 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 Thursday, January 18th. Hope everybody's having a fantastic week. Getting ready for the weekend. And yeah, let's get rolling. As always, lots of stuff in the news. Lots to talk about. I want to say something about Davos. It's not explicitly in the list of topics that we have, but it's implied, because certainly the Middle East peace deal that is being hashed out these days is probably being hashed out at Davos. Davos is in Switzerland, it's a gathering of the world's political business, and to some extent, intellectual elites. It is a five-day gathering filled with talks and panels and lots and lots of backdoor meetings, lots and lots of schmoozing. The main purpose of Davos is, I think, the schmoozing. It is where political leaders who come from all over the world get to talk with one another in a somewhat relatively informal setting. It's a place where business deals are made, both business deals between businesses and between business and governments are made at Davos, or at least discussed in Davos, whether they're literally finalized, I don't know. It's a place in which ideas are floated by the kind of mainstream of the world, which is typically left of center, and what you get is ideas that the left would like to propose that suggests, so once they emphasize, are usually floated in Davos. That's partially why Millet had such a fresh take, given that Davos is really the place where the statists get together and chat. This year at Davos, China has a massive contingency. They've really come to try to influence and to try to have sway over both the business and the political climate over there. It is a charm campaign by the Chinese government, with lots of Chinese bureaucrats. Attending, discussing, indeed, the GDP number for China for last year was first disclosed, not in China, but in Davos by, I think, the finance minister, the Chinese finance minister, or economics minister, or whatever they call him. So it's the place where all these people gather. The Saudis are there. The Iranians are there. Much of the Middle East is represented. Of course, they come there with very, very big wallets. They come there with money and with the poll, the poll that that kind of money buys and money has in a place like this. Again, you'll also find all the leaders of a kind of big business are going to be there. Davos has been dedicated to a large extent to kind of an anti-capitalist agenda, an agenda of what you might call soft to hard fascism, government control over business, government control over corporations. Klaus himself has said he's not for the ownership of the mean of production by government, but they control by the government. That is that the corporation should pursue stakeholders. And of course, who is going to define those stakeholders? Ultimately, it's governments who define these kind of things. This is the place that's big on ESG. And if we get a new title other than ESG, it'll probably come out of Davos. The big, as I said, stakeholders, they're not as big on DEI as I guess America is, because DEI is really not a big deal and not a big issue and not a big topic elsewhere. It is very much an American kind of thing, whereas corporate social responsibility, as they call it, is a big deal everywhere, including in Europe. As you can expect, when all these rich movers and shakers get together, this is a great week for the sex trade. Prostitutes from all over Europe flock to Davos. Hundreds of them come in to town. I know I've been asked in the past, so I found there's a story on New York Post today. Overnight for a top prostitute at Davos is $2,500. It's $750 an hour. And they're book solid. That is a book solid. One of the prostitutes says something interesting. I thought that was pretty funny. I thought I'd share this. She basically says, at the end of the day, the politicians are not the one hiring the services of the prostitutes. The politicians have neither the time nor the desire, although I don't know if she's met Bill Clinton. She says, you have to choose between a drug, sex, or political power. And she says, the latter is stronger. And it doesn't leave room for other interests and eats up people completely. I believe her. I think that's absolutely right. I think that politics eats people up. Power is corrupting. The kind of power these politicians have is completely corrupting. And it destroys their capacity to live, including destroys their capacity for sex, with the notable exception of Bill Clinton. All right, let's see. So one of the things happening at Davos this week is that the Saudis, in particular, are bringing together a bunch of Arab leaders and, I think, moneyed interests, as well as sitting down with Europeans and the Americans. And they are devising or proposing a grand peace plan, not just a ceasefire, but a solution to the Middle East problems that's overarching and overreaching and comprehensive. What the Saudis are basically proposing is not only that there be a total cessation of hostilities in the Gaza Strip and on the northern border of Israel with Hezbollah, but hostages should be released. Israel should immediately work to establish a Palestinian state. The European countries and the United States will guarantee that they will recognize such a Palestinian state that it will immediately gain membership in the United Nations. The Saudis will pour gazillions of dollars into this so-called Palestinian state. And some money will pour in. Political leadership will be attained. And in exchange, I guess, for all this, the Saudis will recognize Israel. Arab countries from all over the Middle East, in addition to those who signed onto the Abraham Accords, will sign peace deals with Israel, all in exchange for Israel's commitment, i.e., irreversible steps. They define it. Israel take these irreversible steps towards the establishment of a Palestinian state. And if all this happens, we get to live happily ever after. And I think the sad thing is about all this is that Israel is likely to be tempted, depending on how exactly they define a Palestinian state, depending on how they define irreversible steps, depending on who exactly comprises the government in Israel at the time. It seems like this is where Israel is heading right now. It is heading to some kind of ceasefire in exchange for hostage release and then some kind of political solution to the issues in the Gaza Strip, and whether Israel is willing to guarantee the establishment of a Palestinian state or not. That seems to be kind of the outline of a plan. Saudi Arabia is basically indicated. And this is a huge kind of dangling benefit in front of Israel to establish these peaceful relationships with Israel and bring with it a bunch of other countries that haven't yet done so. I mean, so this is kind of where it seems to be. It looks like the Europeans and Americans are behind this. They seem to agree. You know, one big kumbaya, it seems to be happening in Davos around this potential peace deal. Of course, what the deal does is it evades the actual causes of the conflict. It evades the fact that the Palestinians seem to be fairly consistently dedicated to the destruction of the state of Israel. It evades the fact that Hamas will not be destroyed under such a plan, will still be around, will still have influence. But it's not just Hamas. The Palestinian people, their dedication to killing Jews will not have changed. It evades the fact that Israel has, on its northern border, a committed organization, the Chizbalad, the most powerful organization within the state of Lebanon. Committed by every means possible to the destruction of the state of Israel and the killing of its Jewish population. It ignores the fact that behind all of these lies Iran, which is dedicated to, I'm repeating myself, the destruction of the state of Israel and the killing of the Jews who reside there. And all of those elements, the religionist Palestinians, the Islamists, Hamas Islamists, Chizbalad Islamists, Iranian Islamists, are really dedicated without, you know, they don't say it very often. But they're all dedicated to the establishment of a global sharia, global jihad, in which sharia law will be the dominant power, the dominant law in the whole world, not just Israel. But other than that, peace is a wonderful thing, and we should strive towards it and why not cut a deal while we evade the actual source, the actual heart, the actual essence of the actual problem? Let's just plaster it over again. And then one day, when they all rise up again, including the Saudis and the Egyptians and the rest of them, and wipe out the state of Israel, the rest of the world will say, God, we didn't know. We couldn't have, we couldn't have, we couldn't have known. I mean, they really did say that this time it was gonna be peace. I mean, the Saudis signed a deal. The Egyptians, a long time peace and the Palestinians, they got their state, why would they do this? Living with no principles, a pragmatic existence, is short-term, it's unhappy, it's unbelievably destructive. And that's what this peace, so-called peace deal, is requiring. It's a catastrophe. Israel should reject it, the United States, of course, should reject it, but the United States has no principled leadership, and no principled leadership on the horizon, the leadership on the horizon, uniformly, is a pragmatic, short-term deal-making. How about that? Deal-making, Trump will come in and he'll cut a deal. Yeah, this kind of deal, a deal that is destructive to the very essence of liberty and freedom for the one people who actually promote some level of liberty and freedom, and that is the people of Israel. All right. Talk about, yeah, the Middle East. A new conflict is brewing. We talked about this yesterday. The first shots of this new conflict were shot yesterday or the day before yesterday. And that is, the Iranians lobbed missiles into Pakistan, attacking what they called terrorist bases in Pakistan that were responsible, they claim for the suicide bombing at the Soleimani Memorial a few weeks ago in Iran. A number of people in Pakistan were killed as a response to this bombing. Today, Pakistan, Pakistani Air Force, attacked targets within Iran, claiming that the Iranian targets were terrorist organizations, and that Pakistan was responding to the Iranian attack on Pakistan. So now the Pakistanis have attacked the Iranians and maybe this will go on and on and on. It could be interesting to watch. I will say one thing for the Iranians and the Pakistanis as compared to the Americans. I mean, you kill an Iranian, the Iran will respond. You kill a Pakistani, the Pakistanis will respond. You kill an American, the American president will wag a finger at you. You kill a few Americans, you'll wag a few fingers at you or you might say, ooh, it's escalating. We'll have to do something about this. And you injure and kill enough Americans then maybe then you get a response and they lob a few missiles into your territory. But they'll make every effort in the world not to kill any of you. In that sense, it seems like the Iranians and Pakistanis are much more interested in protecting their interests than the Americans are. Americans seem to be pretty accepting of having their own people injured and killed without doing anything about it. And the consequence of that, of course, is the mess we have in the Middle East the chief enemy, the entity behind much of what is happening out there, Iran is left untouched by the United States. All right, so yeah, Pakistan, Iran, something to watch. The Iranians today said they would retaliate against the Pakistanis. On it goes, I'm not sure how it ends. Pakistani military, I'm just guessing, my estimate just because of the weapon systems that Pakistanis have, I would say that in a confrontation between Pakistan and Iran, Pakistan wins. Not because Pakistan is a very poor country, but it has American weapon systems. I think they have F-16s. The Bush administration spent years and years and years selling them some of the best weapon systems possible. And so a confrontation between Iran and Pakistan actually works out in our favor in a sense that I think Iran is the biggest threat to us. All right, if you have any questions, if you wanna challenge me, if you're offended by what I say, yeah, if you're anti-Semitic and you'd like to express their anti-Semitic views in ways that would force me to actually read them, then please feel free to use the super chat to do so. Of course, if you're not any of those things and you wanna support the show and you wanna ask me a question, you can do so as well, even better, actually. All right, free writing. One of the things that's going on in the world is of course the United States is now has its fleet together with the British and some other navies out in the Red Sea and there's a bunch of stories about how basically the Chinese are free writing on the West. That is, the United States is protecting the sea lanes and who benefits from that? Well, China benefits from that. And well, that is true, partially true. It is also interesting and it brought in mind a few thoughts. One is the fact that the one country's ships that are not being attacked on the Red Sea are Chinese ships. Chinese ships are getting a free ride through the Red Sea and this suggests that China has put some pressure on Iran. Iran has told its proxies among the Houthis not to attack Chinese ships. So if you wanna cross the Red Sea, Chinese ownership, Chinese flag, Chinese crew would really, really help. So Chinese, one of the reasons the Chinese have not deployed their Navy, one of the reasons they're letting America's do all the heavy lifting here is not only because it's cheaper and easier to do that, the Chinese do have a couple of ships from their Navy in the eight and seas and are far from this. But to some extent at least because some of the ships that are Chinese ships are getting free passage. Of course it is also true that the Chinese are not getting involved, the Chinese do benefit enormously from all these other ships, carrying Chinese goods to Europe because they're the sellers. But of course the idea that they are free riding and Europe is not is bizarre. Of course Europe is free riding as well because Europe is benefiting from American protection. And getting the cheap goods from China without deploying its forces in order to protect that free flow of goods. Again with the exception of the UK. So, but this really evades a much bigger issue. And that is the fact that the entire world since World War II has basically been free riding off the United States in a sense. And of course the United States benefits from this enormously, but other countries, European countries, China, China, really the rest of the world does not really share in the costs. And that is that since World War II the United States has basically been the protector of trade in the open seas. China is a huge beneficiary of this. And so has Europe and again, the rest of the world. Everybody who trades with anybody and 80% of the goods that are traded globally, travel by sea, and the United States Navy is the one that protects that. The United States Navy is funded by you and me. And as a consequence it is our funding that keeps it all going. And of course the free riding problem is much larger than that because NATO has been, you know, the United States has basically been protecting Europe from the Soviet Union and now from Russia without the Europeans really paying into that in any kind of reasonable way. Really the Europeans are big enough, rich enough, strong enough. They should be able to pay for their own defense. Why do they need the United States at all other than the convenience of being able to free ride off of it? I mean, the deal should be cut. A big deal should be cut. Whereas the United States will sustain a Navy that protects the shipping lanes around the world. And at the same time, it should, you know, in a sense leave NATO and let NATO become a European defense agency that basically protects Europe. So the US will take the shipping, will take the sea lanes and Europe will take Europe and defend it from Russia, Islamism and whoever else poses a threat to the countries within Europe. That's kind of a global deal that should be made. China is not to be made deals with. So the United States though will have the burden of protecting the sea lanes in Asia, not just in the rest of the world. It would be good to find other seafaring nations, certainly Japan, South Korea, that have a strong interest in keeping the sea lanes open and have good Navy. Japan has an excellent Navy and promote their participation in this mission to keep trade, to keep ships, to keep trade flowing through the shipping lanes of the world. Talk about trade. One of the most valuable products globally traded today are microelectronic chips, semiconductors. We have talked a lot about chips. Talked a lot about chips last year. I read the chip wars if you remember and of course chips have become a geopolitical, really geopolitical keystone. Chips are crucial to the military. They're crucial to developing military technology. Chips are therefore essential in the competition, in the military competition between the United States and China and the United States has indeed tried to deprive China of the most sophisticated chips, although how successful the United States has been is somewhat questionable. Anyway, one of the consequence of the emphasis on chips and the importance of chips is the United States, as you know, is engaged in industrial policy to try to bring chip manufacturers, manufacturing back home to bring it to the United States. The Biden administration passed a hundred billion dollar a chip act, which many Republicans supported. And there is a frenzy of building of chip manufacturing facilities all over the United States, whether those chip manufacturers will ever make chips that companies wanna buy, whether they will make it a competitive prices to be able to sell, whether they can find enough employees to hire to fill these factories to be determined. Nobody really knows. But what the chip actors really inspired around the world is a frenzy of governments, a frenzy of governments now dedicated to trying to match the United States. Europe now has its own chip act, which provides tax benefits, subsidies, all kinds of incentives for companies to build chip manufacturing in Europe. And I was just reading that South Korea has blown this completely open, whereas the United States has dedicated a hundred billion dollars to build chip manufacturing to subsidize and tax credits and all of that for that. South Korea is planning to lay out $471 billion. It is working with a number of its local chip giants, particularly Samsung, which is the second largest chip manufacturer in the world after TSMC in Taiwan. They are building this massive research facility that'll have actually three big research facilities, 13 new chip plants, and that's on top of 21 fabrication plants that are already being built. They plan to build 7.7 million wafers monthly by 2030. And this is, of course, a massive investment in chip manufacturing that should dominate, and this is the Chinese government coordinating all this and making sure that all this is happening. Part of this is private investment. Part of it is, if you will, government subsidies, not at the same time, of course. Japan and Taiwan do not want to be left out of this. Taiwan, of course, is home to TSMC, and the Taiwanese and the Japanese governments are also investing huge amounts of money in their tech sectors. And all I see here is one big frigging disaster. I mean, here is a sector that develops mostly without government help. Government bought its product primarily for defense. Some of the first chips were put into missile technologies for the government, but this industry developed by itself. It developed competition by itself. Now, yes, TSMC got some help to get started in Taiwan, but it wasn't a huge amount of money. It was mostly, it got help raising money from private enterprise in order to get it going. But for the most part, in the West, at least, and chip manufacturing has been a market phenomena. Sometimes Intel is the leader. In recent times, Intel has not been a leader. In recent times, it's been TSMC. The industry has changed strategies several times. Leadership has changed several times. The type of chips people specialize in have changed several times. Japan has led, Japanese companies have led, United States companies have led, Taiwanese company have led, South Korea companies are clearly developing world-class expertise. But all of this has really been driven by profits, the private sector, competition. I'd say it's just healthy. It's just developed in a healthy way with minimal, relatively speaking, minimal government intervention. And suddenly now, inspired as always by China, we learn everything we need from China, how to respond to COVID and now how to do chips. The countries in the West led by the United States, but joined by the Europeans, the Taiwanese, the South Koreans and the Japanese. Now these industries are gonna be government guided. The government will decide what technology should be invested in. The government will decide how much capacity should be built. Governments will decide who are the winners and who are the losers. And thus we lose that phenomenal engine of innovation and we lose real competition. It's tragic to read these stories. And of course, if you're gonna get in the business of massive government investment in these industries, well, China has plans now to double its capacity in five years of chip manufacturing. It won't be particularly innovative chips, but then it's not clear there gonna be many innovative chips. The more government gets involved, the more this gets bureaucratized, the more this gets, again, government deciding who the winners and losers are going to be. Not good for tech, not good for chips, not good for progress, not good for progress. All right, and we should stop mimicking China. We should stop mimicking China, really. All right, let's see. And yeah, I mean, I'm all for limiting the availability of the most sophisticated chips to China for national security reasons. Although, again, one of the things that is going to happen is China will find ways around it. China will have its own people innovate around it. Whether you are actually succeeding in doing it or not is questionable, whether sanctions or trade limitations actually work is questionable, questionable. Some of these very advanced chips, supposedly, you can only use modern machine from the Netherlands, and if you prevent the Chinese from getting that machine, they can't produce really, really, really thin wafers. Now there's a second technology coming out of Japan. That technology might be banned on the Chinese, but maybe the Chinese can copy it. They'll probably steal the IP. Don't count on trade to stop on these kind of sanctions, on a particular product, to stop the Chinese from investing heavily in military equipment that uses advanced chips. All right, antitrust, as we know, the Biden administration is probably the most aggressive administration ever when it comes, or in a long, long, long time, I'll put it that way, in a long time. When it comes to antitrust, one of the deals that they sued to prevent happening is the purchase of Spirit by JetBlue. Yesterday, a judge blocked the JetBlue Spirit merger. He agreed with the Justice Department that it would restrict trade, and therefore has blocked it. JetBlue and Spirit are considering whether to appeal the ruling or not. I think you all know my position on antitrust. None of the government's frigging business. The government should stay out of it. Companies should merge or not merge based on their voluntary choices. There is no individual rights here at stake. There is no government involvement that should be had. Now, this is not the first time an airline merger has been blocked. They've been blocked many times in the past, and many deals never happened because everybody knew they would be blocked. The very existence of antitrust laws is a hamper on, generally, on the structure and the way the whole industries are constituted. Many times, industries that should be consolidated, that should have fewer players, do not have because people are afraid to consolidate because they're afraid the government will knock it. So it's sad. I don't know if JetBlue merging with Spirit is a good business decision. I have no idea. I don't know what impact it would have. No idea. That's what markets are for. Try experiment, see if it works, it works. Maybe they go bankrupt, doesn't work. Airlines go bankrupt quite easily. There's another merger right now in the airline business. Alaska has reached an agreement to buy Hawaiian airlines. Will the Justice Department object to that? Probably. And that will probably squash all mergers in the airline industry for a while until we have a different administration and then they'll try again. But there's no guarantee, right? I mean, there's no guarantee that a Justice Department run by any other, by a Republican, will allow mergers in the airline industry. Republicans have often stopped these kind of deals from happening in the past. So we live in a statist world where the government thinks it's its job to police the voluntary choices that we engage in, the voluntary choices that have, there's no fraud, there's no violence, there's no violation of individual rights. It's just, I don't know, airline prices might go up. It's not even clear that would happen, but maybe they would because Spirit is a super discount airline and JetBlue is not super discount. And you all have a God-given inalienable right to cheap prices at all costs? I guess, that is the theory anyway. Again, this is kind of a pragmatic, pragmatism is applied to the judiciary, central planning, central planning given to the Justice Department and to a judge. He gets to decide what's good for the economy and what's not. Finally, here's a case of anti-Semitism. I give you this case not because it stands out, but because it's so common. It's everywhere. But I think it illustrates how kind of the anti-Semitism manifests itself, how universities are behaving, how it all kind of plays out in the ugly fashion that it does. Concordia University. Concordia University in Canada. So this is in Montreal. It's canceled the permit that it gave to a pro-Israel student group to set up a table on campus. You know how student groups table on campus to promote the stuff that they do. The table would have had a material on it that caused for the release of Israeli hostages. So releasing hostages, they would have had a table there. A few Jewish students would have stood there handing out leaflets to encourage people to work towards releasing the hostages that the Palestinian holds. I mean, this is, I know, a radical, radical position for these kids to have. The university said they would not permit the table. The students' leader challenged the university. The university's response was, look, we're just trying to protect you. We're just trying to protect you. We're trying to protect you from those radical Palestinian groups that are gonna come and harass you and there might be violence. I mean, let's ban controversial books because they might lead to the radicals. The bad guys, not, you know, the book is fine. But let's ban it because the author might get killed by radicals. I mean, let's ban Salman Rushdie's book because God, those Muslims might go after him. They did, they did, right? Let's ban lectures where protesters might show up and might do harm to the lecturer. I mean, it sounds reasonable, right? Well, maybe the job of the university in this context should be and the job of the government certainly should be to protect you against that violence. If there are radical groups on campus that might be violent as a consequence of a leaflet about releasing of hostages, maybe they should be banned. Maybe you send some police to protect them. We're protecting you because the radicals might come and by that you're taking the side of the radicals. We're protecting you because people might inflict violence on you and by doing so, you're defending and being on the side of those who inflict violence. I mean, this is just pure anti-Semitism. It's also pure cowardice. It is despicable. It's horrible and it's everywhere. This is not unusual. It is not unusual. Usually it is not the people doing the violence. It is not the crazies who are blamed for any problem. It is the people being attacked who are to blame because how dare they know this is upsetting to people. So how dare you engage in speech? How dare you engage in activism if people are going to get upset? This is, you know, the death of the West. This is the death of freedom and liberty. All right, cool. All right, a couple of things. Remind you, this show is supported through contributions from listeners like you whether you're live or not. If your live super chat is available to support the show, you can do a sticker like Gail did for 99 cents or Omo or Syrvanos did for $20. Chali did for $20. So and then Ovid did for 11 Norwegian Kona. And Jonathan started off the $90.99 thing with Stephen did $5. So yeah, you can do anything. Anyway, from $500, I think you can do more than 500 anyway down to 99 cents. So please consider if you're listening live supporting the show in that way. Or you can ask a question, which is even better because then you get to shape the show. If you're not listening live, the best way to support the show is on Patreon, subscribe star, or you're on bookshow.com slash membership. And I appreciate all the support you guys give me. Please like the show before you leave. And finally, this show is supported by, sponsored by the Ironman Institute right now, the Ironman Institute is taking applications or taking registrations, I should say, for Ocon Objectivist conferences in Anaheim, California in June of this year. It's gonna be a fun conference. I still don't know what I'm gonna be talking about, but I will be talking there. And it should be fun, it should be interesting. You can come meet in Popeson, meet other you on bookshow fans in person, meet other Objectivists, meet other intellectuals. It'll be a great event. Please join us at it. So I hope to see you all there. Oh, to register, go to ironman.org slash start here, ironman.org slash start here. All right, so let's do some of these questions and we'll start with Michael, $50, thank you Michael. People never called Russia's invasion of Ukraine a genocide, but Israel, defending itself, everyone is referring to as a genocide. I can't imagine anything more Orwellian and evil. It's a 21st century leftist blood libel against the Jews. Yeah, absolutely, there was no question, a genocide. I mean, the population of Gaza has increased dramatically. The people dying right now are dying because of something the Palestinians did. They started a war, there was a ceasefire, they broke it, they broke it in the most brutal, horrific fashion, demonstrating, you'd think to the entire world, what they really wanna do in Israel, which is rape, murder, torture, slaughter, behead Jews. And somehow Israel is wrong to defend itself. Israel is wrong to be engaged in self-defense. And Israel is like one of the most cautious maybe, the most cautious fighter in any war in terms of civilian casualties. And it doesn't matter, nothing will appease these haters. Russia's invasion of Ukraine was not called a genocide. And even though it's led to thousands and thousands of deaths, and because Russia has a standing in the world and America has an embassy in Moscow and European countries don't wanna cut off all ties with the Russians and overall, because nobody has the gall to stand up to the Russians, what's Israel gonna do if everybody sances it? And this seems to be universal agreement about the need, the willingness to appease Israel, to appease, sorry, the Arabs against Israel to appease the Palestinians. Adams says, Poland's policy, job offer in Poland, you get an immigration visa, attracts R&D labs, Intel's third largest R&D lab with knowledge workers from 40 countries, other new visa limits pushed by Congress are prompt for R&D to leave the United States. Yeah, I think R&D is already leaving the United States. I mean, think of how many Chinese who would love to come to the United States, love to bring their entrepreneurial and scientific engineering skills to the United States are not coming here, they're starting up labs elsewhere in the world because of our immigration, massive, massive immigration restrictions and limits on immigration. That is already happening, the brain drain out of the United States, well, it's not out of the United States, it's that the brain trust in the United States is not growing anyway close to as fast as it could and the attractiveness of the United States is becoming diminished because of our pathetic, antiquated, anti, what? Anti everything immigration laws, which is just absurd and ridiculous, don't promote anything, have no real, have no virtue, all vice our immigration laws. What we encourage is people to come here for welfare. That's basically what right now we're encouraging, our immigration laws encourage people to do, which is truly stunning. James says, did you watch Godzilla? No, I haven't yet. The movie is a masterpiece. Another show I keep hearing about is Blue Eye Samurai. In the past few years, it is clear that movies and TV shows overall have decreased in great, have decreased in great stories that suck you in. Yeah, I mean, I think that's right. I think it's a long-term trend, but yes, I have not heard of Blue Eye Samurai. I guess maybe I have heard, it sounds familiar, but I don't know. I will look it up and you will hear when I watch Godzilla. I will definitely comment on it once I have watched it. Michael says, did you see Trump yelling out or arguing with the judge? Do you think the judge is afraid to hold him in Contemporary Court? Yes, I do think the judge is afraid to hold him in Contemporary Court. I mean, the antics that Trump has played out in a civil case against his companies and in a civil case for defamation, those kind of antics, I don't think should be tolerated by judges, but they're afraid. They realize that everything they do is gonna be scrutinized and life is gonna become hell if they treat Trump as they would treat any other, any other accused, anybody else acting like Trump would be held in contempt and thrown in jail cell. Jennifer, great comments on integrity yesterday. Neil Pote fought back against musical conformity, quote, one likes to believe in the freedom of music, but glittering prizes and endless compromise shatter the illusion of integrity. I think that's right, but look, in the end of the day, it's not the prizes or the glitter, it's people themselves who shatter the integrity, that is, they're responsible for it. You can dangle the money, you can dangle the prizes, you can dangle that, but a person of integrity, it doesn't affect them. I mean, I think again, Nain Rand illustrates this point most powerfully in the fact that, you know, Howard Walk turns away, he's a starving architect and he turns away a massive deal, huge amount of money in order to walk away and work as a manual labor in the quarry. So yeah, Jennifer reminds me that I will be in Michigan next week on Tuesday at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor on Wednesday in North Michigan at, God, Northwood, Northwood University. I've spoken at Northwood University two years ago, I think it was. And it's a good group there, so it should be a good event. University of Michigan, it's been years and years and years. I hope it's a good event. I hope they bring up the people to really get a good audience at the University of Michigan. You really have to do the work of advertising and getting people out. I hope that work is done and I hope we get a good turnout, but hopefully you guys show up, if nothing else, say hello and come. So if you live in Michigan, you live in the area, come by, both those events, information is available on my website, you're on brookshow.com. Also, I'll be in Austin, Texas on Friday next week, the 26th. I'll be giving a talk about Israel and I've already been told on Twitter not to come to Austin by somebody. So it should be interesting. So a talk on Israel, a talk on the morality of Israel's war on campus at the university, please join us. I'd appreciate the support. If you live in Austin or the area, please come on over. It should be interesting, nothing else. And I promise to give a good talk if they let me speak. And it'll certainly be challenging for people. Challenging. All right, let's see. Wes, thank you, and Silvanos, thank you. Both of you got us to our goal for today. Really, really appreciate the support through stickers. When are you reviewing the departed? It's on the list soon in the next couple of weeks. Well, next few weeks. My wife wants to watch it, so we'll probably watch it one evening, maybe this weekend, and then I'll review it next week. I did two movies, I've got like four more to go or five more to go, so slowly chipping away at them. James, how can we give people welfare? Entering the country and completely forget about the people in Maui impacted by the fire. Have you been to Maui before? Yes, I've been to Maui, beautiful, beautiful place. I mean, the refugees, have we really not given the people in Maui welfare? My guess is we have. I mean, Hawaii is a pretty leftist place. I think it has pretty generous welfare benefits. And FEMA, I'm sure, is gonna write big checks to the people in Maui. We should be giving anybody welfare. People in Maui should have had insurance. They didn't have insurance, they can get charity. We shouldn't give anybody welfare. And of course, the tragedy about the immigrants is that they're not coming here for welfare. They're coming here to work, but we don't allow them to work and we give them welfare instead. And that's absurd. Just 100% ludicrous insanity. Liam says, why haven't Matt Walsh and Michael Knowles said anything about Israel since October 7th? Are they afraid to upset the new, young, hip, anti-Semitic base? You know, I don't know, I don't know that they've said nothing. So I don't know, maybe you've tracked their channels. Hard for me to believe they said nothing, but they haven't said a lot. And maybe it's because they agree with Candace Owen. I don't know. Maybe because they feel like Ben Shapiro does more than enough, maybe they're not pro-Israel and they're afraid of, by being anti-Israel, they upset the evangelicals. One way or another, it probably doesn't play well to their base. If they're pro-Israel, it doesn't play well to the anti-Semites within their base. And if they're anti-Israel, it doesn't play well with the evangelicals in their base. So it's not exactly a winning topic for Matt Walsh and Michael Knowles. But I'm curious what they have said. I might go on their channels and check to see if they've said anything and if they have said something what they've said. Hopper Campbell says, are the forces of anti-Semitism strong on the far left or far right? I think they're strong on both. I think they're in different places. I think on the left, what's shocking about the left anti-Semitism is that it is front and center in our cultural institutions. That is the left anti-Semitism is on our universities. It's in the leadership of many of our cultural institutions. It's from people with PhDs, it's students and intellectuals and again, leaders. There's a lot of anti-Semitism on the right. But the anti-Semitism on the right tends to be among the uneducated, the marginal, people who don't have cultural significance. You saw the anti-Semitism on the right in Charlottesville. You saw it on the attack on the synagogue in Pittsburgh. You see it ruining its head periodically. You see it in, what's his name? Oh God, the idiot who's got a very popular YouTube channel who's anti-Semitic and has a massive following and is there commonly, you see it on Twitter. You see the number of anti-Semites, the extent to which there are anti-Semites of the right on Twitter. It's very extensive, but it's just not among the leadership. And then in subtle ways it appears like I mentioned Elon Musk will like something. Nick Forentus, thank you, Nick Forentus. So Nick Forentus, right? I mean, he has a big following. And remember he was invited to dinner with Donald Trump and he's got Congress people who are with him. But you know, I mean, all anti-Semites are fringe. The fringe left is in our big institutions. The fringe right is on the fringe, but it's still big. It's still very influential on the right. People who are anti-Semites are cited on the right and are respected on the right, I think, Canada so on. I mean, I mean, Tucker Carlson, think about the comment Tucker Carlson made about Ben Shapiro. If that's an anti-Semitism, I don't know what is. I mean, that is anti-Semitic trope goes back to the Dreyfus trial. So, yeah, I mean, that's, that is, there's plenty of anti-Semitism to go around. It's not unique to one side or the other. I mean, the sense that anti-Semitism on the left, you could say is new, but not really. The communists, particularly the Stalinists were quite anti-Semitic. The Soviet Union was quite anti-Semitic. Anti-Semitism just, it's just across the board. It always has been. It's not affiliated with one side or the other. It's affiliated with, sadly, all sides. Charles Butler says, when you worked on a kibbutz, did you encounter anyone who expressed a desire to leave? Yeah, lots of people. Lots of people. I'd say a big chunk of the people, they just were too cowardly to do so. Leaving would actually require them to be independent to leave. But yeah, people hated, lived on the kibbutz and hated it at the same time. James says, have you seen that Maine is providing free housing for migrants? Google title migrants get up to two years free rent for new apartment. The state has many homeless people and homeless veterans. Yeah, I mean, it's the same thing, right? The state shouldn't be providing free housing to anybody. I don't care if they're giving it to migrants or to homeless people. They shouldn't be providing it to anybody. And the reality is the more free housing you provide, the more homeless people you will get, the more migrants you will get. So it's horrible. It's horrible that instead of letting these migrants work and then pay for themselves and go to the places they can afford, we're sending them to New York City and providing them with welfare, which is on both accounts, absurd. Maine is at least more reasonably priced in terms of cost of living, I think, maybe not. But are they allowed to work is the main issue. Look, but why don't you believe in welfare? Why not? Why not provide them with, right? The whole point is we have to believe in immigration and we have to reject welfare. All right, thank you guys. Really appreciate the chatters, thanks for the support. Remind you again, events in Michigan and Texas next week. You can find information on your onbookshow.com slash members, just your onbookshow.com. And tonight there will be a show, probably 7 p.m. East Coast time, topic to be determined. But you'll find out soon, it's already 2 o'clock, so you'll find out in the next couple of hours. That'll be tonight, same place, same time. And of course I'll see you tomorrow for another news roundup. Thanks everybody, see you tonight or tomorrow. Bye.