 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Brookshow. All right, everybody, welcome to Iran Brookshow. And this, ooh, we need some lights. What's up with that? It is Friday, almost weekend. Friday, December 8th. I hope everybody's having a had. Is having a fantastic week and looking forward to the weekend. And I think we got our lights back. All right, we're going to jump in to the news today. What did I want to remind you of before we did that? There will be a show tomorrow at 2 PM East Coast time. I promised Saturdays would be dedicated to positive topics. So it will be a positive topic, even though yesterday it was kind of positive. I'm definitely positive with dawn. So I'm kind of over supplying positive content. But that's OK. We'll do a positive topic tomorrow, and then we'll get into the nitty-gritty of negativity next week. Let's see, what else do we have? Yeah, a reminder, those of you who would like to attend the INRAN Institute Conference in Austin, Texas in late March, particularly if you're a student of Objectivism, if you've read a lot of the books, and particularly if you plan a career or would like to consider a career as a professional intellectual, please go to INRAN.org slash start here and fill an application for scholarship and to attend the conference. You'll get to hang out with Greg Salamieri and Ben Bear and many others, and it's definitely going to be a fantastic event. So encourage everybody to apply and get started on an exciting, exciting path. All right, let's jump in. So I thought we talk a little bit just to begin with about Intifada. There's a lot of talk about Intifada. There's, of course, the chants out there of Intifada. There are a lot of claims being made about what Intifada actually means and what it refers to. And of course, we've seen what happened with the heads of the presidents of the universities the other day in front of Congress. Just an update on that quickly. Just before I started the show, I did see that the board of trustees of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, the University of Pennsylvania, Japan, has actually asked the president of the university to resign. She was one of the three presidents of the universities in front of Congress. They just completely blew their answer to the question regarding what is calling for Jewish genocide, harassment. They completely blew it. And all three should resign just because of how pathetic their response was. But more than that, they really should resign because of how pathetic the way they're managing the campuses is, the pathetic state of our universities. Of course, having them resign will not change much. The real what at our universities is not primarily in the president's office. The real what at the university is in the faculty, in the DEI departments, and throughout the administration. I do not believe. I don't think there's any chance that replacing the president any one of these universities will change anything significantly. I also think, this is before we get to the issue of Intifada. We'll get to that in a minute. I also think that the universities really have to think clearly about free speech and the kind of speech they want in their campuses. They are not as private universities, the three were private universities. They're not obliged on university property to have the First Amendment as the standard for speech. They don't have to allow the Nazis or the KKK or those calling for Jewish genocide to march on their campuses. They have every right. And I would argue responsibility not to allow certain voices on campus. I do not believe in the bizarre notion that they have of academic freedom, which suggests that a university should just sit back and allow anybody to say anything whenever they want. Now that's true that the government cannot silence you, even if you are arguing for something horrific, but a university is an institution of learning. The university is an institution of education. A university should have standards. Now I know it's hard to apply the standards. And the default is let everybody say whatever they want to say, and as long as they're not breaking the law, they can do whatever they want. That's a default. But that's defaulting on your responsibility as an educational institution. And what is actually happening, which I think makes everything worse, is that the standards that they apply, because they are applying standards, even though they have this position of you can say anything, except insult blacks or accept, insult transgenders or accept creed, accept. Add on the intersectionality woke exceptions that they would like and they do include. So you can call for genocide of Jews, but not for genocide of other peoples. So the standards they have chosen without admitting it are the standards of the far left. That's what allowed speech and what's not allowed. What they should do is the same as, I think, what Twitter should do and Facebook should do and all these places, and they all have the same problem. They're all private institutions. They all can have their own standards. I don't think if it's legal, OK, I don't think that is ideal for university and I don't think that's an ideal for social media. I think they have to consider the purpose of the institution, the purpose of the platform, and consider and think about objective standards for what is acceptable and what's not acceptable in terms of behavior, in terms of speech, in terms of protest, what protest acceptable, what are not, and actually have standards and actually stand by those standards. And that should apply to professors and students and everybody else. But that's hard. It's hard to think through what kind of speech are Nazis acceptable. No. Communists? Well, that's going to be hard for them. If Nazis are not, why would you allow communists? And if communists are not, who else is not? And what's the standard? Right now, the standard is discriminate against anything that the woke left wants you to discriminate against. But that is wrong and that is not objective. So, yeah, the university president should resign. But I think Don said yesterday when I interviewed him, he said, look, the university system, as it is, is unsolvable. And I think that's probably true, at least in our lifetime. It's unsolvable. And what that means is that the money, the donors, they need to start thinking about alternatives. They need to start thinking about new institutions. This is what's exciting about the University of Austin. Exciting about other projects that are going on around the country. We need more bigger, more ambitious. And we need it quickly. But without changing the fundamental culture on campuses and that's going to require firing or eliminating the DEI office, that's going to require changing some of the faculty composition. Ultimately, I don't think you could do it without eliminating tenure. Because everybody's already entrenched and they only approve the people who they like. And therefore, it's endless. You cannot change American universities. It's too late. Too late. All right. Danielle, thank you. Wow, $100. Really appreciate that. That's great. Thank you. And then Robert, thank you. Maria-Leen, thank you. Yeah, I know that's good. I really appreciate it. OK, back to Interfata. So in our universities, people are marching for global Interfata and they're marching for Interfata. And what does it actually mean? Well, Interfata is a word in Arabic. I had the meaning a minute ago. The actual meaning of Interfata is like, shake things up. Yeah, it's like shiver, shudder, tremor, shake off to shake. Shake, get rid of, maybe even shrug. But that's not what they mean when they march advocating for Interfata. They mean something very specific. They're referring to an uprising. And it's come to mean uprising, revolution. They talk about globalize the Interfata or Interfata revolution. So what does Interfata refer to? Well, the Interfata refers to two events in the history of Israel-Palestinian. Let me call it a war, right? The war, the conflict, whatever you want to call it. One started in December 1987, which started in Gaza and spread to the West Bank, which was basically people, Palestinians going out to the streets and throwing rocks at Israelis, throwing rocks at the military. They were at the time regularly going to work in Israel, refusing to go to war. It was like, we want a resolution to this. And it all arose out of a car accident, which a number of Palestinians died. But the core of it was frustration at what they thought was what they viewed as an occupation and poverty and the lack of opportunity and a hatred for Israel. But it wasn't anywhere near the way it is today. And that Interfata, initially, Israel used, tried to crush these protests and riots. And that only made things worse. Ultimately, Israel shifted to using rubber bullets so they wouldn't kill anybody. That didn't help. Ultimately, it was put down. But it was months and months of violence. But the violence was mainly localized in the West Bank and in Gaza and was demonstrations and riots. That was Interfata number one. But nobody really remembers Interfata number one because Interfata number one didn't really leave a real mark. Well, people when they're talking about the Interfata are really talking about the second Interfata. The second Interfata was launched in 2000 after Yasser Arafat in Camp David was basically offered pretty much everything he wanted by Bill Clinton and Ehud Barak, who is the prime minister at the time of Israel. I think by American estimates, he was given over 90% of what he'd asked for. And he basically said no. This is after the Oslo agreement Yasser Arafat was in the West Bank. And he went back to the West Bank and basically launched the Interfata, the second Interfata. But this Interfata was very different. This Interfata was not demonstrations and riots and throwing rocks. This Interfata was a massive surge of terrorist attacks targeted at civilians in Israel. This is a time where there were very little restrictions on the ability of Palestinians to move around Israel, to enter Israel, to exit Israel. And this is a period of about three years in which, almost on a weekly basis, buses were blown up, restaurants were blown up, wedding celebrations. Suicide bombers would enter wedding celebrations and blow themselves up, a period in which Israelis never knew when their attack would happen, where hundreds and ultimately thousands of people killed, maimed, injured. And it could happen anyway at any time, which increased the randomness, the scariness of it, the terror of the situation. And this is what Interfata has come to mean. Interfata means the terrorizing of innocent men, women, and children. It means the killing, the blowing up of women, children, civilians. Now, of course, they don't consider them innocents. It means the arbitrary random destruction. It means a reign of terror. When they call for a globalized Interfata, they're calling for a global reign of terror. They're calling for not just blowing up buses in Israel, but blowing up buses everywhere. They're talking about the kind of terror attacks that ISIS committed in Europe during the mid-2000s. They're talking about 9-11s and shootings and cars driving through crowds. They're talking about mayhem and death and destruction on a global scale. When they talk about Interfata revolution, they're talking about the raising up of, I don't know whom, but everywhere, the killing, the slaughter, the maiming, the destruction of civilians everywhere. That's what Interfata means. Now, I don't know how many of the people chanting it know what it means. Probably very few. Just like when you ask people, when they say from the river to the sea, what river? They have no idea. They can't name the river. They can't name the sea. By the way, it's from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. That's the reference. This is what Interfata means. This is why it's evil. This is why it is a call for violence. It's a call for terror. It's a call for revolution. Should universities just allow anybody to call for any kind of revolution whenever they want? Certainly, if somebody wants to write an op-ed in New York Times calling for Interfata, if they are serious, if they are actually putting together the mechanisms by which an Interfata would be launched, wouldn't that be inciting for violence? Wouldn't that be a violation of the First Amendment? Wouldn't that be not free speech but actual violence? Granted, if you're just a kid and you're just shouting Interfata, Interfata, you don't know what you're doing. You're not putting it, this is the context that those presidents were talking about. You're not putting the mechanisms in place to actually have a revolution. All right, maybe you have the legal free speech to do that, right, to do that. But should you be allowed to do it on a campus? Any more than should you be allowed to call for the re-enslaving of blacks on campus? I don't think so. I mean, there are just certain things that are uncivilized. That an educational institution in the name of educating should not tolerate. We should not be tolerant of all views. In educational institutions, there are certain views that should be beyond the pale. And you know what? Institutions can compete. Not all institutions can have the same exact standards, just like not all social media should have exactly the same standards. And let's see what happens. Let's see what facilitates good education. Let's see what encourages students to come. Let's see what encourages parents to send their kids to. Yeah, one of Freeman says enlightened institutions. That's what enlightened institutions are. Enlightened doesn't mean, yeah, you want to call for the killing of Jews, fine. You want to call the killing of homosexuals, fine. No problem. Go ahead. You want to burn crosses in the school thing? Oh, that's fine. Speak, speak, after all. No. No. They have to be standards. They should be objective. They should be clear. Professors, students should know what's acceptable and what's not. They shouldn't be, and they should be, I'll put it this way, they should be based on an objective standard of what is and what is not within the scope of reasonable. But yeah, I mean, the challenge there, of course, is what people consider reasonable today is complete nuttiness. And but this is why in private institutions, it's OK. They get it wrong. They can fix it. They can change it. No doubt that Facebook and Twitter all get it wrong. But the world does not end because they got it wrong. All right, let's see. All right, a few updates from Gaza. So I just want you to remember what interfaater actually means. So a few updates from Gaza. Oh, where is this? I had a list of a few things. OK, so we don't hear a lot about it in the news right now because it's, you know, it's passe. It's people aboard with it. It's gone. But so let's hit a few highlights. Israel still is fighting. They're still fighting significant fighting in the north of Gaza, where Israel is still trying to gain complete control of every part of the north. Remember, this is all very dense urban areas. And the areas in the north where there are still several Hamas strongholds, which Israel is slowly cleaning out and destroying. You might have seen video of Al-Assad University in the Gaza being blown up yesterday. And people were horrified as it was blowing up universities. Yes, Al-Assad became a symbol of Hamas. It not only was there that many of Hamas trained. It was also filled with guns, ammunition, rockets, and an intelligence center, tunnels, of course, leading in and out of. I think one of the best things that Israel is doing right now is it is destroying not just Hamas, but the symbols of Hamas. I think it is important to destroy the symbols of Hamas' power, the things that Hamas has built, anything associated with Hamas, including, by the way, the mosques. I've seen many destroyed mosques. And I am cheering for that. It needs to be a complete destruction, a complete eradication of this view of the world, of a Hamas view of the world, of an Islamist view of the world. Right. So they're still fighting. So they're still fighting going on in the north. And they keep popping up. They keep more and more resistance. And indeed, as I said the other day, this week I've seen some of the heaviest resistance we've seen since the beginning. In the south, Hanyunas is the main town in which Israel is operating right now. In the south, you have a heavy concentration of Hamas in Hanyunas. Israel has now surrounded Hanyunas completely. Troops have entered into the center of Hanyunas and they are hunting down the Hamas. Yesterday we saw video primarily from the north, but also from the south, of dozens of Hamas members surrendering or having been captured. And a lot of the news media is freaking out because the pictures show dozens and dozens of men basically down to their underwear in long lines. There's even a picture of them on the sand just outside the city seated with Israeli soldiers standing above them. And the caption is something about they were about to be killed and put into a mass grave by the Israelis, which is complete lie and complete made up. But it's the kind of stuff you see on Twitter and the kind of lies that are being circulated by the West and by Hamas and by their sympathizers. Anyway, you saw long lines of basically semi-naked men. What was interesting is all these men were military age. They were all 20s, 30s, 40s maybe. There were no women. There were no children. There were no babies. There were no elderly. And yet people were making comparison between Israel taking, quote, hostages and Hamas taking hostages, which is, again, disgusting and despicable that the people are doing this and that they get away with it, not that they get away with it in terms of being silent, but they get away with it in terms of people not standing up to them. So what does the Geneva Convention say about prisoners of war? Now, I am not a big advocate of the Geneva Convention, but that's the standard that people use, right? According to the Geneva Convention, prisoners of war may include the following. Members of armed forces, volunteer militia, including resistant movements, civilians accompanying the armed forces. All of these men are likely members of Hamas, affiliates of Hamas or Islamic jihad or people who are helping them out. When prisoners surrender, I'm quoting again from John Spencer, who did a whole thing about this, about the Geneva, when prisoners surrender, some unofficially, unofficial, right, surrender or capture, they're immediately searched. Many militaries have internal processes. In the United States military, it's just a search, silence, segregate, speed to the rear for processing and safeguard. In Israel and Gaza, combatants often have weapons and explosives, suicide vests and such. So the tactic of the IDF has been for a long time when dealing with them is to have prisoners remove their clothing down to their underwear from a distance to ensure that they're not a threat to their captors or other prisoners. Once searched, prisoners of war are rushed to safe areas, safeguarded for processing, for intelligence and detainment, this includes collecting individual information, so prisoners' information can be submitted to, you know, the Red Cross and other institutions, but also so that intelligence can start screening them and interrogating them. These, all these stripped-down prisoners were all put on trucks and shipped off to prisons in Israel, they've had to expand the prisons and open up some new ones in order to facilitate all the captured Hamas, they will go through interrogation by Israeli, by the Israeli intelligence security, Shin Bet, and by military intelligence to gain any kind of intelligence about where the leaders of Hamas are, where the tunnels are, where centers of command and control are, all of that stuff is gonna be part of what they're gonna be interrogated about. As I said, partial disrobing is standard practice in the Israeli military because of their experience with suicide bombers. Don't wanna be stripped down when you're captured. Don't encourage a culture of suicide bombers. So Israel's making real progress. Again, it is being super cautious, partially because of its own just-war theory indoctrination and partially because of the Israeli government's capitulation to the US government's pressure, which I think is absolutely wrong. I mean, the Israelis should be ignoring the Americans. They should stand up to Biden. They should do so proudly and vocally and constantly and in a clever PR way, they should not let the Americans slow them down. They should not let the Americans tell them how to fight a war. They should not let the Americans dictate to them. I mean, one of the things that has happened, just I was reading about it this morning, there's now indications that the Biden administration has told the Netanyahu government that they expect the war to be over by the end of the year. In other words, they're on a clock. They have three weeks. Now what do you think this does? This basically inspires Hamas. It basically tells Hamas, if we can just hide, if we can just manipulate the battlefield in a way that our leaders do not get captured and we can sustain ourselves somehow, some way for three weeks, we are safe. This is horrific. Israel should repeat clearly and unequivocally that it will not accept the timeline for Biden or anybody else. It will do whatever it is deemed necessary to defend itself. This war will last as long as necessary. Israel will bomb whatever is necessary. It doesn't accept the UN's authority. It doesn't accept the United States's authority over it. That it is an independent country that would decide its own fate for itself. Of course, Biden is not the first American president to put such pressure on Israel. Go back. You know what, Richard Nixon in 1973, Israel had the third Egyptian army, hundreds of thousands of Egyptian troops surrounded, basically had cut off all water and food. They were in the desert. They were starting to have real water shortages. Over 100,000 Egyptian soldiers could have died. This is 1973. Israel had surrounded them. They had no way to get food from water. Richard Nixon called Goldemir and said, you open up a supply route to them. We demand that you open up a supply route to them. Goldemir basically called him back and she said, I'm sending you a list of every single Israeli soldier who is missing, who we believe is in captivity by the Egyptian military. We demand that every single one of them be seen by somebody from the Red Cross. Once that happens, once every single one of our soldiers is accounted for and has been seen by the Red Cross, then and only then will I allow water in. Nixon said, but you're gonna have 100,000 or more Egyptian soldiers dying. And she said, then they will die. What do you think Richard Nixon did? Did he cut Israel off? Did he did the strategic reasons for why the United States supports Israel change? No. He forced the Egyptians to accept Goldemir's terms. Every single one of the prisoners was seen by Red Cross. And then and only then did Israel permit water to be provided to the Third Army. Unfortunately, that's I think the last time an Israeli Prime Minister's actually stood up to an American when Ronald Wilde Israeli's not to kill Yasser Arafat and to allow 6,000 Palestinian terrorists out of Beirut on safe passage on a ship to Tunisia. Israel said, yes, sir, we'll do what you say, Ronald Reagan. Of course, he promised them to, he would support them not after the Marines were killed. He tailed between the legs, America retreated. In 1981 and 82 during the Second Intifada that we just talked about, Alex Sharon twice or maybe three times had Yasser Arafat cornered, surrounded in the cross, ready to be murdered, killed, not murdered, killed in self-defense. George Bush called him and said, uh-uh, can't kill Yasser Arafat, retreat, leave him alone. But buses are blowing up, schools are blowing up, children are being killed, don't care, leave him alone. And even Alex Sharon, who was one of the tougher prime ministers Israel's ever had, withdrew, he listened to Bush. So this is throughout Israeli and US history, I've got to talk out there about, you can find it on YouTube, about the horrific nature of the Israeli-American relationship and how America has crippled and continues to cripple and has crippled for decades Israel's ability to defend itself and how that only makes things worse for Israel and the United States long-term. It's not unique to Biden, but Biden's in office right now, so to hell with him, right? He is the source of this. The US needs to back off and let Israelis do what they need to do. They know exactly what needs to be done. I think Netanyahu, this is the one time when Netanyahu's political, what do you call it, power lust, political power lust, is consistent with doing the right thing because the Israeli people want him to do the right thing this time. This time, he knows that if he doesn't destroy Hamas, he is out. And if he does destroy Hamas, he's probably out as well, but at least that gives him a chance at political comeback. I hope he's out for good and forever, but his only hope of staying is to really crush Hamas. So Netanyahu's survival instinct and his power lust are now consistent with actually what the right thing to do is. So let him do it, let it rip. And Israel should be a lot more aggressive than it is because every day, every day, we hear about Israeli soldiers dying and to a large extent those deaths are not necessary. The result of the fact that Israel is holding its punches, particularly when it comes to bombing from the air. All right, what else do we have? Yeah, we talked about this, I can't remember when it was, a week or two ago, two weeks ago. Actually, when I had Fleming Rose on, if you remember I had Fleming Rose on, when we had Fleming on, we talked about this, Denmark, a country from which Fleming Rose, they got published in the Danish cartoons. The Danish parliament has passed a law that prohibits the burning of the Quran and other religious scriptures in public places with up to two years in prison as a penalty. So I guess you can burn your Quran at home in a non-public space, but you can't burn a Quran in public. Now, this is a clear violation of free speech, but what is more important in a sense is why they're doing this. They're doing this because, not because Jews and Christians are complaining about the burning of the Old Testament or the New Testament, not because Christians are complaining about, I don't know, the depictions, the horrible depictions of Jesus and museums and so on. They're doing it out of sheer cowardice and explicit capitulation to the worst of the Muslims. They're doing it in capitulation to those people shouting at the father in the streets. They're doing it in capitulation to the Islamists in Europe who would indeed take over Europe and turn it into a Sharia law, totalitarian place. They're doing it as an act of surrender, as an act of submission to Islam. This is the worst kind of appeasement. Now, if you thought, okay, I mean, they're doing it because they really are offended by the burning of, but they're not, they don't care. They're doing it to appease the worst people in Europe today and they think that appeasement will work. All appeasement does is prove to the Islamists and I'm not even talking about the Muslims because I don't know if a majority of Muslims support this or not, but we're talking about the Islamists. Is this gonna satisfy the Islamists? Of course not. They will want the stopping of cartoons of any presentation of Muhammad, then they'll want other accommodations for Islam and more and more and more and more until they take over. I think it's unlikely they take over, but that's gonna be the direction. The more you appease them, the more they'll demand. Sweden, by the way, refused to pass such a law in spite of the fact that not passing such a law might deny membership in NATO because Turkey is so far still objecting to its participation in NATO, partially because of this idea of burning the Quran, which happens in Sweden more than it does in Denmark. And Sweden is not doing it because the politics of Sweden, the political parties on the far right are strong enough to prevent this from happening in Sweden. But things like this, passing of things like this will encourage far right political parties in Denmark to raise up. And it's not gonna be pretty when far right political parties raise up in Europe. All right, so that is the Quran. Okay, away from Islam. Oh, I just don't want to redo this tweet. This is good. I like this tweet. This is by an Arab, Louis Ahmed. He writes, as someone who fled the Middle East 10 years ago, I came to Europe in hopes of a secular rule of law that protects my right to freedom of speech and freedom from religion. These are the kind of Muslims we want, but I was mistaken. The Islamists who I fled from are thriving in the West and I'm manipulating democracy and the naivete of Westerners to advance the insidious agenda. Today, Denmark bans the burning of the Quran to appease them. In a few years to appease them. In a few years later, criticism of Islam will be banned. Once you give them a finger, they will take the whole hand. That's what they did in most countries. They've wielded political power. Now they enjoy 57 Muslim countries where criticism of Islam leads to imprisonment or death sentence. Why should the West change its laws to cater to Islam? It's literally insane. I cannot believe it's happening. I mean, that's courage. That's courage. And that's the kind of people we need. This is why I'm against kind of blanket bans. We want to allow safe passage to people like this to the West and keep the Islamists where they are. All right. The situation in Venezuela and Guyana is only getting worse. Venezuela basically is now announcing that it is ready to annex two thirds of Guyana's territory that since 1899 for over 100 years, Venezuela has claimed as its own. There've been two treaties, one in 1899 and one in 1960s that have basically granted this to Guyana. But Venezuela rejects that and it had this referendum which Maduro claims by a huge number of people participate in an overwhelming majority. 95% want him to, I mean, this is 95%. Anytime you get an election with 95%, you know it's rigged, right? That he is gonna take Guyana. Now we know why this is happening. It's happening for two reasons. One, Maduro needs to distract his people from the horrific state of Venezuela. He needs patriotism. He needs to rally them around a flag in order to save his cryptocratic, disastrous socialist regime. That's one. And second, Guyana just announced that there are vast deposits of oil and gas in Guyana and offshore ExxonMobil is actually developing some of those fines offshore. Venezuela's told ExxonMobil to leave that it is now gonna be Venezuela in territory and the Venezuela oil company will explore. As a response to that, the United States has announced that it will be involved in military drills with Guyana and that it reaffirmed its military alliance or some kind of protection that it has guaranteed Guyana at some point. Guyana itself has said that it is preparing to defend itself and its borders in case of a Venezuelan invasion. As I told you, Brazil has its military force, its army on high alert. I don't know what's gonna happen here. I don't know if the United States is gonna get involved. I don't know if Maduro actually wants to go to war. I wouldn't be surprised, by the way, if Maduro's allies, the Russians and the Iranians are putting him up to this as a way of distracting the United States, away from the Middle East and away from Ukraine. I wouldn't be surprised at all. This would be quite something for the Biden administration to manage another war, and this time in the Western Hemisphere, in our kind of backyard. But, you know, here we go. It's gonna be interesting to see what happens and it's gonna be interesting to see whether the United States gets drawn in and if the U.S. has some kind of defense alliance with Guyana, I guess it will have to. And what that will actually mean, what actually mean? I don't know what kind of forces Venezuela has. They're supported by Cuba, Iran, and Russia. Talk about an axis of evil, right? Yeah, Venezuela is a military that is weak but is wealthy because the military, over the last 15 years, has basically been taken over. Whatever means of production exist in the country have been taken over by the military. It's the way in which Boshavas and Maduras have been able to keep the military on their side as the country has fallen apart. They've been able to keep it on their side by basically giving whatever the country has to the military. So it is a kleptocracy where the military has basically stolen. The only people fed in the country are the military. The only people who have any money are the military. So there's the military, how competent it is, how able it is. Your guess is as good as mine. My guess is not very. All right, finally, Hunter Biden is again in a lot of trouble. Second indictment, he was indicted for gun charges. Now he's indicted for tax fraud. Wolf for failing to pay his taxes, for 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019. This is willful. And two counts of failing to file a tax return for 2017 and 2018, all in violation of tax law. So he has, where was this? Oh, I tried to mark it up. Anyway, if you remember, there's a plea deal and then the plea deal was rescinded and after the plea deal was rescinded, now there's an independent prosecutor. It does appear that the independent prosecutor is independent and is really going after Biden. Not only did the indictment include all the details about the fraud he committed vis-a-vis the IRS and taxes, but it also indicated the kind of expenses he had written off as part of his filing of taxes. Money itemized, here I'm reading from Washington Journal article, itemized how Hunter Biden allegedly spent money, including about $680,000 on various women over the course of four years. I mean, that's a lot of prostitutes. 680, well maybe a thousand an hour. You know, I don't know, there's a high end. So 680 prostitutes over four, maybe it's not that much. I don't know, $680,000 over four years and $190,000 in adult entertainment. Prosecutors listed a number of personal items. They say Hunter Biden inappropriately claimed his business expenses and his taxes, including rent payments for his daughter's New York apartment and $30,000 for a daughter's law school tuition. He also claimed there's a business expense payments for exotic dances, strip clubs, pornography and $10,000 of a sex club membership. Must be some sex club where you pay $10,000 of membership fee. Wow. Now, a lot of the money that came in to the various entities on which he did not pay taxes came in from Ukraine, China and one other country which I have forgotten. Anyway, this is, you know, next year is gonna be fun, right? So we're gonna have the trials of Biden and all the CD stuff about Hunter is gonna come out, but also I'm sure a bunch of stuff will come out about his relationship with his dad and whether money, whether he had dad got money and under what circumstances and how much and all of that. So there'll be massive legal challenges that Biden is going to face. And at the same time, you're gonna have four different lawsuits, four different criminal prosecutions of Trump and everything that involves. It's just gonna be, I mean, the quality of the people, the we are placing at the top, you know, for president is just pathetic, just absolutely pathetic and that the Democrats are rallying around Biden and that the Republicans are rallying around Trump. I mean, it says everything about the real state of this country, which is not good to say the least, not good. All right, let's see. Let's see. I guess people are speculating about how I know how much prostitutes cost. I have no clue, but a thousand an hour seems like a reasonable rate, right? What, let's see, yeah, we need a positive show tomorrow. All right, let's go over to chat. Again, thank you, Danielle Sosa, who gave $100 and got us very close to our target so we're only $20 away, so maybe $120. Shelly gave 20, we need one more 20. Kenny, thank you. Chad, thank you. Gail, thank you. Stephen, thank you. Thanks to all the, you can do a sticker, you don't even have to ask a question. We'd be good. Apollo, as he says, 1250 is average. It sounds like people have much more experience than I do. Okay, Reno says, why do so many people, or so many good people admire Henry Kissinger? Good people, I mean, I'd be curious to know which good people admire Henry Kissinger. I'd love for you to name a good person who loves Henry Kissinger. I think a lot of people admire Henry Kissinger because he was influential and powerful. I think people admire powerful men and influential men. And so I think that is part of why people attracted to Kissinger. I think people don't understand farm policy and don't understand what is necessary for farm policy. Reno says, Lex Friedman admires Henry Kissinger. Well, Lex is just confused. Lex is a good guy, but he's confused. He either doesn't know what Kissinger actually did or he doesn't understand the world of farm policy and how farm policy should needs to be conducted and why morality is important for farm policy and why Kissinger is the epitome of the wrong kind of farm policy. Ray Dalio is not a good guy, I don't think. I mean, the fact that he's made a lot of money and done well in business does not mean he understands anything about politics, does not mean he understands anything about the world beyond finance. And I don't think I've seen Ray Dalio speak. I've seen him talk about economics. He doesn't have a really good grasp. He is a catastrophizer. Why is a catastrophizer? And I don't think he has any good idea about farm policy. I mean, how many people out there in the world actually have an understanding of farm policy? Three, four, five in the whole world. I mean, there's just not that many people. So people admire Kissinger because he's been around forever. He got a Nobel Prize, even though he got a Nobel Prize for a piece that wasn't a piece for handing over South Vietnam to the North Vietnamese. People admire him because he was active, because he was there, because he opened up China. I don't know why people, but he is a pure pragmatist and pragmatism is not an admirable idea. Everybody's mixed out there. Everybody's mixed. And if you're mixed, and if you're not willing to stand up principle, and if you're not willing to take a real moral stand or something, then Kissinger's just about as good as you're gonna get. All right, still looking for $20, guys. $20, we've got 129 people watching live. Somebody out there should be able to do 10, five, or 20, and get us to the target. All right, friend of goes, I lost a significant value. My first car, bought by, from an army friend. Have you ever lost a significant sentiment or value like that? Have you shed tears over such a loss? I don't think I've ever shed tears, but yeah, I mean, I remember selling the car, you know, in which I brought both my sons when they were born from the hospital home. It was a Toyota Accord, red. It was the first real decent car I'd ever owned. And again, both my sons were brought in from the hospital in that car. So yes, so I know that the sense of sentimentality towards an object, because it revives certain memories. It brings forward certain values that are important. But I never shed literally a tear, and you know, it passes. It doesn't last for very long, things like that. Huam says, I thought the second interfaite was 2000, 2008. No, second interfaite ended around 2003, four, and in 2005, Israel withdrew from Gaza, so it withdrew not only troops, but it withdrew all Jewish civilians out of Gaza and basically left Gaza to the Palestinians who then brought in Hamas. So no, by 2005, there was no interfaite anymore. It had been basically crushed by Sharon's government. All right, we're down to $10, just $10, and we made our mark, we made our target. All right, Robert says, oversupplying positivity, no such thing, values are primary. Don't ever stop rocking out Iron Man's philosophy in your own life lessons. All right, thank you, Robert. And Matthew Stroud, yeah, problem is that I get fewer views, less money, I have to live. And in order to live, you have to be negative. That's the lesson I have learned from doing the Iran Book Show that life acquires navigativity because it's the only way to raise money. All right, Matthew says, watch Sherma, an economist, Angus Deaton. I could only do 30 minutes, it was so awful. Diggs at Rand, and so much obviously wrong thinking from them both. Yeah, and Angus Deaton is a decent economist and I like Sherma, and Sherma sometimes likes me and we did an interview, interviewed me, and he was very respectful during that interview, but he can't hold that respect. He can't hold Rand, and so he immediately has to undermine and undercut it. And it's sad, it's sad. I wanna like Sherma a lot more. Angus Deaton, again, is a Nobel Prize economist and he's a good guy and good economist. It's too bad they can't see beyond their narrow focus expertise because neither of them have much to contribute to be a world anyway close to what Rand has to contribute to this world. All right, last question, I love Lex, but one of his vices is that he's far too forgiving of other people's vices, I agree. Very hippie-dippie, see the best and the worst of people. Sounds like me, but even I don't go as far as Lex. Yes, I agree with you. There's too much emphasis on, I think, kind of a Christian emphasis of love thy enemy and or find positives in people who you know, don't deserve the positive we find in them and should be judged. He's not judgmental enough. He's not the virtue of justice is not strong enough in him. All right, everybody, thank you. Really appreciate, oh, we got one more. Here it says, Tipper Harrison and Morty Melnick at Camp North Star in Hamilton, Ontario, with good guys. They liked Henry Kissinger, but it just doesn't matter, all right? You know, they were good guys, I'm sure, but not good in foreign policy. That's, I mean, people could be good and wrong in foreign policy. I'm not implying that everybody who likes Henry Kissinger is a bad person. I'm just saying that they're just not good on this. They're just not good at evaluating foreign policy. Otherwise, they wouldn't admire Henry Kissinger. Enric says, many universities before the 1960s didn't allow political demonstrations and speech because it interrupted learning. That should be a standard again. Yeah, certainly some universities should adopt it and let's see maybe students would like that. Look, and this is the thing to remember and here's my positive note for the day and this will be it, right? We'll end on a positive. Most students don't go out and demonstrate. Most students at universities, even at the worst universities in the country, are not yelling into fodder. Even more so, most Muslims in Europe and most Muslims in the United States are not out there into the streets. If they were, there'd be millions, not just thousands. A vast majority of Muslims and a vast majority of students at universities do not support October 7th, do not support Hamas, do not support terrorism and violence and the horrors of wanting to fodder signifies. If John Bolton admired Kissinger, then John Bolton's wrong. And John Bolton is very mixed on foreign policy but he's better than pretty much anybody else out there who's being close to the foreign policy establishment. Andrew says, we, your position to the notion of overthinking, don't you think the AI doomerists are trying too hard to think through every potentiality, leading them to catastrophize? It's like the error from munitions. No, it's not overthinking, it's the thinking about it wrongly. It's not overthinking, it's the conceptualizing it wrong, not understanding the difference between a life form and a non-life form, a conscious being and a non-conscious being, a treating to a non-conscious being, the attributes of a conscious being, attributing will to something that has no will. But in terms of thinking out what AI can really do and what can really go wrong, there are things that can really go wrong and you wanna be careful. And absolutely in that, that's good kind of thinking. It's when they engage in science fiction, when they engage in false thinking, out of context thinking that they get into trouble, when they become rationalistic about what consciousness actually requires and their knowledge of what consciousness is and what it requires. All right, everybody, thank you. Thank you to all the superchatters, really, really appreciate it. We made our goal, we exceeded our goal, that is great. I will see you all tomorrow for a positive show at 2 p.m. East Coast time. See you there. Bye, everybody.