaluation, right? You need more pesos to buy the dollar. You've devalued. You've made the peso less valuable vis-a-vis the dollar. Now in Argentina, and this is only happens, I mean the whole idea of devaluing is only when there's an official exchange rate in Argentina, there's an official exchange rate, and then there's an unofficial exchange rate, and the unofficial exchange rate is, is in the black market. It's illegal, but it's there. And all Millet did was bring the official exchange rate more in line with the unofficial one, with the black market one, which is more reflective of reality. Ultimately what he wants to do and will do is get rid of capital controls. That is get rid of any official rate, get rid of any restrictions in terms of how many dollars you can convert, how many pesos you can convert to dollars. But he doesn't want, but he has to take his time doing that to make sure if he does it too early, all the dollars, everybody will convert their pesos into dollars and send them overseas. And he wants to get a certain stability in the economy. He wants to get the deregulation and the cutting-gummet spending, and he wants to get all that done before he lifts the capital controls. He wants to get, convince people that he's serious about the reforms that he's engaging in before he lifts the capital controls, but he will lift the capital controls. And in that sense, the government will not be involved in setting the value of the peso versus the dollar. And ultimately, he wants the dollar-wise economy, which is to get rid of the peso completely. All right, I need to run, guys. Thank you. I appreciate the super chat. We did great today. I really, really appreciate that. I will see you all tomorrow at 2 p.m. East Coast time. I think that's right. And for a positive show, we'll do something positive. All right, see you tomorrow. Bye, everybody.