 Now that's a big dog. You muted, you muted, you muted, you muted. Thank you, and I want to thank you for the volume and of the material you've been putting out lately. It's been just great intellectual ammunition at an important time. And I'm looking forward to the new year's show as well. And thank you to all the donors who are matching and you know, they're raising the bar for all of us who are donors of yours, but we're happy to have that raise. So, I wanted to ask you about something out of the Middle East in the last couple of days that I read about. You and I are both fans of fowda and it was almost like something out of fowda happened. As I understand it, in Iran, one of Iran's nuclear scientists was assassinated in this very coordinated, amazing hit job that involved a number of people and that supposedly was carried out by Israel. I don't think it's been confirmed. I think, John Brennan, some Americans condemn this as an act of political violence. So, I wanted to know what your take is on that in, and is that the type of thing that America, for example, should be involved in is efficient assassinations of people of high level in Iran, Saudi Arabia, North Korea. What's your take? Yeah, I mean, this is the second assassination in Tehran, in the Tehran area. We found out about it. I think the first assassination happened in the summer. The first assassination was actually assassinating the al-Qaeda's number two, who's been living in Iran for a long time and was assassinated there. And the assumption is, and I think this is credible evidence of this, that the Israelis did it at the request of the US. We don't know exactly, but clearly the Israelis did it. So, they assassinated also in a very coordinated attack in a suburb of Tehran, the number two al-Qaeda guy in the world. And then now they've assassinated the number one nuclear scientist in Iran, but not just any nuclear scientist, the guy who worked on converting, you know, in building nuclear weapons. See, he was the guy who was responsible for the entire nuclear program in Iran. I think this has been going on for a long time. You know, Israel, every few years, you hear about scientists or assassinated in Iran. It's not always as big headlines as this one was, but I think the Israelis have a program to take out anybody involved in this program, take out the brains of the operations so they can't build the nuclear bomb. They did this, some of you might remember, most of you are probably too young to, but Israel took out the Iraqi nuclear power plant in 1980 or 81, maybe 81. And before they took out the actual nuclear power plant, they for years had been killing Iraqi scientists who were working on the plant. So they basically, you know, will not tolerate the building of nuclear weapons by an enemy nation and they're taking them out. Now, look, I believe all this is weak and not enough and only delays, it doesn't change the projection. You know, a lot of the scientists that work in places like Iran and others on nuclear power program might be, they might be from North Korea, they might be from Pakistan who has nuclear weapons. They might be Russians who used to be under the Soviet Union. It's hard to assassinate every nuclear scientist out there and identify them and do it. The proper thing Israel and the United States should do is bomb any facility that is suspected of nuclear activity into oblivion. That is make sure that not only is it bombed and destroyed and cannot ever be used, but send a clear message. Every time you build something, we will knock it out. We will destroy it. So I still think it's weak to go out there and assassinate, you know, North Korea, you assassinate this general, another general comes about. Israel's been assassinating leaders, military leaders of the Hamas for decades. All right, every time a military leader is kicked out a new military leader comes in, a Trump assassinated Soleimani, the head of the National Guard in Iran was it about a year ago? They've replaced them, somebody else is there to do the work, either take them out. I mean, what you need to do is take them out. These little pinpricks, I don't think in the long run are effective even though they buy you time. Well, quick follow-up, is America's policy against political assassination altruistic? Is that self-sacrifice? Absolutely, it's ridiculous. It's ridiculous. Now, it came out of a period where the CIA was probably assassinating people without, I'd say without strategy, without a real clear view of why they were doing it and what was gonna replace these people. So I'm not saying that the prohibition at the time, but yes, I mean, every tool should be available to the military and to the president and to those in foreign policy to deal with enemies. I mean, if you could assassinate Stalin, wouldn't you? If you could assassinate Hitler, wouldn't you? So absolutely, the United States should permit assassinations. We do it with the drones, right? We're taking out al-Qaeda people all the time and ISIS people all the time with drones. It should be broader. Israel, unfortunately suffers from the same problem. They assassinate Hamas military leaders, but they won't assassinate Hamas political leaders. But it's a political leaders that probably do more damage. So if somebody's dedicated to your destruction, you should destroy them first. What we need today, what I call the new intellectual would be any man or woman who is willing to think. Meaning any man or woman who knows that man's life must be guided by reason, by the intellect, not by feelings, wishes, whims or mystic revelations. Any man or woman who values his life and who does not want to give in to today's cult of the stare, cynicism and impotence and does not intend to give up the world to the dark ages and to the role of the collectivist. Broads. All right, before we go on, reminder, please like the show. We've got 163 live listeners right now, 30 likes. That should be at least a hundred. I figure at least a hundred of you actually like the show. Maybe they're like 60 of the Matthews out there who hate it, but at least the people who are liking it, you know, I wanna see a thumbs up. There you go. Start liking it. I wanna see that go to a hundred. All it takes is a click of a thing, whether you're looking at this. And you know, the likes matter. It's not an issue of my ego. It's an issue of the algorithm. The more you like something, the more the algorithm likes it. So, you know, and if you don't like the show, give it a thumbs down. Let's see your actual views being reflected in the likes. But if you like it, don't just sit there, help get the show promoted. Of course, you should also share. And you can support the show at your own book show.com slash support on Patreon or subscribe star or locals. And show your support for the work, for the value. Hopefully you're receiving from this. And of course, don't forget, if you're not a subscriber, even if you just come here to troll, or even if you're here like Matthew to defend Marx, then you should subscribe because that way you'll know when to show up. You'll know what shows are on, when they're on. You'll get notified, right? So, yes, like, share, subscribe, support. Like, share, subscribe, support. There you go. Easy. Do one or all of those please.