 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Book Show. Alright everybody, welcome to the Iran Book Show on this Thursday, January 5th, as I continue to update you on the news of the day, the news of the year so far, 2023, hard to believe. Alright, let's just jump into this. I think this is one of the most horrific stories you will read anyway, and unbelievably revealing of kind of the agenda of the new left, of the modern left, of the wacky left, but the wacky left as institutionalized all over this country. And that is the story of what is today still, I think, ranked as the number one high school in the United States. Number one high school in the United States is the Thomas Jefferson appropriately named, I think, High School for Science and Technology in Virginia. This is a high school that many, many parents move to Virginia in order for their kids to attend. It is a high school that places in the top universities in the United States, really, in the world. It's a high school that is in the state of Virginia, as you might know, so it's somewhere in Northern Virginia, not exactly where, but in Northern Virginia. It also happens to be a public high school, so this is a high school run by the government. It's a public high school run by the state of Virginia. And yet, it has managed over many, many years to establish itself as one of the top high schools in the country, if not the top high school in the country. I guess it's in Fairfax County. Fairfax County really is suburbs of DC, Northern Virginia. The Virginia Attorney General has just launched an investigation into practices at the school. And let me just say right in advance, appropriately so, absolutely so. And here are the two big issues that are going to be investigated. I think the one which says it all is the fact that the school has been withholding, not telling its students when they have achieved awards. In particular, let's see, what's the award called? This is the, God, where is it? Yes, the National Merit Scholarship, I guess, they give awards. They commend students. National Merit Honors, I think they call. These National Merit Honors are available to students to score very high in standardized tests. And they are important in some colleges and universities decisions about accepting students. The top universities, top colleges use this in accepting. It's also crucial to receiving scholarships. So there are, let's see, something like 800 special scholarships from evil corporate sponsors, of course, from those businessmen. 800 special scholarships for extraordinary students, for students of ability, for students who score very high in these tests, for students who get the National Merit Honors. Now, for years now, the administration at the Thomas Jefferson School has been withholding these awards the notice that students have received the awards from the students and their parents. They've often not let them know at all. They've let them know late. They've sat on these announcements so that the students could not use this information in their applications for early admittance into colleges. A lot of these students have missed opportunities. Some haven't heard about it until after they've already been turned down or accepted by certain universities. And only then do they know that they've got this award. This has been going on now for several years. Interestingly enough, this is, of course, a school dominated by Asian students. A significant number of its student body is Asian. But, you know, I read this story of one kid who is an Arab-American, Shawana Yasso, that's the name of the parent, not the student. Her son, you know, studied hard, took the most advanced classes and actually won a National Merit Honors scholarship and didn't hear about it. Applied to universities not knowing he had won and didn't get into his top choices partially because he hadn't, they didn't let him know. I mean, these are people who are running, not just some random high school, but they're running what everybody knows and they know is the top high school in the country. Where a significant number of the students, over the last five years, this sitting in this information has affected the lives of 1,200 students, 1,200 students. One form of student said he learned he won the award through a random email from the school to a school district email account that students rarely check. The principal neither told his parents nor made any kind of public announcement. Now, just so you understand, the principal and the, oh, this guy is what? This guy is a, oh, I thought I, yeah, there he is, the director of student services, Brandon Costaca. He's the director of student services. The principal is, anyway, whatever the name of the principal is, they know exactly what they're doing. This is not accidental. This is not a consequence of, well, they're just incompetent. The mail got lost. They have a bad address. It sat on a secretary's desk for a while. They were busy. Other things going on. No, this was a purposeful attempt not to recognize achievement, not to recognize students knowing that such an attempt jeopardizes the success of these students. Costaca admitted that the decision would hold the information from parents and inform the students in a low key way, low key way, like late and maybe never was intentional. Quote. I mean, think about what this says, think about what this says about what this man's view of the world is. Quote. We want to recognize students for what they are as individuals, not focus on their achievements. I didn't read that five times. We want to recognize students for what they are as individuals, not focus on their achievements. So what they are as individuals has nothing to do with their achievements. What they are as individuals is, no, this is not double talk. This is serious stuff. This is deep philosophy, right? Look, we're all determined by our genes and our environment. Our achievements are not our achievements. They are just the consequence of random occurrences in the universe. They are the consequence of being born to the right parents at the right time with the right genes in the right place and having loving family and you get no credit for your achievements. And in the sense you don't have any free will, you don't get a credit for it really. Most things, but you know your emotions, the kind of person you are, you know, you're nice and friendly and that is what you are as an individual. Your achievements, that's your genes. This is a consequence of the God, of the determinism that dominates today's academia. This is a consequence of the Wallsian view that we are the Wallsian political scientists. The Wall just determined political scientists and philosophy. The Wall just determined mystic nothings. This is the consequence of the evolutionary psychological view that you don't determine your fate. Therefore, you are not responsible for your achievement. This is the same as I think the worst presidential speech in all human history which was Obama's, you didn't build that speech. Well, you didn't achieve that. You don't deserve that. You don't get the award because you didn't do it. The focus is on purely what kind of individual are you and what kind of individual are you. It has nothing to do with your achievements. It has everything to do with, I don't know, your emotions. Because this is how Kostaka continues. He said that he and his principal, they just didn't want to hurt the feelings of the students who didn't get the award. Talk about altruism and egalitarianism and envy and hatred of the good and hatred of achievement. And who, who, who is the bastard who put these people in charge of the school? I mean, these people shouldn't be in charge of anything, not even their own life. But who put them in charge of the number one school in America? How do they get that position? Yeah, I mean, this is what the superintendent, maybe this is the people, the superintendent of Fairfax County Public Schools said. He said, you know, this was a mistake to be honest, right? You know, we have to do something special, commendations, send a very strong message to the kid, right? Your work is meaningful. If you work hard in life, there are good benefits from that. It's just so mild. This isn't a mistake. This is pure evil. And it was over and over and over again over time. So Kostaka sent an email after he was caught. This all came out in December. And December 12th after it was caught, Kostaka sent an email to parents of the commended students, notifying them the important recognition and saying, we are deeply sorry for not showing the news earlier. This is, this is part of the war on merit. This is part of the war on achievement. This is part of the war on free will. But it doesn't end there, folks. It doesn't end there. The principle of the school, the guy in charge of the school who was appointed in charge of this school, this is the top school in the United States, has been alarming incessantly to make the school not the best school in the United States to eliminate the merit-based acceptance standards to the school. The principle has been lobbying that basically, there are too many Asians in the school, and that they need to stop the merit-based admissions test to get into Thomas Jefferson. I mean, it's not an accident. The school is the best school in the country. It admits the best students. And what they need to do is increase diversity. And indeed, the process has become over the last couple of years of changing the admitting standards to the school, eliminating or reducing the emphasis put on merit-based and highlighting diversity. Now, we'll see with the Supreme Court decision about Harvard whether this will stand that decision. It looks likely the Supreme Court will decide that race-based admissions are against the law, against the Constitution, but we'll see. So, good for the Virginia Attorney General, good for the Governor of Virginia. They are looking into this. They are unleashing the Office of Civil Rights on Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology for their failure to timely notify students of the commendation. By the way, this story was broken by the City Journal in New York City, so it's important to give credit. The City Journal is a publication of the Manhattan Institute in Manhattan. But also, they're going to look at the overall of the admissions policies. So, you know, there is a backlash. Yonkins was voted in, I think, to Governor of Virginia to a large extent over the horror of many, you know, relatively Democratic voters, people who typically vote Democratic, the horrors over the Democratic parties shift against merit and achievements and anti-Asian attitudes and anti-success attitudes. And I think a lot of people who typically vote Democratic voted for Yonkins because he was committed to schools being accountable to parents. What a crazy revolution that is. Whereas I think the Democratic governor's attitude was parents shouldn't intervene in education, shouldn't butt in. It's none of their business. So maybe they'll fix this. Maybe they'll fix this. Yonkins has been mentioned as a potential candidate, a Republican candidate running in the primaries for, you know, for presidents. So, but this is a good cause. This is a great cause to champion. Champion merit, champion achievement, champion excellence, champion parent involvement in their kids' education. It's a great cause. All right. That's the story you could do a whole show on easily, not just a quick thing in our news shows. All right. Quickly, we have to talk about this. I mean, McCarthy failed again yesterday, as you probably heard. They spent the night trying to cut deals and give the people voting against McCarthy more stuff that they want. The reality is that there's a bunch of them who don't want anything. They just don't want McCarthy to be Speaker of the House. This is, for the most part, not some principled opposition to McCarthy because he's a weasel and a pragmatist. I mean, I wish he is a weasel and a pragmatist, but this is not some principled conservative opposition that they want more conservative. Although some of the demands are demands that make sense. Some of the rule changes they want in the House are rule changes that make sense, that would prohibit monstrosities like this $1.7 trillion appropriations bill from passing so easily at the end of last, just a few weeks ago, a week ago. So there are definitely Republicans there who are trying to make changes that make sense. But I would say that mostly this is the anarchist, the nihilist, the Trump, what do you call it, trying to get as much attention as you can attitude. These are people who just want attention. These are people who just want to smash stuff. These are people who, and it's not even, it's not even all make America great again. I mean, certainly the people there are the five that are objecting, but the primary five, six are objecting. So not, but because a lot of the make America great again, tight people are voting for McCarthy, right? Jim Jordan, who's been, has been proposed as an alternative speaker by these guys is consistently voted for McCarthy and has nominated him. This is nihilism and narcissism. Yes, narcissism was the word I was looking for. Thank you, Frank. Narcissism, it's, look at me. This is Bobette, who has learned nothing from the fact that she almost lost a massively Republican district. She almost lost to a Democrat because of her shenanigans and because of her irrationality and because of her nuttiness. And yet she came back to the house and continues the same way. I mean, hopefully she will lose next time to a Democrat. Maybe she'll, maybe Republicans, some Republicans will learn a lesson. There's nothing principled going on here. This is all a power play. This is all an attention play. This is just, for many of them, just nihilism. All right. So, I mean, I'm no Kevin McCarthy fan. I think he's a ultimate weasel. And in a sense, I am enjoying this if only to see him squirm. And if only to see him pay the price. This is a guy who sold himself to the devil, you know, on many occasions, repeated occasion, changes mind, flip-flopped on issues like that, basically tries to appease everybody, tries to be on everybody's side and understands for nothing. So, in a sense, this couldn't happen to a nicer guy. On the other hand, it's just, it's just pathetic and it gives you a sense of exactly what the Republican Party is all about. So, Paul Ryan, who was, who was, who's hated so much today, who's despised so much, why? Because he took a principled stand against Trump. For the first time in his life, he actually took a principled stand on something meaningful. And so he's hated today. But Paul Ryan, in 2011, was the compromise candidate when the conservatives refused to vote for a moderate. And Paul Ryan was put forward as, he said he didn't want it. He refused to be speaker. He didn't want to be speaker. And then he was the, he was the, he was the conservative guy who the conservative put forward. Many of the, some of the people actually withholding the Kevin McCarthy vote right now put forward Paul Ryan at the time. He was the hero of the conservatives. And Paul Ryan was one of the, you know, he kept selling out. But in terms of ideas and in terms of proposals and in terms of, he was one of the best congressmen we've had in a long, long time. I mean, the Paul Ryan budgets that passed the House during the Obama years, which would never be turned into law, of course. One of the best budgets the United States House or Senate have ever voted on, including one budget that had Medicare turned in, voucherized, turned into vouchers. But of course, that was unacceptable to Trump who ran on, I won't touch Medicare. I will fight for Medicare for you because he knew who his voters were. I will protect Medicare and Social Security. And of course, he would never, I mean Paul Ryan ultimately always voted with the statists. But a lot of his proposals and a lot of his ideas and a lot of the budget that Paul Ryan Congress passed were terrific and fantastic. They were too terrific and fantastic for Trump. And that's where they butted heads. You know, his ideas were unacceptable to Trump. The kind of things he wanted to do. I mean, if Trump had been on board with Paul Ryan in those first two years where Trump had the House and the Senate, wow, we could have done, the Republicans could have done some major stuff. But they didn't. Anyway, the McCarthy catastrophe and clown show continues at the House of Representatives. Republicans are making a joke of themselves. All right, quickly on the Ukraine war just to give you, you know, give you periodic updates. It turns out, I told you that Ukrainians had bombed these barracks. The Russians have now upped a number of casualties from 68 to 87. A lot of Russian bloggers. I mean, these are pro Russian bloggers and a lot of Ukrainians are claiming the numbers actually in the hundreds that many, many more than the 87, the Russians that many right now died in those barracks. Anyway, it turns out that that it appears that the way that the Ukrainians targeted the barracks, the way they knew where to find them and be able to bomb them was because these recruits coming in. These were, these were fresher recruits, you know, relatively new soldiers. They were using their cell phones and they were talking on their cell phones and what the Ukrainians did. And you've got to admire the Ukrainians ability to use information and, you know, in spite of having a much smaller army and a much smaller budget and everything, they are using what they have so amazingly effectively. Anyway, they triangulated those cell phone calls to this building and bombed it and it's this lack of discipline in the Russian army where they're using cell phones that are easy to identify and to trace and to listen into. And, and that's what targeted this. They used American made rockets, hemods in order to do it and devastated the Russian barracks. Ukraine is also making very small, slow advances in the northeast. If they can take this mage, this major route that gets to Kremlin, I think they will have most of Luhansk. They will be able to take most of Luhansk this winter. They're making slow progress in getting there and they're withholding any Russian advances on other fronts. Finally, another Ukrainian achievement, achievement of technology and achievement of Ukrainian weapons systems. And I think of Ukrainian innovation is that in the first few days in January, the Ukrainians have managed to down every single drone. These are suicide drones, drones that crash into buildings and explode. They managed to down every single 100% hit rate. That's unheard of. The Russians are sending dozens of these drones every night and the Ukrainians are hitting all of them. And that is a testament, again, to the superior technology. They weren't heading very many early on. They've learned, they've adapted, they've adapted their weapons systems and now they are shooting them down. The Russians keep buying these drones from the Iranians. The Iranians are producing them in the hundreds. But the ability of the Ukrainians to innovate on the fly, to adapt their strategy, to adapt their weapons systems and to achieve such successes is truly an amazing, amazing wartime achievement. One wonders who is helping them. I wonder if the Israelis are actually secretly helping the Ukrainians. Maybe I shouldn't say that, get Israel into trouble. But I wonder if they aren't. This sounds like something the Israelis would be really, really good at. And if not, I bet you the Israelis are really studying this and learning exactly what the Ukrainians are doing so that they can mimic it because Israel is terrified. So the Saudis terrified of those Iranian drones being used as a swarm technology, swarming on targets. I don't know if you, this is another news item that was just a very short item, but Israel attacked, made a major attack on the Syrian, on the Damascus airport. And the target of that attack was weapons systems being brought in by the Iranians to beef up their troops over there to provide to the Hezbollah. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of that was drones. I think what the Iranians are doing now is they're doubling up on drone technology. So Israel is destroying them before they get to their target. And as regularly, if you follow the news, Israel regularly bombs Syria in an attempt to destroy the weapons systems that the Iranians are supplying before they get there. All right, just quickly before we move on to the next one, 114 people watching a buck 20, a buck 30 from each one of those would get us that $250 super chat target. We are, we are short about $188. So please chime in again, a buck 50 from everybody on there and we've reached it. We've reached it. So free for you to jump in, jump in with that. All right, quickly. Let's see quickly. Yes, digital dollar. I'm just seeing more talk about this with the collection of crypto. I think the feds and everybody else, you know, is more and more recognizing the appeal of digital currency, the appeal of this. But it's clear that the authorities, the government does not want it to happen in the private space. They're not ready to have the dollar replaced. They certainly don't want the dollar to be replaced. And like many other central banks, the US central bank, I think is more and more. Thank you, Apollo. Apologists did a buck 50. Everybody did that. We would achieve our goal. Like that, right? You know, less than a filtered coffee at Starbucks, as they like to say. Thank you, Steve. So digital currencies, China, China Central Bank is experimenting with it. China Central Bank will probably be the first central bank that makes these. It's from a purely economic perspective, right? It's a fiat currency, obviously, so it has all the downsides of fiat currency, easy to inflate, easy to manipulate, easy to use in order to pick winners and losers and to manipulate the economy. But the advantages are the advantages of a digital currency. That is very, very low transaction costs, easy to move across the world, easy to use for trade really, really quick. And China is going to introduce this. Of course, the downside of a central bank digital currency, the downside is, wow, George, we'll get to that. Oh, thank you, George. The downside is that it is, you have no privacy. Privacy is zero. It's gone. Every single transaction that you engage with, every single transaction you will engage with using this digital currency will be tracked on some big spreadsheet somewhere, some big database, some AI will track it. And of course, in the United States, what is going to happen is we will get a central bank digital currency with all kinds of provisions for privacy. You see, they won't centralize the information, they won't do this, they won't do that. They promise, don't worry, we won't use it to go after you at all, all privatized, all privatized. And we will, you know, people will go, oh, okay, the government is putting in restrictions so they won't, you know, it's okay, we'll go with it. And then five years later, there'll be some kind of emergency, and they'll need the data, and then five years after that, and five years after that, and then slowly, all of that will go away. All the protections and privacy will go away, and the government will hold every single transaction you've ever made that'll have access to it like that. They'll be able to score it, they'll be able to analyze it, they'll be able to, they will become the credit agencies who need credit rating agencies when the government can actually tell everybody exactly what their financial position is. How much money you have everywhere, what their debts are, what your stocks put for you is everything, because everything is denominated in their digital currency. Now, I can understand why China would want that, I can understand why nobody's going to object to China having that. But God, in the land of the free, this is one we should fight with everything we have. We should not give the government authority to do this, we should not allow them to do it. Even if it means China having a more, quote, efficient currency than the dollar. Having the ability to control your own, how you use your money, what you do with it, and not having one entity track everything is crucial for liberty and crucial for freedom. But we're heading in that direction and both Congress and I think the Fed are looking at it again. I promise you that when it's presented, it will be presented with all kinds of safeguards. We see what happens to those safeguards as soon as there's a quote, emergency. Alright, so fight it, big issue. Alright, let's see, wow, George came in with 500 bucks. Thank you, George. It says, Happy New Year. I miss the live show, but better late than never. Please keep up these daily news updates. Love the focused content. Also have a strong review. Also have a song review, alright. Ladder is by Tool, okay. I'm copying it over. Let me just copy the whole thing over. Make sure that I have it. Oops, don't have this open. Alright, let's see. Thank you. So we've easily made our goal for the day. Thank you, George. That is super, super generous. And I'm glad you're enjoying these daily shows. I'm glad to get the positive feedback on these. They're not, I mean, it's super time consuming, so I have my doubts about them sometimes, but I'll keep doing it as long as you guys are supporting them. Mike Dow says, I just increased my monthly contribution before I did so, though my browser warned me that the site is suspicious. What are you up to? Well, I mean, these ideas are kind of suspicious, revolutionary. You have to be careful what you're supporting there, Mike. And you know somebody is monitoring that contribution. And anyway, it would be interesting if the Iran Book Show becomes suspicious. Alright, Andrew says, Bernie Sanders made a statement that amounted to being soft on Putin and that Russia's interest in NATO's expansion, if I understand correctly, is reasonable. How did his sympathies with Russia and Putin align with this ideology? Look, the left and the right are both pro-Putin. The crazy left and the crazy right completely support this. You know, Putin is a authoritarian, but he's a, you know, fundamentally a kind of a, he's a statist. He runs the country from a stated perspective. There is a strong element of socialism and a social ethic in what he does. Bernie Sanders hates America. Therefore, like many of the kind of the North body and libertarians, anything that an opponent of America does must be good. And you know, Bernie is anti-anything that's American interest. And he's pro-authoritarians around the world. And Putin, I think, is at the top of that list for a variety of different reasons. He's strong. He supports a lot of both left and right wing elements in Europe. So it doesn't surprise me at all. Again, what drives a lot of it is the anti-Americanism. The anti-West, the anti-capitalism. You know, Putin is not a capitalist. There's nothing capitalist about Putin. And again, it shows so much that there's no difference between left, radical left and radical right. Far left and far right. There's becoming less and less of a difference between them. You're on, can't, you're on, you're on, you're on, you're on, can't I-24 News say that Giora Epstein is coming out of retirement? That might make Russia and Syria stop. I guess I don't understand. Who's, who's Giora Epstein? I'm missing something. Sorry, you're on my, I don't know who Giora Epstein is. What am I missing? All right, Ilya, thank you for the excellent content, Giora, on my first contribution. Thank you, Ilya. That was from Israel, in Shekir. Scott, Scott, wow, Scott, Scott never does this. Scott, did you say the Department of Justice leans left and we basically have to accept it? Can you see how perceived flippancy from intellectuals can drive some to populists? I said the Department of Justice leans left and we basically have to accept it. I mean, the Department of Justice leans left. It's, it's a bunch of bureaucrats. The government bureaucracy leans left. Do you have to accept it? No, you should fight it, but what's the way to fight it? What, what's the way to fight it? The way to fight it is not with populism. The way to fight it is not by turning the Department of Justice right. The way to fight it is, is radical reform of the Department of Justice and real changes. Sure, of course, the Department of Justice leans left. I mean, look, just on economic issues, just look at, look at the anti-trust lawsuits that the Department of Justice brings back. And of course, the Department of Justice under Jeff Sessions prayed every morning and went after all kinds of issues related to religion instead of defending us. So it's a, it's a political institution with an entrenched bureaucracy that is left, but the entrenched bureaucracy in every single department in government is left. Just like, I mean, where do they get, where does the entrenched bureaucracy come from? It comes from, and, but to do, to do something about it, one has to concede, concede that government does too much. The only way to get rid of the left biased of government, of gun bureaucrats, which now hundreds of thousands of them, not millions, I don't know how many people work for the federal government, millions, the only way to do something about the entrenched bureaucracy is to limit government. It's to reduce the power of government, not to bring in people who are skewered right, because A, you don't have enough people. If you tried in the Department of Justice and all these other departments to hire right-wingers out of college, you couldn't, you couldn't fill government. I mean, right, you know, to their credit, a lot of people who vote for public and out of college go into business. They don't go into government and the ones who do go into government, it's going to be just as bad as the left. So the only way to change the Department of Justice and generally government bureaucracy, leaning left, and this is the sense in which you have to accept it unless you're willing to do this, is to change your view of government and to limit its scope, to limit its influence, to limit what it does. And then, and fire, I mean, what we really should be doing is talking about how many government employees can we fire? How many government employees can be let off? I'm for laying off, you know, 70, 80% of the government bureaucracy. I don't think, and that's what it means, by the way, that's what it means to dry the swamp. That's what it means to get rid of the swamp animals. But how many Republicans are willing to do that? I mean, I'm not talking about replacing them with our guys. I'm talking about getting rid of them. It's not going to happen unless you have a philosophical, political shift in this country towards the limited government. Benny Horowitz, thank you. Appreciate the support of a bunch of others. Gail, thank you. Vladimir, thank you. Marilyn, thank you. Steve, thank you. Apollo, Zeus, thank you. All right, let's do these quickly. We've got a bunch of these, a bunch of super chats. Again, as usual, going over time. Paul Allen says, if the Iranian regime collapses, it's just placed in no longer supplies to Russia. How are the prospects for continued war of attrition in Ukraine? Again, I don't think this is going to land up being a war of attrition. I think that the Ukrainians have got this. And I think the Russians are running out of ballistic missiles. The Russians are running out of any kind of sophisticated weapons. There's only so many drones they can buy from the Iranians if the Ukrainian could shoot them down. I think that in any case the Ukrainians have the upper hand in this war, it's going to take a long time because the Russians have sheer numbers, but I think the Ukrainians have this and they can push the Russians out of Ukraine fully within maybe a year, maybe two, hard to tell, maybe shorter than that even. And it's not clear that if the regime collapses, they stop supporting Russia, because if the regime collapses and it becomes secularized by the National Guard, it's called the National Guard, then the Revolutionary Guard, sorry, the Revolutionary Guard, the Revolutionary Guard might be continued kind of an authoritarian regime in Iran which might choose to ally itself with Russia rather than choose to ally itself with the West. That transition might take a lot longer, the alliance with the West. Elias Hirom says, Gyora Epstein was an Israeli air defense pilot with a good 20 years or so, Georgian calendar, and he says that might make the Russians and Syrians stop. Israeli pilots are superior to Russian pilots, Israeli airplanes are superior to Russian airplanes. If Israel really wanted to take on Russia and Syria, it could. I think he could wipe them out, certainly could wipe out the Syrians. Israel has chosen not to do that for a variety of reasons and to kind of deal with the Russians, and this is why Israel is not publicly supporting Ukraine, because it has to deal with the Russians, whereas the Russians basically will not stop the Israelis from attacking Iranian and Hezbollah targets within Syria, so the Russians won't deploy their anti-aircraft missiles, they won't deploy their airplanes, they won't defend Russian airspace, and they won't object to Israel just going in there and doing whatever it needs to do in order to attack Iranian targets within Syria. That's the deal Israel has, that's cheaper for Israel than actually a conflict with Russia, which who knows how that would go. Israel would start World War III, but it would be bad. So it's, that's the deal with the devil that Israel has broken. Shahzabat says, according to Back to the Future trilogy, money should have been completely digital by 2015. Yeah, should have been, and luckily isn't. If it was private digital, that would be phenomenal, but that is not going to happen anytime soon. Is there a future for crypto in the long term? They might be, but it's not as money. It's money as a feature, but not money as the killer feature that must have. So exactly what that future is, I don't know. Somebody has to come up with a killer app for crypto. It's not replacing the dollar because that won't happen, but the question is what is it? If I knew, I'd be rich. What do you think are the chances that Putin is still president of Russia by the end of 2023? 80% 50? I think it's 50, and I think it declines beyond that. So I'm pretty pessimistic about, I mean pessimistic for Putin. I think most betting sites are closer to 80 to 90. So I put it at 50. I think there's a good chance he's gone, because I think, as I said from the beginning of this war, and I've been right, I think Russia's in much bigger trouble than even the most experts out there think, both economically and militarily. Jason says in a digitalized central currency, couldn't tech companies hacker offer the equivalent of VPN to anonymize monetary transaction and maintain privacy layer on top to hide something underneath? That would be really interesting. I don't know, maybe. I mean, that would be cool. It could be be outlawed. Could the government outlaw something like that? So that's beyond my technical knowledge. And then the question is, could it be outlawed? Again, could there be a way to do it in spite of being outlawed? Would it develop into a black market? All good questions. That would be cool if that were possible, and you could do it even if the government outlawed it. Rafael, hi, Iran. Happy New Year. I have this question in my mind. Would the world be deterministic if humans, animals disappear? Well, the world is deterministic if humans disappear. As far as I can tell. Now, is there some other species out there that has free will? I mean, not that we have any evidence for, so we have to assume no, but could they be sure? So as long as there's free will, it's not deterministic. A we that only being in the universe with free will, I don't know. I don't know. Dolphins do not have free will. Jason, I just imagine a next level battle between government tech and possibility of some tech disruptors on a centralized digital currency. Cool. I think that's a cool imagination. I hope you're right. And you probably are. Colt says, how do you think that when Ukraine will go this year well once, what do we expect to see? And how do you think it will impact America as well? I mean, I think the Ukrainians are going to chip away at Russia. I think the Russians are going to struggle. I wouldn't be surprised if at some point this year, Russia declares a state of emergency internally and tries to increase the number of people in its military through conscription. And at that point, the question is, well, to what extent will the Russian people go along with it? And to what extent with the remaining oligarchs, the ones who haven't fallen out of windows and the military go with it? But I think this is going to be painful. The problem is that it's not really painful until you start bombing Russian civilians. And that's not going to happen. The Ukrainians won't do that. And Russian civilians are pretty accustomed to pain. And while the economy in Russia is going to be really, really, really bad, it's not going to be, it's not the equivalent of, you know, when civilians start really suffering from war. So the Russians can keep this going for a while. But I think generally this is going to go the Ukrainian way. We will see. You know, Belarus might enter the war and attack from the north, which will put Kiev in play again. I wonder whether the Belarusian people who demonstrated extensively against their dictator will tolerate that and whether they will accept their participation in the war and whether the military in Belarus might not revolt again. So I think that's the reason they haven't intervened so far is because they're afraid of what the people actually do if they do intervene. I don't think the dictator has enough support. He's not as strong in Belarus as Putin is strong in Russia. Mellon says Putin doesn't know the actual situation with Ukraine. He has surrounded himself with people who led him, who tell him what he wants to hear. He has to know. He has to know in great detail because the losses are so vast, the situation is so bad. He has to know how bad it is. He might still be under the illusion that they can get out of it. They might still be feeding him the idea that there's a path to victory. But he knows. He knows. I think. Dimon says I said yesterday, but check out section. Yes, SEC vs. Ripple. I wrote it down. I will look into it. Thanks, Dimon. Oh, everybody. Thank you. Wow. You know, that was the most lucrative, most lucrative. Thanks to George, most lucrative morning show we've had so far. So thank you to everybody. Thank you in particular to George. And I will see you all tonight. If you remember, I'm interviewing Nikos. We're going to be talking about critical race theory. We're going to be talking about the illiberal right. And we'll also be talking about the University and its prospects. Nikos' involvement in it. And so, yeah, it should be, it should be fun. Nikos is fun, full of energy. And, yeah, tonight. Oh, it's an unusual hour. We're going to do it at 5 p.m. east coast time, 5 p.m. east coast time. So soon on, in, yeah, right here. So on the Iran book channel. See you this afternoon. And of course, tomorrow morning. Bye everybody.