 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 on this Wednesday, November 29th. I hope everybody's having a fantastic week and yeah, being productive and doing stuff out there. All right, we're going to jump in with some news items for the day. This is one of our news roundups and I remind you you can ask questions using the Super Chat. You can support the show using stickers. Jennifer's already done that. It worked for her today so we're off. We really got it started and yeah, we'll just jump in. Yesterday we got the news that Charlie Munger died, passed away at the age of 99. May we all live to at least 99? I mean that should be the new standard. It should be life expectancy of everybody, anybody who takes their life. Seriously and invest in it 99 I think is a good number to start. Right, to start. We can even do better than that. Anyway, Charlie Munger is a legend. He is known primarily as Juan Buffett's number two, the vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway. He has been a partner of Juan Buffett's for about, was a partner of Juan Buffett's about 60 years. He was an investor, a very successful investor in his own right before he joined up with Buffett. And he is credited for changing Buffett's investment style to kind of the style that we really know today. Munger was born in Omaha, Nebraska in 1924. He went to get a degree in mathematics at the University of Michigan but left school to enlist during World War II. He was stationed I guess as a weather forecaster in Noam, Alaska during the war. Even though he never got his first degree, he managed to convince a dean at Harvard Law School to admit him. And he received a law degree from Harvard where he graduated Magna Cum Laude. He landed up settling in Southern California and establishing himself as an investor out there. I don't know how much exactly he is worth in terms of net worth but he is worth in the many, many, many billions of dollars. Juan Buffett credits him with Munger with many of their best investments but primarily he credits him with changing Juan Buffett's investment style. Juan Buffett started out life very much buying any kind of stock as long as it was really, really cheap. So his investment philosophy early on was to buy really, really run down really, really cheap stocks. Berchick Hathaway itself I think was a textile company, something like that. There was close to bankruptcy, very, very cheap. Buffett bought it up and ultimately turned it into a holding company that owns everything today. Munger called Buffett's method of investing the cigar butts, the stuff that everybody throws away, the stuff that's about to fall apart, the stuff that's really, really cheap. Now Buffett did very well buying these kind of companies. But the reality is that Munger convinced Buffett to start investing in great companies, great companies that were reasonably priced or priced relatively low but not at bargain basement prices. Now Buffett had been following kind of the guidance of his mentor Benjamin Graham, another legend in finance, and really buying things that were really, really cheap and he stopped doing that. One of the best investments they made together was Sees Candy, which they bought and made about $2 billion for them. It was a great company. That was relatively cheap, relatively cheap. So Munger, if you remember, Buffett has made a lot of money in Coca-Cola. A lot of big names, of names of great companies that, for a variety of reasons, in the case of Coca-Cola, I think it was the release of New Coke in the late 1980s that caused the stock price to tumble. He bought a bunch of it. It recovered, of course, because it's Coca-Cola and he made a fortune on it. So Munger was also known for his one-liners, his zingers. He would often do at the Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholder meetings to which thousands and thousands, tens of thousands of people would come. He would often sit back and let one Buffett take all the questions and give long answers. And then he would come in with a one-liner zinger that would kind of summarize it all up. He's famous for that. He had a great sense of humor. He was very, very pro-American. Some of you will probably dislike him because my guess is that he voted, he was probably a voted Democratic most of the time. And yet he was one of the great business people, businessman of the 20th and 21st century in America, one of the great investors of our time, one of the shrewdest, smartest people in the investment world, people traveled from all over the world to listen to him speak, to get to hear some of his zingers. He was a real legend and somebody whose life should be celebrated, he managed to live to 93, to 99, one Buffett is 93. And of course Buffett is quite a legend, but it's hard to imagine one Buffett now doing those annual meetings, doing those Q&As without Charlie Munger at his side. So a real great American, a great investor and somebody who has been very, very positive about America for a long, long time, a long, long time, you know, is past. With celebrating his life, with commenting on, he's definitely, I think, one of the good guys. Let's see. Oh, talking about good guys. So the Oakland City Council wanted to pass a resolution because everybody cares about what the Oakland City Council thinks. They wanted to pass a resolution basically saying that there should be a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, that Israel should give up the goal of destroying Hamas and there should be a long-term permanent ceasefire over there. Something that who knows, but Israel might be coming to that conclusion as well. It does seem like Israel and Hamas are, as we speak, negotiating about prolonging the ceasefire. The ceasefire is supposed to end today. Last prisoners released, last hostages released today and Israel should be going back to war footing tomorrow. But the head of the Mossad, together with the head of the CIA, are in Qatar negotiating an extension. So God help us. Anyway, the Oakland City Council wanted to have a declaration about the need for a ceasefire and no civilian casualties. And they wanted to include a statement condemning Hamas as a terrorist organization. And when they try to do that, basically, a series of speakers came up. It's very anti-Iraab racist. The notion that this was a massacre of Jews is a fabricated narrative. Yeah, did you hear that? So a series of speakers came up to denounce their interest in denouncing Hamas. So they deny Hamas did anything. I'm going to play you the audio. You don't need to watch the video. You can listen to this. And you can tell that most of these are just by the accents. Most of these are just plain regular Americans wearing kafias to show solidarity with the freedom fighters over in Palestine to show solidarity with Hamas. But here is what they had to say. There have not been headings of babies and rapes. Israel murdered their own people on October 7th. Calling Hamas a terrorist organization is ridiculous, racist, and plays into genocidal propaganda that is flooding our media and that we should be doing everything possible. So Israel killed its own citizens on October 7th. It was a Hamas. No, it was a Hamas. Israel killed them all. It was all a ploy by Netanyahu to start a war with Hamas. So they just killed all their citizens and pretended that it was Hamas. And then of course, denouncing Hamas is just racist. And it's just a ploy. And we should be fighting against this, you know, Hamas are the good guys. Don't forget. It's basically Hamas is bad guys. It's just genocidal propaganda that is flooding our media and that we should be doing everything possible to combat. I support the right of Palestinians to resist occupation, including through Hamas, the armed wing of the unified Palestinian resistance. As an Arab asking with this context to condemn Hamas is very anti Arab racist. The notion that this was a massacre of Jews is a fabricated narrative. Many of those killed on October 7th. Fabugated narrative. Many of those killed. Killed by the IDF. Killed by the IDF. So what they constantly repeating and you see this on Twitter, they're constantly saying is the killing that happened on October 7th was done by the IDF. It was not by the Hamas over and over and over again until there'll be many people out there who just accept it, who just think it's absolutely true. An amendment condemning Hamas is bald propaganda meant to thank you. Your time is up. To hear them complain about Hamas violence is like listening to a wife beater complain when his wife finally stands up and fights back. Question. Did anyone else notice that those who oppose this resolution are old white supremacists? There's been a lot of atrocity propaganda, ranging from claims of the headed babies to mass rape. Hamas is not a terrorist organization just because the US and Israel deems it so. Hamas is a resistance organization that is fighting for the liberation of Palestinian people and their land. All right, you get a flavor for what happened in the Oakland City Council. The left has gone completely nuts. I mean, this has been the left now for a long time. It's just this is the latest victim that they're out to support. This is BLM on steroids. And it's going to be interesting to see what the consequences of this are. How are Jews going to vote in the next election? I mean, another reason I think for not having Donald Trump on the ticket for the Republicans is, I think somebody like Nikki Haley, even the Santas could get a big chunk of the Jewish vote by showing support for Israel, whereas a lot of Jews are going to withhold their vote from a Democratic Party that is basically stabbing them in the back, expressing anti-Semitic views. And you know, Jewish vote can matter in places like Michigan and in Georgia. But it's also true that the Democrats are going to be heard by the potential of the Arab vote, not voting for Democrats. They won't vote for Republicans, but they'll just stay home, which again could help Republicans in Michigan. Putting Donald Trump on the ticket though would probably discourage a lot of Jews from voting Republican. So again, they're probably going to have to decide where they actually want to win, whether it wants to continue falling on the sword of their love of Donald Trump and everything he stands for. All right. So, you know, the left continues to show its nihilistic hatred of anything resembling Western civilization, really, and its commitment to kind of intersectionality, the greater the victim, the greater you can pretend you are a victim, then the greater you can make a noise that you are a victim, the more likely it is that the left is going to support you. It's all about being a victim and being distant and unassociated from anything to do with the Western civilization. They hate Israel because Israel is a bastion of Western civilization. It is a bastion of civilization, of enlightenment values, and their embrace and repetition of conspiracy theories is the equivalent of QAnon. I mean, the left has shown that they are just as susceptible as the right to embrace conspiracy theories. And it is interesting kind of to evaluate the state of America today. We both left and right, at least at the edges of them, are both committed and embracing and of hatred and conspiracy theories and denial of reality on mass scale, mass scale. This is what we are today. Reality, truth, evidence, doesn't matter. The only thing that matters are your emotions, and that's, again, across the political spectrum in a disgusting display. All right, the Senate and the House are going to be voting soon on bills to provide military support for Ukraine and Israel. And I think there's also in the package, there's significant money for Taiwan. So it's an aid bill for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan that involves military assistance for all three countries. Heavy negotiations going on. If you remember, the Republicans in the House did not want to vote on this bill. They wanted to vote on Ukraine separately because they don't support Ukraine. They do support Israel, so they wanted to vote for the Israel bill, but not for the Ukraine bill. And then Republicans also started to insist that if you're going to have a bill that includes Ukraine, includes Israel, and includes Taiwan, they also wanted significant additions to the bill that have to do with tougher border restrictions, asylum restrictions, and the border. And that looks like what is going to happen. It appears the Democrats are going to compromise on this. It appears that the Senate will vote on a bill that has several provisions to toughen border restrictions, asylum restrictions, the way the border patrol deals with people crossing the border. Everything is going to be toughened on that regard. At the same time, Israel, Taiwan, and Ukraine will get additional funding. This is likely to pass the Senate. It needs really 60 votes in the Senate in order to not fall under filibuster rules. But it looks like most Republicans, I mean, my guess is Rand Paul will vote against this. I'm not sure which other Republicans today advanced will probably vote against this. But the border restrictions are such that I think many Republicans will vote for it. I think it'll get a majority of Republicans that will get a majority of the Democrats and it will pass probably with big numbers. It also is the kind of bill because it includes the border provisions that might make it possible to pass in the House of Representatives. So Speaker Johnson will probably present a very similar bill in the House of Representatives and probably get it passed. So, you know, we're seeing the political parties compromise. Of course, compromise immigration right now is good for Democrats. They realize that the situation at the border is untenable. It's absurd, ridiculous. And it's costing them votes. And as a consequence, they're willing to appear tough on immigration for this bill in order to get their other priorities passed. Primarily, I think, support for Ukraine. Israel is easy. Taiwan is probably easy. I don't know how the parties are aligned on that, but my guess is they both support it. It's Ukraine. It really is the sticking point. So Republicans give the Democrats Ukraine. The Democrats give Republicans the the tougher immigration restrictions and everybody appears to win except the American people because there's no real discussion about the real problems that we face. And there's no real consideration to the real challenges that the federal government needs to deal with, I don't know, entitlement reform, cutting spending, all of the stuff that nobody wants to touch. But that matters a huge amount in terms of the actual future of this country. So yes, they will be a bill. Congress will pass it. And Ukraine and Israel and Taiwan will get their aid. Unsurprising, it's almost always the case that Congress gives a thumbs up to more spending, right? It would be nice if as part of this bill, they would have cut spending somewhere else to make up for the deficit, right? But that would be that would be crazy, right? That would be crazy. All right. Oh, yeah. One other thing about the bill is the Democrats are trying to get the left wing in the Democratic Party is trying to get the the the bill to include strings attached to include things like no killing civilians or effort in terms of Israeli aid. So to give Israel aid only on condition that Israel does XYZ. I think that's going to be defeated, ultimately. So I don't think that'll actually make it into the bill. All right. Let's talk about Russia. Interesting. Yesterday, Russia held, actually, it's a two-day conference that Russia held that has been held in Russia about the Russian world, the nature of the Russian world, the future of the Russian world. So it is a it is a conference that I guess is held annually centered around the nature of Russia. Putin gave a very long speech yesterday about a two-part conception of Russian identity. We'll talk about that in a minute. And then today, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, the patriarch, Kirill, gave a second speech about Russia and immigration, which I think you will find interesting. Anyway, so let's take the first speech by Putin. Putin made a lengthy speech where he reiterated something that he's been talking about for quite a while. If you go back to his very famous speech, which I analyzed, not speech, actually an essay. So you have it in writing. You can read it. It was translated on the Kremlin website into English. So you can read this. It's an essay he wrote in July of 2021, you know, seven months before the invasion of Ukraine. It's called The Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians. And it was basically an essay, you know, basically to set the stage for the invasion of Ukraine. It's too bad foreign policy analysts didn't pay more attention to it. Anyway, Putin is reaffirming this idea that the Russian nation, the Russian nation, other people that are composed of ethnic Russians, whatever that means, Belarusians and Ukrainians and who are artificially divided because of horrible policy miscalculations during the Soviet Union and then after the fall of the Soviet Union. But really, that is all artificial. And that is a great tragedy. And that the Russian state, this is Putin arguing, the Russian state needs to do all it can to unify this Russian nation. Don't tell me the war in Ukraine is about NATO. The war in Ukraine is about unifying the Russian nation. It always has been. And again, Putin told us this in July 2021 in an essay he wrote and is published on the Kremlin website in English translated into English by them can claim anything different. All right. Putin also defined the concept of Ruskinir. I think this is the spirit, Russian spirit, as a union of people, a union of people who feel a spiritual connection to the motherland and consider themselves to be native Russian speakers and a carriers of Russian history and culture, regardless of their national or religious affiliation. So notice the separation. There is something called the Russian nation. That's ethnic Russians, ethnic Ukrainians, ethnic Belarusians. But if you buy into that stuff, there's a real problem because many, many, many people within the Russian Federation today are non ethnic Russians. They are non Christians. Many of them, for example, are Muslims. They are expected, as the Chechens, for example, to come and fight on the front line for mother Russia. And yet they are not ethnic Russians and they are not part of this unity of Russian nation. So here he has to expand the concept. This is the Ruskinir, Russian people, not nation, people, a union of people. And here what matters is your Russian speaking. You have Russian history. You have embraced Russian culture. Whatever your national or religious affiliations, you can be Chechen. You can be Dagestanian. You can be all these other ethnic groups that exist all over Russia. As long as you buy into the language, the culture, the history, you are part of this. So Russia, as it is today according to Putin, is all the people who have lived and are living in Russia. Make up Russia, plus these other people who belong to the Russian nation. This Ruskinir is more than just the people who live under Russia today. This Ruskinir, these peoples of Russia is not just who happened to be in Russia right now. He defines it in the stock he gives as all the ancient Rus. Ancient Rus, really the Kiev Rus, these are the original peoples that established Ukraine and then Russia. He talks about the Kingdom of Moscow, which had different borders. He talks about the Russian Empire, which included vast parts of Poland, vast parts of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. He includes the Soviet Union, which includes, of course, vast parts of Asia. And Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and the contemporary Russian Federation. So the concept, the Kremlin's concept of Russian compatriots, Russian peoples includes much of Eastern Europe. It includes the Caucasus and it includes Central Asia. Putin is an imperialist. Putin wants the resurrection of a Russian Empire, wants a resurrection of the Soviet Union. And, you know, in the speech where he talks about all this, you know, the big part of this is to strengthen the Union, to strengthen the culture, to strengthen religion, but also strengthen religious diversity. But he has a real vision of a Russian nation, a big Russian nation standing in opposition to the West and of the West ultimately being subservient to this great Russian nation. And this is, again, this is the ultimate reason for the invasion of Ukraine. Don't buy any of the other, you know, Western rationalizations for it. Just listen to Putin, believe Putin. Putin tells you exactly what he wants, what he intends, and why he's doing what he's doing. What's interesting is that the next day, that is, this was yesterday, I think, this morning, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church gave a talk also about Russia, the meaning of Russia, what it means, the importance of it. And a little bit of a different tone than Putin, which is interesting. He talked about the need to significantly adjust Russia's migration policies, echoing Europe, I guess, in order to preserve Russian culture. He highlighted the perceived superiority of ethnic Russians to other regional ethnicities. And the fear that these ethnic enclaves, people were migrating there into Russia proper, but also people from outside of Russia were migrating into Russia. And here we're talking about primarily Muslims. He says migrants are, quote, changing the appearance of Russian cities and, quote, deforming Russia's singular linguistic culture and legal traditions. And Russia needs to stop focusing Russian companies. I mean, this could be any right-wing person in the West these days. Russia needs to stop focusing on profits and focus on the values of the Russian state instead. There is a lot of anti-migration rhetoric coming out of Russian society these days, and there is anti-migration legislation being presented in the Duma in the Russian parliament. So, interesting, very anti-migrant, very pro-Christian Russian culture speech after Putin basically said, you know, we have multiple cultures and that's good and that's okay. You can see kind of a little bit of the tension inside Russia. The ultra-nationalists are definitely xenophobic and definitely concerned about the vast population of non-ethnic Russians in Russia today. Interestingly, too, is that Russia is on a vast campaign right now to try to get Russian ethnic groups, migrants into Russia, migrants who've come from, primarily they come from Central Asia, Uzbeks, Kazakhstanis and so on, looking for jobs, looking for work, they come. And what they're trying to do is they're trying to make their ability to work in Russia and their ability, ultimately maybe even to become Russian citizens, they're making a contingent on them joining the military. Russia is now desperate for troops. It's trying to get as many soldiers as it can. Many of those soldiers are being seduced into joining the military and are not Russians, they're not, they don't know what they're fighting for. They're basically trying to survive so they can outlast their military service and hopefully gain some kind of residency in Russia. So Russia, in its desperation, is trying to get as many of these migrants, mainly from Central Asia, Muslims, to go fight for them in Ukraine. Kanan Fadda, exactly, Kanan Fadda. All right, finally, well also, we forgot to Russia, one of the story that is making the news, and that is the fact that Russia, if you remember, when was it, last year sometime, there was this big thing where the Belarusians were basically flying people into Belarus from places like Syria, like people who wanted to leave Syria, and then taking it to the Polish border, and then saying, okay, cross into Europe. And they created a massive migrant crisis on the Belarusian-Polish border, and they were doing this basically to penalize Poland, and Poland then brought its troops, and it created a real crisis. I think there's still some Syrians, unfortunately. Poor Syrians stuck in the forests between Belarus and Poland. Many died, many starved to death, many foes to death. Anyway, Russia is doing the same thing to Finland, to penalize Finland for its joining of NATO. Russia has been encouraging migrants to come to Russia from places like Syria and Afghanistan and other places, and then taking them to the Finnish border and encouraging them to cross into Finland, into a European Union state, into a NATO state. The consequence of this is that, and so the numbers have been skyrocketing. Hundreds of migrants have been showing up on the Finnish border wanting to cross and seeking asylum. As a consequence of this over the last few days, Finland has basically closed its border. It's shut it down. It's not allowing anybody to move from Russia into Finland. So Finland is, you know, it's a new tactic that Russia is engaging in, and I wouldn't be surprised by the way. I don't think it would surprise anybody. If it turned out that a lot of the smuggling of African and Middle Eastern migrants into Europe is being funded by Russia. It's being funded by Putin. I don't think that would surprise anybody. I mean, Putin wants to undermine the West. One of the main ways, or one call it, suppose the easy way to undermine the West, is to smuggle in as many Islamists into the country as possible, or just foreigners, just Africans, because that creates angst within Europe and creates a real challenge within Europe. So a way to undermine European liberalism, liberalism in the positive sense, classical liberalism, is to change the composition of Europe, and I wouldn't be surprised at all if Putin is funding that. I mean, Putin funded the European environmentalist movement. Putin funded the anti-nuclear movement within Germany, the anti-fracking movement within the UK. That has all been shown, and plenty of evidence has been shown to that effect. It wouldn't surprise me if Putin is helping to flood Europe with Muslim migrants at the same time. All right, okay, final story, kind of a strange one. I didn't even know this existed, but there is a country in South America, a country I have not been to, one of the few. Guyana, Guyana is the only English-speaking country in South America. It is in the northeast corner of South America. It borders to its north of Venezuela, and it borders to its west with Brazil. I forget, it borders with another very small country on its south. I'm not sure the name of that country. Guyana, the Guyana borders were determined a long time ago. Some kind of committee that comprised of, I guess, the United U.S., Britain, and some other countries together with Venezuela. And it turns out that two-thirds of Guyana, two-thirds of Guyana. Suriname, I think it's Suriname to its south, that's right. I think two-thirds of Guyana is territory claimed by Venezuela. Venezuela is currently running what it calls a referendum to decide whether they're going to annex two-thirds of Guyana. And as of just today, it seems as if Venezuela is moving significant troops to the south of Venezuela to the Guyana border. And you could see a war break out between Guyana and Venezuela, Guyana, this tiny little country. This region does have a lot of oil. It does have other resources. So there's plenty of reasons for Venezuela to want to grab it. Venezuela has lots of reasons to go to war. This is what authoritarian thugs do. The Maduro government, which has struggled forever, but has managed to maintain control of Venezuela for a variety of different reasons. They have managed to hold onto Venezuela in spite of the real poverty that they have created, this predecessor and Maduro have created in Venezuela. And it appears that they are rallying troops to take the two-thirds of Guyana that they believe is theirs. Brazil has put its army on high alert. Brazil is probably the largest army in that region. I'm not sure if Brazil would intervene. I'm not sure if Brazil would do anything. It may be primarily concerned with refugees. But this is the behavior of thugs. This is the behavior of authoritarians who have starved their own people and to distract them from that engaging war. And Maduro is following a script. He is particularly emboldened, I think, to do something like this by the fact that the Biden administration has re-established, in a sense, relationships with Venezuela. It's buying Venezuela in oil. And in exchange, Maduro has promised, promised, promised, promised, promised that he will hold fair elections next year. Well, if he can present himself maybe as a war hero, as bringing back lost Venezuela land, who knows? By playing on Venezuela nationalism, maybe Maduro can survive even a, quote, fair election. You never know in Venezuela. But it is a remote part of the world that I don't think very many people pay attention to. But we could see war in Latin America and South America. And it will be interesting to know. I think, you know, the Brazilian president, Lula, I'd expect as an ally of Maduro. So I would find it hard to believe that Brazil would intervene on the side of Guyana. I think the Brazilian putting its military in the alert has more to do with refugees than has to do with them wanting to intervene in any kind of way. Just want to give you a heads up. Just in case you're heading to Guyana, Guyana. No, yeah, Guyana. That's what I said, right? Guyana, sorry, Guy, Guyana, Guyana, Guyana, Guyana. So never been there. All right, that is it for the news roundup. I've got five super chat questions. You still have an opportunity to ask, use the super chat feature to both support the show and to ask questions value for value. You can also use a sticker to support the questions. We'll jump in. We'll jump in with Jennifer. Economics is a science, right? Do you think that distorted views of many economists is due to economic ties to politics? It seems like other sciences such as chemistry aren't so bad. Well, I think it's a more difficult science in this sense. It's a science that involves human behavior. It's a science that involves both politics but also individual human behavior. It's a science that depends on whether you believe human beings are a rational animal or not. It depends on your definition of what rational actually means. So it absolutely is or should be or can be a science. A science doesn't mean math. A science doesn't, and a science, any science that involves human beings, psychology for example, is going to be a lot more difficult. It's going to be a lot more distorted. It's going to be a lot more attractive to the influence of philosophy on it beyond, you know, physics, chemistry, and chemistry are primarily affected by bad metaphysics and epistemology. But the psychology economics and others are also affected by bad ethics and bad politics. So there's more that can go wrong. There's more that can go wrong once human beings are introduced into the equation and therefore morality and politics are introduced into the equation. Thank you, Jennifer. Bradley says, when are you going to do the positive episode? You mentioned many people struggle with social pressure and what power others have over them. Objectives gives a clear framework of what power one actually has and why very powerful. Saturday. So I think what I'm going to do is I'm going to try to dedicate the Saturday shows to a positive message. So Saturday, I think it's a 2 p.m. East Coast time. I think those shows will be the positive shows. Thursdays typically is an interview, although this week will not be an interview. I think tomorrow's show on Thursday, tomorrow night, will be on Europe's Islam problem, which I've spoken about a lot, but we'll do a kind of a roundup of it. And there's a lot of articles coming out, and Hsieh Ali has a piece out today about it. A number of other people have pieces out there, so that'll probably be tomorrow. But Thursdays typically is an interview. Tuesday will be more of a state-of-the-world political, bigger question type thing. So typically negative, unfortunately. And Saturdays, the day of rest, will be devoted to a positive view of it. Thanks, Bradley. Thanks for reminding me to mention that. Andrew, interesting how the lefts love for the defense of the meek, a more consistent with Christianity, than the right's mixed views. The right and defending Israel are being hypocritical to their deeper moral values, thoughts. Yeah, I mean, God, I've got a lot to say about this, and this is going to be a future Tuesday night show, because I've got a lot to say about this in the context of Dominion, the book I'm reading, which I encourage everybody to read if you're interested in the history of Christianity. And again, it's the book that I and Hosea Lee cited, and many, many, many, many, many people are citing, vis-à-vis the importance of Christianity. Yeah, I mean, there is no question that a reading of Christianity, particularly a more committed reading of Christianity, i.e. Paul and maybe Luther and others, and many other Protestants over the many years. I mean, look, Communism is Christianity. I don't care what they tell you, but one thing comes very, very clear out of Dominion, and that is that Christianity has flirted with Communism for 2,000 years. For 2,000 years, there have been Christian sects that have tried to establish Communism for their members, and the conservative church crushed them because it was an attack on their power and their particularly understanding of Christianity. So within Christianity, there is this real battle between a dedicated and questioning commitment to the victims. I mean, woke, woke ideology, intersectionality is fundamentally Christian. I think that's the final chapter in Dominion. I haven't got to it yet. It's about woke and Christianity. There's no question after reading so far in Dominion, woke ideology is fundamentally in its morality, in its intersectionality Christian. It's more Christian than the Christians. Marx, particularly in his, you know, care about the worker and about the Poletarian and about the downtrodden, is Christian. And it's interesting who Dominion doesn't think is Christian and we'll talk about that. It's Christian. It's a, you know, disintegrated form of Christianity. It's a Christianity that doesn't have beyond the ethics, doesn't have anything to guide it because it doesn't have the where does this come from answered Christians do God. It doesn't have that integrating faction. It is a morality divorced from any kind of integrated epistemology. I mean, integration and misintegration, the dim hypothesis, Lenitz dim hypothesis, are fundamentally epistemological, not ethical. And it is fundamentally disintegrated epistemologically. The left is. I mean, Leonard talks about D2 being fundamentally egalitarian. Egalitarianism is egalitarianism is D2, the most disintegrated ideology possible. That's in the dim hypothesis. You should read it before citing what's an M and what's a D. You should actually read the book first. So anyway, going back to Christianity, what called it Orthodox Christianity, what Catholicism represented and what today's I think American form of Christianity, which is a unique form of Christianity, which is not similar to kind of the way Christianity is practiced in Europe is much more of a Christianity that recognizes hierarchy. It's much more of a Christianity that accepts hierarchy. It's much more of a Christianity that is focused on, you know, defending certain ideas that they take as Christian. But I don't think I don't think Paul and Martin Luther would have recognized as Christian. So it's two different strands of Christianity that are in conflict with one another. But the right is not as Christian, maybe in its morality. The right today is or not as it is as Christian, it's immorality. It's not as Christian as it's the object of its sacrifice. The object of its sacrifice, you know, the modern right is much more around God, the perception of God. But it's much more Americanized. It's much more self-interested. American Christianity is far more self-interested. It's been largely whitewashed from its communism. And that, I think, explains it. But the left, in its morality, is far more Christian. And its epistemology, it's completely disintegrated in Christianity. But in its morality, the left is more Christian than the right. Kabutah. How to find freedom in an unfree world. I did a whole session on this. You can find it. I did a whole program on this. But you know, look, you can't. There is no freedom, quiet freedom. Freedom is an absence of coercion. It's very difficult. It's impossible to find a place where you're free of coercion. Try not paying your taxes. Try not following the regulations. So you can't find political freedom in an unfree world. An unfree world is what it is. And you've got to deal with the unfreedom the best that you can. What you can find is fulfillment, happiness, success, prosperity, satisfaction in spite of the world not being free. But freedom is a political reality. It just doesn't exist. And you have to fight for it. And it's going to take a long time to bring it about. But right now, there is no political freedom in the world. There is no country that has political freedom. You can find places that have more and fight people, places that have less. But anyway, it's, you know, look up my show on how to live a life of reason in an irrational world, which I think is much more relevant because that deals with your own personal life, not the political life, but your life as a human being. Just look that up on YouTube. You can find it. Adam says, after the Canada border cow crash, Vivek said that this just shows that we need to defend both borders as if that will solve the terrorism problem. Yeah, I mean, it's absurd. Walls are not going to solve the problem. And of course, the crash had nothing to do with terrorism. And has anybody ever been to the Canadian border? Do you know what it would involve to build a wall? I mean, it's just ridiculous. And who are we afraid of exactly? I mean, that's the thing about Vivek and about so many of these. It seems dominated by fear. Our whole politics today is dominated by fear. Stop being afraid. Think about the positive. Think about what can be done. Not about the fear of what is. How do we solve problems? And solve problems not by going into defense. You solve problems by going on the offense. And that's what I'll tell you how to solve the problem of Islam in Europe tomorrow. The Godfather says, wasn't sure if you heard that Australia is forcing media companies to pay shift for defamation and mischaracterization. I think you may have needed some good news. Yeah, maybe we'll cover that. I'll try to cover that maybe tomorrow on the news show. But yes, Peter Schiff, who was accused of tax fraud, his bank was accused of tax fraud and violation of bank regulations and was attacked by the IRS and other tax agencies around the world. And they did this months long investigation. They found exactly nothing. But all of this caused the Puerto Rican banking regulators to shut down his bank in spite of that or to take it into receivership. They run it now. Anyway, part of this, the media got caught up in it. So maybe I'll just cover it now. The media got caught out of it. 60 minutes and other media, including Australian media or media owned by an Australian company, all caught up in this and basically defamed Peter Schiff, basically saying he's a tax evader. But more than a tax evader, his bank is laundering money for the mob, for dictators. Money laundering, all this, all these accusations, which it turns out they got directly from the IRS and these other agencies, right, in violation of Peter's rights. And he was just defamed. And none of this turned out to be true. Indeed, what he showed in this court hearing that he had is that the news media knew this wasn't true. Because they had talked to witnesses and none of their witnesses corroborated these accusations. It was just going after Peter Schiff because he's a well known free market guy and he's a well known opponent of statist economics, statism or broadly. And they, you know, they just, you know, defamed him and just made stuff up, mischaracterized stuff, but told both faced lies. For which, by the way, some of the reporters got prizes on journalism. Anyway, an Australian court has ruled that Peter Schiff was defamed and has basically granted him half a million dollars of compensation, which I think is too little, way too little, of compensation for the way the news media treated him. It's just horrible, just horrible, you know, the way they went after him and what they did to him. Dolan says, what do you see as the next steps in Gaza? If Hamas is actually destroyed as Israel, then occupy Gaza again, how do we handle the West Bank as well? What is the solution here? Well, I mean, the solution is for Israel to occupy the West Bank and Gaza, completely occupy it. And I've said this many, many times, it means reoccupying, taking control of the schools, changing the rhetoric, changing what is taught, changing what is debated and what is discussed, putting the Palestinians under Israeli occupation. But at the same time, also liberalizing their economy, encouraging direct investment into the Gaza Strip and into the West Bank, investment in economic development in these places, rather than in tunnels and in weapons. And then giving it a generation or two, and then hopefully Palestinians change, and as a consequence of that, you get a one-state solution. But that's unlikely. I don't know what the likely scenario is. The likely scenario is some kind of status quo, or maybe some kind of peacekeeping force in Gaza at least. Maybe they're peacekeeping forces of Arab countries that have recognized Israel. Maybe it's a peacekeeping force that includes some Europeans. I don't know, but some kind of peacekeeping force in Gaza that supposedly guarantees that they are demilitarized, which even the president of Egypt, Sisi, has said that Gaza and the West Bank need to be weapons-free. Palestinians should not own weapons. So maybe Egypt would be willing to send troops to help in such a peacekeeping force. I don't know. But first Israel has to defeat Hamas, and I'm not at all convinced that's actually going to happen. As we speak, they're negotiating another truce, another ceasefire. So who knows how long this will last? Garrett says, hello, Yuran, do you have a reading list? I'm trying to find more books from an objective perspective outside of Rand, Peacoff and yourself. I mean, I don't. I think there's a reading list on the Einren Institute website, so I definitely would look there. But first read everything by Rand and Peacoff. There's some books by myself and Don Watkins. Don Watkins is coming out any day now, maybe he is already out. But it's coming out any day now. His effective egoism book. I haven't read it, but I encourage you to read it. I'm sure it's going to be good. I mean, and interesting fresh perspective on it. And I love the name, effective egoism, as opposed to effective altruism. So I encourage you to read that. Then you've got Greg Salmiere has some books out. You've got books by Tara Smith. So Greg, Tara, I'm sure I'm missing some people. Ilan Juno on foreign policy. Yeah, I mean, go to the Einren Institute website and you'll find a lot of books there, a lot of books there. So, yeah, Greg, Tara, I'm sure I'm missing some. Harry Binswanger, Harry Binswanger, right? Epistemology in particular, How We Know is an important book. Yeah, that's a good start. Frank, did Israel want natural gas found off the coast of Gaza? What? There is natural gas found off the coast of Israel. It is in the Mediterranean. It is in Israeli territorial waters. It is being, you know, the oil field has been developed already. They will start pumping natural gas out of it already or pumping natural gas out of it. But there's a lot more to come. There's a lot more natural gas off the coast of Cyprus and off the coast of Lebanon. That whole area has natural gas. I don't think Israel is after the natural gas off the coast of Gaza if there is any. But it also doesn't want the Gazans to get the money for it and then build weapons and tunnels with their money. But I don't think Israel is trying to get that natural gas necessarily. It's got plenty of natural gas fields off the coast of Israel that it still has to develop and exploit. Sylvanos, did you cover the recent SpaceX launch of Starship? I did not. I covered the previous one. Great footage of the booster blowing up during the ascent. Awesome to see the progress being made in Texas. Yes. Thank you, Sylvan, $50. We really appreciate that. Awesome. It's awesome to see the progress they're making. It's awesome to see their willingness to basically have their spaceships blow up in order to learn and to figure out so that ultimately they will be able to build a rocket that can take human beings to Mars. That is the goal of these rockets. So yeah, I find it super inspiring. I wish Elon Musk would focus on that rather than some of the other stuff that he does. But the whole mentality at SpaceX, the whole attitude at SpaceX, the whole way in which they do what they do is truly inspiring and amazing. So yeah, thanks for pointing that out and highlighting it. All right, everybody. I will see you tomorrow at around the same time. We will be doing our news roundup. There will also be a show tomorrow night, probably, on Europe and Islam. And let's see. Yeah, we're short about $11 from our goal. Somebody wants to jump in with the $11 as a sticker. That would be amazing just to get us to the goal. That would be fun. Otherwise, thank you to all the superchatters. Thank you to Sylvanus for the $50. Thank you to all the $20 and $10 and other superchatters, all the superchatters. Thank you for all of you listening. Don't forget to like this show before you leave. It helps with the algorithm. It really, really does. If you click that like button, it really helps a lot. So please do it before you leave. We should be much higher than we are. Don't forget to subscribe if you're not a subscriber. And yeah, see you all tomorrow. Have a great rest of your week. Bye, everybody.