 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, Monday, end of November. We're getting close to the end of the year. Thanks everybody, and thanks for being here. And I hope you had a fantastic Thanksgiving weekend, right? That you had a good time. Oh, video, yes, I need to turn on that button. All right, I was distracted. Let's see, we've got a bunch to talk about, and not much updates. I guess this week will be a pretty normal week tomorrow, and Thursday will be two shows. So this week will be a normal week as we go into December. I'm home all of December, at least that's the plan right now. So I expect that we will continue normal shows for basically the rest of the year with the exception of holidays and other stuff that might happen. All right, so that's a quick update on that. What else? Reminder that the Iran Institute is a sponsor of the show and the event. So there's an event tomorrow on the fountainhead. It's, you can all participate. It's by Zoom, so go to Iran.org slash start here. You can register, find out more about it. It's about the fountainhead. It's about all the Iran Institute efforts to get young people to read the fountainhead. It should be a lot of fun. It should be really interesting. I hope you join. If you do do it, do it through the Iran dot org slash start here link, you know, that that'll help the sponsorship of the show. Okay, I think that catches us up there. All right, let's jump into the news. As always, there's a lot going on. The ceasefire is continuing. It, it, this is the fourth day. It's supposed to be the last day, but there's now word that they, that Hamas and Israel have agreed to extend the ceasefire for another two days. We, everybody's assuming that that means that the Hamas will, will release another 20 hostages some tomorrow, some the day after. We're still waiting for the hostages today to be released. It's already what, 8pm in Israel. And I don't think they've been released yet, but the expectation is that they will be released later tonight. It seems like every day there's some glitch. There's something that Hamas says, oh, wait a minute. We don't do this. We don't want to do that. I guess they released a list and Israel objected to who was on the list and they had to renegotiate that and it went back, and it went back to, you know, Hamas has now agreed. John says he's got fuzzy, fuzzy video. Are you guys getting fuzzy video or video okay for you guys? I don't know. I'm getting fuzzy video, but I can't tell. I can tell if that's just local or that some of you are saying no. Some of them say video is excellent. So I assume it's, video is good. All right. So ceasefire continues. Release of hostages continues. We'll see. I think more hostages released today. We'll see more tomorrow. We'll see more on Tuesday, on Wednesday. I suppose then the ceasefire ends. Other than the United States, Biden is continuing to press Israel and I guess to press Hamas into extending the ceasefire. It's unclear what the purpose is beyond a certain point. Hamas is not going to release everybody. It's only going to release some hostages. It doesn't want to lose whatever leverage it has by releasing all the hostages. But I think the strategy of the Americans is the strategy of mindless pragmatists, which is what the Biden administration is and what almost every American administration is. And that is delay, delay, delay. Just another day, another day, let's just buy a little bit of time. To do what? We don't know. To develop a strategy maybe? No, God forbid. We don't want a strategy. We just want to buy time. And as long as there's no bombing in Gaza, that buys us time. So we don't want bombing in Gaza because that's not good for us. And the left wing of the Democratic Party doesn't like it. We're losing votes. So we just want the bombing to stop. And what's the solution then? We don't know. We have no answer. We have no strategy. We have no ideas. We have no clue. Put pressure on Netanyahu to eliminate Hamas in a more humane manner. I think that's the Biden administration's goal is the eradication of Hamas in a humane way. One of the things I think that as Israel is releasing its prisoners, notice Hamas is releasing hostages. Israel is releasing prisoners. These are all criminals. These are all people who have attempted murder and things of that nature. As Israel is releasing them, some people who are watching this and monitoring this are realizing every time one of these is released, and there's a big celebration on the West Bank. And in the celebration, they're calling for killing Israelis and celebrating Hamas's victory and celebrating October 7th. It's dawning on some people, not a lot, but some people, that the Palestinians generally like Hamas. And the Palestinians generally want Israel destroyed. And the Palestinians generally want to annihilate the state of Israel and they want to kill the Jews in Israel. And what are they supposed to do there? What are they supposed to do with that? That is the reality. People are finally discovering it. But you see it in their responses. They don't know what to do with it. They don't know what to make of it. So their response is, yeah, we need a diplomatic solution. We need a two-state solution. And it's like, wait a minute. How do we have a two-state solution with people who want to destroy Israel? How does Israel have a solution, a negotiated solution, with people committed to its destruction? And it's not, it turns out, surprise to many people, I guess, that it's not just a few members of the Hamas. It's the Palestinian people want Israel destroyed. At this point, the Palestinian people are committed to the destruction of the state of Israel. At this point, the Palestinian people do not want peace. They do not want a two-state solution. They want a one-state solution with the Jews in the ocean or under the ground. And only when you realize that do you realize kind of the absurdness of so much of the rhetoric out there. Oh, if only they could all live in peace. Oh, if only they could all go to the negotiating table and cut a deal. And the other myth that's out there that I think everybody, everybody's talking like this, that this is a war against Hamas. As if Hamas is some local terrorist organization that if you just eliminate, like ISIS, it's localized, you kill up the leaders, you kill a certain percentage of the fighters, and we solve the problem, it's all over. But that's absurd. This is a war with the Palestinian people because the Palestinian people support Hamas. This is not just a war with Hamas. This is not just a war with a few people, with a particular organization. You could just kill a few terrorists and it's all over. This is a war between the Palestinian people and the Israeli people. And it is absurd. The Biden administration does this, the media does this, everybody on Twitter is doing this. You know, even the people who support Israel do this. Oh, no, no, we're not a war with the Palestinian people. I mean, Netanyahu and Israelis do this. Of course we are. Of course Israel is. It is a war with the Palestinian people. It's the Palestinian people who came in on October 7th. It wasn't just Hamas, it was people. It was the Palestinian people who celebrated when those monsters came back to Gaza. It's the Palestinian people who were spitting at the bodies. It's the Palestinian people who hate Israel and who want to destroy it. It's the Palestinian people that a war should, needs to convince to change their way. It's not just hopeless. But the only way you'll get peace in the Middle East, in this part of the Middle East, is by convincing the Palestinian people that they're cause is hopeless. And they better embrace a different one. There is no other way. But as long as you continue, as long as people continue to hold this absurd, this ridiculous notion of, no, no, the Palestinian people, they're peace-loving. It's only the leadership. It's only Hamas. Oh, the Palestinian Authority. They are huge fans of peace and a two-state solution. No, they're not. No, they're not. And their lovers of terrorism, their instigators of terrorism, their funders of terrorism. Sadly, the Palestinian people are going to have to suffer. And if you just make this a, I don't know, surgical operation that only goes after Hamas leadership, then you lose. And I think generally, if I had a, if I have to place bets right now, I'd say Israel's already lost or it's on the way to losing. There's no way Israel can win this because it won't let itself and because the world won't let them. The world has clearly decided Israel cannot win this, should not win this, will not win this. And it won't. It won't. It can't. And it won't dismantle Hamas. It can't because it won't do what's necessary. And it can't, and the world won't let it. And it can't and won't bring the Palestinian people, in a sense, their knees to the point of being willing to change their minds about the conflict. So anyway, so that's where we are. It's not a good place. There's nothing positive. This ceasefire was a disaster. Does anybody really believe that in two days Israel's just going to start bombing like crazy and going into Gaza with the force that they did? I mean, Israeli generals keep saying that's what they're going to do. But I'd be surprised if they actually do that. We will see. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm wrong. You know, one of the things just one more point, you know, people are using this, I don't know, 14,000 Palestinians have died or whatever. How do they know these things? How do they know these numbers? The Hamas Health Department is saying that 14,000, have they counted the bodies? Do you know how many 14,000 bodies? How many, you know, where are these bodies? Have they cleared the rubble and found these bodies? How did they know? And out of these 14,000, let's say that was true. How many of them are Hamas? How many of them are soldiers? And can we assume that all the young middle-aged men who were killed in these bombings are Hamas or at least a large percentage of them? But who has these estimates? Where are the mass graves? Where are the piles of bodies? I mean, it's taken Israel weeks to figure out how many people died on October 7th and to get a number and they still don't have an exact number. How do the Palestinians have an exact number? An exact number. They're so exact. They're so reliable. And then everybody trusts that everybody's citing it. How does anybody know what that number is? Nobody knows how many Palestinians have died. Nobody knows how many of those Palestinians have died are children. Nobody knows how many of them are civilians and how many of them are Hamas. Nobody has a clue. Hamas lies constantly and it lies for propaganda. We see this over and over and over again. They lie for propaganda and when they repeat the lies over and over and over again. And this is something that all liars have become very, very good at in the world of social media. If you repeat a lie over and over and over again on many different platforms by many different people, it just becomes truth. It just becomes something that everybody accepts. Nobody challenges it anymore. Nobody challenges the number of casualties that Hamas is putting out there. Nobody. And nobody challenges really anything Hamas says. It's amazing to me that when Israel puts something, it says, you know, the Israelis are claiming with this big caveat and skepticism induced language that X, Y, Z. And then when Hamas does it, Hamas says, as if, well, Hamas says that's a fact. They just have no clue. Yep. This is a war between Israel and Gaza, Israel and the Palestinians in Gaza. They haven't expanded it to the West Bank, but it should be a war with the Palestinians more broadly. I mean, Shay writes, I've been saying from day one that we should be calling this Israel-Gaza war, Israel-Palestine war, not Israel-Hamas. It's not the Likud-Hamas war. Yeah. I mean, I agree. But I'd say this, and I've been saying this for 20-something years. There's been, and there has been a war between Israel and the Palestinians for, you know, certainly since 1987 or maybe since sometimes in the 1990s. But there is an ongoing war between Israel and the Palestinians. This is round X. This is battle Y in a battle Gaza, if you will. Battle Hamas-Gaza, if you will. But the war is an ongoing war. The war didn't start on October 7th. And indeed, before October 7th, there was a ceasefire. And the war isn't going to end when this is finished. I don't think it was 67 because it's in 67 to 87. There was very little in terms of in Israel, very little hostility, very little hostile activity. The hostilities within Israel really picked up, really picked up by Palestinians in the territory of Israel, really picked up in 19, after the Oslo Accords in 1994. So they really picked up with Yasser Al-Fad returning to, returning, coming to the West Bank and installing himself the leader of the Palestinians in the West Bank or really recognized by Israel and the international community as the leader of the Palestinians. That was the end of it. That was really the beginning of an intense hot war between Israel and the Palestinians. I say 1994, the signing of the Oslo Agreement. I've told you this before, but that day when the news came, I called my parents up and I said, this is the most disastrous thing Israel has ever done. This is going to cause massive, massive casualties in Israel. You cannot sign peace deals with terrorists. You cannot cut deals with Yasser Al-Fad. Only bad things will happen from this. And my parents are like, yeah, right, this is great. This is peace. This is why you're being so cynical and negative. Well, we've seen since then the bloodshed, particularly in the Second Intifada. So certainly since 1984, I mean, terrorism's been against Israel. It's been going on since 1948. But I'd say this particular war with the Palestinians, defining it as Palestinians versus Israel, is since Yasser Al-Fad's return in 1984. All right. So yeah, this will keep you updated on the ceasefire. Elon Musk is in Israel. He is touring around, meeting, he met Netanyahu earlier today. He's meeting the president of Israel Herzog tomorrow. He got a tour of the area where some of the massacre happened. He's been near the border with the Gaza Strip. He is meeting with families of the hostages. He's doing a PR rehabilitation campaign in Israel. I mean, he took a real beating after positively commenting on a anti-Semitic tweet by an anti-Semite, which Elon Musk approvingly commented on, then explained the context that he only meant the ADL or whatever. But the reality is, and he took the PR blow for approvingly tweeting a tweet that was written by a known anti-Semite was the intention of being anti-Semitic. You know, Elon Musk might have criticism of particular Jewish groups that is not necessarily anti-Semitic, but why retweet or why comment positively on a tweet for whom five minutes of research were discovered that the guy's an anti-Semite, a known active anti-Semite. Anyway, he got clobbered. A lot of advertisers left acts. Elon Musk is in Israel to try to smooth everything over, to show he really loves Israel. He's friends with Israel. He's done an interview with Bibi Netanyahu that is available. I haven't listened to it yet. I did read a section of it when Netanyahu says, you know, we're going to have to, once we finish off Hamas, we're going to have to figure out how to rebuild, ultimately, how to rebuild Gaza. Israel's going to rebuild Gaza. And Elon Musk says, I want to help. I want to help Bibi Gaza. All right. So Musk is now committing billions to the rebuilding of Gaza. Again, good PR for him. And it'll be interesting how it plays out. It'll be interesting if there are any changes in terms of the attitude of some people on his platform towards Israel and towards Hamas. It'll be interesting to see what Musk writes about in the future. And, you know, he is, yeah, he is trying to improve his image. And I don't know if this will work. I hope so. But I don't know if it will work. You know, I still want Elon Musk to be successful. But, yeah, I mean, it's, there's a sudden, I mean, I wish Elon Musk would just stick to being a businessman. I mean, including running Twitter, just be in the background and run Twitter. You don't have to retweet. You don't have to create all these problems for yourself. You don't have to globetrotter around the world becoming a pseudo-diplomat and pretending you care. You don't have to do all this stuff. Just run the frigging company properly. Just stay in the background and run it the way it's supposed to be run. Yeah, there's X space, I guess, between Netanyahu, Luca says, and Musk, he says, 20 minutes long and worth listening to. Yeah, I mean, I'm, yeah, I mean, I don't like Netanyahu, I don't particularly like Musk in this context. I don't like Musk. I like Musk as a businessman. I wish he'd just stick to that. He's not, he doesn't do himself any favors when he opens his mouth up and talks politics and freedom of speech and things like that. I don't think he actually knows what he's talking about. He is too much of a flake when it comes to these things. All right. Lucinda says, thank you for doing such great work you're on. Thank you, Lucinda, really, really appreciate it. And thank you. Thank you for being a member of the show for six months. You too can become a member. Just click member down there. But if you're not a subscriber, first become a subscriber. Please subscribe to the show. Don't forget to like the show before you leave and so on. All right. The Houthis in Yemen who are a military organization of the Shiites in Yemen engaged in a civil war for the control of Yemen with a, with a, the Sunni government of Yemen, which is supported by Saudi Arabia. Basically, this has been a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia in which tens of thousands of civilians have been killed and pretty much nobody in the world cares. Only when, when Israel is doing the killing, does anybody seem to care? What was it? Yeah. So the Houthis, as you probably know, been sending missiles to Israel direction. They can't reach the center of Israel, but they can reach the southern tip of Israel a lot, which is a resort town in the very southern tip of Israel on the Red Sea, beautiful location. And Israel has been shooting down those missiles and drones as they've made their way. I don't think any of them have actually hit anything of significance. But the same Houthis are also committed now to obstructing shipping in and out of Israel or really shipping of ships that are either owned by Israelis or flying in Israeli flag or have Israelis as crew members. They've already taken over one ship that is owned by an Israeli, an Israeli wealthy individual. And the ship was not carrying an Israeli flag. There were no crew member on the ship that was really, but the Houthis took it over. I'm not sure how that's going to be resolved in kind of, there's no, we're not getting a lot of news about that ship. But over the weekend, they try to take over another ship. This ship signal distress. This is near, not far from Somalia, close by to the ship. There was an American, I think it's a destroyer. The Americans sent over some troops. The troops prevented the ship from being taken over by the Houthis and indeed actually caught the perpetrators of the attempted hijacking. The assumption is the Houthis and who are being, and they're being held in custody on the American destroyer. And this is, this is in the best tradition of the American Navy keeping the sea lanes open in the best tradition of keeping trade flowing and stopping pirates on the high seas. It took them a long time to stop the piracy off the coast of Somalia if you remember 10 years ago, but they did ultimately. And now they're going to have to, I think that the Israeli Navy, the American Navy are going to have to patrol along the Red Sea and into the Indian Ocean. The Persian Gulf, those areas to prevent pirates, in this case the Houthis, from stopping or blocking the sea lanes and blocking trade. So that is happening as we speak. Hopefully that'll be the last ship that has to deal with this. This ship, by the way, was also Israeli owned, owned by an Israeli businessman. No flag, no Israeli flag, no Israeli crew, but it was owned. I guess they look at the ship name and you can find who owns it in the registry. And if it's Israeli owned, they go after it. If it's not, they don't. So thank you. I think it's a good use of American Navy to stop these things from happening. All right. A couple of kind of scary things happening on American campuses. The first late last week was at a high school, a Hillcrest High School in Jamaica, Queens. In this high school, there's a Jewish teacher who happens to be pro-Israel, who was identified on video, I guess, that she had been on Facebook, maybe, that she had been at a demonstration in support of Israel holding a plaque, I stand with Israel. The photos of this, of her being at the demonstration with the plaque, I stand with Israel, started circulating in the school that Facebook page was created, or at least, I guess, the photo was on the teacher's Facebook page, was on her profile, on her page. Right. Anyway, they took this, they started spreading it around. And at school, for about two hours last week, they basically rampaged through the halls, trying to do violence to this teacher. The teacher had to hide herself, had to lock herself and hide. As the kids, you can find video of this all over the web, as the kids just rampaged through the school, trying to figure out where she was, and trying to get her. You know, they ripped a water fountain from the wall. They shed a tiles on the floor of the boys' bathroom. They, you know, they were yelling Free Palestine, Allah Akbar, and F Israel. The teacher was in hiding. The New York City Police Department had sent 25 officers to the scene. It took them a while to get control over this. And, you know, and again, two hours to get it all under control. Of course, this has been condemned by the school authorities. It's been condemned by the city, by the mayor. The mayor was pretty, pretty stringent about this. The Chancellor of New York Public Schools is, you know, is kind of condemned. They're not too much, right? He says, what's happening in Middle East has gotten a lot of emotions from a lot of people, right? Nobody wants to condemn it too much. They don't want to seem to be on the Israel side too much. But God, I mean, imagine being a Jewish teacher, a pro-Israel teacher. Anyway, in these schools now, this is really scary. These kids are scary. And, you know, what kind of support are you going to get? And how is this going to change? What needs to happen to change these kids' minds? What needs to happen so that teachers can keep teaching without fear for their lives because of their particular positions? It is a truly bleak, horrible situation we're seeing for teachers who happen to be pro-Israel. Similar situation at the University of Southern California, USC. On a Thursday in early November at the USC campus, there was a large crowd and a large crowd of demonstrators, pro-Palestinian, shouting all kinds of slogans by some witnesses, including shouting destroy Israel. A university professor, a tenured university professor by the name of John Strauss, who's an economics professor, teaches developmental economics, was walking by, saw this, and got angry. He's Jewish. He's pro-Israel. And he heard destroy Israel. And he started telling them, I'm Jewish and I'm very pro-Israel. And he said, Israel forever, Hamas and murderers. Supposedly, as part of the yelling back and forth, there's video of him saying, Hamas and murderers, that's all they are. Everyone should be killed. And I hope they are killed. Anyway, the students videotaped us. They chopped it up in various ways as to make this particularly, whoever can put it up and tick-tock and put it up everywhere else on social media. And the result of that is that Professor Strauss, in spite of having tenure, has been suspended from the university. He's on a paid administrative leave. He's barred from campus and is not going to be able to teach his undergraduate course this semester. So the students are saying, he insulted us. He stepped on a paper with the names of dead Palestinians. He said horrible things. And of course, them ripping off the posters of hostages, them saying horrible things, they have absolute right to free speech in anything they want. They can call for murder, genocide, the destruction of Israel, all they want, no penalties, nothing. But you stand up for Israel. You stand up for Israel. And they tear you down. So anyway, they tear you down. They lose your job. You are basically turned into a campus pariah. You can't even teach your classes. The fact that you have tenure, the fact that being there forever doesn't make one difference. There's a long article in this on the LA Times, just an unbelievable injustice. And generally, what you're seeing around the country, around the United States today, is a complete and utter double standard. As long as you're calling for the genocide of Jews, that's fine. As long as you are calling for the destruction of Israel, that's fine. But if you say anything in support of Israel, or stand up against Hamas, or call for the destruction of Hamas completely, legitimately, you are shut down. You no longer have free speech. You no longer have any kind of sense of so-called academic freedom. All right. So yeah, I mean, this is horrific. And it's basically a form of anti-Semitism. It's basically a form of discriminating against those that are perceived to be successful, and therefore supposedly the oppressors. For the benefit of those who are oppressed, in the name of the oppressed, you can say anything you want. Never, never, ever defend the oppressors, or really, to put it another way. In the name of the poor, you can say anything you want. In the name of the successful, the rich, you can't defend them at all. All right. Finally, we've got a bunch of stories out of China. And, oh, it's the end. A bunch of stories out of China. Let's start with the continued challenges of the Chinese economy. China is struggling economically, continues to struggle economically. We've seen a significant downgrading of its real estate sector. We've seen significant troubles of its real estate developers. It has not ended. It continues. They continue to struggle to pay their debts. They continue to struggle to raise money. Consumers or owners of condos continue to struggle to gain ownership over properties that they put money down on and are not being built. So that's an ongoing story of the kind of real estate problems. Now we're seeing massive losses in the financial sector in China. So a big kind of investor, you could call it, financial firm called Zongzi Enterprise Group, is facing criminal charges of fraud and all kinds of stuff. But it looks like their assets are going to have to be sold at 70% discount. We're talking about a company that has about $56 billion that it owes customers, it owns consumers, and it's going to have to take a massive right off on this. The problems with the Chinese economy just keep mounting. And again, the more we've talked about this before, the more authoritarian the Chinese government is, the more problems the Chinese economy is going to have. So it's not letting up. It's just getting worse and worse. Just a note on demography. We've talked about Chinese demography. We've talked about the collapse of the number of people in Japan in China at birth rates, very, very low, wobble low replacement. You know, Chinese are just not having kids and the Chinese society is getting older and older and it's going to get older at a very, very, it's getting older at a very, very fast pace. The Chinese don't have a safety net for old people. That means a lot of the money that young Chinese are going to making is going to have to go instead of to investment. It's going to have to go towards keeping their parents alive. These are parents that have not saved because they're too poor to have saved, right? So it's not that I'm arguing for safety net, but it is a massive challenge in China, given how poor the country still is on a GDP per capita basis. On a per capita basis, China is still a poor country. It might be the second largest economy in the world by some measures, even the largest economy in the world. But on a per capita basis, it's poor. Very poor. Anyway, it's poor with a demography collapsing does not bode well for future economic growth, future economic wealth, future economic success without pretty dramatic reforms. Well, there's one good news story, if you will, coming out on the demographic. It's kind of demographic side. And that is that while China has fewer and fewer young people, the young people that it does have are more and more educated. More and more of them are going to college. Many more of them today are going to college about 20 times. It was a 16 X the number that went to college at the turn of the century that is in 2000 are going to college today. So they're much more productive, earning a lot more. China's economy will slowly transition away from manual labor in factories towards more value added productivity enhancing type work. And it's not just that Chinese are going to college because hey, Americans are going to college too, but we don't consider that value enhancing necessarily. But the Chinese are going to college in large numbers towards STEM fields. And this is the this is the good news for China, if you will, 40% of China's college graduates are STEM majors, 40%. That is more than double in the US, which is only 18%. And I wonder how many of those are fallen born, 35% in Germany, 26% in the rest of the OECD. So the good news for China is that they are going to dominate engineering. They're going to dominate the production of scientists. The rise in productivity as a result of this is limited by the fact that it's authoritarian and these scientists and engineers cannot go out there and just make and do and produce what they want. They can't enhance productivity the way they could in a free market. But, you know, the reality is that then we produce 18% of our college graduates are engineers. I don't know how many we produce in some of the humanities where I think what they're taught in university actually decreases their productivity, probably wipes out the increased productivity we get from from from the engineers. You know, China has college graduates who are highly productive, which you cannot say probably for the United States. And then it's just a question of how much freedom will they have to do to enhance productivity to improve production in China. We will see, but that is the one piece of good news coming out of China. They've got a lot of STEM students. By the way, for years I've heard that the reason Silicon Valley companies go to China is not because of the lower cost of engineering, but the sheer number of engineers that they can get. They can hire thousands in a day, whereas you can't do that in the US. There's a shortage of engineers in the US. And instead of the US having immigration policies that take the 40% Chinese graduates and bring them to the US to work here, we encourage them if they did come to the US to study. We encourage them to go back to China and start their companies and go and help the Chinese economy be more productive rather than make the American economy more productive. You know, our hatred of immigrants far supersedes our love of increased production. And that, by the way, is primarily a Republican policy. That was for Scots. Let's see. Yeah. A setback from China is the fact that we've talked about the Taiwanese election. Taiwanese elections are coming up in January. The opposition tried to have one candidate. The opposition is a lot more friendly to China than opposition is much more friendly to China than the existing government is. So the opposition tried to rally around one candidate, probably to a large extent supported by the Chinese government. The Chinese government wants the opposition to win. That deal to rally around one candidate fell apart. There are going to be at least two opposition candidates running against the candidate of the governing party today. All likelihood that the current government will win, which is good news for those of you who value Taiwan as an independent country. China will not be happy. China is, you know, once the opposition to win, once pro-Chinese politicians in Taiwan to gain power, because ultimately China would like to take over Taiwan without having to go to war. They know today they cannot win a war, and they're not sure they could win such a war in the future. But the Taiwanese people either want the status quo, they want independence. So 32% of Chinese people want the status quo. 21% of the Chinese people want independence. Explicit, they already have independence, but make it explicit. Only 29%, oh, so 32% want status quo indefinitely, which means independence. 21% wants explicit independence. 29% want status quo, we'll decide later. So an opening for maybe combining with China. Only 6% of Taiwanese population want to move towards unification. So China has a lot of work before it, you know, to do what it did in Hong Kong. But that is ultimately its goal. Alright, let's see. Yeah, final story, you know, final story. You know, China has a big Islamic problem. Western China is dominated by Muslims. I don't know the exact number, it is a population, but these are millions and millions, tens of millions probably, of Muslims living in the western parts of China. A number of different, I mean, we hear about the Uighurs, but it's not just the Uighurs, it's a number of different peoples, a number of different groups out in western China in a number of different regions of China. You know, Muslims, China is engaged actively in undermining the religion. They're engaged in re-education. Some of that re-education is happening in camps. Some of that re-education is happening in schools. But part of that re-education campaign is the fact that China is basically disassembling mosques in these regions. They're basically taking them apart. The Human Rights Foundation has basically looked at satellite images of western China, looking at mosques that used to were there with the spires and the dome on the top. And many of these buildings, the domes have gone, the spires have gone, and the buildings are being used for other purposes. So China is dealing with the Islamic problem by basically forced assimilation, by basically actively destroying all remnants of the religion and forcing people to assimilate and become Chinese. China at least realizes that you better assimilate the Muslims. It's what Europe should do as well. Now by these tactics, Europe should do it within the context of freedom of religion. I think it would also be much more effective than these tactics. But China is going for the brute force tactics, and it's going to be interesting to see how they do. 10, 12 years ago there were regular terrorist attacks in China by Islamists. You don't hear of terrorist attacks anymore by Islamists in China. I don't know if that's because they don't happen or if that's because you just don't hear about them. It's just that the media in China just prevents them from coming out. But basically they're using force. The U.S. I think uses confidence in Western civilization and Europe is not doing anything. I mean the U.S. I'm being overly positive about the U.S. It's interesting to see in the future which model worked best. But clearly something has to be done about Islam. There's no question about that. All right, certainly about Islamists. All right, we will now go to questions. Not a lot of questions and not a lot of money raised towards our goal for the super chat for today. We're going to get back on track of reaching our goals. So please consider supporting the Iran Book Show. We're about $163 short. That's $820 questions. But we do have 148 people watching live right now. So what is it a dollar from each person? You can do a sticker. Gail just did a sticker for $5. A few people doing $5 sticker will get us there. WCZN, thank you. Ryan Ward, thank you. These are all people who did stickers. Luca, thank you. And Roosevelt, thank you. So yes, those stickers help. Most stickers like that could get us to our goal quite quickly. Also, don't forget to like the show before you leave. It doesn't cost you anything. It really helps with the algorithm. Thank you, John. John just did a $20 sticker. A few of those would get us quickly to the goal. And if you're not a subscriber, please consider subscribing to the show. All right. Rimo Rafael has a sticker. Thank you, Rafael. Appreciate it. Rimo says, what do you generally look for on a balance sheet of a company to determine whether to buy at stock? I mean, I don't. I don't buy individual company stocks other than in my hedge fund. In the hedge fund, you know, I look at certain things on a balance sheet, but I don't look at anything separate from a holistic view of the company. And I have very, very narrow view of what to look for for bank companies based on a model that's designed in terms of the probability that this bank will be taken over in the future and its governance and so on. But generally, if you're looking at something on the balance sheet, you don't have to make a decision about whether to buy a bank or not. Sorry, buy a stock or not. Just stop. Any analysis you do of a company's balance sheet, there are hundreds, if not thousands of people out there who are probably smarter than you, certainly more experienced than you, certainly more knowledgeable than you, doing the same thing, including a bunch of really smart algorithm written and probably constituting AI these days who know exactly how to take a balance sheet and completely analyze it to death. You have no advantage over that. There's nothing you will learn on a bank's balance sheet that is unique to you. Now, in investing, it's not bad to look at the balance sheet and make sure that this company's not bankrupt or not doing really, really stupid things or not completely crazy or whatever, right? But never make an investment decision based on anything you find on a balance sheet. And generally, I do not encourage people to invest in specific stocks unless you're a professional investor because professional investors will eat you alive. I encourage people to diversify widely by mutual funds or ETFs and diversify. Don't day trade. Day trading is for losers. I know, I'll get a bunch of people now telling me how much money they've made recently in day trading. All right, talk to me in a year or two, but the statistics are clear. Day trading is a losing strategy for everybody except the real pros. So if you want to become a pro, then the things you can do to become a pro, you can go get a master's degree in finance, you can go work for a hedge fund, work in Wall Street or whatever. But yeah, so I look at a bunch of stuff on a balance sheet because it gives me some idea about the valuation and its relative stock price, but that in isolation is meaningless, is absolutely meaningless. So I don't want to say that I look at anything on a balance sheet because nothing on a balance sheet. I mean, again, yeah, I mean, if you're a professional investor, you look at balance sheets and you take off of all kinds of things, depending on the kind of company it is. A bank's balance sheet is very different than a tech company's balance sheet, but be very, very careful how you use that information in your investments, right? All right, Paul, thank you for the $50, really appreciate it. Paul says, Netanyahu has repeatedly said the war will resume after the ceasefire. Hamas now wants to keep extending the ceasefire with the release of more hostages. Do you think Netanyahu will resume the war and will Hamas be destroyed? First of all, I think they already announced that Netanyahu has agreed to extend the ceasefire for another two days. I don't know how long this will go on, but Netanyahu will extend the ceasefire as long as hostages are being released. I have no doubt about that. Will the war resume? Yes, it will resume. I don't know with how much vigor, I don't know how it will be resumed exactly. And I think at the first opportunity for another ceasefire, there will be another ceasefire. The war will not be prosecuted, and depending on how you view the destruction of Hamas, right? They are, according to estimates, 30,000 Hamas fighters that does not include all their Hamas civil administrators. Do I think 30,000 of them are going to die? No. Do I think every single one of the leadership in Hamas are going to be killed? No. Do I think the political leadership of Hamas in Qatar are going to be killed? No. Will Hamas actually be destroyed? I don't think so. I think Israel will claim victory. They'll declare it destroyed, and in a few years it'll be back. So I just don't see it. Well, Israel will go back to the war, yes. But I don't think with the same vigor as they did before. And they will focus primarily on the north, and in the south they will do more like, would be my expectations, fewer, less from the air, more on the ground, and on the ground much more cautiously thus sacrificing a lot more Israeli soldiers. I think what the ceasefire has really been a huge boon to Hamas, not only because it has increased, dramatically increased, the pressure Israel is under to extend the ceasefire indefinitely, but also because they are now much better prepared for the Israeli ground insertion, particularly in the south, into their various towns in the south of Gaza. So I just don't see how they're going to destroy Hamas completely. I don't see it happening. I know that Yinele keeps saying it, but Yinele said a lot of things in his history that he doesn't live up to, and I fear this is just one more of those. Thank you, Paul. Jason, our congressman, one of two GOP who voted to impeach and got re-elected, worries a lot about the CCP buying up U.S. farmlands. What to tell at the next town hall? I mean, really, of all the things to worry about in terms of the future of America, I think that is the least of them. I mean, let's say we go to war with China, then we just take away all the land that they own in the United States and say, whoops, sorry, we are nationalizing it and we're reselling it to Americans. Could happen like that. Of all the problems in the U.S., the CCP buying up U.S. farmlands, I mean, the reality is I'd like to see a GOP, anybody stand up against farm subsidies. That's a much bigger problem, much bigger problem than the fact that the CCP owns farmland. Indeed, a much bigger problem is the fact that the CCP owns our treasury bills, although I don't think that's a big problem either. Who cares if they own the farmland? A lot of farmers made a lot of money by selling them to the CCP. If that's even true, right? But I don't see what harm that does to the U.S. Whether they're going to stop producing food on that farmland, is that it? They're going to starve us by not producing food. They own such a tiny little fraction of a fraction of a fraction. It doesn't make any difference. So it's a non-issue. Stop worrying about it. Focus on shrinking government spending. Focus on deregulating. Focus on reducing the tax burden on Americans. Focus on revitalizing the American economy. And revitalizing entrepreneurship of liberating the tax sector and the rest of the U.S. economy. Those are the things that should be focused on rather than obsessing about China, which sadly, Nikki Haley is also doing. I guess it's a way to get the... You have to have an other to rally people around. And so the other, the people are rallying around hating other Chinese, and that's what gets them going. Andrew says, Altruism is like a virus of injustice, destroying selfish premises with hatred of the good and pity for evil. Absolutely. Do you think altruism functions as automatic in the sense that people are unaware of its impact on their thinking? Yeah, absolutely. I don't think people even think about it. I don't think people even challenge it. I mean, they can't imagine an alternative. It's basically, this is morality. They might think about how moral do I really want to be and do I want to be a pragmatist? But even then, altruism is shaping their decision. There is no conception of an alternative to altruism. I'll talk more about this when I do a review of the book Dominion, which I am almost done with, I think, four more hours of listening to and I'm done, which is fascinating, really, really interesting book. But, oh my God, so, I mean, so frustrating. But yes, I mean, Christianity is so thoroughly ingrained in all of us, including the most secular woke people that they cannot conceive of anything but altruism. Altruism is Christian altruism in particular, Christian altruism. The importance of the weak, the importance of the meek, the importance of the oppressed, the importance of the subjugated, which was everything about Christian morality from the beginning of Christianity, that attitude is everywhere and it's not challenged by anybody except I ran, and it dominates our secular thinking about the world, which is exactly what Tom Holland in Dominion argues. But he argues a lot more than that, which I'll get to. Ryan says, I recommend reading causality versus duty to better appreciate the current conflict. Do you think that this essay can be used to understand the barriers to peace? Does it all fall down to thinking versus unthinking? I mean, there's no question that at the end of the day, all issues, all challenges, all problems that exist out there boil down to thinking or not thinking. You know, the issue of altruism is boils down to not being willing, not willing to think about an alternative, not willing to do the work even when you're confronted with an alternative like rational egoism, not being willing to do the work. The whole issue of causality versus duty, causality requires thinking, requires work. People don't do the thinking, so much of our society as at the perceptual level. It's not at the conceptual level. So, you know, almost everything I agree with you about causality versus duty that is an excellent essay should be read once every couple of years. It is so much to say about so many things in our culture, not just, you know, and it's about, you know, the fundamental of dealing with the world through, you know, duty. This is what I have to do. This is what I must do. I cannot question. I cannot ask why. I cannot ask for a cause. I cannot think about what will happen when I do this. I just have to do it. That is what I'm supposed to do. That is my duty. Versus a conceptual mentality, which is a mentality that is constantly questioning. In Rand's theory, you don't have a duty to anything. You don't have duties, period. In Rand's, everything is about cause and effect. Everything is about thinking through. Everything is about achieving something, a goal, a purpose. And everything is about reasoning to achieve that goal, which means thinking. So it's the exact opposite, the exact opposite. But yeah, every conflict in the end of the day boils down to, I think, every challenge we have in the world, duty on duty. Frank says, are Palestinian Christians a threat to Israel? Well, it depends what you mean. The Christians who live in Israel have not been a threat to Israel. They are citizens of the state of Israel. They're treated for the most part as equal citizens. A large part of their population in the city I grew up in Haifa were Christians, Christian Arabs. They do very well in Israel. Again, they are doctors. They're engineers. They're in every profession out there, and they've done very well, and they're not a threat at all. The Christians in the West Bank have a hard time, because on the one hand, I think they would like to join the Christian who live in Israel, the Christian Arabs who live in Israel. They would like to be part of Israel, because they would like the rights that they would get if they were part of Israel. On the other hand, they have to be very, very careful, because if they express those views, they will be killed by the Muslim neighbors. So they are often anti-Israel, at least because that is what's required from them in order to be able to live with the neighbors who are Muslim. They're not that many Palestinian Christians in the West Bank and Gaza. They are a tiny minority, and they do what they're told, basically, because their lives depend on doing that. They do what they're told in terms of what the Muslims tell them to do. Luca says, what can be done with URWA schools, with kids learning to hate the Jews from a UN-sanctioned school? That's even a huge issue that needs fixing in my humble opinion. I mean, yeah, I don't think it needs fixing. I think it needs demolishing. I've talked about this for years now. The UN needs to be demolished. You could imagine an international organization of free countries. Free European countries, if there are any countries in Africa, you would deem free South American countries, free Asian countries. A global organization of free countries that serve some of the things that the United Nations serves. But you cannot have a union of Putin and America, of Saudi Arabia and Iran and America and Holland and Sweden and the UK. There's no unity there. There's no thing there. The UN needs to be dismantled completely. It needs to be eliminated. What do you do with the schools? Well, the UN should be banned from these territories. Israel should ban them from them. Israel should dominate, occupy the West Bank and Gaza and dictate, dictate what is taught at the schools. Is the UN evil? Absolutely the UN is evil. It is absolutely an evil organization. It is an evil organization. The service of evil. There's nothing good about the UN. And it should be done away with completely. Jennifer, when is the next members only show God? I've neglected those, right? I'll try to figure it out. Probably either this coming Sunday or the Sunday after that. But very soon on a Sunday. Buzz, why cool to see figures like Musk talk spotlight? I don't find it cool. I mean, you might want to find it cool. I don't find it cool to see figures like him. I mean, he's good at business that doesn't make him good at anything else necessarily. And his political views are not particularly educated. They're not particularly interesting. They're a hodgepodge. I would prefer that he leave politics out of it, run his business as well. And I don't think what is he spotlighting? He's spotlighting Elon Musk. But he'll go back and he's a flake and who knows what he'll see. So sadly, I wish it wasn't. I wish businessmen were all serious and had real serious intellectual views and could fight for good cause. But Musk is not an example of that. The causes he wants to fight for are not necessarily good causes. Entertainment says, why is a rainwater collection banned in the West Bank? I don't know. I mean, the West Bank has a, like the rest of Israel, it's not only banned in the West Bank. I think it's banned all over Israel. Israel has created a unified water distribution system. It guarantees the quality of the water. It guarantees that everybody has water wherever you happen to live. Rainwater collecting is not banned just in the West Bank. It's banned everywhere. Because the government in its infinite wisdom cannot certify the quality of that water. So Israel has a network of water distribution, one of the most advanced in the world, including massive quantities of water from desalination plants that is distributed all over Israel, including the West Bank. Should it exclusively ban rainwater collecting? No, from no way, including the West Bank. But it's just one more status policy that Israel's engaged in. But it's not engaged in just against the West Bank again. It's engaged in all over Israel. It's just another example of statism versus an example of, I don't know, discrimination against Arabs in West Bank. I don't think that's it at all. Rafael says, I've been to Stockholm recently and the way they approach life is named Lagom. Not too much, not too little, just the right amount. Do you agree with this? No, no. The whole Scandinavian model is a model of no ambition, no real striving, no pushing to the limits, no great achievement, but no great losses. It's kind of this risk-averse mediocrity. And I think that humanity does not advance much if that is the attitude. We're kind of stagnant and stuck. And as individuals, when you do strive, when you are, what do you call it, energize when you are ambitious, Scandinavian society pulls you down. So it's a culture that's anti-individual ambition, which is not a good culture at all. Phil says, in all seriousness, at what age does a U.S. university expel students who bring in, distribute, or does that not apply anymore? I don't really understand the question. But I don't think a U.S. university will expel students for violence. They'll expel students for explicitly racist comments. They won't expel them for anti-Semitic comments. They won't expel them for supporting Hamas. They won't expel them for supporting violence against Jews. But they will expel them for being a member of the KKK or expressing anti-Black or anti-Spanic sentiments. It is interesting how they do this. And right now, American universities, at least some of them are suffering because some of the alma mater, some of the donors are stopping to send checks. Now we'll see if that's sustainable. We'll see if they'll continue to do it. We'll see how widespread it is over time. Yeah, Jennifer says, even if she says something anti-gay, they'll probably expel you. Not if you say something anti-Israeli or anti-Jewish. Garbled says, hi, Iran. What do you say to the argument that more civilian casualty leads to more future extremists? Does the data bear this out? No, quite the contrary. The data does not bear this out. I mean, the best data points of this are from World War II, where a lot of civilians died. And that is that there's no hatred of American Germany. There was no hatred of American Japan, even though both the United States and the UK killed hundreds of thousands, if not millions of civilians in Japan and the UK. So the data doesn't bear this out. I don't think it's true. I think it is true that if you do a half job at killing civilians but not winning the war and not doing it in such a way and with such confidence that that nation that you're attacking is convinced that they have lost, that they cause is hopeless, then the killing a civilian will breed more hatred. And that's why you have to go wholeheartedly. You have to do it in a non-half-assed way like we did in Japan and Germany. And in Israel, Israel does it half-assed. And yes, it breeds more hatred, but what's the option? The hatred's already there. One way or another, Israeli weakness, more hatred. Israeli civilians, more hatred, no matter what it does more hatred, except if Israel actually thoroughly, unapologetically, systematically defeats the Palestinian people. Now come us, the Palestinians. And until it does that, it cannot win. Well, it says Bitcoin is freedom, a pseudo-freedom, delusional freedom, but I guess some of you will take that over nothing. Alright, Phil says, will Israelis be dumb enough to reelect Netanyahu after this shift and altruism? Well, he didn't shift. There's nothing new here. Netanyahu has always been like this. I've been telling you exactly who Netanyahu is for 25 years. You guys won't listen, but I've told you exactly who he is, what he is, his level of compromise, how big of a sellout he is. I've told you all this literally for over 20 years. So, and Israel kept electing him even then. I think this time maybe it's too much, not because of the altruism. I think maybe this time too much is because he failed so badly to prevent the original attack. But come on people, you know, go back and watch my talks from 2000. And one, in 1999 I think I gave my first talk on Israel. I've always been anti-Netanyahu. Always said the same thing, gives great speeches, doesn't act it out. So, nothing new. Alright, Happy Avocado says, what do you think about the book? How to win friends and influence people? I mean like a lot of books like that, it's got some good ideas. It's got the particular principles that are good. It's got other things that are completely sick and handed and bad. So, it's a mixed bag like a lot of self-help books. You know, it's not, you know, you have to come with to it with a critical rational mind focused on your interest, focused on being rational and with a virtue of integrity and justice in mind and figure out what makes sense and what doesn't. I read it a long, long time ago and with that in mind. Mark Thomas says, maybe student writers can be sued. Objectivism, I'm not sure what the objective is. Yeah, I mean if you, suddenly if you destroy property you should be able to destroy, to be sued. I don't know under what other basis you'd be able to be sued. The only basis of suing is actual damages. You have to show damages. So, suddenly if they destroy property they should all be sued. They should be put in jail. They should be criminally prosecuted and sued. 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