 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Book Show. Very welcome to Iran Book Show on this Thursday, Thursday of war. All right, so I know you've all been waiting to hear this, but I was wrong. I was wrong. I underestimated the irrationality of Vladimir Putin. I underestimated his complete insanity and how crazy he is, how uncalculated he is, and how willing he is to put everything on the line, including his own presidency for the sake of, what did we call it the other day? What did he call it? The greater Russian whatever, spirit, the greater Russian nation, the greater Russian ethnic group, the greater Russian homeland. And yes, in spite of the fact that I said I did not think that he would invade, he did. He's crazy. I should stop trying to predict what crazy people will do. That is probably my mistake. He is nuts. This is a suicide for Russia. It is probably a suicide for him, although we'll see how it all plays out. It is a disaster for everybody involved. It's obviously a disaster for the Ukrainian people, for the Ukrainian soldiers. I don't know if you heard today on Snake Island in the Black Sea, which is a small, tiny little island in the Black Sea, which had a research, a Ukrainian research facility, scientists, 13 soldiers there to defend the island. The Russians asked them to surrender. They refused. They were all killed to the last man. This is ugly, but this is war. This is the way war is. And I know there are the people out there from, you know, from Bronze Age pervert to some perverts who follow this show, who think war is cool, who think Vladimir Putin is a man because he is willing to go to war, and he's willing to kill, and he's willing to destroy, and he's willing to knock things down and blow things up and destroy human life. But no, Vladimir Putin is just another little Attila, another little monster, another little political hack whose life is worthless and whose life will be destroyed by his own actions. Nothing virtuous here, nothing worth emulating here, nothing worth admiring here. What you're seeing today is the worst of mankind, not the best, on the Russian side. And we will see. We will see what will happen. A lot of this is going to depend on the commitment of the Ukrainians to fight, the willingness of them to engage with the Russians, to fight them off, and to resist. We'll see. It's way too early to tell how this is going to play out. But this is not going to be cheap. This is not going to be cheap for Putin. This is going to be expensive. The casualties on the Russian side are ready mounting. Body bags are ready being shipped home. And T-72 tanks, which I've talked about in the past, are already being destroyed. Helicopters have already been brought down. Now, it's likely Russia wins this. They've got overwhelming force. But think about the motivation of the Russian soldiers. Thank you, Kevin. I appreciate that. Think of the motivation of the Russian soldiers. Why are they there? They don't care. I don't know if you saw the initial pictures of Russian prisoners of war captured by the Ukrainians. They don't look highly motivated to be doing what they're doing. What the hell are they doing there? Why were their families at risk? Was their, quote, liberty in danger? No, Russian troops are not particularly motivated. Russian people are out in the streets to protest. Thousands. Already, last I saw, 1,800 people are being arrested. That suggests to me that a lot of people out in the streets of 1,800 people have been arrested already. These are people with great courage, given what Putin does to his opponents, poisons them, tortures them, kills them, puts them in jail for life. We're seeing demonstrations in Moscow, in St. Petersburg, in smaller cities around Russia. Hard to find, by the way, these pictures in this news. It doesn't just appear in the feeds. When I look at Google News, it is nothing about this. Putin is taking an economy that is less than half the size of Germany's, less than a quarter of the size of Germany on a GDP per person basis. An economy that has been floundering for years. An economy with very little economic growth, dependent on natural resources. And that is it. Nothing else cooked. Thank you for the support. And now with sanctions, now with the crippling of assets, with the shutting down of the new gas pipeline to Germany. Please, for now, we'll see how long the West Resolve will hold out. He is about to cripple his own country. Putin has done nothing here, beneficial to anybody. He is completely detached from reality. This will make Russia poorer. It'll make Russia even more dependent on natural resources than it is, because they won't be able to do anything else. They're going to make Russia technology poor. Russia depends on its technological advancement on importation of technology from the United States. And the United States just banned that exports to Russia. Russia has just proved itself to be an aggressor nation, a nation committed to war, a nation of war mongers. Therefore, it is a pariah on the world. And the only thing, the only thing will allow Russia to gain anything from this. The only thing that can allow Russia to benefit at all from this is the West's weakness. And the West is already weak. I cannot believe that the United States still has an ambassador in Moscow. I cannot believe that we still have diplomatic relations with them. I mean, even Ukraine, only last night, cut off diplomatic relations with the Russians, which is kind of a joke. I cannot believe that Russia is still treated. Do you know the Russia right now? That Russia is chairs. The Security Council meetings of the United Nations? There's a good reason for you for us to leave the United Nations tomorrow. A pariah nation like Russia should not be a member of the Security Council, should not be in the United Nations. Of course, neither should three quarters of the countries that are in the United Nations be there this way. The whole institution should be dissolved. But it is the weakness of the West, which is the only possibility of Russia benefiting him. I mean, what Biden, poor, weak, senile, pathetic, old Biden should have done today, is not only cut off diplomatic relations with Moscow brought an ambassador home. Not any place sanctions of Putin himself. Note that no sanctions were placed on Putin, on a bunch of oligarchs surrounding Putin. How about freezing Putin's assets, I wish we could, in Switzerland? That would send a little shock signal to Putin. How about announcing? This would really be cool, right? How about announcing? A complete lifting of all restrictions on fracking, on production of natural gas, and in the export of natural gas from the United States, and the introduction of fracking and the production of natural gas from the UK. And guess who's rooting for Putin? If it's not your favorite former president, Trump, who still thinks Putin is a brilliant genius strategist who's manipulating the world as he plunges Russia into poverty and into suicide, Bannon, who thinks Putin is great. Because Putin, there's no woke in Putin. Putin doesn't tolerate woke and doesn't tolerate transgender people. So Putin is a good guy. Yeah, he only takes people he disagrees with and cancels them. But Putin knows how to cancel people. He literally cancels them. He puts a bullet in their brain. It is sick, sick to see the American right, including people here on this chat, sick to see the American right, the right that is supposed to represent the founding fathers, supposed to represent liberty and freedom in this country, supposed to stand up for individual rights, supposed to be pro-capitalists. It is sick to see a right defend a brutal dictator because he's anti-left, defend somebody who shoots his opponents, kills his opponents, and then people are comparing him to Justin Trudeau. Justin Trudeau is awful, horrible, pathetic. But Justin Trudeau is not invaded a country, has not killed dozens of people, has not murdered his political opponents. Not yet anyway. He's heading there. But not yet. And yet to you, it's all the same because there's only one enemy. There's the left. Oh my god, the left. And if we have to hug Hitler and adopt Hitler in order to defeat the left, let's go for it. This is not America. These are not people who should lead America. Flynn, Mike of Flynn, Trump's biggest cheerleader. Mike of Flynn is justifying Putin because he's fighting for his ethnic purity, I guess. This is what we've come to. Tucker Carlson, who for days and days and days now has been justifying anything Putin would do, has been cheerleading Putin. Why? Because Putin's a man's man. He knows how to use muscles. He knows how to take people out. Oh, we admire people like that. Because to hell with individual rights, tell us America. Tell us Americanism, tell us what this country stands for. We support muscle. You see it here in the chat with the guy putting up all those emojis of muscle because that's what we've come to. We've come to a point in this country where we admire men of muscle. We admire the thugs. We admire the warmongers. We admire the people who are willing to go out there and destroy and break all in order to attack the left. As long as we attack the left, individual rights are out. Reason is out. Capitalism is out. None of that matters. As long as we don't have transgender people. We, unfortunately, when I say we, I'm talking about much of the American rights, unfortunately, not all, not all, but much. Too many. Too many. Truly despicable and truly disgusting. Had to get that off my chest. Shali, thank you. Appreciate that. All right, let's put up a map. Because we like to go through maps. And we like to try to see what's actually happening in the world. So let's put up a map. Oops, not that. There we go. There's a map. Hopefully you guys can see that. It's a map of Ukraine. The red dots with things splashing out of them. Those are places that Russia this morning was already bombing. Those are the major cities. You can see Kiev right there. You can see running through Ukraine. And I don't know, do you see that when I, yeah, I think you can see that when I draw this box. You can see inside this box, you can see a major river that flows through Ukraine, that separates Ukraine from East to West. It is a river that flows right through Kiev. One of the sad things today for me was watching some of the TV coverage. As a battle was raging for the airport in Kiev, to see the bridges and the rivers that I have traveled across, places that I've been in Kiev, Maidan, which is kind of at the center in front of, right in the center of Kiev, where the revolution in 2014 occurred, it was sad to know that that area was now basically a war zone. So you can see this river separates East and West. There's a good chance that the Ukrainians are going to try to muster their forces across this river and try to do what they can to prevent the Russians from crossing it. The challenge that they face is that if you look to the north of Ukraine, you can see Belarus. Now if you remember last year, Belarus was in trouble. The Belarusian dictator was accused of cooking the books, was accused of stealing an election. There were tens of thousands of people in the streets, maybe hundreds of thousands of people in the streets. There was a good chance that his regime would be overthrown. And he basically clamped down on those people. And the Russians supported him, supported him completely. And Putin came in and offered troops of support and gave him political cover as he repressed the demonstrations. Belarus is paying Putin back now by allowing Russian troops to invade Ukraine from the north. And the problem with that is, the danger with that is, of course, that they can now come at Kiev from the west so they can get to the other side of the river and attack Kiev from the west. And you're seeing that. One of the first things, one of the interesting things, and I don't have really good explanation for this. I'm curious if anybody out there has one. But one of the interesting things is that one of the first targets of the Russian forces was the former Chernobyl, the former nuclear power plant that, of course, melted down during the Soviet Union during the 1980s. And that is a depository of a lot of highly radioactive material. And that was the first target, one of the first targets of the Russian forces. Now, it could be that's by accident because it's on the road to Kiev. It could be that they have some other goal in terms of what they want to do with Chernobyl in terms of threatening the west, in terms of threatening Ukraine. I don't quite get it because anything they do there, in terms of releasing radioactivity, could very well drift into Russia. So it's an area where you do not want to be shelling. You do not want to be bombarding because you could hit one of those depositories of radioactive material left over from Chernobyl. And so Ukrainian forces fought them off. But ultimately, the Russians took that. I think Ukrainian forces are now basically trying to defend Kiev, particularly from the north, where so the Russians are coming in, if you will, from where it says, pop-chep, pop-chep, pop-chep up here, right up there. They're coming in from that region, from this region over here, towards Kiev. And they're coming in from this region over here, towards Kiev. And I think that much of the Ukrainian military will be devoted to defending Kiev from those flanks. One of the most interesting battles today was occurred in the airport, the international airport outside of Kiev. Again, an international airport I have flown into. The airport was originally, the Russians landed helicopters in the airport with forces. Those forces took the airport from the Ukrainians. They took control over the airport. I think the reason was, even though the Russians had bombed, I think most of the airports in Ukraine, my sense is that they had kept that airport free and they were gonna take control over it and then fly troops in, and potentially armored troop carriers into the airport, which is only about 10 miles outside of Kiev and then drive them towards Kiev. Tonight, reports out of Kiev are that the Ukrainians have taken it back. I have a theory about this. I suspect that the Russians are poorly equipped. I suspect that the Russians don't have night fighting equipment. They don't have the kind of equipment the Americans have, the Israelis have, and maybe the Ukrainians have. And the Russians are poorly equipped to fight at night, so that once night fell, the Ukrainians could use their night vision goggles that they probably bought from the Americans or were given by the Americans and to take back the airports. And it looks like they've taken back the airports and they hold it now. Whether they can hold it long-term is hard to say. The Russians really want that airport. It is a direct link into Kiev. But that doesn't save Kiev because as I said, you've got forces coming in from the North, driving towards the capital. Putin last night said that he basically is going to kill the leadership of Ukraine. He called them Nazis. He's gonna denazify Ukraine. There's a sick mind. Think about the president of Ukraine. I don't know if you know this, but the president of Ukraine is a Jew who has family members who died in the hands of the Nazis. And yet Putin was calling him a Nazi, talking about denazification of Ukraine last night. That's how sick and pathetic Putin actually is. And we will see whether he gets to do that. I hope the president of Ukraine has a retreat plan. Probably to Lviv. Lviv is the closest to the West you can get. It is a beautiful city on the West side of Ukraine, close to Poland. From there, you can easily escape into Poland and get away out and run a government from exile over there. At the same time as the Russians have attacked from the North and from the Northeast, they've also attacked from the East itself, so from this entire region, from the Donetsk area, which is these Eastern provinces that declared the autonomy from Ukraine a while back. And they are pushing West from there, and they've also invaded from Crimea and going North, and they've also tried to land from the sea. Another key target other than Kiev is Odessa, right down here. Oops, let's see, right down here. What the Russians would like to do is basically cut Ukraine off in the Black Sea. So they would like to go from Donetsk all the way to Crimea and from Crimea all the way to Odessa and to the Romanian border and capture that entire territory and keep it there and make it Russian and cut Kiev off from its only connection to the sea. Russia has overwhelming numbers. I think it's inferior technologically. Russian weaponry is inferior, generally, to Western weaponry by a big margin. It's not even close. These MiGs and Sokolov planes, I mean, luckily for the Russians, they're not fighting NATO. NATO would wipe them out in days. I mean, literally in days. Put aside the nuclear site, conventional weapons, NATO crushes Russia in days. It wipes out its air force very, very quickly. You know, a T-72, a T-80 has never put down an American Abrams tank or a German tank. The American tanks are far superior to Russian tanks. German tanks are far superior to Russian tanks. Israeli tanks are far superior to Russian tanks. The only good Russian weapon system they have is the AK-47. That's about it. And that was produced a long, long, long time ago, almost a century ago. So Ukraine actually has, to the extent that they have sophisticated Western weaponry, has a technological advantage. For example, T-72s have gone down in flame because the Ukrainians are using javelin American javelin anti-tank weapons. Javelin anti-tank weapons are incredibly superior to anything the Russians have. And, you know, if the Ukrainians have enough of them, and I hope that one of the things the United States right now is shipping as many javelin anti-tank missiles into Ukraine as possible, hopefully through Poland or through one of the other bordering nations. That is the one weapon that can really, really, really change things on the ground. The Russians, again, have a huge numerical advantage, but the javelin is far superior weapon system to anything the Russians have. Russian tanks are little death traps. T-72s, T-80s are death traps for the soldiers inside of them. The javelins can stop an entire convoy of tanks by taking out the tanks in front. You can slow down whole columns. You can take them out and you can change the balance of power very quickly. Warsaw is seeing the use of anti-aircraft and anti-helicopter missiles. Again, American weapons systems that the Ukrainians are using and they've taken down a number of helicopters. And supposedly they've taken down a number of airplanes as well. So this is far from a done deal. Well, again, Russia will probably win this in quotes because it'll be a victory on the ground, but it'll be a disaster for Russia. The Ukrainians have a shot at at least making this very expensive for Putin, very expensive for Putin. And the more expensive this becomes from Putin, the more expensive this becomes for Putin. The more likely it is that somebody in the Kremlin takes him out. It's not hard to tell how popular Putin really is. It's hard to tell what the tolerance of the Russian people or even the Russian generals is for casualties. It's hard to tell. Writing stuff in all caps really makes a difference on the chat. You should all do that. You should all start writing in all caps because that makes it true. That makes it true. Putin is likely, to the extent that these oligarchs who are losing their access to their beautiful condos and beautiful homes in London to the point where these oligarchs are losing access to their bank accounts in London and New York, you know, a lot of those beautiful new condos that were built on Fifth Avenue were owned by Russian oligarchs to the extent that they are no longer welcoming the United States. They cannot access their assets in the United States. If you continue to do that, if you continue to shun them, there is a chance, there is a chance that they will turn to Putin and destroy Putin. So, yeah, isn't Chelsea owned by the Russians? They own a lot of assets in the UK and now those assets are frozen. Oh, I hope they are. That was my understanding of what Johnson announced today. Putin could easily be toasted. Putin could easily be toasted. He could easily be overthrown by his own people. He could easily be overthrown by people within his own government. Colt says, from reliable government of Ukraine, so seven helicopters, seven fighters, 24 tanks, and 24, 20 armored vehicles of Russian Federation have been taken out. Now, you know, it's impossible. Look, there's a fog of war right now. The fog of war is really, the first few days, it's almost impossible to tell what's going on. And, you know, even on the ground, it's hard to tell because you might be in a particular area, you don't know what's going on in other areas. It's very difficult to tell. But those seem like reasonable numbers. Of course, those are not very large numbers. I mean, the Russia has a lot of tanks. Taking out 24 tanks is no big deal. But if you start accumulating the numbers, if it starts getting into the hundreds, and if the Ukrainians start getting a little confident in terms of taking out these tanks, you can slow them down. And again, you have to ask. You have to ask yourself. To what extent are Russian soldiers really motivated here? To what extent are they willing to die and fight for what? For what? For Putin? What are they fighting for? The motherland? How many of them really believe any of that? How many of them think they think that is worth fighting, dying, risking their lives for? So, you know, I don't think, I think this is gonna be, as I said from the beginning, I don't think this is gonna be, not from the beginning, from before the war, I think this is gonna be quite costly for Putin. I think this is gonna be very costly for the Russian people. And you know what it wonders? How long will Putin survive? But it really depends on the willingness of the Ukrainian people to fight. They've got something to fight for. They're freedom, they're liberty. They've got something to fight for. Todd, thank you, that $100 is very appreciated. He says this will end for the moment very badly for everyone. Everyone loses in war, absolutely. War is a lose, lose, lose scenario. Nobody wins in a war. Nobody wins in a war. Even that parent winner is not one. People die, economies get destroyed, lives get destroyed, families get destroyed. So, it really depends on, again, the Ukrainian's willingness to fight and their ability to fight. Supposedly today, one of the government announced that they will issue automatic rifles to any Ukrainian who wants one. If they're willing to fight and defend their country, they say, who knows if you believe, I mean, it's hard to believe anything coming out of the region, that they've distributed over 10,000 such weapons in Kiev. Hopefully they've distributed a lot more over the days to come. They've also, unfortunately, made it illegal from men from the age of 18 to 40 or 45 or something like that to leave Ukraine. So, they're gonna force them to fight. People who flee should be allowed to flee. The government's job is not to force you to protect your home. If you don't wanna protect your home, you can shun them later if you want. Thank you, whoops. Thank you, Jared. So, that is the situation. Somebody says the Ukrainians killed a lot of Jews in World War II. Yeah, they did. So, the Russians, so the Poles, but the party responsible for the killing of the Jews were the Germans. So, should we be anti-Germany? Should we condemn all things German because Germans killed most of, you know, my family who was still in Europe? One of my grandfathers comes from a small village in Poland, not far from the Ukrainian border. So, in Eastern Poland as part of, that is very close to Lviv in that area in Ukraine. So, I have, I had family in that region. They were all wiped out during the Second World War, in which many people in Eastern Europe helped the Nazis, did what they did. Ukraine reformed too. They elected a Jew as a president of the country, a comedian, but a Jew. That's pretty amazing. That's pretty amazing. All right, I'm glad I was telling my wife today that I am so glad that I've already been to Russia, that I've seen St. Petersburg, that I went to the Hermitage, that I went to Moscow, that I've been in Red Square, that I've been to all these places because I'm never going again, or not as long as Putin is around, who knows how long he'll be around. But, you know, I'm glad I've seen all these places. Of course, I'm also glad I've been to Kiev. I've been to Kiev many times. I have, on my calendar, literally on my calendar, I don't think I quite booked a hotel room, but I know which hotel I would stay. I was supposed to be in Kiev on, I'll tell you the date, it's April, yeah, April 28th. And I'm supposed to be in Kiev. It's clear that I won't be in Kiev on April 28th now, so sad, and sad that, you know, who knows what's gonna happen to the kind of people who invited me to Kiev, kind of the free market think tanks, the pro-liberty think tanks that exist in Kiev, the ones who are fighting, the Ukrainian government to be more capitalist and to be more respectful of individual rights, those are gonna be the first victims of whatever government puts, whatever Putin puts in their place. I wonder if you can ask, have I ever visited the Sinai Peninsula? That's a funny question, I wonder if you can. Yeah, I mean, I've hiked most of the Sinai, not most of Sinai, I've hiked much of the Sinai Desert. You know, we used to, as a family, we used to go down along the Red Sea coast, and as a kid, we used to swim on the beaches of the Sinai Desert on the Red Sea. I have scuba-dived in Sharma-Sheikh, I have snow-cold in Dahab, and I have watched all the nudists from Scandinavia, Follick in Nueva, all along the beach, and I've climbed Mount Sinai, so yes, I've been to Sinai. Never again, I'll never be there again, so again, I'm glad I did it when I did it because I won't go again, so it is sad. The whole thing is sad. You know, Ukraine is not exactly a bastion of freedom, but as compared to Russia, it is, it is. As compared to Russia, it's much freer. It's compared to Russia, it has an opposition. As compared to Russia, it is not authoritarian and it is not threatening to invade anybody. As compared to Russia, it is a bastion of freedom. As compared to, I don't know, Germany, it's not. But these things are on a spectrum, unfortunately, which there was a country in the world today that you could say is free. Is the United States free? Frank asked if I saw the burning bush. Absolutely, absolutely I saw the burning bush. Haven't you ever seen a bush burn? All right, what else? So, you know, it's a sad day for Ukraine. I think it's a sad day for the Western world. The question, of course, now is, I think what will happen here is that Putin wants a quick war. He would like to get to Kiev quickly. I don't think he has to occupy the entire country. What he wants is to get to Kiev quickly. He wants to get rid of the current government. He wants to install his own puppet regime in Kiev. He wants to install an authoritarian government in Kiev that is similar to the one in Belarus, similar to the one in Kazakhstan. And basically make it a satellite state of Russia. These are people who will do exactly what Putin tells them to do. He will dominate Ukraine and then he'll leave. So he will leave and he'll put the West in a quandary. Should they impose sanctions? Or shouldn't they impose sanctions? Now that he's left, now that it was over, should they recognize the new government in Ukraine? Or shouldn't they? And this is where Western weakness will encourage them to fold and to give in. So that's the plan. The only thing that could stop really that plan is basically for the Ukrainians to fight it out. And for the West to supply them with all the weapons that they need. For the Ukrainians to slow the Russians down to make this long, to bog the Russian army down into prolonged combat, to make it super, super, super expensive for Putin and to get the Russian people wild up so that they rebel against Putin. The only hope for Ukraine is that this gets stopped by Russia, by the Russian people, by people opposed to Putin. And the only way they can do that is by making this super expensive, super expensive in terms of blood, in terms of lives for the Russians. And that means destroy as many tanks, get as many, knock down as many airplanes out of the sky and make this as costly as possible for the Russians. Make this a disaster. Make this another Afghanistan for the Russian forces. The last time Russia invaded a country was during Afghanistan. Donna, thank you. I appreciate it and I'm glad you're learning a lot. So, you know, you won't, you know, I've watched a little bit of television, but you don't see kind of a real analysis of this on the news. Even the American generals are kind of so wimpy when they analyze this stuff. It really is pretty pathetic. And they're afraid to call a spade a spade. They're afraid to call Putin what he really is. They're afraid to question Russian military hardware, even though the United States has gone up against that hardware in like an Iraq war twice. And the Israelis have gone up against this hardware all over the world. So it is interesting how weak the Russian weaponry system is. So, yeah, let's hope that the Ukrainian people are up to the challenge. Let's hope the Ukrainian people can defend themselves. Let's hope the Ukrainian people can make this as bloody as possible for the Russians and fight, fight these bastards with everything that they have, with everything that they have, yeah. And if Tucker Carlson defends Putin again tonight, I hope you'll stop watching him because that's really the only tool you have against Tucker Carlson is just stop watching him. All right, happy to, oh, a few other things I wanted to say. Oh, yeah, I just wanted to say this because it's like this is the insanity of people on the left right now. You know, I talked about the insanity of people of the right. I talked about Trump and Bannon and Flynn and Tucker Carlson and the insanity there. But here's the other insanity that you get from the left. John Kerry today, John Kerry came out and said, something like, oh, this is really sad because, you know, I hope this doesn't make Putin, distract Putin from his commitments to reduce CO2 emissions to, I hope it doesn't take his eye off the ball in terms of climate change, which is the real enemy of mankind, right? I don't know, something like that, I'm paraphrasing. Really, people are dying. Ukraine is trying to defend itself from an aggressor. Ukraine is trying to defend itself from somebody who wants to denazify it, whatever the hell that means. And what you're concerned about right now is climate change. That's it, that's what's important right now. This is what you say on the day of the invasion that he might take his eye off the ball of climate change as if Putin gives a damn about climate change. I mean, these people are so nutty and delusional and you've got it on both sides, the left and the right, they're all crazy, they're all crazy. I mean, where is some reason and rationality about any of these topics? Climate change, that's the problem. And then Biden in his announcement today, God, he was almost half asleep. The sanctions are pathetic. I said this at the beginning of the show. Cut off diplomatic relations with Russia. Bring our ambassador home. Put all these sanctions on Putin himself. I see political leaders afraid to put sanctions on political leaders because they're afraid other countries will put sanctions on them. So like political leaders, you know, off limits. Really? But it's political leaders that are making these decisions. I mean, everybody, everybody, everybody in American politics today is a pathetic loser. I don't know what we do with this. I really don't wanna, don't know what we do with this. How do we get out? How do we get some decent people? Yeah, did they cut off Swift? No, but the Europeans don't wanna cut them off Swift because the Europeans are afraid of Russia. And Biden is accommodating the Europeans by not cutting them off from Swift. All right, we got a lot of questions. I think most of them, hopefully all of them, are related to the topic. And so let's jump in. We've got a lot of live viewers. So please, to the live viewers, I'd ask you just before we go on a couple of things. One is we're gonna keep on talking about Ukraine and Russia. We've got a lot of questions about Ukraine and Russia here. But I have a few things to ask of you. One is very simple. Just like the show. If you find it at all interesting, if you get any value from it, please like it. It helps with the algorithms. It helps the show tremendously with the algorithms. But second, if you like what I'm saying here, you might like other content that I produce. If you're not a subscriber, please subscribe. That would be fantastic. We'd love to have you as part of what we're doing here. It would be amazing. And then for those of you really into this and like it and as regular listeners and so on, please support the show. You can support the show on uranbookshow.com slash support on Patreon or subscribe star. It's that support that makes the show possible. It makes it possible for me to do what I do to spend as much time as I spend with you guys and try to convey my views, some education, some learning, some rah-rah motivation for all of you. So you all have an opportunity to support all that through uranbookshow.com slash support or Patreon or subscribe star. And of course, the other option, since you're here live right now, you can support uranbookshow through the super chat feature like you're seeing many people do. We have a daily goal of $600 for the super chat. We're up to 508 already. So we're very close to the 600, but there's no reason we can't go to a thousand today. So with this many people watching, hopefully there's more people who are interested in asking questions, making comments, just getting my attention or just supporting the show like some of you have by like Todd did by just making a contribution on the super chat. But use this an opportunity, ask me anything, about anything, although we will take priority for the questions on the topic. I will start as always with $20 questions and then we will keep going. Applejack815 says, writes, this was the first question we got today for 20 bucks. Russian's uncontested invasion feels too close. Like it's just across the border. I don't mean Canada. It's a helpless sense that Russia won't stop there and no one in Europe will stand up to him. What do you think? So it does feel very close and it feels very close to a large extent because of not just television. We've had that for decades now, not even live television. We've had that for a long time, but now you can go to Twitter and get a constant live feed from people on the ground where it's happening. This is how we know about the downed Russian helicopters. This is how we know about the destroyed tanks. We know a lot of that from footage taken on iPhones, on smartphones and put up through Twitter. So it brings it right onto your hand, right into your living room, right into your place. Now, also the West pathetic response, the fact that the Europeans are just sitting around. I mean, while I do not believe the United States should be intervening, I don't think this is our business. I don't think we have a stake here. Germany has a stake. If I were Finland and Sweden, I think one of the responses to Putin, and this is one of the senses of which I think he could lose, is Finland and Sweden should immediately request admission to NATO. That would horrify Putin to have Finland on his northern border being a member of NATO. Finland has not become a member of NATO, neither has Sweden. But imagine if as a cause of this, one of the negative consequences that Putin gets is a Finland that joins NATO. I think that would be beautiful. I think that would be just. I think that would be terrific. So those are the kind of things that the West could do. I hope they do do it. I hope it's done tomorrow. It'd be great if the Finnish government met tomorrow and immediately put in a request, and NATO, which is meeting tomorrow, immediately granted the request and made them a member of NATO. It would be cool if the Swedes did the same thing. That would be immediately a loss for the Russians. That would immediately put Putin on the, he might gain Ukraine and put NATO forces on his northern border. So a lot can be done by the West. And it really is the logic stand, a question of are they willing to do it? Will they do it? So, you know, I understand your frustration because we're so weak, but let me say this. I do think the Ukrainians are fighting. It's hard to tell right now, fog of war, but I do think the Ukrainians are fighting. I wouldn't give up on the Ukrainians. Not in the sense that they can win this, but in the sense that they can make it so costly for Putin that he might be overthrown as a consequence or he might be so weakened as to be pathetic in the future. So don't give up on the Ukrainians. And, you know, maybe, maybe this will be a wake up call for the Europeans and they'll start investing more in their own defense. Europe should be intervening here. Europe should help Ukraine defend itself. Europe should deploy forces against Russia. And let's be clear, at least in my view, and I think, you know, again, European forces would crush Russia, would crush Russia, given their technological superiority, their superiority in weapons. This is something Germany should be very interested in. This is something Poland should be very... Oh, one interesting thing, already a small loss for Russia is that, what's his name? Or the one in Turkey came out against Russia and the invasion of Ukraine. He condemned Russia. Orban in Hungary, Russia's biggest ally within the European Union, has come out and condemned the attack on Ukraine. So Russia's allies, the countries that Russia can count on in Europe to help it. Hungary, and then not exactly in Europe, but still an important member of NATO, Turkey, which have been very friendly with Russia, both countries have condemned his attack on Ukraine to their credit. Indeed, Turkey has been selling drones to the Ukrainians. Let me give you one other kind of positive story here in terms of the weakness of the Russians. You know, Russia fought a proxy war with Turkey last year. You probably didn't notice this because nobody cares in America often. And in much of the world about these little wars that happen in remote parts of the world. But the fact is that there was a war fought last year between a ally of Turkey and an ally of Russia. And the Turks whipped the Russians ass. I mean, they whipped them. The Turks were represented by Azerbaijan. And the Russians were represented by Armenia. And Turkish drones turned out to be the decisive weapon in the war. And they whipped the Russian tanks, they whipped Russian technology, they whipped Putin's favorite, I guess, republic in the Caucasus. So Azerbaijan beat Armenia last year. So, you know, Ukraine has drones, it has Turkish drones, it has weaponry from Europe, it has American javelin and stingers. Don't give up on them is my point. Don't give up on them. This is not a done deal. This is not finished. I don't think. All right, let's see. Tyler, thank you. He says, thanks for the show. Really appreciate it. Where's Todd, thank you, $100. He says, come on now, hit the like button and subscribe value for value. Thank you, Todd. Adam Campbell, another $100. Well wishes for all the Kyra-Ugonovas in Ukraine and Russia tonight and over the coming months. Kyra-Ugonova, of course, is the heroine of We The Living. Let's go read We The Living. It's a good time to read We The Living and get a sense of what that part of the world is like when ruled by an authoritarian thugs. So thank you, Adam. And thank you for reminding us of We The Living. All right, let's Michael ask, is this like Hitler invading Poland? Was Hitler smart and more powerful than Putin? How smart was Hitler? How smart was Hitler? He looked really smart in 1939. By 1945, he had shot himself in the bunker after destroying his own country, killing millions and millions and millions and millions of Germans of his sacred Aryan race. Hitler was a loser. Hitler was an idiot. Hitler was a megalomaniac who couldn't think himself out of a box. Hitler made strategic error after error, but of course he did, because as a power-lusting megalomaniac, you're irrational. And irrationality is what? Anti-reality. Anti-reality means you're gonna make lots and lots and lots of mistakes. No dictator is smart, rational, calculated, efficient, effective, even though Donald Trump calls Putin all these things. He lost. He is a loser. He got killed and he killed his beloved people, so-called beloved people with him. For what? For nothing but death and destruction. Is Putin smarter or less than Hitler? I don't know. What differences do we make? They're both authoritarian thugs and therefore we'll do a lot of stupid things. Let's see. Shai says, did you see Zelensky, banned man from leaving the country and is implementing a draft? Yes, I saw that. It's horrible, but it's what everybody does, right? Every country in the world has done it, including America. War after war, it's always done, right? If I went to Israel and the war was announced, if I was young, they wouldn't let me leave as an Israeli citizen. I couldn't get on a plane and leave the country during a war. They would, I would be enlisted immediately into the reserves and put it on the front. So there's nothing unique about this, even though it's horrible and statused, but it's horrible and statused within the context of, this is what is done in every single country in the world, even some of the freest countries in the world, this is what is done. So it's terrible. Ukraine's still the victims, but disgusted by all governments involved today. Yeah, but you can't make moral equivalencies here. It's just not the same. Every government in the world would do what Zelensky did. And not all governments in the world who would do that are the equivalent of Putin. It's just not the same thing. We owe us the meatball, 50 bucks, thank you. Was there any basis to speculation several months ago about Putin's health? Is there circumstances where this could be a rational decision from Putin's point of view? No, it's never rational to initiate force. It's never rational to attack a country that is not a threat to you. It is never rational to engage in war, to initiate war, to start a war, never. I don't know anything about Putin's health, so speculation is meaningless, it's completely arbitrary from my perspective. I have no idea, no idea if it means anything or if it stands for anything, represents anything. Philip asked, thank you for all your work, Dr. Brooke. The Ukrainian military is taking donations. Everybody check Ukrainian government's Twitter, Super Chat, won't let me post links. Yes, I saw that. There are websites that you can go to donate money directly to Ukraine, hopefully so they can buy military equipment to crush these bastards. Tom says, should we encourage Turkey to close the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles, cut Russia off from the Mediterranean? Yes, I mean I'm a little worried because one of the reports I saw, and again, fog of war, hard to tell, but I think this is legit, one of the reports I saw is that almost the entire Russian fleet or significant portion of the Russian fleet is right now in the Eastern Mediterranean. It's off the coast of Syria. The Russians have a large naval base in Syria, one of the reasons they fought so hard to help the Assad regime and to maintain it in Syria is to keep that base. And the entire Russian fleet is there, and I wonder if they did that in case they needed to open the straits, these are the straits that are from the Black Sea and into the Mediterranean Sea and it's very narrow and Turkey controls both sides of those and Turkey could theoretically close those, but of course what would happen if the Russian fleet was there bombarding Turkey? So I am skeptical about Turkey's willingness to do that. It would be an act of war against Russia. It would be perceived by Russia as an act of war. I doubt that Turkey is willing to take that stand, particularly with the entire Russian fleet, including ships they had in the Mediterranean, including ships they had in the Indian Ocean, are all now in the Eastern Mediterranean, which means that they already, if NATO does something, if Turkey does something to act. Some people have speculated they're gonna go after Israel. No, they're not gonna go after Israel. But they are in a position to defend the Bosphorus Straits. They are in a position to inflict real pain on Turkey in the case that they close the Bosphorus Straits. Anyway, I am not technically a military expert, but that's the best of my understanding of kind of what is going on and what are the stakes with regard to Turkey acting that way. So that would be a declaration of war by NATO and I think NATO without the U.S. should declare war on Russia. But with the U.S. it should not, because I don't think the U.S. should be in war with Russia, but I think NATO free of the U.S. should engage with Russia and kick them out of Ukraine. But that's because I think Europeans have a massive interest in this war, which Americans don't. Does Poland really want a large border with Russia? Does Romania, does Romania is also a NATO member? Does the Czech Republic, no, Czech Republic doesn't have one, but Slovenia would have one, Slovakia, sorry, Slovakia would have one. And so in Austria, all countries that would have a direct border with Ukraine as a Russian satellite with Russian forces in Ukraine. Travis asks, any book recommendations for learning about this situation, global relations in general? Not this situation, I have no idea what books to recommend for this situation, really nothing. Global relations in general. I definitely would recommend Ilan Giorno's books, Winning an Unwinnable War in his book on Israel. I don't know, I mean you'd have to read a lot of history. You'd have to read about the whole history of Eastern Europe. You'd have to read a lot of different perspectives on this. I also follow foreign affairs, although foreign affairs tends to be wimpish and leftist. But I try to read widely about the topic for a variety of different sources. It's very difficult to find one good source. But no, unfortunately I don't have clear-cut recommendations, particularly not for situations that are so new and fresh, kind of. Alejandro asked, did the U.S. funded Nazi coup in 2014 in Ukraine? No, no, no, no. I'm sure they helped the coup, but the coup was not a Nazi coup. The coup was a pro-liberty coup. The coup was a pro-freedom coup. The coup was not a Nazi coup. I've met people who participated in that coup. I've met people in Ukrainian parliament. I actually gave a talk at the Ukrainian parliament once to people who were part of that. Give me a break. These are not Nazis. They're not exactly free market people. They're not exactly objectivists. But they're not fascists and they're not communists. And they're not lackeys of Russia. And that's what Russia doesn't like about it, that they're not lackeys of Russia. Paul says, what effect will this have on Putin's support of the Syrians? Well, it depends on the outcome, right? I think he will continue to support the Syrians. Syria, everybody says, oh, Donald Trump, this would have never happened under Donald Trump. Donald Trump was a master. He handled Putin so well. Well, right under Donald Trump's nose, Putin basically became one of the most powerful players in the Middle East. He basically became the most powerful player in Syria. He became the dominant force in Syria. You know, he secured his naval base on the Mediterranean. He secured an air force location for his air force in Syria. He got his lackey Assad to remain as president. Single-handedly, Putin managed to take over Syria and to protect his lackey in Syria when he was about to fall, in spite of the fact that the Americans wanted him to fall, in spite of the Americans being on the other side of this. Under Trump, Trump allowed Putin to have his way in Syria. So no, Trump is part of the tradition of American weakness vis-a-vis Putin, vis-a-vis authoritarians all over the world. You don't think that the world was watching when Trump groveled before the brutal dictator of North Korea. You don't think they watched as he called him his best friend. They don't think he watched as he held that little communist North Korean flag when he was in Singapore. You don't think they watched him demean himself before that little man from that little monster from North Korea? You don't think they learned the lessons from that? How weak America is? I mean, we have had a series of American presidents from George Bush senior through Bill Clinton, through George Bush, through Obama, Trump, and now Biden who have no foreign policy strategy, who have no idea of how to do foreign policy, have no conception of American interests or American strengths, have no idea what American first would look like, who are absolutely unequivocally pathetic. And we've seen, we've seen that whole thing, whole thing. Trump did nothing with regard to the Iranians. Absolutely did nothing. He killed one general. And everybody thought he was, whoa, didn't take out their nuclear capabilities, didn't take out anybody. They killed Americans, and he took out one general. Yay, what a hero Trump is. He took out an Iranian general. Wow, that's foreign policy for him. That's tough. That's being a cowboy. God. You guys have no clue what foreign policy looks like. You have no clue what American interests, what an America first foreign policy would actually be. Trump was weak with regard to Iran. He was pathetic with regard to North Korea. He was Putin's lackey when it came to negotiations with Putin. He was all the one. He basically folded and gave all the one whole segments of Syria. So basically Trump handed over Syria to Putin and all the one. Now, again, I don't think Americans should be in Syria. But if we're there, are we there to find their books? Yeah, read John Bolton's book. Somebody should read John Bolton's book. John Bolton, who Trump appointed because he was really good on some issues in foreign policy. And then John Bolton wrote a book. Now he's the devil. But read his book, and you'll learn about Trump's foreign policy groveling, Trump's foreign policy pathetic weakness. He didn't sound tough to the authoritarian. He didn't sound tough to Xi and China, who took over Hong Kong under Trump's nose. He didn't sound tough to Putin, who basically did what he wanted. He didn't sound tough to the Saudi Arabians, who killed a journalist under his nose, and he didn't care. Brutally slaughtered a journalist in their embassy in Turkey. He didn't sound tough to anybody. He sounded tough to you, to us, to Americans, but not a single authoritarian in the world thought he sounded tough. So I don't think how this affects Syria, unless Putin is weakened. If Putin is weakened, then he'll be weakened in Syria as well. I'm not sure who will fill the void if he is weakened in Syria. The other thing that Trump allowed is for the Iranians to get established in Syria. So the Iranians basically now control. This is Bush, Obama, and Trump basically gave the Iranians the whole fertile crescent, from Lebanon, from Beirut, to Damascus, to Baghdad, to Tehran. The Iranians dominate the fertile crescent, which is truly, truly stunning. Let's see. People don't like Bolton, but Trump nominated him. You all loved Bolton when he worked for Trump. This is why Trump makes people mindless. That's what I find so interesting. Ryan says, yes, Ryan says, has it in book? Both say that war is destructive of capital and has no upside. Please tell us your view on the complicity of the Russian people to tolerate a dictator for so long and not overthrow the government. Well, huge complicity. The Russian people are responsible for this. I mean, the Russian people. Putin is beloved by a big segment of the Russian people. I don't know if it's a majority. I don't know how many people. They haven't overthrown him. They haven't allowed a real opposition to rise. They haven't defended that opposition. They demonstrated when he put in prison, I forget the opposition leader's name. But it was relatively weak. They could have done a lot more. They're cowardly. Look, it took them what? What is it? 70 years, 70-something years to overthrow the Soviets? Russia is not exactly a bastion of freedom and liberty, unfortunately, among its people. Oops, what did I do? All right, let's see. Derek says, should the truckers, should the Canadian truckers be sent to honking downtown Moscow? Well, I mean, they might not be led back into Canada. That's the only problem. I hope there's some Russian truckers who are willing to go honking downtown Moscow. Of course, they won't just have their assets frozen. They will have their balls frozen. They will be sent to the gulags in Siberia and be allowed to freeze completely, assets, and everything. Every asset that they own will be frozen. Chad asks, don't planes dominate in ground assaults? How would Ukraine have any chance to prevent Putin from taking Kiev? I don't know that they can prevent Putin from taking Kiev. They can make taking Kiev really, really bloody. They can put a javelin anti-tank missiles in various streets around Kiev. They can slow down his columns. They can kill a lot of Russian troops on his way to taking Kiev. They probably can't prevent it completely, but they could make it very bloody. They could make it very painful. Now, again, it might be that the Ukrainians fold and that the Russians just overwhelm them. It's, I suspect that Russia thought they would do better than they have done on the first day. I think they're bogged down in the Northeast. They're bogged down north of Kiev. Supposedly they've got free reign in the South. They're doing very well in the South, but in the Northeast, they seem to be bogged down. I don't know, right? I'm not on the ground. I don't have any special intelligence from there. I don't know Ukrainians well enough to know how well they are fighting and how well they will fight. But let's hope, my hope is that they have the courage and they have the conviction and they have the weaponry to fight it out. Let's see, Grant says, no question. Listen to the UN Security Council meeting earlier today, very reminiscent of Britain to Germany. Don't invade Austria. Don't invade Czechoslovakia. Diplomacy doesn't go far with dictators. No, it doesn't. You'd think we would have learned. Think we would have learned. And we haven't and Europeans haven't. And again, this is a European war, not our war, but this is a European, this is a war Germany should be concerned about. This is a war Poland, Romania, Czech Republic should be concerned about. This is a war Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia should be concerned about. This is a war NATO minus the United States should be very concerned about. They've got a monster on their border now. Vlad asks, as far as I heard, Russians do have some new cruise missiles and tanks. They have new cruise missiles. The tanks, T-80s are not very impressive, not very impressive. If you look at a Russian tank versus the Abrams tank or the Israeli Merkava or the German tank, which I forget its name, they can't compete. The Western tanks are just far superior. They are far superior defending their own crews and they're far superior at target aiming and shooting. Is the reason you're discarding them that Russians don't have many of them? No, they have a lot of tanks. What do you think of their chances to increase production of those small? Russia is a poor country relative to Europe. And Russia is a technologically backward country. Russian weaponry is relatively, relative to American weaponry, primitive. My guess is Chinese weapons are far superior to Russian weapons. When the MiG-29 was, when the MiG-29, I was just talking to a friend there today about this, in 19, I can't remember when it was, 19, early 70s, a MiG-29 was clocked flying over Egypt at Mach 2.5 or something like that. And the West went nuts. They were like, oh my God, the Russians have achieved superiority in the air over the West. They have a superior weapon, the MiG-29. No American fighter can fly that fast. And then a Russian fighter pilot, I don't know if you remember this, some of you weren't born yet, defected to South Korea, no, to Japan. Anyway, South Korea, Japan, I can't remember. And defected and brought a MiG-29 with him. And the Americans got to actually take it apart and see what was made of. And it turned out that this is a pathetic plane. It could go straight very, very fast. It could not maneuver. It could not maneuver. You know, the difference between me and you, Richard, is that I've fought against Russian weaponry, you haven't. I've studied Russian weaponry, you haven't. Because I had to fight it. I know T-72 is inside out and T-55s, T-65s. I've studied this stuff, you haven't. So, you know, embellish and enjoy your ignorance. The MiG-29 could go straight very, very, very fast. But in 1982, when the Syrians flew MiG-29s against Phantoms, Phantoms were much older airplanes, F-4s. The Israelis basically took out the MiG-29s and took out the entire Syrian Air Force, filled with state-of-the-art, top-of-the-line Russian aircraft. Have you ever seen the, you know, Richard says it's a numbers game. Have you ever seen the numbers of the Six Day War or the Yom Kippur War? Have you ever seen the numbers of the 1948 war against Israel? I mean, the numbers would blow you away, blow you away. The Arab forces had multiples, many, many multiples, well over 10 X, the number of planes, the number of people, the number of tanks, the number of everything. But the soldiers were not willing to fight because they didn't know why they were fighting. The soldiers were not motivated and the weapons systems were not as good. And in every one of those battles, even in the 48 when Israel had inferior weaponry, Israel won because it was motivated, it was defending something they valued. It was defending their land, their freedom, their property, their families. This is not at the end of the day a numbers game. And if the Ukrainians have learned from the Israelis, if the Ukrainians are willing to fight like the Israelis have, then they will take out the Russians. Will they, can they? I don't know. I'm not predicting that the Russians lose here. I'm predicting that if the Ukraine fights, if the Ukrainians are willing to fight, if the Ukrainians take the fight seriously, then they can inflict a lot of pain on the Russians, a lot of pain on the Russians. And again, numbers are not everything. Just look at the wars Israel has fought. Just look at the numbers. Sorry guys, reality, facts, that's what matters. And it could be two days from now, they've taken Kiev and it's all over. I acknowledge that I could be completely wrong here, but that'll be the result of the fact that the Ukrainians folded, that the Ukrainians do not have the spirit in them to fight this. That's possible. Yep. I'm the one who's insane tonight, Richard. That's absolutely right. God. So I don't think they have a chance at production. I mean, again, Russia is not particularly strong here. There was not gonna last very long, one way or the other. I don't see the Russians needing to produce a lot more mappings either. Winners will lose this. If this takes a couple of weeks, then they've lost. All right. Tyler says, thanks for the show, you all really appreciate it. Appreciate the support. Thank you, Tyler. Shazba says, reading, we're the living for the first time. Oh, wow. Wow, enjoy. Leon Kira will prevent it from leaving Russia and then they were prevented from getting work when they were forced back home, not party members. That struck me as particularly nasty. Yeah, I mean, communism is nasty, is nasty. Richard's always here, almost every night because I am so insane. I'm so wrong. Alex says, congrats, you're on. This is my first super chat ever. Alex, it's great to have you on the super chat. It's great to have you supporting the show. All right, guys, we are at, I don't know, 800 and something bucks. I think Catherine wants to go to 1,000. What the hell? We're only like less than 200 away from 1,000. 180 bucks would get us to 1,000. That would be kind of cool. If we got to 1,000, you would support my message, you would support what I'm trying to say here, what I'm trying to do here, what I'm trying to promote here. And that would be fantastic and greatly appreciated. All right, we've got a bunch of non-$20 questions. Oles Sando, I don't know how to pronounce that name, sorry, and I welcome to YBS fan. Welcome, welcome to you. Thanks for joining us. I don't even know what that is exactly. Anyway, that's cool. All right, where are you from? Oles Sando. Is that a Scandinavian name? Where is it from? Jacob says, will Russia push forward quicker with the seizure of Taiwan as a result of this? Is it different due to our defense agreement? We don't have a defense agreement with Taiwan. We negated the defense agreement with Taiwan in 1979, I think, under the Jimmy Carter administration. We negated that defense treaty because we wanted to establish a relationship with Beijing and that was one of the conditions. So we don't have a defense treaty with Taiwan. But Taiwan is much better, I think, again, to the extent of my knowledge. Taiwan is much better defended than Ukraine is. It has a better weapon system. Gene, thank you. Thanks for being a YBS fan, I appreciate it. I don't know what these new green things are. What is this? It doesn't look like a super chat because it doesn't look like there's any dollars attached, but it does make you a fan somehow. Are you joining as members? You can become a member of the Iran Book Show. There's a button below where you can become a member. All kinds of perks. We're gonna be putting up videos there just for members. Maybe this green thing is a sign that you become a member. So go become members, guys. It's like $5.99 or something. So join as a member, thank you. So please join as a members. There's 350 people here right now. 350 people should be joining the channel right now. That'd be terrific if you join as members in addition to subscribing. And it's a great way again to support the show because it's another source of revenue. So first of all, you know, so few things. One, I think Taiwan is much better defended. Taiwan is also a freer country than Ukraine. And I think the people there were motivated to fight the Chinese. So I think it's gonna be a tougher battle. And I think China still lives under the illusion that they will one day be able to convince. The Chinese will be able to convince the Taiwanese to join China and not have to invade it at all. So I think that Taiwan is more difficult and I think as a consequence of it being more difficult, I think it's not likely that China is gonna do anything yet. I don't think China is ready. I don't think this is the right timing for China. China is struggling economically. China is worried about sanctions from the United States. It's worried about sanctions globally. It is not in a strong position. I don't think the leadership in China is quite as irresponsible, as irrational, as thuggish as Putin is. I think it's more thoughtful, I won't say rational, but thoughtful about trade-offs and what it has to lose if it invades Taiwan. Right now it has a great, if you will, trade relations with Taiwan and there's too much to lose. There's a lot of wealth, a lot of people and this would cause the Chinese economy to tell spin into a massive recession, if not a depression, the kind of sanctions that would be put on them. China is still ambitious economically. Russia is not ambitious economically. Russia is ambitious ethnically, spiritually. It's ambitious territorially. Russia is ambitious in all kinds of ways in terms of empire building. It's not particularly ambitious when it comes to economics. And partially you can see that. China has done economically much better than Russia has. All right, thank you everybody for becoming members of the Iran Book Channel. I appreciate that. So I don't think we're gonna see China invade Taiwan. Again, I could be wrong. I could be proven tomorrow wrong. Tomorrow the Chinese could invade because they sense the West is busy. But I don't think they will. China would also have problems with Japan. It would have problems with South Korea if they invaded Taiwan. Again, not that they care about Japan and South Korea, but again, there are a lot of business relationships. This is why business and business integration reduces war. It reduces the impact of war because war becomes much more costly. So Lyman Brown, I think I answered that, will she be involved in it to take Taiwan? I mean, he's watching the West's response. There's no question about that. He is watching the West's response. Michael asks, if you were president, who would be your foreign policy advisors? Oh, God, if I were president, could I just have one, Leonard Peacoff? I would just make Leonard Peacoff my foreign policy advisor. It would just be me and Leonard Peacoff would run foreign policy. That would be a blast. That's it. I don't think I need more than that. I mean, he learns Juno. I like the way he learns things about these issues. From the non-objectivist world, it's tough. I don't like Bolton's things about Bolton. He's too eager for war. He's too pro-NATO. He's too anti-Snowden. Leonard would now bring Trump in, not for a second. Not for a second. If I were president and he was my foreign policy advisor, not for a second, you guys don't understand and don't know Leonard. Who else? I mean, Bolton has some good things, but I don't think he brings anything different. Peter Schwartz? Peter Schwartz? I would want some area expertise. Putin's former chief economic advisor is at the Cato Institute. He would be an interesting guy to bring in. I don't know. I haven't thought about it because it's not relevant because, but very few people outside of Objectivism would I trust and they're not that many people who are experts in foreign policy and Objectivism. You've got Elon and you've got Peter Schwartz and you have, and of course you've got Leonard Pekoff, but all of them, maybe with the exception of Elon, none of them are sector specialists and I like sector specialists. I would want to look for foreign policy, people who really have a deep understanding of foreign policy, particularly regions and their Objectivists. All right, let's see, the legend 27. Do you think that people today are more willing to accept white authoritarianism, especially the younger generation of men? Yes, much more, much, much more. I don't think it's even a thing. I think that left-wing authoritarianism will face a much more stringent pushback than right-wing authoritarianism. And I think it's gonna get worse over time. I think it's gonna get worse over time. And you're gonna see it. You're gonna see it play out in the next few couple of decades. You're gonna see it play out. Daniel says, how do you imagine Trump would have handled this? I hear a lot of the right-claimed prophet Trump would have never allowed this to happen. I don't know. I have no idea how he would have handled it. I have no idea. My guess is not much differently than Biden. It partially depends on who Trump would have had as his foreign policy advisors around him. But somebody like Bannon would have cheered Putin on. It would have encouraged Trump to support Putin taking Ukraine or deposing that president. But it's hard to tell. It's hard to tell what kind of deal would have been struck. But a lot of it, I mean, clearly Biden is incompetent and his foreign policy advisors are completely incompetent. But I don't think the kind of people that Trump would have appointed, particularly in the second term, as foreign policy advisors were good. I mean, Pompeo was not good. He was terrible. And he was terrible in North Korea. He was terrible in Iran. And he landed up being terrible in Russia. And up until yesterday, Pompeo was raving about Putin. Was all our support of a Putin. Today, finally, finally, today, Pompeo started criticizing Putin and calling this an unjust war on Putin authoritarian and all the things that he should have been calling him all along. His banner support, the Ukrainian invasion. I didn't listen to him today, but he was defending Putin up until today. He's a huge fan of Putin's. Huge fan of Putin's. I mean, Putin has sometimes been successful. Sometimes he's failed. I mean, he failed with Armenia. He succeeded in taking a piece of Georgia. And he succeeded in his ploy in Syria and that was opposed to Trump. So the only reason Trump ever sanctioned Russia because his pharmacy advisors recommended it and that was primarily Bolton and people like McMaster and Mathis. But those exactly are the kind of people that Trump kicked out and Trump wouldn't want in a second term. In a second term, Trump will make sure that all of his advisors are yes men and all his advisors are bought into the banning view of the world which is yeah, let Russia have Ukraine because they're ethnically the same color skin. But it's hard to tell what the alternatives are, right? I mean, there's no question. One of the things that have motivated Putin is Biden's pathetic evacuation of Afghanistan. But how would have Trump evacuated Afghanistan? Would it have gone better? It's very difficult to tell. So, don't know. Richard asks, Shapiro seems to think that what's happening now is the result of the West becoming more and more indolent following the end of the Cold War, your thoughts on this. What's happening now is the West becoming weaker and weaker and valuing itself and its own civilization and its own value less and less. The West having no self-esteem. So there's a sense in which that's indolent but it's primarily an issue of self-esteem, self-confidence valuing its own civilization. And so yeah, it is a sign of the West weakness. What happening now is a reflection of the West weakness is why it's why Putin has been so, has successfully not been overthrown in Russia. It's why he gets away with killing. I mean, think about Putin's track record. He's been killing Soviet dissidents all over the world including in Western countries with no consequences for decades now. He's been killing opposition's leaders, nobody cares. He's been invading countries like Georgia and Crimea. Nobody does anything, nobody cares. He's been involved in wars in the Middle East, nobody cares. He gets away with anything. And the West just shrugs, the West just doesn't care. So why not? But the West has no confidence, the West doesn't believe in itself. He saw that after 9-11. The West cowers, the West is pathetic. You saw with the greatest expression of that was the Mohammed cartoons where the whole West refused to publish the cartoons and cowered before Islam. So now we're cowering before Putin. So there's a sentence in which Shapiro is right, but he attributes it to secularism. I attribute it to bad philosophy. Secular or non-secular. All right, we're like a hundred and what? We're like 120, 30 away from the thousand dollars. So it would be nice to get to a thousand dollars. We're 140 away, $720 questions or $140 contribution or 250s and change and whatever. You guys figure it out, $140, $140. The West is philosophically weak, ideologically weak. It lacks a backbone, it lacks self-esteem. It lacks confidence. It lacks righteous indignation, righteous confidence in its own and itself. All right, Ryan asks, how much and in what way U.S. involvement do you support in Ukraine? Any troops, a hundred million for anyone who kills Putin, et cetera? No, no troops, no troops. No American pilots going in and out. Nothing, I support selling them weapons, giving them a loan, you give the loans to everybody, why not, selling them weapons, providing them with all the technology they need in order to defeat the Russians, providing them with intelligence, providing them with intelligence and weapons without endangering the lives of Americans. That's what I would do. Hundred million to kill Putin? No, no, I mean, if we want to kill Putin, let the CIA just do it. Bounties, I don't believe in bounties. You want to kill somebody, just do it. Oops, what did I delete there? All right, Alex, nuclear power plants possible to prevent Ukraine from ever dream about recreating a nuclear arsenal, a research reactor was also taken. Yeah, but Chernobyl is dead. It's a dead reactor, so I don't know what kind of impact that would have. I didn't realize that a research nuclear facility was taken. That's interesting. Do you think this crisis will force you up in the West and we consider they're fracking bans? Unfortunately, no, unfortunately, no. I think Greta has the West by the balls, she has the West by the hearts, whatever. I think, you know, this is John Kerry worrying about climate change when people are dying in the streets in Ukraine. This is the moral cause of the young generation is climate change and not willing to give that up. So no, unfortunately, I don't think it's gonna cause them to rethink it. I mean, the fact is that even Ukraine probably could frack and has natural gas there. Certainly the UK has a lot of natural gas, but I think Germany has too. I mean, it generally turns out that there's just a lot of natural gas out there. Derek says, Tucker rightly hates Justin Trudeau, but then defends Putin. Yeah, this is the American right today. They like strong men of a particular kind. See, what he doesn't like about Justin Trudeau, this is the reality. What he doesn't like about Justin Trudeau is Justin Trudeau is effeminate. Justin Trudeau has this weak mannerism. He comes out as a little effeminate. So even though he's acting authoritarian, it's acting authoritarian from a kind of an effeminate perspective. What he likes about Putin, what Bannon likes about Putin, what all these guys, Putin has muscles, Putin likes to go boating without a shirt on, Putin is a man's man. Putin is non-woke. What they like about Putin and the rest of them is that they are, they hate the left. It's the only thing that matters. Do you hate the left? If you hate the left, I love you. I mean, the right right now would be falling all over themselves. Many people in the right would be falling all over themselves, over Hitler. Because he hated the left. He wasn't woke. Vanu, Alina, Alania, two-part question. One, how does this invasion differ from the Orade invasion of Georgia? Two, is this invasion, if this invasion is swift, what does it mean for the Caucasus countries coming from Georgia, Armenia? Well, the only way in which it differs from the Orade invasion of Georgia is that the Orade invasion in Georgia stopped short of taking over Tbilisi, of completely overthrowing and taking over the entire country of Georgia, and instilling a puppet regime in Georgia. The Georgians managed to resist the Russians enough to prevent that. Sanctions were put in Russia and Putin for whatever reason, I don't know enough about the conflict, stopped. He took one province and he stopped. Here, Putin is much more ambitious. Ukraine is bigger. Ukraine is closer to the West. This puts him very close to one little mistake. And he is in front of NATO. He is in a conflict with NATO. So this is much riskier for Putin, but also much more ambitious for Putin. If he succeeds, if this is swift and he gets away with it and he feels like he got away with it and it seems like he won in some sense, then I think the real lesson for the Caucasus is why not take over the rest of Georgia? Why not then go to Azerbaijan and get the oil? The oil used to be part of the Russian Empire. Remember Russia took Azerbaijan for a war to take over Azerbaijan in order to get the oil, the first oil in the world that was a first real oil field in the world was discovered as Azerbaijan and the Russians swiftly took it over and made it part of the Russian Empire. So I think it bodes ill for any country that borders it. And if someday Putin decides that he thinks that NATO is weak, then his obvious targets are Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Those would be easy. It would take him a day. Those are small countries. They have no land borders with a NATO country other than each other. They could only be defended by NATO supplying them by the sea. That would be too slow. Putin could overrun them in a day. They're tiny, tiny, tiny places. Now that would be the declaration of war on NATO and he would have to deal with NATO's air force, which again would crush him, crush him. Now you're not gonna see this happen because I think Putin's gonna be careful not to upset NATO. But if NATO, I'll say this again, if NATO went to war with Russia, NATO would crush the Russians in days. It wouldn't even be close. And I don't think Putin knows that because he's a detachment reality megalomaniac. So he could make a mistake and he could lead Russia into massive defeat. Michael asks unrelated question from out of left field, but it's 20 bucks. Do you buy cars for safety or comfort? I buy cars for comfort and speed. I buy cars for me. I buy cars because they're fun to drive. My last car that I bought for me was an Audi S5 with red letter seats. And today I would buy the Audi RS5 or I would love to have a BMW M5. I don't because I live in Puerto Rico and there's no way to drive a car like that. So in Puerto Rico, I buy the car my wife wants. I don't buy the car I want. In Puerto Rico, the principle is comfort. Comfort and the ability to sustain potholes. And what do you call it? Dependability. So in Puerto Rico, I own a small Lexus SUV because a small Lexus SUV is safe, it's comfortable, it can handle potholes and it never breaks down. Just you can ride 300,000 miles and the thing will never break down. In Puerto Rico, you never will drive 300,000 miles in a lifetime, I wouldn't drive 300,000 miles in Puerto Rico. So it's a perfect call for Puerto Rico. Grant, thank you for the $50 contribution. I really appreciate it. I'm glad to see a lot of people appreciate today's show. In spite of some people obviously not. Grant's right, thanks for the show. The topic is unfortunate though. Yes it is. Too many of my topics unfortunate. That is a fact. It's too much bad in the world. Maybe I'll try to do a positive show over the weekend if I can muster the energy to do that. I just have to comment on this. He says Russia has 6,200 nuclear weapons, the US 400 and Britain's 220. France, you should also count France in there. I don't know if those numbers are true. I don't know, I haven't researched it. But how many of the 6,200 will actually take off? How many of the 6,200 would reach their target? How many of the 6,200 would actually blow up? And I don't wanna test that because 6,200 nuclear weapons, 4,000 nuclear weapons, which the US has, so the US has 4,000. I don't wanna test that. How many of those actual warheads versus weapons? How many of those are submarines so that they can't be taken out in a preemptive strike? How many of those are on the oceans? How many of those are mobile? So sheer numbers don't matter. They're just one factor in a much more complicated equation. Okay, Corey says, I think this femininity which the right criticizes the left for and masculinity which the left criticizes the right for, toxic masculinity, et cetera, is all just emotionalism versus emotionalism in both cases reason is out. I agree completely, I agree completely. Masculinity and femininity are real. They're not, they are virtues in the right context. Yes, they can both be toxic. But what really matters is reason. What really matters is rationality. What really matters is the choices people make. What really matters is their thinking that they put into those choices. That's what matters. Michael asks, Russia has been building hypersonic missiles while we've been building gender-neutral toilets. Yeah, you underestimate the US and you overestimate the Russians, Michael. Hypersonic missiles, I wonder. It reminds me of the MiG-29, really, really, really fast. Can it hit a target? Will it blow up before it even takes off? Really? Do we have the weapons systems to take them out? Do we know? Do you know? I doubt we've been sitting on our hands and I doubt the Russians' hypersonic missiles are very effective. I have, historically, I have 50 years of experience, not 50 years, I don't know. Since the early 1970s. Yeah, it's 50 years, well, that's kind of crazy. 50 years of experience with Russian weapons systems. I wouldn't bet on them, ever. The Syrians bet on them, the Egyptians bet on them, the Jordanians bet on them, the Iraqis bet on them. Many, many countries have bet on, the Armenians bet on them. And the bets did not pay off, the bets did not pay off. Ukraine doesn't have an air force. Ukrainian air force has finished, it's done. They have a few, the Ukrainian air force, first of all, is Russian airplanes, it's not American. And Ukrainian air force has finished because the airports have been wiped out. So as far as I can tell, the few Ukrainian jets that are still flying are landing in Romania. And Romania, I don't think, will allow them to engage in combat missions over Ukraine. So Ukraine has no air force. But what Ukraine has are stinger missiles. And I wouldn't want to be a pilot going up against stinger missiles. I'll just put it that way. They are powerful, powerful, mobile anti-aircraft missiles that'll take down a MiG, certainly take down a helicopter and certainly take down big transport airplanes. So I hope the Ukrainians have enough of the stinger aircraft, anti-aircraft missiles. We'll see. Chad says, thanks for the show today. Thank you, Chad. Thanks for the support. Thank you for all of you who became members of the Iran Book Show. Please keep becoming members. There's gonna be content that we only put up that is only available for members that'll start next month. And Action Jackson is responsible for that. I am gonna have a front, a new front row event. That's a private event with 20 people, just 20 people. It'll be a seminar on self-esteem and it'll be in April. And you can find out more information. There's a link at the top where you can find out more information about it. So sign up for that. We still have, I think over half, we've only got about seven people signed up. So there's still, I think, 13 people that can sign up. Just 20 people on a Zoom with me talking about self-esteem. So it should be fun. People, I think, who participated in the past seminars that I've done on capitalism and socialism have really enjoyed them. So I hope you sign up for these. It's $100 a person. It'll be on a Saturday. All the information is available on the link, on the chat that is pinned at the top. Grant says, top off Chad Mill for $1,000 with three bucks. Thank you, Grant. Thank you, Chad. We made exactly $1,072 to spare. Thank you, everybody, for being here today. Thank you for the support. Keep it up. Here's to the Ukrainians. Go, Ukraine. I hope you give hell to the Russians. Make them pay. Make them pay. Clay, 50 bucks, LPR class of 2022. Thank you, Clay. Great, great. Yeah, I'm not gonna see you again in 2022, unfortunately. I've done my two classes for LPR, but hopefully you'll visit in the future and say hello in the class of 2023 or 2024. Thanks, Clay. Thanks for joining us here. Thanks to all of you for listening. Don't forget to like the show. It's that little like button. Don't forget to subscribe to the show if you're not a subscriber. And don't forget to support the show on youronbookshow.com slash support. Andrew says, for $20, if the core of the problem is the destruction of the West self-esteem, isn't the rationale to despise the left from methodologically destroying it? No, because I don't think it's only the left that's destroyed it. I think it's the left and the pathetic right. And I do despise the left. We should despise the left. We should absolutely thoroughly, deeply despise the left. That doesn't mean we should support the right. We should despise them both. The left, for undermining the West self-esteem, the right for not being able, not even have an inkling on how to defend the West self-esteem. And now, because they failed so badly, they have themselves reverted to destroying the West. They have themselves reverted to authoritarianism. So left and right at this point must be despised. 30 years ago, yeah, it was more about the left. Things have changed. Free trade, go Ukraine. And he says, go Ukraine and the Ukrainian. I can't pronounce it. Thank you, free trade. Thank you to all of you. And I will update you all on Saturday. Maybe it'll turn out that Richard was right. And I'll have to admit again that I was wrong. You know, the one thing you get on the Iran book show that you don't get on a lot of other shows is when I'm wrong, I admit to being wrong. See you on Saturday, buy everybody and never forget the heroes of Snake Island, assuming that that story is true. Remember the fog of war, we don't really know. Well, no one day, but on Snake Island, that spirit of fight, not willing to surrender, fighting to the last man, that is the only way Ukraine can win.