 the radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Brookshow. All right, everybody. Welcome to Iran Brookshow on this Monday, April 15th. It's tax day. I hope everybody has filed their extension or filed their taxes. Well, I hope you found a way not to, but I think you're better off filing than going to jail. All right. We've got our first chatter announcing to the world that Christ is king. If only I'd realized that earlier, maybe my life would be different. I think it's a little too late for me, Cal, so don't waste your energy on me. All right. Let's see. All right. Today, so we're going to do a roundup of what happened with Iran and Israel and what's happening and what I expect to happen in the next few days. We'll talk about USAID to Israel because that always becomes a big issue. America supporting Israel and God supporting, well, God or Christ or whatever. Then I guess my followers on the chat are getting into this Christ is king, Christ is king, somebody's king. Anyway, we'll talk about that. We'll talk about the gold, some interesting news about gold. Then we'll talk about homicide rates. I've got some numbers so far. I've just been talking about directions. Now we've got some numbers. Came out over the weekend about 2024. So we'll talk about that the first quarter of 2024. All right. Oh, now Christy is king. Who is Christy? God. I mean, this king issue is out of control, out of control. Adam says he is king. All right. Let's put that to rest. Queen. All right. That I'm on with you. I'm with you on that. Let's see. All right. Let's talk about the Iranian attack on Israel. I think many of you heard my show that I did while the attack was going on on Saturday. It was a five-hour show. I think I broke all the records. I think Jonathan Honing finally got what he wanted. He wanted a three-plus-hour show, and he got a five-hour show on Saturday. But it was all kind of real time. I was tracking what was going on, trying to inform you of it. So now we can kind of summarize what actually happened. We have the data. We have the knowledge free of kind of fog of war elements in terms of what was going on. All right. So bottom line is the Iranians launched the Iranians and some Iranian proxies, Iranian proxies in Iraq and the Houthis as well as Hezbollah in Lebanon all launched various projectiles towards Israel. Overall, in terms of at least the larger projectiles, I think the Hezbollah launched some of their short-range missiles into Israel. But overall, we're talking about 170 drones, 170, 30, 30 cruise missiles. And what surprised me ultimately, because you didn't really get the sense when things were actually happening in real time, there were 120 ballistic missiles, 120 ballistic missiles. In terms of the hit rate, of 170 drones, zero actually impacted Israel. Of the 30 cruise missiles, zero actually hit Israel. Of the 120 ballistic missiles, something like seven hit the southern area in Israel, the negative. I think mostly two air force bases were hit. One aircraft was damaged, no casualties in those air force bases. One aircraft was damaged. It was a refueling airplane, a maintenance hut, and a few craters in the runway, which have since been filled in. So the bases are fully functional. The one ballistic missile did hit a kind of a Druze settlement, not a Druze, God, where does that come from? A Bedouin settlement. And what do you call it? Fragments from it, hit a number of residents there, likely, but one girl, seven years old, was injured significantly from it and experienced how to go through critical surgery. As far as I know, she's okay, but I haven't really kept up with that story. Shrapnel, thank you. I was looking for that word, shrapnel. She was hit with significant shrapnel, went through surgery in Israeli hospital. This is a Muslim girl in a Bedouin village outside of Arad, outside of a Jewish town called Arad. So this is, you know, overall, given that 320 significant projectiles were sent towards Israel, that is a pretty damn good performance in terms of minimal casualties and almost no structural damage to anything of importance. You know, of the drones and cruise missiles, most of them were knocked down before they even reached Israel. So most of them were knocked down over the Red Sea if they came from the Houthis or over Jordan and Syria if they came from Iran. The people doing the knocking, all of these missiles down, I mean, this is an unbelievable performance of the air defense systems. I mean, this is a truly stunning achievement, basically 99% was knocked down or landed in the middle of nowhere. So this is truly stunning in terms of the achievement here, but it is not purely an Israeli achievement. A number of ballistic missiles, probably five or six were shot down from US Navy ships in the Eastern Mediterranean. You know, I think one of the cruise missiles or other missiles were knocked down by an American ship in the Red Sea. American pilots, American pilots, Jordanian pilots, UK pilots as well as French pilots all participated in basically what looked like a video game, but a lethal one of shooting down drones and cruise missiles well before they reached Israel. And the success rate of shooting those down was 100%. That is, F-35s, American F-35s and Israeli F-35s basically did most of the work here. And it truly is stunning the degree to which they succeeded in knocking all this down. Now, we'll get to the implications of this multilateral mission in a minute, but you know, this is just to give you a sense of actually what happened. It really does look like this attack by the Iranians was modeled after Russian attacks on Ukraine. That is, this is a pattern developed by the Russians in attacking Ukraine. You send drones, cruise missiles, and only at the end ballistic missiles to overwhelm the defense systems. Of course, Ukraine has nowhere near as good of an air defense system as Israel does. And of course, Ukraine did not have the support of all these allies in knocking down the missiles projected at it. So the expectations and the plan in terms of the Iranians was for all of these projectiles to reach Israel at about the same time. And that was somewhat achieved. Let's see. Again, this is a system developed by the Russians. I don't think they've ever, you've ever seen this magnitude of just a sheer number of drones, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles all fired at once. That is all fired towards one target. Even in Ukraine, I don't think they've seen these magnitudes. So this was definitely spectacular. I mean, and think about the fact that in Ukraine, they managed to shoot down about 46% of Russian ballistic missiles. Israel shot down, again, with the help of some help from the American Navy, what is it, 113 out of 120? Well, 120, but it's not clear that 120 were actually launched. We'll get to that in a minute. Well, 120 were attempted to be launched. There's also some news coming out that says that about half of all the ballistic missiles that Iran launched actually either exploded on launch or actually crashed somewhere in Iran or in Iraq, so never even made it anywhere near Israel. So I don't know. We don't have accurate stats here. So we don't know, but it could be that up to 50% of all the missiles launched towards Israel never even made it. So Israel knocked down well over 90% of what was targeted. If only 46%, if the ratio was closer to the Russian ratio to the Ukrainian ratio, the damage in Israel would have been substantial. If drones and cruise missiles would have made it, the damage would have been substantial. I mean, these stories coming out, and I'm seeing them all over the media saying, oh, Iran didn't do this. This wasn't serious. You don't launch 300-something missiles and drones and not be serious about it. They expect significant damage. This is a massive disappointment to them. It reveals the extent of which the Israeli defense system is dramatically better than the Ukrainian. I think the Russians are watching this too, and this suggests that, again, Americans, NATO, Israel, have capabilities that Ukraine doesn't even come close to. Israel in particular, because it also has the arrow systems, is in a particular good position to defend itself against launches. Now, the Iranians did not launch any hypersonics, which, supposedly in Ukraine, the Russians are using close to hypersonic or somewhat hypersonic, but Israel does have the arrow three. The arrow three was designed to deal with hypersonic missiles. It is the only air defense system currently operational and active that was designed to address the issue of hypersonic missiles. It wasn't really tested, although you did see some arrow three putting down some ballistic missiles from Iran, but those were not hypersonic ballistic missiles. Israel does have the capacity to pull down hypersonic, hypersonic being more than Mach 1, although some of the hypersonics, particularly Chinese hypersonics, supposedly can deal with Mach 5. The arrow three has not been tested at those speeds, and I doubt it will be tested anywhere, anywhere, anytime soon. So the hypersonics exceed Mach 5, at least the ones from China. I don't think the Russians do. I think the Russians are much slower, and the Patriot systems have had, Patriot anti aircraft systems have had some decent success in knocking down some of the Russian hypersonics, but again, the Russian hypersonics are not Mach 5. They're much lower than that. So technically hypersonic means Mach 5. In reality, you hear a lot about Russia launching hypersonic, they're not Mach 5. The hypersonics of Russia launchers. Iran claims to have hypersonic, it's not the Mach 5. It's slower than that. Anyway, so that is what happened. Let's see, what else did I want to say about what happened? So, you know, this is an amazing testament. This is an amazing testament to the air defense system that Israel has. It's an amazing testament to Israeli, American, and other fighters. Supposedly the daughter of the Jordanian king, who is an Air Force pilot, knocked down like five drones, so good for her. So a huge, huge achievement here. Again, not clear how much, how many of the ballistic missiles actually made it off of their, you know, across the Iranian border in any significant way. Many of them were duds and failed just as I would expect. We have seen some of the ballistic missile carriages, the kind of the holes. There's one, I saw a video of one that was down near the Red Sea, near the Dead Sea, and one that we saw in Jordan, a video of one in Jordan. But again, the air defense system did amazingly well. The American systems did amazingly well. You know, if you did get through, and I'm sure Israel is looking into why those did get through, and, you know, what failed to make it possible for them to get through. So Israel will learn from that and advance. Here is the one, I don't know, this is, this is an issue that you've got to, that Israel I think is unfortunately, I think has to deal with. The reality is that Israel got a lot of help. It's not clear what would have happened if Israel hadn't gotten that help. I almost wish Israel didn't get the help. Now, in a proper world, Israel would not only get the help, but America would have eradicated the Iranian regime by now. So I'm not talking about an ideal world, I'm talking about this world. In this world, I'm not sure it was a good thing for Israel to get the help, even if it had meant some of the missiles getting through. The reality is that because of this help that Israel received, it now seems, it now feels obligated to those who gave it help, the Americans, the Europeans, and the Arabs in the region. All of these players have come out explicitly, explicitly. A statement saying that they want Israel not to retaliate. The Biden administration has been very explicit about Israel should not retaliate. This is a win because there were no casualties except for the seven-year-old girl and it's, you know, what do you want to get into tit for tat and we don't want to escalate and please don't respond. The Europeans have said the same thing. Arab nations have said the same thing. And now, within Israel, you're seeing leftist publications like Haaretz, which is the equivalent of New York Times in Israel, saying basically the same thing. And Israel now feels beholden. So even in Israeli cabinet, they are now talking about, well, how do we maintain this alliance? We formed this alliance. This alliance is great. We now have the Americans and the British and even the Jordanians and the Saudis may have helped and all these other, the Gulf states gave us intelligence. How do we maintain this alliance? And then placing the maintenance of this alliance as questionable as it might be above the need to retaliate, above the need to respond. That has become the priority. And indeed, it appears that Israel might, will probably respond, but probably respond in a minimal fashion. Now this is, this is a disaster. Iran just launched 300 and some projectiles towards Israel. I mean, significant projectiles, not the little stuff that Hamas even launches, but significant projectiles that could have caused massive damage in Israel. Indeed, there's no question that both the Iranians and the Russians, who are helping them, will learn from their inability to penetrate Israeli air defense systems and do a better job or try to do a better job next time. The fact that a few missiles did get through is a real concern. Imagine if those five, seven missiles had hit Tel Aviv or Haifa. There would be significant civilian casualties. So, you know, Israel by now responding, by now responding, is basically telling Iran that, you know, they can bomb Israel at will. They're telling Iran that they fear them because they fear the response to Israel's retaliation. They're telling Iran that their attack on them was effective. Well, silence Israel. They're telling Iran that Israel is beholden to other powers and won't pursue its own self-interest because the Biden administration has asked it not to. Israel can fight alone. It can. You know, I don't know how to dispel this mythology. Maybe this is one of the problems of all these countries coming to Israel's aid. I mean, yes, there would be more casualties. Yes, there could be more, would be more casualties, no question. But Israel can fight and win alone. And indeed, I would argue it needs to fight and win alone given how meek, given how pathetic, given how appeasing the rest of the world is. Israel should have told the United States and the UK to stand down. It's got this. It should have told them that after October 7th. Please provide us with weapons, which we will buy, by the way. And other than that, leave us alone. Let us manage this thing. We will defend ourselves. It's not too much. It is doable. The Iranians are weak. Hezbollah right now is weak. Hamas is weak. Israel has the resources, capabilities to strike back and defeat the enemies it faces. Now, without foreign help, casualties would be significantly higher. Okay? With foreign help, casualties are going to be much higher than otherwise in the long run. In the short run, lower casualties. In the long run, higher casualties. As I said over and over and over again, for 20 years now, Netanyahu is a wimp. There were people within the cabinet who were urging an immediate strike the same night as the Iranian offensive. And that's what should have happened. Now, Israel is looking for strategic alternatives. Every day they meet. The cabinet meets and they're presented with different alternatives. And Netanyahu says, no, no, give me more alternatives. Including, by the way, now they're talking about maybe they'll just do a cyber attack. I mean, maybe they could do a major cyber attack that really made a difference. We will see. Netanyahu is dithering. As he has from October 7th, as he has since he became prime minister 20 years ago, almost 20 years ago, dithering, dithering, dithering. And instead of protecting Israeli lives, instead of securing Israel's security for the long run, he's appeasing the Americans. He's appeasing the Israeli left. He's playing, who hate him anyway, playing games. He is. I think the only conclusion is that he is a coward who gives a great speech but never lives up to it. So now the Washington Post's headline says, Israel always strike on Iran to quote, send a message while preserving their alliance. See, the alliance shackles. The alliance are false friends because real friends will tell them, take the Iranians out. The alliance is a false sense of security. What happens when you become dependent on them and one day they disappear? So unfortunately, this is what Israel is doing. Unfortunately, Israel will suffer the consequence of this. By the way, they've already announced that they put on hold the operation in Rafa until they take care of the Iranians, but they won't guarantee when they'll take care of the Iranians sometime. So everything is kind of on hold. I don't know. Israeli economy is suffering dramatically from the fact that everybody is in the army. They've just called up two additional army brigades from reserve brigades, which means even fewer people in the workforce. The economy's struggling. Israel's spending, you know how much Israel spent on defending itself? Some estimates put it at north of $1 billion in one evening, one night, in a few hours to knock down all those Iranian missiles, $1 billion. It's much cheaper to be on the offensive than it is on the defensive. $1 billion. Israel can't afford to do this and shudder its economy. Israel needs, and I've said this since October 7th, it needs to win this quickly, decisively, and go back to normal life, and they refuse to do it. And yes, you can blame Biden for it, but that's just, that's pathetic. Every single American president in all of American-Israeli relationships since 1967, since America started selling Israel weapons, 1967, late 1967, has urged Israel to compromise, sell out every single American president, Republican or Democrat. So the fact that BB chose to capitulate, as some other Israeli prime ministers have in the past, in spite of knowing the consequence of that capitulation, is a sign of his weakness. Goldomir did not capitulate. So it's a sign of his weakness. You want to blame everything on Biden, because you hate Biden and because he's left, fine, but that's just stupidity on steroids. All right, let's see. So I've seen a lot of people complaining about Israel faunade. And, you know, I don't like faunade. I wish it all went away. Total faunade that the United States provides in the world is $770 billion. And it provides faunade to 212 countries. By the way, the United States provides Russia with $1.7 million of faunade. It provides South Africa with $659 million in faunade, you know, in Ethiopia. Ethiopia, by the way, gets $2 billion of faunade, just to give you just a sense of it. Luckily, Iran does not get faunade and neither does Australia and neither does Sweden or Finland. But almost any other country in the world gets some form of faunade from the United States. I mean, Mongolia gets $17 million. And Afghanistan, you know, I don't think they get anything now, but they were getting well over a billion. So here you have, so we have a $70 billion budget. First, I mean, I'd like to see that zero. But first, let's be clear, $70 billion out of a over $4 trillion budget. $4 trillion. Canada gets a little bit of faunade. Canada gets like $32 million of faunade. Now, I haven't dug in to figure out what it looks like, what it means. There are all kinds of these buckets that faunade comes out of. But $70 billion out of a $4 to $5 trillion budget is pretty insignificant. So if we care about government spending, which I do, care about government spending, then the first thing you want to do is cut where it matters, cut where it matters, cut where you can get to trillions, right? Trillions. So over the $90 billion, Israel actually receives, I mean, put aside Ukraine during the war, which has received about $12 billion, this was in 2022, right? So these, I don't know if we have 2023 numbers. It's just, I'm just looking. 2023 numbers are actually lower, actually $56 billion. So for what that's worth, and let me see if they have 2024 numbers, I'm curious. No. So the 2024 numbers are not, I don't have them. So 2023, but it was $56 billion. Again, I'd like to see these zero, right? And in 2023, it's clear that Russia, for example, is getting nothing, right? So I'd like to see this again at zero, but let's start looking at Israel falling. Just to give you a sense, Egypt today gets about $1.5 billion. Jordan gets $1.6 billion. And in those, both of those countries get the falling as part of the peace deals that they stuck with Israel, the United States secured the falling. Syria, Syria, a major enemy of the United States, gets $761 million. And Iraq, another enemy of the United States, gets $363 million. Again, as we said, South Africa gets hundreds of millions. Sudan gets $642 million. I don't know who do we have here. Somalia, Somalia gets $1 billion of foreign aid, $1 billion. So Israel gets $3.3 billion. Okay. I found this on the web. Didn't ask you Syria. Israel gets $3.3 billion, which is, except for Ukraine, the largest amount anybody gets, right? So a significant amount of money and people are flipping out. Israel gets foreign aid. We should cut off Israel from all foreign aid. We should eliminate it completely. And, you know, I would not object to that. But let's think about the foreign aid that Israel gets. Now in the past, during the 19th, starting in, starting really with the, with the peace deal with Egypt, Israel started to get a significant economic aid. Economic aid peaked at like four and a half billion dollars in 1985. So through the 1980s, Israel got economic aid from the United States. And throughout this period, I was saying Israel does not need economic aid, zero it out. And indeed, in 2007, and in 2007, basically Israel, 2008, yeah, Israel's economic foreign aid was basically zeroed out. I think in 2008, it was $50 million. This is down from, again, a peak of four and a half billion dollars. Israel does not receive any significant economic aid today. I think it's $5 million right now. And I'm not sure what that is for. It's probably some welfare program that the United States funds. I mean, that should be zero. Israel received two pockets, two forms of aid. So economic aid is zero, two other forms of aid. One is military aid. So straight military aid, they receive around $3.3 billion a year for that. This is part, this is provided under the Found Military Financing Program. This is a fund that requires Israel to use the money, the $3.3 billion, to purchase U.S. military equipment and services. So it has to use the money in order to buy U.S. weapons. So basically what this is, is a U.S. government subsidy to American arms manufacturers, to the military industrial complex, if you want to call it that. Now, I'm fine with zeroing in that out, but let's just realize what it is. This does not go into the Israeli economy. They do get weapons that they could otherwise not get, but the U.S. economy gets a $3.3 billion going right back. 100% is supposed to be spent in the United States, 100%. Once in a while, they are permitted to use a portion of it to buy equipment from Israeli defense firms. But on principle, it's supposed to be 100% spent in the U.S. Now, there is an additional $500 million a year that is slated for a joint effort between the United States and Israel to develop missile defense systems, missile defense systems in which the two countries collaborate on research development and production of these systems. This is what helped develop and produced Iron Dome. Iron Dome systems that now the United States is purchasing and using and wants to deploy in a variety of different theaters. You can imagine Iron Dome being incredibly valuable in the South Korea theater. You can imagine Iron Dome being incredibly valuable in the Ukrainian theater, although I don't think it's being used there. David Sling, which is for cruise missiles and other type of missiles. Iron Dome is for smaller projectiles. David Sling's is for drones and cruise missiles, and then the Aero II and III, which are for ballistic missiles. Now, the United States does not have the equivalent of Iron Dome. It has something like David Sling, but this is all new tech. The United States shares in their tech, and therefore this is not foreign aid. This is a shared investment. And indeed, even Israel's Iron Dome, the projectiles, the missiles that Israel uses for Iron Dome are made by Raytheon. So the United States, Israel is buying the projectiles from Raytheon. So as foreign aid goes, this is not exactly a drain on the U.S. Treasury. Now add to that. Add to that the fact. A few other facts. One, Israel is actually fighting America's wars. Israel is actually fighting America's wars. Iran is at war with America, has been since 1979. Israel is fighting a war that America should be fighting. It's chosen not to, out of cowardice, pragmatism, lack of self-esteem, all kinds of reasons. Israel is fighting it. So it's doing work for the United States of America. It's protecting American interests. It's holding the Iranians back. With no Israel, Iran would be much more focused and energized around attacking U.S. interests. Two, Israel provides the United States with unbelievable access to intelligence and to military technology, including the testing out of American weapons systems. Where else? American weapons systems, some of the most advanced used in actual combat. How much has America learned from Israel's use of F-35s? Where else in the world has the F-35 been used in combat? No way. No way. Israel is testing out equipment, using it, and provides massive amounts of feedback back to the United States. Back to the United States. So the United States provides, sorry, Israel provides the United States with massive amounts of feedback on weapons systems and technology and intelligence, which is crucial to American self-interest, crucial to American defense. Israel is also enhanced American weapons system. And again, shares that technology with the United States. Israel develops its own tech. A lot of that is shared with the U.S. So the alliance Israel, the United States has with Israel, is probably the most valuable alliance it has with any country in the world right now. So, you know, it costs $3 billion out of a budget of $4 trillion, $4 plus trillion. It's a cheap price to pay. Cheap price to pay. And again, all that money flows back to its arms manufacturers. So super cheap, super effective, massively valuable to Americans. All right. Let me just thank a few people before we go on with a couple of other news items. And then we'll go to the super chat. John, thank you for the sticker. Silvanos, thank you for the sticker. Tom, thank you for the sticker. Those are all very generous. Martin from Argentina, thank you for the sticker. Let's see. Tezi and Apollo, thank you. Vadim Gale, Jonathan Honing, Fendt Hopper, Martin again, an anonymous user. And of course, John, who starts off now every program with a $20 sticker. So thank you, John. Really, really, really appreciate all of that. Thank you, guys. You have been great. All right. Let's look at a few other things. So massive instability over the weekend because of what happened with Iran in anticipation for that last week. You know, gold prices as a consequence spiked again. They reached 2,350 pounds, and these are record levels, or close to record levels. They, I think, again up again, they're up a little this morning, although off of the record levels. So gold is going up. I think gold, oh, sorry, gold hit a record of 2,431 on Friday in anticipation of the strike. And then when Israel didn't immediately retaliate, it came down a little bit to 2,350. But generally, gold has done very well over the last few months. And really two causes for this. Gold is generally considered an inflation hedge, and people buy it with anticipation because of inflation. But I think gold is disappointed for the most part as a pure inflation hedge. I don't think its performance has matched up to inflation over the last few years. But what gold clearly is, what gold clearly is, is gold is a hedge against the end of the world. Gold is a hedge against global instability. Gold is also a hedge against the collapse of the dollar. Gold is a hedge against really, really, really bad outcomes. And as the world becomes more unstable, as war becomes more prevalent, people rush into gold. It's interesting. They don't rush into Bitcoin. So Bitcoin does not seem to be served as a very effective store value or hedge against inflation or even a hedge against, certainly not a hedge against a macroeconomic event, sorry, geopolitical events. Actually, Bitcoin plummeted with the Iranian attack from 70-something thousand to 65,000. Still very high. But Bitcoin is much more of a speculative asset. And I'll do a show about my evolving views about Bitcoin. And it's certainly a bet on its functionality in the future. But it's not a hedge against anything. It's not a hedge against anything. Gold is. Now you can buy gold at Costco. I don't know if you guys knew this. You can actually go to Costco and buy a bottle of gold. You can put it in your shopping cart and check out, which is, I think, pretty cool. I might do that. I don't know if they have that in Puerto Rico. I need to check. But that seems pretty cool. Okay, so gold is reaching highs caused by the real global instability. Every time you get wars or struggles when Russia invaded Ukraine, gold spiked. And every time you get this, you get a spike up in gold prices. So it is interesting. Hopefully, you guys own some gold and are benefiting from this. The story I found most stunning. I don't know. This is the most stunning story I have seen in a long time, I think. Remember Zimbabwe? I have, I haven't, I've got it in the cupboard behind me, but I'm not going to stop the show and go get it. I have a hundred trillion dollar note. I think actually Jonathan Honing sent me a couple of hundred trillion dollar notes from Zimbabwe. Was Zimbabwe had hyperinflation, you know, what, 20 years ago, 15 years ago, something like that? Well, Zimbabwe has inflation again. Significant inflation. Zimbabwe generally has a horrible economy. It's massive amounts of poverty. This is a country that used to be the bread basket of Africa. It basically exported massive quantities of food and basically feeds, barely feeds itself today. Zimbabwe has had these Zimbabwe dollars that has just been worthless. And it's been, for a while, there was a period when they did away with the currency and they were using South African Rand, the South African currency, but then they reintroduced the currency and it's been a disaster. Mugabe is dead, but the people who replace them, well, we don't know because I've got some good news about Zimbabwe. So here's the good news about Zimbabwe. Indeed, shocking, stunning news about Zimbabwe. And maybe this is the beginning of something important. You know, maybe even Mille. Hey, Mille, can you hear me? Maybe even Mille could learn something from Zimbabwe. How about that? Certainly, the Federal Reserve could learn something about Zimbabwe and maybe this is where the bricks all ultimately had, if they do, then that would be a revolution, a really economic revolution in the world. Zimbabwe is issuing a new currency. It's called the ZIG, Z-I-G. And that is from a longer name, which is ZIM Gold. The currency is going to be backed by a basket of foreign currencies, gold and precious minerals, dominantly by gold. In other words, Zimbabwe is going on what you can, what seems like right now to be a gold backing. Zimbabwe's central bank has launched a new structured currency backed by gold, which is stunning. They've given the population 21 days to convert all the old cash into gold, into this new currency, which is gold. Initially, their concerns about does Zimbabwe's central bank have enough gold, and they have disclosed, if you believe them, that they have, let's see, what was it, 1.1 tons of gold in the country, in the vaults of the central bank, and then have another 1.5 tons of gold abroad. They also have precious minerals, such as diamonds, that they could convert into gold, which are worth about 0.4 tons. But basically, this new currency is going to be supposedly backed by the gold. The central bank, it would adopt a tight monetary policy linking the money supply growth to growth in gold and foreign exchange reserves. So they will treat foreign exchange as if it's transferred into gold, based on the gold, the price of gold in that foreign reserve that they have, whether it's Euro or Dollar or South African Rand. I mean, this is massive. This will immediately eradicate inflation from Zimbabwe if people believe that this will actually hold, if they believe the central bank. I mean, a lot of this is about believing them. Inflation was 55% in March. This could easily drop it to zero. This is the kind of system Argentina should adopt, better than even dollarizing the economy. Although the advantage of dollarizing the economy is you get rid of the central bank. Here, they're keeping the central bank, and of course, the central bank are cheap, cheap. So it would be cool if they actually got rid of the central bank completely. The new notes, the new bank notes, maybe Jonathan Honing can get us one, actually feature a drawing of gold ingots being minted. So it actually gets gold on the money. This is the first country going on a gold standard, I don't know, since 1971, as far as I know. This sounds pretty amazing. So this is called the ZIG, ZIG, capital G, standing for gold. So I'm excited. I hope this bodes really, really well for Zimbabwe. Of course, Zimbabwe also needs private property and a functioning court system that is actually going to live up to the rule of law. It needs a lot of things, but this is a huge first step and a massive, massive important step if you want to stabilize your economy. So I'd love to get a ZIG. I'd love to get my hands on a ZIG. All right, let's see. I thought that was exciting. I don't know, you guys seem tepid about it, but that's okay. Okay, finally, just to back up my claims about crime. I mean, claiming crime is down, particularly the crime that is most easy to observe, that is, to measure, to keep track of, which is homicide. Homicides are reported whether this crime is solved or not. We know exactly how many people die because of homicide in cities. And that data is reported pretty quickly. You can get it on a quarterly basis. So we now have the data for the first quarter of, for the first quarter of 2024. And the data is quite stunning. That is, homicides have dropped dramatically throughout the United States compared to 2023. And if they can sustain these levels, we'll see if that's doable. But if they sustain these levels on a seasonally adjusted basis, because crime always goes up in the summer, but if they sustain this range of levels, then this 2024 could be the least motorist year since 2014. And that was the least motorist year since the 1960s and maybe ever, given how we collect stats. Just to give you a few statistics, in Washington DC, which is a horribly violent place and where crime rates have been going up for years, murders declined by 28%. This is absolute numbers, right? In Philadelphia, murders declined by 34%. In Columbus, Ohio, again, a very relatively high motor rate, murders declined by 58%. On a per capita, per 100,000 basis. Again, cities have seen massive declines. The largest year-to-date decline is in Boston, 82%. Columbus, Ohio, we said 58%. Austin, Texas, 42%. Basically, the only major cities that are seeing an increase in motor rates are Denver, Los Angeles, and Portland, also rises in homicides as of early April. Now, again, we'll see if this holds for the rest of the year. The number of homicides in the United States rose significantly in 2020. It rose by 30% in 2020. Rows again in 2021, a little bit, but stayed at those high levels. And 2022 was down, 2023 was down, and it looks like 2024 is down significantly. Now, so when Trump tells you there is carnage in the streets of America, now you have the facts. You have the actual facts that no, well, the first half of 2022 was the highest homicide rate. Actually, no, sorry. 2021 was the highest homicide rate. In 2022, New Orleans had the highest homicide rate in the United States. And again, that has dropped significantly in 2023 and then again in the first quarter of 2024. So there is some reason to be somewhat optimistic in terms of motor rates. And if you look at theft, if you look at grand arson, if you look at burglaries, I'm not talking about shoplifting. I'm talking about major theft that is going to be reported, that is actually reported. The problem with shoplifting is half of the time it's not even reported. Major theft, violent assault. The things are big stuff all down, all of them down across the board since the peak in 2021. Now, it's true shoplifting is up. We talked about that on the Iran book show that stores are shutting down in San Francisco, stores are putting stuff behind locked cabinets. Shoplifting is really high in parts of the country. And that is a real problem. It's a real problem that can be dealt with with enforcement. Auto theft is ultimately down from last year. I know it's, you know, I'd still take the good news. I know you guys having a hard time with taking good news. I know you resist it. I know you don't want to hear it. But the reality is that things are getting better in terms of violent crime. And that's the crime that I think is the most problematic, is the most disturbing. All right. Let's see. All right, auto theft. I'm just looking at auto theft up. Auto theft was still up in 2023. So we don't have 2024 numbers slightly from 2022. But it's been up over the last five years by about a quarter. So don't own a Kia or Hyundai. Those are the most likely cars to be stolen. Kia's and Hyundai's from 2003 to 2023, seven times higher likely to have your Kia or Hyundai stolen than any other than other brands. Pretty amazing. All right. There must be something about the parts of those cars that can be dismantled. Again, violent crime down across the board. We should celebrate that. We should be happy about that. And the primary reason for that, by the way, is in once the craziness of defund the police ended and cities got reoriented, they started spending more money on police. Once the anarchy of the BLM riots ended and the COVID insanity ended, everything, you know, community policing returned, cops returned to their beats, police showed a presence in the cities. You know, almost no city out there, maybe with exceptional Los Angeles and indeed Los Angeles crime rates up. Almost no city has actually took the defund the police seriously, particularly not once crime rates all peeked and went up in 2021. By 2022, they were spending more money on policing and crime was going down. All right. Let's see. All right, we're going to do the super chat. A few reminders to everybody. Tonight, I'll be interviewing Tara Smith. We'll be talking about two new books of hers, one on egoism and one on free speech. So tonight, philosopher Tara Smith is going to be in the Iran book show, 7pm East Coast time, 7pm East Coast time. Please join us. I think it's going to be a fabulous discussion. Tara's always excellent. It's always fun. We always get into interesting issues. And yeah, fantastic. So join us tonight at 7pm East Coast time on the Iran book show for Tara Smith interview about her two forthcoming books. All right. Iron Man Institute is a sponsor of this show. And the Iron Man Institute is encouraging you to sign up for OConn. We've talked a lot about OConn. OConn is a fabulous, fabulous conference that happens every year. I know many of you have never been. You should go. It is both socially and intellectually incredibly stimulating, stimulating, stimulating time. So it's, you know, everybody should attend. You know, you can go to ironman.org slash start here to get access, to get access for that. All right. Today is the scholarship deadline. Today is scholarship deadline. But so I assume everybody who wanted a scholarship is already applied. All right. Another sponsor of the show is Alex Epstein. Epstein, sorry, Alex Epstein. You know, and his energy talking points, which features Alex AI, energy talking points gives you concise, powerful, well-referenced arguments on every imaginable energy, environmental, and climate issue. Alex AI, which is part of the premium service, is a cutting-edge chat box based on Alex's energy knowledge and thinking methods. Alex AI users, which include many CEOs and members of Congress, use Alex AI to answer their energy questions, help them write speeches and write social media posts. You too can get all this knowledge. You can go to alexepstein.substack.com, alexepstein.substack.com, and join the most knowledgeable person on issues of energy, climate change, and the environment in the universe, actually in the universe. All right, John, thank you for the sticker. Jeffrey, thank you for the sticker. I appreciate it. And I appreciate all the many people who refused to accept statistics because they don't go because, I don't know, Biden's in office, so you can't have anything positive happening. And when Trump was in office, you couldn't have anything negative happening. So the fact is, violent crime in the United States, violent crime in the United States, bottomed out, was the lowest it's probably ever been in history. In 2014, under shock of all shocks, President Obama. And that makes President Obama a great president? No. Why attribute these things to presidents? I never understood that, but you need the bad news because the only way Trump can get elected, see, the only way Trump could get elected is to convince the American people that the world is literally falling apart and that he is our savior. And it's the savior attitude. I mean, the Biden administration is awful, awful, horrible, disgustingly so. In spite of that, shockingly, the world is not falling apart. But to actually get elected, you have to convince people that it is. Biden got elected because of the incompetence of Trump. Trump should have nailed that election. The economy was doing well. He completely fubbed and was a complete disaster, complete disaster with COVID. He was a complete disaster with BLM. He was a complete disaster with this Bible in front of the White House. You remember that whole thing? I mean, he was just a joke with his drink chlorine. I mean, the guy presented himself as a complete bumbling idiot, and he lost. And you should have won that. He was an incumbent. He had all the advantages of an incumbent. And the economy was doing pretty well, again, not because of Trump. In spite of Trump, in spite of Biden, the economy does well. Presidents don't get the credit for how the economy does. At the time, I was telling you presidents don't get the credit for how well the stock market does. It's just not how the world works. Presidents don't have that kind of power. They don't have that kind of influence. Yeah. We've got people in the chat who still believe the election was stolen. I feel sorry for them. I really do. I mean, you go against reality, against reality, against reality for so much time. It's got to affect those brain cells at some point. All right, let's jump into the super chat. Midas, $100. Thank you, Midas. Been listening for about a decade, you're on. Wow. Never supported. How come? But this month, the 32, I'm finally finishing my BS in finance and have a career lined up in commercial banking. Excellent. So I figured now is the time to start. Thank you for all the content, but more importantly, the inspiration. Thank you, Midas. Really, really appreciate that. Good luck in your banking job. I'm curious which commercial bank you're going to work for, but that is terrific. And I completely understand that while being a student and all that, it's hard to afford to support the show. I appreciate the fact that you've been listening and really appreciate the fact that you've been inspired. So that's why I do this. And thank you. Thank you for the support. All right, Adam, longtime supporter and significant supporter of the Iran Book Show. Iran just got a free look at the defense capabilities and procedures of Israel and its allies, the lack of responses, cowardice, and will continue to embolden inferior enemies. Absolutely. You know, this look that they got, you know, I don't know how valuable it is. We'll see. But yes, it wasn't free. It cost them a lot. Iran is not a rich country. Israel could make it very, very poor by taking out its oil installations. You remember I told you that basically Iran has one big facility where all the exports of oil go through. Israel taking that out, which would not require much at all, because it's pretty exposed. It's not like the, you know, you need bunker-busting bombs in order to get to the nuclear program. The oil is easy, easy and cheap to get rid of. Yes, the lack of response is pathetic, but I can guarantee one thing. Here's my prediction. Whatever Israel does, the one thing it will not do is hurt, damage, destroy Iran's capacity to produce and export oil. Adam says, free in terms of, in terms of without consequences. Absolutely you're right. So far without consequences. We'll see what they do. Sadly, I think they're going to do something weak. And they're still, they're not going to do it tonight, I don't think. They, they seem to continue to dither. Dither? Is that a word? It's a real word, right? Sometimes I think I make up words. They continue to dither. Vadim says, Israel air defense system kind of reminds me of the protective rays of goat's coach. Now, okay, almost comic to see evil being impotent against a rational moral society that is Israel. Yes, Israel's technology is not an accident. Israel technology is a consequence, a consequence of, you know, having being a free society. But you don't get technology for free. And by the way, that reminds me that my debate with safe, the Palestinian libertarian Bitcoin economist on the Palestinian issue is up. It's, it's out. I didn't even see it. I don't think he's advertised it even on, on, on, you know, Twitter, but it is out. You see, you can find it on Breedlove's YouTube channel, Robert Breedlove's YouTube channel. And yeah, let me know what you think, three and a half hour long debate on the Israeli Palestinian issue. And, you know, let me know what you think, how I did. It's not an easy issue to debate. Yeah, I don't see, I really don't see that he has tweeted that the debate exists. I wonder why. I'll take that as, I don't know, a positive because Breedlove is, is, was anti me. That is, the, the moderator, he did a good job moderating, but he made this opening statement that was horrible, really, really, really bad, really bad. And you can listen to it. I think it's going to be up there. And yeah, let me know, let me know what you thought of the debate, but it is out there. He has 365,000 followers, wow, on Twitter. I don't know about YouTube. Last I looked at it at like 4,000 views, but it would be great if you watch it and comment on it, please comment on it in, in, in, in, if you think I made some good points, comment in my favor. All right. All right, let's see. Whoops. That's kind of, yeah, it's interesting that he, he's not, he's not, he's not tweeting it. All right. Jeff, he says in honor of tax day, how were taxes collected in early America, especially late 19th century? Well, there was no, there was no income tax, right? Income taxes were basically unconstitutional, viewed as unconstitutional back then. So there was no income tax. So there was no, you know, filing taxes on April 15th. There was no withholding tax. All of that is a modern, modern creation. Most taxes were various forms of tariffs, importation taxes. There were all kinds of other transactional taxes. So they were collected primarily at custom houses in the border. And by states, states had a variety of different taxes. And I'm not sure how they were collected at the state level. But remember, you know, there was very, very little, there was very, very little taxation. The federal government spent less than 5% of GDP. So it spent in some cases close to 3% of GDP. The entire government apparatus, state, local, and federal spent significantly less than 10%. So you can imagine the taxes were very, very low to the extent that they happened. But there were no income taxes, with the exception of the Civil War. But those income taxes were ruled unconstitutional. There were other attempts to introduce income taxes that failed. And it took amending the Constitution in order to get the income tax in 1914. So Americans did not have to keep receipts, have deductibles, stuff like that. There were some forms of corporate taxation. Some forms of corporate taxation. So corporations still had to do it. But individuals did not. Individuals did not. Thank you, Jeffrey. Schaasbad. A term you could use, lollygagging, to fool around and waste time lollygagging. Lollygagging sounds too frivolous to talk about, you know, when people's lives at stake, oh, they're lollygagging. I don't know. Doesn't flow off the tongue easily. Thank you, Schaasbad. All right, let's see. I've got a lot of questions still from Saturday, which I will get to some of them today. And then some of them I'll delay for tomorrow. I just don't have the time to cover all of them. By the way, good news, bad news for you, I don't know. But we will be shifting to a new schedule starting tomorrow. Monday is always going to be like this. There'll be a one o'clock or two o'clock news show and then in the evening a debate, a interview. But every other day is not going to be from two to four, two to five. So there'll be plenty of opportunities. Actually, I'm going to delay all the questions for Saturday to tomorrow. I'll answer them all tomorrow because tomorrow is going to be a long show. We're going to go till four or five o'clock tomorrow. Targets in terms of superchats, just you know. Monday will be the same, 2.50, 6.50. 2.50 for the news roundup, 6.50 for the afternoon. Other days will be 700 for the total show. So I will do the first hour will be news roundup. And then I will do another topic. In the title of the show, you will see that starting tomorrow. There will be just news roundup and a date. And then after that, it will be the topic, the bigger topic that we're discussing, the bigger topic that we're discussing. It's going to be from 2 p.m. until somewhere between 4 and 5 p.m. east coast time. So at least two hours of content every day, potentially three hours of content every day. How long it goes will depend completely on you and on how many questions you have. I know that this is not idea for all of you, but this is probably going to be the schedule through the summer. If it turns out that it's not as good as the current schedule in terms of money raised, in terms of number of people watching live, then I will shift back to the old schedule in the fall. But in the summer, I might not be in the United States for a lengthy period of time, and it will be impossible for me to do the current schedule given time zones. So this is a schedule that I'm going to start now. And if I indeed land up not being in the United States during the summer, this will be much more convenient for me, or not convenient, make it possible for me to do the show even while I'm traveling. All right, all the questions from Saturday will be answered tomorrow during this very long show that I will be doing, and I'll be doing this very long show every single day, Tuesday through Friday, Monday will be news roundup, and then interview, and tonight don't forget, interview with Tara Smith, a philosopher, Tara Smith on egoism and on free speech. Two topics. All right, Mary-Eline, you were right, Biden told Israel not to strike back, so frustrating, angry, makes me crazy. I agree, Mary-Eline, just because I know what's going to happen doesn't mean I'm happy about the fact that I'm right, because I said, Biden would do this, and I said Netanyahu would cave. Robert Nasir, YBS freedom. Meanwhile, I'm waiting for Israel to do what the United States of America would do if we were ever attacked on our soil in this way. I hope that's true. I hope the United States would actually respond properly if it was attacked on its soil. It's not obvious to me. Suddenly, the United States did not do what is necessary after 9-11, not even close, not even semi-close. Go read End States that Support Terrorism by Leonard Peacock written in, I think it was published in November of 2001, after 9-11. Go read that again, and you tell me that the United States, even when attacked on its own soil, does what is necessary. It does not. The wimpiness extends far beyond Israel, definitely to America, including the American people themselves. After 9-11, we attacked the wrong people in the wrong place. They too long did it all wrong from beginning to end. Mary-Eline, it was a win for Iran because the U.S. wouldn't let Israel strike back. Yes, I agree with you. And what they're seeing is how weak Israel actually is that it will succumb, succumb. Prop up, I saw on the anti-regime Iranian forum on Reddit that they were posting addresses of Mullahs and regime members calling for Israel to strike them. Absolutely. I mean, as I said on Saturday, the Iranians want Israel to weaken this regime so that they can have a free country. They would love for Israel to target the Mullahs. And I would love for Israel to target the Mullahs. I would love for America to target the Mullahs. Alas, it ain't happening. It is not happening. Urban pocupine, is it possible that the run-up in gold prices over the last 30-ish years has to do with the rise of conservative talk shows and the fact that every one of them aggressively advertises a gold broker? No. I mean, the reality is that gold prices rose before the last 30 years. Gold prices spiked and peaked at the time in the early 1980s. And then they crashed when interest rates went up and inflation was devastated. And then they slowly rose again. And then they rose again during the financial crisis. But even as people like people to shift were expecting them to go through the roof, they actually stabilized and then went down. And then they rise every time there's political uncertainty. They rise every time when there's economic uncertainty. They rise every time when there's inflation or some economic catastrophe. Certainly geopolitical catastrophes, they always rise. So it's very predictable in that sense what is going to happen with gold. So, no, I don't think it has anything to do with marketing. Gold market is too deep. It's too extensive for that to actually be happening. Tom, do you think Iran will be less useful to Russia as a weapons supplier because of this? No, I don't think so. I mean, Russia can still use hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of drones. That's what they're buying from the Iranians in order to overwhelm the Ukrainians. They can't do it maybe with the Israelis partially. There are two reasons here. One is Ukraine just doesn't have the F-35s and the F-16s and the F-15s that Israel has. They can knock these things out of the air before they even reach the target. But secondly, Ukraine is much closer to Russia, much closer to Russia than Israel is to Iran. So Israel has a lot of warning before the drones reach it. And it has a lot of airspace. It basically controls the airspace in Syria. And the Jordanians let it operate above their airspace. So it had a lot of room to operate, to operate. So that is not the case for Ukraine. So Russia will still be buying hundreds of actually thousands of drones from the Iranians, unfortunately. Shahzad, will Tara Smith be providing us all with handouts during an interview? I don't think so. She always does that with lectures, but not for the interview. I think she provided me with a handout, but not you. All right, James says, are you going to read all Superchats from yesterday? Yes, but not today. I will do that tomorrow in the show. Tomorrow's show will be at 2 p.m. We'll go until 4 or 5 p.m. And I will be reading and answering all the questions from yesterday's Superchats, Saturday Superchat on the show tomorrow. James goes on, how will Jordan be viewed by other Arab countries for helping Israel will Iran expand in Asia? I mean, a lot of the Arab countries helped Israel. It wasn't just Jordan. Supposedly, Saudi Arabia provided an intelligence. Egypt, interestingly enough, actually turned down U.S. request to join in the fight and knock down some of the missiles being launched from the hoodies, which Egypt would have the ability to do. So Egypt did not join in. You know, I think Jordan's trouble is that it has already a peace deal with Israel, and the Palestinians really hate it. And some Arab states do, but Arab leaders generally have moved to at least a short run to a pro-Israel position. So I don't think it affected Jordan one way or the other. Will Iran expand in Asia? No, Iran's not going anyway. Iran is a poor country. It does not have a strong military. It has a lot of missiles. It has a lot of drones. And it has nothing else. It has no real military capabilities. It can't expand anywhere. Indeed, it should fear that if it tries, other countries might bite into its own territory. So no, Iran's not expanding anyway. Its influence expands because it inspires the jihadis. It expires Islamists because it's the one country ruled by Sharia law that stands up to the West and gets away with it. So next terrorist attack could very well be caused in the West, could very well be caused by the fact that Israel did not respond. Because Israel in the West appear weak, that elevates Iran, that inspires Islamists all over the world to go after the West. All right. I will see you all tonight at 7 p.m. East Coast time. Thank you for the superchatters. You were great. We easily beat our target. And remember tomorrow, 2 p.m., long show, two to three hours. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. We're on a schedule now. All right. So you can set your clocks. You can set your timers. You can join. No excuses. I'm not moving it around, except when I will be, when I travel. But when I'm home, it's always in the same time, same place. And yeah, Catherine just did a sticker. Thank you, Catherine. Shali, thank you. And Catherine reminded me, just a quick news story. Catherine was posting about this, I think, earlier. There are protests, pro-Hamas protesters all over the United States blocking the pass to airports. If you miss your flight in the next few days, if you're in a parking jam outside of Chicago or airport and you're going to miss your flight, you can thank the pro-Hamas demonstrators. But really, who you should thank is your local police force for not clearing these bastards out, for not clearing them out, arresting them, throwing them in jail. This has been going on for too long. These protests, the tolerance for these protests is absurd and ridiculous. The government needs to shut them down. Actually, this was a Gail story. Was it Gail or Catherine? Now I'm confused. Why am I confusing Gail and Catherine? All right, it was Gail. Sorry, Catherine. You don't get the credit for this one. Gail gets the credit for this one. She tweeted on it and she mentioned it on the chat. So thank you, Gail, for providing me with a link to it. It really is disgusting. It really is ridiculous. Law enforcement needs to shut down these protests. It needs to shut down these protests as quickly as possible. And they need to use force to do it. And airports, shutting down airports, I mean, it truly is outrageous and a massive violation of the rights of all those people trying to get to a plane, trying to get on vacation, trying to get business, to see their kids, see the grandkids, whatever, right? All right, everybody, I will see you all tonight, 7 p.m. Don't forget.